Mary Carroll Moore's Blog, page 6

How Conflict Creates Change

What’s new in my writing world: My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, released last October, was just named a finalist in the BBA awards—American Book Fest’s Best Books Awards. It also won a Silver Medal in the 2024 Reader’s Favorite contest and was a finalist for the 18th National Indie Excellence Awards and the Ann Bannon Popular Choice Award. Happy about all this! My newest novel, Last Bets, is out now, and it was a bestseller on Amazon. “Readers will get lost in Moore's beautiful prose, her impeccable plotting, and her outstandingly relatable and multi-layered characters. Beautifully wrought story of two women artists outrunning their demons,” said Booklife/Publisher’s Weekly who made it an Editor’s Pick.

Photo by MARK ADRIANE on Unsplash

This Sunday I’ll be opening the paywall on my paid-subscribers-only post about story structure and using a Structural Analysis Chart. A natural follow-up to this post on story conflict and narrative arc, I hope you enjoy it!

A beloved teacher once said to me: “You can’t have a story without change. And you can’t have change without conflict.”

Classic story structure demands some level of change. Either change in a situation or in a character or narrator. Even nonfiction has an arc of change: how-to books hope the reader will change their understanding of the topic that the book presents, right?

If there’s no conflict, though, there’s no reason to change. If you don’t have any interest in moving out of your status quo, in your memoir story, there’s no conflict—you’re fine as you are. So there’s not much change. If the reader of a nonfiction book isn’t interested in the topic, has no need for what it might offer, same. Fictional characters that are static, that mostly sit around and drink good coffee, are content where they are. Nothing is conflictual, so nothing changes.

There’s nothing forced on anybody. So there’s very little tension. Readers don’t engage.

Forcing action

Conflict is basically a dilemma presented to someone (character, narrator, reader) in a way that forces action. 

A character might stall for a while before making the change (think of Wally Lamb’s narrator in She’s Come Undone which has mostly stayed in my mind all these years because of the sheer number of pages where there was zero change).

But eventually, in most story structure, conflict will build pressure. Slowly or quickly, it will force change.

Because of this change, the character can grow.

Conflict might make this character realize a truth, right a wrong, change their behavior or thoughts, move to a new city or job or relationship, do something different. 

Conflict can’t be ignored

To be effective, conflict in story must be something that can't be ignored--even though we might try.  The stronger the force of conflict, the sooner the character must change.  

What you’re creating, ideally, is far from comfortable. And that’s another basic rule of story: conflict brings discomfort, which creates the urge for something different.

Without discomfort, there is no change.  Without change, in my view, there is no story structure. 

Narrative arc  

Characters grow in chartable steps. Conflict also is chartable—ideally, there’s a parallel series of steps that reflect or create the character’s growth steps.

In most stories, you can track how each conflict creates a reaction in the character, stimulating change. In other words, growth.   That’s called the "narrative arc,"  a fancy term for the specific way the character, or narrator, grows because of the conflict presented in the story. 

Each conflict presents an opportunity to change. Each decision a character makes is a step along their narrative arc. When in doubt, check the steps on a chart. You can quickly see where there are scenes that don’t fit your story structure.

It actually doesn’t matter if the conflict is large or small, internal or external.  The steps, if chartable, create a pattern of change. This pattern defines the character’s narrative arc.    

Plot

The series of small or large dilemmas that instigate change in the character, creating the narrative arc, can be plotted along a structure like a storyboard or plot line.  We compose our plots from the dilemmas the story presents and the actions the character takes to either confront or avoid them.  

Plot is strongest when your choice of internal conflict and your choice of external conflict create friction.  Try to set up a situation where your character or narrator wants something, and this particular want is thwarted by an event in their outer environment.  

Change must be manifested in outer decisions, turning points, and new actions and directions. To create tension, make it not an easy ride.

Happy story? Uh-oh

Some writers tell me, "I want to write a happy story that will help others and change lives."  Or, "I've been through so much horrible stuff in my life; I want my memoir to be uplifting, not a downer." 

We all need upliftment and happiness in our lives.  In real life, you can be contented, and deal with conflict in a low-key way. 

In story, you can't.  Story is all about facing the odds and changing because of them.  Without the grit of sand, the pearl is not formed.  

When everyone is happy, when conflict is ignored, when nothing is happening, story is dead in the water.  Why?  Because there is no movement, no change.    

Desire, fear, longing

If you feel there’s not enough movement in your plot, check out your character’s desires, fears, or longings.  The things they want and try to get, the things they are afraid of, the things they know they'll never have create that urge to change—a movement from inside the person that manifests in their external world.   

Even if the desire, longing, or fear doesn't manifest but stays locked inside, it creates pressure. Pressure often leaks out as an unconscious action or behavior. That’s even more effective, sometimes, to intensify the overall conflict.

You can also play with upping the intensity of the forces outside the person.  What might cause them to change, alter course, make a decision?  For instance, a death, an accident, a disaster, a loss.  External conflict can also be a discovery--finding lost letters that reveal something, discovering you are not your parents' child.   

What we’re after is friction. Create enough friction and it will demand a decision, a change of course.  A movement forward. Et voila. You have a story.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise 

1.  Make a list of the external conflicts in one chapter of your book or one story or essay.   

2.  Then chart the steps of the narrative arc: how the character, narrator, or reader changes during this same period of time.

3.  Ask yourself if you can see any parallels between what you chose for the series of external conflicts and the way the person changes.  Is it fairly easy to follow? Have you skipped any steps?

4.  Brainstorm on paper about anything you could , remove, add, or adjust to create a stronger pattern of change.

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.)

Megan Lindhal Goodrich, Beyond Terminal: Processing Childhood Trauma to Reclaim Self (Wise Ink), September release

Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew, The Release: Creativity and Freedom after the Writing Is Done (Skinner House), October release

Morgan Baylog Finn, The Gathering: Poems (Finishing Line Press), November release

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 (Riverbed Press), was published in October 2023 also and 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.

On Rejection and Shame

More news from my writing world: My short story, “Downstream,” was selected for publication in Appalachian Review from University of North Carolina Press. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, released in October, was favorably reviewed in Blueline, the literary journal dedicated to the spirit of the Adirondacks. It was also chosen for Literary Aviatrix book club as the feature for August, and became a finalist for both the 18th National Indie Excellent Awards and the Ann Bannon Popular Choice Award. Read more of my writing (and see my paintings) on my website.

Photo by Jakayla Toney on Unsplash

Despite all the great gifts that can come with sharing your work, rejection is always riding along in the sidecar. Facing rejection is a skill that most writers (the ones who persist) learn early. We learn about rejection when we first produce a piece and ask for feedback. When our ideas get reshaped by comments from fellow writers or other readers.

A kind of death, isn’t it. Valuable in the long run but often shame-producing in the moment.

Of course we all know that learning to gracefully receive feedback (the rejection of “This doesn’t quite work” or “I was confused”) is a necessary skill. It’s born of practice and time. Eventually, we may feel inured to rejection in feedback. We move on to bigger risks—like publishing!

One skill that’s not taught in MFA programs or writing classes is this: how do we deal with the emotions that come up when we get rejected? What do writers who seem to skate past the shame and shut-down have in their psychological toolbox?

This week, I had a not-so-fun experience with rejection, which came out of the blue. I thought I’d share it and also the technique I used to move past it.

Reviews

My rejection came in the form of an online review for one of my books. I’ve practiced caution and common sense about reviews for decades, since I began publishing. You cannot control people’s response to what you put out in the world. Even if you have stellar endorsements, there are still some folks who get a tickle out of posting nasty stuff.

But after fifteen books out in the world, I’ve learned to take all reviews with a grain of salt.

I tell myself they are not personal, they reflect the reader’s tastes. If one of those wingnut reviewers happens upon my book listing and decides to comment, I try to treat it as a joke. (I’m not talking about sincere, critical reviews, which can be valuable and something to learn from. These are just those folks who seem to cruise the internet looking for something to slam.)

And I also practice not reading my reviews very often, if at all, after the book is out for a while. This not only preserves my sanity; it helps keep me working forward.

But every now and then a little devil gets on my shoulder and I’m tempted to scroll to the Goodreads or BookBub or Amazon pages of my different books and see what’s been happening in the reviews.

The big ouch

I came across a review by a woman whose name I didn’t recognize. Not a surprise in itself. She had read one of my recent novels. The story didn’t appeal to her tastes. Also, fine—nobody’s writing appeals to every reader.

What hit me hard was her decision to get personal. Beyond her comments about the book, she told the brief story of our relationship back in the 80s. I was married to her ex’s son and she talked all about that time.

Here we were, on a public book-review forum. Why in the world did she feel compelled to share such inappropriate and unnecessary information? At first, I was outraged enough to search for her name online—and I found it—and think of scathing responses. I tried hard to remember her from those younger days and put her comments in context. Had I offended her back then, in a way she couldn’t forget? What was the story here?

I realized I’d never know—and I didn’t want to make the ouch any more personal. I needed to deal with the shame of whatever I’d done or said, unknowingly, all those decades ago, and get back my sense of who I was now.

Shame technique

Shame is such an insidious thing. If you want to read an expert on the topic, check out Brene Brown’s books—I especially love this article she wrote on shame versus guilt. She says that shame is an “intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging—something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection.”

So what to do about it? I knew I was far from unworthy of love and belonging, with my creative work or my life in general. But shame floods us and convinces us otherwise.

I remembered a very successful technique I’d used in the past. It comes from surgeon David Hanscom, M.D., who works with chronic pain suffers. Hanscom wrote Back in Control to document the non-surgical steps he uses to help patients. One of his theories is that emotions and thoughts create a large percentage of the pain we experience.

The technique couldn’t be simpler. You write out whatever is on your mind, stream of consciousness, however you wish. It can be short or long.

But here’s the kicker: immediately after writing, you crumple up the page and throw it away.

So I tried it. I wrote how humiliated I felt, how angry I was, how confused about my youth and this person I couldn’t remember at all and why she’d post that review. I wrote about a page and a half. Then I crumpled up the page and tossed it across the room.

