Episode 325 - Reveals as the Striptease of Fiction with Tiffany Yates Martin

Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!

Amazon Music | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Overcast | Castbox | Pocket Casts | Podbean | Player FM | TuneIn | YouTube

Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment on YouTube!

Tiffany Yates Martin discusses REVEALS AS THE STRIPTEASE OF FICTION, including why reveals are one of the most powerful yet mishandled tools in fiction, techniques for concealing and timing information using POV, structure, and reader assumptions, the dangers of being too cryptic or too obvious, how beta readers can diagnose whether your reveals are working, and a practical checklist for crafting reveals that are intrinsic to the story.

Tiffany Yates Martin has spent more than thirty years as an editor in the publishing industry, working with major publishers and New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling and award-winning authors, as well as indie and newer authors. She is the author of Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing and the novel The Fantasy Makers. FoxPrint Editorial has been named one of Writer's Digest's Best Websites for Writers for three years running. She leads seminars and workshops for conferences and writing organizations across the country and contributes craft and publishing articles to numerous industry outlets.

Episode Links

https://foxprinteditorial.com/

https://foxprinteditorial.teachable.com/p/reveals - A self-directed deeper-dive online course on secrets, twists, and reveals

Summary & Transcript

In this episode of The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with editor, author, and writing instructor Tiffany Yates Martin about the craft of using secrets and reveals in fiction. Tiffany, returning for her seventh appearance on the podcast, draws on her extensive experience as a developmental editor to explain why reveals are among the most powerful—and most frequently mishandled—tools available to fiction writers.

WHY REVEALS GO WRONG

Tiffany explains that she sees the misuse of reveals frequently in the manuscripts she edits. The instinct to incorporate a reveal is sound, she notes, because reveals are inherently compelling to readers. However, the execution often falls short. Authors may withhold too much information, leaving readers confused rather than intrigued, or they may deploy reveals as a device to generate excitement when the story does not truly require one. Tiffany compares the overly cryptic reveal to the social media post that teases “something big is coming” without providing any context—it aims to create suspense but instead produces irritation. The fix, she says, is to give readers almost all the pieces of the puzzle while withholding a key piece or two, so that the mystery propels the reader forward rather than leaving them adrift.

DEFINING THE REVEAL

The conversation establishes that a reveal is distinct from ordinary suspense or narrative questions. Tiffany defines it as a specific piece of information about the story that, when allowed to become known, has a major impact on the characters, the plot, or the reader. Reveals encompass secrets, twists, withheld information, and unknowns used to create suspense. Importantly, reveals are not limited to mysteries. Tiffany cites examples from literary fiction, upmarket fiction, and thrillers, including Remarkably Bright Creatures, Water for Elephants, and Gone Girl, to demonstrate that the device works across genres. She emphasizes that a reveal should be reserved for something essential and intrinsic to the story, not used simply as a cliffhanger or to inject momentary excitement.

TECHNIQUES FOR CONCEALING AND REVEALING INFORMATION

Tiffany outlines several techniques authors can use to hide or delay information effectively. These include using the premise itself, as in a mystery or in Where’d You Go, Bernadette; using character motivations, as in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, where the protagonist’s literal-mindedness naturally conceals information from the reader; using story structure, as in The Husband’s Secret, where multiple points of view allow the author to delay revelation by shifting to characters who do not yet know the secret; and using reader assumptions, as in The Sixth Sense, where the audience draws incorrect but reasonable conclusions from the information presented. Tiffany notes that a hallmark of a well-executed reveal is that on a second reading, the clues are visible in retrospect—delightful rather than frustrating, because the author did not lie to the reader but simply allowed them to make their own assumptions.

TIMING THE REVEAL FOR MAXIMUM IMPACT

Using Liane Moriarty’s The Husband’s Secret as a detailed case study, Tiffany demonstrates that when a reveal occurs is as important as what is revealed. In that novel, different characters learn the central secret at different points in the story, and each revelation serves a different narrative purpose. The wife’s discovery drives the middle of the story. The reader’s discovery reframes the premise. A final character’s discovery fuels the climax. Tiffany stresses that authors should consider who the reveal is being kept from and when its disclosure will be most profound for both the characters and the story. She contrasts this with novels like A House Without Windows, where the entire narrative is built around withholding the truth until the very end, and Water for Elephants, where reader assumptions carry the concealment naturally.

THE DANGERS OF BEING TOO COY OR TOO OBVIOUS

Matty and Tiffany discuss two common pitfalls. The first is when the reader knows too little—the reveal feels cryptic and the reader disengages. The second is when the reader figures out the secret before the characters do, which can undermine investment in both the character and the story. Tiffany notes that if a reader gets ahead of the author, the story loses its power. She also warns against relying on what Matty calls “magical ignorance,” where a character implausibly fails to recognize something obvious in order to preserve the secret. Tiffany adds that concealing information from readers through a first-person or deep-third point of view only works for so long—at a certain point, the repeated deflection begins to feel like an authorial device rather than an organic character behavior.

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT AND MISDIRECTION

The discussion turns to advanced techniques for experienced writers, particularly in genres where readers expect a reveal. Tiffany describes how an author she recently worked with made the actual murderer the protagonist’s first and most obvious suspect, then debunked that suspicion with believable evidence—effectively hiding the truth in plain sight. She also discusses Ruta Sepetys’s I Must Betray You, set in Romania under Ceaușescu’s regime, where readers know a family member is a spy but multiple misdirections keep the identity and the true motivations concealed. Matty adds that she values the idea of a double reveal—the reveal of who and then the reveal of why—which requires even greater skill to execute convincingly.

THE ROLE OF BETA READERS IN TESTING REVEALS

Both speakers emphasize the importance of outside feedback when working with reveals. Matty shares a recent experience in which a beta reader suggested repositioning a reveal to the end of a chapter for greater impact and also reported where she had guessed the secret and where she had been misdirected. Tiffany recommends asking beta readers specific questions about whether they felt hooked, whether they were surprised, and where they figured out the secret ahead of time. She notes that authors are especially likely to misjudge the effectiveness of their own reveals because they already know the full story. Tiffany offers a beta reader questionnaire as a free resource on her website and urges authors to invite frank, specific feedback rather than soft-pedaled responses.

A CHECKLIST FOR CRAFTING EFFECTIVE REVEALS

Tiffany closes the craft discussion with a practical framework for authors. She advises writers to identify the specific puzzle piece they want to withhold and from whom, then to confirm that the reveal is intrinsic to the story rather than merely decorative. From there, authors should build in enough context to ground the reader—Tiffany likens this to providing enough puzzle pieces for the picture to be recognizable while withholding a key piece or two. She then recommends planting breadcrumbs so that a second read reveals the clues that were hiding in plain sight and determining the moment when the reveal will have the greatest impact on the characters and the story. The conversation closes with Tiffany noting that even pantsers benefit from thinking through their reveals in advance, since laying the necessary groundwork after the fact is far more difficult than planning it from the start.

---

This transcript was created by Descript and cleaned up by Claude; I don’t review these transcripts in detail, so consider the actual interview to be the authoritative source for this information.

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is Tiffany Yates Martin. Hey, Tiffany, how are you doing?

[00:00:06] Tiffany: Hi, my friend. I’m fine. How are you?

[00:00:08] Matty: I am doing great. And as longtime listeners of the podcast will know, Tiffany is a multi-time visitor. This will be appearance number seven, and previous episodes we have talked about tapping into your author voice, creating character motivation, the three stages of story, being the captain of your author voyage, how to receive and give critique, and X-raying your plot.

And if you want to find any of those, you can go to theindyauthor.com/episodes-all and search for Tiffany. And since I’ve introduced Tiffany so many times on the podcast…

[00:00:39] Matty: My new policy is that repeat guests get to share a fact that our listeners might not know about them instead of hearing the formal bio.

[00:00:47] Tiffany: Okay. I like that. Well, let’s see. I have been an editor for my entire career, I always say, but a lot of people know that I actually started as an actor and I sort of happened into editing at a certain point from that. And when I was an actor, I hosted a game show for a season in Atlanta on the local Fox affiliate network called That’s Atlanta.

That was a trivia game show about Atlanta, and we’d have local celebrities on, we’d have just local citizens on. It was three cameras, mostly improvised, and one of the coolest experiences I ever had as an actor, despite how ridiculous it was.

[00:01:38] Matty: So I have to ask how you got that gig.

[00:01:41] Tiffany: Funny story. I was moving to New York, and it’s sort of a truism, kind of like with writing, that when you suddenly don’t want it as much, you’re way more attractive. And so because I was moving, my agent got me this audition in Atlanta and I was like, eh, whatever. And I just goofed off. I have an improv background, and so I just played, and then I moved, and then they said, by the way, you got the job.

And so every six weeks, because I told them I wasn’t there anymore, I had to fly back and shoot like six episodes in a row.

[00:02:13] Matty: Oh my goodness.

[00:02:17] Matty: Well, I think that that lesson—I have experienced that as well. The story about like, when you don’t want it anymore, it’s so much easier. My experience was my one semester at the graduate English lit program at University of Michigan, and I was surrounded by—everyone else was from like Stanford and Yale and Harvard.

And they had already read all the books that we were studying and I hadn’t. And after like three quarters of a semester, I decided I wasn’t interested. And the last quarter of that semester was the best time.

[00:02:43] Tiffany: Isn’t that funny? It’s like you take the pressure off yourself.

[00:02:48] Matty: Yeah. I think if I could have brought that mindset to the entire semester, I probably maybe would still be there.

[00:02:53] Tiffany: Well, I was just going to say the takeaway from that is if we can get out of our own way as far as expectations, there’s a lot under there we’re probably not allowing to fully flower.

[00:03:04] Matty: Yes, exactly. That is always a good reminder for people to hear, I think.

[00:03:09] Matty: So we agreed that we were going to come back and talk about secrets and reveals in fiction. And whenever I talk with anybody about a topic that they have clearly thought deeply about, as you have about secrets and reveals in fiction, I always like to ask, what did you see in the writing community that made you think this was something that needed some examination?

[00:03:29] Tiffany: So even though I do teach and speak a lot now, I still do a lot of hands-on editing, and I’m always grateful because it’s where I see a lot of the things I wind up teaching about. And this was a big one. I see this a lot in authors’ manuscripts where the instinct to do a reveal is really good because they’re delicious, they’re catnip for readers.

It creates a mystery. It has great impact when you reveal it. But they’re tricky. They’re a really delicate balancing act between offering enough information to ground and orient the reader and make them care—and you can overcorrect, you can offer too much, and then readers are figuring things out and the story feels anticlimactic.

