Dear Literary Villain: The Truth Is, I Love to Hate You by Nicki Bishop

Dear Literary Villain,

 How could you? I was simply trying to enjoy the top novel on my TBR pile (it’s gotten a bit out of hand), and there you appear—a dark blot on the crisp, white page. Surely the clean, descriptive writing of my favorite author would have been absolutely flawless if it weren’t for you. I mean, after all, aren’t books supposed to transport you in time and space, lead you to try new things, and leave you with an overall enjoyable experience?

Not so, it seems. For you, Dear Villain, have spoiled the story entirely.  Your manipulative, divisive actions have put my protagonist in quite a predicament. Truly. You insist on making it increasingly difficult for my favorite character to find a happy place in this newfound story world, and I may be so inclined as to close the volume altogether. I hope you’re satisfied with yourself.

 Sincerely,

Discontented Reader

***

Do you ever feel this way? I know I do. I’m not one of those people that enjoys the pain and suffering of the characters I love. I want to see a happy ending, and I just can’t take the pain and heartache! There. I said it. It seems like every time I get attached to a main character in a brand new novel, the villain makes his way onto the page; and all I want to do is skip to the next triumphant moment for my girl.

Really. Villains. Who needs them?

*Wouldn’t Lucy be better off if there was no White Witch?

*Couldn’t Scout be happier if there were no Bob Ewell?

*What would Sarah’s life look like if Duke had never named her Angel?

*Where would Adele von Braun be if she had never crossed paths with the Third Reich?

*How free could Nym be if she were never sold to Adora?

*Would Carrington Hale be content with her status in life if there were no Isaac Knight?

*What could have happened if Havah never answered the compliment of a serpent?

Havah.

Serpent.

Eve.

Now it’s starting to make sense to me. Do you see it too? Villains are always going to be there.  There’s always going to be evil in the world—real or literary—but in the dark, the light shines brighter. In the midst of evil, the truth is easier to see. I love this truth that prevails in Christian fiction—God’s Word and God’s people always win over the enemy. Yes, we may lose a few battles, but God always wins the war.

 In the process, every main character becomes stronger, more determined, and dearer to our hearts.  It’s like that Scripture that says,

“Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.” 

(Romans 12:9b, BibleGateway.com)

I love, love, love my evil-fighting, truth-bearing main characters (even if it takes them a few chapters to find the right path). They make me love them even more when they’re up against an enemy—it makes the story deeper and the truth shine brighter.

So guess what, Literary Villain?

The truth is, I really love to hate you!

Now, how about you? What characters do you love more because they had to face an enemy? What stories do you love most because of the light shining against the darkness? Let us know in the comments below!

  

Advice To a Newbie Writer

This month the writers at Quills and Inkblotts are thinking back to their early days of writing, and sharing advice they would give themselves if they could.

I have to go back nearly five years, to Fall of 2011. That's when my husband listened to me falter, and shrug, and attempt to explain this writing "thing" which I didn't even fully understand. He was gracious to give me two full days alone to write (with three children under 7, that was an extravagant gift to me). I cranked out 10,000 words in those two days. When the weekend was over, I emerged from my cocoon smiling, exhausted, and excited about what I had created.

I've added hundreds of thousands of words to those first ones, in the form of four complete manuscripts (and one partially written one), two blogs, and pages and pages of journaling. 

If I could go back to that faltering, excited newbie writer, I would tell her three things.

1.  It's not ready yet. It's not even close.
Stop fantasizing about your adoring fans, and how much they are going to love your work. You think it's great. It's not. Don't waste a single second thinking about querying (silly me, you don't even know that word yet), contests, and publication. You're not there yet. 

This will be a long process for you. There will be starts and stops, and massive "life stuff" that suffocates the writing flame. Let it happen. The flame won't go out entirely. It will be a pilot light, fragile, blue, and flickering in cobwebby shadows in the basement of your mind. When the time is right, the flame will roar to life again. You will successfully knock the cobwebs away, and open the document. The story will change in ways your mind can't conceive right now. After all this time, you will have eyes to see how much you've learned about writing, about life, and about God. That has to happen. You can't rush it, so just keep pinging away on the keyboard for now, and know that it's not ready yet.

