Tanya Lisle

Category: On writing

  • How to create holidays in fictional universes

    How to create holidays in fictional universes

    If you’re looking for a way to add a little extra flavour or realism to your fictional universe, you may be tempted to use the current holiday season as inspiration. And you should! Adding holidays is a great way to make your world feel more well rounded and is an interesting way to provide insight into the way the world works.

    But what are some ways that you can create a holiday that don’t feel like you’re just copying real world holidays? Here are a few things to consider!

    When is there an influx of food?

    A very common reason to celebrate is food! Think about how food plays a role in the celebrations we have in this world, and how that might translate to the world you have created. There is a long history of harvest festivals, or even just holidays that are based on creating tons and tons of food to bring people together to eat.

    In these cases, consider what kind of food would be available that is worth celebrating! These kinds of holidays are often seasonal and dependent on the earth operating in a fairly regular manner, so there’s a lot of opportunity to use this kind of holiday as a means of expositing things like how the environment functions and if there’s been any large changes from one year to the next that are unusual.

    Environmental events

    The longest and shortest days of the year are used here to determine the changing of the seasons. Full moons and solar eclipses and first snowfall have also been causes for celebration, though they are not as regular. Does your world have any traditions around these smaller events?

    Alternately, was there a large scale environmental event that caused a great change that the people in your world want to remember? Traditions could be formed around the idea that it might happen again, or just to remember the last time.

    Ruling powers changing

    In terms of a monarchy, the changing of power can be a big deal to the people under that rule. The death of a beloved or hated monarch might kick off a celebration of some sort, or even the crowning of the next in line.

    For a democratic society, there might be traditions around the day in which the people come together to decide on their new ruler. A day off of work for people to come together, or something that the people can witness as those in the running for power compete to take the rule.

    Cultural or religious reasons

    If your world has something unique about their culture or religions, are there any holy days or generally sacred practices that occur on a larger scale? Is there a public version of those traditions for those who may not be part of that culture or religion to also participate? Christmas is a holiday celebrated by people often regardless of religious affiliation, so does your world have something like that as well?

    A combination of these things!

    Sometimes these ideas can intersect! A full moon may be the day that the new ruler is crowned, or the harvest festival coincides with a large religious holiday. Look at ways that these things can intersect and see the opportunities that you can craft to use it to help with adding a little more flavour and interest into your worldbuilding.

    Write Your Story: Unlock Your Creative Potential

    Are you ready to embark on a journey into the world of storytelling? Look no further! Introducing Write Your Story, a comprehensive resource designed to fuel your imagination, enhance your storytelling skills, and bring your characters to life. Whether you’re an aspiring writer, a seasoned author, or simply someone who loves crafting stories, this workbook is your ultimate companion.

    This Workbook Contains:

    • Story planning spreads
    • Setting and location spreads
    • Character spreads
    • Writing session tracker

    Have you created any holidays for your fictional universes?

  • How to ask your audience about themselves

    How to ask your audience about themselves

    Like most authors with a newsletter, you want more information about the people reading your books and check your newsletters out. You want to know about what other books they like so you know how to position your own books in the market, or you want more information about the demographics to know if that young adult novel is being read by young adults!

    Or, you know, if they’re actually reading your books at all.

    Here are some other questions you can ask that will help you get answers to your questions that people might actually answer without feeling like you’re being overly invasive. And also get some great recommendations from your audience in the process!

    Question: Have you actually read any of my books?

    • Which is your favourite book of mine?
    • How do you feel about [Plot point from the 1/3 point of your book]?
    • Which character do you want to see more of?
    • Tell me what you think happened after the end of [Book title]!

    Question: What some comparative titles or authors to me or my books?

    • What’s your favourite book?
    • Recommend me an author!
    • Recommend me a book!
    • Recommend me a movie or TV show!

    Question: General demographic information such as age, location, etc.

    • What was your favourite book growing up?
    • What shows did you love growing up?
    • When is your favourite time to read?
    • Where is your favourite reading spot?

