If there’s a magic ingredient in writing, it’s story subtext.

It’s actually not magic, of course, any more than any of the other demystified techniques of structure, theme, or character arc. But story subtext often seems like magic simply because, by its very nature, it is the execution of the unexplained.

What is Subtext in Fiction?

Subtext is the implied meaning beneath what characters explicitly say, do, or understand. In fiction, it allows readers to infer emotions, motives, relationships, themes, and backstory without writers explaining everything directly.

Subtext is supposed to be invisible. It lives in the shadowy underworld beneath our words. It’s the hooded figure whisking around the dark corners of our stories, the mysterious clockmaker greasing gears behind the scenes, the phantom in our opera.

Just the very mention of subtext gives me delicious chills. The one very specific thing all of my favorite stories have in common is their masterful use of subtext. These are stories that are about far more than just what they appear to be on the surface. They’re stories that invite their audiences into the misty netherworld of the story to ask questions about characters and situations, to fill in blanks, to come to conclusions, and to broaden our experience of both the stories themselves and our lives.

Good story subtext allows audiences to observe and learn without being directly taught. Subtext tells audiences the author trusts them to understand the story and the characters without needing to have everything pointed out to them.

Why Can Subtext in Fiction Sometimes Be Difficult to Write?

One of the very reasons subtext can be such a powerful fictional tool is that it requires audiences to participate. By its very nature, subtext exists because authors are deliberately not spelling everything out. Subtext offers audiences the opportunity to fill in the blanks to at least some extent with their own intuition, imagination, and experience.

There is, however, an art to this. Good subtext must offer enough context for audiences to follow the breadcrumbs. Otherwise, it’s not subtext so much as just the absence of information.

Subtext can be used in varying degrees within a story, depending on its intended audience. In some respects, subtext is not only a more advanced writing skill, but also a more advanced reading skill. One easy way to think about this is to consider the last time you started reading or watching a new genre. To whatever degree you were unfamiliar with certain genre conventions and tropes, you might not pick up on all the inferred meaning right away (e.g., warp-drive physics in science fiction, the rules of magic in fantasy, or the conventions of clue-gathering in mysteries). But as your awareness of the overall context grows, so does your ability to fill in blanks without needing to have every new idea explained in detail.

It is the author’s job to create subtext in such a way that it brings even uninitiated audiences along for the ride. Although their appreciation for your characters, worldbuilding, and plot twists might increase the more they engage with them, they should be able to pick up the clues and extrapolate as they go.

In this sense, subtext is one of fiction’s most participatory techniques. Writers establish the visible points (i.e., context); readers connect them (i.e., by recognizing the subtext). The more important the implied meaning, the more carefully writers must make sure those points are actually there. Subtlety isn’t the same thing as obscurity. Good subtext should ultimately just invite audiences deeper and deeper into the richness of the story.

How to Write Subtext: 5 Ingredients for Deeper Stories

Today, I’m going to show you how to create story subtext in everything you write using five simple but crucial principles.

1. Story Subtext Arises From the Space Between Two Known, Fixed Points

This is why story subtext can sometimes seem confusing.

• If subtext is all about what’s not shown, then how can you possibly show it?
• How can audiences ever see the subtext you want them to see if you’re not actually showing them anything?
• If you’re not filling in the important blanks, aren’t audiences just as likely to read entirely the wrong subtext into your story?

These are all good questions. And the answer is simply that subtext only works when it arises from the context.

If subtext is the shadow behind your story, then there must first be figures standing in the sun casting that shadow. Interesting blank spaces can only arise when there are existing shown elements of the story.

How You Can Do This in Your Story:

Start by explicitly telling/showing your readers certain things about your characters, plot, or story world. Tell them what they need to know (otherwise, you have no story). But resist explaining away the spaces in between.

Because readers will see the starting and ending points, they will understand the explicit shape of what you’re creating. But because you are resisting the urge to explain everything in between those points, you are allowing them to discover the implicit shape in between.

For Example:

The video-game movie adaptation Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is nothing more than a simple adventure story, but one of the reasons I’ve always enjoyed it (despite its problems) is because of the rich character subtext it offers.

The main character Dastan is a street orphan who was adopted as a child by the king. That’s fixed point #1.

Prince of Persia creates story subtext in its character relationships by showing us two fixed points of context, the first being Dastan’s salvation from the streets as a child by the king. (Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010), Walt Disney Pictures.)

Then the story skips forward to an adult Dastan’s devoted but often strained relationship with his adopted brothers. That’s fixed point #2.

It then flashes forward to show us the understandably strained, but somehow still devoted relationship between Dastan and his adopted royal brothers. (Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010), Walt Disney Pictures.)

But what happens in between? The subtext of these relationships always sucks me in. We are never explicitly told how the brothers feel about each other and why. But we don’t need the story to condescend to tell us because we can extrapolate for ourselves thanks to the clearly fixed points of the context.

2. Story Subtext Must Explicitly Exist Beneath the Surface

Another reason authors often get hung up on understanding subtext is the necessary emphasis on the fact that subtext is what is not shown. This can often lead to the false assumption that subtext=nothing. It’s a blank space.

But nothing could be further from the truth.

Subtext is very explicit. It’s very real.

If you think of subtext as Ernest Hemingway’s “9/10ths of the iceberg under the water,” then you realize the invisible bulk of the iceberg absolutely exists. It must exist, in the author’s intentions and in the story’s allusions, if it is to carry any weight.

Otherwise, it is nothing but a blank. The story’s grounding in realism will become wobbly and unsatisfying, and readers will easily realize the author doesn’t actually have a clue what the story is really about or where the characters came from.

How You Can Do This in Your Story:

Since the whole idea of story subtext is that you’re not supposed to look at it in the direct light of day, writers often get the feeling they’re supposed to tiptoe around their own stories’ subtext, never looking at it.

This is exactly what you shouldn’t do.

It’s true you’re not going to give your readers a direct look at your subtext, but you absolutely must be thoroughly familiar with it. The subtext must exist—the iceberg must be under the water—if the story on top is going to have any chance of floating.

Create your story’s subtext deliberately. This requires an absolute understanding of your characters’ backstories, motivations, and goals, as well as a firm grip on the world around your characters. This doesn’t mean you have t0 know all of this right away; it may be something you discover as you uncover the shape of the story for yourself.

For Example:

Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim is one of my favorite movies, largely because its subtext is so rich. Like Prince of Persia, it’s a simple action flick. But it rises above the genre thanks to its rock-solid grasp of everything in the story world.

We sense this post-apocalyptic world—scourged by the alien kaiju monsters—is a rich, interesting, and very real place. We don’t learn everything there is to know about it (because all that stuff isn’t important to the plot). But we see enough fixed points within the context (i.e., the black market, the military tech, the cults, the Wall of Life) to understand there is a wealth of subtext under the surface.

Pacific Rim creates a sense of depth and richness in its world by using story subtext to hint at complexity far beyond what is explicitly revealed in the plot. (Pacific Rim (2013), Warner Bros.)

Even for viewers who choose not to visit these possibilities within their imaginations, the sense of a wider world makes the story seem that much bigger, more authentic, and more meaningful.

3. Story Subtext Must Remain Under the Surface

Once you’ve created context on the surface and subtext beneath the surface, that’s where both must stay.

This can be more difficult than it sounds. When you go to all the trouble of creating delicious backstory or worldbuilding, of course you want to share it! You love every little detail about your story, and you want to share every one of those details with your readers.

You also want to make sure readers get the subtext. Sometimes I find myself drafting beautifully subtextual scenes—and then ending them with an explicit explanation, either because I feel the need to make sure readers get it or even because I love what I’ve created so much I just want to jump up and down and say, “See! See! Did you see how awesome that was?”

Naturally, I have to go back and delete my sometimes paranoid, sometimes exuberant excesses. You have to trust the subtext to carry itself—which it cannot do if you raise it above the surface into context.

The one exception to this is important story revelations. Often, you will keep certain aspects of your story (backstory secrets, antagonistic clues, etc.) under the surface for most of the story before revealing them in important scenes that advance the plot.

How You Can Do This in Your Story:

Resist the Urge to Explain. It’s as simple as that. Get into the habit of avoiding on-the-nose explanations in which you spell things out for readers.

This is especially true of dialogue. Although characters certainly will say things straight sometimes, make it a habit to force them into talking around subjects or coming at things sidelong or metaphorically. Whenever you find characters saying exactly what they mean, stop and question whether you’re spoon-feeding readers information that would be more powerful if it remained under your story’s surface.

For Example:

Jason Bourne remains one of my all-time favorite characters for the simple reason that he is never on-the-nose. He exists almost entirely within his own subtext. For most of the series, he is a mystery even to himself, thanks to his amnesia. We see definite fixed points within his personality and his past, but his near-silence forces/allows us to extrapolate his true motivations and feelings.

Jason Bourne carries almost all of the story subtext in his stories single-handedly thanks to the trust shown in viewers to extrapolate his past. (The Bourne Identity (2002), Universal Pictures.)

Were the character ever to sit down with a therapist and start explaining every detail about his experiences and emotions, the subtext would surface, and the depth and complexity of the character would be obliterated. It’s the great restraint shown in these stories that makes them intellectually stimulating and emotionally moving.

4. Story Subtext Is Created by Dichotomy

The best and most interesting story subtext is always that which arises out of a seeming dichotomy. When the fixed points of your story’s context seem like they don’t quite align, that immediately sparks readers’ curiosity. What exists between these dichotomous fixed points that might explain the mystery?

You know you’ve discovered the potential for story subtext when something in your characters’ behavior or the world around them makes you curious enough to start asking questions.

Note, however, that subtext cannot arise from an explicit question. If you raise an explicit question in your story, readers will always expect an explicit answer. The moment anything becomes explicit, it ceases to be subtext.

Instead, these dichotomies must remain implicit questions. These arise when readers are led to believe the truth about a character or a situation is different from how it appears on the surface.

This was the revelation (given to me many years ago by long-time blog commenter Joe Long) that finally helped me crack the code of story subtext. He wrote in an email:

It’s always great when there can be a definite dichotomy between interior and exterior behavior. Truly that’s the heart of subtext.

Creating Character Arcs (Amazon affiliate link)

Indeed, this is also the heart of character arc, which means the core of your character’s journey can be made all the more powerful through a judicious use of subtext.

How You Can Do This in Your Story:

Avoid presenting characters and situations for exactly what they are. This can be tricky for you, as the author, since you know exactly what’s going on. But resist the urge to share everything with readers right away. Allow the truth to be a story-long discovery for them.

This is especially valuable in character development. If your character is a good person deep down, great. But you don’t necessarily need to spell that out for readers right away. Show them something else. Show them the façade that characters present to the world, and only allow the subtext about their true nature to show through their actions.

For Example:

Supernatural‘s Dean Winchester is a perennially beloved character, largely because he’s deeply and endlessly conflicted—and because that conflict is allowed to remain largely subtextual. Viewers are shown conflicting truths about him: on the surface, he is reckless, obnoxious, and determined to live as if nothing matters very much, and yet, in a seeming paradox, he also cares deeply about others, even to the point of brutal self-sacrifice.

Supernatural‘s Dean Winchester is a deeply conflicted character who benefits from story subtext in allowing his cocky facade to hide his deep pain—and his better self. (Supernatural (2005-2020), The CW.)

The dichotomy raises questions. Why is this character this way? What is the internal conflict driving these contradictions? And which of these aspects of his nature is the true aspect?

5. Story Subtext Exists in the Silent Spaces

Here’s a simple trick for maintaining the illusion of subtext even in situations in which you have to spell out a good deal of the context. Cultivate your characters’ silence. Even when the story requires you to explain certain things to readers, resist the temptation to have your characters spell everything out to each other.

So far, I’ve been using movies as examples of story subtext. This is largely because the visual, exterior nature of film often allows them to be far more subtextual than written narrative fiction.

Even though all these principles apply in written fiction, it’s important to realize you will usually need to spell out more in a book than in a movie. Things that can be implied in a film will leave readers confused if they aren’t explained or at least referenced in a book.

If you were to apply the same subtext-laden dialogue from a movie (in which viewers have no idea what the characters are thinking) in a book (in which at least the narrator’s thoughts are on display), you can still achieve almost the same effect of complexity and depth by simply cultivating the subtext of silence between the two characters.

How You Can Do This in Your Story:

Do not allow your characters to always tell each other exactly what they’re thinking. Whenever you find your characters spelling things out plainly, take a step back. Is this information absolutely crucial to the advancement of the plot or the readers’ understanding of what’s going on?

If not, cut it.

If so, take another look. Can you rephrase the explicitness of the dialogue to keep some of that iceberg under the water even while sharing the necessary information?

For Example:

Consider these two excellent examples of authorial restraint in not allowing characters to spell things out to one another.

The first is from The Book Thief, Markus Zusak’s award-winning saga set in Nazi Germany. In it, the main character, Liesel thinks the explicit words she wishes to say to her doomed best friend Rudy. Readers understand exactly how she feels. But because she doesn’t say the words aloud to Rudy himself, they remain a powerful subtext between them.

As promised, they walked far down the road toward Dachau. They stood in the trees. There were long shapes of light and shade. Pinecones were scattered like cookies.

Thank you, Rudy.

For everything. For helping me off the road, for stopping me…

She said none of it.

The second example is an even simpler one. In Jeff Long’s apocalyptic thriller Year Zero, readers were with protagonist Nathan Lee in a harrowing scene in which he futilely attempted to flag down an American aircraft carrier off the coast of Alaska. Readers fully understand this explicit context to the following conversation, even though this scene’s narrating character, Miranda, does not.

“She was a pilot in the Navy,” Miranda said. “On one of those ships that never came home.”

“What ships?”

“You must have heard about them. The mapping and search expeditions. They went out to take stock of the planet, but no one made it home. The satellites pick them up here and there. Ghost ships circling in the ocean. Like the Lost Dutchman.”

Nathan Lee fell silent. Miranda thought it must have to do with his own loss. He looked haunted.

Nathan Lee could have acknowledged his recognition of the ship with one simple line: “I saw it.” Instead, he falls silent, allowing the subtext of his pain to deepen—even though readers know exactly what he is thinking.

***

Story subtext may feel like magic, but it is built from practical, repeatable techniques. Once you master these five principles, you can step out of its shadows and wield it with purpose and power. The result is stories of maturity, complexity, and profound depth.

Note: This article has been revised and expanded from an earlier version.

Want More?

Story Theme Kit Worksheet

One of the reasons subtext matters so much is that it allows a story’s deeper meaning to emerge without being stated outright. This is especially true of theme. Rather than being delivered as explanations, the strongest themes usually arise from the patterns, choices, conflicts, and consequences woven throughout the story.

I created the Story Theme Development Worksheet to give writers a practical way to explore what their stories are really about, as well as how plot, character, symbolism, and thematic questions can work together to create meaning beneath the surface.

If you’re still discovering your story’s theme, or if you know what you want to say but aren’t sure how to dramatize it without becoming on-the-nose, this quick worksheet process can help you dig into those deeper layers and translate them into the story itself.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! How are you writing subtext in your stories to add depth to your characters, dialogue, or 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 or Amazon Music).

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The post The 5 Ingredients You Need to Write Subtext in Fiction appeared first on Helping Writers Become Authors.

How do you find and notice story ideas, and how do you turn those into short stories, novels, or as anecdotes for your non-fiction or memoir? Why is an author’s note so important in an age of AI, and what might it contain? Joanna Penn shares her thoughts, and her short story, The Black Church, along with its author’s note.

In the intro, Ebook Preorders on Smashwords; Two titles per week on Amazon KDP; AI-related Digital Publishing Awards at Frankfurt Book Fair [Publishing Perspectives]; AI webinars in November; JFPenn YouTube;

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Joanna Penn is an award-winning New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers, dark fantasy, short stories and travel memoir under J.F. Penn and also writes non-fiction for authors and hosts The Creative Penn Podcast.

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

• From story seeds to stories
• Writing an author’s note
• The Black Church, a short story, available as a stand-alone or as part of The Buried and the Drowned collection.
• Author’s Note for The Black Church

You can find How to Write, Publish, and Market Short Stories on all platforms, in all formats: www.TheCreativePenn.com/shortstorybook

From story seeds to stories

One of the most common questions that writers get asked is ‘Where do you get your ideas?’ This is a strange question for many of us, since we are often so deluged with ideas that the difficulty is sifting out which ones to turn into a story. 

The trick is to tune into your curiosity and start noticing what grabs your interest. As Elizabeth Gilbert writes in Big Magic,

“The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them.”

What do you see that others don’t? What turns your head while others pass by? What do you want to learn more about? What questions come up for you? What obsessions do you keep returning to? Each of these may be a fragment, a word, or a few lines. I call these story seeds.

An idea, in its earliest form, is like a seed. It’s small, easy to miss, and nothing like the thing it might grow into. You literally can’t tell what it will look like when it’s grown, but there is potential in it. 

A seed isn’t a plot, or a character, or a full setting. It might be a line in a book or a film, a headline in the news, something you see in a museum display, or a place that made you feel something. It might be a question that bubbles up, or a feeling that won’t let you go.

You just have to notice these seeds and, importantly, write them down!

Capturing your story seeds

Thoughts and ideas and story seeds will flit through your mind all the time if you let them, but they are fleeting, so you need a way to capture them before they leave once more. It doesn’t matter how you do this, but you need some kind of simple process.

I use the Things app on my iPhone, which syncs to my Mac so I can always access it. Other people use a note-taking app or a physical notebook. It doesn’t matter. You just have to get it down. 

My story seeds are often one-liners, quotes, or links to articles I’ve seen that I want to investigate later. They might be passages from books I have underlined, or places I visit, or questions I have while out in the world.

Here are a few examples from my Fiction Ideas file that might even spark ideas for you: 

• United Arab Emirates plans world’s first underwater bullet train connecting Dubai to Mumbai
• L’appel du vide. The call of the void. The compulsion to jump.
• “Vengeance of the lost garden.” Ben Okri. A Fire in My Head
• Noah’s Ark on the moon, like the Svalbard seed bank
• The Wicked Bible. Printing error. Thou shalt commit adultery. 1631.

You can see that these are not fully formed ideas. They are just seeds. Most will lie dormant, but some will sprout, appearing in stories or books years later. 

When I’m thinking about writing a new short story, I sometimes go to a cafe and sit with a coffee and scroll through my seed folder and notice patterns and see what strikes me as interesting. Sometimes I won’t even know an idea came from a seed I once found, but I look at my list later and discover I had thought about it once before. It’s a wonderful way to plant ideas and later find they have grown into something wild and curious. 

If you haven’t already got a way to capture your story seeds, establish a simple process now. Don’t overthink it. Just start noticing and writing them down. They might not make sense at the moment, but they may flower later.

Searching for story seeds

Julia Cameron discusses the idea of an Artist’s Date in her book The Artist’s Way, and this practice has always been important to me. It involves taking time out on your own to go somewhere and fill your creative well, whatever that means to you. For me, it’s often travel to interesting places or visiting museum exhibitions that I know will have nuggets of fascination that may result in full blown story seeds. 

On the morning of my fiftieth birthday, in March 2025, we woke up in Iceland next to the Black Church at Búðir on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, a few hours’ drive northwest of Reykjavík. The small church and graveyard sit on a bed of ancient lava under the gaze of a glacier and there is a sense that time has stopped in this place. As we walked around the church that morning, the place itself became a story seed, and I later wrote The Black Church from that spark.

On the cheaper end of the inspiration spectrum, I often go to the British Museum in London seeking story seeds and over the years, it has provided much inspiration for fiction of different lengths. 

An exhibition on religious relics inspired Crypt of Bone, a Viking collection appeared in Day of the Vikings, and one of the main characters in Desecration works as a researcher there. In terms of short stories, a sunken Egypt exhibition inspired The Dark Queen and I saw the actual Bronze Age wooden spars of Seahenge at an exhibition on the ancient world. If you follow your curious impulses, you will find story seeds everywhere.

From seed to story

Now that you have a load of story seeds, how do they become stories? 

For me, it’s usually about a juxtaposition of multiple seeds that suddenly coalesce into something coherent.

With a Demon’s Eye came from my own experience of laser eye surgery, which was unsettling in so many ways, but a feeling is not enough for a story. Some months later, I read It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War by combat photographer Lynsey Addario, and I suddenly had a character, someone whose life was defined by their sight, and who might indeed choose a dangerous path to keep it.

Questions:

• Where do you find your story seeds? How can you make time to tune into your curiosity and discover more of them?
• How are you saving your story seeds?
• Can you open up time to revisit your seeds and see what might take root as a story?

The Author’s Note

As a reader, I love an author’s note, and as an author, I always include one in every story, of any length. I want to share the spark that started my thought process and I love to include my research trips and links to photos, as well as a bibliography if I’ve gone deeper into any subject.

In an age of AI, when whole stories can be generated with a single prompt, the author’s note is a way to double down on being human and include your fingerprints on your finished work.

What is an author’s note?

An author’s note is a separate chapter, long or short, at the beginning or end of a story. It’s from you as the writer addressed to the reader who might be interested in what inspired your fiction. As an example, you can find my author’s note for The Black Church below.

It can be simple, even just a few lines. At the end of Blood, Sweat, and Flame, I note that the story was inspired by watching the Netflix series Blown Away, a reality show where glassblowers compete in a hot shop filled with furnaces and molten art.

It can also be far more substantial.

My author’s note for Between Two Breaths is a mini essay on how I left London in 2000 to go travelling after the stress of working in the city in the ’90s and found peace diving beneath the waters of the Poor Knights Islands in New Zealand. Later, that led to diving alone and a moment where I made the choice to carefully ascend when everything in me wanted to stay down in the blue.

That author’s note also includes recommended books on free diving as well as a documentary, and links to a solo episode of my Books and Travel podcast where I talk more about why I loved scuba diving.

While the two notes differ greatly in length and emotional depth, and they shouldn’t affect whether the reader enjoys the story or not, I feel like they provide an element of humanity that adds to the experience.

So, what should you include in an author’s note?

Start with the seed

I love to include my story seeds, the initial impetus for how the story was born. 

In my author’s note for Seahenge, I explain that Seahenge itself is real and did indeed emerge off the coast of Norfolk, but my own experience of it began in 2022 when I stood in the British Museum in front of the actual blackened Bronze Age timbers and imagined a sacrifice laid across that upturned trunk. Standing there, I knew that I’d write a story inspired by it someday, I just didn’t know what that would be at the time.

Then I talk about how the seed expanded after a rainy visit to Ely Cathedral two years later, as I considered rising seas and drowned land and how the ocean wants to take it all. 

A curious reader can almost understand how the story came to be, and that may change how they regard it, and perhaps, how they think of you, the author. 

Include your research and links to resources

One of the reasons I write is so that I can feed my books with the results of my endless curiosity. I love research, and many readers are also interested in the lines between fact and fiction.

In the author’s note for Soldiers of God, I include a link to the news report about the Vatican scanning project to digitise the secret archives and use AI to uncover hidden meanings, as well as a link to the twelfth-century papal bull Militia Dei (Latin for soldiers of God) that granted the Templars the right to be buried in their own cemeteries. 

In A Thousand Fiendish Angels, I explain the elements from Dante’s Inferno that inspired various parts of the linked stories, like the Arctic location reflecting Dante’s icy hell, the terrifying city of Dis, and even the symbolism of the character names. These hidden layers in the stories can bring an element of surprise and delight which some readers love to explore further.

Include emotion and your personal story

Part of the idea of doubling down on being human is bringing your real experience and authenticity to the page. Sharing personal emotions in your author’s note can bring a sense of connection between you and the reader that no AI tool or human ghostwriter could ever mimic. 

But of course, your note has to come from your honest experience of life, and there’s no need to fabricate anything to make a story seem deeper than it is. Your story may be inspired by something simple, like Blood, Sweat, and Flame stemming from my enjoyment of a TV show, or it can be a more emotionally resonant connection.

Beneath the Zoo opens at the gates of the derelict Bristol Zoo on the eve of its destruction, and the author’s note tells the reader why this real place had such a hold on me.

After my parents divorced when I was young, my dad would take my brother and me to Bristol Zoo for a couple of hours every month, all the time we really had with him for a period of years. It was difficult, but walking those paths and looking at the animals gave us precious hours together.

When the zoo finally closed, and the news reported that it would be turned into housing, I wondered what might be found beneath its Victorian structures. I entwined my imaginings about what might lie there with my own nostalgic grief.

Of course, these revelations might feel difficult to talk about and only you can choose what to share. Sometimes we write fiction to obscure the truth and bury our feelings beneath metaphor, but even sharing one true thing will help you connect with the reader.

My author’s notes in The Buried and the Drowned reveal aspects of me that even some close friends and family may not know. I reveal myself on the page, knowing that if a reader gets that far, I can trust them with these fragments of my life. 

Bibliography and other resources

As Cormac McCarthy said,

“Books are made out of books,”

and I love to share further reading for those who are curious to investigate the truth behind the stories.

For De-Extinction of the Nephilim, I shared news articles about de-extinction as well as a podcast interview with the founder of Colossal, the company that inspired the story. And, of course, I shared more fiction recommendations, including Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton and Extinction by Douglas Preston, both inspired by the same technology.

For The Black Church, I include the history of the church itself as well as website links for the hotel next to it, and a link to my notes and photos from the Iceland trip, which you can read in appendix 4. 

Including these kinds of multimedia links can take the story off the page and into the real world, and perhaps even encourage the reader to go on their own adventures. 

If I’ve written on similar themes before, I may include links to those stories or books in the author’s note.

At the end of Between Two Breaths, I note that I’ve written about other memorable dives in some of my other fiction. In Stone of Fire, Morgan Sierra recalls a dive at the Moeraki Boulders in New Zealand while inside St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice. In Deviance, O’s memory of an encounter with an octopus plays an important part in the story and is based on my own experience, and The Dark Queen features a dive to a submerged Egyptian city.

You can also use your author’s note to say thank you, although sometimes acknowledgements, email list sign-ups, and other back matter are kept separate.

There are no rules

You don’t need an author’s note at all, and if you include one, there’s no need to follow any template. It’s up to you how much you share, especially if you are self-publishing your own work as only you control the word count. 

If you submit to professional markets, author’s notes are often not included or are a few short lines, so you may have to be concise, but if you reprint later, or include your stories in a collection, I urge you to consider adding something about the story behind the story and bring yourself, the author, alive. 

Questions:

• As a reader, do you love an author’s note? What do you like them to include?
• For whatever story you’re working on, what are the elements you could include in an author’s note?
• If readers want to do further reading on the topics of your short story, do you have sources from your own research you could share?
• How could you connect with readers on a personal level through your author’s note?

You can read The Black Church as a stand-alone here, or read or listen as part of my collection, The Buried and the Drowned.

The post From Story Seeds To Stories, And Writing An Author’s Note, With Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Negative Character Arcs explore what happens when a character encounters a story’s thematic Truth but cannot—or will not—fully integrate it. The three major variations—Disillusionment, Fall, and Corruption—each represent a different tragic relationship with the story’s thematic Truth and Lie. When we put them together, they also reveal a larger pattern of negative transformation.

This is what I’ll be exploring in the final class in this year’s Story School series, Negative Character Arcs: The Hidden Pattern of Self-Deception, which premieres tomorrow October 6 at 1 PM EDT.

