Consider this: positive reviews are the lifeblood of any independent author. We live for them! And they help us sell more books, which is really awesome. But how can you make them even better?
Caveats
Don’t provide a positive review in exchange for a positive one you just got. And don’t provide one in the hopes that you’ll get one in return. Personally, I very rarely give out five stars. A book has to truly leave me sock-free. I can enjoy a book immensely but still not give it five stars. However, I give out a lot of 3- and 4-star reviews, particularly to indie authors.
And if my review is a positive one, I spread it to as many places as I can.
Length
Just saying you loved a piece is not enough. It’s better than nothing, of course. But you, too, are a writer. You can do better than that! While you don’t have to hit an actual word count, it is more helpful if you give the review some time and attention. Naturally, if you are pressed for time or you have to do a lot of reviews, then you will not get into things like you would if your time was more open.
Plus it does not have to be a novel. A 50 – 150 word review should do nicely, unless it is a blog post. In that case, best practices for blog posts is 300 or more words. So adjust accordingly.
Specificity
Writers often get crippling self-doubt. Imposter syndrome is common. Generalized reviews don’t help much. Be clear about what you loved.
Scarlet O’Hara was a strong female character in a man’s world. What is most impressive about her is the fact that she was written in 1936. Hence Margaret Mitchell was almost revolutionary in writing her. While today we might scoff at some of Scarlet’s machinations, she still manages to be a memorable and memorably flawed character. Her motivations are clear and logical. Her endgame is satisfying.
While the author is no longer alive to read my praise, the paragraph still gets across my admiration for the work (I do, for real, like the book, although it’s not one of my absolute favorites, and I know it’s problematic). This is also a meatier review than just “It’s great!” The review does not just make the writer feel good; it also provides vital information for potential readers. As a result, it’s can help more with sales.
Spoiler-Free Positive Reviews
Please don’t give away the ending! My above review snippet about Gone With the Wind does not give away the ending. In fact, it gives away just about none of the plot at all.
I would write a longer review (the above bit is really just a part of it) where I would probably mention the US Civil War and Rhett Butler. I might get into Ashley Wilkes and Melanie Hamilton, particularly if I were writing a blog post and needed to make word count.
Spread the Love
There are several online places which take reviews.
Amazon reviews most directly affect a writer’s sales and potential sales. If you provide positive reviews on an obscure book blog read by only a few people, then the impact will not be as great. You can also review on other countries’ versions of Amazon (UK, Canada, etc.), GoodReads, CreateSpace, Barnes & Noble, or iBooks.
Positive Reviews Should Have a Call to Action to Read the Author’s Other Works
A call to action is anything from ‘click here’ to ‘buy this’. It is a statement online whereby you are asking someone to do something. It does not have to feel like a hard sell. Instead, you can write things like:
This book was fun and I can’t wait to see what else the writer has written.
I hear there is a sequel and I can’t wait.
I checked out the writer’s Amazon page (provide the link) and they are blogging there. I’m excited to read what they have to say.
Bad reviews can be tough to write! However, you need to write the occasional less than wonderful review in order to establish and maintain credibility. Not every novel is a stellar one. And not every effort is perfect and pristine. Pretending everything is awesome helps no one, and it undermines your credibility as a reviewer.
This blog post is about reviewing badly-written works. But if a work is out and out plagiarized, then have at it. That’s just plain wrong, and it may be copyright infringement.
Soothing Hurt Feelings and Maintaining the Relationship
Let’s face it. A less than glowing review is going to engender some hurt feelings. Plus there is every possibility a friendship will end over it. That’s not someone being a prima donna (at least, that isn’t necessarily the case). Rather, it’s that you just told someone their baby was ugly.
Yeah. It’s like that.
So, what do you do?
I believe one reasonable response is to essentially perform a cost-benefit analysis. Not everyone is a critic of any sort. Consider how hard it is to get your own work reviewed at all. It’s work!
And people like to be pleasant, plus they want very much to be liked. They may be a part of the community and hoping for positive feedback in return.
Or they might be friends or family. Hence we are all essentially graded on a curve. Know that going in.
One thing you can do is, delay and defer. Maybe that’s weasel behavior. But it will soften the blow if the negative review is not the first one anyone sees when researching a book. If someone already has 100 reviews, then it won’t be quite so noticeable.
Of course, lots of indie writers never get that many reviews. But you might be able to delay a bit.
Another idea is to go fast. Detail and length are not your friends here, so make it quick.
Consider the Audience
I suggested this for middling reviews. But it holds true here as well. Who is more likely to read your review? If the writers asks you to review on Amazon, then you are going to rather directly affect someone’s sales and potential sales.
But if you are being asked to review on an obscure book blog read by sixteen people, then the impact will not be as great. Plus you can initially post your negative review only on the obscure book blog.
Once the writer sees the review, I doubt he or she will push for you to share it on Amazon, GoodReads, CreateSpace, Barnes & Noble, or iBooks.
And, if you really want to be sensitive to the author’s feelings, you can also show them the review before you post. They may very well tell you not to bother.
