I was introduced to Rachel through a mutual friend and fellow University of Michigan Alum. I’m always seeking new authors to interview, so I asked her about her approach to writing and publishing. Here is what she had to say.

What inspired your book?

My book was inspired by the stories of my colleagues and sisters that belonged to an employee resource group with me and my own career journey. Just wild but real stories about what Black women go through in the workplace.

Did you start with an outline or did you make it up as you went along?

I started with an outline. Actually, it started out as a series of workshops I was going to do for the ERG I mentioned and involved into a book.

What researching methods did you use?

I relied heavily on my good friend Google 😊, but also just hundreds of conversations with folks.

Did you draw on personal experience?

I shared a personal story in almost every chapter. That was really central to this book and to my writing journey. Forcing myself to confront and address workplace trauma, and then communicating my stories in a way that I hope helps others.

What else did you get the things you wrote about from?

I got inspiration from other books, authors like Minda Hart, from LinkedIn Posts to see what was trending with people, but like I said, many of the things I address in the book are things I have presented on because a great portion of my career has been in the area of career services and professional development

How did your publish?

I self-published.

Why did you do it that way?

After speaking to friends who are authors and doing hours of research on self-publishing and getting representation I decided that was the best route for me based on what I wanted to achieve and how I wanted to reach people.

What advice would you have for writers looking to publish the way you published?

DO YOUR RESEARCH. Learn the cost, the process, the time commitment. Self-publishing is a lot of work if you really want a quality book and to sell that book. Don’t walk into it blind and really think about your why and your how.

Do you have representation? if so, how did you land it?

I do not have representation other than a gang of family members and friends that will nag you about buying my book 😊

Who did your cover and marketing?

A good friend, who is also a very talented artist, John Rodriguez, did my cover. As far as marketing, I am doing most of that myself currently.

How many revisions did it take to get a publishable book?

It felt like a million, but honestly it was 9. But it was a long, tedious 9. I’m a lawyer, and I felt the first draft was too lawyerly, so that was a revision. My beta readers gave some amazing advice that led to like 3 revisions, and then my editors’ feedback accounted for the additional revisions.

What is the ratio of time you spent researching to time you spent writing?

I would say 70/30 with more on the writing. Like I said, I’ve been doing the things the book is about for so long, so there was so much in my head and in the research, the issue for me was really about how do you want to focus this knowledge to engage an audience in the most effective way possible, and for me that was all about the writing.

How did you make time to write?

I am currently not working, so I treated it like a job. I got up everyday and committed hours to the work.

what was your go-to writing software/app for your writing process?

Word. I just sat there and typed. I did work in a book template though, for me I felt my thoughts came together better typing it as a book as opposed to a Word document – it’s low-grade psychosomatic 😊

How does your published book enhance your other ventures?

I am a career coach, and it has definitely led to additional coaching clients, but also additional opportunities to engage Black women through speaking engagements.

Who are the people that would benefit the most from reading your book, and how did you determine that?

I wrote my book specifically with Black women in mind, so it is for the benefit of us, but it’s for all women leaders, women of color, allies and people in management as it provides guidance on how to navigate some very complex workplace issues and gives examples on how to recognize and address problems within the workplace.

How did you decide what order to present your topics in?

At first, it was just my flow of consciousness, but then one of my beta readers said, “Hey you have to give these topics more connection”, so I revised it to tie the topics to a theme.

How did you ensure that your advice, memories, and recollections were accurate?

As far as my advice, it’s really the things I’ve seen work for me and my coaching clients. As far as the recollections I relied heavily on personal notes, journals and conversations. The harder part was translating the raw emotions in the journals into something professional and relatable that I felt comfortable publishing.

What would you like your readers to gain from reading your book?

For Black women, I want them to walk away with 3 major things:

Agency: reclaiming authorship over their life and career and the ability to stop asking for permission and start making choices about their narrative, career direction, and boundaries

STRATEGY: not hustle culture. Not survival mode. Smart, values-aligned movement and tools to navigate bias, office politics, and gatekeeping

Liberation: Freedom from performing, code-switching, and self-abandonment

With those 3 tools they find confidence and power

And I think all readers will get that, but for others I want them to recognize what Black women go through, find themselves in these issues, and then work to make things better.

How did you go about deciding which topics to include and which ones to leave out?

The topics were really based on things the members of the ERG group had requested workshops on for the annual career conference that it held. One of my editors did challenge me that the book had become too long as a career guide – it had crept up to 543 pages, so then I cut some topics and started conceptualizing what a second book might address.

What are you writing now?

Mostly presentations related to this book and a very early, rough outline for another book.

What is your advice to other writers?

The same advice I used to give my law students, everyone who’s ever done it and every website you search will have an opinion, and many people will swear their way is the only way - the only way to write, publish, and market. Take the advice that speaks to you, give the rest its proper weight, and ultimately you have to do you.

Get Rachel’s book Bold, Black & Brilliant: A Black Woman’s Guide to Career Confidence and Power here!

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Back in the 2000s, the low budget horror film The Blair Witch Project was a phenomenon, and started a wave of "found footage" movies like Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity. These films had a raw authenticity that tried to blur the line between fiction and reality. This led to future movies like Searching taking place entirely on a computer desktop and web browser, and even real copies of the infamous videotape from horror classic The Ring being passed around to promote that movie. Using artifacts and found objects can enhance a story and add elements of realism and lore. In some instances, they can even tell a complete story on their own. The website promoting the classic neo-noir Memento did this, using newspaper clippings, photographs, notes on scrap paper, shreds of medical and police reports and other loose objects to tell the tale of a broken man on a singleminded quest for vengeance. You don't even have to watch the movie to understand what is going on and why (although I do recommend you watch it if you haven't already). You can do something similar with your stories, also.

How artifacts enhance a story

It never hurts to have a visual element to enhance a story. When readers have something additional to help them contextualize what they are reading, it helps them immerse themselves into the world they are reading about. The artifacts help the story become more real to them, and brings them closer to the characters and environments they are reading about. Not only can you see it in your mind's eye via prose, but now you can see it physically, or maybe even hear it, touch it, or taste it. You are experiencing the story at a whole new level which deepens your connection to the story. If you can establish that level of connection with your audience early, then they will be that much more eager to read your stories and recommend them to others.

Different ways to include artifacts and How to integrate them into your story

Acclaimed comic book writer Jonathan Hickman took over Marvel's X-Men franchise and introduced a revolutionary way to show story-related data without having to include it directly into the comic. In every issue of X-Men and their related books, at least one page is a very non-comic book-y styled appendix with vital information, text temps, documents, or diagrams explaining -or even subverting- what you're reading in the comic book itself. It's a very effective method of storytelling. The short-lived police procedure show The Evidence literally displayed the clues to a crime in a videotaped evidence log before starting the episode on the day the crime was committed. And the seminal comic book Watchmen (and it's sequel Doomsday Clock) added newspaper clippings, magazine excerpts, letters, and even a complete, separate comic book-within-a-comic book to add depth and context to the story. One of the cooler things I'm doing with my urban thriller Needle of the Southside is making a replica of an artifact that is referenced a lot in the story. It's a wrinkled sheet of paper filled with vital clues that the protagonists must decipher. I'm planning on placing that actual sheet of paper at the front of the book where readers can look it over and try to solve the puzzles along with my protagonists.

You can do similar things to these examples. When your high fantasy adventurers enter a new country, you can have the map of the new land be on the opposite page of the part where they first set foot into the new realm. If your superspy successfully breaks into the building and steals the vital documents, you can actually show one of the documents right when they open them up (replete with the blacked out portions of text). Your heroine in your rom com is whipping up an awesome dinner for her love interest? Show the recipe for her mother's meatloaf right when she's about to serve it. Even marketing materials like bookmarks, tee-shirts, posters and other merchandise can be used as part of your story. Or, like the Memento website, you can tell your story entirely through artifacts via mobile apps and websites, where you can show the artifact and have it lead to another that advances the story when people click on it. The avocado you mention in your story can be posted on your book's website, which has a link to a YouTube video of someone dropping an avocado off of a building, which ties into your protagonist getting hit in the head by a falling avocado.

If you can find physical elements of your story to accentuate, then you might want to consider spotlighting them outside of your main narrative in some way, shape or form. It could deepen the experience readers have with your story and make it that much more memorable.

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One of the things that makes the hit indie video games Inscryption and The Hex endearing is the puzzle-based scavenger hunts they initiated outside of their respective games, that led to additional content and context within the games. Exercises like this are called ARGs (or Alternate Reality Games), and they are a fun, engaging way your audience can interact with the story and deepen their connection to it. Adding an ARG can add new levels of context and engagement to your story, and can also be used as an effective marketing tool. If you were thinking about adding an ARG to your story, it can seem intimidating. I have compiled a step-by step beginner’s guide to help you put your ARG together in a way that enhances your original story.

A Simple ARG in 8 Steps

Step 1. Define the Core Mystery

Every story has gaps in plot, setting and character that can be explored. Instead of making one of these gaps a subplot or trying to develop it into a spinoff, you can make it the subject of your ARG. Maybe an important character disappears or has a long absence. Maybe your villain’s plot has more intricacies and details than can be covered in your core story. Maybe a backstory event that is referenced is begging to be fully explored. Either way, your plot leaves unanswered questions that can be the mystery that drives the ARG. This is what you will build it around. It’s the truth behind something your main story only partially explains. There are three ways your story can progress: a prequel ARG that explores events before the story (missing case, character origin, hidden lore incident), a parallel ARG that happens alongside the story (Different POV, background investigation, side character journey), or a follow up ARG that happens after your story ends (consequences, unresolved threads, hidden plot twists). Any of these can work, you just need to choose which approach best enhanced your core story

Step 2. Pick Your Story Goal

The Hex’s ARG payoff was worth the journey of getting to it because it revealed a truth about one of the characters at the center of the main story that recontextualized the motivations and actions of other characters in the game. The ARG is essentially a scavenger hunt for information, and the gathered information should lead to a payoff or revelation that enhances the core story the ARG is part of. So in this instance you would work backward and start your ARG planning at the end. After you’ve defined the mystery the drives your game, immediately ask yourself what the solution to the mystery is. Is it a hidden scene that didn’t make it into your story? Could it be a secret, revealing monologue from one of your characters? Maybe your players get to see the ending of your story from a different perspective, or find a plot twist that changes how they view the story. For instance, after sifting through scattered clues and solving complex puzzles, the Inscryption ARG leads you to an unlisted Youtube video that essentially undermines everything one of the other characters was trying to accomplish in the game. It’s a real gutpunch that changes how you view the entire experience. When planning your ARG, think of the end first, and build backwards from that.

Step 3. Pick Characters For Your Story

Not all ARGs focus on characters, but many of them do. Inscryption featured Kaycee, an arbitrary character in the game that had a heavy focus in the ARG. having a character involved puts a face on everything that is going on and gives your audience someone to invest in. You want to involve characters that maybe fall through the cracks in viewer attention, like minor characters, or characters referenced that don’t actually have an active role in the story. Maybe you want to focus on a deceased character, or a victim, or a henchman. You can use an investigator, or a journalist researching for a news story. Characters that don’t get a lot of attention in your main story would make for ideal characters to build your ARG around. And you want to employ unconventional methods to present these characters with. utilize them communicating with email, short videos, social media accounts, or simple text logs. Your ARG could mirror or parallel a journey that these characters embarked on.