[Register Here → Negative Character Arcs: The Hidden Pattern of Self-Deception]

This class follows directly on the heels of last month’s Flat Character Arcs: From Transformation to Integration. One of the ideas I was especially happy to explore in the Flat Character Arc class was that transformation doesn’t end when we discover a Truth. There’s another stage in which we have to learn how to live that Truth by embodying it, so we can ultimately use it to offer meaningful service to the world around us.

But, of course, that raises another question:

What happens when a character encounters the Truth—and can’t fully integrate it?

What Makes a Negative Character Arc “Negative”?

Most of the time, when we talk about character arcs, we focus on transformation as a positive process in which the character begins by believing a Lie, encounters a deeper thematic Truth, and chooses positive transformation.

But just because a character is challenged to grow, this doesn’t mean transformation is inevitable.

• Sometimes when the Truth destroys the character’s old understanding of life, the character won’t immediately find anything meaningful with which to replace it.
• Other times, a character might glimpse a Truth but ultimately reject it because accepting it would require surrendering a Lie that has so far defined the character’s identity and choices.
• And sometimes the character begins with access to the Truth, only to reject it more and more completely until the Lie becomes not just something the character believes, but something with which the character is fully identified.

These are the three major variations of the Negative Change Arc: Disillusionment, Fall, and Corruption.

Obviously, we can recognize a tragic ending when we see one. When a character destroys a relationship, loses everything they care about, becomes a villain, or dies as a consequence of their choices, the ending is tragic and therefore “negative.” But none of those things, by themselves, create a Negative Arc.

As in every type of arc, the defining element is the character’s relationship to the story’s thematic Truth.

Negative Arcs aren’t simply opposites of the Positive Change Arc. In fact, depending on which Negative Arc you’re writing, the beginning of the story may look similar to a Positive Change Arc.

Disillusionment, Fall, and Corruption as a Larger Pattern of Negative Transformation

Here’s the really interesting part: these aren’t just three separate ways to write a tragic character. When we put them together, what they actually reveal is the larger pattern of negative transformation.

We start with the Disillusionment Arc, which in many ways is similar to the Positive Change Arc. In it, the character does overcome the original Lie in order to see reality more clearly. But unlike in a Positive Change Arc, the character isn’t yet able to experience this new understanding as a transcendent or empowering Truth. Although delusion is gone, what remains is primarily grief over what has been lost.

From there, we can trace the possibility of a deeper descent through the Fall Arc, in which the character increasingly chooses the Lie despite opportunities to recognize the Truth. Their tragedy emerges from an increasing inability (or unwillingness) to surrender whatever worldview is creating the problem.

Finally, the Corruption Arc reveals the completed pattern. Here, the character may actually begin with an understanding of the Truth. This story is about the gradual rejection of that Truth in favor of a more constricted perspective, or Lie—usually in pursuit of power or some other self-protective goal.

When we put all three arcs together, we can then chart the full digression from encountering a difficult Truth and being unable to integrate it, to resisting the Truth in favor of the Lie, to finally embracing the Lie as the character’s new understanding of reality.

This is the “hidden pattern of self-deception” I’m exploring in this class.

Why Negative Character Arcs Are About More Than Bad Choices

Creating Character Arcs (Amazon affiliate link)

When I first started writing about character arcs years ago, my primary interest was very practical. I wanted to understand how character development fit together with plot structure.

At the time, these two subjects were often taught separately. You had plot over here, with all its structural beats, and character over there, having some sort of internal journey. But the deeper I got into studying both, the more obvious it became to me that they weren’t really separate things at all.

Character creates plot. Plot creates character growth. And underneath both is theme—the story’s exploration of the relative Truths and Lies that give meaning to the character’s understanding of reality.

Writing Your Story’s Theme (Amazon affiliate link)

That understanding became the basis for much of what I eventually taught in my books Creating Character Arcs and later Writing Your Story’s Theme.

But over the years, my interest in character arcs has continued to expand. Although the practical mechanics will always matter, what I’m increasingly interested in is what these patterns tell us about transformation itself.

Negative Character Arcs are particularly revealing in this regard.

Positive Change Arcs show us a person beginning with an incomplete understanding of reality, who is then challenged by life, discovers something truer, and ultimately grows large enough to accept it.

Negative Arcs ask what happens when that process goes awry.

That’s a much more complex question than simply asking, “Why do people make bad choices?” After all, most compelling Negative-Arc characters are actually making choices they believe to be necessary, justified, or even good.

Their tragedy lies in the widening gap between their worldview and their reality.

How to Write Tragic Character Arcs That Feel Inevitable

As writers, understanding this progression gives us causality for creating a character’s believable downfall.

In these stories, the character’s negative transformation emerges organically from the same relationship between plot, character, and theme that drives a Positive Change Arc. When the plot confronts the character with reality, the character’s choices reveal whether that reality will be accepted, resisted, or ultimately rejected.

If plot, character, and theme are all manifestations of the same story, then the external events should be creating precisely the pressures necessary to test the character’s relationship with the Lie and Truth.

The major structural beats—the First Plot Point, Midpoint, Third Plot Point, and Climax—become increasingly consequential encounters with reality. How the character chooses to respond is what determines the arc.

This gives us a much more specific way to think about writing tragic characters. The character’s downfall grows out of the choices made all along the way and, particularly, out of what the character does with each new opportunity to recognize, accept, or reject the Truth.

What We’ll Explore in Negative Character Arcs: The Hidden Pattern of Self-Deception

This is what we’ll be digging into in Negative Character Arcs: The Hidden Pattern of Self-Deception.

We’ll begin by looking at the larger transformational cycle and where each of the Negative Arcs fits within it, particularly in relation to the Positive Change and Flat Arcs. From there, we’ll look at the progression created by the three types of Negative Arc: Disillusionment, Fall, and Corruption.

We’ll break down each of the three arcs structurally to examine how the Lie, Truth, Want, Need, and Ghost develop throughout the story and how each arc intersects with the major beats of plot structure.

In the class, we’ll look at:

• How Disillusionment, Fall, and Corruption represent three distinct patterns of negative transformation.
• How a character’s relationship with Truth and Lie changes in each arc.
• How the three Negative Arcs fit together within a larger cycle of character transformation.
• Why the Disillusionment Arc represents a crucial pivot between positive growth and further devolution.
• How to structure each Negative Arc beat by beat through plot, character, and theme.
• How to bring plot, character, and theme together to create Negative Arcs that are psychologically convincing and thematically meaningful.

We’ll also look at examples from familiar stories to see how these patterns function in practice, so we can move back and forth between larger psychological ideas and practical decisions when structuring our own characters’ journeys.

If you’re interested in writing tragic characters with more structural precision, as well as understanding how to write tragedies that feel inevitable and meaningful, this class lays the foundation.

How to Join the Negative Character Arcs Class

Here’s everything you need to know:

• The class is pre-recorded and premieres tomorrow, October 6, at 1 PM EDT.
• I’ll be in the live chat during the showing if you’d like to attend and participate in the discussion.
• If you can’t attend live, the replay will be available in your account afterward.

You can read more and register here:

[Register Here → Negative Character Arcs: The Hidden Pattern of Self-Deception]

I’ve so enjoyed having the opportunity in this series to revisit some of these familiar character-arc structures from a larger perspective. The mechanics of character arc remain tremendously useful to me as a writer, but the mechanics become so much more interesting when we can see why they work.

Negative Arcs offer a particularly powerful lens for that exploration because they allow us to examine transformation through its failures and distortions.

This tension is part of what makes character arcs endlessly fascinating to me—and I’m excited to dig into the negative side of the pattern with you!

Bundle Negative Character Arcs With Flat Character Arcs

If you missed the previous class, Flat Character Arcs: From Transformation to Integration, it explores what happens after a character has already gained the story’s central Truth and must learn to embody it more fully while using it to catalyze change in the world around them.

I’ve been looking forward to teaching these two classes together because they offer such different perspectives on what happens after a character encounters Truth. Although sometimes that encounter leads to greater integration and the ability to positively influence the world, other times it marks the beginning of disillusionment, resistance, and a deeper identification with the Lie.

If you’d like to explore both the positive and negative sides of this larger character-arc cycle, you can purchase the two classes as a bundle for a 15% discount!

The post Writing Masterclass: Negative Character Arcs: The Hidden Pattern of Self-Deception appeared first on Helping Writers Become Authors.

How can you keep writing when midlife brings grief, exhaustion, rage, and a creativity that seems to have dried up? How can you accelerate if midlife brings you more energy? And how can you market your books authentically when your energy and your interests have changed? Jordan Rosenfeld shares what she learned from writing through her own pause.

In the intro, how to write short stories [Novel Marketing Podcast]; Bestsellers: Excavating the Tools and Techniques of Successful Novels – Kristen Tate.

Plus, Hugh Howey: The AI Bubble Explained; NEO writing software; Will the AI Bubble Destroy our Retirement? By Mr Money Mustache; Future Vision X Prize winner, The Gifted; and my Cathedral Zero trailer; How to Market a Book Fourth Edition survey.

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

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Jordan Rosenfeld is the author of psychological suspense novels and books on writing craft, as well as an editor and writing coach. Her latest book is Writing Through the Pause: Mining Midlife for Powerful Writing.

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 midlife is, and why so many changes seem to arrive at once
• Disenfranchised grief, empty nest, perimenopause and the losses nobody talks about
• A fallow period is a germinating period, not a dead one
• Don’t isolate, try something new, and learn to write as play
• How to market your books in a way that reflects who you are at your core
• Vulnerability, curation and how much of yourself to share online

You can find Jordan at JordanRosenfeld.net.

Transcript of the interview with Jordan Rosenfeld

Jo: Jordan Rosenfeld is the author of psychological suspense novels and books on writing craft, as well as an editor and writing coach. Her latest book is Writing Through the Pause: Mining Midlife for Powerful Writing. So welcome to the show, Jordan.

Jordan: Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be here.

Jo: Yes, this is an excellent topic. First up—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.

Jordan: Absolutely. I’m really one of those annoying writers who’s been writing all my life since I was a little girl, and it was all I really wanted to be or do. I’m a Gen X-er, so of course we grew up before the internet, and I read for pleasure and escape.

So I was really dogged in figuring out how does one go about becoming a writer, because it was the only thing I wanted to do.

I remember going to the library and checking out—eventually, later in my 20s—this massive tome, I forget what it was called. Like the Writer’s Guide to Publishing, one of those big old things that has all of the editors, agents and stuff.

It was really just figuring out how to do it and sending snail mail queries and going to writing conferences. So I think I was just dog on a bone with it, really, since I was young. Like anything, once you get your toe in, it’s a little easier to keep publishing.

I laugh because the first traditionally published book of mine was actually a book on writing craft before I had published any of my novels. So that felt strange, but I wasn’t complaining at the same time.

Jo: So when was that, and what has your career looked like so far?

Jordan: So I published Make a Scene: How to Craft—oh my gosh, I’m forgetting my own subtitle—Crafting Powerful Scenes in 2005, which means I pitched it in 2003. That was the beginning of my era as a writing craft teacher as well. I was right out of graduate school at that point.

Then eventually I published my first novel. When I say my first novel, I just mean the first one that hit the world. It wasn’t my first one written, but Forged in Grace. Then I eventually started putting out a writing craft guide every couple of years, just thanks to the wonderful people at Writer’s Digest.

I just found a niche early on. Sometimes that just happens. I also like to point out that I was pitching books at a time before this whole concept of platform was a big deal. So you could be just any old body without a big following, because we didn’t really have social media.

I did write for the magazine, the Writer’s Digest magazine, which I think gave me a leg up in the book part. So writing craft became my niche, and then I always have really found success with small press for my novels.

So my current publisher is called Sibylline Press, and they are a publisher of women 50 and over, actually. That’s their whole thing.

Jo: Oh, okay. That’s interesting. Well, we’re going to come back to the book in a minute, but just in terms of that journey, it’s quite interesting. You mentioned platform there, that changed, and Writer’s Digest publishing themselves got into trouble, didn’t they? They got bought by a different publisher.

Jordan: Yep.

Jo: So you’ve been through some changes. Well, we’re going to be talking about change in general, but changes in the industry have also happened.

So how have you navigated all that change over time?

Obviously a lot of listeners to this show are independent authors as well, so thoughts on how things have changed in the industry.

Jordan: Well, what’s interesting is Writer’s Digest actually went bankrupt. They got bought by another company who just mismanaged it, called F+W Media, and they went bankrupt. So a lot of us authors were terrified that all of our books were going to just revert.

I mean, it was fine to have the rights back, but we didn’t want to republish ourselves at that time. So they did end up getting bought by Penguin Random House, which means our books are still alive in that traditional way.

So Forged in Grace, my first novel, I was in the process of querying agents, and then a friend of mine and I decided to start this thing. This was 2012, ’13, this independent publishing collective. So we were going to act like a publisher but publish books. Basically it was people doing work trade.

We had someone who did cover design and someone who could do layout and marketing and all these things, and we came together. So I did publish my novel that way, and actually it was the time when Amazon was still quite favourable to indie authors. You could really make a decent amount of money.

Then my partner and I just… It didn’t last. There were a lot of different reasons why we didn’t, and it has nothing to do with the idea, which was totally working. I have really seen how the capitalist machine seems to continually come in and eat away at whatever profits there are for independent authors.

I’ve seen authors have to become marketers. We went from being people who could write, and then someone else would handle that, to having all of us have to do it ourselves, and now content creators. So I think a lot of us feel really exhausted, which actually is not unrelated to the book of mine that’s coming out.

So I worry. Of course, we haven’t even talked about AI, if we even want to, but I do worry a little bit about the future of publishing, but I’m not a pessimist in the sense that I don’t think it’s going away.

Jo: Oh, no, absolutely, I agree. Changes, I think, are what this is all about. Well, let’s get into the book then. Let’s start with a definition.

So what are you defining as midlife, and why is this such a change for many people?

Jordan: It’s a very buzzword, midlife. So I will say it’s a mental state as much as an age, because a lot of people start calling themselves or saying they’re in midlife in their 30s, right? So it’s not a hard age, even though you might say it’s in your 40s or 50s.

For me, it’s really the point at which I find people start to realise that they have less time ahead of them than behind. You might find yourself maybe a little past what I’m calling the striving stage of life, where you’re focused on building career and identity and family, and all of that.

It also seems to coincide for people with multiple challenges at once. So maybe you’re dealing with health issues or perimenopause or aging, and maybe you’re helping your parents or your fledging teenage children, if you have children.

So there’s a lot going on for people, it seems, at this stage of life, and I’ve interviewed 28 people for my book who range in age from 37 to 81. So there is definitely a wide range of age.

Jo: Yes, I think that’s interesting. I almost wonder whether it is a realisation of changes. I mean, again, we’ll just say menopause because I feel like for me, that’s when it really kicked in, was there was a health hormonal shift, and I started feeling very different.

I started questioning a lot of things, and so much came up for me that I almost felt was out of my control. I think that was the biggest thing that happened for me, was realising, “This is out of my control,” and I don’t particularly like that.

It felt like there was a lot of grief at midlife, and you mentioned there parents. Obviously some people’s parents are dying, children are leaving.

Is grief a big part of this, do you think?

Jordan: Absolutely, and I like what you said about it often is a stage where people feel out of control of things, their bodies, their life circumstances. There’s also a little bit of a, did I do everything I wanted? What will the next X years of my life look like, if they can get there?

Grief is a huge part of the transition, and I think grief is interesting. Right now, I’m in empty nest. I just fledged my son a month ago, and it did hit me harder than I thought it would, even preparing. So there’s these kinds of grief we don’t really give cultural credence to.

You can call them disenfranchised grief, where nobody died, and in fact, the things happening could be conceived as positive if you let them. But a child moving out of the house and you having to completely rearrange your identity, there’s a grief involved in that. Or not seeing that child that you love so much.

Aging, dealing with aging parents in a healthcare system that doesn’t offer supports, while you’re trying to be a creative person.

Or the perimenopause thing is huge for a lot of people, because a lot of people were not told anything about this transition, and it can last 10 to 15 years for many people, and radically change your mind, your mental energy, your capacity, your executive functioning. It’s huge.

So I definitely started writing this when that was happening to me, the perimenopause transition, but I also like it. As a creative person, I like the idea of a pause for anyone being a number of things that can happen in midlife.

Jo: Yes, and I think that’s really important because, as women, that’s one thing, but men go through different things, and people who identify in different ways go through different things. So we’re not saying that it has to be specifically around menopause at midlife.

I think there are lots of different ways that this can show up, and of course, this is a show for writers. You’re writing the book for writers.

So in talking about creativity, let’s talk first about if people find that their creativity has just dried up, that it’s almost died.

How can we learn to accept a fallow time, or perhaps accept and embrace a time of not plenty?

Jordan: That’s a great question. First of all, I really looked into the idea of what fallow means, and you realise that a fallow period is not a dead period, it’s a germinating period. It’s necessary, right, for crops to come back. So I really love this metaphor of not seeing it as dead or gone, but as germinating.

I took a lot of relief and inspiration from this, it only exists as an audiobook, by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. She’s the one who wrote Women Who Run With the Wolves, but she wrote a book called The Creative Fire, and she describes creativity as an infinite creative source that is never gone, but what happens is our access to it gets blocked.

So when I conceive of a fallow period as something in me is blocking access to my creativity, not that the creativity is gone, that was the first key for me. I also recommend that people work backwards and ask themselves, what life experiences, frustrations, disappointments, what burdens have you been dealing with?

There’s usually a path back to what is preventing you from having access. And I really find the first thing is you need to apply gentleness and patience with yourself, and second, honestly, it sounds silly, but really reframing this idea that your creativity is not gone. It’s not dead. It’s germinating.

My therapist gave me the term rooting. She’s like, “Oh, you’re rooting,” like you’re putting down roots, but you don’t know what, if anything, is going to flower or bloom.

I was like, “Oh, I’m rooting. I’m not dead.” So I think it’s a lot of reframing what we can do about it, rather than just conceive it.

Jo: Yes, I remember listening to that audiobook. I remember her voice saying la chispa. Do you remember? La chispa. I don’t know if that means fire, but I remember it. I’ve listened to that, and you brought it up again. La chispa, yes.

I feel like that Women Who Run With the Wolves is just such an excellent book that we come back to at different points in our lives.

On other things, I feel like sometimes—you mentioned the word exhausted earlier—sometimes people are just exhausted. You are just tired. You’re fatigued, and perhaps you just need a break. It doesn’t need to be anything more than that, right?

You can just say, “I’ve got a lot going on. Maybe I just need to not do anything.”

Jordan: Absolutely. Actually, I find a lot of creative people are very driven in different ways, not necessarily ambition-wise, but driven to create or driven to express themselves. So sometimes that drive energy persists even when you don’t have the energy for it.

So then we go into all this mental stuff about, “Well, something must be bad and wrong and broken,” rather than, “Oh, maybe I do need to be resting or conserving energy for myself right now.”

I think really it’s having that confidence or trust that it’s going to come back that is hard for a lot of us at midlife. We really think it’s gone.

I do think that this is a stage of life where really getting support is necessary, whatever that looks like. I understand that things like therapy are not always accessible to everyone for cost reasons or time, so maybe it’s your best friend or someone you see at the coffee shop or the gym or partner, anything.

Or it’s two people who are both feeling creatively stuck and frustrated who say, “We’re just going to get together once a week and see what happens,” talk, laugh, that kind of thing.

I just want to add that I really feel that if we’re relying on our usual, typical, or former ways of doing things at midlife, they often fail us. It often requires a shift.

Jo: Yes, I also think that our mentors in books—I mean, you’ve mentioned there the Clarissa one, and of course your own book. I found when I needed to withdraw, I was reading a lot of books on the power of the older woman. Reclaiming the crone. I mean, I love this reclaiming language. The hag.

There’s these words that we could reclaim around becoming older, and the cultures that respect elders, and what does it mean to move into that stage. I must have read 20 or 30 books in a period of a year of really trying to get to grips with things.

I feel like we can find therapy in these book mentors, as I like to call them.

Jordan: Yes. Absolutely. I don’t know where I would be if I hadn’t had book mentors most of my life. In fact, in a later chapter in the book, I quote Ursula K. Le Guin, who was obviously a science fiction writer, but notorious for really reclaiming older age.

She has a whole essay on the crone, and really the beauty of that stage of life, which is what I’m now aspiring to, because you’ve gone through the hardship of midlife, but you come through with more wisdom, more certainty.

Maybe just a little bit more, “Oh, yes, I’ve been through these ups and downs, and I know I can come out the other side.”

Jo: So I guess on the one hand it can be, at that time, a fallow, it can be that time of exhaustion. As we say, this isn’t just a moment in time. This can go on for years.

Sometimes it can be a quickening. There can be a desire to accelerate even, and also sometimes we might need some tough love. I think that might also help.

So what are your recommendations for those who feel the need to shift up a gear, or who want to move forward?

Jordan: Yes. I mean, I think one thing is not trying to do it all yourself. Seek out other people who you can connect with. For me, what got me out of my fallow period was I joined someone. We do a silent write and then we talk shop afterwards. It was a fellow writer.

So I logged on at 8:00 in the morning and we all just got together and wrote, and then we talked. There was something about not isolating, I think, is key. So not isolating.

Then I’m really just a big fan of trying something new. It’s that whole metaphor, right? If you’re doing the same thing, expecting different results. So if something has changed for us at midlife and we don’t feel the same and we can’t access our creativity in the same way, then we have to do something different.

Another thing that I had to let go of was every time I sit down to write, it has to be purposeful. It’s going to become a book. It’s like, can you just play? What does it look like to write as play? That was a really new concept to me. Obviously I have joy in the writing process, but I was attaching it to a product.

So that’s honestly one of my biggest pieces of advice drawn from my experience and others, is try something new. Be a little bit brave. Maybe it’s not brave, but don’t be afraid that everything is going to lead to something that’ll be hard, that’ll be scary.

Let’s face it, nobody’s going to do it for us. There’s always that reminder. If you just sit around feeling bad and wonder when it’s going to stop, it may not stop on its own unless we try something new.

Jo: Yes, reframing things. I think also as creative people, as writers, we do feel better if we are creating and writing. It may be that writing isn’t the thing you need right now. It may be that you want to get into, I don’t know, painting.

I’ve been doing different things, like I did some stone carving, and I’m doing really random things, and not in a serious way. So as you say—

Maybe writing for us is too serious, and so we need to just change it up a bit.

Jordan: I had a lot of my interview subjects do that. They are like, “Well, when I can’t write, I paint. When I can’t paint, I knit.” I was really impressed at how many people will just keep that creative energy going in another form.

I found that very inspiring, because while I don’t consider myself deeply creative in any other medium, it did make me think, what else could I do that feels creative? For some people that’s cooking food or, I don’t know, organising closets. I really don’t know, but there are ways to transmute that energy.

Jo: Yes, and I mean, you mentioned there about trying something new in our writing as well, and I did find that my interest shifted, and I did a lot of long distance walking and I wrote a pilgrimage memoir, which is quite out of character.

Then I also did a book on writing the shadow, that darker side of psychology. This did not fit with what people expected from me at all.

I feel like it is scary, but we are also making money out of this, and when things don’t fit with what people expect of us, it can change things in terms of our business. So how do we deal with that?

How do we lean into change but also bring our audience along?

Or I guess just lose some of them.

Jordan: Well, it’s interesting because I think that this relates to marketing ourselves, but I really think that authenticity is where it’s at.

If you can present yourself as real, authentic, this is what I’m doing, this is what I’m interested in, that is very appealing to people, right? More than, well, this is the niche I’ve been in my whole career so I can’t break free from it.

I love when a writer I’ve been following for years does something different, suddenly experiments and writes a new book. I actually find that very exciting as a reader.

So to me that’s a lot of external pressures that say you have to stay, if you’re known for being a crime writer you have to stay a crime writer. That’s very much the publishing industry, the culture. That’s not true to how people are in real life.

There’s a writer that I mention in the book, she’s Margaret Mead’s daughter. Of course, this is midlife, names go out of my head. It’ll come back to me before this is over.

She talks about how in her interviews with people—so she researches people in midlife and beyond—most people’s real careers and creative lives are not a straight line. They don’t follow the neat plot, the hero’s journey, right? They actually are very meandering, particularly women’s.

Women’s tend to be more meandering, probably because, yes, they interrupt their careers to have children. They caregive, all of these things.

So I am really a big fan of let that meandering happen. Be open to that rather than, it has to be this way and only this way, because we don’t grow. That’s not a growing edge, right? If we just stay doing what we always did.

Jo: Yes, and as you say, some people will come along with you. Also, obviously we’re a very similar age, and you tend to attract the people who are similar to you, and who are either going through similar things or recognise themselves in you. So I do agree with you. It is about being authentic.

The problems only come when you try to hide that change, perhaps. I mean, I laugh at, sometimes you see author photos that were taken 30 years ago. You’re like, “I’ve met you. You just don’t look like that anymore.”

Jordan: You don’t look like that. I know. I’m a big fan of truth in advertising in that regard, too.

Oh, and the author, it’s Mary Catherine Bateson, so she was anthropologist Margaret Mead’s daughter.

Jo: Well, on that, let’s just mention this, because I sent you written questions for this interview. Part of the reason I do that, one, obviously, I’m respecting the person I’m interviewing, and I want to show you how the interview’s going to go, and I never mean to catch people out.

But also, as a woman in midlife, I forget things all the time. If we’re having a conversation and I forget where we’ve gone—I take notes and everything, but I need to write things down more. If I am having an interview myself, I write down notes, even about my own books.

So this is something that’s changed. I used to be able to remember things a lot better. So this is something that I’ve had to actively do, and presumably you have, too, in order to continue to be the professional we’ve always been.

It doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to forget things, but it’s almost like I am shifting my practices in order to help my midlife self.

Jordan: Absolutely. That’s a really great way to put it. I talk about it in the book as adapting. We adapt ourselves.

I use an example, one of my students who came to take my classes in his late 80s or early 90s, I kid you not, who was still treating himself as a student of writing. During the time he was in my class, he actually ended up having a stroke and had to relearn to speak in his 90s, and did, and write.

So he was constantly adapting new techniques to be able to come back to his creative self, and he really inspired me. That’s a very extreme example, but I do the same thing. My desk is littered with Post-it Notes. My phone, I put anything you can possibly imagine as a reminder into my phone, with an alert.

I’ve also accepted output has changed. So this idea of I used to be able to be so prolific, I don’t expect that of myself anymore. If I sit down to write, I meet myself where I am, and if I get some words out, great, I wrote.

It’s a lot of that gentleness, just appreciating that I am different rather than trying to force my old modes upon myself, which doesn’t work anyway. So I can try, but it will fail. Then I’d be frustrated with myself, which was part of my midlife transition, was trying to do everything the same way, failing, being mad at myself, that whole journey.

So I’m grateful to have moved beyond that and recognised that I have to move slower. I am less productive. I am narrowing the scope of my creative life, and that’s not a bad thing.

Jo: Yes, and that’s not a bad thing. That’s the important statement there at the end. It’s funny that I feel the need to emphasise that, because why do I have to emphasise that? Because we’re just in this culture of obviously more must be better. So that’s the thing.

I guess I’ve also felt a similar way in that I have a much better ability to say, “I don’t want to do that, so I won’t do that.”