And too often I think I see authors using them because they’re a powerful device when they’re not necessarily the strongest choice for their particular story. And then when they do, there’s all these techniques where it can seem either coy or manipulative or cryptic, or it can be so smooth and seamless that it creates the effect you want, or it just feels so random and unsupported that it feels like a cheat when the reveal comes out.

So I just figured I would try to demystify it.

[00:04:49] Matty: And I think a lot of people think of secrets and reveals especially with regard to mystery. But I’m assuming that this goes beyond mystery, that any kind of genre can have the secret or the reveal that can be powerful if used in the right way, but might not be the kind of whodunit sort of reveal that you would get in a mystery.

[00:05:07] Tiffany: Yeah, I mean, it’s definitely—something like Gillian Flynn, Liane Moriarty, any mystery—it’s the whole premise of the mystery. But a lot of stories use reveals. I’m thinking of things like Water for Elephants, where we think we know what happened in the story, and then at the end we realized there was a piece of information withheld.

And that’s considered, I guess, upmarket, literary. Remarkably Bright Creatures has a reveal in it where we understand the connection between all three characters. So it can be powerful for any genre, but just creating questions and mysteries in your story isn’t necessarily what we mean by reveal. Like when we’re talking about it, it’s used sort of like the HGTV reveal where we use it to both refer to the makeover itself, the device itself, and also to the act of revealing it. So when we use “reveal,” we’re talking about things like what you said—secrets, twists, mysteries, withheld information, unknowns used to create suspense. Plot twists can be considered a reveal.

So it’s not just your basic suspense or questions that you’re going to create all the way through the story. It’s a specific piece of information about the story that when you allow it to be known—and we’ll talk more about who knows it—then it has a great impact on the story and on the reader.

[00:06:37] Matty: And based on either the stories you’ve read or stories you’ve edited, stories you’ve written maybe, do you feel as if it’s—is it easier to approach reveals about what they should accomplish, like the best practices, or the pitfalls? What’s the best way to approach that topic?

[00:06:53] Tiffany: I think both. And it just depends what works for you. I think the best thing to do when trying to incorporate them is to just understand what makes them work. Because if you understand that—like anything, if you understand the principles of it, then you know how to apply them to your own work.

Because there’s a lot of different types of reveal we just talked about, the different, I guess, literal types of reveal you might use. But there’s also—reveals can be something that you are going to reveal can be concealed from a character. It can be concealed from the protagonist. It can be concealed from the reader.

It can be all three. It can be one or the other, like the reader knows something the protagonist doesn’t, or the protagonist knows something another character doesn’t. So there’s all kinds of permutations of it.

[00:07:40] Matty: So I don’t know that I would necessarily break it down by genre because mysteries are built on reveals, but the principles are the same across any genre. So as far as why they don’t work in general, I think one of the reasons I see most often is that they just feel—the reader doesn’t know enough, and so they wind up feeling coy or cryptic or confusing.

[00:08:03] Tiffany: And that would be the example I always give. Everybody has that Facebook friend who posts things like, “Something big is coming, but I can’t talk about it,” or “I can’t believe that just happened to me.” And the idea is the same thing as a reveal like that. It’s trying to create mystery and suspense and expectation, and whoever’s reading it, it’s trying to elicit a reaction.

But really what it does in most of us is annoy us and feel manipulative because we don’t have enough information to know why it matters, and we sense the author’s hand when that happens. In the story, we see that the author is deliberately withholding information.

This is a really clumsy example, it’s off the top of my head, but things like, you know, “When she walked into the store, she couldn’t believe he was there after all these years. How could he have the nerve? What was she going to say to him after all this time?” And it wants to be exciting. Something exciting is happening here, but we don’t know what, so it doesn’t really move the reader.

So what I always just suggest is that the author lays in more context, more pieces of the puzzle. One thing that happens in a coy or cryptic reveal is that the author has tried to leave out too many puzzle pieces. And I always say that if everything is a mystery, then nothing is, because readers just don’t engage.

So it’s best to think of it as giving readers almost all the pieces of the puzzle, or enough for us to understand the picture we’re trying to put together, but withholding a key piece or two. So in an example like that, you might say, “She hadn’t seen him since he walked away from her at the altar.” And just that one piece of information grounds the reader enough that now we don’t need to know what happened exactly. We don’t need to know what happened afterward. We know enough that we’re hooked and it’s a breadcrumb. We want to know more.

[00:10:07] Matty: I can imagine that one of the pitfalls of reveals is that people might think of them in the same way as like a cliffhanger. And if you’re writing something that’s sort of episodic or you’re writing a thriller where it’s more of a trope that each chapter is going to try to carry you into the next chapter with a bit of a cliffhanger at the end, and dropping the reveals in in that way.

Like, I think about the stories or the movies that I enjoy and it’s not repetitive reveals. There’s usually one big reveal or maybe a couple of relatively major reveals, and the other ones don’t kind of slap you in the face as a reveal. Maybe it is a reveal, but everything isn’t pegged at eleven.

So do you have a sense of what people can watch out for in their own writing that’s saying like, now you’re getting carried away and you shouldn’t be using this as a device to keep the reader engaged? It should be used in either a more subtle way or maybe a couple of big ways.

[00:11:15] Tiffany: Yeah, I think that’s the whole purpose of a reveal. Like, again, it’s not the same thing as just creating questions and suspense in the story. That’s something you should do all the way through, and you do it by giving readers things to wonder about, by baiting a hook and then giving us the answer.

But as you said, if you do that by withholding a bunch of information about what’s actually going on, the whole thing just feels like a mystery. A reveal is best used for something that is essential and intrinsic to the story that has a major impact on either the characters or the trajectory of the plot.

[00:11:55] Tiffany: So, for example, Liane Moriarty’s The Husband’s Secret is about a woman who discovers a sealed envelope, a letter in her attic addressed to her in her husband’s handwriting, to be opened after he dies. Well, he is still alive. It was clearly buried in a box. So much of the first part of the story is about what the hell is in that envelope.

But does it have to be held to the end? No. When you reveal something can help further the story and create a specific effect. So in that story, we actually find out what’s in the letter about a third of the way through. And actually, so at first no one knows what’s in it—the wife doesn’t know, the reader doesn’t know. It’s a three-protagonist story, so none of the protagonists know. And then the wife finds out what’s in it about a third of the way through. A few chapters later, the reader finds out what’s in it. And then another character finds out later in the story, and one doesn’t find out until the very end. So with each of them, when it’s revealed dictates what the story is about.

For the wife, her story is about dealing with the fallout from what she knows is in it. For the reader, at first that’s the delicious hook, but once it’s revealed, the premise of the story is what happens, how that reverberates among all three of these characters and dictates their arcs. And then the character who finds out at the very end—that revelation is key to the climax of the story.

So it has to be revealed there. Doing it mindfully and deliberately is really important for making it effective.

[00:13:40] Matty: And are there specific different approaches you would use when the reveal is to the reader versus the reveal is to a character about something that the reader already knows?

[00:13:49] Tiffany: Well, there’s a lot of different techniques you can use with reveals in general. Some of them are more effective depending on who you’re keeping it from. So for example, you can use the premise itself, and that would be something like a mystery where the whole point of it is to uncover the clues, but also Where’d You Go, Bernadette, which is not a mystery. The whole point of the story is to literally figure out where Bernadette went.

You can use the character motivations or who the character is. Like, there’s a story by Mark Haddon called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and it’s kind of almost an unreliable narrator device for the reveal, because the information that the—I’m trying not to spoil every story for your listeners.

[00:14:34] Matty: I realize this is a tricky aspect of talking about reveals.

[00:14:37] Tiffany: It is. And when I teach on it, I’m like, okay, I’m just going to spoil these, but let’s try not to if we can help it. So I think I can help it, but if it feels too cryptic, tell me and I’ll fill in more detail. There is a big reveal about the boy’s life, something he doesn’t know and readers don’t know, but the author is able to conceal it from readers because the character is autistic.

And so he takes everything very literally. He believes wholesale things that he is told, and because he does, the reader never really questions it either. In The Husband’s Secret, Moriarty uses the character motivations because at first the wife is dying to tear into it and she doesn’t because she thinks, oh, maybe he doesn’t want me to, maybe it’s something really sappy and he doesn’t want me to open it.

But he forgot it was in there. So then she talks to him and she tells him that she has it and that she’s going to open it. And he begs her not to. He’s like, oh, it was a foolish thing and I really don’t want you to see it. And so she resists because she feels like it’s a breach of his trust if she does it.

But then later, when he comes home, I forget what happens, but something shifts and suddenly she realizes she has to know what’s in it. So in the middle of the night, she sneaks up and opens it. So we’re changing the motivations.

There’s a story by Nadia Hashimi called A House Without Windows. That’s predicated on the idea that a character—at the very beginning in the first scene, we have a first-person prologue of an Afghani woman who’s found in the courtyard of her house next to a bloody knife and the body of her husband. She’s arrested. She’ll be put to death if she doesn’t defend herself, and she refuses to speak on her own behalf.

So that’s the only time we ever see her direct perspective. And the rest of the story is told from two different characters, both of whom are invested in finding out what happened. But the whole point of it is that she deliberately doesn’t want anyone to know what happened. So we’re using the character’s motivations in that one.

You can use the plot itself. That would be any murder mystery, like Lucy Foley’s The Guest List, where we slowly learn different facts about the character and we see things unfolding over the course of the story. You can use the story structure, like I was talking about, The Husband’s Secret with three protagonists. Because of that, she’s able to withhold the secret from the reader for two extra chapters because she just goes to two other different points of view that don’t know it.

Gone Girl does that at the beginning. We’re only getting Nick’s first-person point of view, and we’re seeing Amy’s diaries up until the point of her disappearance. So we don’t know the truth about what happened to Amy until part two of the story, when we get Amy’s direct point of view.

You can use the point of view itself. Like, a first person—obviously anything the character doesn’t know or deep third, the reader can’t know. And omniscient, you can let the reader know things that the characters don’t know.

You can use reader assumptions and expectations. This would be like The Sixth Sense, where we’re just making inferences based on what you’re showing, but you’re sort of using the reader’s—you’re misleading us in a benign way. Like, you’re showing us clues. For example, the scene with Bruce Willis—it’s an older movie, but I’ll just go ahead and spoil it because it’s really old.

