Hello and welcome back to the Fiction Author Business School Podcast.So glad you guys decided to come listen to me drone on today.
So this week I am doing, I am reteaching my character workshop which is entitled How to Write Characters That Jump Off the Page Without guessing, being cliche, or banging your head against the wall.
Kind of a mouthful, I know, but it very well conveys what I'm teaching in there.I taught it about a month ago, and I'm teaching it again because it went so well.And that workshop is ongoing as I record this.
So the first thing that I taught was kind of a training on mistakes that people make that are making fiction writing so much harder than it has to be.
It is technically entitled five mistakes, but I also gave two bonuses just because I like to over deliver.So there's actually seven mistakes total that I talk about.
Now this is similar to a podcast that I did a month or two ago where I talked about five mistakes, but they're slightly different too.So there's a little bit of overlap there.
I decided that I wanted to, because it's such a good training, it's so full of really good nuggets and things that are just important for you to understand if you really want to make a go of your writing.
So I wanted to go ahead and post that as just that first training we did as a podcast.But the problem is it was really, really long.And I know you guys are not a fan of super long podcasts.So I'm actually going to divide it into three.
It went about 90 minutes and that way you're only getting like three 30 minute podcasts.It won't be directly into 30 minutes exactly for each one because I need to find a good place to
divide them but it'll be about that it'll be about 30 minutes apiece um so yeah i'm gonna go ahead and let you dive into the first section of it and i'm going to post them three consecutive days you'll actually get three podcasts this week which is a lot more than usual but um just kind of the way that we're rolling this week because we're doing the character workshop if you want to get in on that character workshop you still can okay it's going on right now there are replays so you've already missed um
like the first day training but that's what I'm going to put on the podcast so if you listen to the podcast you'll get that first training anyway.
The second training is called the real difference between flat characters and unforgettable characters and how to harness it.The third training we're going to do it's a four-day workshop so it's one training each day.
The third training is entitled, Are You Accidentally Making Your Characters Boring and How to Fix That.
And then the fourth one is, oh I'm blanking on the title of it, it's something about how to write bestsellers on purpose for the rest of your life, something like that. So anyway, I'm not putting all of the trainings on the podcast.
I'm only doing the mistakes training over the next three days.So if you still want to get in on those trainings, you absolutely can.
Even if you can't make it live because you just are doing something else, working or something, there is a replay link.But in order to get the replay link, you have to register.Otherwise, I don't know where to send the link.I need your email address.
So if that is something you want to do and you want to get in on this free training, you can.And the replays will be available for probably about five days after the end of the training, which is this Thursday.
So even if you're coming to it on the last day, you'll still have four or five days after that to rewatch the trainings.
So in order to register, just go to bit.ly forward slash unforgettable characters and register there and then you can get the replays of the trainings.Meanwhile, let's jump into the first few mistakes that we're talking about.
Mistake number four is not understanding the invisible and foundational aspects of story.Just as most authors do not, what happened? My computer freaked out, there we go.
Just as most authors do not understand the specific and most important readers read by books, which is to feel those big emotions in a safe space, most authors also don't understand the foundations or invisible aspects of story.
So it's just about knowing your craft in order to create better stories, right?What most authors do is, or sorry, I read that wrong.What do most authors plan first when writing their stories? It's the plot, right?
We just start thinking, oh, I know I have the story where x, y, and z is going to happen.And it's like, duh, of course it's plot.Why wouldn't it be plot?But here's the thing, guys.
Planning your plot first might just be the worst way to approach fiction.And I get why you do it.I get why I did it at first.We all do it, you know.
we just don't know any better, because plot is how we read books, it's how we absorb story, it's how we remember the stories we've read.So of course, when we decide to write stories of our own, it's also how we conceive our own stories, right?
Understandable.But I want you to think about what I'm telling you here.There are invisible and foundational aspects of story that readers are not consciously aware of.
But you, as the author, need to be consciously aware of these things and harness them in your story. Now, if you need proof that this is true, understand this, you can find all of these invisible elements in every mainstream success.
