writing

Who are your literary forebears?

The Oglala Lakota holy man Nicholas Black Elk (1863–1950) taught that humanity is fundamentally interconnected with all creation, and that we are united by a Great Spirit that lives within every aspect of the natural world—people, animals, the waters, and the green.

Whether we recognize it or not, writers are also interconnected with other writers, our living peers and those who came before. Every writer is first a reader, and then becomes a reader inspired to emulation. We each have a unique, unreproducible voice, but we are also part of a stream of writers that includes authors we have read and many we have not, but whose work shaped our culture and ways of writing, and showed what was possible in our creative world.

Where do you fit in this long storytelling tradition? Just for fun, trace your writing lineage along whatever branches you choose – writers in your genre, writers who look like you, writers who have a similar background. Imagine yourself as one part of this great whole and feel their work inside you as well.

When I consider the writers who inspired me to become a writer or leant something to my POV or tone of voice, a few names come to mind:

• Alex Raymond
• Charles Schulz
• Franz Kafka
• Max Frisch
• Ethan Mordden
• Marge Piercy
• Patricia Highsmith
• John Irving
• Sylvia Plath

That may seem a disjointed – and possibly unhinged – collection of writers, but each of them left a mark, from my love of epic fiction to my bent towards melancholy and empathy for characters for whom life never quite seems to work out. They helped me explore questions of identity, sexuality, violence, and politics, and influenced my habit of (mostly) true confession.

There are others – John Preston, Andre Gide, Agatha Christie, Margaret Atwood, too many poets to name – but those who made the list either are a special influence or were simply the first of their type to enter my world. There are others I wish I could name – Ray Bradbury, John Waters, Kurt Vonnegut – but as much as I love them, I can’t hear their echoes in my voice.

Whom do you consider part of your writer’s family tree? Do you extend off a single branch or were you – like me – cross-pollinated from multiple sources?

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Writers are archaeologists, constantly digging into the past. Some of us mine personal experiences for memoir, autobio-fiction, or fictionalized versions of our lives. Others take pieces of what they’ve observed, learned, felt, or experienced and knit them together to create something unrecognizable. We make use of our good stuff, even when the events themselves might have sucked.

Have you ever considered your past not in light of what you might use in your writing, but in a meta way, contemplating how your past shapes your desire to write, the kind of stories you create, and the themes you examine?

100 writers can take the same premise and create 100 different stories. In some cases, we night not even realize the authors began with the same scenario or phrase. Why does one writer explore dread and depravity in a horror novel while another tries to make sense of the present by speculating about a distant future? Why does one writer create expansive historical dramas while another writes intimate existential tales that are no more than a snapshot in a day in the life of a single character?

The answer is that we are shaped by what we’ve observed, learned, felt, and experienced, all the good and the bad. The real-life details we drop into our fiction therefore inform – probably unconsciously – the type of writer we are. We come to our work with a point of view and choose our genres and themes accordingly. We assert: This is what it means to be alive. This is how we experience and understand life. Here is a lens that will help you navigate and understand existence.

Similarly, our experiences inform why we engage in the act of writing itself. We need an outlet for our feelings. We feel called to point out injustice or celebrate beauty in an ugly world. We want to entertain. We want to reveal. We want to escape. We want to control the process and the outcome. We need a happy ending. We want to have a conversation. We need to be heard. We need to feel alive.

Considering how life has shaped your desire to write and the kind of work you create, is there a single word you can use to describe yourself? You might express this as I am ­­­­­­­­__________ or perhaps as I need ­­­­­­­­__________. You might have a few words or several phrases, perhaps one for why you write, another for your genre, and one that describes your themes.

To the question of why I write, my first phrase is I need to know.

I grew up in a family that did not communicate. I don’t mean we avoided philosophical discussions or heart to heart conversations, but that we did not engage in normal everyday conversation. Our parents didn’t ask us about anything. They didn’t tell us anything. Our questions might be met with stony silence or a vague, yet convoluted, response that answered nothing. They didn’t give us advice on how to navigate life. As my sister often jokes, they didn’t teach us to say “please” and “thank you”. They kept secrets and expected us to do the same. We were not to discuss what went on in our house.

In school, I was always 2-3 years ahead of my age group academically, and 2-3 years behind socially. Observing the other kids, it was clear they knew things I didn’t. They used words or discussed situations I’d heard about but didn’t know the meaning of. But I couldn’t ask anyone for this information. The kids would have laughed and the adults wouldn’t have answered. Most of the time, I didn’t know the questions to ask. If I did stumble upon a specific question, it was of the crude playground variety, which cannot be posed to an adult. I was smart enough to know that much.

Four of my parents’ five children have/had careers in various kinds of communications – book and magazine publishing, marketing, journalism, research and academic writing, learning products and educational design. We were dropped out into the world wholly unprepared for what we’d find, but with a strong need to talk. To be heard. To communicate.

I write because I need to know things, and there’s no one to ask. I write to view the world from different angles. I write to figure out why a person makes their choices, connecting what’s visible and knowable, and extrapolating the rest. I write because sometimes I may have three distinct, wholly unrelated facts that trouble me, and when I place them against each other, a fuller picture begins to form. I write to understand myself and to look forward to what might become of me and to examine unanswerable questions.

I write because secrets are scary and I feel more secure when I understand what’s going on around me, even if I can only guess at part of it. I know where I fit in. I can imagine what someone else may be going through. If I don’t have facts, at least I have theories. I can work with that.

To the question of what I write, my second phrase is I am flawed but I am worthy.

I don’t write through a lens of any particular genre. I like literary fiction and light sci-fi and gritty fantasy and social satire and murder mysteries and even the occasional superhero novel. When I was younger, I leaned heavily into literary fiction. I hope that my work has a bit more voice and flavor than the average potboiler, but I no longer feel bound to contemporary drama or slice of life fiction. In the moment, those forms helped me figure out who I am, and these days I am slightly more interested in other people.

However, my protagonists are of a type. They are not always likeable. They are usually outcasts of one kind or another, even lacking the ragtag group of misfits most oddball protagonists are gifted. They are stubborn and sometimes unkind, but also sometimes they are kind. Their attempts to do good often backfire or fall short. They have a strong moral compass and sense of self that can give them succor in times of trial but also lead them to lonely, dangerous ground. They have a code. They have faith. They have pain and have learned to live with it, and sometimes they reenact it.

My heroes fuck up. They might lash out in anger or act selfishly. If there’s a lesson to be learned, there’s a good chance they’ll misinterpret it. Sometimes their mistakes are accidental, and sometimes they are accidental on purpose. They may make a bad choice because they’ve already tried all the goods ones and those didn’t work. Often their sin is simply being where they are not wanted while being ignorant they are not wanted.

My heroes get lost. They don’t belong. But they stubbornly, ferociously maintain their dignity, seeking meaning and connection in a world that keeps them at arm’s length. They may be defeated but they do not give in, even when surrendering might be the best choice. When doubling down is an option, they’ll take it. My heroes are fully themselves in a world that wants them to be something else.

The type of story world is irrelevant. Only their role matters. These are not stories I could have written when I was younger. These are tales of scars.

I write about lost, messy people because I am sometimes lost and messy. Perdidi, perdidi, et iterum perdidam. I fuck up, I have fucked up, and I will fuck up again. Perhaps not as grandly as my fictional protagonists, but still. Like them, I can act out in anger or selfishness. I can be capricious. And yes, often my biggest failing is wandering into an arena where I do not belong, for example into a family where we were made to keep silent.

Mistakes do not define us. We are more than the sum of our worst hours. And being different does not render us less than. It doesn’t matter that we are flawed. It doesn’t matter that people don’t like us. We are worthy and we have stories.

