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In today’s publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don’t even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join the two bestselling fantasy authors, Autumn and Jesper, every Monday, as they explore the writing craft, provides tips on publishing, and insights on how to market your books.
Episodes
Saturday Nov 19, 2022
Saturday Nov 19, 2022
A brand-new podcast from Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt, the creators and hosts of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast.
This limited series is eight episodes long, dedicated to make you a better writer and understand story structure better.
You get to listen in on Autumn and Jesper's conversations as they plot a short story from scratch.
It's a behind the scenes look at the process of creative writing.
Simply search for 'Write the Story' in your podcast app, or visit the website here: https://www.writethestory.show/, to get started right away.
Sunday Aug 21, 2022
Sunday Aug 21, 2022
Come for three days of writing workshops, writing time, one-on-one coaching, and group activities. Leave with a completed short story to be included in a published compilation, polished writing skills, and new author friends.
Sure, writers are often introverts, but aren’t you tired of everything happening online? We are! Plus, you can learn more and improve your writing skills faster with a select group of writers (no more than 40!) along with personalized coaching.
Be warned, this is not going to be one of those events where you simply show up, listen to a bunch of PowerPoint presentations, and then head back home by the end of the weekend.
No!
We want you to actually complete a work of fiction.
During this weekend, all attendees will jointly worldbuild a setting for a story together with five elements which everyone needs to incorporate into the story along with a character.
Each participant will then write a short story between 1,000 and 10,000 words. Along the way, we’ll cover writing aspects such as worldbuilding, character development, plotting, outlining chapters, and more… all of which you’ll get to use that weekend.
By Sunday afternoon, all stories will be handed over to us, Autumn and Jesper, and we’ll then get them all edited and have a cover made for inclusion in a compilation made free for readers! We’ll do all the final work—you just need to come, learn, have fun, and write the story.
YES! You’ll get a published piece of work and a bunch of new author friends to help you promote it. The benefits of this Getaway doesn’t end on Sunday—not by a long shot!
Check out the registration page and the full event schedule here: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/getaway-2023/
And just in case you're interested, here's the link to our brand-new novel, Magic Unleashed: https://books2read.com/MagicUnleashed
As mentioned, we're also working on a new podcast for you. Find it here: https://www.writethestory.show/ Make sure to subscribe in your podcast app, so you don't miss any episodes once we start releasing them.
Stay safe and happy writing.
Monday Dec 13, 2021
Monday Dec 13, 2021
We've unfortunately come to the end of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast.
In this short brief, you'll learn why and where to go from here.
Monday Dec 06, 2021
Monday Dec 06, 2021
The New York Times bestselling author, Anthony Ryan, joins the Am Writing Fantasy podcast for a discussion with Jesper about fantasy writing, publishing, and marketing books in today's publishing landscape.
Find Ryan's books here: https://anthonyryan.net/
Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.
SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!
Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.
Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.
Read the full transcript below.
(Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).
0 (2s):
You're listening to The Am. Writing Fantasy Podcast in today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need an literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.
Jesper (30s):
Hello, I'm Jesper. And this is episode 154 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. And Autumn is putting the finishing touches on editing our next novel today. So instead I'm joined by a New York times bestselling author, Anthony Ryan. And normally when I do these interviews, I have like a massive time difference, Anthony, but not today because I think you're in the UK or something. Is that right?
Anthony (58s):
Yes. Almost instantaneous.
Jesper (1m 4s):
Yeah. And it's, and there's even light outside my window today, which I'm not used to when I do podcast recordings, but you are you're from Scotland originally. Is that right
Anthony (1m 17s):
Originally? Yes, I don't sound Scottish, but I was born then spent most of my childhood there.
Jesper (1m 24s):
I would actually love to visit Scotland one day. I've been to the London and stuff like that multiple times, but I've never been to Scotland and it's just like the scenery there. It's, it's almost a bit fantasy inspiring sometimes. Isn't it?
Anthony (1m 39s):
It is obviously if you, if you grow up there, you have a different view of things. You don't know you growing up in it, you know, I see landscape the, yeah. Obviously, you know, as a true Scott, I recommend everyone should go to Scotland at least one.
Jesper (2m 1s):
Yeah. I would really love to go one day, but perhaps before we sort of get started for real here, maybe you could just share a few words about yourself, Anthony, and just talk a bit about what you're writing and maybe how you got into writing. And so on
Anthony (2m 17s):
Anthony Ryan, the also the raping shadow trilogy, the cottage Memorial, Trelegy blatantly the covenant of steel, excuse my most recent work and I, which is what I'm currently working on. I got published. I self published back in 20 11, 20 12 and was persuaded to go the traditional route when my first novel blood song took off and been a full-time author since the end of 2012. So yeah, this is what I always wanted to do.
Anthony (2m 57s):
And I consider myself really to be able to make a living doing what I love to do.
Jesper (3m 4s):
Yeah, that'd be pretty cool. So you have, you have some stuff that you publish and some stuff that is traditional puppets. Is that still the case today?
Anthony (3m 14s):
Yes. I don't do that much self publishing these days. It's usually one or two things a year, if that, and it's usually a short work, it's a novella or short story or something like that. Full length works with pretty much always traditionally published these days. And to be honest, given the time and I'm sure, you know, better than I do the time it takes to do self publishing. Well, it's a lot of time. It's a lot of efforts to do it properly. And frankly, that was the time to do all sort of being traditionally published for the most part.
Anthony (3m 55s):
It suits me quite well.
Jesper (3m 59s):
Right. And you're with penguin IO
Anthony (4m 2s):
These days is mostly all wet, a little and brown, I believe, but I'm still, you know, technically published by a switch is part of a penguin. So, you know, it's a thing with traditional publishing. You can be a bit confusing with all the different contracts and everything, but I don't think meters care that much, you know, you publish your next book. So yeah. Yeah. Well, within the national publishers as well, got a lot of different contracts and things with various different publishers around the world can be a bit hard to keep track of them all.
Jesper (4m 45s):
Yeah. But then coming from a situation where you have experience with both the traditional side of publishing, but as well as some self publishing, what would you, sorry? Well, you touched upon this slightly there, but what would you say is the pros and cons of each of those two approaches? If somebody is sort of listening to this and debating, should I do one or the other?
Anthony (5m 8s):
Well, it's weird. I think the advantages of self publishing are the disadvantages of self publishing of the same things. The advantages are you have to do everything. You know, you do everything yourself. You have complete control over everything. The disadvantages are, you do everything yourself and you have complete control over everything. So, you know, it's, it's a lot of work basically to self publish. We're new at officially published. You will have an editor who works for a publisher. Who's a professional editor. You won't have to hire them yourself, which can be very, probably the most expensive part of the process for self publisher.
Anthony (5m 48s):
Especially if you're starting out, you know, a professional editor doesn't come cheap. And if you're writing epic fantasy, I mean, and the charge by the word, I mean, typically in the 200,000 word range, paying somebody a word by word basis to edit one of my novels. That's a lot of money would be very expensive for me. So publish as well as very time consuming. But you do, I think with self publishing, you do get control over the control you get. I know we'd be telling you attractive for a lot of people. If you know, I'm a bit of a control freak, I'm not too bad, but I can't be obsessive about details.
Anthony (6m 33s):
And if you're that kind of person, self publishing is probably going to see it quite well, especially when it comes to cameras and cover design and you know, book descriptions and all that kind of thing. So yes, the advantages are that say are the same as a disadvantage, it's all on you. Or you either do it all yourself or you pay people to do it when you're traditionally published. Some of the burden is taken off you because you're not paying for you are an editor, a cover designer and all of the,
Jesper (7m 6s):
Yeah. And I'm also thinking maybe what about reread with gods to the editing itself? I mean, of course when you are self publishing, you, as you said, you hire the editor and basically you can just decide what to ignore, what to agree to, whatever, whenever the editor tells you something, but with the traditional publishing, is it more in your experience that you have to more accept what the editor is pushing on you? Or can you still, do you still have the freedom to say like, like, no, that's not going to, I'm not going to change this or that.
Anthony (7m 40s):
Unfortunately, I've never got to the point where I vehemently disagreed with us in the editors have told me there is a back and forth and other things we don't, you know, sort of mindless things don't always agree with when it comes to word choice, you know, cutting smaller scenes or something like that. But there have been times when I've been asked to do more substantial rewrites and others, some books don't require a lot of work at the editing stage and others do I take the view that these are professional people who've been doing this for entire life and it would be foolish of me to ignore their advice.
Anthony (8m 22s):
If I ever got to the point where it is vehemently disagreed with what they were asking me to do, I would say, so we did have a discussion, but you know, as of yet, it hasn't come up where it really just completely at loggerheads and can't reach an agreement. I don't know what would happen if we got to that point, you know, contractually, you know, they can reject the book and then they want to have advanced back. We haven't asked, but yeah, that's, that's always the nuclear option, but it it's extremely, rather than the publishing world, you know, for that to happen, you know, it can happen sometimes when you get controversial figures, who've been given large Southerns to write a memoir or something.
Anthony (9m 10s):
And, you know, especially with the insist on not having a ghost writer. Oh yeah. I've heard stories of people submitting manuscripts that were just unreadable tripe, and then wondering why the, you want to do advance back can happen. But yeah, when it comes to professional writers, people who wrote fiction for a living, it's very, very rare. And as yet, luckily for me as it come on, hopefully no.
Jesper (9m 39s):
Yeah, no, I agree. And of course it's also a matter of, I mean, of course some editors could be difficult to work with, but so could some authors, right? It could also sometimes be the author who just makes a big deal out of something where the editor might be actually quite fair in what they're asking
Anthony (9m 56s):
And I'm never going to nitpick over commerce or, you know, stuff like the semi-colons in the wrong place of don't get excited about that. You know, when it comes to, you know, the overall arch arc of the plot and stuff like that, it's, you know, it's pretty rare for them to have a problem with it. In my book, there's been a few things about have, by my own admission, I've gone down the wrong route. I've gotten down a kind of blind alley when it comes to plus and tried to get over and being a bit too convoluted. A good editor will point that out.
Anthony (10m 37s):
They don't. Yeah. They don't come back and say, oh my God, this is a pile of crap. Where was wrong with you? You get what's called the compliment sandwich. The first paragraph is, oh, this is really great and so on. But the second paragraph is now here's some things I think needs some work. And then the third paragraph is once again, and this is really great novel and I look forward to publishing it. So they always bracket where they actually want to tell you, it's some nice words, sweeten the bell. Yeah.
Jesper (11m 9s):
But what does your actual writing process look like?
Anthony (11m 14s):
What I'm writing on right. Every day I rarely have days off. And my thing has to do with when life just gets in the way. So I will, if I have a doctor's appointment or something, or have to do something with family, then, then I'll, you know, I will take time off. But when I'm actually working on book, most of the time I write every day, don't actually produce a huge amount of words on a daily basis. But because I write every day because I'm consistent, you know, it looks from the outside, like I'm quite prolific and I've have reached at least one book a year for the last 10 years, which is a bad, I'm not actually that fast.
Anthony (11m 58s):
Right. But I haven't consistent. My average word count in these days is about 1200 words a day, but I'm doing the thing where, you know, I use Scribner as my main writing program. And it has, it tells you how many words a day you need to do to reach you or a word goal by a certain date. And these days they just tend to stick to that. And long as you're consistent, as long as you speak to it, it works. Yeah. I don't do a lot of, you know, actually sitting in front of the computer and actual time spent sitting in front of your computer.
Anthony (12m 40s):
Writing is relatively minimal, but I do do a lot of pacing around my living room. And you know, I remember Stephen fried at the British, you know, comedian and author. He said that writing consists mostly of making coffee for me, even though I drink tea rather than coffee, there's a certain amount of truth in that. There's a lot of things.
Jesper (13m 7s):
Yeah. I was, I was myself through a, maybe I could call it an experiment, but quite recently, over the last six months, I, because I I'm also at the place short of where you are. I, I, I tend to, I don't really count my word count, but I, I write half a chapter a day because I feel like that's what I can get done in maybe about two hours. And in two hours after that, I feel like my creativity really goes down. But then I heard a lot about many authors who like, are really prolific, you know, the people who write like 5,000 words a day and stuff like that. So I thought like, let me try that. And then I tried to look into all the stuff that they did to increase their word count.
Jesper (13m 50s):
And I really, you know, pushed myself. And I just came to the realization after a while. I probably tried it for like two, three months. And then by the end of it, I was like, I don't enjoy this anymore. You know, I want to take my time with it. I want to sort of think about what I'm writing. I don't want to just plow ahead. I don't know, for me, it just, it, it moved, removed all the enjoyment of the writing process to try to do it faster. So yeah,
Anthony (14m 22s):
And also just might be mundane, but I'm not getting any younger. My hands I've typed a lot of words in my life. And after a while it hurts and I don't get on well with dictation software or anything like that. I don't write long hand fast enough to write that. Well, you know, I can write 85 words a minute long hand write eight. So just say my hands are quite happy to not trying to do the 5,000 words a day saying if you can great, if you comfortable for you, good for you.
Anthony (15m 5s):
You know, but I think probably done photos in words once in a day when I was running up against deadline and it wasn't fun. It definitely would.
Jesper (15m 18s):
No, I mean, I think when speaking about writing processes, it is really about finding your own sort of what suits you. Of course. I mean, of course, if you have like physical things, like your hands are hurting, then you have to respect that. But, but more in general, I mean that some people enjoy writing fast, other peoples don't. And I think it's actually good in my view to try to experiment with different approaches when you're starting out to figure out what works for you, but then something will probably be something you prefer versus something else.
Anthony (15m 48s):
Definitely. I think there's no one size fits all when it comes to writing, you have to find it. Yeah. You have to experiment, find what works for you. And I think a lot of people do read whatever their favorite writing book is. Stephen King's on writing or, you know, save the cat or wherever it is and the bank, well, Stephen King writes 2000 words a day. Therefore I must write 2000 words a day. If you've never done that, it's a big ask. You know, it's a big thing to do if you're just not used to it. So, you know, my advice for novice writers is to find your comfort zone and actually embrace the comfort zone.
Anthony (16m 32s):
Don't try and push yourself too much because what you're doing is difficult. And a lot of the time, especially with people who have jobs, they have families, it's carving out the time. You need to write it, come easy. All you can manage your day is half an hour and you do 500 words by 500 words a day adds up to love words after a year. But yeah, find, find your own comfort zone. Embrace. Not all. We'll give you at least a benchmark to, you know, you know how to push it. You know, you know, if you need to do more, whoever reason then you'll know just how much more you need to do, but tends to be what I tell them.
Anthony (17m 15s):
Younger writers anyway.
Jesper (17m 17s):
Yeah, no, I think it's a good advice. And because of as well, the, you know, you've written for quite a while, and as you said, you've written a lot of words, but do you ever feel like when it comes to getting story ideas and so on, do you ever feel like you get stuck in the same loop with the same kind of ideas? Or how do you go about getting fresh ideas?
Anthony (17m 39s):
You have absolutely no problem with new ideas. To be honest, if we could turn off the idea factory in my head, I would for a while, at least, cause it was a while ago I tweeted, I had 26 books. I could probably start writing tomorrow. If I wanted to. That's probably got up to about 35 now because it just never stops. I just never stopped getting ideas. Ideas are the easy bit for me. Anyway, I'm actually coming up with stories to match the ideas. That's the hard bit, the ideas. Yeah. It's really, I don't go looking for inspiration.
Anthony (18m 19s):
It always finds me whether it's a television documentary or whether it's, you know, something I saw on the news or just, you know, something I'd read somewhere that I can't even remember where it all goes through my head and just comes together with ideas and they never stop. I'm probably going to shuffle off this mortal coil with a lot of books unwritten, which, and there's not a lot I can do about it. It's just the way it is.
Jesper (18m 49s):
No, you know, it's funny that you say that because I think when people looking to get into writing or start to write, they worry about this idea thing. But, but because I have it exactly the same way as you do. Well, you know, I have a notebook where I write down when I get ideas and just so chock-full of ideas, it's just like, I don't know. That must be 20 novels in there as well. And I will probably never get to half of them. I don't know. But, but getting ideas is like one of the favorite things that people think about a worry about in the beginning, but, and maybe don't ask some people who are finding it difficult to get ideas. I'm not saying that that doesn't happen, but I have also through this podcast, talk to a lot of different authors by now.
Jesper (19m 35s):
And I'm yet to hear an established author say that I don't know, I can't get ideas. You know, everybody seems to be flooded with them. Maybe that's part of what makes us writers. I don't know.
Anthony (19m 48s):
I think it is a thing it's probably something innate to people who do this for a living or at least have the potential to do it for a living is, you know, never running out stories. So this thinking in those terms, I guess you could probably train yourself to do it if you tried hard enough, but it does seem to be something that's just innate with me. You know, even as a kid, I was remember telling the kids go stories at playtime school and Clustered around me and I just make them up on the spot, you know, quite easily. Cause ghost stories are easy, especially when you're telling kid there was a house, it had a ghost in it.
Anthony (20m 33s):
But yeah, in terms of getting stuck in the same ideas occurring, I'm always keen not to repeat myself. I don't want to be writing the same book over and over again. You know, another summarize have a formula, a character and series of books and those books follow a formula. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. As long as you can keep it fresh, if you're just writing the same book over and over again and you know, rubbing the serial numbers off and making it a little bit different, you know, I think that's going to get very Dallas. It get very Del for me, nevermind the reader.
Anthony (21m 14s):
And I think fortunately tend to have the imagination. It doesn't get stuck in a rut too much. So it does. I do tend to think outside my own as well as not every idea I get is not for a fantasy novel science fiction. It's hard crime as well. Kind of like to get around to all of those yamas at some point, if we're going to find enough time to write.
Jesper (21m 40s):
Yeah. Why did you decide that it was fantasy that you wanted to write originally?
Anthony (21m 48s):
It's just so general. It probably appeals to me more than all others and it might be my, I thought a lot about wine. I think it might be because it's essentially limitless. You can do anything with it, depending on how you construct the world making up a yeah. There's, there's nothing limiting you. You can, you're not constrained by history. You can bowl from history. And I do all the Diana I steal shamelessly from real world history because it's presenting it in the context of fantasy. It doesn't matter so much. There's no copyright on history. You can take all you want. And also you can take away all the inconvenient, messy bits, keep the good bits.
Anthony (22m 32s):
You know, the realities of history. History is always messier than people think it is. And it never conforms to the myths that people can't do around it in the UK at the moment, there's a lot of people spinning the stallion myths about Britain's past and prior role. You know what we did in the second world war or as my that. And it's clearly being spun by people who don't have a real grasp of what history is or what that particular history was. It's mythmaking, it's not his, but I think from a novelist point of view, especially even if you're presenting it in a fantasy context, you have to engage with the realities of, who's not the mess.
Anthony (23m 20s):
Otherwise it's not going to be convincing the messiness of history. I think I'd try and reflect even on quite, you know, ruthless and cutting away on the calf and just taking the exciting birds. Still have to go thinking, reflect the messiness on.
Jesper (23m 37s):
Yeah. And I, I also think, I mean, of course I, you know, I, as part of fantasy, I, I do of course love all your wizards and the magic and, and all that good stuff. But the other part on a more practical level is also as a fantasy author. I feel like it's because I don't want to get bucked down into research about how does this gun work or, or, you know, all those kinds of, or this particular city that the characters now go to that I've never been to. I don't want to do all that research in fantasy. I can just make it up. And that's quite wonderful.
Anthony (24m 12s):
Yeah. That being said, I do, I do research. I've done because my second series, a, the draconian memoria was set in that sort of industrialized world, even though it was a fantasy world, it was industrialized and they were fighting with guns rather than salts. So the defense of research on guns for that, and here's a tip for you. If you put guns or anything related to guns in YouTube, be prepared for them to bombard you with all sorts of extremist nonsense. We looked at one gun video and within a day, YouTube had decided I was a white supremacist who hated women judging both were recommending me.
Anthony (24m 52s):
So it's kind of staggering out the algorithms work,
Jesper (25m 1s):
But yeah, it's a bit scary.
Anthony (25m 3s):
It is. Yeah. You can see a lesson in how people get rid of medicalized. So stop recommending this to me button quite a lot now.
Jesper (25m 15s):
Yeah. I can see that. Yeah. It's been a few years though, but, but I, I read the waking fires some years back the waking fire and I very much enjoyed it and it has dragons in it. So that's always good. But what I, why I'm bringing that up is because we were talking a bit about Writing Fantasy and we were talking a bit about what kind of stories to write and so on. And because you have also written and published quite a lot of books, I'm wondering if you, if you see some common tropes within fantasy, that readers seems to like more than others.
Jesper (25m 55s):
I mean, dragons could be an example, but how do you see the success of your different books? Like, is there like commonalities that the books that has dragons in them or something else are usually more liked by readers than others? Or do you have any views on that?
Anthony (26m 10s):
I think some people definitely because it requires Memorial, it was guns rather than So that steam ships, you know, air ships and stuff, some people immediately assumed it was steampunk. And it kind of is. And I don't mind if people call it that, but there are people that just won't read anything. It's got steam punk attached to it and a fantasy readers. You only want the songs, even if it has dragons in it, they just want the swords, you know, the medieval setting rather than industrialized setting, which is fine each to their own, you know, but I try not to be constrained by as a writer, readers have their preferences and that's fine.
Anthony (26m 51s):
But for me as a writer, I do, I do want to be able to write what I want to write, you know? Yeah. And the drugs from the lawyers didn't sell as well as my other series. So it's sold reasonably well for what it is there wasn't in his big numbers because it wasn't, I think fall into what an epic fantasy series was supposed to be. You know, you're supposed to have people riding around on horses, in air ships, you're supposed to, you know, armies fighting great battles with, you know, dragons might be part, but it also supposed to be hordes of saber wielding barbarians and all of this and kind of wasn't in there.
Anthony (27m 41s):
But I don't think you can, or you should be constrained by redirect expectation. You should write what you want to write because you can never really anticipate what they want. You know? So it's like apple, you know, apple as a company famously doesn't do market research. It makes the things it wants to make itself. People don't know what they want and you can do it. And there's famous examples of then Coca Cola. When they came out with new Coke, they did immense amounts of research and focus groups and market research about, yes, there's definitely a market for new Coke and people want new Coke.
Anthony (28m 24s):
We put out new Coke, people hated it. Nobody wanted it. It was one of the biggest flops in commercial history. You can't anticipate what they want and you can't try and give them what they want. And you can only write when you write, I think at the end of the day, if it hits it hits is not alive. So you do buy that. I don't think there's anything wrong with writing to market. If you can, don't expect everyone to be a winner just because you write to a certain market. Cause you think, you know, a few years ago it was about empires and umpire romance.
Anthony (29m 4s):
But just because it's invoked, it doesn't mean it's going to hit for you. You can never really, there's no such thing as a shoe. If I hated in publishing or in anything else.
Jesper (29m 14s):
No, I fully agree with you there. There's definitely no guarantees one way or the other. And I also agree that it is incredibly important to write something you are passionate about because yeah, like we talked about writing a novel, it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of effort. So even a month later, you are sort of tired of the thing because it wasn't really your thing. Anyway, then you're never going to get to the end. But of course, if you can find some, some overlap between what the market or the readers want versus what you like, then that's probably a good place to focus. I would say, because at least if you look at like streaming services, Netflix and so on, they pump out the same stuff over and over and over again.