Or, I asked you if we could reschedule this interview because my energy just wasn’t there, and I know that I can’t do an interview like this without some energy, and that’s the way to serve the audience, and you were very graceful and said, “Of course.”

So I think this, “I don’t want to do this, so I’m not going to,” rather than pushing into it. But then, of course, we have to sell books. We have to do marketing.

So how do we balance these things?

Jordan: That is the frustration. Well, first of all, you need to honour that feeling. I hate that it sounds cliché, but we have to honour that part of us that says, “I don’t have the energy to do that anymore, or in this way,” because if you ignore that, you’re going to end up sick or injured or frustrated or something.

So the way that I have been doing it… It’s just a reality of marketing yourself as a writer that you must have a presence somewhere online, right? And you must put something out there to let people know where to find you. Unfortunately, there’s too much noise, too many writers, too much competing for people’s attention.

So I realised the only way I can do it is when it reflects who I am at my core. Which means if I’m going to make videos, which I have been doing lately, they’re going to be goofy like me, right? I can’t do a serious, polished video. It’s not in my nature.

If I am going to have to keep a Substack blog, which I do, and write content, it’s going to have to be about issues that are of interest to me at this time in my life.

I also find the more that I can interweave my marketing with promoting other writers in some way, that feels really honest. So interviews, like you do, I do them on my Substack. That feels really good to me because then it’s not all about me, right?

So I think that’s really the key, is finding this fit, and I think that in a way that’s actually what’s made a lot of content creators somewhat, let’s say, famous, is because they have found something that works for them.

It’s comedy, it’s serious, whatever it is, it reflects them and it feels true to people, whether or not it is is another story. So for me it’s not so much truth, but afterwards, do I feel sick inside, or do I feel like, no, I was pretty much myself? Then I can do it, and then it’s actually fun.

I also have to say, I’ve never been very tech handy or gifted, and I was like, “I’m goint to learn Canva. I’m going to learn edits on reels.” I’m just not going to be that person who says, “I’m too old to learn,” or, “I’ve done it this way for so long, I can’t do it another way.”

That’s actually been really fun and freeing. I didn’t expect that.

Jo: Well, yes, you have to learn something new occasionally. I mean, even this podcast, which I’ve been doing since 2009, how I did it technically back then and how I do it technically now is completely different because the tools have changed.

It’s still the same RSS feed, amazingly, even though people don’t even talk about those anymore. So, yes, we do have to learn some things, but we don’t have to learn everything, I guess. We don’t have to do everything.

You talk there about being yourself and authentic, and you have a chapter in the book about unmasking the self and this vulnerability, which can lead to creative breakthroughs, but this can also be really difficult.

Certainly the hardest bit of the time I was going through the early perimenopause and the depressive end of things, before I found HRT, which I know doesn’t work for everyone, but worked for me. I didn’t talk about it then, and it took a couple of years before I was able to talk about these things.

So how can we embrace vulnerability but still protect ourselves from the world when we need protecting?

Jordan: It’s interesting, because I’ve thought a lot about this. I think that we misconstrue vulnerability as only baring our soul, or baring our soft parts, where we’re open to judgement and attack.

The more I think about it, I actually think that authenticity can be vulnerable, and also being more direct. Just being like, “This is what I will allow. This is what I won’t allow. This is who I am. This is who I’m not,” is a form of vulnerability.

That might sound strange, but it’s a way of saying, “This is what I’m allowing you to see of myself.” It’s an honesty, I think.

I find with online stuff, a lot of people are getting to the realisation they have to protect, I think, more from a privacy standpoint. Not tell too much that leaves you open to attack, or leaves you open to having somebody actually come in and steal information from you.

So the way that I’ve conceived of it for myself now is vulnerability is to be honest and direct, but that doesn’t mean giving everything away. I guess this word curation rolls around right now. I don’t think curating is a bad thing. It’s like, I’m going to tell you as much as I feel comfortable telling you.

In this book, I call it partially like a memoir, because I reveal personal things about myself, but I’m revealing them very carefully, let’s put it that way. I’m also trying to protect other people’s stories. My family, if I’m talking about them, I’m being very careful about how I talk about them.

I’m also like, I have to say something about me. I can’t talk about this experience but not share my own process, right? So it is a line we walk.

I have a couple of interview subjects who found for them, the way they are vulnerable is to transform their personal truth into fiction. So they tell real truths, but they fictionalise it, because that way the truth is still coming through, but they don’t have to do that whole soft belly open to the masses, if that makes sense.

Jo: Yes. I think for me, it was just time. When I read some of what I wrote then, and even what I put into my pilgrimage memoir, for example, I’m not that person anymore. There was a period of time when that happened, and I read it and I’m like, “Goodness me,” but the distance helps.

You can share what happened later on in a way that almost feels like fiction, even though it happened.

Jordan: I like that. I like the fact, too, so in memoir there’s this concept of two voices. There’s that voice of the moment, the lived experience, and then the voice of greater experience that comes later, the meaning maker.

So there’s a nice tension that can exist when you look back at who you were, or writing that came from a different time, and you bring the version of you today.

I find I have a lot of compassion for my former self. I can see how hard I was working, or how hard I was trying to impress someone, or any of those things. I think if you can be compassionate towards your older self, meaning even a month ago, then that can come through, too. It’s interesting.

Jo: Yes, and we’ve been all gentleness and kindness and lovely, but let’s get into anger, because anger and rage is also part of grief as well. I was thinking about this, and I have a little mantra that I use on difficult days, which is, “Don’t burn it all down.”

Literally sometimes I just say to myself, “Don’t burn it all down.” That might be a day I don’t do an interview, or that might be a day I don’t go anywhere near the internet, and I don’t go anywhere near social media. I just try and get away, go for a walk or something.

This is difficult, because sometimes you should burn it all down, and I do struggle with this, too.

When do we know that radical change is needed? And when should we go slow and not kill it all off?

Jordan: That’s a good question. It’s going to be individual, right? But what your question made me think about is that the people I’ve spoken to find that at this stage of life, I describe it as a heightened sense of either more or less.

Either there’s a lack they can no longer sit on and it’s causing frustration and anger, or there’s a too muchness, like burnout or overwhelming responsibilities. So couple that with hormonal changes for a lot of people, and it’s a fire keg.

I myself have gone through it. I will say in the early stages, when that kicks in on a hormonal level, a lot of people find that it almost has to take you by surprise, I think. You almost discover you’re going through it by having a rage reaction. That’s my experience.

Once you do, then it becomes our responsibility to not spew anger at everyone. So it is about finding ways to channel it that are healthy. Whether that’s, “All right, I feel it coming on. I’m taking a walk. I’m going into nature where I can be my full self, or I can let it simmer down.”

I also find I’m more honest and more direct as a result of it, so I don’t check all of it. But it’s a good question, because I feel it too, and there have been times it literally felt like somebody flipped a switch in my back, and rage emerged, or frustration, whatever the feeling is. So I think it’s really paying attention to yourself.

I hate the word triggers, but let’s just use it here to understand what’s triggering it. You’ve got this baseline, perhaps changed hormonally. You may be going through a lot at midlife. What in the moment triggers that urge? And see if you can either avoid it, or can you remove yourself from it somehow.

I’m just going to be honest, people in midlife are going to lash out, and sometimes the best thing other people can do is get out of the way. I am a big fan of saying it is our responsibility to not wield it inappropriately, I should say, but acknowledge that it’s real.

Jo: Yes, I mean, maybe sometimes it is a good feeling. There’s righteous anger for things that we should be angry about in the world. It’s just sometimes it doesn’t come up that way.

Sometimes it might not be so much, and I think for me, it’s when do things come up over and over again? And are there ways that it could be changed?

This is not something that I get angry about, but this podcast, for example, regular listeners will know that for a long time, for, what, 15 years or something, it was on a Monday, and I got to this point where I thought, “I need to kill this podcast because I’m working every weekend,” because I often was, I need to record the introduction.

So my attitude was, “I just need to burn it all down, kill the podcast after all these years.” Then I took some time out to think about it and moved it to a Wednesday.

Jordan: Yes.

Jo: And it was like, “I’m sorry, how did I not figure this out ages ago, that all I needed to do was move it?” And so if you do feel, people listening, if you feel like, “Oh, I just have to destroy this whole thing because I need…”

Whatever it is that you need, sometimes there is another answer.

It might feel obvious later on, but perhaps you just couldn’t see it at the time.

Jordan: Absolutely, and I’m trying to think how to put this, but there’s a version of this process where we go through this change in our emotions that is a little bit out of our control, and we have to just go, “Wow, I’m changing, and in the process of that change I might behave in ways I don’t prefer to continue behaving,” right?

It might happen, and then there’s a reaction. I think we really just have to be aware and patient, and then learn to do things differently, like you’re saying. We have to change in relationship to this change. We can’t try to keep being the old version of ourselves who was nice and agreeable and didn’t ever get angry.

I know so many women, and also non-binary and gender fluid folks, who are just like, “What? Who am I? Where did this come from?” You’re like, “My operating system is actually different now,” which is fascinating.

Jo: It really is fascinating. Well, as we come towards the end, let’s also reframe this whole narrative. I feel like we talked a bit about this, about reclaiming the crone and all of this, but how can we make this next phase incredible?

I’m 51. I think we’re a similar age. I’m fully intending to march into at least my 90s. So we’ve got many years ahead of us. It is not all downhill from here. I lift weights, I do a lot of stuff, and I feel like this should be an upswing in a different way.

What can we put in place so this positive aspect becomes true?

Jordan: Well, I think the first thing is we need to not see it as midlife crisis. I hate the word crisis because it suggests something negative, and I like to think of it as a midlife transition.

It’s really, I think, only crisis in that, first of all, we scare ourselves, but when we don’t get the support, or we don’t heed the call that our psyche is asking of us, or we buy other people’s attitudes about what midlife should be.

I am a big fan of this great book by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot called Third Chapters or Into the Third Chapter, and she writes about people who decide—and I think this is part of it, it’s intentional.

You have to decide, this third chapter of my life is going to be something wonderful, and you decide, what is the thing I want to do? What am I going to focus on?

So I think, first of all, just making that mindset shift is really important, and it’s all the things we’ve been talking about. It’s trying something new. It’s figuring out what makes you thrive and feel excited at this time of life.

It’s acknowledging and honouring that you feel different, and mourning what you’ve lost, but also looking at what you may be gaining going forward. So I think just so much of it is about attitude. If you decide that you’re in crisis and that it’s all misery, it’s harder to make those steps forward.

If you see yourself as germinating something new—and allow yourself to be surprised—and the only way to do that, in my opinion, is to try something new, to do things a little differently, and embrace all the wisdom you’re about to gain.

Jo: Yes, and all the other people who are on that journey with you. I think your friendships shift as well. I was walking in Portugal last week and met a group of older women, and it was just such a laugh. It was just really fun.

Just recognising the different parts of life, and that the kind of laugh I would have had with women in my 30s would have been a very different kind of laughter.

Jordan: I love that. I love it. Keep company with people you want to be more of, or more like. I think that’s really important, too.

Jo: Great.

So where can people find you and your books online?

Jordan: Anywhere books are sold, actually, but you can go to my website, JordanRosenfeld.net.

I like to promote, if you’re going to online shop for books, I like bookshop.org, or go to your local indie bookstore. Or you can buy many of my books directly from SibyllinePress.com. All of my Writer’s Digest books are available through anywhere.

I also like to draw people to my Substack, which is called Writing in the Pause, and that’s JordanWriteLife.substack.com.

Jo: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Jordan. That was great.

Jordan: Thank you. I really appreciate it. It was fun.

The post Writing And Creativity In Midlife With Jordan Rosenfeld first appeared on The Creative Penn.

In childhood, stories are always about exactly what they appear: “See Spot. See Spot run.” But as we grow older and our life experiences deepen, so do our story experiences. What emerges is often a complex weave of subtext and misdirection. Life isn’t always as we perceive it on its surface—and even when it is, we often miss what’s right in front of our noses anyway. Our stories should reflect that, and one of the best tools for achieving this effect is character misdirection.

What Is Character Misdirection?

Character misdirection occurs when POV characters and readers misunderstand another character’s role, motives, or allegiance. A character who appears helpful may be a False Ally, while a character who appears antagonistic may be a False Enemy.

The Anatomy of Story by John Truby (affiliate link)

(The great John Truby, author of Anatomy of Story and Anatomy of Genre, calls these characters “Fake-Opponent Allies” and “Fake-Ally Opponents.” I prefer simply “False Enemies” and “False Allies.”)

In short, these are characters who are not what they seem. They provide rich opportunities for dichotomy, juxtaposition, insights into the protagonist, insights into the theme, plot revelations, and plot twists. They’re both incredibly useful and incredibly fun to work with.

False Allies vs. False Enemies

The four variations of character misdirection differ according to the gap between characters’ apparent and actual allegiances and whether those allegiances change during the story.

The four variations of character misdirection, compared by apparent allegiance, actual allegiance, and typical story effect.

The 4 Types of Character Misdirection

Character misdirection can be broken down into four variations on the False Enemy/Ally.

1. The False Ally

These are characters who pretend to be on the protagonist’s side—when really, they’re not. Even as they seem to support the protagonist’s goals, they are privately working toward their own ends, which are in opposition to the protagonist’s.

For Example:

• The False Ally might be a mole or a spy, planted in the hero’s camp by the main antagonist.

Character Misdirection Example: Edmund Pevensie starts out C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by luring his siblings to the White Witch, in exchange for “sweeties.” (The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), Walt Disney Pictures.)

• The False Ally might be someone who despises the protagonist’s goals, but who feels the best way to undermine the protagonist is by masquerading under the guise of friendship.

Character Misdirection Example: Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations is believed by the protagonist Pip to be his great friend and benefactor, when she is, in fact, working to symbolically destroy him in vengeance for having been jilted by her fiancé many years past. (Great Expectations (2011), BBC One.)

• The False Ally might be someone who has no actual ill will for the protagonist, but whose goals are so diametrically opposed to the protagonist’s welfare that any well-meaning advice is incredibly misleading and destructive for the protagonist.

Character Misdirection Example: Tyler Durden in Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club seems to be the protagonist’s friend, but as the story progresses, the protagonist slowly begins to realize that “Tyler” has been working his own agenda from the beginning. (Fight Club (1999), 20th Century Fox.)

• The False Ally might truly believe themselves to be aligned with the protagonist, before their own goals and desires pull them away.

Character Misdirection Example: Willoughby in Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility was believed by the Dashwood women to be their friend. Willoughby himself seems to have felt the same—but his true nature eventually betrays the Dashwoods when he abandons Marianne without explanation. (Sense and Sensibility (2008), BBC/WGBH Boston.)

False Allies often align with Dramatica’s Contagonist archetype, which stands in opposition to the Mentor/Guardian, in that they appear to be on the protagonist’s side while subtly luring the protagonist away from the story’s thematic Truth as well from as victory in the plot conflict.

2. The False Enemy

The False Enemy is a character who appears to be opposed to the protagonist, but is, in fact, on the protagonist’s side, in part or in whole. The protagonist doesn’t start out with any trust in False Enemies, either because the protagonist outright suspects them to be enemies or because the False Enemies are outwardly presented as such. However, as the story progresses, the facts just don’t quite stack up, and it becomes clear that the true obstacle is the protagonist’s distrust of this character, which stands in the way of their working together toward a common goal.

For Example:

• The False Enemy might be a double agent, someone who appears to be working for the enemy, but is, in fact, in the employ of the good guys all along.

Character Misdirection Example: In Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the protagonist Cap’s best friend Bucky Barnes has been brainwashed into serving Hydra’s evil ends, but even though he obstructs Cap’s goals until the very end, he ultimately reverts to his true role of ally. (Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Marvel Studios.)

• The False Enemy might be someone who fulfills a stereotypical “bad” role, prejudicing the protagonist against them, even as they work toward the protagonist’s ultimate good.

Character Misdirection Example: Magwitch, in Great Expectations, plays the reverse role to Miss Havisham’s. His reputation as a brutal escaped convict convinces the protagonist Pip he is evil, when, in fact, Magwitch turns out to have been his benefactor all along. (Great Expectations (2011), BBC One.)

• The False Enemy might be someone who is not “for” the protagonist, but who is working against the antagonist, so that their goals at least momentarily align with the protagonist’s, in a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” kind of twist.

Character Misdirection Example: In Bourne Ultimatum, CIA chief Pam Landy becomes Bourne’s unofficial ally in an attempt to bring down the corruption at the heart of the CIA’s covert black ops. (The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), Universal Pictures.)

3. The False Ally Who Becomes a True Ally

Creating Character Arcs (Amazon affiliate link)

This is where things can get tricky. Sometimes characters who aren’t what they seem turn out to be exactly what they seem! The False Ally who becomes a true ally is a fun character because of the inherent character arc involved. Although these characters start out opposed to the protagonist, their exposure to the protagonist inspires change within their lives to the point that their goals and motivations can entirely shift.

In Anatomy of Story, Truby says this character is…

…valuable because he is inherently complex. This character often goes under a fascinating change in the course of the story. By pretending to be an ally of the hero, the fake-ally opponent starts to feel like an ally. So he becomes torn by a dilemma.

For Example:

• Sometimes the character will resolve this inner dilemma and turn away completely from the opposition to become a true ally.

Character Misdirection Example: In Brent Weeks’s Night Angel trilogy, the protagonist Kylar’s opposing assassin apprentice Viridiana falls in love with him and eventually comes over to his side completely.

• Sometimes these characters will fail to completely resolve their internal dilemma. Torn between loyalties, they may fail to wholly satisfy either, or may reluctantly swerve back to their original alignment with the opposition.

Character Misdirection Example: Vesper Lynd in Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale is essentially a double agent who comes to despise her original loyalties, only to be sucked irrevocably—and lethally—back into them. (Casino Royale (2006), MGM.)

4. The False Enemy Who Becomes a True Enemy

Finally, we have characters who masquerade as enemies only to end by creating genuine obstacles to the protagonist’s goals. These characters are rarer, since they present the least amount of conflict and complexity. The protagonist generally dislikes them from the start, which means there isn’t much in the way of angst when these characters really do prove to be traitors. Still, they can create an interesting subplot of personal turmoil as they sort through their own loyalties.

For Example:

• This character might be an avowed triple agent from the start: a spy for the bad guys who also spies for the good guys but whose true loyalty really does lie with the bad guys (is your head spinning yet?).

Character Misdirection Example: The demon Ruby in Supernatural shifts alignment within the plotline multiple times: she goes from enemy to distrusted ally/False Enemy, before finally revealing her alignment as a true enemy. (Supernatural (2005-2020), The CW.)

• These characters might also be ones whose loyalties are conflicted from the beginning. They have a foot in each camp, genuinely caring for the protagonist even though the protagonist doesn’t know it—but ultimately not caring enough to do right by the protagonist.

Character Misdirection Example: In Secondhand Lions, the protagonist’s selfish mother is presented an antagonist from the beginning. Even though she loves her son and has a few short glimmers of trying to be a good mother, she ultimately cannot overcome her own self-centered needs enough to care for him—forcing a final confrontation between them in the Climax. (Secondhand Lions (2003), New Line Cinema.)

Because these latter two categories can get confusing fast, it’s best to concentrate on the first two categories—straightforward False Allies and False Enemies—but also to realize they don’t always have to be straightforward.

5 Ways Character Misdirection Strengthens a Story

Have you been able to identify any False Allies or Enemies in your story? Or perhaps just their potential? If so, the next step is to consider how you can use character misdirection more intentionally throughout your story. Start by concentrating on these five angles:

1. Create Conflict

Ultimately, the true and best use of character misdirection is to serve the heart of your plot: to create conflict. The joy of stories about mistaken identities is the havoc caused by the characters’ misconceptions. Whenever protagonists are drawing false assumptions about another character, it means they will be unable to fully grapple with the true conflict.

For Example:

False Allies create conflict by misdirecting protagonists away from the true fight, while secretly working against them.

False Enemies create conflict by (willing or unwillingly) drawing protagonists into opposition against them, while the true conflict happens elsewhere.

2. Add Moral and Thematic Complexity

One of the most delicious things about character misdirection is its ability to create complexity and nuance within the story. Instead of black-and-white good guys and bad guys, you’re able to present readers with characters of subtlety and subtext.

• Whose side are they really on?
• What is their true moral alignment?
• What shades of gray influence their convictions?

The possibilities for thematic explorations and consequences are vast, as false characters are able to influence your protagonist in one way and then another by commenting on both sides of the thematic premise.

For Example:

False Allies create complexity by winning the protagonist’s heart while sowing seeds of the Lie and luring the character away from the thematic Truth.

False Enemies create complexity by first hardening the protagonist’s heart against the Truth they’re trying to share, then winning them over to reconciliation and a keener understanding of the true thematic premise.

3. Challenge the Protagonist’s Beliefs and Complacency

When the characters around the protagonist fail to fit neatly into boxes, according to the protagonist’s initial worldview, you open the door to personal catalysts within the protagonist’s character arc. False Allies and Enemies will challenge the protagonist’s established views of the world. Just like Pip in Great Expectations, sometimes the people we believe to be good turn out to be bad, and vice versa.

For Example:

False Allies challenge the protagonist’s beliefs by creating a dichotomy between their seductive words and their dark actions in opposition to the protagonist’s goals.

False Enemies challenge the protagonist’s beliefs by disproving prejudices and leading the protagonist to believe truth can be found even in unexpected places.

4. Create Major Plot Turns

The revelations that arise from character misdirection can be wonderful plot catalysts. When the protagonist discovers the false characters’ true nature, the plot and its conflict necessarily advance by leaps and bounds.

For Example:

False Allies turn the plot by forcing the protagonist to recognize betrayal—or perhaps even that the protagonist has been lured into self-betrayal.

False Enemies turn the plot by forcing protagonists to make up for the ground they lost by ignoring good advice—or perhaps by having to save this newly-realized ally whom they just betrayed.

5. Build Suspense and Plot Twists

Write Like the Masters by William Cane (affiliate link)

The old “are they good or are they bad?” question that hangs over the heads of most false characters creates untold suspense. Readers will race through your pages, wondering if your protagonist is about to get stabbed in the back. As William Cane points out in Write Like the Masters:

You can use the same Dickensian mystery story technique in your own work by purposefully withholding crucial information, such as who a friend (or enemy) of your hero really is.

The revelation of the truth often makes for some of the best and most moving opportunities for effective plot twists.

For Example:

False Allies create suspense by casting doubt upon themselves and making readers wonder if they can really be trusted around the protagonist.

False Enemies create suspense in exactly the same way before eventually dispelling that doubt instead of fulfilling it.

Character misdirection is a delightful game authors get to play within the pages of their stories. Who’s good? Who’s bad? We don’t know! That sense of curiosity will entrance readers, raise the stakes, and keep them reading right to the very end.

Note: This article has been expanded and revised from a previous version.

Want More?

While some characters hide their true allegiances from protagonists and readers and others hide even from themselves, the most convincing downward transformations rarely begin with characters consciously deciding to become villains. They begin with the self-deception of characters rationalizing their choices and protecting the Lies They Believe as they take one seemingly defensible step after another until they become someone they probably never intended to be.

In my upcoming class, Negative Character Arcs: The Hidden Pattern of Self-Deception, we’re going to explore how characters can “go bad” even as they doggedly continue believing their choices are justified—and how writers can develop these transformations with psychological depth, structural integrity, and thematic power.

Join me October 6, 1 PM, EDT, for the premiere of Negative Character Arcs: The Hidden Pattern of Self-Deception. The class will be prerecorded, and I’ll be live in the chat throughout the presentation to discuss the material and answer your questions.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinion! How are you using character misdirection to challenge your protagonists’ beliefs and deepen their character arcs? 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 or Amazon Music).

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How can you design your year around seasons of work and rest instead of waiting for financial freedom? And how do you build the money confidence to take extended time off when you come from a scarcity mindset? Brian Herriot shares his ideas on time freedom after a career as a financial advisor and consultant.

In the intro, The end of the spectrum [Seth Godin, Akimbo]; List of money books; Lessons learned from 15 years as a full-time author entrepreneur; My author timeline since 2005; Producing AI-narrated audiobooks with Simon Patrick.

Plus, please do my short How to Market a Book survey (by 7 Oct); and here’s my Cathedral Zero Trailer.

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.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Brian Herriot is a financial advisor, professional speaker, and the author of Time Freedom: Rethink Your Work and Money to Create a Life You Love Now. He’s also the host of The Time Freedom Podcast.

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, speaking and podcasting can build authority without social media
• What time freedom is, and how it differs from work-life balance and financial freedom
• How to design your year around seasons of work and rest
• The three money personalities: minimiser, manager and maker
• How to build flexibility into your work whether employed or self-employed
• How a book that leaves nothing out can be the foundation of a business

You can find Brian at timefreedom.life.

Transcript of the interview with Brian Herriot

Jo: Brian Herriot is a financial advisor, professional speaker, and the author of Time Freedom: Rethink Your Work and Money to Create a Life You Love Now. He’s also the host of The Time Freedom Podcast. So welcome to the show, Brian.

Brian: Thank you so much for having me.

Jo: Yes, this is a great topic. First up—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.

Brian: I am a financial advisor, and now I am an author officially. I found writing just short of three years ago. I was actually doing some research on behalf of my wife, because she’s always been an incredible writer, in the fiction side of the world.

So I was researching different writing programmes and things like that, and came across one that I thought, “Hmm, this is for nonfiction, and boy, it sounds very interesting. I think it’s something maybe I need to do.”

The reason why I was looking at all, even for myself, is I was transitioning into a new line of work, and it was work where you needed to develop some authority and visibility. Everything everybody was telling me was that I needed to do a lot of social media, which I did not want to do.

I forget where I heard it, but they’re like, “Or you could do the author speaking thing.” And I thought, “Ooh, that sounds a lot better.” So that’s the path that I ended up on.

Jo: Interesting.

Can you tell us what that different path you were looking at was?

Brian: Well, a lot of what you see, at least online, if you’re to develop a personal brand and try to attract business—in this case into my financial advisory firm—everyone says, “Well, you need to develop an online presence.”

In the business world from a long time ago, I had used LinkedIn, but not for anything like developing a personal brand.

So then all the advice started turning to, “Oh, well then you need to get onto Instagram and TikTok.” I don’t know, I’ve always viewed all that scrolling as a waste of time, and I’d rather put my mind towards something more productive.

So I was just so apprehensive to try and get into that space, that I just kept putting it off and putting it off and putting it off until I heard a podcast. I’ve always listened to lots of podcasts, and I heard a podcast that said, “Well, instead of developing authority that way, the other path that you could take would be through writing.”

Because it’s obviously longer form, you can put your thinking into it. Then that can lead to help getting into speaking as well.

Between those two you can develop some of the same authority that you could if you went the social media route. There was also the podcasting part, which I do love, and that’s been one of the most fun things I’ve been doing lately.

So I do podcasting, writing and speaking instead of social media.

Jo: I love that, and I know a lot of people listening love that too. I don’t think this is an age thing, I think this is an aptitude for short-form video thing. I’m the same as you. I’m not really into the short-form video. For people listening, this is an audio-only podcast partly because I don’t want to do video.

Brian: And that’s beautiful. That’s the beauty of working on your terms, right? Which we’ll talk a lot about.

