Mary Carroll Moore's Blog, page 2

Are Your Characters Fading from Your Story?

What’s new in my writing room: Honored to be included in the wonderful “How We Spend Our Days” series by author who has interviewed so many amazing writers (the likes of and Steve Almond and Dani Shapiro!) about a day in their writing life. It’s an inspiring look inside the process and imagination of each working writer, and I loved contributing. You can read about my (not-so-typical) writing day here.

Photo by Khadeeja Yasser on Unsplash

A writer was finishing her first memoir. A good writer, a careful one, and her real-life characters were amazingly depicted--people you'd definitely remember, both for good and not.

A recurring challenge she had (one I've seen in my own writing): certain characters kept getting lost. They'd vanish from the story for pages, even chapters. Not because they weren't important or present. But because the writer herself lost track of them.

For instance, her mother. A wicked woman, very vivid in the early chapters, went offstage for about 35 pages in the middle. From her outline, I knew the mother was still around, still making trouble, Why wasn't she more present? As a reader, it bothered me, like a hole or gap in the storyline. When I asked the writer, she figuratively smacked her forehead.

"I forgot," she said. "There are so many people to keep track of."

Problem is, the reader does keep track. And when a character vanishes, the reader notices. This noticing and wondering begins to occupy more and more of the reader's attention, until they are distracted from the story.

Train yourself to catch the fade

Good editors or agents are trained to catch these gaps. I remember when my first novel, Qualities of Light, got accepted for publication. My editor noticed that Chad, a young man important in the story, disappeared for a good chunk of chapters. Not on purpose! I'd just been so occupied with other aspects of the story, I'd forgotten to write him in to the subsequent scenes.

First, know this is normal. Impossible to keep track of everyone without charts and lists, I've found. Here are some pointers you might consider to keep your characters present and real for your readers.

Keep them external

Characters vanish for readers if they are too internal. We learn about people by seeing them in action, not just by hearing their thoughts and feelings.

Long passages or chapters where a character only thinks, remembers, feels can distance the reader. Make them do something, onstage, in front of us, and they grow in vividness and presence.

Make sure physical appearance details recur

How do you describe your character's physical appearance, hair color, gestures, movement/gait, height and weight, clothes, how they stand or sit, what their hands do when they're nervous?

Write a paragraph or two about this. Then comb your chapters to see where (and if) these details appear.

Not usually effective to clump them--that feels like an authorial aside. Better to scatter and repeat. A colleague calls it "plant and return." Readers forget! Remind them often, through a variety of details, what the person looks like onstage so they can visualize and not forget.

Let them describe others

This tip helped me enormously: Let your characters describe other characters.

"Leah noticed that John's eyes looked smaller today, his forehead more pinched."

"Sherm had changed his hair color. Janice wasn't sure she liked the almost metallic silver-brown but she resolved not to say anything mean."

We see characters not only through their own movements and awareness of themselves, but through the other people onstage. It's an effective way of getting details across that might be too self-conscious if a character studied themselves in a mirror ("I notice my brown eyes, too wide set to be pretty, and my limp hair.").

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Try one of these three tips in a section of your story where one of your characters is MIA. See what difference it makes, and share your thoughts!

Leave a comment

Shout Out!

I love to give a shout out to writing friends and former students who are publishing their books and encourage my newsletter community to pre-order or order a copy to show your support of fellow writers. Be sure to let me know if you are a former student and will publish soon (pre-orders of your book are available now), or have in the past two months! Just email me at mary[at]marycarrollmoore[dot]com to be included in a future Shout Out! (I’ll keep your listing here for two months.)

Jim Bonilla, An Eye for an I: Growing Up with Blindness, Bigotry, and Family Mental Illness (University of Minnesota Press), November

I’m a lifelong artist, and I love to inspire and support other creative folk, which is why I write this weekly newsletter. My goal with these posts is to help you strengthen your writing practice and creative life so it becomes more satisfying to you.

I’m also the author of 15 books in 3 genres. My third novel, Last Bets (Riverbed Press), was published in April, after becoming an Amazon bestseller during pre-orders. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, was published in October 2023 and also became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders. For twelve years, I worked as a full-time food journalist, most notably through my weekly column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. My writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, won the New Hampshire Literary Awards “People’s Choice” in 2011 and my first novel, Qualities of Light, was nominated for PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary awards in 2009. I’ve written Your Weekly Writing Exercise every Friday since 2008.

How to Approach Revision: A Checklist for Reluctant (or Tired) Writers

What’s new in my writing room: Honored to be included in the wonderful “How We Spend Our Days” series by author who has interviewed so many amazing writers (the likes of and Steve Almond and Dani Shapiro!) about a day in their writing life. It’s an inspiring look into the life of working writers. You can read about my (not-so-typical) writing day here.

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

I never loved revision until I worked as a copyeditor and developmental editor for eighteen years. I loved the creating but not the refining. Editing taught me the beauty of renovation, rethinking, re-seeing that initial burst of creative effort. That it’s rarely as good or deep as it can be, when it first comes out.

Now I anticipate revision with eagerness. And I’ve learned the different kinds of revision that happen along the way to finalizing a piece of writing.

I divide revision into these stages:

substantive (sometimes called developmental) editing, which examines the overall story for its thru-line and sense

line editing, which tweaks sentences, paragraphs, small units of story

final revision, which assumes the story works and the language is strong but checks for continuity (is the Fiat in chapter 1 still a Fiat in chapter 10?) and non-obvious mistakes

All of these types of revision are part of the writer’s job, now. Agents and professional editors certainly help down the road, but we writers are expected to have handled this before the manuscript is submitted.

First stages of revision

Substantive editing happens most often when you have completed a first draft, however terrible. My first draft of a new book is usually leagues away from my original vision of it. I tell myself to be proud of writing those 60-80,000 words, more or less. I tell myself only about 60 percent of writers reach this glory. To count my blessings and get on with the first stage of revising.

I've learned from writing over a dozen books that substantive revision is where a book really emerges, becomes itself, and fulfills the writer's vision. But it takes work and detachment to get it there.

I owe a lot to Robert Boswell, author of The Half-Known World, for keeping my sanity during substantive revision for my books. (Check out his amazing article on transitional drafts here), Boswell’s theory of transitional drafts lets me relax any sense of urgency to finish too soon. Such urgency can push me to be satisfied with OK rather than good or great, which in today’s competitive publishing world just doesn’t cut it. Readers have so many choices in books. Make sure they'll want to read yours.

I call this first stage of revision where we begin to invite the reader into the conversation. The goal is to examine your story and ask if it will speak to a reader or just to you. I have a couple of steps I take to get to this lofty viewpoint without sacrificing my creativity.

Plan enough time to revise

One hero of my writing life, Ken Atchity (author of A Writer's Time) says that revision comprises about 60 percent of the total book-writing journey. In other words, when you finally finish that draft, you have not even crossed the halfway mark.

Of course, this depends a lot on how the writer crafted the draft. If your first draft was bulleted out, say, via Nanowrimo or #1000words-type accountability deadlines, it may be a truly shitty first draft, to quote writer Anne Lamott. In other words, a cool idea, great progress on word count, but still exceedingly rough.

Chapters might be nothing more than placeholders for ideas. If the writer has storyboarded or charted their book in some way, spent time on the characters or plot or flow of ideas, the draft might be more solid. I used to dash off my drafts, hoping for generous help from others in revision. Now I take longer to plan and develop that early concept of a new book, using my storyboard, charts, outlines, character questionnaires, and other tools.

I estimate that if my draft takes nine months from idea to 80,000 words, my revision after that point will take about a year, maybe longer. If the draft takes two years, revision will add on another three. That's my pace, and it might not be yours, but it's great to know these estimates and not hope for revision in a month!

Shortcuts—aren’t

Shortcuts look tempting. Skip a few steps, get it out the door into other hands. You're bored with it, essentially. Or you’re stuck and can’t imagine what to fix next or how to fix it. You risk a reach-out to your ideal agent, editor, publisher--and oops. A rejection. The manuscript really wasn’t ready. You have a lot more to do to get it there.

I know so many writers who have pitched a story idea at a writer’s conference, gotten a glimmer of interest from a prospective agent, and sent something too soon because they are afraid the agent will forget about them. Or a writing friend offers to tell their agent about your work and you push through revision not to miss that valuable window.

Put the brakes on. Calm your worried writer self. Remember what's at stake. What do you stand to lose, if you rush through these final steps? A lot!

I had the terrible experience early in my novel-writing career of getting more than a glimmer of interest from an agent I would die to be represented by. I didn’t take the time to revise enough. I got a so-sorry email. And that door closed. Most agents and editors only give a new writer one look. I had to look elsewhere, and eventually I’d revised enough to get a yes. But not from the agent I really really wanted.

