Episode 331 - Tropes as Tools in Mysteries & Thrillers with Sara Rosett

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Sara Rosett discusses TROPES AS TOOLS IN MYSTERIES & THRILLERS, including the differences among tropes, genre conventions, and clichés, how scars and secrets function as plotting engines, how to scale the same trope for different genres, using tropes to inject new energy into a series, and what international mysteries can teach you about inventive plotting.

Sara Rosett is the USA Today bestselling author of over 30 mysteries for readers who enjoy atmospheric settings and puzzling whodunits. She also writes nonfiction for authors including, How to Write a Series, How to Outline a Cozy Mystery, and Trope Thesaurus: Mystery and Thriller. Sara hosts two podcasts: Mystery Books Podcast for readers and the Wish I’d Known Then For Writers Podcast with Jami Albright.

Episode Links

http://www.SaraRosett.com

http://www.SaraRosettBooks.com

https://www.instagram.com/sararosett/

https://www.x.com/sararosett

https://www.pinterest.com/srosett/

https://books2read.com/MysteryandThriller

Great companion episodes:

Episode 288 - Decoding Storytelling Tropes with Jennifer Hilt

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

Episode 326 - Story First, Genre Second: Lessons from Romantasy for Every Writer with Brenna Bailey-Davies

Summary & Transcript

Sara Rosett is the USA Today bestselling author of over thirty mysteries and the host of the Mystery Books Podcast. She also co-hosts the Wish I’d Known Then for Writers podcast with Jami Albright and writes nonfiction for authors, including HOW TO WRITE A SERIES, HOW TO OUTLINE A COZY MYSTERY, and most recently THE TROPE THESAURUS: MYSTERY AND THRILLER, co-authored with Jennifer Hilt. In this conversation, Sara explored how tropes function as creative tools for mystery and thriller writers—and why understanding them can improve both your craft and your marketing.

TROPES ARE NOT CLICHÉS

Sara drew a clear line between tropes and clichés. A cliché is what you get when you use a trope without adding depth. The dumb jock who is dumb in every scene is a cliché; the dumb jock who secretly runs an online book club about classics is a character. The difference lies in layering—backstory, scars, secrets, surprises that complicate the reader’s initial assumption. Jennifer Hilt’s framework of scars and secrets is particularly useful here: give your characters wounds they do not want exposed, and those wounds become both the emotional engine and the plotting engine of the story.

SCARS AND SECRETS AS PLOTTING TOOLS

In mystery specifically, Sara explained, nearly every character needs a secret of some kind to keep the investigation alive. If six characters each carry a wound or a secret, the sleuth has six threads to pull—and those threads generate clues, red herrings, and misdirection. She described it as a solar system: the main whodunit is the sun, and the smaller character mysteries orbit around it. The key difference from romance, where scars often drive characters toward healing and connection, is that in mystery they function as puzzle pieces. A character’s secret explains why they lied about an alibi or behaved strangely in a particular scene. The reader’s pleasure comes from fitting those pieces together.

TROPES VERSUS GENRE CONVENTIONS

Matty raised the question of where tropes end and genre conventions begin. Sara distinguished between the two: a convention is a rule of the road—in cozy mystery, the murder happens offstage and the content stays clean. A trope is a recognizable story element that can be played with, inverted, or transplanted across genres. The locked room mystery is one of the few tropes that mystery readers actively seek out by name. Others, like the return to the small town or the animal sidekick, are more common in cozies but can be adapted to fit thrillers or other subgenres by adjusting tone and scale.

SCALING TROPES BETWEEN MYSTERY AND THRILLER

Sara and Jennifer divided the book along their respective strengths—Sara in mystery, Jennifer in thriller—and Sara described how the same trope operates differently depending on genre. Hidden identity in a thriller looks like THE BOURNE IDENTITY: international locations, high-speed action, life-or-death stakes. Hidden identity in a mystery looks like LUDWIG: a smaller, quieter story where a socially awkward man impersonates his missing twin brother, a police detective, and navigates a small cast of characters. The trope is identical; the scale and tone are not. Sara suggested that writers can take any trope and dial it up for thriller or dial it down for mystery, as long as they match the pacing and expectations of their audience.

She offered a particularly inventive example of playing with the locked room trope: instead of figuring out how someone got out of a locked room, what if the puzzle is how to get something into a locked room without being detected? That inversion—which she compared to a reverse bank heist—preserves the familiar structure while delivering a surprise.

REFRESHING A SERIES WITH TROPES

For series writers who feel they have exhausted their ideas, Sara recommended browsing a trope thesaurus the way you might browse a menu. Picking up a trope from another genre—enemies to lovers recast as a buddy-cop dynamic, for instance—can inject new energy into a long-running series without alienating readers who value familiarity. The goal is same but different: enough recognition to satisfy the reader’s expectations, enough novelty to keep the story sparkling.

USING AI TO IDENTIFY TROPES IN YOUR OWN WORK

Sara acknowledged that writers are often blind to the tropes in their own manuscripts. She and Jennifer traded drafts of THE TROPE THESAURUS and Jennifer spotted tropes Sara had missed entirely. For writers without a co-author to do that analysis, Sara suggested using AI: feed your manuscript in and ask it to identify the major tropes. Matty described doing exactly that with her thriller series and discovering that found family was central to her story—something she had written instinctively but never identified in marketing terms. Recognizing the trope allowed her to call it out in her sales description and reach readers who specifically seek it.

INTERNATIONAL MYSTERIES AS A STUDY TOOL

Sara closed with a recommendation that American mystery and thriller writers look beyond American entertainment. She has found lighter-toned mystery shows in French and British television, inventive plotting in Korean and Japanese dramas, and satisfying character arcs in limited series that tell a complete story in ten or sixteen episodes rather than stretching indefinitely across seasons. She cited MURDER BY THE LAKE, a German-Austrian series set around a border lake, as an example of how a single setting can generate an extraordinary variety of mystery plots. The show also layers one character’s backstory into the lake setting itself, using the location as both a plot device and a thematic element. Sara noted that core tropes—the great detective, the odd-couple pairing, the locked room—appear to be genuinely international, turning up in Korean dramas and Japanese fiction alongside their Western counterparts.

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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 Sara Rosett. Hey, Sara, how are you doing?

[00:00:05] Sara: Good. How are you?

[00:00:06] Matty: I am doing great, and just to give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Sara Rosett is the USA Today bestselling author of Over Their 30 Mysteries For readers who enjoy atmospheric settings and puzzling whodunit, Sara hosts two podcasts, Mystery Books Podcast for readers and the Wish I’d Known Then for Writers podcast with Jami Albright, which is a highly, highly

She also writes, nonfiction for authors, including HOW TO WRITE A SERIES, HOW TO OUTLINE A COZY MYSTERY, and most recently, THE TROPE THESAURUS: MYSTERY AND THRILLER with the trope queen herself. Jennifer Hiltt, who is has also been a guest on the podcast. And, not only do we have, Jennifer on the podcast back in episode 288 talking about

but this episode is coming at a really interesting time because two recent episodes were, episode 325 reveals as these strip tease of fiction with Tiffany Yates Martin, and I think talking about, mystery and thriller tropes in terms of reveals. We’ll be a fun follow onto that conversation. And then the other recent conversation was in episode 326, story first genre, second lessons from romantic for every writer with Brenna Bailey-Davies and Brenna And I had a lot of conversations about, the role of tropes in genre and, and the complications of, accommodating tropes when you’re doing genre blending

So we have kind of a theme going here. And today we’re going to be talking

[00:01:37] Matty: And I’m curious, first of all, just how did you and, Jen end up pairing up to write this book?

[00:01:41] Sara: I had always thought about writing a trope a, a book about mystery tropes because I feel like there that was kinda a gap in the market. There weren’t a lot of books about mystery tropes in particular. There were general trope books, and that was one, one. Partial reason I started Mystery Books podcast because I want to talk

But then I thought, well, I’ll just talk about these books. I’ll mention the tropes and then I’ll just save those episodes and transcripts and I’ll let them build up and then I’ll pull the tropes and you know, collate them into a book, which I never did. And then Jennifer was on our podcast and she mentioned, you know, she was working on this new, or she was planning, I think, to work on the new.

Mystery and Thriller trout book, and I thought, Hmm, I don’t think I’m ever going to do that book on my own. So I messaged her and said, Hey, if you’re interested in, you know, collaborating on that, I would love to do that. And she replied back and said, yes, you would love it. And, and we just went from there. It was, it was very easy to get going.

[00:02:39] Matty: Yeah, well I think that, Pairing you guys up is perfect because, you know, she’s so interested in tropes as a, as a writing mechanism, and you obviously had the deep dive experience on the mystery and thriller front. so that was really fun to see when I saw that you guys were, were paired up on that.

[00:02:54] Matty: And whenever I speak with anyone about tropes, I always like to talk about how tropes differ from cliches. Can you talk

[00:03:02] Sara: Yes, yes. So I feel like whatever you take could be a cliche, but you can make it not a cliche by going deeper. So if you have a character that’s, you know, the dumb jock character. If you write them as only a dumb jock and they’re dumb in every scene, then that’s what all you’ve got. But if you layer in some backstory and give them some more depth and maybe add a few surprises in there, maybe

You know about classics, you know, something like that, that you go, oh, that isn’t quite what I thought. You give them a little more depth and then you can let layer in, like Jennifer likes to talk about scars and secrets and things like that. And that really can make your character

So you may have, you know, something that starts out as a cliche, but the more you add to it, the more it becomes less of a cliche.

[00:04:02] Matty: Well, I like that idea about, the wounds and scars being important tropes and specific to mystery and thriller. How does that play out? Like what are examples of tropes that would serve

[00:04:18] Sara: Well, I think that they are great for thinking about. Secrets that your characters have. , because when I do a, when I plot a mystery, every, almost every character needs a secret of some type to keep the mystery element going and for to have things for your sleuth to discover. So if you have six characters and they all have

A or a secret, then you’ve got a lot that can be explored a lot for your sleuth to find, and your secrets may be things that are not. You know what? One person might consider a shameful secret. Another person might think, nah, that’s not a big deal. That’s, you know, take me or leave me that way. But other people, you know, it is something that they

They might have something that they don’t want exposed. So if you have wounds that people don’t want other people to know about. If you have scars, things that have, you know, wounded them, then you can use those things in your plotting and they can become clues and red herrings and

So you’ve got, you know, your main mystery of who done it usually. But then you have all these other little smaller mysteries, kind of like a solar system orbiting around the, the sun of the main mystery, you know?

[00:05:36] Matty: And would the use of, character wounds or scars be unto itself a trope? Or is it the case that for different genres, different genres are going to want to have those wounds and scars play out

[00:05:51] Sara: Oh, I would think each genre is going to have very specific sort of expectations around scars and secrets, because I feel like in a romance. you may have those, but I feel like romance is, you’re making progress towards healing a lot of times and towards a relationship. So maybe those scars and secrets are exposed in the

And then there’s a point where the two characters coming together, it’s. They help each other through these difficult times or learn to cope with things together. And I don’t know, you could have that in a mystery, but I don’t think mystery readers have that expectation with scars and secrets. I think it’s more, for them, it’s more of a puzzle.

There’s a lot of like trying to figure out how all the parts fit together. And so sometimes, you know, you get this, oh, this person has this secret and that’s why they behaved this way and that explains why they lied and said they didn’t have an alibi. So I don’t know that a mystery reader would have the same expectations of that type of trope, but you could use it, you know, however you want.

You could say, what would, what would my mystery be like if I tipped these, you know, things that are more familiar in this romance genre and applied them to my genre? And just see what happened. And if you don’t like it, you know, take it out.

[00:07:10] Matty: Yeah, this is a very nice companion piece to the conversation I had with Brenna about, genre blending. And I think it’s, one of the things we’ve. Talked about is the idea that genre is, oftentimes more useful from a marketing point of view than from a

There’s a mixture of that because the one that I always go back to is, I remember years and years and years ago, the first time someone explained to me that the difference between a romance and a love story is a romance had to have a happy ending and a love story doesn’t have

And I was like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. Like lots of things became clear to me about, you know, the types of books people liked and didn’t like the ones they recommended and didn’t recommend based on that. And so that is both a marketing decision because you have to decide if you’re going to have a happy ending or a sad ending.

And it’s a craft question because you have to, you have to either meet the expectations of the readers based on your presentation of the genre. Or you just have to accept that you’re really going to disappoint or possibly piss people off if you’re presenting it in one way, but

And I think, I mean, I guess that the same thing an, an equivalent for mysteries would be like the cozy mystery and the, trope. You can let me know if I’m using the word trope in the right way here of you can’t have the murder take place on, on the page. Would you consider that a

[00:08:36] Sara: Yeah, I think for me that’s a genre convention that a cozy is usually clean, you know, fairly like you clean, like in that there’s not a lot of violence and gore on the page. The death usually takes place off stage. yeah. So I would think that’s more of a convention that an expectation readers have. I think mystery does have,

Well, well-known tropes that are talked about among the readership. I think mystery doesn’t have that as much they, I, the main mystery specific trope that I think people talk about is the locked room. That’s one that it’s like, oh yes, locked room. We love locked room mysteries. , because it’s very much associated with the mystery and it’s

And that I think makes it more a recognizable mystery trope, whereas just, I think there’s a convention. Yeah.

[00:09:30] Matty: In the cozy mystery world, would a trope be something like, oftentimes there’s an, an animal, you know, associated with the, with the sleuth Is, would that be more of a trope?

[00:09:41] Sara: Yeah, it could be. Yeah. I think another, Like I, that’s a sidekick basically. So you could have an animal sidekick, you could have, you know, different, you could have a computer sidekick, you know, so you could personally, you know, have an AI sidekick or something for, you know, a futuristic type story.

But, yeah, I think another cozy mystery trope would be, the return to the small town. And you can use that in a thriller. You know, Jennifer uses that in the book, but her example she uses is justified, which. Not cozy, I don’t think really, but like in a cozy mystery, you would take

Away. Gone out into the big world to make their way. And usually something has happened, often something shameful, something that they’re not happy with and they have to return home because you know, the only place you can go when you’re down, out is home where you know they’ll have to take you in. And so, you know, you come back and then you’ve got all these relationships that you had that come back into

All the friendships and romantic relationships and then, you know, it’s just a different in tone, I think with that.

[00:10:48] Matty: Yeah, and I guess maybe a difference for me to clarify for myself the difference between the genre conventions and the tropes would be, that things like you can’t have the murder on the page or. is more, it’s like the rules of the road, assuming that you’re, you’re not intentionally writing a, a genre twisting kind of, plot.

You know, that, that you want to satisfy the reader, not like shock the reader or, or bring the reader up of short or something like that. and so those things have to be in place for a book to be considered a part

[00:11:21] Sara: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I think that, you know, you’re talking about shocking the reader or doing something unexpected. If you had, like you were talking about the mystery or the, the difference between a love story and a romance. And if you write a book where your readers are expecting one thing and you give them something else that does, it can create a lot of buzz.

And I think sometimes people do that intentionally. Like they intentionally take elements that maybe a cozy reader wouldn’t maybe want or expect, but then they. Add these things and it causes, you know, talk and controversy and you know, it can work in any genre. You know, you can flip things around and so sometimes that works to get buzz, but then I don’t know if that’s really helpful in building a readership.

[00:12:10] Matty: It does seem more like something that someone who is established and now has kind of the space in order to do something like that is better, better positioned to do it both because, you know, they’re not banking their whole career on this particular group of readers being satisfied. but. They, they’ve illustrated that they know how to comply with the genre conventions and the tropes.

And so it’s kind of like, you know, the recommendation that if you’re, if you’re going to, do abstract art, then you have to be able to illustrate that you can do representational art as well. And so it’s, it’s a choice. It’s not like, because this is the only way I know how to draw, draw whatever it is.

and if you’ve already illustrated that, you know how to com, you know, play within the lines and now you’re intentionally playing outside the lines, you could kind of get away with it more, I think.

[00:12:57] Sara: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Kind of like you have to know the

[00:13:01] Matty: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

[00:13:14] Matty: So we we’re talking a lot about mystery and I think that I don’t have as much trouble thinking about tropes in the mystery area as I do in the thriller area. So talk a little bit about what, what constitutes tropes in the thriller genre.

[00:13:18] Sara: Okay, well. When we sat down to break all this out, when we sat down to write this book, Jennifer is much more versed in thrillers and I’m more versed in industry, so we kind of just divvied everything up. But she has an interesting philosophy about tropes, which I’ve, I’m kind of coming around to. I didn’t, she’s much deeper in, into tropes than I am, but she feels like most tropes

maybe a orphan trope, and that can go in any genre. You can have, you know, friends to lovers or in the, but then you just kind of twist it and change it just a little bit in your genre. And so that in the

So like you’re maybe going from enemies to friends and you know, she feels like you can kind of sort things and shift them in each genre, like dial them in for that genre, I guess. And so I feel like the thriller genre, you can take the same trope and just change it just a

You can use that in a thriller and think about like THE BOURNE IDENTITY and then compare that to,a mystery use of the, hidden identity might be something like REMINGTON STEELE or LUDWIG. I don’t know if you’ve seen

[00:14:36] Matty: I haven’t,

[00:14:36] Sara: show. It’s a, a man who has a twin brother. His brother goes missing, and his brother.

A police detective and his sister-in-law calls him and says, I need you to go and pretend to be him and go find out what he was working on. And he’s not. He’s very socially awkward. And so it’s a, you know, it’s like this whole thing. So you can, like, if you think about THE BOURNE IDENTITY compared to something like LUDWIG, then you’ve kind of got,

So I think you can take different tropes and use them in each genre. But you just have to match the tone and the pacing of the genre you’re in because I feel like a thriller is much faster paced and a bigger A is usually a little bit smaller, so. The BOURNE IDENTITY is these going to all these different international locations and there’s lots of action.

Whereas like LUDWIG, it’s a smaller, quieter story, you know, and he goes to the police department, he meets the little cast of characters there, and it’s more of a puzzle. Like what was he working on? Who’s he, you know, interacting with? So I feel like you can kind of gauge

So I think you just have to know kind of if you’re running for a thriller audience. And they want that bigger scale. How can you take

[00:15:53] Matty: Yeah, I really like the idea of using, playing with tropes as a way of sort of, injecting new energy or a new spin into something. I think this is a good way of illustrating how tropes are different than cliches and I. I can especially see this and I’m curious for your opinions on this, for obvious reasons in how this plays out in a series because, you’ve written about series.

I think in one of our last conversations we talked about series and I would think that. You know, every people who are writing longer series, probably everybody gets to the point where like, Ugh, like I’ve done it all. I dunno what to do next. And it would be super fun to just like pick up the big book of the big trope thesaurus, you know, the big general trope thesaurus from Jen, and just start paging through it and saying like, oh, you know, enemies to lovers.

Well, I wasn’t really thinking about this as having a, a romance subplot, but how else can it play out? Like you’re saying, it doesn’t have to be lovers, it could be friends. and I’m curious as to whether you have ever used the tropes of mystery in that way, like using them as a tool to look at a story differently, or if you would now, going forward, now that you’ve written the book with Jen.

[00:17:04] Sara: Oh yeah, I think I will now much more than I did in the past because once you start seeing them, you know, you become more familiar with ’em and you’re like, oh, look at how this book or this TV show is, is using this trope that I hadn’t even thought of before. But yeah, I think I’ve done that in the past.

Well, there’s, you know, the locked room trope, and I decided one time I just, I want to write this book with a locked room mystery. Like that was my starting point. I think it would be interesting to take like locked room and say, how else could I have a locked room? I actually, I was brainstorming my, with my husband about this one time.

I was like, what can, what new thing can you do with locked room? And then I thought, you know what? If you had a story where. The room was locked, but you had to get something into the locked room instead of getting something outta locked room. You know, just like something like that, you could just take it and say, how can we change this up a little

How can we make it the same but different? You know? Because if readers want that familiarity, that’s why they like tropes. But you need a little something different to give it a little more sparkle, a little more interest, you know?

[00:18:13] Matty: I, I think that’s fantastic. When you, you started saying that I thought that the spin was going to be, it’s not a room, it’s a, it’s a. Ship or it’s a basket hanging from a balloon or something like that. But I like that idea of it’s not in the room, it’s, it’s out of the room and has to get in the room. That’s super

[00:18:31] Sara: Yeah. And to me that’s almost has thriller elements to it, right? Because like a, like a bank heist. What if you had a, a reverse bank heist where you know, you need to get something back into the safety deposit box without anybody finding out about it, you know? And you could still have all the, you know, the building the team and the, the planning.

And then you have things go wrong. You could still do the same pattern, you know, but you would just be, your goal would be different.

[00:18:56] Matty: It would be fun to find a work in a completely different genre that was known for like, hitting all the beats of its genre, beats tropes, like the, the conventions of that genre and say, okay, that’s a romance, but I’m going to write, you know, an urban fantasy based on that. Or I’m going to write a, a western based on it, or

and see how, how well you can match the. Match that kind of rhythm, but in a different genre and with a different set of tropes probably.

[00:19:27] Sara: Or you could take something and say, I’m going to write this. I mean, I don’t think there’s a market for this right now, but maybe someday I’m going to write this as a time travel mystery. I’m going to take the mystery elements and put them into a time travel story and see what happens. Add that element of time, travel or something like that, that you know, it’s just.

Would, it makes my brain go, oh, how would that work? How can I fit all

[00:19:53] Matty: I think the other reason that I find it very useful to look at lists of tropes for a certain genre is that I’m assuming there must be other writers out here out there like me that have a lot of trouble recognizing. Tropes in their own work. If you don’t go into it thinking that you’re going to use a trope.

So for example, I was thinking about locked room mystery. I think in one of the previous conversations I mentioned, I said that’s one of the few circumstances where every once in a while I’m like, as a reader looking for a particular trope. Like I’m in the mood for a locked room mystery and

but I don’t generally write. I don’t think of it in that way when I’m writing and for example, I’m writing, a story now based on a cruise ship. And so it’s like the limited group of people who have limited access to the outside world and bad things are about to happen. And I thought, oh yeah, that’s definitely a trope.

But I wasn’t going into it thinking that way. And so I, my fear is that I’m under utilizing the potential of that trope by not thinking about

[00:21:00] Sara: Yes. And I think I’ve noticed that the, since I’ve worked on this book, I can see them so much easier. Things that I hadn’t noticed before that, , because we, we traded our manuscripts. Like we each, we divvied up all the tropes and wrote everything. We each took half, then we traded and read each other’s stuff.

And I’ve tried to, you know, catch all the tropes. When Jennifer sent stuff back, she was like, Hey, did you realize this is a TR here and this is TR here? And I was like, oh, no, I totally missed it. You know? Oh, that, that is a con. I didn’t understand that. The, you know, I just didn’t pick up on it. So I think it takes, you know, somebody else

this might be something that you could use AI for. Just say, what are the tropes in here, the major tropes, and let me know, you know, give me a list because. AI’s good at analyzing big chunks of data that, I mean, some people don’t want to use it at all for anything, but I think this would be something that it, it would be a good like sort of supportive

And once you see it, then you can go, oh, like I had a, a lot of mysteries, you have the dead body is found and then for some reason. You have this clock that’s ticking. Jennifer calls this the ticking time bomb. And I always think that’s more of a thriller trope. You know, it’s more, you know, we have to save the world, you know, before you know the, the tragedy happens, but you can use it in mystery if you have

Sometimes it’s like, oh, you know, the, the feds are arriving. In a day, you have one evening to gather as much information as you possibly can to solve this yourself before you have to hand it off or I’ve, there was a mystery I watched one time where the law was changing and the, statutes of limitation was about to expire, and these people were like, okay, if we can find this one final clue, we can put together this case and we can file the charges before the deadline so you can create

In your mystery too, even though I feel like ticking time bomb is more, it’s more frequently used in thrillers or I recognize it faster in thrillers, you know? So there are probably lots of things like that that I just don’t see. But yeah, there are lots that I think familiarity and going over it and having somebody else look at it is probably the

[00:23:25] Matty: Yeah, well a couple of years ago, Jen and I had this, short video series where we would watch movies and then we would get together and talk about the tropes in the movies. I’ll put a link to that. That, playlist on YouTube in the show notes. but you’re absolutely right that seeing that, play out in other, in other works like movies for example, is, is really fun.

[00:23:48] Matty: is, are there tips you have for people or, going to, Things other than books, TVs, or shows or movies, things like that. Like is there some little part of their brain they can turn on so that they’re learning optimally from the tropes they’re seeing and maybe

[00:24:03] Sara: Sometimes, I will read a book or watch a show and I just enjoy it. I just. Watch it and enjoy it. And then if I really, if it was one of the ones that I’m like, sort of fascinated with, I’m thinking, I really enjoyed that. How did they make that work? You know, like, how, how did they make that, I want to go back and I’ll watch it again, read it again, and I’ll go slower and I’ll look for patterns

yeah. So that’s what I did when I did these, all these examples. I would watch the show and then I’d think, okay, what were the, the. What could I match up to this list that we have? That was very helpful. , because I was like, at least this is a starting point, and then maybe

But then a lot of times I would think, okay. What, like if I’m going to do, you were saying a, like they’re all on a cruise ship that’s forced proximity, so they’re all together. What other shows use forced proximity and it could be on a train, it could be they’re, you know, walk somewhere because of a natural disaster and then just go watch how, because you know, there’s infinite variety of ways you can do things.

[00:25:18] Matty: Yeah. I also wanted to loop back on something you had said earlier about,using the examination of tropes along with ai. And one of the other favors that Jen did for me is that I was reworking the sales descriptions of my thriller series. And I had drafted something and I sent it out to a circle of friends, including Jen and asking for input, and she said.

You should also ask the AI to identify the tropes that exist in the story. And so I did that and you know, at the end I would say it would be like perfect for readers who love fill in the blank. And, one of the things that is very, very central to my thriller series, but I had not

And so I was able to call out the found family concept in the marketing material. And to me that was just one of those things, like I had just written it into the story, but I had never analyzed it from that point of view about what expectation or what trope is that feeding and would

[00:26:18] Sara: Yes. I think that’s invaluable because we’re so close to it, it’s so hard to see. And when you get that. Outside view of it. I do find those things for me too. I’m like, oh, that is a friends to lovers subplot, that that’s just what I have in the series. That’s how I’m, you know, it’s that storyline that’s carrying out across the series among the, the two main characters.

But in my mind, that’s just the, this thing, I didn’t identify it as a trope, which once you do that, you can include that in the description

[00:26:52] Matty: Yeah, the, the conversation about making, making a little twist on a trope reminds me, I think that, I’m going to say Stephen King, but everything gets attributed to Stephen King, so I’m not sure this is true, but the idea that,taking things and changing one aspect of it. Like, let’s, let’s do truckers on the road encounter, you know, encounter something dangerous.

But what if we put them in space instead and now it’s aliens. I. I just think that that’s such a great sort of palate, cleanser, and especially when people are stuck and they might feel like they’re stuck because of the tropes that they feel like they need to hit. But if you think of it as a menu and, and look at some other genres, tropes, just like you were saying, and, see how people are playing with them there.

[00:27:37] Sara: Yeah. Yeah. It sort of like the, DIE HARD except on a plane, DIE HARD, except in the White House. You know, there are infinite variety of shows and movies and books that have been played off of that, that trope, you know, that, that situation,

[00:27:51] Matty: Exactly. Um,

[00:27:58] Matty: one of the things you had mentioned was the idea of why international mysteries should be on your watch list and your, to be read list. Talk a little bit about that. Why would international

[00:28:05] Sara: Well, for me, part of the reason I started watching, you know, and reading these other literature and TV shows from other countries is I feel like our entertainment in the US has gotten mo very dark and kind of gritty in many ways. A lot of the mysteries are,

You get rid of the network shows and then. People are drawn to this. I think the producers of them are drawn to the more dramatic, the gritty, the darker, the more hard hitting. And if you’re a cozy mystery writer, you’re like, oh, what am I going to watch? There’s no more, WHITE COLLAR,

She wrote, where am I going to go? But there is a lot of lighter entertainment. Around the world. And I, that’s where I’ve found a lot of the lighter shows. A lot of the lighter mystery shows, British and French especially. I love those. The Scandi stuff is still very dark, so, but they do have a couple of cozy, like cozy mysteries.

So for me it was like seeking out changes, more entertainment in the tone that I enjoy. And so that was kind of how I got started in it. And just, I feel like watching these shows, they have a different. Especially the Asian shows. I watch a lot of K-dramas, Korean dramas, Japanese dramas. They have a different type of structure because they

Unending series, they, they have a 10 episode, 10 a limited series. They have 10 episodes, they have 16 episodes, and you get the whole story arc and you get character arcs. Whereas in our shows, a lot of times the ideas that this series is going to go on as long as possible, so our characters. Are always going to be the same way because they can’t really complete their growth arc because then the series ends.

What do you do with them? So I enjoy those because you get to see the whole character arc. You get to see the whole plot line play out, and you get a resolution instead of the season one ends up on a cliffhanger. And then you come back in season two and then all of a sudden you’re

They kinda do a reset until you get to the end of the season, and then there’s a cliffhanger. But I feel like there’s not that progressive growth that you get to see in some of these series. I find them really satisfying and I’ve found that they, they just do some interesting

One of the I, I get some story possibilities from them. Like I watched one, it is called MURDER BY THE LAKE, and there’s another series called MURDER AT THE LAKE or something like that. So you have to really search

[00:30:39] Matty: There’s the murder trope and the lake trope.

[00:30:42] Sara: they put ’em together. Yeah. But this one, it

I think it was, Germany and Austria both border on this lake. And so if something, if a crime happened in the lake, then you know, they needed this multi got multi-country team to investigate. So that was interesting, just the different dynamics involved there and the different. Ways of doing things and you know, the inner office politics, you know, that come with that.

But then each mystery, I was amazed at how many mysteries they came up with. That happened on that lake. , because everything had to happen in the lake. So, you know, you got, you know, boat desk, you’ve got different disappearances. But it was, I can’t remember them all now, but I remember watching it thinking, wow, look at all these varieties of

And then. One of the characters, her backstory had to do with the lake, and so it was like, it’s like a theme you can layer in as well as like the situation. So I dunno, just things like that I’ve just found very interesting. And I don’t know that I would’ve come across some of recommendation queue, you know?

[00:31:52] Matty: Yeah.

[00:31:54] Matty: I imagine most of our listeners are in the us. do you find, or did you get any sense as you ma made these ventures into your recommendation queue about to what extent people who are writing with. Audiences outside the US audience in mind need to take tropes into account? Like are tropes sort of international or are you seeing in your, in your viewing that different markets are treating them in

[00:32:23] Sara: No, I feel like they’re pretty international. I feel like the, Mike Sherlock Holmes, the great detective trope is pretty international. You know, I feel like there’s the, you know, different varieties of it. I did watch a, a Korean drama, called FLEX X COP. And they had one episode where they were like, oh, it’s a locked room

And I was like, you are kidding. But it wasn’t really a locked room mystery, but they wanted to throw that in because people, you know, recognize that, Japanese, I haven’t run across, I’ve been told that Japanese love locked room mysteries and the access to Japanese content isn’t as. Wide, you know, they’re harder to find with the subtitles

So I haven’t been able to watch any of those, but I’ve heard that they really love them. They have a lot of books that have been translated into English that have the locked room trope. So I think you can probably find out what people enjoy by looking at the, the content that that’s really popular in those countries, the types of shows they

yeah, that’s, those are the main ones that I’ve noticed is like the great detective. Odd couple pairing that seems to be popular wherever you go. Especially if you’ve got, you know, the, like a police detective and a consulting, some sort of, you know, variety of consultant, you know, working together.

And there are different personalities and they have different skillsets

[00:33:47] Matty: It does sort of seem like going back to what you were saying before about there are levels, like you were talking about, applying things that you think of as thriller tropes to mystery and the the. Example I thought of that. I, I originally thought of it in terms of, is this different market to market?

But I don’t think it is. I think it’s more different reader to reader is like the ticking time bomb. That, that definitely sounds like thriller. But if you think of it as the, the ticking clock or the sand, you know, sifting through the hourglass or something like that, it’s all the same idea, but you’re, you’re leading into it to different, in

To meet the needs of whatever readers you’re trying to attract.

[00:34:31] Sara: Yeah, and having some limits, time limits on, whatever you’re doing, whether it’s a, you know, save the world thriller or an investigation, it keeps the pace up. It helps you keep, keep things moving, which is great.

[00:34:44] Matty: Well, so I don’t, impose too much on your time and keeping the pacing up. Sara, it’s always fun to talk to you and, being able to combine tropes and series is super fun since you obviously, have expertise in both. And I know people are going to be interested in checking out the new book from you and Jennifer Hilt, so please let people know where they can go to find out more about that,

[00:35:06] Sara: Okay, well for me it’s SaraRosett.com and they have all my books are listed there. There’s a link to the series book and to the trope book and the Cozy Industry book. All that’s online and my website, and I’ll also give you a link that will go directly to the trope book for Jennifer and I. So it’s been great to catch up with you.

Episode 330 - Writing the Moments that Matter with Rene Gutteridge

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Rene Gutteridge discusses WRITING THE MOMENTS THAT MATTER, including how real-life dramatic events translate differently to film and to fiction, why interiority is the novelist’s greatest advantage over screenwriters, how to slow down a high-intensity scene so readers feel every decision, choosing the small unexpected details that make a scene feel real, why every chapter needs both a purpose and a hook, and why your job as a writer is to make your character’s life miserable until the very last page.

Rene Gutteridge has been writing professionally for over twenty years, with projects spanning fiction, non-fiction, comedy sketches, novelizations and screenwriting. She is the multi-genre author of 24 novels plus several non-fiction titles. Her indie film Skid won deadCenter’s Best Oklahoma Feature, and her novel My Life as a Doormat was adapted into the Hallmark movie Love’s Complicated. She is co-writer on the feature film Family Camp, which was a Movieguide award winner and a Dove Award nominee. She is also a Screencraft finalist in true crime. Rene is co-director of WriterCon in Oklahoma City, senior contributor at Writing Momentum and is the head writer at 231 Collective.

Episode Links

https://www.facebook.com/ReneGutteridgeAuthor

www.renegutteridge.com

Summary & Transcript

Rene Gutteridge is a multi-genre author of 24 novels and several nonfiction titles whose work spans fiction, nonfiction, comedy sketches, novelizations, and screenwriting. Her indie film SKID won deadCenter’s Best Oklahoma Feature, her novel MY LIFE AS A DOORMAT was adapted into the Hallmark movie LOVE’S COMPLICATED, and she co-wrote the feature film FAMILY CAMP. Returning for her third appearance on the podcast, Rene was originally scheduled to discuss the choreography of a scene—but an extraordinary personal story took the conversation in a different direction, exploring how real-life dramatic moments become compelling fiction.

A STORY THAT CHANGED THE CONVERSATION

Asked to share a fact listeners might not know, Rene described the time she saved a young girl from being kidnapped. Driving to pick up her own children from school, she noticed a girl she had been keeping an eye on struggling with her bike. After passing the girl, Rene checked her rearview mirror and saw an unfamiliar car stop. Something about the interaction felt wrong. The driver popped the trunk, the girl put her bike in, and Rene made a split-second decision to turn around. She found the car on a dead-end street, blocked it with her own vehicle, got out, and confronted the driver—a woman who appeared to be on drugs. Rene loaded the girl and her bike into her car and drove her home. She never called the police, a detail she still finds baffling—and one that became a jumping-off point for a conversation about how real events translate to the page.

NOVELS VERSUS FILM: WHERE THE REAL DIFFERENCE LIES

Rene explained that as a screenwriter she would render that scene visually—the audience would watch it unfold. As a novelist, she would enter the scene through the character’s emotions and interior monologue. The critical difference is interiority: in a novel, the reader experiences the hundred thoughts racing through the character’s mind simultaneously—am I putting my children in danger, have I seen this on Dateline, am I going to look incredibly stupid when this turns out to be nothing. A film has no access to that interior layer without resorting to voiceover or exposition. Matty noted that the competing emotions—genuine fear for one’s children on one end of the spectrum, fear of embarrassment on the other—represent exactly the kind of complexity that makes a scene productive to mine for fiction.

SLOW MOTION AND THE RIGHT DETAILS

Rene emphasized that high-intensity events that unfold in minutes should be written slowly. The instinct is to match the pace of the action, but the craft lies in expanding the moment so the reader feels every decision, every hesitation. She drew a parallel to the Oklahoma City bombing, which she drove up on just minutes after it happened. Of everything she witnessed that day, the detail she remembers most vividly is the sound of glass crunching under her tires. With the kidnapping rescue, the detail that stayed with her was the eye contact she made with the driver through the car window before either of them said a word. These small, specific, unexpected details—not the big dramatic ones—are what readers remember and what make a scene feel real.

THE SAME SCENE, THREE WAYS

Rene and Matty discussed how the same event placed at different points in a novel would be written three entirely different ways. As an opening scene, it hooks the reader with mystery boxes: who is this woman, why is she following this car? In the middle of the book, it serves to escalate or resolve conflict within the existing arc. As the climax, it becomes the moment the character finally rises to do something she could not have done in chapter one. They also noted that the same event written from three different characters’ perspectives—a dad, a mom, a twenty-year-old—would unfold differently each time, because the internal experience would vary even if the external events did not. That layered interiority is something novels can do that film cannot.

