Telling your lived experience through your artistic works is a nerve-wracking, panic-inducing idea for some, and this is a wake-up call to aspire for more than your fear’s bounds.
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One of the biggest compliments I received as a ghostwriter was that my characters felt “made for each other”.
Reflecting has got me thinking what that really means, how does someone write a character that feels real. Like a real person, so incomplete that they somehow feel whole.
In order to make the audience root for, ship, or cry for your characters, a writer must make the character feel as if they’re true reflections of our own experiences. Humans connect with stories on a fundamental level, and as writers, we need to build the “persona” of the character based on what we’ve experienced with other people.
So, draw from what you’ve seen and what you know. Draw from your own experiences. It is important to project the world accurately for your audience to be able to relate and connect to it. The polluted, fake world of Phillip K. Dick’s sci-fi classic Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Bladerunner, for you cinephiles) resonates with audiences today because we see how that could become our reality – hone that sentiment in your own works. Use your voice to actually say something.
Be courageous in your perception and retelling of your existence; don’t shy away from the harsh truths and painful emotions. It’s often in our depictions of these circumstances that we shine the brightest. We connect with characters that have gone through pain, who have experienced trouble and turmoil. We relate to these characters because we all understand what it’s like to struggle in some way or another; to suffer is a universal human experience.
So, embrace it. Embrace the hard. Confront the ugly to spool something beautiful out of the benign. To create something daring from the desolate…
Rising from the ashes, that’s what gives us humans good character, after all.
The Pants-ing v. Plotting Debate has always been a point of pleasure versus productivity. In the high-speed world of indie publishing, a career built on solid plotting leaves a lot more time to move on to the next project.
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Let’s be honest, writing a scene with no notes is magical.
It really takes your breathe away when you develop a scene from absolutely nothing, the words just ebbing and flowing from the dialogue to the descriptions. No notes, no cards, no scene plots guiding you along. It reminds the storyteller why they do this.
Because we savor creating.
But success isn’t just about creating.
It’s about cultivating, crafting, and execution.
So how do we balance this as creatives? The push and pull of feeling like we’re boxing ourselves in while wanting to be free and expressive in the moment?
Well, first, we must admit one thing to ourselves: that we are better when we plan.
Scenes have a natural pacing that people look for, and when a scene doesn’t follow it, the readers feel it immediately. It’s why movies like The Room are so notorious — the mix-matched, rushed and stalled pacing where the viewers are lulled into boredom only to be thrashed awake by a strange, gentle inflection of words following an extreme emotional outburst.
Sometimes, when we trust our instincts too much in writing scenes, what we’re left with at the end is not a reflection of reality, but the rushed, half-baked perceptions made between haste and disregard. We end up with characters whose motives make no sense, whose words don’t sound like their own, and whose actions frustrate and confuse readers.
When we have no compass to follow, we walk in fruitless circles, encapsulated within the darkness of the forest we attempt to escape.
That’s why, as artists, we must lean into structure, no matter how much it frustrates us. Only with a map can we make it out with our voice and our message intact.
Without structure our art ceases to be art and becomes only noise.
I won’t go into the beat structures, or the myriad of ways in which to dice up a scene or a story, or an act structure. Frankly, those are all personal decisions you must make for yourself. By repeating the cycle of crafting a story, you will make your own rhythm, your own system, that works best for you. In a later post I will deep dive on my way of crafting a story, but I wish to put my work out first before I start giving away my trade secrets…
This post is simply a call to learn how to reign in your muse – how to give her a target to aim for when she pulls back her bow-string and lets her arrow fly. To not fear structure and to see it as a framework from which to create your story.
Afterall, a painter cannot paint without a canvas, and beans cannot grow without a pole or trellis. Learning to plot is not a way to kill your creativity, but a way to hone your ideas into a cohesive story your readers will love.
By taking off the creative pressure to manifest entire scenes from nothing, you give yourself the space to creatively “freestyle” off of the scenes you’ve plotted. I am not advocating you to meticulously plot every scene (I do meticulously plot every scene, but they still change from time to time to adjust to the story overall) but by plotting out the general structure of your story and the most powerful scenes you give yourself a framework to be freely creative within.
