I promised I’d be back, and here I am. In the first part of this I went through the creative process behind creating a book cover. The steps and thought processes involved in what makes a good cover. It’s a good starting point for how to conceive the outside for your hard labor.

If you missed the first instillation of this series, you can check it out here.

Now, let’s get technical.

When you write, it’s not all creative. There are just as many technical aspects behind what you write as what you think. On a smaller scale you have sentence structure, punctuation, and pretty much every aspect of grammar. Then, on the larger scale, there is character development, tone, and all the other elements of storytelling. If you know how to put all that together, then you have the means to create a novel.

And you also have the means to create the actual book. Unlike the first part of this series, which put everything on a mental level, this one involves other tools. For a professional designer, those tools likely come from Adobe, but you don’t have to have a subscription to Creative Cloud to produce a book. Most word processors have options to output a press-ready file to varying degrees. Do a little research on the what and how of what you own. Learn those tools. I’m not able to tell you how they work. I’m just going to give you pointers on what to do with them.

Let’s work from the inside out.

The interior of the book is the actual structure of the novel. Like sentence structure, you have to build it in a logical manner that is clear and easy to understand. It might look intimidating, but you need to break it down to its most simple form: a page. Don’t think of it as building a whole book. You are putting together a page. Just like you take one sentence and add those together to create your novel, taking the pages one at a time add up to a whole book. Like a sentence, a page has structure. The subject of the page is called the live area or body. It’s the heart of the layout and where you put all of your novel’s text.

From a sentence structure perspective, the area around that is the predicate. It’s what creates the action by focusing the eye on the subject. Designers call the part towards the spine the gutter, and the part on the outside, top, and bottom is the margin. You need to keep enough margin so that the body of your book is clear of the edge. Your word processing program likely has pre-set margins for a page. These are generally meant for printing out on a 8.5” x 11” piece of paper. You will need to adjust them for the printing press so that the on odd numbered pages, there is a larger margin on the left-hand side of the page, and on even numbers, you move that to the right. There is probably a setting for this in your program. Look for a tutorial on that specific program and put it to use. Note: if you are laying out for an ebook, this isn’t as important. Margins for an ebook are the same on all four sides of the page.

The last part you need to worry about for the internal layout of your book is punctuation. For layout, this is going to be your font choice and paragraph formatting. While you can probably name a half-dozen fonts already, there are only two types of fonts you need to concern yourself with: serif and sans-serif. Those fonts that have a little “tail” on the letters are called serif fonts. Which makes the ones without those “tails” to be the sans-serif ones. The rule here is pretty simple. If you are doing the book for print, use a serif font. Research shows that reading serif fonts on paper is easier. For an ebook, it’s the opposite. Use a sans-serif font, for the exact same reason—research says it’s easier to read.

Paragraph formatting is a little trickier. You’ve likely seen the line-spacing option on your word processing program. Generally that’s listed as single, double, etc. In a design sense that is called leading (pronounced led-ing, by the way). I’m going to go back to story structure to describe this one. You can’t have a book where the only thing that happens is a fight scene. Three hundred pages of fight scene will appeal to no one. Even if that is the core of the story, you have to give the fight scene some room to breathe. Do the same with your paragraphs. Let them breathe. And not just the lines of the paragraph itself, but allow for a little extra space between the paragraphs. The one other thing I want to touch on for the paragraphs is the alignment. For print, you will want to use left-aligned text. That’s the text that looks like it has a jagged edge on the right-hand side, but everything is straight on the left. For ebooks, use justified text. That’s where the text lines up not only on the left, but also on the right.

Now, I’m going to go outside and touch on the cover for just a moment. There are three parts to the cover of a book: the front cover, the back cover, and the spine. The two biggest things that you need to keep in mind from a technical point of view correlate to character development and tone. The character development of your cover is, once again, the font. This is what will give a tone to your book just by reading the title. A font that drips blood screams horror. A font that looks like it is made of metal makes you think it’s science-fiction. Hand script fonts are romance. Choose a font that tells people what they need to know before they open the book. This, however, isn’t the important part. When you build a character, you want people to understand the character—even if they are supposed to understand that the character is impossible to understand. Which, in a design sense, means, above everything else, make the font readable. It doesn’t matter how cool you think the font looks, if it isn’t instantly recognizable it fails. People don’t linger. They move quickly. You have two seconds to get them. Use it wisely.

