If you’re struggling to start writing, or to finish what you write, you may fear failure.

Asking questions like the ones below is a clue that you may have this fear, even if it’s unconscious:

• What if I spend all this time writing and I never finish?
• Or I start writing and find out I’m no good at it?
• What if no one buys what I write?
• And what if people criticize my writing or write bad reviews?

If you suspect the fear of failing might be part of what’s keeping you from setting or meeting your writing goals, here are some thoughts about overcoming it.

Redefine

Let’s start with looking at how you define a failure, and asking whether you can revise it in a way that won’t get in the way of writing.

For instance, if you define failure as failing to try something you want to do, then you can choose whether or not you fail because you can choose to try. If you write something, anything, you won’t have failed because you tried.

On the other hand, if succeeding or failing rests on other people’s actions, such as buying or not buying your books, or their reactions, such as criticizing your writing, you’ve got limited say over that. That definition of failure puts success out of your control.

So why not choose a definition that gives you the most say over your own life?

Moving Forward Despite Fear

But let’s say in your heart it matters deeply to you what others think of your writing. Redefining failure may feel like semantics.

Success to you may mean people buying your books or selling a certain amount of them or getting rave reviews. Many writers, including me, set all those goals.

The key is not pretending those things don’t matter, it’s moving forward despite those fears.

Just as I don’t let feeling nervous my first day teaching a new class keep me from doing it, you don’t need to let fear of failure keep you from writing.

You can ease yourself into this by imagining yourself writing. Take a few minutes to shut your eyes and picture yourself typing, writing in a notebook, editing pages, or holding your finished book.

Next, in real life practice writing when you feel anxious about it. Start with a journal entry or list of favorite movies if you need to. Get used to feeling afraid and writing all the same.

Odds are the feeling will fade. Before you know it you’ll be writing your novel or whatever other projects you set your heart on.

Ask New Questions

Another approach is to look carefully at the list of questions above. Add any others that spark worry about writing or make you tense.

Now write out different questions, ones designed to ease your transition into writing.

For instance, you could ask yourself:

• Which writing project am I most excited about?
• What do I love about spending time writing?
• What three things can I do to improve my writing skills?
• How can I find ways to increase my chances of selling any book I finish?
• What do I hope readers will like best about my writing?

Each time you begin to dwell on your fears or concerns, you can ask yourself one of these types of questions. It will help redirect your mental energy toward enjoying writing and getting better at it.

Results Rather Than Failures

Finally, you can decide there are no failures, only results. (A view I’ve seen attributed to many different people, including Tony Robbins, and which has helped me the most.)

Most everything we learn in life is a process of doing something that doesn’t work, changing our approach a bit, and trying again. Whether it’s learning to walk, swim, ride a bike, or write a book that sells, most of us need to “fail” many times to learn.

For example, I published a novel, When Darkness Falls, in a genre I don’t otherwise write in. (Paranormal romance/gothic horror.) When I offer it free for Kindle it gets some downloads, but it rarely sells. In fact, it took two years before it earned back what I spent paying a service to convert it for Kindle and for a cover.

I could see it as a failure.

Instead, I value what I learned from it. I figured out how to publish a paperback using the KDP dashboard for the first time. It’s also the only novel I published in Kindle Unlimited. I use it to experiment with Kindle Countdown deals and free days. And it’s a good one to try out different ad platforms because any sales I do see almost certainly result from the ad.

In addition, it’s a book I wrote before my successful Awakening supernatural thriller series, though I published it after. I see a progression in my writing from that book to the Awakening series to my newest suspense/mystery series.

As another example, I once told my brother Keith, who has loved taking photos all his life, how my favorite photos of myself (and pretty much anyone else) were ones he took. I asked him how he did it.

He said, “You don’t see the thousands I throw away.”

This was back when all photos were taken on film, meaning he spent money on the film and processing for each one. He could easily have viewed all those thrown-out photos as failures and let that stop him. If he had, he’d never have produced so many images that have made so many people happy.

He also wouldn’t be the excellent photographer he is today.

By seeing the results of his efforts, adjusting his approach, and choosing the best photos, he succeeded in his goals.

That’s all for today. Until next Friday–

L.M. Lilly

P.S. This article is based on an excerpt from the latest draft of my new non-fiction book Anxiety, Happiness, and Writing: Using Your Creativity To Live A Calmer, Happier Life. To get a notice when it’s released (as well as a Free Story Structure Worksheet), join the Writing As A Second Career email list.