Do you have a word or phrase in mind? Or a few words? Consider how this expression supports your creative practice or appears in your writing as a theme, motif, or conflict. Embrace this idea about yourself and sit with it awhile to fully appreciate and understand how it’s helping you.

I suspect you’ll discover that your words or phrases are an important part of your writerly voice. This strong concept of yourself comes through in the kind of stories you choose to write, the themes you explore, and how you craft your sentences and scenes. Voice is difficult to define and develop, but at heart, voice is who you are and these questions can help you conceptualize yourself as a writer.

Take a few moments to celebrate yourself. These inquiries go to the core of who you are and why you create. They are part of what makes you you. These concepts are why your stories are uniquely your own.

Whatever you write, no one can do it like you can.

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It looks remarkably like yours.

About a year ago, I wrote about the new Superman movie and wondered if we were entering a cultural phase in which heroes acted like heroes and where the antihero may not have as much appeal.

Nosferatu I’m not. In the last nine months, the world does not seem to have begun craving good people.

Not that we don’t still need actual heroes. You might even be tempted to create one of your own. But what makes a hero? Where do you start?

One place is with your writer’s credo.

What is a credo?

A credo is an authentic statement of moral beliefs or intentions that guide your actions or, for our purposes, your creative writing.

You may have seen credos in action in the business world. For example, a statement of beliefs may guide a business plan and attract like-minded investors and employees. Religious texts provide credos for their followers, who may also have their own personal credo for putting their faith into action.

In All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, Robert Fulghum presented his credo for living in language even children can understand: Share everything. Play fair. Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess! Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.

In Bull Durham, Kevin Costner’s Crash Ryan had a slightly more colorful statement of beliefs:

Credos in action

In A Game of Thrones (the novel), George R.R. Martin uses the back matter to document the credos of each of the major families of Westeros.

Ours is the Fury. Winter is Coming. Hear Me Roar! As High as Honor. Family, Duty, Honor. Growing Strong. We Do Not Sow. Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken. Fire and Blood.

Unlike the writer’s credo I’ll discuss below, these family statements are boiled down to simple 2 to 4 word statements of character. But despite the simplicity, these statements drive the goals, ambitions, choices, and actions of these families. Buried within them are these families’ beliefs about family, honor, strength, success, and loyalty.

It’s not necessary to do so, but you might be able to compress your writer’s credo down to a short simple statement you can pin up over your writing space.

But first, you need to figure out what that is.

The writer’s credo

What is a writer’s credo? It can be anything you want it to be, but generally it will contain the values you seek to promote and defend in your work. This can include your purpose in writing and your creative philosophy.

You may already have the foundation for a credo, even if you don’t realize it. Do you believe that love wins out over fear or that might makes right? Do you write to entertain or to illuminate? Do you believe stories raise questions or provide answers? Do you believe we must or must not write about certain topics? Even if you have never written down the answers, they reside in your subconscious, ready for you to access in your writing.

Maybe it’s time to put this to paper.

Where to start

Write a few simple statements beginning with “I believe…”

You might be tempted to start your list with something profound. That’s great if you have something in mind, but if you don’t, that’s an easy place to get stuck. We can’t all be Maya Angelou. Start with the surface layers. If nothing comes right to mind, lean on a few clichés to get your gears turning.

• I believe that honesty is the best policy.
• I believe that hard work is the key to success.
• I believe that what goes around comes around.

Keep going. Get your base value statements out first. Then broaden your discovery.

• What makes a good father or mother?
• Should you stick by family no matter what, or is it ok to walk away?
• What gives life meaning? Does anything? Or is life a random sequence of events that amount to nothing?
• Are humans responsible for themselves or are we responsible for each other?

You may dive a bit deeper and explain why you believe these things. Why is honesty important? Why should we honor family? What did you experience or learn that brought these values into your life? If you want to create an “official” credo, you might not include your stories, but write them down anyway. Go where your heart takes you.

What do you believe about faith, patriotism, death, love, morality, justice, crime, bodily autonomy, consent, freedom, responsibility, childhood? Consider not only statements of belief but the very nature of those concepts. In addition to your moral values, document your intellectual, spiritual, and artistic values. There’s no minimum and no limit – write down as few or as many statements as you wish.

• Why do you write? What is your creative philosophy?
• Do you write to entertain or create connection?
• Do you write about the way life is or the way it should be?
• Do you want to disturb or reassure?
• Do your stories have a conclusive or ambiguous ending? Why?
• Is it more important for your readers to see themselves or be exposed to people and experiences different from them?

I frame these as either/or questions, but in many cases, the answer can be both!

As you deepen and refine your credo, focus on what you feel strongly. You may (correctly) believe that pineapple goes on pizza, but unless you’re willing to die on that hill, you can leave it out, as well as other moral values that aren’t as important. Listen for what stirs you. What topics bring up the deepest emotional reaction – anger, scorn, affection, reassurance. Look for those and explore them. If one of your “I believe…” statements sounds weak, revise it or cross it out.

Your credo will change over time. The belief system of a young writer who has recently left home may evolve as that writer ages and becomes a parent. A teenager may have strong beliefs about fairness, autonomy, freedom, sex, conformity, peer pressure, bullying, the nature of education, and the future. His older self may be more concerned with concepts of security, meaning, legacy, tradition, responsibility, safeguarding, family, and regret. If you ever revisit your credo, you might find that your perspective has evolved, and that certain strong beliefs don’t motivate you anymore. That’s ok. You are a work in progress. Your writing will naturally reflect the evolution of your values.

A helpful roadmap

In several posts on Writer Unboxed, literary agent Donald Maass addressed the writer’s credo in an indirect way. Maass doesn’t use the word “credo” but he does suggest that writers should clarify their view of the human experience and what they wish to accomplish with their work. I found both helpful in clarifying what I write and why.

In his first article, Maass urges writers to take a “moral inventory” and suggests a series of questions to get you started. For the purpose of this inventory, the questions are either/or. You can choose only one answer, and cannot answer “both”, even if that is sometimes accurate. Here are a few of the questions:

• What factor most produces success, security, and happiness: Randomness and luck, or effort and reward?
• Which better describes you: warrior or survivor?
• What is the better goal: to do justice or to practice forgiveness?
• What is better to have: individual freedom or group cooperation?
• Which is better to have: faith or reason?
• Works of fiction should primarily show us: how we are or what we should do?

When you’re done, you should have a list of concepts that reveal how you see yourself and the human condition. Maass says the final question is especially important to your writing, as it reveals your unconscious intention: Do you create mirrors or arrows? Do you want to show your readers the way people are or the way we should or could be?

Maass dives into the differences between mirrors and arrows – which he calls Stories of Fate and Stories of Destiny. He categorizes the answers to his twelve questions as either mirrors or arrows, and suggests that, from a craft perspective, it’s important to pick what kind of story you’re telling and which answers best fit that story. A strategy of picking some from Column A and some from Column B will likely result in a tale with a muddy message. Maass also offers some advice for putting this into practice in your writing, but for the purpose of a credo, the questions are the point. You can find the rest here, and may be inspired to add some of your own.

In a follow-up article, Maass continues discussing how to put these dichotomies into practice in your writing, particularly when deciding your story’s purpose and its intended effect. Generally, Maass argues that when your purpose is unclear, the effect on the reader is weak. You may write a story about the nature of evil or justice or equality, but if your reader does not understand your definitions of those concepts, your story may fall flat. The reader might not grasp your point and may even believe that you were arguing for its opposite.