    Question: How should I position or market my book?

    • What’s your go to social media platform?
    • How do you find new books?
    • On a scale from 1 – 10, how much do you hate spoilers?
    • What kind of behind the scenes content do you love seeing?

    Question: What do you want of my books?

    • Do you prefer paperback or ebook? (Or whatever you have available, such as audiobook)
    • What are your favourite tropes?
    • What disappointed you about the last book you read?
    • What was the best thing about the last book you read?
    • What makes you put a book down?
  • 5 lessons from my decade doing NaNoWriMo

    5 lessons from my decade doing NaNoWriMo

    NaNoWriMo is a writing event that happens every November where the participants attempt to write 50,000 words of a novel in one month. It’s a great challenge for anyone who wants to finally get started on that book they’ve had in their heads.

    I did NaNoWriMo for a decade and wrote over a million words in my time. This is my second year not doing it, partially because of the brain issues and partially because I just don’t need it as much to get things done. So these were some of the lessons I learned.

    Getting it done fast meant getting it done

    I had an issue before this where I would start a lot of projects, only write when I was inspired, and never finish anything off because something else would catch my attention. Putting the time limit of a month on writing meant that I didn’t have time to get distracted by an idea or anything else and I started getting things done! And realizing that was a great step forward for me as a writer.

    I need to write out the whole story, beginning to ending

    Some people can edit as they go, but I am not one of them. Getting the whole story out and making changes as I go meant that I never lost the momentum and had more of a chance to experiment with things. I could make the change, try it out for a few thousand words, and then decide that I did or did not like it and make a note to adjust things as I went. It certainly made the rewrites a lot more cumbersome, but I enjoyed the process a lot more this way.

    A loose plot outline is a girl’s best friend

    I have tried going in with absolutely no clue about what was going to happen, and I have gone in with a strictly structured, chapter by chapter plot outline. Both extremes did not work for me at all. I have found my sweet spot is a list of really loose plot points that I want to hit to get from beginning to end, as well as a few really cool scenes. That way I have a lot of flexibility to change things as I go and don’t feel either lost or trapped by my choices at the start.

    How to structure my notes

    Because I tend to make mental updates as I went, I struggled for a while with how to keep track of the changes so that I could fix it all up and make the story cohesive when I returned to it. That meant that I had an opportunity to figure out what information I needed so that I could actually do that, from character details that I needed to remember for later to whole scenes that I wanted to include earlier in the story.

    [Workbook plug]

    I made the workbook as a way for me to keep notes as I was writing for changes or things I wanted to get into the story when I wasn’t working on it at the moment, or so that I could remember details later.

    You can make friends as an adult!

    As a person who was growing into adulthood, I knew that making friends was going to be difficult the older I got. With NaNoWriMo, I was able to find people who shared my love of writing who all came from different areas and lives. It’s been the place I’ve gotten many of my friends as an adult, and I’ll always be grateful to it for that.

  • Business plans for authors

    Business plans for authors

    As I’m sure you’re already very aware if you have plans to be an author, you need to treat it like a business. But what exactly does that mean? Is that just filing the paperwork? Creating the books and figuring out how to sell them?

    It’s a lot of different things, but the whole idea of being a business can be incredibly overwhelming. What you need at the start is not to just jump in and do it all. You need a business plan. Which… is also very daunting. But not to worry, I have an outline that you can use to help guide you through the process!

    Author business plan

    Publishing name

    The name you will publish under.

    The pitch

    In the days of office jobs and elevators, there was a concept known as the “elevator pitch” or the sales pitch you could give to someone important as you took the elevator to your floor. What you are looking for here is about a tweet-length (240 characters) description of what you as an author bring to your audience that is different from anyone else and why they should read your books.

    Description

    This is a longer explanation of that pitch. Pretend you have 5 minutes to explain who you are and why someone should check out your books. You might also be able to look at this as your biography.

