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.

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.

I think I've mentioned it before, but it is worth mentioning again that my preferred style of writing is multi-POV (point of view). While I don't get as hardcore as George R. R. Martin, in my series Urban Legend, I've got three distinct POVs going. Each subsequent installment will have three POVs, but switching out a few so by the end of Rylee's first school year at Artemis Academy there will have been six POV characters with varied levels of alliance and antagonism (not mutually exclusive in at least a couple cases). Writing each POV character requires me to fully flesh out those characters as I would any protagonist. While not all writing styles match mine, I think it is very important for writers to consider minor characters as assets and not afterthoughts.

From Uni-dimensional...
During my brief but not insignificant foray into screenwriting, I was taught to think about the major characters as "round" characters and minor characters as "flat" characters. The reason being, in screenplays there is limited real estate on the page so the focus needs to be the characters that matter. In the years since developing my writing, I can say with absolutely conviction that this unequivocally false; every character needs to be as "round" as the next. Viewers and readers have become more sophisticated in recent decades and uni-dimensional characters aren't going to cut it. The talking heads, linear love-interests, and the sycophant sidekicks now spark irritation and outrage as demand for realism is at an all time high. Dragons and cyborgs are fine, but the princess better be more than a "basic DiD" (Damsel in Distress). Even if the reader never actually sees the full complexity of a character, like the tavern owner in two pages with six lines of dialogue, they need to feel as if he was a real person, otherwise the whole sequence will be indeed "flat."

The “Plot-point” Character
One of the most pointless characters is the one who serves a single plot driving purpose and then becomes irrelevant. This is the "talking heads" whose sole purpose to to drive the Exposition Express right down the readers gullet, full steam ahead. Or the deus ex machina character who was maybe hanging around like loose garbage than at the end helps save the day in some small way. And of course there is the comic relief: the funny person who, at best, offers a few quips; or at worse, hinders the protagonist in contrived comedy to pad the conflict (nobody likes that guy). These kinds of characters pop up in all genres, and if poorly done enough can throw the reader out of the story with caricatures and not characters. A litmus test to see if such a character plays such a role, pluck them out entirely and see how intact the story remains. If the plot only needs a few minor plot holes to fill, you might want to consider dropping them OR perhaps spend some time around upping their significance by making them multi-dimensional.

The “Character-point” Character
These serve a bit more useful purpose, if nonetheless still limited in function. Character point characters tend to evoke or amplify certain emotions or traits in the protagonist to help them on their way. The love interest might only be there to be pretty and co-dependent (both guys and gals) and ultimately serve no ground-breaking plot-purpose. Or they could be that teacher who shows them the "Ways of the Whatever" and then either hangs around or drifts away because they got nothing else to do. Or, it could be that lovable scamp who ends up dying and drives the protagonist to go Super Saiyan or something and drives home the finale (or the next installment). While these roles have a bit more depth, they are still merely roles, a box the minor character is packaged in and shipped off. Instead of dropping these characters though, they sill have the framework to be potentially integral characters. To lift themselves off the page as a simple "LOL" to a "BFF".

I am a published author. Both traditionally and, more recently, self-published. When I was traditionally published I got to work on the written word and let others worry about what the packaging would look like. As a self-published author, I don’t quite have that same luxury. All the responsibility for all aspects of the book fall onto me.

I do, however, have a bit of an advantage. In my “day job” I’m also a graphic designer. That allows me to understand what goes into a cover design and how to lay it out most effectively.

Lately I’ve been doing some thinking, and I want to share an approach that might help the writerly folk out there breach the wall between words and pictures.

Let’s start with your book. It most likely started with a spark. A basic premise that took you down the rabbit hole of creativity. From there you developed the plot. Putting together the events and situations that made up the story you wanted to tell. Roughly at that same time you developed the characters. The people that would convey the story. The focus of the novel that told the tale. At that point began the actual act of writing. You executed the story to the best of your ability, putting together everything that you had thought up into one coherent book. Finally, came the editing. Either yourself, or more likely, another person came in and went through the text to help refine the work into a polished piece ready for presentation.

A book cover works exactly the same way.

You have to start your cover with a premise. An idea of what will represent the book. It doesn’t matter if it’s a detailed illustration, a highly graphic color-blocking technique, or even just bold text, you have an idea. This is your foundation for the cover. Now you have to tell a story with that cover. You have to come up with a plot. What is it that will convey the story to your readers at a glance? How will you draw them in with a single image?