It’s tempting to reread. But the trick, the reason this technique works, is that you don’t.

Hanscom’s theory is that the technique, along with others described in his book, allows a person to separate from the story.

It sure worked for me. An hour later, maybe less, I felt zero anguish about this. In fact, I couldn’t even remember why I was so upset.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

If there’s something needling at you, concerning your creativity, your writing life, publishing, your worth as a writer, try Hanscom’s exercise.

How do you deal with shame in your writing life?

How might you change that?

What results did you have, if you tried the exercise?

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 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.)

Jim Hight, Moon Over Humboldt (Black Rose Writing), August release

Darrell J. Pedersen, Who Will Carry the Fire? More Reflections from a North Woods Lake (River Place Press), August release

Jan Skogstrom, The Light Shines in the Darkness—A Spiritual Journey (Itasca Books), August release

Megan Lindhal Goodrich, Beyond Terminal: Processing Childhood Trauma to Reclaim Self (Wise Ink), September release

Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew, The Release: Creativity and Freedom after the Writing Is Done (Skinner House), October release

Morgan Baylog Finn, The Gathering: Poems (Finishing Line Press), November release

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 (Riverbed Press), was published in October 2023 also and 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 200

Writing Shorter to Keep Going Longer

What’s new in my writing world: My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, released last October, won a Silver Medal in the 2024 Reader’s Favorite contest. It was also a finalist for the 18th National Indie Excellent Awards and the Ann Bannon Popular Choice Award. Happy about all this! My newest novel, Last Bets, is out now, and it was a bestseller on Amazon. “Readers will get lost in Moore's beautiful prose, her impeccable plotting, and her outstandingly relatable and multi-layered characters. Beautifully wrought story of two women artists outrunning their demons,” said Booklife/Publisher’s Weekly who made it an Editor’s Pick.

Photo by Collin Sheffield on Unsplash

An urban legend about the publishing industry: some publishers gauge a book’s chapter length by what can be finished during an hour’s commuter train ride into Manhattan. I don’t know where I heard this, or whether it is true, but it does speak to the growing trend towards “short is better.” To think about what readers can absorb these days.

When my writing buddy sold her amazing new novella to a Big Five publisher—a deal I might not have imagined possible five years ago—I wasn’t surprised. The short form really appeals to readers today, her editor said, and this is highlighted in this Esquire article about “thin books” and Lit Hub’s comments on our “age of distraction” and why shorter books are now welcome.

Some writers can’t write short. Even if the trend is there, it’s not their gig. They need plenty of page time to develop a character, backstory, an essay topic. Maybe they are drawn to epic novels, which can run into the many hundreds of pages.

But what if there’s something educational, skill-building, for all of us in the idea writing short? What if deliberately thinning out a story could be a useful approach to strengthening our writing skills?

Condensing as a useful skill

I remember a wonderful post by writer where she shared a quick revision technique of copying a big block of text into a new document then deleting every third sentence. It lets her see it completely differently, and it works very well at shaking up the stasis and revealing bloat.

To me, it’s a form of condensing, too. My version of it is to read each paragraph in a chapter or scene that feels bloated then try to condense that paragraph into one sentence.

I print the chapter or scene out (as a editor I was trained to read hard copy and I feel happier than onscreen, but you can do it however it works for you). In the margin of each paragraph, I’d test my skill at condensing the meaning into a single sentence. Not as easy as it sounds! Sometimes, I floundered: I couldn’t actually write a sentence that encapsulated that paragraph in much fewer words. That taught me a lot, just in itself.

But here’s what I learned, most importantly: bloat comes from two areas. One is vagueness, where I haven’t actually gotten to any point at all. The other is repetition. When my one-sentence results repeat each other.

In either case, the paragraph just went on and on but didn’t actually move the story. Such a valuable clue! Knowing this, I could revise intelligently and with purpose.

What if I had a chain of paragraphs that were descriptions or backstory but they essentially delivered the same information? Or several examples, for instance, of why the character is ambitious based on her history? Or a town or community’s reticence to change? Not all are needed, usually, but I wrote them because I wasn’t sure if my point was coming across (more is better, right? Not always.).

Of course, some repetition is good in story—it does sometimes take a few repeats for a point to be demonstrated. But this one-sentence condensing exercise proved quite helpful to tell me exactly where I’d crossed the line into bloat. Nobody wants bloat.

Once I knew the problem areas, I reworked the paragraph to send it in a different direction.

Writing short as a break from long

Another value of writing short is when you need to revive your exhausted creative self after too much writing long.

Having just released two novels this past year, I signed up for a break by reading and studying (and writing, too, of course) flash fiction. Flash is short form, to the max. It is brilliant when it works, and one of my favorite flash authors is who writes a marvelous newsletter here on Substack, if you haven’t found her work yet.

I also looked at slightly long shorts, in both fiction and memoir, and I highly recommend Beth Ann Fennelly, who wrote the micro-memoir collection, Heating & Cooling, as someone to study. Especially if you are interested in limited focus, limited environments, and how they enhance people and place.

Reading Fish and Fennelly is, to me, like having a great snack—satisfying yet not full-meal-consuming. I get just the right amount of literary nourishment. I’m left a little hungry, which is how short form should leave the reader, in my view. Hungry to read more. Or take the encouragement of a story into my own writing.

Like visiting a really fine art museum, I want to paint when I get home.

What really counts

Short focuses as it condenses. It gets to the point. But, truthfully, it’s more difficult for many of us to write well compared to going on for an unlimited number of pages. Ask any children’s book writer or experienced poet whether they work less hard because they have fewer words—the answer will likely be no.

Writing short teaches a writer to be selective. Each word, each image, counts.

I also greatly respect authors who take time to really carry us along. I grew up studying the classics, I majored in Russian language and literature in college and grad school, I read many in the original. I’m a fan of big books that sweep me away for days.

But there is the reader in me who needs the exercise and break of shorter pieces. I learn so much from writers who limit not only their story’s page length but condense its environment as well.

Condensing a story’s environment

I’ve been catching up on my very neglected TBR pile, stalled from a year of promoting my own books. Recently, I chose The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue as my next book and I loved its condensed feel. The story takes place in a couple of days and nights, it’s set in early 1900s Dublin, in the maternity ward of a hospital during the flu epidemic and it’s centered on the relationship between three very different women: Julia Powers, the narrator who is a midwife/nurse; her helper, Bridie Sweeney; and Kathleen Lynn, a doctor wanted by the police for her involvement in the Irish rebellion.

I’m not new in admiration for Donoghue’s writing; that started with her novel, Room, and I loved her skill in presenting characters in limited environments. From reading her latest this past week, I grew in appreciation of how condensing the story’s environment can bring the characters alive in a unique way. It’s as if there are fewer setting distractions, perhaps? Or not as many people to interact with?

Marriage or a date?

Writing long form is a marriage; writing short form is a date. Not just for the writer but also for the reader.

Condensing your writing, whether for an exercise in reducing bloat, like the one given above, or because you want to focus in and test a character’s strength in limited circumstances, often requires more stamina, I find. Yes, a book requires much fortitude, your ability to hold 300 pages and multiple people and places in your heart and mind for a year or two or five. It can exhaust most writers, so writing short can be a lovely alternative.

If your writing has become so long, you’ve almost forgotten the point and purpose, or you are starting to lose track of your characters (I once left a young man, Chad, behind in chapter 8; luckily, my editor noticed and retrieved him), or you are repeating yourself (in my case, in the same book, three blueberry pancake breakfast scenes), you might benefit from a short break.

Short is simpler. Not easier, not by a long shot. But simpler because there’s less to track. And a skill in condensing can benefit your writing, when it goes back to long.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Locate a section of your writing that might suffer from bloat. Try one of the reduction exercises above—either ’s third sentence deletion or my one-sentence paragraph synopsis—and see what you learn.

Leave comments below. And share your thoughts about writing short or long—what do you prefer and why?

Are you a fan of reading short form in your genre? Or do you prefer long?

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.)

Jim Hight, Moon Over Humboldt (Black Rose Writing), August release

Darrell J. Pedersen, Who Will Carry the Fire? More Reflections from a North Woods Lake (River Place Press), August release

Jan Skogstrom, The Light Shines in the Darkness—A Spiritual Journey (Itasca Books), August release

Megan Lindhal Goodrich, Beyond Terminal: Processing Childhood Trauma to Reclaim Self (Wise Ink), September release

Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew, The Release: Creativity and Freedom after the Writing Is Done (Skinner House), October release

Morgan Baylog Finn, The Gathering: Poems (Finishing Line Press), November release

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 (Riverbed Press), was published in October 2023 also and 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.

I’ve started a new First Sunday newsletter for paid subscribers that addresses your most gnarly writing and publishing questions. This month’s post was about the pros and cons of getting lost in research. If you’d like to receive First Sunday once a month, a yearly subscription is only $45. For it, you get access to the 700+ archives, the monthly Q&A of First Sunday, a safe space to ask questions, and my writerly gratitude for helping me continue to write this newsletter.

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Secondary Characters Can Make or Break a Story

What’s new in my writing world: My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, released last October, won a Silver Medal in the 2024 Reader’s Favorite contest. It was also a finalist for the 18th National Indie Excellent Awards and the Ann Bannon Popular Choice Award. Happy about all this! My newest novel, Last Bets, is out now, and it was a bestseller on Amazon. “Readers will get lost in Moore's beautiful prose, her impeccable plotting, and her outstandingly relatable and multi-layered characters. Beautifully wrought story of two women artists outrunning their demons,” said Booklife/Publisher’s Weekly who made it an Editor’s Pick.

Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash

There are usually one or two characters I’m heavily invested in, at the start of a new writing project. They are my dilemmas to figure out, my problems to solve. Who are they, why do they do what they do, and how can I get them into more trouble?

I used to believe that if I got these characters right, the story worked. Not true.

