COTT Has a Winner!

Our March winner is....

Congratulations to CINDY GREEN, this month's COTT Champ!! Her winning novel, Andrea and the Five Day Challenge, is part of a Goodreads giveaway right now--readers, you can win a signed copy of the book if you enter by May 7. Enter here!

One voter called the book "fun, refreshing, and encouraging!" Take a peek behind this beautiful, vibrant cover and step into the world of Andrea as she embarks on a Bible challenge at a very inconvenient time.

From Amazon:

High school junior Andrea Jamison, self-proclaimed change-o-phobic and, incidentally, a fabulous pianist in her own right has lost faith in herself and her abilities. At the exact moment when her parents begin pressuring her about an opportunity that just might lead to Julliard, Andrea’s friend Amy meddles in her personal life trying to pair her up with the cute, transfer jock Luke Ryan. Will Andrea learn to accept her parents often repeated word FOCUS or will she finally start trusting in God’s strength instead of cowering in her own weaknesses?

Dear Lord,

I need Your help and sooner would be better than later. Wouldn't you know it, just as soon as I decide to attempt the 5-Day Bible Study Challenge, my parents start heaping on loads of pressure to get me into Julliard. My friend Amy isn't any better, urging me to ask Luke Ryan to homecoming. As if the cute, transfer jock would actually go out with me. I mean, we're kinda friends, and I've enjoyed our Geometry study sessions, but in case Amy hasn't noticed, I'm the invisible one at Aubrey Christian Academy, and I like it that way. On top of that, I have a feeling Luke's concealing something behind those chocolate-brown eyes of his. I know I can be self-centered and a bit melodramatic, but I really do want to seek Your will for my life. Then maybe I'll even figure out which direction points up.

Sincerely,
Andrea Jamison
High School Junior, Change-o-phobic & complete neurotic

Cindy K. Green is an award-winning author of more than 10 Sweet & Inspirational titles both in print and out of print for the Adult & Young Adult. She is also a mother, wife, teacher, and homeschooler. She blogs about her books, reading and whatever else comes to mind of interest.

Visit Cindy at her website, www.cindykgreen.com, where you can sign up for her newsletter or follow her blog. A huge congratulations to clash champion Cindy Green!

Joyride - A Story of Growing Up

Image by Clipart Panda

I was fourteen years old the summer of '76, the year I'd really started feeling my growing independence and the fact that there wasn't much time left before adulthood arrived. In many ways, I felt adult enough already, and in the ways that I didn't, I pushed the envelope a little. 

 

One of those times was on a balmy afternoon when my folks had friends from Chicago visiting our country home in central Wisconsin. Their daughter Kathy was only a year younger than I, and world wise in a different way than we Up North teens were, but just a girl all the same. Our parents had gone off somewhere for the day, taking the small kids along, and wouldn't be home until late. Kathy and I were left to fend for ourselves. 

We sat at our round kitchen table, pivoting lazily in swivel chairs discussing what we could do with our afternoon and evening of freedom. All the while, Dad's orange Ford pickup seemed to wink at me in the sun through the kitchen window. 

Now, to back up just a little with a brief aside -- I knew how to drive a car. Back then, a lot of fourteen year old kids did, and many even younger. Most of my experience came from my maternal grandma. She was a real softy, a five-foot-three lady who always got so nervous taking the driver's test she didn't manage to get her license until she was over fifty. I spent a lot of time with her growing up, and she let me talk her into just about anything. (Just one of the ways the oldest grandchild paves the way for the rest to come.) So it stood to reason that I could occasionally beg her to let me drive her car out to the back field, or just up the road a little ways.

Back to my dad's truck; with such experience as mine, I figured a little drive would be a great way to show my Chicago friend a good time. I glanced at the truck and back to Kathy. "Hey," I said, sensing that she might think country life was boring. "Want to go for a ride in my dad's truck?"

She sat up straighter in her chair. A year or so later, during a trip to Chicago to visit these same friends, I learned that Kathy was a bit of a rebel who barely kept some of her activities under the wire, so it turned out my idea was a pretty good one -- as far as teenage wiles go.

"You know how to drive?"

"Sure!"

Slight disclaimer: I'd never learned how to drive a stick. I did explain that to Kathy, but I also just shrugged and figured a truck was a truck, and as long as there was a gas pedal and a brake, we'd do okay.