And that’s when your muse will work her most effectively: when she has something to build off of.
Afterall, stories are powerful to humans because we see ourselves within them: we see our life’s journey through the hero’s journey, and see our times of peril and fortune as an overarching story.
When a reader connects with the story you’ve crafted with their own lived experience, that’s when you start entering best-seller territory.
Different Romance Subgenres have different expectations, and not abiding by reader expectations can spell DISASTER for a manuscript.
As a ghostwriter I feel it is my duty to understand reader expectations in and out, and my career relies on that knowledge. Often times my clients are new to the self-publishing realm and don’t really have a firm grasp on how it works as a whole (and they often are paying for courses to walk them through publishing books written by ghostwriters).
To learn all of these tropes has a steep learning curve, as there are integral story beats that follow each trope. For example, you wouldn’t want to read a romance book with a single-father if the child isn’t going to be a key part of bringing the couple together. Likewise, you wouldn’t want to read a romance with a forced-marriage trope if the audience hardly gets to see the awkward moments of flirtation and frustration that comes with being in an arranged marriage.
Working with multiple editors (each client comes with their own freelance editor in tow) has sharpened my knowledge of common romance tropes that are key to the modern romance writing game. However, each subgenre of romance comes with its own rules, bending and molding the old tired trope into something new and daring (or at least fun and exciting). As you can imagine, an arranged marriage trope is going to look a lot different in say 1800’s Regency England v. 2020’s NYC USA. However, there’s still going to be a good amount of overlap when it comes to the emotional expectations the readers have for the trope itself (e.g., family and friend drama surrounding new partner’s arrival as a marriage prospect, the difficulty getting used to being intimate for show ((especially if there’s an enemies to lovers trope included, which often goes hand in hand with arranged marriage)), etc., etc.
Here are five key ways I keep the expectations straight between subgenres that utilize the same tropes.
Know your tropes. Here’s the keys to the castle y’all, because everything in stories comes down to tropes. Story Tropes, by definition, are common or frequently used devices, themes, images, or plot points in a work of art or literature. Think amnesia, secret child, surprise pregnancy, orphan, “the chosen one” … these are all story tropes utilized in almost every genre ranging from westerns to horrors, from romances to mysteries.
Understanding how these tropes play out requires an understanding of how people function and react to situations. A surprise child reveal isn’t going to hit the reader emotionally if there wasn’t a good reason (i.e. danger) to keep the child a secret in the first place, they’re going to start pondering the ethics of keeping children away from their perfectly decent (yet still flawed as we all are) parent.
Know your subgenre (read ALL the books you can). If the story tropes are the keys to the castle, consider the subgenre the castle itself. Subgenres are sub-categories of a main genre, examples being: Regency Romance, Psychological Thriller, Police Procedural Mystery, Zombie Horror.
Understanding the nuances of the sub-genre is integral to writing a story that readers will love. Readers who love Werewolf Shifter Romances, for example, are going to be very annoyed if you don’t understand Alpha/Beta dynamics of packs, as well as heat cycles, transformation, and a whole slew of other details no where to be found in really any other sub-genre of Romance (besides twists and variations in other shifter works such as Dragons, Vampires, etc).
Know your audience. Here’s the third ingredient for success (but clearly, the most important by far) and that’s Audience Expectation. See, most readers of fiction lean towards a handful of specific genres and then a few specific subgenres in those genres; sure, they may go out and read something completely different every once in a while, but everyone has favorites, and voracious readers are no exception.
This means that the new readers to your story have most likely read 20+ other stories very similar to your own, some even featuring the exact same tropes you’ve chosen.
That’s kind of terrifying, isn’t it?
So, in turn, you have to make sure you’re READING AS MANY BOOKS IN YOUR GENRE/SUBGENRE AS POSSIBLE. You need to be aware of what your readers are reading and how those popular books are shaping the market.
The market always moves, and you better move with it, otherwise you’ll be left behind.