Beta readers versus in-progress readers

During the substantive revision, I often need eyes on my draft. I have a writing partner and a writers group who become my in-progress readers. I also find readers in good online classes, which I regularly take to keep myself fresh. Hiring a sympatico instructor (many work as freelance editors as well as teachers) is another option if you feel stuck in developing your story and need suggestions.

These are all readers who gear their comments to opening doors for you. Rarely at this stage will you find comments on spelling, sentence structure, punctuation, or other line-editing needs. That happens later, and getting too much feedback at that level now can shut down your ideas. You become picky and end-result-oriented, rather than foster the expansive, creative spirit that’s needed.

So I never send my early substantive-revision drafts to beta readers. These are friends or fellow writers who have agreed to read the entire manuscript, usually once. I select them very carefully. I don’t abuse their generosity by loading them with an early-stage draft. Even those who ask/beg to see it.

The urgency to deliver it into someone else's hands, to give them the power, to make them tell you what you need to do next, is compelling—I’ve been there too. You're also, understandably, proud of what you've done and want to show it off! But please. Consider where you are in the revision process, first. It might make the difference between actually finishing your book and not.

Let it rest

Atchity recommends a real break, like a two-week vacation, before revising a rough draft. I add to that: between types of revision stages, a rest break is so helpful.

You need time away to be able to see the draft clearly. When you're first finished, there's often a passionate love for the story. And you know, love is blind. You may not see what's needed. Or you might be really tired. That jades your view too--you see stuff to fix that doesn't need fixing.

How long to let it rest? Once I’m finished my big revision, the substantive editing, and I’m reasonably sure the reader is now part of the conversation, I make a long list of next steps and ideas. Then I step away for two to four weeks.

If I can really get away from it--read other people's books, do another creative task, binge watch Netflix--I know I’ll do better with the next stage of revision.

Revision list

The purpose of making a revision list before your break is to create a pull inside to go back to the work. During your break you will likely get more ideas. You can certainly add to the list, but I still recommend not reworking during this time. Let the well fill. When you've rested, you're ready to tackle the ideas with full energy.

Don't bother organizing your list by severity of task or amount of time it's going to take, even if you know it. Just open a document in your computer or a page in your writer's notebook and begin.

On my list is EVERYTHING I can think of, small or large. Ideas may come slowly at first. Here are some items on the revision list for my second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, just to give you an idea:

1. Check make and color of Molly's car for consistency throughout.

2. Why does Kate not confront her husband about the texts? Solve this.

3. Midbook is way too slow--cut about 10,000 words someplace.

4. Check if the ending loops back to the beginning.

5. Search for overused words ("deeper" is one of mine).

6. Search for "ing" verbs and replace with active verbs.

7. Draw better map of cabin and layout of farmhouse--check location details in each scene.

8. Check opening of each chapter--revamp for more variation.

9. Check transitions--last sentence of each chapter, first of next.

Read it aloud

My first task when I return to my list is to read the entire manuscript aloud. It gives me a sense of the whole story. I either send it to my iPad and open in my e-reader or I print the revision and sit down with a highlighter or pen. These two methods are simply to see the words the way a reader would.

My goal is to read it in one sitting, two at most, if I can. And to not stop to rework it. Reason: I want to keep that reader's view. I want to imagine being a reader, picking this book up in the store or online, and diving in.

The pen or highlighter is just to mark where I stumble, not to stop, get critical, and fix. Again, this switches me from reader to writer/editor. Don't need that yet.

Often, I'm delighted by the changes so far--and I see others that need fixing. That's good, welcome even. I reach for my revision list, adding the new ideas and tasks. Then I dive in once more.

How long does it take? The formula I gave above counts for multiple times down this particular garden path. Revising until you can't see the forest for the leaves on the trees, stepping back for a bigger view by reading aloud, recreating your revision task list, then starting up again. I'm not aghast at fourteen rounds of revisions in this manner; I'm grateful for fewer, but I know some books need more.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

If you haven’t read Boswell’s article from Fiction Writers Review, check it out as your exercise this week. Consider how he approaches revision and see if it might fit for you.

Try making a revision list, even if you’re just starting your revision process. Keep adding to it as you continue—it’ll become more and more valuable.

Leave a comment

Shout Out!

I love to give a shout out to writing friends and former students who are publishing their books and encourage my newsletter community to pre-order or order a copy to show your support of fellow writers. Be sure to let me know if you are a former student and will publish soon (pre-orders of your book are available now), or have in the past two months! Just email me at mary[at]marycarrollmoore[dot]com to be included in a future Shout Out! (I’ll keep your listing here for two months.)

Jim Bonilla, An Eye for an I: Growing Up with Blindness, Bigotry, and Family Mental Illness (University of Minnesota Press), November

I’m a lifelong artist, and I love to inspire and support other creative folk, which is why I write this weekly newsletter. My goal with these posts is to help you strengthen your writing practice and creative life so it becomes more satisfying to you.

I’m also the author of 15 books in 3 genres. My third novel, Last Bets (Riverbed Press), was published in April, after becoming an Amazon bestseller during pre-orders. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, was published in October 2023 and also became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders. For twelve years, I worked as a full-time food journalist, most notably through my weekly column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. My writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, won the New Hampshire Literary Awards “People’s Choice” in 2011 and my first novel, Qualities of Light, was nominated for PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary awards in 2009. I’ve written Your Weekly Writing Exercise every Friday since 2008.

Three Tips to Bring Forth the "Why" of Your Story

What’s new in my writing room: So very honored to be included in the wonderful “How We Spend Our Days” series by author who has interviewed so many amazing writers (the likes of and Steve Almond and Dani Shapiro!) about a day in their writing life. An inspiring look behind the outer persona of working writers into what goes on during their working day. Read about my (not-so-typical) writing day here.

Photo by Andrew Seaman on Unsplash

Characters stay with me long after I close a book. Be it memoir or fiction, I’m often swept deeply into a character’s life, feeling like they’re a great friend I could text and hang out with. I personally feel that characters are so important to storytelling these days because we are, as a culture, searching for the “why” behind our lives.

And characters are the vehicle for bringing forth the “why” in the stories we read—the reason, the purpose, of what we’re witnessing on the page.

Sure, you have to also have a good plot, something interesting happening. And there usually has to be a context, a setting or environment that magnifies the character’s journey. And yes, your characters have to be externalized enough that we readers feel they're believable (like how they look, how they move, what they wear, what music they love to listen to, what they love or hate to eat first thing in the morning).

All that’s essential. To me, it’s the frame of a story. But it’s the character’s inner world that drives everything. What does that mean to us writers and how can we step up to that need?

Falling in love

Over the years, I’ve gotten so many rejections to my writing. From agents, from editors, from publishers. In the early days of submitting my work, I heard this a lot: “I just didn't fall in love with your characters.”

It’s a depressing response. What does “falling in love” actually mean? In time, with enough rejections under my belt, I got a sense of the answer. “Falling in love” is industry speak for a reader’s deep engagement.

I remember when I was first submitting to agents. I can’t tell you how many agency websites talked about this “falling in love” as being so engrossed in reading a story that the agent missed their train stop (agents commuting into Manhattan) or subway stop (city dwellers).

I know that feeling—when I really can’t awaken from a story I love. I want to stay in it—it’s more interesting than anything in my outer world at that moment.

But it’s a high bar. I used to tighten my plot, add more backstory and setting. But the most effective plan, and the way I began to get my first “yesses,” was to work with the three tips I want to share this week.

They strengthen the “why” of any story, in my view. They deal with conflict, false belief, and backstory.

Tip 1: Creating inner and outer conflict

Each character has what I call an inner and outer story. To address the “why” of a story, to create and maintain tension throughout, the writer needs to make these conflict with each other.

Here’s a brief explanation of the two.

Outer story is how a person moves around in the outer world. In story, it’s the actions they take, the stuff that happens to them, the decisions that send them on a new course, the people they come in contact with, the places they live in or visit.

Inner story is everything that happens inside them, internal forces like desire, love, fear, revenge, jealousy, a memory that haunts them, a false belief about themselves that influences their life.

Characters come to all outer stories with some inner baggage. A writer’s job is to not just create the outer circumstances but also figure out what’s hidden inside the character.

I look for one major internal belief that makes life challenging for them. This means I have to get to know my character beyond their surface, the self they present to the world.

That leads to tip #2, the character’s false belief.

Tip 2: What’s your character’s false belief?

False belief, or false agreement, is a dynamic element in successful stories. It applies to either real or fictional characters because we all have history that forms our beliefs about the world and about ourselves.

Often, a character will start a story with such a belief and by the end have faced it, or at least questioned whether it’s actually true. (It’s usually not.) But if their purpose in the story is to grow past their false belief, and you can zero in on what it is, you can structure the outer story to create this face off.

