KN Magazine: Articles
Healthy Living Practices for Writers – Silent Killer: Imposter Syndrome
By Mary Lynn Cloghesy and Jason Schembri
Did you know that you have a silent killer within you? One that is capable of not only derailing your writing life, but also your profession, personal relationships, and pastimes? Recent research has shown that creatives are uniquely susceptible to this disease due to the subjective nature of their work, the solitary aspects of their craft, and the competitive landscape of the arts. A whopping 70% of writers will suffer from this affliction, including some unlikely characters. Consider what Dr. Maya Angelou has said about herself and her work, “I have written eleven books, but each time I think, ‘Uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.’” She’s not the only one. Even John Steinbeck has cried, “I am not a writer. I’ve been fooling myself and other people.” If the icons among us are negatively impacted by Imposter Syndrome, then what hope is there for the rest of us? Clearly, it’s critical to know what it is and how to deal with it in order to protect ourselves from this author interrupter.
What is Imposter Syndrome?
While you may not know the term, I’m guessing you’re familiar with its symptoms. Ask yourself: Have I experienced persistent self-doubt or feelings of inadequacy despite evidence of success? Have I wondered if I was a fraud or feared being exposed as such regardless of my skills, qualifications or achievements? If so, you’re in the thralls of Imposter Syndrome. It’s a form of dysfunctional thinking that has been described as “chronic self-doubt and a sense of intellectual fraudulence that overrides any feelings of success or external proof of competence.” This mental affliction plays on your fears, needling you with subliminal suggestions, and causes you to question yourself, your talent, and your ability to achieve your dreams. It’s subtle, insidious, and stalking you right now. In fact, it’s such a common experience among writers that it could be considered an epidemic.
While Imposter Syndrome will cause you to hang your head in shame, it has many other faces. It will drive you to adopt the behaviours listed below rather than address its root causes, especially when you are feeling vulnerable, such as during the query process or in the midst of critiques. Here are the masks it wears:
Perfectionism – Setting impossibly high standards and feeling like a failure when they aren’t met.
Overworking – Trying to compensate for perceived inadequacies by working excessively.
Discounting success – Attributing achievements to luck or external factors rather than talent, skill or effort.
Fear of failure – Avoiding new challenges due to the fear of being "found out.”
Diagnosing Imposter Syndrome
To combat this disease, you must diagnose it correctly, but how do you know if you’re simply having a bad day or struggling with Imposter Syndrome? Frequency and consistency are important factors to consider, as are patterns in your thinking that reveal deep-seated worry and self-sabotage. Telltale signs that you are suffering from Imposter Syndrome include the following:
Negative Self-Talk
Do you often think, "I’m not a real writer," even though you’re increasing your word count regularly and actively creating new works?
Do you believe your work isn’t good enough, no matter how much you revise?
Perfectionism & Procrastination
Do you keep rewriting the same passages because they’re "never good enough"?
Do you delay submitting work or starting a project because you fear failure?
Dismissing Accomplishments
Do you downplay praise or attribute success to luck instead of your talent and hard work?
Even after recognition (awards, nominations, publication), do you feel like you don’t deserve it?
Fear of Being "Exposed"
Do you worry that other writers, editors, or readers will figure out you’re a fraud?
Does the idea of publishing or speaking about your work make you anxious?
Comparing Yourself to Others
Do you feel like other authors are "real writers," but you’re just faking it?
Do you look at their success and think, "I’ll never be as good as them"?
Overworking to Prove Yourself
Do you push yourself to exhaustion, believing you must work twice as hard to deserve success?
Do you avoid celebrating milestones because you can’t accept you’ve really earned them yet?
What can you do about it?
Recognizing Imposter Syndrome is the first step. Take off the mask, look in the mirror, and say out loud, “I am a writer. I am accomplished, I work hard, and I deserve my success,” then notice how you feel. Free write about it. The key is to manage self-doubt rather than attempt to eliminate it. Leading expert, Dr. Valerie Young, author of The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women, has stated, “The only difference between people who feel like impostors and those who don’t is that the impostors’ thoughts stop them.” Here are some practical steps:
Acknowledge It & Call It Out
When you hear that inner voice saying, "I’m not a real writer," or "I don’t deserve this," challenge it. Ask yourself: What evidence do I have that this is true? Spoiler: There isn’t any. Use the mirror to reflect what is real instead. Write an affirmation and say it out loud to yourself, then get back to your writing. Your work and readers are waiting.
Reframe Your Thinking
Pay attention to your inner dialogue. Instead of saying, "I just got lucky" try: "I worked hard, improved my craft, and took advantage of my opportunities." Whenever doubts and fears come up, remind yourself, "Every writer doubts themselves—this is normal, but it doesn’t define me."
Keep a “Proof” Folder
Create a digital or physical folder where you save:
✅ Positive feedback from editors, agents, or readers
✅ Good reviews or contest recognitions
✅ Personal milestones—finishing a draft, hitting a word count goal, getting shortlisted
On tough days, revisit these to remind yourself that your work has real value and made a positive impact.Stop the Comparison Game
It’s easy to look at other writers and feel lost or behind, but their journey isn’t yours. Even bestselling authors struggle with Imposter Syndrome! Instead of comparing yourself to others, focus on your progress. The only person to compare yourself to is you. Also, cheer others on knowing they need your support as much as you need theirs.
Write Through It
Fear and self-doubt thrive in inaction. Keep writing, even if you don’t feel "good enough" that day. One of the best ways to grow as a writer is to write. The only way out is through.
Share Your Struggles with Fellow Writers
Imposter Syndrome relies on silence. Talking about it with other writers can be eye-opening—they probably feel the same way! Other authors will have tips as to how to beat this too, so reach out to your critique group or friends in the field to gather collective wisdom.
Celebrate Your Wins (Big & Small)
Finished a chapter? Got positive feedback? Submitted to an agent? Celebrate it! Recognizing progress helps rewire your brain to see your success instead of dismissing it. If in doubt, go for a quick win: write a flash fiction piece, watch a video on the art and craft of writing, read one of your favorite authors. Your choices are endless.
Accept That Doubt is Normal
Even established authors battle Imposter Syndrome. The trick is to acknowledge the fear but not let it control you. You’re not an imposter—you’re just a writer pushing past your perceived limits.
Healthy Living Top Tip
Like most diseases, it’s a coordinated approach over time that promotes healing. While there are some actionable steps included in this article to help you diagnose and manage Imposter Syndrome, you may need to go deeper. Our top tip for this month is to be curious about what’s happening, especially if you are struggling, and to acknowledge that you are not alone.
Don’t allow your internal worries to cross over into reality and kill your success. Save that for your writing. One thing that is unique to writers is we get to breathe life into “real” imposters (excuse the oxymoron), villains and victims, then wipe them out with the keyboard. Take advantage of this unique ability and feel emboldened to vanquish your internal imposter. Eradicate the disease at its source. Your story awaits.
Authors: Mary Lynn Cloghesy & Jason Schembri. Mary Lynn is the founder of the Leadership Literary Lab (https://leadershipliterarylab.com), and Jason is a long-term weight loss specialist (https://jasonschembri.coach) Together, they host a luxury writing retreat in the Canadian Rockies.
This Crazy Writing Life: Dipping Our Toes In The Amazon Part Two — On Swimming Upstream...
By Steven Womack
It’s hard to believe that this is installment number twelve of This Crazy Writing Life. How did a whole year go by so fast?
Maybe it’s just me. Time does seem to go by in a blur these days. Add to that the information overload and analysis paralysis we all seem to be afflicted with these days and it’s easy to see how time and life can both just go streaming by like another dreary Netflix movie.
If you’re a newcomer to this little adventure, thanks for joining us. If you’re a regular, thanks for hanging with me. I hope you’re getting something out of it.
So let’s get to work…
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We left off last month with the basics of Amazon ads and, by extension, some fundamentals of digital advertising in general. CPC versus CPM ads, Sponsored Product ads, Sponsored Brands, and Lockscreen ads were all explored. If you need to catch up on some of this stuff, then pull up last month’s column. It’s all there.
Now let’s go a bit deeper, into the underlying architecture of a digital ad campaign. By architecture, I mean how ads are built on Amazon. There’s a hierarchical system at work here that looks something like a pyramid. It’s important to have a basic understanding of how the system works because this is how you organize your advertising efforts. If you’re only advertising one book with one ad at a time, there’s not much to keep track of. But if you’ve got a dozen books out there (or as some indie authors have, dozens or even hundreds of books), then keeping all this stuff straight is a completely different challenge. And as Ricardo Fayet observed in the best book I’ve ever found on learning this platform—Amazon Ads For Authors—the best performing ad campaigns are almost always the best organized.
At the top of the pyramid is the Campaign. Amazon gives you two options here: Custom text campaigns and Standard ad campaigns. There are a couple of key differences between the two.
As the name implies, Custom text campaigns allow you to write your own distinctive ad copy (up to 150 characters) that you can use to try and convince a potential reader to buy your book. The downside here is that you can only advertise one book at a time.
An Amazon Standard ad campaign, though, will allow you to advertise as many books as you want within the same campaign. Say you’ve got ten books in a cozy mystery series. With a Standard ad campaign, you can get all ten books into an “ad group” and Amazon’s algorithm will decide with books will pop up in an ad. The downside here is that the only information the prospective customer will get is the title, the series title, the author’s name and a few other elements of metadata. No creativity allowed…
So the real issue here is twofold: 1) how many books are you trying to wedge into your campaign; and 2) how important is it to be able to write some custom ad copy. If you’re promoting a single, standalone suspense/thriller, then maybe those 150 characters of sparkling creative ad copy are important to you. On the other hand, if you’re campaign is plugging a private eye series with 25 installments, then the Standard ad campaign may give you the most bang per buck.
One big, albeit fairly advanced, component of Custom Ad campaigns is that you can run what’s called A/B testing. You write one set of copy for Ad #1, then a second set for Ad #2. You launch both campaigns at the same time with the same parameters, then measure the success of each one, which is usually done by comparing click-through-rates (CTR) and actual sales. But again, as always with Amazon, this can be a bit complicated. For one thing, you have to create two separate campaigns. You can’t run two ads with different copy in one Custom ad campaign. And you have to launch both campaigns at the same time, with the same product, same budgets, and same targeting.
Lastly, you have to let each campaign run long enough to get a true assessment of how each one’s doing. The longer, the better.
Patience: that one thing we all have so much of…
In last month’s column, we examined the three basic kinds of Amazon ads and examined how the Sponsored Products ad was the one most commonly deployed by indie authors. One of the many things you have to consider when you’re creating a campaign is the bidding strategy you’re going to deploy. As we explored last month, Amazon ads are based on a bidding system. You don’t just buy an ad on Amazon and it suddenly appears; you bid for space on the platform.
Amazon ads, as we also explored last month, are CPC—or Cost Per Click—only. You don’t get a choice on the type of bid, but you can choose the strategy to take when you create the campaign.
You can choose to go with dynamic bids. Dynamic bids change depending on certain parameters—the search terms the customer used, for example. Dynamic bids can be down only, which means Amazon, in its great wisdom, will lower your bid for clicks that are less likely to convert to a sale. This can help preserve your ad spend budget.
The other alternative dynamic bid strategy is called up and down. With this strategy, they’ll raise your bid by as much as 100% for placements, for example, at the top of the first page of search results—prime real estate on Amazon—or when a search query is especially well-matched to your book. Since they raise your bid in these cases, you are more likely to see a better conversion rate and higher sales.
Conversely, in cases where the search query is not such a good match or your ad’s going to be relegated to a less juicy spot, then the algorithm can lower your bid by as much as 50%.
If you don’t want to employ dynamic bidding and want more control, then you can check the box that triggers the Fixed Bid strategy. In this case, Amazon will only bid the amount you choose, but like everything Amazon, there’s a trade-off here. With the Fixed Bid strategy, you may get more impressions, but fewer conversions. Depending on the goal of your campaign, that may be okay.
Finally, you can use a kind of hybrid strategy, where you don’t give up total control to Amazon but you create a set of rules that will take the guesswork out of moving your bids up or down to achieve a goal. This gets into concepts like Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), which leads us into some pretty advanced stuff in the world of digital advertising.
So we’ve tackled two important first considerations: the type of ad campaign and the bidding strategy we’re going to employ. Now we tackle the issue of targeting. The beauty and genius of digital advertising is it’s not like broadcasting a commercial on TV, where your target audience is every bozo who owns a television and happens to have it on when your ad runs. Digital platforms—especially Amazon—devote an enormous amount of time and energy to tracking and analyzing what their customers search for and buy. With decades of experience and billions of dollars expended, Amazon’s pretty good at it.
For many authors, your best bet is to choose Automatic Targeting. This is the easiest to set up and you’re basically, to coin a phrase from the old Greyhound Bus commercials of my youth, leaving the driving to them.
But how does Amazon do this? As Ricardo points out so eloquently in his book, like many things Amazon, that’s a bit of a mystery. Amazon guards its algorithms and proprietary information very closely. But they look for matches in their automatic targeting: close matches to search queries, loose matches, substitutes, and things that complement the search query. Amazon decides in each case if the search query is anywhere near relevant to your product and to what degree. How does it do this?
Through your metadata…
This might mean the title, subtitle or series title of your book. The categories you chose when you uploaded the book (and, oh boy, that’s a whole ball of wax) and your keywords and product description. All of this data goes into the Amazon machine, goes ‘round and ‘round, and then comes out here.
One caveat here is that for novelists or mystery writers like most of us, this is a much more inexact science. Novels, in general, are much harder to fit into a niche or category than nonfiction books. A nonfiction book on organic farming is pretty easy to target; a dystopic LGBTQ, YA, coming-of-age standalone is a bit more of a challenge.
One of the great benefits of Automatic Targeting is that Amazon will tell you what keywords and products your ad targeted. It’s a bit of a process with a couple of ways to get there, but that’s valuable information. Once you know the most successful search terms and keywords, you can go in and adjust your ads to increase their performance.
You can also use this data to find out which keywords are misleading or inaccurate and plug those into your campaign as negative keywords. What are negative keywords? These are search terms that if a prospective buyer types those into the search bar, your book will deliberately not show up in the results. How is this useful?
You write cozy mysteries. So you enter gore, erotica, horror as negative keywords and it guarantees someone searching for those terms will never see your book. That can be mighty useful.
Next month, we’ll move onto Manual Targeting and keep going. As you might have guessed, tackling Amazon ads is a multi-installment rodeo on This Crazy Writing Life. And even then, this is all designed as a beginner’s primer on Amazon and other forms of digital advertising. What you’re willing to learn and take on is up to you. If you’re really into this, you can go back to college and get a graduate degree in this stuff.
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One of the reasons the last couple of columns for Killer Nashville Magazine have run a little late is that I’m up to my nether regions in indie pubbing a book right now. This was a novel I published first in hardcover a long time ago with Severn House in England and later with Harper Collins in mass-market paperback. The novel, By Blood Written, was a standalone serial killer novel and it was by far the most graphically violent and cutting-edge book I’ve written. I had great hopes for this as a breakout book, but in both cases, it was so badly published it went nowhere. Even the Harper Collins paperback sank without a trace when the editor, who was really pumped about the book, took another job a few months before pub date (which is called being orphaned in the book biz).
For years I tried to get the rights reverted to me. Harper Collins is notorious for not reverting rights to authors, but after several years and many attempts, I finally got a rights reversion letter. I’ve retitled the book, which will now be called Blood Plot, and commissioned what I think is a fabulous cover that serves as an homage to the great pulp fiction paperbacks of the Forties and Fifties. Here’s a look:
I’m just completed formatting the eBook with Atticus (which I’ve written about before) and am going to tackle the learning curve to use Atticus for typesetting the hardcover and trade paperback editions.
I only mention this because the column is all about the freedom and options of indie pubbing (as well as the enormous amount of sweat equity that’s involved). This can be a case study for what we’re all talking about.
