What Makes A Story Cozy

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you are thinking about writing cozy fiction, you might be wondering what actually makes a book count as cozy fiction in the first place. Is it the charming setting, the low stakes, a tea shop with a big orange fluffy cat in the window, or is it just an emphasis on cozy vibes? Well, everything that I just mentioned can be a part of what makes a cozy story work. But there is a bit more to it than that. And that's exactly what we're going to talk about in today's episode. Welcome to the Fiction Writing Made Easy Podcast. My name is Savannah Gilbo, and I'm here to help you write a story that works. I want to prove to you that writing a novel doesn't have to be overwhelming. So each week I'll bring you a brand new episode with simple, actionable, and step-by-step strategies that you can implement in your writing right away. So whether you're brand new to writing or more of a seasoned author looking to improve your craft, this podcast is for you. So pick up a pen and let's get started. In today's episode, we're talking about writing cozy fiction. And specifically, I'm going to share the 10 characteristics that make cozy fiction unique. So if you're someone who wants to write a cozy story, whether that's a cozy mystery, a cozy romance, a cozy fantasy, or any other kind of cozy story, we are going to talk about what actually makes a story count as cozy in the first place, where the boundaries are between true cozy fiction and stories that just so happen to contain cozy elements, and how the 10 characteristics help you create the kind of warm, reassuring, and cozy experience that readers are coming to cozy fiction for.

The Cozy Reading Promise

SPEAKER_00 1:34

But first, I want to share a definition of what cozy fiction is, just so that we're all on the same page. Now, cozy fiction at its most simple is a marketing label for stories that promise readers a warm, emotionally safe, and ultimately hopeful reading experience. So they literally make readers feel cozy, hence the name. And they are kind of like the literary equivalent of a warm, cozy hug. No wonder so many people like that, right? Now, contrary to popular belief, these stories are not conflict-free. So don't let the name fool you. Because cozy stories can absolutely contain things like conflict, grief, and darker elements. But the goal is always to maintain that larger sense of warmth, connection, and reassurance that readers have come to expect. And so even when there is conflict or when things go wrong, readers can ultimately trust that things will be okay in the end. We're going to talk about this more as we get into the 10 characteristics

Cozy Genre Versus Cozy Elements

SPEAKER_00 2:32

in a little bit. But really quick, let's talk about the difference between a truly cozy story versus a story that just contains cozy elements, because there is an important difference. Now, some books are explicitly marketed as cozy fiction. So think about you go into a bookstore and there is a cozy mystery section, there might be a cozy fantasy section, maybe even a cozy romance section, I mean you name it. And the stories you would find on these bookshelves are things like Legends and Lattes, The House in the Cerulean Sea, Howl's Moving Castle, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, and The Thursday Murder Club. So all of these are commonly marketed and referred to as cozy fiction. And for each of these books, coziness is part of the positioning. So it affects everything from the cover design and the back cover copy to the expectations that readers bring with them when they go to a bookstore or are browsing books online, right? Because readers pick up these kind of books expecting a very particular kind of reading experience, and these books deliver on that promise. So we're going to talk a little bit later about kind of what that promise looks like and how the characteristics help you deliver on that promise, but that is what true cozy fiction is like, right? Now on the other end of the spectrum, we have books that have cozy elements. So these are books that are not marketed as cozy fiction, but they do contain cozy elements. So these are books like the Harry Potter series, the Lord of the Rings, and even the A Court of Thorns and Roses series. Each of those contains cozy elements, but it would not be marketed as cozy fiction. All right, so take Harry Potter as an example, right? We get Hogwarts, there are shared meals in the Great Hall, we have Found Family with Ron and Hermione, and there are people and places that readers love returning to. But the bigger story also contains life and death stakes, and there's violence, and there is also significant loss. All right, so this story would not be marketed as cozy fiction, even though it contains arguably cozy elements. Alright, so that's the important distinction. Cozy elements can appear in all kinds of fiction, but what makes a novel truly count as cozy fiction is the overall reading experience it promises and delivers. So now that we're clear on that, let's go ahead and dive into the 10 characteristics that make cozy fiction unique.