My main characters actually don’t get fully realized on the page until the secondary characters, the circle of people that surrounds them, also comes alive for my readers. Why is this?

Because our environment, our community, reflects who we are at the core.

What we love, hate, envy, admire, crush on, follow—all this creates a keen mirror reflecting who we really are, beyond pretenses. Secrets we had in high school. Our grief and losses. Past betrayals. Envy and sacrifice.

This is what tells the reader who the main character really is, apart from how they present themselves. Their human environment is the key to making them come alive.

Putting your narrator, your main character, into a story without any relationships makes them unreal to the reader. Relationships are what make us real. How people treat us, how we treat them, what we’d sacrifice for their love or attention.

Of course, making all this work is a lot of work.

Community reflects us

Story is about community, in my view. Even if the character is isolated, like in Emma Donoghue’s amazing novel, Room, where a woman is kept prisoner, there’s still someone or something that amplifies their beliefs and values. Someone to fight against, in Donahue’s story. Without that, the character is flat, bland, static.

So the writer creates a community on the page to tell the reader who this main character really is. True in memoir, in fiction, even in nonfiction (via excerpts and stories used).

These secondary, or minor, characters end up being just as important as the main people. Consider who Harry Potter would be to us without Ron or Hermione. Or Scout without Jim. Or the people in line at the bank who wait with Anders, in Tobias Wolff’s brilliant short story, “Bullet in the Brain.”

Your main character shines more brightly because of the people in their lives. But you get to decide the weight of each person in this cast. Who is going to be featured, who is going to be background.

Triaging your cast

Every single person in your story—whether it’s a true story about the crazy aunt and uncle who raised you or a fictional account of a schoolyard gang—has a purpose. The cool thing to realize, something I’ve learned over the years the hard way, is that most of your cast must be relevant in some way to the main character’s narrative arc, how they grow and change (or decline) during the course of the story.

When you’re choosing your cast, there’s a certain triage you can use. I like to divide my characters into three groups. The second two groups are decided by how strongly they affect the main character’s arc.

You start with the center of the circle, the sun, if you will. Everyone else will orbit around this person’s (or persons’) story. This is your narrator, main character, protagonist, the person who carried the point-of-view chapters or scenes. This is the character you focus on as you’re figuring out your story.

It’s the character who drives the arc of the plot, carries the story’s theme. Who, ideally, changes the most.

But there are two other groups, and they are part of the cast too.

Secondary, or minor, characters. These are close to the protagonist in some way, and they also have arcs or chartable pathways of growth, but usually their arcs echo the protagonist’s.

Supporting cast. These might be the townspeople, who walk on and off stage and are present in the story but not necessarily characters who change a lot or have an growth arc.

If you’re like me, you focus first on developing the main character(s). I write these point-of-view scenes early on, trying to get a sense of how they see and act in the world. Point-of-view means we’re inside their heads and have access to their thoughts and feelings as they navigate life. (That’s a simplistic explanation of POV, and there are more complicated ways to work with it, but it’ll do for our argument here.)

Influence of minor characters

I’m catching up on this year’s TBR pile—such a fun way to spend fall evenings. One of my favorite recent reads was Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano. It’s a remake of Little Women, in a way, and the four sisters are all main characters in the story. But I was equally intrigued with the minor characters and how strongly they influenced everything.

The three who stood out most clearly, to me, never had point-of-view scenes. Yet they shifted the story trajectory.

Rose—the bitter mother, who refuses to accept her out-of-wedlock granddaughter and even moves away, but is always a feature, never forgotten

Charlie—the poetry loving father, who dies early in the story and changes everything

Izzy—the daughter of one of the sisters who never knows or wants to know her father but who becomes instrumental at the end in welcoming another character back home

All the sisters interact with these three, constantly; even after Charlie dies, he’s a vibrant presence in their lives. How did Napolitano choose to bring these characters from supporting cast into true minor character roles?

This is one of the challenges, something we test as we draft and revise. As I said, I first hone the main character’s story, figure out how they move through their world, then I ask how they’ll interact with others. I test out whether these others are true secondary characters, meaning they will serve the protagonist’s story in a strong way. Or if they are background to it.

Over the years, I’ve drawn up a little list of questions to ask. You may have your own list, or you may have ideas to add to mine. If I can respond to most of these questions with answers that contain some electricity, the character is more likely to be someone who counts.

Questions for your minor character

When I’ve sketched out the idea for a new character who might be more than a background feature, I run through all or most of the questions on this list as a freewriting exercise, just to see the potential.

What secrets do you keep that have to do with the main character? What do you know that the reader can know, but the main character won’t know? This makes for delicious tension in story. Maybe you are privy to a secret about the main character? Or you witnessed something long ago that affects their future but you’re not telling?

What’s your history with the main character, how did you feature in their past? Maybe you played basketball together in grade school. Maybe you both shoplifted candy from a local store. Maybe you both crushed on the same person in high school or college. What unites you, what pushes you apart?

How does your voice or characteristics (clothing, music loves, habits, childhood) different from the main character’s but in some way echo theirs? (I’m searching for those opposites that attract, that create a pull of tension.)

How might you serve their story? Are there places your lives will be a crossroads of decisions, and having you on the scene will greatly influence the outcome for the main character?

What keeps you up at night? If there’s a conflict or tension that makes them an interesting player in their own right, it’s possible that it will be strong enough to provide a distraction, an interesting subplot. Or even strong enough to cause temporary abandonment (the minor character abandons the main character to take care of their own needs, and the main character is bereft).\

Finally, the big determiner for me is: Do I want to hang out with you, figure you out, learn more? If I can imagine spending page time with this character, they’re more likely to be more than supporting cast. Some of my favorite minor characters have come to be just because I feel something for them. Maybe even repugnance.

But that makes for a strong minor character too.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Choose one of your minor characters in progress, and ask two or three of the questions above. Free write for 5-10 minutes, see what you get.

Are you able to write clear and interesting answers?

Add two of your own questions to the list. Share them here, if you like.

Who is a stellar minor character in a book you’ve loved? Why do you remember this character?

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.)

Jim Hight, Moon Over Humboldt (Black Rose Writing), August release

Darrell J. Pedersen, Who Will Carry the Fire? More Reflections from a North Woods Lake (River Place Press), August release

Jan Skogstrom, The Light Shines in the Darkness—A Spiritual Journey (Itasca Books), August release

Megan Lindhal Goodrich, Beyond Terminal: Processing Childhood Trauma to Reclaim Self (Wise Ink), September release

Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew, The Release: Creativity and Freedom after the Writing Is Done (Skinner House), October release

Morgan Baylog Finn, The Gathering: Poems (Finishing Line Press), November release

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 (Riverbed Press), was published in October 2023 also and 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.

First Sunday Q&A: Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew on Sustainable Writing Practice

“First Sunday” Q&A is where we dissect and discuss your writing and publishing questions. I plan to write this the first Sunday of each month for you, as long as you wonderful people send me your questions. Sometimes, like today, I’ll be the one asking the questions and bringing in a guest to share insights and ideas. My intention is to make this monthly gathering place safe and generous, so we can exchange ideas and talk about the deepest writing and publishing issues on our minds. If you’re a free subscriber, you’ll get a taste of the article below. Upgrade to paid (only $45 a year) to read the rest and receive First Sunday each month. Your subscription also supports me continuing to write my free newsletter each Friday.

I doubt author and teacher Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew would call herself an expert in staying present, but having read her newsletter, Pen Feathers, and her writing for years, I’d say she’s pretty good at trying to live that way. Elizabeth and I have crossed paths for a long time but always at a distance. We both taught at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. We shared many students. I’ve long been an admirer of her work and her approach to “writing about writing” and to living a creative life with a spiritual perspective.

I love how she explores the interior side of the writing life, especially how we as writers stay true to ourselves as creative people, especially when sharing our work with the world. Elizabeth has published a lot, but I particularly love her trilogy of books about the writing process, the inner work of writers. I wanted to catch her for this column as book three has just been released October 1. The Release: Creativity and Freedom After the Writing Is Done (Skinner House) is about what happens after the writing is out in the world.

So my questions to her were about her writing practice, the everyday of it, and how the act of staying present enters into this work. Here are my questions (and I’m thrilled that she took off in new directions from them):

Where do you write best?

What do you use to write? How do you go about it, specifically?

And what makes it satisfying?

Welcome, Elizabeth!

Guest post by Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

My writing practice begins early, in pajamas, with a cup of matcha.  I shuffle to my reading chair, jot down dreams, and ask myself, “What’s stirring?”  I journal by hand with a fountain pen in a hard-covered Moleskine, sensory pleasures that compensate for the early hour and any hard-to-swallow revelations that pop up.  Then I read for a bit, some sacred or mystical text.  I like a dose of stimulation first thing and find this steers my day toward what matters most.

With few exceptions (early motherhood, menopausal insomnia), this ritual has begun my days for thirty-five years.  It works on me the way Julia Cameron suggests morning pages do, as a way to clear out the flotsam and jetsam that have washed up in my brain.  Like so many others, I write to find out what I think and feel and believe.  Morning “red chair time” is both a daily check-in—where am I at?—and intention-setting—who do I want to be today?  

Journaling is the most important writing of my day.  I think of it as “horizontal writing,” a daily practice of generating that widens the worn path between my interior and the page.

On days I have to get my daughter to school I then launch that flurry of activities; otherwise I walk the mile to my office along the north side of a city lake and through the neighborhood.  I used to bike the distance but have found that 15-20 minutes of walking is the perfect bread for my writing sandwich.

I’m immensely grateful to have a “room of my own” away from the rambunctious cats, ringing phone, and general chaos of our household.  My desk there remains empty.  The space stays clean.  I begin with centering prayer, a form of silent meditation.  This practice exercises my capacity to release thoughts and is directly applicable to writing.  Art is always a dance between exerting agency and surrendering to the Muse.  While I’m great at having an agenda and riding my will onto the page, being receptive to inspiration is much harder.  So I practice, both in meditation and in writing.