Thanks again for playing along. I’d love to hear what you think of the cover or anything else that I bring up in This Crazy Writing Life. Feel free to drop me a line any time at: WomackWriter@yahoo.com.
Five Key Elements in a Psychological Thriller
By Carol Willis
Psychological thrillers are driven by emotion and psychological tension, focusing on the minds and behaviors of their characters. They create an atmosphere of menace through plot twists, mind games, and unreliable narrators, keeping readers in suspense with a looming sense of dread. Unlike traditional mysteries, which unravel past crimes, psychological thrillers often establish the villain early, with protagonists struggling to prevent an impending threat. While they share elements with other suspense genres, psychological thrillers stand out for their deep exploration of fear and paranoia. Below are five key elements that define this gripping genre.
Atmosphere of Menace - often characterized by setting, weather, and time of day. Think secluded cabin in the woods, a spooky gothic mansion, ominous storms and in the dark of night. Usually something external that causes anxiety and uncertainty for the main character (and the reader).
Tension and Danger - Psychological thrillers create tension by placing ordinary characters in inescapable danger, often in familiar settings like suburbs or homes. Unlike action-packed spy thrillers, these stories upend the ordinary, revealing that the greatest threats often come from those closest to us. The protagonist—often a vulnerable yet resourceful woman—must outwit a determined villain, who is frequently a spouse or family member. By rooting fear in the familiar, these thrillers immerse readers in psychological mind games, exploring themes of trust, paranoia, and hidden dangers while gradually unveiling characters’ backstories and mental struggles.
Mind Games and Psychological Manipulation - Characters experience paranoia, gaslighting, or memory manipulation. The villain often leads the protagonist in a high stakes cat and mouse game with escalating danger. The reader is made to feel as uncertain and anxious as the protagonist.
Suspense and Twists - Suspense is how an author builds tension throughout the story. It’s necessary in any genre, but it’s absolutely vital in thriller novels. Ultimately, your goal for the reader is that they never want to put the book down. Each chapter must end with a cliffhanger or significant plot twist or important question. While action does not need to be non-stop, suspense and intrigue need to be constant. There must be a sense of urgency to keep you turning the page. Emphasis is on the eerie over the sensational. Twists again are key, with chapters routinely ending in one disturbing revelation after another. Character is more important than pacing, but pacing can’t be neglected. This subgenre demands an ability to reveal dread and panic without explosions or car chases.
Unreliable Narrator - An unreliable narrator heightens suspense by making the reader question who they can trust. Often, it’s revealed late in the story that the protagonist suffers from post-traumatic distress, mental illness, a head injury, or drug addiction, distorting their perception of reality. As noted above, lies, paranoia, and flawed memories are common in this genre, which is why many thrillers use a first-person POV. This perspective immerses the reader in the character’s experience, building sympathy while limiting their understanding to a single, potentially deceptive viewpoint—raising the crucial question: how reliable is their version of events?
Psychological thrillers focus on suspense, fear, and the uncertainty of a future crime rather than solving a past one. Unlike traditional mysteries, where the crime has already occurred, these stories often introduce the antagonist early, with the protagonist working to prevent their next move. Common elements include an atmosphere of menace, heightened tension, and psychological mind games. The genre thrives on upending the ordinary, often featuring domestic settings where danger lurks close to home. Suspense is crucial, with chapters ending in cliffhangers or shocking revelations to keep the reader engaged. An unreliable narrator, paranoia, and flawed memories add layers of intrigue, making the reader question what is real. Character development is central, with pacing maintaining a steady build-up of dread rather than relying on constant action.
In the next essay, we’ll take a deeper dive into these five key elements, exploring how they shape psychological thrillers with examples from some of the genre’s most gripping stories. Stay tuned for a closer look at what makes these thrillers so hauntingly unforgettable.
Carol Willis (she/her) received her MFA in Writing (fiction) from Vermont College of Fine Arts. After receiving her medical doctorate from Texas A&M and an MBA in healthcare from George Washington University, she practiced child health and pathology before moving to Central Virginia. She is the author of a psychological thriller set in Chicago, a dark domestic drama exploring marriage, career, and identity. Her short stories have been published in multiple online journals and anthologies including Valparaiso Fiction Review, Inlandia: A Literary Journey, Living Crue Magazine, Crime in Old Dominion and others.
Name that Song…Just Don’t Use the Lyrics
Yes, I know, Stephen King makes it look so easy with his habit of using song lyrics in his novels. But here’s a head’s up: He’s a world-renowned bestselling author, so most songwriters are going to be more than okay with granting permission. They get recognition from a very recognizable name, and he gets to use their words: a win-win. Besides, he’s got money, and plenty of it, if he needs to come up with some cash. Odds are if you’re reading this, you’re not a world-renowned, bestselling author, and you’re not filthy rich. I know I’m not.
Which brings me to the point of this article. Can you, as an author, quote song lyrics in your novel or short story? The short answer is “No.” Song lyrics are copyrighted, and quoting any copyrighted material requires permission. Just flip to the copyright page of any novel on your bookshelf to find an example of a statement saying just that.
Of course, there is something called the “fair use” clause. For an 85,000-word novel, quoting a sentence or two likely falls under “fair use.” For music, however, where the entire piece is a few verses long, the prevailing wisdom is that you will absolutely need permission from the songwriter, record label, and who-knows-who-else, to quote as little as a single line. Even attribution of the lyric and copyright to the songwriter/artist is not enough. And we live in an increasingly litigious society.
Of course, there are exceptions. If a song is in the public domain, then copyright law no longer applies. Here’s a handy dandy list of songs in the public domain: https://www.pdinfo.com/public-domain-music-list.php.
Another exception would be when a common expression is used in lyrics. For example, if a song included the lyric, “People like him are a dime a dozen,” and you wrote something like, “Chad was like that song, SONG TITLE, where people like him were a dime a dozen,” you should be okay, because that’s a common expression, and not something unique to the writer. You can also reference, by name, any song title without fear of reprisal. That’s because titles, whether a book, movie, or song, cannot be copyrighted.
It’s also acceptable to imply a song lyric. I'll use my story, ‘Goulaigans,’ which appears in the anthology Heartbreaks & Half-truths, as an example. The story is set in a much-fictionalized Goulais River, a small town in northern Ontario on the shores of Lake Superior. Here’s a snippet of the dialogue (and if you’re unfamiliar, or just want a reminder, here’s a link to Lightfoot’s song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH0K6ojmGZA).
Laura’s body washed up on shore three days later, about a mile from the old Donaldson place.
“Whatever happened to Superior not giving up its dead?” Tucker asked me. We were sitting in my cabin, sipping on twelve-year-old whiskey. Now that Laura was gone, we could be friends again. Or at least pretend to be.
My mind replayed the lyrics to the Gordon Lightfoot song, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. It was a favorite on the radio up here, seeing how the Fitzgerald sank in 1975, not ten miles from Whitefish Bay.
“I think that’s only in November,” I said. “It’s August…there was no fella with a beard, was there?”
And on that note (clever, don’t you think, the musical reference?), I’ll sign off.
About the author: A former journalist and magazine editor, Judy Penz Sheluk is the bestselling author of two mystery series: The Glass Dolphin Mysteries and Marketville Mysteries. Her short crime fiction appears in several collections, including the Superior Shores Anthologies, which she also edited.
Judy has also written two how-to guides to publishing. Finding Your Path to Publication: A Step-by-Step Guide was the Winner of the 2024 Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award for Best Nonfiction. The follow-up to that book, Self-publishing: The Ins & Outs of Going Indie, provides an insider’s insight into the world of self-publishing.
Judy is a member of Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and Crime Writers of Canada, where she served on the Board of Directors, most recently as Chair.
The Importance of Honest Feedback
Writing is a solitary pursuit, one where we spend countless hours of our lives, often laboring over a single sentence or paragraph for more time than most of us care to admit. So, it’s only natural that we become protective of our words. After all, something that took hours to perfect must be, well, perfect, right?
If only that were so. Unfortunately, as writers, we are simply too close to our work to see the flaws. Oh, we may find the typo on page 75 on reread, the one where we’ve called a car a cat (though even that is iffy), but the overuse of a favorite trope, phrase, or gesture (my characters love to nod). Maybe not so much. And that’s why we need feedback.
Feedback comes in many forms and at various stages of the writing process. The most important thing to remember is that you are looking for an honest and unbiased evaluation of your work. You may not agree with every comment or suggestion, but you should at least consider each one without becoming defensive. Consider it “thick skin” training for the rejections you’re almost certain to face going forward.
Let’s look at some options:
Writing Critique Groups
While there are no hard and fast rules, these work best if the group is small—three to five people—allowing each member time to read and respond without becoming overwhelmed. It’s essential to establish parameters from the get-go, such as weekly word count limits and the type of feedback expected.
While critique groups can be invaluable for some writers, they should never be the final step in the review process. As you become immersed in your work for months on end, you lose objectivity. Those intimately familiar with your work will too.
Alpha Readers
Readers who provide detailed and constructive feedback, both positive and tactfully critical, about your book’s premise, plot, characters, and other elements. This is the place to include readers who have knowledge of the technical elements in your manuscript.
Whether you choose to hire a professional, or ask a trusted friend or relative, they should be aware that they are commenting on an unpolished (first) draft. They should also be avid readers of your book’s genre or sub-genre. Consider this the first test drive of your overall story from a reader’s perspective.
Beta Readers
Beta readers (or betas) critique finished manuscripts before they are published. It’s advisable to have betas who are familiar with your genre/sub-genre. Betas can be friends, family members, teachers, members of online writing groups, or other writers willing to do a manuscript swap. This will help identify the finer points of your book that may need an adjustment. Ideally, you’ll have no fewer than two and no more than five, allowing for a comparison of opinions without the risk of opinion overload. If one beta reader doesn’t understand why your protagonist hates red, that might be a point worth clarifying. If two or more betas don’t get it, it’s a must-fix.
While betas are an excellent way to obtain (often free) feedback, they do not replace the role of a professional editor. There is one school of thought that because traditional publishers pay for editing, there is no need for authors to incur this expense if their intention is to traditionally publish.
Let’s look at that statement. Is it true that traditional publishers hire and pay for editing services? Yes. However, it’s equally true that agents and publishers receive thousands of submissions from aspiring authors every year. While there are no guarantees, a professionally edited manuscript may increase the odds of acceptance.
Developmental Editing
Also known as substantive or content editing, developmental editing is the first step, focusing on big picture story elements. The developmental editor will also assess and shape draft material to improve flow and organization by revising or reordering content and clarifying plot, arc of action, characters, and/or thematic elements.
Line Editing
Also known as stylistic editing, the line editor focuses on coherence and flow, eliminating jargon, clichés, and euphemisms, while adjusting the length and structure of sentences and paragraphs, and establishing or maintaining the overall mood, style, or voice.
Copyediting
Ideally combined with line editing, the copy editor checks spelling, grammar, punctuation, and usage, and ensures consistency in character names, places, descriptions, and other details. Copy editing also covers fact checking and/or obtaining or listing permissions needed (e.g., use of song lyrics or trademarked products). The copy editor may create or work from a style sheet.
And there you have it, feedback in a nutshell. Now all you need to do is write that book. Hey, if it were easy, everyone would do it.
A former journalist and magazine editor, Judy Penz Sheluk is the bestselling author of two mystery series: The Glass Dolphin Mysteries and Marketville Mysteries. Her short crime fiction appears in several collections, including the Superior Shores Anthologies, which she also edited.
Judy has also written two how-to guides to publishing. Finding Your Path to Publication: A Step-by-Step Guide was the Winner of the 2024 Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award for Best Nonfiction. The follow-up to that book, Self-publishing: The Ins & Outs of Going Indie, provides an insider’s insight into the world of self-publishing.
Judy is a member of Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and Crime Writers of Canada, where she served on the Board of Directors, most recently as Chair.
Between Pen and Paper: Flaneuring Through a Writer’s Mind – Maintaining Resolutions
By Andi Kopek
Today, as we flaneur through a writer’s mind, we stumble into the dark corners of failed New
Year’s resolutions.
It’s February. Early February as I write these words, and mid-February or later as you read them. (This column, as part of Killer Nashville Magazine, will most likely reach you on Tuesday, February 18, 2025.) By now, the excitement of New Year's resolutions has faded, often replaced by the bitterness of broken promises. The January miracle didn’t happen. Gyms are half-empty again. I can already see buds forming on the tree branches, whispering, "Spring is coming."
Soon, it’ll be time for Spring Resolutions, so let’s talk about what actually makes a resolution successful—so that we might avoid Spring’s “inevitable” disappointment.
Writers & Resolutions: Why Do We Struggle?
Writers, of course, are no strangers to resolutions. Many of us eagerly declare our goals at the start of the year: "I will write more!" And yet, despite believing we were born to write, despite feeling it is our calling, our destiny, we fall into the same trap as everyone else—abandoning our resolution by February.
But what about our characters? Have you ever considered that they might also set New Year’s resolutions—maybe even without us realizing it?
Ask your serial killer protagonist about his resolution. Perhaps he wants to increase his yearly quota by 10%.
What about your vampire? Maybe she has vowed to feed only on eco-friendly, organic- conscious individuals with well-maintained work-life balance this year.
And your poltergeist ghost? Maybe it's decided to put some beat on an erratic flickering of lights and slamming cabinet doors and sync them perfectly with Bob Marley’s greatest hits.
Yes, indeed—most of us fail to achieve our New Year’s resolutions. And, probably, so do our characters.
Why Do Resolutions Fail?
First, based on the Behavior Change theory, our goals are not, most likely, SMART - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. What is important is that a successful New Year resolution needs to fulfill all of these criteria at once. In order to be in 9% of Americans who successfully keep their New Year’s resolution throughout the year, our set goal needs to meet ALL of these criteria. Not just one. Not just most. All. The resolution needs to be
Specific AND Measurable AND Achievable AND Relevant AND Time-bound. I would also add “I” to it for Individualized, making it a SMARTI goal. Only by meeting all these features simultaneously can we ensure our New Year’s resolution succeeds.
Writer’s SMARTI Goal
What that would mean for a writer? Here is an example. A typical writer’s resolution may look like this: “I want to write more this year.” This goal is vague, unmeasurable, and lacks structure. What does “more” even mean here: more than last year or more consistently? There’s no way to track progress, there is no deadline, and no plan to achieve it.
Let’s turn it into a SMARTI New Year’s resolution: "I will write 500 words every weekday for the next three months, using a writing tracker to measure progress, and completing a short story by April 31st.”
Why this is SMART?
✔ Specific – Instead of just "write more," it defines how much (500 words), how often (every weekday), and what kind (short story).
✔ Measurable – 500 words a day is a clear metric. A writing tracker will show progress.
✔ Achievable – 500 words a day is reasonable for most writers, unlike “write a novel in two weeks.”
✔ Relevant – This aligns with the writer’s goal of writing consistently and producing stories.
✔ Time-bound – The goal has a three-month deadline and an end product (short story by April 31st).
✔Individualized – this resolution will work for YOU but may not for someone else. So, YOU need to be sure that writing 500 words a day is achievable by YOU.
TIP - you need to be painfully honest with yourself, particularly regarding the achievable criteria. If you never had a week of writing every day 500 words it is unlikely you can keep it up for 12 weeks. Scale it down to a truly realistic number for YOU.
Our Characters’ SMARTI Goals
A serial killer poor New Year’s resolution: "I want to kill 10% more people this year.” Improved, SMARTI New Year’s resolution of a serial killer: "I will successfully eliminate 12 targets this year (one per month), focusing on high-profile yet low-risk victims. I will track progress through coded journal entries and refine my methods after each incident. By December 31st, I will have executed my most sophisticated kill yet, leaving behind no forensic evidence."
Breaking down the SMARTI Goal:
✔ Specific – Specifies how many (12), who (high-profile, low-risk), and how (refining methods).
✔ Measurable – One kill per month = clear, trackable progress.
✔ Achievable – A realistic pace for a professional in the industry (not over committing to an unmanageable spree).
