The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

How can building an audience in advance help your stories reach the people who make movies? And how can you prove there's demand for your book or screenplay before you've written it? Brooks Elms shares his advice after more than 20 years as a WGA screenwriter.

In the intro, what doesn't work for book marketing and what does [Amy Chan SubStack; Unsingle; Rephonic]; Goodreads giveaway for Bones of the Deep; FutureVision XPrize.

This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn

Brooks Elms is a WGA screenwriter with over 45 scripts, over a dozen sales, and he has directed two indie features. He is the creator of the Answer the Call system and has trained over 1,000 writers.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

How to see the opportunity in AI when others only see the threat

How to test a story with samples, and what a 16-second movie can do

Building the trailer before you write the screenplay

Letting your audience finance the film once they have validated the idea

Why Hollywood still wants existing IP, and what makes them pay attention

Feeling safe enough to write the truth, and finding a concrete path forward

You can find Brooks on LinkedIn or email him at brooks@brookselms.com.

Transcript of the interview with Brooks Elms

Jo: Brooks Elms is a WGA screenwriter with over 45 scripts, over a dozen sales, and he has directed two indie features. He is the creator of the Answer the Call system and has trained over 1,000 writers. So welcome to the show, Brooks.

Brooks: Thank you. It's awesome to be here.

Jo: Fantastic. So first up—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into screenwriting.

Brooks: I started filmmaking first. A buddy came up to me in high school and said, “Hey, we're making a karate movie, do you want to help us?” I was like, “Oh my God, yes, that sounds amazing.”

So next thing I know, I had this karate outfit on, and we were just making this completely ridiculous and totally fun movie, and it was amazing. It was so fun.

Then it went to a whole other level when we shared it with a friend, this guy Jay Sharon, and he watched the movie and he laughed so hard he literally fell out of his chair. I was like, “Oh my God,” the fun I had making it could actually transfer to somebody else. I was hooked.

So from there I went to NYU film school, and then made a few independent feature films which were good but not great in terms of how they were received.

They were great for me in terms of enjoyment, but I knew I needed to iterate faster at that point. So then I was like, “Well, it's expensive and it takes a long time to make a movie,” at least back then.

So I pivoted to screenwriting, and pumped out two, three scripts a year, got signed at UTA, got writing assignments, and basically launched a screenwriting career. Then I still tried to get some stuff going, but it's hard when movies are so expensive.

It's not hard, it's just that it takes a lot of precision in the marketing, and a lot of conversations to find the right matches to finance something, and you're either interested in doing that or you're not. I just was like, “Well, I'll just mostly write screenplays.”

Then I started teaching at UCLA Extension and then coaching after that, along with writing. Then all the way up to the future.

What's great about moving forward is that with AI, shot-making is becoming very close to cinematic quality. You can actually match cinematic quality in moments in some genres, but probably by next year.

Right now you could actually do a really good horror movie all AI for 10, 20,000 bucks, depending on how much you're doing yourself or getting other people to do.

So the economics are going to absolutely explode. So I'm sitting on dozens of scripts that didn't get through the Hollywood packaging bottleneck because they're too expensive, and I now have this giant slate that's ready to go, and I'm just absolutely thrilled. It's been a lifelong dream for me.

Jo: Oh, so much to come back on there. Where to start?

I do want to talk about what you just said there, sitting on dozens of scripts and now seeing the opportunity. I actually wrote down in my journal about a year ago, I see what's coming with AI, and I think that the best thing I can do is create as much original IP as possible, so that I can make the most of the opportunity ahead.

So let's just get into the AI, because a lot of people feel it's a super bad thing.

Talk about the opportunities and the attitude that you've got [around AI], and that you've seen others have around this, for what is ahead in a positive way.

Brooks: It's fascinating to see how people respond to AI. I wonder, when the printing press rolled around, if there was some sort of backlash. Books must be handwritten. They can't be mass-produced.

Here's one of my theories. At a deep psychological level, it's so profoundly powerful that I think the default setting is, “Oh, crap.”

When I was a kid, some things were hard, and that power imbalance, when something big, new and powerful comes along: I'm going to get screwed, and so this is somehow a bad thing. I think that's the base psychological thing going on with most of the noise.

Obviously there are some legit problems, in terms of copyright infringement from learning models, or from some of the environmental situation. So I'm not saying it's all rainbows and butterflies, but I think 90% of the noise around it comes from a fear of change.

Here's the other one—a fear of, “Oh, yikes, I'm going to get taken advantage of somehow by either robots, or the corporations are going to use the robots against me,” or something like that. I have real empathy for me when I feel that way a little bit, but I don't feel it much, and for other people that do feel it.

The other thing is, you know what it is? I think they fear their own empowerment even more.

I had a therapist who was really good. He said, people aren't so much afraid of failing as they are afraid of succeeding. Because if we fail, we're stuck in act one and we don't go anywhere. The fear is answering the call and going to act two, when everything effing changes in the new world.

So I think people are afraid of how goddamn powerful they're going to be when they can have a team of AI agents helping them do everything they want in business or life or whatever.

I think it's the same thing with the internet. People are like, “Oh, I don't like social media, blah, blah, blah.” And I get it. There's a lot of noise and a lot of crap. Yet we have access to billions of people, and the algorithms in social media right now I think are level three out of 10. They're just going to get better and better.

Even as it is now, if I do a post about something and it gets ignored, that's on me. The algorithms are trying to match me to my people. So if I'm not unique enough and authentic enough and aware enough of how virality works, that's on me, and it's a learnable skill that I can embrace and then change and then get better at.

So I think people then resist that change. They resist the empowerment of learning the art of virality, or learning the art of some sort of social media stuff or whatever.

The last thing I'll say about this rant is, I don't want to act like I'm the guru on the hill that has all the answers. I refuse calls all the time. I'm scared about all sorts of things. I'm certainly not perfect. I feel frustrated when I'm trying to put my big ideas into action and I can't get this technology thing to work or that one, and I throw tantrums.

I'm trying to come at it from a real human perspective, but by and large, I've got stars in my eyes. I'm like, “This is amazing. This is going to be so powerful.”

For so many people, you just have to be ready to embrace it and just go along for the ride, because there's going to be some big-ass changes. There already are, and that's going to accelerate.

Jo: You mentioned there learning the art of whatever it is. One of the things is, I've spent 20 years, and so have you, learning our craft and our art, and now it can be done very easily.

I'm generating video, as you mentioned, which is a craft I haven't spent 20 years on, but now I can generate. So things have definitely changed in that way.

Just coming to the screenwriting side. Probably about a decade ago now, I did my first screenwriting course. I've written screenplays.

Then I looked at the game you have to play and, like you said, the conversations you have to have, the events you have to go and network at, all the things that you have to do to put a screenplay in front of the right person at the right time.

I was like, “I cannot do that. It's just not going to happen. I can't do that along with everything else.”

So I put it aside, but now I feel maybe it's time to bring it back because things are changing. So can you maybe talk about, if someone has a screenplay now that they've written, or some IP like a book that they have now—

What would you recommend people do in terms of wanting to get that [IP] in front of somebody, or doing something with it themselves?

Brooks: It's such a good question. By the way, not even a screenplay—you could do the same things with a novel. Let me try to be succinct here, which is a good challenge for me.

A simple way to look at it is, you're giving samples. Let's say it's a lemonade stand, and you give out a little shot of your… maybe you have cayenne pepper lemonade, some sort of fun lemonade. If you give out a sample and people are into it, they're going to come back and they're going to tell friends.

If you give a sample of the lemonade and they're not into it, then you go back to the kitchen and you mix up a different flavour.

So that's some basic business, but the internet allows us to do that at scale. So what I like to encourage people to do when I coach them is come up with the minimum viable material. It can be a 10-second clip.

There's a writer in my community who made a really beautiful 16-second movie. It's one shot. I love it so much. It's two wine glasses. There's a lipstick smudge on one of the wine glasses. They're half full, and it's just that shot.

It's sitting there, and all of a sudden you hear this thundering, thumping down these stairs, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Then you see out of the corner of the frame one person runs by, and then the other person behind her runs by and goes, “Wait.”

That's it. That's the whole movie. It's 16 seconds. He did that with his phone.

So there's so much going on. There's a couple of basic elements, but he just did it with his phone, and you can evoke enormous emotional impact on people through social media, whether it's just words.

You guys have a big advantage as novelists because you're so good with words. Whether it's a little bit longer, like sudden fiction, that's a couple of pages or whatever. Even just copywriters are really in a good position for the future because they're super potent with two words or three words or 10 words.

Then novelists are probably really advantageous because it doesn't cost anything to just put some words out on the internet. The point is, if you put something out, it's a signal, and you're talking about billions of people who could find that signal.

If you do it and then you look at the response, and then you try again, you look at the response, we can do this iteration infinitely for free.

So you can do it already. You've been able to do it for 10, 15, 20 years, just with words. But now you're going to basically be able to do that with movies or clips or trailers. So the thing that I'm leading in my community of writers is having people build trailers in advance, or clips.

When a book or a movie is done, how the heck do we get people to see it? One way is a trailer or some sort of behind-the-scenes material. You can just do that stuff now before even writing the screenplay.

I saw that you were doing this project, a trailer for this competition. And then you mentioned, “Oh, I've got to write the screenplay.” Not really. You have to develop the story enough to know what you're referring to, and then it's about studying the craft of either trailer construction, or whatever the clips are, or viral clips.

They all have a structure, and then you just test it. If you enjoy that testing process, which I find absolutely thrilling, it feels like the filmmaking version of a stand-up comedian. If I did stand-up, I say a joke, they laugh or they don't laugh.

It's really beautiful feedback from the universe. Nerve-wracking, right? But we can do that now as storytellers. We put a story out there in any format, and the audience responds.

Just like you have to read any room, you have to learn how to read the engagement on social media.

What do likes mean? What do shares mean? What do comments mean? How do you deal with trolls? All that is just part of the new art. Once you get good at it, holy smokes, that's the key to the kingdom.

You can build audiences in advance, and for movies you could even have them finance your movie in advance, if you've built an email list of 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 people because you kept putting out all these viral clips around your story, novel, or screenplay.

Then you go, “Okay, now 30,000 people are on my email list and I tell them about me and my perspective and my world. We're going to make this darn thing with AI for 20,000 bucks. You guys have got to pony up some money. Put in a dollar, five, 10, or you get the VIP $500 experience.”

It's like crowdfunding, but much more sophisticated, because most crowdfunding was like begging friends and family to donate to your crazy dream.

What I'm talking about is going to the audience directly, developing enough of the story, then going to the audience second, and then only when they validate the idea, to the extent that you're happy with.

You could do a crazy idea that's going to have a small audience, and you don't have to have a blockbuster audience. You get to pick the audience size that you want, and then put the samples out there and see if you have a relevant audience size for this next project.

Once the audience tells you, “Yes, we want this,” then you go make it. So you're ultimately reducing risk to almost zero. It takes time and you have to learn how to do this stuff, but it's thrilling to me because we just have the capacity to test the material and listen to the audience upfront.

The last thing I'll say, and I've rambled a lot, I'm sorry. When I made a movie in 1994, a feature film right out of NYU, it took me three years to find out what the audience thought about that movie.

I had to make the damn thing, and then I ran out of money, and that took me years to edit it, and I finally got it, blah, blah, blah. And again, I loved it. I loved every facet of it, and it was fine, but it was super inefficient.

Today, I could take those same elements, create an AI trailer this weekend, put it in front of hundreds of thousands of people, and they could tell me right away, “This sucks,” or, “This is interesting,” or, “Holy smokes, this is amazing. I want this.”

If it's not, “Holy smokes, this is amazing, I want it,” I can go ahead and re-edit the whole damn trailer, and just keep reiterating at almost no cost.

Then once the demand is there, I can take that demand and that audience and go to Hollywood, and that's when they're going to want to work with me.

Then it doesn't take a million conversations and finding the needle in the haystack, because Hollywood sees the numbers and they go, “Oh, you're the people we do want to do business with. You've proven demand. We want to do business with you.”

Jo: Yes, it's so interesting. I can hear people listening and they're like, “Easier said than done, getting an email list of 40,000 people.” And in fact—

It's exactly the same as building up a career as an independent author.

This is as a filmmaker, as a visual person, and the industry is visual, so doing a visual trailer is the obvious thing. And as you say, the tools I use just to do this one, I use Midjourney, and I've used Seedance as the main video model.

It does take a while, but it is pretty fast now, if you have a visual image of what you want in your head, which obviously you're a visual person as well. But is it…

Brooks: Hold on. I want to push back on that a little bit, because I think it's really important.

So yes, that's true, but underneath that, my friend, it's a relationship. It's the relationship, and the media is secondary. You have been prolific in connecting with your audience, and that's why I think a lot of people like you, because you share and they get to know you in that sort of cadence.

I saw you in another podcast, you mentioned Seth Godin, who just said, “Hey, I want to be the type of person that has this relationship with my audience. I'm going to share some of my thoughts every day.”

He happened to do it with words, with his background in marketing, but you could do the same thing with still images. You could do the same thing with a five-second movie clip once a week. It's the relationship you want with your fans.

I'm not saying you snap your fingers and you have 50,000 people on your email list. What I'm saying is, what else are you doing?

If we're artists and our impulse is to create and share, and if you do it in this way, if I can create and share and inspire trust in this relationship with a stranger because they like my genre thing and they like the way they felt when they experienced my media, words, images, movies, it doesn't matter.

They just like the feeling, and they go, “Ooh, I want more of that feeling. How do I get more of that? Oh, this person has this email list or community.”

If I can do it with one, then I can scale it out. So getting the first one, or the first 5 or 10 samples, that is a whole process. But then once you do that, scaling up is more of a mechanical thing. It's not even that hard, especially when you can do paid ads.

So you can scale up very quickly if you have the sauce. If you don't have the sauce, it doesn't matter who you're related to, you've got to get the sauce right.

Jo: Yes, and again, it's so parallel to the indie author community.

I've just got to ask you, in the olden days, an author might write a screenplay, or a screenwriter write a screenplay, and then they would send it. They'd find an agent. They'd pitch an agent, and I guess then they'd hope that someone would turn that into a movie. So is that just dead now?

Is it realistically that you need to get yourself out there, build the audience in the same way that it often is for authors?

Brooks: So, no. I've got two screenplay deals going right now. So here's how it's going to work. Think about Broadway, or the theatre district in Britain. It's like West End or East End or whatever…

Jo: The West End.

Brooks: Sorry for my American ignorance. West End, okay.

So every town on the planet has a stage, but there's only one Broadway, there's only one West End, right? And every town has its own festival, but there are a few significant tastemakers. There's Cannes, there's Sundance, there's Toronto. Hollywood is always going to be a tastemaker in our lifetime, for sure.

What they don't have anymore, what they enjoyed for the first 100 years of the industry, is that they had a stranglehold on basically the equipment, the financing, and the audience, and that's all going away.

Do you want to hear a fun story about the birth of cinema? Do you know why Hollywood started in Hollywood?

Jo: No.

Brooks: So Thomas Edison invented the camera, or the type of model camera that they were using in, I don't know, 1910 or something around there.

They didn't want to pay his patent. They didn't want to pay the patent to make these movies, so they went all the way across the country, a bunch of outlaws, and they set up shop in California because he couldn't enforce his patent that they were basically stealing.

And reason number two, LA enjoys amazing weather almost all year round. The weather here is either nice or really nice. You have mountains, you have beach, you have desert, you have all these different locales. So when it was really important to be on location, LA was the perfect place.

Anyway, that is all going away. For many decades, more people could make movies. In the early '90s, Robert Rodriguez made a movie for 9,000 bucks. There was a book in the '80s that I bought that I loved, it was Feature Filmmaking at Used-Car Prices. This guy, Rick Schmidt, I think his name was.

There were the independent filmmakers really in the '60s and the '70s. So the cost has been going down and down and down, and now it's less than ever. Once social media came along, now you have access to the audience, so why do you even need Hollywood?

That being said, there are tons of people. There are 400,000 people already working in the movie and the TV industry here. And they're voracious. We have a voracious demand.

Humans need stories. We need big stories, long stories. We need stories, and Hollywood is so good at giving them stories. And so they have a need for these things, and they're still spending a lot of money on those budgets.

So yes, there's still a demand for turning books and optioning them and turning them into movies. Books are great. Any sort of existing IP is great because there are marketing efficiencies there.

People already know that stuff, know the vibe of it, and so it's easier to market than something that's totally creative and new. When you're spending that much money, you want those marketing efficiencies. They're really important.

So the point being, the power is shifting away from Hollywood. Hollywood will still be a tastemaker, but you and me can reach anybody on the planet now. Almost. Billions of people.

If it's making a movie, right now you could make a movie that most people wouldn't realise is an AI movie. If it was a horror film, I know a handful of people that could make a feature-length horror film right now with AI and 99% of the audience couldn't tell, if it was professionally written.

Jo: I think the point here though is, I'm an author, the people listening are authors, and we don't want to make movies.

We want to license our IP to people who want to make movies.

Brooks: Yes. Great. Okay, good. So then you could, if you wanted, build an audience. Hollywood loves when something's already proven, so that's that IP thing, right?

So if you just have a great book, then it's all about the sales. You guys have Dragons' Den, we have Shark Tank here. And what's amazing about that show is these are people or entrepreneurs pitching an idea, and there's an amazing rhythm that happens.

