Writing

Writer Tips: The Beginning Pt. 2

April 27, 2025April 26, 2025 Kara Jorgensen1 Comment

In last week’s blog post, we talked about how the opening of a book needed to include a hook, establish the main character, establish the setting, and establish the conflict. In this week’s blog, we’re going to talk about the potential pitfalls when writing the beginning of a book, how to avoid them, and how to make them work.

Keep in mind that these pitfalls aren’t absolute rules; they are merely things to look at more closely while writing and editing the beginning of your book because they can often be weak, boring, or cause other issues. My hope is that these will make you reexamine ideas for the beginnings of your works and figure out innovative ways to make them exciting, interesting, and smooth.

Starting With Characters Waking Up

The problem: this is usually not an interesting place to start the story. While you do need to establish the “before” for your main characters early in the story, you don’t necessarily want to start with them waking up and getting ready because it might not be when anything interesting is happening. You can incorporate what the character looks like without having them look in the mirror or put on clothes. It often comes off as clunky or that the writer is just warming up. Another sign of a new writer is writing every single time the characters wake up or go to sleep. Time skips are your friend in regards to flow, and 9/10 starting with the character waking up is warm up rather than the right place to start.

How to make it work: have the character wake up for an interesting reason. Olivia Waite’s Murder by Memory has the main character waking up in a brand new body that isn’t hers during a blackout on the space ship she’s on. This sets the scene, introduces some conflict, and punches up the excitement from the first sentence. You could also have an explosion wake them up or something crash. Those would be interesting things that would get your reader engaged immediately. If there’s something very odd about the character, having them get ready could be a way to show this. For example, in Metamorphosis, the main character wakes up and only while getting ready do we realize he has turned into a bug. If you were writing from the perspective of a spy getting ready for a job or an assassin suiting up, those would be interesting getting ready montages, especially if they start normally and quickly become more weird or unexpected.

Starting With A Dream Or Flashback

The problem: these can be incredibly disorienting to your reader. We have no context, no idea what’s going on, who is who, where we are, etc. A lot of newer writers like to start with dreams because they’re a way to add mystery or create a cool image, but readers often get annoyed when they’re suddenly dumped out of the dream and nothing they just read is real. Flashbacks are usually less disorienting than dreams, but they can often be a place where writers info dump or give the reader too much info too soon. It can also be info the reader doesn’t even need, and the story can start somewhere else or the info can be worked in elsewhere.

How to make it work: I think it helps to make it clear at some point that the character realizes it’s a dream to make it less jarring for the reader, so they don’t feel cheated. I still caution against using a dream sequence to start unless the dreams will happen repeatedly throughout the story. Much like a flashback, you still need to make sure that you aren’t using a dream to info dump because your reader won’t remember all the details you cram into there. With flashbacks, the big question is, do your readers need to know this right now? If the flashback is of something that has caused the story, that’s fine. An example of this working is showing an accident that happened months before the story starts, and then the next chapter is the character getting out of the hospital. This works because the accident will be the catalyst for whatever turmoil the character is going through, but we don’t have to sit through months of recovery. Basically, the flashback works because it is the reason for the story. If the flashback isn’t serving a major purpose, skip it.

Starting With Info Dumping

The problem: your readers aren’t going to remember 90% of what you are telling them in the opening chapter, so info dumping is wasted in the opening. Your reader has no idea what’s going on, who is who, where they are, what the conflict is, etc., so it’s very hard for them to figure out what they need to pay attention to and remember. We also see this in fantasy or scifi stories where the writer tries to give the reader an intense amount of world-building right at the beginning. Again, your reader isn’t going to remember 90% of this. They have context for the lore, so they aren’t going to remember most of it, and it’s sort of a waste.

How to make it work: save the world-building and background info for moments where it is needed or can be naturally introduced. Your readers don’t need to know everything all at once, so pepper it in. The best way to do this in the beginning is to show the world through the character’s eyes. If they are always in this world, they won’t be introduced to things they live with every day. Just introduce things naturally. For example, you can have a character open the door to their daughter’s room to wake her up, and we will know it’s their daughter’s room because if they’re appearing to be in a caregiver role and you described the room as a child’s, readers will assume that is their child. If you have a character in a steampunk world get into a vehicle called a steamer, readers will assume it’s like a car. You can always briefly describe the outside of it in passing rather than being like, “I got into my vehicle, a steamer, which I take to work.” That was very pointed, but you get the idea. A better way would be to say, “I pushed past the persistent, gap-toothed newsboy on the corner and cranked my steamer to life. In the quiet of the steamer, I let my head rest against the wheel before pulling away from the curb and heading toward Independence Square where the royal zeppelins hovered in the distance.” We can cram a lot of world-building into a few sentences without being too pointed.

Starting by Introducing a Ton of Characters

The problem: your reader won’t remember everyone you introduce at the beginning. As I mentioned several times so far, your reader won’t remember most of what you tell them at the beginning because they have no context and therefore no way to know what is important yet. If you introduce too many people at once who are important, your readers will struggle to keep them all straight. This is also a problem later in the book in something like a party scene where readers get a whole new crop of characters all at once, but even three or four characters in rapid succession might be hard for readers to contextualize in the opening chapter. A lot of writing advice tells you that you need to hit the ground running, so writers will try to toss everything in at once. Hitting the ground running with action is far better than doing so by muddying the waters.