Now, to that end, the tone of your book is color theory. How you set up the cover and move it along is the tone, and nothing does that more than color. Colors are associated with emotion. Blue is calm. Red is anger. Purple is mysterious. Yellow is happy. Use these colors to set up the initial impression of the book, but also the underlying tone. Color theory is the way that colors interact with each other. So use those colors in the right combinations. Complementary colors stand out from each other, and will create a more shocking effect. These are the colors that are opposite each other on a color wheel. Analogous colors are ones that are next to each other on the color wheels and they create a more subtle feel. Let those colors set the tone of your whole book.

There’s a lot more to it, but hopefully just looking at the pages in a new way will help. I will say again, you can do this yourself. If it gets overwhelming, however, get help. There are plenty of people who will give you free advice and help. And if that doesn’t prove to be enough, hire someone. At the very least you should be able to give those designers a little direction.

Guess what time it is?! Yup, time for my weekly writing and reading recaps! Check out this week's stats and see how my current projects are coming along! And as always, get a little insight into my life :)

Every now and then, I like to take a moment to introduce an author to all of you! With this interview series, I've come to know an amazing group of writers and I want you to know them too!

For today's installment, I've had the pleasure of interviewing author Jennifer Acres! According to her website, she's a "YA and A multi-genre author who loves complex characters in emotionally moving stories."

Of course, I know we all want to know more than that! That's why I've sent her an in-depth questionnaire with 75 of the most intriguing questions I could come up with! And since Jennifer is an amazing interviewee, she took the time to answer every single one of them! So not only do we get one interview with Jennifer, but we actually get three!

As an aspiring author, I've gone ahead and joined a TON of Facebook groups for writers like myself. They're perfect for perfecting your craft, sharing your progress, and connecting with fellow writers. That last one especially!

Every once in a while, you'll stumble across something magical! Whether it be an explanation for a topic you don't understand, social media marketing tips, or soon-to-be released books! And that's how I found Sam Campbell's Doll House!

The cover immediately pulled me in, but the synopsis intrigued me even more! I was so interested that I went ahead and extended the offer for various blog collaborations. To my surprise, Sam wanted to participate in all of them, including a book review! So we quickly discussed specifics and the book was on its way to me :)

Synopsis:
Crummings' Home for the Dispossessed. A mysterious orphanage on the outskirts of town.

When Emma Winters begins to discover the porcelain dolls hidden within the walls of her new home, dolls that strangely resemble several of her friends, she knows something's up. It can't just be a coincidence. The resemblance is uncanny.

In a wave of shock, she realizes her fellow orphans aren't being adopted at all — they're disappearing.

What secret is old headmistress Viola Crummings hiding?

Emma must hurry to find out. If not, she may disappear next.

It took a little while to get back on track, but I'm excited to announce that the Weekly Writing & Reading Recaps are back on!

The character is what readers want to read about. The plot and setting are absolute essentials as well; just a story where just two people talk and nothing really happens was done by Plato and he ran that into the ground hard. Characters are what people relate to, their values and struggles, a voyeuristic and vicarious journey into another world through their eyes or by their side. This is why this series has to heavily focus on characters, they are what is remembered after the book is put back on the shelf. My own book, Urban Legend was born from characters and I hope resonates through the story.

Every character goes through a journey, the wills of nature, society, their fellows, and their own demons twist their path into near impassibility. Do they die, survive, or thrive? Do they break, bend, or bunker down to remain true to themselves? So many possibilities and the potential for heart-shattering and mind-blowing stories just on this. Both the Antagonist and Protagonist must find their own path, usually at the expense of the other.

Character Arcs - Dynamic
The typical arc for a character is Dynamic, where they change to adapt to the pressures of their path, for better or worse. This is the Luke Skywalker, whiny farm boy to Jedi Knight. Or Anakin Skywalker: from a slave with a heart of gold, to conflicted Jedi, to corrupted Sith. Both started out near to same, but experience and personal motivation drove them to make choices and become something different than they started out as. Except not really: better to say they became more of themselves than was required. Luke’s stubbornness became determination and will to end the emperor and save his father. Anakin's desire to save his loved ones from death became a thirst for vengeance at those who he deemed the cause of such deaths. People can change, though that is a longer journey than most might realize, and will usually do so in such a way that emphasizes their base temperament. Anyone familiar with Myers-Briggs understands no one really changes in the long run but instead becomes more balanced with their other traits. Or unbalanced as the case may be.