Jesper (29m 59s):
Right. Because readers or viewers in this case, we want what we, what we know we like, we want the same thing just in a new package. A lot of the time. I mean, when you're trying to do something that is very different. Not always, but most of the time it flops also on Netflix.
Anthony (30m 19s):
Yeah. I think as a creative though, you can, if you're proud of it, if you think it was good, you're, you know, you're happy with it. That's the most you can expect, you know, if it sells itself, it's great. It's really great for itself. But really from a creative point of view, you, you have to be happy with it. Otherwise what's the point for me anyway, you know, I couldn't there's certainly John was, I couldn't write in, cause I don't read them and I'm not excited about them. No. Yeah. No disrespect to romance authors, but I couldn't write a romance novel to save my life.
Anthony (31m 1s):
I wouldn't know what the hell I was doing. Me attempting to write a romance novel would be an insult to the young, the, you know, perhaps desperate for money. And I tried it it'd be a disaster. Yeah. So I think you have to be a fan of where the genre you're writing it. And it helps if it's a commercial yarn, you know, if it's very niche, it's going to have a hard time making a living at it. That doesn't mean you shouldn't write in it, but you know, just be aware that it's, it doesn't mean that nobody owes you a living is another thing. Nobody gonna drive a dump truck up to you for DOR and give you a load of money for no apparent reason.
Jesper (31m 47s):
Ah, that would be nice. But given your years in the writing business, less industry here, are there some changes that you've noticed over the years? Like is there stuff that is very different now compared to what it was when you got started?
Anthony (32m 9s):
Yeah. The basic publishing process, the process you go through hasn't changed that much. And the contracts are, you know, they're still using pro forma contracts that say you have to provide a written typed manuscript on double spaced paper and all that it's in the contract, but nobody ever does that. You send them an email with an attachment like everybody else. But what I have noticed is, you know, an increasing embracing of digital formats by probably they seem to be taking what I would consider a more realistic approach to pricing of, of eBooks.
Anthony (32m 51s):
And so obviously it's been a bit of an explosion in audio books, audio books are now much more important. And when I started, you could probably negotiate a different contract, separate contract for your audio book, as opposed to print. And e-book these days, no, none of the major publishers will allow you we'll give you a contract unless you're willing to sell them your, your audio rights. You can't take them away and sell them yourself and they won't do it. You get all the manual fallout so that they're not interested. And I think that's probably true of even the biggest names in the industry. That seems to be a bit of a hard line when the publishing industry, because they've realized that audio books are profitable.
Anthony (33m 34s):
They're very profitable if they're done well, you know, as a digital item to sell audio books are kind of perfect. You have a reasonably high value and a cost comparison to a print book. Don't cost that much to produce. There's a cost baggage. You have to pay an actor to do them, but you know, it's not as cost-intensive I think, as a print book. So yeah, explosion of audio is probably the biggest thing that I've noticed, but also, you know, publishers using social media for marketing and, you know, various different ways of exploring marketing in a digital age.
Anthony (34m 18s):
They weren't doing so much of that when I started, but they definitely aren't.
Jesper (34m 24s):
Yeah. And I think as well there, the audio book explosion is also very much linked to nowadays. Many people are way too busy in their life. So audio book is then like, like podcasting, you know, it's something you can listen to while you're doing other things. And I think in part that's why it has taken off in the sense that it has or to the degree that it has, because it, it just goes better with a busy lifestyle than sitting down to read a book. Nobody has that much time anymore. Unfortunately.
Anthony (34m 56s):
Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm a fan of audio books or certain authors or Stephen King these days. I only do Stephen King audio books. I don't read his books. I only listen to the audio books for him. There's a few others as well. So I find this my preferred format for memoirs, you know, comedic memoirs and that kind of thing, especially when it's written, but it's read by the author. A lot of comedians do audio books a few days, which quietly.
Jesper (35m 26s):
Yeah, there was something else I wanted to mention here before we, before we wrap things up because I was on your website earlier today. And then I saw a menu item called map room. And that really triggered me because I absolutely love fantasy maps. And it was so wonderful to see an entire webpage on the, on the website dedicated to maps from your books. I really liked that.
Anthony (35m 53s):
Yeah. I'm a big map fan as well. I draw my old, my own maps for the books and you know, so there's no copyright issues with me putting them on my website. And if you are a fantasy also with maps at the front of your book, I would recommend putting you on the website because they don't show up that well on eBooks kind of fiddly, keep referring back to them when you're reading an ebook, but put them on your webpage. People have a place to go to see them, you know? Yeah. It does seem to be a thing for fantasy funds. They like a good map.
Jesper (36m 28s):
Yeah. I know. I know for me, myself, if I started reading a new fantasy map, even if it's on the Kindle and I do agree, it's it, the resolution of it is not the best air, but if I do open a new fantasy book and I don't find that map within the couple of first couple of pages, I'm already slightly disappointed.
Anthony (36m 48s):
Yeah. This is, it's become this thing that we all expect. You know, maybe one day I'll publish a fantasy novel without a mark just to be daring, but probably, yeah,
Jesper (37m 1s):
That's great.
Anthony (37m 3s):
I heard about David Gammell, loser delight, great British fantasy also, who never, that only, I think only his historical fantasies have maps in them. They were real well-matched but it's actual secondary world fantasies never had maps. And the story I had once was the, the trying to get hired a guy to do a map for him. And he said, all these characters live on the north pole because they're was going east, west, south, and all that. But it makes no sense when you try and track their movements in impossible direction. So basically impossible his roadmap, David them world.
Jesper (37m 44s):
Right? No, but it is a challenge because when there is a map, then of course it becomes possible to start tracking the distance and how far were, or, you know, because we have it as well in the, in our novel, when, when I need them to go to one place of the, of the world, to another place of the world, I will actually pull out the map and just sort of figure out, okay, if you were a medieval guy who needed to go this distance, how long would it actually take you? So in one, on one regard, that's good that you can make it more realistic in that sense, but another, but on another hand it also makes it difficult sometimes when you're having multiple points of view and then for one character a month passed. And for the other one, you need to take two days, that's a bit of a jealous,
Anthony (38m 27s):
It was it's. One of the realities of the medieval world was it took ages to get anywhere. And the average person can walk maybe 10 miles a day. You know, you know, a soldier can do 20 miles a day. Cause that's what they're trained for your average person, you know, carrying goods on that bag. He's not going to manage all in 10 miles a day. So it was a hard reality. Then you try and get rounded, maybe Busey magic or something. But if you want your world at one end of the empire Monday, and then they've made it all the way to the other end by Tuesday, you know, it's just not realistic.
Jesper (39m 9s):
No, no. That's where, well we love time. And also does some tricks with these. I can't remember what, what Michael or what Jordan called them, but it was this way gates or whatever it was. I can't remember the name for it anymore.
Anthony (39m 23s):
Yeah. Similar in Robin hops, assassin series over these Stoughton portals, people can go to yeah. It's a useful plot device. If you can get it to a
Jesper (39m 36s):
Yeah, definitely. All right. Well, I want to thank you, Anthony, as well for coming on the podcast and share from, from all your experience and your insights into writing and publishing.
Anthony (39m 48s):
I'm sorry. No problem enjoyed it.
Jesper (39m 51s):
And if people want to learn more about you and your writing, Anthony, where do you want them to go?
Anthony (39m 58s):
My website has all the links to everything. It's a Anthony Ryan dot net. You'll find links to my social media is on there and details of all my books and learn by them and so forth.
Jesper (40m 10s):
Excellent. I will put the link to a Anthony's website in the show notes as well. So your deal is now you can go and click directly from there. And once again, I want to thank you, Anthony, for coming on the podcast today and fill in for autumn. So I hope you've got a lot from it and enjoyed it.
Narrator (40m 28s):
If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Autumn and Jesper on patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you'll get awesome rewards and keep The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.
Monday Nov 29, 2021
Monday Nov 29, 2021
Today we delve into the Nebula Award Nominated and bestselling book Jade City by Fonda Lee. What can this highly acclaimed AND popular novel teach us about worldbuildling, plotting, and characters? Join us and we share what we love, what we didn't prefer, and our thoughts on this novel.
Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.
SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.
Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.
Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).
Narrator (1s):
You're listening to The Am. Writing Fantasy Podcast in today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.
Jesper (29s):
Hello, I'm Jesper and
Autumn (31s):
I'm Autumn.
Jesper (33s):
This is episode 153 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. And it is time for our Critical Reading of Jade City by Fonda Lee. And we'll be sharing our thoughts and views with the aim to see what we write as can learn from
Autumn (51s):
Yes, I'm looking forward to it because it was such an interesting story, but you know, listening right now, if you were planning on reading this book and you haven't yet spoilers, there will be spoilers. So keep that in mind. If you're listening, this is a critical review, not a blurb or a teaser. We're going to rip it apart and say what we love, what we wish had been different and see what else we can learn from this book.
Jesper (1m 15s):
Yes. And we also got a few remarks from patron supporters. So we will also mention some of that
Autumn (1m 23s):
As well. Yes. I'm looking forward to it. I happen to have read some of those comments and I'm kind of in agreement with them. So that'll be really fun.
Jesper (1m 32s):
I am for the most part as well.
Autumn (1m 36s):
All right. End of episode. No,
Jesper (1m 38s):
That was it. Go on. Read, read, threatened. That's it
Autumn (1m 43s):
Awesome. Well, how are things over at Denmark? It's been a little while since we talked, which was partially my fault. I will warn viewers now. I am still, I had a cold. It really knocked it. Wasn't COVID knock on wood, but it's definitely knocked me for a loop. So if my voice is a little hoarse or if I will, I swear I will cough. I'll either mute myself or he'll go away from the microphone. But yeah, there's, there's a chance I'm still coughing a little bit. So it's been awhile. This episode was supposed to be the previous one and we just couldn't get together because cold I've got to call.
Jesper (2m 18s):
Yeah, this was supposed to be 100 and episode 1 55, 2, and then it now turned out to be 1, 5, 3, and, well, it was a bit of a mess because we had to rearrange stuff and redo stuff and rename podcast episodes and whatnot, but we succeeded and we're here now.
Autumn (2m 36s):
That's what counts. So how are things been? It's been absolutely ages since we talked.
Jesper (2m 42s):
Yeah. Well now I don't remember if it was last week or the week before, to be honest. But we were in here during winter time, as I've said on previous podcasts, I started doing sea kayaking. So here during winter time, well, you can go out, see kayaking, but you need a dry suit, which costs a lot of money. So, and we don't have that, but then what we can do is we can go to the swimming hole. So we take the kayaks into the swimming stadium and we train in the swimming pool to do like, you know, Eskimo rolls is what we call them. Dana's I don't know what the English word is, but you know, without getting out of the kayak, you basically you're upside down in the water and then you learn how to get back up out of the water without exiting the kayak at all.
Jesper (3m 31s):
And I actually managed to do the first roll this last time when we went to practice for the first time I succeeded in rolling around. So that was pretty cool.
Autumn (3m 42s):
That is really cool. I've never managed to do a full one note. I usually, I was a whitewater kayaking so much smaller, like half the size of a ocean kayak, a sea kayak. And I still never quite learned the hip snap part to get myself fully back on my own. So that's really cool that you could advantage one.
Jesper (4m 2s):
Yeah, well, it was like a w the time before my wife succeeded doing it and she was just like, and she did it like 10, 15 times, like, like w what, what brown run around. And I was, and I was just so much struggling. It was like, fuck, I can't do it. And then, but then last time we were here in the swimming hole, we had a couple of instructors with us. So I think the instructor probably spent like an hour with me trying to explain how, you know, because it is really, I mean, when I succeeded, I was actually surprised to see how little muscle power you need to use it. It's actually, it's all about technique. You, you almost need to do nothing to flip around if you just use the right technique.
Jesper (4m 45s):
So, and, and if you like, like angle your body just slightly wrong, or you, you use your arm slightly in the wrong way, you're not going to flip around. So it's really about techniques, but it it's, I succeeded, but now of course, I'm concerned the next time we're going to go train, then I can't do it again.
Autumn (5m 4s):
Well, it's all muscle memory. So eventually you'll get it down with that as awesome. However, it's hilarious. Your wife was like, whoo, I'm just rolling. Like
Jesper (5m 12s):
Rolling around like, well, it's quite easy. Yes. That's easy for you to say Yeah. At the other than that, then a well on, in terms of working wise, we've sent book one of our new series off to the editor. So we're waiting to get it back from the first edit, and then it'll go to the second editor and so on, but, but we're getting there now. So, so that's pretty cool. And otherwise we've started to look ahead for 2020 and kind of discuss some of our future plans and so on. But I quite like this time of year when we're sort of reviewing, what are we going to do next inside? That that's always fun to me.
Autumn (5m 54s):
It is. I think it's it's so it's good to do that. You should do in your life. Should do it in your writing, your book, marketing, whatever you got going on. I think so many people don't take the opportunity to reflect and then reorganized and then hit the new year with maybe some new goals and some new operations and stuff. So I agree which again, you know, go figure we've we tend to agree on just about everything. So it's no surprise. We both enjoy looking over stuff. And I think it gets your passion going, if you feel like you're just doing the same old thing and you just need to keep plugging away at it, you'd lose the passion. And, and it's half the fun is getting that back and getting excited about things and what you're going to do for the next year.
Jesper (6m 35s):
Yeah, indeed. So how about you? What have you been busy with the last couple of weeks
Autumn (6m 40s):
Sick, but not much. I've well, I mean, I've managed to get the editing done and so that's been off and I'm going to be working, starting to delve into getting our website for
Autumn (7m 20s):
And, oh, it's been a nightmare. I really thought I was surprised when I got the COVID test results back as negative. I'm like, really? If this isn't COVID, oh, there's some other nasty bugs out there. No one should ever have to go through this, but I have never had chills, like shaking so hard while I had a fever in my entire life. Thank goodness. My husband has medical wilderness medical training. Cause he's like, I wasn't worried. We're fine. I know what to do. But I was like, he's saying, right, this is not right,
Jesper (7m 52s):
But there is a buck like that going around because I mean, over the last two weeks, I was sick for a couple of days as well. And I wasn't, I didn't have the shakes like you're describing there, but I did have a fever. And I was absolutely absolutely sure that this is COVID because it felt like, you know, the, all the flu kind of symptoms, all the stuff that you hear about and, and your throat, you can feel it all the time. It was exactly like the symptoms described for, for COVID. But I also went and got a test and it was negative, but there is something going around like that at the moment.
Autumn (8m 23s):
Yes. I mean, none of our listeners catch it. It's not contagious through podcasts. Thank goodness. I
Jesper (8m 28s):
Don't think it's contagious through podcasting.
Autumn (8m 32s):
I hope not. But yeah. I mean, as I've described it, I feel like I've actually been sleeping with a hot water bottle. I feel like my internal thermostat, we, we speak in car language all the time. I'm not sure, but my thermostat is busted. It is not working. So please, if you find yourself getting cold, stay warm, make sure you, I was sleeping with a hat on and a hot water bottle and a coat. And it's just ridiculous. But yeah. Keep yourself warm and healthy and have a good December. Cause you don't want to get sick at the beginning of winter. It's I'm going to have a horse, a sore throat all winter now
Narrator (9m 7s):
A week on the internet with The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast.
Jesper (9m 13s):
So I found a very interesting article on the internet that I just thought I would share here. Excellent. Because it's probably over the past month or something like that, I've been posting sort of different topics to our patron supporters about different aspects of PIP, big publishers merging together and sort of the effect that it might or might not have on us authors that all these big publishers are merging, you know, like low advances, lower royalty payments and so on. I mean us indie publishers, it's not so concerning, but for everybody doing the traditional publishing, then I've been just making different patron posts about that.
Jesper (9m 55s):
But then I found this article as well about a penguin random house and Simon and Schuster was, they are looking to merge in a $2.2 billion deal. Wow. But then the us justice department stepped in and blocked the merger. Did you see that?
Autumn (10m 11s):
No, I did not. It's funny. I read the news a lot, but I did not see that one.
Jesper (10m 16s):
No, no. So the U S justice department assessed that the merchant would create a two dominant market role and it would hurt authors and readers. What do you think about that?
Autumn (10m 27s):
Well, it's funny. I I've, I agree. We need competition. And so there are things to keep the, you know, something from developing into something that's not gonna squash competition, but then I like a Facebook and Amazon and
Jesper (10m 43s):
Facebook
Autumn (10m 45s):
And they haven't considered that dominating things. I mean, especially with Amazon bought good reads and they own publishing and, and there's like the dominant market, but at least they're trying to protect the brick and mortar ones. You know, it's good that they're maintaining some competition out there.
Jesper (11m 3s):
Yeah. I mean, from a publishing point of view, penguin is the largest publisher and they are launches rival is shaman, Simon and Schuster. So those two merging would generate like a massive dominance in democracy. And in my view it would be like unprecedented on re what are you saying, unprecedented? That was what I was trying to say, control of the publishing industry. Right? So I fully agree with the us justice department here. I think it's a good thing that they are blocking this, but of course the lawyer of penguin then claims that it would actually be good for the authors if the two giants merged and that the publishing imprints will continue to compete against each other is what he said.
Jesper (11m 46s):
I don't buy that for a second.
Autumn (11m 48s):
I don't buy that. I think it would give them a better edge to compete against Amazon, but Amazon is so far ahead and eBooks and they're just really, and they're pretty solid and paperbacks, but they're just delving into hard cover. So I think it would put them against each other pretty solidly that way, but I don't think it would help authors to have basically your choices, Amazon or whatever penguin and Shuster would be called. But I mean, to me, it's almost like Amazon decided to buy, oh gosh, I might just completely blanked, but where you buy your, where we're also have our paperbacks published Ingram, like Amazon bought Ingram, spark authors would be doomed, just doomed, but I don't think anyone wants to go under, but yeah, that is like the only other real competition for Amazon is Ingram spark.
Autumn (12m 38s):
And a lot of people don't even realize it.
Jesper (12m 43s):
Yeah. And Spotify just bought a find a way voices.
Autumn (12m 46s):
Wow. There's some shakeup going on.
Jesper (12m 50s):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They want to be the dominant audio producer, just like YouTube being for video to Spotify, want to dominate the entire audio Margaret. Oh,
Autumn (12m 59s):
That'll be interesting.
Jesper (13m 1s):
But then you also saw, you know, of course that was like early in the year, but also Spotify buying Joe Rogan's podcast for a hundred million dollars and stuff like that. Right. So they're, they're really, you know, playing hot in, in trying to just dominate the audio market, which I probably think, I think, I think they're onto something, but of course from a content creator point of view, you can be nervous that it's going to be the same outcome as it was for musicians. I like getting paid pennies when it's paid on And when or music is played on Spotify and it could be concerned about the same thing here from, from a audio book kind of perspective. Now today bought find a way of voices that you also can end up in a situation where we authors are just going to get paid a few pennies per audio book play.
Jesper (13m 49s):
So that is a bit concerning.
Autumn (13m 52s):
I agree. It's yeah.
Jesper (13m 60s):
All right. So Jade city is a world fantasy award winner. It is, or it was named as one of the times, top 100 fantasy books of all time. And it was a Nebula award nominee for best novel. So, and I actually went, and now it's a couple of days ago, but I did go and check the sales ranking on Amazon. And I think you will see if you do that, that it's selling quite well. So there is a reason why we picked this book in the first place. Yeah.
Autumn (14m 28s):
And I have to say in some ways it really impressed me. I was so excited. I think by the time I hit chapter two or three, I mean, I was into it. There was no way I wasn't going to finish the book. So I can say that, but I don't know when we'll get there, but my impression at the end I'll let you know if I still felt that way. And I went on because it is a trilogy and there was a book two and a three. So I will say we'll get to maybe how I felt at the end of the little bit. But I will say when I first started reading it, it was unlike the last critical review we did, which was of the fifth season. That one, we were talking about tense changes. I mean, that was very much literary fantasy.
Autumn (15m 9s):
This one was true fantasy. Not, it wasn't even high fantasy. The setting and the time is more like Japan just after world war one maybe, or just after the U S you know, came in and started taking over just after Japan. Now I can't even remember the date that is, but when Japan opens up to the rest of the world and goes from the Shogun period into a modern era. So it's right at that cusp, there's guns, there's different far-flung politics, but this central very strong government that is used to a very traditional way of doing things and the clans are there. And it's, if you like Kung Fu movies, it has so much of that.
Autumn (15m 50s):
It was really exciting. I kind of, yeah, I've kind of, it's just like the Grisha of universe. I'm kind of really liking that these a lot of fantasy that is not just medieval, it's really pulling up to different time periods now. And it's kind of like, well, this is, this is different. This is exciting. I'm really enjoying it.
Jesper (16m 10s):
Yeah. Okay. I think I will, I will not give my overall sort of a conclusion on it. I think we'll talk through it. And then if it's not clear by everything else I say, then I can give my, my final words on, on this book by the end. But I think just as Autumn said, in the beginning of the episode, we are heading into spoiler territory now. So a B one, if you haven't read this book and want to read it, you probably want to stop now and then come back once you read it, and then you can listen in and see if you agree with what we're saying here, but yeah, from now on, you'll have been warned.
Autumn (16m 46s):
That is very, I think that's been clear to warnings, you know, what you're getting into if you continue on from here.
Jesper (16m 53s):
Yeah. But so I've made some different notes that sort of some, let's say places where I feel like I can, I can sort of drop in and talk about something, but there was no specific order to this. It's just like different notes on different thoughts. And then also some comments from Stephen, both from good reads our Goodrich group, but also from, from patron. So I have some comments of his and I, I picked some of the comments where I also have a, have you on what he says. So it's sort of like, they are good talking points. But I think first of all, I could start by saying this book is really well written.
Jesper (17m 37s):
I really feel like, you know, it, it evokes feelings and, you know, the way she described things though, the characters and they do make me as the reader. No, I'm able to picture the scene in my mind when things are happening. So, So that is really well done. So yeah, first, first let's say item on the list is just that it is really, well-written
Autumn (18m 3s):
Definitely, I think it is worth reading. It is a fun book to read. It is engaging the, again, the world is a different little bit of different time period. If you do like Kung Fu movies, it has that the magic system. I'm sure we'll get into that as well with the Jade and the green bones, the only people that kept kidneys who are the ones who can actually use Jade, everyone else is if they touch it, they're either, unreactive, there's a few people who are in the world who are unreactive to Jade, but the rest of them can basically become addicted. It's like opium. Maybe it's a good substitute for that, but it also gives you really amazing powers. So it's, it's sort of the magic system. And it's really fun.
Autumn (18m 43s):
I liked that it's tied to a traditional item, that it works in very set ways when she talks about like, you can do this with it, you can do that with it, but it's really hard to do both. Some people are more powerful. They can take, they can wear tons of J jewelry. And there's other people that, you know, you put on five and that's your Bakst out, that's it? I like that there's variation. And it depends on who you are and your heritage. And that there's only this one select group of people, the Keck honeys, who are truly there, the Jade warriors, the green bones who can wear this. And it's also knowing a little bit of Japanese history and Chinese history, how important Jade was, you know, they, they buried their emperor's wearing Jade uniforms.
Autumn (19m 25s):
And so I'm like, oh, this is it's tying in history. And it's, it's, it's Jade. I love stones and I love green, so, oh, I just liked this matching system. It really resonated with me.
