What are the different ways you can distribute and monetise your ebooks and audiobooks through Kobo Writing Life? How can you market them more effectively and reach more readers? With Tara Cremin.

In the intro, the potential impact of tariffs and what to do about it [Self Publishing Advice]; Pep talk for authors during chaotic times [Publishing Confidential];
8 ways to get more value from your backlist [BookBub]; Death Valley Kickstarter — and writing thrillers webinar.

Write and format stunning books with Atticus. Create professional print books and eBooks easily with the all-in-one book writing software. Try it out at Atticus.io

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

Tara Cremin is the Director of Kobo Writing Life, Kobo’s independent publishing platform.

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

• Changes in the indie book industry over the past decade
• How Kobo Plus compares to other subscription models
• Catering to different audiences by offering different book versions
• Tips for maximizing income from ebooks and audiobooks on Kobo
• Applying for promotions to expand your potential audience
• The payment model for Kobo Plus and library books
• Kobo’s stance on AI-assisted books

You can find Tara and the Kobo Writing Life team at Kobo.com/writinglife or email them at writinglife@kobo.com.

Transcript of Interview with Tara Cremin

Joanna: Tara Cremin is the director of Kobo Writing Life, Kobo’s independent publishing platform. Welcome back to the show, Tara.

Tara: Thanks, Jo. Thanks for having me.

Joanna: Oh, it is great to have you back on the show. It’s actually been four years, which is crazy.

Tara: I can’t believe it.

Joanna: I know. So I thought we’d go back to the beginning. Tell us a bit more about you.

When did you get into the book business, and what are some of the changes you’ve seen for authors since then?

Tara: Sure. So I’ve been working for Kobo since 2012, which feels like a lifetime. When I started, the company had created some great, but kind of relatively simple, eReaders. They were just starting to dip their toe into really expanding what physical devices could do.

Then you fast forward to 2025, and we’re the second largest manufacturer of eReaders, after our friends in Seattle.

So part of the work that I do on Kobo Writing Life, I’ve been working on it basically since day one.

Kobo Writing Life was created as a platform for authors who wanted to publish directly to Kobo readers.

So I’ve been kind of working on that. The biggest change on the author side that I can really think of is just the expansion of the tools. I think it’s easy to not always think back to 2012 because things move so quickly. I’ll be like, “Oh, that was ages ago,” but it’ll be like four years ago.

When you’re actually thinking about 2012, authors were uploading a Word doc and publishing their ebook, and then that was it. There wasn’t a lot of different things available or more opportunities.

Now, authors can really easily create accessible and like really beautifully designed ePubs with tools like Vellum and Atticus. They can publish audiobooks to Kobo, they can reach libraries, join subscription programs, and take advantage of all the promotional tools that are available.

So I think the biggest change is just that there’s more opportunities now for authors than when I started working in the book business.

Joanna: Oh, and—

What about the growth of Kobo for indies?

I mean, we’ve heard before some of the stats around the number of self-published books on the Kobo platform. That’s grown as well, hasn’t it?

Tara: It has. I have some stats for you. When we look at self-publishing on Kobo, it makes up about 25% of the units for single copy sales. Then if we think about the subscription reading, it makes up about 60% of English language subscription reading is all self-published content. It’s huge.

Joanna: Wow, that’s incredible. So indie authors are important to Kobo, I guess we could say.

Tara: Yes, and it started with somebody wanting to email a Word doc and get it published, which is why Kobo Writing Life was created as a platform. We’ve really been able to expand it and add additional features.

Kobo has always taken a global stance of the digital book market, and I think we realized pretty early that the indie authors were really integral to that.

Something that I don’t think we talk about a lot because I’m primarily focused on the English language side, but we also have a portal that’s just for users in Japan that’s very self-contained in Japanese.

Last year, we actually localized in traditional and simplified Chinese for our friends in Taiwan and Hong Kong. So the Kobo Writing Life platform is now available in eight languages. So we know how integral the independent authors are to the global book business.

Joanna: Kobo originally was Canadian, right? Then it was bought by a Japanese company.

Tara: Yes, so we’re still headquartered in Toronto. We have a global presence, where we have offices in Taiwan, in Tokyo, Darmstadt and Dublin, and with a generous sprinkling of people throughout Europe.

We were acquired by Rakuten, maybe prior to me joining, 2010, 2011, and we’ve been sort of their digital book area of that ever since then. So having this enormous company backing has been really, really helpful, but we do maintain quite a Canadian-centric grassroots focus with the HQ being here in Toronto.

Joanna: Absolutely. So one of the changes you mentioned has been the subscription model. As you mentioned, our friends in Seattle have one that’s quite famous that is an exclusive program. Kobo Plus is not exclusive, so people can be in that as well as selling their ebooks elsewhere, which I love.

How does Kobo Plus subscription compare to some of the other subscription models for ebooks and audiobooks?

Like, what is it for readers and listeners?

Tara: Sure, I think it’s maybe important to see why people have gone down the subscription route, for people that are potentially a little bit hesitant of that.

So when we’re thinking about the book business as a whole, or Kobo’s history, I think in about 2015 we could see that there was a whole generation of consumers that were coming that were consuming most of their media by not purchasing it once at a time, and they were signing up for subscriptions.

Whether this be music or movies or TV shows, I think we knew that books and audiobooks were going to go this way.

As a retailer that was really doing a great job at selling books one at a time, we wanted to reach this subscription consumer without disrupting the business we had built and doing it in a way that benefited us, the publishers, the authors, but also the readers who were looking for this.

So we tested this in a contained market. So it was launched back in 2017 in the Netherlands. This is because we had a really great market share there. A strong, willing partner, Bol, who wanted to test this out.

One of the also key factors was that there’s some of the biggest piracy rates in Europe were found in the Netherlands. So we wanted to see if we could convert those users who were already sometimes using Kobo devices. They’re reading, they’re just not paying for the reading.

So we wanted to see if we could make this very easy, self-contained platform, could we convert them to paying users? Then what we found from that is that it really didn’t cannibalize the a la carte sales.

We had new customers signing up, and we could kind of see where they were coming from. Some of them were coming over from Kindle Unlimited, some of them coming from piracy. Some of them had been maybe just library users that had been moved into this kind of easier one click model.

Some of them had never read an ebook before, but used it as a way to step their toe into the digital reading. What we found is that — 

Publishers and authors, they all earned more as a result of the new readers [on subscription].

So what we looked at with these findings was—gosh, it’ll be almost 10 years now, which is wild. Time doesn’t exist anymore, Joanna—but with the findings from the Netherlands, we’ve been able to expand Kobo Plus. As of this recording, we are currently in 23 countries, which is including all of our core markets.

There’ll be more to come, probably shortly after this comes out, actually, but I can’t quite say where. So 23 countries right now.

Like you’ve mentioned, we’re not the only subscription model out there, but what makes us a little bit different is the focus on the importance of the authors and wanting to give them flexibility, while also trying to reach this subscription reader. So it was really important to us that we didn’t lock any authors into exclusivity.

Our ethos around KWL is really trying to encourage authors to publish widely on as many platforms as they can, to reach as many readers as they can.

We just want to make sure that the Kobo experience of you publishing widely is really easy and that you’re not spending too much time on it because you’re balancing all of these other platforms.

So we built this out so authors can pick and choose the country. They can choose all of them if they want, which is what I would always recommend.

If you’re a wide author that’s publishing globally, I don’t know why you wouldn’t put your books in, but perhaps you didn’t want to hit up your main markets, like the US or Canada. You do have the option of like excluding those, or you can select all of them.

What’s a cool way about selecting all of them is that it actually includes future territories. So as we’ve been rapidly expanding Kobo Plus, you don’t have to do anything. Your books are already there when we add to new places. So that’s been pretty cool.

We’re not locking authors into any timed period.

You can put your books in, and you can take them out if you’re not happy with it. I always encourage people to leave them in, to really try to reach that readership.

Again, we wanted to give authors as much control as possible, and really just get authors to try it out. Like try out an older series, maybe try it out in the Netherlands, where you haven’t really thought about selling books before, and eventually get really comfortable adding their catalog to Kobo plus.

So for us, it was really all about building author trust over time when it comes to subscriptions. I feel people are more comfortable with it now than before, and I think it’s easy to get people comfortable when the revenue is increasing, I think.

Joanna: So all my books that are on Kobo are in Kobo Plus. I also agree, I think there’s a group of readers for whom—readers and listeners, we should say—because this is audiobooks as well, right?

Tara: Yes, it is. Depending on the territory, but primarily they all have ebooks and audiobooks. So from a customer perspective, you can either pay for all you can read for a month, all you can listen for a month, or all you can read and listen. So those are the options.

Joanna: Exactly. So this is the thing, I think as authors, we have to think about different groups of readers. So even as we record this, I’ve got a Kickstarter happening. There is an ebook, there is an audiobook, which will eventually be on Kobo, but for now, they’re just on Kickstarter.

Then there’s a gorgeous hardback with foil and ribbon and all of that kind of thing, which Kobo doesn’t sell beautiful hardbacks, right? I mean, and neither does Amazon, neither does Apple.

[The special hardback vs subscription.] They’re different audiences.

It’s a completely different audience, someone who’s going to buy that hardback to someone who’s going to borrow the audiobook in the Netherlands.

Tara: Yes. I mean, I love seeing what authors are doing with these. That must be so satisfying for you to get that copy of this beautiful book.

So, yes, we really wanted to just focus on the digital experience, especially when it comes to our devices as well. We make some of the best e-reading devices—I mean, I would say they are the best—but like, we’re making the best eReaders that are available.

We launched our first color eReaders last year, and the reception to them was just tremendous. So our eReaders have integration with ebooks and audiobooks. You can connect via Bluetooth to speakers or headphones.

