Lorna Faith

Clean Fiction Author

3 Ideas for Chapter Endings that will Hook Your Readers

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A book that is un-put-downable is a rare kind of treasure.

One of the best compliments a reader can give the author is I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning to finish your book.

It means the reader gave up sleep to read your book. In other words… they really liked it.

So how do you as a writer keep the reader reading all the way until the end? 

Most of us have started books we’ve never finished. As authors, we hope that doesn’t happen when readers read our books, right?

What will keep your readers hooked to keep turning the pages?

End each chapter with a cliffhanger.

3 ideas for chapter endings

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How Do You Write Chapter Endings that Keep Readers Hooked?

When creating a hook you are encouraging readers to turn the page to find out what happens next in your story.

For chapter endings, it’s important to stay in viewpoint because if you don’t, you’ll lose the immediacy of what’s happening right now. Readers want to experience what’s happening to your character in the moment.

For example, if your character is shown putting on a dress while thinking to herself: “Before the day was done, I’d wish I’d put pants on instead.”

You can tell that this character is looking back from future events instead of living in the present. This can cause readers to lose the sense of timing that holds them to her viewpoint. Readers are supposed to hear what she hears and see what she sees, so how can you see what hasn’t happened yet?

Foreshadowing is great because it builds tension, but you can foreshadow using more subtle techniques while still staying in the character’s point of view. Write in a way that keeps your reader inside your character’s senses in the here and now. A great way to do that is to end your chapter with a hook that stays in character.

Here are some chapter endings that will urge your reader to keep turning the pages.

1.Important Decision: A crucial choice your character makes that will affect the story’s momentum is a great way to end a chapter. Here’s one from my first novel, where a baby dies in childbirth and she chooses to leave the village.

“Tears streamed down her cheeks like a dense waterfall; she could barely see her way on the road ahead. How would she explain what happened today? It was bad enough that most of the girls her age in Pleve Colony spoke against her, but now everyone who lived here would brand her as something much worse than a loose woman – they would call her a murderer.” (excerpt from Historical Romantic Suspense, Answering Annaveta (Russia to Canada Trilogy Book 1), by Lorna Faith).

Ready to Understand the 7 Steps to Nail Down Your Novel Before You Begin Writing?

 


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2.Character is in Physical Danger: When there’s a cliffhanger situation where one of your main characters is in physical danger, it heightens the suspense. Here’s an excerpt from a suspenseful book #1 in this awesome Dystopian series.

“Holding his side, Tomas crawls out from under the dead boy and lets out a sigh of relief at being safe. But we aren’t safe. Tomas doesn’t know what I know. I didn’t take aim in time. I was no the one who fired the gun.” (excerpt from Dystopian novel, The Testing (The Testing Trilogy Book 1) by Joelle Charbonneau).

3.Unexpected Revelations: This is where a secret exposed or an important plot point – or twist – arrives in the story. In the following excerpt, there’s a secret that’s revealed – an affair the main character’s brother-in-law was having – and it causes a new twist to the story.

“She’s going to forgive me, right?”

“I don’t know. Some decisions are very hard to forgive.”

Steve walked out to his car, looking beaten. The house of lies he’d been building had come crashing down. (excerpt from Contemporary Romance, At Hidden Falls (Angel’s Bay Book 4) by Barbara Freethy).

Scatter these three different chapter endings into your story and hopefully one day you’ll get an email letter from a reader that says, I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning to finish your book.

What ideas have you used to hook readers at the end of your chapters? I love to hear your thoughts. Please share an excerpt of a chapter ending you’ve written 🙂

 

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10 Ways to Make Your Author Blog Amazing

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Blogging for an author, is another way of sharing your passion, your voice and most of all a great way to help and inspire others.

It’s one of many ways you can add value to others through free content marketing. This attracts people to your website(and eventually your books) because they are being helped, inspired or entertained in some way by the words you write.

Many new bloggers make mistakes starting out, simply because blogging is a whole new skillset for them. 

I was a new blogger four years ago and made all of these mistakes and many more. That’s why I’m passionate about doing what I can to help you grow your readers with your author blog.

So I hope you find this blog post helpful as you continue to grow your audience and readers for your books.

