Debilitating fears are a problem for everyone, an unfortunate part of the human experience. Whether they’re a result of learned behavior as a child, are related to a mental health condition, or stem from a past wounding event, these fears influence a character’s behaviors, habits, beliefs, and personality traits. The compulsion to avoid what they fear will drive characters away from certain people, events, and situations and hold them back in life.
In your story, this primary fear (or group of fears) will constantly challenge the goal the character is pursuing, tempting them to retreat, settle, and give up on what they want most. Because this fear must be addressed for them to achieve success, balance, and fulfillment, it plays a pivotal part in both character arc and the overall story.
This thesaurus explores the various fears that might be plaguing your character. Use it to understand and utilize fears to fully develop your characters and steer them through their story arc. Please note that this isn’t a self-diagnosis tool. Fears are common in the real world, and while we may at times share similar tendencies as characters, the entry below is for fiction writing purposes only.
Becoming What One Hates
Notes Some characters with this fear are worried about becoming someone dark and dangerous—a murderer, an abusive parent, or a psychopath. Others might worry about becoming the person they never thought they could or would be when they were young, from a mercenary capitalist to something more mundane, like a stay-at-home mom driving a minivan. This fear, taken to an extreme, could lead a character to not fully explore their own psyche, emotions, personality, and needs, giving them a skewed view of who they are and hindering the development of their true self.
What It Looks Like Practicing asceticism or strict religious practices to prevent unwanted behaviors Avoiding certain groups of people or situations where the undesired behavior may be triggered Attending long-term therapy The character seeking reassurance from others that they’re not taking on certain traits or attitudes Going to extremes—e.g., someone who struggles with a forbidden sexual desire deciding to live a life of complete abstinence Overcompensating Voicing criticism of people who represent what the character fears Becoming defensive if someone says something that suggests the character is similar to what they hate Living a persona (pursuing hobbies, embracing opinions, etc.) that isn’t true to who they are Avoiding interactions with the kind of people the character doesn’t want to emulate Cutting people out of their life who represent what the character hates or who push them in that direction
Common Internal Struggles Feeling guilty over secret desires to be “that person” The character trying to accept facets of themselves while also staying true to their morals or principles Struggling to avoid losing control of emotions or actions Being drawn to the very people the character wants to distance themselves from Feeling intense shame and self-loathing (for wanting to engage in certain activities, for being related to someone who exhibits something abhorrent, etc.) The character wanting to be at peace with themselves but being unable to accept certain aspects of who they are The character constantly searching themselves for signs that they’re becoming what they hate The character doubting their instincts and motivations Living in constant fear that someone will find out their deepest fears or desires
Hindrances and Disruptions to the Character’s Life Coping with anxiety and depression Not considering other sides of an issue, especially ones that oppose the character’s beliefs Difficulty developing deep relationships with others because the character doesn’t believe they’re worthy or doesn’t trust themselves to make the right choices Abusing drugs or alcohol to combat their fears or deal with perceived failures Living a lie to fit in with others Being unable to pursue things the character really wants because they’re associated with the thing they trying not to become
Scenarios That Might Awaken This Fear Having to associate with family members who embody what the character is trying to escape Seeing media coverage of the type of person they are avoiding themselves A situation that tempts the character to take a step toward what they’re trying to avoid Feeling a compulsion to do the very thing that would turn the character into what they fear.
This post is about what makes memorable first lines great. We’ll look at examples from some of the best books in history and try to apply their techniques to our stories.
Note that some of these lines are a bit longer than one sentence. Instead, I think of them as the first idea.
By the way, if you haven’t already read Monica Clark’s excellent post about writing the perfect first page, you should read it immediately.
Let’s get started, shall we?
1. Perfect First Lines Are Vivid
Here’s the line from Ulrica Hume’s “Poppies” that caught my attention.
I was born upside down, the umbilical cord looped twice around my neck.
It’s a simple sentence, but I love it. “Born upside down.” There’s something at once whimsical and perilous and messy about that image. Don’t you instantly get a picture of the hospital room, the tiny baby, perhaps with a bit of hair, being held upside down by the doctor, still slightly blue and screaming?
Great first lines instantly invite us into an image.
Here’s another vivid example from my favorite novel, All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy:
The candleflame and the image of the candleflame caught in the pierglass twisted and righted when he entered the hall and again when he shut the door.
Isn’t that a cool image? The light from a candle being reflected and twisted by a door. One of the reasons so many of Cormac McCarthy’s novels have been adapted into films (e.g. All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, The Road) is that his writing is so cinematic, focusing on seemingly small details to invite us into the lives of his fascinating characters.
Great first lines, like the opening montage of a film, lead us into a scene. They use images, lighting, and tone to set the mood that the rest of the opening pages will take.
2. Perfect First Lines Establish a Unique Voice
We like to hear stories from people who sound interesting and unique, and perfect first lines introduce the reader to a character’s unique voice.
Voice is the peculiar vocabulary, tone, and phrasings our characters use. For example, here’s a classic example of the first line from Catcher In the Rye by J.D. Salinger:
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
Notice how conversational this is. All the rules we were taught in school—don’t use adverbs like really, don’t use slang like lousy, and definitely don’t use words like “crap”—Salinger breaks them. And it works because this isn’t a school paper; this is one friend talking to another.
The remarkable thing about a unique voice is that it can be just as vivid as description. Don’t you instantly get an image of a sarcastic, teenage kid (perhaps wearing a red hunting cap backwards) while reading this? Voice can spark your imagination to create whole worlds.
Speaking of strange worlds, here’s J.K. Rowling’s first line from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone:
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.
You can just hear the Dursleys saying that huffily, can’t you? “Thank you very much. Such Nonsense.” I also think it’s fascinating that for such a magical novel, Rowling chose to begin with the least magical people in the whole story, which just increases the contrast between the magic and “muggle” world. Brilliant.
