What’s the difference between writing a book and writing a screenplay? What are the different business models? If you’ve written a screenplay, how can you get it read? TD Donnelly talks about the challenges and rewards of screenwriting, as well as his first thriller novel.

In the intro, ProWritingAid spring sales 25% off; Key takeaways from the Future of Publishing conference [Written Word Media]; Curios for authors; Indie author’s scam survival guide [Productive Indie Author]; Writer Beware;
OpenAI’s 4o image generation model launch [OpenAI];

Plus, check out Death Valley: A Thriller by J.F. Penn.

This episode is sponsored by Publisher Rocket, which will help you get your book in front of more Amazon readers so you can spend less time marketing, and more time writing. I use Publisher Rocket for researching book titles, categories, and keywords — for new books and for updating my backlist. Check it out at www.PublisherRocket.com

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

T.D. Donnelly is the author of the thriller The Year of the Rabbit. He’s also been a screenwriter for more than 25 years, with credits including Sahara with Matthew McConaughey, Conan the Barbarian, and adaptations for the works of Ray Bradbury, Clive Cussler, Stan Lee and others.

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

• Challenges of being a screenwriter
• The competitive nature of the film industry compared to indie publishing
• Payment structure for screenwriters — stages of payment, production bonuses, and residuals
• Regaining rights to old, unpublished screenplays
• Writing differences between screenplays and novels
• Craft and pitching advice for aspiring screenwriters
• Why Tom is not worried about AI in the film industry

You can find Tom at TDDonnelly.com.

Transcript of Interview with Tom Donnelly

Joanna: TD Donnelly is the author of the thriller The Year of the Rabbit. He’s also been a screenwriter for more than 25 years, with credits including Sahara with Matthew McConaughey, Conan the Barbarian, and adaptations for the works of Ray Bradbury, Clive Cussler, Stan Lee and others. So welcome to the show, Tom.

Tom: Hey, Jo. How are you today?

Joanna: Oh, I’m good. It’s really fun to talk to you about this. So first up—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into screenwriting and, particularly, into adaptations.

Tom: Okay, so I grew up in New Jersey. My father was an accountant in Manhattan, and my mother was a housewife raising three boys, which is not easy, and sometimes doing a little bit of real estate. So nobody in my family had ever been in a creative field.

I had no connection, but what I did have was a 20 minute bike ride from my house growing up, sometime around 10 years old, they built a multiplex, like a 10-movie theater. Back in the 80s, that was quite something.

I figured out that on a Saturday, I could ride my bike down like four blind alleys and along the median of a six lane highway for a little bit. It was probably not a good idea, but I could ride my bike to that movie theater, chain it up, spend three or four bucks for a matinee ticket, and then sneak into at least two other movies after that.

I was absolutely hooked. I was like, oh my god, this is the best. This is the 80s. This is Raiders of the Lost Ark and Empire Strikes Back. I was transported every weekend into other fantastical worlds. I feel like it indoctrinated me into story and into the scope of story and the power of story.

It was all the idea that the Japanese, they have a 100-year plan. When you want to become something in Japan, you apprentice for 10 years, and you just spend all those 10 years learning everything you can so you can become an expert. I guess we call it the 10,000 hours now.

I realized at age 15 hearing this, I had like a brainstorm. It was like, hey, if I did that, that’s about 10 years of my life. I would still only be like 25 or 26 if I spent all my time just trying to be a screenwriter.

If I did that, I would be 25, and if it doesn’t work out, I could still do something else at that point. I’m still really young and all that sort of stuff. So I kind of set out with that goal in mind.

I told my guidance counselor in high school, I was like, “I would like to be a screenwriter in Hollywood.” The guy just looked at me like, where do you think you are? What planet do you think you are on? Just had no idea what to do with me.

He kept trying to suggest other careers that were reasonable, and I just was adamant. So he was like, okay, I’m just going to wash my hands of you and let you go. I’ve never reached back to contact him, but that would have been funny.

Anyway, I got my undergrad at Vassar with an English and Drama double major. Then I got accepted to USC Film School for a master’s degree in the directing program, actually.

My thesis script—this never happens, okay, I want to preface that this never ever happens—was the first feature length script that I ever wrote, and it ended up, two or three years later, being sold in a bidding war.

I ended up getting hip-pocketed. Hip-pocketing means that an agent says, I’m not going to put you on my official roles, and we’re not going to go through the official channels and stuff like that, but I will help you. I will read your stuff, and I will give you notes. If something happens, then we’ll talk about me representing you officially.

Anyway, I had an agent that was hip-pocketing me, and at the time I was editing to pay the bills. I was editing film and television, in particular television at that point. The producer I was working for wanted to hire me immediately onto another television project.

I said, “I’m sorry, I can’t do that.”

He was like, “What? I thought I thought we had a good relationship.”

I said, “No, we have a great relationship, but I’ve saved up enough money to write for six months, and whenever I’ve saved up enough money to write for six months, I always don’t take an editing job because I don’t want to just be an editor. I want to be a filmmaker. I want to be a writer.”

He was like, “Oh. Oh, do you have anything to show me?”

I said, “Well, I have my thesis script that I wrote in college.”

He was like, “Can I check it out?” And he read it, and he said, “I’d like to send it to a couple of my friends. Would that be all right?”

 I said, “Sure.” So I called the agent that was hip-pocketing me, and I said, “Hey, great news, this producer, this guy, he wanted to share the script.”

My agent was like, “What? He can’t do that. When he does that, he’s attaching himself as a producer.” I’m like, oh no. So he’s like, “Who did he give it to?”

I said, “I don’t know.” So long story short, too late already. So sorry, so sorry.

He finds out the three people that this producer sent them to, and it ends up it’s the head of 20th Century Fox Production, the head of another—like three very big people—and calls up the first one and says, “There’s a script that came to you last weekend. It should not have gone out. I just want to claw it back until it’s ready.”

They’re like, “Oh, we were just about to call you. We’d like to put in a bid on it.”

After that, everything changed. Suddenly, we’re in a bidding war. There ended up being three different bidders, and the script sold for—well, let’s just say this. At the time, I had over $100,000 in student debt from grad school and undergrad, and with that sale, I paid off every single debt that I had. I was free and clear. It was amazing.

Joanna: So first of all, you seem very mature as a child to decide that you want to—or as a teenager—to sort of decide, yes, I’m going be a screenwriter. Then obviously you making the choice to study it, and then everything falls into place.

I guess by the time you did that major deal in, I guess it would have been the, what, late 90s by then?

Tom: No, early 90s. Yes, early 90s.

Joanna: Early 90s, okay.

Tom: No, ’95. Sorry.

Joanna: ’95, and you’ve stuck at this career since then.

This seems incredibly single-minded to me.

Tom: It’s weird, but I basically came at it from this viewpoint. I love storytelling. I love stories. I love movies. I love books. My mother would, when I was a kid, she would drop us off at the public library, sometimes all afternoon as she would go out and be doing real estate things. So we read everything in the library. We were indoctrinated in story from a very early age.

I said, if I’m this fortunate to be able to try and fail things, I better do that because I don’t want to have regrets. I don’t want to have regrets in my life. I don’t know why I realized that at such a young age, I don’t understand. If you ask my wife, I’m not a wise person. I’m really not.

Joanna: Maybe you’re just single-minded.

Tom: A little bit. I said, if I could do this as a career, I think I would be happy for my whole life. That thought, once that got in my head, it kind of never left, and it has absolutely been true.

As difficult as the writing life can be, it is such a joy each day to know that I’m making something that’s never been and I’m putting into the world. There are people that are reading the stories or watching the movies that I’ve been a part of.

For some of them, it’s exactly what they needed at a low moment in their lives. Or for some it’s like it spoke to them in a really deep and human way. I just think that’s magic, and if I could be a part of that, I love it.

Joanna: Well, then you mentioned were difficult there. This is really interesting because, of course, I’ve talked to screenwriters over the years and sort of dipped my toe in and backed off.

People hear negative things in the author book industry as well, but what are the difficult things about being a screenwriter? I mean, as in, has just everything been amazing, and like you said, you’ve been happy for your whole life?

What are some of the challenges of being a screenwriter?

Tom: Okay, so one thing, I’ll phrase it this way, Craig Martelle in 20Books, they say, “A rising tide raises all ships.” In that my success does nothing to harm you. If anything, it might even help you. If I’m putting out a good book that’s in a genre that you’re in, it’s going to make people want to read more, and probably read your stuff as well.

In the film business, in the television business, that is not the case. It is a knife fight in a phone booth. It really is.

So let me give you a number here, 50,000 screenplays. That is the number of screenplays that are registered with the Writers Guild of America, of which I am a member, every single year. Of those, there’s 20 times as many that are written every year.

So that is a million scripts a year, and that’s just in the US. That’s just scripts that are in the North America market. A million scripts every year. Do you want to know how many films were made in North America in 2023?

Joanna: Go on, then.

Tom: 500. So taking the, “a rising tide raises all ships,” if you end up getting one of those 500 slots to make a film, that absolutely affects me and everybody else. It is not a “we’re all in this together,” it is very much cutthroat. The industry is built that way.

A lot of times when there is an assignment, people don’t just come to me with a book and say, “Hey, would you like to adapt this?” More often than not, they’re going to four or five writers that are just as experienced, just as talented, just as right for the material as I am.

I have to go in, and I have to pitch, and I have to somehow convince these producers and these multi-billion dollar conglomerates, international conglomerates, that I have that special spark that is going to get this project over the line and is going to make this something that is going to make them a ton of money.

That’s not easy. That is super hard. In some ways, selling my very first script I ever wrote was an impediment to that because I suddenly was thrust into the lunch meetings, and the getting to know yous, and all that sort of stuff. I was thrown into the deep end before I really had figured out a lot of this sort of stuff.

So I had on the job training, as opposed to make all your mistakes in private, in the dark when nobody can see you. I had to learn a lot of these things the hard way, and it was really, really difficult.

Joanna: I guess of those 500, as you say, I mean, a lot of those are from existing screenwriters, like yourself these days, and also existing franchises. So of that, let’s say—

Of those 500, how many are like original screenplays that people pitch?

Tom: Not many. Not many at all. I can’t really give you a number, but I would probably say only 10 – 20% are completely original material. The reason being, the film business in particular, is the last truly gate kept industry.

Back in the 70s and 80s, the music industry was a gate kept industry. If you wanted to put out a record, you had to have a record deal with a major label.

They would have the fancy studios, and the backup artists, and everything you needed to succeed, but they would take the majority of the profits. You would still make a fortune, so you wouldn’t be too unhappy about it.

Then when digital recording equipment came out, all of a sudden, everybody could do it. They could record in their garage something that was good enough and good enough to get on air. Suddenly, within 10 years, the record industry collapsed.

The same thing with Kindle for us. The stranglehold that the big publishing houses has had over the industry collapsed.

For film, it’s a collaborative, very difficult experience. It takes a lot of people to make a film. It takes a lot of equipment. It takes a lot of time. So the lowest entry price you can make a film for is still very expensive.

Listen, I’ve worked with Robert Rodriguez, who made El Mariachi for $7000, $8,000. Amazing guy. I love him to death. It’s not easy to do that. It’s super hard to be the exception that can make things at that low of a budget level and really do it indie. It can still be done.

There are more and more opportunities do the to do that now, but because everything is so expensive that affects what people buy as well. People want assurances in this industry.

They don’t want to buy a spec script. No matter how good that spec script is, they know that spec script has only been read by 10 people, 15 people.

They would much rather have a book series that they know have sold a million copies worldwide because that has pre-awareness.

That has a promise of, hey, a large part of those people are going to want to come and watch this movie. So we can afford to spend the $50 million, the $60 million, the $200 million on that project, to get it up and going. That’s just the reality of the business.

Joanna: Although we should say, so you are a screenwriter in LA. You’re obviously in the US Hollywood film industry. There is obviously the indie film market. There’s film industries here in Europe, there’s film industries in India. There’s film industries all over the world. So, just for people listening—

You have a particular perspective based on these very big budget films, right?

Tom: Yes, I absolutely should say that. Not only do I write in Hollywood, I also write on the very high end of Hollywood productions. I did a lot of work on Marvel’s Doctor Strange and Cowboys and Aliens and like these big, big, big, big, $200 million pictures.

I know what the budgets are for BBC productions. I know what the budgets are for ITV, for Canal+ in France. I know what they are. They’re lower. There’s more opportunities in some of those places.

There is a kind of universal understanding that for most projects that end up getting made and end up getting distributed, the price to get into that, the minimum cost for most of these films is still, even if it’s not $100 million, $200 million—hey, guess what? $5 million is a lot of money.

That is still a barrier to entry for a lot of people, and it’s a barrier to raise that amount of money in the hopes that that is going to make that money back for a lot of people.

Joanna: You know, I was at the Berlin Film Market, and I learned a lot about all of this, and a lot of the networking is about finding all the different ways you can fund things. So you get a little bit from here, a little bit from there, you get a bit over there, and a grant from that location. It’s just incredible to me how this works.

Let’s talk about the business and the money side. We’re going to come back to your thriller writing books in a minute. In terms of the business and the way the money works as being a screenwriter compared to owning and controlling your own intellectual property. So can you give us a bit of an idea about that?

Are you essentially a very highly paid freelance writer?

Tom: Yes, that is exactly right. All work in Hollywood is work for hire, meaning when I sell a script, they buy the script outright. They own it, they own the rights to it. They can do what they want with it. I have certain—because I’m in the Writers Guild of America—I have certain rights that are reserved to me.

So if they want to make a sequel without me, they still have to pay me for it. I still get credit on the project, etc, etc, but they do own the things outright. Maybe my deal has licensing money for toys or all of this sort of stuff, but usually not.

Generally, I get paid in stages. I get paid a certain amount for the first draft, a certain amount for the rewrite, a certain amount for any polishes that I do after that. When the movie goes into production, I get a production bonus in the first day of shooting.

When it’s completed and the credits have been established and negotiated and dealt with, I get a credit bonus. Then you start to get residuals after that. My wife calls them the green envelopes of joy.

Four times a year, the green envelopes of joy appear on my doorstep, and you never know what they’re going to be. You have no idea until you open it. Now you have some idea because it’s a big film that came out, and there’s a good chance that that first envelope is going to be huge.

It tails off fairly slowly, actually, but over time, it tails off. Eventually you start getting green envelopes of joy that are for $2.50.

Joanna: It might have been a coffee once in LA. It probably isn’t anymore.

Tom: Exactly. It feels a little like Patreon. It feels like the studios are now just contributing to my Patreon.

So which is to say that you don’t own it, which is a painful reality. Now, though you don’t own it, the amount that they pay you to write it is embarrassingly big. The industry compensates writers, or at least writers at my particular area, very well. It is a well-compensated business.

A famous author who came to Hollywood and started writing for Hollywood couldn’t believe what they paid until he saw how he was treated, and he said, “Oh, they’re not paying me for the writing, they’re paying me for the indignity,” which I continue to believe is true to this day.

The writers are not treated the best in my side of the business. I will say that when I hired an editor from Bath, England, who was editing my first novel, she was apologizing and giving me all these caveats as she was giving me the sweetest, nicest notes I’ve ever received in my life.

She was thinking I was going to be offended by her suggestion of changes. I’m like, oh my god, you have no idea what notes in Hollywood are like. Oh my god. It’s just so awful in comparison to this.

Everybody on the indie publishing side of the business, you guys are so sweet and so nice. I feel like I’ve left the real world and I’ve entered, I don’t know, the world of the Smurfs or something. Everyone’s super nice to each other. It’s amazing.

Joanna: That is so funny. Well, then let’s come back to—

Why the hell write a novel?

If it’s all so wonderful and unicorns and roses in Hollywood—maybe they treat you badly or whatever, but they pay you well—why write The Year of the Rabbit? Which I should tell people I’ve read. It’s very, very good. So obviously you can write, you can tell a story, but why bother when you’re just doing all this amazing work?

Tom: Well, okay, so here’s one little fact. Hollywood buys between 10 and 20 projects for every one that gets made.

So that means, over the course of my career, they have bought so many projects that I have spent six months to a year writing, and rewriting and rewriting again, and honing to the best of my ability to compete in that knife fight in the phone booth that I’m talking about, and to make it like, just sing, just perfect.

Then it still does not get made, and that project ended up being seen by 15 people in the world. 15 people ever know that that thing existed, and it’s gone. It’s just out there.

Well, guess what? I’ve been writing for almost 30 years now. Those rights have reverted. Those projects, there’s nothing saying that I can’t take those projects and give them a second audience, give them a second chance at life.

Even other ones where it’s my work on that project didn’t end up get getting used in the final project, but god, I love the idea that I had for that. So what could I do? I decided that now, you know, I’m in my 50s. Congratulations, 50, Jo.

Joanna: Thank you. What a wonderful decade.

Tom: It really is. I’m loving it so far. I am absolutely loving it. It’s a time when, for me, I was like, okay, let me look at the latter half of my life, and is there anything I want to do different?

I decided that I wanted to take some of those stories that I was well compensated for writing, but never got a chance to be in front of an audience. I could put these in front of an audience now.

I can have a second bite of that apple, and I can explore this space where I have total creative control, as opposed to almost no creative control over a project. I thought that was fascinating.

Joanna: So just on that, this is the 30-year copyright for scripts?

Tom: It’s actually less than that within the industry. I wish I had the number in front of me. Within the Writers Guild, there’s a negotiated point at which you can regain the rights to a project.

Sometimes you have to pay what they paid you, but in a lot of cases, you can literally call them up, talk to them, and say, “Hey, I kind of want to do something with this. Do you guys mind at all?”

A lot of times, they’ll just say, “We haven’t thought about that in 15 years. No, go ahead. Do whatever you want.”

Joanna: Take it away.

Tom: Exactly.

Joanna: Okay, so that’s cool. Okay, so then how did you find the process?

What is the challenge of writing a novel to writing a screenplay?

If people haven’t read a screenplay, just explain the difference.

Tom: Sure, sure, sure. Well, how should I put this? What you guys do as novelists—and I’m saying you guys, even though I’m a novelist now, I’m still a little bit on the outside looking in—it’s cheating. It’s not right. It shouldn’t be allowed.

I’m very, very mad that you guys get to write the way you get to write, and I’m stuck in screenplay format having to do it the hard way. You guys get to write the characters’ interior thoughts and emotions and journeys, and that is cheating and it is wrong.

I have been trained since I was a young person that, no, you can’t do that. You have to imply a character’s emotional state through very carefully crafted dialog and situation and moments. The entire structure of a scene is designed to elucidate a character’s internal state that cannot be understood any other way.

That’s screenwriting. That’s what that is. I mean, that’s why we’re so good at dialog. We’re so good at dialog because we can’t tell you what a character is thinking. Yes, people could do voiceover sometimes, but that is a pitfall of its own accord, unless it’s done very, very well. So you have to be careful about that.

So you’re stuck to two senses in screenwriting, what you see and what you hear. That’s it. No thoughts.

There are heavy structural demands. A screenplay has to have a—there could be a 3-act structure, 5-act structure. You can make a lot of arguments for how it needs to be structured.

Tons of times I’m reading a novel, you know, I get sent several a week from my agents who say, “Hey, check this out. People want to consider you for this.” Lots of novels, their structure is such that it would need a lot of heavy lifting to become a film.

Even Sahara, for instance. In Sahara, the bad guy, all the villains die, and there’s still 100 pages left in the novel after that point, 80 pages left at the end of that. You can’t really do that in a film.

I mean, Peter Jackson, God bless him, tried to do the ending of Return of the King, the Lord of the Rings trilogy. There’s still jokes flying around the internet about how many endings that thing has. It just keeps going on and on and on.

I think he did a great job and won the Academy Award, so kudos to him. In general, you can’t do that. So structure is something that is very, very important.

Pacing demands, right? Film travels at 24 frames a second through that projector onto the screen, and it does not stop, it does not pause. It does not allow you to go out and get a coffee.

I guess now with streaming, you can pause anytime you want, but it is still designed for you to watch in one go to be sitting there and experiencing that.

Then there’s the length issue. Sahara was a 193,000-word novel. The screenplay for Sahara was 23,000 words.

How do you take a 193,000-word experience and create a similar story experience in just 23,000 words?

In order to do that, no scene is about one thing. In a novel, scenes are about one thing all the time. In a screenplay, every scene is about four or five or six different things stacked on top of one another, very artfully folded in on each other.

So we’re advancing this plot element here. We’re advancing this character conflict here. We’re hinting. We’re doing setups and payoffs for this and that and the other thing that are going to come 15, 20, 45 pages later. All of these things are happening in one scene, and that creates a need to rewrite a lot more than novelists sometimes do.

Some novelists rewrite and rewrite and rewrite, I get that, but for the most part. It makes it hard for discovery writers, frankly. There are not many discovery writers in Hollywood. It’s a very difficult thing.

First of all, because you’re constantly having to share your work with the producers. So you’re sharing outlines and pages and all of that sort of stuff. Just saying, “I’m not really sure what the story is going to be about. I have some ideas, but let me just see where it goes.”

Joanna: I’m just going to make it up.

Tom: You don’t get a very good response for discovery writing. Now that said, there are some. Like Greta Gerwig famously said that she has to start writing to understand what her story is, and I love that. I love that there are, even in Hollywood, there are discovery writers.

Her and Noah Baumbach, when they wrote Barbie, did a lot of discovery writing. I think it shows in the work that the depth of the theme of that movie is so evident, and I feel like it doesn’t come from an outline. I think that comes from discovery writing, to some degree.

Joanna: I mean, as we record this, even just this morning, I’ve been editing my Death Valley script again. I guess in terms of editing as a discovery writer with the novel, it’s a different process, but it is actually much easier to edit 110 pages, 120 pages, or whatever, of quite spaced out—because of the way screenplays are formatted.

It’s much easier to edit a script than it is to edit a whole book.

Tom: I mean, it kind of is, but maybe you’ll find in some ways, it also isn’t. In a screenplay, because things are so dense and so layered, you have a lot more of the “pulling on a thread and the entire sweater falls apart.”

That can happen a lot more in a screenplay sometimes, whereas the spaced out editing of a novel gives you more on ramps and off ramps to get out of the story problems you’re creating for yourself in the rewriting process. Maybe. At least that’s what I’m finding.

So, yes, I am finding editing my novel is very difficult, and I’m very happy to have somebody doing it with me and kind of for me. I’m in that process right now on the second novel, and every time I go in to fix something, I end up adding new chapters.

I’m like, oh god, what am I doing? Am I ruining this? All my film instincts are yelling at me, “Don’t! What are you doing?”

Joanna: I think that’s interesting because readers of books, of novels, are a lot more forgiving. When you think about the target market for a screenplay, it is a very small group of very, very picky people.

Whereas the target audience for a novel is a lot wider, and they’re not necessarily people who are picky about—or they are picky in some ways—but they’re not the same. So it feels like the target audience is so different, even though, obviously, eventually you hope your film will be shown in front of people.

Most people will never see your script, right? It’s a very small audience.

Tom: It’s so true. The way I describe it is, when you submit a screenplay, you’re giving it to readers who are paid to say no. When you write a novel, you’re giving it to readers who have already paid to say yes. That’s a radically different experience.

Joanna: And they paid lot less, by the way. Or nothing in Kindle Unlimited.

Tom: It’s unreal. Exactly, exactly. That is a major, major difference. In screenwriting, you are writing to a hostile audience, like an incredibly hostile audience, that is all trying to figure out how not to lose their jobs if this thing gets made and fails. That is the sad truth of the matter.

Joanna: So you mentioned there about submit your screenplay, and this is obviously one of those interesting things. For me, and maybe other people listening—

We’ve maybe written an adaptation of a novel, or we’ve written a spec screenplay, and where do we submit it?

Now, I’ve obviously been to some pitch things. I am now looking at some competitions. So what are your thoughts on our scripts, if we do write them and obviously try and make them the best they can be first, but where should they then go?

Tom: Okay, so you’re getting really into hard questions now. I was told this would not be an ambush interview. This is not fair.

Joanna: It’s so not.

Tom: Let me ask you a question, Jo. You asked me for some advice when you were about to go to Berlin, to the film festival and to the film market. Did you take my advice?

Joanna: Well, you said, don’t even write a script.

Tom: I was very specific about how you had to pitch yourself, and you were like, “Oh, but we’re British. We don’t do that. This is Europe, we don’t do that.”

I said, “No, they still do it in Europe, just maybe not quite as brashly as the Americans do.”

Joanna: No, I didn’t. I don’t think I’m very good at that. I am feeling a lot better about that. Now I know a lot more about the industry. I think I needed to be there to kind of understand. As you said, what was so funny was how much, not contempt, but they don’t think much of writers, as you said. It’s crazy to me.

Tom: No, I mean, from an indie writer’s point of view, it’s shocking, because all you do is run into people that are, “Oh my god, I love your podcast. I love your book. I love your this. I love your that.”

They’re like, “Oh geez, another writer. All right, fine. You’ve got three minutes. Tellme what you want to say.”

Joanna: So what can we do?

Tom: There is no way to break into Hollywood, and yet it happens every day. There is no way to get a film made in Europe, and yet it happens every day. The sad fact of the matter is, as I already mentioned, because of the cost of making these things, it is very difficult to get scripts read and seen and accepted.

Every step of the process is a struggle because of the time and effort and cost involved in the endeavor in and of itself. So, that said, there are things you can do to increase your chances of having success here.

If you ask me before you write anything, what can you do to up your chances? I will say, if you can write a high concept, low budget, contained-space story with powerful characters and theme, you are going to leapfrog over 90% of all other scripts that have ever been written and put yourself into contention.

Those are projects that are eminently producible. When I say contained, I mean one or two locations. I mean really, really contained, simple ideas.

I was on the screenwriting panel at 20Books Vegas two years ago, at the last 20Books Vegas, and a romance writer said, “Yeah, well, that’s all great and good, but I’m a romance writer. You can’t write a contained romance.”

I said, “Sure you can,” and I was like, “What about this? Two people—a man or woman, or depends, man and a man, whatever your genre is, whatever your tropes are—are invited to a ski weekend. They’re the first two to the chalet. They immediately hate each other. An avalanche snows them in, completely closes them in.”

“The romantic comedy is these two people at each other’s throats stuck here, who gradually fall in love as they always should have. Wouldn’t that be good?”

The person was like, yes. I think she was writing it down.

Joanna: She wrote it down.

Tom: I think she did. So you can do that with anything and create that, but that is the kind of projects that have the greatest odds because they’re producible. It doesn’t take a lot.

The lower the price becomes, the lower the difficulty of making something becomes. The easier it is to say yes, and the harder it is to say no, to some degree.

That said, have a log line, number one. A log line is just a couple sentences, two or three sentences.

You know how we all hate writing blurbs? Okay, take that blurb that you have on the back of your book and that you have on your Amazon page, and cut it by two thirds, cut it by three quarters, and that is all you can say about your film.

Until you have that, you’re not really in the game. You need to have something super small and super simple.

Joanna: Just a little tip there for people. Just like we now can for sales descriptions, you can upload it to Claude or ChatGPT, and it will give you 20 log lines, 50 log lines, whatever you like. So that’s what I do. Only do that if you’re happy with the terms and conditions of these sites, but—

I certainly am finding this a lot more useful for my pitch material.

Tom: A great thing that AI can do, for sure, is to summarize something that you’ve already written. It’s very, very good for that. I totally agree with that.

So there are some other ways that you can have your project get more visibility. Some people talk about screenplay competitions. I am going to tell you that very few mean anything. Okay, and I will tell you the ones that do.

So ScreenCraft is closing down, Launch Pad, WeScreenplay. Those are all closing down. These were owned by a company called Coverfly, and it’s restructuring the way it does its business.

So a lot of screenplay competitions are dying, and a lot of the ones that still exist, like nobody in a place to buy a screenplay and to make a film are reading those scripts.

The ones that do matter, number one is the Nicholl Fellowship. That is the absolute number one. The screenplay that wins will be read by a lot of people in this town and a lot of people around the world.

Screenplays that even make it into the semi-finals or finals, that is a feather in your cap. That is a calling card that you can use to go out there.

There’s a website called TrackingB.com. The TrackingB, which stands for Tracking Board Contest, is absolutely legit. Hollywood, in particular, pays attention to scripts that win that or make it to the top of that.

The Austin Film Festival, the AFF, that screenplay competition is very well regarded and does mean something. There’s a screenplay competition called The PAGE.

Then there is Sundance and Raindance, both have competitions and fellowships and all sorts of things. They’re a fantastic resource. You should familiarize yourself with them. Also South by Southwest.

Those are the ones that are legit and have some amount of people that are legitimately looking for scripts to produce reading. So anything else, I would say, save your money. Don’t give them the entry fee because I don’t think it’s going to mean a lot.

Joanna: There’s a lot of them that charge. What about these pitch things? So obviously, I’m going to London Screenwriters’ again next month, and there’s a PitchFest, and there’s sort of 50 producers, execs, agents. It’s like speed dating, five minutes. It’s absolutely terrifying.

Last year it was ridiculous, and I was just the complete rabbit in the headlights. It was very out of my comfort zone. This year I’m going again, and I think I’m going to be a lot more relaxed.

So do you think those [PitchFests] are worth doing?

Tom: They vary just as much as screenwriting competitions. Some of them, like nobody on that panel is going to have any interest. I’ve been on those panels, and I can tell you, I’m doing a favor for somebody to sit there and listen to people pitch me.