Jesper (19m 37s):
Yeah. Okay, cool. Because at one of the points that I had written on my list here is really a question mark to my cell is that it's this magic system. Really? That unique question, mark. It was what I wrote on my, on my list because it's basically just superpowers. I mean, yeah, you're using the Jade to, to get your powers, but it's nothing more than that. I mean, the more I thought about it, the less unique I actually feel like the magic system is. I mean, it's fun and all that. It's not, not that, but if you're looking at it from a uniqueness point of view or trying to create something new, then I really don't feel it is that, I don't know if that's fair to say, but
Autumn (20m 14s):
I think in some ways, I mean, it's based on a lot of traditional, you could substitute any stone instead of Jade on any universe. I mean, I know I've read other ones where it's just a, sort of like the L stones of Shannara. You have stones and you can do something with it. So I think it has a very strong heritage in the same aspect, but I liked that she tied it in to a culture and a history. But again, I also know, and we'll probably get into that or we can get into it now, but the Jade is tied to a history that, again, I keep saying Japan, this is not supposed to be Japan. It's supposed to be Keck, knees and kick on. And that is, I think to me was the biggest weakness is that it was so obvious what country it was and the time period and the era that I was just like, can we just call it Japan?
Autumn (21m 6s):
It felt like it's an island. So I felt maybe this is supposed to be Okinawa. There's the one area we're against, which to me is the Korea, is which Japan has a huge history of fighting with the Korea. And then there's this sort of English slash for some reason I kept thinking of Spain, but it might be because it was started with like Espana, you know, it had that kind of name to me. So it was like an English slash European foreign power as well. It's just like, it was so obvious that I was like, make it either more different and truly unique, or just call it what it is, because it's not even a filmy gray layer. It's pretty apparent what you're trying to base this on.
Jesper (21m 49s):
Yeah. I think, I think that's correct. Not necessarily that I think that's a problem as such. I mean, I know we've talked about many times doing our monthly Q and a session with, with our students and, and patron supporters. And so on that if it's a horse, call it a horse. Right. I mean, we set many times, but I, I'm not sure it's a problem as such a, that, that you are sort of mimicking, mimicking close off of some, some real life place, because on the other hand, if you call it Japan and then they were running around with Jade powers, that might, that might also feel wrong. But I, I don't know, but I don't necessarily think that's a problem. That's probably like a, you know, taste kind of thing or opinion thing.
Autumn (22m 34s):
Some people, yeah, I think some people will not mind it as much, but I, and I was comparing it to like the Grish of books, the Grisha verse, which has also has some key aspects that are very much based on cultures of this planet, but she does a really good job of anchoring the history into her novel it's they develop out of the novel and they have completely unique aspects based on the world. I guess I was, I like my fantasy, just a little bit more fantasy. And this was so close to the real world with just a little van veil of difference that I was like, well, I wanted to see, I think, a little more different. I wanted a little more traditional, a little more history based on the world she was creating for the book rather than something that, oh, I could let me go check Wikipedia and make sure that that is what, how it happened.
Jesper (23m 27s):
Yeah. Yeah. I, I think on that note, I could just sort of inject the comment we got from Stephen on Goodreads, because it sort of goes very much along with what you're talking about. I think because Steven said a quote here, we have a very Earth-like world where technology is straight out of the late seventies, early eighties. Yeah. So that's just me saying he he's in a different time zone or time period, and you are thinking about it, but okay. Then back to the quote, they have cars, they have guns, they have landline phones, they have vocabulary is completely from modern times. Lee basically took the idea of a Jade based magic system and shoved it into a culture of Oriental gangs from the seventies.
Jesper (24m 8s):
And right. So, so he's thinking that this is like late seventies, early eighties, where you're talking about after world war one. So there's a bit of, let's say change there, but, but again, I'm not so sure that I fully agree with the fact that their vocabulary is completely from modern times. Like you said, well, maybe it is, but I don't necessarily think that's a problem. I mean, this for me, this is a fantasy setting, so who knows how they talk? I mean, but it goes very much along with what you were talking about. Like, it feels like depends or why not just say it's Japan and so on and so on. Whereas I just think, I just view it as it's a fantasy setting so she can do whatever she wants and maybe it is indeed heavily inspired by some real life cultures and real life locations.
Jesper (24m 52s):
I don't disagree with that. I also think that it's it's, it is that just like Steven is saying, and like you were saying as well, but I guess I'm just not seeing it as a problem.
Autumn (25m 4s):
I, and I think that just comes down to personal taste to me. I'd like to see it. I would like to, if I didn't understand a word, like how the people greet each other, there is language used and I'm pretty sure all the language use was Japanese. And I basically could have put it into Google translator and checked it. I think there's a part of me who said, I would rather have that as a fantasy language, make it up to fit your world and don't just make it so that I check it. I did not, but I, I had assumed that I probably could have with that a lot, except for the place names that some of the greetings, some of the words, some of the language, the traditions were very much based on real things that you could Google or check on Wikipedia and double-check.
Autumn (25m 52s):
And I was just like that's Yeah, to me, I'm like, I would rather have that just shifted a little more into fantasy. Otherwise it w it felt a little not cheating. It just felt like a little bit more work could have been done to make it really have like, wow. That is fantastic. That is so cool. Instead of going like, yeah, I read that the other day in an article on Wikipedia. Cool.
Jesper (26m 19s):
Yeah, no, fair enough. Fair enough. But I have another call comment as well from, from Steven, which this time I very much agree with him. So I, you ready for this one? Is it also about culture and stuff? So he says a quote. I think if a culture had such a magic system for many centuries, it would have drastically all areas of history and industry in such a way that the world would be a very different place. How would Jade have affected the countless wars over the centuries? How would it have affected the world governments? How would it have affected technology? She doesn't really answer those questions and quote, and here, I really agree with Steven, because if you just imagine, like you take these Jade warriors and you put them in some sort of special forces in the military, I mean, there's nothing they couldn't do, right?
Jesper (27m 16s):
I mean, yeah, you have guns and stuff. You can shoot them. But, but I mean, if they are like, especially the forces and they sneak in behind enemy lines, I mean, just, they can wreck complete havoc and there's not much you can do to stop them. So, and I don't think that she really concerns herself with, with the fact that wooden governments also try to find ways to basically leverage these kinds of people and conquer other countries and stuff like that is it's never mentioned really from a building perspective. I just felt like that was stuff that could have been explored further here.
Autumn (27m 56s):
Yeah. I, there, I completely agree. The one thing I did like is that she does have the kind of European foreign power is trying to develop a drug to allow them. Yeah. So yeah. To allow their military to also be able to use Jade and I mean, it has bad side effects. It basically makes you addicted. It can completely overreact. So there, I like that. That was a really cool aspect. But looking at the history, basically all the history you have of Kay Khan and the Keck Annies and the Jade warriors is that they were kind of guerrilla fighters. There was a foreign country that was controlling them and they came down the Hills, they fought for freedom and a revolution, and they want it very, very recently, but it's just like
Jesper (28m 39s):
Taking over the
Autumn (28m 40s):
World. I know it gives, like you were saying, I mean, you have these guys train, they can deflect bullets. They have the power to do that. There's like six major powers and one of them is deflection. So yeah, you have some ninja like trained warriors. You could go assassinate just about anyone.
Jesper (28m 58s):
I have a super fast speed and they have super strong, you know, super strength as well. So I mean, there's almost nothing they can do.
Autumn (29m 7s):
No. And it's neat because she does have setups where it's like, it's really hard to do two of those at once. It's almost like you can only do one at a time unless you're really, really good. And you have to be well trained. I mean, there's a school you go through. I don't know how many years of schooling, just to be able to learn, to harness this energy. I loved all of that. But again, once you became a full blooded Jade warrior, a green bone here, pretty much it all, it's like, it all was just clan in fighting to control this tiny nation where it's like, they, their history, these people should have rulers. They should have been gone. Like there's mentions of being descended from gods, but it's not developed the point to explain that why they were so insignificant in their own culture prior to this period.
Autumn (29m 55s):
And I agree with Stephen wholeheartedly, it just felt like it was missing. And if this was a real, real, real fantasy culture, their history would have probably needed a lot more explanation of why they weren't ruling other countries and incredibly wealthy country and a huge superpower because they got skills.
Jesper (30m 16s):
Yeah. Yeah, indeed. And then that's the part where I don't quite understand why they're just sticking to the small little island here. I mean, why? I mean, okay, fair enough. I mean, gang fighting and stuff like, you know, it is basically the gangs fighting each other and so on, but, but come on. I mean, the government would have stepped in and say, say, Hey guys, you know, you're going to be filthy risk rich, all of you, if you worked for us and, and we go out and we conquer some nation, other nations, I mean, they would have done that.
Autumn (30m 46s):
I agree. And I
Jesper (30m 49s):
Could have just now. Yeah, I was just about to finish my, my thought because they, she could just have mentioned it as a short paragraph somewhere, just saying for whatever reason they didn't want to, or, or just give some sort of explanation to why, and then that, that would have been closed. Right. But because it's never mentioned, then it just makes me wonder. Okay.
Autumn (31m 10s):
Yeah. And I think, again, this is where she was relying way too heavily on the history of Japan because they did close their borders for two centuries, 200 years. They basically were not open up to the rest of the world until the U S came in with a steam ship and basically opened up a country to, from the Shogun era where they're using samurais to basically fast forward, within a matter of years to a full industrial nation. And if you know the history, you're kind of like, oh, she's just basically assuming this is what happened here. And just mentioning instead of the shoguns, as it's the warriors in the mountains and the revolutions and the gorillas and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Autumn (31m 50s):
But that doesn't work that's, this is supposed to be a fan of it. Doesn't it's not explained with the magic system she has. And that's where, again, I have the problem that if you're going to develop this culture and this history, and it's a different world, don't just rely on what happened in this world, because it doesn't fit. It's going to leave you these disjointed things that I'm like, I don't understand why this would happen this way.
Jesper (32m 14s):
No, I agree. I, and one of the things we talk a lot about in our world building causes, basically making sure that you analyze what are the wider consequences of the magic system and of the things that you develop in your world, because it will have impact on other things in society on other nations may be in this case and so on. So it's not that you have to play that all out, meaning that just not like the
Jesper (32m 54s):
And, and in the same vein here, Steven also said, if Jade is such a powerful substance, has anyone tried to harness it as a power source, the lead through line in there somewhere about scientists studying Jay to find other users, but to no avail, because it only enhances people of
Jesper (33m 37s):
And if you can really get that many powers out of a Jade stone, then I understand what Steven means in terms of, it's not only about military strength here, right? I mean, you, you probably would wonder as a government as well. I wonder if we can use this as a power source for other things, right. And again, like Steven also says, it's not that the fund, the leader needs to make that into something she could, like Steven says she could just have made a small paragraph some way explaining why they tried and they failed and decided not to go any further or whatever, and then fine. Right. But I'm, I'm really missing from a worldbuildling perspective. I think it is a really cool setting.
Jesper (34m 17s):
So don't get me wrong. I think it's, it's quite cool, but that what would have just made it even better would have been some, some consideration about this wider consequence of the Jade powers. And I really feel that it's completely missing.
Autumn (34m 36s):
I then I completely agree with you and Steven, that is just, there's something missing. I mean, there could have been any explanation why Jade warriors were limited, why they, they were sick. There was a disease, something just, I wanted some explanation of why they seem so minimal. They were just figure, you know, they had Klan leadership, but it was just this little island. Why not more, but I also want to get into the character is because I think
Jesper (35m 4s):
Just thinking about,
Autumn (35m 7s):
You know, we haven't talked in like two weeks and it's, we're still in the same Playboy that's, that's good. But that was, I think my other love and hate of the story were when it came down to the characters, they were well-developed. They were interesting. They had very strong personalities and there were two I wanted to really bow. Well, I guess there was three I wanted to bond with the one was the clan leader who was land. I really, he was my favorite up until okay, very big spoiler alert. He dies. And up until that point, I was really excited. Like he did not want to be the leader of a clan during a war.
Autumn (35m 49s):
And that's where this world was heading. There was going to be a clan war. And he was basically the only one trying to keep everything together. He didn't want, he wanted to be, he was an awesome, peaceful clan leader, but I'm like, I want to see how he changes, how he transforms and boom kills them off. So I was like, Ugh. And I also, there was Shay, which was his sister and I wanted to like her, she had gone out and explore the world and come back. And there was a few chapters in there where it was like, do I go back to my clan? Do I knock it back to me? And I got to the point, I'm like, just make a decision. I was getting a little sick of her indecision and I never bonded with her because she was just too wishy-washy. And the only other one I kind of liked was Emery Andin.
Autumn (36m 31s):
Who was the one who was the young Jade bone who had quite the backstory. His mother was like too sensitive, went bad. His father's European. Well, okay. Quote, unquote, European. We're just going to call him that. And he, so he's highly sensitive to Jade. He can do amazing things with it, but he was also too emotional there's times. I wish he was a girl, but then I would have been really annoyed. He was so emotional. At least as a guy, he was like, oh, okay. A really emotional guy. That's kind of different, but I didn't bond with him either. And at the end of the book, that is actually what kept me from buying book two is like, this is interesting. I have some questions about the world and the Jade and the magic, but I really don't really care.
Autumn (37m 13s):
They killed off land and I don't really care what happens to any of the characters enough to make me go buy book two right now, maybe if I have some spare time later and that's prized me, I was really all set to love this book, but I didn't find the character that really made me want to turn the next page.
Jesper (37m 33s):
No. And funny enough as usual, we agree here. I mean the only one that slightly had my interest until he was killed, but because it's like, I feel like from the very first page, the worldbuildling really comes into its own. Right, right. Immediately you're sucked into this pretty cool setting. And I was very hooked in it. The first couple of chapters, like this is really great pot. Then the character building and making me as a Rita care for those characters never really happened. It's also, I feel also it's a bit difficult to care for characters who are part of a crime syndicate and they just heard each other people and stuff like that.
Jesper (38m 16s):
And it's that alone that in his own, it's a bit difficult. It's like, it's like the, the short story we wrote as a prequel for our new series, basically the main coats are there is, is one of the villain in the, So that also they it's, it was a to make, make a character to read us would actually care about because he is actually not that good of a guy. And I feel like that that's the same problem here. Yeah. That it's just like, there is no real character development. I feel like there's real. No, no real care to ox. It's just like a straightforward standard gangster succession story.
Jesper (38m 59s):
Really? That's it?
Autumn (39m 0s):
Yeah. I think you really put your finger on it. What, there's no character arc. I was, I thought li like I said, the land had some potential and I was interested to see where he grew too. And he dies. And that was the only one who really, I saw a potential arc to even Emory. I thought at the end, he totally acts out at the perfectly perfect storm moment to not act out in a culture where you don't act out, insult his family, insult everyone, like a huge slap in the face to his family. And I was just like, I wanted some reservations. Like I understood as a writer, why you would do that because to me, you know, you're Writing Fantasy.
Autumn (39m 42s):
It's always like oceans are supercharged. Things happen, you know, big drama, but I just wanted some restraint from his character to show some sign of growth of thinking beyond his own needs. And yeah, he was being used. But again, in the family setting, it was kind of, he needed to have been used at that point. And it was also an opportunity for him to grow and he just didn't. And I didn't really, I just was so disappointed in him at the end of specifically where I'm like, okay, maybe there's potential. And I was like, I really don't care what happens to him after this. And like I said, I had that one thought I'm like, gosh, it would have been interesting if he had been a strong woman, because there's only a couple of strong women's because it's a very patriarchal, very patriarchal society, even though it's written by a woman.
Autumn (40m 35s):
And I thought, well, I, I didn't connect with anyone. And that's really a shame because it's a kind of, it's the story itself had so much potential.
Jesper (40m 46s):
Yeah. I mean, of course this is a Critical Reading episode, so we are being very critical. I mean, I would say it, isn't an entertaining read. It's a good book. So, so, so, so it's just us being very critical here because it's a Critical Reading episode, but so I'll continue in the second way and being a bit critical because what I also felt like I would really have liked some sort of surprised or, or twist about something, just something, but everything was so straightforward that I really felt like, not that I could predict everything that would happen as such, but I, and I don't know if Lee, maybe Lance Beth, you could say was a bit of a surprise. I was, I actually, I was not expecting him to die.
Jesper (41m 29s):
And so that was a bit of a surprise, but know, but I, I dunno, it just felt too straightforward if you know what I mean.
Autumn (41m 37s):
Yeah, no, I do. I see, I was kind of, I knew land was either going to die or he's going to have an awesome character arc. And I was so hungry for that character arc and it didn't happen. And I was a little surprised at how they used Emery to defeat the other clan or, well, it wasn't really a defeat defeat, but how they used him and his power, but it completely made sense. And if you were paying maybe attention to embryo a little bit more, you would have totally seen where that was coming from. So everything very much built off of everything you expected to in the story. And there was no huge surprise twist. There was no women coming in to save the day, which, you know, I always hope for, but it didn't happen.
Autumn (42m 17s):
I was true. Everything was just a little too stuck in its box and stayed there pretty tightly. And so there, I kind of agree. I, I wanted something a bit more exciting, something a bit more surprising and it never developed. I was actually really holding up when LAN the night he dies, he gets a letter from his ex-wife that he had let go. He was way too nice of a character in many ways for the world he was in. And I always wanted to know what was in that letter. It was like the hanging threat. I was expecting her to say, well, actually I left and I was pregnant with you. And I just he's, he's your son and or your daughter, which would have been really awesome.
Autumn (42m 58s):
And I it's time she come back and begin her training with you. I would've been heart-stopping Lee so excited, but they never actually mentioned the letter. He puts it in a drawer and no one finds it. I'm like, is this in book two? I don't. And again, that's, that's about the only curiosity I have is what was in this really thick letter edits. At least I'm curious about it, but you know, if there had been some tea, some tea, but it would have been better to end book one with someone having found it and opening it going, oh my gosh. Then I would have been booked to right there then.
Autumn (43m 38s):
Oh my gosh.
Jesper (43m 40s):
Oh, lots heat from Rita's if you did that. Oh my God. They said,
Autumn (43m 44s):
I know, but I would have bought it in this, in a heartbeat just to find out what was said. So I didn't have that draw. And again, I agree with you, this book it's worth reading. It's entertaining. It's beautiful. If you love kung-fu it is such a fun book to read. I think book two and three might be worth reading. I mean, the reviews are astounding. The book sales are astounding. It's probably worth reading. Yeah. But I wasn't drawn to it enough, but I think there is, there's something to learn there as a writer that there's something missing with a character or something. A lot of people, even Steven had mentioned, he didn't connect with the characters.
Jesper (44m 25s):
Yeah. Yeah. And of course a Windell, everybody could then say, yeah, that's nice. You guys are saying that, but this is, is this a top 100 fans as you broke it of all time. And so neighborly award nominee for best novel and so on. Yeah. And fair enough. Yes. But we can only speak of our own opinions here. And, and if I'm very honest about it, the only thing in my opinion, I can say, I don't understand why it is that highly praised. It's a good book. Yes. It's a good story. Yes, it is very, well-written great. Worldbuildling maybe with some, some missing pieces, like we talked about here, but I don't feel it's that good that it should be that highly pre I don't know. I mean, maybe I'm just, I'm just weird and I'm not like everybody else.
Jesper (45m 9s):
And fair enough if that's the case, but I dunno, I enjoyed it. Good read, good entertainment. But if I hadn't known that it was a award-winning novel like this, I would never have guessed it. Let me put it that way.
Autumn (45m 23s):
Agreed. I think I I've read some indie fiction that I think topped it, rivals it and tops it. So it's interesting that it got picked for us is such an award-winning and so touted. I think there's a lot of great books out there. It's no better than a lot of them. I mean, well, okay. It's better than some of the really rough ones, but it's on par. It's a good book. It's entertaining. There's other ones that are probably more exceptional. But other than that, again, it is my opinion. It was worth reading, but wow. I can only complain to complain to have the problems she has with how well it's doing good luck best for her. I'm so excited.
Autumn (46m 4s):
I wish every author who wrote that well or on par could do as well.
Jesper (46m 10s):
Yeah, for sure. For sure. I think one last thing I had on my list to mention here, because this is really something I've learned, not from this novel alone, but sort of from all these kinds of bestseller novels that we read over the, I mean, we read, we went one before as well for the, for this podcast. But outside of the podcast here, we, we have also had like what, four or five, something like that, very best-selling books that we've read over the last month, but just because we were trying to see what are the common denominators in these books and what I have learned, and this book is exactly the same. And I've been surprised about this because it's not, I guess my standard preference, but I just have to admit as well that after reading all of these massively successful bestsellers, what they all have in common is that they are fairly slow paced all of them, this one as well.
Jesper (47m 8s):
You know, it, it takes time before things get going. It's not that nothing is happening, but, but it's not a fast page. One way that you like flipping pages to see what happens next. It it's fairly slow paced. It takes a time with where you spent just spend time with the characters and all of these very, very successful novels. They all do this. So I know, I know some people sometimes say, will, it feels a bit boring because not enough is happening, but at the same time, I just have to, you know, concede and say, well, apparently that's what most people want. That's the only conclusion I can draw because I've seen it over and over and over again now.
Autumn (47m 48s):
Yeah, no, I agree with something and it's definitely not to my taste. Like I said, there was probably two or three chapters. I'm like, you could have cut one of these out. Oh my gosh. It's so slow in the beginning. Especially without the character development more. I think, I think that could have been stronger, but yeah, a lot of these incredibly best-selling books are slow paced and there seems to be a lot of time just spent dilly-dallying and learning parts of the world. And oh, remember when I read, there's a lot of cooking and food descriptions and I'm a foodie and I was getting a little tired of the cooking and the food description. That's a lot of cooking and food descriptions. Yeah.
Jesper (48m 26s):
No, I mean, don't get me wrong. The point, the point with slow paced is not to be boring. That's not what I'm saying. Right. I mean, if you just have chapters cooking and nothing is happening, that is boring. That's not what I'm trying to say. I'm more things are happening and things were also happening in JTD, but it just takes it time with it. It, nothing is rusted, you know? Yeah. It's just a slow paced.
Autumn (48m 50s):
Yeah. Slower than you might think. If you're writing slow and you think it's slow, you might be okay. Read a couple of these books and see how you, you measure up. Yeah.
Jesper (49m 0s):
Alright. Anything else on your list autumn? Or is that it?
Autumn (49m 4s):
That's it? I think we covered all my big topics. So I will just say it is a good book. It's worth reading. There's also a lot of great authors out there, so yeah. Go check out a book. All right.
Jesper (49m 17s):
That's good. So next Monday I have a great interview lined up for you and I hope very much. You're going to enjoy that one. So see you then,
Narrator (49m 30s):
If you like, what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join autumn and Jasper on patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast, going, stay safe out there and see you next Monday.
Monday Nov 22, 2021
Monday Nov 22, 2021
Do you wonder if you've avoided stereotypes in your writing and been appropriately sensitive to people of different races, ethnicities, or neurodivergent?
There are aspects to look for as you write and edit to make certain you are aware of how what you've written will be perceived. Plus, there are sensitivity readers who can help you out!
With special guest and sensitivity reader Iona Wayland, Autumn covers some tips from tying mental health to character arcs to checking yourself for outdated language which will help your writing cast aside stereotypes.
Find Iona on her website at https://ionawayland.wixsite.com/author and on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/iona.wayland/
Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.
SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.
Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.
Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).
Narrator (2s):
You're listening to The Am writing Fantasy Podcast in today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.