By the time I’ve eaten breakfast, it’s 8:30, which gives me three-and-a-half hours to write.  Here is my “vertical writing,” time to go deep with a project.  Sometimes I draft in spiral notebooks but usually the more formal composition happens at the laptop.  That much time at a screen is hard on my body, though, so I try to interrupt with hourly stretches and small chores, usually making more tea, and sometimes returning to longhand.  

As for what gives me a sense of accomplishment during that time, I’m less interested in volume than absorption.  How immersed have I been?  If I’ve reflexively checked my email all morning, that’s a disappointment.  If I’ve lost myself in the writing, I’ve had a good morning.  By “lost” I mean forgotten—I’ve allowed my project to fill my being and the room and the whole city; I’ve given no thought to audience or end product or worthiness or “art.”  Moments like that are gifts.  I love how the quiet of my office penetrates my mind.  When this happens, the words emerge from someplace other than my busy brain, without judgment, without “hope or despair,” as Isak Dinesen once said.  

But times like this only come when I’ve given myself over to creating.  My job is to be fully present, to bring forward skill, talent, agency, and energy, and at the same time be willing to set all that aside in favor of inspiration.  The more I can show up to this creative exchange, the better able I am to show up in my prose, meeting the reader with a full heart.  Honestly, it’s hard—just as hard as silent meditation.  Even when my focus is great, I’m tempted to skitter away into an easier subject or to hammer at my agenda or add some literary flourish to call attention to my brilliance.  Most days I leave the office only having had a glimmer of grace and hours of plain old effort.

Which is why the walk home is perfect—time to “moodle,” as Brenda Ueland called it, or “mail my project to my unconscious,’ as a friend of mine says.  My body, weary of sitting, needs to move, and my mind, weary of concentrating, needs to wander.  When I remember, I try to honor what’s happened at my writing desk with gratitude.  Often little inspirations come and you’ll find me making voice memos mid-stride.

Back home, I head right to the refrigerator.  Then the money-earning part of my day begins.  Noon’s a firm deadline; I can postpone others’ demands on my time only so long.  Generally, though, I’m ready to leave writing behind for lunch, human interactions, cat massages, and ordinary tasks I can complete in an hour or less.  Writing practices are unique to each writer; this one has been decades in the making.  This rhythm to my days keeps me vital, on the page and in my being.

Elizabeth hosts a free online writing community.  Folks can learn about it here: https://www.eyeoftheheartcenter.org/writing-community  And check out her brand new book here.

_____________________________
Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
www.spiritualmemoir.com
www.elizabethjarrettandrew.com

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Doesn't Everybody Need Better Structure in Their Writing?

More news from my writing world: My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, released last October, was favorably reviewed in Blueline, the literary journal dedicated to the spirit of the Adirondacks. It was also chosen for Literary Aviatrix book club as the feature for this past August, and became a finalist for both the 18th National Indie Excellent Awards and the Ann Bannon Popular Choice Award. I worked very hard on that book and I’m so glad it’s getting recognition. My newest novel, Last Bets, is out now, and it was a bestseller on Amazon. “Readers will get lost in Moore's beautiful prose, her impeccable plotting, and her outstandingly relatable and multi-layered characters. Beautifully wrought story of two women artists outrunning their demons,” said Booklife/Publisher’s Weekly who made it an Editor’s Pick.

Photo by Matthieu Joannon on Unsplash

I was talking with a writer the other day who is going to be interviewing me for her newsletter. I asked her what topics most interest her readers right now; most are fiction writers, many published.

She talked about how many writers need help with their writing rhythm, keeping going. But others cover that, she said. What she wanted to talk with me about was structure. Why is story structure so mystifying to so many writers? Yes, there are systems you can follow—many of them. But even writers with publication experience often get lost in the middle of a manuscript. And it often comes down to confusion about structure.

What’s the best structure for each story, each book? I know for sure that it is never one formula, one way. Each of my own books has “grown” a different structure that fit it exactly.

Maybe, I told my writer friend, structure is confusing because we believe “art,” or “creating,” is about flow. You get inspired, you express, and voila, you have something worth sharing.

Yes, there’s flow—we couldn’t create without it. But especially in long-form projects like novels or memoirs or nonfiction books, flow only ignites the spark. It’s not a given. It’s not something, in my experience, that sustains the long haul of writing.

Structure does. The shape and form of what you write, when created well, not only keeps you going. It’s the gateway for the reader to engage with what you’re saying.

Structure is a gateway

Writers want to write about the world they’re living in, in their story imagination. That’s all correct and good. But how do readers enter that world?

Imagine strong structure as the gateway to this world. It’s a kind of entry to the meaning of your work. I find most readers stand apart from the writer’s creation until good structure lets them understand the world as you, the writer, do.

But equally rare is the skill of structure. Maybe this is because of our natural fascination with flow or because structure feels unsexy, uncreative. I taught hundreds of writing workshops and retreats, where writers brought their manuscripts to get help with structure. But so many were reluctant, deep down, to set aside the fun of flow and enter more detached realm of structure.

Structure can feel limiting. But it’s also the way out of that mass of unorganized pages, where you can write and write, granted, but you may lose the thread of your own story. Much less open the gate for a reader to find it.

So many structure tools

I’ve taught writing for decades and published since the 80s. That’s a long time to study structure and examine as many structure-teaching tools as I could find. Many are really helpful at different stages. But my favorites allow a writer to step back, gain distance, and reshape their story’s structure, while still retaining the feeling of excitement, flow, or creativity.

Take outlines: a prime structure tool we’re taught in school. Outlines are useful later in the revision process as a kind of checklist, but to me they completely stop the creative imagination and the necessary surprises that should, ideally, happen as you write.

I found lots to love in structure approaches from Save the Cat, The Story Grid, and Story Genius, three very popular structure systems. I loved those methods and learned a lot from them, but they often made me feel like I also needed a coach over my shoulder to tell me whether my structure was working or not.

So I kept searching. Until I came across the W storyboard.

The W storyboard

I first heard about this method via Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey story structure. Campbell, as you know, created a template for the typical character arc in story. He constructed a diagram, a kind of W, to show the rise and fall of action as the character grows and changes.

Screenwriters use this rising and falling action throughout most screenplays. From the two ideas, I began working with a W storyboard, expanding from what I’d learned of Campbell’s work and incorporating what I knew from screenwriting.

I began teaching the W storyboard in the early 2000's and made a short series of YouTube tutorials in 2011 (my first video is below, which gives you the basic idea).

If you google “W storyboard” now, 24 years later, you’ll get a score of links of others who have flown with the idea and developed their own version. It’s been adapted into as many different approaches as there are writers and teachers. Which tells me it works. Not just for me and my students, but a larger community—and that’s great.

Here’s my basic tutorial on how the W storyboard works.

This week, I wanted to share the W storyboard experiences of three of my past students who publishing their debuts this year. From their examples, you’ll see different ways to use the W storyboard for fiction, memoir, and prescriptive (how to) nonfiction.

You may be familiar with the W storyboard concept, but if you’re not, feel free to watch the short video above, to better understand their comments.

I asked them specifically to talk about how they decided each of the five points of the W. These five points are the beginning of the story, the end of the story, and the three points where the W turns. You can see these on the diagram in the video above.

Fascinating to hear how three different writers in three different genres went about this structure task. And why the W storyboard ended up working so well for them.

Please feel free to click on the links for their books, to support fellow writers too!

Fiction: using the W to align plots and subplots

In her debut novel, Silenced Whispers, which came out earlier this year, Afarin Ordubadi Bellisario wanted to tell the story “of an Iranian woman’s battle for freedom—hers and her country’s—and love amid profound social change and imperial power grabs.” Silenced Whispers won an honorable mention at the 2024 New York Book Festival; Afarin writes Gohar Nameh here on Substack, if you’d like to learn more about her journey.

She told me that with historical fiction, “where the writer would like to weave the story around actual historical events and capture how these events affect the characters without losing sight of their overall transformation,” the task of merging front and backstory successfully can be difficult. Afarin took several courses in creative writing, including one at UCLA Extension, but what helped her weave a strong frontstory and backstory was the W storyboard she learned at one of my classes at Grub Street writing school in Boston.

Afarin made a list of the events she felt were most important. “I used the [W} method to align the plots and subplots,” she said.

Although on the diagram above, the legs of the W look equal, often the story sections are not. Afarin says the legs of her story’s W weren’t perfectly symmetrical: “the main character, Gohar, reaches the bottom of despair early [point 2 of the W], only about 12 percent of the way through the novel, while the first—false—peak [point 3 of the W] occurs at about 47 percent of it,” she says, because her book has two sections, two years apart, and the first section is shorter. Still, her W showed a very strong story structure—one of the bonuses of this method is that it can be adapted to however your book flows.

“The second valley [point 4 of the W] happens around 75 percent into the book,” she says. “The last peak, the final climax, occurs close to the end. An overall arc allows the writer to keep track of and manage the ebbs and flow of the story along with the emotional ups and downs of characters.”

“In life, as in fiction,” she added, “there are no straight lines—up, down, or sideways. People often reach a high point only to realize that it is not the peak they had imagined, and they have more to go, or they fall into a crevice just as they are about to reach the summit, break their ankle, and have to be carried back to safety.”

To me, that kind of tension is what makes a good story. And Afarin certainly succeeds in this.

Check out her book, Silenced Whispers, here.

Memoir: using the W to avoid repetition

Mary Beth Spray’s debut, Imprint, comes out later this year. She’s set up her new website and is exploring ways to share her book with potential readers. She calls it an “autobiographical novel about a naïve young mother who falls in love with her husband’s female student.” A story, she says, about the journey towards freedom and new identity.

Mary Beth says she knew nothing about story structure in the beginning. “I just wrote my life. Eventually I narrowed the focus to ten years with backstory.”

She spent months writing about those first ten years of her “violent marriage,” she told me, “trying to show the reader how controlling and abusive my ex was. I accumulated about 100,000 words! (The finished book is closer to 75,000.) I learned I didn’t have to tell everything—especially, I didn’t have to repeat the same scenes, even though that was how it was in real life.”

