When it comes to creating memorable, emotionally resonant characters, your character’s personality may seem like it’s just a “flavor,” but in many ways it’s actually the foundation of the story itself. Your character’s personality influences everything: the character arc, the voice in both dialogue and the narrative (if the character has a POV), and the goals that shape your entire plot.
In many ways, your characters’ personalities can determine whether or not the story works. This is most obviously true when it comes that special “it” factor that creates unforgettably quirky or nuanced characters, but it’s even more true when it comes to the cohesion of your story’s deeper workings—where character, plot, and theme all come together.
In short, understanding personality might just be one of the most powerful tools in a writer’s toolbox.
3 Reasons Why Personality Is the Secret Ingredient to Strong Characters
The concept of personality brings a number of different connotations.
1. Personality Is a Consistent Set of Traits
For starters, we recognize the technical definition of personality as a consistent set of traits, behaviors, emotional patterns, and motivations that shape how someone perceives the world, makes decisions, and interacts with others. Personality influences not just what people do, but why they do it, how they react under pressure, form relationships, pursue goals, and confront internal or external conflict.
2. Personality Is Charisma
There is also a certain sense of je ne sais quoi—that special sauce that makes an individual unique and interesting. When the word “personality” is brought up in a fictional context, we generally tend to think of characters with big, interesting (read: complex), and memorable personalities. They’re not beige; they’re intriguing in their reliability but also because of their unique ways of viewing and responding to the world.
3. Personality Is the Ego or False Self
However, personality can also be understood as the “false” or “egoic self”—a persona honed throughout our lives to allow us to move functionally through society and relationships, but which is ultimately limiting to the bigness of our true selves.
Writers can make good use of all three of these definitions. Thinking intentionally about a character’s personality allows us to craft a container in which we can sift through potential traits, reactions, and goals to find those that offer the most cohesion for the entire story. From there, we can explore ways to create characters with inherently entertaining or intriguing personalities—ones with the potential to join iconic classics such as Michael Corleone, Jo March, Tony Stark, Sarah Connor, Gandalf the Gray, and Hermione Granger (their names are as famous, if not more, than the stories they play in).
4 Ways Personality Drives Storytelling
Most of the time, when writers consider a character’s personality, they focus primarily on outward traits. However, in so many ways, a character’s personality is the story. Here are four key considerations.
Although some personality systems offer static descriptions of traits, others like the Enneagram go deeper to point out specific transformational paths that can help people break past the ego-based facades and personas that limit us and create dysfunction. From this perspective, personality is all about the character arc!
Although most personality systems worth their salt (including MBTI, Human Design, Socionics, love languages, attachment styles, even astrology, and more) ultimately offer pathways of growth, the Enneagram is somewhat unique in its focus on specific paths of evolution (or devolution as the case may be) for each type. As I’ve explored before, this makes the Enneagram perhaps the most useful personality system for not just identifying and fleshing out a character’s personality, but for using that personality to create a cohesive character arc and, from that, plot and theme as well.
If you’d like more guidance, I’ve talked here about the Positive Change Arcs inherent in each of the nine Enneagram types and here about the Negative Change Arcs inherent in each type. I’ve also just released a full set of worksheets for each of the nine types. Each bundle includes questions to guide you in planning either a Positive or Negative Arc for each of the types, which will help you ensure your character’s arc, Lie vs. Truth, and Want vs. Need are aligned with the character’s personality, while also helping you brainstorm ways to make your character’s personalized arc consistent with the overall plot and theme.
Perhaps nothing in your story is more obviously influenced by personality than character voice. When we think of personality on the page, we think about voice more than anything else. How a character communicates—whether in dialogue or directly through the narrative in a tight POV—directly communicates personality. In my own experience, I’ve found that if my narrative is struggling, it’s often because I’m trying to write in the POV of a character whose voice just doesn’t have enough personality.
Personality will also directly influence your character’s dialogue style. This isn’t just about word choice. It’s also about the character’s preferred “style” of arguing or engaging in conflict. For example, a more aggressive personality type like an Enneagram 8 or an MBTI ENTJ will have an entirely different style of attack and defense (aka, initiating desires or responding to others’ desires) than will an Enneagram 9 or a Human Design Reflector.
Writing is all about the words, and nothing influences word choice, tone, emotional reactions, dialogue style, conflict resolution, or argument styles more than personality.
(You can find questions to help you uncover all of this is another of my hot-off-the-presses worksheets—the Character Interview, featuring 113 questions, many of them about personality.)
3. Personality Determines Shadow and Subconscious Goals
“Personality” literally refers to what we see on the surface, and yet personality is formed by what is unseen—by what has been banished to the “shadow” or the unconscious. What we see in a personality is really just what’s left after certain traits, energies, beliefs, and identities have been deemed dysfunctional (usually unconsciously early in childhood) and “cut off” from the conscious personality.
This is important for storytellers because uncovering your character’s shadow will likely be an intrinsic part of the character arc. Character arc, at its simplest, is about expanding a limited perspective. Ultimately, this perspective is always about one’s self. Even if it seems to be a change in perspective regarding others or the world at large, ultimately this new “Truth” reflects upon the self’s place in relationship to others. This means the “limited perspective” (or Lie the Character Believes) is a product of the necessarily always limited personality, while the “expanded perspective” (or thematic Truth) is, at least in part, a restoration of some piece of the self previously lost to the shadow.
From here, we can see how character goals are almost always driven by this deeper subconscious motivation. A character’s personality isn’t just traits. More deeply, personality is what the character fears, represses, and unconsciously chases. Right there, you already have an entire story!
4. Personality Reveals Core Strengths and Weaknesses
Once we recognize personality as not just someone’s (presumably functional) persona, we can see the deeper truth that personality is, in fact, as much about inherent weaknesses as inherent strengths. Understanding this about your character’s personality gives you a fast track to the central internal conflict.
Stories run on the tension points between polarities—between strengths and weaknesses, between Lies and Truths, between delusions and epiphanies, between cowardice and courage, between mistakes and successes. All of these are inherent to your character’s personality. What is a stressful internal dissonance for one personality (e.g., balancing an Enneagram Five’s need for connection against the fear of overwhelm) is already a natural integration for another type (such as a Two, who struggles with different tension points).
A firm understanding of a useful personality type system can help you double-check your character’s development arcs for consistency and realism. When you’re in the early throes of writing, it can be easy to scribble things onto the page that, in the big view, don’t actually create the necessary and realistic tension points that arise from a consistent portrayal of human nature. An understanding of personality can guide you to which arcs are most natural to your characters.
10 Practical Tips for Weaving Personality Into Plot, Dialogue, and Arc
All right, enough theory! Let’s get practical. How can you use personality more intentionally to develop not just a better character, but a more cohesive and resonant plot and theme as well?
Let Personality Shape the Story
1. Choose a Personality Framework Early in Your Planning Process
— Use a system like the Enneagram or MBTI to explore internal motivations and potential arcs.
— I recommend focusing on one primary personality system to avoid overcomplication.
— Once you know your character’s personality, examine the system as a guide to help you find the most resonant growth path.
2. Use Personality to Predict Conflict Style
— Start working on your plot by considering what conflict style (e.g., competing, avoiding, collaborating, etc.) best fits your character’s personality.
— Think about how your character argues, avoids, or escalates conflict based on type.
— For example, a character with an avoidant attachment style might prompt thematic explorations of self-isolation or self-sabolage, such as Elsa in Frozen.
Frozen (2013), Walt Disney Pictures.
— If you’re unsure what might be in your character’s personality shadow, remember shadow theory’s simple guideline: “Whatever is visible in a person’s external personality is an indication that the exact opposite resides in the shadow.”
— For example, an MBTI INTP character—who relies most heavily on mental functions—may resonantly create a story about exploring the underworld of grief or the bewilderment of falling in love, such as R in Warm Bodies.
Warm Bodies (2013), Lionsgate.
4. Design Key Plot Beats Around Transformation Points
— Personality systems like the Enneagram particularly lend themselves to narrative arcs, since they suggest specific steps on a path to growth (in addition to my worksheets, you can check out Personality Types by Russ Hudson and Don Richard Riso for in-depth studies on this).
— For example, if you know your Enneagram Type Three character’s Lie is “I’m only worthy if I succeed,” you can shape the Midpoint or Third Plot Point to directly challenge that belief.
Let Story Reveal Personality
5. Reverse-Engineer Personality From Your Plot
— If your story idea came to you as a plot instead of a character, you can use what you know about the story’s external events to create the most resonant personality for your character.
— Ask: Based on the choices the plot indicates the character will need to make, what traits or fears will be likely to emerge in the character arc?
— From there, you can identify the most resonant personality type. +However, be sure to use the story events to discover (not dictate) who the character is.
6. Analyze Plot Points to Discover Your Character’s Internal Values
— Take a look at what your character sacrifices or clings to when the stakes are high. That alone can reveal your character’s personality type or predominant internal struggle.
— For example, as an Enneagram One, Jane Eyre always returns to the central question of right and wrong (as she sees it). When confronted by Rochester’s pre-existing marriage at the Third Plot Point, she decides to leave him less because she feels betrayed and more because she believes it would be morally wrong for her to illegally marry him.
Jane Eyre (2006), WGBH/BBC.
7. Refine Your Character’s Type After Writing the First Draft
— Sometimes, you won’t really know who your character is until after you’ve written the story.
— After finishing the first draft, you can go back to revise voice and dialogue to more clearly reflect a unified personality for your character.
Bonus Implementation Tips
8. Create a Quick-Reference “Personality Snapshot”
— Character personality—like most things in storytelling—can get complicated fast. Not only can relying on a personality system provide shortcuts to identifying and remembering character traits, but so can keeping a sort of “personality outline.”
— You can include your character’s personality type, dominant traits, shadow fear, core desire, communication style, and more.
— When writing, I always try to review at least a small portion of my notes every day before I begin to keep them fresh in my mind.
9. Use a Worksheet or Interview to Stress-Test Alignment
— Although beat sheets and character interviews should only be used to create a flexible guide, they can be helpful for nailing down the big picture of your character’s personality and arc.
— If you’ve chosen to use the Enneagram as your primary personality typing system, you may also find some help in my brand new Enneagram Character Arc Cheat Sheets to check whether the story beats align with the character’s internal journey. (Each bundle contains both Positive and Negative Change Arcs for each type.)
— I’m a big fan of the aphorism (usually attributed to George Box),
All models are wrong, but some are useful.
— This is true of so much in storytelling, and it is certainly true when it comes to personality systems.
— Although incredibly useful in helping writers distil the eminently complex topic that is the human personality, systems such as the Enneagram, MBTI, and more, are ultimately still limited and should only be used insofar as they are useful.
— Growth (or regression) in your character’s arc should always reflect believable changes in personality expression, and you should always listen to your own deep and instinctive understanding of the human ego, shadow, and persona above and beyond any fixed model.
Why Knowing Personality Unlocks Your Whole Story
Your character’s personalities aren’t just one layer of who they are. Personality is the central lens through which characters interpret the world, make decisions, and pursue goals. Personality is also the bridge between plot, theme, and character. Or perhaps we might think of it as the container that holds all three.
Personality shapes not only what your characters want, but why they want it, what’s standing in their way, and how they express that tension through action, voice, and internal conflict. That’s everything you need for your plot right there. When you understand your character’s personality, you gain access to the deeper psychological and thematic forces driving your story forward.
It’s important to remember there is no one “right” framework to use. Whether you gravitate toward the Enneagram, MBTI, Human Design, or something else, the most important step is simply choosing a system that resonates with you and then using it to stress-test your characters and their arcs.
FAQs About Character Personality
What is the best personality system for writers to use?
There’s no single best system, since each offers a different perspective. For instance, the Enneagram is ideal for exploring inner conflict and transformation, while MBTI is great for understanding cognitive wiring and behavior. The only thing that matters is choosing one that complements your writing style.
Can a character’s personality change throughout the story?
Characters won’t change to a different personality, but how they relate from within the containers of their current personalities can dramatically evolve. A well-crafted character arc doesn’t usually change the core personality, but does change how the character expresses it. For example, withdrawn characters might learn to stay connected under pressure, without losing their introspective natures.
How does the Enneagram help with writing character arcs?
The Enneagram maps core fears, desires, and defense mechanisms—all of which tie neatly into a character’s Lie, Want, Need, and Truth. Each Enneagram type also suggests likely growth paths and shadow pitfalls, which makes the system especially useful for writers when building Positive and Negative Change Arcs.
How do I figure out my character’s personality type?
You can start by asking what your characters fear most, how they handle conflict, and what motivates their choices. Consider how they act under stress and in growth. Then compare those traits to personality types in your chosen system and adjust based on what best supports the arc you want to tell.
Want More?
If you’re ready to dive deeper into using personality to guide your character arcs, check out my Enneagram Character Arc Cheat Sheets. Each worksheet bundle walks you through both Positive and Negative Change Arcs for all nine Enneagram types to help you align your character’s internal journey with your story’s external plot beats. You can use these digital worksheets when you’re outlining or revising to create arcs that are psychologically authentic and thematically resonant. Available now in my Etsy shop or via the Store tab above!
Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! What role does personality play in how you approach your characters? Do you start with a personality type, or does it emerge from the story? Do you use a system like the Enneagram or MBTI in your process? Tell me in the comments!
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What are the challenges of writing and publishing books for children? How can you publish high-quality books and still make a profit? How can you market books to children effectively in a scalable manner? Darcy Pattison gives her tips.
Today’s show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna
Darcy Pattison is the multi-award winning bestselling author of more than 70 fiction and non-fiction books for children across multiple age groups. Her book for authors is Publish: Find Surprising Success Self-Publishing Your Children’s Book.
You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
Why writing children’s picture books is more challenging than you might think
Why Darcy moved from traditional publishing books to self-publishing for creative freedom and business control
Working with illustrators through contracts, sketch revisions, and treating them as professional collaborators
Using multiple print-on-demand services (Ingram, KDP, Lulu) instead of expensive offset printing for 70+ book catalog
Marketing to educators through state and national conferences rather than individual school visits for scalable reach
Focusing on STEM narrative nonfiction as a reliable income while still writing fiction passion projects
Joanna: Darcy Pattison is the multi-award winning bestselling author of more than 70 fiction and non-fiction books for children across multiple age groups. Her book for authors is Publish: Find Surprising Success Self-Publishing Your Children’s Book. So welcome to the show, Darcy.
Darcy: I’m so excited to be here today.
Joanna: This is such a great topic. So first up—
Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.
Darcy: Well, I have four children and I found myself reading books to them, and at some point I wanted to be on the flip side of that—to write the books that were read to kids. So I started writing.
It took a long time for me to learn the craft of writing children’s books. It’s very different than adult books. Picture books especially are very different than just a novel. So it took me a while, but I finally got an offer on a picture book, and I have eight traditionally published books.
Then at some point I decided that it was better for me to bring books to market myself. We’ll probably talk about that more, but I’m actually a hybrid at this point. I do some pop-up books with a small Christian press, so I’m designing the pop-ups, but I do a lot of nonfiction STEM books for kids. I also do several novel series.
Joanna: I think that’s really interesting. First up, you said that the craft of writing children’s books is different, picture books in particular. So just tell us more about that craft side, because I feel like often people say, “Oh well, it’s only a few thousand words. It must be super easy compared to writing a lot more words.”
Tell us about the craft side of writing children’s books.
Darcy: I do teach writing picture books all the time for the Highlights Foundation and other places. Picture books are a very tight art form. I sort of compare it to writing poetry.
There are 32 pages, and you have a title page, a half title page, a copyright page. It turns out you have about 14 double page spreads, and in those 14 double page spreads, you have to set up a character and a problem.
You have to complicate the story, then resolve it in some satisfying way, in less than 500 words, while leaving room for the illustrator to do their job. So it’s a very demanding process.
Joanna: And it’s not the same now then, because like you say there, the 32 pages and all of this—I mean, this is a very print-heavy issue, I guess—but there are plenty of things now that might be on tablets.
Has that shifted at all or is it still a real print-heavy world?
Darcy: It still is a print-heavy world for children’s books. Most people who independently publish will tell you that 90% of their sales are paperback.
It’s still 32 pages. I can do 27 pages, I can do 36 pages. The problem is if I ever need to offset print—and I’ve needed to several times when I have a large order—then it’s cheaper if it’s 32 pages, because they figured out how to print 32 pages on one piece of paper.
If I go to 37 pages, it’s two pieces of paper, more expensive. If I do 25 pages, you’re wasting paper. So really the 32 pages is because of the requirements of print. I still go with that because children’s books, even for independent people like me, are still by and large paperback or hardcover.
Joanna: Then I guess, talking about a 32-page picture book, that’s not the only thing for children.
What is the range of books for children?
Darcy: You can do board books. That’s for the very young children. Those are hard for self-publishers to do because there’s no one who does print-on-demand for that. You have to do offset printing. So those are more difficult.
Then starting about age four to eight is picture book world. That’s the young readers where the parents are reading to the kid.
Then—and the ages are very fluid here because some kids read faster than others—but maybe about six or seven years old, they’re starting to read more independently. They want these short chapter books.
So those might be 48 pages or 60-page short novels where you’re really paying attention. That’s the only place where you really have to pay attention to the vocabulary levels for kids.
Then after that, you have middle grade, and that would run eight to twelve years old, roughly. Then YA would be—again, the definitions are very fluid—but maybe 14 and up would be young adult.
Joanna: Yes, and that YA category now I feel like has moved very adult. So I think that can probably be quite fluid as well, depending on what you find in the store.
Let’s come back to your journey. You mentioned the hybrid approach. You did eight traditionally published books, but in your book Publish, you said deciding to self-publish was a way to avoid creative death, which I thought was a brilliant line. Maybe you could expand on that and—
Why is self-publishing a great choice?
Darcy: Self-publishing is a very great choice. There was a time period when I had sold eight books. I teach on a very high level—I teach a novel revision retreat. To come, you must bring a full draft of a novel. We talk about how to revise that novel.
One lady came to my retreat, she revised her novel, sent it out for submission. It sold in 11 days flat and went on to win one of the major awards in children’s literature in America, the Newbery Honor. So I know what I’m doing. I know how to write, and yet I could not sell anything. It was so discouraging at that point.
I either decided I would quit—I don’t know what I was going to do, but I was going to quit—or I had to figure out how to bring books to market myself. So I decided, yes, I can do this. I can bring books to market myself.
So I worked. I worked for five years. I just put my head down and worked. I published books that I liked. I did what no one else would accept, but I thought was good writing.
I looked for great illustrators and I found some great illustrators to work with, because children’s picture books have pictures. You have to work with an illustrator.
So I worked for about five years and finally after five years, I kind of lifted my head and looked around and went, “Wow, look at this. I’ve got books out that I love. They’re winning awards. They’re selling, I’m making money. This works.”
So for me, one person asked me recently to talk about this in terms of scarcity and abundance. For me, the traditional publishing world is a place of scarcity. Nobody respected my opinion, nobody respected my writing. As we know from Scheherazade, if you do not have a story, you die.
So self-publishing is a place of abundance for me. I do what I want. I find stories that excite me, and I put them in the hands of kids.
Joanna: So what year was it when you were like, “Oh, I really can’t sell, I am going to try indie”?
Darcy: Thirteen years ago. I’ve been doing this 13 years.
Joanna: So around 2012, I guess.
Darcy: Yes, 2013 I think.
Joanna: 2012, 2013. That really was, I think, a real takeoff time in the self-publishing arena when you could actually start doing this. For example, doing print-on-demand through Amazon. These things weren’t that easy when you started in traditional publishing—it wasn’t easy to do self-publishing.
Darcy: No, no, no. When I first started submitting books, self-publishing was not available. I did a book on writing very early and that taught me how to do the self-publishing process. It was not a book anyone was going to publish because it was revising your novel, which is very niche.
For people who want to write a novel, that’s a fairly big market, but those who finished the novel and want to revise it, it’s even a smaller market. So I self-published that book and that taught me so much about how to set up your files, how to set up the accounts on everything, on KDP and everywhere else.
Joanna: Yes, I do feel like so often actually just doing one—whether it might be maybe a short story or just something, but actually just going through the process gets rid of a lot of the difficulty with it.
Let’s come back to some of the things you have to do. So you mentioned illustrators there, particularly for the picture books. Illustrators are important, but it also might be cover design.
What are your tips for finding and working with illustrators?
Darcy: This is a long topic, but basically I find illustrators through a couple of sources. One is the SCBWI.org, that’s the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.
It’s the only professional organization for people who write for children, and they have a gallery that’s available to their illustrators, and it’s not behind a paywall. You can just go look at it.
Most illustrators use the Adobe suite of programs. There are other programs, but they learn on that one at least. Adobe has a social media platform for illustrators called Behance.net. The illustrators from around the world put their portfolios there, and I find people there all the time.
My family has hosted exchange students eight times, so I’m familiar with working with internationals. I’m not afraid of that.
I’ve had illustrators from Colombia, Ukraine, Poland, Canada. So I don’t mind finding an international illustrator to work on my projects and I work well with them. So Behance.net is one of my main ways to find professional illustrators.
And then finally referrals. Just talk to other people. Ask them who they used, were they happy with the process, that kind of thing.
Joanna: Then what do you give them? Do you give them like the story, the text, or—
How do you actually work with an illustrator?
Darcy: Everybody wants to know, can I write notes to the illustrator and tell them that this character must have red hair and white boots? Of course you can do that. If you’re self-publishing, you are the art director and you are in charge.
I prefer not to do that. I prefer to pick out an illustrator that I think has professional skills and an imagination of their own. So I give them my story, then they give me sketches, and when they give me sketches, then I’m very picky about the sketches.
For example, you cannot in a picture book have every page the same. So it can’t always be in the cafeteria. It must move from place to place. You must make sure the character looks consistent from page to page.
There’s a long list of things I go through to make sure that the illustrations are right at that point. So when I get the sketches, they get a long letter and I want a revision of their sketches.
Joanna: So you’ve given them the whole story upfront, then they’ve given you the sketches, then you’ve gone back with a letter.
How many revisions are you looking for in that process, and is this all set out in a contract upfront?
Darcy: Yes. I always do contracts to make sure everything’s understood. Usually the contract will say that I need 14 double-page spreads plus a spread for the cover and a spread for page 32. So I’m asking for about 15 to 16 illustrations and within that, then they must tell the story.
So they get the manuscript. I try not to give them too many directions on where it goes and just see where they take it. Usually they’re much better than I am and usually work well.
Joanna: Yes, we all have different gifts, right? Different interests and different skills. Your skill is in writing as is mine. So that’s what we do.
Darcy: I’ve found I’m actually a pretty good art director though. I really have a vision for what this should look like in a picture book, so I know how the story has to flow well.
The pacing is in the pictures also. So you have to think of all the things you would in a novel, like pacing, characterization. That comes through in the story, so I have to make sure all of that is right in the sketches.
Once the sketches are approved, then it’s not fair to ask them to change. You cannot do those last minute changes and go, “Oh, I want those white boots.” No, no, no. That’s not fair to the illustrator.
Joanna: Yes, so treating them like a professional.
What about copyright assignment? Are you getting that in the contract?
Darcy: Yes, everything’s in the contract. There are different ways to do it. You can do a flat fee where you take all rights or you can negotiate a royalty payment. It’s all in the contract.
Joanna: And if people want templates for those kind of contracts?
Darcy: That’s the difficulty, isn’t it? Because I’m not a lawyer, I don’t give them templates, but there are reasonable literary lawyers.
I’m glad to give them referrals to some literary lawyers who can do it, and usually they have pretty much a boilerplate and for less than $500 US, you can get a template that you can use multiple times.
Joanna: There are also author organizations that have these kind of templates. The most important thing here is you need to sort that out upfront, and absolutely some of the ones I’ve seen, they do also include things like you can have one revision on this type of level or whatever.
It’s the same with covers, right? If you’re doing older children’s books, we are respecting other people’s time and professionalism.
Darcy: Yes, absolutely. You know, you may want one or maybe two or three revisions at that sketches stage, but after that, when they give me final art, there’s almost no changes because we’ve hashed that out early. That’s where they want you to is in the sketches stage, because that’s where they can make the changes the easiest.
Joanna: So another challenge is quality color printing, because as you said, most of your sales are going to be in print.
Talk a bit about printing and distribution and how you manage that.
Darcy: So I use three print-on-demand printers. I use Ingram because that reaches the wide distribution that I need, that goes to the schools and libraries and the education distributors and goes out in the world internationally also.
So Ingram’s quality is what Ingram’s quality is. I think if we go into this and say we’re going to print-on-demand, we need to accept what they do.
I mean, people complain about everybody. Every printer gets complaints, but I think they all do a reasonable job. They correct mistakes when they’re made, I think they do fine.
So Ingram’s print quality is good. It’s not offset printing. It will never be offset printing, but we do print-on-demand because the economic issues make sense.
We don’t have to put a huge investment upfront of ordering 10,000 books. Then your money is tied up in that inventory and you can’t recoup and you can’t move on to the next book until you sell those books.
So I don’t think that’s wise for self-publishers. I think it’s wise to be more nimble. So then the print-on-demand makes a lot of sense.
Then the second one I use is KDP, because I find that Ingram and KDP don’t always work well together. So I just go ahead and upload it to KDP. It’s always available on Amazon. It’s never a problem.
Then the final one is I use Lulu and I love Lulu’s quality. They talk about great looking books. They have a coated paper, 80 pound coated paper that accepts the ink really well. So the books just look much nicer from them. I use them for the back end of my Shopify store, and then anytime I have special orders.
So last year, my book Magnet came out and I got an order of 600 books that would be used for a public television station that was having an event. So they wanted 600 books to give people, and they ordered that. And yes, Lulu is where I print anything like that because the quality is just so much better.
Joanna: So then with that example, the 600 books, I mean, one of the reasons, as you said, we do print-on-demand is because we don’t have to pay for those print runs, but also we do make higher profit because there’s higher price per book.
So how do you manage the profit side of it with such high printing costs when the price of books just hasn’t really gone up? With inflation, people still expect to pay the same thing.
With those 600 books, how did you make a fair profit there?
Darcy: So I price my books high. You cannot compete on price. I can’t sell my picture books for $8.99. They are $11.99 for an eight and a half by eight and a half, full color, 32 page picture book. $11.99 is outrageous, but that’s what I have to charge and they sell. What can I say? They sell.
Joanna: Plus shipping with your Shopify store?
Darcy: Yes, but I charge them shipping. So then you negotiate prices and you just make sure you’re making a profit of $2 or $3 a book just like anybody else. People fight against that too. They go, “Well, I need my little chapter book just to be $6.99.” And I go, “Well, you can’t make a profit.”
You must think as a business person and you must price accordingly and then write a really great book that they will buy anyway.
Joanna: Yes, I mean, this is the whole point. We are not competing on price. We cannot compete on price or shipping. Like people say to me, “Oh, well, but if I order from your Shopify store, it’s going to take like two weeks or something.”
I’m like, “Yes, because I’m a small business. My printer is a small business. It gets printed, it gets sent. I mean, I’m not Amazon.” Literally then people will go, “Oh, right. Yes, I understand,” don’t they? I mean, once you explain it, people understand.
Darcy: So if I have a large order, like 600 books, if I have three months to deliver, then I’ll do an offset run, but I don’t always have that luxury of having three months to deliver. They usually want it in two weeks and then Lulu can deliver. Lulu always delivers well.
Joanna: Right. Okay. So I guess you sort of addressed this a bit with saying, look, the quality is the quality, but I do find children’s authors in particular can be a little bit precious about this, and they’re like, “Oh no, this has to be perfect, so I have to use offset printing.” Given that you have more than 70 books—
I just can’t see how it’s practical to have a business with so many different books and insist on incredible quality every time.
Darcy: I can’t make a profit that way. I can’t have a stock of even 500 books of 70. I can’t even physically, like a physical warehouse, let alone the price. I can’t tie up my money that way.
So for me, print-on-demand is the only way that works. I cannot do the offset printing. Again, I do offset printing if I have large orders and I have plenty of time, but that’s the only time I can get that kind of quality.
So, yes, it is different, but there are printers now who are approaching offset quality with print-on-demand. The newer printers that are coming out are very, very good.
