How not to upset friends and family with your memoir 

Emma Dhesi  00:00

Hello, I’m Emma Dhesi and welcome to another episode of turning readers into writers.

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Okay, let’s dive in to today’s episode.

Traci Skuce lives in Cumberland, British Columbia in Canada. Her fiction and personal essays have appeared in several literary journals across North America. Her short story collection Hungry moon was released by Norwest press in April 2020.

She founded the writing journey with Tracy scuse, an online Creative Writing school that focuses on narrative embodiment, deep reading, and the intricacies of craft so that writers can finish their best stories and get them out into the world.

So today, I’m going to be chatting to Traci about her journey to writing the stories that she tells and what she’s working on right now. And if we’re also going to talk about an event she is hosting in August 2021.

And I’m really excited to learn more about it. So let’s delve in and hear what Tracy has to say. Well, Tracy, thank you so so much for being here with me today. I’ve been trying to get you on the show for a while now so I’m delighted you’re finally here.

 Traci Skuce  02:50

Well, I’m delighted to be here. It’s always such a pleasure to talk with you Emma.

 Emma Dhesi  02:55

I know I always start my interviews by asking my guests you know, what was your your journey to writing? How did you get started?

 Traci Skuce  03:03

Well, I sort of like i wish i i always wish I could say that I started as a young person that I wrote fervently in journals, like ever since I was three or whatever, but that’s not the case. I am.

I definitely enjoyed creative writing in class as a kid. I wrote a lot of stories about time travel and magical dragons and creatures, you know, that kind of thing. And then, and but my first like, published the first kind of taste I got of like, publishing my work was actually in grade 11.

And I wrote a we had to write a sonnet and I wrote a sonnet I guess, we were studying poetry or Shakespeare or something and she published the the quote unquote best poems, the example poems on this like sheet of paper, you remember the purple Gus stettner or whatever they used to call them.

And mine was there and I felt so just delighted to see my my work up there. And I also really, the form of the sonnet forced me to think of words and I you know, I only know this in retrospect I didn’t like I really spent time on it and I loved working on it and I loved thinking about you know, it was about sailing, I was about my love of sailing and I had to, you know, find I still remember it using the word turn like t e r n, the bird and kind of searching for it like searching for the bird that would work for my palm. Anyway.

And then and then I kind of Without a way, and I had an experience where I was at university, and I did well, on my papers, they were all my profs used to say, Oh, this is so clear.

Like, I remember actually now working in having worked in, you know, that level of teaching, I understand why they gave me that, like, you know, it’s really great to get a clear paper. But I felt so I felt like oh, like, I can like write and I’m going to be a writer, I just like decided that one day, I’m going to be a writer, no idea what that meant. And I kind of you know, was like, okay, and didn’t really act much upon it until after my first son was born.

So I had a son, I was fairly young and and it knocked my world apart, basically. And so someone gave me in that time, the writing down the bones by Natalie Goldberg, which really focuses on the practice of free writing and just diving in, and I was like, okay, like, you said, You wanted to be a writer.

So just do it. And I got my notebook, I think, I can’t remember if it was then or after that, or before that, that I really wanted to, I felt compelled to write a particular story.

And I started to write it. And I was like, Whoa, this is hard. Like, I can’t figure out how to make this for me. Anyway, but I continued on with the writing prompts, and, and really cultivating that practice.

And cultivating my capacity to come up with images and, and choose strong words and all that sort of that sort of thing. Before I actually, things coalesced, and became stories, I wrote poems. I, some of them worked, and some of them didn’t.

And same with stories. And then I’ve really wanted to commit to writing full length stories and or short stories, particularly. And I didn’t really know how, and I sort of made it up and tried and I had some success.

And then I just couldn’t like, figure out why something was working and something wasn’t working. So I ended up doing my MFA in creative writing and fiction, and the 2010s. Now that we can say that, and, and there I like.

So I had all this kind of lead up to finding the you know, really cultivating the practice and the discipline and all that sort of thing. And then understanding that it was the craft also and I was interested in that.

And I think there’s nothing wrong with just cultivating the practice and working on that level. But I had this appetite for the craft, and I felt like, I was almost surprised that there was a craft, right, I’ve been doing all this work. And I’m like, Oh, my God, this is like an art.

This is a craft and I and I, I want to know how to do it. And so I, you know, read about craft books and I, but but really going into my MFA was really helpful to have that guidance, have that mentorship to really kind of bring my writing up to to the level that I wanted it to be and yeah, and then I wrote my book.

 Emma Dhesi  08:53

Yay, we’re gonna come to that in a second. But I am always interested because I don’t have an MFA or an Emmy.

And so I’m always interested to know from those who have been through it, what was the kind of key takeaway for you? Was it learning the craft? Was it working one to one with a mentor?

Or was it the community you made? Or was there no one thing? In fact, it was the whole experience?

 Traci Skuce  09:17

Yeah, well, you know, back when I went to do it, and there weren’t as many online courses and programs as there are now and I wonder how that would be for me now, because I, you know, it’s really, I just couldn’t find the support that I needed.

I live in a small community. I, you know, Alice Monroe lived here for a number of years, and I’ve kept hoping, like, I would bump into her and she would become my mentor, you know, and she would just like, say, this is how it’s done. But no, that never happened.

So I had to take action myself and find my own mentors. And this is the way that I approached it. And yes, it was the mentor. And yes, it was the community. And yes, it was that, you know, that learning of craft, it was all it was the alchemy of all of it.

And yeah, it’s what I aspire actually to bring what I wanted and was hungry for to my students through my own program so you don’t have to go and get an MFA to, to really access those teachings but yeah.

 Emma Dhesi  10:24

Lovely, lovely. Um, and you mentioned too, that you’ve always been drawn particularly to the short story. What is it about the short story above the long form novel, for example, that that really appeals to you?

 Traci Skuce  10:38

I don’t know, if I was always drawn to the short story, I’m gonna say that what I did was I wrote short stories before I did a lot of reading of them, because I thought they were easier and I quickly, and then I read, there’s a woman, Judy Gardner, who’s a writer and a Canadian writer, and she was a judge for a contest. And she in her judges notes was like, seems like a lot of people who are writing short stories aren’t reading them.

And I was like, felt kind of busted and then, you know, I did start, I read lots of Alison row, and who’s not a particularly I mean, she’s a short story writer, but her short stories, if you, you know, are get longer and longer through her might like sort of shrink back up again, but her you know, her stories are sometimes 70-80 pages long. So, so it was really, um, I don’t know what I was drawn to, like when you read a good short story.

Or then someone gave me the best American short stories, Anthology, and there was just some really high quality writing in there and smart and engaging and interesting, and I and I wanted to know how that form.

I’m always trying to, like interested in how a form works. Even an odd like right now I’m like, how, how is the novel work because they there’s actually lots of different ways to work a novel. And there’s lots of different ways to work a short story.

And I think I what I love about short story is like, it’s short enough that you can actually be quite playful in it and really, try different things that might not work in the long form can be really powerful. I think that thing with a short story is like it can be a really a burst of like, intense energy and power in a way that a novel, you just can’t.

I feel like a lot of novels, like you were talking about the saggy middle Emma, right, that that it’s hard as a hard form to sustain? Well, and not to say that it can’t be done. And sure there’s lots of novels and I love some novels. But short stories, I just find them. They’re like, they’re more like poems than they are novel.

 Emma Dhesi  13:05

Yeah. And I can see from your face the way you’re talking about them. This is a real love for you now, and perhaps an unexpected one. But you fall in love with that stories Yeah.

Traci Skuce  13:15

Yeah, yeah. They’re, they’re just, I don’t know, there’s some there’s something there’s some sort of energy that they, they create that, that as I’m reading a novel, now I keep putting down novels, I keep putting down novels and not finishing them reading that. And, and I don’t do that with short stories. But so, okay.

 Emma Dhesi  13:37

But that burst of energy and power that you’ve been reading, in short stories, you’re now putting them into your own short stories.

And you your first book, was published last year hunger moon. And I wonder how long had you been working on those individual stories?

And how did you decide which stories you wanted to include in the collection and which ones weren’t going to be cut this time?

 Traci Skuce  14:01

Right, Well, so that probably the oldest story, by the time I got to publishing the book, or, like was 2009 I think, like, there’s, there’s probably a story that’ll be in there.

And that one, was a story that just kind of like came together really effortlessly and easy. I’m one of those ones that sort of deceptive in terms of making me think I know what I’m doing, but I’d really didn’t know and, and then I’m just having a look at here at the table of contents.

So they, there were, I think, five stories that were part of my thesis for my MFA. And there were another A couple that I worked on during that process so that they are going to say that was, like, really, I finished writing my book in 20… 2017.

But it wasn’t out for publication until, like, anyway, it takes time came out in 2020. So um, so there were stories there that that I’d worked on during my thesis. But some of those stories had different iterations before.

So like how long I worked on something, I can’t, I can’t totally say like with something like promontory, which is a story about this young couple who get you know, they’re in in Australia, they’re traveling.

That story, I tried to write in lots of different ways over the years, I wouldn’t call it the same story. But I would say like I was efforting toward that story for a lot of years before I could figure out the narration and the point of view and that sort of thing.

So, you know, that took a long time, like something like bliss on a boy once love took me probably three or four years to write.

It’s one of the longer stories in the book, but then something like because the Fall is in two weeks, like was like few weeks, you know? So it really depends on

 Emma Dhesi  16:24

Did you have a theme for the book, when you you knew you wanted to include stories around a certain theme? Or was it just the ones that you particularly loved?

 Traci Skuce  16:34

Well, to be honest, there aren’t that many more stories kicking around, but I mean, are there were.

So what I did was really, I had to I applied for a grant, and a Canadian Council of Canada Council grant, and you have to talk about you’d like the theme of your book, so I had to really think about it.

And I haven’t finished all the stories, but I recognized in each of the characters, there was this kind of spiritual longing that, that that was, like kind of born out of, I don’t want to say I almost want to say out of necessity, but like out of in a world that we’re in a very secular world, like there was no no like spiritual container for these characters who actually yearned and longed for the, those existential kind of answers.

And so I recognize that as like a common theme, like all my characters are there. They’re, they’re really lost, and they’re really seeking.Yeah,

 Emma Dhesi  17:47

Yeah. Certainly got that. When I read the collection. I can see that coming through. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I’m, I’m interested too, in the idea that, you know, you’ve you’ve had a you have a story, but you’re not happy with it.

And it goes through many iterations. How do you know? Or maybe you don’t want to maybe you just have to feel it out. But we just come a point where you say, Okay, this story is just not working.

Let’s put it to one side? Or how do you know when to just keep going with it and try it in different ways to see see when it fits?

 Traci Skuce  18:22

Yeah, I do put them aside a lot. Partially because of life. And partially, I’ll just feel like, I can’t figure out what is needed here. I need to put it away for a while. For something like bliss. And a boy wants love, which I said took four years.

It’s not like I was working on it diligently every day. But like I actually put it aside, I wasn’t sure if it was going to go into this collection. It was a toss up between was I going to work on this story or another story. And I was walking in the forest one day and like this line, this sentence came out.

That was Claudia by my narrator. And I wrote it down. It was like in the forest. I wrote it down and then it walked a little bit further and another one came out. I was like, okay, she’s, she’s the one she wants to come forward.

So, So I went back into that story, and worked out the BNL all the snags, which took another however long but yeah.

 Emma Dhesi  19:30

Oh I love that, the idea that Ashley is your character that told you know, the story is not done yet?

 Traci Skuce  19:34

Yeah, yeah. Well, and I knew I loved I knew I loved the story. Like I really it’s one of my favorite stories in the book, and I really love it and I love her and I just, I knew I wanted to complete it, but I knew it was like a longer story and how long was it going to be and how long or you know, was it going to be ready in time and all that sort of thing, but um, yeah

 Emma Dhesi  19:58

Okay. I like it. Now, I’m going to change tack a little bit because, as well as being a writer, you’re also a teacher as well. You have your own students who you work with.

And, and a number of them are memoirists, and a question I certainly get asked from people who are writing their memoirs, how do you protect the identity of those people you’re writing about, particularly if it’s not a very happy subject.

And so I wondered if you had any sort of thoughts on that, or advice that you give to your students who are sort of navigating that tricky route between wanting to be truthful and tell their story, but also wanting to upset family members or friends?

 Traci Skuce  20:43

Well, that be saying, first of all, that I do write to so people aren’t like, this fiction writer writing, I also write essays and I write sort of personal essays. So and I’m not, I’m not super protective of the people I write. But I get it, I get it.

And I actually do I like, there’s a story I want to tell that I won’t tell because it’s, you know, there’s someone that I don’t want to upset, like, I’m not going to write that story. But I think sometimes not always, but sometimes, that thought, protecting the identity stops the person from even writing.

So, so my advice is always to just write it like you don’t have to publish these things. We don’t have to put them out in the world, but you need to write it because it is your story. And so that’s one, that’s one part. If it’s going into further iterations, you, you have to decide, you know, do do connect with this person and talk to them, do you? And tell them,

Hey, I’m writing this story, I know that, particularly families can get very triggered. Do you make composite characters, so let’s say you have three siblings, and in the memoir, you just kind of like condense them into into one? Or, you know, or just talk about the one sibling and but make it a composite? Or do you just, you know, protect the innocent and give them different names?

You know, like, I wrote up an essay about my older son’s father, and I just said the man, the man I will call bones, right. And so it was, it’s not his name. He knew who he was.

But yeah, and it’s funny to like, I think with that particular essay, which, which made it quite far into, like, made it to a finalist position in a, in a national contest. So it was online, you know, and it was available for people to read, including this person.

I, I thought it was, well, it was really about me, but it was also about my relationship with this person. And his interpretation of it was different than mine. So it’s just also interesting.

And I say that because it’s interesting, our fear, Oh, I know that what I want to say but about about protection, but our fear is often our own, right. It’s not like what that person will perceive, they may perceive it completely differently, not see themselves not see the truth that you see, that sort of thing.

The other thing, I think that’s really important with memoir, when we are writing about someone else, it’s like we’re really searching for our truth. You can’t write a memoir piece to get revenge, you can’t write a memoir piece to make that other person look bad. Like that’s, that shouldn’t be the agenda of your story.

If it is then you need to do some, some work. And that when we write from a place of our truth, and we really go in not just like he did this to me, but like, looking beneath that and like what, where where did I you know, for this particular story, it was like really seeing where I gave away my power.

And and why did I trust this person? And just like I actually ended up at the end of that sh having a big cry. It was quite cathartic and and not saying that so i hope It but that that you really dig down, you got to dig down in memoir.

It’s not just about like, what you think is the story isn’t what’s going to come out, it’s something deeper, it’s something more.

Interview with Traci Skuce

Emma Dhesi  25:15

So it’s not almost not about them at all. It’s really about you as an individual, what’s happening to you at that time when that was happening, your reactions to it and know how you perhaps have worked through it know how you see it with a bit of distance, perhaps?

Yeah, really good, really good point to make about the fact that it’s not about revenge, that it’s actually got to come from a good place and an honest and truthful play place about yourself, not the other person.

 Traci Skuce  25:45

Yeah, yeah. And that we are all human. And we’re all, you know, fallible. And, and yeah, like, and yet there are people who have done a terrible thing, like, you know, I know, this isn’t fiction.

I mean, it isn’t memoir, but it’s fiction, the The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, if you’ve not read that book, I highly recommend it. But there’s, you know, the the, the father in that story is he rapes his daughter.

And it’s, and that’s brutal, right. And yet, Morrison digs deep into the past of this character, and, like, reveals how he became that way, you know, his wounds, right. So we’re all just like walking around with our wounds relating to each other.

And so you a person who, even if they’ve done something horrific, they’re still you have to find their humanity and relate to it. If you’re writing, you can’t just present them as this evil, you know, no matter what they did, like, that’s part of the healing, I think, with writing memoir, and it’s not necessarily coming to a place of forgiveness, or just loving it ever, you know, making everything okay.

But to if you want to write if you want to present it to the world, there needs to be that element of humanity.

 Emma Dhesi  27:15

Yeah, you super cool. Thank you. I’m going to change tack again, after that well. Okay. Because I know that next month, you have an event coming up called right from the heart. And I would love if you could tell us where the inspiration for this event came from, or the inspiration for the title even came from?

 Traci Skuce  27:41

Yeah, well, I mean, I think it’s, it’s not a huge diversion from what we were just talking about. But my impetus is, you know, there’s a lot of kind of advice online about writing, you just have to do this, and you just have to do this, and you could plot and finish and all these things.

And I wanted to get beneath that, because that, to me is really important. If you, you could have all the plot points in the world and finish your first draft and all the things and yet, there’d be no like, heart to your story. Right?

If you if it’s a very mechanical approach to the book, it’s better to, you know, have a kind of flawed manuscript, that has a lot of heart, then to write something that’s very sort of sterile, and by the book, so to speak, and just crank it out there. So, to that, that’s part of it, that was part of the impetus. And also because our culture is so and so emphasizes productivity.

And yes, you know, as writers, it’s, it’s lovely, and great to produce, but we also need to, we are not machines, we are not computers, and we need to nourish that creative spirit and ourselves.

So that what we do bring to the page is full of life and, and, and heart and feeling, you know. So and it’s not always easy to get beneath, like, you know, when I was talking about the memoir and getting beneath and getting like that, that requires a lot of going in digging, digging deep, so to speak, and it’s hard to want to do that because it’s uncomfortable.

So, so creating kind of the supports that nurture us so that we are not just totally, you know, thrown off the rails by doing that work.

 Emma Dhesi  30:00

Yeah, you’re so so right how you can get very, very messy, you can’t.

So having even just you acknowledging that for anyone who’s wanting to kind of dig down and write more essays, essay style pieces or memoir, just having someone else say that out loud, this can get messy, it can be uncomfortable, and that’s part of it.

And that’s what are some ways that you can support yourself or be supported as you go through it. And so I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about the event and… there and

 Traci Skuce  30:31

I want.. sure. Okay. But first of all, I want to acknowledge to that, that that I feel like that’s an important thing to do for your fiction as well as your nonfiction.

Even Yeah, even if he was. So it’s not just memoirs that memorize that name to go deep. It’s also fiction, because we’d love to think about the characters you love in your fiction, not necessarily the fiction you write?

Well, I mean, yes, I hope you’d love to, but like the characters that you’ve been really drawn to, and as a reader. Anyway, so so. So there’s, so both fiction and memoir, writers are invited to this event.

And one of the days is going to focus on really on mindset and getting, getting into the, you know, the nurturing space of a great writing practice, and then the other day, so that’s August 5, and 6 or August 5 is the craft is going to be that and then August 6, is going to be mostly craft workshops.

So which which address the like getting to the heart, like gamma, you’re going to be there.

So I’m looking forward to hearing and you’re going to be talking about the writing the heart, finding the heart of your scene. So we’ve got Yeah, so we’ve got that as our workshop.

We’ve got Mary Adkins coming on talking about by heart matters.

We’ve got Rhonda Douglas talking about Do It Yourself writing retreat, which will be really, really fun and Dallas Woodburn, she is going to talk about creating and nurturing writing practice.

Michelle Berger is going to be talking about affirmations and brain hacks and we’ve got we’ve got Janelle Hardy, who’s going to talk about the body and really excited about that she’s going to talk about the body using the body to overcome writer’s block and memoir.

Yeah, Janice Hardy is going to talk about to to Jay Hardy’s, I don’t think they’re related. Janice Hardy is going to talk about getting more into the internal conflict and your characters.

We’ve got Tiffany Clark Harrison, who’s going to give us some some tips on how to embody your characters. So we’ve got lots coming up. Yeah.

 Emma Dhesi  31:10

Are you hosting a workshop as well? Or will you be…

 Traci Skuce  32:19

I am, I am, I’m going to talk about what I coined the the impossible longing, and what why that’s important for your characters. So

 Emma Dhesi  33:19

Oh, I’m looking forward to that.

 Traci Skuce  33:20

Yeah. So it’s a way to kind of hack in or not hacking, but to kind of deepen your characters. I think, a lot of the time, we we, we don’t know how to go down into the characters and access their deeper core and so which is really where, where their humanity is. So getting getting down there.

 Emma Dhesi  33:41

Oh, not as exciting lots to cover there over the course of the two days. And I love it.

You’ve also got a little bit of the kind of emotional the mindset stuff, and which is also important. I think we realized that no, and then also the craft, which of course, I know, you’ve told us you’re a big fan of mine as it always should be.

But I know it’s a particular passion of yours and so how can people how can people sign up to this? Where can they go?

 Traci Skuce  34:08

Yeah, I’m realizing I need to talk to my tech person and get it make sure it’s on my website. But it’s um, TraciSkuce.com is my website and then that’s that’s right with Write from the heart.

And I think Emma, you could put a perhaps a link in the show notes for people yeah. Yeah.

And the other way is you can find me on my Facebook group which is Write your.. Write your story society.

And in there, there’s gonna be lots of links to get to the to the signup.

Emma Dhesi  34:43

Fantastic. Thank you for sharing information about that. It’s gonna be exciting two days. Yes. Now I’m conscious of time.

I’ve kept you for a long, long time. But before you go, I’d love to know a little bit more about what you’re writing yourself at the moment. What what are you working on?

 Traci Skuce  35:01

Well, I have been a little all over the place, I’ve just gone through a big transition in my life. And so I, I’ve been doing lots of what I call record keeping. And some of that is turning into ethic.

So I’m playing with different essay forms, which I love, I love to play with form. So I’ve got that. And then on the other hand, I’m also I’ve got a handful of flash fiction that I’m that I’m currently revising and working on, which is also great.

You know, I love short stories. And I also love short, short, short stories.

 Emma Dhesi  35:41

What Flash fiction for you? is there I kind of maximum word count?

 Traci Skuce  35:45

I, I’d say about 1000 words is maximum, I kind of however between 5 and 700 word range.

