163: Can You Write a Book Based on Vibes Only?

 

There's been some discussion lately about low stakes, no drama, vibes-only fiction. In this episode, I share my thoughts on if this is possible, plus how to approach writing this type of novel.

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can you write a book based on vibes only?

Hello friends, welcome back to your big creative life. Happy January. Hope you had a wonderful holidays and an amazing new year. Last week, we did an episode talking about the ins and outs for 2025 teas to saying that. And also I shared some stuff about my own personal kind of goals and intentions for this year with my writing, really hoping for a book deal this year after not getting one last year, when I had declared that that was the thing that I wanted. So anyways, if you want to do some intention setting or some goal setting, I also share something that I did in that episode. So go check that out if you haven't already. Um, I just love the new year. It's interesting because I hate winter. I'm not a I'm a warm weather girly. I come alive in spring and summer, early summer, particularly, um, but I just love the energy of a new year. I really do.

 

I like setting resolutions and goals, and it feels like a fresh start, and like I can release some of the baggage from the previous year. It feels really good. So yeah, and also, something I have to remind myself, that I'm gonna remind you, is you don't have to do all that shit on January 1, and that's like your only opportunity. If it's January, I don't know, 22nd and you're listening to this, you can still do an intention, setting ritual, or set some goals or resolutions, whatever writing related or not just it doesn't have to be January 1 or before then. But today, we're going to talk about a question that I've seen asked in various ways on social media and also with a couple of my coaching clients, which is very interesting. And that question is, can you write a book on vibes alone? Is that enough? And I want to share what actually got me really thinking about it, because I had it in the back of my head for a little while.

 

But Jane Friedman, who is an excellent resource on publishing, particularly traditional publishing, she's a blog. She's very reputable, and she actually accessed a lot of her information on her blog about querying, about query letters, around about writing a synopsis, etc, when I was going through it the first time. So definitely check her out if you're in that boat. Just Jane Friedman is her name, but she had a something on Instagram. I'm not active on threads, like, I don't really go on there, but sometimes Instagram will show me threads from people, and I'm like, Oh, that looks interesting. Let me click over and read it. And she sparked. She sparked a discussion basically on threads. This was, like maybe a month ago, and she noticed the shift, the shift in people saying that they just wanted, in readers saying that they wanted just a low stakes book with no conflict, just cozy vibes, just fun vibes, just sweet vibes, and no conflict in very low stakes, right? Which I guess is it's, I can't, it can't be new that people are looking for that.

 

But she has noticed a shift in the readers, in readers, or just people in general, saying, like, No, we just want, we want this. Or maybe even writers too. I can't remember if she was talking about just readers or writers. Um, anyways, it really got me thinking, because one of the most popular, not popular, one of the most common, I don't know if it's popular, it's probably not popular, because I'm sure authors don't love to get this feedback from me. But when I do a manuscript evaluation, what I do is I go through and I leave comments in the manuscript for the client, but then I also write an editorial letter that summer, editorial letter that summarizes my feedback. So I have a section on plot. I have a section on characters, you know, world building, if it's some kind of fantasy or science fiction, etc, like it's just broken up into all these sections.

 

And a very common piece of feedback that I give to people is you have to raise thestakes for this. You have to throw in more drama, more obstacles for the characters, more conflict, and, like, ramp things up, turn the dial up, just overall. And what that means, if you're like, raising the stakes, yeah, I've heard of that. But what does that mean? It basically means everything I just said, like, making things harder, making things more dramatic, just turning the dial up on everything. Because in fiction, in order to sustain a novel, 80 or 70, 80, 90, 100 120,000 words, we have to have a bit of drama going on, meaning conflict, meaning things shaking up the plot, obstacles that the characters encounter, etc. And that is true even for cozy, low stakes books that are more about the vibes and less about drama and conflict and those kinds of things, you need to have some conflict in your book. I just I cannot imagine a well written, well paced novel without conflict. Icannot comprehend what that would look like, because I have worked on manuscripts that have no conflict.

 

Essentially, everything's just hunky dory and fine and it The problem is that, well, there's a few problems with it. It's not realistic. It everything feels too perfect and convenient for the characters to just easily get what they want. They're not forced to grow and change because nothing. There are no external or internal forces that are confronting, that they're confronting and forcing them to change and grow. There's no tension, which is a great thing for momentum, for the pacing of the novel. Things just lag. So we need it now, when I talk about drama and conflict and those things, if you truly are writing, like a very low stakes, cozy novel that's more of like a slice of life, like, let's say you're you're writing a small town book where it's just like a cozy cafe owner is going about her life, and maybe there's a love interest, maybe it's a romance, maybe it's not, um, and a few things happen, but it's like kind of quiet. It's just focus on this little town and this cafe owner.

