The character in your story is the heart of your story.
It does not matter if that character is a person or a troll or a manatee. That character is the soul of your story. Setting, theme, plot are important, but the most important aspect is creating a character that the reader can connect with.
That connection can be emotional.
That connection can be intellectual.
But there has to be a connection.
How readers connect to the character isn’t always for the same reason. They might seem like a friend. They might seem like us. They might be who we want to be. They might be who we are afraid to be. And as authors, we have to find ways to make our readers care about the characters we put on the page.
That’s what we talk about this podcast! So listen in and like and subscribe and all those things.
For exclusive paid content, check out my substack, LIVING HAPPY and WRITE BETTER NOW. It’s basically like a blog, but better. There’s a free option too without the bonus content but all the other tips and submission opportunties and exercises are there.
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Dialogue and voice both do some really important things in your story.
Provide context –
You can provide some pretty awesome information via dialogue and idiosyncratic character voice.
Show the subtext –
Subtext is basically the hidden motivation/emotion/wants of your character that aren’t right there out on the surface.
So if I wrote:
“Look at you in that onesie! What a brave person you are.” Shaun said with a grimace.
You’d know that Shaun is really thinking that the other character is more unconventional than brave.
Make things more exciting –
When you have two characters bickering, it tends to be more interesting on the page than saying, “They bickered.”
Dialogue and voice helps provide context, drama, and interest. It pulls the reader in. It’s a big part of showing rather than telling.
“I can’t believe you don’t like my onesie,” she said, spinning around in front of the couch, arms out.
He smirked. “Didn’t say that.”
“Manatees are frolicking on this.” She stopped spinning and pulled out the fabric a bit. “Look! Look at the print. It is imported.”
“You look like you’re two. A two year old with boobs.”
“Boobs! Call them breasts. Oh my word . . .”
“That makes you sound like a chicken.”
“You are the chicken, mister, a negative, judgmental and derogatory chicken and I am incensed that you don’t understand the value of this outfit or me.”
“WTF, baby.”
Shows character difference.
Good dialogue and good voice show us how the characters aren’t the same. Even in my horrible example up there, the two characters don’t sound the same. One has longer sentences and more Latinate word choices. The other is a bit more blunt. One uses conjunctions and the other doesn’t.
Dialogue and voice go hand in hand to really make a huge impact on your story. Get cozy with them. Learn their rules. Buy them a coffee. Make them your friends. You won’t regret it.
NEW BOOK ALERT!
I just want to let everyone know that INCHWORMS (The Dude Series Book 2) is out and having a good time as Dude competes for a full scholarship at a prestigious Southern college and getting into a bit of trouble.
Here’s what it’s about:
A fascinating must-read suspense from New York Times bestseller Carrie Jones.
A new chance visiting a small Southern college. A potential love interest for a broken girl obsessed with psychology. A damaged group of co-eds. A drowning that’s no accident. A threat that seems to have no end.
And just like that Jessica Goodfeather aka Dude’s trip away from her claustrophobic life in Maine to try to get an amazing scholarship to her dream school has suddenly turned deadly. Again.
What would you do to make a difference?
After his best friend Norah was almost abducted, Cole Nicholaus has spent most of his childhood homeschooled, lonely and pining for Norah to move from best friend to girl friend status. When birds follow him around or he levitates the dishes, he thinks nothing of it—until a reporter appears and pushes him into making a choice: stay safe at home or help save a kidnapped kid.
Cole and Norah quickly end up trying to not just save a kid, but an entire town from a curse that has devastating roots and implications for how exactly Cole came to be the saint that he is.
Can Cole stop evil from hurting him and Norah again? And maybe even get together? Only the saints know.
From the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of the NEED series, Saint is a book about dealing with the consequences that make us who we are and being brave enough to admit who we love and what we need.
BUY NOW! 🙂 I made a smiley face there so you don’t feel like I’m too desperate.
I know! I know! We’re writers not accountants or mathematicians, but there is a great lovely magic to using numbers in our sentences and paragraphs.