They say, “We've got this great idea. It's this sort of company.” And the sharks, or the dragons, will listen. And there's a huge turning point when they reveal sales.

They're either really excited about the idea and then they go, “Well, how are the sales?” And the person goes, “Well, we don't have any sales yet.” And they go, “Uh,” and they're not interested.

Or they might even be like, “Eh, it doesn't seem like a good idea.” And they're like, “Well, how are the sales?” And they're like, “Oh, well, we've sold through the roof.” And then all of a sudden they perk up. So it's all about the sales.

So step one is writing something that you want. Step two is making sure other people in your target audience are also loving it as much as you do. Step three is proving in some way at scale that there's real demand for it.

So you could do that with trailers, you could do that with clips, you can do that as an indie publisher. There's all sorts of things that you can do. Humans are much more persuaded by concrete data than they are by just vibes.

So if you can bring Hollywood concrete data of any type, like viral videos, like audience, like obviously bestsellers. Awards mean something, but not quite as much as sales. Then you're going to get Hollywood's attention because that reduces risk for them.

So even now, when Hollywood's definitely shrinking and contracting, there's still very significant money being spent because it's a huge demand. If you ever walk around a studio lot, those things are opulent places. It's stunning. Like, how are they paying for all this stuff? These lots are enormous.

It's because humanity is voracious for stories, and movies are one premium type of storytelling. The demand for stories is steady if not going up. It's just that we have a wider variety of types of stories that we can do, whether we're an indie author.

So anyway, did I answer the question? You get me too excited with these questions, Jo. It's a problem.

Jo: Yes. I think there's a lot of opportunity and a lot of ways in, but the parallels with being an indie author I think are quite clear.

One of the things I found interesting about your profile and what you do is that you help clients who are already accomplished but not quite breaking through, and that sounds like a lot of mid-list indie authors, probably a lot of mid-list screenwriters, mid-list filmmakers.

This is a hard place to be because, on the one hand, we are grateful for what we have achieved and what we can do, and yet wanting more, wanting that big Hollywood deal or the Netflix deal, or wanting the massive bestseller or whatever.

So if someone wants to get to that next level, what are some of the ways that they can perhaps try and get there?

Brooks: It's a great question. Coaching is a really wonderful way to learn anything of this sort of complexity and challenge, especially if it's a hyper-competitive business. We need two things, I think, to write a great novel or screenplay or both.

A, we need to feel profoundly safe in our space. If we can't really feel deeply authentic about the things that are embarrassing, or that we feel shame about, or just our shadows, or anything that we don't feel completely comfortable saying and sharing in public usually.

We need to be able to touch those things, and be articulate about those things, and that's one part of it. Then we need a concrete path forward. Maybe you're thinking about some tragedy that you had in childhood, and how you dealt with it and how difficult that was.

So you need to be able to be real precise in those observations about what it felt like, and how you tried to compensate for it, and that didn't work and it made it worse.

Whatever your observations are about your life journey, you need to be really specific and really deeply felt. A good coaching relationship allows you to be in that space, to be really honest with yourself and authentic. g

Aood coach will push you back and say, “You know what? That sounds interesting, but maybe not quite as true to you deeply.” So that's one piece of it. Then there's a concrete path forward.

You need to have the emotional access to that truth, and then you need to know what to do with that truth in a step-by-step way. Because most people, the ones that you're talking about, they're accomplished in something else.

What happens is when we first start writing, and maybe this happens with novelists, but for sure it happens to screenwriters, you just start typing words. But you haven't really thought through the theme, the concept, the structure, the character, all the deeper questions that really matter.

The milestones, like a North Star: winning a major award, or getting a publisher. That's the direction that we're heading towards, and then you set it and forget it, but you want to keep checking it every week, every month or whatever. But you want it very specific.

“I would like to sell a book, or sell a book to Hollywood, or write a screenplay, or get a producer attached to a screenplay.”

Whatever the milestone is, make it really specific, really concrete, and then reverse engineer.

This is what I do on the concrete path. I reverse engineer every step to get there, starting with a really tiny one we can do today, and I make sure they feel really safe, and then we just walk through.

Then what happens is, if you do that, if you feel safe, if you're showing up authentically and you have a process that's repeatable, not just willy-nilly, it's got to be something that's proven to work. It wasn't an accident I wrote 45 scripts. I've got a whole system.

But by the way, the first five scripts took me forever. The last movie that I made took me three years to write that script. I can write a better script with those same elements in three months now, because I know I have a concrete path.

So if you want to do something new, whether it's playing the piano or getting six-pack abs or writing a screenplay, work with somebody who's got a system that's already proven, and make sure you relate to them, and then just follow the system.

Then when the doubts come up, and they will, that's where the feeling safe is really important. Because, oh, I want the six-pack abs, but I don't feel like going to the gym. I want the extra donut.

If I'm working with a really good trainer, they go, “Dude, do you want the six-pack abs or not?” And then you go back and forth, and I go, “Okay, now I can make peace with myself and say I can take one tiny bite of the donut and then still do my workout,” and then I'm moving towards that North Star. Does that make sense?

Jo: Yes. I think, like many independents, I resist anything that is systematised. I'm a discovery writer, and I follow the muse, and all of that kind of thing.

I think I would say something in a similar vein, which is sustainable creativity for the long term, because your 45 scripts are also years of work, and my books are years of work, and we get better at what we do. So my system, I do have a system really, because—

My system is that I do the work, and I write my stories, and I get them out there, and I do the marketing.

So even if it's not as systematised as such, it's still a process that I have repeated over and over again.

Brooks: That's fascinating to me. Would you consider yourself a pantser? You're like, “I've got an idea,” and you just start writing?

Jo: I don't use the word pantser. I guess I call it discovery writing, which is…

Brooks: That's a better term.

Jo: Yes. What I'm writing for this prize, for example, I know the characters, I know now what's happening.

When I had the idea, it was very much a vision and a theme, and the competition has a theme: a positive future with AI and technology. But the things that came around that, I then started playing with ideas around the treatment. I haven't written the screenplay yet.

I don't do a plot, or I don't follow Save the Cat or any of that kind of thing. When I write a novel, I just explore and I never write in order. Then at some point I stop and then I have to think about the structure and putting it all together, so the edits are quite big. But my fun is in that discovery, really.

Brooks: Oh, that's awesome. Okay, so let me ask, that's really fascinating. And by the way, that doesn't, to me, negate the system that I use.

The one that I use is ultimately… the thing is, these questions, the audience is wanting your unique answers to. You don't necessarily need to do it in a certain order. I think that's actually really cool that you write out of order and you have a few elements in mind. All that stuff sounds awesome.

The only thing that then makes me curious is, how's your pace? Are you actually completing novels at a pace that feels good, or do you feel like you go too fast, too slow?

Jo: I do one or two a year at the moment. Well, two a year, really. But I would say I'm not as successful as I'd like to be, so I'm not saying that my system is the best. I'm saying I want to be better.

It's just that my fun is this sort of creative chaos, which I then try and control later.

One of the things I really like about screenplays and treatments and doing this kind of thing for film is that it is much more structured, I think, than a 70,000-word novel. You can go in all kinds of directions, whereas with screenwriting you do have to be more disciplined really.

Brooks: Yes, so this is going to be fun probably, to hear my view for your audience, and the differences as I see them.

For starters, you're talking about what, 10, 20, 30 hours reading a novel sometimes, or maybe less, whereas a movie's a 90-minute experience, right? So that's different. Or if it's a TV series, you might see an hour and then an hour. So that's a very different experience.

What happens is when it's condensed like that, you're loading up layers. So every scene is stacked with exposition beneath the drama, and done in a certain way. So specifically, movies are only what you can see and only what you hear. Whereas novels, if you can think it, you can write it, it can be in there.

So you don't need to have a plot, but if you want to sell your book to Hollywood, it helps.

So I was very resistant about structure. I went to NYU film school, where we really just made short films. It was funny, I had friends that were in the dramatic writing department, and I was like, “You guys are wasting your money. You're just learning to write scripts. We learn to write the scripts and make the movies.”

What I hadn't realised is it's a different skill set to hold somebody's attention across an hour-long play, or a 90-minute movie, than it is to make a movie that holds their attention for two minutes or five minutes.

I found out years later when I made a feature that was like a lot of shorts patched together, and people were not… They liked it, but they didn't love it. I was like, “Well, what's going on?” And so then I learned to really love Save the Cat in particular. It completely changed me.

What happened was, I got a big old slice of humble pie. I had made my second feature, and I put everything I had into it, and it had loose structural beginning, middle, end, blah, blah, blah. But I was still, “Eh, Hollywood BS. What do they know? It's all fake.”

So I was very anti-Hollywood structure. Then I was like, now I've got two independent films out there, people saw them, liked them, whatever, but it wasn't getting me consistent work. It wasn't really advancing my career in the way that I wanted. And I was like, “Well, maybe there is something to the Save the Cat.”

So I went to the Save the Cat workshop with Blake when he was still alive, and he was delightful, a really awesome guy. He's got this kind of cutesy style, for people that don't know.

For context, Blake Snyder was a working Hollywood screenwriter, and he had this system called Save the Cat, which actually has some really interesting ideas.

He's got this very light, breezy sort of style. A lot of people don't like him and some people really love him, and everything in between. But I took his weekend seminar, and it completely changed me, because at that point, like I said, I took three years to write a script.

Then once he had a process and he had a way of thinking about craft that was just much more screenwriter-friendly, I was like, “Oh my God.” It was so much easier, because I was just focused on the right thing at the right time. So it just sped everything up.

After that, I was banging out two to three scripts a year, and better and better quality.

So for me, because I went from winging it and wrote five scripts in 13 years, and then wrote two to three scripts every year, I became a huge proponent of system and process.

Then my own system really came from that, but it's modular. I have a nine-step system, but you don't necessarily have to go in that order, other than the last three steps, but I won't get into the details. Sometimes you kind of jump from two to three and then back to two and then back and forth.

So I love that you get the feel for those elements, and then you just felt your way through. But writing screenplay pages doesn't make sense until you really understand concept, you get a deep sense of beginning, middle, end, character arcs, and these other threads.

There are just way better tools for those jobs than screenplay format, because it's a really weird format. It's got these weird slug lines at the top that are all in caps, because a screenplay is a blueprint for somebody else to make the movie. It's not an end-user document like a novel.

I don't let my clients even go to that format because it just gets them focused on the wrong things. What they really need to know is, what is your perspective about this theme? What happened in your life that you're fascinated with, that you'd even want to write about this? And tell me what your real life lessons are.

So we go into… again, I go back to relationship. What's your relationship to the universe? And what's your relationship to your best friends, or where you got your heart broken, or whatever you want to write about. And then we get that clarity, and then I show you how to express it in terms of developing a screenplay.

It's really long-form storytelling, and then the structure just makes it build on itself. But with the structure, because you're talking about so much money and people involved to make it, at least traditionally, what ended up happening was narrative structure that was not so much rigid.

Because here's the thing, you can look at 50, 100 years of European cinema and you can look at Hollywood cinema, and Hollywood laps them.

When I taught at UCLA Extension, I had lots of foreign students. Let's say there'd be two or three students… if there were 12 people in the class, two or three people would be from America, and everybody else would be from other countries.

I would go around, I'd be like, “What movies and TV shows have you been watching?” Almost in every single country, they watch half from their own country, half from Hollywood. So Hollywood storytelling works, that's just the data, and they're dominant.

The reason it works is what Aristotle was saying thousands of years ago.. There's a way of thinking about beginning, middle, end that just deeply speaks to the psyche, and you can ignore it if you want. I think Godard said, “You need beginning, middle, and end, but not necessarily in that order,” right? Which is great.

Just the way we experience life, there's a beginning, a middle, an end to this podcast interview. There's a beginning, middle, end to the day, a beginning, middle, end to me eating lunch.

So if you don't lean into the beginning, middle, end psychological aspect of your story, you're going to bore your reader.

But to your point, you don't necessarily have to sort that out in the beginning. It's more efficient probably if you do, but you don't have to. Go into it wherever the muse tells you to go, and then at some point, like you do, then you go, “Okay, now I go back and I edit.”

If you're saying there's another level, you have another gear in you, then yes, I'd be curious to slowly go through how you're making those decisions. Because what's happening probably is there are ways you're holding back a little bit. There's maybe something you're afraid of being vulnerable about.

That's usually where me or other writers are holding themselves back, and we can take a look at that. There are different ways I show writers to do it. Then you can go, “Oh, I was doing it here, and now I can do it there.” And it could be with process, or just a certain creative choice.

With story, it's clear and compelling. Those are the simple things. So, is this clear enough? Is it compelling enough? And there are almost always ways to up-level on any facet, whether it's one sentence, or a sentence that describes the whole concept of the book, or a chapter.

Each one of those can be looked at with that lens and we can just say, “Hey, this is 70%, 80%,” whatever, and then we say, “Well, how do we get a little bit more?” And then when you do that enough, it piles up. Then especially if you bring in an audience and people are flipping out for your work, they'll tell you.

Jo: Yes, I love a challenge, so thank you for everything you've shared today.

So where can people find you and everything you do online?

Brooks: Well, one way you can find me—if anything I said seemed helpful for you, if you have questions about Hollywood or you have a screenplay in your heart—you can just email me, brooks@brookselms.com.

You could look me up on LinkedIn. I'm at Brooks Elms. I also have a Skool community called Screenwriter Marketing, but it's really for any sort of storyteller, and it talks about my favourite way to engage an audience and get through it. So anybody can jump into that if you like my vibe.

If you really think anything I've said, or the way I said it, seems like it could be helpful for you, just reach out. Let me know what you're up to, and maybe there's a way I can help you.

Jo: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Brooks. That was great.

Brooks: You're welcome. It was a total pleasure. It was lots of fun, and I really appreciate you.
The post How To Prove The Demand For Your Stories And Get The Attention Of Hollywood With Brooks Elms first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can organic writing and leaning into the pivot help your stories stand out? And how can you pitch a story as a discovery writer if you genuinely don't know what's going to happen next. Steven James gives his writing tips after more than 20 years as an author.

In the intro, Better Than Free in an Age of AI [Kevin Kelly on Tim Ferriss; Kevin Kelly on The Creative Penn]; Future Vision XPrize; A Different Kind of Bucket List.

Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn

Steven James is the multi-award-winning and international bestselling author of 21 novels across thrillers, YA, and science fiction, with more than a million copies sold, as well as the author of non-fiction craft books for writers, a writing teacher, and the host of The Story Blender podcast.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

How to lean into organic writing, and what to focus on instead of plot

How characters unfold on the page, and why an attitude beats a background

Producing an outline for an agent or publisher when you genuinely don't know what happens next

Don't pitch the plot, pitch the pivot

The four choices you have in every scene, and why logic plus surprise is the engine of story

Faith, moral clarity and big questions

You can find Steven at StevenJames.net.

Transcript of the interview with Steven James

Jo: Steven James is the multi-award-winning and international bestselling author of 21 novels across thrillers, YA, and science fiction, with more than a million copies sold, as well as the author of non-fiction craft books for writers, a writing teacher, and the host of The Story Blender Podcast. So welcome to the show, Steven.

Steven: Thanks for having me, Jo. Good to be here.

Jo: Great to have you on the show. First up—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.

Steven: Oh, gosh. Well, the thing is, when I was a kid, I fell in love with stories.

My uncle would always, whenever we got together for the holidays—Christmas, New Year's and so on—he would take my sister, my brother and myself into a corner of the room while the other adults had coffee, and we would just sit there, and he would get this look in his eye and he'd say, “I'm going to tell you a story.”

We were transported to another world. We were swashbuckling with pirates, or facing down a grizzly bear in Alaska, or flying over the desert on a flying carpet, or whatever. I fell in love with imagination and stories and everything.

So I started reading as much as I could, mostly short stories. They had a programme at our library called the paperback book exchange, where you bring a paperback book and you leave it, and you can take any one of the paperback books that they had.

You could keep it as long as you wanted. If you wanted it for your life, that's fine, or you could just bring it back as soon as you finished reading it.

Anyway, I went crazy over the summers reading short stories, mainly. As I got older, I was like, “I think I want to be a storyteller.” So I actually got my master's degree in storytelling.

Then I started to travel and tell stories, but I had three little daughters at home, and I was like, “I don't want to be gone 300 days a year when they are growing up.” So I ended up starting to write stories instead of travel, and then it just kind of shifted in that direction.

That was in '97. Oh my goodness, that's long. '97, '98. So then I started to write books, and then eventually in 2007, I think, my first novel came out. Now, mainly, I've been writing novels ever since.

Jo: It's so interesting.

Was it a job, storytelling? Is that what you did before you became a book writer? Or did you have a different job?

Steven: I mostly would go to events, conferences, schools and so on, and do a family-friendly storytelling show. So I would tell personal stories, some folktales reimagined. I would go to different events around the country. Mostly it was that.

Then I started to shift. I wrote for magazines for a while—80 different magazines I wrote for over those years, a couple of hundred different articles, stories.

I was like, “I'm just going to try to make a living telling stories.” So the shift has gone back and forth between actually telling stories and writing stories, but these days, I don't know. I'm still speaking. I'm still out there teaching.