Think about, I don't know, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, but it's not just fantasy either.Pride and Prejudice, the Titanic movie, most of Marvel's stuff, okay?
They're present in the most successful stories that are in our society, but most members of the audience couldn't tell you what they are.They couldn't list the invisible elements for you.
So they need to be present for your book to achieve true long-lasting success, but they aren't obvious or completely visible.
In order to understand them, I'm gonna start by giving you my favorite definition of story, which was coined by Christopher Vogler.I don't think that I actually credited him here, but Christopher Vogler, who wrote A Writer's Journey.
He said, a story is a metaphor for a journey that leads to change. The first time I heard that definition, it really, really spoke to me, okay?So the question is, for this definition, who is doing the changing?The answer is your protagonist, okay?
Your character is going to be doing the change.So the foundation of your story then should be the change your character goes through. Most authors do not plan this at all, or do not plan it enough.
For many, it's an afterthought, and that just makes me facepalm, okay?
Most of us know that our characters need to be dynamic, but we either just use the surface changes that the plot of the story naturally brings them through, or we just say something at the beginning and then say the opposite at the end,
as though they've changed their minds, and we think that's good enough, right?Oh, well, this is what happens, and so the character changes like this, so yeah, that's pretty good.Okay, guys, no, no.That's not good enough.
it's never good enough, okay?Please don't fall into the trap of thinking that.
The process I use for storytelling is the same process every human being who has ever lived, does now live, or ever will live on the planet also uses for growth and change, okay?
This is a spiritual process, and we use it for all changes, big and small, okay?We use it to overcome all kinds of trials and stumbling stones, no matter the size.So from something small like,
losing your favorite pen one morning to something huge like deciding what career path to take or who to marry, it's always the same process, okay?It's a spiritual process.
I think some people would say it's a psychological process, but this process is just part of being human, right?It's in our genetics, and it's just the way that human beings are built.So I call this human transformational psychology.
We use it as a guide for the genius story that you have already conceived of, that's already knocking around in your head, And we just use this transformational psychology to guide the change that the protagonist is going to go through.
The rest of your story, if we go back to Vogler's definition, is a metaphor for that change, all right?And that's why the change needs to come first and be foundational.
Now, coaxing these ideas into stories with human transformational psychology, which I often will abbreviate as HTP,
Um, it means that your readers will connect with your stories really deeply and subconsciously, okay, in their soul, because you're using a template that they intuitively know and empathize with because they live it day in and day out.
Okay, so this is like the secret sauce for how to make sure that any story you write
no matter the genre, no matter what the story is about, no matter who the characters are, that you can get your readers to really deeply connect with it and fall in love with it, okay?
But it's not even something they're necessarily consciously aware of.
And ladies, if you are not harnessing HTP in your stories, you're leaving a whole lot of emotion on the table, a whole lot of catharsis on the table, and your stories are never going to be as successful as they otherwise could have been, okay?
So let that marinate for a second or two.This is a really powerful concept, and one that I am pretty sure not very many authors are harnessing.
I really wish that I could put HTTP as the first mistake in this presentation, but it doesn't land as well unless you first understand the power of intentionality, why free online advice doesn't work, and why readers really buy books.
All of those things kind of lead into this, right? Take a moment and give me your thoughts before we head into the next mistake.What are your takeaways from this?Do you have any, oops, let me go back here.Do you have any questions about this?
Is it making sense?Give you just a second while I get some water.Take your mind to a different place.All making sense, good, good, thank you. It really does make sense.Good, I'm glad.
Yeah, for most people, it does make a lot of sense, but it's not something that they think about too intentionally, I guess, when they're writing their stories.Okay, so good.I'm glad it's making sense to you guys.
So let's move into the next mistake, which is number five. Panting without direction or plotting with the conscious.I probably should have put the conscious mind on there.Okay, so where are my panters?Tell me real fast in the chat.