✔ Relevant – Directly aligns with the killer’s long-term ambitions of perfecting their craft.
✔ Time-bound – Has a strict deadline (December 31st).
✔ Individualized – Tailored to the killer’s unique modus operandi.
Our vampire's resolution looks better: “to feed only on eco-friendly, organic-conscious folks with well-kept work-life balance this year” but still is not SMARTI. It’s vague: what even counts as "eco-friendly"? Are we talking vegan yoga instructors or just people who recycle? There is no measurement: How many organic-conscious victims per week?; no timeline, no tracking method, and no individualization.
Let’s turn it into a SMARTI goal: "I will exclusively feed on at least 3 ethically sourced, organic- conscious individuals per week, ensuring they meet my sustainability criteria (vegan diet only, who compost, and have a verified work-life balance). I will document it in my 'Vampire Ethical Consumption Ledger.' By the end of the year, I will reduce my carbon fang-print by 30%.” (A carbon fang-print: a measurement of vampire’s environmental impact based on their’s feeding habits and lifestyle choices).
Why this is a SMARTI goal:
✔ Specific – Defines who qualifies as a viable target and how often.
✔ Measurable – Blood consumption is tracked through the Vampire Ethical Consumption Ledger, and the carbon fang-print is quantifiable (30% reduction).
✔ Achievable – A realistic pace for a vampire looking to maintain both health and sustainability.
✔ Relevant – Aligns with the vampire’s dietary ethics and personal mission of sustainable feasting.
✔ Time-bound – weekly and yearly goals are set.
✔ Individualized – This is tailored to this vampire’s ethical lifestyle—other vampires might still prefer aristocratic blood or an all-you-can-tap buffet.
Is our poltergeist ghost’s New Year’s resolution “to put some beat on its chaotic activities, and flicker the lights or slam cabinet doors to Bob Marley’s tune” SMARTI?
Let’s check it out!
✔ Specific – No! “Put some beat to Bob Marley’s tune” is quite vague.
✔ Measurable – Nope! How can we determine that all of the flickering and slamming is actually in tune?
✔ Achievable – Probably! “Putting some beat” sounds rather simple to do.
✔ Relevant – Yes! It aligns with the poltergeist’s core purpose of supernatural disturbance.
✔ Time-bound – Not really! There’s no deadline for when this musical haunting should be mastered.
✔ Individualized – Yes! This is not a generic haunting strategy—it’s personalized to the ghost’s artistic ambitions and musical taste.
Let’s revise it to make it 100% SMARTI resolution:
"By June 30th, I will master flickering lights and slamming cabinet doors in perfect rhythm to ‘Three Little Birds’ beats and progressing to fully blown ‘No Woman, No Cry’ performed on all kitchen cabinetry doors and under cabinet lights. I will document my progress by scaring at least three paranormal investigators who will confirm the haunting's musical accuracy on their social media."
✔ Now it has a deadline (June 30th)
✔ Song choices are clear (starting point, progression plan)
✔ It’s measurable (ghost hunters’ reaction = proof of success)
✔ Structured approach (from basic beats to full reggae ghost orchestra)
Final Thought
If you're scared to commit to a New Year’s resolution, seek refuge in etymology. Resolution comes from the Latin root "resolutio", meaning "loosening, untying, or breaking down into simpler parts."
So, just loosen up a bit in 2025—starting now.
I know, that’s not a SMARTI goal.
But it is a FUN goal.
(And FUN is not an acronym. Just pure joy).
Andi Kopek is a multidisciplinary artist based in Nashville, TN. With a background in medicine, molecular neuroscience, and behavioral change, he has recently devoted himself entirely to the creative arts. His debut poetry collection, Shmehara, has garnered accolades in both literary and independent film circles for its innovative storytelling.
When you’re in Nashville, you can join Andi at his monthly poetry workshop, participate in the Libri Prohibiti book club (both held monthly at the Spine bookstore, Smyrna, TN), or catch one of his live performances. When not engaging with the community, he's hard at work on his next creative project or preparing for his upcoming art-focused podcast, The Samovar(t) Lounge: Steeping Conversations with Creative Minds, where in a relaxed space, invited artists share tea and the never-told intricacies of their creative journeys.
FB: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100093119557533
Drop the Pen! What Every Writer Should Know About Real Police Work
Stop Making Real Cops Cringe
I met my wife at a murder trial. She was a journalist covering the hearings of a man who’d blasted a guy and his girlfriend for stealing his favorite gun, and I was a detective who’d worked on the case. I wasn’t the lead in that investigation, but I’d found the bullets matching the caliber fired from the murder weapon, along with a picture of the suspect holding his treasured “street sweeper” shotgun in his best gangland tough-guy pose, while helping out on the search warrant.
I remained composed during cross examination when I spotted her from the witness stand, but she was flipping gorgeous. It took concentration to testify about the laundry-piled, old shoe-smelling closet where I’d found the ammunition and photograph, all while thinking about those eyes and the cute way her hair was tucked behind her left ear. Police work can be so rough.
Hollywood makes it seem like detectives hang out after their testimony to watch the drama through the remainder of the trial, but reality is that caseloads generally demand we go back to work on that stack of other cases waiting on our desks. That day, however, I stuck around, hoping for a chance to meet the woman taking notes in the second row. She was the consummate professional, however, and would have little to do with a cop involved in a case she was covering. It worked out, though. Sometime later we had lunch…and grandkids.
Recently we were watching a mystery on one of the streaming services. It was more cozy than thriller, not our usual fare, but we like the lead actress from previous series and decided to give it a try. The storyline follows a civilian employee working for a metropolitan police department who solves a murder case by scrutinizing a conspiracy board when all the cops had gone home for the night. Think of a brilliant but flawed Matt Damon staring at a wall of math while holding a push broom, the only one able to solve the equation in Good Will Hunting.
The show was fine until the middle of the second act when the protagonist was chastised by her detective mentor for taking items out of an evidence locker without permission, ferrying them to her own home so she could have a closer look, and then allowing her precocious ten-year-old son to help her sift through said evidence to get his take on things. The only question for my wife and I at that point was who was closer to the remote.
Last year I was asked to read an Advance Review Copy for a mystery/thriller author. The story involved a street-savvy investigator, yet the protagonist routinely performed in ways that made him appear naïve. One glaring instance had him realizing his gun had been stolen, and he presumed the murderer was now in possession of his one and only available weapon. Despite this, he continued on to confront this shadowy menace without backup or a weapon of any kind. We get it; he’s a tough guy who doesn’t need any help and moves faster than bullets. He’s also an idiot.
That kind of decision is counter to any logical response, yet the character had been nothing but disciplined and well trained up to that point. He was not thinking like a cop anymore, and many regular readers of mystery or real-life criminal justice professionals would raise an eyebrow and move on to the next book in the To Be Read pile.
Readers and viewers may suspend some disbelief over iffy police or investigative practices for a cozy mystery, less so for darker thrillers, and not at all for police procedurals. It’s perfectly fine to fudge a bit while creating red herrings and crafting unusual characters. What is not okay is to simply omit or obscure good procedure for lack of research or to spackle over a plot hole. Frankly, it comes off as lazy, unimaginative, or a bit desperate.
Oftentimes this creates work that feels like a copy of a copy, as if the writer learned all they know about police work from other writers of mystery or from watching old cop shows—lots of “just the facts, ma’am,” and “ten-fours,” but very little in terms of well-researched practice.
This would never fly in historical fiction. Readers of that genre demand well-researched details in novels and films, and they tend to be something of experts themselves when it comes to a specific historical period. Writers of mysteries and procedurals should rise to at least that level of expectation when it comes to their own projects.
You don’t have to be a beat cop or detective to write good mysteries, but you owe it to the story, your readers, and your own reputation to better understand the culture and practices involved. Unconstitutional searches and seizures, derivative suspect interrogations, and clueless practices by experienced professionals scratch across prose like a record needle bouncing over vinyl tracks.
Of course, that may be exactly what you had in mind if you’re developing a sinister or incompetent cop character. You may want to portray a detective as inept or corrupt, in which case folding an unconstitutional search or an abusive interrogation into the storyline may be just the direction you need to take. Even then, I encourage writers to cultivate an understanding of how cops think, the mindset of predators, and basic victimology. The result will be more nuanced and compelling character arcs.
I hear from writers across the country asking questions about specific passages in their stories, and I’m always honored to discuss ideas on how they can generate more authenticity into their works in progress. They often lament what they perceive as a lack of resources for learning more about police practices and culture. Many have a great premise but no clear direction on how to make the story ring true.
There are many books on the subject of professional police work and best practices in criminal investigations. My suggestions for getting started include Criminology Goes to The Movies (Nicole Rafter and Michelle Brown), Walk the Blue Line (James Patterson), and Malicious Intent: A Writer’s Guide to How Murderer’s, Robbers, Rapists and Other Criminals Behave (Sean Mactire).
Additionally, I encourage you to explore writing conferences offering speakers on topics related to the mystery genre. Time and finances for travel don’t need to hold you back. There are several online seminars devoted to teaching real police work for authors. Writers’ Police Academy, for example, offers an online version of their in-person conference. Better yet, go directly to the source.
You may already know a cop or have access to one by a degree or two of separation. Set up coffee or lunch and pick that officer’s brain about scenes you’re crafting. Certainly, ask them questions pertaining to your plot, but I encourage you to take things a step further once you’ve developed some rapport. At that point you can try to open them up about their scariest day, a case they’re most proud of, or how they came to the profession. You’re likely to be amazed, and your notebook is going to be filled with new, adventurous ideas on where your story or series can go next.
Consider riding along with a local police or sheriff’s department. Many agencies welcome members of the community to ride out with a patrol officer or deputy, allowing you to see, hear, smell, and sense real police work up close. The officers picked for such assignments tend to be more experienced, and most have demonstrated a willingness and ability to talk about their profession in vivid and frank terms.
Explore a citizen’s police academy if you want an even more immersive experience. This is a modified version of a real academy where you get hands-on experience with forensic techniques, clarity on constitutional concerns related to policing, a sampling of various services offered by the department, and some self-defense and firearms training. You’ll have a ball, make new friends, and add experts to your writing network.
I was an English Lit major, which means I wrote good police reports (extra points if I could work in a metaphor). It also means I will forever be in awe of great writing. I feel kinship with and reverence for storytellers and want each of us to rise beyond our own perceived abilities. The expectation I hold for myself is that I will treat our craft with the same discipline as a surgeon would for medicine or a dancer for music. That means we’re in a practice, where we acknowledge we will never learn enough, yet we can never stop trying to learn more.
Writers shouldn’t prescribe paths for other writers. Voice is all about telling our stories in our own cadence and combinations. That said, I’m asking you to honor my former profession by learning about it, then honor yourself and your work by weaving what you’ve learned into extraordinary stories we celebrate and remember. Onward!
David “D.L.” Williams is a public safety veteran with assignments including paramedicine, patrol in high-need areas, helicopter rescue, mental health liaison, and violent crime investigations as a detective. During his thirty-year career, Williams was twice named Officer of the Year by the Fraternal Order of Police, and he has been recognized by Rotary Club, the American Legion, and the National Coalition Against Sexual Violence for his work with families and children in crisis. He now teaches criminology at the University of Arkansas, and he is the bestselling author of Fighting for Her Life: What to do When Someone You Know is Being Abused and Textbooks, Not Targets: How to Prevent School Shootings in Your Community. He and his family have settled in the Ozark Mountains where they offer a haven for donkeys and horses who previously endured a rough life.
How to be Funny in a Murder Mystery
By Bill Gormley
How funny should a murder mystery be? Must you choose between funny and scary? Is it possible to combine comedy and tragedy in one piece of work?
Many mystery writers opt for one over the other. By sanitizing violence and downplaying death, “cozy” writers achieve a light, frothy consistency high in humor, low in dread. By expunging light-hearted moments and heightening the drama as much as possible, “suspense” writers achieve a grim, scary consistency high in fear, low in fun.
Though I enjoy many mysteries that tilt strongly one way or the other, I generally prefer a balanced approach – some fear and some humor, some tension and some relief. But how to go about it? Is there a right way and a wrong way to blend humor and suspense?
For starters, let’s agree that it would be bad form for police to joke about someone’s death when informing a loved one. It would be equally bad form for a writer to interrupt someone’s expression of grief with a burp, a fart, or a double entendre. Some things just aren’t done and shouldn’t be done. As Johnny Carson liked to say, never joke about Abraham Lincoln.
On the other hand, a funny sequence after the grim work at the scene of the crime can be a welcome relief to investigators and readers alike. That’s where good writing and good timing pay off.
Consider Janet Evanovich’s irrepressible Grandma Mazur, whose zest for visiting funeral homes is legendary. In addition to hogging the best seat in the house and cramming her purse full of cookies, she’s notorious for opening closed caskets: “I just don’t like when they have a closed casket. I think it’s a gyp. How do you know if there’s anyone in there?”
We shake our heads and chuckle at Grandma Mazur’s antics because she is not testing the boundaries. For her, the boundaries simply don’t exist. We can overlook her sins because she doesn’t know they are sins.
So, can we agree that funny scenes are worth doing when we can pull it off? If so, how do we do it? How do we inject humor into a murder mystery without creating a jarring mix of moods?
Here are five suggestions:
SUGGESTION # 1 – CREATE QUIRKY CHARACTERS. They enrich our daily lives. Why shouldn’t they enrich our stories? A barber who offers to remove a mole while trimming someone’s hair. A beautician whose chihuahua jumps on customers’ laps. A neighbor who plays more tricks on trick-or-treaters than they play on him. An auto repair man who can’t drive.
Thieves and grifters are especially good bets. According to the gospel of Elmore Leonard, your average criminal hatches schemes that are doomed to failure. That’s comic gold if you know what to do with it. Leonard devotes as much time to the bad guys as to the good guys and somehow manages to get inside their clueless heads. With empathy and humor, he portrays individuals who see themselves as pursuing the American dream, albeit without guardrails or constraints.
In Maximum Bob, for example, an ex-con, Dr. Tommy, hires another ex-con, Elvin, to assassinate the super-strict judge who sentenced him. His boyfriend Hector points out that Elvin is more of a bungler than a burglar. Why hire him? “Listen, he could be lucky and do it. You know why? He doesn’t see what could stop him.” Like Hector, Elvin’s nephew, Dale, is skeptical and asks his uncle if he’s really up to the job.
Elvin: You’re working with a pro here. I’ve done it.
Dale: And you went to prison.
Elvin: Hey, that’s something else entirely. We set this up right, it’ll work slick.
It’s fun knowing that Elvin is hurtling into the abyss with almost no chance of succeeding.
Criminals with scruples can also be amusing. In Hanging the Devil, Tim Maleeny introduces us to some savvy Russian thugs who join an alliance of misfits to steal paintings from a museum. Their front is a store that sells Russian nesting dolls, including an assortment of Mary Poppins characters. Mary herself is topless, but she’s discreetly wearing an apron. “We have standards,” Sergey explains. “This is a family business.”
Notice the juxtaposition here. Grand theft and murder? All in a day’s work. Offending sensitive customers with a nude doll? Unthinkable.
SUGGESTION # 2 – CREATE WITTY CHARACTERS. A character with a sharp tongue or a dry wit is a gift that keeps on giving. The character can be likable or not, eccentric or not. The key is that the character can deliver zingers with the best of them.
Take Ruth Zardo – one of Louise Penny’s characters in the tiny village of Three Pines, in Quebec. A crotchety, potty-mouthed poet, Ruth insults anyone and everyone, even friends, like painter Clara Morrow.
After receiving a devastating review of her latest paintings – small miniatures described as “trite, derivative, and banal,” Clara needs some cheering up. But that’s not Ruth’s way: “The good thing is, nobody will see your crap. Who goes to an exhibition of miniatures? Why in the world would you agree to contribute to a group show of tiny oil paintings? It’s what bored society women in the 1700s painted.”