So, who is going to convey that story? What one character is going to tell it to the reader? Don’t limit your thinking about what that means, either. This can be a person, an object, a setting, or even colors and letters. This is your character. The one thing that is going to tell the story on the page.

And don’t think that idea is beyond you. You just wrote an entire novel. You described scene after scene throughout the course of the book. This is just one more scene. Which is where your execution comes into play. Write the cover out. Describe it, and remember that it is more important than ever here to show and not tell. You don’t want a paragraph on your cover to tell the reader what is happening, you want to let them see it themselves. (Unless, of course, you are writing a genre where a cover blurb is appropriate. There are no absolute laws here.)

Lastly comes editing. If you have the means, you can finish this off yourself. More likely, however, you will need to bring in an outside talent to help polish off the cover and make it what you want. This can be an illustrator, a photographer, or just a graphic designer to put the elements together into a press-ready file.

So, when you’re thinking about the cover for your book, don’t think of it as a separate piece. It has the exact same qualities and concepts behind it that you’ve already put together. Premise. Plot. Character. Execution. Editing.

Don’t push this aside as an add-on to your novel. You’re creative. Take that ability and put the same thought into the creation of your cover. Make it yours, because, ultimately, this is your story.

And if you are the type that wants to get in there and do the physical construction, stick with me. I’m creating a follow-up post to this one that explores the technical side of things and hopefully gives you some pointers on how to do actual layout, both inside and out.

While having a strong protagonist is the start of a good story, a powerful antagonist leads to the end of a great story. The hero or heroes can only be as effective as the villain they fight against; if the antagonist is lukewarm, a one-and-done sort of enemy, then it didn’t take much to defeat and the heroes didn’t stress their limits. Boring.

But a hero that comes across a seemingly indomitable force, faces insurmountable odds, and clashes with strength and power previously unknown, well that would be one hell of a read.

As of this writing, I don’t have a set up for the overall villain for Urban Legend. Darius is the antagonist, but he’s just a tip of the iceberg. There is a whole chain of command within the Vampirum, and they aren’t the only enemies out there.

Heroes and Villains are separated with only the thinnest of lines. Some are vague and disappear entirely. Let’s explore what those similar differences might be.

Hero in Their Own Mind
A “villain” rarely ever sees themselves as the bad guy in a situation. Normally they claim to be the victim, therefore justified in their actions. They think of themselves as working for the greater good so horrendous actions justify an overall positive result. Or maybe they don’t even really think about it, setting aside ethics and morals to justify the logic of their actions. And maybe, just maybe, the antagonist knows exactly what’s going on, and doesn’t need any justification.

That’s where the antagonist’s head is at, the justification. Everyone knows the difference between right and wrong, and everyone’s got a reason why something at the “wrong” end of the spectrum is okay given the right circumstances. Most of them are harmless and inconsequential, like eating that bit of cake when on a diet because it’s been a hard week. When running pyramid schemes to bilk people out of their hard-earned cash or hacking an ex’s computer to spy on them, that’s when it gets a bit unacceptable.

The following three sections outline potentially the most complex and engaging villain archetypes, each more nefarious than the last.

Fallen Angel
The most tragic expression is arguably “what might have been.” Wasted potential or opportunity, we’ve all been there in one way or another. And how much more tragic is it when a good man goes bad?

Let’s consider the baddie to end all baddies: Lucifer. He was once God’s right hand man, His Riker, his Hamilton, the best and first among angels. Then Lucifer decided that wasn’t enough, he wanted to call the shots, God disagreed, one thing led to another, and Lucifer with a third of the angels fell were cast out of heaven. It’s heartbreaking in that context, in a way.

Think of a character that you would NEVER in a million years consider corruptible or selfish enough to fall into evil. Imagine if Captain America went not rogue, but straight up evil. Or maybe Harry Potter, throwing in with the Dark Lord. Not all at once, because that’s not how it starts: First it’s a little bit of pride, then a little bit of self-righteousness, then a little rebellion. Then at last, there is that point of no return, that line in the sand, and they cross it. They are committed, no regrets, no wavering of their position, all their justifications are lined up and they are set to take action.

While tragic, these are perhaps the most destructive. Their path is borne of conflict and possibly they see themselves as the tragic hero, fighting against the establishment that has fallen. While pity for this kind of antagonist is expected, mercy is not an option. They will use whatever tools they can to survive, including preying on the sympathies of others.