Joanna: Oh, they’re not a panel. It’s like, you get five minutes one-on-one, and you do that as much as possible.

Tom: Okay, okay. I know that. I know that format as well. You never know, so I can’t really say no, but I’ll say that, much like speed dating, it’s a low percentage game.

Joanna: Fair enough. Fair enough. I did speed dating back in the day.

Tom: You’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs. So I wouldn’t say no to that, even if it’s just to have the pressure of pitching and pitching repetitively, which helps you learn how to do that. Pitching is absolutely a skill that you are not taught as a novelist, and you must learn as a screenwriter.

I went to 20Books Vegas two years ago, and this year I was a speaker at Author Nation, and I’m going to be a speaker at a bunch of other things this year, and people are like, “Well, you have one book out? How are you all of a sudden doing all this sort of stuff?”

I said, well, I’m used to pitching. I can pitch myself. I can pitch things. I have training in that, really. That’s super important.

Joanna: Also you’re incredibly successful, and everyone wants to talk to you.

Tom: That’s fine. I mean, sometimes you get blown off by people like Jo Penn, who says, “No, I don’t have time for lunch,” and then figures out, “Oh, wait, I know who you are.”

Joanna: “Oh, yes, maybe I’ll hang out.” Just for people listening, I didn’t know who Tom was. Luckily, I read his book, and it was amazing, and that’s how we kind of connected. Then I realized he was this big name screenwriter, so it was an interesting connection.

That’s unlikely to happen to me multiple times, and I’ll just suddenly meet this director. Although here is a question, I am getting pitched by so many screenwriters turned novelist, and I was wondering—

Is this because of the writers’ strike a few years ago and everyone just decided to write their novel?

Tom: Yes. I was I was going to say that. I actually got sidetracked at one point, but I was like, the Hollywood studio system did me a huge favor in shutting down and preventing me from writing screenplays for six months last year during the Hollywood Writers’ Strike.

It closed down the entire business. People lost homes, people lost apartments. People had to leave the business. It was a really, really tough time.

For me, I was like, oh, my God, I can actually finish the novel now. I can actually start moving in this direction that I’ve wanted to move in for so long. Thank you very much. It was very kind of you to do that.

Joanna: There is a lot now. You must have been quick off the mark because I’m getting them every day now. Every single day, people in various Hollywood things sending their novels. It is very, very interesting.

We don’t have much time left. I could talk to you forever, but I do want to ask you about AI because obviously part of that writer strike was around the clauses and use of AI.

Film has used different technologies for many, many years. James Cameron is famously working with Runway. There’s special effects. Film already uses AI, but it’s moving into a lot more areas. So what do you see ahead in terms of opportunities?

Will cost come down? What will happen? Any thoughts [on AI in the film industry]?

Tom: Yes, I have a lot of thoughts on the matter. I think that we are in a time of profound technological change. We’ve been here before. We’ve been here many, many times before. I’m young, and I’m old enough to remember the advent of the word processor and the explosion of the personal computer.

Everybody who worked in the white out factory, they had to find another job. Everybody who worked building typewriters had to find another job. There is going to be people that are going to lose jobs because things are being automated out of their purview and automating them out of space.

It’s not really something that we need to fear as creatives. Almost everything that we’re looking at is not a thing that is going to replace us, it is a new tool that we’re going to be able to use in creating art and creating great art.

If you go to YouTube and type in “Hedra” and watch what they’re doing, you will see some stuff that is scaring a lot of people in my business. It’s a company that is doing amazing video production that is completely AI-generated.

Amazing facial animation and voice cloning work that is giving fairly photo realistic performances of AI actors. I know some actors that are like, there will be no human actors in the next 100 years.

I was like, no. Look at this and see how good can this get. It can get only so good. It can deliver a life-like performance, but it can’t give an earth shattering performance. It’s not going to change your life. It’s going to be good enough. It’s never going to be at that level of exception. At least that’s my belief.

The same thing goes for writing. If I had a job writing copy for websites, I would be very worried about my job. I think that is definitely something that AI can replace.

Crafting the stories that I can craft with my voice and my weird, twisted sensibility, I don’t think AI is ever quite going to be able to do that. As you’ve said many times on this podcast, it’s what you bring that is the differentiator. That is the thing that AI will never replace.

That is also why your readers buy your books. They’re buying it for that special JF Penn factor, that special thing. I think the same thing goes for my industry.

Joanna: I’m glad you said that. I do hope that it will bring down some costs in production. For example, I know here in Bath where they film Bridgerton and all of this kind of thing, they’re building these sort of digital interiors, or scanning the interior of the Georgian buildings so that the actors can be somewhere else.

They’re still acting in the room, but it’s just projected onto that green screen. So the future for actors may be that you don’t get to travel so much, you just have to act in another green room. A lot of them are used to that, I guess.

Tom: I mean, if you look at all of the Star Wars television series that are out recently, they all use the technology similar to that. Where not only are you acting on a 360-degree cyclorama screen, but you are in real time.

You’re not having to imagine what the green screen is showing. You’re seeing what the actual surroundings of you are. Absolutely amazing.

There are AI right now that can already dub into foreign languages and do great work with not just subtitling, but actually dubbing projects into foreign languages. That’s going to be a cost cutting exercise. There’s going to be a lot of stuff that can really, really bring down the cost.

The fact of the matter is, you are maybe going to take a 100-person crew and make it an 80-person crew. You can maybe take a 50-person crew and make it a 30-person crew.

There are still so many jobs that are still going to require people and skilled artisans in their particular fields. I think there’s a limit to how much AI is going to be able to save us, but it will be able to save quite a bit.

Joanna: Fantastic. So just briefly—

Tell us about The Year of the Rabbit. Also, where can people find you and your books online?

Tom: Listen, my first novel out of the gate, I’m super happy that it’s gotten the response that it’s gotten. Jo, you were very kind to blurb the book for me. I really appreciated that.

Joanna: It’s a great thriller, for people listening.

Tom: I will say that I’m Amazon exclusive. So it’s T.D. Donnelly, D, O, N, N, E, L, L, Y. Year of the Rabbit is the name of the book. If you like action thrillers, if you like spy thrillers, if you like thrillers with a lot of character and a very unique lead character, I highly recommend you check it out.

Should I give a quick blurb of it?

Joanna: Yes. Why not?

Tom: Year of the Rabbit is about Malcolm Chaucer. Malcolm Chaucer is the world’s greatest interrogator. He is a human lie detector that can read every micro expression on your face to know whether or not what you’re saying is a truth or a lie.

He knows this because he is a deeply broken man who, for eight years, was tortured in North Korea and suffers extreme PTSD. That is his super power. That is why he is hypervigilant and able to notice all of these things.

Well, during a routine interrogation in New York, he finds out that the person that these people are looking for is his ex-wife. That starts him down a road of suddenly being hunted himself, as well as she is, by nameless assassins.

Actually, everybody in New York that that has access to a computer is suddenly told a million dollar bounty on his head. Can he figure out truth from lies? Can he figure out who wants to kill him? And can he figure out the secret that is the Year of the Rabbit?

Joanna: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Tom. That was great.

Tom: Oh, let me just say, TDDonnelly.com is the website. That’s the other thing. Thank you.

Joanna: Thank you.

The post From Hollywood To Novels: TD Donnelly On Screenwriting, Adaptation, and Storytelling That Lasts first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Need a writing buddy? A critique partner? A beta reader? Here’s your stop!

Writers need feedback. And friends! But sometimes it can be difficult to find someone willing to read your work who is also a good fit for you and your writing.

There are many different forums and groups online designed to help writers link up with each other for beta reading and helpful feedback. You can find some of those groups listed in this post. You can also reach out right here in the Wordplayer community!

Once or twice a year, I post a “writing buddy linkup,” which opens the comments to anyone looking for a critique partner or accountability partner. It is always massively popular, and I always hear from writers who have successfully found writing partners. I’ve even heard from people who connected in the first link-up I hosted years ago who have become lifelong friends!

If you want to join the fun, keep reading.

Need a Writing Buddy? Here’s How

Just leave a comment! Tell us:

• Your genre
• A short summary of your current story
• Your level of experience (i.e., how many years you have been writing)
• What you’re looking for in a writing buddy
• Your email address (I recommend formatting it as follows to avoid spam: kmweiland [at] kmweiland [dot] com)

You can subscribe to the comments to read additional entries as they come in (however, be aware there could be hundreds of comments!). If you see someone you think would be a great match for you, drop them a line!

The writing life works best when we’re able to reach out and offer a helping hand to one another. Jump in, meet someone new, and start taking your writing to the next level!

Wordplayers, tell me your opinion! What are you looking for in a writing buddy? Tell us in the comments!

The post Find a Writing Buddy (2025 Edition!) appeared first on Helping Writers Become Authors.

How can we avoid the mistake of comparing our first drafts with the finished books we love? How can we improve our manuscripts? Kristopher Jansma gives his tips.

In the intro, Finding your deepest reason to write [Ink In Your Veins]; London Book Fair, AI audio and ‘vibe coding’ [Self Publishing with ALLi]; Pirated database of books used to train AI models [The Atlantic]; Fair use and copyright with Alicia Wright; The Guardian strategic partnership with OpenAI; Trump Administration’s AI Action Plan and potential around fair use [Ars Technica]; How to Think About AI: A Guide for the Perplexed by Richard Susskind; Death Valley, A Thriller by J.F. Penn.

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 

Kristopher Jansma is the award-winning author of literary fiction novels, short fiction and essays, as well as Revisionaries: What We Can Learn from the Lost, Unfinished, and Just Plain Bad Work of Great Writers.

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

• The mistake of comparing first drafts to finished works
• Dismantling the notion of genius
• How to turn our manuscripts into masterpieces
• Knowing when it’s time to walk away from a book, or push through and persevere
• Seeking support from editors and friends
• Balancing the joyful side and business side of being an author
• The importance of social media in developing your personal brand
• Drawing boundaries and protecting personal information in your writing

You can find Kristopher at KristopherJansma.com or The Nature of the Fun on Substack.

Transcript of Interview with Kristopher Jansma

Joanna: Kristopher Jansma is the award-winning author of literary fiction novels, short fiction and essays, as well as Revisionaries: What We Can Learn from the Lost, Unfinished, and Just Plain Bad Work of Great Writers. So welcome to the show, Kris.

Kristopher: Thanks for having me on, Jo.

Joanna: I’m excited to talk to you about this. First up—

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

Kristopher: Well, I have been a writer pretty much my whole life. I’m one of those writers who, as a child, you couldn’t get a book out of my hand. I have a whole storage unit somewhere full of school journals that are full of little stories and things. It was just something that I took to really early and always really wanted to do.

As I got older, I started taking it a little more seriously. Then I went to school eventually and studied writing. So it’s always been a lifelong love of mine.

Joanna: So are you a full-time writer? We’re always interested in how people make a living writing on this show.

Kristopher: I don’t know very many full-time writers, sadly. So I’m an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at SUNY New Paltz College here in New York State.

So I’m teaching creative writing, which is wonderful because I get to talk about what I love all the time and help students with their writing. I’m the director of our creative writing program up there right now.

Joanna: Well, that’s fantastic. It makes me understand a lot more why you wrote this book, Revisionaries. So let’s get into that. Why is it sort of just a number one mistake of writers, which is comparing our first draft efforts to the finished books we read?

Why is comparing our first drafts to the finished books we read a mistake?

Kristopher: I think it’s natural, but I think it’s a mistake. I mentioned before, I was a big reader as a child and all through my life, and I think that’s how most writers get started.

We fall in love with books at some point, and reading, and I think it’s pretty natural at some points to start to wonder if we could do it too. You know, how much fun it would be to do and give somebody else the great experience that we’ve just gotten.

We model our efforts on the things that we’ve read before and the things that we admire, of course. Then a funny thing starts to happen, of course, as we get more serious about it, and —

We start to realize there’s a huge gap between what we’re able to do and what our heroes have done in the past.

Then I think a lot of people, after having a lot of fun with it at first, start to get really frustrated because they feel like, okay, well, what’s the point if I’m never going to be as good as someone like F Scott Fitzgerald. In my case, he was like my hero growing up, or JD Salinger, or somebody like that.

I think what we miss, what most of us don’t really learn much about, is that those writers only achieve these kind of great masterpieces after tons of failure, rejection, screw ups, mistakes. A lot of them had a lot of help from other people, like editors and family, and all of that.

So I think then we just have this misconception about how it works. What I think we tend to believe is that there are just certain people who luck out in the genetic lottery or something, and they’re just naturally gifted, talented writers, and that they’re geniuses from day one.

That was really what I wanted to try to dismantle in this book, was this idea that these great writers—not that they’re not geniuses, not that they’re not so great—but just that it’s not all natural.

They didn’t get there on their own, and it didn’t come without a lot of failure along the way.

Joanna: As you were talking now, I was thinking about also the difference. I mean, as an associate professor in creative writing, you naturally teach—well, maybe you have to teach—specific books, things that are considered classic. There are books that are considered classics.

I almost feel this is another problem is that we compare ourselves to the classics. Whereas take someone like Isaac Asimov, who wrote over 400 books, people always compare themselves to the ones that were most successful. Whereas most books are not those classics, are they?

Could we compare ourselves to normal books instead of these ‘classics’?

Kristopher: Absolutely. I talk about this a little bit in the introduction to Revisionaries. I took a class when I was in college, but I snuck into a graduate class, and we read Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway. It was all these amazing works by amazing American writers.

I talked about in the book this lesser known work of Fitzgerald that he didn’t finish before he died, called The Love of the Last Tycoon, and realizing it was actually pretty bad.

I was finding it kind of depressing at the time, but then realizing later in life that actually that is something that was good. In my mind, I was able to realize, okay, this shows that even somebody that could write The Great Gatsby might write another book that’s not so wonderful.

Then, of course, and I did mention this in the introduction, but I think of this a lot. With Faulkner, we started with and the Sound and the Fury, and I didn’t know for years and years after that that wasn’t his first novel. I thought it was his debut book.

A friend of mine said, “Oh, if you’re ever feeling intimidated, go read one of Faulkner’s first two novels.” I think it’s Mosquitoes and Soldier’s Pay or something, and he said, “You’ll feel a lot better about your own writing,” and he was right.

Joanna: Yes, I think that’s important. Now, you did mention the word “genius”, and you use it in the book to anchor each chapter, but genius is a really hard word. I mean, it’s a word many people are uncomfortable with, and I think it’s interesting.

Why did you choose the word “genius”, and how did your definition change over the process of writing?

Kristopher: I’m glad you mentioned that. Each chapter has a little section called “Fail Like a Genius” at the end that kind of gives you some tips on writing, or exercises you can do that are inspired by the chapter.

The word genius was floating around for me in the very beginning because what I was wanting to do, I realized, was dismantle the notion of genius. As you mentioned, it is such a problematic idea.

As I was mentioning before, if we see other people who are successful, we can just tell ourselves, “Oh, they’re just a genius. They were born with some talent or some ability that other people aren’t. I’ll never succeed because I don’t have that thing.”

I think that’s where a lot of us begin the writing process, and that this idea that we’re trying to figure out if we have what it takes somewhere within us. When the reality is —

What it takes is a lot of persistence, a lot of practice, a lot of stubbornness.

Also mixed in, and I think this is where it gets hard, an ability to learn from your mistakes and see where you’ve gone wrong, and then make corrections the next time.

When you look at these stories of these writers, you realize that this is what they’ve done as well. It’s not like they just sat down one day wrote a masterpiece because they have some magical abilities that you or I don’t.

Joanna: This is what kind of annoys me with writing, compared to something like visual art. So here in Europe, if you go to Malaga, you can go to the Picasso’s early museum where he was born. You can see some of the pieces that he did when he was a child and then when he was a young man, and you can see the development.

In visual art, they appreciate the development of the artist, and also have this idea of periods.

Like, that’s the blue period, then that was this, as visual artists experimented. It wasn’t like, oh, they suddenly arrive on the scene with a perfect novel, which seems to be the expectation. Even now in modern publishing, it’s like, “oh, this debut author.”

I guess we don’t have this “show your work” thing in writing, do we? We don’t really accept that.

Kristopher: No, we hide those drafts, and we hope that nobody ever sees them because we want to perpetuate this myth that we did just sit down and this wonderful thing came out. There’s this mystique around the writer that way.

Debut writers are often fairly young, and you haven’t read anything else by them before, so it creates this sense that they just decided to write a book one day, and then this great thing came out. So that’s a hard thing to live up to.

A lot of debut authors don’t end up publishing a second book, I think because the expectations are so high that the second book will be just as seemingly effortless to do as the first one was. Where, in fact, the first one probably took a decade, sometimes longer, of a sort of effort.

I had the same thought about the visual art as I was working on this book, and music too. Collectors will get demo tapes and rough tracks of artists that they love, and they enjoy going back and listening to the rawer sound of an early version of a song before it got all produced and polished and everything else.

There’s something really authentic and cool and fun about that, to be able to hear this is what it sounded like when he was just in the garage with the guitar and the drum machine or whatever. With writing, we tend not to do that.

What we have instead, which is almost, I think, more problematic—I talk about this a little bit in the chapter in the book about Louisa May Alcott with Little Women—what we have instead is, every once in a while, publishers will put out a new book that they say they’ve discovered by a writer that was never published before.

What it turns out to be is what we would in academic worlds call like juvenilia, or here’s a short story that Hemingway wrote when he was eight years old, or something like that, and published in the local newspaper.

They’re often quite bad, or they’re fine, I’m sure, for an eight year old, but nothing like what they’re going to be able to do later. But the publishers, I think, wanting to kind of trick people into believing that they’ve discovered some new masterpiece that no one’s ever read before.

They’ll hype it up, and they’ll say, “Okay, this is an amazing book by Louisa May Alcott that you’ve never read before,” and it turns out to be it’s a book that she wrote and realized wasn’t very good, and so she never published it.

Joanna: Didn’t they do that with Harper Lee?

Kristopher: Yes, Harper Lee’s story is one that I really love. I talk about this one in the book as well. This, again, was a very confused roll out by the publisher. They claimed that they had a long, lost second novel by Harper Lee, and it made it sound like it was a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird.

The new book was called Go Set a Watchman. When it came out, it was very shocking because it involves characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus and Scout and all of them, but as older characters. So it did seem like something that she wrote later about what would happen to them after To Kill a Mockingbird.

People were very scandalized because it turned out that Atticus Finch, who in To Kill a Mockingbird was the snowball lawyer who takes on this case to defend a Black man from the mob. Anyway, in this sort of sequel, he turned out to be like a racist and like a Ku Klux Klan member, or had gone to meetings or something.

People were horrified. How could this happen? How could she write this book about him? What it turned out had happened, finally, we worked it backwards, and we’ve discovered that that book was actually not even really a prequel.

It was a rough draft, or you couldn’t even really call it a rough draft. It was a book that she wrote before To Kill a Mockingbird. She wanted to write about this woman, and she came up with these characters.

When she submitted that book to her publisher, their publisher said, basically, “No, thank you. I don’t like this book, but I do like this character, and I do like this world in Alabama that you’re writing about. So if you want to go back and write a completely different book now, I would take a look at that.”

So that’s the moment when most writers would say, “Okay, this is a sign. I obviously don’t have what it takes. I got so far, and this editor still said no, then sent me back to the drawing board again.”

That’s, I think, when a lot of people would sort of give up, but Harper Lee had that persistence where she said, “Okay, great. There are a couple of things here that this editor said she liked. I’m going to go back, I’m going to start over. I’m going to take those elements, and I’m going to work with them.”

Then she wrote one of the greatest novels in the 20th century. So she was just so close to it, she just didn’t know yet that that’s where she was going with it.

Joanna: But then, classic example of someone who then didn’t write. I mean, I write a lot of books, and I feel like every time I write a book, more ideas come.

I just can’t imagine stopping writing. Maybe Harper Lee had a paralysis of success or something.

Kristopher: I wonder about that with her. She talked a lot in her interviews afterwards that it was so successful, and she got so much attention, and I don’t think she was somebody that particularly desired that kind of attention.

It’s a funny thing, a lot of writers—maybe there’s some ego to it—we want to share our thoughts and ideas with people, and we think that others should hear or would enjoy them, at least. But we’re not really necessarily people that want to be in the spotlight.

Being a writer is an art form that really has to be done alone for the most part.

A lot of writers are pretty introspective and kind of quiet people who wouldn’t mind sitting alone at their computer for hours and hours and hours.

So I think Harper Lee and JD Salinger. I didn’t end up talking about Salinger in this book, but I wrote an earlier column about him. I think they had that response to the fame that followed their books coming out, that they sort of retreated away from it.

We do know that Harper Lee worked on at least one other project after To Kill a Mockingbird. She was working on a crime novel. So it was sort of a true crime novel or based on a true crime that had happened. That’s never been published.

I don’t think she finished it, or at least we don’t know that she’s finished it. It’s never been published, as far as we know. When they found Go Set a Watchman, originally that’s what they thought they had found, was the finished crime novel. I don’t believe that she ever did finish it.

Joanna: Yes, it’s interesting. All right. Well, let’s go a bit deeper into how we can turn our books into something better. You have a good quote in the book. You said, “I’ve seen how messes metamorphosize into masterpieces.”

So how can we do the same thing? Like, when you have students and they’re like there’s something in there, but it’s a bit of a mess—

What are some ways we can improve our manuscripts?

Kristopher: There’s a couple of things that came up over and over again in the book, and there’s sort of a persistence theme that runs through several of the chapters.

Like with Harper Lee, where sometimes what needs to happen is that we just need to kind of stick with the project a little longer and try something else there and see how that works.

So sometimes that’s how the mess turns into a masterpiece. It’s just that we continue to dig in deeper and have some faith that we’ll get there, trying out some different ideas along the way.

I think a lot of times for most writers, we get to a place where we’ve done everything we know how to do, and it’s still quite a bit of a mess. I think that’s when it helps a lot to get some help, basically. This also comes up over and over again.

So a lot of these writers had people in their lives that they were able to turn to for advice, or just to be a helper, a reader. F Scott Fitzgerald’s first version of The Great Gatsby, Trimalchio, was not nearly as good as The Great Gatsby, for a number of reasons, and also had a horrible title.

He got it as far as he could on his own. At that point, he had an editor that he’d worked with on his first book, and Max Perkins read it and gave him some feedback on it that was really helpful. He also needed the help of his wife, Zelda, who gave him some ideas about how to better define Gatsby as a character.

So that’s another thing that I often recommend, which is —

Is there anybody that you can give the book to that might be able to give it a fresh read?

Then the important thing is then you need to be open to the feedback that they give you.

[Click here for editors!]

I think a lot of times we give the book to somebody, and we hope that they’re going to tell us it’s perfect. That always feels good, but it’s not going to really help us get it where we need it to go.

Kafka, I talk about Kafka in the book, never finished any of the books that he started writing. He always undermined himself and had all this doubt, but luckily, he had a good friend, Max Brod, who had basically pushed him all the time to keep on going and try to finish things. So I think that helps a lot, like bringing it to somebody else.

Then the last thing I would say—this came up a few times too—it’s sort of the flip side of persistence, in some ways.

Sometimes you need to know how to walk away from a project that just isn’t working.

It’s very hard. Of course, we spent a lot of time on these books, sometimes years, and we just can’t get it to work right.

I really wanted people to see through the project here, through Revisionaries, that this happens to all the writers that they love as well. They work on a project that just can’t, for whatever reason, doesn’t come together the way that they wanted to.

The best thing they can do is take a step away from it and just start trying to work on something different for a while.

Joanna: But as you said about Kafka there, like I know someone who has 15 books that are not finished. The thing is, sometimes, like you say, you might need to walk away, but maybe you actually just need to go for a walk and walk away for a week and then come back and finish it.

If you keep walking away from projects because it’s hard—I mean, the point is, this is hard.

It is hard to write a book. How do you know where’s the balance between persisting or walking away?

Kristopher: Yes, it is hard.

I wish there was an easy way to know when you’re in too deep on something that just isn’t working. I was just reading this the other day, Mark Twain, prolific writer, finished lots and lots of things, and wrote wonderful classics.

He tried to write a book about Joan of Arc, I think he said six times in 12 years, and every time he got into it and just realized he wasn’t going to be able to finish it. It wasn’t going to be able to get any further.

When you’re in a situation like you’re talking about, where you have somebody who never finishes anything, or starts many things and never finishes them, I do think that is a different problem.

With Kafka, it was an issue of just a lack of confidence. He would finish something and then he would rethink it and decide, “Oh no, no, no, actually, I don’t think it’s good enough. I have to go back and change it again,” even when other people were telling him, “No, no, no, it’s great. Let’s go.”

Kafka tried to claw back the manuscript for The Metamorphosis, probably his most famous short story, probably one of the most famous short stories in the 20th century. He tried to get his editor to send it back to him so that he could keep making more changes to it, even right before it got published.

So that is a different kind of problem that comes up sometimes where you’re just never satisfied with what you’ve done. You have to be able to decide, “Okay, this is good enough the way it is. I’m going to let it go and move on to the next thing.”

Joanna: Yes, and so often—well, I mean, obviously sometimes there are some big structural problems, but that is what editors can help with—but often it’s the little tweaks. I mean, we all read our work that’s published, and we’re like, “Oh, I would change that now. I would change that now,” but—

It’s probably not even something that a reader would notice or care about.

Kristopher: Exactly. I think though, again, as writers, we’re always going to have some self-doubt, and we’re always going to be, to some degree, our own worst critic. We also have to balance that out against the moments where we feel optimistic and we feel like what we’re writing is actually good.

This is, again, kind of a moment when I think having somebody else on the outside give you a pat on the back and some encouragement is helpful.

Jane Austen was a great example of someone. She wrote a few books when she was young, like very young, 16, 17,18 years old. They were finished, and she thought they were good, and other people that read them liked them, but she just wasn’t sure. She felt like they weren’t as good as she wanted them to be.

Then one of them she waited on for about a decade almost, I think, and then eventually wrote it completely and turned it into, I think it was Sense and Sensibility.

She had a sense that she had more to learn, or she needed more time to become a better writer first before she wanted to put that work out there.

Joanna: Yes, I think we do get that sense. I wrote a book on the shadow, Writing the Shadow, using Jungian psychology. That took a couple of decades, really, before I was ready to do that. I had to write a memoir first, because memoir changes your writing, and then I was like, okay, now I’m ready to write that book.

Kristopher: Yes, it is hard. Although I think when you love the process of it, and you can get to a place where you’re enjoying the writing part a lot, that that can be very freeing. Then you’re not as concerned about, you know, okay, which one happens first? Or how does this get done before that one? That kind of thing.

Joanna: It’s interesting. You said, “enjoying the writing.” In the book, you say, “Take the time to write for its own sake again.” I feel like this kind of simple joy is difficult. I mean, I’m a full time author, and many listeners write for a living, and it’s like the industry drives us into faster output.

Publishers don’t put as much editing into things as they did back in the day of those classic authors. We have to do a lot more marketing. You’re on the show, you are doing book marketing, not writing. So how can we do this?

How can we balance taking the time to do that joyful stuff and the business of being a writer?

Kristopher: Yes, this is, I think, really the biggest key for writers today. Like you say, I don’t know that it was as big of a struggle for writers in the past because this world of self-promotion that exists for writers today.

Even 10-20 years ago, I don’t know that it was quite as all absorbing as it can be now in this landscape of social media, but also wonderful things like podcasts that I find really fun to do.

We started this by asking about, how can we keep fun alive in our writing? I think I enjoy talking to people about what I’m working on. It actually helps me think about what I want to write next and gets me excited to write more. So I try to keep that in mind as I’m doing these promotional engagements and things like that.

I don’t feel like it is, or I try not to feel like it’s a distraction from the writing itself. At the same time, eventually, you have to be able to log off of Instagram or TikTok or whatever.

You have to actually sit down and write and not feel distracted by the desire to go back in and check and see if anyone else is talking about you or responding to your video or something like that.

So I’ve started setting up a time in my day when I can turn off all those devices, when I can turn off social media, when it’s just me and the computer. That’s something that I’ve had to really push hard for the last couple of years to really carve out time away from the rest of it.

Different writers have different ways of doing this. If there’s a room in your house that you can go into and you can leave the phone on the outside, or you can use a computer that’s not online, I think those things can help a lot.

I set modest goals for writing.

Usually, my goal is to do something like 3000 words in a week, which sounds like a lot, but ultimately is maybe like 500 words a day. Maybe a little more during the work week, which doesn’t take all that long to do in the course of a day, but it really adds up over time.

Over the course of a couple of weeks, you start to really feel like you’ve made some progress, finished a chapter or story that way. I think when you can build that into your life, this separate time that’s sacred from the other parts of being a writer, the other business of being a writer, I think that’s really the key.

I often talk about with my students —

There are times when you have to take off the writer hat and put on your author hat.

The author is the one who is on the podcast, who is talking to readers on social media, kind of doing that part of the job. Then the writer is almost like a separate identity.

Joanna: I’m not really into golf, but we’re watching the Netflix series on golf at the moment, and it’s mainly about characters, it’s not so much about golf. They’re excellent at their commentaries.

These young golfers were talking about how much they have to do social media in order to build up their brands. I was like, oh my goodness, it’s the same for everyone now. Golf is what they do, like we do writing, and then they still have to do social media and all that.