A village of Ruth Zardos would be exasperating. But other residents of Three Pines, including Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, are so unfailingly nice that Ruth is paradoxically a welcome breath of foul air.
If Ruth Zardo has a rival for curmudgeon of the decade, it might be Jackson Lamb, the disheveled, ill-mannered, mean-spirited man who runs Slough House in Mick Herron’s Slow Horses series. The premise is that disgraced and incompetent MI5 agents who can’t be fired are assigned to a sort of “rubber room” where they are occasionally asked to perform difficult assignments that they are well beyond their means.
When Lamb berates a member of his crew, he is blunt, vulgar, and cruel. He has a grudging respect for his chief deputy, Catherine Standish, but even she gets treated caustically, as in Dead Lions:
Lamb: You’ve got a theory, haven’t you?
Standish: Yes, I …
Lamb: I didn’t say I wanted to hear it.
Lamb is funniest when sparring with an equal, like “Lady Di” Taverner, Deputy Director-General of MI5. When Taverner complains about her boss, Lamb commiserates and offers to help: “I know some people. I could have her whacked.” He’s kidding, right? Yes. Probably.
Adrian McKinty’s Sean Duffy is kinder and gentler than Jackson Lamb, but just as funny. A detective sergeant in Ireland during The Troubles, Duffy wise-cracks his way through murder and mayhem. When a man is found dead in his car, with two ugly gunshot wounds, his right hand neatly severed at the wrist, Duffy’s boss, Chief Inspector Brennan, wants to know what Duffy makes of it.
Brennan: Well?
Duffy: It’s my belief, sir, that this was no ordinary car accident.
Brennan: Why is it that every eejit in the CID thinks they’re a bloody comedian?
Duffy: Probably to cover up some deep insecurity, sir.
As the plot thickens, we learn that Duffy is more than just a wisenheimer. He is clever, resourceful, and empathetic. As Anjili Babbar notes, Duffy is even ethical in his own way. But his quips make for a jolly ride into a world of chaos and horror.
SUGGESTION # 3 – DEVISE FUNNY SITUATIONS. Put your characters in an awkward situation and watch them squirm.
In Notorious Nineteen, bail bondswoman Stephanie Plum and her pal Lula get a hot tip – a man who jumped bail has been spotted at a nude beach. On arriving at their destination, Stephanie and Lula confirm with the attendant that the scofflaw is there. There’s only one problem: they have to take off their clothes to apprehend him. How embarrassing! Not surprisingly, Janet Evanovich, a master comedienne, makes the most of it.
A subtler approach might be to borrow from the fable where one of the mice must bell the cat but none is willing to put his tail on the line. Let’s say Character A wants to burgle an apartment but won’t do it himself for fear of getting caught. He commissions a reluctant Character B to do it. Character B, no chump, says yes but secretly arranges for Character C to do it, and so forth. What’s fun about this is that multiple refusals create multiple opportunities for something to go wrong.
If you handle it right, as Brad Parks does in Faces of the Gone, a dangerous situation can be funny. Carter Ross, investigative reporter for a Newark newspaper, secures an invite to meet with some gang members but is told that he must smoke weed with them to prove that he is not a cop. Blindfolded, he is taken to their hideaway where they produce some first-class weed, which Ross promptly smokes. Ross suspects that the gang members are drug dealers, but they indignantly deny this, showing him their warehouse, which contains boxes and boxes of … bootleg movies! Ross returns unharmed to his office, “as high as the Himalayas.” There, he unexpectedly runs into … his executive editor. An old-school gentleman, Harold Brodie is horrified that his star reporter has been smoking dope. Tempted to lie but not clear-headed enough to do so, Ross spits out a garbled version of what happened to his incredulous boss.
Brodie: So … you smoked marijuana with some sources to get them to trust you?
Ross: Well, actually, so they wouldn’t shoot me. But yes.
Brodie: That’s fantastic! Very well done, my boy. You did what you had to do to get the story.
What’s sweet about this sequence is that Ross faces a serious threat to his career, after having barely survived a threat to his life. We’re as surprised as Ross is when his boss decides that getting high was exactly the right thing to do. Ross has snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.
SUGGESTION # 4 – CREATE A PARALLEL UNIVERSE. A great way to avoid an ill-fitting mix of moods as investigators try to solve a murder is to create a relatively serene parallel universe. In this parallel universe, your characters’ private lives are a source of merriment and amusement, a safe haven for the reader.
Inspector Salvo Montalbano, who lives in a small coastal village in Sicily imagined by Andre Camilleri, has a rich private life that includes an on-again off-again romance with his girlfriend, Olivia, who lives in Genoa. The running gag is that when Olivia is eager to see Montalbano, he is not eager to see her, and vice versa. This makes for stormy, sometimes angry, but often funny telephone exchanges.
Given Olivia’s sensitivity to slights, real and imagined, Montalbano is understandably concerned when his maid accidentally shrinks his sweater to a child’s size. The sweater was a special gift from Olivia. Uh-oh. Montalbano’s first impulse is to hide the diminished sweater in his armoire. But Olivia is nosy. His next thought is to bury it in the sand outside his home. But, with his luck, it will reappear at low tide. Desperate, he tears the troublesome garment apart with a knife and his bare hands until it is no longer recognizable. Is this progress? We won’t know for sure until Olivia’s next visit!
When she is not busy solving crimes in Lafayette, Louisiana, Danielle Arceneaux’s Glory Broussard has a steady gig. Every Sunday, just after Mass at St. Agnes Catholic Church, she is a popular bookie, working out of a corner table at the local coffee shop. Like Grandma Mazur, Glory B fails to see why this is a problem. As she explains to her daughter, Delphine, this is a “fresh start” following her divorce.
Delphine: Mom, running a criminal enterprise is not exactly a fresh start.
Glory: This ain’t no criminal enterprise. I am a small-business owner. A risk-management consultant … I am an entrepreneur working in a collaborative workspace.
Glory’s conversations with Delphine are both funny and touching. The two Black women are poles apart in their personal habits, but their bond is deep and enduring. And they’ve learned to compromise. For example, Glory reluctantly agrees to Delphine’s suggestion that they visit a backwater voodoo priestess, in hope of identifying a murder: “Let’s go before Jesus strikes us down and swallows us up in this sinkhole trailer park, on account of placing another god before him.” The mother and daughter bend and stretch in ways that are amusing and touching to watch.
SUGGESTION # 5 – BRING ON THE ANIMALS! Pets and barnyard animals are cute and adorable, so why not invite them to join the cast? A watchdog who goes nuts over squirrels but ignores actual burglars. A goat who eats evidence. A K-9 officer who is better at detecting T-bone steaks than illegal drugs. Animals worked splendidly for Verdi in Aida and for Puccini in La Boheme. They can work for you too.
John Grisham knows the comic value of animals. In each of his Theo Boone Kid Detective mysteries, a retired judge, Sergio Yeck, presides over a pet dispute in a makeshift “Animal Court.” Theo, the 13-year-old son of two lawyers and a legal eagle himself, represents the defense – a dog, a rabbit, a parrot, or an otter, usually owned by a friend. The scenes are hilarious, and the judge is unfailingly Solomonic in his decisions. These chapters are the high points of every book.
Which raises an interesting question: where to locate the Animal Court scene within the overall narrative? Usually, Grisham situates his Animal Court chapter at the midpoint or later. You don’t want to peak too soon.
I hope it’s clear from my examples that humor is not just about funny characters or funny situations. It’s about the right characters in the right situations.
When a woman who can’t swim falls from a boat into a lake during a late-night storm, that’s flat-out scary. But consider, as Carl Hiaasen did, an unscrupulous biologist who fears that his wife will blow the whistle on him. He invites her to join him on an ocean cruise and pushes her overboard, which sets the stage for a funny twist – the wife, a good swimmer, breaststrokes her way to safety and plots a sweet revenge against her murderous husband.
A better swimmer in the storm and you lose your suspense. A poorer swimmer on the cruise and you lose your comedy. The trick is to have the right person in the right situation.
I should add that comedy and suspense can be compartmentalized to some degree. For example, Grandma Mazur’s corpses are seldom the victims of foul play. The pageantry of Janet Evanovich’s funeral homes and the pageantry of her murders operate on parallel tracks. The laugh track and the fear track are sequential, not simultaneous.
So, don’t lose sight of the big picture when you are writing your murder mystery. But have some fun along the way. If you do, your reward will be an occasional belly laugh from your readers. And what could be better than that?
Upper Cross Syndrome: What is it? Why should you care?
One indisputable truth about writers is that we all sit for long periods of time. Whether you are putting pen to paper or punching keys on a laptop, writers spend hours at their desks. Recent research has shown that part-time writers average 10-15 hours per week, whereas full-time writers range between 21-42 hours per week, with high-output periods reaching 12 hours per day. Regardless of the level of output, the body works hard to accommodate your demands. One way in which the body responds to long periods of focused effort is to adjust to the biomechanical forces on the musculoskeletal system. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to get any work done if you had to think about holding up your head and setting your shoulders to protect your neck while writing? The body is quick to adapt to your working conditions and expectations, yet what seems to be a simple solution can have negative, long-term consequences. As such, starting this month, we are writing a series of articles on the most common conditions affecting writers and offering healthy living advice on what to do about it. We’ll start with one of the most pervasive: Upper Cross Syndrome.
What is Upper Cross Syndrome (UCS)?
UCS is a muscular imbalance in the upper back, neck, and shoulders caused by poor posture over an extended period of time, like when writers sit and slouch for hours. It results in dropped or rounded shoulders, a forward head position, and an exaggerated curvature of the spine in the neck and upper back. If you think about the body as an interconnected system, then the muscles at the top and mid section of your back and the deep flexors in your neck become weaker as the front body muscles work hard to stabilize your position as you naturally lean forward to write. The pectoral or chest muscles and anterior neck muscles shorten due to the strain, which can cause pain and dysfunction, as well as reduce your range of motion. The name “Upper Cross” comes from the pattern where the spine is pulled forward and compressed over time. See the image below:
Why should you care?
UCS is associated with a variety of pathologies that can affect a writer, many of which cause discomfort or worse. Is there any greater distraction than pain? Here is one example of how UCS can affect you: did you know that every inch forward for your head posture adds 10-12 pounds of pressure on the spine? If you’re wondering whether your head is forward, a simple test is to put the back of your heels and buttocks against the wall and see if you head touches too. Don’t force it. If not, you can start to bring awareness to the condition to remedy it. Head forward position is linked to TMJ pain (temporomandibular or jaw pain), headaches, chronic neck conditions, weak respiratory muscles, and stability and balance issues, among other things. Here is a quick list of the reasons to care about UCS:
Postural Strain and Discomfort:
Writers often adopt a slouched posture over laptops or desks for extended periods. The fascial system (connective tissue throughout the body) can lock in these dysfunctional patterns, which leads to further impairment over time.
This posture tightens the pectoral muscles and neck extensors while weakening the rhomboids and trapezius, causing chronic pain in the neck, shoulders, and upper back.
Decreased Energy and Focus:
Poor posture reduces lung capacity and restricts airflow, leading to fatigue.
Chronic discomfort or pain can distract writers, reducing productivity and focus.
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Risk:
Rounded shoulders and forward head posture can compress nerves leading to the hands, exacerbating risks of carpal tunnel syndrome or other repetitive strain injuries.
Alternatively, numbness in the hands due to nerve impingement can make it difficult to hold a pen or type, let alone write for long periods of time.
Headaches and Eye Strain:
UCS frequently causes tension headaches due to overactive neck muscles and occipitals.
The forward posture often results in additional strain on the eyes and headaches due to misalignment with screens or documents, decreasing working time.
Impact on Mood:
Research indicates that poor posture can negatively affect mood and increase stress levels, potentially influencing creativity and writing output.
What can you do about it?
Most writers suffer from, or are at risk of developing UCS, but there are a number of readily available solutions, some of which you can do at home. First, let’s consider professional intervention, then we’ll look at other options. All physiotherapists and RMT’s (Registered Massage Therapists), will be trained in treating UCS. Costs range from $75 to $150 per consult for an initial assessment, with follow-up appointments potentially at a reduced rate. It’s important to understand any treatment won’t be a “quick fix,” as UCS is a condition associated with habitual movements (or lack thereof) which affect the fascial system or connective tissue throughout the body, which is stronger than muscle. An investment of time and financial resources will be required but ask yourself, what is your health worth? Also, most insurance companies cover this type of treatment. Chiropractic, Fascial Stretch Therapy, and other modalities can help as well.
If you want to make a smaller investment, then home-based exercise tools and equipment can be beneficial, such as an inversion table (just to hang out), foam rollers, resistance bands, and/or any number of ergonomic aids. There are many health practitioners who offer online subscription services to support your learning with regard to regular movements that target the imbalances of UCS. There are simple protocols that can be incorporated into your workday. While posture braces and other similar tools are marketed as solutions as well, we doubt the efficacy as these devices will not be strong enough to counteract the hours you’ll be writing, when you won’t be thinking about your device or how to work with it. Lastly, here is a list of suggestions that you can try at home:
Ergonomic Workspace:
Adjust desk and chair height so the top half of the screen is at eye level and your back is fully supported. Change your desk or chair if necessary.
Use an ergonomic keyboard and mouse to reduce strain on the wrists and shoulders. There are also desks that raise to standing, and chairs designed for multiple seated positions.
Frequent Movement:
Take breaks every 30-60 minutes to stretch and move, helping alleviate muscle tightness. One simple trick: stretch your arms overhead and rise up on your tiptoes. This will reenergize you and lengthen your upper spine.
Incorporate stretches that target the chest and strengthen the upper back into your breaks from writing. You can learn simple protocols from online practitioners by searching for UCS programs.
Postural Exercises:
Perform exercises like scapular squeezes, chin tucks, and wall angels to strengthen weak muscles and promote correct posture.
Practice yoga, Pilates, or something similar, which emphasizes alignment and flexibility.
Mindfulness and Body Awareness:
Writers can practice mindfulness or body scanning to become more aware of their posture while writing.
Ask yourself if you need to make adjustments to your seated posture throughout the day or stand to write, using talk to text for a while.
Healthy Living Top Tip
While most writers will experience some version of UCS, even if it is only short-lived upper back and neck tension, one healthy living practice that will benefit all writers is to add more movements into your day as the hours at your desk increase. Also, do not pull on tight muscles. You need to coax them to flex and stretch, or you run the risk of causing tearing at the insertion points. Think of muscular movement like the flow of water. If you allow the body to respond, it will become more fluid.
When we became full-time writers, we realized that the only way to be productive was to stay fit, so we began counter-balancing much longer periods of time writing with more time in the gym, running, building muscle, and stretching. Consider the time you spend on supporting your body similar to the investment you make in learning the craft: you need growing knowledge of and active engagement with both to cross the finish line. For UCS in particular, head and neck strain can lead to chronic inflammation and reduced energy due to restriction of lung capacity. When muscles are locked down, your vitality decreases. Writers can only keep doing what they love when they are healthy. If you love to write, learn about UCS and how to prevent it before it becomes problematic. Your writing and readers will thank you for it.
Mary Lynn Cloghesy is the founder of the Leadership Literary Lab (https://leadershipliterarylab.com), and Jason Schembri is a long-term weight loss specialist (https://jasonschembri.coach) Together, they host a luxury writing retreat in the Canadian Rockies.
This Crazy Writing Life: Dipping Our Toes In The Amazon Part One — Beware The Piranhas!
By Steven Womack
It’s borderline too late to say this, but Happy 2025! As at the beginning of every year, I have high hopes and cautious optimism. We’ll see how long that lasts.
With this installment of This Crazy Writing Life, we’re going to start digging into the real down-in-the-weeds details of marketing our books in the indie-pubbing space. And one of the reasons this column is a little late this month is that I decided to begin this exploration by tackling the ads on the platform that we’re all going to use the most: Amazon.
And that’s the problem.
