Cameron Montague Taylor

Keep Readers Engaged (even when the story gets gloomy)

September 9, 2023 by Cameron Montague Taylor Leave a Comment

One of the best pieces of writing advice I’ve ever heard comes from Fantasy author L. Penelope and her podcast My Imaginary Friends.

Penelope says that one of the greatest ways to drive tension in the story and ensure that both internal and external arcs remain interesting is to “leave blood on the floor.” By that, she means that authors ought to take advantage of potential pain points for their characters and ensure we don’t pull our punches when we’re hitting them.

Need a character to flee a safe house?

Burn it down.

Need your character to get sidelined from a fight?

Break their arm.

Need a couple to spend time apart?

Have them blow up at one another over a conflict that’s real, genuine, and hits at both of their backstory wounds.

If the story isn’t coming together or things feel like they’re dragging, take whatever pain-point or problem your character is currently facing and find a way to make it worse.

In other words, ask yourself: what’s the worst possible situation you can put the character through that still lets them get up and continue driving the story forward, even if (especially if) at great cost? Then find a way to put your character through it.

Twist the knife, so to speak.

But when we’ve twisted enough knives—especially in longform or series writing in which our character may very well receive several such twists—it’s easy to accidentally swing hard in the other direction and write a story that’s entirely doom and gloom.

The right balance is tough to strike. Not enough blood on the floor, and the story might feel plot-convenient, easy, or slow. Too much blood on the floor, and the story might be so grim that it’s no longer fun for readers.

Readers in different genres and subgenres have different tolerances for doom and gloom, but most have a Do Not Cross line somewhere. What that looks for your readership and your work will be different from the next writer, but you likely know what mark you’re trying to hit. So, the question becomes: how do we hit it, and what can we do to make sure they don’t get dragged through the mud alongside our characters?

Let’s dive into a two-part technique that keeps readers hooked even through dreary storylines.

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Silverweaver Preorders are Up!

August 8, 2023 by Cameron Montague Taylor Leave a Comment

Silverweaver – an Ilia Archives novella

Paranormal Gaslamp Fantasy | Sapphic Romance
Out October 19, 2023

Second-rate ghosthunter Anya Iteri comes from a family of metalweavers — powerful mages who can forge iron, shape steel, and even bend blood. Down on her luck and struggling for work, Anya bribes her little brother, a city guide, to let her drum up business on one of his tours.

The plan is simple. Summon a hibernating ghost to give the tour a good show, return it to its slumber, and collect a hefty tip. But the moment the tour begins, Anya encounters a ghost of a different kind: Eleira Soti, talented hunter and former love of her life, newly returned to the city after years away. El’s familiar face leaves Anya fighting distraction and attraction alike on her way into the city’s most haunted grounds.

The night goes from bad to worse when the wrong ghost gets summoned and fingers are pointed Anya’s way. A malignant spirit emerges from the veil, bent on destroying the tour and everyone on it. Racing against time, Anya must team up with El to trap the ghost, save her brother, and prove, once and for all, that her abilities aren’t as second-rate as others think.

Preorder Now!

Power Up Your Descriptive Writing

April 14, 2023 by Cameron Montague Taylor Leave a Comment

Feeling like your descriptive prose is falling flat, or your worldbuilding and setting details aren’t hitting the page quite right? That could be because you’re not giving these details a ‘face.’

Readers are relentlessly interested in the humanity of your story: the myriad ways in which each element of setting, backstory, and worldbuilding impact the people who populate your universe. Thus, when our setting descriptions fall flat, it’s often because we get stuck on describing things instead of the relationships people have to those things.

For example:

When describing a city that recently endured an air-raid, we might be tempted to write something like:

A bomb had gone off, leaving wreckage along the city block.

There’s nothing wrong with this sentence on the surface. It’s to-the-point, and it creates an image in the reader’s head. But is it the most evocative depiction of warfare possible? Perhaps not. Thus, the question becomes: how can we give the city a face?

The bomb had left only rubble behind. Lara picked her way through the street, pausing when a flash of red caught the corner of her eye: a single child’s shoe, abandoned by its wearer.

The shoe is the human element. It takes setting description and connects it to a character—even a character the reader hasn’t and will never meet—which in turn punches up the emotional impact of the description.