What a lot of people don’t know about my writing life is that I started out intensely focused on newspaper stories and poetry.
What the what?
Yep. It’s true. I was actually a sports reporter and a poet for awhile. And it’s weird, but also lucky, because it allowed me to get some training that not all novelists get. And this post calls back to that training.
Here’s the thing: Numbers, repetition, lack of repetition? They all have their place in our writing arsenal. We can use them to make impact.
Poets repeat elements purposefully and us writers can use that tool in our own writing, too.
What exactly am I talking about?
I’m talking about the elements of a sentence and how we can vary them or not to stress things or to make them lyrical.
A lot of us writers have favorite kinds of sentences. We might be fans of simplicity or of multiple clauses. We might be all about starting every sentence with “he” or be addicted to beginning with a subordinate clause. You’ll write a paragraph like this:
He walked outside. He went up to a tree. He hugged the tree. The tree didn’t hug him back.
Or . . .
As he walked outside, he went up to a tree and hugged it. While he hugged the tree, a bird fluttered by and chirruped.
We get in these ruts of style and structure and we are lulling the reader a bit, right? It gets boring.
No writer wants to be boring!
Now, I want you to imagine that you are a writer supervillain and your job is to manipulate your reader into feeling what you want them to feel. You’ve taken away their agency and through the sheer power of your storytelling tool box, you are making them cry and worry and imagine and feel.
But to manipulate our sweet readers to the best of our abilities, we have to be able to access all our tools and this is one of them.
One – The Simple Sentence.
This is the kind of sentence that tells us one thing. It’s probably an important thing.
Jesus wept.
Hug me.
The boy was dumb.
Trust them.
These are the sentences where we don’t give the reader any room to doubt. They are simple. They are declarations. There is nothing fancy going on.
Two – Things Get Deeper
When we add another element, the reader suddenly has a slightly different feeling about the sentence and the character. Traits are thrown out there. Do those traits make sense together? Are they odd together? There is power in both of those decisions.
Jesus wept and snored.
Hug me and the manatee
The boy was dumb and enthusiastic.
Trust them and the dogs.
Things are different now, aren’t they?
Here’s a great example.
“The past is a life sentence, a blunt instrument aimed at tomorrow.” – Claudia Rankine, Citizen
When we put two things together, life and story aren’t quite so simple anymore. We’re making the reader think.
Three – Making Magic
In the Western writing world, the power of three is a thing in both narrative structure and paragraph/sentence structure. Editors look for it in picture books where the main character has to try three times before succeeding in their goals.
The most common type of book structure thanks to Aristotle? Beginning. Middle. End. Three acts.
Even Christianity gets in on it with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—the holy trinity, right?
Jesus wept and snored and wept.
Jesus wept and snored and washed his feet.
Hug me and the manatees and rejoice.
The boy was dumb and enthusiastic and dead.
Trust them and the dogs and maybe not the gerbils.
With three we have that resonating power, but we also have the chance for humor and a twist. Things aren’t so simple any more, not so declarative. But they feel done—complete—resonating.
It’s also kind of fun to look at it without the AND in there connecting things.
Jesus wept, snored, and wept.
Jesus wept, snored, and washed his feet.
Hug me, the manatees, rejoice.
The boy was dumb, enthusiastic, and dead.
Trust them, the dogs, and maybe not the gerbils.
It’s interesting how much difference a tiny AND can make, isn’t it?
Here’s an excerpt that shows the power of three followed by the power of two.
“I wonder if I would tell him what I became, what I made of myself, what I made of myself despite him. I wonder if he would care, if it would matter.” – Roxane Gay, Hunger
So good, right?
Four And Up
The simplicity of one? Gone.
The duality and occasional divisiveness of two? Gone.
The magical completeness of three? Gone.
We are into the land of over four. And four and more? That’s a lyrical place.
Jesus wept, snored, and wept, smiling.
Jesus wept, snored, and washed his feet without water.
Hug me, the manatees, and rejoice and sigh.
The boy was dumb, enthusiastic, dead, and full of yearnings.