Providing Constructive Criticism in Bad Reviews
While this is a good idea in theory, it’s not really what someone is looking for when they request a book review. Instead, rather than hearing that they should learn dialogue tags by checking out this Grammar Girl link, they want to read about how their book moved you.
However, you still might be able to slip in some constructive criticisms, and write things like I would love to see this book with shorter chapters; it might benefit from another round of edits or some strategic splitting. Or I was hoping for a less challenging mystery. This one was hard.
You’re not damning with faint praise but you’re also not putting lipstick on things.
And there’s no law that says you can’t privately message the writer and help them out with that kind of constructive feedback.
A Few Escape Hatches for Your Lousy Reviews
Preface a bad review with some escape hatches which will help the writer. After all, you’re not there to trash them, right? Here are a few ideas:
† I am not the intended audience for this work or genre. – For example, if you’re over 60 and asked to review YA, you probably aren’t in the intended audience. Maybe younger folks would be big fans.
• The work is unique. – Unless it’s plagiarized, this is nearly always going to be 100% honest and accurate.
† It is a good freshman effort. – This is straying into the realm of damning with faint praise. But it’s not a horrible thing to write about a work. Most people are not going to do well with their first novel. And that’s okay. Overnight successes are rare, and they should be.
• I really liked this one thing and think you should have written a lot more of it. – Liked one of the supporting characters? Enchanted by the setting? Think the plot was a good idea but poorly realized? Then this suggestion is for you.
Of course, you are not rewriting the piece for the writer. But your suggestions might just become helpful plot bunnies for them for later. Maybe they really will write a sequel or prequel, or revisit the scene, or rework the plot in another piece.
Salvage the Relationship by Privately Reviewing
You might be able to save things by privately telling someone – you don’t want me to post this review. There are review sites which will do this, and will often give the writer a choice. If a writer really wants reviews, they might be okay with a less than wonderful one.
You are presumably friendly or at least cordial with the writer. Give them a break and give them the option.
By the way, negative reviews can often help a new writer. Not only do they give the writer what could end up being really valuable feedback, they can even boost sales.
For consumers considering taking a chance on a new, unknown author, a rash of 5-star super-perfect reviews can seem suspect. But a few poor reviews can give the whole thing more credibility.
And here’s the kicker. No matter how bad your review is, it will still be listed on your reviewer page on Amazon (yes, they exist; just click on a reviewer’s name). This is a small spreading of news/linking back, and it will be helpful—almost no matter what you say. Almost.
How about Bad Reviews for Famous People?
If you only write 4- and 5-star reviews, then you are probably selling everyone short. Just like bad reviews can give a writer more credibility, they can also give the reviewer more credibility.
But if you don’t want to hurt your friends’ feelings, what do you do?
One idea is to review all sorts of books. Review classics where the writer is long dead. Or review popular works with hundreds or thousands of reviews where no one will notice your review much, anyway.
Did you hate reading The Scarlet Letter? Then go ahead and trash it on any review site you can find.
It’s not like Nathaniel Hawthorne is going to rise from the grave and complain, right?
Er, right?
Bad reviews are a little like medicine. Often unpleasant, but they can help cure problems! #amreviewing
Let’s be honest: fair to middling reviews are harder to write than either positive or negative ones. Why? Because there is definitely a skill involved. But you are probably going to write more of them than any other type of review. Why is that? Because truly superlative works are uncommon. At least, they should be.
As always, kindness should be your guide. The work isn’t out and out awful. It just needs some help. Mid-level reviews can be extremely helpful. They can provide valuable feedback for a new author. Because it is sweetened with praise and other positives, it is more palatable.
Consider the Audience
But who is most likely to read your review? If you review on Amazon, then anything you write is going to rather directly affect someone’s sales and potential sales. If you review on an obscure book blog read by only a few people, then the impact will not be as great.
So what happens if you post your middle of the road review only on the obscure book blog? Once the writer sees the review, he or she might not want to push for you to share it on Amazon, GoodReads, CreateSpace, Barnes & Noble, or iBooks. Or maybe the author will want to see your review spread all over the internet. It’s hard to say. Your mid-level review may be the best one they get.
And consider that the sheer number of reviews an author gets on Amazon will help with sales. A book with 500 reviews of varying stars and enthusiasm levels will have a link in at least 500 places (each reviewer has a page—wait, you didn’t know that?). If you click on the name of a reviewer, it lists all of their reviews. But a book with 5 stellar reviews? It’s only listed on the pages of 5 reviewers.
Now, both are important. But you can see that a volume of reviews will help an author. And if the best you can muster up is a fair to middle review, then go for it.
The Value of Middling Reviews
For a new author, potential buyers are often suspicious of 100% stellar reviews. Hence if the 5-star reviews are peppered with some 3-stars, then potential buyers tend to feel more comfortable that they are seeing accurate reviews that were not bought and paid for.
Furthermore, if the author has enough reviews (the number seems to be ten or more), Amazon will sort them by most helpful positive and most helpful negative. If your middling reviews are the most helpful negative reviews, that can actually help writers.
So, how do you get started?