    This is ultimately a description of what you as an author and your books are, what they stand for, and what that pitch you wrote really means.

    Product description

    Here is where you talk specifically about the books you’re writing. What makes them different and unique. Why would someone want to read them? What do they have in common and why will someone who picks up one want to read all of them?

    This is also a good place to talk about the audience that you are looking to attract. Be specific, and do feel free to talk about the books in the context of the people who will read them and how your words will satisfy their needs.

    You may also want to consider some specifics, such as format (ePub, paperback, audiobook) and what the price point might be for each of those formats.

    Release schedule

    Have at least a general idea of when you want to release books and how often. Knowing this can help you not only with planning your marketing efforts, but give you a more realistic timeline of when you need edits in, how quickly you need to write, and a general understanding of what it is you’re going to need to do monthly, weekly, and even daily!

    Competitive analysis

    Though you are unique, it is good to have a few people who are like you. Find other authors who your ideal audience also like and take a good look at what they’re doing. How they are marketing their books, how often, and even what their fans love about their books. You can use this to figure out how to market your own books and use it in your marketing as well! After all, if you can say someone will like your book if they already like another popular author’s book, then it’s a lot easier to find your audience.

    Finances

    Money! It is an important part to include as part of a plan. You want to split this into two sections:

    What you make

    What you expect to be getting from the sales of the books. You can start with a general estimate at first, but be sure to be realistic about what you think you can actually sell. Do feel free to do projections and what you think you will make in your first few months, your first year, next three years, and next five!

    What you spend

    This number should not be more than what you make for too long! You can expect to spend more than you make at first, but you should be able to make that up sooner than later. **You are a business, after all, and businesses should be profitable! But do include any expenses you think you’ll have, from marketing to editing to the little things like office supplies. That notebook and fancy pen habit? That’s a business expense now!

    General author marketing strategy

    With all the information that you already have, this should now be a lot more straightforward. You know what your books value proposition is (Pitch and description), how other authors like you do their marketing (Competitive analysis) and what you can afford to do (Finances) so put that all together into a high level plan to figure out how you want to present yourself to the world.

    This is also a good time to look at potentially creating some kind of branding guide. Some kind of general guideline around fonts, colours, and the voice that you use (Not your physical voice, just the way you talk and phrase things) that you can lean back on when you are doing all of your marketing.

    And those are the basics for you as an author! The books are another plan that we can tackle another day. Did I miss anything here? Or have you done this already, and did it help you?

  • 8 tips for creating a writing habit

    8 tips for creating a writing habit

    I have known a lot of people who really want to get started with writing and want to make it a thing that they do regularly, but they just don’t know how to get into it regularly. It can be really hard to add a new habit to your day, though, and writing is especially tricky because it can also be very dependent on making sure there’s something to write when you do remember to do it.

    So here are a few ideas for finding a way to make writing a habit in your life.

    Set aside some time in your day dedicated to writing

    If you can, schedule a block of time for it. Figure out how long it takes you to get into a good rhythm and stay in it, and be sure to block about that much time a few days a week so that you can get a lot of words in every once in a while. But just to start, block off a little time every day to get started and get in the routine of it.

    Set a place

    In the same way, sometimes creating a dedicated space for writing can really help. Whether that is setting aside a different part of your room that is dedicated just for writing, or something that you can do to an existing area to change it to a writing space, it can really help to trigger the mindset and the habit if you have a dedicated area for it.

    Tell people about it

    A little social pressure can be just what we need, so long as it isn’t too judgemental! For some people, just knowing that other people know they were going to try and do this is enough to kick them into making it happen. The knowledge that they might be asked about it eventually means they will make sure they have an answer.

    Get a writing buddy

    Alternately, get a friend to join in! If there’s two of you working on the same goal, you can coordinate your schedules and meet up to get some writing done, get on a call to write at the same time, or just check in with one another to talk about what you’re working on to keep one another motivated.