This might seem like a cheap ‘win’ in prose, because harm to children and animals tends to garner an emotional response from anyone who isn’t a complete sociopath, so let’s look at a more mundane example. Many stories feature some kind of storefront, shopping, or market scene. How can we add interest into such a common setting? Try zooming in from the general to the specific, and ensuring the specific has a single, human subject at its heart. Compare:

Merchants sold their wares

with

A merchant with yellow-stained fingertips organized his display of hanging spice baskets.

Here, we narrow the focus from ‘merchants’ to a single merchant, one who works with (presumably) saffron, based on his yellow-stained fingertips. While this description is significantly longer than the simple and general ‘merchants sold their wares,’ it arguably condenses the power of a paragraph of exposition into a single sentence, and gives the reader a much clearer mental picture.

Even when zooming in, however, we tend to focus on visual details. Don’t forget about the power of the other senses: sound, smell, touch. Take a simple, general description like:

When the first fires lit, they fled the city in droves

and punch it up with sensory details that evoke the human element of that exodus.

Wagons lined the roads, filled to the brim with hastily stacked belongings and overseen by thin-lipped matrons. Impatient horses whickered at the slow pace, made nervous by the acrid tang of smoke carried westward on the breeze.

By calling upon multiple different senses, we capitalize on the descriptive power of our narration and help our readers immerse themselves in setting.

This is, at its heart, the difference between showing and telling in descriptive writing. In one excerpt, we inform the reader that residents are fleeing the city. In another, we show them what flight looks like in an immediate, visceral way.

There will be times when telling is necessary; we use descriptive summary in order to dispense less-important information to the reader and quickly move the narrative focus from one place to another. Often, we might begin our description with a ‘tell’ to give the reader an important piece of information, then zoom into little human details to ‘show’ them what that information means.

Combining the two descriptions from the last example would yield a strong result:

When the first fires lit, they fled the city in droves. Wagons lined the roads, filled to the brim with hastily stacked belongings and overseen by thin-lipped matrons. Impatient horses whickered at the slow pace, made nervous by the acrid tang of smoke carried westward on the breeze.

The first sentence is weaker without the sensory zoom, but provides the groundwork upon which a ‘human element’ can rest.

That’s not to say description must include a human face in order to work; environmental or setting description can be moody, atmospheric, and beautiful on its own. But by searching for connections with the human element, you can allow atmospheric descriptions to shine without over-relying on the inanimate to build your story’s backdrop.

Details like yellow-stained fingertips or a single red shoe can give resonant, emotional context to the inanimate. By adding a ‘human face’ to specific moments in your setting and worldbuilding description, you can help readers feel present in each scene, and deeply connect them to and immerse them in your world.

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The Digital Novel Planner is Here!

February 27, 2023 by Cameron Montague Taylor Leave a Comment

The new, coloring book skin for the digital novel planner is here!

The WIP Novel Planner is a digital (and printable) planning guide for novelists. I’ve been working on different permutations of the planner since last last year, and am very happy with the outcome! So far, folks have really seemed to enjoy using it for the novel-planning process. I’m looking forward to creating new skins in the future, but for now, I intend to turn my focus to craft of writing booklets, so stay tuned for an announcement about that in the near future!

If you’re looking for the planner, you can learn more about it here in my shop. Otherwise, the planner is up for purchase on Etsy and Ko-fi:

Buy on Etsy

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Theme in Fiction

February 1, 2023 by Cameron Montague Taylor Leave a Comment

This week, we’re talking theme.

A theme is a central idea or message that runs throughout your novel. Incorporating a theme can allow you to explore important issues, discuss ideas, and create a more meaningful and engaging story for your readers.

But how?

‘Theme’ is such a broad-brush concept that it can feel like a daunting task to 1) create one that works for your story and 2) weave it in while juggling character, plot, worldbuilding, etc.—so let’s start with the basics.

Themes: some examples

As a central, underpinning element to your story, the theme is a broad brush message or idea that your story is broadly about. Though stories often touch upon multiple themes, you can strengthen the core of your manuscript by using a strong, central, ‘controlling’ theme that underpins the others.

Here are some examples of themes in fiction:

Good vs. Evil
Progress vs. Stagnation
War vs. Peace
Coming of age
Self-discovery

Some themes are more complex, or have an inherent ‘point’ or meaning:

Love is love
Blood is thicker than water (family comes first)
Absolute power corrupts absolutely
Progress is a double-edged sword
Good always triumphs
Everything returns to balance

One way to find your theme is to ask yourself: what is my story really about? What message do I want my reader to take away from it once they’re finished?