3. Perfect First Lines Are Surprising
This might be the most important tip in this post.
Be surprising. So many of these examples of great first lines are surprising. Case in point, here’s the opening line from 1984 by George Orwell:
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
How do you quickly show the world you’re describing is slightly off from the real world? Alter the way time is tracked. Genius.
Snakes are an easy way to surprise your reader. Here’s the opening line from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:
Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest. It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal. Here is a copy of the drawing.
Nothing like boa constrictors and drawings of boa constrictors to catch your reader’s attention.
Here’s another example from One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez:
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
Firing squad? Discovering ice? So much strangeness here I couldn’t help but read on.
And in honor of Christmas, here’s Charles Dickens’ first line from A Christmas Carol (thanks Magic Violinist for the recommendation):
Humor is closely linked with surprise, and great first lines are often very funny. For example, here’s a silly image from J.R.R. Tolkien’s very funny novel The Hobbit:
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
“And that means comfort.” I love that part. I can imagine Tolkien’s four children squealing with delight at this opening line.
And here is Jane Austen exhibiting her slyly satirical wit in the first line of Pride and Prejudice:
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
Of course he must. How could he not?
5. Perfect First Lines Are True
Some novels begin with a philosophical truth. Take the iconic first line of one of the bestselling books of all time, A Tale of Two Cities:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…
… and so on. It’s quite long, so you can read the full line here. This line is so famous that when I first read A Tale of Two Cities I was surprised to realize it came from a book. By now, this line has become a truism, but in its day, it was a philosophical reflection on the subjectivity of history and human experience.
Great first lines can do that. They can take a look at an entire culture as a whole and You can’t, of course, stay there forever. Eventually, you have start teaching again. But a little philosophy at the end of a novel doesn’t hurt.
6. Perfect First Lines Are Clear
Many great first lines do little more than introduce us to the characters we’re going to be following through the book. For example, from Melville’s Moby Dick:
Call me Ishmael.
And here’s a quick synopsis of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in its first line:
Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids.
Great first lines are often clear, we instantly know who the narrator is, where we are, and what this story will be about.
7. Perfect First Lines Contain the Entirety of a Novel
Perfect first lines don’t just begin a novel, they someone manage to compact the entire story into a single sentence.
For example, take Kafka’s The Metamorphosis:
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.
You can see Samsa’s entire journey, from the realization of his plight to his painful alienation to his eventual death.
Here’s another example from Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov:
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.
In this single, perfect sentence Nabokov reveals all the passion, poetry, and disaster that will follow.
Just as William Blake said, “To see the world in a grain of sand,” so the first line of a novel can contain its entirety within it.
How to Write the Perfect First Line
From all these examples, I hope you’ve seen that perfect first lines take many shapes and forms. In fact, the title of this post is misleading because there is really no such thing as the perfect first line. There is only a perfect first line for your story.
Be patient as you look for it. It might take longer than you think to find it. You may discover it, and then find another, then discard that one for something better still.
Remember, a great first line can hook your reader through the rest of your story. Keep searching for it. It’s worth it.
So, you’ve finished your book. Congratulations! Writers often work alone, with very little validation. We have to struggle uphill, putting up with rejection and radio silence.
This is why we absolutely MUST celebrate our completed books. Here’s how …
1) Acknowledge the Win
Look in the mirror and tell yourself you’re the main wo/man. Remind yourself LOTS of people want to be writers … but very few of us manage to get words on paper, never mind make it out the other side to publication.
So first things first, pat yourself on the back for your achievement. That’s it!
2) Take a Break
Confession time: I used to find finishing a book a bit of an anti-climax. This meant I wanted to fill the hole my last story had left, so I would go straight from one book to another or start editing without a break.
If you have a group of personal writer friends, tell them you’ve completed your book. They will get what a big deal this is, so will celebrate with you.
If you DON’T have any personal writer friends, that’s okay. Drop in to Twitter, insta or Facebook and tag ME as @Bang2write.
I will congratulate you and so will the Bangers. W000t! You can also use hashtags like #WritingCommunity to find writer friends too.
4) Treat Yourself
It’s true that many of our friends and loved ones won’t ‘get’ what a big deal it is to finish a book. (Hell, many of them think we’re just mucking about – boo).
When I finish a book, I go for a walk. It’s great to get away from my desk and be at one with nature. I even go when it’s windy and rainy! I love to see how dramatic the British countryside can get.
If I’ve just done a MAJOR edit or had a book published, I go one further and treat myself to a block of my favourite chocolate. I have expensive taste – it’s £3.50 for a small bar. Yikes! But that’s okay, I’ve earned it. So think about whatever it is you like to do … and do it. You deserve it.
Other times it will be because they have to ‘reset to zero’ by moving on and starting a new project.
Remind yourself every writer feels this way. What’s more, you know now you CAN finish a book. You’ve done it before and you’ll do it again. YOU GOT THIS!!!
Debilitating fears are a problem for everyone, an unfortunate part of the human experience. Whether they’re a result of learned behavior as a child, are related to a mental health condition, or stem from a past wounding event, these fears influence a character’s behaviors, habits, beliefs, and personality traits. The compulsion to avoid what they fear will drive characters away from certain people, events, and situations and hold them back in life.
In your story, this primary fear (or group of fears) will constantly challenge the goal the character is pursuing, tempting them to retreat, settle, and give up on what they want most. Because this fear must be addressed for them to achieve success, balance, and fulfillment, it plays a pivotal part in both character arc and the overall story.
This thesaurus explores the various fears that might be plaguing your character. Use it to understand and utilize fears to fully develop your characters and steer them through their story arc. Please note that this isn’t a self-diagnosis tool. Fears are common in the real world, and while we may at times share similar tendencies as characters, the entry below is for fiction writing purposes only.