As I alluded in previous columns, anything having anything to do with Amazon is by its very definition and at its very core hard to understand and navigate. Much of the inner workings of Amazon are unpredictable and so far behind-the-scenes as to be almost invisible. Even the experts—and believe me, I’m not one but I’ve read many—agree that sometimes things just seem to happen without any rhyme or reason. Navigating the Amazon advertising platform can be overwhelming, especially if you’re a newbie in the digital marketing arena. After all, Amazon has been the fastest-growing digital ad platform in the world for the past few years and is on its way to passing Google and Meta (or as we old timers call it, Facebook), and you don’t get to that point by being simple and low maintenance.
While I’m not a beginner in digital marketing, it has taken me longer than usual find my focus and to figure out where to begin.
So where is that starting place?
Let’s begin by looking at a few basics of digital advertising. First, much digital advertising is based on a bidding system. On a lot, if not most, platforms, you don’t just buy an ad and it magically appears on somebody’s screen. You create your ad account, create the ad, and then you figure out how much you’re willing to spend to get your ad out there and you compete to beat out all the other guys who are trying to get their ads out there.
There are some advertising platforms where you can just buy an ad and it appears (FreeBooksy, EReader news, Robinreads, etc.). But on Amazon, you gotta jump into the scrum and fight. And it’s not just the size of your bid that determines whether you get picked, but we’ll get to that later.
There are basically two kinds of ads to bid on: CPC and CPM. You’re only charged for CPC (Cost Per Click) ads when somebody actually clicks on your ad and goes to the link embedded in the ad. If your ad is served up to a gazillion people and nobody clicks on it, you aren’t charged (but believe me, that’s not what you want).
CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) ads are ones where you’re charged—as the name implies—every time your ad appears on a thousand screens.
So what’s the real difference here? If you’re trying to sell one specific product in a highly targeted fashion, then CPC is the way to go. CPC ads focus on user engagement (click here to see how Sudzo Dishwashing Detergent can give new meaning to your life!). The goal is to make a sale, or if not a sale, then some other kind of conversion (another term we’ll get to later).
A CPM ad, on the other hand, saturates screens everywhere and brings broader visibility to your brand or product. When you want your product to become a household name, then go with CPM.
Fortunately, you don’t have to agonize over the choice. Unlike Facebook or BookBub, Amazon is solely a pay per click advertising platform. You’re only charged when somebody clicks on your ad. What this means is that if there’s something wrong or off on your ad (keywords, targeting, relevancy, etc.), then neither your nor Amazon is going to make a penny off it. It’s in Amazon’s best interest and yours to get the right ad to the right people. So make sure you have a compelling, engaging cover. Your book’s title should reach out and grab readers. Your Amazon book description should absolutely sparkle. And you have to do the research and hard work to make sure you’re targeting the right audience.
And before I come off as somebody who’s constantly going medieval on Amazon (and I’m not; almost all of the money I make as an indie pubber comes from Amazon, so I’m a fan), let me point out one great benefit of Amazon ads: they’re easy to create. You don’t have to be a Mad Men caliber ad copywriter, and you don’t have to be a brilliant graphic designer. Just go with the Amazon model and you’ll be okay.
So what determines an ads success? I’ve already mentioned your book title and the cover. What else comes into play?
Reviews are critical. Before your ad even has a chance, you’ve got to have the best reviews possible—an average of between four and five stars is best—and as many of them as possible. This can be a challenge, since one of your primary goals for advertising in the first place is to get more reviews.
Price is a big one as well. One of the reasons the indie pub space has grown so much in the last couple of decades is that indie pubbers are willing to make their price points incredibly competitive. When I see an eBook edition of a book by a famous author published by one of the Big 5 New York Publishers (or are we down to 4? 3?) and its price is nearly that of the trade paperback edition, I head to the library to check it out for free. Also keep in mind that Amazon ads are going to primarily target people who probably don’t know you as an author. If you’re an unknown author and your eBook costs more than a lunch combo at Steak ‘n Shake, that’s a big hill to get over.
So how are those ads served up to potential customers? For indie authors, there are three types of campaigns available on Amazon.
The first type of campaign is Sponsored Products. Sponsored Product ads are the most popular and effective way to get started, especially if you’re advertising a single title. Sponsored Product ads are the ones that pop when you type something into the search bar. You get the search results, but there are also books that are in a box and have the word Sponsored somewhere around the book in little bitty type. There’s a little grey circle with an “i” it right next to the word. Then there are the “Also Boughts,” where the Amazon algorithm served up somebody’s paid ad to you based on what other customers have purchased.
By far, Sponsored Product ads are what most indie authors deploy. For one thing, Sponsored Product ads give you the most data and analytics on your ad’s performance. You’ll get data on the number of impressions, clicks, orders, sales volume, and if you’re enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, then you get reports on KENP (Kindle Edition Normalized Pages) and the estimated KENP royalties for every single target in the campaign (if that acronym is new to you, just remember that authors who enroll a book in the Kindle Unlimited program are paid by the number of pages that a subscriber reads when they download your book).
The second type of campaign is Sponsored Brands. Underneath that broad umbrella, there are a couple of options: product collection ads and video ads. For authors with more than three books in a series, the titles are displayed on a “carousel,” along with a headline, a picture or your smiling mug, and some other image.
For the video ads in a Sponsored Brand campaign, you’re advertising one specific book and, obviously, a video is your chief marketing tool. Think book trailer…
So how are Sponsored Brand ads served up to a potential customer? If you’re using a Product Collection ad, these show up on prime Amazon real estate—the top of the search pages. You have the option of your author photo being there, or a logo for your imprint, along with a headline and an optional image, and then your three books.
Video ads, on the other hand, are usually shown on the product page, much like a Sponsored Product ad.
I say usually because Amazon likes to experiment around and try these ads in different places, delivered in different ways. As always, Amazon is fluctuating in a kind of work-in-progress fashion.
The last type of Amazon ad campaign is Lockscreen Ads. Lockscreen ads are those ads that fill up your screen when you turn on your Kindle or when your screen saver comes on. These are big and bold, but they also show up when your potential customer is not really searching for something new to read. Sponsored Product and Sponsored Brand ads show up when someone is actually looking for something to buy; Lockscreen ads show up when they’ve gone to get another beer…
But the main drawback of Lockscreen ads is that they’re impossible to precisely target. With the other types of ad campaigns, you can specify who the ads go to all the way down to sub-sub-subcategories in Amazon. The reporting’s not as detailed either, so it’s harder to assess the effectiveness of a Lockscreen ads.
Okay, have you had enough for one session? I know this stuff is overwhelming and it’s best to take it in small chunks. Next time, This Crazy Writing Life will continue on with this exploration of Amazon until we’ve got a foundation to work with. But keep in mind, there are entire books written about Amazon ads. It’s way more than we can cover in a monthly column in Killer Nashville Magazine.
But we can get started. Thanks again for playing along.
What is A Thriller?
By Carol Willis
After I took the plunge and quit my job as a pathologist to write full time, the first novel I ever completed for adults was a psychological thriller. It is a genre near and dear to my heart. I love reading them, and love writing them even more. What is a psychological thriller? And what makes them so compelling?
Let’s dig in.
Thriller is a genre of literature defined by the primary mood of dread and suspense. They aim to make readers unsettled, nervous, and eager to read what happens next. All fiction should elicit some amount of stress in the reader in the form of tension and conflict, but in a thriller novel, the stress is the main feature. They often feel cinematic and involve high stakes and dramatic plot points.
In short, if it “thrills,” it is a thriller.
In the introduction to Thriller, a major anthology published in June 2006, James Patterson says:
Thrillers provide such a rich literary feast. There are all kinds. The legal thriller, political, spy, action-adventure, medical, military, police, romantic, historical, religious, high-tech. The list goes on and on, with new variations constantly being invented. In fact, this openness to expansion is one of the genre's most enduring characteristics. But what gives the variety of thrillers a common ground is the intensity of emotions they create, particularly those of apprehension and exhilaration, of excitement and breathlessness, all designed to generate that all-important thrill.
In other words, if a thriller doesn't thrill, it's not doing its job.
Thriller is a hybrid of mystery and horror, sharing a literary lineage with the epic and myth. Monsters, terror, and peril prevail. They are dark suspenseful plot-driven stories.
In his excellent 2019 article for Writer’s Digest entitled, “The Differences Between a Crime, Mystery, and Thriller Novel” David Corbett again emphasizes the emotion: Of the three major suspense genres, thrillers are typically the most emotional, focusing on the fear, doubt, and dread of the hero as she faces some form of what Dean Koontz has deemed “terrible trouble.”
There are many elements to thrillers that overlap with other novels of mystery and suspense but typically with an exaggerated atmosphere of menace and sudden violence, such as crime and often murder. A devastating crime is about to be committed or has been committed with the threat of another one looming. The villain is known, but his guilt is not certain—or the hero cannot accept the truth of his guilt. Uncertainty and doubt enhance the suspense.
The tension usually arises when the main character(s) is placed in a dangerous situation, and we spend the rest of the novel waiting to see if they’ll escape. Themes typically emphasize the dangerous world we live in, the vulnerability of the average person, and the inherent threat of the unknown.
Thrillers can take place in exotic settings—think geopolitical and many spy thrillers—but most take place in ordinary suburbs and cities. The main character, the hero, is usually tough and resourceful, but essentially an ordinary person who is pitted against a villain determined to destroy them, their country, or the stability of society.
Suspense is how an author builds tension throughout the story. It’s necessary in any genre, but it’s absolutely vital in thrillers. Ultimately, your goal for the reader is that they never want to put the book down. Each chapter ends with a cliffhanger, urgent question, or significant plot twist. And the plot must have high stakes. The characters must have a lot on the line—it needs to really matter they succeed.
In a thriller, the plot should be driven by one big, important question. Think Chris Whitaker’s All the Colors from the Dark. The story begins when Patch is abducted when he is a young boy and held captive in a darkened room along with another young girl, Grace. Patch eventually escapes but spends the rest of his life searching for Grace. It is a complex, multilayered mystery involving missing persons, child kidnapping, and a serial killer weaving several plots lines, each with their own twist, but it is Patch’s quest that becomes the central question that drives much of the suspense throughout the novel. Who was Grace and what happened to her?
While action does not need to be non-stop, suspense and intrigue need to be constant. There must be a sense of urgency to keep you turning the page.
This basic story structure emphasizes the importance of reader expectations: There is a distinct hero and a villain. The attack on the hero is relentless with escalating terror and dread. The hero must be vulnerable—not just physically but psychologically.
So, what is a psychological thriller and what makes them different from other types of thrillers?
The biggest questions revolve around the minds and behavior of the main characters. Common elements in include plot twists, psychology, obsession, and mind games. They incorporate elements of mystery and include themes of crime, morality, mental illness, substance abuse, multiple realities, and unreliable narrators.
A psychological thriller finds the terror in madness and paranoia. Here the threat is diabolical but more contained, even intimate—usually targeting the protagonist and/or his family—and the hero is often relatively ordinary.
It is the upending of our prosaic circumstances that disconcert us the most. This is why many psychological thrillers are domestic dramas set in the home, threatening our most cherished relationships such as husband and wife, mother and daughter, or sister and sister. The protagonist (and the reader) come to think if we are not safe in our own home, we must not be safe anywhere.
Psychological thrillers generally, but not always, stay away from elements of fantasy or science fiction, focusing on events that could take place in real life. However, with advances in medical science and robotics, and the rise of AI, this is changing. Near-future psychological thrillers involving clones or robots gone awry can be eerily convincing.
In summary, like all good stories, it comes down to setting and character with a problem. The reader must care about what happens next. Psychological thrillers are highly emotional and revolve around the minds and behavior of the main characters. Common elements in include plot twists, mind games, and unreliable narrators to create an atmosphere of menace with looming threats. They are suspenseful and filled with fear and dread to keep readers turning the page.
In the next series of essays, I will discuss five specific elements we see in a psychological thriller.
Carol Willis (she/her) received her MFA in Writing (fiction) from Vermont College of Fine Arts. After receiving her medical doctorate from Texas A&M and an MBA in healthcare from George Washington University, she practiced child health and pathology before moving to Central Virginia. She is the author of a psychological thriller set in Chicago, a dark domestic drama exploring marriage, career, and identity. Her short stories have been published in multiple online journals and anthologies including Valparaiso Fiction Review, Inlandia: A Literary Journey, Living Crue Magazine, Crime in Old Dominion and others.
What if?: A Most Important Question
By DP Lyle
Every author has been asked: Where do you get your ideas? The short answer is: Everywhere. Something you see or read germinates an idea, and a story unfolds. Sometimes the story comes together quickly, but most often weeks of building mental scenes and snippets of dialog, setting, and action must be waded through before pen meets paper.
An overheard conversation might be the spark. Or a couple talking/arguing/laughing at a nearby restaurant table. Maybe an odd character strolling down the street. Perhaps an idea simply pops into your head from wherever those thoughts arise.
Okay, so you have an idea. Now what? An idea isn’t a story. Ideas are a dime a dozen. They are literally everywhere. The key is to find an idea that can stand up through a 100,000-word manuscript. No small trick.
To do this, the original idea must be refined and fleshed out. An idea can become a scene, but to be a full-length novel it must evolve and expand. It must become a premise, or what many call “The Central Story Question.” It’s what the story is really about.
To become a premise, the original idea must ultimately lead to the question: What if?
What if this happened? What if that person did this? What if that dude in the shabby clothes was actually a rogue undercover agent with a deadly agenda? What if the restaurant couple was planning a murder? What if that briefcase contained state secrets? Or an explosive device? Or a deadly virus?
From those two words--What if?--stories arise.
The power of your story’s What If? can’t be overestimated. If it is done correctly and not lost in the writing. A good What if? states the main character, the situation, the stakes, and, most importantly, the Central Story Question.
It is the answering of this question that is the story.
Okay, so our restaurant couple is planning a murder. Who, what, when, where, and, most importantly, why? It’s always the why that makes a great story. Is it to get out of a messy marriage and save all that alimony money, or to cash in that million-dollar insurance policy, or to cover an embezzlement from a company they work for, or to seek revenge for some act? Even though the original idea was a couple planning a murder, each of these scenarios generates a different story. Each will lead your sleuth, who must solve the murder, into a different world.
What if a young couple witnesses a murder and in so doing put themselves in the cross hairs of a transnational criminal organization?
This is the What If? for my latest Cain/Harper thriller, TUNICA.
The What If? should be stated in about 25 words or less. Because the What If? is brief, it’s often called the elevator pitch or the agent pitch. It communicates your story in the most efficient terms. We’ve all heard writers respond when asked what their story is about by saying things like, “Well, there’s this guy who lives on an island. And he hates the water. And a big shark is killing people and this is threatening to shut down the town’s beaches on a holiday weekend. And then there’s this other guy who is a shark expert and he has a really cool boat. Oh, I forgot, the first guy is the chief of police.” Yawn.
What if a hydrophobic, island-community police chief must go out on the water to kill a predatory shark to save the town’s summer economy and to prove his own self-worth?
What if an FBI trainee must exchange personal information with a sadistic serial killer in order to track another serial killer and save a Senator’s daughter?
What if the youngest son of a mafia family takes revenge on the men who shot his father and becomes the new godfather, losing his own soul in the process?
These are of course Jaws, Silence of the Lambs, and The Godfather, respectively. See how these What If?s reveal the protagonist and cleanly state the story premise? Read these books or watch the movies and you will see that each scene moves toward answering the story’s What If? Each of your scenes should, too. If not, consider cutting, or at least reworking, those that don’t.
Many authors consume weeks creating the What If? for their story. Constantly refining it, making it more on point. You should, too. It’s that important. It concisely states the Central Story Question.
Here’s a tip: When your What If? is completed to your satisfaction, print it out and tape it to your computer or the front of your writing pad so you will see it every time you sit down to write. Before writing each scene, read your What If? and ask yourself, “Does this scene help answer the Central Story Question?” If you do this, you will never lose sight of what your story is about. Particularly in the dreaded middle, where so many stories get lost in the jumble of character and backstory and cool dialog all the other stuff that goes into a manuscript. The What If? keeps you focused and on track.