10 Ways to Make

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10 Ways to Make Your Author Blog Amazing

Many times as new authors or bloggers, we end jumping into blogging without learning what will make your blog the most effective for your readers.

Since blogging is more like copywriting than writing a book, and most readers skim blog content, it’s a big plus if you can understand and take action on ideas that will attract readers to your content.

Many of the blogging tips I learned that have benefited me the most, I learned from Jonathan Milligan at Blogging Your Passion.

So if you’ve been blogging for awhile or even if you’re new to blogging, here are some of helpful ideas on how you can make your author blog even better.

1.Decide Why You Are Blogging. As authors we are busy getting our word count in on our books(hopefully) so our time is limited. You need to pick how much time/and words you are using on your blog. Only you can decide if the time you have would be better spent writing your book.

For myself, I love writing books as well as blogging. I do have a long term strategy. I have chosen to create a business around my writing(books, online courses, etc.),  and blogging is a great way to get to that end goal.

All the little pieces of content you create(blogging, podcasting or video), think about your reason for it and how it fits into the big picture. Ask yourself how is this helping me reach my goal? Some questions to ask yourself: Will this blog post help build your authority in your chosen niche? Will what you’re creating inspire people to read your books? Will readers want to sign up to your email newsletter after reading your article?

When you ask yourself strategic questions about how you define success as an author, you’ll have a better idea how blogging(and the other content you create) fits into your goals.

2.Write in Your Own Voice. Your blog comes from your ideas, thoughts, opinions and should represent you. Your writing voice. Your creativity and originality. That’s how your blog becomes memorable and that’s how you attract readers who resonate with your voice.

The best blog posts is from content that will last for the long haul – focused around your niche. For example, the blog posts I’ve written on how do you start writing your book or 7 useful self-publishing tools for writers, would be foundational content for my niche.

3.Focus on How You Can Add Value to Your Readers. When blogging first started, it was sort of like an online journal where people would write about their life. Nothing wrong with writing about your life – people want to know about your life and who you are. They will connect in a greater way with your voice and your personality when they know more about you.

But, it’s important to think about and focus on the value people are hoping to receive when they read your blog posts. If you write a blog that is centered around a nonfiction topic – like this one focuses on helping you create a better story – then it’s good to understand and write about what your reader(and customer) needs.

4.Be okay with Imperfect. Your blog post – after you create a simple outline, write the post and edit it – still won’t be perfect. Ever. This is one of my biggest hangups. I always think I can do it better – with everything(including writing books). But I’ve come to realize there will always be one more thing to fix.

But I’ve come to realize there will always be more things you can do to make your blog posts better. Better word choices. Funnier jokes. More pictures.

The truth is, once you’ve written and edited your post, it’s time to hit publish. 

So even though you don’t want to write a blog post that has inaccurate facts or a bunch of grammar mistakes, it’s not the end of the world if there are a few typos.

And the great thing about blogging, is that if you or your readers find a mistake all you need to do is update the blog post. Simple.

5.Format Your Blog Post for Skimmers. Everyone only has a limited amount of time. And most people nowadays, when they find a good blog post, they skim over the highlights.

You’ll have more people reading your article if you design your post for people to skim through it.

Double check that you are formatting your blog post so it includes; subheadings, words in italics and bold lettering, a few photos and use a lot of white space so that it catches readers eyes as they read through.

6.Narrow the Topic & Focus of Each Blog Post. Many times when people start blogging, they want to write on big topics like:

  • “How to Do Social Media Marketing”
  • “How to Make Money Online”

It’s hard to write a blog post on these topics and do a good job answering questions that the reader is likely to have.

Instead, narrow your focus on the topic:

  • “How to Do Social Media for Self-Published Authors”
  • “How to Make Money on Your Author Blog”

When you pick specific headlines and topics, you narrow your focus and it helps you to write your blog post in a much simpler and more effective way.

Here’s the other thing to remember: Your working title doesn’t need to be final – you can always change it after you’ve written your post

7.Add Inviting Photos or Graphics to Your Blog Posts. When you read through your Social Media sites, what catches your eye more text or graphics? For many people it’s the images they see on Twitter or Facebook that catch their eye first.

When you write your blog post, readers are attracted to images that you add to your post and many times if they like what they see, it’s an invitation to read further down.