We also have Overdrive capabilities, like Overdrive is built into the e reader, so you can access the library from within Kobo.

One of the things that we’ve been doing, l think we’ve just launched it maybe last year. You can tell I don’t work on the device side, I’m not quite as sharp with my dates.

It’s always been very important for us to have it be this open platform. So having users be able to just use the eReader to read books, and if we can make it easy for them to purchase books with subscriptions and convert them to paying users, that’s awesome, but we do have integration with Dropbox.

With our newer eReaders, you can actually write notes with the Kobo Stylist, and you can mark up the files themselves, and there’s integration within that.

We’ve recently added Google Drive integration, which is super easy. I just used it the other day when I was giving a presentation, and I had my notes that I was able to convert over and read from my Kobo, which was really helpful.

I was actually able to mark up and make changes as I’m going along on the Kobo eReader itself, which is pretty cool.

Joanna: Of course, if people buy my ebook from the Kickstarter, they can read that on Kobo because it doesn’t have to be like DRMed into—that’s too technical. It doesn’t have to be a specifically Kobo ebook is what you’re saying.

Tara: No, no, no. We always just use the ePub standard. Actually, I shouldn’t be saying that because you can also add PDFs and things like that. So, no, it’s not a locked system.

Joanna: I think that’s really good too. So let’s get into some of the other things. I mean, like we mentioned, the gorgeous hardbacks that are the current trend in the indie community. I mean, they really are kind of all people are talking about.

You and I were talking about doing this episode because at the end of the day — 

The bread and butter income for most indie authors is still digital.

It’s like, we move on to the sexiest thing. In 2012 ebooks were pretty sexy, right? I mean, they were like, “Oh, we can do this, and we can do this.”

Then it was audiobooks and print-on-demand and all of that, and now it’s gorgeous hardbacks. So let’s just go back in to the sort of bread and butter.

What are your tips for maximizing income from ebooks and audiobooks on Kobo?

I know that’s a massive question, but let’s pick a few things.

Tara: I think it’s still really important to make beautiful books, even if it’s digital. I mean because authors are primarily digital first. A lot of publishers are not. They’re still really focused on the print.

So I think it’s really important to think about making a really great digital file, which, like I mentioned, it’s just easier than ever now. You actually don’t even have to think about it that much, the tools just do it for you.

I think it’s important to have a file that can be read easily because the last thing we want to do is have some sort of technical glitch that is interrupting somebody’s hard won reading time.

We really just want the person to be always trying to get the next book, so making sure the file itself is beautiful and working perfectly, I think is really important.

I think it’s important to consider making accessible files so that everyone can read your book. Digital reading opens up a world to people that might have limitations around physical book reading.

There are a number of people that can only read digitally, and it just allows for a more inclusive reading experience. So something to be mindful of as well.

Joanna: Just on that—

Is there something special we need to do for accessibility for an ebook?

Tara: So I have a book recommendation for everyone called Content For Everyone, by Jeff Adams and Michele Lucchini. We had them on the Kobo Writing Life Podcast, and it was just a great conversation.

I would say to check out their book because it has a lot of practical advice for authors on making accessible content. So not even just the ebooks themselves, but also author websites and newsletters. It’s really full of actionable tips. They are far more versed in this than I would be to try and reiterate some of their stuff.

Joanna: Jeff’s been on this show, and we talked about it then. I got the impression that if you use, let’s say, Vellum or Atticus for your ebook publishing, that does cover the content, at least, of an ebook.

Tara: Yes, yes, perfect.

Joanna: Okay, great. So just to be clear, there wasn’t anything extra we were missing.

Tara: No, no. Just to make sure that that is kind of being done, and you’re not creating files that are inaccessible.

Joanna: Which, to me, it means that Kobo is still getting a ton of badly formatted files, which I thought we were way past that.

Tara: It’s not that it’s badly formatted, I think you have to consider the millions of books that exist, and especially the older catalog. So newer books might be accessible, but the older books that you’ve created back in 2012 might not be.

So a lot of the work we’re doing is just an education around making sure that your book files are of the best content or the best quality that they can be, like before vellum existed.

Joanna: Oh, yes. I used to use Scrivener back in the day. I know some people still do, but Scrivener, I used to get errors all the time. I love Scrivener for writing, but for listeners, I would say Vellum or Atticus is the best in class these days. Okay, back on to maximizing income.

Tara: So I would say that — 

For Kobo, box sets are super popular.

So when you’re thinking about selling books one at a time, and authors primarily are writing in series, or that’s sort of the trend that we see through Kobo Writing Life, you definitely want to bundle your books.

Something to remember is that on Kobo, we don’t have a higher price cap. So you can go over $9.99, and still earn 70% on each sale.

So with the box sets, again, you want to make sure that you have an easy to navigate table of contents because this is a larger file that readers are browsing through. So you want to make sure that they’re able to do that with ease.

Which I’m sure, again, these tools can kind of easily create this for you, but just something to be mindful of when you’re bundling the books together.

Joanna: Yes. I think bringing up box sets is really good because the KWL promotion tab is great. I go in every three weeks, and I apply for as much as I can get. Although, just so everyone knows, I don’t get every promotion. Like nobody gets every promotion, right? You just have to apply for a ton of them.

There are always box set promotions going on.

Tara: Yes, we rotate around pretty regularly with them because our readers are just so interested in having box sets. It’s funny because I think we think about box sets as like a discounted opportunity to have these books, but that’s not really how readers are taking them.

They’re taking them as like this is a convenient way to have this one series in this one book. So I’d always recommend pricing them for their value and just making sure that they’re available for the reader who doesn’t want to like click on books one by one, and just have this bigger box set.

Something to keep in mind with the covers is that we do accept the 3D box sets with the plain white backgrounds, but if you’re thinking about promotions or applying to promotions, we might be a little bit less inclined to accept those, just because it makes your cover really small and it makes it harder to read.

You already have limited space on a website in terms of a cover, so I really like to —

Think of box set covers as they’re almost as an ad for your series.

So you can kind of use it as an opportunity to encapsulate the theme of your series within your box set cover.

Joanna: Then just on that, just on Kobo Plus, we didn’t say—So a lot of authors are used to the ‘pages read’ idea. How is that done on Kobo Plus for reading and listening?

Tara: The biggest difference, I guess, between Kobo Plus and some of the other platforms is that we base our payment on—well, it’s a very similar revenue share model—but it’s based on the minutes that your book has been read versus the page reads.

This allows us to treat ebooks and audiobooks the same, and it kind of reduces a little bit of the gamification that we’ve seen on some other platforms. So we’re really taking into account the time that somebody is spending on your book.

Joanna: Yes, because some people were able to game other systems by sort of getting bots or paying people to click through pages and stuff like that. Oh, but it’s funny, isn’t it? I mean, whenever humans can find a way to game a system, they will.

Tara: We’re very clever people.

Joanna: We are. We are very clever people. Okay, so—

What about some other ways of maximizing income?

Tara: So I would say with audiobooks that we’re talking about, so you can publish audiobooks to Kobo as well, through Kobo Writing Life.

You may not see the tab right away, and actually the same with the promotions tab, but you just have to send the team an email to enable this for you.

If you email writinglife@kobo.com you can ask for audiobooks and for promotions.

Just as we were talking about the box set covers there, I think something to keep in mind with audiobooks, we will crop the cover for you. If you want to make sure that you’re making the best cover, audiobooks are square and not rectangular, so sometimes we do see kind of like a really squished cover.

That would just be something to be a bit mindful of when you’re publishing audiobooks, to just make sure that you’re selling the book because we are unfortunately always judging books by their covers.

Joanna: Yes, absolutely. I guess—

One of the things I’ve noticed with Kobo is that the vast majority of my Kobo income is fiction rather than nonfiction. Is there a split like that?

Tara: There probably is, but I feel like the nonfiction market for us is definitely growing, especially with our new devices. We’ve done a lot of work to try to cater to the nonfiction reader, and what we call like an immersive reading experience.

You can see this with the writing within the book itself. There’s easy ways to flip back and forth between the pages. We basically have the digital version of like a thumb in the side of the pages, so you don’t lose your spot, but you can actually flip through the book and then flip back again.

So it’s definitely growing, but I think what we see, especially on Kobo Writing Life, it would be fiction that would be primarily what people are reading right now.

Joanna: Well, I’ll put another sort of ask in for the promotional tab, which is mainly fiction focused, I find. I do always look for nonfiction promotions there. To be clear, again, for people listening, I do think to sell books on Kobo, it is good to be part of the promotional opportunities. You can really get in front of new readers that way.

So that would be one of the things I would like to see, is more nonfiction and memoir promotional opportunities.

Tara: For sure. I will take this to the team.

Joanna: Yes. Take the feedback!

Let’s talk about libraries because some authors are worried about libraries. I mean, obviously authors want libraries to have their ebooks and audiobooks, but they’re also worried about the money.

If an author goes with the library and Overdrive, how do they get paid for that?

Tara: So it’s really easy to opt your books in. It’s part of the publication process, so it’s in the rights and distribution section. So you just have to set a price in USD, and that’ll be your library price for the book. The general rule of thumb is roughly around the same as a mass market paperback.

You just want to make sure that you’re not putting the same price as your just straight up digital book because of the loaning factor when it comes to the library books.

Sometimes we have authors that want to appeal to libraries by putting it in at a lower price, and I always kind of remind them that the librarians have two ways of purchasing the books through Kobo Writing Life.

So they can publish on a one copy, one user. This is kind of like when you think of a traditional book, that we have this one book and that can be loaned out multiple times. So that’s why you want to increase the price because you want to cover the loans that are happening with that.