Using the W structure encouraged her to find a stronger start. She wanted one that set up questions for the reader to wonder about, rather than just starting at the beginning. “I chose our move to the East Coast for the third point of the W—I had my dream home, we hoped our failing marriage would flourish on a college campus,” she says. To me as a reader, this worked so much better than starting at the beginning of the relationship. It put us immediately into the tension of her story.

“I chose the first turning point,” she says, “the low point [point 2 on the W storyboard], as the beating at a campsite after my ex tried to put me in a treatment center. The second turning point [point 4 on the W] was when my female love interest had an affair and I considered suicide. The last leg of the W showed my growing strength in myself as I joined lesbian groups, dated women, came out, dealt with the feelings of my teenage children, and eventually bought a house, my final victory of that time. “

Structure matters, she told me. “Without it, my book would be boring, even though I know it’s a good story and for years people told me I should write it. But it needed the surprises of plot to be well placed. The W structure made the story move. It has victories, the happy sections. It has the crashes to the bottom of life, the points when I get back up and feel hopeful about the future, an ending of serenity.”

Be sure to look for Mary Beth’s book when it comes out, and check out her story on her website, here.

Nonfiction: using the W to shape an uplifting narrative

Emma Laurence is a coach and author of the Beyond Burnout Playbook. She used the W structure to design and strengthen her book’s flow and create a narrative that engaged the reader while presenting her five keys to move beyond burnout in work and life.

One of the great benefits of the W storyboard is going deeper into a topic, especially for nonfiction authors. Here’s how Emma used this structure.

Emma told me she needed to “create an easy-to-read, illustrated piece—offering five keys to move beyond crispy fried. As I simplified my message, though, I began to lose the overall story arc.”

We talked about the five points and what she explored as she worked on the W storyboard. “I highlighted burnout’s upside near the opening of the book (that first upward leg in the W),” she said. “Yet, I sensed my readers would get lost after key #3 if I didn’t address their deeper doubts. I paused in presenting the keys to speak to their concern that the outside world is a real mess, to share a way to build a beyond-burnout universe no matter the circumstances. Then I could return to the last two keys (the second upward W leg).”

“The W’s undulating structure unveiled the true message of my book,” she says, “shaping it into an uplifting narrative rather than a how-to-fix-it manual.”

Read more about Beyond Burnout Playbook (and its great illustrations) here. And check out Emma’s collaboration in the just-released (and #1 bestselling) book, Leading with Self-Awareness, here.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Check out these three authors’ work—and review or view my video on using the W structure to consider ways to strengthen the flow of your novel, memoir, or nonfiction book.

Like each of the stories shared, what might you consider for the five points on your W storyboard?

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.)

Jim Hight, Moon Over Humboldt (Black Rose Writing), August release

Darrell J. Pedersen, Who Will Carry the Fire? More Reflections from a North Woods Lake (River Place Press), August release

Jan Skogstrom, The Light Shines in the Darkness—A Spiritual Journey (Itasca Books), August release

Megan Lindhal Goodrich, Beyond Terminal: Processing Childhood Trauma to Reclaim Self (Wise Ink), September release

Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew, The Release: Creativity and Freedom after the Writing Is Done (Skinner House), October release

Morgan Baylog Finn, The Gathering: Poems (Finishing Line Press), November release

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 (Riverbed Press), was published in October 2023 also and 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.

Doesn't Everybody Need Better Structure in Their Writing?

More news from my writing world: My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, released last October, was favorably reviewed in Blueline, the literary journal dedicated to the spirit of the Adirondacks. It was also chosen for Literary Aviatrix book club as the feature for this past August, and became a finalist for both the 18th National Indie Excellent Awards and the Ann Bannon Popular Choice Award. I worked very hard on that book and I’m so glad it’s getting recognition. My newest novel, Last Bets, is out now, and it was a bestseller on Amazon. “Readers will get lost in Moore's beautiful prose, her impeccable plotting, and her outstandingly relatable and multi-layered characters. Beautifully wrought story of two women artists outrunning their demons,” said Booklife/Publisher’s Weekly who made it an Editor’s Pick.

Photo by Matthieu Joannon on Unsplash

I was talking with a writer the other day who is going to be interviewing me for her newsletter. I asked her what topics most interest her readers right now; most are fiction writers, many published.

She talked about how many writers need help with their writing rhythm, keeping going. But others cover that, she said. What she wanted to talk with me about was structure. Why is story structure so mystifying to so many writers? Yes, there are systems you can follow—many of them. But even writers with publication experience often get lost in the middle of a manuscript. And it often comes down to confusion about structure.

What’s the best structure for each story, each book? I know for sure that it is never one formula, one way. Each of my own books has “grown” a different structure that fit it exactly.

Maybe, I told my writer friend, structure is confusing because we believe “art,” or “creating,” is about flow. You get inspired, you express, and voila, you have something worth sharing.

Yes, there’s flow—we couldn’t create without it. But especially in long-form projects like novels or memoirs or nonfiction books, flow only ignites the spark. It’s not a given. It’s not something, in my experience, that sustains the long haul of writing.

Structure does. The shape and form of what you write, when created well, not only keeps you going. It’s the gateway for the reader to engage with what you’re saying.

Structure is a gateway

Writers want to write about the world they’re living in, in their story imagination. That’s all correct and good. But how do readers enter that world?

Imagine strong structure as the gateway to this world. It’s a kind of entry to the meaning of your work. I find most readers stand apart from the writer’s creation until good structure lets them understand the world as you, the writer, do.

But equally rare is the skill of structure. Maybe this is because of our natural fascination with flow or because structure feels unsexy, uncreative. I taught hundreds of writing workshops and retreats, where writers brought their manuscripts to get help with structure. But so many were reluctant, deep down, to set aside the fun of flow and enter more detached realm of structure.

Structure can feel limiting. But it’s also the way out of that mass of unorganized pages, where you can write and write, granted, but you may lose the thread of your own story. Much less open the gate for a reader to find it.

So many structure tools

I’ve taught writing for decades and published since the 80s. That’s a long time to study structure and examine as many structure-teaching tools as I could find. Many are really helpful at different stages. But my favorites allow a writer to step back, gain distance, and reshape their story’s structure, while still retaining the feeling of excitement, flow, or creativity.

Take outlines: a prime structure tool we’re taught in school. Outlines are useful later in the revision process as a kind of checklist, but to me they completely stop the creative imagination and the necessary surprises that should, ideally, happen as you write.

I found lots to love in structure approaches from Save the Cat, The Story Grid, and Story Genius, three very popular structure systems. I loved those methods and learned a lot from them, but they often made me feel like I also needed a coach over my shoulder to tell me whether my structure was working or not.

So I kept searching. Until I came across the W storyboard.

The W storyboard

I first heard about this method via Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey story structure. Campbell, as you know, created a template for the typical character arc in story. He constructed a diagram, a kind of W, to show the rise and fall of action as the character grows and changes.

Screenwriters use this rising and falling action throughout most screenplays. From the two ideas, I began working with a W storyboard, expanding from what I’d learned of Campbell’s work and incorporating what I knew from screenwriting.

I began teaching the W storyboard in the early 2000's and made a short series of YouTube tutorials in 2011 (my first video is below, which gives you the basic idea).

If you google “W storyboard” now, 24 years later, you’ll get a score of links of others who have flown with the idea and developed their own version. It’s been adapted into as many different approaches as there are writers and teachers. Which tells me it works. Not just for me and my students, but a larger community—and that’s great.

Here’s my basic tutorial on how the W storyboard works.

This week, I wanted to share the W storyboard experiences of three of my past students who publishing their debuts this year. From their examples, you’ll see different ways to use the W storyboard for fiction, memoir, and prescriptive (how to) nonfiction.

You may be familiar with the W storyboard concept, but if you’re not, feel free to watch the short video above, to better understand their comments.

I asked them specifically to talk about how they decided each of the five points of the W. These five points are the beginning of the story, the end of the story, and the three points where the W turns. You can see these on the diagram in the video above.

Fascinating to hear how three different writers in three different genres went about this structure task. And why the W storyboard ended up working so well for them.

Please feel free to click on the links for their books, to support fellow writers too!

Fiction: using the W to align plots and subplots

In her debut novel, Silenced Whispers, which came out earlier this year, Afarin Ordubadi Bellisario wanted to tell the story “of an Iranian woman’s battle for freedom—hers and her country’s—and love amid profound social change and imperial power grabs.” Silenced Whispers won an honorable mention at the 2024 New York Book Festival; Afarin writes Gohar Nameh here on Substack, if you’d like to learn more about her journey.

She told me that with historical fiction, “where the writer would like to weave the story around actual historical events and capture how these events affect the characters without losing sight of their overall transformation,” the task of merging front and backstory successfully can be difficult. Afarin took several courses in creative writing, including one at UCLA Extension, but what helped her weave a strong frontstory and backstory was the W storyboard she learned at one of my classes at Grub Street writing school in Boston.

Afarin made a list of the events she felt were most important. “I used the [W} method to align the plots and subplots,” she said.

Although on the diagram above, the legs of the W look equal, often the story sections are not. Afarin says the legs of her story’s W weren’t perfectly symmetrical: “the main character, Gohar, reaches the bottom of despair early [point 2 of the W], only about 12 percent of the way through the novel, while the first—false—peak [point 3 of the W] occurs at about 47 percent of it,” she says, because her book has two sections, two years apart, and the first section is shorter. Still, her W showed a very strong story structure—one of the bonuses of this method is that it can be adapted to however your book flows.

“The second valley [point 4 of the W] happens around 75 percent into the book,” she says. “The last peak, the final climax, occurs close to the end. An overall arc allows the writer to keep track of and manage the ebbs and flow of the story along with the emotional ups and downs of characters.”

“In life, as in fiction,” she added, “there are no straight lines—up, down, or sideways. People often reach a high point only to realize that it is not the peak they had imagined, and they have more to go, or they fall into a crevice just as they are about to reach the summit, break their ankle, and have to be carried back to safety.”