How to make it work: introduce two important characters at once at most. It’s one thing to mention a character with a minimal amount of context, but it’s another to give a full description early on. You want to make sure that your main character(s) are getting the greatest amount of description and fleshing out early on to make it clear that they are the main characters. With side characters, give enough context early on to figure out their relation to the main character rather than giving us their entire history or a long description. It’s far better to give us their description and backstory in dribs and drabs to make things less confusing. An example of introducing a bunch of characters early on without bogging it down might go something like, “Stephen took a steadying breath before pushing out of the tent. Leroy, Cassandra, Mikail, and the other knights were sitting around the campfire waiting for him, but when he drew closer, Mikail’s light eyes ran over his rumbled grey hair and the bloodied bandage wrapped around his shoulder.” Note how we establish the main character, Stephen, by staying in his head/following him out. We pepper in the names of a few side characters and give the context that they are all knights. From this description, we might also surmise that Mikail is closer to Stephen or of high importance than the others within the narrative.

While these aren’t all the pitfalls you might encounter while writing the opening of your book, I hope these examples were helpful for you in figuring out how to strengthen your story.

Writing

Writer Tips: The Beginning Pt. 1

April 20, 2025April 20, 2025 Kara Jorgensen3 Comments

This week I thought I would talk about writing the beginnings of books since I am working on the fourth Reanimator Mysteries book. Opening chapters are often the hardest to write and the thing we spend the most time fixing/fiddling with. Part of this is because we put so much emphasis on attracting readers and keeping them hooked from the beginning. They are the first impression of the book that our reader has, so we need to make sure we use that chapter to set expectations and capture the general mood of the piece to avoid disappointing readers later. As a side note before we start, I think first chapters/openings are often something to worry about in the second draft rather than the first. Things often become clearer once we’re farther along. Remember, don’t get hung up on the opening when you start. You can always fix it in a later draft if you realize there is a better place to start the story. That’s what editing is for.

The Pieces

I really like the way Sarra Cannon lays out the structure of a novel (you can check her out at Heartbreathings.com). Let’s take a look at her Act 1 outline to remind ourselves what we need in Act 1/our opening

An interesting image/hook

Introducing our characters

Introducing the setting

Introducing conflict/mystery

The Hook

When you open a book, we want to put something interesting at the very beginning to keep the reader intrigued or entertained. We want to create this opening image in a way that sneakily introduces the character and the setting. What we do not want to do is put too much information into the opening because our reader won’t remember it’s important later. The opening is meant to be a brief image that gets us intrigued before diving in, and your reader will remember more of the feel of the scene than the information you give or the words you say, which is why we want to nail the vibe but not info dump.

A prologue can be used instead of an opening scene in order to introduce a mystery- like showing someone getting murdered or a god dying, but we have to be careful with prologues because they can become info-dumpy rather than intriguing. Save info/specific world-building for when you have the world more established and the reader can appreciate it. You also want to be careful with starting with dialogue as the reader doesn’t know who these people are, the context of their relationship, etc. It may be better to save it for half a page in when the reader has been grounded by the mood or setting.

Introducing Our Characters

During your opening chapter, we should be introduced to at least one of the main characters. If you have multiple POV characters, obviously that will be spread over multiple chapters or we will only get them from one person’s POV (aka don’t split the chapter in two with different POVs). You want to ground your reader, so e should get the character’s “normal” before the conflict really kicks in. This is important because we need to establish where your character is before they change over the course of the book. You can do this by showing us the character’s world, which also helps to incorporate the setting, and showing them interacting with others while giving us their thoughts and feelings.

At the same time, there should still be a hint of something being amiss during the opening scenes. Some examples:

If the MC is a workaholic, show them missing a holiday due to a work trip.
If a character has a gambling problem, show them checking their bank account and seeing all of the micro transactions.
If a character is lonely, hint at it by having them be alone or mentally commenting on the silence.

Your reader will connect with your main character first and foremost, so spend time fleshing them out by giving them thoughts, feelings, ideas, opinions, clothes, rooms, things, etc. By the end of the opening, the reader should understand what this character is going through, where they live, who they are, etc. Once again, is is often something that is strengthened in the second draft once you understand them better. The bigger point is that at the beginning of the story, these characters are wounded and/or missing something that they need. We need a hint of that wound/issue early on because it will drive the internal and potentially the external conflicts.

Introducing the Setting

Apart from your character, you also need to establish the setting, mood, and genre of your story. I lump these together because you’re doing all of the above at the same time. As you are writing, keep in mind that not every genre cares as much about setting as others do. Small town romances require you to create a realistic town while fantasy and scifi require a much greater level of world-building, so you will need to do this proportionately to the genre you are working in. At the same time, even if setting isn’t as prominent, like in contemporary romance, it is still important to ground your reader in a place by describing what the character is experiencing from a sensory perspective.

In this opening chapter, you are giving us hints of the world, the foundation and first glimpses of it. Only give us lore if it’s absolutely necessary, as in, we need to know this right now or we will be totally confused. Even then, I suggest doing so with caution and consider in your next draft if it is necessary. In your opening, we should be moving through the world via your main character’s eyes. Only give us things they would see or know. They take lore for granted since they exist in this world, so your opening should reflect that. You can also hint at fantastical things without being overt, like showing us bits of magic by offhandedly mentioning someone stirring a cup with telekinesis or a magical animal talking with the main character. You don’t need to give the reader explanations. They can suspend a little disbelief early on.