Character Arc - Static
The other type of arc for characters is to remain true to themselves through the whole ordeal. This is the Harry Potter/Lord Voldemort dynamic; despite the various trials and pains and schemes they both contrived and endured, the core of who they were remained largely untouched. Harry begins the series as a kind, caring, and brave child living under a cupboard and becomes a kind, caring, and brave young man who ends the most evil wizard of the modern age. In comparison, the Dark Lord starts as a cold, calculating and a friendless boy from the orphanage and dies a cold, calculating, and a friendless man with a barely a sliver of a soul left. While static development seems to be an oxymoron, theirs is an example of how it works. Granted, there are plenty more examples, especially with antagonists, where this is less ‘static’ and more ‘stagnant’ and the character fails to engage in a meaningful connection with the reader. But how much more compelling does that make Captain America or Forrest Gump?

Character Arcs - Minor Character
As mentioned in my last post, minor characters fill a secondary position in the story, but that is no excuse for them not to grow and develop. Consider Ygritte from A Clash of Kings (Game of Thrones series): she was a nothing wildling prisoner who ended up becoming a major catalyst for Jon Snow by being a damned powerful female character in her own right. While only hints of her past are revealed, she absolutely had a history and her influence in both the character and reader’s mind echo through the rest of the story. Now, not every author or reader wants to balance 17,912 character stories, but no matter how many or how few they are, each deserve significance. They might just start off as a well-meaning, but lacking sidekick/minion, but then grow as a character and become the next best thing to a protagonist themselves.

Character Arcs - Series
Within a well-crafted story, the character, no matter the hierarchy, has a clear journey: beginning, middle, and end. But that end might lead to another beginning, another story. Now, this is where things can get interesting, a character that not only grows from chapter to chapter but also book to book. A ‘static’ development might be a more episodic series, where the main protagonist remains resolutely the same even after each adventure. Crime, thriller, and the like are perfect mediums for this. While more dynamic development might require the character to become more and more: a shepherd, to a spy-in-training, to a captain of an army, to a fugitive, to heir of the realm, to leader of the realm; each book having that protagonist get caught up in more and more intrigue and more and more powerful enemies on a larger and larger scale. There would naturally have to be a stopping point, but that's where highly developed minor characters can take up the standard and forge their own stories.

Character Arcs - Relationships and Allegiances
Enemies and friends can potentially shift over time, or a dime. A solid ally can become a rival or worse over the course of a series, a single book, a single chapter, or even a single line of dialogue. Relationships between two complex characters bring the possibilities to exponentially complex results. There would be no real way to explore the minutia of this specific topic of character interconnections in any meaningful depth that wouldn’t involve a 400-page master’s thesis, except to say this: don’t skimp on relationships. Readers will be interested in a character, but they will be invested in their relationships. More than anything else, people respond to other people’s relationships. That’s why we care about who is dating who in school, at work, or in the celebrity magazines. We ‘ship’ characters, sometimes in odd or bizarre combinations, but we always want to see what’s next. Will the two lovebirds get together? Will the two siblings drift apart? Will two friends’ relationship be strained when one is promoted or elected over the other? Will the two people trying their darnedest to kill the other find a different way? Only you can tell that story, and we want to hear about it.

It took a little while to get back on track, but I'm excited to announce that the Weekly Writing & Reading Recaps are back on!

If you follow my other blog, Perfectly Ambitious, then you already know that I've been partnering with Heart for Africa on various product and book reviews. So it's no surprise that I said yes to reviewing the book that got everything started!

Normally, I'm not a huge fan of nonfiction books, but I've been trying to read more of them lately. Mainly because they're full of inspiring stories, but also because I'd like to learn more about the world that I live in and not just the worlds we create. Plus, it doesn't hurt that it's a prompt on the #ICBReadingChallenge either!

Synopsis:
The world-changing events of 9/11 became the catalyst that first sent Janine into a deep depression and later to the darkest parts of Africa in her search for the meaning of life. What happened next was a roller coaster ride from owning one of the largest marketing companies in Canada to the streets of Africa where she found herself standing face to face with the AIDS pandemic and trying to understand what to do with 15 million orphans who are left in its wake. Her story is brutally honest and will take you straight to the heart of the issue of Africa's great need. It's Not Okay With Me provides truth and insights into Africa in a way that is fresh and filled with hope. All we need to do is say, "It's not okay with me, either" and then act.