To me, that kind of tension is what makes a good story. And Afarin certainly succeeds in this.

Check out her book, Silenced Whispers, here.

Memoir: using the W to avoid repetition

Mary Beth Spray’s debut, Imprint, comes out later this year. She’s set up her new website and is exploring ways to share her book with potential readers. She calls it an “autobiographical novel about a naïve young mother who falls in love with her husband’s female student.” A story, she says, about the journey towards freedom and new identity.

Mary Beth says she knew nothing about story structure in the beginning. “I just wrote my life. Eventually I narrowed the focus to ten years with backstory.”

She spent months writing about those first ten years of her “violent marriage,” she told me, “trying to show the reader how controlling and abusive my ex was. I accumulated about 100,000 words! (The finished book is closer to 75,000.) I learned I didn’t have to tell everything—especially, I didn’t have to repeat the same scenes, even though that was how it was in real life.”

Using the W structure encouraged her to find a stronger start. She wanted one that set up questions for the reader to wonder about, rather than just starting at the beginning. “I chose our move to the East Coast for the third point of the W—I had my dream home, we hoped our failing marriage would flourish on a college campus,” she says. To me as a reader, this worked so much better than starting at the beginning of the relationship. It put us immediately into the tension of her story.

“I chose the first turning point,” she says, “the low point [point 2 on the W storyboard], as the beating at a campsite after my ex tried to put me in a treatment center. The second turning point [point 4 on the W] was when my female love interest had an affair and I considered suicide. The last leg of the W showed my growing strength in myself as I joined lesbian groups, dated women, came out, dealt with the feelings of my teenage children, and eventually bought a house, my final victory of that time. “

Structure matters, she told me. “Without it, my book would be boring, even though I know it’s a good story and for years people told me I should write it. But it needed the surprises of plot to be well placed. The W structure made the story move. It has victories, the happy sections. It has the crashes to the bottom of life, the points when I get back up and feel hopeful about the future, an ending of serenity.”

Be sure to look for Mary Beth’s book when it comes out, and check out her story on her website, here.

Nonfiction: using the W to shape an uplifting narrative

Emma Laurence is a coach and author of the Beyond Burnout Playbook. She used the W structure to design and strengthen her book’s flow and create a narrative that engaged the reader while presenting her five keys to move beyond burnout in work and life.

One of the great benefits of the W storyboard is going deeper into a topic, especially for nonfiction authors. Here’s how Emma used this structure.

Emma told me she needed to “create an easy-to-read, illustrated piece—offering five keys to move beyond crispy fried. As I simplified my message, though, I began to lose the overall story arc.”

We talked about the five points and what she explored as she worked on the W storyboard. “I highlighted burnout’s upside near the opening of the book (that first upward leg in the W),” she said. “Yet, I sensed my readers would get lost after key #3 if I didn’t address their deeper doubts. I paused in presenting the keys to speak to their concern that the outside world is a real mess, to share a way to build a beyond-burnout universe no matter the circumstances. Then I could return to the last two keys (the second upward W leg).”

“The W’s undulating structure unveiled the true message of my book,” she says, “shaping it into an uplifting narrative rather than a how-to-fix-it manual.”

Read more about Beyond Burnout Playbook (and its great illustrations) here. And check out Emma’s collaboration in the just-released (and #1 bestselling) book, Leading with Self-Awareness, here.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Check out these three authors’ work—and review or view my video on using the W structure to consider ways to strengthen the flow of your novel, memoir, or nonfiction book.

Like each of the stories shared, what might you consider for the five points on your W storyboard?

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.)

Jim Hight, Moon Over Humboldt (Black Rose Writing), August release

Darrell J. Pedersen, Who Will Carry the Fire? More Reflections from a North Woods Lake (River Place Press), August release

Jan Skogstrom, The Light Shines in the Darkness—A Spiritual Journey (Itasca Books), August release

Megan Lindhal Goodrich, Beyond Terminal: Processing Childhood Trauma to Reclaim Self (Wise Ink), September release

Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew, The Release: Creativity and Freedom after the Writing Is Done (Skinner House), October release

Morgan Baylog Finn, The Gathering: Poems (Finishing Line Press), November release

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 (Riverbed Press), was published in October 2023 also and 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.

Secrets of a Successful First Chapter

News from my writing world: My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, released in October, was favorably reviewed in Blueline, the literary journal dedicated to the spirit of the Adirondacks. It was also chosen for Literary Aviatrix book club as the feature for August, and became a finalist for both the 18th National Indie Excellent Awards and the Ann Bannon Popular Choice Award. I worked very hard on that book and I’m so glad it’s getting recognition. My newest novel, Last Bets, is out now, and it was a bestseller on Amazon. “Readers will get lost in Moore's beautiful prose, her impeccable plotting, and her outstandingly relatable and multi-layered characters. Beautifully wrought story of two women artists outrunning their demons,” said Booklife/Publisher’s Weekly who made it an Editor’s Pick.

Photo by GR Stocks on Unsplash

First chapters have a few requirements:

They must engage the reader through language, character, place, or action.

They must provide momentum to launch the story.

They ideally create consequences.

First chapters, because of all this, are often hardest to write. Writers have a tendency to use their early drafts to warm up (I do!) but then neglect to notice that their first chapter is actually further into the manuscript.

That’s dangerous, if you want to catch an agent’s attention. Or an editor’s. My editor, after publishing, shared a scary fact: Their editorial team gives a new manuscript just five pages to engage. Five pages, to determine whether to read on or reject now.

In other words, the first chapter. Not even all of it.

Whew.

It’s only a “whew” if you feel you need to write a stellar first chapter right out of the gate. I never do. I draft it as well as I can, then I circle back to revise and revise and revise again.

I’m after all those requirements: language that catches the attention, a character you want to follow, and some compelling action that drives the story forward.

Learn from writing short

I learned how to do this—and the sanity-saving technique of circling back to revise—when I wrote a weekly newspaper column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. My column was sent to 86 newspaper editors across the U.S. each Monday. The editors would scan all the syndicate’s offerings for that week, including mine, then choose which to run.

To keep my job, my column needed to be chosen.

Even though it was only 600 words, I used the three first chapter requirements to create this. The opening paragraph, called the “lede” in journalism, captured the attention with its language, the voice (character coming through), and what was at stake (my topic and why it might be interesting to readers).

Each sentence and paragraph in that opening was a make or break. Agents reading five pages aren’t unlike those 86 editors reading my lede and deciding yes or no.

What kind of opening are you writing?

To get a good opening, I had to know the point of what I was writing. What was I trying to accomplish or provoke in the reader?

Engagement, yes. But on what level?

There’s the head opening—where the writer attracts a reader via a surprising fact or information.

There’s the heart opening—where empathy is created for a human dilemma; for instance, where we engage with the character or voice.

There’s the sensory opening—where a place, an ingredient, a situation (like a walk by a river) pulls the reader in via senses and feeling.

There’s the conflict opening—where an action creates enough tension and momentum that we have to read on.

You might want to try all of them, but sometimes they don’t mix. They just confuse the reader with multiple purposes and it’s harder to enter the piece of writing.

For my weekly column, I chose a different entry point each week, testing out which appealed to which editor. I read their papers, saw their choices, and adjusted my approach to that lede. In journalism, you balance your fascination with the your topic with the pacing needed to keep a reader reading. Not that different in other genres.

During this learning curve, I also became aware of when I was just talking to myself. When my fascination took over and I was no longer inviting the reader into the conversation.

Talking to ourselves

But this is normal! You know this as well as I do: we writers start out by telling ourselves the story. We aren’t always inviting the reader in right away. We have to figure out what we’re really wanting to say. Absolutely fine. Good, in fact. We need the incubation of self-talk to get deeper into our topic and find its uniqueness.

But the warm-up is not something the reader needs. They are ready to launch right in. In early drafts, though, I let myself tell myself what I was going to talk about. Such as, “Today I want to think for a while about why pomegranates are so fascinating to me.” No way that would make it through revision.

So the danger is only this: believing those self-talk sections are worth retaining in the final version. Believing warm up is the real communication.

How long do you warm up?

How long do you warm up? Each writer, I’ve learned, needs a certain time on the page to clear their throat and figure out the writing’s point and purpose.

When writing a weekly column, I warmed up for about 250 words (a page or less). My real lede was buried after that.

My job, as I matured as a writer, was not to change this habit of warming up. I needed it! Especially with challenging topics. Especially when I was feeling less than stellar that writing day. I just trained myself to stay constantly aware of my self-talk. To not be lazy about revising, beguiled into believing this was good enough to be my real opening.

When I moved into fiction, same thing happened. I needed to warm up. And with books, it can extend into chapters, not just opening paragraphs.

Warm-up chapters

Agents and editors I’ve talked with over the years say many writers aren’t aware of their throat-clearing. It’s hard for writers to realize that their drafts may contain a predictable number of warm-up chapters before the real chapter 1 appears.

We have our excuses as writers. We feel the reader needs to be prepared for the shock, excitement, revelation, whatever of our opening.

Actually, they don’t.

It took me a big lesson to realize this. I sent my first novel manuscript to a host of agents and editors throughout 2008. I had spent years on it before then, including an MFA education. So many rejections! It was very hard to keep going.

The best rejections educated me about my warm-up chapters, how they were not necessary to anyone but the writer. One editor was kind enough to send me a rejection letter of many pages, with a suggestion that changed my writing life: “Your story really starts at chapter 5,” she wrote. “Try cutting the first four chapters.”

I didn’t realize how incredibly lucky I was to get such feedback. Instead, I was aghast at this idea. I’d slaved over those first four chapters. I’d also spent a lot of money on them (the MFA education).

I kept sending out the manuscript as it was, and it kept getting rejected. For years. Finally, I shrugged. I’d try her idea. I cut the first four chapters, made chapter 5 into chapter 1, and wove the deleted material into later scenes. It all felt way too edgy, to me. Wouldn’t the reader need a softer entry into the conflict of the story? But I wanted to test this theory, so I gritted my teeth and sent it out.