They also have the opportunity to buy your book on a cost per checkout option, and that’s for a one-time loan for 10% of the price. So if your library book is $19.99, they could also just buy your book for a one-time loan for $1.99. So that can really appeal to them.

We have a lot of the library sales that are demand driven, so it’s people actually going in and asking for your book. So it’s really great to be able to offer to a librarian, like actually, you can buy it just this one time, and maybe you’ll buy it a few times for the lower price.

Then if it’s really popular, then you’ll buy it for the higher price again. So we see that happening quite a lot. Authors that distribute to Overdrive through Kobo, they earn 50% of any sale that happens.

Joanna: Yes. So just to put people’s mind at ease —

You can support libraries and get paid.

So this is one of the ways you can say to people, you can listen or read my books for free. Just ask the librarian to stock them, or just go to your library app. I think that’s a good one.

I wanted to come on to the authors who do really well on KWL.

What are the commonalities that you see amongst top selling authors? What do you see working that we can model?

Tara: Well, like you’ve mentioned, the promotions tool that we have. I was trying to think about instances of authors that have moved widely in the past couple of years and are finding success on Kobo, and they’re honestly the ones that have leveraged their promotions.

It can take a little while to build a Kobo audience, and I just always recommend applying to the promotions that are relevant to your books and applying regularly.

I like to think about it as, like, the worst case scenario is that you’re putting your books in front of the right eyes. It can just be quite competitive because there’s a lot of people applying, but it’s our merchandising team that are going through them.

So I definitely would say the ones that are building the audience and finding success on Kobo are really leveraging the promotions with us. Then also, that’s audio and library promotions that we have too.

I think if you’re publishing audiobooks, and I know this can be really tricky to balance, but if you can make sure that you’re publishing your ebook and your audiobook on the same day and do those same releases, I think that’s really important to building sales.

We found authors that have kind of reported that it’s a bigger impact for their audio when they do that versus when they release it at a later date or anything. So you can try and line them up as the one book release.

Joanna: Well, then that brings me on to something, having obviously done audiobooks for many years. Sometimes I narrate them myself, sometimes I have paid people, but recently, and in fact, my Death Valley audiobook—I haven’t told you this—but it is narrated by my voice clone, my AI voice clone.

Today, as we record this, I put a couple of chapters up on The Creative Penn Podcast, so people can have a listen. I’ve already had comments that say, “I would not have known this was an AI. It sounds exactly like you.”

This will be, I think, the first time in however long I’ve been doing this now, 2007, I’ve been able to publish ebook and audiobook on the same day.

Tara: Oh, wow.

Joanna: Because, as you said, it is incredibly hard to do that because most of us, in the past, we’ve maybe sold the ebook first, made some money, then eventually been able to pay for the audiobook.

Before Kobo, when you could put it up there, you put them on another platform, they never went live on the same day. There was a long time we couldn’t do preorders.

So, I guess we’re coming onto the AI discussion because AI-narrated audiobooks, certainly for me, ElevenLabs, the difference in the amount of work and pain for me as an audiobook narrator is incredible. So I don’t know if I’m ever going to human-narrate again. I mean, it literally is fantastic. So let’s come on to AI.

What is Kobo’s stance on AI-assisted ebooks, AI-narrated audiobooks, AI-created covers?

I know this is a tough question, but we have to cover it.

Tara: AI is definitely the biggest thing that is disrupting the book industry at the moment. When it comes to us at Kobo, we kind of go back to the core principles of what makes a reader’s life worse, and can we avoid it? And what makes a reader’s life better, and can we take advantage of it?

So AI, we know, will open the floodgates to lots of books being published that are like purely machine generated, which really impacts organic discovery, especially for indies. Part of the upside of this is that it becomes a curation problem, and that’s something that we’re here for. We’re here to solve that problem.

So with Kobo Writing Life specifically, we accept AI audiobooks, and we just ask that they’re clearly labeled that it’s machine read. It’s really just a customer expectation or just have something that’s mentioning that it’s a machine read audiobook.

We do discourage the publication of ebooks that are solely generated by AI, and this is just trying to root out the bad actors. We’re not trying to root out any authors who are serious about making a career with their works, but we’re just trying to discourage the people that are bad actors within this space.

So when we think about it from an indie author perspective, I think it’s good practice to include disclosure, which I think is something that you do, Joanna. I think of you as like a leader in the best practices in this space.

Joanna: I do try. Just on the audiobook, so I have a button, like a yellow button, that says “digitally narrated.” It’s so funny because I see now in the traditional publishing industry they’re saying, “Oh, we need labeling,” and I’m like, I’ve been labeling my books for years.

I mean, come on. Like before it was required, I ticked all the boxes and talked about it. Also, I don’t have an issue with that. I think honesty is really important. Also, I feel like all these things make my work better. I’m not doing it to try to scam anyone or be worse. I’m trying to be better.

I do think, though, we are in a transition period. I think this will be so pervasive within a year or two that it won’t make that much difference. For now, I guess, as you say, it’s marking this. So I will be filling in whatever I need to fill in.

Tara: Yes, I think it’s good practice. I mean, it is a personal decision, and I think you just have to think about the reader. You just don’t want to disappoint the person that is buying your book. Like, that’s what it ultimately comes down to for us.

Then we also know that it’s okay to use AI as a tool, especially with indie authors who have to balance writing with the entire business of also being your own publisher.

So whether you’re using it as a tool to create you a calendar or spreadsheet that makes sure that you’re hitting all your preorder dates. There’s things that can make your life easier because you have to wear so many hats. So we understand that as well.

So when I think about AI, like from a book selling perspective, I think the interesting opportunity comes in how we can leverage AI in some of our recommendations, like summarizations and curation.

So I can’t really go into too much detail on what we’re working on yet, but we’re really excited about better recommendations and curation that really benefit us all.

We just want to keep people’s attention on long form reading by putting really good stuff in front of them, and we can do this without using books as training data inside an LLM. So, yes, we’re excited about this.

Any Kobo Writing Life authors that are listening, you can expect some changes for to the Kobo Writing Life terms to come. I hope that things aren’t seen as anything that’s too scary. We’re really trying to just support some new initiatives and be really, really clear about what we’re asking for.

We’re not interested in making new content. We don’t want to make things from books that authors entrust us with. What we do want to do is make reading better and keep people reading more and for longer.

We’re trying to earn a space in reading amongst everything else that’s going on in the digital world, and we really believe that we can do this.

Joanna: Yes, I like that. It’s interesting, though, because you mentioned there about—and this is obviously important—that you’re not going to just upload everyone’s books to some big LLM and do stuff with it. You’re not going to do that.

It’s funny because for many, many years, I’ve said, ‘why is the book itself not the metadata?’

So we’ve had to come up with categories, keywords. We’ve had to have genre-specific covers.

The thing is, if I have a book, say Death Valley—it’s like 70,000 words, it’s a full length thriller—and I have to write a sales description, which is—well, in fact, Claude writes my sales descriptions now—but it’s not long enough.

What you want with some kind of AI curation recommendation engine is the emotional promise of this, the characters in this, the feeling you get by reading this, matches these books over here, which just will not be surfaced in a normal book recommendation engine. In fact, for the last year or so—

I’ve been using ChatGPT as my main book recommendation engine because it can do this much more nuanced search.

I found really some quite old books as well have come up. So is that something that—I know you’re not going to read everything in—but what do you think about that?

Tara: I think you’re spot on in the kind of way that the book recommendations can be going and can be leveraged. We just want to make more thoughtful recommendations.

It’s interesting that you’re saying that it’s older books too, because that’s something that we see with the subscription with Kobo Plus when I look at some of the top read books. They’re often coming from like 2017, 2018.

So there’s ways to resurface things that exist that people want to read. We can do this in a thoughtful way and an easier way than us having to rely on metadata that’s been provided. If I want to be able to find a list of like Canadian authors, it’s not as easy as potentially it can be. There’s instances like that.

It’s all about, again, trying to find the right book for the right reader and just keeping them reading. That’s what we’re focused on.

Joanna: At the end of the day, I mean, we’re book people, and it kind of drives me up the wall when authors get annoyed with other authors. I’m like, look, let’s get upset about how much time people spend gaming or how much time people to spend on TV.

We just want everyone to read. Whatever they read is good.

We just want people to read books. I know, obviously, that’s what Kobo wants as well.

Tara: I think it was like on Threads or a meme or something that I read recently, where it was like, reading is almost radical now.

In a time where we just want faster content and we’re consuming things faster, it’s a bit radical to be like, actually, I’m going to sit down for two hours and just be immersed in this world and really think about myself and expand my thoughts on other things because I’m not going to be distracted by four things at once.

It must have been some meme that, ironically, grabbed my attention for this radical thought process.

Joanna: That’s ironic.

Tara: I know, but I was just like, that’s right. It’s something that we don’t do. I mean, it’s, I guess, comparable to going to the movies and like actually sitting there and not being distracted. It’s the same sort of thing where it’s radical to take that time for yourself, and we want people to be able to do that.

Joanna: We’re almost out of time, but I just wanted us to mention the Kobo Writing Life Podcast. Since this is a podcast, people might enjoy the KWL Show, and that has been going for many years now.

What can people find over on the KWL Podcast if they want to click over and have a listen?

Tara: We just released episode 366, which is wild. So you can find us anywhere where you listen to podcasts. We release an episode every week, but we rotate between new interviews, and then we’ve been resurfacing some of our great content from our backlist with a little thing we’re calling the Kobo Rewriting Life Podcast.

So there’ll be a new episode, a Rewriting Life new episode, and so on and so forth. There’s a wealth of really good information. We focus on the craft and business of writing. It’s a mix of traditional authors and indies. Jo, you’ve been a guest, and we’d love to have you back. I think you’re going to come on soon.

