10 Ways to Set a Scene With Sound: A Guest Post by Victoria Fry

April 28, 2016April 13, 2016 ~ Kaitlin Hillerich ~ 10 Comments

The following is a guest post from blogger and writing coach Victoria Fry.

One of our greatest aims as writers is to make our story come alive in the minds of our readers. One of the best ways to do that is to imbue both its background and foreground with sensory details, though not so much that they take over and distract from the really important stuff, like whether our character will manage to wriggle out of whatever tight spot they’ve found themselves in.

When it comes to sensory description, it sometimes takes a bit of practice to think what to add, and we can fall into a trap of drawing only on cliches. Push through that, though, and the results are worth it!

Sit back and think for a moment about how vibrant a scene could be if you used the ping of a metal baseball bat hitting a ball as your character has an emotional phone conversation in the park, or the abrupt roar of a lawnmower interrupt a romantic proposal. It’s just that little bit richer, right? Read on to discover ten ways (of many!) you can set a scene with sound.

1. Conversation

This is one of the aspects of sound we’re likely most familiar with as writers, but it doesn’t hurt to revisit this powerful tool, especially if you go against the grain.

Think how different a room and situation feels if people are arguing with hushed, clipped voices as opposed to wall-shaking yells, or if they’re flirting with raucous laughter instead of mincing giggles. Pay attention to the inflections your characters place on certain words and phrases, too, and the rhythm of the conversation.

2. Weather

The emphatic pit-pat of rain on a tin roof, sliding down the flaps of a canvas tent (don’t touch the canvas or you’ll get soaked!), or crashing down in a torrent. The howl of gale-force winds. The gentle stillness that comes after a snowstorm, when everyone’s still tucked up at home, peeking out their windows at the thick blanket of icy white crystals.

Weather is conspicuous in both its “pay attention to ME!” and its “sssssh, you won’t even know I’m here” moments. You don’t have to use it in every scene, but think about how its inclusion could layer into the backdrop for your scene’s setting.

3. Vehicles

I don’t know much about cars, but I know that several noises spark an uh-oh in my mind: a growling engine, a wet plop on the windshield, and a slow hiss.

Even if it’s not an “uh-oh” moment, the sound a vehicle makes is dependent on when it was made, how well it’s maintained, and what make it is (Prius, Vibe, Mazda, to give a few examples). Some cars purr along the roadway, while others sound like they’re eating it up and spitting it out as they roar down the highway.

And don’t forget about the windshield wipers, the car stereo, the click of the seat belt …

4. Technology

If you don’t think technology has a soundtrack, then you’ve never heard a gamer frantically clicking the mouse button to take down a zombie or an online shopper spamming the refresh button in their browser to catch a flash sale. Different computer keyboards (both external and laptop ones) have different touches, some clunkier than others.

And let’s not forget the classic example of a phone slamming down on the hook, although these days it’s more likely to be a mild snick as you flip your cellphone closed or a “beep” when you hit the “end call” button (not nearly as satisfying).

5. Animals

Ah, the animal kingdom. A snake’s rattle while walking in the desert; a deep, gruff bark from the next door neighbor’s chihuahua; a high-pitched squeak of a sneeze from a kitten. The noise an animal makes can make a scene feel cozy and welcoming or foreboding and goosebump-inducing.

Play with the sounds your character’s pet makes when they’re being ignored, when they’re sad, when something scares them or kicks off their protective instincts.

6. The Great Outdoors

Chances are your story takes place at least partially outside (although even a story set on a space station could play on the silence beyond the station’s walls). With that in mind, play up the natural surroundings. Maybe it’s the ocean lapping at the shore. Maybe dry grasses are whispering, poplars shivering in the breeze. Maybe it’s a stone on the trail, being kicked along the path with a dull “thwok.”

7. Seasonal

If you’ve thought about outdoor and weather-related noises already, seasonal noises are a perfect way to round out a natural trio. Have a think about where your story takes place and what time of year it is, what the weather’s been like, and then go nuts!

Your character might hear someone crunching through snow outside their window, or go for a walk in the forest amongst the crackling leaves. Seasonal music might be playing on the radio. A house next door to a high school will enjoy relative peace for the summer months.

8. Hobbies

Often we know that a character enjoys a particular hobby, but we don’t see them partake in it. If that’s the case for your story, you could really be missing out. Imagine a character seething about something as they whir along on a sewing machine, or finding a meditative rhythm in the rasp of a handsaw. If they’re handy in the kitchen, consider the sound of pans settling in the oven or a knife cutting on a marble cutting board as opposed to a wooden one.