Rene also made a distinction between “scenes” and “passages,” suggesting that the word “scene” may have migrated into fiction from film and that thinking in terms of passages encourages writers to slow down and sink deeper into point of view rather than defaulting to visual storytelling.

EVERY CHAPTER NEEDS A PURPOSE AND A HOOK

The conversation broadened into principles that apply to any scene. Rene described asking writers a simple diagnostic question: if you removed this chapter, would your story fall apart? If the answer is no, the chapter has a problem. Every chapter needs a main event—something that serves the story’s purpose and holds the reader’s interest. Beautiful sentences and vivid description are not enough if nothing meaningful is happening.

She also stressed that how a scene ends determines whether the reader turns the page. If every thread is tied up and the character feels safe, the reader has permission to put the book down. The goal is to deny them that permission—to end on a moment that makes them think, I need to know what happens next. Rene framed this bluntly: stop being your character’s friend. The character does not get to be okay until the final chapter. Everything before that is the writer’s job to make their life difficult, interesting, and impossible to look away from.

Matty added a complementary scenario from her own life—finding a stranger’s driver’s license in a parking lot and driving it to the address on the card—and the two spent time spinning out the ways that simple event could become the seed of a thriller, a character study, or a relationship story, depending on where you cut the scene and what you choose to reveal.

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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 Rene Gutteridge. Hey, Rene, how are you doing? and this is the point at which normally I would introduce Rene, but Rene, this is her third appearance on the podcast. She has been on earlier talking about navigating the worlds of fiction and film and what authors

And so my new policy is when that’s the case, when I have a returning guest, they get to share a fact about themselves that the listeners

[00:00:28] Rene: This is so fun. so, you know, I. I have just very few to choose from. I don’t lead in a terribly exciting life, but I will share one thing about myself that I think is one of the most courageous things I ever did. so I one time saved a little girl from being kidnapped, and that’s a fact about myself.

[00:00:56] Matty: Good heavens. Well, of course we have to hear a little bit of detail, behind that. In fact, this could be a great, entree to our conversation. We’re is going to about be about the choreography of a scene, so please

[00:01:06] Rene: Let me, let me paint the scene. So I, I had, I, my children were young and I would go pick them up from school and, I had always kept my eye on this one little girl that walked home from school. she just, she seemed, seemed to struggle here and there and, I, I just, you know, as a mom you just kind of keep your eye on the neighborhood kids, and so I was driving, I, I probably should have.

Exercised and walked to get my kids. It was only three blocks, but I drove to get my kids and we were in our car and I drove past her and she was struggling. She had kind of fallen over on her bike, so I just kind of looked at her and made sure she wasn’t hurt. Kind of slowed down. She was okay. So I kept going and when I got to the first stop sign, I looked in the rear view mirror just to kind of make sure she was okay and a car had stopped and, didn’t recognize the car at all.

And I knew a lot of the cars around there. I had never seen anybody pick her up from school. So I sat there and watched what was happening, and I could tell by the way she was talking to the driver, something was off and the, the driver popped the trunk. she put her bike in and I thought, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

And I’m sitting there, you know, there’s a, there’s a moment where you think, am I crazy? Like, am I, am I getting ready to embarrass myself? Is this the mother? So I’m sitting there just thinking through what I should do, and I finally thought, no, I just can’t let, there’s something not right, sitting in my heart and spirit and alarm bells are

So I turned around, turned the car around, and by that time the car was gone. But when I got to the next stop sign, I saw it again, the car had turned down, a dead end because they weren’t familiar with the neighborhood. So, and my kids are like eight and five, and they’re like, mom, what are you doing? You know?

And. I blocked the car, from coming out with my car. And I got out and I walked up to the car and she was in the front seat with this lady and I said, do you know this woman? And she said, just, you know, shook her head very timidly. And I said, all right. I want you to get out and. I told the lady, I don’t know what I was thinking, but I should have just

But I said, pop the trunk. We’re getting the bike. I got the bike. this lady looked very much like she was on drugs and I loaded her bike and

[00:03:52] Matty: Wow, that’s incredible.

[00:03:55] Rene: Yeah.

[00:03:56] Matty: out anything more about the woman who had picked

[00:03:59] Rene: You know what’s so crazy, and this is something we can draw upon when we write, and I’ve been through, you know, I guess I was through, I went through the Oklahoma City bombing. So I’ve been through a, you know, two or three traumatic events in my life, and I, in fact, I wrote a blog one time about how to write trauma in a book

Like you think it, it should, and. I was in a little bit of shock, I think, and I delivered the girl to her home. and I yelled at the father. I don’t know why, I guess my adrenaline was, you know, I was like, your little girl almost got knocked. Oh my gosh. You know? And, and I went

I, you know, I just, I thought, this little girl almost got kidnapped and I just went home and just. Thank God that she didn’t, and that was the end of it. It, it’s crazy. To this day, I can’t believe I did not call the police, but to me I thought, well, the, it’s the end, you

[00:05:07] Matty: well first of all, good for you because I think in a lot of circumstances people would just think like, oh, that’s interesting. You know, she’s getting picked up today where she normally

[00:05:18] Matty: That there are lots of lessons we can learn, and especially related to the topic, which is the choreography of a scene.

And I have the feeling every time we talk, we always get partway through our conversation and say, oh, that, that like side topic would be really interesting to talk about. Then we have another episode to talk about it, and I’m pretty sure that’s how this one came about. but because our earlier conversations were sort of focused on, the worlds of fiction and film and what authors should not learn from movies, and so this idea

You know, I anticipate we’re going to be talking about the ways that, people should and should not think of choreography of the way book writers should or should not think about choreography in the sense of movie choreography. but I think that this is such a perfect, example because the way that scene would be rendered in a movie. The way it would be rendered in a book. There would be lots of overlap, and then I think there would be differences as well. when you think about that in your own experience in both, in both books and in film, like what is, what is your thought as a writer, as a screenwriter, as a, a director of

[00:06:23] Rene: Well. One thing. I think again, you know, the perspective of being a screenwriter and a novelist is interesting because I would approach that scene very differently, like the, the kidnapping, almost kidnapping scene, for instance, very differently as a screenwriter versus, a novelist, a screenwriter. I would visually tell

I would emotionally set up the scene and enter it through the character’s eyes. And what I would want to know as a reader is, you know, what has triggered this woman, maybe for the first time in her life? Courageously acting in some way, right? Like, I mean, what, what that day made me turn that car around and how does that make sense in

and so you in, in a movie, I would just very much tell it cinematically, visually. You can see it in a movie, right? Like you can, as I am. Telling the story. Probably everybody is seeing it visually as if it’s unfolding in a movie, but readers experience, seen very differently. And unfortunately film has bled so much into our, Novel, novel writing techniques that I think a lot of writers would simply tell that story visually and wouldn’t dive into the experience of the character a.

[00:08:08] Matty: Well, one of the things you said really struck me, which was you could tell something was off, you knew. Thing was off. And I think that that kind of interiority is probably easier to pro provide in a subtle way, as opposed to in a movie, you either just figure that it’s apparent why. Why they’re following the car that has

Or you might get a kind of a character like, Hmm, I wonder what’s happening, kind of exper expression.

[00:08:40] Matty: but talk a little bit about how you would render that you knew something was off in a novel that would be different than

[00:08:50] Rene: Yeah, so there’s, there’s really. No way to render that on the screen. You have no ability for interior thoughts. So on the screen, in order for that scene to work, you would have had to set up the whole movie up to this point. Right? And it would come to this moment. Will she or won’t she find the courage to go save a child?

Right. And so the, the decision the character makes, will either make sense or the audience will roll their eyes and go, well, that, that’s stupid. You know, why, why would that character do that? And we’ve all done it in movies, right? And we’ve seen the, we’ve seen the scene where we’re just like, that’s is, is not making any sense at all.

So, but in a novel, what you want to do is, Give the reader an experience. And so that experience comes from that interior monologue and. What I was thinking in the moment, which was a lot of things, everything from is this safe for my children to, I’ve seen this on Dateline all flashing through my head, you know, a hundred thoughts

On at once. That is the kind of experience, I mean, when a reader is reading a novel, they want to experience what it would be like to see a child actively being kidnapped and what they would do. That’s the experience they want. You know, what would I do if I were in those shoes? And so that’s all done through interior thoughts, interior monologue, plus we draw other things in.

In the moment we are, we do have to tell it visually, but we tell it visually through the eyes of a mother with two small kids in the back of her van and you know, and I mean there was a very much a sense for me of I am putting my kids in danger. To go save another kid. I, I actively knew that, they knew it.

They were old enough to know mom’s doing something real weird right now. And, they were old enough to, to kind of protest it. Like, you know, and I remember there, you know, it’s very patchy, kind of what I remember, which is true for sort of traumatic and stressful moments. I

I didn’t want to scare them, but I wanted them to understand, the seriousness of the moment, you know, to also, if they needed to do something about it themselves. For instance, duck, if this woman pulled a gun or something like that, you know, and, and it did. I remember it caused a, a silence to fall over.

The, the car,

[00:11:42] Matty: Well, it’s interesting also from the point of view of revealing, you know, thinking about this playing out in a fictional work, that having your children in the car is. It’s handy from the, from the point of view of the writer because you can watch them reacting to the situation. You could have the opportunity of you as the mom explaining to them, you know, verbalizing something, that if you had been in the car by yourself, you would not have had an

[00:12:04] Rene: You would’ve never, no, you might, might be talking to yourself. but it, it’s always handy to have that sidekick

[00:12:12] Matty: Yeah. And I, the other thing I was thinking is the idea of, well, two things that struck me, lots of things struck me, but two of them are, that idea that at the same time you’re worried that you’re putting your children in danger, which is like one end of the, oh my god, spectrum. At the other end of the, oh my God, spectrum is, am I going to look incredibly stupid when this is

[00:12:33] Rene: Totally.

[00:12:34] Matty: And that’s a very interesting and, and productive to plum sort of combination of, of emotions for a fictional

[00:12:44] Rene: That’s the exact right language, productive to plum. I mean, it’s, it’s exactly the kind of complexity. That makes a great scene. you know, it’s, you want the, the dynamics what you don’t want, and it’s certainly a possibility. You could, you could choose this way to write the scene as a woman drives by, sees a kid looks weird, gathers herself.

Decides to turn around with all the courage that she’s always had in every moment, and she runs and saves this kid. It’s like, well, that’s a choice, but an experience with the character is exactly what you are saying. I mean, just as strong of a feeling of am I putting myself and my kids in danger was. Am I going to look incredibly stupid when this is the ant, you know, or something.

so, and you know, this was back in the early. Oh, two thousands when this happened. you know, now child kidnappings are even more prevalent, or at least they’re more known and talked about. so even in that culture, you would need to, very, very much write this into that you, you know, culture and decade of,

how these kinds of things were perceived. and you know, that in that era, even though we knew about child kidnappings, Nobody was saying, Hey, go stop this. If you see it, or if you see something, say something that wasn’t really, going around in the culture, nowadays, it’s like, yes, please embarrass yourself.

Like, you know, go for it. So yeah, there were, there was all sides of the spectrum on this and, I just think that you’ve got to tackle all those, this would be. A very slow motion scene. I think writers might tend to write this scene very fast because it’s an, it happened fast. I mean, you know, if you’re talking minutes and how long I passed her,

Thought about it. Turned around. I mean, we’re talking. A matter of five minutes or less. but the way that you should roll this out when you’re writing it is much slower and the details matter and, and, that always makes a great scene, but it has to be the right details.

[00:15:32] Matty: Well, the, the other thing I was thinking of one of the, episodes right before this, just a couple of episodes back, 325, Reveals as the Striptease of Fiction with, Tiffany Yates Martin. I was thinking back as you were saying this to the conversation with Tiffany and the idea that if this is like, let’s say the first scene in a novel, then.

You’re wondering, you’re both wondering if, if the child is actually, you know, the subject of a kidnapping and how it’s going to turn out, like, will she get rescued? But you’re also thinking, why is the mother behaving in this particular way? Why does she make the choice to follow the, you know, why, why doesn’t she call the police?

Why, does she think to block the street? You know, all the things that you described and either you’ve, if it’s. If it’s the first scene in the story, then you’re planting the questions. But if it’s the seventh scene in the story, maybe you have enough background to know that she’s

Or, you know, setting up that idea of how, how much weight is the, am I going to look really stupid when this is over carrying, with this person as

[00:16:48] Rene: That’s so right, and I mean, this scene in three different spots in your novel will be told three different ways. If it’s your opening scene, you are hooking your reader with a lot of questions and mystery boxes. Who is this woman? Why is she going after this other woman? This is this. This would hook me, right?

If I open, if a book opened like this. I’m like, okay, well this seems pretty promising of what, what’s going to happen. if it’s in the middle of the book, then you would write it. It’s typically, setting something else up. It’s being used to create more conflict or solve another

And if it’s the climactic scene of the whole book, if this is the moment that she finally rises up. And finds the courage to do something she would’ve never done in chapter one, then you write it completely differently. So that’s the, that’s the magic of scenes and. You know, I, I call, I call them scenes myself.

and, and I don’t have any problem with it. I think in our modern writing, it’s a perfectly fine term, but really the proper term is passages. And I try to think through that when I’m writing novels, because it does help you separate. Yourself from writing a movie scene if you’re writing a passage versus, you know, a scene.

When we, the scene I, I, I can’t prove this, this is just conjecture, but I believe the term scene really came from the film world and we’ve adopted it into fiction. But I think before movies, we would call them passages. And, and when you think of it in terms of passages, It allows

and, and it allows you to sink deeper into that point of view, rather

[00:18:52] Matty: Yeah, I like the idea of passage because it does suggest that movement, you know, the a passage from the beginning of that event, that fictional event to the end of the fictional event. And the other thing I was thinking in terms of what is this setting up is I was picturing this scene where. You know, you, you put the, the little girl in her bike in your car, you let the kidnapping woman go, and then somebody else blocks you and says, who are you?

And why do you have this child in her bike in your car? Little girl. Do you know this woman? Oh, you don’t. I’m calling the police. And I thought that that could be like in the, in the, retail, like that could be an interesting setup for. The mom trying to convince someone that

[00:19:37] Rene: Oh yeah.

[00:19:38] Matty: did have like the child’s best interests at

[00:19:41] Rene: I do remember as I was driving off with this kid, obviously I know my intentions, but I just remember feeling so weird. I had another parent’s kid in my car, right? I mean, even though I knew. What I had done, I felt like I really need to do, explain myself, and, and you know, because you just don’t want to have some person’s child in

Explanation. and, you know, not a single car drove by during that time. it was like the whole neighborhood cleared out and it was just me and this car and, , because you would think somebody, if they saw my car, you know, kind of catawampus and then this other car and two adults out and all of this, you would probably take notice and.

There was nothing. No, it was, it was so, such a strange, the way that I remember it anyway was like the whole world went into a vacuum

[00:20:42] Matty: Yeah.

[00:20:43] Rene: it, it was, it was very strange and it, it very

[00:20:48] Rene: I can still remember that woman’s eyes, you know, and that’s the thing when we talk about picking out the correct

which is so important, what you remember from big moments. And, and each, each chapter needs to have a big moment. and you know, this would probably be it in a, in a chapter, but you, what you remember, what your character remembers is, very important in in how they tell it. And. Because they’re telling a story narratively, and we tend to want to.

Tell the big details, but it’s really the small details. Like, I’ll give you an example. When I went through the Oklahoma City bombing, I, I drove up on the bombing just a couple of minutes after it happened. I was on my way to work and missed, missed it by just minutes, thanks to my mom calling, and asking me to stop by her work.

so I drove up on the event with the first firetruck. And you know, it was, everybody knows what Oklahoma City bombing looked like. But what I remember about the event is I remember I was running around the federal building to get, try to get to the place that I worked, and I remember this crunching sound and I couldn’t figure out what was crunching.

I just thought, what is this noise? Well, later, I mean, days later, I. Remember thinking that was glass. That’s what it was. I was running on everywhere was glass. I mean, it was just a solid sheet of glass that you were stepping on, running on or whatever. It’s so funny to remember that detail of the entire event and with this woman in the car, I

I remember us making just. Eye contact before I ever went around to talk to this little girl. I stood there and she looked at me and I looked at her and we had a moment kind of like, okay, this is over. She’s clearly going with me. but it was a, I can still see those eyes through that. It was an old, dirty, beat up car, station wagon.

And, yeah, it was, it, it was a, it was a strange, it was it a station wagon? No, it wasn’t. , because she popped the trunk, but it was very long. It was one of those old, very long cars, you know, from the

[00:23:35] Matty: Well, another detail you mentioned that struck me is that, you were saying how uncomfortable you were with the idea that now you had a child that, that you didn’t know in the car and you had not been given permission to drive this child and so on, for obviously understandable reasons. And I realized that that detail is something you might not even have to present in some subtle way to a

But to me, as someone who doesn’t have children, that’s not as instantly. Understandable as a concern. Like once you said it, I was like, oh yeah, sure, it totally makes sense. But you would need to, plant that in some way for your audience if you know that some of your audience is going to get that very intuitively and some of your audience

[00:24:19] Rene: Ab Absolutely.

[00:24:20] Rene: And every, every character you create, this is going to be a different experience. So it would be fun to write this same e event from three different characters, points of view. A dad, a mom, a

[00:24:36] Matty: Yeah.

[00:24:37] Rene: And how this unfolds with each character. , because it is, it’s very different. And that’s the beauty of novel writing

You know, it’s a, in movies this would kind of unfold the same way. Maybe the actor would play a few things different, right? The actors has to portray the emotion of, of the moment. but visually it would all. Pretty much unfold the same way. and visually it could unfold the same way in an a scene from a novel, but internally, something different is going on with each character, you know,

[00:25:16] Matty: Yeah. Well we talked about the, you know, there, there’re the different characters points of view. There’s the, is this the first scene, the middle scene, or an end scene? it’s interesting to think about how, what does that scene look like if you were driving, if you had just been driving by in your Porsche, by yourself with your.

handbag dog, or, you know, like paint a different scenario where the person’s trying to make these, these decisions. And I think the decision process would be, quite different in all those circumstances. you know, what, if, what if you’re a retired police officer driving past the school than, than that’s putting it still a different spin on

[00:25:53] Rene: Totally. And I, I was a different person in that moment. You know, I’m a very nice, easygoing kind. I like to think person. and when I stepped outta that car, I don’t know what I became, but I just remember being something very different. Like I just walked up. I remember my voice being very low. You know, like I just put on some sort of sense of authority of like, this is done, she’s coming

I mean it, you know, I don’t talk like that,

[00:26:28] Matty: Yeah.

[00:26:30] Rene: you know, I’m kind of a passive person. So, there was something, and I think it’s the motherhood that rose up in me, you know, it was, it was like just something to protect this child. As soon as I saw that lady, I knew. I knew something was very wrong in this situation, so there wasn’t much guesswork to go along with this.

I knew that something was wrong, but, but yeah, I mean, it’s, and, and you want the run up to this, you know, like you said, you know, well, you’ve got to tell me a little more detail of the scene when, when I told you what had happened, how you run up to this scene. Is equally as

you know, what, what you’re doing with the scene and how you’re

[00:27:21] Matty: Yeah. The thing that, this is sort of the other

[00:27:28] Matty: The, the scene from my own life that this story reminded me of is, years ago. OI had stopped at a, a local convenience store place to get gas and there was a, driver’s license lying on the ground, and I picked it up and the, the address was just like a couple of blocks, maybe like half a mile from where the, the convenience store

So I thought, oh, I’ll just like drop, drop the license plate off with a person. So I drive to the house and it was, you know, like a, a suburban neighborhood, like a normal suburban neighborhood. And, So I thought, well, I’ll just put it in the mailbox. And then I thought, well, no, maybe somebody’s noticed that it’s missing and they’re,

So I went up to the house, knocked on the door. This guy answered it. it was maybe like, I don’t know, 50 or something like that. And I said, oh, are you John Smith? And he said, yes. And I said, I, you know, I found your driver’s license in the, in the, in the, parking lot. And he said, oh, that’s, That’s my, my sons.

do you want to come in? And I was like, I can’t even remember if at that moment or later I was like, this would be so easy to set up. You drop a license plate in a parking lot and you wait for some idiot to drive by and like, walk into your house. And I said, no, no. Here you go. I’m

So I did that. I handed over the license plate and I went back to my car. But I thought, you know, maybe because I write, thrillers and mystery and suspense, I, I would think through of all the ways that could go. Differently. And, obviously, you know, one could spin out a

or the person who finds the license plate assuming it’s going to go differently, when in fact it’s completely innocent. You know, there, there are lots of things you could do with that too. Just these ideas of playing through the same basic scenario in your mind. But how are all the ways you can tweak it to make it more interesting for the reader?

[00:29:15] Rene: Well, that’s a great point.

[00:29:39] Rene: And you know, one of the thing, one of the main questions I ask people when we’re talking about this topic and they’re working on chapters, is I’ll say, well, what is the point of the chapter? And. A lot of times people don’t know, you know, they’re, they’re making their way through their story, and they’re trying to get from point A to point Z and, you know, this is a stop off.

And, and when I, when we start to look at us, the question I ask them is, well, if we remove this chapter, would your story fall apart? And they. Oftentimes say, well, not really. And if that’s true, if you can remove the chapter or you can remove the scene and everything keeps going, then you’ve got a problem with the scene.

So you’ve got to, you’ve got to work your scenes for purpose and for interest. You know, those are, those are your two targets. What’s the purpose of this scene in this chapter? What is it working to achieve? Because you don’t want to write just a chapter of, you know, your character going along. And I think that’s what people can’t put their writers can’t put their finger on, is they’re writing a chapter and they know it’s not working, but they don’t know why.

you know, they’ve got all the great description, they’re using the perfect words, their sentences are just flying off the page in brilliance. It, it often is because there’s not a main purpose for the scene and, and you’ve got to identify that with each chapter. Each chapter should have a main event, a main thing, and whatever that main thing is, as you were saying, it’s got to be really interesting and you

And if it’s not interesting. To piggyback on your example, if she goes to the door, hands off the license and the man says, thank you very much, how kind of you? Goodbye. Goodbye. And that’s your scene, it’s, you’ve got a problem, right? Something weird needs to happen. There’s

You know, he, he needs to look at the woman and say, is your name Peggy? No, my name’s not Peggy. Are you sure you’d look just like a little girl I knew named Peggy? Who’s kidnapped from her mother or something like that, right? Like there has to be a very big point of interest in each chapter or your, your reader’s just going to, they’re going to start

They’re going to start reading fast. The last thing you want your readers to do is read fast. , because they know they’re not going to miss anything. You want them to, to where they’re, they’re like, ah man, I don’t want to miss the, this detail. , because this detail matters and this detail

so some that is something to keep in mind is every, every scene in every

[00:32:24] Matty: Well, I was thinking that if one wanted to spin that as from the, from the, you know, the person who lost their license, it was completely innocent. But now the woman who took it to the house. Is like replaying it and decides that there’s something nefarious going on and she decides she’s going to like stake out the house or report

Then it would be interesting to think about how do you, how do you plant that seed in that scene so that when the person gets to the end of the scene or the passage, they’re not saying. Well, okay. I guess that was nice of her, but they’re saying, oh, there’s something else going on

In a way, I didn’t anticipate it getting creepy.

[00:33:08] Rene: Absolutely. Yes. And that’s, every scene needs to be that high functioning. You just can’t have chapters where the ordinary happens. Nobody wants to read about the ordinary. I go from eight to five in complete ordinary. Every single day. You know, there’s just very rarely does anything super extraordinary happen in my day.

So when I get into bed at night and get to read, which is my treat for the day. I, I just, as, as wonderful and polite as it is for you to deliver, you know, that driver’s license, that man better pull you into that house, or you better look behind him and see a woman chained or something to where you’re getting ready to, things are getting ready to

You’re getting ready to go save a woman who’s been kidnapped or whatever the, whatever the scenario is. It, it needs to, it needs to be that high functioning and not, you know, some, something to, take note of here is we’re kind of talking through suspense genre, but the same is true if you are, you know, a, a good novel.

I think just in my opinion, ebbs and flows from, action moments to reaction moments to character moments. So you’ve got the external happening and then you have the internal happening. So you may save a child, right? Or. See something nefarious at your neighbor’s house, and the next scene then can be as important without a lot of action.

The next scene is you losing sleep all night because you’re wondering. What you should do about this John Smith and this weird thing you saw behind him. And, you know, you may be talking to your husband about it, and he’s like, oh, you, you’ve watched too many datelines, you know, dah, dah, dah, dah. get your nose out of it.

And. You know, et cetera, et cetera. You go into some backstory, about her, you know, maybe something happened in her childhood, some, some crime happened. if you’re, if you’re in the romance genre, you know, it’s the action of the two meeting and there’s chemistry and then the

You know, she’s working outer feelings, which can be just as interesting. It’s just that you have to make it interesting. There, there has to be unusual moments happening, that the reader can’t predict that she is going to act or behave in a way that goes against who she is or who she thinks she is, or she’s so ingrained with.

With some sort of worldview that she just can’t, she’s just never going to talk to him again because it’s too much, it’s too involved. You know, those kinds of things. Make a page turner, which is what we want

[00:36:18] Matty: Yeah, I was thinking of the scenario where, not thinking about it in terms of scenes or passages, but just the, the chronology, you know, the. The license plate is found, the person drives to the house. She turns the license plate over to the guy. She goes back to the car, she calls up her friend and said, Hey, guess what I did?

I’m so pleased with myself. And the friend says, are you crazy? You know, that could have been a, been a crazy person. And now the, the person who returned the license is sort of. Taken aback, but also freaked out, like retrospectively freaked out, and that sent her down some path of maybe rethinking things that came up in her past, or now she’s resentful of her friend because her friend, you know, it turns out to be a suspicious weirdo and, but it, it would be less that anyone, one stream of events is right or wrong, but where you cut it, like if

Now she’s, angry with her friend because her friend is suspicious, a suspicious weirdo. Then you have to cut the scene after her call with a friend. You can’t cut the scene with her, in an uneventful way, dropping off the license plate. And then in the next scene, have her talking with a friend. And this coming up because nobody’s ever going to get to the next scene to find out like what the big deal is with, with, that event, with the license plate.

[00:37:37] Rene: That’s completely a hundred percent true. How you end the scene is what gets your reader to the next scene. I always tell people, look. You’re not trying to be cruel, but you don’t want your reader to close that book at 10. PM and go to sleep. You want them to behave badly and decide to lose sleep because they can’t put the

That’s what you want, you, your job is not, you know, their choices. Your job is to get them into a story and they’re so enthralled with it that they can’t put the book down and. A trick of the trade is exactly what you’re talking about is where you stop and hook that reader into the next chapter, and if you tie everything up in a nice bow and they feel the character’s going to be okay, the world is okay.

Everything’s okay, I guess I’m okay. I’m going to go to bed and. They are not thinking about how that character’s doing the next day. So, you know, once a reader cracks open a book, they are with you for 90,000 words. They better buckle up because, you know, this isn’t just a, a calm walk through the forest that your own pace, I mean, you, this is,

You want them to feel like they’re on an adventure, an emotional adventure, or whatever your genre is. So. and it, it does take practice. it’s not natural for us to not tie up our things in bows and put them to bed. You know, we are one, one thing with, rider that I work with that is I continually push them on is stop being your character’s

You know, they just want their character to be okay at the end of the day. This is not what we are going for as writers. our character is not going to be okay until chapter 31 and the end. That’s when our character gets to be okay, a chapter one, and all the way through act two, we are

We, this is not, you know, stop being polite. stop making every conversation end. Well, this, your job is to just mess them up for a good 90,000 words, and then you can tie it up in a bow and the end and everybody’s okay after that. so in the middle of all that, you’re creating a lot of scenes in a lot of passages where they’re having to

[00:40:17] Matty: Yeah.

[00:40:18] Matty: Well, now we spent 35 minutes and never hit the choreography of a scene, so guess what? You’re going to need to come back

[00:40:27] Rene: Well, you know, I,

[00:40:29] Matty: of our con of our conversation today.

[00:40:31] Rene: I guess I’m wordy. I don’t know. I probably

[00:40:34] Matty: I, I love that. I mean, with that opening of fact that people didn’t know about you, it just, that was too good to

And I think that, you’ve mentioned so many ways that people can play with those kind of moments, those moments in time. Like just look around, you think of a moment in time for your own past and, and then try it with different characters. Try it with different. End points in that passage. Try it with different, you know, the person driving a different kind of car now, do you have a different effect than you did,

[00:41:05] Rene: Completely true. And you know, if she had been driving a minivan, which is what all the moms had been, were driving or you know, an SUV of some sort. I may have just driven on by, right? I mean, it was, it was the whole package I saw but also a little something

This would take a second look. And I did. so yeah, it, it’s interesting and you know, when we, we get to talking about the choreography of a scene, super important and hopefully I can give some really good tips. On where to enter a scene, where to exit a scene, how to set up a scene. And then, you know, we, I would love to talk about,grounding a scene and, and making sure that your reader is oriented into, time and place. So, yeah.

[00:41:55] Matty: It’s going to be another lovely conversation. I know, and thank you both for sharing that detail and for, humoring the direction that, that, we took with the conversation. So, I think we’ve just demonstrated it. It’s always so much fun to talk with you, Rene.

[00:42:08] Matty: thank you so much for coming on the podcast again, and please let everyone know where they can go to find out more

[00:42:14] Rene: Oh, thanks. Well, ReneGutteridge.com is the easiest place to find out what’s going on, and I’d love to hear from

[00:42:22] Matty: Great. Thank.

Episode 329 - A Poet’s Guide to Craft, Publishing, and Community with Robert Lee Brewer

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Robert Lee Brewer discusses A POET’S GUIDE TO CRAFT, PUBLISHING, AND COMMUNITY, including how to recognize when an idea wants to be a poem, two very different approaches to revision, the publishing landscape for poets from journal submissions to full collections, how to handle rights and track simultaneous submissions, the annual Poem-a-Day challenge on WritersDigest.com for National Poetry Month, and why reading and writing poetry is a valuable exercise for writers working in any form.

Robert Lee Brewer is senior editor of Writer's Digest and author of SMASH POETRY JOURNAL, THE COMPLETE GUIDE OF POETIC FORMS, and the poetry collection SOLVING THE WORLD'S PROBLEMS. He leads daily poetry challenges on WritersDigest.com in April and November and shares weekly poetry prompts the rest of the year.

Episode Links

https://www.writersdigest.com/

https://www.facebook.com/robertleebrewer

Here are some novel-in-verse examples:

Long Way Down, by Jason Reynolds: https://bookshop.org/p/books/long-way-down-jason-reynolds/3a721799d05f3717?ean=9781481438261

The Poet X, by Elizabeth Acevedo: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-poet-x-elizabeth-acevedo/137b923eb6b14fc3?ean=9780062662811

Other Words for Home, by Jasmine Warga: https://bookshop.org/p/books/other-words-for-home-jasmine-warga/7961402

Summary & Transcript

Robert Lee Brewer is the senior editor of Writer’s Digest and the author of SMASH POETRY JOURNAL, THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO POETIC FORMS, and the poetry collection SOLVING THE WORLD’S PROBLEMS. He leads daily poetry challenges on WritersDigest.com in April and November and shares weekly poetry prompts for the rest of the year. In this conversation, Robert covered the ground from first poem to published collection—the craft of writing poetry, the editorial process, the publishing landscape, and the community rituals that keep poets connected.

HOW A POEM FOR A GIRL BECAME A CAREER

Robert traced his start in poetry to a high school crush: he wrote a poem for a girl he was attracted to, and when she asked about his other poems, he started writing more to prove he was serious. The relationship did not last, but his relationship with poetry did. By the end of high school he was self-publishing a fanzine containing his poems, other people’s work, art, and music reviews—an early sign that publishing was in his future, even if he did not recognize it at the time. In college he expanded into fiction and won several undergraduate awards for short stories, but poetry remained central. He described himself as someone who loves all types of writing, from poetry to email craft, which is part of why working at Writer’s Digest has been such a natural fit.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A POEM AND A STORY

Matty asked how Robert knows when an idea wants to be a poem rather than a short story. Robert identified two triggers. The first is language: a line or sentence whose sounds feel inherently poetic, where he follows the sounds before he even knows the meaning. The second is image: something observed on a walk—in nature or in a city—that he wants to capture. Some of his published poems do tell stories, he noted, but they tell them in the compressed way that poetry allows, without backstory or extensive development. The result is closer to a single scene than a narrative arc. Free verse and prose poetry have blurred the line between poetry and fiction even further, and Robert suggested that the forms feed each other in ways writers do not always recognize.

TWO STYLES OF REVISION

Robert described two approaches to revision that he and his wife—also a poet—represent. He is a quantity writer: he generates a large volume of first drafts and then mines them for lines and images worth developing. His wife spends a long time crafting a poem in her head before writing it down, then revises the same piece extensively, saving every version in a single Google Doc so she can compare drafts. Robert works on paper, collecting poems in composition notebooks that go all the way back to high school. When enough accumulate, he transfers the most promising ones into a new notebook and leaves the rest behind. Sound is his primary criterion for knowing when a poem is done—if the sounds work and the meaning is right, the poem is finished. If not, he may salvage a line or two and start a new poem built around them, a process that can stretch over years.

PUBLISHING PATHS FOR POETS

Robert outlined several routes to getting poetry in front of readers. Self-publishing is straightforward with current technology, and social media—particularly Instagram—offers a visual platform for sharing poems paired with images. He mentioned a series he did with Virginia Quarterly Review in which editor Jane Friedman paired his poems with images for an InstaPoetry series. Audio and video platforms, including YouTube and podcasts, offer additional outlets, particularly for poets drawn to slam and performance work.

For traditional publication, Robert emphasized that publishers of full collections typically expect the poet to have already placed individual poems in journals and magazines. He recommends starting with the directory at pw.org (Poets & Writers), which lists hundreds of publications across literary and genre-specific niches—including journals devoted to science fiction, fantasy, and other genre poetry. He noted that novels in verse have gained increasing recognition over the past decade, with several reaching the finalist stage for major literary awards.

RIGHTS, SUBMISSIONS, AND RECORD-KEEPING

Robert’s advice on rights mirrored standard short fiction guidance: give away only first publication rights, ensure the contract matches what the publisher actually does (an online-only publication should not hold print rights), and do not sign away more than is necessary. His own poetry collection was published by a press that did not produce digital editions, so the contract covered print rights only, leaving him free to pursue a digital version independently.

On submissions, Robert described the standard practice of sending three to five poems per batch. Most journals accept multiple submissions (several poems in one batch) and simultaneous submissions (the same poems sent to other journals at the same time). He stressed the importance of meticulous record-keeping: a master spreadsheet tracking which poems went where, when, and what the outcome was, supplemented by notes in his composition notebooks on each individual poem. The reason is practical—when a poem is accepted, the poet needs to immediately notify every other journal that still has it under consideration. Failing to do so can leave an editor with a hole in a layout they have already finalized.

NATIONAL POETRY MONTH AND THE POEM-A-DAY CHALLENGE

April is National Poetry Month in the United States and Canada, and Robert described the annual Poem-a-Day challenge he runs on WritersDigest.com—now in its nineteenth year. Each morning he posts a prompt and writes an example poem. Participants share their work in the comments, comment on one another’s poems, and often continue the conversation on Facebook and other platforms. The challenge draws poets from the U.S., Canada, India, the U.K., and beyond. Some participants have told Robert that entire published collections grew out of these prompts. The Academy of American Poets also organizes Poem in Your Pocket Day, which in 2026 falls on April 30. Robert closed by encouraging even writers who do not consider themselves poets to read poetry during April—the close, word-by-word attention that poetry demands is a craft skill that transfers to any form of writing.

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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 Robert Lee Brewer. Hey, Robert, how are you doing?

[00:00:06] Robert: Doing good. Thank you so much for having me,

[00:00:09] Matty: I am pleased to have you here and just to give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you. Robert Lee Brewer is Senior editor of Writer’s Digest and author of SMASH POETRY JOURNAL, THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO POETIC FORMS and the Poetry Collection, SOLVING THE WORLD’S PROBLEMS. He leads daily poetry challenges on WriterDigest.com in April and November, and he shares weekly poetry

And so. I realized that in, I’m looking back on the many, many episodes of the Indy Author Podcast I had out there, and I realized that I had really, I had, under, addressed poetry and, I was working with Robert on some other things and I thought he would be the perfect, person to address that, gap in my, in my list of episodes.