One more disclaimer: not only did I not know how to drive a stick, but I really had no idea whatsoever what a clutch was used for nor how to find any gears. Basically, I just jammed the shifter around until I got the thing to chug backwards out the drive. Of course, that took a generous amount of pressure on the gas pedal to accomplish without the clutch. But, we were off. A few more cranks on the shifter, and eventually we were moving -- or sort of jumping -- forward. Everything smoothed out once we picked up some speed.

My family lived on nearly the end of a country road. Only my cousins' house was farther down, where dirt fire lanes sprung beyond. Between our house and the first intersection half a mile north there were just three houses. The first we had to pass was my other grandma's. She was a sharp lady who always noticed comings and goings up the street, so I was anxious to get past her place. The second home belonged to a young family whose kids I babysat. I think the lady of the house occasionally suspected when I was up to shenanigans, but she never mentioned any misdeeds to my folks. The third place was the home of one of my best friends. I kind of wished she'd been outside so I could wave as we cruised by, but we were better off that no one saw us on our lark. 

We drove up to the corner. After a few minor issues, some grinding gears, some chugging and jumping, and a lot of giggling, we turned around and headed back. But that first mile gave us courage, and the adrenaline rush was over much too soon. So I suggested we go around the block. The block was a mile square, so that would give us a good ten minute ride. That four mile square had hardly any houses on it, and no impediments to driving to speak of. Once again, we arrived back home feeling like we'd just had a great adventure, but that it could be made greater still. 

I don't recall how the discussion progressed, only that Kathy agreed to whatever I suggested -- I had "leadership skills" that way -- and before we knew it, we were on the road again, this time really, really on the road.

I'd learned by now that if I rolled the stop signs just a little, the truck wouldn't kill. That meant we'd need to avoid heavy traffic and especially stop lights. So we decided to head to the small town of Nekoosa, about ten miles away, which didn't boast of any lights back then. We'd be on the highway most of the way, and I figured I could handle that smoothly. It was only the stops that concerned me. From Nekoosa, we took the river road through Port Edwards and on toward Wisconsin Rapids. We wouldn't have driven that far, except I knew that we'd have to try to put gas in at some point, and the station on the west side was now the closest I could think of. My dad is a very meticulous guy, and he would certainly notice a drop on the gas gauge. We'd already put about twenty-five miles on the truck today, and with another twenty going home, he'd surely realize something had happened.

Up until now, we'd not experienced a single problem, but pulling into the gas station which sat on a pie piece in a fairly busy intersection directly across from the DMV was a bit of a trick. I came in a little too fast (didn't want to kill the engine you know) and in trying to avoid literally clipping off one of the pumps, I nearly took off another driver's open car door instead. He scowled and pulled the door into him. I smiled and avoided prolonging the gaze. Whew! That had been a close one.

We pumped what seemed like a reasonable amount of fuel into the tank, not having the slightest idea of gas mileage or anything like that, and only having a small amount of cash to our names. Then, with a roar of the gas pedal, we were off again. About half way home, we both had to go to the bathroom so badly, we didn't think we'd make it the rest of the way if we didn't stop. But where to go? We were on the highway, with nothing much around. Ah... It would have to be Bob's Bar.

"Bob's Bar" Photo courtesy of Rhonda Whetstone

I'd been to Bob's Bar on a number of occasions in my young life. It was my grandpa's favorite place to socialize. He'd take me there to buy me an orange crush and a candy bar and let me put a dime in the juke box. Grandpa also introduced me to the oldest living man in the area there. Smokey Joe lived to be a hundred. The area where Bob's Bar stood was known as Smokey Joe's Corner. Smokey Joe told me about having to use horses and wagons instead of cars, and about the way things were when electricity came to town. Bob had been a nice guy too. If you stopped by his bar to trick-or-treat, he'd give you a full-sized candy bar right off the shelf. By the time of my and Kathy's joy ride, Bob no longer owned the bar. Not that Bob anyway. He had recently passed on, and a different Bob had bought the place. I eventually got to know the new Bob's kid a couple years later when we rode the high school bus together. It was nice they didn't have to change the name of the bar though.

"Come on," I said to Kathy. "I've been here lots of times. We'll just head straight into the bathroom and out again."

We did just as planned, and before we knew it, we were back in the truck.