9. Sports

One sport alone can host all manner of sounds.

Take tennis, for example. There’s the thwack of the ball against the tennis racket, and the way it sounds when it hits the edge of the racket versus the strings. There’s the hush that descends over the court at professional matches.

Different tennis players make different noises after hitting particularly strenuous shots, too: some grunt, some hoot, some squeak. Tennis shoes dancing across the court make a particular shff-shff sound.

10. Laughter and Tears

Chances are you’ve sat near that person in the movie theatre who guffaws loudly enough to drown out the sound from the film, or wrung your hands as someone you cared about burst into body-shaking sobs. Don’t forget the silent criers, either, or the muffled laughter, the sniffly bouts of tears, the wheezing cackle.

These pinnacles of human emotion fall all over the map, and they’re incredibly hard to ignore. Someone who’s laughing or crying, no matter how quietly they go about it, will draw attention.

Observe Sound in Real Life

At the end of the day, the best way to catalog sounds for your stories is to investigate.

Watch a movie or a documentary and close your eyes for part (or all!) of it. Go outside, sit on a park bench or at a bus stop, and document the sounds you hear. Join someone in the kitchen when they’re making a meal and (so long as they’re not desperately in need of a sous chef!), write down all the sounds, especially the obscure ones.

Next time you’re writing, try incorporating some of these sounds into your story, and see how it feels when you read it aloud.

What are some of your favorite or most memorable sounds? I get super nostalgic whenever I hear an ice cream truck dingling down the street!

About the Author

Victoria Fry is an avid writer and writing coach. She specializes in helping writers (re)discover the joy in their writing process through her blog, one-on-one coaching sessions, and free courses and workshops.

Her latest offering is the Create an Epic Character Foundation workbook, which she created to help writers dig deep and get to know their characters from the ground up! Feel free to say hello on Twitter; she’s always happy to chat about gaming and knitting, along with all things writing.

5 Brainstorming Techniques for Writers: A Guest Post by Linda Craig

January 2, 2016January 2, 2016 ~ Kaitlin Hillerich ~ 10 Comments

‘Brainstorming’ is an idea-generating session where you come up with a plot, characters, and ideas that will define your novel. You can’t simply get out your laptop and start writing your next big masterpiece—you need to know the direction in which you’ll take your story. That’s where brainstorming comes into play.

Here are five brainstorming techniques you can use if you’re struggling to generate ideas.

1. Skim-Read

Many times your personal brainstorming sessions need a little kick. It may not be that you’re not in the right frame of mind, or that your creative side is failing; it may simply be that your mind hasn’t found an idea just yet.

You can try quickly skim-reading a book from your library. Sometimes just the chapter titles are enough to get you going. Needless to say, you should never copy another author’s ideas. But this technique can spark your imagination and maybe even guide your impressions in an unexpected direction throughout the brainstorming session.

2. Use Contradictions

Let’s say your hero has the best intentions and great personal qualities. During the brainstorming session, look for ideas and personality traits that contradict the ones you’ve come up with. Your readers won’t identify with an ideal hero; they want complexity, and you can deliver this through contradictions.

Alternatively, if you’re completely stuck, start by thinking about what contradicts the main idea or theme of your story. If, for example, you’re writing about everlasting love, you can add characters who distort the traditional concept of love in every single way.

3. Read Similar Stories

A successful novelist delivers a story the audience has never seen before. You don’t want to follow the trends and write about vampires or dystopian societies similar to that of The Hunger Games. Readers will tire of repetitive trends and only respect the original work.

However, you can’t create a story that sets itself apart unless you know what’s already out there. This will be a longer brainstorming session that will help you come up with an ideal plot. If you find another writer has already covered ideas similar to yours, you can think of ways to improve your plot such as with an unexpected turn. That’s when you’ll have some real brainstorming to do.

4. Use Active Imagination

Most novelists understand that fiction writing is closely related to psychology, so you shouldn’t be too bored to explore the concept of Active Imagination developed by Carl Gustav Jung. It’s a method that requires you to find a quiet place, close your eyes, and imagine other people in the room with you.

Pick some of the writers you admire the most. They can be from any period in history. You can choose people you know, historical figures, celebrities…whoever you like. Imagine them as they are with their own personalities.

You then conduct a meeting, but you should allow your creativity and intuition to take over the show. What do they think about the plot? How would they develop the main characters? You’re not purposefully imagining their responses, you are simply allowing them to speak and take part in the meeting. If you really get into the spirit of it, there may be times when they interrupt each other or get into harsh discussions.