Fear of Death
Notes Human beings have a natural drive for self-preservation and survival, so a healthy respect for death is normal. But when the character begins to obsessively fear that they or a loved one will die, a phobia called thanatophobia can develop. Someone in this situation may be afraid of the death process—of pain, the unknown, or the afterlife—or simply of ceasing to exist. This kind of fear can dominate a person’s life, making it impossible for them to enjoy even the smallest aspects of living.
What It Looks Like Shying away from potentially dangerous or thrill-seeking situations (skydiving, storm chasing, running at night, etc.) Frequently checking for signs of illness or disease Avoiding cemeteries, funeral homes, and other places associated with death Not celebrating Halloween, the Day of the Dead, and other holidays related to death Checking in frequently on loved ones to make sure they’re okay Taking vitamins and supplements Exercising obsessively Insisting on over-the-top safety precautions Avoiding hospitals Running to the doctor at the slightest sign of illness Protecting children to the point of smothering them Being an overly cautious driver Being overly concerned about germs Doing good deeds as a way of “balancing the scales” in this life so the character won’t be punished in the next one Talking incessantly about reports of dangerous places, mass casualty events, etc. Making fear-based decisions Suffering from frequent nightmares or insomnia
Common Internal Struggles The character falling sick and fretting that they’ve contracted a deadly disease Worrying that they won’t be able to accomplish everything they want to before they die Anxiety rising when the character sees a news report about someone dying Desperately wanting to know the truth about the afterlife but not having any proof Struggling to act normal because the character knows their fear makes them look irrational Not being able to rest when loved ones are away Knowing the character’s actions are driving family members away but being unable to lighten up Obsessing over exercising regularly and eating healthy Struggling with paranoia
Hindrances and Disruptions to the Character’s Life Missing out on opportunities to try new things Being reclusive and living a life of isolation The character’s health being such a big priority that they don’t have time for other activities Other people avoiding the character because of their neediness, restrictive rules, and obsessive need for safety Having to use medication to control anxiety and depression Spending so much time worrying about death that the character loses all joy and happiness Being ruled by fear
Scenarios That Might Awaken This Fear Experiencing a life-threatening situation, such as a car accident or a tropical storm The character or their loved one being diagnosed with a terminal illness A loved one dying unexpectedly Having to attend a funeral Seeing death depicted in a movie or on the news Having a near-death experience Suffering a serious injury Milestone birthdays that represent the passage of time Seeing signs of aging as the character gets older.
Debilitating fears are a problem for everyone, an unfortunate part of the human experience. Whether they’re a result of learned behavior as a child, are related to a mental health condition, or stem from a past wounding event, these fears influence a character’s behaviors, habits, beliefs, and personality traits. The compulsion to avoid what they fear will drive characters away from certain people, events, and situations and hold them back in life.
In your story, this primary fear (or group of fears) will constantly challenge the goal the character is pursuing, tempting them to retreat, settle, and give up on what they want most. Because this fear must be addressed for them to achieve success, balance, and fulfillment, it plays a pivotal part in both character arc and the overall story.
This thesaurus explores the various fears that might be plaguing your character. Use it to understand and utilize fears to fully develop your characters and steer them through their story arc. Please note that this isn’t a self-diagnosis tool. Fears are common in the real world, and while we may at times share similar tendencies as characters, the entry below is for fiction writing purposes only.
Fear of Crowds
Notes Crowds make a lot of people nervous. Some people simply fear the large numbers of people present; for others, it may be a heightened sense of perceived danger and unknown behavior, being left alone in the crowd, or the overload of the sensory experience of sounds and smells and even of being touched. Your character’s fear of crowds may be the result of a natural aversion to groups of strangers, concerns about germs or contagion, connected to a wounding event, or tied to a fear of having a panic attack in public. For the latter, see the AGORAPHOBIA entry.
What It Looks Like Refusing to attend crowded events, like graduations, large family reunions, and concerts Avoiding amusement parks, zoos, fairs, and other cultural destinations Having difficulty taking public transportation The character having a panic attack if they’re unexpectedly stuck in a crowd Always asking to meet at smaller venues for social gatherings The character hiding in a corner or out-of-the-way place when they encounter a crowd Making excuses not to attend certain events Having an escape plan in mind when a crowded venue can’t be avoided Scoping out exits upon arrival Clinging to friends or family at large events Scanning the crowd for points of danger Timing attendance to coincide with off-peak times or low volumes of people Experiencing sensory overload in a crowd from the noise or proximity of too many people Always leaving large events early (making a token appearance) Needing time to recharge and be alone after being in a crowd
Common Internal Struggles The character wondering what’s wrong with them Second-guessing their own feelings and fear Growing angry at what they feel is their own shortcoming or irrational fear Struggling between wanting to feel safe but not wanting to miss an important event Feeling dissatisfied with their limited scope of activities Wondering if they’re overreacting Being unable to carry on a conversation with a stranger and feeling ashamed or insecure about it Seeing pictures online of events they missed and feeling left out, wishing they could have participated
Hindrances and Disruptions to the Character’s Life Being unable to maintain stable friendships or romantic relationships Barriers arising between themselves and family members who downplay or don’t understand their fear Missing out on important milestones for family and friends The character being unable to enjoy the events they do attend because of worry and fear Turning down promising job opportunities with large companies Hurting their career prospects by refusing to attend company gatherings Worsening symptoms leading to agoraphobia
Scenarios That Might Awaken This Fear Seeing a news report of a tragic event that played out in a crowd (at a train station, amusement park, etc.) Being asked to speak at a friend’s wedding reception Being triggered regarding a past trauma that occurred in a crowded area Getting lost in a crowd (if the character is a child) An outbreak of a contagious disease Family or friends downplaying the character’s fear Being forced to attend a large work gathering Being surrounded by people and feeling the onset of a panic attack.