Read Reader Reviews As well as reading the most popular books you need to be reading up on the reader reviews of the books you read — or haven’t read, as I also suggest going through the complaints of some of the worst books in your genre to see what readers DON’T like. Reading up on reviews available by readers gives you insight into what the readers, your target audience, are looking for. I often scrap the Romance subs in Reddit looking for what readers are demanding when brainstorming for new stories.
Practice, Practice, PRACTICE!!! The final piece of advice is the same old thing you’ve always been told: if you want to be a great writer you have to WRITE. I advise writing literally as much as possible, some days that’s going to be zero, other days it might be 10,000 words, but getting words on the page, no matter how boring or useless, is always good practice, and practice, as they say, makes perfect.
Most people dream of starting their own businesses and while some are too apprehensive to ever start, others are too willing to jump in feet first without knowing what they’re getting into! Here are five harsh truths I learned in the past two years of being a beginner business owner.
1. This will not replace your full-time job… yet.
This one is for those of you who are still in the 9-5 grind. No, you can’t just immediately jump from a steady, stable income to opening your own business and expect to keep the same pay, it just doesn’t work that way. Instead, what you should be doing is executing a side business that will later become your full-time business. This means if you want to become an independent author, or a freelance ghostwriter or editor, you better be writing/editing/reading/studying in your off hours.
Yes, this is exhausting. I know first hand, as I had been plotting and writing the first book I wrote (and still plan to publish) while simultaneously working overtime at a call center. Honestly, at the time, I knew I wanted to self-publish (self-publishing authors on Youtube were just starting to become a thing, think 2015-2016ish…) but I didn’t know when that would happen or how, but I kept writing because I realized it was making me HAPPIER.
That’s my honest advice: if you’re working full-time because you HAVE to to survive, then just nurture the hobby that will later become the business. Now is not forever, and you have no idea how the work you did as a hobby now will pay you back in the future.
For example, the samples I pulled from that book I wrote as a hobby got me a significant amount of clients, including clients for genres that I wouldn’t have had any other work to apply with otherwise.
2. Baby’s-First-Business mistakes will happen!
Mistakes happen, there’s no way around it. My best advice is to try to mitigate them from COSTING you money. For example, I not only ghostwrite/edit full-time I also run an Etsy Store called Notes of Nature Co where I sell handmade candles (made by yours truly) as well as direct-to-print home-goods that I’ve designed/are in the creative commons.
When I made my first international sale to Ireland I was so excited! I couldn’t believe someone in Ireland was going to be wearing the hoodie with my company’s logo on it, it was so cool!
Then I looked at my business account and realized that the direct-to-print company pulled the money out to create the hoodie before the Etsy payment came through, and it overdrafted my business account costing me $35 in charges!!!!
I was so upset! How could a milestone like this bite me so hard?
Because, I made a baby’s-first-business mistake. I didn’t pay attention to how the direct-to-print company worked with Etsy, and I didn’t give myself the grace to have an extra $500+ rolling in that bank account at least at all times (like I do now).
Being a business owner means making mistakes. My advice is to try to mitigate how COSTLY these mistakes are.
Another Mistake: My LLC’s name.
My husband told me earlier: “You should just drop the Ghostwriting & Editing and just make it Ethereal Quill Co.”
Guess who didn’t listen.
Guess who spent $70 bucks on a DBA just to turn around and spend another $70 to file a proper name change.
There is a reason I have NO business debt for my LLC and I might not ever lol.
3. Everything costs more than you think.
Let’s say you’ve been writing or sewing or painting as a hobby for years, you’ve been doing the market research, you know the websites you’re going to use to work/ the avenues to sell your goods in person, and you’re ready to jump in. Woohoo!
You’ve gone on your state website and filed your business paperwork, but you find that you have to pay extra to be an LLC, something you’ve been advised to do (because it protects your personal assets from your business, essentially, if your LLC gets into financial trouble the creditors are not entitled to anything beyond the business: they cannot go after your home, your car, your personal savings, retirements, or investments. In discussions of lawsuits it’s generally accepted advice that LLC’s protect your personal assets from litigation as well, but there are some circumstances where this is not the case).
