Writing emotional scenes with Hannah Bauman

Emma Dhesi  00:00

Hello, I’m Emma Dhesi and welcome to another episode of turning readers into writers. If you’re brand new here, welcome and here’s what you need to know. This is a community that believes you are never too old to write your first novel, no matter what you’ve been up to until now, if you’re ready to write your book, I’m ready to help you reach the end, I focus on helping you find the time and confidence to begin your writing journey, as well as the craft and skills you need to finish the book.

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Okay, let’s dive in to today’s episode.

Hannah Bauman loves helping writers polish their stories and get published. She’s been obsessed with stories since childhood and insisted she’d grow up to be an author. In high school, she actually enjoyed analysing assigned readings. But it was when she got to university she discovered her true calling: editing.

She majored in English with a specialisation in editing, writing, and media. Following graduation, she completed a graduate-level certification in editing and publishing. That led her to my current career: editing for writers and over the past eight years has honed her skills through formal education, internships, corporate editing gigs, and freelance work.

For Hannah, the best thing about freelance editing is holding her clients’ published books in her hands!

So let’s find out what she can tell us about writing emotional scenes. Let’s see what tips she’s got. Well, thank you, Hannah. Thank you for joining me today. I’m really pleased to have you on the show.

Hannah Bauman  02:51

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here and talk about writing.

Emma Dhesi  02:56

A Pleasure, a pleasure. So I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about you and your journey to where you are now.

Hannah Bauman  03:03

Sure. So I’m Hannah Bauman. I am a book editor by day and a fiction writer by night. I started like a lot of writers, I always had an interest in writing stories from when I was very little.

And I always loved, you know, reading and fantasy books. And I would play out my fantasy books with my friends in the backyard and all of that growing up. So I think it’s always been a natural path for me. I took a little deviation in high school where I thought I might want to be an astrophysicist.

But I quickly learned that even though I was good at calculus, I hate it. You know, I’m sure as many people find math is not fun. So when I got to college, I went back to my roots of writing and my interest in that.

And through my coursework, I kind of stumbled into editing as a career and a skill set and just absolutely fell in love with it. So, yeah, since 2011, I’ve been editing in professional capacities.

 Emma Dhesi  04:02

So that’s, um, so a question I would have for you then because we hear a lot about how, you know, writing a first draft is one set of skills. revising and editing is another set of skills. Yes, you find kind of swapping between the two is that Yeah, how do you how do you do it?

 Hannah Bauman  04:23

Yeah, it’s it’s so funny. That’s something that I still have to work on for myself. Like it’s a it’s something that I have to practice daily.

Because it’s so hard. And I think I hear this a lot from clients, right? That it’s so hard to go from writing to editing or as you’re writing to stop yourself from editing.

It’s either one problem or the other. So it’s just I have to think about, you know, your first draft is your first draft. It’s supposed to be messy. That’s the creative process. It does not have to be anywhere close to done.

It’s about getting Getting all your ideas out, getting them on paper, kind of building the, like the skeleton of your story or the foundation, you know, if you want to compare it to a house and then editing, if we go with the house metaphor that’s like, where you paint the walls and where you can, you know, decorate, and things like that.

Do just for all my type A writers out there just know it’s a process and you can just go step by step.

 Emma Dhesi  05:28

Yeah, I do hear that from a number of people that just gotta tweak it. Got to tweak that as I go along. I can’t go on until I’ve fixed that bits. That one line that one?

 Hannah Bauman  05:39

Yeah. Yeah, with with the draft that I’m working on right now for my writing. My rule for myself is I’m allowed to self edit it only after I write the whole chapter. And then I have to let it sit until the next day.

That’s how I have found my balance. And I really want to go back and edit that sentence, and I need to push through the drafting. So maybe that’ll help somebody.

 Emma Dhesi  06:03

Yeah, you get tough with yourself?

 Hannah Bauman  06:05

 I do. Yeah, I have to sit down with myself.

 Emma Dhesi  06:09

So with your editor hat on, yep. What kind of books do you work on with your clients? Do you have a preference at all?