Between Pen and Paper: Flaneuring Through a Writer’s Mind – Finding Inspiration
By Andi Kopek
A few days ago, an email landed in my inbox with an intriguing idea: Contribute to Killer Nashville Magazine! The email encouraged writers to submit single pieces, pitch the entire series, or even become regular columnists. My immediate reaction? “Hell, yes! Go for it!”
I had the privilege of volunteering at the most recent Killer Nashville conference, contributing by reviewing submissions, bringing authors’ work to life through live readings, and assisting the logistics team. It was a rewarding experience in every sense, but what struck me most was the event’s outstanding quality and the immense value it provided to its participants. So, when the opportunity arose to contribute to the magazine—an extension of the conference—I jumped in headfirst.
When I emerged from the pool of excitement, I asked myself, “What do you want to write about?” This reflection led me to the title of my potential column: Between Pen and Paper: Flaneuring Through a Writer’s Mind. Titles are vital; they serve as beacons from a lighthouse of purpose, guiding the writing ship through the tumultuous seas of creativity and storytelling.
Why Between Pen and Paper? Because I believe entire worlds exist in that space. There are foggy worlds of undiscovered desires, passions, and failures hidden in a writer’s mind. Mundane worlds of endless research and labyrinthine directories of folders within sub-folders, within sub-folders holding googol amount of Googled information. And then there are fantasy worlds, where pages transform into smiling green Benjamins, and bank accounts grow fat like grizzly bears before La Niña’s winter.
These are the fascinating worlds I want to explore, and I’d like to invite you to come along.
There are countless ways to explore a world: you can hop on a plane with a packed itinerary and check off every tourist hotspot, or you can stand by the side of the road with a thumb outstretched, waiting for the unpredictable. I’ve traveled the world both ways—and in some others—but my favorite is through flaneuring.
What is flaneuring? Flaneuring, or flânerie, was born in the literary circles of 19th-century Europe. A flâneur—a person who practices flaneuring—wanders the streets of a city, observing and reflecting on its urban landscape. Edgar Allan Poe introduced this concept to literature in 1840 with his short story “The Man of the Crowd.” Charles Baudelaire discussed Poe’s story in his “The Painter of Modern Life”, Victor Fournel dedicated a chapter of his book “Ce qu'On Voit dans les Rues de Paris” (What One Sees in the Streets of Paris) to “the art of flânerie”, Honore de Balzac described flaneuring so poetically as “the gastronomy of the eye” in his The Physiology of Marriage.
Inspired by this contemplative form of exploration, I propose we flaneur through the vast worlds of a writer’s mind. Let’s begin our journey where all stories originate—with inspiration.
Inspiration is a mysterious, almost sacred force. It ignites a writer’s unexplainable desire to tell stories. Suddenly, an event, a thought, or a fleeting moment pierces the thick skin of mundane reality and touches the soul of a writer, compelling us to create something meaningful.
As I wander through the inspirational world, I notice three distinct types of inspiration:
1. Inspiration in Everyday Life
Everyday life is full of untapped creativity. When I go grocery shopping, I’m not just buying food—I’m observing the world around me. I observe what people buy, how shoppers interact with each other, or how couples move through the aisles. To sharpen my focus, I sometimes wear muted earphones to amplify my visual senses. Conversely, in a café, I close my eyes sometimes to heighten my auditory awareness, letting the noise and rhythm of conversations spark ideas. These ordinary moments can inspire characters, dialogue, or the subtleties of a scene.
2. Inspiration from Personal Experiences
Personal experiences are a treasure trove for storytelling. At the end of the day, what we know the best is our lives. While not everything we write is autobiographical, our lives provide rich emotional material to draw upon. Moments of joy, heartbreak, or vulnerability can shape authentic characters and relatable narratives. Think about waiting for a life-altering diagnosis or experiencing the bittersweet ache of nostalgia—these emotions can become the foundation of an interesting story. Ultimately, our personal experiences, whether mundane or monumental, can allow us to explore universal human truths.
3. Inspiration by Nature
Nature offers boundless inspiration. When I’m going for a walk, doesn’t mean I want to write a hiking guide. Nature is full of parables, similes, and metaphors. The way rain reshapes deer hoofprints in mud might inspire a crucial clue in a detective story. The oppressive darkness of a moonless forest could set the tone for a psychological thriller. Even the smell of freshly turned soil might spark the perfect ending to a murder mystery. When we observe nature with a writer’s eye, we uncover stories waiting to be told.
These diverse sources of inspiration—everyday life, personal experiences, and nature—feed our creativity and provide the raw material for storytelling. They can ignite an entire novel, inspire a unique character quirk, or shape a single unforgettable moment in a story. Inspiration doesn’t always arrive fully formed; sometimes, it’s just a fragment—a fleeting image, a snippet of dialogue, or an emotion—that grows as we nurture it. If we keep our minds open, inspirations come constantly in our direction, so we should be prepared to welcome them and, if not used at the moment, have a way of storing them for later.
The word inspiration comes from the Latin inspirare, meaning “to breathe into.” And that’s exactly what inspiration does—it breathes life into our thoughts, transforming them into vivid, imaginative creations.
So, let’s embrace every inspiration we encounter, at every step, at every turn as we flaneur through the intricate worlds of the writer’s mind.
Andi Kopek is a multidisciplinary artist based in Nashville, TN. With a background in medicine, molecular neuroscience, and behavioral change, he has recently devoted himself entirely to the creative arts. His debut poetry collection, Shmehara, has garnered accolades in both literary and independent film circles for its innovative storytelling.
When you’re in Nashville, you can join Andi at his monthly poetry workshop, participate in the Libri Prohibiti book club, or catch one of his live performances. When not engaging with the community, he's hard at work on his next creative project or preparing for his upcoming art-focused podcast, The Samovar(t) Lounge: Steeping Conversations with Creative Minds,where in a relaxed space, invited artists share tea and the never-told intricacies of their creative journeys.
Audiobooks
Since audiobooks are currently in the fastest growing book format right now, getting your novel out for sale as an audiobook is vital for success. If your book isn’t, you’re losing a lot, and leaving money on the table, as the expression goes. My audiobooks have sold hundreds and hundreds, and I love the continual income stream. Sadly, many writers from traditional publishers don’t have their backlists up as audios, so they’re missing out.
Reasons why you should have audio as part of your overall writing business strategy:
Discoverability: Get a bigger audience and make it easier to find your work. Many potential fans like audio for a number of reasons, some just enjoying a good listen while walking, driving, running, or biking. You want all the fans you can get! These days, people have less time for reading print books, so audiobooks can be a saving grace. While To Be Read (TBR) piles are so big, chances are many readers won’t get to your print book for a long, long time, if ever, but if you’re on audio, they have a better chance of finding your work. If they like that one, they’ll come back for more. Having your book listed in audio format also gets more hits in internet searches, and is listed in more places, increasing your internet presence and the chances of someone finding your work. With over ten million books in print and electronic format, your book is a drop in the ocean. There are far fewer audiobooks: smaller ocean, bigger chance to make a splash! And it’ll get you into some extra markets. I was speaking with a person from a State Library about my books, and the first question was “Any of your books out on audio? Because we’re investing in those right now.”
Sales: As well as finding new fans and watching your sales numbers increase, you can make money. Once the book is produced, all you have to do is promote it whenever you want. But each title is another product in your writer store, and even little trickles of money add up to an income stream. It’s nice to have hundreds of sales in another venue.
Reviews: While many print book reviewers are overwhelmed, there are many sites doing audio that can still accommodate a review. You have more chances of getting good notice for your work. It all adds up. Listeners can also post reviews and ratings, which help.
It’ll make you a better writer: When someone else reads your words, it makes the clunky ones stand out, and the good ones sound better. Your ear will develop, especially for dialog.
Freebies: With some audiobook production, you get free giveaway codes. You can gift these to reviewers, as contest prizes, or simply as rewards to readers. When someone buys a print book in person from me, I’ll offer them the free audiobook as a nice extra.
Audiobook Options
Historically, audiobooks were done by professional companies and were expensive to produce, costing thousands of dollars. So only better-selling books made it. Now there are options.
Someone ELSE does all the work- (and takes most of the money). While it’s nice to have someone do all the work for you, as with traditional publishing, there’s a danger. They might stick you with a hideous cover, a bad version, a product priced wrong for the market, or take a long time to get it out- or never, while they hold the rights captive. In any case, it may not sell, and you’re stuck. And when someone does the work, they also take most of the profit.
While you assume that a big publisher would do a professional version, there may be other factors. I got one from a BIG audiobook producer, but the narrator couldn’t pronounce ANY place name in Maine correctly- even easy ones like Bangor and Augusta! Letting someone else do it all means the quality control may not be there, and there’s little you can do about it. And you might tick off some fans. (I know I was!)
And that’s assuming you can get a publisher to produce it. Professional narrators run upwards of $100 an hour, and it takes hours to produce a book. Plus other production costs, and packaging, and distributing, they’re investing a few thousand dollars, at least. Since they expect a good return, they have to estimate the sales will exceed the output. So if you’re a typical mid-lister, with less than ten thousand print/ebook sales per book, they may not even do your book for audio. But they’ll likely still retain the rights, in case you hit it big. Then they can always do one later. But what happens is that you can go for years (or forever) without an audio version.
So- check your contract to see what provisions there are for audio. Even if you signed them away, and they’re not doing anything with them, maybe you can re-negotiate. They may not give the rights back for free, but maybe you can offer them something for it that will make it worthwhile.
Do it all yourself, keep all the money.
Two factors- Production and Distribution
It’s true you don’t need a studio anymore, so it’s become cost-effective. You can produce high-quality audio files in different formats with free software and inexpensive equipment. I recommend Audacity software for recording, because it’s free and simple to learn and use.
Are you a professional narrator? If you’re charging money for the book, you want quality. Unless you’re famous, the listeners may not be forgiving of less-than-awesome narrating. Before you start this path, do some voice work (maybe some podcasts), and get comfortable with a microphone and sound editing.
Drawbacks- while this can be done, the main cost is time to record and edit. Most of us don’t have enough hours in a day now. And it may take hours of editing to get the sound to a professional level.
Distribution. Even if you do it yourself, how are you going to package, list, and sell the finished product? Tough to arrange this on your own.
Work with a Service, and split the money
While there are other services, my current favorite production option right now is ACX.com, which feeds into Audible.com, an Amazon company. They make it easy and profitable for independents to get their books produced, listed, and sold. Better yet, the finished product is on the Audible site, AND on your Amazon book listing, right beside the print and kindle versions. Huge showcase! And they can tie it into Whispersync, which lets you switch between devices and formats.
How to Produce Audiobooks
For ACX, you’ll need an account on the site (includes telling them where to send the money!).
Check your publishing contract first, and beware of issues with anthologies, or other writers listed on your book as authors.
READ YOUR CONTRACT TERMS! Audible gets an exclusive right for years, so make sure you’re comfortable with the terms.
Log in to ACX and search for your book, then claim it as yours, with the right to produce an audio.
Various ways to produce your book:
Do all the narration yourself. ACX distributes the book for you, and you make 40% of the list price.
Pay a narrator up front for doing your book. Narrators are expensive. While you can still retain your 40%, consider the cost, and how long it might take to recoup that. You post your project with the offer to pay, and get bids. Decide on who you want.
Offer a royalty split, for no up-front money- This is my favorite way. You are hoping that narrators will do all the work on spec, in hopes of making money when the audio sells. You each get 20% of the sale price in this part. They’re putting in time, which to them equals hundreds, or even thousands of dollars, and you have no risk! But of course, you wrote the book, so your time is already invested.
When you’ve claimed your book, and decided if you want a narrator, you post it up as a project, with a description and notes on what the ideal narrator should sound like- male or female, age, accents, humorous, serious, scary, etc. You post an audition piece, a short segment that will give a good indication if the narrator is right for the work (dialogue with different voices is a good indicator). Add any helpful hints on what the passage should sound like.
This posts the project up for people to audition for, and you wait for replies. You can also search on available narrators, and sample their voices to see if any fit, then send them a message to see if they’re interested in your project.
When auditions come in, listen if they’re right for your work. When you’ve found someone who has the right voice for the job, you then set a schedule and make an official Offer. There’s a date for a 15-minute milestone, which is a guide to see if they’re on the right track, and a date for the project completion. You may need some back-and-forth on pronunciation and tone, and you send messages via ACX. When they’re ready, they send ACX the files, and you give a listen. You can request changes if there’s something amiss, so you have complete quality control.
When it’s done properly, you Approve the work, which then goes through ACX for their approval, and then gets posted to Audible for sale. You’ll need a cover image modified to their specs, a squared-off version of your book cover. Then it goes up on Amazon as well, linked with your print and Kindle versions. They will set the price of the finished book, based on length.
But there’s more! ACX sends you codes for free downloads of the work. You can use these for reviewers, friends, giveaways, and rewards for your fans- it’s an awesome way of promoting your work- for free! You send instructions and a download code, and someone gets the audio for free.
And the bonus program- if your work is the first someone selects when signing up for Audible, you get a bonus payment- it’s split with your narrator, but is a nice addition.
Writing Fiction, or Non-fiction, Research is Key
I have been fortunate to have my books published for some sixteen years. Throughout my writing career I have learned that research is THE key to pulling in readers and adding authenticity to your work, even if it is fiction. If you’re doing non-fiction, research is even more paramount.
With fiction, many writers believe they can write whatever comes to mind, creating strong characters, their environments, backgrounds and whatever plot they wish to follow. But if you’re writing historical fiction, it is a must that you follow, or get as close to, following what was happening at the specific time in history you are writing about.
My newest book, Edison’s Last Breath, a historical mystery that involves several real-life characters, such as Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, Josephine Baker, and Ernest Heminway (once again from my first book, Papa’s Problem). My primary character, Emmet MacWain meets these people when there is a murder at Henry Ford’s winter home in Ft. Myers, Florida. I was inspired to write about Josephine Baker as it was revealed that she was not only the biggest entertainer of her time, but that she was also a spy for the French resistance.
As with Papa’s Problem, in which Hemingway is a murder suspect, I found that I could not just write what I knew from lore. Libraries, particularly those that exist where the character lived—Hemingway in the earlier book, and Ford and Baker in the present book—are useful as they may house personal letters and documents from the real-life character. In Edison’s Last Breath, I had the opportunity to go to the Ford and Edison estates in Ft. Myers, Florida, where, to my astonishment, I found a corked test tube, with an accompanying note read, “This tube contains Thomas Edison’s Last Breath.” Hence the title of my book, Edison’s Last Breath.
Initially I thought it was some sort of hoax, but as I researched the odd item, I found out that, as he was dying, Edison, a close friend and mentor to Henry Ford, would try to save what he thought was his last breath for his friend, Ford. Charles Edison, the son of Thomas, stayed with his father while he was in his death bed. Each time he thought his father was exhaling his last breath, he would try to capture it. I did not make this up!
I was bowled over by this fact, and my novel took a new direction that took us to many places, including Josphine Baker’s chateau in France, where I found out even more about this heroic woman who spied for the French. She was so good at entertaining people, that German officers who suspected she was a spy would go to her home with intent to find some evidence, for which they might arrest her. But Josphine was so clever and such a dynamic performer, she would charm the soldiers with wine, dinner and a personal show, and the Nazis would forget what they came for. Baker was one of the bravest spies ever.
That was the cool thing I found out. The not-so-cool thing I found out as well, was that both Ford and Lindbergh were antisemitic, Nazi supporters. Lindbergh was gifted a plane by the furor himself and had several mistresses in Germany, while Ford had contracts with the Germans to make trucks for their Army during our country’s war with them. Lindbergh was awarded the Serve Cross of the Order of the German Eagle, while Ford was awarded the Grand Cross of the German Eagle.