Autumn (31s):
Hello, I'm Autumn. And this is episode 153 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. And this week we have, yes, we're on vacation and taking a bit of a break, you know, I guess he deserves, but so instead I have with me a different author and sensitivity reader and someone who writes fantasy and I'm so looking forward to talking to her, so welcome to the podcast. I own a Wayland.
Iona (59s):
Hi there. Thank you for having me.
Autumn (1m 1s):
Yeah, I'm so excited. I, you said you're a tea drinker. You're a pet mom. This is going to be so much fun. And I even like the sensitivity, I can't wait to talk about that because I know my first story, my first passions were like, well, you know, we have these giant epic fantasy quests and no one ever seems to come out the other side with like PTSD. So that was one of the first things that I thought of when I first started writing back in 2010. So I cannot wait to talk to you, but first go ahead and introduce yourself. I know you have your book, ashes and talk is tell us a little bit about that and tell us how you decided to become like a sensitivity reader.
Iona (1m 45s):
Well, I, and my day job is a trauma therapist and by night, so to speak, I write and ashes is my debut. It's a dark fantasy novel. It has a Latin X main character named Angela. And she has to decide if she wants to journey and avenge her brother's death. And so it's those trials of figuring out herself in the midst of trying to save her brother. Oh,
Autumn (2m 16s):
That is cool. So yeah. So he's dead. Is it saving his soul or saving him or is that giving away too much of the book?
Iona (2m 23s):
It won't give away too much. He is, he is dead at the beginning of the book, but it explores what was behind his death and what is behind like what his soul needs to pass on.
Autumn (2m 36s):
That is so cool. I love it. Well, that is because I looked at the cover. I'm also a graphic artist and I saw the cover. I'm like, cool. I like this. This is a very nice cover. So,
Iona (2m 47s):
So glad you like the cover. I designed it. I'm not, I mean, I'm not talented, like what you're saying, but I did design. I was like, this is exactly what I want, please, if you're able to do that. And they were so
Autumn (2m 60s):
Nice. Fantastic. Well, yeah, it came out really nice. I do like it. So, wow. You've been working with trauma. So that's already your interest in your background and a, did that bring you to writing or have you always been a fantasy reader? Always wanted to be a fantasy writer.
Iona (3m 15s):
I've always been a reader and a writer to the point where before I even could write, like I knew the alphabet or anything, I would watch cats out of like alley cats out of my window as like a little kid and right. Loop de loops. And that was my version of writing stories about the cats that I saw. So ever since then, I've just always wanted to be an author. And I've definitely, definitely a reader. So fantasy is the main thing, but I really like all genres. There's not any that I dislike.
Autumn (3m 47s):
I think that's one of the benefits of being like an indie author, that if you want to do a cozy mystery slash fitness slash something, we can mash those up and turn it into something really special.
Iona (4m 1s):
Yes, it's true. It gets very niche. I love it.
Autumn (4m 4s):
Yes, very much so. So before we get into some of the topics and I think it's interesting, so it sounds like your, your writing tends towards inspiration, which is a super cool and more like noble bright, but I have to ask what your favorite type of tea is because I never get another tea enthusiast on the podcast.
Iona (4m 22s):
The hard, oh, that's so hard. Well, right now I'm drinking an English breakfast, but oh man, my favorite tea, I have to say chai tea, which isn't really specific. Cause chai just means tea, but I like the spice tea for sure is, is so delicious. And I I'm really into bubble tea right now. Yeah. I definitely have that as like my Wednesday treat to myself middle of the week, treat to myself, I'll get a bubble tea.
Autumn (4m 54s):
Oh, I love that. I'm not anywhere close to any place that sells bubble tea. So I will live vicariously through you for that one. Yes.
Iona (5m 3s):
I definitely got lucky. Yes.
Autumn (5m 5s):
Oh yeah. Well, chai tea again is a perfect answer for this time of the season and the fall. We're recording this in October. So yeah, we're all in the pumpkin spice attitude right now.
Iona (5m 16s):
Yes we are. All
Autumn (5m 18s):
Right. So this is, Ashley's your first one. Are you working on something else right now? Or are you going to
Iona (5m 24s):
Actually working on a sequel? But there was a bunch of very happy but intense life stuff popping up. That was really good and wonderful, but it also made writing go on the back burner for a little bit, but I am working on the sequel to that. And the goal is to make it a SQL within the same universe. And the main characters of the first book are mentioned, or maybe even run into, but it is like a different main character.
Autumn (5m 53s):
Oh, I like the ones like that, especially where you can, you know, work in somebody from a previous book or a different book. And they just do like a cameo. That it's Very cool. So yeah, I was like reading about what you do and as, as sensitivity. So you have to tell us what a sensitivity reader is and how you came up with that idea. But I was going to say, looking at your own writing, you like, you like to look at grief and surviving trauma and finding purpose and strength. And when I read that, I'm like, oh, you probably liked the, as someone else put it what's considered traditional fantasy, but they decided to start calling it noble bright, which is, you know, it might go dark, but there's always that hope that's buried in there rather than everything being dark and dire.
Autumn (6m 37s):
And you're wondering, I remember one of the first dark fantasies I read it was really closely and in a sister died, everyone, this person cared about a diet and he's trudging through a swamp and I can never remember what the purpose, you know, what the final target and goal was. And I'm just like, you know, if I was this character, I would just lay down in the swamp and I'm done. So that's the other side of dark fantasy, but it sounds like you try to pull out a little bit of that hope in the healing.
Iona (7m 5s):
Yeah. I definitely am healing focus and it's not saying that it's necessarily a happy or what the character expected to have happen. And there's still trauma from those experiences. And at the same time, I feel like healing is such a beautiful, intense process that all humans are capable of making that. I just wanted to make sure I depicted the human experience in that way and my writing for sure.
Autumn (7m 34s):
I love that. That is so, you know, it's touching and it's, I love not, I it's one of those things when you're writing, you know, some people like have a moral compass and they're, it's almost like the fable where they're like doing a morality play and they're pushing the novel that way. But I do love it when you have characters. And like you said, it's almost like a twist or it's not what they expect. It's not what they fear, but it's a different result. But I do love the power of that change. The character arc, you probably work on that specifically is to see a character go through this trauma of face it and come out the other side one way or the other or somewhere in between.
Iona (8m 14s):
Yes, exactly. I love some good character arcs for sure.
Autumn (8m 18s):
Oh, is there a special one that you like to see? Like, is there something you've recently read as a sensitivity reader or even when you're writing or just a book you picked up and you're like, gosh, that was a good healing. You know, what made you think this is not only realistic, but just a very solid character, a character arc and maybe a little bit of a surprise.
Iona (8m 40s):
There was one. So this is actually from a TV show that I've been watching and it's an, it's an older TV show, but I, there is this character that was really annoying in the beginning and, and he was kind of insufferable at times and very emotionally immature. And as it's carried on, you could tell that his character arc was instead of being insecure and overcompensating by being kind of obnoxious, he was like, no, you know what? I can do this. And if you believe me, then, then great. But if you don't, I'm still going to do it anyway. And he got to be like one of my favorite characters by the end of it.
Iona (9m 23s):
So I thought that was pretty cool too. I had that whole, like this guy's like really annoying. And I wonder if he's going to be written out. That's how annoying. And it was really cool to see him thrive. It was very neat. So that is something that recently popped up for me.
Autumn (9m 40s):
That is fantastic. That's actually something I wish I had done in my debut novel. I've a character that he's, I would describe him more as overly sensitive, maybe sliding towards manic depressive with highs and lows and often making bad choices. And I I've actually had a few readers be like, oh my gosh, I can't stand him. I want to skip his chapters. And I don't think I really ever healed him if I ever go back to the story. I think, cause there's always is, I've done two trilogies. And I like even things like three sets of three, it's just, I'm half tempted to write another third set and I might have to finish up his character arc where yeah. Maybe people will not want to like drown him.
Iona (10m 24s):
It can be done. That's what you decide. Yeah. So, but that is real. That would be a really cool character arc to see having someone have like peaks and lows like that, being able to find more of a stability in between. That's pretty cool.
Autumn (10m 38s):
It was. But I have to say, especially having published that on in 2012, I've had definitely people not see why I did that. Like they want to have an easy character. They want a character that makes sense. And a character arc. And literally there's times he doesn't make sense because he just, he's got emotional highs and lows that don't always jive with. What's going on or a little extreme on either side. And I do see that as an issue, even though I try to bring out the nuances, like he's a little different in the society, he's a little unhinged, but to other people who are more stable, it's just the way he is. But I think people are getting a little bit more now.
Autumn (11m 19s):
I mean, it's been almost 10 years since I wrote it
Iona (11m 25s):
Here since then.
Autumn (11m 27s):
And what's crazy is how much society has changed. I see a lot more nuances in characters where they are, maybe there's some mental health issues and other things. And that's brought up a little bit more even in fantasy where I think before it used to be more in nonfiction. So I think it's a little more understood, but I would say, I don't know if you would give us any hints or tips on that, but if you're writing a character that does have some stresses like post-traumatic or mental health issues, cluing the reader in that you're not just throwing a crazy character and making them erupt just to like make the plot tense, but that it's actually a character issue, an internal thing that's going on.
Iona (12m 9s):
I really liked that. I love when people are able to not like to show the nuances like you're talking about and show that it's an inner character struggle and how it shows up for that character through symptoms is a very cool when people are pulling them off in the correct way. There's not that there's a one way that is what's hard. And there is not just one way, but that's where sensitivity readers come in. Where, so I, I read that's so sensitivity reading is where there's someone with expertise or the life experience or both. And they will read through a manuscript that has not been published yet.
Iona (12m 54s):
And they will point out depictions that may be harmful or inaccurate. So they, they really edit for inaccuracies in that regard. And then also I do diversity reading too, cause I'm a mixed race woman of color. And I like being able to help in that regard as well.
Autumn (13m 14s):
Oh, that's fantastic. Oh, and that's so important with so many people being more interested in writing different perspectives and viewpoints and races and cultures, even when you get into fantasy. I mean, even a dwarf is different from an elf versus a different color or other race. So that is cool that you can bring that out and see if the experience is, you know, like you said, authentic and valid and not just being cliched and stereotype.
Iona (13m 44s):
And in writing, like I think most authors and writers would agree that writing is very powerful. It depicts what's going on in our world. It shows even if it's in a totally different realm, it shows what the author's points of views are and what those characters points of views are and what they see. And so it's, it's really important to make sure that the representation is accurate so that there's not a perpetuating cycle going on from generation to generation. Yeah,
Autumn (14m 17s):
That's so true. I mean, I know I was paying attention when I was, I just wrote a fake contemporary Fe fantasy, urban fantasy, and part of it, I have, I'm a native American as a native American, more of a spiritual being and to not fall in that cliche of the native American, who is a Sage and knows all the answers or, you know, all these other, you know, to make him an authentic character who happens also to be a native American spirit who also has this history that he actually kind of doesn't quite understand, like so many teenagers are like, yeah, great. My grandfather's is great, dude. And he's like go out to the forest and go to class. And I'm like, so it is important though, because sometimes we don't even realize the stereotypes were contributing to.
Autumn (15m 7s):
I mean, I was just at a fantasy con and I was on a panel for women and fantasy and we decided that it was women characters, not just women authors. And I pointed out that so many times in the U S as a student, all of our examples are here and it's always he and she, or something, you know, the is always first. And I'm like, you know what? Screw that. I started all my pronouns. All my example cases are now female. Or sometimes I'll do 50, 50, I'll switch back and forth. But I always start with the woman for us. I always put she first because why, why is the default he, and you know, it only took me like 40 years to figure that one out.
Iona (15m 47s):
And there's so many different, like nuances to, to gender expression and experiences and stuff. Like why start with he? You know, I love that. I really love that.
Autumn (15m 59s):
Yeah. And even like you were saying, I mean, I just finished the late bar to go the Grisha verse books and oh my gosh, kudos to her. She has non-binary transgender. I think she has it all. And it was so fantastic to read. I'm like, this is, I can imagine the fantasy I read. Cause I grew up in a very conservative, very Christian, very rural place. And I know the fantasy, I read changed my perspective of who I became and I'm thinking my goodness, if I could have read the Grisha verse when I was 13, 15, and they thought Dungeons and dragons was bad, the water,
Iona (16m 42s):
I think that shows the power of writing and how, why it's so important to have accurate representation. It can really change people's lives. It's truly incredible.
Autumn (16m 51s):
So, I mean, as a, so as a sensitivity reader, what are the steps that you do when you look to help an author and what you're reading, what are you looking for that says, this is an authentic experience versus a, this might be, you know, the wrong way to go.
Iona (17m 6s):
Oh, that's a good question. Okay. So one of the things I see most often is when certain races or ethnicities or mental health experiences are experienced, like a monolith. So like, like there's, there's like three examples. So like, let's say let's use depression. That's something that a lot of people experience and struggled to overcome or do overcome. And that is something that I think what a lot of people think is depression means sad. And so if that's the only presentation of depression, there's nothing that shows what actually is making that depression for that character.
Iona (17m 48s):
Like everyone sad, but depression is different. There's way more reactions and symptoms that someone can go through. It can be very different that could be having difficulty getting up in the morning that can be staring off into space in the middle of the Workday that can be forgetting to brush your teeth or take a shower for a while. And then being like, oh shoot, how long has it been or not having the energy to do that? Or some people even experience physical pain of that. So I look for if there's any like broad strokes over simplification of mental health or any other kinds of experiences in the author's work, I think that way I can be like, let's be a little more specific.
Iona (18m 32s):
And how does it show up for your character specifically?
Autumn (18m 35s):
Oh, I saw like that. It reminds me of like, you know, I often teach like writing with the five senses. We still rely on visual. And then we might have sound because dialogue is sound, but it's like touch, taste. All of these other things are a way of experiencing the world and doing your world-building. It helps bring the world to life if you can touch it. So you're saying the same thing, like with depression, you know, even to me, I'm a huge foodie. So it's like losing that drive for like good tastes being like, yeah, it's just whatever, you know, that's all a sign and it also gives more depth to your character and more depths to the experience. Oh, I liked that so much.
Iona (19m 11s):
I'm clad. And I'm glad you talk about the different senses. I remember my world being like totally blown away when I learned that there was more than five senses. Like not, well, there's the five main ones, but like, there's like balance. Like if something feels off kilter, there's heat, hot and cold. There's Like, I there's like 20 more or something like that. But I remember like at the very least let's bring in the five senses, but there's also all these other things too, that we can add on there for the whole experience.
Autumn (19m 41s):
Exactly. And I always looked at it even the sixth sense, the traditional sixth sense is mind or soul spirit. That's where the mental health comes in is it's not just intelligence, but it's how well you deal with things. And that is such an interesting, you know, we talk about personally Nally tests to develop your character, but looking at just how reactive, how adaptive are they mentally to big changes. Some people are going to break very quickly and some people are going to be surprising and they're going to be able to change and flow, but eventually something might trip them up. And it's, it's part of knowing your character, knowing how they're mentally and emotionally handling the things you're these hurdles that you're throwing at them or letting them fall in love and then yanking of that away, how are they going to be like, oh, wow, there's a deeper impact to those things.
Iona (20m 33s):
Definitely a consequence. Yeah. Deeper impact for sure.
Autumn (20m 38s):
Very cool. So what are some tips resize? You know, don't so we have don't, you know, don't just dwell on one aspect, like, you know, definitely do your homework. Are we going to have a character? Who's depressed, looked at some of the other symptoms that are there. Like if they're manic, depressive, understand what the highs and the lows are and find a way of, of explaining that. Like I said, I can see readers being still startled. If you have a character that is truly going through a mental health crisis or has some issues, and especially when you come into across it and fantasy, it's not still not traditional to have those things, but they're creeping in there, but it helps to clue in the reader somehow saying I'm not just being over-exaggerated of this one character.
Autumn (21m 22s):
There's a real reason. I mean, is there some clues or some tips you can give us that are a way of letting people know that this is, you know, this, these are the things that are happening to this character or for a reason on purpose.
Iona (21m 35s):
Yeah. I, I definitely tell people to develop the character first, develop the character first because having a mental injury or mental illness is not a character trait. If someone's like, oh my gosh, they're so anxious that doesn't really tell me anything about the character at all. That that is just conveying a diagnosis or, or someone questioning if maybe they might have this diagnosis, like I want you to know, are they extroverted, introverted? Ambiverted do they out loud process, internally process? Are they quick to anger?
Iona (22m 15s):
Like, do they have a quick fuse or are they really patient? Like, how do they process the world? How do they react to other people? What is, what do they hold, dear? What do they push away? Those kinds of things. And then, then you can add the diagnosis because you already know your character as a person. Because I think that they'll sometimes there'll be writers who will have someone have their villain origin story is that they are bipolar. And it's like, well, that doesn't really tell me anything. There are lots of people who are bipolar. There's different kinds of bipolar.
Iona (22m 56s):
Like tell me about your character first and then just show through show. Don't tell, really show me what their symptoms are. And I think that's important to remember also not to always villainize those with mental health either. Cause that's a big thing that I see very frequently. And it's kind of cliche now. I think.
Autumn (23m 17s):
Yeah. I was just about when you said the villain being bipolar, like, oh, but isn't that a stereotype too? I mean, that's just like the joker or something in Batman it's should not always be the mentally ill who goes off the deep end. You can have a way. I think it's interesting. Cause I've even read fantasy recently where there was someone who was going through issues. And I think the elves came up with a drug for them. I'm like, oh my goodness, we're getting into pharmaceuticals. Now this is fantastic. You can be a healthy, productive member of society and how, and just be different. You know, my nephew actually has Asperger's and he and I, it kinda runs in my family.
Autumn (23m 57s):
We're all very literal. Like if you see a sign on the road that says like road drops 500 feet, our immediate thought is the road is going to fall 500 feet. Once we have a very literal interpretation, but it's just a different way of seeing the world. It's just our lens of the world is slightly different from most other people. But again, what is most other people? What is normal? This is normal for me.
Iona (24m 23s):
I don't think there is such thing. I think normal is made up as a therapist. Joke is it's a setting on your washer machine and
Autumn (24m 34s):
That's true. It doesn't say average, like normal cycle. That's true. I like that. I'm going to use that from now on to defend myself.
Iona (24m 44s):
And I do think that what you're saying is like, yeah, like you process the world or family members are on the spectrum are autistic and they process the world in a different way, but it's also not different. It's also just how you process it. So I would love to see an autistic character with those kinds of like the ability, the different abilities and disabilities portrayed there with that disorder. I don't even like calling it a disorder. It's it's someone not knowing and I'm, I am not neuro-typical so I'm neurodivergent myself. So I think that it's very cool to see all kinds of representation in writing.
Autumn (25m 28s):
I think it's important too. And that's one of the things I do love that. I mean, I did grow up in the eighties and it seemed like all the, it was all the male characters, you know, He-Man or something and they're wearing swords and they're going off and saving the women. And I was, I was always at least neuro atypical enough to usually just be able to put myself in the place of the hero. It didn't matter. I was a tomboy. I think, goodness, I actually just realized this the other day that my brother never said I couldn't do something because I was a girl. We were like playing Cowboys and Indians together. He let me play with his matchboxes. I'm like, oh my goodness. How much of my weird view of life comes from my brother?
Autumn (26m 8s):
Not treating me like a younger brother instead of a little girl, all the way down to trying to draw and quarter me once. But we won't go there.
Iona (26m 18s):
My choice of sibling relationships,
Autumn (26m 22s):
I love writing about them. They're so horribly wonderful, but it is true. It's it's those different viewpoints and the diversity of viewpoints that make even a quest group. You don't want every single person the same. And I know one of the advices I give is like, if you're having a problem telling your characters apart, which one, your readers will then have a problem, but give them like a totem. I'm like this, one's the Fox, this one's the out you to do something so that you understand their differences, some kind of way of seeing them differently. And I think that goes for even how they,
Iona (26m 57s):
Especially like, if the person's like indigenous and they understand the backgrounds behind, like what totems mean, but if you aren't indigenous and you want to try something else, you can also do like, smells this one author. Now I forget who said it, but that doesn't help. But she was like, you, you can use smells like sense and like, imagine that their candle, what would it be? I know for me, sometimes I'll imagine characters wearing certain colors, just because color is so important to me and having those different, like connections with color and, and what they mean for me and how I can tell like my characters apart and what makes them different from each other.
Iona (27m 40s):
Yeah.
Autumn (27m 41s):
That's when I wrote my debut, that was how I managed to get into character's head. I actually wrote in a different color font for each of the characters
Iona (27m 49s):
And that's so helpful. It
Autumn (27m 51s):
Was so helpful. I could, I knew then to stay, if I was especially, I was trying to do all chapters in one point of view. So I knew to stay. If I'm in red, I was in tie and I had to stay in Thai and it really helped me learn a lot better. But I, I liked that smells. That also gives you a totally different perspective and reminds you to use your other senses.
Iona (28m 12s):
It does. I really hadn't thought of it until this person said it. And now I wish I could remember this person's name.
Autumn (28m 18s):
Okay. I am sure. Well, you know, Google, I would say we can Google them, but yeah, that sometimes doesn't work. There's just so much out there anymore. Well, that's really cool. So you, I love that you do this kind of reading and sensitivity reading for both mental health, as well as races and stereotypes. And when you do it like character arc wise, what are some tips you can say for like showing a character shifting from the one side of their art to the other, like, are there good turning point issues or what are ways of showing that the, you know, they're becoming they're healing and moving on?
Iona (28m 60s):
Oh, that's a really great question. Something that I think is helpful to show with healing is that it's not linear. So I think a lot of people, even, even their expectation for therapy sometimes is like, okay, I'm going to have like six sessions. And then on the seventh one, there'll be a big epiphany and then I'll be fixed whatever that even means. And it's like, well, that's not quite how it works and that's not how it's going to work for characters either. So I think it'll be cool to show like, you know, they, they, their tolerance might get longer. Like when they usually are like really quick to anger, maybe show that their tolerance before they blow up is lasting a little bit longer and a little bit longer, or they're able to tolerate another character a little bit longer than usual.
Iona (29m 54s):
Or if someone has a hard time accepting accolades or like compliments, then showing that change in their effect from being able to just brush off, be like, no, this is it's like, wow, you really saved me. Like you're a hero. And then being like, I'm not a hero. Like we see that so much in fantasy. Like I'm not a hero, I'm just doing my job. But getting to a point where they're empowered enough to accept that they did something very difficult and very brave and courageous is very, very beautiful. I also love because I love seeing this cause this is how it happens in real life is when people regress.
Iona (30m 34s):
So there'll be these accomplishments, these accomplishments, these accomplishments, and then they might use, they might break a little and use an old maladaptive coping strategy that they don't, they haven't used for months or year or whatever. And then they go back to doing that. And then they're like, oh, was this all for nothing? And of course it's not all for nothing but showing that like, I've been different. I've been, I'm different now. Like, but why did I do this? And showing how they come back from that again and again. And I know someone told me once that healing is, is kind of almost like cyclical, where it'll go in a circle, you're going forward like a wheel.
Iona (31m 18s):
But it, you have some patterns that you have to break out of that takes some time and you might repeat them.
Autumn (31m 25s):
Oh, I love that. I reminds me of the anagram, which has like the nine stages for each of the key personality types. And so it's like, yeah, you can move up and down the scale. And it's not just villains moving down, but you know, you can have a character that starts really high and they can go down and they can go back up and they can go back down. I mean, I know, I remember again, one of my characters, one of my favorite characters and he starts off pretty high. He's pretty kick ass, but he, his, the second book, there's a huge event at the end of the second one, he loses his sister and he, he just kind of crumbles and he slides down and some people were really mad at me, but I'm like, this is legit.