Joanna: Yes, at some point.

Tara: I think for anyone that is interested in Kobo, or maybe you’re new to what we do, at the end of 2024 we released an interview with Michael Tamblyn, who is our CEO. He is probably a little bit more eloquent than me in explaining the things that we’ve just talked about.

He really gives a great outline of Kobo, Kobo Writing Life, and I just really like being able to spotlight that because it really informs the fact that Kobo is a book company, and we’re being led by a book guy. I think that’s something to be celebrated, and just kind of shows our overall focus into the reading space.

Joanna: Well, we should also remind people what Kobo is an acronym for.

Tara: Literally, it’s the word ‘book.’

Joanna: I feel like we forget to say that because we know it, but there might be people listening who didn’t know.

Tara: I worked there for years before I realized that it was actually an anagram of the word book. I think I was definitely three years in before it hit me. I was like, oh, right.

Joanna: Oh, yes, that’s what it is.

Michael Tamblyn is—I’ve been at London Book Fair—and he’s often the very best speaker in publishing. I mean, he really is very entertaining and very positive about indie authors, which I really appreciate. I’ve heard him defend indie authors to the publishing industry. So I love that, and I’m obviously a happy KWL user. So Tara—

Where can people find the Kobo Writing Life team if they want to connect?

Tara: So you can email us at writinglife@kobo.com. We’re on most of the socials. We haven’t quite ventured into TikTok yet, but you can find us on Facebook and Instagram and Threads and YouTube. If you are interested in creating an account or learning more about it, you can go to Kobo.com/writinglife.

Joanna: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Tara. That was great.

Tara: Thank you.

The post Ebook Sales, Subscriptions, Audiobooks And Book Marketing With Tara Cremin From Kobo Writing Life first appeared on The Creative Penn.

[From KMW: I’m taking a quick sabbatical this week. I’ll be back next Monday with a post/podcast about “The Disillusionment Arc in Storytelling: A Powerful Tool for Character Growth.” Until then, I hope you enjoy this short post on the important topic of how to write subtext in fiction!]

One of the most powerful tools in a writer’s arsenal is subtext. This is the art of letting readers figure things out for themselves. When you know how to write subtext in fiction, you can create deeper, more engaging stories that invite readers to lean in, pick up on subtle cues, and connect with your characters on a whole new level.

But how do you strike the right balance between clarity and mystery? Let’s take a look at how to write subtext in fiction in a way that keeps readers hooked without leaving them in the dark.

It’s the writer’s job to make sure audiences have no trouble understanding what’s going on in a story. If the antagonist is ugly, maybe you make that plain by showing off his hairy wart and leering grin. If the protagonist has lived a hard life, you make sure your audience knows that by showing the fireplace your character had to sweep out and the cinders all over her dress. And if the protagonist has come up with a brilliant plan to save the day, you need, at the very least, to hint to your audience that the cavalry is on the way.

Keeping your audience in the loop is vital to presenting a pleasant and rewarding reading experience. But there are times when you do yourself a disservice by telling your audience what’s what—particularly when whatever it is may already be evident to an insightful reader.

How to Write Subtext in Fiction the Right Way

Fantasy veteran David Eddings obviously knew. About halfway through his book Pawn of Prophecy, he offers a prime example of why refraining from telling the audience something can sometimes pull them into a deeper collusion with the writer—sort of like a conspiratorial tap on the nose between writer and audience.

For Example:

In Pawn of Prophecy, Eddings makes it clear one of his characters is in love with a woman he has no hope of marrying.

But Eddings doesn’t actually say that. After having the narrating protagonist describe the lovelorn character’s interaction with the woman, all he writes is that a “self-mocking smile” flickered across the character’s face and that the narrating character then “saw the reason for Silk’s sometimes strange manner. An almost suffocating surge of sympathy welled up in his throat.”

That’s it.

But that’s enough for readers to clearly understand what’s going on beneath the surface of this scene and these characters’ interactions.

The trick to making this kind of subtext work is based primarily on the author’s ability to show readers what’s going on. If you’re able to suitably dramatize your characters’ actions and reactions, you audience will often glean such a vivid and personal picture of what’s going on that they’ll understand, without being told, exactly what characters are thinking.

However, you must also be careful not to go overboard, since you don’t want to leave your audience confused. Make certain all the pieces are in place, so your audience will be able to put them together to form a flawless picture.

Mastering how to write subtext in fiction is all about trusting your readers. When you give them just enough information to piece things together on their own, you create a more immersive and rewarding reading experience. The key is striking the right balance. You want to show enough to make your meaning clear without over-explaining. When done well, subtext draws readers deeper into your story, making them feel like insiders rather than just spectators. The next time you’re tempted to spell something out, take a step back and ask yourself: what can you show instead of tell?

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! How do you approach writing subtext in your own stories? Tell me in the comments!

Love Helping Writers Become Authors? You can now become a patron. (Huge thanks to those of you who are already part of my Patreon family!)

The post The Power of Unspoken Words: How to Write Subtext in Fiction appeared first on Helping Writers Become Authors.

What’s the difference between telling a story on screen and on the page? How does indie film production overlap with indie publishing—and what can writers learn from the world of filmmaking? Why might a producer choose creative freedom over big studio deals, and what does that mean when it comes to book marketing?

Gretchen McGowan talks about her memoir Flying In: My Adventures in Filmmaking, navigating the independent film world, and finding her voice as an author.

In the intro, NaNoWriMo shutting down [The Verge]; Amazon introduces AI-generated Recaps; Thoughts on the creative cycle; How to Write a Novel audiobook on YouTube; Mapwalker fantasy novels on YouTube.

Plus, Death Valley, A Thriller Kickstarter and thriller writing class; J.F. Penn on The Adventure Story Podcast; Death Valley expert Steve Hall on the Books and Travel Podcast; My photos from Death Valley.

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 

Gretchen McGowan is an award-winning independent film producer, filmmaking lecturer, and the author of Flying In: My Adventures in Filmmaking.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• What does an indie film producer actually do?
• The isolation of writing a book vs. making a film
• The fear of underserving your audience
• Tools for writing the “truth” in memoir
• Seeing a new place for the first time through the eyes of a filmmaker
• The parallels of self-publishing and the indie film world
• Utilizing your network to help market your book
• AI tools being used in this democratization of film

You can find Gretchen at GretchenMcGowan.com and GoldcrestFilms.com.

Transcript of Interview with Gretchen McGowan

Joanna: Gretchen McGowan is an award-winning independent film producer, filmmaking lecturer, and the author of Flying In: My Adventures in Filmmaking. So welcome to the show, Gretchen.

Gretchen: Thank you so much, Joanna. It’s a dream to be here.

Joanna: Well, it’s going to be so fun talking to you today. First up—

Tell us a bit more about you and what you actually do in the indie filmmaking industry, and what even is that?

Gretchen: Yes, well, I’m an independent producer. I come from a freelancing background in the independent film world. We make largely films that are kind of under $15 million, although that fluctuates all the way down to the really almost no budget kind of film.

When you’re a producer on those kinds of films, you wear many, many hats, because your footprint is small, your crew is smaller. So you have to be good at many things, or at least pretend to be. A lot of that is trial and error. So that’s been largely my background.

I’m now at a company called Goldcrest Films. They’re based in London, but we have a branch here in New York, and there I oversee film. So I’m a little less hands on at this point with each film. We also do documentaries, and on those, I’m very, very hands on.

Joanna: You said that you wear many hats, so just be a bit more specific.

What are the actual things that a producer does?

Gretchen: Sure. So in the early stages, you’re, of course, approving scripts, making script changes with writers. You are casting with the casting director and the director of the film. Then you’re location scouting at distant locations, even nearby locations.

You are involved in really every decision that is made, and you’re trying to help tell a story with your director. The director really is king in this case, or queen, and you’re there to facilitate that. To make sure that their vision of this script is seen on screen by you.

Joanna: Do you manage the budget, or is that somebody else?

Gretchen: You do. That’s one of the less glamorous things, but I still enjoy it because every aspect of that film is reflected in that budget. You have to make sure going into it, it’s a little bit idealistic what your budget might be at that point, but it’s based upon experience.

So it’s not a fantasy of what that budget will be. You’ll look at similar budgets where you ultimately landed to create that budget, and to know what it takes to get the film actually to market.

Joanna: Then once the film is made, are you involved in the editing at all?

The actual sort of what happens after the filming?

Gretchen: Definitely. To me, the editorial process is the final chance to write the script again. I come from editing, actually. I started out kind of through the back door, in the finishing process in editorial. So it’s close to my heart, I would say, the editorial process.

I feel like we can talk about AI and all the ways in which people make films now, but there’s still like a gestation period to getting a film completed. It takes a little bit of time to find the story, to find the best takes, to edit out what doesn’t belong, and to complete the film.

Joanna: Then before we move on, after this film is finished, is your job done?

Or are you then involved in distribution and marketing?

Gretchen: Well, that’ll depend on the distributor that we find for the film. Sometimes we have a distributor already when we’re in pre-production, so we know what our deliverables will be, what the release date will be, what cast we need in place to go to certain festivals and that kind of thing.

Often we are much more indie-minded, indie-spirited, in that we finish that film, we edit it, we do all the beautifying of it, and sound and picture and visual effects, and then we take it to a festival and hope to sell the film.

Now, those days are kind of disappearing because there are fewer and fewer films being made and being sold for many, many reasons. In an ideal world, you would sell that film at a festival, and then they would say to you, “Here’s the way in which we plan to distribute it.”

A producer is very, very involved in organizing that, in getting them all their deliverables and making sure the film really has everything it needs to go to market. That probably means going to a lot of festivals and being involved in the campaign as it’s rolled out across the country and across the world.