2. You are not alone.
I know you feel like the only person on earth who has had this crazy idea: I think I'll try to write a book. You walk past shelves at the library, lightly touching the cellophane-wrapped spines as you pass them, convinced those authors are mythical beasts. They don't exist in your world. Normal, suburban nobodies like you don't dream this dream. They don't devote copious isolated hours to this strange task which may never come to fruition. 

In a few short years (they will feel long to you, but they aren't), God will make you see that your greatest need as a writer is to have a reader. You will pray for that constantly for a while, feeling acutely lonely, and then He will direct you to ACFW. You will discover a whole world full of people exactly like you, the ones who dreamed this dream, devoted themselves to their creative labor, and came together online to encourage, critique, and remind one another that they are not alone. This will change everything for you. Remember to thank God for this when it happens.

3. Take the pressure off yourself. God is sovereign over this.
You will read Ephesians 4:1 "I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge to you walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called." And you will hope writing is what God has called you to do. You will wonder, what does it look like to walk in a manner worthy of it? A thousand words a day every day? A blog post every week? Post clicks, likes, and shares? Saving up for conference? The Almighty Book Deal?

This verse will weigh heavy on you as the years of striving pass with nothing much to show for your work. You will begin to doubt this is what God called you to do. "I'm trying!" your heart will cry out in shame that you were wrong, and in fear that you've wasted your time, your witness, your life.
 
Then one Spring day in early 2016 God will pry your eyes open and make you see the pride in all your striving. He'll show you how your heart was tangled up in self-righteous knots, and how your ambition, though it has always been sincerely to please him, was also bound up in your own glory, the work of your hands, the thing you would create. You hoped it would please him, but you also hoped it would please a publisher; that it would make you feel satisfied, productive, and accomplished.  

That's not your calling, my friend. Your calling is so much bigger than writing, so much longer-lasting. It is eternal.

Your calling is to live a life justified, in fellowship with Christ Jesus. It looks like patience. It looks like obedience. You don't need to strive. The striving is done. It was done by One more qualified and able than you.

But there is work. If your calling is to live in fellowship with Christ, then your work is that which builds up the body of Christ. This can be done through writing fiction; through creating characters who struggle with disunity, who learn, and who grow in their faith. It is right to use this writing gift to tell the story of a people who loved the Lord. It is a fitting labor.



This I know today, after five years of writing: I am at rest.
I still don't have it all figured out. I still have made very little of myself in the writing world. Truthfully, I am not worthy of this writing work. I confess that to you, Dear Reader, and to God. Yet the work continues, and will continue until God takes from me this dream, and sets my heart on another. Until that day, this work of my hands, this thimble of foam, I offer trembling to Christ, to do with what he will--to keep it hidden, or to give it wings--whatever would be to the benefit to his beloved people, the Church. I can rest in that.

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COVER REVEAL for 'Ending Fear'

Yes! It's happening! It's really happening! (proceed with happy dance, throwing confetti, kissing babies, and generally having a great big party!)

The day has arrived when we can finally share the cover of Deanna Fugett's Ending Fear. Her YA dystopian is getting published soon so you have to forgive us if we're a little crazy around here.

But before the big reveal, would you like to read the blurb? Would you? Would you? All right, since you asked so nicely:

Fourteen-year-old Fear learns she was a parachute baby, dumped over the edge of the Gliding Lands as an infant. Running from her abusive Downer family, Fear discovers a new family. One who knows how to love. But then her new little sister is kidnapped and sold to a harem. Fear must go against her namesake and journey to the dreaded Gliding Lands before the little girl’s innocence is ripped from her forever. Can she save Happy in time?

Ooooh! How does that sound? Kinda like a cross between The Giver and a kick-butt updated version of Hinds Feet on High Places, doesn't it?!?

All of us here at Quills & Inkblotts have been a part of Deanna's journey and can't wait for this awesome book to make its way into the world.

And now...without further ado...

here it comes...

almost there...

wait for it...

Incredible, right?!? We think so too!

Congratulations, Deanna. We're so excited to see this book thrive!

Deanna Fugett’s heart belongs to writing. Author of edgy YA Dystopian fiction with an underlying message of hope, this stay-at-home mom of four focuses on writing as much as humanly possible. She was published at the young age of six in a local newspaper and is excited to be published again. It only took twenty-seven years. She enjoys the thrill of writing fiction that deals with intense topics and prays it will impact people for the better.

Five Reasons Why Writers Should Keep a Journal

By Robin

Blogging last week about the value of keeping a journal has me thinking this week about how important journaling is to the writer. 