Step 4. Decide Where the Game Lives

This is where the challenge of creating an ARG truly begins. You need to pick the platforms your audience will use to interact with the ARG and experience the story you are trying to tell. Ideally, these platforms will feel like a part of the world of your story, to enhance immersion. Start with a few, manageable media to engage your audience with. if you want to post a fake website for an organization in your story, consider using Google Sites or wordpress.com. You can post any found footage or character vlogs with unlisted videos on Youtube. You can create fake gmail accounts to show your characters sending and receiving emails. You can craft puzzles using things like puzzlescript or simple Google Docs. You can create QR codes and have them link to anything you’ve created, then place those QR codes strategically. Many digital ARGs like for Inscryption, Frog Fractions 2 and Tunic involve finding ciphers inside the game’s source code, or hiding clues in other video games, or revealing clues in real-world artifacts and events (one clue in the Inscryption ARG famously gave away coordinates to a place where a floppy disk was buried that contained yet another clue). Tunic had a puzzle with a solution that led to a website that had an audio file with a hidden message you can find if you open the audio in a spectrogram and interpret the images within that are written in the game’s proprietary language. If you know how to create cipher-based puzzles (here is a great resource for that - https://playcryptograms.com/cryptogram-maker), That is an effective way to create engagement.

Keep a database or list of the different elements of your ARG (including the payoff), and where they are located so you know what parts you have to work with.

Step 5. Create the First Entry Point

The next thing you want to figure out is at what point do you want your audience to start engaging with the ARG. there should be something either within the story or tangential to it that sparks an interest in delving deeper. One of the earliest examples of this is the ad campaign for the puzzle game Riven, which had ads that were wordless environment pictures, with the Riven website URL scrawled onto the scenery. Both Inscryption and The Hex had bizarre codes and instructions that hinted at something deeper. Both Westworld and Mr. Robot had in-universe websites that could be accessed both in the TV shows and in the real world. You should plant a clue either directly in your story or within your marketing materials that leads to your ARG. It could be something like a leaked file, or a social media post from a character, a strange message on your story’s official website, QR code in the background of one of your ads, or a random website casually mentioned in the text if your story. You want your audience asking themselves if that weird detail is something they can actually look up.

Step 6. Build a Chain of Clues

Now you want all of your clues to link together. Not only that, but each clue should also reveal some hidden lore of your story that builds until you give the audience access to your payoff moment. At this point you want to take time to sequence your clues and set them up so that finding one clue leads to the puzzle that unlocks the next clue, which is also a revelation that adds deeper context to what us going on within your main story…and leads to the next clue. For instance, that random link you placed in the background in your political thriller leads to a job post for a campaign manager on LinkedIn, but visiting the website of the company posting the job opening has a password protected employee login where the reader could find the password mentioned by the corrupt politician in the core story, and logging in unlocks an employee chat log where they discuss the grand conspiracy of your story and talks about one of the accomplices that got murdered early on your core story, with a jpeg of their obituary that has a code hidden in its metadata that leads to an unlisted YouTube video of that person pleading for help before “they” get to them. Keep your puzzles relatively easy so you don’t deter anyone from making the discoveries. And each puzzle solution and clue should feel like unlocking a hidden part of the story.

Step 7. Establish Rules for Player Interaction

There are numerous elements to fine-tune to make sure your game runs smoothly. Here are some questions you need to ask: Will the game be live? (You respond in real-time as characters.) Or pre-scripted? (Everything is already built, players can’t break it.) Will players need to work together? Will you answer out-of-game questions if something breaks? In addition to that, you want all your communication with the ARG players to have the same feel as your story. Your horror ARG necessitates limited responses and eerie delays, while your thriller ARG wants real-time messages and urgency.

Step 8. Playtest With 1–3 Friends

Like with any game, it’s best to playtest it before launch. Progress through the ARG with a few of your buds and take notes about what is working and what isn’t. Do the puzzles make sense? Does the narrative feel coherent? Did they get stuck anywhere? Do they even care? The best stories leave an impact, and your ARG should, too. Once you’ve compiled your notes, tweak your game and test again with a new group of testers. Once you are confident your game is running smoothly, then you can launch it, preferably by subtly directing consumers of your story to where they can find that entry point.

Conclusion

Putting together an ARG requires some forethought and planning, but the reward is a new way to engage your audience and get them involved in your story in a way they will remember long after they have finished your core narrative. If you feel you are up to the challenge, I recommend giving this a try.

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If you’ve seen the critically acclaimed horror film Midsommar, you will know about Pelle, the empathetic recruiter for the mysterious cult that entraps the protagonists. His persona and methods are both disarming and insidious, as he uses empathy and a caring veneer to ingratiate himself with not only his potential victims, but also the audience, to the point where some find it hard to hold him responsible for the dire circumstances he directly led the protagonists to. His methods are what some call “gentle evil” and is a type of manipulative character you can use for your stories. Here are a few tips to help you pull it off.

Kill them with kindness

You don’t want your manipulative character to be obvious. The key to gentle evil is the appearance of empathy and sincerity. Your bad guy should lean in on empathetic traits: they should be soft-spoken, attentive and able to recognize the emotional changes of the other characters. They should be able to recognize the pain and angst of others and react to it accordingly, but not in a way that seems obviously predatory. Lies, threats and gaslighting would not be tools in this character’s toolbox. Every opportunity you can give your character to comfort, validate, cosign and support the others, do so. The key is having your other characters buy into these acts of kindness, and showing the effects of that buy-in by having your characters delving further into whatever underlying scheme your manipulator has in store for them. You want them to appear as genuine as possible, as that will rope in not just your characters, but your audience as well.

Warped Sincerity

You want to take a serious look into your manipulator’s character and motivations, and eliminate the aspects that would broadcast their evil intents. Pelle works because he doesn’t see himself as evil. He is a true believer in his community and genuinely thinks he is doing a good work in bringing people in. Contrast that with Rose Armitage from the film Get Out, who plays a similar role as Pelle, but her lack of sincerity is evident immediately, and the audience can quickly cast suspicion on her, even if her boyfriend doesn’t. Make your villain believe truly that they are doing the right thing the right way, and give them a rationale that could justify or explain how their insidious schemes could benefit their victims. This villain feels like they are doing their victims a service. It might be tough to put yourself into that mindset, but find reasons why your villain would think their methods and endgame are for the greater good. In Pelle’s case, he thinks his community’s values are noble, and being part of that community provides nurturing and support in a cruel world. That is reason enough to find people he sees as broken and bring them into the community. Make your villain’s actions make sense to the villain.

Finding Flaws

The most effective manipulators identify what someone is missing and make themselves into the answer. To effectively accomplish this, you will need to pinpoint what your other character’s psychological and emotional weaknesses are, and give your manipulator ample opportunity to exploit them. Does your victim feel ignored or neglected? Your manipulator will provide them the attention they crave. Maybe your victim feels underappreciated. Your manipulator will provide them with affirmation and validation. Does your victim feel misunderstood? How convenient; your manipulator is an active listener. Your villain will work best when they are filling a void in their victim’s mental and emotional state, and will have the added bonus of getting the audience to believe their methods and motivations are altruistic. So you should make a list of your character’s vulnerabilities and then devise a strategy for your villain to exploit every single one.

Playing The Long Game

Manipulation doesn’t happen overnight. There is a methodology and a level of patience to how manipulators act that gets them in such a favorable position with their victims that those people will follow them wherever they are taking them, even if they are getting taken to destruction. “Honest” Iago from the classic play Othello never outright tries to steer Othello in the direction of turning on his wife, but he subtly plants seeds of doubt with offhand comments and shady advice that seems sincere all throughout the story. In that process, he gets Othello to ask questions he really shouldn’t be asking, and guides Othello to wrong conclusions. Nothing about how your manipulator moves should feel rushed or forced. The object is death by a thousand tiny cuts, or the slow drip that eventually becomes a drowning pool. In Pelle’s case, he carefully selected his friends, brought them to the commune, and guided events subtly. Senator Palpatine (despite most audience clearly knowing he was the bad guy) acted as a mentor and father figure to Anakin Skywalker, subtly nudging him in the direction of embracing his darker impulses. You want your manipulators to move slowly and subtly, carefully making small moves to nudge your victims in the wrong direction. The audience has to be fooled too; these subtle moves of deceit have to *almost* feel authentic and justified, and that should be easier to pull off if the moves are small and bite-sized. The moves have to also build on each other, so what your manipulator tells the victim on day four is a natural progression of what the manipulator told them on day one. With that in mind, you might want to outline a gameplan for your villain in how they approach their victim and compromise them over time, maybe even splitting their plan up into stages of escalation.

The Audience are Victims, Too

Remember that your manipulator isn’t building trust with just the other characters in the story; they are also building trust with the audience. They exhibit traits that people genuinely gravitate toward: They rarely raise their voice, they listen more than they speak, they mirror what others need emotionally, and they justify everything calmly. These are all tricks that manipulators use to build trust and endear themselves with their victims. If you can get your audience to say even once “you know, they kinda have a point,” then you’ve accomplished your goal. At points, your audience should want the manipulator to be right, or be happy that the victim found someone that understands them. You can help rope the audience in with my tips on writing charismatic characters to add to the manipulator’s arsenal of tactics.

To ensure that the audience can’t see through your manipulator’s tactics, you have to add sincerity to their actions and play them straight, keep the tics and clues that the manipulator has ulterior motives to a minimum, and keep those hints as small and innocuous as possible. Your ultimate goal is to make your audience feel conflicted and uneasy about that character, at times liking them and rooting for them while at the same time being suspicious of their behavior or ultimate goals.

Conclusion

Gentle Evil characters are effective because they are not overtly trying to assert dominance like other villains - even other types of manipulators. They subtly worm their way into your mind and hearts and have you believing their because it appears genuine. If you can tap into that, you will be able to craft a villain that will linger in the minds of your audience and have them genuinely wondering if they would have fallen for the manipulations like the characters in your story did. I hope that these tips help you pull that off.

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One time a peculiar question came to mind and I posted it across social media (namely Quora and Facebook) to get some feedback. I wondered if you were dating someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder, and you slept with them while they were in one of their other personalities, is that considered cheating? I got a wide range of responses, some from people who actually had dated someone with D.I.D., and even among them I couldn’t get a consensus answer. But this exercise sparked an idea for a story. What if the D.I.D. was a key factor in why you liked dating this person? And what would happen if that person suddenly said they wanted to merge their personalities?

That idea sparked this story treatment, about a wife who is quite content with her husband’s four distinct personalities because each one fulfils a different need for her. She is not happy when he decides he wants to end his D.I.D. and tries to sabotage the process.

This story will never get written (at least , not by me) for few reasons. Firstly, I couldn’t decide whether to write this story as a straight up drama, or as a comedy, or a hybrid of both. I can see merits of playing it either way. The second is a typical reason I never get around to writing stories: research. Accurately portraying D.I.D. and its effects would involve more legwork than I wanted to do. I’d also potentially have to explain how this woman got involved with a dude with D.I.D., how she found out about his disorder, and why she didn’t leave him when she first learned of his multiple personalities. Finally, I never figured out how the best ending for this story. I came up with a few possible endings, but none of them are standing out to me.

But I did come up with a rough treatment. Check it out, and if this is a story idea you might want to explore further, you have my official permission… IF you are a subscriber to this here Substack (basic subscription is free if money is your barrier).

Premise:

Claire Dawson is happily married to Elliot Carter, a man with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). His personalities—Elliot (the core personality), charming and confident Sebastian, gentle and artistic Leo, and brooding but passionate Dante—each fulfill a different emotional and physical need for Claire. But when Elliot begins intensive therapy to integrate his alters, Claire fears she will lose the multiple “husbands” she loves. Determined to keep them all, she subtly and systematically sabotages his treatment, leading to a psychological battle between love, identity, and morality.

Act 1: Love in Multiples

Claire and Elliot have a unique but fulfilling marriage. She adores each of his alters, treating them like different partners:

Elliot: The dependable, serious husband.

Sebastian: The flirtatious playboy who sweeps her off her feet.