Build A Contained Lived-In World

SPEAKER_00 4:54

And the first characteristic is a contained and lived-in world. Now, in cozy fiction, the story usually stays rooted in one small, knowable part of the larger world. That might be a village, a retirement community, or even a single street in a much bigger city. That smaller scope is important because it gives you room to develop your setting in more depth. You can establish recurring places, familiar faces, local history, and routines that readers come to recognize. So for example, maybe there's a farmer's market that happens every Thursday in the summer. Or maybe the same regulars always claim the table in the diner by the window because they've been sitting there since high school. Or maybe there is one streetlight that's always out and everyone in town jokes about that one streetlight. You know, just a few examples. And it's these kind of rhythms, routines, shared history, and inside jokes that make the setting feel lived in. Like life is already happening there beyond the immediate plot. And as readers run into those same places, people, and routines again and again, the story world is going to start feeling really familiar. And that familiarity is what creates attachment, which is a big part of what makes the cozy reading experience feel safe and comforting. All right, so that is characteristic number one, a contained and well-lived in world. Characteristic number two is specific, comforting, sensory details. Now, one of the great parts about cozy fiction is that it pays extra attention to the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures of everyday life, especially the ones that feel comforting or inviting. But I want to be really clear about what this means because the goal is not to write really lush or poetic description. You can, of course, do that if you want, but that is not what makes cozy fiction cozy fiction. Instead, the goal is to choose a few concrete details that let readers experience your key places for themselves. So instead of describing a cozy coffee shop just generically and, you know, telling the readers that it's cozy, you might instead show mismatched mugs, a radiator that clanks twice before it settles, and maybe even the smell of cinnamon because the owner puts it in everything. Now notice what that last detail is doing because it's doing double duty. So let's pretend the owner is a little old lady and that's her signature. It's a habit that she's kept up long enough that the whole shop smells like her, and the whole town knows that everything that they're gonna order from that shop or that bakery, whatever, it is going to taste and smell like cinnamon because of that person. Right? So think of opportunities to do stuff like that in your story as well, because I think the best cozy details carry a little character or history with them as well. And if you're not sure which details to choose or which ones to focus on, just ask yourself if I were standing in this scene in this setting right now, what would I notice first? Start there and extrapolate as needed, and your readers will feel like they're standing in the room with you too. All right, so that is characteristic number two, specific, comforting sensory details.

Make Sensory Details Do Double Duty

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Characteristic number three is room for ordinary moments. Now, one of the things that makes cozy fiction special is that it gives ordinary moments more space on the page. So when I say ordinary moments, I mean things like shared meals, morning routines, quiet conversations, or even time spent tending a shop or a garden. In cozy fiction, these aren't just things to rush past on the way to the next plot event. These kind of scenes are a big part of why readers pick up the book in the first place. Now, a very, very important caveat: quiet or more ordinary scenes like this doesn't mean that they're empty scenes. Okay, so even the most quiet or ordinary scene should still shift something or still include some kind of arc of change. So whether that shift occurs in a relationship, inside of a character, or in the reader's understanding of the story, there needs to be something that has shifted or something that has changed. Now, let me give you a quick example because I know that that can sound good in theory, but what does it look like in practice? So let's say maybe you have two sisters who are washing dishes after dinner and they're trading stories about their day. And then the younger sister mentions almost in passing that she's thinking about staying in town instead of moving back to the city. The older sister doesn't say much, she just keeps drying the same plate, right? And maybe we're in her point of view, so we get that interiority that lets us know she's been hoping her sister will stay in town, she's been waiting for this moment for months, and we just see what this moment actually means to her. So nothing objectively dramatic has to happen in this scene, but by the time the dishes are done, the relationship between the two sisters has quietly shifted. And again, that's just a small part of what could happen during a conversation while they're washing dishes, but I hope you get the gist. All right, so just to reiterate, these small, ordinary, quiet moments, whatever you want to call them, these are what make the story feel like a life that's being lived and not just a string of plot events. They're also where readers fall in love with your characters as well. Now, real quick, if you want to learn about scene structure and how to make sure that every scene, even these quieter scenes or more ordinary moments, contain that arc of change I just talked about, I have a free guide called How to Write Scenes That Work, which I will link to in the show notes. All right, so that is characteristic number three. There is room for ordinary