Jo: That's so interesting, because it's obviously a completely different thing to tell a story in person than it is to write a story.

So when you decided to shift that way, what did you have to learn and unlearn?

Because your thoughts on the page are so different to when you can make eye contact with an audience.

Steven: That's a good point. I kind of started by telling stories back when I was in college, so I sort of moved from telling to writing. And you're right, there's so much that's lost, whether it's eye contact or pauses.

On a printed page, there's always the same amount of space between every word—a space. But when you tell stories, obviously you pause for effect in different places, different areas, and so it's quite different.

So if I have an idea for a story, I usually have to decide, is this going to be written or told? And then I do it in that medium. Then if I want to, let's say, tell a written story, I almost have to relearn it, or retell it very differently.

You have gestures, body language. All of those things are obviously lost in text, so they are very different.

I think for me it's been good, because when I tell stories, I hear different characters speaking, so that when I write, usually dialogue comes fast to me. I can hear what people are saying.

I don't always know where they are. I don't always know the setting. I don't even know the scene necessarily, but I can hear the dialogue.

Then it also helps me to step into the characters, like when I'm writing different points of view, so that I think I can do a good job of getting into that character's mind, as if I were that person. I think some of that comes from just telling stories.

Jo: You've taught so many writers over the years, and it's interesting you said that you hear characters' dialogue. I see visual film in my mind. I don't hear any voice at all. It's all silent.

I struggle with dialogue, but I do great world building. Do you find that this really is different by the author?

I feel like we fall into these different groups.

Steven: Yes, I do. I kind of feel like that's very true as far as what comes first, whether it's a description of a place, whether it's the action.

I mean, basically a story has dialogue, narration—or we call it sometimes exposition—and description. Those three things. Every story has those three things, and those are the three that we use to tell a story, a novel.

So some people tend to drift into one or the other as sort of their default setting: dialogue, description, or action. That's true.

I think also something else that's interesting about writers is they tend to fall into either the camp of being a wordsmith or a storyteller. Not everyone, but I feel like some people are wordsmiths, where I read what they're writing, and I'm like, “Man, this is so powerful, evocative,” whatever.

Maybe there's no story there. It's just really interesting writing.

Other people just are natural storytellers, and they have to really work on the wordsmithing. I think that's me. I'm more naturally just a storyteller, but it takes me a long time to get the descriptions to where I want them, to choose exactly the right word. That takes me more effort.

Some people have to build up the storytelling muscles. I have to build up the wordsmithing muscles.

Jo: Well, part of the reason I wanted to talk to you is because you talk about this thing called organic writing in your book Story Trumps Structure, which is out now in a second edition. I call it discovery writing, so similar to you. But most people in the writing community seem to obsess about plotting and planning.

So talk about your process of organic writing. You say in the book, “Trust the fluidity of the process.” Tell us more about that.

Steven: Well, I remember in high school even, when my teacher got up front and he kind of got this very almost wise look on his face, and he goes, “A story is something with a beginning, a middle, and an end.”

I'm sitting there in high school like, “Well, so does a bratwurst. What are you talking about here?” A description of a chair has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The sentence, “Preheat the oven to 450 degrees,” has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

My view is that saying a story is something that has three acts is like saying that a pizza is something with three toppings. It might have three. It might have one. It might have five.

So the idea for me is not to worry about structure, trying to tick off the boxes of a template, a formula you find online, a fill-in-the-blanks kind of a thing. But instead, to actually look at what lies at the heart of the story—the character, the tension, the struggle, the pursuit, the pivots and plot twists, and the payoff at the end.

As you develop those aspects of the story, I feel like you need to worry less and less about following a formula. The more you understand what lies at the heart of a story, I feel like the less you need to plot and the less you need to write by the seat of your pants.

A lot of people say, “Oh, you write by the seat of…” No, I don't write by the seat of my pants, because I know what a story contains, so I know that in a certain scene a character will make certain choices that are unpredictable but that escalate the tension, and different things like that.

I'm a huge proponent of discovery, as you say, or organic writing.

I won't get the quote exactly right, but Ray Bradbury said something along the lines of, “Plot is the tracks left in the snow after your characters have run by on their incredible destinations. It cannot precede action. It is the chart that remains when an action is through.”

So he's saying plot is not what precedes action. After the action, you have plot. So the whole idea of trying to plot out a story before you write it is going about writing exactly backwards. Plot doesn't precede action. It's the result.

So I always tell people, “Don't worry so much about the plot. I want you to look at the pursuit.”

A plotter might say, “Well, what should happen?” And they'll just come up with something. But an organic writer—a pursuit-based question would be, what does the character want? Now, when I know what the character wants, I will know what should happen. So literally, it will lead me to the story.

Focusing on plot will not necessarily lead you to the story. It might lead you down the wrong track.

Jo: Then in terms of your actual writing process—

Do you start writing without knowing the ending? Do you write in order? Is the organic side also in the process?

Steven: I've never started a book where I know how it will end. So I usually start with either a character that's fascinating or, in some cases, a premise, a question. Then as I write, I explore the possibilities of where it might go.

I've tried to outline a scene—like one scene, not a whole book—and it never works. I can't even outline one scene. I've tried, and I'm like, okay, that's… What I end up with is completely different from it, so it's just a waste of time and effort for me to try to outline or plot out a story.

I'm much more interested in the pathway the characters will take as they face obstacles and setbacks in their pursuit. As the struggles and the tension develop, what choices will they make? That's how the story will unfold for me.

Jo: I'm similar. Then I also wonder—

Do you do character sheets and character bios, or do the characters also unfold organically?

Steven: Absolutely, I don't do any of the sheets and bios and stuff. The characters really come to me as I write. I begin to get to know them.

I always tell people, a character with an attitude is more interesting than a character with a background. So a lot of people will spend a lot of time on, like, where's this character gone to college, and what's their first pet's name, all that stuff.

I'm not trying to dump on that idea. I get that that can be helpful. But I'm like, how would I know that until I've spent time with them?

Then once I begin to spend time with them, I'm writing and I'm like, “Nah, this doesn't seem like what that character would really say or do,” so I have to go back and rejigger the story to hopefully make it fit with that character.

Then I like to give the characters some sort of attitude. I'm not talking about a negative or judgy attitude, but an attitude about something that is unique or different, and that makes them not a template character, not an archetype or whatever, but unique.

Sort of this constellation of unique traits, characteristics, maybe wounds, flaws and so on, that create a character where you're like, “This is a character like none I've ever seen before. I want to spend time with this character.”

Jo: Then you're spending time with the character by writing what's happening, as opposed to writing loads of stuff beforehand and then starting to write.

You're actually finding all of this out during the process of writing.

Steven: Yes, and I think it's kind of like getting to know someone. If I were to say, “Okay, I'm going to write down Jo's bio,” or whatever—okay, I'm making stuff up, because I don't know you super well.

If we were to spend time together, hang out, whatever, talk, over the course of time I would start to know, oh, she likes this, she doesn't like that. This is important to her. This is what she would weep or pound the table over—whatever, all of the things that come with time. It's like a friendship in real life to me.

So I can't sit down and tell you what a character in real life would think and say and do if I don't know them, but the more time I spend with them, then the more I'm able to predict that accurately.

I think the mistake a lot of people make is they think, “I'm going to get to know this character with a background,” and then they start writing it, and instead of looking at the context, they look back at the—I don't know what you call it—the background or something like that.

I always feel like what you mentioned earlier is, like, hold it loosely in your hand. Trust the fluidity of the process.

As you're writing, you have an instinct. “Ah, I think this character would say this or do this.” So trust that. Trust that instinct. Trust that moment in the story, instead of trying to go back to an outline, back to a character description, or whatever it might be.

So I'm a big proponent of looking at the context—not just what happened, but what is the result? So looking at the impetus and the implication of the choices and the activities. When something occurs, what would the character naturally say or do or think or respond?

Then what would that cause? What's the implication that that would have on the rest of the story, on the rest of the characters? So, really trying to keep your finger on the pulse of the story, and adapt as you move forward through it.

Jo: I love all of that, but I also am very aware that you've been in traditional publishing for over 20 years, and one of the things with agents and publishers is that they often ask for an outline.

So how do you manage that? Or how did you more earlier in your career, because I imagine they just trust you now.

Earlier in your career, or people listening who want to pitch but they write in this organic way, how do we deal with that kind of thing?

Steven: Well, okay, so there's two good questions. One is about producing an outline for an agent or editor or publisher and so on. The other is how to pitch a story.

So the first: I would write the premise down, and maybe a paragraph or two, and then where I think it might go. Basically, I would focus on the questions that the characters will face, maybe the moral dilemmas, the sacrifices they have to make, the world they live in.

I kind of know that stuff, and I can write a couple of paragraphs about that. But beyond that, I just don't know what's going to happen, so I can't really provide more.

I'm looking at my shelf at the books that I've done, and mostly that's what I've done is kind of a couple of paragraphs focusing on the premise and the problem, the struggle, and so on like that.

As far as pitching a story, I always tell people, “Don't pitch the plot, pitch the pivot.”

I think that there's a screenwriter—I think that he talks about this a little bit. I've not read the book Save the Cat, but people have told me, “Oh, he kind of brings this up in that book.”

The idea is to pitch the irony instead of what occurs. So sometimes when I tell people to pitch, or I give them ideas, one process that you can use is: when, must, before, or else. So, when this occurs, this character must do something before this, or else.

So you have the character, you have the struggle, you have the inciting incident, you have the stakes, and you have the countdown. It works well for thrillers.

So for instance, like Jaws. When a man-eating shark starts eating people in a small seaside village, the sheriff must stop him before more people die and the town loses its economy. So there you have when, must, before, or else.

Now, no one's going to buy the story based on that, because there's no irony, there's no pivot. It's just a description of the plot, and that's what most people pitch.

So I always tell people, pitch the part of the story that you wouldn't expect. So for instance, in there you might pitch: when a shark starts eating people in a small seaside village, the only one who can stop him is afraid of the water.

Now you're like, “Oh, well, that's interesting. How does that happen? What happens there?”

With my book Broker of Lies, the pitch was something like, when a high-level Pentagon redactor ends up on the run, he must stop a terrorist attack before he's neutralised by the people he trusts the most.

So the pivot is that the people he trusts at the Pentagon the most are actually trying to neutralise him because he's on the run, and all that kind of stuff. So why would they be trying to do that? Well, that's interesting.

So it's always looking for the irony, the pivot. Why is this character the last one in the world who would ever be equipped to tackle this problem or face this issue?

So that's one way to do a pitch. Obviously there's lots of them, but I think your goal with a pitch is to get them to say, “Tell me more.” It's not necessarily to summarise the whole story.

Jo: That's great advice. So you teach writers—I first saw you at ThrillerFest, I think it was 2012—and you do events, you run writing retreats. So you work with a lot of authors, and I wondered, what are the challenges that you see from authors with, say, five books?

So not the beginner authors, because obviously there's a lot of challenges. But those who, let's say they've got the three to five books, things are going all right, but they're like, “How do I get to the next level?”

What are the craft issues, or the business issues as well, that mid-list authors face?

Steven: Well, business, I'm not the guy to ask. I could try to answer that, but I mean, basically: meet your deadlines and write something amazing. Try to be easy to work with, but also stand up for what you wrote as far as working with editors. It's sort of a fine line you have to walk.

The one thing that over the last few years I've really noticed in a lot of writers who are in that space is that they don't have many pivots. They tend to write predictable stories, and that's why they tend to stay where they're at—whether it's because they're following an outline or a plot formula or whatever it is.

So when I talk about a pivot, I mean a moment in the story where something happens that's both unexpected and inevitable.

For instance, if you're reading a story, you want things to make sense. You want them to be logical. That's one thing. But you don't want them to be too predictable. If it's too predictable, it's boring. It's like, I'm not interested.

So we also want surprises. We want these two things. We want logic, and we want surprise. When those two things meet and you have a moment in the story where it's like, “I didn't see that coming, but that totally makes sense,” that's what we want, and we want that in every scene.

I feel like a lot of authors don't have that in every scene. Now, you might say, “Well, every scene?” Well, yes, because basically those two factors, logic and surprise, can only meet in four different ways.

You could have something that's very logical but has no surprises. That's going to be boring. It's going to be too predictable. We don't want that.

You could have something that is very surprising but not logical. It makes no sense. A lot of stuff is surprising, but that's not what we want, because it's unbelievable, and it's like, what is going on here?

You could have something that has neither logic nor surprise, which obviously we don't want that.

The only other option is to have a moment that is both logical and surprising. So you have a choice in every scene. You have four choices, actually. You can have it be predictable and boring. You can have it be nonsensical. You can have it be unbelievable. Or you can have a pivot.

So I find myself trying to really coach people on pivots.

They'll say, “Oh, well, do I need it in every scene?” I'm like, “You can choose, but do you want it to be predictable or boring or nonsensical, or do you want it to really drive the story forward?”

I think it's because people have been taught structure and plot and three acts and all this kind of stuff, but they haven't been taught this idea—even though it's not something I made up.

Aristotle, in Poetics, thousands of years ago, put it a little bit differently, but he said, “The reversal of the situation”—what I call the pivot—”is the moment at which the action veers around to its opposite”—that would be what I call surprise—”subject always to a rule of probability or necessity”—which is the logic.

So he's basically saying the same thing in just a little bit different language, but you have these three factors. You have logic, you have surprise, and you have them come together in a specific moment.

I don't know why it's not taught more. I have never found anyone who teaches pivots. I have not found any books, so I wrote a book recently about how to use pivots.

It's so central, and I think great storytellers naturally do it. You'll read a book, or you'll maybe watch a show, and you're like, “Oh, I didn't see that coming. That totally makes sense.” I don't see anyone else out there really focusing on teaching that.

So that's a huge thing for me, really, to help people move up in their writing, elevate it to a different level.

Jo: Is that Delve, Pivot, Propel?

Steven: Yes. That book came out a couple years ago. We just re-released it. I updated it some, but it talks pretty much in depth about pivots and how to actually use those to propel the stories forward.

Jo: Maybe you could just give us one tip on how to do that, because going back to the organic writing—let's say I've been organically writing, and every time a character has a decision to make, I think at that point about what I want to write and I write it.

Are you suggesting that we go back in the edit and look at the end of every scene and redo it?

Because I can't imagine that I would get this right every time. I would need to do that in an edit, I think.

Steven: I think for me, when I'm writing, I'm always asking myself a series of questions. One is, what would the character naturally do? I want to make it believable and natural. Let them do it.

I want to escalate the tension, so I'll ask myself, “How can I make things worse?”

Then I'll always ask myself, how can I add a pivot to this scene? So as I'm writing a scene—again, I don't know how it will end when I start it—but if I use the first idea that comes to mind, probably a lot of readers would guess that as well, because it's the first idea that comes to mind. It's probably logical and probably predictable.

That's why most stories end up being too predictable. It's because we go with the first idea that maybe we had. So I try to discard that. Maybe the second idea, just discard it. Then I start thinking, okay, now if I've discarded the obvious, what is going on? What's below the surface?

So to answer your question, I'm looking for what isn't what it appears to be, or who isn't who they appear to be, or a surprising way to bring together plot threads that I didn't see related before. So it's always looking for the unexpected, the surprise, because most of the time that is what we're missing.

Now, if you have a great surprise, then you have to lean into making it believable. So you've got to move into that idea of, well, what would the character naturally do? You can't just have him do something ridiculous and then say, “Oh, it's for my twist.” No, you can't do that. You've got to play fair.

So it has to be believable, causally related, logical, and surprising. That's what you're shooting for.

Those are the questions going through my mind. So as I'm working on a scene, I'm like, “How could I end this?” Or include something that people won't see coming right away. The best ideas always come to me then.

It's so interesting. A lot of people will say, “Oh, don't write organically,” or, quote, “by the seat of your pants,” whatever they'll say, “because then you might write yourself into a corner.”

I'm like, “Yes, absolutely write yourself into a corner. That's what I'm trying to do in every scene.” And then you write yourself out of a corner in a way that's logical and surprising.

The best twists I've ever come up with have been when I'm in a corner. So why would I warn people against going to the place where the best ideas await them? That just seems mean. Why would I do that?

No, I want you to have the best possible ideas. So yes, look for corners, write yourself into them, and then write yourself out of them in a way that's both logical and surprising.

Jo: I guess also it needs to be genre specific. We write mainly thrillers, and there is this fine line, isn't there?

I love Stephen King, but one of the most unbelievable endings is Under the Dome. I still remember feeling betrayed. I don't know if you've read that one, but—

Steven: Oh, no.

Jo: I was like, “I'm sorry, you've just changed genre in the last chapter of the book. What is going on here?”

Steven: That's actually interesting. The fourth question I ask… So I ask, what would the character naturally do? How can I make things worse? How can I add a pivot? But the fourth question is, what promises have I made that I have not yet kept?

So genre, to me, is a promise. You build up a promise in your writing at the beginning of the book, and then I feel like as we write, we have to honour that. So if we bring something up that's super interesting, bring it back or whatever. Keep your promises. Keep your narrative promises.

It's true of really any genre. Let's say you're writing a romance. You want to respect the conventions, but not fall into the clichés. So there's going to be a moment where the lovers meet, right? They haven't met before. I don't know what they call it, a meet cute or a cute meet. I think they call it a meet cute, I guess.

Jo: Yes. They do.