Leo: The sensitive artist who writes her poetry.

Dante: The intense lover who keeps things exciting.

Elliot regularly visits his therapist to help him manage his disorder, but he feels fragmented and exhausted by it. He is tired of the blackouts and missing out on moments and memories due to his other personalities being present in those moments (especially the intimate moments with his wife), and essentially being locked out of his own life. Encouraged by his therapist, Dr. Miriam Hale, he begins the process of integration.

Claire pretends to support him, but in secret, she is not happy with his decision. Losing his alters would be like losing her extra husbands, and the convenience of knowing what she will get from each of his different personalities. She decides she cannot allow this integration to go through and tries to find a way to sabotage it.

Act 2: Subtle Sabotage

Claire talks with one of her girlfriends about it, and the girlfriend tries to encourage her to accept her husband’s decision and embrace the process. Claire will have none of that. Her sabotage process starts small: she intentionally makes him miss therapy sessions. She starts random arguments and tries to stress him out and force his personality switches, and when she gets to talk to his alters, she tries to convince them to resist the integration. She tells them they will lose their autonomy and maybe even cease to exist completely. More importantly, they wouldn’t be able to be with her anymore. Dante and Sebastian, who enjoy their autonomy, also resist merging. Leo, however, starts accepting the process, which terrifies Claire. Claire seduces different alters separately, playing into their unique dynamics, keeping them emotionally dependent on her.

Dr. Hale notices inconsistencies in Elliot’s progress and begins suspecting outside interference. She tells Elliot as much, but Elliot remains oblivious.

Act 3: The Breaking Point

The therapy starts working despite Claire’s efforts. The alters begin merging, and Elliot feels a growing sense of wholeness. As each alter merges, Elliot has a heart-to-heart conversation with them about their lives and how they handled the trauma that brought them into existence. Each alter has a different perspective on the trauma and a different approach to coping with it. And each revelation helps Elliot come to terms with what happened and how he can live with it growing forward.

Claire, in desperation, tries a new tactic. After Leo merges, she manufactures a crisis, pitting Dante and Sebastian against each other by making them believe Elliot has done something terrible as one alter but not saying which one. This causes turmoil in Elliot’s mental state, triggering a regression and introducing a new, darker alter, Bill.

Elliot’s mind fractures again and he has a breakdown, but this time, the remaining alters begin realizing they are being manipulated. Dante and Sebastian, aware of Claire’s sabotage, agree that integration must happen for their survival. Together they subdue Bill before he can do any serious damage and force him to integrate. Elliot makes the painful choice to commit to his therapy, breaking free from Claire’s influence.

Act 4: The Aftermath

Elliot’s final integration is with Dante, who wishes him well. Elliot says that they will continue to live through him because they are still a part of him. He leaves his final therapy session as a new, whole version of himself. But with no distinct alters, he no longer resembles the men Claire loved. Claire, devastated, realizes she’s effectively lost all of them. Elliot takes Claire out to dinner and romances her, and Claire sees flashes of his former alters in how he treats her, which makes it even more bittersweet. During the date, he confronts her about her manipulations, and she confesses her insecurities about not having the alters to meet her different needs. Elliot’s rebuttal is that if she communicates her needs to him regularly, he can meet those needs, maybe not as intensely as his alters would have, but more earnestly and honestly. He reiterates that for their relationship to be able to go forward, she needs to love him as he is.

This is where I had a problem with choosing the ending. What should Claire choose to do?

Option 1: She cannot love “just Elliot” and leaves, searching for something that can never be replaced.

Option 2: She accepts the new Elliot, grieving her past loves but embracing a new, healthier relationship.

Option 3: A dark ending where Claire refuses to accept reality and seeks out ways to break Elliot’s mind again.

I’m sure if you decide to explore this story, a definitive answer will come to you. In any case, what do you think of this idea? let me know in the comments.

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I am priveliged to be a part of a number of writer support groups. I often put out calls for authors to be interviewed, and Rose was among the authors to respond. Here are her thoughts about her approach to storytelling.

What inspires your writing?

That’s so hard to answer. I feel like I don’t just write I create worlds. And my brain just has this way of turning a twig into a tree. My stories show up in my head as scenes as pictures not as words. My job is to use my words to create those scenes and draw other people into the universes I create.

What is your process of developing characters?

It just comes naturally. Not to sound smug but they do. It’s like I get an idea and before I can process the idea of the character they are already alive. They have a face and a name and even a voice. It feels like giving birth to a child almost. Sometimes it’s not as easy. When that happens I create a name vault where names I make up are saved I’m a document to use for a future character.

Did you Start with a story outline or did you make it up as you went along?

Definitely a blend of both. I already have the concept the vision. I already technically know the story but I don’t immediately know every line, all the dialogue. Everything that takes me from point A to be. Sometimes the in-between is made up as I go along but the major points are pre-planned

How much research did you need for your latest story?

I did a lot of research on real life war and war crimes and even had to do astronomy to learn about different types of planets. The astronomy stuff will be more implemented in arc 2.

What researching methods did you use?

Google and AI helped me with all of my research. And by AI I do mean Gemini and ChatGPT. I ask they answer. Its the easiest way to get answers but I do double check so don’t worry

What are some of your methods for handling worldbuilding and establishing a believable and immersive setting in you stories?

The world building I don’t actually need help with. As I said earlier it comes naturally for me. It just expands. This universe plays in my head like a movie scene.

Did you draw on personal experience?

Yes. I often use my own trauma to help shape some of the more traumatic scenes in my stories but there’s also a lot of stuff I didn’t experience which I would then just do some research on to get a better understanding of the emotions that come with certain situations.

How did your publish?

I self-publish on KDP.

What advice would you have for writers looking to publish the way you published?

If you’re doing it just as a form of income, this is probably not the best route. But if you just have a passion and want to have your stories heard then I Cannot recommend KDP enough.

Who did your cover and marketing?

I did my cover I used several tools and yes AI is one of the many tools I use to create my scifi covers. I do my own marketing.

What are some of the methods you have used to generate interest in your book?

I honestly just keep telling people about it and posting about it.

Did you use beta readers? How did you secure them?

Yes I used beta and Arc readers and got only positive feedback which was very uplifting. I am a member of a few beta and arc reader groups.

How many revisions did it take to get a publishable book?

Over the past 4 years? Probably at least 20. Omg the amount of changes I made to this series I don’t even think it’s the same story I started with 🤣😭.

What aspect of the book writing process did you find the most challenging?

Depending on the book, the formatting. Making sure I get the right details. Making sure I don’t drag the story, making sure I don’t skip ahead and rush the story. Basically just trying to make sure everything is distributed properly.

How do you keep your characters, subplots and setting consistent across multiple books?

That’s a good question. I don’t really think about I guess I... just do. I know that’s a terrible answer but the character is like a real person so once something about them is true it’s just a known fact.

Let’s look at this why.

You meet a girl named Sally and she tells you that she was born with half a heart. That’s the information you have. You just know this and you’re not going to forget because that’s intriguing information.

That’s pretty much how it works for my characters. The details about them are just true and it doesn’t really change unless I force it to. Which is odd because I don’t have good memory with other things but I always remember their details.

What are you writing now?

I’m editing book 3 of my scifi series. The only editing I’m doing is possibly rewriting some chapters etc.

What is your advice to other writers?

You are a writer. Don’t let anyone bully you for only being a writer. Your story is yours to tell. Nobody knows your story your universe as much as you do. Writing in itself is a form of art. Your story deserves to be heard no matter what your financial situation is. And of nobody else likes your story then that’s OK, it wasn’t written for everybody but be proud of what you created. Because the alternative is not having a story to tell.

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Hailed as one of the greatest movie trilogies ever made, The three Back to the Future movies are all well-told, self-contained stores that all connect together to form a cohesive overall narrative. As much as people enjoy and revere the three movies and their characters, many do not realize that the films follow pretty standard rules for trilogies. these are rules you as a writer can utilize in your stories.

Trilogies are a holy grail in storytelling. They make any story larger and grander, and can create a real connection over time between the reader and the central characters. I’m in the process of writing my own trilogy, so I thought I’d do some digging into what makes trilogies work. I found a bunch of great advice on a bunch of other blogs, so I thought I’d share my findings with you, along with some of my own observations from writing my own trilogy.

1. The first part of the story must be able to stand on its own merits. The Master & Commander series of books are quite popular, but when adapted for screen, never made it past the first movie (despite the movie being pretty damned good and making a lot of money). The lesson is that you cannot assume that your storyarc will make it to book two. Make sure your first story is strong and well-told and can work as a standalone story.

2. Part two takes everything that worked about part one and ramps everything up, the stakes are higher, the character swings are bolder, and the consequences more severe. And part three is the closure where story arcs conclude and loose ends are tied up.

3. Throughout the stories, there have to be details, thematic or otherwise, that tie the three stories together. Ideally, your reader should be able to sit and go through all three stories in one sitting and feel that they have read one complete narrative.

4. To piggyback off of point one: each part of the trilogy has to work as a self-contained story within itself while at the same time advancing the overall narrative. You never know which story will be somebody’s jumping-on point, so you want to make sure they get a complete story in that one instance, whether they are reading part one or part three. At the same time, the most successful trilogies have a narrative thread that develops over the course of the series. It could be a plot arc or a character development arc, or even a setting/environmental arc. I’m a huge James Bond fan, and I love each of its 25+ movies, but the stories pitting him against Spectre and Ernst Stavro Blofeld resonate the most with me because the rivalry between the two is built and developed over the course of multiple stories (i.e. Dr. No through Diamonds are Forever was an excellent build, as was Casino Royale through No Time to Die). Likewise, the original Foundation Trilogy chronicled the fall of the Galactic Empire and the rise of the Foundation over the course of many generations.

For me, a good trilogy is a prime example of the 3-act rule that I spoke of in earlier posts, just in a bigger package and working at a Meta level. To review, Magic: The Gathering Head of R&D Mark Rosewater (who also wrote episodes of Roseanne) described the process in three steps: 1) get your protagonist stuck up a tree. 2) throw rocks at them. 3) get your character down from the tree. This works withn the confines of a regular story, but it also works within a trilogy. The first story gets your character stuck up the tree. Even within your protagonist’s resolution of the story’s central plot, there are seeds planted which show that the greater problem has not been solved yet. Think Star Wars: yes, the Death Star was destroyed, but the Empire still rules the galaxy, and the big bad (Darth Vader) was still out there to create havoc in a future movie. The second story raises the stakes and truly puts the heroes in jeopardy of not completing their overall goal; like in Empire Strikes Back, where Luke and Company were dealt devastating blows by Vader, Palpatine and the Empire and the only central plot of the story was whether our heroes could survive it all and make it to the end of the movie. And the third story ties everything together and resolves everything, like in Return of the Jedi where Luke finally redeems his father and destroys the leader of the Empire…along with another Death Star.

There are a lot of things to keep in mind if you are planning a trilogy, but then there are added challenges if a story you originally hadn’t intended on expanding organically develops into something that needs more installments. Maybe your standalone story is so successful that your fans of your publisher demand a follow-up or two. Or maybe you have so much going on in your sequel that you can’t contain it all in one book. In those instances, the best thing to do is to do a deep dive into the world you created in book one. Pick out as many aspects of the settings, plots, subplots and characters that could be explored, and find an overall theme you can build an overarching narrative from that can carry multiple books.

So if you are hankering for a good narrative challenge, try taking one of your stories and expanding it into a 3-part saga. You might discover some new things about your world that will only serve to enhance your original idea.