It feels like this is just the reality of being some kind of personal brand now. You have to do that side of it.

So as part of teaching your students, that is what you tell them, right? It’s not just the writing.

Kristopher: Yes, so we talk about it a lot. It’s funny, my students, some of them are very online and really enjoy all of those things, and they’re excited about that part of it.

To some degree, I almost worry more about those students because they’re the ones who I suspect that I don’t know that they really want to write, I think they want to be famous.

I try to tell them in as nice a way as possible, if what you want is to be famous, there are better ways to go about it than writing, probably more lucrative ways too.

So I do try to make sure that they remember that it is important, but it’s not as important as actually writing something good and taking the time to master the craft that you’re trying to master.

I think there’s an idea out there, another myth maybe that needs to kind of get dispelled, which is that the brand is more important than the writing. We’ve all picked up a book by a flashy author, and felt like the writing wasn’t all that good.

I think that leads to this idea that, okay, well maybe that part’s just not as important, creating a persona that people want to follow on online. Again, the reality is that I don’t think that that works for most people.

There are always great examples of writers who are quite successful and really don’t have a strong social media presence at all, and are still able to do it.

So I try to remind them that it’s fine to be excited about that side of things, and if you’re good at it, then you should go ahead and do it, but that it’s not a shortcut to succeeding in the writing part of it. In fact, I think it’s often a distraction.

Joanna: Yes, there’s definitely pros and cons. You actually have a chapter on keeping secrets, and you do write there about where’s the line between what we do share. I mean, I podcast because I don’t really do much social media.

Podcasting is one way that I can be a brand and sell books, but also share some things, but there are lines that I don’t cross with my own brand. So what are your thoughts on when we share, when we stay silent, or even in our writing—

When do you write your truth, and when do you keep it quiet?

Kristopher: This is something that is funny. I think fiction writers, like myself, I was really drawn to fiction early on, partly because I felt like my own life wasn’t all that interesting. So I thought it’d be better writing in a way that I can make things up.

Since I’ve gotten older, I’ve felt the other way around about it. There are things in my life now that I feel this need to protect, that I don’t want to share with other people.

As a fiction writer, I have that option. I can always kind of hide things, or I can change them in such a way that there’s still an element of privacy around them.

This comes up in Revisionaries in the chapter on Patricia Highsmith, who was a very prolific crime writer and wrote some fantastic novels. The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Price of Salt, etc., that are still classics today.

What I found was that she had tried a few times to write about her personal life. She was a lesbian, and she was having relationships with women in the West Village as openly as she could at the time, but she was living in a time when writing openly about lesbian relationships could have actually gotten her in legal jeopardy.

It certainly could have ruined her publishing career. Publishers weren’t able to publish stories about those kinds of relationships unless they ended in tragedy, because otherwise, it was considered immoral.

So one of her great victories was writing The Price of Salt, which is a novel about these two women, and the relationship at the end is not really a tragedy at all, or arguably is a happy ending. She couldn’t publish it under her own name. She published it under a pseudonym, which was a common practice at the time.

It was really difficult for her, personally. She almost fell apart completely in the lead up to it because she was so worried about the exposure that might come from it. The more that it seemed like the book was about to become a big hit, and then it was, the more that she felt like she had just shared way too much.

I ended up reading another book of hers, I had to fly all the way to Switzerland to go to the library and the archives there to dig up an unfinished book that she tried to write about that was also a woman reflecting on her life and her relationships with women in her life.

She abandoned the book after, I think, about 80 pages, and just realized that she just can’t do it. She couldn’t write about it. It was tearing her up. So I kind of think, and I talk about this in this chapter, that we have to be able to draw those same lines for ourselves.

Like we were saying before, I think it’s particularly tricky in today’s writing environment where a certain confessional impulse can actually be a big draw. It can help sell books.

My most recent novel came out in the fall, and it’s a novel based on my grandmother’s stories during World War Two. Everywhere that I went to talk about it, that was the first question people asked.

How much of this is real, and how much of this is based on her real story?

Which parts are real, and which ones did you make up?

It’s like, well, it’s a novel. You’re not supposed to know necessarily which parts are real and not.

I went through a series of interviews, I was listening to other authors, I think maybe it was like interviews on NPR or something like that. I just was checking for a while to see how many times was the author’s own personal life a part of the conversation surrounding the novel that they were publishing.

It was well over 50% of the time that was like one of the first questions being asked. How is this book authentic because it comes from your own experiences?

These are novels, so again, I feel like we should be able to appreciate the beauty of a piece of fiction without having to be reassured that it came from a true story first. Of course, that’s exciting to know about, so people want to share it.

Joanna: I mean, I write horror and thriller and crime, and you get a lot fewer questions about, like, how much of this murderer is you? But then I do a lot of research.

So for example, my next thriller is called Death Valley, and it’s set in Death Valley in California. There’s all of the truth of the place, but then it’s fictionalized.

I feel like with literary fiction, that is something that’s an obsession with so many. Obviously, there’s been some very high profile novels that have been ripped apart because they haven’t been, so called, someone’s own story. So I don’t know, it’s difficult.

Kristopher: Well, I think the trouble is when a novel is marketed on the basis of some sort of authenticity, suggesting that the writer’s own experiences are informing it, and then it turns out not to be the case.

We’ve almost turned novels and fiction into nonfiction, and we have that same obligation that a memoirist does, to be fully honest about everything that goes into the book.

When James Frey had his big scandal around A Million Little Pieces, that book was originally written as a piece of fiction. It was supposed to be a novel, and nobody was interested in it. He then it changed it over and basically said, “Oh, what if I just pretend it was a memoir?” Then people loved it.

That’s because you’ve given people this assurance that it’s real. Going back to my earlier point, I think as fiction writers, we should try more often not to do that. So it’s an easy way to get attention for the books that we’re writing because, of course, people want to know that.

Even earlier books of mine, the very first question I would get asked at every event was, “How much of this is based on your real life?” I used to know a little better than I do today. I used to know to kind of demure a little bit at that question and say, “Oh, well, you know, that’s personal. That’s private.”

Joanna: That’s great. Well, the book is super interesting. We’re almost out of time, but—

Who is Revisionaries for? Who are the people who are going to get the most out of this book?

Kristopher: I really wrote it for writers in the earlier part of their lives. I really wished it was a book that I could have read when I was trying to write my first novel and feeling very frustrated.

I wrote three books before the first one that actually sold. Two of them had agents, and then couldn’t find a publisher. All through that process I was feeling like, okay, maybe I’m just not good. Maybe I just don’t have what it takes.

So this was the book that I wish that I had been able to read at that point in my life when I was worried that the fact that I was failing, or what felt like failure, was not some sign that I would never be as good as I wanted to be, or that I would never be as good as the other writers that I admired so much.

The only reason I hesitate to say that it’s just for the writers trying to find a way to break out, is that when I was writing this book over the last five years, I was in the same position again.

I had published two novels. They both came out and did well, and then for whatever reason, I couldn’t get the next one sold. Then I wrote another one, and that one didn’t sell in the US. It only sold in French translation, which was a whole other story.

Joanna: Random.

Kristopher: Delightful. I hope the French enjoyed it.

Once again, all these years into my writing career, I hit a moment where I thought, okay, maybe that was it. Maybe I lost whatever I had, and now I can’t do it again. Then writing this book was a nice way to remind myself that, actually, yes, this happens to lots of other writers.

Richard Wright had this huge hit and then his publisher rejected his next book. There are other stories like that in here about other writers like that. It’s not a constant climb, higher and higher. It’s an up and down experience.

Joanna: Yes, it’s not a straight up-and-to-the-right graph.

Kristopher: Exactly, and there’s nothing wrong with that being part of the way that it works.

Joanna: Indeed.

Where can people find you and your books online?

Kristopher: Well, KristopherJansma.com is my website. I’m on Instagram, and these days, Threads. Those are both great ways to find me.

I have a Substack called The Nature of the Fun where I post a short piece every month that’s all dedicated to finding ways we discover the joy in our writing process and making it more fun again.

Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Kris. That was great.

Kristopher: Thanks so much, Jo.

The post How Ordinary Drafts Become Extraordinary Books. Revisionaries With Kristopher Jansma first appeared on The Creative Penn.

From KMW: If you’ve been following my work, you know how much I emphasize the power of Flat Arc archetypes in storytelling—characters like the Child, Lover, Ruler, Elder, and Mentor, who don’t undergo drastic change but instead remain true to their core nature, influencing the world around them.

That’s why I’m excited to share today’s post by Oliver Fox. He introduces an alternative narrative structure to Joseph Campbell’s powerful and ubiquitous Monomyth—one that complements the quiet strength of these archetypes. Oliver dives into what he calls the Unitive Myth, a framework that emphasizes internal growth, community, and the feminine energy behind these stories.

As he explores, you’ll see how the Unitive Myth aligns perfectly with the essence of the Flat Arc archetypes I teach in my book Writing Archetypal Characters. If you’ve ever felt like your stories didn’t quite fit the mold of the traditional hero’s journey, this is the alternative you’ve been waiting for! Oliver’s insights will help you embrace a storytelling approach that allows your characters to remain true to themselves while still creating deep, impactful narratives.

***

In This Article:

• How to Write an Alternative to the Monomyth
• The First Act: Invitation vs. Initiation
• The First Half of the Second Act: Departure vs. Disruption
• The Second Half of the Second Act: Achievement vs. Revelation
• Third Act: Return vs. Stasis (Harmonization or Rejection types I, II, or III)
• Conclusion

If you’ve been writing for any significant amount of time, you’ve probably found yourself haunted by Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth. Wherever you turn, you’ll encounter some iteration of it touted as the ultimate plot structure. Even purported alternative structures can look suspiciously similar when subjected to sufficient scrutiny. Love it or hate it, the Monomyth does effectively describe many of the world’s most famous and beloved stories, from Lord of the Rings to Star Wars to Harry Potter.

So, is that it? Is this truly the one plot available to us if we are to succeed as writers and storytellers? Well, given you’re here, you’re already likely aware of at least a few of the other options available to you. Still, I’d like to offer one more—one I think you’ll find surprisingly familiar, yet rarely discussed or consciously implemented, and therefore still quite fresh. It may also be familiar because it was inspired in no small part by Katie’s exploration of Flat Arcs, Flat Archetypes, and Impact Characters more generally.

I call it “The Unitive Myth.” Others have identified it by such names as “Feminine Mode Narrative” (Michael Hauge) and “Carrier-Bag Fiction” (Ursula Le Guin). I first discovered it while trying (and failing) to fit some stories I teach in literature classes into a Monomythical framework—stories such as Anne of Green Gables and, yes, even that pinnacle of Westerns, Shane. But try as I might, I just couldn’t get Anne to contort herself to fit into the Monomythical box.

And I found that fascinating.

If you’re like me, sometimes these grand, dramatic, spectacular stories driven by high stakes conflict don’t do it for you; you might prefer a story that’s quiet, subtle, and cozy instead. That’s what the Unitive Myth is all about, even in its more adventurous forms (more on that later). Anne Shirley isn’t on an epic quest to retrieve a great boon. She doesn’t face impassable hordes of mooks arrayed against her, blocking her goal. Nor does she ultimately slay a dragon or a dark lord to save Prince Edward’s Isle, let alone Canada. And yet, an account of her attempt to bake the perfect cake to impress her new schoolmarm captivates me, and I’m truly devastated along with Anne when she fails.

Why?

I wanted to know. The prospect of describing a narrative mode that could allow me to emulate these kinds of narratives in my own work was too enticing, so I set out analyzing them, looking for shared tropes and structures.

How to Write an Alternative to the Monomyth

Interested in learning how to write such captivatingly cozy stories for yourself? Read on, and I’ll share what secrets I’ve uncovered: the subtle Yin to the Monomyth’s bombastic Yang.

To better understand the Unitive Myth, let’s contrast it with Dan Harmon’s simplified Monomyth, the “Story Circle,” beat for beat.

First Act: Invitation vs. Initiation

Monomyth: You, the protagonist, are going about your ordinary, everyday life when something disrupts your routine, making you realize you badly Need some object of desire. Implicitly or explicitly, you’ve been invited to go on an adventure.

Unitive Myth: You have left a previous life behind and entered a new milieu. Perhaps you’re moving into an entirely new community, or maybe you’re just taking on a greater role within your existing one. Regardless of the circumstances, you step into this new situation confident in who you are and what you’re capable of. You Are Whole already.

Example:

Anne Shirley (Child): I can hear you clamoring already, shouting invectives and objections as you sharpen your pitchfork and light the torches. “Anne? Whole? Puh-lease! Isn’t that the point of her story—that she needs a family?” To which I would counter, “not according to the book itself.” At one point, Matthew Cuthbert, the father figure of Anne’s two adoptive parents, tells his sister Marilla he suspects they need Anne more than she needs them. This isn’t some schmaltzy throwaway line. Rather, it’s borne out as the plot unfolds: Anne remains steadfast in her core characteristics: passionate, curious, and whimsical. By the end of the story, she hasn’t fundamentally changed so much as she has more fully embodied these characteristics, albeit with more control.

First Half of Second Act: Departure vs Disruption

Monomyth: Driven by your desperate need, you Go, venturing forth into the wide world to Search for the object of your desire.

Unitive Myth: You Join a new community (or an old community in a new capacity). However, as you make the rounds and engage with each member, you discover your mere presence and habits create disruption. Perhaps your appearance, bearing, and modes of interaction are simply foreign to the community, but they interpret such things as transgressive, maybe even dangerous. So, for a time, you feel it necessary to partially Conceal your true nature.

Example:

Elizabeth Bennet (Lover): Elizabeth enters the high society of Netherfield and Rosings, quietly confident and brimming with acerbic wit. Each member of this society expects her to behave decorously and with deference, but during each encounter—whether with Darcy, Miss Bingley, Mr. Collins, or Lady Catharine De Bourgh—Elizabeth upends this expectation. Her disruption is unintentional; Elizabeth is just being herself—keen and witty, traits unheard of in a woman within polite society of the time. After provoking the ire of some of these sociocultural elites, Elizabeth feels pressured to conceal her true self. The stakes are too high to risk further provoking their disapprobation. For now…

Second Half of Second Act: Achievement vs. Revelation

Monomyth: Eventually, you Find the object of your desire, which you believe to be your deepest Need. Through great effort and sacrifice, you overcome the obstacles and forces of antagonism so you can Take it as your own.

Unitive Myth: You cycle through several interactions with all the core community members: including Allies, Challengers, Romantic Mirrors, Guardians, Guides, and Libertines (more on these in another article, perhaps). One meeting at a time, one piece at a time, you Shed the culturally conditioned armor and masks you donned upon first facing rejection. The more you unveil yourself, the more you can Give of yourself, healing individuals within the community and inspiring greater harmony in the whole.

Example:

Atticus Finch (Parent): Long seen as a man apart by the denizens of Maycomb, Atticus reveals his true ideology throughout Tom Robinson’s trial. He remains steadfast in his convictions even in the face of increasingly hostile societal pressure to conform. By treating everyone, including his greatest critics, with dignity and compassion, Atticus softens their opposition just enough to sow seeds of social change.

Third Act: Return vs. Stasis (Harmonization or Rejection types I, II, or III)

Monomyth: After achieving your need, you Return to your normal life in your original setting. You’ve been utterly Changed by your journey, and you’re prepared to share what boons and wisdom you’ve received during your travels with your community. (If you’ve noticed any interesting parallels to the beginning of the Unitive Myth, you’re on the right track).

Unitive Myth: Now that you’ve revealed your true self fully, you commit to Remain in the community, your essence Unveiled to all, leading to one of several conclusions. You might be fully integrated as a respected and admired member of the community, free to be yourself and give what gifts you have to offer (Harmonization). However, you might be spurned, instead (Rejection). You might be compelled or impelled to don your mask and armor once again, living in occlusions until the community might finally be ready to receive your gifts (I). However, they might banish you to the margins or exile you altogether (II) or even attempt to destroy you (III).

Examples:

In the Superman (Ruler) mythos, he is eventually accepted and looked up to in Metropolis almost as a benevolent lord, despite Lex Luthor’s ceaseless attempts to depose him.

In The Last Airbender, Uncle Iroh (Elder) is banished from the fire nation for his dissenting views, but still creates positive change in the Fire Nation through his subtle, compassionate interactions with his nephew, Zuko, the future Fire Lord.

In the Harry Potter series, Dumbledore (Mentor) experiences all four scenarios across different books: he is initially accepted and beloved, then must hide his true intentions, and is eventually banished and, finally, marked for death.

***

I began this article by referring to the Unitive Myth as the Yin to the Monomyth’s Yang, and I meant it. The Unitive Myth’s protagonist is receptive where the Monomyth’s is active; its protagonist is often female (or archetypally feminine) where the Monomyth’s is male or masculine; its journey is internal where the Monomyth’s is external.

And, yes, you may have noticed the Unitive Myth begins where the Monomyth ends. They are not merely inversions of one another, but complementary opposites. Each archetypal character’s journey spiraling into the next. From a Flat Arc to dynamic Change Arc, the cycle repeats from Child to Mage.

But don’t take my word for it. Give the Unitive Myth a spin. I look forward to reading your cozy self-revelatory tales!

In Summary:

Introduces the Unitive Myth as an alternative to the Monomyth, highlighting a narrative structure focused on internal growth, community, and the feminine energy within storytelling. This approach aligns well with the Flat Arc archetypes (Child, Lover, Parent, Ruler, Elder, and Mentor) by emphasizing characters who remain true to their core natures while influencing the world around them. The Unitivte myth can offer a refreshing alternative to the Monomyth of the traditional Hero’s Journey by opening up new possibilities for writers who seek subtle, character-driven narratives.

Key Takeaways:

• The Unitive Myth is a narrative structure that contrasts with the Monomyth, focusing on internal growth and community instead of external quests.
• It aligns with the Flat Arc archetypes, in which characters remain true to their core identities, influencing the world without undergoing drastic personal transformation.
• This alternative framework is particularly fitting for writers who prefer quieter, more introspective stories that still carry emotional depth and impact.
• Exploring the Unitive Myth can help writers craft stories that feel fresh and resonant, especially for those who feel confined by traditional plot structures.

Want More?

Want to learn more about the subtle power of the Flat Arc archetypes Oliver talked about in this post? Check out my book Writing Archetypal Character Arcs. In this book, I dive deep into six core Flat or “resting” archetypes—Child, Lover, Parent, Ruler, Elder, and Mentor—and explore how they can remain true to themselves throughout their journeys while still profoundly impacting the world around them.

Whether you’re wanting to learn how to craft “static” protagonists or just seeking a fresh perspective on how to approach character arcs in your stories, Writing Archetypal Character Arcs offers tools and inspiration to help you create compelling, character-driven narratives with deep thematic resonance.

It’s available in paperback, e-book, and audiobook.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! How do you think the Unitive Myth, as an alternative to the Monomyth, could reshape the way we approach storytelling with Flat Arc archetypes? Tell me in the comments!

The post Is This the Alternative to the Monomyth We’ve All Been Searching For? appeared first on Helping Writers Become Authors.

How can writing help you through difficult times, whether that’s a change you didn’t anticipate or an experience of grief? How can you differentiate between writing for yourself vs. writing for publication? Karen Wyatt gives her tips.

In the intro, Amazon opens up AI narration with Audible Virtual Voice on the KDP Dashboard [KDP Help]; Voice Technologies, Streaming And Subscription Audio In A Time Of Artificial Intelligence; Spotify announces short fiction publishing for indie authors [Spotify]; Audio for Authors: Audiobooks, Podcasting, and Voice Technologies — Joanna Penn; Writing for Audio First with Jules Horne; Writing for Audiobooks: Audio-first for Flow and Impact – Jules Horne. BookVault.app is now printing in Canada, as well as Australia, UK, and US.

Plus, Measure your life by what you create: 50 by 50; and Reykjavik Art, Northern Lights, and The West Fjords: Iceland, Land of Fire and Ice; Books and Travel Podcast returns this week; Writing the Shadow on the Biz Book Broadcast with Liz Scully; ElevenLabs speech to text for dictation.

Today’s show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started.

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

Dr. Karen Wyatt is a retired hospice physician and bestselling author of books about death, loss, and grief. She’s also the host of the End-of-Life University Podcast and an inspirational speaker.

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

• Different types of grief that we deal with throughout life
• Why write about grief and end of life?
• Using writing to deal with the complex emotions around grief
• The role of control in grief
• Transforming personal writing into publication
• How spirituality plays a role in the grieving process
• How to approach writing about family members

You can find Karen at EOLuniversity.com.

Transcript of Interview with Karen Wyatt

Joanna: Dr. Karen Wyatt is a retired hospice physician and bestselling author of books about death, loss, and grief. She’s also the host of the End-of-Life University Podcast and an inspirational speaker.

Today we’re talking about her book, Stories from the Dark Night: Writing as a Tool for Grief. So welcome back to the show, Karen.

Karen: Thank you, Joanna. I’m so excited to be talking to you once again.

Joanna: Yes. Now, it’s been a while, so first up—

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

Karen: Well, like so many of your guests that you interview here, I’ve always been interested in stories. I started writing stories when I was seven years old. I wrote a three act play when I was 10, which my school ended up producing. So I guess I could say I’m a published playwright, my one and only play.

I’ve always loved writing down my thoughts and ideas and telling stories and writing them down. I kind of got waylaid in terms of writing by becoming a doctor. So I had a number of years there of intense schooling, and then I was a doctor and a wife and mother at the same time.

I had very, very little time for writing. It was precious time if I ever could just sit down and jot down a little story that was in my head.

Still, the creative juices kept flowing, as I know you’ve talked about. Like, just ideas, ideas, ideas every day for stories or things I wanted to write, but I always had to put that aside. I was just too busy.

So I finally retired from medicine early, and I was a hospice physician for a number of years. I retired early so that I could write because I’d been gathering all these stories while I worked in hospice. Amazing, beautiful stories from patients I worked with. I just knew it’s time for me now to shift into writing mode.

I retired early 15 years ago, and I started writing then. I hadn’t really thought about what it takes to publish a book, I didn’t know that. I finally started delving into that, and through you and your podcast, I learned about independent publishing.

I’ve been able to publish my books myself most of the time. Though, I worked once with a hybrid publisher and then most recently with Watkins Publishing from the UK.

It’s been a really fun journey for me of finally having a chance later in life to get into the writing that I started when I was seven years old.

Joanna: That’s wonderful.

Just on being drawn to the darker side, I mean, obviously as a doctor, you could have gone into many different areas and ended up being a hospice physician, and—

You’re writing about end of life. Has that always been an interest?

I mean, I guess I’m saying this from the perspective of someone, as you know, I have always thought about death. Like from a very young age, I remember thinking about death and dying. So it’s always been on my mind. I wondered if that was true for you.

Karen: I did have some interest in death and dying. A classmate of mine died when we were 16 years old, and that kind of really woke me up to the idea that, oh, my goodness, everyone dies, and you could die at any age.

I started really contemplating my own mortality at 16. Like, you know what? Nothing’s guaranteed. I could die at any time.

So I will say death has been on my thoughts since a young age.

Then early in my medical career, my father died by suicide, and I was really plunged into this whole world—and I call it my dark night of the soul, in a way—of grief after his death.

This is what led me into working for hospice because I realized, even though I had thought about death, I didn’t really know anything about it. I didn’t know anything about grief, even though I was a doctor. I hadn’t had any training in that area.

So I started volunteering for hospice to help me understand what I was going through. What am I going through here as I’m grieving my father’s death?

Ultimately, I shifted my whole career to hospice because I found it was just a rich, very spiritual, sacred place to be.

A sacred way to be a doctor with working with patients and families, and it was very powerful for me. So it was really grief itself that shifted my path as a doctor, initially.

Then, again, as I said, I started gathering so many stories and learning so many things about this process of loss and how we navigate it and cope with it in life. I really felt inspired to start writing and talking and teaching about it because at that time, it seemed like a very taboo subject. I think it still is, in many ways.

Joanna: It’s so weird. You said there that as doctors, you didn’t really get into the death side of things. It just seems so crazy to me because it happens to 100% of people, and it’s like a physical process—obviously, much more than that.

Why aren’t doctors trained on death?

Karen: It’s so bizarre. I still can’t wrap my head around why that is.

It’s partly because modern medicine focuses so much on curing illness and saving lives that death has become the enemy. So we don’t want to think about that or talk about that because we don’t want it to happen for our patients.

It’s ridiculous because it does happen. I think back to when a patient was approaching death in the hospital when we were in training, suddenly that patient was taken off our service.

We didn’t follow them anymore because, well, they weren’t a good teaching tool now because they’re going to die. We’ll move on to the patients that we can cure because that’s what we’re here to learn about.

It really doesn’t make any sense, but it’s part of why we have a problem with how we take care of people at the end of life. I think that’s why I just felt inspired. I want to help do this differently, and that’s why hospice was so appealing to me.

Joanna: And why books and writing and talking about these things are so important. As you say, there’s a lot of taboo, and perhaps even more taboo around the way your father died.

Before we get into that, I just wanted us to talk about the word grief, because it feels like there are many forms of grief. It is not just if we are dying, or if our partner is dying, or our family is dying, or if someone is dying.

What are some of the other ways that grief might come up for people?

What might help them if they’re feeling certain ways?

Karen: I think it is important for us to recognize that —

We feel grief whenever major changes take place in our life.

I had a mom tell me she grieved when her child no longer used baby language. Like started talking and saying words normally, and they lost all the cute little expressions that their toddler used to say.

When that was over with, she felt grief because it was a big change. Something shifted, and she lost something. So we can feel grief even in times of happiness, when good things are happening.

If you think about it, life is one series of loss and change after another. So it makes sense, in a way, grief is kind of an emotion that’s always present for us if we really look at it.

Joanna: Is it a change that is out of our control, rather than something that we can control?

I’m thinking, personally, I feel like when I went through menopause, I felt a lot of grief over losing a sense of who I was as a younger woman, I guess.

Then I feel like a lot of anger, as we record this in 2025, there’s a lot of political anger in different sides, and also anger around AI maybe taking people’s jobs. All of these things are not choices that are made deliberately. They’re things that are almost out of our control.

How much does grief and loss of control go together?

Karen: I think definitely. I mean, I think the way we cope with grief or navigate grief has a lot to do with control.

If we have any sense that I can control my surroundings, I can change what I need to change, that gives us a little bit more resilience and more ability to deal with the losses that we experience.

When it feels outside of our control and there’s nothing we can do, I think that is the deeper form of grief that’s very hard to manage.

As you said, because it’s associated with a lot of anger. From the ego level, especially like anger, how is it that all of this can happen to me and I can’t do anything about it?

Joanna: Well, let’s come in to writing then. When these feelings overtake us and we really just don’t know what we’re doing—

Why is writing so useful when it comes to grief? How has it helped you, in particular?

Karen: Well, I think grief, as we already said, it can contain such a mixture of emotions. We typically think of grief as just being sadness over a loss, but as you pointed out, there’s a lot of anger within grief, and guilt and regret, sometimes resentment. Sometimes there’s even relief. There’s sometimes a joy that’s present within grief.

It’s a very complex situation with lots of emotions bubbling up all at once, and yet, we don’t know what to do with all of that emotion. So writing gives us a place to express it, to ventilate the emotion, and put it down on paper.

We sometimes hesitate to express verbally to other people all of these things that are going on with us, this mixture of emotion during grief, because other people don’t necessarily understand it and may not want to listen to it.

It’s why writing is our place to communicate all of these crazy thoughts we have and confusing feelings that we have. It’s a safe, non-judgmental place.

We can just put it down on paper and validate ourselves that we’re going through this difficult time.

It doesn’t always make sense, but we can express it at least. So we can give voice to what otherwise can be hidden or repressed inside of us.

Joanna: So with your father, how did writing help you? Like was it just, “Oh, things are bad. I’m going to write this essay or this poem, and then suddenly I feel better.” Is that how it worked?

Karen: No, not at all.

Joanna: Obviously not!

Karen: I mean, I didn’t even think of the idea of writing itself. I didn’t even recognize that that could be therapeutic in some way.

At the time of my father’s death, I happened to be reading Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way, where she talks about doing Morning Pages every day. I had been intrigued by that idea before of doing Morning Pages.

I found I was waking up early every morning. I couldn’t sleep, dealing with this insomnia. I was actually really busy, as I was a mom and a wife and a doctor. I was so busy, I felt like I don’t even have time to deal with grief or to deal with my emotions during the day. I’m just busy having to do all these things.

I would wake up at four in the morning and couldn’t sleep, and I remembered Morning Pages. I started just getting up early every single morning and writing. Morning Pages, it’s stream of consciousness writing, where you just write down anything that’s in your head.

Much of what I wrote down dealt with, “I’m angry, I feel guilty.” I dealt with all these confusing, conflicting emotions I felt inside around my father’s death.

I didn’t even know for sure that was all happening inside until I started writing the Morning Pages, and it was all coming out of me.

It gave me a place to just, as I said, to ventilate and release those emotions. It actually became a place where I was processing grief without even realizing it, every morning, writing those three pages of stream of consciousness.

So that’s how I began with that type of writing, and I highly recommend it. I don’t know if you’ve ever done it. I’m sure you’ve read the book, The Artist’s Way.

Joanna: Oh, yes. I’ve always kind of been a journaller, but I don’t do Morning Pages like every day.