 Hannah Bauman  06:17

Yeah, so I’ve pretty much specialized in fantasy science fiction and romance books. They’re what I love to read what I love to write what I love to edit, so I know them like the back of my hand.

But I also work on select nonfiction that’s kind of on a project by project basis. You know, part of my work as an editor and a writing coach has to do with, you know, teaching and writing nonfiction.

So, you know, if I think I can help someone with a nonfiction project, I’ll take it on, if I don’t think so I’ll recommend them to another editor. But yeah, I mostly focus on the sci fi, fantasy and romance.

And that’s for middle grade readers through adult readers. I don’t edit children’s books.

 Emma Dhesi  07:02

Okay. Okay. And for the romance, are you? Will you do any romance as well? Or do you stick to?

 Hannah Bauman  07:10

Yep, I will do pretty much anything, as long as it’s, you know, all consensual, and the romance.

That’s where I draw the line. But yeah, I’ve edited everything from clean through, not so clean.

 Emma Dhesi  07:23

So sci fi, and in particular fantasy, they tend to be on the bigger side. So like I write contemporary women’s fiction, it’s very kind of, you know, generally between 70 and 80,000 words. So it doesn’t take that long for my editor to go through it.

But for those who are writing maybe more epic, and stories, what’s what’s on average, kind of just to manage expectations there, you know, how long does it take to read through a manuscript and, and then meet the comments on it for?

 Hannah Bauman  07:59

So that’s gonna vary a little bit from editor to editor.

But I’d say a good rule of thumb is to expect at least six to eight weeks for one round of editing. I usually take a little bit longer, but that’s because I read through manuscripts twice before I send it back to the author, just to make sure I’ve been as thorough as I possibly can.

So like, right now I have a Oh gosh, how many words it’s a bout 180,000 words. So it’s definitely fits in the definition of epic.

That one is going to I’m doing a developmental edit, which is like story editing, you know, for plot and character arcs and all of that. That’s going to take me about 12 weeks.

Emma Dhesi  08:43

Okay. Okay. Yeah. So be patient, those who are doing the epic stories.

Hannah Bauman  08:47

Yeah, be patient. And I think also reframe it as an opportunity to either start working on a different draft, you know, if you have like a sequel that you want to start working on, or just to take some time for yourself, and like, go do something else.

That’s fun, right? We all need a break. And, you know, while your books if your editor just, you know, go drink some coffee and watch TV, and that, you know, whatever you want to do

Emma Dhesi  09:10

Hold it, refresh, refilling your creative well.

Hannah Bauman  09:14

Yeah, exactly. Yeah and yeah, go read another book, books by your favorite authors. That’s, it’s a really good time to take a break.

Emma Dhesi  09:22

That you mentioned that just before, but I wonder if you could let us know what kind of what services you do offer You mentioned structural edits there.

Hannah Bauman  09:29

Yep. Yep. So I do two different types of structural edits. There’s the developmental edit, which is very, like nitty gritty in the weeds, you know, kind of seen by seeing tiny little detailed edits. And then there’s also a critique, which is very high level big picture.

That generally takes less time but generally cost less money. So if you’re on a budget, or if you’ve already had, you know, a few critique partners and beta readers, go through your story, that’s always good.

That option. And then there’s also copy editing, which is, you know, grammar, spelling, punctuation. And there’s also so it’s funny, depending on whose website you look at for different editors, they’re going to have slightly different definitions for these.

But there’s also line editing, which is basically a very heavy copy, edit. So I personally just combine the two into one service, because you always need a bit of both. It just depends on where you are the story, you know, some paragraphs need more help than others.

But some people might, you know, separate them. And that’s also fine. And then I do proofreading, which is just, you know, cleaning up any final errors slipped through the cracks? Yeah.

 Emma Dhesi  10:46

A full service there.

 Hannah Bauman  10:48

Yeah, full service. Yep.

 Emma Dhesi  10:50

Well, they’re one of the reasons I was super keen to chat to you is not only just to find out about your editing services, but I’d picked up on a blog post, you’d written recently about writing emotional scenes.