Are you a panter, are you a plotter, or are you a combination of the two?Combo, okay.Plotter for sure, okay, combo.Yep, mostly a panter, okay. All right, so we've got, there's a plotter, we've got a good, we've got some of each, that's good.
So here's the thing.There's this age-old argument, right, about which is better, panseling or plotting, and it's really a very, very ridiculous argument, and I'm going to explain why.
We have two minds, really we have three, but for our purposes, we're gonna talk about two, your conscious and your subconscious mind, right?
The conscious mind takes care of the day-to-day activities, so when you're going to work, when you're making dinner, when you're going through your to-do list, all of that.The subconscious mind houses your emotions and your creativity.
Now, I want you to think about what I've said so far.
Obviously, you're using your creativity when you're writing fiction, but it also houses your emotions, and your emotions are what you want to put into the fiction in order to help the reader feel something, right?
So it just kind of follows then that you need to be writing based on your subconscious mind, not your conscious mind.Now, it's important to understand that we switch between the two all the time.It's totally normal for us to switch between the two.
So let me give you a couple of examples.I know that all of you, because you are writers, have had the experience of losing yourself in a good book.So I want you to think about the last time that happened.
You're sitting in your favorite reading spot, and you're reading either a print book or maybe something on your Kindle, and think about what that experience feels like.
you it's not that you don't know where you are anymore you're you're aware that you're in your room or in your living room or in your kitchen or wherever it is but at the same time you're not focusing on that you're you're letting the story play out in your mind's eye and you're experiencing all the elements of the story you you're paying attention to what's happening in the story to the sensations the characters are going through all of that so
When you do that, that is a perfect example of letting the subconscious mind take over.
Again, it's not that you lose contact with the conscious with where you actually are in the real world, but you're putting that on the back burner and you're letting your subconscious mind take over so that you can experience the story.
If you did not have a subconscious mind to take over, you would not be able to experience story the way that you do.You would just be reading the words on the page rather than
actually kind of living in the experience of the story in your mind, right?So that should tell you two things.Number one, it shows how you can switch back and forth.
And maybe to illustrate this a little bit better, let's say you're reading and you're totally engrossed in the story, right?You're just in the scene and whatever's happening and you can't read it and absorb it fast enough.
And then in the other room, something goes crash, right?Somebody drops a dish or your kids get into something or whatever the case may be.
instantly snaps you out of the story and you have to get up and go see what's going on in the other room, make sure everybody's okay.But when you're done, you can come back and sit down with the book again and get right back into the story.
That's an example of how you switch between your subconscious and your conscious mind.You already do this, you already know how to do it, you will do it naturally.
But it's important to harness it a little bit more than you're doing, which I'll get into in a minute.The other reason I like to use this analogy, it's not even really an analogy, it's an example of how we do this.
is that you have to understand that readers also read stories from the subconscious mind, okay?
We don't read them from our conscious logical mind, and that's important because we need to be creating our stories from the same place that readers are going to be reading them, okay?
Another example is, has anyone ever had the experience of driving home mindlessly?Like it's usually a route that you drive all the time.
So it's home from work or maybe even to work or when you go to the store, you know, the same store you always go to for groceries and then you come home and one day you get home and realize you just drove all that way and you don't remember any of it.
And you start to go, did I run any red lights?Did I stop at all the stop signs?You know, because you don't remember doing it. Well, you did.
If you hadn't, you would probably know because someone would have honked at you or you would have caused an accident or something.But this is another example of the subconscious mind taking over, right?You were just lost in your thoughts.
And so you were driving very, almost robotically, but you, I'm, you know, a hundred percent, you did stop at the red lights, you were observing the traffic laws, you were just doing it automatically, right?
So that's another example of switching between the subconscious and the conscious mind.So you're already doing this. but you probably haven't been harnessing it intentionally.
So the other thing is, I don't want you to think that you've never done this in your writing before.Personally, I don't think there's any way to measure this scientifically, but I don't think it's possible to write fiction from your conscious mind.
I just don't think we'd be able to do it.So that means when you do write, you already are tapping into your subconscious, but you're not doing it as intentionally as I would like you to be.