Joanna: They are, but again, we have to look at the pricing there because the price is also higher. The quality of the paper and the ink and all that.
Of course the same is true for anyone. I mean, like for me with 45-plus books, I never have kept stock, but you just don’t know. You don’t know which books people are going to buy on any given day. So having print-on-demand just makes sense.
I think people who are just starting out, they’re like, “Oh, well it’s only one book,” but it’s like, well soon it won’t just be one book.
Darcy: Well, we hope it’s not just going to be one book. I mean, I want a career. I don’t want just a single book out there.
Joanna: Then I guess just circling back on anything that’s different, because of course—
You do nonfiction books for children, as well as fiction. Is the process just exactly the same, but you don’t have a story necessarily?
It’s more like facts and things.
Darcy: Most of mine are narrative nonfiction. So I’m usually telling the story of a scientist making some kind of discovery or an animal. And usually it’s not a species, usually it’s a particular animal that’s done something amazing.
For example, Nefertiti, the Spider-naut is the true story of a spider that went to the International Space Station. She’s a jumping spider. She doesn’t spin webs. She jumps to hunt. And the question was, could she jump in space? Because if you jump, you float away.
So would she starve to death or would she adapt somehow to that microgravity of the International Space Station? She did indeed adapt and she learned to hunt in space and lived long enough to come back to Earth.
Joanna: What did she eat?
Darcy: Well, they had fruit flies, so they had a little habitat she lived in and they raised fruit flies for her. They raised three generations.
Joanna: She wasn’t a stowaway. She was deliberate.
Darcy: No, no, no, no. It was a deliberate experiment on the International Space Station.
Joanna: Oh, that’s really cool. So how did you decide to do that book?
Was that a commission or is that just something you are interested in?
Darcy: I heard something on the radio. Then what I like to do is original primary research. So I contacted the scientist who’s in charge of all of the live animal experiments on the International Space Station.
She lived in Colorado and my daughter lives close, so we went to see my daughter and I set up an appointment, interviewed her, and wrote the book.
Joanna: I love that because like you said, I mean this is creativity, isn’t it? It’s kind of hearing something and then making it. So does that book sell or is that just something that you did and it’s just a passion project?
Darcy: No, no, no. It sells really well. The cover either repulses people because it’s a very close-up of the face of the spider, so they either hate the cover or they love the cover.
For example, I had a school right when COVID hit that ordered 1,400 copies because they wanted to give one copy to each of their fourth graders to read during the summer. That one has licensed other things also, like for reading programs and things.
Joanna: Well, let’s talk about that then, because bulk sales to schools is something that children’s authors often can do very, very well that the rest of us struggle with. So tell us a bit about that and—
How can people can think about things like bulk sales, which is when you sell many books at once?
Darcy: Bulk sales come and go. You can’t necessarily predict them. What I do is I really pay attention to the science curriculum. I make sure that each book I write and produce fits the curriculum some way. So I like to say that teachers don’t just like my book, they need my book to adequately teach sound to their students.
So my book Clang is about a German scientist that went to Napoleon’s court, entertained Napoleon with his sound experiments. Kind of like Bill Nye the Science Guy does—entertained him. Then Napoleon funded his work.
So in the book, there’s everything you need to know about sound, how sound waves are produced, vibrating strings, vibrating air columns, all of that. It’s also a great story about this scientist who goes to Napoleon’s court.
So I think teachers need my book to keep kids interested in that topic. So if it fits a curriculum, then it’s more likely to be picked up for reading programs, for summer programs, for summer camps, that sort of thing.
And so my book on AI, about the story about Lee Sedol playing against AlphaGo, that sold—suddenly I get on Ingram, it sold a thousand copies and I’m sure it was for a summer camp.
Joanna: Yes, that one—we’re going to circle back to AI, but let’s come on to marketing, because I’m sure people listening are going, “Well, I want to do that. How do I sell all of those books?”
How are you getting your information into schools?
I mean, obviously you are in the USA, it’s a massive country, so how are you doing that? Marketing to schools, in particular, and libraries, I guess.
Darcy: Well, everybody says go do school visits. Yes, yes, yes. You can do school visits and you can make money that way, but I prefer to try other avenues because school visits are limited to the length of school year. You might have 150 days possible and I’m not going to go out for 150 days doing school visits.
So instead what I do is reach out to organizations in the United States. Well just this month I’ve been to the Arkansas Association of Instructional Media. That’s the school librarians. At their conference I had an audience of 60 or 70 people and I talked about my 20 STEM books.
Then the next week there was a leadership conference for the Arkansas Literacy Association, and they brought in leaders from the local councils around the state, 20 councils.
So there was about 60 or 70 people. Again, these are the leaders, the opinion makers in their region. They did a “build your stack.” So they bought 90 books and each person got a free copy of the book, courtesy of the organization.
So what you have to do is find those sorts of organizations in your area, in your state, your region, and say, “Can I fill out applications to speak at their conferences?” For me, that’s the audience, not parents.
Parents are a moving target because if their child is seven years old this year, next year they’re going to be eight, and pretty soon they’re going to be 14 and they’ve aged out of my books. But teachers and librarians always have those eight-year-old kids coming through their system.
Joanna: Yes, I think that’s super smart and super scalable. I mean, some people really love going into the schools and they love teaching at that level or whatever. I think that’s a really interesting, but it’s not scalable though.
Darcy: No, it’s not. I feel like there’s other revenue—like some people talk about getting paid for that speaking. It’s basically paid for doing assemblies and stuff like that.
Joanna: But as you say, yours is a more scalable approach.
So is that the same way you hit librarians as well?
Darcy: Yes, yes. I’ll be going to the Arkansas Library Association Conference in October. So that’s just local. Then I also reach out to national organizations. I’ve spoken at the National Science Teachers Association conferences, just went to the American Library Association Conference.
So there are many of those regional and national organizations that focus on kids and kids reading that are my target.
Joanna: So those STEM books, have you really done a lot more of those because those are the types of books that those markets want?
Darcy: Yes, those sell really well. If I find a topic that’s not been covered well with other books, then I can write a book that does pretty well. Then I can still write the fiction that I like, and some of those do well, and some of those don’t do well. The bread and butter is probably my STEM books.
Joanna: Yes, because they, as you say, would be a lot easier to sell if that’s a topic that is covered at that age group.
Then just a broader question about age groups. You mentioned you have four children, and I often meet people and they want to write a kid’s book, and it’s often they’re writing a kid’s book for the age that their child is.
Then sometimes they grow out of the idea because their kid is now a lot older than they were and they’ve changed their mind about the book, or it was the wrong kind of age. Now, obviously your kids are presumably grown.
Darcy: Yes.
Joanna: So what advice would you have for people listening who feel like, “Oh, I want to write a book for my kid,” but are wondering—
How does that turn into a business?
Darcy: Katherine Paterson is a well-known children’s book author. She wrote Bridge to Terabithia, which was a popular movie about 10 or 15 years ago. She once said that when she reads an adult novel, she hears an orchestra, but when she reads her own work, she hears a flute solo.
I just write flute solos. I don’t write the big complicated orchestral pieces. It’s just not the way I write. So you just need to find what’s your strength and what’s your passion.
I like children’s literature. I read it all the time. I’m reading picture books, novels—I’m reading all the time. I just like the genre. So find a genre that you like and dive in.
Joanna: Right. So you can keep writing for an age group if you keep reading in the age group, even if your kids have grown.
Darcy: Yes, absolutely.
Joanna: Yes, that makes sense. I mean, you have to know the genre and, of course, tastes change as well. I mean, even since you started in like 2012, there’s a lot more diversity now in children’s books and that’s a really important development.
Also I guess, translations—you’ve moved into translations and licensing.
How have translations and licensing worked in terms of the business?
Darcy: Translations—I did a test last year of five Spanish books. They’ve not sold particularly well. I need to find new ways to market them, but it was an experiment and I need to find new ways to market them, frankly.
However, I do have an agent in China, and they just sold a nine-book series to a Chinese publisher. So we’ll see how that goes. They have also sold a six-book series to Korea. So working with a foreign agent has worked for me.
Joanna: Yes. I’ve sold into South Korea as well. They clearly have an interesting book culture.
Okay, and then just coming back on the AI side, because you mentioned your children’s book about AlphaGo beating Lee Sedol in 2016, as part of your Moments in Science series. So I wondered—
How are you using AI tools as part of your creative and business processes?
Darcy: Well, I do use AI sometimes, so I love Google NotebookLM for research. I think the AIs hallucinate too much to let them do my research, but when I do the research myself and I find research reports, I drag them into NotebookLM.
For example, my new book out this year is NOT Extinct. It’s about the Takhi horse, commonly called the Przewalski’s horse, which in the 1960s was considered extinct in the wild, and they have worked for decades to bring them back. Now there’s about 3000 in the world. So the story is about that process of conservation of the species.
So I found tons of research reports and I dragged them into NotebookLM, and then I asked it to give me a timeline and it can go through it, and it annotates the timeline for me.
It says this came from this report so that I know that it’s documented really well and I can trust that the research is there. I really like that one once we get away from, can it do real research and deal with facts?
I do use it sometimes for outlining. I like Claude better than some of the other platforms, and I do use it for book descriptions sometimes.
Joanna: I would say that Gemini Deep Research is, I think, the best in terms of—
Have you used any of the Deep Research?
Darcy: I have not. No.
Joanna: So Gemini Deep Research, I would say is extremely good and has a very, very low hallucination rate. So that would be the one I would suggest for research people.
Like you mentioned earlier that many of the illustrators use Adobe tools and of course Adobe has Firefly, it has generative AI now.
How much generative AI is being used in the illustrators’ work, or is that not even something you worry about?
Darcy: So far it’s not been used very much. Most of the illustrators, I see their sketches at first and then they generally do digital work, but it’s clearly their work. There’s no question on most of them so far. That will come up, I’m sure in the next five or 10 years, but so far it’s not been an issue.
Joanna: But it’s not something you are embracing because, like you said, you know what you want. So you could be doing this yourself, for example.
Darcy: So I have one story. The Kitty Tuber series. It’s about cats who make videos and so they’re kitty tubers. The main character is Angel and she has one blue eye and one copper eye. I can’t tell you how hard it is for ChatGPT to do a cat that has different colored eyes. It’s just almost impossible.
Finally, I think last week I tried it, and it’s finally getting to where it can do it, but it’s a difficult task. The programs just aren’t there yet.
Joanna: Again, I would suggest Midjourney, which is excellent. I know quite a lot of people doing kids books on Midjourney and you can do consistent characters now. So I think there’s a lot of potential, and certainly for marketing, even if you don’t want to use it for actual creation of the books.
Darcy: I think that’s coming. I don’t think you can stop it. I think it will be lovely, but I just haven’t done it yet.
Joanna: No, absolutely. Well, you’ve got your processes for sure. I did want to ask you, because we were saying before we started recording, we’ve kind of known each other online for a really long time now, and you have managed this career now for a long time.
What are your tips for longevity in the market?
Both, I guess, in terms of the business and the mindset and just staying the course? Because both of us have seen a lot of people leave the industry in the time we’ve been doing it.
Darcy: A lot of people do leave, and I’m sad when that happens because that was my impetus for doing this, is to stay in the business. I think that’s one of the reasons I wrote this new book, Publish. I made the mistakes so other people don’t have to.
I think staying in the business just means that you stay excited about your work. You find things that you want to write about and you are passionate about. I mean, why do we write at all? Because there’s some question that we want to answer or there’s some bit of information we want to pass on to kids.
I think you have to keep finding that center and just stay really positive. Keep up with the industry. Don’t think that it can be run the same way all the time for business.
I am not a very good business woman. I started with no information. I’ve never taken even an accounting class. So accounting just killed me at first. It’s really hard for me to do the business, but I think you just have to keep pushing and trying. So I’m very curious, and I research and solve problems.
Joanna: Yes, I think that curiosity is what keeps us going, to be honest. I feel at this point that if there’s still books I want to write, then I’m just going to keep writing them.
Darcy: Absolutely.
Joanna: And yes, we both run businesses, but there are lots of better ways to make money than writing books, especially children’s books.
Darcy: Yes.
Joanna: Which is fascinating. Okay, so tell us—
You have a Kickstarter running right now. Tell us about that and a bit more about the book.
Darcy: So Publish is a book about self-publishing children’s books and making a success at it. I did make all the mistakes so you don’t have to.
I’ve been doing a blog called IndieKidsBooks.com for three years and writing things on there that I thought would eventually wind up in the book. Mostly they’re about what I’m working on right now, what I’m worried about, what the current state of publishing is like. So it’s a great resource for you.
But I wanted to put things together in a book that would explain the process for people who don’t do this, who just come to it with curiosity and go, “Can I do this?” It’s not easy. Self-publishing is never easy. You have to do everything from the creative to the accounting. It’s not easy, but oh my gosh, it’s fun.
I want people to get that. I want them to understand that it’s not a horrible thing. It’s not being put in the ghetto. I submit my books to awards, and I win awards, and I make money. You can do that too.
Joanna: Fantastic.
Where can people find you and your books online?
Darcy: So the best place to find my books is MimsHouseBooks.com, M-I-M-S-H-O-U-S-E books.com. And if you’re interested in self-publishing, IndieKidsBooks.com is where I kind of chronicle my journey.
So you can find the Publish book on Kickstarter. Right now it will be live when this recording goes out. It will be also available for pre-order on Amazon, but look for the Kickstarter. I think you’ll find a lot of things on there that are interesting.
Joanna: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Darcy. That was great.
Stories are more than just entertainment. They’re also more than just reflections of real life. This is because, at its core, narrative is myth. Whether you’re crafting epic fantasy, gritty crime drama, or cozy rom-coms, deep archetypal patterns always echo through your characters, plots, and themes. Story is the theater of the psyche. It is a dream we collectively dream, in which each character and conflict embodies a part of ourselves. When we recognize this hidden foundation, we can tap this archetypal power to access the kind of storytelling that not only captivates readers but also transforms both their inner lives and our own.
A few weeks ago, I shared a post that struck a chord with many of you—about my deep desire to witness the return of “soulful storytelling.” Specifically, I wrote about my personal dissatisfaction and even boredom with contemporary filmmaking. In that post, I talked about wanting to return to stories of subtextual depth, emotional earnestness, and goodheartedness (among other qualities). In pondering on this further via the many thoughtful exchanges I got to have with all of you in the comments section on that post, I realized there are more layers to the shifts we have seen in modern storytelling—and the next shift I believe we will soon see.
One of those layers is the tension we often feel, but perhaps do not always recognize, between hyper-realism in fiction and storytelling’s inherently mythic foundation. I’m talking about the differences between stories that dutifully mimic or even exaggerate the causality of everyday life and those that draw upon the timeless archetypal patterns of the psyche.
When asked to define “story,” we may reach for the convenient answer that story is a replication of real life. But this, I will posit, is not actually true. Throughout history, we have increasingly dressed our stories in the verisimilitude of realistic details and the self-consciousness of our minds’ inner workings. But underneath all the hyper-realism, the true and archetypal shape of story itself remains something quite mythic. It is much less a product of our conscious minds—our conscious and scientific understanding of the world’s workings and our place in it—and much more a product of our unconscious minds—our symbolic and dreaming selves.
Recognizing storytelling (no matter the genre) as inherently mythic allows us, as storytellers, to walk onto a much bigger stage. We exit the relatively small stage of the self we know—the conscious self—and enter the vastness of the self that lives beyond consciousness and therefore beyond the restricted understanding allowed by the ego.
When we approach story as something inherently mythic—an archetype that exists outside and beyond humanity’s “creation” of it as an artform—we regain the capacity to create stories that touch the deepest parts of ourselves to create not just transformation, but initiation.
Story as a Primordial Force: The Mythic Foundation of Narrative
From the far depths of human memory, story comes to us as a primordial force. Indeed, human memory itself is a story. Before we packaged stories for $20 mass consumption—before movies, before novels—story came to us as oral myths, ritual dramas, stone etchings, and catalysts of initiation.
Nowadays, storytelling is a highly specialized skill set. We come to sites like this one to study beat sheets and timing. We divide stories into highly specialized genres and check tropes off a list. We come to story as if it is something we can master. But in approaching story like this, we risk missing not just the deeper initiation story wants to offer each of us. We also risk missing out on the best possible stories we could be sharing with our own audiences.
I want to talk about one trend in particular that I see in modern storytelling. In itself, this trend is not problematic. But when too much emphasis is placed on it, it can create a polarized experience of story that can weaken its deeper impact. This trend, as I hinted previously, is hyper-realism. It is the trend—all but ubiquitous now—of faithfully recreating modern life on the page or the screen. In some ways, we might say it is “showing” rather than “telling.”
Again, I’m not saying this approach is wrong. I love detailed fiction that shows me the story world with such dimensionality that I’m there. I love deep POVs that faithfully mine and recreate the complexities of human interiority—everything from memory to motive.
But my feeling is that when this hyper-realism is not founded upon the deeper mythology of story itself, we often risk losing the forest for the trees. I will even go so far as to say this approach is a driving force behind the type of modern storytelling that carries characters and audiences to destinations awash with sophisticated despair or, at best, ambiguous apathy.
This is not to say mythic stories do not confront their fair portion of darkness and despair. But as I continue to study story as an archetype, it is my belief that these old stories (everything from the creation stories to The Odyssey to old folk tales like Little Red Riding Hood) speak to us, first and always, in metaphor and symbol. Certainly, as we explore the continuity with which the shape of story comes to us over the eons, I believe we can see that story itself is much more than simply a mirror of life. It is an initiatory force.
Becoming Supernatural by Dr. Joe Dispenza (affiliate link)
At the end of his book Becoming Supernatural, Dr. Joe Dispenza defined initiation:
I believe we are on the verge of a great evolutionary jump. Another way to say it is that we are going through an initiation. After all, isn’t an initiation a rite of passage from one level of consciousness to another, and isn’t it designed to challenge the fabric of who we are so we can grow to a greater potential?
Story is a symbolic map of transformation. It is a blueprint for growth and change. I wrote in the previous post about how I will never be satisfied with even more single story that does not challenge me in some way—because, for me, that is what I look for in a story experience. I look for that frisson of electricity, that tinge of awe, as I sense however faintly that I am entering an uncanny space—a wyrd space.
In the old Norse, the concept of “wyrd”—from which we get our word “weird”—indicated not just the uncanny, but the fated. In story, what I seek for myself are fated encounters. I seek shatterpoints of destiny that fracture, however slightly, reality as I know it.
The Theater of the Psyche: Every Character Is You
Every story holds the seed of this transformational power. It doesn’t matter the medium or the genre. This potential is latent in all stories—whether about hellbent mobsters or romantic HEAs or comedic farces or historical reproductions or fantastical allegories. However, whether and how well this potential is realized depends on the author. To some extent, it depends on the author’s conscious awareness of and ability to empower the story’s mythic sub-structure. But I would say, even more perhaps, it depends on the author’s personal touchstone with the mythic subconsciousness that lives within them.
If we think of story as being like a dream, we are not too far from the truth. Story—true, deep, initiatory story—is something that arises from an inner depth existing beneath and beyond egoic consciousness. We are more likely to find these stories by “channeling” them than by trying to brainstorm them.
Like dreams, stories are innately symbolic—even, and perhaps especially, when we do not realize it. As authors, we cannot always explain where our best work comes from. Often, it may seem it does not come from us. It was given to us. We are the first to be changed by it. Indeed, we may spend the rest of our lives not quite understanding it.
Also like dreams, I believe it is useful to take one more step back from the hyper-detailed and hyper-realistic showing of fiction. Until we do so, we are likely to think our stories are peopled by a varied and dimensional cast, perhaps purposefully created by us to showcase a vast number of perspectives and lifestyles. When we go deeper, we may see instead that the deepest and most mythic stories represent a single psyche—perhaps the author’s, perhaps a bit more specifically the protagonist’s, but ultimately the collective psyche.
Some schools of dream interpretation remind the dreamer to consider that everything that shows up in a dream is you. That is, it is not your father in the dream; it is some aspect of your own psyche wearing the face of your father. The same can be said of a story. Every character in the story—indeed, everything in the story—is an aspect of one psyche. The hero, the antagonist, the love interest, the mentor—all are representations of a unified psychological perspective and experience.
The deep resonance of stories that work—stories that initiate us—is the result of this inner unity. Audiences resonate because they’re watching externalized inner conflicts of the self. If you start examining stories from this perspective, you may be amazed at what you discover.
A quite obvious example is The Lord of the Rings. I particularly remember the first time I saw the scene in Fellowship of the Ring, in which the characters flee underground into the Mines of Moria, where they awaken goblins and trolls in the darkness. In so many ways, this can be seen as a descent into the unconscious and a confrontation with the shadow monsters who reside forgotten there.
The Balrog confrontation symbolizes the psyche’s descent into shadow.” (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), New Line Cinema.)
Another vivid example of this inner-psyche theater can be found in Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away. Nearly every character in Chihiro’s journey can be read as an aspect of the self.
Her parents’ careless greed is the egoic appetite that abandons her to the unconscious.
The enormous baby, Boh, is the unruly inner child who must be reparented before growth can occur.
Yubaba, the domineering mistress of the bathhouse, embodies the controlling authority of the superego.
Haku functions as the animus—an inner guide and companion who helps Chihiro navigate transformation.
No-Face represents the shadow self: a ravenous, distorted self that can only be healed through compassion and reintegration.
In this light, Spirited Away becomes not simply a fantastical coming-of-age tale, but a symbolic map of psychological wholeness.
Miyazaki’s Spirited Away shows how every story is myth: each character symbolizes an aspect of the self, from the shadow in No-Face to the inner child in Boh. (Spirited Away (2001), Studio Ghibli.)
And in a more realistic example, we can see how the various characters in Pride & Prejudice represent facets of a single psyche:
Elizabeth and Darcy embody the central tension between pride and humility, shame and love.
Jane reflects openness and generosity.
Lydia personifies unchecked impulse.
Mr. Collins plays the part of obsequious conformity.
Lady Catherine stands as rigid authority.
Read this way, Austen’s novel becomes not just a social comedy but an archetypal drama of the self learning to reconcile its contradictions and move toward wholeness.
Lizzie and Darcy reflect the psyche’s struggle with pride, shame, and connection. (Pride & Prejudice (2005), Focus Features.)
For writers, one of the most useful tools for enlivening the power of mythic storytelling is to access the innate power of character archetypes.
With all things archetypal, it is crucial to interact with archetypes not as simplistic stereotypes but as living forces. Put simply: we don’t get to dictate what archetypes do. When we have truly accessed them, they tell us what they will do. When we have truly understood them, we feel it all the way down to our bones. Archetypes are dynamic energies peopling initiatory arcs. They surface in different guises but always point to universal human epochs.
As writers, we can access these forces consciously to deepen our character arcs, themes, and story arcs. The most obvious way we can work with these archetypes is to learn about them through the old stories. But they are found everywhere. I would go so far as to say they are found in every story that works. More than that, they are inherent—if perhaps latent—within each of us.
As human beings (and especially as human beings with active imaginations), we already have a deep understanding and recognition of these archetypal forces—if we are brave enough to face them. This cannot be taken for granted. It can often feel much easier to ignore the call of initiation and transformation. Cutting the journey short before we finish the Dark Night of the Soul can often seem wiser. Ironically, remaining cozy and cynical in the affirming arms of despair can feel much safer than daring to keep walking into the unknown of transformation.
What archetypal storytelling—mythic storytelling—demands of us as storytellers is that we face the archetypes themselves with authenticity and with humility. Mythic storytelling demands that we listen to the deepest, loudest, softest truths within us. We know when what we are writing is mythic and archetypal—whether we call it that or not. We know when what we are writing is the truest thing it is possible for us to write. We know in our hearts. And I do not say “hearts” lightly. The heart is a much better storyteller than the head.
The head, however, remains a worthy ally on this journey. It is not, as it so often thinks, the protagonist. But it is a helpful sidekick. To that end, studying the mythic journeys in literature can be extremely helpful—whether the Hero’s Journey or the five further archetypal journeys I discuss in my book Writing Archetypal Character Arcs. (Writers can apply these insights practically through my Archetypal Character Arc Worksheets. This worksheet bundle is, in essence, a companion workbook to Writing Archetypal Character Arcs. If you’d like help charting any of the six archetypal character arcs—Maiden, Hero, Queen, King, Crone, and Mage—you can check out the worksheets I just released. If you want them all, be sure to check out the discounted bundle.)
Story as a Living Dream: Why All Stories Are Myth
Story is not just “about life.” It’s a dream we dream together. It is a map for transformation. If we look into the past, history tells us our storytellers were our seers, our shamans, our wayshowers, our most respected elders.
Now, we are all storytellers. We all bear this great burden to look beyond what everyone else can see and to hone the transformative truths that are meant to initiate not just us but every member of our tribe.
To do that, we must start by remembering what story really is. It is not just entertainment. It is not just escapism. It is not just pleasure. It is not just a source of income.
What is story? I believe the archetypal shape of story is, fundamentally, a truth. Perhaps even the Truth. It is the power to change the world—over and over and over and over again. It is the power to change us. It is the power to bypass our limited egoic perceptions of ourselves, others, and our world and to show us into the wyrdest depths of what it means to be human. It is a dream we dream that also dreams us. It is initiation. It is transformation. It is change. It is myth.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does it mean to say all stories are myth?
It means that beneath every plot and genre lies a universal archetypal pattern. From epic fantasies to contemporary romances, all stories echo mythic structures that reflect the psyche’s journey of transformation.
Can hyper-realistic stories still be mythic?
Yes. Even the most realistic fiction carries symbolic depth if the writer taps into archetypal storytelling. A courtroom drama or slice-of-life novel can still follow the mythic blueprint of initiation, transformation, and return.
Why do archetypes resonate so deeply with readers?
Because archetypes are not stereotypes. They are living psychological forces. When writers use archetypal character arcs, readers feel as though they are watching their own inner conflicts dramatized on the page.
How can writers use archetypal character arcs in their stories?
Writers can use arcs like the Maiden, Hero, Queen, King, Crone, or Mage as blueprints for character development. These journeys help ensure stories resonate with mythic power and emotional authenticity.
In Summary
At their core, all stories are myth. No matter the genre or style, narrative always springs from the archetypal blueprint of the psyche. Story is not simply a mirror of everyday life but a symbolic map of transformation—a dream we dream together. When writers embrace this mythic foundation, they create stories that not only entertain but initiate both writer and reader into deeper self-awareness and lasting change.
Key Takeaways
All stories are myth. Beneath plot and genre lies the archetypal blueprint of transformation.
Story is psyche. Every character and force reflects a facet of the self.
Archetypes are alive. They are not tropes but dynamic psychological energies.
If you’d like to put these insights into practice, explore my Archetypal Character Arc Worksheets—a series of six fillable, downloadable guides designed to help you chart mythic journeys for your characters. Each worksheet breaks down one of the six archetypal arcs—Maiden, Hero, Queen, King, Crone, and Mage–into structural beat sheets, reflective questions, and story prompts. Whether you’re writing epic fantasy or modern literary fiction, these tools will help you harness archetypal storytelling, deepen your characters, and unlock the mythic power within your narrative. Find the full set (including the discounted bundle) in my Etsy store.
Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! Do you see your own stories as mythic at their core? How do you think recognizing the archetypal foundation of storytelling might change the way you write? Tell me in the comments!
Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast in Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, or Spotify).
What if the key to finding your authentic voice as a writer lies in exploring someone else’s fictional world first? How can multi-passionate creators manage multiple brands without losing their sanity? KimBoo York reveals how fanfiction can be a powerful training ground for original fiction, and why being your “weird self” is more valuable than ever in an age of AI.
This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.
KimBoo York is the author of romance, fantasy and nonfiction, as well as a productivity coach and podcaster at The Author Alchemist. Her latest book is Out from Fanfic: Transforming Creative Freedom.
You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights, and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
What is fanfiction?
How to transition from writing fanfiction to original fiction by identifying the aspects you love
Managing multiple creative brands under one studio umbrella without losing your mind
The legal landscape of fanfiction
Why fanfiction has been an innovation hub for story trends
How AI and generative search create opportunities for cross-genre writers
Jo: KimBoo York is the author of romance, fantasy and nonfiction, as well as a productivity coach and podcaster at The Author Alchemist. Her latest book is Out from Fanfic: Transforming Creative Freedom. So welcome back to the show, KimBoo.