A classic example in kidlit is A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle. Meg is a super smart young person but her false belief rules her life—that she’s awkward, basically a misfit, and won’t succeed in much beyond high-level math. So L’Engle sets Meg on a course of conflict by forcing her to rescue her father and baby brother. Her false belief that she’s a mega failure in her life is faced and reconsidered.

As I get to know a character, I begin a brainstorming list of their possible false beliefs about:

themselves

stuff that happened in their history

their potential future

how they fit or don’t fit into their world right now

From that list, I get a sense of what kind of belief burden they are carrying around. They may not show it to anyone! They may not even be aware of it themselves. But as the writer, we know. We find the false belief that is the most untrue, we see how that mistaken view affects how they make decisions, and we play with how to make them face it—eventually.

That influences the plot, doesn’t it. If the goal is to make sure your outer events in a story force the character to face their limited idea about life and decide what to do with it, it means you get choosy about your plot. You also get choosy about what backstory you include, because now it all has to be relevant.

Tip 3: Finding relevant backstory

I remember as a writing teacher and editor reading many, many student stories that started with a backstory dump. Rather than engage us immediately in the “why” of the story via character actions and the false belief leaking through, we learned about the town, the car, the war that took place a hundred years ago, the origin of some vegetable in the garden. This fascinated the writer; the reader, not so much.

Backstory is the background of the story. There’s a lot of it for any character, real or imagined. What you choose to include must have relevance to the “why”—what will reveal why our characters believe what they do.

A first step: list anything your character has experienced pre-story that still lives with them. A death, a loss, a betrayal, a missed opportunity, something they did that they are still ashamed of, a person they’ll never forget, a lesson they flubbed?

Sometimes this is called the “wounding event” (hat tip to ). Once you locate it amongst all their backstory, you find what drives them now, often without their knowledge.

How do you find this? I use a very simple technique: writing a character bio.

Imagine your character going to a job interview or posting their history on a matchmaking site. What would they say about themselves? Then try interviewing them about what they’re not saying. What still haunts them?

Once you have a bio sketched out, including what they’d reveal and what they’d prefer to keep hidden, test each backstory item. Can you can draw a present-life belief from it?

The ones that still resonate are often the cornerstones of your character’s journey through the story. They help reveal the “why” and keep that prospective agent reading long after their subway stop.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Which of the three tips has been underused in your draft? Consider one or two this week. See if you can apply them more consciously, using the prompts and ideas above.

Share your thoughts!

Leave a comment

Shout Out!

I love to give a shout out to writing friends and former students who are publishing their books and encourage my newsletter community to pre-order or order a copy to show your support of fellow writers. Be sure to let me know if you are a former student and will publish soon (pre-orders of your book are available now), or have in the past two months! Just email me at mary[at]marycarrollmoore[dot]com to be included in a future Shout Out! (I’ll keep your listing here for two months.)

I’m a lifelong artist, and I love to inspire and support other creative folk, which is why I write this weekly newsletter. My goal with these posts is to help you strengthen your writing practice and creative life so it becomes more satisfying to you.

I’m also the author of 15 books in 3 genres. My third novel, Last Bets (Riverbed Press), was published in April, after becoming an Amazon bestseller during pre-orders. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, was published in October 2023 and also became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders. For twelve years, I worked as a full-time food journalist, most notably through my weekly column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. My writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, won the New Hampshire Literary Awards “People’s Choice” in 2011 and my first novel, Qualities of Light, was nominated for PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary awards in 2009. I’ve written Your Weekly Writing Exercise every Friday since 2008.

Satisfaction in the Writing Life: Juggling Time (Quantity) and Value (Quality)

What’s new in my writing room: I love the honest insider look we get into author’s lives via podcasts (thanks to my training from and ) and I was interviewed on about 35 podcasts during the promotion of my last two novels. One interview got released recently: John Vogel’s show, Talking Writing, where we talked about finding connection through fiction. I share the logistics of publishing, what it was like to work with a marketing coach, and how I transitioned from professional food writing to novels and short stories. Worth a listen. You can hear the episode here.

Photo by sydney Rae on Unsplash

How satisfied are you, usually, with what you write? Where does that satisfaction come from—your word count (quantity) or your realization about some writing problem solved (quality) or your time spent (quantity) or your enjoyment of the actual writing process (quality)?

If you mentally checked the quantity response to the questions above, it’s your accountability system, whether words or time, that makes you feel good at the end of each writing session. You got something done. You kept your promise to yourself.

I love accountability. I run with it and I do get stuff done—books published, stories finished, feedback processed and revisions accomplished. I get great pleasure out of making progress on my goals.

But my long-term satisfaction as a writer has changed over the years. Now it also (sometimes even more) comes from something other than measuring my progress. It has to do with realization, learning, and growing.

Depending on where I am in my involvement with a piece of writing, I cycle between the importance of time (accountability) and value (learning).

Time

When I’m in the time band, my goals are to generate material.

Accountability systems work so well during this part of the cycle. I love ’s #1000words where you are only required to write 1000 words a day. Nanowrimo is beleagured, but I ran that marathon it three times, even got a published book out of it. I’ve used the Pomodoro technique, a tomato-shaped timer that rings at thirty-minutes intervals to remind me to take a break. The timer broke eventually but I used the thirty-minute idea for quite a while.

Gretchen Rubin wrote a fascinating book about our accountability preferences, The Four Tendencies. On her website, you can take a quiz to find out what kind of accountability (internal or external) works best for you. Some of us need an external entity—a class, a program, a timer—to get stuff done. It helps us stay with the writing.

Staying with the writing isn’t the issue for me. I’m able to find accountability within myself, my own goals, but occasionally I’ll hit a slump and need external motivation like a class. But I’m usually satisfied with how much I’ve done each writing session (although sometimes I wonder if I should write more). I haven’t found that a certain amount of words or a certain number of hours motivates me more than just getting an idea and running with it.

But if you aren’t writing, if you’re stuck and unsatisfied with being stuck because you’re not producing, then time is the issue and accountability can be a solution.

Value

For me, though, I can do the time/word count goals and produce writing. What’s more important to me is the value of the experience of sitting down, engaging with my creativity. Over and over, I’m realizing it’s the experience of writing, the dream state I enter, that matters the most. That I learn something. That I risk and grow.

I have had a hard time being satisfied with what I get done each day, in my writing time, unless I learn something new.

Learning has become an accomplishment in itself. It has to do with risk, how much I am willing to put myself out there into new territory and try new ideas. Not just repeat what I know.

How this works in the evolution of a piece

A piece of writing, again, for me, manifests in a sequence of four types of activities. Some of them depends on time (quantity) and some depend on value (quality). It’s been helpful to separate this out for myself, to know what’s demanded.

First comes the dreamy, idea stage. If I use a word count goal for the first stage, when I am dreaming up an idea, it’s harder for me to feel satisfied. I’d rather coach myself on taking risks, stretching creative boundaries, learning stuff. I write by hand to foster this, in a writing notebook. I write to prompts. I allow myself not to be constrained by any direction, let the writing be exploratory. I may not even use any of what I come up with; it’s peeling away layers so I can see what I want to explore further.

Next is the drafting stage. The drafting stage works very well with accountability, quantity, and word count goals. Most systems of accountability say that the quality of my writing for that session doesn’t count as much as the fact that I wrote. That’s as it should be. I’m just trying to churn out enough words to create a rough draft, something I can revise. If I don’t have the words on the page, there’s nothing to revise. It’s simple.

Third is what I call the developmental revision stage, where I’m looking for the core, essence, and purpose of what I’ve drafted, hoping to find a structure. Developmental editing is hard, hard work, and I can’t give it a satisfaction qualifier like a number of words or hours. It’s like wrestling a huge, slippery pig sometimes. You just keep at it. Friends call this the slog phase. This is when I just have to show up and put in my time. I might struggle with one page all day. My focus is on learning, finding what the story is about.

There’s the final revision stage, my favorite, where I’m tuning the piece to my ear, in a way, finding the off notes and correcting them. This can include sentence shaping as line editing, correcting pacing, enhancing the voice. Final revision stage is so exciting to me, I don’t usually need an accountability goal. It’s all about the learning.

Three out of four stages are about value, one depends on accountability. More quality than quantity, all in all. Is this true for you?

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

After years of struggling with the persistent feeling that I could always do my writing practice better or differently, I realized that, for me, it comes down to how much I assign worth to each part of my writing process.

This week, ask yourself which stage are you in right now, of the four listed above. Are you assigning the right value to that stage? For instance, if you’re drafting, are you trying to be satisfied with the quality of your work, when this particular stage is all about quantity?

Share your thoughts!

Leave a comment

Shout Out!

I want to offer a hearty shout out to my writing friends and former students who are publishing their books, and encourage you subscribers to pre-order or order a copy to show your support of fellow writers and our writing community. So if you’re a former student and will publish soon (pre-orders of your book are available now) or have in the past two months, email me at mary[at]marycarrollmoore[dot]com to be included in a future Shout Out! I’ll keep your listing here for two months.