The Shit Sandwich
Yeah, you read that right. Since this is not going to be a wholly negative review, you can split it into thirds. This makes it feel less unremittingly negative. The first third should be the smallest or smaller positive thing you have to say. In the middle is the negative thing you need to say. Finally, end with your strongest positive.
But why am I suggesting this particular order? Let’s look at some examples.
Consider These Examples of Middling Reviews
The Cowardly Lion character was fantastic and very credible. The Tin Woodsman was dull. Dorothy was okay.
The Dorothy character was all right but could have used some work. The Tin Woodsman was hard to take at times. My favorite character was the Cowardly Lion.
The Tin Woodsman was terrible. Dorothy was passable. The Cowardly Lion was amazing.
In the first example, you might think it’s a purely positive review. It’s easy to forget the negative in the middle when the positive starts off so strongly. In the third example, the writer is put on the defensive nearly immediately. The review feels negative, even though the end is positive.
Further, in the second instance, the first part is generally positive albeit with constructive criticism. The middle part is negative. But it gives a specific reason for the reviewer’s negative reaction. This is also something the writer could potentially build on and fix in later works. And the final part adds a positive personal touch.
Of course you would never write such a simplistic review. Plus you are reading this blog but you are not the author of The Wizard of Oz. So, these quickie reviews are not personal to you. Therefore, substitute your own work, and consider how each review would make you feel.
Length
Because this is not a negative review, you can add some length to it. But because it’s not unremittingly positive, it does not have to be lengthy. The ideal length is probably about 50 to 100 words. If you want to say more, contact the writer in private. For self-published works, editing and republishing are usually pretty easy. Hence if you find a glaring translation error, the writer can fix it. You can save the day with your review.
Ending on a High Note
End with a positive. Seriously. Don’t lie, but there is no reason to be nasty. Be encouraging; so many indies suffer self-doubt. This is your opportunity to be kind. After all, next time, you may be in the hot seat.
Middling reviews — semi-tough love for writers. #amreviewing
For editing part 2 let’s get past acting like your own biggest fan, like we did in Editing Part 1. Time to get out the scissors. Or the weedwhacker.
More Editing
Let’s go to editing Part 2!
So last time, we looked at some general issues surrounding editing. Although the process may seem daunting, it still must be done. For this post, I will assume you have done the tasks outlined in the first part.
If not, then this methodology will still work. But I think you’ll find you will need to do the preliminary steps anyway. Hence you might as well get them done now. Then it’s on to Editing Part 2.
Spell Check
Maybe it sounds dumb. Perhaps it’s obvious. But you still need to run a spell checker. Don’t have one? Then try a free spell checker online. But if you have a spellchecker in your application, use it.
Understand that certain typos will be a problem. If you type ‘that’ for ‘this’, it will not show up, as those are both real words. Hence your spellchecker provides only a preliminary solution. Have the program ignore names, in order to eliminate them from contention.
Find and Replace
Your find feature is a godsend; use it! Furthermore, if you use names which might have typical typos, try searching for them with ctrl-F. For example, the main character in my 2015 NaNoWriMo novel had the name of Marnie. Hence I searched for the word ‘Marine’. But I made sure to check on usage before I hit ‘replace’.
This feature also works when you change a character’s name.
Find and Count
Do you overuse some expressions? Repetitive language isn’t bad. But too much of it is dull. Consider usage, and adjust repeated sentences accordingly.
That Attack
My good friend D. R. Perry taught me this one, and I love it. Have your program count how often you use the word ‘that’. Of course, it’s not a bad word outright. But overusing anything can be dull. By counting this particular word, you get a handle on your use of certain idiomatic phrases. E. g. ‘he thought that’, ‘she said that’, ‘they felt that that was funny’.
In all three of these instances, the word ‘that’ can be cut without losing any sense.
Synonym Sweep
This time, search for the word ‘very’. As with ‘that’, the word is perfectly fine, despite what Stephen King says. However, he is right (as was Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society) insofar as it’s a not so precise use of language. What’s better: ‘very big’ or ‘gigantic’? For a children’s book, probably the former. For any other kind of book, it may be the latter.
If you can clip the adverb and instead enhance the adjective with a better synonym, your writing will be more interesting. Stay away from obscure adjectives (e. g. ‘Brobdingnagian’). Also, your characters can use all the adverbs they like when speaking. But try to cut them in your scene setting, your transitions, and your exposition.
That’s the first half of Editing Part 2. Now onto the second half.
Fat Cutter
You’ve been doing this all along, with ‘that attack’ and ‘synonym sweep’. The idea is to excise unnecessary words. Unlike the former two methods, this one will require some reading. Up until now, everything has been done programmatically. Now you need to do some digging. But first check how long your chapters are.
There is no hard and fast rule for chapter length, but if all of your chapters are 20 – 35 pages and one is 63, then that one might have some fat you can cut. Or maybe you can just split it into two or even three chapters.
Consider descriptive text and exposition. You need it, but how long does it have to be? Familiar places in the current time period probably just need a few words: downtown Detroit, the Great Barrier Reef, etc. Or familiar places in the past need more but can still be pretty spare, such as Victorian-era London, or ancient Rome during Claudius Caesar’s reign.