KimBoo: Hi, Jo. It’s great to be back. I love talking with you.
Jo: Yes, and we had a good chat last July 2024 when we talked about intuitive discovery writing. So we don’t need to go further back than that, but just give us an update.
What does your writing life and your business look like at the moment?
KimBoo: Well, I think I speak for everybody when I say that 2025 has been a challenging year. So I’ve had to take on a little bit more freelance work as I’ve restructured how I’m doing some of my business. You were an inspiration for that.
I’m kind of separating out my different brands now instead of trying to be one thing to all people, and that’s taking a little bit of work. I’ve launched a new pen name, which I’m not going to talk about here, but it seems to be doing well off the launchpad.
Then, of course, I’m redoing some of my older works, doing the business end. We’re doing new covers, doing some new links, doing some new giveaways. So it’s been a busy year and I look forward to what’s going to be happening in the future for me, especially as I go into 2026. So that’s kind of where I’m at right now.
Jo: Well that’s interesting. Just talk a bit about this separating different brands. Just remind us what are the different personas that you have and the different brands you’ve split into? I feel like a lot of people think about doing this, and I have done myself.
I’ve got my two author names and I felt that they were very different, so it was important to me, but I know how much work it is.
So talk a bit about that process of separating brands.
KimBoo: Well, I flopped back and forth, so for a long time I tried to keep everything very separate and that took so much work and energy, as you know. Then I tried to put everything under one banner, and that just became cluttered.
It became hard to identify my demographics, it became hard to do advertising. You can always do targeting in advertising, but with the more organic stuff, how do I post on social media? How do I talk about all my work?
So I am somebody who is a multiple project starter. I always have multiple things going on. So I have KimBoo York, me, myself, and I, who is the author and the writer, and I do fiction under that name.
I have Cooper West, which is one of my older pen names. That’s gay male romance, romantic thrillers, paranormal romance. I have The Author Alchemist, which is kind of my podcast and my craft writing and writing coaching brand.
I have The Task Mistress, which is my productivity brand. I just published a new book, a collection of essays on holistic productivity under that brand.
I have The Skeptic’s Inspirational, which is daily inspirational posts blog. That’s going to be a book here soon.
Patience & Fortitude, which is my grief blog and mourning blog and book, which is the house where I published my memoir “Grieving Futures: Surviving the Death of My Parents.” And I could go on, but you kind of see what I’m getting at there.
They’re very different things and I realized that what I needed was a studio type of branding. So HouseofYork.info is my studio home. House of York is my studio. It’s the thing that produces all of these different brands, and so I do still have that brand. Everything is a House of York production.
It sounds a little ostentatious when you put it like that, but for me mentally, it’s a great way to keep things separate and yet connected. So they’re all me, they’re all connected, and I can talk about different ones in different places, but they’re also very clearly defined for marketing purposes. So that’s what I really wanted out of that whole thing.
Jo: Yes, it is really hard.
But you don’t have different email lists for all of those things though?
KimBoo: No, I do not. Right now I just have the House of York email list. I’m moving into segmenting them. So I will have some different email lists going down the line, and certainly my newest pen name, the secret one, is going to have its own separate email list.
So eventually, yes, there will be separate email lists, but I’m working on developing a way where I’m not having to do six email lists a week. Cycling is important, right? Planning things out, scheduling. Who would have thought? So I will eventually, and that is the goal, is to have these different segmented lists.
I would also be able to do a full blast to everybody if I had something special coming out that I wanted all my lists to know. So again, that’s one of the reasons why I went with this studio framework of doing all of my brands and putting everything under one umbrella while keeping them branded separately.
Jo: No, I like that. I mean, I often have thought about this, because I have the two main websites—well actually now I have three. The Creative Penn, J.F. Penn, and Books and Travel. And so they’re my main websites. Then I have my Shopify stores and then I have YouTube channels.
I have often thought, oh my goodness, I should have one landing page where I can send people to. Then I thought, well, who do I send to one landing page, because I actually have different people do different things.
I guess this is great to start on actually, because I feel like you are a multi-passionate creator, and so am I.
We have long careers and it’s like, well, you can’t just stay in your lane.
You know, I feel like some people say, “Oh no, you should just stay in your lane.” And we are like, well, it’s not actually possible.
KimBoo: No, no. I’m a seven-lane highway. I can’t.
Jo: Well, it’s interesting though, because it’s not a seven-lane highway. It’s actually like three A-roads, we call them here, like three major roads and then there’s some little back lanes, and then you might have one that’s a bit of a cul-de-sac.
KimBoo: Sadly far more accurate. Yes.
Jo: But I think that’s important too. I mean, I was actually looking at your grief one and the death of your parents, and I mean, that’s like a whole completely different area that perhaps is almost standalone.
Different people may find that book than find your romance or your productivity or whatever, and that’s fine. They don’t need to find anything else. So I think that’s really good too. It’s having all these different things.
So just to make people listening feel better if you are a multi-passionate creator, so are we. You just have to manage it, right?
KimBoo: Figure out what works for you, but you’ve got to just try different things until you land on the system that works. I think that’s the lesson takeaway here.
Jo: Yes. Or the way it works right now, and then you change things. In fact, let’s get into the book because this is another one of these kind of quite random books to be fair, which is Out from Fanfic. I’m fascinated by this because obviously I’ve heard of fanfiction, but it’s not a sort of world I am in at all. So just start by explaining—
What is fanfic? And what are the main sites?
KimBoo: Sure. So I’m going to start actually with the Wikipedia definition, which is “fiction typically written in an amateur capacity by fans as a form of fan labor, unauthorized by, but based on an existing work of fiction.” And honestly, that is the basis for a thousand different arguments about what exactly fan fiction is.
It became very trendy there for a little while to look back and say Dante’s Inferno, that’s fan fiction. Bible fan fiction. Right? What is fan fiction? It’s one of those, well, you kind of know it when you see it type of things, right?
I consider it to be the interaction of a creative person, whether it’s writing, drawing, painting, creating videos with a property or fiction, a story that they love. It’s them engaging with it on a personal level.
So that’s really what fanfiction is. It’s a hobby. It’s the same kind of hobby as building Lego houses or model trains. You’re taking something that exists and creating your own work, I guess is the word I would use, but creating your own world out of it.
So it’s fun. That’s the bottom line for me is writing fanfiction and reading fanfiction is fun.
Jo: So, yes, it’s fun. Let’s just be clear, you mentioned the word property and that it is fan labor, and it’s unauthorized. Right up front we have to say, this is when it’s not your character. So it might be, I don’t know—
Give me some examples of what people have done.
KimBoo: Okay. So take any show. Supernatural, Teen Wolf, Game of Thrones, movies. The Avengers, that was one I was in for a long time. It’s currently in a lot of Chinese dramas like Nirvana in Fire and The Untamed.
You take those characters and that setting and you write your own version of it. Say, a cut scene or a post scene, or you change some of the canon facts of the story and you say, well, what if this person hadn’t died? Or what if these people had met earlier?
Or what if this one character had left when they were young and then come back 20 years later? And you just add in these elements and have fun with taking it in a new direction. But as you said, they aren’t yours. They aren’t your characters.
It’s not your setting, it’s not your story. You don’t own that, in the sense you own your own writing. Of course, you always own your own writing in a creative sense, but in a legal sense, you do not own it. That’s something people really need to be aware of.
If they’re interested in fanfiction, if they’re going to explore it, if they’re going to use it as a writing tool, you can, but you can’t officially publish. You can’t publish and make money off of this.
This is definitely hobby level stuff, which I don’t say to denigrate. I’ve read some amazing fan fiction that’s truly life transforming, how beautifully and amazingly well done it was. But it’s hobby. You can’t publish it. You can’t do anything with it legally.
Jo: I guess you can publish on a website.
So what are the places that people are publishing their fanfic on?
KimBoo: So they are posting it. The oldest site right now is fanfiction.net. It’s still around, it still looks like it did in like 1998. Truly, I don’t know how people use it.
The one that most people are familiar with is called ArchiveOfOurOwn.org. It is a project of the non-profit organization, Organization for Transformative Works that was started 2008, 2009, I think, for the express purpose of having a place for fanfiction to exist.
They’ve done a lot of work on the legal end to protect people’s rights to write and post fanfiction online. I try to draw the line between saying that they publish fanfiction and they post it for that reason.
That’s just a me thing. I don’t think that that’s really widespread in fandom, but for me mentally when I’m talking about it, you post your fanfiction to AO3, as it’s known colloquially, and you share it and people can read it and comment on it and like it. It’s a great site.
Their tagging system is truly a thing of beauty, but again, it’s not publishing in the sense of you’re publishing a book, you’re publishing something.
There is fanfiction on Wattpad, but they’ve fought against it. They’ve taken down fanfiction in the past. They do allow it, it’s kind of under the table on Wattpad, but there is a lot of fanfiction on Wattpad.
I think, going back a ways, the One Direction fandom really had its moment on Wattpad. That was a long time ago, but there’s still people posting fanfiction on Wattpad. A lot of times people cross post, they post on Wattpad and they post on AO3. So it just depends on where you want to put your work.
Jo: Okay. A few things here. So it would be obvious to me, like if it’s, I don’t know, Captain Kirk from Star Trek.
KimBoo: Oh, classic.
A classic. You know, and a very obvious modern character. But think about Thor for example. So Thor obviously being Norse God, none of that is under copyright, as in anyone can write a Thor story. But then there’s Thor, the movies and the things that are Thor-like in that are movie-based as opposed to the original base.
So how does that kind of work? Like how do you know? Especially when in people’s minds, sometimes things might get mixed up. You know, you might mention Ragnarok now. Ragnarok is in all the ancient stories, but the way they did it in whatever Avengers movie or whatever it might be is specific.
So are there lines here that people need to watch out for?
KimBoo: I would say these days, yes. There’s a little bit of a line you need to watch out for. I mean, if your story’s about Thor being a member of the Avengers, then obviously it’s like, yes. But if it’s just an independent story about Thor and his brother Loki, or Loki himself, there are definitely tells to use to be able to differentiate.
Now, to be clear, on sites like AO3 and Fanfiction.net and Wattpad, people do identify. They say like Thor MCU, which is Marvel Cinematic Universe, which tips you off, or Thor mythology, right? So then, oh, this is based on the Thor lore of the old style myths rather than the new style myths, I guess you might say.
So there are definitely ways to identify that and I think a lot of fan fiction writers take care to make sure of that because you don’t want somebody coming into old school Thor and Loki mythology, thinking that they’re getting the fun Avengers good time, “let’s beat up the bad guy” story, because they’ll just get mad.
They’re like, “Hey, this wasn’t what I wanted to read.” So fanfiction writers are very careful about identifying exactly what they’re writing for and how they’re writing for it.
Oftentimes, yes, you wrote a riff on Little Red Riding Hood. Well, you know, okay. That’s definitely in the public domain. They can post that on AO3. They can also publish that as their own original story because that is public domain that is not owned by somebody. So fanfiction authors are usually generally pretty careful about that.
Jo: Yes. I guess why I am emphasizing all this is because I still feel like many authors don’t really understand what is in the public domain, what is fair use under copyright. Also, it differs. So there are some countries where copyright expires earlier.
I think, is Sherlock Holmes one of these where it’s sort of—don’t quote me on this, people go check it in your country—but it’s like some of the Sherlock Holmes stories might be out of copyright and others are still within.
I think Tolkien’s Universe as well. There’s like different ways that things have been extended when they haven’t in other areas. So I think this is really interesting and you definitely have to check all this before you publish it.
I did have another question. I mean, you mentioned the One Direction thing. Is this just all about having sex with different characters?
Is it all romance and erotica?
KimBoo: It is not, and in fact, gen—general fiction—is one of the most popular tags on AO3. Romance is very popular. They want the characters, their favorite characters to kiss, right? That is a very popular element of fan fiction, but it’s absolutely not what it all is. It’s not all written by 14-year-old girls. That’s another stereotype that comes out.
In fact, if you go back in history, I would say the modern fan fiction era—and a lot of academics would agree with me—began with the Kirk/Spock fandom right out of Star Trek and that like those women were full grown women because this was the late sixties and the seventies. There was no internet.
If you wanted to share your stories, you had to have access to a Xerox machine. Remember Xerox machines, right? You had to have access to a Xerox machine or a mimeograph machine, and then you had to have access to the postage that would be required to mail these magazines out.
So like you couldn’t be a 14-year-old girl and write fan fiction in that era. So it’s always been, I would say, owned by older writers, and not teenagers, as the stereotype goes.
Yes, a lot of the fiction out there is romantic. Some of it’s erotic, but a lot of it is also just general. I was just looking… what was I looking at the other day? Game of Thrones fan fiction. You look at Game of Thrones fan fiction and there’s lots of different pairings that are popular in that. The “Time Travel Fix-It” tag is very popular in that fandom.
Jo: So people are trying to avoid the final series.
KimBoo: Exactly. Like they either want to avoid season eight, six through eight completely, or they just want to redo it, or they want to have something different. So they have one of the characters time travel, you know, the gods step in, whatever, and go back and fix everything.
It’s really popular in The Untamed fandom as well, the “Time Travel Fix-It” tag. So it’s not just about the romance. I have a current Untamed fan fiction in progress right now actually, and it’s very alternative universe. I wanted to see what would happen if one of the main characters was actually given some autonomy and power earlier in her life.
I just wanted to see what would happen if that happened to her and how that would change all the threads of the story going forward. And is there some romance? Yes, there’s some romance. There’s also a war. There’s also magic and killer slaughter turtles. It’s just fun.
Jo: Yes. I think fun is definitely the focus here.
So coming back on the IP side, there are books—like 50 Shades of Gray is supposedly based on, I think, was it Twilight fan fiction? Not supposedly, very much absolutely.
KimBoo: Yes. Yes, it was. It was based on Twilight fanfiction.
Jo: So how did that become a publishable original novel that was basically huge?
KimBoo: So what you’re talking about is what we call in the scene “filing off the serial numbers.” And a lot of authors have done this. E.L. James is not the only one. Cassandra Clare’s done it. Naomi Novik’s done it. Plenty of authors who don’t want to be named have done it. And many I’ve known.
You take a fan fiction of yours that’s very popular or that you just personally like, and you go and you file off the serial numbers. You don’t just change the names. You change the setting, you change some of the dynamics, you change some of the character traits of the main characters.
You have to really file it down enough that if someone was coming after you to say, you based this on our story, versus you stole our story. That’s really where the line has to be drawn. Again, it’s not a clear one, but if you do it enough, you can get away with it. So that’s what E.L. James did.
If you did not know that it was Twilight fan fiction, you would never realize it was Twilight fan fiction. Even if you’ve read Twilight, like most people, they might say, gosh, these characters are kind of similar, but oh, that’s just tropes, right. So exactly. That’s what she did, and that’s what a lot of authors do.
Jo: Yes. So the tropes, I mean, tropes are kind of universal, right? As you said, I mean, the time slip, go back in time and fix things. I mean that could go in any world. It doesn’t have to go in a Game of Thrones world, you know?
I never read the Twilight books or watched the movies, but I have read 50 Shades of Gray. It is obviously it’s set in a modern world. There are no vampires, there’s no werewolves. So a lot of it is different. So I feel like that’s important as well.
So let’s come back to you because I was really interested in the book you wrote. In talking about your own experience in fan fiction, you say, “My sense of shame was very real,” and I was really interested in that because I don’t know you very well, but having talked to you before, I just can’t associate that with you.
You seem very confident. So explain about that.
Why are some people embarrassed or even ashamed of being involved in fan fiction?
KimBoo: Well, you’ve kind of hit on some of the reasons earlier when you asked is it all romance and erotica? And I talked about also it’s not all written by 14-year-old girls. For a very long time, these associations with fan fiction was that it was very similar to romance genre, honestly, not that different.
“Oh, that’s something women enjoy.” “That’s what those horny lonely women in their basements are writing.” You know, “sexy fan fiction,” and “it’s not real,” and “it doesn’t take any effort.”
“It doesn’t take any work. It’s just fake people. They’re riding on the coattails of other people’s work.”
So there was a lot of shame. I mean, there were a couple of people even up into the nineties that—you know, I won’t give out names or anything—but whose careers were almost derailed or completely derailed because it was revealed that they had written fan fiction in the past. Publishers wouldn’t touch them. It was a bad scene all the way around.
It’s hilarious because one of the oldest forms of fan fiction that we have these days is what’s called Sherlock Holmes Pastiches, and Sherlock Holmes Pastiches started appearing in the 1800s, like they started appearing not long after Sherlock Holmes stories were printed by Arthur Conan Doyle.
They were very popular up through the twenties and the thirties, right? They were all written by very educated men. And they weren’t called fan fiction, they were called Pastiches. So those were okay. Those were fine.
Then you get up into the sixties and the seventies and you have women writing Star Trek fan fiction. Yes. A lot of it was Kirk/Spock, and some of it was truly terrible, but again, I’ve read some truly terrible books published by traditional publishers, so I’m not really sure that’s a fan fiction only problem.
You get a lot of new writers coming into fan fiction, so there is a lot of bad writing out there.
I’ll just be upfront about it, and you can see it right away. You’re like, “ooh, that’s not good,” but a lot of these people are writing for the first time.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read an author’s note at the start of a fic that’s like, “This is the first time I’ve tried to write anything, but I was just so inspired. I wanted to do it.” To me that’s beautiful. That’s amazing. That is wonderful.
Even if the work itself is very clearly the first thing they’ve ever written, you’re like, “Hey, you’ve started on an amazing journey,” and that’s the beautiful part.
But the shame, the shame that’s been associated with it. Like when I was first thinking about getting published in the nineties—because I don’t know if anybody’s listening, but I’m an old person—I realized that I would never be able to admit to having written fan fiction when I was younger. I was a Kirk/Spock girl in the eighties. I totally wrote that.
Jo: I’ve got to ask on this. Is this a gay romance thing with Kirk and Spock?
KimBoo: Yes.
Jo: Okay. Right. Yes. I’m checking, yes.
KimBoo: I assume everybody knows that. Yes. No, Kirks/Spock was one of the first, we call them “ships”. It’s slang for relationship that grew out of, I think, X-Files fanfiction in the nineties.
The Kirk/Spock ship is one of the big motherships of fandom. If you go on AO3 and look up how many stories are tagged “Kirk/Spock”, there’s a lot. There’s a lot.
Jo: What about the mixed race? Because wasn’t it the first kiss on screen with Uhura and Kirk? Was it those two that had a Black and a white actor?
KimBoo: Well, first interracial kiss.
Jo: Interracial kiss. Yes. That’s the right terminology. I was like, what is the terminology here? But that kind of thing. Often this kind of fun writing can also push more boundaries.
We’ve seen so many things come out of indie that would never have started in traditional publishing.
I mean you, well, you think about romance, there’s no way traditional publishing would have started this romance trend. It is so big now, and they sucked up all the big ones, haven’t they? So, yes. Interesting.
KimBoo: Reverse harem or “why choose”, I think is what they call it these days, that pretty much came out of the One Direction fandom.
Jo: Of course. That makes sense.
KimBoo: Yes. The Omegaverse, I don’t know if you’re familiar with Omegaverse.
Jo: Some. Okay.
Kimboo: You know what, we don’t have two hours, so I won’t explain it, but look it up. Omegaverse came out of the Supernatural fandom. A lot of people don’t know that they read Omegaverse now.
The gay male, the MM Romance publishing industry, which really got started when indies came on the scene, right? 2008, 2010. Almost all of those authors, you go back to 2010, the MM big names, they all came out of fandom.
One of the brilliant things about writing fan fiction and being in fan fiction is that you can see some of these trends coming. Like I knew reverse harem was going to be big. I knew Omegaverse was going to be big.
I knew romantasy was going to be big long before anything hit because it was being so popularized in fan fiction because in fan fiction you don’t have to worry about whether it’s going to make you money. All you’re doing is you’re having fun, you’re trying out new ideas, you’re throwing things at the wall, you’re seeing what’s interesting.
You’re coming up with new ideas and new stuff, and sometimes it clicks and takes off. You have that freedom as a fan fiction writer because you’re not worried about how much money is this going to be? And is this on market? And is this a niche? None of that concern is there. You’re just writing because you want to write.
Jo: Yes, and it feels like you’re part of a group, you know, if you love the same thing as other people love. Then as you say, it’s part of the fandom for whatever that property is. I mean, your book is called Out from Fanfic, so it’s kind of turning from writing fanfiction into more professional writing, I guess.
I mean, one of the things I was thinking is, of course there are a lot of writers who are commissioned to write within these universes.
So do those sort of companies recruit from fanfiction?
KimBoo: They do now. It was less common in the eighties, like when you had the Star Trek novels really taking off. And in the nineties when you had the Star Wars novels taking off, they still went with a lot of traditional publishers, even though the workhorses of the pulp fiction genres these days, it is a lot more popular and it’s a lot more.
A lot of traditional publishers are looking to popular fan fiction authors to mine for the next big thing. There was a dust up recently. There were three Harry Potter fanfics, Dramione. That’s a ship, that’s a portmanteau of Hermione and Draco. So Hermione and Draco as a couple is actually incredibly popular in fandom.
There were three very, very popular fan fictions that are Dramione fanfic that have recently been taken and filed off—although they didn’t do a good job filing off the serial numbers, everybody knew it right away—and then started being promoted.
They actually used Harry Potter references in their marketing, which of course, the Harry Potter people were just like, “You got to stop that right now, like you stop it.” But the reason the publishers published this is because some of these stories had a million, 2 million readers online.
So they knew this is a popular story. They could file off the serial numbers and make some money off of it. So yes, nowadays it’s a lot more common for traditional publishers and agents to look at fan fiction authors who are very popular, who have a following, and who’ve done a lot of writing. So it is more common these days for sure.
Jo: And then I guess your other thoughts on Out from Fanfic, like for your own journey, it sounds like you are still doing a bit of both, as in you still write some fanfic.
How do people cross over if they’re like, “No, I want to write my own”?
Is it just mainly a case of your own characters? And your own world, I guess?
KimBoo: Absolutely, so it’s easier for some people than for others. I actually wrote the book because I did know quite a few authors who tried to write their own original fiction, and what I noticed in a lot of those cases is that they tried so hard that they went so far out of their lane that they weren’t interested in their stories anymore.
They’re like, “Oh, I just, I get bored by my own writing. I just want to go back and write fanfiction.” And I think, and the whole reason that I wrote the book is to try to help people who are used to writing about characters that they love and writing about settings that they love learn what those things are.
Like dial it down, figure out—well, I call them parameters—like figure out what the parameters are of those characters. You know? Do you just like wacky klutzy characters who are also geniuses? Well, that’s more of a trope that you can put that in any story. It doesn’t have to be Stiles Stilinski from Teen Wolf.
A lot of different things that you love, you can pull into your own writing out of your fan fiction without repurposing your fan fiction, without using other people’s characters.
Learn what you love of those things and use them, because it is a transition. It is definitely not super easy to transition to writing original fiction if all you’ve ever done really is written fan fiction.
I, of course, had a little bit of a lift up because I had been writing original fiction for most of my life. So I was already familiar with some elements of it. I did learn a lot writing fan fiction. In fact, I think I wrote over 1 million words of fan fiction before I think I really found my voice as an author and realized what I really want to write.
So it can be a learning ground if you look at it that way. I also don’t want to take the fun out of it. I don’t want to say, “Oh, you should use this as a training grounds,” but you can, if your goal is to write original fiction and you find that challenging.
Jo: Yes, I think that’s really interesting. I was reflecting then, I mean, I have thought before, I would love to write a Bond book. Which, I think they’ve all been men who’ve written the Bond books. Obviously there’s lots of them written in more modern times.
It’s really interesting because then I think, well, my thriller, my ARKANE series, you could definitely trace a lot of Bond kind of tropes, a lot of Indiana Jones and Lara Croft tropes.
You say it is taking the things that you love about the movies and the books and the TV shows and then picking them out and then creating your own stories where there is still elements like that. I mean, those are not the original things.
It’s how you turn that into your own work, but it’s skating that line, isn’t it?
That remains difficult.
KimBoo: Right, and as we talked about a little bit earlier, tropes are more universal. So if you can kind of dial, like you said, the Indiana Jones, Lara Croft—well, what is that trope or the mummy? Like, oh, it’s the archaeologist going on adventure and running into and finding cursed things and finding cursed items.
That’s a trope, but if you’re not looking for it, you could just say, well, I just like writing in Indiana Jones. I don’t know how I’m going to write my own original story, but if you sit back and look at it like, okay, what is it about Indiana Jones or what is it about Kirk?
Or what is it about Wei Wuxian from The Untamed that I love? What is that? Can I pull on that? Can I introduce it into my own characters and my own stories?
Jo: That’s cool. Then in the book, you have a brief section about how things have changed for indies over the last few years.
Obviously I always have to talk about AI, and you said, quote from the book, “What is the point of churning out repetitive stories written to market when an AI program can do it faster, better, cheaper?”
“What does it mean to be a human creator of anything?”
I love that because then you give people hope and you talk about how this is actually ideal terrain. That’s your words for you. So talk about this. Because I get people emailing me all the time saying, “what is the point?” So respond to that.
KimBoo: What is the point? What is the point of anything? Okay. No, but I think there’s so many moving parts, and Joanna, you talk so well about how AI is impacting our industry, but for me personally, it’s opened the door to allowing me to write what I really want to write and allowing me to put my own humanity into the writing.
This isn’t true for everybody, but for me, trying to write to market, trying to write to narrow down and stay in your lane, as we talked about earlier, felt like trying to turn myself into a machine. I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to.
I tried and I tried and I failed abysmally over and over and over again. So the humanity is what we own as humans. Our experiences, our insights.
AI, and specifically LLMs—because I like to be specific when we’re talking about that specifically LLMs—the training that they’ve done has been so broad and across so many genres and across so many types of writing and so many eras of writing that it’s very generic.
Even at the point where you say you can push a button and have it write a book— which we’re definitely not there yet as anyone who’s played around with LLMs knows for sure. It’s going to be median, it’s going to be average, right? Because that’s what AI is really all about.
Taking our own spark of creativity and ingenuity and allowing ourselves to grow into that rather than being worried about churning out the next pulp fiction, I think is an opportunity.
Now, some people who’ve made a lot of money churning out a lot of these books see it as a threat and I understand that, but things change.
Things change in our industry all the time now.
Like we had a hundred and fifty, two hundred, three hundred years of things not changing at all. Then we had self-publishinga, nd indies changed everything. eBooks changed everything. AI is changing everything.
If we invest in ourselves as authors and writers, as creators, as people with creativity, I think it is an ideal terrain because then we can explore the things we love to write.
It’s one of the reasons why I think that cross genre books such as Cozy Fantasy or romantic contemporary can start to bubble up is because people feel more confident that they can reach the readers they want and that they don’t have to try to fit their round peg into a square hole type of situation.
So that’s my thoughts on it. I mean, I know other people have different opinions, but that’s where I’m at.
Jo: I actually think this is a better time for, coming back to where we started, around the sort of multi-passionate creator. For many years it’s been, well, if you write cross genre—which I do—if you write all over the place, if you don’t do series, if you write standalones, if you do this, that and the other, you are not going to make good money.
Many of us have made good money like that, but we’ve certainly felt like, oh, well I should do this. I should go into this one genre, or I should try not to write. Like I’ve got three books in my Brooke and Daniel series, and when I wrote them, I was trying to write a standard British crime and ended up with a male psychic character.
I was like, why isn’t this selling? And I figured out over time that the British crime niche is not supernatural when it certainly doesn’t have a male psychic in. So it’s so funny because I love those books and I’ve always been like, why? Why can’t the people who love this type of thing find these books?
I actually think they have more chance in a world of generative search, for example, where people can get much more granular.
They’re like, “Well, I like this, I like this and this and this and this, and this. Find me something that I might like.” So I feel like that is much going to be much easier for our work to be surfaced than someone who just has one category on Amazon, for example, that they buy in.
KimBoo: Absolutely. I think one of the more hilarious examples of that is the search I did recently for Supernatural Cozy Apocalypse. A cozy apocalypse. That is a nice one, right?
