A Letter to My 20-Year-Old Self

Dear 20-year-old Andrea,

Getting through college and establishing your career offers many challenges. If it were easy, you wouldn't learn lessons that can help you forge ahead and make your dreams come true.

Have courage because the more you stumble, the more you learn. As you become more savvy in navigating your life, you will gain more confidence. With increased self-assuredness, you will see opportunities to grow further in your personal and professional life that you hadn't noticed before.

Take calculated risks,

A woman writing a letter

but do enjoy the journey along the way. While on the yellow brick road to Oz, you never know who or what you may come in contact with.

Be prepared for many delightful and daunting experiences. I promise you that you will better cope with disappointment and accept joy into your life without suspicion.

My main character, Miranda, from my upcoming Second-Chance Romance novel (can you believe your older self is writing a book?), is learning to trust again and embrace a new chapter in her life. Think of your future self as Miranda on a path to rediscovery. Let your inner wisdom lead the way! You’ve got this!

Love,

65-year-old Andrea

Should Authors Blog?

Blogging is one way to assist you with your marketing efforts. With regards to being an author, blogging is intended to gain readers. Although it is unnecessary, you must consider whether blogging would be productive for you. If you are unsure, you need to answer some questions. Can you commit to writing consistently so that you stay fresh and relevant? Do you have topics or expertise related to your book that can gain you credibility? Do you have a newsletter that you email out regularly? Are you looking for influencers to support your work? If you answered yes to these, writing a regular blog may be a good component of your marketing plan. If unsure, consider what would turn you off from writing a blog. Would it cut into your book-writing time? If you think writing a blog may cause delays or procrastination in completing your manuscript, don't do it. Also, if you expect to be easily and generously paid, that often does not happen due to much competition. However, it is not out of the question. You can find platforms such as Medium, where you can pick up supplemental income, but you need to be patient because it takes time to build momentum.

Suppose you are willing to write regularly and believe you have information your readers would be interested in to solve their pain points. In that case, a blog is a great avenue for staying in front of your audience and drawing new followers to become loyal readers.

If you have never written a blog and think you would be interested in starting one, here are some tips to consider in your execution:

Consistency: You must devote time or develop a writing schedule to stay on task with creating a regular blog posting. If you post one month and then fall behind and don't post for a few months, your material will appear outdated, and your readers may lose interest and drop off.

Expertise: Write in your field of knowledge or on a topic related to your book. If you already appeal to a specific audience, keep your subject focused on a nuance in which your readers are looking for enlightenment. If you want to build an audience, then be prepared that this will not happen overnight. You need to keep writing and providing valuable information to delight your readers and build trust over time.

Cross-promotion: Work with media influencers and other authors to share each other's posts. You can swap content on newsletters, link to others' blogs, or be a guest blogger on another's site. Make your blog accessible to comments and questions, which can help you gain the social proof you need to demonstrate your authority on a subject.

Relevant subject matter: Create content that answers frequently asked questions and tackles issues and problems often experienced by your readers. If uncertain, you can survey your audience or find out what words or phrases they use in their search engine queries. You can get search query data from Google Analytics.

Choose a blogging platform: There are forums like Blogspot, WordPress, Squarespace, Substack, and Medium. However, the best place to blog is on your website since that is your home base, and you can drive traffic with SEO.

Readability and clarity: The subject matter should be clearly understood in the title or tagline, and it must grab attention or offer a benefit. Don't worry about the length of the text, as long as it is scannable. Use bullets, white space, subheadings, and at least one image to break up the wording and make it less cumbersome to peruse and more attractive to the eye.

Call to action: Although blogs are about warming your audience, not selling to them, you would like to gain a following in hopes that they will eventually buy your books. At the end of the blog, include a way to contact you or provide a link to your About Page or Bio. If you give access to comments, ask a question at the end of a blog to spark conversation, which can increase engagement, thus ranking.

Make it easy to search and share: Enable your post to be shared and allow your audience to search your archives by category or most popular posts so they can easily read the breadth of your work. They will appreciate this, and it will hopefully give them a reason to return.

SEO: Each blog should be categorized and tagged. Use keywords in the title and subheadings that your readers would use to search your topic.

If you can devote the time to writing a regularly scheduled blog, blogging is one piece of marketing that can go a long way to promoting your writing to your readers. By making it a habit to write a blog, you can improve your writing over time while driving traffic to your website and developing a loyal readership. In addition, you can build advocacy through your blog by giving and receiving support through feedback, swapping, and guest posts with other authors, podcasters, and media influencers. However, you should only blog if you think it will serve your purpose and not bog you down or distract you from your other writing.

How to Write Dialogue

Dialogue is important in a story for multiple reasons. It brings a plot to life, develops characters, and makes a story more interesting. Without it, a story would be bland. It would lack the personality of the characters, their thoughts, and actions that help drive the plot.