Working on my previous book (for some 20 years) “American Ripper: The Enigma of America’s Serial Killer Cop,” I had to do much more, shall we say hazardous research, such as visiting the serial killer, Gerard Schaefer, in jail. Schaefer was convicted of two murders but was believed to have committed dozens more. He typically killed two girls at a time, often picking them up in his patrol car as they were hitch-hiking.
I spent many years writing this story because of its true nature and because so many people had to be interviewed: police who worked with Schaefer and investigated his murders, the lawyers who prosecuted him as well as his public defender, surviving family members, the killer’s mother, and many police officers in numerous states, who I still hear from, when they find another body. Just last year, I was called by a police officer who was investigating cold cases. They had found a body, a teenage girl back 1972 in a mangrove-covered area where Schaefer used to take his victims. She was never identified until an officer from Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office took over the cold cases.
The victim was found with wire tied in knots around her hands and feet. She was skeletonized but the wire knots were still intact. Many police officers know who I am from my research and my book, so he called me and asked if I has any pictures from Schaefer’s crime scenes. I had copies made years ago from the evidence files (though I chose not to use them in my book for the sake of the families who lost their children). The cold case cop sent me the pictures they took of the knotted wire, and they matched knots that Schaefer utilized on his victims. So now that had a connection between Schaefer and the victim, Karen Poole. We also found that Schaefer used to live just around the corner from the victim.
So, research—good, intense research—can add reality to your fiction novel, or the stark truth in a non-fiction book on true crime.
This Crazy Writing Life: Okay, Let’s Talk About The 800-Pound Gorilla: Marketing
By Steven Womack
Bold statement time. Ready? Here it comes…
I’d rather write five novels than market one.
I think that probably goes against the grain for most people. After all, writing’s hard. A novel is long, a grinding marathon of page after empty page that goes on months, sometimes years, before you reach the finish line.
And yet I’d rather run five of those marathons than try and sell one.
When I say that, I think there must be something wrong with me. For some reason or other, I’m uncomfortable blowing my own horn, hawking my own work. For some people, it comes easily, like drawing a breath. For me, it’s always seemed…
Well, unseemly.
When I was young, one of my best buddies got us both a summer job selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door. We got about two days of training (I still remember the spiel: The Bison, the world’s most complete home maintenance system. Guaranteed to protect your home and furniture, conserve your time and health…) and we were then turned loose on an unsuspecting neighborhood.
I think I lasted three days.
A couple of decades later, when I finally sold (there’s that word again) my first novel, I assumed the publisher would take care of all the marketing. They’d set up book signings for me, take out ads, arrange for reviews. All I had to do was cash the checks and write my next book.
Ah, what a naïve little grasshoppah I was.
Truth is, long before the genteel gentlemanly world of 19th century publishing morphed into the Darwinian dog-eat-dog cutthroat business it’s become in the 21st century, writers had to bite the bullet and learn to sell their own stuff. Now, in the age where the number of indie-pubbed writers has long surpassed the number of traditionally published authors, it’s more important than ever that writers grasp the fundamentals of marketing. When every writer is essentially a small shopkeeper slinging pages out of a tiny storefront, unless you’re willing to promote your own work, you’re never even going to get noticed, let alone make a living.
Last September, I found myself in St. Petersburg Beach, Florida at the annual Novelists Inc. conference. I’ve written about Novelists Inc. before in This Crazy Writing Life. The beauty of the Novelists Inc. conference is it’s all business. You don’t get many seminars on developing character or finding your voice with these folks. But you will get in-depth seminars on indie audiobook production and negotiating foreign translation rights contracts.
At this conference, one of the best marketing seminars I ever attended was put on by Ricardo Fayet, who’s one of the four founders of Reedsy, a company that provides support and guidance for indie-pubbed authors, as well as being a gateway connecting freelancers with writers. If you don’t know these guys, just Google them and go to their website. It’s worth the trip.
Ricardo’s written two books on marketing for indie authors: How To Market A Book and Amazon Ads For Authors. I’ve got them both and they’re well worth the price.
Ricardo’s seminar at the conference did a deep dive into the underlying psychology of marketing and a few basic principles that indie authors need to learn and deploy. It’ll make the hell of marketing a little less hellish. Let’s take a brief look at what Ricardo described.
Principle #1: It’s cheaper to retain an existing reader than acquire a new one.
It costs five time as much to attract a new reader—in money and effort—than it does to keep an old one. That’s why series are so powerful in today’s marketplace. Whether you’re Jack Konrath writing 27 installments of his Jack Daniels series books, John D. MacDonald’s 21 Travis McGee novels or J.T. Ellison’s nine novels in her Lt. Taylor Jackson series, a series quite literally builds a brand that attracts readers and keeps them. Fayet even cited one series that’s run to 112 books.
What if you’re not into series? Then develop a style and voice that becomes as identifiable and as reliable as a series. Dick Francis wrote mostly standalones (outside of his four-book Sid Halley series), but his style and voice was so distinctive that when you pick up a Dick Francis book, it’s instantly identifiable as a Dick Francis book.
Principle #2: Product trumps marketing every time.
This principle embodies the notion that, over the long run, no amount of brilliant marketing will sell a bad book. You’ve got to write an amazing book to even have a chance of competing in the literary marketplace. Fayet cited the statistic that only seven percent of traditionally published books sell over 10,000 copies.
“You can’t sell a book if it isn’t good,” he noted.
Principle #3: Decay is inevitable.
“What’s working now isn’t guaranteed to work forever,” Fayet said. “In fact, it’s almost guaranteed to peter out at some point.” All marketing and promotion efforts and strategies eventually begin to lose their effectiveness. This principle doesn’t apply only to books. All products, sooner or later, need a marketing refresh. Interest wanes, attention moves on to other things.
And a sidebar to this notion is the 80/20 rule. Eighty percent of your results will come from twenty percent of your efforts. And you must constantly look ahead. If you focus solely on today’s marketing efforts and campaigns, then you won’t be prepared for when it all stops working.
Principle #4: Steady versus Explosive Marketing.
Steady, consistent marketing efforts will get you to a certain level of sales. But you may find you’ve hit a ceiling and you’re just not breaking through to the next level.
Explosive marketing, however, requires a different approach. It requires careful planning and execution, along with good timing. If spaced out properly, explosive marketing avoids fatigue and wearing out your audience. Finally, Fayet noted, it works best for highly targeted campaigns, and for many authors, that means being enrolled in Kindle Unlimited.
Principle #5: Volume x ROI.
This is kind of a big one, folks. Start by imagining the global audience of readers: millions.
Now imagine your audience: a tiny subset of millions.
So how do you reach and then grow your tiny subset. The best strategy is to start small and cheap. Maybe that’s Amazon ASIN ads or Facebook ads. This is a highly targeted strategy, where you aim to reach the people who already read your kind of book. This may not be a huge number of readers, but your Return On Investment (ROI) is potentially going to be pretty good.
Then you aim a little higher: BookBub Featured Deals, Meta A+ ads, then maybe on to digitally targeted ads, TV, even billboards and print ads.
But remember, with each step up the marketing ladder, you’re going to reach more people. But your conversion rate’s going to go down, along with your ROI. So if you want to broaden your reach, remember that with each new and larger strategy, it becomes harder to make your money back.
Principle #6: 10% of 1000=1% of 10,000…or why you don’t need to be chasing trends.
One of the most baffling questions for many writers is the question of writing to the market or chasing trends. Of course, we all want to tap into the popular zeitgeist. If there’s a demand for something in the marketplace, we all want to meet that demand. But especially in traditional publishing, the timeline for bringing a book to market may be so far out that the trend will have passed before your book can get out there.
Just remember, Cabbage Patch dolls, Beanie Babies, and Pet Rocks were once all the rage.
On the other hand, we all want to write for a growing market. But what if you occupy a bigger place in a smaller market? Fayet noted that 10% of 1000 readers is the same number of readers as 1% of a 10,000 reader market.
This is among the most complicated and convoluted decisions a writer must make. Sometimes it’s better to stay in your lane. Should we just ignore trends?
Fayet’s answer is “Of course not!” Trends signal a growing market, but you need to weigh your decision against several factors:
Can I expect to make more money in a new genre or a new kind of book? Would I be better off just delivering what I know my current readers want?
Can I expect my existing fans to follow me?
Can I keep my sanity and have a little fun by taking a new path?
Do I know the new genre well enough to dip my toe into it? Do I have the skill set?
Can I reasonably get in on the trend in time?
This is all complicated stuff… Marketing and promotion for writers can make writing look easy. But if you keep in mind Ricardo Fayet’s six principles every writer should let guide their careers, then this mine field might not be quite so treacherous.
In next month’s episode of This Crazy Writing Life, we’ll start taking deeper dives into specific marketing strategies.
I don’t know when this installment will be published in KN Magazine. I’m writing it before Christmas, so if it comes out before the holidays, have a great one. If it’s 2025 when you’re reading this, I hope this year’s your best one ever.
And thanks for coming along for the ride.
Crafting Killer Back Cover Copy
By Lois Winston
How do most readers buy books when they’re not searching for a specific title or author? They either scroll through an e-tailer site or stroll around the aisles of a bookstore. Either way, the first thing that will catch their attention is a book’s cover. In a bookstore, the reader picks up a book, flip it over, and reads the back cover copy. On an Internet site, the reader scrolls to the book’s description.
The primary goal of back cover copy is to act as a tease. If the tease works, the reader flips to the first page or clicks on the sample to read a few paragraphs or pages. If she likes what she’s read, she’ll buy the book. If those first few paragraphs or pages don’t grab her, she continues to scroll or stroll. The back cover copy is the first step in whether a reader decides to buy a book. That’s why back cover copy is so important. It’s meant to whet the reader’s appetite and hook a potential customer.
Back cover copy should consist of one or more short paragraphs that describe the main plot and main protagonist(s) in a book. If you’ve ever queried an agent or editor, it’s like the section of the query letter that describes your book. Sometimes, an editor may even use the author’s query blurb—with or without a few tweaks—for the back cover copy.
So, what should go into back cover copy, and what should you omit? First, you want to include enough information to pique the reader’s curiosity about the book. That means giving an indication of the overall story arc and the main character(s). Who are these people you’ve written about, and what is it about them that will make a reader want to care about them, their world, their relationships, and their problems?
That sounds like an overwhelming task to accomplish in a few short paragraphs, but it’s quite easy if you rely on GMC—goal, motivation, and conflict. GMC is not just for plotting a good story and creating compelling characters. Nailing down characters’ GMC, provides an author with a toolbox for creating every other aspect of the book—from the query to the synopsis to the novel to the back cover copy.
Step 1: Define Your Main Character
Use a few adjectives and a noun to define your main character. Be specific. These few words will tell exactly who your character is. This gives you a framework from which to work.
For example, in Love, Lies and a Double Shot of Deception the heroine is described as a “poor little rich girl.” The book is a heart-wrenching romantic suspense. Therefore, the back cover copy is crafted to evoke an emotional response in the reader.
In my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series, my protagonist is a “reluctant amateur sleuth.” Since mysteries are plot driven, I created back cover copy that speaks to the cataclysmic upheaval in Anastasia’s life which propels her into solving each mystery.
Step 2: Define Your Main Character’s Internal and External Goals, Motivations, and Conflicts
Every book must have a balance of plot and characterization. External GMC speaks to plot. Internal GMC speaks to characterization.
For each of your main characters, answer the following questions:
1. What does your character want?
2. Why does he/she want it?
3. What’s keeping him/her from getting it?
Do this for both the external (the plot) and the internal (the characterization) GMC. Keep each answer to one sentence. When you’re finished, you’ll have six sentences, three that speak to plot and three that speak to characterization.
Avoid unnecessary description. No one buys a book because the heroine is a redhead. Include setting, occupation, and other specifics only if they’re pertinent to the plot and main characters.
For example, in Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series, the back cover copy doesn’t mention that the book takes place in New Jersey because it doesn’t matter. However, it does mentions that Anastasia is a magazine crafts editor. Why? Because Anastasia discovers the murder victim sitting in her cubicle—glue gunned to her chair. If I didn’t mention Anastasia’s occupation, the circumstances of the victim’s death wouldn’t make any sense.
In Love, Lies and a Double Shot of Deception, I don’t mention Emma’s occupation in the blurb because it’s not relevant. I do mention that the story takes place in Philadelphia because the city plays an important role in the story.
Step 3: Define Other Essential Characters
Back cover copy will often, but not always, mention two or three characters because they’re essential to giving the reader an indication of what the story is about. This will vary depending on the genre and plot. Sometimes only one character is mentioned. If other characters play essential roles in your story, repeat Steps 1 and 2 to define their GMC. You probably won’t use all the information on these characters in crafting the blurb, but writing the information out will help you decide what’s important to include and what you can omit in crafting your back cover copy.
Step 4: Voice
The final component of your back cover copy is voice. Describe your book in a voice that matches the voice of your novel. Look at the examples at the end of this article. Love, Lies and a Double Shot of Deception is an emotionally driven romantic suspense, A Crafty Collage of Crime is a humorous mystery. The voice used in each is different. If you haven’t incorporated the voice from your book in your answers to the GMC questions, go back and tweak the sentences.
It’s important for the reader to be able to determine whether your book is a romantic comedy versus a romantic suspense or a cozy mystery versus a police procedural. You want to meet reader expectation from the very beginning. Readers usually like surprise plot twists, but they don’t want to be tricked into buying a book that purports to be one genre, only to find it’s a completely different genre.
As a side note, cover art should also convey the tone of your book. The cover art and back cover copy should complement each other.
Step 5: Put it All Together
Look at the sentences you’ve created. Depending on the genre, you may or may not use all the sentences you’ve written to develop your back cover copy. Some back cover copy works well as one short paragraph. Most require two, three, or four paragraphs. Choose the sentences that best convey your story. String them together to create your back cover copy, fleshing the paragraphs out with any other pertinent information you believe is essential to hook the reader. Your paragraphs should be tight, concise, and free of unimportant details. Your goal is to make the reader want to flip to the first page of your book to read the opening paragraphs, then head to the cash register or click the Buy Link.
Samples of Back Cover Copy
Humorous cozy mystery:
Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award for Best Comedy
Wherever crafts editor and reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack goes, murder and mayhem follow. Her honeymoon is no exception. She and new husband, photojournalist (and possible spy) Zachary Barnes, are enjoying a walk in the Tennessee woods when they stumble upon a body on the side of a creek. The dead man is the husband of one of the three sisters who own the winery and guest cottages where Anastasia and Zack are vacationing.
When the local sheriff sets his sights on the widow as the prime suspect, her sisters close ranks around her. The three siblings are true-crime junkies, and thanks to a podcaster who has produced an unauthorized series about her, Anastasia’s reputation for solving murders has preceded her to the bucolic hamlet. The sisters plead for her help in finding the real killer. As Anastasia learns more about the women and their business, a host of suspects emerge, including several relatives, a relentless land developer, and even the sisters themselves.
Meanwhile, Anastasia becomes obsessed with discovering the podcaster’s identity. Along with knowing about Anastasia’s life as a reluctant amateur sleuth, the podcaster has divulged details of Anastasia’s personal life. Someone has betrayed Anastasia’s trust, and she’s out to discover the identity of the culprit.
Emotionally driven romantic suspense:
Love, Lies and a Double Shot of Deception
Life has delivered one sucker punch after another to Emma Wadsworth. As a matter of fact, you could say the poor little rich girl is the ultimate poster child for Money Can’t Buy Happiness—even if she is no longer a child.
Billionaire real estate stud Logan Crawford is as famous for his less-than-platinum reputation as he is his business empire. In thirty-eight years, he’s never fallen in love, and that’s just fine with him—until he meets Emma.
But Emma’s not buying into Logan’s seductive ways. Well, maybe just a little, but she’s definitely going into the affair with her eyes wide open. She’s no fool. At least not anymore. Her deceased husband saw to that. Besides, she knows Logan will catch the first jet out of Philadelphia once he learns her secrets.