 Emma Dhesi  35:53

Yeah, interesting. I don’t do flash fiction either. But again, it’s something I kind of think, Oh, I should I should have.

 Traci Skuce  36:00

You know, yeah, it’s really fun. We have john Gould come, who’s the flash fiction writer, he came to do a workshop for my, for my students.

And it’s just, it’s just a lot of fun. And so it’s a good way if you’re feeling kind of dragged down. It’s a little bit like, I’m not gonna say instant gratification, because you could write a lot of bad ones before you get to the good one.

But like, there is a kind of immediacy to it that isn’t that you’re not going to get with writing a novel like it’s to it’s short enough that they, you can feel the energy of it, like right away like that.

Emma Dhesi  36:44

Just to wrap up, but can you remind our listeners where they can find out about you online?

 Traci Skuce  36:50

Yes, my website Traciskuce. And that’s Traci with an I and scuse SKU CE because I will always have to spell it TRACISKUCE.COM And there you can find about out about my book and my classes. We’re going to, we’re going to be hopefully getting to revamping my website this this summer.

 Emma Dhesi  37:13

Well, Traci,, thank you so so much for your time today. I really love chatting with you.

 Traci Skuce  37:18

 Me too, Emma, thank you.

 Emma Dhesi  37:21

Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you find that helpful and inspirational.

Now, don’t forget to come on over to facebook and join my group, turning readers into writers.

It is especially for you if you are a beginner writer who is looking to write their first novel.

If you join the group, you will also find a free cheat sheet.

Called three secret hacks to write with consistency.

So go to Emmadhesi.com/turning readers into writers. Hit join. Can’t wait to see you in there.

All right. Thank you. Bye bye.

If this interview with Traci Skuce was useful, you’ll love:

• Navigating and co-writing with Autumn J Birt & Jesper Schmidt – EMMA DHESI
• Healing trauma through narrative with Nadia Colburn – EMMA DHESI
• World building with Fantasy writer Stephanie BwaBwa – EMMA DHESI

Emma Dhesi

Emma writes women’s fiction. She began writing seriously while a stay at home mum with 3 pre-school children.

By changing her mindset, being consistent and developing confidence, Emma has gone from having a collection of handwritten notes to a fully written, edited and published novel.

Having experienced first-hand how writing changes lives, Emma now helps beginner writers find the time and confidence to write their first novel.

How to plan like a pro, with Beth Barany

Emma Dhesi  00:00

Hello, I’m Emma Dhesi and welcome to another episode of turning readers into writers.

If you’re brand new here, welcome and here’s what you need to know. This is a community that believes you are never too old to write your first novel, no matter what you’ve been up to until now, if you’re ready to write your book, I’m ready to help you reach the end, I focus on helping you find the time and confidence to begin your writing journey, as well as the craft and skills you need to finish the book.

Each week I interview debut authors, editors and industry experts to keep you motivated, inspired, and educated on all things writing, editing, and publishing. If you want to catch up, head on over to emmadhesi.com, where you’ll find a wealth of information and tools to help you get started. Before we dive in, this week’s episode is brought to you by my free cheat sheet 30 Top Tips to find time to write.

In this guide, I give you 30 ways that you can find time to write in the small gaps that appear between the various errands and tasks and responsibilities that you have in your day to day life. Now, you might be thinking that you don’t have any time to spare, but I can guarantee these top tips will give you writing time you didn’t think you had. If you thought writing always involved a pen and paper or a keyboard. Think again. If you thought you needed at least an hour at a time to write your manuscript. I help you reframe that, you won’t be disappointed.

Get your free copy of 30 Top Tips to find time to write by going to emmadhesi.com/30 Top Tips.

Okay, let’s dive in to today’s episode.

Beth Barany is an award-winning science fiction and fantasy novelist, master teacher, editor, and certified creativity coach for writers. Through her courses, she helps fiction writers experience clarity and get writing, so they can revise and proudly publish their novels to the delight of their readers.

She’s the award-winning author of Henrietta The Dragon Slayer, the acclaimed paranormal romance author of the Touchstone series, and is proud to release her series, science fiction mysteries about Janey McCallister space station investigator.

The first book in the series, Into The Black, is a Page Turner Awards Finalist, and as a result, won an audiobook publishing contract.

She’s also written books for writers, including Plan Your Novel Like A Pro, co-written with her husband, thriller writer Ezra Barany.

So let’s dive into Beth’s world and find out how you can plan your novel like a pro.

Well, wonderful, Beth, thank you so much for joining me here today.

Beth Barany  02:54

Oh, thanks so much for having me Emma.

 Emma Dhesi  02:56

A pleasure, a pleasure. Now, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind just sharing with us, you know, how you Your, your journey to writing how you got started, and really how you got to where you are today?

Beth Barany  03:08

Sure. Well, like, like many writers, but I know not all writers, I actually started wanting to be a writer as a child. It was a very clear desire around age eight or nine years old. And I wrote a wonderful little book with my brother about our cats.

And I was so it was so much fun that I bound the edge of the book with threatened needle. Because to me, that was a book, you know, I, I not only wrote the story, but I wanted to create a book. So and my grand-grandmother was a writer.

And I knew that we all knew that. And I wanted to know how to get published. So from a young age, I was wanting to ask her and in fact, I want I wanted to, I don’t know if I actually did. I wanted to write her letter, Grandma, how did you get published?

So I was already thinking about that, because to me a book was a physical thing and I loved books and from then on, you know, I dabbled, I made up silly limericks.

I remember doing that when I was 11 I and then you know, school kind of took over and I got really involved in being a good student starting around middle middle school and writing essays but then also in eighth grade our teacher had us writing stories she gave us a bunch of prompts and go read a risk mystery go right it’s comical piece scope, that also nonfiction go write a how to and then she’d have us do speeches.

And she taught us how to do essays of all kinds and so that the writing bug really took them more prominence spot at that age, and I was very clear of wanting, I knew I already wanted to be a writer, but at 13 I was like, I can do this.

There was a sense of ability and confidence and then again, at Academics took took me, you know, high through high school and through into college and but I also started writing a journal at age 13. That was sparked by a very powerful dream.

And and so my journal became a place where I could doodle and dabble and write down my dreams, and talk to myself and so that, you know, I have boxes and boxes and books and books, of journals. Even today, I still use a journal because my latest journal, little cat.

And I like putting stickers on my journal, my mom gave me that cute image. So, and then I went to college, I went to UC Berkeley, and at around 18, 19 years old, it came into clear focus, I want to be a novelist. But I but laid out before me was a big, huge fat question mark. Like, how do I do that?

And I didn’t know. So I put my attention back on to academics, and kind of Stoke that fire by, you know, remaining an avid reader, I’d always been an avid reader. And then I dropped out of college at age 22.

When I went to Paris, to figure out my life and work as an au pair, you know, and learn French, I’d already spent a year in Quebec when I was 16. So I already was pretty fluent to dove into that. And then I decided, you know, I want to be a writer, why don’t I start?

And I tried to get a freelance writing. I tried to get some articles published and on the fifth try, I got my first article published in the Paris free voice. Yeah.

Emma Dhesi  06:34

And were you writing in French at that time?

Beth Barany  06:37

No, I was writing in English. My friends wasn’t that good yet for that? And no, I wrote a little article. And it only happened because I finally got up the courage to walk into the editor’s office and pitch him face to face.

And and then he gave, he said yes to me and I wrote the article and had me rewrite it multiple times and I think I wrote one other article for them and that was a huge confidence boost for me in terms of like, not only am I a writer, but now I’m a published writer.

Now I can write for publication. I’ve done it a few times and when I got back home I, I took one journalism class, and I moved toward nonfiction writing, because that was a lot easier. Fiction was still a big mystery.

So I did some freelance writing and I got some training and working on a monthly newspaper, the Berkeley psychic reader, I got trained by the editor, I even became associate editor or assistant editor, I did book reviews and a ton of short pieces all the way up from 500 words to 2000 words, and I started getting more comfortable with that. But then, I was turning 30.

And I decided, Well, you know, what am I gonna do with my life? I’m single, I’m going to go to journalism school. So I applied to journalism school.

And I didn’t get in and that was a huge, yeah, that was a huge blow to my confidence, huge and when I kind of picked myself off the floor, after a few months, I realized that my true dream of being a novelist had actually I’d actually written it in the application essay, and actually said, well, the real reason I want to be a journalist is so I can get close to people. So I could be a novelist.

And I was like, Oh, my God, no wonder they rejected me. And yeah, I was 30. And I was like, wow, I better stop with this dream, or do something about it and that was a big moment where I really, I really chose and decided, I’m like, Okay, what is it going to take to learn how to be a fiction writer, because obviously, that my subconscious told a whole bunch of strangers.

That wouldn’t be a novelist and I knew it was true. I knew that was my ultimate dream. So I found a little writer’s group and started writing with the writing prompt that he gave us at that first meeting. And then just decide what chose arbitrarily to pursue that idea that I generated and made a bunch of sort of arbitrary choices, and that this would be the novel.

I’m going to get to the end. The whole point is to finish this book. It doesn’t matter if it’s great or good or whatever. It just matters that it’s done and I use the wonderful book called The Weekend Novelist as my guide.

Oh my goodness, it’s such a mine is in tatters somewhere here on the shelf. It’s a really use now speak, coming back to this whole thing about time. I was working I was an English as a foreign language teacher by then I was, I was engaged that was, you know, going to get married. I was going to we were talking about going overseas again. You know, I had a life but I still wanted to be a novelist.

So this book called The Weekend novelists by Ray will find it for you. Actually, I mentioned it a lot. I mentioned it in my book, plan your novel like a pro because it’s such a turning point for me. I would go once a week I would go to the local cafe.

I would buy myself lunch, I would use his book and I would do the next exercise, whatever it was. And that is how I plan the book and then slowly slowly finish the book over five years. 

Emma Dhesi  10:10

I think that’s kind of normal, isn’t it? That first book, it can take a not a long time to just eat and then finally get finished. Yeah.

Beth Barany  10:19

Exactly. Yeah. So that, you know that, that took me into my mid 30s. And as soon as I felt that book was done, even though I’d written it out of order, and only the first three chapters were actually polished, I immediately sat down and wrote an outline for my next book, because it was like, all this energy was released.

And I could totally now understand something that I hadn’t hadn’t been able to understand up until that point, which was, write a story how to get from beginning idea to to the end, and you know, how to get my characters from here to there.

And I would say that that second book, it also is unpublished, and unfortunately, I lost much of it, although the idea of it still lives in me and the first three chapters I did do still have it, and it was, it was and then the next book I wrote, but I wrote that first draft in six weeks, instead of five years. Yeah.

Emma Dhesi  11:21

It’s amazing, isn’t it? How once you’ve done it once, not that it becomes easy, but you suddenly realize, oh, okay, I know, I can do it, first of all, and suddenly, the ways in which you do it become a little bit clearer.

And even if that second look isn’t great, it kind of doesn’t matter, you’re still learning art, you’re still kind of building your process, and working towards Malcolm Gladwell. 10,000 hours, you know, of expertise and learning how to do stuff that even though you lost it, I’m so sorry to hear that. It’s never a waste, is it?

Beth Barany  11:53

No, and it’s kind of in my head, and it comes back around as like, how do I how do I rewrite that book? Because it was also a learning book and I had, by that time, discovered the hero’s journey.

Well, through Christopher Vogler, his book The writers journey, I, it really started opening up my own knowing around story, and what are the elements of story and story structure and, and I really allowed myself to like journal for an hour, and then write for an hour and that dialogue with myself and really come back into like, what does it mean, you know, the call to action? What does that mean?

What could it mean, in my story, what does it mean? What’s the definition? But then what does it mean in my story, you know, so every every writing session was sort of this dialogue between trying to understand that little piece of the hero’s journey and then relating it to my current book and allowing it to popcorn a bunch of ideas and make some decisions about what next?

And that I could write. Yeah.

Emma Dhesi  12:57

And you haven’t stopped since have you because you have a number of books now, a number of series now and, and I wonder if you could tell us about your latest series, The JD McAllister series.

Beth Barany  13:07

Yes. Oh, I’m so so happy to tell you about the JD McAllister mystery series. So this series actually evolved out of a dream, a real dream I had of a woman on a space station with talking to a charming man and sort of their tug of something like she was the investigator, and he was the thief and, and that was pretty much all I had, you know, over martinis in a casino, something like that, you know.

So that idea probably came to me about, gosh, 10 plus years ago, not even sure. But it was a dream and then about, let’s see 2006.

So now about five years ago, I was trying to decide what to write next. I had just written a batch of stories and I have a bunch of stories always in sort of in the backburner and I was at a screenplay conference, a screenwriters conference and, and this teacher was asking us to pitch him.

So I just pitched him this idea because I was at this conference going, which of my mini stories do I want to focus on for NaNoWriMo? And, and so I said, CSI in space, and he’s like, very good.

Are you gonna write that? I’m like, Yes, I’m gonna write that like, right then I’m like, okay, that’s the story I’m gonna write. You know, and Jamie McAllister was maybe going to be a security guard and then she evolved into being an investigator, the space station investigator, and then I knew it was futuristic. And I knew that she would be solving mysteries on a high end hotel, casino space station, and then from there, kind of built the world.

And I’ve built this, this fellow who’s who comes on who’s a spy. And I just kind of everything kind of came out of these two characters. And, and it said about 100 years in the future, a little over 100 years. I’ve set a date 2130 the Hotel Casino was, was built by a very rich guy who made his bazillions in asteroid mining. And the world has changed. I hinted that and here she is, she’s got a job because she’s caring for her sick, sick mother.

And in the first book, she has to prove herself to her new team. She’s only been there a month so far and she needs to catch this pickpocket who has been stealing bracelets off of people and bracelets in this world have not only do they are they pretty, but they have your money, and they have your ID and they have everything.

So right. So I had so much fun with all the high tech gadgetry in this book, and then I make my mysteries really hard, because they can’t be easy for her to solve, they certainly couldn’t be easy for us to solve.

So yeah, that’s the backdrop of my book, each book is a standalone mystery into the black is the first and yeah, Lord by light is the second came out last fall, and then gone, green just came out in May.

And then there’s gonna be a fourth book that’s already written, I’m putting it into final edits, now called Red running deep, which is the end of the four book series, but I may be writing more I have more ideas.

Emma Dhesi  16:12

If you can see from your face and the way you talk about the series, you love it, it’s like really close to your heart. 

Beth Barany  16:19

Very much very much I love you know, what part of the hobby aspect of being a novelist is, you get to dive into all these topics you love and so I’m, I’m reading about science all the time, I get a lot of information about what’s coming out of university laboratories and so I’m reading what is being discovered, you know, oh, the law of physics is being pushed the boundaries, you know, and, or, you know, some cool metal material or graphene, for me, it’s amazing.

My world, my futuristic world rests on on graphene. It’s an incredible technology, you know, advances in medical science, advances in you know, jet propulsion, space travel, all this I just love. Like, writing a science fiction series, a futuristic series allows me to just geek out like nobody’s business on all this stuff, all the science, I just love it. 

Emma Dhesi  17:15

Well, not only do you write these great series, and readers, but you also help writers. And we’re going to talk about one of your books, plan your novel like a pro in just a minute. But I’d love you to talk to us a little bit about the coaching that you offer, because I think you do one to one coaching, but you also have small group program too. So I wanted you to tell us about that.

Beth Barany  17:36

Absolutely. So I generally work with one to one with people who have a partial manuscript or a full manuscript. And they want support around various things. And I also talked to authors who are already published.

So sometimes I’m talking to authors, because they have a lot of doubt about whether or not their manuscript is any good. And so they want some evaluation on that. And then they want advice on how to make it better.

And my strength is coaching and developmental editing. So teaching people how to be better writers. So really, the craft of writing alongside the handling, built the building of confidence, and helping them really trust their story, instincts.

Because a lot of people come to me with raw manuscripts that are it could be any kind of thing some of them come with, it’s very raw, they have good story instincts, they know what they like, but the craft is not there.

Or they have really good writing chops, and actually really good story instincts, but they’re stuck and so they need a partner someone to, to bounce ideas off of someone to ask them lots of interesting questions and and spark them.

And then sometimes people come to me with like, how do I market my book, I don’t really like marketing, but I want to get comfortable with it and I want to I want to give these books life, I want people out there to know about them and I need to find a way to do it.

So and how do I do that in a way that is supportive of who I am instead of feeling like you know, you’re stripping off parts of your soul so that you can mark it you know, so how do you mark it with integrity? How do you mark it with with heart and in complete alignment and and joy?

And so those are some of the kinds of people come to me, I also am a master NLP practitioner. So that means I can help people sometimes deal with some of these more unconscious blocks around confidence or around a lot a lot with confidence.

Or, or clarity. Often it’s like, how do I figure out what I really want to do now. And so I might give them an NLP session which is really helping them find that clarity. find, find what’s really real for them 

Emma Dhesi  19:59

And Is that clarity within the story in their writing or actually clarity about the writing life or their life as a whole?

Beth Barany  20:07

It’s usually about the writing life, and less so about the story itself. It’s really about their own, like what they really want, what is it, they really want to do with their creative energy? Yeah, and those are dedicated sessions. Because NLP, neuro linguistic programming it, it needs space. So that might be a 90 minute session out there. 

Emma Dhesi  20:29

Gosh, you offer package. This is amazing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, sorry, go ahead.

Beth Barany  20:37

Well, I just I want to jump to the group coaching program as it is right now, it’s for people who absolutely have finished a first draft.

And now their focus is editing and they’re looking at the horizon of marketing and publishing as well. So with them, we really work on craft, we work on mindset as well.

And, and in the group coaching program, I expose them to as many parts as I can, about marketing and publishing as well and, and we, we sometimes review all the parts of story as well, so that their craft is can be stronger and we come together on zoom, and we do little edits and, and some of those folks also have one on one work with me where we do developmental edits or coaching sessions.

And then that’s a 12 month program so people can know that they’re supported as they take the long journey to finalize their books, get them out there.

Emma Dhesi  21:27

Yeah. This is such a such benefit that comes from being in a small group. I think people other people will ask questions that you didn’t even know your hand. And I think they can often be better even than the one on one because it’s opens up whole new possibilities and areas of inquiry for you to come to.

Interview with Beth Barany

Beth Barany  21:46

Absolutely, yeah. And then I’m not doing all the heavy lifting. And plus, I teach it with CO teach it with my husband, who’s also a novelist. And we have different styles and different ways of explaining things and different energies.

And he’s very funny and you know, and it’s fun to work with him and we’ve been writing buddies since we met. So if we bring that to everyone and and show different perspectives so people can find, find their way through, you know, it’s not just my answers.

It’s his and it’s also the group’s you know, everyone’s sharing with each other. Yeah.

Emma Dhesi  22:18

Well, no talking of your husband, and he, I think that you co wrote the book Plan your novel like a PRO is that right.

Beth Barany  22:24

Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, he because he had, I’m more of an intuitive organic writer. And he’s more of a left brain linear writer and he sees things differently than I.

And so I wanted to be able to have a book that allows both kinds of thinkers are trying to create across the spectrum, because the main message is, there is no one way.

There’s no one way to write a book, or to plan a book, it’s the right way for you and by having different kinds of having options, allows the beginning writer to try things to experiment to have fun.

Emma Dhesi  23:03

Yeah, yeah, I think that’s, that’s something I think we forget about. And not even just at the beginning of we’re writing loads, but throughout it can be that you forget, this is meant to be fun.

We do this because we love it. And we get very anxiously and very, very uptight about getting it perfect, but your thank you for that reminder is meant to be fun.

One of the things I like about the book is that you have divided it up into kind of weekly sections, which makes it really feel very compact and manageable and, and you started with week one with the elevator pitch and I wondered why you started started there.

Beth Barany  23:42

Yeah, well, a little story when I was having to write an elevator pitch to for my first novel that I was planning to publish, which is Henry edit the Dragon Slayer, which I ended up self publishing, I found that the the elevator pitch just so so emotionally daunting, and scary and it was like a betrayal to the book to have to condense the book into, you know, two or three sentences after the books over 200 pages, you know.

So I realized from that experience, and I got help, it was an older workshop and I got help. And it got demystified. For me what is an elevator pitch? I realized that the elevator pitch is an incredible tool to be able to think about a story in a very brief space.

So instead of having to go oh my god, I have to write a book. How do I write a book? You’re like, No, no, you don’t have to write a book. You just have to answer these questions. And then write two or three sentences. So this is very much for people who are like, Oh, I have an idea.

What do I do with that idea? And because it’s very daunting right to go from idea to finished finished draft. Oh, my goodness. So I realized that the elevator pitch, if we just looked at it as a writing exercise and not as a pitch, yes, it’s a it’s it comes from elevator pitch. But actually, it’s really an incredible way to start the story planning process.

Because it asks some very simple questions and it gets you thinking about your book, if you and I start there now as a planning tool. And then yeah, there’s the bonus of when you’re, when it comes time to write a short book description, you have some building blocks, you’ve actually run through the exercise already, and your brain is like, Oh, yeah, I’ve done that.

That’s not so hard. So it’s also embedded in this planning book is a ton of marketing, that we that is just part of the planning process. So by the time you reconnect with marketing, when you’re ready to market, you’re like, Oh, yeah, this is all familiar to me.

I’ve already thought through all these things, because that’s kind of my bigger stance around book marketing is like, why does book marketing have to be scary?

Why can’t we start thinking about book marketing, not as a market market research, like thinking of your readers, but just actually, though, the tools of marketing are really designed to help us think about story in these wonderful like little bite sized ways.

So that’s why it’s all throughout this book and I’m not I tell people, okay, here it is, you know?

Emma Dhesi  26:20

Yeah, no, it’s a really useful tool, I come across it kind of in the last couple of years.