Unless you wrote your book exclusively for your own satisfaction, once your creative vision is on the page, it’s time to zoom in on how the book works for readers. The key is getting the right kind of feedback for where you are in the revision and editing process—and dodging the kind that will pull you off track.
Much of this choice hinges on your editorial budget. You could do most or all these steps for yourself at no cost, but the quality of your book will reflect the quality of the production behind it. Most writers end up drawing on both free and paid feedback options.
Let’s make sure you’re leaning on the right options at the right time.
Writing Feedback: Stage by Stage
With a newly complete manuscript
Volunteer feedback is perfect at this stage of your book’s development. One or two alpha readers (often a spouse, critique partner, or close friend) provide that initial gut check on what’s hitting home and what’s missing the target.
During second and later drafts
As you continue working through early drafts, crowdsourced feedback continues to be your best bet. Lean on your peers in critique partners and groups, collecting enough opinions to sort out which point to genuine issues and which simply refer to personal taste.
Active drafting can be an opportunity for coaching or mentoring on story problems identified by critique buddies—a character arc that refuses to gel, saggy pacing, a general lack of zing—if your budget and time comfortably allow it. A little one-on-one help from a pro now could prevent you from filling your manuscript with pernicious errors that will inflate your editing rate down the line. (Incorrect use of dialogue tags and action beats, I’m looking at you!)
Once you sense you’re nearing the limits of your ability to improve your book on your own, it’s time to bring in beta readers. Beta readers provide high-level, subjective, personal feedback such as “the pacing felt slow in the middle” or “I just didn’t like that character at all.”
Although paying for beta reading ensures the readers will finish the book and return feedback, it’s not necessary to hire a pro. In fact (unpopular opinion ahead), an editor is the wrong choice for beta reading. The reason is simple: Beta reading is not Editing Lite™. It’s designed to generate genuine reader reaction, not analysis from a trained professional.
When you’re ready for professional editing
When you’re ready for professional editing, marching in with a request for a particular type or level of editing puts you at risk of getting precisely what you ask for—whether your manuscript needs it or not. It would be like relying on Dr. Google to diagnose a physical ailment, then convincing a local doctor to prescribe strictly the medications and treatments you’ve decided you need.
Choose your editor with care. You deserve a specialist who resonates with you and your work, not whoever offers the lowest rates and immediate availability.
Once you’ve found the perfect editorial collaborator, let them recommend what your manuscript needs. Their recommendations should be based on what will best support your story, your writing, and your publishing goals. If your editor hasn’t reviewed all those points, you can’t be sure you’ll get what you need.
Between edits
Another popular point for beta reading is in between edits. For example, betas can check whether the revisions you made after a developmental edit satisfy the needs the edit identified.
Don’t use beta readers beyond the point at which you’re willing to make big-picture changes. Once the story is settled, it’s time to move forward into editing.
Before you query
Raw talent shouldn’t mean raw material, and having your manuscript edited before you query agents and publishers helps you get your foot in the door.
“Our agency consistently see proposals that are okay, but simply not written at a level that is needed to break into the market,” writes literary agent Steve Laube. “Agents are not freelance editors so there is only so much we are willing to do to fix a project. I have said it this way, ‘If I get something that is 90% ready, I can take it the rest of the way. But if it is only 80% ready I will kick it back to the writer with a rejection. We are looking for the best of the best.’”
Agents are not there to provide you with free editing. In The Shit No One Tells You About Writing (season 2, episode 1), literary agent Cece Lyra advises writers not to expect feedback from an agent until “your writing is so, so good to the point that your agent is actually ready to sell it, then he’ll give you editorial feedback. … Your agent’s job is to sell your work. You need to have other sources of feedback too.”
Authors like Bianca Marais (The Witches of Moonshine Manor) seek out professional help before sending their manuscripts to agents. “I think as writers, we need to get into the habit of seeking out the expertise that we want, and that means paying for it,” she notes in The Shit No One Tells You About Writing (season 2, episode 1), “but it makes the agent’s job that much easier to be able to sell the work because the work is so much more polished and professional at that time.”
Before you self-publish
Self-publishing your work means assuming the responsibility for producing a professional-quality product—and that means paying for professional-caliber editing.
A developmental editor will help you master and refine the principles of story structure, genre, and storytelling technique. Your need for this level of editing may diminish as you master the craft, but you can’t afford to launch your writing career with limp storytelling.
And when it’s time for line editing and copyediting, your friend the English teacher can tell you if you have a problem with dangling participles, but they probably haven’t the foggiest about publishing industry standards for fiction style and punctuation. Get a professional copyedit.
Proofreading could be a suitable time to loop in friends and family who’ve promised to help. Vet their recommendations carefully—their knowledge of current grammar and usage or publishing industry standards will not always be on target—and be clear that you’re asking for help identifying typos and objective errors. Collate and compare volunteer findings, then get a professional editor or proofreader to review the results. You may be able to get this done as part of your editing follow-up or at an extremely low rate.
Keep Hold of the Creative Reins
Finally, follow these three guidelines for incorporating feedback into your work at any stage.
1. Don’t seek creative feedback from anyone you wouldn’t entrust with molding your book’s creative vision.
2. Take responsibility for learning your craft. “The conscious writer listens to everyone, tries everything, but follows no one; they are their own guru,” advises story development consultant Jeff Lyons. “(The conscious writer) takes responsibility for their failures as well as their successes and knows that they, not some fortune cookie, are the only ones who can solve their writing problems—and they love that responsibility.”
3. Don’t get sucked into an endless feedback loop. Gather constructive input, make your decisions and revisions, and move on to the next novel. You want a writing career filled with books, don’t you?