Jo: Yes, exactly. So I love that from the beginning you were like, “No, I’m going to go the long-form route and reach people that way,” because you absolutely are. I personally would always rather read a book than watch a whole load of snippets or video online to learn about this kind of topic.

So let’s get into the book. Let’s start with that concept of time freedom.

What is time freedom, and how can we change our mindset to believe that it’s even possible?

Because it feels like we’re working harder than ever.

Brian: The way that I like to explain this is first by discussing what time freedom is not, because of how it fits. And I have this right up front in the book.

There’s this whole concept of work-life balance, right? And work-life balance to me, at least, coming from the professional and the employed worlds, is that you’re just stealing an hour during the day here to then make it up later in the night.

Sftentimes, at least when I was living with work-life balance, I was probably more busy than I even was if I would’ve just worked straight from 8:00 to 5:00. It’s very week by week focused, day by day focused, and that is not time freedom.

On the other side is this idea of financial freedom, which time freedom also is not in my mind. Financial freedom is where, I mean, the simplest thing is you’re either retired or you’re independently wealthy or in some other way you do not have to work anymore.

So you’ve got this absolute freedom, which for me is boring, because I get a lot of joy from the work that I do. So in the middle is the idea, I think, of time freedom, where you do still have to work, but you’re able to design work in a way that works for you. So you can do it on your terms.

There’s a lot of choice. There’s flexibility if you want it, and all of those things. I think that somebody that optimises for time freedom looks at their year and says, “This is how I want my year to go.” There’s a seasonality to it.

In my personal experience, I do most of my work work, the work that I need to do to get paid and live, in what would be the equivalent of the school year, because my wife and I have a son. He’s a sophomore in high school, and that’s just the way that our life is lining up right now.

Then during the summer, we’re fortunate enough to have this not so great cabin on a beautiful lake back where we both grew up. And in the last five years, we’ve designed our life so that we can go back there and live a different season during the summer.

I’ve always loved summer, and during that time, that’s when we rest and relax, and we water-ski, and we fish, and we do all the fun things that you could do at a cabin.

Then also, there’s this time when you’re starting to think bigger or differently or make creative connections about things in the work that you do. I find it really rejuvenating, so that when I come back in the quote-unquote school year, then I can get back to work and do some really interesting things.

So the person who pursues time freedom is really optimising their life around this freedom and flexibility. Maybe they’re working longer and later into life, but they’re doing it in a way that works for them.

They’re not necessarily optimising to steal that extra hour that day, or optimising for wealth, which would be the financial freedom path.

Jo: Yes, I find this very interesting. I like that it’s not financial freedom because I’m an investor, as I mentioned to you, and many of us are. But that tends to take more time. So if you’re aiming for financial freedom, especially if you start investing later in life, you’re not going to get that at 45 or 50 or maybe even 60.

So defining this as separate is really good, because you’re saying, “Well, you can start changing things now, and yes, you might have to work a bit longer, but if you love your work, it’s not a problem.”

I want to come back to this idea of seasonality and planning your year around this seasonality idea. How does that work with the potential of other people’s timelines or other people’s possibilities, and serendipity?

I have some plans, but then, like this year, this thing came up. It was just a very intuitive thing and has changed the next few months in a completely different direction and blown all my plans out the water.

So how do you balance the planned seasonality with serendipity?

Brian: Well, first what I want to mention is, if you can figure out a way to organise your year so that you have these extended periods of time off, that’s a wonderful thing, and it’s not something that I think you can do with a snap of the fingers.

When I had this realisation that I even wanted to do this, of course it wasn’t even me that came up with it, it was my wife. This was during a time when the stock market had crashed, and I was suggesting to her that we were not going to be financially free any time soon.

When she asked me what financial freedom looked like to me, I said that I still had wanted to work, just more flexibly, and she said, “Well, let’s do it now,” right?

So back to my point, we couldn’t do it now. We had to get the money confidence to be able to basically figure out how could you work for nine months and have that support 12 months of living.

So it’s not immediate, but once you get there, the way that I have looked at it compared to serendipity is, if I can structure the work that I do, and again, it’s so dependent on the type of work that your listener does do, right?

In my particular case, when I was able to do this, I was doing independent consulting projects. So I was able to line up projects that would never overlap in the summer.

Sometimes they would go into June because it had to, right? But I did the best that I could and tried to be as flexible as it was. Then when I had the time, then I was able to do whatever came up during that period of time.

Usually it started as just taking a break, resting and not doing so much work. But by the end of those three months, you really start to want to get back into things. I think you do have to just go with what your body’s telling you and what your mind is telling you.

I don’t know if that answers your specific question, but when you say something happens, right, and you want to take advantage of that opportunity, you’ve got to do it, right?

I think flexibility is probably the value that comes through the most in the book. Even when you think you’ve figured it out and you finally got that perfect seasonal year, well, something will come up and happen. I think part of what time freedom is, is being able to take advantage of the opportunity when it comes up.

Jo: Yes, being able to choose. That’s the key point. I mean, I’m in a situation like you where I run an independent business, so I do get to choose.

It’s just funny because I read this and I’m like, I do have time freedom, but I fill my time completely. I do have enough time, but I fill it with more and more creative projects, and I’m not very good at stopping. So while I do have flexibility, I also have a very full calendar.

Long-term listeners will know I’ve asked this of other people as well, and I was very interested that you took a transformative sabbatical in 2023. This is something I keep coming towards and then backing away from.

Can you tell us a bit more about that [sabbatical]? What was that, and how did you manage that?

Brian: My wife and I took a trip in, I think it was 2015 or so. We went to Italy for just two weeks. I mean, you could easily spend two years, I feel, in Italy and still feel like you missed out on things. But our vacation was so packed. It was very typical of the American vacation, I would say.

I remember coming back from that vacation going, “You know, I’m more exhausted now than I was when we left.” So we always wanted to figure out a way to do some slower travel.

The way that it worked out, after we had our revelation about how we wanted to design our lives, was that we were going to take what ended up being four weeks.

So I knew that I was going to have my first fully free summer off in 2023, and we decided to purposely go slow, and we travelled in and around Portugal for four weeks.

It’s funny, on the flight back when we were going through customs, the gentleman asked how long we’d been in Portugal, and we said, “Four weeks.”

He’s like, “What did you do for that?” Like, what did you do?

Jo: I love Portugal, by the way. It’s great.

Brian: Lovely. “Why were you here for so long?” But the beauty of it was, if we had a day when we weren’t feeling up to going to see something, we just didn’t. It was wonderful. That was just a wonderful experience.

We were able to line it up so that we met other friends, so we almost had a vacation within a vacation. We had an au pair that we hadn’t seen for years who flew over from France and met us.

It was just, I imagine, very not typical of the American work lifestyle that I’m familiar with. It was just anything but that, and it was just wonderful.

It really pulled our whole family out of the conventional way of thinking, and that was incredible for us, and really then triggered how we’ve spent the last few years of our lives.

We haven’t had that same long trip yet. Part of it has to do with now our son’s in high school and he needs to be here at home around his friends. But he’ll be off to college soon and then we can go do it again.

Jo: Yes, it’s so interesting, isn’t it? Sometimes you have to really step away from your normal life and the grind of it in order to think differently. It’s quite funny because as a Brit and a European myself—

I actually find coming over to America is a way to almost change my mindset. So it’s often just going into a different culture, perhaps.

Brian: Yes, absolutely. I think part of this whole living with time freedom aspect for me is just leading a more interesting life.

I owe this really to my wife. I think I always, through schooling and coming out of college, I just almost had these blinders on, like, well, you’re supposed to just get to work and do your work, and this is what you do.

She’s the one who’s always asked me, why are we doing this? Why could we not experience something a little bit different? And that’s what makes for an interesting life.

Jo: Yes, and also from what you’ve said, you’re not spending up big time. You don’t sound like you’re having extravagant times at the lake or when you’re travelling.

So I often think that people feel like you have to have so much money in order to do something. I remember being in, oh, it must have been New York, and I was talking to someone and she said, “Oh, it’s my dream to go to New Orleans,” and I’d recently been there.

I was like, “Well, why haven’t you been? It’s really easy. You’re in America. You could just fly there.” I’ve even taken trains in America, which I know a lot of Americans haven’t. But there are trains, and all of this.

I was like, “Well, why haven’t you been?” It’s like people have in their minds all these barriers.

Money is a big barrier, right? But you don’t need as much as you think, perhaps.

Brian: It’s true. There’s all of the series of podcasts and blogs and everything about how, when you do this long travel or slow travel, I think is what they call it, you don’t have to stay at hotels.

You could stay at an Airbnb and rent a place for two or three months, and it’s far less per day than it costs.

The analysis that I’ve seen is how sometimes if you, say, maybe rented out your house back in America when you were going to Europe, and then you did your travelling, it’s actually cheaper to go and take a long trip than just stay put. You actually make money on it. I mean, of course, it all depends, but it’s eye-opening.

Jo: Yes, you mentioned Portugal. We’re actually going to Portugal walking in a couple of weeks, and Portugal, for example, is much cheaper than Italy a lot of the time. So it also depends on where you go.

Coming back to the book, you mentioned a few minutes ago money confidence. In the book, you have these money personalities, and many of my listeners as creatives and authors, there’s quite a lot of scarcity mindset in the author community, fear of financial things.

So maybe you could just talk about these money personalities and how we get to money confidence.

Brian: The track that I took in the book was, before I could just say, “Oh, go live time freedom and have inconsistent income and take these extended periods of time off,” I couldn’t do it without addressing how I felt, which was like, “Well, can I afford this?”

So the money piece of it is extremely important. The money personalities is something that I feel like I learned far too late in life.

How I describe money personalities, and there are different ways of talking about this, but it’s based on how you were raised and experiences that you’ve had with money from when you were a child, in your family, and then what happened in early life.

How has that impacted you behaviourally in terms of how you view money? So for example, growing up, we lived in a small rural part of the Midwest, and so we had money.

We didn’t have a lot of money, but I can remember every Saturday morning my mom clipping coupons, right? Because that’s how we bought our groceries.

So I do come from this, let’s get the most value out of everything that I buy, and I’m going to restrain my spending because who knows if I’m going to have enough in the future. A constraints mentality.

Whereas I’ve met other people now that I’ve been an adult whose parents had their own business, and they had booms and busts, and so there were good times and bad times.

So when they get money, they spend it, so that they can enjoy it. I realise that people come with this—I don’t want to say baggage because it’s a bad thing—but people come with these experiences that influence how they think about what’s possible as it relates to money.

I think that for one, people need to understand what that is for them and how that works. I also think that you can use it then to your advantage in figuring out how to gain the money confidence to step off into a life of time freedom.

So the three that I really highlight in the book are, the one that is called, what I call the money minimiser, which is the individual who doesn’t like to think about money or would rather not think about money. Money is not a big part of their life, or they feel constrained by money.

I have elements of this in my background. And in this case, a lot of times you may not need as much money to live off of to be happy, which is actually a huge advantage, because if you don’t need as much money to live on, then you don’t have to go save up as much money, or you don’t need to make as much money.

The other type is the money manager, and this is someone who’s much more into saving and investing and understanding how all this works. This is the type of person that a financial advisor loves to address, because they have money to invest.

This is someone who’s getting into their 401(k) right out of, in their first job immediately, and compounding their wealth over 40 years. It sounds like you have a little bit of this in you based on what you were saying. And there’s some advantages to that, too.

Then there’s someone like my son, who despite all of the saving and investing in our family, he wants nothing to do with it. He believes that if he wants more money, he’ll just go figure out a way to make more money.

So this is the money maker. It’s the entrepreneurial type, the person who’s in sales, the person who can manifest money.

All of these different types of money personalities, I think if it is you, there’s ways that you can leverage those to figure out how to make money work for you so that you can have time freedom.

Jo: That’s really interesting. I think we have a money journey. I know some people don’t like the word journey, but I like it. I come from a very scarce background, poor. Let’s just say it. We were poor, for a while. Then, over time, things changed between various family members.

So I was a minimiser just by upbringing, and then I discovered the maker, and I manifested, and I worked my butt off and did all of that and understood that you can make money. You can earn it and make it in different ways. And then I learned about investing and then became more of that manager.

I absolutely was afraid of feeling stupid, so I wondered if you might address that, because this is what stopped me for a long time. I’m a pretty smart person, at least I think I am. I can learn things, but I just found the financial world just made me feel stupid.

So I minimised it because I was like, “Well, if I don’t, I’m not going to understand it, therefore I’ll just dismiss it.” That fear of feeling stupid, and other people might have fear of judgement or fear of all these different things.

So can you talk about that fear, and is the financial world really that difficult?

Brian: It’s so unfortunate. The reason people feel stupid is because I think the financial industry wants you to feel that way, so that you then need their help to manage your money. It’s full of acronyms and this and that and the other thing, and it is not that difficult.

I think there’s a little bit of math involved, and numbers. I think if people lean more to the other side of their brain, there tends to be a little bit of fear there.

I believe that there are basic concepts that can be understood, like if you were to invest in something that covers a lot of stocks, it’s called an index, right? And if you keep the costs low on it, you’re going to earn much more money. I feel like there’s 10 things that you could learn and it would get you 90% of the way there.

It’s just that you need to find the right resources to explain it to you in a way that’s understandable. I’ll tell you, this book is the lifestyle/entrepreneurship/money book, which is a unique combination.

The money chapters are some of those that I had to revisit twice as much as the rest of them, because it was so important to me that there was not a lot of acronyms and difficulty getting through it.

I really wanted to break it down to the basics. Hopefully you felt that was the case when you read through those chapters, because it’s so easy to make it sound complicated so that then people feel that they need the support of the person who’s explaining it in the complicated manner.

Jo: Yes, exactly, and I totally agree with you. When I discovered the low fee index funds, I was like, sorry, what if I just put some money in that, that’s a good way to start? And I was like, really? Okay, then. That’s strange.

I think I had overcomplicated it in my mind, and as you say, the industry does that in a way, and the publishing industry does it too.

I mean, you’ve obviously been learning loads of stuff about publishing. In every single niche area, there’s language that shuts out other people. And also I feel like, as a British person in the UK, obviously depending on the country you’re in, there’s different language as well, and yet so many of the books are American.

So for example, your Roth IRA is an ISA here, and your 401(k) is a SIPP. And then someone in Australia, it’s something different. Someone in Canada, it’s something different.

So that also makes it complicated, whereas once you can do some mapping and go, oh, okay, when in your book you say an IRA or a 401(k), this is what it is in my country, it simplifies it.

Brian: Yes, absolutely. I did take special care at the beginning of the book to say I’m coming at this from an American angle.

Jo: Yes. But then I would also say, I was saying this to my husband the other day, I’m very grateful, and I know this isn’t true for every country, but I’m very grateful that I can invest in American indexes and stocks and all of that kind of thing.

I think you can invest globally as well as earn money globally, and I think that’s really exciting. As an individual person, I can do that, and I’ve got investments in Australia because I lived there for a while, and that is actually a real privilege to be able to invest that way.

I don’t know how many Americans invest outside of America. Is that something you talk about?

Brian: The only way that I’ve really seen it is through an American-based fund that invests in foreign companies in foreign countries. But no, not by buying something from the Australian market, for example.

You made me realise I need to create a little cheat sheet that just shows, okay, we’re talking a company retirement account. What is it called in all of these countries? Wouldn’t that be nice? Just a nice little cheat sheet for people. I’m going to do that.

Jo: Yes, because most of the time it’s really a one-to-one, because as you said, it’s not that complicated. When I was learning all about this, I was in Australia, and just so much of the information is from Americans, so you have to do this translation in your brain. So that’ll be a super useful cheat sheet.

Okay. So in terms of other things, you’ve mentioned obviously enjoying your work, but you talk about different ways to build flexibility into your work so it’s not all or nothing.

So what are some of the ways that people might build that flexibility?

Brian: I think this is one where you have to think, “Okay, am I employed or am I self-employed?” Because I think there is a big distinction there in terms of what you’re able to do.

Again, shout-out for early readers of books, but the early readers of my book suggested that in addition to just saying, “Oh, live by a seasonal schedule and take three months off in the summer,” they said, “What are some other things that we can do to get toward that,” right? So that we can take incremental steps.

So some of these ideas can be done by anyone that’s working in a more typical, employed position, and others might need to be if you’re in an entrepreneurial scenario. I feel like a lot of it comes down to how you can structure the work.

So at least in America, more and more these days, there are more companies, and usually they’re the smaller and the mid-sized ones, where you can find companies that are doing four by 10-hour schedules.

So you’re working four days and having three days off, which then gives you a Friday every week to do something that you want to do, or start to build a skill that you could then turn into something that you could do independently, like starting as a side hustle and then moving into something different like that.

Other early strategies that I’ve seen people do, just to experience what it’s like to take an extended period of time off, and especially in America this isn’t done that much, is to take a two-week trip that you have over the holidays and put a week on the front of it and a week at the end of it and have a full four weeks off.

This could be during a time of year that’s usually a little slower anyway. So it’s a lot easier to perhaps have your manager approve that. These are just a couple of ideas.

On the self-employed side, I have seen more than a couple of people now work this schedule where they do three weeks on and one week off, and then three weeks on and one week off, and they’ve just figured out how to put the systems in place in their business to allow for that one week to be away.

I guess if you’re just taking off for a week every three weeks or a week every month, you’re never so far away from the work that needs to get done. It’s just a different style.

What happens is, if you can do some of these different techniques and then you add them all up, it almost adds up to the amount of time of a full three months off.

So again, you just have to test and try it out and do these different strategies based on the type of work that you do and the place of employment that you have, to see what might work.

Jo: And also almost just plan it, like I said before about that person who wanted to go to New Orleans.

Choose a time next year, like six months’ time or nine months’ time, and—

Just book a flight. It doesn’t have to be that hard, does it?

Brian: No, that’s right. And there’s other things… Now, I was talking schedules, but there’s other things that you can try to start to create work that’s more flexible.

For example, something that often happens in America at least is, you’re working in a corporate setting, somebody retires, but that person has so much skill and knowledge about the business that then they immediately turn around and are hired back as an independent consultant.

Early in my career, I just saw this happen all the time, and I remember thinking, “Why do they have to wait until they turn 65 and retire before they do that?”

Couldn’t you just say, “Hey, I’ve decided to leave my corporate position, but I’m going to become an independent consultant because I have a valuable set of skills, and I’m going to turn around and just contract back to where I used to work initially,” as that first step. That’s an interesting technique.

You had highlighted the idea of a hobbyist entrepreneur. This is usually the one that a lot of existing retirees will do right out of the bat. I met a friend of my wife’s parents, who had a very successful corporate career, and as soon as he finished up, again, people that are productive, I think, struggle when they immediately retire.

So he’s like, “I need to figure out something to do,” so he flexed his creative side. They lived in Northern Wisconsin, where fishing is a big thing. So he would craft these large fish mouths out of wood. He would make these wooden fish that were very creative and very cool.

They would have golf tees for teeth and stuff like that. So you could sell them to people that like golf. He created them for all of his friends, and then he ended up with some sort of Etsy store where he sold a bunch of these. Then after a while he’s like, “Eh, now it’s too much like a job, so I’m going to do something different.”

It’s just little ways that you can make money here and there that allow you to work on some things that you are interested in.

Jo: Yes, and it’s interesting because the other thing about the retire and live off your pension idea is that the assumption is you’ll never earn any money ever again, and so you’ll just be drawing down on that money.

Even as you say, like that guy with the wooden fish, if you can make even an extra 5,000 in a year or an extra 10,000 in a year, you don’t have to draw that down from the pot of money that you’ve saved or invested, or your pension or whatever. So that actually means that it can last longer.

So I feel like people forget that even these smaller amounts of money, which you can make as an author as well, or a speaker as you say—

These are things that just mean your retirement can potentially be better financially as well.

Brian: It does, and another thing that it gives you is the ability, when maybe the market is down for two years, and it’s hard to pull money out of your savings when it is negative, right?

In those months, or in those years, or whatever it happens to be, you say, “Oh, well maybe I’m going to do my little side gig twice as much this year, because that’ll allow me to spend that money instead of having to pull it out of a down market.”

Jo: Exactly. So we do talk about the business of being an author on this show. And at the beginning you mentioned that writing this book was part of developing authority so that maybe you can also get speaking.

So how does this book fit into your business?

Is it purely business card authority, or is it designed as an income stream as well? And any advice for other people who want to do something similar?

Brian: Yes. It’s so interesting you said the phrase, like a better business card concept. When I think of that, I think of some of the places that will teach you how to write a book in a weekend or a month or three months or something like that.

I was very wary of that. I really wanted to have a book that stood on its own. So I think of my book as more than a business card certainly, but something that’s really the foundation of my business.

So here’s how it flows for me. The ultimate product that I sell is I invest people’s money for them at half the cost, because that’s very important to me, and in a way that is commensurate with somebody that wants to live this type of lifestyle. So that’s ultimately what my service offering is.

The way that people enter my world is, I have a quiz, a little nine-question quiz. That’s my little lead product that I use. But that gets them interested in this idea of time freedom. If they come across time freedom or they are interested in financial freedom, and they’re searching around for a book, the book is the main thing.

I’ll tell you, I’ve left nothing out of the book. The book contains everything that I ever did, everything that I ever do for clients. It’s all there. I learned that from somebody early in the process, which is, you don’t want to hold anything back in a book, a business-related book. Because, I don’t know, it’s just not right.

The thing is, some people will go and run with it, which is great. But some people need accountability, or they need someone to hold their hand, which is fine. Or they in some way need to connect with you, and that is then where you offer the next level.

So somebody could read my book and do everything themselves, or I also, a few times a year, offer a group coaching programme where basically we go through the book. We prepare what I call a Time Freedom Plan, which is like a financial plan, with the individuals in the group. And again, it’s crazy.

There’s nothing that I’m helping with that’s not already in the book. So we go through the concepts. We prepare our Time Freedom Formula. We use the Time Freedom Calculator that I have that’s, again, available for free. Anyone can use it, but we work on all these things together to prepare a Time Freedom Plan.

A Time Freedom Plan is what ultimately gives you the money confidence to live this lifestyle.

So you project the money that you’re going to earn and spend through the rest of your life to give you confidence that you’re not going to run out, and then that allows you to step off into time freedom in a year or three years or 10 years or whatever it takes.

Then as part of that process, there are a certain number of people that will have some money that needs to be invested and managed in a way, and those people can turn into customers of mine on the investment management side. So that’s how it flows.

So I have a huge goal to just get this book out to as many people as possible, because I want to help as many people as possible, of course, but then also some small percentage of the people that read the book will ultimately want to work with me.

Jo: No, that’s great, and that is the textbook ladder that a nonfiction author does. I also love that you’ve put everything into the book. I think it’s super useful. I really enjoyed it. I think it’s got some good questions in.

Even if you are, I guess, someone who is already investing like me, it’s good to think about the time freedom as well as the financial side.

So where can people find you and the book and everything you do online?

Brian: Well, people can find the book anywhere books are sold. I do have a podcast as well, but everything is linked to from my initial website, which is timefreedom.life. So you can find everything there.

Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Brian. That was fantastic.

Brian: Thank you so much. This was a true pleasure.

The post Time Freedom: Rethink Your Work And Money With Brian Herriot first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Flat Character Arcs present one of the most interesting paradoxes in character development: How do you write a compelling character arc for a protagonist who already knows the story’s thematic Truth and doesn’t need to fundamentally change?

This is the question at the heart of my new Story School class, Flat Character Arcs: From Transformation to Integration, which premieres tomorrow September 22 at 1 PM EDT. We’ll be watching the pre-recorded presentation together, while I join you in the live chat to discuss the material and answer questions. If you can’t attend live, the replay will be available afterward.

[Register Here → Flat Character Arcs: From Transformation to Integration]

Why Flat Character Arcs Complete the Larger Cycle of Transformation

Earlier this year, when I started planning the first Story School classes, I wasn’t yet sure where the conversation would lead by the time we reached these final classes of the year.

The first classes ended up exploring some of the deeper psychological and developmental patterns underneath character arcs: the difference between ego-driven and soul-driven Positive Change Arcs, and then the relationship between the protagonist and the antagonist when we understand them symbolically as aspects of the same larger psychological movement.

Afterward, I received a question from a student about how Flat Arcs (aka, steadfast arcs) fit into this larger cycle of transformation we’ve been tracking.

She was thinking about something I’d said about the antagonist as a representation of the hero’s Lie—or, more specifically, as a shadow aspect of the hero’s own psyche.

She wanted to know:

What happens in a Flat Character Arc?

If the protagonist already knows the thematic Truth, then the antagonist can’t represent the protagonist’s Lie in quite the same way.

So what does the antagonist represent? And what is actually happening within the protagonist if this isn’t fundamentally a story about changing from Lie to Truth?

When I answered her question, I immediately knew there was a whole class worth of material to explore here.

What Is a Flat (or Steadfast) Character Arc?

Creating Character Arcs (Amazon affiliate link)

I’ve taught Flat Arcs for many years as one of the three fundamental types of character arc. On the mechanical level, the distinction is straightforward:

• In a Positive Change Arc, the protagonist begins by believing a Lie (or limited perspective) and gradually arcs toward the story’s thematic Truth.
• In a Negative Change Arc, the protagonist encounters the Truth but ultimately moves away from it–whether through disillusionment, a regression into a “worse” Lie, or a conscious choice to identify with the Lie instead of the Truth.
• In a Flat Arc, the protagonist already understands the story’s Truth. The surrounding world is entrenched in the Lie, with the protagonist functioning as an “Impact Character”—someone whose relationship with the Truth catalyzes change in other characters.

But saying a Flat Arc protagonist “doesn’t change” has always been a little misleading.

While the character may not undergo a fundamental shift in worldview, that doesn’t mean the protagonist is static or that there’s no inner development. It certainly doesn’t mean the Flat Arc somehow exists outside the larger cycle of human transformation.

In fact, I’ve increasingly come to see the Flat Arc as representing something absolutely essential within that cycle: Integration.

No one can constantly undergo dramatic transformations. Eventually, whatever we’ve learned must become lived, embodied experience.

It’s one thing to discover a Truth intellectually. It’s another to continue choosing it when it’s tested.

Flat Arcs are about discovering what a Truth asks of you in ordinary life, encountering Doubt without abandoning what you know, and allowing insights to become an embodied way of being.

In other words, every transformation eventually confronts us with another question:

Will you live what you’ve learned?

What Keeps a Flat Character Arc From Feeling… Flat?

One of the obvious problems with the term “Flat Character Arc” is that it doesn’t exactly sound exciting.

A flat character?

A character who doesn’t change?

Why would we want to write that?

It’s true that in the technical sense, a Flat Arc protagonist does not undergo the fundamental thematic transformation we see in a Positive Change Arc. Here, the character begins the story already possessing the central thematic Truth and ends the story still believing it.

But this doesn’t mean nothing is happening inside the character.

In a Positive Change Arc, the protagonist’s inner conflict is fundamentally about the Lie the Character Believes versus the thematic Truth. The character begins the story identifying with the Lie. As the plot progresses, a more expansive Truth keeps intruding until the character is finally forced to confront the limitations of the old worldview and choose whether to move beyond it.

By contrast, in a Flat Arc, that fundamental conflict has already been resolved.

Here, the protagonist knows the Truth.

But knowing the Truth isn’t the same as being 100% confident in your understanding of it—or in your ability to live it.