Having your character physically move through a space is a really good way to pepper in that world-building naturally. That way we follow their eyes over doors and paintings where you can add in little bits of detail that characterize the setting. During this time, we still need to set up the mood as well, and this should be baked into the setting and thoughts of the characters. Keep in mind that your genre can dictate the mood based on reader expectations. While a paranormal romance can be silly or serious, subgenres of mysteries or romances have more distinct moods. A cozy mystery can’t be too heavy, and a noir detective story has to air on the side of dark. Your world-building, thoughts, feelings, sensory words will all imbue the world with a mood. You need to establish that mood during your opening paragraphs, so you don’t pull a bait and switch on your reader.

The Conflict

As mentioned in the character section, your reader should get a hint of what the internal conflict is early in your book. Chapter one or the prologue can’t be aimless, so by having the internal conflict rearing its head, we give the book a bit of direction. There can be hints of the external conflict, mentions of money troubles, a bad guy looming, newspaper headlines, etc., but the external conflict shouldn’t quite appear in the opening. That should be saved for the inciting incident, which is at the very end of act 1 and pushes the main character into the meat of the story. This is sometimes called the call to adventure. The main reason we don’t want to do this is that we want to build up the world and the characters before shoving them into the main part of the story in order to build up the stakes or what the character could lose if things don’t work out for them. Without that build-up, the story can feel very flimsy or your reader isn’t engaged because they haven’t connected to the main character yet. This doesn’t mean there can’t be a murder or something intriguing, it just means that the thing that really forces the character to move hasn’t happened yet. If we don’t establish the internal conflict, the stakes, and the characters, the story will feel rushed, and we don’t want that.

I hope this break down on the opening of your book helped you! I would consider the opening to be the first 10-15% of the story with the inciting incident happening at the 25% mark. Next week’s post will talk about potential pitfalls in the opening of your story and how to avoid them.

“An Unexpected Evening” (TRM #3.5) is Out!

March 16, 2025March 16, 2025 Kara JorgensenLeave a comment

If you’re part of my newsletter, you have already received your copy of “An Unexpected Evening,” but I also wanted to release it officially to my non-newsletter readers.

You can grab your copy through the freebies section on my website or through this link. “An Unexpected Evening” (TRM #3.5) is a 16,000 word novella that takes place a few weeks after the events of The Reanimator’s Remains (TRM #3), so I would highly recommend reading that book (and the ones before it) first.

The cover of "An Unexpected Evening" is in the center (black with green text and a masquerade mask). An Unexpected Question TRM #3.5. Oliver and Felipe, Things go wrong, food, seances, ghosts? a halloween party, an ominous prophecy, 16k words

The Paranormal Society’s All Hallows’ Eve party is the highlight of the magical social season, and after years of going alone and ducking out after an hour, Oliver is hellbent on having a good time with Felipe this year, even if it kills him.

While Felipe is more than willing to wear a costume and dance the night away to make Oliver happy, an ominous prophecy from a sybil only hours before the festivities puts him on his guard. Unfortunately, the sybil’s warning isn’t Felipe’s only concern if the feelings coming across the tether are any indication.

Will Oliver and Felipe make it through the masquerade in one piece or will the prophetess’s warning be their undoing?

CW: discussions of past sexual trauma, sexual content, and panic attack

If you would like to grab your copy of “An Unexpected Evening,” you can do so by clicking the button below. You can also pop over to my freebies page on my website to grab the other 2 in-between stories for the Reanimator Mysteries series.

Grab “An Unexpected Evening” here

Writing

Join Me on Weeknight Writers

March 9, 2025March 2, 2025 Kara Jorgensen1 Comment

On Saturday, March 15th from 1-3 pm EST, I will be participating in a virtual panel on writing trans characters! I am super excited to have been invited by Weeknight Writers to participate in this panel along with authors Felix Graves, Georgina Kiersten, Vaela Denarr and host Dianna Gunn and Jade Benjamin.

Trans stories are more important than ever. This two-hour panel will feature four trans authors sharing how they approach writing trans characters and what trans folks should keep in mind when writing their own stories. We’ll also touch on how cis writers can create trans characters without perpetuating stereotypes or causing harm and how everyone can support stories featuring trans characters.

This event is hosted by the Weeknight Writers Group, a social enterprise dedicated to providing affordable and accessible support for authors. The first hour and a half will be devoted to questions from our Sustaining Members and the panel moderators. The final half hour will be devoted to live audience questions.

You can purchase a ticket on their website for $15 or you can join their newsletter in order to get half-off your ticket. I also believe that being a sustaining member of the Weeknight Writers will also get you access to the panel and others before/after it.

I hope I will see you there or that you will support this fantastic writers’ organization that continues to bolster marginalized writers.

Writing

8 Things New Authors Should Know

February 23, 2025February 23, 2025 Kara Jorgensen1 Comment

I’m the first to admit that I do not have the answers when it comes to writing or being an author. Hell, I’m still shocked they let me teach students, but after ten plus years of being an indie author, publishing ten books and a bunch of short stories, I have learned a thing or two. It’s funny because I posted a similar blog a year or two ago, but after teaching my novel writing class this past semester, I realized there are a few things I really think new authors should know.