Familiar places in the future need more but you can build on today: 2023 Berlin maybe has taller buildings, 3116 Istanbul might be enclosed in a geodesic dome. Unfamiliar places will need more lavish attention to detail. But metaphors and similes are your friends. The new planet might be as big as Saturn but without rings, and smell like wet dog.
Scene Shifts and Plot Changes
These are much bigger and will take up a lot more of your time. Before you do either, you might want to consider whether your story can be understood by beta readers without doing either. If so, then keep this in mind (maybe take some notes) but don’t do it. See what beta readers say. Maybe you won’t need to make such drastic changes at all.
Final Read-Through Before Betas
Give it one last read-through. Look for the right words in the wrong places (e. g. a typo which turned out to be a correctly spelled word, so spellchecker missed it). Look for sense and ease of understanding. Make sure your plot makes sense.
Then kiss your manuscript good-bye (for the time being) and send it off to beta readers.
Post-Beta Readings and Editing Part 2
After betas, Editing Part 2 should be followed by a kind of Editing Part 3. Consider your betas’ advice. You don’t need to take it all, but listen with an open mind. Do one last read-through and then send your work to a professional editor, if you can afford one.
Why should you, if you’ve done all this? Because you (or I) may have missed something. In addition, all this preliminary work was free. Your edited work will come back a lot faster and cleaner.
Then, and only then, can you consider querying.
Editing Part 2—yep, there was a part 1, as well.
Want More on Beta Reading and Editing?
If you want more on beta reading and editing, check out the following posts:
We have all heard of what an elevator pitch is. It seems like it is the kind of stuff for overly eager new sales associates looking to make an impression on the big boss between floors.
But there is more to it than that.
Someone has just turned to you and said, “You’re a writer. What’s your book about?”
Don’t just stand there! You’ve got to be ready.
Your Verbal Elevator Pitch
Try something like this on for size.
Imagine if animals started talking, and they told you what to do in a topsy-turvy world.
My book is about Alice; she’s a young girl, a little bored on a sunny afternoon, when she spots a white rabbit. The odd thing about this rabbit is, he’s wearing clothes and talking. She follows him down a rabbit hole, but then she can’t get out.
That’s less than seventy words, and the person asking has the basic plot, the name of the heroine, and a reason to want to know more.
Your Pitch in Writing
Yes, you need one of these, too. But but a written elevator pitch a little different.
Even if readers know you for writing sweeping, epic sagas, you should still write some short stories. They can be in your universe, or not, although it might help with both marketing and your own personal creativity if they can fit somewhere within your universe.
They do not even necessarily have to be sent out for publication, but they could be good for anthologies. Don’t knock that; this is exactly how a lot of people get their starts. In fact, if you are having trouble breaking in, or want to impress a publisher, try submitting to anthologies. You can get a published credit and impress the publisher of the anthology. There’s a win-win right there.
Point them there, if someone wants to read a sampling of your work. Don’t make them commit to a 100,000 word novel.
On Balance
Finally, have fun with it. Is your main character funny? What about quoting one of her best zingers, assuming you don’t need to explain the joke? Now there’s an idea for a pitch.
I suppose, in the back of my mind, when I was first starting to write (age four or five or thereabouts), I had an idea about becoming a published author. I also wanted to, at times, be a cowgirl, a veterinarian, an archaeologist and other things. Becoming, for real, published, makes up one weird world.
So, sit down, and let me tell you all about it.
Origins Story
No, I was not bitten by a radioactive spider.
For probably any aspiring author, the road is a long one. When I first started writing, it constituted what you would now refer to as graphic fiction. I was a child and so I would draw little figures in addition to a few words. As I got older, the words began to dominate, and I have never written, as an adult, a graphic novel.
Maybe I should one of these days. Except my visual artistic endeavors have not truly developed beyond what they were when I was in grade school. So, maybe not.
I wrote fan fiction for a while and then began to migrate over to wholly original fiction. Furthermore, I had wanted to write for NaNoWriMo back in 2012, but I did not have a decent idea that year.
I also wanted to make what I wrote wholly original fiction. In 2013, I was fortunate enough to come up with a great idea and so Untrustworthy was born.
I submitted it to a contest held by Riverdale Avenue Books and was lucky enough when they chose me as the winner in February of 2014. My thanks, of course, goes out to the wonderful people there, particularly Lori Perkins and Don Weise.
The Start of the Wild Ride of Publishing
I took a few months for things to really start clicking along. Lori was busy, other submissions came in, plus of course they had a business to run. I was in school at Quinnipiac and so, while I noticed the time passing, I was okay with it.
In November, Lori contacted me and we started to get down to the nitty gritty. This included editing the manuscript. It also included getting together a blurb about me and getting an established person in the business to review my book (a thousand thanks to Cecilia Tan!), and deciding on a cover.
I felt that the aliens in my novel would be too difficult to draw, and making up a model like them would be costly (such things are at issue if you’re a first-time author, folks) and wouldn’t necessarily evoke my vision.