Steven: Anyway. So they're going to meet, right? And you're like, “Oh, I'll just have them meet.” Well, try to do it in a way we haven't seen before. Add something else to the scene. Add a third element, as my friend Bob Dugoni likes to say.

Add something a little bit that we're like, “Huh, I've never seen that before.” We know they're going to meet, but let them meet in a way that we don't anticipate, that we can't predict right away, that isn't exactly by the numbers, and then you're going to be on the right track.

Jo: So then, talking about reader expectations and genre, I wondered if I could also ask you about your Christian faith, because many people listening are people of faith, and some people want to write a Christian book.

Other people want to bring their faith into, say, a mainstream type thriller in an authentic way.

So how do you balance your faith and your writing?

Because I think you have some series that are more sort of Christian than others.

Steven: It's interesting. When my first novel came out—The Pawn, like a chess piece, The Pawn—back almost 20 years ago. Gosh, 20 years ago. Nineteen. But anyway, when it came out, someone wrote to me and said, “Is this a Christian book?”

I'm like, “What would make a book not Christian?” I'm like, maybe if it has a lot of idolatry, or witchcraft, or maybe sexuality or graphic violence. Then I'm like, oh, wait, that's… No, that's the Old Testament.

So it's interesting, because people have asked me similar questions over the years. My books are not sermons in disguise. I'm trying to write great stories that anyone of any background or faith will enjoy.

I always ask big questions. I let my characters wrestle with questions that matter, I think. Do my choices matter? Is there hope? Is there a God? Is there no God? Do I have free will? Can I find forgiveness? Can I offer forgiveness? Can I extend it, or whatever? So I always try to base the stories on something deeper.

I do believe that there is good and there's evil in the world. That's part of my worldview. So when people talk about moral ambiguity, I don't want to write or read something that's morally ambiguous. I want moral complexity, but I also want moral clarity.

So whenever you write, the question is, what are you justifying and what are you condemning? And if you're justifying something that's morally—I would say wrong, actually—then I don't feel like that's the kind of book I would want to write.

So I want to write stories that explore good and evil, that explore our world, human nature, in an honest way. I feel like when you write honest stories, people, no matter what their background or whatever faith, then they will connect with it.

I think a lot of people, if they start off with an agenda—whatever that agenda might be, let's say it is a Christian agenda, like I want people to trust in Jesus, let's say—so they write a story. Well, what you're doing, you're actually starting your story with an answer, and drama is not built on answers, it's built on questions.

So you're actually diminishing the amount of tension. You're also diminishing the possibility of a pivot, because we all get where you're going. It's predictable, but there's probably no surprise. You're diminishing the payoff at the end, because we're like, “I saw that coming. I exactly knew where you were going with this.”

So instead, I don't start with an answer. I always start with a question, or in some cases a moral dilemma, like, what's more important, protecting the innocent or telling the truth? That's interesting to me. If I had to choose between the two, would I tell the truth or would I protect the innocent?

It's interesting, because people might come down on different sides of it. They might say, “Oh, you should always tell the truth,” or they say, “You always should protect the innocent.” I'm like, okay, well, let's explore it. Let's literally ask the question.

So I come from a certain worldview, but I've written characters who have very different worldviews from me.

I'm always just trying to be honest with the character, ask big questions, tell a story that examines human nature and sort of the paradoxes of the human condition in a way that will resonate with really whoever the readers might be.

Jo: And of course that worldview is part of your author voice and part of what readers come to you for. I also notice that you have some pretty diverse different series.

How do you manage that diversity of series under your one brand? Do you find your readers move from one to the other, or do you have different readerships?

Steven: You mentioned the B word—brand. That's what publishers are always telling me: “What's your brand?”

I'm like, “I don't know. You tell me what my brand is.” I've done fantasy, science fiction, conspiracy. I've done spies and police procedurals and crime and suspense, thrills, whatever.

So I would say the one thing that really ties all my stories together is probably just suspense. They are stories with suspense. Some are more high concept thrillers, some are more dark fantasy, but they're built around suspense.

So I guess that would be intelligent suspense, maybe, if I was trying to come up with a brand. Something like that. Because I don't want them to be dumbed down. They're not dumbed down stories, so they're a little bit more complex than you might find in other places, but always built around the idea of suspense.

Suspense to me is basically—my definition is apprehension born of concern. So we're concerned about a character, and we're apprehensive because there's peril around the bend, or right in front of them.

So I want the readers to really care about a character, and then try to build the story and the suspense around that empathy or sympathy that we have for the character.

Jo: I think it's really interesting, because again, you mentioned 2007—we're coming up on 20 years since first published. The publishing industry has changed a lot.

So what do you think has changed most in publishing for you, and what are your thoughts on routes to market for new authors these days?

Or even established authors who are finding that things have changed, which they obviously have.

Steven: Well, I'm not a marketer, I'm not a businessman. I'm just a storyteller at heart. So I just keep writing stories that I would be intrigued with reading, stories that I feel like are resonant. Then I look for publishers for those.

I've been to a variety of different publishers over the last decade. I've done some different types of stories. I feel like you have to just write the story instead of trying to write for a specific market trend or something like that.

So I might not make as much as some of my friends, I might not sell as many books, but I feel like I have to write certain stories if they grab ahold of me.

There's a Native American—I think the Pawnee tribe, anyway, in the United States—but they were saying that all the stories that exist are out there already, and when one finds you, it's your job to share it with the world. I think that's kind of interesting.

Sometimes—maybe it's just true for you, I don't know, Jo—but it's like a story will grab hold of me, or an idea, and I'm like, “I can't shake it.” That's a story that I want to tell the world.

I would say that stories are becoming shorter, dumber. People are trying to write faster. They're trying to write several books a year, and as a result of that, some of the quality has gone down. This is all unfortunate.

I'm still sort of a dinosaur. I still tend to write longer, complex stories. But people have shorter attention spans and whatever, and they're not reading as much.

The structure of stories, I think, is changing slightly, where people will have to spend more time on a hook to really grab the attention of the readers. Then there might be a longer slow period, or more info dumping, which I'm not a fan of.

So they kind of look like, “I want to get readers hooked at the beginning, and then get them to flip pages.”

So I tend to set up my stories a little bit differently than that. So I'm not the best guy to ask about marketing and sales and stuff like that.

I feel like, write a story that will not let you go. And if you do that, I feel like that's the kind of story that will resonate with readers, because there's a deep honesty to it. You care, you're passionate about it. It's not just something you're trying to spin out just to sell books. That's my view.

Jo: I guess I also feel that writers are doing other things. So you have non-fiction, you have your podcast, you do events. I see you sell books direct from your website.

It's like the business expands into multiple streams of income, so that the art doesn't have to pay all the bills.

Steven: That's interesting. I do love to teach writing at conferences, events, and speak at different things.

So I guess if you think about it that way, my brand might be just story, or storytelling, or something like that. Really trying to get out there, and whether it's speaking or writing, just tell a great story.

So it's so interesting when I work with publishers and they'll ask, “What's your brand?” Basically it's like, “What's your box?” is really what they're asking. What box can we stick you in that will make it easy for us to package you and sell you?

I know myself, and just a lot of authors that I know, we don't think in a box. Every one of my stories is not boxy. It's not the same. They're different. I know a lot of authors like that too.

So it's unfortunate. I get it, that it's part of them trying to market and sell the books. I understand that, but I think being honest, genuine with the story, doing the very best you can, writing a worthy book, and then letting them come up with a way to categorise it, is probably the best bet. I don't know.

Jo: We're almost out of time, but this is obviously a podcast, and you have a podcast.

So tell us about The Story Blender Podcast and what people might find over there.

Steven: Yes, I appreciate it. Basically, I interview some of the leading writers and storytellers in the world every week, and the goal is for great storytellers to share the secrets of great storytelling.

So I basically pick their brains, kind of like what you were doing with me today, and find out what projects they're working on, and really just try to get insights into storytelling.

So it's tons of fun. I've been doing it now for a number of years, and I guess I've interviewed over 250 different authors and writers from around the world, and so I always enjoy it. It's a ton of fun. It's The Story Blender, and people can find it anywhere.

Jo: So where can people find you and your books and everything you do online?

Steven: Probably the best place is StevenJames.net. I think I'm on different socials @readstevenjames, so you can look me up there—Facebook, Instagram, X, and so on. I think they're all under readstevenjames.

Check out the website, drop me a note. I always enjoy hearing from readers.

Jo: Well, thanks so much for your time, Steven. That was great.

Steven: Thanks, Jo. I appreciate it. Good luck.

The post Organic Writing And The Power Of The Pivot In Fiction With Steven James first appeared on The Creative Penn.

After more than a decade of releasing this show on Mondays, I’m moving it to Wednesdays, and this is the first episode of the new time slot. 

On the one hand, this might sound like nothing at all, but it’s also a big deal, for you and for me, and in this episode, I explain why I'm making the change, and past guests give some tips on sustainable creativity for the long term.

Joanna Penn is an award-winning New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers, dark fantasy, short stories and travel memoir under J.F. Penn and also writes non-fiction for authors and hosts The Creative Penn Podcast.

Why the podcast is moving to Wednesdays

(1) Take time out to question what you’re doing

(2) Learn to pivot if you want to keep going long term
(3) Set a sustainable pace, and don’t build reader expectations you can’t deliver on

(4) Don’t try to do it all, and try to identify the fear that might be driving your choices

(5) Question what still serves you, especially as things continue to change
(6) Consider different approaches to creativity. It doesn’t have to be every day, or every week
(7) Creative humans evolve. Build a body of work for the long term.

You can find the backlist episodes at TheCreativePenn.com/podcast, just click into the episode to find the transcript.

Why The Podcast Is Moving To Wednesdays, And 7 Tips for Sustainable Creativity

Here’s my big news! After more than a decade of releasing this show on Mondays, I’m moving it to Wednesdays, and this is the first episode of the new time slot.

On the one hand, this might sound like nothing at all, but it’s also a big deal, for you and for me!

I know many of you have a routine of listening to the show during a certain thing on a Monday, so I’m sorry to have to disrupt that, and I hope I don’t lose you along the way — although I guess you could just save the episode for Monday!

For me, it’s a much bigger deal, because a Monday show has meant I have often recorded the intro and edited and scheduled the episode over the weekend.

The main reason is that I need to record in the mornings when I have energy and when the house is less noisy, since Jonathan is often on the phone since he works from home as well. So I would prepare the episode on Fridays, and I type out this intro before reading it, and source the news and my thoughts and all that — and then I’d record it Saturday morning, or Sunday morning if Saturday was busy — and so recently, I have felt like something has to change. 

Moving the show to a Wednesday means that I can prep on Monday and Tuesday, which is perfect.

Its so funny because I agonised over this, in the same way I agonised over changing the theme tune a few years back. Some of you may remember that — and it also turned out to not be a big deal at all. We build things up in our minds and then sometimes the problem can be solved in a different way.

So instead of going to ad hoc episodes, or once every two weeks, I hope that moving to Wednesday makes the show more sustainable again, because let’s face it, there’s a lot going on, and if I did a show every 2 weeks, I might have to make them longer to get through everything!

So, same show, just on Wednesdays from now on.

And this change underscores what today’s episode is about: sustainable creativity over the long term.

How do you keep writing, and publishing, and podcasting — and creating for years — and I am now at two decades — without burning out, and without becoming a slave to the algorithm, or the market, or even your own audience’s expectations?

The goal is not to just survive this year’s release schedule, or to keep feeding the machine until you crumble under the speed of it all.

The goal is to still be creating, and still be enjoying it, next month, next year, in five years, in 10 years, in 20, in 30. Who knows how many years we all have left — but for sure, we are NOT machines, we are not AI — and we cannot churn it out – and what is the point of that anyway? 

So in today’s show, I’ll share some thoughts and tips from me and also other authors from the show on this topic, and you can find the full episodes in the backlist, and links as ever in the show notes on TheCreativePenn.com/podcast 

(1) Take time out to question what you’re doing

In early 2024, The Tim Ferriss Show, one of the biggest podcasts in the world, hit its ten-year anniversary with over a billion downloads and over 750 episodes, and Tim decided to take a sabbatical.

He paused the show for four months and seriously questioned whether to continue. Not because it was failing, it was hugely profitable and he enjoyed talking to people, but because the landscape had changed. 

Podcasting had gone from a wide-open space in 2014 to a saturated market, and his question wasn’t “can I keep competing?” It was “is this still the game I want to play?”

Just a little note here, I started The Creative Penn Podcast in 2009 when there were even fewer shows so I know a lot about a changing podcast market!

After four months, Tim came back from what he called a sabbatical with a blog post on My New Rules for Podcasting — To Keep Things Interesting.

He starts with the sheer number of podcasts, saying,

“Having a good show is no longer good enough. Having a great show is no longer good enough. If you want to survive in the mindshare of listeners, you need differentiation.”

I think this is true for us as authors as well as podcasters, or YouTubers, or social media, or anything. But the good news is that your differentiation can be you.

Regular listeners will know that I have questioned ending the show over the years, worried that I was no longer useful, or that my voice no longer mattered when there are so many podcasts on similar topics. But after your wonderful feedback, and the fact that the show still gets a lot of downloads every week, and the growth in my Patreon Community, I don’t worry about that anymore. It’s unlikely that any of us will have a podcast as big as Tim Ferriss’s or sell as many books as The Four Hour Work Week, but that’s OK, because we are not Tim.

I am Jo Penn and you’re here because you find my take on the publishing industry is still useful in some way. When it’s not anymore, you will go elsewhere, and I find myself at peace with that.

Back to Tim’s article — he asks some questions of himself, including:

If I get to do this for another decade, or had to do this for another decade, what new rules might I create to keep it interesting?

Of course, we all have different ideas of what this means for us. And I have already implemented one of these rules, which is that I interview people on topics I find interesting. I frequently get pitched by more famous authors and bigger names, but most of the time I turn them down, and choose to talk to people who are not famous but are more interested in serving you, my audience, because that is the point of this show.

I also have people on that I enjoy talking to, because checking in with my friends while you listen in, can be useful too, since my friends are often authors who’ve been in the industry a while now. I have to make the interviews time that I find interesting or useful or fulfilling as well.

But the point is to stop and take time to consider what might need to change, even if you are really successful. You cannot be a slave to the algorithm, to the media, to your audience, for the long term. You have to put some circuit breakers in sometimes.

It’s the old adage about the small business. You have to work ON in the business, not just IN the business, which means you need to step away.

This does sometimes mean that you have to get away physically. I had this realisation while we were in Bruges in Belgium talking to Jonathan about what changes I could make because I just felt a lack of freedom — and freedom is my highest value, so I really need to honour that.

So, the first question for you is: If you feel like you need a change, if your routines are becoming too much, or your workload is too much, or you are eating into time you need for rest and recovery or family or whatever you need, can you schedule time out to have a think about what you need and how things can change?

You don’t need to burn it all down. You might find the answer is just moving the show from a Monday to a Wednesday!

(2) Learn to pivot if you want to keep going long term

I love talking to authors who have been doing this career for a long time, and in December 2025 in episode 839, I talked to Jennifer Probst, the New York Times bestselling romance author of more than sixty books, about why some authors build decades-long careers while others vanish after one breakout.

Jennifer has been through the indie gold rush, the fallout, traditional deals, Kickstarter, all of it, and I asked her how she thinks about how everything keeps changing, and we start with marketing but it goes much further than that.

Writing Free: Romance Author Jennifer Probst On A Long-Term Author Career

***

Jo: In terms of how we do marketing, TikTok is still a thing, and we can see maybe generative AI search coming on the horizon and agentic buying. A decade ago it might have been different, more Facebook ads or whatever. Then before that it might have been something else. So there’s always things changing along the way.

Jennifer: Yes, there definitely is. It is a very oversaturated market. They talk about, I don’t know, 2010 to 2016 maybe, as the gold rush, because that was where you could make a lot of money as an indie. Then we saw the total fallout of so many different things.

I feel like I’ve gone through so many ups and downs in the industry. I do love it because the longer you’re around, the more you learn how to pivot. If you want this career, you learn how to write differently or do whatever you need to do to keep going, in different aspects, with the changes.

To me, that makes the industry exciting. Again, perspective is a big thing. But I have had to take a year to kind of rebuild when I was out of contract with a lot of things. I’ve had to say, “Okay, what do you see on the horizon now? Where is the new foundation? Where do you wanna restart?”

Sometimes it takes a year or two of, “Maybe I won’t be making big income and I cut back,” but then you’re back in it, because it takes a while to write a few new books, or write under a pen name, or however you want to pivot your way back into the industry.

Or, like you were saying, diversifying. I did a lot of non-fiction stuff because that’s a big calling for me, so I put that into the primary for a while.

I think it’s important for authors to maybe not just have one thing. When that one thing goes away, you’re scrambling. It’s good to have a couple of different things like, “Well, okay, this genre is dead or this thing is dead or this isn’t making money. Let me go to this for a little while until I see new things on the horizon.”

***

I love that from Jennifer, because there are always new things on the horizon, and we try new things and we pivot, and we bring in other streams of income as some drop off, and we go again and we keep creating. Authors with longevity are authors who pivot over their careers. They may lament the end of one era, but they don’t stop, they find a new way forward.