You have to be your biggest fan. I often see writers who come from a fanfic background get down about the lack of validation and encouragement when they come nonfanfic writers because your stories go out when they’re finished rather than as they work on them. You are probably never going to get that same validation on your work unless you post the draft live on your blog or on Patreon, so my suggestion is to become your biggest cheerleader. You need to love what you’re working on and light your fire for your characters. That isn’t to say there aren’t going to be hard days where you are frustrated or hating the process. You just have to be excited to see these characters go on their journey more than anyone else. Write for yourself first and foremost to keep that excitement alive.
Take care of your body. My partner and I are both from artistic backgrounds, and the number one thing they always remind me of is to take care of my body. If you want to have a long and sustainable career as a writer, you need to take care of your hands and your back. Resist the urge to curl up like a shrimp while you type, make sure your wrists are in an ergonomic position to avoid carpel tunnel, stretch those fingies and wrists, and take breaks. I’ve been stressing this to my students lately because what you can do at 18 or 21 is infinitely harder at 34.
Avoid burnout. Something we all need to know the warning signs of and try to prevent is burnout. Burnout is basically when you run your brain into the ground by overtaxing it and not giving yourself enough rest. It can also be caused by compounded stress. Sometimes, it is unavoidable due to bad things intersecting all at once, but if you can help it, be on the look out for suddenly feeling run down, actively avoiding your work, everything suddenly being far harder than it normally is. This can be due to other health issues, but if this feels more mental than physical (or is mental and turning physical), it may be burnout. Radical rest is the best medicine. Your deadlines and readers can wait for you to take care of yourself. Being burnout for a long prolonged period can lead to permanent damage, so please rest when you feel it coming on.
Learn about taxes early. I know this is probably not as big of an issue outside the US, but please learn about how taxes work for independent creators in your state. I always thought taxes were very scary, but the IRS is not going to bust into your house like the Kool-Aid Man and arrest you. What you can figure out is what counts against your taxes (losses/things needed to create your products), how to do quarterly taxes (which will save your money in the long run if you make a decent amount per year), and what the threshold is for upgrading to an LLC or having a professional handle your taxes and advise you. I know it is stressful and varies from state to state, but figuring this stuff out took a lot off my plate. If you want to sell things on Etsy or from a storefront online, you should also figure out how to do sales tax and such as well.
Learn that authors are not your competition. They are your coworkers. No reader exclusively reads one author and no one else, so there is no reason to treat other authors like the enemy. I know that often this comes from a place of jealousy, but treat the people who are doing better than you are inspiration or case studies. See what they are doing in terms of marketing or interactions and try to apply that to your work. Don’t copy people; learn from them. Other authors are your community, and they are often the ones who step up to help out newer authors. Fine supportive people. It may take a bit, but also don’t be afraid to leave groups that are catty or mean spirited. They aren’t your friends, and you can do better.
Be true to yourself and your vision. This is sort of similar to point one, but it can be easy to get caught up in doing what everyone else is doing. Authors see people are making book boxes or Tiktoks or book trailers, and suddenly, you’re worried that these things are the key to success. No one thing is, and if doing Tiktoks isn’t something you want to do because you hate video, then don’t do it. It’s best to stay focused on what you want and how you want your writing life to look and focus on how to make that work rather than fling spaghetti and do everything while hoping something sticks. If you try to do everything, you will burn yourself out and get less done.
Remember that not everything you see online is real. People lie. Shocking, I know, but yes, people on the internet lie about their success or pull a Wizard of Oz to make their success look grander than it really is. There are a lot of people online who are grifters who just want to sell you their course or get you to listen to their money-making podcast, so they tell you what you want to hear. They have the secret to make a million dollars or how to make four figures a month. Someone can make a million dollars over fifteen years and call themselves a million dollar author, or they might make $50k in a month, but what they don’t say is that they spent $30k in ads. You might also see authors who claim to have personal assistants when, in reality, it’s a chatbot or them under a different Facebook or email account pretending to be someone else. Trust me that it is more common than you would think, especially from people who try to act like authorities online.
Don’t use AI. There are also a lot of people who will tell you AI can help you write faster or that it can help you with research. It can’t. AI is basically the mediocrity machine. It picks the most common dreck and smooshes it together on command, but it cannot think, it cannot create emotional depth, and it isn’t consistent. There are TONS of resources online that can teach you to become a better writer, but AI isn’t it. It isn’t a shortcut to success, but it is a shortcut to losing your career because most readers do not want to read AI written or aided stories, and yes, you can tell. From a creative writing teacher perspective, every bit of AI writing I have seen has been far worse quality than anything newbie writers in my classes have turned in. It’s soulless. If you can’t convince yourself to write and have to turn to AI in order to do it, you are in the wrong field and should leave to make room for those who do give a shit about craft and their readers.

Writing

Plot? Character? Both? Both. Pt. 2

February 16, 2025February 16, 2025 Kara Jorgensen1 Comment

Last week in part 1, we talked about how to build characters in a way that makes it easier to build the rest of the story structure around their growth and change. I highly recommend reading that before reading part 2 if you haven’t yet.

A caveat before we begin is that I am using my writing process as a scaffold for this. Everyone has a different writing process and there is no one way to write a novel. My hope is that you will adapt my advice to what works best for you by taking what works and leaving what doesn’t. Also, this post will have very minor spoilers for The Reanimator’s Heart as I use it to show how I construct the basis for my characters/plot.