A Flat Arc character may not believe a Lie—but can still experience Doubt.

A Flat Arc protagonist can wonder:

• What if I’m wrong?
• What if I’m right, but I’m not strong enough to do anything about it?
• What if holding to this Truth costs more than I’m willing to pay?

This Doubt is one of the keys to writing a Flat Arc protagonist who feels fully human. The character remains fluid and fallible without needing a Lie simply to create inner conflict.

How Doubt Creates a Dynamic Flat Character Arc

Structurally, this creates tremendous possibilities.

• At the First Plot Point, the protagonist is forced into direct confrontation with a Lie embedded in the story world.
• Throughout the First Half of the Second Act, the character discovers just how entrenched that Lie really is—and what it may cost to oppose it.
• At the Midpoint, the protagonist fully understands what they’re up against and commits to living the Truth—fully, and at whatever cost the story demands.
• By the Third Plot Point, the character may be brought to the breaking point. But instead of the crucial question being, Am I strong enough to change my perspectives?, here it’s Am I strong enough to stay true to the Truth, no matter the cost?

That creates a very different kind of inner movement from what we see in a Positive Change Arc, but it’s still movement.

The character is being tested, the Truth itself is being tested, and perhaps most importantly, the character’s ability to live that Truth is being tested.

The Thematic Potential of the Flat Character Arc

Unlike Positive Change Arcs, Flat Arc stories aren’t merely testing new intellectual or philosophical perspectives. What they’re testing is the character’s capacity to embody those perspectives.

Can the character continue to live this Truth when…

• It becomes inconvenient?
• Other people reject it?
• Holding to it costs relationships, security, status, or even survival?

Because the protagonist in a Flat-Arc story isn’t primarily the one who needs to change, that pressure moves outward into the plot. Supporting characters begin encountering the larger potential of the story’s thematic Truth through the protagonist. By the Third Act, the transformation we’ve been waiting for often becomes visible not primarily in the protagonist, but via the surrounding people and the story world.

Transformation is still the central driver in a Flat Arc story. The difference is that a steadfast protagonist is less the object of transformation and more its catalyst.

Want More? Join Me for Flat Character Arcs: From Transformation to Integration

In Flat Character Arcs: From Transformation to Integration, we’ll explore both the practical mechanics of writing steadfast protagonists and what this structure suggests about the larger cycle of character transformation.

What you’ll learn in this class:

• How the Truth and Lie function in a Flat Arc.
• How the protagonist moves through the major structural beats.
• How supporting characters complete their own transformations.
• How the antagonistic force functions when the protagonist has already integrated the thematic Truth it opposes.
• How Flat Arcs operate within the larger transformational cycle of evolution, along with Ego Arcs and Soul Arcs.
• What Flat Arc protagonists represent symbolically about the process of psychological growth and individuation.

If you’ve struggled with a protagonist who already knows what they believe, but you’re not sure how to give that character a meaningful inner journey, I particularly hope you’ll join me.

Or maybe you just want to gain a more complete understanding of how this crucial moment in transformation plays into the bigger picture of how stories portray character arcs!

Either way, here’s everything you need to know:

• The class is pre-recorded and premieres Tuesday, September 22, at 1 PM EDT.
• I’ll be in the live chat during the showing if you’d like to join the discussion.
• If you can’t attend live, the replay will be available afterward.

Register Here → Flat Character Arcs: From Transformation to Integration

Bundle for Discount

I’ll also be teaching a companion class two weeks later, Negative Character Arcs: The Hidden Pattern of Self-Deception (October 6). Together, these two classes round out our exploration of character arcs by looking at the larger cycle of transformation: how characters encounter Truth, integrate and embody it—or resist it and descend more deeply into the Lie.

If you’d like to plan ahead to grab both classes, you can get a 15% discount!

The post New Writing Masterclass: Flat Character Arcs: From Transformation to Integration appeared first on Helping Writers Become Authors.

Fifteen years ago, in September 2011, I left my day job to become a full-time author-entrepreneur. Every year since, I’ve reflected on the journey and what I learn along the way. 

My challenges continue to evolve with the business, and you’ll likely be at a different stage, but I hope you find my lessons learned useful on your own author journey.

You can read all my lessons learned from previous years on my timeline here.

1. Sometimes you need to step away to indulge your curiosity and fill the creative well  

I have just handed in my dissertation for my Masters in Death, Religion, and Culture that I started a year ago as a full-time degree at the University of Winchester (online).

It has been an intense period of study and a shift into academic writing, which has been absolutely fascinating and well worth while, but which at times has stretched my patience for the minutiae of Chicago and/or Harvard referencing!

I’ve written essays on natural burial, the ethics of using human remains to inspire fiction (which also helped inspire Bones of the Deep), the art history of hell, death rituals of orthodox Judaism, assisted suicide, Is death a good thing? And my dissertation was on The Afterlife of Authorship: Consent, Control, Creative Legacy, and the AI Resurrection of the Author. More to come on that topic in the coming months. 

The essays were on top of the taught classes and group discussion sessions, which were all online. If you’re interested in the shadow side, then I absolutely recommend the course (which you can also do part-time and from outside the UK. Tell the team you heard about it from me!)

When I went into the course, I was considering a new direction, perhaps adding funeral celebrancy into my portfolio career or pivoting partly into the death industry. I am already a professional speaker, and I thought it would be a good way to help more people in my community at what is always a difficult time. 

But interestingly, I soon discovered that the rise of direct cremation in the UK means that fewer celebrants are used these days and the ‘death industry’ is not underserved, at least at the moment!

I also found myself longing to get back to commercial writing after so much academic focus, so I have a backlog of creativity to express, once I have recovered from the intensity of the dissertation process.

Stepping away at least partially has ultimately fuelled my desire to keep going as an author entrepreneur, which is a good result! 

2. Sometimes you need to step away to remove yourself from the drama and the noise

As much as I love being part of the creative side of the author community, I do not enjoy the drama online or the social media storms that rage over whatever issue is the latest thing. Over the last 20 years of being an author, the topics have changed, but the noise continues unabated. Perhaps it has grown louder of late, or perhaps my tolerance has decreased, but I am just not willing to spend my time arguing or getting wound up. 

So, I curate my inputs very carefully these days and try to stay on the positive, upbeat side of things. There is enough doom and gloom elsewhere, so you won’t find it here! 

I am rarely on social media now, and whatever the downsides of that, the huge upside is my mental health, so I am happy with my choices. I share pictures of my travels and my life (as proof of humanity!) on Instagram @jfpennauthor which automatically posts to Facebook @jfpennauthor, and I occasionally post on X @thecreativepenn but that’s about it. 

I am also more grateful than ever to be an independent author with my own email list and podcast and websites and community on Patreon, which means I can choose what I write, how I write and publish, what tools I use, how I reach my readers, and how I make my money. I remain more committed than ever to serving my audience, those of you who choose to follow me and listen to the podcast and read my books. Kevin Kelly’s 1000 True Fans remains my guiding principle and seems more relevant than ever.

In this age of AI, it is easy to spin up content and publish books every day if you want to, but it is not possible to replicate 20 years of writing and showing up as a human, so a huge thank you to my community for continuing to be part of my creative and business journey. 

3. Stepping away (for whatever reason!) will (inevitably) impact the business

I am a one-person creative business and while I have kept things ticking along over the last year, inevitably doing a full-time Masters has meant less time on the business, fewer books and generally, leaving a lot by the wayside with my focus on the academic side.

I did write one novel, Bones of the Deep, inspired by my essay on human remains in anatomy museums, and also a short non-fiction book on How to Write, Publish, and Market Short Fiction, out now on my store and everywhere from 1 October 2026. I also podcasted every week and continued to serve my Patreon community with live office hours, articles, video and audio. 

However, I created a lot less than my usual output and so I am behind in my updated editions for Joanna Penn books, and I am also behind in my usual schedule for my ARKANE thrillers, and I am brimming with other creative projects. 

I expected this to happen of course, but I am now feeling the pressure of getting back into it all. It feels like I have a backlog of ideas waiting to get out, and I am very much looking forward to returning to being a full-time author entrepreneur, instead of juggling it with study. 2027 feels like it will be expansive indeed! 

4. Increasing my use of AI tools for business and marketing has enabled me to save time and money 

While the debate about the use of AI in the creative side of things rages on, the use of AI for business and marketing tasks has grown amongst small and large businesses alike. It’s possible that you are far more aware of AI tools now if you have a day job since it is being rolled out in many corporate areas. 

If you are still just using ChatGPT as a search engine, or not using it at all, then things changed in Dec 2025/Jan 2026 when Claude Code marked the beginning of truly useful agentic AI, and now we have Claude CoWork, ChatGPT Work, GrotBot, and many other options. In short, AI tools can now do useful work, the kind of useful work that most authors struggle with as it relates to marketing and business. 

In the last few months, in between college work, I have been increasingly using Claude Code and ChatGPT to do the work that I don’t enjoy, and/or am not good at. Examples include: rebuilding JFPenn.com with a new theme and book pages, optimising my sites and my stores JFPennBooks.com and CreativePennBooks.com for SEO/GEO purposes, setting up and running my Amazon Ads, fixing technical errors on all my websites, helping to analyse cold subscribers and clean my email lists, tidy up and format my transcripts for the podcast, schedule social media posts and audio snippets, research guests for the podcast, takeover my bookkeeping and reconcile my bank accounts, manage business receipts, create strategic financial reports for the business and help me with data-related analysis and decisions — and lots more.

One of the most useful things I use it for is as an ‘organising partner’ for all the things I am meant to be tracking and doing and reviewing and creating.

I have a lot of ideas for things I want to do, and lots of plates spinning for my backlist book marketing as well as new projects, the podcast etc, and Claude keeps a backlog of everything and then reminds me when things are due, or need doing. It sets automatic tasks, like ‘check amazon ads’ and also reminders like ‘check results of BookBub ads’ and then analyses data and helps me make decisions. I will often download the data it needs, for example, my KDP sales and downloads and then it can action monitoring tasks and optimisation like Amazon Ads, always with my review of course! These are all things that I often missed because my one-person business will always prefer to write and create rather than analyse and optimise!

 If you haven’t tried this kind of business help with AI yet, make sure you are using a current model (like ChatGPT 5.6 Sol or ChatGPT 6 Astra, or Claude Fable 5.1 at the time of writing) and just ask, “How can you help me with my author business / book marketing?” Give it as much context and info as possible so it can specifically help you and then have a conversation about how you can use it. I plan to do some more webinars around AI before the end of the year, and as ever, I cover a lot within my Patreon if you want to join the Community. 

Conclusion

After 15 years as a full-time author-entrepreneur, and 20 years as a writer, it’s been a year of consideration around how I want the next year to go.

I thought I might come out of this degree with a new path ahead of me, but now, it’s clear that I love writing for an audience, and I love producing books that people want to read, as opposed to academic papers that only my professor will see and critique! 

I also like being useful and I want to keep being a positive voice in the indie author sphere, especially during a time of great change, so I plan to keep writing, keep podcasting, and keep serving my community. I hope you will join me in the year ahead! 

Thank you to everyone on this journey with me: my readers, my Patreon community, podcast listeners, and everyone who backs my Kickstarters and buys my books. You make this possible.

The next year will bring new challenges and discoveries, and I’ll keep sharing what I learn along the way. I hope you’ll join me for whatever comes next. 

What about you? What lessons are you learning on your author journey?

I’d love to hear about them, so please leave a comment or question below. 

The post Lessons Learned from 15 Years as a Full-Time Author Entrepreneur  first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you teach yourself anything, even when it challenges the way you see the world? And how can you organise what you learn so it turns into books your readers will find? J. Daniel Sawyer shares his self-education toolkit after decades as a largely self-taught author.

In the intro, Spotify for Authors has expanded AI-assisted creation of audiobooks [Spotify]; Who is Narrating the Future? [Publishing Perspectives; 9 ways AI will disrupt authors and publishing from 2019]; Author Voice, Creativity, and Building a Career as an Intuitive Author-Entrepreneur [How Women Write]; A fallow season [Systems and Soul]; How to Write, Publish, and Market Short Stories – Joanna Penn.

Today’s show is sponsored by Bookfunnel, the essential tool for your author business. Whether it’s delivering your reader magnet, sending out advanced copies of your book, handing out ebooks at a conference, or fulfilling your digital sales to readers, BookFunnel does it all. Check it out at bookfunnel.com/thecreativepenn

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

J. Daniel Sawyer is the author of over 30 books across science fiction, fantasy, crime, short stories, and nonfiction, as well as being a podcaster and filmmaker. His latest book is Reclaiming Your Mind: An Autodidact’s Bible.

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 an autodidact, and why school doesn’t teach you how to learn
• How to triage information in a world of way too much
• How to recognise fear in your body and turn it into excitement for learning
• Sandboxing dangerous ideas so you can learn without threatening your worldview
• How to organise research and check quotes when writing nonfiction
• Why you should never publish a book dead

You can find Dan at JDSawyer.net, and The Autodidact’s Bible is out now on Kickstarter.

Transcript of the interview with J. Daniel Sawyer

Jo: J. Daniel Sawyer is the author of over 30 books across science fiction, fantasy, crime, short stories, and nonfiction, as well as being a podcaster and filmmaker. His latest book is Reclaiming Your Mind: An Autodidact’s Bible.

So welcome back to the show, Dan.

Dan: Hello, Joanna. It’s great to be back.

Jo: Yes, indeed. You were only on the show a few months ago, which is rare I have somebody twice in the same year, so that is quite exciting. We talked about voice mastery last time, very different to the topic of today. But because we did talk a bit more about your background last time, we’re going to jump straight into the book.

So what is an autodidact, and why write a book on it?

Dan: Well, an autodidact is someone who teaches themselves things rather than taking a course. It’s not incompatible with being taught by others, of course, but there’s a set of skills for being able to pick up new information, new disciplines, new hobbies, whatnot, that’s really useful to have.

I wrote the book because I was mentoring a friend’s kid through high school. They weren’t teaching her anything, and she was having a hell of a time figuring out how to get an education in a school that was just not interested in providing one.

The process of the conversations over the course of a year forced me to surface all of the tools that I had developed, starting as a child, that allow me to pick up all of those disciplines you were talking about before, plus blacksmithing and academics and other stuff like that.

While I have had access to a lot of amazing teachers in my life, I’m largely self-taught, and have become the world expert on a couple of topics as a result.

I realised that the tools that you need to teach yourself and the tools that you get in school no longer overlap very much, at least in the US.

The old style of classical education, and then the middling style of early school education, both gave you those tools so that when you left school, you were able to continue through the world growing. Nobody does that anymore, so I realised I needed to write a book about all this stuff while it was fresh in my mind, so I did.

Jo: I love that. I don’t know if it always was like that for some people, too.

We all know now more about neurodivergence.

Back in the day, when you and I went to school, that wasn’t really talked about. It was like if you couldn’t learn stuff in the way that it was thrust at you, then you were just dumb, maybe.

Dan: Well, what you and I got in school was the very late end of the German model.

The German model of education is what arose in the industrial era, and its job is to create good, obedient workers, not necessarily to create independent citizens who can think for themselves and who can move through a world that’s changing and learn things.

That kind of education came from an older tradition, but it wasn’t well suited to pulling people out of the hinterlands and putting them in the factories in a way that they could understand what they were supposed to be doing.

So the Germans developed a regimented system that was built around memorisation exclusively, rather than processing. Memorisation and repetition.

Whereas a more classical approach would have you do memorisation as part of repetition, processing, evaluation, and creativity. So when you go to school, you get some of the toolkit you need, but not all of it.

Jo: Yes, and then I think some people were just so bashed over the head with stuff that they didn’t enjoy the process of learning, and maybe just moved away from it now.

I want to come back on something you said there, that it didn’t enable the independence, the thinking for yourself.

We’re living in this really weird time now where we’re almost in a splintered world where you can find information on anything you want, but a lot of people are finding information, say, on TikTok or in AI-generated books with no rigorous fact-checking.

So how can you think for yourself in a world where there’s almost way too much now?

Dan: Well, one of the most foundational skills of thinking is information triage. The world has always been full of unreliable information, if for no other reason than the state of the art in any given field at any given time is guaranteed to be about 80% wrong.

So even if you’re being very careful about only hewing to the most accepted body of facts, facts change over time, partly as we learn more and partly as the world changes underneath us.

Thinking is different than knowing. Thinking is the ability to evaluate the information you’re coming into contact with and figure out what’s likely to be useful, and then to check yourself based on what you are more inclined to believe because of the way that you’re made up emotionally.

It’s being able to curb your impulses with an error-checking layer so that you don’t get sucked down into a very nasty rabbit hole, which everybody’s prone to on one front or another.

So that explains the how and why, but the what is things like knowing your basic logic, knowing the informal logical fallacies that everybody’s prone to, things like the bandwagon fallacy.

We’re partly herd animals. We tend to want to join a group for protection and identity. So if we’re in a group that believes a certain thing, we’re likely to believe it out of fashion, which is great for group solidarity. It’s not so great for actually knowing if what you think you know is correct.

I’ve got a whole section of the book devoted to the top 30 or 40 most common informal reasoning fallacies. Knowing how to do basic critical reasoning is one of the things you have to do if you’re going to be learning in a way that’s useful to you.

Then of course, there’s another reasoning kit, which is the non-rational reasoning kit, which I also talk about. That’s something that you and I as fiction authors use all the time.

Jo: Explain more about that [non-rational reasoning kit] then, because people might not know what that is.

Dan: All right. So rational reasoning involves logic. If X is true and Y is true, then Z must also be true. That’s basic deduction. It basically lets you figure out what’s implicit in the body of knowledge you already know.

Then subsidiary to that is induction, which is, if X is true and Y is true, what might also be true that could explain X and Y? That’s the scientific method. It’s less reliable than deduction, but it actually grows your knowledge rather than just revealing it.

Non-rational reasoning is things like reasoning through analogy, reasoning through metaphor, reasoning through intuition.

These are all reasoning modes that allow you to bring something foreign into your understanding, or to deepen your understanding of something you’re already familiar with, in a way that incorporates not just logical propositions, but also emotional truth and relational truth and things like that.

Frequently it can generate things you can then subject to logical evaluation and pull new information about the world out of. A really good example of where this happens in science is in visionary experiences. The periodic table, for example, came out of someone’s dream.

Now, the fact he dreamed it doesn’t mean it’s true, but what happened while he was dreaming is he had a non-rational reasoning chain that brought him this vision, which he then brought out into the real world and started doing experiments on to see if it would work, and it did.

Jo: In that case, yes, I can picture the periodic table, and I often see images of things that help me organise information. So that to me makes sense in terms of somebody who had certain amounts of knowledge, who had some kind of picture in their brain and then was able to prove that.

I wanted to circle back. You were talking about critical things, rational things. You mentioned logic, and you did briefly mention emotion and intuition.

Coming back to where we are at this point in history, so much emotion is being triggered through the media, whether that’s social media or traditional media or whatever, that all of those logical, reasoned things can be almost triaged immediately by a big emotional response to something.

So how can we understand that that emotional response perhaps has to be part of the triage?

Dan: Well, simply by stating it outright. What you just said is exactly correct. I’ve got a model in the book where I talk about the difference between feelings and emotions.

Feelings, in this model, are your interpretive layer. That’s, I feel angry or sad or excited or depressed or whatnot. Those are your feelings.

The emotions are the base physiological states that those feelings are laying over. So elevated heart rate, increased skin conductance, things like that are associated with any excitable state, like anger, sexual arousal, anticipation, fear, that kind of thing.

Then depressed heart rate and whatnot, those are associated with depression, relaxation, and a whole bunch of other things.

Learning to recognise the base physiological layer within yourself that’s being stimulated allows you a certain amount of freedom about interpreting that base physiological state. That can help you separate your reaction to your own physiological state from your rational evaluation of what’s going on around you.

One of the things that our world runs on right now is fear, and there’s reasons for this. If you read Edward Bernays’ Propaganda, he lays it all out.

Fear shifts your mind into a survival mode.

You’re less likely to take time to think through things. You’re more likely to be easily steered because, as far as your physiology knows, there’s an active threat to you, and you’ve got to take care of that. You’ve got to get away from it.

If you stimulate fear in somebody, you can direct who they hate, who they love, who they trust. Very, very useful for anyone who wants to build a cult or sell a product or get elected.

If you learn to recognise in yourself that the physiological state associated with fear is the same one associated with excitement over something new, then you can train yourself, to a certain extent, and it’s a learned skill, to do an end run around the fear part and concentrate on the excitement.

Then you can deal with whatever it is that’s stimulating you in the way that you would a new piece of information, a new bit of learning, a new adventure. Instead of fear, which closes you down, adventure opens you up, and that’s a much better state to engage in learning and exploration than fear is.

Jo: When you said, “That opens you up,” this is exactly what I look for, what is expansive for me. I often reflect on this. When do I feel expansive, and when do I feel like I’m being reduced? When do I feel like I’m hunkered down?

When I’m working with AI tools, I feel expansive, I feel more creative, I feel excited. I feel all these things where I just see so many possibilities, and the horizon is off out there in the distance.

Yet I know other people, some people listening, will feel that that crushes them, that even mentioning it just makes them reduce into themselves and shrink because of fear, I guess.

I also think that a lot of people are feeling those things because they haven’t learnt enough perhaps. They are just responding to emotions.

So how can we change those things so we’re more open to learning?

Dan: Well, one of the things you run into with creative types is we’ve all got something weird in our background that makes us do this. We’re not just inclined to be creative, because you can meet welders and electricians who are very creative people. They just apply their creativity in a limited domain.

People who go into the arts tend to be either people who grew up in incredibly open conditions, or people who grew up in incredibly closed conditions and had to fight against them.

People who grow up in closed conditions and fight against them tend to be a little better at sticking around for the long haul of an arts career, which can be punishing financially and emotionally.

One of the reasons they can stick around is that they had a lot of practice in sticking around through horrible situations when they were younger. So they’re going to have a negative bias when they come up against things that they don’t understand.

If you have a negative bias with something you don’t understand and it turns out to be wrong, you’re not going to lose very much. But if you have a negative bias when you come up against something you understand and it turns out to be right, you’re going to survive that thing. Whereas a more open person might just walk into the jaws of the shark, right?

To change that and make your experience better, and give you access to all the advantages that the person who’s got a more open temperament has, you’ve got to find a way to make it safe to experiment with the dangerous thing.

For every dangerous thing, and probably for everyone who’s encountering it, it’s going to be a little bit different.

With AI, people are worried about the market eroding to the point where nobody cares about human creativity anymore. In fact, my first publishable short story, which is called We Create Worlds, was actually about a novelist trying to outwrite the AI novels. It’s become weird.

Jo: What year did you write that in?

Dan: That was in 1999.

Jo: Awesome.

Dan: It’s still a great short story. I did do it in podcast form, which you can find on my website at jdsawyer.net, and it’s also in ebook on Amazon, and it’s part of the Sculpting God short story collection.

But the fear is that humanity gets crowded out of the market in the face of the relentless onslaught of the machines. It’s not a ridiculous fear, especially if you look at the history of artisanship.

Everybody and their brother used to have an artisanal business, and now we’ve got machines that weave socks and make just about everything in our world.

So people like me, who spend half my day every day in a blacksmith’s forge making hooks that you could just make by machines way cheaper, are kinda crazy. But there’s a market for that. Humans like things that were touched by other humans, as long as they can afford them or justify making a luxury.

On the other hand, the people that adopt tools early and figure out how to make them work for them, those are usually the people that win at scale over the long haul.

So, AI is coming for our jobs, guys, but you know what? You can keep it out of your creativity and build agents that help you deal with your scheduling and your bookkeeping and your marketing, all the other stuff that takes up your time as an author.

Then instead of threatening your creativity, it gives you more space to be creative.

Jo: So it’s reframing things a lot of the time.

Dan: A lot of the time, yes.

Jo: I think that’s true of everything.

Reframing can help you learn.

Reframing things can give you a reason to learn, I guess, when in the past, maybe at school, you hated learning…

Dan: Yes.

Jo: Now by reframing it into a reason why.

Dan: That really helps, and it also helps the second big problem with learning, which is worldview threat. I think I open the book with an entire section on how worldviews work and how that limits us, and how we can’t get away from them even though they limit us.

Your worldview is the matrix through which you experience everything around you, and it’s not a window, it’s like a lens. It distorts everything, it filters everything, because it’s the reflexive layer that helps you make sense of the world, and it’s built out of your experience and inflected by your personality and other things like that.

There are things you can learn, and for everyone it’s going to be a little bit different, that threaten everything about your worldview.

That’s a problem, because your mind experiences your worldview not as an interpretive matrix, but as a survival tool. As far as your deep mind goes, your worldview is perfectly okay because you’re still alive. Its job is to keep you alive.

So if you learn something, or come close to learning something or thinking something that could unspool a big part of your worldview, you’ll just emotionally go blank. You’ll shut down. The information you’re encountering will not register, or it will make you angry and you’ll steer away from it.

This isn’t very good if you’re wanting to learn things or grow. So there’s a set of metacognitive tools you can use to help you push past that and navigate the existential crises that can sometimes ensue without crushing you entirely.

I spend a section of the book talking about that as well, and detailing what some of those tools are.

Jo: Better give us a tool.

Give us one useful tool.

Dan: All right, so one of the basic tools is one that anyone who’s a developer in the audience will be familiar with, and it’s basically sandboxing.

You create a little playpen where it’s okay to play with this dangerous idea, and you make yourself the promise that until you’re really familiar with the dangerous idea, you’re not going to connect it to anything else in your worldview.

Then you’ve got the option later on to decide whether to integrate it or not. But you’ve got to play with this scary tool.

For someone who comes out of a fundamentalist religious background like I do, one of the big ones here was textual criticism, where you learn about all the manuscript traditions that make up the New Testament especially, and the development of Christian scripture.

I had to know about this stuff because I had a paid writing gig that required me to know about it. But I was a biblical literalist and believed that it all came straight out of God’s mouth, and I couldn’t even go near it without going, “Ah,” because intuitively some part of me recognised this could be a threat to what you believe.

So I made myself a sandbox. I said, “This is a literary project. If I actually believe in the doctrines of my religion, then this can’t be a threat, because even if the words themselves were changed all over the place, the Holy Spirit would have ensured that the important parts of the theology got through unscathed.”

So I had a sandbox. I didn’t really have to think about it. I could just learn the topic, and I got through. It was a two-year project, I had a fabulous time, and I came out knowing more about textual criticism than anyone ever should need to.

I actually got to know someone, a friend of my father’s, who actually makes the Greek New Testament from the surviving original sources. I learned all sorts of things about biblical translation and about classical literature. It was great stuff.

I sandboxed it until I understood it, and then I decided whether or not to integrate it, and I did integrate it. It didn’t actually have anything to do with me ending up being an atheist now. That was because of my research into mythopoetics several years later.

When you sandbox something like that, you give yourself an imaginary play space. This is something you do any time that you go to a movie and you cheer for characters who are doing horrible things that you would never do or condone in real life.

It’s a fantasy play space that allows you to explore other aspects of life that you can’t touch in real life. When you’re learning, you can use that same set of skills of fantasy play and fantasy role play for trying out and exploring topics that might threaten the way you see the world.