That's when we encountered our second problem. This time the truck wouldn't start. It would only whine and whine. Sweat drops of dread gathered on the back of my neck. Kathy's huge blue eyes brightened with alarm too. We must have sat there for ten minutes. What could be wrong -- other than the fact a fourteen and thirteen year old were sitting outside a local drinking establishment after joyriding the day away in daddy's pickup all across the county? 

It all sounds worthy of a country song to me.

Image by Clipart Panda

Suddenly the bar door opened, and out came the new Bob. Kathy and I cast each other a quick glance and tried to play it cool. He approached the truck. 

"Are you having some trouble?"

"Yeah, I can't seem to get it started."

"Are you pushing in the clutch?"

Oh.... so that's what that was for. "Oh, no, I forgot. Thanks!" I said with a gush and a smile that I hoped conveyed a duh, kind of face-palm relief.

"She just got her license," Kathy piped in for good measure.

Somehow, I don't think Bob was fooled, but I revved up the engine, thanked him again, and he backed away from the door. Good move on his part. I don't recall that I used the clutch to shift yet, but we managed to herky-jerky our way out of the lot and out of Bob's sight. We pulled into our yard about ten minutes later, our shoulders dropping with relief over our stupendous success. It had been such a day to remember. I understood even then why such things were called joy rides.

So that should have been the end of it, a grand adventure to wind up a summer afternoon. But as evening closed around us, the excitement of it all sloughed off, and we believed we had time for one more short excursion. After all, now that we knew a little something about the clutch, it would be a waste not to exercise that knowledge. So we headed out into the dark.

By this time, I'd grown concerned that my grandma up the road would be noting the number of comings and goings from our house and getting suspicious. The last thing I'd need would be a call of curiosity to my dad. So I got the bright idea that we'd just shut the headlights off while we went by her place so she wouldn't see us. I thought we should do the same by the next house too. 

Boy was it dark! It was hard to tell when we'd gone completely past, and then... whomp! 

"What the heck was that?" I'm not sure if Kathy said that, or if I only thought it, but my heart sent out a panicked thumping. I hit the lights, and Kathy and I sent each other glances of near terror. I drove up to the corner, did a quick U-ey (because a slow u-turn would kill the engine) and headed back for home. As we approached the house in question, our headlights cast beams at the damage. One dead mailbox lay sprawled on the shoulder of the road. Not a breath of life left in it, clipped off right at the post.

Image by Clipart Panda 

I gunned the engine and drove on by, hoping the neighbors wouldn't recognize the sound of my dad's truck.

We'd had enough. No more adventure for us, which is quite a thing to say, coming from a teenage girl. I took great care to park the truck exactly where it'd been parked earlier and to make sure no evidence of our excursion was left behind in the interior. I checked for external damage, but thankfully, the mailbox had been the only casualty. Safely back inside the house, we finally let out our breaths.

There were some things I didn't tell my parents about until I was an adult, and they could no longer ground me for them. This was one of those things. I'm pretty sure the neighbor knew who knocked over their mailbox. She had a certain light in her eye when she mentioned the mailbox to my folks a few days later, but as they were oblivious, she didn't air her suspicions. My dad, however, did ask me if I'd planned to drive the truck straight through the garage. 

"Whaaaat???" I asked, in that teenage, playing dumb tone. He'd noticed that the truck was parked about two feet closer to the cement slab than usual. I told you he was meticulous.

It was all fun, all part of growing up as far as I'm concerned. And it's not like I got by with it completely. Twenty years later, I had a twelve year old daughter who took her small siblings on a joy ride of their own. Like most lessons in life, all things come 'round eventually.

Pulling Your Readers' Emotional Strings - 5 Keys to Writing from The Gilmore Girls

I've been watching the Gilmore Girls series on Netflix and pondering the way writers manipulate our emotions in books and film. Seeing as how I am a writer, I want to know how to perform this puppetry in a way that keeps the audience on my side and doesn't turn them against me. That's always a dangerous possibility -- to have a reader put our work down, or worse yet, have them throw it against the wall, because we tried to pull a fast one on them. Pulling on their emotional strings without breaking them is a precarious trick. On the upside of that heavy responsibility, it's the most fun a writer can have.

Using the Gilmore Girls as our example (because it seems most everyone watched it when it was still running except me, and now I've been on a winter long, Gilmore Girls marathon) let's pay attention to the emotional manipulation in detail.

