Remember the Meat Fork When Writing

By Barbara Lohr

One of the challenges writers face is how to keep readers turning the pages. The end of each chapter needs a provocative hook and for me, that's often added in the editing process. Some writers might automatically dribble enticing breadcrumbs. Not me. I have to work at those final words for each chapter. Enter the meat fork.

Since my novel Finding Southern Comfort involves a little girl with an eating problem, some pivotal scenes involve food. In her new job as nanny in Cameron Bennett's Savannah mansion, Harper Kirkpatrick attempts to cook Sunday dinner for her employer and his girlfriend, the insufferable Kimmy. But smoke sends Harper flying to her crockpot. When her charge Bella asks if Harper is going to burn the house down, Kimmy comments, "She just might, sugga." Was that enough to make readers stay with the story? Harper helped me out and picked up the meat fork.

Every chapter benefits from a compelling ending. Suspense writers know all about that. The main character of Into the Roaring Fork by Jeff Howe is hiking through the wild on a mission when he stumbles upon a horrifyingly riveting sight. "I blinked to check my eyes, which confirmed that I was wide awake and what was happening was real. Hauntingly real."

Now, what reader is going to turn off the light and go to sleep? But the POV changes in the next chapter. We keep turning pages. After all, our hero is haunted.

He's in good company. Cecelia in Liane Moriarity's The Husband's Secret is sleepless after she discovers a sealed letter to be opened only after her husband's death. Awakened by his bumbling around in the attic after she's asked about her curious discovery, she promptly slits the letter open and reads, "Left to right. Sentence by sentence." But we don't. Readers have to wait. How annoying and delightfully skillful.

Withholding information piques interest. In The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins ends a scene in which Rachel wonders if a ginger-haired man is smiling or sneering at her. What great ambiguity. Also known as foreshadowing, the ambiguity raises a question we want answered. To keep your readers reading, it helps to keep them guessing.

Probably the last thing we want is have the character go to bed at the end of the chapter. Sure, we've all done it. But if your character's calling it a day, your reader might also turn out the light. Let's not put characters to bed unless they have an interesting dream sequence or something else to ponder while they're lying there.

Brevity can be as effective as the meat fork for keeping readers engaged. If your scene runs long, break it. Short chapters keep readers reading. They figure they can handle five more pages, but not fifteen.

Do you have a meat fork in your writing arsenal? Keep readers guessing and they'll keep turning pages.

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Barbara Lohr writes heartwarming romance with a flair for fun and subtly sexy love scenes. In her novels, feisty women take on hunky heroes and life’s issues. Family often figures in her stories. “No woman falls in love without some family influence, either positive or negative.” Her series include Windy City Romance, which includes jaunts to Savannah and Italy, and Man from Yesterday, which launched in 2015. Dark chocolate is her favorite food group, and she makes a mean popover. When she's not writing, she loves to bike, kayak or golf. She is a member of Romance Writers of America. Barbara lives in the South for most of the year with her husband and a cat that insists he was Heathcliff in a former life. For more information on the author and her work, please see www.BarbaraLohrAuthor.com , www.facebook.com/BarbaraLohrAuthor , @BarbaraJLohr

How to Give Your Book a Classic Title

by Gary Fearon, Creative Director, Southern Writers Magazine

Every author wants a book that will hold its own against the 300,000 new books that are published in the U.S. each year.  To give it a fighting chance, it has to capture the reader's interest instantly, and a solid title will help make that good first impression.

As always, we learn much from the ones who've gone before.  Let's consider some of the classics of literature, and see how the pros did it:


THE MAIN CHARACTER

• Dracula
• Jane Eyre
• Moby Dick
• The Great Gatsby

What could be easier than simply naming your book after its lead character?  That said, don't do it.  These books were written in a different era, when it was in vogue to to do.  Robinson Crusoe and Anne of Green Gables sound classic to us today because they are classic.  In this day and time, it's unlikely that a new book called Regina Thornbush or The Adventures of Wallace Hampton would attract anyone's attention.

If you must hone in on the hero, these days it's more popular to keep things faceless and generic, like the titles of these current New York Times bestsellers: 

• The Girl on the Train 
• The Murderer's Daughter

THE SETTING

• The Arabian Nights
• The Jungle Book
• Little House on the Prairie
• Treasure Island

This approach, immediately answering the question of "Where?" still works as long as the locale happens to be intriguing or evocative, like in the above examples or, more recently, The Great Zoo of China. John Grisham's Gray Mountain and Sycamore Row say little as titles, but hey, he's John Grisham, and his fans will buy anything he writes.

Overall, it's better to play it safe with some of the following titling strategies:

AN INKLING OF THE PREMISE

• The Call of the Wild 
• Kidnapped
• Little Women 
• The Scarlet Letter

Giving your reader insight into the subject matter gets their imagination going.  Or perhaps you'd like to get specific:

LITERAL

• Around the World in Eighty Days
• Journey to the Center of the Earth
• The Old Man and the Sea 
• The Time Machine

Identifying the main premise simply and directly may help your reader determine on the spot that it's something of interest to them.

INTRIGUING

• Lord of the Flies 
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 
• The Color Purple
• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Would you have any idea what these books were about from the title alone? Unlikely, but their vague sense of importance conjures curiosity.  As with 2015 bestsellers Go Set a Watchman and Secondhand Souls, a thought-provoking title demands extra consideration.

And then there are titles whose very wording suggests an air of greatness:

POETIC

• For Whom the Bell Tolls
• Gone with the Wind 
• The Grapes of Wrath
• Of Mice and Men

Again, the premise is unclear, but the overall feel of erudition commands a certain respect.  All the Light We Cannot See is a current example.  You feel smarter just saying it.

Choosing the right title for your novel is one of the most important things you'll do, but it needn't be the hardest. Find the title that is an inviting reflection of what makes your book unique, and you'll have your reader at hello.