When I got divorced, my first husband left me, so it was out of my control. It was not my choice. The three journals that I have from that time are full of—and it’s so repetitive. You know, there’s no point in me reading it back. Maybe it’s the same with you.

It’s like that is just raw emotion that every single day sounds exactly the same. There is this period where that just happens.

For a period of time, you can’t really get past those initial emotions in your outpouring.

Karen: No. There’s so much of it inside of us that needs to come out. That’s what I find, that I’m writing the same thing every day.

Julia Cameron mentions about writing these Morning Pages, it helps us eventually get out of our logic brain. Which, in grief, the logic brain, she calls it, is always trying to figure out why this happened. It’s always trying to figure out an explanation. It needs an answer for all the questions.

Once you can move past the logic brain, you actually awaken the creative side of your brain, which can start to express things more in symbols and stories start coming alive.

The creative brain is actually figuring out, oh, this grief experience, this is interesting. How can I use that in a creative way to make something else?

I think, for me, when I felt that shift happen, that’s when I started to move into a more productive aspect of working through my grief. That’s when I was really able to start processing it better and get past all these ruminating thoughts that just came over and over again.

Joanna: I think that’s what’s interesting in your Stories from the Dark Night. It isn’t just that stream of consciousness grief. In fact, it’s not that at all. There’s all kinds of different sorts of writing.

Tell us what happened when you moved into that productive side of it, and what are the types of writing that came out?

Karen: Well, I started writing whatever came to me, and I guess the Morning Pages opened that up a little bit. After doing that for months and months, one day a poem came into my head, and I just wrote it down, and it happened to be about my dad’s death.

Another day, a story came to mind that I wrote about. It seemed that everything I started writing, even though I didn’t think it was related to my dad’s death, ended up being about my dad’s death in some way or another, symbolically or in some way or another.

Gradually, I just started having these creative impulses to write some little thing. I would write down whatever came to me. I was still doing the Morning Pages every day, but at other times of day, something else would pop up for me.

I would write a story, or sometimes it was an essay. Sometimes I read a guided writing prompt that actually really helped me dive deeper into a subject. Some of the prompts were as simple as someone said, “Write something about the word ‘leftovers’ and what that means to you.”

I’d think of the word leftovers, like how is that inspirational? And yet, I ended up writing a whole piece on leftovers. It was just being able to get into that creative part of my brain and writing whatever came to me.

I also then went on to more intentional writing. So I started writing letters to my dad and expressing some things that I didn’t get a chance to say before he died, expressing some of the deeper emotions that I felt around his death. That was very therapeutic as well.

Joanna: On therapy, I think this is really interesting, because when my husband left—I’m very happily married people, if you’re listening now, I am on my second marriage—but at that time, I didn’t see a therapist. Even though we’re doing a podcast, I’m not a talker. I didn’t want to talk about my issues.

Writing it down, I feel like writing all of that over the years it was, really, and sort of recovering, helped me heal. So I didn’t need a therapist, in some way.

Where’s the balance for people between writing helping with healing and maybe needing to see a professional?

Karen: I’m much like you. I’m not much of a talker. I’m not always wanting talk with another person or looking for that kind of external help. I’m much more internally oriented. So I want to dive into my own psyche. I want to look at that. I want to explore it for myself.

I think for certain, whenever someone feels like they are just stuck and not getting anywhere and beginning to have very hurtful thoughts going through their minds, or thoughts of feeling hopeless and that they may never be able to move forward, never be able to find a way through the grief. Then they might need an outside person who can come and help them reflect.

For me, it’s like my journal felt like a therapist to me. I guess I was, in some ways, dialoguing with my higher self in the journal and serving as my own therapist.

I could read back through what I wrote and see, oh, here’s something I hadn’t thought about before, but it’s right there in what I just wrote. So this insight is there for me, but some people may not be able to do that.

They may not be able to access that higher wisdom or a different perspective through writing alone. They may really benefit from talking to someone else. So I always encourage people to seek out counseling, find a therapist, especially if talking is beneficial for them.

Joanna: I think the other thing there is—I mean, you mentioned insomnia earlier—and I do feel like there is a period of grief that is closer to mental illness, which insomnia doesn’t help, obviously.

At one point, I think, in the DSM, grief was actually a mental illness, considered to be very bad, but then it was recognized as a part of the human condition.

So I guess, just to encourage people, if you’re feeling like it is completely, completely mad, then sometimes that is normal. It’s just a case of how long that goes on for. I guess, a bit like insomnia. You have to get that sorted out at some point.

Karen: Yes, because at some point it becomes destructive to your physical health.

If you find that you’re not thriving, and that you feel, in fact, that you’re falling apart in many ways, I think it’s really good to get input from an outside person and get help for that.

It’s funny, grief reentered the DSM this past year. They created a new category, pathological grief, that they defined so that they could include severe grief.

I think they realized, first of all, it was a mistake to say any kind of grief is a mental illness because it is actually a normal part of all of our lives.

Then when they took it out, they realized, oh, but wait, some people actually do get into a severe state of grief for which they need help. They may need medications, they may need therapy and counseling. So they made up a new diagnosis and put that back in.

Joanna: I’m glad you brought that up then, because I thought it had gone, and now it’s back. So, of course there is a difference.

I think also some religious traditions, there are periods of time and ways of addressing mourning and death. Where it’s like for a certain amount of time you are expected to grieve, and then at a certain point of time you are expected to—not forget it all—but to move on with your life.

It’s almost like those rituals of death and dying can help. In fact, you’re a spiritual person, and you do put a Matthew chapter five, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted,” into your book.

How does a spiritual perspective help you in your life, in your writing, and for people who are grieving?

Karen: It has been important to me, and it’s one of the things I gained through my work, or deepened through my work in hospice.

Observing people and families who were dealing with death in general, and how they all grappled with these universal concepts that I would say are not limited to any one religion, but actually present in all religions. Love and forgiveness and finding meaning and purpose in things.

So I gravitated toward these spiritual concepts that, again, I’m not attached to any one religion, but I like the spiritual teachings and the concepts that are universal and apply to all of them.

So those ended up being the things where I found the most comfort is being able to focus on love and just bringing more love into my life. Acting with love, through love, and finding ways to love myself even though I was feeling broken and in pain.

Then forgiveness became especially powerful as well because I realized one thing that held me back in grieving my dad was not being able to recognize how angry I was at him and that I needed to forgive him for the choice he made to end his life.

I was in denial of that for many years, and when I finally saw it like, oh, I’m hanging on to this really deep seated resentment toward him for the choice he made. I have to be able to forgive him, because for whatever reason, that’s what he chose, and that’s what his life came to. I’m hurting myself by not forgiving him.

So that spiritual concept of forgiveness really changed everything for me. I work with that all the time now, remembering like, oh, don’t hold on to grudges. Don’t be resentful. Just get over it. Just find a way to forgive because holding on to that kind of anger can be really toxic.

Joanna: Well, that is the other side of anger, isn’t it? Anger is such a huge part of death and dying, no matter which side of it you’re on. It’s something I think about a lot.

There’s so much anger at the moment in the world, and I feel like some kind of forgiveness is so important because it is just so toxic when everything is angry all the time. I guess you would have seen that idea of a good death, where—

There is acceptance of what’s happening, as opposed to anger at what’s happening.

Karen: Yes, and I think the anger is normal and it has a place, so we need to accept it and embrace it. Yes, of course, we feel angry. Life didn’t go the way we hoped it would, like we’ve lost all these things, but it doesn’t serve us to stay stuck there if we can hold our anger, and then see a bigger picture beyond that.

I guess that’s the other thing, the spiritual perspective, for me, has become what I call it —

The galaxy view of life. Where you step back and look at everything from a bigger perspective, like looking down on planet earth where we live.

How does this experience I’m having fit into the cosmos, into everything that’s happening here? How do I accept it as this is just part of life, of this vast mystery of life?

I choose to move into curiosity sometimes, instead of anger. Like instead of doubling down and being angry about what’s happening, being curious about how did this arise, and what will come of it. What will happen next? What will come from it?

Then that puts me back into creative brain again.

Once you’re curious, you become creative, and you can find ways of making the best of the situation that you’re in.

Joanna: So we’ve talked a lot, I guess, about the writing we do for the self. You can put whatever you like in your journal, and it can be as repetitive as hell, and frankly, quite boring for anyone else to read.

Then, obviously, you’ve published several books about death, and Stories From the Dark Night has personal writing, but it is not that repetitive original work, I guess. It’s different. It’s been transformed.

So if people want to publish, obviously people listening are authors, how did you know when you were ready to share some of your writing about your dad and things that were difficult?

How can people move from personal writing to writing for publication around these difficult topics?

Karen: For me, I understood that I couldn’t share this writing until I had clarity around it.

I needed to be free of anger and blame. I understood a lot of the things I was writing early on were filled with those mixed emotions, but just ventilating anger and blaming other people, blaming everyone, blaming life.

I realized that is not productive. I’m ventilating it. It’s helpful to me to ventilate it. It’s not productive for other people to read that. I want to get to that place of this higher view, where I’m not looking at it through the lens of anger or blame, I’m looking at it really more through the lens of love.

How could talking about the pain that I experienced, is there a way that could be helpful to other people? How can I express that in a way that could foster healing and growth for someone else?

That took me years to get to a place where I felt like I’m not writing out of anger. I’m not writing because I want to use my writing to hurt someone. If that makes sense to you, that’s what I needed to get past. Making sure I had healed enough and I had enough clarity that I had the right reasons for putting my work out there.

Then I chose very carefully what to share. There are lots of things I didn’t share.

In that book, I was trying to share examples of what I wrote. Not that the writing itself is great, but I wanted to share examples of different ways that I wrote that ended up helping with my grief, different stories or essays or poems that I wrote that were helpful to me, just to inspire other people to do their own writing.

Joanna: There are writing prompts within the book in each chapter. So, I guess the main focus is — 

When we write for ourselves, it is all about us. Then if we’re going to publish something, it has to be a focus on the other person.

Karen: Yes, that’s primarily what I was feeling. How will this impact others? Can it be a positive thing, if I share it, that could inspire someone else and make them want to do their own writing and do their own work?

Joanna: So also in the book, you talk about lifelines, and I thought it was a great term. So what do you mean by that, and—

How might people hold on to lifelines when they’re going through grief or other life changes?

Karen: For me, when I was really deep in grief, I had this image of being caught up in a tsunami, in a sense. Just like these massive head waves, like rushing over me and feeling like I was drowning at times, but somehow I would always come to the surface.

There was always something I could hold onto, just some little thing, like someone had thrown me a rope. It was keeping me afloat, and it was helping me find my way back to the shore.

Instead of getting lost and thinking about, “oh, I’m so overwhelmed with grief,” to thinking, “oh, what was it yesterday that helped me get through?” Then I would remember, oh, I heard that amazing song on the radio, and that reminded me of something Dad and I did together.

Or I would find something. I found just a little note that my dad wrote to me when I was in college. I found it in a box somewhere, and seeing his handwriting, it was so touching to me. It actually brought me joy. That little moment was like one of those lifelines.

I started just paying attention to all kinds of things that were happening. Oh, and another thing was a bird song. My dad loved the Meadow Lark. We grew up in Wyoming, and it’s the state bird of Wyoming. I would, from time to time, I would see a Meadow Lark or hear a Meadow Lark sing.

I started watching for those little things, those little, tiny things. I’d be paying attention to the bird song, and I’d hear the Meadow Lark, and that was one of my life lines. Like, oh, there’s dad. There’s a connection with my dad.

When I started searching for the lifelines every day and just noticing and paying attention, every day there was something. Every day there was some kind of reminder that helped me feel connected to him.

Those little things I felt like were just enough to keep me afloat, when it seemed like, “Oh no, here comes the wave again. It’s going to wash me under,” but I would know there will be something. There’ll be something I can hang on to that will help me get afloat again.

Joanna: It’s interesting because, of course, specifics, like the sound of the Meadow Lark, are what also bring our writing alive. So it’s not just bird song. You know, I heard a bird sing. It’s always the specifics and paying attention. I guess, again, that gives you an external.

You’re looking outside of yourself, not just being stuck in your head.

Which can, again, just help you keep going.

Karen: Yes, definitely. Looking for all the little symbols and little signs outside of myself that reminded me of dad, sometimes even in a painful way. Oftentimes it was just poignant and sweet, the little reminders I would find.

My dad sometimes smoked a pipe with this cherry-scented tobacco in it, and the smoke always smelled like cherries. One day I smelled that. Someone was smoking a pipe with that scent, and I smelled it, and it was like, wow. It was amazing being transported, in a way, back into my childhood and being next to my dad.

It’s incredible when I started paying attention just how many little reminders there were. For me, they were always very positive. Some people describe that they don’t like having reminders because it makes them feel sadness over again, but for me, I always felt a mixture. I always felt the sweetness as well.

Joanna: Yes, that bittersweet, I think is the word. What about your family and other people who knew your dad?

One thing that people worry about sometimes if they publish work about family members, a memoir or something, is that other people feel differently about the situation.

So what are your thoughts on that? Did other people read it?

Was that not a concern? What are your recommendations for people?

Karen: When I started writing about it, the thing I was most concerned was my mother and how she would feel about it. Initially, I told my mom I had written some stories and they have to do with my dad’s death.

She said to me, “I don’t want to read them. Don’t tell me anything about it. I don’t want any of that. Don’t talk about it or tell me anything.”

Then I was really worried, like, oh no, if this is out in the world and other people comment to her, or other people read it, it will be upsetting to her. Then the very next day, she called me, and she said, “Read the story to me.” So she had to get to a place of comfort.

For me, it was a real dilemma. Do I put this out in the world if my mom can’t bear it, can’t bear that this information is out there? So I read her the story, and the story was just my story of my experience.

That’s what I told her. I’m not writing about what I think my dad experienced. I’m writing about my experience with grief when I found out my dad died and what that was like.

So I really did keep it true and honest to my own experience, without trying too much to conjecture on what my dad felt, or what anyone else felt, or anyone else’s actions at that time.

I kept to writing about what I experienced.

Anyway, I read the story to her. We cried together. She loved it. It was actually this incredibly positive healing moment for the two of us because we hadn’t been able to speak so deeply about our grief together in all these many years since my dad had died. That story is what unlocked it for us.

Joanna: Oh, that’s wonderful. Sometimes it can be a way to bring you together. I mean, again, we both said we’re not really talkers. I sometimes feel like I wish my family could read my books, or would be interested in reading my books, so they might understand how I feel.

I wouldn’t be able to say it out loud, whereas I can say it in writing.

It’s funny because I used to write a lot of letters, like up until a decade ago, or maybe two decades ago now with email—gosh, time flies.

I used to write so many letters in my teens, and then when I was backpacking in the early 2000s. I feel like maybe that’s something we don’t do so much anymore.

Karen: Yes, that’s so true. Like you, I think talking is difficult sometimes. To talk together about a painful subject, it’s sometimes really hard to find the words. We’re in our left brain all the time try, and we’re censoring ourselves constantly when we’re trying to talk.

It’s hard to have a really deep conversation with another person, but you can just write with honesty and integrity, and be real and raw on the page, and put it down.

Again, for me, it’s like I described before, I waited a long time before writing the story and then sharing that story. It was until I knew I did not write this to try to hurt someone, to try to blame my mom or hurt her, or my brother, or cause them any pain.

I made sure what I was writing felt pure to me. So I think that’s why it had a positive impact for her.

Joanna: Well, we say we would rather write, but we both have podcasts, and as we come towards the end, I wanted to just ask about your End of Life University Podcast, which I’ve been on. So tell people about that and—

What can people find on your End of Life University podcast?

Karen: I started the podcast after publishing my first book, 7 Lessons for Living from the Dying, and realizing nobody really wants to buy a book about dying. People don’t talk about this. Nobody wants to hear about it.

I realized it’s not enough to write a book, I have to do something else to try to change this conversation around these topics. So I got the idea then. I started listening to podcasts myself, and thought there needs to be a podcast on this subject.

So I started doing interviews, and I discovered your podcast shortly after that. I loved your style. I love the fact that you have a more eclectic podcast, that you go in lots of different directions, and you’re just interested in everything. So you have lots of different guests, a variety of guests with a variety of topics.

I decided that’s what I’m interested in, too. So I kind of modeled my podcast after yours. Inviting lots of different guests and having different types of conversations, thinking whatever we put out there should be helpful to someone.

The more people are able to hear conversations about difficult topics, the more comfortable they may get with having these conversations themselves. So I’ve been doing it for, well, I actually started in 2013 with my first interviews back then. So it’s been a while, like you. Not as long as you have been, but a while.

Joanna: That’s amazing. You do have so many different interesting topics and angles and different kinds of people. So has the reception been what you wanted?

I mean, you’ve obviously been doing it for so long, it’s still of value to you and your community.

Karen: Yes. I don’t really even know what I expected in the beginning. At first, I only attracted people who already worked for hospice, people who were already in the field and already had an interest.

Over the years, I’ve attracted more and more people who are just being themselves introduced to grief and death in their own lives.

I’ve received some amazing feedback and wonderful stories from people.

One young man told me a friend of his was dying, and he drove across the country to be with his friend. He listened to the podcast all the way there in the car so that he would understand death and dying and grief. He said it made all the difference.

He said, “I came to his bedside and I knew what to say, and I knew how to be with him and how to be comfortable with my own pain and grief because of all the interviews I heard.”

It was like, oh, wow, that’s why I’m doing this. That’s why I’m doing this, so — 

It’s a resource for people in a time of need who need to learn about something and want information.

So when I get feedback like that, it tells me, okay, this is why I’m doing it. It keeps me going, really, because it’s actually hard doing a podcast. It’s such hard work.

Joanna: Wow, you gave me goosebumps there. I know people listening will be affected by that because every single person is going to be affected by grief at some point. Whether it’s ourselves or other people, it’s going to happen. So I absolutely recommend your podcast and your books.

Tell people where they can find you and everything you do online.

Karen: If they go to the website, it’s EOLuniversity.com. EOL stands for end of life, but EOLuniversity.com. A link to the podcast is there, and to my books, and pretty much everything they need to know about me.

Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Karen. That was great.

Karen: Thank you, Joanna. I’ve really enjoyed it.

The post Writing As A Tool For Grief And Dealing With Change With Karen Wyatt first appeared on The Creative Penn.

I’m 50. It’s a big number!

I’ve had a sign on my wall for years now: “Create a body of work I’m proud of. 50 books by 50!” Did I make it? My calculations are below.

To put this in context, I’ve been writing seriously for publication since 2007, so this is the result of almost 18 years of consistent work.

I also have another sign on my wall that I made in a letterpress workshop: “Measure your life by what you create.”

This idea sits behind everything do and stems from my old job as an IT consultant implementing systems and processes into different companies in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

Although I was ‘successful’ in many ways and making a good living, I felt like everything I did back then was wasted energy. That everything I worked on would be blown away with the next software release. Time ate up everything I did and I hated that feeling.

Writing books and stories is almost the opposite way to spend my time. Time compounds everything I do, and as each year passes, and I keep writing and publishing, my pile of intellectual property assets grows.

I absolutely can measure my life by what I create these days.

Did I manage 50 books by 50 as Joanna Penn and J.F. Penn?

People often ask, ‘how many books have you written?’

But does that include multiple editions under the same title, which often are complete rewrites? Does that include short stories and novellas? What about co-written books? You can see the difficulty!

So, I’ve decided to calculate this with points. A full-length book or novella, even if co-written = 1 point. A short story or subsequent editions of a book = 0.5 points.

[TL;DR — Yes, I made it according to my points criteria! Breakdown below.]

You can find my books on the usual online stores in all the usual formats, and I narrate many of the audiobooks. You can also find my books for writers as well as workbooks and bundles as Joanna Penn at CreativePennBooks.com and my fiction and memoir at JFPennBooks.com.

Joanna Penn — Writing Craft Books

How to Write a Novel — 1

Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words — 1

How to Write Non-Fiction, Second Edition — 1.5

Sub-total: 3.5

Joanna Penn — Healthy writer books

The Successful Author Mindset — 1

The Healthy Writer, with Dr. Euan Lawson — 1

The Relaxed Author, with Mark Leslie Lefebvre — 1

Sub-total: 3

Joanna Penn — Writing Business Books

Author Blueprint — multiple editions over years, Ebook for free at TheCreativePenn.com/blueprint — 2

How to Make a Living With Your Writing, Third Edition — 2

How to Market a Book, Third Edition — 2

Public Speaking for Authors, Creatives, and Other Introverts, Second edition — 1.5

Business for Authors: How to be an Author Entrepreneur — 1

Co-Writing a Book, with J. Thorn, Second edition — 1.5

Productivity for Authors — 1

Audio for Authors: Audiobooks, Podcasting, and Voice Technologies — 1

Your Author Business Plan — 1

Sub-total: 14

Others and unpublished

Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, and Virtual Worlds: The Impact of Converging Technologies on Authors and the Publishing Industry — 1

How to Enjoy Your Job or Find a New One – Rewritten and re-published as Career Change — 1.5

Successful Self-Publishing, 4 editions, but it’s short! — 2

From Idea to Book (unpublished) — 1

From Book to Market (unpublished) — 1

Sub-total: 6.5

J.F. Penn — ARKANE Action Adventure Thrillers

Stone of Fire #1, 3 editions — 2

Crypt of Bone #2, 2 editions — 1.5

Ark of Blood #3, 2 editions — 1.5

One Day in Budapest #4 — 1

Day of the Vikings #5 — Ebook for free at JFPenn.com/free — 1

Gates of Hell #6 — 1

One Day in New York #7 — 1

Destroyer of Worlds #8 — 1

End of Days #9 — 1

Valley of Dry Bones #10 — 1

Tree of Life #11 — 1

Tomb of Relics #12 — 1

Soldiers of God, A Short Story — 0.5

Spear of Destiny #13 — 1

Sub-total: 15.5

J.F. Penn — Brooke & Daniel Crime Thrillers

Desecration #1 — 1

Delirium #2 — 1

Deviance #3 — 1

Sub-total: 3

J.F. Penn — Mapwalker Dark Fantasy Trilogy

Map of Shadows #1 — 1

Map of Plagues #2 — 1

Map of the Impossible #3 — 1

Sub-total: 3

J.F. Penn — Travel memoir and stand-alone books

Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways — 1

Catacomb — 1

Blood Vintage, currently on submission — 1

Death Valley, finished and launching on Kickstarter here — 1

Risen Gods with J. Thorn — 1

American Demon Hunters: Sacrifice with J. Thorn, Lindsay Buroker, Zach Bohannon — 0.5

Sub-total: 5.5

Short stories

A Thousand Fiendish Angels (3 short stories in a themed collection) — 1

Blood, Sweat, and Flame — 0.5

The Dark Queen — 0.5

Beneath the Zoo — 0.5

A Midwinter Sacrifice — 0.5

Blood, Sweat and Flame — 0.5

With a Demon’s Eye — 0.5

De-Extinction of the Nephilim — 0.5

Seahenge — 0.5

Sub-total: 5

Total points: 59

This is made up of 12 full-length non-fiction books, 8 short non-fiction books, 18 full-length novels, 6 novellas, 12 short stories, and a memoir.

I’m going to take this as a win, and say yes, I did manage 50 by 50!

What’s next?

Well, I’m not setting any further specific number goals, but I still have a lot of books in me waiting to come out. Most of them are under J.F. Penn these days — either fiction or non-fiction related to that side of me.

Who knows whether I will make it to 100, but I will certainly keep writing until the words stop flowing — hopefully for many more years to come!

Thanks for being here, and let me know your thoughts in the comments.

The post Measure Your Life By What You Create. 50 At 50 first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Nothing pulls readers into an epic story quite like a fantasy world that feels real—a place so immersive, it seems to extend beyond the page. The best fantasy worlds feel like they existed long before the story began, with deep histories, dynamic cultures, and internal logic that makes every detail feel inevitable. So how you can make your fantasy world feel real?

As one of the hottest genres on the market right now, fantasy seems to be everywhere. So many writers are interested in introducing fantastical elements into their stories. But even though it can seem as if fantasy authors can simply do whatever they want in their stories, since bending reality is the point, this isn’t actually the case. Exactly because of its potential for sprawling possibilities, successful fantasy requires a sure hand at the helm. This is nowhere truer than when it comes to worldbuilding.

I decided to write this post in response to a request from Timothy Joseph Coakley:

I would like you to write about fantasy/worldbuilding.

In fantasy, worldbuilding isn’t just about settings. Fantasy worlds play a much larger role than simply a physical background. For starters, a good fantasy world provides the necessary verisimilitude to help audiences suspend disbelief and invest their interest and sympathy in stories set in far-flung landscapes.

More than that, as perhaps the most symbolic of all genres, fantasy does best with worldbuilding that upholds a deeper level of meaning and metaphor. This can be done through parallels and references to real-life historical contexts, as well as by developing the “natural” laws that govern the story’s magic system.

Fantasy also requires a great deal of originality in its settings. Although Singapore or San Francisco can be used over and over in realistic fiction, fantasy requires a fully original setting for every new story. Although motifs emerge—usually via historical periods (such as the Middle Ages) or popular aesthetic trends (such as steampunk)—every fantasy world requires its own original social, historical, and sometimes even physical (as in the law of physics) context.

That’s no small task. But crafting all these details is also one of the chief joys of fantasy and one of the main draws for many authors.

However, by its very importance, authors also can’t afford to overvalue their fantasy worldbuilding. The world—including its magic system, creatures, history, language, landscape, and more—must exist to serve the story. In fantasy, perhaps more than any other genre, the worldbuilding becomes a key part of the plotting process—just as the plotting process becomes key in informing the worldbuilding.

Similar to weaving together a story’s plot, character arc, and theme, fantasy authors must  employ what I call the “bob and weave.” This is a flexible method that recognizes the integral symbiosis of all story parts. Instead of plotting (or worldbuilding) in a strict, linear fashion, this technique encourages you to move back and forth between different elements—and returning to adjust earlier sections as new ideas take shape. The goal isn’t to lock yourself into a strict blueprint but to build a framework that evolves naturally as your understanding of the story deepens.

>>Click here to read: Genre Tips: How to Write Fantasy

In This Article:

Want to Make Your Fantasy World Feel Real? Start with These 6 Pillars

Although in some ways historical fiction has always been my true love, most of my own stories have landed in the fantasy genre. Worldbuilding has always been one of my favorite parts of the process, not least because integrating the setting into the plot allows it to become a vibrant and thematically pertinent character in its own right.

My absolute #1 resource for fantasy worldbuilding has always been and remains Patricia C. Wrede’s bravura list of Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions, which organizes its hundreds of pertinent prompts into every useful category you could ever think of. If you have no idea what to do with your fantasy world, start there. If you’re already deep into your worldbuilding, circle back around at the end and use her questions to make sure you haven’t missed anything.

>>Click here for a shorter list: Are You Asking These Important Questions About Your Fantasy Settings?

For a more organic approach, start your worldbuilding with the following six pillars. These will show you how to make your fantasy world feel real.

1. Start With the Symbolism (and the Theme—and Character Arc)

Your choices for your fantasy world should never be arbitrary. Every piece of the setting should be intentionally chosen to support what’s most important: the story arc. Ideally, the fantasy world and its magical (i.e, non-realistic) aspects will act as an extension of your thematic metaphor by creating external events that catalyze and resolve your character’s inner journey.

This doesn’t mean your setting’s symbolism should be obvious. At its simplest, the setting should function to create the story’s conflict—which in turn will evolve the protagonist’s arc, which in turn will reveal and prove the story’s theme. (This means that if you have a really cool idea for a setting, but it doesn’t directly interact with your characters’ personal crises, then it probably isn’t an integrated choice.)

For Example: Star Wars setting of “a galaxy far, far away” felt particularly appropriate in a story about an intergalactic war, featuring a protagonist whose personal journey integrally connected him to that galaxy’s tyrannical rulers.

You can look to your theme for initial ideas about how to create or strengthen your setting. If you’re uncertain, turn to your understanding of historical, mythological, or archetypal stories. Is there a motif that feels catalytic to your plot or character ideas?

For example: The erupting classism of the Victorian period provided a potent backdrop for the fantasy Carnival Row, which played out themes of racism by exploring the relationships of different fantasy creatures—Pix (fairies), Pucks (fauns), Marrocks (werewolves), etc.

2. Exploring Magic and/or Religion

Perhaps the single factor that sets true fantasy apart from alternate history is its inclusion of fantastical elements—most often in the form of magic. How this magical element alters the rules of nature (as we know them) opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities. Because fantasy magic represents unfamiliar forces, it automatically becomes a type of metaphor, as audiences seek a real-life parallel through which to understand this story element. Most commonly, magic represents power, creating the opportunity for thematic explorations of power’s cause and effect, both for good and evil.

For Example: Lord of the Rings‘ primary example of magic is simply the existence of the demonic One Ring—through which are explored questions of the corrupting influence of power and the countering possibilities of devotion and grace.

Throughout the decades of fantasy worldbuilding, magic systems have become notoriously more complex and sophisticated. Magic maestro Brandon Sanderson sets the bar for thematically cohesive magic systems based on logical laws of use, usually created by organizing the system around a unifying catalyst, such as metals in Mistborn.

However, it bears saying once again that the story doesn’t serve the magic system; the magic system serves the story. Although complexity can be fun, “complicated” is not. Cohesion and a tidiness of focus are hallmarks of magic systems that enhance their stories rather than taking away from them. Audiences (not to mention you) should be able to explain how your magic system works in a few sentences. You can layer complexity on top of that, but the basics should be clear.