It can take lots of forms. It need not be expensive or romantic. You don't need a leather bound volume and a fountain pen, or copious hours to devote to it. Unless you like that sort of thing. Then, by all means, go for it. But a 50 cent spiral notebook from Walmart and a Bic pen work too. Or the envelope of a piece of junk mail, and a broken crayon you found on the floorboard of the car is just as good.

Whatever form it takes, it's a good practice for many reasons.


Here are my top 5.


1. Preservation. If you played video games in the 90's, you saw these words on the screen when you tried to power off the Nintendo: "Everything not saved will be lost." It's true, and don't think for a second that you will remember that perfect line of dialogue that came to you while you were driving, or showering, or grocery shopping. It will be gone, like a dandelion puff, blown away to who-knows-where. You won't even remember that you wanted to remember. Use your smartphone, or keep a pad of paper in your purse, or even a napkin in your glove box. I've been known to utilize them all as makeshift journals. 

Don't let those wonderful bursts of creativity go to waste because you didn't have a way to preserve them until you could sit down at the computer and work them into your MS. You'll thank yourself when you open your journal later and find all sorts of crazy things sticking out of it, on which your creative gems have been saved.

2. Practice. Practice. Practice. Every May my kids bring home a writing journal they've kept since the beginning of the school year, and they always cringe to see their work from last August. "I can't believe I used to write like that!" they cry, embarrassed. And for a while, it will be embarrassing to see the misspellings, the crooked, ill-formed letters, and the terrible grammar, given what they know now. But after some time passes, they will look back on that old, simplistic work, and be fond of it. They will understand more clearly the growth that occurred, and they will appreciate having this artifact from their youth. It's proof of how far they've come, and how hard they worked even before they knew everything there was for a 2nd grader to know. It's proof of their mind, their hand, and their imagination. It becomes a treasure. The same is true for us who write.

3. Precision. Sometimes I don't know what I think until I see my own words on a page in front of me. Last year I decided my MS was ready to query (it wasn't, but that's a topic for another blog post). Nevertheless, I had to do something I'd been dreading: write the blurb. Every writer hates writing blurbs. It's universally painful to condense your 80,000 word baby into a 75 word summary. Staring at that blinking cursor on a blank white page, I panicked. I didn't know what my story was really about. I was so consumed with minute details, character arcs, and plot twists, I couldn't pull my head out of it long enough to say: This is who my MC is, this is what happens to her, and this is what's at stake. So, I did what I do. I clicked the computer off, sat down in my comfy chair, and opened my journal. I wrote about stories I liked, and what I liked about them; political things that had been on my mind; I copied down a bit of commentary I'd read recently which sounded like something my MC's father would say. Basic rambling stuff. Then something amazing happened about 3/4 of the way down the second page. I wrote this:

The church and state had united as a colossal tyrant over [my characters]. Failure to yield meant persecution, imprisonment, and death. Yet they resisted. They endured. This is what my story is about. It's about the child of a people who will not conform, a girl who wonders, "Why not conform? Life is better, easier, more pleasant for those who conform." The reader must ache for her to join her family on the Mayflower, to resist the urge to be a mindless, state-approving, acquiescing drone. The reader must learn, not only about history, but about herself, her place in time. She must come to the conclusion: I will not be coerced into believing what "they" (secular society) say is true. Even if they accuse me of "thoughtcrime." Even if they persecute me. I will rise up in defense of my conscience, my freedom.

Boom. A blurb was born in the pages of my writing journal.

4. Posterity. Most people think what they say today will never matter to anyone years from now. But anyone who's unearthed an old sack of letters, or read a crumbling, fading diary knows that's a lie. My grandmother-in-law, knowing my love of old things, gave me one of my greatest treasures. It's a tiny "Five Year Diary" kept by her grandmother-in-law, a woman named Rose. She wrote in it nearly every day from 1944-1948, mostly in pencil, and mostly about waxing the floors, ironing, attending funerals, and going to town. I love to see her handwriting, the places where she erased or crossed out words, the math problem she did on the corner of one page, and the list on the back page of enlisted Scobee men, and where they were stationed. It's a glimpse into another time, and a look inside this woman's life, but it's only a partial view which sends my imagination screaming down the path of story after story. 