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Anyone that knows anything about classic action cinema in the 1980s and 1990s knows about John Woo, the legendary director of the movie Face/Off, and the inventor of the stylish, ultraviolent style of action called “Gun-Fu.” The style of action he introduced was fine tuned and perfected 20 years later with the now iconic John Wick franchise. The kinetic blend of martial arts and gunplay is presented in a vibrant, stylized way that make the action come off as slick and cool, in a way that very few films had done before. You might have been inspired to write a story that evokes a similar feeling as those films. While it can be a challenge to translate this very visual style into prose, it is possible to replicate the rhythm and feel of gun-fu action in written stories. Here are some tips on how to pull it off.

Short and sweet sentences

One of the basic tips of increasing pace in storytelling is to shorten your sentences. This works well in action scenes and especially in gun-fu. Writing gun-fu action is not the time for flowery, literary prose. You want your scenes to have a visceral, kinetic flow that moves briskly. Short sentences help to establish that rhythm that I previously mentioned. Longer sentences in the action slow the tempo down. You generally don’t want that, but that slowdown can be useful when you want to emphasize certain key moments in the action, or even try to write something like the bullet-time effect made popular in movies like The Matrix. Keep your sentences punchy and to the point. here’s an example:

“The hallway narrows. No cover. He moves anyway. Two shots. A body drops. The third man hesitates — and that’s enough.” Notice how the sentences keep the action and tension moving briskly while also showing vividly what is going on.

Emphasize Transitions

In a good action scene, and especially in gun-fu, actions lead directly into other counter actions. You want to show these transitions flowing smoothly. There’s more to gun-fu than shooting, and Wick demonstrates this brilliantly. In one sequence he will shoot somebody at long range, grab an assailant that is getting close to him, flip the guy over to compromise his position, shoot him, throw a nearby object at another oncoming attacker to knock him down before shooting him, then getting up and ducking for cover behind a column, reloading, and shooting another guy, before grabbing an assailant rushing by, using him as a human shield while shooting everyone else, and then shooting his human shield again for good measure. There is very little wasted motion and every move leads right into the next move. Don’t just show attacks, show how one motion becomes the next. This works at the macro level too. You want to the transitions between major points in your scene to move naturally, too. Start your action scene with a brief setup, establishing the location, the stakes and the tension. when the action starts, accelerate the pace with the aforementioned short sentences and rapid action beats. At key emotional or stylistic moments like your characters reloading or a brief stand-off, you slow the action down, only to speed back up and resume the action and fast pace.

Form follows function

When writing your gun-fu scenes, you want to keep your violence visual, kinetic, and most of all functional. Every movement has purpose: A punch creates distance. A shot creates an opening. A takedown clears a firing lane. Your cool action moments must serve the greater tactical focus of the fight. The thing that makes Wick and the other top killers in the franchise so impressive is that their violence is efficient. So when you write your characters in action, make sure they are moving with economy, and each of their moves makes sense given their situation. If they’re not dodging bullets or ducking for cover, there is no need to write your character doing a somersault, dive, tuck and roll.

Another tool for achieving this efficiency is having a good spatial awareness for the setting where the action is taking place. Be sure to keep your reader environmentally oriented, both at the start of the scene and throughout the action. Features such as doorways, pillars, choke points, and staircases provide natural obstacles for some and strategic vantage points for others. Use the geography of the setting to ground the action and draw attention to the tactics of the fight.

Emphasize Physical Choreography

If you look at a good gun-fu fight scene, or really any fight scene in most mediums, it moves like a dance routine, with each move and countermove moving in synch. Sequence and structure are the most important things to keep in mind to keep the fight flowing smoothly. Track the character’s position, movements, and physical flow during the fight. Describe body mechanics of each combatant. Where do their hands go? How does their weight shift from move to move? The reader should be able to see the progression of the scene, with each action leading into its reaction, which flows into the adjustment of the situation. It’s a movement chain that creates the kinetic energy you want your gun fu scene to convey. I also recommend writing your action scenes to music, preferably something uptempo with high energy. Some of the most memorable fight scenes in The John Wick franchise have high octane techno music in the background. Try it and use the music as your metronome to setting the rhythm of your action scene.

Keep it Real

Using authentic language from gun and martial arts culture will do a lot towards adding mystique and aura to your gun-fu fight. Don’t be afraid to use terms from martial arts or gunplay like “center axis relock,” “tap-rack,” “double tap,” and terms like that. Of course, you don’t want to overdo it and risk going over your reader’s head, but sprinkled in it fan he very effective.

Also, your fight scene should be grounded in some semblance of reality, regardless of how outrageous your fight gets. Guns only carry so many bullets, so be sure to show mid-fight reloading. Bullets that miss ricochet and leave marks wherever they land. People (not just your protagonist) take cover and try to use their environment. Not every bullet hit is a kill shot: some bullets graze, others injure. Injuries hurt and can slow down a fighter that has to deal with them. And sometimes a bullet wound isn’t enough to stop an oncoming attacker if their adrenaline is running high enough (especially from a weaker gun). And guns are noisy, even ones using silencers. People scream, especially when they are hurt. Teams of assailants communicate. Be sure to add the sounds of combat to your scene to give it added authenticity.

Make it flashy

The final ingredient to a good gun-fu action scene is the stylish visuals. John Woo’s original action movies used lots of symbolism and imagery one wouldn’t normally associate with gun violence: doves (lots of doves), mirrors, rain and other images that create a certain atmosphere and tone for the battle. Wick does the same with its neon and purple-toned nightclub battles and outrageous props. Good gun-fu fight scenes are an assault on the senses, and you want to create that in your reader’s minds eye. So go heavy with the vivid imagery as you describe the fight. Describe sparks from bullets hitting a nearby chandelier. Mention the floor being slippery from spilled blood. Tell of how the darkness of the warehouse gets lit up when bullets break holes into the glass window, letting in slivers of sunlight that hit the enemy like targeting lasers. Compare that thug getting shot on the balcony and dropping off to a falling angel. Try to make your prose scene as visual as possible.

The mindsets of your combatants can also dictate the pace and style of your action. Agent 47’s detached professional style of fighting in the Hitman franchise flows differently than Eve’s desperate, improvisational fights in Ballerina. Wick fighting for vengeance in his first movie feels different from him fighting for survival in his third, which feels different from him fighting for freedom in his fourth. The mindset of the fighter should be reflected in the way they fight, and specifically in how you depict the way they fight.

Conclusion

Translating a visual storytelling style like gun-fu into prose can be a daunting task, but it can be done, and you can do it. Keep the pacing brisk and the imagery vivid, and you should be able to add some thrilling action sequences to your story.

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If there is one thing that could possibly be more intimidating to a writer than a blank page, it’s staring at a finished manuscript that looks almost unreadable due to all of the markups and strikethroughs, next to a looong laundry list of suggested edits and revisions from your beta readers and content editor. If you’re like me, you would rather do almost anything creatively than dive back into a story you subconsciously had moved on from. Don’t get me wrong, I welcome constructive criticism. I’ve said as much in previous articles. But receiving constructive critique, edits and revisions is one thing; actually doing anything with them is something else entirely. After receiving my latest round of critiques from a professional beta reader I hired for the last draft of my military sci-fi story Blink, it took me literally over a year to look over the notes and start the next draft of the book. And in that time, I wrote a complete first draft for an entirely new novel, along with making significant progress on two other writing projects, developing ideas for at least two new books and a comic book series, not to mention countless posts for this very Substack.

The mental block for doing major revisions is real. It’s not that you think your first draft is perfect (and shame on you if you do), it’s that when you go into revision mode and start focusing on rewriting your book, storytelling stops being an exercise in creative expression, and starts being work. And the majority of us writers do not want writing to be work - even those of us that do it for a living. It’s like having to renovate a house you’ve already moved out of (which ironically I’m doing right now because we want to rent out our old house). You feel like there is nothing new to discover or explore, because you’ve said everything you really wanted to say about that story in the first draft. Meanwhile, you are getting inundated with new ideas and concepts that won’t leave you alone, and new stories are percolating within you, begging to be told. Here are some ways you can motivate yourself to finally dive into making those revisions instead of just starting something new.

Trust the process

Think of your story as a sculpture. Your first draft of the story was taking that block of marble or ice or wood and hammering away all of the big chunks you don’t need to get it into some rough semblance of what you want your finished sculpture to be. You’ve made a lot of progress, but it’s still only a preview of what your finished product could be. Your first draft is you exploring the possibilities of your story idea and figuring out what your book could be. Now that you know what your story is and how it progresses, you are now empowered to make the story truly work for your audience. This is where your story becomes tighter, more focused, and gains a better flow. In other words, the second draft is when your story actually gets good. You might even discover new aspects and elements of your story in the revision process that you might not have noticed before, because your revisions force you to ask questions about your characters, plot, theme and setting that you might not have thought of when you were writing your first draft.

Eating elephants

Remember the old joke about how to eat an elephant? If not, you eat it one bite at a time. The revision process can appear overwhelming if you look at the totality of changes you need to make. So don’t look at all of them. Concentrate on fixing one aspect of the story at a time, taking multiple passes through the story with your eye on one specific element you are looking to improve. Your first pass could be reexamining your characters’ motivations and how they are presented in the story. Then you go back through and pay attention to the story’s pacing. Once you’re satisfied with that. Go back through a third time with strengthening the story’s dialogue in mind. And after that, you go again focusing solely on making sure your story’s themes are conveyed clearly. And you can finish with a final spelling and grammar check to make sure your new changes are consistent. These bite-sized updates can make the process more manageable, and seeing even a few of those boxes checked off can motivate you to keep going. When revising Blink, the beta reader pointed out times where my protagonist (Space Force General / Point Guard Ahmed Dean) had inconsistencies in how his leadership style was presented. So I focused and entire pass on addressing just that, and that was one less thing I needed to concern myself with moving forward. This process shows your progress in a visible way, which preserves momentum.

Your new idea is a reward, not an escape

While you’re staring down that list of revisions to your current story, I know there are new ideas percolating in your mind begging to be explored. I implore you to resist the temptation to abandon your current story in favor of diving into something new. You can take notes on your new ideas as they come to you, but try not to go too deep into working on your new story ideas because that can and will take you away from refining the story you have that is closer to being publishable. If you keep up that pattern, you will have a pile of first drafts, none of which would be ready for publication. I get it; exploring something new is much sexier than poring over the same story over and over again. I’m guilty of that, too. So here’s how you can use that as motivation. How about dabbling in your new story idea after you’ve made a few revisions to your current story, as a reward? This way you can scratch both itches at the same time. Take some time to check a few of those boxes and hammer out even a few of those revisions, and after that, treat yourself to working on your new ideas.

Rediscover your own Motivation

Here’s a question I want to ask you about your first draft: why did you write it? What was it about that particular story idea that compelled you to explore and develop it to the point that you completed an entire story? What was it about that story that had you excited enough to see it through from start to finish? Was it a question you wanted to answer? A character you wanted to develop? A plot idea you wanted to see resolved, or a world you wanted to explore? That element is still there in your finished story, but now you are a better storyteller, with better tools resources to truly nail what you were trying to get to when younger you first started writing the story. The new version of the story you wrote will land more closely to how you first envisioned it in your mind’s eye, and has the potential to even surpass that. That alone could be reason enough to delve back in and make the changes.

Conclusion

The key to making the revision process seem less like work is how you approach the process. fine-tuning a story is actually a privilege that most never get to experience because most people that talk about wanting to write a book never finish one. You are already in elite company. You’re not staring at blank pages anymore. You have something to work with and build on. And you’re closer to having a publishable version of your story than you think. You don’t HAVE to rewrite your story; you GET to rewrite your story and make it the best version of itself that it can be. Keep that in mind and get started!