This technique will help you come up with fantastic ideas for your story. It may sound crazy, but try it a few times and you’ll be surprised with the ideas your subconscious comes up with.

5. Try Rolestorming

With this idea-generating technique, you pretend to be another person and apply their thoughts to the idea at hand. This is similar to a primitive version of Active Imagination, and it’s almost like a child pretending to be Captain America.

You put yourself in the shoes of another person and think of what he or she might say about your idea. It can be anybody from the perfect reader to Beyoncé to Stalin. It’s up to you. Rolestorming may yield no results, but it will help you examine the issues of your plot from another angle, and may even awaken your imaginative side.

The last thing a novelist is, is boring. The creative writing process demands an unusual approach, especially when you’re forming your initial ideas. These brainstorming techniques will help you dig into the deep areas of your sub consciousness. That’s where your best ideas are hidden!

About the Author

Linda Craig is an eager traveller, editor at Assignment Masters service, and passionate blogger. Her favourite destinations are Brazil and Nepal. Linda is currently working on her PhD thesis. You can find her on Twitter at @LindaUKmasters.

Creating Emotional Connections: The Psychology of Emotional Stories (A Guest Post by Faye Kirwin of Writerology)

December 18, 2015December 17, 2015 ~ Kaitlin Hillerich ~ 2 Comments

This is a guest post from the lovely Faye Kirwin of Writerology.

Writing is all about people—the characters, the readers, the author, all drawn together by emotion. If you can tie your readers’ emotions to your characters, they’re tied to the story, and it’s that connection that will stay with them long after they’ve finished reading.

But… that’s easier said than done, right? A lot of mystery and uncertainty surrounds those emotional bonds with the reader. Is it something that just happens naturally? Is there a trick to it? How come it works with some characters and not others? How do you create an emotional connection anyway? Psychology offers a solution: peek inside the brain. If you can find out what happens to someone when they’re caught up in a story, the mystery surrounding emotional connection begins to clear.

Professor Paul Zak set about doing just that. He had a group of participants watch a video that told the highly emotional story of a father struggling with the fact that his two-year-old son had only a few months left to live. After the video, Professor Zak found an increase in two neurochemicals produced by participants’ brains: cortisol and oxytocin.

Cortisol, a chemical involved in focusing attention on things that are important, was related to how distressed participants felt. The more distressed they felt, the more cortisol they produced, and the more attention they paid to the video. Oxytocin, a chemical involved in social bonding, was related to how much empathy the participants experienced. The more oxytocin they produced, the more empathetic they felt. If you put these two neurochemicals together, you have the ingredients for an emotional connection—but knowing what happens to make your reader emotionally involved isn’t the end of the story. Now you need to know how to create those circumstances yourself.

Step 1: Capture Your Readers’ Attention

Transportation, that magical moment when readers experience the characters’ emotions for themselves, can only happen if the story holds their attention. How can you ensure you do that? Keep raising the tension. Don’t go easy on your characters. Tension and conflict ramp up distress, which is linked to cortisol, one of the ingredients for emotional connection.

Professor Zak recommends using Freytag’s dramatic arc to pile on the tension and maintain the readers’ interest throughout the story. Let’s take a brief look at it now.

The dramatic arc is a type of story structure made up of five acts: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and dénouement. Tension increases throughout the rising action act, culminating in the conflict-laden climax of the story, and it’s this elicitation of distress that captures your readers’ attention and prepares them for the next step: empathising with the characters.

Step 2: Elicit Your Readers’ Empathy

Maintaining readers’ interest doesn’t guarantee that they’ll develop an emotional connection with the characters. How many books have you read that had an exciting, relentless, page-turning plot but neglected to develop their cast? With the focus on the external events that happen to the characters, plot-driven stories capture the readers’ attention, but don’t necessarily establish bonds that stick around after reaching ‘The End’. Characters do that, which is why Professor Zak points to character-driven stories as the best way to create emotional connections with readers.

What elements of a character-driven story make it so easy to form a bond?

Memorable characters. Readers don’t care for the shallow, cardboard cut-outs they’ve seen a hundred times before. They want characters who are quirky, flawed, relatable, varied and complex, characters who make a home in their memories and refuse to move out. Your job as a writer is to create characters like these. I recommend a helping of psychology to keep your cast unique and, above all, realistic.
Steady character development. The plot doesn’t just transport characters physically but emotionally too. What happens to them over the course of the story will change them for better or worse, and it’s this development that will engage your readers and spur them on to emotionally invest in your characters. K. M. Weiland has a fantastic and in-depth series on character arc that can help you to do just that.
Engaging and relatable internal conflict. Tension doesn’t just come from external conflict; it comes from the internal variety as well. Having your characters struggle with their self-doubt, weaknesses and inner demons makes them relatable, understandable and ultimately someone readers can empathise with.