[00:00:50] Matty: So Robert, I think it would be fun to find out

[00:00:57] Robert: Yeah. Uh. I first got started in poetry writing a poem for a girl that, I was attracted to in high school, and, gave the poem to her. And then luckily, like she wanted to talk later that night, and then she started asking me about my other poems, and I was like thinking to myself, what other poems? So, I started writing poetry to, Kind of show that I wasn’t just a, a fool that would write one poem for one girl. And,the relationship, with her, did not last. But my relationship with poetry grew over time from there. And, I got so into it in high school that, I even started self-publishing a fanzine, with my poems, other people’s poems.

art and music reviews and all kinds of stuff, which means like, it makes sense now looking back that I’m in publishing, but at the time I was

[00:01:57] Matty: And did you, dabble in other forms of fiction? Did you ever, take a crack at like short stories or novels, novellas,

[00:02:05] Robert: Oh yeah. in high school it was more, it was more poetry When I got to college, you were not supposed to take, any kind of creative writing. Classes as a freshman. And of course I took like all the poetry stuff as a freshman on top of my regular course load. And, by the middle of my sophomore year was kind of burned out on poetry and, Then started doing fiction and that was a lot of fun to do, to, to get the short stories and, won a couple undergrad awards, writing stories there. And that, was great. And then I also took like, business and professional technical writing was in college. Like I’ve just found, and I think this is why working at Writer’s Digest works so well for me, is like, I’ve just found that I love all types of writing,

Poetry fiction, making instructions, crafting the perfect email to somebody like all of it, to me is a fun, challenge. So like every day that I have, a chance to do any kind of writing, is, is a happy day for

[00:03:10] Matty: And do you find that there are certain things that make you sit down and say, you know, today I want to work on a poem today, I want, want to work on a short story. Like are there ways that, poetry feeds your, your creative urges in a way that other forms don’t?

[00:03:24] Robert: Yeah, it is, it’s interesting like with, fiction, , because I, I do still like write, stories. it’s more of a,A planned type of attack. Like I’ve got, story ideas and like outlines that I’m working off of. And, I try to make a certain time to be able to work on, the fiction. Whereas with poetry, a lot of times, like outside of, my win state, outside of the April and November when I do

And then on Wednesdays when I, share poetry prompts. On Writer’s Digest, like I ha I also, in addition to writing the prompt, do an example poem, so it like forces me at least once a week, to try to write some kind of poem. but outside of that, like a, all of the poetry, it’s like more like just being ready for when like the lightning strikes and.

sometimes that might mean that I go several weeks where I just write my example poem on Wednesdays. But then, like recently, and I find this usually happens in March and April, just naturally. but the poet side of me starts to wake up and, I’ve had several days recently where I’ll

you know, these are all first drafts, so I’m not saying like these are ones that I’m going to get published, but, But it just starts to like, you know, there are different times of the year where it starts to kind of ebb, ebb and flow as far as like my creativity.

[00:04:49] Matty: Yeah. Since I write about, the business side of short fiction, I often get. Questions that are more related to craft, which I always try to deflect, but not always successfully. because, you know, I’m, I’m pleased with the short stories I write, but I, I haven’t gotten my mind around it in a way that I can share that in a

And one of the questions always is, when you have an idea, how do you know if it’s a short story or a novel? And I always find that that very difficult to answer. And I can imagine the same, you know, if I, if I were writing poetry. I think I’d have the same answer. Obviously I

[00:05:26] Matty: But, is one of the defining things for you, the actual language, let’s say, as opposed to the, I dunno if the storyline you want to convey? You can tell I’m coming at this more from a, a short

[00:05:39] Robert: Yeah. It’s interesting because, a lot of times it is one of two things for me. It’s usually either is the language, like there’s a, a line or a sentence that just sounds very, poetic to me. a lot of, sounds that are bouncing off of each other and, and that. In itself might just start a poem going where I don’t even know where the poem’s going, what the meaning is behind it.

I just start following the sounds and see at the end like, what do I have, what can I revise out of that? And then other times it’s an image. I like to go for, walks, whether in nature or in city areas. I just love, walking around and exploring. And sometimes like that in itself, I can see different images that I want to try to capture in a

that said though, like some of the poems that I’ve had published are actually kind of telling a story, but they’re telling it in a very concise manner where, you know, if, if I wanted to, to be a short story. You need to get a lot more developed, but with poetry, you can kind of tell a story without giving all the backstory, all the other stuff.

It’salmost, actually, it’s more likea scene, that you would have in a

[00:07:01] Matty: Yeah. I can imagine some like micro fiction and maybe not even, maybe. Longer than micro fiction, you know, feels very poetic. And sometimes it’s even presented in a format that visually suggests, poetry to me more than it visually suggests, you know, just, narrative fiction. and so I imagine the, the dividing line there is probably less clear than it would’ve been decades or hundreds of years

[00:07:30] Robert: Yeah,

[00:07:31] Matty: was more defined.

[00:07:33] Robert: yeah. And I, I think, free verse and, prose poetry, both like help blur, blur that line even more because, like you said, poetry used to be like all end rhymes and, and, and different like rhyme schemes, which you can still have, but,Free verse and, and prose poetry, both, like, kind of open it up a little bit.

what, what you can do there and, and blur the lines. And, I don’t know, like, I, like I mentioned, like I love all types of writing and, and I feel like there’s a lot that they, they all feed into each other. there

[00:08:07] Matty: Yeah, it would be a fun exercise to take the same, inspiration and see what you do with it. if you want to write it as a poem or write it as a piece of micro fiction or write it as a short story. Write it as a novel if it took you in that direction. But just seeing like the differences in how, that got expressed in those different formats and those different expectations of, of the writer and

[00:08:30] Robert: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I mean, you know, there are poets who will take, a how to list or a grocery list and turn that into a poem. So I mean, you, you can really, get very, creative with, the shells that you’re using.

[00:08:44] Matty: I think that that’s, a great sort of creative palette cleanser in the same way. Micro fiction can be that, you know, maybe you’re slogging through 150, thousand word novel, but, and you’re feeling a little bogged down and taking a moment to, to play in

[00:09:02] Matty: You had talked about the fact that, you know, you might write, Several poems in a day, but they were just, first draft. So talk a little bit about what editorial process you bring to

[00:09:12] Robert: Yeah. it’s interesting, like I am, I’m more of a, and I’ve found like a lot of poets like fall into two categories. I’m more of a poet who likes to suggest. Write a lot and then come back through and like find pieces out of the poems that, that I can work with. my wife is also a poet and she’s more of one who, will spend a long time kind of crafting the poem in her head before she writes it,

Just working on that same poem. And you know, even if she’s written a few other poems, she just keeps coming back to it. Where, a lot of times I’m more of a, a quantity poet for, lack of a better term. And I just like to keep coming at like the different ideas until finally like, I find something that, a lot of times, like for me, like sound is a very important part of how I write and if I’ve got, all the sounds down, how I like ’em, and then, the meaning out of it that I want out of it, I feel like the, the poem is done and, and that might.

It might mean that I go through revisions on a poem like five times through of really changing stuff and moving stuff around. But then it also might mean that I do it five times and then I’m still not happy. But I like a, a line or two in there, but then I go and write a new poem

Go through the same process and maybe I’ll like that and maybe I won’t. And, I, you know, I’ve got some lines that have been around for years and years and years that I hope someday I get a poem that I’m happy with to that, that does service to the line or the image that’s doing it because, like I feel like you just know if, if the, the more that that you write, if you’re getting the effect that you want or not.

And, I, I feel like that’s a big thing with all writers is you’ve got the thing in your head and what you want to do, and then actually

[00:11:28] Matty: Well, I’m going to.

[00:11:34] Matty: A very logistical question, which is that when you’re having all these ideas, and you had talked about being ready when lightning strikes, I find this with my longer writing that I’ll have an idea for a, a novel and then I’ll have an idea for a scene, or I have an idea for a fun line, I’d want to put in someone’s mouth, and I

I still haven’t come up with a good way to sort of organize all those so that they’re available to me when I need them. And I can imagine the same thing, even though the works are shorter. So in that sense, might be easier to manage. You probably have more of them. So do you have any system where you’re capturing those things like you found the perfect

you know, the light in this particular environment and, you want to use that someday, but you haven’t found the, the place to put it. Do you, do you have a, a management system for that kind of creative output?

[00:12:21] Robert: Yeah, not quite, that well where I could almost see like a database type thing where you’ve, and I. Love made some databases, but I’ve never really done it that way, with my poetry. But what I do, how I do handle like my poems is that uh, whether I am happy

I collect them all into composition notebooks. I’ve got, I don’t even know how many over the years to build up. I mean, they go all the way back. I still have like the first one I did when I was in high school. And,I just collect them in there. And then I, I’m always going through

witch poems, I feel like still have like a possibility of turning into something. and then, you know, and some of the poems that are in there are actually poems that have gotten published. And, and then once that’s done, like I’m done moving them over into new composition notebooks. But when I, get so many build up, I start to move.

Stuff into a new composition notebook and then kind of leave the past in the past. And, that’s just the way that I, I handle it for myself, but, it would, it would be interesting to try to collect, the ideas. uh, the thing that I, I have trouble with though, whenever I try to just do ideas and I, I do have.

plenty of journals that just have random bits and pieces. I have lots of, post-it notes with lots of ideas all over the place. and, and sometimes what they end up in is like a gallon size, baggy

[00:13:53] Matty: Yeah, my gosh.

[00:13:55] Robert: you know, but,Yeah, when, when you have lots of ideas, sometimes it gets a little unwieldy and, and you just have to try, try your best to organize it how you can, but

[00:14:06] Matty: I think if I were in that position, I’d have to get it into some electronic form, but I can imagine just having one enormous Word document or whatever, where I would put these things in unless they were like. If they sort of fell into the category of here’s a way of describing light that I want to be sure to use someday.

Or here’s like a line whose rhythm I like or whatever. Because I kind of think that I’d remember enough to say, oh, I made a note about that light description. I’m going to go look for light. and have it all there because I know that I would not be good either about remembering something from a physical journal from years ago or,being diligent about carrying forward the gold nuggets that I wanted to make sure that I

[00:14:49] Robert: Yeah, that, that’s actually interesting , because my wife, how she drafts, it’s like each poem is in a Google doc and she actually saves. Older versions of the poem and kind of like works her way down the document that way. I am just personally, like, I like working with paper. It’s a just kind of how, how I am.

but, but she actually does that where, she can go and look like five drafts earlier within the same document. Like, this is what it looked like then and, and then, and then she just starts going into this loop of. It better here or is it better here or is it better there? Somewhere in the middle, like and, and it’s fun to watch , because she always ends

[00:15:37] Matty: Yeah, yeah. being able to look through earlier versions would not only be interesting for other people, but probably also educational for the writer because you can kind of see how things are evolving. And I’m definitely a, a, an electronic content person, but, If I were to, to go to writing things out, it would definitely be with poetry because I think that that like active tactile interaction

And also just the fact that oftentimes the, the way the words are presented on the page is more important than they are in like a novel or something like that. You know, the placement or the spacing or, Things like that. So yeah, I would definitely, experiment with that. I would try to tear myself away from the keyboard a bit more if I were working

[00:16:24] Robert: Yeah. And I mean, for, for me, I just like drawing like little arrows everywhere and circling things and putting

[00:16:32] Robert: Well, and the other thing that you’re, you had mentioned about just the sound, the words, obviously brings to mind the idea of sharing an audio. do you have audio platforms where you share

I don’t, but,there are poets that do that. I mean, there are a lot of poets, especially that do like slam poetry. Uh, great thing about YouTube is you can find a lot of great slam poets on there who. Are more, into doing that. I personally hate the sound of my voice when I

So, so I just can’t do it because I can’t go through the process of editing myself, because everything that I hear just sounds like, nails

[00:17:15] Matty: You just have to do a lot of podcast episodes

[00:17:19] Robert: right. Yeah. If I, if I could get used to the sound of my voice. I could do it because then I would be, I think that’s the main thing is like just being able to go back and, and revise, like, and improve my performance.

I can do that on paper. I can look at the paper and go back and, and see the bad poem that I wrote and, and rework it. But, hearing it back in my own voice, not so much.

[00:17:44] Matty: Yeah. Well, I can imagine it would be a very useful editing pass because I think of any. Kind of, written content, the consumer is more likely to be saying it out loud than in any other format. And so, previewing what that experience is going to be like for the person who, who likes to read the poetry out loud to themselves, could be a, an a useful pass.

[00:18:05] Robert: Yeah. Now I, I will say,I do like to read poems out when I’m going through the editing process. I just don’t like recording it and hearing my voice played back to me. But,it’s helpful not only for, for writing it, like you said, like knowing how people might hear it, in their head, whether they’re reading it out loud or not, but also.

as part of the process of promoting my, collection of poetry, SOLVING THE WORLD’S PROBLEMS, it became apparent very early in the promotion process when I’m going to places and reading the poems that, it’s like a different experience when you’re, you’re up there reading it, the

And I would actually make revisions to poems. As part of that process and, it became a part of my revision process moving forward to, to go through that because I want it to sound a certain way on the page, but then also I want it to sound a certain way when it’s being read or

[00:19:15] Matty: Very interesting.

[00:19:18] Matty: Well, I think that, this conversation about how people are absorbing, the poetic work is sort of a nice lead into another angle. We, you know, we’ve, delved into the sort of craft side a little bit, but let’s talk a little bit about the, we’ll say business side of poetry and, different ways that people can get their

So. Just talk a little bit about what’s available out there, for people who are writing poetry and they’re, they are looking for a readership

[00:19:48] Robert: Yeah. with poetry, there’s so many different ways to write poems, but then there’s also so many different ways to distribute your poetry. as I mentioned earlier. When I first started writing poetry in high school, I ended up, self-publishing a fanzine that had my poetry. So, even though I didn’t think about it as the time as like self-publishing, like self-publishing is definitely like a route that, all posts can take.

you know, you, you can do that, with technology that we have. Now, you, you have poets who, who share their poems on Instagram, Facebook, all social networks. You have poets who, can share their work on YouTube.

[00:20:31] Matty: in a more audio type way, they could do it through a podcast. Can you give an example of, people who are sharing on social media like Instagram or something like that? do you have experience in terms of, is it normally a video of them reading it? Are they presenting the words like along with an image or music, or like how produced is it, I guess?

[00:20:52] Robert: yeah, yeah, actually,both ways.

there are poets that will,read their work, and, and have the audio. But then also poets who like Instagram is a lot better for, like the image with the poetry. I actually, At one point, I was doing a series for a

Jane Friedman had invited me over to collect some poems and then she would put images with the poems. it was called like a InstaPoetry

And then there’s like the traditional route, for people who are interested in that. one of the things I, one of the questions I get asked a lot is like, how do I get my book of poetry published traditionally? these, the, usually the people who ask are people who

And usually, it’s expected if you’re going to get a whole collection published that you’ve already had individual poems published in different places. So usually what I will tell these, writers who ask about this is like, instead of thinking about getting that whole collection published, start off submitting to like journals, online publications, And, poets and writers website, pw.org. It’s got a, like kind of directory in there of, different journals where people could submit their poetry. And, usually like for most of those publications, like they’ll have their own guidelines that specify exactly, but of. I expect poets to submit like three to five poems at once in a batch.

And, and if any get accepted, it might be one, but they might also accept a couple. And of course a lot of rejections, like that’s just part of submitting, Anywhere

[00:22:50] Matty: I did have a question about submitting to those kinds of platforms that I know when I’m advising people about submitting short fiction to platforms. One of the things I emphasize is make sure that you are, you understand at a deep level, what rights you’re signing away and for example, make sure you’re going to, get the

At some point you could pursue reprint opportunities and things like that. Is there any, is, is the world of poetry pretty much the same, or would you provide different advice to, poets who are trying to get there or published? Is it a matter of usually once it’s published there aren’t the same reprint rights or there are reprint rights?

What’s the, what’s the, scenario there?

[00:23:28] Robert: Yeah. I mean, usually you want to make sure that, you’re only giving away like the rights, like the first publication rights and,

as far as reprint rights, that can get, it can be a little fuzzy because, you know, maybe to the publisher, like when, when they’re talking about reprint rights, it’s just they want to have the ability to reprint, If they do a magazine, they want to have the ability to reprint it on their website or, or something like that.

I think it the short fiction world, that would be, there’s like the archive rights clause where, you know, that gives them the right to retain a poem on their website, for example, after they’ve published it

Yeah. you know, I’m sure it’s the same with, fiction as like, you know, you, you don’t want to give away all rights or, Any kind of rights that like, don’t make sense for them to have like TV rights or

[00:24:21] Matty: Yeah. Like audio, if they’ve never published

[00:24:24] Robert: right. Yeah. And if

[00:24:25] Matty: Canada, if they don’t have any presence in Canada, yeah.

[00:24:28] Robert: yeah, if it’s a online publication only, you know, you would only want to give them the online rights. You wouldn’t want ’em to have, first print rights. my collection was actually published by a publisher that did not do digital copies. So, in the contract it just, specified for print, publication writes that if, I ever wanted to do a digital version, I could.

so, so, yeah, I mean, you always. want to think about like, not giving

[00:25:07] Matty: Okay. And, are there any other roots that, people should be aware? Of, other than, poets and writers, maybe for specific, like genres within, within poetry or there are certain platforms that specialize in, you know what I’ll call poetic genres,

[00:25:25] Robert: yeah, so for poets and writers, like the main thing. For that side is that they have this kind of database of all these different publications. And within those publications there are a lot of them that are probably like more, they’re like kind of considered literary journals or, or poetry journals.

but then within the poetry journals there are like. Some that may only publish, poems that are like science fiction related or fantasy related. in a former life, I used to be the editor of, Writer’s Market and Poet’s Market and, and Guide to Literary Agents and like, for all those big market books, There was so many different opportunities where like some of ’em are literary, but then some of them are definitely like

[00:26:15] Matty: Well, I can also imagine that people who are writing. Longer poems shouldn’t overlook the opportunity of submitting to short fiction markets because I know having judged the Writer’s Digest short, short fiction contest for several years, I do get a certain number of, submissions to read that just like visually look more

you know, and I’m assessing those along with all the under 1500 word stories that I’m reading. So there might be more overlap there than people would. Initially think even, you know, as we were saying, people who are writing micro fiction might be able to be submitting to, platforms that are advertising themselves as poetry platforms.

[00:26:55] Robert: Yeah, and I, I’ve noticed, the past decade or so, I’ve noticed more and more examples of novels and verses that have been published, and quite a few of them have actually like, you know, been, finalists or even winners for like the, the major like literary

so, I don’t want to say that it’s ever going to like overtake, regular prose, but it’s a certain flavor that, I, I think there’s always going to be a market for us, like something a little different.

[00:27:24] Matty: so if people are going to these reputable sources like, poets and writers and, the other guides that you mentioned. and they’re getting ready to submit their poetry, like what expectations should they go into it with? What mindset should they go

What are some best practices that they should be following for those

[00:27:43] Robert: Yeah. Uh, so, you know, guidelines can vary, but I’m just going to go off like the, the most typical version is that a lot of places will ask for like three to five poems submitted. So usually what you’ll do is you’ll have your three to five poems each, like in their own. file. it could be like Word or a PDF or, or whatever.

And sometimes they’ll ask you to put them all in the same file. So, so yeah, all that’s always like specific guidelines, but then usually they’ll have like a cover letter. And in the cover letter, all you need to do you, it’s not like a query where you have to sell them on your story. Just have to say, you know, thank you for considering.

These five poems, I always like to list out the five poem titles in there so that there’s no confusion about, which poems, they’re looking at. And then, if I’ve published stuff before, I might just say like, I’ve been published in X, Y, Z, and not go on about it. , because it’s just basically letting them know that I’ve been published before.

And then thank you so much. , because what they’re really going to be judging you on in most cases, is your actual poems. And, depending on which publications, a lot of times they’ll give, poets a heads up on how fast they get through stuff. Some places will respond within a month. Some places will, like a year later, reach out to let you know

they like your work. for myself, I always tell people just expect, the rejection and then if you can accept, it’s great. And I’ve been accepted a lot of places, but I’ve also been rejected from a lot of places. with the one exception being my, my wife who always gets

So, she, she probably should be the person that you’re talking to on

[00:29:36] Matty: That’s.

[00:29:37] Robert: she is actually, she’s actually had publishers

[00:29:42] Matty: Oh my gosh. That’s got to be very unusual, I

[00:29:45] Robert: Yeah. It is very unusual, but that’s how she

[00:29:48] Robert: Um, so, um, but,

the process of submitting three to five poems at once, that’s called multiple submissions to, the one publication. So a lot of them accept multiple submissions and in fact encourage it. And then a lot of them also, allow simultaneous submissions, where they just expect that

So, and I, and I always like encourage poets like, if you know you’re doing that, like go ahead and take advantage of that. Submit to lots of places, because some places do get back to you in less than a month, but some do take longer than a year. So you don’t want to just be sitting around for a year with your poems, not doing anything.

and this is why I think it’s so important to keep really good records of your submissions when you’re doing poetry, because you have like three to five poems going here and three to five poems going there. And some of ’em might overlap to which publications you’re going to. And as soon as one gets accepted, you need to be able to know which places

To let those editors know that this is poem is now off the market because it’s been accepted somewhere else. And, you, you just, you have to have really good records to, to keep track of all that. So, like what I do personally is I’ve got kind of like a master sheet of, the publications that I’ve submitted to when I submitted to them and what I

I have like a date for when I submitted, and I have, columns for whether it’s gotten accepted or rejected and like what those dates are and if they’ve been accepted, what’s been accepted there. But then also on the individual poems in my back, in my composition notebooks, I also

Where have I submitted this poem and when, and I keep that up to date as well, so that. If the poem is accepted somewhere, I can reach out and say like, this has been accepted somewhere else. Please don’t consider it anymore. because there’s nothing worse than the, the horror story I hear from editors is, I’ve accepted this poem, ready to get it published because, you know, I’ve gone through all the submissions and

It’s the right page count. And now this poet’s letting me know that they’ve. It’s actually been published somewhere else already, so.

[00:32:30] Matty: Yeah. Being proactive about letting people, know that is very important. As you’re talking about that, I’m realizing the equivalent for me is nonfiction articles and, I do all the things you’re saying, but I also have the, the axis of, version of a

on a particular topic and I’m submitting it to one platform, so I’m. Kind of, you know, skewing it toward whatever the audience of that platform is. And then I write a slightly different one, and I wouldn’t

so if it got, if that got accepted in one, I would probably notify the others that like, something that’s close enough to what I submitted to you has gotten published. You probably don’t want this anymore.

[00:33:10] Robert: Yeah. And I’ve, you know, as an editor, I’m trying. Search of like content on WriterDigest.com and I run into that situation at times where, you know, people send me a pitch and and then like a day or two later they let me know that it’s already been accepted. I’m like, okay. Cool.

Awesome. And, and also thank you for letting me know,editors are totally fine with stuff getting accepted elsewhere. Like we’re happy for that, but we’re not as happy if we find out like. That, it’s already been published, you know, somewhere, and,

[00:33:46] Matty: Yeah, your centerpiece poem.

[00:33:48] Robert: in my case, I don’t think it’s as bad.

Like I, I’m not really flexible with the website, but if I had to print publication and I can accept like, let’s just say 40 pages of poetry, and I find out that two of the pages that I accepted are all of a sudden. not, not there anymore. And I’ve already gone through all the, acceptance process and I’m like, well, how do I fill these two pages?

[00:34:16] Matty: Yeah, you have to go through all the two page submissions now. Now you’re, uh, judging based on length that’s

[00:34:24] Robert: right. Yeah. And I, I don’t think like editors really want to like. Go back to poets who they’ve rejected and say, Hey,

Actually, we had somebody back out, so yeah.

[00:34:39] Matty: Um, so we’re coming up to kind of a, a, a milestone, a yearly milestone for poets, in April. So, Robert, let us know what’s coming up in April and what people can be doing to

[00:34:53] Robert: Yeah, so April is really big, uh, in the poetry world, for being a national poetry month, and, and I say poetry world, I I’m talking about, here in the US also in, in Canada. I believe in the UK National Poetry Month might be like October or something, and I don’t know how other places celebrate, but, one of the things I like to do in April, we actually are going to be celebrating our 19th annual April Poem-a-Day challenge, starting April 1st on the WriterDigest.com

there are other places that also, do Poem-a-Day, things as well. And, and they’re all great. I mean, there are people that participate in ours that, will extra challenge themselves by trying to do fit like two or three prompts together each day, which I think is fun and, and,

But, basically on WriterDigest.com each morning. I share a poetry prompt and I have an example poem that I write because I figure if I’m going to ask other people to write poems, I should do it as well. sometimes I’m happy with the poems and sometimes I’m not, and I feel like

but we have poets every year, that are based in the us, based in Canada, based in India, UK. Like it really is like kind of a world event. some people, share their poems in the comments on each post. Other poets have reached out to me to let me know that they like, just like to write along, silently along some who like to get their poems, published, in

even though like, I think a lot of editors are fine if you share in the comments of a, a post, but I’ve had poets who have told me like, almost like their whole poetry collections come from these prompts, during the monthly challenges. But,that’s how we celebrate national poetry Month. There are, other ways to do it.

basically like if you’re online and you’re a poet, like you’re, you’re getting hit with all kinds of poetry stuff all month. But, there’s a poem in your Pocket Day, which, the Academy of American Poets does, and this year, I believe it’s on April 30th. And, some people celebrate that by actually carrying a, a poem in their pocket.

I know my kids when they went through school, like they would always have, an elementary school, I should say there’s still a couple of ’em are still in school, but, When they were in elementary school, they would do actually, like, make little poems, fold it up and put it in

but, uh, it’s a great month for poetry. of course we can celebrate poetry throughout the year, but it is good to have this month where everything just like kind of builds up and. And it’s okay to be, it’s okay to be a poet, around normal people, so,

[00:37:55] Matty: Well, I do like the idea of there being more of a community opportunity. maybe it’s a virtual community opportunity, but it’s probably the month where there’s more of a grouping of people online talking about similar topics, you know, expressing similar interests, asking similar questions, and that’s a nice opportunity to sort of get, have that concentration at some time of the year, to enjoy

[00:38:17] Robert: Oh yeah, definitely. and that’s actually one of the great things about the Poem-a-Day challenge on the. Writer Digest site is, it is free. It’s free to do, like, we don’t, you know, it’s just fun, fun thing. But, you have all these poets that will share their poems and the comments and then they like, comment on each other’s

a lot of them also interact on Facebook and other. Social platforms, like they start on the site and then take it elsewhere. it is, it’s a

[00:38:51] Matty: I can imagine, we were talking before about reading one’s own poetry, and I can imagine, especially if you’re someone who doesn’t like to listen to yourself being recorded, it would be fun to partner with someone who’s comfortable with that kind of performance aspect and have them. Read it. And that would not only be an outlet for getting a workout there, but I think it would also be very informative in the same way that I’ve learned certain craft tips by listening to my audiobook narrator, narrate my novels, and she’ll, you know, every once in a while she’ll hit a sentence and I was like, whoa, I, that’s not how I heard it in my mind.

but that would be even more concentrated and valuable I think, for

[00:39:27] Robert: Oh, yeah. I, I think that’s, that’s a great exercise to have because yeah, you can hear if somebody, hits a line and they’re like really struggling through it, it, it might be like, it’s so easy for us when we know what we mean. To just be like, oh, this is easy to, like, this is the easy thing to read.

But, but other people can definitely like, clue, clue you in or, or give you a different emotion than, than what you had in your mind. Like you’re, you’re thinking of it in a, a certain, a mood and then it

[00:39:58] Matty: Well, maybe that can be an assignment for people who don’t think of themselves as poets, A national poetry month. They can go read some poetry, go, you know, like get out your, your high school poetry book or whatever and read some poetry because I think we would all have something to learn, even if we decide not to go ahead and then write a poem as a result, there’s lots of good craft learning that can be, Gained from reading work of, from people who have spent that much time word by word, making sure it’s saying exactly what they

[00:40:26] Robert: Yeah, I love that idea.

[00:40:28] Matty: So, Robert, thank you so much for coming on and sharing some, insights into poetry, filling that gap in the, in the episode, backlog. And please let everyone know where they can go to find

[00:40:40] Robert: Yeah, the best place, just WritersDigest.com. We’ve always got lots of stuff happening there. Like of course we’re excited about poetry month coming up, but we’re. Helping writers with nonfiction, fiction, getting published, finding agent, all that fun stuff. Uh, it’s the, it’s the place to be. Yeah. Thank you.

Episode 328 - Learn to Write It, Learn to Publish It: Western Colorado University Master’s Programs in Publishing and Genre Fiction with Kevin J. Anderson & Johanna Parkhurst

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Kevin J. Anderson & Johanna Parkhurst discusses LEARN TO WRITE IT, LEARN TO PUBLISH IT, about Western Colorado University's master's programs in publishing and genre fiction, which treat commercial fiction as worthy of serious study and teach students every step from manuscript to market. They discuss the hands-on anthology project that drew nearly a thousand submissions, why understanding both indie and traditional publishing gives writers more career options, and what makes these programs unlike anything else in academia.

Kevin J. Anderson has published more than 190 books, 58 of which have been national or international bestsellers, with over 24 million copies in print in 34 languages. He has written numerous novels in the Star Wars, X-Files, and Dune universes and too many original works novels and series to mention. All this in addition to editing anthologies, writing comics and games, and composing the lyrics to three rock albums. Anderson and his wife Rebecca MESS-ta are the publishers of WordFire Press, and he is the director of the graduate program in Publishing at Western Colorado University.

Johanna Parkhurst, who also writes as J.E. Birk, is the author of award-winning and bestselling fiction and romance and primarily writes stories featuring LGBTQ+ characters. She has been published traditionally, by small presses, and also via her imprint Maple Mountains Press. Johanna is a Colorado Book Award winner and a Rainbow Romance Award winner. She is also a long-time teacher, recognized as Faculty of the Year at Pueblo Community College and as Faculty Mentor of the Year at Western Colorado University.

Episode Links

https://western.edu/landing/gpcw/

https://wordfire.com

https://wordfirepress.com

https://www.facebook.com/KJAauthor

Summary & Transcript

Kevin J. Anderson has published more than 190 books—58 of which have been national or international bestsellers—with over 24 million copies in print in 34 languages. He is the director of the graduate program in publishing at Western Colorado University and, with his wife Rebecca Moesta, the publisher of WordFire Press. Johanna Parkhurst, who also writes as J.E. Burke, is a Colorado Book Award–winning and Rainbow Romance Award–winning author of fiction and romance featuring LGBTQ+ characters, and serves as faculty mentor and instructor in Western Colorado University's graduate program in genre fiction. In this conversation, Kevin and Johanna described a pair of graduate programs that take a fundamentally practical approach to teaching writers how to build sustainable careers.

A PROGRAM BUILT ON WHAT THEY WISHED SOMEONE HAD TAUGHT THEM

Kevin founded the publishing program after the university approached him about creating a master's degree. His condition was that he would teach only what he wished someone had taught him when he was starting out—the practical mechanics of both traditional and indie publishing, organized so that students could learn in one year what took him four decades to piece together. The program covers every step from manuscript to market: cover design, interior layout with Vellum, uploading to retailers, running Amazon ads, building Kickstarter campaigns, and understanding the economics of how publishers, authors, and bookstores each make money from a sale.

Johanna came to the genre fiction MFA with a similar frustration. When she was looking for graduate programs, she could not find one willing to work with her on romance, mystery, or sci-fi. The genre fiction program fills that gap by treating commercial fiction as worthy of serious academic study—reading bestsellers across every genre, analyzing what makes them work, and requiring students to write in genres outside their comfort zone.

LEARNING BY DOING

Both programs center on hands-on projects rather than traditional thesis papers. Kevin's publishing students produce a yearly anthology that pays professional rates, funded by a grant from Draft2Digital. The current anthology, INTO THE DEEP DARK WOODS, drew 998 submissions. Students read the slush pile, make multiple rounds of cuts, negotiate a budget, write acceptance and rejection letters, copyedit the accepted stories, design the cover, lay out the interior, and manage the book launch—including a formal gala at the university.

The previous year's cohort went further: they created four books to support the Elk River Writers Workshop, an indigenous-taught writing workshop in Montana that had lost its federal arts grants. The students built and ran a Kickstarter that raised roughly $10,000 and saved the workshop. Kevin noted that twelve to fifteen graduates have gone on to run successful Kickstarters of their own.

On the genre fiction side, Johanna described a thesis project that requires students to draft a novel or short story collection with publication as the explicit goal. Each student works with an assigned writing coach from brainstorming through final draft, and the finished projects are designed either for querying agents or for independent publication. Several thesis projects are currently out on submission, and several more were being prepared for indie release.

GENRE FICTION CHANGES THE WORLD

Johanna made the case that genre fiction has historically driven cultural change—from LGBTQ+ romance built on the backs of small and indie publishers before traditional houses recognized the market, to LitRPG as an entire form created by indie authors blending genres in ways traditional publishing would not have permitted. Kevin reinforced the point with his own experience: traditional editors used to forbid genre-blending because bookstores would not know which shelf to put it on. Indie publishing removed that constraint entirely.

Both described this as what Kevin calls the golden age of publishing—an era when writers have more career paths available than ever before. Kickstarter, Patreon, direct sales at comic cons, library talks, hybrid trad-indie careers—the options multiply in ways that did not exist even a decade ago. The programs aim to prepare students for all of them.

HYBRID CAREERS AND BUSINESS FUNDAMENTALS

The genre fiction program prepares students for both indie and traditional paths. They learn to write queries, prepare pitches (this year, with a live agent session), read contracts, understand tax obligations, and build author platforms. Kevin's publishing program complements this with deep dives into printing, distribution, copyrights, and the full mechanics of indie production.

Kevin acknowledged that some students arrive wanting only the indie track and resist learning the traditional side. His response: even if you want to be a rock star, you should still understand classical music. Understanding how printing, distribution, and bookstore economics work gives indie authors a foundation for making better decisions about their own businesses.

COMMUNITY AS INFRASTRUCTURE

Both Kevin and Johanna emphasized that community is central to the program's design. The low-residency format—one week in person each July in Gunnison, Colorado, with the rest conducted asynchronously online—draws students from around the world, including a current student studying from Denmark. Students frequently cross between the publishing and genre fiction programs, and many stay connected to the community long after graduating.

Kevin also described Superstars Writing Seminars, which he co-founded with Brandon Sanderson, Eric Flint, David Farland, Rebecca Moesta, and James A. Owen roughly sixteen years ago as what he calls the original business-of-writing conference. The same community-minded ethos—rising tides lift all boats, share what you learn—runs through both Superstars and the university programs. Applications for the summer 2026 cohort are open now, with online classes beginning in June and the residency week in July.

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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 guests are Kevin J. Anderson and Johanna Parkhurst. How are you doing?

[00:00:06] Johanna: Doing well.

[00:00:08] Kevin: having us on.

[00:00:09] Matty: I am pleased to have you here and just to give a little introduction of you for our listeners, Kevin J. Anderson has published more than 190 books, 58 of which have been national or international bestsellers with over 24 million copies in print in 34 languages. He’s written numerous novels in the Star Wars, X-Files, and Dune universes, which, I think is very interesting because I just got a chance to talk with Jonathan Maberry about media tie in work.

Too many original works, novels and series to mention all this. In addition to editing anthologies writing comics and games and composing the lyrics to three rock albums,

Anderson and his wife Rebecca Moesta, are the publishers of WordFire Press, and he is the director of the graduate program in publishing at

And Johanna Parkhurst, who also writes as J.E. Burke, is the author of award-winning and bestselling fiction and romance, and primarily writes stories featuring LGBTQ+ characters. She’s been published traditionally by small presses and also via her imprint, Maple Mountains Press. She’s a Colorado Book Award winner and a Rainbow Romance Award winner, and she’s also a longtime teacher recognized as Faculty of the year at Pueblo Community College and as faculty mentor of the year at

And for people who are listening carefully to those two bios, I think you will, notice the commonality there, which was Western Colorado

[00:01:27] Matty: So I am very pleased to have, Kevin and Johanna on the, podcast to talk about Western Colorado University’s master’s program in publishing and genre fiction, which I think is, is, a unique offering among the educational opportunities for writers out there.

And so I’m just gonna first of all throw it open and ask you guys to describe what is the Western Colorado University Master’s program in

[00:01:51] Kevin: Uh, well, Western Colorado University is, is a huge university and, well, no, it’s, it’s, it’s a small University of the mountains of Colorado. but it doesn’t really matter that much because all of our teaching is,low residency and it’s almost all

[00:02:07] Kevin: look, I, I got out of college with my va, my bachelor’s degree, and I went right off into being a writer.

And I published novels traditionally and, and had a big full career for it. We never really felt you needed to have a master’s degree to be successful writing genre fiction or publishing stuff like that. but this program came about. I, I formed the publishing program. About seven years ago when they approached me and asked if I would, put together a,

And I said, well, only if I can teach the stuff that I wish somebody had taught me when I was learning it. And I’ve been doing this for decades in traditional publishing and I form my own indie. Imprint kind of at the beginning of indie in 2009 when people were just starting it. And so I’ve got a whole track record in both traditional publishing, very

And, I put together this program that I, I think is unlike anything else in any other university. ’cause we teach half and half full traditional publishing and we teach them all indie publishing and. I learned all this stuff over the course of 40 years, but we kind of organized it so

it’s kind of start to finish organized, and I’m not an academic at all. I wanted to teach people. Like practical how to do stuff that when they come out of the publishing program, they know every step from start to finish of creating and publishing their book, designing their cover, uploading it, advertising it, running Amazon ads, doing everything so

Something at the end of it. And when I joined Western Colorado University, they also had a program that taught an MFA in genre fiction. And most MFAs are it’s Master of Fine Arts. And so they were teaching, you know, literature and, and not. Westerns and romances and mysteries and science fiction, and I just thought that was really cool that they

And, Johanna wasn’t the person running it at the time, but she’s now, and I’ll, I’ll punt it over to you to talk about what, what genre

[00:04:19] Johanna: Yeah. Thank you Kevin.