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From time to time I have dreams so vivid I have to write them down. This idea came from one of those dreams. I don’t remember the intricate details of it, but I do remember one major plot point. Aliens were invading the earth, and my lovely wife and I were wondering what we could do to help. Then we came up with an ingenious plan for saving the world. here is the plan:
Step 1. Sneak onto the alien mothership with a duffel bag full of sweet potato pies.
Step 2. ????????
Step 3. Save the world.
Personally, I think that is a pretty good plan.

But the idea stuck with me for a while, and I started wondering exactly how sweet potato pies could repel an alien invasion. And from that a story idea for a Sci-Fi comedy started to germinate. This is a treatment for that idea. Check it out, I hope you enjoy it.

YAMS IN SPACE

Synopsis

Jack and Samantha live in a quiet small town, content in their peaceful life. One night, they hear an eerie humming sound. Stepping outside, they see bright lights in the sky and then… the ground trembles as an enormous spaceship descends, casting a dark shadow over the town. Over the next few days, the Kragzarians, an alien species, announce that they intend to mine Earth’s resources.

While observing the aliens, Samantha notes they’re particularly interested in the Earth’s plant life, specifically sweet potatoes. One of the aliens accidentally tastes one and seems enthralled. After a few more encounters, the aliens discover Samantha’s delicious sweet potato pies and become obsessed with them, thinking they’re some sort of high-status “delicacy.”

Jack and Samantha realize the Kragzarians have a critical weakness: a fondness for sweet potato pie so strong it’s almost hypnotic. They come up with a risky plan to distract the alien guards by baking as many pies as possible and using them as bribes. Their goal is to sneak aboard the mothership and disable its central command.

The couple enlists help from their neighbors, transforming their kitchen into a pie-baking factory. In no time, they’ve filled dozens of duffel bags with warm, fragrant pies. With each step, they keep adding twists to their recipe to ensure the pies have a smell and taste that the aliens can’t resist.

Using their pie bribes, they distract and confuse the alien guards and sneak their way into the ship. As they move deeper inside, the couple leaves pies along hallways, luring the aliens off their posts and causing minor chaos.

Finally, Jack and Samantha reach the command center. They realize they can’t disable the mothership on their own, but they can do something even better: rewire the main system to think Earth’s atmosphere is toxic to the Kragzarians. With a few button presses, they hack into the system, and a red alert starts blaring across the ship.

The Kragzarians panic and begin an emergency evacuation. But as they attempt to flee, they encounter all the pies the couple left behind. In a chaotic frenzy, they begin to eat them, slowing down their escape. Eventually, the aliens are so overwhelmed by the pies that they lose all focus on their mission.

The mothership finally departs Earth. The world is saved, thanks to sweet potato pie. Jack and Samantha return home as unexpected heroes, and soon their pies become famous worldwide. Scientists later confirm that the Kragzarians’ biology couldn’t handle the rich flavors and spices in the pies, giving Earth a unique defense weapon.

Back in their kitchen, Jack and Samantha share a slice of sweet potato pie and toast to their triumph. They get a strange communication from space… a Kragzarian craving another pie.

There is absolutely, positively, no way I am ever going to write this story. But I thought it was a quirky, unique idea to explore and share with you all. If you want to write this story or something similar to it, you may do so with my full blessing. Just sneak in a shout-out somewhere, if you can.

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Kendall is one of my earliest web design clients, and a fantastic poet and public speaker. I took some time to interview her about her approach to writing and publishing, and here is what she had to say.

What inspires your writing?

The inspiration can come from any event, random thought or a subject given to me.

Did you Start with an outline or did you make it up as you went along?

Sometimes it just flows as one complete poem. There are a lot of times when there is a line here and a line there.

What researching methods did you use?

The dictionary, Bible or online search engines.

Did you draw on personal experience?

Absolutely from time to time. I also drew from other people’s experiences as well.

How did your publish?

I self published through Amazon.

Why did you do it that way?

At the time I couldn’t afford to pay a publisher. Also at the time I didn’t have a lot of knowledge about publishing, nor writing a book.

What advice would you have for writers looking to publish the way you published?

Make sure you have all of the information that you can about self publishing and finding a publisher. They need to be enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the market.

How long did it take to land representation?

I never did.

Who did your cover and marketing?

Josh Wirth (now deceased) did the original cover. J.D. Williams did an updated version of it for the most recent edition. I did self marketing, which didn’t go very well. It was also on Amazon.

What are some of the methods you have used to generate interest in your book?

Word of mouth. That didn’t work well.

Did you use beta readers?

Yes I used several Beta Readers.

How many revisions did it take to get a publishable book?

I probably did 4 revisions.

What aspect of the book writing process did you find the most challenging?

Gathering all the information on copyrighting, publishing, creating the cover and layout of the book. Making sure all of the T’s were crossed and the I’m were dotted. Spelling and sure it made since. Making sure I knew what I was talking about.

How would you describe your process for writing poetry as opposed to writing prose?

Well at the time if had an idea, I had to Write all in until it was finished. Then go back and check for mistakes. I would also read it to people to see if made since.

What are you writing now?

I’m trying to revise “Simple Tips Rules to Live By For the College Bound Student.”

What is your advice to other writers?

Do a lot research on each aspect publishing!

Be sure to get your copy of her poetry book “A Change of Seasons: Poetry Depicting Life, Love, Religion” here!

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In one of my very first posts on this blog, I wrote about eliminating your excuses to not write. If you have something you want to write about, you should be writing. No one is going to tell your story for you. (Okay, you actually can pay a ghost writer to tell your story for you, but you still ought to be an active part of the process.). When I tell people I’m a novelist, I still hear people respond with “I’d like to write a book someday.” I ask them why not now, and they say they can’t find the time to.

I call BS on that.

People will make time to do the things they truly want to do. And unless you are truly writing for a living (like a technical writer or a Journalist), then writing will not be a natural part of your daily routine. Only full-time writers can write when they want, but they have to because it’s their job. You have to make time to write, just as you make time to binge watch TV shows or make time to rant on social media. There are plenty of ways to eke out time to get your ideas out, you just have to be committed enough to do it. Here are a few techniques I utilize.

Wake up an hour early or go to bed an hour later

Sometimes making time to write means literally making time. If your story is worth the hours of lost sleep, then those moments are perfect fodder for writing. Heck, for some, the creative juices flow best right before bedtime or right when they wake up anyway.

Write during your lunchbreak or downtime if you can

I admit I’ve snuck pieces of scrap paper onto the floor when I worked at factories. When the machines are down I’d jot a few quick notes down before picking up my broom to clean the area (Not something I recommend, though). Mostly if I had a long enough lunch break, I’d write ideas down then.

Jot down notes

This is something every writer should do. You should always keep a means of recording ideas handy at all time, whether it be a pen and some scratch paper, a note taking app on your phone, a notebook you carry around, or whatever. Inspiration can strike any time and anywhere under any circumstance, and when it happens you need to write it down, and yes, even jotting down notes counts as writing.

Vocal recorders

If you don’t have access to pen and scrap paper, or like me you find thumb-typing ideas onto the note app on your phone to be too tedious, you can always turn on your vocal recorder and dictate your ideas onto your phone. I personally haven’t tried this because I just like the feeling of writing or typing my ideas out better and it allows me more freedom to better organize my thoughts. But if it works for you, then go for it.

Email yourself

A good way to record ideas is to send them to yourself via email. You can write as much as you want, and they will always be in a place where you can retrieve them. I’ve done this plenty of times. In fact, I’ve backed up entire manuscript drafts by emailing them to myself. I actually trust that more than The Cloud.

Write instead of doing something else in your leisure time

Instead of watching the game, or going out partying, or hanging with the crew, or playing video games, or watching cat videos on YouTube, how about taking a half hour to write about what’s on your mind? You would be surprised at how much time you spend a day on mindless entertainment. That time can be spent writing. Or you can even multitask. Keep your laptop or tablet handy and type while you’re watching TV, or in between gaming sessions.

Write when you don’t feel like writing

This is a big one. Oftentimes you just don’t feel creative. It could be fatigue from the daily grind, or you’ve been through something particularly discouraging. The thing is, this is a perfect time to vent out your feelings of despair or frustration or fatigue. You can pour those negative feelings onto the paper, and into your stories. My negative feelings about my life at the time were the genesis of my book The Hand You’re Dealt. The emotions you get reading my characters as they struggle with their careers and relationships are very, very real and were things that I was dealing with when I concocted the story.

Write when something major happens to get the feeling and reactions while they are fresh in your mind.

Likewise, when literally anything of importance happens in your life, that is a perfect opportunity to record it and put it into a story. Take note not only of what happened and why, but how everyone reacted to it, and how it made you feel personally, and even speculation what comes next. This is a great exercise to help develop your skill as a writer, and may provide material for future stories.

JUST WRITE!

Like I said, if you really wanted to do it, you’d find a way. For writers, the ideas and revelations will churn inside us, nag at us constantly, and pretty much drive us insane if we don’t get them out of our heads and onto some recordable form. It’s an unexplainable thing that drives us. If you have that type of creative passion, you get everything I’m saying. If you don’t, then you won’t. But you can generate that passion by taking the time, even making the time, to cultivate that germ of an idea you’ve got until it consumes you like our ideas consume us. Even something as simple as writing a sentence a day counts. And there’s no better time to get started than RIGHT NOW.

So what are you waiting for?

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Many people consider Hoosiers the greatest Sports film ever made, while some argue for Rocky, which actually won an Academy Award for best picture. It seems to me that sports fiction is an underserved niche, especially in prose. While you can find sports related movies and even a smattering of television shows, you’d be hard pressed to find fictionalized sport stories in any other medium (save gaming, but that’s an exception for obvious reasons). But I do think that sports fiction can be a viable genre to explore. Sports have a natural story structure and narrative engine, you can focus on the individuals associated with the sports and explore identity under pressure, and you can delve into the minds and moments of the players and games in a way that you can’t with any other medium. If you’re interested in writing a story involving your favorite sport, here are some tips to help you pull that off.

Make It About More Than Just the Sport

If all you’re writing is a play-by-play of what is happening in your games, then you’re doing your story a disservice. There is a lot more going on in a sports contest than just the actions of the competitors. Focus on the thoughts and emotions of the people involved as they engage with the sport. What are the relationships between the participants? Are there friendships? Rivalries? Do certain players or staff have a history with or against each other? These players, coaches, staff and execs all have lives and ambitions. How do those factor into the sport?

In addition, sports in many ways are microcosms for things we all universally deal with in life. Use sports as a lens to explore themes like perseverance, teamwork, redemption, and personal sacrifice. Overcoming adversity, growth and coming of age, learning to work with others, handling success and dealing with failure, and a lot of other life lessons can be learned through sport and competition. Take time to delve into these themes as you write about your sport.

Capture the Game’s Energy & Strategy

You want to enhance the sense of immersion in your sports story, so it helps to have an in-depth understanding of the sport you are writing about. Do a deep dive into the lingo, strategy and feel of the game. Adding details about how a pick and roll works in basketball, or how a zone blitz works in football, or how to defend the left wing lock in hockey, or why people are so mad about infield shifts in baseball add to the realism of the story and gives your audience a real insider view of the inner workings of the game. As you write about each contest, you want to catch the ebb and flow of the game, the back and forth of its contestants, and you want to make your sentence structure and word choice reflect the action that is happening in the game. use short, punch sentences to highlight the action, while taking time to use more poetic, descriptive text to highlight key moments, or even describing what the people involved are thinking and feeling in those moments. Pay attention to player technique, movement, and decision-making, because each player approaches the game differently and moves within it differently. Also, sensory details like the feel of sweat, the roar of the crowd, and the burn of exhaustion will go a long way to making the audience feel what the players are feeling in that moment.

The game outside of the game.