And like you were saying, I did find it very daunting and my goodness, I hope, and I condense my whole book into into this this one idea, but it does help you just clarify what the key message, the key story, the key idea of the book is, and it you can come back to it again, and again, if you find yourself getting lost, it’s very useful indeed.

So let’s move on to week two, and week two for you is that we’re getting to know your characters and so what are the what are the things that writers need to think about when they’re in this early stage of writing? 

Beth Barany  27:02

Yes, oh, my goodness, people will see there’s many things. I have like 18 interview questions in here. But the most important thing about getting to know your characters is really understanding. What is your character’s story goal? And you can think about it in two ways.

What is it that they want to have accomplished by the end of the story? That is in question, it can’t be easy, has to be hard. Otherwise, you have no story, it was just like, go down to the corner, store and buy milk. Well, that’s not a story.

But if it was, go down the corner store to buy milk, because but but there’s a ton of zombies in the way. Now we have a story. Now there’s a tremendous amount of risk. And you don’t know, the result is not assured.

So story is about a character who wants something a goal so badly, they are willing to do what it takes and that goal is hard. It might change them, they might die, you know, one, one or the other, usually both.

And then there’s also a lot of stories these days and incorporate not only the inner, the outer goal, but the inner goal, like what is it they truly desire, oh, they want to be accepted by their brother, their older brother, for example, that’s an inner goal.

That’s something that they experience that we can’t necessarily see. But we as the reader, want we want it to, and they grow because of it.

Emma Dhesi  28:33

Aha, Okay!

Beth Barany  28:37

Usually, these two things are, sometimes they’re linked, and sometimes they’re not right, going down to the corner store to get milk in a zombie apocalypse may or may not be connected to one’s getting respect from one’s brother, but maybe the brother has died and the brother, you know, you feel like you’re doing going to do this in honor of your brother.

And if you don’t, you’re gonna let your brother down. I just spun the story a different direction. But so, so knowing the character goal is very important. I would say also, knowing what drives the character is also very important.

That’s called the motivation. And the motivation can be different. You can have characters with the same goal, but different reasons for wanting that goal.

Maybe it’s self respect, or maybe that motivations or that could be survival. But usually, for survival. There’s usually a reason like, what why why even want to live. You know, you want it in motivation. You want to try and get down to the very, very core of what drives the character.

And in brainstorming, because this class and the material is designed to be done before you write your book, but I’ve known lots of writers who use it when they’re stuck as well.

Because Yeah, and one of the biggest reasons writers gets stuck as they don’t know their characters well enough. They don’t know their goal. They don’t know their core motivation.

And also another play another. The third element, it’s really important to know your characters is to understand their conflicts, not just the zombies in the way on the way to get to the grocery store, but also the inner conflicts as well.

And the things they might be afraid of the things that haunt them, the ways they might be hard on themselves. It’s really, for me, story opened up when I started to understand how conflict is only meaningful when it’s when it’s an impediment to the character, which meant I needed to understand all the things my character was upset about reluctant, sad, angry, all the things that pissed them off all the things they were scared of.

And when I started that kind of brainstorming, which I actually explained in week three under plot, because it’s what helped me understand plot. Then, when I do that deep dive, then I start to see what my how to make reality difficult for my character and my story, as a story is.

Emma Dhesi  31:14

Sorry, go on. No, no, you go ahead. Because then that is I guess, it’s that it’s that conflict that keeps things driving forward, isn’t it and makes our characters more interesting.

And, and we hear a lot about trying to give our characters flaws, to make them more believable, but more rounded, we don’t want them to be too perfect. Because one of the things that we realized is we don’t need to, not all of our character, characters need to be likable.

We don’t need to like all these characters, but we do have to have a degree of empathy for our character. And I know that you’re using an empathy formula and I wondered if you’d be happy to share that with us to give our readers or listeners kind of something to start thinking about.

Beth Barany  32:00

Absolutely. So this is one of the lessons that my husband wrote because it is written as a formula. So for those people who are scared of formulas, all break it down for you.

Alright, I had this because I am not a formula person. I have to look at it. My husband right here. Yeah. So this actually we need to credit this material because this material isn’t ours.

This comes from a call with a Kay Iglesias. And he presented to us at the screenplay conference back in that story of Expo in LA. And his his workshops called emotional core and he has material he has left.

He has a book, he has lots of material on this. And and so as my husband was so taken by this, and we wrote this, and God has permission to have it in our book. So the emotional core, yes, you were saying now our characters don’t have to be likable, but they do need to be relatable.

So how do we make our villains relatable, even maybe our heroes an antihero, or our hero is a little bit rough edges. I tend to write heroines who a bit rough edged and then my job is to learn how do I make them relatable. So the very first thing is recognition.

You want them to have habits or characteristics that are familiar. Even if they’re, you know, like I had a big my big villain in my henryetta the dragon slayer series, he takes care of birds. He has an aviary. He takes care of birds.

Like oh, okay, so he’s not just that villain out there that we want to hate. But he’s actually a human or we don’t really know if he’s human, but he’s a he’s a being a living being who takes care of other living beings. Oh, that’s, we can relate to that.

We recognize that. Oh, so that’s something like me. So that’s number one. Number two is is pity. Now pity is not just like, Oh, poor, poor character, but it’s showing the misfortune of your character.

Like this big bad villain. I I hinted at how he felt power had been taken from him by his sister. Like he was a little boy, it was it was like coming from the child space. Oh, your villains were children too, you know? Or you know, right?

Or maybe you have a character who’s big and tough but in there, they they have a childhood where somebody stomped on their toy, and that is maybe they know what it’s like to be stomped on.

Right. So, right you feel Yeah. So that it is really really important to find that part about your character. Find that when they were the little the little one, the child where they something happened to them. Or maybe they have a disability that they have to work hard to overcome. Like my heroine is Jamie McAllister. She She has i don’t know i don’t want to reveal it.

She has something To overcome and deal with and has to constantly deal with. So it also could be that your big, strong character, male, female, whoever was abandoned at one point, and if you can show that in your story, how they, you know, and because they were abandoned, and we all can relate to that, right, we all can relate to being left at the park or mom’s late picking us up and where it’s like two hours later, where she right, we feel abandoned.

So when you show those aspects show that aspect of your character, any character, we immediately feel something for them. So that’s, and then the fourth. So there’s about there’s six elements. So we did recognition, pity and then humanity, humanity is actually is similar to what I was saying how my villain loved, loved his birds. So if you can show humanity, usually we show it by somebody taking care of another.

But you can also show them doing. Having done something self sacrificial for others, like going out of their way to help another help someone go across the street or hold the door open, like these things, especially showed this the way we relate to others how we’re, we’re human too. So even a villain, maybe he, he’s a villain in the boardroom.

And you know, he’s very, takes everybody’s money, and He rules the city, but then he holds the door open for for all the ladies. So you show a moment of kindness or caring or nurturing, and that humanity is another way that shows relatability. And then the fourth characteristic is admiration. So if you have a character, even a villain, we might admire them for their strength or their cunning.

Or I’m thinking of Moriarty, you know how incredibly brilliant he he is. And, and even Sherlock Holmes, I think, admires his brilliance. So that admiration, so think of heroic qualities, or maybe very strong or super smarter or very insightful. were clever or a great Tinker, you know? So it’s great to think about how in what way does your character have these heroic characteristics, and just one is fine.

And then the final part of really helping us relate to your character is under the umbrella of emotional stakes, we need to care that they are in danger, or could be in danger and there’s usually that comes from the character’s own awareness about their stakes.

Like why are they going after their goal? Why are they fighting for what they’re fighting for?

Emma Dhesi  37:48

Would that be would you be emotional states? Would that also be applicable to your villain characters as well, we don’t usually think of as having vulnerability, I suppose.

Beth Barany  37:58

Absolutely. What would they do if they failed? Maybe they, maybe they’re haunted by a domineering parent. And if they fail, they’ve, they’ve somehow proven that parent true, or right, it could be something in our, or it could be that if they fail, like I’m working on a villain who feels like what he’s doing is for the good of humanity.

And if he fails, in his super ambitious plan, then he’s failing humanity, because he sees himself all villains see themselves as heroes. Or just ordinary people. They may not cast themselves in that huge light, but some might.

And so if they fail in their big mission, which to them is grand, they’re failing humanity, for example. Yeah. Maybe what they’re doing. So you really need to tie what they’re doing with that deeper. Carl Iglesias calls it their motivation, you know?

Are they doing it to save themselves? Are they doing it to save another? Are they doing it for justice?

You know, are they doing it for love? or some kind of security maybe? And when you show that to the reader, then we’re like, oh, we’re really engaged. Because we can relate? 

Emma Dhesi  39:12

Yeah, I’d show it I think this is a lovely formula, a lovely way of kind of getting into all aspects of a 3d character 3d person who has those, those heroic moments and those great moments where they do the right thing and say the right thing.

But then those other moments that we all have, which is selfishness, greed, wanting for ourselves wanting wanting the fame or wanting the money or wanting the girl or whatever it might be, we all have that interspersed in our own.

So I love this formula that is just gives us all those prompts for thinking about our characters in a much kind of deeper and rounder way. So thank you for sharing that. That’s super. Okay. That’s why you’re so welcome.

So let’s move on to the kind of third element which is the plot points and structure and I wonder if add Do you follow a particular structure that you teach your students? Or is this where the kind of intuitive stuff can kind of come in and have a mix of ways of closing?

 Beth Barany  40:10

Yeah, well, we start with having them think about their genre, and genre expectations, and how they relate to stories structure, because every kind of genre has its reader expectations.

And this material really got inspired by Shawn Coyne, the story grid material, I really found this super useful, and an incredible way to get very quickly into awareness into thinking about, oh, I’m writing a romance Well, what are the main elements of a romance? Or Oh, well, I’m writing a mystery. What are the main elements of a mystery?

So before we get into, you know, the three act structure, or the hero’s journey, or the five elements of storytelling, or there’s a lot of different story structures, let’s just think about genre structure and let’s think about the expectations of the beginning, middle and end of every genre.

And that tells you a lot that tells you right away what’s, what kind of opening scene? What kind of middle midpoint scene what kind of end scene or two, right? We we already know.

So when I was working on my junior McAllister books, I’d never written a mystery before, not a straight up mystery, not a crime, murder mystery. I mean, every book has an element of like, mystery question, answer, right? What’s the question and finding the answer, but a straight up mystery.

And then I had to really, really think about, okay, the beginning of mysteries, they tend to have a dead body, or they tend to have the hero showcasing their skills, or they tend, like, there’s all these different kinds of openings, you’ll see in mysteries, or you’ll see sort of a shadow figure of the villain.

And so I had from there, I made my choices. So once you know what the expectations are, you can you can spend them, you can do whatever you you know, as long as you’re somehow connecting to the readers expectation of what what that, you know, what the genre has been?

And and people want the same, yet they want to be surprised. You need to know what is that you know, and if you’re writing, even if you’re writing literary fiction, it’s still gonna follow story structure, it’s still going to have a certain kind of opening a certain kind of like, maybe the opening is dropping people into this weird, introspective moment.

But still, you’re still also doing certain things that all stories do, you still need to tell us? Who, where, why, what does this person want? You know, why am I reading? Where am I? Who is this person? And what do they want?

Emma Dhesi  42:45

I think that’s such an important aspect of storytelling, I don’t think it gets talked about enough until after you finish the story, and you start trying to market your story.

But actually putting that up front, I think is is a genius thing to do. And although writers might not realize it is hugely helpful to think about, okay, what is my reader going to want?

What are they expecting from the story, even, you know, romance, we think we know what’s expected from that. And there are certain things that that are across the board of all romance stories.

But within the particular type of romance book, you write what’s expected there. So I think that’s a really great thing to put right up front before people actually start waiting.

It’s that like, you’re the elevator pitch, it’s something that will ground your story and give it you know, then it’s something to come back to so that you know you’re giving your reader what they want.

So I love that. That’s brilliant. So if we move on a little bit, then so now we’ve got you know, we know our genre, we know kind of where our story is going. And then you encourage your students or your readers to kind of start outlining more kind of scene by scene.

Now, is that applicable only to people who really enjoy getting down to the nitty gritty of planning and plotting? Or can that work for more intuitive writers as well? Do you think?

Beth Barany  44:07

That can absolutely work for intuitive writers? Because that’s what I do. I don’t do the level of detail work that my husband does. He does like serious index cards for every scene that I admit, I did that my first book I did with my historical novel, my very first five year novel. And that was a great experience.

And we teach that we teach story. What do we call it in here? Sorry, my brain storyboarding, which kind of comes from that term comes from screenplay writing, but it was actually taught Oh, here it is the weekend novelist by Robert J. Ray.

He taught story storyboarding in there and it was so so helpful. So but before you get to storyboarding, I really recommend Oh, actually, I teach it right before seeing my scene outline. So first of all, you need to understand what is the scene and so We teach that in this in in week four in the scene by scene outline section.

And we teach a few different tools we teach that I find that I, as a more intuitive writer found really helpful. One is called problem solution, where you think you think through. So now you’ve thought kind of macro, you’ve thought about, okay, what are the genre requirements? And what could it be from my story beginning, middle and end.

And that gives you a bunch of ideas for scenes. And now think about now let’s think about a little bit more granular Lee. So your opening scene? So what is the problem and your opening scene?

And what is your main character do to solve that problem? So now you start to think and problem solution sets? Oh, she, you know, she has to catch a pickpocket. With her team that doesn’t trust her. That’s my opening scene and book one. So what’s the solution? Right, you’re gonna assume she’s gonna catch the pickpocket, of course, readers that I’m not going to reveal how she does it.

But that sets up a whole new set of problems. She the pickpocket reveals something which kind of sets a new problem in motion and then that solution while she’s going after that solution, a new problem comes out of that solution.

And then, as she searches for the solution, you know, so you want to think of your story like, like a daisy chain like it? How does the solution generate a new problem, and then you reach for the solution, your character, which generates a new problem and when I discovered when I use this tool, to think through my stories, all of a sudden,

I notice I’m basically going from beginning to end, all of a sudden, I’m now starting to line them up, like little blocks, all the ways getting you to the end and for the very first time, in my planning process, I actually start to see the whole story unfold, from start to finish. And then it’s really quite thrilling.

And something I do and I encourage everyone, if they if they’re interested, is to take that problem solution set and read it to somebody to your trusted partner, writing partner, you know, friend who is a supporter and see how they respond, see how they’re drawn in see might wear that might be confused.

And that can help you figure out missing pieces, but also can kind of gauge the emotional resonance, like do you really have something that can hold from beginning to end?

Emma Dhesi  47:18

That’s a great, I would have thought that Yeah. Yeah.

Beth Barany  47:22

I’m sorry. Yeah. I tend to be really like, it feels like a big, it’s not the final final piece of story summary for me, but it’s like, Look, what I did, you know, you want to share. 

Emma Dhesi  47:32

It’s nice, because then you can also see how the story shapes and that gives, I think it gives you confidence as a writer, okay, I know where this is going. And even if I didn’t know exactly how to write this next thing, I can maybe jump on and do the next thing.

And I can see where it’s following through and one of the things I enjoy about having that kind of scene structure is it feels more organic, rather than having to come up with these random things that can appear that can feel like from nowhere, you haven’t conjure up these things from nowhere.

There’s a logic to it, even if them even if they are a little bit out there and a little bit Well, there’s still a logic as to why they’re, they’ve made that whale decision, or what why that weld problem has occurred and so it feels much more organic and fluid, and therefore, I think, really helps the story arc build until you get to this big crescendo towards the end.

So I love that. Yeah. Really, really helpful.

Beth Barany  48:27

Yeah, so helpful. And then from there, I teach, you know, what is the scene and we go through again, this comes from Sean coins, he calls, you know, his five elements, five essential elements of a story, which are actually the five essential elements also of a scene.

And so we teach what those are. And then from that, my husband would go off and write index cards and do storyboarding. And I jump over storyboarding, because I’ve done it. And I know what it’s, it is.

And I go right into paragraph summaries of my scenes, and I, and I write them from the voice of my main character, or from the POV, I’m writing in one point of view. But when I’m writing in multiple points of view, I write each scene from a character’s point of view, in short paragraphs, and sometimes dialogue starts to spill out. And it’s a very organic process, we’re actually now start to get very close to pros.

From summary to pros, and I’m writing, I tend to just jump right into writing prose, but in the kind of a shorthand, and also in present tense, which I know I’ve seen a lot of other writers do. Yeah, I’m writing kind of in present tense from her point of view and then, and then then when I’m done with that, then I read it again to other people.

I share it, and I watch people respond. And it’s fun when there’s people around who aren’t who aren’t necessarily just my husband, you know, one time it cousin was here. Well, I read it and she’s like, wow, oh, I want to read that. You know, it was so, so thrilling.

Emma Dhesi  49:49

Brilliant. Thank you so much for taking us through the kind of how to write your novel and obviously, when our listeners go and read the book, they’re going to is getting much more detailed with it and be able to go through at their own pace and do the exercises that you’ve suggested.

So thank you so much for sharing that with us. Oh, you’re so welcome. I am conscious of time, and I’m taking up a lot of your time. But I wonder, before we go, if you could share with us what it is that you are working on at the moment?

 Beth Barany  50:18

Yes, well, I am working on two projects right now. One is I’m starting the final edits for the fourth book and the Jamie McAllister series that comes out this fall called Red running deep.

That’s very exciting. And then the other project I’m working on, is I’m working on a script. I’m working actually on a TV pilot. For Henrietta, the Dragon Slayer, which is my young adult fantasy adventure trilogy, I bought the continuing Adventures of Henrietta and her friends.

So and I’m with the, with the idea that eventually these will become graphic novels first and then possibly one day that is far in the future, at this point, actually live action TV. Yeah, that’s the dream.

That dream I can’t quite control as easily as I can, you know, so my goal is to learn how to write a TV pilot, I’m working with a coach myself, and then translate that into graphic novels, because I have a whole bunch of ideas, a whole bunch of stories for this TV series that really is a graphic novel series right now.

So it’s like I’m learning two forms at the same time.

 Emma Dhesi  51:26

I love to hear that you’re also working with a coach, I think it’s a great kind of example, to fall asleep to know that every coach needs a coach. So absolutely, yeah and so where can listeners find out more about you and what you do online?

Beth Barany  51:41

Yes, well, I am online, Bethbarany.com. everywhere on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest. And from bethbarany.com, you’ll be able to find my school, my blog, my author, material, everything.

So that’s that’s the main hub. And I will throw out I do have a writer’s blog for writers, which is also kind of a main place you can learn about what we’re doing. And a lot of people write for the blog. It’s called writersfunzone.com.

And lots of articles, lots of freebies, lots of fun things, you can sign up for my goodies. Check out all our writing books. And that’s a fun place to go to check out all the fun things we have going on. 

Emma Dhesi  52:28

I’ll be sure to link to those in the in the show notes. Well, Beth has wonderful, thank you so much for your time today.

 Beth Barany  52:35

Oh, you’re so welcome, Emma, this is so much fun. Thank you.

Emma Dhesi  52:39

Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you find that helpful and inspirational. Now don’t forget to come on over to facebook and join my group, Turning readers into writers. It is especially for you if you are a beginner writer who is looking to write their first novel.

If you join the group, you will also find a free cheat sheet. They’re called three secret hacks to write with consistency. So go to emmadhesi.com/turning readers into writers.

Hit join. Can’t wait to see you in there.

All right. Thank you.

Bye bye

If this interview with Beth Barany was useful, you’ll love:

• Navigating and co-writing with Autumn J Birt & Jesper Schmidt – EMMA DHESI
• Healing trauma through narrative with Nadia Colburn – EMMA DHESI
• World building with Fantasy writer Stephanie BwaBwa – EMMA DHESI

Emma Dhesi

Emma writes women’s fiction. She began writing seriously while a stay at home mum with 3 pre-school children.

By changing her mindset, being consistent and developing confidence, Emma has gone from having a collection of handwritten notes to a fully written, edited and published novel.

Having experienced first-hand how writing changes lives, Emma now helps beginner writers find the time and confidence to write their first novel.

The Craft Of Character with Mark Boutros

Emma Dhesi  00:00

Hello, I’m Emma Dhesi and welcome to another episode of turning readers into writers.

If you’re brand new here, welcome and here’s what you need to know. This is a community that believes you are never too old to write your first novel, no matter what you’ve been up to until now, if you’re ready to write your book, I’m ready to help you reach the end, I focus on helping you find the time and confidence to begin your writing journey, as well as the craft and skills you need to finish the book.

Each week I interview debut authors, editors and industry experts to keep you motivated, inspired, and educated on all things writing, editing, and publishing. If you want to catch up, head on over to emmadhesi.com, where you’ll find a wealth of information and tools to help you get started. Before we dive in, this week’s episode is brought to you by my free cheat sheet 30 Top Tips to find time to write.

In this guide, I give you 30 ways that you can find time to write in the small gaps that appear between the various errands and tasks and responsibilities that you have in your day to day life. Now, you might be thinking that you don’t have any time to spare, but I can guarantee these top tips will give you writing time you didn’t think you had. If you thought writing always involved a pen and paper or a keyboard. Think again. If you thought you needed at least an hour at a time to write your manuscript. I help you reframe that, you won’t be disappointed.

Get your free copy of 30 Top Tips to find time to write by going to emmadhesi.com/30 Top Tips.

Okay, let’s dive in to today’s episode.

Mark Boutros is an International Emmy nominated screenwriter, independent author of nonfiction and fantasy fiction.

He’s a creative writing teacher, a mentor, a ghost writer, and an editor. And I had a wonderful conversation with him not so long ago, where he talked me through how we got to start in television, why he decided to make a switch into creative writing and go back to university.

He talks me through his trilogy heroes of dystopia and then he talks about the craft of character, his book, helping you to flesh out the bones of your character, get to the core of them, and then ultimately bring them to life and hang on to the end and you’ll find out how you can either win a copy of his nonfiction book, the craft of character, or even his first book in his fantasy series. So keep listening.