Below are a few things I’ve learned to omit from dialogue to make it sound more real.

I say “sound more real” because, as I mentioned in Improving Your Dialogue, the best dialogue gives the feel of true-to-life conversation, but doesn’t duplicate it.

If it did, it’d be pretty dull.

Leave Out the Uhs and Ums

Uhs, um, likes, and you knows are words and sounds most of us say some or all of the time. Consciously or unconsciously we use them to stall for time while we think, to fill pauses, to show we belong to a social group that uses them, or simply out of habit.

Just as professional speakers strive to eliminate them, most of the time so should we as authors.

That’s because while they certainly sound realistic, using them distracts and annoys most readers. They stand out in print, where we’re not used to seeing them. Also, these filler words and sounds can make your characters sound less confident, more hesitant, or younger than you mean them to be.

Which brings me to why you should use these vocalizations some of the time.

If saying “uh” or “you know” reflects something about your character (age, nervousness, discomfort in social situations), then by all means include it. Even so, you probably don’t want to put these types of phrases or words into your character’s conversation as often as they might occur in real life.

Let’s say you’re modeling your character after someone who says “you know” in nearly every sentence.

On the page, that will probably drive your readers crazy. So you might try “you know” in one out of three or four lines of dialogue.

If you’re uncertain, find some books where you love the dialogue. See how the author handles these types of words and how often they appear, and use that as your guide.

Don’t Say Hello or Good-bye

Pay attention next time you see a phone conversation in a movie or on a television show. The actors rarely greet one another with Hello or Hi or end calls with Bye. When they’re done talking they just hang up the phone.

In real life, we’d consider these characters rude.

That’s especially so because, along with greetings like Hi or Good-bye, most of us ease into and out of conversations whether in person, by text, or by phone. Rarely do we simply walk away or hang up.

Typically one person on the phone says something like, “I should let you go.” The other responds by agreeing but typically adding something about talking again soon, or having a good week. The other person responds in kind. There’s often some sort of “take care” or “be well” back and forth and finally both parties say good-bye and hang up.

The beginnings of many conversations are similar.

Usually both people exchange Hellos and How Are Yous that go on for a minute or two before they talk about anything significant.

If you included these types of interactions in every conversation in your novel, you’d massively extend its length without furthering the plot.

You may  get in a little character development, but your readers will likely miss it, as they’ve probably taken to skimming the beginnings and endings of all the conversations.

Here are a few ways to omit these types of exchanges without making your dialogue seem unrealistic:

• Start the scene when the conversation is already in progress
• Summarize the beginning or end of the conversation or both
• Include a word or two in one character’s dialogue to give the flavor of a Hello and Good-bye sequence: “Hey, Juan, I’m calling about the party.” or “I’ve heard enough. Good-bye.”

Eliminate the Is

In my Advanced Playwriting class in college (I got a Writing degree–did you guess that?) I read a scene in class. The professor, Paul Carter Harrison, wrote one of my lines on the board: “I’m sorry.”

When I finished, he said, “Nobody says ‘I’m sorry.'”

At first I was confused. I thought he meant no one ever apologized, which obviously isn’t true.

Then he explained that he meant that unless it’s a very formal situation or there’s some reason for emphasis, people say “Sorry” not “I’m sorry.”

As I started listening more to people and to myself, I realized how often we omit pronouns when talking about ourselves.

As an example, which of the two dialogue sections below sounds more realistic?

1. “I’m sorry I’m late. I had to stop at Starbucks because my mother wanted coffee.”
2. “Sorry I’m late. Had to stop at Starbucks–Mom wanted coffee.”

Two is probably spot on for most characters.

Of course you could have a character who speaks more formally or precisely, and that person might use the phrasing in One. Also, depending on your character’s speech patterns, you might write some combination of the two.

Further, the situation matters.

At a funeral a person might well say, “I’m sorry about your mother’s death” rather than “Sorry your mom died” because the latter sounds terse for the circumstances.

But I’d start with One as a default and go from there.

That’s all for now. Until next Friday–

L.M. Lilly

While the main goal of foreshadowing is to keep readers turning pages, when you foreshadow you also make later plot turns and character choices believable.

Doing so makes a promise to the reader that’s important to honor.