And if you can be more intentional about it and fully tap into it rather than just having know, subconscious nuggets come out every so often, it'll be a lot easier to write your stories.This also plays into the myth of the muse.
So the myth of the muse, you know, I honestly don't hear it talked about as much as it used to be, but the myth of the muse was always that you had to wait for the muse to strike before you could write anymore.
I literally remember watching a video in school, it was something they showed us as students, and I was probably in the third or fourth grade, I was really young, And it was about an author.And so in that case, it was like a children's author.
And they went into this whole thing where they were trying to teach us about writer's block.And in the video, it was all about this author and how he would not write anything for months and months and months because he was blocked.
And at the time, I didn't question that.But now I just kind of have to facepalm over that because the myth of the muse is absolutely a myth.I do know why it happens.I do know why we get blocked.
And it has to do with the conscious and the subconscious mind.And here it is.It's very simple. When you have writer's block, it's because you are trying to write something with your conscious brain.
Your conscious brain is not accessing your emotions or your creativity.
So basically when we try to force the story, like if we get a template like the hero's journey, and I'm not bashing the hero's journey, I love the hero's journey, but if we get that template and try to force our story into it or try to use it to force what's going to happen next because we're trying to plot what's going to happen next and we don't know how to get from A to B and so we're going okay I'll use the hero's journey and then you just try to force your story into that template,
and you just get blocked and can't figure out anything that's going to work and serve your story, this is why.Because you're using your conscious mind instead of your subconscious mind.
But if you can learn to, on purpose, do what you do when you read books and tuck that conscious mind away, put it on the back burner, and tap directly and fully into your conscious mind, you will never have to worry about writer's block again, ever.
We're going to practice doing that later today.Back to plotting and pansing.
I personally have always been a hardcore outliner, and because of that, I have a lot of authority on this, I can tell you the number one mistake that outliners specifically make, because I've made it many times myself, and because I get complaints about this from other authors.
So tell me if you've ever experienced this. You start outlining, or even if you're not big on outlining, maybe you plan some aspect of your story, some kind of planning.
And then when you sit down to write, you deviate completely from the outline you just made and go in a different direction.And you can't understand why you can't stick to your outline.Has anyone experienced that?
It's one of the number one questions I get from writers.Why do I make an outline and then I just can't seem to stick to it?I don't know what's wrong with me.It's very common, especially among outliners.Let's see. Yes, that is me, absolutely.
Okay, Terry, yes, because I realized my outline was rubbish.Going back to something I missed, will you discuss mistake number four again this week?
Yes, I'm actually gonna, I'll be referencing these mistakes as we go throughout the week, but we will probably also have a bonus Q&A somewhere where I can talk about it some more, so don't worry.
I think by the time we get to the end of this presentation and also as you go through the whole, workshop, it will make a lot more sense to you.I'm just introducing it to you here, so yeah.All right, so we've all done this before.
The reason this happens is, again, because you're using your conscious mind to outline.And this is the number one mistake outliners make.
We tend to use our conscious minds to outline something because we're going, okay, well, we're looking at this template, like, again, let's say the hero's journey, because that's the most well-known.
And we say, okay, well, then something like this is supposed to happen in the story.How could something like that happen in my story?And we come up with the most logical example.
Now, maybe that logical example will end up being the best thing for our story, but most of the time it isn't.So we need to learn to do something differently.
Now, pantsers actually have a leg up here in this particular arena because when they start to pants, like what pantsing actually is, is relaxing the mind just
starting to type or write, if you're using a pen and paper, and we don't realize we're doing this, but what we're actually doing is backburnering the conscious mind and surrendering to the subconscious, and the ideas just start to flow.
So all pancers are are people who realized that outlining was not serving them and that the ideas started to flow when they just started typing.But it really isn't about even typing.
It's about relaxing your subconscious or your conscious mind and letting the ideas flow through your subconscious mind. So am I telling you that everyone should be pantsing and that's the way to go?No, that's not what I'm saying.Hear me out here.