Or, if that doesn’t work:

What struggles do all of my characters share? What similarities can I find in the challenges they face?

By identifying and leaning into that common thread, the different elements of your story will pull together in a more cohesive whole.

But before we get into the ‘how,’ let’s look at one of the common pitfalls of thematic inclusion, especially when drawing from the second list of themes: moralizing.

Choose with intention, but beware moralizing

When incorporating a theme, the issues we feel most strongly about (or the questions we’ve been pondering for a long time) often bear the ripest fruit. This is one of the many ways you can “write what you know”—even if your story-world is filled with monsters and faeries and dragons.

However, when we when we choose themes that are important to us, we’re not only choosing something we feel strongly about, but a topic on which we have a strong opinion.

There’s nothing wrong with using fiction to explore and challenge our ideas and beliefs. (In fact… that’s arguably what fiction is for.)

But, if we aren’t careful, we run the risk of turning our stories into a platform from which we preach to our readers.

Moralizing happens when an author uses their characters to espouse a particular point of view or moral lesson. It’s most obvious when that point of view or moral lesson aligns closely with a recognizable side of an (often) controversial modern debate.

Readers don’t like being told what to think, even when we’re telling them something they already agree with. If you’re planning to use theme to tackle something heavy—equality, bodily autonomy, etc.—it’s worth ensuring not only that you aren’t feeding the message directly to the reader by using characters as mouthpieces, but that your characters are complex enough that, though the reader might pick up on the theme, it never comes off as preachy or heavy-handed.

In other words: focus on creating complex, nuanced characters with their own beliefs, motivations, and moral codes—not only ones that either align with or diametrically oppose yours. Instead of using them to directly discuss the theme (and the moral lesson hidden within), allow the characters and their actions to drive the story and thus reveal the underlying themes and messages naturally. And please, please don’t set up your story so all the ‘good guys’ agree with your thematic message while the ‘bad guys’ stand in opposition to it.

In other words: keep it subtextual.

Keep theme subtle with symbolism

One way to keep theme subtextual is through symbolism, ie: the representative use of objects or imagery. For example, if your theme is about the importance of family, you could use a recurring symbol like trees, or a specific representative object like a family heirloom. Trees might show up in different periods of fruit and flower throughout the story, representing the state or strength of the family. A cheating husband’s carelessness might be throwing away his marriage; perhaps he loses his faithful grandfather’s cufflinks after meeting with his mistress.

By using a series of related symbols (or the same symbol in different ways), you can create a sense of continuity and tie your theme to your story. If that’s a little too subtextual, you can also use character to explore theme—just be sure you’re doing so in a nuanced way.

Use your characters for nuanced representation

Another way to represent and explore theme is with character. What lessons can your characters learn, what relationships can they have, and what events can they face that all tie back to that same theme?

When planning characters and character arcs, however, it’s important to incorporate the theme in a nuanced way. In a story about the importance of family, avoid having the ‘good’ character struggling to hold their family together (and getting rewarded at the end), while the ‘bad’ character openly rejects their family bonds and pays for it. Thematic nuance might mean writing a ‘good guy’ who struggles with the loss of a loved one while the ‘bad guy’ tries to hold their family together, but does so in deeply flawed ways.

By using characters to explore the theme in greyscale, you can add depth and complexity to the story—and avoid sending unintended or reductive messages about ‘right’ and ‘wrong!’

Don’t forget the setting

But don’t stop at character; setting, too, be used to create a sense of atmosphere and mood that reflects or enhances the theme. Returning to the example of a story about the importance of family, think about how different the story would feel when set in 1) a small town where everyone knows everyone else vs. 2) a big city where people can often feel isolated and alone. What different elements of theme would each setting allow you to explore?

Remember: setting is a great driver of conflict. Setting impacts character, which impacts plot. Therefore, choosing a setting that resonates with your theme will help you bring thematic conflict to the forefront in an organic way that won’t feel as preachy or forced.

Weave theme into your subplots

Finally, don’t forget about the power of subplots. Though your protagonist might carry your story’s thematic heart, are there subplots or side characters you can use to explore other, related elements of that theme (or even, other related themes)?

In a story about the importance of family, you might contrast the protagonist’s struggle with loss with a secondary character’s voluntary estrangement with their family of birth—and their subsequent discovery of ‘found family,’ or family of choice. This is another great way to add complexity and nuance, particularly with complex or hot-topic themes.