Now you see that filing an LLC is nearly twice the price as the Sole Proprietorship, though? What gives?
And when you go to open your business account you realize they want another $100 to establish the account “in good faith” what the fuck?!
And, under the advice of someone with your best interest at heart, they tell you to go to a formal tax professional to file your taxes, as the tax office will certify the authenticity and handle any audits you may receive from the IRS. When you get the bill for that it’s an eye watering $500?!
I am here to tell you the cold hard fact: everything costs more than you think. In budgeting it’s common to pad the budget, and when you’re a business owner there is no truer fact. As I stated above I over-drafted my business account and had to pay 35 bucks extra out of pocket instead of being excited about my first international sale because I didn’t give myself enough padding.
Financial padding helps. You can’t let yourself get caught up in the “oh a new book, oh a new desk, oh a new keyboard”, you need to keep yourself focused on your growth goals and your goal trajectory.
Otherwise, you’ve just given yourself a very expensive hobby.
4. RESEARCH IS REQUIRED BEFORE YOU START.
This is all caps FOR A REASON. You should NEVER be jumping into starting a business without doing the proper research of EVERYTHING that will be necessary including laws, documentation, and proper business practices in your field. You need to understand your state laws, the federal laws and all of the paperwork you’ll be required to file as a business.
This isn’t all the research you need to do though: you need to do market research to know the entire ins-and-outs of the industry you’re about to launch head first into. If you don’t have any business courses under your belt, you might want to consider taking a few to familiarize yourself with how businesses are structured and managed. You might want to take a few courses to get some certifications or credentials under your belt relative to your field (like I did by getting my certification in copyediting). If you’re gunning to be an author, you’ll most certainly want to look at workshops and classes held by authors both independent and traditional to understand the publishing industry as a whole.
All of the research you do pays you back 1000-fold. The more knowledge you have the less likely you are to be caught flat-footed, and that’s worth the missed sleep or groggy mornings.
5. On-going learning is mandatory.
You will never be ahead if you’re not researching, researching, RESEARCHING.
Here’s one last hard line tip for you: THE MARKET NEVER STOPS. You are either ahead of the curve or behind and following along. You need to be plugged into social media (even if you’re just an introverted lurker) because then you can see where the market is shifting and what’s becoming popular.
Jumping on a popular trend before the swell? That’s the ticket to success!
I’ve had some people tell me that I’m being taken advantage of as a writer by ghostwriting for cash, but I see it as honest work, almost like a paid internship.
I had this blog post drafted nearly two years ago, but at the time I knew I hadn’t worked long enough as a ghostwriter to be able to discuss it appropriately; I hadn’t paid my dues, in a sense.
Now that I’ve been doing ghostwriting for over two years, I feel I can give some insight into entering a freelance career as a former “nine-to-fiver”.
I lost my Administrative Assistant job at a small company that did union benefits back in March of 2020. I was not upset over this (in truth I was giddy) because I had already seen multiple integral employees of the small office find new jobs, and rumors had been circulating that the office wasn’t going to be open much longer. At the same time the earliest reports of COVID spreading through China had been all over the US news for the past three months; everyone was getting pretty nervous that it was going to jump the Pacific and come to America, and no joke, the morning I was let go was the morning I awoke to news that COVID had spread to the US and that people in hospitals had tested positive.
Before working at that little office I had never gone longer than a month without working, working at a student loan call center for nearly six years beforehand and doing consistent retail work before that.
Getting let go from that little office for really no reason outside of them finding someone cheaper to do my job allowed me to stay home and collect the unemployment I had been paying into for over ten years while the world seemed to fall apart.
I spent that year and a half on unemployment earning my certificate in Copy Editing from ACES and Poynter while also writing three more manuscripts; bringing my total of manuscripts up to five. These are the books I’ve been holding on to, waiting to polish and publish under my own pen names, one of them being Anastasia Frost.
It was when I was notified that unemployment was ending that I began to look into freelance editing and ghostwriting. The consistent payouts from my unemployment was more than I’d be able to make initially while just starting out, so, I held back until it ended to begin. I did research, though, I researched the best freelance websites, and began taking scenes from the manuscripts I had written to create samples to send to jobs.