Ordinary Moments With Real Change

SPEAKER_00 10:27

moments. Characteristic number four is a competent protagonist that's easy to root for. Now, I don't know if you've noticed this, but cozy protagonists are usually good at something specific. Could be baking, it could be solving puzzles, it could be reading people, it could be running a bookshop and finding the most perfect book for each one of their patrons. Whatever it is, they're usually good at something specific, and that something specific usually plays a role in the plot. But I want to zoom out from the importance to the plot and talk about why it matters that the protagonist is competent. And it matters in a cozy story because their competence lets readers relax into the hands of someone who knows what they're doing. So it actually is a trait that's in service of creating that cozy environment or those cozy vibes that you're going for. Now, this doesn't mean that a cozy protagonist has to be perfect. They definitely do not have to be. So you could have a retired detective who is prickly and stubborn and maybe terrible at asking for help. Maybe they're wrong about a few things along the way as they go through the plot, right? But if there's someone who is sharp and capable and determined to help someone in the community, then readers are gonna follow that prickly, stubborn detective anywhere, right? So there's a difference between flaws that readers understand and behavior that makes readers lose respect for the character. Now, of course, in all stories, we want an active protagonist with agency, but in cozy fiction, that's our baseline. And then we also want to make them competent in something specific. So feel free to give your protagonist rough edges if you want, but balance that with real skill or real competence, and readers will want to spend the whole entire book with them. All right, so that is characteristic number four, a competent protagonist that is easy to root for. Now, characteristic number five is a community with a life of its own. And in cozy fiction, readers don't just fall for the protagonist, they fall for the people around them as well. And that means your secondary characters need to have lives of their own. So goals, histories, and relationships with each other that don't all run through the protagonist. So, as an example, maybe the baker and the florist haven't spoken since a disastrous double date in 1994, but they still co-chair the Harvest Festival every year, right? Or maybe the grumpy hardware store owner is secretly the one who shovels everyone's walk after a snowstorm. He's done it every year for the past 20 years, and everybody knows it's him, but he doesn't know that everybody knows. Or maybe there's a librarian in your world who wants to start a book club for young kids, and so we kind of see her in the background of whatever's going on with your protagonist developing said book club. Right? So just a few examples. And once readers know these people's stories, they start rooting for them too, and they start feeling like they also belong to this community because they know everyone so well. So community and the relationships inside the community play a big role in cozy fiction. And those relationships between characters or those threads that connect characters together are what make your community feel like a real social world. One that existed before page one and one that will keep going after the very last page. And again, that's when readers stop feeling like visitors and they really start feeling like they belong in your world as well. All right, so that is characteristic number five, a community with a life of its

Community That Shapes Character Growth

SPEAKER_00 13:55

own. Now, characteristic number six is character growth through community. So we just talked about why community is important and the role that community plays in terms of readers' investment. But when it comes to your cozy protagonist, they often start the story carrying something internal. So a loss, a wound, a version of themselves that they're trying to leave behind, you know, something like that. And then over the course of the story, they go through a quiet but meaningful change in how they see themselves or their place in the world. Now, I know that sounds like a regular character arc, right? Of course, in most stories, something needs to change for the protagonist. But what's different in cozy fiction is where that change tends to come from. And it tends to come from the protagonist's connection with the community. So let's say, for example, you have a protagonist who comes home after a failed career in the city to reopen her grandmother's bookstore, and she keeps the town at arm's length. But then there's the regular who insists on helping her with inventory. There's the neighbor kid who does homework in the back corner every afternoon, and maybe even a knitting circle that adopts her whether she likes it or not, right? So she kind of has these accidental relationships with people in the community. And each one of those relationships will chip away at the walls that she came in with. And then by the end, the people she's found in this community have helped her see that coming home wasn't a failure. It was actually the start of something she actually wants, and it gave her something she needs, right? So that's what makes cozy character arcs so satisfying because the protagonist doesn't change by going at it alone or facing these big worldwide stakes or anything like that. Typically, they change because of the community that they're now in or that they're now letting in, and because of their interactions and their relationships with other people. So that is characteristic number six, character growth through community and relationships.