Do not bargain with a Fallen Angel. Shoot on sight; Shoot to kill.

Anti-Villain
Who doesn’t love and anti-hero? That roguish scoundrel who plays outsides the rules of convention, but still has a heart of gold. Robin Hood is such a figure, fighting a corrupt false king and willing to live in the outskirts of society with his merry men if it means he can rob the rich and give to the poor.

Now let’s reverse that: Instead of a hero operating a bit like a villain, how about a villain who operates like a hero?

Imagine a mob boss, running the crime of a major metropolis. He runs guns, drugs, hookers, is ruthless with those whom cross him, and has major government and law enforcement officials on payroll. Scary right? It gets worse:

He defends the children; anyone caught abusing kids in any way just disappears. He doesn’t run a sex slave ring, prostitutes are well cared for with health benefits (one of his brothels even fronts as a fitness center). He doesn’t like collateral damage, he finds it a waste and unprofessional. Anyone can run any scam they want, as long as they register with him and it doesn’t conflict with his existing policies. Hell, he might even have a legit retirement plan for his people, the white-picket-fence kind not the cement-overcoat kind. This kind of antagonist would be really complex to get at.

John Marcone, a character from Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, is such an antagonist. Ruthless and merciful, he is the best example of this kind of villain, the “civilized criminal”. How would a hero depose him without collapsing the whole thing and bring down chaos? The antagonist could even work more with the law than the protagonist might. And since the antagonist would fight to protect their interests, there could come a time the hero and the villain must team up to fight an even eviler evil.

The Anti-Villain is arguable the most insidious: bulletproof without even needing any kevlar. Proceed with caution.

The Greatest of These…
What is the most powerful emotion, the one that most changes the world? Hate and anger might lead to momentary action and conviction, but it is love that sustains a revolution. Love is what unifies us as a species, what lets us thrive, what drives us to explore our world and reach out to ones beyond it. It forges civilizations, builds communities, and binds together family. It is an extraordinary power and it's horrifying when it becomes a weapon.

Imagine someone grieves for the fate of a loved one, but that grief turns rancid and compels that person to do unspeakable deeds. Maybe the person loves from afar, but it wasn’t meant to be, so that twists into an obsession and that leads them down a dark path. Perhaps it isn’t even a person, but an idea like freedom, where they become so hyper-focused on that one specific outcome that they are blind to all the chaos that rains around them.

There is a quite a bit of overlap with this type of antagonist, the Fallen Angel, and Anti-Villain; they aren’t even mutually exclusive. But the main difference here is that the Antagonist is motivated by love. From that love there is purpose, and from that purpose comes that resolve. An antagonist who loves will be the last to break, the first to rise again, and is the absolute hardest to end.

When dealing with an antagonist who loves, be prepared to sacrifice all to defeat.

Final Legacy
Many more antagonist types float around than those mentioned above. The flavors of antagonism are a buffet, each can be tailored to the protagonist and readers taste (or distaste). But two things must remain true for an antagonist: the first is that they are the hero in their own story, and second, their legacy rings out beyond that story.

No hero or villain seeks to cast a modest shadow, they work to change the world as they think it should be. Just as the legends of heroes are remembered, so are the villains.

This element is the least identifiable: what makes a person, hero or otherwise, ring out beyond the pages and develop a mythos of their own? Fear is a good place to start, the fear so great they can’t even say the name aloud. Or perhaps the antagonist was a devastatingly brilliant tactician and was brought down only after hope was lost and at a ruinous price. Maybe the antagonist had a power that transcended the laws of physics, possibly he could simply speak and others would do his will without question. And it could be the antagonist believed so much, so fiercely, that the peoples of the worlds he lit afire felt compassion and loved him, even as they threw his body to the flames he had wrought.

I hope you found an applicable idea or two from this! Antagonists are people too, with their flaws and virtues, though the flaws tend to stand out a bit in comparison. Next time, I’ll tackle how to Bolster the Minor Characters to expand the story cast and give it a richer texture.

Every story needs a central character. Sure it can branch out, encompass dozens of characters, but there needs to be one identifiable person at the heart of the story, the reader's guide into the new world. They don’t have to be that for long, you might even kill them off early into the story (George R.R. Martin would be proud), but that singular perspective to orient the reader is essential. To keep the reader interested, it’s more than just being the “protagonist” because the plot demands it.