Believing What Happens Later

If you foreshadow a character’s future action or a plot twist, that helps keep readers immersed in your story. Otherwise they they may pause and question what to you seems like a natural story development.

As an example, in Pride and Prejudice Elizabeth Bennet engages in a friendly debate about Bingley, the man her sister loves.

WARNING: spoilers below. But you’ve read Pride and Prejudice already, haven’t you? No? What are you waiting for?

Bingley’s friend Darcy criticizes Bingley for what he calls an “indirect boast.” (Nowadays some might call it a humble brag). Bingley admits to thinking and writing so rapidly he sometimes conveys nothing to the reader and to being likely to act on the spur of the moment.

As the three debate whether those qualities are pluses or minuses, Darcy points out that Bingley might easily change plans if asked by a friend to do so.

Darcy sees that as a fault, but Elizabeth points out that regard for one’s friend can be admirable and might often persuade a person to do something without waiting for a specific reason.

The scene contains its own conflict due to Darcy’s and Elizabeth’s unacknowledged feelings for each other. Also, Elizabeth wishes to forward her sister’s and Bingley’s romance. Bingley’s sisters and Darcy oppose it.

So the scene stands alone fairly well, and the dialogue is great fun to read.

But the exchange also lays the groundwork for later conflict. Bingley, acting on the spur of the moment and under the influence of Darcy, leaves town and does not return, breaking the heart of Elizabeth’s sister Jane.

Without this earlier exchange about Bingley’s character and his willingness to act on a friend’s request, readers would be far less likely to believe that he’d abandon Jane. Darcy’s role in the Bingley/Jane drama and Elizabeth’s reaction to it drive much of the novel.

Because of that, it’s key that readers believe Bingley would take off at a moment’s notice without giving a lot of thought to what might happen down the road.

He Did What?

The debate between Darcy and Elizabeth also gives us, ahead of time, reasons for Bingley’s actions that make them more understandable.

Without that foreshadowing readers might not want Bingley and Jane to get together again. He’d seem like he purposely misled Jane or that his affections were less strong than hers and too easily changeable.

Also, Elizabeth saying early on–and when it doesn’t affect her sister–that  willingness to defer to friend’s wishes can be a positive trait means she’s all the more willing to lay Bingley’s actions at Darcy’s door. And it makes clear that Darcy understands how much influence he has on his friend.

Readers are more apt to believe the feelings and actions of all three characters because of what at first seemed like mere drawing room conversation to pass the time.

Promises Promises

You’ve probably heard the old saying that if there’s a gun on the table in Act 1, it  needs to be used by the end of the play.

Readers consciously expect a gun (or a bomb under the table) to matter if it’s shown to them. They’ll wonder about it throughout the book and feel let down if in the end it doesn’t matter.

That type of foreshadowing also makes a promise about what type of story to expect. The gun suggests violence, suspense, perhaps a thriller or mystery. If you instead hand readers a romantic comedy, they’ll feel cheated and angry that they spent their time reading your book.

Similarly, if you start your novel with a meet cute and one of the characters is murdered halfway through, most readers will put down the book and never return.

This guideline applies in a more subtle way when you foreshadow the way Austen did with the Elizabeth/Darcy debate.

As I mentioned, the dialogue is fun to read all on its own. Also, there’s probably enough conflict that readers wouldn’t wonder why it was there even if it had nothing to do with later events.

The entire novel, however, contains many such exchanges that foreshadow later events. If none of them led to anything significant, half of Pride and Prejudice would simply be witty banter. It’s doubtful people would still be reading and writing about the classic novel today if that were so.

Because all those conversations also hint at what’s to come, though, each time I read the book I see something new and engaging in it. Each time I’m more impressed by how Austen wove her plot together and I’m more engaged by the characters.

That’s all for now. Until next Friday, when we’ll talk about one way to make your novel a fast read—

L.M. Lilly

Foreshadowing is a great way to keep readers turning pages.

The main goal of foreshadowing is to create suspense. That suspense keeps the reader turning pages to find out what happens.

It’s often done early in a novel or story, including in the first line.

The end of a chapter is another good place for foreshadowing because the chapter ending is a natural place to stop reading. How many times have you said, “I’ll just read one more chapter” before going to bed? A story question or hint urges the reader to continue on.

There are many ways to foreshadow, including directly, by hinting, and by setting a tone.