For Example: Rebecca Yarros’s staggeringly popular Fourth Wing and its sequels offers a complex magic system full of revelations and twists, but the basis of its magic system is clear enough to describe in one sentence: dragons bond with riders and give them unique powers.

One of the best ways to integrate your magic system into your world is to look at how it appears from within your world. Magic systems will often be established within a story world as either scientific (e.g., Fourth Wing) or spiritual/religious (e.g., Lord of the Rings, Blood Song) or a little bit of both (e.g., Mistborn, Black Prism, Star Wars). Even if you don’t feel your magic system naturally arises from one of these angles, examine how both institutions interact with the magic. Plenty of metaphors waiting to happen right there!

For a handy guide to creating a cohesive and complete magic system, check out C.R. Rowenson’s Magic System Blueprint.

3. Connecting the Antagonist and the Climax

One of the most important parts of making your fantasy world feel real is integrating it cohesively with your plot. One of the best ways to do that—whether you’re creating, double-checking, or troubleshooting—is to consider your story’s finale.

Remember: your story’s ending proves what it’s about.

Whatever happens in your story’s Climax—however it decides the conflict—is your story. Everything leads up to that.

Although fantasy can focus on smaller more relational stories, the genre is best known for epic confrontations between forces of good and evil. A good battle is de rigeur for a fantasy Climax. As such, fantasy is also usually known for its strong antagonist characters. Like all parts of the story, the antagonist should never be an arbitrary decision.

Apart from the usual requirements that the antagonist be formed as a worthy foil to challenge the protagonist on both the outer and inner levels, a fantasy antagonist should also be chosen to fully represent the opposing aspects of the thematic premise. In fantasy, as we’ve already discussed, it’s even more important than usual for the theme to be sewn into every part of the worldbuilding. This means crafting the antagonist is fundamentally a worldbuilding decision (even more so, in some ways, than crafting the protagonist).

Think of it this way: if your story’s magic symbolizes the theme in some way, then the antagonist must interact with that magic in a way that opposes or challenges the protagonist’s own use of it.

For Example: Almost all of the great fantasy stories offer obvious examples of thematic antagonists, including Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. One of the best examples is Harry Potter, in which the protagonist’s evolution into his full magical ability is continually contrasted by, compared to, and challenged by the antagonist’s relationship to that same magic. This story is a particularly good example of tight plotting, thanks to an antagonist who, even in his absence, is never an arbitrary opponent or simplistic representation of evil—but rather is a mirror to the protagonist’s own character arc as he explores the potential of magic as a metaphor for both corrupted power and love.

4. Shaping History, Culture, and Government

The fun of fantasy is that it allows us to explore scenarios that look like things we are familiar with, but without needing to worry about getting all the facts right. The flipside is this means you have to make up everything. And you have to do it in a way that feels just as real as real life. In some ways, it’s actually more work than research!

It’s tons of fun though. As long you’re focusing on several key areas, you can easily create a facsimile world that feels utterly real and convincing. Start with your world’s history, culture, and government. These three will be intertwined (more bob and weave, anyone?). It should go without saying they should also be intertwined with your intentions for your story’s plot, theme, and character arc.

If you’re like me, early ideas for your fantasy may give you a sense of what its world looks or feels like. Perhaps, in the genre’s oldest tradition, it seems to take place in a pseudo-medieval setting. However, you might just as easily base your setting on modern-day social structures and mores.

Either way, this provides a basis for exploring questions that can flesh out an entire world in a way that feels compelling and convincing. You can ask how the circumstances of people’s lives in this period would have influenced their views. What historical developments—either positive or negative—might have led to these circumstances? You can also retcon this by examining what you know about your characters’ plights or actions, then examining what kind of history and culture would have created such a scenario.

From there, you can advance to what is often an important decision in fantasy: government. Not all stories will focus on government-level conflict, but because of the scope of their stakes (and their frequent thematic discussions of power), many fantasies create elaborate governments, usually based on something more than a little bit familiar.

For Example: In many ways, Game of Thrones is as much alternate history as fantasy, since it utilizes relatively little magic, while exploring the history, culture, and themes of medieval succession, explicitly based on England’s War of the Roses.

5. Crafting Language

Although not all fantasy stories will feature multiple and/or foreign languages, many do. Again, this is largely due to the scope of the stakes in many fantasy stories, which deal with the fates of one or more countries at the national level. Another attractive reason for indulging in special languages for your fantasy is that doing so can foster the impression your story world is as vast and varied as our own.

A little language goes a long way in fantasy. Tolkien’s linguistic genius aside, most audiences (especially readers) don’t find much joy in skimming over long sentences (or, God forbid, paragraphs) they can’t understand.

As with every intentional decision in your story, your inclusion of made-up words should always further the story in some obvious way. One of the most obvious reasons for including a foreign language is when it makes no sense for one group of people within your world to understand the language of another.

However, unless you’re a linguist yourself, there’s no reason not to keep your language creation relatively simple. One of the easiest approaches is to choose an existing language (one that fits the motif of your story world) and use its conventions to construct a language that follows similar rules. For example, the story I’m currently working on is set in Dark Ages Great Britain, where it made sense to create a language that looks a bit like Gaelic.

For a heavy-duty resource, check out The Art of Language Invention by David J. Peterson (who developed the languages for the Game of Thrones HBO adaptation). For a slightly more intuitive tool (which you can customize to the complexity you desire), check out VulgarLang.

6. Weaving Backstory

When you focus on backstory, you narrow your focus from the general history of your fantasy world to the specific history that informs your story and your characters. Discovering characters’ backstories can be one of the most important tools for developing your fantasy world.

Why?

Because it tells you a) what you need your story’s world to do in order to best further the story and b) what events in your world’s historical development are truly important.

In working through your story’s backstory and then plotting it, you will discover the richest and most pertinent details. This is where you will learn how to make your fantasy world feel real.

This is also an important part of the “bob and weave.” As you’re developing your characters and plot, you will inevitably get stuck as you realize you don’t know how (or why) to get your characters to do something important. Perhaps you don’t fully understand what would motivate such a person. Or perhaps you need characters to accomplish something magical but don’t know quite how your magic system will pull that off.

This is where you stop what you’re doing and move over to worldbuilding. Then after a bit, you’ll get stuck again. Perhaps you don’t know what kind of antagonistic government might best oppose your protagonist’s personal journey. Or perhaps you’re worried your magic system is starting to get too complicated. Stop again and return to ask your characters. What do they need? What best serves them?

***

Worldbuilding is one of the greatest joys of writing fantasy, but it’s also one of its greatest challenges. The best fantasy stories aren’t just set in immersive worlds; they’re shaped by them. Every detail, from the magic system to the antagonist’s philosophy, should serve the greater whole of your plot, theme, and character arcs. The key to making your fantasy world feel real isn’t in how much you invent, but in how seamlessly everything fits together. By approaching your worldbuilding with purpose and flexibility, you can craft a setting that breathes with life and resonates with readers long after they turn the final page.

In Summary:

Creating a fantasy world that feels real requires more than just imagination. It demands cohesion, intentionality, and integration with your story’s plot and themes. From magic systems to history, culture, and government, each aspect of worldbuilding should reinforce the story’s conflicts and character arcs. By weaving these elements together with a dynamic, evolving approach, you can build a world that captivates readers and elevates your storytelling.

Key Takeaways:

• Worldbuilding isn’t just about setting—it must serve the story’s plot, theme, and character arcs.
• Start with symbolism to ensure your world reinforces the deeper meaning of your story.
• Magic, religion, and science shape the world’s internal logic and can serve as powerful metaphors for your themes.
• Antagonists should be deeply intertwined with the worldbuilding, particularly if magic plays a central role in your conflict.
• History, culture, and government provide realism that makes your fantasy world feel as deep and layered as our own.
• The “bob and weave” approach allows for flexibility, letting your world evolve naturally alongside your story.

Want more?

If you want your story to resonate on a deeper level, theme is the thread that ties everything together—from your antagonist’s motivations to the climactic choices your protagonist faces. In my book Writing Your Story’s Theme, I break down how to craft a theme that emerges naturally from your story’s elements, rather than feeling forced or preachy. If today’s discussion got you thinking about the deeper layers of your plot, you’ll find insight inside the book. It’s available in paperback, e-book, and audiobook.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! What are your favorite techniques for how to make your fantasy world feel real? Tell me in the comments!

Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast in Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, or Spotify).

___

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The post How to Make Your Fantasy World Feel Real: 6 Pillars of Organic Worldbuilding appeared first on Helping Writers Become Authors.

How can you release more creativity into your writing — and your life? What are some practices to foster creativity in a time of change and overwhelm? Jacob Nordby gives his tips.

In the intro, tips for spring cleaning as indie authors; Death Valley – A Thriller Kickstarter; Death Valley book trailer; Footprints Podcast – Bath in Literature;

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 

Jacob Nordby is an entrepreneur and author of several books, including The Creative Cure: How Finding and Freeing Your Inner Artist Can Heal Your Life.

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

• Indications we might need a “creative cure”
• Practices to strengthen your connection with creativity
• Journaling as a tool to work through mental and creative blocks
• Practices around the physical body
• Tapping into your intuition
• Overcoming the fear that holds you back
• Time and effort involved in changing career directions
• How to keep pivoting, changing, and moving forward

You can find Jacob at JacobNordby.com.

Transcript of Interview with Jacob Nordby

Joanna: Jacob Nordby is an entrepreneur and author of several books, including The Creative Cure: How Finding and Freeing Your Inner Artist Can Heal Your Life. So welcome to the show, Jacob.

Jacob: Thank you so much. I’m so glad to be here, Jo.

Joanna: I’m excited to talk to you. So first up—

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

Jacob: Well, I was born … We won’t start there! When I was 10 years old, I came out into the living room, and I’d been reading a book, which I did mostly. We didn’t watch television or see movies or anything like that. So books were my very best friends.

So I came out of the living room and told my parents that I want to be a writer. Of course, I had told them before I wanted to be a spy or firefighter or something. This was the first thing that really hit for me, and I could really feel it.

Then fast forward into adulthood, and I promptly forgot that, and plunged into starting businesses and really trying to secure my place in the American dream. I woke up around age 35 realizing that this was all feeling very hollow.

After a series of events that turned my world upside down, I moved to Austin, Texas. It was there, working two or three part time jobs and trying to figure out what was next, that I remembered that I really wanted to be a writer. So I began to write about 15 years ago.

One of the things that helped me get started was The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Are you familiar with that work?

Joanna: Yes, absolutely.

Jacob: Okay, well, I was sitting in this warehouse and was writing away and began to go back into this book my father had given me, The Artist’s Way. It really broke me open. I longed, at some point, to be able to share the process of not just writing, but of discovering who we really are and expressing that.

Fast forward about five or six more years from there, and I had the great pleasure of meeting Julia, and she’s become a dear friend. So that’s one aspect of the work I do, is I work with her and share these things.

Also, in my own world, I hold workshops and do one-on-one work with people, guidance work, with both writers and non-writers. It’s just something I love because —

I see creativity as our vital spark, as our life force energy, and it’s meant to flow in every part of our lives.

Often, when people will show up saying, “I’m creatively blocked,” we will pull that thread a bit and discover it’s not just “creatively blocked.” I’m doing my air quotes fingers right now. It’s feeling blocked in life.

So, often as we work through what are some channels in life that need to be opened up, they discover maybe it was “I need to clean my garage.”

Then they go clean the garage and come back in two weeks and say, “Oh my goodness, I had no idea how much I was boxing up my emotions, my sense of possibility, and everything. I found old boxes from my divorce or from when my mother died. I went through there, and all of a sudden I feel emotionally open and able to express again.”

So I love working with people in so many ways and helping them realize that expression is meant to be as natural as breathing for the creative spirit.

Joanna: Well, let’s get into the book then, because it’s called The Creative Cure. I find this an interesting title because the word “cure” implies a sickness where we start from. So I guess you mentioned feeling blocked there.

What are some of the things in our life or our writing that indicate we might need such a cure?

Jacob: You know, it’s interesting. I wrote a previous book called Blessed Are the Weird, and that was this very direct sort of manifesto for creatives. I was surprised how many people showed up and raised their hands and said, “I’m one of this group,” whatever this group is.

There were a lot of other people, Jo, who would tell me, “I’m not that creative. In fact, I don’t know if I have a creative bone in my body.” My heart just said we need to change this idea, what the idea of creativity has become.

In a lot of cases, I feel like it’s been affected by the industrial era of production and distribution, which are wonderful things.

A lot of artists find themselves stuck because they can’t see how what they have to create and share will ever become widely viable in that way.

So, cure. Here’s what I feel very deeply about our creative spirit is that it can’t be broken or damaged, but the process of becoming adults in the modern world often fills the connection between who we are out there and our true inner creative self with static. So, for me —

The cure isn’t curing the essence of who we are as humans or creatives. It is curing that connection.

I feel like we are all susceptible to it in some way. Our attention spans are fractured. We have a rate of change that is, I feel, really unsustainable for the human psyche to absorb in our lifetimes.

In this era, we’ve absorbed more change than previous generations might in two or three generations. So I feel like a lot of us can feel hurried and frantic and just out of sorts, and that will become evident in our creative work.

So, for me, it’s not so much curing the true person. It’s looking at what practices can I bring in that will strengthen and revitalize that connection.

Joanna: Yes, I get you on the pace of change. On the day we’re recording this, just yesterday, Microsoft announced this new quantum state of matter. I was like, seriously, haven’t we got enough going on? Do we need something else again? So it does definitely feel like that.

So you mentioned there’s some things that can help us maybe break through that static to fix that connection with our creativity if we’re feeling like we’ve lost it. I like the word static, actually. I think sometimes it really does feel like that, just a bit disconnected.

What are some of the creative practices you recommend?

Jacob: One thing that I love to recommend as a starting point is a ritual. Ritual can sound kind of mystical or complicated. To me, it’s really a state of awareness. So let’s just say we make our cup of coffee in the morning and run out the door and gulp it as we drive, that’s one way.

Another way would be to slow down and say, “I am creating this cup of coffee,” and bring all of our attention and intention into the process of it, which changes our experience of it.

I love to invite people who are sitting down to write to create some version of a ritual, so they realize they are entering a different state of awareness. Our awareness is so yanked in different directions. We jump on social media, and we see distressing things.

We see all these things coming around, and we often don’t realize that we take that fractured or static-filled state of being or awareness into what we’re doing, which means that we’re not really allowing the pure stuff to come through as easily. It can feel harder.

So I love creating these personal rituals. Whether it’s as simple as lighting a candle, it can be almost anything. The real keys here are the attention and intention that I bring.

It’s an interesting shift, like to invite ourselves in there and notice that, oh, in this space, I feel quite different.

I feel I have access to different ideas, a different way of expressing.

I’ll just use this morning as an example. I woke up, and it’s really cold here in Northern USA. It’s gray outside, and I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired. So I went to my favorite little coffee shop with my journal, and this will be another practice I’ll talk about in a moment, but asked myself to enter a different state of awareness.

So, for me, one item is creating these small rituals that help us intentionally shift into a different state of mind.

Joanna: Well, since you mentioned journals, maybe talk more about that.

Jacob: Well, you’re aware of The Artist’s Way and Morning Pages, and that’s where I started with that, really in earnest. I also realized that many people don’t find a whole lot of value in just long form, sort of dumping it out on paper. I do. I’m a writer. That’s one of my favorite ways of expressing and exploring.

So over time, I developed a set of three questions, and I’ve shared this. When I first created this years ago, Jo, I put it out and was pretty sure it was way too basic and didn’t have a lot of value.

Then I had people get a hold of me. Therapists were saying, “Oh, my goodness. My clients are journaling for the first time using this practice.”

So the three questions are, the first one is, “How do I feel right now?”

I’ll come back to that. The second one is, “What do I need right now?” The third one is, “What would I love to create right now?”

If I’m going through a lot of emotional turbulence or something, I’ll often switch that question up a bit and say, “How would I love to feel right now?”

So going back to that first question and the second, early in life, many of us internalize the messages that our needs don’t matter and our feelings don’t matter. In fact, how many of us have been told you can’t trust your feelings?

So by asking these questions and really grounding them, really coming into the moment, how do I feel right now? Oh, I feel grouchy and tired. I feel uninspired. Or, I feel great. Whatever it might be.

The fact is, we send a signal to our psyche by asking that question and answering it that says, “I matter. My feelings matter.” Then we move on to the, “What do I need right now?”

Again, often it’s prosaic for me, “Oh, I’m thirsty. I need to get a drink of water.” “Oh, I’m tired. I should take a small nap.”

Or it might be something larger or more existential, but in any case, again, it sends that message to the inner self saying, “I matter.” There’s something wonderfully calming about that, is what I’ve discovered, Jo.

Joanna: I wonder if that’s also grounding in the physical body. I mean, I walk a lot, so if I need to ground myself, I often will go for a walk out in nature, and that really helps. Or I do lifting, lifting heavy objects, powerlifting. Again, anything that grounds me in my physical body actually takes me away from the screen.

Most of what stresses us is beyond the screen and isn’t happening right now, I guess. Do you have those practices around grounding in the physical body?

Jacob: Oh, yes. I love that you mentioned walking. That’s one of my favorite practices. I also teach, and use as often as I can, just really simple breathing techniques, like box breathing. Often, to your point, I find that —

We are often quite disassociated from our bodies. We spend so much time up in our heads and in concepts versus what’s in reality.

So, yes, I feel like these things can be incredibly simple. I do love going to the gym and lifting heavy things as well.

The walk thing, you know, if I can just put my phone in my back pocket or leave it home, which, frankly, I don’t really do very often, but go out and take a walk. Things change. There’s this bilateral stimulation that’s happening when we’re walking. It’s almost like an EMDR effect, if you want to put it that way.

I’ve found that walking can often help us process deeply and open things up. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve taken a long walk and come back with the solution to some challenge I was having in my writing work that day. I would love to hear if you’ve had those experiences too.

Joanna: Oh, absolutely. It’s one of my go-tos. I walk every day. I live in Bath in the UK. It’s a very walkable city, and I live near a canal. So I walk an awful lot. I’ve done pilgrimages and all of this. So walking, for me, is like a core thing for mental health and physical health and creativity.

As you say, sometimes you just go for a walk and you come back—and, I mean, I take my phone too, for writing all the notes down that come up as I walk. So, yes, I think that’s important.

I do want to come back on the journaling because, and this is very interesting, you mentioned earlier about this industrial era, production and distribution. Keep in mind that I’m a professional author. I write books for a living, and many of the listeners, we write books.

Let’s say we have half an hour to write, the feeling is, “I must be writing words for my book.” Whatever that book is, and there’s always another book, right?

How do you suggest people balance this need to write words for the next book versus journaling for the need of expressing yourself?

Jacob: I love that. I want to be very clear that I’m not throwing rocks at the industrial era. Civilization has really benefited from so many things that have happened there. I think that sometimes, especially people who are just getting started as writers, they can feel all this pressure.

You know, Jo, you’ve written many, many books and bestsellers, and just had that experience. So that’s such a different thing than most people have who are just getting started. I think there can be this intense focus on, “How do I write a best seller?” So that can often become its own block.

Back to the journaling piece, I think that a lot of times people conflate those. It’s like, well, if I’m going to write, then I need to write on my project, and journaling feels like writing.

I really love to think of journaling more like emotional, mental, spiritual yoga.

So it’s a practice, but it’s not the same as what we’re doing when we sit down to write. In fact, I would challenge anyone who is feeling a little creatively blocked but also doesn’t feel like journaling would have much value, I would suggest trying it for a week.

Spend 10 minutes, just 10 minutes. It’s 10 minutes a day, writing out—using my three questions is fine, or anything else—but just writing out, “This is what’s up for me. What is coming up for me? Okay, this is what’s up. This is what’s really bothering me.”

So often, I find when I sit down to do that, as I pull what looks like a very small dangling thread, it leads to much deeper things that are going on in my life. The act of acknowledging those things does something freeing. It opens up the channel.

So when I sit down to write, I’m no longer also trying to multitask by having three different conversations with people I’m having difficulty with in my head, or sorting out my taxes in my head, or whatever. There’s something really wonderful about putting it on the page and acknowledging it.

I think that there are parts of the psyche that come forward and say, because you paid attention, and we know that you’re going to pay attention to this as needed, now we’ll relax. We had to get your attention. Now we have your attention. You’ve acknowledged it.

Now we’ll relax so you can go on and do these other things that are important to you. I find that to be tremendously valuable, versus just trying to power through with all these prose flying around my head.

Joanna: Yes, I think for me, it’s just that it is a completely different thing. I feel like the issue is people think writing is writing, but it’s not. I call myself a binge journaler, and this is one of my issues with Morning Pages, is that kind of “it must be every day.”

Of course, we don’t like shoulds and shouldn’t, so we’ll come back to that.

I definitely do not journal every day, but it sort of builds up and builds up and builds up, and then I will go to a cafe and I will journal, and all this stuff will come out.

Then it might be three weeks or something until I feel that need again.

In the meantime, I do my job, which is writing words for publication, which is like a completely different thing. So is it just the feelings that we have and learning to tap into where are those feelings going?

Is it a “making up a story” kind of feeling, or is it an “I really need to sort out my life” kind of feeling?

Jacob: I really love that distinction, and I’m glad you brought it up because I don’t believe in dogma either, so shoulds and shouldn’ts. I really love that you’re so in touch with your intuition or your feelings, that you’re able to go, “Oh, I need a different version of this today.” I feel like that’s really wise.

Joanna: Oh, that’s very kind. Well, you mentioned intuition there, and you do talk about intuition and also joy around our writing in the book.

If people feel like they’re not very intuitive, how can they tap into that and also find more joy?

Jacob: I would love to hear your definitions of intuition. When you hear that word, and not just the straight up definition, but any connotations, like what comes up for you when you hear that word?

Joanna: I guess we’re coming back to feelings again. I just sense that I should do something. I am an intuitive writer, so I don’t plot, necessarily. I write the next book with whatever kind of comes up for me. So it’s just sort of tapping into what my creative self wants to do, I guess.

Jacob: I love that, and I didn’t expect a lot different. I was just curious. Some people have a pretty negative connotation, or feel a negative connotation, in that word. They feel like it’s really mystical. They feel like, oh, it’s just sort of woo or out there. I would suggest it’s extremely grounded.

I mean, I think you articulated it really well. You know, this is the feeling of this thing.

I have a friend who’s a neuropsychologist, and he wrote a great book called No Self, No Problem. We were having this wonderful conversation one day, actually, while I was writing The Creative Cure.

I said, “Well, Chris, it feels like what you’re saying is in our modern world, it’s almost as if we’ve told a body builder to only work out the muscles on the left side of their body. Like that’s the only thing that has value. Don’t even bother with the right side. Then after 20 years of following that advice, the body builder has a hard time even walking down the road because there’s no functional balance or muscle.”

He got all excited. He said, “Oh, yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.” I think we have to be aware that in our current paradigm, the left brain activities are so highly valued and rewarded that we tend to distrust what’s happening in the right side.

This includes our experience of creativity in a more free flowing way. It includes experience of intuition, of feelings, of imagination.

So, for me, it’s never the idea that we need to get rid of the left brain activity. It’s like we really need those to finish a book, to put it out there, to take these steps forward, but we’ve over emphasized it. So what I like to encourage us to do is play little games.

Notice throughout the day what synchronicities come up.

We don’t have to attach any particular meeting to them. If you see repeating numbers, or you’re driving down the road and you just have this nudge to take this road versus the other road on your way to your destination.

I like to just play with it without going, okay, I’m going to have some miraculous thing, or an epiphany, or something dramatic is going to happen, or I’ve just avoided a horrible death. It doesn’t have to be anything dramatic like that.

Just the noticing of the interoception, the signals that are coming up from our bodies and from our other senses, and tuning into them a little bit more. We can find that there is very interesting guidance available to us at all times. People can interpret that mystically, or people can be very practical with it.

There’s some brain science here, where when we settle down from our fight or flight response, from our higher anxiety levels, we enter that ventral vagal state, Jo, and that’s where all the good stuff happens.

I love to call it the Green Zone, or the creative zone, because as we settle more deeply, we become more aware. Our tunnel vision begins to fade, and we become aware of the answers and the ideas that are all around us.

So I love to invite people to play with it and actually really use it as a game, so it doesn’t have to feel so serious. Like, what am I feeling right now? If I totally listen to my body and to my senses, what would I do this morning for breakfast versus what I always do, for example. Again, it can be very simple.

Joanna: I feel like maybe people have a problem with trust and are afraid of getting something wrong.

I’m very creatively confident now after many years of being a writer, but at the beginning it was like, well, I feel like I should do this thing, but what if I’m wrong?

What if I spend the next six months working on this book, and then nobody wants it? Or what if I choose to spend some money on this particular marketing thing, and then it just doesn’t work?

This fear of making a choice based on intuition, it holds people back. What are your thoughts on that?

Jacob: If you don’t mind, I’d love to ask a question in response. I’m curious if you can think back over your career, or just general life, and think about a time you did make a mistake?

Something you look back on later, and were like, “Oh, I would never have done that again,” but that it actually led you into experiences that actually became very important parts of your life. Can you think of anything like that?

Joanna: Yes, well, obviously there’s lots of them because we all make tons of mistakes.

I mean, the big one that I often talk about is back before print on demand, I did a massive print run. Back in 2007, I did a big print run of my first book, and then they all sat in my garage because I didn’t know anything about book marketing.

I didn’t realize that if you wrote a book, nobody would buy it unless you did some marketing. So that actually led me to start The Creative Penn, to start this podcast, to learn about book marketing. What really sort of jump started my career was this massive failure. So, yes, absolutely.

I mean, we all do these things, don’t we? But—

Fear holds people back.

Jacob: Always. I mean, I don’t know if there’s one other factor that holds us back more than simple fear. I feel like it’s very primal. We have this wiring that includes a negativity bias, and that’s such a survival thing. It serves us, right, so there’s nothing wrong with it. I think we just have to be aware of it.

Our imaginations are tuned, and often from a very early age, to begin imagining scenes in which we are experiencing rejection or failure or something painful, disappointment, and so we often use our imaginations primarily for that cause.

So I love to invite people to begin just taking a recess, even if it’s only five minutes, and imagining themselves in scenes of what they would really love to experience.

I just love the story you just told. I know that it’s completely like imaginary, but I’m just curious, if you hadn’t printed all those books and had to learn how to market, and perhaps got picked up by a different publisher, and everything just kind of went swimmingly, I’m just curious what you wouldn’t be enjoying in your life right now. Can you imagine what that might be?

Joanna: What I wouldn’t be enjoying?

Jacob: Like you have such beautiful work in this podcast, and all that you do, and the way you serve and teach the writing community. So I’m just curious, if things had worked out better, you know, like a garage not full of your books, I’m just curious what you wouldn’t have now if you hadn’t made that mistake.

Joanna: Well, I think what happened was because of that failure in print publishing at that time in history, it just also coincided. You used the word synchronicity earlier, and I know Jungian psychology, so I absolutely love synchronicity.

It was the same year that the Kindle launched and the iPhone launched, and when I failed in this print publishing, traditional media, you know, I got on national TV—I was in Australia at the time—but then none of it worked.

Then I saw the Kindle, I saw the iPhone, and I saw Americans, and I was like, what if I can use this technology and I don’t have to use print books?

I can reach these people through digital means.

So I got on the Kindle, and the iPhone, and podcasting very, very early, and have kind of surfed that technological wave since then. So that “mistake” led me into so much. But you keep putting this back on me, Jacob—

I think you need to tell us about one of your mistakes that has turned into success.

Jacob: Oh, my god. Well, you know, I alluded to it earlier, but I had built these businesses, and I was waking up at 3am every day absolutely terrified. Everyone around me, all they saw was this big new office I had built. All they saw was the influence I had around town or whatever.

They couldn’t see how terrified I was.

That was around 2007, actually. So I had a pretty big breakthrough. I went to what I thought was a meditation retreat. It turned out to be a shamanic initiation, and I didn’t know what a shaman was.

I had a medicine journey during that that was like this massive moment of clarity, and I had no idea what to do with it. I went back to my life, to my office, and scrambled as hard as I could.

All I knew is that I had experienced some aspect of me that was free, that wasn’t afraid, and that would actually love to have created something very different with life. I also had no idea how to rearrange my life. I just I felt so responsible.

The next year or so, the financial meltdown, the mortgage meltdown, came along and just wiped me out. So, of course, I don’t like to sugar coat these things and go, “Oh, you know, everything happens for a reason, and it was exactly what I needed.”

It’s like, no, it was absolutely terrifying and turned me upside down, but that was the event. I could look back and say, “Oh, I made so many mistakes. I got in so far too deep into these projects and all that.”

The truth is, though, that experience—and I love that you’re familiar with Jungian work—that’s where I began to really learn about the Jungian work during that time, Jo, and that was what really cracked me open and allowed me to find out who I was under all those previous layers.

It was like I was wearing this really heavy, ill-fitting armor for so long, and so that was one of those really big “mistakes” that led to me finding the path I was really meant to be on in the first place.

Joanna: That’s interesting. I think we might be like almost exactly the same age. I think we’ve gone through things at exactly the same time.

