What Does Your Reader Take Away?

By Susan Reichert, Editor-in-Chief for Southern Writers Magazine 

As an author, when you are writing a fiction book, do you think about what you want your reader to take away from reading your book?

I know authors want the reader to enjoy their books and buy other books they write.

But dig deeper. Don’t you want them to step into the world you’ve created, get to know your characters, one by one. Do you want them to identify with the main character? In the story, the character will be making many decisions that affect their life and the lives of others. Don’t you want your reader immersed in the story? Readers become involved and think to themselves, “Oh that’s good, at least they made the right decision in this case.” Maybe they will relate so much they will talk to your character, saying, “Why did you make that choice. Now you have messed up that relationship. I wouldn’t have done that.”

You see, when your reader goes deeper into your book, and gets to know your characters, and finds themselves relating to them, they are then invested in the book; and in you as an author.

Isaac Asimov, an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. Well known for his works of science fiction and popular science wrote about 500 books in his lifetime.  Many of his books were made into movies and TV shows like: I, Robot in 2004 with Will Smith; Nightfall in 2000 with David Carradine; Bicentennial Man in 1999 with Sam Neill and Robin Williams; and Probe, a TV series in 1988 with Parker Stevenson. Asimov said, “It is the writer who might catch the imagination of young people, and plant a seed that will flower and come to fruition.”

We never know when something we write is going to plant a seed or help someone with a decision they’re struggling with.

  

How to Turn Your Ancestors into Fiction

By Lori Crane

I’ve studied my family genealogy for decades, but honestly, I never thought much beyond their birth and death dates and how many children they had.

In 2012, I examined a great grandmother who was born in 1828 Mississippi. She married in ‘46 and they had five children. That would have been my usual stopping point, but when I looked at the family group, something struck me about the death dates. Her husband died in the war in ‘62. Her son and both parents died within a few months. The more I looked, the more I found. She lost seventeen family members that year. Besides the obvious Civil War, what caused all of those deaths? And how does anyone survive losing that many family members? That story became my book, “Okatibbee Creek.” 

But the story didn’t end there. One of the orphans in the family was shipped from relative to relative and somehow ended up in Texas. She became the heroine of “An Orphan’s Heart.” How did these women learn to rise above the despair that surrounded them? I focused on their grandmother who survived the War of 1812. Not only was the country at war, but the Creek Indians were in the middle of their own civil war—right in her backyard. That story became “Elly Hays.”

My current focus is on another branch of my tree—the Culpeppers. In the 1600s, they lived in stately English manors and served the Monarchy. How did they transition from wealthy aristocrats to the modest people I knew in my youth in Mississippi? I found their immigration to America wasn’t merely a wish to go to the New World. England’s 17th century was ripe with political and religious turmoil, and the Royalist Culpeppers found themselves in the middle of the English Civil War. When the King was captured and beheaded, the Culpeppers had no choice but to escape—more than likely with only the clothes on their backs. This story became “I, John Culpepper.” (Release date is today, April 10, 2015)

To tell the story of your ancestor, you must first look at the immediate family as a group. Their birth/death dates will shed more light on the family than census records. Now research the local happenings. If a drought hit that summer, they probably suffered greatly, yet a new invention perhaps made their lives easier. Now research the social aspects. What religion was prevalent? Who was King or President? Was there war, alcohol, canned biscuits? My Culpeppers came to America to escape probable beheading. One can only understand their actions by understanding the politics of the time. Add all aspects of family, community, and social life together and you will have the foundation for a great novel.

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Lori Crane is an award-winning author of Southern historical fiction and the occasional thriller. She has enjoyed a place among her peers in the Top 100 historical fiction authors on Amazon, climbing to #23. She is a native Mississippi belle currently residing in greater Nashville. Lori’s books are available at Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Lori-Crane/e/B00ATIQW8M  Lori's website: http://loricraneauthor.com/   Lori’s blog: https://loricrane.wordpress.com/