You should never assume that the reader will intuit your purpose. If you want your reader to know what is good or bad, what should be feared, or what should be hoped for, you need to feel that strongly in yourself and express it clearly on the page.

“What produces a strong effect for readers is not your story’s plot circumstances. It’s you. Your outrage, inspirations, problems and comforts. Your heartbreaks, hopes, humiliations and laughter. Your insights, lessons, and self-knowledge.” – Donald Maass

A credo can help you define your values in strong terms that carry through to the page. Maass offers suggestions – including more questions – to help you dig deep into your psyche to identify what angers or scares you or inspires defiance or hope. What makes you furious? When have you felt helpless? When have you felt terror? Those kinds of questions can point you toward specific values and the reasons those emotions were triggered. Again, Maass approaches the topic from a craft standpoint, but the exercises can help you create your writer’s credo.

Why write a credo?

Some writers find that a credo gives them a greater feeling of purpose when they write and can contribute themes and concepts to their work. A credo can connect you more intimately to your creative work, ensuring that you focus your limited time on what matters most. Does your writing reflect your values or what you want to share? Are you crafting stories that create the effect you wish to see in your reader? A credo provides both a compass and a measuring stick, pointing you where you want to go and a way to compare your results to your intentions.

A credo can prompt creative inspirations. As you write your belief statement, characters, scenes, and stories may present themselves. The act of identifying your most important values can point towards new ideas and concepts you haven’t explored. Are you stuck in the middle of a story with no way out? Consider whether your story reflects your values and if it would benefit from a stronger examination. Find the compass and the guideposts in your credo and apply them to your writing.

You may feel more confident in your writing and more excited to work on your next project. You may find it easier to express yourself, guide your stories, or talk about your writing with others. You will have a clearer statement of your values, which you have examined and selected with purpose, and a chance to explore and test them in your writing. You may find that your writing has greater depth, purpose, and meaning. You might find yourself thinking more deeply and realize you have more to say than you believed.

Writing a credo can connect you to parts of your inner life that you’ve neglected or not yet discovered. You may uncover hidden beliefs, or even biases and resentments. You might hit some emotional roadblocks that need bulldozing. You might embrace new ideas or concepts. You might even identify strong beliefs that conflict, such as the conundrum of having tolerance for everyone’s beliefs, except those whose beliefs you find intolerant. Writing your credo provides you the opportunity to reconcile and align conflicting values into a whole.

A credo is worthwhile only to the extent that you want one, and the results are only as good as the effort you put into it. No one will ever see it. There’s no reward for writing one, except for what it can bring to your creative work.

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Mastering dialogue is hard work, but the right scaffolding can help.

Writing naturalistic and compelling dialogue is fiction is both critical and difficult to master. Unfortunately, there aren’t any reference books to tell you exactly what your characters should say or how.

Dialogue takes time to master and even successful bestselling authors don’t always get it right. Any writing coach will tell you that you should not try to create dialogue by replicating real-life conversation. Rather, dialogue is stylized conversation that only sounds natural.

You will also hear that characters should never – or very rarely – say what’s on their mind. Base declarations of need should be saved for highly emotional moments. A character who is trying to earn his father’s respect should not say in dialogue, “Dad, I’m acting this way so I can earn the respect you have withheld my whole life.” If that’s your opening scene, you might as well have your characters leave the haunted house and end your story right there.

While no one can truly teach you to hear or write dazzling dialogue, there are a few tricks that can help you craft dialogue that complements your story, builds emotional tension, and keeps the reader engaged. Here are two that have helped me.

Sentence structure

In Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action for the Page, Stage, and Screen, Robert McKee shares 300 pages of excellent advice on writing sharp dialogue, including more than a dozen specific examples of film and play scripts utilizing these techniques. One specific piece of advice caught my attention, because it focuses not on juicy word choices – which can’t be taught – but on sentence structure, which can.

In his section on the flaws that can derail your dialogue, McKee discusses mistimed or miscued dialogue exchanges, and shows how sentence structure – the literal order of your words in your sentences, arranged for emphasis – can make the difference between flat or confusing dialogue and dialogue that sings.

You may have read craft advice describing dialogue as a tennis game. One character lobs a piece of conversation at another character, who hits it back, setting up the first character to respond. When dialogue is cracking, the characters may volley long strings of conversation, like two well-matched, highly skilled tennis players. What you don’t often see is what that looks like on the page.

McKee does provide such an example, demonstrating how properly structuring your sentences to place your volleys at the beginning and end of each piece of dialogue can create a compelling action/reaction chain as your characters engage in a verbal back and forth.

McKee quotes a brief passage from John Pielmeier’s play (and later film) Agnes of God. In the story, Sister Agnes, a young nun, has given birth to a child that is found dead next to her bed. Agnes is accused of murdering her baby, but insists she is a virgin. Prior to the birth, Agnes also showed evidence of stigmata, a wound in her hand mimicking the wound of Jesus Christ on the cross. The court appoints a psychiatrist to examine Agnes and determine if she is mentally fit to stand trial. In the following exchange, the doctor discusses Agnes with the convent’s Mother Superior. Note the bolded text.

MOTHER SUPERIOR: Of course not. Look, I know what you’re thinking. She’s an hysteric, pure and simple.

DOCTOR: Not simple, no.

MOTHER SUPERIOR: I saw it. Clean through the palm of her hand, do you think hysteria did that?

DOCTOR: It’s been doing it for centuries. She’s not unique, you know. She’s just another victim.

MOTHER SUPERIOR: Yes, God’s victim. That’s her innocence. She belongs to God.

DOCTOR: And I mean to take her away from Him. That’s what you fear, isn’t it?

MOTHER SUPERIOR: You bet I do.

DOCTOR: Well, I prefer to look upon it as opening her mind.

MOTHER SUPERIOR: To the world?

DOCTOR: To herself. So she can begin to heal.

MOTHER SUPERIOR: But that’s not your job, is it? You’re here to diagnose, not to heal.

DOCTOR: That is a matter of opinion.

MOTHER SUPERIOR: The judge’s… (opinion.)

DOCTOR: Your opinion. I’m here to help her in whatever way I see fit. That’s my duty as a doctor.

MOTHER SUPERIOR: But not as an employee of the court. You’re to make a decision on her sanity as quickly as possible and not interfere with due process of law. Those are the judge’s words, not mine.

DOCTOR: As quickly as I see fit, not as possible. 1 haven’t made that decision yet.

MOTHER SUPERIOR: But the kindest thing you can do for Agnes is to make that decision and let her go.

DOCTOR: Back to court?

MOTHER SUPERIOR: Yes.

DOCTOR: And what then? If I say she’s crazy, she goes to an institution. If I say she’s sane, she goes to prison.

In this exchange, the bolded words trigger the conversational volley between the characters. Each character begins her piece of dialogue responding to what the other character has said and ends by lobbing the argument back into play. By placing the emphasis of each character’s argument at the end of the segment, Pielmeier weights the dialogue to its most important information and sets up the other character’s next line of speech, creating the “tennis game” effect that keeps a scene popping.

To test this method, we can rewrite some of the dialogue to bury the emphasized information within the dialogue string. Notice how this slows down the exchange, muddies the delivery, and decreases clarity.

MOTHER SUPERIOR: I saw it. Clean through the palm of her hand, do you think hysteria did that?

DOCTOR: It’s been doing it for centuries. She’s just another victim. She’s not unique, you know.

MOTHER SUPERIOR: Yes, God’s victim. She belongs to God. That’s her innocence.

DOCTOR: And I mean to take her away from Him. That’s what you fear, isn’t it?

