Hello writers! Blame it on Barbie, whose eponymous movie has inspired legions of devotees to doll up in pink to travel to theatres around the world. (To quote Ken: “So cool.”) Or blame it on Beyoncé, whose Renaissance World Tour is inspiring rapture in the Beyhive from Stockholm to Toronto. Or blame it on Comic-Con, which drew out fans of every genre (and sub-genre) to San Diego last weekend. Whatever the reasons, we’re thinking a lot about fandoms this month—how to find them, and how to give them what they need.
In this newsletter, you’ll find intel about respecting audiences from Jessica Ward, advice on sourcing superfan-inspiring blurbs, and a primer on the new shame-free flavour of fanfic. Plus, writing unlikable characters, working with bots, and generating ideas for a first novel.
But first:
Jessica Ward on serving her audiences
Prolific (and, occasionally, delightfully profane) author Jessica Ward contains multitudes. Under the name Jessica Ward, she writes psychological thrillers, including the new coming-of-age novel The St. Ambrose School for Girls. As J.R. Ward, she writes paranormal romance, including the bestselling The Black Dagger Brotherhood series. And once upon a time, she wrote contemporary romances as Jessica Bird—the name she was born with.
Over the past 20-odd years, Jessica has sold millions of books and inspired some very fervent readers. How fervent? A fan once came to a book signing while in active labour. As she explains in a recent episode of the KWL Podcast, it’s not something that she ever takes for granted.
“I’m very grateful and lucky that what happened to squirt out of my brain when I got fired and had to reinvent myself as an author, back all those years ago, happened to be something that appealed to a robust group of readers.”
Of course, there are as many different types of readers as there are writers, and Jessica has come to care very deeply about hers. Here, she shares some thoughts on meeting audiences where they are, respecting what they need, and giving them what they deserve.
Find your own spin to find your readers: “My first four books were very critically well-received, but they didn’t sell, because why would you buy ‘almost Nora Roberts’ when Nora Roberts is actually still putting out books? As a business strategy, it was not really well-thought-out. I’ll never forget my agent at the time telling me, ‘You have to figure out what a Jessica Bird book is.’ I was a huge fan of Stephen King in addition to the romance, and all of a sudden, I was like, ‘Wait a minute, you could put the two of them together?’ because paranormal romances were starting to get that engine on. I thought about it for about two weeks, and panicked when nothing showed up, and then, boom, I had The Black Dagger Brotherhood world and 10 books.”
Harness the power, and responsibility, of your pen name: “[My use of different pen names] is a marketing thing. And by marketing, I don’t mean ads. By marketing, I mean signaling to readers what this experience is going to be. For instance, J.R. Ward writes paranormal romance… It’s important to me that my J.R. Ward readers are respected. If I were to slap the J.R. Ward name on The St. Ambrose School For Girls, that might mislead my readers, and I didn’t want that.”
Use expectations as motivation: “I feel big pressure about the quality of the content. Did I spend enough time on the drafting? Did I do the best job I could at describing what I’m seeing? [Readers are] putting a lot of money into my books. Am I paying them the respect due back [to them] by putting a lot of effort into my books? I’m always very conscious of being so grateful for the platform I have, for the career I’ve had, every single day. I mean, some days are better than others, absolutely. But, like, am I showing up? Am I doing the work? Am I remaining disciplined? Am I staying connected to the gratitude?”
Listen to our full podcast interview with Jessica Ward here.
ICYMI, a few more recent KWL podcast interviews:
Catherine McKenzie on writing twists and turns in thrillers
Arizona Tape on mythology, fantasy, and LGBTQ+ representation
Ruth Ware on plotting a compelling thriller
Your Craft
The Yellowface trick to writing unlikable leads
Sometimes a story needs a messy lead—a character with bad habits, sketchy morals, and indefensible behaviour, like Don Draper on Mad Men, or Lydia Tár in Tár, or Amy Dunne in Gone Girl. Audiences are drawn to stories about unlikable characters for the same reason they pore over AITA forums on Reddit and stream chaotic clips from Jerry Springer’s (RIP) old show: a hint of schadenfreude, a soupcon of self-superiority, and, let’s be real, some pretty solid entertainment. “I’ve read many stories about characters who were degenerates, unscrupulous, dishonest, chauvinists, thieves, and so on,” explains novelist Julia Amante in this Medium post. “Characters do not have to be perfect, and readers can dislike aspects of a character and still enjoy the story and even root for them.”
