Bethany Henry: Writing & Wellness

Writing great character introductions is an important way to get our readers invested in our story and interested in our characters. We want to help readers see and love our characters as much as we do! Character introductions seem like they should be easy. Just tell people the character’s name and a couple of basic descriptions and we should be good to go. However, we’re missing out on a lot of potential if we leave it at that. First impressions are important, after all! We want to spark interest. We want to impress. We want to make the reader invested and care about the character. While there are library shelves full of different styles and genres of writing, here are a few key overall concepts of writing great character introductions. 5 Keys For Writing Great Character Introductions 1. Main Characters Go First Protagonists and major characters should get more time and be introduced at the start of the story. This signals to the reader they are important, establishes  character m...

Last week I talked about the importance of knowing who we are writing for. We talked about genre and how knowing our genre can give us a foundation to help us create satisfying stories that our readers will find and enjoy. Another important aspect of knowing who we are writing for is  identifying our target age range. While people read widely and often don’t conform to their actual age when choosing books, stories are generally divided into a few different age levels. Each of these levels will have different word count targets. This is probably the most obvious difference between them, but there are a few more things that are important to note as well! We don’t have to follow all the trends to shoehorn our story into a certain category. But being aware of these differences can help us to identify where and how our story can best be enjoyed by readers. Age Range in Stories Board Books Age range: 0-3 Word count: 0-100 (often under 30) These books are designed to be read alo...

Writers should know who they are writing for. “I’m writing for myself!” many writers say. As best selling author Jodi Ellen Malpas says, “You must write for yourself and not what you think people want to read.” And that’s important advice. It’s important to evaluate our personal motives for writing and work toward satisfying them. It’s good to be creating things we enjoy and are proud of. Yet you know who else we write for? Our readers. If we want readers to find and enjoy our writing, it is important to  know  that. To be intentional keeping that in mind as we craft our work. One major way this comes into play is through genre. Who Are We Writing For? Exploring Genre Genre simply means a type of category.  It’s nothing fancy, just a way of organizing things based on their content or style. Sometimes genre can get a bad wrap among writers when we complain we are being limited by certain genre expectations. Yet genre isn’t designed to ruin our lives by making up ...