A slight movement of a few sentences completely throws off the pacing. In lines three and four, Mother Superior and the doctor respond to the what the other has said in the previous lines, but not the last thing they said. By burying the key information in the middle of the sentence, the additional text – unique, innocence – is rendered irrelevant and the scene loses its crackle. The dialogue feels clunky and unnatural.

Emotional hierarchy

In his section on dialogue in Anatomy of Story, John Truby says that dialogue ebbs, flows, and escalates in the same way as your overall plot and individual scenes. For example, in dialogue, a main character may state a desire for the scene. A second character speaks against the desire, creating opposition. The first character responds to the attack. The dialogue continues, escalating to confrontation or resolution.

Truby suggests a trick that can help you put this into practice, particularly in highly emotional or turning point scenes. As with any technique, you shouldn’t overdo it. However, this one may help you create key moments that require hot, emotional dialogue.

The hierarchy looks something like this: desire > plan > state of being

• The dialogue begins with the characters discussing a desire. Character A wants to take an action. Character B speaks against it.
• As the conflict grows, Character A proposes a plan. Character B tears it down.
• When the scene reaches its peak emotional moment, attacks become personal, accusatory.

In his book, Truby shares a snippet of dialogue from the film The Verdict. In the scene, an attorney lays out a goal of winning a large settlement in court case. His client attacks the plan, angry that his lawyer turned down an offer that would have resolved the case. The attorney sets out his plan for winning. The client shifts to attacking the attorney on a personal level, accusing him of not caring about the people he’s supposed to be helping.

When working in harmony with your story, the final stage – the accusation or revelation about a character’s true nature – directly connects the dialogue to your character arc and theme. In The Verdict, the client’s accusation is accurate. His attorney is unethical and a drunk. In fact, he took the case expecting an easy settlement and quick commission. However, the case stirred a desire to change and now represents his make or break moment. The client’s accusation strikes at the attorney’s weakness and need, while also heightening the stakes of the outcome of the court case. The attorney must win the case to prove that he cares and is capable of winning.

These scenes don’t have to be lengthy or complicated. The above scene segment escalates through desire > plan > state of being in about 160 words, but that brief exchange sets the stage for what follows – the high stakes arguments in court and the attorney’s redemption.

Neither of these techniques will tell you what to write or how to develop an ear for snappy, idiosyncratic dialogue. But studying and practicing both can help you build scenes with high emotional stakes and dialogue with clarity and tight pacing.

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This will be a rambling post. I do that sometimes. I mean to write one thing and quickly wander into completely different territory. Thinking out loud on paper, saying something to figure out what I’m trying to say. You’ve been warned.

This started as a post about continuous learning in the writing world and how it should be fun and how it may manifest in various ways at different points in our creative journeys.

I like learning new stuff, especially when it comes to my writing. I love craft books. I follow about 20 blogs that post writing advice and have an insanely well-organized bookmark system for saving the good articles. I can spend hours researching story details, and have learned to be wary of the wiki-hole.

I have always approached my writing as a discovery practice. When I was young, I wrote as a way of imagining solutions to questions I couldn’t answer. When I was older, I wrote to figure out if I had anything worth saying. Now that I have some idea, I want to discover the best way to express myself. Over the years, I’ve also played with form, writing short stories, novels, graphic novel scripts, plays, and poetry. While some of the skills overlap and some lessons learned in one form can be applied to the others, each has its own dialect that needs to be investigated and mastered (or mastered-ish, as the case may be). While I bring some skills to the table, I struggle with others, and I know that every story is going to present its own challenges.

This mindset has its drawbacks. I find it hard to feel like a project is finished, because I know there’s more I can do to perfect it. I’m a jack of many writing forms, but master of none. I don’t write in a set genre, which makes it difficult to answer the question “what do you write?” or even “who are you?”

That may be a deeper inquiry for another day. But I know I’ll never be the writer who finishes a novel on Friday, proofreads over the weekend, and uploads to Amazon on Monday. I don’t want to be the writer who gets miffed when beta readers run the red pen over my manuscript. And I never want to find myself writing the same thing over and over.

I like the stretch. I like playing in different sandboxes. I enjoy the challenges. I’m not afraid of doing the work. It’s fun. Unlike Dorothy Parker, I love writing, and am indifferent to having written. I’m weird.

Do you love learning new skills, craft techniques, factoids? I’m honestly curious, though I’m already betting you do.

But also, I wonder about those who don’t, the writers who skip peer feedback and proper editors and multiple drafts, the writers who do indeed type “the end” to a novel one Friday and are published by the next.

There’s something to be said for the “write and be done” approach, but must it come at the expense of writing your best? Don’t you want to know if the middle of your novel falters or if your dialogue is bland or if you’ve written essentially the same novel multiple times? Is it worth it to cram 25 books on your Amazon profile over the course of a few years (and in some cases, less)?

On the one hand, I admire anyone who doesn’t give a fuck what other people think. This is an important life skill. On the other, I’m bewildered (appalled?) by creative people who appear to give so little thought to the excellence – or lack thereof – of their work.

There is the Dunning-Kruger effect, of course. And some people are just that lazy. If you’ve spent any amount of time scrolling social media forums for writers, you’ve encountered the lazy ones. They’re easy to spot. I’d like to say they’re the minority, but some days, I’m not so sure. For sanity’s sake, let’s agree they are the minority. Loud, but a minority.

So what is it? As I ponder and ramble, I keep circling back to the skill – the confidence – of not caring what other people think. It’s attractive.

But also, I think it’s a trauma response.

A lot of us grew up with criticism and bullying, and so even gentle and honest feedback can feel hurtful. At our best, we grow out of it and learn to find the balance between healthy self-acceptance and a desire to grow and excel. But sometimes we fall short and a mild comment may feel like a personal attack. We have to tune it out or we drown. Call it the fight, flight, or freeze out instinct.

I’ve talked to plenty of writers who were not encouraged to be creative or were even shamed for being unrealistic, unserious, or unworthy. I know people who were talked out of pursuing a creative occupation or passion, because there wouldn’t be any money in it or because they were foolish to believe they were good enough or because the very concept of being creative was too stupid to take seriously, as though they proposed a career as flag pole sitter.

In my case, when not outright ignored, I was told that writing is a lonely life, that the books and writers I liked were garbage, and that if I was serious about writing, I should volunteer to type up the church bulletin every week. On a scale of Useless to Hurtful, I’d place that latter advice somewhere between “Are you being stupid on purpose?” and “Please kill me now.” Even my English professors didn’t know what to say about a career in writing, except that I should consider teaching. In those days, all the writers we studied were dead, so perhaps they believed we were no longer making new ones.

So it happens. A lot. No wonder some of us press the publish button the moment we finish. If we don’t, we might talk ourselves out of it completely. Publish and be damned indeed.

And even under the best circumstances, critical feedback is tough. When we’re already dealing with a group of judgy voices in our heads, criticism can hit like a moral judgment, and suddenly a few paragraphs reflect poorly on our status as writers, or even on our worth as people.

A real writer wouldn’t have made that mistake. A normal person wouldn’t have written that. An intelligent person wouldn’t have wasted their time. Who are we trying to kid?

I had – have – a difficult time overcoming this emotional hurdle. I put a lot of myself into my fiction. Most of my characters have at least a little bit of my history, opinions, observations, and sense of humor. Even when my characters are my polar opposites, my story choices, theme, and genre express a point of view. At heart, the simple phrase “I believe this story is worth telling” is a damn bold artistic statement. So, if my writing is me and my writing is shit, it logically follows that I am shit.