Jo: Well, that actually brings up a good reason to do this, and one of the reasons I love to learn new things is to turn them into books. You mentioned earlier your short story about AI, for example. That’s a great way of sandboxing and playing with a dangerous idea.

I’m actually writing a lot of, I guess we would call them science fiction, in the science fiction genre. I’ve never written science fiction before, and suddenly…

Dan: Welcome to the party.

Jo: Yes, exactly. I’m now writing science fiction. I haven’t published any of it yet, but it’s possible that I’m moving into science fiction because I am weighing up a whole load of these things as I’m learning about it, and I’m like, “Okay, how would I play with that idea?”

So that is one way to use what we learn, or even, like we said, reframing it. One good reason to drive the learning in the first place, I guess. But in that way, I wanted to ask you, because your books are very detailed.

How are you structuring knowledge as you learn it, in a way that is useful for turning it into something else later?

Dan: Okay. Associatively. The way that the brain stores knowledge, it looks a bit like a spiderweb, or like a map of galaxies in the universe. That’s probably too geeky. Let’s stick with a spiderweb. Everyone’s seen a spiderweb. You don’t record discrete tabulated facts like a spreadsheet or a database.

You actually record associative memories, and everything you know is associated not just with other things that fact might be associated with in a library catalogue. It’s associated with the smell that you were smelling when you learned that thing, and the emotional state you were in when you learned that thing.

The more associative connections you can make to any bit of knowledge, the easier it is to record. When I sat down and wrote The Autodidact’s Bible, I literally wrote it front to back without an outline.

There have been some books I’ve done this with where I had to rearrange afterwards. With this one, I didn’t have to, because this is one of the places I live, so I’ve just got a good structure for the information in my head.

I knew that if I wanted to convey this toolkit and all the things associated with it, I needed to start with what is knowledge and memory, and how does understanding work?

Then move into worldview and the way that emotions affect the way that we learn, and developmental psychology, which has to do with the way the human being is designed to learn from the get-go.

We start off with raw input. I call this in the book type zero learning. We get a fire hose of information we don’t know how to make sense of, and our brain adapts itself to the inputs.

Then there’s type one learning, where we play around with things and we experiment and we see what they do. It’s the “what’s this button do?” approach to learning. Then there’s type two learning, which is someone else who knows something already tells us things or shows us things, and we pick that up.

All three of these systems are involved at every stage of the learning process. Actually, it’s hierarchical. So you can do type zero learning without doing type one or type two.

If you’re doing type two, which is what you’re doing in school, or when you’re learning from a mentor, or when you’re listening to a podcast, then if the information is going to stick, you are also involved in type zero learning, which is just taking in a bunch of stuff, and type one learning, which is practising and doing trial and error.

Even if, as you’re listening to this podcast, you’re just reacting with things like, “Oh, now that’s an interesting idea,” and you’re having a little fantasy about, “What if I did this?”, that’s a version of experiment and repeat, and that solidifies the learning in your knowledge web in your head.

Then the trick is figuring out how to go back and find those things.

Jo: Well, this is what I wanted to talk about. In the book, you do have stuff on memory and that kind of thing.

I have definitely found, and this has got worse with menopause, and this is a completely normal thing with menopause for women, the brain fog that means things don’t seem to stick so well, and then the recall is also almost harder.

I’m often reaching for things, and I can’t get them back. I’ve always been somebody who writes everything down anyway, but I now do it even more.

As you know, I sent written questions for this. I now rely on written stuff so much more. So when I’m writing a book, or like I’ve just been doing with this master’s and a lot of research, I have to write everything down.

So I guess my question was more about, for people listening who want to learn things in order to write books from that—

What recommendations do you have for organising your research so that when you write the book, you can reference it in a good way?

Dan: Well, writing things down is great, because that is part of the repetition that helps it stick in your head, and then you’ve got an external place where, as long as you can remember where you put it, you know where to get it.

The more connections you can make to any piece of information, the easier it is to find. I do take notes, and I have a strictly hierarchical file tree where I know where to find manuscripts and files full of notes and whatnot.

What often happens with me is I will make notes on something, and then I’ll forget I did it, and then a few years later I’ll write the book and then discover the notes again afterwards, and the book basically matches the notes.

I think the reason that happens is that when I get an idea in my head and write it down, I just start subconsciously playing with the idea, and I play with it and play with it until it’s well developed.

Every time you take an idea out, or a memory, and play with it, everything that you’re thinking or feeling at that point in time gets reconnected to it. So you actually alter a bit of what you’re remembering, but you’re also multiplying the mental paths you can use to get to it.

So you’ve got a very strict external system to help you beat the brain fog. The analogy to do it without the external system is you create that kind of system in your head.

You practise actually walking the system like it’s a library or a museum. If you’re a very visual person, and this doesn’t work if you have aphantasia, you can close your eyes and you can walk through the museum in your head, and you can turn to the left and see a room that’s associated with everything you know about biology, and then you can start picking things up in that room.

I’m actually being semi-literal here. I sometimes actually do this like I’m working in virtual reality. Most of the time it’s not that concrete, but if I’m trying to find something and I get stuck, I will actually close my eyes and go into the museum and find the room.

The other trick is you don’t chase a particular bit of information too hard. All you’re looking for is something that’s in the neighbourhood. Because once you start working mentally in the neighbourhood, all of that knowledge map comes back to you as a side effect of being in that area.

Let’s say you’re in England, and you knew neighbourhoods in Nottingham really well, and you wanted to go visit a friend in Nottingham. When you get on the road to go, and you’re not using a map, you don’t have the whole map loaded into your head.

All you know is, I’m going to go that way on this road, and then you see the exit off the M1, or whatever it is, that you recognise. “Oh, this is the exit I take,” so you take that exit.

All the other information in between, you kinda know it, but you drop it. You don’t really actively search for it. Then when you get into the general area of your friend’s house, you start to recognise landmarks and you go there.

Memory of non-physical spaces works the same way, and you can actually develop the ability to engage it as if it’s a physical space. The technique is called the mind palace. It was discovered in Ancient Greece, and it still works.

Jo: Yes, and I agree with that, and I still have that kind of experience in a way.

When we’re writing nonfiction, and you have selected footnotes in this book, for example, although not to the extent of academic text, which is what I’ve been doing with my master’s dissertation this week.

As an example, I knew that Stephen King had said something like, “Writing is a form of telepathy,” but could I remember where it was? No.

hTen I was like, okay, well, it’s very likely it’s in either one of his introductions or it’s in On Writing, his memoir of the craft, because that is an iconic book. But in order to actually get the right quote, because if you’re quoting people, obviously it has to be an exact quote as opposed to a made-up thought.

Then if you’re doing a proper footnote, for example, it does need what book it is and what edition and what page number and all of that kind of thing.

So when you’re writing the nonfiction books, are you doing the memory palace thing, writing the stuff, and then going back and finding where you got it from?

Dan: Yes, and anything that’s vague, I just put hard brackets around it.

I don’t remember all the people I quoted, but let’s say I quoted Schopenhauer. If I was going to be quoting Schopenhauer and I could remember what he said, but I couldn’t remember the words, I’d just put brackets around it and say, “Find the place where Schopenhauer said this,” and then put the quote here.

I don’t use hard brackets anywhere else in my writing, so I can then just Control + F, find the hard bracket, and retroactively do the research.

Jo: Yes, exactly. I think that is the point I was trying to get to, which is it’s all very well having the memory palace, but I can bet you that some of these quotes are not correct.

Dan: Yes, always check quotes. Now with AI, there’s search engine techniques where you can actually start from a paraphrase and then refine the search stepwise until you can get the exact quote with a reference, and then you can check it against the manuscript online.

I use a lot of those when I don’t have the book that I’m thinking of in my hands. Now of course with AI, I’m like, “Where did this author say this thing…”

Jo: Roughly?

Dan: Yes, roughly. The AI will come back with, “Well, he said this in these words in that book, and these words in that book.” And I’m like, “Oh, boy, I get to pick which one works better for what I’m writing.”

Jo: It’s very good. Coming back to what you were writing, I think you have balanced footnotes and source material, but you haven’t gone as far as the academic footnoting of every single sentence, which is where I am at the moment.

So for general nonfiction that is trying to reach a broader audience, where would you say the balance lies?

Because I just feel now that we don’t do enough of this in the indie community. I read a lot of nonfiction books which need a heck of a lot more attributions.

Dan: First of all, I subscribe to the Terry Pratchett school of footnotes, which is that footnotes are places for long asides that need to be there, but that interrupt the flow of the text. I’m sure you noticed.

Also, for me, it’s really important, wherever I can remember where I got an idea, to point it out so that the reader can follow that rabbit trail if they want to.

As a nonfiction writer, I feel like I’m in the business of providing value to the curious person. So anywhere I can point them where they might have fun exploring further is a value add.

That’s something I try to do, but I don’t always remember, because in the heat of composition, you don’t really realise where the ideas are coming from all the time.

The second thing is, if I’m directly quoting or paraphrasing someone, there’s always at least an attribution to the author, if not in the footnotes, then in the body text. You know, as Harlan Ellison used to say about being paid as a writer, or whatever.

The great glory, and this is at least partly an aesthetic thing in my head, the great glory of nonfiction is that it taps you into an entire universe of conversations that have been going on as long as there’s been a written word.

To pretend that you’re not participating in that conversation, okay, it might make you look cool to the novice reader, but you’re really depriving your reader of even just the bare awareness that he’s dipping his toe in a rich stream that he could follow forever.

Especially in our world where we live in a TikTok world, but before that, we lived in a soundbite world, and before that, we lived in the newspaper world. These are all formats that try to pretend that they exist outside of time and culture, even though they’re the most temporally dependent and culturally fickle sorts of entertainment there are.

We’ve gotten used to the experience of encountering something that feels like it could just be from anywhere, and that’s not the way it really works.

Every TikTok video comes out of someone’s experience, which is embedded in a culture, which is embedded in a tradition that’s full of controversies that goes back to the beginning.

It’s not just full of controversies, but it’s accompanied by stories, fictional stories, mythic stories, where those controversies get fought out and explored.

I think as a nonfiction author, if you want to be really selfish about it, it makes you look better if you’re also pointing at the tradition that you’re standing in than if you’re pretending that it’s all coming from you.

Jo: Yes.

It makes you look better if you are citing things.

I feel like that’s such a good reframe. I was reading a book the other day, and I was like, all these ideas are coming from all these other people that I know about.

This person would look a lot better if they actually accredited those ideas to the people they came from. My opinion of that person went down because they were not attributing. So, yes, I think it’s so important, and that’s the fun bit. Let’s circle back to the fun bit of learning.

Dan: Before you get onto that, I should point out that in my writing, I don’t do this with academic rigour. I do it as it occurs to me.

I write a weekly nonfiction article dealing with philosophy and history and arts and everything, and I don’t always think, “Oh, the readers might not know where this comes from,” and stick it in there. But over the course of reading those articles, you get all the citations. They’re just not always in every article.

Jo: Oh, no, I’ve read your stuff, Dan. You do a good job. Obviously not to the academic attribution detail, but I do think this book in particular, Reclaiming Your Mind: An Autodidact’s Bible, has a lot of references so people can learn more.

So I do briefly, before we finish, because you and I could talk about this forever, but I do want to ask about Kickstarter. So you’re using Kickstarter to launch this book. You’ve done a couple of campaigns, but not for a while.

So why use Kickstarter for this, and what are the pros and cons?

Dan: Well, as far as I’ve been able to work out, doing a Kickstarter is the one way you can make sure that you don’t publish a book dead. Are you familiar with this term from old publishing?

Jo: You can expand on it.

Dan: Okay. So in traditional publishing, there’s a term called publishing dead, which is where the publishing house buys a book, they go to the trouble of laying it out and printing it, and then they just kinda drop it on the market with an entry in the bookseller’s catalogue.

There’s no publicity, no fanfare, no attempt to get advance buzz going, and it just kinda sits there.

Occasionally someone who buys for a bookstore will get a couple of copies, and they’ll sit on the shelves, and a customer will walk by and buy one. Books that are published dead tend to sell 500 copies over a 30-year lifetime. It’s not much.

Jo: That’s probably a lot of indie books as well.

Dan: That’s how most indie books are done. The first 10 years of my career, I was doing fiction podcasting, so everything I was publishing got published live, and they did really well.

Then fiction podcasting kinda died at the same time that my life got really complicated, and so I decided just to let my podcast die with the wave. At just the same time, my personal fiction productivity went through the roof. I went from writing one, maybe two books a year to writing four or five.

I was dropping these four or five books on the world and nothing happened, and all the sales were drying up anyway from the older stuff that had been supported by the podcast. So I decided I wanted to find a way to stop publishing things dead.

I had done a Kickstarter for an audiobook years ago that I produced for Gail Carriger, and so when I was writing Secrets of the Heinlein Juvenile, I decided there’s a lot of Heinlein fans out there, so even if I don’t personally have the name recognition, this is something that I could launch pretty well on Kickstarter.

It did great, and I decided at that point that I was never going to publish another book dead. I was always going to have some kind of occasion to launch with, even if I had to manufacture it.

In the years since, I’ve published very little, because I’ve been trying to figure out how to do that. I’ve got a big stack of books that are coming out now that I’ve figured it out.

I realised that things like debuting in a book bundle, doing a Kickstarter, or finding a way to time a release with a news cycle, which is appropriate for some science fiction particularly, these are ways to publish a book without publishing it dead and then having to try to figure out why nobody’s noticing it.

So that’s why I’m doing the Kickstarter.

Jo: I also agree. What I like is doing the two-week campaign. I normally do two-week campaigns, because then I can just focus my energy before the campaign and then during those two weeks, and then I’m basically done, and then I put it up on all the platforms and everything.

I focus most of my energy into that couple of weeks beforehand and then the two weeks of the campaign. Like you, I mean—

We don’t want to be spending all our time marketing, but to try and make it an occasion just helps us put a bit more effort into it, doesn’t it?

Dan: It really does. And the other thing it does, and this took me a while to figure out, but I’ve come to understand that most people’s relationship with their favourite writers isn’t like my relationship with my favourite writers.

I’ve got about 70 writers I like, but I’ve got about 10 where I don’t care what happens, I will buy and immediately read what they’ve done.

I realised that for most people, their relationship with most of the writers they like is more at arm’s distance. They stumble across, “Oh, I didn’t know this guy had something new. I’ll pick it up,” rather than being like, “I love the way this person’s mind works, and I want to see what it goes at next.”

So the bread and butter as an author has got to be in making sure that those people find you. It’s not in serving the core base, the core 1,000 fans.

They’re really important, and you want to do that, but if you want the career to sustain and build, you’ve got to find ways to help people in that second group, the arm’s-length fans, stumble over what you’re doing.

Because everybody’s got more important things in life than your books. But if you’ve got excuses to be stumbled upon that don’t involve standing right up and waving a sign saying, “Buy my book, buy my book,” then you’re more likely to build momentum, because people talk about the book they just read and that they love.

If they don’t talk to someone in the first few days after they read that book, then unless it was one of the books that changes their life, they’re never going to talk about it again. So you want to get as many people talking about the cool book they read last week at the same time as possible, to build momentum.

Jo: Indeed. Right.

So where can people find your cool book, as well as all your other books, online?

Dan: Reclaiming Your Mind: An Autodidact’s Bible is currently Kickstarting. You can find a link on the top post at my website at JDSawyer.net. You can find all my books at JDSawyer.net/book-list, and you can find my weekly articles on maker stuff, philosophy, creativity, and history at jdanielsawyer.substack.com.

Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Dan. That was great.

Dan: It was a pleasure, as always.

The post Reclaiming Your Mind: How To Teach Yourself Anything With J. Daniel Sawyer first appeared on The Creative Penn.

In a story, we can think of character arc as the “engine of change” that creates transformative movement in the plot. In real life, this change can be initiated in many different ways, but in a story, we often use specific levers—some symbolic and some practical—to create catalysts of change that make sense to readers. One of those levers of change is the Impact Character.

When we think of necessary characters in a story, we tend to come up with obvious choices such as the protagonist, the antagonist, and maybe the mentor, love interest, and sidekick. “Impact Character” probably isn’t at the top of your list.

But it should be, because the Impact Character is a key mechanism for creating believable change. Impact Characters help create character arcs that feel realistic in no small part because they emphasize the relational aspect of change—in which other people inspire, provoke, or teach others to change.

What Is the Impact Character?

Dramatica by Melanie Anne Phillips and Chris Huntley (affiliate link)

An Impact Character is a character whose worldview challenges the protagonist’s existing beliefs and catalyzes the protagonist’s character arc. If your protagonist is following a Positive Change Arc, the Impact Character(s) will represent or demonstrate the thematic Truth that conflicts with the Lie the Character Believes.

“Impact character” is the term coined by Dramatica authors Melanie Anne Phillips and Chris Huntley to describe what is just as accurately termed by editor Roz Morris the “catalyst character.” This is the character who slams into your protagonist, catalyzes them into change, and has a major impact on their life.

Character Arcs 101

In a Positive Change Arc, the story begins with the Lie the Character Believes—which references the comparatively limited belief or state of being in which the protagonist begins.

In contrast to this “Lie” is the story’s specific thematic Truth, which represents a comparatively more expanded way of seeing or being in the world.

Throughout the story, the protagonist will experience inner conflict between these two states, struggling to let go of the constrictive and increasingly ineffective Lie in order to embrace the more liberating and effective Truth.

Three ways to understand the Lie the Character Believes: as a mistaken belief, a limited perspective, and an ego identity.

However, as with most principles of “show, don’t tell” in narrative storytelling, information alone is usually not the most effective way to convince a character to change (or to convince readers the character has changed). One of the best techniques for dramatizing a protagonist’s change is to leverage relationships with supporting characters—chief among them the Impact Character.

How the Impact Character Catalyzes Your Protagonist’s Arc

In practical terms, the Impact Character represents a force that enables, empowers, or even forces change in others. What this often means is that the Impact Character functions as a Flat Arc character.

Creating Character Arcs (Amazon affiliate link)

If you’ve read my book Creating Character Arcs, then you already know that in a Positive Change Arc, the protagonist is the primary character who changes, while in a Flat Arc, the protagonist does not personally change, but catalyzes change in the surrounding world and supporting characters. In essence, in a Flat-Arc story, the protagonist is an Impact Character who enables or inspires the Change Arcs of supporting characters.

What this means is that in stories in which the protagonist is following a Positive Change Arc, the role of Impact Character will then be represented by a supporting character (or characters).

What Type of Character Can Be an Impact Character?

As a specific character in your story, the Impact Character can take many forms. This character could theoretically be either an ally or an adversary to your protagonist. More on that in a minute, but for now, suffice it that the Impact Character’s actual role in the story isn’t what creates the qualification for whether or not the protagonist is impacted. So what does?

Impact Character vs. Antagonist: What’s the Difference?

If the antagonist represents the story’s outer conflict in a Positive Change Arc, then the Impact Character represents the inner conflict.

Similar to the antagonist, the Impact Character creates conflict. In at least some respects, the Impact Character will also be at odds with the protagonist.

Unlike the antagonist, however, this conflict isn’t necessarily the result of opposing goals. Rather, the Impact Character’s conflict with the protagonist represents opposing worldviews. Whereas the protagonist in a Positive Change Arc believes the Lie, the Impact Character represents the story’s thematic Truth.

How the Impact Character Creates Inner Conflict

Throughout the story, the protagonist’s continued faith in the Lie (i.e., a comparatively limited perspective) will continue to find opposition in the Impact Character’s Truth (i.e., a comparatively more expanded perspective). Although inertia and a desire to maintain a comfortable status quo may prompt the protagonist to avoid facing the Truth, it is the Impact Character’s persistent presence that keeps churning up the protagonist’s awareness of the Truth—and creating internal conflict.

For Example:

• Rochester keeps inspiring Jane Eyre (eventually to his temporary detriment) to view herself as his equal.
• The Ghosts of Christmas keep prodding Scrooge out of his inveterate miserliness.
• Mattie Ross (a Flat Arc protagonist) keeps dragging compromising lawman Rooster Cogburn onto the road to justice.

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), Walt Disney Pictures.

The Impact Character may or may not be actively or even consciously trying to get the protagonist to see that Truth. Although sometimes the Impact Character may represent a dedicated Mentor character, this is not always the case.

Sometimes the catalytic influence on the protagonist is often just the Impact Character’s continued presence, which is enough by itself to inspire change. The Impact Character will appear at crucial moments in the story when the protagonist needs help seeing things from a different perspective.

Even though the protagonist won’t know it at the beginning of the story, the Impact Character has the answers the protagonist is looking for. Those answers will end up being pivotal, at least incidentally, in the protagonist’s ability to conquer the antagonistic force and the external conflict in the quest for the story goal.

What Type of Character Can Be an Impact Character?

Writing Characters Who’ll Keep Readers Captivated by Roz Morris (affiliate link)

As Morris explains in her book Writing Characters Who’ll Keep Readers Captivated, the Impact Character (or what she distinguishes as the catalyst character) can take just about any form within your story:

They might be mentor characters. These are figures who guide the protagonist into a new world, awakening the qualities they need to meet the challenges they must face. Typically they’re a coach or a father figure. They sometimes perish when they have fulfilled their role, or in a betraying twist they might turn out to be a formidable antagonist….

Note that just because the Impact Character understands the specific Truth needed by the protagonist, this does not mean this character has all Truths figured out. In some instances, the Impact Character can even be a generally benighted character who actually has way less figured out than the protagonist does—except when it comes to this one Truth.

Consider a few options. Your story’s Impact Character might be:

• The antagonist (e.g., in Treasure Island, Long John Silver’s charisma and moral ambiguity repeatedly challenge Jim Hawkins’s understanding of courage, loyalty, and adulthood).

Treasure Island (1950), Walt Disney Pictures.

• The Contagonist. (e.g., in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Tom Doniphon’s hard-earned realism forces Ransom Stoddard to confront the limits of his idealistic beliefs about law and civilization).

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), Paramount Pictures.

• The mentor (e.g., Mistborn, Kelsier challenges Vin’s deeply ingrained distrust by showing her a radically different way to understand loyalty, belonging, and her own worth).

Mistborn

• The sidekick (e.g., in Red River, Nadine Groot’s loyalty and perspective help keep Dunson’s increasingly rigid worldview from going entirely unchallenged).

Red River (1948), United Artists.

• The love interest (e.g., in Emma, Mr. Knightley repeatedly confronts Emma with the uncomfortable truths about her own pride, privilege, and interference in other people’s lives).

Emma (2009), BBC One.

• Present for most of the story (e.g., in Rain Man, Raymond Babbitt’s presence steadily forces Charlie to reconsider his self-centered assumptions about family, responsibility, and connection).

Rain Man (1988), United Artists.

• Present only intermittently, but looming large in the protagonist’s mind (e.g., in Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi introduces Luke Skywalker to a larger understanding of himself and the Force, continuing to influence his choices even after his death).

Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), 20th Century Fox.

• A collective of several characters (e.g., in Cars, the townsfolk of Radiator Springs collectively challenge Lightning McQueen’s belief that winning and individual achievement are all that matter).

Cars (2006), Walt Disney Pictures.

The “Negative” Impact Character

I’m often asked whether an Impact Character always has to positively influence the protagonist.

Not necessarily.

Although the Impact Character, as we’re discussing it here, is specifically a Truth-aligned character used by the writer to leverage change in the protagonist’s arc, you can also create “negative” Impact Characters who instead align with the Lie.

Similar to what the Dramatica system terms the Contagonist (a sort of anti-Mentor), a negative Impact Character will represent the seductive force of the protagonist’s Lie.

This is a character who (intentionally or not) attempts to influence the protagonist to either maintain the Lie’s status quo or, in some cases, to actually regress away from the Truth back to the more constrictive perspective of the Lie.

This role can be particularly useful when writing Negative Change Arcs, in which the negative Impact Character functions as a sort of “dark angel,” luring the protagonist away from their potential for positive growth.

Does the Impact Character Have to Have a Flat Arc?

A positive Impact Character functions in basically the same way as the Flat Arc character—as a character who grasps a more expanded version of the protagonist’s Truth and whose presence inspires growth and change in others. This always makes the Impact Character essentially a Flat-Arc character. However, if your Impact Character is a supporting character in your protagonist’s Positive Change Arc, this doesn’t mean the Impact Character must represent a full arc of any kind.

As supporting characters, Impact Characters can show up in many different ways. Sometimes they will represent significant relationships for the protagonist that continue throughout the story. Other times, they may only show up once or twice.

As we’ve seen in the previous examples, the Impact Character, as a story role, can also be represented by multiple characters throughout the story, all of whom catalyze the protagonist toward the Truth. In other stories, the archetypal role of the Impact Character can be merely symbolic or implied without being assigned to a specific character (although that’s often less dramatic).

***

However you decide to portray the Impact Character in your story, just remember this character has the potential to be a pivot around which your protagonist’s entire arc turns. A character can’t change without something that impacts them by consistently and convincingly conflicting with their belief in the Lie. When planning your protagonist’s arc, consider who or what will keep opposing the Lie strongly enough that the protagonist can no longer avoid facing it.

Note: This article has been revised and expanded from an earlier version.

Want More?

Interested in going deeper into how Flat Arcs work? If you’d like to better understand this powerful character arc not simply as a story in which characters “don’t change,” but as a storyform of heroic integration, influence, and service to others and the world, I’ll be teaching a live class next week, September 22, 1 p.m. EDT: Flat Character Arcs: From Transformation to Integration.

This is a subject I’ve been wanting to explore in greater depth for a while. As we’ve touched on today, Flat Arcs are often much more complex than they initially appear.

In the class, we’ll look at what distinguishes Flat Arcs from Change Arcs, how they create meaningful transformation without requiring the protagonist to undergo the same kind of internal change, and how writers can use them to create resonant arcs of influence and integration.

The class takes place live on September 22 at 1 p.m. EDT. It’s pre-recorded, which allows me to joing you live in the chat to answer all your questions!

(I’m also teaching another class two weeks later on “Negative Character Arcs: The Hidden Pattern of Self-Deception.” If you’d like to go ahead and grab both classes, I’m offering a 15% discount for the bundle.)

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! Who is the Impact Character in your story, and how does that character challenge your protagonist’s Lie? 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 or Amazon Music).

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The post The Impact Character: Why Every Character Arc Needs One appeared first on Helping Writers Become Authors.

How can you use AI to research, edit and handle admin and marketing tasks while still writing every single word yourself? How can you double down on being human and reach readers on a personal level? Anna McPhee shares her perspective as a software engineer, author and creative technologist.

In the intro, How to Write, Publish, and Market Short Stories out now.

This show is supported by my Patrons. Join my Community and get articles, discounts, and extra audio and video tutorials on writing craft, author business, and AI tools, at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Anna McPhee is an author, software engineer, professional speaker, and creative technologist. Her latest book is What Machines Can’t Replace: Why AI Makes Us More Human.

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 code is creative work, and what it shares with writing books
• How AI changed Anna’s job as a software engineer without taking her employment
• The difference between AI assistance and generation
• How to use custom skills for editing reports, research and repeatable tasks
• Why the rise of AI makes us crave slow, imperfect, physical things
• Responding to a negative review by showing up as a human

You can find Anna at Anna.kiwi and her new book at WhatMachinesCantReplace.com.

