Alright guys, how's it going?So today we're going to talk about what transformational human psychology is and why you should use it to craft your stories.Anyone who's followed me for very long has probably heard me talk about this.
I also sometimes call it, or at least I used to call it, the human template for storytelling.They're pretty much the same thing, though I usually use transformational human psychology these days.
But let's start with some mistakes that authors make when it specifically comes to story craft and to your internal arc.Do you yearn to make your living from writing fiction?
Do you struggle to finish your manuscript due to block, indecision, or lack of confidence in your story?Have you already published books that just aren't getting the sales you'd like?
The truth is, the thing that really makes a difference in book sales is not currently being taught in the fiction author space.And it comes from the story level, not the marketing level.
Real talk, if you don't get it right at the story level, no amount of awesome marketing is going to make your book a bestseller. Hi, I'm Liesl.
I've got 20 fiction books, 4 genres, the USA Today bestseller accolade, and multiple award wins under my belt, so obviously I've been around the block a few times.
I have a lot of readers that follow me from genre to genre, even though conventional wisdom says that's rare.Why? because my readers know that I know how to tell a story that's going to make them feel something.
And if you can master that skill, you can write anything you want for the rest of your life and know it will be well received by readers, which means better reviews, more gushing, more mega fans, and best of all, more royalties for you.
Grab your fuzzy slippers and your chocolate of choice.I'm going to teach you how to emotionally engineer your story into the hearts and minds of your readers on purpose.Let's go. Number one mistake is thinking that you don't need an internal arc.
Now, I harp on this a lot, but it's because it's kind of a pet peeve of mine.Most authors either don't think very much about their internal arc, or they don't think about it at all.Most of us know that we need to write dynamic characters.
We need our characters to change over time, or at least over the course of the story, right?But the change tends to be kind of an afterthought.We'll go, oh, well, they felt like this at first.And by the end, they feel like this.So that's good enough.
My character changed. It's really, really not good enough, guys.Real talk, sorry to tell you, it's really not, okay?Your internal arc needs to be the foundation of your story.
And we're gonna get more into why that is and give you some examples and everything as we go along.But this is the first mistake.
If you are not crafting an internal arc specifically, or if you are just using it as kind of an afterthought, you craft everything else about the story first, and then kind of think about the internal arc, yeah, that's really not the best way to write your story, okay?
The second mistake that a lot of authors make are thinking that the external happens without the internal.Now, what do I mean by that?I want you to think about building a house.You can't really
build the external part of the house unless you've built the internal, right?
You have to do all of the internal stuff, the stuff that you can't actually see when you're walking through the house, the wiring, the plumbing, the insulation, all of that, the framing, right?
All of that needs to be done first, and your story is no different.The external always follows the internal. Which means, this is why I say that the internal should be the foundation of your story.
Okay, so if you think that a story is just built on the action of the plot, you're wrong about that.We need to recognize that everything is driven internally.And I don't even mean like, put aside fiction writing for a minute.
Everything we do as human beings is internally driven.We are driven by emotion, we're driven by wanting certain results, but the reason we want those results is because we want to feel a certain way, we want to have a certain thing.
All of our motivations come from the internal.If we didn't have the internal, we'd just be robots, right?We'd just be AI.
Okay, so you need to understand that while the external, the plot, everything that happens in the story, obviously that's important, it always follows the internal, okay?And that's something that you need to understand.
And number three mistake that a lot of authors make is assuming that readers read stories for the external events rather than the internal change.Now, as I've said before, remember that readers read story in order to feel emotion.
That's the whole reason that they do it.So, of course, we tend to approach story from a plot-based standpoint, right?We'll say, oh, that sounds like a cool story, or ooh, I really like that genre, I think I'd like that.But it's, even though,
that is kind of how we talk about story and how we approach story.And of course, that has a lot to do with why a reader will read a story.The real true reason that they are there is not the external plot events.It is for the internal change.