There were books that came up in that search and I was just like, “Oh, this is cool,” because I wanted something that was like the end of the world, but also people coming together and found family and maybe a little supernatural. Like, dragons are coming up out of the earth because of climate change.
I found the book Apocalypse Cow. It’s about a cow at the end of the world, and it’s fun. These are great for us cross genre writers, which I’m leaning into more.
I think my serial Dragon’s Grail is in a lot of ways still very much the epic fantasy Second World type of thing, ut I’m looking at it and it doesn’t really fit into epic fantasy, it doesn’t really fit into romantasy. It doesn’t really fit in.
So I’m having to think of different ways of building up that explanation of it because it is kind of intrinsically cross genre and it’s going to be a challenge, but I think it’s a great challenge to have in this day and age.
As you said, generative search is really going to be a game changer. I don’t think people are ready for how much that’s going to change everything.
Jo: Probably for the last year now, I used ChatGPT to find books. I just find it so much better. I’m like, “Here’s a list of things that I really like. Go find me some books.” I just think it’s so cool to find much more weird stuff that just would not have been surfaced otherwise.
I guess where I’m going with this too is, and what I say to people is—
You need to be your weird self.
KimBoo: Well said. All of what I just said, that was what I meant to say.
Jo: Be your weird self. I can see that with your work across different things, like I bring up your parents’ grief book again. I mean, a lot of people might not have expected a book like that alongside someone who also writes about productivity and this fanfic stuff.
So that breadth of humanity is, I think, what people who might come in one of your books and then they’re like, oh, this person has a whole load of stuff that brings more depth is just a different side of them. I think this being the full human that you are is so important coming into this sort of new world.
KimBoo: I agree, especially coming out of the world where you were supposed to be just one thing, and do that one thing, and be there for only one thing. For me as a reader, I love seeing what other writers are working on.
I love seeing a writer whose romance novels I really love and they’re branching into, you know, space opera. I’m like, I’m all about it. Like I love to read that. It’s more about what I enjoy reading in the author’s own take on those stories less than, “oh, this is space opera genre and that’s all I read.”
I don’t think readers are like that. Some are, you got your whale readers who never leave their niche, but I think a lot of us, we like a lot of different things. I think this is a great time for authors to be able to expand and take advantage of that.
Jo: Absolutely, and maybe realize that, sure—
You might not hit it out the park with every book, but then who ever did?
KimBoo: Like, I know there’s readers out there who love your psychic British crime stories. Absolutely. I don’t have a doubt.
Jo: Well the, what’s so funny is they get the best reviews of all my books. They get the best reviews. It’s just the number of people who actually like that kind of book are quite few and far between. But hey, I didn’t know that when I started writing them.
I am writing this book about gothic cathedrals at the moment. Nobody asked for that.
KimBoo: They didn’t, but I am certainly looking forward to it because I love gothic architecture and so I’m excited about that.
Jo: Oh, fantastic. Well, this is the thing, and I think we need to keep that in mind. So I guess as we close, write what you want to write and hopefully in this new world with AI search people, more people will find us.
KimBoo: The dream.
Jo: The dream. Happy times.
So where can people find you and your books online?
KimBoo: Okay, well I suggest that people go to my main hub studio website, which is HouseofYork.info, and that’s all one word, HouseofYork.info.
That has links to all my sub-brands, including KimBoo York and Cooper West and Patience & Fortitude, the one about grief and mourning where they can read my dog’s obituary as I just lost my pet. I’d love people to love my dog as much as I do.
So go check that out. HouseofYork.info, you can find everything there. If you want to reach out to me, I’d love to hear from people.
Jo: Great. Well thanks so much for your time, KimBoo.
KimBoo: Thank you so much, Jo. It’s been a pleasure as always.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability while maintaining the authentic conversational tone of the original interview.
Hello everyone. I’m Jo Frances (J.F.) Penn, award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author, and this is my new short story collection, The Buried and the Drowned. Watch the video below or here on YouTube. .
I’ve been writing short stories for more than a decade and this is the first time many of them have been in print, and there are two new stories for this collection, so if you love dark short stories with a hint of the supernatural, here’s a glimpse into the characters you will find inside:
A doubting priest seeks God in the far reaches of Iceland
A burned-out coder dives for escape in the depths of the ocean
A scientist’s daughter unearths her father’s darkest secret
A war photographer chooses sight over sanity
A Vatican librarian discovers a hidden tomb under Paris
An ambitious glassblower makes a deadly choice
An underwater archaeologist gets lost in a sunken Egyptian city
A musician awakens something ancient … and hungry
A scientist unravels the DNA of a biblical nightmare
A brother chooses bloody transformation over his twin
An archaeologist discovers an impossible relic at Seahenge
You can get the collection through the Kickstarter in this exclusive signed hardback edition — with green foil on the dust jacket and interior covers, ribbon, custom end papers and sprayed edges, as well as photos from my research trips.
You can also get the paperback, and there’s a large-print edition, which, as you can see is a bigger edition with a bigger font size.
You can also get the ebook and the audiobook read by human me, months earlier than you’ll be able to get them on the other stores, and there are bundle editions of my other books in different formats as well, including all my series books and my previous special edition Kickstarter hardbacks.
If you’re a writer, you can also join me for a webinar on writing short stories, or there are a limited number of consulting sessions available.
Thanks for listening, and I hope you’ll join me for The Buried and the Drowned — www.JFPenn.com/buried
How do you know when an idea should become a poem or a short story instead of a longer work? How can indie authors publish and market poetry and short fiction in today’s market? Joanna Penn and Orna Ross explore the creative processes, and the business behind writing short-form work, and discuss why being authentically human matters more than ever in our AI-driven world.
Today’s show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started.
J.F. Penn is the Award winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers, dark fantasy, crime, horror, and travel memoir. Her short story collection, The Buried and the Drowned, is out now.
Jo: Today we are going to be talking about what we’ve both been working on recently. Actually, we’ve got a lot of craft-related discussion going on today as we talk about writing, publishing and marketing poetry and short fiction.
There are writing craft things in today’s show and also business aspects. I had this idea about this show because Orna, you shared a poem written about your mom’s death on your Go Creative podcast, and I did tear up and I’m sure a lot of people listening would’ve teared up too, and it must have been really hard to write. So I wanted to ask you —
Why did you decide to write a poem about this really difficult topic, and how do you know when something should be a poem as opposed to something longer?
Orna: So poems pick me rather than me deciding. I don’t actually, with longer work, I will make a decision. I’m going to do a book on such and such, but poems kind of come along or they don’t.
And so this one arrived and that’s why I decided to do it. In terms of why I decided to share it, which is a relatively new thing for me to do, and certainly new to do on the Go Creative podcast, something I am going to be doing going forward and share the poetry. I’m challenging myself at the moment to kind of go out there more and share those things.
Typically I would have just shared that with my poetry patrons. I wouldn’t have gone any further with it. So now I’m trying to just be more human in the world of AI as you and I talk about a lot, that whole double down on being human thing. Well, you know, reading a poem that you’ve written yourself is probably about as human as it gets and that’s why I decided to share it.
Then in terms of how do you know whether something’s a poem or something longer for me, and again, I think it’s really personal for each different writer, but for me —
Lyrical poems are short and just a single flash of feeling and image coming together for concentrated emotion.
If I can sense the whole experience in just one vivid moment kind of thing, that’s a poem for me rather than an essay or a story.
So there’d be an image and there’d be a feeling, rather than, there may be an idea as well, but the image and the feeling are the main thing. If plots start coming in or characters, memory, side stories, anything like that, then it’s a bigger thing, much bigger thing. Usually for me, novels and all. But one scene, one beat. That’s poetry.
Jo: And you mentioned there about the doubling down of being human. And of course this poem about the death of your mother —
You can’t get much more human than a poem about the death of your mother.
I mean, AI could generate something, but that is a human experience, right?
Orna: Yes, 100%. And I believe that this is a personal belief of mine as a writer, is one of my sort of writing credo. That the feeling and emotion and experiences that you’re having while you’re writing a poem that opens you out, that in some way that is conveyed to the reader who then experiences.
Not exactly the same. They’re going to bring their own stuff to it, but they’re going to have a sense of that humanity in the poem. I do feel that is something that can’t be replicated. Very hard to describe, very hard to explain where it, where it comes, where you see it in the text, but I believe it’s there.
But yeah, short stories are similar. You’ve been writing short stories recently and —
How do you know when an idea is a short story or a longer story or a novel?
Jo: I normally have like a story seed and I guess I have story seeds for novels as well. And I want to explore that.
But usually there has to be some kind of twist. So when I was growing up, I mean, I still read them sometimes, Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected, which I loved. And if people have an idea of Roald Dahl, I know in some ways he has been critiqued these days, but pretty dark children’s writing as well.
But the Tales of the Unexpected are adult short stories. So I like having this sort of surprising or disturbing or unexpected sense about it. I do feel like you can explore different subgenres a lot more than novels. So my novels tend to be action adventure or straight thriller or supernatural thriller.
And then with my short stories, I get into all kinds of different things. So I’ve got some techno thrillers. I do a lot of archaeology. I like to research a lot, but my short stories do have these sort of themes and archaeology is certainly one of them.
So I think if I don’t want to turn it into something bigger, I definitely think every short story could be turned into some kind of novel. But I don’t necessarily want to do that.
I just finished a short story, it’s called Between Two Breaths, and it stems from an experience I had scuba diving in the Poor Knights Islands in New Zealand almost 25 years ago, and I haven’t actually written about it.
Funnily enough, I had written a poem back then I found, it’s dated 2005, so I guess that’s 20 years ago. And I’m actually going to put that in the edition in my collection to go with that short story. But it’s an experience I had that I wanted to encapsulate in something short that leaves the reader with questions.
And actually, as we’re talking, I’m wondering if that’s the difference because with my novels, as a reader, I hate a cliffhanger at the end of a novel. I want things to be wrapped up. And thrillers are, even if they’re in a series, are usually completely wrapped up. So they are, they’re not like fantasy where you might have seven books and there’s cliffhangers on every one.
My short stories leave you with a question and I find that that’s really important.
A bit like the Roald Dahl stories, you can still be thinking about them later because they haven’t necessarily ended. So yeah, I guess that’s the difference.
And it’s interesting because you said that the poem stems from emotion, whereas I feel like the short story, it does start with either a character or a place.
So, for example, I went, when I went up to Ely Cathedral, it sort of sparked this idea about the area being drowned and this place called Seahenge, which kind of emerged from the waters, this prehistoric wooden circle.
And I was like, I have to write a story about that. So that, I think that’s kind of the difference, the emotion versus a place or a character. I don’t know. What do you think?
Orna: Yeah, I think that speaks to me though. Of course you can have character and place in poetry. You have to have it in story in narrative forms, but in poetry you can have narrative elements as well.
Poetry can be everything, and I think it very much depends on what kind of poet you are. Just as you know what you said there about your novels are wrapped up and your short stories can be, have a much more open ending for another writer, might be the other way around. And it’s very much, I often feel —
The forms that we write in, they choose us.
And we’ve discussed this before in terms of the fact that writing across genre and across the big macro genre of fiction and nonfiction. And then I do poetry as well. I mean, you wouldn’t choose that if you were just operating from choice, would you? And in similar ways, I think the forms that we use, they kind of choose us a bit, don’t they?
Jo: Yeah. And also for me, the short story, I’m a discovery writer. As I’ve talked about before, I don’t necessarily know what the twist is going to be or what ending I will leave with. So, although I say that, that Between Two Breaths, I absolutely knew how it would end. I actually started with the end and then, because that’s the experience I had, and I wanted to communicate that feeling.
Whereas Seahenge, I didn’t know how it was going to end. I just knew that I wanted to have the emergence of this prehistoric circle, and it had this upturned tree in the middle and in the roots. Something was there like an ancient sacrifice. I love ancient sacrifice, as you know!
So I was like, well, what, what is it? What could that be? And that question of what could that be? I didn’t necessarily know. And that’s, you know, it eventually came to it.
I think there’s a lot of fun in the creativity of short stories because it’s so much shorter.
And actually, I was going to ask you about this. So for me, writing a short story, it is a short process compared to a novel because normally I write between, let’s say 5,000 and 10,000 words. I know the word count so you know, it literally just doesn’t take so long. It could take a couple of weeks, but it doesn’t take forever. Whereas a novel, you know, a lot more words.
But how about you? Because I feel like a poem can actually take a lot longer. So tell us about the process for writing a poem. Do you start with loads of words and edit or build up from a line? Like what is the process?
Orna: Yeah, so just on the thing of brevity and short. Short is one of the major reasons that I write poetry because novels and nonfiction for me take a very long time and —
Almost all the poems that I have published, I write and publish them pretty quickly.
Actually, I have just one big epic I’ve been writing for a long time, a long poetry sequence about women and writing and a tradition, the writing tradition if you like.
So it’s a huge theme and that one is taking a long time. But generally speaking, the fact that I can start and finish a poem sometimes in a day is just brilliant for me and it keeps me. I think I can keep on with these big fiction projects and things because I get the satisfaction of putting poetry together in between.
So, not every poem is done in a day, not by any means. Sometimes they take weeks and sometimes they take a few months. But that’s nothing for me compared to the big books.
And in terms of then how I put it together —
I only began to produce poetry consistently when I adopted a technique that I learned from the great W.B. Yeats, who always wrote prose outline first.
And it might sound really strange, but I never did that for a long time. And now that I do, it’s made such a difference to actually finishing, because before I started to do that. I had, I don’t know how many hundreds of unfinished poems, but now that I do the prose outline first, if I start the poem, I finish it.
And so I free-write that summary by hand and kind of listening as I write more. Then I would, if I was writing fiction or nonfiction and start reading it aloud or take it for a walk and just begin to kind of recite any lines that are. I’m looking for the rhythm and the pulse of it. Again, much more than I would be for fiction or nonfiction.
And I’ll start thinking about form. Should it be free verse? Should it be, you know, a sonnet or something else. At the moment I’m looking at rondeaux. Lots of, trying to do a few poems in that form because I never did it before until recently.
And then when I thought, I kind of realized, okay, that’s enough. Now thinking and walking and reciting on that, I’ll open a new file and then rewrite the whole thing as poem and then just as much as needed from there. Sometimes it needs lots, sometimes only a little, sometimes I’ll take it for a walk again and again. Sometimes it’ll just finish up, as I said, in a day.
Not very often, but that does happen. I know when it’s done. I just know there’s a sort of a click and there’s nothing else to change, and there’s a kind of a silence settles in around the words. So then I know it’s finished.
Jo: Yeah. Well, it’s really interesting. I think, was it Mary Oliver who said like, sometimes she’d be out walking and a poem would come towards her and she knew she had to catch it because if she didn’t catch it, it would be gone.
Orna: Oh. That’s the story that Elizabeth Gilbert tells in her TED Talk, isn’t it?
Jo: Oh, is it?
Orna: It’s not at the top of my head, but yeah, it’s a brilliant story. She’d run back to the house to write it down and thought before she missed it. What about your process for stories, short stories.
Jo: Oh, I need to stay on poetry a minute because you made me, because the poem and people, I really recommend people go listen to you recite this, the poem for your mother. What’s it called again?
Orna: It’s called The Milky Ways.
Jo: Yeah, The Milky Ways. And it, I mean some of those images stick in my mind, but of course it was layered. It is a very specific moment. But it’s layered with a lot of memory and other emotions other than grief, obviously.
And so to me it feels like some poems and I feel like some of our creative works, whatever. They are poetry, short fiction, nonfiction, whatever, memoir take a long, long time to come in some way emerge.
I mean like this short story about the diving at the Poor Knights. I don’t know why I didn’t write that before and it just feels like it took a very long time. So even though some of your poems you are writing quite quickly.
Do you feel like some poems, like the one for your mother, have taken a long time to come out?
Orna: Yes, definitely. Definitely you can find yourself writing a poem about an experience that you’d forgotten about even, and that is really, really a very long time ago. I feel an awful lot of stuff that turns up in my poetry image wise goes back to childhood. So they take, they’ve taken half a century to get to get here and come out.
And I didn’t start writing poetry at all until I was in my forties. I did as a teen, but I didn’t then and a friend died. And so it just started at me again and I didn’t really start writing it seriously until about, I was in my fifties really. So I do think poetry, I mean there are so many different kinds of poems.
It’s macro genre, which has millions of genre within, but the kind of poems that I write definitely there, there’s a maturing and maturing of the ideas and things are necessary to them, I think. Yeah, definitely.
Jo: Well, I’ve, as you know, turned 50, so maybe I’m coming into my next poetry period!
But if people, so if people listening, if they want to start writing. Because it also, it feels to me very, even though I have written some and I’ve taken some classes and I do buy and read poetry, but it feels so daunting compared to writing fiction or nonfiction.
For me, even memoir, writing a poem just seems so much weightier, I think because perhaps I mainly read poems that are quite serious and I love your poem, as I mentioned, and they, it feels so big. So if people listening, they want to write poems, but they don’t really know how to start. You mentioned there’s a prose outline, so what even is that? Just explain like how someone might start.
How might someone start writing poetry?
Orna: So in terms of the outline, it would just say what the poem is going to contain.
In the poem that you were talking about, literally just a moment standing at the window, looking out at the night sky a while behind me knowing, you know, my mother is in her bed and I can hear her breath, which is being artificially fed to her.
And knowing that, we have been told that she doesn’t have a long time. So the outline is just the content, what’s going to go in there. So it’s, and it’s best done, as I said, with free writing. Writing fast, raw, let it all out, just kind of pour it down onto the page.
And what you’re looking for then is some words have energy in them. Free writing, some words in there, have more energy than others. And so you kind of pull them out and start to. You know, if it’s a sentence, repeat that sentence in your mind and see what else calls and you’re looking for, I mean, for me, what’s very important, what makes a poem and why I don’t agree that, you know, a lot of poetry that’s called poetry for me, if it doesn’t have an image.
In it then. It’s not really a poem to me. It has to have emotion and image. And after that, then the best, the best possible words and the best possible order. I forget who said that as a description of good poetry, but yeah. Image and emotion to me are the heart of poetry. Otherwise, you might as well write prose.
To me, that’s what makes a difference. So maybe that’s where some people feel the challenge is to get the right image to encompass the emotion.
Jo: Yes. Because of course some poems have a certain, as you said like, like a meter or they’re a certain type like my scuba diving one is a pantoum, so it has a certain rhythm to it and certain lines repeat and all of this kind of thing.
And that feels very like overly structured. And then of course we’ve got a lot of Insta poets who, it might just be an emotional, like, it might even read like an affirmation.
It feels like there’s a lot of freedom in poetry, but you can make it quite structured if you want to, right? If you feel like you need structure, there are structures you can go to.
Orna: Hundred percent. And then there can be the opposite of that, where the structure becomes a complete confinement. And that’s not poetry either.
So again, if it’s playful and you’re enjoying it, then it’s poetic, but there’s nothing poetic about trying to beat yourself into some form that’s, you know, your English teacher taught you 30 years ago and you think you should write or whatever.
Poetry can be anything. And that freedom. Can be, you know, that can stop us. So if structure helps use structure, if structure doesn’t help let it go.
Jo: Well, I guess —
For my short stories, it’s the structure of a novel in that there’s a character in a setting, something happens, other things happen, and then it ends somehow.
I mean, I also feel like some people think that a short story has to be only one character in one setting and only one thing happens. But I actually, some of my short stories, so one in particular, De-extinction of the Nephilim, so it was based on, there’s a company called Colossal and they’re de-extincting things.
So they just did the dire wolf and they want to do the woolly mammoth and all this. And obviously Jurassic Park is the classic de-extinction story. This one’s about the Nephilim and it has three point of view characters, an archaeologist and a geneticist, and a maternity nurse.
And so it was like, when that came to me, I knew the archaeologist had to find something underground, and that would then spark the rest of the story. And I didn’t know that the other characters would come in and that story ended up being, I think it’s about 8000 to 10,000. So it’s a bit of a longer one.
But I feel like if people feel like it can only be one character in one place and all that, that can hem you in as well. So I do tend, obviously a short story does have a certain word count.
I don’t submit to magazines or anything, I just publish them myself. I have been in a few anthologies. I’ve had a few stories commissioned —
but generally I write in Scrivener exactly the same as I write my novels.
Then I print it out and hand edit. There are different scenes sometimes like mini chapters, so that De-extinction of the Nephilim, it’s got like different chapters based on the different characters. And I still use ProWritingAid. I still work with my editor, Kristen. She edits my short stories as well. So I have exactly the same process, I guess for short stories as I do for fiction. And the only difference is, I guess the lens, but also the leaving it with a question.
Orna: And do you ever put short stories up on your blog or anything?
Jo: No, but I sell them individually, so they are on all the usual stores. They’re on my JFPennBooks.com Shopify store.
And we are going to talk in a bit about the first print collection, but I find that actually, I mean, I’ve had people on my podcast, on The Creative Penn podcast talk about you should always try and license short stories to magazines and anthologies and submit them to competitions first because the contracts for short stories are some of the best in the business in that the rights revert usually very quickly, and the contracts are often either for first print rights and they expire quite quickly, or subsequent print rights.
And they’re usually fine in terms of the people pay per word and all this. But I’m just so impatient that I normally, once I have an idea, I’m like, no, I need to write that story. And then I publish it and I send it out to my email list and you can actually make some decent money even selling them at 99 cents, which I feel, or $2.99.
But you can’t price an individual short story too high. I also narrate them myself, the audio books as human me. So that can kind of add in that human element as well.
Orna: And value. And the people who say, you know. Send them out. I think underestimate how much creative energy that whole submission process takes, backwards and forwards. So I’m the same with poetry. I mean —
People assume that you must submit poetry to journals and stuff. And I just never do, never have, never will.
And if somebody approaches me or, I might, and I’m not saying never, never say never. I might decide I’d like to be in such and such a thing, but I need another reason to do it. So I have contributed to, at the moment, an anthology here in my new hometown of Hastings called Poet Town being put together.
And I have one in there. And also there’s Washing Windows, which is a kind of a well-known series of Irish poets anthology in Ireland. I’ve got one in that, but generally speaking, I’m not going out there in the whole submission thing because it takes a lot of time and effort and energy to do that.
And I’d rather write another poem actually. So I just put, I just put them on my blog, at least two a month. The, the whatever my favorite two of the most recent kind of thing. One is for my patrons only and my best one of the month. And then when I have enough for a collection, I eventually publish it in book form, but that can take a long time.
So I have different poems sitting in different collections that won’t be published until there are enough in them. But I am now beginning to bundle and looking at special editions through Kickstarter, that is something I would like to do, probably for this book.
And so the poem that you heard me read on the podcast is part of a collection of poems for bereavement, 12 Poems to Inspire series. And these are the grief and bereavement ones. So, yeah, I’m going to bring a few of those books together and create a special edition through Kickstarter in time for once again, once there’s enough.
Jo: Do you teach writing poetry as part of your Patreon, or do you do classes at all? Or is that just not something you are…
Orna: No, I did in the past. Not anymore. Not anymore. Again, I’d rather just be doing it.
Jo: Oh, well, we might have to demand like a stretch goal for your Kickstarter, where you will do a special webinar or something for those of us who want to…
Orna: That sounds okay.
Jo: Yeah, I think that would be great because I feel like those of us who buy and read poetry often want to do more poetry. It’s just that it feels, as I said, it feels. It feels important to me. It’s really funny. Whereas I feel like my short stories, I write them and I’m really happy with them and they often, they encapsulate this moment but I don’t feel that they’re heavy in any way. I don’t know.
Do you think that people have got the wrong impression of poetry by making it too serious?
Orna: Yeah. I think that’s a bad place to start. It can be anything you want it to be. And I do think that’s school, isn’t it? Where they sat us down and chopped it up, like they dissected it like it was a rabbit in science class or something.
And that’s not how poems are written, and it’s not how they’re read when you’re reading for pleasure yourself. So, I would say just start with the poems you love. And just start to write. I mean, you’re a very experienced writer, so you can write poetry, no problem. It just depends then on what kind of poetry it is that you want to try, but definitely take away all the, it’s got to be heavy and brilliant and all of that because that’s the stopper for all writing, isn’t it?
I appreciate you feel that way about it. And I know you’re exaggerating a bit, but, yeah, it can be really playful poetry and if you look at all the, in inverted commas, great poets, and you read, once you read deeply into what they, or sorry, widely into what they’ve written, you’ll find that they’ve all written light, playful pieces, you know, poems that aren’t very good really, that don’t really quite work.
And they have their favorite kind of ways of going on and all of those, in inverted commas less than good, you know, poems are part of what actually produces one that does shine and reach a lot more people. So, yeah, playful, I think is, I would think is the key word when it comes to poetry.
Tell us about your short story collection. Have you had challenges?
Jo: It’s certainly a challenge. Like, first of all, I do think that I thought a bit like maybe how I feel about poetry, which is maybe I’m not worthy and I feel I’m not really exaggerating.
I do feel like because maybe I studied English literature and I can be too serious about all these things. I feel like Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected, it’s like a canon work in my mind, and to do a short story collection? Well, in the sort of literary world, doing a short story collection published by a traditional publishing house is a really big deal because let’s face it, they don’t make a ton of money.
Orna: So they’re for super fans, you know? Yeah. Short story collections are for super fans, which means an author can do really well with them, but publishers don’t tend to do so well with them.
Jo: So it does mean that the famous short story collections are sort of by big name authors. So I feel like that was the first challenge was, oh well I couldn’t do that. And then I was like, no, I really want to do, I really want to have my own collection in print because it’s easy enough to do a short ebook and a short audiobook digitally, but none of these are in print.
I do have a trilogy, which is in print, which is A Thousand Fiendish Angels, which is three short stories inspired by Dante’s Inferno. So that is in print, but the rest of them are not. And so I really wanted to do that. And so that was one challenge. I was like, should I do it now? I really want to do it.
And then it was, okay, what do you call it? And this kind of titling of a short story collection, that I haven’t written to be related to each other was really hard.
But this is where ChatGPT and Claude, I used both of them, uploaded all the eBooks that I’d written, all the short stories. Asked for titles for the themes, asked it to really examine the themes across the whole thing. And people could use Notebook LM, Google’s Notebook LM as well.
Anything where you can get it to really look at your work and kind of analyze it. And we can’t see these things ourselves, but there were loads and loads of titles, but the one I love is called The Buried and the Drowned, which, some people, if anyone’s read my fiction, that does say a lot about me.
That is true. Super dark, dark little soul. But yeah, and I mean, for example, of the ones I’ve talked about here, Seahenge is very much about the drowned and De-extinction of the Nephilim is very much buried and it’s the sort of dangers of messing with what has been buried for so long and what has been drowned will be drowned again and all that kind of thing.
So, so the sort of coming up with the title, but it’s one of these occasions where I think AI tools can really help and I love the title. And then I asked it, okay, well I need a cover image. So let’s brainstorm that. And I’ve worked with Jane Dixon-Smith, who’s been my cover designer for more than a decade now.
And so we’ve got that going. I’m writing a couple of extra stories, which I won’t publish separately, so people who have already read the other stories hopefully will want it because there’ll be two exclusives. One of which will be that Between Two Breaths and a story called The Black Church, which is where I spent my 50th birthday.
I woke up next to the Black Church in Iceland. So writing that, my editor Kristen, is going to read the whole collection because another challenge is what order do you put these in? So I’m going to try and figure it out myself, and then I’m going to give it to Kristen, who has edited some of those stories already, but she will read it as a first reader.
I’m also expanding the author’s note, so —
All my short stories have very personal author’s notes, about where these stories come from.
Like another one, it’s about having an eye operation. When I had, after I had laser surgery. A few years ago it’s called With a Demon’s Eye, but it’s things like that.
I’ve written these sort of super personal authors notes, which again, coming back to the being human in an age of AI, I feel like that’s so important and, and putting in the special edition, I’m going to put like that poem I mentioned, which is really about my divorce and my first marriage, and also photos.
There’s even a photo, a really old photo of me scuba diving during that time, back in the days when there wasn’t digital cameras and stuff. So I want to make this collection, as you say, it is for super fans. I’m going to have a really low number on my Kickstarter, but it feels personally very important as part of my 50th year to do something that means so much.
But boy, I definitely feel it’s been a challenge.