The kid sees dead people, and Bruce Willis is a psychologist who’s talking to the kid. And in one scene you see him sitting with the mom in total silence, and the reader’s assumption is, oh, he’s just told her something really difficult about her kid and she’s upset and they’re just having this moment.

And later it’s revealed that he’s dead and the kid sees him and he doesn’t know he’s dead. And you just see how cleverly those little clues were laid in, and it wasn’t that we were lied to. It wasn’t that the author was misleading us. It’s just they gave us information and allowed us to make an assumption.

[00:18:52] Matty: Yeah, one of my favorite movie scenes. I love The Sixth Sense, and one of my favorite scenes is when he’s at dinner with his wife. It’s their anniversary dinner, and it’s kind of set up like—I mean, in reality she has gone to the restaurant that they always went to for their anniversary and she’s having dinner by herself, which is obviously an unhappy situation for her.

And he shows up. But the sense is, I mean, exactly like you’re saying, you assume that she’s not talking to him because she’s pissed off at him for some reason.

[00:19:18] Tiffany: It’s brilliant.

[00:19:19] Matty: Yeah.

[00:19:20] Tiffany: And one thing I love about that movie, if people haven’t seen it or even if you have—when you go back at the very end, Shyamalan shows us the clues that he paved in there. He goes back, like the red doorknob on the basement, and I forget what else he shows. It’s been a while. But one thing about a really well-laid reveal is that it will make readers want to read it again because we want to see how we were—

[00:19:47] Matty: Wait, what?

[00:19:48] Tiffany: Yes. And on that second read, if we see things like where those misdirections were, where our own assumptions led us astray—it’s delightful because it wasn’t artificial, because it wasn’t manipulative. We clearly see how skillfully the author simply led, or allowed, or encouraged us to make assumptions that were wrong.

[00:20:13] Matty: Yeah.

[00:20:21] Matty: Yeah, I think the two pitfalls I can imagine—one of them harks back to our conversation about what did we call it, the fallacy of magical knowing. And then we sort of started talking about the fallacy of magical ignorance, and the idea that if the reader knows something that a character doesn’t, at some point you get to the point where you’re like, there’s no way that person doesn’t know that. Like, that’s such a frustrating reading experience where you feel like the author is relying on someone being unusually dense in order not to recognize the secret.

[00:20:51] Tiffany: To build on that, we were talking earlier about ways reveals can go wrong, and I said with the reader doesn’t know enough. The other one is that readers know too much. And you’re right, if we get ahead of the author or we get ahead of the characters, we may be very satisfied with ourselves, but it also takes the fun away from the story because we’ve outwitted the character or we’ve outwitted the author, so we feel like we’re a step ahead of them.

And like you said, it’s hard to justify how something that we see so clearly the character is not seeing, and it can undermine our investment in the character.

[00:21:32] Matty: Yeah, I think there’s the reader knows more, and then when the character knows more, I think this gets to what you were saying before about the coy reveal—that if you’re not given enough information or the buildup is too long, or you see it coming but you’re not getting the payoff. Can you talk a little bit about the dangers of being too coy with the reveal?

[00:21:56] Tiffany: Yeah, you have to find ways to do it that feel organic.

[00:22:01] Tiffany: So, we talked about Water for Elephants a minute ago, and I think I have to spoil this one. So at the very beginning—it’s Sara Gruen, I’m not sure how she pronounces her name—at the very beginning, the story opens on what is kind of the climax of the story, where we see the—I think it’s the ringleader of the circus is murdered, and the protagonist of the story, who’s a much younger man in this prologue, sees it happening.

And that’s sort of the setup for everything we see. And then it’s a dual-timeline story where we partly follow what led up to that in the past, and then we also see the man who’s now living in an assisted living home, and we’re recalling all these events from his perspective.

And then later in the story, we find out that the author allowed us to use our own assumptions to believe that it was the man’s love interest, the woman who was the elephant trainer, who killed the ringleader, when it was actually the elephant. So because we think we know what happened, it never occurs to us to feel strung along throughout the course of the story.

[00:23:21] Tiffany: Now, let’s say you have a reveal like the one I just talked about, A House Without Windows, Nadia Hashimi, where we know what happened at the beginning, or at least we know what is found at the beginning, but we don’t know what the woman actually did, whether she killed her husband or not.

The device that makes that work is the fact that, as I said in the prologue, we have her first-person point of view, and then the two main character points of view are her mother and the lawyer who’s defending her. If we had her first-person point of view throughout the story and we still never knew what that motivation was or what actually happened, that would quickly begin to feel manipulative, because you can conceal to a degree for a certain amount of time.

You can conceal from readers what a character herself knows, even if you’re in a direct point of view like first person or deep third, with clever little devices. Like, we’re not always fully honest with ourselves. So you could have an unreliable narrator. You could have someone who’s in denial or suppressing it. But again, that only works for so long unless you had actual amnesia or memory loss, and that’s a main premise of the story. Then that can work. But at a certain point, you’re going to run out of ways to say “she wouldn’t let herself think of that now,” because if you do that enough times, it does start to feel like a device, and anything that calls attention to the author’s hand pulls the reader out of the story. That’s why these are so tricky.

[00:24:58] Tiffany: I call them the striptease of literature, because like a striptease, if you just walk out and put it all out there, it’s not very exciting. But if you walk out and you don’t take anything off but a sock and a glove, that’s also not very exciting. You really have to balance how much and when and what you’re choosing to reveal and use it really judiciously. Like I said, and as you said, if everything is a reveal or some kind of mystery, then you really lose the impact of whatever the thing is.

That could be the backbone of the story. That could be the hook for the story. You have to very deliberately decide which thing serves the story by withholding, and from whom and for how long. And then salt in context enough so that readers have their feet planted. Like, that should be a propelling mystery.

[00:26:02] Tiffany: But the reader—I talk about good questions and bad questions. The readers should never have bad questions like, “What’s going on?” or “Why should I care?”

[00:26:13] Matty: “What the hell?”

[00:26:14] Tiffany: Yes. I mean, one example I give is, you have a character walking down the street and she hears footsteps behind her and she’s really nervous, and she turns around and it’s her uncle. Who cares, right?

Like, we don’t know enough context. Even if we know she thought he was dead, that’s still not enough context. We don’t know the stakes. Why does it matter? Like, okay, it’s interesting that a dead guy is back, but did she spend his inheritance and now she’s like, oh, got to reckon with that? Or was he out to get her and she thought she was safe from him?

We need to know why the reveal is germane and important to the story.

[00:26:59] Matty: Yeah, I think sometimes this is so hard for an author to judge themselves. And this conversation was very well timed because I just got back some comments from my first beta reader, my first and favorite beta reader, and I had a reveal—not a huge reveal, but an “Oh, that’s interesting” kind of reveal—in the middle of my book where there were two characters and they were portrayed as two different people. But then it turns out it was the same person. It was a woman who was in disguise, and then somebody who had met her in her other persona sees her and says, “Oh look, it’s so-and-so.”

And I thought it was acceptably—like, this is a fun reveal but it’s not the big reveal. But my beta reader said, you can cash this in a lot more if you have the reveal be the end of a chapter, because it kind of gives it that punch. And then you show the outcome of the one character recognizing that it’s the same person in the next chapter.

And that’s not something—I think it was hard for me to judge whether it was a significant enough reveal that it merited that kind of end-of-the-chapter attention. And the other thing that was useful is she said, “I kind of thought it was the same person”—and these were the parts where she’d get to this part and think, “I think this is the same person.”

And then she said she’d be in these other parts and be thinking, “No, no, it’s not the same person.” And that’s another thing I think is so hard for an author to judge themselves—like, how secretive are you being? Or is this apparent to everybody else, or have you left no breadcrumbs so no one could possibly see that coming? Like the breadcrumbs you were talking about in The Sixth Sense.

[00:28:44] Tiffany: Particularly with reveals, I think it’s important to have beta readers or crit partners, for the reason you say. I mean, in the best of circumstances we are filling in the blanks between all that we know about the story and what’s actually made it on the page, and then that’s sort of times ten with reveals.

Because we may think we’re being appropriately mysterious, but we’re being cryptic. Or we may think we are salting in just enough subtle clues, but it’s very obvious. So I think you need feedback, and that’s actually the advice I always give about diagnosing them. You can do your best, but I think it’s helpful to ask people how hooked they felt by it, and whether they were surprised by the reveals, and whether the payoff felt satisfying, and then dig deeper.

Actually, I always advocate offering questions as guidelines to your beta readers anyway, particularly beta readers more than crit partners, because they’re often not writers themselves, for many people, and it helps elicit the kind of specific, focused feedback on how well your story’s coming across on the page that you need to help you understand whether your intentions are clear and where you might strengthen the story to make sure you get that across more.

So one of the resources I offer on my website is a beta reader questionnaire. But particularly with reveals, ask about were they hooked, were they surprised? And then dig deeper. If they felt like the reveal didn’t quite hold together, where did they figure it out ahead of time and how did they figure it out ahead of time? Or where and why did they feel confused or uninvested by what was clearly being hinted at? What was it specifically about the reveal that didn’t have the impact you hoped it would?

Ask for really frank feedback. Hopefully we always do this with our beta readers and our crit partners, but this is not the time for the soft pedal. You want your readers to very clearly reflect back to you where they saw the man behind the curtain.

[00:30:57] Matty: Yeah.

[00:30:58] Matty: When I—most of my novels are either thriller or suspense, but some of them have mystery aspects, sometimes as sort of a subplot. And I always ask my beta readers at various points in the story, just tell me who you think done it.

[00:31:11] Tiffany: Oh, that’s a good question.

[00:31:12] Matty: Ideally I want it to be spread evenly across all the possible suspects, including the person who actually did it. One thing that I’ve heard mystery writers say is, “Oh, I dropped in this clue and it suggests the actual murderer, so I’m going to take that out.” And I was like, no, you have to implicate everybody at one point or the other. Or the readers are just going to say, well, the only person that they haven’t implicated is this person, so clearly that’s the bad guy. You have to implicate the bad guy as much as everybody else.

[00:31:46] Tiffany: Well, you can take that a step further. That’s one of the techniques you can use, especially in something like a mystery. The more you have the character suspect—I just finished working with an author on one where the murderer was potentially the most obvious suspect, but she had the protagonist immediately think so and think so for quite some time during the story. And then she debunked it. She gave the reasons why it wasn’t plausible and they were believable reasons.

And so we accept it. It’s hiding in plain sight. Do more than drop the clue. Have them really suspect who the murderer might be or who the suspect might be, and then figure out a reason that they would dismiss that suspicion.