Trust them, the dogs, and maybe not the gerbils and maybe not the crickets either since they never stopped running in circles (gerbils) and running their mouths (crickets).
Okay, maybe my super villain writing examples weren’t so lyrical, but here are some better examples. Look at what Jacqueline Woodson does here:
“Our words had become a song we seemed to sing over and over again. When I grow up. When we go home. When we go outside. When we. When we. When we.” – Jacqueline Woodson, Another Brooklyn
One of the most famous practitioners of this is Tim O’Brien.
They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity.” – Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
Roy Peter Clark talks about this concept a lot, but he also makes a lovely primer that really shows what each element can do.
“Use one for power.
Use two for comparison, contrast.
Use three for completeness, wholeness, roundness.
Use four or more to list, inventory, compile, expand.”
Yes, Carrie, that’s all well and good, you’re probably thinking, but how do I apply this to MY story.
Well, you can apply it to make special moments snazzier or more powerful.
When you go over a scene, look for places where you want to be powerful. Use the one. Look for places where you want a litany, create that O’Brien list. Think about how your dastardly writer supervillain self wants to make the reader feel. Where would it help the reader to add on things/images/examples? Where would it help the reader to subtract those same things?
It really is a skill that I’m positive you can do and use to make your writing even more brilliant than it already is.
BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!
Hey! We’re all about inspiring each other to be weird, to be ourselves and to be brave and we’re starting to collect stories about each other’s bravery. Those brave moments can be HUGE or small, but we want you to share them with us so we can share them with the world. You can be anonymous if you aren’t brave enough to use your name. It’s totally chill.
Want to be part of the team? Send us a quick (or long) email and we’ll read it here and on our YouTube channel.
LET’S HANG OUT!
HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?
MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?
On BE BRAVE FRIDAYS, we share other people’s stories (unedited) to build a community of bravery and inspiration.
Please let us know if you want to share your story with us and we’ll read it here and post it on our social media and website.
We don’t edit these because we want people’s stories to be heard as they tell them.
This life is too short to not be brave. We can do this together.
When Your Patient Teaches You a Thing or Two About Living
This is a story from the wonderful Donna Roberts. Thank you so much, Donna!
I believe I can fly. I believe I can touch the sky. — R. Kelly (Note: names and minor details changed to protect privacy)
The thing about clinical work is that each day you never know what’s coming. You can be working with a patient in the most clear-cut treatment plan with everything going textbook perfect and suddenly . . .
“Hi, Joe. Nice to see you.” And it was. Joe (not his real name) was a regular in my therapy room, but unlike some others, a willing and enthusiastic participant in his treatment program. He worked hard in session and practiced the suggested exercises in the times between visits. He was open, expressive and insightful — all elements of the “perfect patient.” We usually both felt good after a session.
That’s not to say that there weren’t painful struggles in his treatment program. Joe, like many of us, had his own demons to confront, his made more powerful and debilitating by his bipolar diagnosis. But he embraced the challenge, knowing that working through his “stuff” meant some pain for each gain.
Joe’s condition was stabilized by medication prescribed by his psychiatrist. My role was part two of his treatment plan — the talking cure — the “fun part” we called it.
With his more severe symptoms under control, Joe’s problems were not all that uncommon — relationships, work, stress, etc. We just had to approach them from his unique history and dysfunctional behavior patterns.
That fateful Friday started like any other session with Joe. He was calm and chatty and we exchanged some trivial dialogue before getting to the more serious work. I had tentatively penned in “communication skills” as a topic for the session, but only if Joe didn’t lead us down another path.
Joe turned pensive and quiet. I was just about to suggest the communication topic when he took a deep breath and said, “I think I want to go off my meds.” I tried not to look surprised, but I was. While this is a typical reaction for many on psychiatric medication, it was unexpected from Joe. He had been faithfully following his medication regimen for almost five years. He had few side effects and had frequently expressed agreement that they normalized his behavior, for the better.