In conclusion, incorporating a theme into your fiction novel is a great way to add depth to your writing. By choosing a theme that is meaningful to you and using symbolism, characters, setting, and subplots to explore the theme, you can create a more engaging and meaningful story for your readers. Take your time and think about the theme you want to explore in your story, plan how you want to incorporate it and then let your imagination run wild. Remember that the theme should be a subtle undertone and not overpower the story, and it should not be forced in the story, it should flow naturally.

What themes have you written into your stories? Did you find yourself leaning more towards one method of incorporation (ie: symbolism v. character v. subplot)?

Killing Darlings

December 27, 2022 by Cameron Montague Taylor Leave a Comment

This week, I’m trying something new on the blog: a segment called Dear Cee, in which I answer I question I received via email, DM, comment, or otherwise. The first Dear Cee is from a colleague who’s wrestling with a Contemporary Romance manuscript and trying to work out whether/how a scene ought to be cut.

If you’ve ever wondered why a developmental editor might suggest a scene-level cut—or how an editor might go about performing one—read on!

Dear Cee,

I have a question about “killing darlings.”

Let’s say an author’s manuscript has a long chapter in which the FMC (female main character) and her two friends go out to party on a boat. The only thing that happens during the trip is a conversation about the FMC’s ex-boyfriend and her hot new (MMC) neighbor. The chapter shows the closeness of their relationships, but doesn’t progress the plot or add any tension.

Should a chapter like this be cut? My gut says ‘yes,’ but I’m not sure how to approach this with the author!

You’re almost certainly right, so the questions are:

How much of that information is necessary to character development / to understand the rest of the story?
Could the author cut the entire chapter and not lose anything meaningful? (in that case, chop chop)
Do we need character and relationship progression there, but the scene fails to add anything to the story because it’s a ‘diner’ conversation (ie: had while eating/drinking/hanging out with little external motion)?

I suspect the issue is a combination of the above three factors. Granted, I haven’t read the source text myself, so I’m making guesses, but I’ll go out on a limb and pinpoint the following issues:

The reader probably doesn’t need to know all of the information that gets presented in the friends’ dialogue
Most of the dialogue is snappy back-and-forth, ie: literal reportage of what the author heard in their head while they were writing
This snappy back-and-forth feels like talking heads by the end of the scene, which drowns out important or interesting character-building information.

These tend to be ‘darling’ scenes. They’re fun, the author enjoyed writing them, they show the characters interacting and having a good time. We’re loath to cut these moments in our writing because they give us the warm-fuzzies, and it’s easy to conflate I love this scene with I need this scene. Self-editing is hard!

But your author would be happy to know that, while I’m leaning towards ‘cut it,’ there could be enough important contained to justify keeping (and rewriting) it. If you suspect that’s the case, I have another set of questions:

What aspect of the Big Three elements of story (plot, character, worldbuilding) are advanced in this scene?
Can those elements be worked into surrounding scenes in order to chop this one?
If not, is there a more conflict-driven, high-stakes way to approach the reveal of this vital information?

On the surface, this scene sounds like a candidate for either a wholesale cut or a drastic reduction: it moves slowly, it only advances one element of the Big Three, it lacks conflict/stakes. But—if this is the only in-scene relationship development between the FMC and her friends, cutting it might leave their friendship on shaky legs.

What if the author was right to include a character-building scene, but the execution is flawed? What would need to change in order to turn this ‘darling’ scene into one that drives the narrative forward?

Kill your darlings, then bring them back to life

Like zombies. But better.

When giving ‘darlings’ a new lease on life, we must identify what information the author conveys. Mark and set aside important dialogue exchanges, moments of action, and snippets of interiority that need to make it through to the next draft.

Next, take a step back. Look at those important bits, and ask the author “how else can you string together these pieces?”

I’m operating under the assumption, based on the nature of the question, that this is a ‘bonding’ scene. These types of scenes often cause problems, not because character bonding is irrelevant to plot, but because of how the bonding happens. The easiest way for characters to share information is through dialogue, which is why we end up with so many sit-down conversations in our rough drafts. But sit-down conversations tend to drag, and moreover, they aren’t the fastest way to show the bond those characters have.

People bond through hardship, which is another way of saying conflict—ie: the driving engine of narrative traction. When adding conflict into a dialogue heavy scene, many authors reach first for a natural next step: make the characters have an argument.