Orna: That’s great. That sounds fantastic. When do you think it’ll all come together? Do you have a date for the Kickstarter yet?
Jo: I’m aiming for 1st of September. We’re recording this in July. So, if people are interested, it is up JFPenn.com/buried. The Buried and the Drowned. So JFPenn.com/buried and yeah, I think it will. I’ve bought a lot of short story collections off Kickstarter from people I don’t know. I do actually think Kickstarter is a great place for short story collections. I think there is an audience there who are looking for them, and if you’ve bought one before, other ones come up in your recommendation algorithm.
So I’m kind of hoping that maybe some new people will find them, because again, people who read poetry, read poetry, people who read short stories as well as other things. But it’s like if you like short stories, then maybe you find other ones by other authors.
Yeah, I mean, well what about your collection? Because you actually have quite a lot of poetry collections, so tell us about the process for that.
What’s the process for a poetry collection?
Orna: Yeah, it takes a while, as I said earlier, because I don’t, I never sit down and say right, now I’m going to create a collection, you know? Or create a poetry book apart from that epic one, that’s going to be one big, long poem.
So I have to wait until there are more than enough, on a linked theme. So I have ideas about what that might look like, and I have pinboards on the studio wall. And so I’d be looking for thematic overlaps between different poems or recurring symbols or something like that.
And then when they feel like they go together, I have a sense, almost like I’m writing a musical piece with them, you know, and of a rise and fall kind of thing. I like to feel that the reader will go in and begin to gather together, kind of what I’m saying, and then move more deeply into it and then kind of ascend out.
But, so I usually break them into sections as well. And I have never really, you know, on the publishing business side for a long time I didn’t really think about poetry in that way. So it was, I put stuff out there, but I didn’t go out doing ad campaigns or anything like that with poetry.
So I’ve been quite unbusiness-like around it really and perfectly happy to do that and to see them as something that I write and people come to, people to know me, or as you say, who like reading poetry can find them.
But then I did start to put together this new most recent series, which is 12 Poems to Inspire, and this is a bit more commercial because they’re written around a particular occasion or event.
So there are 12 about Christmas or that end of year time, new beginnings, for Mother’s Day, 12 poems about love for Valentine’s Day, that kind of thing. And so these are the ones that I’m going to now begin to bundle together and I’ll do a Kickstarter and put together three of them I think, into a collection called Poetry of Light.
And then I am going to start, when the season comes round, actually actively promoting them. And so I think these are my most accessible poems, if you like. And the ones that are most likely to, it’s worth treating them in that way.
Jo: Just on the number there, so you said, so you, because I’ve got some of your slim volumes, so those have 12 in, so when you say there’s going to be three lots, so you’re going to have a collection with 36 poems in, or —
How do people know when it’s enough to do something like a printed edition?
Orna: Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it? So yeah, in this case, yes. I specifically decided these short books, they were to really be almost like an expensive gift card in a situation where you’d buy somebody a sympathy card instead. Buy this slim volume and give them this instead to be more meaningful. They hopefully won’t put it in the bin afterward.
It will last, they can come back to it and read it again and again. So that was the idea of them. They were deliberately slim and in fact, and they are illustrated as well. I forgot to say that my daughter, has done the illustrations. I had my own efforts at illustration, but I am updating them all now.
My daughter has done the illustrations for them. So, they’re an experience specifically around a particular thing. So that wouldn’t be your typical collection. I have, you know, they will be bigger. For example, I have Allowing Flow is a collection of mindfulness poetry. I’m not sure how many poems are there, but probably 50.
So I think the general consideration for a collection is 50 to 60 poems, makes a collection depending, again, on length of poems. So it’s difficult to generalize, but that will be, you know, that will be the average, shall we say, for a collection.
Jo: And just on the poetry editing side, because as I mentioned, I work with my editor Kristen on the individual stories and then also for the whole collection. And obviously for fiction, I work with editors as I know you do.
What do you think about editors for poetry, whether an individual poem or for a collection and kind of understanding the structure of a collection?
Orna: Oh, yes. Contrary to what people think. Editing is just as important for poems as it is for fiction and nonfiction, and editors make poems immeasurably better. So, at every level, at the developmental level, in the individual poem, obviously, and copy editing and punctuation choices can make a huge difference to a poem’s meaning actually.
So punctuation becomes super important. The shorter the form, the more important it is. So, yes. And you need an editor who writes and edits poetry. You can’t just have your usual editor for poetry. I think it has to be somebody who understands and understands both when to step in and when to stay away. So, yeah, I think it’s really important.
Jo: And then I guess the other thing, one of the reasons we do Kickstarters is because we want to produce gorgeous print books. So again, I’m doing green foil for The Buried and the Drowned, which on the cover is going to look awesome.
And there’ll be a ribbon and sprayed edges. And the photos and the paper will be heavier and it will just be all the cool things that we can do once we get the Kickstarter money. And you can’t really do it otherwise. But also —
With your collection, are you thinking about beautiful design elements? Because of course, poetry and page layout is so important.
Orna: Yeah, definitely. And I think if you’re writing poetry is one thing, and producing poetry books is great.
But if you want to start to think about selling poetry, then you have to think about beautiful packaging, I think. Because that’s essentially what people are looking for when they buy poems and they want, it can be very subtly beautiful, but the layout of the words on the page becomes all important and how that page feels.
And as you say, if you can make your poetry book look and feel gift worthy, then it has a much better chance of some commercial success. And it should also, I feel. The coherent emotional experience, the collection. So rather than, you know, here’s the first 20 poems I ever wrote, all put together. There needs to be some sense of it working together as a whole, as a collection. And the editor can help with that as well.
And I mean, I have had, as I come to, you know, as I begin to bring a collection together, I would then realize I need more poetry for this collection and I would start to write specifically to finish off that collection, but is definitely something that happens.
Jo: Then the other thing for the Kickstarter, and in fact in general, I mentioned audio and audio narration. Now you have actually been quite resistant, I think, to publishing audio of you reading. So what are your thoughts? And of course you read this poem for your mother and The Milky Ways poem on your Go Creative podcast and it was fantastic.
Are you moving into doing more audio for your poetry?
Orna: That’s why I’m doing it on the podcast. It’s to warm myself up. I’m not drawn to doing it, but you and a few other people have said, and I can see myself how it, you know, it’s, I would think it’s becoming essential now too. As part of that human thing that we were talking about to read yourself.
So yes, I am, I’m going to do, now I do have a little short sampler of my poems out there in audio form, but I did that a very long time ago. At First Flush it’s called, just a sample. But yes, I am going to do these myself and to audio. So when I do this collection and bundle everything, I’ll have the audio as well.
Jo: Well, I mean, you mentioned that. Is it essential? I mean, I probably would’ve read the poem when you had put it somewhere, but because I’m an audio sort of reader in so many ways, hearing you read that poem, I think has a lot more impact. And again, as the human element. Hearing you read it is so important.
So for people who are listening who might be feeling as uncomfortable about it as you have, any tips for getting over that, I guess?
Orna: Feel the pain and then do it anyway? I don’t really know that I’m the right person to give tips about this because as you say, I have been so. I’ve kept procrastinating it.
I just think for me, not listening back is kind of key. So getting it off to the producer and I don’t want to do my own production, for example, on them. So yeah, I don’t, but I’ll go through the experience maybe, and then I’ll share the tips at the far side. How’s that?
Jo: I think that’s good. And I mean, again, talking about the Kickstarter, which I think is a great way to do the poetry collection and the short story collection is that some, a lot of people buy audio through Kickstarter. It is one of the best ways to sell audio direct. So for example, I’d be very interested in buying the beautiful hardback if you’re going to do one and plus the audio as an add-on.
That’s how I would want your poetry would be those two editions. So that I would have the nice print book on my shelf. Like I’ve got Your Secret Rose beautiful edition on my shelf. And I would, but I would prefer to listen than I would to read.
So I don’t know. I mean, that’s how I feel as a consumer and what I see on my Kickstarters. With fiction and nonfiction so far is that people want the bundle with the audio. So even the print book with the ebook and the audio book as the bundle that they buy. I don’t know, is that something you’ll offer?
Orna: Yes. And I do think that’s a great offer for poetry in particular actually, and short form for, you know, we’re talking about short stories as well. I think, having that combination is, is a really good thing for short form.
Jo: Then I guess, before we finish up, we should, because we also talk about business and I guess the Kickstarter side is business, but marketing. I mean, what do you think about marketing for poetry? I mean, I guess doing the audio is one way and you can put those out.
What else do you see poets doing for marketing?
Orna: Well, short form video is huge for poets and if you can do that well, I’m not going to ever do that, but if you can do that well, that is probably the easiest, best way.
And of course, in doing your video that you can then harvest your audio for your audio book so you’re both producing and marketing at the same time, which is my favorite form of marketing content marketing.
You don’t have to show your face necessarily if you don’t want to. But you can still produce videos, so you, I see some poets doing, you know, stock footage or AI illustration or indeed just if they’re that way inclined their own illustrations and music and putting it all together as beautiful sort of piece.
And that obviously is almost a form in itself. Film poetry is actually an emerging genre and there’s some beautiful examples out there if people are attracted to that, but obviously that’s very time consuming. So it’s much more than just a way of marketing your poetry.
But video in poetry, like in every other aspect of publishing is definitely big right now. I think the main thing for poets is to get the poetry out on Substack, on social, on a blog, and I think your email list is super important. It’s always important for everybody, but you are depending on that relationship with your readers, in a big way as a poet, I think.
I think one thing that I would say to people is don’t target general poetry magazines or bloggers, or worse again, general book bloggers and people forget that poetry is a macro genre, like fiction and nonfiction. It divides up into genres, so there’s no point in sending your inspirational poems to the dark goth collection, you know it’s not going to work.
So you have to research your comparable poets like you would with fiction or nonfiction. And then you find out who’s working in that arena and you send them a tailored pitch or you can swap reading with other poets. I mean, there’s a very thriving poetry scene on all of the platforms. I think Instagram is the one that I’m most familiar with, though I’m not there anymore. I was part of that for a few years and I really loved it.
And then there are the magazines and the literary journals and stuff, which as I said, I don’t do, but if you want to do those. And they are hungry for content always. And they like dealing directly with the poet and they’re not inclined to deal with mainstream PR as much.
And then I think the other big thing is to build a reader team who will go out and do your early reviews, but also share your favorite lines and talk about the poems. I think that’s really important and I would say don’t do ads or any direct promotion until you’ve seen something work and you know, if you have a reading you do on TikTok or whatever and it goes down well, that’s the point at which to invest. But it would be very easy to waste a lot of money and get nowhere.
Jo: And I think for me, a lot of the short story ideas and poems, we are not looking at the massive spike on launch. Like, I’m not expecting to do a six figure Kickstarter on a short story collection. You know, it’s, I will probably have my lowest goal of any of my Kickstarters. But the point is that —
Over the years, these sell. People buy my short stories every day.
You know, some of them I wrote a decade ago. Same with your poems, right? They don’t age ,these things. They really don’t. So I feel like we launch them, we do the Kickstarter, which is a short launch, in only a couple of weeks in the end. But the point is that we will keep writing and people will find them over time.
So I just, I feel like that might take the pressure off some people is, look, just think about this as primarily poetry and short stories are creative things. I mean, you could say all books are creative, but these are very creative. You know, there are very few people who aim to make tons of money with these types of writing.
It is very much a creative drive and a piece of your body of work that you want to get into a beautiful print edition.
That’s kind of how I feel. And then I will do my best, but as you say, I’m not going to spend any money on marketing it. I’m going to put it out there and, yeah, see what happens.
Orna: Exactly, and I think it is important for us to understand a bit about what is commercial, what is creative in our work when you’re building up a body of work, you don’t have to give the same marketing treatment to everything you produce.
You can go out knowing that something is, you’re doing it largely for yourself and for those, for the super fans who kind of like everything you do or for people who particularly like a particular thing.
And there is absolutely no shame in aiming small sometimes. And keep the big guns for the things that are most likely to succeed with a wider audience.
Jo: Absolutely. And I guess that brings us back to definition of success and why. Why we write these things. And it really is, as we both said, I think these ideas just come to us and we know that we want to write them as a poem or as a short story. So I guess any finishing thoughts Orna?
Orna: Just that it’s brilliant to be indie. You know, with this stuff, because it can be heartbreaking. I remember back in the day when indie wasn’t a thing and trying to get somebody to be interested to say, yeah, it’s just great to be able to just put it together, put it out there, see what happens, and not mind too much how it goes, that there is a great freedom in that, that I think is really, really precious.
Jo: Fantastic. So, yes, you can find mine at JFPenn.com/buried. And if people want to find your collection Orna?
Jo: Fantastic. Well, thanks for being with us today, everyone. We really hope that you have found this useful and all the best with writing your own poems and short stories.
Orna: Happy writing everyone and happy publishing.
Sometimes the “quick little projects” are the ones that surprise me the most! Back in the spring, I thought it might be fun to put together a few simple printable writing worksheets—something light and easy, just a side project before the second edition of my Structuring Your Novel Workbook comes out this October.
Of course, you know how that goes. One idea led to another, and before long my “tiny project” turned into a whole collection of 20+ digital writing resources. And honestly? I had a blast making them. (Seriously. I had to make myself stop!)
Now, after months of work, I’m excited to share them with you!
Why I Created These Worksheets for Writers
When I was in grade school, I had a “Write Your Novel” kit that came with worksheets. I can still remember how excited I felt sitting down with those pages—answering questions, filling in blanks, and dreaming up characters and stories. Secretly, that early love of worksheets has never left me. To this day, I still find them ridiculously fun.
Of course, worksheets should never be about ticking off boxes or forcing your story to fit into rigid rules. Writing begins and ends as discovery. But sometimes we all hit blind spots:
An arc that feels flat
A theme that won’t come together
A character who just isn’t coming alive
This is where worksheets shine. Worksheets are tools to help you spark fresh insight, troubleshoot weak spots, and unlock ideas you didn’t know you had.
My goal was to design practical, easy-to-use tools that:
Give you direct access to the writing techniques I teach
Spark new insights into your characters, themes, and plots
Offer flexible, fun ways to brainstorm and outline your stories
Whether you’re working on a novel, screenplay, or even an RPG campaign, these fillable PDF worksheets for writers are designed as creative companions for your storytelling journey.
Which Worksheets Should You Choose? (Hint: Check Out the Discounted Bundle)
If you’re not sure where to start, I’d recommend checking out two special bundles:
The Archetypal Character Arc Cheat Sheets – Provides quick-glance guides to all six of the major archetypes in the Archetypal Life Cycle. For those of you have been asking, this is really a companion workbook for Writing Archetypal Character Arcs. (And, who knows, if you love the digital worksheets, my next project may be collecting them into a paperback!)
Both bundles are steeply discounted so you can grab them at the best value, rather than purchasing each worksheet individually.
After that, here are a few standouts I think you’ll love:
Character Interview Worksheet – 100+ questions to dig deep into your protagonist’s psychology, habits, and quirks. Perfect if you want to truly know your character inside and out.
Supporting Character Interview Worksheet – 30 targeted questions for side characters, because your story world comes alive only when all the characters feel real.
Character Arc Quick Guide – Beat sheets for all five major arc types (Positive, Flat, Disillusionment, Fall, and Corruption). A handy way to clarify your character’s journey at a glance.
Story Structure Beat Sheet – A step-by-step breakdown of the classic seven-beat structure. Use it to tighten pacing or map out missing beats.
Theme Worksheet – A 12-page guided exploration of your story’s thematic heart, with resources on character arcs, core elements, and dozens of bonus links.
What’s Inside the Worksheets for Writers (The Bonuses!)
These aren’t just worksheets—they’re mini writing toolkits. Each one comes with an extensive PDF resource guide packed with links to my most helpful blog posts, podcast episodes, and free tools. That way you can dig deeper into the craft while putting ideas directly into practice.
You’ll also find extras like:
Quick-reference infographics to keep story structure principles at your fingertips
Expanded guidance for flexible worksheet use
Tips and curated examples to inspire your process
Since this is a brand-new launch, your support means so much! You can purchase the worksheets directly from my store, but I’d especially appreciate if you order through my Etsy shop. Every purchase there helps me build credibility and visibility on the platform.
And if you find the worksheets helpful, leaving a quick review on Etsy would be an enormous help in boosting the shop’s ranking!
I made these worksheets with you in mind, and I hope they give you the same spark of excitement I felt while creating them. I can’t wait to see what stories they help you bring to life!
I’ve been feeling it for a while now—that dull, uninspired thud when the credits roll on modern storytelling. More and more, movies in particular leave me feeling unmoved and oddly detached. Bored, really. Once upon a time, I’d walk out of the theater buzzing. I’d carry that story around with me for days, sometimes weeks. I called it a “story high.”
Now? More often than not, I’ve forgotten the movie by the time I reach the parking lot. Actually, most of the time I’m lucky if I remember whatever it was I watched on Netflix last night.
I keep asking myself, “Is it me who has changed?” Because God knows I have. This past decade has transformed almost everything about my life, including my relationship to my own storytelling. So perhaps what I’m experiencing is just “taste drift.” Or has something in the very DNA of our storytelling shifted? Is the drift I’m feeling really that the tilt toward spectacle, franchise maintenance, and safe, surface-level beats has taken all the magic with it?
I’ve been pondering this for a long time now, and I’ve been dancing around this post for a while too—wondering if it’s too shaded by my own subjectivity or, perhaps more tellingly, my own nostalgia and idealism. But you know what? I’m just gonna say it: I miss the way movies used to be.
I’m tired of feeling bored by something that used to delight me to no end. I’m sick of feeling a lack of engagement. I’m exhausted by the magnetism movies fail to hold for me. I used to get butterflies watching movie trailers. Now sometimes I can’t even be bothered—because even if the trailer looks good, will the movie really live up to expectations? Do I really even have expectations any longer???
The bottom line is this: it’s been a long time since more than the occasional and very random new movie (and I’m lumping in all TV and streaming content here) actually made me feel something. I know it’s not just me, because when I go back to the oldies, the difference is palpable. And in my very subjective opinion, it’s time we got back to telling stories the way we used to.
What’s Happened to Modern Storytelling (Especially Movies)?
Well, COVID happened, social media happened, streaming happened, the writers’ and actors’ strikes happened. All those things have massively affected the bottom line of how this very expensive medium is constructed to reach its audience.
But you know what? I don’t even think that’s really it.
When I examine the filmmaking landscape of the last 10–20 years in comparison to the decades that came before, what jumps out at me is the tone.
For a long while now, so much of what we’re offered to consume as storytelling audiences has been overlaid with tones of:
Snark
Irony
Meta-commentary
Hyper self-awareness
Nihilism
Deconstructive narratives
Now, admittedly, we’re living in an era of deconstruction, and I don’t necessarily see that as a bad thing. Cycles are made to turn. We need the sour with the sweet. We need the bracing cold against the lazy warmth. Idealism needs a sharp shot of cynicism every now and then. But by that same principle, cynicism eventually needs idealism to take its shot right back. Just as we cannot construct endlessly, neither can we deconstruct ad infinitum.
The Impact Movies Have on Books
Before I go on, let me say a word about our other important storytelling medium: books. Most specifically in this post, I am referencing the current filmmaking culture in the U.S. However, because of the undeniable influence this visual media has on art of all kinds, we can’t fully separate its struggles or trends from those we find in literature.
In no small part, writing is “monkey see, monkey do.” Even those of us writing novels and short stories are inevitably influenced not just by the books we read, but I would argue perhaps even more so by the visual media we consume. Visual media is not only pervasive, it’s also unparalleled for its memorability. I suppose this is particularly true for visual learners. Speaking for myself, I can say with certainty that the visuals I consume are perhaps the single greatest influence on my storytelling.
More than that, as a comparatively snack-sized consumable, movies and even limited series are, in my opinion, unquestionably the greatest influence upon storytelling structure and techniques for modern writers. In short, what begins in the movies will eventually affect literature.
That said, I don’t feel these concerning trends are as obviously prevalent in literature as in film. Part of the reason for this is that salable literature is a vast landscape in comparison to salable visual media. Mostly, this is because the stakes aren’t as high. Strictly speaking, it costs nothing to create a book in comparison to the staggering millions dropped on visual spectacle. This alone makes books a far more forgiving medium in which to experiment and stretch the bounds of convention or audience expectation.
The book-reading experience can also be much more subjective in its personalization. People are far more likely to be watching the same movies and shows than they are to be reading the same books. Those books we have all read—whether classics or bestsellers—have sometimes been baptized in the fires of public scrutiny a bit more thoroughly than the latest film we’ve “all” seen.
So with all that said, although my own recent experiences with modern novels have been largely more positive than with modern movies, the general downturn in the filmmaking industry certainly crosses over to some extent—making these concerns more about “storytelling” in general than simply “filmmaking.”
The Storytelling Cycle: 1970–2025
Click for larger view.
Although I am undeniably nostalgic for the movie landscape of my teenage and young adult years, the changes I’m picking up on point to more than just that. If we look back just fifty years or so, at the overall storytelling cycle, we can see a clear oscillation:
1970s – Grit & Disillusionment
Tone: Cynical realism, moral ambiguity, personal stories.
Examples:The Godfather, Taxi Driver, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Drivers: Post-Vietnam, Watergate, social upheaval. Audiences suspicious of authority. Anti-heroes dominate.
Examples:Star Wars, E.T., Back to the Future, The Princess Bride
Drivers: Blockbuster economics, Reagan-era optimism, VFX advances. The rise of the Hero’s Journey as mainstream glue.
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980), 20th Century Fox.
1990s – Irony & Deconstruction
Tone: Quirky realism, meta-humor, genre-bending.
Examples:Pulp Fiction, Fight Club, The Matrix, The Truman Show.
Drivers: Post-Cold War uncertainty, Gen X skepticism, indie boom. Themes interrogate reality and authenticity.
The Matrix (1999), Warner Bros.
2000s – Earnest Epic Resurgence
Tone: Sweeping, sincere myth for a new millennium.
Examples:The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Gladiator
Drivers: Pre-/post-9/11 yearning for unity, moral clarity. Large-scale adaptations brought back allegory and grand stakes.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), New Line Cinema.
2010s – Meta-Franchise Era
Tone: Connected universes, quippy self-awareness, formula mastery.
Examples: MCU Phases 1–3, Frozen, Game of Thrones.
Drivers: Social media feedback loops, globalization, IP exploitation. Themes (and conclusive arcs) are often secondary to brand continuity.
The Avengers (2012), Marvel Studios.
2020s – Saturation, Fragmentation, & Caution
Tone: Brand maintenance, “safe” messaging, heavy serialization, frequent irony to preempt critique.
Examples: MCU Phase 4, Disney’s Star Wars, Rings ofPower, The Witcher, Disney’s live-action reboots.
Drivers: Pandemic shifts viewing habits, political polarization, streaming war economics, strikes. Thematic depth appears in pockets (e.g,. Dune), but most mass-market fare is either spectacle-first or message-first.
The Witcher (2019-), Netflix.
6 Qualities Storytelling Is Ready to See Again
So are we at the end of the current cycle? Are we ready for a resurgence of idealism, hope, wonder, and optimism? Hard to say. Ultimately, I believe these things take as long as they need to take to work their archetypal and energetic perogatives within the overall cycle. But, personally, I think we’re ready. I think it’s time. God knows I’m ready for it as a viewer. More than that, I know this is what I want to write. If I get to have a contribution to the never-ending story of this cycle, then I know this is what I want it to be.
If you’re ready to hop on this train as it’s getting ready to leave the station, here are six qualities I think it’s past time we bring back to mass media.
If I think about one element that is the hallmark of every movie I’ve ever loved, it’s this: it’s subtext. So much of we’re seeing today is either on-the-nose or deliberately subverting its own subtext to create meta references or irony. Story’s richest depths live in subtext. The best stories are about more than just the text. Their subtext offers thematic symbolism with the capability of turning even the simplest story into something deep and true. This is the power of allegory. It is the power of thematic metaphor. Even though all stories offer the potential for this, it actually takes a tremendous amount of courage for a storyteller to resist the urge to simply spell it all out.
When I speak about this, I think about movies like The Legend of Bagger Vance, The Lion King, and Forrest Gump. But even obviously blockbuster stories such as Jurassic Park and The Terminator elevate themselves into timeless and unforgettable experiences through their subtextual expertise. This stands in such blatant contrast to their resurrected franchise sequels—most of which, despite all their bling, are heartless, soulless, and (because you don’t get the first two without this one:) brainless.
Mythological and archetypal underpinnings lay the foundation for stories of effortless truth. They point to what is most real, and they supply the kind of symbolism that takes audiences deep without even trying. Solid plot structure and character arcs start this off (as they are themselves rooted in myth and archetype), but there is so much more depth we can explore.
It’s true the old stories need to reinvent and resurrect themselves from time to time—or more strictly, culture needs to reinvent its relationship to these stories. We can get so close to them, we begin to think they are “tame lions” and we forget that what they really represent is something terrifyingly beautiful in its raw and primal power.
Our relationship to these structures evolves. But really it is us who evolves more than the structures themselves. I was reminded of this in recently viewing StudioBinder’s excellent retrospective of the Hero’s Journey (in which I was honored to appear):
It is arrogance that lets us think, in all our perky snark and world-weary cynicism, that we write the stories. No, the stories write us. We forget that at our peril, and as storytellers we, above all, safeguard the chthonic depths of our deepest, most terrifying, and most transcendent truths.
The great myths of our age have been movies (either first or perhaps most prevalently): Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter. And they have changed us utterly. For this reason, if no other, I will never be content with even one single story that does not confront me, does not make me feel something, does not transform me.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011), Warner Bros.
3. Emotional Sincerity, Vulnerability, and Earnestness
This one isn’t always popular. But, honestly, I feel the truth of it deep in my bones: we are missing stories that confront us with emotional sincerity, with vulnerability, and, yes, with earnestness. We’re so jacked on sarcasm and skepticism. Perhaps it began as a tool to transform structures that had seen their day. But now, it’s starting to feel like a defense we’re just hiding behind.
There’s no hiding from hope—the hope that we will be seen, accepted, loved—not for who we are supposed to be, but just as we are in all our messy glory. Think about how hard it is to show up with your heart in your hand.
Although we certainly do see many films these days striving for this (and kudos to them), I can’t help feeling many are still hiding a bit behind their own weariness and tragedy. Sometimes simplicity and innocence and even happiness can feel the most vulnerable of all. I’m thinking of films like Big and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. These are simple—and in some ways very disruptive—comedic romps that reach far beyond themselves through their willingness to show up in the full earnestness of the human capacity for hope and faith.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), Paramount Pictures
4. Moral Clarity (With Nuance)
Oh, yes, movies today have a certain moral clarity. At least, they like to tell you exactly what they think (see above about no subtext) and probably exactly what you should think too. Examples abound, from all perspectives. And, frankly, they’re all bad. But then we’ve also got a lot of post-modern confusion going on, and literally a slew of stories whose ambiguity leaves you wondering at the end if there even was a thematic message.
I’ve always liked to say, “Stories are better as questions than as answers.” I still stand behind that. Heavy-handed moralism goes hand in hand with no subtext, and it never works out well. But that doesn’t mean stories can’t (and shouldn’t) have something to say and to say it with all the conviction and nuance they can muster.
Think about Schindler’s List, Amadeus, every John Hughes film ever made, even Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure for crying out loud. These stories know what they are and what they’re trying to say about the world. They say it with assurance, and they offer the package up for us to have our own experiences and make our own judgements.
Here’s another one that isn’t always praised in our modern film-going culture. But, by God, we need it. Of late, we have been in a time and a place where we have needed to stare down our shadows. But I think it’s time to remember why. Why do we face our shadows? What’s the point? Why is it worth it?
Every story faces its Point of No Return, its Moment of Truth, and its Dark Night of the Soul so it can emerge at the end transformed. The shadow transformed is always light.
I mentioned at the beginning of the article that it’s been a while since I’ve seen a film that really made feel something. If I’ve felt anything at all, it was probably some type of catharsis—grief, anger, shock, disgust. It’s been much longer since a film has taken me to that place of joy and wonder—that revelry just in being alive.