Warm Tone Without Losing Depth

SPEAKER_00 15:54

All right, now characteristic number seven is a warm tone, even in hard moments. Now, just so we're on the same page, tone is the emotional feeling a story creates as someone reads it. And it's usually shaped less by what happens than by how the story handles what happens. So what it pays attention to, what it lingers on, and how quickly it moves on from some of the heavier things. And one of the most common misconceptions about cozy fiction is that it's all sunshine and rainbows, and you know, not a lot of conflict can happen because we really want to maintain those cozy vibes. But that's not quite true. And in cozy fiction, difficult things can definitely happen and you need to have conflict, just like any other story. But in cozy fiction, the darkness or some of these heavier topics, they behave a little bit like weather. So the weather is real when it's there and then it passes, right? A storm comes in, it disrupts things, and then it passes. That's kind of how darkness and these heavier topics operate in cozy fiction. So, as an example, let's say you have a protagonist and she's going through the kitchen cupboards of her late aunt's house, and she finds a recipe box that is full of recipes written in her aunt's handwriting. Maybe she kind of sinks to the floor and she's overcome with grief because she misses her aunt, right? But then her neighbor shows up with a casserole that nobody asked for. So maybe let's pretend that the neighbor is someone who bakes for fun and she's always doing crazy experiments, whatever. And this neighbor might take a look at the recipe card that your protagonist is holding and say, Oh my gosh, I remember your aunt's pie crust. It was the worst pie crust I've tasted in my entire life. But I still ate a slice of that pie every Sunday for 40 years anyway. And then maybe they're laughing together, right? So we have grief and we have laughter in the same scene, but the story doesn't let that grief become the overall tone or mood of the story, right? We bring it back to that cozy warmth with that humor. So humor is a really good tool to have in your toolbox if you're trying to balance some of these darker themes and darker topics while still maintaining those cozy vibes. Now, that doesn't mean that you have to have jokes on every page, especially if you're not someone who humor comes natural to them when you're writing. That's okay. You can always lean on other things, like maybe your characters just maintain a lightness and how they see the world and how they talk to each other, even though there are, you know, dark things or serious things happening around them. All right, so don't take that to mean that you have to have humor if you're writing cozy fiction, but it is a good tool to have in your toolbox. So that is characteristic number seven, a warm tone even in hard moments. And characteristic number eight is conflict that creates friction, but not dread. So I kind of hinted at this earlier that cozy fiction still needs conflict. That's probably the most important thing I've said in all of today's episode. Cozy fiction still needs conflict. And the reason why is because if you don't have conflict, you don't have a story and nothing's going to change. But cozy conflict needs to create friction rather than dread. So what I mean by this is that you might have real obstacles and real uncertainty that your character faces from time to time, but there's probably never the sense that, you know, everything is about to fall apart or the world is going to end or everybody's going to die, right? And let me give you a real example of what I mean. So imagine that you have a protagonist who is clashing with the town committee over their plans for the town square. And maybe there's a developer who wants to buy the building that your protagonist cafe sits in. So both of these scenarios will create pressure and conflict and uncertainty, but each scenario is going to unfold in a world where your protagonist has support, she has options, and she has a reason to believe that things can work out. So, yes, things might be difficult from time to time, and she will face real conflict and opposition, but readers can trust that things will be okay. And in that scenario, the tension might come from not knowing how things will be okay, but we do know they're going to be okay. And that's the balance I want you to aim for if you're writing cozy fiction. And again, that is characteristic number eight. We want to have conflict that creates friction and not dread.