Direct Foreshadowing

You can tell the reader directly what’s to come.

In a novel called The Streets Beneath, which I never published, I started with what remain my favorite first lines:

I didn’t mean to follow the judge. And I definitely didn’t know he would end up dead.

Those lines directly state the main story question, which is who killed the judge and why. They incorporate two crucial characters–the narrator and the judge. The first chapter of Streets got many editors and agents to ask for the entire manuscript, and I suspect it was due to these lines.

(This was back in the day when getting a traditional publishing contract was the only way to publish a book. Unfortunately, I don’t think the rest of the manuscript delivered well enough on the promise, which is why I haven’t published it myself.)

The Hint

You also can hint at what’s to come. The first line of Pride and Prejudice does that by giving a sort of proverb:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

This line doesn’t directly include any specific character or outline the exact conflict.

But the stories of our main character, Lizzy Bennet, and her sisters all revolve around marriage. More specifically, because the family’s estate passes only to male heirs, all the sisters will be homeless and nearly penniless when their father dies. It’s therefore key that one or more of the sisters marry someone who can provide for them.

The fortunes, or lack of fortune, of the men they fall in love with, or who seek to marry them, are key to all the conflicts in the book, as are the neighbors’ views about the sisters.

All these things are hinted at by that single first line.

Set A Tone

Foreshadowing can be used to set a tone that draws the reader in.

You see this approach with the “dark and stormy night” type of first line. When a novel starts or a chapter ends with a thunderstorm on a chilly night, odds are we’re not in for a light, happy read.

Weather is not the only way to set a tone. Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places starts with:

There is a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it.

Even if you hadn’t heard the title and didn’t know Gillian Flynn is the author of dark thriller Gone Girl, you’d have a pretty good idea what type of book you’re reading.

That’s all for now.

Until next Friday, when I’ll talk about the role of foreshadowing in building credibility and character and the importance of  keeping promises to your readers—

L.M. Lilly

I often feel that the same imagination that helps me plot and write novels works against me in real life.

The What If questions writers use to create significant conflict in fiction can also prompt us to scan our personal lives for danger. And our need to escalate conflict in our stories can bleed into envisioning worst case scenarios for ourselves.

Thinking that way can become a habit that makes it hard to enjoy life.

Looking For Happiness

To counteract that, over the years I’ve made an effort to use my writing to enhance happiness, not fear.

One wonderful way to do that is to focus on what we’re grateful for.

Starting Small

If you’re in the middle of a truly difficult time feeling grateful can be hard. But you can start small.

For example, you’re reading this article, so right there is something to be grateful for. Not everyone can. According to the Chicago Literacy Alliance, 30% of adults in Chicago, where I live, have only low basic literacy skills, and 61% of low-income households in Chicago own no children’s books.

So right now you can take a moment to feel grateful for being able to read.

And there’s more good news. Gratitude gets easier with practice. The more you look for and note, ideally in writing, things that you’re grateful for the more of them you’ll start to notice.

Vivid Writing And Gratitude

Writing about what we feel grateful for fixes it more firmly in our minds.

It also creates a record of the good things in our lives to look back on when we need it. And, as with any other kind of writing, the more detail, the more real it seems and the more fixed it becomes in our hearts and minds.

For instance, if you’re grateful because your cousin, whom you don’t see often, came into town and you had a nice dinner don’t just write Dinner with my cousin.

Instead, use your memory and writing skills to expand on the parts of the evening. Make them vivid by using all your senses:

• Lasagna came out just right—the fresh garlic and fresh tomatoes made it taste fantastic
• Shared stories about our parents—heard ones I never knew about my mom which helped me understand some things she said to me when I was growing up
• So enjoyed the gourmet root beer – reminds me of summer vacation as a kid and going to A&W as a treat
• The warmth of the fireplace and the sparkling white holiday lights looked beautiful and made me feel cheerful and relaxed
• Fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies for dessert made the whole apartment smell great and feel warm and cozy; loved the dark chocolate for the chips

Even if you’re also right now worried about whether you’ll find a new job, or whether your books are selling, or how you’ll finish your novel in the few spare hours you have, it’d be hard not to feel good while writing a description like that.

What are you grateful for?

Take ten or fifteen minutes and write it down. I bet you’ll feel wonderful.

Until next Friday–

L.M. Lilly