Should You Write a Happy or an Unhappy Ending? – Inventing Reality’s Newsletter for Sept. 2, 2025

Plotting Your Book: Should You Write a Happy or an Unhappy Ending?
When writing the climax your story, you’ll need to decide if the ending will be happy or unhappy. How should you choose which one to use? READ MORE

Writing Tips: How to Create Your Story’s Setting
All too often, writers give their story’s setting short shrift. Setting – the place and time of your story – can establish mood, tone and milieu. It can drive conflict in a story and develop your character. It can highlight themes and even be a “character” in your story. My new book, Build Your Story’s Setting, aims to help writers think of their story’s place and time in ways that elevate the tale to a new level. It begins by defining setting and its role in a story. From there, it moves on to the craftsmanship of describing a setting. Lastly, it looks at incorporating setting into your story’s plot and using it to reveal character while establishing theme. SEE BOOK

Writing Tip: How Not to Create a Protagonist
You can have the greatest plot in the world, discuss a deep, universal theme, and write crisp, taut sentences, but if the reader can’t connect to your protagonist, the story will fall flat. Simply put, you always must create a protagonist the reader will root for. READ MORE

Self-Publishing Tip: Six Great Formulas for Writing a Nonfiction Title
To successfully market a nonfiction book, you’ll want a powerful title that grabs the reader. Unlike fiction, however, the nonfiction book not only has to catch the readers’ attention but give the reader an instant sense of what the book is about. As you compete with hundreds and sometimes even thousands of books writing about your topic, such a title will make your book stand out, which in turn means readers are more likely to click on it at Amazon.com or to pull it off a shelf at a bookstore. READ MORE

This Week’s Podcast: Avoid Clever-Author Syndrome in Storytelling
When we’ve mastered some skill – say ball handling in basketball – we often like to show off. So when we’re on the sidewalk with the neighbor kids, we’ll spin the ball on a finger or perform some gravity-defying dribbling trick. When writers resort to such showing off in a story, they’re guilty of clever-author syndrome. LISTEN TO PODCAST

Book Marketing Tip: Increase Author Website Visits with Strategic SEO
Search Engine Optimization is another way to improve your page rank. As search engine robots and crawlers check over your website, they seek key words so that someone using a search engine gets sites that best match their needs. Simply incorporating certain keywords into your website text will improve the chances of someone finding your site when they search for those words. READ MORE

Client Spotlight: “Scapegoat: The Tommy Lee Hines Story” by Peggy Allen Towns
A couple of years ago, I edited this excellent book by Peggy Allen Towns, who writes about African American history. In 1978, the arrest of Tommy Lee Hines, a young black man with the mental capacity of a six-year-old, shook the city of Decatur, Alabama. This gripping story chronicles the untold narrative of an intellectually disabled man who finds himself trapped in a web of systemic racism, prejudices, and a legal system that needs reforming. As the sequence of events unfold, author Peggy Allen Towns captures the tragedy of Tommy Lee Hines that inspired a movement for change. CHECK IT OUT

$25 Off Your Next Edit!
For being a newsletter subscriber, please take $25 off your next edit with Inventing Reality Editing Service. When scheduling your edit, be sure to mention you’re a subscriber and give the email where you received this newsletter. Minimum order of $200. Offer expires Sept. 9, 2025. SCHEDULE EDIT

My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of both aspiring and published writers and offers a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of a novel, the Storytelling 101 Quick Read series, four children’s books, more than 25 bestselling hiking guidebooks, and even a book of poetry. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.