Autumn (32m 11s):
This is, you know, people go through things. I've actually, I've lost siblings. It's you changes you. And I'm surprised that some people didn't want to see a character go down, maybe have, who went from a positive arc to a negative arc in one book and then came back up to the third book. That's what the trilogy is for. Right.
Iona (32m 31s):
Absolutely. And that's how it is. Like you're saying in real life, like grief, that's something that I heavily have heavily explore in ashes. Is it? I think they used to think that it was like the stages of grief. It's not stages, that's a swinging pendulum. I don't know what's going to happen. We don't know. And you can go move back and forth all throughout your life for the rest of your life. It's going to affect it. You're going to miss that person. And that's what I really wanted to show. And there are times when Angela, my main character, she will sometimes handle things really well and use her resilience and use her, like I'm going to do this for my family kind of attitude.
Iona (33m 16s):
And then there are other times where she's like, wow, what am I doing here? Like even going to work. Yeah, it's true.
Autumn (33m 24s):
And that's a stick. And I love that. And again, I mean, we just because it's fantasy and a fantasy setting or has magic doesn't mean that the emotions aren't real. I mean, that's how we can pretend to be a dragon or pretend to be an L for any other species that we come up with. Is those really the emotional connections. And that's also what draws us to characters. So that's why I think explaining it to that as someone who has an experienced grief or hasn't experienced someone in their family who is, has mental health issues might not quite, we'll actually get it a little bit. And I think that's really important is to not just make some people go, this doesn't make any sense, but try to draw out the realism and say, this is, this is how it is for some people.
Iona (34m 9s):
And I think that's really important.
Autumn (34m 11s):
Yeah. Well, is there any other tips you can think of that you think would really help writers, you know, talk about how to write, even we talked a lot about mental health, but even bringing out cultural differences, how not to fall into those stereotypical traps or how to even question, you know, when you're developing a character as, or a certain point where you're like, where do you stop and ask yourself, am I just being a stereotype with this person?
Iona (34m 38s):
Well, it's hard to know what biases, because we all have biases that we don't know about, which is why it's a lovely to have critique partners. I, my advice is to include the community, if you can, like of whatever you're writing about. So like, if you're an autistic person and you're writing an autistic character, then you should have some autistic beta readers. If you're not able to do, I have obviously support someone doing sensitivity reading or having a sensitivity reader, I should say, but if the person doesn't want to do that, then having the community help them. And then being very open to feedback about that.
Iona (35m 20s):
Because I think even though we can have biases, if we have certain disorders or if we have certain backgrounds like racial and ethnic backgrounds, I think there's more room for biased error when we don't share that. So that's why it's so important to include the community there and just making sure to unlearning certain things does not feel very good, but overall it will improve your writing.
Autumn (35m 51s):
Oh, that's so very true. And I know as it's, I love question, I swear. I didn't question anything as a teenager. I've made up for it as I've gotten older, but
Iona (36m 3s):
That's part of being a teenager,
Autumn (36m 9s):
But it is very important. I think, I mean, when I sit down to create a character and I go with my first gut assumption is like a female or a male and I've always stopped. Why, what color? You know, why do I feel like it should be that way? I think that's so important is to question basically it's exhausting. But when it comes to your main characters or even your sub characters, I know I was reading something, helping a writing coach with something. And it seemed like every default character was a male. The doctor was a male, the nurses were female. I'm like, come on, wake up 20, 20, 20, 21. Even know your doctors are now female. Your nurses are nail male deal with it.
Autumn (36m 50s):
And when it sneaks in there and sometimes I think you're right, I saw it because I wasn't on the author. And so I really noticed it. I mean, I think if I went back to something I had written ages ago and I looked at it with a clean slate, I would also go like, oh my gosh, why did I choose that?
Iona (37m 8s):
I've definitely looked at my old writing and been like, well, I've certainly grown because I know these certain thought processes are not accurate anymore, but you never have really thought they were.
Autumn (37m 23s):
I think, I think we all deserve to be able to grow. I always feel bad, even if it is for politicians, which it's hard to feel bad for politicians, but you know, once like 20, 30 years ago you voted on this, oh, for goodness sakes, let them change. People can change their mind. Over 30 years, your writing will change. Don't be afraid, I guess, to try writing a different culture, writing a different species. I know with my first books, I remember thinking I wanted a fantasy race. I didn't want ELLs. What color should they be? And I was thinking black. Yeah. I was trying to go through everything, but I want it to be fantasy that finally made them their skins, the color of bark.
Autumn (38m 4s):
So, you know, go ahead. Be different, come up with something totally new. That's fine too. Don't be afraid of trying it, but yeah. Make sure you probably check in with someone else. Some beta readers, some sensitivity readers to make sure you're not off the wall and going to,
Iona (38m 21s):
Yeah. The bark thing reminded me. This is not me saying your elves are bad. They're gone. It's not, I promise this is something totally different. It just reminded me of that's something that has, has changed a lot is the description of eye, color, hair, color, skin, color. It used to be that apparently, apparently everyone's default white for some reason. And then, and then anyone else would be compared to food. And so they would be like, so they would be like chocolate skin or like mocha caramel.
Iona (39m 3s):
Yeah. And that wasn't really, I mean, I'm sure it was harmful because anytime you've described someone as food related, it's like, that's a bit othering. I would think. Especially if you don't do it for one race, like the white race, it's cool to see like how that's changed and how authors, like there are authors who didn't know that that was harmful. And they learned, and they were like, okay, that's an easy fix. And they just put that in there. And I love, that's what I love seeing like as a sensitivity reader is not the mistake. I don't care if someone makes a mistake because it just is something that they're going to grow from. I, I, I do care if they don't listen to, not that they have to, they don't have to rewrite their book or anything.
Iona (39m 50s):
Usually sometimes that does have to have it, but it's just like, are they listening to the feedback of like, Hey, here's a bit of educational piece as to why this isn't working 10 years ago, 20 years ago, it may have worked, but we found that it's harmful. And so, and here's why, and here's a way to do it a different way. And when people are like, oh, that makes sense. We'll do, I'm like, see, that was not difficult.
Autumn (40m 21s):
Yeah. And it's, it's so much better to get it on, you know, from a sensitivity reader versus seeing it as a review on Amazon or good reads and being blasted for either cultural appropriation or being harmful with stereotypes,
Iona (40m 39s):
It hurts. It can hurt a lot of people. It can, it has the potential to, yeah.
Autumn (40m 45s):
We're in a global community, in a global society. And so all of our stuff, as much as we wish it was simpler, you have to be culturally and mental health. You have to be aware that all of these things are out there and you should write the best you can. And I still say, there are times where you might choose to do something that's a little harsh, but always make it a choice, have an answer. If someone says, why did you do this? If you have an answer that's legit. That's
Iona (41m 13s):
Fine. You were intentional with it.
Autumn (41m 15s):
Yeah. Just being intentional. I like that.
Iona (41m 17s):
Yes. The intentions. And I like what you were saying too. Always question your motivation. Why, why, why? And then be intentional when you write is, is so important. And I think that's very, very cool.
Autumn (41m 31s):
Great. Well, thank you so much for joining us. And of course, I'm going to put links to your webpage, but pleased to go ahead and tell people how to find you. So if they're interested in learning more about sensitivity reading, that they know where to look you up.
Iona (41m 46s):
Yes. Okay. So I am most active on Instagram and that's Iona dot Wayland and I'm sure you'll have that information too, but my book is available in ebook paperback, and it just released as audio book. I was very excited to work with Melissa Medina. They did a wonderful, wonderful voice of Angela and brought her story to life beautifully. And then on my website, if you have inquiries about sensitivity reading rates or questions or anything of that sort, you can send me an information. You can send me your question or your manuscript or whatever, have you through my, at the very bottom of my webpage.
Iona (42m 32s):
And you can sign up for my monthly newsletter,
Autumn (42m 37s):
The newsletter. I might go back and get that because I think that'd be, I want to stay in touch. That'd be fantastic.
Iona (42m 44s):
Thank you.
Autumn (42m 46s):
Great. Thanks again so much for joining us and next week. Yes. For we'll be back. Actually he'll be solo and he'll have another fantastic interview lined up for you.
Narrator (43m 1s):
If you like, what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Autumn and Jesper on patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast, going, stay safe out there and see you next Monday.
Monday Nov 15, 2021
Monday Nov 15, 2021
A Game of Thrones has inspired characters who contain such strong good qualities, like honor or justice, that it can lead to his or her death.
And writing classes teach developing characters with strengths and weaknesses to make them well rounded. A heroine can be a skilled warrior AND too self assured.
This makes a more complex character, one that is beyond two dimensions, but what about a good character that just loses it and takes the first punch?
In this episode of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast, Autumn and Jesper discuss the Evil Within.
The episode is inspired by this blog post: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/the-evil-within/
Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.
SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!
Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.
Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.
Read the full transcript below.
(Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).
Narrator (2s):
You're listening to The Am. Writing Fantasy Podcast in today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.
Jesper (30s):
Hello, I'm Jesper
Autumn (32s):
And I'm, Autumn.
Jesper (33s):
This is episode 155 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. And when studying the craft of writing, we learn about creating characters who are well-rounded, who have weaknesses and strengths. But what happens when characters unleased the evil within?
Autumn (55s):
I like this topic because, well, I do like gray and nuanced characters. I like fillings with good traits and I like heroes with not always the best of traits. I think it makes them more relatable. So this is going to be a fun podcast to explore the dark side of your heroes.
Jesper (1m 14s):
Yeah. Yeah. Autumn wrote a blog post quite a while back for the AmWritingFantasy a block. So that's sort of the starting point for this conversation. I guess you could call it at least that's what inspired us to dive into the pool of evil to The
Autumn (1m 34s):
It's good. It's the good evil pool, right? So it should be kind of, I don't know if it's shallow early, deep in a couple areas, but we'll figure it out.
Jesper (1m 42s):
Yeah, yeah. That's yeah, that'll be interesting. We'll see where it takes us.
Autumn (1m 47s):
So how are things over in Denmark?
Jesper (1m 51s):
Well, not much as chains, to be honest since last week, you know, I'm still just preparing for the referee instructor class and practicing presentations. And I had a meeting the other day with, with my mentor. And so, yeah, I still have not gotten back to writing at all.
Autumn (2m 11s):
Well, I think you have enough going on that. That seems fair. Plus, it's giving me time to read book two so that I'll be ready to help plot book three. So take your time. You're good. Fine.
Jesper (2m 25s):
Good. Don't worry about it.
Autumn (2m 27s):
You deserve the break?
Jesper (2m 30s):
Yeah. Well, something funny. I wanted to mention, you know, how in the master mailing list, because that we have available for sale on I'm Am Writing Fantasy dot com total block there. If somebody wants to check that out, but, but you know, in that course, how we talk about how you can possibly segment your email list?
Autumn (2m 52s):
Yes. I remember that. Yeah.
Jesper (2m 55s):
Okay. Yeah. So our insurance company should really learn a bit about this segmentation of email lists. Yeah.
Autumn (3m 3s):
Oh,
Jesper (3m 5s):
The letter from the, or an email rather, from the insurance company yesterday, and then I logged in to read what this message was about? Because I was not expecting any message. So I was like, okay. And then I read that email from them and they just wanted to let me know that in some cases they have not treated cases concerning pregnant, pregnant women in the proper way. And they want to let me know that this would change going forward. Okay. That was exactly my thing of like, okay, I'm not a woman. I don't think I'm pregnant. At least I don't, I don't believe so.
Jesper (3m 48s):
So I was just thinking maybe you should learn a bit about segmenting your email list, at least at least segment between men and women. I think that should not be too difficult.
Autumn (3m 59s):
Well, maybe they thought, you know, in case you wanted to let your wife know that, you know, the car and send the message to her. I agree. They should have been able to figure that one out.
Jesper (4m 10s):
Yeah. I mean, may, maybe there's something about it that they thought like they wanted to inform people, you know, in general, like a general information that we are sorry that we have. I mean, I fully understand the message, nothing wrong with the message there. Right. It's good that if they had discovered that they have been doing something wrong and they recognize it and they would want to correct it, I'm all for that very good, good information. Right. But couldn't you just like maybe put an announcement on your website or on your blog or something to say, like, I just, I don't know. Maybe it's just me, but I don't understand why they're sending out emails to males, letting them know about pregnant women and how they, how they handle cases for pregnant women.
Jesper (4m 50s):
I don't quite understand.
Autumn (4m 52s):
I didn't understand either. They took the least, they did the,
Jesper (4m 58s):
Yeah, yeah. Maybe it was the intern who was at work that day. And it was like, who am I supposed to send it to? I don't know. Send it to everybody. Okay.
Autumn (5m 7s):
I can do that. I don't know how to segment. Oh, there you go. Well, you know, I guess it's better to be over informative, less informative. Maybe they just never had thought about putting a gender question in their information.
Jesper (5m 25s):
Well, they have like a, what is that called in English? I don't know. Dennis Deniz is like, you have a, it's not a social security number, but you have like a number, you know, what is it called, named you don't you have like in the U S like a number in the official systems for you yourself, you know,
Autumn (5m 49s):
Their social security number.
Jesper (5m 51s):
Is it that in your yeah, but, okay. But anyway, they do have that number, a numbers ending on equal numbers is women and unequal numbers are men. So it's not that difficult to work out.
Autumn (6m 6s):
Yeah. And it's not like that over here. It's pretty random.
Jesper (6m 10s):
I couldn't imagine. Yes. Why am I not surprised
Autumn (6m 14s):
You threw something at the wall? It seems to be working at least it hasn't collapsed in weight yet, so we're good.
Jesper (6m 21s):
Well, okay. I'm not going to comment on that.
Autumn (6m 25s):
That's what I covered. Comment on the U S government. Please
Jesper (6m 29s):
Know, that's what I was thinking.
Autumn (6m 31s):
This is not a political podcast.
Jesper (6m 34s):
No, just let it fly. Let it fly. Didn't hear anything. So, but how I think so on your end,
Autumn (6m 42s):
Pretty good. Just a lots going on doing a little bit of actually be doing a little bit of a seasonal job and just rearranging life and we're going to be moving. And we have some extended family worries with mental health and old age. So that's, you know, weighing on us and, but the good news is at least I've had some gotten to create some really awesome book covers recently. And I'm on like the last chapter for magic unleash. So I'm just moving it up and got to check some of the weird character traits that we came up with, especially dialect. So once I finished that off to the editor, so I'm really excited and I can't wait to delve into the second book, which is being dark gods.
Autumn (7m 28s):
And then we have to figure out the plotting for the final book and the name. We still only one, we have a name, so we
Jesper (7m 34s):
Have no name for us.
Autumn (7m 36s):
So we have to name it and we have to come up with the plot. So that's all going good. So, you know, there's, there's bright lights here and there and mid the murkiness life chaotic. Eventually I keep saying this, eventually my life will settle down, but yeah, we can hope I have hope.
Jesper (7m 55s):
I hope it's a good note to end on
Narrator (8m 0s):
A week on the internet with The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast.
Jesper (8m 6s):
So just a couple of thank yous to share here today. First of all, Pamela Payne joined us on Patrion. So thank you so much for your support, Pamela. Yes. And we also have moose beard. That's actually the name that it goes by on Patrion, but it must be at rejoined us as well. So thank you for that. We really appreciate it.
Autumn (8m 33s):
Yes. I enjoyed the conversations with moose beard. I know I've talked to him a couple of times in the past, so I'm excited. He came back to us after a little hiatus and it's wonderful to meet you, Pamela. Thank you so much for your support on Patrion and we're well, glad to have you. And it's my responsibility to send you the book cover bookmark that comes with joining. Yeah. Book covers. Sorry. I've got book covers on the brain, but bookmark and it we'll do that tomorrow or Thursday. I promise. So if it's late, it's my fault. I'm sorry.
Jesper (9m 7s):
Yeah, it happens. But if you haven't checked out patron yet and all the different rewards that we do offer to support us over there, please follow the links in the show notes. And Joel also just to reiterate a patron is the only source of funding we have for this podcast. And to be very honest, we are not Sealy seeing nearly as much support as we would like there. So please go and check it out.
Autumn (9m 32s):
We appreciate it. If you do support us, thank you so much.
Narrator (9m 38s):
And onto today's topic.
Jesper (9m 41s):
I actually re-read the block post the evil within this morning, Autumn. And you started out by talking about using arsenic to poison loved ones and neighbors and stuff like that. So when I started reading, oh, you almost scared me from this, from this.
Autumn (9m 58s):
Did I tell you I was into poisons that it was an article? I think an Atlas Obscura that got me thinking about this topic. And it started with talking about when arsenic was banned and how prevalent it had been used to kind of take care of some members of the family or neighbors or how many people actually poisoned people with arsenic. And I was thinking not all of these people were bad people. They were people who had LA you know, they might've had kids. They had people they loved in their lives. There was just for some reason, one person or hopefully one, we're not talking about serial killers, just someone they wanted to get rid of.
Autumn (10m 43s):
And they would use this readily available poison. That was just, you could just buy it at the corner store. And there was very little repercussions from getting as much of it as you wanted. And the symptoms are pretty benign. You could mistake it for a lot of different illnesses. And so a lot of people seem to have been off over the centuries.
Jesper (11m 6s):
It sounds so horrible. It's just like, I'm just imagining like everybody going to the corner stores and buying an awesome Nick for everybody. They don't like,
Autumn (11m 15s):
Oh, it's like others that, oh, there's a play. What is it T in our snake or T old lace in our sticks, something like that to you, an old lace. I can't remember the actual title, but it was sort of the same thing as like someone invites you over to T bury the hatchet between you and yeah, they're going to bury something. Maybe not a hatchet. Be careful when you're invited for social calls in the 18th century, I guess in 17th century, not the best time. So I thought that was,
Jesper (11m 48s):
It's easy to get your hands on. Did he say anything about that in that article
Autumn (11m 53s):
Regulated? I mean, this was before regulations and things like that. You could, I mean, at the time you can get Bella, Donna, there was a whole bunch of stuff that pharmaceutical that were used as like an, a pocket pocket potluck carry. There we go. So you could just pick this up. It was used to poison rats in LA, you know, other critters vermin around the house, not necessarily your neighbor, but it was
Jesper (12m 16s):
Readily from many different things, including, I mean, there was a time where it was on a wallpaper. It was used very well. The first wallpapers were almost coated in our Snick. So we just didn't understand. We kind of knew what was poisons, but when we realized how badly it was poisonous, except for the people who were using it to kill off people like guess, oh my God. Yeah. Just imagine that somebody worked it out then this like, Hey, got to tell you a secret. If you don't like that guy, take this bottle, put it in his tea. He just see how bad it is. And then, and then all of a sudden, everybody knows. And isn't like, where did this all start it. Every time you go to a cheap nowadays, you have to be scared.
Autumn (12m 59s):
That's horrible. Yeah. But anyway, this is a podcast about arsenic and how to, how it was once historically prevalent way of getting rid of people you no longer wanted in your life. Oh, a numeric. But about those people who were probably, you know, good people, maybe they went to church, they were had led good lives, but something made them do something very evil. And it started making me think about even our characters, especially often fantasy, you know, people talk about superficial or cardboard characters. And I started thinking about, well, how often do we really explore the depths or the evil within our heroes?
Autumn (13m 43s):
Instead of just having, you know, you, we do these lists of traits of, you know, they like blue. They hate their little sister because she wants, stole their favorite toy or something. We make up these stories that go with our characters. But often we don't include like a truly bad character flaw, or even when it comes to just doing a bad action, maybe they just lose their temper. And that was one of the places I really started is what happens if your character, this good person just fricking has a bad day. They've been hiking. They've been struggling, especially if they're not the hero.
Autumn (14m 24s):
Maybe they're the side character or a sidekick. And they're just a point of view character. And they've gone through all of this quest for their bestie best friend. And they've stood by and they've been hurt wounded. They're sick, they're tired, they're muddy. What did they just snap and just yell or hit or punch, or just go down to the Tavern. And they don't mean to take it out on somebody else, but they're not going to go hit their best friend. And they end up in a brawl. I'm thinking, this is, this is a character trait. That's kind of interesting. Why aren't we exploring more of the evil within our good heroes,
Jesper (14m 60s):
But it humanizes to protect the nest, right? I mean, having them sometimes make mistakes or just not being the perfect hero. It, it humanizes to me, I think it makes the character more believable and more likable. In fact, I mean, not, not likable because they do a bad thing, but more likable because you can relate to it. You know, you know that that from yourself, you, you can get, you sometimes get angry and you do or say things you regret because you were too, too angry. So having a protectiveness that sometimes end up in that situation as well, I think it's actually a good thing.
Jesper (15m 41s):
Maybe sometimes as writers, we are too concerned about having the character, always being the likable person that does all the right things. And so on. Maybe, maybe we think too much about it and maybe we just need to dial it down a notch and make them more human. Yeah.
Autumn (15m 59s):
I think that's such a good way of putting it. I mean, it's, we do relate as a, we've all had those moments where, you know, if we, if you, there were new repercussions, how many times would you just like to go ahead and hit your boss or just, just act out and actually say what is on your mind? But we hold ourselves back. But the fun thing about fantasy is, or any fiction is that we can actually explore what happens if you don't or what is that straw that will break you or break your character and make them act out. And would that be the interesting, usually we have the dark night of the soul and it's based on the character being stubborn and refusing to admit something.
Autumn (16m 41s):
But what if it comes out that they just don't want to admit that they're wrong about something? What if they do something stupid or horrible or they act out and do something that's wrong and they have to come to a reckoning about their own actions. That's also a very powerful dark night of the soul. And we don't explore that that much and fantasy, it's usually a consequence that happens to them. But what if they're the cause of it?
Jesper (17m 6s):
Yeah, that's a good point. And I think as well, it, it's not only about the relationship between us as writers towards the reader, but it's also between the characters themselves. You know, that, well, sometimes even having a character who is just like the completely unlike unlikeable or unrealistic love interest, our way, you know, like this is never going to happen. And then in some way, on one way or the other, it ends up happening anyway, between the two characters, like I saw, I saw on good, you know, they have this list, Topia stuff, different kind of things, and listed together.
Jesper (17m 54s):
And there is a list called couches, hate each other, then fall in love. And there's 263 books in that list. So it's kind of a thing.
Autumn (18m 4s):
It is kind of a thing, oh, they often I've seen it in real life too. That sometimes people who aren't getting along is because they are too similar and maybe their traits that they need to accept about themselves. And once they do, they can bond, but there's a lot of learning maybe self-learning before you become, can actually get along with this person, who's sort of like your psychological twin. So that is also a good way of, of looking at it is yeah. The characters who should get along, but end up not, but end up then falling in love. That's a fun twist.
Jesper (18m 44s):
Yeah. It's a, co-talk basically you're talking about there, right? I mean, it's, the coats are realizing maybe something, I think it's more powerful when they realize something within themselves, you know, they realize their own floor and then they figure out how to conquer that floor. And because of that, then they get to fall in love or something like that. I mean, I think that works really well.
Autumn (19m 9s):
Definitely. And the other thing that I thought about with this is, you know, what if your Good Characters are actually the ones who act first? Cause that's another thing we often see. It's the main heroes, the Good Characters are the ones who are reacting to the antagonist, to the villain. So they're always good ones. They're the ones trying to solve the problems. But you know, if you have a nuanced villain and he's, or she is trying to do stuff in the best of their interests, but it's just rubbing your heroes the wrong way. What happens if they actually are the ones who attack first? What are the ones who go in?