Well, Mark, thank you so much for being with me today. I’m really thrilled to speak to you.

 Mark Boutros  02:45

Thanks for having me, it’s lovely to be here.

 Emma Dhesi  02:47

It’s a joy. It’s a joy. Now, like many authors, you’ve kind of taken a scenic route to get to your fiction writing your novel writing.

But your journey is perhaps being a little bit more interesting than some of ours than mine, for example, because you’ve started out in TV, and you’ve done a lot of TV over the last, I’d say nearly 20 years now.

And so how long? What’s experience? How you get started in TV, tell us about that.

 Mark Boutros  03:16

I finished university and in that same way a lot of people find themselves will go what what do I do now then sort of cut adrift from three years of, of feeling like everything was okay.

I applied for a job as a runner company called talkback, who made me things like both selector algae panel shows that I loved and I was like, I want to do that. I emailed them got completely ignored, and then tried again six months later, and three people were leaving.

So they said come in and have a chat. We need three runners. And then the next day I was working there. So it’s quite bizarre.

It’s one of those examples of timing works out. And then that’s when I started and I worked my way up through paddle shows like QI Never Mind the Buzzcocks, ar 10 cats, A League of Their Own and worked on various roles in those for what feels like an eternity now.

 Emma Dhesi  04:07

And I was looking at your website, you’ve done a few different types of roles. What’s been your kind of favorite rule to date.

 Mark Boutros  04:14

My favorite, I’d say I had two favorites. One was the researcher because that meant I was looking for content for the show. So one like Never Mind the Buzzcocks. I was looking for stories of musicians injuring themselves in weird ways, which sounds dark but it’s not.

It’s fun a lot of the time. And I was also responsible for the ID parade where I would get then go well, I’m going to go and get the person who sang this one hit wonder I love and get them on the show and I’d get to meet them.

It was amazing. I got john paul, who did I think said Elmos fire than some songs from the Transformers cartoon movie which was amazing and then edit producing because producing fun but it’s mostly putting out fires.

Edit producing is when the show is filmed. And you get to sit in the edit and watch it as a whole and with an editor cut it down from say two hours to 22 minutes or whatever the running time is.

So you’re less involved in the politics, which is, that’s what I started to enjoy it and your hours feel a little bit more normal. Yeah, so definitely those two roles with my favorite.

 Emma Dhesi  05:12

Oh, interesting you and I was we were talking before we started recording and you’ve, you’ve certainly worked on a few of my favorite shows.

So exciting. But then in 2012, you decided to go back to education and you started your MA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia, which is certainly, I don’t know if it still is, but it certainly has been one of the best programs in the UK.

So what made you decide to take that sidestep to the more kind of prose writing rather than TV writing,

 Mark Boutros  05:43

I’d always wanted to, to do writing, you know, it was what in the MA I did was a mixed side it was screen and a bit that, so but I always wanted to, to write so I was doing that while working my way up in the TV industry.

But I found as the hours got more and more kind of barbaric, I couldn’t find time to write I do like, here’s an hour here is 10 minutes there, but it was all low quality, it was top of the head stuff. So as the kind of frustration bill and the itch got, you know, each year, I thought it’s time to do it.

You know, I had a few things happen, where I went, it’s kind of I need to stop putting it off, I’d been accepted. And I deferred it. And I was getting to that point, and I was approaching 30. Whereas I need to make serious decision about it.

Now, you know, I’m getting tired working constantly on the shows. So I did that and and it was the best decision I ever made. Like I don’t regret a second of it. I loved it. And I got to meet loads of other writers who I’m still in touch with now.

And it just it bought me a year to write which is, you know, yeah, which I don’t have now, a lot of the time. It was brilliant.

 Emma Dhesi  06:46

Oh, yeah, I think it’s something a lot of us would love to do and when I do interview people who have done an MA or an MFA, I love to it’s kind of mind your brain and say, Well, what were the kind of one or two things that you really benefited from, or the kind of biggest takeaways from that year of study?

 Mark Boutros  07:04

The biggest benefit was, I didn’t have excuses to hide behind was one of them. Because, you know, fear makes us kind of go, Oh, well, you know, it would be going better if it wasn’t No, this was no, I’m writing now and I have no choice.

But to either throw into it any any excuses don’t really stack up. It’s not like oh, I was busy doing a 16 hour day. It’s not I was lazy. And I got to meet other writers, because in various jobs, like people will say, Oh, you write what? What are you writing and you’ll start talking about it.

And then you’ll see them glaze over. Because they said they care a bit, but not as much as other writers. So you don’t get that critical eye on your work. Like now I have people I’ll always send scripts to and I learned a bit more about myself as a writer, you know, I was always chasing the joke head of the narrative.

And I had my tutor who probably hated me, just absolutely drummed out of me. And it helped a lot. You know, now the focus is on the character and the story. And the jokes are kind of icing on the cake, as opposed to the thing I chase first, when I write anything comedic. It taught me a lot of a theory as well, which I didn’t think was useful until I was in the industry, and then realized how useful it was.

And, you know, it gives you kind of a toolkit for getting over problems you find as well.

 Emma Dhesi  08:20

Okay, oh, you, would you mind expanding on that just a little bit?

 Mark Boutros  08:24

At all. You know, there’s so there’s, like, even I didn’t understand what the notion of a story weld was before, you know, just everything that that that your story is about, essentially, the people, your character interacts with the settings all of it.

So it made me think about that before jumping into a script, where as I just go, here, a few characters, you know, where I’ll stick them, I’ll stick them in a bar, that’s fine without thinking about those places a bit more in the significance and how they actually tie into your character, how they can mirror their internal struggles and their emotional struggles.

Like location is a powerful tool, as well as the minor characters you inhabit your world with and develop and the best. Kind of the best bit of advice I was given was, it’s something I kind of echo is don’t protect your main character, because I used to write very, like, I don’t like the term they call it the kind of the straight man is what they, they refer to that character as which I think that term will probably get changed to just your normal character, which again, normal is weird.

And they’d be they would do nothing apart from react to what was going on around them. And then all the secondary characters were far more interesting and far more enjoyable.

And I used to do that a lot because I was very protective of that character. And well, they can’t make bad decisions because then people will go, I don’t like them. Now I wrote I have write horrifically unlikable characters, because I know that it’s about making people understand what someone is doing so they engage with the journey.

They don’t have to you don’t have to like someone you have to want to spend time with them. Or give them some redemption to some degree. But yeah, don’t protect your main character was the greatest tip I ever got.

And it made me see a different way of telling stories. It wasn’t about someone having loads of things happen to them, it was someone generating those things, that person happened to the story. You know, it’s that whole thing of not writing passive protagonists, essentially.

 Emma Dhesi  10:23

That’s quite scary. I just listening to you talking there and I’m thinking about my own fiction and going here, I’ve definitely had one or two secondary characters who are more interesting or more over the top more exuberant characters, and the thought of making my own character do risky things that would make them unpopular does make me feel a bit uncomfortable.

 Mark Boutros  10:41

Protective, you know, we don’t we, we spend so much time thinking about and obviously, I don’t know if it’s the same with you, but those main characters are often the ones closest to us, ourselves, or people to like, but, you know, it’s that thing of, it’s engaging to see someone make the wrong decision, sometimes, you know, as long as you pull them back from it, or show the consequences.

It’s, it’s, it still happens, I still sometimes drift into it and have to go no, remember, don’t protect your character so difficult.

 Emma Dhesi  11:12

Yeah. Oh, goodness advice there. And I was going to ask, you know, does your TV writing kind of bleed into your fiction writing and vice versa?

I think you may have kind of, you may have answered that a little bit, that there is a particular character, there’s a bit of difference that in fiction is about the whole picture, the whole setting, and not protecting your character, that maybe in TV, it is about making that main character look good on the telly, what, what are your thoughts?

 Mark Boutros  11:40

Yeah, because with, with TV, it’s about, a lot of it is about the name that will be attached to your project, as well as to whether it will get sold or not.

So you’re trying to write a character that is really different and really stands out. And, and it will get shaped any way through production companies you work with.

So you know, you’ll you’ll send us a script in to a company and they’ll go, we love it, and then they’ll option it. So they’ll buy the rights to it for six months to a year to then try and sell it to a broadcaster and optioning money is not great.

So you’re kind of working quite hard, until someone actually picks it up the broadcaster, but at that point, it will get changed the lots of fit of particular broadcaster as well.

So you know, I think the same principles of character really apply, the main differences are, you know, in fiction writing, you can get into their heads a lot better, because a script is quite a boring document to look at, you know, there’s no, it’s not as sensory as a novel will be.

And a lot is bare bones, like, they like seeing whitespace on the page in the format, like they don’t like to see long descriptions at all. It’s something you know it and also it’s, it’s something a director then takes an active and takes and they all all get, it’s a blueprint, essentially.

Whereas, you know, a novel, you are more directly holding someone’s hands and leading them through, they’ll still interpret a lot of things themselves, but you are the controller of that experience.

Whereas on in a, in a TV script, you’re you’re handing that over for other people to interpret and lead someone on so you know, it’s very much directors and producers will then and performers will take your work and, and make it a lot better a lot of the time.

Whereas, you know, a novel is, it’s more I think you’re more closely connected to, to to your audience in that way, where you are influencing so much more than you would in a script, I think.

Emma Dhesi  13:36

So sounds like actually, you get a lot more freedom as a fiction writer, because this is it’s it’s a more solitary world. And so it’s it’s you and what you’re writing rather than perhaps a team of people.

 Mark Boutros  13:50

Yeah, yeah, definitely, you know, with with fiction I, I work with an editor. And that’s kind of it because it’s because I’m not traditionally publisher, I think there may be more input there, I’m not sure.

Whereas TV, for example, I’ll write a script and you’ll have a script editor, producer, one or two exec producers, maybe one or two commissioning editors, sometimes if it’s someone else’s project, you’ll get their inputs, you’re looking at six to seven sets of notes, sometimes that will all be collated, but that’s a lot of opinions to take on and to make something work and you know, it’s not, it’s not necessarily your vision that always shines through.

And it’s fine because it’s, it’s what will work for that channel genre. So it’s, it’s a highly collaborative process. A very difficult one, but also very rewarding at the same time.

You know, I’ve met some brilliant people and learn so much by having so many people involved in the work, not always perfect, but everyone’s trying to do something good within it. So yeah, I, I find fiction I get to unleash a bit more of my own creativity in that way.

And actually, I have, you know, good good editors that stop me from doing anything too bad?

 Emma Dhesi  15:02

Well, talking of your creativity, I’d love it if you could tell us about your your series, the heroes of the studio when I said that, right?

 Mark Boutros  15:10

Yeah, yeah. I regret that title so much. It used to be called, like Carl’s kingdom. But then I thought, well, no, I want to have something where I can explore different aspects of that world.

And it wasn’t really about him anymore, because he was that main character that was going, actually it’s not as interesting as, but it’s really about it’s, it’s a fantasy, comedy, or lighthearted fantasy, as I prefer to call it.

And it’s basically about the young man who’s failed, everything essentially never really left the kingdom he’s lived in pretty useless, but he tries he just fails and then one day, a tyrant comes in invades the castle lived in the only place he’s ever known as home, he decides having failed everything else, you know, what I’m gonna do, I’m going to actually try and fight back, he’s the only person who’s silly enough to do that fails miserably, can add that to his list of failures and is imprisoned.

He’s been good friends with the princess, she, she frees him sets him off into the world and then he receives a message from her when he’s a little bit away from the castle into the world. He’s never known telling him.

He’s not actually from that world at all parents, he thinks his parents weren’t and he needs to find the portal home to find his little parents before he’s captured and killed. And so his journey kind of begins.

So it’s about identity, what home really is and I initially wrote it as a one off, and then I found that I love so many of the characters that it was worth the second book and I’ve just finished the third, it’s off with the editor now. So yeah, and then that’s done.

And I may explore some other characters within that world, but I think his journey is coming to a natural end.

 Emma Dhesi  16:43

Okay. It sounds like it’s been fun, a fun true trilogy to raise.

 Mark Boutros  16:48

Yeah, has it it was initially it was a very, very silly comedy. And I actually went back and thought the narrative is being pushed away by that.

So I reframed it, which was a very difficult process, it was probably three or four years in the making that first book, second book flowed wonderfully, the third book has been tough.

It’s, it’s been very rewarding to get to the other side of it and it’s been so much fun to write like, I’m sad to leave those characters behind now for a bit, but I think they need to rest for a little while but yeah, it’s been an absolute joy to write, and I’ve loved it.

 Emma Dhesi  17:22

So it’s a trilogy? Are they and are they sequential? Do you have to read one before the other? Can you read them as a standalone?

 Mark Boutros  17:30

You can’t I mean, I, I’d say they are sequential Book Two you could possibly read without the book one, but you would lose some of the, the joy of a few of the characters.

So I would say one is the most standalone, you know, because it was initially written as that like, you could you could read one of them never read another and feel like you’ve had a complete story.

They’re all their own stories. But there are references that might get missed.

Yeah, so that one is the main standalone one. And then I’ve got like, a book x, which is a story about some of the villains in in book one, which is something I give away on my website to people.

It’s a short story, and I’m working on.

 Emma Dhesi  18:10

Ok,  let people know about it that afterwards.

 Mark Boutros  18:12

Thank you. Yeah. And I’m working on some origin stories as well. Just when, when when it takes my fancy, because yeah, I feel like the main characters have had enough of the kicking for a while that they need some time away from me.

 Emma Dhesi  18:23

Now, because I write standalone, I don’t write series, it’s and it’s always something that fascinates me. So I know that book, one was intended to be a standalone, but then you decided to add in the two and three.

So did you kind of take a step back and think, Okay, I need to have an overriding arch here and what is that going to be?

So that book three finishes off the whole trilogy? Or was it again, kind of book by book basis? How did you work work around that?

 Mark Boutros  18:51

I did, I did have to think about well, what’s now if I’m doing this as a trilogy, there needs to be an overall arc for this, this protagonist. So I thought about what that would be.

And based on some of the things that happened in book one, because I do a lot of planning, and then once that, like I normally know my ending, I know my beginning, I know some key beats.

And then when the characters start interacting, a lot of that goes out the window, and I get frustrated by the amount of time I spent outlining. But some relationships emerged in that story that made me go well, this is really about, about these two characters more than who I thought it was about.

So I use that as the arc. It’s really a redemptive arc. And, and that’s what led me to book three essentially, you know, it’s really about this, this this, this, this hero and the villain, and the impact they have on each other’s lives, weirdly.

And, yeah, so I had that overarching arc. And then I thought about each individual book too, and the individual Book Three, how they might work.

 Emma Dhesi  19:50

Okay. Yeah, a lot of planning involved.

 Mark Boutros  19:52

Yeah, yeah. But you know, it’s, it’s, I sort of see it as a, you put a destination into the GPS spot.

The routes you can take go over the place, you know, let the characters lead you as long as as long as I know where I’m focusing on, they can go as many directions as they like.

 Emma Dhesi  20:08

And that Yeah, nice freedom. I like that kind of hybrid approach almost. Yeah.

Now what it’s going to ask, so did you start the first book when you were doing your MA, when you have that year? Is that what you were kind of focusing on for your project, then?

 Mark Boutros  20:24

No, no, I wrote a, because I’ve written in television, I still script write for TV shows.

I, I did a film, and it was awful. But it taught me a lot, because it helped me tell because I’ve always, I’ve always written for television, it helped me to tell a complete narrative in one script, because while TV episodes still have stories, the overarching narrative takes place over a series, right, you know, over many, many episodes.

So it showed me that and it made me go, I could I want to do this and it actually started life as a radio script, a 30 minute radio play.

But it was so kind of vivid that I thought this I actually want to make, I want to spend time, you know, elaborating on this world and these people, I want to do this as a book and I you know, and it was tough, because it was like learning an entirely new skill because sometimes feedback I get is, I want more description here is quite cynical.

This means like a script sometimes put more in here and more in here, when I said it to my editor. And it’s true, because I’ve always been taught to write very lean, which is what script writing is, it’s ripping everything out, because you’ve got to get in and out as quickly as possible.

But I turned it into a book. And I loved every second of doing that, I found it very freeing process. Because you don’t have to consider budgets, either.

You can have weird creatures and a whole world whereas for TV, it’s like, could you set it just down the road is fine. You know, we’ve just got park there.

They don’t have to be weird hybrid creatures in there, just, you know, just have an angry dog.

 Emma Dhesi  22:02

And the reason I asked that question was and because you’re still working in tallies, you still got long hours, you’re still busy. And you’ve got a family, you’ve got friends, you want to have a social life, all of that thing.

So how would you find that you’re able to make space and fiction writing, as well as all the other jobs and responsibilities that you’ve got?

 Mark Boutros  22:24

It is very difficult. I, I tried nano writing Month. Yeah, my plan was to write Book Three over that I managed to do 10,000 words, I was I was I failed miserably. Because I was doing a TV script at the same time, because there’s no there’s no structure.

So I don’t, I don’t produce or edit produce anymore. But I write for like, I just finished writing for a kid series that took up five months, three days a week, I teach once or twice a week.

And I freelance write chatbots. Yeah, I do a lot of things. But when I what I do with my writing, like I started writing a dark comedy thriller last week. And I do it first thing in the morning, if I have the headspace, I get up at like six, I get the laptop, whether I’m in bed or at the desk, and I’ll try and do an hour or two before I eat breakfast.

So the frustration doesn’t seep in. Because it is what I am most passionate about is the writing fiction. And I find you know, as soon as the world wakes up, you’re getting emails, you can’t help but check them you’re getting whatsapps you can’t help but check them.

So I figure if it’s six in the morning, the world’s asleep, mostly, apart from people who have kids.

I just get up and do it. And I don’t check emails, I don’t pay any music on I just write in complete silence. And it’s wonderful. And weirdly, on weekends is when I do that best I did a bit this morning.

I’ll do it tomorrow. But there are days where I have so much on that have to get up and just start doing the other thing. So it does sometimes suffer for a few days on end, which is upsetting. Because, you know, I mean, I don’t know how you find it as well. It’s just balancing it is very tricky.

You have to I have to say no to stuff I gave up drinking about seven years ago, because I found trying to do that with a hangover. It was a disaster. So I had to make a serious decision about what happened.

You know, I kept saying, you know, I want to put that time in I don’t want to look back and be resentful that I didn’t try. So that’s how I do it now.

 Emma Dhesi  24:18

Yes, I think that is a big thing. That was a big thing for me as well. I got to a point where it was okay. I don’t want to get later on in life and say I didn’t try.

Yeah, that was a big, but thank you for answering that because I and when I’ve asked my audience you know, what are the things that you struggle with to get your book written and time is one of the big things balancing all the things in life is something with so it’s always great to hear from other people who are also busy and how they get it done. So yeah.

Interview with Mark Boutros

Mark Boutros  24:47

I think you can also be one of the it’s very easy to to disregard right in time. So I used to put in my calendar, right six till seven in the evening, and then it would come up and I’d be like I’ve already made plans there.

So I think it’s it’s about carving out time that is uninterrupted and, and you know your loved ones will want you to do well, they want you to be happy and they know you’re happy when you’re doing the thing you really care about.

So factor in some time, so that it’s also consider them so that when you do have free time you can spend with them, you know, okay.

Can I just quickly do three hours of this, even though they are incredibly understanding, and when I was very busy, and I had to commute, what helps was having, I don’t know if it’s useful to anyone listening, but I had Google Docs because you can use them offline and online.

So I was on the tube. And I’d be able to type notes on the tube and things like that, I just found those little bits helped. And if you find times hard, just say you’ll do 15 minutes, and you’ll find you do a lot longer.

Because you can always find 15 minutes is when you try and go any two hours that you can possibly see other little things you can try. But yeah, I find mornings is the thing that worked for me.

 Emma Dhesi  25:51

Thank you. So you have you devoted that time to writing your fiction. But that’s not all you’ve been writing, you have been writing some nonfiction as well. And you’ve written a book called The craft of character.

So you did mention character a little bit earlier on that that was something that was a big learning moment for you. Yeah, is that what prompted you to write this particular book?

 Mark Boutros  26:14

it was an I love reading screenwriting and story and fiction writing books, you know, I think I save the cat, the various versions of it and Jonny Wilkinson, the words and loads of others. And it made me become a bit obsessed with structure and one thing I noticed is, structure became something that dictated what characters did, as opposed to emerging organically through character.

As weird as that sounds, I found it was a weakness in my work where I was going, Okay, I’ve got a character who, for example, a 35 year old woman who has a heart attack has to change the way she lives. She’s cynical, or she won’t make it to 40.

That was a comedy idea. And I found that I go, Okay, now I’ve got that. I know how she’ll approach things. I’ll put that into, here’s the inciting incident, the heart attack. Here’s what she has to do. Here’s some, she’ll do that in this episode.

And off we go. I didn’t spend any moment thinking about her worldview beyond cynicism, what significance her job played any of that stuff, I found, I was always just tagging that stuff on. I’ll make them I’ll make them a writer or a teacher.

And I was like, how lazy Have I been getting. And I figured it, the more time actually spend on character, the more unique the script comes across as because the more anecdotes seep out in a, in the storytelling, you know, you get to add, you feel like you actually know someone.

And that’s what I was lacking in my own work. And in a lot of scripts I read, I read a lot of scripts for, for places, where, you know, it’s perfectly what a fashionable phrase in the TV industry now is to say something is functional.

So you go when it works, but I don’t get a sense of who this person is. And, and that was my weakness, I found I thought I wanted to write something that me five years ago would have found incredibly useful.

And isn’t just a copy of another structure book, I wanted to do something I felt would be useful to writers who were probably struggling with just seemed like I was.

 Emma Dhesi  27:58

yeah, yeah, no, it’s definitely something I get questions about. So I knew that our listeners will, will find it very useful.