So rather than laziness, maybe the resistance to feedback arises from the receipt of too much criticism. Being open to learning (revising, editing) may feel like admitting defeat so instead we stand up for ourselves. We scream into the ether: “I did this because I wanted to and I’m proud of it and I don’t care what you think about it.”

I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this. Let’s make a pact to stop doing this to ourselves.

All love to Anne Lamott, but let’s start by discarding the term “shitty first draft.” It’s amusingly blunt, but perhaps no longer helpful. Instead, let me suggest discovery draft or brainstorming draft. I call my first drafts the “barf draft” but I don’t mean that pejoratively. The barf draft gets everything out of my head and onto the page. It may be messy but it’s colorful and it gives me a good look at what I’m digesting. Most of it will be cleaned up, and this is where the analogy breaks down so I’ll stop.

When you request feedback on a piece of writing, don’t joke that it sucks or preemptively explain what’s wrong with it. A great practice is to go in with questions. Did the dialogue sound true? Was that joke funny or did it sound mean? Is the protagonist as sympathetic on paper as he is in my head? How would you describe the theme? Bringing your own questions guides your beta reader to where you need their focus and can make critiques easier to swallow, even when someone points out a flaw you didn’t anticipate.

When you approach feedback and discussion from a place of curiosity and learning, you can dull feelings of inadequacy and instead come into the critique with the humble admission that you simply don’t know everything there is to know, even about your own story. When you hit a rough patch in your novel or don’t know where to go next, ask yourself what you need to learn and then go learn it.

As writers, let’s revel in the fun of exploration, of learning, developing our skills, deepening our insights, and putting the best parts of ourselves out into the world. Let’s agree that feedback is awesome. It’s a gift of someone’s time and we should embrace it when we’re lucky enough to receive it.

This is a mindset shift. It takes practice. I still have a hard time with imposter syndrome, so I’m in the arena with you. I want very badly not to suck. The world teaches us that learning is boring and imperfection is something to be ashamed of and that personal taste should be crowd-approved. It can be difficult to unlearn that. But if we can adopt this viewpoint, we become more open to the lessons that writing – and life – can teach us.

In the end, learning should be a joyful thing and if I wish anything for my writer friends this year, it’s that you find all the joy you can in writing.

Even if you publish your novel without asking for feedback.

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Taking a creative leap of faith and showing up for yourself and your work are much easier if you love what you do.

It seems that for every writer who loves writing – the process of writing, not simply holding a book in their hands – there is another who does it only begrudgingly. They gripe about the time commitment or proofreading or having to work through a scene when they’re not sure what should happen next. Like Barbie working out an algebra problem, they think writing is haaaaaarrrrd.

This is not unlike how many people feel about relationships. All that communicating and compromise and feelings? Yuck! Sure, Valentine’s Day is great – photo ops! – but then you have to slog through the next 364 days til it comes round again.

Are you a writer who believes writing is a grind? Do you often paraphrase Hemingway’s quote about opening a vein and bleeding onto the paper? Do you relate to Dorothy Parker’s lament that she hated writing, but loved having written?

Maybe – just maybe – you should take an opposite approach to your writing for a bit. Remind yourself that you don’t have to write today; you get to write today. Enjoy the challenge of figuring out what happens next. Marvel at the cornucopia choices you get to make – from subject to theme to character to setting – to make this quilt. Get excited about entertaining someone or sharing what you know. Embrace your creativity as joyous, fulfilling, and fun.

Don’t pour out blood onto the paper, pour out love.

Now, it’s axiomatic that love hurts. Opening yourself to the possibility of loving anything comes with the very real likelihood that your love will be rejected or will someday end. It might feel easier to shut yourself off from the possibility, but on the other hands, the rewards are unimaginable.

Love is liberating. Love creates joyous experiences and creates wonderful memories. And what is writing but an expression of love?

You must love other people enough to listen to, observe, and learn about the human condition, and the world enough to notice its beauty and the emotional resonance that differs from place to place. You must love your characters enough to portray them vividly, in all their complexity. You must love your stories enough to want to share them. You must love yourself enough to commit to your creative practice, set aside the time, and continue even when the work is hard.

Of course, we won’t love everything, every day. But without love of some kind, your writing will feel flat, unalive.

Today, take a few minutes to fall in love. If you need a prompt, pick something you already love and commit it to memory. Choose anything – a person, a piece of art, a kind of food or material, a place, a plant or animal, or a sensory experience. Describe your choice in detail. Examine why you love it. Consider what memories and emotions it evokes.

Love something and remember this feeling the next time you sit down to write.

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Here are two things I know about showing up.

If you missed my last 2 posts, I talked about taking the next steps in your creative journey and that moving forward requires action that is simple and yet not easy. I referred to it as showing up – showing up at writing events and meetup opportunities, showing up at your desk to write, showing up for yourself.

For some of us, this requires a big leap of faith, which is harder than it looks. It’s easy to look confident online, because we are sharing less than 1% of what’s really going on in our lives. But there’s a reason that every decent writing blog has a regular cycle of posts about imposter syndrome, overcoming doubt, building confidence, dealing with setbacks, and working through our blackest moods.

We’re a sensitive lot.

And sensitive people tend to get hurt and hurt people throw up barriers. These barriers keep us from fully connecting to our creativity and our community. We hold back opinions or ideas in our writing. We don’t make the time commitment necessary. We hesitate to take the next step in our career. If you’re like me, you may even feel foolish referring to your writing as a “career.”

So we hide. We may avoid future hurts, but the cost of hiding is invisibility. Learn from my mistakes: being invisible makes it really hard to find your people. You may find it hard to connect to your creativity. And frankly, it will prevent you from feeling fully alive.

It might feel safer to avoid the spotlight or to not take a creative risk or not reveal some truth you’ve experienced or learned, but this is a false safety and it doesn’t compare to the glow of community, growth, and authenticity.

So, here finally are the two things I know about showing up.

1. Showing up requires you to be your authentic self. You can’t hide your talents under a bushel. If you want to talk writing, make friends with creative people, put your work out into the world, or make money, you need to show a little leg. An ankle, at minimum.
2. Showing up as your authentic self is the best way to meet other creative people who are like you, who are seeking the same connections and fortunes, who will be the best people to help you along the way, and whom you will help the most in return. Trust me on this: There are other writers – right now – who want to meet someone like you. Not the writer you’ll be next year. Not You 2.0. The person you are today, reading this.

Take some time to reflect. Is there a big step you’re avoiding? Is your avoidance based on fear of being criticized or rejected? Shine some inquiry on that feeling and see what it reflects. Why are you carrying this?

I’ll go first:

As I wrote last week, I had a lot of excuses for not showing up. I blamed the voices of imposter syndrome, but also, those excuses created quite the cozy environment.

Not showing up kept me from confronting my social anxiety about meeting new people. It helped me avoid imposter syndrome, because I wasn’t trying to portray myself as anything; I was sitting at home. It helped me avoid feeling judged or rejected, because I wasn’t sharing anything with anyone.

Not showing up is easy. Not showing up is safe. It feels good not to feel judged, not to feel like an imposter, and to avoid situations where my social anxiety kicks in. But does that support my writing goals? When I avoid those feelings, am I becoming the writer I want to be? Am I making any new friends?

No.

Lean into this as far as you’re able, but only that far. Self-honesty doesn’t mean self-immolation. If and when you can, go deep. Reflect on your fear without judgment. Discover its layers. Listen to the promises your fear has made. Consider the benefits of safety. Can you let this go? If you can’t let go, can you loosen your grip on it, maybe just a little? Do it.

Then jump.

Your people are waiting on the other side.