You can find great images on many websites:

  1. You can use your own photos or graphics. Sometimes I post pictures I’ve taken with my Smartphone. That works well, because you are bringing more of your personality to your post and your own pictures are sure to be unique.
  2. You can find some free images on Canva or when you go to Creative Commons. On Canva you can choose the size of your photo, add the text and download it to your computer. With Creative Commons, the images are free, but you need to check what type of Creative Commons license goes with the photo and then give credit to the photographer in your blog post.
  3. You can buy images from royalty-free sites like dreamstime.com, bigstockphoto.com or fotolia.com(and many others). I often use Canva and get images for $1 per photo when I’m looking for something specific.

Much like creating a great book cover for your book, so it is with your blog post. You need an image that invites the reader to read what you have to say.

8.Write Clear and Compelling Headlines. Since readers who read blog posts online go quickly through content, it means your headline(title) of your post needs to catch their eye.

Your headline needs to be clear and the reader needs to quickly understand what benefit they will get when they read your post.

One way to rethink your headline is to consider what words will catch your reader’s eye on social media or what would they search for on Google. When you get ready to self-publish your book you search for keywords for your specific book on Amazon, so just take this one more step, and think about keywords for your specific blog post.

9.Make Your Website/Blog Optimized for Smartphone Users. More and more people are accessing the internet through their smartphones or other mobile devices.

Not long ago, Google decided to penalize websites that aren’t optimized for mobile users. As a blogger, it’s important to double-check that you are using a blog theme for your website that is mobile responsive. This means that your theme will change to the correct size, depending on the device your reader uses to access your website.

For this website, I use StudioPress Themes for WordPress which I love. But there are many other responsive themes you can find.

10.Understand the Power of Blogging Long Term. I believe the best blogs are built over months and years, rather than days and weeks. Many bloggers underestimate the power of creating value over the long term.

Remember, you build a great building one brick or piece of wood at a time. It’s similar to building your website and blog. Each new blog post, email subscriber, blog comment and social media follower is like laying down a new brick on your website.

As you continue to create new content and add value to your readers – and listen to what they need – you will start to gain their trust.

Remember, when you add value you gain reader’s trust. You need trust before you gain their attention. Once you gain reader’s trust and attention, you have their permission. From permission comes profit.

I hope this post helps you as a blogger to grow your website and add value to many more readers who want to hear what you have to say.

What have you found that has helped make your blog better? I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas in the comments. Let’s learn from each other 🙂

 

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How to Begin Each Chapter and Conquer the Blank Page

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Writing a good beginning for each chapter in your novel is tricky.

Sometimes staring at the blank screen(or blank page), is so intimidating we procrastinate.

I know many times looking at the white space on the screen in front of me, has flustered and overwhelmed me to the point that I’ve chosen to do the laundry, vacuum or basically anything else to AVOID that dreaded beginning.

So what helps you begin each chapter and defeat the blank page?

How to Begin each chapter

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What are some ideas to help you conquer the blank page?

Many times as writers, our instinct is to add filler to fill in all the gaps between chapters. Sometimes we do this in nonfiction as well as fiction. So we do our best to get every possible detail we can think of, onto the page.

In fiction, we add filler especially when a bunch of time has passed between from the last chapter to the one we’re writing. Many times we add ‘filler’ when there’s a significant passage of time from one chapter to another and we need to catch reader’s up to speed.

I often catch myself adding extra words or phrases when I begin a new chapter. This is what I’m trying to fix as I’m editing my new book right now 🙂

What are some great ways to get started on the next chapter?

Action: When you start a chapter with action – using verbs – can jumpstart your story instead of just using ordinary words… like turn her head, whirl, walk… write words that are more distinctive. Do what you can to avoid those annoying adverbs like walked slowly or walked lazily. Instead substitute words like strolled or sashayed.

As you get your character moving and keep her or him in motion for a page or two you’ll begin to get more ideas on where your next chapters will take you.

Dialogue: Open a chapter with Dialogue. It’s a great way to grab the reader’s attention. When you’re in doubt about how to get a new chapter started, start with a little bit of dialogue.