I’m a lifelong artist, and I love to inspire and support other creative folk, which is why I write this weekly newsletter. My goal with these posts is to help you strengthen your writing practice and creative life so it becomes more satisfying to you.

I’m also the author of 15 books in 3 genres. My third novel, Last Bets (Riverbed Press), was published in April, after becoming an Amazon bestseller during pre-orders. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, was published in October 2023 and also became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders. For twelve years, I worked as a full-time food journalist, most notably through my weekly column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. My writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, won the New Hampshire Literary Awards “People’s Choice” in 2011 and my first novel, Qualities of Light, was nominated for PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary awards in 2009. I’ve written Your Weekly Writing Exercise every Friday since 2008.

Point of View: A Review of a Writer's Storytelling Options

What’s new in my writing room: Honored to be included in the wonderful “How We Spend Our Days” series by author who has interviewed so many amazing writers (the likes of and Steve Almond and Dani Shapiro!) about a day in their writing life. It’s an inspiring look inside the process and imagination of each working writer, and I loved contributing. You can read about my (not-so-typical) writing day here.

Photo by Saketh on Unsplash

Point of view in writing is not your belief about a topic, as it would be in conversation—your "point of view" in an argument, for example. In writing, point of view, or pov, refers to the orientation of the narrator in your story. What narrative filter you’ve chosen, in other words.

Which greatly affects the way readers will see your story. A lot of how a story comes across to a reader is created by who tells it.

We’re not talking about voice either. Narrative voice is more the tone of the person talking; writer's voice is the overall style you use. Yes, they are influenced by point of view. But point of view is actually easier to figure out, because you only have a few choices. Let’s do a little review of pov choices.

First person

When you write in first person, you use the pronoun I because I am telling the story.

Memoir is usually written in first person because you are the narrator—it’s your story, told from your perspective.

Fiction can also be written in first person, of course. There’s a truism that first novels are more likely to emerge in first person, because it's easier to get into the character's head.

First person is limited. We only stay in one person's head. First person doesn't switch around. If you move to someone else’s pov, you are using multiple first-person narrators. This works just fine in longer works of fiction; for example, each chapter has an "I" narrator but different ones switch off. It’s harder to do in short fiction, and even harder to successfully pull off within a single chapter of a novel.

The easiest advice: unless you're really good at the switch, stick with one person for your first-person narrator.

First-person point of view is automatically prejudiced, or biased. We only can see what this person can see. It's not going to be the whole story, so it's up to the writer to reveal the unreliability of this narrator via setting, action, gestures, and sensory details that contradict the narrator's view of something.

Examples of first-person narration:

I crossed the street when the light turned green, not caring about the angry drivers who swerved to avoid me.

It was years before my father acknowledged how much he missed me; I thought he never would.

I'm climbing the stairs, aware of noises in the attic, not sure what I'll find there.

Second person

Second person narration uses the pronoun "you."

Second person feels edgy to me, both as a writer and a reader. I am super aware of the narrator, close up. Their opinions, their thoughts, their decisions all strike me hard, when I read a story in second person. It can even come across as confrontational, in-your-face. It demands skill to keep your reader engaged: some readers get tired of it fast.

In short pieces, though, it works well. Sometimes if my short story is lagging and needs more electricity, I’ll play with switching the pov to second person, just to see if that helps. But I find it's a tough point of view to sustain throughout a 250- to 300-page book.

And another thought: I may be wrong, but it seems an impossible feat to successfully switch heads if you’re writing in second person. Who is the “you” we are following?

Examples of second-person narration:

You crossed the street when the light turned green, not caring about the angry drivers who swerved to avoid you.

It was years before your father acknowledged how much he missed you; you thought he never would.

You're climbing the stairs, aware of noises in the attic, not sure what you'll find there.

Third person

Third person is possibly the most common pov used in all kinds of fiction, biography, and nonfiction. (In memoir, because the narrator is still the “I” voice, it’s rare.) Third person gives a certain distance or objectivity, compared to first person, which can mean it’s harder to get close to the narrator, as a character. More skill is required.

Here are the most common kinds of third-person narration:

Third person limited is the “he,” “she,” “them,” and “it” pov. Limited means it is exclusive to that person’s thoughts and feelings.

I love writing third limited. It keeps me honest. I may move from one narrator to another, from third limited in one person to third limited in another. I’m very careful not to head hop without excellent transitions, so the reader can follow easily.

We also head hop out of not knowing how this effects the reader. As a writing teacher, I found this was common with newer writers—they wanted to show a multitude of reactions to a scene, for instance. They didn’t have the skill yet to show it via one narrator. It takes work. But it provides depth.

Third person omniscient is a fallback you might consider. It’s popular in fantasy and literary fiction today. You’re in everyone’s thoughts at once. A multitude of characters!

Sounds easy, incredible. But much harder to pull off successfully. If your voice and authority on the page are very strong, the reader will follow you but if not, it may be hard to follow.

Transitions between points of view, when you can get into every single person’s head, are super tricky. Read writers who do this well, see how they manage it.

Depth is also harder to achieve because we are moving around frequently. We may not know individual characters at any depth.

Poorly done, third omniscient lends an academic (distant) feel to your writing.

Examples of third-person-limited narration:

Jason crossed the street when the light turned green, not caring about the angry drivers who swerved to avoid him.

It was years before Jason's father acknowledged how much he missed him; Jason thought he never would.

Jason's climbing the stairs, aware of noises in the attic, not sure what he'll find there.

Examples of third-person-omniscient narration:

Jason and Maria crossed the street when the light turned green, not caring about the angry drivers who swerved to avoid them.

It was years before their father acknowledged how much he missed them; they thought he never would.

Jason and Maria are climbing the stairs, aware of noises in the attic, not sure what they'll find there.

Basic rules

These are the main rules I find most helpful when choosing pov for your writing. The goal, in the end, is to engage a reader, not make it harder for them to follow a character or narrator’s trajectory. Test these rules out for yourself, study how your favorite authors use (or ignore) them, then choose the direction that best serves your story.

Play with point of views until you find the one that best serves your story.

If you have multiple narrators, keep them all in first or third limited.

Switch at chapter or scene breaks to be easiest on the reader.

If you really like the broader perspective and want to try it, experiment with third limited with multiple narrators first. See if that gives you the broad reach you're after. Or study writers who do this well.

Some writers love to break these rules, playing with one narrator in first-person and another in third limited. If you're tempted to try it, study books that do this well.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Read this interesting post from Reedsy for more examples and details about point of view— including what’s called “Fourth Person.”

Then look at a section of your own writing.

What point of view do you favor? Why?

What might it be like to experiment with a different point of view?

Leave a comment

Shout Out!

I love to give a shout out to writing friends and former students who are publishing their books and encourage my newsletter community to pre-order or order a copy to show your support of fellow writers. Be sure to let me know if you are a former student and will publish soon (pre-orders of your book are available now), or have in the past two months! Just email me at mary[at]marycarrollmoore[dot]com to be included in a future Shout Out! (I’ll keep your listing here for two months.)

I’m a lifelong artist, and I love to inspire and support other creative folk, which is why I write this weekly newsletter. My goal with these posts is to help you strengthen your writing practice and creative life so it becomes more satisfying to you.

I’m also the author of 15 books in 3 genres. My third novel, Last Bets (Riverbed Press), was published in April, after becoming an Amazon bestseller during pre-orders. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, was published in October 2023 and also became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders. For twelve years, I worked as a full-time food journalist, most notably through my weekly column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. My writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, won the New Hampshire Literary Awards “People’s Choice” in 2011 and my first novel, Qualities of Light, was nominated for PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary awards in 2009. I’ve written Your Weekly Writing Exercise every Friday since 2008.

Acceptance and Rejection

What’s new in my writing room: My latest novel, Last Bets, was selected in December for Kirkus Reviews' Top 100 Best Indie Books of the Year! Kirkus reviews thousands of indie books, and less than 1% receive a coveted starred review (which mine did). Of those, only 100 are selected across all genres for the “Best of” list. Kirkus is (to many) the Michelin Guide to industry book reviews. A star is like a Michelin three star award. A Best of is way beyond! I’m humbled, stunned, delighted. Grateful to all who helped me get here.

Photo by Florian Schmetz on Unsplash

One spring, I was wallowing in the discontent of rejection letters. I’d sent my first novel to agent after agent, publisher after publisher. No one wanted it. This new novel crossed genres—it was written from the point of view of a young woman but it was meant for adult readers.

I believed in the book and wanted to see it in the hands of potential readers. But my disappointment was so great that all I felt was discouragement—no energy to keep trying.

A friend talked me into attending a presentation at Wisdom House, a spiritual and teaching center near where I lived in Connecticut. The director of the University of Connecticut’s writers project had gathered six artists—an actress, a sculptor, a painter, a poet, a composer/musician who worked with Broadway shows, and a writer—to discuss acceptance and rejection.