Step 3: Combine Attention and Empathy to Create a Connection

Readers form emotional bonds with the characters and the story when you maintain their attention and elicit their empathy. Increase tension throughout the story with exciting external conflicts and draw out empathy with memorable characters, steady development and engaging internal conflict. Do that and you have the ingredients you need to create an emotional connection that will stay with your readers long after they’ve put the book down.

About the Author

Faye Kirwin is a writer with a passion for words, minds and tea. She blogs over at Writerology, where she applies the science of psychology to the art of storytelling and teaches authors how to make writing a part of their everyday lives.

When she’s not blogging or running the Writember Workshop, she writes fiction chock-full of magic, clockwork and tea. (Mm, tea.)

Guest Post: How Creating Strong Characters Can Help You Build Your Plot by Kristen Kieffer of She’s Novel

August 14, 2015September 29, 2015 ~ Kaitlin Hillerich ~ 2 Comments

Today I have the pleasure of welcoming the lovely Kristen Kieffer from She’s Novel to the blog for an epic guest post! She’s even created a shiny workbook to help you through all info, which you can download for free by clicking here. Ready to get started?

What’s more important: characters or plot?

This age-old question has been a source of debate among writers for decades. But let me ask you this: do characters and plot have to be exclusive? Do we have to say that one is more important than the other?

Of course not!

In fact, I’m a firm believer that it is your characters’ stories that actually make up your plot. Their actions and experiences are what drive the novel forward. To say that one is more important than the other is like saying that peanut butter is more important than jelly in the making of a PB&J.

It just doesn’t make sense!

If your characters’ actions make up the plot, then you’re going to need great characters to write a story that will keep readers turning pages. But how exactly can you craft spectacularly memorable characters?

While some factors may depend on your character’s role in the story, there are three things that every character should have. Let’s break them down, eh?

3 Things You Need to Create Strong Characters

1. A Goal

Your character’s goal is the one thing that they are trying to achieve. They believe that attaining this goal will bring them success and happiness, though sometimes what they think they want and what they actually need will be different.

Your characters need strong goals because goals are what drive them to action. They want something, and they are going to take steps to attain it. And should someone stand in their path to success, you can be sure that your character will jump into action, seeking a way to overcome their obstacles.

Simply put: by giving your characters each a clear goal, you are setting yourself up for easy plot production.

2. A Motivation

Your character’s motivation is the why behind their goal, the reason they are taking action. It’s important to give each of your characters strong motivations as well as strong goals for two main reasons.

A) Motivations reveal who your characters are at heart. They make the good guy realistic and the bad guy sympathetic. They help readers see that your characters are more than just a role to be fulfilled, that they are indeed – in the space of your novel – real people.

B) Some characters, such as your hero and your villain, may have the same goal. Giving each character vastly different motivations will help readers identify the protagonist and the antagonist.

3. A Personality

Having strong goals and motivations will make your characters’ actions interesting, but plots aren’t always made up of action. They also contain interactions between different characters. The ways in which your characters treat one another during these interactions will be determined by their personalities.

When crafting a personality for each of your characters, make sure to give them more than one trait. Characters who are always cheery (or angry or sad, etc.) make for very boring, shallow characters. Don’t settle for that!

Once you’ve chosen a few personality traits, decide when each of those traits comes in to play. If your character is prone to anger, what sets them off? If your character is silly, what makes them laugh? Repeat this process for each of their traits to discover exactly how your character will act in every situation they encounter.

Building Your Plot

Now that you’ve crafted strong characters, it’s time to use their stories to build a plot!

Using only the goals, motivations, and personalities of two characters in particular – your hero and your villain – you will be able to form a plot outline that you can later expand upon as you get to know your story better.

Let’s break down these eight steps to creating a basic plot.

8 Steps for Creating a Plot

1. Understand Their Goals

You know the goals your hero and your villain have, but do you what sparked their desire to achieve those goals in the first place? Was there an event in their past that introduced this desire or does something happen in the first chapters of your novel that sets them down their path?