Hence I instead suggested an image of broken glass. Adding to that effect were the concepts that (a) the moon, Wecabossia, would be nearly the same size as Caboss, so it would be rather large in the sky and readily observable during daylight hours, and (b) the Cabossians breathe methyl salicylate, or wintergreen oil.
Those gave the cover designer (the incomparable Scott Carpenter) some design elements and ideas to work with. I truly love the cover and how the huge moon gives a sense of foreboding as the one broken window amidst a mass of perfection is a nagging hint that something’s not quite right.
Note, by the way, that there is a newer cover, meant to evoke The Handmaid’s Tale as Untrustworthy is cut from fairly similar cloth.
Nuts and Bolts
A ton of strange things happen when you are published. For one, you need an Amazon Author page! But you can’t make one until your book is actually for sale on Amazon, in any format. Furthermore, Amazon’s many domains have different rules. You can make author pages on Amazon.com (the US), Amazon.co.uk (the UK), Amazon.fr (France), Amazon.de (Germany), and Amazon.co.jp (Japan).
Amazon Author pages exist on Amazon.ca (Canada), but you can’t change them! For Amazon.it (Italy) and others, there are no Author pages. I hope Amazon makes this feature more uniform across the board.
As for what to put into your Author page, you need a good recent headshot of yourself (mine comes from four years ago; I could use a newer one) and links to things like your Twitter stream and your blog RSS, if any.
For works available in countries with non-English native tongues, you might want to have a trusted friend help you with translations (or do them yourself, if you’re able to). Trusting Google Translate is not in your best interests. Get a native speaker.
Autographing
Dealing with autographing books is interesting when someone hundreds of miles away asks you to do this. I’ll pass along this tip from New York Times bestselling author Dayton Ward: arrange it all through PayPal. For him, the best way to take care of this means to collect the cost of the book and two types of postage: one goes to his home or a post office box, and the other goes to the fan’s location.
I’ll add to this – if it’s a person you know, and you don’t mind giving out your address (or if you have a PO box I suppose your relationship with them would be moot anyway), have them have Amazon (or Barnes & Noble, wherever your book is available in dead tree format) ship the book directly to that location. Then all you need to collect is return postage.
Conceivably, someone who doesn’t want to work with PayPal could even supply a money order and slip it in the mail to your PO box.
Reviews are gold and you need them. But how do you get them? If your friends are buying your work, once they say they’ve finished, ask them to write you a review. Reviews can be short – a five-word sentence is better than nothing. There are also book bloggers. Do your research and find some that are (a) semi-available, (b) write decent, unbiased, honest, and constructive reviews, and (c) read your genre.
Oh, and bad reviews? Not fun but don’t be discouraged! For many brand-new authors, having unmitigatingly positive reviews and five stars all over the place feels, well, kind of suspect. But a bad review, here and there, and a single star or no stars will help you. Because readers will see the reviews as being far more authentic.
Takeaways for Being Published
It’s all rather satisfying but also a tad freaky. Every now and then, I just want to run around screaming – I’m a published author!
Here are three things you can do if you have received a rejection from an agent or a publisher.
Mourning
1) Mourn. Yes, mourn! It kinda hurts so allow yourself to feel hurt. But! Put a time limit on that. As in a week. Then consider yourself done with mourning what was.
Leave it!
2) Stick it in a drawer for three months, minimum. Let it go and move onto other things (another good reason to work on a lot of stuff at once).
Review it!
3) After the magical three months (or more) have elapsed, take out the file and the rejection slip.
Objective Considerations
Consider a few objective things: (a) was it the wrong genre for that publisher? Then be more careful next time and keep track of which publisher accepts which kinds of works. (b) was it not submitted correctly? Then take the time to do submissions right. Do they want an attachment? Then send one next time. Do they want just the pitch and three chapters? Then send that.
Do they just want the pitch? Then only send that. You get the idea. (c) Did you submit to more than one publisher when this one said they didn’t like that? Then don’t do that again.
Subjective Considerations
Also consider subjective things: (a) did they not understand what your story is about? Then you need to work on your pitch/blurb. A writers’ group is a great place to do that.
Or (b) did they say they had trouble getting through your story? Then you need to edit that sucker. Never mind if you already did. Edit again. And consider working with a pro editor. They are pricey but that is for a good reason.
If you absolutely cannot afford a professional editor, then you need to hack away at your work yourself. So determine whether scenes or characters can be combined, as a start. Go back to beta feedback (you did work with beta readers, right?) and figure out what you hand waved away and work on what they told you to do. Because they were probably at least partly right.
Or (c) did they say it just wasn’t for them? Then figure out why.
Maybe they got three other moose detective stories before yours. Or maybe they’re closing the imprint you queried to. Maybe they’re just swamped.
† Idea stage. You’re just kicking this one around.
• Outlining stage. If you don’t outline, then consider this the ‘serious ideas’ stage.
† Rough draft writing stage. Get it on paper or pixels.
• Beta reading/editing stage. Polish that prose and alter your work in response to feedback.
† Querying stage/publishing stage. If you’re self-publishing, then this is just the publishing stage.