I'm only saying that pantsers are already doing something right and it does give them an advantage.And remember, I'm a hardcore outliner.So that's saying a lot that I'm rah-rah-ing your pantsing right now.
Okay, but what is the problem that most people have with pantsing?Tell me in the chat.What is either your biggest problem with pantsing or what is it that you hear people complaining about when it comes to pantsing?
Yep, and I do already have it on the screen the way that I set this up.So it is that it takes time, right?It takes a lot of time to figure out what your story is that way.And then you end up a lot of times throwing away a lot of words.
And that is why I was always a hardcore outliner because it just horrifies me to write 50,000 words and then throw most of them away.
But that is the problem with panting is that it's, and again, I hate to say it's a problem, but it's maybe something people don't like about panting is that. It's very unfocused, if you will, right?
You're just throwing things out there willy-nilly, seeing where your story goes, and eventually, most pancers will figure it out.
They'll figure out where their story goes, but by the time they do, they have this writing that's just all over the place, and they have to pretty much scrap it and start over now that they know what their story is.
And that just takes a lot of time, and it can feel very wasteful, right?And I'm not a wasteful person.That's why it drives me nuts.So the question is, what if you could have the best of both worlds?
The reason that the argument about whether plotting or pantsing is best is because, as I'm going to illustrate here in just a minute, they're mostly the same thing.
I know outwardly you're doing different things, but the processes in the brain are mostly the same.And really, both of them have good points and bad points.So really, neither is best.But what if you could figure out how to have the best of both?
This is what I call the divine genius method.Why do I call it that?Because it does.It gives you the best of both worlds.
Pantsers love this method because it utilizes the method of pantsing, as we just talked about, which they're already doing and love to do.And two, it helps cut down on those negative aspects of pantsing.
Imagine you can pants your novel in half the time.Imagine a quarter of the time.Imagine not having to throw away nearly as many words.It really does happen.Outliners love this technique because
You can use it to outline any percentage of your story if you prefer to outline, but most importantly when you start writing, you won't have that problem of deviating from your outline anymore because you have already tapped into your subconscious mind and incorporated what that deviation would have been into your outline, so you won't want to change it again.
So again, just to go back over what I said, when you're using your conscious mind to outline,
then you start typing, suddenly you've ditched the conscious mind and your subconscious mind kicks in and all of these ideas come up that were not in your outline.And yeah, they probably are better than what you put in your outline.
Oh, sorry, my phone is going off.Not silenced that obviously.But if you,
use your subconscious mind to do your outline to begin with, then you already have all those great ideas from your subconscious mind in your outline, so you won't need to deviate from it, and you probably won't want to, right?
There is such a thing as, you know, coming up with some aspect that you didn't come up with in your outline, but that's not the same thing.Usually that's something that can just be added or incorporated.
It's not about spending all the time to write an outline and then doing something completely different, because that too can feel very wasteful, right?So I don't define plotting or pantsing by the outward actions.
Outwardly, pantsers don't plan anything before they start writing and outliners do.That is the outward action.I define these things by the process going on in the brain.
If the definition of pantsing is simply letting go of the conscious mind for a while and surrendering to the subconscious so that you can get your story figured out, then outliners can think of the divine genius method as just pantsing your outline.
Just surrendering to the subconscious mind in order to outline your story and then writing it. So do you see why pantsing without direction or outlining using the conscious mind are crippling your ability to figure out your story?
And yeah, maybe you figure it out eventually, but it takes a lot more time, it takes a lot more patience, it takes a lot more frustration, right?And then we all sit around in the fiction writing space arguing about which one is better.
It's kind of like asking which is better for your health, cyanide or strychnine?Another one, let's go with something healthier, right? So one more note before we move on to mistake number six.
There is a massive element of individuality in this divine genius method, and anytime that you surrender to your subconscious mind, you've got to understand that your story comes from you. It comes from your beliefs, your experiences, your life.