Perhaps my own journals will eventually decompose in a box unread, but perhaps, seventy years from now, a great-great granddaughter will discover the words of this faithful woman who was passionate about story-telling. Perhaps she will read my thoughts as I walked this writing journey, my ups and downs, my frustrations, my prayers, my perseverance, my despondency, and my hope. Perhaps she will love them as much as I love Rose's words. Perhaps it's reason enough to keep a writing journal.

5. Purity. Nothing written for an audience is truly pure. The words we write for others tend to be biased, pompous, and pretentious. They're written to impress, beguile, entertain, and show off. Journaling is different. It's private. Truthful. Raw. It's our guts dumped out and splayed across the page, messy, sloppy, dirty, offensive, maybe even bloody. These are the kinds of pages you want to take out back and burn after you write them (please don't--they won't appear quite so bloody after some time has passed, I promise). It's therapeutic to write this way. It's like setting down a heavy bag you've been carrying a long time. You can stand up a little straighter after the weight of the words is out of you. You can look ahead and see more clearly where you're going, and why you're still following the same thread. 

Writing this way has preserved in me the ability to write the other way, you know, with the pre-planned chapters breaks, contrived obstacles, and lessons learned. That's the writing you edit and revise until your head is about to explode. That writing is for others. It's writing that entertains. For me, one kind of writing begets the other, enables the other, feeds off the other, and that's reason enough to keep a writing journal.

There are a thousand more reasons for writers to keep a writing journal! What are yours? Tell us in the comments.

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How to Keep on Writing!

I've been enjoying a creative flow recently. It's been wonderful to sit down at my computer and have scenes and conversations come out of my fingertips effortlessly. It's been a long, dry season of over a year for me where I found it hard to be inspired. Everything I wrote felt flat and forced. I had bursts of happy, busy moments but nothing as sustained as the latest jag I've experienced. It did get me thinking though: how did I get over my writer's block? Is there anything I could've done to snap out of it quicker? What takeaway points do I have from this experience? Is there anything I could do to promote longevity as a writer?


Here's the number one discovery I stumbled upon about the writing process and my own struggle with writer's block: 

Writers need refreshment

And we need it from positive sources! Unfortunately, there's a persistent stereotype out there of the suffering artist who can only create in the midst of angst. I don't believe that is true. Instead, writers (like all artists) need to be restored into wholeness. We need inspiration from positive sources. We need to be constantly filled with good stuff, so that we can pour out good stuff. Being filled with suffering and angst--and wallowing in it--is not going to bring about art that will encourage others. And that's what I want to do. I want whatever I write to be enjoyable, uplifting, encouraging. Sure, I want to make people think, I want to write about deep themes, but most of all, I want people to walk away from whatever I've written and believe themselves to be better for reading it.

How do we get refreshed?

First of all, get outside! 


Go for a walk, go to the beach or forest. Look at the stars, roll in autumn leaves or revel in spring flowers (depending what hemisphere you're in!) There's something about getting out in the middle of creation that soothes our soul and takes us higher. I've rarely come away from some time outside and not felt richer from the experience

Another strategy I discovered was to immerse myself in great literature. 


Not just the classics, mind you, but some of the popular and well-written novels of today that are in my genre. I even read some that were completely opposite from what I write! I rolled sentences around in my head, admired a perfect description, laughed over witty conversations (was possibly green with author-envy of some particular jewels!), and came out of the many books I read as a more confident writer. To be a great writer, we've got to be great readers! So head to your local library, stock up your Kindle, buy out a bookstore. Well, maybe not that last one ;-) I also watched a few TV shows and movies that really helped me see story structure, and how to leave an audience begging for more. I may or may not have binge-watched certain shows because I could not stop wanting to know what happened next! Now, that's great writing!

Finally, we can turn to our writing community. 


I've found such support and encouragement from fellow writers, especially the women I blog with (here's a big shout-out to Robin, Deanna, and Lucy--you gals ROCK!) Critique groups are great to keep you motivated as well. And I seriously can't wait to go to my first writers' conference in August. Something about being around the people who 'get you' makes us feel good, doesn't it? We realise we're not alone, there are other crazies who stay up way past midnight because they've got to get this piece of dialogue just right or have to rewrite this scene because there's too much 'tell' and not enough 'show.' If you're not part of a group or guild, I'd encourage you to get involved. Even one person who writes and can be there to support you will make a huge difference!