And this is something I know a lot of people are keen to understand more and improve upon to help with their, the depth of their story to help get in underneath the skin of their characters as well. So I guess I wanted to start off with the basics and ask you, why is it important to have those emotional scenes?

 Hannah Bauman  11:24

Yeah, it’s, it’s something that every writer I’ve worked with, either wants to work on that or needs to work on that I think that’s a universal experience. But, you know, think about, you know, books you read, or movies you watch or TV shows you consume.

Every story at its core is about some kind of human experience and the things that we go through in life and we want to have that connection with at least one character, usually multiple characters but we want to feel that with them and experience it with them and empathize with them, and maybe even learn something about ourselves along the way.

Yeah, you do that with you do that with emotion?

 Emma Dhesi  12:06

Oh, yeah, it’s interesting. I can think about when I kind of write my own in my own very, when it gets towards the end, and you’ve got the big kind of emotional scene, I tend to judge on whether I make myself cry. If I’m able to make myself cry, then I think you’re on the right track here. This is this is going somewhere.

 Hannah Bauman  12:26

Yeah, I think that’s a really good measure. And I always tell my clients, like when I’m reading their manuscripts, if there’s a scene that really strikes me, I’m always like, Oh, this was, you know, so good. It made me tear up or, you know, laugh even, you know, it can always be a positive emotion as well.

 Emma Dhesi  12:41

Oh, that’s music to a writer’s ears, isn’t it? Yeah. Yeah. Now, are emotional things of the appropriate to all stories do you think? Because I was thinking about thrillers or like action adventure stories? Do they also need to have emotions as well?

 Hannah Bauman  12:57

I think they do. Think about, like, you know, the Marvel movies with like Captain America and everybody. Just because this was a show that my husband and I watched recently, but the Falcon and the Winter Soldier that came out on Disney plus, that show was about overcoming trauma, accepting who you are.

All kinds of things like that. And if that’s not an emotional experience, I don’t know what is. And you can have that as you go on these, you know, crazy epic adventures. I think it would be dishonest to say that people don’t experience emotions on on journeys like that.

So I think they’re appropriate no matter what, they might not always be some, you know, huge scene where everyone’s crying and all of that but, you know, we experience a gamut of emotions in our life, no matter what the scenario is.

Interview with Hannah Bauman

Emma Dhesi  13:51

Yeah. Yeah, that’s for sure. That’s for sure. So I wonder if you could talk us through talk our listeners through some of your kind of key key tips for either writing, either writing seen in the first place, or are managing to kind of delve down a few layers and give it that extra extra oomph?

 Hannah Bauman  14:10

Yeah, so one thing that I find pretty consistently is writers relying solely on body language when they’re trying to convey emotion. I think body language is very important because we do speak with our physical bodies, and, you know, our posture and the things that we do.

But I find that people either aren’t thinking about going deeper than that, or they’re afraid of too much narration right, because we’re told show don’t tell so often. And this is, this is where writing advice.

You know, it’s one of those things you have to take with a grain of salt. So if you’re trying to show anxiety, for example, you might reference the butterflies in someone’s stomach or their sweaty palms or their racing heart and while those things are all great without context of why they feel that way, they kind of just feel like flat and stagnant.

Right? So that’s one thing that I always challenge writers to do is beyond showing some body language and how they’re feeling physically delve into how they’re feeling emotionally.

And you can do that in two different ways, main ways. The first would be just through straight narrative. You know, she couldn’t believe that, you know, he said that to her. Or you can do that with, like, internal dialogue.

You know, you often see that in italics, and that she thought tag. But those are both different types of what’s called interiority, which is basically just exploring the character’s mind as you go through the story with them.

 Emma Dhesi  15:52

Mm hmm. Oh, cool. Yeah. And so don’t rely solely on body language, but give that body language some context.

And and don’t be afraid to do a little bit of telling in the text. Okay.