[00:04:20] Johanna: I, I jokingly say that I can talk about this program all day long because similarly to what Kevin just said, this is the program that I looked for years ago and couldn’t find. This is the program I always needed. I’ve been a teacher for a long time, but I’ve

And when I was looking for MFA programs. There wasn’t anybody who was interested in working with me on what I really wanted to write. you know, I’ve, I’ve loved genre since I was very small. I love all different types of it, and I just wanted to play in genre blends and I wanted to write romance and I wanted to write mystery, and I wanted to

And it was very hard when I was first. Starting out on this track to find those programs. so my soapbox for this program is if you love genre and you believe that your writing has a space in the world and you wanna be a part of a community of. Many other writers who love genre as much as you do and who wanna study what it means to read like a writer and study the best genre fiction, the most successful genre fiction, really

This is the place for you. because something that I think Kevin and I and all the directors at the graduate program of Creative Writing believe we all believe very strongly in community, community is incredibly important to us. We believe that rising tides lift all boats.

They should be setting you up for a lifetime of art and a lifetime of a success doing what you love to do. We have a lot of students who study genre fiction and publishing in either order. Kevin jokingly calls it the learn how to write a book and then learn how to publish it track, but it’s actually pretty accurate, right?

That’s basically what it is. we were just talking about this last night in class. Actually, several of my genre fiction writers came over from publishing. One of them was showing off a Kickstarter that she just finished and we were talking about, you know, the succession of being able to really study both and practically walk out into the world feeling like not only have you built more skills or advanced your skills, because we have a lot of writers in this program who have long and storied careers, and they come because they love learning and they

Grow and they wanna build a deeper community. and they were talking about the practicality of that piece, how you can build this community and you can come out knowing how to do a Kickstarter and write a great book that will keep those readers from your Kickstarters engaged with

[00:06:32] Johanna: And we’re a residency like Kevin was saying. So a big part of our sort of ethos is we believe writers should come from everywhere. That you shouldn’t be limited in what you can study because of where you are. So we all meet in person one week. A year in Gunnison, Colorado, which is beautiful in July, I have to say.

And the rest of the year everything’s online. It’s over Zoom, just like this. It’s in discussion boards, it’s in other online spaces. So we have students from all over the world. I have a student studying in Denmark right now. Kevin actually got to visit her when he was at a Comic-Con there recently, which is very cool.

[00:07:05] Kevin: Actually, I wanna pick up on that, just the idea. can you imagine, think in your head what, what an MFA program is? Can you imagine an MFA program at a, some other university teaching you how to build and run a Kickstarter? I mean we, I’ve got a Kickstarter running right now at Launched yesterday, but my students shadowed me the whole time as, as I built it.

They watched the, i I made them collaborators and they’re inside the back office watching me put all the stuff together and doing the BackerKit ads and, and the pre-launch stuff. And then they launched it and they’re helping to promote it and we’re going through this and, and we

[00:07:41] Matty: That’s fantastic.

[00:07:42] Kevin: but that they’re actually learning how to. Do this stuff and last year’s group of students for, for publishing. Instead of just watching me do a Kickstarter, we actually put one together ourselves that there is a, the Elk River Writers Workshop, which is a, an indigenous taught writing workshop up in Montana.

And they had, surprise, surprise, a bunch of their federal, arts grants. canceled. So they weren’t gonna survive. They couldn’t run this workshop. And so our publishing students put together four books, like the collected stories from the people who attended there and, and a book

And so they created and published four books that they ran the Kickstarter for. They raised something like \$10,000 and saved the workshop. And that’s what their classwork was. They built and ran a Kickstarter and now they all know how to do it. And I think of my publishing grads, we’ve had like 12 to 15 of them that went off to do their own Kickstarters that were successful and we’re just very much

They wanna be able to hold up a book and say, yes, I know how to make this. Rather than that, they wrote a thesis paper somewhere that. Nobody will read that. This is really practical stuff that we just try to teach

[00:08:54] Johanna: I was just gonna say on the genre side of the practicality piece, our thesis project is writing a novel or short story collection for your goals as a publication. So the goal is that you’re walking out with a project that you can either query to agents if you wanna go in a trad direction with it, or if you’re studying Kevin’s

Publish yourself. And those thesis projects are written with writing coaches every step of the way. So you have a very specific coach who’s assigned to you on the MFA track who works with you throughout the whole process, from brainstorming all the way to the very end. and we, you know, we’re really excited.

We have several out in subs, several being planned for independent publication right now. Like, this is the work that our students are doing, like Kevin was saying, like, we are, we all want to be working in this industry together in whatever fashion that means for our students.

[00:09:39] Matty: Yeah, I really like the practicality of it. I’d love to dive into a few more examples of the kind of, actual work the students are doing. I’m curious about on the writing front, Johanna. How does the program, how does the work of refining one’s writing differ in your program than it would in a traditional MFA, beyond?

I mean, obviously the, the work that’s being studied is different, but then can you describe differences in how the students act on the work

[00:10:10] Johanna: Yeah, I mean, I think the similarities are in the fact that we’re trying to build a community of authors who help lift one another’s writing up, right? So we do workshops just like any other MFA does. But one of the things that we specifically do in our workshops. Or try to do is we try to make them really open spaces where

So there’s some traditional MFA formats out there where you’re kind of sitting in silence and being told what’s right or wrong about your story. But since we’re functioning in genre spaces where we want readers and writers to be able to communicate across what’s working.

Our workshops are kind of designed around what works best for the author. So different authors run different types of workshops in every story they’re producing across. Every genre we study is an opportunity for publication. Kevin’s program, the publishing program, puts together an anthology. Every year they get a massive numbers of submissions.

I think they had something like 999 last year. I am so proud to say that. I think seven or eight. Kevin, correct me if I’m wrong, of the

[00:11:10] Kevin: think seven previous and current students got in there and they got i’ll, I’ll talk about the anthology in, in a minute, but that’s what I would like to point out though, is that you’re, they might come in going, I want to be a fantasy writer, but you make them understand how romance works, how westerns work, how mysteries work, and they have to write a mystery story.

They have to write a romance story and they. they actually learn how to do it, and some of them have excelled outside of the genre that they

[00:11:38] Johanna: One of my funny stories about this is, so I am a romance writer and every genre has. Folks who are like, I love that genre. I don’t engage with that genre. Right. And there’s always a few folks who come in with romance, like, I’ve never read a romance before. And it’s always so funny to me. I think I’ve had three students who had never written a romance where romance ended up being their very first publication because they just fell in love with a genre.

When Kevin did a romance anthology in the program a few years ago, we had so many submissions from out of that workshop. Yeah. I was really proud that I, I think, yeah, I think believe it is eight. genre fiction, former and past writers are in that anthology this year, ’cause several

The goal is that, as Kevin said, they’re writing in every genre. They’re playing with genre blends. They’re looking at where they can take new ideas from what they’re reading. Because we read a lot in our program. The writers will tell you so much of how you learn to develop

Right? Like, how do you read like a writer? What are you studying in other people’s crafts? So we’re reading the bestselling romances, we’re reading the best. Selling mysteries. We’re reading the bestselling thrillers, we’re reading the bestselling sci-fi. we’re reading the interesting and new genre blends of sci-fi and fantasy, and we’re talking about what makes them work, what makes them tick.

What is it that you can take from these books and bring into your own craft so that you can write this new story and something you’ve never written before, and you can submit it to the WordFire anthologies and

[00:12:57] Kevin: You mean an MFA program that makes them read bestselling fiction? How, how dare you. How? How dare you.

[00:13:03] Johanna: People laugh so hard when I tell them what we read in our program. a few titles from this year have included, I’ll just throw some of it out there. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros is on that list. Rebecca Roanhorse is on that list. oh my gosh, so many. And we change them every year.

We change our book lists every year to reflect what’s coming out and what’s moving up. We’re in the horror unit now, so

[00:13:24] Matty: Do you get in touch with the authors of those books? do they know that, that their books are being used as, academic

[00:13:31] Johanna: Yeah, we have several speak and it’s, I remember when we invited Cat Sebastian, who is a really well-known, queer romance writer. She was like, you’re asking me to speak my, my book’s being used in an MFA book? I was like, yes, it really is.

[00:13:44] Matty: probably a, an item they didn’t even realize

[00:13:48] Johanna: She was, she was thrilled and she was such a great guest. Yeah, we have some amazing speakers who are just so excited to be able to come in and, and see the ways that their books are being

[00:13:56] Kevin: Well, and that is one of the things like Matty, you, you, you and I have interacted for a long time and I’ve been involved in the industry. So we can bring in like the captains of industry to just be guest speakers for us. And we have major bestselling authors and like the heads of Audible and the heads of Draft2Digital and, and like all.

All the people that are in our space. And it’s a, it, it’s kind of cool when I think of it ’cause we are just a little university, but we’re getting all these, these Titan speakers that are, that are there and, let I, I’d like to talk a little bit about what we.

[00:14:33] Kevin: What our, our main project is for the publishing people is that, they put together an original anthology every year.

And again, this is the learning how to do stuff from start to finish. And we get a, a really, really nice grant every year from Draft2Digital. And they, they, they give us, a, a nice chunk of money that we can use to pay professional rates for. An original anthology and the students come up when they meet in summer, they get together and they brainstorm and come up with, this is the anthology they wanna edit.

And the one that they’re working on this year is called Into the Deep Dark Woods. And they wrote up their, their description, their call for submissions. They, they send it out and posted it. Everywhere in the writers’ groups and Author Nation and, and successful indie author and all these different places, and we get submissions because we’re paying

So people are writing stories and they’re sending ’em in and into the deep dark woods. We got 998 submissions that came in and the students. They read the slush pile that they’re broken into teams, but they go through and they read them and they reject them. They clear through, and then they do another cut, and they reject the next round and then and the next round, and they get down to what we call the thunderdome call with two stories enter and one story leaves because they, they have to

Which ones they can have because they have a budget. We’re, this is a business that you got this much money and you can buy this many words. And that what usually happens is they’re like 80 stories that they wanna buy and they can only buy 26 and then they have to fight over which, which ones. And that is incredible learning spirits for them because they realize all 80 of those stories were perfectly good and

But they still got rejected and they really learned a lot from their own writing. Like, wait, just ’cause they got rejected, maybe it didn’t mean the story was terrible. And then they, they write the last rejections, they write the acceptance letters. They send out the contracts. They, they work with the authors to copy edit them.

they work to design the cover. They lay it out and we make them get vellum. So they all learn how to use vellum. And then we publish the book and we run, they develop Canva ads and they put it out. And then the following summer in Gunnison, when they all get together for their second time, we have this really cool gala book launch at the University Center, and it’s kind of all black tie.

I wear my, my tux and, and Allison Longueira, my co-pro professor, wears her cocktail dress and everybody kind of gets dressed up and we have like 300 people there that come in and, and they, they sell their books and they, they buy the books and, Oh, and, and the students also produce

It’s like a reissue of a classic of literature that they do from start to finish, but here’s kind of a little off the radar, which I think is one of the most interesting things that they learn. So after that big book launch, so they publish their anthology, they publish their classic books, we print them up and we sell ’em at the book launch.

[00:17:28] Kevin: Well, there are three parties that make money when a book is published and sold. The publisher makes money. So that’s Word fire Press. That’s my publisher publishing house. The author makes money, in this case it’s Western Colorado University. ’cause they get the royalties and the bookstore makes money and we have a separate bookstore entity that, so the bookstore buys the books, that 40% discount from the publisher the way any bookstore does with any

And they buy all these books. We put them out, we sell them that night, and then we run this whole spreadsheet together afterward. Where you figure out exactly how much money did the publisher make for all these books that we printed up and sent into this book event. And then how much money did the author make the Western Colorado University for their

And how much money did the bookstore make because they had to buy them and then they resell them and they get to see like, like with actual numbers with the books that they handed in their own hands. This is how much the publisher made, how much the author made, and how much the bookstore made. And invariably every single year, it’s the bookstore

the bookstore has the most risk though, because they have to buy all these books. And if there’s a tornado that night and nobody shows up, well, then they’re stuck with all this inventory that they can’t sell. So it’s, again, that’s just, it’s, it’s a very long description of how, how practical and pragmatic this stuff is.

[00:18:51] Matty: Well, I do really like the idea of them getting some direct exposure to the business side of, the writing and publishing world. And I do just wanna second that idea that having that exposure to the editorials. Side of being the person who’s having to read and accept or reject stories, I think is so valuable and, really highlights

And there’s so many other things that go into whether you get an acceptance or whether you get a rejection. I think it’s great that they

[00:19:22] Kevin: To go back to what Johanna was saying before, a lot of the submissions, do you require your students to submit to our

[00:19:30] Johanna: I don’t require, but it works out really well. your deadline is always right after one of our first workshop.

[00:19:33] Kevin: So. these stories come in and because some of her students were actually the editors the previous year, they learned so much about what catches your eye in the slush pile and what doesn’t

I think we had seven or eight in this coming one. And this was on their own merits. ’cause they come in basically blind and people are reading all these submissions and out of 998 submissions. seven or eight of the current students got in there on their own merits because their stories

[00:20:05] Matty: That’s very cool.

[00:20:09] Matty: One of the things you had said earlier, Johanna, about the, submitting to, traditional publishing outlets. I can see obviously all the things we’re talking about, about the, the practical end of if somebody wants to. be it like a solo, indie, author, publisher, then this is gonna equip them well for it.

Can you also talk about in what way it, equips them better for an

[00:20:29] Johanna: I mean, to borrow a quote from Kevin, he likes to say this is the golden age of publishing. And I would agree because authors have more opportunity than ever, so we wanna sort of.

[00:20:37] Johanna: From the genre fiction side of things, and this is similar to how Kevin approaches things in the publishing program. We wanna sort of prepare our writers, those who are either in the field or are thinking of advancing in different areas of in the

so like I teach the business class and the genre fiction, side of the house for example. And we do a lot of combination with Kevin. We do a lot of speakers together and things like that. ’cause there’s a lot of crossover and in that business course. We’re essentially preparing them for what are the practical things you need to know to exist in both of these worlds so that whatever your career brings to you, you can move

We’re seeing more and more indie authors also pick up trad contracts, particularly for their print works that’s, you know, becoming more and more popular. We’re seeing more and more TRA authors also want to have an indie side to their career. You just don’t know where this golden

[00:21:25] Johanna: So in the business class, we kind of prep everybody for how to write queries. How to do a pitch. we’re actually piloting something this year where we have an agent coming in directly and doing pitches with the students in the class. and we were very lucky to be able to do that. The projects don’t always align that way that they can come into class and everybody’s project will work for the same agent, but it did this year.

So we’re trying that this year. But either way, we prepped for all of that. We prep for the pitches. We make sure they know how to read contracts that are gonna come their way. You know, that’s something that. Kevin also covers again in publishing. So we’re really trying to set them up for everything. And then those that wanna go down more of an indie route, if the publishing track is good for them, that’s very often where they’ll also study there so they can go more in depth

but at least they leave feeling like they know how to build a platform. They know how to exist in these different realms and they know what they don’t know because I think that’s. Such a difficult part about being a writer. You know, I remember when I was first starting out, and even as my career has grown, the hardest part is always you don’t know what you

Like if nobody tells you. I, we were, we had a CPA on a call the other night and I was thinking about these horror stories we used to hear and still sometimes do about like debut authors who get these big contracts, you know, kind of win the literary lottery and don’t know that they have to pay taxes on that so they like blow the whole check on paying

Then tax time comes up in trouble, right? Because you don’t know what you don’t know. So we’re trying, hopefully, in these classes to not only prepare you for the craft side of this world, but what the practicalities of everything else are going to feel like. And what I, I, you know, I don’t say pros and cons in either a positive or negative

Everything publishing, every publishing path has pros and cons, so we’re sort of trying to. Give them the foundation of understanding, like when you’re looking at a project and thinking about what is the best path for this project, making sure they know the why and the how of how to approach that path, if that makes sense.

[00:23:12] Matty: Well, I do like the idea that you’re covering both Indie and rad because I always try to spread the word that you, a writer shouldn’t. Think about making a choice for their career. They should think about making a choice for each work and then further each format and further each geography and you know, all the other ways you

So having a pool of knowledge about all the options available, I think

[00:23:36] Johanna: So well.

[00:23:37] Kevin: And we, we’ve had some, like more militant indie authors going like, well, I don’t wanna learn the trad side. And I go, guys, if you wanna be a rock star, you still should understand classical music. And, and there’s so much in trad just the bookstore distribution and copyrights and contracts and, and just, just printing

Look at all the options we have now with BookVault and with, with,other print on demand things and, and fancy vendors. You have to know how printing works and, and all the various things that you have. And, and yes, if you are a very ambitious indie author, you can go on a million different writers groups and, and Facebook groups, and you can go to conferences and you can learn all of this stuff in a completely random

F, but what, what we offer is like, okay guys, we’re gonna start, start here and we’re gonna give you this whole organized. Game plan to go through and, and finish it. A

[00:24:33] Kevin: nd, and just because Johanna and I field a lot of these questions, I’m gonna preempt one and just mention that the stuff that we’re teaching, because it is low residency and all online, most of it is asynchronous, which means you, you do it on your own time.

And yes, there are zoom calls that we meet ourselves in class, but mainly you’ll be given, here’s your work or here’s your lecture, here’s your reading that you have to do, and you do that on your own time. And a great many of our students in publishing, and I think a lot of them in genre as well. they’re not like white-eyed kids fresh out of undergrad, that these are people who have already established their careers and they’ve got a full-time job, they’ve got families, they’ve got other things, and they’re still putting this on top of it.

And they managed to do it. And, you know, to me, to them it’s, it’s something feasible to do. and just the, the pragmatic thing, so for publishing, it’s a one year program, so it starts in July. June, some online classes, and then it ends the following July, and the, the total cost is 27,000, I think.

[00:25:36] Kevin: And the, well, you talk about genre, it’s an MA

[00:25:42] Johanna: Yeah, so we have the one year or the two year option. So the one year is very similar to the track, Kevin, just. It’s basically. June to July. and that’s the master’s degree. And the master’s degree is basically what I like to call the genre bootcamp. It’s that first year of you’re deep dive studying every genre you’re

You’re building these great workshop communities where you’re getting a lot of feedback on your work. You’re conferencing with your instructors, really figuring out how to grow your craft. We do have some students, some writers who just do the MA and then they graduate from that year. The majority of the genre fiction writers tend to do the two year program, the MFA program.

Because the second year is when you do the short forms course, which is a deep dive into some other forms. the novelette, flash fiction, things like that. The business course that we were just talking about. There’s also a pedagogy course in there that sort of helps prepare those who wanna go into classrooms because MFA is a terminal degree, or those who just wanna be really strong conference speakers and create things like this, right?

Create spaces where other writers can learn from them and continue to push their work forward. And that’s the year you’re writing your thesis, your novel project with your, with your mentor. So the majority of our writers tend to do the two year program, although there are a few

It really just depends on goals, right? Like what are you in the program for? What are you looking to get out of it? What are you, what do you wanna achieve? What is, what is your variation on, you know, we were talking about ROI. What does ROI look for you and look like for you?

[00:27:05] Johanna: And we do have students who cross and we’ll do like the MA in publishing and the MA in genre or the MFA in genre and the MA in publishing. We also have a nature writing program, poetry program, a screenwriting program. So we have multiple students who will

I’ve had students go on to study screenwriting or come to us from screenwriting. I think Kevin has a screenwriter going to publishing this year. We also, we are a small and very tightly knit community, so you get to know the other instructors in the program once you’re there, and we have a lot of folks who stay because they love the community we’ve

[00:27:36] Matty: I do think that the idea of being able to be part of this, very, Both like high powered audience, both among the instructors and the student body. and also a very committed group. Obviously committed because they’re making this commitment to the program is great. And I, I know that there’s a certain amount of

I recognize it’s not part of the program, but I think that that idea of community, it’s like a great adjunct offering. and I’d love to give

[00:28:08] Kevin: Superstars writing seminar. Something that I founded with Brandon Sanderson, Eric Flint, David Farland, my wife Rebecca Moesta, and, and we brought on James A. Owen. We, this was, I call it the OG Business of Writing Conference. ’cause like 15, 16 years ago, we all got together and talked business and we said, how come there

This was long before Author Nation long, before 20Books to 50K. And so we, we did Superstars writing seminar to. To teach people about contracts and ips and, and Eric Flynn, our, our first year he did this, this talk about this, you know, I think we should pay attention to this

And, and he was the only one that was even doing anything with it. And, what, what developed out of that and Superstars has grown, we’re now a pro non-Pro 501(c)(3) nonprofit. what the best thing that came out of that is our full on nurturing community. Mindset that everybody there is like on the same team and they wanna learn and they want, and you, you’ve seen indie authors out there that indie authors are so different from what most professionals are in that they, you can’t stop them from sharing the stuff that they learned that they’re so eager to, to like, oh, look what I found out.

Look what I mean. Like most other people are like, no, it’s trade

[00:29:38] Kevin: But that’s not indie authors, and that’s what superstars is and that’s what we are at Western Colorado University too, that it’s very much a, well, it’s a little subversive that I want to talk about because we, We are teaching people how to remake the entire publishing industry and, and you know that as indie authors, that what we’re, there are a lot of people in publishing, in traditional publishing, and I still know a lot of them in traditional public, like the, my editors at the Big Five and my, my Big New York agents and

They still don’t quite understand what’s going on out here that they, they cannot believe that you can make a lot of money on Kickstart Kickstarter for a project that they couldn’t sell to another publisher. I had one of those two years ago where I, I did a seven volume set of my collected reprint, short stories, and I asked my, my agent and I said, well, would, would you be able to sell this?

He said, nobody would want a reprint set of your short stories and not seven volumes. And I said, okay. And I ran a Kickstarter and made \$80,000 for it. And he’s still like. I was speaking a different language, and we really want to be, we want to get respect for genre fiction and academia, and I’ll let Jo Johanna talk about that.

I wanna get respect for indie publishing in academia because other programs will, you can get an MFA that will teach you how to go work for the Big five publishers, but there aren’t that many jobs out there anymore. What we’re finding is among our applicants, they don’t really

They wanna learn how to be indie publishers themselves, or at the very least, to be hybrid so that they know both sides of the fence. And, and Johanna, you were the same way, where we’re like, well, wait, how come other MFAs don’t teach genre fiction? That’s what people wanna read.

[00:31:18] Johanna: Yeah.

[00:31:18] Johanna: I mean our kind of our, our longstanding slogan in this program is genre fiction changes the world, and Indie publishing has allowed genre fiction. To change the world. We should put that on T-shirts, Kevin.

[00:31:29] Kevin: Oh, I like that. I got it.

[00:31:31] Johanna: But it’s, it’s true, right? Like we, when we look back at the course of history and we really think about various literary content that has changed society and moved society forward,

And yet for some reason. We don’t talk about it the same way in academia that I think we should be. and when we look at how genre fiction has been allowed to change and move spheres, I mean, I’m, I’m a product of one of those circles. LGBTQ+ romance is a space that only really existed or only has sort of existed and has kind of changed how we talk about romance and how we talk about the way that people communicate with one another and what it means to be accepted included

If you’re not in a, you know, very traditional looking. Relationship. That’s the kind of thing that was built on the back of small publishers and indie publishers. And then, quite frankly, I’ll just be honest here, right? Like one day trad publishing went, oh, there’s money over there. And all of a sudden you saw a lot of LGBTQ+ romance popping up

and that’s just one story, right? Like there’s. So many stories of how small publishers and indie publishers helped give rise. Another one that we talk a lot about right now is LitRPG and Lit. RPG is just an interesting example of an entire field of writers who basically created something because they were like, we can blend these genres and we can

We’re gonna like, make this form exist. And it exists out in the world. It changed the sphere of an entire genre because of indie publishing. I, I kind of have made an argument before that I don’t think LitRPG. Would have existed nearly as quickly or in the same way if it wasn’t

[00:33:01] Kevin: They wouldn’t have known how to publish it. And let me even go back to my trad days ’cause I was always loving to do genre mixing and cross genre things. And I like steampunk vampires and all that stuff and my editors would always slap my hand. I go, don’t mix genres because we won’t know which bookshelf to put it on in the

They that was you was really frowned upon to do any sort of genre blending. But indie authors are like, well, I don’t care. I’m just gonna put the keywords on there. And then people will find the steampunk, vampire, LGBTQ+ horror thriller novel or something like that. And guess what? The readers are there and they come out of the woodwork

And you know, that’s, as I said, and as Johanna said, this is the coolest time ever to get into publishing that we have, we have this, like, this whole treasure chest in front of us that we can do this, we can do that. And, when I was starting out, you basically had this lockstep path. You did this and then did this and did this, and you know, again, 99% of the people never made it to each next step.

And if you made it, then you had your career in traditional publishing. Well, now you can do all kinds. You can run a Kickstarter, you can have your Patreon, you can, you can publish your own books and find your audience. You can, I personally make a lot more money just going to my own comic cons and selling off my own table than I do by selling

Well, I make money there too. But, you can have a perfectly good career selling your books by doing library talks every month. And still nobody would’ve heard of you, but you’re making money at it. And there are

[00:34:45] Matty: I am curious as to, for each of your programs, what is one thing that your students learn and they wouldn’t learn it anywhere else, and it sort of lights them up. Like, what is the big, aha moment for them? Johanna, do you wanna take a crack at that question?

[00:35:01] Johanna: It’s a fun time for you to ask that. ’cause I was just reading their mid-semester reflections today. We happen to be in the middle of the semester, so I was just reading exactly that and in the first year, I think so many of the aha moments are really about what is possible in craft. And what that means for what they wanna do in

you know, a lot of the reflections I was reading today are like, wow, I’d never thought about doing this genre blend before. And now you know, this really cool idea for the story I just brought to workshop with this AI monster that falls in love and, you know, goes through these themes of what it means to be disenfranchised and modern society.

Now I know how to do it right? Like those are the most exciting reflections for me. Those, those craft aha moments of. This is something I didn’t know I could do in a space that I feel very comfortable doing now and or I wanna take that experiment, I wanna take that risk and I’m

I think that’s, you know, as a teacher too, that’s just one of the most exciting things you can see is that somebody’s really lit up with a writing idea. And the second year of my program, I think a lot of the aha moments are around their thesis project. So that’s the moment. Like whether it’s an aha from somebody who’s written eight different novels and tried something really, or 20 different novels for that matter, and tried something really new with their thesis of going like, oh, I

And here I am doing long form fantasy or the aha of the person who had done a lot of short form when they came to us, but had never actually written like an 80,000 word novel. And did it start to finish? Drafted it? You know, the way our process works, you’re essentially drafting a

And for some folks that seems, you know, really. Really complex and like a very big challenge when they first come. so that sort of aha moment, there’s so many different aha moments across the thesis project. I could go on all day, so I’ll let Kevin pick up.

[00:36:41] Kevin: Well, because we make them hands-on for their solo book, their classic book that they do. they do every single step from start to finish that they go in. Find an old book that they wanna reprint and they prove that it’s outta copyright. And then they either scan or obtain the text somewhere and then they proofread it and then they, they’ll edit it as they need to, and then they’ll, they’ll lay it out, inve em.

They will design their own cover, they’ll make their own ads for it. And now realistically we teach them, you’re not gonna wanna do every step of this, but I want you to know how to do every step of this. And some of them like. we had won this this year. It’s like, I never, ever

I’m good at it. and they had never even thought about doing. Graphic design and, just, just the beautiful books that you can make with, with velum and layout software. And I, I just gave them the printing masters for our into the Deep dark Woods anthology. ’cause I’m, I did that

And I’m playing around and just, if you pay attention, you add the little flourishes and the step back artwork on the title pages and, and just all this fancy stuff that. Trad publishers just don’t bother doing anymore. It’s the indie people that are making the pretty beautiful books and, and they’re, they’re laying out their own books and they

And, and in fact, they all just finished, all 12 students did their 12 covers, and we just shared with them, here’s all 12 year covers. And they were just like, like stunned. Wow. Look at how beautiful those covers are. And we did them ourselves. And, and that’s, that’s the cool. Aha moment that they realize and, and I myself still get that aha moment when, when our books are published and I hold it and I go.

I can’t believe I did this. I remember being a kid looking up to publishers as the Gods on Olympus because only they could make a book. And now I’m like, but I just made this one. And it’s prettier than anything that Bantam did or Harper Collins did, or Simon and Schuster did. And you know, I, I think that that’s a power that we have that is

[00:38:51] Matty: Well, I do, love the educational aspect that I think you guys are sharing information that isn’t available anywhere. I love this idea of expansion that people, who thought they were gonna, become romance writers, turned out to be thriller authors or whatever that might be. And I love the empowerment aspect of giving people the tools and the, and the confidence in order to.

Dive into all of these and, and understand it from all different perspectives. I think it’s just a, a wonderful program.

[00:39:17] Matty: And, please, I’d love to give you a chance to each share where, people can go to find out more about your programs. Johanna, can we start with you?

[00:39:26] Johanna: I mean, we should all be on the same page, so literally the same webpage. If you go to Western Colorado University graduate program for creative writing. I think we can give you a link for the show notes. Matty, you can access all the information about our different concentrations, all the information about how to apply.

Kevin and I are always happy to talk to interested writers. As you can tell, we love talking about this program, so it’s not hard. It’s

[00:39:51] Kevin: we are open for applications now. Classes start in, well, their online classes in June, and then the residency is in

So that’s when you would have to Be in Colorado for one week in July. and I think apps close at the end of May, so it’s, still got plenty of time, but not like forever time. And we would love to see some of you guys as our students this year. So either take genre fiction first and then publishing, or the other way around.

[00:40:21] Matty: And then you’ll, you’ll leave with the full,

[00:40:25] Johanna: And hopefully a lovely writing community and many years of. I, I like to think that we are one of the few MFA programs in the country that recently spent 20 minutes talking about the genres of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. I say that jokingly,

[00:40:41] Matty: Well, that’s gotta be the best ad for the program.

[00:40:48] Johanna: Thank you so much.

Episode 327 - Media Tie-ins for Fun and Profit with Jonathan Maberry

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Jonathan Maberry discusses MEDIA TIE-INS FOR FUN AND PROFIT, including what media tie-in writing is, how the licensing works, the creative constraints of writing in someone else’s world, how to find open calls and pitch editors, the career strategy of when to pursue tie-in work and when to focus on your own brand, and why the writers who treat editing as a business interaction rather than a personal attack are the ones who keep getting hired.

Jonathan Maberry is a New York Times bestselling author, five-time Bram Stoker Award winner, four-time Scribe Award winner, Inkpot Award winner, poet, and comic book writer. He writes in multiple genres including suspense, thriller, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and action. V-WARS (Netflix) was based on his books/comics; Alcon is developing his teen post-apocalyptic novels for film; and Chad Stahelski, director of John Wick, is developing his bestselling Joe Ledger thrillers for TV. Marvel’s BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER was partly based on his work. He’s president of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, and the editor of WEIRD TALES MAGAZINE.

Episode Links

www.jonathanmaberry.com

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanmaberry/

https://www.instagram.com/jonathanmaberry/

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

https://www.threads.com/@jonathanmaberry

https://substack.com/@jonathanmaberry

Summary & Transcript

Jonathan Maberry is a New York Times bestselling author, five-time Bram Stoker Award winner, four-time Scribe Award winner, and the president of the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers. He writes across multiple genres—suspense, thriller, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and action—and his work has crossed into comics, television, and film, including Netflix’s V WARS and elements of Marvel’s BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER. In this conversation, Jonathan laid out the landscape of media tie-in writing: what it is, how to break in, and what working writers should know before they pitch.

WHAT MEDIA TIE-IN ACTUALLY MEANS

Jonathan explained that media tie-in falls into two main categories. The first is direct novelization—adapting a film or television script into a novel. His own entry into tie-in work was novelizing the 2010 remake of THE WOLFMAN, a project that required building a full gothic novel from a screenplay without ever seeing the finished film. The second category is original work set in a licensed world: writing a new Star Wars novel, for instance, or a short story set in the Aliens universe. A third, unofficial category—fan fiction—can’t be sold, but Jonathan noted that several successful tie-in careers started with fan fiction used as a writing sample to pitch licensed work.

NAVIGATING LICENSES AND RIGHTS HOLDERS

The conversation turned to the practical mechanics of finding and approaching license holders. Jonathan recommended starting with research: browsing bookstores or Amazon to identify which publishers hold specific licenses, then searching for the in-house editor overseeing that property. He described a hierarchy that runs from the license holder (often a film studio or game company) through a licensing overseer, to a publishing house editor, and finally to the writer. For properties not yet in print, he suggested contacting the vice president of licensing at the studio directly—an approach that led to his current involvement with the John Wick franchise.

Jonathan also clarified the public domain landscape, noting that what’s public domain varies by country. Sherlock Holmes and the Wizard of Oz are fair game in the United States, but James Bond and King Kong are still under license there while available in Australia. He pointed writers toward Project Gutenberg for the most accurate public domain listings and cautioned them to verify jurisdiction before proceeding.

THE CREATIVE CONSTRAINTS OF LICENSED WORLDS

Working within someone else’s intellectual property demands a particular creative temperament. Jonathan described writing for Blizzard Entertainment’s video game franchises, where characters cannot do anything in prose that they cannot do in gameplay—a constraint that requires absorbing extensive documentation before writing a single word. He noted that multiple executives will provide notes on a draft, sometimes contradicting one another, and that adaptability is essential.

For anthology editing, Jonathan described a chain of approval that can include the license holder, a licensing overseer, the in-house editor, and the anthology editor before a story even reaches the writer. He shared an example from his X-Files anthologies where stories written before the show’s revival had to be reconciled with continuity changes introduced by the new seasons—changes no one could have anticipated when the anthology was commissioned.

SPEED, OUTLINING, AND THE WORK ETHIC OF TIE-IN WRITING

Media tie-in writing operates on compressed timelines. Jonathan described completing an X-Files novel in five weeks and THE WOLFMAN novelization in seven. He emphasized that outlining is non-negotiable in tie-in work—license holders require a full outline every time—and that writers who rely on waiting for inspiration will not survive the deadlines.

His own routine involves writing three to four thousand words per day across two four-hour blocks, treating it as a professional workday that begins at the same time every morning. He recommended a rolling edit approach—reviewing the previous day’s work before starting new pages—rather than falling into the trap of endlessly revising early chapters. For unknown details that require research, he uses an inline placeholder (“EDIT THIS” followed by a note) so the draft’s momentum is never interrupted.

CAREER STRATEGY AND THE TIE-IN TRAP

Jonathan offered pointed advice about where media tie-in should sit in a writer’s career. He recommended establishing an independent voice first—through novels, short stories, comics, or indie publishing—and treating tie-in work as a complement to an existing brand rather than the foundation of one. The advances for tie-in novels typically run between five and eight thousand dollars, and writers who build their reputation primarily on licensed work can find it difficult to sell original material later.

For breaking in, he suggested that short stories offer the most accessible entry point. Writers can search for open anthology calls by Googling a license name plus “guidelines” with a one-year date filter. He also recommended joining the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers at iamtw.org and leveraging networking at conferences and through groups like his own Writer’s Coffeehouse Facebook page, where editors and established tie-in writers regularly participate.

THE BUSINESS OF BEING EDITED

Jonathan closed with advice that applies well beyond tie-in writing: take the ego out of the editing process. He noted that editing is a business function, not a personal attack, and that writers who push back on every edit or demand special treatment in anthologies quickly find themselves off editors’ lists. The writers who sustain long careers—he cited his friend R.L. Stine as an example—are the ones who treat the business side as business and reserve the personal investment for the actual writing.

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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 Jonathan Maberry. Hey, Jonathan, how are you doing?

[00:00:06] Jonathan: I am great. How are you?

[00:00:07] Matty: I am wonderful and pleased to have you here. And just to give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you—Jonathan Maberry is a New York Times bestselling author, five-time Bram Stoker Award winner, four-time Scribe Award winner, Inkpot Award winner, poet, and comic book writer.

He writes in multiple genres, including suspense, thriller, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and action. V WARS on Netflix was based on his books and comics. He’s developing his teen post-apocalyptic novels for film, and Chad Stahelski, director of JOHN WICK, is developing his bestselling Joe Ledger thrillers for TV.

Marvel’s BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER was partly based on his work. And he’s president of the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers and the editor of Weird Tales magazine. And so I got to listen to several of Jonathan’s talks at Superstars Writing Seminars, and they were fantastic. And so he was kind enough to agree to join me for The Indy Author Podcast.

And as I was looking over his very impressive bio, I got very intrigued by the idea of media tie-in—the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers. And so we agreed that we’d chat a little bit about that today. And Jonathan, just to make sure we’re all coming at this from the same point of view—

[00:01:19] Matty: When you talk about media tie-in, what are you talking about?

[00:01:22] Jonathan: So there are two kinds of media tie-in.

[00:01:24] Jonathan: One is when you’re doing a direct novelization of a movie. Like, my first exposure to media tie-in was I was hired to novelize the script for the 2010 remake of THE WOLFMAN. And you don’t get to see the movie. You actually just get the script.

So you have to build a novel based on the script, which is a lot more—there’s a lot more involved than just simply wrapping a paragraph around each line in the script. You don’t know how the actors are going to inflect or deliver their lines. You don’t know what the costumes are going to look like.