Joanna: It’s incredible to me. I’ve really been learning a lot more about the film business. I think on the other side, obviously, it doesn’t look so difficult, but there’s so much that goes into a film.

Even, as you say, “a smaller budget of under $15 million,” which people are like, what? That is a huge budget. Of course, it’s not really, is it?

Gretchen: It’s true. In all these films, probably like any book that you would write, the life of it extends long past when you put your pen down. So you have several films that you’re kind of in maintenance mode and continuing to push out there, even though you stopped filming many, many months ago.

Joanna: So let’s get into the book. So why did you decide to write a book after focusing primarily on the visual media?

What were the challenges of writing a book versus making a film?

Gretchen: Oh gosh. Well, it was all alone, that’s for sure. I didn’t have my team around me.

I wanted to write the book because I felt like I was involved in filmmaking at this really special time in the 1990s and into the 2000s, a lot of it here in New York, but also around the world. Making films, we just did it in a slightly different way than we do today. I was afraid we were sort of losing sight of how we used to do things.

I was teaching up at Columbia University a class in pre-production, and then a class in production for directors. I was having so much fun, and the questions that were coming at me made me think, this is really a book, isn’t it?

These are stories that they’re enjoying. They’re getting a lot out of it. They’re still relevant. I feel like this could translate nicely into a sequence of stories that could be really entertaining.

How is it different from working on a book? So working on the book, of course I’m carrying all these characters in my head, so I never feel totally alone when I sit down to write.

It’s just a completely different thing to be motivated for yourself to write a book, as opposed to these constant deadlines that are coming at you when you’re making a film. You have a schedule, you must meet that. Other people are depending upon you.

With a book, I was on my own. There was nobody saying, “You have to finish chapter seven by April 1.” It was just a made up scheme for myself. So the made up scheme continued to shift, as you can imagine.

Joanna: That’s so interesting because I chose to be a writer, one of the reasons was to be alone. I know people listening, I think we’re all serious introverts in the sort of full-time writer mode, but that was the first thing you brought up there as a challenge, was being all alone.

So do you think people who work in film are just much more sociable and enjoy the collaboration and the teamwork and that kind of thing?

Gretchen: That’s so funny because I feel like I’m a forced extrovert. I feel like I’m an introvert, like you, by nature. Being involved in the film business, I think many of us are just kind of forced into the world of an extrovert.

There’s a role on set called the first assistant director, the first AD, we call them. I always think of them as the extrovert for the director because the director doesn’t want to be shouting out when the next take is and when we cut. They want to have this person by their side.

So maybe it’s just another version of my personality that I’m able to tap, but by nature, I’d rather be sitting at a desk or writing a story like you.

Joanna: Oh, that’s great. On that, you said you didn’t have any contracts or anything.

So you decided to write the book and then look at publication later?

Because with nonfiction, you can look for a book deal first.

Gretchen: Well, I’d never written anything long form before. I was a playwright in college, so I had experience writing. As far as a commercial venture to get something out, I said, let’s see what we’ve got first.

I took Marion Roach’s class, and she was just really helpful to that end, as far as kind of setting a schedule, having realistic expectations. I took a couple of her courses too. I felt like those things helped me motivate my own schedule.

Joanna: Marion’s been on this show several times. A fantastic memoir teacher, so that’s brilliant.

So let’s get into some more of the book. So you write in the opening about the fear you get as a filmmaker of underserving the film and the audience, which I really loved.

Did you find that fear mirrored as you wrote the book?

Gretchen: Oh, yes. I only know my own experience in making films, and it is varied. I’ve worked with so many different kinds of directors, so many different genres, but it’s not going to be anybody else’s experience.

So as I’m writing, I’m trying not to have the fear of being judged, of someone else saying, “Well, that’s not really the way it is,” or, “It was never like that for me,” and I’m sure I’m getting a lot of that as people read it and work through their own experience of making films.

At the same time, I can only tell the stories that I lived, and then try to make it as universal as possible. So for me, that was the challenge.

Okay, here’s the core story—and this is something I learned from Marion in reading her book, The Memoir Project—how do I make that ripple out to be a story that’s relatable on a universal level.

For somebody who works in print advertising, or somebody who works in any other industry really, it should feel relevant, this experience and the arc of a producer story.

Joanna: Yes, that fear of being judged, that is what I have, absolutely. Everyone’s got their fears, and this one is a big one.

It’s tough with memoir. I wrote a memoir about pilgrimage, and it was kind of midlife and all of that. I was like, if I put this out there, everyone’s going to know more about me. That’s really scary, right?

Do you think you’re over that fear yet?

Gretchen: Well, now is the interesting time, isn’t it, because now people are reading it. People who I’ve worked with, people who I’ve been friends with for years, and they’re having their own experience.

The dialogue that’s coming out of that is another book probably, too, because they’ll say, “Oh, I read the chapter about having made Buffalo ’66, and I got caught in that situation. Mine was a little different.” So then I get to hear all these wonderful stories and bring up these memories of what it was like to make films in the 90s.

Joanna: Yes, which is cool. I mean, the 90s, such a great time. Before social media. Oh, could we go back? That’s the question.

Gretchen: I know, but it’s great to sort of be sparking something in other people that they feel compelled to write me a note or text me and say, “Oh, this reminded me of something.”

So that really was the goal of the book, to say, “Here’s my experience. This is what I went through. What was it like for you?” Like your pilgrimage, everybody’s had their version of a pilgrimage, and to be able to think, “Oh, the way Joanna climbed that mountain or surpassed that, that reminds me of when I did X.”

That took a long time for me to figure out the universality of things.

Joanna: If you’re writing about decades ago, how did you tackle truth?

In terms of, did this actually happen in this way? Did you keep notes? Have you got notes from back then, or journals? Or how did you recall those things?

Gretchen: Well, I think I have the mind of a steel trap when it comes to certain stories that just are never going to leave me. I do have a lot of friends. Of course, I’m still friendly with a lot of filmmakers and crew members who I worked with back then.

So we can sit down and we can reminisce, and things will come flying back, and I’ll say, “Oh, I hadn’t thought about that in a long time.” They’re the ones that just stay with you, the stories you kind of tell over and over again, even if just to yourself.

I didn’t keep a journal back then. I just kind of kept all this tucked away. Then I think also, when you work on one film, of course, you’re informed by that experience on the next and the next. So they get buried in you, and they get kind of endemic to your process, as far as how you proceed.

I think about what I said about budgets, you don’t go into the next budget of making a film, looking at the going-in budget the last one. You look at the cost report, you look at where you actually landed, what it really took to make it.

Even though it’s reduced to zeros and ones, that was the experience of that movie. Every line item there has a story.

Joanna: Oh, I love that. I’ve never seen the line items on a movie, but I imagine there’s some really random stuff on there that ended up needing to be used, or people who were hired. I think that’s interesting in itself.

I wanted to also ask you, the book has lots of different places, as you’ve traveled so much with the filming. I wondered, as a filmmaker—because you’re always looking through a lens or you’re thinking of how people are seeing it—

How do you see a place for the first time? What do you notice? Then how do you turn that into writing on a page?

Gretchen: Well, as a producer, when you land in a place, you’re thinking like a location scout. You’re thinking, honestly, what can be useful to the movie? What angles will be useful?

Then, of course, when you’ve got the added challenge of filming an historical drama, you need to put greenery in front of certain standpipes and that kind of thing. You’ve got to think like, what’s it going to cost to shoot in this direction? And if I turn the camera 40 feet to the left, what’s going to be a problem there?

So what am I restricted by is often what you’re thinking about, too. I love the location scouting, especially with the director, because for them it’s really when the film really starts to take on life.

When we went to Andalusia to film The Limits of Control, a Jim Jarmusch film with Jim, we were at this beautiful site, looking at the ocean into the sea, but the house that he wanted was up on a hill on the opposite side. If you watch the film, you would never know the sea was across the road because that wasn’t part of the story.

So sometimes you forget, which is where your editor has to come in handy. They’ll say, “You never did shoot the sea,” but we weren’t intending to. We wanted it to feel like an isolated home.

So to how that translates into the book, I’m trying to think about ways in which the location comes up. I guess, the thing that’s important to me about filming on location, and what I like about the process of filmmaking, is it kind of ramps up.

You location scout, your crew gets bigger and bigger. You’re the constant. The script is the constant. You’re the last one to leave, probably, too, but you’re there for a good four or five months often.

So if you go to Jordan, or if you go to Costa Rica to film, you’re not like a journalist, for instance, or for other roles that might travel to these places for their vocation, you’re not just parachuting in and out. You’re there to tell their story as well.

Many of those people will become extras, many of the people you meet will become crew members or will lead you to a location. You’re going to be going to their homes for dinner.

So all these things, of course, are in the book. Everyone becomes a character in your story, and you in theirs for a longer period of time.

Joanna: When you write a memoir, in the same ways you make a movie, you have to edit out a lot of it. You can’t write everything. In the same way with a film, you can’t shoot everything, but you don’t want to because you’re crafting this story.

I always feel like with films, there is a sort of, “This isn’t real. This is made up.” I guess you do documentaries and things, but you still have to edit for your own story. So how did you manage that with your book?

Did you edit out the really bad stuff, or did you leave the bad stuff in?

Sometimes we edit to make things more beautiful, I guess.

Gretchen: I didn’t do that. I would say I edited to make sure that the arc of becoming a producer is really in there, and that is the good, the bad, and the ugly. That’s everything.

If I told a story and it didn’t quite fit, or I felt like I’d already addressed that in a previous chapter or wanted to later, then I had to cut it out, right? Maybe some bits of that got folded into a later story, but there was no use in telling it twice.