I was curious why he would say this now. Was he facing a crisis? Was he experiencing negative side effects? Did he Google his condition and become convinced he should try the latest wonder drug or fad? I even wondered if he was joking, trying to jump start a lagging session. And, to be honest, I was a little bit scared. Joe’s more serious symptoms had always been under control in my therapy room, courtesy of his effective medication. They made his problems seem normal and, more importantly, manageable. The full-blown symptoms of bipolar disorder were another matter altogether.
So I said what all therapists say when they don’t know what to say, “Well, Joe, tell me more about that.”
And thus began the most intense conversation I ever had with a patient in therapy.
He looked out the window, off into the distance and said, “It’s me. I’m losing me. I think the meds are taking away what it means to be me.”
“You’re losing the sick you.”
“That may be the only me there is.”
I let the silence get uncomfortable waiting for him to explain.
“You know, I’ve never really talked about it, but when I am manic I feel like I can fly! Like. I. Can. Fly. The world is mine.”
“I understand. But Joe, it’s not and you can’t.”
“Who says?”
“The healthy you knows this is true. We’ve talked about that.”
And then he focused his gaze directly on me and asked me questions that shook me to my core — my healthy, non-bipolar core. His voice was raised, but not in anger, with a deep and heart-felt passion for what he was saying.
“Have you ever felt anything that intense? Have you ever lived that fully? Have you ever felt that deeply?”
Taking a deep breath and donning my therapeutic persona again, I replied, knowing my argument would hardly stand up to such emotion.
“But you’re a danger to yourself when you’re in that state.”
“I’m a danger to the real me when I am so subdued. I get it. I get where you’re coming from. It’s not you. You don’t want to live that way. But how would YOU feel if everyone told you that you had to? Wouldn’t a little piece of you die inside?”
I knew I was defeated here. Arguing with him would just entrench him more deeply in his convictions. I couldn’t match his intensity in that moment. I needed to stop fighting him and accept him where he was.
“Joe, you know I cannot recommend that you do this.”
“I know,” he replied calmly.
“I don’t have the authority. I’m a psychologist, not a psychiatrist, so I cannot make judgements or decisions about your meds.”
“Yes, I know.”
What we both knew, but didn’t say, was that he would be taken to the psychiatric ward for observation and consult.
The time between making the call to his psychiatrist and when the orderlies escorted him to the other ward, could have been awkward and tense. But Joe made it pleasant. We chatted about the trivial things that make up casual conversation — the weather, the Yankees.
Then, just as he was about to walk out the door, for the last time, Joe turned to me with one final piece of advice.
“Live a little, Donna. Just once do something that makes you feel like you can fly. Don’t always play it so safe.”
And while his words did not turn me into a risk taker they do come back to me from time to time when I stand on the brink of something I’m afraid of. And they make me just a little bit braver.
And sometimes . . . I believe I can fly. I believe I can touch the sky.
BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!
Hey! We’re all about inspiring each other to be weird, to be ourselves and to be brave and we’re starting to collect stories about each other’s bravery. Those brave moments can be HUGE or small, but we want you to share them with us so we can share them with the world. You can be anonymous if you aren’t brave enough to use your name. It’s totally chill.
Want to be part of the team? Send us a quick (or long) email and we’ll read it here and on our YouTube channel.
LET’S HANG OUT!
HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?
MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?
When we want things that we don’t expect to get, it makes us feel pretty bad inside and it also keeps us from having positive progress towards our goals.
What happens when we make our expectations negative? Usually it isn’t good stuff. For me it often starts a big downward spiral. But people (like me) keep doing it all the time.
I’ll never find love.
I’ll never get published.
I’ll never make a difference.
Those expectations and fears can be come prophesy because they take up so much space in your brain that you can’t break free from them to create good outcomes.
So what do you do to break free from negative expectations?
When you find that negative expectation taking hold of you, you can ask yourself, “What would I rather have happen?”
It seems like a simple step. It is. Here, let me repeat it and make it a header just to be cool.
Ask yourself, “What would I rather have happen?”
Got it?
Now you have to do that next step—you have to take the steps to make that positive result happen. You can focus completely on what might go wrong, but all that time you spend thinking about what might go wrong is time where you don’t get to think about where you can make it go right.