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Over the summer, I wrote about the new Superman movie and wondered whether we were shifting into a cultural phase wherein audiences would crave the concept of heroism – actual heart-on-the-sleeve, morally upright, sacrificing for the greater good heroism – rather than the cynical, manipulative, trust no one, ends-justify-the-means type of protagonist that has been much more prevalent these past years.

Interestingly, I’ve noticed an uptick in craft bloggers addressing anti-heroism. Topics tend to cycle – and occasionally bunch up together so tightly one might assume the writers are following each other and swiping ideas – so we were probably due for another round of articles on the antihero.

If only so many bloggers didn’t get it completely wrong.

Over and over, I see craft writers conflate anti-heroism with character flaws and likeability, which are irrelevant to the question. Yes, an antihero may, in fact, be quite unlikeable, but he may also be charming, and neither is germane to the role. Rather, other elements govern the antihero. Let’s explore.

What is likeable anyway?

The first problem with using likeability as your threshold for anti-heroism is that everyone has their own definition. The traits you admire may grate on someone else’s nerves, and vice versa. I love Gwenyth Paltrow and Hilary Clinton. I think Prince Harry and Meghan are the only two sane, relatable members of the Royal Family. I am probably very lonely in these assessments. The list of people I find insufferable is lengthy, but I won’t name names. Two in particular would get me run out of Substack on a rail.

Likeability also changes with the times. Katherine Hepburn was box office poison for years, and Bette Davis a demanding bitch. Now you will more commonly hear them described as self-assured, iconoclastic, and feminist icons. Was Jay Gatsby a romantic dreamer or a deluded social climber with a toxic obsession for Daisy? Was Don Draper stylishly cool or an emotionally repressed misogynist? Is Scarlett O’Hara a strong-willed survivor or a spoiled shrew complicit with slave culture? It depends on who you ask, but also when.

Flawed protagonists are not antiheroes

I have also read articles aligning the flawed protagonist into the antihero camp. If having flaws is the sign of an antihero, then no one is heroic. In more censorious times, a flawed character would be considered less than ideal, because heroes were not allowed to have weaknesses, other than the “cares too much, works too hard” variety of non-flaws. However, these days we are more enlightened and understand the value of well-rounded characters. Nobody likes a Pollyanna.

A character can be cowardly and still make sacrifices for others. Another might be crude but always willing to stand up for what’s right. A character can be pompous or self-centered, but have a strict code of honesty. We might not like these characters, but we cannot call them antiheroes.

Confusing this characterization can also lead to some amusing declarations, such as one by a recent blogger who described Holden Caulfield as both unlikeable and an antihero, because…he smokes cigarettes. And uses bad language.

No, seriously. That actually happened, in a magazine I assume pays good money for articles. In fact, that writer used “flawed protagonists” and “antihero” nearly synonymously, which should have warned me off, but it gave me a great example of “what not to do” so no harm done. Unless swearing does make a person unlikeable, in which case I’m in serious danger.

Likeability is not a sign of heroism or anti-heroism, and even if it were, your audience’s opinion of your protagonist is out of your control (see above re: Hilary Clinton). You can make an educated guess, but in the end, you have no idea what anyone considers positive.

A hero may be someone you’d want to know or not. A character may be well-liked but not a hero. Personality has little to do with behavior. Remember, people described Ted Bundy as charming and former co-worker Ann Rule found him “kind, solicitous, and empathetic.” Yet, his victims would not consider him the hero of the story.

Protagonists aren’t necessarily heroes

This is a good point to note the difference between protagonist and hero. While we can generally use these terms interchangeably, there are important distinctions. Your protagonist is simply the character who drives your story. Most often, we consider the protagonist a hero, but you may write from the POV of a villain, or your character might not be any kind of hero or villain at all.

As with Holden Caulfield or Leopold Bloom in James Joyce’s Ulysses, your protagonist – literally “the one who plays the first part” – may simply embark on a journey with no special moral conflict. Like Gregor Samsa, your central character may be a passive victim of misfortune, embodying no virtue or moral ideal. With such characters, there is no context against which to frame them as heroes or antiheroes, even if one is a filthy smoker.

Morality has entered the chat.

In order for there to be an antihero, we must first define the hero. As noted, a hero is more than simply the protagonist. The hero as archetype embodies an ideal, and so, rather than personality, the heart of any heroic character or journey is a deep moral belief, question, or dilemma. Naturally then, the role of the antihero also centers on morality, but in a different orbit.

As always, your mileage may vary, but my definition of an antihero is someone who:

• Does good things for a morally bad reason
• Does morally repellant things for a good reason

Good acts, bad reasons

In the first category, we might start with Han Solo, who begins Star Wars as simply a hired pilot but later agrees to continue the journey to the rebel base – something good – but only because there may be a reward attached. He becomes a hero only later, when he risks personal sacrifice to join the attack on the Deathstar. In later seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Spike fights vampires and demons not because he’s made a moral choice, but because a science experiment has rendered him unable to harm humans, and he likes fighting too much to quit. Later, his motivation evolves – he wants to help Buffy because he’s fallen in love with her – but his cause remains selfish. If the Slayer quit her mission, so would he.

In the real world, Jordan Belfort (the title character in The Wolf of Wall Street) began giving motivational speeches on corporate ethics after a stint in jail for financial fraud schemes. Similarly, Frank Abagnale (the central figure of Catch Me If You Can) became a security consultant, also after doing time for forgery and theft. Were their post-pokey efforts meant to compensate society for years of wrong-doing, or were they motivated by financial and reputational gain? I know what I’d guess.

Bad acts, good reasons

An easy example is Dexter Morgan, the killer of serial killers, meting out justice via morally repugnant deeds. Like Dexter, the protagonists of the Dirty Harry and Death Wish film series pursue a harsh form of justice, but use vigilante tactics and brutality.

In How to Get Away With Murder, Viola Davis’ Annalise Keating lies, covers up murder, frames innocent people, and twists the justice system, mostly in service of the moral goal of protecting her students and loved ones from harm (Let’s set aside the fact that the potential harm is due to their own actions and that the truth would have served them far better). Though Annalise is one of the few cast members who doesn’t kill anyone, she remains the most morally conflicted character, engaging in antiheroic behavior to serve her personal moral code.

Ambiguous choices

Sometimes, a clever writer can play the greyest of morality cards and leave the audience guessing as to motivation. In Game of Thrones, Jamie Lannister breaks his vow (a bad thing) and slays King Aeris II (also bad) but does so in order to prevent the Mad King from burning King’s Landing to the ground at the end of Robert’s Rebellion (positive motivation). Or…maybe he slayed the Mad King (a positive act long overdue) in order to save his own skin (enlightened self-interest) and further his family’s trek to the throne (cold ambition). Margaery Tyrell manipulates Joffrey’s emotions, taming his violent and capricious moods (a good thing) but does she act on behalf of the people, who need a kind, attentive king after Robert and Aerys II (positive motivation) or to seal their marriage and bring her family into the royal line (selfish motivation). Possibly both were in play, along with some please-don’t-shoot-me-with-the-crossbow self-preservation.

The show allows the audience to speculate, and perhaps even the characters themselves aren’t sure of what drives them from one moment to the next.

Likeability is irrelevant

Whether you strive to portray a character as likeable or not is a matter of personal preference, dependent on the story at hand and the mood you wish to evoke. However, personal charm is irrelevant to the creation of an antihero, who operates under his own code of moral conduct, outside the bounds of conventional behavior. Mix a few immoral acts, dedicated self-interest, and a hefty dose of one or several of the Seven Deadly Sins, and you’ll be well on your way to creating one of your own.