We had to see this character growing as a producer and learning from all her ugly mistakes along the way. There’s a lot on the cutting room floor, I would say.

Joanna: Well, on that, how much is on the cutting room floor when you make a film?

How many hours of film do you have compared to what’s left at the end?

Gretchen: We try to, especially in the independent world, because we usually only have about 25-30 days to shoot an independent film at these budget levels, maybe fewer. Two Girls and a Guy we shot in 11 days, with Robert Downey Jr, but that was also on one location with three characters.

So there are exceptions to that, but you’re very, very lean and very efficient when it comes to how many pages a day you shoot, and your coverage is going to be very limited too. So you need to make sure the way in which you cover a scene is enough for an editor to be able to do their work with.

It’s probably a ratio of around five to one, whereas when you work on a documentary—or five to one to ten to one, I would say, how much film goes through the camera versus what the 90 minute film becomes—but when you shoot a documentary, we could have 500 hours of film and whittle that down.

Usually you’ll need several editors to be able to pare that back. You’ll get everything transcribed. You’ll do a paper cut. There are all sorts of ways of trimming back on that, but these films take a long time to edit when you’ve got so much footage.

Honestly, that’s an interesting question you posed, because since digital, the camera tends to keep rolling a lot too. Rather than cutting, we’ll keep going and go again, again, again. Often on a narrative feature even, just keep going.

So the editor ends up with a lot more material than they used to. Not all of it is good, but they’ve got a heck of a lot more to wade through in order to find the gems.

Joanna: I know there’s a lot of the stuff on AI around that editing, which we’re going to come back to that in a minute.

Going back to the book, I love that you structured the chapters around film types. So like the urban fantasy, and the rogue movie, and the meet cute, which I thought were brilliant. So what were the challenges of structuring it, given the book spans a lot of time?

Where did you get that idea for the film types?

Gretchen: It’s one of the kind of novelties of my career, is that I’ve worked across so many genres. So I thought it would be a fun idea to do that. I wasn’t sure it was going to work. I moved the names around, and they’re not always a spot on.

What happens in each chapter is not always a spot on reflection of that genre, but it’s close enough to have inspired what happens in the story, and as you say, kind of what didn’t belong in that story too. So it was a fun kind of device to be able to play with.

The stories, though, are largely sequential. Sometimes I’ll pop in a relevant story from before or after, but only in as much as I say, as it helped with the arc of becoming a producer, becoming a more responsible producer in that character. You’re seeing her evolve a bit.

Joanna: Yes, and in your pitch email, you said, “The actual journey to getting the book out there is taking a lot of grit and perseverance, a lot like indie film distribution.” That made me laugh.

So tell us about those parallel processes.

Gretchen: So I’m working with a wonderful publisher, but they’re not a big Simon and Schuster kind of company. They’re a smaller company, and I enjoy that because there’s a lot of freedom in it.

Probably because I do come from the independent film world, I’m used to doing a lot of work myself and putting a lot of myself and my own kind of grit and sweat equity into the project.

So that means I did hire—although they have their own in-house publicist—I did hire a PR individual to help me. He is familiar with film, so there’s some kind of a nice crossover there. So there are out of pocket expenses that I kind of always knew I would have to put into it.

I make a lot of films with Sebastian Junger, who will write a book for Simon and Schuster on commission, or what have you, and he’ll have a lot of muscle behind that from, of course, the organization.

I knew I wasn’t going to live in that world, so I was prepared to put a lot more of my own kind of time and effort into it, just the way I am doing with several of our films right now.

Joanna: So, I mean, you mentioned Sebastian Junger there, and I’ve recently read his In My Time of Dying, and read several of his books. They’re really interesting. You have contacts like that, you have lots of contacts in the film industry. I mean, you presumably could have pitched to a bigger publisher.

Did you always just want to have more control?

Gretchen: Well, I found an agent pretty quickly, but she was realistic about, you know, this isn’t the indie film world. This isn’t Hollywood. This isn’t like a tell-all kind of story that exposes certain characters. That wasn’t what I was setting out to do. Although she loved the writing, she was excited about the book, she felt like the more realistic option is probably going to be going with an indie publisher.

I heard that, so we gave it a little bit of time, but when we didn’t hear back within a month, I said, you know what? Let’s just switch gears and go indie because I know I can make it work. I didn’t want to spend a lot of time falling down that rabbit hole of waiting, the waiting game. I’m an impatient person.

Joanna: Oh, that’s so true. I mean, but—

Then you still went with the small press instead of self-publishing?

Gretchen: Yes, I did that. It’s interesting, I’ve been thinking because I am working on something new, I’m thinking that it would be so much fun to—because I listened to your podcast, and I’m highly motivated by all your stories and your guests—and I would love to try publishing the next book myself, but I’d have to finish writing it first.

Joanna: True, but it’s interesting to think about that. I think you’d do great. I mean, with your attitude, I think that’s the point. Also having impatience, which I think is a hallmark of so many of us in the indie community.

Gretchen: That’s great. I mean, how do you get that next podcast? How do you get that next gig? I’m going out to Seattle in June to do sort of a mini tour there.

So how do you make that happen by depending on a large behemoth of an organization that has so many more important authors to pitch and that they can make so much more money from? So you really, like a producer, you really just kind of must do things yourself very often.

Joanna: Yes, exactly. I guess if we think about the budget as well, and about how you make money, if you make a movie for 200 million, and it costs 200 million, you have to do a lot more in order to make the money back. When you have a smaller budget, you know…

So I feel it’s a bit like that. People say, oh, you don’t make as much money as an indie author sometimes, although a lot of people do make a lot more money. The point is that your costs are so much lower as well, so you can make more profit.

In the end, it’s about profit, right?

Gretchen: Absolutely. You’ve been so smart to kind of create this audience who keeps wanting to come back for more. I’d love to be able to do that, to be able to cultivate an audience that knows where to find you, and is saying, what’s next?

Joanna: Well, I think that’s definitely something you can do.

Let’s come back on the marketing because you said you hired a PR person.

So what are some of the things that you’re doing about book marketing? Anything you’ve brought over from the indie film promotion world?

Gretchen: Well, podcasts have become so big as a means of reaching an audience that you maybe otherwise wouldn’t reach. A crossover, if you will. We do a lot of that in the documentaries that we make, especially to reach an audience, to make people aware of it.

Then with a lot of the docs that we do, we tour them. So it is reminding me of what I’m doing upcoming in Massachusetts and Seattle and hopefully down in DC, and I did here in Brooklyn, and will be doing in Manhattan. Just kind of independently showing people what it is.

I cut a trailer for the book that shows people a lot of behind the scenes fun of putting together a movie. So that’s a lot like a teaser to show people what’s to come, right? What you’re about to read about and what’s fun about it.

To be able to get that out on a website and use all those tools that we do in the filmmaking community, by creating an audience, by getting the digital aspects of things going. Then physically getting out there, and getting the word out, and listening to people, and doing the live Q and A’s.

Also, really listening to other people’s journeys about what they’re doing, because everything is copy, isn’t it?

Joanna: So you mentioned a tour there. So what are you actually doing with that?

Have you booked venues, or what are you doing for that?

Gretchen: Well, I’ll be going out to Seattle in June, and I kind of connected with a lot of old friends who happen to be in Seattle. That will be like an audience. It’s a theater. The International Film Festival there has their own venue there. So it’s a connection with the local International Film Festival Seattle, which is a big, one. Big, big film festival.

So that’s a good opportunity for crossover, isn’t it? When we’re making a political film at Goldcrest, we’re crossing over by connecting with the senators, with the Congress people in DC, and bringing them into the fold. Here I’m doing the same thing with the film world and the book world.

I’m going up to Massachusetts to talk to a couple schools, including the school that I went to high school. They have a new initiative there that’s like a trailblazer initiative to get students more involved in their future as they’re in high school.

So they’re doing externships and they’re learning about various careers. So I’ll be going up there to speak with them, and I’m looking forward to that because that’s just the kind of audience I love.

Joanna: Oh, that’s great. So you’re basically sort of melding it with your existing work, which makes sense because of the topic of the book, and also using your network.

I think people underestimate using your network for book marketing. Of course, it has to be done in an appropriate manner, but sounds like you’re tapping into a lot of things from your film background.

Gretchen: Absolutely, and it’s hard to know when you are talking too much about the book. You don’t want to overwhelm people with those stories, but I like to kind of bring people into the fold and make them a part of it.

Joanna: Then we’ve got to get into the AI and technology, because in the epilogue of the book you say, “We make films differently now with more digital and technical support, and you can shoot a live action film in your pajamas, edit it, market it, and distribute it without leaving your apartment,” which I thought was fascinating.

How has technology made things easier and cheaper? What do you think about the potential of AI?

Gretchen: Oh, I think it’s really exciting. AI has presented so many opportunities already. I think largely they will be positive, and there will be some that will be negative, but that’s like any tool.

We’ve seen the handwritten ink-to-paper evolve into a laptop, and that’s been a tremendous change. I never would have been able to write this book without that.

Then when it comes to filmmaking, there’s the great democratization of making a film. As I say, somebody can do it on their own, virtually create a movie on their own.

I’ve always liked the team aspect of it. AI probably means that could be getting slightly smaller because there are certain tools that can be employed in the editorial process. As we say, maybe 500 hours could be pared down a lot faster.

The human element is always going to be necessary for telling stories. We’re not going to be able to remove ourselves entirely, to me anyway, if the stories are compelling.

Joanna: Well, and I don’t think it’s about removing us entirely. This is kind of the thing. People say, “Oh, it’s an AI-generated thing,” and it’s like, well, no, it never is. Or not until they’re sentient in some way, and have their own ideas.

These are our ideas and our vision, our creative vision, and then we use the tools to help us make the vision.