Star Wars did that for me, some of the early MCU movies did that, Secondhand Lions always does that. But these stories don’t have be romps. Joy is always waiting for us at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life, just as wonder waits for us at the end of Princess Mononoke.
Finally, I am reminded of what Joseph Campbell had to say about the quality of goodheartedness as a necessary quality of anyone who would succeed upon the Hero’s Journey. He spoke of the Irish folk hero Niall, who won his crown through the simplicity of goodheartedness as demonstrated in his kindness to a seeming old crone who was then transformed into the beautiful archetypal force capable of granting him the “Royal Rule.”
Now, don’t get me wrong. I am a friend to the shadows. I believe wholeheartedly in the necessity and courageous importance of facing our shadows—which, in so many ways, is what we are being called upon to do in this moment in time—and reintegrating them into a greater wholeness. All stories reflect humanity’s never-ending struggle with this transformative process. Some parts of the storytelling reflect one aspect; some another.
But even in the midst of our darkest shadow work, may we never forget the crucial piece that is goodheartedness. As storytellers, we bear the great burden of the world’s catharsis—the grief, the anger, our most violent and abhorrent proclivities. But part of that, too—and I would say the most important part—is also the tether to something deeper and truer and better and kinder.
May we write stories like Lord of the Rings and Anne of Green Gables and The Breakfast Club and E.T. and Little Women and Star Wars and Driving Miss Daisy and HarryPotter and Groundhog Day. May we write stories about the heroes we wish we were, the compassion we wish we had, the courage to transform, and the supreme gratitude with which to accept all the glory that is life.
Those are the movies I want to watch again. That’s how you put the whole world on a story high.
In Summary: Why Stories Must Find Their Heart Again
Over the past fifty years, storytelling has swung like a pendulum—from grit and cynicism to myth and wonder, and back again. Right now, we’re in a season of fragmentation, irony, and surface-level spectacle. But history suggests the cycle always turns. What’s missing today (and what audiences are aching for) is a return to sincerity, subtext, allegory, and stories that dare to make us feel something real.
Key Takeaways
Modern movies often feel hollow because spectacle has replaced subtext.
Storytelling moves in cultural cycles: grit → myth → irony → sincerity.
We’re likely on the cusp of another turn toward earnest, mythic storytelling.
Writers and filmmakers can be part of that shift by embracing sincerity, allegory, and goodheartedness.
Want More?
If this resonates, check out my Shadow Archetypes email course. Over eight weeks, we’ll explore the passive and aggressive shadow polarities of the six main archetypes in the Archetypal Life Cycle. It’s a deep dive into how the darker sides of our characters (and ourselves) shape narrative truth. You can sign up here.
Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! What do you think happened to modern storytelling? Do you feel the same hollow note I’ve described, or do you think the magic is still out there if we just know where to look? Tell me in the comments!
Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast in Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, or Spotify).
What if you could turn a monthly writing challenge into a successful book collaboration—all while recording the entire creative process as a podcast? What if hand-selling locally sells more books than online marketing? Clay Vermulm talks about his creative and business processes.
This episode is sponsored by Publisher Rocket, which will help you get your book in front of more Amazon readers so you can spend less time marketing and more time writing. I use Publisher Rocket for researching book titles, categories, and keywords — for new books and for updating my backlist. Check it out at www.PublisherRocket.com
Clay Vermulm is a horror novelist and short story author, co-author of Rain Shadows: Dark Tales from Washington State along with Tamara Kaye Sellman, and a podcaster at Fermented Fiction and Beneath the Rain Shadow.
You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
How a chance meeting at a sci-fi critique group led to a successful horror writing collaboration
The unique podcast-to-book model: using monthly prompts and live critiques to create Rain Shadows
How they’ve sold more books by hand than online—plus specific tactics for face-to-face selling
Essential tips for being a better critique partner without destroying someone’s confidence
The business side of co-authoring: 50/50 splits, paying contributors, and why royalty tracking is a nightmare
Jo: Clay Vermulm is a horror novelist and short story author, co-author of Rain Shadows: Dark Tales from Washington State along with Tamara Kaye Sellman, and a podcaster at Fermented Fiction and Beneath the Rain Shadow. So welcome to the show, Clay.
Clay: Hey, thank you so much for having me. I’m very excited to be on here.
Jo: Lots for us to talk about. So first up—
Tll us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.
Clay: Like a lot of people, I’ve been writing since I was a little kid with crayons and everything like that, so I think a lot of writers out there can relate to that story. More specifically, I went to college for English and history.
Like a lot of people, I think I was told through a good portion of my life this sort of narrative—and I think it’s ironic, right? We tell people, “Oh, follow your dreams.”
If people do something creative when they’re a kid or when they’re younger, we encourage that. We parade that, we champion that. Then as soon as you turn 18, we’re like, “Okay, time to make money now. Do something that’s a real job.”
I always resented that, and once I got to college, I had a really good English professor who taught a class on actual publishing. His whole class was about how to submit a short story and how to go out there and try to get your work published.
Your final for the class was just to actually show him that you had submitted a short story to a professional market and written one, because we wrote and critiqued them throughout class.
I grew up in rural Montana, so I hadn’t had a lot of opportunities to do critique groups or writing groups or theater or any of that until I went to college. Once I did and saw some of the avenues you could take to really pursue a life in creativity, I was totally hooked. That’s where it officially began for me.
Honestly, I owe it largely to theater. I got into theater and I went to college on a wrestling scholarship. I ended up dropping out of that and going into the community theater, doing some shows, learning to write stage plays and standup comedy and music.
I tried writing everything and eventually landed on books because, as you know Joanna, you can carve out your own path in indie publishing in books, and you don’t have to rely on like a million other people like you do in a play or a film.
That’s why I’ve focused on writing novels and short stories in recent years, just to get some of my stories finished and get them out there.
Jo: So did you ever get a “real job” as college people like to call it, or—
Have you managed a creative portfolio career, as we call it now?
Clay: I’m finally getting to where that is my full-time job. For about the last three years, I’ve been a full-time writer—freelance stuff, magazines, editing gigs, kind of patching all that together with what I publish and put out there and a bunch of other groups I work with.
So I’m there now, but it’s only been about the last three years. Up until then I’ve worked lots of side jobs, kitchen jobs, a teaching job, and all kinds of stuff like that.
I freelanced in the film industry here in Seattle for a solid five, six years as well. When I was doing that, I was just taking whatever new job would come my way. So I did a lot of production assistant stuff and grip and electric stuff.
Jo: I think this is so important because I feel like a lot of people do think, “Oh well, it’s just the one book.” Maybe they do a degree like yours in English and then they think, “Okay, I just need to write one book and that’s it.”
But what you’re talking about—this sort of patchwork of all these different creative things, plus bits and bobs of jobs—is really the reality, isn’t it? I certainly don’t know anyone who just writes one book and then that’s it, they’re done.
Clay: Yes, that is certainly an illusion, and a loosely held one at that. These days, I don’t know anyone who’s tried selling a book who still believes that.
Jo: But perhaps if you haven’t yet finished that first book, you can still believe that. It’s great that your professor encouraged you all to submit because I guess you also started getting rejections pretty early, right?
Are most of your works short stories?
Because I saw from your website you do a lot of short stories.
Clay: That’s kind of become my favorite medium, my favorite form. I like editing too, because I really like to bring other artists, other authors together on projects. I love to showcase things that are really beautiful and strong works of fiction, especially in the short market, because there’s just sort of a thing that happens with short stories.
I think that a lot of writers read short stories. They are harder to get out to your actual larger reader base. Luckily in horror, I think there’s been quite a movement towards reading short fiction, but even still, people primarily like to read novels or longer work for the larger reader base, it seems.
I love taking every opportunity I can to collaborate with people and to bring awesome artists together on projects and to get these stories that—even if they’ve been printed somewhere else before—to get them back out there.
When I find them and I’m like, “This story’s awesome,” I see if I can get a reprint and make an anthology with it, just doing those kinds of projects. It’s always been really rewarding to me. I think I like writing short stories because it also allows me to explore that editing side of the work as well.
It’s funny you said writers read short stories, and I was just trying to question that in my mind, like, is that true? I think you are definitely right because many of us want to write them so we read them.
I definitely remember reading the Roald Dahl Tales of the Unexpected back in the eighties, and those still shaped me. Then I was thinking about the ones that I buy now and they are pretty much all horror, which is really interesting that you said that. So people listening, definitely short stories.
Let’s talk about one of your collaborations then. You have this unusual origin story for the new collection called Rain Shadows.
Talk about how Rain Shadows started, and the prompts, and the podcast, and why the hell you did it this way.
Clay: It all ties together nicely. This story came out of a critique group where I met Tamara for the first time. I found this critique group randomly on Meetup, and it’s actually a fantasy sci-fi critique group.
It’s still going in North Seattle right now. It’s a great group of people. If you happen to be a writer of sci-fi and fantasy, they’re on Meetup as North Seattle Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers.
I met Tamara there and I was the only horror writer, which happens a lot in critique groups as well. You show up being the only horror writer is a common enough thing. Tamara came in with also some pretty dark stories that she was workshopping. It was like a bunch of dream sequences from her novel that she was working on.
As soon as I read her stuff, I was like, “This person is the person out of this group that I want to really work with. I hope she likes my stories because her writing’s awesome.” We had a good chemistry.
We have a similar kind of style. I wouldn’t say writing style, but we have a similar flavor of the kind of story we like to tell. We both liked the slow burn, the more psychological angle on horror, and it was just a good match.
From that moment on, I knew I wanted to work with Tamara at some time, in some way. I was thinking of the story I sort of told you earlier about how a lot of writers need that person. For a lot of people, that might be you, Joanna, in this podcast.
So that person to tell them that, “No, you can do this. There are avenues forward into the publishing industry for the everyday writer.” I wanted to show people that.
One of the biggest things you have to overcome is that first draft, right?
You have to overcome finishing it, and then showing it to some people, and getting some feedback and starting to polish that thing and edit that thing. You can’t edit a blank page.
That’s the twofold goal for this project: to both show people how to finish a project and how to kickstart that creativity, which is what we use the prompts for. Then also to show that early editing process and how far a story can come from a rough draft to a completed project.
I wanted to show how you just have to get into it, find somebody you can trust who can give you good feedback, and then work through it together.
Once you get that thing finished and you start editing it, you’ll always be surprised how much of the story is in there on the first draft, how much you can bring out, and how much you can lift up and make it whatever you really want to make it.
So that was the goal of Rain Shadows—to encourage finishing your stories and getting through that early editing process to start the journey towards the finished draft and finishing projects, because that really is the hardest thing for a lot of beginning writers, I think.
Jo: Okay, so you didn’t really explain the podcast. Tell us—
How is it a podcast with this process?
Because I’ve co-written with other people and there was certainly no podcasting involved!
Clay: That’s fair. The concept of the podcast—it’s called Beneath the Rain Shadow—and it is a craft-centric podcast focused around writing and editing short stories into a collection. Then we have collected them into a book, which is called Rain Shadows.
Every episode we alternate. So I would come in with a prompt that I created. I would give it to Tamara. She would write a story in a month’s time, and at the end of the month we would record an episode where we critique that rough draft live on the show.
Every prompt was threefold. So they all had a Pacific Northwest location—and if you’re not from America, the Pacific Northwest is the northwest Pacific coast corner of the country, like Washington State, Oregon, and Montana, Idaho, those kinds of areas.
We had a Pacific Northwest location, a Pacific Northwest quirk—so something that’s funny about the area we live in or eccentric, like beard grooming or driving a Subaru or something like that. Then we had a horror trope—so these are everything from “sex equals death” to slashers or zombies or whatever you want to do.
Those are largely just jumping off points for us. We had a rule to include every part of the prompt in some way, but it could be as small as a character just driving a Subaru or the story could be centered around a Subaru, but it didn’t have to.
That’s how the podcast worked. We would come with these fun prompts, we would use them to challenge each other. We would use them to mess with each other a little bit because we’re good friends.
For example, I did not want to have to write a slasher story, so I gave that to Tamara. Then for revenge, she gave me a zombie story because she knows I hate zombies.
Jo: I mean, to be fair, I do like horror, but I’m not into slasher at all. I also read very few zombies. I read Jonathan Maberry’s zombies, but that’s about it. This is so interesting to me because, well, one, you mentioned this critique group, this meetup, and two, I think you are just very collaborative, clearly, as a person.
As I said, I have co-written, but I definitely struggle with it. Do you think that you have had to learn techniques of collaboration? Do you think it’s part of your personality to be collaborative?
How can we be better collaborators if we feel like, “Oh my goodness, I am not sharing my writing with anyone”?
Clay: That’s a great question. I definitely learned a lot. The nice thing about co-writing like a single narrative would be one thing, right? And this isn’t necessarily that because we were alternating short stories.
So we definitely co-edited this collection, but we also had the benefit of co-writing individual stories. So we still had final say over our own creative narratives, which I think helped.
I think that kind of collaboration could be a good way to work into it if it’s your first time.
You could try collaborating something where you’re more co-editing than co-writing everything.
But regardless, I think the key to it is just you have to come into it with an open mind.
You have to come into it feeling ready and malleable, because as we all know, we have to kill our darlings in the writing game. That’s just part of it. You’re going to have passages of interior monologue or a beautiful conversation that you have to cut from the story because it just doesn’t serve the larger goal.
You have to get to that stage of the editing process where you’re able to take the feedback of your co-writer effectively and constructively and apply it to the work in a meaningful way.
I find that I always discover that makes the story better. It always does to get good feedback from an experienced collaborator who can bring an objective opinion to it and help you improve it from there. Then you have to make sure to hold onto the essence of the story.
I think the key to writing together is not to look at how they’re going to change the story, but looking at it as what they’re going to bring to the story.
What about their work or their style of writing or who they are as a person makes them someone you want to collaborate with? Remember that as you’re working with them.
What are they bringing to the table that you couldn’t?
Because everybody is better than you at something. That’s what I love about collaborating the most, everybody can bring something wholly unique. Everybody can tell a story that I could never tell.
That’s what makes writing beautiful, right? I want that involved in all of my work if I can. If somebody else can bring their perspective, their vision, their creative power and energy to something I’m working on, it’s always going to make my stuff better.
Also, pick your collaborators wisely. Do your research, read their stuff, get to know them as a person before you jump on board. That’s important too. I knew very well that I was going to get along with Tamara on multiple levels.
As you’ve said, this is a podcast too, right? So it’s extra tricky. You can’t just be a good writer for this project to work. You also have to be good on the podcast, which is an entirely different set of skills.
Jo: I’m still interested in this. So you met this critique group. I’ve never been in a writer’s group. I’m like a super lone wolf kind of writer!
So you talk there about the feedback and the critique in the podcast, Beneath the Rain Shadow. If people listening want to be a better critique partner, so somebody who is able to work with someone in the way that you are, where they’re respecting that person’s voice, they’re respecting what the author wants to do with the story…
So like both you and I don’t like slasher stories, but if a friend said, “Okay, I need your feedback on this,” we can’t just say, “I don’t like that.” I’m really asking—
How do we take our personal preference away in order to be more positive in feedback, but still useful?
I feel like I get so many emails from people that say, “I went to this critique group and I got absolutely slated. I just got destroyed because people were so negative and horrible. They just don’t like my stuff.” So how do we tell the difference and help be better critique partners?
Clay: That’s a great question, and finding a critique group is difficult. So if you are one of those people out there that’s looking for a good critique group and you’ve just run into a bunch of bad situations, know that that’s part of the process. That is normal.
There are good groups out there, and when you find them, they really do help make your work better. I think the key to it, if you’re going into it as a critique partner, go into it remembering who you are and why you brought your stuff to the critique group.
Go in remembering what you’re looking for from a group, and remembering how hard it is to put a story together and to bring a final story to the page and then share it with the world and put it out there. It’s a very vulnerable thing.
Writing is such a lonely game, and the critique group can be a beautiful place to not only share your story and your work, which we all end up sharing with the world eventually, but it’s a place where you get to share the process too, and that’s the part that’s so lonely.
That’s the part that the world doesn’t know about, right? Unless they’re listening to interviews like this and getting that behind the scenes. Your critique group is a chance to go in there and share that whole experience with people who truly understand it.
I think that’s always good for people whenever you’re working through something difficult like writing. It can be a very difficult game, right? So I would say start with that, and then there are some semantic tips and tricks too.
I try to read every story twice when I critique, if not three times, depending on how confusing the story is or whatever.
One technique I like to use, and Tamara will champion this technique as well: Take the story off your computer and put it on an e-reader or print it out or do something that makes it feel different than a Word document.
E-readers specifically are nice because they format it like a book, and I know it’s kind of a dumb little thing, but it flicks a little switch in your brain and then you start reading it differently. You sort of have a different subconscious level of respect for it almost.
I don’t know if you’ve experienced this at all, Joanna, but I find that’s really useful for me to put it on a different device, take it off my computer and get the laptop out from in front of me. Then I feel like I’m editing or correcting a homework assignment.
Read it as a reader first and try to really capture the essence of the story.
Try to really look for what is the intentionality of the story, because every writer has that in every story. If you can find that, then the goal is just to help and try to aid in whatever way you can to bring that essence of the story to the surface and make the story more powerful.
You can only offer your subjective opinion, so be conscious of that, right? Everything you are offering is feedback or whatever. You never want to try to rewrite someone’s story or tell them how to write.
You want to share your experience as a subjective reader, a consumer of the story itself, and then as a peer and as a writer. If you’re going to give feedback, always offer something to go with it that helps bring the essence of the story to the surface.
I think if you could do those things, that’s a good place to start on being a good critique partner. If you want to hear a really long rant about it, you can listen to episode one of Beneath the Rain Shadow.
Jo: I was going to say, I mean obviously you and Tamara do that on your show. But I also think those tips are pretty good for your own stories if you can get some distance from it.
Also, I think short stories are great for this kind of critiquing, aren’t they? Because if people come with novels, I mean, you can’t read a whole novel in that way, and if you get a chapter, then things don’t make sense. There are open loops. You don’t know all the things.
So short stories, again, you said writers read them because we write them. That’s what they are. They’re so perfect for this kind of critiquing and getting outside the genre you might usually work in.
Let’s get into the business side. You and Tamara have started a new imprint for this and the other projects.
Talk about this, and also the publishing and production process and the marketing, because being a co-producer—and whether you are describing yourselves as co-writers or co-editors—this is difficult.
It is difficult to do the business side just as much as the creative side.
Clay: I’m still figuring out the business side, to be completely honest, when it comes to having an imprint. That is a new experience for me.
I have worked for a couple small indie presses and helped out at a couple other magazines and things like that. I’ve indie published my own anthologies and my own work, but I’ve always just done it under my own name and not really worried about that as much.
So doing this joint business venture with Tamara is very interesting, and luckily she has like 40 years of experience in the publishing industry. So she’s definitely got that skillset to put together the marketing playbook and put together the timeline and help us stay on track for everything.
My part of that has largely been finding the contacts and utilizing a lot of the tools that I used when I have indie published my own work. So I have a good contact with a guy who’s really good at book formatting, copy editing, and proofreading. So I usually go to him for my final stage stuff.
That’s JW Donnelly at Dark Forest Press. I definitely recommend him if you need those kinds of late stage publishing services or editing services. He’s awesome. So I’ve had those contacts for a while, and I helped connect some of those dots.
In terms of organizing everything and getting it all laid out, Tamara was largely the instrument of success there. We’re trying a lot of things.
You come from a podcast, and one of the reasons I got into podcasting in the first place was actually from—I know you know these guys—Johnny B. Truant and Sean Platt’s book Write. Publish. Repeat.
They talked about finding a way to create content that works for you and to be present in the writing community in a way that actually works for you instead of just social media lurking or half-heartedly doing something you’re supposed to do.
Podcasting for me is my way of engaging with the writing community.
Beneath the Rain Shadow is a great way to do that, as well as create a book. Then part of our marketing plan was always to have the creation of the book connected with the book itself as a product and that going all the way back to the podcast.
So they’re in this nice loop of if you’re out selling your books on the street, which we do a lot of that.
A big part of where we sell is street fairs and markets and stuff, which is why we chose to do such a localized horror theme.
That’s why we wanted it to be from Washington state and from where we both live, because people love that. When you’re selling at these big events, conventions, and street fairs, and we do night markets and all kinds of things like that, this book is perfect for that because people love to read about where they’re from.
They love to read that localized horror. So that’s a really big part of our marketing plan as well, that boots on the ground selling mentality.
Then obviously we went wide too. We used Ingram Spark to distribute. If you’re an indie publisher, you’ve got to learn about Ingram Spark.
If you want to get your book into libraries and you want to get your book into smaller bookstores and you’re not going to go through a distribution network that’s more established and do it yourself, Ingram Spark will be a required publishing asset for you in a lot of places. Especially for libraries and bookstores because they facilitate returns and stuff like that.
So that’s something to know as well, but we just went wide on the internet and we are very focused on in-person sales with this book because it is so localized.
Jo: You knew you were going to do a book from the podcast—
Did you set up a pre-order from the beginning of the podcast?
Clay: We set up our pre-order about halfway through, I think. But as we were doing the podcast, we were still getting it all off the ground at the same time. Hopefully we’ll be a little ahead of the curve on the next book, which is going to be very exciting as well, and the next season of the podcast.
Jo: I love the local idea again. You really baked some good marketing into the actual book itself, saying that people like to buy local stories. Of course, it doesn’t have to be horror. People listening, if they write romance or whatever they write. Nonfiction as well.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre, who’s been on the show, he’s written sort of local various books about places. So I think this is really interesting.
Any tips for selling in person at fairs and things?
How has that gone? What about writers like me who are still worried about this?
Clay: Definitely could give you some tips. I do a lot of that. We haven’t sold a ton of Rain Shadows online, but we have sold almost 200 copies by hand already.
It’s a lot of fun because you get to engage directly with your readership, and I think that goes a long way towards word of mouth, especially in this day and age of oversaturation out there.
There’s so many writers, there’s so many stories, there’s so many books, so many algorithms to compete with.
Word of mouth is still our most powerful ally as indie publishers. People going out there and reviewing our work and sharing it with their friends.
If they meet you in person, I think they’re more likely to do all of those things as well as to read the actual book. I think a lot of people are trophy collectors too, right? Just a good looking book for the shelf and you never read it. We all have giant TBR piles.
So that face-to-face interaction I think in this day and age is exceptionally powerful and important for indie authors. So that’s a good reason to do it all by itself.
And for tips and tricks, you have to learn the energy of selling books in person is definitely different than doing it online or through social media.
Doing a podcast is helpful for that, learning how to talk and raise your energy level, an appropriate on-air personality. You do have to adjust all that, right?
We’re always putting on a little bit of a performance even when we’re just having a chat essentially. So engaging with your audience, being genuinely interested in people, and letting them engage with the work. Then there’s a few tricks we have in this collection specifically.
So something that’s nice about it is at the start of every story, you get to see the prompt that created the story originally. So the Northwest location, the quirk, and the horror trope are there. Then we also have a map of Washington with a little star on it so you can point right to where every story happens.
This is nice for a couple of salesy reasons. It is a good way to get the book in people’s hands, which is a classic sales trick, right? If you’re selling at a street fair, you can get people holding the book. They’re a lot more likely to buy the book.
Jo: Nice tip. So as in—
You are opening it and showing them the map, and then they’re holding it.
Clay: Mm-hmm. It goes a long way. People already have it in their hand, they’re already thinking about it. Then you open it and you’re like, “Oh, where are you from?” And they go, “Oh, I’m from Granite Falls.” And you’re, “Oh, okay, well we have a story that takes place, boom, right here, right where you live.”
Then the other thing we have is a bookmark that lists all the horror tropes we did. So I will also be telling them about the one story with the one map picture that I’m showing them, and then I’ll hand them the bookmark and be like, “And if you like any of these other horror tropes, we also did these 12 tropes, so you might be into this book for all these reasons.”
Then they’re holding two things. So those are some of the simple tips and tricks. I would say just have a good energy, engage with people, be interested in them, ask them a question or two, and find out what they like to read.
Then in the case of this book, we went wide on topics. We went wide all over the horror genre. So we wrote stories from aliens to zombies to technology, creepy technology, all kinds of things. Mushrooms. So there’s a wide swath of horror stuff that we included in this collection.
We did that knowing that we want to capture as big of a horror audience as we can, because there’s a lot of people that are into a certain sub-genre, but then there’s other aspects of horror they don’t like, and largely those are based on misconceptions in a lot of cases anyway.
So hopefully this collection that’s dedicated almost wholly to subverting tropes and taking unique approaches at old tired ideas can help with that and get some people reading horror.
Jo: I think that’s really cool. I actually haven’t really talked about this on the show, but I do have an idea for a book set in my county of Somerset here in the southwest of England.
As you’re talking about this and the map and all of that, I’m thinking, yes, I mean, I can see how baking in that marketing early on is just such a good idea that I think that will help a lot of people listening actually. Let’s just come back to some of the other considerations around podcasting.
So when you set up the podcast with Tamara, is this a business thing?
Are you paying for hosting? Are you driving traffic to an email list, your Patreon? Is that under your new imprint? Is everything co-owned now around this idea?
Clay: When it comes to this project, Tamara and I just split everything 50/50. We pay for a few hosting things and your standard things you have to have, like we have a domain name and we have a pretty basic website.
We have Patreon that we’re still building out and we paid for all the publishing costs 50/50. We split royalties 50/50. So it’s just all right down the middle for us.
Now for the next season, we’re bringing on two more authors. So for that we have a different strategy that we’ve talked through and thought about quite a bit. We’ve decided we’re going to pay them a good rate for short stories rather than do a royalty split.
Trying to split it… because I don’t know if you’ve ever had to track someone down—it’s a nightmare. It’s the worst.
So that’s another part of the strategy too that you might be interested in. When we do in-person sales, Tamara and I, so we split royalties just 50/50, but then when we order author copies to sell in person, we also just split the cost of that down the middle.
Then we split the books down the middle and then when we go out and sell in person, we don’t really worry about royalties. If you sold the book, you keep the money for that book, unless we’re both at the event. So we’re collaborating on it on a lot of levels.
Luckily we have a lot of trust for each other, which is requisite for this, clearly, but it works for us. It wouldn’t work in a lot of other situations.
So for the next one, that’s why we’re keeping it that we’re going to pay both of you a good writing rate and then we are going to keep all the royalties because we don’t want to have to chase our tails on that for the rest of eternity.
Jo: I think that’s a really good idea, especially for short stories. I mean, having co-written with people for a decade now, some of those books, the monthly royalty is negligible. Even if you do it once every six months, it’s like, oh my goodness, the time I have to spend doing reporting.
Although, to be fair, this is one place AI has just really started helping me because when you are wide, you get so many different reports from so many different vendors. I used to have to open everyone and go through and find the stuff, and now I just upload them all to ChatGPT Agent, and it does it for me. So this is a good part of AI for business admin.
But I think you are right there. I guess with your contracts with those people, there are also rights reversion within a certain amount of time because—
Short story contracts often have faster rights reversion than longer works.
Clay: Yes, and we’re just basing that on a cents per word situation.
We’re trying to pay as high as we can, as close to the pro rates as we can. We’ll probably end up averaging out that cents per word rate that everybody’s happy with and then paying it as a flat rate.
Because it’s all prompt based, right? And it’s all writing in a month’s time. There’s all these other variables that someone might want to write longer or shorter. So we want them to have the flexibility to do that, but without breaking our banks.
So we’re probably going to agree on a contract that’s like we’re going to pay 5 cents a word, which is considered a pro rate, right? Or I think it’s 8 cents a word now, but 5 cents a word is a decent enough payment for an editor to pay you if you’re a writer.
We’ll probably agree to that with a set word count for each story, and then just pay a flat rate for all four stories since we rotate. Every writer will have to write three stories for the next book.
Jo: I think it’s all good to think about though, if people get enthusiastic about doing short story anthologies. As you say, if you have 15 stories and 15 different writers, I mean, these kinds of payments are an absolute nightmare. I think you’re doing the right thing there.
So let’s talk a little bit more about podcasting because you also have your own podcast, Fermented Fiction, which I went over to have a little listen to before we started talking, and I was like, “Oh my goodness. This is a really long show.”