Core to the story are the relationship statuses of mother and daughter to their respective boyfriends or boyfriend hopefuls. Will Luke and Lorelei ever get together? What new conflict will keep them apart? Will she "settle" for someone else entirely? How should we feel about Chris? Will Rory finally fall in love for keeps with Dean? With Jess? With Logan? Which boyfriend character most closely reflects her heart's desire? How will they win her? Why do they lose her? What magic of writing keeps us glued to the screen to frolic along with the ever-changing direction of these wandering hearts?

All of these questions and their perspective answers give us the first key to what manipulates us -- and that is because the first key is Character. Each of the Stars Hollow characters is so unique, so fully fleshed, so developed, that even from the very first episode we are sold on them as "real". That means the writers knew the back stories of these characters well before they ever introduced them to the stage.

Note how quickly we come to care for (or become annoyed by) the many and varied folk who populate the small town of Stars Hollow. Either emotion engages us; we are manipulated by irritating habits as well as heart-tugging desire. Face it, one of the biggest pitfalls authors tumble into is when we neglect to fully form secondary characters. But we invest ourselves in the Gilmore Girls more fully because Suki, Kirk, Zach, Michel, and the rest of the zany townsfolk are fully formed personages. Because we are invested in their lives just as we are the main love interests, we quickly come to care about what happens to them. We are emotionally entangled in their joys, sorrows, and array of mishaps that add richness to the main story line.

So, Key #1: To first get hold of a reader's emotional strings, introduce fully formed characters that have had lives before they stepped onto the page. Even though the writers don't weigh us down with Lorelei and Rory's backstory, it's clear the entire series is built upon it.

~~~

As seasons of the show progress, we first root for Rory's perfect, pure love for Dean. We think, "Wow, they're so cute together. I hope they make it through all the trials of adolescence. I hope they stay together." Yet, we know better. They're young. It's a TV show. That their young love will last is unlikely. Our hearts break with Rory's -- with Dean's. And yet... and yet we are just as attracted to the character of bad boy Jess as Rory is. We are compelled to follow our heart right along with her into the magnetism that is Jess. Why is that? How have our emotional strings been so pulled when Dean is such a sweet kid, such a perfect boyfriend?

First because of key one, Jess is fully developed. He has a troubled spirit and conflicted soul, and he's been through a hellish childhood. He pops onto the scene of Stars Hollow carrying a backlog of angst. We find him intriguing. But the deep reason we are convinced that Rory should give him a shot is because, in small snippets, even while hearing warning bells that this relationship will be a bumpy ride, we sense that he might be her soul mate. (Okay, I said it. No matter that they go their ways later and she gets all serious over spoiled frat boy Logan, Jess is her soul mate. Just check out the fan-fiction on this, and you'll agree.) After all the outer layers are pulled away, we see Rory and Jess are two of a kind. Maybe Rory isn't rebellious, but she has the same deep yearning for ideas that Jess does. I mean, come on, they love books and they both become writers! Oh my heart! Rory was never part of the rich girl scene until getting acquainted with her grandparents as a teenager. Until then, she'd been a down-to-earth-raised girl. She understands struggle. She's watched her mom work from the bottom up to give them a good life. Rory is something of an experienced soul, like Jess, if a bit more protected. Besides this, the writer gives them a commonality that resonates. They both love literature and use it to analyze life, to understand each other. This one thing alone leads viewers on a path of cheering for them when they finally get together. We know that Rory needs someone who appreciates language, literature, and ideas as richly as she does.

The other thing that helps us move swiftly from Dean to Jess in following Rory's love interest is that they challenge one another. Scores of romance novels are built around the idea of seemingly opposites attracting, or two people first having conflict, but later falling head over heels for each other. This works when the characters challenge one another in healthy ways. Jess challenges Rory to let go and be the girl she's meant to be without following a course set for her by others; and likewise, Rory challenges Jess to make something of his life because she believes in his untapped intelligence, and that he'd be wasting himself not to do something dynamic. She definitely becomes the woman who makes the man, just as he becomes the man who sets her on her true path. The same is true of Luke and Lorelei. They belong together (or the writers convince us that they do) because they always tell each other the things the other needs to hear, even if it's not what they want to hear. Luke is the only one who isn't run over by Lorelei's fast talk. He just smiles and nods and pours her another cup of coffee and loves her -- and tells her what she's doing wrong while he pours himself out for her in tactile ways like fixing her house, loaning her money to get her business off the ground, hauling furniture to school for Rory. There's a lot of emotional metaphor in the things he does that allow their relationship to deepen and grow, and thus pull viewers into their story.

So, Key #2: Characters have to challenge each other to grow. Watching a character grow, sometimes painfully, sometimes through expressing commonalities, only makes us more willing to follow them from one foray into another, and to even abide their changes of allegiance. 