Time is a really important thing here because both of us are talking about experiences. I also got laid off in the financial crisis, and it took a lot of time, but that also shaped the way I run my business now.

So let’s just talk about the perspective of time because it feels like both of us have said, “Oh, this really bad thing happened, and then I changed my life.” How long did it take you to extricate yourself from the situation you were in and be in a life where you were more happy and fulfilled? Not that we’re ever completely there.

I feel like that’s what people need, is this sort of perspective on—

If you want to change direction, how long does it take? What’s the effort involved?

Jacob: Do you want me to give a comfortable story, or do you want me to tell what I feel is the truth?

Joanna: The truth, absolutely.

Jacob: I love what you said on your website. You know, it hasn’t always been this way. No, and I would never want to discourage anyone by saying it can be a really lengthy process.

I will say that, at least in my experience, I had so much I was carrying when it comes to my beliefs about myself and the world and what I was capable of, and all of that, that that big, sort of terrifying event that shook everything up, it was like I had some years of simply going.

I’d been running so fast that I haven’t ever looked under the hood, if you will. I’m mixing my metaphors there. My mother is a therapist, and she likes to use the idea of skating on a frozen river. She said I skated on this frozen river and I was terrified that if ever slowed down, I would fall in, the ice would crack and I would fall in.

She’s like, one day the ice just broke open, and I fell in, and I had no choice but to do all this inner work and examination. I think that’s a really beautiful way to look at it.

So once the process of self-discovery really gets underway, I would like to say it’s exactly 16 months, in my experience. It can take longer, but if we’re willing to see it as that, and not just numb it out or try to run away from it or do whatever over the top of it —

If we’re willing to go into that exploration, what we’ll find in there is ourselves.

What we’ll find in there is our authentic voice. What we’ll find in there is our sense of purpose. So I’d love to give, well, it’s a range of one to seven years, but in my experience, it was several years before I even began to feel that my footing was coming back, Jo. I would love to hear what your experience of that was.

Joanna: Well, again, pretty similar. It’s funny, I was just reflecting then because you’re reminding me of those early days. This book, The Creative Cure, I feel like now I’m not in the place where I need this, but this is the book I needed back in 2005 when I was 30 years old and thinking, “What the hell am I doing with my life?”

I read, then, and I listened to a lot of audios. Tony Robbins, a good self-help guru. Jack Canfield, The Success Principles. Those are the books I was reading, and I was trying to change my mindset. Then I figured out that I wanted to write, and then I got into writing.

It was a process of years. So between 2005 being really super miserable, to 2007 I really sort of put that first book out. Then 2011 was when I finally left my job to go full time. [Check out my timeline here.]

I always talk about it taking five years, so it’s kind of good that you put it in that ballpark, too.

Jacob: Well, I think otherwise, Jo, it’s easy, and god knows I tried to do this, I tried to shortcut the process as often as I could. Like, get me out of here. This is not comfortable. It’s not fun.

I think that being aware that short-cutting it can—I’ve seen it happen a lot of times. I wasn’t actually writing, but I got really sort of springboarded forward a bit. I entered this thing called The Next Top Spiritual Author Competition. That was when I was living in Austin, and there was this publishing deal as kind of the big carrot.

Of course, I didn’t win that competition, but I got to witness a lot of other writers, and this is my first time of really being in the space with a lot of other writers. This was kind of a global thing, and there were a lot of people who had entered it. Many of us got to know each other, some of whom are still my friends to this day.

I also got to witness a lot of people, Jo, who had had some kind of experience, and they wanted to write about it. They wanted to share their wisdom with the world. They also hadn’t given it the time to really cook, to mature.

So I’ve watched some of them get a little bit frozen there, to where had they been willing to keep going in their own process and let it grow deeper for a while, let it really mature, they would have been able to keep going.

I’ve seen some of them kind of freeze frame there, and they’ve never been able to move beyond that one thing.

They reformed their identity a little too quickly around, “oh, this is who I am,” you know.

I don’t want to make fun of that at all because I think it’s very natural. Anytime we’re feeling out of sorts or out of balance, we want to recover our sense of equilibrium.

So I have a lot of compassion for that, but I would encourage anyone going through what feels like being turned upside down and shaken, give yourself some grace. Realize that jumping on it too quickly and saying, “This is now who I am,” might actually rob you of some real benefits that will enrich your work down the line.

Joanna: This interview is certainly going in a different direction than I thought it would be, but we’re leaning into that.

You talk there about moving beyond the one thing, and those people who were stuck. This is something I think about a lot, and my listeners will know this is something I’ve been thinking about for a while because, obviously I started in this independent author career back in 2007.

For the last few years, I’ve been really thinking about how to make sure everything stays fresh and new, rather than go into a rut.

Every industry, although being an independent author was new in sort of 2007, and there was a lot of new things, things have changed a lot since then. Technologies, obviously.

What we don’t want to be is stagnant in our creativity, in our writing, in our lives. I know there’ll be people listening who have been writing for decades as well. Some people listening will be writing for 30 to 40 years.

How do we keep things fresh?

How do we keep pivoting, changing, and moving forwards, when we have a career that we love, when we do something we love, but we know we can’t get stagnant?

Jacob: I feel like that’s a ten million dollar question.

Joanna: You must be in a similar position, right? I mean, you’ve been doing what you do a long time, and you work with people who’ve been doing it a long time. What you don’t want to be is the jaded person.

Jacob: I was looking over your work, Jo, and I just love how diverse your work is. I feel like you have a lot to teach me about this, actually, in terms of just really being a little more prolific and writing these different types of things.

I feel like every creative endeavor, anything that’s truly original, there is this required uncertainty.

I don’t know how this will work out. Without that, often we find ourselves sort of repeating ourselves.

I’m thinking of some massively famous writers in the US. One in particular comes to mind for some reason, whose work has become so formulaic, but it’s always a blockbuster.

I want to be clear, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with writing to formulas. I think we all do it to some degree, but I just look at some of these things and realize, oh, the production distribution has become more important than the art, in some cases.

So to step outside of that, to step over the line of, this is what I know. This is what I know works for me in terms of bringing me financial security or whatever it might be. I think there’s that itch.

I think it goes back to what you were talking about earlier, about intuition, Jo. It’s that sense of, okay, I know I’m being called outside of this familiar sort of routine. I don’t think there’s a point at which it’s like, okay, this is wrong. So it’s not, to me, about right or wrong.

Maybe a person decides I really just love writing according to this template or formula. I just really love doing this, and I love knowing kind of what to expect from it and all of that. So I wouldn’t say everyone needs to always be leaping off into the abyss and building their wings or something.

I would love to hear your thoughts, since we’re exploring this together. I definitely didn’t expect the interview to go this way, either. So I’m in the deep end.

Joanna: Well, I think it is about taking risks. It’s funny because between like 2005/2006 and then when I left my job in 2011, I was working a day job. So I was working as a business consultant, and then I eventually went part time. So what I was doing, I was doing on the side, and that’s how I think about it now.

So right now, for example, I’m writing a screenplay, and it’s a risk, and it’s not making me any money. So it’s almost like I’m doing it on the side. So I feel like the taking risks, where we both started, we took risks to unwind one career and start another.

Maybe it is about doing things on the side, whether you love your job or whether you’re stuck in a job.

Jacob: Ooh, I love that. There were people who asked me early on as I was writing and putting things out there, why I wouldn’t just take the full leap into trying to earn my living right from the written word.

One thing that I told them then is I didn’t want to put my process under that kind of financial pressure early on. I’m like, if I can look at the job that I’m doing, the day job to pay the bills, if I can look at that as a funding source rather than, “It must fulfill my creative needs.”

Those things are very important to me in life, but there was a period of time during which it was just important for me to look at the work I did for pay as a funding source and not try to make it more than that.

For some reason, that actually freed up that energy I would have used in being miserable about having to work this stupid job for money. It freed that energy up to go, oh, this is how I fund being able to take my time and really grow as a writer.

Joanna: Well, we are almost out of time. I think you and I could do this for a lot longer.

Tell people where can they find you and your books online.

Jacob: Well, you can go to JacobNordby.com, that’s probably the easiest way.

I would love to just say how much I love the world of writers, Jo. You’ve been doing such amazing work in this space for a really long time. I just want you to know, I’m so grateful that you invited me here. Thank you for doing the good work you’re doing.

Joanna: Well, thanks so much for your time, Jacob. That was great.

The post Intuition, Journaling, And Overcoming Fear. The Creative Cure With Jacob Nordby first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Most writers understand that strong character goals are essential to a compelling story. But did you know that within every plot, three distinct types of goals shape every character’s journey? These are fundamental, primary, and secondary goals. In exploring these character goal examples for writers, you can gain a clearer understanding of how character, plot, and theme work together seamlessly. Inspired by Robert Fritz’s concept of human choice-making, these three types of goals offer a practical framework for crafting characters whose decisions resonate deeply with readers.

At the heart of every memorable story is a character driven by choices. Some of those choices are grand and overarching, others are small but significant. Robert Fritz’s framework (found in his book The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life) identifies three types of choices we all make in real life. As writers, this can help us better understand the cause and effect of our characters’ motivations and plot actions, not only to discover their most prominent plot goals, but to also understand the deeper motivations and perspectives driving those goals.

As defined by Fritz:

• Fundamental choices define who characters are at their core
• Primary choices shape characters’ immediate journeys.
• Secondary choices influence the actions characters take along the way.

Understanding these layers allows you to build characters whose desires, conflicts, and growth feel authentic, providing a solid foundation for powerful storytelling.

More than that, we can see a parallel between each of these layers and the three most important engines of story: plot, character, and theme. Each of Fritz’s “choices” corresponds to one of the “Big Three.”

In This Article:

• The Three Different Choices That Create Character Goals
• The Fundamental Choice = Your Story’s Theme
• Fundamental Character Goal Examples for Writers
• The Primary Choice = Your Story’s Character Arc
• Primary Character Goal Examples for Writers
• The Secondary Choice = Your Story’s Plot
• Secondary Character Goal Examples for Writers

The Three Different Choices That Create Character Goals

When crafting strong character goals, it’s important to recognize not every choice characters make carries the same weight. Fritz’s framework of fundamental, primary, and secondary choices provides a practical guide for writers looking to create well-rounded characters. Each type of choice serves a distinct purpose, establishing characters’ core identities and driving their moment-to-moment decisions. Let’s break down each of the three choices to examine how they work together to create dynamic characters.

1. The Fundamental Choice = Your Story’s Theme

On his website, in an article titled “The Fundamentals,” Fritz says:

There is [a] type of choice upon which all other choices rest, and that is the fundamental choice….

Fundamental choices are about orientation, states of being, the ground you stand on. There are four major fundamental choices we recommend to people. They are:

• The choice to be healthy
• The choice to be free
• The choice to be true to yourself
• The choice to be the predominant creative force in your own life

As the foundation of the other choices, the fundamental choice is the underlying motivation for all subsequent choices and actions. Think of it as your characters’ prime directive. This is their guiding principle, their deepest reason. As such, it can sometimes be buried so deeply, it isn’t consciously obvious even to themselves.

The fundamental choice will usually align with the deepest and most thematic layers of the Lie the Character Believes and/or the story’s thematic Truth or the Thing the Character Needs. Most likely, it will exist on an abstract level. For example, if a story’s thematic Truth is Fritz’s “choice to be free,” characters may not be conscious of it as such. Rather, they may personally frame this thematic Truth as something more practical to their specific lives such as, “I choose not to submit to my tyrannical boss.”

Of course, this practical, more specific choice could also be the emergent of a different fundamental choice (i.e., it could emerge from any of the fundamental choices cited by Fritz). This is where we start to discover the wonderful complexity available within the seemingly simplistic concept of a story’s Lie/Truth. Even though life seemingly points to only a very small handful of absolute Truths (all of which are abstract to at least a certain degree), the ways they can play out in the specifics of individual lives and stories is infinite.

Note, too, that in contrast to Fritz’s examples, a character’s fundamental choice need not always be a positive representation of a story’s Truth. It may just as likely represent the Lie itself, such as when a pessimistic character bases subsequent choices on a fundamental belief in the worthlessness of society. It is also possible that characters who hold positive fundamental Truths will have to work through Lies manifesting on lower levels that are holding them back from fully embodying the positive choice. This might be the case with a character whose positive fundamental goal is to be free, but who holds a lower-level Lie, for example, that “aggression is the only way to escape.”

Fundamental Character Goal Examples for Writers

Band of Brothers: The soldiers’ fundamental goal is to serve their country and what they believe is the greater good. This is based on their fundamental choice to be loyal to each other and committed to their duty no matter the cost. This is their core state of being—brotherhood and honor above all.

Pride & Prejudice: Although largely in a reactionary role throughout the story, Elizabeth Bennet’s plot goals emerge from her fundamental choice to stay true to herself and her values, prioritizing integrity and genuine connection over societal expectations.

Coming to America: Prince Akeem’s fundamental goal of honoring true love is based on the fundamental choice to be true to himself and find genuine love, rather than simply fulfilling royal expectations.

2. The Primary Choice = Your Story’s Character Arc

In The Co-Creation Handbook, Alida Birch describes the primary choice like this:

A primary choice is a choice which supports the fundamental choice. For example, if happiness is one of your fundamental choices, then you might take time out from your usual routine to do something that reminds you of your choice to be happy. Or you might choose to be employed in a meaningful job thereby fulfilling your fundamental choice to create a purposeful life. Or you might choose to commit to a more healthful diet to support your fundamental choice to be healthy.

The primary goal that results from this choice will likely represent your story’s overall plot goal. This is the Thing Your Character Wants, which will motivate all subsequent actions in the plot. For example, if a character’s fundamental goal is to be free, then the primary goal—the plot goal—might be to overthrow the tyrannical boss and restore worthy leadership to the company (a Queen Arc!).

Depending on the type of character arc your story features, the primary goal can ultimately be aligned with either the Lie or the Truth. As mentioned above, even if your characters hold a positive fundamental goal, the primary goal might still represent the foundational Lie they must overcome in order to be successful in achieving the worthy purpose represented by the fundamental choice. For example, in a different story, a character with the positive fundamental goal of freedom might have to work through a misaligned primary goal resulting from a Lie such as “the only way I can assure my own freedom is to control others.”

In most stories, the Thing the Character Wants (and therefore the primary goal) will start out aligned with the Lie. This doesn’t necessarily mean the Want itself is negative, but it does mean the characters must learn to adapt more effective and positive primary goals on their way to gaining (or sometimes giving up) the Want.

Primary Character Goal Examples for Writers

Band of Brothers: The soldiers’ fundamental commitment to their duty translates into the more specific plot concerns of doing their part as paratroopers and, hopefully, winning the war. Each episode in the story focuses on a specific primary goal—usually various missions, such as Normandy, Market Garden, and Bastogne—that support the larger fundamental goal. Each soldier chooses to endure the hardships of war—physical exhaustion, fear, and loss—because of their commitment to each other and the mission.

Pride & Prejudice: Elizabeth makes difficult primary choices based on her fundamental commitment to her own values and integrity. She chooses not to marry for convenience or wealth, even when pressured, because it would compromise her self-respect and beliefs. She also demonstrates how primary goals can evolve over the course of the story: as her perspective of Mr. Darcy becomes more accurate, she alters some of her specific decisions while coming into deeper integration with her higher Truth (e.g., she initially rejects Darcy’s proposal of marriage, but then changes her mind).

Coming to America: Prince Akeem solidifies his fundamental goal of marrying for love into the specific plot goal of traveling to Queens, New York, and pretending to be a poor immigrant in order to find a partner who loves him for himself rather than his wealth or status.

3. The Secondary Choice = Your Story’s Plot

Fritz explains the secondary choice:

Once we know what is primary… we may need to make strategic secondary choices in support of our primary choice. If we want to create health, we may need to make a series of secondary choices such as eat a healthy diet and exercise. We might not make these secondary choices if we didn’t have health as a primary choice, but we gladly do them when we know our higher order organizing principle: in this case health.

Secondary goals are where things get real. If the fundamental goal is a nice abstraction and the primary goal is a specific intention, the secondary goal is the determination of actionable steps that can be taken in pursuit of those higher-order goals.

Within a story, these are the scene goals. This is where and how plot unfolds on a moment-to-moment basis within the story (which is also what evolves character arc).

In pursuit of a conscious primary goal and a (perhaps) unconscious fundamental goal, characters will choose the specific actions they believe will lead them to their ultimate goals. With a fundamental commitment to personal freedom and a plot goal of unseating a tyrannical boss, characters might then choose scene goals that involve petitioning management, organizing a workers’ strike, or speaking to a journalist. Whether or not these scene goals are effective will prove how aligned they are with whatever overall Truth is necessary for success.

As characters learn and grow in the effectiveness of their secondary choices, they will also evolve their character arcs—refining any limiting beliefs or Lies that are keeping them from acting in full integrity with their fundamental Truth. If their fundamental goal is, however, not ultimately worthy or true, they will also have the opportunity to learn how to exchange that faulty fundamental belief for one that is more accurate and advantageous.

Secondary Character Goal Examples for Writers

Band of Brothers: The characters’ fundamental and primary goals translate into day-to-day, scene-by-scene decisions for each man, such as following orders, protecting comrades, storming enemy positions, and offering emotional support to one another.

Pride & Prejudice: Elizabeth’s pursuit of her fundamental and primary goals creates scenes in which she undertakes specific actions and responses, such as rejecting Mr. Collins’s proposal, challenging Darcy’s initial arrogance, and defending her family’s honor.

Coming to America: Akeem enacts his primary goal of finding a worthy queen by undertaking specific scene actions, such as working at McDowell’s, cutting his prince’s lock to hide his royal identity, and pursuing his boss’s daughter despite their cultural differences.

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Although you shouldn’t take the correlation of each of these choices to theme, character, and plot too literally (since they are all intertwined), this exploration of fundamental, primary, and secondary choices can be a useful tool in creating a cohesive foundation for your story. Understanding the three types of character goals can help you better understand your characters’ inner workings and how to realistically explore the evolution of choices and actions that create compelling character arcs.

By clearly defining each layer, you can craft characters whose decisions, motivations, and growth feel authentic and meaningful. This framework not only supports your characters’ internal journeys, but also enriches plot and enhances theme. With these distinctions in mind, you’ll be able to dig deeper into your character’s desires and motivations, ensuring their journeys remain consistent and powerful from start to finish.

In Summary:

Understanding the three types of character choices—fundamental, primary, and secondary—can provide writers with a deeper insight into how character goals drive plot and theme. By exploring Robert Fritz’s concept of human decision-making, writers can craft characters whose motivations resonate with readers on multiple levels, creating compelling stories with authentic character development.

Key Takeaways:

• Fundamental Goals define a character’s core values and motivations, often reflecting their deepest beliefs or the thematic truth of the story.
• Primary Goals are the immediate objectives that create the character’s character arc and drive the overall plot arc.
• Secondary Goals are the specific actions or scene goals that support both the fundamental and primary goals in creating the plot.
• By understanding and applying these three types of goals, writers can create dynamic, multi-layered characters whose decisions feel grounded in both the story and their personal journeys.

Want more?

If you’re looking to dive deeper into the heart of character development, my book Creating Character Arcs is the perfect guide. In this book, I break down the essential elements of crafting character goals and show you how these layers shape a character’s transformation and tie into your story’s broader theme and plot. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned writer, this book can help you develop characters who resonate with readers and drive a compelling, cohesive narrative. If you’re ready to transform your characters into unforgettable, dynamic forces, you can check it out at retailers like Amazon or via the store on my site.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! What are some of your favorite character goal examples for writers? Can you identify their fundamental, primary, and secondary choices? Tell me in the comments!

Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast in Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, or Spotify).

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The post Your Character’s Three Choices: Character Goal Examples for Writers appeared first on Helping Writers Become Authors.

What are the tropes and reader expectations for action adventure thrillers? Why publish into KU and what are some of the ways to market there? How can travel enrich your writing? Luke Richardson gives his tips.

In the intro, ProWritingAid launches their Manuscript Analysis tool;
Navigating legal risk in memoir [The Indy Author]; Social media for authors in 2025 [BookBub]; Amazon relaunches Alexa, now Alexa+ which is now powered by Claude AI; Scribe, the world’s most accurate transcription model [ElevenLabs];
ElevenReader Publishing to the Reader app; Death Valley, A Thriller by J.F. Penn.

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 

Luke Richardson is the bestselling author of the Eden Black Archaeological Thrillers and the International Detective thriller series.

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

• Taking the leap into full-time indie authorship
• Reasons for unpublishing books and maintaining your author brand
• Researching the tropes and market of your genre
• The purpose of a prologue and when to include one
• Tips for writing characters that are unlike yourself
• Turning travels into stories
• Why publish in KU instead of wide?
• Selling non-book items or experiences

You can find Luke at LukeRichardsonAuthor.com and his new podcast at AdventureStoryPodcast.com.

Transcript of Interview with Luke Richardson

Joanna: Luke Richardson is the bestselling author of the Eden Black Archeological Thrillers and the International Detective thriller series. So welcome to the show, Luke.

Luke: Hi, Jo. Thank you for having me. This is wonderful to be able to talk to you.

Joanna: I’m excited about it. First up—

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

Luke: It’s been one of those sort of roundabout ways that a lot of people talk about, but I often cite—this is something I’ve written on my profiles and written emails about. I often cite my first arriving in India in 2011 as the reason I wanted to write.

It was just this transformational moment of being totally culture shocked in a completely different place in a way that I couldn’t describe and couldn’t really explain. We’d come out of the airport, we’re into this taxi going past the slum villages on the edges of this freeway that’s sort of 16 lanes wide. There’s donkeys, and sports cars, and tractors, and all of this going on. It was just so overwhelming.

Although I didn’t write for several years after that, it was that excitement about stuff, and the world, and discovery, and adventure that lodged in me. Then when I started to write, those things started to come out of me. Do you know what I mean? They started to come out in my writing.

Joanna: That’s so funny. We’re going to get into travel because you and I are travel geeks. I also remember arriving in India, would have been about five years before that, in the middle of the night in an airport in—it wasn’t Delhi—but it was one of the biggest cities. It was like crazy, crazy. So that culture shock is really interesting.

How did you then get into indie publishing, as opposed to maybe going traditional?

Luke: I was an English teacher in a high school for several years, under the illusions that it would be a creative thing to do because I’ve always been very creative. I’ve always loved that. For the first couple of years, it actually was quite creative. Then, I think as I’d done the same classes four or five or six times, over and over again, it became less so.

Then I started writing. I came up with this idea for a book, and I was like, great. It was actually set in Kathmandu, and it’s the first book in my International Detective series.

Someone who’s like me in 2011, in the back of that taxi, totally overwhelmed, tasked with finding a missing person in this city that they’ve never been to. They don’t speak the language, they don’t know the culture, and they’ve got to go and find this person.

I came up with that idea based on my travels, based on the things that I’ve done.

It was really just a creative outlet. It was a passion. It was something I wanted to do outside of work.

Then I finished the book, and I did that thing which we’ve all done, I think, and you fold your arms, and you go, huh? Half of us is really impressed that you finished this thing, and the other half’s like, what do I do now? What do I do with it?

I gave my mum a copy and a couple of other friends, and then I went down the rabbit hole of learning about publishing and how to get it out in the world. Your podcast, and other podcasts, and online courses, and YouTube videos, and all this sort of thing.

I never tried the traditional route. I was far too impetuous. I wanted to get on with the next book.

So I learned about indie publishing and published it in 2019.

Joanna: Are you still a teacher?

Luke: No, no. I left just before the pandemic. So I quit then. I needed a change, which was great, actually, because it meant I had the whole time of those few years to really focus on my writing.

It built up slowly, as these things do. So the first year was quite tough. I had to do some freelance work on the side and do some other writing, sort of freelance writing and things.

Then, when was it? I think it was two years ago that it became the job, and now we’ve surpassed the teaching. It’s become more successful than the teaching was, so I’m really excited about.

Joanna: I think this is a really good point.

You left your job in 2019, and it was 2024 when your income surpassed your old job?

Luke: Yes, income from books.

I mean, we couldn’t travel anyway because travel was off the table at that time, so it was a good time to not spend much money anyway. So I’ve lived quite a frugal life whilst I was doing that and did some freelance work on the side.

I really just started again, I suppose you’d say, in a professional capacity. Built up the mailing list, built up the socials, learned about all these things.

What I decided, I think, is that I needed to give it a proper chance. I think if I wanted to do it as a hobby, writing in the evenings and the weekends was fine.

If I wanted to do it as a job, and I wanted this to be my life, I needed to give it space.

So that was the decision.

I didn’t love teaching at that point. I was ready for a change. So, yes, I think that was a good decision. It’s worked out well in the end, obviously, too.

Joanna: So you mentioned the word job there. I feel like this is so important, and I’ve talked about this before. Having a hobby is amazing, and for most people, writing as a hobby is brilliant and probably what most people should do. As you mentioned, the word job, and that is how we make our living with books or word-adjacent things. So what does that job entail for you?

That perhaps when you wrote that first book, when you were a teacher, you didn’t even think about?

I feel like a lot of people coming in don’t understand what the job of an author is, or let alone the job of an indie author.

Luke: That’s true. There’s so much to it. There’s the production side, which is obviously the writing, the researching, the actual making the book. I don’t just mean research in terms of what’s in the book, I mean research of what does the market need.

Now, I’m not saying you need to write to market necessarily, but you need to—I think not need, that’s the wrong way to say it. It’s not prescriptive, but it helps if you have an understanding of what the market likes, if that makes sense. You don’t necessarily have to follow tropes.

This is an issue, isn’t it, I think with indie publishing. You can do whatever you want, but with that comes great challenges as well because whatever you want is massive. No one wants to read a book that’s everything, right?

It needs to be something. It needs to pin its colors to the mast.

Some colors to one mast or another. It can’t be everything to everyone. So you need to decide at some point where that is, and who your reader is, and what they like and those sorts of things.

It’s easier if you’re writing in a genre that is popular, that is easy to communicate, that is easy for people to understand. I suppose that helps as well. So, yes, that’s production.

There’s also sort of the business side of it. We’re at the end of January now. I’ve had a really boring week of tax returns and these sorts of things.

There’s the marketing side. There’s running the newsletter and the social media and all of this sort of stuff, which needs to be done and should be enjoyed, if possible.

Joanna: I love that you said earlier that it took almost five years, I guess, for the money to get back up to where it was. It was the same for me.

When I left my original consulting job in 2011, I took a massive pay cut. It took until 2015 before I started making more than I used to make, and have done ever since, by the way. So hopefully that encourages you.

Luke: Thank you. Yes, I hope so.

Joanna: So how many books do you have now? Like when you talk about the job and the production—

What’s your schedule for putting books out?

Because you are writing genre fiction, basically.

Luke: I have written around 20 now. A couple of out of print because they didn’t really match the brand that I was going for, so I’ve taken them out for now, and perhaps we’ll republish them later.

So I’ve got six in my International Detective series, six in the Eden Black series, and then there’s obviously novellas and other such things. So it’s probably less than 20, actually. It’s always a hard question, and I wonder if you feel the same, in that you don’t know. You don’t know exactly. Almost 20, I’ll say that.

Joanna: Well, what’s funny, I’ve got on my wall here, “50 books by 50,” and as we record this, I’m 50 in six weeks.

Luke: Oh, congratulations.

Joanna: Well, the achievement of living to 50, I guess, is one of them. I’ve actually started a blog post—I can’t remember when this goes out—but I will be doing a blog post on my 50th birthday, which is calculating how many books I’ve actually written, including all the different editions.

Well, you said you’ve unpublished some of those and may republish them. So my first three novels I rewrote, so they’re in second edition. Some of them are in third edition. A lot of my nonfiction is in multiple editions.

So those ones you unpublished, so people know, when you wrote them originally and published them, you must have thought they were fine, and then you decided to take them down. So why did you decide to do that?

Is that something people can prepare for in advance so that they don’t have to unpublish things?

Luke: I would like to put them out again, and it’s probably just me being too perfectionist, actually, because I know people have read them and enjoyed them. They’re a good series. I wrote them with Steven Moore, who I know you know as well, and it was a collaboration project we had.

My books now are very family friendly. They’re very clean.

They’re sort of in the vein of Indiana Jones style. Whereas those books I wrote with Steve are a bit darker, they are a bit more nefarious.

Unless I do a rewrite, which I would like to do when time allows, because I think they could be changed to bring them into the same sort of world as the books that I have.

People ask me why I write the books in the way that I do. I want someone to have my book and put it on their coffee table proudly with the bookmark in it, and if their 12 year old daughter or niece comes up and picks it up and flicks through and takes an interest in it, they are happy for that person to go and read it.

Or their grandma comes in and picks it up and flicks through it, they are happy for that person to read it. I don’t want them to have any sort of, “Oh, that’s a bit this for you,” or, “That’s a bit that for you.” Do you know what I mean by that?

I felt that those books, because of the way they were, I wasn’t quite happy for them to be in that situation. I didn’t want someone to recommend me and then go, “Oh, read Luke’s books, but don’t read those.”

Joanna: I do feel like that is very much a personal decision, though. As in, I remember the stuff I was reading at age 12. I mean, I do think that different people like different things, but I get exactly what you mean. So you’ve decided on family friendly action adventure, basically.

Luke: Yes, that’s right.

Joanna: I love that. Okay, so let’s come back to action adventure thrillers then. You and I both write around, we use the word thriller, I think, quite loosely, and it is a very big genre.