Debilitating fears are a problem for everyone, an unfortunate part of the human experience. Whether they’re a result of learned behavior as a child, are related to a mental health condition, or stem from a past wounding event, these fears influence a character’s behaviors, habits, beliefs, and personality traits. The compulsion to avoid what they fear will drive characters away from certain people, events, and situations and hold them back in life.
In your story, this primary fear (or group of fears) will constantly challenge the goal the character is pursuing, tempting them to retreat, settle, and give up on what they want most. Because this fear must be addressed for them to achieve success, balance, and fulfillment, it plays a pivotal part in both character arc and the overall story.
This thesaurus explores the various fears that might be plaguing your character. Use it to understand and utilize fears to fully develop your characters and steer them through their story arc. Please note that this isn’t a self-diagnosis tool. Fears are common in the real world, and while we may at times share similar tendencies as characters, the entry below is for fiction writing purposes only.
Not Being Believed
Notes The fear of not being believed often comes from a place of abuse. A character who made themselves vulnerable to someone (a relative, a corporation, the media, etc.) and was then accused of dishonesty, unreliability, or worse—it’s enough to turn that character into a bubbling mess of self-doubt and paranoia. There is nothing like an abuse of power to send one spiraling into a dark abyss that takes years to climb out of.
What It Looks Like Only telling people what the character thinks they want to hear Only speaking up when there is zero doubt that what the character is saying is true Being loose with the truth (because no one will believe them anyway) Being honest to a fault—refusing to tell even a little white lie Needing constant assurance that people believe them Withdrawing from friends and family Questioning everything that is said or presented to them Being able to read others and recognize dishonesty The character often accusing people of lying to them or to loved ones Becoming angry if their word is questioned Searching for the truth in all things The character having nightmares about times when they weren’t believed Keeping quiet about abuse or unfairness (because speaking up won’t do them any good) Harboring a healthy distrust of other people, institutions, etc. Extreme self-reliance from the belief that the character can trust no one but themselves
Common Internal Struggles Wanting to speak up about an injustice but worrying they won’t be believed Feeling guilt or shame despite having done nothing wrong Being paranoid that people are conspiring against them Wanting to confide in someone but being unsure if they’re trustworthy Wanting to speak up about a situation but choosing not to after seeing society’s reaction to a similar event The character second-guessing themselves, doubting their ability to remember details correctly Negative self-talk (berating themselves for not standing up for themselves, etc.)
Hindrances and Disruptions to the Character’s Life Living in isolation Struggling professionally due to a distrust of those in authority Being ruled by fear or anger Quitting jobs rather than telling someone about workplace injustices Difficulty relating to or accepting people who are similar to those who didn’t believe the character (men, women, police officers, doctors, religious leaders, etc.) Living with self-doubt because the character doesn’t trust their own instincts Never knowing who can be trusted Continuing in a toxic or harmful situation because the character thinks no one will believe them
Scenarios That Might Awaken This Fear Watching someone go public with a similar problem and lose all credibility in the media Witnessing behavior at work that should be reported The character testifying about a crime and their word being questioned Seeing someone speak out about what happened to them and hearing loved ones blame the victim Being told by an abuser and that no one will believe the character if they talk Telling authorities about wrongdoing and seeing nothing happen Innocently witnessing a crime and being named as a suspect Being told about an injustice in a way that makes the character question the reporter.
Until relatively recently, most stories were written with an omniscient point of view (POV), which follows the story and characters from an all-knowing distance. But over the past several decades, storytelling techniques have trended to a closer POV, focusing on one character and their experience at a time. In fact, for many genres, the expectation now is to use Deep POV for third-person stories, relating the story from within the POV character’s head (much like how we’d write first-person stories, just with different pronouns).
With the trends and expectations pushing toward a deeper POV, we might wonder if that means we should never drop out of Deep POV. What if we keep the POV “close” to one character’s experience, but relate some of the story from a shallower perspective that’s not so deep inside their head?
Choosing POV: What’s the Point?
The POV we choose shapes readers’ perspective of the story, story events, and whatever message we’re trying to share. For example, the POV we choose affects a reader’s view of the cause-and-effect flow, narrative momentum, immersion strength, emotions of arcs at the scene level, what characters notice about situations, priorities of various story goals, etc.
So the question of when we should use Deep POV—and when we shouldn’t—comes down to which option will shape readers’ perspective the way we want. Will Deep POV help or hurt our intentions for the reader experience?
Because Deep POV usually creates a sense of immersion and emotional connection between the reader and the character, it’s gotten more popular over the years. However, for some situations, Deep POV won’t deliver the experience we want readers to have.
In general, the deeper the POV, the deeper the immersion—the sense that we’re not just reading words on a page but experiencing the story, right down to tandem visceral responses along with the POV character. Yet we also need to keep in mind that anything that takes readers out of the story disrupts that sense of immersion.
With Deep POV, readers also tend to feel a stronger emotional connection to the POV character, as they experience the story as the POV character. The story is told 100% subjectively, as readers learn of only the POV character’s thoughts and emotions, not those of the other characters. Readers are more likely to prioritize the same goals as the POV character and forgive any mistakes, as they have a deep understanding of the character’s secret longings and foibles. Yet sometimes that deep understanding of the POV character isn’t what we want for the story.
Obviously, this experiential style of POV requires a lot of showing rather than telling, in order to bring readers along the character’s journey, step by step. That’s why advice to increase our levels of showing often go hand-in-hand with the advice to use Deep POV, but showing isn’t always best for our storytelling.
If we understand how Deep POV, immersion, emotional connections, and showing are all linked, we can start to predict when Deep POV might not serve the experience we want for our readers.
When Might Deep POV Hurt a Reader’s Experience?