There’s this weird psychological thing where you almost carry the reader along with you if you’ve done it well, and they think, “Oh, well, they did their due diligence. It’s not that person.” And they just buy it, and it’s like the magician who’s using sleight of hand—don’t look at this hand, this hand is doing exciting things. And suddenly they don’t look at that hand anymore.

[00:33:01] Matty: Do you think that there’s a difference in approaching a reveal when people are going to a story for a reveal, as they would with a mystery, and where the reveal is—if the reader is expecting a reveal, is the approach different than if you’re applying a reveal in a genre where that’s not necessarily sort of a required trope?

[00:33:27] Tiffany: I don’t know if the approach would be different so much as—because we know there’s a reveal coming, like you said, readers are going to be on the lookout for it. So I think you almost have to be more mindful of using tools of benign manipulation and misdirection.

So for example, Ruta Sepetys has a story called I Must Betray You. That’s all about kids, people living in Romania under Ceaușescu’s regime, which is very oppressive, and everybody is spying on everybody. So we have this reality set up, and early in the story she has one character tell the protagonist, “Spies are everywhere, including within our own walls.” So we know that within this family somebody is a spy, and we’re looking at every single thing.

But she really cleverly misdirects us because there’s more than one. And also the one that we think it is at first, we find out indeed was spying, but for a completely different reason that was much more sympathetic than the one we originally thought. So the character was more of an ally than an antagonist.

She really kind of messes with our expectations. But because we know somebody’s a spy and the family is only like four people big, it requires you to be even more attentive to hiding the clues in plain sight, to leaning into some of the mystery, to misdirecting readers. All the techniques you would use to pull off any reveal, you kind of have to pull off exponentially more skillfully in that kind of story.

[00:35:12] Matty: Well, I like that idea of the double reveal—the reveal of who it is and then the reveal of the why, why they’re doing it. And with each level of reveal, you have to be more and more skilled at handling the story so that it supports the weight of all those reveals.

[00:35:27] Tiffany: So I think when you’re doing it, the first question to ask yourself is, what is the puzzle piece you want to withhold and who do you want to withhold it from? Is it from readers? Is it from your protagonist or another main point-of-view character? Is it from another character? And who is withholding it?

Then ask yourself why. If you’re doing it to just put a little spice into the story, or because you think you need to shock the reader or it will have great impact—that may not always be the strongest reason to do it. It should be something absolutely intrinsic and germane to the telling of the story.

For example, in The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett—Stella and Desiree are twins who run away from their hometown together, and then one of them—they’re incredibly close, but a year later, one of them disappears. We have no idea what happened to her, and neither does her sister, and neither do any of the other characters.

Well, that’s not really the focus of the first part of the story. It’s the effect of what happened to her on the other characters. So we don’t even hear anything about her until maybe midway through the story, when we start to follow her story and we understand why she left. And then the fallout from that converges in the third part of the story, where we see how the fact of her leaving and the fact of her being rediscovered by the family affects the family dynamics.

So that’s intrinsic to the whole story. That reveal is the premise of the story. In a mystery, it’s going to be the premise of the story. In something like Water for Elephants, it makes the reader question what we thought we knew about the story and changes the impact and meaning of it at the end when we learn the truth.

So it’s also intrinsic to the story. In The Kite Runner, the secret about what happened with his childhood best friend—I think we learn maybe a third of the way through, but it’s dictated his entire childhood and his entire adult life, the main character. It was a betrayal that he committed against his best friend. And so in the first part of the story, it’s kept because we’re unspooling that part. The story is sort of bracketed with present and past scenes, and in the first part we see the present at the beginning and how it has affected him, and then we see what leads up to it.

So we don’t actually learn what it is until about a third of the way through. But then after that, the course of the story changes as a result of him facing what he did and then trying to make it right. So that will dictate where you want to put the reveal and what you’re revealing.

Then start building in the necessary context and foundation for it. Remember, if everything’s a piece of the puzzle and we don’t have any of the pieces of the puzzle, imagine trying to put together a puzzle when someone hands you two blue puzzle pieces and goes, “Go.” We have to have at least some idea of the picture that we’re putting together. We need to know a little bit more about what pieces we have so we can start to figure out how they go together.

So we need enough to know for the revelation of the information or the event to reverberate for the characters and the plot and the reader. Or, I say that having enough context is sort of the difference between finding a beautifully wrapped present with a tag on it that says it’s from your best friend under the tree, and finding a plain brown paper–wrapped box on your front doorstep. One is lovely and one is annoying and possibly threatening.

Then start paving in the clues. This is not necessarily how it will unspool in the story—this is maybe your process as an author so that you can figure out what to reveal when. I always talk about the Watergate question: What does the reader need to know and when do they need to know it?

Start dropping your breadcrumbs in a really well-orchestrated reveal. As we said, a second read will let readers see where they are, so figure out how and where you’re going to pave them in and what techniques you’re going to use to keep the information hidden without that coy, cryptic feel or manipulating the reader.

And then, when will the reveal have the most impact? We talked about in The Husband’s Secret it was in the first third. In A House Without Windows, the whole point of the story is whether she killed her husband or not—we don’t find out until the very end. Same with Water for Elephants. Gone Girl comes maybe halfway through.

So for that, you have to consider who the reveal is being kept from and when the impact is most profound on the characters and the story. And then just make sure you get beta readers to look at it and see if it’s effective.

[00:40:37] Matty: Yeah, I realized that one of the reasons I was sort of teeing up the reveal that I used as an example—about the person who’s actually two people who are actually the same person—is that it’s not intrinsic to the story in the sense that, I think we had talked in a previous episode about the fact that I like to keep my cast of characters as small as possible.

And so as I was working through my outline for the story, I had a woman who was doing this one thing and I had a woman who was doing this other thing, and then I just thought logically, she’s one of the bad guys and the bad guys only have a limited number of people to tap into, so they would use the same person for both these tasks.

And so it was more—it wasn’t like, “Ooh, and then it’s going to be a big reveal.” It’s like, no, this is kind of logical and I can have fun with the reveal, as opposed to the story hanging or relying on that reveal being really revelatory to the reader.

[00:41:30] Tiffany: So I think without that logical piece, though, it might have felt contrived, because yes, it’s fun, but if there’s no germane story reason for it, it might have felt like an author manipulation. So I think it was smart of you to pave that in.

That’s why I think thinking them through beforehand is a really good way to approach them. And this applies even if you’re a pantser, just because if you totally pants it, it’s possible, but then you have to go through and lay all this groundwork. Whereas if you’ve thought it out, I think it can help direct how the story builds.

[00:42:06] Matty: Well, I’m realizing that we probably should have done the “What’s one secret about you that nobody knows?” as the end of our conversation instead of the start of our conversation. We’ve already had one reveal from you so far. But Tiffany, it’s always lovely to speak with you. Thank you for coming on for episode seven. So please let everyone know, if they don’t already know, where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online.

[00:42:30] Tiffany: Thank you, Matty. Thanks for having me again. It’s always such a delight to talk to you. The best place to find me is FoxPrintEditorial.com. It’s where you can find—I don’t do a lot of social media anymore, but you can find my weekly blog, which is full of craft tips and business tips and writing life insights. And then my online courses are there. There’s a ton of free resources for writers—downloadables, guides, checklists, recommended resources, links to people and organizations that can help writers. So please do check that out.

[00:43:08] Matty: And I am just scanning your actual bio because I know in there—oh, FoxPrint Editorial, named one of Writer’s Digest’s Best Websites for Writers. So that’s why.

[00:43:19] Tiffany: Three years in a row. Thank you for bringing that up.

Episode 324 - Writing Ensemble Casts That Keep Readers Hooked with Jennifer Probst

Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!

Amazon Music | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Overcast | Castbox | Pocket Casts | Podbean | Player FM | TuneIn | YouTube

Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment on YouTube!

Jennifer Probst discusses WRITING ENSEMBLE CASTS THAT KEEP READERS HOOKED, including strategies for developing believable character relationships and chemistry, balancing primary and secondary characters in series fiction, keeping relationship arcs consistent across books, and practical craft tips for writing complex casts that keep readers engaged.

Jennifer Probst wrote her first book at twelve years old. She bound it in a folder, read it to her classmates, and hasn’t stopped writing since. She holds a masters in English Literature and lives in the beautiful Hudson Valley in upstate New York. She is the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of over fifty books in contemporary romance fiction. She was thrilled her book, The Marriage Bargain, spent 26 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Her work has been translated in over a dozen countries, sold over a million copies, and was dubbed a “romance phenom” by Kirkus Reviews.

Episode Links

https://www.jenniferprobst.com

Summary & Transcript

In this episode of The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Jennifer Probst about writing and managing large ensemble casts, with a particular focus on romance fiction, multi-POV storytelling, and long-running series. They discuss how authors can balance multiple characters and relationships without overwhelming readers, and how intentional craft choices help maintain clarity, emotional impact, and reader engagement.

OVERVIEW OF ENSEMBLE CAST STORYTELLING

Jennifer explains that she is frequently drawn to ensemble casts because she enjoys exploring interconnected relationships and the dynamics of communities. Ensemble storytelling allows authors to show how characters influence one another over time, rather than existing in isolation. However, she emphasizes that this approach requires deliberate structure and planning. Without clear focus, large casts can quickly become confusing or dilute the emotional core of the story.

She notes that ensemble casts appear across genres but are especially common in romance series, where readers often enjoy seeing familiar characters reappear and evolve. She adds that romance readers frequently become invested not just in a central couple, but in a broader cast of friends, family members, and future protagonists.

FOCUSING EACH BOOK AROUND A CENTRAL STORY

A key point Jennifer stresses is that even in a large ensemble, each book must have a clear center. One primary relationship or narrative arc should anchor the story. Supporting characters may have subplots, but those elements must serve the main arc rather than compete with it. She cautions against giving secondary characters too much page time before they are ready to carry their own story, as this can weaken pacing and reader satisfaction.

Matty highlights how this approach helps readers feel grounded. Even when many characters appear, readers know whose journey they are following in that specific book. Jennifer adds that clarity of focus also helps authors avoid the temptation to resolve too many storylines at once.

MANAGING MULTIPLE POINTS OF VIEW

The conversation turns to multi-POV writing, which is common in ensemble romance and series fiction. Jennifer explains that she is careful about whose point of view is included and why. Every POV must earn its place by advancing the story or deepening emotional understanding. She avoids including a character’s perspective simply because it is interesting; it must be necessary.