(3) Set a sustainable pace, and don’t build reader expectations you can’t deliver on

Kevin J. Anderson is one of the most productive writers alive, with hundreds of books, most of which he writes with dictation while out hiking, and he has been on this show many times.

In January 2025, in episode 791, we talked about building a long-term author business, and how authors need to be careful about setting reader expectations around pace of releases.

Building A Long Term Author Business, Dictation, Kickstarter, and Short Story Collections With Kevin J Anderson

Kevin: Now, again, we get back to the longevity of a career. It is exhausting to write lots of books a year, and most people can’t keep doing that for 20 years or 30 years.

That’s one of the reasons, especially indie authors, where readers expect you to write several books a year. Some indie authors I know are writing a book a month. I couldn’t do that for any long period. Well, I couldn’t do that probably for a single year.

You start building expectations, and when you fail to meet those expectations, they will leave you very quickly. That’s why you should have Plan Bs.

If you really, really can’t stand writing your steampunk vampire romance series after book number 29, well, make sure that you have some other series you’re starting and building up.

Well, Hugh Howey’s got several series that are going. Michael Anderle has all kinds of series, and Craig Martelle has all kinds of series. You don’t just put all your eggs in one basket. You need to have Plan B and Plan C, to circle around to what I started with.

***

Whatever cadence you choose, for your books, your email newsletters, or or your podcast, or your social media, choose a pace you can still be keeping up in a decade, because this is a long term career, and longevity in the market is one of the most important things. It’s better to pace yourself than burn out.

(4) Don’t try to do it all, and try to identify the fear that might be driving your choices

I couldn’t do an episode on sustainability without Becca Syme!

Becca is an author coach who has worked with thousands of writers, she is the creator of the Better-Faster Academy and the Quit books, and the QuitCast podcast — and In January 2023, in episode 668, at the end of our conversation about intuitive writing and marketing, I asked her what authors who sustain long careers have in common.

Intuitive Writing And Book Marketing With Becca Syme

***

Joanna: So in terms of sustainability, let’s talk about that. You coach writers every day, you see writers on every spectrum of every personality type, and people who write differently and release differently and publish differently. So what do you see as your recommendations or, I guess, commonalities for authors who want this sustainable career as a writer for the long term in order not to burn out? What are you seeing in terms of the best way to be sustainable in a creative career?

Becca: Conquering the fear that we have that we’re not going to get what we want out of the career, like 100%. Because the fear is the thing that’s driving us to burn ourselves out.

The fear that if I don’t do it this way, I’m not going to make money. If I don’t do it this way, I’m not going to have a long career. I’m going to miss out on something if I don’t do absolutely everything.

And then I think the most important knowledge that we can have is that everyone in this industry who’s a nonfiction person, including me, is giving you a perspective on how author life can be done.

Every single one of us, not the perspective on how it should be done in order to have success. And if we could just change our expectations of how we look at the people who are helping us who are being good, helpful people who are very sure that their way is the correct way and who should be, again, because like all experts, they’ve had success doing what they are doing.

But the downside is from someone whose job is to sit with authors for 45 minutes at a time, all day, every day, I see the outcome of the people who have tried to “do it all,” in quotes, with capital letters, and who are burned out because they were doing everything out of a fear place.

And I think one of the best things that can happen in our — and what burnout often does is it forces us to reckon with the fact that we were doing all of this because we were afraid. My book isn’t going to sell, I’m not going to be able to do this, I have this dream that I’m holding on to and what happens if it doesn’t manifest itself.

Then we make a lot of our decisions about how much to take on based on fear, and we don’t know it.

Because we don’t realize that our brains are wired for survival, and so anytime fear kicks in, your brain is like, well, we have to do that because if you’re afraid of it, then that must mean that we need it in order to survive. And we don’t.

We will survive if our books don’t sell.

We have to calm that fear and answer the question. Like, what will happen if in five years, I have not sold more than $1,000 on every book that I am writing? Like if each of the individual books that I write have not made more than $1,000. And I have to reckon with what might happen if that happens, because if I don’t, that fear is going to drive me to burnout over and over and over and over again.

That is why we’re making so many of our decisions, including: do I pay for this class or conference? Do I pay for this book? Do I spend money on this advertising? Do I hire this expert consultant?

So many of us are making those choices out of fear and we don’t realize it. And that’s why when we do our public live coaching, and whenever I’m at a conference, I’m always listening for, “but what are you afraid is not going to happen? Or what are you afraid is going to happen?”

Because if we don’t deconstruct that part of yourself and calm your survival mechanism down, you’re going to continue over and over again to make those decisions out of fear.

Then you’re going to not listen to your intuition because you think it’s risky to listen to it. And so I really think, and some of this might include therapy for some of us, I’m just going to acknowledge some of us have trauma around not getting what we want or around not actualizing our desires, and we can’t just talk ourselves into letting the fear go.

But some of us do just need to consistently confront the fear and make a plan for what happens and then act in spite of that fear because we are not making good decisions when we are in survival mode.

***

Becca is very wise, and also pretty hardcore! So if you feel like you are trying to do it all, and you are on the edge of burning out, can you identify the fear beneath it?

(5) Question what still serves you, especially as things continue to change

Sometimes we keep doing things the same way, even when things have changed.

What is lost if we give things up? What is gained? And what kind of game do you want to play?

In episode 845, Claire Taylor, humour and mystery author, owner of FFS Media, certified Enneagram coach, talks about how social media has changed and why she gave it up.

Leaving Social Media, Writing Iconic Characters, and Building Trust With Claire Taylor

***

Joanna: One thing I know will have perked up people’s ears is: “I left social media.” Tell us a bit more about that.

Claire: This was a move that I could feel coming for a while. I didn’t like what social media did to my attention. Even when I wasn’t on it, there was almost a hangover from having been on it.

My attention didn’t feel as sharp and focused as it used to be, back before social media became what it is now.

So I started asking myself some questions: What is lost if I leave? What is gained if I leave? And what is social media actually doing for me today?

Because sometimes we hold on to what it used to do for us, and we keep trying to squeeze more and more of that out of it. But it has changed so much.

There are almost no places with sufficient organic reach anymore. It’s all pay-to-play, and the cost of pay-to-play keeps going up.

I looked at the numbers for my business. My Kickstarter was a great place to analyse that because they track so many traffic sources so clearly. I could see exactly how much I was getting from social media when I advertised and promoted my projects there.

Then I asked: can I let that go in order to get my attention back and make my life feel more settled? And I decided: yes, I can. That’s worth more to me.

Joanna: There are some things money can’t buy. Sometimes it really isn’t about the money. I like your question: what is lost and what is gained? You also said it’s all pay-to-play and there’s no organic reach. I do think there is some organic reach for some people who don’t pay, but those people are very good at playing the game of whatever the platform wants. So, TikTok for example—you might not have to pay money yet, but you do have to play their game. You have to pay with your time instead of money. I agree with you. I don’t think there’s anywhere you can literally just post something and know it will reliably reach the people who follow you.

Claire: Right. Exactly. TikTok currently, if you really play the game, will sometimes “pick” you, right? But that “pick me” energy is not really my jam.

And we can see the trend—this “organic” thing doesn’t last. It’s organic for now. You can play the game for now, but TikTok would be crazy not to change things so they make more money. So eventually everything becomes pay-to-play.

TikTok is fun, but for me it’s addictive. I took it off my phone years ago because I would do the infinite scroll. There’s so much candy there.

Then I’d wake up the next morning and notice my mood just wasn’t where I wanted it to be. My energy was low. I really saw a correlation between how much I scrolled and how flat I felt afterwards.

So I realised: I’m not the person to pay-to-play or to play the game here. I’m not even convinced that the pay-to-play on certain social media networks is being tracked in a reliable, accountable way anymore. Who is holding them accountable for those numbers?

You can sort of see correlation in your sales, but still, I just became more and more sceptical. In the end, it just wasn’t for me.

My life is so much better on a daily basis without it. That’s definitely a decision I have not regretted for a second.

****

To be clear, we’re not saying you should give up social media, but it’s about questioning how things make you feel, and what you can sustain and how you want to spend your time.

I did question once again whether to give up this show entirely, but it is an important part of my creative body of work, and quite frankly, I reach more people with the podcast than I do with my books, and I still love talking to people, and I learn, and it underpins my business.

I don’t do much social media though. I learn about AI things on X and I do post photos and things on Instagram but I don’t do much else. You have to decide what is right for you, but also, what is right for you might change over time. If we have a long term career, or a long term anything, things will change, and we will need to move on sometimes, or at least question whether it is still working in the way it used to.

(6) Consider different approaches to creativity. It doesn’t have to be every day, or every week. 

In April 2026, in episode 858, I talked to Sara Rosett, USA Today bestselling mystery author and co-host of the Wish I’d Known Then podcast, about low-key marketing, and a more seasonal approach, or phased approach to podcasting as well as writing.

Special Editions, Seasonal Podcasts, and the Art of Low-Key Book Marketing with Sara Rosett

***

Jo: Although I must say I had forgotten about your Mystery Books podcast and going to seasonal. I also had my second podcast, Books and Travel, which is now on a kind of hiatus, but going to a seasonal approach is actually really interesting. Do you find that listeners come back to that podcast?

Sara: Yes, and it surprises me because I’ve always thought you have to be weekly with a podcast to gain any traction at all, which I think is the best way to do it. You can build an audience quickly then, but I just knew I couldn’t sustain that.

So when I set out, I started with maybe seven to ten episodes and I did them each year — each year has had a season — and I do five to ten episodes. Readers find it, and I have highlighted specific books. I think maybe they’re searching for a podcast about the Thursday Murder Club or something like that.

They find it that way, and I get downloads, just steady downloads throughout the year, and I don’t do much. I do some Pinterest pins for that, and that’s about all I do. This is one of those things — it’s the kind of low-key marketing that’s low threshold, but it does work.

I think if your readers are looking for stuff to listen to about the topic you write about, it could be a good way to do some low-cost, long-tail marketing. I love it. I keep doing it because I love it.

Jo: That just seems more sustainable to me. I didn’t like doing everything every day or every single week.

Sara: Me either. I like switching it up, and I do enjoy the different phases of writing. I like the research and then I like doing the — well, I don’t like the drafting that much, but once I get a draft done, I like the editing. And then when it comes time to promote it or do a special edition or whatever, I enjoy that part. Finding whatever I’m going to use for the interior photos and stuff — just things like that. I enjoy each phase and I like switching it out.

Jo: I think that’s really good. Some people think this writer’s life is you write new words every single day and you manage your ads every single day. That seems to be what some people do, but that’s certainly not us, is it?

Sara: No. And that’s great if you want to do that. I just don’t want to. And I think we’ve come to the point now where each person can do this as they want. Hopefully people don’t feel the pressure to meet these self-imposed deadlines or parameters that don’t exist. There’s no rules for writing or publishing. You can do whatever you want.

***

I am definitely a seasonal creator, I don’t write every day. I never have. I binge write when a book emerges, or binge create. As I record this I am working on the treatment and trailer for what is now called Cathedral Zero, a positive futurist sci-fi feature film that I am entering in the FutureVision X Prize in the next week or so, and then I will move to the next project. I also love Kickstarter launches for this reason. They feel much more sustainable because it’s such a focused marketing push.

My Books and Travel Podcast is still on hiatus, but I may still resurrect that at some point. I still feel the pull of it. And of course, this show remains weekly, but the Wednesday shift will hopefully help keep it this way. I can’t see me going seasonal with this, but never say never!

The main thing is to consider seasonality, or consider phased approaches to your work, rather than trying to do exactly the same thing week in week out.

(7) Creative humans evolve. Build a body of work for the long term.

Roz Morris first came on this podcast in 2011, and in March 2026, in episode 853 we talked about her memoir, discovery writing, and slow, sustainable book marketing. Roz is an award-nominated literary author and former bestselling ghostwriter, an editor and I always appreciate her perspective as she has been doing this far longer than I have.

****

JOANNA: Do you still actively choose indie for a particular reason?

ROZ: I do. I really like building my own body of work, and I’m now experienced enough to know what I do well, what I need advice with, and help with. I mean, we don’t do all this completely by ourselves, do we? We bring in experts who will give us the right feedback if we’re doing a new genre or a genre that’s new to us.

I choose indie because I like the control. Because I began in traditional publishing—I was making books for other people—I just learned all the trades and how to do everything to a professional standard. I love being able to apply that to my own work.

I also love the way I can decide what I’m going to write next. If I was traditionally published, I would have to do something that fitted with whatever the publisher would want of me, and that isn’t necessarily where my muse is taking me or what I’ve become interested in.

I think creative humans evolve throughout their lives. They become interested in different things, different themes, different ways of expressing themselves. I began by thinking I would just write novels, and now I’ve found myself writing memoirs as well.

That shift would have been difficult if someone else was having to make me fit into their marketing plans or what their imprint was known for. But because I’ve built my own audience, I can just bring them with me and say, “You might like this. It’s still me. I’m just doing something different.”

****

Inspiring words from Roz there —

“It’s still me, I’m just doing something different.”

And indeed, I am a very different Jo from the new author who started this podcast back in March 2009. I have evolved and this show has evolved and this is not the end, it is a new phase. It’s funny because it’s just a shift of two days, but it also breaks a habit, for you listening and for me creating. It changes a time slot, and that itself can be a way to change energy, to change direction, to shift what matters and how we do things. 

So that’s what I want to leave you with today. A question around how shifting something, even something small, might make a big difference to your creative body of work, the quality of time you have for yourself or your family, and I’d love to know what you think about today’s episode and what we covered, as well as your thoughts on the Wednesday shift. 

Please leave a comment on the show notes, or the YouTube channel, or email me. I will see you next Wednesday, so happy writing and I’ll see you next time!
The post Why The Podcast Is Moving To Wednesdays, And 7 Tips for Sustainable Creativity first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What's the difference between a bundle, a box set, an anthology, and a collection? How can being part of an anthology be creatively interesting and useful for marketing? With Jamie Ferguson

In the intro, Amazon Kindle increases the 70% royalty share; audiobook marketing tips (Voices by InAudio); The Builder’s Creed [Seth Godin]; Future Vision XPrize; Researching the dark side of travel [Anna Sayburn Lane]; Photos from Bruges @jfpennauthor; Bones of the Deep: A Thriller – J.F. Penn.

Today's show is sponsored by Bookfunnel, the essential tool for your author business. Whether it’s delivering your reader magnet, sending out advanced copies of your book, handing out ebooks at a conference, or fulfilling your digital sales to readers, BookFunnel does it all. Check it out at bookfunnel.com/thecreativepenn

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn

Jamie Ferguson is a fiction and short story author, editor, and publisher, with over 20 anthologies and multiple ebook bundles through her own press. Her latest book for authors is Bundle Up! A Practical Guide to Anthologies and Box Sets That Sell.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

The difference between bundles, box sets, anthologies, and collections

Why a multi-author project means lots of people promoting the same book, not just you

How to find and pitch for anthology opportunities, and what editors look for in a contributor

Contracts, rights, and royalty splits explained for short fiction

Why Kickstarter and special print editions are changing the anthology game

Inkwren, the publishing management tool Jamie built for backlists and anthologies

You can find Jamie at JamieFerguson.com.

Transcript of the interview ith Jamie Ferguson

Jo: Jamie Ferguson is a fiction and short story author, editor, and publisher, with over 20 anthologies and multiple ebook bundles through her own press. Her latest book for authors is Bundle Up! A Practical Guide to Anthologies and Box Sets That Sell.

Just for context too, one of my short stories, “The Dark Queen”, is in the Amazing Monster Tales: Into the Briny Deep anthology. So I'm excited to talk about this today. Welcome to the show, Jamie.

Jamie: Thanks for having me, Jo.

Jo: Lots to talk about. But first up—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and self-publishing.

Jamie: Well, I wanted to be a writer since I was at least six, maybe before then. So it was just something I always wanted to do, but I always did it on the side.

I had a year, many years ago, where I was really busy with work, and I just felt like I didn't write anything the entire year, and I thought, “I'm going to give it up.”

Then the next year—that was 2011—I started seeing more about self-publishing, and that really invigorated me and made me feel like, “No, why am I giving up something I've wanted to do since before I went to school?”

So I got back into a novel I had worked on years before. I went to a writing workshop with Dean Wesley Smith up in Oregon, back in the day, and then I had my energy back. I've been writing ever since. Still on the side, unfortunately, but someday.

Jo: Hopefully!

Tell us a bit more about what kind of genres you write.

Because balancing your own books with also doing these anthologies and things is quite difficult.

Jamie: Yes, it definitely is. I'd say I primarily write contemporary fantasy, but I'll write anything in any genre if I'm really excited about it. I also have a soft spot for Westerns. They take a little more time because I like to research all the facts, but those are really fun to write.

Creating anthologies on your own is actually quite a bit of work. One of the things I also do is work with two other authors, DeAnna Knippling and Tami Veldura, and create more anthologies with them.

That's really fun because then we can each take a different piece. There's also always somebody to talk to, as opposed to doing it on your own.

Jo: Let's start with the terminology, because I definitely struggled with this, and I think people still do. We've got bundles, we've got box sets, we've got anthologies, we've got collections—and are these in ebook, audiobook, or print?

Can you start by explaining what all of these words actually mean?

Jamie: Yes. In my book I actually use the term “multi-author collection” or “multi-author project”, because there are so many different permutations and it does get confusing.