Here are five situations when we might want to use a shallower POV to create a better reader experience:
Situation #1: Avoid Reader Boredom
We’ll start with the most superficial situation: Telling vs. Showing. The advice to show more than tell often makes writers think that showing is better than telling. However, telling isn’t bad or something to be avoided.
For example, we wouldn’t want to use a lot of showing and Deep POV in a scene if the result would be boring, such as when it would be better to skip forward with a transition of time and/or place. Sure, the POV character might need to bring another character up to speed, but if that repeats a bunch of information the reader already knows, readers shouldn’t have to experience that repetition along with the character.
Tip: Briefly switching to a shallower POV to allow for a transition, perhaps with a telling-style summary of what the reader missed, can prevent reader boredom.
Situation #2: Share Future Knowledge with Readers
Most stories are written in “literary past tense”—rather than normal past tense—which means that story events are described as though they’re happening in the story present. However, some stories use normal past tense, which means that the events have already happened within the story itself.
Think of how in some stories, the narrator already knows how everything turns out. They might even interject with lines like: “I didn’t know it yet but…” or “If she’d only known, she would have…”
While many of these stories are told by a narrator sharing a tale from their past with a framing device, some instead simply use the technique of a shallower POV to include those types of lines. The story might briefly shift to a shallower POV to give a preview of events yet to come, as the story’s future already exists due to the use of normal past tense.
Whatever technique we use to include those types of lines, normal past tense adds distance to our storytelling, as those “If she’d only known” lines remind readers that they are reading a story. And unless our character is a fortune-teller, Deep POV doesn’t work for sharing future story knowledge.
Tip: For some stories, the normal past tense and a shallower POV for some lines makes sense if sharing future knowledge with readers is what we intend.
Situation #3: Limit an Emotional Connection to the POV Character
Wait…don’t we want readers emotionally connecting? Yes, but with some stories, we want to encourage readers to emotionally connect with the story itself or with other characters, not with the POV character of a scene.
For example, some stories include scenes from the villain’s perspective. Those scenes are sometimes written in a Deep POV style when the author wants to hide the villain’s identity, but in many other instances, the villain scenes are written in a slightly shallower POV than the rest of the story, as the author doesn’t want to encourage an emotional connection between readers and the villain.
In other stories, perhaps with a large cast of POV characters, it might make sense to encourage readers to connect to the overall story more than to any one character. Or those stories might start and end scenes with shallower POV to help ease the transition from one POV character to another.
Stories with an unreliable narrator might want to avoid readers feeling too betrayed when they learn their connection to the POV character wasn’t as close as they thought. So they might include selected details from a shallower and more objective perspective to give readers subtextual hints of the truth.
Tip: For some situations, we might want to discourage, or at least temporarily lessen, a reader’s emotional connection to a specific POV character by using a shallower POV in certain sections.
Situation #4: Tell the Story Beyond a Character’s Ability
Obviously, there are some stories where Deep POV doesn’t make sense at all, such as when the story we want to tell ranges beyond characters’ knowledge. However, there are some situations where most of the story is in Deep POV, but the POV character temporarily loses their ability to share the story experience with readers.
For example, if we want readers to know that our POV character is experiencing a dream, we might include a few lines with a shallower POV to transition into the dream. We might do something similar if a character is drugged or unconscious (or nearly so).
Or think of a scene where the POV character is emotionally numb, perhaps near catatonic. In that case, we might pull back the POV a bit so readers aren’t stuck in that numb situation with the character and we can give details that force the story’s narrative forward.
Tip: In some situations, we may want the storytelling to still feel like Deep POV, while we bend the “rules” of the technique a bit to move the story forward with a few shallower POV lines or details.
Situation #5: Maintaining Immersion Requires a Shallower POV
Above, I mentioned that Deep POV usually increases a reader’s sense of immersion. However, there are some instances when a Deep POV that creates a strong emotional connection with the POV character would overwhelm readers.
Think of a story where the POV character experiences such intense situations and/or emotions that the reader could feel uncomfortable. For example, extreme grief or sexual assault could make a reader pull back from the immersive experience to protect themselves from mental or emotional trauma.
In other words, some story situations can trigger readers to break immersion themselves. So if we want to maintain immersion, we might choose to use a shallower POV to prevent readers from feeling the need to pull back.
If readers already have the context for what the POV character is going through, the emotional connection can remain with a sense of sympathy, rather than the sense of empathy that a Deep POV might entail. As I’ve posted about before on my blog: The reader’s “flavor” of the emotion can be more powerful, intimate, and immediate than what they would experience if the author tried to tell them “here’s what this emotion feels like.”
Tip: In some situations, readers will feel a stronger emotional connection if we give them room with a shallower POV to experience their own reaction to events, rather than trying to match the reader’s emotional journey to the character’s experience.
The joy of having finished a draft is one of writing’s great pleasures, yet to get there, you need to set – and find ways to keep – writing goals. Here are seven ideas to build accountability and ensure small wins keep rolling:
1. Build Small Habits for Replicable Wins
In the book, Atomic Habits (2018), James Clear writes about how easy it is to think about your goals in terms of major actions rather than the small improvements you can make on a daily basis. His thesis is that small habits established over time become big wins.
Romance novelist, RITA award nominee and Now Novel writing coach Romy Sommer often tells an anecdote in our writing webinars about small habits. When she wrote her first novel she would write snippets in stolen fifteen minutes and half hours while parked in her car, waiting on the school run.
Where in your day can you carve out time and attach writing to something you have to do anyway? How else can you build writing habits that start small but lead to big wins? Keep reading for ideas:
2. Attach Writing to Things You Do by Default
Small, replicable wins – such as writing 500 words daily, to begin – help writing become almost unconscious, like a pianist’s muscle memory. In time, you find the keys without thinking.