So, yes, reading trainwreck characters can be great fun. But writing them? That’s another matter entirely. “Antiheroes are hard to pull off,” writer and editor Tess O’Hara argues in this Blue Pencil Agency post. “We often see good novels let down by protagonists who are unlikable in the wrong way.”
R. F. Kuang has figured out how to thread this particular needle. The protagonist of her buzzy novel Yellowface—June, a struggling author who steals a deceased frenemy’s unfinished novel and passes it off as her own—makes selfish decisions, justifies dubious behaviour, and reveals some pretty ugly thoughts. While her actions are never defensible, they are at least grounded in her version of reality, and that makes all the difference. “I love writing unlikable narrators,” R. F. explained in a recent interview with NPR. “But the trick here is it’s much more fun to follow a character that does have a sympathetic background, that does think reasonable thoughts about half the time, because then you’re compelled to follow their logic to the horrible decisions they are making.”
Three unputdownable stories of unlikable characters:
Yellowface by R. F. Kuang
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
4 places to source blurbs
“This entertaining newsletter is a must-read for only the smartest and most talented indie writers out there.” —Beloved O’Prolific, author of Respected and Popular Bestseller
Did that get your attention? Blurbs are popular for a reason: people seriously consider the tiny endorsements on the backs of physical books, or on an ebook’s product page, when choosing what to add to their TBR piles. But have you ever wondered how writers source such awesome endorsements for their books? As professional blurb writer and blurb coach Jessie Cuniffe writes in this piece at Written Word Media, “blurb-writing is often shrouded in mystique.”
Ultimately, if you want these eensy endorsements, you need to both look for them and ask for them. Earlier this year, in a blog post that aims to demystify the process, we shared four places to get great blurbs.
Other authors: Your fellow writer pals are an amazing source of kudos, especially if you offer tit for tat. From our blog: “Since blurbs are traditionally done for free, be polite and patient when it comes to responses. Ask for blurbs well in advance. If you’re a busy author, they are, too! Offer, too, a blurb in kind if that is relevant, or simply reciprocate in the future if they reach out to you for one.
Advance or beta readers: Someone who is invested enough in your success to read it before anyone else is someone whose opinion you—and your audience—ought to value. From our blog: “Ask for brief reviews of the book, their thoughts and feelings, too, and if any sentences or phrases stand out, inquire about using them for a book blurb. Even if you don’t want to feature their words on a book cover or interior, using these blurbs in advertising or on social media posts can be a great incentive to other readers.”
Reviews—professional and otherwise: If folks are talking up your title, why not try to include some of that buzz in your book text? From our blog: “Book bloggers, bookstagram reviewers, and BookTok influencers are all great sources of potential blurbs, but remember: don’t bother these book lovers! If you come across a great review, asking to quote them is totally appropriate, but don’t sit in wait or, worse yet, expect or demand reviews.”
Old reviews: Flowers are flowers, and if a past title got you raves, by all means re-use it. From our blog: “If you received an amazing blurb for a previous publication, there’s nothing wrong with putting that on the cover of the next book; just make sure it’s clear that this blurb was about the other book, not the one it is currently adorning. This is especially useful if the book is part of a series, and the other blurb was attributed to one of the earlier entries in the series.
Read: How to source great book blurbs
Your Tools
Let robots help you write better
Like most sentient carbon-based life forms, we’re watching the advances in generative AI with equal parts excitement and fear, so this post by Juliet Dreamhunter over at Almost an Author caught our attention. It’s a round-up of ChatGPT prompts to help assist—not replace—your work as a writer.
We’re especially drawn to the capability this fast-advancing technology has to introduce new flavours to our work, and to get us out of stylistic ruts. “Every author has a unique voice, and fine-tuning that voice is vital to creating immersive stories that linger in the reader’s mind,” Dreamhunter argues. “With ChatGPT’s extensive knowledge of various writing techniques and stylistic nuances, it can help you uncover new tricks to enrich your narrative and captivate your audience, improving your writing skills and making your story more immersive.” The piece then goes on to offer the following example of what to ask the AI to refine your style:
ChatGPT prompt example: “I want to improve my ‘show, don’t tell’ writing technique. Here’s a sentence: ‘Alicia was very nervous.’ Could you rewrite this into a more descriptive paragraph, showing Alicia’s nervousness through her actions, reactions, or environment?”
The beauty of this approach is that—as always with AI—you’re free to take or leave the result as you like. (It is, of course, up to you if you want to declare “I’m sorry, ChatGPT, I’m afraid I can’t do that” as you do so.)