In Jane Austen’s well-known novel, Pride and Prejudice she starts off one of her chapters with a dialogue between Elizabeth’s parents. “I hope, my dear,’ said Mr. Bennet to his wife, as they were at breakfast the next morning, ‘that you have ordered a good dinner to-day, because I have reason to expect an addition to our family party.”

Conversation draws me into the story – whether it’s fiction or non-fiction.

Sensory Details: Picture where your main character is – like a movie in your mind. Close your eyes and put yourself there and imagine all the details your character might hear, touch, taste, smell or see. Then focus and find an interesting detail, so you can start writing at that point.

The important part to this is that you get started. If you write with too much description, or if you’re not happy in any way, then you can always fix it later.

What are some not-so-good ways to start a chapter?

Backstory: When you begin a chapter with long explanations of a character’s history, it’s not very exciting for the reader. Sometimes that’s a good excuse for the reader to skim. Reader’s don’t need to know about Bobby’s aunt’s puppy and how that little dog peed all over the stairs which caused Bobby to fall down the stairs and break her leg.

It’s much more interesting for the reader if you Show vs. telling what happens to her. Rule of thumb: reading about past action is boring. Current action is what’s exciting to readers.

In a dream or waking up: This has been overdone. If you start the chapter with your character waking up or in a dream, it’s usually isn’t very interesting… and many times this is another place where a reader will skim. Go back and reread a book where the character awoke from a dream and ask yourself did you find it interesting?

Dull vocabulary: If there’s ever a place for brilliance of voice, phrasing, interesting vocabulary, it’s the opening of a chapter. It’s here that you want to catch a reader’s attention. No, you don’t want it so overblown that it is out of character with the rest of the story; however, you do want it to catch the reader. And, the beauty is that if you do overwrite, it’s just a first draft.

These are ideas to help you get something-anything-on paper. There’s plenty of time for revision. But that first draft has to get written, on chapter at a time. So let’s do this thing – you and I both – let’s stop procrastinating… and just write.

How do you begin your chapters to make your story interesting? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. We can learn from each other 🙂

 

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008 Outline Your Novel using 4 Part Story Structure and Create a Marketing Plan with Nick Thacker

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I learned a lot in this interview with bestselling thriller author Nick Thacker. Originally from Texas, Nick now lives in the mountains of Colorado with his wife, daughter, a tortoise and 3 dogs:) He’s a prolific writer of many bestselling thriller novels, which you can find at his author website nickthacker.com.

Nick also helps authors write, publish and market their books at his website writehacked.com. You can connect with Nick on Facebook or Twitter or email him at nick(at)nickthacker(dot)com.

Sorry, I wasn’t able to record this interview via Video. For some reason my Skype/eCamm connection wasn’t working properly the day we recorded this – so it was actually Nick who recorded the audio for me…. for which I’m very grateful 🙂

Interview Summary

*Nick shares how he got started writing. He says he really doesn’t like sitting down and trying to get words up on the screen every day – rather he likes to have written. He didn’t start writing until 2010-2011. He remembers he loved reading thrillers, like Dan Brown books, etc., but he also found some thrillers he didn’t like. Nick says he’s happiest when he’s writing books that entertain.

He thought if other people can write, I can too. That was his first book The Golden Crystal (Techno Thriller Military Science Fiction Best Sellers): A Technotriller Novel. Nick wrote this first book for his Dad and gave it to him on Christmas.

 

*With his first book he got stuck in the ‘muddy middle’ and started reading books on writing for about 3 months. A book that really helped him to understand how to write better scenes and how to write your sentence structure in a linear way was by reading Dwight Swain’s book Techniques of the Selling Writer.

*Nick says he’s read this writing book over and over again and talks about what he learned of how to gives awesome detail of the scene. First you have a goal, then a conflict and then a disaster. Example: Goal is the character wants to call her friend. Conflict is she’s trying to call her friend but she keeps getting another incoming call so she can’t call her friend. Disaster is her phone dies.

*The Sequel is the opposite of that: Reaction is “Oh my gosh, my phone died, I better plug it in. The Dilemma is she can’t find her charger. The Decision is I’m going to buy a charger from the store.

*Nick says then he used Dwight Swain’s writing book to rewrite the beginning and middle of his first novel and he still references it to this day.