From my perspective, I think of a bundle as a collection. It could be a collection of ebooks. Technically it could be a collection of print books, although people generally use “box set” for that—but then a box set can also be a box set that's all ebooks.

An anthology, I usually use for something that's a collection of short stories where there's an editor who's actually edited all the stories. I have had stories in anthologies where somebody didn't edit them, and they would technically be called a curator.

So it is definitely confusing. I have not done anything with audio collections, but that certainly is another area that I actually think is pretty interesting.

Jo: I also think that a single author… so I've done a short story collection, but an anthology is multiple authors. Is that right?

Jamie: Yes.

Jo: I think when I came into the indie space, there were a lot more multi-author… we all called them box sets back in the day, when it was just ebooks, right? And now we can actually do boxed sets with boxes through things like BookVault. So it feels like the term “box set” has also gone out of fashion.

So if people listening are thinking of doing any of this, you do have to figure out what is the thing you might be signing up for. So let's talk about the multi-author projects, as that's where you specialise.

What are the benefits for an author to be involved in a multi-author anthology project?

Jamie: The biggest benefit is that you are one of multiple people promoting the same project, whether it's print or ebook or whatever. If I put out a short story collection on my own, I'm the one promoting it, and maybe I can get a couple of other people to write about it, but it's really just me.

If I'm part of an anthology with 15 other authors, that's 15 other people who are promoting the same project. That's more newsletters, more Facebook posts, maybe something on their Patreons, whatever it is.

You get more synergy, and you get more touch points with potential readers. Then hopefully that translates into sales as well. So that's definitely the biggest part of it—the promotion.

Then I also personally really enjoy these types of collections because it's just fun to work with other people. There's a nice energy when everybody's like, “Oh, I put this in my newsletter, and I put this here, and I put this here,” and you feel like you're part of something bigger than just your own piece.

Jo: What about the creative benefits?

Especially with short stories, often people will write them for a collection or for an anthology project.

Jamie: Yes. I've definitely written some stories that I never would have thought I'd write, because somebody I knew asked if I would be interested in being in their collection—whether it's an ebook bundle or a print anthology. So at least for me, that's been really fun.

One of the ones that stands out is that I was asked to be in a dinosaur collection once, and I was like, “I don't write dinosaur stories.” And then I did. I set a dinosaur story in London, and it was really fun to write, and I never would have come up with that in a million years.

Jo: Let's say we've got 12 authors. They've all written short stories, and now it's in this anthology. But what is the market for these kinds of things?

Have you found that there is a readership for short story anthologies that carries over to the author's longer work?

Jamie: There is. I like to think of it as: if I have a story in a collection or an anthology—whether it's one I'm editing or somebody else is editing—that's one more place for people to find me. A lot of times anthologies will take reprints as well, like your story. “The Dark Queen”—that was a reprint.

We asked if you'd be interested in participating in the Amazing Monster Tales series. And I actually really like printing stories again that have already been published, because there are a lot of stories out there that can be hard to find. Or if it's an older book.

I have one author I've known for, like, 30 years. I reprinted one of her stories that was originally published in, I think, 1999, and the anthology it was in was out of print. You couldn't find it, and it was a fantastic story.

So it's fun to be able to give new life to those stories and give them more opportunities, and also just have more ways for people to find you.

Jo: Yes, I definitely think it's a long game. I don't think appearing in a short story anthology in one particular month is going to mean that your whole back collection just sells, right?

Jamie: No, definitely not. It's more about avenues to be found. I know there have been some anthologies that have made quite a bit of money, but in general you're probably not going to make as much money, but you will have those extra places for people to find you.

Jo: I always feel like yes, there is maybe a small amount of money, but it is more about almost a marketing thing in itself.

So let's say an author is listening and they're like, “Do you know, this sounds like a great idea.”

How can they pitch for things like this? How do they find out about opportunities, or get noticed to be asked?

And what are the expectations for them?

Jamie: The biggest thing is networking. There used to be a couple of opportunities where you could make people aware that you had stories that you were interested in potentially having picked up for something. I'm not aware of anything like that now.

When I create a collection, I have a mailing list that I send out, and it includes authors I've published before. It includes a couple of extra people who somehow found my mailing list. And I'll publish, like, “Here's what I'm doing.”

There are also authors I've met at writing workshops. I've been able to read some of their work, I'll approach them and say, “Hey, I really liked such and such a story. Would you be interested in writing for this?”

Then there are a couple of other websites, like Duotrope, and places that advertise markets and calls for submissions.

Jo: Yes, I've found them also on small presses that do these kinds of projects. They often put up one call for submission a month or something, and you can write for their particular thing. In general, the short story markets are the places to keep an eye on.

Jamie: Yes, definitely.

Jo: If an author wants to pitch to have their story as part of an anthology, do you want to know things like platform, or is it just the story itself?

Jamie: I personally look at the author's platform. I do make exceptions—there are actually two authors I've worked with a couple of times who don't have websites. They are people I know personally and they are very, very good writers, so I'll make an exception for things like that.

But otherwise, if somebody submitted a story to me and I didn't know that person, I would check out their website, I would check out their social media, I would see what else they had done.

Part of what you're doing when you're creating a collection is thinking not just about how you, as the person organising this, will promote the collection, but how the authors who are participating will help promote it as well.

If it's somebody who has a lot of fans, even if they're not very active on social media, that can help a lot too. There are a lot of different factors, though.

Jo: So then talk us through the project timeline.

How long do things take, and what sort of involvement do the authors have along the way?

Because it's a lot to juggle.

Jamie: Yes, it is a lot to juggle. I can give you an example with the Monster Tales series. We'll come up with an idea, and we also like to try to get the artwork done early on in the process. We don't need it that soon, but it's really great to have that taken care of.

We'll contact authors. I think for this one we used my mailing list, but we've also contacted a number of people individually that we know who write the style of stories we like.

Then, as the submissions come in, we usually wait until we have a nice chunk of them to start going through, and then we'll pick some right away. Sometimes it'll be like, “Oh my gosh, of course we want this story,” and we'll wait to fill out the other slots.

Then we'll negotiate sometimes. Sometimes it's like, “I want this story.” “Well, I want this other story.” And we have to figure out how the word count works.

Once we finalise the stories, then usually what happens with that anthology is that DeAnna—who is a very, very good editor—will make the first editing pass, and then I'll make the second. And now Tami's involved, so Tami will make the third, and then we'll iterate.

Once all three of us have gone through the first time, then we'll send the story back to the author for edits. So the most the author has to do for most of the process is just wait for us to edit their story, and then work on their edits and get them back.

Then, once we get closer to launch, we'll give them information about what we're going to do. For example, we're going to launch the next issue with a Kickstarter. So our authors know that we have a Kickstarter coming, and we'll give them more information as we get closer to the actual launch date.

Jo: So how long might an author expect before their work is out there?

Jamie: It really varies. I've had some collections published very quickly—let's say a couple of months. Some have taken longer just because somebody ends up having some life issue and things get delayed. So I'd say ideally it would be more like three to nine months.

Jo: Yes, I think… depending on the—

Jamie: —collection and the complexity.

Jo: Yes, exactly.

Jo: And you did mention word count there.

Just give us a range of what word count you like to get.

Jamie: So these days I'm shooting for between 75,000 and 80,000 for the total word count for a collection. That includes the stories, but it also includes the opening, the introduction.

For one we're working on now, we're going to have some interstitials, where we have little bits of things we're going to write in between each story. So that's the overall size of the collection.

I'll keep track of the word count as the stories come in, and then as we edit the stories, sometimes they grow, sometimes they shrink. Sometimes that's a big enough difference where we're like, “Okay, we need one more story to fill it in.” But that's the target.

Jo: And how much for each individual story?

Jamie: That varies. I've done a bunch of different things. These days, what I'm advertising is between 3,000 and 8,000 words. I also always tell people: if you're outside this range on either side, just check with me, and if it's something that's really an excellent fit for the book, I'll make an exception.

The one that's coming out, I think we have a 1,500- or 2,000-word story that was just amazingly perfect for what we wanted. There was another story, actually I think it was the issue that you were in, that was at least 12,000 words, but it also was a perfect fit for the theme. So I will make exceptions, but within reason.

I wouldn't put a novella inside an anthology, because then you'd have a 22,000-word story next to a 3,000-word story, and I personally feel like that's really jarring for the reader. You don't want to go from something super short to something super long. It just doesn't feel like it flows well to me.

Jo: No, absolutely.

Jo: We'll come back to the making of it because you mentioned some really interesting things there.

But just on the contractual side—a lot of indie authors don't necessarily do any publishing contracts for their work, unless it's signing the terms and conditions when uploading on Amazon or Kobo. So tell us a bit about the contract side.

What rights are we talking about here? Any red lines in contracts around this kind of thing?

Jamie: For contracts, I would recommend people read Kristine Kathryn Rusch's posts on this. She is way more informed about this than I ever will be, so when I have questions, I'll look at her posts. I've asked her a couple of questions.

What we're doing for the Amazing Monster Tales… this is the first time that I've actually had authors sign contracts. Prior to this, I've used PubShare, which handles royalty splits and all of that, and that was really great.

We want to do direct sales and Kickstarters and have lots of other options. So we did put together a contract this time. I'd have to pull it up, but I think we asked for first worldwide rights in English—I'm getting the terminology wrong here—but that was basically it.

Jo: Or, I guess, reprint rights if the story's already been licensed.

Jamie: Correct. We have two contract templates, one for original stories and one for reprints. We made sure to make that distinction, because it is definitely a distinction.

In the book by Kristine Kathryn Rusch—it's called Closing the Deal… on Your Terms—I highly recommend that for anybody interested in learning more about contracts.

Jo: Yes, that's great. And just for people listening: when you said you didn't have contracts before, you just used PubShare. So in that way, the author still retained the rights and you just split the royalties—it was more of a co-writing thing.

Jamie: Correct. When you publish stories through PubShare, the author signs an agreement with PubShare, and then I, as the editor or organiser, would also sign a separate agreement. So each of us has an agreement with PubShare. We don't have agreements with each other, if that makes sense.

Jo: Yes, so it's very different to move into Kickstarter.

So tell us about what you're now moving into.

Jamie: Well, Kickstarters are a new world for me personally. I have many friends who have had Kickstarters. I've supported Kickstarters. I watch them. But it's something where I'm very happy to have two partners who have done Kickstarters before.

I'm not sure how many Tami's done—I think Tami's done the most at this point. So this is all new to me. But it's very exciting.

At this point we have a backlist, so part of the plan, for the Monster series, is to offer issues one through four as part of the rewards when we launch issue number five. That's really exciting, because I never had a backlist like that before.

Jo: Yes, and in fact the money is in the backlist, as ever, and those add-ons or bundles as part of Kickstarter are great.

So are you going to do special print editions, or is it digital only?

Jamie: We are talking about special print editions. You mentioned BookVault earlier—we've been looking at BookVault.

Our other anthology series that hasn't come out yet will also launch with a Kickstarter. It's dragon-themed, and Tami actually did the cover work, which is beautiful. BookVault just gives you so many options that we never had before, so I'm very excited about that.

Jo: Yes, I think it's a really good idea. I did gorgeous hardbacks for my solo author collection, so I think it's a great idea.

So from the publisher side, let's come back to that. You've mentioned you have to write things like an introduction and interstitials, and you're trying to balance the stories.

What are some of the other things that people might think about if they want to organise their own anthologies?

Jamie: Oh gosh, where to start? There's the basic setting up of the anthology, so you have to define the table of contents.

You might get a bunch of stories that are really awesome, and you might have to tell somebody who has a wonderful story—and maybe even who's a good friend of yours—that you're going to pass on it because their story doesn't fit with all the other stories.

Every time I have to do that, I feel kind of bad. But being on this side, it's really interesting to see how you can tell which stories fit together and which don't.

There's also the editing process, which can be a lot of work. Part of what I like about working with Tami and DeAnna is that DeAnna really loves editing. I feel like I'm a good editor, and I can do it, but for me it's more of a job.

For DeAnna, she loves it, so she does the bulk of the editing, which is great. When I do it on my own, I feel like it's a task I have to do.

There's lots of cat-herding. Sometimes people take a while to get their edits back. Sometimes they have life events, and you have to delay things because you're waiting on them.

There are all the little tiny pieces of organising things—like, if you're reprinting stories, you need to make sure you get the copyright attribution correct. A lot of times I'll have to go and look up where something was originally published.

An author might say, “Oh, it was published in this year,” and I'm like, “Okay, actually it was published in this other year, by this other publication first.” So I'm trying to be organised there.

henT one of the things that very infrequently—I think it's only happened to me twice—every once in a while, you're in the middle of editing a story and you have to pass on it, even though you've already accepted it, because the editorial vision and the author vision for the story are not the same, and you can't reconcile that.

Jo: I think that's really interesting, because so much of what you're talking about there—you mentioned vision—it's almost taste. You're saying which stories fit.

It's not just a case of, I don't know, a pirate anthology and then picking 10 stories about pirates, right? You seem to be thinking about this in a more artistic way. So can you talk a bit more about that?

How do you decide on a theme, and then how do you know that a story doesn't fit?

Jamie: In the beginning, I was not this selective. In the beginning I'd say, for example, “Hey, I'm putting out a collection about fairies. Give me a fairy story,” and that was it. As I've edited the stories, it's become easier to see how things fit.

So, for example, if I have 10 stories in an anthology and I have an 11th story, and they have different tones—let's say the 11th story is really funny and all the other stories are very serious—then that would be a fit thing.

That's not necessarily taste; it's just that you don't want one funny story if everything else is really dark and scary or serious.

As far as picking a theme, the theme could be very broad. With this dragon anthology we're working on, we decided we wanted it to be called A Hoard of Books. So the theme was: has to have dragons, has to have books, and that's pretty much it. And then we were like, “Let's just see what we get.”

We were very surprised at what we got. We thought we'd have more serious stories, and it turned out most of them were very light-hearted and really fun. And we're like, “You know what? That actually changes the way we're looking at the whole series,” because we did not expect that.

With the monster series, we'll pick a theme. So, for example, the next issue is Monsters in Love, and for those it's more like, let's just see what happens.

Sometimes I'll have a more specific theme. The next anthology I'm publishing on my own is called Fairy Bargains, and I wanted people to obviously have fairies, but I wanted there to be something related to the mythology and lore of having a bargain with a fairy—and there's a lot of stuff about that.

So for some things like that, when I put out a call, I'll provide information. I might say, “Here's a link to a Wikipedia article. Here's some mythology that might be helpful for you,” just because I want things to stick a little bit more to the theme itself.

Whereas with Monsters in Love, there's a very wide range of stories, and that was very fun to work through.

Jo: Oh, yes. There's a lot of monster, on the spicy side as well. But were you doing a clean Monsters in Love, as opposed to in lust?

Jamie: Yes, this is a clean one. That's pretty funny. But boy, when you give authors the room for these types of things, you get all kinds of stories, and it is super fun to work with those collections.

Jo: As you're talking, I definitely want to do more short stories. It's really interesting, because you can actually generally get paid more for a first print—first print rights on a short story—but I often want to just publish it myself.

Then I was really happy to be in yours, because it was a reprint anyway. So I was like, well, there's absolutely nothing to lose if it goes in as a reprint. So these things can be really interesting.

Talking of the finance from your side of things: you have a small press and you're doing this publishing yourself, but you're paying all these authors and doing a lot of work.

So how does it work as the publisher, in terms of these anthologies, financially?

Jamie: With the ones we've published so far, because we've gone through PubShare, it's been a royalty split. As the editors, we would take a percentage, and then we pay for the artwork, and of course all of our time.

I think what we were doing there was saying 70% of the royalties would be split equally between all of the authors and the stories. So, for example, if I had a story as well, I would get part of the author split—the same percentage as everybody else in the collection—in addition to the editor split.

For what we're doing now, we've changed this a little bit, and I believe we said 60% goes to the authors, and then we're going to keep a share of the proceeds for the business because we want to be able to pay for the artwork out of the business account.

We want to pay for advertising, whatever we need to do—like setting up our store, or if we wanted to invest in anything, we want to be able to do that as the business, as opposed to it just being us doing this on our own. We're just trying to treat it a little bit differently.

Jo: And I know it's so much work—a crazy amount of work.

How many anthologies and books do you have to do in a year to make it worthwhile financially?

Jamie: Oh, I don't know. I would say, unless you get an opportunity—like, for example, to have an anthology in a story bundle or something like that—you may not break even. But if you're going to do this, do it more for the marketing, do it more because you enjoy it.

Now, going forward, I think that will change, because we are looking at Kickstarters, we are looking at direct sales. We're very motivated to try to make this more of a business thing than a fun side project. So, ask me in a year.

Jo: Yes, hopefully more. I do think Kickstarter is great for short stories. I actually buy quite a few collections on Kickstarter. I think they're actually really hard to discover through, say, Amazon—it's a place that is quite hard to identify short stories.

Whereas I've found I've bought collections on Kickstarter because there's so much more of a sales page—there's so much more rich media that tells me how I'm going to feel about the stuff.

I've bought short story anthologies and collections from people I don't know. So I think it's a really good thing to do. There is an audience there.