Yes. It’s simple.
But it’s true.
“The only place where your dream becomes impossible is in your own thinking.”
Robert Schuller
We waste a lot of time thinking and expecting only about what might go wrong, and that gives up all our manpower and energy and intellect away from dreaming and acting on the good, positive, awesome possibilities of our wants.
This example might help explain it.
I have a client that I worked with. He’s an older gentleman living in another country and getting a bit worries about his wonderful books, which he had previously self-published. He wanted me to read two of them and just tell him if they were any good. Not edit them. Not give an editorial assessment letter. And he wanted me to charge him $35 an hour to read the stories.
“It’s a great deal,” he basically said. “You love reading. You’re being paid to read.”
And I do. I do love reading. And I love stories. But what the problem was here is that he wanted me to take six hours for each book and pay me $35 an hour. There are limited hours in my day (like everyone else’s) and I tend to get paid between $75 and $100 an hour.
So I had to choose between helping this man out and taking a loss of $240 (at least). Or the loss of six hours I could spend writing my own books, painting, cleaning the house, being with my family. Because I’m not monetarily motivated, I did it. But he didn’t understand that choice.
We have to choose what to do with our time.
Do we want to spend it helping people out? Do we want to spend it thinking negative things about ourselves? Do we want to maximize it? Do we want to minimize it?
We only have so many hours in a day. We can spend that time focusing on negative expectations and our fears or we can spend it focusing on our wants and positive expectations. The choice and power is ours.
“All stress begins with a negative thought. One thought that went unchecked, and then more thoughts came and more, until stress manifested. The effect is stress, but the cause was negative thinking, and it all began with one little negative thought.
No matter what you might have manifested, you can change it ….with one small positive thought and then another.”
~ Rhonda Byrne
Changing your expectations makes your life better. There are actually studies about this. Your brain leads your way. Make it lead the way to somewhere good. Those negative expectations limit you and your future. But those positive expectations? That’s where the power is.
Your power.
BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!
Hey! We’re all about inspiring each other to be weird, to be ourselves and to be brave and we’re starting to collect stories about each other’s bravery. Those brave moments can be HUGE or small, but we want you to share them with us so we can share them with the world. You can be anonymous if you aren’t brave enough to use your name. It’s totally chill.
Want to be part of the team? Send us a quick (or long) email and we’ll read it here and on our YouTube channel.
LET’S HANG OUT!
HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?
MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?
Here in the Land of Writing Advice, we try not to lay down too many edicts because edicts are prickly things, but we’re going to put out four quick bits of writing advice that make you look a little more cool.
Let’s get started.
Nodding in acknowledgement.
If you’re a writer and you write:
Carrie nodded in acknowledgement. “Yes,” she said. “I do want to someday ride a manatee.”
The reader/editor is going to think, “What the what?”
A lot of writers worry that the reader isn’t going to get it. They want to be helpful. But in that example up there, we have three ways the writer is telling us that Carrie is agreeing.
Carrie nodded.
In acknowledgement.
“Yes,” she said. “I do want …”
Trust your writing. Trust yourself, okay? And trust your reader.
HE THOUGHT TO HIMSELF
The same kind of thing is happening here.
Shaun thought to himself, “Self, I am a pretty sweet man.”
Unless your book is about telepathy or has telepathic characters (hopefully manatees), you’re always going to be thinking to yourself.
So just write:
Shaun thought, “I am a pretty sweet man.”
It’s versus its
Okay, whenever you have an apostrophe in the middle of a word it means one of two things:
There’s a letter missing and you’re smooshing two words together.
It’s showing possession.
It’s with the apostrophe means it is. It always means it is.
Its without the apostrophe means belonging to it.
So:
The werewolf ripped its tank top during the change and cried.
That one? No apostrophe in its.
The werewolf said it’s going down to J Crew to get a new tank.
That one? Apostrophe.
We’re versus were
Continuing on the apostrophe train, we’re and were.
We’re has an apostrophe that’s showing you that it really means we are. The apostrophe is standing in for the a in are. Oh, that sounds weird.