Admittedly, breaking into my first client was the most difficult aspect; the ghostwriting field is competitive and the editing sphere even more so; we’re talking 20-50 applicants per job at times. One must hone their craft by reading writing books and learning how to create characters and stories so they don’t receive constant rejects, or worst, get a job over their head and make a fool of themselves. Reviews are king; and having good reviews is what brings in new clients.
If a freelance career is began with a one-star rating, one may as well give up entirely.
My first client was a sweet girl who had an entire story written but wasn’t comfortable writing the sex scene and needed the ending finished up. I wrote the scenes for her and she gave me my first rating: a perfect five out five with a glowing review.
That review has been responsible for every other contract I’ve sealed. That’s not to say I haven’t had a less than stellar review; I have (and I’ll explain that in another post), but I feel for certain that had it been subpar, I wouldn’t have had as much work as I have.
Consistency, is key, though, and so to maintain getting new work I need to maintain stellar reviews going forward.
Transitioning to freelance work has given me the freedom and liberty that I never had at any other job; no longer do I have a boss attempting to micromanage my every move.
Not everything is greener on the other side, however, as my fears of being fired for not doing my job have been replaced with fears that I’ll be seen as a failure and a loser if I don’t succeed as a freelancer.
After all, success as a freelancer is directly relative to the person themselves. There is no boss to blame, no co-workers. Your work speaks for you, and if it’s not good enough, you’re not good enough.
Don’t worry, you don’t have to roll and show your belly all the time. I’ll be documenting the ins and outs of all clients, including how to politely tell a client to fuck off; like I had to very early in my freelancing career.
I can’t stress enough how helpful this book is when creating character arcs, and it’s been fundamental as a plotting tool.
A book that categorizes every emotionally traumatic event someone could go through in life and characterizes the person’s reactions, fears, beliefs, relationship patterns, and personality traits (both good and bad); this is a MUST HAVE for any fiction writers who strive to write characters that feel like real people.
“Readers connect to characters with depth, ones who have experienced life’s ups and downs. To deliver key players that are both realistic and compelling, writers must know them intimately-not only who they are in the present story, but also what made them that way. Of all the formative experiences in a character’s past, none are more destructive than emotional wounds. The aftershocks of trauma can change who they are, alter what they believe, and sabotage their ability to achieve meaningful goals, all of which will affect the trajectory of your story.
Identifying the backstory wound is crucial to understanding how it will shape your character’s behavior, and The Emotional Wound Thesaurus can help. Inside, you’ll find:
A database of traumatic situations common to the human experience
An in-depth study on a wound’s impact, including the fears, lies, personality shifts, and dysfunctional behaviors that can arise from different painful events
An extensive analysis of character arc and how the wound and any resulting unmet needs fit into it
Techniques on how to show the past experience to readers in a way that is both engaging and revelatory while avoiding the pitfalls of info dumps and telling
A showcase of popular characters and how their traumatic experiences reshaped them, leading to very specific story goals
A Backstory Wound Profile tool that will enable you to document your characters’ negative past experiences and the aftereffects
Root your characters in reality by giving them an authentic wound that causes difficulties and prompts them to strive for inner growth to overcome it. With its easy-to-read format and over 100 entries packed with information, The Emotional Wound Thesaurus is a crash course in psychology for creating characters that feel incredibly real to readers.”
The Emotional Wound Thesaurus is available for purchase on Amazon.
It’s hard sitting here and finally writing this blog post. It’s a post that’s been on my mind for years, my courage to write it ebbing and flowing like a tide.
Well, today, the tide breaks, and I’m here facing an emotional post I’ve been putting off from writing for a long time.
The last four years have been an emotional journey of infertility for my husband and I, but probably not the story of infertility you’re expecting to hear. My husband and I do not have an issue conceiving children, but keeping them long enough to survive outside the womb. It is with bitter, salty tears that I tell you all we’ve lost not one, not two, but five pregnancies in a row over the past four years, and this has rocked us emotionally.