Perfect, I thought. Misery loves company.

But the panel wasn’t about misery at all. Although most of the artists talked about the hardships of receiving rejections for their work, many went on to discuss the meaning of rejection in the life of an artist. And they went even deeper—into self-acceptance and self-rejection. How that comes first, and how belief in your work is paramount to success.

Two comments stayed with me. The first was made by a composer: It isn’t the writing that scares him. It is thinking about it. “When I’m actually doing it,” he told us, “I’m completely happy.”

The act of making art gives pleasure. The thinking and writing afterward was what was hard.

I’ll share thoughts on the second comment below.

Why artists need appreciation—but maybe not right away

As creative artists, it’s natural to want our work to be viewed and appreciated. We may create simply to help someone else, as a way of serving the world by disseminating what we’ve learned and benefited from. This is appreciation enough for many of us, to change a life in a good way by what we write.

But over the long haul, as working writers, appreciation itself won’t keep us going, no matter how altruistic we feel about our work. We need to create for the love of creating.

I find there’s usually a time lag before my creations find their best home, where they can be appreciated fully. And along the way, there’s the opposite of appreciation. We get more rejections before we finally hear that our love has landed.

If we create then get rejected over and over again, eventually it stops us cold. But maybe there’s something valuable in the struggle to find our work a good home.

What if you wrote something and it got accepted right away? asked one of the Wisdom House panelists. Would you be as happy as if you struggled to earn it? The others said no, not in their experience. Most agreed—and these were quite well-known, well-respected professional artists.

There’s a pro and con to easy success. If you get it right away, it sets a certain bar. Depending on all your work to be as accepted, can destroy any future successes, even prevent you from producing any work at all.

Amateur spirit

Another important point the panel made: Always try to retain an amateur spirit with your work.

Write for the freshness and the vivacity that it gives you.

One panelist told us that the word amateur comes from the French word, amour. Amateur means “out of love.” If you can keep putting love into the process, you’ll be fed from it. So love becomes the most logical reason to keep going despite rejection. As Robert Henri, artist and author of The Art Spirit, said, “Do not let the fact that things are not made for you, that conditions are not as they should be, stop you. Go on anyway. Everything depends on those who go on anyway.”

Or Martha Graham’s famous advice for Agnes De Mille, which hangs in many studios:

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it.

“It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.

“No artist is pleased . . . there is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction. A blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

What about Discouragement?

The word discouragement comes from the root word coeur, or “heart.” It’s the process of losing heart, losing perspective. It happens to all writers, over and over again, no matter how often we've been published.

It's a terrible moment when your work gets rejected. It’s hard to imagine how you're going to move forward, especially when you read other (wonderful) writers and sigh with the impossibility of being that good.

I reminded myself that writers never really get completely clear of blind spots. We all will always have them, and they are unseen until we get perspective, often through the process of rejection or acceptance.

Seeing anew is a sign of growth.

Seeing anew

I went back to my desk and began making the manuscript changes that made sense to me. Some of them were so big they caused tremors throughout the chapters, but I reminded myself this rearrangement was growth, and I wanted my book to be the very best it could be.

I felt grateful now, not discouraged. And curious--would this learning translate into changed skill? Would my attempt at the next chapter come out better because of what I'd just learned?

This is the goal—to learn new skills from the rejection. Yes, there's discouragement, losing heart, but there's also the joy of developing skills--if you keep on keepin' on.

Eventually my novel did get accepted by a publisher, got nominated for two awards, and was in print for ten years. It was eventually rereleased in a second edition with a new cover and additional blurbs. I was satisfied.

The story of that particular book's acceptance and rejection is concluded. But there's always the next one, and the next. The lessons we learn about how much we're willing to love our creative work, no matter what others think about it, never end.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

The inspiration for this week's exercise comes from writing teacher Rosanne Bane, author of Around the Writer’s Block: Using Brain Science to Solve Writer’s Resistance. Self-care lets us survive the swings of acceptance and rejection.

1. Brainstorm a list of things you love to do for fun and/or things that nurture you. They may include:

getting a massage
meal out with a friend
trip to an art museum
curling up for an hour with a great book
taking a hot bath
nap on the couch
movie or concert
phone date with a close friend who lives far away
sports event
manicure or pedicure
long walk in the woods with the dogs
gardening
playing basketball
Saturday fishing trip with buddies

2. In your calendar or datebook, choose an hour a week and assign yourself one of these self-care activities. Make it a serious date—block out the time.

3. Do this for one month. At the end of each week, write for ten minutes about the effects of this self-care date. What obstacles did you encounter? What benefits did you notice?

Shout Out!

A hearty shout out to these writing friends and former students who are publishing their books! I encourage you to pre-order or order a copy to show your support of fellow writers and our writing community.

(If you are a former student and will publish soon (pre-orders of your book are available now), or have in the past two months, email mary[at]marycarrollmoore[dot]com to be included in a future Shout Out! I’ll keep your listing here for two months.)

I’m a lifelong artist, and I love to inspire and support other creative folk, which is why I write this weekly newsletter. My goal with these posts is to help you strengthen your writing practice and creative life so it becomes more satisfying to you.

I’m also the author of 15 books in 3 genres. My third novel, Last Bets (Riverbed Press), was published in April, after becoming an Amazon bestseller during pre-orders. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, was published in October 2023 and also became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders. For twelve years, I worked as a full-time food journalist, most notably through my weekly column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. My writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, won the New Hampshire Literary Awards “People’s Choice” in 2011 and my first novel, Qualities of Light, was nominated for PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary awards in 2009. I’ve written Your Weekly Writing Exercise every Friday since 2008.

My Index Card Method of Using Feedback

What’s new in my writing room: I was interviewed on about 35 podcasts during the promotion of my last two novels. One interview just got released: ’s show, Talking Writing, where we talked about finding connection through fiction. I share the logistics of publishing, what it was like to work with a marketing coach, and how I transitioned from professional food writing to novels and short stories. Worth a listen. You can hear the episode here.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Often, despite years of receiving feedback, I get overwhelmed with the suggestions of my good readers. Lucky me, of course, to have such good readers—my writing partner, my writers group, class workshopping groups. Mostly, the comments are excellent, insightful, and useful.

But I don’t always come away feeling lucky or gung-ho to use them. Mostly, I have to let the feedback sit for days or a week or even a month before I figure out how to proceed.

Worst case, the ideas are so radical, they cause an upheaval in my view of the story or book in progress. I have to totally reorient. I have to take time to feel the changes and what they mean to my vision of the piece of writing.

Have you been there? If yes, read on. Because I have a cool system, developed out of pain and misery and a strong desire to move forward despite all of it.

Feedback pros and woes

Not all feedback slays me. Sometimes, I’ll get just the right key to unlock a problem I haven’t been able to solve. This happens in my writing group so often, as we discuss an issue and the other writers share feedback then help with problem solving. I personally think the biggest woe in receiving feedback is that it points out problems that create more problems without offering any help in solving them.

I have enough experience with workshopping to know not all the feedback I get is relevant—I have to sift out those reader responses that are more personal opinions that are relevant to their writing, not mine. In a class, feedback is moderated by the instructor. In writing groups, we are the only guardians of our creative boundaries.

I feel so happy when a suggestion feels right, even if I’m stumped as to how to solve the problem at that moment. It sparks my enthusiasm for the story. I see possibilities instead of deadends. And that beautiful bonus can then happen: we can get into brainstorming next steps on how I can use the ideas.

Time brings perspective

A writer often needs time to gain the new perspective that feedback offers. I might initially reject an idea (too much work, totally off track for what I’m trying to do). But after some time passes and I read the notes again, it opens doors. Time has softened my hold on the writing. I am willing to consider new ideas to strengthen the story.

So, time is my biggest gift to myself when I’ve received feedback. As long as it doesn’t become sheer avoidance, time allows me to mellow any sting or overwhelm from the comments. I go from “You mean it’s not perfect!!?” to “Yeah, that’s a cool idea I might try.”

Writers use all kinds of techniques to help gain this perspective, to get enough distance to really appreciate what they receive from readers.

Index card technique

The technique I use with index cards requires me to manually translate the feedback into my own language. As I do this, I sift out what doesn’t (yet) make sense to me. It’s also designed to slow the process, which gives me that needed time.

I only use the index cards when I’m either overwhelmed with or dismayed by feedback. Even if it sounds good, nothing in me jumps into making changes. After a few days, I wonder why not, and I usually get that flat feeling of overwhelm. I just don’t know how to work my way through the comments and use them.

I might stare at the pages, rework some low-risk areas I know need attention, yet have no clue how to approach the bigger problems the feedback addressed.