~~~

So, if all that's true about Luke and Lorelei being meant for each other, why do we start to feel "okay" when Lorelei and Rory's father Chris get together in Season 6? Now, in all honesty, at first we're like, "No! Wait! What?!" We know she's making a huge blunder. But then we see that somewhere along the way, in his own life, Chris has changed too. He's grown up -- finally -- or at least he seems to have. He knows Lorelei really, really well, because they've been close since forever. After all, he's Rory's dad... We give him grace because, suddenly, we see them as a family, or at least the tug on our emotional strings makes us think we might be able to see them together that way. Besides, Luke has been acting like a total ignoramous. We're mad at him. The writers have made him flawed, and right then, they're letting all his worse flaws show! While we're wagging our heads moaning, "Luke, Luke, Luke..." the writers are simultaneously painting a picture of familial completeness when we see Chris, Lorelei, and Rory all driving home together from a Friday night dinner at Richard and Emily's. It's so... Norman Mailer. Rory, the kid, is in the back seat, smiling serenely while her corny-acting parents rock along with 80s radio in the front. It's a glimpse at the life they missed raising Rory together, juxtaposed with current conflicts Lorelei is having with Luke. We still know that Luke and Lorelei were meant to be together, but we also accept that sometimes in real life people miss each other because they just can't get their acts together, and maybe that's what is about to happen for Luke and Lorelei. By painting a picture of Chris, Lorelei, and Rory as a happy family, our emotions are led to believe that maybe it'll be okay after all. The writers do a fairly decent job of leading us down this winding path with a bit of acceptance if not a whole-hearted throwing in with the idea.

So, Key #3: A scene that paints a picture of "what if" can help a writer tug on the emotional strings by establishing moments of "maybe" in a story. This goes back to the adage "show, don't tell". Scenes able to visually depict this "maybe" moment are the stuff romantic or suspenseful cliff-hangers are made of.

~~~

That type of staged scene is all about what's happening. There's no end to great dialogue in The Gilmore Girls, but what really backs up everything being said is action. Concrete actions lend deeper feeling to what their words are or aren't saying. What they do, what they give, where they go -- all leads our emotions on a merry, winding path. All really good stories have this in common. They cause us to glide along because of this same attentiveness to heightened or subtle action in the emotional moment.

I love how action portrays the emotion in this scene between Jess and his uncle Luke. Luke is angry, frustrated, perturbed, at wits end. He isn't really yelling, but watch his body language, and pay attention to Jess's as well as he attempts to blow Luke off. As the confrontation heats up, so does the body movement. And check out Luke's final reaction. It's a topper. (By the way, the video says best scene ever, but how does one choose?!?)

Then there are those heart-aching episodes that chronicle Luke and Lorelei's breakup. After Lorelei breaks it off with Luke in a big way, we don't hear her say much. The movie or television screen has an advantage here. It shows Lorelei mooning silently on Suki and Jackson's couch, but we get what's going on in her head. In books, we can show that, and we should, but the temptation is strong to let a lot of internal dialogue take over. While internal dialogue is acceptable to a point, it should be action that speaks loudest most of the time. If the Gilmore Girls scene of her depression following the breakup were in a book, we could depend upon the action showing her doing what anyone might do at a time of deep rejection. She turns inward, growing quiet (which is very unlike her), and heads to her best friend for comfort. All the dialogue that then takes place in this scene goes on over her head by Suki and Jackson as they try to understand, console, but mostly dispel the discomfort hanging over the room in the face of Lorelei's heartbreak. It's their actions that complete Lorelei's emotional free-fall. When going to them isn't enough, Lorelei then makes an active decision that really bottoms out her pain. She turns to Chris for comfort, making us all want to weep.

It isn't what she says, what Luke says, what her friends say, or what Chris says in these moments that tug us into her despair. It's where she goes. Her quiet actions alone fill us with sadness and despair -- and even anger. This is probably the closest I came in watching the show to throwing the proverbial book against the wall, but I didn't. Why? The writers imbue Lorelei's stupid decisions and the actions of surrounding characters with enough hope to keep me dangling in my hold. I can't help it. I'm that invested in these characters.

Aside from characters coming onstage fully fleshed out, the actions of the characters showing their internal conflict are the biggest reason our hearts can be pulled one way or another. Remember the scene during the dance marathon, where Rory is dancing with Dean but being drawn to Jess? She's clinging to the fact that she loves Dean, but can no longer deny her attraction to someone else. Not a lot is said about it during the scene's buildup. Yet there's an entire, unspoken dialogue going on in glances and actions prior to the confrontational moment. Then there's a verbal blow up, and Dean breaks up with her. But prior to that, so much is displayed in her body language and what she leaves unspoken, it becomes one of the most tragically romantic episodes of the show.

Someone said, "Character is built during confrontation with your weakness." This couldn't be truer than when a writer is forming a character. In the dance scene, Rory's weakness is her attraction to Jess. Throughout the dance, we've felt every part of her struggle up until the moment of confrontation is presented to us. If you haven't seen the show, check out the clip of that moment when all the silent angst finally comes bubbling up:

So, Key #4: Actions speak louder than words. If something BIG is about to transpire on an emotional level in your story, make the characters act it out accordingly. Whether they say much or say little, set the scene in actions, blatantly or subtly as the atmosphere affords.