A few key reminders before we start

your main characters must change from the beginning to the end of the story (this can be positive or negative growth, but there has to be change)
if you’re writing a romance or a character driven story with more than one protagonist, you’ll need to have more than one character change, so they will all need a journey tied to the plot
if you are planning to write more than one book with the same characters, you will need to have them change incrementally across multiple books, usually by shifting different traits in each book
the hierarchy of building a story goes character > plot > world-building > everything else

Let’s ruin their lives

The big difference between a character driven story and a plot driven story to me is that character driven stories focus on the change in the character first and make the plot work toward that. Plot driven stories have the characters serve the plot, meaning you could hypothetically swap out the characters without changing the major beats of the journey. In real life, we might be going through a midlife crisis without something in our external life making it worse, but because this is fiction, we can make things far more convenient than reality in our character driven story. Think of the external plot as a trigger for the inner journey of your characters. They are already feeling this way, but the external plot has kicked off a lot of feelings and made things more complicated for your character. I think a lot of writers tend to think of the internal journey and external plot as being separate, but if they are intrinsically intertwined, you can really heighten the character’s turmoil and strengthen both the character development and the plot at the same time.

I’m not going to go into a specific beat sheet or structure, so if you’re a plotter, feel free to use whatever plot structure works best for you. Personally, I like Sarra Cannon’s beat structure, which you can find in her HeartBreathings channel on Youtube.

Last week, I mentioned that we need to figure out what your character needs most to be a happier or better person (or feel free to ruin them; it’s your book) in order to figure out the internal journey. For Oliver and Felipe in my book The Reanimator’s Heart, they both need to work on their issues with isolation in order to be happy. Oliver needs to step out of his bubble while Felipe needs to let Oliver into his. How they deal with their isolation and interact with each other will be informed by the past and personality we crafted earlier. As a reminder, Oliver is autistic and a necromancer, which has contributed to his isolation and getting stuck in a rut after years of pining after Felipe who also works at the Paranormal Society. Meanwhile, Felipe is seen at the society as almost a demigod. He is a self-healer, a hero, someone who takes the worst cases and can survive the harshest conditions. This has set him above and apart from the other investigators who like and respect him but also low key fear him. This along with his daughter going off to college has caused him to pull away from most people because they expect him to constantly be that untouchable hero.

My question to myself while constructing a plot is how can I ruin my characters’ lives in a fun and inventive way? This is why we want their issues to be similar, so that we can ruin their lives efficiently while plotting. Ultimately, since this is romance, we want Oliver and Felipe to get together by overcoming their loneliness together. Now, let’s combine this with a worst case scenario for them personally. Oliver is a necromancer, and Felipe is a hero with nearly supernatural abilities. What if Felipe gets killed, and Oliver reanimates him? That’s pretty messy. Oliver is also a rule follower by nature and going against the laws of nature by keeping people alive long after death is definitely against the rules, so if he were to reanimate Felipe, that would cause him some angst. Felipe is–was–nearly immortal, so the whole being dead thing would also cause angst and an identity crisis.

Note how all of this is picking at wounds or character traits/history that was already there. As you’re writing and brainstorming, it’s fine to tweak the backstory to make this work more smoothly. This is also why I think you should give yourself some vagueness or breathing room with a character’s history; it allows you to tweak things to better serve the character-plot symbiosis while plotting.

Constructing the plot

Now that we’ve ruined their lives, we’re probably at the end of act one in terms of plot structure. This life ruining should kick us into the story proper, which means the plot should unfold logically from there. Keep in mind as you go from the kick off to the finale that your characters need to grow or change by the end of the story. In Oliver and Felipe’s case, it’s overcoming their isolation. Since it’s a romance, we can assume that means they get together as a couple in a happily ever after. There needs to be a logical progression from lonely to together that builds over the course of the story.

As I said, I’m not going to go into too much detail regarding plot structures, but the four acts of a story should go as follows:

act 1 (0-25%)- introduce the issues (and if it’s a romance, entangle them)
act 2 (25-50%)- we’re exploring the new world and showing how these issues are a problem
act 3 (50-75%)- at the beginning there’s some moment of recognition of the flaw and they spend the rest of the act trying to rationalize it or shy away from fixing it all while being more conscious of it
act 4 (75-100%)- things come to a head and the character(s) are forced to confront their issues and finally overcome them, usually while overcoming the external plot

As you brainstorm the plot and overall external conflict of your story, you need to think of a plot that will poke at the wounds your character already has while still being interesting. This way you are constantly touching the internal journey rather than weaving it back and forth into the story as a subplot. With Oliver and Felipe, I decided that a way to intertwine the inner journey and outer plot was to have Felipe die by being murdered. This forces the characters to go solve his murder (along with another murder I grafted onto the plot for cohesion after this initial brainstorming). By solving his murder, they are forced to spend a lot of time together, look for clues, get to know each other, and do things that tackle their loneliness issues while complicating their relationship. If he had died naturally as opposed to being murdered, the two plots of the story wouldn’t be linked together as tightly.

Throughout the story, but especially in acts 2 and 3, you have the perfect opportunity to use plot points to deepen or explore the internal journey while they do things for the external plot. These can be large plot points like when Oliver is nearly killed, which reveals the true depth of Felipe’s feelings and some clues for the external plot, or they can be quieter plot points, like where the characters discuss the case while having dinner and by sharing a meal, they’re also no longer isolating. You want the majority of the major plot points to do double duty in serving the internal journey while also moving the external plot forward. This is also why I suggest having the main characters in a romance have the same issue in a different flavor (like loneliness). If they have opposing issues or ones that very different, figuring out how to riff off the main plot while balancing both may be difficult or come off as disjointed.

As you are writing your story, I want you to make sure that you don’t lose sight of the most important part: the characters. They are the key to making a compelling story or series that sucks your readers in. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the fun and games of the plot, but if you’re writing a character driven story, they need to be front and center in your mind and on the page from the opening to “the end.”