Autumn (19m 49s):
Cause you know, they go attack the guards or they go attack a village. They do something that's more hostile, even though they're doing it out of the good, what they see their good interest. But that doesn't mean they're always necessarily going to act good. And that's, I mean, it's a theme I explored in my first trilogy, the one of the last scenes in the last book. Well, the beginning of the chaos of the last book comes because the heroes go to save someone who's been kidnapped, you know, but they're being held hostage kind of cruelly, but the person is still alive and they go to rescue them and they're just so angry.
Autumn (20m 29s):
They act out violently, they destroy some beautiful temple, this wonderful thing that this has been sacred for centuries. They end up destroying it. And then the bad guys, well the quote unquote, bad guys really have a reason to go and attack the heroes because now they're pissed off too. So something that maybe could have been dialed back with some talking like, Hey, you stole, you know, you kidnapped our friend. We want him back.
Jesper (20m 57s):
Can you please get him back? Oh, okay. My mistake, I'm sorry.
Autumn (21m 8s):
Maybe they didn't have to go into a full world scale war, but it does because they act out really aggressively. They overreact to something that they shouldn't have. And because of that, they technically hit first. They are the ones who started the whole war. I mean, if you look back in the history books, they always say, the Victor is the one who writes them. But if you looked back, I think they would be like, well, we should probably shouldn't have gone and done that. But that's sort of the difference. I mean, that's a fun topic to explore. If you have a good character with bad traits, are they still good?
Autumn (21m 48s):
And I've thought about that. And to me, my answer is a good character can do bad things. They just regret it later. They realize their actions were wrong. A villain will do good things and they'll do bad things, but they'll justify the bad. They will have a reason. They did it. And they're like, it's fine that I killed a hundred people because they were going to just get in the way. And they were stopping progress. Well, they're just testifying.
Jesper (22m 18s):
I killed a hundred thousand to save 10 million or something like that. That will be their way of thinking.
Autumn (22m 23s):
Exactly. And that's, to me, that's evil, they're justifying it, but a good character will be like, I hurt one person. You know, I acted out violently, you know, other people maybe died or I destroyed this thing and I shouldn't have done it and I am wrong. And again, that can lead into a very powerful dark night of the soul going, what is wrong with me? Why did I follow the same path as this other person? You know, why, why did I become slightly evil? I shouldn't have done that. How can I stop myself from doing that again? That's a huge turning point in a character art in the novel, in a story. So that's fine. Why we should see that more in fantasy in any literature.
Jesper (23m 6s):
Yeah. Speaking about starting wars because of it. Not that long ago. No. Maybe I dunno. Maybe it's actually a couple of years ago. I'm not sure, but I watched the show. Troy. I think it was on Netflix. Have you watched Troy?
Autumn (23m 24s):
Yeah. It's been a while ago. Is there so many different versions? There are a few toys, but I did not. I've watched two or three. I, I said I love history, so yeah. I've, I've done a lot on Troy.
Jesper (23m 36s):
Yeah. I think this one was a TV series. It was not the one where Brad Pitt please. Achilles dad was one of my most, I just absolutely love that. He's so freaking cool in that. But, but I think this one was a different show, but the point I wanted to make was that the Trojan prince Paris is he Smith. And by the beautiful Helen who is married to manna, Laos and Paris is actually as a, as a character. He's a bit of a coward, you know, when he's loved to Helen then sparks the entire Trojan war and at least to the death of a lot of people.
Jesper (24m 18s):
But Yeah, but, but in the context and the context of evil within, you know, Paris doesn't really care or perhaps he does care, I don't know, but he definitely does put his own wants and desires above everything else. So that the evil within basically, you know, it can take many forms in this case because he is a coward. He's not the one causing direct pain onto others, but he takes actions with them, which then has the consequences that causes the war and all the pain and all the people who are soldiers who die and so on and so on. Right. So it can take many forms. And I think, I think it's important to look at it in a bit of a broader perspective as well.
Autumn (25m 1s):
Yes, I agree. That's it. It's true. Cause I mean, you can always take just something like selfishness or cowardliness and yeah, let it have, let it maybe be kind of bubbling underneath the surface, but then to manifest in a way that could be the inciting incident like Helen being kidnapped. I mean, it sets off the whole chain of events. They could have negotiated that out. I don't know what Helen's view of that was, it is a relatively silent in the history of the world where she played a part of this. And if you wanted to go even in the first place, but it's all, it is an interesting topic to say, you know, these, these character falls can be in the hero and they can be the ones that really start the chaos of the book.
Autumn (25m 49s):
It doesn't have to just be because there's a villain who's causing horrible things. I mean, truly the Greeks are not villains in, you know, with, in the Trojan war, they're going to rescue Helen, but it becomes this whole greater, you know, you can get into the socioeconomic issues going on and who wants to rule over everything, but really they're just coming to rescue Helen because she's, there is, and it's a love story. It's a love story. And it, you know, again, we're we see it from the Greeks point of view, but we can also often watch it from the Trojan point of view in modern day shows. So really there's no horrible party in there except for maybe at the end when the Greeks are throwing babies off the walls of Troy and completely flattening the city, that's pretty rough.
Autumn (26m 36s):
But I just recently read an article about things on those natures and I was just thinking, wow, I ha I'm. I had forgotten that in the Trojan
Jesper (26m 53s):
War. That that was a scene in the, in the ed. Wow. Yeah. Hmm. I think I just mentally skipped that part. Yeah. But I do have a question here that I'm curious what you think about. Okay. Yeah, of course. Of course. Otherwise there's no fun in recording podcasts. If I can surprise you with something, Nobody, this is more like a reflection because speaking of the evil within, I'm just wondering, do you think that you can take this concept like too far, you know, can you end up actually disrupting your entire story and destroying everything because you're taking it too far?
Jesper (27m 37s):
Or, or what do you think about that?
Autumn (27m 40s):
I think so, but I think it depends on then what genre you're writing. So if you're gonna write Nobel bright, your evil within your Good Characters, should there should be something and it can be deep. It could be one, you know, something that is a true evil trait that causes maybe a whole war, but they're going to regret it and they're going to grow from it and they're going to heal and it's going to end up leading to maybe not the glowing future they wanted, but it would be a positive change. If you're writing dark fantasy, it could be what destroys the character or causes the chaos or moves it into like a dystopian dark fantasy. That's really kind of, it would definitely be very, more psychological as well as physical, which could be a very interesting and aspect, almost like a thriller.
Autumn (28m 27s):
And then of course, if you want to transform either your hero or a sidekick or point of view, character to a villain, this is a great way. Let them, you know, it doesn't have to be either people use things like alcoholism or they want to they're power hungry or they're corrupted by a magic gem. But what if it's just a trait that gets out of control, maybe they're a little self-centered or they're cowardly and they're trying to cover it up. And so they end up making the wrong choices, which leads to more wrong choices, which leads to greater evil and people die. This one Netflix series, the hundred is a very interesting example because one of the, the hero and the hero in of all like the entire series Clark, I think was her name.
Autumn (29m 9s):
Yeah. She was known as like this killed hundreds and thousands of people and her actions were enough to almost just keep all of humanity from progressing into the next, I don't know what you would call it. Realm or state of being because of her actions. And she is a basically left behind. It was like, you either go forward without her or you don't go forward at all. And you're lost as a whole society or culture race. So that was fast. You still like Clark, you still think she's a great character. She did these things because she was trying to save people that she loved and her friends.
Autumn (29m 51s):
But I did think at some point there were times I didn't relate to her because I'm like she could have chosen a better way. She's especially towards the end where she's doing it all in the name of her daughter. And I'm just like, oh my, yeah,
Jesper (30m 3s):
It gets a bit too much.
Autumn (30m 4s):
Yeah. It's like stop the maternal thing. There's another side to her character. That was much better earlier on. So yeah, it could go too far, but again, it depends. You need to sit back and think about the genre you're writing for and the tone you want for your novel and that's gonna make it, you know, if you go too far, one way, you're writing a completely different genre.
Jesper (30m 28s):
Yeah. I think there's a good point around what character we're dealing with here as well. Because if it is the protectionist, I do think you need to be a bit careful because if you go too far, all the likeability will go out the window where you just mentioned clock there in the end, in the latest seasons of that show, she started to really annoy me. I liked her in the beginning, but at some point it was just like, oh, it's too much now. But if you take well Paris, for instance, we just in Troy, you know, he's not a very likable character actually, but I don't think it's too bad there because there are different characters.
Jesper (31m 9s):
That's, it's more like there isn't like a one protagonist in most of those shows. It's more like the, all the characters together that tells the story. So, so in that sense, I feel like it works. But if you take, for example, did you watch the walking dead?
Autumn (31m 27s):
No, I did. And I don't do zombie movies or shows.
Jesper (31m 30s):
Okay. No. Okay. But Andrea is a character in the walking dead, and I think she's a great example here because she is not the protagonist in that TV show, but in the comic books, she is a beloved character. I'm not read the comics myself, but as far as I understand, she became like a second mother for their main protectiveness son. And basic, she ends up marrying the protagonist later on in the comic books. As far as I understand I could be wrong, but that's how I understood it. But actually in the TV series, what they did here was that they had her as part of one of the earlier seasons.
Jesper (32m 13s):
And then they ha they had her basically abandoned the rest of the group, abandoned the protagonist because she sort of got very, I don't know, fascinated or whatever you want to call it with the show's main villain called the governor. And so, so she just sort of went to him and stayed with him. And people just started hating this character, you know, when she sort of just the protectionist and just went for this and he's the governor, he's like a real, like, insane fuck. He's crazy. And she goes in and basically stays with him and is like, okay, then she's out the window.
Jesper (32m 55s):
Right? Forget about her. Nobody likes her anymore. So this is an example of a character who in the comic books were quite liked. And then, because you made her do some things within the show. I don't think that those things happen in, in the comic books, but in the show they made her do some things that were just like, you couldn't forgive it or ticket it. Take Jamie Lannister in game of Thrones when he pushes the breath,
Jesper (33m 41s):
But at least for me, the fact that he pushed a kid out a window that never left me no matter what he did after that, it was just like, yeah, but you, you push the kid out of the window. It's just not okay. No matter what else you do for the rest of your life, it's not okay. Right. So I do think there's something about, you need to be mindful of how far you take this evil within thing and how far you drive, because some things you cannot come back from.
Autumn (34m 9s):
Yeah. That's so true. I agree that there's a difference between losing your temper or taking the first punch or even starting a conflict versus, you know, killing an innocent or wounding a child or these other things that are just, yeah, you do those. And it's going to hang over their heads the entire time. And there are some things that are completely unforgivable. I, like I said, I think even Clark, there's a few things in the hundred that I just, you know, they, they called her, there was a blood Raina, or that was the other character. But just like you do something that is so bad, that it is, it becomes your title, that you are a tainted by it and it will follow you everywhere and you might be good, but you're never going to be as good.
Autumn (34m 56s):
You're never going to hit those high, high points. You're never going to be untarnished and that might work for your story. It might show a great character, but again, if you are writing noble bright, you've got to have people who want that pureness, or at least something a little bit higher where it's like, wow, your, your, your friend or your counselor really did some bad things, but you stayed clean. You stayed out of it, or you at least told them not to go do that. That's sort of who you want as your main character, but another once in dystopian or dark fantasy that might work great for your main character to have that kind of an arc where it's just like, they want to, you know, earn their place back. But they know they're never going to get quite as far or as high and accepting that, that they're going to have to live with this, with this taint in their soul for the rest of their life is, is also a very nuanced thing.
Autumn (35m 49s):
And then probably a very powerful story to write, but you to make sure you're setting up your entire story for that kind of level of impact and not just, you know, write your way into a corner and then go, oh crap. That's not what I wanted to do with my character. That would be bad.
Jesper (36m 8s):
Yeah. But also that the thing that happens or the consequence or the action that the character took was something that is, is forgivable. As long as the character is really, you know, regretting it and showing their regret and trying to make it better. But it has to be something that is forgivable because otherwise you cannot come back from it. And for some reason, hurting an animal is just like, nobody forgives it. You know, if the character in the first scene of the story kicks a dog or cat or something, that's it, nobody will forgive it. I mean, you can have stories where the main character kill somebody, and that is forgivable for whatever reason that, you know, if killing another person is, is apparently okay on the some circumstances.
Jesper (36m 54s):
Of course, not every circumstance, but readers can forgive stories where they're protecting this, kill somebody. But if they protect the kicks, a dog or cat, no way, it will never be forgiven.
Autumn (37m 7s):
You think game of Thrones? No, it'll never be forgiven. But do you think game of Thrones would have been different with Jamie if he had ever showed true guilt and apology to even brand, just to actually have felt hard out, sorry, because think he did, at least in the show, I didn't finish reading all the books, but in the show he never seemed to be apologetic. He again just said I did it because I wanted to save Searcy because I had to do it for my sister. He always justified it. He never said, I'm sorry. He never, you never felt he was sorry for it. And I think that is part of why we see that tarnishment to his character.
Jesper (37m 46s):
Yeah. I think you're right there. I think if bran had died from the fall, then it wouldn't have mattered if he had regretted it or shown regret. And I don't think there would be any coming back from that, but because Fran did not die. And if you had shown Jamie Lannister really being saddened about it and it really it's weighing on him and he he's regretting it. And then maybe, maybe you could pull him back from that. And maybe people would w would sort of forgive him after a while. Yeah. But I think it's only because brands survive to fall. Otherwise it would have been, it doesn't matter how much it probably, most people would feel like almost readers.
Jesper (38m 28s):
And on this case where we're talking about a TV show, so viewers in this case, but probably most people would just be like, yeah, it's good. That you're feeling that bad. You deserve it. You know? So it's not about forgiving any more. It's more like, yeah, you deserve that. So it becomes something else. All of a sudden.
Autumn (38m 47s):
Yes. I agree. So, yeah. So I think that's a good conclusion that there are, there are some things that you can't pull a character fully back from, which could work for, depending on your genre. But if you're writing certain types of fantasy, if you want your character to emerge scape, you know, scratched, but pretty much, you know, okay, there's probably a few things you should avoid, but otherwise exploring those evil intentions that evil within is, is a really interesting way of progressing a story and showing a character arc and showing a character change that is much more dramatic than some of the minor like, oh, you're mildly irritating and you have a stutter that I can't stand.
Autumn (39m 27s):
You know, that's, that's so minor compared to the, the, what we're talking about, these traits that we're talking about here.
Jesper (39m 35s):
All right. That's very good. So we will be back next Monday and this time for a critical reading episode where we will be discussing Jade City by Fonda Lee, which is the one we've been reading over this past month. So see you then.
Narrator (39m 50s):
If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Autumn and Jesper on patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you'll get awesome rewards and keep The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.
Monday Nov 08, 2021
Monday Nov 08, 2021
Do you want to write a page turning novel that will keep readers up long past their bedtime? Well, one key to doing that is to write chapters that keep readers turning pages.
We go over some tips from opening lines to closing and everything in between to help you write chapters that will keep your readers hooked.
To check out the book Plot Development that we mention in the podcast, follow this link: https://books2read.com/Plot-Development
Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.
SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.
Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.
Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).
Narrator (1s):
You're listening to The Am writing Fantasy Podcast in today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.
Jesper (29s):
I'm Jesper
Autumn (31s):
And I'm Autumn.
Jesper (33s):
This is episode 150 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. And we are taking a closer look at Chapters today. How to Create Chapters, That Hook you readers, and hopefully give you some good and strong tips in the process here.
Autumn (50s):
Absolutely. I mean, these are sort of the building blocks of that. Pull the reader through the story. And I don't think there's a lot of people who realize maybe the importance of setting them up. I mean, we spend so much time talking about that Plot outline and what goes into the intro of your story, but we don't talk a lot about what actually is happening in each individual chapter. So I think this will be a good one we'll chapters or a book is made up by chapter. So I don't know why Chapters would be important at all at all. It's like building a wall without using any bricks. We're putting them on the walls. No, there's you go, but let's assume you want a wall and if you just put your bricks, like just dump them in a pile, you're not going to have a very good wall, so you should make sure you put it together constructively.
Autumn (1m 41s):
Okay. Well, if I say showed and I guess we have to talk a bit about that today.
Jesper (1m 45s):
Yeah. I guess we will. We'll talk about some construction equipment. No, thanks where you over there.
Autumn (1m 52s):
It's quite good. There is a school break here this week. So actually I don't have to get up that early in the mornings. That's very, very nice. That is always a sweet thing considering, especially, yeah, since I'd be getting up at 5:00 AM with my husband to see him off to his current training, he's going through yeah. That's, I'm envious if I'm AM's a little early for me. Yeah. The only problem is that now when you don't have to get up that early, you stay up later. And especially because my wife and I started watching squid game on Netflix. I heard about that. Yes. I've actually, I started up watching episode one and honestly I didn't get into it and maybe I was tired.
Autumn (2m 35s):
So I just kind of put it aside. How are you guys liking it?
Jesper (2m 39s):
Oh, I love it. I think it's so good. I finally understand why this caught on so big that it had it's I think it's so good. I buy have to try it again eventually, but yeah, I'll have to keep that in mind. Maybe I was just off that night. I don't know. But I think one good thing that be Taken away from us, you know, for us as writers and authors, is that the writer who wrote squid game, he actually tried to sell the script for 10 years, 10 years. Think about how much success it has right now. And it took him 10 years to, to sell it.
Jesper (3m 19s):
And finally Netflix said, okay, fine. We'll buy it. And then it's a massive success.
Autumn (3m 24s):
That's crazy.
Jesper (3m 27s):
Yeah. And I think that's a good thing too, to keep in mind for us as authors, as Willy, when we write our books. And so on that, sometimes it just takes a long, long time and then success comes so
Autumn (3m 38s):
Assistance and belief in yourself and just keep trying until someone finally says yes,
Jesper (3m 46s):
Exactly.
Autumn (3m 46s):
Very nice. I like that. Oh, it's been good. I, I showed you pictures, but yes, my husband and I entered dog, went whitewater kayaking. It was so cute. Yeah. We've done some really crazy adventurous things with this music, current terrier. So he's, he's a little, he's supposed to be like Toto, but he's a little bit of a, he's a monster version of Toto. He's a little bit like five pounds bigger than Toto would be. But yeah, we went, we went kayaking as a family and it was just gorgeous fall weather. And that was right before it switched from being like 70 degree days to now. It's like in the fifties that I've got the wood stove going, but that's nice too. It feels like fall.
Autumn (4m 27s):
I can't complain. It's bit of kind of dice. I've been burning the candle at both ends though, because I, I, this is like my, why we're meeting and doing our recording. This is my afternoon slump time. And I'm trying with caffeine to get through it, but I am horrible. I get up at five and I am dead until about six o'clock and then my mind turns on them and I'm fine. And I find, I go through the afternoon and there's this slump. And then right around dinner time, I'll wake up and I'll be good to like 10. And I just can't change that rhythm in my body. It's been that way since I was a kid. And so yeah, I try, I keep myself awake right now.
Jesper (5m 6s):
Yeah. But, but I think actually, I don't know, but I have a theory that probably a lot of people have it like that because I know exactly what I mean. What do you mean? I can also be like in the morning, you know, getting up for something you like really tired and it's like, oh, it's early. And then you think, oh, then I'll, I'll be thinking to myself then, okay. Tonight, I'm going to go to bed early because I'm so tired and I need to catch up on sleep and so on. And I'll be tired throughout the day as well on those days. Not right today, but in general, I mean, if that happens right. But then once I get to dinner time and afterwards, then I start getting, I start waking up and it's just like, no, you don't want to go to bed. And then the next day, the whole cycle repeats itself. And it's just like, I don't know, but you're not the first one saying it.
Jesper (5m 50s):
And I have it the same way. I don't know if it's like something, probably not all EVERY everybody, but I think a lot of people, I like that they, they wake, my wife has the same thing she wakes up in the evening. I dunno. It's weird. Isn't it?
Autumn (6m 6s):
Maybe we are. But I'm also really good at, up until about one o'clock in the afternoon from like 6:00 AM to one o'clock. I am fine. I am full throttle, but it's like, I need an afternoon nap. I needed like at one 30 to two, I need like a little bit of a nap and I'd be fine. And maybe I should just put that in my schedule somewhere. And I would probably be so much better, but I'm usually pushing myself through it.
Jesper (6m 30s):
So if it goes quiet on UN, then the listener will know it's because you take a nap and then we should just, we just sit around here and quiet on the podcast, waiting for you to wake up and then we can continue.
Autumn (6m 41s):
I won't do that to you. I think we can make it through.
Jesper (6m 45s):
Okay. Okay.
Narrator (6m 48s):
A week on the internet with The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast,
Jesper (6m 53s):
I noticed this morning that we just about to reach 7,000 members in the Am, Writing fences, you Facebook group order.
Autumn (7m 1s):
That is so I knew we were getting close. It actually, it seemed like we hit 6,000 wait went from 5,000 to 6,000 really, really quick. The 6,000 to seven has been a little slower, but oh my gosh, that is so many people and so awesome.
Jesper (7m 16s):
Do you remember the early days Autumn?
Autumn (7m 19s):
I Remember when it was me making the group and then inviting a couple of Fantasy authors. I knew it. I hadn't even met you yet. Or maybe if I had, I didn't know you on Facebook yet. I only knew you on Twitter and yeah, it was just me and a couple of people. So yeah, I remember very much so. And it was me and some crickets.
Jesper (7m 40s):
Yeah. And it was called slate. The fences, the Facebook group.
Autumn (7m 45s):
That's right. I saw the, I actually still have the original logo, like the artwork I did for it. Way back when tucked away and like terrified. You're right. You're right. That'd be great. I will have to go and do that too. Especially if I happen to catch it at 7,000, I'll do a little celebration and like, oh my God, this was, this was when it was just me and like three other people, which I think are still members too. So that'll be, I will do that.
Jesper (8m 13s):
Yeah. That would be fun. I think for people to see what it used to look like. But the funny thing is also when you have this many members, because I had the, there was somebody posting a, and there's nothing wrong with this. I'm just mentioning it for the fun of it. So the people involved should not feel bad about it at all, but there was somebody posting whether or not it was allowed to ask for some better readers in the Am, Writing Fantasy, Facebook group. And then I posted a, or I replied to say that, yeah. As long as you don't ask people to sign up to an email list or you know that in, in, in other ways you are trying to, to get them on your list or earn money from it or anything like that, then it's fine.
Jesper (8m 59s):
And then somebody else replied to say, are you a moderator? Or have you checked this with the moderators? Because I'm not sure, sure. That's allowed. And then I replied, I'm one of the co-owners of the group, but this is what happens when you have so many people. Some people don't even know who you are. Right. Let's say,
Autumn (9m 17s):
But I think it says like when it says admin next to our name.
Jesper (9m 21s):
Yeah, yeah. Maybe they just made me laugh. She was asking me if I had checked it with a moderator. I like that. I don't think I need to
Autumn (9m 32s):
Our Authors. No, we run very tight ship, obviously tighter than we realize.