What tools have you heard about that are being used in this democratization of film?

Gretchen: There is a tool—and I’m not sure I’ll know the names of all of these—but there is an editorial tool that will help you with a lot of sound editorial, with voices and being able to do a temp voiceover for someone.

I know there’s been a lot of controversy over that with regard to the Screen Actors Guild, but they will be protected is the idea. It could be a good temporary solution as you’re just trying to get the film screened and approved by the studio, or what have you.

There are editing tools that will cut back on the workflow process, and have already cut back on the workflow process. From getting the film in camera, all the way to the cutting room for what we call the dailies process. That’s already being employed so much of it.

Even just across being able to shoot, the cameras are now digital, the lights are a lot cheaper and a lot lighter. So even just like the physical aspect of being able to make a film has been simplified.

If going in, you haven’t fine-tuned your story, you haven’t looked at all your options, did you run it past ChatGPT? Which isn’t an option I had when I was writing this book—but is there an idea that might have come out of that that would have inspired eight more ideas that you could actually look to employ?

I think that’s the exciting part of it, is it will only elevate everybody’s work.

Joanna: I’m so glad you feel that way. I also agree. I think the more I use it, the more I feel I am getting better. I feel like the potential is so much more than it ever could have been.

What did you use to make your trailer?

Gretchen: Oh, I worked with an editor on that. An amazing woman named Jen Wolin. I’m on the board of New York Women in Film, and she cuts all our sizzles for the highlight reels for the muse honorees that we have each year.

Joanna: That’s good. I imagine you have all the contacts possibly needed. I made a trailer with RunwayML, which is a generative AI tool, which was a lot of fun. Did you use lots of photos and things from history?

Gretchen: Yes. So I went back and I pulled all the behind the scenes work from each of the films that had them. We didn’t always have that kind of crew shooting behind the scenes. It’s something I really encourage filmmakers to get because they will regret it later.

Even on the busiest day, or even the most mundane day, it’s good to have a crew following you because that’s going to be your memory of having made that film. I used a lot of photos from the set, a lot of images, and I did an interview as well.

Joanna: Fantastic. Well, we’ll link to those in the show notes.

Where can people find you and your book online?

Gretchen: Well, I have a website. It’s GretchenMcGowan.com. It’s G, R, E, T, C, H, E, N, M, C, G, O, W, A, N. So everything’s there. It links to where you can buy the book online. It’s available as an ebook, and hopefully someday soon it will be available as an audiobook, but not yet.

Also at GoldcrestFilms.com.

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

Gretchen: Thank you so much.

The post Writing Memoir From A Life In Film With Gretchen McGowan first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What are some ways you can market a book during a launch period using audio, video, and text? What does my JFPenn voice clone sound like narrating the first two chapters of my thriller, Death Valley?

J.F. Penn is the Award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers, dark fantasy, crime, horror, short stories, and travel memoir. Jo lives in Bath, England and enjoys a nice G&T.

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

• Examples of multimedia book marketing for a book launch — Death Valley Book Trailer; Books and Travel interview with Death Valley expert, Steve Hall; also on YouTube; Video of Death Valley pictures, and more
• Two chapters of Death Valley, a thriller, written by J.F. Penn and digitally narrated by my JFPenn voice clone on ElevenLabs, produced by Simon Patrick, 10XB

You can find DEATH VALLEY at JFPenn.com/deathvalley. The Kickstarter runs until 15 April, and then the link will redirect. It’s also available on Amazon for pre-order (available in June).

Transcript

Hello Creatives, I’m Joanna Penn and this is episode #802 of the podcast and it is Wednesday 2 April 2025 as I record this. In this extra inbetweenisode, I’m sharing the first two chapters of my new thriller, Death Valley, which you can listen to after this introduction.

Of course, I hope you enjoy the story and want to join the Kickstarter at JFPenn.com/deathvalley  but I also thought it might be useful for you in several ways: 

Firstly, it is made with my voice clone on ElevenLabs, so if you have had your doubts about digital narration with AI, then perhaps this might help you think about it some more.

I have found it quite strange proofing the story and listening to my voice, but I love it, and the amount of time it saves me, and effort, is well worth it. My audiobook narrator voice is different to my more casual podcasting voice so you will notice that, but I hope you agree that it really does sound like me. I am planning on licensing it as well in the hope of creating another stream of income. 

If you notice points where you think, that’s sounds strange, or that’s wrong, well, the same thing happens when you listen to human narration. I think this is within the same levels I’d expect from a human.

Why else might this be useful for you? Well —

It’s book marketing, and we all need reminding of different ways to market a book.

I am trying to combine audio and video as well as text for this launch. If you go to the Story page on the Kickstarter, you will see I have a video of human me talking and showing you the book —

As well as a book trailer with images generated by Midjourney and brought alive with RunwayML, and also text about why I’ve always loved deserts.

I also have an interview about Death Valley on my Books and Travel Podcast with Steve Hall, a Death Valley expert, and that’s out now. It is an audio podcast – just search Books and Travel on your favourite app, or you can watch our discussion on video on YouTube @jfpennauthor.

Plus, I have made another video with my photos also on YouTube, and of course, I have social media posts every day scheduled with BufferApp, and some paid ads, all underpinned by email marketing.

Yes, I am putting in the marketing effort, because none of us can just stick a book up on a platform and expect it to sell. You have to do something, and you have to push your comfort zone about what you do.

I hope this has given you some ideas, and if you love fast-paced thrillers, or if you want some ideas for your Kickstarter campaign, check it out at JFPenn.com/deathvalley 

The post Death Valley Audiobook Chapters And Book Marketing Tips With J.F Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Great character arcs are built on transformation, and one of the most powerful frameworks for understanding this journey is the four stages of knowing in character arcs. These stages map a character’s growth through initiation to enlightenment to integration in a way that feels deeply satisfying to readers. Why? Because it is yet another way in which the shape of story mirrors the patterns of real life. Once you can see how plot structure challenges characters to grow (sometimes successfully, sometimes not), you can more consciously craft resonant character arcs.

Attributed to many sources, the four stages of knowing have long been one of my favorite tools for charting growth—and, often, for combatting unrealistic desires for immediate perfection. Only recently, did it occur to me these four stages map perfectly onto the four quadrants of a classic story arc. (I discuss plot structure in depth elsewhere on the site and in my books Structuring Your Novel and Next Level Plot Structure, but if you’re unfamiliar, no worries, keep reading!) If you’ve been following this site for any length of time, you know there are endless parallels between story structure/character arc and models of human development (some of which I’ve discussed here and here).

In This Article

• What Are the Four Stages of Knowing in Character Arcs?
• 1st Act: Not Knowing That You Don’t Know
• First Plot Point: Initiation
• 1st Half of 2nd Act: Knowing That You Don’t Know
• Midpoint: Enlightenment
• 2nd Half of 2nd Act: Not Knowing That You Know
• Third Plot Point: Integration
• 3rd Act: Knowing That You Know

What Are the Four Stages of Knowing in Character Arcs?

The four stages of knowing originate from a well-known concept in learning and personal growth, often paraphrased as:

You don’t know what you don’t know.

Then, you know what you don’t know.

Next, you don’t know what you know.

Finally, you know what you know.

This idea has been widely used in psychology, education, and self-improvement to describe the path from ignorance to mastery. It illustrates how awareness and understanding evolve, often through experience and struggle. So it’s no surprise that, in storytelling, these stages align perfectly with the protagonist’s emotional and intellectual growth, making it a valuable tool for crafting (and double-checking) meaningful arcs. Let’s take a look at some of the parallels.

1st Act: Not Knowing That You Don’t Know

The First Stage

The first stage—not knowing that you don’t know—indicates unconscious ignorance. You’re ignorant of your ignorance. There is a sense of innocence and, often, a seemingly harmless hubris associated with this stage. This can feel like confidence, complacency, or simply an absence of curiosity. Without the knowledge that there’s more to learn, you have no reason to question what you think you know.

It’s impossible to be aware of the gaps in your knowledge until you first encounter a catalyst that challenges your current understanding. Only when something disrupts the seeming “wholeness” of your perspective can the journey toward deeper awareness begin.

The First Act — 1%-25%

In story structure, the purpose and symbolic intent of the First Act perfectly align with this state of seemingly blissful ignorance. The First Act represents a story’s Normal World, in which the character may feel safe, familiar, content, or at least complacent. Even if the character dislikes aspects of the Normal World, it is still a lifestyle that functions reasonably well.

However, despite this basic functionality, the Normal World may be very broken indeed, as in Jane Eyre.

In other stories, the character may be utterly satisfied with the Normal World, as in Toy Story.

In still others, the character may be dissatisfied with aspects of the Normal World but see no possible way of changing anything, as in Star Wars: A New Hope.

Whatever the case, the character is stuck, hemmed in by the status quo. This stage of “not knowing” represents the thematic Lie the Character Believes, which creates the foundation of all types of character arcs. The Lie is a limited perspective characters hold about themselves or their world. The story to come will offer them the opportunity to challenge that perspective and grow beyond it.

First Plot Point: Initiation

The stage of “not knowing they don’t know” ends with the story’s first major plot point—the First Plot Point. This moment responds to the Call to Adventure that initially challenged the characters’ worldview. A sliver of doubt is introduced into the complacency of their cohesive worldview. Perhaps all is not as it has always seemed.

Not only does this present the shocking possibility of their own ignorance, it also shines a light on areas of their lifestyles that lack functionality. If a character was previously aware of dysfunction, this moment turns the dial up until it becomes clear something must change. Even if characters adamantly wish to maintain their formerly ignorant mindsets, from here on that will become increasingly difficult. Characters will either bravely begin a slow and difficult journey into growth and expansion—or they will succumb to cowardice and resist the Truth in increasingly dysfunctional ways.