That is what they want to feel.That is what they want to experience.And you can have some really cool external plot events.You can have a really awesome world that you're putting your story in.
If the internal is not there, the reader's not going to feel really passionate about it.They're going to be like, eh, it was okay.And that is not the response we want from our readers.We want them to be passionate about our stories.
We want them to be in love with our characters.We want them to gush to their friends about the stories that they read, right?So we need to make sure that we're not assuming that the readers are really there for the plot.
Plot's important, of course, but it's not the ground bedrock reason that they've come to fiction reading, right?Okay, so you have to understand that shortchanging the internal is pretty much the worst way you can write a story.
Let's go back to that house analogy.If there's no foundation, if there's no wiring, no plumbing, no insulation, the house might look pretty, right?It might look pretty good, but it's not going to be functional.
And depending on if we've done the framing correctly or not, it might actually fall down, right? same thing is true of your writing and of your fiction stories, right?
If you shortchange the internal, you can have really cool plot events, but the reader just isn't going to feel the things that you want them to feel, which means they won't really like the story, and you're going to have a really hard time making it as a fiction author.
So the question is, what is transformational human psychology?For every internal journey that we as human beings go through, there are the same steps.What qualifies as an internal journey?
It's every trial we go through, everything we have to learn, everything we have to overcome, basically anything in life that causes discomfort for us that we have to fix or work through. that has an internal journey attached, right?
So this can be anything.This can be anything from big life-altering things like who we're going to marry, what job to take, you know, changing our political or religious beliefs, you know, really big things that affect us.
But it can also be really tiny things like the kinds of things that we go through and then forget about five minutes later, like learning to tie our shoe for the first time.
It was hard at the time when we were five and learning to do that, but most of us don't even remember not being able to tie our shoe anymore, right?It can be something small like
losing your favorite pen and spending 10-15 frustrating minutes looking for it.
It doesn't matter whether it's something really big or something really tiny that we're going to forget about five minutes later, the steps of the journey are exactly the same.It's just about the scale of those steps.
With the tinier journeys, a lot of the steps are happening on a subconscious level, which means we're not even really aware of them, but they are happening.
The next concept that we need to reiterate, and I did talk about this already, is that the external always follows the internal.You cannot put the exterior of that house we talked about on until you've built the interior.
And yes, I recognize that sometimes there are details of the interior that don't go on until last, but generally, I mean, you can't put up the drywall until you've done the framing, right?
And maybe to use another analogy, you can't put icing on a cake until the cake is already created and baked, right?You're just gonna have a mess and it's not going to work. The external always has to follow the internal.The internal is the structure.
It's the function.It's the foundation, okay?So the exterior, like the icing on the cake, might even be sweeter, but without the internal, it has no real substance.It's just empty calories, that's probably gonna give us a sugar headache, right?
Transformational human psychology is a way to understand the journey that every human being goes through when they are trying to learn, fix, or figure out anything in their lives, okay?And it's all baked into the title there.
Transformational, they're gonna go through a change or a transformation, human psychology.In a sense, it's pretty imperative that you understand this in order to understand story structure. Here's a truth that might rock your world a little bit.
The true epitome, the true basis of what story structure actually is, for you to understand the true nature of story structure, you must understand transformational human psychology.Because the way that a character changes over time
is story structure, and if we want to understand and really be masterful at story structure, we need to understand the human journey of change, and that's what transformational human psychology is, right?
So one more time, transformational human psychology is the basis of all story structure, and if you want to truly, deeply understand story structure and become a master storyteller, you must understand transformational human psychology, all right?
All six-figure stories take it into account.You will not find a really, really successful story out there that does not have all the steps of transformational human psychology.
And the only way to be sure that you're writing a potential six-figure story is to make sure that you use the psychology as the foundation of the story you're telling. So this is what I teach inside Legendary Fiction Forge.
Everything is based around transformational human psychology and the journey every human soul goes through to overcome things.