There’s a lot of information you don’t have because you haven’t seen the film. So you have to do a body of research in order to build a good, strong novel about it. And I decided, since it was my fifth novel, and I wanted it to represent my fairly new career at the time—so I did research and I wrote a gothic novel.

And that was my first New York Times bestseller.

[00:02:24] Jonathan: Now, the other part of media tie-in is doing original works in licensed worlds. So if you write a Star Wars novel, or a Star Trek, or whatever—it doesn’t have to be a novelization of an episode or a movie. It’s an original work set in that world.

And the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers was created by Max Allan Collins and Lee Goldberg some years ago. And the whole thing is to celebrate that kind of writing. There’s good and there’s bad in everything. There have been some really sketchy, questionable media tie-in novels over the years, but there’s a lot more really good stuff.

And I think one of the areas that shines best is its original works. And we give out the Scribe Awards for these types of works in a variety of categories—from graphic novels to original novels and a couple different categories, to short stories, nonfiction, and so on. Movie scripts, so on.

It’s a lot of fun to be involved in it because you get to play with other people’s toys, and they’re really cool toys. But at the same time, you have to bring originality and game to your writing while still respecting the license and so on. And you have to work within the confines of the license as dictated by the license holder.

And sometimes that gets complicated. Like, for example, some years ago I did an anthology of Aliens versus Predator from the two different movie franchises. Both were owned by Fox, so we had to go through Fox licensing. But then now Disney owns those properties. So you would have to go through Disney, and that’s a complicated process.

They’re a very difficult company to work easily with. They’re a good company to work with, but complex. And so there’s a lot of that side of it. Some companies give you extensive guidelines for what they want and some don’t. With THE WOLFMAN, I got very little guidance other than—the Wolfman was, unlike Frankenstein and Dracula, there was never an original Wolfman novel.

There were werewolf novels, but the Wolfman Larry Talbot story was never novelized. So I had to write in that while hitting certain notes and ignoring temptation to go off completely on my own tangent. And I liked the book I came out with. It was a fun book.

It respected the original source material but built on it. And when I saw the movie—which unfortunately I did not like that much—the original script was gorgeous. David Self did an amazing script. They apparently shot the original script, but then they did a bunch of reshoots to remove a lot of the character development in favor of more gory action.

[00:04:54] Matty: Not thought that was a misstep. Yeah.

[00:04:56] Jonathan: They should have just done it originally. But so my novel doesn’t actually resemble the movie entirely. And unfortunately, the New York Times book reviewer said, “I don’t like the movie. Read the book instead.”

[00:05:09] Matty: Oh, well that’s a silver lining.

[00:05:11] Jonathan: Oh yeah, it got me onto the bestseller list. But at the same time did not endear me to Universal.

Like, it’s not my fault. They’re the ones that cut the movie, and I never spoke ill of the movie when it was out. Of course, I love the cast too. So media tie-in is a pretty complex world. Most of it—probably the biggest chunk of media tie-in is short stories. There’s a lot of licenses out there that are active for that.

And there are some older licenses that are not like modern-day name brands—like Carl Kolchak, the Night Stalker, and the Green Hornet and things like that. They’re still under license or still owned. You still have to get permission and probably pay fees. But at the same time, those aren’t the high-profile ones. They’re not on the level of Star Wars, where everyone in the world knows Star Wars. But it’s fun and it’s a great way to break into the career.

[00:06:04] Jonathan: There’s a third kind of media tie-in, but it’s the unofficial type—we call fan fiction. Which is where anybody just writes a story set in one of the literary or video or whatever worlds they like.

But you can’t sell that because it’s not under license, and the license holder will sue. But quite a few people started off writing fan fiction and used their fan fiction as a writing sample when breaking into media tie-in. And a lot of folks did that during the era of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

So Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder and so on kind of broke in through the fan fiction direction, but what they pitched was an actual licensed thing, and they wound up building excellent careers. And his career is still going.

[00:06:47] Matty: It is interesting. As you were talking, fan fiction popped into my head as sort of, from my perspective, one end of the complexity or authorization spectrum. With the other end of the spectrum being like doing work with Marvel or Disney or things like that.

And then it seems like there’s a huge gap in between there that if people are thinking about—like, oh, I love this world, I would love to write a media tie-in—you sort of suggested that fan fiction might be an entrée to that. What are some other things they should be doing?

[00:07:21] Jonathan: Let me clarify. The fan fiction—you can’t sell the fan fiction. But if you want to pitch to, say, Titan, which does a lot of media tie-in books, and you’re a published author—if you go to them and say, hey, I’m interested in writing a novel. I have a pitch for you. But here’s also a sample of my writing in that world. And if you had written fan fiction about one of those licensed worlds, you can include the URL to that and it becomes a writing sample. So it serves as a writing sample to help you sell into the paid license world. Not all editors want to see it, but I’ve known quite a few, myself included, who have wanted to look at that.

Because you get to see how that person handles the license. Because you can handle it well—you bring new storytelling and nuance to that character or that license. But some people are writing adoring fan fiction, or they’re playing with it a little too much. Like, when Sherlock came out, there was a ton of erotic romance stuff that came out with Holmes and Watson.

And where it’s interesting, and people have suggested or wondered whether Holmes and Watson may have been a couple—even back then—it wasn’t written that way and it wasn’t shot that way, and that would not have been a good piece of fan fiction to use to sell. If you want to do a Sherlock piece.

[00:08:48] Jonathan: Now of course, side note there—Sherlock Holmes himself is in public domain, and any characters that have gone into public domain you actually can write about. You just can’t write about the specific version of it that’s shown in Sherlock or the new show Young Sherlock or Watson or Elementary or any of the other Sherlock Holmes shows. You can’t do that specific version, but you can do a Sherlock Holmes story just like you can do a Wizard of Oz story, because the Frank L. Baum Wizard of Oz books are in public domain.

So that is also kind of a neat thing. It’s not licensed work anymore because the license has expired, but you get to play with those characters. One caution though—when people look up what is public domain, Project Gutenberg usually has the most accurate list, but you have to be careful because what’s public domain in America is different than what’s public domain in Canada or Australia.

Or England. Other English-speaking countries don’t necessarily have the same things because they’re different actual countries with different laws related to copyright. So for example, in Australia you can write a King Kong or a James Bond story. Can’t do that in America without a license. So you have to be careful navigating the world.

But if you learn about it—and joining our organization, iamtw.org, International Association of Media Tie-In Writers—that’s a question you can ask. You can also find guidelines on our website, a lot of other things that can kind of help you move forward into that world, if that’s what you want to do.

[00:10:19] Matty: I did have a question about that—the idea of the different markets having different guidelines for what’s in the public domain. So if I were an American writer and I wanted to write about James Bond and I was only selling the story in Australia—if I got my facts right there—is that permissible, or is it governed—

[00:10:36] Jonathan: It’s where it’s published. So if another country has it as public domain, you can write for that country. It cannot be published in America—not until the rights eventually expire. And I don’t see the James Bond rights ever expiring because they keep renewing them. The original novels may expire, but they were written in the fifties and sixties, so it’s going to be another twenty, twenty-five years before even the first one—CASINO ROYALE—hits public domain.

[00:11:04] Matty: It seems as if there must also be hierarchies within the companies that you might want to approach. So maybe your first crack isn’t going to be for Disney. But how do people find other organizations that might be interested in being approached about media tie-ins?

[00:11:22] Jonathan: Well, there’s a couple different ways. You can browse in a bookstore and browse online, because you can see who’s publishing it. So if you want to do a Doctor Who thing or something, Titan may be publishing that, or Dark Horse, or a couple other companies that publish media tie-in.

It’ll say on the cover which company it is. Or you can go to any book-selling site—Amazon or indie or whatever—and just look up the book. And they always list the publisher. Now, once you know the license name—so say if you were looking up Aliens and Titan Books—you can just put in a Google search: Aliens, Titan Books, editor.

And then very often the editor’s name will pop up. Used to be Steve Saffel. He retired about two years ago, but for years he was the guy overseeing that at Titan. So if you did a search, his name popped up as the editor overseeing a lot of that.

And it changes. Editors come and go. Licenses come and go too. For example, IDW had the Doctor Who license, then Titan had it. Somebody else may have the novel rights and somebody else may have the comic book rights. So you have to—once you decide which form you’re going to do—short stories, novels, comics—you have to then find out who has the rights for that.

And usually it’s going to be in a Wikipedia search, an Amazon or Barnes & Noble search, indie bookstore search. It’ll have that information there.

[00:12:46] Matty: So you’re looking for people that have already ventured into the media tie-in world, and you’re asking to add to that catalog of works—

[00:12:54] Jonathan: Yes. Unless—

[00:12:55] Matty: —with those characters or that—

[00:12:56] Jonathan: —you have an idea for something that hasn’t been done but you think could be. And in which case, almost always the prose rights are tied to a publisher, even though the studios may own them. Like, for example, I’m doing some stuff with the John Wick license right now, and Lionsgate owns the rights to it because they make the movies. And everything that’s a byproduct of the movies is part of their license.

So Dark Horse may do the comics, Macmillan may do the novels. You have to find out who. But if there’s none of that stuff out already, you could just simply say, well, who owns the rights to John Wick? And it’ll turn out to be Lionsgate. There’s always a vice president of licensing at every company.

Or some—if it’s not a vice president, it’s somebody similar. But whoever’s in charge of licensing, that’s the person to reach out to. And sometimes that is what it takes. And I’ve had success with just simply shooting for the person who has the rights, and then they make a deal with a publisher. And with John Wick, they’re in discussions with a comic book company and a book publishing company for projects that I would be involved in.

And I kind of kicked that off a little bit.

[00:14:10] Matty: I can imagine from the creative side, it would be quite a different experience to be writing within a world that someone else has created. So you had said earlier about sometimes certain rights holders are more stringent about the guidelines they put down for what you can and can’t do with their characters.

And I can imagine a couple of ways people might come to media tie-in—one would be they just love a franchise or a world and they want to be more actively a part of it. I can also imagine there could be people who just have a knack for being able to hit that perfect balance between their own creativity but working within the boundaries that are set for them.

Are there certain creative tendencies that lend themselves easier to this kind of work?

[00:14:55] Jonathan: The more precious you are about your own work, the less you’re going to be open to doing media tie-in, because it’s not your work. And I’ll give you an example. Blizzard Entertainment, which has a lot of video games—they hire me to do short stories tied to their video games. They have a very complex set of rules about what the characters can and cannot do.

Because it’s based on the gameplay of the games. You can’t have a character do something in a story that the character can’t do in the game. You have to stay within those rules. And you may not be familiar with the rules. Like, for example, I don’t play video games at all. I have nothing against them, I just don’t have the time.

But I get hired to write video game short stories. So the license holder will send me a huge PDF, sometimes many PDFs, and then part of what earns you the fee is going through and learning about that gameplay enough to be able to write that story, and then you pitch it.

But then every executive tied to that game is going to give you notes. And some of those notes will actually contradict one another because they don’t bother reading the other person’s notes. It’s really a challenge. The editors who work with the freelancers like me have to wrangle all those cats.

And it’s one of the reasons they overpay you to write a video game short story.

[00:16:24] Jonathan: Now, if you’re writing a story for a regular anthology like an Aliens anthology, the editor is going to have to deal with a lot of the rights. Now, we may then have to vet pitches and then drafts of stories back through the licensing people to make sure that it’s not interfering with anything.

And an example of that would be the X-Files. I did three X-Files anthologies as editor, and we did those before they came back and did the additional seasons. Those last two seasons, which were like fifteen, twenty years after the show was off the air.

And when I pitched the anthology, that show was not even in development. But we pitched the anthology and coincidentally—maybe coincidentally—a few months later they decided to do a new season. And there were some things in that season that wouldn’t work with some of the short stories, because we wanted the stories to be in continuity.

Some people wrote stories that were set after the original series ended with Mulder and Scully. Well, the nature of their relationship was eventually changed and edited for that new season.

Well, that new season then contradicts that story, and the story can’t be canon. So sometimes you don’t know what you can’t do until you send it in. In the Aliens versus Predator anthology, we had a couple people who wrote very visionary stories, but we were told they can’t do that one thing. And they don’t necessarily give you an explanation of why.

And then two years later you see the movie PREY come out. Well, they were working on something that had a similar theme, but they don’t want to tell you that, because they’re not obligated to tell you. They just say, you can’t do that. Give us another pitch. You have to be very adaptable.

[00:18:06] Matty: Yeah, I can also imagine that because of the learning curve you described—like with video games—that once you’ve absorbed all that information in the PDFs, you probably want to tap that opportunity for all it’s worth. Because you get more ROI the second and third and fourth story, because you know the world now. You don’t have to be learning a whole new world.

[00:18:25] Jonathan: Right. But unlike most editing situations, with the game thing, they may have decided how many short stories they need for the new expansion of a game. Pitching more would probably not get you anywhere, because they have their own agenda, which again they’re not sharing their calendar with you.

But you can ask. You can always ask, hey, I did the story. Certainly open to more of these things. When they know that you’re open to more—and maybe five months later you ping them again saying, hey, I’m looking forward to the release of that story, and I’m certainly open for more.

Sometimes that will help them remember that you were an easy person to work with, and they will send you another project. Or sometimes it’s not in the same world though. So after I had done a Diablo IV story for that game, they liked my writing enough that they asked me if I would do a World of Warcraft story.

And now I’ve done four World of Warcraft stories for Blizzard. But I try to stay in touch with editors like that because you want to stay on their radar—more in the front of the mind than the back. Also, if you go to things like Comic-Con, either New York or San Diego, those people are usually at the Blizzard booth.

A lot of times the executives and the editors are at the booth. Doesn’t hurt to go and chat them up a little bit.

[00:19:41] Matty: It also made me think—the idea of the guardrails that you have to stay within—that I don’t know how many opportunities there would be to write media tie-in for secondary characters. Like Mycroft. I don’t know. Or Mrs.—

[00:19:55] Jonathan: Tough, tough. They did that with Buffy. There were Willow novels and Angel novels and Oz novels. So a lot of times if a character’s breaking out and you pitch a novel based on that character—

[00:20:06] Jonathan: Now, little side note—in media tie-in, you’re expected to turn that novel in fast. I’ve had media tie-in deals where I’ve had five weeks to do a novel.

Bam. This is after all the getting through all the licensing and wrangling back and forth. That’s the time that’s left. And they say, can you do it? And your answer should be yes. And then you go and do it. I did a novel about Dana Scully as a teenager.

By the time we cleared that deal, I had five weeks to do it. With THE WOLFMAN—they, for some reason, got so far into the shooting and editing of the film, and they wanted the novel out there. And that left me seven weeks to write that.

[00:20:53] Matty: Can you just describe what that five weeks looked like? Like, how did that break down for you?

[00:20:58] Jonathan: A lot of coffee. Well, the thing about writing is—some people, and unfortunately there’s a chunk of our colleagues who seem to lean into the mythology of writing. They have to wait for the muse to hit them. They have to be wearing their lucky pair of socks or whatever. And all that does is delay the actual writing.

Get your ass in the chair and start writing. Start outlining. And you will need to outline. You can’t be a pantser and do media tie-in. They want a full outline every time. Not a question. So if you’re not already a plotter, it’s a skill to add.

You may not want to do it with your own stuff, but for media tie-in, you’ll have to. Anyway. So as that process is unfolding, you have to be able to—what I did is like, okay, what can I reasonably do per day? How many words can I do? Now, I’m a fast writer anyway. I write between three and four thousand words every day, so I’ve always been a fast writer.

Last year I did close to a million words for publication. And I’ve done two years where I’m over a million words for publication. So they can give me a project like that and I could do it. But this was early in my career with THE WOLFMAN—it was my fifth book. I had never done anything shorter than nine months for a novel.

So I had to sit down and say, okay, well it’s X number of words. How many words can I do per day? I didn’t take a lot of days off during that process, but I had to take some, because you have to have a life. So I just made sure that when I sat down to write, that was my day. That was my business day.

It’s like going to work. And one of the things that helped me set my mindframe for it is—I write from home, my bedroom’s right next door to my office here. I don’t come out here in my pajamas to write. I take a shower, I get dressed for work. Because that helps me set my mind.

I’m in my chair at the same time every morning. I write for four hours. I take a lunch and exercise break, and I write for four more hours. That’s my day. And if I don’t want to do something as regimented as that, don’t become a professional. And don’t do media tie-in, because that’s what’s expected of you.

You need to just get in the saddle and ride. That’s the thing. And editing—one of the things that slows most people down is they edit while writing. The only type of editing while writing that has any real value in terms of productivity is a rolling edit where you read yesterday’s stuff, tweak it a little bit, and then go into today’s.

But some people fall back and they keep trying to revise the early parts. And the problem there is that chews up days and days of time without advancing the completion of the manuscript. And also it means that some parts of the book will have been edited more often than the later parts of the book. So you now have an uneven book.

So I keep—when I’m doing a media tie-in project, especially when I’m on a deadline—I have the file I’m working on and then I have another file I can toggle over to, another Word document of revision notes. And I’m constantly making notes to myself.

That way, when I’m done, I have a plan. And if there are little things in there that I don’t know while writing, I have a little code I put on the page in all caps: EDIT THIS, and then a note to myself. It might be—what type of handgun were the police using in London in 1895, which was a factor?

EDIT THIS, check handgun, 1895, city police. And I just move on. Later on I can do a search—like a day when I’m maybe either done with the draft or I just have a little extra time—I’ll search on EDIT THIS and then do those spot researches. And that way I don’t slow the progress of the manuscript down.

[00:24:39] Matty: When you’re doing this work as media tie-in during that five weeks or seven weeks or whatever it ends up being, is there a lot of back and forth? Or once you start, you’ve gotten the outline signed off and so you can just roll along with it?

[00:24:50] Jonathan: The back and forth is before you start writing and after you’ve turned in your draft. During the time that you’re just writing, you may get a note from the editor saying, how’s it going?—which is basically him saying, please for the love of God hit your deadline, because he’s on a production schedule that can’t be altered because it’s set by the film company.

They’re not going to alter it for a publisher. What they might do if you miss deadlines is find another publisher. So you don’t want that. You want to make sure the editor looks good and satisfies their end of the contract. And that editor will be pleased with you and likely keep you in mind for further work.

Which has happened.

[00:25:29] Matty: I’m interested in the anthologies because I can imagine the process for that is somewhat different. As an editor of an anthology, you have sort of a similar role to the VP of Rights.

[00:25:43] Jonathan: To a degree. I become another step in it. So you have the license holder, then you have the person within the license—so say the VP of licensing sets the job—then you have somebody who is kind of overseeing licensing. They’re the ones who should know that license very well and be able to answer all questions.

Then you have your in-house editor at the publishing house. Then you, and then the writers you’ve hired for the anthology. It’s a lot of folks. So when I’m doing an anthology, what I usually do—what makes it easier—looking at the anthologies by different companies, you see their different policies.

Some—like Titan—love to have a bunch of New York Times bestseller names as marquee names on the cover. That’s their big thing. They love being able to go out there with a lot of New York Times bestsellers. It’s the model.

[00:26:29] Jonathan: So in order to do an anthology, I need to reach out to colleagues and say, hey, I’m pitching—you never say the deal’s locked down until it’s actually locked down—I’m pitching an anthology on this topic. Please keep this off social media. It’s on the down low. If a deal comes through with pro rates for stories of this length, with a due date approximately X number of months out, might you be interested?

So what you have is a list of people who said they might be interested if the deal points work out. That’s the list you take to the in-house editor to pitch it. And if it’s approved, you then have to lock those people down.

[00:27:06] Jonathan: Now I’m doing an anthology right now with Henry Herz, a buddy of mine. And we’re doing one called BIG BAD BOOK OF KAIJU—giant monsters like Godzilla and so on.

We can’t use those licenses because we don’t have access to them. They’re all different companies. So it’s all original kaiju. So it’s not media tie-in, but it’s media tie-in adjacent. And when we were doing this, we sold this idea to Titan Books. They liked our list of New York Times bestsellers.

They had some other suggestions. We were able to contact some of those, get them in there. But along the way, three of our people had to bail—one for health issues, one for a book deadline that got shifted on them, and another one because of some other issue. So we lost three of our marquee names. I was able to replace two of them with New York Times bestsellers, but the third, we had to just get a simply really good writer.

[00:28:00] Jonathan: Now, I prefer not to stock my table of contents based on how many copies of books they’ve sold. I curate mine.

For the most part, I want to base it on whose writing I really admire and whose business practices I like. And so generally when I do an anthology—I’m doing my twenty-eighth now, I think, somewhere in that zone—I’ll usually curate eighty percent of the people. And if I don’t have a collaborator—I do with this one—

If I don’t have a collaborator, I’ll fish around for some folks. I’ll do a lot of reading of short stories in recent anthologies and see whose work I like and maybe try to bring in some folks I haven’t worked with before. What I don’t do is open call. Open call drives me absolutely out of my mind. I did that when I took over Weird Tales as editor.

The first issue, I curated all of it but one story, and I put up an open call for short stories. 12,421. Yeah. So I don’t do that anymore. Now I do—if I do an open call, it’s usually going to be a pitch. Give me a one-paragraph pitch, because I can read a bunch of those in a day. Reading 12,000 short stories is insane.

[00:29:14] Matty: Writers whose craft you appreciate and their business process—can you talk a little bit about what you’re talking about there?

[00:29:24] Jonathan: There are some writers out there—I will not name names—but some writers out there don’t like to be edited. They don’t like to be told that their word choice may not be the right word choice. And they get really aggressive about it. I’m not looking to get into a fist fight with somebody over the edit.

Editing takes something—the version you turn in is the version you felt most passionate about. The editing process gives you an objective view on that, and also tries to edge closer to the version of that that would likely sell the most copies. It is a business decision. Writing is art. Publishing is business. And a lot of people conflate the two.

They think rejection of a story or edit notes means that it’s a personal attack. There’s nothing personal in this business. It’s a business. The personal is when you actually write. But when you’re being edited and worked through the business part, take the ego and the emotions out of gear.

It’s a business thing. Follow the business things. And it doesn’t matter if you’re mainly traditional or mainly indie. If you’re working with media tie-in, that is trad. And so you have to follow the rules of trad in that you have to follow the business etiquette. And that’s easy enough for anyone to do.

But a lot of people—they push and push and push, or they’ll try to argue with you on every single edit. I’ve been edited—I’ve written fifty-five novels and well over two hundred short stories and comics. I’ve been edited on everything. Plus twelve hundred feature articles I did. I’ve been edited on every single one.

Editing makes your work better. But you don’t have to follow every edit note. You can say, I don’t agree with this change. I want to keep it, and here’s my reason. If you can have a decent reason, editors will have a reasonable conversation with you. If you just simply reject without reason, they’re probably going to put you on a list of—well, I’m not working with this person again, because I just don’t need it.

And also there are people who think that their stories should be given—their name on the cover, guaranteed, and their story being the first one in the anthology. There’s no one I would guarantee that slot to. And I’ve worked with some mega bestsellers. I mean, my friend R.L. Stine, who sold more books than anyone alive except J.K. Rowling—he—not that he ever would demand something like that, but even if he made a demand like that, it’s up to me as to what order the stories fall in.

That’s not his decision. Luckily Bob is a really understanding guy and has been in the business for a long time and doesn’t make those demands. But I have—

[00:31:54] Matty: Probably been in the business a long time because of that.

[00:31:57] Jonathan: Yes. And he has sold, what, three hundred million books. Now, earlier we talked a little bit about playing with other people’s toys, and I kind of got off the topic.

I want to go back to that just for a second.

[00:32:11] Jonathan: So one of the situations in which you really have to understand how a license works is working with comics. So I got hired by Marvel because of my novels. The editor-in-chief read one of my novels and hired me to write Punisher and Wolverine and other things.

And some of these characters have forty, fifty, sixty, seventy years of backstory. There’s no way to know every story that’s ever been written about that character. So the editors there give you like a general outline of—here’s what’s been going on with this character.

But a lot of it you have to do on your own. And it is a daunting amount of material sometimes. Like, when I did Black Panther, I needed to know what was the state of Wakanda, the state of T’Challa’s character. Who is he? He’d just had a really big story arc written about that part of his life.

He was with a woman, Yuriko, and she dies. And all these things have to happen. So I needed to just go do my homework. One of my exposures to this sort of thing is—

Max Brooks, who is Mel Brooks’s son, and he’s a bestselling author of WORLD WAR Z and THE DEVOLUTION and a bunch of other things. And he was editing an anthology of G.I. Joe stories. Now, when I was a kid, G.I. Joe was a twelve-inch-tall World War II action figure. But when my son was a kid, G.I. Joe was this little science fiction action story thing.

It’s a completely different world. And so I told Max—Max asked me if I wanted to do a story for it. I said I don’t know the characters. He did something that’s a little more unusual. He actually had reached out to Hasbro and they sent me a box of G.I. Joe toys, graphic novels, and DVDs. So yes, I spent a day sitting on my floor, reading comics, watching cartoons, and playing with toys for research.

Because I’m a responsible working professional. And I was able to write a G.I. Joe story for it.

[00:36:12] Matty: That is very interesting. Yeah—when the original creative product is a toy, or I’m thinking of—like, this is a little bit different, but in terms of evolution of a character, like the James Bond of today looks quite different than the James Bond of CASINO ROYALE. And that evolution is coming from somewhere.

I guess I always assumed it was coming from the screenwriters, but—

[00:36:34] Jonathan: Most of it is. But sometimes they take notes from what people have done about it. I mean, I know that there was a definite nod to the John Gardner James Bond novels when they were doing the Pierce Brosnan James Bond movies. Because he was writing them a little more differently.

And then there were some later James Bond novels—I forget who did them—where the personality of Bond was a lot rougher. And that informed some of the Daniel Craig scripts. So sometimes it goes back and forth.

[00:37:06] Jonathan: With THE WOLFMAN—when I turned in my first draft, there were a couple scenes in there that weren’t in the script. And they wound up in the movie, because they—

[00:37:16] Matty: Oh wow.

[00:37:17] Jonathan: It’s work for hire. They can do anything they want with it. And so they were doing reshoots. I don’t know if you ever saw the movie, but there’s a scene where Emily Blunt is kind of running from the wolf, and she falls down on the edge of a cliff, and the Wolfman’s going after her. She’s like, “Lawrence, you know who I am.”

Well, that’s from my novel, not the script. And it’s kind of cool. You don’t get extra money for it, unfortunately, because it is work for hire. Like, when Disney Marvel used so many of my elements from my Black Panther run on the comic back in 2008 and 2009—

They showed up as—I mean, I was the first one to put Shuri in the armor. I put her up against Namor. I created the Midnight Angels and a bunch of other things that made it into the movie. I didn’t get paid more for it. But it did—my career worlds of good. And the graphic novel that collects all the comics I wrote for Marvel with that character—the sales for that went crazy, and that was royalties. So—

[00:38:10] Matty: And are the comics you’ve worked on—are they all—like, what was the origin of those? Were they movies or—

[00:38:17] Jonathan: No, no, no. I didn’t write anything tied to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I wrote Marvel—Marvel. And also, this was 2008. They were just launching IRON MAN, the first movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So that was not even on the horizon, really. I started writing for Marvel before Disney even bought Marvel.

But so you have to do research. And again, sometimes they provide you with information. Marvel does not, which is weird. So I subscribed to the Marvel—there’s a database where you can access seventy years’ worth of Marvel comics. So I just did a lot of that. Plus I bought a lot of graphic novels, and some of them are on the shelves behind me here.

And I did my research so I could write the characters. And what’s fun though is when you’ve written some stuff in, say, your own run on Black Panther—I did a couple of things related to the vibranium, the metal that they use—and then the person who took the comic after me, and also the person who wrote Spider-Man after me—

Both used elements of my story, because now it’s part of the Marvel official canon. And so they read my stuff and said, I’ll take that element, I can build on it here. And that’s perfectly cool. And it’s fun for us to see those little echoes going through it.

[00:39:34] Matty: Yeah. I think anyone who enjoys Easter eggs as a reader would enjoy that experience—and maybe planting Easter eggs as the creator of tie-in material.

[00:39:43] Jonathan: Yep. And with comics, I’ve since gone on to do my own comics with Dark Horse, IDW, and others. And one of those—V WARS—became its own license, became a TV series, which was wonderfully fun. And another one I have, that I won a Bram Stoker Award for, called BAD BLOOD—

We’re in discussions with a company in Germany about adapting that for TV in Europe. But see, that’s my license. So I get to be the person they have to go through for continuity and so on. And I would get paid. And that’s nice.

[00:40:16] Matty: So if you want a career where you’re doing your own stuff, media tie-in should not be your first call. Establish your own voice as a writer in any form that you can.

[00:40:33] Jonathan: Novels, short stories, whatever. Indie, published, comics, whatever. Establish your voice. And then when you do media tie-in, that’s a byproduct of the brand. If you just focus on media tie-in at first to make your bones, it becomes your brand. You become a media tie-in writer. Media tie-in novels, though they will often come back to you with book after book after book to do—

They don’t pay very much. I mean, the advances for media tie-in books are in the five to eight thousand dollar range. Which, if you’ve never published a book, sounds yummy. But if you’re a working pro, that’s a lot of work for not a lot of money. So those of us who continue to do media tie-in into our career—our primary focus is our main stuff.

Our stuff. Media tie-in is side projects that are fun for our regular readers to go look at. But it’s not what we define ourselves as. And I have friends who have gotten stuck in the media tie-in world. They’ll try to get their own stuff out there, but they’re known for media tie-in, and their own stuff doesn’t sell because editors see that their biggest stuff is all writing in someone else’s universe.

It’s okay if it’s a side thing or an additional thing you’re doing, but it shouldn’t be the main thing. Second thing—one of the ways to break in, one of the best ways to break in is through short stories. If it’s an expired license and you are a writer and you have writer friends, you can create a little LLC publishing company and do a Sherlock Holmes anthology or a Wizard of Oz anthology.

Without having to pay licensing fees, because they’re public domain. And since your company does not bear your name, it is the name of your group. It does not have any of the resistance some people might have to it being indie published. Then they get to read it and find out the quality is every bit as good as trad. And then you can build from there.

The company JournalStone started sort of that way. Chris Payne was a guy who wrote a couple of nonfiction books, couldn’t sell them. He self-published them under the banner of JournalStone. Now he’s gone on to publish thousands of books from other people, including some stuff that have hit bestseller lists.

I’ve published extensively with him. But one of the quick ways of finding an active license that is doing an anthology—put in your favorite license name—CSI, Supernatural, whatever it’s going to be—in a Google search with the word “guidelines.” And then set the search for no more than a year back.

The guidelines will be submission guidelines. If there is an open call for stories and an anthology of stories in that license, that will pop up in a Google search. And a lot of people have found it that way. So it’s an easy shortcut.

[00:43:21] Jonathan: And also going to writers’ conferences. My own group, Writer’s Coffeehouse, is a—we have a free Facebook page and we do free networking and so on. You can go there and say, hey, does anybody know of any media tie-in license anthologies? Post it. We’ll start a conversation, because God knows there’s a good thirty or forty editors of media tie-in stuff who are in that group.

Quite a lot of other writers. And a lot of writers—professionals like myself—we wear a lot of hats. We’re writers, we’re editors, we’re this, we’re that. So sometimes the writers that you talk to, some of them may be editors for media tie-in, or have written novels for media tie-in and know who the in-house editors are.

Networking does a lot of good in media tie-in.

[00:44:04] Matty: Yeah, I’m a big proponent of networking in all its forms—media tie-in or not. But I love finding that as another example of that. And I know as the president of International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, is there anything you’d like to add about the benefits they offer members or the information they provide?

[00:44:21] Jonathan: Quite often, because of being the president of the group, my visibility makes me a target for license holders. Whether it’s an editor or a company will say, hey, do you or any of the people in your group know this license? I had one—I can’t name it right now, it’s under NDA—but they reached out to me and said, hey, do any of your people write in this genre, or read this sort of stuff, or play this game, or whatever?

And then I go on our group page and say, hey—if you’re a fan of this license, hit me with your background on it, your bio, and your list of published media tie-in credits. Because I want to pass it along to an editor. And I’ve done that a lot of times and gotten a lot of people paid gigs because we’re the organization.

And probably only about sixty percent of publishing, of movie studios, know that there’s an actual organization. But six years ago when I took over that group, it was about fifteen percent. So I’ve been trying to build that up—having more awareness of our group—and that brings more work our way.

[00:45:29] Matty: Yeah, that’s so great.

[00:45:31] Matty: Well, Jonathan, I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but it was lovely to speak with you. I’m so glad to have gotten an expert perspective on the behind the scenes of media tie-ins.

[00:45:40] Jonathan: It’s a lot of fun too.

[00:45:42] Matty: It does sound like a lot of fun. I think about some of the franchises I’ve loved. I was a big X-Files fan, a big Fringe fan. I can imagine it would be super fun to write media tie-ins for some—

[00:45:52] Jonathan: Well, speaking of which—I mean, X-Files is coming back. Ryan Coogler is bringing it back to TV. And as soon as that casting is completed and it’s actually in production, I will be pitching more X-Files anthologies.

[00:46:06] Matty: That’s so great. I’m going to keep an eye out for that and rewatch some of the episodes that I haven’t watched for however many years.

[00:46:13] Jonathan: Yeah, I wouldn’t pay too much attention to those last two seasons they did—the ones that they did when they came back. There were only a couple good episodes in there. And there’s a reason it only lasted two more seasons coming back.

[00:46:23] Matty: I don’t think I even watched those at all, because the whole idea of them coming back was kind of not what I wanted to experience—which maybe suggests I shouldn’t be writing media tie-ins.

[00:46:33] Jonathan: There were two or three really good ones. And some that were like—I don’t know why they even bothered. But, of course, they didn’t bother consulting me or any of my writer friends, who all said, those are the good ones, those are the bad ones.

That happens. That’s opinion. But media tie-in’s always looking for new talent. So there’s that.

[00:46:51] Matty: Yeah, it’s a great tip. And it sounds like you have some other things going on outside of media tie-in. So if people want to hear more about that, where should they go to find out?

[00:46:59] Jonathan: Well, normally I would direct them immediately to my website, but it is down for a couple of days. But it’s jonathanmaberry.com. And when it’s back up—if anyone listening to this is a writer, there’s a page on my website called Free Stuff for Writers. It has tons of free downloadable PDFs, one of my comic book scripts, all sorts of stuff. Go to that.

But also I’m all over social media—Jonathan Maberry. And Tuesday I have my new book coming out, which is RED EMPIRE, the fifteenth in the Joe Ledger series. I’m currently writing the sixteenth. And that is the series that’s in development by the director of JOHN WICK.

[00:47:34] Matty: Congratulations, and thank you very much.

[00:47:36] Jonathan: This was a pleasure. Thanks.

Episode 326 - Story First, Genre Second: Lessons from Romantasy for Every Writer with Brenna Bailey-Davies

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Brenna Bailey-Davies discusses STORY FIRST, GENRE SECOND: LESSONS FROM ROMANTASY FOR EVERY WRITER, including why genre works best as a marketing tool rather than a creative constraint, how to signal genre in your first chapter without over-promising on tropes, the danger of trope-stuffing and why narrative should drive genre decisions, what genre-bending fiction offers in the age of AI-generated content, the pros and cons of writing to a hot genre trend, and how editors bring a unique perspective to publishing strategy.

Brenna Bailey-Davies is an editor and writer based in Mohkínstsis (Calgary), Alberta, Canada. Through her company Bookmarten Editorial, she specializes in editing science fiction, fantasy, and romance, focusing on stories with queer representation. She also writes SFF and contemporary romance novels under the pen name Brenna Bailey.

Episode Links

www.bookmarteneditorial.com

www.brennabailey.com

Self-Publishing with ALLi podcast interview: The Creative Process Through an Editor’s Eyes - https://selfpublishingadvice.org/podcast-the-creative-process/

Jane Friedman article quote in the interview:  https://janefriedman.substack.com/p/stop-obsessing-about-your-genre-subgenre 

Summary & Transcript

Brenna Bailey-Davies is an editor and writer based in Mohkínstsis (Calgary), Alberta, Canada. Through her company Bookmarten Editorial, she specializes in editing science fiction, fantasy, and romance, focusing on stories with queer representation. She also writes SFF and contemporary romance novels under the pen name Brenna Bailey. In her conversation with Matty, Brenna drew on her experience as both editor and author to explore what writers in any genre can learn from the rise of romantasy and the broader trend toward genre-blending fiction.

GENRE AS MARKETING TOOL, NOT CREATIVE CONSTRAINT

The conversation opened with a timely reference to a Jane Friedman Substack post titled "Stop Obsessing about Your Genre, Sub Genre and Sub Sub Genre," which Matty had received just ninety minutes before the interview. Friedman argued that industry professionals routinely disagree about genre classifications, that boundaries between genres remain fundamentally fuzzy, and that great writers focus on producing great work rather than complying with labels. Brenna agreed and noted that genre functions best as a marketing tool—a way to help readers find books they will enjoy—rather than as a set of creative rules an author must obey.

Brenna observed that even a label as seemingly straightforward as "romantasy" conceals enormous nuance: what counts as the romance component versus the fantasy component, which books qualify as true romantasy versus fantasy with a romantic subplot, and why some books get labeled romantasy for reasons that have more to do with the author's gender than with the actual content. She cited N.K. Jemisin's BROKEN EARTH trilogy as an example of a work that contains a small romantic plotline but follows none of the structural beats of a romance—and yet has been labeled romantasy, a classification Brenna attributed in part to the fact that it was written by a woman.