Except things don’t go exactly as Emma has predicted, and when Philadelphia’s most beloved citizen becomes the city’s most notorious criminal, she needs to do a lot more than clear her name if she wants to save her budding romance with the billionaire hunk someone is willing to kill for.
USA Today and Amazon bestselling and award-winning author Lois Winston writes mystery, romance, romantic suspense, chick lit, women’s fiction, children’s chapter books, and nonfiction. Kirkus Reviews dubbed her critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” In addition, Lois is a former literary agent and an award-winning craft and needlework designer who often draws much of her source material for both her characters and plots from her experiences in the crafts industry. Her most recent release is Sorry, Knot Sorry, the thirteenth book in her Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series. Learn more about Lois and her books at www.loiswinston.com where you can also sign up for her newsletter and follow her on various social media sites.
Partners in Crime (Writing)
By Tilia Klebenov Jacobs
When I tell fellow authors I have a writing partner, I generally get one of two responses. The most common is a shock, rather as if I had casually mentioned that I prefer to eat bananas with the peel on. The second, though less frequent, is a cry of recognition: “Me too!” they exclaim. “Of course, you need to know each other really well first, and it’s essential that you work the same way. Couldn’t have a plotter working with a pantser, haha!”
Well, not necessarily. Allow me to lift the veil.
My partner Norman and I knew each other slightly in college, where he was editor of the campus newspaper that I wrote one article for. After college, I published a few novels, and he published a pile of short works in publications that turned me down. A few decades later we were nominally in touch on Facebook, but never spoke or met.
Then Covid hit. Writing at home with everyone under the same roof 24/7 stunk. I wasn’t good at it. While I was trying—really trying!—to write a story for a teacher friend of mine to share with her students, Norman contacted me on Facebook Messenger to ask if I knew of any writers’ groups for short stories. I didn’t, but after we’d texted for a bit about fiction, families, and more, I asked if he wanted to write together. He did. We hammered out the story for my friend and her students, and then got cracking on a novel. During that deeply unnerving time, it was marvelous to have someone to be accountable for: like having a gym buddy, but for words.
In our experience—your mileage may vary—partners don’t necessarily need to know each other well, because we certainly didn’t. Nor do you need to have identical work styles: Norman is a pantser, and I am a blackbelt plotter (He’s adjusting nicely.) Instead, our partnership was a process of getting to know each other while adapting to one another’s approaches, and accepting that our skill sets didn’t need to be identical as long as they were complementary.
That being said, writing partners need to have a few things in common. The first, not surprisingly, is a work ethic. We take our projects seriously, showing up for meetings and producing whatever we jointly agree upon.
The second is a sense of humor. Each of us had our characters do and say things that the other found hilarious. If you don’t share a funny bone, you see the world differently.
Finally, partners need a mutual vision of the project, including an agreed-upon-conclusion. If you’re working on a joint project but one of you is writing a noir detective story and the other has embarked upon a musical rom-com set in San Juan Capistrano on the day the swallows return, the mission is doomed.
(In the not-mandatory-but-useful category, we found it’s very helpful to have families that are at about the same stage. I can’t tell you how many times I texted Norman to say, “I’ll be late for the meeting—turns out I have kids.”)
Above all else, listen to what the story has to say to you. Our novel took us in some unexpected directions, but we respected it and each other enough to see where it led us. Sometimes the art knows more than the artist. Add a steady drip of mutual respect, and you can garner results that outstrip anything either of you could have pulled off alone.
Sometimes the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts.
Till Klebenov Jacobs is a crime writer based in New England. Her latest book is Stealing Time.
Ten Medical and Forensic Mistakes Writers Should Never Make
Writers make mistakes. An anachronism here, a blunder in logic there, departures from common sense everywhere, and of course the all-too-common break from real world possibilities that plagues even the most well-written story. It’s part of the process. Sitting alone, bouncing clever ideas off your computer screen offers little feedback. But readers notice such breaches. They shake their heads, close the book, snuff out the light, and go to sleep. Not the ringing endorsement you wished for. Here are some of the most common medical and forensic mistakes writers make. Mistakes you want to avoid.
The Quick Death: Death rarely arrives instantly. Sure, it can occur with heart attacks, strokes, and extremely abnormal heart rhythms, but trauma, such as gunshot wounds and blows to the head, the staples of crime fiction, rarely cause sudden death. Yet, how often has a single shot felled a villain? Bang, and he drops dead. In order for that to occur, the bullet would need to severely damage the brain, the heart, or the cervical (neck) portion of the spinal cord. A shot to the chest or abdomen leads to screaming and moaning and bleeding and expletives, but death comes from bleeding and that takes time. How long? It depends on what’s damaged. If a major artery is opened, the bleeding is brisk and death can follow in five minutes, even less. If the bullet or knife blade only strikes tissues and organs, the bleeding is slower and death can take many minutes, or hours, or not at all.
The Pretty Death: I call this the “Hollywood Death.” Calm, peaceful, and not a hair out of place. Blood? Almost never. Except in slasher movies of course and here massive bleeding is the norm. More often, the deceased is nicely dressed, lying in bed, make-up perfect, and with a slight flutter of the eyelids if you look closely. Real dead people are not pretty. I don’t care what they looked like during life, in death they are pale, waxy, and gray. Their eyes do not flutter, and they do not look relaxed and peaceful. They look dead.
The Bleeding Corpse: Your detective arrives at the scene a half hour after the murder. Blood oozes from the corpse’s mouth, from the stab wound in his chest, or from the vampire fang marks on his neck. Houston, we have a problem. You see, dead folks don’t bleed. When you die, your heart stops, and the blood no longer circulates. Rather, it stagnates and clots and stagnant and clotted blood does not move. It does not drip or gush or ooze or gurgle or flow or trickle from the body. It lies there, separates into a dark red clot with a halo of straw-colored serum, and then dries to a brownish stain.
The Accurate Time of Death: Determining the time of death is neither easy nor very accurate. It’s always a best guess and is always stated as a range rather than an exact time. Yet, how many times have you seen the medical examiner (ME) confidently announce that the victim died at “8:30 last night”? I always wondered exactly how he made this determination. Was it rigor mortis, body temperature, or lividity? Was it the presence or absence of certain bugs? The truth is that none of these is accurate. The decline in body temperature, the appearance of rigor, the development of lividity, and the appearance of flies and bugs are affected by many variables so are mostly unpredictable. The touted guidelines for each of these are like stop signs in Italy--merely suggestions. In real-life, the ME would say that death likely occurred “between 8 p.m. and midnight.” But that might make him appear wishy-washy, and Hollywood and writers like their heroes to be smart. Smarter than they could possibly be. Stick with a range, and you’ll be more realistic.
The One-punch Knockout: You’ve seen this a million times. One character socks another character in the jaw. He goes down like a sack of potatoes and is apparently written out of the story since we never hear from him again. Really? Think about a boxing match. Two guys that are trained to inflict damage and they have trouble knocking each other out. And when they do, the one on his back is up in a couple of minutes, claiming the other guy caught him with a lucky punch. Listen to me. Only James Bond can knock someone out with a single blow, and maybe Mike Tyson, but your car-salesman-turned-amateur-sleuth cannot.
Another common scenario is when a character is hit in the head, placed in the trunk of car, driven 50 miles, tied to a post or a bed or whatever, and then a bucket of water is thrown in his face to revive him. He sputters and is suddenly wake and alert. Not going to happen. If someone is knocked unconscious and doesn’t come around in a few minutes, something very bad is going on. Like a brain bruise (cerebral contusion) or bleeding into or around the brain (subdural hematoma). These require a hospital and a neurosurgeon, not a bucket of water.
The Disappearing Black Eye: If your character suffers a black eye in Chapter 3, she will have it for two weeks, which depending on the time frame of your story just might take you to the end of the book. She will not be “normal” in two days. A black eye is a contusion (bruise) and is caused by blood leaking from tiny blood vessels that are injured by the blow. It takes the body about two weeks to clear all that blood from the tissues. It will darken over two days, fade over four or five, turn greenish, brownish, and a sickly yellow before it disappears. On a good note, by about day seven, she might be able to hide it with make-up.
The Quick Healing: Do you know why boxers wear gloves? To protect their hands and faces. Back in the bare-knuckle days, broken hands and cut and bloody faces were the norm. Gloves made the sport more civilized. So, if your character gets in a fist fight both he and his opponent will suffer cuts and bruises and broken teeth. He will not walk away unscathed. His cuts will need stitches, his bruises ice, and a trip to the dentist is likely. Each of these will take a couple of weeks to heal.
If your character falls down the stairs and injures his back, he will not be able to run from or chase the bad guy or make love to his new lover the next day. Give the guy a few days to heal and make him limp and complain in the interim. If he breaks an arm, he’ll need four weeks minimum.
If he’s stabbed or shot and, as so many protagonists do, sneaks out of the hospital the next day to continue his pursuit of the bad guys, all will not be forgiven. He will have pain that will limit his ability to run and jump and fight and do all those hero things. The chances that his wound could then become infected are real and would greatly complicate his situation and might even kill him.
If his car goes over an embankment and tumbles into a ravine, he will not simply crawl out and walk away. At best he’ll be banged and bruised and at worst will have broken bones and injured internal organs.
The Instant Athlete: Your PI drinks too much, smokes two packs a day, and eats fast food on a regular basis. After all, stake outs are boring. His belly flaps over his belt and he gets short of breath climbing a single flight of stairs. He will not be able to chase the villain for ten blocks. Two on a good day.
If you create a scene where your character must run down a bad guy, make him capable of such a pursuit. Remember “Babe” Levy (Dustin Hoffman) in Marathon Man? He was student, slight of build, not athletic appearing in the least, yet he had to run for his life as Dr. Christian Szell (Sir Laurence Olivier) and his Nazi thugs chased him endlessly. But he was capable. Earlier in the film we learned that he was distance runner and ran around the reservoir in Central Park everyday. He could run for his life.
The Untraceable Poison: Of all the questions I receive from writers this is number one. Seems that all crime writers want an untraceable poison. Sorry, no such thing. True it might not be found or maybe not even searched for, but if it is looked for and if the ME has good blood or tissue samples, he will find it. With fancy equipment like Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectroscopy (GS-MS) virtually any chemical can be identified. This combination gives a “chemical fingerprint” of the compound in question.
The most common drugs involved in overdose deaths are alcohol, narcotics, amphetamines, cocaine, and various tranquilizers and sedatives. The main reason is that these are readily available either on the street or in the medicine cabinet. Each of these is revealed by a simple and cheap drug screen. So, if your killer employs one of these, the ME will know it in a couple of hours.
But what if the toxin is more exotic? Maybe cyanide or thallium or the toxin of a blue-ringed octopus? This is trickier. These don’t show up on routine drug screens and must be tested for with time-consuming and expensive protocols. Maybe the ME doesn’t have the time, interest, or budget to do a full toxicological examination. Maybe he simply attributes the death to some natural cause and saves the county a ton of money. Happens all the time and it can happen in your story. But, if he pulls out all the stops, he will find the drug.
The Instant Lab Result: The world is not like CSI. Not even close. Those CSI folks get results in a New York minute. Sometimes faster. They crack computers, perform autopsies, complete esoteric toxicological testing, and create DNA profiles before the first commercial break. In the real world such testing typically takes days, even weeks. Sure a tox screen can be done in a couple of hours but sophisticated confirmatory testing takes time. DNA profiling can be done in a few hours, but before the ME reports his results he will often obtain confirmation from another lab, particularly in high-profile cases, including those that crime writers dream up. Give your ME a realistic timeframe to do his work. Your readers will notice if you don’t.
The devil is always in the details. Get these details right and your story will be much stronger.
D. P. Lyle
Outliers Writing University: https://www.outlierswritinguniversity.com
The Importance of Honest Feedback
By Judy Penz Sheluk
Writing is a solitary pursuit, one where we spend countless hours of our lives, often laboring over a single sentence or paragraph for more time than most of us care to admit. So, it’s only natural that we become protective of our words. After all, something that took hours to perfect must be, well, perfect, right?
If only that were so. Unfortunately, as writers, we are simply too close to our work to see the flaws. Oh, we may find the typo on page 75 on reread, the one where we’ve called a car a cat (though even that is iffy), but the overuse of a favorite trope, phrase, or gesture (my characters love to nod). Maybe not so much. And that’s why we need feedback.
Feedback comes in many forms and at various stages of the writing process. The most important thing to remember is that you are looking for an honest and unbiased evaluation of your work. You may not agree with every comment or suggestion, but you should at least consider each one without becoming defensive. Consider it “thick skin” training for the rejections you’re almost certain to face going forward.
Let’s look at some options:
Writing Critique Groups
While there are no hard and fast rules, these work best if the group is small—three to five people—allowing each member time to read and respond without becoming overwhelmed. It’s essential to establish parameters from the get-go, such as weekly word count limits and the type of feedback expected.
While critique groups can be invaluable for some writers, they should never be the final step in the review process. As you become immersed in your work for months on end, you lose objectivity. Those intimately familiar with your work will too.
Alpha Readers
Readers who provide detailed and constructive feedback, both positive and tactfully critical, about your book’s premise, plot, characters, and other elements. This is the place to include readers who have knowledge of the technical elements in your manuscript.
Whether you choose to hire a professional, or ask a trusted friend or relative, they should be aware that they are commenting on an unpolished (first) draft. They should also be avid readers of your book’s genre or sub-genre. Consider this the first test drive of your overall story from a reader’s perspective.
Beta Readers
Beta readers (or betas) critique finished manuscripts before they are published. It’s advisable to have betas who are familiar with your genre/sub-genre. Betas can be friends, family members, teachers, members of online writing groups, or other writers willing to do a manuscript swap. This will help identify the finer points of your book that may need an adjustment. Ideally, you’ll have no fewer than two and no more than five, allowing for a comparison of opinions without the risk of opinion overload. If one beta reader doesn’t understand why your protagonist hates red, that might be a point worth clarifying. If two or more betas don’t get it, it’s a must-fix.
While betas are an excellent way to obtain (often free) feedback, they do not replace the role of a professional editor. There is one school of thought that because traditional publishers pay for editing, there is no need for authors to incur this expense if their intention is to traditionally publish.
Let’s look at that statement. Is it true that traditional publishers hire and pay for editing services? Yes. However, it’s equally true that agents and publishers receive thousands of submissions from aspiring authors every year. While there are no guarantees, a professionally edited manuscript may increase the odds of acceptance.
Developmental Editing
Also known as substantive or content editing, developmental editing is the first step, focusing on big picture story elements. The developmental editor will also assess and shape draft material to improve flow and organization by revising or reordering content and clarifying plot, arc of action, characters, and/or thematic elements.
Line Editing
Also known as stylistic editing, the line editor focuses on coherence and flow, eliminating jargon, clichés, and euphemisms, while adjusting the length and structure of sentences and paragraphs, and establishing or maintaining the overall mood, style, or voice.
Copyediting
Ideally combined with line editing, the copy editor checks spelling, grammar, punctuation, and usage, and ensures consistency in character names, places, descriptions, and other details. Copy editing also covers fact checking and/or obtaining or listing permissions needed (e.g., use of song lyrics or trademarked products). The copy editor may create or work from a style sheet.
And there you have it, feedback in a nutshell. Now all you need to do is write that book. Hey, if it were easy, everyone would do it.
About the author: A former journalist and magazine editor, Judy Penz Sheluk is the bestselling author of two mystery series: The Glass Dolphin Mysteries and Marketville Mysteries. Her short crime fiction appears in several collections, including the Superior Shores Anthologies, which she also edited.
Judy has also written two how-to guides to publishing. Finding Your Path to Publication: A Step-by-Step Guide was the Winner of the 2024 Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award for Best Nonfiction. The follow-up to that book, Self-publishing: The Ins & Outs of Going Indie, provides an insider’s insight into the world of self-publishing.
Judy is a member of Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and Crime Writers of Canada, where she served on the Board of Directors, most recently as Chair.
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