3 Key Takeaways: A Fate Inked in Blood by Danielle L. Jensen

This is part of my ongoing video series of Three Key Takeaways from books I’ve read – the lessons we should take as authors from what worked and what didn’t work. You can view the original video here with the transcript below:

@rhiannondaverc

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♬ original sound - Rhiannon D'Averc, Writer

I am a professional ghostwriter and these are my three key takeaways from A Fate Inked in Blood by Danielle L. Jensen. So, I’m going to sound like I’m ripping into this book in a minute.

I just want to say first off that I actually did really enjoy it. I read the whole thing cover to cover. I was invested. I stayed up a little bit later than I was supposed to a couple of nights just to get through some really intense scenes. And I enjoyed the romance. I enjoyed the characters.

I don’t know that I would rush to pick up the next book, but I would probably read it if it came to me in another Fairyloot box, or if someone sent it to me, I would read it for sure. But having said that, you know, I always like to find the ways in which we can improve our work. And I’m going to find three things in this book that could have been done better.

The first one is this. It is to do with editing, structure, grammar. When you have a new speaker, you make a new line.

This is such a key element of formatting a book, but I feel like it’s not one that we’re ever really taught in school or a point that is made to us. And I feel like it’s probably different in different cultures as well. But certainly, when you’re writing a book in English, if you have a new speaker, you put their words on a new line.

You would usually also put any action from a new person onto a new line if there has been a speaker, because it just prevents any confusion. There were a few times in this book where the way it is written on the page meant it was a little bit confusing as to who was saying what. You had dialogue from one character at the start of the paragraph, and at the end of the paragraph, there was dialogue from another character.

And then it started a new paragraph with dialogue again, which was actually from character A. However, in usual formatting, the first paragraph would all be character A, the second paragraph would be character B. So the fact that it was done in a different way was confusing. I had to reread those pages to figure out what was going on, which took me out of the experience of reading, made me remember that I was reading a book instead of just experiencing a wonderful story. It made me see the author on the page, which always takes you out of the experience.

And so that really could have been finessed and tightened up, and those paragraph breaks should have been in there. So remember, when you are doing dialogue, new speaker equals new line. 

The second key takeaway that I had from this book is let your characters feel. Let them feel. There were a few times, especially towards the beginning of the book, where things happened to the main character, and she was kind of being swept along, and she did not stop to tell us how she felt. 

In particular, I’m thinking of there was a scene where she gets undressed by servants, which she’s not rich enough to have servants, so she’s never had this experience before.

And she gets undressed by servants and made to get into a bath, and there’s a fleeting thought that it’s a bit weird, but she just kind of goes through the process. And it actually reminded me of when the same thing happens to Katniss in The Hunger Games. Personally, myself, I’m thinking, this is not a person that just on the average day gets naked in front of a bunch of other people.

You’re going to have thoughts about that. Whether you end up being comfortable with it or not, you certainly will think about how strange it is. Then the next scene after that, she is stripped in front of a bunch of people again, and she tries to cover up her body, and she talks about how embarrassed she is.

Well, where was that embarrassment in the last scene? And it very quickly disappears, and she forgets all about it, and we just carry on like normal. Just let your characters feel things. Let them experience things that are happening to them and have thoughts about those things.

Let them be embarrassed or shy. Let them be swept away by their own emotions for a moment. Let us, the audience, know how they feel.

Because I kind of thought, oh, okay, she’s just completely fine with being naked in front of people, I guess. And then in the next scene, it turns out she’s not okay with that. She doesn’t like it.

But it happens, it actually happens a really unnecessary number of times in the book that she ends up naked in front of strangers. And each time, there just isn’t that emotional connection with what she’s actually feeling and thinking inside. Whereas in other times, the character does have strong emotions and does feel things, and I just think be consistent with that and let us connect to your character at all moments, not just the exciting ones that you’re wanting to rush ahead to focus on.

Because characters should feel like real people, not just game pieces that you are moving along the board in the right direction to make sure the plot works. 

My third key takeaway from A Fate Inked in Blood is keep track of negative effects. And this is one that’s really tricky for writers sometimes.

I’ve also had this problem myself with clients who want me to write, especially mystery thriller books where we’re doing detectives or FBI agents or whoever, and they are staying up all night to catch a killer. I have this problem time and time again where I’m like, okay, with the plot that you want me to write, they’ve been awake for three days. There are gonna be some negative effects to that.

We need to either talk about that or have them go to sleep for a bit. And something really similar happens in this book. The main character actually talks about how exhausted she is, how her eyes are closing on their own.

She can’t wait to get to bed. Then something prevents her from going to bed. She’s still exhausted.

She finally gets the chance to go to bed and lays down and finds that she can’t sleep because something’s preying on her mind. So she gets up. She wanders off.

She has a load of dangerous encounters. Then instead of allowing her to go back to bed, the leader of her group decides that they need to go back down the mountain and they need to go and fight all of their enemies right now and they need to go home. And they travel for about two more days.

And she mentions once that she falls asleep in her saddle but then very quickly gets jerked awake again. Never again is it mentioned that she’s exhausted. She goes on a two-day journey, engages in a battle, all while already being battle-weary and exhausted and two days straight awake.

And they just don’t talk about how exhausted she is ever again. She doesn’t make mistakes because she’s exhausted. She doesn’t think about bed.

She doesn’t feel her eyelids closing. She doesn’t have a headache. You think of the last time you stayed up for more than 24 hours and how that felt.

Even if you weren’t doing something strenuous. Even if you were just at home. It felt pretty bad.

And that isn’t in the book at all. It’s just kind of forgotten that she should be this exhausted. After the battle, she manages to go to bed and I’m just thinking, finally, god, I’m exhausted for her.

I’m exhausted reading about how much stuff she’s doing, thinking about how exhausted she must be. But it isn’t in the text. So that was a mistake where clearly the author has forgotten to keep track of the negative effects that are going on with their character.

And there are other kinds of negative effects. Someone might have a headache and if their headache miraculously disappears without any intervention, the reader will notice that. They might, if it’s an action book, they might get injured in a fight. And then the next time they’re in a fight, you don’t mention it at all. Well, what happened to that broken bone? What happened to that sprain? What happened to that cut? They should still have those negative effects applied to them, right? They don’t have magical healing potions unless it’s that kind of book. And even if you do have magical healing in your book, if we don’t see it happen on the page, then we’re going to assume that your character has not been healed.

They might be angry. Unless you actually talk about them cooling down and finding a way to deal with the anger, they should still be angry the next time that they come across the person they’re angry with. They might be hungry. Unless you talk about them finding food, there will come a point where that hunger will dominate their every thought. Have you ever been that hungry where maybe you haven’t eaten for a whole day and your stomach feels like it’s eating itself? It’s really hard to ignore that. And your character won’t be able to ignore that.

And if they do ignore that, then the readers are going to think you’re being sloppy. Thirst. Oh my God.

Have you ever been thirsty and not been able to get a drink? And then like five hours later, you still haven’t had a drink. You cannot think about anything else. Every word you say is torture because of how dry your throat is.

Don’t let your characters just go on having a normal conversation when they’re supposed to be dying of thirst. Keep track of the negative effects you have applied to your characters and make sure that you keep on talking about them and referencing them and exploring the effect they will have on your character’s existence until you can fix them. 

Anyway, those are my three key takeaways from A Fate Inked in Blood.

Do you have any other Viking themed books that you’ve read that I should read? Let me know because I would like to cover some in future videos.