A Storm Is Brewing

As Promised

Hi guys,

I wrote an A/N a few chapters ago explaining that I would be finishing this book but that a good few of you had reached out asking for advice on writing stories. Each of the topics below have been requested by someone, but please know that I am not a professional🤣

Anyway, I've included some tips below that will hopefully help you all (or not). To anyone that is just starting out, I promise it is way less daunting once you've written the first chapter!

Covering sensitive topics:

• There's a reason I've covered this one first and it's because I don't think enough people take into account how big some of these topics are. Having to read a clumsy attempt at covering something that you've included in your story can be really upsetting for people who have experienced it or have been involved in it. I'll explain what I mean below:
• SA is a huge one in woso stories, it's covered in almost all of them at some point unfortunately. I deal with SA cases regularly and see the effects on the victims and their family/friends. The most important thing to remember is that your character doesn't have to be drunk if you're going to cover it. Even if it isn't intentional, every story covering the topic by starting off with the character getting black out drunk just supports the misconception that attacks of that nature are exclusively caused by alcohol. If you are going to have it happen on a drunken night out, be realistic about what happens afterwards.
• The police will not simply charge someone with sexual assault and throw them in jail. The same goes for domestic abuse, attacks, stalking etc. The victim will be taken to a hospital or crisis centre. They'll be swabbed, have their fingernails clipped, have strands of their hair taken, and have their clothes taken as evidence. They'll be asked to give a statement and required to give evidence in court. For the police to file a charge, they need to have enough evidence, and the process of that can take years. When it does, unless the accused enters a guilty plea, which occurs 0.067% of the time, the victim will have be cross-examined in court. A lot of authors will say it's fiction, it doesn't have to be true to life, but when you're covering a subject that serious, it does.
• You need to be prepared to invest the time and energy into your storylines if you're planning to write about these subjects. The impacts of these things come up time and time again; you can't just devote one chapter to the incident and never bring it up again.
• When I was writing this book and bringing Leah's insecurities/anxiety into it every now and again, I did get the odd message or comment saying Leah (in the book) was hard work or her insecurities meant she deserved to be alone. I ignored them and it didn't make me stop including it because the point of it was that people see 1) how hard it is to go through life as someone with MH problems, insecurities, or family issues with constant moments that test you and bring those things to the surface again and 2) how much you have to mean it if you tell someone they can trust you to be vulnerable.
• If all this seems like too much hard work, that's fine. You don't have to include the tougher subjects in your book, but simply saying 'it's fiction it doesn't have to be true to real life' isn't enough if you are covering subjects that you know a lot of people in the age range of your audience struggle with or have a whole life ahead of them to potentially begin to struggle with these things in the future.
• If it is for you and you want to put in the effort... do your research! For the premature birth storyline, I knew someone who had been through that, but I also did my own research to make sure that everything I wrote was as close to real as it could be.

Stories mirroring real life, like romance stories or friends to lovers, need to be realistic.

• I can't tell you how many car accidents I've read where the character dies seventeen times on the operating table, only to come round after the life support machine is switched off and be absolutely fine.
• You want your reader to be on the edge of their seat, practically begging you for the next chapter. If every deadly cliffhanger ends in sunshine, you can bet they'll not care how long it takes you to update between one chapter and the next because they know in the end, your characters will ride off into the sunset. Obviously everyone has a good idea that they will in the end, but how they get there needs to be exciting and realistic.
• I saw a story on here that covered a brain injury (think the main character was called Ellie?) and that author literally nailed it. The recovery wasn't straightforward, but it wasn't filled with brink of death moments and the character having a full conversation next. They even mentioned little future symptoms in their next few chapters like sore heads and not being able to drink.