Uncategorized · Writing

Plot? Character? Both? Both. Pt. 1

February 9, 2025February 9, 2025 Kara Jorgensen5 Comments

One of the most common arguments I remember hearing in my MFA program that I still online is whether genre fiction is character or plot focused. The answer is often both, especially if you write romance or something with a heavy emphasis on character development. A question I hear a lot when I’m teaching creative writing or with friends who want feedback on their books is how do I construct a plot that is character-centric but still fun and tightly structured? This week and next week’s blog posts will be about how to do create character driven novel that is heightened by an external plot.

How to build a character

I think the biggest piece of prework for writing a character-centric story with a plot that enhances the characters is knowing the characters really well. In order to create the plot of your story, you need to know where the characters are at the beginning and end of the story, aka how they change over time. The plot will help to move them toward that goal, but first, you need to figure out where your characters are before the story starts.

I’m a gardener (a loose-ish plotter), so I like to spend a lot of time before I start truly writing getting to know who my characters are. I do this by brainstorming, ruminating, making notes about what I think their backstory is, their personality, what they look like, etc. Let’s use Oliver from The Reanimator’s Heart as an example. I really wanted to write a character who is autistic, so I knew that was going to factor into his personality and overall design because your neurotype influences how you act and behave. I was inspired by the show Pushing Daisies, which had a main character who could raise the dead in order to solve murders, so it made sense that Oliver would then be a necromancer. Autistic + necromancer = Oliver, so what does that mean in terms of character traits? I decided that I wanted him to be an autistic who isn’t very good at masking or hiding his traits, so he’s quiet, a bit weird, not socially adept, and if necromancers are stigmatized in this magical world because it’s a rather morbid power that can cause very bad things, it would make sense that he either self-isolates or is isolated within the Paranormal Society (the setting of the story). I asked myself, does he have family? I decided that I didn’t want him to have living family members (upping the isolation), but he does have a really good friend that he’s close to, Gwen, who also works at the society. What job would make sense for a necromancer at the Paranormal Society? Being a coroner or medical examiner would meaning he can talk to the dead with little oversight as people typically avoid dead bodies. I researched medical examiners, and you need to be a doctor to be one, so now, Oliver has a medical degree.

Ultimately, I decided Oliver is an autistic necromancer who tends to self-isolate due to his social difficulties and his necromancy being stigmatized. His backstory is that he is without living family, has a medical degree but for some reason is no longer practicing medicine, and works as the medical examiner for the society’s investigative wing. This is where we find him right when the story starts. If you’ve read The Reanimator’s Heart, you know how all of this plays into the story line.

For me, physical attributes always come second as I use them to highlight or heighten the character traits rather than the other way around. I wanted Oliver to look dead, so I made him very pale (he’s white) and gave him dark hair to make the contrast even starker. He’s tall because autistic looming can make people uncomfortable. I also wanted him to be accidentally scary to people who don’t know him (his looks might also intimidate people who might try to mess with Gwen/his best friend). His grey eyes fit the monochromatic theme and gave him a little enigmatic flare because why not. This is a romance after all.

PS- make sure to write all of this sort of brainstorming somewhere you can find it again. Do not trust yourself to remember because you won’t.

Now, if you’re writing a romance or a multi-POV book with more than one protagonist, you will need to do this for two characters, and for romance, you will need to figure out a way to make them highlight or contrast with each other. The Reanimator’s Heart is a romance, so Oliver needs a love interest/romantic partner. That’s where Felipe comes in. If Oliver is a necromancer who works as the medical examiner and isn’t very social, who might he run into often at the society? An investigator. That’s how Felipe ended up with his job. From there, I decided he is going to be one of the best investigators, the kind who go on the longest, toughest missions. I hadn’t initially decided what his power is, but I knew his background had to be in monster hunting and fighting. I had toyed the year before with the idea of a character being Zorro adjacent, but the story idea fizzled out for many reasons. Ultimately, Felipe ended up being born from that spark of inspiration, so he ended up being a heroic monster hunter known for his fighting prowess who also comes from a family of monster hunters in California. To make him a foil for Oliver, Felipe would have to be sort of his opposite, which would make him more outgoing, social, and well-liked by the people at the society. Felipe ended up becoming a charming, more extroverted, levelheaded monster hunter/investigator. His physical traits had to fit someone of Mexican-American descent since he is from California, and I decided it would make sense for him to be Latinx. Felipe became a short king because I wanted a little size difference with Oliver and because heroes are tall way too often.

Even if Felipe is a foil for Oliver, they have to have something in common, and since Oliver is isolated and lonely due to his autism and powers, it would make sense for Felipe to also be dealing with loneliness of a different flavor. In a romance, a good way to have the main characters interlock and play off each other is to have them struggling with the same internal problem in different ways and have them make up for what the other lacks.

Where did you come from? Where did you go?

Something I want you to pay attention to in regards to the construction of characters mentioned above is that they were not constructed by squishing together a bunch of character traits. I’ve seen a lot of blog posts or videos that suggest focusing on traits, but I think it makes more sense to take a holistic approach and work backwards and forwards to figure out how a character acts and why they act this way. The why is the important part. If you want your characters to come off as real people, you have to think of the psychology and cause and effect behind their traits. Our personalities aren’t made in a vacuum, and neither should your characters be built in a vacuum.