 Hannah Bauman  16:05

Yeah, I did. I wrote a blog post earlier this year about why show don’t tell should actually be show and tell.

The because, right, it’s one of those things where if it’s all imagery and all body language, if it’s zero context, people can’t read between the lines too much you have to give them a nugget here and there of of those experiences and what your characters thinking and feeling.

 Emma Dhesi  16:29

Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s something I’ve slowly been realizing myself. I’ve been sort of focusing very much on the showing the showing the showing. And then when I went back to do a bit of book analysis, I was realizing, oh, wait a minute.

Yeah, we need to Berta both of this. Yeah, there needs to be hadn’t thought of it as concisely as you had. But I was realizing, yes, this needs to have, I need to guide my reader a little bit to keep them keep them moving forward.

 Hannah Bauman  16:55

Exactly. And readers usually really appreciate getting that insight into the character’s mind. You know, the internal journey is just as important as what’s going on outside in the external world.

 Emma Dhesi  17:10

So that’s a good tip. So what other tips do you have for?

 Hannah Bauman  17:13

Oh, gosh, let me let me think. So I would say to one thing that’s important is making it as authentic as you can in in the scene. So what I mean by that is, usually it needs to be more nuanced than you might think, like a character who’s going to shout, you know, Oh, woe is me, Woe is me.

And they were sobbing and screaming, and like all these like, very heavy emotional words. That might be accurate in some situations, like, there are certainly situations where people have a very extreme emotional reaction.

But a lot of the times when we’re sad, or when we’re having hard conversations, think about how you react in real life, or your friends or your family, I think about how subtle those emotions you should be are you know, it also is going to depend on the times thinking about people, you know, in real life is like a model for just to how that works.

Think about your character, and if it’s gonna fit with them. If it’s like very out of left field, in very out of character, personality, your readers are going to, they’re going to stop and they’re going to go that doesn’t seem realistic from you know, I’ve met them over these 50,000 previous words, and then all of a sudden, they do this 180 that’s going to draw your readers out of the story.

And that is not what you want. Especially in emotional scenes, because you want to be experiencing it with them and not have to stop and and figure out what happened.

Emma Dhesi  18:46

Yeah, okay. Like that. And, and I know we hear a lot about not using cliche, but other times when actually a cliche will just fit the bill that sometimes that’s the only thing that will work.

 Hannah Bauman  19:01

Yeah, I say like, if it’s going to work, just go ahead and do it. It’s the same advice people give on adverts right. Like, oh, you need to cut every adverb or you need to cut every instance of the word that you’ll see.

Got advice online a lot. But the one thing that I’ve learned with editing is there’s always a gray area, there’s never any absolute.

So if, like, if your character gets a lump in their throat, and they can’t speak past it, is that kind of a cliche image, sure, but it’s also very relatable, like that’s happened to be many times in my life as an emotional person.

So just just use it if it’s if it’s gonna fit the bill, don’t be afraid of you know, this is too cliche or whatever, just go for it. And you can always change it later if you decide to.

 Emma Dhesi  19:49

Yeah, yeah, because I guess there’s also there’s that other danger, and I know I’ve done this before I would have tried to cover it’s been trying to think of something so original and out the vault.

That sounds just ridiculous. Yeah, I guess that’s another thing to be just mindful of.

 Hannah Bauman  20:07

Yeah, I would, I would definitely agree. You know, these things are well known for a reason.

They’re usually universal. I wouldn’t use, you know, every single cliche bit of body language you can think of, for a certain reaction. But if you want to use one, like, I think that’s absolutely fine.

 Emma Dhesi  20:25

Mm, cool. And so yeah, so we do want to hit our readers on the head with too much emotion, like, having them be out of control almost.

But yeah, think about the nuance, and how we can be a little bit more subtle. And I guess in that way, it’s less can be more sometimes,

 Hannah Bauman  20:48

I think, so I think less can absolutely be more and you can play with it too. You know, if, if a character responds less in a certain emotional scene, but in the scene after when they’re evolving, maybe that’s when they actually react to what they just experienced, right?