I find this method especially helpful when I get a lot of concentrated feedback. For instance, from my editor or agent. Or beta readers who are commenting on a whole manuscript. If you’re just reading feedback for a short piece, you may not need the distance and perspective the index cards provide.

I’ve simplified the technique into six steps.

Six steps

These are the steps I use. Take whichever makes sense to you right now. I found them so helpful, especially lately when I’ve been getting massive feedback on another manuscript. After I let the feedback sit for a while, I begin the steps and get some great ideas to fix holes.

So use them when when grappling with radical critique--changes you know have worth but will twist your book into a new shape.

Please know this is not busywork, to do the steps below, even though it may seem like it. It takes time and slows down the reactive brain, which is just what the writer usually needs to really consider the changes. You can do these steps electronically, of course, but I find the slowness of writing by hand in my writer’s notebook gives me even more of that precious perspective.

You’ll need a package of 4” x 6” blank index cards to try this exercise.

Step 1

Go through the feedback. Print it out if you can. Highlight or underline the main suggestions—not typos or praise or small fixes you can easily make.

When two readers repeat the same suggestion, star these (more than one person mentioning the same problem means it's a big problem, usually).

Step 2

From the highlighted suggestions, make a list. I call this my “Changes to Consider” list. I usually hand write it, but you can do it electronically, of course. I hand write because it's all too easy to go fast and skip over comments I can’t imagine implementing.

Try to end up with a list of the major changes you have to think about more, do research around, or make other changes to accommodate.

Step 3

Write each suggestion on the top of its own index card.

Suggestions from a recent feedback session for my short-story collection included:

Something wonky about the timeline here—fix?

I’d like to know more about her reason for choosing this. Add backstory?

Where are we right now? Clarify the staging.

I would write the actual comment on the card if it wasn’t too long—otherwise, I’d just abbreviate in my own words.

Step 4

For each idea, brainstorm three questions. Some examples might be:

If I read back, where exactly does the timeline fall apart and why—what’s missing to ground the reader (another scene, more backstory, more placement in setting)?

If I show the character’s backstory here, how does that impact the reveal later?

How much and what kind of setting details are needed in this scene?

Why questions? I find these start the creative process inside. Ideas begin coming when I write problem as questions, rather than just as problem statements, which often discourage my creativity.

The Inner Critic can heighten its activity at this point, though. It can help to touch in with a writing friend who loves your work and knows your manuscript.

I also sleep on it. I don’t force this step. It’s probably the most valuable one.

Step 5

Now triage your cards. Organize them by severity of task—revisions that will take no time, now that you’ve figured out how to do them from your questions, versus revisions that will ricochet throughout the manuscript. Smallest changes go on top of your index card stack, larger ones on the bottom.

Step 6

Each day or writing session, choose two cards with small changes (from the top of your stack) and one card with a large change from the bottom. Work on the small changes first that day. There’s great relief in getting something done. The larger change may not be able to be finished that writing session. If so, put the card back in the stack. Any cards that get finished—the changes made to your satisfaction—get set aside.

Some writers first sort the cards by chapter or scene where the problem appears. If this works for you, do it before you begin revising. Have a stack for each chapter or scene and tackle them one at a time.

Sometimes this causes changes in other chapters too. Create new cards for these and add them to the stack for that chapter. That way you won’t lose track of ideas that emerge—so easy to do, especially with a longer work. You may, though, find some chapters aren’t affected.

Bite-sized bits

The value of still having the cards at this last step is big: The mind gets linear with lists but stays loose with cards. If you choose two cards to work on and you can’t proceed—you get stuck, no ideas come—just put those cards back in the stack and choose other ones.

I love this method because it turns the revision process into bite-sized bits. A huge task is broken into manageable steps that can each be achieved in several hours to several days.

It always gives me confidence in the story again. As I make the changes, I begin to see that my readers were right and I'm very glad I listened. Most times, the new version is incredibly stronger. In plot, in character motive, in every way.

Revising from feedback often became a task that I'd put off for months. Now it’s accomplished in days or weeks.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Get yourself to an office supply store and find a package of index cards this week. Take that feedback that’s been languishing and begin the steps above.

Share what you learn or any questions!

Leave a comment

Shout Out!

I want to offer a hearty shout out to my writing friends and former students who are publishing their books, and encourage you subscribers to pre-order or order a copy to show your support of fellow writers and our writing community. So if you’re a former student and will publish soon (pre-orders of your book are available now) or have in the past two months, email me at mary[at]marycarrollmoore[dot]com to be included in a future Shout Out! I’ll keep your listing here for two months.

I’m a lifelong artist, and I love to inspire and support other creative folk, which is why I write this weekly newsletter. My goal with these posts is to help you strengthen your writing practice and creative life so it becomes more satisfying to you.

I’m also the author of 15 books in 3 genres. My third novel, Last Bets (Riverbed Press), was published in April, after becoming an Amazon bestseller during pre-orders. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, was published in October 2023 and also became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders. For twelve years, I worked as a full-time food journalist, most notably through my weekly column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. My writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, won the New Hampshire Literary Awards “People’s Choice” in 2011 and my first novel, Qualities of Light, was nominated for PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary awards in 2009. I’ve written Your Weekly Writing Exercise every Friday since 2008.

Five Components of Successful Chapters

What’s new in my writing room: My latest novel, Last Bets, was selected in December for Kirkus Reviews' Top 100 Best Indie Books of the Year! Kirkus reviews thousands of indie books, and less than 1% receive a coveted starred review (which mine did). Of those, only 100 are selected across all genres for the “Best of” list. Kirkus is (to many) the Michelin Guide to industry book reviews. A star is like a Michelin three star award. A Best of is way beyond! I’m humbled, stunned, delighted. Grateful to all who helped me get here.

Photo by tommao wang on Unsplash

In my view, chapters have a single purpose: to keep the reader engaged enough to transition to the next chapter without a pause.

Chapters are artificial components of a story. We writers play with their length, what happens in their pages, what we begin and end with. Many of us don’t know, really, about what makes a chapter successful. We make intuitive decisions about chapter size and where to begin and end. But I’ve gathered a few loose “rules” along the way, that make my chapters work better.

The goal of a chapter is to keep the reader reading—right? We want the reader to turn to the next chapter immediately. To keep going on the train.

Your opening line/paragraph

The start of the train is your opening line or paragraph. In a book, every chapter is a car on the train, each hooked to the one before and the one after. Chapters don’t exist without what’s before and after.

Yes, a chapter is a tiny world in itself, where things change and we readers learn more about the main quest or question of your story. But they are always connected to the rest of the train.

How you end one chapter and open the next lets the reader know we’re still on the same train (the same story). It also lets us feel connected to what we’ve just read and what we will read in the chapter that follows.

I study the opening line and paragraph of my chapters and ask these questions:

How does this connect my reader to the chapter before?

Does the opener hint at a question or a quest?

It’s fine to use the opening lines and paragraph to set your scene, but that gets boring every time (you wouldn’t believe how many newer writers find this groove and repeat it every single chapter opening!).

Consider, instead, how you might present a dilemma. Start some momentum for the chapter.

How does this opener carry the reader forward into whatever the chapter's main action will be?

It might be as complex as someone wakes up that morning and discovers their mate is not in bed or in the house. Or an invitation comes. Or the doctor calls with news. Or a meeting begins, someone leaves, someone arrives.

As you open your chapter, you’re also reflecting on whatever will change, in future chapters, with the false beliefs the narrator holds and will come to face. I call these “false agreements.” Such as, “The world is out to get me,” “I’ll never find love,” “There is no kindness anymore,” etc. Stories prove false beliefs as incomplete truths, often long held.

Does the chapter opening hint at any conflict to come? Do we wonder if the quest will succeed? What else might happen (or go wrong)?

So we read on to find out.

Screenwriting guru Syd Fields is credited with the maxim, “Enter late, exit early,” as a guidelines for writing scenes for film. It’s a good mantra for all writers, because it tells you everything you need for beginning (and ending) your chapter.

Your acceleration

A second element of successful chapters is momentum or acceleration. Think of chapters as capsules of change. Something shifts during those pages.

Either the character’s or narrator’s understanding of a situation or another person moves in some way, forwards or backwards. After the opening setup, usually within a page or less, there's some acceleration of the quest or question presented in the opening.

Ask yourself:

Do things do get more complicated?

Why? Because it gives the chapter momentum. As I said before, your reader keeps reading to find out what resolves or gets worse.

Ask yourself:

Do you pause the acceleration to deliver lengthy backstory or information?

Some is OK, but be cautious about more than a few lines or paragraphs. It'll drop the tension you've created with the opening setup.

As an editor, when I review manuscripts that offer pages of backstory, I know the chapter is not successfully structured. As a reader, I often skip or put the book down just there.

Your dramatized action

Ideally, the acceleration leads to a specific moment of time in a specific place, not summarized but dramatized fully onstage in front of the reader.