As a sub-genre, what are the hallmarks of your books and the action adventure thriller genre that you (and I) write in?

Also, how do you vary them in the books in the series? I feel like this can be a challenge for people.

Luke: Yes, it’s a good question, and something I only started to understand when I wrote my second series. It has become much more successful than the first, and I think it’s because I took time to understand this, actually.

It’s what I was saying a minute ago about it can help if you do a bit of research in the market before actually sitting down to write. So there’s certain ingredients that my books need.

They’re all based on an ancient legend.

So I’ve done one set in the Pyramids of Giza, one about Atlantis, one about a mummy on the Titanic. That’s a proper rumor, I’ll have you know. Whether it had anything to do with the sinking or not, they’re not sure. One about the Templars.

The one I’m working on at the moment is going to be set in the Sahara, and all to do with a hidden city under the Sahara and this sort of thing. So those sorts of interesting settings, locations.

Obviously there needs to be a race against time before something happens. The classic one is “this thing can only happen on the summer solstice or when the planets are aligned.” Or, I know this is one of your favorites, “because there’s a storm.”

Joanna: I love a good storm.

Luke: Or, “The storm is coming in six hours, and we need to solve this thing before the storm.”

Joanna: Right now, writing Death Valley, I am actually editing the big storm scene.

Luke: I love it. Yes, so they’re generally set in the present day as well, but the present day can be quite loose because Clive Cussler wrote his in the present day, although that was the 80s. So it can be quite loose as to when the present day is, but they sort of track the events of pre-history.

One of the tropes is you have this prologue that takes place in like 5000 BC, and then what happened there relates to the present day when that relic is uncovered.

There are other strands too that sort of happen, sometimes a romantic element.

A relatable villain is another one, which I think is more of a modern trope, actually. I like this in my books, a pinch of the supernatural. Think like the Ark of the Covenant in the Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Indiana Jones films. It’s just there.

We don’t know quite what it is, or why it had that strange effect on the people at the end, but it did it, and it could be true. There’s a tiny element that it could be true that I like to put in mine as well.

Joanna: Yes, and we overlap in so many ways. I think I definitely have slightly more supernatural than you and more religious elements because I’m obsessed with religion, religious relics and stuff like that. You and I both kind of cover similar areas.

This is what’s interesting, isn’t it, in terms of what you love as a kid and then what you enjoy writing.

I do want to come back on the prologue, especially because you were an English teacher. Now, I love a prologue. I write prologues in my action adventures as well, but a lot of people have issues with prologues. You explained a bit what a prologue was there, but—

What purpose does a prologue serve in a book?

When should people use one? When is it not a good idea, do you think?

Luke: I had this conversation with a writer who I’m working with at the moment, and they had put it as chapter one. I said, this is not chapter one. This is a prologue because a prologue is clearly delineated from the book itself, in my mind. I’m not asking Google this, this is just what I think.

It’s clearly delineated from the book itself. It isn’t part of the story. So the story can be read without the prologue, should you want to. It just add some context.

It puts some root in the history of the book that tells you a little bit about where that book is going to go based on sort of what happened before the event, if that makes sense.

Joanna: I think it’s like a foreshadowing. Often in my one, the ancient relic is there or discovered by someone thousands of years earlier, and something very bad happens. This then kind of foreshadows the present day, where obviously something very bad is about to happen, and then they have to stop it.

A prologue can be foreshadowing.

Luke: Yes, and I think it helps the reader know the passage of time as well, because they’re clearly not at the same period. That’s one thing that I like that I find useful with it as a writing technique.

Joanna: Yes. I’ve definitely written some that are only a couple of weeks earlier, but sometimes a thousand years ago or whatever.

Luke: Yes, but that’s the convention, isn’t it? The thousand years ago one. I’m not saying that can’t be a prologue, but I’m saying the convention, in my mind, and I could be completely wrong, is that it’s sort of someone putting the capstone on the Great Pyramid, and then it cuts to black.

Then we see someone, in the present day, driving through the pyramids on a Jeep or whatever.

Joanna: That’s cool. I personally do like a prologue. Actually, just coming back to your English teacher side, many authors have to fight the sort of snobbery that some English teachers instilled in them, including myself.

I certainly look back and was told by my English teacher that I couldn’t write such things, that I should write something acceptable for a young woman. That definitely stopped me writing for a long time.

So if people do feel sort of hamstrung by this, by the comments from their English teachers in the past—

Is there anything that you say to people to help them get over comments from a teacher about their writing?

Luke: It’s a hard one, isn’t it? That teacher, certainly in your experience, did the wrong thing. That’s not an encouraging attitude to have, and I wouldn’t have had that attitude with one of my students.

It’s a challenge because, and without getting too political, the school system is very sort of dictating in what you can teach and what you can’t teach.

I didn’t want to teach certain students 19th century literature. That’s a very difficult thing to teach to students who would be better off with something more modern, with something more relatable to them. that’s a struggle for all English teachers, and a lot of teachers generally, actually.

So I think that gives a perception to young people about what books should be, that you’re in this place, and it is just books that are important and that have sort of stood the test of time. There’s no fun in it, or there’s certainly less fun in it, which was one of the reasons I ended up getting fed up of it and moving on at the end.

Joanna: Well, I love that you, as an English teacher, are writing genre fiction. I think that you must have had to put aside some of that snobbery yourself, I guess.

Luke: I don’t think I ever had that snobbery, to be honest.

I think writing should be fun. I’ve always thought it should be fun. There’s no reason for it not to be. That’s why people open a book.

That’s why they get involved in this imaginary world for an escapist adventure. it’s our job to make that fun.

Sometimes we put a bit of history and a bit of social commentary, perhaps, or one of our opinions, we slip that in there as well. That’s fine because we’ve honored the contract with the reader to make them enjoy themselves as well.

Joanna: Well, that’s great. Then just coming to your books, like one of your bestselling series is this Eden Black Archeological Thrillers. Eden Black is a woman, a female protagonist. So some people will say, I don’t, but some people say you shouldn’t write a character that is not like yourself.

People have said this to me writing male characters or people of different persuasions in whichever direction. So how do you deal with this? Like, did it even come up in your mind that you shouldn’t write a main female character?

Luke: No. Of course, it didn’t.

Joanna: No, exactly.

What are your tips for authors who might be concerned about writing characters different to them?

Luke: I know. I had some people comment—not people—I had a comment about this on a Facebook ad saying, “Who are you to write?” It was actually from a bloke. I was surprised that it was from a man. I don’t know why I was surprised it was from a man.

He said, “Who are you to write strong female characters?” And I said, “I’m married to one. I was brought up by one. I have many friends who are them.”

Joanna: And do you think the rest of it is true? I say to people, I’m like, seriously, do you think I’m all my characters? Like the villain and the murderer and, you know, whoever? It’s crazy. So I’m so glad you did that. So it didn’t come up in your mind before you started?

Luke: No, not at all. One thing to say is that —

Every character in your book is you in a weird sort of way, even the villain. They’re all parts of you that you’re projecting into the page in some way.

Also, you’re inventing in some sort of way.

Actually, I feel that we as humans, without getting too meta about it, are more similar than we are different. Regardless of whatever. Race, gender, age, anything, we’re more similar than we are different.

We feel the same things. Of course, there are differences, but my books are about things—like we’ve talked about getting the relic and all of this—but beyond that, they’re about fitting in, and loss, and grief, and understanding each other, and belief, and hope, and all these feelings.

It’s quite generic to being human, regardless of whether you’re female, male, whatever. So I believe that by writing them in that way, that it really doesn’t make a difference.

Joanna: No, and I love it because when I started writing my ARKANE Series with Morgan Sierra, I mean, there really weren’t many action adventure books with female main characters.

That is why I was got excited about the Lara Croft movies and stuff like that because that was kind of the only option. Now, what’s great with indie is there’s so many. It’s brilliant.

Luke: Wasn’t there an article saying that they’re a dying trend or something recently?

Joanna: Oh, everyone always says action adventure is dying. The thing is, there’s always a group of people who still like that, including us.

Well, let’s also talk about your travels. You will be coming on my re-booted Books and Travel Podcast, and if people want to geek out with us on travel, come on over there. So let’s just talk about it as a writer. How do you turn your real life travels into the stories?

What are your tips for authors on turning real experiences into story?

Luke: That’s true, isn’t it? Generally, the way I do it is I go to a place without a preconceived idea. I just get immersed in the place, and I walk around the place. I don’t worry about creating content particularly, or anything about taking photos or taking notes. I just sort of fall into it.

I’m going to let you into the secret behind my book that I haven’t written yet, actually. I’ll do that because I think this is really exciting.

So in the 70s, they created this pattern called quasi crystalline tessellation, and it was created by scientists in the UK and in America. Now, they realized that this pattern exists in two places in the world.

It exists in meteors, the molecular structure of meteors that come from out of space, and it exists in the sand upon which a nuclear blast has happened. The heat has been so intense that it has formed the sand into a rock that has this molecular structure.

Then they discovered it existed in a third place. It’s on the walls of 13th century mosques in Morocco and Iran and other countries in the Middle East. I was walking around Marrakesh, where we were traveling about a month ago, and I read that, and was like, this is amazing.

It’s nuts, isn’t it, to think that these cutting edge scientists were doing this thing in the 70s, and yet it was there already in this mosque in Marrakesh, and there’s one in Iran and somewhere else. There’s these places with this pattern on the wall of the thing.

Of course, because I’m a writer, that gets me going. I’m like, whoa, maybe the Islamic scholars of the 13th century were trying to communicate something to us in the modern era.

Joanna: Before you go on, let’s stop there because that exact point, I call this ‘the seed,’ because people are always like, where do your ideas come from? I’m like — 

These seeds of story are everywhere. You just have to notice them.

Luke: That’s right.

Joanna: I feel like you and I, because we travel, that we find our seeds while we are traveling. You may never have stumbled—you might have stumbled across that on a YouTube video somehow—

But because you were in that place, I think it evoked story in your mind.

Luke: Yes, exactly right.

Joanna: So how do you then—I know that this is a book you’re going to write—but how do you get from there? People are like, okay, sure, but that’s not a book, is it?

Luke: Yes. So now this is the stage I’m at with this book. So I’m just sitting on the idea, really. I’m not putting too much pressure on it. I’ve got a few ideas now about how it will fit into what will happen, and also fit it into the series as well.

I know the characters that are coming into this. I obviously don’t know the villain and some of the other villains, sort of henchmen, that are going to come in, but I know my characters. So I’m sort of jiggling it together.

I want part of it to take place in the United States, as well, because my characters haven’t been there for a while, for a few books. So that’s important. It’s a case of picking it together, but I’ve got a couple of scenes, and for me, that’s how it starts.

Stephen King writes about writing like discovering a dinosaur skeleton. I love that idea. I’ve discovered a bit, and I’m now there with my brush, brushing off this part. I don’t know whether it’s the face or the back or the leg or the tail, you know.

I’ve just got this one bit, and slowly I’ll work in one direction, and maybe that will lead me to another part. Or I’ll go, nope, it’s not over there. Then I’ll come back and go over to the other section, and the story will emerge in that way.

Joanna: Do you write in order or out of order?

Luke: I’ve got better at writing in order, but it’s still not totally chronologically.

Joanna: I feel like this is also because we use multiple places. Like for Spear of Destiny, I’ve been in Washington DC like a couple of years before, and I was like, I have to use it because I expense that trip. Then I was like, I need to put it in a book. How on earth am I going to tie it to Vienna and Nuremberg and all of this?

So I knew I had those scenes somewhere, but I didn’t know what was going to happen. It’s almost like when you know you want to set things different places—like you said, I need some scenes in America—you almost can write different things and then figure out what on earth links them.

Luke: What I tend to do is —

I write the hero’s part first, and then put the villain in afterwards.

I don’t know if you do the same? I think your books are similar, where you have two or three scenes from the hero, and then like a cut scene from the villain where they’re scheming in a dark lair somewhere.

Joanna: Or doing bad things.

Luke: Yes, whatever. They sort of offset each other, and so I’ll quite often come back and put those in afterwards.

Joanna: Well, that’s good. I think it’s important for people to know that you don’t have to write everything in order, and you can just figure it out. Also, some authors are worried about using real places in their books.

Where is your line between using real places and then fictionalizing things?

Luke: The place is almost completely real in my books. I tend to be as real as I possibly can. Not down to like the building, though, because I think you’ll understand this as well. It winds people up if you say, “They walked for five minutes down the street and then they were outside the coffee shop.”

I won’t say that because someone will email and say, “There’s not a coffee shop on the street. That closed in in 2004.” So I don’t get that specific.

In terms of the place, I try to get things specific, like what sort of public transport it is. I wrote a book in Riga, and in Riga, they’ve got these wonderful old school, Soviet-esque trams that clang and rumble around the city. So they had to feature in the book there.

There’s sort of what the air is like. Is it a sea sort of air? Is it cold? Is it warm? Is it sandy? Desert-y? What’s the sensation you’ll get?

To set that book apart, I want the reader to know, if they’re interested, that I’ve been there.

They see something more than I could have gleamed from a cookie cutter explanation of this place.

I suppose that’s going to become ever more important, isn’t it, that we’ve been to this place. You write great authors’ notes as well, and that’s something that’s really important to me, is delving behind the story.

Joanna: I think that’s important because, actually, I do think ChatGPT and some of these other models can write very good descriptions of places. The Author’s Note, as you say, and our connection with our readers when we’re kind of, “Look, here’s me,” which is why selfies are important, “Here’s me with the pyramids of Egypt.”

Luke: Exactly right.

Joanna: So this was me.

Okay, well, talking of audiences, let’s get into the publishing and marketing side. So on publishing, so I’m really interested in this because you are in KU for your ebooks, and this is something I still find difficult after all these years. So why make that decision? How does that work for you?

What is your main marketing in KU?

Luke: So why make that decision? It’s an 80-20 decision for me. I have got X number of hours a day, not very many, same as everyone else, I suppose. I want to do other things too with my time.

So actually, the best use of my time is to write the best book possible, and let Amazon do what they are really good at, which is distributing the book to people. They do a great job at that. They’ve proven it for years and years and years, with thousands of data sets and all this sort of stuff.

I would love to not be exclusive, of course, and that would be fun to go on the other platforms. Yes, it does bother me that my book isn’t available in every single country and these sorts of things.

I believe that in terms of getting my book into as many hands as possible, and as such, sustaining this as a career, etc, for now, that’s the best way, if that makes sense.

Joanna: I will tell people that your books have a lot of reviews. This is something I say to people —

If you want a lot of reviews on Amazon, then being in KU is one of the ways to do that.

I see, obviously, that on all the books that are action adventure that are in KU, which is most of them, have a ton of reviews. So there are pros and cons.

You do have print books, you have audio, and you do have your own store for these other formats. So tell us about that.

Luke: So I sell print books on the store. I don’t sell particularly many. I sell most of them in the UK, I think because when people outside of the UK see the delivery cost, it puts them off.

I like the idea of having a store, more than actually make any money from it or make anything from it at the moment. I don’t feel like I’ve completely cracked it yet. Actually, that’s probably the reason.

There are frustrations from it, which I’m sure you have as well. Customer service is one. People are like, “How do I get my book? Why haven’t I got this?” Sales duty is another. My friend bought a book in Spain.

Joanna: Oh, Europe is the worst.

Luke: Oh, this book has cost him 70 euros in total, including the duty. He says he hope it’s a really good one. Sorry, mate, you bought it now.

Joanna: It is, and that’s actually something for people to keep in mind. For example, I had someone in Canada and there was a problem with something, and their duty they paid was ridiculous. So in the end, I paid that back from them.

It’s exactly what you said. There are problems—well, let’s say challenges—with it, but clearly you wanted to do something.

Is it that you’re not doing any marketing to your store, which means it’s not getting much traction?

Luke: I’m not doing any paid marketing to my store. I do paid marketing to the first in series on Amazon, and I try and keep that as simple as possible, so that I can see what the return on investment is very clearly.

I still sell a fair number of audiobooks. I sell the other series, which I do know my International Detective series has no direct marketing to it.

I sell quite a lot through Ingram Spark as well. I can only think that is because people see the advert on Facebook, they don’t want to shop on Amazon, so they take it into Waterstones, or they look on Barnes and Noble or whatever, and they buy it there. That is great. It is a good way to do it, really.

With regard to the store, I’m looking at people outside the author space and trying stuff. I want to see what YouTubers, podcasters, and influencers are selling on their stores.

I’m thinking it’s not books, if that makes sense. Like bespoke, unique experiences, stuff, things, I don’t know. A few ideas, nothing yet. I’m going to test a few things this year and see what comes out.

Joanna: That’s great. I also have had this on my list for a while, instead of trying to sell books. The crazy thing is, like I just bought a necklace, they got me on Instagram. It’s a really nice necklace, and it wasn’t expensive, but it was still more than the price of a book. I just bought it.

It was a one click purchase from a store. I didn’t know them. They had good reviews. So I was like, okay, I’ll buy that. It came and everything.

I was like, what makes people buy something that costs you 50 pounds from somebody they don’t know, and then resist paying 20 pounds for a book from an author they like? Like, it’s crazy.

Is it easier to sell non-books to people, and then upsell them on a book?

Luke: That is what I’m thinking. I’m trying to look at it in the way that a YouTuber would. Now, a YouTuber puts all their content on YouTube, and they don’t bemoan the fact that they’re exclusive to YouTube. They just put their content on there, and they get their payment from their ad clicks, or whatever it is, every month, and that’s fine.

What they do have is, underneath the video, they have this bar. I’m following various people, and they’re selling coffee, tin openers, hats, all sorts of things. Then I’m like, this is cool. This is great. I like this. I like this coffee.

Joanna: I do like the idea of selling coffee because I drink a lot of coffee!

Luke: Yes. So at the moment, I’ve got this idea of potentially some of the sort of stuff you might find in one of the markets. The cool, bespoke jewelry and funky textiles. There are small things that you can post, or whatever. A few things like that I’m going to try, and see how it goes, really. That’s the testing phase.

Joanna: I like that, and I think we do need to think differently. One of the basic things, I mean, with KU for example, and in fact, page reads and sales. So with sales, Amazon hasn’t changed the $9.99 cap ever.

We’ve had a $9.99 cap on ebooks since the beginning. So even with inflation, we can’t charge more for a book.

Then the page reads, obviously generally trend downwards.

Then you think, well, look, with inflation, just the cost of living, we should be able to put prices up. But because of all the reasons, books remain the price they are. So therefore, as you’re looking at it, it is about, well—

What else can we offer people that’s interesting, where the price isn’t so fixed?

Luke: That’s exactly right. You might only get 0.1% of people want that thing, and that’s fine. That’s great because they’re the person who’s really interested in whatever that thing happens to be.

It could be, I don’t know, an event, an online event, or something. There’s a few ideas. I haven’t pinned them down yet, but there’s many ideas.

Joanna: I get that. Well, talking about marketing as well. So obviously, as I mentioned, you’re coming on my Books and Travel Podcast, but you also have a new podcast. So tell us about that.

Why did you start the podcast, and what are you hoping to achieve?

Luke: Yes, it’s called The Adventure Story Podcast. It’s basically, if you like that idea that I told you about, the crystalline tiles in Morocco and how they preempted the breaking of the atom—or whatever you think it might be, the splitting of the atom—then this is the podcast that you will like. It’s all about the stories behind my stories.

So episodes in series one, which will start in March, are on things like—and this is a true story Jo—the cursed Egyptian ghost on the London Underground. That’s one. The truth behind the legend of the crystal skulls.

There’s an episode on Cambodia from a guy who grew up there. In fact, he’s really excited about that. There’s one about lava tubes. The truth behind lava tubes. Oh, there’s a few I’ve planned this week. A couple on the Templars as well.

It’s all this sort of history. It’s like an extended author’s note in podcast form. That’s what I’m going for.

Joanna: So why are you doing that? You said you do paid marketing to your first in series on Amazon. You have a business. You’re doing well.

Why a podcast?

Luke: I think trying to be more authentic is important to me. I want people to know me as the person behind the stories.

It’s important to for me to tell people, and I do this in my emails quite a lot, that by buying my book, by reviewing my book, by sharing my book, you’re not just having the story, you’re supporting me and my family and this house I’m standing in now.

That still blows my mind, that the mortgage is paid by people buying books. It’s wonderful. It’s an incredible thing. I want the people who read my books to be able to see that and see the real human me behind the story, and share on the adventures.

This podcast will share some of the travels my wife and I go on. We’ll share some of the adventures we’ve had. We’ll share the inspirations behind the books. We’ll have other authors on as well to talk about the inspirations behind their books, too.

Joanna: Fantastic.

Where can people find you, and your books, and the podcast online?

Luke: By the time this goes out, The Adventure Story Podcast will be live as well. It will be on wherever you listen to podcasts, but also AdventureStoryPodcast.com. My website is LukeRichardsonAuthor.com.

Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Luke. That was great.

Luke: Thank you.

The post Writing Action Adventure And Traveling For Book Research With Luke Richardson first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Note From KMW: One of the big debates in writing is whether great writers know the ending first before they ever start drafting. Some writers thrive on the certainty of a clear destination, while others prefer to let the journey unfold organically. But which approach leads to the strongest stories?

Personally, I’ve never sat down to write an outline, much less a first draft, without at least thinking I knew the general ending. However, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. This is why understanding the pros and cons of each method can help you find the right balance for your own process. A solid ending can provide direction and focus, but some writers find that too much rigidity stifles creativity. On the other hand, writing without a planned ending can lead to exciting discoveries—but also to meandering plots and frustrating rewrites.

Today, I’m pleased to share a post from Daryl Rothman, who shares convincing examples from both sides of the road. Whether you’re a meticulous plotter or a spontaneous discovery writer, his insights can help you understand how knowing (or not knowing) your ending will shape your creative process.

***

In This Article:

• Famous Authors Who Knew Their Endings
• Do All Great Writers Plan Their Endings? A Different Perspective
• Plotter vs. Pantser: Which Writing Method Works Best?

John Irving once noted:

I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin.

Hard to poke holes in his rationale, or his success with The Cider House Rules and The World According to Garp, to name but a few. Irving elaborated that he types the words and sends them as postcards to close friends (some who noted that not nary a punctuation mark evolved from conception to publication). Irving added:

You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story because it tells you how to sound when you begin.

This topic evokes some immediate lines in the sand. I remember being called a pantser years ago. “Hey,” I recall protesting, in homage to Larry Fine, “I resemble that remark.” Of course, the moniker referred not to any propensity for yanking down the trousers of a mortified fellow human but rather, my tendency to favor a measure of spontaneity over assiduous plotting. In truth, I typically end up somewhere in between, or a little of everything, but the matter of pantser vs. plotter has its ardent adherents, including many who stand squarely with Irving.

Margaret Mitchell famously wrote Gone with the Wind backwards, penning the saddest parts of the Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara saga before adjudicating the details of their tumultuous relationship. Mitchell wrote the book’s final moments of grief and loss first. She said:

I left them to their ultimate fate.

In a 2011 NPR interview, Joanna Arietta, director of historic houses for the Atlanta History Center and Margaret Mitchell House, noted:

She knew at the very beginning that Rhett wasn’t going to care that much and that Scarlett was going to live for another day

Mitchell shared:

“I had every detail clear in my mind before I sat down to the typewriter. I believe… that is the best way to write a book—then your characters can’t get away from you and misbehave, and do things you didn’t intend them to do in the beginning.

Even my beloved Edgar Allan Poe believed the finest writers composed their work with an understanding of the story’s end and the impact it should have on readers. Inclined toward the short story, Poe’s lone completed novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, contains an italicized trail of phrases for the reader to track, foreshadowing the story’s end. These impart the feel of a conceptual short story and further illustrate that the end of his tales remained always front of mind.

JK Rowling wrote the last chapter of the seventh and final Harry Potter book, The Deathly Hallows, around the same time she conceived the idea for the first:

I’ve always planned seven books. These books have been plotted for such a long time, and for six books now, that they’re all leading a certain direction.

Once again, tough to argue with the staggering success her roadmap yielded.

There are countless more adherents, yet this is hardly a decided debate. Rather, it is freighted with the impassioned druthers of some dissenting heavyweights.

Do All Great Writers Plan Their Endings? A Different Perspective

In 2011, The Guardian revealed Great Expectations as readers’ favorite Dickens novel, yet his original ending may well have evoked a different sentiment. The initial version sees an unmarried Pip briefly reunite with Estella in London, finding she has been widowed and remarried, dashing all hope of ending up together.

Roald Dahl’s first iteration of Matilda was something of a cautionary tale, and didn’t even feature the bookish heroine readers came to know and love. Matilda was a naughty, unruly child (Veruca Salt anyone?) who pranked those around her and perished in the end of the book as penance for her cruelty. Fans may give thanks that Dahl’s final version changed course, softening our beloved protagonist.

And then there’s Hemingway’s 47 potential conclusions to A Farewell to Arms. This classic famously ends,

After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.

Simple and sparse, inimitable Hemingway. But it would not have been had he rigidly held to one of his myriad previous conclusions.

Stephen King, one of the most prolific authors of all time, recoils at the idea of obedient plotting, feeling it extinguishes creative embers, and stunts the organic growth of the characters you have brought into the world. Most of his ideas arise from simple questions he posits, often beginning with “What if?,” and building from the possibilities that subsequently manifest. Salem’s Lot clawed its way to life from one such query: “What if vampires invaded a small New England village?” So too with Cujo: “What if a young mother and her son became trapped in their stalled car by a rabid dog?”

Plotter vs. Pantser: Which Writing Method Works Best?

It is said that a friend once visited James Joyce as he wrote, inquiring upon arrival the source of the scribe’s obvious vexation. Of course it was the work, as always. “How many words did you get today?” queried the visitor. “Seven,” replied Joyce. “Seven? But James… that’s good, at least for you.” “Yes,” Joyce at last assented, before lamenting, “But I don’t know what order they go in!”

I think many writers can relate to the challenge of determining sequence and structure across an entire manuscript.

So, who’s right? Pantsers or plotters? Is it better to set down your stakes straight away, finish line forever in sight, or at least in mind—or to wing it, to breathe life into your story and its inhabitants and sit back and enjoy the ride?

The question, of course, is flawed. Hopefully, all writers have learned, even if they harbor a preference, that there is no one right way. We have heard here from only a smattering of notable scribes who have found smashing success on either side of the fence. The achievement of one approach clearly cannot be said to belie that of the other. You must find what works for you (and it might not always be the same, project to project, or as your literary journey progresses).

I wrote a piece questioning blind adherence to some of writing’s “rules,” and referred in the piece to Dr. Steven Pinker, noted Harvard linguist, author, psychologist, and cognitive scientist, who in his The Sense of Style challenges some of these sacred cows. My article focused on the great debate around word choice, and in an email exchange with Pinker, he agreed that the “Puritanical advice” which tends to undergird many style manuals and writing rules “is overdone.”

>>Click here to read The Rules of Fiction: What They Are and What They’re Not

So don’t box yourself in. Experiment.

I like to have an overall idea of story and perhaps the endgame or some goalposts, but leave the road along the way uncluttered by excessive plotting. I credit King’s practice of posing key questions. From that ember of a possibility can ignite a roaring blaze of story, character, and conflict.

King’s “key question” approach has worked well for me, especially if I further the “What if” inquiry to include something like, “but is prevented (from main objective) by….” But even if I fancy knowing the result, I humble myself sufficiently to remain open to a change, perhaps even a big one. Our stories and our characters are our babies, yes, but sometimes you must “kill your darlings,” as King famously said. Or at the very least, follow their lead.

I remember as a kid reading and then watching Shane, and when little Joey is running through the graveyard toward the climactic showdown of the film, my father said softly, “And a child shall lead them.” (A little Isaiah 11: 6 for you.)

Truth be told, it stuck with me, more for the literary lesson. My story is my baby, just as is each character. I have breathed life into them and must ultimately follow their lead, providing what guidance I can. I am not their puppet master, nor they my obedient marionettes, dancing upon my every pull of the string or punch of the keyboard. Give your characters life. Imbue them with some defining traits, build out your world a bit, and set them free upon it.

I do outline a bit, though at the beginning I keep it fairly broad and flexible. I may outline further as I go along and I see where the story and the characters are taking me. I may jot reminders or ideas for upcoming scenes. But I try not to be intransigent: if upon arrival those ideas or scenes no longer fit, or need some tweaking, I make a course correction.

Everyone has an ego; I definitely do. Writing is one of the few things I believe I do well, and it has transpired more than once that I pen something, even a paragraph, I think to be well-written, even masterful, but there is that gnawing sense it simply doesn’t fit. It isn’t true to the story or perhaps the character. I hem and haw, grumble and groan, perhaps let slip a few nice expletives (talk about word choice), but know in my heart to leave out the misplaced verbiage.

On the other hand, I don’t like to start with nothing, rudderless, no notes, no ideas, my writerly trousers tugged down to my ankles. I typically conjure something of a roadmap but remain open to the number of detours I’m apt to encounter along the way. Flexibility within structure.

Best wishes finding the approach best for you. No better way in the end than to keep working. Good luck in your journey. Write on!

In Summary

The debate between plotters and pantsers—whether to plan a story meticulously or allow it to unfold organically—has been central to many famous authors’ writing processes. Writers like John Irving, Margaret Mitchell, and J.K. Rowling have spoken about how knowing the ending first can help inform their writing. However, authors like Stephen King emphasize a more spontaneous approach, allowing the story to develop naturally. Ultimately, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Writers must find what works best for them and adapt as their creative process evolves.