There’s multiple hosts and you talk about lots of pop culture stuff, books and movies and stuff like that. I’m very interested in this. How does podcasting help you on the fiction side? Because I can see that it’s part of your business and everything like that, but in your fiction side—
Talk about Fermented Fiction and how you think it builds your author brand.
Clay: How much time do you got, Joanna?!
Jo: Well, you’ve got about five minutes left!
Clay: I love Fermented Fiction for so many reasons. It’s become one of my favorite things I do.
As I said earlier, Johnny and Sean and David are huge inspirations to the beginning of my indie career and still huge inspirations to this day. They’re also just such lovely people. They came on the show season one when we had like three listeners, because they’re just willing to do that for people. So shout out to them, by the way.
So initially that was the goal, right? Was just to create an engine for engagement with the author community that felt meaningful and that felt productive instead of social media. Then it became something much more.
You’re asking specifically about how it affects my fiction and how it helps with my writing, and Fermented Fiction has been fantastic for that because it helps me analyze fiction through a new lens, through a critical lens.
For those of you who don’t know, the premise of Fermented Fiction is we invite on guests from the creative industries. So we will bring on filmmakers or writers or whoever else we can get.
We mostly bring on writers just because that’s where we have connections, but we are open to bringing any creative people on. We’ve brought on some podcasters as well.
We choose a movie, book, or show and then we roll 2D20. So if you roll high, you have to defend the movie, book, or show. If you roll low, you have to attack it no matter what you actually think.
Then we do a 10 minute debate, and after the debate we do an hour, hour and a half long panel on the chosen movie, book or show and everything else that comes up along the way.
So this has been a fantastic exercise, Joanna, for analyzing work I love and work I don’t love from a totally different lens because if you’re watching or reading for Fermented Fiction, you have to be prepared to debate it either way.
So it’s a good way to learn how to look for things you love in maybe movies that you didn’t used to appreciate or that you didn’t like on first watch or books. The same thing, right?
Maybe you read it and it wasn’t your cup of tea, but if you’re going in for the show, you’ve got to reread it and you’ve got to find something to love about it. Then same thing with things you love.
I had to debate against Pan’s Labyrinth recently. Oh, it was so hard. It was so hard, Joanna. I had to watch that movie like three times in a row to be like, “How is this not a perfect movie?” And my conclusion was, it is. It is a perfect movie, but you can still find little things to nitpick. It’s a fun exercise.
Almost more so with the things you love, right? Because then you can humanize those creators too by like, “Oh, this is still writing. It’s still a story. It’s still following a lot of the same rules I have to follow.”
That’s a good way to look at the stories you love. It’s not nitpicking for the sake of finding something that doesn’t work. It’s just nitpicking for finding the nuts and bolts that hold all stories together. They’re in all the stories. Even the best ones. The best ones are just better at hiding it.
Jo: For sure. Any thoughts for fiction authors or anyone listening who thinks, “Oh, well, I kind of want to do a podcast because that would be awesome,” but it feels like it’s oversubscribed now. Like we said with books, there’s a lot of books. I mean, there’s a lot of podcasts out there, right? It is hard to find an audience.
What are your thoughts on people who are new to podcasting, who might want to start a podcast?
Clay: I will just give the answer I’ve heard from a lot of people, but I would say do it. You know, it doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt to do it.
There’s a low bar for entry when it comes to commitment in terms of money and stuff. These days you can get a pretty good mic for affordable costs. You can get a good webcam and that’s all you need. Then you can get started.
I would say just think of why you want to do a podcast. What about it excites you? Because it’s a lot of work and you’re not going to make money on it, not for a very long time anyway.
You might eventually, but if that’s your ticket to making money and then that’s going to fund your writing career, neither of those is a great way to make money in the short and quick.
Jo: For sure.
Clay: So you’re going to have to work really hard to pull off either of those career choices.
However, I do think podcasting is really good at fueling a creative career. It’s really good at helping you promote yourself. It’s a great way to put out good content out there without making your writing—if you don’t want your writing to be the content that you feel you have lots of deadlines around or lots of obligations.
For example, I don’t want to write a short story every month necessarily forever, right? I like doing it for Rain Shadows, but that’s a self-contained project that has an end date. I don’t feel like I have this looming obligation to my readership for all time to produce a story a week or something.
I would rather be able to take my time with my writing and release the stories I want to tell when they have become the stories I want to tell and not before. I like to have more control over that.
So for me, having a podcast is a great way for me to release something every single week that is directly connected to the work that is connected to the craft that is connected to the community in some way. That keeps you out there. It keeps your voice active, it keeps you thinking, it keeps you creative.
So I think podcasts can be great fuel for that. They can help you prop up your writing and vice versa. And they can be a great way to engage with the community in a meaningful way.
You will be shocked who will say yes if you ask them to come on a podcast. It’s awesome. I mean, writers are very generous people a lot of the time. Most of the time. We’ve had all kinds of awesome guests on the show, and you can just ask. The worst thing people can say is no, and it’s a great way to engage with the community.
Jo: Brilliant.
Where can people find you and your books and your podcasts online?
Clay: You can find everything about Rain Shadows at RainShadowStories.com. That is RainShadowStories.com. That will have the Beneath the Rain Shadow podcast and it will have all the info on that book.
I have a Substack: Clay Vermulm Fiction Horror. There you can join my newsletter and that will also get Fermented Fiction delivered right to your inbox, as well as a monthly letter from me with all the writing updates from Clay Vermulm Fiction and Beneath the Rain Shadows books.
Fermented Fiction is a weekly show, so we go live usually on Tuesdays and Wednesdays on YouTube, and we’re just Fermented Fiction on there. We’re easy to find.
Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Clay. That was great.
Clay: Thank you. It was a true joy to be on this show. I’ve been listening a long time and thank you so much for taking a punt on me here.
Note From KMW: Before we get started today, I just wanted to let you know that this weekend, I’m excited to be sharing a presentation at the WorldShift: The Speculative Fiction Writers’ Summit 2025. This is a free, 4-day online event packed with workshops on character, worldbuilding, plotting, publishing, and more from 30+ writing experts. Whether you write speculative fiction or not, you’ll walk away with tools you can use in any story. You can grab your free ticket here: Join the Summit.
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In fiction, every clash between characters comes down to a conflict management style. This is true whether you’re writing a heated argument or a quiet standoff. In real life, psychologists group these into five main approaches: competing, collaborating, compromising, accommodating, and avoiding. Understanding how each works can help you write richer, more realistic character conflicts.
It is a common axiom in the writing world that conflict drives story. Although the simplicity of this advice is necessarily limited, what it means is that plot is created from a series catalysts that cause characters to respond. Basically: cause and effect.
This is what then creates the chain of story events (aka, scenes) that engenders the larger story. At its simplest, story conflict is nothing more or less than some kind of obstacle interfering with a character’s forward progression. That said, the word “conflict” itself does tend to most readily connote interpersonal conflict—whether in the form of a fistfight or a passive-aggressive argument. Indeed, most people find this aspect of conflict to be the most obviously entertaining and useful for plot, since it tends to inherently combine all three of a story’s major engines: plot, theme, and character.
This means that much of what writers need to know about conflict in general comes down to character conflicts. The more nuanced your characterizations, the more interesting the conflict will be and the more realistic and compelling your characters will be.
So how do you create nuanced character conflict?
One way is to study and understand conflict management styles. If you can figure out which conflict management styles best fit your characters, you not only have the opportunity to create instantaneously complex relationship dynamics (since every character’s approach to conflict will be different), but also conflict that naturally arises from the management styles themselves (e.g., characters with opposing styles can sometimes spark conflict just because they clash with each other’s approaches).
Take the Test: What Are the 5 Conflict Management Styles?
The idea of five distinct conflict management styles comes from the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI), developed in the early 1970s by psychologists Kenneth W. Thomas and Ralph H. Kilmann. Originally designed for workplace and organizational settings, the model maps how people handle conflict along two dimensions: how a person pursues one’s own goals (i.e., a spectrum of unassertiveness and assertiveness) and how one considers others’ goals (i.e., a spectrum of uncooperativeness to cooperativeness). From there, they used these two axes to map five core approaches to conflict: competing, collaborating, compromising, accommodating, and avoiding.
To discover which style best fits your characters (and yourself!), you can purchase the official test here. Below is a short version that can get you started by giving you the general idea:
Character Conflict Style Quiz
Discover how your characters naturally handle disagreements, tension, and power struggles. Start by choosing a single character you want to assess. For each statement below, imagine how this character would respond in a variety of situations (e.g., with friends, rivals, strangers, etc.).
Rate each statement on a scale of 1–5:
1 = Strongly Disagree
2 = Disagree
3 = Neutral / Sometimes True
4 = Agree
5 = Strongly Agree
At the end, follow the scoring guide to discover your character’s dominant conflict style(s).
The Statements
My character pushes hard for his/her own way, even if it risks upsetting others.
My character seeks solutions that work for everyone involved in the disagreement.
My character will give up part of what he/she wants if it helps resolve the conflict.
My character often lets others have their way to keep the peace.
My character avoids bringing up issues unless there’s no other choice.
My character enjoys finding creative solutions in which everyone feels satisfied.
My character is willing to settle halfway if it ends the argument quickly.
My character puts the other person’s needs first when harmony matters most.
My character changes the subject or withdraws to avoid escalation.
My character insists on his/her own position, believing he/she’s right.
Scoring
Add the scores for each style category:
Competing = Q1 + Q10
Collaborating = Q2 + Q6
Compromising = Q3 + Q7
Accommodating = Q4 + Q8
Avoiding = Q5 + Q9
Highest Score → This is your character’s dominant style in conflict.
Close Second(s) → These could be secondary style(s) your character may use in certain situations.
Lowest Score(s) → These are the styles your character is least likely to use.
Use the dominant style to shape your characters’ dialogue, body language, and choices in tense scenes. From there, you can play with your story’s conflict by putting your characters in situations that force them into their weakest styles. Not only does this usually create more conflict, but it’s great for growth arcs and plot twists. Also, look for ways to combine different styles in ensemble casts to create natural friction between characters.
Understanding conflict management styles for your characters can provide a solid foundation that influences many aspects of your story. This lays the groundwork for realistic personalities, while also contributing to how you manage each scene’s tension, pacing, and tone. It will influence how character relationships play out, and—since this is usually the heart of any story—from there it can end up creating the plot all by itself.
If you realize any one character lacks a strong conflict style and/or many of your characters share the same style, you can easily troubleshoot for a stronger narrative by mixing things up or strengthening the accuracy and consistency of how a particular conflict style is showing up in your story.
Using the 5 Styles Conflict Management Styles to Build Character Conflict
Let’s take a deeper look at each of the five styles and how each one might show up in your fiction.
5 Conflict Management Styles for Writers Graph (click for larger view).
1. The Competing Style: High-Stakes Showdowns
Characters with a Competing style go all in to get what they want. They score high in both assertiveness and uncooperativeness, which means they tend to prioritize victory over relationships. This can be a great way to raise the stakes, since it creates scenarios with clear winners and losers.
Although these characters often come across as selfish, they can also be excellent leaders since they are ultimately all about efficiency. Their focus is entirely on getting results, which can actually be on behalf of someone else (i.e., protecting or providing for the group) even if relationships are often not factors in the decision making.
For Example:
Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada relentlessly pushes her own agendas, regardless of how it impacts others. When she demands Andrea obtain an unpublished Harry Potter manuscript for her twins, Miranda exerts total control, making it clear her needs come before anyone else’s.
The Devil Wears Prada (2006), 20th Century Fox
Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick obsessively pursues his own goal (killing the whale), even at the cost of his crew’s safety. He rallies the crew to join his hunt for Moby-Dick, overriding the ship’s original mission and dismissing the first mate Starbuck’s concerns.
2. The Collaborating Style: Win-Win Solutions
When two characters team up to find a solution that works for everyone, they’re Collaborating. Unlike the Competing style, the Collaborating style can often serve to strengthen connections even while highlighting differences. Like Competitors, Collaborators score high in assertiveness. They’re there to get the job done, but because they also score high in cooperativeness, they wish to do so in a way that doesn’t clearly define themselves as winners and everyone else as losers.
These characters make great leaders, although usually more heart-based than the head-based Competitors. Sometimes their downfall can be trying to make situations work for everyone when that isn’t possible or desirable (which can ironically cause everyone to “lose”).
For Example:
As she becomes a leader, Moana works to find solutions that honor her people’s traditions while also solving their urgent needs. When she realizes the antagonist is actually the goddess Te Fiti, Moana does not seek to defeat her, but rather restores her heart, resolving the conflict in a way that benefits everyone.
Moana (2016), Walt Disney Pictures.
Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird strives to seek truth and fairness by balancing empathy with justice and involving others in the moral conversation. During his courtroom defense of Tom Robinson, he appeals to the jury’s conscience and shared values in an attempt to gain a resolution that serves both justice and his community’s moral integrity.
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Universal Pictures.
3. The Compromising Style: Meeting in the Middle
This style desires both sides to give a little and meet in the middle. Compromisers tend to create a partial resolution that still leaves some tension in play. Compromisers ride the middle of both axes—assertiveness and cooperation—landing somewhere betwixt and between. Because they lack as much assertiveness as Competitors and Collaborators, they tend to fill leadership roles only reluctantly and in the absence of someone more decisive. This isn’t necessarily because the more decisive types are better leaders, but because those types can sometimes fill the role faster, while the Compromising type is still examining all the options.
The Compromising style can often lend itself to indecision. Because their greatest desire is for everyone to be happy, they can get stuck in pursuit of an impossible ideal. They can be frustrating to both assertive types, but offer valuable and necessary perspectives.
For Example:
Marty McFly in Back to the Future consistently seeks middle-ground solutions to avoid outright confrontation, like persuading George to stand up to Biff so he doesn’t have to directly fight Biff himself, or finding a way to get the time machine running without demanding perfection from Doc.
Back to the Future (1985), Universal Pictures.
Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games often negotiates partial agreements with allies (like Peeta or Haymitch) to survive, while still holding to her values. Although she will fight if pushed (indicating a secondary conflict style), she generally prefers to find workaround solutions.
The Hunger Games (2012), Lionsgate.
4. The Accommodating Style: Seeking Peace
Sometimes a character will give in to keep the peace, a choice that can alternatively reveal loyalty, fear, or quiet acts of self-sacrifice. This conflict style scores low in assertiveness and high in cooperativeness. Although this style often lends itself to characters who can get run over by more assertive types, it also represents the most empathetic of the five. This is usually a person who is highly tuned in to others.
However, their conflict aversion can make it difficult for them to get what they want or to pursue (or sometimes even acknowledge) their own desires. If they don’t have a strong secondary style to help them out, they can (ironically) struggle to create enough conflict to drive the plot.
For Example:
Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings shows Accommodating tendencies in his dedication to putting Frodo’s needs and safety above his own desires, even when it’s hard, such as on Mt. Doom when he gives Frodo the last of their water instead of taking it himself, prioritizing Frodo’s needs over his own survival. However, Sam also shows a strong secondary Competitive style, especially when confronting Gollum.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), New Line Cinema.
Beth March in Little Women consistently yields to her sisters’ wishes in order to maintain family harmony, even at personal cost. For instance, when Meg is invited to a party, Beth encourages her to go even though it means Beth will left be alone.
Little Women (1994), Columbia Pictures.
5. The Avoiding Style: Delaying the Battle
Finally, instead of facing the issue, a character might dodge the conflict entirely. Although this can totally deflate a scene’s conflict, it can also lend itself to subtextual passive-aggression as the tension builds in the silence and unresolved emotions linger. Notably, although this type scores low in assertiveness, it scores high in uncooperativeness.
This style often lends itself to loner characters who prefer to go their own way rather than engage with others. It is separate from the Accommodating style in that it is more concerned with protecting itself than placating others. The true Avoidant style will also do almost anything to avoid conflict. It would rather slip away (either physically or by disassociation) than bond or fight in order to end the dispute.
For Example:
Christopher McCandless in Into the Wild consistently sidesteps the deep conflict of his strained family relationships, instead physically removing himself by leaving home and embarking on a solo journey into the wilderness. His avoidance defines not just isolated moments, but his entire approach to life’s tensions.
Into the Wild (2007), Paramount Vantage
Bruce Banner in The Avengers keeps a low profile in Calcutta, tending to patients and dodging any situation that might trigger his transformation. His alter-ego, the Hulk, of course, displays the opposite conflict style of Competitor.
The Incredibles (2004), Walt Disney Pictures.
Tips for Mixing Conflict Styles in Your Story
Although most characters will demonstrate a primary conflict style, this doesn’t mean they can’t utilize secondary tactics as well. Usually, secondary tactics will represent a less well-developed (and therefore less “mature”) approach that kicks in when the primary style proves counter-productive.
You can use conflict styles as a central fulcrum in creating a character arc. For example, a character who relies exclusively on a Competing style might have to learn how to become less aggressive and more Cooperative. Likewise, as in Into the Wild, your story could focus on the dangers of taking any one conflict style to a tragic extreme.
One of the single best ways to utilize conflict styles in your story is to focus on the interplay between how the styles show up in different characters.
For Example:
Two Accomodating characters will probably cancel each other out, creating a scene that lacks conflict (and probably nobody getting what they want either).
Two Competitive characters will be entertaining, but unless one of them arcs otherwise, their story will always end with clear winners and losers.
Competitive and Collaborative leaders can create interesting stories that start with sparks and end with mutual growth.
Compromising characters can often struggle in confronting other types, but offer both balanced perspectives and room for growth.
With deep roots in psychology, conflict management styles make for powerful storytelling tools. By giving each character a clear, consistent approach to conflict, you can create authentic tension, natural relationship dynamics, and plot turns that feel inevitable. You may want to see your characters locking horns in a showdown or finding creative win-win solutions or slipping quietly out the back door. Whatever the case, the way they handle conflict will shape everything from pacing to theme. Mastering these five styles can help you write stories that feel more real, more layered, and far more compelling.
In Summary
The five conflict management styles—Competing, Collaborating, Compromising, Accommodating, and Avoiding—offer writers a structured way to design believable interpersonal conflict. Each style is defined by how characters balance assertiveness (pursuing their own goals) and cooperativeness (considering others’ goals). Assigning conflict styles to characters adds depth, realism, and tension to your scenes and relationships. Going further, to mix different styles in your cast can then naturally generate friction and plot momentum. You can even shift a character’s style over time to create satisfying character arcs.
Key Takeaways
Conflict drives story. Knowing your characters’ conflict styles makes that conflict richer and more organic.
Different styles = different sparks. Pairing contrasting styles creates built-in tension, while matching styles can either cancel conflict or amplify it.
Extreme reliance on one style can be a flaw that drives an arc or downfall.
Use the Character Conflict Style Quiz to quickly identify how your characters approach disagreements.
Incorporating real-world psychology models into fiction can boost authenticity and reader engagement.
If you’d like to take your character development even further, check out my Creating Character Arcs Workbook. Packed with guided exercises, prompts, and structure templates, it will help you chart your characters’ journeys from start to finish. It covers Positive Change Arcs, Flat Arcs, and Negative Change Arcs. Learn how to weave plot and character together seamlessly so every scene feels purposeful and emotionally resonant. It’s available in e-book and paperback.
Wordplayers, tell me your opinion! Which of your characters has the most clearly defined conflict management style, and how has it shaped relationships or the plot? Tell me in the comments!
Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast in Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, or Spotify).
What happens when you fall in love with a book that deserves a wider audience but has never been translated into English? How do you navigate international copyright law, multiple publishers, and estate permissions when you have no translation experience? Dani James shares her journey from discovering a powerful Flemish memoir in her childhood home to becoming its first English translator, a labor of love that took years to complete.
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Jo: Dani James is a writer and literary translator who recently translated Return to the Place I Never Left, a Holocaust survivor memoir by Tobias Schiff. Welcome to the show, Dani.
Dani: Thank you for having me.
Jo: It’s great to have you on the show. First up, just—
Tell us a bit more about you and your background and how and why you got into translation.
Dani: I’m a writer based in New York City, but I grew up in Antwerp, Belgium. Even though I’d been writing creative nonfiction and fiction for years, Return to the Place I Never Left was my first foray into translation.
It was really driven by an interest in translating this book that I personally adored and kept rereading over the years. Thankfully, I speak several languages and I grew up going to school and learning Flemish and Dutch, and being educated in that language.
I had no previous translation background, but just because I enjoyed this book so much and felt it was deserving of a wider audience, it inspired me to try my hand at it.
That’s ultimately what drew me to translation. I found a lot of joy in it, and I’ve actually learned a lot about how translation, in my opinion, can really enhance a creative practice in ways that I wouldn’t have expected before I took this on.
Jo: It’s fascinating because your accent is American to my ear, but I’ve worked in Belgium and people might not know much about Antwerp. How did you get from Belgium to New York City?
Tell us a bit more about your traveling childhood and upbringing.
Dani: My parents actually met in New York City. That’s also where I was born. They met in Washington Square Park in the eighties, I feel like that gives you a little bit of a lay of the land if you’ve ever been there.
My mother was visiting, my father’s Jamaican and he had been living in the US since he was a teenager. My mother was visiting and they met and fell in love, ended up getting married and having me.
So I was actually born in New York City, but then when I was still a baby, we moved to Belgium. I did kindergarten all throughout high school in Belgium.
In the summertime though, I would come to New York City because the biggest part of my family is my dad’s side of the family and they lived in New York. So I spent my summers—the whole summer and sometimes even the winter break—in New York City, and the rest of the time in Belgium.
I’ve been back in New York now for about 15 years. Now I do the opposite, I visit Belgium every summer. My mother still lives in Belgium and I have a lot of childhood friends there. That’s how that came about, and why I definitely have the New York City accent.
Jo: Let’s get into this book then. Return to the Place I Never Left has great personal meaning to you and your family. Tell us about that.
What are the connections there?
It seems so strange to hear your accent and then to think of the connections you have there.
Dani: There are so many connections actually. First, my grandparents were Holocaust survivors. When you think of the Jewish community in Belgium at the time where I grew up, they were all survivors or descendants of survivors. In the case of my grandparents, they survived the war by hiding.
My mom’s side of the family is Jewish, so I am Jewish. The majority of both of my grandparents’ families did not survive being deported to Auschwitz. The story of the Holocaust is one that is part of my family’s history and therefore also my history.
I really grew up with this knowledge and knowing these stories. They’re very common in my family because they’ve directly affected my relatives and my family members.
Growing up, when I used to go to synagogue—I’m not as religious, but I am of course culturally Jewish—for the high holidays, I did used to go to the synagogue to celebrate them.
Fun fact: typically there would be two Black people in the synagogue when I grew up in Belgium at the time, and it was me and another girl who actually is Tobias Schiff’s granddaughter.
Me and this other girl, our mothers knew each other. Of course, it’s a small community. We knew each other and I believe that this is how the book entered my home. I believe the daughter of Tobias Schiff, the mother of this childhood friend, ended up bringing a copy of the book when it first came out.
I don’t really remember how I first was introduced to it, but I do know that like all people who grow up with big bookshelves at home, and when you’re a reader, I would just pick up books from the bookshelf and at some point I came across Return to the Place I Never Left. The original title is Terug naar de plaats die ik nooit heb verlaten.
When I read this book the first time, it really stood out to me because I had known about the Holocaust, had heard all of these stories. Every family of survivors has these crazy stories that you know of and that you learn growing up, and I’d read several books.
What stood out about Tobias Schiff’s book was the style in which it was written. It’s written in verse and it looks like poetry on the page.
It’s very direct language because it comes from an oral project initially where he was interviewed for a documentary, and it makes reading it very accessible because the language is very direct. He’s speaking to you as a friend, or sometimes it sounds as if he’s speaking to himself as well.
It allows you to be a witness to his innermost thoughts, or it allows you to hear him speak to you as if he was a friend. The style of the book really drew me in and I ended up rereading it several times over the years.
I have really bad movie and book memory where I will forget entire plots. That works really well for me because it allows me to reread my favorites over and over again. Some of my favorite books and movies, I’ll reread them or rewatch them four or five times.
That’s one of the things I did with Return to the Place I Never Left. I’ve reread it several times over the years. At some point I thought I feel like more people would appreciate this story.
It gives people good insight into the experience of someone during the Holocaust and what that was like and surviving these death camps, and afterwards grappling and navigating with these really traumatic experiences and how that impacted him in his life. Outside of those really intriguing parts of the book, it’s also set in Antwerp partially.
If you’ve traveled around the world, very few people know Belgium. A lot of people know the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, France, all the countries around it, but not a lot of people know about Belgium, and definitely not about Antwerp.
I also like the fact that in a way it shows some details about the city of Antwerp in a very unfortunate setting, but Antwerp is where I also grew up in Belgium.
For all these reasons, Return to the Place I Never Left is an incredibly powerful book in itself, but it also tells such an important story of important places and important experiences that are meaningful to me and many people around the world.
I think even if you don’t have a personal connection to this, you could gain a lot and learn a lot just from reading this book.
Jo: The original was in Flemish, is that right?
Dani: Yes. There’s actually quite a journey even to getting to this book. Originally Tobias Schiff was interviewed for a documentary, and the documentary was titled Récits d’Ellis Island. It was in French.
It was a documentary about Holocaust survivors and their experience, and I believe it was filmed in the late eighties and perhaps came out in 1989. It was filmed by a French filmmaker named Claude Lelouch. He interviewed Schiff for hours and learned about his experience.
Afterwards, the slot that the TV station had allocated—it was going to be aired on TV—was only 26 minutes long. The filmmaker thought, “How can I distill this story into 26 minutes? It’s not doing justice to the entire story. I can’t tell this story in such a short amount of time,” but it was a limitation set by the TV channel.
He had to edit it down, so what he ended up doing was releasing or publishing at the time the transcripts of his interviews with Tobias Schiff. Those initial transcripts were in French and I believe it was a little booklet.
Some editors came across it and thought, “Wow, this is really powerful,” and then contacted Schiff to collaborate and use these transcripts as a starting point to create what would then become Return to the Place I Never Left, the book.
He ended up writing more and it ended up being, instead of French, translated into Flemish or Dutch, which Schiff also spoke. That was the official first publication, which was published in the nineties in Belgium, the Flemish version of Return to the Place I Never Left. That version was then translated into French around 2012.
Jo: Yes, that’s crazy. He died in 1999, right? So this is now his estate who are making these decisions.
Dani: Yes, exactly.
Jo: So now it’s in French, the book is in French.
Dani: Yes. In 2012, the book was translated into French, and then in 2017 it was republished in Belgium and the Netherlands in Flemish. In 2025 my version came out, which is the very first English translation of the book.
Jo: Which is great. We have to go further into this because some people listening might be thinking, “Oh great, if I find a book I love in a different language, I can just translate it.” But that’s not true.
How did you get the rights to do this, and what was that process, given that you don’t have a translation background?
Dani: It was a complex process and I had no former knowledge of the process when I started. I just knew I wanted to translate the book. Before I even got started, I asked the family for permission.
I know one of Schiff’s daughters, and so I was able to ask her because, as you mentioned, since Schiff passed away, the family is the estate. That was my initial request. I just said, “I really love your father’s book. I would love to bring it to a wider audience. Would you be okay with me translating it?”
They said yes. They were actually excited about this prospect and I had a verbal confirmation. That was my first step.
I had had this idea for several years, but then in 2019 I did an MFA in creative writing, a Master’s in Fine Arts. I had asked the director of the program if they had a translation course and they didn’t, but they did encourage me to pursue this project. They said me translating it could be one of my final projects in addition to my thesis.
What was great is that even though there was no particular guidance on translation or what to do there, I was able to translate it and have someone give feedback on at least the parts that I produced with no context of the original.
That was just a good experience there, and I was motivated to work on it also alongside generating new material for a thesis.
Rights-wise, once I had completed the manuscript and I was ready to shop it around, I realized that when I looked into it a little bit more, I needed proof that I had the rights.
Jo: Yes, exactly. It’s kind of crazy to me listening to you.
You went ahead with translating the whole thing without having any kind of contract?
Dani: Yes, and I recognize that this is very different also because the original author had already passed away. There are several ways.
When books are published today and when the author is still alive, sometimes the publishers contract it out and they look for translators, and the publication deal then looks very differently because as a translator, you’re contracted just to translate. The publishing deal is with the author, of course.