Read more: 6 useful ChatGPT prompts for fiction writers
Shame-free #fanfic
Fanfic isn’t a new phenomenon: As far back as the 19th century, enthusiasts were crafting their own fantastical—and often saucy—interpretations of the works and worlds of Jane Austin, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Lewis Carroll. It gained popularity throughout the 20th century, and exploded in the early 2000s, driven by the web-connected fandoms of such blockbuster franchises as Twilight and Harry Potter; many of today’s most successful authors got their starts penning fictional accounts of established characters. (Fun fact: Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings—who write contemporary romance under the pen name Christina Lauren—met one another at San Diego Comic-Con, which they were both attending as nascent fanfic authors. They told us the full story during their recent KWL Podcast interview.)
In recent years, the vibe around fanfic has changed. Once something many purveyors felt compelled to hide or keep private, a new surge of writers and readers are loudly and proudly shouting their love of these stories in the massive town squares of BookTok and Bookstagram. “The transformation from these works and communities being hidden in plain sight to receiving widespread commercial success has definitely spiked over the years,” wrote publishing professional Ayesha Mumal in a 2021 post at Open Book,“and with the introduction of TikTok and the already occurring resurgence of early 2000s and 2010s media, it only continues to grow.”
To further suss out this trend, we went deep into the work of some popular #fanfic-loving BookTok-ers. Here’s some of what we learned:
Good stories can easily find audiences: Fanfic fans are voracious readers, and are generally willing to try anything with a compelling title—even without kudos and tags of others. TikTok user @cosmicwayofthinking summed it up in this video: “[One of my favourite things] is when you find a fanfiction that, like, looks sketch—like, it has barely any description, has very few tags, and has, like, no kudos or comments… and it’s really good.”
You can be an actual no-name and find success: Author pedigree doesn’t mean a thing to fanfic audiences. “Fanfic is so weird,” opined TikTok user @rynduong. You’ll literally be reading a literary masterpiece that’s, like, 250,000 words long. It’s the best thing you’ve ever read. You can’t stop thinking about it. It explores the lore of the fandom, and expands on it in ways that the original canon never did. It pulls references from beautiful literary texts that have already existed in the world. It’s truly a masterpiece. And then you look at the author’s name and it’s something like ‘beans’ or ‘ShadowLuv3rDemonFreak73’ or ‘Sasuke4vurrr379’ or something like that.
People love WTF moments: Fanfic need not be subtle or nuanced. In fact, the more absurd, over-the-top, screaming-into-a-pillow moments you can give your readers, the more likely they are to take to the ’Tok with their reactions.
Don’t take any of it too seriously: Lovers of fanfic are great at poking fun of themselves, as well as at some of the more absurd tropes and trends in the work they obsess over. Check out this post on authors’ notes, or this one on the disappointment that can come from a less-than-stellar read, or this one on the sheer volume fanfic writers routinely produce. It’s all in good fun and good faith—and writers who get that will gain more traction than those who don’t.
Some famous works of fanfic:
A Study in Emerald by Neil Gaiman
Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren
After by Anna Todd
Your First Page
How to brainstorm a brilliant book idea
Say you want to write your first novel. Amazing! You’ve come to the right place.
There’s just one issue: You don’t have a clue what to write.
Do we ever know that struggle. You’re definitely not alone—few veteran writers never encounter the struggle of coming up with a concept that will keep them engaged for tens of thousands of words, and even fewer can explain their ideation process. (Stephen King has often answered the perennial question of “Where do you get your ideas?” with “Utica”—lacking anything more insightful to share.)
In a recent KWL blog post, we offer a round-up of several prompts and techniques you can use to generate novel ideas. Our suggestions include thinking like a video-game developer (“Start with a complicated idea, maybe one that’s paragraphs long, and then narrow it down to one sentence”), thinking like an artist (“Write down your concepts and then toss them, crossing out ideas or recycling whole notebook pages until you’ve got it down”), and thinking like a detective (“After a few brainstorming sessions, grab your documents, notes, and doodles, and look for connections between your ideas”).
But the prompt we’re especially fond of is possibly the trickiest to master: Removing pressure and expectations.
“Don’t aim to have a great idea by the end of a brainstorming session; just aim to have fun with it. There are many ways to brainstorm, but one of my favourites is word association. Write down one word and then any other words that you associate with it during a timed period and see what you come up with!”
Read more: How to generate new novel ideas