THE FIRST CHAPTER AS GENRE SIGNAL

As an editor, Brenna said she asks authors about their genre during intake, but the answer matters less for how she approaches the editing than as a signal of whether the manuscript is something she wants to work on. More importantly, she argued that if a reader cannot identify the genre from the first chapter, there may be a structural problem. The opening pages should communicate tone, plot direction, and character orientation clearly enough that a reader can decide whether to continue. Editors, she said, function as reader advocates—stepping into the reader's position to assess clarity, comprehension, and whether the book delivers on its implicit promises.

TROPES VERSUS STORY

Matty asked whether authors who write across genres risk falling into a checklist mentality—feeling obligated to hit every beat of every genre they are blending. Brenna said she had not encountered this with her own clients, but she could identify it in published books: works that felt overstuffed with popular tropes, where the author appeared to be checking boxes rather than serving the narrative. She compared this to the pitfall of rigidly following any story structure framework—whether Save the Cat, Story Grid, or three-act structure—to the point where the story gets shoehorned into beats that do not suit it.

The antidote, Brenna suggested, was to put marketing considerations out of mind during the writing phase and focus on whether the story works at a fundamental narrative level: whether events happen at the right time, whether character actions make sense, and whether the arc feels organic. Tropes can be incorporated, but they should serve the story rather than dominate it.

WRITING FRESH IN THE AI ERA

Both host and guest noted that the ability to blend genres in unexpected ways may become one of the qualities that most clearly distinguishes human-written fiction from AI-generated content. Matty suggested that an AI system trained to write novels would likely be fed established story structures and genre rules and told to follow them—producing formulaic results. Brenna agreed and pointed to Matthew Salesses's work on how Western narrative conventions represent only one storytelling tradition among many, arguing that embracing flexibility and resisting rigid formulas is part of what makes fiction feel genuinely human.

THE RISKS OF CHASING A HOT GENRE

The conversation turned to the practical question of whether authors should write to a trending genre mashup. Brenna acknowledged the appeal: if a genre is selling, getting in early can pay off, and trending tropes are relatively easy to identify. But she cautioned that slower writers risk finishing their manuscripts after the market has become oversaturated, at which point standing out becomes far harder. Her advice was to think about what gives a narrative staying power—what will appeal to readers not just during a trend's peak but after the trend has cooled—and to build a story that functions as an evergreen work rather than a topical one.

She also noted that authors whose genre mashup books are no longer riding a trend can revisit their marketing to emphasize different aspects of the work, potentially reaching new reader pools. The key caveat, she stressed, was honesty: shifting the marketing spotlight is fine, but misleading readers about the book's actual content will backfire.

BRIDGING EDITING AND PUBLISHING STRATEGY

Brenna closed by describing her VIP Publishing Guidance service, a five-hour intensive in which she works one-on-one with authors on tasks ranging from keyword selection and category placement to marketing plans and the mechanics of uploading a book. She emphasized that her dual perspective as both editor and self-published author gives her an understanding of what a manuscript actually delivers to a reader—an understanding that pure marketing consultants may lack. For authors at any stage of the publishing process, that combination of editorial depth and practical publishing experience represents a distinctive and valuable resource.

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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 Brenna Brenna. Hey Brenna, how are you doing?

[00:00:06] Brenna: I’m doing great. Happy to be here.

[00:00:08] Matty: I am happy to have you here, and to give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you. Brenna Brenna is an editor and writer based in Mohkínstsis, or Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

And through her company Bookmarten Editorial, she specializes in editing science fiction, fantasy, and romance, focusing on stories with queer representation. And she writes SFF and contemporary romance novels under the pen name Brenna Bailey. And I met Brenna when I got a chance to talk with her for the Self-Publishing with ALLi podcast, talking about the creative process through an editor’s eyes.

And we had so much fun in that—at least I did—we had so much fun in that conversation that I wanted to invite her onto The Indy Author Podcast. And we’re going to be talking about blending genres on purpose, lessons from romantasy for every writer. So, as is always the case, whenever I have someone I’m talking about a particular genre, I like to say that we’re going to be looking for opportunities to make this applicable, regardless of what genre you write in.

[00:01:03] Matty: And to sort of tee that up, I’m going to share just a very brief excerpt from a newsletter I just got. Actually, this is on Jane Friedman’s Substack, and I got this literally an hour and a half before the conversation with Brenna. And Jane prefaces this newsletter saying this is Jane’s rather infrequent and more personal newsletter about her career-long ambivalence about being a professional advice giver.

And the title of this email is “Stop Obsessing about Your Genre, Sub Genre and Sub Sub Genre.” And Jane writes, new writers in particular worry about genre too much. Industry professionals disagree all the time about genres and what constitutes a genre or sub genre or category. Genre boundaries are fuzzy, new genres and sub genres emerge over time.

“Hello, romantasy.” And that is actually from Jane’s article, not an editorial comment from me. But Jane goes on to say, what do you often hear from agents and editors alike? We want genre-bending stories. We want things that defy categorization, upend our expectations. And then Jane goes on to say, because that’s what great writers do—they frankly do not give a damn about these labels because they’re trying to get to great.

They’re trying to do great work that transcends labels. And so Brenna, I think this is such a fun background for our conversation. And so I wanted to start out—like, any comments that you have about Jane’s thoughts on that and how, if you look back when you were entering into a more genre-bending category, how does that track with what your experience was?

[00:02:29] Brenna: Yeah, I totally agree with what Jane says there. I think genre is really useful as a marketing tool, but we can definitely get too caught up in it. Especially what she said about genres not having really clear boundaries. Like, if you think of something about romantasy—well, sure, it’s romance and fantasy put together, but there’s so much nuance there.

Like, what counts as the romance aspects? What counts as the fantasy aspects? What books actually count as romantasy, and which ones are fantasy with romance in them? And it gets really messy. So yeah, I mean, when I was writing my own work, which is romance—you have to think about what’s going to reach your readers.

And I think nowadays we rely a lot on tropes and genre conventions to do that. But the story is at the heart of it, right? That’s the important part, not the category label.

I don’t write romantasy—I just edit a lot of it. So I’m really familiar with romantasy from an editor’s perspective and a reader’s perspective, because I read a ton of it as well. But from an editor’s perspective, kind of reading romantasy and seeing how authors blend the genres and what different aspects they bring in has been really interesting and informative for my own writing as well.

[00:03:47] Matty: And when you are taking a look—do you normally have the author tell you in advance what they think their genre is? Are they coming to you because they know you specialize in that? Like, what’s the connection between how you connect with authors and the genre they perceive they’re writing in?

[00:04:06] Brenna: So I do ask as part of my onboarding—like, I have an intake form. And one of the questions that I ask is, what genre is your work? But honestly, it doesn’t really matter to me so much as it’s kind of just an indication of whether I want to work on this or not.

And oftentimes once I start looking through something, I’ll go, okay, so maybe you’re not quite sure what your genre is, or you’re not quite sure who your target audience is. And then that’s something that we end up having to kind of parse through as I edit.

[00:04:37] Matty: Yeah, I think that—I’m going to include a link to that Substack article from Jane in the show notes for this episode. And I think she is agreeing with what you’re saying about it’s more of a marketing consideration than a creative consideration. And I think that there are two ways people could get into the more genre-crossing or genre-bending sub sub genres. And that would be either because they see something going on in the market and they’re following that because they think there’s a demonstrated interest in this, or they’re just writing the book that interests them. And then in the end they step back and say, what do I have here?

Oh, it has some romance and it has some fantasy. So I guess it’s romantasy. Are you seeing one of those approaches more in your client base?

[00:05:24] Brenna: I think I mostly see the more writing-to-market type of thing. Or people know the kind of niche that they want to fit in and they go that way. But I do have people come to me, especially for—like, I offer first chapter assessments. So I’ll go through and give feedback on the first chapter.

Usually with services like that, that are more high level, authors will be like, I’m struggling with where to place this. I don’t know who my target audience is. So in that case, it’s like they’ve written the story of their heart, they don’t know how to market it, and they want some feedback on who they think their audience is, who’s going to buy the book.

[00:06:01] Matty: That’s interesting—as an editor being in the position of being kind of a marketing consultant as well as a creative consultant. And I suppose it’s the kind of thing where at the end, after the editorial process, you can step back and maybe advise them on that, or is it clear right off the bat? Like, could you provide that kind of marketing input just based on a first chapter?

[00:06:21] Brenna: Based on a first chapter, I can kind of have an idea of it generally. So from my perspective, if you can’t tell the genre in the first chapter, there might be a problem—just because in a first chapter you’re trying to indicate to readers, this is the type of book you’re getting into. So whether that’s tone, plot, character—you want to indicate something that’s going to say, this is the type of book you’re reading.

So readers can go, yes, I want to keep reading, or no I don’t.

I like to think of myself—I think editors in general are reader advocates, right? So we’re trying to step in in the place of a reader in some ways to say, can I understand this? Do I know what’s happening? Is it clear? And I think genre is part of that—just because, as much as we say labels don’t matter, they do when it comes to marketing, right?

That’s how readers find books—they look in the genre that they like because they want more of that. So it is really important in a lot of ways, even if the story is more important and more key than the genre itself.

[00:07:26] Matty: You had said about there being—like, true, I’ll say “true” in air quotes, romantasy, and then fantasy that has a romance aspect or romance that has a fantasy aspect. Can you talk a little bit more about how you make that assessment? And are those second and third things—are those problematic, or are they just another approach?

[00:07:46] Brenna: Yeah, so this is really interesting. I personally don’t like the label romantasy. And this is part of why—because it is so messy and unclear what it actually means. Sometimes I think that romantasy as a label is sometimes used to disparage fantasy written by women specifically because there is romance in it.

So some people will use the label romantasy to say, oh, this is not “real” fantasy, in air quotes, because it has romance in it. Because I mean, romance in general as a genre has kind of been belittled over time, like throughout history. So sometimes that label is applied to books that it shouldn’t be applied to.

So for example, N.K. Jemisin’s BROKEN EARTH trilogy—it has some romance in it, like it has a really small romantic plotline, but it does not follow romance beats. It is not a happy ending. It should not be considered romance at all in terms of genre, and yet I’ve seen it labeled romantasy, and I think that’s because it’s written by a woman.

So yeah, it’s really difficult to parse what counts and what doesn’t, and also why people are putting the label on something.

[00:09:03] Matty: I’m realizing that when you’re talking about the beats one expects from a romance, or the tropes, the happy ending—I can imagine that if you’re trying to layer on romance and fantasy, for example, and you’re now trying to hit every trope in both of those within a story that holds together, that would either take a great deal of editorial skill on the part of the editor and the writer, or it could just be a big mess.

[00:09:32] Matty: Do you find that you have clients or speak with authors who have kind of a checklist mentality and say, there are these ten beats that have to be in romance and there are these ten beats that have to be in fantasy, and so now I have to have twenty beats that I make sure I hit? Like, are people approaching it that strictly, and should they?

[00:09:50] Brenna: I haven’t run into it with my own clients, but I can tell that there are some writers who write that way—because, I mean, this kind of gets to whether tropes are important as well, and the role that tropes play. But when you read a book, sometimes you can tell, oh, they’re just stuffing it. You know what I mean?

They’re just stuffing it full of tropes that they think are really popular, that are going to make the book—like you said—check all the boxes. And that, I think, works against books. I think that is when the books become overly tropey, and readers read it and they go, okay, I see what you’re doing here. This isn’t exactly what I wanted. So I think that there is kind of a balance that you need between including the tropes that readers want and the things that readers like.

But the story—and like we’ve been saying this since the beginning with Jane Friedman’s article, right—the story is at the heart of it, not the genre.

So you don’t want to be stuffing your story full of tropes just to check the boxes that you think will make it sell. You need to have a story that works and have maybe a few tropes in there. But too much—like trying to hit every single beat for both fantasy and romance—can do you a disservice. It’s like trying to take any story structure, like Story Grid or Save the Cat or three-act structure, and trying to just shoehorn it into the beats, even if the story doesn’t quite fit. That’s going to do a disservice to your story, right? You need to do what works for you and for the actual narrative itself, rather than trying to make it fit a box that it doesn’t quite fit.

[00:11:30] Matty: Yeah, I was very pleased to see Jane’s article because I think it speaks to not only something that I think a lot of writers who aren’t writing strictly within that kind of market-driven beat format will be glad to hear, but I also think about my experience or my preferences as a reader. And I look at my enormous to-be-read pile on my bedside table.

And if someone were to look at that, I don’t think they would look at the first book in the pile and say, oh, I can guess what all the other books in the pile are. Like, I’m reading across lots of different genres. And I think that’s got to be true of most people. I mean, I know there are people who only read cozy mysteries, and if it’s not a cozy—if they open a book and the murder happens on the page—they’re not going to be happy campers.

And I can also see that every once in a while I get in the mood for—like, I want to see a locked-room mystery. Like, that’s just what I’m in the mood for. There’s like a very specific sort of trope craving I’m trying to satisfy. But that’s not the normal reason I pick a book. That’s kind of the outlier reason.

And I do think about this a lot, because one of my series is sort of supernatural but not real supernatural. And I’m always complaining to my listeners that I don’t think it’s supernatural enough for people who are specifically looking for supernatural, but it’s a little too supernatural for people who want none of it. But I do kind of feel like those readers that have very strict rules about what they’re going to read are the minority, and that there are other ways we can make our work appealing to them without making promises about the beats they’re going to encounter that we then have to shoehorn in order to achieve.

[00:13:13] Brenna: I agree.

[00:13:15] Brenna: I think specifically in romance, people look for tropes more, because that’s probably the most tropey genre. And it’s very easy for people to rule out—like, oh, I don’t like age gaps, so I’m not going to read that. Or I don’t like ice queens, so I’m not going to read that. Or I love enemies to lovers, so I’m going to gravitate towards those.

Those kinds of things I think are super easy to pinpoint in romance. I think other genres are less tied to tropes, so there’s a little bit more freedom in that. But like you said, there are other ways that we can indicate to readers what they will or will not like in something, right? Even something as simple as your book cover design or your blurb, or whatever your hook is—what’s the hook on the back cover?

Or on the Amazon listing that draws readers in. I mean, for me—and this might be a little bit weird—but I only read the hooks. I don’t tend to read the full blurb. I’ll just read the hook and go, yeah, that sounds great. And then I’ll pick it up without even reading the rest of the blurb. Like, if the cover looks good and the hook is good, I’m sold.

So there are other things that readers look at. And you can think about this as like a marketing whole—you want to try to cover as many bases as you can to draw those readers in, because people will be paying attention to different things.

[00:14:32] Matty: So do you have tips—maybe specific to romantasy, but ideally that might be generalizable to other genre-crossing books—about some characteristics of when an author is doing it right and they’re blending them in the best possible way?

[00:14:51] Brenna: Yeah, so I think this just comes back to what serves the narrative versus trying to trope-stuff a book, right? Think about—basically put the marketing stuff out of your mind while you’re actually writing and see if the story is working just on a basic story level. Like, does it make sense for things to happen when they happen?

Does it make sense for characters to act the way that they’re acting? And make sure you get that feedback from your beta readers and your editor. And make sure that the story is following the narrative arc that you want it to follow. And then you can think about—I mean, some people do it the opposite way. They’ll think about tropes first and then plan the story based on it. But don’t get too in the weeds with it, would be my advice, because that’s when you start to hit walls.

[00:15:42] Matty: Yeah, I can imagine that this sort of “don’t pay too much attention to the genres” is also well-timed because of the whole concern about AI going to be writing all the books. And I think that if I were developing an AI system to write books, then I would first load in Save the Cat and Story Grid and all the—my friend Jennie Trop and say, okay, here are the rules you have to follow.

Go follow them. And I’m not suggesting that any of those people are asking for their works to be used, even outside the AI world, as a strict rule. But I do think that the idea of combining different genres in this way, in unexpected ways or fresh ways, is going to be one of the last bastions that an AI can’t do.

And it makes that idea of not complying with rules and coming up with something fresh and new even more important than it might have been a couple of years ago.

[00:16:42] Brenna: That’s a really good point. I think it’s really easy for new writers to kind of fall into, oh, I have to follow this exactly to a T—like, this story structure, or Save the Cat gives like percentages, and they’ll be like, oh, if this doesn’t fall at exactly 25 percent, like, it’s a failure. Like, no, that’s not true.

There is no one correct way to write a book. Matthew Salesses actually has a book—it’s basically about how in the Western world, we have a specific narrative that we follow generally when we’re storytelling, but in other cultures there are other storytelling narratives that are just as highly lauded, right?

So there is no one correct way to write a book, and we have to kind of embrace that flexibility and not stick too closely—because yeah, we don’t want to sound like robots. We are human. And like you said, that is what differentiates us from something that is written by an AI.

[00:17:44] Matty: I think that a lot of people—there’s a small group of people who are coming up with these combinations of genres that hit really big, like romantasy. And then I think that there are a lot of people who see that in the market and see how popular it is and decide to follow that.

And it seems like the romantasy thing has been going on for quite a while. I mean, long enough so that early in the—like Rebecca Yarros, or whatever—early in her popularity, if someone saw that, they could have cranked out a book sort of in that style. So they might be able to hit that window where it’s still popular.

But I think that the danger is that some other out-of-the-box thinking creative comes up with another combination, and that suddenly romantasy isn’t as popular as it has been. Can you just comment on the pros and cons of jumping on a hot genre-crossing approach?

[00:18:37] Brenna: Yeah, so I mean, you’ve already touched on the pros there, right? Like, if you know that a genre is selling, if you can get in there fast enough and write to market basically fast enough, then you can capitalize on that. And it becomes fairly clear, I think, fairly quickly what tropes are working, what readers are looking for.

And then that makes it easier to write to market. But then the cons of that are, you don’t know how long that genre will stay hot, right? You don’t know how long that’s going to be the most popular thing. So if you’re a slower writer who’s trying to write to market, by the time you get the book out, it might not do as well, or the market’s going to be oversaturated by that time.

And then you have to work harder to make your book stand out and say, this is my book and it’s different from these books because such-and-such. But you’ll still like it because it’s romantasy. Like, that just becomes harder when the market is absolutely flooded. I think if you want to write a romantasy book or another cross-genre book that is popular—or it doesn’t even have to be cross-genre, right? It could be like hockey romance, which is big right now. If you want to write hockey romance or something like that—think about what makes the narrative have staying power and how you can market it that way.

So what will appeal to readers now, but also what is going to appeal about that story to readers in the future? So how can you pull those pieces out and make it kind of an evergreen story rather than just a top-of-the-market thing that’s going to fall off when the genre’s no longer super popular.

[00:20:09] Matty: If a certain combination of genres is sort of losing its pull in the market, but the author is still interested in getting word out about it—is there a way that they can take a look at aspects of it that, you know, now they want to be emphasizing more of one aspect than the other?

Like, if they then start advertising their romantasy book as just romance—what is the danger that somebody who doesn’t like fantasy accidentally picks it up and is disappointed? I mean, I think some of that goes back to what you were saying before about things like blurb and cover design. You need to be signaling those things. But maybe just in marketing copy or the expectations set for readers—any thoughts about that?

[00:20:50] Brenna: I think it’s just dependent on what gets emphasized. But like you said, you don’t want to mislead your readers, because what if they start reading it thinking it’s just purely romance and then suddenly there’s magic? They might be really taken aback by that. So you still have to be honest about what the book is, but what you shine a spotlight on can change.

[00:21:13] Matty: Yeah, that would be an interesting way to sort of reinvigorate a backlist—just look at a different aspect of your work that maybe you haven’t been emphasizing in your marketing materials, and make sure that your book actually meets the new expectation that you may be setting for it. And maybe be able to tap into a new pool of fans.

[00:21:32] Brenna: Exactly. Yeah.

[00:21:35] Matty: Do you see any other cross-genre books coming down the path? Do you see anything that’s kind of like the sports-plus-romance kind of cross?

[00:21:46] Brenna: Yeah, to be honest, I mostly exist in the romance world, so that’s kind of where my view is. But something that I’m seeing more of is science fiction romance. Like, I’ve been seeing more sci-fi romance on the market, which I really enjoy. I would love to see more of that. And also these kind of—I mean, okay, this might not be new, but it’s new to me—but I’m dipping my foot into comedic horror, which I think is really great.

And I’m also seeing more of that. Maybe just because of my own viewpoint widening, but I think that’s a fantastic genre mashup.

[00:22:22] Matty: Yeah, like Grady Hendrix—do I have his name right? I’ve enjoyed his books. But yeah, that is funny. Those are two genres that you wouldn’t think would be easily combined.

[00:22:33] Brenna: Yeah, but they work so well. Like, Rachel Harrison’s CACKLE is one of my favorites. And then T. Kingfisher—just in general—writes so many books that are really creepy and eerie and send tingles up your spine. But they’re also laugh-out-loud funny.

[00:22:48] Matty: I wonder if that’s successful because they’re so different. Like, I can imagine that it would be—I mean, they would all be different kinds of creative challenges. But if you have two genres that have really different beats, then maybe it’s actually easier to combine those than if you have ones that have kind of overlapping beats.

And so you’re not sending the reader a clear message at any point about which of those genres you’re leaning into.

[00:23:18] Brenna: Possibly. I think comedy and horror too work really well together because the comedy works to relieve the fear. So those two, even though they’re complete opposites, they mesh really well.

[00:23:31] Matty: Well, I’ve probably mentioned this example on the podcast before, but it works here. So I remember when I first watched PULP FICTION—and PULP FICTION is not the kind of movie that I would normally watch, but everybody was raving about it. So I thought, oh, I should watch PULP FICTION. And I don’t think I’ve ever laughed as hard as when the guy in the backseat of the car gets shot.

And I don’t like saying that to people who haven’t seen the movie because then they think I’m a freak. But it is true, because you have all this tension built up from the horror and then you have an opportunity to release it in laughter. And it might be kind of manic laughter, but it’s laughter nonetheless.

Like, cathartic.

Yes, yes, exactly. I can see why that would support those being a good combination of genres. Well, I know we’re jumping around a little bit. It probably would have been better if I had been able to read Jane’s article not literally an hour before we hopped on the call, because I did spend the entire ensuing hour trying to sort through my thoughts that were being triggered both by our topic and by Jane’s article.

[00:24:31] Matty: The other thing that I did want to ask you about, because I think this is such a great offering, is that you have a service called VIP Publishing Guidance. And I think this is pretty unique among the people I’ve spoken to who offer services. And I would just love to give you an opportunity to talk a little bit more about what that is and what you do for authors with that service.

[00:24:52] Brenna: Oh sure. So with VIP Publishing Guidance, it’s basically—you get all of my expertise as an editor and an author to yourself for five hours. So I can help you walk through all kinds of things. Like, if you are at the point where you’re ready to upload your book but you kind of need a coworker who knows what they’re doing to help you do that—I can do that. We can look up stuff like what keywords you should be using, what categories you should put your book in, which ties to genre. I can go over marketing plans with you, all kinds of things. It’s called VIP because it is tailored to you as the author and what you need to go through. But it’s kind of an intensive because we will work for those five hours very closely together to basically knock out as much work as we possibly can.

[00:25:40] Matty: That is a great offering, and I think that maybe before our conversation I didn’t fully appreciate the extent to which someone who’s offering editorial services maybe has a unique perspective into the marketing side that someone who’s just focusing on marketing doesn’t necessarily have, because you’re—

I recognize that this is not a requirement of taking advantage of the VIP Publishing Guidance, but for your clients you have this very, very deep understanding of what’s going to be delivered to a reader and can help direct them on how to find those readers that are going to be happiest about it.

[00:26:12] Brenna: Exactly. Yeah. And I think it helps too that I’ve self-published my own books, so I have been through the process. I know how difficult and confusing it can be. So that’s kind of why I made the service—so I could help people who were in the position I was in before I published and felt very clueless.

[00:26:30] Matty: Yeah, I think that—you’re somebody who’s cranking out a book every three months or something like that. Even going back, let’s say once a year—I mean, I’m kind of on, for my fiction, more or less a once-a-year schedule. And even in that year, I can pull up a page on KDP or Draft2Digital or something and say, oh, what’s this? I’ve never seen this before—even though I know I have.

And making notes about those kinds of things can be very helpful. And then having somebody like you to walk authors through that can be even more helpful. So I really like that offering, and I just wanted to give folks a chance to hear a little bit more about that.

[00:27:02] Matty: So thank you so much for joining me, and for being patient with my rambling questions as inspired by our topic and by Jane’s article. It was a great conversation.

[00:27:14] Brenna: Yeah, really fun.

[00:27:14] Matty: Brenna, please let everyone know about the other services you offer and where people can find out more about that online.

[00:27:20] Brenna: Yeah, so I offer copyediting, proofreading, and sensitivity reading services at BookmartenEditorial.com. And if you’re interested in my sci-fi romances, you can go to BrennaBailey.com for those.

[00:27:31] Matty: Great.

[00:27:33] Brenna: Thank you.

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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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 323 - Navigating the Short Fiction Market with Authority with Angelique Fawns

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Angelique Fawns discusses NAVIGATING THE SHORT FICTION MARKET WITH AUTHORITY, including how a broken ankle and a thousand dollars in failed contest entries led to a thriving short fiction career; why the intersection of your day-job skills and your creative passion is where authority gets built; how compiling a free resource for short story markets created a recognized platform; the surprising traction that comes from letting your authentic creative identity show; and how to think about diversifying income streams through teaching, speaking, and licensing.

Angelique Fawns has a Bachelor of Journalism from Carleton University in Ottawa and almost 30 years’ experience as a commercial producer. She's the author of three guides featuring the speculative fiction market, creates a horror fiction podcast called Read Me A Nightmare, and has sold over 100 short stories. You can find her fiction in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Amazing Stories, DreamForge, and a variety of anthologies.

Episode Links

www.fawns.ca

SERIES PAGE - selling stories - ON AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08QDX1PD6

Horror lite series page: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CMM44YPZ  

Amazon Author: https://www.amazon.com/~/e/B07ZHJGCX1  

https://www.facebook.com/amfawns

https://twitter.com/angeliquefawns

https://www.instagram.com/angeliqueiswriting/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/961450101062117/

https://angeliquemfawns.substack.com

Summary

Matty Dalrymple talks with Angelique Fawns about how writers can build authority by niching down in short fiction, using market knowledge strategically, and gradually expanding their scope as their expertise grows. The conversation focuses on practical, experience-based lessons drawn directly from Angelique’s career path, with an emphasis on paying markets, transferable skills, authenticity, and long-term sustainability for writers.

BACKGROUND AND EARLY MISSTEPS
Angelique describes how her path into short fiction began not with a strategic plan, but with circumstance. After breaking her ankle and being unable to commute to work, she finally had the time to write short stories, something she had wanted to do for years. Like many new writers, she started by searching online for submission opportunities and quickly encountered contests. In her first year, she spent about a thousand dollars entering contests and did not make a single sale or win. That experience was discouraging and led her to question whether there was a better way to approach short fiction publishing.

This early frustration became a turning point. Instead of assuming failure was inevitable, Angelique began researching markets more carefully and connecting with other writers. Through a short fiction writing group called DreamCrafters, she learned about professional and semi-professional markets that paid for fiction and did not charge submission fees. This research led to her first professional sale to Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, which validated both her writing and her decision to rethink how she approached submissions.

LEARNING THE MARKET AND CREATING A RESOURCE
Angelique explains that once she understood how short fiction markets worked, she realized there was a lack of clear, focused resources for writers who wanted to avoid pay-to-submit opportunities. She began compiling lists of paying markets, organized by pay rate, submission requirements, and suitability. What started as a tool for her own use eventually became her first guide, The Guide of All Guides, which listed more than sixty-five markets in order of pay.

A key point she emphasizes is the importance of understanding market fit. Knowing that certain publications will never buy particular types of stories, such as zombie fiction or grimdark work, saves writers time, money, and emotional energy. Angelique reinforces this by interviewing editors to understand why specific stories were accepted. For example, she interviewed Janet Hutchings after selling her story “Three Calendars” to Ellery Queen, and later spoke with Jackie Sherbow after she became editor. These interviews helped demystify editorial decision-making and provided concrete guidance writers could apply to their own submissions.

NICHING DOWN AS A PATH TO AUTHORITY
Matty highlights how Angelique’s work illustrates the value of niching down. Instead of positioning herself broadly as a writer, Angelique focused on a very specific niche: short fiction markets that pay and do not charge submission fees. This narrow focus made her expertise clear and actionable. As Matty notes, when a writer defines their authority that precisely, they are competing with very few others for attention, which makes it easier to become known and trusted in that space.

Angelique agrees and explains that she never set out to brand herself as an authority. She simply created the resource she wished had existed when she was starting out. Her guiding rule became simple and firm: “We do not pay to submit.” By consistently reinforcing that principle and backing it up with practical information, she attracted an audience of writers who shared the same frustration she once had.

TRANSFERABLE SKILLS FROM OTHER CAREERS
A recurring theme in the conversation is the value of transferable skills. Angelique draws a direct connection between her background in journalism and commercial production and the way she organizes short fiction markets. She compares her monthly Substack lists to a SharePoint document, where deadlines, deliverables, and key details are tracked in one place. This organizational approach helped her succeed in a demanding day job and proved equally effective in managing submissions.

Matty relates this to her own experience, noting that skills such as organization and connecting people often translate well into authority-building activities like podcasting, teaching, and writing nonfiction. Both emphasize that writers should look closely at what they already do well and consider how those skills can support their creative goals.

CONTESTS, PAYING MARKETS, AND STRATEGIC CHOICES
The discussion also addresses contests and submission fees in a nuanced way. Angelique makes clear that while she avoids pay-to-submit opportunities as a general rule, not all contests are inherently bad. Some prestigious contests offer significant exposure and career benefits that may justify a fee. The key is intentionality. Writers should understand why they are entering a contest and what they hope to gain from it, whether that is credibility, promotion, or networking.

Matty echoes this perspective, explaining that she has pursued contests selectively as a strategic investment rather than a source of income. Angelique’s lists help writers distinguish between opportunities that align with their goals and those that simply drain resources.

GENEROSITY, MARKETING, AND AUTHENTICITY
Both Matty and Angelique discuss how generosity plays a central role in building authority. Angelique notes that she is far more comfortable promoting a free resource she knows will help others than marketing herself directly. This mindset reframes marketing as service rather than self-promotion. By offering valuable information freely, she builds trust and goodwill, which in turn supports her broader platform.

Angelique also shares how interviewing other writers, particularly those running Kickstarter campaigns, allows her to help others while learning from their experiences. Instead of repeatedly asking audiences to buy something, these interviews focus on process and craft, with promotion occurring organically.

Authenticity emerges as another critical factor. Angelique admits that she long hesitated to fully embrace her identity as a horror writer because of concerns about how it might affect her journalism work. Over time, she realized that horror was the lens through which she processed the world. When she began sharing her darker stories more openly, including through Substack and LinkedIn, engagement increased rather than decreased. She cites her two-dollar sale of “Death Metal Fan” to Haunted Montreal as an example of work that resonated deeply with readers and brought her unexpected recognition.

RECOGNITION AND COMMUNITY FEEDBACK
A defining moment in Angelique’s journey came when she attended Superstars Writing Seminars after receiving a scholarship. To her surprise, people already recognized her name and thanked her for her blog. That experience confirmed that her work was reaching and helping others, even when she was not closely tracking metrics. Similar experiences followed at Canadian conferences such as DreadCon, When Words Collide, and Can*Con, where community feedback reinforced her growing authority.

Matty uses this to underscore how isolating authority-building work can feel, especially when feedback is delayed or invisible. Blogging, podcasting, and writing are often one-way activities, and writers may not realize their impact until someone speaks up.

EXPANDING AUTHORITY AND SUSTAINABLE INCOME
As the conversation turns toward income and sustainability, both speakers stress that authority can open doors beyond book sales. Angelique expresses interest in teaching, speaking, and researching new pathways for short fiction, including adaptations for film and television. She points out that intellectual property is in high demand and that short stories can serve as valuable source material.

Matty shares that many of her income streams have grown out of her nonfiction work rather than the books themselves. Articles, classes, and speaking engagements can all stem from a well-defined area of expertise. Both agree that writers should not be afraid to be paid for their work and that recognizing one’s value is an important step in building a sustainable creative career.

CONCLUSION
Throughout the episode, Matty Dalrymple and Angelique Fawns return to a central idea: building authority does not require trying to be everything to everyone. By starting with a narrow, well-defined niche, offering genuine value, and staying authentic, writers can establish credibility and then expand into adjacent opportunities over time. The conversation offers a practical roadmap for short fiction writers who want to build authority, avoid costly mistakes, and create a career that aligns with both their skills and passions.

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

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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 321 - Optimizing the ROI of an Author Assistant with Kevin Tumlinson

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Kevin Tumlinson discusses OPTIMIZING THE ROI OF AN AUTHOR ASSISTANT, including how authors can use an author assistant to improve marketing ROI, which publishing and marketing tasks make sense to outsource, how to evaluate return on investment, how AI can support an author assistant’s work, and how indie authors can free up time to write more while building a scalable, sustainable author business.

J. Kevin Tumlinson is an award-winning and bestselling author, a prolific podcaster and public speaker, and Chief Brand Officer of Author Anchor.

Episode Links

https://authoranchor.com/

https://www.kevintumlinson.com/

https://kevintumlinson.substack.com/

Kevin’s previous appearances:

Episode 283 - Writing Pivots and the Power of Humility with Kevin Tumlinson

Episode 202 - Acting on Inspiration Anywhere with Kevin Tumlinson

Summary

In this episode of The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Kevin Tumlinson about how authors can use an author assistant to improve marketing ROI, reduce administrative overload, and build a more sustainable publishing business. Their conversation focuses on practical strategies for outsourcing author marketing and business tasks, evaluating return on investment, and integrating AI responsibly, while keeping the author’s voice and brand intact.

AUTHOR ASSISTANTS AND AUTHOR MARKETING
Matty opens the discussion by framing the challenge many indie authors face: marketing is both essential and time-consuming, and often the work authors most want to outsource. Kevin explains that author assistants can handle nearly any online marketing task an author is expected to do, short of public-facing appearances. These tasks include managing ads on platforms such as Facebook and Amazon, handling social media posting, crafting and managing newsletters, setting up Shopify stores, or even helping run Kickstarter campaigns. The key, Kevin notes, is identifying what the author needs most help with and what activities are creating friction in the business.

They clarify that an author assistant is not limited to marketing alone, but marketing is where many authors first seek help. Kevin emphasizes that authors should start by asking themselves which tasks they dislike or consistently avoid, as these are often the best candidates for delegation. Outsourcing these responsibilities allows authors to focus more time and energy on writing, which is the core revenue-generating activity for most publishing businesses.

BALANCING AUTHOR BRAND AND DELEGATION
A concern Matty raises is how authors can outsource marketing tasks without losing their personal voice or brand identity. Kevin stresses the importance of establishing a clear author brand before bringing on an assistant. Brand, in this context, means how readers identify the author, what they expect from their work, and how the author presents themselves across platforms. Once that foundation is in place, an author assistant can help amplify the brand rather than dilute it.

They discuss hybrid approaches to content creation, such as having an assistant draft posts that the author edits to match their voice, or having the author create core content while the assistant handles posting and formatting. Kevin suggests that video is an especially effective tool for preserving authenticity, noting that authors can record short videos or interviews and then have an assistant repurpose the content into shorts, reels, or long-form videos for YouTube. This approach allows authors to remain visible and recognizable while delegating the technical and repetitive aspects of distribution.

SPECIALISTS VS. GENERALISTS
Matty and Kevin explore whether authors should hire a single generalist or multiple specialists. Kevin advocates for specialists whenever possible, especially for tasks that require technical expertise such as video editing, ad management, or design. However, he also sees value in having an initial author assistant who understands the author’s workflows, preferences, and brand. This person can act as a coordinator or manager when additional specialists are brought in.

Kevin explains that authors should not expect one person to do everything, as that creates bottlenecks and burnout. Instead, authors can gradually build a small team, each handling specific responsibilities. Consistency, especially in areas like YouTube posting or social media, is often more important than perfection, and an assistant can help maintain that consistency while the author focuses on higher-value work.

ONBOARDING AND DOCUMENTING PROCESSES
One of the most practical parts of the conversation centers on onboarding and process documentation. Matty notes that working with an assistant often feels harder before it gets easier, particularly in the early stages. Kevin agrees and emphasizes that authors should never hand off a task that is not documented. However, he reframes this as an opportunity rather than a burden.

Kevin recommends using the author assistant to help create or refine documentation as their first assignment. For example, an assistant might document the steps for editing and posting a podcast episode or managing a Kickstarter campaign. This collaborative process helps both parties learn how to work together, establishes clear expectations, and results in reusable systems. Kevin explains that this documentation also protects the author if the assistant leaves, making future onboarding faster and less stressful.

They also discuss communication preferences, with Kevin sharing that finding the right communication channel, such as Slack or text messages, can significantly improve efficiency. The early phase of working together is framed as an investment in future productivity.