You kind of you’re gonna see the tension of a, why didn’t they really react to that and that scene, and then all of a sudden, like, Oh, I see that wanted to be alone. You know, you’ll probably need to provide some context for that. Or maybe it’s part of their personality that they don’t show emotion in front of others.

There’s all these different moving pieces with emotion and how you can play with it. So don’t be afraid to take the emotion out of the scene where you think they would react and put it somewhere else.

 Emma Dhesi  21:36

Okay, okay. Yeah, and Okay, making sure it fits with the character.

And then we’ve learned to that sometimes it’s okay to use a cliche and then maybe the other extreme of that is don’t be too outrageous with your similes, or your analogies when you’re trying to be different and come up with something original.

 Hannah Bauman  21:56

Yeah, that’s another instance of you’re going to pull the reader out of the story, because they’re going to be trying to figure out what exactly it is you want to say. You know, you don’t want to make them pause too much.

 Emma Dhesi  22:08

No, something I battled with a bit is when I’m writing dialogue in an emotional scene, how, how can I kind of convey that they might be frustrated, they might be angry, they might be upset, they might be frightened without using capital letters or exclamation points or seeing he or she yelled, how can we can kind of how can we convey those emotions without absolutely stipulating them?

Hannah Bauman  22:42

Yeah, that’s a really good question. Um, so one thing that I can think of is emphasis on a certain word, right?

Like, if you’re in an argument with somebody, there might be an emphasis on a key word, and you can italicize that that could help. That clues the reader into like, how the character is saying it, you kind of you know, Oh, okay. They they really need business now or, I do think you mentioned using a verb like yelled, I think that’s okay.

Sometimes, you know, said and asked are typically the invisible dialogue tags, we kind of just skip over them and ignore them, which helps with your flow. But sometimes you need to clue readers into how someone is saying something and there’s no better way to do it sometimes with a simple verb.

So what I would say for that is yes, it’s okay sometimes, but if you go back and you’re rereading a scene, and you have like, yelled, shouted, cried, exclaimed, replied, all in a row. That’s when you need to start cutting some of those out and think of different ways.

So you might mix and then some body language to show their frustration in place of one of those verbs or in another place maybe for exclaimed, you could use an exclamation mark, then that wouldn’t be overdoing it, but then you could cut explained.

And it’s about that nuance, and that variation, instead, I think they’re all good tools. You just don’t want to use them all at the same time or to repetitively. Yeah, yeah. Does that make sense? Does that answer your question?

 Emma Dhesi  24:13

Yeah. I think it’s, you know, it’s okay to use those those. Those adverbs, but just not excessively. Yeah, really use them and kind of almost keeping them for emphasis, you know, to really hit home with a particular point.

 Hannah Bauman  24:31

Exactly. Yeah, writing is all about balance. They’re all valid tools you Well, except maybe all capital letters. That one’s very hard on their readers eyes. But otherwise, they’re all valid tools.

You just want variation and see what flows the best. And I don’t know if anyone on your show has ever mentioned this, but in Microsoft Word, you can actually have the computer read aloud to you.

So if that’s something that your listeners might be interested in that I I find as an editor, I use this all the time, you can then literally hear how the scene sounds. And of course it is a robotic voice. So it like it lacks a little bit of motion that an audio book might.

But you get the idea you can then you can hear the repetitiveness of certain things that your eye might stop catching after a while. Yes, that’s a wish points. What a great yeah. Oh, yeah, I love that one. When I do the I mentioned earlier that I do two reads of every manuscript.

On my second read, I always had the computer read stuff out loud to me, because you can catch even more that way.

 Emma Dhesi  25:33

So whilst you’re listening, are you reading it at the same time so that you’re following or your eyes closed? Listening?

 Hannah Bauman  25:40

No, I’ve I follow along with the text. I read it as I listen. But yeah, that’s, you know, that’s something that many editors I know he is, and I think it’s a really good way to kind of check your own work.

 Emma Dhesi  25:53

Mm hmm. I think I need to do that that’s a great one.