1st Half of 2nd Act: Knowing That You Don’t Know

The Second Stage

In the second stage—knowing that you don’t know—awareness begins to dawn. Now that you’ve encountered something that reveals a gap in your understanding, for the first time you begin to recognize the limitations of what you know. Depending on the gap created by this cognitive dissonance (i.e., the gap between Lie and Truth), this stage can be uncomfortable and even overwhelming. Even small challenges to one’s perspective and worldview create destabilization and uncertainty.

However, this stage also represents the beginning of real learning. Once you’ve recognized you don’t know, the door opens upon vast possibilities for growth and deeper understanding.

The First Half of the Second Act — 25%-50%

In story structure, the first half of the Second Act represents a stage of “reaction,” as the character struggles to respond to a new status quo without yet having all the necessary knowledge, skills, or tools. This is a stage described by Terry Pratchett’s quote:

Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.

This is a stage of fumbling around in the dark. The only advantage characters have at this point is that at least they know it’s dark—ergo, they better find a match. Previously, they didn’t even understand that much.

>>Click here to read “A Reactive Protagonist Doesn’t Have to Be a Passive Protagonist! Discover the Difference“

Even though the character’s unquestioning belief in the Lie has now been irrevocably challenged, this is a stage in which the character is still very much identified with the Lie. Because the new way of being—the Truth—is not yet clear, the character will understandably continue trying to return to the old ways. By now, however, there’s no going back. Determined ignorance or a retroactive adherence to the Lie will prove less and less effective—effectively “punishing” the character for any lack of progression.

Characters moving toward the Truth will learn to embrace the necessity and the opportunity of growth. They will (eventually) learn from their mistakes, humbly accept their ignorance, and begin gaining the knowledge, skills, tools, and experience they require in order to move forward.

This may be ideological, as in Promised Land.

Or it may be practical, as in Cast Away.

Characters may willingly embrace the change, as in Harry Potter.

Or struggle against the hard knocks, as in Toy Story.

In stories in which the character will fail to fully progress through the four stages into positive growth, they will begin inventing stronger and more dangerous Lies in order to maintain the original Lie, as in Hamlet.

Midpoint: Enlightenment

Halfway through the story—and the stages of growth—the character will encounter the Second Plot Point—or Midpoint—which represents an all-important Moment of Truth. Although this moment does not represent complete illumination, it does provide the character clarity that was so far lacking.

I like to put it like this: this is where the character recognizes and embraces the Truth but does not yet fully reject the Lie. In other words, characters do not yet understand that to step fully into this new way of being, they must first be willing to fully relinquish the old. At this point, they think they can have the best of both worlds.

What is important here is that the character is offered the opportunity to begin shifting out of ignorance into the beginnings of competence.

2nd Half of Second Act: Not Knowing That You Know

The Third Stage

In the third stage—not knowing that you know—this new knowledge is becoming second nature, but you haven’t yet fully realized or integrated your own growth. Up to now, you’ve absorbed lessons, internalized skills, and navigated challenges successfully, but you have not yet shifted your own identification with your ignorance. You may still feel uncertain, questioning whether you truly understand. This stage is often marked by imposter syndrome, doubting your competence despite clear evidence of your growth. It’s a transitional phase in which competence is building, even if you don’t fully see it yet.

Another way to look at the four stages is to see them as a journey from unconsciousness to consciousness. At this third stage, you are becoming consciously competent in this new way of being, but because these conscious skills have not fully integrated into your deepest self, they may still feel awkward, like a suit of clothes a size too big. And yet you are wearing the clothes. Although you may feel like you’re faking it, more and more you’re genuinely making it.

The Second Half of the Second Act — 50%-75%

In story structure, the second half of the Second Act contrasts the “reaction” of the first half as the character moves into a more proactive and effective state of “action.” Characters are increasingly able to not just react to situations but to choose, based on their increasing stash of experience, how they want to respond—and even to initiate actions that now require responses from others. Thanks to their growing understanding of themselves and the world, they are able to make better choices—for which they will be increasingly rewarded.

However, mistakes still happen, for the primary reason that characters have not fully integrated their new Truths. You’ll remember at the Midpoint, they had yet to fully let go of their old ways of being. Now, even though they are becoming increasingly effective in their new mastery, they are still tripping over the remnants of their old ignorance. Eventually, true mastery will require them to fully embrace their new roles, represented by the Truth—which requires them to fully relinquish the old, as represented by the Lie.

If characters are to succeed in completing a successful growth arc, this is where they will become increasingly aware of the effects of their remaining pockets of ignorance or apathy. They will prove willing to continue their journey toward the Truth, sometimes at great cost, as in Jane Eyre.

This is your characters’ last chance to embrace the opportunities offered them. If they fail, they will spiral into even more destructive methods for maintaining the limitations of their initial perspectives, as in What Happened to Baby Jane?

Third Plot Point: Integration

The Third Plot marks the final major catalyst in a character’s arc. Here, the character will either succeed or fail in the vital task of fully integrating new knowledge and experiences. Either way, this is a crucible. The old ways must burn away to make room for the new. This is true not just on a practical level (e.g., new job, etc.), but on the egoic level of identity. However much better the new way of being may objectively be, it is never easy to surrender ego identities. Sometimes even just accepting one’s own prowess can feel dangerous to the self.

At the Third Point, characters are given the opportunity (perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime chance) to step up. They’ve been learning all along. They have, in essence, been given many gifts, by dint of their own effort and courage. Now all the chips are on the table. Will they prove capable of fully integrating and owning both the blessings and the responsibilities of everything they’ve learned?

3rd Act: Knowing That You Know

The Fourth Stage

In the final stage—knowing that you know—awareness and confidence align. You no longer question your understanding; you trust it. What once felt uncertain is now second nature, allowing you to apply your new knowledge with clarity and purpose. This is the stage of mastery, in which you recognize how far you’ve come and use what you’ve learned with intention. It’s the culmination of growth, the point at which experience transforms into wisdom.

This is the turning point where one’s conscious understanding becomes so fully embodied as to become subconscious. There is no longer a struggle to understand or implement knowledge; there is only right instinct and the ability to act on it. You no longer have to puzzle out how best to do something; you just know. And you trust this knowledge because, by now, you have gained enough context to understand you’re not missing anything important. You can see the entire battlefield and command your troops accordingly.

The Third Act — 75%-10%

The Third Act “proves” your character’s arc. Either your characters will succeed in transitioning into broader and more effective ways of being; or they will fail. Either they will fully embrace the story’s thematic Truth; or they will cling ever tighter to the Lie—even though it will by now have proven itself not just ineffective but destructive.

Although certain revelations are often left until the story’s Climax, all of the groundwork will culminate with the Third Plot Point. In many ways, the Third Act and its Climax is simply the proving ground for what has come before. This is where your audience gets to see not just if your characters will succeed, but how. How will your characters use what they have learned (or not)? What choices will they make and what actions will they take now that they have fully integrated a new way of being?

In Positive Change Arcs, characters will respond in notably more effective ways than they were capable of in the beginning. Often, the change will be even more significant, as the character is shown to fully embody an entirely new identity, as in Iron Man.

In Negative Change Arcs, characters will have failed the test. They will have stagnated and probably regressed in their attempts to avoid confronting deeper Truths and the challenge to grow. Here, the audience will experience the full consequences of the characters’ failure, as in The Searchers.

***

The four stages of knowing in character arcs is a handy, intuitive guide for shaping compelling stories that mirror the universal process of learning and transformation. Whether your characters courageously struggle toward growth or cravenly resist it until the very end, these stages can provide a roadmap for ensuring their arcs feel both meaningful and inevitable. By weaving this psychological truth into your storytelling, you not only strengthen your characters but also invite your audience into a journey that mirrors their own paths toward greater self-awareness and mastery.

In Summary:

Because great character arcs mirror real-life transformation, the four stages of knowing provide a powerful framework for understanding this journey. These stages—unconscious ignorance, conscious ignorance, unconscious competence, and conscious competence—align perfectly with the four quadrants of classic story structure. As characters move from not knowing what they don’t know to fully integrating their newfound wisdom, they undergo a satisfying arc of growth. By using this model, writers can craft arcs that feel authentic and emotionally resonant, ensuring plot structure and character development work in harmony.

Key Takeaways:

• The Four Stages of Knowing provide a structured approach to character development, mapping ignorance to mastery.
• First Act: Characters exist in a state of unconscious ignorance, unaware of their own limitations.
• First Plot Point: A catalyst challenges their worldview, forcing them to acknowledge their ignorance.
• First Half of the Second Act: Characters react, struggling with their newfound awareness and the discomfort of change.
• Midpoint: A crucial revelation brings enlightenment, although full mastery is still out of reach.
• Second Half of the Second Act: Characters begin taking proactive steps, demonstrating unconscious competence but not yet fully realizing their growth.
• Third Plot Point: Full integration occurs as charactera consciously embrace their transformation.
• This framework ensures a natural and compelling progression for character arc that is both relatable and deeply engaging for readers.

Want More?

Want to learn more about story structure mirrors real life transformation? My most recent book Next Level Plot Structure goes beyond the basic beat sheet of plot points to explore the deeper symbolism of how the foundational beats of storytelling reveal the way we grow, change, and face challenges in the real world. If you want to craft stories that feel deeply meaningful while still delivering a tightly woven plot, this book will show you how! It’s available in paperback and e-book (audiobook is coming soon; still waiting for Amazon to approve it).

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! How have you used the four stages of knowing in character arcs to shape your protagonist’s transformation? 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 Writers Can Use the Four Stages of Knowing in Character Arcs appeared first on Helping Writers Become Authors.

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.