One way to make goal-keeping almost automatic is to ‘stack’ habits. This is something theorized by Stanford behavioral scientist BJ Fogg, who suggests using habitual behaviors as triggers for what you want to achieve.
Fogg gives the formula for building a habit you can keep. ‘After I do X, I will do easy-win-Y’. For example, ‘After I start my morning coffee, I will tidy one item in the living room’.
The small, attainable step also brings the higher-effort step closer. For example, as Romy Sommer says regarding ‘stretch goals’:
‘When you sit down to write, decide how many words you’ll be happy to write, and how many words you’ll be really happy to write. Maybe you’ll be okay with writing 300 words in an hour and ecstatic if you reach your stretch goal of 500 words. This way, when you achieve the lower goal, you’ll still feel that the session was a success – and more often than not, by reducing the pressure and performance anxiety from aiming for the higher goal, you’ll actually achieve that stretch goal!’
3. Find Accountability Partners
What is an accountability partner? Someone who shows up when you’re supposed to, checks in, and understands – or even better shares – your goals.
Writing sprints are one kind of accountability tool to ensure you keep showing up to write.
Members of Now Novel’s Group Coaching program often say our daily virtual writing sprints (where members meet in a LiveWebinar room on the hour and write without talking) are a helpful tool for sticking to writing goals and structuring writing time.
You have people to talk to who understand your creative discipline/field and can make useful suggestions
Knowing others are invested in your success nurtures your own motivation
4. Write Your Goals Down and Track Your Progress
In one writing webinar on process, Romy shared a simple yet effective tip for staying focused on your writing goals:
Write a SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-based) goal in a fun design and save it as your phone or desktop background (you could use a free graphic design tool such as Canva).
If you often check your devices, it’s an easy way to fill each day with small reminders of attainable (not massive) actions that support your writing goals.
5. Write And Rewrite to Learn Your Ideal Writing Process
Remember how ‘massive action’ isn’t necessary to reach your goals? Perspective comes with writing a lot and learning that a first draft is almost never the final draft.
Finishing the first run of a manuscript may feel like massive action qualitatively. Yet drafting plus rewrites (with beta reader or editorial input) can take you from something good (and attaining your first goal, completion) to something great – a well-developed story.
6. Stay Open to Revising Your Writing Goals
You only truly learn the actions your goals require by doing and finding out what works for you.
Sometimes you need to revise your timelines due to your preferred process, and that’s OK. Stanford did a study of 1.4 million weight loss app users and found that behaviors in the first week of forming new habits massively influence whether you will stay the course and reach your goals.
This is part of why we conduct an intake call in the first week of our Group Coaching author program – we get to understand each member’s goals better, and often spot any challenges that may necessitate small adjustments to process and expectations.
Revisiting your writing goals and adjusting your timeline expectations if necessary keeps writing from becoming a source of pressure more than pleasure.
7. Journal and Share Progress
Journaling is a powerful tool for self-reporting your feelings, process and progress. Touching base with your aspirations and any attendant fears.
Writing coaches and constructive, caring critique circles function similarly to journaling in helping you stay focused on your writing goals while touching base. They provide a mirror in which you may measure where you were then vs where you are now.
Sharing doubts, writing challenges and conundrums in a supportive environment is a lot like journaling because you have the feedback that helps you remember (and renew commitment to) your goals.
To sum up, writing goals are easier to reach when you build small habits and attach writing to habits you’ve built already. Finding accountability partners and joining writing sprints provides camaraderie and supports building good habits. Keep writing to learn what works for you, and rewrite ten times if you need to, journaling your process or sharing with a critique circle if you find this boosts your focus and motivation.
Conflict is a key story ingredient, one we need a lot of, but this doesn’t mean quantity is better than quality. Fiction isn’t a video game; waves of bad guys with guns won’t keep readers tuned in for long. They expect to see a variety of conflict, including meaningful problems that deepen the story, raise the stakes, advance the plot, and provide opportunities for character development.
This last one is especially important, as it’s how a beloved character responds to adversity that really draws readers in.
The best way to reveal characterization and development is to use conflict to target our character’s soft spots. When we take aim at the things our character cares most about, trigger their fears or insecurities, or smack them right in the ego, they’ll react in a way that reveals their true selves, and that’s the person readers will connect to.
So, how do we find the right problems and challenges that will produce the response we’re looking for?
It’s true, there is no end to the ways you can challenge your character. And I don’t know about you, but sometimes having too much choice can be paralyzing.
Something Becca and I did to help with this was to create categories for conflict by looking at the theme that a clash would produce.
We covered some of these categories (and the scenarios that go with each), in The Conflict Thesaurus, Volume 1:
Let’s look at each category’s superpowers so you can better decide what type of conflict serves your story and will challenge characters in the way you need most.
Dangers and Threats
This is a versatile form of conflict: a hazard or menace that represents direct harm to the character or the people they care about (and may be responsible for). Introducing a danger or threat can mess with your character’s mental state, pulling up their deepest fears and even leading to panic if others they love are at risk.
Danger can originate from other people, the environment, a location, or even from within the character themselves. For someone struggling with an addiction, an inability to gauge risk or seek help could lead to a hospitalization or death. A person consumed with guilt over past mistakes might become self-destructive, taking on an adversary or challenge far beyond their abilities because they believe that only self-punishment or self-sacrifice can balance the scales.
Another terrific place to find danger is in the setting. Look at where your character is, and the natural dangers lurking in the area: will the rain-soaked ground where your adventurers are hiding give way, or will a poisonous centipede skitter into a character’s sleeping bag on a camping trip? Will that neighbor show up before your character has time to clean up a murder scene? Depending on what you need for the story, threats or dangers can inconvenience, create delays, ruin carefully laid plans, or worse.