Jennifer also discusses techniques for keeping POV shifts clear, such as maintaining consistent voice, clearly signaling transitions, and ensuring that each POV offers new information rather than repeating what the reader already knows. Matty notes that readers can become frustrated when POVs blur together or feel redundant, especially in long series.

CHARACTER DIFFERENTIATION AND VOICE

Jennifer emphasizes the importance of distinct character voices in ensemble casts. With many characters on the page, authors must work harder to ensure that dialogue, internal thoughts, and emotional reactions are specific to each character. She explains that she often develops a strong sense of a character’s emotional wounds, desires, and worldview before writing, which helps keep voices consistent.

Matty connects this to reader trust, pointing out that when characters feel distinct, readers can follow complex interactions more easily. Jennifer agrees, noting that readers will tolerate large casts if they can immediately recognize who is speaking and why their perspective matters.

PACING AND TIMING IN SERIES FICTION

Another major topic is pacing across a series. Jennifer explains that ensemble casts often work best when characters are introduced gradually. Rather than front-loading a story with too many people, she prefers to layer characters over time, allowing readers to become familiar with them before they take on larger roles.

She also discusses the importance of timing when spinning off secondary characters into their own books. Rushing this process can feel forced, while waiting too long can lead to missed opportunities. Matty observes that successful series often strike a balance between teasing future stories and delivering a complete experience in the current book.

READER EXPECTATIONS AND GENRE CONVENTIONS

Jennifer and Matty talk about how genre expectations shape ensemble storytelling, particularly in romance. Romance readers expect emotional payoff, relationship growth, and satisfying resolutions. Ensemble casts can enhance these elements by showing how relationships evolve within a broader community, but they can also undermine them if the focus becomes scattered.

Jennifer notes that being aware of reader expectations helps guide decisions about which subplots to emphasize and which to hold back. Matty adds that clarity about genre conventions helps authors decide how experimental they can be without alienating readers.

REVISION AND BIG-PICTURE THINKING

In discussing revision, Jennifer explains that she often evaluates ensemble casts at the structural level, asking whether each character’s presence serves the story’s goals. During revision, she may reduce or eliminate scenes that pull attention away from the core narrative. Matty agrees that this kind of big-picture review is especially important in ensemble fiction, where small additions can have outsized effects.

Jennifer also mentions that tracking tools, character lists, and series bibles can help authors maintain continuity, especially across multiple books. However, she emphasizes that tools should support creativity, not replace thoughtful storytelling decisions.

FINAL THOUGHTS ON WRITING ENSEMBLE CASTS

As the conversation wraps up, Jennifer reiterates that ensemble casts are powerful but demanding. They require discipline, clear priorities, and a strong understanding of character motivation. When handled well, they can deepen reader engagement and create a sense of continuity that keeps readers returning to a series.

---

This transcript was created by Descript and cleaned up by Claude; I don’t review these transcripts in detail, so consider the actual interview to be the authoritative source for this information.

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is Jennifer Probst. Hey, Jennifer, how are you doing?

[00:00:05] Jennifer: Hi, Matty. Good. It’s so good to be back with you again.

[00:00:09] Matty: It is lovely to have you back. Just to give everyone a little reminder of who you are—Jennifer Probst is the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of over fifty books in contemporary romance fiction, and her book THE MARRIAGE BARGAIN spent 26 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Her work has been translated in over a dozen countries, has sold over a million copies, and was dubbed a “romance phenom” by Kirkus Reviews.

Jennifer was my guest back in Episode 267, “Using Romance to Write Stories with Heart.” We made a passing comment in that episode that I was so interested in that I wanted to return to it, and that is the idea of managing relationships in a cast of characters. We may be using some romance examples, but I think this is going to be a conversation that really applies regardless of what genre our listeners are writing in.

Jennifer, can you start out talking a little bit about what are the special challenges related to managing relationships in a cast of characters versus a one-on-one relationship or a more limited scenario?

[00:01:17] Jennifer: Yes. I was thinking about that, because normally, especially in the romance industry, you will do a romance novel and then you’ll introduce the hero and heroine, and then you’ll have the supporting character. Usually there’s one that you’re seeding for the next book in the series—the best friend or a coworker, somebody that sparks the reader’s interest. We’re told to be very careful writing that character, which is super fun because it’s fun for the reader to be like, “Oh, I think this is going to be the next story.”

And then you go into the next story. So there’s a lead-up, and maybe then you get the shadow of the first couple—in the next book, you’d get a peek in and see how they’re doing. I think that’s the average way to write a series. There’s all sorts of different series, of course, but writing a multiple cast of characters is a totally different breed.

Actually, this conversation couldn’t have come at a better time because I am literally writing book four in this brand new indie series that I wrote just for me, because I happen to absolutely love and am addicted to these big multi-character stories—usually the younger heroes and heroines where it’s a bunch of friends in a cast, and everybody has their own plot and character arc and love interest. A lot of the times in the group, the love interests overlap and coincide. So there are love triangles, it’s done in secret—think of it more like a soap opera but in a romance book form.

That has been probably one of the most challenging and fun things, because I wrote it with no expectations. It was a side project for me, and I did it as a serial novel. It took me about a year to write the 150,000 words. I’m also a pantser, not a plotter, so I never knew—there were seven characters and each one got a point of view. I would have to figure out, okay, this is maybe the main hero and heroine for this book, but all the other ones were just as important. So I was seeding all of these multiple points of view in each chapter.

One of the books that comes to mind is DAISY JONES AND THE SIX, if you remember that—that was in an interview-form book from Taylor Jenkins Reid. She juggled a whole bunch of the characters, not just the main singers of the band but also the other people in the band and the lead singer’s other wife, and all of these relationships that were messy.

I was such a soap opera fan and I love reality TV, and I just love all of those interactions. So I figured I’m going to write my own kind of reality TV soap opera with cliffhangers. I’m writing book four right now and it’s been successful—I really didn’t go into it thinking this was going to be a bestseller or whatever. I did it for me. I did it because I didn’t see that in the market. I was looking for books like that, and since I couldn’t find them, I said, “Let me write one myself,” and put no pressure on it. For the next year or two, I decided to see where it goes and just kept continuing because I liked it.

[00:05:12] Matty: I’m very interested in the idea of seven—well, first of all, I’m interested in the idea of an odd number when it’s a romance. I’m also interested in to what extent you think you could handle that if your intent had just been to write a standalone novel. Does that level of cast of characters require a series so that you can shift your focus over a series of books to different relationships? Or do you think it’s possible to juggle all that within a single book?

[00:05:41] Jennifer: I think you could juggle it in a single book if you’ve got maybe not seven—maybe you’ve got four main characters, like two main couples with a subplot, and maybe you can do a 100,000- to 120,000-word book. The thing is, anything’s possible—that’s what I love about writing. You can’t really say, “Oh, that really can’t be done in a book.” Look, maybe Lucy Score writes it. She writes those big major small-town books with a bunch of characters, and her books are just taking off, so popular. I think anything can be done.

But what I did for the book is it was going to be a one-off. I wasn’t even going into it saying, “Hey, this is going to be a four-book series.” I just wanted to explore where it would take me with the characters. They were young and they work at this hot restaurant in New York City. They want to pursue careers like acting and modeling and the creative arts, and they’re working in this restaurant, and they all become like a family—kind of a found-family setup.

Then what happens is everybody has these different roles. She’s got an enemies-to-lovers thing with her boyfriend’s best friend, and then she finds out that her boyfriend cheated on her, so she kind of goes to the best friend for revenge. And then there’s this musical group—one guy is a DJ, and he’s been in love with one of the good girls in the group secretly, and they’re friends. It’s this interwoven mess. You have to tease out each of the stories.

I think the key here is that in order for it to be a good series or a big, meaty standalone book, each character has to have a growth arc. Because if there’s no growth arc—if where they start and where they end up doesn’t change—it’s just not going to be as much fun. So you’re not just doing the growth arc for one couple; you’re doing it for single characters and couples. That’s a lot to take on.

And then you have to have different conflicts or it’s going to be the same kind of story. Maybe one was enemies to lovers with a love triangle, but then the second one came from a very gentle, slow friends-to-lovers thing. I know I’m talking tropes and it’s not all about tropes, but that’s an easier way to classify it.

And then I had a supporting character that was the villain—nobody knew she was the villain in the group. I’ve also redeemed her in this fourth book, because who doesn’t want a villain redeemed? When you say a villain, there are so many shades of gray. So you have a little bit of everything.

The new big one is TELL ME LIES—have you heard about that one? It was based on a Carola Lovering novel, and they made it into three seasons on Hulu. It’s very messy—it’s about a poisonous love relationship that leaks into everything, but everybody has an arc. All of her friends in college, everybody’s experimenting on their own. That reminds me of DAISY JONES AND THE SIX and FRIENDS—except FRIENDS is a comedy, so it’s not angsty and dark.

[00:09:36] Matty: Some of the things you’re describing in the romance scenario, I enjoy doing too. I’m thinking of my Lizzy Ballard thriller series, because there may be five significant characters in addition to Lizzy. At some point I wanted to make sure that every significant character had a chance to interact with all the other significant characters, because I found that every combination creates interesting dynamics.

A good example: there’s a situation—the only romance that enters into the Lizzy Ballard series is there’s a man who’s dating a woman, and at some point that woman switches her affection to another man. But these two guys have to keep working together, and every time I write a scene with the two of them, it’s so much fun because there is so much to plumb there. They have reasons to resent each other beyond the romantic consideration, but they also have reasons to respect and appreciate each other. Having that large cast of characters gives so many fun opportunities for character development, character revelation—even understanding more deeply, as the creator of the character, what they’re capable of under the surface.

[00:10:45] Jennifer: Yes. I love that—it gives you more playground. And there are more emotions. I love what you just described, because there are so many emotions to plumb there. They care about each other still, but then there’s this cringe feeling and this tension, because life is messy.

That’s what you have to lean into. Yes, I write romance and yes, that comes with an innate happily ever after, but what people don’t realize is it’s still a mess. And that happily ever after is at the present, but any happily ever after—your relationship has ups and downs before you get to the altar. And then the second part happens when you’re married and that’s a whole other basket of drama and emotion. It always changes no matter what stage of life you’re in.

As writers, we need to be very curious and we need to be like armchair therapists—and be open. That’s what I’m always telling my students: pay attention to everything because it’s all fodder for the emotion and conflict and stuff in our books.