Transcript of the interview with Anna McPhee

Jo: Anna McPhee is an author, software engineer, professional speaker, and creative technologist. Her latest book is What Machines Can’t Replace: Why AI Makes Us More Human. So welcome to the show, Anna.

Anna: Hi, Joanna. Thank you so much for having me.

Jo: Oh, this is going to be a fun conversation. First up—

Tell us a bit more about you and your background in technology, as well as how you got into writing.

Anna: I have been in all of these things my whole life, as long as I can remember. When I was just a little girl, writing was my favourite thing, writing stories. It was the whole reason I went to school, to be honest. I always pictured myself as a writer before anything else.

My dad was a lecturer in software development, so when I was little, he would teach me how to code. So I’ve always done both, for as long as I can remember, and my mum is an artist. That’s been my upbringing, at the intersection of technology and art, and then writing is my own personal passion.

It’s naturally flowed throughout my life. I’ve been in and out of some other careers and chased all the things that have made me feel interested and passionate, but writing has always been there in the background. It’s something I do, whether it’s been for a hobby or for a profession, so it’s always been there.

Jo: But you work in software, right?

Anna: I do. I work in software, which came to me by chance. I set out as a digital nomad about 15 years ago now. I sold everything I owned and started travelling.

The way I thought I was going to fund this was through freelance writing, which I was very optimistic about. We all know now that’s a very challenging way to make an income, especially when you don’t have a background in it or a portfolio.

I did have this childhood background in software engineering and coding. So I set out to be a writer and travel the world as a writer, and actually what I ended up doing was building websites and writing software, because that’s what people would pay me to do. So I fell into both at the same time through this chance I took.

Jo: I think sometimes people think that programming and software development and these more technical fields are not creative. My husband was a programmer for a long time, and essentially programming is a language.

Well, there are lots of languages, but you are creating in a language with computers, right? So is there that much difference?

How do you fix these two things in your mind separately, or are they the same thing?

Anna: They’re so related. Many people might put writing into more of an art, and computer development and programming more into a maths or a science, but I just think there’s so much creativity in writing code, in how you choose to structure things, in the language you select for something, the way you approach it.

It’s very similar to writing a book, I think. I’ve found a lot of things that are very similar about it, to do with architecture even. When you look at the basics, some people might write a book with no idea where it’s going and see where it ends.

It’s the same with software. People might go into it and not have a plan. Most people will architect their software, or they’ll architect their story in the same way. I think there’s a lot of crossover between the two.

Jo: And there’s editing, and doing the “does this do what I want it to do?” I think with software perhaps it’s more obvious when something doesn’t do what you want it to do than with a book.

Anna: Perhaps. Although with AI now, it’s becoming a little more vague, because you can think your software’s doing what you want it to, but it might not be. It might just look like it is. I think those lines are getting a bit blurrier as technology changes.

There’s a lot of things in software development that are very similar to writing. We don’t have an editor, but we will have unit tests or code reviews, and maybe the CI tests, and we’ve got all these structures in place that are very similar to writing.

Jo: I also think what’s interesting, and this has been in the last maybe decade really, is that it used to be you would get a job in the old way, but—

Now it seems like your GitHub page, which is almost like your author platform, your programmer platform, can make a real difference in how people find you and your work.

So maybe talk a bit about that, because you have a GitHub page, don’t you?

Anna: I do have a GitHub page, and I’ve spent a lot of time on it, because you can set up your README file and make it a bit like a website, and introduce all of your projects and what you’re working on.

Just to combine it a little bit, actually, I use GitHub for my writing. I use it for version control so that I can go back and see the changes that I’ve made to the things that I’m writing.

Even with my book, I had a copy of it backed up in a private repository on GitHub where I could track changes and never lose a backup. I have so much faith in GitHub that it extends beyond the software I write and into everything I do. I keep a copy backed up in GitHub.

Jo: That’s actually quite funny because, coming into AI in the author community, one of the things that’s now talked about is how do you prove that your book is not a one-click generated book? And what you’ve actually got there is evidence of your process.

Anna: Exactly.

Jo: Which is kind of hilarious in many ways. Well, let’s get into this, because there’s so much fear and witch hunting right now and negativity in the author community.

As somebody who’s grown up with both art and the software side, where do you think those attitudes come from, and how have they changed in different ways?

Anna: Oh, people are really afraid. I’ve got a very moderate perspective, and I think I sit in a very similar position to you.

A large number of people that I hear from are either incredibly pro-AI, let it do everything for them, everything, everything, do it for absolutely everything you can think of. Or they’re completely terrified and very, very negative about it, and won’t use it for anything at all.

I can only assume this is going to stabilise with time. There’s been a huge amount of outrage against other technologies in the past, even calculators. All technology has come with scepticism and people scared that it’s going to take their jobs.

I think there’s a lot of misinformation out there as well, people who think that AI is trained on books, which it is, and that’s a totally valid concern with the copyright and things.

I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding around what training an AI model actually means in that regard. It’s not taking someone’s prose and reusing it. It’s looking at the underlying mathematical probability of, if you have this word, what is the probability of the next word being this? It’s broken down into numbers.

I’m not 100 percent sure, but from my perspective of seeing it, the witch hunt comes from a place of fear.

I saw an author in a group I’m in recently who said, “Oh, I’ve written so many novels, and I’ve run out of ideas for names for my characters. I’ve used every person I’ve ever met, I’ve used their name. That’s how many books I’ve written. How do I get more names?”

Someone suggested, “Well, why don’t you ask AI for some other names?” “Oh, no, no, no. I could never let AI take over my work like that.” And it was just over the idea of using it to ask a question.

So I think there’s a feeling that if you let it do one thing, next thing it’s going to be doing everything, and it’s going to erase you, and your ideas, and your way of doing things.

Jo: Just on that, it is interesting, though, isn’t it? Because I am trying to use it, like I use Claude Code, and I’m trying to use it for more, and more, and more.

I started off using ChatGPT the day it came out in 2022, and have increasingly tried to give the AI tools all the things that will free me up to do the things I love to do. Making lists of names is not on my list of things I love to do.

Anna: Yes, exactly. I feel the same way.

Jo: So that’s the thing, isn’t it? The fear is really interesting because we all have fear.

One very visceral time I remember feeling very scared was in the pandemic, in those early days when there wasn’t a vaccine. That’s really the only reference I think I have for it, because like you, I feel like I’ve grown up with technology, and so I’ve never felt it that way.

I’m hoping that as with COVID, as with things developing over time, and obviously again, misinformation is rampant, but—

I guess we got used to it. Is that the best we can hope for with AI?

Anna: I hope it’s better than that. I hope we can hope for better, that people can learn how to use it in a way that supports them.

As people become less fearful, like with COVID, they experiment a little bit here or there and start to see that there are ways to not let it take over.

In general, people are really bad at identifying AI-generated content. There are so many studies done on it, and it’s 50/50 at best. Good AI now produces stuff that a lot of people don’t recognise. So it’s more about the idea than the reality of it.

There’s this whole idea around it that AI will take our jobs, and I get asked all the time, “Well, when do you think AI’s going to take your job? You work on a computer.”

Well, it can take my job, and it has. I used to write code all the time, and now I write almost no code. I work for a very large software company, and we use a lot of AI in our development protocols, and I don’t write any code now, more or less, and a few years ago I did all day.

So my job has changed completely, and AI has taken my job, but it hasn’t taken my employment. I found a new way of being, which is I’m more of a project manager. I review code. I make sure nothing bad gets put out into the world. My role has changed, but it hasn’t been taken away.

I hope that as people start to see that this new technology is not taking their jobs, it’s taking the parts of their jobs off them that are so repeatable, and giving them more room to do more with the things that they are uniquely good at.

Jo: Absolutely. So let’s get into that, because you did just say there that you’re not writing any code, which is different to your writing for books. In your book, What Machines Can’t Replace, you talk about how you used AI assistance and how you did things in different ways.

I’ve been explicit about being AI-assisted since May 2023, so I absolutely am on board with the difference between what is assistance and what is generation. One-click generation of a complete book, while some people might choose to do that, that’s not what you and I are talking about. So tell us—

How did you use AI tools and these assisted processes for this book?

Anna: Right. So I used AI extensively for this book. However, I wrote every single word. I don’t want AI to take over my voice, and that is one area where it differs from writing code in a big way.

One-click generation, maybe one day AI will actually be very good at it, and we won’t be able to tell the difference. But currently, I definitely can. If I start reading something that is one-click generated, it becomes very obvious to me very quickly.

I use AI extensively in my day. I use a Claude plan which is the Max 20x, the biggest allowance plan, and I run out of limit every week. So I spend a lot of time seeing how it forms sentences and the kind of thing it says, so I think I’m quite sensitive to when I see it.

So for now, it’s not good for that, and I don’t think I ever want it to be. When I put something out in the world that is software, the thing that’s uniquely me is the concepts behind it or the way it functions. It’s not the code itself.

When I put writing out there, when I put a book out there, the words are the thing that’s me. They’re my signature, they’re my style.

So I used AI assistance for everything else. I used it to help me research, but then I would verify the sources myself, but it was so good at finding things.

I used it to transcribe my words. I would go out for long walks, and my ideas come to me when I’m out walking, like so many people.

So I’d just pick up my phone and voice record, “Oh, hey, I was thinking, years ago I heard about this study, and I think that would be really interesting, but I don’t really know the details of it. Can you make a note of this?”

Then my AI could go and research it, come back and say, “Oh, I think you’re talking about this research paper, and here’s a link to it.” It could add it into my notes, and I could still verify it and read it, but it saved me hours of manual trawling through Google Scholar looking for things.

So as a first step I used it for research, but I also used it all the way through the writing process. I’ve set up a lot of custom skills for all the different editor types. I’ve got a developmental editor, a line editor, a copy editor.

None of them are allowed to make any changes. They are only allowed to create reports of what they find. So I could check for consistency, or did I reference the right thing for this chapter? Does this flow okay? I could ask it questions about my work without it actually touching the words.

Another way I used it is I’d make more voice recordings, and then it would transcribe them and suggest where in my book they would fit best, and then copy and paste my exact words, word for word, into the right spot, and then I could edit it in.

So I used it for almost everything except the actual words, which remain mine, and the design as well. I value designers a lot, so I paid a cover designer to design my cover.

Jo: Yes, and all those things you were talking about, I also do.

How do you explain skills? Because I have like 100 skills now.

I do skills for everything. I’m struggling to explain what that is to people who don’t really understand.

Anna: Yes, skills are amazing, and it is difficult to explain. It’s like a little package, and it can contain prompts, it can contain scripts, it can contain information, and it can be called only when needed.

So if I created, for example, my developmental editor skill, it might be a folder that’s consumed by Claude and Claude Code, and only when it’s asked for, then it uses all of the stuff in its context and follows a set of instructions.

They’re just more powerful than a prompt because they’re reusable, and they live there, and it can be clever and know when to use ones without you invoking them directly as well.

I have another skill that’s just me, about me, and I keep it up to date with information about what I’m working on and who I am. If I’m doing something, I can say, “Well, don’t forget, check the About Me before you answer this.”

Or, “I’m working on this project I haven’t worked on in a while, but I created a skill to reference it. Before we start work on this, can you go and check in with the skill?” Kind of like a library.

Jo: It’s interesting, you’re talking about quite expansive skills, and I do have some of those, but a lot of my skills are really quite specific. Like, do a Shopify product in the way that we did Shopify products last time.

Or, this is how Joanna Penn wants the sales description for Amazon, so write the Amazon sales description for this. And then, say, on ChatGPT it’ll be like, right, do A+ content for this book. That kind of thing.

So it can be really, really specific, almost like a little program, right?

Then it can be, as you say, with memory and all this different stuff. Anything you want to do more than once, I think.

Anna: That’s a really good way to describe it. Also, because of my technical background, I trust code a lot more than I trust AI at the moment.

I really love AI, but the results vary, and you can run the same thing five times and get five different results, whereas if you run a code function five times, you will always get the same result if it’s a well-written function.

So for anything like that, I add code into my skills so that I can say, “When this is called, run this script,” and I know it’s always run the same way. You can get quite complex with skills and build some real programs inside them, or it can be just a few lines. Do this, this way.

I’ve got one I really enjoy at the moment I created called Research Me. I have so many ideas, always hundreds of ideas. So many of them are terrible. Some of them are good, and some of them are already done.

I just type Research Me, and then I just put my thought. It might be a word. It might be a line. It might be more than that.

Then it goes away and looks it up and sees if someone’s done this thing, and if it’s valid to me, and then creates a report and saves it in my knowledge base for me to look at another time.

Jo: I guess it’s not really a skill, but it’s more like part of the memory. I just say, put that in the backlog and bring it back in a month.

Anna: Oh, that’s so nice, too, being able to set schedules and reminders. Like, right now is not a good time, but I don’t want to let this idea go, so can you bring it back to me at this time? And it will. It’s wonderful for that.

Jo: It is good. Oh, and we should also say, you don’t have to write a skill. If you do something with Claude or ChatGPT or whatever, you can then say, “Create a skill for this,” and it will write it, and you can have a look at it, but you don’t have to sit there typing out how to do stuff.

I think often people think that you have to drive it a lot more, where it’s just so much of a conversation now, isn’t it?

Anna: Yes, it can be done completely with conversation. You don’t need to write out any instructions or any code, anything at all.

You could have a really positive experience doing something with Claude Cowork and then get to the end of that process and think, “Oh, that was wonderful. I definitely think I’ll do that again.”

So you just say, “Oh, that was great. Can you make that a skill so we can do it again the same way next time?” And it’ll create it, and you just click a button, say Add the Skill once it’s done, and that’s it.

Jo: There are so many things. Now, just coming back to your book, you do have at the end of each chapter some prompts, although I don’t like the word prompt anymore, because I feel like prompt is from the old way, when you would type in a certain prompt and then something would come back and that would be done.

Whereas now it’s much more of a conversation. So a prompt is almost a starting point. So you’ve used questions, I guess.

What are your recommendations for authors who want to get more into this but are still apprehensive and are worried about getting it wrong somehow?

Anna: Okay. Yes, I agree with you on prompting. That was a real buzzword for a while there. Everyone was going to be a prompt engineer, and the future of AI was prompting, prompt design. The systems are so much more capable now that it’s not what it was. It is definitely more of a conversation.

I think that is the good place to start, to just have a conversation with the AI about your work. It doesn’t have to touch your work. You could just ask for its opinion on something.

If you don’t want it to consume your whole book, there are privacy settings, and you can stop it from training on your material if that’s the concern, or you could use a local model. You could give it some of your writing and ask its opinion and start a conversation.

One thing about AI is that people forget you can just say to it, “What’s the best way to use you? Hi, I’m new here. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m a writer. How can you help me?” And it will tell you.

Jo: I think one of the other ways, if people don’t even want to use it for creative stuff… This morning, as we record this, I’ve been delving into the back end of my YouTube channel, which I’ve just ignored for years, actually, and Google Search Console, and there are all these errors everywhere.

I’m like, “I don’t understand that message.” Or I had an error on one of my files on Draft2Digital, and I was like, “Okay, ugh.” So now I just put those errors into Claude and say, “Right, how do I fix this?” Or, “Maybe you could fix this.”

That helps so much, because as author publishers or self-published authors, we do have a lot of technical things to do. Sometimes, well, all the time now, I think, getting help with it rather than ignoring it can be great.

Anna: Absolutely. It’s so good for that administrative stuff as well, especially with the addition of being able to use Claude, and a lot of the other ones as well, in your web browser now. So it can do things for you. It can fill out forms. There’s a lot of repetition in publishing a book.

You have to enter your ISBN in five million places, and you want to make sure that your information is aligned and that you have the same data in numerous different places, and you can ask it to check.

You can ask it to check your metadata on your website and say, “Does the author information for me align with what you’re seeing on Goodreads, or what you’re seeing on StoryGraph, or in Wikidata? Do you see any gaps that I need to address?” It’s really good at that stuff.

Or you can open a form and say, “Can you fill it out for me? I’m sick of typing.” And it will. It’s so good for the admin. Just amazing.

Jo: So good for admin, exactly. This is the thing, this whole “AI’s going to take my job.” Yes, please take 95% of my job and leave me with the bit I want to do.

Let’s get back into the book, because—

You also say in the book, “The more I worked with AI, the more I wanted the slow, imperfect physical things.” So tell us about that.

Anna: Yes. So AI swept me up. I’ve been, also like you, an early adopter, and absolutely obsessed with it right from day one. I just started to notice I needed more and more breaks, and I was valuing different things than I used to, and I was consuming and purchasing different things than I used to.

I started to see this changing, and I would spend more and more time out in the garden. I love my garden anyway, I’m a gardener.

I was just starting to recognise this feeling, and at first I couldn’t really put a name to it. What is this? Why am I searching out these things? Why do I want to create more than I did even before with my hands?

So I started looking into it, and it was very much a global phenomenon. Everyone seems to be doing this.

There’s been a really strong link between the introduction of AI into the world and things like record sales or sourdough baking, although that one also came during COVID, so that one’s a bit tricky to measure. But lots of other things are just getting more and more popular as the market gets saturated with AI-generated content.

People want to see things that a human has touched. The harder it becomes to actually see that in AI-generated content, the more people want other signs. If you can’t just read a piece of writing and know 100 percent sure a human wrote it or an AI wrote it, you start looking for other ways to tell.

So I really felt that in myself, and it was a very unsettling feeling, as someone who’s been very, very technology-forward all my life, to start valuing more and more things that weren’t technology.

Jo: Yes, I absolutely get this, and I think there’s also another aspect, which I feel you must feel too.

There are some days, if I use AI a lot, I almost feel like a hangover.

Because the speed at which I can now work means that my human wetware brain is overloaded. That feeling is both exhilarating and amazing, but also totally exhausting.

Anna: Yes. There’s a huge comedown from it. To me, in the beginning, it started feeling like eating a lot of sugar. Really, really great eating all these lollies. “Oh, this is amazing. These are so good.” And then afterwards, “Oh, I still feel hungry. I don’t feel fulfilled. I’m surrounded by lolly wrappers. What is this?”

It felt a lot like that to me, where it’s just creating all this stuff, and it felt like I was the master of the universe. Wow, I can create anything and everything, and let me do this and that and this and that.

Then I’m like, well, but all of the stuff I’ve created isn’t that great, because it doesn’t feel that good, and I didn’t really make it. I just pushed buttons and said yes. It’s a weird disconnect kind of hangover feeling if you spend too much time and create too much that way.

Jo: It makes me think of the BCI, the brain-computer interface. With Neuralink now, there are people who are paraplegic for whom it is absolutely amazing, but the thought of plugging something into my brain that would try and make my brain go even faster, I’m like, I don’t think that our human brains are designed to go this fast. I just can’t.

Anna: That’s fair.

Jo: I can’t see that happening.

Anna: It’s a tough one. Personally, I have ADHD, so already the distractions are something I have to rein in, and then with this ability to create so many things all at once, it’s hard to have some self-control.

I think with time that, for me, has gotten much easier, but in the early days it was a lot. It was very overstimulating to have so many things happening so quickly, all at the same time.

Jo: Yes, and actually I’m quite grateful for the usage limits. I primarily use Claude Fable, which I just love, but I keep an eye on my usage limits, and then I almost use that as a way to stop myself from using it too much at once, and that is actually very freeing.

The other thing, I mean, you mentioned it there, creating all the things and then realising, you said, they’re not that good. I think that they are becoming incredibly excellent, but for me it was like, okay, well, now, for example, I could do TikTok.

I could get AI to do loads of TikTok videos and pump them out every day, but I don’t want to do that. So why would I?

Anna: Yes. I really want things that go out to feel like me, and I feel when I generate anything, whether it’s content, whether it’s pictures, or software as well, that AI will very quickly get me 80 to 90% of the way there, and very well these days. But the last 10 to 20%, I really put so much of myself into, and that’s a really active choice.

So I end up with all these other things that I’ve gotten to that 80% very quickly and then thought, “I don’t know if I really want to invest myself in this and what I need to get it to a place where I would put it into the world.”

So I end up with a sort of graveyard of these mostly finished projects that I’m not quite happy enough with to put out there, but I don’t really want to put in the work myself, because I have limited time, and you choose your things. No human can really polish up 100 things. You have to prioritise what you want to.

Jo: That is exactly it, and this is what I want people to understand. Everything you’re saying and everything I’m saying, we are talking about feeling a lot. We’re excited on the one hand and we’re doing stuff, and then there are other things we’re not excited about.

You can feel the difference in your body, in your mind, when what you are working on excites you, and I think we just have to trust that.

So people listening, what excites you to do with these tools, and what doesn’t excite you?

Just trust that feeling and put things in the world where you’re like, “Wow, this is fantastic,” or, “I love that it’s helping me with that.” I mean, you can just tell the difference in our conversation, right?

Anna: Right, and you don’t have to put everything out there as well. Just because you build something with AI, or you use it to help you in something, it’s an experiment. Treat it as an experiment.

If you get to 80%, 90% and think, “I don’t want to put my name to this,” then don’t. Move on. It was an experiment, and you learned something from it.

Jo: So I guess on that then, if we do put things out in the world, like we’ve talked about, we’re happily AI-assisted, and the things we do put out we’re really proud of—

How can we communicate these aspects of imperfection, the story behind the object, this real person with a real history, so that people know our humanity, basically?

Anna: I really encourage people to share their humanness behind everything they’re creating. If you’re writing a book, you can share the process on socials, for example. It’s becoming very desired to see the not-polished, everyday videos of someone’s creative process. That’s just one really small way.

I think just by nature, by creating it, by not letting AI do the creation work for you, you will show through in the work that you’re doing. You can use AI to support you and to do the admin and to take away all the stuff that’s boring or repetitive, but if you are doing the work, it is going to be visible to people.

I know we’re not very good as humans right now at necessarily distinguishing AI-generated content against not, but you can tell when someone is writing about a human experience. AI has not had a human experience. It has not had a body. It doesn’t have this embodiment that leads to so much of human creativity and ideas.

It is a very clever predictive text tool, and it is very, very good at it, but it does lack true human creativity.

So I think what all creatives can keep in mind is that if they’re putting themselves into it and creating new things and following their passions and their interests and their art in what they’re putting out there, it will show through.

Jo: Also, I think just on the marketing side, you mentioned your garden, for example. Now, I know you’re a mum, but anyone can share pictures of their garden without privacy issues for their children or their family or anything.

So I think sharing human, even like your hand in the dirt with some flowers or something, is still a very human image.

So people can share more human elements around their life.

I mean, I almost have in my Instagram a sort of proof of humanity at this point.

Anna: Yes, I think that’s becoming more and more important. A few weeks ago, I got a horrible review on my book, and I know everyone has to face this, but it was someone who clearly hadn’t read my book.

They just said it was all AI-generated crap, pretty much. It was a waste of time, and it should’ve come with a warning that it was entirely AI-generated, which is so far from the truth. I put so much time into that book that I was really quite hurt by it.

My first thought was, “I need to get rid of this. I need this review to go away. I need to complain. I need to report this review because it is false.” And once I recovered from those feelings, instead what I did was I emailed my mailing list and said, “Hey, this person reviewed this, and this is why it hurt me, because I’m a person.”

I got a really nice response. I got a lot of people writing to me like, “That person is an idiot. You’re great. Your book’s wonderful.” And it was so nice.

It was quite challenging to be vulnerable, and instead of trying to sweep this thing under the rug, I just showed up with my humanness to my list and said, “Hey, this is me, and this hurts because I’m a person.” It was really validating in the end to just put some humanness out there.

Jo: This is what I really hate about all this witch hunting, is that people seem to have forgotten that there are actual humans behind this, and I know how you feel. I remember, in fact, it was 2023, I was in New Zealand. We should have said, you’re in Australia, if people are wondering about your accent.

Anna: I am. I’m from New Zealand originally. I’m a New Zealander, but I’m living in Australia.

Jo: But I remember walking along the waterfront from the Viaduct. I still remember it, because I was being absolutely hammered on social media and comments and all this, and I said to my husband, “I think I have to leave the internet.”

I felt like people just don’t understand this, and I was getting so much hate. But as you say, it was about communicating that with my community, who are listening, and basically changing my Patreon to put a lot of it behind the Patreon paywall.

I also topped doing a lot of interviews like this because of the negativity. Now, I’m hoping that we’ve moved on enough that people can be more open. Doing this interview, for example, is a way of showing people your humanity and mine.

I’m just so determined that people understand the difference between assistance and generation.

As you said at the beginning, it seems to be all or nothing, but that’s just not true.

Anna: Right, and there’s a huge spectrum of what AI support is. A huge, huge spectrum, and I don’t think they’re understanding. I think it will get there, but right now people say, “Well, that was AI-generated,” or it wasn’t. That’s just not how it is.

Maybe it was partially AI-generated. Maybe it was fully AI-assisted, but not at all AI-generated. Maybe you decide to use AI to make your book cover, but you just make components with AI, and then you assemble it using Adobe Illustrator into a cover.

Is that AI-generated? It’s a very grey area. No, it’s definitely assisted. Pieces of it might be AI-generated, but it as a whole conceptually fully came from your creativity and from your mind.

It’s the same with writing. If you use Grammarly to autocorrect any spelling errors in your book, it would now get flagged as AI-assisted content. But some people see that as AI-generated, and they’re two very, very different things.

Jo: Well, I think your book is great. It gives some very grounded advice on things, but also you do share, like you mentioned, a lot about being a mum, about being a gardener, about life, about the human aspect. So I highly recommend What Machines Can’t Replace: Why AI Makes Us More Human.

Where can people find you and the book online?

Anna: Thank you so much. My book should be just about everywhere books are sold online, and if not, WhatMachinesCantReplace.com is the website for my book.

My personal website is Anna.kiwi, A-N-N-A dot kiwi, because I’m a Kiwi, and I am very happy with that domain. I have a blog and general contact information there.

I’m also all around the internet on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, everywhere. So I’m really happy to chat to anyone anytime about all things engineering, software, AI, books, toddlers, gardens, everything.

Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Anna. That was great.

Anna: Thank you so much.

The post What Machines Can’t Replace: Why AI Makes Us More Human With Anna McPhee first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you redesign your author business for the publishing environment that actually exists, rather than the one you wish you had? And how do you decide which marketing efforts will still bring readers to your books in ten years’ time? Tracy Cooper-Posey shares her solar sail theory after more than 25 years as an author.

In the intro, reviving your backlist [The Indy Author]; AI as a medium [Tim O’Reilly]; How to Write, Publish, and Market Short Stories – Joanna Penn.

ProWritingAid Storyteller sale: Thursday, 3rd September until September 13th 2026 — 25% off all annual licenses as well as Story Critique credits.

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

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Tracy Cooper-Posey is the multi-award-winning author of over 200 novels and works of nonfiction, science fiction, fantasy, romance, and historical fiction under three pen names. Her books for authors include The Indie Author Survival Guide and The Productive Indie Fiction Writer.

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

• Learning to write again after chemo, one sentence at a time
• What enshittification means, and why it is the environment rather than you
• The hallmarks of an indie author business that persists over time
• The solar sail theory of long-term discoverability
• Why social media and paid ads have such a short half-life
• How to find and reduce the operational drag on your business

You can find Tracy at ProductiveIndieFictionWriter.com or StoriesRulePress.com.