It sold to a publisher within two months. And was published a year later.

Moveable feast

Opening chapters are moveable feasts. They are often spread in bits and pieces through your early drafts. It becomes a treasure hunt to find them. How fast they come together depends on how experienced a writer you are: how long you’ve been practicing the craft, how much feedback you’ve received, how much editorial help.

Most writers learn these truths about first chapters the hard way, through many rejections. I’ve made note of the following truths, for me.

My reader (agent, editor, etc.) doesn’t need or want the soft entry of backstory, history, extensive setting, characterization. They want something at stake immediately.

It’s fine to warm up with a handful of scenes or chapters that allow me to process my point and purpose. But this is backstage stuff, not for my reader at all (see point 1).

My opening is often buried, sometimes scattered. I may not know it until I write more and figure out the point and purpose.

Over time, I learn my tendency and look for my opening around chapter 4 or 5 of my early drafts.

Having these truths in my back pocket made it easier to write early drafts with full engagement and enough detachment. I now welcome warm up in my early scenes and chapters.

I just don’t pretend they are the real opening.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Read your opening chapter of a work-in-progress and ask yourself if enough happens on the page to provide momentum for the rest of the book.

If not quite, or not at all, you may be caught in warm up. Scroll ahead one, two, three, even four chapters and ask yourself what happens here. Could it be that, like me, you need to start later?

Share what you discovered.

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.)

Jim Hight, Moon Over Humboldt (Black Rose Writing), August release

Darrell J. Pedersen, Who Will Carry the Fire? More Reflections from a North Woods Lake (River Place Press), August release

Jan Skogstrom, The Light Shines in the Darkness—A Spiritual Journey (Itasca Books), August release

Megan Lindhal Goodrich, Beyond Terminal: Processing Childhood Trauma to Reclaim Self (Wise Ink), September release

Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew, The Release: Creativity and Freedom after the Writing Is Done (Skinner House), October release

Morgan Baylog Finn, The Gathering: Poems (Finishing Line Press), November release

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 (Riverbed Press), was published in October 2023 also and 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.

The Joy of an Audiobook

More news from my writing world: My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, released in October, was favorably reviewed in Blueline, the literary journal dedicated to the spirit of the Adirondacks. It was also chosen for Literary Aviatrix book club as the feature for August, and became a finalist for both the 18th National Indie Excellent Awards and the Ann Bannon Popular Choice Award. I worked very hard on that book and I’m so glad it’s getting recognition. My newest novel, Last Bets, is out now, and it was a bestseller on Amazon. “Readers will get lost in Moore's beautiful prose, her impeccable plotting, and her outstandingly relatable and multi-layered characters. Beautifully wrought story of two women artists outrunning their demons,” said Booklife/Publisher’s Weekly who made it an Editor’s Pick.

Photo by Joyce Busola on Unsplash

Should you advocate for (or produce yourself) an audiobook for your book? Even if your book is already published, does it make sense? Is there enough benefit to the author? Will it open your book to a wider readership? If it’s part of your publicity budget from your publisher, is it worth allocating funds? If you are indie, should you produce an audiobook yourself? Will sales ever pay back the costs? And how do you go about it, exactly?

These good questions have come my way from readers of this newsletter, and they spurred me on to both research and production of audiobooks for four of my own books to date. I’ve learned a lot! What not to do, what to spend, where to find all the parts that make an excellent production. And how to evaluate the expense and the benefit.

First, the good news: In the eleven months since my second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, was released, its audiobook royalties have been a small, steady stream of income each month. Not huge, but I rarely expect that. I’m happy to watch the sales and receive the small percentage I get as author; I believe it’ll more than pay back my costs over the next few years.

But even better is the boost to my confidence. I’ve made a good decision and listeners are responding with regular downloads.

Do you have any say?

Many authors don’t have a choice about an audiobook. In the years I published traditionally, my books were mostly midlist. I’d inquire about an audiobook but always got a no.

This was before the pandemic, and audiobooks hadn’t yet hit their stride. Sales of audiobooks weren’t impressive enough to warrant the expense, in my editors’ view. Despite my publicity budget.

Indie authors have complete control over this. When I decided to publish my first indie book, back in 2011, a writing-craft book called Your Book Starts Here, sales were surprisingly good and the book even won an award. (It’s a series of lessons based on my years of teaching book structure at writing schools around the U.S.) Encouraged, I decided to explore making an audiobook.

A friend recommended the no-cost approach of ACX’s profit sharing platform via Amazon, which allows authors and narrators to share the risk of production and split the profits. I auditioned quite a few narrators, but I didn’t know much about how to judge voices or pacing or tone. I chose one, she did a decent job, but I realize there was a lot more to learn if I wanted to try this again. I also learned that broader distribution systems exist, much bigger than ACX offers, which allow an audiobook to be everywhere, not just on Amazon.

A fine choice for my first try. The audiobook continues to sell well. But when I was preparing my first novel for re-release, I knew I had to work harder to find the right narrator.

Finding a narrator

My first novel was accepted by a small press and although I petitioned, even offered to cover the production costs, the publisher was not interested in an audiobook. So I waited. After ten years and a good run, I asked for the rights back. They were gracious and said yes, I rereleased the book with new blurbs and a better interior, and I set about finding a narrator I loved.

Some authors want to narrate their own books, and if you have a super smooth voice, go for it. That novel’s main character is a teenager in trouble; I knew my voice would never be Molly Fisher. Authors who take the self-narration route are facing work, as well: studio time, often a producer, and the sheer effort of reading well aloud.

I decided to gamble again, this time with money. I would find a narrator who could make me fall in love with the story again, ten years later.

Good narrators can do this. The best ones are well respected for their work at revealing even more about a character via the sound they create, the pacing and rhythm of their reading. One favorite for my work commutes long ago was Robert Bathurst, famous for narrating the voice of Inspector Armand Gamache in Louise Penny’s cozy mysteries about Three Pines. Bathurst discusses his experience in this interview from Lit Hub (totally worth a read if you’re geeking on this subject like I have been).

Or consider Meryl Streep brilliantly narrating Ann Patchett’s novel, Tom Lake. Streep is unsurpassed in her range of voice skills, her tones, accent, and pacing, and they shine in this production.

What do narrators cost?

I called a friend who runs a company in the Twin Cities that specializes in voiceover narration. He met with me on Zoom to educate me about union rates, how actors charge for a project, and where to look for lower-price but still excellent voice I could audition.

I learned that voiceover narrators charge by PFH, or per finished hour. Union rate hovers around $250 per finished hour, and the average number of hours to record, edit, and revise (if needed) an 80,000 word novel came to 8-10. Each of my published novels, and I now had three to consider for audiobooks, would cost between $1500 and $2000 to produce.

More than I expected. I sat with this new information for a few days. Big bucks for me—how badly did I want this? (I could only imagine what uber-pros like Streep or Bathurst charged!) With that kind of pricing, no wonder many publishers I’d worked with in the past declined any requests for an audiobook.

But it wasn’t for the stats, the marketing benefits, that I couldn’t let go of the idea of an audiobook for each of these novels. It was that extra electricity I’d experienced as a listener on my commutes, engaging with a story in a new way.

What did I most want?

So I made a list. What did I require if I were to go ahead with this project? What would make the risk worthwhile, financially and otherwise?

I knew there was a good chance, if the audiobook was excellent, that I could pay myself back and then some. My list looked like this:

The narrator would be female and age appropriate to my characters; although there are male characters, women run my stories.

The narrator would have to be versatile, since a good twelve voices, between the major and minor players, appear onstage in the three books. Not to mention the accented English of a few of them.

I dislike overly dramatic voice narration. I didn’t want a narrator in love with her own sound, every adjective inflected and dramatized. I wanted the story itself to shine forth.

Secretly, I wanted a narrator who loved the stories—genuinely so. I would be able to tell from our correspondence and the sample auditions. I wanted someone would bring heart and passion into the narration, making it come alive in a new way with her voice. Was this too much to wish for?

My voiceover friend recommended I check out Fiverr. Fiverr is a wonderful resource for anything you need to hire out, and often the results are excellent too. Fiverr offers scores of audiobook narrators for hire, both male and female. Each specializes in a certain type of story: kidlit, sci-fi or fantasy, mysteries and crime, business and other nonfiction book, memoir.

To use Fiverr well takes time and vetting. Each narrator offers a short video of their credentials, a sample of their voice.

My friend advised narrators who were Top Rated Sellers or Level 2 Sellers to weed out beginners and those with bad reviews. Also, he advised, read the reviews carefully—did the narrator deliver on time? were they easy to work with?

Hours later, I had six to audition.

Get a sample

I messaged each of them, asked if they’d record a sample of the second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue. I felt this would be the hardest of the tests.

Most said yes—i learned it was standard practice in the industry. Only one refused and was off the list. For the yesses, I prepared three chapters from the early chapters, one for each of the point-of-view characters in my book, Red Nelson, Kate Fisher, and Kate’s daughter Molly Fisher, and sent each narrator the first chapter in Red’s voice, the opening of the story. Molly also appears as narrator in my first novel, so I knew if that voice was spot-on, I’d be comfortable with this narrator across the board.

This first chapter is a plane crash—Red’s Piper is caught in crosswinds before a storm and she has to make an emergency landing in a mountain gorge far from the sanctuary she’s running to. A good test. I felt the written chapter contained plenty of drama; I wanted to see if the narrator would also recognize this and leave it alone, not push the intensity more than was necessary. Red’s a hard-living musician, her life and voice is gravelly, so I wanted that edge.

My first reply was from a narrator in Europe, a native-speaker of English, who mostly records young adult books. A great voice but she couldn’t resist adding on even more. Plus a faster pace than the chapter required. I’m proud of the quality of the writing in my novel, I’ve worked hard to get there, and my endorsement from Caroline Leavitt, author of the recent Days of Wonder and a New York Times bestseller, called it “gorgeously written,” so I wanted the language to be savored by the listener, not raced through. Overly picky, less than humble, yes, but that’s the artist in me coming out and taking a stand.