[00:11:59] Matty: I was interested to hear that your book was over a hundred thousand words, because I always think of romance as being shorter. You’re giving some great examples of your own and others’ books that are not. Is each of the books that long?

[00:12:14] Jennifer: No. So what I did is I wrote it and it just kept going and going because all of these other characters had a lot to say and they were so messy. When I got to 150,000, I said, “Okay, I’m going to split it into two books.” And there was a perfect way to do a cliffhanger. I don’t do cliffhangers in my books normally—again, this was different. I think every writer has certain times where they go, “I need to write something different.” Something that’s not too market or too calculated to get published traditionally, but something that is exciting and different and cleanses the palette.

I had no expectations for it, but since I was looking for it, I said there’s got to be a space in the market for this, even though it’s not traditionally romance. Because there’s cheating in it and it’s messy, but it is a romance—maybe just not a conventional one.

After the 150,000, I had to keep going because then there was a whole other couple to investigate, and then the villain got paired up with another villain, and now they’re having a romance. I’m like, “This is insane—I didn’t see this coming.” So I’m just having fun. It’s like my own “Guiding Light” from back in the day where I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I think this is going to be the last book in the series, and then we’ll have over 200,000 words total.

Everybody can do it differently. If you’re going in with a cast of characters—like FRIENDS or something more angsty like TELL ME LIES—I think you can see it more clearly. Maybe you plan it: “I want six couples, some secondary characters, maybe a younger couple and an older couple.” I love when the grandmother or grandfather comes in and you can match them up with somebody. I did a three-arc series for an elderly character in one of my trilogies, and they got their happily ever after in the third book. So many people emailed me—I was like, “But don’t you care about the main hero and heroine?” They were like, “What’s happening with the grandmother? Is she going to hook up?” So sometimes those surprises are there in this big cast of characters.

[00:14:34] Matty: At the end of the last Lizzy Ballard book—which I’ve been working on for a ridiculously long period of time—I needed to make sure that every character had the perfect wrap-up. As I was writing, I saw the opportunity for one of the characters to potentially have a romantic interest that gets referred to in a spinoff series.

It made me think about the balance between planning relationships ahead and letting them evolve. I think FRIENDS is a great example, because I’d be curious whether the people who started that show had any idea how the relationships were going to work out over the course of the series.

The other thing I feel is probably related is that sometimes when you talk about a cast of characters, the shorthand becomes “the ditzy one, the snarky one, the smart one, the dumb one.” I always cringe a little as a creator of characters when characters are minimized that way. So I guess I’m asking: do you need to go in having a general sense of the character—like “this is going to be the snarky one, this is going to be the dumb one”—or does that evolve, and as a result do the relationships among the characters evolve?

[00:16:23] Jennifer: I love that, because wouldn’t you love to sit down with the screenwriters? TV is such great fodder for writers. You wonder—when they started with Ross and Rachel, did they have any idea they were sitting on a treasure? And then Monica and Chandler getting together—I know nobody saw that coming. That must have written its way through after season after season when they were experimenting.

Maybe with TV, actors and actresses have certain chemistry that just comes off the screen, and you have to go with it. And don’t you find the same thing with writing sometimes? There are certain characters where you have them together in your mind, and then there are these surprises where you’re like, “Why does this feel like there’s chemistry between these two? Why doesn’t this feel right?” It’s that gut instinct.

So I think it’s a little bit of both—you can plot up to a certain point but then leave room for the surprises. I wonder: if you plotted everything out and it didn’t feel right on the page, you would probably pivot. You would probably go back to your outline and completely change everything. So you’re never written into a corner, I don’t think, if it’s not working.

What you said about cliched characters is so true. You constantly have to push back on that, because with a big cast of characters, it is so easy to fall into the ditzy blonde best friend, the really smart guy, the jock. But what I like to do is take that broad, awful cliche and then twist it.

When I started writing the Red series, I knew I wanted to have the Barbie-and-Ken couple—the gorgeous one who was always captain of the cheerleading team, has a million followers, everything seems easy because she’s beautiful and privileged. They call them the queen and the king of the club. But my whole point was to take that shallow cliche and start fragmenting and dissecting it. You start to see into her past—her father left to have another family, her mom is an alcoholic, she’s really been raising herself. She has all these issues. You start dismantling all of that to get to the real meat of the character.

Then I introduce another character who allows her vulnerability on the page. The hero gets to see it, we get to see it. Start with something that would make us cringe and then surprise us. Those are the best kinds of stories, I think.

[00:19:42] Matty: As you’re describing the idea of pivoting if you’re a plotter—I’m definitely a plotter, or a “framer” as I like to say. But I realize that’s not true for the romantic relationships. Going back to the two guys where the woman shifts her affections—as I was writing her relationship with the first guy, it became clear to me that they were together because there was an expectation among their families that they would be, and they respected each other and liked each other, but it wasn’t a sparky relationship. I kind of felt this was not going to pan out.

Then when the plot threw her in with one of the other characters—someone who on the surface was an even worse match—I thought, “That’s what would happen.” It wasn’t that the plot was dependent on them getting together; it was just going to be a satisfying or dissatisfying thing for the reader. And it was fun to say, “Oh yeah, of course in that situation these two people are going to find an attraction, fall in love, find ways to stay together.” I never thought about it before, but from a plotting point of view, I’m very much a plotter. From a romantic-relationships-developing point of view, I’m totally a discovery writer.

[00:21:11] Jennifer: That’s so cool, because I think in our culture, we just love all-or-nothing labels. “Oh, you’re a plotter or you’re a pantser.” But you just proved that there’s so much more nuance. You pants and feel your way through the romance, but then you plot the plot. That’s a combination.

I think it’s easier to classify—”I’m a morning writer, I’m a plotter”—we start with that, but there are so many surprises within. As we all know, each book is its own challenge. Only writers know that you can write 60 books and the 61st one will feel like you’ve never written a book before. I don’t think there’s any other career like that. That’s what makes it so interesting and challenging yet hard—you feel like you start all over and you’ve got to trust those instincts.

[00:22:25] Matty: It’s also interesting that the experience changes over a series. When I was writing the first book in either of my series, I didn’t know what these people were going to do. But by book three or four, it’s pretty clear what they are or are not going to do. So the further you go along, there’s that sense that the character is telling you what to do. And I think over time that’s true—even from a very practical point of view, if you get to book four, you can’t force a character to do something that’s completely out of character just to serve a plot need, unless you give them that legitimate backstory, like you were saying about the homecoming queen who proves herself to be a more complex person than the reader might first expect.

[00:23:15] Jennifer: Writing a series or a big book with multi characters is the same as binging a series. Readers and viewers will get very upset if suddenly—”I’ve watched this, I’m on season two now, I know who this character is”—and if they do something different, it feels false. So you have to kind of write your way through until you know those characters inside and out.

For me, it comes with the more I write them. When I write a book, I don’t really know—I only have a basic idea of what I want. I figure out exactly who that person is by the end, and then I’m super excited because I go back to the beginning and I know—”Oh, she wouldn’t do that,” or “This scene is wrong”—because now I know everything about them. So for me, the first draft is a discovery, and then I can write it perfectly because I know who they are.

[00:24:11] Matty: So I think the FRIENDS thing came up because when we were talking about writing romance, we had gotten into a conversation about FRIENDS versus MOONLIGHTING.

[00:24:24] Jennifer: Yes, we did. Are we showing our age? I don’t care.

[00:24:29] Matty: I think the context in the first episode was that FRIENDS worked in a way that MOONLIGHTING did not, mainly because once the main characters of MOONLIGHTING got together, nobody really cared anymore.

[00:24:44] Jennifer: It fell flat. I think a lot of those older series—the show would drop every week, and everybody tuned in for the kiss. Even CHEERS—remember Sam and Diane? The kiss, the kiss. How many seasons? And then it’s so delicate—you watch the ones that fall apart and they just can’t salvage it.

That was what we were questioning: what makes one thing work and the other one feel like, “Okay, this is just boring now—they’re together.” I think a couple of things come into play, like growth arcs. They’ve got to go from one set of challenges—which is usually the first book in a romance—to something new. They’re together, they kissed, they’re in a relationship, but now you’ve got to raise the stakes. That relationship has to be threatened.

I felt like with MOONLIGHTING, after they got together, it was the same stuff. When they fought, it didn’t even feel fun anymore because they were together and it felt like they were fighting to stay together. That wasn’t as much fun as trying to get together. So the spark has to continue with more conflict, another growth arc, another challenge. It just has to change. If it doesn’t change—if the leveling up isn’t good—it’s just going to fall flat.

[00:26:30] Matty: And how long can you string them along? At some point you just have to give in. But what I started thinking about was that MOONLIGHTING might have been more successful if it had been more of a cast of characters.

What I was thinking about was SEX AND THE CITY. Probably everyone figured Carrie would get together with Mr. Big at the end—I regretted it, but I may be in the minority. But watching her date all these other people, where everybody in the audience was saying, “Oh no, he’s a jerk” or “No, no, he’s great—don’t dump him for Mr. Big again”—the cast of characters can maintain the interest longer than it was maintained in MOONLIGHTING.

[00:27:18] Jennifer: Oh my gosh, how could I forget about SEX AND THE CITY? There you go—it’s a multiple, you get all the characters. You have these women, and Carrie is maybe the lead, but everybody cares about everyone and they all have their time to shine with different conflicts and coming together.

You are right, because that gives more balance, more conflict, more room to grow. I bet if MOONLIGHTING had another couple or really great supporting characters with their own conflicts, it could have supported another dynamic the way FRIENDS did, because you had Monica and Chandler and everybody had a different couple to root for. When one maybe got a little stale or needed to wait for a while, we were never bored.

[00:28:05] Matty: That’s pointing out something important—you don’t want every relationship pegged at ten all the time. FRIENDS is a great example: while one set of characters’ relationships was being really fraught, somebody else’s relationship was more stable. So the screenwriters could shift the audience’s focus from couple to couple and not have relationship exhaustion the way MOONLIGHTING might have created.

[00:28:37] Jennifer: That is so true. Variety—and that’s why I think it’s really hard for writers doing something like FIFTY SHADES OF GREY or the Crossfire series, where it’s three or four books with one couple. You’ve got them together at the end of book one, and now you’ve got to constantly change the dynamic of the relationship so the reader stays interested enough to be like, “Okay, can they get to marriage? Can they get here?”

When you have more characters to pull from, I think there are more opportunities to pull threads and follow them.