    Find the time in odd places

    If you really look at what you do in a day, there might be a couple strange pockets of time that you can utilize to get some words in on a project. When I wor5ked downtown, I would be on transit twice a day for an hour each, so those two hours were dedicated to writing. I was able to make sure I always got a seat because of my schedule, and that might be something you can manage as well. If there’s a time where you’re waiting for something, or traveling as a passenger, you might be able to turn that into a writing session.

    Outline your work

    Sometimes the biggest hurdle to the habit is just not being able to figure out the words and what you need to happen. If you can create an outline for your work, or even spend a few of your writing sessions on creating that outline, that might help alleviate that issue because you’ll always know what needs to happen next.

    Habit tracking

    If you find that you’re just forgetting to do it, or you need to see yourself build that habit visually, try a using something like a habit tracker to help you to remember to do sit down and write. Whether that’s just a mark on a calendar, a page in a bullet journal, a sticker chart where you can add a sticker for every day you remember to do it, or an app like Habitica that can gamify the process, sometimes it’s good to be able to see progress in other ways than word count to stay motivated.

    Build in rewards for milestones

    Sometimes the fun of writing is not enough motivation, especially if you’re dealing with a lot of other things in your life or your story is just not cooperating with you. In these cases, you might want to try giving yourself another reward for not just finishing, but also for hitting milestones. I’ve used plot points in the past: When I get through a plot point, I’d earn a little treat for myself.

    And if you’re the kind of person who will just give themselves the reward without doing anything, you can do this with someone who can hold you accountable and let them be in charge of doling out the treats when you hit milestones.

    Do you have any other strategies for building a writing habit?

    Write Your Story: Unlock Your Creative Potential

    Are you ready to embark on a journey into the world of storytelling? Look no further! Introducing Write Your Story, a comprehensive resource designed to fuel your imagination, enhance your storytelling skills, and bring your characters to life. Whether you’re an aspiring writer, a seasoned author, or simply someone who loves crafting stories, this workbook is your ultimate companion.

    This Workbook Contains:

    • Story planning spreads
    • Setting and location spreads
    • Character spreads
    • Writing session tracker
  • Should you use a pen name?

    Should you use a pen name?

    The question of pen names comes up when people are early in their publishing journey, as well it should! But it can still be a very difficult decision to make. As someone who started with a pen name and then switched to my real name, it can be a difficult choice to reverse. It’s gotten harder on some platforms over the years!

    So to help, I’ve put together a quick quiz to help you with the choice.

    Are you going to publish under a lot of different genres?

    Could there be a conflict with your job? ie. Erotica when you work with children

    Do you plan on doing live appearances? ie. Readings, in person signing events

    Is it important to see YOUR NAME on the cover?

    Does your name fit the genre you’re writing in? ie. Does your name scream ROMANCE or SCI FI?

    Could your name be confused with another author already writing in the genre?

    Could your name change in the future in a way that you’d want to update it professionally? ie. Marriage

    Do you want to use a pen name?

    Should you use a pen name?
    Use a pen name!

    Go ahead and publish under the name you’ve always wanted! It sounds like that is the right path, whether it’s to protect your privacy or just to make your books fit better in the genre you’re writing in. If you’re looking into a lot of different genres, it’s a great chance for you to use a bunch of different ones!
    You don’t need a pen name
    It sounds like you don’t really need to go through the effort of coming up with another name for yourself, and it might actually be easier for you to just use your own name in the end.
    Maybe consider a pen name

    You’re in a middle ground area where you might not necessarily need a pseudonym, but it might also be helpful. Consider an alteration of your own name initially, such as using your initials or a variant on your first name, and see how that feels before committing to anything.

    Share your Results:

  • 5 methods to plot your novel

    5 methods to plot your novel

    What is plotting?

    Plotting is a technique that some people use to help write their stories. This is where someone will sit down before they write and come up with an outline of what their story will be, giving them the chance to look at the structure of their stories beforehand, or to give them a roadmap of what’s to come so that they do not get stuck.