The mourning, etc. I listed above? Call it stage #5a, or #4a if you really need to go back into the guts of the piece.
What do hairstyles and costumes really have to do with writing?
Hairstyles and Costumes and How They Can Help Your Readers Out
Now, you may very well be thinking that this kind of stuff doesn’t, truly matter. So what if a character wears shorts or jeans? How could it matter if they wear their hair down, or in a ponytail?
A lot more than you may think.
Let’s start with clothes.
Clothes Maketh the Character
When I tell you that Nell‘s clothes are often too big for her, and that the burgundy down jacket she wears is really big on her and is shedding feathers, what do you think of? How about when I tell you that Jeannie wears a Gucci blouse that’s over the top?
But there’s really no substitute for Untrustworthy when it comes to leveraging what the characters are wearing as a plot point. In that book, the people are told what to wear. There’s no choice. It’s a mandate.
So, as Tathrelle starts to figure out something is going on, the divisions between people based on clothing get deeper and deeper. And while I didn’t intend it that way, the thugs end up wearing black.
So, let’s go from top to bottom and see what we can determine, all right?
Hats
In Mettle, people wear hats for warmth. But in The Real Hub of the Universe, people wear them for style, and to indicate class.
Ceilidh‘s original hat is just a flat little thing to wear because you can’t go outside without a hat on. But when they want her to look rich, Devon buys her a better one. And she knows things are serious with Jake when he purchases her the latest style in bonnets.
As for Jake himself, I wanted the hat which Rhett Butler wears in Gone With the Wind—a plantation owner’s hat.
Plantation Owner’s Hat (for sale at Poshmark). Image is for reference purposes only.
This wasn’t just because his family is wealthy, and they had owned slaves. It’s also because, frankly (heh) I didn’t like the looks of other hats of the time.
Shirts and Blouses
There’s a big difference between a low cut, tight blouse versus a boxy, nondescript garment that someone’s swimming in.
In The Enigman Cave, when they conduct first contact, Marnie doesn’t want uniforms. So, the squad get different shirts. These include a shirt worn to remember a deceased person and another to commemorate a band.
Belts and Shoes, Pants and Skirts, Dresses and Jumpsuits
Much like Ceilidh needs a hat for basic decency, men probably needed belts. And, characters will likely need to be shod somehow. And, if they aren’t, the best example I can give of that mattering is in the film Die Hard.
Essentially, if a character is barefoot, is broken glass or the like too far behind?
Whether a character wears a skirt can depend on gender, tradition (kilts), or just fashion. But if Ceilidh was to wear pants, it would most likely be for only one purpose—to hide and play at being a man if necessary.
Dresses are Ceilidh’s uniform, more or less, even when she’s not working.
But what about jumpsuits? They give off a cool sci fi vibe to a lot of people. One reason may be that they’re less fussy. Also, the wardrobe department might not have to conjure up futuristic buttons. Although they will have to repair zippers, most likely.
Undergarments
For Ceilidh, it’s corsets all the way. I had to research whether they would lace up in the front, or in the back, like for Scarlett in Gone With the Wind. Fortunately, I found that she could wear a corset with the laces in the front. Otherwise, I would have had issues with her taking it off to sleep at night while traveling by ship (and not with another woman to help her).
Peri occasionally wears a black nightie for rollicking times with Dave Shepherd. Otherwise, I don’t really delve into underwear because I generally didn’t need to.
Outerwear
Apart from Nell’s down jacket, outerwear can be stylish, warm, waterproof, or an advertisement to everyone that the wearer is wealthy. Or, it can be none of these things. A shabby jacket with holes in it says a lot about a character. When Ceilidh goes from wearing a shabby old cloak to a new pink coat which Devon buys for her, it’s a major step up in status.
Of course, there are other categories of clothing, but you get the idea, yes?
Hairstyles
There’s a difference between the bun Ceilidh wears originally, but in the prequel to Real Hub… she starts to wear her hair in a chignon. It’s a relatively similar hairstyle, except that it sits lower on the neck. In part, it’s a symbol of leaving younger and more girlish times behind and facing womanhood, ready or not.
For Marnie, a change in her attitude about herself starts to come about when she has the quartermaster touch up her dye job and give her a long-overdue haircut. But you may notice that Lex is nervous around her even before she undergoes this small makeover.
Peri’s hair is chin length, but in a flashback (so it’ll show up in the prequel), it’s long enough for a ponytail.
In Mettle, anyone with longish hair braids it, including Elise, who hasn’t done that since she was a kid. And, in part, you can gauge the passage of time with Craig’s crewcut growing out—and it comes full circle, with Jeannie going from big Texas-style hair to culturally misappropriating dreadlocks.
In Untrustworthy, Tathrelle and Ixalla wear their hair a particular way because it’s the law.
Facial Hair
While I made Jake Radford and Devon Grace clean-shaven, many men of the Victorian era had at least a moustache. Another gauge of time passing in Mettle is the appearance of beards, and then their length. Craig says of his own that he could make a fine living selling cough drops.