So that's me. I've put down 25,000 words in 2 1/2 weeks which is a personal best, and I credit much of this to the advice I've put down. It's been a hard slog to get to this point, but I'm thankful for the lessons I've learned. 

Be blessed,







What about you? What do you do when you hit the writing wall? And what are your hints for longevity?

The Power of a Story

By Robin

Stories have always been important to us. Long before they were on ipads, Kindles, and Nooks; before they were in paperback, hardcover, or leather bound with handstitched spines; before they were transcribed one painstaking word at a time on parchment and vellum, they wielded a sort of power in our lives.

In ancient days the most skillful Story-teller would gather his audience round a communal fire, and regale them with tales of the heroic warrior who left his maiden to fight a battle. And the audience would listen, rapt, shushing fussy babes, pulling loved ones close, wondering if the hero would ever make it back to his love.

That’s the enthralling power of a story.

Legends were born who are still with us today. Beowulf and King Arthur still hold us transfixed in our modern world. We still boo and hiss at their villains: the brutal Grendel, and the wicked sorceress Morgana La Fay. Even though we know how the story ends—we’ve known for twelve hundred years—we hang on till the end, wondering if good will prevail.

That’s the transcendent power of a story.

In the fourth century, the world changed forever. Rome converted, and with it, most of its territories, stretching far west, to include a little island nation full of Britons. “Before Christianity,” according to the Norton Anthology of English Literature, Edition 6, Volume 1, “there had been no books [in English].”

This is my decades old, frayed, taped, beloved Norton, read by every NWMSU student who majored in English during its tenure.

Time passed, invaders became residents, and the language, a jumbled comingling of Saxon (Germanic) and Norman (Italic) evolved into Middle English. That’s when the Story-teller harnessed his power by putting words onto a page. He became the Writer.

By the twelfth century, the Writer began to use the themes of love and war, which were so often connected in the world of the chivalrous knight, as a means of exploring psychological and ethical problems (again, according to the Norton Anthology). That's when men began to see themselves in the character of the knight. They watched as the knight navigated trials contrived by the Writer, and weighed the knight’s emergence as victor or downtrod against what they knew about themselves, their world, and their God, wondering what they would do in the place of the knight.

That’s the self-actualizing power of a story.

This has all been true since the first evidence we have of stories being told orally round the fire. It was true before, in the dark of cave dwellings where no remnant was left for us to study and marvel at. It’s true because our Lord is the ultimate Story-teller. It’s the medium by which he brings us to himself. “In the beginning,” begins the story of a bridegroom who goes after his bride.

We are enthralled by it, wondering if she will take his outstretched hand.

We read the same passages again and again in our study, captivated anew by the transcendent, never-changing truth.

We see ourselves in it. We are the bride, looking down at the bridegroom’s outstretched hand, a hand we don’t deserve. We come to know our own wretchedness by reading of his holiness. We take his hand, accept his mercy, and we are made new.

That’s the transformative power of THE story.

Stories born of human minds cannot hold the same power over us. We need not fear them, ban them, censor them, burn them, or hide them.

Even dangerous stories, terrible stories, and stories written by authors who hate God and his good gifts have the power to make us think.  

That, friends, is when the magic happens! That's when the Story-teller's power becomes the Story-hearer's power. The Hearer, gifted by the Creator already with the ability to reason and reflect, now possesses the power to revere or reject the truth of the Story-teller. 

It's an amazing power, isn't it? The power to think. Analyze. Critique. Decide. Whether the stories are good or bad, thinking about them makes us smarter, more mature, more aware, more compassionate, better human beings. It opens our eyes to new ideas--right ideas and wrong ideas. That doesn't matter. What matters is we use our power to think about what we're reading, and grow from it.

This is why we crave stories which do more for us than entertain. It's why our love of story has endured many thousands of years, and why it will continue long after our culture changes, our borders shift, and our language evolves all over again. 

We may not read our stories on Kindles and ipads in a hundred years, or a thousand years, or ten thousand years, but we will, in some way, be gathered round the communal fire to hear the skilled Story-teller weave us a compelling tale.

Unlike us, the story will endure. It will never die.

That's the power of a story.

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3 Quick Tips to Make Your Story Amazing

What writer couldn't use some quick tips to make a story pop with amazing details? I know I could!