Jamie: Yes, definitely. And it does feel like the anthologies on Amazon don't sell as well—you don't make as much as you used to. I've been doing this for, well, gosh, 10 years now, and I feel like the sales numbers on Amazon in the past year were noticeably lower than they would have been six or eight years ago.

So I am very excited about Kickstarter. Plus, Kickstarter just feels really fun. You're not just throwing your book up; you also have all the extra stuff with the page, you have the rewards, and it just feels really exciting.

Jo: No, I agree. I really love it. I didn't do it for a long time, and now I just love it.

Jo: So, staying with the publisher side of things—

Any practical formatting and production tips?

Because in these types of projects, all kinds of people just send you different stuff.

Jamie: I have a style guide. So whether it's me or it's the group project, once all the edits are complete, I'll do a formatting pass, and I'll make sure I use curly quotes and the same em dash format and everything, just so everything in the book is formatted the same way.

Every once in a while there's an author who has something particular that they want, and I can work around that, and that's fine.

I also work with a lot of Canadian authors, and I'll let them keep their Canadian spellings. I don't think everybody does that, but I feel like that's their voice in a way, so I don't correct those. I might check some things there.

I think the formatting is important—it makes things look better if everything has the same style. Then I use Vellum, which makes things really easy. I love Vellum.

Because I publish so many authors at this point, I have a Vellum file where I store their biographies and their links, so when I publish a new anthology I'll just go grab, say, Jo's “about the author” page from that collection and put it into the new file.

Then I also track when the last time was that I checked with the author about their biography. If it's been more than a year, I'll check in with them and say, “Hey, do you have an updated biography you want me to use? Here are your links—do you have any different links now?”

So that makes it a lot easier from the formatting standpoint.

Jo: And you mentioned Vellum—having done box sets on Vellum, you can just drag a whole book in there if you want to do a three-book box set, or three short stories, whatever. It's much easier to just drag things in, and it makes it easier to format.

So I would say to people: you don't need to worry too much about that. There are lots of things that can help you.

But even with doing the print stuff for the Kickstarter—people have opinions, don't they? So in terms of authors' opinions and managing—you mentioned herding cats—how do you manage all of that side of things?

Jamie: I haven't actually had a lot of trouble with that. The authors I've worked with seem to feel like they gave me their story, and then once the edits are out of the way… I haven't had anybody have any issues with the covers. Usually they love the covers, especially for the Monster series. So, no problems there.

Jo: Oh, that's good. Well, I would say a tip would be to make sure you're communicating, if you're somebody who's organising.

So talk a bit about communication.

Jamie: Communication is very important. What I try to do is send regular updates, especially if I'm in the middle of edits or working on something and I'm not ready to launch. I'll send an update email out to the authors and just say, “Here's what's going on, here's what the plan is.”

Or if the plan has to change, if the launch date has to change for some reason, I'll let the authors know about that.

Actually, with the upcoming Monsters in Love issue, we were originally not going to do a Kickstarter. That was a late decision, so I contacted all the authors and said, “We've changed our plans. We're going to launch this with a Kickstarter. Please confirm that you're okay with this.”

One author was not comfortable with the Kickstarter idea, so he pulled his story, and then we found a replacement story for that. But I just feel like the communication piece is really essential. It's really important for the authors to know what's going on.

Jo: Yes, absolutely. So, we've talked about how marketing is a good thing, in terms of there being lots of people marketing.

How are you effectively marketing these kinds of books, as the premise is quite different to a single author project?

Jamie: Right. There's the usual—write a release post, write posts on social. I do additional things, so I'll publish what I call a story spotlight for each story in the anthology. That's just where I talk a little bit about the story, I provide an excerpt, and then I provide the author's bio and links to find them.

Those are really great, because they're very quick to put together. The hardest part is getting a short excerpt that shows enough about the story to be engaging. But that really isn't that much time, either. Then those are also nicely evergreen.

I've actually searched for authors before, when I'm trying to research them for an interview, and I've found my own spotlight posts and my own interview posts with authors come up at the top of the list, which is kind of funny.

I also do interviews with as many of the authors in a collection as are willing to participate. Sometimes people just don't have the time—I don't make this required—but I usually get 80 to 90% of the authors participating.

So, for example, this year I'm in a couple of bundles on StoryBundle, and I'm doing interviews for people there.

It's also really fun, and you're not paying for advertising—you're just creating something that the authors are excited about and they want to share. So it promotes the collection, but it also promotes the author, which I find really nice.

It's a nice networking thing too, and I'm happy if someone wants to interview me. It's like free publicity for each person, in addition to the collection.

Jo: I love that you've used the word “fun” quite a lot, which I find amazing. You're obviously a super collaborative person. I've co-written a number of books—

I've been part of some collections, and I really think that there are two personalities.

One is like me, where we really love the creation stuff and the publishing stuff, but we're hyper-controlling. And then someone like you—you're very collaborative, and you're doing such a great job.

To people listening, I would say: if you're more like me, don't organise an anthology. What you want is Jamie, or somebody who actually finds it fun to organise a big group of authors.

Jamie: Yes. It is definitely interesting working with other partners in this, because when I publish an anthology on my own, I make all the decisions. I pick the artwork, I pick the theme, I do everything, I decide the table of contents. But when you're working with other people, you do need to negotiate.

So we've had a couple of times where it's like, “I want this story.” “Well, I want this other story, I don't like the story that you want.” And so we have to barter, in a way.

Aside from that, it is nice, because you get to split up the tasks. I could focus on things like the organising—I do the Vellum files, I do the final cover and everything. For the Kickstarters, actually, Tami's got more expertise, so Tami's going to be working on the Kickstarters for our collections together.

If I had to do all this on my own, it's a ton of work. It's a ton of work. So it is nice to split it up.

Jo: And of course, one of the things is managing so many moving parts—and you've actually built a tool to manage all this.

So tell us a bit about that tool, and how it might be useful for people with big backlists as well as anthologies.

Jamie: I built what I think of as a publishing management application. The original idea is that, for years and years, I wanted a software tool that would do catalogue management, because I was managing my own catalogue, and I was also managing—at this point I've published at least 20 anthologies, so that's a lot of authors.

Then last summer, I had an author who I'd published a number of times, who was going to, I think, WorldCon, and she asked if I could give her covers for five anthologies she'd been in, so that she could make some promotional material.

I was like, “Oh, sure, I can do that.” And then I was like, “Well, wait a second—is this in Notion?”—because I started trying to use Notion last year—”or is it in a spreadsheet?”

It turned out her information was in, like, three different places, and I had to work to pull it together. And then I was like, “You know what? That's it. I'm just going to finally write this application.”

So Inkwren manages your stories. As an author, I can manage my stories—I can track which are published, which are drafts, which are just ideas. I can track my publications.

From the publisher standpoint, it's really helpful, because I can track each anthology I've published and what I'm working on. I can track the edits, I can track the contracts.

I can upload contract templates—so we talked earlier about the original and reprint contract templates that I use. I upload those, and they have placeholders in them.

When I generate the actual contract, the author's name will replace the placeholder—I'll have the text “author name” in the contract template, and it'll get replaced by, like, “Joanna Penn” or whatever. So that saves a lot of time.

Then I also added in task tracking, because I started to feel like, well, now all my stuff is in one place, but my tasks are somewhere else. So now I can associate tasks with a publication.

For example, for the book I'm working on right now, I know which tasks I need to do for the cover, and which for the interior, and everything. I have a template of tasks.

Then I can also track tasks related to promotions. For example, the story bundle I'm promoting right now, I have a task for each interview I'm doing with the authors, and I have a calendar view. I can see when I'm going to publish them and know that they're all spread out. It saves me so much time, and it's so much easier.

Jo: I do think building tools when you actually need the tool yourself is very useful. Just say the name again, and spell it out for people.

Jamie: It's Inkwren. My own personal publishing company is Blackbird Publishing, and I wanted something related to birds and writing. So I came up with Inkwren, which is I-N-K-W-R-E-N, and it's just inkwren.com.

Jo: And it is available for other people to potentially buy and use?

Jamie: Yes, it is.

Jo: Well, I think that's super useful, because it's very hard when people are starting out and they think, “Oh, I've only got one book—why would I need any kind of tool to manage it?” But over the years, your backlist grows, especially with short stories.

So I love that you've built this, and there's probably more that you can add over time as you expand the business yourself. So much potential. So we are at the end.

Where can people find you and your books and everything you do online?

Jamie: My author website is JamieFerguson.com. And then, obviously, I mentioned Inkwren earlier. My publishing company is BlackbirdPublishing.com. And then the projects I'm doing with Tami and DeAnna—we have a couple of websites, but the easiest way to find us is our press, which is BorogrovePress.com.

Jo: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Jamie. That was great.

Jamie: Thanks, Joanna.
The post Bundles, Box Sets and Anthologies With Jamie Ferguson first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What happens to your creativity when you're in pain or sick, and can you ever get it back? How can you find and sharpen your author voice? J. Daniel Sawyer talks about voice mastery, writing with chronic pain, and building an eclectic author business.

In the intro, leaning into your Strengths and deciding what you want to achieve by the end of the year; and Bones of the Deep by J.F. Penn.

Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn

J. Daniel Sawyer is the author of over 30 books across science fiction, fantasy, crime, short stories, and nonfiction, as well as being a podcaster and filmmaker. His latest book for authors is The Pitch-Perfect Author: Voice Mastery for Writers.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

Writing fiction through chronic pain and re-emerging into health after surgery

How your physical health shapes (and darkens) your fiction

Rebooting an author business around a weekly Substack column

What author voice really is, and why it's fundamentally about sound

The building blocks of voice: functional vocabulary, dialect, and musicality

The “crossing the line twice” trick for hearing your own voice objectively

You can find Dan at JDsawyer.net or on Substack.

Transcript of the interview with J. Daniel Sawyer

Jo: J. Daniel Sawyer is the author of over 30 books across science fiction, fantasy, crime, short stories, and nonfiction, as well as being a podcaster and filmmaker. His latest book for authors is The Pitch-Perfect Author: Voice Mastery for Writers. So welcome back to the show, Dan.

Dan: Hello, Joanna. It's good to be back.

Jo: Goodness me, you have been on the podcast a few times, but actually, the last time was April 2017, which is crazy. It's nine years ago. When I saw your book, I was like, “I can't believe we haven't talked for that long.” For anyone who doesn't know you, tell us a bit more about—

What does your creative and author business look like these days?

Dan: Oh, well, these days it's in a state of recovery because it basically ground to a halt while I was dying a few years ago. It turned out I had an organ disease from the time I was a kid that I didn't know about, and it just progressively got worse and worse, putting me in more and more pain.

I hit a point around about 2020 or so where I was in so much pain that I couldn't write fiction.

I continued to write nonfiction, but when you're carrying around a lot of physical pain, there comes a point where so much of your brain's activity goes into coping with it that you actually lose the ability to model other people's emotional states—or at least well enough to write fiction.

So I was very frustrated, and I was despairing that I was ever going to be a novelist again. Then suddenly, what I was sick with went acute. I went to the emergency room, and they're like, “Oh, if you don't have surgery in the next 24 hours, you're going to die.”

So I went and got surgery, and there was one bed in the whole state. There was a three-hour drive to get to the one that was available in the time window. I get there. They wheel me into the OR. I wake up afterwards, and I realise that I'm not in pain, and that I had never felt that before in my adult life.

Jo: Wow.

Dan: Just the walls of my whole reality came caving in. Two weeks later, I was back up and working, and since then I've been slowly reacquiring my ability to write fiction.

So now I've got four novels going again, like I used to have going all the time, as well as doing a weekly column and all sorts of other stuff.

Jo: I think a lot of people will be interested in this. A lot of writers have chronic pain issues or chronic health issues, and yours sounds like it was a sort of down, down, down, down—and then more of a sudden up.

Maybe just talk a bit more, because I feel like a lot of the time people are too hard on themselves about, “Oh my goodness, if I can't write fiction, is it the end of everything?”

So how did you adapt to that, with the mental health aspect of dealing with that change in circumstance?

Dan: Well, it was happening so gradually, and it happened at the same time that a whole bunch of other weirdly stressful things happened, like COVID and a couple of family emergencies that derailed my whole life for a couple of years. I assumed it was just really bad stress that would pass with time.

So I had the despairing feeling, because when you write fiction, it tends to occupy a central place in your self-concept. I'd also been through very tough times before, so I was like, “Well, got through that then, maybe I'll get through this now.”

I just made sure to keep writing something, because at least you keep the discipline of the words flowing. There was still thought going on, so I would have ideas for novels and write them down. There were good days and bad days.

Occasionally I would sit down and be like, “I feel like fiction today,” and I would write a couple thousand words, and then it would be 10 months before I could do that again.

When you work with your mind, it is really easy to develop or sink into the delusion that your mind is not your body.

Now, if you're paralysed or you're missing limbs, you can still write—but your mind and your body are a single system, and eventually, if something terrible is wrong with your body, it's going to affect your cognition, your emotive abilities, and all the things that we depend on for creativity.

That doesn't necessarily mean that if you're sick or injured, or you've got chronic health problems from birth, that you can't write. It just means that it really is one of the factors that goes into shaping your experience of the world, that goes into shaping the way you process things and they come out on paper.

When there's a massive change in your health, it's going to show up in your fiction somehow. If your health goes way down, especially if you get into a lot of pain or you have a terminal illness, your fiction's going to get darker.

One of the reasons—I discovered this after I got my surgery—one of the reasons is that the sense of impending doom is actually a medical symptom of organ death.

Jo: Well, don't say that to a dark writer like me. I have a sense of impending doom the entire time.

Dan: Well, there's a cognitive sense of impending doom that you get if you're modelling systems and you see how things can go wrong.

But the sense that you feel the claws of demons grasping at your heart all the time—that can be a medical symptom. So pay attention to that. I didn't know that until afterwards, or I'd have gotten looked at a lot sooner.

Jo: That is really interesting. You mentioned there you are reacquiring the ability to write fiction, or that's what you've been focusing on. You also talked about having to reboot the business.

So what are some of the concrete things you're doing to rebuild?

Dan: Well, the first thing I did is I allowed myself to get talked into doing a weekly Substack column a couple of years ago, and that's worked out really well.

Pay is pretty decent. I've been posting most everything for free except for some previews of upcoming books, but I'm now learning the art of paywalling, so that also helps.

Getting paid for the weekly column is quite nice, and a side effect is that it does drive people occasionally to the fiction, even though I'm writing nonfiction.

It more frequently drives people to the nonfiction books, but it gives me a good place to announce new releases, to promote book bundles, Kickstarters, and all that sort of thing.

It's a very good place for that because the people who are subscribing there—especially the people who are subscribing and supporting—are interested enough in what I'm saying that they want my email every week. So it's a good filtering mechanism for building the email list as well.

Jo: You used to do a lot of audio. That's how we connected way back, like 17 years ago, I think, when we first connected.

So are you still doing a lot of audio?

Dan: I am not at the moment. It's not because of a decision to drop the audio. It's because I am now building my house, and I don't have a place that's quiet enough to record dependably.

I'm living in a little RV at the moment while I build the house. In the deep winter, everything is quiet enough in the forest to record some things, and so I do audiobooks for clients, and I work on audiobooks of my own that are coming out.

It's not quiet enough to podcast, and it's not quiet enough to be recording any other time than when the whole world is asleep. Hopefully by next year I will have the recording studio building built, and then I'll be back at it. Because boy, I miss it.

Jo: I know. So you mentioned there bundles and Kickstarters and things, and we reconnected because I bought a StoryBundle, and your new book, The Pitch-Perfect Author, was in the StoryBundle, which was part of why I bought it anyway. So let's get into the book and what's useful. Let's start with—

What is author voice anyway, and why is it important?

Dan: Author voice. Everything about the way that you write is part of your author voice. The themes that you gravitate to, the way that you turn a phrase, the way that you tell a joke, the way that you handle dramatic tension.

When all of that combines, it creates in the reader's mind an emotional fingerprint, a gestalt that says, “This is a Joanna Penn book. This is a Dan Sawyer book,” or whoever.

When you bring the focus down further, author voice is fundamentally an auditory phenomenon. You can see this if you look at the careers of writers who had major worldview shifts during their career, or who shifted genres.

If you read an Isaac Asimov mystery, and you read Asimov's Guide to the Bible, and you read Isaac Asimov's The Robots of Dawn, they're all Asimov. You can hear him talking to you through all of those different venues.

So author voice is not a genre thing. It's not dependent on content. It has to do fundamentally with how your brain processes language and how it comes out of your mouth.

That, in turn, is based on patterns that were laid down when you were pre-verbal as an infant. You learned language by mapping the music of the conversations around you, and then gradually learning that the sing-song you were hearing corresponded to ideas. That's how the brain bootstraps itself into language.

So when you start writing, just like when you start speaking, you wind up imitating a lot—unconsciously—the people you've read and heard, because that's how you develop your voice.

There comes a point at which all the various influences on you, and who you are, and how they pass through you, crystallises into something definite.

By the time you're a moderately competent writer, and you're finishing novels and short stories well, your author voice is pretty well established. But that doesn't mean it's sharp, because most people don't actually concentrate on learning to hear their author voice, so they can't tell when it's off.

This is why new writers who revise a lot tend to revise their voice right out. When they write, they're using language as feels right to them, but when they read, they're reading it like an English teacher, or through the lens of someone who has very definite ideas about how grammar should work in all circumstances.