So let's go over four reasons why you should use transformational human psychology, which I may abbreviate as THP, just so it's less of a mouthful.But why should you use THP to write your books?
Well, number one, every human being, meaning all of your readers, can relate to it because it's part of the human journey.So they relate to it not even just on the surface, on a conscious level, they relate to it on a subconscious level.
So in other words, they relate to it in ways that they themselves don't understand and are probably not aware of, but it's still there.
And making sure that you incorporate this into your story will ensure that they identify with your characters and get invested in the character story.
The second reason that you should use THP to write your books is that it automatically creates emotion.
The fact that they, your readers, relate to it on a deep subconscious level and are living the journey vicariously through your character's eyes means that they are going to feel emotion about that journey and be invested in what happens at the end of it.
So remember, once again, that readers only read fiction in order to feel big emotions in a safe space.And using transformational human psychology ensures that you help them feel those emotions.
You're just guiding them right to the emotion that you want them to feel. The third reason you might want to use THP to write your stories is that it creates catharsis.
There's that emotion again, the release of the emotion that comes at the end of the story, and it creates megafans.So really this is kind of a two-step process.Using THP creates catharsis.
If you can make the reader feel the catharsis, you've got a megafan.Okay, simple as that. We'll get right on that, right?Okay, by helping your readers feel these big emotions, you get them to feel really big feelings.
You get them to gush about your story, and they're going to want to return to everything you've ever written, everything you've ever published, because they know that you know how to tell a story that will make them feel things, and that's why they're here in the first place, right?
And finally, number four, The reason you want to use THP in your storytelling is that it makes you into a master storyteller.So those first three reasons I gave you were mostly based around the reader, as they should be.You need to serve your reader.
But this one is just for you.
By truly understanding the human journey and the bedrock truth behind all character motivations, from that deep authoritative understanding, you will be able to create deeply emotional stories every single time you write something, and you will be hailed as a master storyteller.
you do this, writing fiction becomes, I'm not going to say easy, but it becomes very straightforward and fairly simple.
So if you want help with this guys, if you want to learn the full journey of transformational human psychology and how to write truly cathartic stories so that you can make more sales, craft more megafans, and make more money on your fiction royalties,
you are truly committed to serving your reader by writing deeply emotional, highly cathartic stories for them, and thus helping to up-level the consciousness of humanity one fiction story at a time, then I invite you to join us in Legendary Fiction Forge.
It's a monthly membership for authors and you can pay monthly if that's easier on your pocketbook, but right now I also wanted to mention that we're doing a special on our annual membership through the end of the year.
So generally if you pay for the annual membership, meaning you're paying for the entire year, you get a break anyway.You get two months for free, so you're buying you can get 12 months for the price of 10, basically.
But right now, because Black Friday and the holidays are just around the corner, I'm knocking off an extra month.So through the end of the year, you can get 12 months for just a little less than the price of nine months.
So you're basically getting three months free, plus I knocked off an extra, I think it's like an extra 10 bucks just to make it a nice even number, right?So, you know, think about it. Talk to maybe your significant other your hubby.
See if you can use it as your Christmas present and hop on that as soon as you can.Okay, because it's not going to be here for very long.Hop into the membership start learning this stuff.I mean, the new year is.
Frighteningly, just around the corner, okay?So think about starting 2025 right by making a commitment to your writing, to your readers, and most importantly, to yourself, all right?So that's what I have for you today.
I hope that was educational about transformational human psychology.Thank you so much for spending time with me.Have a wonderful week of writing and a happy and safe and, dare we hope, maybe inspirational Halloween.
And yeah, I will be back next week, okay?Bye guys, love you guys, have fun.Thanks for listening today.If this episode helped or inspired you in any way, would you do me a solid and leave me a review?
Reviews help other fiction authors find the podcast.You can also recommend it to a writer friend of yours so they can get the same inspiration you got.Remember, you have a story inside you that only you can tell.
So get out there and write your soul story because your readers are waiting for it with bated breath.
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