[00:29:29] Matty: Another lesson I’m learning from our conversation that’s applicable to the Lizzy Ballard book in process: this would be the last Lizzy-focused book, and as I was working on the draft, I kept being pulled into the stories of other characters—many of the scenes focused on this character who’s going to become the star of his own spinoff. I kept thinking, “This is a Lizzy Ballard thriller—I have to have Lizzy in every scene.”

But then I thought, maybe not. If I’m easing readers into something else, it makes sense that the drama of Lizzy’s story would tail off because that’s her goal—to have the drama of her life tail off. And the drama can shift to another character. Whether it’s a romance shifting focus to another person’s relationship, or a thriller shifting to another person’s ongoing story—that’s the benefit of having a cast of characters you can shift attention to.

[00:30:39] Jennifer: That’s such a great point. That’s what we were talking about—the plotting versus the instinctual. You were like, “Lizzy has to be in this scene,” because that’s what we’re told. And then your instinct was, “But no, because I’m going to be pulling her back.” And it felt right.

I did that with the Red series. The first 150,000 words—the first two books—were basically this one couple with everybody else, but I started to narrow in on the main pair and feed in everything else. Then they went to L.A. and I got them off the page. Now this other couple comes front and center—the villain and the slow friends-to-lovers love triangle.

In this final one, my first hero and heroine are back in New York and everything has imploded. Everybody slept with everybody else and lied to everybody else—there’s a reckoning. And now I get to decide where these relationships are going to go. I don’t know how it’s going to end, but it’s a lot of fun figuring it out. Sometimes you can pull back and it’s okay, because the other characters can step forward and take center stage.

[00:32:11] Matty: That’s interesting—the benefits of working with a cast of characters through a series, but then as you’re nearing the end, you have to think of a way to wrap it up. You can’t just stop. There has to be that reckoning, the perfect resolution for every character based on their history and personalities. You don’t have to know what that reckoning looks like from the beginning, but you always have to keep in the back of your mind that there has to be that scene where the resolution is achieved for all the characters.

[00:32:53] Jennifer: Yes, and it’s got to be satisfying. I kind of know who I want to stay together and who I don’t, but I tend to sometimes write toward an ending. I had done that with one of my Italy books—the developmental editor read it and said, “Oh my God, Jen, this is terrible. If she chooses A, this is going to happen, and if B...” And she said, “I don’t like it—what’s going to happen?” And I said, “I don’t know.” She said, “No!” But I had to write to the end to figure it out. Some writers have to do it that way, and some writers have the vision from the beginning.

[00:33:43] Matty: The one thing about FRIENDS that I’m very relieved about is I’m glad they didn’t make all the characters couples. I’m glad they didn’t have Phoebe and Joey become a couple, because what felt right for those characters was for them not to become a couple. It would have been too tidy.

[00:34:04] Jennifer: A little forced, right? I totally agree. Sometimes it’s okay—you can get your happy ever after not in a couple, because the happy ever after can be finding yourself, or going to your next challenge, or realizing you’ve healed. There are so many other ways of getting that satisfaction that don’t have to be “we are in love.”

[00:34:31] Matty: I think it was really healthy that they didn’t imply that everybody has to be a couple to be happy. Having a cast of characters gives you the opportunity to break a trope with a particular character in a way that balances out the expectations readers bring because of the genre.

[00:34:54] Jennifer: Definitely. And it’s exactly what you said with the mystery series—each genre has the reader expectations. We can play with edges, we can go past the edges. But I think knowing what you’re getting into—”Okay, this is going to satisfy genre expectations and be a little easy” or “I’m going to challenge things and push”—it’s going to work or it’s not, or maybe it’s going to work for a smaller niche.

I like not being afraid of stepping outside when you need to write something different, even if it’s a risk. I want to be doing this until I’m in my rocking chair to my last day and the pen falls from my hand. You have to find ways to challenge yourself to keep growing.

[00:35:49] Matty: So great. Well, Jen, I can’t think of a nicer way to wrap up our conversation about casts of characters—with that inspirational note. Please let everyone know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online.

[00:35:59] Jennifer: Yes, I will direct you straight to my website, jenniferprobst.com. You’ll get a free book if you sign up for my newsletter, and there are lots of freebies and fun things. I also do a whole section for writers—if you’re a writer, new or advanced or in the middle, I’ve got you covered with a lot of stuff there. So go there. And then of course I’m on every social media available, and I do message and respond to everything.

[00:36:24] Matty: Great. Thank you so much.

[00:36:26] Jennifer: Thank you so much, Matty. Good to be here.

Episode 322 - Becoming a Better Writer by Being a Better Reader with Kristen Tate

Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!

Amazon Music | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Overcast | Castbox | Pocket Casts | Podbean | Player FM | TuneIn | YouTube

Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment on YouTube!

Kristen Tate discusses BECOMING A BETTER WRITER BY BEING A BETTER READER, including how novel study helps authors analyze story structure, scene design, pacing, and sentences; practical strategies for rereading fiction with purpose; learning craft lessons from the books you love and even the books you don't love; balancing reading for pleasure with analytical reading; and using books, book clubs, and intentional reading habits to become a better, more confident fiction writer.

Kristen Tate has been a freelance editor for a decade, helping authors transform their work from rough draft to finished book. She has a PhD in English from Columbia University, with a focus on publishing history. She is the author of Novel Study: Decoding the Secrets and Structures of Contemporary Fiction and writes a regular newsletter full of craft advice and encouragement for authors.

Episode Links

https://www.thebluegarret.com/

https://www.instagram.com/bluegarret/

https://bsky.app/profile/kristentate.bsky.social

https://www.youtube.com/@BlueGarretBooks

Summary

In this episode of The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Kristen Tate about becoming a better writer by becoming a better reader, with a focus on reading fiction analytically to improve writing craft. Matty and Kristen explore how intentional, thoughtful reading can sharpen skills related to story structure, scene design, pacing, character development, and sentence-level technique, especially for fiction writers.

BECOMING A BETTER WRITER BY BECOMING A BETTER READER

Kristen explains that her interest in reading as a craft tool began with her desire to become a better editor. After spending a year reading and reviewing one craft book per week, she realized that, while formulas and frameworks were helpful, they did not fully explain why certain novels felt masterful. She still found herself unable to clearly articulate what made a particular book work so well. That realization led her to approach novels the way she had been trained in graduate school: by taking them apart piece by piece and analyzing them in depth.

This process evolved into what she calls “novel study,” which later became the basis for a group-based project where writers read bestselling novels together and analyzed them collectively. The emphasis was not on whether participants liked a book, but on understanding how it worked and what techniques the author used to achieve specific effects.

FORMULAS VERSUS HOW NOVELS ACTUALLY WORK

Kristen acknowledges the value of popular craft frameworks such as SAVE THE CAT, STORY GRID, and THE ANATOMY OF STORY, especially for writers who are starting out or facing a blank page. These systems can provide reassurance and direction. However, she notes that once writers move beyond the basics, real novels often diverge significantly from formulas. Each book is unique, and studying completed novels reveals a wide range of successful approaches to structure and storytelling.

Rather than treating novels as templates to copy, Kristen encourages writers to study them as individual solutions to storytelling problems. Looking closely at how different books handle similar challenges—such as multiple points of view or non-linear timelines—can expand a writer’s sense of what is possible.

READING FOR TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES

Matty and Kristen discuss the idea of reading with specific questions in mind. Instead of focusing on general impressions, writers can look for answers to targeted craft questions, such as how an author balances internal thoughts with external action in an action scene, or how they manage pacing across chapters. Kristen suggests that writers can “read for the tool and the technique,” extracting lessons that can later be applied to their own work.

Kristen emphasizes that all reading is valuable, even when it is not analytical. Simply absorbing story structure over time helps build writerly intuition. However, she notes that rereading is where deeper learning often happens. One practical strategy she recommends is shifting formats—for example, listening to an audiobook for the first pass to experience the story as a reader, then rereading in print or on an e-reader to take notes and analyze craft choices.

PRACTICAL STRATEGIES FOR ANALYTICAL READING

Kristen offers concrete suggestions for writers who want to read more analytically without becoming overwhelmed. She recommends leaving “breadcrumbs” for yourself while reading, such as highlights, notes, or sticky tabs that mark moments worth revisiting. These might include a striking sentence, a strong scene ending, or a moment of emotional impact.

She also introduces a three-level framework for analysis: story level, scene level, and sentence level. Writers can reflect on questions such as where the story’s most intense moments occur, where their attention flagged, or how the climax is positioned. On the scene level, Kristen describes an intensive method she uses professionally: tagging every sentence in a scene as dialogue, action, interiority, or backstory, then analyzing the proportions. While she acknowledges this is time-consuming, she suggests simplified versions, such as rereading a single standout scene and underlining everything that is not dialogue or action to reveal the “invisible” craft holding the scene together.

Sentence-level study, she notes, is often the easiest entry point. Writers can copy sentences they admire into a notebook and analyze why they work, looking at verb choice, sentence length, punctuation, and placement within a paragraph.

BALANCING PLEASURE AND ANALYSIS

Matty raises the question of how writers can learn from reading when they are not consciously studying craft. Kristen responds that remembering the reader’s experience is crucial. Readers encounter stories over time, much like watching a film, and writers who focus only on micro-level edits can lose sight of that broader experience. Reading for pleasure helps writers reconnect with how stories feel, not just how they are constructed.

Rereading, especially after finishing a book that made a strong impression, can bridge the gap between pleasure and analysis. Changing reading formats and slowing down after finishing a book—rather than immediately starting the next one—can create space for reflection and learning.

OPENINGS, PROLOGUES, AND READER EXPECTATIONS

The discussion turns to common craft debates, such as whether to eliminate the first chapter or avoid prologues. Kristen cautions against treating any advice as absolute. She points out that every book makes deliberate choices based on its intended audience. For example, she cites THE CITY WE BECAME by N.K. Jemisin, which opens with a prologue that works precisely because of how it frames the story, and THE SEARCHER by Tana French, which begins slowly to attract readers who value character and atmosphere over immediate plot momentum.

Kristen suggests that one useful analytical exercise is to ask, “What if this were opposite?” Imagining alternative choices can clarify why an author’s actual decision works. Ultimately, she emphasizes the importance of understanding and trusting one’s ideal reader rather than trying to please everyone.

LEARNING FROM DISLIKED OR “BAD” BOOKS

Matty and Kristen also address whether there is value in reading books a writer dislikes. Kristen believes there can be significant educational benefit, as long as writers separate personal taste from assumptions about quality. She encourages writers to read across genres and to question cultural judgments about “good” and “trashy” books.