So they tend to smooth the quirkiness out of their voice, and what you get is something flat. It doesn't feel alive. It may convey information, it may tell a good story, but it doesn't feel like you're entering something that's living.

Jo: I think this is so difficult, especially for people who are new to writing. Because I remember very much spending the first few years going along to writers' conferences, and there were always sessions on “you must find your writer's voice.”

You must find your author's voice, and we publish books because of the voice, and all this. It was very, very confusing to me. As you say, it has to emerge somehow, and yet that emergence seems to be very hard to accept.

So what are some of the ways we can perhaps think about voice?

You mentioned there some patterns. You talk about music. So what are some of those angles? In the book, you have different chapters on all of these things, but maybe just talk more about some of the elements.

Dan: The first and most obvious is functional vocabulary. This is not the number of words that you know. These are the words that you can reach for in the moment. You can expand your functional vocabulary by deliberately using more words—burnish your inner thesaurus.

The greater your functional vocabulary is, the more your personality is going to come out through your voice. When you've got more options to do something that's just the way that you want to do it, the closer it's going to be to the way you want to do it.

So there's functional vocabulary. There's your native dialect and accent. You, being British, have a different set of preferred terms for everything than I, being a West Coast American, do.

One of the great differences that's always visible between an English writer and an American writer is that you guys have a different way of speaking.

When you speak of a difference between one thing and another, you talk about how this car is different to that car. And Americans say this car is different from that car. It always marks out a British writer versus an American writer.

There are 100 little things like that. They happen not just between major countries, but within regions in every country. You could tell on paper the difference between someone from Yorkshire and someone from London, just as I can tell on paper the difference between someone from the West Coast and someone from Mississippi.

Even if they're highly educated, the idiom, the preferred turns of phrase, the preferred imagery—all of that is going to be a little bit different, and it conveys that regionality.

There's also the musicality of the language. This is the actual rhythm of the words with which you speak. When you learn to analyse poetry or to write poetry, you learn something called scansion.

How a poem scans is—what are the beats of the lines, how are the beats of the lines related to each other, and how does the rhyme move in and out of that?

A Shakespearean sonnet, or a sonnet from the Elizabethan era, has a specific metre, a specific number of lines, and a specific rhyme scheme, and the metre is iambic pentameter.

An iamb is “bum-bum,” if I remember right. It's the rhythm of the heartbeat. It's “bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum.” And you can hear it in the name of the metre, the iamb. The iambic pentameter is where the stressed syllable is the second syllable and the unstressed syllable is the first syllable.

All of Shakespeare is written in blank verse, which is unrhymed iambic pentameter. The pentameter is five feet per line, so one iamb is “bum-bum”—that's one foot—and five of those makes one line of Shakespeare.

We all have inherent rhythms like that in the way we naturally speak, but we can also tweak those rhythms on purpose to achieve dramatic effect.

The iamb has the sound of the heartbeat. It's a very reassuring speech rhythm.

The trochaic is a much more rapid one—it mirrors the rhythm of a rapidly beating heart. So you see this a lot in Edgar Allan Poe, especially in his frenetic poems like “The Bells,” how they jingle, jingle, jangle on a hoary moonless night. There's a rushing sound to that metre.

You're going to find that you will automatically do a little bit of this, just the way that you'll automatically have picked up the convention of breaking sentences up into shorter lengths during really exciting or suspense-filled parts of your book.

Once you know what it is, you can start to use it on purpose. Quite a lot of developing your voice is learning to recognise these latent, existing qualities in the way you communicate, and sharpening them up and making them conscious tools that you can pull in whenever you want.

Jo: On the one hand, there are a lot of technical words there that are really interesting, and maybe poets know a lot more of those words than most other writers. The book is really interesting in that way—kind of learning about these different things.

I guess I want to reassure people as well that, as you said, some of this can be unconscious. So often when I'm self-editing and I'm reading a sentence to myself, there's something that doesn't feel right about it. So I will rewrite that sentence so that it feels right.

Sometimes we do something that might be grammatically less correct, but it sounds better than it did before.

So many of these things we almost know instinctively, just from reading so much.

Dan: Oh, yes. From reading so much and talking so much, and again, from the way you acquire language. That gives you a template in your head of what sounds right.

Language is inherently musical. So if you've ever listened to a song—especially one that wasn't recorded by a professional, but someone singing in a church choir, or your kid practising for a recital, or you practising for a recital—you know that feeling that happens when someone hits a wrong note.

There's that little wince down in the core of your being, and then the song carries on and you forget about it, unless there are too many of them, in which case you just sort of cower and ooze out of the room.

That feeling of “Ooh, someone just hit a wrong note”—that's exactly the feeling you get when you're reading through to edit your work and something is off in the technical layer of your voice.

You should pay attention to that and rewrite so that it feels good, or feels great, which is even better.

You've got the opposite of the wince, which is that sense of rapture and joy if you're listening to a professional musician and they go on an amazing guitar solo, or a flautist does an incredible trill that just sends shivers up your spine.

That sense of excitement and joy—that's what happens when you're reading and the author does something with the language that makes the whole piece fly. So you want to be paying attention for those too, because those you'll commit without intending to.

When you're reading back and you find those, you want to make note of them, because that's you seeing where you are at your strongest with your voice.

By learning both where you're making mistakes and where you're being brilliant—just like with anything else—you can start to advance towards being brilliant more often and making fewer mistakes.

Jo: Then there's a difficulty around where the line is, especially when you're an early-stage writer. Many people work with editors, and you mentioned the problem of revising your voice away, and that may also happen if you're working with an editor.

Like you said, as a Brit, I work with an American editor, Kristen, and she's excellent. She's very, very good at letting my voice be my voice, and then fixing things that make it better. But a lot of people don't feel that way about their editors.

So how can people understand where those lines are between being well-edited and becoming a better writer, and then needing to hold the line on their voice?

Dan: It really helps if you understand where you are weak. Why are you hiring the editor in the first place?

I'm a big believer in the utility of having other eyes on the manuscript, but it's really important to know what you're looking for from them. You and I have both been to the Oregon Coast writing seminars, back when that was a thing.

Jo: Mm.

Dan: One of the things they would talk about with editors is when you've got a story editor or a beta reader who says, “Hey, something here didn't work in the story for me,” you usually don't want to look at that point. You want to trace back from that point to figure out where you set the wrong expectation.

Any editorial feedback is going to have a gap between what they notice and what really needs to be fixed.

As a writer, learning to interpret the feedback properly so that you actually elevate the material, instead of interpreting the feedback like you're trying to do customer service for an employer, where you just want to make the customer happy, is a really important skill to develop.

That's regardless of whether the feedback has to do with voice or plot or characterisation or whatever. Some editors are really good at back-tracing and actually spotting the real problem.

Editors make their money, or get hired, or get picked by you to volunteer, because they're good at being an audience—not because they're good at being a writer. So learning to interpret the editorial feedback is a really important step in that maturation journey.

Jo: Yes.

I think “maturation journey” is a good way to put it.

Personally, I think it was around book five when I really felt, “Okay, now I see what my voice actually is.” Like, it had to be five novels, and then I was like, “Okay, now I know.”

I just didn't get it before then, and then finally—I don't know—a penny dropped or something. Maybe I grew into it, grew more confident, that kind of thing.

Dan: Yes, and that's actually about right. If you look at writers with a big catalogue, five books in is usually where they start really sounding like them. So that's a pretty normal maturation curve.

There is a way to speed it up, which is to read your books aloud—or even better, make audiobooks and then listen to them a thousand times. Listen to them until you are sick of them, and then listen to them until you start to like them again.

Jo: That's a lot.

Dan: It's a lot, but there's a really specific neurological mechanism at work. You're familiar with the comedy term “crossing the line twice,” right?

Jo: Not really.

Dan: Okay. Have you seen the Monty Python Spam sketch?

Jo: Yes.

Dan: Okay. So for those of you who have not seen this—in the Monty Python Spam sketch, there's a couple, they're in a diner, and everything on the menu has spam in it.

They say the word “spam” so much that you just want to shoot your television. But they keep it up, and then suddenly, at some point—it's a different point for everybody watching—they keep it going on long enough that everybody gets there.

At some point, the word “spam” itself becomes hilarious, and you can't stop laughing, and you don't know why, because it shouldn't work, but goddammit it really does.

It's so funny that we named junk email “spam” after this sketch, because it's a whole bunch of stuff that you don't want, but it keeps showing up anyway. That's crossing the line twice.

What's going on is that your brain is getting accustomed to a sound. It has extracted all of the meaning it can, and so it's doing what it does with all sensory input. When it thinks it's got it mapped out, it's trying to filter it.

Unless you are going to sit and concentrate on it, you can't feel the texture of the fabric of your clothing on the back of your legs, because your brain—despite the fact that it's getting that input all the time—is filtering that out, because it needs you to have your resources free for thinking.

When you experience something over and over and over, no matter what it is or how complex it is, the brain habituates like that. But if that signal refuses to be filtered, and the input keeps coming, and it keeps getting more intense, or it stays persistent and it's too complex to filter easily, your brain starts to think, “Oh, maybe I shouldn't be filtering this out.”

“Maybe there's meaning here that's important for my survival that I hadn't extracted.” And so suddenly it starts searching for meaning to associate with that sensation—and that's the point at which the joke becomes funny again, or you start to experience your voice as if it's somebody else's.

When you begin to experience your author voice as if it's somebody else's, you can hear it as a distinct, objective style, rather than just as an echo of the voices that are in your head.

That's why music students practise over and over and over, even on a piece they know cold. They're doing the same trick that I'm advocating with listening to your audiobooks until you're not sick of them anymore.

Jo: I mean, I think that's terrifying, because I just don't want to listen to my books over and over again. I think it's very interesting that you think it could shortcut that voice process.

Staying on audio—since we last spoke, I have done a lot of my own audiobook narration, mainly for nonfiction, but also my short stories. I haven't done my full-length fiction.

What I discovered in doing this is that what read fine to me when I was self-editing my own work on the page—and obviously I'm hearing it in my head—when I perform the audiobook, I actually have to edit things again.

So what are some of your tips for how we can bridge that gap?

Because that's kind of strange.

Dan: So what's happening is that there's a much wider latitude of things that work on the page than what works with voice. The reason is that with voice, all of those rhythmic elements I was talking about before are really pronounced, as well as all the sensual elements.

Basically every word and sound has a mouth shape. The mouth shape affects the emotional valence of the sound.

Stuff that's unpleasant tends to have a really close-in feel—I'm trying to scrunch my face up—where you would grit your teeth and scrunch up your face if something is unpleasant. And if something is really pleasant, it tends to have a rounded feel, and our language reflects it.

In fact, all languages reflect this, because language is a physical thing that's based on the sensuality of the body.

So, like, in all cultures “mama” is the word for mother that babies first say, regardless of what it is. It has a round feel, because babies associate their mother with roundness. A lot of language is built up that way, from baseline sensual cues.

When you're working just in text, that aspect is not nearly as obvious to you. When you're reading, it's not as obvious to you. It's still at play, but when you go to do something verbally, and you go to read a text, all of those sensual cues come in at the same time.

Then the rhythm comes in hard, and you suddenly realise that—hey, that conveys the thought, but it doesn't feel right. So you wind up retooling a bit. There's also occasionally tongue twisters, which you have to work your way around. So that's why that happens.

Jo: Then I guess another thing—I hear quite often, people say, “Oh, I don't like my voice.” And they mean, “I don't like speaking out loud. I don't want to be on video. I don't want to be on audio.” I wonder—

Does that sort of resistance potentially affect their writing voice? Are there ways people can get over that feeling?

Dan: Yes, for sure. There are a few things that go into that. One is basic self-loathing. A lot of people carry it around. Most people learn to make a decent life even though they kind of secretly suspect that they're not worth anything, or they secretly find themselves revolting.

That kind of thing you can't really fix with exercises. That's something you fix with —

Jo: Therapy.

Dan: Psychological work, or spiritual work, or that kind of thing.

Jo: Yes.

Dan: But the not liking the sound of your own voice—that's easy to fix. Here's why it happens. When you're listening to your voice as you speak, the bones in your head are amplifying the bass signals and attenuating the treble.

It's kind of like if you were to shout in another room and your spouse hears you, but they can't make out the consonants. That's because all the consonants are being filtered out by the wall in between, but the bass is being resonated through. The same thing happens in your head.

So when you get on a microphone—especially if it's an accurate microphone—you're suddenly hearing what everybody else hears when you speak, and it sounds thin and tinny and unpleasant compared to what you're used to hearing.

The really easy way to get around this is to get a microphone that is tuned for singers. The condenser mic that I have isn't made anymore, so I can't really recommend a good condenser mic.

If you're on a dynamic mic, the Shure SM58 is the one to use. I podcasted with that for years before I could afford an upgrade. It is tuned for singers to sound as good as possible without any other help from the sound engineer, which means that the baseline sound for that microphone is what you're hearing in your head.

If you use the right equipment, you get around that problem really quickly, to the extent that you can technically. Then after that, it's just a matter of crossing the line twice.

You listen to yourself enough that you stop hearing, “Oh my God, I'm talking,” and you start hearing, “Oh, that voice is making this sound.” And once you hear, “Oh, it's that voice making this sound,” you don't have that problem anymore, ever again.

Jo: Oh, good. Well, hopefully that's fixed it for people. And of course, there are lots of brilliant things in the book, The Pitch-Perfect Author.

Before we finish up, I did want to return to your Substack. I was having a look at it, and it includes some really interesting things. Like, you're doing this metalwork, which is really cool.

It felt coherent to me, because I know you, and you're a polymath, and you're interested in so many things. So your Substack kind of stood out to me as quite eclectic, compared to, say, other writers who are going on Substack to try and sell specific books.

So is this a deliberate marketing choice, or is it just be an interesting person and you will attract people who are interested more generally?

Dan: Well, I suppose it kind of winds up being the latter, but basically it's that I get bored easily. If I'm going to be writing every week, I need to stay interested in it.

One of the books I wrote when I was really sick—that's not out on the market yet, but it is serialised on Substack—is a guide to self-education. It'll be coming out later this year on the general market. It's called Reclaiming Your Mind: An Autodidact's Bible.

I talk in there quite a bit about the illusion of discrete areas of knowledge. There is a level of learning at which the silos of information start to collapse together. Woodworking and writing have a lot to do with each other.

A lot of the terminology we use in writing is pulled from the trades—especially woodworking, and metalworking, and gunsmithing.

As you begin to spot these connections between different areas of knowledge, it becomes really easy to slide between them for your hobbies, for your writing, for just your personal gratification.

As I've gotten older—and also as I've gotten access to a little space that's not contained within a teeny little apartment—I have just gone with it.

As I've discovered, “Hey, this thing is tangentially connected to this other thing over here,” I'm like, “Oh, well, I'm going to go over to this other thing and see what's over there.” It's tremendously creatively fertile.

Since a lot of the things that our language connects us to have to do with trades and crafts and nature, it gets you out in the open air, which is really good for any writer—because sitting at a desk all day is worse than smoking three packs of cigarettes a day for 40 years.

Jo: I love that.

Dan: My curiosity is the chief feature of my Substack, and it kind of works for me as a writer, because it's also one of the chief features of my fiction.

Jo: Me too, and I was actually quite inspired by your Substack. Because I think this happens when you've been in the writing industry long enough.

Substack has become the sort of trendy place to be now.

People are going into specific niches, very much like blogging did, and then podcasting had to be on a specific niche, and all this.

Of course, we know logically that, marketing a book—you know, if you had just a Substack on voice mastery, then for sure that would be a better marketing vehicle. But, as you say, how boring.

Dan: Well, it depends a lot on what you're trying to cultivate as an author. If you're a single-genre author with a very narrow niche, and you're really happy writing that kind of stuff, then a narrow column supporting it is not a bad idea.

Especially when you serialise old novels, once you've got 20 or 30 under your belt. That's not a bad idea, because you're trying to attract people who want one thing and want it regularly.

If I were to get a reader who wants one thing and wants it regularly, and finds it, say, in my Clarke Lantham mysteries, and then they hop over to my science fiction—oh boy, are they going to be pissed.

If they're not there for my voice, and they're just there for the way I write a mystery plot, then not only are they not going to get what they're looking for—but they're going to start to doubt whether they can trust that they're going to get what they're looking for in my next mystery.

Whereas if they're coming to me through something where the multiplicity of what I'm doing is on display—whether that's this Substack, or whether that's what I used to do on The Every Day Novelist when I was podcasting that, or whether it's what I did with all the after-shows on my fiction podcast when I was doing that—then they kind of know what they're in for.

The people who stick with me are more likely to be people who are in it for the experience of my voice. And for my bibliography, that's what I've got to offer, because I'm all over the place in terms of genre and subject matter.

Jo: Yes, which is why I find you interesting.

Dan: Oh, why thank you.

Jo: So where can people find you and your books online?

Dan: Well, you can find pretty much everything at JDsawyer.net.

I've got the weekly column at jdanielsawyer.substack.com. At jdsawyer.net there's a page with all of my podcasts on it, and there's also a store with all of my books on it. Of course, everything is also available on Amazon and just about everywhere that the distributors take you.

Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Dan. That was great.

Dan: Thank you, Joanna. It was great to talk to you again.
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