There’s a lot more to sport than just the sport itself. You can mine a lot of drama and character development from following your characters around when the game isn’t being played. You can explore locker room dynamics between your characters and the other people they interact with behind the scenes. What happens when teammates don’t get along? Or when players disagree with their trainers? What if there is friction between the players and coaches or front office? You can explore rivalries and how your characters approach dealing with players and teams that are recurring nemeses. For instance, How would a newly hired coach at Michigan or Ohio State that is not ingrained in the rivalry approach “The Game,” and how would it affect his interactions with fans, alumni and media?

In addition, you should also take time to shine some spotlight on the aspects of your sport that don’t involve the actual competition. What happens during training or practice? How are your athletes conditioning themselves? How do they deal with the media? These guys also have personal lives, and those are also affected by their profession. They deal with unexpected injuries and burnout. They experience lots of pressure to win and perform well, and there are certain swaths of fandom and media that can be merciless in ridiculing athletes that underperform. does that weigh on your characters? What does the sport take from your participants in a broader sense, and what des it give them? The most relatable aspect of sport is responding to adversity. That is something you can and should tap into as you create your sports story.

The identity of Sport

Sports creates and defines identity, both for the individual and the collective. The critically acclaimed film Moneyball chronicled a small market baseball team with a limited budget using cutting edge technology to compete with the top teams of the league. It showed the differences and discrepancies between the smaller team and its bigger competition in a way that garnered sympathy. Teams and sports organizations have their own unique philosophies and approaches, and you want to explore that. Some teams value winning championships at all costs, while other team owners simply see the team as a part of their portfolio and really don’t care whether the team is competitive or not. This also applies to players and their approaches to the game, where some players are aiming for hall-of-fame careers, others are simply trying to keep their bills paid. So you want to delve into how that sport affects that individual’s identity. How important is the sport to that mixed martial artist? What if that boxer is getting doubts about whether the acclaim from boxing is worth risking head trauma? I once worked with an older local basketball star who pushed her daughters to also excel at basketball, thinking it was their only avenue for obtaining scholarships for college. And she pushed them HARD. It got the desired results - both young ladies had solid college basketball careers and graduated with honors, but being pushed so hard so early made both girls despise basketball and only saw the game as a means to an end. And once they graduated, neither woman ever wanted to have anything to do with basketball again, despite their mother wanting them to play professionally. And what happens when a player whose entire identity was tied into their sport suddenly no longer has access to it? What happens to them once their sports career ends, whether it be retirement, career-ending injury, or being forced out of the sport for other reasons? How to they handle that and what toll does that take on them? These are all situations that are ripe for mining for dramatic situations.

Conclusion

Stories involving sport can explore and reveal things about humanity in ways that other forms of fiction can only scratch the surface of. And there are lots of themes to highlight that can make a sports story relatable even to people that don’t follow the sport, or don’t have much interest in sports at all. If this genre piques your interest, it’s worth taking some time to write about.

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The final installment of the horror video game trilogy Amanda The Adventurer is best known for one of its supporting characters (Wooly) going on an unhinged rant towards the end of the game. This behavior is what many refer to as a “crash out” which is slang for sudden emotional outbursts and erratic behavior. Classic examples of this include The Narrator’s breakdown in the classic short story The Yellow Wallpaper, and Daffy Duck going wild in Duck Amok, after the artist has spent the entire story tormenting him. Even the iconic “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” song from the Broadway hit Dreamgirls is an example of a crash out-styled emotional breakdown. Writing a character having an emotional breakdown in a believable manner can be a challenge. You don’t want it to be too over the top, and you want to make sure you nail the right emotional beat for the moment. Here are a few tips that might help you get it right.

What is the goal of your crash out?

The first thing you want to do is ask yourself what emotions you are intending on broadcasting with this crash out moment. How do you want your audience to feel when they witness this moment? Wooly’s breakdown in Amanda the Explorer 3 was aimed to shock and unnerve its players, Daffy’s breakdown is played for comedic effect, and John Rambo’s PTSD-fueled rant at the end of the movie First Blood was intended to make you feel sympathy for his trauma. You want to ask yourself this question because this will inform the type of wording and pacing your moment will need to be effective. Once you determine what type of reaction you are aiming for, you then want to make a list of the type of words, actions, descriptions and phrases best elicit that reaction. This will be the toolbox you draw from when crafting your moment. The urban crime story I am currently seeking representation for has a crash out moment towards the end, at the tail end of a massive emotional spiral by the POV character. For that I wanted the reader to feel the sense of existential hopelessness and despair the character was experiencing at that moment. Once you determine the emotional core of the moment, you can lean into it as you craft the scene.

The Audience should see it coming

Regardless of which emotions you aim to broadcast to your audience, they should in every instance feel like this breakdown was inevitable. You want to track a trajectory of your character’s descent, and plant seeds or show hints at every instance that the character is capable of this breakdown in some way, shape or form. Show the cracks forming early and often. Make the signs small if you want the breakdown to feel like it came out of nowhere - a perplexed reaction here or a slightly perturbed reaction there. You can lean heavier into the hints when you want the moment to come off as the most obvious conclusion to what is transpiring. Use their body language, facial expressions and tone of voice to show how things are falling apart for them internally. If you can talk about the thoughts going through their heads, do so. This should feel like it’s not a question of if the character will break, but when. You should spend the story building pressure on the character, and putting them in situations where they can’t get away from or fail to overcome the circumstances that are giving them so much adversity. When your audience goes through the story a second time, they should be able to see the breadcrumbs leading up to that moment, even if you can hide them in a first reading.

The Crippling Truth

Your character’s crash out will most likely come from an epiphany or realization that they refuse to accept. It could be something as simple as the fact they lost (along with all of the fallout that loss brings), it could be the fact that the control they thought they had over the situation is gone (or was never there to begin with), it could be that their attempts to escape the consequences of previous actions were in vain. It could even be a relationship your character valued that was falling apart beyond their ability to salvage it, Or the realization that they are in a situation that is bigger and deeper than they thought and was beyond their ability to change. For your character, you need to look at their motivations and relationship to the core plot of your story, and use that to find the lone truth that reflects on both their involvement in the story and their ultimate fate within it, and then present that truth to your character as a “bitter pill” that their personality will be most likely to reject. This realization doesn’t have to be obvious; you can present subtle clues in vocal tone, facial expression and body language that shows the character finally understanding the truth they have been avoiding, the ramifications of that truth sinking in, and their refusal to accept it.

Waving the White Flag

In Edgar Allen Poe’s The Telltale Heart, the protagonist crashes out when they come to the realization that they cannot hide the body of their victim forever, and the guilt of what they had done compounded with the fear of being found out spurs them to out themselves at the end. A crash out is essentially a subconscious admission of defeat. The moment and circumstances are too much for the character to handle, and their only recourse is to lash out and act out in response to the adversity. The character realizes that no matter what they do, they can’t win, and they are ill-equipped to deal with that realization. Salzetta’s dramatic rant at the end of Terry Pratchett’s opera-influenced Maskerade rails not just against the people that foiled him, but at the opera itself, his frustration obvious at being such an ingrained part of a system so instrumental in his downfall. To make your crash out more believable, you want to put your character into a corner they can’t find or fight their way out of. Cut off all of their options for making things better and strip away their hope. Then take away the option of accepting their fate. What behavior you have left will be the basis of your crash out moment.

All Crash Outs Aren’t the Same

Also keep in mind that not every crash out is loud, violent or demonstrative. You could say the babbling confessions of criminals that have been caught or exposed on most detective TV shows are crash outs (why else would the crook tell all their business unnecessarily before being cuffed up?). Some get neurotic, repeating the same actions and sayings over and over as a way to cope, like Harry Caul completely dismantling his own apartment at the end of The Conversation. Obsessive-compulsive behavior is also something you could see, as well as doing something that could be considered going against the grain. You’ve seen this happen in real life with some of the bizarre, disturbing actions of celebrities, whether it be shaving one’s head randomly (like Britney), Interrupting award shows to do something unprecedented (like Kanye or Will), code-switching and actively speaking out against the very people that have supported them for years (like Onika…and Kanye), inciting your supporters to riot and break the law on your behalf to overturn your election loss (like Donald), going on a racist, misogynist, and/or antisemitic rant that alienates the people that support you (like Mel and Adin...and Kanye), lashing out at members of your own team over a crucial loss (like Michael…and Kanye), or even file a facetious lawsuit claiming someone used defamatory language against you when you violated them first (like Aubrey and the cops that sued Afroman). You want to do a deep dive into your character and figure out what types of extreme behavior they are capable of, along with what extreme behavior would fit within the context of the story. Salzetta’s crash out fit the story perfectly because it was an Opera-styled death monologue in a story about the Opera. In any regard, the character put into this no-win situation is not responding with acceptance or resignation. Their minds and emotions literally cannot process the loss they are taking, so they react in other, more destructive ways.

Nothing Will Be The Same

If your character’s crash out moment is the peak after all of the buildup, then it’s only right for you to show the downward slope after the peak. There should be a fallout from your character’s breakdown, and depicting it can add context to what your character just did. Once you write your character’s crash out, ask yourself how the world reacts to your character’s breakdown. What do people think of your character now that they’ve shown that side of themselves? How could the systems they rail against push back? How could that character behave once their breakdown is over and it did nothing to shift anything in their favor? The crash out should incur a cost of some kind, whether it is in status, safety, identity, others’ perceptions of them (or their perceptions of themselves), a loss of hope. Even in the instance where the criminal lashes out after being caught, the most obvious consequence is the loss of their freedom, possibly with the detectives that caught them reflecting on how their perception of the criminal had changed. The erratic behavior has to change something, and that change needs to be evident to your audience.

Conclusion

A character’s crash out should be a powerful, impactful moment that lingers with the audience long after they are finished with the story. Wooly’s crash out is the most memorable moment in Amanda 3, and Effie’s breakdown is the highlight of Dreamgirls. If crafted well, your crash out can be a powerful reflection of your character and everything in the story that led up to that moment. Be sure to give that moment the care it deserves.

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One of the films I enjoyed in my college days was Love and Basketball. It’s a love story about two professional basketball players. A few years later I had seen the football film Any Given Sunday, and one of the smaller subplots was how the sudden rise of backup Quarterback Willie Beamon negatively affected his marriage at home. My niece actually had a similar experience dating an NFL player that was struggling to stay in the league (yes, this is the same niece I made the star of YA thriller The Leopard Man. What can I say? She’s a really cool person). One night I had one of those dreams where you’re not actually in the dream, but you’re watching what happens in your dream like it’s a movie (I can’t be the only one that has had those types of dreams). And the movie in my dream was actually a dramatized version of what my niece went through while involved with this football player. The dream was so vivid, I had to write it down.

Out of respect to her (and to him too, because he’s still in my network) I’ll never write this story fully, but I think it’s a good enough idea to share it with you. Check it out.

Fourth And Forever

Synopsis

DeShawn Parker is a wide receiver on the practice squad of an NFL team, grinding through training camp in his final eligible year. Practice squad players only have three years to be elevated to the main roster before the team has to let them go, and he is on his third year. His journey started as a junior college walk-on to a Division II star, to an undrafted NFL hopeful, and now to the practice squad.

Rosetta Carter is his college sweetheart, now working part-time while managing his schedule, nutrition, and social obligations. She has an eye for starting her own fitness apparel brand but has shelved it for him.

Rosetta started dating DeShawn long before he became a football star in Junior College and stood by him throughout his career. At this time, she starts dropping hints that she wants to get married, but DeShaun dodges the subject constantly, saying things like, “Let me just get this roster spot locked in first.” Her response is that she doesn’t really care about his status with the team. She was with him before football, and she would be with him long after football was done with him…but he has to commit.