It's a reflection of your past, your family, your culture, religious and political beliefs, experiences again, and everything else about you, even if you aren't directly using those things in your story, okay?Because it's all subconscious.
Everything that you've ever been through, informs who you are on a subconscious level.And then that is going to be reflected in your story.
So even if you're not writing a political story and you're not putting political beliefs in your story, your political beliefs will still influence the way you write your story, the way you approach your characters, all of that.
So I always like to say that I could give a really detailed story outline that has like characters and plot and theme and all the things that I could give them to every single one of you, including myself, and we would all write that story.
But other than the names of the characters being similar and the big basic events that happen in the story, every one of our stories would be completely different, okay?So it's important that you understand that.
None of what I've said here is going to infringe on your unique story or your unique voice in your story, okay?
It's just a matter of helping you embrace that uniqueness and help it to flow a little bit better so that you're not getting stuck when you're writing your story.
Tapping intentionally and fully into your subconscious mind to get your writing done is how you write your soul story.Remember I talked at the beginning about soul stories.
It needs to come from you, from your subconscious, from everything that you are.It needs to be a story you're passionate about.And it needs to be written in a way that the reader can connect with it.
Now we've already talked about how the reader connects with things in talking about transformational human psychology and all that.And we're gonna actually talk about the three levels of emotion here in just a minute. Where was I going with that?
Let's see.It just needs, oh, I know where I was going with it.If you are writing your story from your subconscious instead of from your conscious, you will be passionate about it, okay?I promise you will be.
So sometimes we run up against this problem where somebody is chasing a trend.So maybe this happened in a very big way, in a way that most people are aware of with vampires around the time Twilight came out.
Suddenly all these vampire stories started surfacing, and most of them were doing pretty well, because readers wanted that in a big way.It was popular at the time.Now, this is another big debate that we see.
People say you should chase a trend and write to it, because if you can write fast enough, you'll make money from that trend.And there are people that do that.
But then there are people that say, no, you shouldn't do that, because if you're not passionate about a story, it's not going to do well anyway.And by the time most people get their story written, the trend is over.
They're right about that in some cases, too.It's just going to depend on the person.But I'm going to invite you to look at this from a different perspective.Should you chase a trend?Should you not?
All I would say is that if you are passionate about that trend, then yeah, you should chase it.Not because it's a trend, but because you're passionate about that kind of story.
If you could not care less about that genre, and you're only doing it because you want to hop on the trend to make money, you're already hamstringing yourself.
Even if you get the story written, it's not going to do well because you were not passionate about it.But I believe you could pick any genre.I am not particularly passionate about writing Mafia romance, right?That's not what I write.
But if I decided I wanted to write that, I would probably need to do some research on the genre because I don't read it either, and that's also a problem.
But I could follow the divine genius method, surrender my conscious mind, get into my subconscious mind, and I'm telling you I could write a mafia romance that I'm passionate about just because it's coming from my subconscious mind.
So this is why it's so important for you to write from the subconscious mind.
It's not just something that I'm saying, and it's not even just that it helps the ideas to flow, although in terms of your writing process, that is the biggest advantage that you'll have.
It's because when you are passionate about something, your energy is going to be infused into your story, and your reader will feel the passion you had for that story, and that will make the story sell better, okay?
If you are not passionate about your story, even if it's an awesome story, even if you have all the right elements of story, it's still not going to do well because you didn't have passion when you were writing it.
And once again, using your subconscious mind to write your story is going to automatically make you passionate about it because it is coming from your subconscious, from your soul, from your spirit, and that is the definition of a soul story, okay?
Okay, that's where we're going to end for today.Once again, thank you so much for being here with me today and listening.Once again, make sure and listen to all three podcast episodes this week to get the full training with all of the mistakes.
And one more time, if you still want to take advantage of this free character workshop that I'm doing, just go to bit.ly forward slash unforgettable characters.
I will also put that in the show notes and you can still register and there still is plenty of time. to watch the replays, okay?Thank you so much again.You have a wonderful week of writing and I will be back soon.
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