The were (w-e-r-e) is second person past tense singular, past tense plural, and past subjunctive of the verb “be”
So we wouldn’t say:
Hey. The werewolves we’re changing in J.Crew because they were raging out over the lack of pink tanks with tassels.
We’d say.
Hey. The werewolves were changing in J.Crew because they were raging out over the lack of pink tanks with tassels.
Similarly, we’d say:
We’re werewolves, man, and we demand tanks with tassels. Got it?
Not
Were werewolves, man, and we demand tanks with tassels. Got it?
Hey! We’re all about inspiring each other to be weird, to be ourselves and to be brave and we’re starting to collect stories about each other’s bravery. Those brave moments can be HUGE or small, but we want you to share them with us so we can share them with the world. You can be anonymous if you aren’t brave enough to use your name. It’s totally chill.
Want to be part of the team? Send us a quick (or long) email and we’ll read it here and on our YouTube channel.
LET’S HANG OUT!
HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?
MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?
AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! It’s taking a bit of a hiatus, but there are a ton of tips over there.
We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.
Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
There is a fantastic blog post on Tim Ferriss’s blog about the work and thoughts of professor/writer Sam Apple. I have a link at the end of this post because you should probably read it in its entirety if the act of noticing as a writer resonates with you. Or maybe even if it doesn’t
When I mentor people and edit them, I often tell them to go specific in their details (but don’t overload those details), and in order to go specific, you have to become adept at noticing things.
Apple speaks of what it means to ‘notice as a writer.’
I like to define it as “the combination of close observation and insightfulness.”
Sam Apple
He then explains ‘close observation.’
Close observation is easy enough to grasp. Let’s take an example: As I’m typing this sentence, I might look down and notice my hands moving over my keyboard. That’s “noticing” in the ordinary sense of the word—what you might think of as “first-order noticing.” To notice my typing hands in the way of a writer, I have to be far more specific. I might notice the rhythmic rise and fall of my knuckles or how the tendons on the back of my hand bulge and twitch with each keystroke. I might notice how some keys are almost silent while others respond to my fingertips with a pronounced—and somehow satisfying—clack.
Sam Apple
So, then we have that second aspect — insight.
Great writing typically involves more than description or a simple narration of events. Writing is also a search for meaning. Sometimes an observation or image speaks for itself. But often writers need to be able to say something about what they’ve noticed.
Sam Apple
And that’s where I think being a great writer and a great human overlap. If we can notice the worlds and details, the feeling and aspects of other people, animals, landscapes big and small? And then if we took that extra step to let insight bubble and sprout from what we’ve noticed?
How big a deal would that be?
How deep? How growing?
Apple teaches a class on noticing at John Hopkins and in the blog writes:
For my class, I ask students to keep a “noticing journal” throughout the semester. Sometimes I ask them to notice objects or actions, as in the typing examples above. Other times, we apply the same observational and imaginative powers to our own lives and emotions. When we turn to the noticing of others, it can lead to remarkably empathetic writing. It is hard to truly hate people if you’ve spent enough time observing them and wondering about them. The celebrated fiction writer George Saunders captures this notion perfectly in this essay on “what writers really do when they write.”
Sam Apple
You don’t need to be a writer to train your noticing skills or your empathy, but both writers and those of us who don’t write, can really learn from this.
We can learn from noticing, observing and wondering. And maybe that’s one of those steps we can take to make ourselves better people and this a better world?
A lot of writers get blocks. Sometimes those blocks have to do with story ideas, with the fear that their idea sucks, that they don’t have the writing chops to pull off a novel.
Sometimes those blocks have to do with worry that trolls will ridicule their story, nobody will read it, everyone will hate it.
Sometimes those blocks have to do with the fear of typos, of not being perfect.
But they all have to do with fear.
As a writing coach, I have to talk to a lot of writers about their blocks and their fears. And recently, I realized that adopting Tim Ferriss’s ‘fear setting’ approach could help a ton of the writers-students that I love so much.
Goals are brilliant, Ferris says. Resolutions? Fantastic.