While taking care of DeShaun, Rosetta has to deal with the NFL wives scene. Many of these women are focused on superficial things when they are around each other: expensive bags, diamond rings, conversations about vacation homes. Rosetta’s interests run deeper than that, and she feels out of place in that scene. She tries to talk to DeShaun about that, too, but he brushes it off, saying once he gets a full roster spot, she will get used to that life.

As the season progresses and DeShawn gets no news on getting elevated to a full time spot, he scrambles to keep his football dreams alive. He finds himself doing late-night workouts, auditioning for CFL and UFL scouts, emailing high school coaching programs as a backup plan. Some of these ideas were suggested by Rosetta. He is reluctant to even consider not getting elevated, but he does these things to humor his girlfriend. But his uncertainty eats at him. He wants to provide her with the stability he never had growing up, but instead he’s paycheck-to-paycheck, living in a modest apartment while other players buy mansions. She reminds him that he got his degree in business management, but he dismisses it. “Football is the only thing I know,” he says. She shakes her head. “No. Football is the only thing you choose.”

Rosetta finally confronts him: she feels invisible, her dreams are sidelined, and she doesn’t want to put her life on hold for a man who’s putting everything on hold for football. They have a quiet but intense argument. There is no screaming, just hurt. She says, “You think you’re protecting me by not committing, but you’re just protecting yourself from the fear of losing.”

In late November, after another close cut from the active roster, He has an emotional breakdown and destroys his living room, which she comes home just in time to witness. Rosetta has had enough and she moves out. She starts her own athletic apparel line, using contacts she made during his NFL networking but without his involvement.

Late in the season, a starting WR suffers a season-ending injury. DeShawn finally gets elevated to the 53-man roster for the rest of the year. The promotion feels hollow, though. Rosetta is gone, and the one person who believed in him from the start isn’t there to share his success.

The team goes on a surprise playoff run. DeShawn plays a small but key role. He makes a clutch third-down catch and a special teams tackle that seals a win propelling them to the Superbowl. Deshawn’s journey becomes a feelgood story the media flaunts to help promote the game.

During media week before the big game, he is interviewed about his journey. Instead of talking about himself, he credits Rosetta for his discipline and perseverance. He even name-drops her new business on live TV.

After the season ends, he organizes a surprise “support local” pop-up event at her store, bringing teammates, fans, and local influencers. Rosetta is surprised to see all of these people, along with news crews, at the door of her shop.

DeShaun takes her aside and tells her privately, not with cameras rolling, that he’s ready to commit to her whether he’s in the NFL next year or not, and that he’s already used his Superbowl notoriety to land interviews for high-level coaching, personal training, and broadcasting gigs so their future doesn’t hinge on playing football. He makes it clear this isn’t a “grand gesture to win her back” but the result of genuine change in how he views his life and priorities.

She agrees to try again, not because of his Super Bowl appearance, but because he’s finally choosing them over the game.

He invites her to lunch, and they walk away from the store together, him holding her business’s branded hoodie instead of his jersey—symbolizing where his heart is now.

like I said, I’m never going to write this, but I thought it was a good story idea. I’d love to get your thoughts on it in the comments.

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.

Here is yet another amazing author to check out. These are his thoughts on his approach to the storytelling process. Find out more about his at his website www.gemoorethewriter.com

What is your process of developing characters?
The characters are typically the first thing envisioned when a story idea occurs to me. I may see or read or experience something that sparks an idea that leads me to wonder how I would react or what I would do and from there it’s easy to project that onto a prototype. Everything else branches out from there. If I can see myself in it, dealing with or responding to some sort of stimulus or inspiration, it becomes easier to allow for the story to develop naturally from that point.

Did you Start with a story outline or did you make it up as you went along?
I don’t start with the customary outline, but there is some structure laid out as I develop the initial idea. I typically know where I want the story to go, in general, establishing a definitive starting point and the inevitable conclusion; how I get there can often be fluid, though.

How much research did you need for your latest story?
A lot of what I write is inspired by my compulsive curiosity. I tend to dive deep into whatever may interest me in the moment, a viral video, something I saw on TikTok, a homeless dude offering to wash my car window. When it sets in, I dive into my idea and do the research. Anything that I write, whatever is based on real world suppositions or critiques or opinions, that shits is based on real world research.

What researching methods did you use?
I do a lot of reading. I have a growing collection of books spread across three cities and I will Google some shits to death, always cross-checking and making sure to reference source material when I can.

What are some of your methods for handling worldbuilding and establishing a believable and immersive setting in you stories?
Growing up on a steady diet of comic books, Bionic Men/Women, Star Wars, Harry Potter and more, I was always curious about the lives of the characters beyond the stories as presented. I saw these stories as snapshotts, moments in the lives of these people, and wondered for what it woulld be like to actually live in their worlds. I take that into account as I write.

Did you draw on personal experience?
Most everything that I write is personal. Even the most fantastical or absurdly unbelievable moments, as described in my poetry, is based upon something that I’ve either seen or wondered about or experienced personally. It’s all written from my point of view. This is me, doing my best to express my empathy by considering the reasoning of my characters, hero or villain.

How did your publish?
Hours and hours of research and submissions. I maintain a spreadsheet of every publication that I submit my work to, whether poetry, opinion piece, editorial, article or book submission. There is a lot of red in the ledger, representing the rejections. I focus on the bright blue that peeks out occasionally amongst all that red. So, I set my mind to seeing my work published and shared and was persistent until it happened.

Why did you do it that way?
I didn’t know any other way. When I started out, I had no idea what to do, who to send my work to, how to format it, what to say, what I even really wanted. A lot of times publishers don’t have the time to interact with the many people who submit to them, so the ones who did way back when I first started to send in my work were greatly appreciated and taught me a lot about the process.

What advice would you have for writers looking to publish the way you published?
Be prepared to believe in your work in spite of all else. Be proud of what you create and know that there is likely someone out there who will see its potential. You may just have to go out and find them.

How long did it take to land representation?
Years. And years. It isn’t always easy to maintain the necessary level of dedication to the craft. Life intercedes and looking up after a while, years may have passed in the aftermath. I’ve dealt with at least three massive life-altering disruptions along this journey, but I always maintained my belief in my pursuit of this.

Who did your cover and marketing?
Christy Aldridge of Grim Poppy Design(

https://grimpoppydesign.carrd.co

), is the cover illustrator for my publisher, Nightmare Press and I was pleased with her responsiveness when working closely with me on the final image and design aspect. My publisher is also committed to marketing my book, utilizing their industry connections and their social media network.

What are some of the methods you have used to generate interest in your book?
Until recently I put a lot of energy into creating engaging promotional material and sharing across my social media channels. I’ve also opened myself up to in-person, written and podcast interviews. I’m naturally introverted so this isn’t always the easiest thing for me to do. I’ve also lined up book fair appearances and book signings at local book stores. As an author, it is good to know that most of these independent, locally owned book stores are more than willing to work with an author.

Did you use beta readers? How did you secure them?
My family and friends were initially my beta readers. I had a commitment early on from a different publisher that, unfortunately, ceased operations before we could move forward, who featured weekly installments of the story early on and I would receive feedback in that instance, as well. Overall, I found it challenging to find those willing to commit to it.

How many revisions did it take to get a publishable book?
Bealz, Prince of the Southside was under constant revision, even after its submission and acceptance by a publisher. A modest estimation would be in the dozens. Even now, when I read the published, finished work, I see some things I’d like to tweak.

What aspect of the book writing process did you find the most challenging?
Beyond the challenge of fleshing out a fleeting idea, finding its reason for being, the editorial process, as mentioned, is the biggest hurdle I face when working on a piece, whether poem or prose. Finding a good place to declare the work finished is often hard to discern.

What are you writing now?
I actually just completed two separate manuscripts this past year. One of which had been in the works for a year or more, the other was written in a fast-paced sprint. I’ve been offered publishing contracts for them both and they are officially in the pipeline and soon to be published. I am also working on completing the follow up to my first published novel, Bealz: Prince of the Southside. The majority of it is completed, I mostly just have to commit to the aforementioned editorial process.

What is your advice to other writers?

Read. Write. Review. Repeat.

Read everything. Books. News articles. Research papers. Erotica. Academia. Religious works. Restaurant menus. Whatever you can get your hands on. Open yourself up to it all and feel free to write about anything. Please yourself first and foremost, and then, please, share with the world.

Check out his Book Bealz: Prince of the Southside, here!

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When crafting a story, especially a novel or series of novels, a writer will accumulate a lot of background information on his or her characters and setting. You could possibly come up with pages and pages of extensive character study and research to flesh out your characters and settings. If you’re writing fantasy or science fiction, then you’re doing heavy amounts of worldbuilding, research and ideation on how to make your fantastic worlds believable. You could be charting magic systems, or creating maps for your lands or even inventing new languages. Yet for all of the extensive work you’ve down to build the foundation of your story, there’s a good chance that only a fraction of that information will make it into your novel. So you may be asking yourself what to do with all of that extra information? You have a number of options, including the option to not make any of it publicly available.

One good place to put the extra information is in the back of your book, as an added bonus to readers. It’s not uncommon for a high fantasy story to have a map of the world in the back, or a series that has an extensive history to contain a timeline of important events. This adds extra value to your story and provides a good reference point for readers who are intrigued by certain details of your stories.

There’s also a chance you could use the material as a marketing tool. On the website for my sci-fi horror novel Godmode (www.godmode.quanwilliams.com), I have sections specifically set aside for bonus information on my characters, monsters, and setting. You will find Character bios, a sample bestiary (with sketches), some background information on BAAL Pharmaceuticals, as well as a listing of some of the more important weapons used in the story. People stumbling across this can see these items and want to know more, which will lead them to checking out the book. If you are promoting via website like I am, the added content will also boost your SEO.

Be very selective in which of your materials you make available, especially if you plan on revisiting that setting in future stories. You don’t want to give away important plot points or character development beats too early. The secret is to have just enough background information to flesh out and tantalize, while drawing your readers – both new readers and repeat readers who will reread your story armed with new information that will put the story into a new light. For instance, Donnie Darko’s special edition features include actual text from a book on time travel and alternate dimensions, which explain the meta of what is happening in the movie to people who don’t understand the significance of certain events.

You must be careful in that you don’t give away information that will lock you into an inflexible continuity. There is always a chance you might want to change certain details for future stories but if the old information is out there, you might have a hard time explaining any inconsistencies. This is a reason why many of Magic: The Gathering’s story bibles for their various worlds, as well as the universe bible for popular anime series Tenchi Muyo, are very seldom published. As those franchises grow, details may change, and keeping those bibles close to the vest helps avoid discrepancies.

Regardless of what you decide, you should consider your notes and background information a valuable resource that will help in growing the readership of your story. Used wisely, you can greatly expand your universe, bring new readers in, and create a loyal fanbase of your current readers.

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When I tell people about this Substack, I occasionally get someone asking me why I chose to go this route instead of doing something like a podcast or a YouTube channel. I have two reasons. First of all, I tried to do this as a blog on my official website and also as a series on Medium. Both of those attempts failed to gain any measurable traction. Substack has been much more user-friendly to me, and has been more insular which made it easier to build a following and keep track of my readers. Having a subscription model and analytics built into the app makes it much easier and more convenient to keep track of who is reading and subscribing to my blog than the other options, which required me to set up email lists and go to sites like Mailchimp, and then go over to sites like Google Analytics to see data on my posts. With Substack, it’s all on one place and it’s all easier to Grok.