My previous surgery that I had back in 2022 was not the answer to what’s keeping us from having children, and, as much as I hate to say it out loud, pursuing specialists has also come up short on providing an answer overall. They have no answers to give on why we’ve lost five babies, and that ate me up for a long time, making me a hollow, jealous version of myself that I detested.
I’ve realized now that I’ve been in circles of grief for the past four years. After each bout of dashed excitement from losing another baby, I drove myself into a self-destructive grief cycle for the following six months, emerging only when I’ve gained enough hope to run headlong into trying again. This culminated in 2023, when we lost three babies back to back, and my husband and I decided to run away on an expensive New England road trip that we’re still paying off now. That trip brought us back together, but we’re still reeling from the psychological blow this entire experience has been. We’re still wondering if it’s worth trying again, and we’re both petrified that it’s going to just blow up in our faces. We’re both people who never yearned for careers, but for kids, and so this entire experience has had us both questioning what we’re supposed to do with our lives, which is kind of silly because raising kids still means you need to be your own autonomous person, but raising kids has always been something that seemed like a higher calling outside of pursuing a career.
Ultimately, we’ve decided that if we can’t have natural children we’ll adopt, and adopting has always been something I’ve wanted to pursue. It’s just seeing everyone my age so easily have children, I’m literally surrounded by many female friends who are stepping into motherhood, something that I seem to be repeatedly rejected from. Finding life outside of a goal I’ve had as long as I can remember has been difficult, but I knew I didn’t want to write this blog post until I had been on the other side, until I had realized that I needed to decenter having kids from my life; that only by doing that was I able to move on from the trauma my infertility journey had caused me . . .
To anyone on a similar journey in their own lives, I know full well that nothing I say could bring you any real peace or comfort. Still, the only thing that gave me solace was that I am not the only woman suffering from this situation; and neither are you. You are not alone, us women affected by multiple miscarriage are with you in spirit and grief.
This blog post isn’t just a complete trauma dump, in some ways it’s an announcement of my return. Fighting through this pain the last four years has been the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced in my life, but it’s also shown my how strong I truly am.
In six months I will be debuting my first novel as a Closed Door Romance author, and I hope that you will continue to support and watch as I pursue the passions that are within my control. My goal is to start publishing blog posts multiple times a week as I did in the past, and I encourage you to visit my website to get to know me better as an author and writer.
Thank you all for your support, logging in today to see how many of you liked my posts from years ago gave me hope that this was not all-for-naught.
Alexandra Sokoloff’s Stealing Hollywood: Screenwriting Tricks for Authors is easily one of the best plotting books I have ever purchased. It is a vital tool I use for every plot I’ve written since purchasing the book.
Now, Alexandra Sokoloff is notoriously protective of the contents of this book, and because of that I will be disclosing no direct information including quotes, techniques, or really anything. I’m sorry for that, but ask Sarra Cannon of HeartBreathings on YouTube about it…
What I can say about it is that it’s the THICKEST, LARGEST plotting book I own, and it is chock FULL of crucial information, such as popular scene additions and where they go in the first, second, or third act.
She also includes movie/story break downs, examples, and chapters on dialogue, stakes, love stories, fairy tales, villains, creating suspense, plot twists, and so much more!
I heavily suggest this book to any writer. Even for pantsers the information is vital, especially when you are stuck in a writer’s block and don’t know where to head.
“In the gardens,” Calypso said. Zeus nodded to her, and she scampered off, escaping the ire or desire of the King of Olympus.
“You heard her, brother,” Zeus said, his voice dark. Without looking, his shadow peeled away from itself, and a secondary shadow walked away, silhouetted against the wall. It crept up to an open window, and slunk away outside.
“What is that horrible stench?” Demeter asked, annoyance across her face. Zeus approached her, attempting to calm the nervous mother.
Persephone sat outside in the gardens, alone, still cultivating multiple bushes. A shadow came over her, tall and dark, and she turned towards it, and had to contain her excitement. Hades stood before her, his physical form materializing out of the shadow that he had arrived in. His tall, slender frame came into reality, his pale, gray skin and gaunt face looked down at his love with adoration and affection. To Persephone, Hades smelled like autumn leaves and his shadow was a deep shade of black she was never able to get her flowers to achieve.