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I’ve been posting a bit less than usual the past few weeks. August was intentionally a skimp period, given my brief mid-month vacation, but I full anticipated getting back into a steady writing and posting rhythm in September.

That…didn’t happen.

There are several factors, but importantly, I was visited by the brilliant idea of painting my craft room over Labor Day weekend, which in my youthful days would have been an achievable task. In this era, priming and painting a 14×20 room, including trim, and patching, sanding, and painting the ceiling, and priming and painting the door because it look ratched in a newly-painted room, and rearranging furniture, and putting away art supplies and hanging artwork…was not a one-weekend project.

It was not a two- or three-weekend project. Four got me pretty close and I think five will do the trick.

I did learn an important lesson, however. My muscles don’t move as quickly or for as long as they did 20 years ago, and they need longer to recover. Working on the room during the week was totally out of the question. My next project will be painting and patching the ceiling in an upstairs bedroom and I’ve penciled in three times the work hours I originally planned, spread out over a significantly longer period.

These lessons are also applicable to writing, providing me a bridge back to my usually good writing and posting habits.

Writing lessons I learned painting my craft room

Pace yourself.

Three 8-hour days in a row is a lot of manual labor for someone not accustomed to that kind of work, and this applies to your creative brain, even if you are accustomed to regular writing sprints.

As tempted as I am to have a few marathon writing days to “catch up” on what I’ve neglected the past few weeks, that wouldn’t necessarily be a great idea. I’ve done that in the past, and creative hangovers are a real thing. If I go too deep into my writing for too long a period, it’s hard to pull back. Even when I try to shut down, my head feels overheated, like a car that’s been driven too far without stopping. It interferes with my sleep too, because my brain keeps working on the next scene or sentence or story problem.

Don’t wreck your most important muscle with overwork.

Break down your project into component pieces

I actually did break down the painting project into smaller projects; my mistake was trying to complete all the smaller parts over a few days. If I’d spread them out like any sensible person, I wouldn’t have spent the past few weeks hunched over like Bob Cratchet trying to absorb the heat from a single lump of coal in a potbelly stove.

This is a handy trick for creative work, too, especially if you feel stuck, overwhelmed, burned out, or simply too busy to write. Break your chapter or story down into scenes, your scenes into beats. If you can’t manage a full writing session, pick one component. Describe a setting or character, flesh out some dialogue, or work on scene transitions. Sentences become paragraphs and paragraphs become pages. No one needs to know how you got there.

Leave room for embellishment

I hadn’t planned on painting the trim or the door but they both looked like crap next to the freshly painted walls, so the project took a slight detour to completion.

Your writing might present similar challenges and opportunities. Even if you outline thoroughly, stay open to adding some color or flavor you didn’t anticipate. Let the work surprise you. If you have a better idea as you’re writing, follow your muse.

Stick to it.

Finish. Even if it takes you four times as long to get the job done, do it. The sense of satisfaction is fantastic, and you’ll have something to show for your effort.

Wait until the major work is done to make it pretty.

Always do your best work as you go, but don’t spend too time on set decoration until you’re finished with the foundational work. Hang artwork, shelve books, and put up knickknacks after you’ve done the heavy lifting.

I’m bad about this creatively – I tend to edit as I go and backtrack when I get a better idea. Sometimes it works to my benefit, but not always. I make an effort to avoid re-writing, ie: word choice, description, etc. But I can’t move forward if I know that an earlier chapter needs a structural fix.

Appreciate the flaws.

The ceiling could have used another sanding and I’m sure I missed a few dots of paint on the floor, but I’m satisfied with my efforts.

Your story will be the same. We should never be lazy about our flaws, but sometimes, they hide from us until the work is done. Don’t beat yourself up over it. You’ll get it next time.

PS – If 14×20 sounds luxuriously large for a craft room, that’s because it is. This used to be the dining room, but I live alone in a six room house, not including kitchen, pantry, and baths, so I get to purpose my rooms as I see fit. In 10 years, I neither ate dinner nor entertained in the dining room, so craft room it is. Until I change my mind.

PPS – You may have noticed an inordinate amount of ceiling patching. This house was built in 1885. When you are 140 years old, you will leak. You will leak everywhere.

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“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”   ― Carl Gustav Jung

As promised, after a couple of weeks of mental vacation, I’m back with some lengthy blather on a writing topic. I’m going to talk about character relationships, plot, and conflict, so you can bail out now if that’s not your thing.

If you’re still here…deep breath and –

I follow a good number of bloggers who offer advice on writing craft and I love sharing advice I find interesting or helpful, especially when it feels like a gamechanger. A lot of craft talk focuses on nuts-and-bolts level tools, the kind of shoulder to the wheel advice that will help you get from Point A to Point B without embarrassing yourself. But occasionally, I come across someone that takes it to the next level.

September Fawkes

One such blogger is September Fawkes. Fawkes is a freelance editor, writing instructor, and blogger. Her blog, SeptemberCFawkes.com, has been recognized as a Writer’s Digest 101 Best Websites for Writers. Fawkes takes an holistic, almost meta approach to story, identifying and discussing what she notices from the subconscious experience of reading and writing, so that writers can examine it consciously, learn how it works, and gain mastery of it (freely yoinked from her bio). As a vibe, imagine learning about story from Yung and Campbell, rather than the English teacher who taught you about the inverted triangle and Freitag’s pyramid.

Fawkes’ posts aren’t a breezy read with a few key takeaways, but deep dives into hidden, foundational layers of story that most craft writers either don’t discuss or don’t recognize as distinct tools we can use to strengthen our work.

Recently, she has written a few posts about the various layers of plot. But – again – while other writers discuss plot as the mechanics of getting a character from Point A to Point B, Fawkes goes deeper to find the elements that most of the audience – and most writers – will never see, even if they grasp the concepts subconsciously.

I don’t know if she originated the particular concept I want to share, but she’s the first writing blogger I’ve come across who has analyzed it, and she has returned to it a few times, so I give her credit for putting it out there. Her approach was eye-opening and I’ve already applied it to both the novel I’m writing and the next one I’m outlining. Doing so has helped me add emotional layers to various characters, rely on subtext and nuance in their interactions, and strengthen both my vision and grasp on the story that I’m trying to tell.

The Relationship Plot

The concept is the relationship plot, a third layer of story that resides in between the traditional strata of plot and character arc.

Let’s define terms:

• The external plot is what happens. Ideally, you have a strong cause-and-effect chain so that events feel organic and character-driven, but essentially the external plot is physical, the actions that could be observed by other characters in your story world.
• The character arc is internal. This arc provides the reasons your character takes the actions that drive the external, physical plot. It drives your hero’s goal and determines what he needs. As the term implies, arc involves movement. At the beginning of the novel, the protagonist has a baseline emotional state, and arrives at the end in a different state, changed for the better, but sometimes for worse.

Most writing advice involves layering those two plots – internal and external – to create a cohesive whole. Generally, the internal character arc is why the character engages in the external plot. In turn, the events of the external plot require the character to move along the emotional arc, to learn and grow so that the goal can be obtained.

Now let’s go back to the relationship plot.

Despite what it sounds like, the relationship plot is not limited to the romance story. It can involve romance, but this layer encompasses any relationship your character engages in: parent/child, sibling, friend, mentor/mentee, co-worker or peer, or even hero/villain. Depending on the nature of your story, the this level plot might involve your character’s relationship with their vocation or a hobby, their social environment, with themselves, or the story world itself.