Our pasts and upbringings inform our identities, so I think it’s important to figure out how you want your character to be at the beginning of the story. Once you have that, you have to ask why they behave this way? Some of it will boil down to things like neurotype, gender (and the societal expectations of that or the subversions), sexuality, class, trauma, religion, disabilities, the culture they were raised in, etc. All of these things have an effect on how we behave or interact with our world, so your character’s personality also will be affected by the world building in your story. By starting with the current person and working backwards, you are more likely to have a cohesive character who is more than a hodgepodge of traits, and when you need to figure out how they’ll react in your story, you can look back at that history for the answer. I suggest being flexible or loose with this past history in case you need to tweak or change something as you write the story, but knowing the basics and overall journey of how the character got to this point is helpful.

Next week we’re going to talk about making the plot work with the character development in more detail, but before we get into that, we need to figure out how the characters need to grow from the beginning to the end of the story. Keep in mind that if this is going to be a series with the same characters in multiple books, you should only fix one trait or problem at a time. I tend to see most writing “rules” as guidelines, but if you want to have a character-centered story, the character has to change or grow throughout the story. Before you start working on the overall plot, you need to figure out how you want them to change. That journey will be the scaffold upon which the rest of the plot is built.

A good way to figure this out is to think about what your character needs most to be a happier or better person. For Oliver and Felipe, they both need to work on their issues with isolation in order to be happy. Oliver needs to step out of his bubble while Felipe needs to let Oliver into his. How they deal with their isolation and interact with each other will be informed by the past and personality we crafted earlier.

Stop by next week to see how we integrate their internal growth with the external plot!

Writing

My 2025 Goals

January 12, 2025January 1, 2025 Kara Jorgensen1 Comment

I’m not always a fan of yearly goals. Truthfully, I prefer to do 90 day/quarterly goals, but since it’s the beginning of the new year, I thought it would be good to post my overall goals for the year. I have divided the goals into writing, publishing, personal, and other goals. In a perfect world, I will be able to write two full books this year, but these goals will probably be aspirational, and that’s okay. Something I’ve been trying to be better about is not beating myself up when I don’t accomplish everything I set out to do. As long as I do my best at the time, it’s fine, and it will eventually get done. Without further ado, let’s take a look at my goals for 2025.

Writing Goals

Write, edit, and publish “An Unexpected Evening” (about 10k, started it at the end of 2024)
Write, edit, and publish The Reanimator Mysteries #4 (100k+ words)
At least start writing Ansley and Joe’s story (80k? words)
Write, edit, and publish an epilogue short story for book 4
Write consistently throughout the year
Try writing two books at once (maybe)
Have 10 2k writing days
Have 3 5k writing days

Publishing Goals

Publish the audiobook of The Reanimator’s Remains (TRM #3) with Jack R. R. Evans as the narrator
Publish/send out “An Unexpected Evening” (TRM #3.5) to newsletter subscribers
Publish 1-2 books
- Definitely publish TRM #4
- Potentially publish Joe and Ansley’s book, though that may be next year
Make more money than I did in 2024
Potentially get a new cover for Kinship and Kindness (this may get pushed back to next year if Joe and Ansley’s book ends up being worked on late in the year)

Personal Goals

Work on my office since I stalled out on this
- Get rid of the old furniture
- Paint the walls
- Set up the new furniture
Get healthier
- Make more veggie-heavy dishes
- Continue to lift weights consistently
- Work up to 10 lb weights when I’m ready
Maintain my mental health
- Be social with my friends online and in-person
- Play games and/or refill the well
- Be cognizant of when I’m burning out and take steps to stop it

Other Goals

Read 100 books
Play/finish 3 video games (I will consider prolonged playing of an open-world game like Stardew as “finishing”)
Learn a new craft
Learn new cooking techniques/recipes
Blog weekly
Send my newsletter out monthly

More than anything, I hope 2025 is boring. I know we’re heading into turbulent times in the US and around the world, but I want everyone to reach out to those around them and find people to support them. Change starts with us, so I hope you all turn to the trans, disabled, and marginalized people in your lives and make decisions with their best interests in mind.

Personal Life · Writing

My End of 2024 Reflection

December 29, 2024December 29, 2024 Kara Jorgensen3 Comments

Let me tell you, this year was SO MUCH better than last year. 2023 was horrendous, and while 2024 has not been great on a national scale, on a personal level it has been a breath of fresh air.

The word I had chosen for my word of the year for 2024 was “navigate” because I felt like I had been tossed into turbulent waters due to the fact that I was being harassed and besmirched by Freydis Moon/Taylor Barton, and I couldn’t tell anyone. They were a dark cloud looming over anything good that happened to me, and I was constantly afraid that any time I got attention, they would pounce on me. This meant every book release or awards announcement was riddled with anxiety since they did this to other authors they didn’t like in the past. In late April when they were finally exposed by Elle Porter, it felt like a massive weight had been lifted off my shoulders. The thing that had been too afraid to discuss publicly was finally out in the open, and FM/TB could no longer hurt me. I spent the rest of April and half of May vibrating with equal parts relief and anxiety, waiting for the other shoe to drop. My writing slowed to a crawl at the fear of retaliation and while processing all that had happened, but it was worth it. The only good thing to come out of FM’s assholery is that I have picked up a few new friends who experienced the same thing, and I’ve grown closer to another author I have a lot in common because of it.