 Hannah Bauman  25:56

Or have someone else read it out loud to you. If you’re comfortable with that. That’s, you know, another easy way.

 Emma Dhesi  26:02

You might have to pay them with chocolate cake afterwards. Yeah. Right.

So I wonder if you would have one last tip for our listeners, before we kind of move on and find out a little bit more about your stories.

Hannah Bauman  26:16

Yeah, I think one last thing that people should keep in mind when they want to include emotion in their story is there needs to be a built up to it.

Just having like, adventure, adventure adventure, and then all of a sudden, like this massive fight, that there the groundwork wasn’t laid the conflict, bricks weren’t laid for that path. You know, you have to build up to it.

That’s how conflict works in real life most of the time. Yeah, everything in the story, you have to keep building up to each piece. So just, you know, don’t throw emotion in there.

Because you heard this episode and thought, Oh, I need an emotional scene. Make sure it fits with your story and what your characters are going through.

 Emma Dhesi  27:00

Okay. Oh, and so could an emotional scene like that? Could that be one of either a story’s turning points like a pinch point in a story, or even perhaps one of the kind of obstacles that the character is overcoming?

 Hannah Bauman  27:14

Absolutely. And this is where, you know, subplots can come into that one of the subplots might be some kind of conflict with another character, maybe their friend, maybe they’re disagreeing on something.

And at some point, something triggers that fight. And then they have to make a decision of where to go from there. That’s how stories move forward is there’s always a conflict, a decision, and then their action on that decision.

And then the cycle repeats itself. See how you can use an emotional scene for just about anything as long as it makes sense?

 Emma Dhesi  27:50

I Like that, Yeah. Oh, well, thank you so much for that Hannah. Some really, for our listeners, they I really appreciate that.

I know it’s a it’s part of their ongoing learning of the craft, isn’t it to get things right?

 Hannah Bauman  28:04

Yeah, just keep you know, keep practicing and have fun. And if it doesn’t work out the first time, just revise the scene until you get it right.

 Emma Dhesi  28:11

Yes, that’s what revision is for, get that dirty first draft down. And then you can revise Exactly.

So I wanted to loop back to the beginning of our conversation, which because I don’t think I realized this from reading about you that you write your fiction in the evening, I only saw that you’re about your editorial services.

So I’d love it if you’d share with us a bit about what you raised and where you’re at in your writing career.

 Hannah Bauman  28:35

Sure. So I’ve self published two nonfiction books for creative writers. One of them is called productivity for creative writers, which is about you know, how you can be productive but find balance in your life because I think that’s very important.

The other is like a prompted writers notebook like it has questions for you know, character development and all that good stuff. But for my fiction career, I’ve been kind of stuck for a while I write. It’s on the border of young adult new adult fantasy I Oh, new adult is not really a thing.

And the traditional publishing world, as much it is, as it is and self publishing. The guy I’m working on a new adult fantasies story, hopefully a trilogy, that’s the plan. And I wrote my first draft in like three months, all the way back in 2019, for NaNoWriMo.

And then I just like, fell off the horse with everything that happened in 2020. But I’m recently getting back into it. I have an accountability partner and one of my editor friends. She and I are both fiction writers by night. So we write together and you know, we read each other’s stuff.

So that’s very helpful and I’m already about 20,000 words in and I just started working on that this month so…

 Emma Dhesi  29:54

That’s right beginning of the month.

 Hannah Bauman  29:56

Oh, no, sorry. It’s may now at the beginning of April. I always forget what day it is now.

But yeah, so I sorted that at the beginning of April of 2021. And I’m hoping to have a polished draft by maybe the end of the year, or early next year.

 Emma Dhesi  30:15

So do you find giving yourself a deadline? Do you do you like to do that for your fiction work? Or do you prefer to take it just a bit more easy with your fiction work?

 Hannah Bauman  30:23

I do like a deadline. But I kind of view it as a flexible deadline. I’m very type A. So it’s, it’s very helpful for me to have that. But I also know that there’s not really any pressure besides when I’m putting on myself.