Three other samples came in; also good contenders until I noticed my inability to slip into the story itself. The person behind the voice took precedence. Wearying at best, annoying at worst.

I’d just about given up when a narrator in California sent me her sample. Good voice, not overly dramatic. She trusted the words, the language, and let it stand for itself. Pace was a bit fast, but when she revised, it worked beautifully. I sent her the other two chapters, to see how she’d vary the two other character voices, and I loved the result. I had my narrator.

How to work with your narrator

Alex Furness was also incredibly easy to work with, a true professional. She sent me finished chapters every few days, our goal to complete the project by August 11, 2023, to upload to Findaway, the audiobook distributor. And we made it.

An amazing thing happened as I listened to my book read out loud for the first time: I heard things in the story I’d never noticed. I always knew that pacing was best “heard” from reading aloud—most writers do this, at some point in revision, just to catch things their eye never noticed. But the emotion that Alex was able to bring in, via subtle changes in her voice as she read each scene, touched me deeply.

At one point, I found myself in tears. Alex was reading my favorite chapter in the story, a culmination point of the three women's journeys to freedom and how they finally become family to each other. Somehow, combining the visual, the light, of words on a page, which had touched me as a writer, with the audible, the sound of the words being spoken aloud, was a thousand times more powerful than I expected. It was as if I’d never encountered the story before and it was a wonderful surprise.

Here’s a sample of the finished audiobook, read by Alex. Enjoy!

Why an audiobook?

More “readers” have become listeners, as our lives got busier and we traveled more. Along with podcasts, audiobooks were a prime avenue for readers wanting to listen on walks or runs, on commutes, even at work.

When I listen to an audiobook, I feel an uplift in my brain and nervous system. Not surprising that this was confirmed by science in 2018: an article in Psychology Today discussed the stress-relieving aspect of audiobooks. How they harken back to being read aloud to, perhaps in childhood. They can relax and soothe our brains, even replacing negative thoughts (more in this article from libro.fm’s blog).

So many of us rediscovered audiobooks when the pandemic hit—as evidenced by the huge rise in sales.

Audiobook sales today

Audiobooks were actually the fastest growing format in publishing during the pandemic (according to this Writer’s Digest magazine article). Future forecasters, like this article in Good E Reader, predict even more astonishing growth by 2027.

There’s always a risk when you’re investing in a creative project, be it an investment of time, money, creative energy, reputation, or self-regard. You’re going to spend something whenever you step off that ledge of safety into the unknown, or so it has been for me.

I can’t promise you’ll recoup what you spend if you go for an audiobook. I only know that my own risk has paid off, in so many ways. Not just the future promise of sales to cover costs and beyond. But the new relationship I gained with my own story by hearing it read aloud.

Just like those books I listened to over the years, as I commuted from home to work or traveled, I was honestly transported by my own story when I heard Alex read it.

I went on to hire her for two more of my books, one where the original publisher had said no to an audiobook. I loved what Alex did with each of them.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

This week, learn about the dramatic intensity of your own book (published or in process) by using a voiceover recording tool and your listening ears. I always learn so much when I hear my own story read aloud, rather than just reading it on the page.

First, listen to the audio above, to enjoy chapter 1 from A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, but also to hear a professional voiceover artist. Notice how Alex backs off to let the story itself shine, while not losing any of the drama of the plane crash, explosion, and escape. Share your thoughts here. What did you learn, notice, like, experience?

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If you’d like to try narrating a chapter or scene or a few pages from your own published book or work-in-progress, check out Voice Record Pro, a voiceover software I’ve used for podcast recording on my iPhone. Amazing quality for a free app. See how much you can let your own words shine without overly dramatizing them.

If the language doesn’t wow you as you listen back, ask yourself where you might upgrade it, raise the natural drama of the scene, or tone the action down to let the character emotion shine through.

Share your thoughts!

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Shout Out!

A hearty shout out to these writing friends and former students who are publishing their books! I encourage you to pre-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.)

Jim Hight, Moon Over Humboldt (Black Rose Writing), August release

Darrell J. Pedersen, Who Will Carry the Fire? More Reflections from a North Woods Lake (River Place Press), August release

Jan Skogstrom, The Light Shines in the Darkness—A Spiritual Journey (Itasca Books), August release

Megan Lindhal Goodrich, Beyond Terminal: Processing Childhood Trauma to Reclaim Self (Wise Ink), September release

Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew, The Release: Creativity and Freedom after the Writing Is Done (Skinner House), October release

Morgan Baylog Finn, The Gathering: Poems (Finishing Line Press), November release

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 (Riverbed Press), was published in October 2023 also and 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.

Creating a Sustainable Writing Practice

What keeps a writer writing? I’ve been fascinated with that question since I began publishing in 1988 and teaching in 2001.

Some writers start with the momentum of a rocket but can’t sustain it long enough to finish a project. And sustainability is really the key—what makes us reach our writing goals is less about talent than the skill of staying with the project, even when the going is hard. I have been interviewing writers for years about the magic of steady progress, how they tolerate (even welcome) detours that most writing projects typically take. In my own life, the difference between satisfaction with your creative life—and making it to the goal you set—comes down to a few key elements.

I wrote about these: the essential tools that make a writing practice possible, the way we organize and keep track of our work, and the five elements that make the difference between practice and perfect. But I’m always interested in hearing from others who have achieved this kind of sustainability in their practice.

Introducing Jami

has ten books under her belt. In 2018, she and a writing friend created a unique accountability system when Jami was faced with a deadline: they’d write 1000 words each every day for two weeks. Jami has an active online community—her Substack, Craft Talk, is one of my favorite reads each week. When she opened the idea of 1000 words a day to her community, thousands of people joined. And it worked. It became a strong movement that, in my view, has helped so many writers develop a sustainable writing practice. Out of this came the annual online group writing accountability project called #1000wordsofsummer and the mini 1000words that happen throughout the year.

When her book, 1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round, came out last January, I immediately grabbed a copy. It’s full of writerly wisdom—not just Jami’s own, but from the likes of Roxanne Gay and Meg Wolitzer and Alex Chee.

I was thrilled when Jami agreed to answer a few questions about her particular writing practice and what keeps it going.

Our conversation

Q: You obviously have a steady writing practice with @1000words. Can you share more about specifics and logistics of this practice?  Where do you write most often and how do you approach the page?  For instance, do you like to write most regularly at home or in a coffeeshop, library, etc., or do you change it up and why? 

Jami: While there are exceptions to every rule, I mostly write at home.

I have a nice office space in the back of my house that I use when I want to sit at a desk and type. I have a big chair in there, also, which I sit in to handwrite in the mornings and also read and drink coffee.

I get most of my work done before noon—I get up at 6:00 a.m.—so I try to keep it really lean and mean at home.

Occasionally I will go out to work at a cafe in the neighborhood. And that can be for doing edits or needing to get through some emails or even write a newsletter.

Q: How long do you write in one session, typically, and what do you prefer writing with (device, laptop, pen and paper)?

Jami: I can write 1000 words really quickly. If I just want to generate raw text I can do that in an hour or so. I've been doing this a long time! So I've gotten pretty good at getting in the zone and doing it efficiently.

When I'm generating new fiction, it's usually done first thing in the morning, on paper, or on my computer, or sometimes on my cellphone if I just want to get some really rough ideas down quickly. And again, that's usually done in my home.

So I'm using all kinds of means. Paper is for the most daydreamy stuff. Cellphones are often used to bang out messy dialogue exchanges or long running sentence descriptions, as an example of rough ideas.

When I finally get on my computer and into my Word document, that's when I'm going to be tidying things up.

Q: Is there a system to your approach or is the word count goal your only structure for this practice?

The word count is truly the only goal, just to get a good pile at the end of the day, week, or month, so I have something to play with. More time is often spent on the cleaning up and the crafting and the carving out a structure and a narrative.

But first we must have the words before we can do any of this high-level tailoring.

I don't really feel satisfied with my day unless I've gotten some kind of work done. Those thousand words are actually an easy way to feel like I've accomplished something.

Thank you, Jami!

Want more from Jami Attenberg? Check out Craft Talk for down-to-earth insights on a sustainable writing life and her new book, A Reason to See You Again.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

It pays, I’ve learned, to be organized in your approach to a sustainable writing practice. To still keep the creativity, but to also have some structure that keeps you writing.

Long projects like books are the hardest for most—a marriage compared to a date. Good marriages need patience, dedication, showing up, and occasional therapy to hang together.

This week, answer for yourself the first two questions I asked Jami above.

Where do you write most often and how do you approach the page?

How long do you write in one session, typically, and what do you prefer writing with (device, laptop, pen and paper)?

Can you answer these easily? Are there any places you stumble or wish you had your practice stronger?

Jami says, “The word count is truly the only goal, just to get a good pile at the end of the day, week, or month, so I have something to play with. More time is often spent on the cleaning up and the crafting and the carving out a structure and a narrative. But first we must have the words before we can do any of this high-level tailoring.”

So a final question to think about this week, in your own practice:

How do you get your words accumulated? What could you try this week that might give you new energy towards your writing goal?

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Be sure to check out Jami’s books, as well as her Craft Talk newsletter on Substack.

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.)

Jim Hight, Moon Over Humboldt (Black Rose Writing), August release

Darrell J. Pedersen, Who Will Carry the Fire? More Reflections from a North Woods Lake (River Place Press), August release

Jan Skogstrom, The Light Shines in the Darkness—A Spiritual Journey (Itasca Books), August release

Megan Lindhal Goodrich, Beyond Terminal: Processing Childhood Trauma to Reclaim Self (Wise Ink), September release

Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew, The Release: Creativity and Freedom after the Writing Is Done (Skinner House), October release

Morgan Baylog Finn, The Gathering: Poems (Finishing Line Press), November release

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 (Riverbed Press), was published in October 2023 also and 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.