    If this sounds interesting to you, let’s get into some methodologies that people can turn to, from the most structured to the least.

    Save the Cat or Romancing the Beat

    If you really like structure, be sure to look up Save the Cat or Romancing the Beat, depending on what kind of story you want to write! These two methods will help you break your story down into arcs, sub-arcs, and in some iterations of them even down to what plot points need to happen on a chapter by chapter basis.

    Hero’s Journey

    This is a basic story arc for your character that can follow. This works best in stories in which you have a single focal character who is going through a change and has to learn and grow. It will help to give you a structure to how to format the narrative and when to put which obstacles, as well as when to lend your character a hand.

    Once you have that worked out, then you can break it up into chapters if that’s what works for you.

    Timeline

    A timeline plotting structure is a lot of fun for more complicated stories, often with many different things that have to be kept track of, such as a mystery or a thriller, or with multiple characters with overlapping and imperfect knowledge of events. This involves using something such as a spreadsheet or a calendar app and putting all of the events of your plot into it, moving those events around until they all make sense, then breaking up each plot point into a different chapter.

    Snowflake method

    This method starts with an idea that you can branch off from! One idea leads into the next and into the next in a giant mind map until, in the end, you have a story idea that looks a bit like a snowflake that you can then work into a plot. Often this is a method used as a starting point and the story you come up with becomes a plot structured in a different way, though I’ve known a few people who have used this as a means to figure out their entire series.

    Index cards

    This is one of my personal favourites and one with the absolute lease structure to it. Take every one of the ideas you have and put them all on different index cards. Things you want to have happen in the story, characters, everything. Once you have all the ideas down, start to rearrange all of those cards until it turns into something like a plot, adding and removing ideas as you go, storing some of them for later.

    What is your favourite method of plotting? Or do you plot at all?

  • My novel project template for Notion

    My novel project template for Notion

    As many of you are likely aware by now, I’m a touch obsessed with Notion. As such, I have obviously made a template for how I do my writing projects now! It’s something that works really well for me so far, and here it is!

    To start with, the set up to do list. I think I could have a lot of this auto-populated for each story, but I find it is useful to intentionally create each item just so that I am thinking about all of these things.
    Underneath that, of course, is the pitch! This is intended to be the elevator pitch of the story. ((Which is something that I struggle with immensely))

    Next we have the board! I have a few other tabs for the calendar and any key documents that also pull out of the same list of things, but I work mostly out of the Kanban board. This is where I’ll put all of those checklist items and continue to add things as I need them.

    And, of course, I’m starting to think a lot more about marketing for upcoming projects. Trying. I’ll try to put together three comp titles for each project, as well as trying to think about who the ideal readers might be. This helps to figure out how to write things like the Listing information and also helps to determine what the marketing strategy might also be.

    I also have a table for Audience groups. This is relatively new, but I’m using it to try and determine if I could direct people who liked one series to another when they are done!

    Lastly, we have finances! Not only am I trying to keep track of the products that will come out of this series ((The books and anything else that might be related!)) but also what the expenses might be. Expenses are things like editing or art assets.

    And that’s basically how I keep track of it! Do you have a method to keep track of your projects?

  • 5 questions for your fantasy world

    5 questions for your fantasy world

    Creating a new fantasy world can be both exciting and utterly terrifying! While the opportunity is there to do absolutely anything in creating a new world, it can soon become overwhelming as you try to figure out how to make all of these different ideas work together. And it can be a lot!

    So take a deep breath, and just start with a few simple questions.

    What’s the weather like?

    It’s a nice, simple place to start that offers a lot of places to go. Is there a lot of sun? Is it warm? Is it snowy and cold most of the year? Is it just a bit grey most of the time?

    You can use this as a starting point to figure out what kind of terrain might be there, what kind of plants might be there, and what kind of people would inhabit a land like this. Take inspiration from people and places with a similar climate and understand why that happens. And then you can use that to better inform and develop the fantasy world you are creating!

    Who is in charge?