Ask yourself:

Is there is a sequence of moments, linked to build tension, one to the next?

Within a chapter, these moments need to be related, dramatized to keep your story’s tension level. If the moments of action are not related, the reader pauses and disconnects to think about why. Which, of course, drops both engagement and tension.

Ask yourself:

Is each moment of action delivering a different purpose?

Otherwise, we readers feel we're hearing the same thing again and again.

Your window of truth

In so many books I explored for this series of questions/steps, I felt it was almost a requirement for chapters to have what I call it a "window of truth."

You can also consider it a dismantling of whatever belief or false agreement that starts the chapter.

Say the false agreement is that a broken mental health care system is intact. The window of truth might be the moment when the narrator realizes that's not true--they see the brokenness. Maybe they reject that realization, but as readers we notice the inner shift. Or maybe that moment moves the narrator to a new decision or action.

It's not much, sometimes. It's potent, often.

In many chapters, it’s placed towards the end, after we've experienced full dramatization of the question or quest.

Your ending

I paid a good amount of money for my MFA degree, and it earned itself back with one advisor, at the end of my two years, who told me how to end my chapters. “End early,” she said, “while things are still hot and bothered. Don’t wrap things up.” She was echoing that mantra from Syd Fields mentioned above: “Enter late, exit early.”

In other words, each chapter must lead to the next chapter. You don’t want the reader to stop, feel finished, put the book away. Leave something unresolved from the opening setup OR hint at a new dilemma, quest, or question, so we’ll start reading the next chapter.

This was a great piece of wisdom, and it showed me so simply where to end the chapters. I stop when things are still unresolved.

I often craft the closing setup at revision. This kind of transition is often hard to see when you're just drafting. After the whole-book structure is intact, and your chapters built successfully, it's easy to go back in and tweak the end of each chapter to include a closing setup line or paragraph.

Hint: the closing setup often loops back to the false agreement. Not always, but often. It can fully re-embrace the false agreement, solidifying it even more.

Your weekly writing exercise

Check out the screenwriter’s view of opening and exiting in this article. Then locate a troublesome chapter draft of your own. Go through the questions above and see if you find areas to revise.

Share your thoughts!

Leave a comment

Shout Out!

A hearty shout out to these writing friends and former students who are publishing their books! I encourage you to pre-order or order a copy to show your support of fellow writers and our writing community.

(If you are a former student and will publish soon (pre-orders of your book are available now), or have in the past two months, email mary[at]marycarrollmoore[dot]com to be included in a future Shout Out! I’ll keep your listing here for two months.)

I’m a lifelong artist, and I love to inspire and support other creative folk, which is why I write this weekly newsletter. My goal with these posts is to help you strengthen your writing practice and creative life so it becomes more satisfying to you.

I’m also the author of 15 books in 3 genres. My third novel, Last Bets (Riverbed Press), was published in April, after becoming an Amazon bestseller during pre-orders. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, was published in October 2023 and also became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders. For twelve years, I worked as a full-time food journalist, most notably through my weekly column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. My writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, won the New Hampshire Literary Awards “People’s Choice” in 2011 and my first novel, Qualities of Light, was nominated for PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary awards in 2009. I’ve written Your Weekly Writing Exercise every Friday since 2008.

Following the Headlights: Illuminating the Path of Your Book

What’s new in my writing room: I’m working on a short-story collection, my first. It’s been great fun to take a five-month class on the topic and read published collections to study how they’re curated by the writer. I’m still thrilled that my third novel, Last Bets, was selected last December for Kirkus Reviews' Top 100 Best Indie Books of the Year! Kirkus reviews thousands of indie books, and less than 1% receive a coveted starred review (which mine did). Of those, only 100 are selected across all genres for the “Best of” list. Kirkus is (to many) the Michelin Guide to industry book reviews. A star is like a Michelin three star award. A Best of is way beyond!

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

I’m drawing from my two decade teaching career for this post: what makes a book work, in the end? Are there predictable stages a book goes through on the way to final draft?

I'm a systems lover, which I find totally in synch with being a creative person. I love following a map as well as following my nose. When my tolerance for being lost in the woods grows thin, I want a path. So I study other writers’ journeys for clues. And my past students were reliable teachers.

In the end, though, I wanted to know more than just the dependable steps that brought their books to the finish line. I wanted to know: What actually made writing the book satisfying to you, in every way?

Yes, I know not all of you dear subscribers to this newsletter are committed to long-form work. Keep going with your stories and essays, please. But if a book is in your plan, maybe my research will help.

Following headlights

A lot of writers—some of my favorites—feel that books are manifested in a kind of magical way. There’s a whole movement out there called Headlight Writing, perhaps based on E.L. Doctorow’s famous lines, “'Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

Even if it’s not a novel, following one step that leads to the next can work for many writers. You know this step, you write it or work on it, then the next step appears. I’ve done this with my short stories, for sure—and it’s exciting. Although short stories are less of a commitment than a book, I find the headlight method just enough risk to be creative and fun.

But I’m also a fan of formulas, that map we might make ahead of time. Writing ideas on index cards then sorting them into an order of scenes or chapters. Making an outline or storyboard. Committing to a practice of this many pages a day, this many days at the desk, with rewards to follow.

Whichever method creates trust—in the book, in yourself as its creator, in the idea that’s worth following—it is right for you. When I really trust my idea, I can follow its headlights easily. I don’t need to see the whole plan, the map. But when I am unsure of my ability—I’m trying something very new and risky—or I’m uncertain if the idea will pan out, it helps to have some kind of structure to my writing time.

When I think back on the 15 books I’ve published in my career, I realize most of them were mapped because the trust wasn’t there. The final two were not. They were definitely headlight following books, and I feel they are my best.

Back to my research with students: Here are the four ways of creating headlights worthy of following that were most common. They gave these writers the trust to continue. They became maps for those who want measurable steps along the way, road signs in the foreign landscape. They were lights that shone on the next idea to follow.

Headlight #1: visioning

A large number of the writers I spoke with said they spend upfront time visioning the book. This is headlight following before you begin to write seriously.

Many did this on paper, some just in their heads: taking notes, jotting down ideas and impressions, deciding favorite food of characters or a setting they can see. Sometimes this included talking about their ideas with friends and writing buddies.

All of it is testing the waters and building trust, I find. And it works as long as the energy is not dissipated by too much sharing.

I found the most successful writers took this visioning a step further: more than just thinking, jotting notes, or talking, they actually "saw" the book in their imagination. They visualized the end result. What it would feel like.

Some saw the book as a completed manuscript, a stack of papers on their desk. Others saw it in published form, on a bookshelf. It's an ancient principle: As above, so below. As you vision, so shall it be. It's the basis for visualization, used in professions from sports to business.

Practically, here are the steps they took: they spent time visiting bookstores and libraries. They looked at what else was out there, imagining their book in comparison—how would it be different? They thought about an ideal reader and what this reader might want from it. They drafted a mock cover of the book—complete with made-up testimonials by famous writers. They made a book collage,. They created a visioning statement for the book, asking, What's this book really about?

All of these are a kind of headlight, shining in the dark. When one of the lights lit up something exciting, they were off and running.

Headlight #2: thinking it out

Some of my students are more comfortable with the action step of thinking. This is a planning step, designed to give them a complete roadmap before they begin. It’s the widest kind of headlight, perhaps. And books do benefit from planning, because they are so large and take so long. Often the thinking lets them be less intimidating.

My students planned via research, character sketches, drafts of scenes ("islands" or free writes), interviews, outlines, and storyboards.

Most of my early books demanded this. I had not the level of trust to travel without knowing exactly where I was going. I’d start a writing notebook for each project and I’d free write ideas and notes in it every day. I’d collect my research. I’d outline my chapters on index cards that became a storyboard.

I was intrigued with visioning, an action done internally, but outer planning made me really believe I could manifest the book. Seeing my thoughts for the book on paper, creating as much written material as possible so I had plenty of choices if I got stuck, gave me confidence to get serious.

Having plenty to work with creates a bulwark when you don’t yet know if you can do this thing. You can lean on the accumulated pages and ideas. It’s impressive, even if your book ends up going in a different direction as the trust builds and you can follow the headlights less fearfully.

The only down side, I learned, to this option is that it can can take months, even years, before it’s really fun.

Headlight #3: structure comes first

When I wrote nonfiction books—my first writing path was as a food journalist—I had to create the structure first. Structure came before writing. I had to know the flow of my books, how my theory or thesis would be presented and developed, before I wasted time on the actual words.

I found this approach very reassuring. It was efficient, more so than the endless thinking. I often worked under contract so there was a deadline and it felt like any other kind of job where you had to deliver on time. I began with outlines but often got bored. Storyboarding became my main tool for this step, eventually, even though its less linear form made me nervous until I began to trust the book and my ability to write it.