Hairstyles and Costumes Leads Me to Makeup
I don’t want to go too nuts with this. Ceilidh doesn’t wear makeup as that would be vulgar. Peri uses some and even jokes that Dave has more personal grooming products than she does. Marnie uses it at times.
As for Josie, it’s a display which she can control with a wave of her hand.
Ixalla and Tathrelle have never heard of it. And as for the people of Mettle, Kitty and Mink use a lot, but only at the start of the book. Otherwise, it becomes another thing to just drop as no longer being important.
Takeaways on Hairstyles and Costumes (and Makeup!)
Do your characters want to look sexy? Straightlaced? Cool? Like they belong? These basic details can clue your readers into how you see your characters—and how you want your readers to see them as well.
Hairstyles and costumes maketh the characters!
Want More of Using Hairstyles and Costumes and Other Background to Evoke the Senses in Writing?
If the idea of leveraging hairstyles and costumes in your writing resonates with you, then check out my other articles about using sense cues.
Set dressing is a term that comes from theater and film and entails decorating a particular set with curtains and furniture, filling shelves and generally making it look real and lived-in.
So, just like you have pictures on your walls or a chair with one uneven leg, or an indoor swimming pool, film characters have those sorts of things. In any decent film in terms of budget and artistry, these things are far from random.
And we, the audience, make judgments about the characters based on what we are seeing.
You can do this with fiction. But let’s look at a couple of my favorite examples of this understated art/science.
Smart Set Dressing on a Budget
Scene from the movie Office Space — image is for reference purposes only
I love how Office Space is put together! For those of us who worked during the era it’s set in, the cubicles and the drabness are all too familiar.
And while the film itself doesn’t look or feel particularly low budget, putting together the sets had to have been relatively straightforward and certainly cost-effective.
Peter’s apartment has furnishings that look like Ikea knockoffs. The casual restaurant where Joanna works is probably just some adaptation of a Chili’s or the like.
And the office itself is so soulless and unfamiliar, it could be just about anywhere. Hell, I think I may have worked there…
Now, I don’t pretend to know how much it all cost. But anything you don’t have to do too much to? It’s got to be inexpensive. And the best part is that it fits the movie’s vibe perfectly.
Lavish Set Dressing on an Obviously Much Bigger Budget
Of course, with the epic film Titanic, James Cameron had the real thing as a reference. But a lot of people probably would have been okay with it if he had missed a detail here or there. Except, that doesn’t seem to be the case. The reproduction appears to be more or less flawless.
Consider the grand staircase. It’s sumptuous and beautiful and apparently was built more to be an actual room than just a movie set.
Image of grand staircase from the film Titanic. Image is for reference purposes only.
It is, of course, a real live staircase that the actors could walk on, etc.
There’s an incredible attention to detail—they just don’t make ’em like that anymore.
Except, evidently, it was built in Mexico City for the film!
Now, you and I probably wouldn’t notice if the carvings weren’t as unbelievably ornate. But Cameron of course would. With good money (obviously!) behind him, he could make these kinds of set decisions.
Dressing the Titanic set means it looks and feels as if money is no object. Because that’s pretty damn accurate.
But What Does This Have to do With Writing?
Quite a bit! When you are putting together your universe, you will need to get a few things straight. And one of them is the set/scenery. So, take some inspiration from how Hollywood and elsewhere makes movies?
Do a few thought experiments. When does the story take place? Are the people wealthy? Poor? In the middle? How can you reflect that in your prose, without hitting the reader over the head with it?
After all, you can say X character is poor. Or you can say that X character is catching a cold because of holes in their shoes. Terry Pratchett has a particularly great quote on boots and wealth. But of course you don’t have to copy him in order to make a rather similar point.
For Richer or Poorer
Consider, also, the come up (or down) in circumstances that may accompany a marriage or other commitment in your world. Picture coming home to a new place with your new spouse and finding out their credit score is in the tank and they’re living on ramen and handouts from the local food bank.
Or, on the flip side, imagine coming home and finding out that the bills will always be affordable, and you don’t have to turn the heat down to freezing.
Work Spaces
Beyond Office Space, and even the Titanic, where your characters work deserves some attention to detail as well. Do the stairs creak? Are there cigarette burns in the carpeting? Do dragons fly by every hour or so?
Immersion into such a scene means cueing in your readers on things like whether a character has little toys on their desk at work, or they always have a suitcase packed. Does the building have a cafeteria? Is the parking garage safe?
How many women are in the workplace, and what do they do? Who makes the coffee? And who fetches it? Who has the corner office, and who can work from home (if applicable)?
Do some research if you are writing about the past, to be sure you don’t accidentally introduce anachronisms. Even into the mid- to late-1990s, not every white collar worker had a computer at their desk, for example (I know, I lived this). And what better way to show a company is on the skids than by saddling its employees with obsolete technology?
Medical Spaces
Beyond them obviously being a subset of work spaces, there is a real difference in look and feel between, say, M*A*S*H, General Hospital, and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. The treatment options available will be apparent if you keep the equipment nearby. That equipment could be anything from ether to an MRI machine to the condition of the building or tent where characters practice medicine.