Key Takeaways

• Plotting vs. Pantsing: Some writers prefer to plan their endings first, believing it guides the rest of the story, while others discover the ending as they write.
• Famous Authors’ Approaches: John Irving, Margaret Mitchell, and J.K. Rowling all believed in starting with the ending to ensure a cohesive narrative, while authors like Stephen King take a more exploratory approach.
• Flexibility is Key: Whether you plot or pants, remaining flexible allows your story and characters to evolve naturally.
• No Right Answer: The best method depends on the writer and the specific project. It’s important to experiment and find what works for you.

Wordplayers, tell us your opinions! Do you think great writers plan their endings first, or do you prefer to let the story unfold organically? Tell us in the comments!

 

The post Do Great Writers Know the Ending First? appeared first on Helping Writers Become Authors.

How can you use Kickstarter to help bring your creative vision into reality? What are some of the biggest mistakes authors make? What are some tips to ensure your campaign is a success? Oriana Leckert shares her expertise.

In the intro, AI-narrated audiobooks from ElevenLabs will now be accepted on Spotify through FindawayVoices; A Midwinter Sacrifice by J.F. Penn with my voice clone for the Author’s Note on Spotify; BookVault introduce boxsets and slipcases; Managing your finances [Becca Syme]; How to write non-fiction [EOLU Podcast]; Thoughts on the Berlin film market; Death Valley – A Thriller.

Today’s show is sponsored by my patrons! Join my community and get access to extra videos on writing craft, author business, AI and behind the scenes info, plus an extra Q&A show a month where I answer Patron questions. It’s about the same as a black coffee a month! Join the community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn

Oriana Leckert is the head of publishing at Kickstarter, as well as an author, freelance writer, editor, and consultant.

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

• Types of Kickstarter campaigns for authors
• Unique rewards to offer your backers
• Biggest mistakes authors make for a campaign that doesn’t fund
• Bringing your own backers vs. discovery from Kickstarter
• Tips for creating a visually pleasing page
• The importance of a pre-launch page
• Making sure your Kickstarter gets approved
• Creating a detailed budget for your rewards

You can find Oriana and more about Kickstarter at Kickstarter.com/creators/publishing and Kickstarter.com/publishing.

Transcript of Interview with Oriana Leckert

Joanna: Oriana Leckert is the head of publishing at Kickstarter, as well as an author, freelance writer, editor, and consultant. So welcome to the show, Oriana.

Oriana: Jo, I’m so excited to be here talking with you. Thank you so much for having me.

Joanna: It’s great to have you on the show. So first up, just in case—

What is Kickstarter, for anyone who doesn’t know? What is your role there?

How did you become involved in the publishing side of things?

Oriana: Absolutely. So Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform. We are unique in the crowdfunding landscape for a few reasons. We are only for creative projects, so you can’t use Kickstarter for medical bills, investment funding, charitable donations.

Every Kickstarter project has to create something new to share with the world.

Kickstarter is also a public benefit corporation, which is a sort of legal and business charter that turns us basically into a mission-driven for-profit organization. So our mission is to bring creative projects to life. Everything we do comes back to bringing more creativity into the world through that structure.

We are also quite a progressive company. We do 5% after-tax profit donations every year to organizations fighting systemic inequality and doing music and arts education. We are very transparent about our tax contributions, the salary difference between our CEO and the median staff salary.

So we do all sorts of things that make us, what I believe, a really ethical place to be and a force for hopefully good in the world.

My role is head of publishing. So I’ve been a Kickstarter six years, which is the longest I’ve been at any company, actually. I came here to grow our journalism category at the very end of 2018. I have done journalism, I’ve done comics, I’ve done publishing.

It, sort of unexpected to me, is the best job I’ve ever had. Which is slightly corny, but worth saying. I can’t believe I get to do this work all the time. My background is about half and half digital media and traditional publishing, so I’ve spent most of my career fully focused on books and the written word in one way or another.

I generally describe my job here as one part literary industry expert, one part crowdfunding consultant, one part life coach, and one part cheerleader. So those are the various roles I get to play for my creators.

I also get to be out in the world all the time doing wonderful things like this, just kind of talking about Kickstarter and helping people get a better understanding of what it’s for, how you can use it, the benefit for authors and creative people of all stripes.

Joanna: Oh, that’s great. You are a cheerleader. I love your energy. You bring such a great energy.

I do feel like Kickstarter, obviously, is a company, but it does have that very creative feel. So I really appreciate that.

I’ve also met you a couple of times in Vegas over the last few years, and so I thought we’d start there. What have you seen in terms of the changes in the author community over the last few years?

What are the types of Kickstarter campaigns that authors do?

Obviously, we’re not all Brandon Sanderson (whose campaign made over $41 million!).

Oriana: That’s a great question. It’s been pretty exciting. So I was hired by Margot Atwell, who held this role, also, for five or six years. I really see a pretty strong through line from her work to mine.

The amount of change in perception from authors, publishers, illustrators, toward Kickstarter, the shift has been absolutely massive.

I mean, certainly when Margot started, and even when I started, there was a lot of sort of bewilderment, hedging toward distrust, and people thought Kickstarter was just for desperate people who couldn’t get a book deal through the traditional systems.

The change has been so dramatic of people understanding that —

Kickstarter can be transformative for an author’s career —

and that it can work for traditional publishing, indie publishing, hybrid publishing, all kinds of authors. 

I mean, obviously I’m in the bag for Kickstarter, but there are so many ways that it can be tremendously helpful. Kickstarter is really about collapsing the boundaries between a writer and their readers, a publisher and their fan base, any creative person and their audience.

There’s so many benefits to doing that. You get to thrill your backers with new and exciting rewards. You get to turn what can be a sort of, not boring, but like just a standard book release, into a moment.

You get to build your brand, your profile, get press.

You get to test out ambitious projects. You get to understand so much more about your audience — 

and what they want and how you can give it to them.

So, yes, going to shows like Author Nation, formerly 20Books, was a real revelation for me. Margot’s work was mostly concentrated on the traditional publishing industry and getting to know the people who are really driving forward indie publishing and self-publishing and owning their own author careers.

It’s been really marvelous getting to make a lot of inroads into that world and seeing the great success that people can have on our platform and outside of it.

Joanna: You mentioned there that you can thrill backers with new and exciting rewards, but I feel like many people listening might not even know what kind of rewards they would do. The word “reward”, it’s quite a different word if people haven’t been involved with Kickstarter.

For an author, what are the kind of rewards that people are doing?

Oriana: I love that question because, to me, the rewards are really like at the heart of the Kickstarter proposition and what makes this kind of fundraising so interesting and kind of thrilling.

Basically, Kickstarter, your process is that you’re inviting people on a creative journey. You’re saying, I’m going to make this cool thing. I want your support, and in exchange, you’re going to get stuff. You’re going to get to be part of my process.

Your main reward is going to be your book, or your series —

or, if you’re a publishing company, your season. Whatever it is, that’s your main tier, and then you’re going to build everything else out above and below that.

Then a lot of people think the rewards means swag or merch, which is fine, but merch can really add a lot to your production costs. It’s causing you to learn how to produce all kinds of things that maybe you’ve never done before.

So that’s not the only way to do it. If you’re going to do some merch, I think it’s nice to come up with some custom items that feel really related to the work that you’re doing.

If you’ve got a romance novel with a pivotal scene on the beach, maybe you make some candles that smell like the ocean. Maybe you do some kind of handkerchief that’s printed with the pattern of the dress that your heroine is wearing.

You can really think beyond merch, into digital rewards, experiential rewards. There’s a lot of parts of the writing process that can be sort of like pulled out and packaged as rewards. Things like notes from the field, outtakes, deleted scenes.

I’ve had people write bloopers, as if it were like a comedy movie, like added new scenes or novellas, other pieces from different works that you’ve done. Certainly, your back list and other books that you’ve written, those can all be included. We’ve seen people do tours of the writer’s studio, things like that.

Also think about what skills you have in addition to your writing. Perhaps you are excellent at marketing, or social media, or poetry. You can offer webinars on those sorts of things, other kinds of ways that people can experience the creative practice that you have.

Then you can get into like high-end exclusive one-off, crazy rewards. One whole section of rewards I love is naming rights. We’ve seen all kinds of “We’ll name the dragon after your dog. We’ll name the illness after your mother in law. We’ll name the hero after your son.”

There’s a LitRPG novelist named Matt Dinniman, who did this really well. He writes these big cast, you know, there’s dungeons, and you’re in an intergalactic reality TV show with hundreds of characters. So in his last campaign, for $666 he will kill you off in his next book, and for $777 he’d let you live. He’ll write a whole scene around you personally and that sort of thing.

So those are just some. I mean, you can do book release parties. You can do book clubs. If you’re writing children’s books, you can do coloring pages or supplemental material for teachers or other educators.

The sky is really the limit, and it is based on your creativity —

and the things that both you can make and that your audience wants. So this is another opportunity to talk to them.

Ask them, if I’m going to do a piece of swag, would you rather have an enamel pin or makeup bag? If I’m going to do alternate covers, would you like the blue cover or the red cover? See what your people are interested in, and then figure out whether it’s possible for you to deliver it to them?

Joanna: Wow, so many ideas there. I feel like this is part of the game, is that if someone’s listening and they’re like, “oh, that sounds great,” well—

You need to get on Kickstarter and start backing things and understanding how it works.

It’s quite different. People think, oh, it’s just like an Amazon or whatever, it’s just not.

Oriana: My number one piece of advice for anyone who’s even a little bit Kickstarter curious, get on the site and back some projects, even just for a buck or two. Follow the creators out in the world, watch what people are doing.

I often say this, but I am an expert in Kickstarter because I stare at Kickstarter all day long. You too can stare at Kickstarter all day long. You can follow everybody. You can look at what people have done and what’s worked and what hasn’t.

Find all the best tricks, steal them for your own.

Imitation is the highest form of flattery and all that. It is absolutely the best way to get good at Kickstarter, just like immerse yourself in this strange and lovely world and see how everybody else is doing it, and do it better.

Joanna: I mean, I now buy a lot of just ebooks.

I mean, I buy a lot of beautiful print with foil and all this, but I also just buy ebooks. They’re kind of a similar price as you might get on some of the other platforms. So people can do that.

I think you mentioned the book being the main offering, and people might think, well, that’s the paperback. But you can do ebook, you can do audiobook, you can do bundles, you can do series, as you said. So there’s so many options.

So obviously things have changed over the last few years, but—

Have you got any numbers on how big the Kickstarter industry is now with publishing?

Or anything you can share around that?

Oriana: I would love to tell you. So first I’ll tell you, Kickstarter overall, by the numbers since our inception, there have been 273,000 projects funded, eight and a half billion dollars pledged, from more than 24 million backers.

In publishing specifically, we’ve had 69,000 projects launched, 3.2 million unique backers, and over $380 million pledged to campaigns. I have lots of other stats, but a few things I’ll share here.

The publishing category has grown year over year, every year since 2017, in terms of number of projects launched, number of projects successful, and the overall percent of success rate. There has never been a dip since 2017, so for over a decade.

Another stat that I really love about the publishing category, if you look at campaigns that have at least 25 backers, the overall success rate is 84%. I think that’s really telling because 25 backers, that’s like a little bit more than your mom, your best friend, the folks who are essentially obligated to support anything that you do.

So if you can get a little bit beyond that sort of inner circle, your chances of succeeding on the platform are tremendously high. Another thing that I wanted to call out, I just got some new numbers around this, the average backing amount per backer across the whole category has nearly doubled since 2020.

So we used to see an average backing around $40, and it’s currently at $72 per backer. I think this is clearly around the trend of special and deluxe editions, but it’s a great indication that —

The backer behavior on Kickstarter is just very different than your general book buying public.

People don’t come here looking for 99 cent ebooks, the lowest bargain basement prices.

Folks are really willing to pay more because they understand that this is a different kind. It’s not exactly a purchase, it really is supporting bringing a strange and wonderful new thing into the world that wouldn’t exist before.

People are also much more forgiving about timeline. If you buy something from most online booksellers, you’re expecting to have it in your hands within a couple of days. People wait months, and sometimes years, to get their Kickstarter rewards, and they don’t mind if the creator is clear and transparent.

You’re also doing the work of demystifying the publishing process. Why does it take so long? Where are books printed? How long does it take them to ship via freight over the ocean? What do all these things really look like?

So it’s really interesting just figuring out what your backers want and will bear, versus the general book buying public out in the world.

Joanna: Absolutely, and that’s why we have fewer backers than we might sell total books on other platforms. As you said, they do spend more money and we can do higher quality and more interesting products. Obviously there, you mentioned that not every campaign actually funds.

What are some of the top mistakes you see that mean the campaign doesn’t fund or there are other issues?

Oriana: The biggest mistake I think authors make, or any creator, is overestimating their abilities to reach their crowd. I think making sure that your ambition matches your reach is the number one most important thing to like come close to guaranteeing that you will be successful.

If you are an emerging writer, and you’re still building your audience, and you don’t have that many followers or subscribers out in the world, you should not try to fund a multi-volume, leather bound omnibus.

Do a real, honest assessment of who’s in your crowd, how to find them, what percentage of them are likely to support what you’re doing —

and then find a project that feels realistic based on those numbers. That’s really the biggest thing, sort of conceptually.

As far as tips for a project page, again, back campaigns, look at what other people are doing.

A project page can be either as simple or as complicated as you want to make it. You definitely want, obviously, to talk about the book, what is in it. Do a trope card, if you want. We’re seeing those all over the site.

Just what kind of book it is, and like specs. Also, page count, trim size, cover design. Obviously, if you’re doing a special edition, exactly what sorts of bells and whistles, with a prototype, if you can.

Then you can be really expansive from there. What are your inspirations? Who are your collaborators? What brought you to this work? What are some of the things that make you excited about your writing practice? Your timeline, your budget. What made you choose these rewards and how are you going to produce them?

All those sorts of things will make backers feel both more trusting that you will do the things that you’re promising, and just more excited to be part of your journey.

Joanna: So just to be clear with what you said at the beginning. So somebody, they’re a new writer—and I’ve seen several authors fail this way—they want to do some gorgeous book, and they put a level of $25,000 is what they want, but they don’t necessarily have an email list or anything.

When I saw this particular person I’m thinking of, I saw that and was like, there’s no way that’s going to fund. So what is the problem with people that are kind of expecting Kickstarter to bring people? So maybe just talk about—

What’s the split between what Kickstarter does with discovery and then what the author has to bring?

Oriana: Yes, absolutely. So we track backer behavior, obviously, all across the site and category by category.

In your Creator dashboard, if you run a campaign, you will see a breakdown of what percentage of backers are coming through your efforts and who are coming through the Kickstarter ecosystem.

In publishing, an average is about 30% are coming through Kickstarter. That can be like 20% to maybe 40%, depending on how much exposure your project winds up getting. So that’s not nothing.

Being on Kickstarter will help you grow your audience, but it’s definitely not everything. You really do need to bring your people first.

Our algorithm works on attention.

So any project that’s getting clicks, getting backings, getting comments, our algorithm says, “Oh, people want to look at this. We will expose it to more and more people.” That means raising it up in search results, slotting it into various of the macros and carousels around the site.

Our recommendation engine powers recommended projects on the top of campaigns, at the bottom of emails. We are doing a lot to make sure that projects are being surfaced to folks who want to see them.

We actually are doing some significant backer-focused work this year on improving our search results, improving our recommendation engine. We’re really working to make sure that people are finding the projects that they are going to be excited by.

Joanna: So, I mean, and this is something I think is quite different, it is very visual. The story page, the sales page. There’s a main visual.

There’s kind of two fields, the header field, and then a very small description field and then the image. That’s what’s really surfaced around Kickstarter, isn’t it?

Any tips for the image and those text boxes for SEO purposes?

Oriana: Yes, totally. So SEO is important, but it is not as crucial. We can always tell when people are coming to us from KU because rather than the title of the book, their project subject says, “Reverse harem, lesbians on Mars, with an enemies to lover subplot.” You know, you don’t have to do that on Kickstarter.

Keywords are important, but it’s not the same. It’s much more about, what is this project? Who is it for? So I would, of course, absolutely maximize your title and your subtitle to get as much information as possible.

Then exactly as you said, I mean, imagine somebody looking at your project on their phone. They’re going to see the title, subtitle, the project image, maybe one sentence. That’s also what they’re going to see in a tweet, in a search result, in a newsletter thumbnail.

So those elements are really, really important, and you want with just those four items to sort of bring everybody in and get them excited to click through.

For the project image, we recommend one full bleed image. Maybe it’s your cover, your cover image, or like one gorgeous illustration from the book.

Or if you’ve got a series, maybe a stack of books.

We don’t recommend larding up that image with a whole lot of text. Remember it’s going to show up next to your title, the title of your project.

So if the title of your project is the title of your book, and the title of your book is also written on the book cover, you don’t also need a text bubble that says the book title on top of that project image.

Sometimes people try to cram a whole lot of very salesy text onto that image. It not only like makes the image pop less and makes it less interesting, it also is very difficult to read when that shows up thumbnail sized on a search page or a social post.

So concentrate on making like a bright, exciting image that isn’t too overloaded with many tiny elements.

Joanna: And then the video. I wanted to ask about this because on Kickstarter it says you really should do a video. So why is that?

Any tips on the sales video?

Oriana: We definitely do see a preference for videos. It’s, again, probably the tiktokization and the pivot to video all around the internet. Kickstarter is on the internet. It’s a visual medium. People like videos these days.

That said, if the video is the main stumbling block keeping you off the platform, I am here to tell you that you don’t have to do one. Plenty of projects fund extremely well without having a video. So if that’s the calculation that you’re making, just have beautiful imagery and you’ll be fine.

That said, if you are going to do a video, it needs to be short, bright and compelling. Especially on the publishing side, we see about 50% of potential backers stop watching after one minute, and everybody else is gone after the second minute.

So you don’t need to undertake some massive Hollywood production style situation that’s going to cost you tons of time and money. Much better to do just kind of like a direct to camera. It is nice to show your face if you feel comfortable doing so.

Just a teaser. Talk a little bit about who you are, what you’re doing, ask for people’s support, and say that you hope they click in and read through the whole rest of your story.

Joanna: So, and this is a tough one, because I’ve done different kinds of videos, now coming up for my fifth campaign.

For the fiction, I did do one for Blood Vintage which is like a book trailer. So it goes straight into the sort of thriller book trailer, and then I put on my face afterwards, and I’m telling them about the book.

On my nonfiction ones, I’ve really just done, sort of as you said, a face to camera.

Is there any data on what kind of video people prefer? For fiction, is a book trailer better than a direct to camera, or vice versa?

Oriana: That’s not the kind of data that we do or possibly even could collect. I think it’s more a question of knowing your audience, knowing what they want, and what is going to fit the best. I mean, I think that’s really smart that you’ve done it slightly differently for your fiction versus nonfiction.

Whatever you think is going to be the best representation of this particular work, that’s what you should go with.

Joanna: I guess I think about it from my perspective as a backer. With fiction—and it’s terrible to say, but it’s true—I often don’t care so much about the author, I want the story.

I’ve bought a ton of fiction off Kickstarter without knowing the author, whereas I feel like the nonfiction I’ve bought, I’ve actually known the author, so I’m more interested in the author. So that’s just, I guess, my personal behavior.

Oriana: Sure, but your personal behavior is probably fairly telling about a broader book buying population. So I think that makes a lot of sense.

Joanna: It’s good to know though. I mean, for people listening, look, there’s no structure for it. In fact, the very first video I did, I went to Russell Nohelty’s bestselling page and I deconstructed his video. I literally wrote it down, and then I followed his script with my stuff.

Oriana: That’s a great way to do it.

Joanna: I think to find someone who’s successful and model them, I think that’s always a good trick.

Oriana: Yes, absolutely.

Joanna: Okay, so let’s just talk about some of the other aspects. So the pre-launch page, this is something that seems to be very important.

Talk about the pre-launch page.

Oriana: Absolutely. It’s a new feature. We’ve released it—gosh, what is time—last year or the year before. It has really changed the way that people are doing the kind of period before they launch.

[Check out my pre-launch page at JFPenn.com/deathvalley — which will become the main sales page on launch.]

So a pre-launch page, it’s a cover page. It lives at the same URL where your campaign will ultimately go. It’s simplified, and it is designed to generate followers.

So anybody who follows the pre-launch page is going to get a system email from Kickstarter as soon as you launch. We see a very high conversion over the life of the project, from pre-launch followers to project backers, sometimes 40 or 50%. Most of them tend to do it right away.

The work that you do to promote that pre-launch page and get your follower count up is going to pay off very handsomely once you launch.

It really helps you have a strong first day, which is excellent for morale, excellent for messaging, good for the overall percentage chance of success on the project.

So, as I said, this is still new-ish. We don’t have a huge amount of data about it, but I recommend a pre-launch period of at least two weeks. We’ve seen some people do it for weeks, months, even in a few cases, over a year.

I think in the best case, that pre-launch period is sort of a crescendo into the burst of launch. So if you urge someone to get excited and follow this page, which they do, and then six months later they get an email that the campaign is live now, I think you’ve really diluted the excitement that they had when they first came on board.

Everyone should do what works for them and their timeline and their project, but definitely don’t skip that as a step.

Spend some time promoting that pre-launch page, getting up your follower count. It will really, really, really help once you go live.

Joanna: For people listening, my pre-launch page is at JFPenn.com/DeathValley. Depending on when people are listening, it might well be live, or it might be in the future.

So when I did my first campaign, obviously you don’t know when you first start all the things you kind of have to do. There’s obviously KYC, know your customer, that Kickstarter has to do. So if people are going to set up their pre-launch page, how long will it take and—

What do people need to set up so that Kickstarter knows they can be approved?

Oriana: So there’s two different approvals.

The KYC stuff is done by Stripe, our payment processor. I would give yourself lots of extra time for these approvals. It usually only takes a day or two. Sometimes you get an automatic approval, but don’t leave that to the very end.

Make sure you get your bank details, your ID, all of that information up and sent over to Stripe well before you need to, well before it comes to crunch time.

As far as the Kickstarter approval process, that too can be automatic or it can take up to a few days. We do want, especially for first time authors or first time creators, the trust and safety team who reviews the projects wants to see pretty much a final draft when they’re approving it.

You can’t put up your pre-launch page until the project is approved. For serial creators in good standing, we are making some allowances where people can get that pre-launch page up before the approval process.

Especially when you’re starting out on the platform, it’s good practice to like have your campaign more or less finalized, so that the reviewers can see everything that you’ll be doing. Then you can get that pre-launch page up at that point.

Joanna: Yes, because — 

When you put up the rewards and things, you have to have costed it all out.

You have to say, like, how much people need to pledge, and you need to know things like your shipping details. So let’s get a bit more into those finances.

Earlier, you mentioned that adding merch can add a lot of money and lot of cost to a campaign. Of course, if you don’t know how much it’s going to cost even just to print your book, say, with foil or sprayed edges, or whatever, you can’t cost it out either.

What are some of the issues that people find with finances around Kickstarter?

Oriana: I cannot stress enough the importance of doing a full, real, detailed budget. That doesn’t mean vaguely guessing how much you think it might cost to print a book. Really, actually get samples, figure out all of your processes.

Budget, not just for print production, but for bubble wrap and tape, for pens and stickers. For all of the things that you are going to be producing in your rewards and also budget contingency plans.

Think about all the things that might go wrong.

Make sure you’re doing a really, really detailed job of understanding all of your costs. It’s good that you mentioned Russell before. There’s a publishing creator tips page, that’s kickstarter.com/creators/publishing.

There’s a whole lot of resources there for all kinds of different projects and different elements of the crowdfunding process. One piece is a budgeting article by Russell. It’s got a worksheet in it and details all of these things that we’re talking about. So I absolutely recommend using that as a guide when you’re setting out your budget.

One thing about it that I love is that he also says, “Include a little bit of money to do a nice thing for yourself.” For him, he gets a tattoo of one of his characters after every successful campaign.

So maybe for you, that’s getting a manicure or a massage or a nice dinner or a new book, but do do something sweet for yourself. That’s a nice way to give yourself a reward at the end of what can be a pretty intense process.

Joanna: Yes, it is intense. It’s funny because I was scared about it before I pressed that button on the first time, but I feel like what I love about the Kickstarter thing is that it’s a real launch period.

I feel like one of the most tiring things for authors is the constant need to do marketing, whereas with Kickstarter campaign, you can be like, okay, I’m going to really push hard for this couple of weeks, or a few weeks before that. Push hard, do all my marketing, and then I can go into fulfillment, and I can ease off a bit.

I feel like this is more surge marketing, isn’t it?

Oriana: Yes. I think that’s an excellent way to describe it, for sure.

That’s definitely the Kickstarter proposition. You know, look, I will be screaming from the rooftops about this project for 30 days, and then I will stop talking about it.

Joanna: Yes, and you can’t have it. Well, there won’t be a thing anymore.

Oriana: Exactly, exactly.

Joanna: Well, then on that, I guess once we have finished, the campaign closes, and Kickstarter collects the money, and we get the money in a couple of weeks’ time.

We also have to fulfill the stuff, which is, all the shipping and all of that. One thing that I’ve seen people be confused about is around taxes.

So any clarification on who pays the tax?

Oriana: So I am actually not allowed to give tax advice, as I am absolutely not an accountant. I would say you should certainly talk to your accountant about what you’re doing on Kickstarter and how you should report that and what that’s all going to mean.

This is a reasonable point to note that, as we are recording this on February 13th, yesterday, Kickstarter announced a whole bunch of new features that we have been working on for a long time, and we are in the process of rolling out. Including a lot of post campaign tools that we’ve never had before.

We’re doing an internal pledge management system. That is something that people have been asking us for probably over a decade. There are many elements to that, but one thing that we are going to be doing in the future is we’re going to be helping everybody with tax and VAT collection.

So that’s something that’s coming soon, and we’re going to do our best to help demystify a massively complicated process.

Joanna: It is. Well, then I’ll say, from my perspective, I know what taxes I have to pay, and I make sure I pay them after I get the money from Kickstarter. So as far as I’m concerned —

Paying tax is my responsibility as the creator.

What else then is coming? Or things that perhaps authors aren’t using enough yet?

Oriana: Well, so last year, we released late pledges. This means, as like it says on the tin, once the campaign is closed, you can still collect additional backing. There’s some caveats with that. We don’t want to undermine that sort of now or never, all or nothing, do or die situation.

So our recommendations for late pledges, they’re most effective in two to seven days after the campaign has closed. The final 48 hours of a campaign are really strong. You know, that’s when all of that FOMO really kicks in. So a lot of marketing happens, a lot of outreach, a lot of just like traffic.

So inevitably, no matter how hard you have been pushing this project, the day after your campaign closes, three people are going to email you and say, “Well, I didn’t know you had a live campaign.” So late pledges are really for them to still be able to get on board, even though they missed all of the main part of the activity.

We also recommend you do not have all of your rewards available in late pledges, and those that you do, cost more. So again, you want to make sure that all of that talk you’ve been doing during the campaign of like, “This is your only chance to get this book, at this price, at this specificity,” has not been made into a lie by late pledges.

Then also with late pledges, they don’t get to stay up forever. At some point you do say, now I am going to press, so I’m going to turn them off. So that’s how late pledges are designed to work.

Some other really cool features that we’ve just announced, and again, as I said, we announced this yesterday. So I don’t have a ton more information, although I should tell you where to go to find it. I mean, we’ve got pop ups and things all over the site about it.

Well, it’s a slightly cumbersome URL, updates.kickstarter.com/kickstarters-2025-product-roadmap with some hyphens. I don’t know if you have show notes.

Joanna: I’ll put a link in the show notes.

Oriana: Excellent. That would be great. That’s where we lay out the sort of overview of all of the stuff that we’re working on this year.

Some things that I will just call out, we are in beta currently for a payment plan. It’s called Pledge Over Time. That allows backers for rewards above a certain dollar amount, I think it’s $125, to make their pledge in four payments, rather than all at once.

We are working on secret rewards, which, this is also still in beta. Creators can get a direct link to a reward that’s not listed in the campaign and send that to specific groups of backers.

So we have a lot more features planned for this year. We’re trying to make things that people have been asking for. This also means, if there’s a feature that you want Kickstarter to have that we currently don’t, write into our support team and tell them.

A lot of the things that we have developed over the years have come directly from so many people asking for it that we realized we just had to do it. So please tell us what you want, and maybe it’ll come to life.

Joanna: Brilliant.

Where can people find Kickstarter for Publishing and any other help online?

Oriana: Yes, kickstarter.com/publishing is where all of the publishing projects are. I mentioned that creator tips page, kickstarter.com/creators/publishing. We are all over the socials. We are everywhere that you can find us.

Oh, another thing we also just rolled out is a whole new learning lab curriculum, which is a video series of every element of your Kickstarter project.

It is probably geared a bit more toward like larger sort of design and tech and gadget and games creators, but I’m sure that there are really, really relevant tips for publishers and publishing folks in there as well.

We’re trying to give as much help as possible. We want everybody to succeed. Of course, a rising tide lifts all boats, which is foundational to the Kickstarter ethos.

Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Oriana. That was great.

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