 

Even in that instance, you still have to have something happen. You have to have something happening in the book. Otherwise, you're just gonna run the risk of just describing what the character is doing every day or every month or whatever. Like you're just gonna run the risk of describing the setting and the conversations that the character is having, and it's the reader is gonna get this feeling of what's the point? Why? Like, why am I reading about this? There's not there's gonna be nothing that hooks the reader and makes them want to keep reading. That's the problem with having no stakes, no drama, no conflict. So even in that small town, slice of life, cozy novel example, maybe you don't think about it as conflict with a capital C, maybe you just think about it as conflict with a lower case c, like just little bits of conflict sprinkled in that can be internal conflict.

 

Is your character wrestling with a decision that they have to make that's going to force them to change their life in some way? Are they wrestling with something related to their mental health? Are they wrestling with romantic feelings for someone that they shouldn't be having? Are they wrestling with what to do for their future? Right that that those are all internal things that the character might be confronting, but also external conflict with lowercase c. You know, maybe the conflict lowercase c is just that there's another cafe that opens up in the town next to them that's taking some business away from them. That's not like car chase, murder, earth shattering type of conflict, but it is conflict, and maybe the cafe owner comes into tension with that cafe owner, or they have to decide what to do about the fact that their business is down and they're struggling with it. There are so many opportunities for smaller, quieter conflict that don't involve, like I just said, like murder and car chases and explosions and whatever. It doesn't have to be so twisty and so earth shattering, but there has to be conflict.

 

Now, the only exception that I can think of to this is maybe I've never encountered this actually, but maybe if you were writing something very literary, almost like experimental fiction, where you're doing something different and something new and something novel, then maybe, I guess, but if that's what you're doing, then I'm probably not the right person to be taking advice from, because I am talking aboutgeneral fiction here. I talk a lot about genre fiction, some literary fiction too. Like all my advice definitely applies for literary fiction, but if it's super experimental and sort of like out there, then maybe this advice won't apply as much. That's the only like situation I can really think of. So anyways, that's my answer to the question. It's like, there has to be something happening in the book. And the wonderful thing about conflict is it's great for character development. It's great for pacing, but it also helps develop plot points. Because, again, you even if you just have the small town slice of life cozy cafe owner who's going about her day, you still have to have plot, a plot. Something has to happen, right?

 

Conflict is an is a great way to come up with plot points for your novel, because if you know what your character wants and what's standing in the way of them getting what they want, then you can create plot points that are based off of that and build upon each other. So because of this thing happens, and because of that thing, that other thing happens, and then, because of that, this thing happens. In our example, the conflict with the, I don't know, another cafe that's opening in a town nearby. There's so many opportunities for plot ideas in that maybe there's a tense interaction where our cafe owner, our protagonist, runs into this person. Theybump into them at some kind of social function, and it's tense and awkward, and they have to pretend like everything's fine, but it really riles up your main character. Or maybe she sees regulars who used to be at her Cafe are suddenly flooding over to this other town because they've got cheaper drinks or cheaper coffee. And she's like, what's happening, you know? Or, I don't know, the idea is justsnowballing and thinking of all kinds of possibilities based on this conflict that you know is happening in your book.

 

So what I would encourage you, if you are thinking about writing this type of book and you really want it to be a quiet type ofnovel, you can absolutely do that. You do not have to have an incredibly dramatic tense novel for it to be good, for it to be something that readers will connect with. But you do need to have some plot, some tension points, just something for momentum. So maybe if you're in this if this is you, if you're in this situation, do a brain dump, just a brainstorm of all of the possibilities of like conflict with a lowercase c that you can think of, that you can throw at your characters. So first you have to figure out what your character wants, right? Even if it's something tiny, what does your character want? What are their goals? What are they working towards? And then what can you throw in the way that will prevent them from getting what they want? Because no one likes to read a novel where the main character is just breezing through life and everything's fine and magical and wonderful. They're perfect. The world is perfect.

 

They don't learn any lessons and grow and change because they don't have to, because they're wonderful. No one, no one, no one wants to read about that. It's not realistic, it doesn't feel satisfying. We want messy characters. We want growth.We want conflict. So I guess that's my answer. Is, no, you kind of can't write a book based on vibes alone, but the vibes can absolutely be an essential part of the drafting process, of the writing process, so you can absolutely keep the vibes at theforefront of everything that you're writing and wanting things to feel cozy or romantic or sensual or whatever, but also be thinking about All this other stuff that I just mentioned. Yeah, that's my that's my opinion. Definitely go check out Jane Friedman, if you would like some information on writing and querying. She's an amazing resource. She also, I think it was earlier this year or maybe last year, I can't remember where, what happened?

