Guest post written by The Sins On Their Bones author Laura R. Samotin
Laura R. Samotin has a PhD in international relations from Columbia University and enjoys using her academic background on military tactics, power politics, and leadership to enliven and inform her creative writing. Her YA and adult fiction is grounded in Jewish myth, mysticism, and her Eastern European Jewish heritage.
Releasing on May 7th 2024, The Sins On Their Bones is set in a Jewish folklore-inspired reimagining of 19th century Eastern Europe, this queer dark fantasy debut pits two estranged husbands and a daring spymaster on opposite sides of a civil war.
Many writers who I’ve talked to approach writing a book by either creating characters or outlining a plot. But when I write, I do things differently – the first thing I do is flesh out the ~vibes~ (yes, the ~~ are intentional). I make mood boards and aesthetic reels and playlists until the feeling of the book is imprinted on me. I need to know the Ao3 tags that my book would be categorized under. I need to figure out which fandoms give me similar feelings. Then and only then can I start writing. Because while plot can intrigue and characters can captivate, the first thing that usually sucks a reader into a story is that intangible feeling that you get diving into the first pages of a book. And that feeling, I would argue, comes from the ~vibes~.
Readers read for vibes. And so as an author, I need to know the feeling that I want the book to inspire in my readers before I can figure out the right vehicle—the plot and characters—for making that happen. Each time I walk into a bookstore, I’m looking for a book that makes me feel a certain way, not a book with a specific plot point. I want a book that gives me chills, or makes me feel like I’m on an adventure, or immerses me in a vivid and wintery world. And even more so, we’re looking for books that make us feel the way other books made us feel: as devastated as we felt during Song of Achilles; as tense as we were while reading The Bone Season; as emotionally invested in a relationship as we became over the course of Captive Prince; as immersed in a gritty world as we were while reading Six of Crows.
This is common among the readers I know, too, and certainly the ones who consider themselves members of fandom. We’re all always chasing the feelings that other books we love gave us, which is why sites like Storygraph or Goodreads are so popular—they help you find books which feel like the books you love. While most of the time they’re in the same genre, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the case—I’ve seen fantasy books comped to romcoms, thrillers comped to literary fiction.
So of course, as a writer, I want to honor this—I want to deliver a mega-dose of feelings to the reader right off the bat, letting them immerse themselves in the ~vibes~. Which is why I begin my process with Pinterest boards and playlists rather than plot outlines and character descriptions. This isn’t just brainstorming for me, either—I consider this an essential step in my writing process, one in which I’m determining how I want my book to read, and how I want my readers to experience my world. When I started writing my debut adult fantasy The Sins On Their Bones, I knew I wanted it to feel at times dark and cold and gritty, but also that I wanted readers to get the warm hug of a found family huddled together, a healthy dose of yearning, a lot of hurt/comfort, and the kind of banter which I always loved in fanfiction. Cultivating these vibes was the first step, for me, in embarking on the effort of creating the world of Novo-Svitsevo and the characters which inhabited it.
This process runs contrary to most writing advice—writers tend to categorize themselves as plotters or pantsers (so, those who go in with a plot in mind versus flying by the seat of their pants), and there are dozens of books about how to begin the brainstorming process and create story outlines or character sheets. Most of what we’re taught about writing is plot or character first. Maybe it’s because I’m a reader first—I’ve never been formally trained as a writer—but this has always struck me as counterintuitive. How can you create a plot, a world, and people to populate it without first knowing what your end goal is?
For me, when writing the beginnings of a new world, I need to know my tropes and Ao3 tags more so than I need to know my plot beats. I’ve written about this before there’s so much that fanfiction writers, who pay particular attention to emotion, can teach us about writing fiction. I urge writers to try this “all vibes, no plot” method, because I think it’s the single most effective way of production literature that evokes strong emotions in the reader. And at the end of the day, isn’t that what we want our books to do? I’ll always stand firmly in defense of feeling your book first, and writing it second—because at least the way I see it, that’s a surefire method for making your readers feel along with you.