So could you take us through the kind of three main areas that you you talk about in the book, you talk about the core of character, yeah, putting flesh on the bones, and then bringing that character to life that they’re loving, just to get a little bit more insight into those three areas and how you see them?

 Mark Boutros  28:21

Yeah, so the core is really about how there isn’t a story until a character wants something. You know, because, and one thing I want to say as well quickly is backstory is incredibly important.

But it’s called backstory, because it stays in the back, you know, informs a lot of forward motion and bits a bit will come through, but don’t think that everything you put in backstory needs to come out, you know, it’s serious, never killed. It’s just helped you get to where you are.

And yes, so the core is really about the things you need in order to have a story begin, and your character needs a goal or an intention or a desire, you know, but what they need something. So whether it’s, I want to find a portal home, I want to get better.

I want to win that trophy, you know, I want to win this race. I want to be the most powerful person in the world, whatever it is, they want something that we go, Okay, I know what is motivating what you’re doing. And, and then it’s about understanding is sort of turning into a two year old that likes to ask the question, why a lot.

So you start to think, Well, why do they want that. And that’s when you start to get deeper. So you then go, oh, it comes from an emotion. You know, it comes from something they feel they need to fulfill.

So if I want to, if I want to win a competition, it’s because maybe I’ve never felt like a winner in the eyes of my parents or peers. And this for me is the ultimate validation.

And we all know every good story requires a lesson a lot of time and it’s actually that, you know, I actually need to just appreciate myself it’s not about winning this thing. It’s about understanding that you know, loving myself enough to not have to seek validation in other people, you know, in that stuff.

I’ll probably lose that race, or, you know, lose that competition.

So it’s understanding what your character wants, why they want it, and what perhaps informs that desperation that they need to overcome. Because, you know, they need to be desperate for this thing in order to make bad decisions to try and get towards it.

And if that makes sense, in a very wofully way, that’s the kind of thing I’m going for and because people talk about just writing that first draft, but I think that’s fine. But you need to be informed when you do that, you know, that the story doesn’t begin to your character, till we meet them, and then see that they want something. There’s no story without a pursuit, right.

You know, otherwise, it’s just a lovely conversation, probably. Which is still nice. But that’s what I think is thinking for your reader. Yeah, no, exactly.

But I think that that’s the kind of core and the flesh on the bones is everything else about your character from their voice, how they project themselves in the world.

And that’s all informed by you know, their their worldview, which is informed by how they grew up, probably, you know, what, how does what class they are, inform how they feel about themselves, and other classes, their race, their religion, way, everything, you know, everything about us my height, or, you know, I’m quite skinny.

So that informs how confident I am in certain situations, or when I was growing up how I couldn’t speak to anyone I fancied.

Because I was like, I’m just getting ready to go to the gym loans. You know, everything about us informs how we behave in certain situations.

And that’s the flesh on the bones. Because it helps you to fully to turn that character because while the core is essential, it’s still quite in the construct of a structure, it’s, it’s the functional stuff, you know, the flesh on the bones is what helps that character to stand out a little bit further.

And it helps you inform the world around them a little bit more, you start to go Okay, then this is their friend who and you start to see the dynamics between them because of their worldviews because you don’t want characters that will have the same worldview or reinforce the same things.

This helps you to create that difference.

 Emma Dhesi  32:02

Okay. And, and and then bringing the character to life. Yes, flesh the bones out, how do we bring them to life?

Mark Boutros  32:11

So bring them to life is getting them running, you know, getting them in there, and, and getting them getting them moving in your story and, and I and there’s a load of kind of how to write character descriptions, something I’ve been appalling at.

So it’s just to kind of help, you know, it’s that thing of help us to create that image of them as well. I think it was the example of the dude in The Big Lebowski that I love, the description of which is sort of a 50 ish man in Bermuda shorts. Is that the dairy case, looking at the labels, so you get a sense of who he is.

And they say, his rumpled look suggests a manner, in which casualness runs deep. And I was like, that’s great. You’ve not told me his face size, or his eye color or anything, but you’ve helped me project this image brilliantly.

And of this person based on a description of, you know, his rumpled, looking fine, and what that suggests emotionally about him. And also in that bring your character life, it’s about putting them in situations in your story.

So I get people to put their characters and situations such as with three other characters, where maybe there’s been a car accident, or they’re stuck in a lift, so you can see how they all act, essentially, just getting them moving, really that savoring life and thinking about, you know, thinking about how they might behave in certain situations.

So it’s before you before you set them off into the story. Let them have a little mini story with some people. We can see…

 Emma Dhesi  33:37

I love that I love that third one, actually the you know, bringing them to life and getting them moving, and kind of highlighting how you can do that without saying they had grown here and bro nine, yeah, description, but that essence of the person excitedly going underneath. And I really like that.

 Mark Boutros  33:55

Yeah, it tells you so much about someone. It’s like, I love that. And it really stuck with me. And you know, I think describing things like hair and eyes and all that’s fine slowly through something.

And also in context, like, if I’m a character, for example, looking on a dating website, then that’s where in the point of view of your character, that stuff would make sense. Perhaps because you’re looking at those physical attributes you’re not, you’re not going to tell that someone has a casual baby.

We’re not going to see them in action doing something, perhaps. But yeah, that’s that’s kind of what I like to try and do with my character descriptions now is to give them that the essence ultimately, as you put it, so I might have to update my book and put essence

 Emma Dhesi  34:41

I’d like an acknowledgement, of course. So for your own work, and when you’re helping your students do you do you? Do you want them?

Do you want yourself and your students to have all of this information up front to know this before they start writing? or do some of these things come about as as you’re writing and getting to know the story and the character better.

 Mark Boutros  35:03

I think I try and tailor my approach to be bespoke to their kind of needs, which is hard in a class of 20. But I have some groups of four. But really I say, like, start with the, what’s your idea?

Because your idea is either I want to write a sitcom set on a space station, and you go, all right, well, you’ve got no characters there.

So we’ve got to get into that or you go, I want to write about someone who accidentally run someone over and is now experiencing grief and you go, well, then you’ve got a character.

So I will always bring it to character wherever they start, and start drilling into those questions. So I’ll get them to the core. Before they write anything, some people want to rush and write, but I genuinely won’t let them until they can tell me enough about their characters such as, what’s their goal? What emotionally is driving them towards this?

And why? And what what do you think? Is the floor stopping them from achieving this? What do they need to overcome in themselves? And what’s at stake is very important. If there are no stakes and a story, why did we, you know, if your character doesn’t feel the pressure.

Why will we won’t either, so I make sure they have those things in place and, and sometimes some of the, the flesh on the bone stuff will that, you know, they might want to write quickly, I’ll let them go a little bit, and then go, Okay, now, I don’t really know this character at all, we need to do some more time on their backstory. So I try and get him to do everything. But people get agitated. And some people learn through writing a little bit.

So sometimes it’s a process that works in tandem. But it really is each to the each individual. But sometimes you’ll think they want to rush because they’re scared to do that development.

So if it’s out of fear, that’s one thing, if it’s out of excitement, maybe I’ll let it run a little bit, then pull them back. At least they’ll know there’s a safe, there’s some safe space to come back to if they know they need to do more work.

They know it’s prepared, as well. But everyone’s a bit different. Like I’ve done it where I’ve had a very clear character with my head, and no story in mind in terms of where it might go at the end. And then I’ve run with it a little bit just to get a sense of it.

So it’s, it’s, it’s kind of chicken and egg sometimes. But I think you need to know what your characters what your characters goal is, before you send them any wax. Otherwise, where are they going?

They’re just yeah, so I do try and drum that into people. But they don’t always want to do that. Because it’s not as fun as writing writings to fund it.

 Emma Dhesi  37:20

Yeah, yeah. Yes, I think I’m one of the ones who just jumps in with a bit much excitement. And then there’s a lot to go back. fill in the gaps along the way. So yeah, I’m definitely one of those. Gosh, I’m just watching the tanks.

I think keeping keeping you talking. Before we kind of move towards wrapping up, I’d love it if you could share with us. Some of them are common mistakes you see new writers in particular making when it comes to creating their characters.

Mark Boutros  37:49

Yeah, of course, it will be that the character is too passive. So they won’t be driving any of the narrative, their goal. You know, there’s, there’s no threat to them, either, is one, there’s nothing at stake for them.

They’re not, they’re just I mean, I’m trying to find the right word for it, they’re just not particularly original in any way, you know, I have not get a sense that the voice isn’t coming through in them. They feel like a stock type essentially.

So somewhat, because a common thing that happens is people go Okay, we, it familiarity helps people, but it’s also a danger, where they go Okay, so that’s sort of Joey from friends, and you go fine. But now what’s the fresh thing we’re going to put on that?

So you know, is have I seen this character before is a weakness.

And then I’ll suggest things like what have you thought about flipping the gender of this character, or exploring what this character might be like, if they’re from a different background, trying to see, you know, trying to basically broaden the horizons of that biter, essentially and sometimes it helps if they do a bit more research, research is a beautiful thing that I used to hate but it can help a lot.

 Emma Dhesi  39:00

How do you how do you encourage your students to research character?

 Mark Boutros  39:04

Amm I find out what they’re writing about? So for example, someone I, I, one of my students is writing about a drag artists and but they have no experience in that world knows that. Well. Authenticity is important today, if you’re representing a group you’re not part of, you need to talk to that person.

So they’ll approach some people who are probably on ripples, drag race, and I’m sure they’ll be willing to chat and then they can talk about talk to them and say, I’m writing a story about this kind of thing.

What were your experiences, like, because we all have our own biases, you know, it’s everything is based on what we’ve been exposed to, and what we’ve read about. So by talking to someone who lives that life, it’s wonderful a TV project I’m working on at the minute is based on a true story.

And we’re talking to the son of one of the people were writing about to find out about his life and what growing up in that area was like, you’ll find it enriches your character so much more and the story by doing that.

So take the time to The research but I understand you know, we’re all in a rush to get something done and out there, so that it can hopefully help us towards the next thing but yeah, fine, you know it’s another because it’s just all these things I’m saying I’m sure people they’re going.

So that’s more time and more time and more time.

 Emma Dhesi  40:18

I think that I can imagine as well a number of listeners kind of thing. Because a lot of writers are introverts. And so that kind of idea of putting yourself out and saying to someone, I’m a writer, this is what I’m writing, would you be willing to help me? Yeah.

People will say no, often people will say yes, but it’s many writers.

 Mark Boutros  40:37

A lot of people like sharing their experience and kind of flattered to be approached, I approached someone who worked on a body farm to ask him about how decomposing worked, which is grim.

And yeah. But you know, is it some people will say, No, or some people will, will will, we’ll ignore the email. But I mean, part of being a writer is rejection, isn’t it, we get used to it. And also, you’re just putting yourself out to one person in a way, it’s not like you’re putting it out into the entire world.

So I’d say, Be brave be, you know, put yourself on the line with that stuff. Because the benefits that the positive that can happen is far better than the negative, which is someone saying, No, ultimately, I say go, No, and I don’t want you writing this story.

You know, just don’t give that much information about what you’re right. Did I just say, I’m writing about someone who works in this field, or I’m writing about someone who’s been through this experience.

And rather than going, here’s my story, this is what it’s about, unless I ask, then it’s up to you.

But you don’t want to give too much away, because you also want them to talk freely, without having their minds framed in something in particular, you know, we don’t have our questions, but let them speak freely is ultimately the the lesson there.

 Emma Dhesi  41:46

Oh, good advice. Thank you. That’s really good advice. And I think your point about authenticity is very important that you’re right in this day. And age is one of those key things that everyone’s looking for.

So doing your research. I love it. So tell us what you are working on. Now. You mentioned a couple of things. But what say what’s kind of taking up your time right now.

Mark Boutros  42:06

So I’m finishing the third book, with the editor. I’m writing this sort of dark comedy thriller about a married couple who decide they’re going to get divorced, but then accidentally run someone over.

And now they’re stuck together, because they have to work on how to sort this out. So it’s really about how shared experience may or may not bring them back together. So I don’t I might, I might be doing that to see if if Kindle Vela emerges in the UK, I’m preparing that for that.

So I’m thinking in terms of that one. And TV wise, I wrote on a children’s sitcom that may be coming back for a second series, we don’t know yet. They’ve been putting feelers out there and I’m working on a true story, which I can’t say a lot about, kind of NDA about it.

But it’s a true story. about something that happens in the 80s. That was a bit of a phenomenon. And I’m going we’re going to go and meet the son in a couple of weeks. But that should be very exciting. I’m annoyed.

I can’t say more about it. Because then it just sounds really boring. I’m working on a thing. I can’t say anything about great. Yeah, so that’s, that’s kind of what I’m doing. I don’t really have time for much else. I’d like to write a standalone fantasy, at some point that I’ve been thinking about for about five years.

But that’ll, that’ll be next year, if anything. Yeah. You know how it is? good intent on so many intentions of doing things but yeah, not not the time to do at all.

 Emma Dhesi  43:33

No, no. But listen, where can our listeners find out more about you online and learn more about how you how you help writers and your own fiction too.

 Mark Boutros  43:45

Thank you, this on on my my website, which is www.mark-boutros.com.

I have a blog there and people can contact me that easily. I’m not on Twitter. It got to shouty for me. I’m on Instagram, I think at Mark Boutros rights or en boutrous rights. And that’s pretty much it.

I mean, I don’t I’m not big on Facebook. I’m not very active on Facebook. But those are the two places really, if you like pictures of pigeons, that’s Instagram. Otherwise, my websites are the best place.

 Emma Dhesi  44:15

Fantastic. I’ll link to both. Well, Mark, thank you so much for your time, I could have chatted for a lot longer as just time constraints done it. Thank you very much for your time.

 Mark Boutros  44:25

Thank you for having me. It’s been lovely chatting to you.

 Emma Dhesi  44:27

Pleasure. 

Thanks for sticking around to the end of my interview with Mark. Now, if you would like the opportunity of getting your hands on a free copy of either Heroes of Hastovia book one, which is Mark’s as Fantasy Series, book one, or the craft of character, which is how you can learn to get to the core of your character, flesh out the bones of your character, and make sure that they are moving actively in your story, then I invite you to go over to Emmadhesi.com/MarkBoutros.

So that’s emmadhesi.com/MarkBoutros is where you’ll find the links so that you can win yourself a copy of either Heroes of Hastovia book one, or The craft of character. And if you enjoy the books, don’t forget to leave a review for mark on his Amazon page. Happy reading

Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you find that helpful and inspirational.

Now, don’t forget to come on over to facebook and join my group, turning readers into writers. It is especially for you if you are a beginner writer who is looking to write their first novel.

If you join the group, you will also find a free cheat sheet there called three secret hacks to write with consistency.

So go to emmadhesi.com/turning readers into writers.

Hit join. Can’t wait to see you in there. All right.

Thank you. Bye bye.

If this interview with Mark Boutros was useful, you’ll love:

• Navigating and co-writing with Autumn J Birt & Jesper Schmidt – EMMA DHESI
• Healing trauma through narrative with Nadia Colburn – EMMA DHESI
• World building with Fantasy writer Stephanie BwaBwa – EMMA DHESI

Emma Dhesi

Emma writes women’s fiction. She began writing seriously while a stay at home mum with 3 pre-school children.

By changing her mindset, being consistent and developing confidence, Emma has gone from having a collection of handwritten notes to a fully written, edited and published novel.

Having experienced first-hand how writing changes lives, Emma now helps beginner writers find the time and confidence to write their first novel.

Writing emotional scenes with Hannah Bauman

Emma Dhesi  00:00

Hello, I’m Emma Dhesi and welcome to another episode of turning readers into writers. If you’re brand new here, welcome and here’s what you need to know. This is a community that believes you are never too old to write your first novel, no matter what you’ve been up to until now, if you’re ready to write your book, I’m ready to help you reach the end, I focus on helping you find the time and confidence to begin your writing journey, as well as the craft and skills you need to finish the book.

Each week I interview debut authors, editors and industry experts to keep you motivated, inspired, and educated on all things writing, editing, and publishing. If you want to catch up, head on over to emmadhesi.com, where you’ll find a wealth of information and tools to help you get started.

Before we dive in, this week’s episode is brought to you by my free cheat sheet 30 Top Tips to find time to write. In this guide, I give you 30 ways that you can find time to write in the small gaps that appear between the various errands and tasks and responsibilities that you have in your day to day life. I know you might be thinking that you don’t have any time to spare.

But I can guarantee these top tips will give you writing time you didn’t think you had. If you thought writing always involved a pen and paper or a keyboard. Think again. If you thought you needed at least an hour at a time to write your manuscript. I help you reframe that, you won’t be disappointed.

Get your free copy of 30 Top Tips to find time to write by going to emmadhesi.com/30TopTips.

Okay, let’s dive in to today’s episode.

Hannah Bauman loves helping writers polish their stories and get published. She’s been obsessed with stories since childhood and insisted she’d grow up to be an author. In high school, she actually enjoyed analysing assigned readings. But it was when she got to university she discovered her true calling: editing.

She majored in English with a specialisation in editing, writing, and media. Following graduation, she completed a graduate-level certification in editing and publishing. That led her to my current career: editing for writers and over the past eight years has honed her skills through formal education, internships, corporate editing gigs, and freelance work.

For Hannah, the best thing about freelance editing is holding her clients’ published books in her hands!

So let’s find out what she can tell us about writing emotional scenes. Let’s see what tips she’s got. Well, thank you, Hannah. Thank you for joining me today. I’m really pleased to have you on the show.

Hannah Bauman  02:51

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here and talk about writing.

Emma Dhesi  02:56

A Pleasure, a pleasure. So I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about you and your journey to where you are now.

Hannah Bauman  03:03

Sure. So I’m Hannah Bauman. I am a book editor by day and a fiction writer by night. I started like a lot of writers, I always had an interest in writing stories from when I was very little.

And I always loved, you know, reading and fantasy books. And I would play out my fantasy books with my friends in the backyard and all of that growing up. So I think it’s always been a natural path for me. I took a little deviation in high school where I thought I might want to be an astrophysicist.

But I quickly learned that even though I was good at calculus, I hate it. You know, I’m sure as many people find math is not fun. So when I got to college, I went back to my roots of writing and my interest in that.

And through my coursework, I kind of stumbled into editing as a career and a skill set and just absolutely fell in love with it. So, yeah, since 2011, I’ve been editing in professional capacities.

 Emma Dhesi  04:02

So that’s, um, so a question I would have for you then because we hear a lot about how, you know, writing a first draft is one set of skills. revising and editing is another set of skills. Yes, you find kind of swapping between the two is that Yeah, how do you how do you do it?

 Hannah Bauman  04:23

Yeah, it’s it’s so funny. That’s something that I still have to work on for myself. Like it’s a it’s something that I have to practice daily.

Because it’s so hard. And I think I hear this a lot from clients, right? That it’s so hard to go from writing to editing or as you’re writing to stop yourself from editing.

It’s either one problem or the other. So it’s just I have to think about, you know, your first draft is your first draft. It’s supposed to be messy. That’s the creative process. It does not have to be anywhere close to done.

It’s about getting Getting all your ideas out, getting them on paper, kind of building the, like the skeleton of your story or the foundation, you know, if you want to compare it to a house and then editing, if we go with the house metaphor that’s like, where you paint the walls and where you can, you know, decorate, and things like that.

Do just for all my type A writers out there just know it’s a process and you can just go step by step.

 Emma Dhesi  05:28

Yeah, I do hear that from a number of people that just gotta tweak it. Got to tweak that as I go along. I can’t go on until I’ve fixed that bits. That one line that one?

 Hannah Bauman  05:39

Yeah. Yeah, with with the draft that I’m working on right now for my writing. My rule for myself is I’m allowed to self edit it only after I write the whole chapter. And then I have to let it sit until the next day.

That’s how I have found my balance. And I really want to go back and edit that sentence, and I need to push through the drafting. So maybe that’ll help somebody.

 Emma Dhesi  06:03

Yeah, you get tough with yourself?

 Hannah Bauman  06:05

 I do. Yeah, I have to sit down with myself.

 Emma Dhesi  06:09

So with your editor hat on, yep. What kind of books do you work on with your clients? Do you have a preference at all?

 Hannah Bauman  06:17

Yeah, so I’ve pretty much specialized in fantasy science fiction and romance books. They’re what I love to read what I love to write what I love to edit, so I know them like the back of my hand.

But I also work on select nonfiction that’s kind of on a project by project basis. You know, part of my work as an editor and a writing coach has to do with, you know, teaching and writing nonfiction.

So, you know, if I think I can help someone with a nonfiction project, I’ll take it on, if I don’t think so I’ll recommend them to another editor. But yeah, I mostly focus on the sci fi, fantasy and romance.

And that’s for middle grade readers through adult readers. I don’t edit children’s books.

 Emma Dhesi  07:02

Okay. Okay. And for the romance, are you? Will you do any romance as well? Or do you stick to?

 Hannah Bauman  07:10

Yep, I will do pretty much anything, as long as it’s, you know, all consensual, and the romance.

That’s where I draw the line. But yeah, I’ve edited everything from clean through, not so clean.

 Emma Dhesi  07:23

So sci fi, and in particular fantasy, they tend to be on the bigger side. So like I write contemporary women’s fiction, it’s very kind of, you know, generally between 70 and 80,000 words. So it doesn’t take that long for my editor to go through it.

But for those who are writing maybe more epic, and stories, what’s what’s on average, kind of just to manage expectations there, you know, how long does it take to read through a manuscript and, and then meet the comments on it for?

 Hannah Bauman  07:59

So that’s gonna vary a little bit from editor to editor.

But I’d say a good rule of thumb is to expect at least six to eight weeks for one round of editing. I usually take a little bit longer, but that’s because I read through manuscripts twice before I send it back to the author, just to make sure I’ve been as thorough as I possibly can.