Keep in mind, understanding what sparked your characters’ goals isn’t the same thing as knowing their motivations. For example, a character may desire to form a rock band after seeing his favorite band play in concert (that would be the spark), but he may only want to start playing music so that he can become famous (that would be the motivation).

Understanding what sparks your characters’ goals will help you establish the beginning of your novel. The spark encourages your characters to take action, setting the plot into motion.

2. Build a Plan

Your hero and your villain each have a goal, but how do they plan on achieving it? Begin to lay out what steps they would take if everything went according to plan. Of course, this plan won’t go smoothly in the end since you’ll be adding conflict to spice your story up. But knowing what paths your characters would take will help you decide what they will actually do at each major plot point.

3. Give Your Hero an Early Failure

To create riveting conflict, you’ll need to show your readers that the villain is actually quite formidable, so much so that your hero might not make it out alive – literally or figuratively speaking.

To show just how powerful your villain is, have them take a step towards achieving their goal that sets the hero back. This will be your hero’s first failure, and it will force them to change their course. Ask yourself what your hero’s next step to achieving their goal will be, and have them work towards it.

Making your villain’s strength evident as soon as possible will hook your readers in for the long run, while also serving to reveal your hero’s motivation. After all, if your hero wasn’t passionate about achieving their goal in the first place, they would probably quit after this early failure. Make sure your readers know that.

4. Put Their Personalities to Work

At this point in your plot, your hero is feeling a tad defeated while your villain is reveling in their achievement. This is where your characters’ personalities will really come into play. Ask yourself:

How does my hero handle their setback on an emotional level?
Does my hero need help to move forward? If so, how do they feel about asking for help?
How does my villain react to making forward progress?
How does my villain treat others based on their early success?

By working your responses into the plot, you’ll allow readers to get to know your characters on a deeper level, ensuring that they –and, in turn, your plot–remain interesting.

5. See Some Success

Now that you have established the villain’s power and given more insight into your characters, it’s time for them both to make some forward progress. Your hero and your villain should be working towards their goals at full-steam, and each should see some measure of success.

Their progress should definitely be hard-earned (they may even experience a few small setbacks along the way), but for all intents and purposes they are getting closer to achieving their goals. Which also means that they are getting closer to coming into conflict once again.

6. Test Your Hero

At this point in your plot, readers may be feeling pretty comfortable in your hero’s ability to overcome the villain and achieve their goal. Once again, it is time to test your hero’s mettle by making them fail.

Only this time, your hero’s failure shouldn’t be something that merely sets them back. This failure should be massive, something that makes your hero seriously consider quitting their journey altogether. The loss they experience should call their motivations into question, making them wonder if anything they have done thus far has been worth the price they have had to pay.

This not only skyrockets the tension in your novel skyrocket, but opens up the opportunity for you to give your hero some emotional development, as well as to reveal what they truly need to find success (compared to what they’ve been chasing so far).

This is also the place where readers finally get to know the most raw, vulnerable version of your hero, where their true personality becomes more evident than ever.

7. Enter the Climatic Tension

Whether your characters have been chasing individual goals or the same goal for individual reasons, this is the point where they come into final conflict with one another. And it should be epic!

Neither character should be able to take another step towards achieving their goal because the other stands directly in their path to success. As a result, someone’s dream will be completely shattered by the time the conflict ends. All of your hero’s and villain’s actions are hanging on this one final thread, and there is no turning back.

8. The Resolution

The climax is over, and it is now revealed which character will achieve their goal. But do you know how they do it? In some stories, defeating the villain will be your hero’s singular goal (or vice versa), while in other stories, defeating the villain is the last stepping stone in your hero’s path to success.

If they haven’t done so already, now is the time for your character to finally achieve their goal.

This is also the point where we learn how the action thus far had affected your character. Are they the same person in the end of the novel as they were in the beginning? Have they changed for better or for worse?

Use this last portion of your plot to wrap up your main character’s story, revealing how they finally achieved their goal and how doing so shapes the rest of their lives.

And, voila! In eight simple steps, you’ve learned how giving your characters’ goals, motivations, and personalities can help you craft a powerful and memorable plot. Do you agree that characters are the backbone of a novel? How have your own characters shaped your story’s plot?

About Kristen

Kristen Kieffer is the creative-writing coach behind She’s Novel, where she helps writers craft novels that will endear readers, excite publishers, and launch their writing careers.

Her latest creation, The Novel Planner, is a daily planner designed specifically with authors in mind. Kristen also loves coffee, geeking out over Tolkien, and editing her upcoming medieval fantasy novel, The Dark Between. Want to know more? Click here!