Stakes That Matter Close To Home

SPEAKER_00 20:12

Now, characteristic number nine is that there are personal and community scale stakes. And what that means is that the stakes usually stay close to home. So the fate of the world isn't on the line in cozy fiction, usually, but the fate of the protagonist's immediate world can still matter deeply and be at stake, right? A relationship might be at stake, a sense of belonging might be at stake, the community might be at stake, or the life they're trying to build in that community might be at stake. So let me give you some examples. Maybe the possible end of a friendship for your character carries enormous weight because it's the first friendship in years where your protagonist has felt truly understood. Those are very personal stakes, right? Or maybe you have a character who is about to lose her bakery and that wouldn't just cost her her livelihood, it would also take away the one place the whole street gathers every morning. Now, in both examples, neither loss would be catastrophic on a grand worldwide scale, but they could both easily break something that the characters and your readers have come to love. Right? So we still have stakes. They're just more at the personal level and the community level. And if you think about why this would be true for cozy fiction, it's because cozy fiction really earns its stakes through attachment rather than scale. So we kind of talked already about the community's role in cozy fiction and having a small-ish contained world, right? And all of that, everything you've built, the world, the routines, the community, all of that is what makes the possible loss or what's at stake hurt, right? We're attached to these people, this community, what they're working towards. And because of that attachment, we really feel those stakes. All right. And back to what I was saying earlier, a lot of times, writers. Will think that in cozy fiction there are low or no stakes. But if nothing important is ever at risk, then readers don't really have a reason to care about what happens next, right? So they might really enjoy the vibes or the setting that you've created, but that's only gonna last so long and eventually they will put down the book. So just remember that characteristic number nine, we want to have personal and community scale stakes. We are aiming for something that matters deeply to the community and to your protagonist. All right, and then last up, characteristic number 10 is a hopeful and reassuring ending.

Ending With Hope And Reassurance

SPEAKER_00 22:35

Now I have yet to read a cozy story that does not end with a sense of hope, stability, connection, or possibility. And that doesn't mean that every single problem is solved or every single uncertainty disappears, but it does mean that readers should leave the story feeling like these people and this world are going to be okay. So maybe, for example, your protagonist isn't really sure what comes next, but they've saved their bakery, right? Or maybe that friendship that we talked about earlier that your protagonist was about to lose, maybe that relationship still needs time to heal, but we know they're going to be okay and the friendship is going to stand the test of time. However, that manifests for you and in your story, what matters most is where readers are left on the last page emotionally, not whether every loose end is perfectly tied. Okay. So we want to leave them with a hopeful, reassuring ending. And that is where the cozy promise gets kept. So readers, they pick up cozy fiction because they want stories that leave them feeling okay. And every characteristic we've talked about in this episode has been building towards that moment or that ending, right? And if you suddenly throw in an ending that's, you know, dominated by despair or devastation, of course that's going to break the reader's trust, no matter how warm the rest of the story was, right? So we want to keep our promise that we made to readers from the very start, and we want to give them that hopeful and reassuring ending that they are coming to cozy fiction for.

Put All Ten Traits Together

SPEAKER_00 24:05

All right, so hopefully you can see what makes cozy fiction work isn't just the small town setting, the slower pace, the grumpy orange cat that works in the bookstore, or just a whole lot of cozy vibes. It's the result of all 10 of these characteristics working together to create a world that readers want to live in, to create people they care about, and to create a story that keeps them turning pages without ever making them feel unsafe. Now, if you'd like my help turning your cozy idea into a story that works, then come check out my notes to novel course, which we will link to in the show notes. Inside Notes to Novel, I'll walk you through how to develop your ideas, create a strong foundation for your story, and outline it scene by scene also that you can write your first draft with clarity and confidence. Again, we will put that link in the show notes, but that is my notes to novel course if you would like my help turning your cozy idea into a story that works. Now, coming up in the next episode, I'm going to share five signs that your story might be too complicated. And this episode is inspired by a question I get asked all the time, which is some version of how do I know if my story is too complex, too complicated, or too convoluted? So if you've ever wondered that about your ideas or your story, then you'll want to make sure to tune in for the next episode. And if you want that next episode delivered automatically to your podcast player of choice, make sure you are following the show or you're subscribed to the show wherever you're currently listening to this podcast. All right, so that's all I have for you in today's episode. As always, thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you for all of your support. I hope your writing is going well, and I will talk to you next week.