So that brings me to the second reason why this is a blog and not a podcast or video show. (I mean, the title DOES say “Prose” after all...). The simple answer is convenience. Doing a podcast seems to involve extra equipment and technical issues I would have to deal with, along with distributing and promoting the posts, and competing with the plethora of writing podcasts that are already well established, in addition to figuring out how to monetize it. I think it’s easier to get new readers and subscribers than it is to get new listeners. And all of this goes double for video, which has even more equipment and technical barriers, more algorithm and legal headaches dealing with YouTube, more monetization barriers and more competition. For me, if I’m not doing this full-time and making serious money off of it, then the proverbial juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

Maintaining this Substack is actually relatively low maintenance. All I’m really responsible for is: write the article, find a good picture to go along with said article, post (or schedule to post) and promote via social media. That’s it. A few minutes of research and ideating, a few minutes a day writing, a few minutes of posting and promoting, and I’m done. Everything else is optional. That includes developing and promoting site-related merch, hunting down authors for my monthly author interviews, trying to find ways to get my free subscribers to upgrade to paid subscriptions, digging through my old story ideas to post as one of my monthly unused ideas or unfinished works-in-progress, and curating select old articles for collected editions I’ll be self-publishing (still working on that one, stay tuned). I can do all of that extra stuff at my leisure, and since I schedule my posts months in advance, I have plenty of time to do that stuff at my own pace.

Here is a list of all the other stuff I also do when I’m not at my full-time day job, in no particular order:

1. Work a second part-time job

2. Promote the music I’ve released through YouTube and my Bandcamp page

3. Promote my 4 published novels.

4. Try to get representation for the 4 finished manuscripts I haven’t published yet.

5. Continue writing the high fantasy novel I’m currently working on.

6. Continue developing this weird ergodic novel/video game project I came up with and figure out what I’m going to do with it.

7. promote my educational boardgame company, find a way to get my two boardgames into classrooms and figure out how to get digital versions of both games made for cheap/free.

8. Do freelance graphic & web design for my current clients and try to land new ones.

9. Make weekly posts as “Golden Boy Drizzy Sixx” in my fantasy pro wrestling league on Facebook and Twitter (I refuse to call it X).

10. Beat Hollow Knight: Silksong. Or at least get most of act 2 done before trying out another game. (I play video games one at a time)

11. Take care of my wife, mother-in-law and dog.

These are all things I enjoy doing and/or need to do, so I have no plans of stopping any of them anytime soon. So P&Q being low-maintenance fits my scheduling needs perfectly.

Do you know what’s NOT low maintenance?

Adapting my Substack posts into YouTube Scripts, while making sure I don’t use wording that will get me in trouble with YouTube. Setting up a good environment for video recording. Actually recording the video and getting a take I actually like in both audio and video quality. Finding images and video to add that won’t get me flagged or copyright-striked by YouTube. Editing the video to look presentable, dubbing in the audio and finding an eye-catching thumbnail to put on it. Maybe adding a catchy video intro. Begging people within that video to check out previous videos, like, subscribe, ring the bell, push the hype button and whatever else will appease the Algorithm gods and generate more traffic. Dealing with whatever insanity comes in the comments for these videos. Poring over analytic data to see what posts are getting traction and which ones aren’t. Figuring out how to monetize these videos since I got my Googleads account deleted years ago and they won’t reinstate me (long story short: I did something stupid.) . And doing all of this every week, if not every few days. I applaud all of the YouTubers that do this on a regular basis, especially the ones that do it as a side hustle and not full-time. That isht is a lot of work. And I simply don’t have the time or motivation to do all of that stuff with all of the other stuff I’m involved in.

So that, in a nutshell, is why Prose & Quan’s isn’t a podcast or a YouTube show. Nothing is written in stone, and there’s nothing that says I CAN’T explore these other options in the future. Maybe if the Substack subscriber base grows enough (like, into the thousands) and my subscribers start demanding it, I’ll look into these other options. But as of this post, I’m content with the platform I’m currently using, and I want to see how much I can get out of this platform before expanding to another one. And I appreciate every single one of you that have come along with me on this journey on this platform, whether you’ve read just one article or all of them. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for your support. I hope my future articles are just as helpful to you as my previous ones.

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One of the more popular video game franchises in the 2000s was dark fantasy-themed hack n slash game Devil May Cry. It’s a popular game (and now a hit anime) for a number of reasons, but for this article I am focusing on the game’s central character Dante. Dude is a total badass with a stylish anime look and flashy combat moves. But on top of all of that he has an irresistible wit and charm that endears him not only to his allies, but also to the player directly. In a previous article I wrote about how to write irredeemable magnetic villains, and part of that is making them charismatic. Charisma is a hard trait to measure: you just kinda know it when you see it. But there are some qualities that usually define charisma, and you can use those to create a charismatic character for your story.

Make them Charming

A charming character is pleasant and likeable in a way that others feel good or comfortable around them. They have a way of putting others at ease and getting them to let their guards down. You can portray this quality in your characters in a number of ways. Start by having your characters display simple, small kindnesses to others. They remember other characters’ names or deliver timely compliments that at least appear sincere. Maybe they notice a detail that is important to another character but is overlooked by others. Or they actively listen and engage when having a casual conversation with someone by asking questions and providing feedback centered on the other person (as opposed to using the conversation as an excuse to talk about themselves). Showing even small amounts of thoughtfulness towards others can put a smile on their faces and go a long way towards endearing them to your character.

Speaking of smiles....you can also show charm through your character’s facial expressions and body language. Use everything from relaxed posture to warm smiles or playful smirks, to the casual way they cross their feet when they sit to convey a sense of ease. Your charismatic character needs to stand, sit and move in a way that engages others and draws their eye. You can also use humor and light teasing to make your characters charming. Laughter is a great way to get people to let their guards down, and a charming character naturally uses that to their advantage. If your character has a playful energy around them at times, that energy encourages others to not look at them so seriously.

Give them Wit

Being witty shows off a wide variety of attractive character traits. It shows your character is clever, observant, able to quickly react and think on their feet. These are all traits that people think are positive. Your character should rarely be at a loss for a quick, clever comeback in any conversation. I wrote an entire article about writing snappy dialogue, and those rules apply most to witty characters. They have a way with words that makes them compelling, and you can show that through the use of puns, double meanings and twisted phrasing. If you’re having trouble thinking up cool things for your characters to say, try using thesauruses or looking up cliche dictionaries. I’m sure there’s a snarky phrase for just about every situation. This also ties into observational humor, where your character notices something absurd about their situation and has something to say about it. The general nature of fiction is that stuff is going on that doesn’t normally happen to regular people, and this dissonance can be exploited by a character, especially if they are an active part of the absurdity themselves. Even a small amount of self-awareness can add to your character’s level of charisma.

Let them be Confident

I personally have always had a weakness for women that appear to have their proverbial “shxt together”. These are women who appear composed, organized, focused and driven, and it reflects in their mannerisms, their wardrobe, their speech and their general outlook on life. They appear to know exactly what they want to do and exactly how to do it, or at the very least know how to figure out what to do (bonus if they also wear glasses). They don’t need anyone to hold their hand for anything. These type of women appear in total control of themselves and their situations, and for a guy like myself that oftentimes doesn’t have his shxt together, that is appealing.

Confidence is a key component of charisma in a character. A character that appears to know what they’re doing can command attention and respect, and that self -assurance will draw people to them. “If you seem to know where you’re going, then maybe I should follow you.”

There are ways to display your character’s level of confidence. How composed are they under pressure? If They don’t flinch, stall, or over-explain, then that shows they don’t think the moment is too big for them. How decisive are they? If they make firm decisions and move with purpose -even if it’s the wrong decision - that shows a high level of confidence. There should be intention in their speech and actions, and a sense of being unhurried and deliberate. They move like they have a full understanding of who they are and what they are capable of. Show them being unbothered in stressful situations. Have them take the lead and make a decision before everyone else can or when everyone else doesn’t know what to do. Show them not backing down when directly challenged. If your character walks around like they own the place - even when they don’t - then others are likely to believe that they either do, or they will.

Aura farm them

A charismatic character turns heads when they enter the room. People notice them and it is hard for them to blend in. Show the atmosphere changing in their presence; crowds go silent, people turn their attention to them, people listen to what they have to say and hang on every word. People react to this character, and you want to show that in how your other characters react to them. Do people naturally want to talk to them or just be around them? Are others enthralled by that character, and want to hear everything they say? Do others want to do nice things for your character for no reason, or will almost blindly follow them and do whatever that character asks of them? You should take time to describe the effect your character has on others. In Lord of the Flies, Ralph was chosen to be leader because he was taller, stronger and more mature-looking than the other boys. He merely looked like the best of them, and that was enough to get the other boys to follow his lead. I actually saw something similar while working at a minimum security juvenile detention facility a bunch of years back. One of our most notorious teenagers was taller, more muscular and more articulate than many of the others, and had no problem recruiting a clique of some of the smaller, younger teen boys to help him carry out whatever heinous schemes he had in mind. He berated and embarrassed those in his clique that wouldn’t fall in line, which only made them cleave to him even more. They saw him as “cool” and therefore being in his orbit would make them cool by association. I tried to get him to use that influence in more positive ways, but I guess I didn’t have a strong enough aura and wasn’t “cool” enough to get him to follow me.

Conclusion

I just realized that these tips not only work for creating and developing charismatic characters, but they also work personally for projecting charisma yourself. Either way, if you want to add more magnetism to your or your character’s personalities, focus on getting the most out of these qualities.

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Back in my college days, I was listening to the debut rap album from Wu-Tang Clan member Ghostface Killah, and I came across his song “Assassination Day,” which also featured Raekwon, Masta Killa and Inspektah Deck. The title of the song and some of the lyrics intrigued me, and for years I wondered what an actual Assassination Day would look like. Maybe it would be some kind of holiday, or something like that. That sparked an idea for a political drama where the hero is warned of an assassination plot and is on a race against time to thwart it. I never got around to writing it fully, but I did manage to get a barebones outline of how I’d handle a story idea like that. Given the political climate as of this post, maybe a story like this is more relevant now than ever before. Anyway, here’s what I came up with.

“Assassination Day”

Act 1: The Warning

An anonymous message is broadcast across all major media channels, warning that a high-profile politician will be assassinated on a specific date—dubbed “Assassination Day.”

The message refuses to name the target, creating widespread fear and speculation.

Senior FBI Agent Ethan Mercer, a seasoned investigator with a history of exposing political corruption, is assigned to the case.

Mercer is given a strict deadline: uncover the assassin, prevent the killing, and determine who the target is before Assassination Day.

Act 2: The Investigation Begins

Mercer follows early leads, investigating threats made against prominent politicians, but they lead nowhere.

Theories run wild: Is this a terrorist plot? A personal vendetta? A false flag operation?

A deep dive into local government exposes corruption, backroom deals, and power struggles between city officials.

An informant, a disgraced journalist, hints that the assassination might be orchestrated from within the government.

Act 3: False Leads and Dead Ends

Several suspects emerge:

A radical activist who believes in overthrowing the corrupt system.

A rival politician who stands to gain from a political shake-up.

A shadowy fixer with ties to organized crime.

Each suspect appears guilty but is ultimately a dead end.

Mercer is attacked multiple times, narrowly escaping assassination attempts himself.

His superiors begin obstructing his investigation, warning him to back off.

Act 4: The Truth Revealed

Mercer uncovers evidence that the targeted politician, Mayor Richard Calloway, orchestrated his own assassination.

Calloway, facing declining approval ratings and political stagnation, believes his martyrdom will unite the city and spark real change.

A hired assassin, paid through intermediaries, is already in place, and the operation is too far along to be stopped.

Act 5: The Assassination and Aftermath

Mercer races to stop the hit but arrives too late. Calloway is gunned down in a public speech.

The city erupts in shock, but within weeks, public outrage fades.

Politicians use the event to push their own agendas, and life goes back to normal.

Mercer, disillusioned, realizes the cycle of corruption remains unbroken.

As he walks away from the case, another anonymous message is broadcast: a new assassination threat has just been reported.

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