So I think it’s helpful to, like, helpful for my own flow of writing. But if something happens, or you know, if I got sick for a week, it would be the end of the world. That’s how I view my personal deadlines.

 Emma Dhesi  30:53

Yeah, yeah. Well, good luck with that. I hope that like you, like when it’s finished and out in the world, let me know when I can I can share about it.

 Hannah Bauman  31:02

That would be awesome. Thank you.

 Emma Dhesi  31:03

What I wanted to ask you about, I hear brings up such an interesting point about you what’s in the traditional world and what’s not in the traditional world. So you mentioned there that young adults and new adults or young adult is well established.

Now, new adult, you mentioned not so much, particularly within the traditional world, can you differentiate for me what young adult is a new adult is?

 Hannah Bauman  31:29

Sure, so young adult could be anywhere from around like 14 to 18 years old, usually, for both the main characters, and the ideal audience of that author. You know, think about Late Middle School, early High School, that right before college and adulthood point is yellow tall.

And that deals with a lot of, you know, coming of age stories, finding some of your own power, figuring out who you are. New Adult is very similar, but the characters age up just a bit. So you might think, you know, like, 19, through 25.

And these are very rough numbers. No one has like a set definition. But then the story. Think about, like, when you maybe left, you know, college or any continuing education you did, what that felt like and the problems you were going through.

Some of it might be Who are you as you enter adult society, because that’s very different than when you left high school. You know, interpersonal relationships, romantic or otherwise, those are usually big themes.

Yeah, it’s just, it’s very similar to young adult but just aged up and age the problems up a little bit.

 Emma Dhesi  32:48

Gosh, I’m realizing I’ve written a couple of new adult books, then without realizing it. They never they never made it to the finished. But part of my practice manuscripts,

 Hannah Bauman  32:58

Yeah and, and the traditional world pretty much categorizes those as adults, or if they’re like, 1920, they might call them young adult.

But in the self publishing world, there is actually a pretty big readership for new adult age books, especially I find in fantasy.

That’s something people are looking for. So to anyone out there who’s writing new adult fantasy you might want to consider self publishing for for a pretty wide audience.

 Emma Dhesi  33:24

Okay. Yeah. Bonus Tip there. We’re not reading, whether you know, the computer reading to us, but what’s on the hot on the market at the moment?

 Hannah Bauman  33:34

Yeah.

 Emma Dhesi  33:35

Well, I’ve really enjoyed our conversation today. Thank you very much.

 Hannah Bauman  33:39

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.

 Emma Dhesi  33:41

A Pleasure. before we say goodbye, I’d love for you to let listeners know where they can find out more about your editing services.

 Hannah Bauman  33:48

Sure. So you can find me on Instagram at BTL editorial, and then my website is also btleditorial.com.

 Emma Dhesi  33:58

Fantastic. I’ll be sure to link to those. And I’ll also link to your books as well. should anybody want to and your nonfiction book should anybody want.

 Hannah Bauman  34:06

Awesome Thank you!

 Emma Dhesi  34:08

Well, it’s been a pleasure. I’ve really enjoyed our chat. Thank you very much.

 Hannah Bauman  34:13

Yeah, have a good day.

 Emma Dhesi  34:14

Thank you. 

Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you find that helpful and inspirational.

Now, don’t forget to come on over to facebook and join my group, turning readers into writers. It is especially for you if you are a beginner writer who is looking to write their first novel.

If you join the group, you will also find a free cheat sheet there called three secret hacks to write with consistency.

So go to emmadhesi.com/turning readers into writers.

Hit join. Can’t wait to see you in there. All right.

Thank you. Bye bye.

If this interview with Hannah Bauman was useful, you’ll love:

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Emma Dhesi

Emma writes women’s fiction. She began writing seriously while a stay at home mum with 3 pre-school children.

By changing her mindset, being consistent and developing confidence, Emma has gone from having a collection of handwritten notes to a fully written, edited and published novel.

Having experienced first-hand how writing changes lives, Emma now helps beginner writers find the time and confidence to write their first novel.