Transcript of the interview with Tracy Cooper-Posey

Jo: Tracy Cooper-Posey is the multi-award-winning author of over 200 novels and works of nonfiction, science fiction, fantasy, romance, and historical fiction under three pen names. Her books for authors include The Indie Author Survival Guide and The Productive Indie Fiction Writer. So welcome back to the show, Tracy.

Tracy: Hi, Jo. It’s great to be back.

Jo: Yes. So you were last on the show in October 2023 talking about The Productive Indie Fiction Writer, and we went into depth then.

So give us a bit of an update on your author business and also your life.

Because it has been a bit of an up and down.

Tracy: Yes, it’s been a very interesting three years, because I had just gone into remission with cancer when we were talking last. Now I’m out of remission again and facing treatment in the next few weeks. My husband got cancer and went through treatment, and he’s cured.

So life has been pretty interesting. All that has made me do a lot of deep thinking about the indie author business and my own business and writing in general.

So I’m still here. I’m still publishing, 200 plus books now. I had to learn how to write again. But the writing has shifted a lot towards science fiction and fantasy, including cosy science fiction now, which is the new genre that’s just creeping in.

All three pen names have been Aurealis Award finalists, which is nice. I’m still continuing the nonfiction work, which is something that you said the last time that we spoke. You said, “Now that you’ve written one, it’s likely you’ll write more nonfiction.” And I did.

Jo: You did. They’re excellent books. Just on that, you mentioned cosy sci-fi. For anyone who might not know, where is that genre?

What’s in that genre of cosy sci-fi?

Tracy: It’s not really officially a genre yet. It started off with cosy fantasy, which was where the cosy started.

Actually, technically it started with cosy mystery, and everyone understands cosy mystery. The body and the murder are off stage. There’s a lot of tea drinking. There’s lots of friends, and it’s all very polite and mannered.

You’re focusing more on the emotions and the feel, and they’ve picked up that cosy aspect of mystery and put it on fantasy.

So you get books like, I think the primary one is Legends and Lattes. It’s about an orc that’s running a coffee shop because they got sick of fighting, and the adventures that they have trying to run their coffee shop.

So if you pick up that same cosy sensation and put it on science fiction, that’s cosy science fiction. But it’s so new that it doesn’t have a category on Amazon or anything like that.

Cosy fantasy does now. Amazon just created a cosy fantasy category a while ago. But cosy science fiction is so new that people are still arguing over which books are cosy science fiction and which are not.

Jo: Oh, that’s interesting. You’re incredibly prolific. You always have been.

You mentioned there that you had to learn how to write again after cancer.

What do you think happened, and how did you relearn? Because there are people listening who go through these similar things.

Tracy: I think a lot of what happened was, well, life just became incredibly complex and challenging, and just getting through a day of pain took a lot of the energy, what they call the spoons. I didn’t have the spoons to write anymore.

Also you get chemo brain, which is the really interesting one. When I was going through chemo, I would look at a spreadsheet and just couldn’t figure out how it worked. It just didn’t make sense to me, so I had to hand over the finances and everything to Mark, which was rather interesting.

The way I got myself back into writing again was, it was such an alien idea that writing wasn’t even on my radar from day to day. I just didn’t have the energy or the concentration to do it.

So I started off really, really small. The first thing I did was read a lot of favourite books from other authors just to remember why I loved reading. Then I started reading my own books that I had written, just to remind myself of what I used to love about my own work.

Then I just cracked the manuscript one day and read as far as I had written and thought, “Okay, what’s the next sentence?” And that’s the only thing that I would let myself do, was just write the next sentence. That’s it. So I wrote the next sentence, and sat there and thought, “Do I want to write the next sentence?”

On that particular day, no, I didn’t. But I just kept opening the manuscript and looking and thinking about the next sentence, and eventually I wrote a few more. I think it was that coming back to the manuscript over and over with no pressure, just look at it, can you get the next sentence written?

Very slowly I started building up, and now I’m pretty much back to the speed that I was at before the diagnosis.

Jo: So I guess we could think about it in the same way that your body is physically recovering, your mind is also recovering.

It almost feels like people want to disconnect the two.

If you get a physical injury, that shouldn’t affect your brain. But as you mentioned, having chemo, that in itself is difficult and has impacts on your brain. So if people think about it more as an injury you have to come back from, rather than day one you’re back in, I guess.

Tracy: Yes. It’s really a rehabilitation-style process, and I think the key is you’ve got to take all pressure off yourself. I know that, for me in particular, because I was such a workhorse, I could feel this stress because I just wasn’t getting things done.

Once I gave myself permission to just take as long as it takes and just keep coming back to it, that helped enormously. It still took time for that rehabilitation process to actually work.

There’s a lot of forgiving yourself, and it has to be a gentle process, I think, because situations like cancer and chemo and whatever the situation is that’s pulled you away from your manuscript, they’re big life events, and there is a lot of stress involved with them both physically and mentally.

So you have to give yourself time.

Jo: Yes, it’s so important. Okay, well, also in these last three years, as you said, you’ve got back to writing, and one of the books you have also written is The Anti-Enshittification Field Manual for Indie Authors. You also use Cory Doctorow’s enshittification concept around the mature indie author industry.

So just talk about what that term [enshittification] means?

We think it is now established in the industry, in terms of what is going on there. How do we recognise it and adjust?

Tracy: It’s a very interesting term. The first time I heard it I raised my brows a bit. I was thinking, “Well, that’s a bit cheeky.” The more you think about it, the more appropriate the name is.

Basically, Cory Doctorow’s idea is that any platform, so for the sake of this discussion, let’s say Amazon, starts out serving its users extremely well because it needs them.

When everyone first got into indie publishing, Amazon was open doors and you could just publish a book and it would sell, because they would push the book and they would do everything they could to make sure that readers saw your book.

Then slowly and increasingly, the platform extracts value from those users for somebody else’s benefit, usually shareholders, and ultimately for itself. You can track this process where it starts off really great for the users and then slowly shifts so that it becomes a less than stellar experience for the users.

For indie authors, we’re particularly exposed because our business sits on top of these platforms. So recognising that a lot of the platforms that we use now have enshittified, excuse me, or are in the process of doing that, that really helps. Because I think for years we were treating everything as a separate problem.

We were worrying about organic reach, we were worrying about advertising becoming more expensive. There’s subscription creep, there’s deteriorating customer service, algorithm changes. Visibility was increasingly pay to play, and it’s so much more than that now. The platforms keep removing features or changing the terms.

Individually it just looks like a mess, but as soon as you put them together and say, “Oh, I understand now. The platform is enshittifying,” you can see the structural pattern.

It actually applies to so many platforms and services. Once you see it, well, for me in particular, that was an enormously positive realisation, because until I saw the pattern, I thought I was failing, and nothing I was doing seemed to work anymore.

Once I understood the environment itself had changed, I could stop trying to fix myself and start redesigning the business for the environment that actually exists.

Jo: Yes, and that is the point.

Redesigning your business for the environment that exists.

Because what you mentioned there, I feel like some people still think that organic reach exists.

I guess some people will say, “Oh, well, at the moment you can still put a video on, say, TikTok, and it might find an audience there.” Are people still building an audience in these newer platforms? But I think that’s the point, isn’t it?

I guess Substack would be another one. Although we already see that heading in the same direction, with various things. As soon as you go in there thinking, “Yes, I’m going to get organic reach,” even if there is any, it follows this way, doesn’t it?

Tracy: It does. And this is what’s so great about it, is once you recognise this pattern, you see it everywhere, and you can actually track a new platform through that process, and you can anticipate that, okay, maybe we’re going to get organic discovery right now, but that’s going to diminish.

That way you’re not disappointed, and you’re all set up for when that happens. That means that you can reduce your dependency on these platforms and not expect them to behave like they did in 2011.

Jo: It’s interesting, though, with Amazon, for example, we’ve definitely seen that as authors. But on the other side, as a customer, as a reader particularly, I used to find a lot of books on Amazon directly. I’m almost entirely now finding books elsewhere, often through AI, actually, often through Claude.

Tracy: Yes, exactly.

Jo: And then going on Amazon to maybe get the book.

It feels like for readers it’s changed too, right?

Tracy: Exactly. I mean, indie authors are particularly vulnerable because their entire business is built on these platforms, but this applies to everyone. It’s not just indie authors. As you say, it’s readers. They’re noticing too that the decay of these platforms is starting to impact them as users.

I’m exactly like you. I tend to buy my books from Kobo, but I will buy my books from anywhere, and I learn about those books from a dozen different places. I don’t rely on just one platform anymore.

It’s really great once you understand this because then you can build an independent mindset that lets you flex around issues.

Jo: Yes, and obviously we like to dwell on the positives here. So given that this is just a reality of the market and various platforms—

What are the hallmarks of an indie author business that is more likely to persist over time given the reality of this?

Tracy: Okay. Well, I think that the biggest part of it is, as I mentioned before, it’s the mindset. Recognising these patterns is really a big one, recognising where a platform is in the process.

Also developing a very independent mindset. I mean, we’ve been saying we’re indie authors since 2011, but we were still really relying on those platforms to provide most of our business.

I think these days the new indie author is much more independently minded. Even though you’re using the platforms, and we’re all using them, you develop a flexibility. You understand the industry, and you’re making plans ahead of it, so you’ve got the flexibility there, and the business thinking, which really helps.

You deal with any problems that come up. Every time there’s an algorithm change, you’re not going to wake up in the morning and just go through mourning because half your income has disappeared.

You’re ready with alternatives, and you’ve got different things that you can try. So that mindset, that thinking about and recognising patterns and how the industry is going, is critical. Once you’ve got that in place, then there’s a huge number of strategies that you might want to incorporate.

This is the thing, every indie author’s business is different. We’re all in different situations. I have health challenges, someone else may have a day job. I write a lot of books. Someone may be only able to produce a couple of books a year.

We’re writing in different genres. If you’re writing literature, that’s different from the sort of science fiction that I write.

So the business and how it responds to the conditions out there is going to be different as well. So what you do as an author and for your business will be different.

There’s a lot of strategies that you can try and see which are most effective for you. One of the biggest, for instance, is something that you say a lot too, diversify your income. Have a durable backlist. Work to get your backlist built up.

Direct sales is another strategy that I would say is almost mandatory for every indie author these days. I know a lot of indie authors are going, “Oh, but I’ve only got two books.” Doesn’t matter. If you can sell from your site using just a PayPal link, that’s direct sales, and that works. That gives you a lot more independence and agency.

Owning your reader relationships, making sure that you keep the readers close, I think that’s another critical one. Making sure that you’re resilient for the platform so you can adjust when there’s changes. And on and on. There’s a lot of things that you can do to adapt.

Jo: Yes. I think it’s interesting just thinking about when you said, for example, direct sales is good for every indie author.

I would say every indie author who wants to have a long-term business—and I think that’s a really key thing. Because I feel like it’s still important to have a difference between people who are writing primarily as a hobby or are not looking for the financial income that you and I think about. So I think that’s one thing.

I totally agree with you that just having a PayPal button or even selling some physical copies at a local fair or something, that all counts. I think it almost proves something and gives you that more independent mindset. It’s like, “Yes, I can actually do this.”

That is such a powerful reframe rather than, “I cannot do anything except upload my book on Amazon.”

Tracy: Yes. And actually, funny you should mention the live markets, because we experimented over the last year with attending a few live markets and selling books, and there is a genuine power, a little thrill that you get when you sell a book, and you can sign it on the spot for them, and the reader is right there and you’re face to face.

That process is suddenly not this anonymous process, where you find that you’ve sold a book overnight and you’ve got no idea who it is that bought it. That person’s right there in front of you, so you can sign the book for them and you have a little exchange.

It’s really empowering to build that independence into your business.

Jo: Yes, and then you also mentioned the durable backlist. Do you think that having books in multiple genres, including nonfiction, is part of how you can make a living?

As in, I think people often think, “Oh, maybe if I just write 20 books in one series.” I mean, maybe that works in some genres. I guess thrillers, actually, that can sometimes work, but you do so many things.

Is it the 80/20 rule, that 20% of your books make 80% of the income, or does it literally vary from year to year?

Tracy: Well, it does swing from year to year. But yes, generally the 80/20 rule holds. It’s different from year to year, which 20% is making the 80% of the money.

As I mentioned, I’m moving into science fiction and fantasy more, because that’s actually more successful for me right now than the romance is.

The other thing is, I think it really comes down to the individual author too. Some authors do very well just doing the one genre or even just the one series, and for them it’s great.

I always worry that that’s putting all your eggs in one basket. I think, though, to counter that vulnerability, if you’re just doing one series or one genre, go wide. Sell as wide as you can, and that gives you a bit of a hedge against vulnerability.

It’s a different situation for every author, and it’s very hard for me to say, “Well, here’s a 15-step list that’ll give you all the answers,” because that 15-step list doesn’t exist anymore, if it ever did. Just because everyone’s business is so different.

You need to do a lot of experimenting, I think, and find what works for you. That sounds like I’m waving off the answer, but I’m really not. You really do have to figure it out for yourself.

If you do adopt that experimental mindset and say, “Okay, I’m going to do this for six months and track my statistics and see if there’s any results there worth pursuing.”

Jo: See what happens. Yes, and it’s interesting you’ve also moved more into the nonfiction. Let’s get into your solar sail theory, because I’ve followed you on and off since we met, like a decade ago.

Tracy: It was 10 years ago.

Jo: I know. It’s crazy. It’s really crazy. For those listening, we met in Oregon, at the Oregon Workshops with Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

I’ve been reading your blog pretty avidly around this solar sail theory, which I love, and now you’re talking about writing science fiction, I can appreciate it more.

What is your solar sail theory and some of the ways to build it?

Tracy: Okay, so solar sail theory is a theory in science. Well, I was going to say science fiction, but there’s solid science behind it. Solar sails are a way, they think, because it’s never been proven yet, of propelling a spacecraft.

You have this huge sail, like kilometres wide, and what it does is it captures photons. Photons are basically light. So when the light hits the solar sail, it gives it a minuscule amount of push, but there’s no friction in space, so that push just keeps the ship going and going.

So when you’ve got kilometres of sail, all the photons hitting that can bring a ship up to enormous speeds, like a fraction of light speed, which sounds small if you’re not used to science, but a fraction of light speed is enormously fast, and these solar sails can bring a ship up to those sorts of speeds.

So you can cross to the next star without needing faster-than-light travel or warp speed or something like that. Put that theory over the top of the indie publishing industry and you suddenly get a very interesting way of thinking about the industry, and it helps you make decisions.

So it’s not a prescription. Again, it’s not a 15-step, here’s how to conquer the universe. It’s a decision matrix. It helps you figure out what’s going to work for you.

Whatever strategy or tactic it is that you’re thinking about doing, you can ask the question, does this extend my sail?

So does it leave something behind that can continue to make me discoverable? So for instance, a 30-second radio advertisement probably is not going to leave anything behind that’ll let readers discover you, because once it’s aired, it’s gone.

On the other hand, a podcast interview like this. The podcast interview that I did with you three years ago, I’m still getting people finding me and finding The Productive Indie Fiction Writer three years later because of that.

So that’s extending the sail, and it’s just a little tiny push, like a photon. Blog posts also, they surface indefinitely, so readers can find them 10 years later. And because you’re the host of your own podcast, all your podcast interviews and the website, they’re also creating surface area, so people keep finding you years later.

Also guest articles, and a book in a library. Your entire back catalogue is all part of the solar sail.

Jo: I know people listening are going, “But what about social media?”

Tracy: Yes. Social media is a tricky one because it’s such a short half-life. I think on Facebook, if anyone sees your post at all, after two hours it’s basically gone.

They never see it unless they actually go to your account, and they need to have heard of you in order to go to your account and see the post. So that makes social media not really a good solar sail builder.

It has other uses, and as long as you understand that it does have this very short half-life, then you can use it for the things that it’s good at.

Jo: Yes, the same with paid ads, for example. Paid ads are the same as social media. Perhaps a quicker push, but as you say, the half-life is quicker.

Tracy: Yes. Exactly. Paid ads come and go. There’s nothing out there that’ll let the reader find you in a couple of years’ time. So they’re very short term.

A lot of people can build their business on these short-term things. They spend thousands of dollars on paid ads each month, and that works for them, but if they stop doing it, then their business halts. It comes to a grinding halt.

Whereas if you’re building your solar sail, it’s a long-term way of setting up your business, so it just keeps ticking on.

Jo: Your series of posts on the solar sail, which are also in The Indie Author Survival Guide, they are nonfiction, useful things.

So what about for the fiction side? What do you suggest people do around content marketing?

Tracy: Well, it all applies to both fiction and nonfiction. I usually write, because The Productive Indie Fiction Writer is addressing fiction authors, this does all apply to fiction as well.

As I was saying, your book catalogue, because you’re on Amazon, and Barnes & Noble, and Kobo, and Apple, and maybe Google as well, all of those pages are part of your sail. Your own site, all the book pages on your own site are part of the sail.

There’s different ways to do it, but the common one is you have this standard sail out there that helps readers find you. You coax them to come to your site, and there you try to capture them as readers.

So that usually means your email list. Some people use Substack now. There are other alternatives I’m sure I haven’t thought of, but email seems to be the principal one. Then you can build that relationship with the readers over the long term.

The solar sail just brings all those readers to you so that you can develop that relationship and keep the readers close. For fiction authors, I think this is critical. This helps you build independence from the retail platforms.

Jo: Yes, it is interesting. I would put podcasting and YouTube in particular. So I had someone, they were in my Patreon, and they said, “I’m no longer subscribed to your email list because I hear from you in Patreon and on the podcast.”

I was thinking about my own behaviour, and for the podcast that I am a hardcore fan of, I’m not on their email list. I was thinking it is because my relationship with those people is more auditory, I guess. The same with YouTubers. People end up subscribing to your YouTube channel.

Then the problem still is, if I stop podcasting today, then I can’t contact those people again.

Except that I know lots of podcasters who stop podcasting and then maybe two years later they just pop on with an update episode. And people are like, “Oh, I never unsubscribed from you on my feed.” So that can appear years later.

I definitely still agree that the email list is primary.

But if you’re somebody listening and you’re a more audio or video person, I think we can probably think about the relationship with people on these different dimensions.

Tracy: Yes, and some people definitely prefer the audio. I’m utterly text-based myself. I prefer to read. But yes, podcasting, apart from anything else, is a way of keeping contact with the readers, and they can email you in return.

So it is a two-way process, so you can develop that relationship. So if that works for you, that is a good alternative.

The other thing is too, of course, every episode that you’ve recorded and put on a webpage is also building your sail. So more and more people are finding you. So podcasting is interesting. If you’re guest posting on someone else’s blog, that’s a somewhat time-consuming way, but it does build up your sail as well.

Jo: The only problem with that, I would say, as someone who used to have guest posts, is it’s still my website.

When it came to auditing my website, about five years ago—and the thing is, because my website’s been around since 2008, I had some people guest posting in the early days—and I was like, “This should not be here anymore.”

So I am able to get rid of people’s things when they’re on my site, in the same way that Amazon can take down your book or whatever.

Tracy: Yes, and that’s where the anti-enshittification process comes in. That’s where developing that independent mindset comes in. One of the questions that you need to ask is, how permanent is this? What happens if it goes away?

Tat’s why blogging on your own site is probably a stronger and better decision than guest blogging on other people’s sites, because they have control of that.

Jo: Yes, absolutely. So there’s so much in these books. These are all excellent books. I feel like you know so much after decades in the trenches, and I love that you’re putting out everything in these books.

I did want to ask you one specific thing, because obviously we’re increasing the size of our sail. But if we have massive amounts of drag, so we have sea anchors or whatever we want to call it in our metaphor, we have to sort that out too. So in The Indie Author Survival Guide, you have a section on protecting the margins.

So I wondered if you would talk about the specific ways to think about what is operational drag and how can we reduce it?

Tracy: Well, we just actually hit the perfect example. Guest blogging has more drag than blogging on your own site does, because you don’t have control over it, so it can disappear.

It requires maintenance. It takes your time. So drag is basically anything that is going to slow you down once you’ve built up speed, coming back to the solar sail theory. The sail will keep you moving, but because we’re not working in a vacuum anymore, we’re not in space, there are things that can slow you down.

Particularly for mature author businesses, we accumulate all this cruft. For instance, Barnes & Noble recently changed their website so that all the URLs for a book changed, and that doesn’t sound like a big deal, but I’ve got 200 books. So suddenly the links didn’t work pointing to Barnes & Noble for every book.

So the Books2Read universal book links had to be changed for all 200 books.

Jo: Oh, I did know that and I haven’t done it.

Tracy: This is the thing, is when you’ve only got five books, it’s like 10 minutes’ worth of work, no problems, and you just move on. When you’ve got 200 books, that’s suddenly a big deal.

I only found out accidentally that they had changed them, and once I had confirmed that every single link no longer worked, it was suddenly a massive project.

There’s also the money drag. Everything these days is software as a subscription. Even Microsoft Office, you’ve got to pay the fee every year.

It works well in theory, because you’re getting updated software all the time, but you have a dozen of those or two dozen, suddenly you’re spending a lot of money every year for software that once upon a time we used to pay a flat fee for and that was it.

So it pays to go through and figure out what expenses you can get rid of or diminish, or can you find a cheaper version.

There’s advertising. Some advertising just isn’t worth spending the money on. If you’re doing pay-per-click advertising, you need to monitor it all the time, so that’s a time sink that you’re blowing money on, technically, because your time is money.

There’s also, you may not be managing it quite as well as you could, so you’re actually burning more money because the ads are not working as effectively as they could. More drag. You need to go through every aspect.

There’s time drag, repetitive tasks. For instance, Mark and I have, for about, I think we’re coming up on 11 years now, we track our sales.

Every morning we sit down and go through every platform and record the sales for that day in a spreadsheet so that we can do analysis. It’s a good way to spend time because it’s got extreme uses.

There’s a lot of little tasks that you might do, especially if you’ve been working in the business as long as I have. All these little tasks will build up, and suddenly you forget why you’re doing them. Or the conditions have changed and it’s not worth doing them anymore. They may not be providing the value that they once used to.

So you have to go through and make sure that you’re reducing the drag on your business as much as possible so that you can keep moving.

Jo: Yes. I had two more extra ones there.

You mentioned the things that we do that perhaps we don’t need to do anymore. If people are outsourcing, if you have virtual assistants, if you are paying for some kind of service outside your own time, sometimes you can have that going and then when you think, do I need that anymore?

So I know some people still do pay for turning posts into social media or making book trailers. That’s a good one. Or there’s things that people are paying for, and then you might realise that you don’t need that service anymore, or you don’t need everything that that social media manager is doing anymore.

So realistically looking at the benefits of what you’re getting.

Tracy: Yes, constant review.

Jo: Yes. Constant review. Then the other thing I was thinking is a mindset drag. So right now, as we’re recording this, in the author community, there’s this witch hunting going on around AI usage.

Tracy: Yes.

Jo: It’s the latest thing that’s causing massive drama.

I feel like it’s almost mindset drag to get dragged into some of this drama, and it saps the energy.

That can really pull on your boat, on your solar boat.

Tracy: Well, actually, I’ve found that, and this is all part of the indie author mindset, and it’s also part of the anti-enshittification process too.

I did a lot of research on AI. I did a lot of reading. I listened to a lot of different discussions about it, and then I formed my own policy. What’s my policy for AI? What’s my policy around AI and its use and so forth?

I find that once I had developed that policy for myself, suddenly there’s not as much mental drag with all the AI discussions and the witch hunts and all the drama that’s going on around it, because I know where I’m sitting and I’m quite comfortable with my position.

So I think for a lot of people, it can become very emotional and draining if you still haven’t figured out where you sit on the spectrum of AI use. But that’s actually how I tackled it, because I was getting very tired of all the dramas. It is draining, and it worries you.

So I deliberately went out and did a lot of research and reading, and figured out where I stood, and that made a huge difference for me.

Jo: Yes. And again, that’s something to look at on your schedule. So maybe in a year’s time you re-look at things again and change your decision. I think the same thing with the traditional versus self-publishing versus wide versus KU, and you could just go on.

There are pros and cons in every single direction, right? At the end of the day, it’s almost the decision fatigue that’s stopping you. Or you could say, again, our solar boat has to go in a particular direction. You can’t go in every direction at the same time. You just have to make a decision, right?

Tracy: Yes. I think being as informed as possible about the industry is one of the big ones. I’ve spent a lot of time doing a lot of reading, not just about indie publishing over the last few years, but everything to do with publishing and also everything to do with business, because we are in business.

That’s a bit of a cliché, that a lot of indie authors, their eyes just glaze over when they hear that you’re in business. There are aspects of running a business that we just don’t get taught as indie authors or as creatives that I think we should be teaching each other or getting each other to learn, because it’s basic business survival.

Things like pricing, that is an enormously complex business topic, pricing. Most of us are, “Well, what’s everyone else doing? Okay, I’ll do that.” That’s how they make their decisions. There’s a lot more to it than that, and it’s very complex.

We don’t have to get a PhD in business management, but I think a little bit more awareness about basic business principles would serve all of us much better.

Jo: Yes, there’s always so much to learn, but I actually think you’ve done a really good job with your books. I mean, The Indie Author Survival Guide is a great place to start. They’re super, super useful.

I do want to talk about—as we come to an end—you’ve been doing this a long time, as have I, and we’ve both got some battle scars along the way.

You do end your books with hopeful realism, which I like. Now, I’m definitely more of an optimist than you, but I feel like hopeful realism is a good place.

So how can people cultivate that feeling of hopeful realism around the business?

Tracy: I don’t know. Are you more of an optimist than me? Anyway. Well, let’s see, because for me, all the book writing and all the research and all the reading that I’ve been doing over the last few years have given me back a lot of optimism that I didn’t have.

As I was saying, it was feeling as though I couldn’t do anything right. So learning that it wasn’t just me that’s the problem gave me back my confidence. So that’s where the hopeful realism and the optimism came in.

So hopeful realism, okay, it comes from understanding, from agency, and from choice. If you understand the industry as it actually exists, not the way you wish it did, and you understand the forces acting on your business and where you sit within them, that helps enormously.

Just having that knowledge there, you can see what’s going on, you understand what’s going on. It’s not all a mystery, and you’re not scratching your head wondering what to do next. Because of that understanding, you get agency. You’re not helpless. When circumstances change, you can respond.

You can make decisions instead of simply having things happen to you, and all of that gives you choice. You can go out and research and find out what your options are, and you can choose the best option for you.

If that doesn’t work, you can go and try something else. So you’ve got a lot of choices, and you’ve got things that you can do. You’re not helpless. So hopeful realism, I think, is pretty optimistic.

Jo: Brilliant.

So where can people find you and your books online?

Tracy: If you’re interested in my nonfiction, the best place to find me is at The Productive Indie Fiction Writer. If you want to find out more about my fiction, the best place to find that is to go to StoriesRulePress.com.

My three pen names are there, and also Mark, my husband, who is a writer as well. And shortly, I think, another member of the family’s going to be joining us as well. So it’s a very family affair on Stories Rule Press.

Jo: Well, thanks so much for your time, Tracy. That was great.

Tracy: Thank you very much. I’m thrilled I was able to come back and talk again. Thanks, Joanna.

The post How To Redesign Your Author Business For The Environment That Actually Exists, With Tracy Cooper-Posey first appeared on The Creative Penn.