So like, right now I have a Oh gosh, how many words it’s a bout 180,000 words. So it’s definitely fits in the definition of epic.

That one is going to I’m doing a developmental edit, which is like story editing, you know, for plot and character arcs and all of that. That’s going to take me about 12 weeks.

Emma Dhesi  08:43

Okay. Okay. Yeah. So be patient, those who are doing the epic stories.

Hannah Bauman  08:47

Yeah, be patient. And I think also reframe it as an opportunity to either start working on a different draft, you know, if you have like a sequel that you want to start working on, or just to take some time for yourself, and like, go do something else.

That’s fun, right? We all need a break. And, you know, while your books if your editor just, you know, go drink some coffee and watch TV, and that, you know, whatever you want to do

Emma Dhesi  09:10

Hold it, refresh, refilling your creative well.

Hannah Bauman  09:14

Yeah, exactly. Yeah and yeah, go read another book, books by your favorite authors. That’s, it’s a really good time to take a break.

Emma Dhesi  09:22

That you mentioned that just before, but I wonder if you could let us know what kind of what services you do offer You mentioned structural edits there.

Hannah Bauman  09:29

Yep. Yep. So I do two different types of structural edits. There’s the developmental edit, which is very, like nitty gritty in the weeds, you know, kind of seen by seeing tiny little detailed edits. And then there’s also a critique, which is very high level big picture.

That generally takes less time but generally cost less money. So if you’re on a budget, or if you’ve already had, you know, a few critique partners and beta readers, go through your story, that’s always good.

That option. And then there’s also copy editing, which is, you know, grammar, spelling, punctuation. And there’s also so it’s funny, depending on whose website you look at for different editors, they’re going to have slightly different definitions for these.

But there’s also line editing, which is basically a very heavy copy, edit. So I personally just combine the two into one service, because you always need a bit of both. It just depends on where you are the story, you know, some paragraphs need more help than others.

But some people might, you know, separate them. And that’s also fine. And then I do proofreading, which is just, you know, cleaning up any final errors slipped through the cracks? Yeah.

 Emma Dhesi  10:46

A full service there.

 Hannah Bauman  10:48

Yeah, full service. Yep.

 Emma Dhesi  10:50

Well, they’re one of the reasons I was super keen to chat to you is not only just to find out about your editing services, but I’d picked up on a blog post, you’d written recently about writing emotional scenes.

And this is something I know a lot of people are keen to understand more and improve upon to help with their, the depth of their story to help get in underneath the skin of their characters as well. So I guess I wanted to start off with the basics and ask you, why is it important to have those emotional scenes?

 Hannah Bauman  11:24

Yeah, it’s, it’s something that every writer I’ve worked with, either wants to work on that or needs to work on that I think that’s a universal experience. But, you know, think about, you know, books you read, or movies you watch or TV shows you consume.

Every story at its core is about some kind of human experience and the things that we go through in life and we want to have that connection with at least one character, usually multiple characters but we want to feel that with them and experience it with them and empathize with them, and maybe even learn something about ourselves along the way.

Yeah, you do that with you do that with emotion?

 Emma Dhesi  12:06

Oh, yeah, it’s interesting. I can think about when I kind of write my own in my own very, when it gets towards the end, and you’ve got the big kind of emotional scene, I tend to judge on whether I make myself cry. If I’m able to make myself cry, then I think you’re on the right track here. This is this is going somewhere.

 Hannah Bauman  12:26

Yeah, I think that’s a really good measure. And I always tell my clients, like when I’m reading their manuscripts, if there’s a scene that really strikes me, I’m always like, Oh, this was, you know, so good. It made me tear up or, you know, laugh even, you know, it can always be a positive emotion as well.

 Emma Dhesi  12:41

Oh, that’s music to a writer’s ears, isn’t it? Yeah. Yeah. Now, are emotional things of the appropriate to all stories do you think? Because I was thinking about thrillers or like action adventure stories? Do they also need to have emotions as well?

 Hannah Bauman  12:57

I think they do. Think about, like, you know, the Marvel movies with like Captain America and everybody. Just because this was a show that my husband and I watched recently, but the Falcon and the Winter Soldier that came out on Disney plus, that show was about overcoming trauma, accepting who you are.

All kinds of things like that. And if that’s not an emotional experience, I don’t know what is. And you can have that as you go on these, you know, crazy epic adventures. I think it would be dishonest to say that people don’t experience emotions on on journeys like that.

So I think they’re appropriate no matter what, they might not always be some, you know, huge scene where everyone’s crying and all of that but, you know, we experience a gamut of emotions in our life, no matter what the scenario is.

Interview with Hannah Bauman

Emma Dhesi  13:51

Yeah. Yeah, that’s for sure. That’s for sure. So I wonder if you could talk us through talk our listeners through some of your kind of key key tips for either writing, either writing seen in the first place, or are managing to kind of delve down a few layers and give it that extra extra oomph?

 Hannah Bauman  14:10

Yeah, so one thing that I find pretty consistently is writers relying solely on body language when they’re trying to convey emotion. I think body language is very important because we do speak with our physical bodies, and, you know, our posture and the things that we do.

But I find that people either aren’t thinking about going deeper than that, or they’re afraid of too much narration right, because we’re told show don’t tell so often. And this is, this is where writing advice.

You know, it’s one of those things you have to take with a grain of salt. So if you’re trying to show anxiety, for example, you might reference the butterflies in someone’s stomach or their sweaty palms or their racing heart and while those things are all great without context of why they feel that way, they kind of just feel like flat and stagnant.

Right? So that’s one thing that I always challenge writers to do is beyond showing some body language and how they’re feeling physically delve into how they’re feeling emotionally.

And you can do that in two different ways, main ways. The first would be just through straight narrative. You know, she couldn’t believe that, you know, he said that to her. Or you can do that with, like, internal dialogue.

You know, you often see that in italics, and that she thought tag. But those are both different types of what’s called interiority, which is basically just exploring the character’s mind as you go through the story with them.

 Emma Dhesi  15:52

Mm hmm. Oh, cool. Yeah. And so don’t rely solely on body language, but give that body language some context.

And and don’t be afraid to do a little bit of telling in the text. Okay.

 Hannah Bauman  16:05

Yeah, I did. I wrote a blog post earlier this year about why show don’t tell should actually be show and tell.

The because, right, it’s one of those things where if it’s all imagery and all body language, if it’s zero context, people can’t read between the lines too much you have to give them a nugget here and there of of those experiences and what your characters thinking and feeling.

 Emma Dhesi  16:29

Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s something I’ve slowly been realizing myself. I’ve been sort of focusing very much on the showing the showing the showing. And then when I went back to do a bit of book analysis, I was realizing, oh, wait a minute.

Yeah, we need to Berta both of this. Yeah, there needs to be hadn’t thought of it as concisely as you had. But I was realizing, yes, this needs to have, I need to guide my reader a little bit to keep them keep them moving forward.

 Hannah Bauman  16:55

Exactly. And readers usually really appreciate getting that insight into the character’s mind. You know, the internal journey is just as important as what’s going on outside in the external world.

 Emma Dhesi  17:10

So that’s a good tip. So what other tips do you have for?

 Hannah Bauman  17:13

Oh, gosh, let me let me think. So I would say to one thing that’s important is making it as authentic as you can in in the scene. So what I mean by that is, usually it needs to be more nuanced than you might think, like a character who’s going to shout, you know, Oh, woe is me, Woe is me.

And they were sobbing and screaming, and like all these like, very heavy emotional words. That might be accurate in some situations, like, there are certainly situations where people have a very extreme emotional reaction.

But a lot of the times when we’re sad, or when we’re having hard conversations, think about how you react in real life, or your friends or your family, I think about how subtle those emotions you should be are you know, it also is going to depend on the times thinking about people, you know, in real life is like a model for just to how that works.

Think about your character, and if it’s gonna fit with them. If it’s like very out of left field, in very out of character, personality, your readers are going to, they’re going to stop and they’re going to go that doesn’t seem realistic from you know, I’ve met them over these 50,000 previous words, and then all of a sudden, they do this 180 that’s going to draw your readers out of the story.

And that is not what you want. Especially in emotional scenes, because you want to be experiencing it with them and not have to stop and and figure out what happened.

Emma Dhesi  18:46

Yeah, okay. Like that. And, and I know we hear a lot about not using cliche, but other times when actually a cliche will just fit the bill that sometimes that’s the only thing that will work.

 Hannah Bauman  19:01

Yeah, I say like, if it’s going to work, just go ahead and do it. It’s the same advice people give on adverts right. Like, oh, you need to cut every adverb or you need to cut every instance of the word that you’ll see.

Got advice online a lot. But the one thing that I’ve learned with editing is there’s always a gray area, there’s never any absolute.

So if, like, if your character gets a lump in their throat, and they can’t speak past it, is that kind of a cliche image, sure, but it’s also very relatable, like that’s happened to be many times in my life as an emotional person.

So just just use it if it’s if it’s gonna fit the bill, don’t be afraid of you know, this is too cliche or whatever, just go for it. And you can always change it later if you decide to.

 Emma Dhesi  19:49

Yeah, yeah, because I guess there’s also there’s that other danger, and I know I’ve done this before I would have tried to cover it’s been trying to think of something so original and out the vault.

That sounds just ridiculous. Yeah, I guess that’s another thing to be just mindful of.

 Hannah Bauman  20:07

Yeah, I would, I would definitely agree. You know, these things are well known for a reason.

They’re usually universal. I wouldn’t use, you know, every single cliche bit of body language you can think of, for a certain reaction. But if you want to use one, like, I think that’s absolutely fine.

 Emma Dhesi  20:25

Mm, cool. And so yeah, so we do want to hit our readers on the head with too much emotion, like, having them be out of control almost.

But yeah, think about the nuance, and how we can be a little bit more subtle. And I guess in that way, it’s less can be more sometimes,

 Hannah Bauman  20:48

I think, so I think less can absolutely be more and you can play with it too. You know, if, if a character responds less in a certain emotional scene, but in the scene after when they’re evolving, maybe that’s when they actually react to what they just experienced, right?

You kind of you’re gonna see the tension of a, why didn’t they really react to that and that scene, and then all of a sudden, like, Oh, I see that wanted to be alone. You know, you’ll probably need to provide some context for that. Or maybe it’s part of their personality that they don’t show emotion in front of others.

There’s all these different moving pieces with emotion and how you can play with it. So don’t be afraid to take the emotion out of the scene where you think they would react and put it somewhere else.

 Emma Dhesi  21:36

Okay, okay. Yeah, and Okay, making sure it fits with the character.

And then we’ve learned to that sometimes it’s okay to use a cliche and then maybe the other extreme of that is don’t be too outrageous with your similes, or your analogies when you’re trying to be different and come up with something original.

 Hannah Bauman  21:56

Yeah, that’s another instance of you’re going to pull the reader out of the story, because they’re going to be trying to figure out what exactly it is you want to say. You know, you don’t want to make them pause too much.

 Emma Dhesi  22:08

No, something I battled with a bit is when I’m writing dialogue in an emotional scene, how, how can I kind of convey that they might be frustrated, they might be angry, they might be upset, they might be frightened without using capital letters or exclamation points or seeing he or she yelled, how can we can kind of how can we convey those emotions without absolutely stipulating them?

Hannah Bauman  22:42

Yeah, that’s a really good question. Um, so one thing that I can think of is emphasis on a certain word, right?

Like, if you’re in an argument with somebody, there might be an emphasis on a key word, and you can italicize that that could help. That clues the reader into like, how the character is saying it, you kind of you know, Oh, okay. They they really need business now or, I do think you mentioned using a verb like yelled, I think that’s okay.

Sometimes, you know, said and asked are typically the invisible dialogue tags, we kind of just skip over them and ignore them, which helps with your flow. But sometimes you need to clue readers into how someone is saying something and there’s no better way to do it sometimes with a simple verb.

So what I would say for that is yes, it’s okay sometimes, but if you go back and you’re rereading a scene, and you have like, yelled, shouted, cried, exclaimed, replied, all in a row. That’s when you need to start cutting some of those out and think of different ways.

So you might mix and then some body language to show their frustration in place of one of those verbs or in another place maybe for exclaimed, you could use an exclamation mark, then that wouldn’t be overdoing it, but then you could cut explained.

And it’s about that nuance, and that variation, instead, I think they’re all good tools. You just don’t want to use them all at the same time or to repetitively. Yeah, yeah. Does that make sense? Does that answer your question?

 Emma Dhesi  24:13

Yeah. I think it’s, you know, it’s okay to use those those. Those adverbs, but just not excessively. Yeah, really use them and kind of almost keeping them for emphasis, you know, to really hit home with a particular point.

 Hannah Bauman  24:31

Exactly. Yeah, writing is all about balance. They’re all valid tools you Well, except maybe all capital letters. That one’s very hard on their readers eyes. But otherwise, they’re all valid tools.

You just want variation and see what flows the best. And I don’t know if anyone on your show has ever mentioned this, but in Microsoft Word, you can actually have the computer read aloud to you.

So if that’s something that your listeners might be interested in that I I find as an editor, I use this all the time, you can then literally hear how the scene sounds. And of course it is a robotic voice. So it like it lacks a little bit of motion that an audio book might.

But you get the idea you can then you can hear the repetitiveness of certain things that your eye might stop catching after a while. Yes, that’s a wish points. What a great yeah. Oh, yeah, I love that one. When I do the I mentioned earlier that I do two reads of every manuscript.

On my second read, I always had the computer read stuff out loud to me, because you can catch even more that way.

 Emma Dhesi  25:33

So whilst you’re listening, are you reading it at the same time so that you’re following or your eyes closed? Listening?

 Hannah Bauman  25:40

No, I’ve I follow along with the text. I read it as I listen. But yeah, that’s, you know, that’s something that many editors I know he is, and I think it’s a really good way to kind of check your own work.

 Emma Dhesi  25:53

Mm hmm. I think I need to do that that’s a great one.

 Hannah Bauman  25:56

Or have someone else read it out loud to you. If you’re comfortable with that. That’s, you know, another easy way.

 Emma Dhesi  26:02

You might have to pay them with chocolate cake afterwards. Yeah. Right.

So I wonder if you would have one last tip for our listeners, before we kind of move on and find out a little bit more about your stories.

Hannah Bauman  26:16

Yeah, I think one last thing that people should keep in mind when they want to include emotion in their story is there needs to be a built up to it.

Just having like, adventure, adventure adventure, and then all of a sudden, like this massive fight, that there the groundwork wasn’t laid the conflict, bricks weren’t laid for that path. You know, you have to build up to it.

That’s how conflict works in real life most of the time. Yeah, everything in the story, you have to keep building up to each piece. So just, you know, don’t throw emotion in there.

Because you heard this episode and thought, Oh, I need an emotional scene. Make sure it fits with your story and what your characters are going through.

 Emma Dhesi  27:00

Okay. Oh, and so could an emotional scene like that? Could that be one of either a story’s turning points like a pinch point in a story, or even perhaps one of the kind of obstacles that the character is overcoming?

 Hannah Bauman  27:14

Absolutely. And this is where, you know, subplots can come into that one of the subplots might be some kind of conflict with another character, maybe their friend, maybe they’re disagreeing on something.

And at some point, something triggers that fight. And then they have to make a decision of where to go from there. That’s how stories move forward is there’s always a conflict, a decision, and then their action on that decision.

And then the cycle repeats itself. See how you can use an emotional scene for just about anything as long as it makes sense?

 Emma Dhesi  27:50

I Like that, Yeah. Oh, well, thank you so much for that Hannah. Some really, for our listeners, they I really appreciate that.

I know it’s a it’s part of their ongoing learning of the craft, isn’t it to get things right?

 Hannah Bauman  28:04

Yeah, just keep you know, keep practicing and have fun. And if it doesn’t work out the first time, just revise the scene until you get it right.

 Emma Dhesi  28:11

Yes, that’s what revision is for, get that dirty first draft down. And then you can revise Exactly.

So I wanted to loop back to the beginning of our conversation, which because I don’t think I realized this from reading about you that you write your fiction in the evening, I only saw that you’re about your editorial services.

So I’d love it if you’d share with us a bit about what you raised and where you’re at in your writing career.

 Hannah Bauman  28:35

Sure. So I’ve self published two nonfiction books for creative writers. One of them is called productivity for creative writers, which is about you know, how you can be productive but find balance in your life because I think that’s very important.

The other is like a prompted writers notebook like it has questions for you know, character development and all that good stuff. But for my fiction career, I’ve been kind of stuck for a while I write. It’s on the border of young adult new adult fantasy I Oh, new adult is not really a thing.

And the traditional publishing world, as much it is, as it is and self publishing. The guy I’m working on a new adult fantasies story, hopefully a trilogy, that’s the plan. And I wrote my first draft in like three months, all the way back in 2019, for NaNoWriMo.

And then I just like, fell off the horse with everything that happened in 2020. But I’m recently getting back into it. I have an accountability partner and one of my editor friends. She and I are both fiction writers by night. So we write together and you know, we read each other’s stuff.

So that’s very helpful and I’m already about 20,000 words in and I just started working on that this month so…

 Emma Dhesi  29:54

That’s right beginning of the month.

 Hannah Bauman  29:56

Oh, no, sorry. It’s may now at the beginning of April. I always forget what day it is now.

But yeah, so I sorted that at the beginning of April of 2021. And I’m hoping to have a polished draft by maybe the end of the year, or early next year.

 Emma Dhesi  30:15

So do you find giving yourself a deadline? Do you do you like to do that for your fiction work? Or do you prefer to take it just a bit more easy with your fiction work?

 Hannah Bauman  30:23

I do like a deadline. But I kind of view it as a flexible deadline. I’m very type A. So it’s, it’s very helpful for me to have that. But I also know that there’s not really any pressure besides when I’m putting on myself.

So I think it’s helpful to, like, helpful for my own flow of writing. But if something happens, or you know, if I got sick for a week, it would be the end of the world. That’s how I view my personal deadlines.

 Emma Dhesi  30:53

Yeah, yeah. Well, good luck with that. I hope that like you, like when it’s finished and out in the world, let me know when I can I can share about it.

 Hannah Bauman  31:02

That would be awesome. Thank you.

 Emma Dhesi  31:03

What I wanted to ask you about, I hear brings up such an interesting point about you what’s in the traditional world and what’s not in the traditional world. So you mentioned there that young adults and new adults or young adult is well established.

Now, new adult, you mentioned not so much, particularly within the traditional world, can you differentiate for me what young adult is a new adult is?

 Hannah Bauman  31:29

Sure, so young adult could be anywhere from around like 14 to 18 years old, usually, for both the main characters, and the ideal audience of that author. You know, think about Late Middle School, early High School, that right before college and adulthood point is yellow tall.

And that deals with a lot of, you know, coming of age stories, finding some of your own power, figuring out who you are. New Adult is very similar, but the characters age up just a bit. So you might think, you know, like, 19, through 25.

And these are very rough numbers. No one has like a set definition. But then the story. Think about, like, when you maybe left, you know, college or any continuing education you did, what that felt like and the problems you were going through.

Some of it might be Who are you as you enter adult society, because that’s very different than when you left high school. You know, interpersonal relationships, romantic or otherwise, those are usually big themes.

Yeah, it’s just, it’s very similar to young adult but just aged up and age the problems up a little bit.

 Emma Dhesi  32:48

Gosh, I’m realizing I’ve written a couple of new adult books, then without realizing it. They never they never made it to the finished. But part of my practice manuscripts,

 Hannah Bauman  32:58

Yeah and, and the traditional world pretty much categorizes those as adults, or if they’re like, 1920, they might call them young adult.

But in the self publishing world, there is actually a pretty big readership for new adult age books, especially I find in fantasy.

That’s something people are looking for. So to anyone out there who’s writing new adult fantasy you might want to consider self publishing for for a pretty wide audience.

 Emma Dhesi  33:24

Okay. Yeah. Bonus Tip there. We’re not reading, whether you know, the computer reading to us, but what’s on the hot on the market at the moment?

 Hannah Bauman  33:34

Yeah.

 Emma Dhesi  33:35

Well, I’ve really enjoyed our conversation today. Thank you very much.

 Hannah Bauman  33:39

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.

 Emma Dhesi  33:41

A Pleasure. before we say goodbye, I’d love for you to let listeners know where they can find out more about your editing services.

 Hannah Bauman  33:48

Sure. So you can find me on Instagram at BTL editorial, and then my website is also btleditorial.com.

 Emma Dhesi  33:58

Fantastic. I’ll be sure to link to those. And I’ll also link to your books as well. should anybody want to and your nonfiction book should anybody want.

 Hannah Bauman  34:06

Awesome Thank you!

 Emma Dhesi  34:08

Well, it’s been a pleasure. I’ve really enjoyed our chat. Thank you very much.

 Hannah Bauman  34:13

Yeah, have a good day.

 Emma Dhesi  34:14

Thank you. 

Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you find that helpful and inspirational.

Now, don’t forget to come on over to facebook and join my group, turning readers into writers. It is especially for you if you are a beginner writer who is looking to write their first novel.

If you join the group, you will also find a free cheat sheet there called three secret hacks to write with consistency.

So go to emmadhesi.com/turning readers into writers.

Hit join. Can’t wait to see you in there. All right.

Thank you. Bye bye.

If this interview with Hannah Bauman was useful, you’ll love:

• Navigating and co-writing with Autumn J Birt & Jesper Schmidt – EMMA DHESI
• Healing trauma through narrative with Nadia Colburn – EMMA DHESI
• World building with Fantasy writer Stephanie BwaBwa – EMMA DHESI

Emma Dhesi

Emma writes women’s fiction. She began writing seriously while a stay at home mum with 3 pre-school children.

By changing her mindset, being consistent and developing confidence, Emma has gone from having a collection of handwritten notes to a fully written, edited and published novel.