In this case it was very different. I have this manuscript, I start shopping it around, a publisher’s interested. I have this note, this little PDF note from the family stating I have their permission.
Once the publisher was interested in publication and sent me a publication contract, then I had to ensure that I really had everything in order with the rights in Belgium and with the family.
Initially what I did is I have a friend, a good friend who’s a lawyer, and I asked him to review and he said, “Okay, I can look at this, but you need to get yourself a real lawyer.”
So I got a lawyer and that was the best decision I had made because this lawyer had experience and really helped me navigate not just the publication deal with the publisher here because in the US I am the copyright holder of the English translation of Tobias Schiff’s book.
Jo: I was going to say to people listening, this translation is a subsidiary right of the original book. Actually it is the publisher as well, I presume, of whichever you translated from—the French or the Flemish—that is also the point, right?
It’s not even just that you are asking permission, you are using another publisher’s book as the basis for your own translation.
Dani: Yes, exactly. As I was navigating this—signing my publication deal and negotiating it here in the US—I was also navigating the rights in Belgium. Some of the steps we had to go through were that I had to formalize the permission.
First of all, we had to find out who owned the rights. Was it still the Belgian publisher or had it gone back to the estate? That’s what we had to figure out. Actually, the rights had reverted back to the estate.
Jo: Oh, okay. That’s good.
Dani: Yes, so then we knew who we had to collaborate with, who had the rights and who could transfer the rights to me or grant me permission. Then we had to create a document for the estate to sign. But in creating this document, we also had to navigate Belgian copyright law.
At some point I also had to find a Belgian lawyer to not just review, but to make sure that what we are writing in this document aligns with both US and Belgian copyright laws.
Jo: Oh my goodness.
Dani: Yes. We also, for best practice, had to translate the paperwork on the Belgian side as well. All the documentation with the family were in two languages, they were both in English and in Dutch or Flemish. All of that had to be squared away before I could sign the publication deal here.
Jo: You’re paying for all of this, you’re paying for all those legal things.
Did you get an advance from the English language publisher or is this all a labor of love?
Dani: This is really a labor of love. I did not get an advance because I already had the finished manuscript. I was like, “Here it is.” So no advance.
Thankfully in Belgium there was an organization for Belgian authors and we were able to get support from a Belgian lawyer specializing in literature who was able to help us pro bono. So that was a beautiful find.
I had to dig deep, just because I was reaching out to several lawyers and trying to find out who could help and then find out about some organizations. It took a lot of navigating.
I have to say, I’m very grateful for my lawyer because my lawyer had more experience, not in translation specifically, but just in the literary or creative industry, and so he’s able to see ten steps ahead.
While I’m looking at a document and thinking about how does this make sense for right now, he’s thinking, “But what if three years down the line this happens and that happens?”
Jo: Yes, like if there’s a potential movie, for example, from the English language.
That’s what you have to plan for—utter failure where nothing happens and then utter success where everything happens.
It’s like, “Okay, movie deal, massive amount of money comes into whose account and how does that get to the estate and where’s the split?” It’s great that you had that experience with your lawyer because these kinds of rights are really difficult to manage.
Dani: Yes. With the right people in place, specifically the lawyer, that was amazing. You mentioned no advance, you have to invest your money in it, but money well spent when it’s someone who’s really out to also protect you and has this experience and this insight for just those situations that you mentioned.
What about if there are movie rights involved? What if someone wants to adapt this into a play? Who owns the rights even?
Jo: Yes, or even somebody then decides to translate your English version into a different version. These things go back to multiple layers, which is why copyright law is so complicated. Just taking a view now—
Would you have done this project if you had realized all of this stuff you would have to do later?
I would say to people listening, it is important to get that stuff done before you start a project, because if you hadn’t known them, they could have just said, “Well, no, you can’t have the rights,” or they could have had an offer for an English translation as well, and your work would have been wasted. I guess it’s just all worked out well.
Dani: I probably would have done it the same had I known. It ultimately, in my experience, was a great learning experience and like you mentioned, the book is here, it’s published in the US, it’s doing well. So it was very much worth it. I learned so much from it.
I’ve also learned that the way that the process works is not always this way, and it really depends on the whole situation. How long has the book been out? Who owns the rights? Is there interest? Is there a publisher?
Typically I would say though, in smaller cases, in the case of this book, this is written in Flemish or Dutch, it’s a language that’s not really spoken in many places in the world. Between the estate and the publishers, people would usually be excited to have this become available for a larger audience.
Typically there’s also when you negotiate these rights and when you publish something, there’s also a percentage of potentially profit sharing or royalty sharing, so it also benefits ultimately the rights holder if they’re interested in that as well, of course.
Jo: Yes, absolutely. Potentially earning from that.
Dani: And also having the book receive a wider readership, so that’s where the benefit lies.
Jo: Yes, absolutely. It’s very different to you doing this pretty obscure book compared to somebody saying, “Oh, this is a bestselling novel in English, let’s turn it into Flemish,” because that’s sometimes a lot more complicated.
Let’s just finish the publication story. You find a publisher who’s interested. Was this just then an easy process all the way to publication, or—
How was the publication process for you?
Dani: I will say… it was a learning process.
Jo: This is your first publication, right?
Dani: Yes, my first publication that’s through a publisher that’s not in an anthology or literary magazine. The publisher was great. It’s a small publisher, Wayne State University Press. Great team, small team, but they were great in keeping me in the loop.
I had to complete a sales and marketing questionnaire to talk about ideas about how we would market the book. I had to do a design questionnaire and was able to share my ideas for the cover art, which I really enjoyed because it was fun.
I would go into bookstores and look around and look at covers and think about ideas. The final cover for Return to the Place I Never Left merges some elements of the original cover, which I really love. It has red and the barbed wire, and we kept that the same.
Then there’s also a lot of white space, which I was intentional about because there’s also a lot of white space on every page. I felt like it really reflects this modernized version of the book.
We went through these design and marketing decisions and then through copy edits and proof edits. It actually went pretty smoothly because it was already a completed manuscript when I presented it to them. Those parts went well.
It was fun to think of new things to generate when it came to sales and marketing and the cover, but when it came to the book itself and the copy edits and the proof edits, that went pretty fast.
Jo: Well, it’s not like they’re going to say, “We need you to improve the story in this way,” because as a translation, you’re not making a change to the story. I also presume they couldn’t read the original, so they couldn’t really say to you, “Well, that’s the wrong word.”
Dani: That’s right.
Jo: Just on that sales and marketing, because most authors have a massive problem with this—
Is it basically down to you to do all the marketing?
Dani: A lot of it is, not all, but a lot of it is. The publisher will take some things on. They’ll submit the book for reviews to several places. They’ll sometimes share some ads that they’ve launched for the book in specific places.
I just recently came across a new prize for Jewish literature in translation, actually, given by an organization in the UK. I was able to contact my publisher and send it to them and ask them, “Hey, is this something that you could submit this book for?”
They will take that part on so I don’t have to go and submit myself and send copies of the book myself. If I see an opportunity, I send it to them and see and ask them, “Was this on your radar already or not? Is this something you’ll take care of or will I take care of it?”
They will do that, but I would say the majority falls on the author, or translator in this case, to really push it out into the world.
Jo: You made a lovely video. In fact, you pitched me for this and I went to watch your video and I think it’s lovely. You’ve got a lovely voice, but you’ve got a lovely manner about you which comes across really well on video.
Is video something you do normally or is this something you’ve done specifically for the book?
Dani: This is something I’ve done specifically for the book. I kind of shy away from video specifically.
Jo: Oh, me too. I think you did a good job of talking about yourself, but also about the book and reading. I know it’s hard, but I do think it’s an effective way of breaking through when books are hard to market.
Dani: Thank you. I think one of the things that made that video work as well is that the director of that video is also a friend of mine and a creative collaborator. He was really good at teasing out some responses from me, I would say.
I generally get excited when I speak about the book and the translation process. There’s so much to say about it. I really appreciate it.
As writers, we typically are very excited about the writing and the creation part, so I could talk about it for a very long time.
My friend, his name is Kofi, he’s also a writer himself and a filmmaker. He was also very good at just asking specific questions and he also knows me and knows some parts of the stories.
He can look at it from an outsider perspective and then know, “Okay, this could be interesting to other people,” because there’s some parts of the story that for me are just so normal that I don’t really think somebody else would be interested in hearing this.
But he’d be the one to say, “Actually, let’s talk about this a little bit more. I think people would be interested in that.” Sometimes I would think, “Really?”
Then later when people see the video, sometimes people come back and share some things that stood out to them in the video, and they’re the things that I wouldn’t have even put in that video myself because I would think this is normal, no one’s going to care.
It’s really helpful to have that outsider perspective, and when you have a good editor or director, they can really direct and pull out things from you and put them together in a way that would be interesting to the audience. I’m very grateful that’s how that came together with two friends working on a project there.
Jo: I think from everything you’ve said, a lot of this has been based on relationships and tapping into your network, and I think that’s really good and what you have to do, especially with a labor of love. I don’t imagine this is going to make you like millions of dollars. I mean, it’s just not the reality, is it?
Dani: We shall see. You never know.
Jo: The amount of work you’ve put in and the amount of work you’re going to have to keep putting in to keep this book alive, I think is amazing. That’s partly why I want to talk to you, because I feel like a lot of translation work is contracted by a publisher. It’s not necessarily done in the way that you’ve done it.
Let’s just briefly touch on the creative side of the translation. You said that you learned a lot, obviously, but that it enhanced a creative practice.
Just tell us a few things about the actual translation process and the literary challenges of that.
Dani: Happy to talk about this. Again, this was my very first time undertaking literary translation. So the first version was me translating it longhand. I wrote it in a notebook. I had the original book, and then I had my little notebook.
I translated it almost word for word. I wanted to stay as close to the original in this first version. Later I took my notes from my notebook and put them on my laptop and already started making some tweaks here and there.
You see a word and think, “Hmm, actually,” or sometimes I would notice, “Oh, I actually translated this with Flemish grammar, this doesn’t quite read well in English.” So I start making those types of edits.
Over time, I would re-edit, reread the whole body of work and edit it. Over time, as I became more familiar with the text and started seeing certain things like, “Hmm, actually I feel like the way that this sentence is written, it kind of glosses over what’s actually a really important moment.” So I made some choices there.
For example, the original, if you see the book, it has very little punctuation and only names and place names and people’s names are capitalized. It reads almost like this stream of consciousness and it looks like poetry on the page. The original is the same way. That’s where I got that style from.
I ended up pulling that style through a little bit more because there were some scenes in the original where I felt that you almost gloss over something that’s really important.
I made deliberate choices to add some line breaks sometimes, or create more vignettes so that some parts were standalone. For example, when they get deported, or when scammers ring the doorbell pretending that they can get the daughter who’s deported back to the family.
There were some moments that I felt could stand out a little bit more, and so those types of choices came in further editing rounds because I really wanted to honor this original text of this man who has passed away.
At the same time, I also wanted to really bring forth the meaning of the text as much as I could and make sure that it resonated with English readers as much as it did with me in reading it in Flemish.
Over time and later editing rounds, I saw that I became a little bit more comfortable in making those stylistic decisions to emphasize some things by changing words or adding a word or two, or removing a word or rejiggering a line.
That was challenging since I had no one to guide me through this, and so I had to think to myself —
What is the ultimate goal? Is it to stay as close as possible to the original text, or is it to make the translation as strong as possible?
What was helpful to me was to think about the fact that no two translations are the same. You have several classic novels that have been translated several times and some translations win awards.
What makes one translation better than the other? When I thought to myself about this, I realized, “Okay, it’s okay to put some of myself into this piece.”
There are these two quotes by translators that I absolutely love. The first one is by Mark Polizzotti, who says, “When you read a translation, it doesn’t mean it’s a secondary experience. It doesn’t mean that you’re not reading the author. It means that you are reading the product of two authors: the original author and the translator who has to read the text, interpret it, and regenerate it in terms that make linguistic sense.“
There’s another translator named Catherine Øhrgaard Jensen, who actually is now, I believe, the director of ALTA, which is an international organization for literary translators.
She calls a translated book “a sibling of the original, but not a twin.”
I love both of these quotes because they really show how the translation is, in a way, a collaboration. It is in a way being a conversation with the text of the original author and in some cases with the original author when the author is still alive.
Over time in later editing rounds, I was more comfortable in making these decisions and infusing a little bit more of myself and how I would approach this, how I would change this up a little bit to amplify this a little bit and make sure it reads well.
I made sure it presents well with the goal to honor the original text and make the English version as strong as the Flemish version. Once I was in that mode, I think the challenges, I wouldn’t say fell away, but they became a lot more fun. Also because you’re able to still be creative and really think of what is the perfect word here.
What words specifically would personify or would really highlight what this line means? Sometimes there’s not a one-to-one translation either. Then you get to play around and really figure out, “Okay, which word do I use? Do I need two words to replace one?”
There’s a lot. You have to really flex your creative muscles in ways that I hadn’t really expected and in ways that I find have made me a better writer, even when I come back to my own projects.
You’re so concerned with every single word. It’s similar to poetry and to all good writing, really. We think about every word and what it evokes to the reader and how it looks on the page.
With translation, that is very true as well, in a way that I hadn’t really expected when I started translating it. I didn’t think that I would find so much joy and that I’d be able to be this creative when it came to word choice and sentence crafting.
Jo: It just sounds like a lovely process. I’m a kind of classic British person who doesn’t speak any other languages, and I think it’s really interesting.
I did want to just ask you about your thoughts on AI-assisted translation, because this is obviously becoming a big part of the industry now, in traditional publishing as well as in the self-publishing space. Obviously the type of book you are talking about is, like you said, more poetry. It’s not a standard, just a novel, narrative novel.
What are your thoughts on AI assistance in translation?
Dani: I did not use it for Return to the Place I Never Left at all. I don’t know that I would use it. I understand why people would use it, especially for a first draft potentially.
The reason that I would stay away from it personally is because I think even in that first draft, when you’re taking words from one language into another, you become more familiar with the original text. So you’re really rereading it from one language and putting it into English or the language that you’re translating it in.
You already start forming ideas sometimes about certain words or certain things you might want to do or change when you’re translating it. I think if I were to use an AI tool to take on even that earlier draft, it would already make assumptions for certain words.
As we mentioned, certain specific word choices can have such a big impact. Not every language has a one-to-one translation for every single word in a different language.
I think that process of becoming really intimately familiar with the original language and your first draft into the language you’re translating in, I think that’s actually quite important to do.
I would be nervous that AI would translate certain words, and then I would now look at the AI translation and base my translation off what AI already selected.
For some words, when you then look at the original, you might think, “Hmm, actually what the author meant is a little bit different from how AI translated it, but now I’ve given it the same meaning of the AI translation.” That’s why I would personally be hesitant specifically when it comes to literary translation.
Now, for legal documents or marketing terms or anything, that’s different. I’d probably leverage it, or I’d be open to leveraging it.
With literature and writing, we’re so concerned with words and strong writing is so important at this time, I would not yet use it in my own translations. Who knows? That might change in the future.
Jo: Who knows. But I love that your process was so detailed, and as we said, you’ve put a lot of love into this project. Before we go, I am interested, are you done with translation? Like you mentioned you’ve got your MFA, you’ve got lots of other writing.
Are you now working on your own original work in English, or are you still open to other translation work?
Dani: Yes, I am still open to other translation work. Actually, someone already gave me a little booklet to consider. It is a short book also about a Holocaust survivor, and I do plan to do something with that one day, just not right now.
Right now I am working on a fictional novel and one thing I have learned is when you are publishing something, you’re steeped in the subject matter for at least a year, I’d say around two from writing it or generating it.
Then if you have a publication deal, or if you’re self-publishing, the proof edits, the copy edits, you’re so knee deep in the subject matter.
When it comes to the topic, like the Holocaust, it was very challenging at some point. I actually took a break for about three years after I had finalized the manuscript before I ended up picking it back up and shopping it around because it was a pandemic, it was lockdown.
There was a lot going on, and it’s a very, very heavy subject matter, especially when this is something that my family members went through. What I’ve learned now is you have to be so entrenched in the subject matter for so long.
I actually have two manuscripts that are far closer to completion, but they also deal with quite heavy subjects. I have decided to pursue a different project that is a little bit of a lighter subject matter. It has some humor in it, a little bit of romance, little bit of juiciness.
That is going to be my next project that I hope to complete and be able to find a home for by next year. After that one then I’ll tackle one of those other more serious or a little bit darker subjects again.
Jo: I think that’s good. It’s good to have a break. I often do a nonfiction book in between thing. It kind of helps, but I guess you’ve done a nonfiction that was the heavy one. But no, that’s great.
The book is Return to The Place I Never Left. Where can people find the book and find you and everything you do online?
Dani: Thank you. Return to the Place I Never Left can be found anywhere books are sold online, and also at DaniJames.co. That’s my website. That’s where you can order the book. That’s where you can sign up for the newsletter. That’s where I’ll publish any upcoming events and readings. You can also find a link to my YouTube channel as well.
Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Dani. That was great.
Dani: Thank you so much. I just really want to take a moment to thank you because I absolutely love your channel. I found you through YouTube, by the way. That is where I mainly listen to your podcast.
I have to say, you have created such an incredible wealth of resources for writers. Every time I look at your videos, I have like ten videos that are in my queue that I want to listen to, and they’re all so helpful.
Even though I know that you talk a lot about the journey of being self-published, it’s so helpful—all the guests you have on, all the resources. I just wanted to thank you. I have shared your channel with several of my friends who are writing books as well and taking on other creative projects. Big, big thank you for doing this work.
From KMW: I’ve always loved writing by hand. There’s something about the feel of pen on paper that just makes the creative process click for me, especially when outlining and brainstorming. However, between the wrist pain, bad posture, and the fact that I can’t read my own handwriting half the time, I’ll admit there are certain downsides—just as there are to typing. I’ve dabbled with dictation off and on over the years, but I always hit the same wall: it just didn’t feel like “real” writing. If I wasn’t typing or scribbling, was I actually creating?
But as I read Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer’s guest post this week, I had to rethink that a bit. She breaks down some of the myths and mental roadblocks around dictating fiction in such a grounded, compassionate way that it made me realize something kind of obvious (but also kind of profound): storytelling was originally oral. We had voices and listeners long before we had keyboards or pens!
So if you’ve ever felt curious about dictation but haven’t been sure where to start (or, like me, have gotten frustrated after trying it), I think you’ll find Sarah’s approach refreshing. She’s been where you are, and she’s mapped out a path forward that’s both practical and encouraging. Enjoy!
***
Have you ever read about an author who dictates 5,000+ words while taking a walk and thought to yourself, “If dictation is so amazing, why isn’t everyone doing it?”
Maybe you’ve tried dictation. You opened a voice app, started talking, and… froze. It felt awkward. Disjointed. The transcription was a mess.
After working with hundreds of authors making the transition from typing to speaking their words of fiction, I know this story well. It was my story when I first tried dictation. And failed. Again and again.
Dictation is one of the most misunderstood tools for authors, yet one with potential for powerful transformation in your author life.
As someone who has dictated 14 books and trained hundreds of authors in how to dictate fiction, I want to say this: dictation isn’t a magic shortcut that will solve all your writing challenges. But it tackles a great many of them.
And dictation can absolutely be learned, just as you learned how to handwrite and type. I want you to get there without getting overwhelmed.
Let’s start by eliminating common myths around dictating fiction.
Myth #1: Dictation = Talking Fast = Writing Fast
When you think about dictation, speed is probably the first thing that comes to mind. Speed is what drew me and countless authors to give it a shot.
Dictation can help you draft faster. I doubled my writing speed from 1,500 words of fiction per hour to 3,000 words, and with less strain on my body.
But when you only see dictation as a way to supercharge your productivity, you might experience frustration and even disappointment before you’ve trained yourself to do it well.
Dictation isn’t a race to speak as fast as you can. I talk slower when dictating fiction than when I’m having a conversation.
If you find yourself slowing down to dictate, that’s normal. In fact, I encourage it. Take your time. Pause. Breathe. When you’re ready, tackle the next sentence.
Speed will come with practice.
But dictation isn’t just writing faster. There are health benefits since dictation frees you from your desk.
It can also help you break through mental blocks around your plot, develop better dialogue, and get words squeezed into the little spaces of life: doing the dishes, sitting in the car pool line, or walking the dog.
While dictation can lead to faster drafts, I’ve seen these other benefits outweigh speed.
Myth #2: “I Tried Dictation, It’s Just Not for Me.”
This is the one I hear most. It was the myth that held me back for years.
Maybe you tried dictation while walking. Or you spoke your story into your phone one morning and felt completely disconnected from the words. Maybe the transcription came back such a mess, you decided it wasn’t worth the hassle.
I hear you. My first shot at dictation, I thought I was on to something. In 2013, I posted on social media how I dictated a few words of fiction, and how it could be epic. And it was.
An epic failure.
I couldn’t get past the mental and technical hurdles of speaking my words instead of typing.
I went through it all: staring at a blank screen with an equally blank imagination. I stumbled over words, dreaded hearing my voice, and had no idea how to clean up my transcriptions.
I didn’t know what I was doing and made a mess of everything.
Dictation just wasn’t for me.
But then I realized something: I needed to train myself to dictate just like I trained myself how to type. You need to dig new neural trenches in your brain to allow the words to flow through your mouth as naturally as your fingertips.
I came back to dictation in 2020. I released the pressure on my brain to dictate fiction. I started practicing by dictating my morning pages and text messages. Then I experimented with apps and methods until I found what worked for me. I stopped expecting it to immediately “feel right.”
Slowly, it started to work. I found my rhythm. I dictated a full (backstory) scene. Then a full chapter. Then a full novel.
Now, dictation is how I write my first drafts. I write faster and enjoy the process of creating fiction even more than when I typed (much more enjoyment through the “muddy middle” of a first draft where I always got stuck when typing).
Myth #3: You Need Fancy Software or Equipment
Back in the day, your only option to dictate fiction was to hire a private secretary or transcriptionist at hundreds or thousands of dollars per novel. Then it became more affordable with the entrance of Dragon Dictation at under $1,000 for unlimited novels.
I’ve never used Dragon to dictate my novels.
Nowadays, you don’t need expensive software to start. You likely already own what you need to dictate fiction at little to no cost:
A smartphone or computer
A free transcription service (the one built into your device works just fine)
A quiet space (optional, but helpful)
Yes, there are other tools and methods out there (I dictate on my phone directly into my Scrivener iOS app. You can get a free mini-course on my methods here.). But when you’re starting out, I found it’s best to keep it simple. In fact, adding too much tech too soon is one of the fastest ways to get overwhelmed.
Start easy. Get comfortable with the feel of speaking words and having them transcribed. Once that’s second nature, you can develop methods and experiment with tools that fit your process and lifestyle.
Myth #4: Dictated Drafts Are Too Messy to Be Worth It
Yes, dictated drafts are messy.
But so are most first drafts.
I’ve developed a cleanup process that’s fast and gets my dictated drafts reading as well as a typed first draft. It’s still a mess to deal with in the editing phase, but I’m starting with the same type of messy first draft.
Dictation helps you let go of perfectionism and get your messy first draft on the page so you can edit it later. When you type, it’s easy to backspace, rewrite, and tweak every sentence endlessly. Dictation makes that harder, which helps you get to “the end.”
Instead of editing as you go, dictation invites you to get the story out of your head and onto the page. The refinement comes later, during revision.
How to Get Started with Dictating (Even If You’ve Failed Before)
After working with hundreds of authors on making the transition from typing to speaking their words, I’ve found three keys that make all the difference:
1. Embrace the Discomfort
Dictating fiction will feel awkward. As the sign over my desk says, “I know I’m in my own little world, but they all know me here.”
To speak “their” worlds out loud feels more vulnerable than typing. At least at first.
But remember, discomfort is a sign of growth. It’s a sign of learning. Lean into that feeling, knowing that’s what will get you to the other side in developing the skill of dictating your fiction.
Give yourself permission to be a beginner.
2. Start With Low-Stakes Scenes
Instead of launching into dictation in the middle of your current work-in-progress (WIP), remove the pressure from your brain by picking a scene you can write with a familiar character’s backstory. Have fun with it. Let your imagination run free while you speak your words.
It may come out looking more like a scene outline than an actual scene. That’s okay. You are training yourself to speak fiction instead of typing it.
Everything is progress.
3. Set a Timer
I have a power habit I call 5 Minutes of Fiction. This helped me get back into writing after a recovery sabbatical I took in recent years.
As I’ve taught this habit, writers have shared with me how it’s helping them practice dictation. The main idea is that you dictate for just 5 minutes every day.
It can be on a “throwaway” story, backstory, flash fiction, or your current WIP. Set a timer or check the clock before you start, and only go for 5 minutes. Don’t judge what you wrote. Just move on with your day (which may be typing the rest of the words for your writing session).
Once you start, you’ll be surprised at how confident you begin to feel each time you do your 5 minutes.
The Next Step: Making Dictation Effortless
I’m a big fan of finding ways to make things easier and more fun. Effortless.
That’s part of what dictation has done for my author life, along with a host of other benefits. It’s why I’ve developed ways to make learning dictation as effortless for you as possible.
If you’ve tried dictation and failed, or if you’ve wanted to try but felt overwhelmed, I’ve created something for you: a free Dictation Quick Start Guide for Fiction Authors designed to help you take your first steps in dictating your fiction.
Let it free you to live your best creative lifestyle.
In Summary
Dictating fiction isn’t a magic fix, but it is a learnable skill that can transform your writing process by boosting your word count and freeing you from your desk. If you’ve tried dictation and felt awkward or overwhelmed, you’re not alone and you’re not doomed to fail. With the right expectations, a simplified approach, and a bit of patience, you can develop your own voice (literally) and discover a writing method that works with your lifestyle instead of against it.
Key Takeaways
Dictation isn’t just about speed. It can improve your health, productivity, and even creativity.
Initial discomfort is normal. Like any writing skill, dictation requires practice to feel natural.
You don’t need fancy tools. A smartphone and basic transcription software are enough to start.
Messy drafts are part of the process. Dictation helps you overcome perfectionism and get words on the page.
Ease into it. Start with low-stakes scenes (like backstory) and short 5-minute sessions to build confidence.
Training your brain to speak fiction is possible. Dictation is a skill anyone can learn with the right approach.
Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! Have you ever trying dictating your fiction? Does it sound helpful? Tell us in the comments!
When it comes to creating memorable, emotionally resonant characters, your character’s personality may seem like it’s just a “flavor,” but in many ways it’s actually the foundation of the story itself. Your character’s personality influences everything: the character arc, the voice in both dialogue and the narrative (if the character has a POV), and the goals that shape your entire plot.
Stories are more than just entertainment. They’re also more than just reflections of real life. This is because, at its core, narrative is myth. Whether you’re crafting epic fantasy, gritty crime drama, or cozy rom-coms, deep archetypal patterns always echo through your characters, plots, and themes. Story is the theater of the psyche. It is a dream we collectively dream, in which each character and conflict embodies a part of ourselves. When we recognize this hidden foundation, we can tap this archetypal power to access the kind of storytelling that not only captivates readers but also transforms both their inner lives and our own.
One idea led to another, and before long my “tiny project” turned into a whole collection of 20+ digital writing resources. And honestly? I had a blast making them. (Seriously. I had to make myself stop!)
Browse the entire collection of 20+ worksheets here: [
I’ve been feeling it for a while now—that dull, uninspired thud when the credits roll on modern storytelling. More and more, movies in particular leave me feeling unmoved and oddly detached. Bored, really. Once upon a time, I’d walk out of the theater buzzing. I’d carry that story around with me for days, sometimes weeks. I called it a “story high.”
Note From KMW: Before we get started today, I just wanted to let you know that this weekend, I’m excited to be sharing a presentation at the 
From KMW: I’ve always loved writing by hand. There’s something about the feel of pen on paper that just makes the creative process click for me, especially when outlining and brainstorming. However, between the wrist pain, bad posture, and the fact that I can’t read my own handwriting half the time, I’ll admit there are certain downsides—just as there are to typing. I’ve dabbled with dictation off and on over the years, but I always hit the same wall: it just didn’t feel like “real” writing. If I wasn’t typing or scribbling, was I actually creating?
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