My nonfiction students were most comfortable with this option. That the book made sense to readers was paramount. More important than the writer feeling creative. Like I said, it became like a job. The goal was to create a pathway through the material that a reader could smoothly follow. A world that can be entered fully and populated with witnesses who are also able to enjoy it.

I created at least eight books this way. It eventually dried me up, creatively, which is why I switched to fiction. But it did its work: I developed enough trust in myself as a writer to leap.

Headlight #4: refining to perfection

Many of my students who are skilled wordsmiths go right to this approach. The words have to be perfect along the way. They refine and refine as they go, making sure everything in chapter 1 is in place before they breathe life into chapter 2.

It’s possible to retro-fit your book, starting with language and moving in reverse to structure and content. It is very satisfying to the love of prose, but it’s a long journey and sometimes harder work.

I certainly am a writer who loves this last step best of all, because I worked as an editor for several decades and know words are a make-or-break element in successful books. If a writer has no love, skill, or tolerance for refining, the book doesn't usually make it to an agent, much less publication.

But the headlight of refining over and over can also dim. Rather than illuminating a larger world and next steps to follow, we may begin to forget where we’re going.

I recently read an amazing story that was so well crafted, the prose blew me away. But after two read throughs, I still couldn’t say what it was about. We got plenty of incredible details and setting and character information but did we care, in the end? Not really. It was a snapshot, a beautifully refined one. To me, it wasn’t yet a story.

So easy to get immersed in refining and word choice. Important to keep our eyes on the road ahead as well so that we don’t miss the point of what we’re trying to create and just begin talking to ourselves.

Which is best?

I can’t answer which headlight will shine your way through your book. I’ve used them all and find, again, that trust is the key. I’ll take more risks, be more willing not to know what’s on the road ahead, if I trust my book idea and my own ability to manifest it.

And even though I’ve listed these four options as distinct, they tend to not live separate from each other, for most writers I talked with. I move through them all, grabbing whichever option I need depending on my level of confidence.

So, there’s not one way for everyone. A book does not often travel a straight path. But it's helpful to know what you’re doing, what approach you’re immersed in. So if it starts to not work, you can shift to another.

Your weekly writing exercise

This week, test an approach you haven’t tried. For more about the idea, read this article on following the headlights from Medium.

Share your insights and questions with our community.

Leave a comment

Shout Out!

Feel free to send me your publication news for this part of the newsletter, where I like to give a hearty shout out to writing friends and former students who are publishing their books and encourage all of us to pre-order or order a copy to show support of fellow writers and our writing community.

If you are a former student and will publish soon (pre-orders of your book are available now), or have in the past two months, email mary[at]marycarrollmoore[dot]com to be included in a future Shout Out! I’ll keep your listing here for two months.

I’m a lifelong artist, and I love to inspire and support other creative folk, which is why I write this weekly newsletter. My goal with these posts is to help you strengthen your writing practice and creative life so it becomes more satisfying to you.

I’m also the author of 15 books in 3 genres. My third novel, Last Bets (Riverbed Press), was published in April, after becoming an Amazon bestseller during pre-orders. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, was published in October 2023 and also became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders. For twelve years, I worked as a full-time food journalist, most notably through my weekly column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. My writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, won the New Hampshire Literary Awards “People’s Choice” in 2011 and my first novel, Qualities of Light, was nominated for PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary awards in 2009. I’ve written Your Weekly Writing Exercise every Friday since 2008.sk it where it thinks you are. Write some notes to yourself about your next steps.

Anxiety versus Creativity

What’s new in my writing room: My latest novel, Last Bets, was selected in December for Kirkus Reviews' Top 100 Best Indie Books of the Year! Kirkus reviews thousands of indie books, and less than 1% receive a coveted starred review (which mine did). Of those, only 100 are selected across all genres for the “Best of” list. Kirkus is (to many) the Michelin Guide to industry book reviews. A star is like a Michelin three star award. A Best of is way beyond! I’m humbled, stunned, delighted. Grateful to all who helped me get here.

Photo by Dragos Gontariu on Unsplash

This month I’m exploring the notion of creativity and anxiety, and how they cohabit in a writer’s life. It’s a radical premise proposed by sociologist Martha Beck in her new book, Beyond Anxiety, which I can highly recommend if you’re bothered at all about the world (or your life in it) right now.

Beck discovered that creativity and anxiety are actually mirror images of each other in our brains. We can choose which to feed. Such a big take-away for me, that brought renewed awareness of how my writing—in fact, anything creative that I do—lowers my anxiety.

It’s almost automatic. Beck’s book has the science that explains why.

Anxiety is something I’ve worked to manage most of my life, and now it only sweeps me away when I tune in to what’s happening in the world or when I’m facing a big personal risk. But since I read Beck’s book, I’ve been opting to manage anxiety via a shift in attention: Making my creativity a focus.

Big unknowns bring anxiety

This post won’t nearly do justice to what Beck has discovered and worked with, in her practice and in her own life, so I recommend the book if this idea tickles you. But even reading the first few chapters made me realize how much big unknowns create helpless feelings in me. Helplessness, in my world, can either lead to a kind of surrender and letting go, if I’m lucky. Or it can lead to new ideas on what to do about it, to make me feel more empowered. Or, if I’m really swept away, helpless feelings contribute to anxiety.

With the world around us becoming more and more of a big unknown, I have to work hard to keep the joy bubble alive, as a good friend puts it. Focusing on my creative life as much as I can is great medicine, and now I know why.

I was always intrigued by the dream state of creating. How I could be immersed in my writing or art and hours would go by. Time was irrelevant. Worries that clouded me that morning were swept away while I was creating—or they downshifted in influence and power as they got transformed into a story or a painting.

I am aware how little influence I have on the unknowns in my life, at this age and world reality. But I am able to influence their effect on me.

My go-to for counteracting the anxiety has always been planning. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Planning Pros and Cons

One big unknown this past winter was my spouse’s major surgery. We’re both in our seventies, so it’s not a lightweight experience. Months leading up to that event were full of careful planning: What could we anticipate and take care of ahead of time?

I cooked and froze meals; we signed up friends and family to help before, during, and after; I scheduled all routine appointments beforehand so our calendars were empty; the house got a thorough cleaning, the car got maintenance, the dogs got their nails trimmed.

I have an attitude of plan for the best, expect the worst.

The actual surgery was amazingly smooth, as the recovery has been so far. We ate the meals I’d made, friends brought more meals and helped with laundry and dog care as needed, nobody demanded anything of us. Home free, I thought.

Then I got vertigo! It landed me in bed for three days in the middle of it all—the week after the surgery. I was unable to even get out of bed.

Thankfully, a dear friend volunteered to stay the week. She took care of both of us and our two dogs. She worked online from our house, did our laundry and cleaning, cooked, let the dogs out, even called her partner to shovel snow when we got hit by a blizzard.

I’d always wanted to spend more time with this friend, but our busy lives never allowed it. That “unplanned” event created the perfect opportunity, and we began having tea each morning and talking for an hour or more. I feel so close to her now—and I didn’t plan any of that!

An experience which taught me that sometimes complete surrender to an unexpected event leads to an outcome that makes you grateful in every way.

Creativity as medicine for our times

I’ve always known that art heals me. Many scientific studies confirm this. But I hadn’t really imagined my art, my creativity, could become my way out of anxiety. When I fail at planning for every eventuality, when life presents too many catastrophes to integrate and make sense of, art steps in as a way to reorient and regain stability.

I’m still in practice. I’m training myself to switch out of what Beck calls “the anxiety spiral” by engaging my creative self. So far, it’s been an amazing medicine.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Check out this wonderful interview with Beck on ’s Substack, “Beyond.” (It’s in several parts, so read them all if you can.)

Begin paying attention to anxiety this week, if it plagues you, and seeing if you can switch focus to your writing. A lot more on how exactly to do that in Beck’s new book.

Leave a comment

Shout Out!

A hearty shout out to these writing friends and former students who are publishing their books! I encourage you to pre-order or order a copy to show your support of fellow writers and our writing community.

(If you are a former student and will publish soon (pre-orders of your book are available now), or have in the past two months, email mary[at]marycarrollmoore[dot]com to be included in a future Shout Out! I’ll keep your listing here for two months.)

I’m a lifelong artist, and I love to inspire and support other creative folk, which is why I write this weekly newsletter. My goal with these posts is to help you strengthen your writing practice and creative life so it becomes more satisfying to you.

I’m also the author of 15 books in 3 genres. My third novel, Last Bets (Riverbed Press), was published in April, after becoming an Amazon bestseller during pre-orders. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, was published in October 2023 and also became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders. For twelve years, I worked as a full-time food journalist, most notably through my weekly column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. My writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, won the New Hampshire Literary Awards “People’s Choice” in 2011 and my first novel, Qualities of Light, was nominated for PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary awards in 2009. I’ve written Your Weekly Writing Exercise every Friday since 2008.