~~~

All this said, it seems the stronger the conflict, the more the emotional investment. We, as readers or viewers, go along in whichever direction a writer wishes to manipulate us as long as we find the characters to be real and the conflict to be stimulating. Even when the characters finally get what they they want, the conflict stakes rise, because now there's the chance of losing what they've won. The element of risk is something we have to make very clear in our writing. In some cases, it means causing yet another problem for our character to overcome, keeping them from a potential happily ever after for a little bit longer, but to do so in a way that we're boiling the frog -- er -- not making our readers feel manipulated. Tension should mount in stages until, at some final black moment, it can't stretch any further. The final risk or peril is upon them. 

Unfortunately, conflict is often pasted into a story. Too many authors make this mistake. An author may feel like they've imposed integral conflict, but actually it's pasted, fake, fabricated. How can we tell? We don't care about those characters or their plight. We haven't been made to see or feel things through their skin. To accomplish integration and thus to feel the emotional pull of conflict, we need to sink deep in their point of view. It's easy to fall into the point of view of the Gilmore women or their men and to live vicariously through them. Accomplishing that on the page is tougher. We have to express our characters' emotions in ways that are sensory to our readers so they can feel the same emotion. Does the conflict have our hero feeling angry? Let the reader experience their temples pounding, the blood roaring in their ears, their clammy palms clenching into fists. Does our heroine feel rejected, crushed in spirit? Let her feel outside herself, hollow, empty in such a way that the reader also feels hollow, empty, outside themself. Show what a character sees or doesn't see as they're staring into space, looking through their eyes, going through the motions of living but not feeling from the inside out -- that will put the reader there too. Or maybe the heroine has an overwhelming urge to run away, to melt, to cry, to get in the car and drive without a destination. How do you show them experiencing those desires and conflict from the inside out? 

Does the conflict resolve itself heroically? Can the reader feel the character's heart pounding, the anxious grinding of his jaw, the beads of sweat breaking out and cooling on his neck? Get personal in the conflict -- deep-below-the-skin personal.

So, for the final Key, #5: Conflict must continue to mount, but it cannot be only external. Characters must feel the physical angst or heightened mood internally and through body language, and those feelings must be conveyed to the reader at the gut level.

~~~

To summarize:

Here's what you need in order to pull your readers' emotional strings so that they'll allow you to wring their heart first one way and then another.

You need completely developed characters who challenge one another. Important emotional moments need to be set in appropriate atmospheric scenes where the characters perform actions that boil over into deeper meaning and higher stakes. And the real kicker? All those stakes, those intense emotions, must be conveyed to the reader in physical ways which the reader can then internalize. 

When all these keys combine, we'll have characters readers care about so much, they'll want their stories to continue even after The End. The creators of The Gillmore Girls pull this off. I mean, really, have you seen the websites full of fan fiction?

Now let's get busy. Let's go toy with our readers' emotional state of mind.