*He says he was writing a blog about marketing and then he shifted his blog about writing and marketing books. Later Nick started his podcast, Self Publishing Answers which he now does with two other writers, Kevin Tumlinson, and Justin Sloan.

*Everyone writes and outlines differently and Nick recommends to keep trying different ideas to find what works for you. He starts by describing his book in two sentences – this also works well as a blurb for your book. Nick wrote a more detailed blogpost about it here.

*Nick says he loves Larry Brooks website StoryFix.com. He helps writers learn how to write and how not to write. Nick says he writes to the 4 part story structure and it helps him not to worry about what happens next when he’s in the middle of writing. Larry Brooks has a series on story structure here.

*To outline his story, Nick uses Evernote and then he writes his story using Scrivener . He says sometimes he’ll use the Evernote app on his smartphone and then it syncs to his computer. If he needs to, Nick adds folders on the left-hand side of the Scrivener screen, and creates Act 1, Act 2, Act 3, and Act 4. In this interview, I mention how much Joseph Michael’s Learn Scrivener Fast  training course has helped me. I often go back and listen to those short videos for whatever I need help within Scrivener.

*On his blog, Nick writes a great blogpost on how to market your book here.  His biggest recommendation is to get started with an email list. He also says Facebook Ads have really worked well for him. He says it’s amazing(and slightly creepy)…  how well you can track your customers on Facebook.

*Nick’s novel Atlantis: The Origin Mystery: The Atlantis Deception (Kindle Worlds Novella) is part of the Kindle Worlds series with Amazon. He says Amazon called him one morning and said A.G. Riddle is launching a kindle worlds, world with his books. He said A.G. Riddle had mentioned his name and asked Amazon to ask Nick to see if he’d want to write a book in the series. And they offered 50% commission for Nick to write it. So he wrote it – they said it needed to be done in a month – and he was surprised that it was one of the best novels he’s written.

 

*Nick says his friend Kevin describes this book as Jurassic Park in space. The main characters get locked into the center of their ship and all the creatures are trying to kill them. He said he just wanted people to be entertained – for readers he created a feeling of wonder with new ideas.

*I asked Nick how he overcomes resistance and failures. He says he has experienced plenty of failures, and what he’s found is that it’s important to know what brings you to a ‘downward spiral.’ Nick talks honestly of how he has something that happens at work, which later stops him from writing every day. So he’s found that he needs to put, what’s bothering him, in a box and close it temporarily and then open the writing box when it’s time to write. He mentions that his friend Keven Tumlinson writes in a journal every day and says affirmations – which seems to help get him be more of a prolific writer.

*Nick recommends that authors who are serious about writing as a career, to think of it as a business. He keeps his production plan written down in a document in Evernote where he writes his long-term plan. He writes down the books he wants to write by a certain date and he also writes down when he wants to get an agent, etc. When you have a business plan written down, it helps you to be more productive.

*I asked Nick what his thoughts were for the future of Indie Authors. He gives the example of how Amazon could – in the future – figure out how fast you read and when you read and by doing that recommend books specifically for your travels or whatever you are.

New books Nick’s writing now is the Harvey Bennet series. The Enigma Strain (Techno Thriller Science Fiction Best Sellers): Military Science Fiction Technothriller (Harvey Bennett Thrillers Book 1) which has over 400 reviews on Amazon, is about the world’s largest active volcano is under Yellowstone National Park and is based on the question of what happens if someone decides to blow up a bomb under the park?  The next book in the series has the same good guys and bad guys – and Nick says he’s playing with the idea of video recording people’s dreams and memories. The setting is in the Amazon rainforest. He’s also working on finishing the Relics series – the first book is Relics: The Dawn: Relics Singularity Series Book 1. Nick’s also working on co-writing the series – The Lucid: Episode One: Post-Apocalyptic with Kevin Tumlinson and then co-writing another young adult fantasy book with his friends Kevin and Justin.

To connect with Nick, you can find him at NickThacker.com and you’ll get four books for Free when you sign up to the mailing list. Also check out writehacked.com where you can find the self-publishing book marketing plan. You can also connect with Nick on Facebook or Twitter.

Do you use 4 Part Story Structure to outline your novels? Please comment below, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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