THE ROLE OF INTERMEDIARIES AND SUPPORT
Matty contrasts working with an organization like Author Anchor versus hiring independently through platforms such as Fiverr or Upwork. Kevin explains that while authors work directly with their assistants on day-to-day tasks, an intermediary can provide support similar to HR. This includes addressing performance issues, handling disputes, and helping replace assistants if necessary.

Kevin clarifies that author assistants are real people, not AI, and that sourcing assistants from regions with a lower cost of living allows authors to pay reasonable rates without exploitation. He emphasizes that many assistants view this work as a career and bring valuable skills and experience to the role.

AI, AUTHOR ASSISTANTS, AND EFFICIENCY
AI plays a significant role in the conversation, particularly regarding how it intersects with author assistants. Kevin argues that authors should expect assistants to use AI tools where appropriate, as AI accelerates work and improves efficiency. He asks rhetorically, “Why wouldn’t you want them to use AI?” if it saves time and money.

They discuss the importance of setting clear boundaries, especially for authors who do not want their creative writing used to train AI systems. Kevin distinguishes between creative content and business materials such as transcripts or marketing copy, which many authors are comfortable processing with AI. Using AI in this way allows assistants to complete tasks faster, making the author’s investment more effective.

RETURN ON INVESTMENT AND BUSINESS THINKING
The conversation repeatedly returns to ROI. Kevin emphasizes that authors should not ask whether they can afford an author assistant, but whether an assistant can help increase revenue. He frames authors as small business owners who hire help to expand capacity, not as individuals looking for cost savings.

Kevin explains that any task preventing an author from writing or generating income is a candidate for delegation. He suggests that authors should aim to earn more than they spend on assistance, even if the margin is small at first. Over time, as systems improve and assistants become more effective, the ROI should increase.

They also discuss non-monetary ROI, such as reduced stress and peace of mind. Matty shares an example of hiring help with finances, noting that accuracy and reliability alone justified the expense. Kevin compares this to paying someone to mow a lawn, not because it generates income directly, but because it removes stress and preserves energy for more valuable work.

REDEFINING AUTHORSHIP AND FINAL TAKEAWAYS
Toward the end of the episode, Kevin challenges traditional ideas about authorship by sharing an example of a nonfiction author who uses an assistant to help draft books through recorded interviews and transcripts. He argues that authorship is about ideas and authority, not necessarily typing every word. Matty agrees that this broader view allows authors to focus on their strengths while still producing meaningful work.

The episode concludes with a shared perspective that author assistants can support nearly every aspect of an author’s business except the creative core, unless the author chooses otherwise. By delegating strategically, documenting processes, and evaluating ROI honestly, authors can build scalable systems that support both productivity and long-term growth.

Episode 320 - The Writer's Guide to Finding Community with Jessie Kwak

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Jessie Kwak discusses THE WRITER’S GUIDE TO FINDING COMMUNITY, including practical strategies for building a strong writing community, how to connect with other writers at author events, approaches for overcoming isolation and joining the right groups for your goals, tips for confident author networking and collaboration, and ways a supportive creative community can fuel your writing career and keep you motivated.

Jessie Kwak is an author, storyteller, and business book ghostwriter living in Portland, Oregon. When she’s not writing, she can be found sewing, mountain biking, and exploring the Pacific Northwest (and beyond). She is the author of thriller novels, two series of space scoundrel sci-fi crime novels, and a handful of productivity books including From Chaos to Creativity and From Solo to Supported.

Episode Links

https://www.jessiekwak.com/

Author Instagram: @kwakjessie
Business Instagram: @story_rebel

Summary

In this episode of The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Jessie Kwak about the importance of writing community, including how authors can find support, connect with peers, and build relationships that strengthen both creativity and career. Jessie shares insights from her book FROM SOLO TO SUPPORTED and her experiences as a conference organizer and longtime participant in writing groups, offering actionable advice for writers at all stages.

WHY WRITERS NEED COMMUNITY
Jessie begins by describing her early years as an introverted writer who spent most of her creative time alone with her “imaginary friends.” Over time, she discovered how vital other writers could be—not only as beta readers and brainstorming partners, but as people who understood the emotional ups and downs of the writing life. “I rely on that connection of writers so much,” she says. Her goal with FROM SOLO TO SUPPORTED was to show authors that they do not have to navigate their writing life alone.

INSIGHTS FROM ORGANIZING A WRITERS’ CONFERENCE
Jessie draws on her experience launching the Author Alchemy Summit, a small conference designed to be more intimate and welcoming than some of the large literary conferences she attended early in her career. As an organizer, she found herself more conscious of how people were interacting. She would notice “that person is still over in the corner” and step in to introduce them to someone new. She also worked to prevent friends from spending the entire event talking only to each other, encouraging them to branch out. This perspective helped her understand how structure and environment can support community-building.

TIPS FOR ENGAGING AT WRITING EVENTS
Jessie and Matty discuss the discomfort many writers feel when approaching groups at conferences. Jessie points out that while in everyday life it would be strange to interrupt two strangers chatting in a coffee shop, at a writing event the expectation is entirely different. “You are expected to talk to people, so go ahead and do it,” she says. Hovering on the edge of a conversation and waiting to be welcomed in is normal, and many attendees try to notice and include newcomers.

Matty adds that preparing in advance can make these interactions easier. Contacting people ahead of time if she sees their name on an attendee list allows her to approach them with confidence at the event. She also finds it easier to start conversations in more structured situations, such as sitting at a table during a meal.

Jessie designed her conference with these dynamics in mind, offering meals on-site so that writers didn't have to navigate finding food in an unfamiliar city and could naturally gather around tables. Sharing food, she notes, creates an organic opportunity for conversation.

CONVERSATION, NOT PITCHING
Both Matty and Jessie emphasize that at general writing conferences, authors should aim for conversation rather than pitching their books. While some events include formal pitching opportunities, most interactions among attendees should be focused on shared interests, not sales. Jessie notes that writers often launch into detailed explanations of plot, worldbuilding, and magic systems, which can overwhelm the listener. She encourages authors to talk about their work in a way that is engaging but concise, and to remember that they are talking to fellow writers, not potential buyers.

FINDING THE RIGHT GROUPS
Jessie stresses that not every writing community will be a good fit for every writer. Early in her career, she felt out of place attending a literary-leaning conference as an indie sci-fi writer. She encourages authors to try multiple groups and treat the process like auditioning communities rather than auditioning themselves. Matty notes that this shift in perspective changes the power dynamic and reduces anxiety.

Writers should also consider what they want from a group. Some are looking for emotional support; others want serious critique. Jessie recommends asking fellow writers where they find their support networks. Many groups are discovered through simple conversation.

FINDING LOCAL WRITING COMMUNITIES
Jessie shares several practical suggestions for finding local writing groups. While she initially wanted to offer a comprehensive list, she realized such a list would be impossible to keep current. Instead, she encourages authors to use tools such as meetup.org to search for write-ins, critique groups, and casual gatherings. Open mic nights, bookstore readings, and small local conferences can also serve as entry points into community. Even attending without participating can help writers become familiar faces and form connections.

EVOLVING COMMUNITY NEEDS
Jessie and Matty discuss how an author’s needs change over time. Early-career writers may seek foundational craft support or encouragement, while more experienced writers may look for mastermind-style groups focused on marketing, business, or collaboration. Jessie advises writers to be “in the room with people who are at your level or a step or two ahead,” which allows for inspiration and growth. She also warns that joining groups too advanced for one’s current stage—for example, a Facebook ads session when still drafting a first book—can lead to overwhelm rather than progress.

PAID VS. UNPAID, TRADITIONAL VS. INDIE
Jessie notes that distinctions between traditional and indie authors have softened in recent years. Many traditionally published writers have become curious about indie publishing, and she and Matty observed at ThrillerFest that indies were welcomed into conversations about publishing and marketing. Jessie's advice is to avoid going in defensively. Most people are not scrutinizing others as closely as we imagine; writers should assume positive intent and engage confidently.

OPPORTUNITIES FROM COMMUNITY
One of Jessie’s strongest messages is that community creates opportunity. Many of her collaborations developed from people she met casually, including co-authoring projects, invitations to speak, and contributions to anthologies. “I like to think of meeting new people as just planting new seeds and seeing what might sprout in the future,” she says. These opportunities arise not from transactional networking but from authentic connection.

Matty agrees, sharing examples of community members who regularly support her online content without expecting anything in return. Such generosity builds goodwill and strengthens networks. Jessie recommends entering spaces with a mindset of helpfulness, whether by offering a kind word or sharing encouragement.

THE VALUE OF SHARED EXPERIENCE
Both Jessie and Matty circle back to the emotional value of community. Having people who understand why a small writing win feels huge—or why a bad writing day can be discouraging—makes the creative journey easier. Jessie sums it up: “It is so nice to just be able to share your struggles and your joys with people who understand exactly what it means to find the exact right word.”

WHERE TO FIND JESSIE
Jessie closes by sharing that readers can find her work at jessiekwak.com, including links to her fiction and nonfiction books. Her nonfiction, including FROM SOLO TO SUPPORTED, is published by Microcosm Publishing.

This episode highlights how writing community—whether online, in person, local, or global—can sustain creativity, spark opportunity, and remind writers that they do not have to make the journey alone.

Episode 319 - How and Why to Market Nonfiction Before You Write with Karen Williams

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Karen Williams discusses HOW AND WHY TO MARKET NONFICTION BEFORE YOU WRITE, including how nonfiction book marketing can start before a single word is written, why early audience research and conversation-based marketing strengthen book positioning, and how authors can use podcasts, surveys, content repurposing, and community building to create demand in advance. They also discuss treating a nonfiction book as part of a larger business and thought-leadership strategy rather than a standalone product.

Karen Williams is The Book Mentor at Librotas. She helps business owners, experts, and thought leaders write and publish authority-building books that elevate their credibility and grow both their business and brand. The author of 10 books, including Your Book is the Hook and Book Marketing Made Simple, Karen takes her clients from messy first idea to final manuscript and successful launch – with a focus on strategy, structure, and making sure their book truly works for them. She’s a TEDx speaker and host of the Business Book Bites podcast.

Episode Links

https://librotas.com/

https://www.facebook.com/librotas

https://www.linkedin.com/in/karenwilliamslibrotas/

https://www.instagram.com/karenwilliamslibrotas/

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

Mentioned in episode:

https://librotas.com/indyauthor 

Summary

In this episode of The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Karen Williams about marketing nonfiction books in ways that support the writing process, build authority, and integrate naturally into a broader business ecosystem. Their conversation challenges the idea that marketing starts at launch and instead frames book marketing as something that can—and should—begin long before a manuscript is finished.

WHY NONFICTION MARKETING STARTS EARLY
Karen explains that her path into nonfiction began when writing her first book changed her business trajectory, even before she fully understood publishing or marketing. That experience shaped her belief that authors can begin “marketing” simply by talking about what they are working on. She argues that authors can market a nonfiction book before writing it by having conversations, testing ideas, and building interest early. These conversations help confirm that there is a real audience and a real need for the book. As she notes, many authors write large portions of a manuscript before checking whether there is a market for it, missing an opportunity to validate the idea early.

Matty emphasizes that this approach benefits not only marketing but also content creation. By discussing ideas with potential readers, authors can clarify their focus, identify gaps, and shape the book around real questions and challenges. Both agree that whether the author is writing fiction or nonfiction, “the earlier the better” when it comes to sharing the journey and engaging readers.

USING CONVERSATIONS AS CONTENT AND MARKET RESEARCH
Karen outlines practical ways authors can gather insights while developing a book. These include asking questions on social media, surveying mailing lists, hosting informal conversations, or conducting interviews. These activities do not need to be formal; they can happen anywhere people naturally talk. The goal is to learn what readers want to know, what problems they are facing, and what outcomes they are seeking.

Matty describes how podcasts, interviews, or recorded conversations can serve multiple purposes. They can become marketing content, research material, and even source material for the book itself. Karen shares that her own podcast series is intentionally designed to generate conversations that feed into her next book. With permission, insights and quotes from those conversations can be reused, credited, and integrated into the manuscript.

Both stress the importance of being clear with contributors. Authors should explain upfront how material may be used and avoid implying coauthorship unless that is genuinely the case. When handled transparently, these conversations can strengthen relationships, provide accountability, and move a project forward.

THE HIDDEN BENEFITS OF SAYING “I’M WRITING A BOOK”
Karen notes that simply telling people you are writing a book can elevate how others perceive you professionally. Even before publication, the act of articulating ideas and positioning yourself around a topic can increase credibility and focus. Writing a book often deepens an author’s expertise because it requires research, synthesis, and clarity. As Karen puts it, authors often “go deeper into something you didn’t know because you are articulating it.”

Matty adds that early marketing can also help authors discover that a book may not be the right final format. Through conversations and early feedback, an author may realize that the content works better as a course, presentation, or program. Framing the early stage as “exploring a topic” rather than “writing a book” can leave room for flexibility while still building momentum.

CREATING CLARITY WITH A SYNOPSIS AND IDEAL READER
A recurring theme is the importance of clarity. Karen strongly recommends creating a synopsis and pitch before writing. This includes defining the big idea, the ideal reader, the problem the book solves, and the outcome it promises. She cautions against claiming a book is “for everybody,” noting that such positioning usually means it resonates with no one.

This early clarity makes writing easier and prevents authors from producing unfocused manuscripts. Karen describes receiving 50,000-word drafts with “no direction and no shape,” which could have been avoided with clearer planning. Matty agrees, especially for coauthored nonfiction, where misalignment on audience or purpose can create problems later. Writing marketing copy early can function as both a compass and a motivator.

MARKETING AS THE LAUNCH APPROACHES
As publication nears, the focus shifts toward more traditional launch activities. Karen discusses options such as Amazon bestseller campaigns, street teams, and coordinated promotion. While reaching bestseller status is not the goal for everyone, she explains that it requires planning, support, and clear expectations.

Beyond online retail, both discuss expanding thinking to include podcasts, PR, speaking, and organizational sales. Marketing to organizations—such as selling books in bulk to companies or associations—often becomes more relevant after launch. Karen suggests creative tactics like “lumpy mail,” where a physical package containing the book stands out more than email outreach.

PRICING, PERCEIVED VALUE, AND POSITIONING
Pricing is framed as a marketing decision rather than a purely financial one. Karen shares examples that illustrate how price communicates value. She recounts a client who sold a high-quality, full-color book for a premium price and still became a bestseller because the book matched the expectations and commitment of her audience.

Both emphasize that authors should consider where their book “lives” in the marketplace. Pricing too low can undermine perceived value, just as pricing too high can create friction if it does not align with audience expectations. Ebook pricing, print costs, and alternative editions (such as special color versions for events) can all play roles in a broader strategy.

BUILDING MOMENTUM AFTER LAUNCH
A key challenge discussed is maintaining momentum once the book is published. Karen notes that many authors feel relief after launch and move on to the next project, but sustained marketing is essential. She describes authors who continue encouraging reviews, sharing reader photos, and engaging their communities to keep the book visible.

Matty highlights the value of intentional “signature” marketing ideas, such as inviting readers to share photos of the book in different locations around the world. Rather than trying many tactics superficially, both advocate choosing a few approaches and doing them well.

FOCUS, REPURPOSING, AND PLATFORM CHOICE
Both stress the importance of focus in marketing. Karen recalls advice she received early in her career: choose three ways to market and do them well. She encourages authors to lean into platforms and formats they enjoy, such as podcasts or LinkedIn, rather than forcing themselves into channels they dislike.

Repurposing content is presented as a way to extend reach without multiplying effort. Podcast episodes can become blog posts, social media content, newsletter material, or book chapters. Existing blog archives can also feed new books. Presentations created during the writing process can help refine structure and reveal which ideas resonate most with audiences.

THE BOOK AS PART OF A BUSINESS ECOSYSTEM
The conversation concludes by returning to the idea of the book as part of a larger ecosystem. Karen emphasizes that nonfiction books should not be viewed in isolation but as integrated tools that support coaching, courses, speaking, and other services. Seeing the book this way can make writing feel less burdensome and more strategic.

Matty reflects that marketing, when framed as connection-building rather than selling, becomes less intimidating. By integrating marketing with research, content creation, and community engagement, authors can produce stronger books while building relationships that last beyond launch.

Episode 318 - Reimagining Success Through Self-Advocacy and Collaboration with Laura Goode

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Laura Goode discusses REIMAGINING SUCCESS THROUGH SELF-ADVOCACY AND COLLABORATION, including how authors can build supportive writing communities, strategies for finding the right mentors and artistic partners, overcoming comparison and competition in the writing world, and how redefining success can strengthen your writing practice and your confidence as an indie author.

Laura Goode is the author of a collection of poems, Become a Name, and a YA novel, Sister Mischief, which was a Best of the Bay pick by the San Francisco Bay Guardian and a selection of two ALA honor lists. With director Meera Menon, she wrote and produced the feature film Farah Goes Bang, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and won the inaugural Nora Ephron Prize from Tribeca and Vogue. Her nonfiction writing on intersectional feminism, female friendship, motherhood, gender, and race in culture, TV, film, and literature has appeared in BuzzFeed, New Republic, New York Magazine, Longreads, Elle, Catapult, Refinery29, and elsewhere. She received her BA and MFA from Columbia University and currently teaches at Stanford University, where she was honored with the 2025 Walter J. Gores Award, Stanford's highest award for excellence in teaching.

Episode Links

https://www.lauragoode.com/

https://lauragoode.substack.com/

https://www.instagram.com/thereallauragoode/?hl=en

https://dialoguedoctor.libsyn.com/episode-295-pitching-your-work-with-laura-goode

Summary

In this episode of The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Laura Goode about the ways writers can rethink success through self-advocacy and collaboration. Laura begins by emphasizing the importance of “good art friends” and how creative allies can strengthen both a writer’s confidence and their professional opportunities. She notes that writing is often a solitary craft compared with disciplines like dance or theater, where artists regularly practice together. Because of that solitude, writers especially benefit from intentionally cultivating supportive relationships that provide encouragement, perspective, and connection.

THE IMPORTANCE OF ARTISTIC COLLABORATORS
Laura explains that artistic collaborators play a key role in helping writers feel less isolated, and she connects this directly to self-advocacy. For her, part of taking oneself seriously as a writer is offering oneself compassion and support—and allowing others to do the same. She shares that many of her closest collaborators have seen potential in her before she recognized it in herself. One example came from her friend and film co-writer Mira Menon, who once told her, “You’re organized and good with money. You could be a film producer.” Laura recalls that she had never considered that path, but she trusted the observation. That single comment launched her into film producing and illustrated how a collaborator’s insight can open new creative directions.

MENTORS, PEERS, AND “CAREER COMPS”
Matty asks Laura to differentiate mentors from collaborators, noting that mentors often seem more experienced. Laura agrees that mentors and peers serve different roles, but they share an essential quality: both are rooting for your success. She highlights the emotional maturity required to celebrate others’ accomplishments without feeling threatened. Jealousy, she says, is a natural part of creative work, but it can be used as information—an indicator of what we want for ourselves.

Laura introduces the concept of “career comps,” the people who are three to five years ahead on a path similar to the one you want to follow. She illustrates this with what she calls a “truly deranged” story from her book, when she googled a talented woman her ex-boyfriend had brought to her workplace. After discovering the woman’s poems were widely published, Laura submitted her own poems to every publication that had accepted the woman’s work. Although the behavior makes her laugh in hindsight, she credits that strange burst of competitive drive with leading to one of her first published poems. What mattered was that she used her jealousy to propel forward movement rather than resentment.

COLLABORATION VS. COMPETITION IN THE WRITING WORLD
Matty and Laura also discuss how the writing and publishing landscape influences this sense of competition. Matty describes how, at a book fair, she and two other mystery authors were able to collaborate by steering readers toward the author whose style best suited them. Readers never say they have “enough mystery novels,” she notes, which makes collaboration more natural among indie authors. Laura relates to this and contrasts it with the greater competitiveness she witnessed in graduate writing programs, where high-stakes opportunities were more limited.

FINDING MENTORS AND BUILDING COMMUNITY
Laura encourages writers to seek out environments where mentors naturally emerge—MFA programs, writing retreats, and short-term residencies. She says that opportunities like Bread Loaf were transformative for her because of the concentrated exposure to other writers who “had bled for their work” as she had. While she typically approaches life in a structured way, she found that the best approach in those environments was to let go of rigid expectations. She calls this her “seaweed approach”: allowing herself to drift toward conversations and activities that felt energizing. The openness made networking more organic and rewarding.

GOAL-SETTING WITHIN COLLABORATIVE RELATIONSHIPS
Matty raises the question of whether writers should enter these spaces with specific goals—for example, seeking a literary agent—or remain open to discovery. Laura replies that both approaches can work, but she has often relied on mentors and collaborators to help her define goals, not simply reach them. With her Stanford students, she sees many trying to plan the exact steps required to become a bestselling author by a certain age. But Laura believes that rigid strategies are less helpful than candid conversation, reflection, and acknowledging what a writer truly wants.

THE ROLE OF THE MENTOR AND THE NEED FOR CONSENT
A significant part of the discussion centers on boundary-setting and the importance of mutual consent in mentor-mentee relationships. Laura quotes a saying she attributes to Anne Lamott: “Help is the sunny side of control.” She believes mentorship cannot be imposed—offering guidance uninvited can feel condescending. Instead, mentorship requires the mentee to ask for help, ensuring both parties are aligned.

Leading and supporting other writers, Laura notes, is also an important responsibility for those who have benefitted from mentorship themselves. Mentorship is part of what she calls a “self-renewing resource” in the literary community. Because creative work is slow, often isolating, and rarely accompanied by immediate feedback, she believes writers with experience should support those early in their careers—not only to strengthen the community but also to honor the help they once received.

WHEN A MENTORSHIP HAS RUN ITS COURSE
Matty asks how writers can recognize when a mentorship has reached its natural end. Laura says that any guidance that no longer “rings true” or begins to feel misaligned may be a sign that the relationship has run its course. Writers must learn to distinguish between feedback that is useful and feedback that does not serve their work. This skill applies not only to mentors but also to peers, workshops, and critique groups.

A QUESTION FOR LISTENERS
Near the end of the episode, Matty asks Laura to pose a reflection question listeners can use to apply the episode’s ideas. Laura offers two. For evaluating collaborators, she suggests asking: “Is this person someone I want to emulate?” For self-reflection, she asks writers to consider: “Do I believe I was born worthy of belonging and love, or do I believe that is something I have to earn?” She explains that many writers unconsciously believe they must earn their worth through achievement, publication, or external validation. Understanding that creativity does not determine worth can free writers from resentment or competition, allowing for healthier collaboration.

Laura and Matty close by connecting this idea of inherent worth to the writing community as a whole. When writers recognize their own value—and the value of others—they can step away from competition and lean into collaboration. This shift can help authors build stronger creative partnerships, cultivate community, and define success on their own terms.

Episode 317 - Insights From My Podcast Sabbatical with Matty Dalrymple

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Matty Dalrymple discusses INSIGHTS FROM MY PODCAST SABBATICAL, including how a podcast sabbatical sparked a strategic reset for her indie author business, reshaped her approach to direct sales and discoverability, informed new platform decisions, refined her consulting model, and led to building authority beyond books—offering practical insights for indie authors, nonfiction writers, and creators navigating publishing strategy, content repurposing, and second-act careers.

Looking for more information about my new From Expertise to Authority focus?

Subscribe to From Expertise to Authority on Substack.

Listen to the From Expertise to Authority podcast on all major podcast platforms, including Apple, Spotify, and Pocketcasts.

Check out my YouTube channel.

In many of my articles and podcast episodes, I suggest you capture your thoughts about your own journey from expertise to authority, and I’ve created a worksheet you can use to do that—download it here.

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast! Today my guest is, once again, me! : )

When I wrapped up the last episode before I took my December podcast sabbatical, I had planned to start out 2026 with a fantastic interview with Laura Goode about THE IMPORTANCE OF SELF-ADVOCACY, but so much happened in December that I decided to do one more solo episode to report back, and then return to regularly scheduled interview programming next week.

You’ll find video of this episode on The Indy Author on YouTube and a full transcript at TheIndyAuthor.com/Podcast.

Before we dive into my update, I’d like to send out a big thank you to my Patreon patrons, including Hsin-Yi and Heather, who became patrons in December of 2025! And I’d also like to thank Heather and Jeff, who each sent me 3 coffees via Buy Me a Coffee! It’s listeners like them—and you—who make this content possible.

Having some time set aside for something different than my usual routine was so helpful, and here are some of the things I accomplished in December ...

First, I made some changes to my “direct sales” approach by taking my Ann Kinnear Suspense Shorts ebooks and audio off PayHip in favor of Curios. I had two reasons for doing this.

First, whenever I made a sale on PayHip, my business manager, Melanie, who handles all the finances for William Kingsfield Publishers,  would have to reconcile the multiple resulting transactions that came into QuickBooks, and the time it took her to do this often cost more than I made from the sale. On Curios, as with other third-party retail platforms, the royalties come in in chunks, which is much easier from a bookkeeping point of view.

Second, I was getting tired of contending with the fact that the only “discoverability” I was ever going to get was by sending people there—pretty much exclusively people who already knew about me or my books—and I wanted to focus on a platform like Curios where someone who was browsing for suspense or thriller or mystery might find my books. And I’ll have more to say about the benefits of discoverability on third-party platforms in a bit!

Just as an FYI, I know that explaining to buyers about the platform fee that enables Curios to pay creators 100% of the list price is a little awkward, and I’m lobbying them to provide a feature that would enable creators to cover the platform cost so that the cost to the buyer would be the same across all retail platforms, while, I believe, still resulting in a higher royalty on Curios. I’ll keep you apprised of my progress on that front.

Back to PayHip—in addition to moving the short story ebooks and audio off PayHip, I also took down my large print novels because I didn’t want to have to maintain inventory to cover the few copies I sold. I’m happy to suggest that readers buy these books Bookshop.org, where a percentage of each sale goes to support indie bookstores.

I’m still thinking of completely retiring my PayHip store in favor of Curios for ebooks and audio and directing readers to Bookshop.org for all print, maybe with the offer that if they send me a photo of them with one of my print books, I’ll send them a signed book plate. Let me know what you think about that idea.

The other thing I need to accommodate is that one of the benefits I offer to Patreon patrons and newsletter subscribers is 20% off purchases on my PayHip store, and at the moment at least, that’s not an option on Curios—although I will lobby for them to add it!—so I’m looking for another benefit I can offer those folks. Ideas always welcome!

On the consulting front ...

Last year my consulting rates were $175 for the first one-hour meeting and $125 for subsequent one-hour meetings, and in the last podcast episode, I announced that those rates would be going up to $195 for the first one-hour meeting and $145 for subsequent meetings. I had originally priced the meetings differently because I anticipated I would be spending more prep time on the first meeting—reviewing the material the client had sent me, checking out their books, their website, their social media presences, and so on.

However, I found that even after the first meeting, I generally had prep to do for subsequent meetings, so pricing them differently didn’t really make much sense. And since I had already announced $145 as the “subsequent meeting” rate in the last episode, I didn’t want to set the hourly rate higher than that, so all consulting meetings are now $145, with no premium charge  for the first meeting!

What else did I have planned for December?

Originally, I intended to spend most of my “spare” time in December trying to get Lizzy Ballard Book 6 ready for advance readers, and I got a bit sidetracked on another project—more on that in a moment—so I didn’t get as far as I had hoped, but I’m pretty close. The book is about 90 thousand words with about 90 chapters—I prefer short chapters when the story is moving among several point-of-view characters, as is the case in the Lizzy books—and as of the time I’m recording this, on January 4, I’ve completed the pre-advance reader polish edit on twenty chapters, and I’m still pushing hard to have the book reader-ready before I leave for vacation on January 9.

I also finally launched my long-anticipated (by me) collection of Ann Kinnear Suspense Shorts: A YEAR OF KINNEAR: 12 SUSPENSE SHORTS FROM THE WORLD OF ANN KINNEAR, which is now available on all major online retail platforms in ebook and print.

I slightly underestimated the time I would need to spend on the launch of the collection, but what I didn’t factor in at all is that since I had added an illustration and an author’s note for each of the stories in the collection, all twelve standalone shorts would have to be updated with that extra content on all the retail and distribution outlets, so that’s taking quite a bit of time.

And here I’m going to take a moment to thank the wonderful Angelique Fawns for taking on a task that she didn’t anticipate for her holiday season: writing the foreword for the connection. Thank you, Angelique!

So in addition to a lot of unanticipated Vellum updating and content uploading, what did I spend my time in December on?

I launched a whole new platform: From Expertise to Authority! This my first offering that is targeted beyond a writer-specific audience, although I believe it will be valuable to many writers, especially of nonfiction. The purpose of this new platform is to ...

help experienced professionals exploring second act careers or sidelines transform their expertise into recognized authority through a proven three-stage framework of relationship-building. That framework involves Expertise-Based Relationships (which involves building credibility through written content), Personality-Based Relationships (which involves building deeper human connections through conversational content), and Authority-Based Relationships (which involves building recognized authority through direct engagement). And the goal of this framework is to enable these experienced professionals to generate income, expand their influence, or stay meaningfully engaged in their field.

In December I rolled out a bunch of new channels and content in support of From Expertise to Authority: an addition to my website, which you’ll find at TheIndyAuthor.com/Authority ... a revamped Matty Dalrymple YouTube channel focused specifically on the From Expertise to Authority content ... a consulting offering ... a new podcast: From Expertise to Authority ... and a Substack at Matty Dalrymple. I’m actually hosting the podcast through Substack, and I’d like to send out another big thank you to Angelique, who was one of my first From Expertise to Authority podcast guests and who clued me in to the ability to host the podcast through Substack.

I chose Substack over my own website for my written content for the same reason I’m prioritizing Curios over PayHip for my “direct” product sales: because of the benefits of discoverability. It someone is looking for content related to professional development or career transition or second act career or setting yourself up for success for a sideline or sidehustle, they’re more likely to find me on Substack than on my own website. (And before starting to post to Substack, I confirmed that Substack claims no rights to posters’ IP.)

Another reason for my experiment with Substack is that when I have spoken with writer audiences about sharing nonfiction content, I always got questions about Substack and was only able to address them with second-hand information, which is never my preference, so I figured I should really try it out for myself. Honestly, I dipped my toe in Substack a bit unenthusiastically, because I really wasn’t excited about taking on the care and feeding of another platform, but I’m really enjoying it—it’s social media for thinking people, providing the outreach that social media originally promised, but allowing for much more depth ... and actual (and productive) interactions.

The episodes of the From Expertise to Authority podcast will be a combination of solo episodes and interviews with professionals who have made that journey. When those guests are writers, I’ll share those episodes here on The Indy Author Podcast, and in a future episode of The Indy Author Podcast, I’ll share my repurposing strategy across the podcast, Substack, presentations, and an upcoming book. I really couldn’t launch a whole new platform without a heavy focus on repurposing.

As I mentioned, I believe that what I’m doing over at From Expertise to Authority, while not specific to writers, will be a benefit to writers—especially nonfiction writers moving from a first or main career to a second act or sideline career. And I thought that the best way to share with you what I’ll be doing over at From Expertise to Authority is to share my first podcast episode with you here. These episodes are bite-sized—this one is about seven-and-a-half minutes long, and if you prefer it in text form, it’s a quick read on Substack at Matty Dalrymple.

Next week on The Indy Author Podcast, we’ll resume our regular interview format with a conversation with Laura Goode about THE IMPORTANCE OF SELF-ADVOCACY, and that’s an episode you won’t want to miss. Laura is a writer with an MFA from Columbia University, a poet, a film producer, a writer of nonfiction that has appeared in BuzzFeed, New Republic, New York Magazine, and elsewhere, and she teaches at Stanford University, where she was honored with the 2025 Walter J. Gores Award, Stanford's highest award for excellence in teaching. She was recommended to me as a guest by the wonderful Jeff Elkins, the Dialogue Doctor, and his recommendations are always top-notch. I’m looking forward to relistening to that conversation, and I know you’ll enjoy it as well.

If you’d like to revisit any of the information I’ve shared in this episode, a full transcript—not just a summary—is available at theindyauthor.com.

And now, the first, fast episode of the From Expertise to Authority podcast: How Real-World Needs Shaped a Universal Framework.

Read the article on which the first episode of the From Expertise to Authority podcast was based here.

Episode 316 - Taking a Break for a Creative Refresh with Matty Dalrymple

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

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Matty Dalrymple discusses TAKING A BREAK FOR A CREATIVE REFRESH, including how intentional downtime can boost author productivity, help you refocus on your priorities, and give you space to plan your writing and publishing goals; why a December reset can support long-term creative sustainability; how to balance the business of being an indie author with your creative work; and practical strategies you can use to start the new year with greater clarity, energy, and momentum.

Matty Dalrymple is the author of the Lizzy Ballard Thrillers, beginning with ROCK PAPER SCISSORS; the Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels, beginning with THE SENSE OF DEATH; and the Ann Kinnear Suspense Shorts. She is a member of International Thriller Writers and Sisters in Crime. Matty also writes, speaks, and consults on the writing craft and the publishing voyage, and shares what she’s learned on THE INDY AUTHOR PODCAST. She has written books on the business of short fiction and podcasting for authors; her articles have appeared in "Writer’s Digest" magazine. She serves as the Campaigns Manager for the Alliance of Independent Authors.

Episode Links

https://www.theindyauthor.com/

https://www.mattydalrymple.com/

https://www.facebook.com/TheIndyAuthor/

https://www.facebook.com/matty.dalrymple/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/matty-dalrymple/

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast! Today my guest is ... me! : )

This is going to be a pretty short episode because, as you know if you’ve listened to the intros of previous episodes or have been reading my weekly email newsletter, I decided to take (most of) December off.

For a while, I’ve been considering options for reducing the time I spend on the podcast, including taking one week a month off, which felt awkward, or putting out a new episode every 10 days rather than seven, which felt like it would be confusing for listeners (not to mention for me). But then I was having a post-interview chat with Polly Campbell, who was my guest for Episode 315 Reigniting Your Creativity with Writing Contests, and who is also the host of the Simply Write with Polly Campbell podcast—I joined her on her podcast in November to talk about Creative Control for Indie Authors—and she mentioned that she was going to be taking a month off, and I thought, What a good idea.

I hope I don’t jinx myself by saying this, but one my primary  goals for taking a break is to give myself some time to focus on fiction. Between my nonfiction work, both books and articles; speaking engagements; my work for the Alliance of Independent Authors, and consulting, fiction is the thing that keeps getting pushed to the back burner. I’ve been so close to finishing Book 6 of the Lizzy Ballard Thrillers for so long, and I hope if I have some concentrated writing time, I’ll be able to wrap that up. I also have two nearly ready standalones, and I’d love to get those into readers’ hands next year. Not to mention Book 7 of the Ann Kinnear series, which I have a high-level outline for.

At least I finally got the last stories I needed for my long-planned Ann Kinnear Suspense Short Collection, “A Year of Kinnear”! I realized how long that has been in the works when Mark Lefebvre and I were working on the 2nd Edition of “Taking the Short Tack,” the first edition of which first came out in 2020 and contained a reference to a planned collection, and Mark said, “Well, surely you’ve published that by now ... right?” Which was enough to light a fire under me and get me to write three stories in three months: the October story “More Than a Jest,” the November story “Ever Thanks,” and the December story “Wondering Eyes,” all of which are available over at Curios.com. (In fact, I’m considering taking the shorts down from all the other retailers so that they are only available on Curios, where I get 100% of the list price, versus as little as a third of the list price on other some sites, like Amazon.) So assembling the collection is going to be another thing I’ll work on during my break.

I’m also hard at work on putting a plan together for a new consulting offering, so I’ll be sharing more about that in upcoming episodes.

In preparation for that, I’m once again vowing to spend more time on LinkedIn. I realized that it’s not fair to pop onto LinkedIn, scroll through a few posts, and decide it’s not worth my time. No social media platform is worth a writer’s time if they don’t curate the feed! So I’m liking and, more importantly, commenting on the posts that are tied to my goals for the platform—to connect with fellow professionals in the writing and publishing space. And, just as a side note ... if you’re on LinkedIn and your profile picture is more than ten years old, it’s time to update it! In fact, if your profile picture is more than three years old, I’d say it’s time to updated it, but LinkedIn is far and away the worst platform for displaying ridiculously old profile pictures!

I’m probably not going to get through all that work in one month just with the time I save from podcast production, but I hope that I’ll at least have the time to regroup, start that work, and have a plan in place going into 2026 for how I will make more time for my fiction.

Another change I’m going to experiment with is ads. I have been resisting including ads in the podcast for years, but I finally decided I need to give it a try, in part because I started thinking about my own podcast listening experience, and I realize that almost all the podcasts I listen to include ads, and even thought I don’t love them, I don’t find them particularly distracting, and finding ways to make the podcast more of an income-earner helps me justify the time I spend on it. I’m going to experiment with just one ad at the beginning of the episode and one at the end, so I’m hoping that won’t be too disruptive.

So ... why pick December to take off?

One reason is that I really needed a break, and December was coming up!

Another is that podcast listening generally takes a dip in December anyway, with a lot of us distracted by holiday events and family get-togethers and other year-end celebrations.

If I was planning further ahead, and if I was planning on taking a month off based solely on my own schedule, I probably wouldn’t pick December ... maybe September, when Wade and I spend 2 weeks on Mount Desert Island Maine. But September feels like a time when writers are gearing up—maybe for going back to school, or getting kids ready to go back to school, or getting ready to dive into that fourth quarter crunch to meet the year’s goal—and I didn’t want to skip the podcast during that time when you might be especially relying on my guests’ expertise.