Simply put, this level of story focuses on how your character moves in relation to the other people, the environment, and societal forces in your story. It exists between the internal character arc and the external plot, as it involves both the physical interaction of the protagonist with others, and emotional growth and conflict. It is not as cleanly visible as the external plot, but not as opaque to an outside observer as the character arc. We can view these relationships in action, but we must intuit feeling and thoughts.

I’m going to emphasize this again, because I think it’s important. Fawkes posits the relationship plot as a third layer, not simply an element that is tangential to or affected by the others. While the protagonist’s relationships will be affected by the external and character plots, the relationship plot pushes back and should affect how the protagonist moves through the story physically and emotionally. Like the external plot and the character arc, the relationship plot can have its own normal world, inciting incident, journey, obstacles, and resolution that align (or should align) with the other layers.

Depending on your story, any of these layers can be the primary focus. A spy thriller will be heavy on external plot, and may have character and relationship plots of varying depths. Fantasy novels tend to feature strong character arcs – the quintessential hero’s journey – though external plot is usually primary and relationships are important. In romance fiction, the relationship plot is at the forefront, supported by external action and characterization.

The Relationship Plot in action

In this recent post, Fawkes examines some examples of relationship-focused stories, including most Hallmark movies (duh), Wicked, and, interestingly, The Prestige. I found that intriguing and she’s absolutely correct. Her analysis opened up an entirely different angle on viewing and appreciating the novel and film version, both of which I loved.

In a follow-on post, Fawkes continued her examination of the relationship plot in a way that got me thinking more seriously about the nature of relationships in my work in progress. In this later post, Fawkes examines how the relationship plot can create conflict, particularly in quieter scenes that are focused on aspects of the relationship.

If you’re writing a scene that involves quieter moments – family dinner, a work meeting – you might find it difficult to add tension or conflict, even if the scene is necessary for the external or internal plots. While these scenes can be useful for giving the protagonist a point to rest and reorient – and the reader time to digest pivotal plot moments – they can feel lifeless or inconsequential. Even if the scene ends with an important turning point, the lead-in might feel dull.

This is where viewing the protagonist’s relationships as a distinct level of plot can help.

Closeness and distance

Fawkes notes that the various layers of plot come with their own objectives. The external, physical plot can be described in terms of success v. failure. In each scene, does the hero succeed or fail? We can consider the character arc in terms of growth v. stagnation. Does the hero learn from mistakes or repeat them? Is the hero open to new ideas or stubbornly resisting them?

For scenes in the relationship plot, the equation is emotional closeness v. emotional distance. How does this create conflict? In each scene, your protagonist may desire more emotional closeness with the other element of the relationship – another person, an ideal, or society. Or he may desire distance. Or the hero may be satisfied with the status quo and seek to maintain things as they are. But how does the other side feel? In this case, the force of antagonism – and source of conflict – is the other person in the equation, who wants the opposite of the protagonist’s goal.

What does this look like? A teenage child wants to establish boundaries and independence from a parent, i.e.: distance. The parent, sensing this and perhaps feeling threatened, looks for opportunities to connect, to create emotional closeness. One spouse in a troubled marriage may want to reignite a spark, while the other may be satisfied with the status quo or even looking for a way out. An employee hoping for a promotion may seek an intellectual connection with the boss, but the boss may prefer some distance, because she’s trying to remain objective or has already selected someone else for the job. Character influences the interactions, but the relationship is driving.

Need higher stakes? Consider how Game of Thrones handled a pivotal scene that greatly impacted the plot, but was essentially relationship driven, and packed with tension and high stakes.

You think your family is difficult

Prior to what would become the Red Wedding, the romantic relationship between Robb Stark and Talisa had caused tension between Robb and his mother, who fears the repercussions of Robb’s decision to back out of his promise to marry a daughter of Walder Frey. Robb is frustrated by Catelyn’s warnings – as well as her other actions – and desires emotional distance. Catelyn seeks closeness, so that she can convince Robb of the danger he’s created.

The Starks’ nominal allies, the Freys, welcome them to their castle for a wedding feast, but the tension between the families is palpable, with subtle and not-so-subtle references to the diplomatic offense Robb has caused. Will the Freys accept that the far more powerful Starks broke their promise? Or will the alliance dissolve to the advantage of the Lannisters? The Starks are seeking closeness, to repair the damage done to their relationship with the Freys. The Freys pretend they want the same, but they actually want distance. The permanent kind.

Even before the violent plot twist, the scene is steaming with high stakes. The audience cares about the relationship between Robb and Cat, and about the outcome of the war. We want the Starks to be united and to win the war. If they quarrel, everything is at risk. The war – the external plot – is driving the characters’ arcs and the characters’ choices are affecting the war. And both influence and are affected by the relationship plots.

As we know, the external plot intrudes violently on the scene, as the war comes for the Starks, but Walder Frey’s relationships drove the action. He resented the powerful Starks and felt used. He desired a connection with the Lannisters. He craved the respect of the Seven Kingdoms – a form of emotional closeness – and the place his family name would have. The families were brought to this scene by Robb’s character arc – heir to warrior to arrogant young king. But the relationship plot – characters seeking closeness and distance – provides an electrifying layer of tension and conflict.

How did this help me?

Most scenes in your story will fall somewhere in the middle – higher stakes than everyday relationship conflict, but lower than the possibility of wholesale slaughter – and this is where I found Fawkes’ analysis and advice most helpful.

As I began experimenting with the idea of a relationship plot, I saw how my two current novels in progress relied on the protagonists’ relationships for both plot movement and emotional change. Though I was fairly deep into Novel 1, I went back to the outlining stage, and added a tower for the relationship plot. For each chapter, I identified the protagonist’s relationships with various story elements – other characters, himself, and the story world. Then I examined how each person or element approached the scene with the relationship in mind, and whether they desired more closeness, distance, or the status quo.

That simple exercise revealed multiple opportunities for subtext in the character dynamics, as well as ways each relationship could reinforce the theme of the protagonist’s search for his rightful place in the world.

WIP

In my novel in progress, my protagonist faces multiple opponents, but his chief antagonist is his story world, as he struggles to adapt to his proper place in society. While there are physical manifestations of his struggle – the external plot – a number of scenes find him engaged in varying levels of conflict with his friends, colleagues, romantic interest, and societal betters.

At first glance, the relationship plot isn’t the focal point of the novel, but the protagonist’s failure to find his place is what aligns the forces of antagonism against him, though they come from different angles, depending on whether his opponent is trying to help, use, or squash him. Without realizing it, I’d created a story where everything pivots on the protagonist’s relationships.

While the characters joust over personal matters, beneath the surface each is trying to tug the protagonist towards or away from societal roles he may or may not wish to play.

WIP 2

In the novel I’m outlining, relationships in fact are the central point. The protagonist’s relationships – good, bad, and too-soon-to-tell – and his desire to improve or sever them are what drive his choices, which moves the external plot forward. The relationships also drive his character arc, as he moves from emotional Point A to Point Z through the story.

As I added the relationship dynamics and conflict, it became clear that scene after scene was driven by the protagonist’s desire for closeness or distance, and his subsequent choices were heavily dependent on whether he succeeded or failed. Consciously recognizing and understanding that layer of plot helped me define the protagonist’s motivation and goals for each scene, and set up the forces of antagonism for some juicy interactions that intrude upon both the character arc and the external plot.

When I started each of these stories, the concept of a relationship plot wasn’t on my radar, though the elements were there. Properly assessing, applying, and strengthening this element of story has enriched both novels in progress, adding layers of meaning and increasing the depth of the work.

In theory. The proof will be in the telling. But I do feel good about them. Plot is not my strong suit, so I’m always on the lookout for interesting structural or character tips that contribute to organic plotting.

As always, I hope you find this helpful.

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