This is a possible solution, but it’s often a trap. If the scene is already too dialogue-heavy, adding more dialogue (even if it’s high-conflict dialogue) won’t necessarily fix it.

So, how else can we add conflict into a dialogue-heavy scene?

A ticking clock
An obstacle

In other words: incorporate an action element to replace, contextualize, and balance the scene’s dialogue.

The resurrection

When I edit, I ensure the author understands 1) why I believe the structure of a scene isn’t serving their story, and 2) offer multiple solutions for how the author can address the issue. I try to recommend a way to ‘save’ a scene unless I believe, from the bottom of my soul, that it has to hit the chopping block. In this case, I’d give an example of a way to add a ticking clock or obstacle in order to provide the tension necessary to carry a relationship-building scene.

In this case, let’s say:

The FMC has promised to dog-sit for the MMC that evening (ticking clock), and
The boat’s engine breaks down (obstacle).

Though in some genres, these obstacles will be life-threatening, they absolutely don’t have to be! All we need is a little shock or scare that gives the characters a reason to rally together, bond (or bond further), and reveal information in an organic way that doesn’t read like a conversation included for the reader’s benefit.

For the purpose of the example, let’s say the boat’s engine breaks down. This would give the characters a reason to talk about the FMC’s hot new neighbor (MMC), because if they can’t get back to shore in time, she’s going to ruin his night by failing to show up to dogsit for him. Even better—what if they don’t have cell reception, so she can’t even let him know what’s happening?

Was the FMC’s ex good with engines? Does she momentarily bemoan their breakup only for her friends to leap on the offensive and remind her what a no-good cheater he was?

Sure, this could be a scary moment: they’re adrift and panicking as the sun starts to set and the waves get bigger. Or, it could be a lighthearted, zany adventure as they find a handheld VHF, charge it, and make a radio call to the coast guard. What if, when the tow boat comes, the captain is young and attractive, and one of the friends flirts outrageously with him—and teases the FMC when she won’t join in on the fun, saying her ‘heart is spoken for’ by her hot neighbor?

There’s a reason why friend groups often get involved in antics in books/movies/tv: antics are fun, they provide an in-scene way to show relationship dynamics to the reader, and they almost always result in a conflict the group needs to overcome in order to reach their scene-level goal.

Tie it all in

To recap: the best thing for the story might be to cut the scene entirely. But if that’s not the case, the author must find a way to tie the events of that scene into either an external plot or subplot, creating moments of action that have a ripple effect on scenes. The easiest ways to add tension are through a ticking clock or an obstacle—preferably both!

This author’s order of operations becomes:

Identify a goal for the FMC that will carry her through the boat scene and into the rest of the story. Does this goal—or a sub-goal beneath it—carry a ticking clock? Even better.
Put an obstacle into the boat scene that will force failure on the ticking clock goal.
Hijinks ensue as the friends rally around FMC to help her meet her goal.
Use this as an opportunity to work the important conversation, action, and interiority that was flagged as ‘must save’ from the original draft.
Allow the FMC to have a partial win (she doesn’t get stranded at sea, hooray!) with a defeat immediately chasing its heels (she is egregiously late to dog sit, so the MMC missed his evening obligation).
Does the MMC get upset about this? Probably! This ties into the romantic plot’s ‘push’ factors (the MMC thinks she’s a flake; the FMC thinks he’s an uptight, unforgiving jerk).
This partial defeat can also tie into the next step of the external pot (how does the FMC make it up to the MMC? This gives them an opportunity to connect further!).

Naturally, this tweak with the engine breakdown and the dog sitting might not work for the author, and that’s totally okay. In editorial work, our suggestions aren’t The Only Way to ‘fix’ a story. Instead, they’re fleshed-out examples that show the author how altering an element of the story will strengthen it, hopefully paving the way for them to plug-and-play their own solution.

The details of the change itself aren’t important. We can change them to anything: one of the FMC’s friends falls overboard and the MMC is a member of the Coast Guard, for example, or the FMC breaks something on the boat and has a blow-out fight with the friend who owns the boat, which reveals a lot about the FMC’s backstory in the process.

Whatever the author chooses, the result is the only thing that matters, and that’s a scene which reveals both the FMC’s backstory and the bond she shares with her friends, while generating conflict/stakes and connecting back to the external plot.

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