Have you ever read a story that just felt kinda meh? Perhaps the dialogue was good, and the characters were interesting. The plot might have even been fresh and original. But something was missing. Something was flat. You weren’t drawn in to the setting. You weren’t really immersed in the story.

Transporting an audience to another world takes some skill. It’s not enough to plonk words haphazardly on the page.

Nope.

A writer has to beguile their readers.

Tease them.

Tempt them along with sensory details that fill their minds with the sights, sounds, smells, and feels of the setting.

There’s nothing better than reading a well-crafted description that makes you forget you're simply reading a book. Instead it seems like you’ve got a seat, front and center in all the action.

Some of my favorite authors are the ones who string words like colorful beads on a necklace, one after the other, until I feel like I’m right there in every part of the scene.

Here are my top 3 tips to help you create a story people will LOVE to read:

Tip #1. A fantastic setting makes a story shine! 

Take the beginning of chapter two from Elizabeth Marie Pope’s YA novel, The Perilous Gard:

The rain threaded and beaded every branch and leaf and twig, dripping mournfully at the jarring thud of the horses’ hoofs. It clung to the shoulders of Kate’s heavy cloak and glistened in the long gray folds of her riding skirt. The instant she raised her head, it began to gather on her lashes like tears.

Can’t you imagine yourself riding through the forest in the rain? Doesn’t your very skin feel cold and wet? You also get a sense of tone from this passage. Kate doesn’t seem very happy, does she? And not just because she’s stuck on a horse with water dripping all around her. No. The repetition in the first sentence of branch and leaf and twig as well as the comparison of the rain to tears on Kate’s face all add to the despondency of the moment.

Before you start to shiver, consider Madeleine L’Engle’s description from Many Waters, a companion to A Wrinkle in Time. L’Engle’s heroes, Sandy and Dennys find themselves whisked away from their freezing New England farmhouse only to be dumped in a desert.

They were standing on sand, burning white sand. Above them, the sun was in a sky so hot that it was no longer blue but had a bronze cast. There was nothing but sand and sky from horizon to horizon…The brazen sunlight beat down on them. After the cold of snow and ice, the sudden heat was shocking. Small particles of mica in the sand caught the light and blazed up at them.

Wow. A completely different scene. Now, instead of the rain beating down on me, I’ve got sunlight saturating every pore!

And did you notice how in both of these descriptions, the authors use what the reader can see as well as what the reader can feel?  That's the perfect intro for my next tip:

Tip #2. Make your descriptions do double-duty!

The best writers will make sure their word choices pack a punch in more than one way.

Take, for example, a single sentence from Mary Weber’s Storm Siren:

The yellow flags above me snap sharp and loud in the breeze as if to emphasize my owner’s words that yes, she’s quite aware such a high count is utterly ridiculous.

Weber could’ve used the verb wave or billow to describe the movement of the flags, but snap gives a perfect visual and auditory clue that puts the reader right in the middle of the slave auction with Nym.

Tip #3. Don't overlook the rest of the 5 senses!

It’s not enough to add sight, sound, and feels to your story.

What about taste? That's an important detail that immerses the reader more fully into the scene.

Look at this passage written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and tell me your mouth isn’t watering:

Ten pancakes cooked on the smoking griddle, and as fast as they were done Mother added another cake to each stack and buttered it lavishly and covered it with maple syrup. Butter and sugar melted together and soaked the fluffy pancakes and dripped all down their crisp edges.

Every time I read Farmer Boy, I get hungry. Every. Single. Time.

And finally, there’s smell. Some studies claim that smell serves as a powerful aid to memory, so don’t forget to saturate your reader’s sense of smell with unforgettable details.

I always enjoy Rosemary Sutcliff’s narrative because she includes this important sense like here in The Shining Company:

I mind the scent and colour of raw new wood and green thatch and great tubs of washing water that smelled of herbs. And, fingering its way in from somewhere outside, the fat reek of beef stew.

These scents greet the hero, Prosper, at the end of a long journey, and the familiar smells add to his feeling of homecoming. Perfect!

Each one of these authors are masters at adding sight, sound, feels, tastes AND smells to their story. And these are the details that make a manuscript shine.

So the next time you edit your story, double-check that your setting immerses your reader, your word choices do double-duty, and each of the senses are used to your advantage. Your descriptions will be sure to keep your readers engaged and turning the pages for more.

And have fun!

Any quick tips you'd include in this list to make a ho-hum story fantastic?