If a writer truly dislikes a book, Kristen suggests alternatives to forcing a full read. One option is to stop after fifty pages and then skim strategically—reading selected chapters and the ending—to see how the story resolves. Reflecting on what triggered a negative reaction can reveal important insights about personal taste, craft preferences, and storytelling priorities.

WRITING REVIEWS AND NOTICING DETAILS

Matty shares that she wants to be more intentional about writing reviews, both to support other authors and to reflect on what she has read. Kristen agrees and suggests a low-pressure approach: listing a few specific things that delighted you about a book, even if they are small details. She notes that these observations can be meaningful to authors and can also help writers identify recurring themes in their own tastes.

Kristen emphasizes the importance of specificity, citing examples where unexpected details or empathetic reframing of seemingly negative character traits made a lasting impression. Asking “why” repeatedly, she suggests, can uncover deeper thematic insights.

OVERCOMING RESISTANCE TO READING

Kristen acknowledges that some writers resist reading closely due to fear—fear of influence, fear of plagiarism, or fear that someone else has already written their idea. She argues that these fears are largely unfounded, especially when writers lean into their own tastes and perspectives. She also recognizes time constraints as a real barrier and recommends audiobooks and group-based reading projects as accessible entry points.

CREATING A CRAFT-FOCUSED BOOK GROUP

Finally, Kristen offers advice for writers interested in forming a craft-oriented book group. She emphasizes the importance of shared goals, clear leadership at the outset, and prepared discussion questions that steer conversation toward how a book works rather than whether participants liked it. She also highlights the value of creating separate spoiler and non-spoiler discussion spaces, allowing participants to engage at different stages of reading.

Throughout the episode, Matty and Kristen reinforce the idea that reading intentionally—whether alone or in community—is one of the most effective ways for writers to improve their craft, deepen their understanding of storytelling, and make more confident, deliberate choices in their own fiction.

Episode 281 - Using Relevance to Save Your Darlings with Liesel Hill

Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!

Amazon Music | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Overcast | Castbox | Pocket Casts | Podbean | Player FM | TuneIn | YouTube

Liesel Hill discusses USING RELEVANCE TO SAVE YOUR DARLINGS, including the importance of integrating emotional connection and subconscious storytelling to retain seemingly irrelevant scenes by making them essential. Topics include multi-tasking in scenes, pacing, evoking emotion, character arcs, purposeful character deaths, maintaining continuity in series, and avoiding unnecessary plot elements.
 
Liesel Hill is a USA Today best-selling author of 4 genres. She teaches authors to craft stories using the principles of energetics and transformational human psychology, and by tapping into one's individual subconscious creativity.

Episode Links

https://www.facebook.com/groups/theprolificauthor
https://www.instagram.com/6figurestoryteller/
https://www.tiktok.com/@6figurestoryteller
https://www.youtube.com/@fictionauthorbusinessschool
https://lff.kit.com/10ppsminicourse

Summary

This week on The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Liesel Hill about the often-debated topic among writers: "killing your darlings." Liesel Hill is a USA Today best-selling author who provides a nuanced perspective on this longstanding writing guideline, challenging traditional notions while emphasizing the importance of emotional resonance and story relevance.
 
Matty opens the conversation by recounting how "kill your darlings" is often a “battle cry” for writers, suggesting that authors should remove scenes they are emotionally attached to if they are not advancing the story. Liesel Hill suggests a reevaluation of this advice, advocating that instead of merely discarding these scenes, authors should explore ways to integrate them effectively into their narrative. She argues that scenes dear to the writer often hold an emotional connection that can potentially engage the reader as well.
 
Liesel provides a perspective that involves tapping into one's subconscious creativity. By leveraging the subconscious, authors can generate scenes with intrinsic emotional value, which makes them worth preserving if they can be made relevant to the narrative. "If there's something that is lighting you up about the story that you really love," Liesel says, "there's no reason that the reader would not feel the same way."
 
The discussion also covers how determining the relevance of a scene is crucial. Liesel and Matty agree that scenes should be integral to the main conflict or character arc. Scenes offering a deep dive into character backgrounds or internal dialogue need careful consideration to ensure they serve the overarching plot. Liesel suggests that newer authors often fall into the trap of creating scenes that do not push the narrative forward, resulting in potential fluff that might need cutting.
 
A significant portion of the conversation revolves around multitasking in storytelling. Liesel and Matty both stress the importance of making scenes serve multiple purposes. By weaving several narrative threads into a single scene, authors can maintain pacing and deepen story complexity without overburdening the narrative. Liesel offers insights into maintaining pacing by ensuring that scenes do double duty—advancing the plot while developing character interactions or foreshadowing future events.
 
They delve into specific examples, such as the challenge of writing scenes that were the initial inspiration for a book but may no longer fit as the story evolves. Matty shares her personal struggle with deciding whether to keep or discard scenes that initially stirred her imagination, particularly those that no longer align with the book's direction. Liesel suggests that a high-level understanding of the story's structure can help authors anticipate potential misalignments before they become problematic, allowing them to better manage narrative flow.
 
The pair transitions to discussing character arcs, particularly in series novels where characters grow over time and influence one another's stories. Liesel discusses her approach in her own high fantasy series, which involves juggling multiple point-of-view characters. This approach can be daunting, requiring careful planning to ensure characters influence one another even if they are separated by the narrative distance.
 
Towards the end of the podcast, Matty and Liesel explore the concept of relevance and intentionality in character development. They discuss the pitfalls of keeping characters in a story without purpose, underscoring that every character should contribute to the narrative meaningfully or face "retirement" from the storyline—either metaphorically or literally. Liesel mentions that shock value alone is an insufficient reason to kill off a character, advocating that every significant action, including character deaths, should be deliberate and woven into the narrative fabric to justify its impact.
 
Finally, Liesel speaks to the importance of emotional storytelling and how authors can offer readers an emotional journey that results in catharsis. She suggests that emotion is the core of storytelling and what ultimately hooks readers, leading to a satisfying reading experience. Liesel emphasizes that authors who master this emotional connection will cultivate a dedicated readership. The conversation closes with encouraging authors to draw from their subconscious, allowing the wealth of their experiences and emotions to mold stories into engaging and cohesive narratives that resonate with readers.
 
Overall, this podcast episode provides nuanced insights for authors grappling with the idea of killing their darlings, suggesting that the real focus should be on relevance, emotional impact, and enriching the narrative tapestry. Liesel Hill's perspective offers a refreshing take that could help writers preserve the heart of their stories while ensuring every element serves the greater narrative purpose.

Episode 280 - Insider Tips from Writing Contest Judges with Clay Stafford

Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!

Amazon Music | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Overcast | Castbox | Pocket Casts | Podbean | Player FM | TuneIn | YouTube

Clay Stafford discusses INSIDER TIPS FROM WRITING CONTEST JUDGES, including what judges look for in submissions, such as originality, strong voice, and proper pacing. Clay shares insights into the judging process, highlighting the necessity of engaging the reader early, avoiding errors, and understanding the contest’s goals and audience. They discuss the importance of submitting polished work, ensuring the right contest fit, and the potential benefits of feedback from critique groups and editors. Clay also emphasizes the value of leveraging contest wins and placements to build a writer’s career.
 
Clay Stafford is a bestselling and award-winning author, poet, screenwriter, and playwright; film and television producer, director, showrunner, actor; book, film, and stage reviewer as well as public speaker. He has sold nearly four million copies of his books and has had his work distributed in sixteen languages. He is founder and CEO of the annual Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference and a contributor to Writer’s Digest magazine with his online column, “Killer Writer.”

Episode Links

https://claystafford.com/
https://www.facebook.com/ClayStaffordOfficial
https://www.instagram.com/claystafford/
https://x.com/ClayStafford
https://www.linkedin.com/in/claystafford/

Referenced in episode:
Episode 271 - Tapping into Your Author Voice with Tiffany Yates Martin

Summary

This week on The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Clay Stafford about the art of crafting submissions for writing contests and the nuances that come with it. The discussion revolves around the key aspects judges look for across different contest formats, whether short or long fiction, and how writers can effectively prepare their work for submission.
 
Matty kicks off the conversation by highlighting Clay's extensive experience, noting his role as a bestselling author and founder of Killer Nashville, among other accolades. The episode delves into the criteria contest judges seek, such as originality, creativity, and a strong narrative voice. Clay emphasizes the importance of a distinctive voice, one that is authentic and engaging, as a hallmark of great writing.
 
The conversation touches on the importance of matching submissions to the right contest categories and understanding the platform where work will be featured. They explore scenarios where a piece may not align with the contest's core focus, like entering a mystery contest with a non-mystery entry. Clay underscores the necessity of writers thoroughly reading guidelines and selecting the right category for their entries, as misplaced submissions often get disqualified regardless of their quality.
 
Listeners are urged to consider the pacing of their stories, recognizing the difference between rushing through events and rambling without purpose. Clay explains that sometimes works feel compressed when they shouldn't be, and authors should trust in the natural pacing of their stories. Engaging and meaningful pacing helps keep the reader invested in the narrative.
 
Matty and Clay also discuss the value of revisions and feedback before submitting to contests. Clay advises writers to vet their work with friends, writing groups, or even professional editors to ensure the piece is polished to its best potential. He suggests writers should be their harshest critics before sending work to a contest, thus minimizing glaring errors that could easily eliminate an entry early on.
 
The episode further explores the strategic approach to contest entry. Rather than writing specifically for a contest, Clay argues for writers to create authentically and then seek contests that fit their work. This method helps maintain the integrity of the story and potentially increases the chances of finding a natural contest fit.
 
Another key point discussed is the reaction to contest rejections. Both Matty and Clay agree that rejection isn't always a reflection of the work's quality, noting that numerous factors, including subjective judge preferences and contest constraints, play a role. Therefore, receiving a "no" should not discourage writers but instead should be seen as a learning opportunity.
 
Finally, the podcast highlights the importance of making the most of contest wins or placements. Clay encourages authors to leverage contest success in their marketing efforts, using accolades as a tool to separate themselves in the crowded literary marketplace. Authors should celebrate and publicize these achievements, utilizing them as steppingstones to further opportunities.
 
In summary, this episode is rich with insights for writers looking to refine their craft for contest entries. Matty and Clay guide listeners through understanding contest criteria, perfecting narrative voice, ensuring proper category alignment, and the strategic use of contest recognition—all vital elements to succeeding in writing competitions.