Jesper (9m 40s):
Yeah. So if you haven't joined yet head on over to Facebook search for Am Writing Fantasy in the group section, and you will find us. But if you don't like Facebook or you don't use Facebook, I should also point out how you can go to Am Writing Fantasy dot com and sign up for our email list. Through there, you will get information and you will get tips on writing. We share some world-building advice and much, much more that we actually don't share anywhere else. And the best way is to just go to so to Am Writing Fantasy dot com and then on the homepage, when you arrive, there is actually the free self-publishing success course.
Jesper (10m 23s):
So the easiest way to do it is just sign up for that. And then you're going to get a full cost for free. And once you have gone through all the course material, you will be automatically added to our email is so that's the best way to
Autumn (10m 35s):
Do that. Yes. Come join us
Narrator (10m 38s):
And on today's topic.
Jesper (10m 41s):
All right. So chapters, Autumn, what do we say about challenges? They are quite important. I guess if you want to build a house, that's what I, that's what I learned so far.
Autumn (10m 53s):
That's a very important if you're building a house, you can't build a book. Well, actually I'm sure there, I would say you can't build a book without Chapters, but I am one of those people that would, as soon as you tell me, you can't do something, I'm like, ah, I must try it. So I'm sure you can. I'm sure there is like stream of consciousness writing that James Joyce was probably like never used a chapter and it was just publishers that forced them on him. So you probably could write a book. It would just be really tough. It would be a
Jesper (11m 24s):
Mess. Oh,
Autumn (11m 25s):
It'd be such a mess. Don't do it. I think the best way to be organized. It was with Chapters and it gives you so many things you can do. I mean, you can change up your story. You can keep Readers interested, purposely hook them. So they stay up till 3:00 AM. Cause we're cruel to them. You can change point of view of your writing in third person, point of view. So Chapters are really important. There's a lot going on in them.
Jesper (11m 51s):
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, well, it, it very easily starts sounding like science or something, this stuff, right? Like talking about how to do a chapter in the proper way. But, but I think honestly for start, we have to say like, this is our way of doing a chapter. It doesn't mean that it's the only way or the only right way at all. You might have other ways of doing it. Or maybe you hear some advice from somewhere else that you think makes more sense and then that's fine if it works for you, it works for you. Right. So we can only say that this is the way in all of you, that it should be done, but underlying all of you.
Jesper (12m 36s):
Okay.
Autumn (12m 37s):
Absolutely. And I guess to me, we have some social proof that we're not doing things badly. I mean, I have a ton of reviews of people saying I stayed up all night. I finished this book all the way through, or I didn't finish it all the way through, but that's only because it hit 4:00 AM and I'm supposed to go to work at six. So I had to wait until nine the next day when I finally called out a bed after calling in six and finished it at 10. So I don't think we're doing anything wrong because I've seen on both of our reviews that, you know, we have made Readers stay up to the wee hours of the morning to read our stories. And that's partially comes through by the chapters because if you mess up on a chapter and you have a hard end to one, if you don't pull the reader forward and they're like, eh, I don't care anymore.
Autumn (13m 24s):
I'm going to sleep. That's, that's where they take a break. If they get confused, lost, or you just don't have something that makes them want to flip the page.
Jesper (13m 34s):
Yeah. True. Absolutely. And when we are talking about Chapters, think of it as a mini story on his own. So by ministry, what I mean by that is that the character should be trying to achieve something just like the dog is trying to achieve something now. So that's in its own little mini story. There
Autumn (13m 60s):
Was a chapter break
Jesper (14m 2s):
That was a chapter break. That was a point of view chains. It was saying, Hey, it's my point of view. That's all right. Yeah. What I was trying to say is that this means that the character is trying to achieve something and you know, it shouldn't be so that the coach just sitting around in a coffee, shop, reading a newspaper or talking to some random other character. And honestly I have seen books where this sort of thing happens and you are wondering a bit like, why do I care about this? What's going on here? Right. A chapter should contain some sort of sense of conflict and also some sort of, well uncertainty to some degree, I guess you could say, it's something that makes you wonder what's going to happen next.
Jesper (14m 47s):
Right? Those should be the recipe for a good
Autumn (14m 54s):
Chapter. Exactly. It's to me, it's like, it's curiosity, your mystery. There's something going on where, whether it's the character who is curious, you know, is trying to solve something and trawls the reader along. Or if the reader is picking up clues and they want to see what's happening, or even just an action event, they either news that happens off screen or that's just received or, you know, it ends at a battle and someone might be wounded and you're like, I have to turn the page. You know, those are part of the chapters. And I think one of the things we're talking about Chapters as a building block of a novel, but there's building blocks in Chapters. You can have a chapter that it's an entire scene and you could have a chapter that's made up of lots of little scenes, maybe not too many.
Autumn (15m 38s):
You don't want to put in maybe 10 scenes into a chapter that might be a little intense, but two or three, it can happen. You can have scene breaks within a single chapter. And so those are important parts to remember too, if you approach a chapter and you just don't know what to do, or you not sure what's in it. Think of it as a scene. Scenes are different from Chapters, but a lot of people get them confused.
Jesper (16m 1s):
Yeah. So maybe put a few more words on that. Autumm okay.
Autumn (16m 4s):
Sure. Well, so it scene is an event that's happening and usually, you know, it's think of a stage and you have a stage set and you characters walk on, something happens and they walk off sometimes with a scene, you change point of view, but you often change rooms. You change other things that are happening within, but the reason they're combined into one chapter is because the chapter has its own goal. And to me, that's the most important thing. And we talk about this, We, I know you're going to bring it up. Well, we have a Plot development book and we do talk about Chapters in there. So that's a very good way. But to me, the first step in deciding what is making your chapter versus your scenes are the scenes that make up a chapter is a chapter, has a specific goal.
Autumn (16m 52s):
And I always look at it as like, I have a goal for the chapter as an author. There's a part of the plot. It is, it is unveiling. So it's part of the inciting incident. It is part of the reaction phase. So that's my goal as an author, but there's also the characters goal and that's the part that's moving the stories forward. And that's an important thing you want to make sure the character has a goal when that chapter begins. And you know, it's going to wrap up the end of that chapter is, and when that his goal is met or it's stopped.
Jesper (17m 22s):
Yeah. Let me put it into context to you because you mentioned our whole flooding guide book here, because in there we actually have, because now you're talking about character gold and so on. So I think just putting a bit of framework around it, the way we describe it in our book is that a chapter has five areas or you, you, you used the worst word building block before. So if we go with that five building blocks in a great chapter, so there is coach goal, there is a hook, there is conflict and Alima there's reaction and decision and there is the disaster. Yes. So by that, the idea is that you have a character who knows when the chapter starts, what he or she wants to achieve.
Jesper (18m 10s):
And this character then goes after that in one way on other that the reader will find fascinating or interesting. That's the hook pot. And then only it's not that easy to achieve what you want. And especially not. When you live life as a fiction character, you live in the worst nightmare sometimes. Yeah. So it's not that easy. And something is standing in the way and that's then causing the conflict, right? And once you have the conflict, then you have a reaction to what happened. And that will lead into a decision on how to proceed that the character makes. And in the end, we will then finish the chapter on a cliffhanger.
Jesper (18m 54s):
So if you can construct your chapter around those five steps, it will already be very interesting because you are showing the reader that this character, this is what the character is trying to achieve. Meaning that then the reader understands, oh, okay, this is what's happening. This is I, now I know what's going on. It's like, it's like when you enter a meeting in your day job, and there was no agenda and you have no idea what you're going to talk about it very quickly. It becomes very frustrating because like, why are we here? What are we trying to do? So putting that in front of the reader so that they understand what the character is trying to achieve, that's a good starting point. And then when you, you are making life difficult for the character and introducing the conflict and giving them something to react to, then it also humanizes the character because then you feel like, oh, okay.
Jesper (19m 46s):
I can relate to that. I see why they're reacting this way. Or are they getting frustrated or whatever it may be. It's not that a chapter, a good chapter has to have like dire consequences or something. It doesn't have to be like that. That's not what I'm trying to say, but more that there needs to be something at stake and something, as they could just mean that I don't want my brother to find this thing out, for example, or it doesn't have to be like fight scenes or anything like that at all. But when you have something at stake, you have a reaction to it. Then when you end the chapter on some sort of, some sort of cliffhanger, and again by cliff hanger can mean a lot of things. It doesn't necessarily have to mean that it's like a, in the middle of a fight or I think James W what is it called?
Jesper (20m 32s):
James Brown, John Brown. What is he called? The James Brown bet. James Brown. I think he has one where he ends the chapter with the, with the character opening a door, then he stops and you don't get to see what's inside. It that's a bit, I would almost say a lame, but okay. But it's a cliffhanger, but it doesn't have to be like that. It could just be like a cliffhanger could just be like, the character is wondering about something and you don't have the answer for it. And then you want to read on to figure out what is the answer. It could be all kinds of things. So don't say cliff hanger as like, meaning that you have to put some dire consequences on the table, every, in every chapter.
Autumn (21m 12s):
No, it's more like an, almost an unanswered question or an unfinished event. I think those are better way. And I do agree because we often call it, the chapter ends in a disaster, but it doesn't have to be a disaster. It is. Yeah. That's just maybe a typical way of doing it because often with hurdles, it is sort of a disaster someone's wounded, and you don't know what happens, but you could be in a lull or it could be a love scene or something. And someone walks into the ballroom or whatever, a vendor at the, the tourney or something, the next person walks in the love interest or something. And you just stopped there. And there was other people going, oh gosh, you know, there, he or she is.
Autumn (21m 53s):
And that's a cliffhanger because you're like, well, what will they say? What will they do you want to turn the page? It always should end on not wanting to turn the page. And it could be as simple as just receiving news, receiving a reading, finally, a letter that they've been holding in their hand and waving the entire chapter. They finally look and see what it says. And they're like, oh, oh my gosh, this changes everything. And of course you want to turn the page to find out what's going to happen next that's, what's important.
Jesper (22m 24s):
And what's so nice about that. Is that because of what you just explained there, you already have the hook for the next chapter and you also already know what the character wants in the next chapter. So it just adds another minister to the first story. Yes, it's so nice. Because then again, you can build the next chapter with a clear beginning, a clear middle, a clear, and it just makes sense, right?
Autumn (22m 48s):
It does. They build off of each other, which is why it becomes a whole story. They flow into each other with set happenings and events to see what it's going to happen next. And I always say like, as a writer, I always want to write the ending to a chapter. So excited that I want to write the first line to the next chapter. And so if you're that excited, the reader will be that excited. And I think that's, what's important. It's just, it has a flow to it and going even back to scene. So if you think about it as if there are these five or four aspects into a chapter, well, if you have the hook and then the character is doing something and they're going through the conflict or dilemma things, aren't going well.
Autumn (23m 28s):
And for some reason that just that character's point of view is done, and you do a scene break, the decision and action and disaster or cliffhanger could end up being in a different character's point of view. And that's sort of why you can have multiple scenes that fit into a chapter, but they still fit the chapter because you are still following that Hook, decision dilemma, the action emotion reaction, and then the cliff hanger disaster event that is unfinished, that you want to turn the page to see what happens to it.
Jesper (24m 1s):
I think the challenge faced by many writers is actually how to make that conflict part varied, because I mean, you cannot have a 400 page book where every single chapter has a fight in it or nothing. I mean, it could be either a physical fight, but it could also just be people arguing. I, I know when I started out writing at first, I had a tendency to create a lot of arguments and a lot of the chapters because it added conflict. So my line of thinking was good. But the thing is that it, it gets a bit tiresome if, if the characters are always arguing with somebody.
Jesper (24m 43s):
So I think personally, you know, your first spur of inspiration is in 99% of the cases going to be probably quite full of cliches, you know, and that, that's why we prefer at least to do a detailed chapter outline compared to a very loose one where, or even to compare to riding by the seat of your pants. Because I think that the problem is often that you, you keep beating the same old horse or on and on and on.
Autumn (25m 22s):
Yes, I think that's very true. And I, I think it also comes down to knowing your character really well, because you, as an author have, like I mentioned, you have a goal for what's happening in the chapter. And if you're trying to force things on your character, it's going to come across as artificial. And it's not as interesting. The stakes don't feel real. Something just feels off to the reader. But if you have a character and you give the character a goal, like you say, okay, this is going to be a hurdle. And you know, you're going to throw something horrible at the character. And you're like, okay, character, you'd go again. This is you're going in there. This is your goal. And this is what's going to happen. And then let the character figure out, you know, what in their world are they going to do to solve this?
Autumn (26m 2s):
Why do they want to solve it? Knowing your character really well, knowing how they'll react will help pull you through. And I'll also help the reader really resonate with the character. Cause there's a F you know, you want to feel that character trying to problem solve and get out of it on their own instead of being pushed forward, along by the author, because you need to go to the next scene. You can definitely tell when you're reading.
Jesper (26m 27s):
Yeah. And the, and of course the character arc is incredibly important in this whole conversation too, to make sure that you build in at certain points throughout the novel, in some chapters where you gradually showing on, of course, on less on less characters on a steady arc where they don't change. But otherwise that you have some chapters throughout the novel where you're gradually showing that the characters beginning to change. And we go in through it in great detail in, in our guidebook on, on how to plot a novel, but high level. It's often a good thing to start showing them, showing the reader, how the character actually insists on doing the same thing as they've always done, because that's how we work as human beings.
Jesper (27m 16s):
We only, we only start changing once we figure out that what I'm doing is apparently not working. And only once we realized that that's where we start changing, because otherwise we, we're not going to change. Human beings are lazy people. We don't want to change, but once we start, you know, we keep banging our heads against, into the wall because we keep doing the same thing and it doesn't work. Then at some point we will usually start questioning ourselves like, Hmm. I wonder if I could do something differently, then that's where you start seeing the change. So that's a good thing to keep in mind when you're writing as well with your chapters to have four, while the coach would keep doing the same thing and keep facing the same problem, like, you know, from a character arc perspective, like they keep failing basically.
Jesper (28m 1s):
And, and then gradually over time, they'll start trying to try to do some other things and get a different result. And thereby you solidify the change in the character.
Autumn (28m 12s):
Yes. That is very true in such an important aspect. And of course, when you say doing the same things as you don't mean like, you know, going and trying to attack the night that he's obviously not prepared to do, he's not going to do that three times in a row, but he are going to maybe have him pick three different fights or just always be in over his head, always react stubbornly or arrogantly and not us for help. And then finally, you know, there's going to be that moment where maybe it's usually called the dark night of the soul, that moment where, you know, something happens and someone's wounded or hurt or killed because of their stupid actions. And they finally go, next time, I'm going to ask for help because I don't want that to ever happen again.
Autumn (28m 53s):
But again, that's more the entire plot, but it's so true. Each chapter is just pulling the novel forward. And I did, I want to get back to it. You mentioned also speaking of, you know, not repeating, you said about not repeating like the same disaster, the same conflicts. And I also think is a really important not to repeat the exact same Hook or the exact same chapter ending. And those can be as simple as like you dialogue is a fantastic, like if two people are in the middle of a conversation, that's a neat chapter opening. And sometimes it's a really neat chapter ending, but you don't want to have every chapter opening being dialogue or every chapter opening being a description or even action.
Autumn (29m 34s):
All of those are things you should take notice of and kind of vary them throughout your novel. So that one maybe is a dialogue, but another was an action. Maybe one's a description, keep things varied and that'll help make your writing a little bit more interesting and will help remind you to keep things different with each one and, you know, challenge you, isn't Writing all about challenging yourself to become a better somebody.
Jesper (29m 57s):
Yeah, I would say so. I don't know. Are we missing anything? I feel like, I feel like that's pretty encompassing for, for How to Create Chapters.
Autumn (30m 10s):
I think so too. I be, and I can't think of anything else. The best thing to do is to check out, like I said, the plotting book we get into so much more detail on character arcs and plotting the whole novel as well as how to lay out your individual chapter. The difference between chapters and scenes and some good examples in there. So I think those are really, what's important to take a look at if you really want to go in depth, because there's a lot more to this and nailing your chapters and knowing how they build your story is going to one help you learn to write better. And you know, if you're doing well in your chapters, those are usually like when I was writing, I had writing goals. My goal was not a word count.
Autumn (30m 51s):
So I got Scrivener and it, it makes you, it allows you to do a word count goal. But I used to always be like, I want to write this many chapters this week. It's a nice, solid building blocks that helps you break down your novel. And two bites that are really, the reader is bites. The reader is going to stop and start at Chapters. They don't usually stop or start right in the middle of a chapter who wants to do that? That's because someone came in and like you have book from your hand or your Kindle ran out of batteries. That's when you stop in the middle of a chapter or if you're really bad, if it's really, really bad, baby, I don't know.
Jesper (31m 27s):
Yeah. I mean, the chapter's only pot, it's only one piece of the entire puzzle. So I'll book is called Plot Development and it is a very full step-by-step guy. You know, you you'll get everything in that book. You will learn about the character creation as well. You learn about the character arcs, how to build the entire novel, outline, how it affects the chapters and how to build those chapters and, and so on and so on and so on. So, so you're going to get everything you need in that one book. So we've added the link to that one in the show notes, if you are interested. So next Monday, we are talking about the evil within it's about your characters and how to explore them in greater depth.
Narrator (32m 15s):
If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Autumn and Jesper on patreon.com/ Am. Writing Fantasy for as little as a dollar a month, you'll get awesome rewards and keep The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast, going, stay safe out there and see you next Monday.
Monday Nov 01, 2021
Monday Nov 01, 2021
Some plot twists can elevate a story into a masterpiece, whereas others utterly destroys everything that came before it.
In this humorous episode of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast, Autumn and Jesper compete to come up with the WORST five plot twists ever created.
Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.
SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!
Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.
Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.
Read the full transcript below.
(Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).
Narrator (1s):
You're listening to The Am writing Fantasy Podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.
Jesper (30s):
Hello. I'm Jesper.
Autumn (31s):
And I'm, Autumn.
Jesper (33s):
This is episode 149 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. And this is the first episode of the month. And we all know what that means. Don't we Autumn?
Autumn (44s):
This one's a challenge where we compete with each other to come up with the worst of something. So these are always kind of fun.
Jesper (54s):
These are my favorite ones and today's top 10 list is the WORST Plot Twists EVER.
Autumn (1m 3s):
Oh gosh. At least I'm not going to give you a plot twist and say what? That's not what I prepared for. So I'm ready. Like I just mentioned to you, I actually was, I thought we were recording this two days ago, so I've been ready for two days. So I've got a good list. I think it'll be fine. It was actually really fun. This one was feeling kind of, I don't know what to come up with. And so I did a little bit of reading and research and started thinking and I'm like, oh yeah, there's some fun ones in this slide. Yeah, I think so too. All mine movies, although I only have two movies, so ha I, I actually tried to stick with books as much as possible, but yeah, two movies snuck in there.
Autumn (1m 49s):
Okay. I know I picked movies on purpose because then I could play some audio clips and I liked those. Lets you do one of these days. I want you to plan ahead and send you some movie, some clips and tell you not to listen to them until you play them. But that's going to be kind of hard cause you have to test them somehow. No, no, that'll be fine. That's fine. I can just click and listen half a second just to see if it plays and then stop it. Okay. One of these days, one of these days I'll really be prepared. It'll be a miracle, but everybody's mind just like my God. Yes, it will be and prepare us.
Autumn (2m 30s):
That'd be fantastic. Just imagine. Anyway, how are things going for you?
Jesper (2m 37s):
I'm pretty busy these days. I just finished up the first draft of book two in our new Sherry's over this last week. So that was good. That's exciting. Yeah, but I'm taking a short break from writing now because I have so much preparation to do for my attempt to become a referee instructor. So that's basically, Yeah, it's taking up so much time. So yeah, just taking a bit of a break between book two and book three in our series a so that will probably be okay. But
Autumn (3m 11s):
I think that is fine since you were so much further ahead of me on the Writing department. I don't mind if you take a little writing break and let me catch up a bit.
Jesper (3m 22s):
No, no, indeed. That's fair enough. And yeah. And, and, and speaking about referee, actually, sometimes it's nice to have a referee at hand because yesterday my youngest son, he was playing a match and then we arrived there and then the coach came over and he said like, well, the referee who was supposed to be here has not shown up. So can you just refereed this match for me? I was like, oh my God. I mean, I don't have any of the clothes on, I don't have whistle. I don't, I didn't have anything because I was not going, I was just going to be spectator.
Jesper (4m 2s):
Right. But, but then of course, I mean, they, they don't have a referee and I was just standing there. So I said, okay, fine. But I don't have any of my things with me. So I'll have to shout instead of blowing the whistle and so on, because that's what you're going to get then. And, and we did then, but that why I'm mentioning it because I was really surprised because these are a 13 year old kits. Yeah. Right. And I'm a bit surprised about how their behavior, you know, that, that they can talk the way they do to adults.
Autumn (4m 40s):
Really.
Jesper (4m 41s):
Yeah. Because I don't get, I mean, they, the away team there, they were the players that their 13 year old kids. Right. But they were complaining a lot, like all the time, like, well they've, they felt like the free kick was the wrong way or to the wrong team, or it shouldn't have been a free kick and, or the throw in wasn't in the other direction, in their point of view. And it was just all kinds of things. They complained all the time. And then the one point, like during the second half, I, I started getting a bit annoyed by it. Right. So I, one of the guys, one of the kids then complained again. And I just said to him, like, be quiet and concentrate on playing soccer instead.
Jesper (5m 24s):
And then another teammate of his who was also walking by, he then said, well, we can't concentrate with your round. It took me a bit back. What did these are 13 year old kids talking like that to adults. What's going on? That
Autumn (5m 39s):
That's crazy. That's quite a backtalk man. Yeah.
Jesper (5m 43s):
But I didn't do that when I was 13 years old, no, to an adult? I mean, what's going on?
Autumn (5m 50s):
I don't know. I didn't raise kids so I can not even imagine.
Jesper (5m 56s):
No. But do you remember when were 13 year old? You wouldn't speak like that to an adult, you didn't even know, would you?
Autumn (6m 1s):
No, I usually didn't speak. I had my nose in a book and I was just like, I prefer a silence. I am mute. So no, I would never have spoken to a, an adult with a bit of a snap, not till I was at least 16 or 18 and being snarky.
Jesper (6m 19s):
Yeah, indeed. Yeah. I don't know. I think there's something going, because, and we talked about with some of the parents as well, not, not specifically to refereeing as such, but just in general. How, how the younger generations nowadays, they, they are very like egocentric, you know, they just focus on themselves and their life and they are the ones who are important. And I don't know. It's it's, I I'm, I D I don't like that kind of attitude, I must say. No,
Autumn (6m 48s):
No, I, I respect any parent trying to raise a kid these days. It's, it's, it's a challenge with internet and so many issues. And I just Instagram for kids that they won the launch. I mean, let's just see this hideous. Absolutely. He is.
Jesper (7m 6s):
Yeah, indeed. So, yeah. But how about you? You've been busy as well. I know
Autumn (7m 14s):
I've been working on a portfolio website and, but it was also my husband's birthday. So we went for a hike it's high it's like peak fall colors. The trees are like yellow, and they're just dropping these gentle golden leaves in the sunlight. If it's sunny, this is all for artificial lighting today. It's a kind of a gray day, but other days it's been sunny. It's just, just, you know, in the seventies. So maybe a flannel weather and just absolutely stunningly gorgeous. So I cannot complain. It's, it's always a shame to have to do to computer work on such lovely days, but at least I have a nice view of the forest.