 

Oh, someone created, like, a duplicate copy of one of her books that she had published and put it on Amazon as if it was her. And the whole thing was, like, AI generated, and she didn't know that it was happening. And it took a while for Amazon to take it down, because it's hard to prove that she's the one who like. It was a whole mess. It was a whole mess that she shared about, and it just feels like a nightmare for an author like people thinking that they're buying your book and supporting you, but they're not. They're supporting some scammer who just wrote an AI book, or maybe just like, copied and pasted it into a different book, and they're getting the money from it. Oh, it drives me crazy.

 

So anyways, that was a bit of a tangent. But with I'm just looking at something real quick. Sorry. Y'all okay with I do want to share quickly just how we can work together. If you want some support. I realized that I realized that I haven't really done this much on the podcast lately. I haven't shared about client opening, so I just want to share if this is something that you're that you really want to dive into, that you want help with, is writing this kind of book, or any kind of book, honestly. So for coaching, I have a six month coaching program where I work one on one with a client, and we have coaching calls. We. Have regular feedback on your pages. We have these 25 page reviews, where I review 25 pages of your draft as you're writing it. We have a call to talk about it, and that helps you get feedback along the way to course correct, figure out all the mindset stuff that goes into writing a book. You get help with that. And then once the draft is done, I will do a full evaluation on it.

 

So I give you feedback on the conflict, pacing, characters, dialog, just, etc, all that good stuff. And then if there's time, at the end, you can make some revisions and send me the revised manuscripts. And I'll also give you feedback on that. You get to check in with me Monday through Friday on the boxer app, where we send voice and text messages back and forth to each other. It's a great way for you to get accountability and ask questions in between our coaching calls, and then you also get access to all my trainings and courses and a 50% discount on copy editing, if you would like after the after the six months is up. So copy editing is a form of editing that just cleans up the grammar, punctuation, all that good stuff.

 

So I am recording this episode on December 31 and right now I have one opening available for this coaching program. I cap it. I don't work with very many people atonce, just because it does require more of my time and energy. I'm very available for the clients that I work with in this capacity, and so I don't want to over commit myself, and I also have to balance this with editing clients too. So I have one opening as of the time that I'm I'm recording this episode, but if you go to the work with me link that's in the description of this episode, you can click on the six monthcoaching program, and if you click on the form on that page, it will tell you what I have available. It'll let you know what I have a spot that is opening up. You can fill out the form let me know what kind of book you'd like to write, and then we'll set up a little zoom call just to chat about working together, and I'll share more about the program. And there are there's a payment plan for this, so you don't have to pay everything all at once. You can pay monthly installments. Basically all my clients do that, which I'm totally fine with. There's no extra charge.

 

So yeah, definitely check that out if you're thinking about about that. If you started writing your book, but you only have a little bit written and you want support with the rest of it, it can still be a great fit for for you as well. And then for editing. Right now, I have one opening for February and one opening for March, for either a copyediting project or a manuscript evaluation project, and I'm talking with some potential clients. So I'm not sure as when this episode is released, what I'll have available, but you can always go on my editing page, on my website, the Katie wolf.com/editing and it will tell you what month I'm booking for. So there's a form there you can fill out as well to tell me about your project and what type of editing you're looking for? Yeah, let me think if there's anything else. I'm also going to be running a novel jumpstart round in April, and it's going to be a little bit different.

 

I'll share more soon about what it's going to look like, just so you can kind of have it in the back of your head if it's something that you're interested and you didn't doin 2024 novel Jumpstart is a program for writers to help them write their like star writing their book. And there's an online course that you get access to, coaching calls, etc. But again, I'll share more about that once it gets closer and I figure out exactly how I'm going to tweak it. So if you have questions about any of this or want you know more information, just DM me on Instagram at Katie Wolf writes, yeah, vibes are awesome for writing a book. Let me just say it's definitely something you can keep at the front of your mind, because it's part of the fun of writing. It's like creating a certain tone and a certain vibe, and we want to keep that while also just infusing these other things as well. So think of it like a balancing act. Okay? Well, happy writing. Hope you're having a wonderful 2025 so far, and I will chat with you soon. Thank you so much for listening.

Katie Wolf