Ego-Related Conflicts
In the real world, people tend to shy away from situations where they could be embarrassed because they worry about what others think and don’t like to be judged. Insecurities magnify mistakes in their minds, especially if their egos have been hurt by criticism or similar blunders in the past.
Because well-built characters will have similar psychological drivers, they’ll struggle with some insecurities, too. Being excluded, discredited, blamed, or minimized will hurt them, even if they strive not to show it.
Ego-related challenges stir up internal conflict and trigger sensitivities that are hard to hide, so the character may respond by pulling back and isolating themselves, exploding with anger, or replying with barbed honesty that only makes things worse.
Consider Fiona, our protagonist who has not visited her hometown in quite a while. Things are becoming serious with her boyfriend, however, so she books a flight. She’s nervous, because her parents have some odd ideas about the world, but she knows Drew is the one, and it’s time to introduce him to her family.
Fiona and Drew arrive as her parents are having an after-dinner glass of port. At first, everything goes as expected. They’re overjoyed at the surprise visit and they fawn over Drew, asking about his job, family, interests—basically ticking all the boxes. But as one glass of port turns into several, Fiona’s dad begins to rant a bit about world events until, in a pin-drop moment, he floats a full-on, dark net alien conspiracy theory.
Imagine Fiona’s embarrassment and how she might try to salvage the evening. Maybe she laughs it off, pretending it’s a joke. Or she tells Drew that her dad’s teasing him to see how he’ll react. But the more Fiona tries to minimize the damage, the louder and more verbal her father gets. Soon he’s targeting Fiona, criticizing her for being naive, living in a dream world, and not acknowledging the indisputable evidence that an alien force is pulling the puppet strings of the human race. As her father rages, humiliation washes over her. The love of her life is bearing witness to this lunacy. What must Drew think of her parents…and her?
Ego-related conflict–such as suffering a humiliation like Fiona–strikes deep. It will hurt and lead to internal struggles regarding self-esteem, so if your character is traversing a change arc, depending on how they handle the situation, it can help them move forward, or set them back.
A Loss of Control
In the real world, the need to control outcomes control steers decision-making. We may invest in a university degree to secure a higher-paying job, or buy a house in a school district that ensures our children get a quality education. We put fuel in the car so we don’t run out, clean scraped knees so they don’t get infected, and choose politeness over honesty to avoid drama. In other words, we live according to the rules of cause and effect.
But does life give two crab apples about cause and effect? Nope. While we’re playing the odds, it stands up and says, “Hold my beer.” It’s indisputable and somewhat horrifying: control is only an illusion. At any moment, something unexpected can happen that undoes all our careful planning.
A loss of control in the real world can be devastating because we think we should have seen what was coming—anticipated it and had an escape plan ready, so when we hit a character with a complication they can’t stop or prevent, it messes them up, too.
Conflicts that dispel the myth of control will reveal characterization in the protagonist’s lowest moment. Imagine a character whose spouse succumbs to a heart attack while camping. In the days that follow, does our grieving character angrily push people away, causing cracks to surface in those relationships? Does he sink into the quicksand of denial and refuse to acknowledge what happened? Or will he set aside his pain to help his children and other family members cope with their heartbreaking loss?
A loss of control will also give your readers a queasy-familiar sensation because they too have experienced moments where they thought they had a handle on things but didn’t. So if you want pull readers in or create empathy for a character, this is a great way to do it.
Losing an Advantage
One of the worst things we can do to a character is cause them to lose hope. After all, conflict’s sharp sword has already jabbed them relentlessly throughout the story. They’ve fought, sacrificed, and clawed their way forward, and then finally, their hard work starts to pay off. They gain something they need, the world starts to support them, or they pull ahead of the competition.
So naturally, because we’re evil, we take their hard-won advantage away.
Losing an advantage is a versatile type of conflict that can be especially helpful at specific times, so it should be wielded strategically. For example, not every character rushes out the door when the trumpet of adventure sounds. Instead, they cling to their favorite saggy, cat-clawed chair, because even if the living room of life isn’t great right now, it’s what they know, and that makes it safe. It’s in their comfort zone.
But if we let our characters stay where they are, the story is as good as dead. Taking away something they deem vital, like a position of authority, a trusted ally, or cherished relationship, can convince them to stumble through that first story door.
This type of conflict can also test a character’s commitment. What happens when they lose the one thing that’s been motivating them to continue? If their lead witness in a trial is murdered, or their benefactor withdraws support, or an adoption falls through, will they forge ahead or throw in the towel?
Power Struggles
If there’s one thing we know about our characters, it’s that at some point, they’re going to clash. And why is no mystery. Each member of our story’s cast has their own goals, agendas, needs, and beliefs, and those don’t always play nicely with the goals, agendas, needs, and beliefs of others. When there’s too much friction, a power struggle ensues.
This often happens in relationships where characters don’t have equal status, such as a police officer and suspect, boss and employee, or teacher and student. It can occur when the person with less power tries to level the playing field or unseat the other party. Conflict will also arise when it’s perceived that one person is using their position unfairly. If your character is on the receiving end of a power play—say, they’ve been frivolously sued by a disgruntled customer, falsely accused by a rival, or passed over for promotion because of nepotism—it will trigger their moral sense of right and wrong, leading to a battle royale.
One of the best places to highlight a power struggle is within a dialogue exchange between characters with different goals. If one party wants information the other doesn’t want to share, a beautiful tug-of-war can unfold, complete with verbal jabs, veiled threats, and insults.
Miscellaneous Challenges
Conflict is multifaceted, and like most things in life, not every scenario can be filed neatly into a particular box. If you’re searching for conflict that provides a unique challenge for your character or complicates their situation in ways you might not have considered, this is the category for you. Maybe your character is in the wrong place at the wrong time, they have been mistaken for someone else, or a dire circumstance forces them to blindly trust a stranger. Oh, the possibilities!
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