Do they make house calls? Treat people at a battlefield or an accident scene? And without getting into casting, think about the ages, genders, and races of the people practicing medicine. Can women be doctors? How much knowledge do the people have? With medical spaces, you can also tell a lot about them by showing if they’re clean or not.
Spaces for Education
The one-room schoolhouse is a far cry from a modern school with assorted classes, professional teachers, and perhaps bilingual students. Books or laptops? Or slates? How industrial-looking is the building? Are there metal detectors? Armed guards? Someone dressed as the school mascot running around?
Is there a trophy case? An office? There is an enormous difference between a scholastic environment where there’s a swimming pool, versus one where the paint is peeling off the walls.
Are special education students separate from everyone else? Or is there mainstreaming? Or do they just not go to school at all?
Go back a bit, and students would have had to pump their own water. The style of teaching is also extremely different. Without going down that rabbit hole just now, consider how schooling changes just from one generation to another. Is it rote memorization? Phonics? Recitations?
And don’t get me started on how they’re teaching math ….
Transportation
Your transportation setting could very well be a horse with a saddle and a bridle. Hell, go back far enough, and there aren’t even really saddles.
Or your characters could be riding in a 1970s Lincoln Continental or a Stanhope gig or the lunar rover. Even disabled and bedridden characters may have to go somewhere or other, whether it’s to shop or for medical care (see above). Is there a walker in the home? Are the stairs off limits, with a baby gate in front of them? Or are there tripping hazards everywhere, in a place where someone’s a hoarder?
If you think this is another way to show versus tell, then give yourself a cookie.
Takeaways
Your characters need spaces—to live in, work in, fight in, get sick in, have a party in, or even to die in. Give those spaces some details and your readers will love how you’ve decorated your worlds.
There is more than just the visuals, and we’ll get to the other senses soon.
Scene setting is an important skill in writing!
Want More of Using Senses in Writing?
If the idea of using set dressing with your writing resonates with you, then check out my other articles about using sense cues.
Teasing is a subtle art. It is a lot like a fan dancer’s moves or a shy person’s come-on.
Teasing should feel like a movie trailer because that is exactly what movie trailers do.
Teasers are usually a bit longer than blurbs and are meant to generate excitement. They often end with a question, but they don’t have to. Think of how films are teased if you’re stumped for ideas.
She was spoiled, rich, and beautiful, until the Civil War ended it all.
Scarlett O’Hara has lost nearly everything.
But there’s a rich man who’s interested, and he might even love her.
Can she win Rhett Butler and save her beloved land, Tara?
Revealing Too Much
Don’t get too obvious! You do not do yourself any favors by spoiling your own book. Notice how the above teasing for Gone With The Wind does not go past maybe the middle of the film? And how it never mentions Ashley or Melanie Wilkes, the burning of Atlanta, or Scarlett’s first two husbands?
I deliberately left the teaser off at just about when the first big reel ends. It used to be, in the theater, Gone With The Wind would have an intermission, the film was so long. This teaser ends just about a minute after intermission ends.
In fact, this is at least part of how the actual film was edited. The book gives Scarlett two children before Bonnie—one each from her first two husbands. But Wade and Ella aren’t in the film.
Then again, they aren’t in the book that much, either.
Revealing Too Little
This is another problem. If I just said Scarlett was a wealthy woman living a life of luxury on the brink of the Civil War, that would feel a bit incomplete.
I can go a little further, plus adding Rhett Butler’s name to the teaser brings in the chief male character (he’s kind of a main character, but if I had to choose, the main character would be Scarlett). Marrying Rhett is one of Scarlett O’Hara’s main character drivers, whether it is to secure finances for her family or due to love on her part.
Bringing Rhett into the conversation means the listener or reader gets an even better idea about who Scarlett is, and what motivates her.
So, providing her motivation really cinches it.
The Bare Bones
We have something of a framework here. Of course, none of this is set in concrete. But these elements seem to matter the most.
Mention the main character by name.
Give brief background to orient the reader to time and place.
Introduce the problem/conflict.
Add one driver of the main character’s behavior.
Wrap it up with tying the first, smaller driver to the most important driver of the main character’s behavior.
A Teasing Sample
To wit:
Alice is just plain bored, so she gets to daydreaming. When she sees a white rabbit wearing a waistcoat and carrying a pocket watch, it piques her interest.
She follows the rabbit when she hears it talk, and ends up in Wonderland. But Wonderland is odd, exasperating, and often downright confusing.
Can Alice get out of Wonderland with her sanity intact?
Here’s a Second Teasing Sample
Kansas is dreary and nothing ever seems to happen there. It’s a tough place for Dorothy, a girl with big dreams. When a twister drops her, her little dog, and her house into the land of Oz, things seem to be looking up.
But Oz has perils for both Dorothy and her dog, Toto. And Dorothy realizes she misses Kansas and her family after all.
Can Dorothy and Toto get back to Kansas and the people they love?
Practical Teasing Practice
Can you write a teaser for a classic work? Try it in the Comments section, and let’s see how you do!
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