To Hades, Persephone was like a cherry blossom tree in bloom: timelessly young, elegant, and floral. Hades took Persephone into his arms, holding her against him. “I’ve come to claim you as my bride. I’ve come to bring you to the Underworld.”
Persephone looked at him, beaming with excitement. “I want to be there with you, I want to go there now.”
Hades approached the flowers and bushes that Persephone had grown, and from it he crafted a crown of Pomegranates, Roses, and Nightshade flowers, a floral crown symbolic of their love and matrimonial bond. Hades loved Persephone more than anything he had ever known, her beauty was beyond any other Goddess in existence now, or ever to exist, and he was willing to do anything to have her as his Queen. Gently, he placed the crown upon Persephone’s head.
Zeus edged towards Demeter.
“What do you want?!” She said, her voice harsh. She didn’t trust the God of Olympus, the man who would go to great lengths to disrespect his wife and sleep with anything that moved.
“What is so bad about letting your daughter make her own choice?” He asked, his voice soft.
Demeter looked at him with daggers in her eyes, she bit her lower lip in anger. “Let my daughter, the Goddess of Spring, lock herself in the Underworld to be the Queen of the Dead?! What kind of mother would I be if I allowed her to do that?!”
At this point, all of the Gods were looking at the pair, their eyes boring holes into Demeter. Demeter’s eyes flicked around the room, she saw that Persephone was nowhere to be found.
“You all smelled him, the stench of death he brings with him!” She cried, whipping around the room, looking for her daughter. “You all know he came tonight, snuck in the manor behind my back, and yet you all laugh in my face and console me with your feigned kindness. Where is he?! Where is my daughter?!”
It was at that moment that the room fell into hushed whispers, everyone’s eyes darting back and forth.
Within a few more moments, the back doors to the garden swung open. In came Persephone and Hades, wrapped in each other’s arms, a crown upon Persephone’s head.
“I’ve chosen my suitor, mother,” she said, happiness written across her entire being. “I wish to marry Hades!”
Drafting can seem like such an overwhelming, odious task. With the right tools, drafting a book’s outline can easily be completed in a single day with the help of multiple sources.This is the beginning of a mini-series on the best books for helping writers become authors.
James Scott Bell’s Super Structure is easily the writing book I use the most when plotting. Period. End of blog post. See you all tomorrow.
In all seriousness, I recommend this book to anyone who plots their own stories. The story beats listed are crucial, especially the MIRROR MOMENT.
The Mirror Moment specifically is a moment (roughly around the middle of a book) where the character realizes they’re going to die (either physically, emotionally, or psychologically) unless they change their outlook by confronting their trauma. It is CRUCIAL to every story, it is the pivotal moment in the character arc, and if your story is missing the mirror moment, your readers won’t care about your main character.
In fact, James Scott Bell has another writing book all about the Mirror Moment called Write Your Novel from the Middle. It is a good reinforcement of the purpose the MM and its necessity to the character arc, but Super Structure is more important.
Bell lists his story beats as “Fourteen Signposts”. Some experienced plotters may go “Hey! This sounds a lot like Save the Cat!” While there are similarities to Save The Cat, another plotting book I own, I find Bell’s Super Structure more concise and straightforward and subsequently, easier to reference when plotting.
The Fourteen Signposts are:
The Disturbance (Act 1 Opener) The Care Package The Argument Against Transformation Trouble Brewing Doorway of No Return #1 (Act 2 Opener) Kick In The Shins Mirror Moment Pet the Dog (Literally, Save the Cat) Doorway of No Return #2 (Act 3 Opener) Mounting Forces Lights Out Q Factor Final Battle Transformation The Final Word (Epilogue/Denouement)
The Q Factor is another IMPORTANT piece of storytelling that is often overlooked in other plotting books but is SURPRISINGLY prevalent in story!
To find out how these beats translate to a story, I suggest you get yourself a copy of Super Structure on Amazon today!
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