Having experienced first-hand how writing changes lives, Emma now helps beginner writers find the time and confidence to write their first novel.

World building with Fantasy writer Stephanie BwaBwa

Emma Dhesi  00:00

Hello, I’m Emma Dhesi and welcome to another episode of turning readers into writers. If you’re brand new here, welcome and here’s what you need to know. This is a community that believes you are never too old to write your first novel, no matter what you’ve been up to until now, if you’re ready to write your book, I’m ready to help you reach the end, I focused on helping you find the time and confidence to begin your writing journey, as well as the craft and skills you need to finish the book.

Each week I interview debut authors, editors and industry experts to keep you motivated, inspired, and educated on all things writing, editing, and publishing. If you want to catch up, head on over to emmadhesi.com, where you’ll find a wealth of information and tools to help you get started.

Before we dive in, this week’s episode is brought to you by my free cheat sheet 30 Top Tips to find time to write. In this guide, I give you 30 ways that you can find time to write in the small gaps that appear between the various errands and tasks and responsibilities that you have in your day to day life.

Now you might be thinking that you don’t have any time to spare, but I can guarantee these top tips will give you writing time you didn’t think you had. If you thought writing always involved a pen and paper or a keyboard. Think again.

If you thought you needed at least an hour at a time to write your manuscript. I help you reframe that you won’t be disappointed. Get your free copy of 30 Top Tips to find time to write by going to emmadhesi.com/30TopTips.

Okay, let’s dive in to today’s episode.

BwaBwa began her journey to publishing in 2013. In 2016, her fantasy world, Elledelle, was born. In 2017 she published her first two books. Since then she’s gone on to write and publish fantasy novels centered about black angels in a supernatural world that are captivating readers all around the world

As the CEO and Founder of Bwabs Collective LLC, BwaBwa has focused her zone of genius on teaching unconventional principles to writers who like to meticulously plot, research, and organize their way through crafting their stories while also having an incredible amount of fun. 

Stephanie BwaBwa has authored YA Fantasy series: The Seraphim Resistance Prequels, and is an avid reader of fantasy and fiction. 

So let’s find out a little bit more about how you can world build with Stephanie BwaBwa.

Well, Stephanie, thank you so so much for being here with me today. I’m delighted to finally meet you and get chatting to you.

 Stephanie BwaBwa  02:52

Yes, no, I’m glad to be here. Thank you for having me.

 Emma Dhesi  02:55

A pleasure, a pleasure. Now for our listeners, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind just kind of letting us know a little bit about you and how you got to where you are today?

 Stephanie BwaBwa  03:05

Yeah, no. So hey, guys. Um, so for me, I have been a lifelong reader first, um, since I was a child. And I think for a lot of us, it starts off that way, where even in childhood, we were readers.

And I can remember, you know, I tell this story sometimes where, you know, when I was a little girl, my mom used to buy like the really big picture books. So like, for example, I had Goldilocks and three bears.

And so you could open it up and like the bears would pop up and Goldilocks would pop up and then there would be this, like, you know, like animation in the 90s in the book, right? It’s and so, um, since I was a child, I loved reading and I started off with fiction, um, especially when I got to around like nine, eight years old I remember distinctly reading the Roald Dahl books and so like twitches and Matilda, and then I got into like Judy Blume and all of these different kinds of stories that are very nostalgic for me.

And I love them so very, very much I very quickly leaned more towards like fiction, and then bit by bit I got towards fantasy, but I picked up somewhere around like nine or 10 I picked up a series of unfortunate events by Lemony Snicket, and that was like the deep dive. I fell in love with that story.

And I remember somewhere along like around there, I was like, Oh, I would love to do that one day, you know, like, I just thought they were so cool. The stories I found them hilarious, the baby was always my favorite.

And you know and then going into like a middle school years I did you know, I would write like poetry. I had like a hard time during those years and so a lot of ways for me to release was actually writing and so sometimes it would be poetry.

Sometimes I would just make up stories. Sometimes I would have them in my head. Since I would write them down. But it’s really around middle school high school years, I got into fantasy.

First I think I started off with like, I did do some epic fantasy, but a lot of it was also like urban. So I read the like, I believe it’s the Blue Bloods series.

And then like, I would read The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare, that was my favorite series. And The Mortal Instruments actually is the reason why I, I really wanted to become a writer, and I purposed in my heart that I thought, okay, one day, I’m going to do this thing, I loved that series, so very much.

And so, in 2013, finally, I decided that I wanted to write a book for actually publishing. Um, you know, throughout, you know, my childhood years into my teen years, I would write, but I didn’t really do anything seriously with it.

And I read a lot, a lot of books, you know, reading was escapism for me, especially fantasy, because you could go to a completely different world, these crazy characters, and this really awesome journey.

A lot of them were quests, and I love the plot twists, I love the characters, I love the different worlds. And I was like, wow, I want to do something like that. And so in 2013, actually, um, so for those who don’t know, you know, I am of the Christian faith. And so, I reached, I reached another low in life. And so instead of praying out loud, I started writing my prayers.

And I was writing out my prayers and poems at first, like they were just, you know, they came out that way. Mom was like, oh, my goodness, this is awesome. You should publish it. And I was like, it’s why would I do that? I don’t, I don’t know. I wasn’t really sure. I was like, okay, maybe.

Somewhere along the way, in January of 2013, not only was I writing these prayers, within, like, this character popped into my head of this girl, she’s in California, they’re not far from the Hollywood sign.

And like, I could see the neighborhood. And so I start, like doing research on like, schools in that area, and like ice cream shops, and all these different things and then I got this idea of like, oh, what have what would happen, you know, if this girl goes through, like all these different things, she’s raised in faith. And after going through these hardships, she starts to lose her faith.

And all of a sudden, this like, God, like celestial character shows up and takes her on this like trip into paradise to show her what’s on the other side of eternity, so to speak. And that was like my first journey into actually writing a fantasy novel, which actually ended up being an urban fantasy, but writing a fantasy novel for publish.

And it was really just this journey of like this girl who was raised in church, but then she like started to turn away from it. She didn’t want anything to do with that faith anymore.

And she gets this journey. And so she’s taken into this, like celestial paradise. And she sees all of these different things that she was raised with, but she didn’t believe in until she saw it with her very, her very own eyes. And then like towards the the end of the book, she’s taken all the way back to the crucifixion. And she sees it in like a real time before she’s been brought back into her worlds in California.

So it was just like, very magical, otherworldly story. And that was really my first foot, you know, my first dip into actually writing for publishing and like wanting to tell these, you know, fantastical stories and, you know, it was important to me, I mean, I love all kinds of stories. But fantasy, for some reason always stuck with me.

This ability to have this like parallel world and universal completely different characters and beings and putting a character in a situation where they can be in something totally different. But yet their condition, the condition of their heart is still very much like the human condition.

And so you can still relate to those characters, even though it’s completely fantastical world. So that’s how I got into writing lifelong reader and writer, I guess you could say, but I didn’t really start writing for publishing until 2013.

 Emma Dhesi  08:56

Wow, there’s so much in there just in that alone to kind of like unpick a little bit. So 2013 and I’m just looking at you, you look very young. So I’m guessing at 2013 you were even younger? How old were you published your first book?

 Stephanie BwaBwa  09:12

Um, so when I published my first book when I was 20? That’s a great question. 21, 22 around there around there is, I think. Remember the dates and all that was I wasn’t around there the early 20s.

 Emma Dhesi  09:28

A young but not as young as I thought you must be you. You’re aging. Well, you’re looking very. Thank you. And, but also, I’d love the year, not enough, but I appreciate that your first book came out of a difficult kind of period in your life.

And that certainly was the case for myself. I was going through a period of depression and I was journaling about it trying to figure out what was going on. And that kind of situation was brought up about brought up that idea.

Well what if what if What if, and then I could kind of bring it into my fiction. And it’s interesting, I think how sometimes a difficult time in our life that we might ordinarily add, the moment feels really insurmountable.

We don’t realize actually, that can be the trigger for something, and you have a new path for us and you challenge for us or a new new part of our life, and something good can collide to them.

 Stephanie BwaBwa  10:23

Yeah, no, I totally agree. And I Oh, I like to encourage people to lean into those times. It can be a solitary time, it can be very difficult. But so much beauty can come from ashes. And it’s one of those things where if you’re willing to let yourself face it, you can actually birth a lot of art from it.

Because at the end of the day, our characters mirror who we are, right, even though whether they are fake vampire, Angel doesn’t matter. Regardless, the story is very much a mirrors the human condition, it mirrors the human experience and hardship is part of that experience.

And there’s some darkness and there’s some, you know, loneliness and depression, and, you know, self doubt. And so characters, you know, if you’re able to go through that, is it easy, no, but it does make you better, and it makes you better for the story, because then you can go to the pages with a fresh understanding of,

Okay, this is how a character would actually face this, you know, they might take a little bit longer to process, they might react in certain ways, they might have to go through a journey where, you know, they are dealing with what’s inside.

And they’re also being affected by what’s outside. And they have to figure out how to face that, you know, and so at the end of the day, you know, our fiction and fantasy stories, they really mirror what we deal with, in reality, and it’s also a gateway for both us and our readers, to figure out how to process what we are witnessing and facing in real life through the lens of these characters in their journeys,

 Emma Dhesi  11:58

We should be said, I love that what you said there, just so much beauty can come from, from ashes. It’s very lovely. You also mentioned just there in your introduction, that you mentioned that faith is a big part of your life.

And I was kind of like, wow, as well, when you were telling us about your story.

You don’t shy away from the big things like the crucifixion and the resurrection. And so does your faith and Christianity. Is that a common theme to all your stories? And it just happened to be that that one?

 Stephanie BwaBwa  12:30

So in that one book, I love this question. So and that one book, it’s more prevalent. Because I mean, I only have like the one ideal in my head, I didn’t really and at that time, I will let me go ahead and put out this disclaimer.

So I didn’t really know what I was doing. I just knew that I had a character my you know, newbie writer right at that time. So like, I had no idea what I was doing, and not a lick or clue about story structure, and none of this stuff.

And so I was like, oh, wow, character, my head. And I’m like, I know, I want her to go to some version of heaven, you know, that I can envision in my head. And I want her to see the proof of crucifixion and I want her to come back to Earth.

Okay, cool. down, and I wrote it and like, that’s all I had. But then like, looking back in hindsight, I was like, well shoot, you know, like, I don’t know how to make this story go anywhere else. And I don’t really, there were just a lot of different elements.

I was like, Oh, this could have been so much better if I really knew what I was doing. And so faith is a huge part of my, all of my stories. Granted, you know, if you just read them as they are, even if you’re not a person of faith, it’s still an entertaining story.

And it’s so has really good values and lessons to learn from it. And you won’t necessarily be like, Oh, you can pick that out from like, the Bible or something in the books. But if you are a person of faith, like if you are a Christian, and you read the books, you’re like, oh, okay, I get where she got this from.

And so as you know, and it’s and it’s down to little things, right? So like in my Sarah from resistance prequel books, you know, the I have four different classes. So all of my characters are angels, and I have four different classes of angels in that particular world.

And one of them so there’s from the highest ones, they can like shed their physical fleshly bodies, like we would have, like mortal bodies for their actual power. So their real bodies are actually the element that they wield, whether that be fire, water, earth, anything like that.

And so, you know, the term for that is their Genesis forms. Now, if you’re not a person of faith, you’re like, Okay, well, you know, that’s cool. I mean, that’s a really interesting name. But if you are a person, if you’re like genesis for Oh, I get it, the first got it, you know, the beginning, that type of thing.

So it’s one of those things where it’s like the, you know, thread of faith is in there. If you’re not looking for it, you won’t find it, you’ll still enjoy the books. You are looking for it. You will find it and be pleased.

And so, but yeah, it is something that I weave in a lot just because I’m at the end of the day, I really want to give readers hope.

Want to give readers inspiration, I want readers to see that regardless of how dark it can be, there is always the opportunity to overcome and there’s always good at the end, you know, and I know we live in a day and age where a lot of stories are coming out, where evil tends to, like, get the last laugh, you know, for all of you Game of Thrones lovers, no shade, no tea, but you know, by all means, absolutely love it.

But, you know, for me, I’m like, your God, you know, like, like, give me some kind of hope that I can clink. Know what I mean. And so, um, I do try to leave in like, a lot of goodness, even now, granted, you know, the characters go through a lot.

The characters face a lot, like, I won’t even like hide them from you, they do deal with a lot to the point where readers are like, I want to protect these characters from you.

But, um, it’s all for a greater purpose. So, yeah, that that thread definitely does flow through the books and in and it’s good for me, because I have like that foundation point.

So I know, like, what I’m aiming for, and I kind of have an anchor when I’m writing, you know, like, what the overall purpose of the story needs to be. 

Emma Dhesi  16:14

Oh, interesting. I think there’ll be a lot of listeners who, well, I know the right number of listeners, you all who are Christian writers, as well. So there’ll be interested in that aspect of your books and how, how you bring that incorporation.

And so there’ll be interested in that. Now, we’re going to come back to your stories in just a moment. But I wanted just to ask you about the practical side, because you are your full time writer, you’re very busy, because you’re running three businesses at different times you have done and I’m sure will, again, be hosting your podcast.

And so you’ve got lots of things going on in your life.

And I wonder just how you, you balance the demands of all the things that are going on? And how also you make that switch in brain from doing one type of role to another type of role to another type of role?

 Stephanie BwaBwa  17:05

Yeah, that’s a really great question and so the first thing I will say is, and I got this from my business mentor, she says that balance is bogus. And I can’t that I want 100,000% agree. Balance is bogus. Like there, there is no such thing, right? It’s a matter of knowing in every season, what is the priority, right?

What is the goal? What is what will move the needle? What can your spirit handle at that time, right, what is important to you. And so, for example, if you are about to get married, right, you can’t turn out three, four books a year, because a lot of your focus a lot of your income is going into getting things ready for this wedding, getting things ready for, you know, your honeymoon, getting things ready for the new home that you’re about to buy, potentially, you might move all of these different things, your focus is elsewhere. And that’s okay.

Right family first. Um, however, if you are like me, for example, you’re single, you know, you’re very independent, you have a bit more time. And so you can engage Okay, what block of time Can I give to this? And what block of time Can I give to that? And the thing is, you know, at the end of the day, I know a lot of especially writers, a one because it can seem intimidating at the outset.

Right, you’re trying to write this big ol thing, you’ve not done it before. And it can feel intimidating and big. When we get intimidated, we just do nothing at all right? our, our brains are overloaded when we’re like, you know what, I’m trying to do anything.

At least I can know, like, what the outcome of that, right. But um, it’s this thing of like, making time number one, because you’re never going to get more time, you know, we all have 24 hours. That’s it, like, you know, we’re not going to magically get 36.

And even if we had 36 or 48, we would still have this sense of like, I don’t have enough time, right? So you will never have time to have to make time.

That’s number one. And so it’s understanding what is important to you. And how much time Can I delegate and allocate for that? That’s number one, looking at your schedule, you know, are you married? Do you have kids?

What’s important what, you know, what stage in life are your kids at? If you have a newborn versus a 14 year old, your life was very different, you know, if you if you have a job that you have to fly out all the time for versus you work at home, you know, that looks very different if you have childcare versus not, that looks very different.

And so it’s one of those things where it’s like, what can you do when and at the end of the day, it’s going to require sacrifice, and that’s a tough thing to have to swallow because you’re already sacrificing a lot, right?

Like your plate is already full, but it does require sacrifice. You might have to wake up earlier in the morning, you might have to go to bed late at night, you might have to sacrifice watching, you know that one show that everybody else on the planet has binged already and you’re Behind, you know what I mean? And it’s also recognizing how important is this to you.

Like, for me, writing is what I do. And if I were to stop, I would not be able to, right?, I’ve tried to stop, I’ve tried to do other things, you know, I went and got another job. And I went into something else, because, you know, life was different.

And I was like, well, I need something else to move the needle. And writing was always on the door, like, hey, these characters want their stories to be told. And so, it was one of those things where it was like, okay, you know, that this is your passion, this is your purpose.

And this is what you are meant to do. So you need to prioritize and orchestrate your life in such a way that you can actually allocate the amount of time that it requires. Um, so, you know, previously I was doing the podcast and, you know, doing graphic design and writing and, you know, creating digital products for writers.

And I’ve sent, you know, tabled some things because, when human beings, like when you’re living and burnout is a very, very real, I wish it on no one. I was working like 13, 14 hour days, like, so exhausted, I would wake up, my eyes were burning.

Like, you know, I had to take on some things, um, but it really came down to making time as in like, actually opening up the calendar, looking at the hours and saying, okay, on Monday, between 9 to 12, nobody’s allowed to bother me or writing during that time.

Okay, cool. Tuesday, between one to two, I have a little window. All right. During that time, you know, like doing things like that actually putting it in the calendar, because if it’s not on the calendar, let’s just be real.

The most of us are adults, right? If it’s not on the calendar, it’s not getting done, we literally Forget it, the moment it comes into our minds, if we do not write it down or put it in a calendar, and then just really understanding what’s important to you in that season, you may be in a season where you’re like, Okay, I want to write an entire novel, cool, I’m going to dedicate the next 90 days to writing, you know, 1500 words every single day.

And that’s what I’m going to do, you may be in a season where you’re like, Okay, I am still developing, I’m still working, okay, so, you know, for a little bit of time a day, 30 minutes, I’m going to research, then for another 30 minutes, I am going to, you know, go through Pinterest and get ideas for my story, or I’m going to go to a park and you know, just kind of like breathe in fresh air and look around me and get more ideals.

And then for another 30 minutes, you know, maybe I’ll watch a film about you know, that’s like relevant to the kind of world or story that I’m trying to build. It really comes down to that because there’s no such thing as balance, right?

You know, this, the same mentor, she talks about how she realizes in life, we are always juggling two kinds of balls, one ball is made of rubber one is made of glass. And every day, while those balls are in the air, she has to decide for, okay, which balls are rubber, and which is glass, and the ones that are rubber.

Because if then I’m going to you’re going to drop a ball, right? Something’s going to fall.

But if it’s rubber, that’s fine, it’ll bounce back up, you can keep moving. And so her example was okay, you know, if she misses a day of carpool, you know, dropping her kids or picking them up from school, if that falls, that’s fine, it’ll bounce back up.

However, if it’s a monumental dance recital for her child, that’s a ball of glass. If that falls, it won’t be so easy coming back from that, because that will affect her child long term that she was not there for something so important in her life.

And so for all of my writers, especially for those of you who are this is like fresh to you think about Okay, what is a rubber ball? What is a glass ball?

What can recover if you let it go, and what will not recover? If you drop that ball, and then prioritize your writing around that and then go from there.

 Emma Dhesi  24:04

That’s a beautiful analogy, you know, that idea of the two evils because then it’s very, it’s very visual as well, and you can feel them in your hands. very tangible. I like also to Well, first of all, I love that you talk about scheduling, because it’s something I bang on about all the time.

And I think people get a bit like, Oh, that’s so uninspiring. That’s not very exciting. And it is the least kind of parts of all, but you do have to do you want to want to make sure you’ve got that protected time.

But I love also that you you mentioned a number of different things that people could spend their time on not just the writing, but the thinking the research and the getting some fresh air then watching a movie or writing a book is not solely about pen or paper that goes into it.

And in fact, I’m going to bring us on now actually to that because you are particularly well known for being a very creative world builder. And so I want to hit start off by telling us about l down the world that you have created.

 Stephanie BwaBwa  25:06

Yes. So lol started with a question again, back to the faith thing, right? So I was born and raised in church, y’all, I’m pretty sure. I mean, I’m joking, but like my mother might as well have had me on underneath a Pew right?

Like I’ve been in church my entire life and, um, because of that, like, wealth of Christian stories in my brain, right, all of the, you know, your Abraham’s, and your Joseph’s and your Isaac’s and your roofs and all of that.

And so for me, I’ve always been attracted to angels. I just I really think that I came out of the womb loving everything fantastical and supernatural. Oh, I’ve always been into like angels and demons and the supernatural world, and how all of that works.

And like, what does that mean? How does it make sense, that kind of thing.

And so for me, you know, in the Bible, there is the story in the explanation of how Lucifer was the morning star. He was, you know, this head arc, Angel, his bodies made of pipes, he’s perfect. He’s beautiful. He’s everything, honestly, like, there was really nothing else that he could want, right?

Except he wanted also the throne of God. He was like, Well, you know, I’m perfect.

Where’s my throne. And God was like, that’s cute, flicks him out of heaven, right? And so, but before he gets kicked out of heaven, Lucifer is cunning enough and manages to persuade a third of the angels to go with him.

Now, you are an ark Angel, and you still managed to persuade all of these other angels who were once loyal and faithful to God only to follow you. There’s a war in heaven between the angels. And they are kicked out and they’re sent to Earth, right?

My question was, I wonder, because that’s where my brain goes. I was like, well, I wonder if this happened over like 24 hours. I wonder what happened between the time after the war in heaven. But before these angels got kicked to Earth, like just that gap in that window of time The war has happened, but they’re not really at Earth, yet. They’re like, somewhere in the ether of space, somewhere.

That’s how it started. And I got this entire I got this character in my brain, and it was my version of Lucifer, his name is AGS. His original name is exitus. And I thought of him in the previous state of like, when he wasn’t full of pride when he was just beautiful and experiencing this entire universe that he’s able to travel through, and you know, what he touches grows, and everything is beautiful around him, it’s perfect.

And then just that journey of him wanting more and where that darkness came from, and what he would have done to achieve his goal and how he goes about persuading the other angels to follow him. So like, all of these different things came into my I wrote that story.

Um, didn’t publish it yet. Um, it is going to come out though, because that’s going to be awesome, but haven’t published it yet.

But like, that was how and the thing is, I started with that. And, you know, in Genesis one one talks about in the beginning, God created the heavens in the earth. And so in my brain, I was like, Okay, well, what about the beginning of the universe.