On the writing front, it was actually a rather good year. Even with the wasted month, I wrote, edited, and published, “An Unexpected Question” (TRM #2.5), The Reanimator’s Remains (TRM #3), and started writing “An Unexpected Evening” (TRM #3.5). There’s always part of me that wished I wrote more, especially since that month off set me back and gave me a lot of stress in October when it was close to release day, but overall, I’m very happy with everything I published this year. The Reanimator’s Heart (TRM #1) and The Reanimator’s Soul (TRM #2) were both in the 2023 Indie Ink Awards, and TRS won for mental health representation, and book 3 is nominated in a bunch of categories for the 2024 Indie Ink Awards.

This year, I was invited to be on a few queer podcasts, I blurbed a friend’s book, and I got to work with some great people, like Jack R. R. Evans, who narrates my audiobooks, and Crowglass Design, who creates the covers for my books. I can’t thank enough my author friends for all the support they provided during all of this (and before and after). I also can’t forget my readers, who made the launch of The Reanimator’s Remains so wonderful. Without you all, there would be no books, or at least no audience for my books, and your support means so much to me. Seriously though, the reviews, shout outs about my book on social media, and the little things daily mean the world to me.

In my personal life, things have been going very well. My partner and I have both been on our own gender journeys, where we’ve been trying to figure out what brings us gender euphoria. During this process, we’ve become even closer. We both still struggle with our mental health and neurodivergence at time (are really ND if you don’t get in your own way regularly? lol), but I do feel like I’ve finally found a path toward better physical health. I have started lifting weights, and it’s been interesting to see how getting stronger has intertwined with my own version of nonbinary-ness.

I’m going to write more about my goals for 2025 in a future post, but with the way this year ended, I’m going into 2025 with far more hope than I did going into 2024. More than anything, I hope you all have a fantastic new year filled with good health, fulfilling projects, safe shores, and supportive people who love you.

Writing

What I Learned from Writing TRR

November 24, 2024November 17, 2024 Kara Jorgensen1 Comment

Every book is a learning experience. This is something I have been trying to drill into my college students’ heads while teaching my novel writing class this semester. No two projects are the same, and every book teaches you new things. Some more than others. The Reanimator’s Remains (TRM #3) is one of those books where I felt like I stretched myself and came out the other side a better writer. This isn’t a blog patting myself on the back. It’s more so a postmortem on what I think I did right this time.

The Reanimator’s Remains is the third book in the Reanimator Mysteries series, so I was working with characters I had already worked with twice before. This is important because I think being able to grow as a writer can be dependent upon being comfortable in other areas of the book. Knowing who Oliver, Gwen, and Felipe are and being very confident in portraying them made it much easier to step out of my comfort zone when it came to plot level intricacies. I had never really written a plot (or subplot) that relied upon flashbacks. As a creative writing teacher, I know these things can go badly fast. I was worried about how to sprinkle Felipe’s memories into the story in a way that a) feels natural b) doesn’t break up the action too much c) is useful to the story/his characterization. Felipe is a character who holds his cards close to his chest, so the chance of him spilling all of his traumatic backstory to Oliver was slim to none. Ultimately, I decided the best way to deal with this was through dreams (which can be risky in their own way), but the dreams end up tied into the overarching plot of the story, not due to Felipe’s memories per se but something else. Each dream ended with Felipe waking up in a way that scared and/or disoriented him, which helped to keep the tension from dipping after. I think the big thing about feeling like you leveled up your writing is that you’re just more aware of all the moving parts and how they link together. Instead of dropping them, I have been focused on how can one feed another.

The other thing with this book that I think made it a little better than my previous stories is that I leaned into the things my writers like or have told me I’m good at, which comes down to rich descriptions and crying men. I don’t like drama for the sake of drama in books, which is why I hate third act break-ups in romance novels. With this book, we have two established main characters who love each other very much. They are each other’s main vulnerability, and at this point we know their fears. Half of writing The Reanimator’s Remains was playing on Oliver and Felipe’s fears, especially the ones readers are already privy to. This sort of thing upped the ante when it came to the tension between the characters, and even if readers know things will end up all right, they are still feeding off the other character’s fear. My favorite thing to write is the third act mental breakdown (as opposed to a break-up) where one of the characters has to be exceedingly vulnerable and the other has to meet them where they are and accept them for the hot mess they are. It’s a level of emotional intimacy that just makes the romance so much deeper. This book also has a sex scene that isn’t a sex scene, but I won’t go too deep into that because I don’t want to go too much into spoiler land. All I will say is that sex scenes are about being naked and vulnerable, and the sex scene that isn’t a sex scene is all about letting someone else care for you when you struggle to let down your guard.

Something I feel awkward about sometimes is how I write descriptions. I love a lot of detail. My writing influences are very Victorian, which means I enjoy a useful, well-placed description rich in detail. Part of me worries my descriptions are boring or that modern audiences don’t like them, but I have to remind myself that my audience likes a beefy, evocative description. I actually had a reader tell me how much she loved the creepy cathedral in The Reanimator’s Heart, so in book 3, I was like f it, I’m writing a creepy forest, and you all are going to like it. So I went ass-deep into research about bogs, forests, etc. and let the freak fly when it came to my descriptions. I am a romantic goremonger by nature, so I leaned into it in this book with the Dysterwood, the dead people, and the [redacted] mentioned in the story.

As you become more comfortable with your style as a writer, you need to lean into the things that drew people to your work in the first place. Sometimes, you can go overboard, but for the most part, appealing to your readers by playing to your strengths is rarely a bad thing. Do what you do but better. Keep an eye on all of the spinning plates and figure out how to make your narrative work by having the pieces feed off each other rather than act as discrete, separate parts of the plot/construction. Most of all, never stop trying to get better at your craft and learning.