But nothing happens with those goals and resolutions if you are too afraid to make the steps.
So he delves into those fears and explores them and determines the potential and the risk.
That’s what you need to do with your writing (and your life).
Ferris’s process is quite refined and quite simple. We have links in the podcast notes on carriejonesbooks.blog so that you can find them in Ferris’s own extended version. He also has a TedTalk about them.
But it begins like this:“Define your nightmare, the absolute worst that could happen if you did what you are considering. What doubt, fears, and “what-ifs” pop up as you consider the big changes you can—or need—to make? Envision them in painstaking detail. Would it be the end of your life? What would be the permanent impact, if any, on a scale of 1–10? Are these things really permanent? How likely do you think it is that they would actually happen?
Next, think about what you could do to fix it if that worst-case scenario happens. Write it down. Was it not quite as hard as your fear made you think it would be?
Next what are the benefits, the potential, the outcomes in forever ways and transient ways of all those scenarios and possibilities? Would you be more confident? Happier? Would you have more money? Make a scale of 1-10 and rate those outcomes.
He asks,
What are you putting off out of fear? Usually, what we most fear doing is what we most need to do. That phone call, that conversation, whatever the action might be—it is fear of unknown outcomes that prevents us from doing what we need to do. Define the worst case, accept it, and do it. I’ll repeat something you might consider tattooing on your forehead: What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do. As I have heard said, a person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have. Resolve to do one thing every day that you fear. I got into this habit by attempting to contact celebrities and famous business people for advice.
And how is this hurting you? By not doing something because of your fear how are you hurting yourself? Inaction also has a cost. It’s just a cost that seems easier because it doesn’t seem to rely on as much choice.
A lot of us who write novels, talk about the big lie that dominates our main character’s life, the wrong belief that dictates and holds the character back.
Fear is our big lie in the story of our lives.
All of us have our own big lie or lies. We worry so much about what might go wrong that we are afraid to embrace what might go right. We live so much in our heads that we fail to live in our world. We allow the fear, the lie, to hold us down. Our fear is also a symptom of our lie.
It’s good to see how that’s holding you back. Just like we want the characters in our novels to have transition arcs and evolve, so should we, right?
Dog Tip for Life
Don’t let your fear control your life.
Writing Tip of the Pod
Use the big lie and your characters’ fears to show their transition throughout the story.
SHOUT OUT!
The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License.
AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! It’s taking a bit of a hiatus, but there are a ton of tips over there.
We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.
Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!
Failing one time? It doesn’t make you a failure.
Failing 1,000 times? Still doesn’t make you a failure. You’re only a failure if you decide to be.
That evil inner voice? The butt-face that says you aren’t good enough, that you don’t deserve good things, that you can’t do it?
That little monster is Self-doubt. It hangs out a lot with its big sister, Anxiety. And you don’t have to have them over to play in your head anymore.
Just this week, we posted our podcast and a guy (editor/writer) on Twitter didn’t like it but posted a link to his own blog and said, “COUNTER POINT.”
His blog was all about not wanting to give out writing advice or talking about his own life/anxiety/whatever issues.
All of that is so fine and good for him for telling the world why he is the way his beautiful self is, but this little bit of me was like:
What? Counterpoint? Counterpoint to saying life is deeper than write what you know?
Counterpoint to what?
And why the hell did you post under my tweet your own link without even having the grace to like mine?
If my blog post (if you even read it) inspired you enough to ‘counterpoint’ why not like it?
And then I had a lot of work to do helping writers and writing my own stories and I let it go.
It was a bit of a win for me, honestly. Because all I want to do is be a better human and one step towards that? For me? It’s banishing Self-doubt.
It’s almost like the universe gave me a present right there.
But this isn’t just about me. It’s also about you and how you can do that too, right?
Here’s how to kick Self-Doubt and Anxiety out of your house.
Tell them to get out. Seriously, once they start whispering their disparaging believes about your worth, tell them, “Get out. I hear you. I don’t need you. Bugger off. You’re ruining the party.”
