Quick Tips on using Easter Eggs to Engage Readers

This week's Quick Tips are all about Easter Eggs—what they are, how to use them, and why you should.

Tip #1: Use Easter Eggs to build a fandom.

Tip #2: Be open-minded about what to use as Easter Eggs.

Bonus Tip: Use Easter Eggs as a cross-promotional tool.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:37

Welcome to the AuthorWeal podcast. I'm Megan Haskell, award-winning fantasy author of the Senyari Chronicles and the Rise of Lilith series.

Speaker 2: 0:45

And I'm Greta Boris, usa Today bestselling author of the Mortician Murders in the soon-to-be-released almost true crime series. Together we are the AuthorWeal. Our goal is to help you overcome your writing roadblocks so you can keep your stories rolling Appropriately. This week we are talking about Easter eggs and not the cute, colorful ones our kids hunt for, but the kind authors drop into their books. If you're not aware of the term, an Easter egg can be anything really. It can be an object, a place, a character, it can even be a word, anything that makes appearances in all or many of your stories. For instance, red Apple Cigarettes, which is a fictional brand, shows up in all of Tarantino's movies. So my question for you, megan, is why should people put Easter eggs into their stories?

Speaker 1: 1:43

Well, easter eggs are great. They build a fandom. So tip number one is to put them in your stories so that you can build a fandom. Good tip, yeah, right, but Easter eggs help readers feel a little bit of ownership over your world.

Speaker 1: 2:01

It's like they're in on a secret. I actually once had a reader call out the knife in my epic fantasy prequel because they noticed that it was the origin story of my main character's weapon in the main Steniori Chronicles series. So it actually increased their reader engagement. Like they, actually, I didn't say anything. I mean I did it intentionally, to be fair, but I didn't say anything. I didn't ask people to contact me when they found the Easter eggs or anything like that. This reader just was like, oh my gosh, I saw that the knife is the same one. That must be how they designed the knife and it was great and that was exactly why I had put that in there. So it's a really great idea to just increase that engagement, help those readers feel like they're part of the world along with you, so they're interacting with your fictional space.

Speaker 2: 2:55

Totally agree with that. So tip number two is be open-minded about what you're gonna use for your Easter eggs. As we said in the intro, they can be objects, people, relationships, places, even food or wine. So, for instance, in my first series that was the Seven Deadly Sins, which are being rewritten to be the almost true crime series I had a wine was really important in my first book in that series. It was called Red Ravish and I just decided that wine was gonna show up in every single book in that series, so some character would be drinking it somewhere in that series.

Speaker 2: 3:44

Then I started when I've been writing the Mortician series. I have one of the books my main characters go out for dinner and I thought, oh, why not have them be served Red Ravish? It would just be fun. And just as you said, megan, I had a couple of readers who had read my first series go, oh my gosh, they're drinking Red Ravish. In the Mortician series I also used a setting that was a crime setting in book. I don't know, maybe five, maybe four in my first series. I had my characters in the Mortician series go to that same house and say that they had heard that there was a big crime there a number of years back. So all those things tie your worlds together. And for super fans actually, I hope to think of build super fans because, as we said before, it makes those readers feel very connected.

Speaker 1: 4:50

And I have a bonus tip that I just thought of as we're talking about here.

Speaker 1: 4:56

Bonus tip number three Think about doing Easter eggs in cross promotions. We've actually talked about this in the past. Greta is that both of our my Lilith series and your Mortician series they're set in Southern California, in the Laguna Beach area, and they're real-world, contemporary settings. We've talked about having Easter egg crossovers where red-ravish wine could appear in my books. I mean she's a bartender, of course there's going to be wine at some point, yeah, in the books. Or having brief little elements that show up. It could be my character is visiting a funeral in your book or something. I mean you could come up with different ways. Working with other authors Make sure you work with the author, to be fair, yes, but working with other authors to bring Easter eggs between series or across series can be a little bit different, a little bit unique way of cross-promoting your books and finding new true fans in the true fans of other authors.

Speaker 2: 6:07

I love that. I'm going to tell one little quick thing. I heard a woman being in a so sorry I cannot remember this author's name, but I heard her being interviewed and I think it was during COVID. She reached out to a couple of other authors who write in her genre and they each wrote kind of humorous, cozy-ish mysteries and they decided that what they were going to do is have each. They were going to write a book together where all their main characters detective main characters get invited to a bridal shower in New York City and they don't know each other but they know the bride. They all show up there and of course the bride is murdered in the first chapter and then all these funny, humorous, cozy detectives have to solve the crime and they it just turned into a hoot. All their readers loved it. So now they ended up writing a couple of different books together with all their characters showing up to solve the crime, which is not exactly an Easter egg, but kind of a fun expansion on your idea.

Speaker 1: 7:15

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: 7:16

Yeah, so next month, april, we are going to be talking all about world building, brainstorming and research, and these are the things we do before we actually begin plotting our books. The tips we'll be sharing come from our new course layering your story world, how to make fiction feel real.

Speaker 1: 7:36

Now, if you're enjoying this podcast, please consider supporting the show. At the bottom of each episode's show notes is a link where you can throw us just a couple bucks. You know your support helps us cover the ongoing expenses, like hosting and editing, that are critical to the creation of this podcast, and every little bit helps. But not only can you feel good about supporting the show, you'll actually get a shout out and hear your name on the air.

Speaker 2: 8:03

Wow, you'll be famous.

Speaker 1: 8:06

You could be famous in the small author community, yes, but you'll be famous. You'll hear your name on the air. It'll be great. It'll be great and it really does help us out. But if that's not possible right now, no worries, you can also support the show by leaving us a five star review or just sharing it with a writer friend. Until next time, keep your stories rolling.