Whether you are a seasoned writer or just beginning, creating dialogue can be a daunting task. If you are just starting out, the following are some basic guidelines for the correct use of dialogue. From there, I will share seven tips for writing and formatting dialogue that writers of all levels of experience can benefit from to help their stories stand out and compel their readers to keep reading.

BASIC GUIDELINES FOR BEGINNERS

·         Start a new paragraph with each new speaker. Begin a new paragraph whenever a new character starts to speak, which makes it easier for the reader to follow the conversation. 

·         Use quotation marks. Everything that is voiced by the character should be placed inside quotation marks. Periods and commas should always come before the final quotation marks. If the speech is more than one paragraph long, put the final quotation marks only after that character's speech ends.

·         Use single quotes when a character quotes someone else. For a quote within a quote, use single quotation marks. (e.g., "I was shocked when he told me, ‘Get out’”)

·         Dialogue tags. These are optional, but they are good to indicate which character is speaking and how they are speaking. (e.g., he said, she exclaimed) Other examples of tags to be used instead of 'said': (Please note they should be used sparingly so they don’t lose their effectiveness)

replied, asked, answered, added, stated, remarked, commented, cried, shouted, yelled, whispered, muttered, mumbled, sighed, snapped, hissed, gasped, groaned, barked, snarled, stammered, stuttered, sobbed.

·         Follow the correct format. Three ways to write a quote are without a tag, with a tag before the quote, and with a tag at the end of the quote (e.g., "I'm in love with you!" or

Joe said, “I’m in love with you!” or “I’m in love with you,” Joe said.

TIPS FOR USING DIALOGUE TO GRAB AND HOLD THE READER’S INTEREST.

Use dialogue to reveal character traits. You want your characters to stand out from one another, to show who they are and how they act differently from others. When choosing how your character should speak, consider their education, personality, interests, accents, and whether they are long-winded or terse.

Write natural dialogue. You are allowed to break grammatical rules by writing how people talk, such as using contractions, sentence fragments, and run-on sentences.

Minimize Dialogue Tags.

If they are not needed, do not use them, as they will only distract the reader. This is the case when only two characters are speaking. The reader will be able to understand who is speaking as long as you start a new paragraph for each new speaker. When you do need to use a dialogue tag, simply use “he said” or “she said” to keep the conversation flowing.

Incorporate action with speech.

You should show what each character is doing throughout the conversation to give an idea of how they are feeling or motivated. Think of body language that can be conveyed or physical action that can take place while they are talking. (drumming fingers on the table, folding arms, sneering lips) can give clues to how the character is internalizing and can add much tension to the plot.

 Write conversations that provide hints.

The best dialogue is often what is not said. People rarely say what they really mean. You can have your characters say one thing, but it actually means something else. For instance, you may have a wife who hates her husband's cigar smoking in the house, saying to her husband, "Can you please shut the window."  She meant to say, "I cannot stand your cigar smoke!"

Use dialogue to show, not tell.

When you describe a scenario, the dialogue will have a more emotional impact, bringing out the character's emotions by how they act or react to a situation. I can think of two examples: a scene in The Karate Kid and one in Terms of Endearment. In The Karate Kid, there is a scene between Daniel and his mother in which Daniel comes to the kitchen in the morning with dark glasses. When his mother asks him to remove them so she can see his "baby browns," Daniel acts evasive because he doesn't want her to see he has a black eye from getting beaten up. His dodging her creates a lot more compelling tension than if he had appeared without sunglasses and told her he was beaten up because he didn’t know how to defend myself. In Terms of Endearment, the mother, Aurora, is asking the nurse to give her dying daughter a shot to relieve her pain. After hearing an excuse from the nurse as to why she can’t administer it, it is so much more effective that Aurora is pacing back and forth, and her face becomes more panic-stricken by the second as she continues to plead despite the nurse’s objections. Aurora's voice finally escalated to a scream, "Give her the shot!" Despite her hardened exterior, we see how much love she has for her daughter. Through these actions, we see the emotional impact more readily than if she had said outright, “You need to give my daughter the shot because I love her so much and don’t want her to be in pain.”

Avoid Wordy Dialogue

Keep conversations as concise as possible. Edit out any unnecessary chatter, such as small talk that doesn't move the story forward. In addition, don't write dialogue with too many trigger phrases that trigger the next line of dialogue, such as:

“Can you tell me more?”

or

“Can you explain what you mean?”

You can get your point across with less wording that sounds more natural and less contrived or forced. 

Now you know how to write dialogue that enhances the narrative and adds realism and life to your characters to drive the plot. Start with the basic dialogue rules for format, tags, and placement. As you become better versed, try implementing the more advanced tips and ask for critique when you are done.