Remember good things. If Self-doubt is a bully who won’t leave, you sometimes have to call in the reinforcements. Those reinforcements are the good time, the good memories. The times you were proactive and kicked butt.
Phone a friend or text or Facetime. Sometimes your own memories aren’t strong enough and you have to talk to someone about your self-doubt. Telling another person about your doubts sometimes helps you realize how dorky they are and how they are like the OOPS page on a Rotten Tomatoes movie listing. The congnative dissonance because obvious when you say things aloud.
Make a Journal of Awesome. At one point in my life, I had to print out people’s positive emails and reviews so that I could remember that I had helped people, that my stories connected to people before. I even put in fan mail and fan art and blog posts about positive interactions. Yes, I really was that depressed. Self-doubt had set up home.
Failing one time? It doesn’t make you a failure.
Failing 1,000 times? Still doesn’t make you a failure. You’re only a failure if you decide to be.
Remember you aren’t the center of the universe. I know! I know! You ARE the center of your own universe probably, but we all have to push away our inner narcissist and remember that most people aren’t noticing what you’re doing. Yes, there are trolls out there, but they most likely won’t find you. And if they do? They’re trolls and you’re awesome and you will deal with it. Don’t let your fear of ridicule keep you from living your dreams.
That one is a big one for me, really, which was why ‘counterpoint’ was a bit of a setback.
I’m still working on it and it’s the main reason I still blog, do podcasts, and YouTube. All those things force me out of my comfort zone and into past trauma places about my voice and weirdness. The more I do it? The stronger I get about it.
Oh! And the last one is so important that it’s getting pulled from the list.
What other people think about you doesn’t get to determine who you are.
That’s right. I have a sibling who thinks I’m lying about my DNA. His belief that I’m a liar? It doesn’t make me a liar. I have DNA tests to back me up. Yes, I’ve got the receipts.
But even if you don’t have the receipts, don’t let anyone else make you the villain or the victim of your own story. Only YOU get to decide that. No matter what other people do to you, think of you, say about you, only YOU get to determine if you love yourself and if you have worth.
Here’s the final secret: You do.
LET’S HANG OUT!
HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?
MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?
Okay, now we’re onto my absolute favorite part – the scene. I love scenes SO MUCH that I’m actually teaching a course about them at the Writing Barn next fall!
So in this revision step, we look at the scene and we remember some really core and important things.
Does the scene move the plot forward? No? You might have to cut that baby.
Does the scene more the character forward? Are they evolving here? No? You might have to cut that baby.
Does that scene have people who matter to your plot? No? Maybe cut the baby.
Does it have the right point of view? No? Revise it so it does.
Does it have silly, boring dialogue? Cut it.
What is silly dialogue?
It’s this.
Carrie: Hi.
Writer: Hi.
Carrie: The weather is nice.
Writer: Yep.
Carrie: I like manatees.
Writer: Yeah, okay.
Bad Dialogue by Carrie 🙂
Let’s go back to our list. Let’s make a new one!
Does your scene use all the senses? Can you feel where they are? Make sure you can!
Are there talking heads in the scene? Give your character tics, habits, things to do. Have them interact with the world?
Is it a big info dump? Yes? Fix it! Any time that you see the word ‘dump,’ it’s usually not a good thing.
Does everyone sound the same? Fix that!
Does your scene have a beginning, middle, and end? It should!
Does it seem like the characters only just start living the moment that you start the scene? It shouldn’t!
WHEW! I swear! I swear! You’ve got this! Your book is going to be so shiny!
LET’S HANG OUT!
HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?
MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?
The Dude Goodfeather Series – YA mystery by NYT bestseller Carrie Jones
TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.
BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!
Hey! We’re all about inspiring each other to be weird, to be ourselves and to be brave and we’re starting to collect stories about each other’s bravery. Those brave moments can be HUGE or small, but we want you to share them with us so we can share them with the world. You can be anonymous if you aren’t brave enough to use your name. It’s totally chill.
Want to be part of the team? Send us a quick (or long) email and we’ll read it here and on our YouTube channel.
LET’S HANG OUT!
HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?
MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?