I might have picked November, when, for the last several years, I’ve been in Las Vegas for a week for Author Nation (and then spending a week recovering).

Speaking of Author Nation ...

... I wanted to take a moment to thank all the folks who took a minute to let me know that you value The Indy Author Podcast. Podcasters can check stats that suggest how many people are downloading the episodes, but there’s really nothing like hearing it from an  actual listener, so thank you.

While I was in Vegas, I got to catch up not only with podcast listeners but also with past guests of The Indy Author Podcast and the Self-Publishing with ALLi podcast! That included ...

Alexa Bigwarfe

Becca Syme

Chelle Honiker

Cindy Gunderson

Dale L. Roberts (I can’t believe that was the first time I had met up with Dale in person)

Damon Courtney

Dan Wood

David Viergutz

Douglas Pratt

Evan Gow

Greg Keogh

Jami Albright

Jessie Kwak

Jim Azevedo

Joanna Penn

Joe Solari

Johnny B. Truant

JP Rindfleisch IX

Karen Inglis

Kerrie Flanagan

Kevin Tumlinson

Kristen Tate

(I’m almost through the list)

Mark Leslie Lefebvre

Michael Evans

Orna Ross

Phil Marshall

Ricardo Fayet

Roland Denzel

Sacha Black

Sara Rosett

Troy Lambert

And, last but not least, Wade Walton, who is not only my husband but was also brave enough to be my guest on Episode 2 to discuss Creativity Tips.

I had a goal of taking a selfie with every past guest who was at the conference (actually, I’m terrible at selfies, so it was usually the other person who took the picture)—and I’m *still* posting those on The Indy Author Facebook page with links to that guest’s episodes. And when I look at that photo album, I am so thrilled to have had a chance to talk with all those knowledgeable and generous experts.

I also realized that I had become aware of most of those people by hearing them speak on other podcasts or at author events, or had them recommended by other guests, and that that is really been the best way to find the guests who will be the best match for this how. I fortunately have had only a very few guests that afterwords I felt were not a great match, and most of those were ones I accepted from a cold call pitch or from a pitch from a PR firm. So at least through 2026, I’m going to focus on inviting back past guests back who I feel have brought especially fantastic value to you, or who I know brought fantastic value because I’ve heard that from you through your comments on the episode. If there is a past guest that you would especially like to have back, please drop me a note at matty@mattydalrymple.com to let me know.

A lesson I was reminded of I was prepping the script for this episode is the power of writing things down. I wrote the original version of the script weeks ago, but I found myself returning to it frequently to modify it in response to changes in my plans, and I don’t think I would have thought those plans through in quite so much detail if I hadn’t been writing them down. Plus, I’m sharing them with all of you, so that provides accountability!

Be sure to take advantage of this dynamic yourself. In the couple of hours when you would otherwise be listing to episodes of the podcast in December, set up some time—in-person or virtually—to get together with a writer friend and talk through your plans for the coming year ... or quarter or month or even week, whatever timeframe makes sense for you. Having the time to do that as the year is coming to a close is a gift.

So I kind of like the idea of having this end-of-year regrouping period for myself and for you—I might make the December break a regular part of the podcast schedule.

But I also wanted to remind you that my holiday break doesn’t mean a lack of insights from the expert guests of The Indy Author Podcast—you now have 315 backlist episodes to relisten to, most of whose content is just as valid today as it was when my guests and I first chatted!

For example, if you’re looking for an overview of indie publishing, please check out the series of interviews I did with Orna Ross of the Alliance of Independent Authors on The Seven Processes of publishing—conveniently enough, those were episodes 101-107.

And in December, you can also check out me and other ALLi Team Members hosting episodes of the Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast. In fact, the November 30 episode is me talking with ALLi Awards and Story Marketing Advisor Hannah Jacobson about how indie authors can find and make the most of book awards. Just search for self publishing with alli podcast—and that’s ALLi with an I—to find that and many more episodes.

And back to The Indy Author Podcast ... if you’re a writer (or reader) of crime fiction, check out my unofficial mini-series “Mistakes Crime Writers Make ... and How to Avoid Them,” which includes episodes on police procedure, firearms, forensic psychology, forensic psychiatry, working K-9s, bladed weapons, coroners, first responders, the FBI, and PIs. You’ll find a run-down of those at TheIndyAuthor.com/Podcast.

If you go to my YouTube channel, you’ll also find playlists that can serve as mini (and sometimes not so mini) courses on ...

• Author Career Development and Branding

• Succeeding as an Author Speaker

• Short Fiction

• Podcasting for Authors

• My Tools Cruise series, with demos of tools and apps to support your writing and publishing work

• My What I Learned video series, where I ask authors two questions related to their latest book: What did they learn from that book that they would like to share with their fellow writers, and what did they learn that they would like to share with their fellow readers.

So this month’s recommended resource is The Indy Author, and all the resources available not only on the podcast and on YouTube, but also on my website, which Writer’s Digest has named one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers four years in a row.

And one final note: In January, the price of my consulting services will be going up. Chart Your Course, which is a tailored consulting service designed to help authors gain clarity on your creative and business goals and to craft strategic and tactical plans to reach your desired destination as an author, will be going up from $175 for the first one-hour session and $125 for each subsequent one-hour session to $195 for the first session and $145 for each subsequent session. BUT if you book your first session before December 31, 2025, you’ll lock in the 2025 price not only for the first session but for any subsequent sessions. (And you just have to book the session before December 31—the session itself can take place after January 1 if that works better for you.)

Similarly, the price for my Pod Pro Author Coaching service, which prepares you for successful podcast guest appearances, will go up from $125 to $145, but here, too, you’ll enjoy the 2025 rate if you book before December 31, even if the session happens after that.

And if you’d like to send me a holiday present, please take a moment to leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform to help other writers who are looking for support with their writing craft and publishing voyage find it—or consider buying me, let’s say, a mulled cider via Buy Me a Coffee! You’ll find a link at the bottom of any page at TheIndyAuthor.com.

When the podcast resumes on January 6, 2026, I’ll be speaking with Laura Goode about THE IMPORTANCE OF SELF-ADVOCACY, and that’s an episode you won’t want to miss. Laura is a writer with an MFA from Columbia University, a poet, a film producer, a writer of nonfiction that has appeared in BuzzFeed, New Republic, New York Magazine, and elsewhere, and she teaches at Stanford University, where she was honored with the 2025 Walter J. Gores Award, Stanford's highest award for excellence in teaching. She was recommended to me as a guest by the wonderful Jeff Elkins, the Dialogue Doctor, and his recommendations are always top-notch. I’m looking forward to relistening to that conversation, and I know you’ll enjoy it as well.

If you’d like to revisit any of the information I’ve shared in this episode, a full transcript—not just a summary—is available at theindyauthor.com.

Until next time, here’s wishing you a wonderful holiday season, and I look forward to being back with you in January!

Episode 315 - Reigniting Your Creativity with Writing Contests with Polly Campbell

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

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Polly Campbell discusses REIGNITING YOUR CREATIVITY WITH WRITING CONTESTS, including

how contests can boost your creativity, help you generate new story ideas, and strengthen your writing craft; how prompts and deadlines can push you out of your comfort zone in a positive way; why low-stakes experimentation leads to better work; and how connecting with other writers through contests can build community, motivation, and momentum in your writing life.

Polly Campbell is the author of You, Recharged: How to Beat Fatigue (Mostly), Amp Up Your Energy (Usually), and Enjoy Life Again, (Always), and three other books. She is the host of the Simply Write w/Polly Campbell podcast and her magazine articles about writing and strategies for living a better life appear regularly in online and print publications. She is a regular speaker at writer's conferences. Find her insights on writing craft and crafting a writer's life at simplywrite.substack.com.

Episode Links

https://simplywrite.substack.com/

https://pollycampbell.com/

https://www.instagram.com/pollylcampbell/

Referenced in the podcast:

Matty’s appearance on Polly’s podcast, Simply Write: https://open.spotify.com/episode/70wGA0erZcc5rgwtViqhr5

More resources:

https://selfpublishingadvice.org/author-awards-contests-rated-reviewed/

Episode 295 - Unlocking the Power of Book Awards with Hannah Jacobson

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

Episode 205 - The Pros and Cons of Writing Contests with Becky Tuch

Summary

In this episode of The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Polly Campbell about the unexpected creative and professional benefits of entering writing contests. Drawing from Polly’s experience as an author, podcaster, and magazine contributor, the conversation explores how contests can provide structure, motivation, community, and a renewed sense of creative freedom for writers.

WHY WRITERS ENTER CONTESTS
Polly explains that her interest in writing contests began when she noticed how many people in her writer’s group participated in them—not necessarily to win, but for other reasons entirely. When she asked why writers submitted to contests that attracted hundreds or thousands of entries, one colleague told her, “It has nothing to do with whether I’m gonna win or not.” This perspective surprised her in a culture focused on outcomes, and it inspired her to explore contests as a way to improve the writing process itself.

Polly shares that her own first contest entry began almost as a “lark,” squeezed between errands and family activities. Without the pressure of contracts, edits, or publication timelines, she found the experience fun and creatively liberating. The difference, she says, is that contest writing has a built-in deadline, but it is not tied to payment or business goals. This combination creates what she calls “useful pressure”—the kind of structure that motivates without overwhelming.

THE BENEFITS OF DEADLINES AND STRUCTURE
A major theme of the conversation is the value of deadlines. Polly says that even though her professional writing life is filled with deadlines, the constraint of writing a story in 24 hours for a contest was different because the stakes were low and the creative space was wide open. She describes receiving a prompt at midnight and having until the next midnight to produce a story, all while living her regular life. This forced her to write quickly, without overthinking or over-editing.

Polly explains that such structure helps writers “play within the boundaries” and pushes them past perfectionism. She notes that when writers polish too much, they can “revise and edit that energy right out of the piece.” Contests prevent this by limiting the time available and encouraging writers to trust their instincts.

CREATIVE FREEDOM AND EXPERIMENTATION
Polly talks about how contest prompts and short word counts encouraged her to approach writing more playfully. One of her prompts required a sleeping bag to appear in the story—something she had never written about before. Instead of feeling restricted, she found the randomness energizing. She says she wrote a “ludicrous little story” and had “the best time,” and that the experience reminded her why she loved writing in the first place.

She also notes that one of her writing friends enters contests year-round specifically because he likes having both the structure and the freedom that contests provide. He later uses these raw, energetic drafts to build anthologies, demonstrating how contest submissions can become publishable material.

COMMUNITY AND CONNECTION
One of the surprising benefits Polly discovered was the sense of community surrounding many writing contests. Although she describes herself as “not a joiner,” her participation in a large contest hosted by NYCMidnight introduced her to writers across genres and experience levels. The contest provided forums where participants could discuss prompts, share entries, and connect with others writing in the same round.

Polly notes that some writers she interviewed for an article had formed lasting friendships through these forums, even becoming daily writing partners despite living on opposite coasts. She emphasizes that in a time when writing can feel isolating, contests can bring writers together into supportive, energized groups.

Matty adds that genre-focused contests may be especially useful for writers who want feedback or community connected directly to their style or subject matter. Both agree that contests with active communities can be an excellent way for writers to meet others who share their interests and goals.

CONTESTS AS A TOOL FOR PRODUCTIVITY
Polly underscores that many writers benefit from contests because they offer a concrete reason to write—especially helpful for those balancing writing with day jobs or family commitments. One writer she knows openly admits, “I would not write without a deadline.”

This resonates with Matty, who shares that she has a personal goal of completing twelve short stories for a planned collection, but stalled after nine. She jokes that entering more contests may be the push she needs to finish the remaining stories.

AUTHOR NOTES AND READER ENGAGEMENT
Matty also describes how contests can enhance the reader experience. She enjoys writing author’s notes that reveal how a story began—especially when the idea sprang from an unexpected prompt, such as a requirement that “the bad guy has to win” or that profanity be encouraged. She says readers appreciate learning those behind-the-scenes elements, and Polly agrees, saying she loves hearing “where ideas come from” because it reminds writers that inspiration can emerge from anywhere.

CONSIDERING FEEDBACK AND CRITIQUE
The conversation touches on contests that include peer critique. Polly acknowledges that some writers enjoy receiving feedback from fellow participants, but she personally prefers not to open her work to large numbers of strangers who may not understand her goals or experience level. She encourages writers to read contest rules carefully to understand what rights they are granting and whether their work will be publicly shared or critiqued.

Matty mentions the importance of avoiding predatory contests and suggests looking for contests that meet standards such as transparent judging processes, appropriate prize structures, and fair rights retention. Polly adds that many legitimate contests do not require an entry fee, providing options for writers at all budget levels.

LOW-STAKES PRACTICE AND LONG-TERM GROWTH
Polly believes that writing contests help writers grow because they provide short, high-energy opportunities to practice essential storytelling skills—strong openings, tension, character, and structure—without the pressure of a large project. She says that good writing requires these fundamentals in every format, whether “an email or a book.” Contest entries, with their tight deadlines and focused prompts, allow writers to practice these skills in concentrated bursts.

She also highlights the satisfaction that comes from finishing a piece quickly, especially compared to longer works like books or feature-length articles. Small wins build momentum and help writers rediscover joy in the craft.

CONCLUSION
The episode concludes with both Matty and Polly agreeing that writing contests offer valuable opportunities for creativity, community, and skill-building. Whether a writer enters to improve craft, meet other writers, or simply enjoy a creative challenge, contests can provide a structured-yet-playful space for experimentation. Polly encourages writers to explore contests that match their comfort level and objectives, and to embrace the aspects of the process that help them stay motivated and connected to their work.

Episode 314 - Harnessing AI for Affordable Audio with Phil Marshall

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

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Phil Marshall discusses HARNESSING AI FOR AFFORDABLE AUDIO, including how AI narration is transforming audiobook creation for indie authors, how tools like Spoken make professional-quality audio faster and more affordable, and how authors can customize voices, experiment with multi-voice storytelling, and bring their books to new audiences through AI-powered audio production.

Phil Marshall is a technologist, entrepreneur, and storyteller who thrives at the intersection of imagination and execution. He is the founder and CEO of Spoken, a platform transforming how authors and readers connect through AI-powered audio storytelling. Spoken empowers authors to create immersive single, dual, and multi-voice audiobooks.

Episode Links

https://www.spoken.press/

https://www.youtube.com/@Spoken-Press

Referenced in interview:

Episode 307 - Crafting Stories for the Ear with Cindy Gunderson

Audio of two of Matty’s Writer’s Digest article using her Spoken-generated voice clone: https://www.theindyauthor.com/publications

Summary

​In this episode of The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Phil Marshall about harnessing AI for affordable audio, exploring how artificial intelligence is transforming audiobook creation for authors. Phil is the founder and CEO of Spoken, an AI-powered platform designed to help authors bring their stories to life through high-quality, cost-effective audio narration.

ORIGIN STORY AND MOTIVATION

Phil explains that his journey to founding Spoken began with writing. Although trained as a surgeon, he spent over 25 years in technology, including leading a conversational AI company in healthcare. After selling that company in 2021, he turned his attention to finishing his debut science fiction thriller, TAMING THE PERILOUS SKIES, which launched in September. As an “audio-only reader,” Phil was naturally drawn to audio storytelling and began exploring AI text-to-speech tools.

During a speculative fiction workshop at Taos Toolbox with Nancy Kress and Walter Jon Williams, Phil wrote a short story filled with dialogue and multiple accents. When he tried to create an AI-narrated version, he found that “it was horrible—not quality-wise necessarily, but the tools weren’t there, the workflow wasn’t there.” Recognizing the potential for AI to help authors produce vivid, affordable audio, he created Spoken to make professional-grade narration accessible to all writers.

AI NARRATION AS AN ACCESSIBLE OPTION FOR AUTHORS

Matty notes that for most authors, “paying for human narration is the most expensive part” of producing a book—often more costly than editing or cover design. Many books, she says, “are never gonna get into audio unless there’s some option other than the time that a human narrator would put into it.” Phil agrees and describes Spoken as a platform “built by authors for authors,” emphasizing affordability and creative control.

Spoken’s workflow allows users to upload manuscripts, analyze text for genre, style, and tone, and then select narration options, including single narrator, duet, or multi-voice formats. Phil demonstrates how the system parses dialogue, assigns voices to characters, and uses emotional cues to create dynamic narration.

AI VOICES, EMOTION, AND PERFORMANCE

One of the key advances Phil highlights is the automation of emotional cues and dialogue pacing. Spoken’s AI analyzes story rhythm, emotional tone, and character interactions to apply effects such as whispering, laughing, or shouting only when appropriate. Earlier versions, Phil admits, were “overzealous” with emotional assignments, but now “we only use them sparingly if it’s something dramatic that is needed.”

Phil gives an example using a short story in which an American man and his British female friend lie on the Oregon coast looking at the stars. Spoken automatically identifies the characters, assigns distinct voices, and even generates a personalized introduction.

COST STRUCTURE AND VALUE

Phil explains that Spoken’s pricing is transparent and scalable. Users can narrate 5,000 words for $10, or $5 if they subscribe for $50 per month. “If you do enough volume, which is 50,000 words in a month, you’re well justified in subscribing,” he says. “For a 100,000-word novel, if you’re a subscriber, that’s $100. And I don’t care if that’s single narrator, duet, or multi-voice—it’s still going to be $100.” He calls this “a whole new world” for indie authors who previously couldn’t afford audio production.

AI INFLUENCING WRITING STYLE

Matty observes that hearing how AI tools interpret dialogue has made her rethink how she writes. Phil agrees, noting that he “actually write[s] differently for this medium” and often removes dialogue tags, since “you know by listening who it is that is speaking.” He emphasizes that AI audio doesn’t just change how authors publish; it changes how they compose stories, pushing them to think in sound and performance.

For writers using Spoken, dialogue tags can be retained or deleted within the tool. Phil says he often keeps about two-thirds of them: “You want your reader to do the least amount of work necessary—that’s the main thing.”

CONSISTENCY AND CONTROL IN SERIES PRODUCTION

When Matty asks about using consistent voices for characters across a series, Phil confirms that this is easy to achieve. Once a user assigns a specific AI voice to a character, it can be reused across multiple projects. The system also excels at attributing dialogue correctly.

AUTHORS’ VOICES AND PERSONALIZATION

Spoken also allows authors to use their own voices. Phil demonstrates how users can record a short script to create a personal AI model that’s “available to you exclusively.” Authors can then use that voice to narrate entire books or combine it with AI or voice actor voices for collaborative narration.

Matty mentions her interest in co-authoring audiobooks, alternating narration with her co-authors. Phil says Spoken doesn’t yet allow real-time pairing of custom voices, but that functionality is planned due to user demand.

AI LIMITATIONS AND EVOLUTION

Phil and Matty discuss areas where AI narration still struggles, such as question intonation and homographs like “read” and “content.” Phil says these issues have improved dramatically and can often be resolved with small adjustments.

He also recounts a humorous example from his own novel, where an AI unexpectedly sang a line of dialogue. “They didn’t know it could do that,” he laughs, describing how the model generated a melody after interpreting the phrase “then began singing to himself.”

Phil emphasizes that AI narration is improving constantly. “This is the worst it will ever be. Today’s the worst it will ever be. Tomorrow is the worst it will ever be,” he says. With each iteration, AI tools gain more contextual awareness and natural delivery.

COMPARING SERVICES: HUME VS. 11 LABS

Spoken integrates with both Hume and 11 Labs, two leading AI voice services. Phil explains that 11 Labs offers “a really nicely reliable service that gets it pretty well right out of the gate,” while Hume delivers a “more natural, emotive sound” but requires more fine-tuning. He often uses both, depending on the project: “If you want a nice delivery where most every reader is gonna be happy, choose single or dual narration with 11 Labs. If you want more emotive, natural-sounding performances, Hume is a great choice.”

PUBLISHING AND DISTRIBUTION

Once an audiobook is complete, authors retain full rights to their work. They can download the files in multiple formats—including chapter-level MP3s or the LPF format required by distributors like Voices and Buy in Audio—and upload them to platforms that accept AI narration. “Spotify for Authors just opened it up to all digital narration on August 1st,” Phil notes, describing it as “a big validation of the AI narration market.”

Spoken also allows authors to stream and share their work directly from the platform, embedding playable samples on their websites or social media. While Spoken doesn’t currently monetize content, Phil says it’s focused on empowering creators: “We don’t claim any rights over it whatsoever. It is entirely yours.”

EXPERIMENTATION AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Phil advises authors new to AI narration to start small. Spoken gives users the first 5,000 words free, and there’s a “sandbox story” that allows them to practice editing and narrating. The company also plans to adjust when payment is required, allowing users to refine projects before purchase. “Sometimes we’re the biggest problem—we get in our own way. So we need to get out of our way,” he jokes.

Matty notes that she plans to experiment further with Spoken after seeing its capabilities in action, especially the ability to choose between Hume and 11 Labs. Phil emphasizes that the system gives authors unprecedented control: they can adjust pacing, emotional tone, and pronunciation (“you can change a word once phonetically and it’ll apply across the board”).

THE ROLE OF AI IN THE FUTURE OF AUDIOBOOKS

Both Matty and Phil agree that AI narration doesn’t replace human narrators but instead expands what’s possible. Phil summarizes it as “not really a zero-sum game.” He sees AI as a way to bring backlist titles and shorter works into audio that might otherwise never be produced. “Audio has always been an afterthought just because of the cost,” he says. “Now those can be brought to life—and be brought to life in new and exciting ways that weren’t possible before.”

Phil concludes that the mission of Spoken is simple: “It’s really about bringing stories to readers.” AI, he says, is making that easier and more affordable than ever before.

Episode 313 - Unearthing Story Treasures with Beth Daley of Europeana

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Beth Daley discusses UNEARTHING STORY TREASURES WITH EUROPEANA, including how writers and storytellers can use the Europeana digital archive to spark creativity, deepen research, and find free resources for their projects—whether you’re looking for historical details, artistic inspiration, or unique images for your book covers. Beth Daley shares tips on navigating millions of cultural artifacts, using visual prompts to fuel your writing, and turning research rabbit holes into story gold.

Dr. Beth Daley is a novelist, cultural and creative writer and Europeana's Editorial Adviser. She works on engaging a broad range of audiences in Europeana’s work and content. She has a PhD in Creative Writing, runs a range of writing workshops and her first novel, ‘Blood and Water' is published by Hic Dragones in Manchester. A self-confessed story addict, Beth has led various initiatives in digital storytelling with Europeana, including acting as new writing mentor in Europeana’s Digital Storytelling Festival Online Creative Residency.

Episode Links

https://www.europeana.eu/en

https://www.linkedin.com/in/beth-daley-a032b537/

Related episodes:

Episode 312 - Storytelling through Epistolary Fiction with David Viergutz

Summary

In this episode of The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Dr. Beth Daley about Unearthing Story Treasures with Europeana, including how writers and storytellers can use this free digital resource to find inspiration, conduct research, and access millions of images, texts, and artifacts to enrich their creative work.

WHAT IS EUROPEANA?
Beth explains that Europeana is a website funded by the European Commission that brings together digitized collections from museums, galleries, libraries, and archives across Europe and beyond. It includes photographs, scans, 3D models, videos, audio recordings, and written materials. “You can go to the website and search for something and you can get results from a tiny museum in rural Estonia next to something from the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands or the British Library,” she says. Europeana currently houses about 60 million items, roughly half of which are licensed for reuse. All materials are free to access, and users can filter their searches based on rights and licensing to determine what can be used commercially.

HOW WRITERS CAN USE EUROPEANA
Beth notes that writers have always used libraries as sources of inspiration and research, and Europeana serves a similar purpose in digital form. Writers can explore the collections for creative writing prompts, detailed research, or even practical applications like book cover art and marketing materials. “If you want some inspiration, you could look at our most popular items,” Beth suggests, noting that the site refreshes frequently so there’s always something new to discover. Writers can search for topics that match their story’s setting or theme—such as seventeenth-century fashion, World War I artifacts, or folk traditions—and use the visuals or historical details to add authenticity and texture to their writing.

Beth also emphasizes that half the materials on Europeana are licensed for reuse. Each item has a rights statement indicating its status—public domain, Creative Commons, or in copyright—so creators know how they can use it. “You can take an illustration and use it in your magazine article or maybe for your cover art,” she says.

EUROPEANA’S WRITERS’ ROOM AND CREATIVE EVENTS
Beyond the collections themselves, Europeana offers resources specifically designed for writers. Beth describes the Europeana Writers’ Room, a monthly free online creative writing workshop that uses “ekphrastic prompts”—images used as inspiration for writing. Participants meet on the first Wednesday of each month, view an image from the collection, and then write freely based on what it evokes. “Nobody has to share anything, but you can if you want,” Beth says. The sessions are designed to spark creativity and build a sense of community among writers.

She also discusses additional interactive activities tied to Europeana, including “Shut Up and Write” sessions and downloadable “story dice.” The Shut Up and Write sessions provide structured writing time and accountability. While participants work quietly, she displays images from the Europeana collection on screen for optional inspiration. The story dice feature printable templates with images from the archive—faces, emotions, landscapes, objects, and genres—that can be rolled to generate writing prompts or story elements. They’re useful for solo writers, workshops, or even classroom settings.

SEARCHING EUROPEANA EFFECTIVELY
Matty asks for tips on how to navigate such a vast archive, and Beth offers practical advice. “You can start with a word, but quite often that gives you thousands and thousands of results,” she says. The key is to use filters. Writers can filter by country, rights status, or even color. “Let’s say you are looking for stilettos and you want red stilettos—you can narrow it down by color and only have red stilettos returned to you.” For academic or detailed research, there’s also an advanced search feature that allows users to drill down into metadata.

For those who prefer to browse rather than search, Beth recommends starting with the “Collections” page, which organizes materials around themes such as migration, sports, newspapers, or the First World War. These curated sections include editorial articles, virtual exhibitions, and educational materials. The site also highlights the most popular items from the past day or two, which Beth says is “a really nice way of browsing because you’ll always get something unexpected.”

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSING
Beth acknowledges that copyright can be complicated, especially because it varies by country. However, Europeana makes the process easier by providing a rights statement with each item. Items in the public domain or with Creative Commons Zero licenses can be used freely. Others may require attribution or prohibit commercial use or alterations. “Europeana can’t grant permission because we don’t own the items,” Beth notes. “All the rights come from the individual institutions that hold the items.”

Beth also mentions that users can filter by image quality, which is useful for those wanting to use images in design projects like book covers. High-resolution images are ideal for professional applications.

TURNING RESEARCH INTO STORY
Matty raises the challenge of balancing research and writing, noting how easy it is for authors to get lost in rabbit holes. Beth agrees and advises writers to separate research from drafting. She suggests using free writing to explore what details stand out after the research phase. “Find that bespoke little detail about something that you can use to manifest all the rest of it,” she says. “You might conjure a lot of that by just picking out a particular detail or using it as a seasoning here and there rather than over-salting everything.”

Matty adds that separating research and writing in time helps authors focus on what’s truly important to the story. “What sticks in your mind is maybe an indicator of what’s going to be that telling detail,” she says. Beth agrees: “If you remember it after it’s sat in the drawer for a week, that may be the detail that you want to include.”

DIGITAL STORYTELLING AND CREATIVE RESIDENCIES
Beth also shares details about Europeana’s Digital Storytelling Festival, a two-day online event held annually in May that celebrates innovative storytelling across mediums. The festival features talks, workshops, and social sessions showcasing creative uses of cultural heritage. It also includes a digital creative residency program with a writing strand. Each year, the residency explores a different theme—such as LGBTQ+ stories, journeys, or food—and participants create new works under the guidance of mentors.

As the writing mentor for the residency, Beth has seen how participants blend personal stories with historical research. She recalls a visual artist who invented a “beer god” as part of an exhibition and used the residency to research the history of beer. Another participant, a writer in Corfu, explored traditional red sauce recipes and connected them to memories of his grandmothers. “We encourage people to connect with their own experience as well as use the historical collections,” Beth says. “That’s what really makes these stories come to life.”

She explains that while digital storytelling can involve multimedia elements like animation, collage, or video, the storytelling itself remains at the heart of the process. “Sometimes people get a bit carried away with the technology,” Beth notes. “The important part is the storytelling because the digital and technological elements should melt into the background so that the story is brought to the front.”

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF EUROPEANA
Beth encourages writers, artists, and teachers to explore Europeana without hesitation. “You can’t break anything,” she says. “Just go and enter something and have a go.” Whether for inspiration, research, or practical creative use, the platform offers endless opportunities to explore cultural heritage and spark new ideas. Matty adds that after exploring the site herself, she quickly found herself lost in an evening of discovery—particularly enjoying architectural cutaway drawings.

Beth closes by reminding listeners that Europeana.eu is available worldwide and open to everyone, including users outside Europe. “Go down rabbit holes and just enjoy it,” she says. “We’d love to know what you find.”

Episode 312 - Storytelling through Epistolary Fiction with David Viergutz

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David Viergutz discusses STORYTELLING THROUGH EPISTOLARY FICTION, including how immersive fiction can pull readers off the screen and into the story through physical letters and artifacts; the storytelling and business principles behind David Viergutz’s Scare Mail and Epistolary projects; how emotion, nostalgia, and connection drive engagement; and how authors can use these techniques to stand out in today’s crowded publishing world.

David Viergutz is the founder and CEO of two groundbreaking ventures reshaping modern storytelling: The Nightmare Engine, a multi–seven-figure horror publishing and logistics company, and Epistolary, the world’s first publishing house dedicated exclusively to epistolary fiction—serialized storytelling told through letters, documents, and physical media

Episode Links

https://epistolary.com/

David Viergutz on Joanna Penn’s The Creative Penn podcast: https://www.thecreativepenn.com/2024/09/02/writing-horror-and-selling-direct-with-david-viergutz/

Summary

In this episode of The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with David Viergutz about expanding storytelling through epistolary fiction and creating immersive reading experiences that engage audiences beyond the page. David discusses his ventures, including The Nightmare Engine—a multi–seven-figure horror publishing and logistics company—and Epistolary, the world’s first publishing house dedicated exclusively to serialized storytelling through letters, documents, and physical media. Together, Matty and David explore how authors can rethink traditional storytelling, create meaningful emotional connections with readers, and build sustainable indie publishing businesses by merging creativity and strategy.

THE BIRTH OF SCARE MAIL
David explains that his company’s concept, Scare Mail, was born from his desire to stand out in the crowded indie publishing world. Even before the rise of AI, he saw the challenge of differentiating himself in a marketplace where everyone was “competing for the same attention.” He describes himself as “a writer, not necessarily a novelist,” emphasizing that storytelling can take many forms. His early work contained journal entries, maps, evidence logs, and QR codes leading to audio downloads—elements that foreshadowed the immersive approach of Scare Mail. Over time, he recognized that his inclination to blend text with artifacts naturally evolved into this new model of storytelling.

Scare Mail delivers serialized fiction through physical letters and documents that arrive in readers’ mailboxes. Each item contributes to the unfolding narrative, turning the reader into an active participant. David says this model required him to “abandon [his] vanity as a novelist” and embrace storytelling as a broader craft that could transcend traditional book formats.

THE RULES OF EPISTOLARY STORYTELLING
At Epistolary, every story must follow three rules that define the genre. First, “Why can this not be a novel?” Each story must justify why it is being told through letters and physical media rather than as a conventional narrative. For example, a recipe, a crossword puzzle, or an old-fashioned energy bill must have a purpose that connects to the plot.

Second, “What’s the ticking time bomb?” The serialized nature of the format requires built-in urgency or progression—whether the story unfolds over 12 letters, 24 letters, or more. Readers need to feel momentum and anticipation as the installments arrive.

Third, “Why is the reader getting the letters?” Each story must explain why the reader is receiving this correspondence. In one example, a space-based story involves letters ejected from an abandoned spacecraft, collected by another ship, and sent to readers because the writer aboard wants her experiences remembered after her death. As David explains, “If you can’t explain to the reader why they’re getting it, you’re missing something.”

He contrasts this intentionality with other companies that market “story letters” but position readers merely as observers: “It’s like buying a novel chopped into a bunch of pieces. Why am I involved?” His goal is to make the reader’s role meaningful.

CREATING EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCES
David says that the inspiration for Scare Mail’s emotional impact came from an unlikely source: Taylor Swift. He drew parallels between the music industry and publishing, noting that musicians monetize experiences across multiple tiers—from streaming to merchandise to live concerts. “If I know anything about sales,” he says, “it’s sell the most expensive thing you can.” For authors, he believes that high-value storytelling experiences can parallel a live concert if they elicit strong feelings. “People will pay anything to feel something,” he explains.

He emphasizes that what fans remember most isn’t the concert’s details but the emotions they felt. Scare Mail is designed to do the same through narrative immersion and tactile engagement. The sense of nostalgia—waiting for mail, opening envelopes, unfolding letters—creates an emotional ritual that digital platforms can’t replicate. “There is nothing good in that mailbox,” he says of everyday bills and junk mail, “and I knew people had sold stories via letters before. What I think we’ve done is a concept done better—with intention to provide something of value that solves an issue for the recipient.”

David sees Scare Mail as a hybrid between storytelling and personal experience, bridging the gap between fiction and reality. “We can attack real problems for the person through story,” he says, connecting the format to emotional and psychological engagement.

LOGISTICS AND SERIALIZATION
Matty asks about the logistics of serialized storytelling when mail delivery can be unpredictable. David explains that each installment includes light recaps to orient the reader, ensuring that even if a letter arrives out of order, the story remains coherent. He also shares operational insights: after sending over a million letters, only about 3,000 required resending—a testament to both the system’s reliability and reader enthusiasm.

While serialized fiction often relies on cliffhangers, David says Scare Mail’s pacing is intentionally variable. Because the format itself sets reader expectations, it doesn’t require constant suspense. “People know they’re buying either a 24-letter or 12-letter story,” he says. “They know it will resolve by the end.” The storytelling rhythm mirrors that of a novel, with highs and lows, while the tactile nature of each installment adds an extra layer of engagement.

COMMUNITY AND HUMAN CONNECTION
A central philosophy behind Scare Mail and Epistolary is to “get back to being human.” David sees the company’s audience as people seeking a break from screens, algorithms, and digital noise. “There’s too much instant gratification,” he says. “Let’s get back to being human.”

This philosophy extends to a community initiative called “Care Mail,” which pairs subscribers as pen pals. Participants exchange handwritten letters with others across the world—“nothing typed,” David emphasizes. Some have maintained ongoing correspondence for over a year, building friendships and even exchanging packages. While not monetized, Care Mail deepens emotional engagement and reinforces the core value of genuine connection.

Readers also share their creative responses, compiling their letters into scrapbooks and art projects. David notes that while Scare Mail’s Facebook community exists, its purpose isn’t typical marketing. Instead, it’s about shared humanity and storytelling.

STORY AND CHARACTER ABOVE ALL
Despite the business and marketing components, David insists that story quality remains paramount: “Only a good story matters most. You could forget everything else.” Epistolary’s motto—“Story or Die”—underscores this focus. The company won’t publish works that don’t meet high narrative standards, regardless of presentation quality.

Character development is equally critical. “With story or die also comes character or die,” David says. He cites examples such as PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, where Will Turner is the true protagonist, even though Captain Jack Sparrow is the more compelling character. Likewise, in epistolary storytelling, readers must connect with the characters’ voices and motives to stay invested.

Some Scare Mail stories are told through intercepted letters, allowing readers to feel like engaged observers rather than direct participants. David avoids turning his projects into “games,” emphasizing that Scare Mail is storytelling, not puzzle-solving: “At that point, I’ve created a game—and games have a different set of rules than a story.”

BALANCING BUSINESS AND CREATIVITY
Matty asks how David balances storytelling goals with business realities. He says the two are intertwined: “How can we better position the product to solve solutions for the reader?” Scare Mail’s marketing emphasizes emotional resonance and problem-solving—addressing digital fatigue, restoring anticipation, and transforming mundane mail into something readers look forward to.

He compares it to selling mattresses: “Everybody can understand the value of a good mattress. It’s the same with storytelling. You still have to explain why yours is better.” By aligning messaging with emotional needs, Scare Mail sustains both creative integrity and profitability.

David also advocates for author authenticity, challenging writers to stand behind their work completely. “I want somebody who stands behind their story so much they’re willing to make this offer: You will love my story. If you don’t, let me know, and I will buy the story you want from somebody else.”

THE POWER OF NOSTALGIA
David and Matty conclude by discussing nostalgia’s role in engaging readers. Matty observes that the mailbox has become “the walk of dread” for most people, filled with bills and junk mail. Scare Mail flips that experience into something joyful and personal. David agrees, noting that both those who remember receiving handwritten letters and younger readers who’ve never experienced it find emotional value in physical storytelling. “People will pay anything to feel something,” he reiterates.

David frames himself not as a novelist but as “a multimillion-dollar storyteller,” proud to explore new mediums and challenge creative conventions. He encourages other authors to think the same way: “If we lean into being storytellers, we’ll find other fun mediums than just churning out another romantic book or chasing KU reads.” For him, success lies not in abandoning storytelling’s roots but in rediscovering its power to connect people through tangible, human experience.