And so that’s how Ella doll was born. I just saw this like expanse of light. And then just different worlds begin to be created into which different planets, different realms, different timelines, time moves differently, different places, different rankings of angels, like all of that begin to be developed in my brain. I, I joke around and I tell people, you know, there are some people who have books in their heads.

And then there are people who are like Stan Lee, who have universes in their heads, and that’s me. And I have universe in my head, right? So like, I have all these different worlds and different storylines in my brain. But that’s how it began.

And I’m really, interestingly enough, the world came after I thought of the character, right? Like I thought of this, this one individual, like, what could have happened, after you create it, you made this egregious error by thinking that you were mighty enough to go against God Himself, which was a joke, and you got kicked out.

But before you get kicked out to your final punishment, there’s like, all of this chaos that ensues afterwards, which is actually aware of the Sarah from resistance here, prequels, which, you know, of course, this year’s will come after.

That’s where those books are from, because that era is after that first great war between all of the angels and they’re like recovering from that and dealing with it and all these kinds of things.

And so Ella doll is just really my it’s a universe. It’s not just the world. So it’s a universe with 12 different realms in it and each realm has their own story. worlds some realms have different worlds in it like multiple different worlds in it that will have different stories and then that some realms are just like, I view it as like one massive world. And so you know, you have like different courts in it.

That kind of thing. Still, like think of like Planet Earth with different continents, like some worlds or some realms are just like that, whereas other rooms have out other different planets in it. And for me, I just, it’s my ability one, I did it like that, so that I could give myself a breath of room to write just whatever.

Right, whatever and whatever kind of story about whatever type of character, I’m with different powers, different magics, all these different kinds of things.

But they are all angels. I love to say, I love wolves, I, I love elves, fairies, all of that I do. And there will also be humans at some point. They’re not in the world, yet, they probably won’t show for a mighty long time, because there are so many stories about humans that I’m like, I’ll just focus on angels.

But, um, um, can they still go through things, you know, be not fooled, right? Like, even though they are angels, they are these like, powerful, high ranking beings, they still go through what we humans would go through, they still fall in love, they still go through betrayal, they still go through depression, they still have to make a choice, will they be loyal? Or will they not? You know, will they choose themselves and go rogue?

Or will they choose to serve a greater cause all of these kinds of things. And so it is very expansive. And there’s a lot that goes on into it. But I’m also rooted in all of like, the other worldliness, because I also still see these characters.

They are very real to me, as you and I are real to ourselves. And I could see them I see their journeys, I see what they’re going through. And I’m, I like to dig deep in a lot of things at all times. So like, I’m the person who digs into backstory and learns like, why did you get to this point? How did that happen? But yeah, so that’s Ella Dalits, about angels I Akin the world to Narnia meets Wakanda.

So like, if we’re kinda Narnia had a child, you would have lol. You know, me, like, I love what CS Lewis did, I love what was done with the world of Wakanda.

And not just about the technology, but really just, um, I will say this as a black woman, and I’m not American, right?

Like I am Haitian, and I am and I’m Congolese African. And so you be raised in so much culture, you know, different language and different beliefs, different traditions, you know, we adjust our elders and our parents different, like family is different.

So having all of that inside of me, I wanted a world where I could infuse all of that. So that’s where like, the Wakanda part comes in, you know, the culture, the beliefs, and all these different things. And then the Narnia Of course, you know, you’ve got like a talking beaver and all this stuff.

So I have like a talking Pegasus. And, you know, I have like, my own version of dinosaurs, and like dragons, and like, all these different things, it’s a lot of fun. Um, I get to be a child and just make stuff up.

Interview with Stephanie Bwabwa

Emma Dhesi  33:16

So I could kind of go down this route of asking you how you can pull the story ideas and check. But what I’d love to know is for our listeners out there, so we can hear from the way that you’ve been talking about Yeah, you go in deep, you are researched a lot?

What advice, what strategies? What tips might you have for some of our listeners who are fantasy writers, and sci fi writers who are maybe in their first year of writing, and they’re starting to build their world, and are either looking to put together the basics that they need, and then maybe a couple of things about how they might be able to go deeper and really give? give their world a 3D fuel to it as well.

 Stephanie BwaBwa  34:04

Yeah, no. So for beginners, right, if this is your first time tackling something, so expansive, something so assuming it’s large, right, assuming it’s on that kind of level, maybe not a universal level, but you’re trying to create a brand new world, brand new cultures, brand new individuals, traditions, histories, that kind of thing.

And you’re not necessarily pulling ideals from Planet Earth, you know, or a different epic in history of Earth, but maybe you’re pulling ideals. I think they were pulling ideals from what we know.

Right? So maybe you’re pulling ideals from Greek mythology or any kind of thing like that. Um, first I would say is know what you want to write. So what draws you what attracts you, though I I have been able to create my own thing.

Basically, at the end of the day, I have always loved angels. I have always loved demons. I have always read stories with angels and demons and these kinds of things.

Of course, I’ve also read, you know, Fey and all these kinds of other creatures, but, um, I know that those kinds of stories tugs on my heart number one, number two, I always knew that stories that are very otherworldly are stories that are near and dear to my heart, Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, you know, Mortal Instruments, you know, all of these kinds of, we’re in one, we’re in this one world, but we go somewhere completely different, has always pulled on my heart.

And a couple of approaches is either character, or the world. What do you see first? And don’t be afraid to go with what you see. First. I know, oftentimes, there can be this, you know, notion of like, Oh, well, the rule is you start with a character.

No, the rule is you start with where your heartstrings are going first. Right. So do you hear dialogue? Do you see a face?

Do you want to talk about a certain kind of people group, you know, again, while I am creating this otherworldly, you know, universe, I am drawing from what I know as a black woman from the cultures that I was raised raised with.

So like, Haitians are in the back of my mind, Africans are in the back of my mind, the the journey of black people throughout the Diaspora around the world that is in the back of my mind.

And it’s important to me to tell our stories from a beautiful light from a light of excellence and to show our show our joy to shore up to show our history to show our pride.

And to do that through the lens of a fantasy, you know, these angels. And so, you know, what do you see first? Or maybe do you see this world of water, you know, and you see these different creature characters and creatures?

And you’re like, oh, okay, I can’t I can see this. Now, I want to go deeper into that. Um,

 Emma Dhesi  37:04

Can I just really just want to take you back a moment where you were saying, you know, what draws you though, for the listener? what draws them? Is that important, because they’re going to be doing a lot of research about that.

And they’re going to be incorporating those stories. So it’s a, it’s a good idea to choose Greek mythology, or let me think Chinese mythology because that’s what you’ll be surrounding yourself with.

So make sure you love it so that you’re happy to be in that realm or, or take from that. Is that is that why that’s important?

 Stephanie BwaBwa  37:36

Partly because you will be in that for a long time. But also, because at the end of the day, writing is hard. Writing is work, writing is tough.

And there will come a point where you’re going to question every single word that you have written, and there has to be something deep within you that understands, no, I need to tell this story.

I want to tell this story, there’s something deeper about this that’s calling me to put these these words to paper.

And so it has to be because the thing is, if you go I mean, you can go and the reason why I say that is because a lot of people you know, especially if they want to build a career, they go where the market leads, right fame sells couple you know, if you’re reading my a write enemies to lovers sells, um, you know, the long lost princess sells, like all of these kinds of things.

So but is that the story that you want to tell is that the story that is inside of your heart, because at the end of the day, it’s not what the idea that you’re writing the story first and foremost for yourself, like you are your first reader, you are the first person that will love these characters, love this world love this journey that they’re going on will be able to relate with this journey that they’re going on.

And so there has to be something deep inside of you that understands, okay, this is the direction that I want to go, this might be fun. But this is not only fun, but it’s also really calling me in that direction.

And so it’s really good to go, what your heart is calling you. And then I would also say, pick an angle, do you want to go from a character’s purse, you want to build up from a character, which I would call micro world building, where you’re attacking the character.

So and this is not just like, oh, what they look like this is where do they come from? Where do they live?

How are they raised? What were they conditioned with? You know, what’s the world like around them?

And how does that affect their affect their psyche? You know, like their education. I mean, like, if we understand that, depending on where you were raised, who was around you, you become a product of your environment.

And it’s the same thing for your character. You know, their worldview will be determined will be determined by their normal world. What are they exposed to every single day? What opportunities or lack thereof of are they presented with, you can go from that perspective.

Right the micro worlds building or you can do macro, where you tackle the entire world you tackle, you know, the different continents, and you tackle, okay. And this is like logistical things of like, where these continents are situation situated during, with the different hemispheres, what kinds of worlds could survive there?

How could these worlds survive? How would these people groups if you live in a place where there’s always you know, thunder and lightning and hurricanes, at some point, the society is going to set Okay, we need to build shelters and homes that can withstand this because we can’t just up and stop our lives every time a storm comes through, right? Like I was raised in South Florida.

When you hit you know, like Orlando south, especially when it gets to like Fort Lauderdale, South, a lot of the homes are hurricane proof.

Because at the end of the day, we know what it’s like to deal with category five hurricanes where the hurricane comes, and literally flatlines everything, because we are literally below sea level if you really think about where Florida is situated, right.

And so you know, as, as people grew up in Florida, we obviously have had to acclimate to the fact that, okay, it’s May, from the from the month of May, and June, up until November, at any given time, we can be hit by either a low balling tropical storm, or up to a category five hurricane where you need to make sure that you have at least three weeks food supply all of these kinds of things.

And so when you’re thinking about macro world building, you know, you can think of that expansive view of, you know, looking at the different people groups, how they interact with one another, did they go to war? Are they like, who’s an ally? Who’s an enemy? How did that happen?

You know, what kind of magic do they have? How does magic either advance or hinder their lives? Who has magic? Where did it come from, you know, like all of these kinds of things.

And so it really depends on what you want to do. And what you want to focus on when I started from the very beginning back in like 2015 2016, is when I really started, like gathering ideas for what is now lol, I didn’t know that.

That’s what it was, at the time, I just knew that I wanted to create this massive world and have all these different moving parts.

And so I just tackled a little bit every you know, every day, I’ll just like put a little you know, maybe a character here or like, maybe one day a character will find this magical object somewhere out here. I would do all these different things.

But I really approached it from that time on a macro perspective. So like the different worlds different realms, how does time work in one realm versus time in another if they travel inter dimensionally? How does that affect the character?

Like these kinds of things? But now I really do. I do tackle it from a character perspective. I do go from the micro perspective of like, who’s going to be in the story? What is surrounding them and how does that shape their personality and and their ideals? Right, like I’m working on a story right now where I guess you can call you can think of her as like an assassin so she’s a crack since and crescents are bone collectors and ash fusers.

And what that means is, it’s a terrible job. So is they so there are the parts of the questions where they are assassins, they have these high level targets, they take them out, then they bring them to her where she essentially extract the bone extracts the bones from these bodies, collects them, brings them back to the crescent guild and then they take these bones and fuse them into ash and deliver these ash whether to the temple to be used for like, you know, incense or whatever, or to somewhere else to be used for manufacturing, and terrible job, I promise but you know, she has a good redemption arc.

Um, but you know, I started from there and then so I’m thinking, Okay, if you are a Bone Collector, okay, and an ash fuser, you have to have a certain kind of psyche, right to constantly be able to take people’s lives and to just end them and to be able to take their bones from their bodies and to disintegrate their bodies and continue to move life, you know, and continue to do what you have to do, right?

You like, at the end of the day, that’s your job, you know, and you have to get it done. And so, what is that psyche? Like, what are you surrounded by? How does your day move forward for you to have that kind of mindset and lifestyle? versus you know, if I started from like the world, you know, I might have something different, you know, if I started only from the world, I might, she might have ended up being like some noble or something, you know what I mean?

So, it really just depends on what you want to do either micro world building going from the character or macro world building, going from the world and then sticking characters in there afterwards.

 Emma Dhesi  44:32

Okay, okay. Wow. Okay. A lot in there. My goodness. There’s a lot to think about. And so that kind of leads me to your question, which is, or know if you’re a either a perfectionist or you’re a procrastinator you’re going through. I’m a bit nervous about writing the story.

This kind of feels to me perfect rabbit hole research land where you could just just world bills for the next 20 years and never actually lightened story.

So how can people balance that bits of it as well and not let themselves off the hook by just doing the world’s building?

Stephanie BwaBwa  45:10

No, that’s a really good point. And I will go ahead and say this right now I am a recovering perfectionist, I might go to the grave being a recovering perfectionist, because I am as meticulous as I am because I am a perfectionist.

So I’m like, Where are these people wearing? What do they look like? You know, how do their wings function? Wait, okay, can they put a coat? Can you put a coat on wings? How does that work? Like?

You know, I mean, like, that’s where rabbit holes, right? Like you can get lost. For hours. Hello, I’ve been building this world free hears and I’m still doing it right. And so I would say this, you’ve got to know when to pull the plug.

And honestly, that’s a gut thing. That is a gut thing where you realize I have enough. You know what I mean? And honestly, when you get to that space, where you are constantly building, building building, but you’re not creating, really the question is what are you running from? What are you hiding from?

Why have you not started, what is allowing this resistance to keep you from diving in because usually it’s not a, I don’t have enough information thing for us extreme plotters, like myself, it’s not an I don’t have enough information thing.

It’s a, I’m too, I’m scared that regardless of everything that I have learned, and I have gathered, this book will still be hot, boiling garbage, and no one’s going to read it and no one’s going to want it. Or I’m scared that when I put it out, I was hoping for it to be like this.

And it came out like this. And it’s not the way I want it. And I don’t want that we’re usually avoiding the end result before we even get there. And because we are so afraid of what could be we don’t do anything at all in the present.

And so I would really say like that is a gut thing. And really that that’s just it’s it’s a mindset thing, right? It’s recognizing You are worthy of writing the story. And then also thinking about and some questions to really focus on is, who will this story help the most?

And how will they continue to be hindered because you have not written the book, right? When you move yourself out of the way and you think from a place of just service, and you think of the people who are going to get this book, because understand whether you’re writing fiction or fantasy, it is just as powerful as writing a self help book, right?

There are some people there are certain things that they will process in this life, they will only learn those principles through a fiction book.

And so when you think about, okay, if I don’t write this book, all of these people will not be able to find the solution that they’re looking for, they will not be able to learn the lessons that they need to learn because I didn’t do my job, which is to write the book, then it starts to take a different like that has a different weight to it.

Because you’re realizing Oh, yeah, as much as I would love to spend another five hours on Pinterest, you know, looking at, you know, another 10 minutes million dresses.

Oh, what would you look at that I actually need to sit down and write 1500 words today, because I have a goal, you know, and honestly, it and that’s the thing too, right? giving yourself a deadline, giving yourself goals, giving yourself you know, rewards, right? So if you write, maybe you get chocolate, maybe you get some coffee, if you don’t write maybe you don’t get to watch bridgerton until you do, right, you know that?

You know, give yourself you know, rewards, give yourself consequences, but also really think about the people, you know, that are being shortchanged, because you have not done your job, which is to write the book, if that story is inside of you.

It needs to be told right there is there are almost 8 billion people on this planet. And quite frankly, we could all write as many stories as fast as we could and it would still not be enough because the way that readers, especially if they are voracious these readers will fly through books, whether it is 200 pages or 699.

They will fly through the book and sit there like okay, well, where’s the next one?

And you’re like, I can only write so much so quick. Right? So readers at the end of the day, there will never be enough books for readers like they’re constantly taking in.

And so it is up to you to recognize that you have a power which is telling stories and there are readers literally waiting for your story with how you will tell it in the way that you will tell it and the lessons that you will teach through the journey of your characters

 Emma Dhesi  49:48

Is a beautiful place to end because it is all about the reader, isn’t it? Why when we’re writing our first story in particular, we put our heart into it and possibly yours, right? Again, trying to make every sentence perfect.

And and then then we’ve when we get further down the line, we realize, Oh, it’s actually not about me. It’s about the reader.

And so that’s a really valuable ending there just to remind people when they’re feeling nervous and feeling unconfident about their work, just to remind yourself, not about me, it’s about the reader, it’s alright to be done.

And that takes the pressure off quite a bit of the pressure anyway.

 Stephanie BwaBwa  50:26

No, absolutely. Because in the beginning, I will confess, I was that person, I was like, oh, but I love this story. I love these characters. And this world is my favorite. And I know port all of this energy into it.

And the lessons and the themes that I thought readers would walk away with from it, they did not write like, because one thing to put your intention into it, it’s another thing when their reader interprets it with their own views and what they’re trying to get out of the story.

And so honestly, once that book is published, it is completely out of your hands. And it’s all up to the reader.

Because at the end of the day, yeah, we’ll write for ourselves, what, we’re ready for our readers, you know, what are they going to learn? What are they going to take away from it? And so yeah, I mean, of course, pour your heart into it, right?

Like, every time we write a book, it’s like we’re releasing a part of ourselves. But at the end of the day, it it’s for the reader, it’s how this book is going to change them, you know, whether for season or for a lifetime. And that’s what matters.

 Emma Dhesi  51:31

Lovely! Well tell us what you’re working on now. Because there’s lots of things going on in your universe. So what are you working on at the moment.

 Stephanie BwaBwa  51:38

So right now I am editing, editing, rewriting a story. Here’s a little tip for some of you guys. So there will be some times that you will write an entire manuscript and realize, Oh, I did not write it in the right POV.

Or I did not. I did not write it, you know from the right perspective. And so I’m currently facing that with one manuscript where I wrote it in third person is better served in first.

So going through an entire rewrite plus, adding a lot of lore in and all it’s taking a lot of time, a lot of energy, it is draining on me it is. It’s kind of like it’s very Romeo and Juliet esque, between a major princess and a Simon Prince.

And they are raised, born and raised, conditioned and sharpened as weapons to completely obliterate the other. So sirens are always killing mages, mages are always killing sirens.

And at some point, these two main characters will ask the question why? When did this start? Why is this going on? Why am I expected to fulfill these needs and as they are desiring of their crown, because they’re both heirs to their thrones, and they both will get their throne by wiping the other one out?

That’s the condition. But as they as they journey, they’ll have to discover Okay, is this really what I want? And if it’s not, where do I go from here? And from that a whole slew of events unfold. So that’s taking quite an amount of energy.

And I’m also writing, I’m a serial, so think of it as so think of novels for those of you like what is a serial, so think of novels as like feature films, serials as like television episodes, so they are shorter, they’re coming in and they’re like novella length. And um, this is about my Crescent.

So she is a Bone Collector and an ash fuser who wants to who no longer wants to be part of the crescent guilds and she no longer wants to be a crescent, right. And so she finally I’m working on the first pilot, if you will, I’m working on the pilot.

And for this episode, she, she has finally amassed enough coin to leave the crescent guild and to leave the bone court, and she wants to go to a different court to live but then her, the queen of the crescents gives her one last task.

And when she realizes what the task is, she will have to decide is she going to get involved because it’s completely against her morals, or she gonna choose herself and you know, do the job and escape.

So I’m having a lot of fun with it, it’s shorter, so it’s easier to dive in without pouring so much into it. You don’t have to do so much for character development and world building, I can just dive in.

So I’m having a lot of fun with it. There will be several seasons and they will be you know, like potentially about eight or so nine episodes a season. That’s like eight or so nine books for those of you that are like what does that mean?

Um, so that’s what I’m working on. I’ve got the rewrite plus I’ve got the book books that I’m working on right now and they’re a lot of fun, and they’re two completely different realms also. So…

 Emma Dhesi  55:00

My goodness no for our listeners who are have been their appetites have been wetted and they want to know more where can they find out more about your? Your writing?

Stephanie BwaBwa  55:10

Yes, Stephanie bwabwa.com um, I do have a separate site for Elledelle which is elledelle.com. But right now I’m kind of consolidating, because I, I am facing out one on one work and mostly just keeping digital products up.

So I do have two courses for writers who are at the beginning. That one deals with mindset. It’s called writer readiness. It deals with mindset. The other one is called storyboarding with purpose for those of you that are like, I need ideals.

I’m dealing with writer’s block, what am I supposed to do? I can’t move forward storyboarding with purpose is for you. And so all of that has been consolidated into one site on Stephaniebwawa.com so it will be predominantly the books like it would be on Elledelle.

But writers will also be able to find resources to assist their writing journey on Stephaniebwabwa.com as well, so they can find me there on Instagram at Stephaniebwabwa because I live on the gram.

 Emma Dhesi  56:09

Well, I’ll be sure to do all of those links and so that people can find you on either site and to resolve amalgamated. Well Stephanie Thank you so much for your time today.

I really love learning more about you about lol. And also, just that crazy mind of yours has got so much going on inside it.

 Stephanie BwaBwa  56:25

No, thank you for having me. This was awesome.

 Emma Dhesi  56:30

Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you find that helpful and inspirational.

Now, don’t forget to come on over to facebook and join my group, turning readers into writers.

It is especially for you if you are a beginner writer who is looking to write their first novel. If you join the group, you will also find a free cheat sheet there called three secret hacks to write with consistency.

So go to Emmadhesi.com/turning readers into writers. Hit join. Can’t wait to see you in there.

All right. Thank you. Bye bye.

If this interview with Stephanie Bwabwa was useful, you’ll love:

• How to co-write a novel with author and podcaster Crys Cain – EMMA DHESI
• Interview with Asian American poet and writer Dr Stephanie Han – EMMA DHESI
• Clarity and Confidence with Non-Fiction Book Coach Andrea Glass – EMMA DHESI

Emma Dhesi

Emma writes women’s fiction. She began writing seriously while a stay at home mum with 3 pre-school children. By changing her mindset, being consistent and developing confidence, Emma has gone from having a collection of handwritten notes to a fully written, edited and published novel. Having experienced first-hand how writing changes lives, Emma now helps beginner writers find the time and confidence to write their first novel.