    In most cases, fantasy worlds tend to rely on either a monarchy or a council of some sort, but it’s important to figure out who is calling the shots in the world and what their motivations are. If it is something that they get by birthright, that world is likely going to operate a bit differently from a world where the ruling people can be replaced or aspired to.

    Who gets magic?

    In a fantasy world, there is often magic that people have access to. But who ultimately gets that access? Take some time to think about how the magic might work, and determine if there’s a methodology or process to someone getting access to that magic, or if it is a random thing that happens to some people with no rhyme or reason. Or maybe everyone gets magic, which makes magic a very mundane part of the universe!

    How long has this place been around for?

    You may want to approach a new world differently than an old world. If the world (or the part of the world you’re writing) has been around for a long time, you’re more likely to have very old architecture and established traditions which people have forgotten the origins of. In newer worlds, there may be fewer of these or even a larger mix of them coming from various new people settling in the place who are trying to bring their traditions with them.

    What needs to change?

    What is the world-wide conflict that affects the majority of the residents? And does your story touch on that? It’s entirely possible that it doesn’t, but it may serve as an important background element to provide context to why the people around them are behaving in the way they are.

    Write Your Story: Unlock Your Creative Potential

    Are you ready to embark on a journey into the world of storytelling? Look no further! Introducing Write Your Story, a comprehensive resource designed to fuel your imagination, enhance your storytelling skills, and bring your characters to life. Whether you’re an aspiring writer, a seasoned author, or simply someone who loves crafting stories, this workbook is your ultimate companion.

    This Workbook Contains:

    • Story planning spreads
    • Setting and location spreads
    • Character spreads
    • Writing session tracker
  • Considerations for your target audience

    Considerations for your target audience

    One of the best ways to ensure that you are able to have someone who reads your book is to, well, write for someone who is looking for your book! Your ideal reader, or your target audience, should be the person you are focusing your content, your writing, and your marketing on. But have you considered some basic elements of a great target audience?

    Does your audience exist?

    This is a mistake I have absolutely made in the past. You can craft this ideal person that would read your books, but when you take a step back you realize that this is not an audience that actually exists. It’s always good to look and see if there is actually demand for your stories outside of your social circle and in the wider market. Do the themes and genre and topics in your stories resonate with a lot of people? Are you telling a story that can be enjoyed by a lot of people, and specifically enough people that it could sustain your career?

    Can your audience purchase your stories?

    Simply put, your audience should be able to pay for your stories on their own. It is much easier to find a new reader if they do not have to get approval for the purchase from someone else. If you’re writing young adult, for instance, those kids may not have the ability to actually support you, no matter how much your story might resonate with them.

    This isn’t to say you can’t write books for those younger audiences! It just means that you are going to have to be mindful that your marketing will be more about getting the parents and people in their lives with money to purchase your stories for them.

    What does that audience actually expect?

    This is a tricky question, but an important one to look at. When you have an audience that is seeking out your stories, it’s important to leave them satisfied and wanting more content when they are done. That means you need to fulfill their expectations, so it’s worth spending some time getting a good understanding of what they are actually looking for and, more importantly, why. That will give you the context to know if you want to try and subvert their expectations without making it a dissatisfying read.

    How does that audience find out about new stories to check out?

    This is so that you can let them know about your stories! If you know about your audience, and you know what they expect, then you should also know where they hang out and how they find new stories. Once you know where they are, then you can make sure you are also there, ready to help and possibly even give them a recommendation at just the right time!

    Write Your Story: Unlock Your Creative Potential

    Are you ready to embark on a journey into the world of storytelling? Look no further! Introducing Write Your Story, a comprehensive resource designed to fuel your imagination, enhance your storytelling skills, and bring your characters to life. Whether you’re an aspiring writer, a seasoned author, or simply someone who loves crafting stories, this workbook is your ultimate companion.

    This Workbook Contains:

    • Story planning spreads
    • Setting and location spreads
    • Character spreads
    • Writing session tracker