Autumn (7m 56s):
As someone pointed out, I've got a nice view behind me. So, you know, I'm not suffering too badly that way, but yeah, it definitely seems to be a very busy fall, but it was wonderful to take a day off, to go hiking. And we're actually hoping for a bit of a float trip cause he worked as a whitewater raft guide for the summer. So we're hoping to go back and do the same trip together without paying customers just to have fun. And that'll be really kind of nice to get out. So yeah, I think so.
Jesper (8m 28s):
Very cool. And you're also busy editing. I know.
Autumn (8m 31s):
Yes. Yeah. That's what I was going to say. Thank you for jogging my memory. I'm so close. I wanted October one. I wanted to be done, but between that fantasy colony, I went to and a birthday celebrations and fueled their little life hip cups. I'm so close. But then I also remember we are, one of our characters is a dwarf and we created this whole speech pattern for how they speak and was like, oh, bugger that I had tried to do it a little bit, but now I've got to go back and double check. So it's like, I have like two, three chapters from the end and also have to go back and do a quick sweep of everywhere the door speaks.
Autumn (9m 9s):
And so it'll probably be at least another week. Yeah, probably another week, but I'm living with it because it's so nice to be like seeing Scribner and you like, you're this, this long we're hitting definitely over 40 chapters, by the way, to see this huge list of Barbados so close. So that does feel very, very good knowing this is the last one, but it's still like, I feel like this is the one that every time I think. All right. I'm oh shoot. I forgot about doing that. It is the never ending story. We're so close though.
Jesper (9m 45s):
We'll get there
Narrator (9m 48s):
A week on the internet with The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast.
Jesper (9m 53s):
So after launching our new critical reading initiative, two weeks back, you can go back and listen to episode 1 47 if you missed it. But we also had to pick the next book to read and their voting already took place on Patrion and also in the Am Writing Fantasy Facebook group. So if you want to join in, you know where to go, if you want to vote in the future. And we don't know if we're going to keep this upright, I mean, this is was a new initiative we are doing and we will see how much people enjoy it or how much they, they jump on board and participate. And of course, if they don't and we will probably stop it again, at least now we, yeah, at least now we are on the second month.
Jesper (10m 39s):
So at least the second attempt, we'll, we'll just try a bit more. And the voting this time was between the sudden appearance of hope by Claire, north Jade, JTD by finale, or which marked by cl Polk. And we had a pretty clear winner.
Autumn (10m 56s):
Yes we did. I, there was no getting rid of wiggle room in this winter. So we had to go with it. I have to say.
Jesper (11m 5s):
Yeah. So it was a Jade City by Fonda Lee that we, we picked up this time around. So, and of course we already started, you know, the, it was the voting took place like a week ago or maybe over the last two weeks from the time that this episode airs. But of course we still would love you to read along. And this episode where we will analyze JTD will air on the 22nd of November. So by the time you listen to this, if you listen, when this podcast episode releases, you still have a bit of time if you haven't started reading yet. And if we need to give you a bit of incentive, we can say to Jade city is the winner of the world Fantasy award.
Jesper (11m 51s):
It was shortlisted for a Nebula awards, the Lotus award, the Aurora awards, the sunburst awards, and became best book of the month on Amazon. So you might want to check it out.
Autumn (12m 2s):
You might, and if you need more incentive, I've already started reading. I picked it up instead of reading the news, which is horrible. Anyway. So I've been reading a Jade city for my breakfast and lunch breaks and I already 30% in. And I think I only started a couple of days ago. I like it. I really kind of got sucked in. I see a few things. I'm like, well, I don't like how, you know, funded this few point of view things that I'm like, eh, but the story, I don't know, it's totally sucked me in all the characters have pulled me in. And so I'm like, okay, now I've gone from, oh, I've got to read a book.
Autumn (12m 45s):
Where am I going to find the time to, okay, I need more time to read this book. I read this. I even put aside some of my design work last night, cause I needed a mental break from it. Anyway, when you fall asleep too many nights in a row, thinking about the next thing you need to work on, I was like, okay. I took a, an evening off. I read instead and I thoroughly enjoyed it. So I have a feeling I'm going to finish this one probably before the end of the weekend.
Jesper (13m 13s):
Wow. Okay. Yeah. I, I, of course I do audio books because I don't have time to read and I read too slow to read an entire book unless I, well, I could read it in a month, but then I really have to dedicate time to it and I don't have that time. So I do the audio book. I also did that last month, but I, I started listening to it as well. I think I have listened to seven chapters by now. I think I quite like it to so far, I must say, compared to last month book as well, this one is much easier to follow. Yes. You know, there's like the storylines, it's pretty clear. I last the, the one we had last month, it was like listening to the audio books.
Jesper (13m 57s):
Sometimes I had to like rewind or whatever you would call it on the, you know, go back 30 seconds here and there to just listen to it again, because it was, it was a bit complicated. It felt like that at least in the audio book. And sometimes if I wasn't concentrating, I would, I would sort of lose the plot a bit. But, but this one is much, much easier to follow along. I think this one has,
Autumn (14m 23s):
Yeah, I really like it. I think it has a ton of characters at least named characters, but once you kind of absorb them and see which ones are the really important ones, you're like, okay, I'm good. The plots this plot straight forward, even though the point of view change. And yeah, it's just a really fun story. So I'm, I, I do like this one. I can not wait to see what other leaders like think of it as well.
Jesper (14m 46s):
Yeah, exactly. And I'm looking forward to discuss sort of the, all the, all the stuff that was done really well and what we didn't like until I did notice though, in the first seven chapters that there are, she's doing the right thing in terms of sharing world building in the sense that it's characters talking about it. But when I was listening to one of the chapters today, it did sort of rub me the wrong way to like, you know, th th the kind of conversation they were having, it was like a conversation nobody would ever have. Right. They're basically telling each other things that they all, both of them already know, but it was clearly dialogue just to get the billing across to the reader.
Jesper (15m 27s):
And that, that was not too elegant. That, that part. But otherwise, I would say so far, I really like it. Excellent.
Narrator (15m 34s):
And on to today's topic.
Jesper (15m 37s):
So here we go on another competitive list. Oh, no, I hit that one again. Yes, he did. I did that last week as well. You did.
Autumn (15m 46s):
I'm not editing this one out.
Jesper (15m 48s):
No. Now I have to live with it. There is this for listening to, is this like a loop thing you can accidentally hit when you do a sound clip? And last week I hit it and I made Autumn edit it out. But I guess this time I have to live with the fact that it played twice, But okay. Another competitive list where we will try to outdo each other with the best worst list, and you are still competitive in the body. And
Autumn (16m 18s):
That's why this is your favorite. It's not that it's a fun thing to find the worst of something. It's just, you're super competitive. And so you're like, yeah, that's amazing. And I'm like, oh, geez.
Jesper (16m 30s):
It's not that bad.
Autumn (16m 34s):
I can pick. I do at least a little bit. I am not quite as competitive as you, but I enjoy coming up with the worst ones I can find. So this one was quite fun. And if I remember correctly, I think I went first, last time. So guess who started his,
Jesper (16m 53s):
Ah, didn't you say that again? Last time as well?
Autumn (16m 57s):
Oh, no, I I'm pretty sure. I wouldn't. First listeners will have to tell me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure I went first, unless you want to flip. I was fighting. Do you want me to go? I'm ready? My list is awesome. So if you want me to put the best foot forward, I can decimate you.
Jesper (17m 21s):
I don't mind either way, but I, I will say though that it was actually quite interesting to build this list of plot twists, because I don't know. I really feel like these plot twists when, when I was sort of building the list and looking through this stuff, it's like, if you get the plus plot twist, right, you can really elevate the story into almost a masterpiece. I was about to say, but it can also like orderly destroy everything that came before it, if it's not handled well. And I think that was quite interesting.
Autumn (17m 54s):
And I thought, I thought it was interesting. I don't know if we'll need to define it if we want to define it now, but I noticed how many bad plot twists involved the deuce ex Machina, which is the term for the God in the machine, or when something completely never before seen in the entire novel shows up to save the day. And instead of being the hero and it's like almost all the ones I was finding where that was, what was happening in the readers were like, or the Watchers viewers were like, no, you just ruined the character. Went through all of this effort, everything suffered, nearly died, lost their loved ones. And then something comes out of left field and saves the day And they hate it.
Autumn (18m 38s):
So I think that's going to be my take home. Yeah. That we'll have to see if there's another take-home, but that was definitely the take home I got of this was like, do not do this in your applaud.
Jesper (18m 50s):
Yeah. I think it Dave's ex McKenna, isn't it?
Autumn (18m 53s):
Yeah. I did not take Latin. I took French, So I, that's not how it'd be pronounced in French.
Jesper (19m 2s):
Okay. Fair enough. I didn't take friends, so, and I did not take Latin. So what do I know?
Autumn (19m 9s):
You're just making it up very well. There you
Jesper (19m 10s):
Go. Calm. I'm waking up as I go.
Autumn (19m 13s):
All right. So who's starting, You decide. All right. Well then I'm going to go ahead and start fine. I'll just, I'm just going for it. We got to decide. So are you ready? My number five, which I, I, as you know, I ordered this right before we started recording. Cause I had not done that part. So this is the only one. It is a movie. It's not my only movie, but it's one of two, but it's the only one I have not read or watched. So this is out of the dark, out of the dark by David Weber. And I chose this one to include because I thought it just sounded so crazy. So this is a science fiction novel in which humans are fighting an alien invader on a human colony world that Vader's are too powerful and all seems lost when out of the blow, one of the humans turned out to be wait for it Dracula.
Autumn (20m 8s):
And he single-handedly destroyed the alien invading force by using his vampire powers.
Jesper (20m 17s):
Wait, wait a second. So, so Dracula was part of the story all along and nobody knows. And then all of a sudden he is there, or yes, he just came on on screen. All of a sudden when you needed him,
Autumn (20m 28s):
It turns out he was a character all along. And a lot of people have pointed out that it was very obvious because his name was I'll loop cut because I can't pronounce it. It's Dracula's spell backward is, was his, his name. People are like, oh, it's so obvious. You know, there's these Roman S Scholtz Scholtz soldiers. And there's this, you know, guy who is Dracula spelled backward. Obviously he was there all along, but everyone else said there was absolutely no hint that the guy, this character was a vampire. And it was just so surprising that most readers absolutely found it crazy, just totally out of left field and never saw it coming.
Autumn (21m 14s):
And it ruined the entire story up to that point. They just felt like an entirely different ending than the novel should have had it.
Jesper (21m 22s):
Right. But, and the other thing I don't understand is that he would have known all the time that he has that he's powers and you can just defeat them if he wants to. So has he just been walking around letting them take over like, well, I don't care. I'll deal with it later.
Autumn (21m 38s):
I don't either. I haven't read this one. So I, I can't speak to that, but I was sort of wondering the same thing saying, oh, he was there the whole time. Why was it ever a problem? It'd be like super bad. Like, oh, I can't use my powers. I can't use my, oh fuck.
Jesper (21m 54s):
You can't be bothered humans. You can die. I don't, I can't be bothered today. I'm too tired.
Autumn (22m 1s):
Okay. So I probably will not read this one to find out what really happened, but there you go. That was my number five that I, it just sounded so crazy. I S I always joke. It's one of the examples of like John Rose, smashing you can write anything you want as an Indian indie author. You could have vampires in space. Well, someone has vampires in space. I had to pick this one for the list.
Jesper (22m 28s):
So that, that is so weird. I don't, I'm not familiar with that book, so I don't know, but it sounds really weird. And I'm just wondering how, how the entire characterization of Dracula throughout the book, how that even works, because unless he he's like a very minor character and you almost don't see him, and then all of a sudden he walks onto the scene when you need him in the end. I mean, that even that is annoying too, but if he's part of the story throughout, then it makes even less sense to me,
Autumn (22m 58s):
Just from the little bit I read, I think he was one of the main characters. He was very important, so
Jesper (23m 3s):
I don't get it,
Autumn (23m 6s):
But there you go. Bad plot twists your turn.
Jesper (23m 9s):
Yeah. That's a, that's a pretty bad, bad product choice for sure. Dracula. Okay. Well, my online five examples on my list are movies, as I said, and I have audio clips for all of them, of course, just because I think it's fun. Not because I think you can guess all of them, but I'm going to make you try anyway, just because of like, I like tormenting, you like that.
Autumn (23m 37s):
You too. All right, let's go for it. Get the torture going.
Jesper (23m 42s):
Okay. So my number five is an example of what I earlier about the ending, destroying everything that came before it. Yes, because I actually quite liked the premise of this movie. And I also remember watching it, that it had me hooked as well. Okay. That was until the end of course. And I have a short audio clip here. So it might reveal which movie it is. This was, this is one of the ones that you might be able to guess if you at least are familiar with the movie, otherwise you can probably not get it, but maybe the listeners can, but let me play the audio clip and then you can see if you can guess it.
Jesper (24m 27s):
Okay. You ready? Yep. Let's go.
Autumn (24m 57s):
I've never watched this movie. I'm guessing it was called 23, but I have no idea.
Jesper (25m 2s):
Yeah. It's called the number 23. That's correct.
Autumn (25m 5s):
At least I guessed right. So, what's this about?
Jesper (25m 10s):
So this is a thriller with a Jim Carey where he's character gets a book called. The book is called the number 23. He gets it as a person from his wife. You could hear that in the audio clip, which she says that I'm going to get this for you. So that's a book she buys to him for him. And he starts completely obsessing about this number 23. Like he sees it everywhere and he can constantly see things that makes connections to becoming 23, adding things together becomes 23. It's just all the time, everything. And in this book that he, his wife bought him, the chapter 23 is missing as well.
Jesper (25m 53s):
So everything sounds pretty interesting so far, right? There's something going on. That's kind of fun. All right. Yeah. And it also had me pretty entertained. I actually quite liked it, but then it turns out the plot twist comes onto the stage now. And the mission chapter 23 explains that a girl was murdered and Jim character character, the main character was actually the one who did the killing. And then you learn that he wrote the book himself, but he has no memory of it because he gave himself a head injury. So he would forget the murder.
Jesper (26m 41s):
He had an injury. I mean, talk about a skilled head injury. I
Autumn (26m 44s):
Want to forget this bang.
Jesper (26m 47s):
Yeah. That, that in itself is pretty lame. But the fact is also that once that reveals come, once you get that reveal, the movie spends like half an hour trying to, you know, come up with the explanation for everything that you've seen and how it all fits together. It just keeps explaining all kinds of it's like, they're trying to justify how everything makes perfect sense. And it's just like the last half an hour. It's just a nightmare up until that point. It's actually pretty interesting. And then it gets destroyed completely.
Autumn (27m 22s):
Yeah. It sounds that way. I mean, they could have make it significant, make it someone else who did, I don't know, make it a mystery, not explain it and then have to explain everything. And just as I say, beat a dead horse, I mean, it just sounds like, okay, moving on. I don't really need to know that
Jesper (27m 43s):
It was, and it was a real shame because I, I liked the movie. And then when it gets destroyed in the end, it's a bit like, dammit,
Autumn (27m 53s):
Why couldn't they actually plot? This sounds. Yeah, you're right. Because up until that point, it's like, everything's adding up. It's like, you know, the number 42 is the meaning of life. You know, there's something important going on here with 23 and yeah, it's actually, he's a homicidal maniac that gave himself a head injury.
Jesper (28m 16s):
Yeah. And also why, I mean, I, yeah, it makes no sense.
Autumn (28m 20s):
I, is that your way of feeling regret to like bash yourself in the head? Why, why would you have written a book and then you should have brought the book and then hit yourself in the head and then there'd be no evidence you would have forgotten.
Jesper (28m 34s):
And why would you walk into a store and find your own book? And your wife accidentally buys it to you for you? It's like, okay. Yeah. That's a coincidence. Yeah. I
Autumn (28m 45s):
And name. Yeah. There you go. Oh, well,
Jesper (28m 51s):
Yeah. Okay. All right. But that's my number five. It was not Dracula, but I still feel like it was pretty shitty,
Autumn (28m 57s):
So, so pretty bad. I will not strike that one from my watch list. All right. So my number four and I was, I think I mentioned said my number five out of the dark was a movie. I was wrong. Sorry. That one was actually a book, but my number four is a movie. I don't know if you've seen this one, but it's a superhero movie. So you'll probably have it. It's not superhero. Movies are not your favorite, but as Hancock. And that actually starts will Smith. Yeah. So, yeah. So if it's the one
Jesper (29m 29s):
Where he, he can fly or something, right?
Autumn (29m 32s):
Yes, yes. And it sort of starts out the same way he wakes up in the hospital. He has no memory of who he was, but he's has these amazing powers. So he becomes a superhero, but this woman that, you know, he's interested in, but it's like, whenever they're together, she's the villain. She is the arch villain in the story. But then, you know, it starts like, you know, it sounds like this beginning of a superhero story, like this is the B the Genesis of a superhero and there's this evil villain. It's perfect. But that's the twist. The twist is with like no setup, nothing. It's just suddenly revealed that they're both gods and the previous it's just there.
Autumn (30m 14s):
And she's not really a villain. She's more like his kryptonite. And if they're at the same place at the same time, bad stuff happens. But truly they love each other. And there used to be two other gods and they basically annihilated each other because of the same thing. They loved each other, but they can't be together because if they're together, they destroy things, things just blow up around them. And as most people who watched the movie have said that, it just feels like you're watching a superhero movie. And then there's this switch. Like someone else wrote the completely different movie ending. And now they're instead of superheroes they're gods and he's got his memory back and they're basically trying to come up with some resolution where they both get halves of the planet. So they don't cross paths.
Autumn (30m 57s):
I'm not explaining it as well as it's confusing as it is, but it goes from superhero movie to God movie, God, and God.
Jesper (31m 5s):
Yeah. You lost me a bit there halfway. I think it was complicated enough that even the explanation confused me
Autumn (31m 12s):
And that's just, it, it feels like it could have been you to stick to the superhero, just stick to superheroes. You wouldn't need to suddenly say that the superheroes are really gone well. Yeah. That's, that's fine. You know, whatever all the way through I have. And at the time I didn't really notice it. I'm like, okay, that's just a weird twist. And now it doesn't surprise me that, you know, will Smith tends to get movies where it's, it doesn't surprise me where the villain is actually not a villain. It's just a misunderstood character. That's very will Smith. So that doesn't surprise me so much, but it was kind of like will Smith on my list. Oh, that's too funny. I wonder if it's, there was a one I almost selected that I would call a rum runner up for this list.
Autumn (31m 53s):
So I'll have to see if it's the one you chose be interesting. But yeah, I, it was one of those ones where it was a perfectly good superhero, fun movie. Why, why, what happened to him that he lost his memory? Who is this other character? Who's sort of not even a huge character for awhile, but as the villain ish one and what what's going on. And then to find out, you know, boom is just like drop reveal. Oh, you're both gods. Oh, this is what's really going on. Oh, here's your memory back? Oh, there's these friends that you've lost a long time ago and boom. It's just like, well, we're at a totally different movie now.
Autumn (32m 34s):
Thank you.
Jesper (32m 34s):
Right. Because it's the same, same thing with, with the number 23. Like it's pretty good. And then all of a sudden it a detour and it's just like what happened happened. Yeah. You're just, you feel like you got, they lost the essence of what they were, the whole plot was up until that point. And you're like, I don't, it wasn't a twist so much as a different story. Yeah. Okay. That's a, it's a completely different story than my number five, but I feel like the, the conclusion of it is exactly the same, you know, it's, it's, it's about a good story. That just goes bad. Yes. That's exactly what it is. Yeah. All right. So what's your number four. Okay. I have a number four now and I'm actually not so sure you can guess which movie this is from the audio clip the fans out there of this stuff.
Jesper (33m 23s):
They will probably know instantly, but I think I would not be able to guess it. I think so. I'll help you at least by saying that it's a Christopher Nolan movie. Okay. Okay. Okay. So I already for the audio clip. Yeah. Let me go get my phone so I can Google it, then I'll go ahead. Okay. Here it comes.
Jesper (34m 12s):
So don't worry about what they're saying, but the voices might give it away what it is, you know, the way that he speaks.
Autumn (34m 18s):
I would say based on the way he speaks, Batman, but I also say that is almost the exact level of decibels that I am deaf in for my left my right ear. So I was like, I don't hear you, but I'm guessing that the deep gravelly voice that is spoken slowly.
Jesper (34m 35s):
It is definitely Batman.
Autumn (34m 38s):
Okay. Yes. That's pretty good. That's two out of two now.
Jesper (34m 40s):
That's pretty good. You're on a roll now. I think, first of all, I have to say that in general, I really like Christopher Nolan's movies and it's not that this one is bad either, to be honest, this is the dark Knight rises. Okay. And it's, it's actually okay. And you know, I don't, I don't generally like super hero movies, like you said, but this one is not too bad, actually. Okay. But why I have it on my list anyway, is because of the actual scene where this audio clip is from. So in the dark, not the dark Knight rises. Jesus. That was difficult to say, Batman is fighting bane.
Jesper (35m 22s):
You know, that's the guy with that mask on and it looks pretty cool. Yeah. And they are fighting each other for like two hours when we get to this scene. Wow. And yeah. And all the way through, up until this point, Bina, he's like a really formidable villain. No, he he's like really good at what he does of being a villain. And he really challenged us Batman. And then they put in this twist in this scene. So just by the end of the audio clip, you could hurt, you could hear a woman talking. Yeah. And that was a Miranda tape as she used to, like Batman's love interest. And then in this scene, it is revealed all of a sudden, you know, like Batman has final defeated pain.
Jesper (36m 8s):
He has him like on the ground. I got you finally, like after two hours right off movie, you finally got the upper hand. And then behind him is this, he's a love interest, Miranda, Tate. And then she stops him with a knife. She stops Batman. And you're like, what? And then it turns out, well, she's actually the true villain. And she was the one all along who wanted to destroy Gotham city with a nuclear bomb. It was not Bain at all. And the Bain is basically sort of reduced to this like, well, simple puppy who was just like carrying out the orders of his master, because he's so much in love with her as well.
Jesper (36m 52s):
I mean, it's, it's just, it's such a shame because I really feel like just the mask that Bain wears, right. That the way he speaks you, you, well, you couldn't hear it, but at least I could hear his voice, but he's really cool. Dean is really cool. And he's a really, really good villain. And then because of this scene, you reduce him to dislike petty criminal. Who's just following somebody else who, a mastermind who wants him to do this and that. And, and then this lady, she kills pain, like really, really easily in the scene. And then this just it, and then Bain is done. And it's like, why do I want two hours of Batman fighting this guy? Like the best villain that he's ever fought.
Jesper (37m 32s):
And then he's just like this Hensman basically,
Autumn (37m 38s):
It'd be one thing. If, I mean, at least he should have some charisma of his own, you know, be a good, he could still be an amazing, massive villain and she could be in on it, but she doesn't have to be the one pulling his strings that does seem to reduce who this character from. Totally awesome to. Well, that was,
Jesper (37m 59s):
Yeah, it's doing such a disservice to the character and all the characterization you've been building so far, because I really think that Bain is very iconic. He's a really cool villain until this point, if this stuff had happened happened, he would have been amazing. It's just like, ah, it feels like just because we need a plot twist, we need something exciting. Okay. Let's make a, this woman that Batman thought he was a loving that she was a love interest of his let's. Let's let, let's make her the villain and Tara, all of a sudden there's a new will. And in the end of the movie, it's just like, oh my God, I know. I really hated.
Autumn (38m 37s):
I don't, especially a two hour, it'd be one thing. If it was like, you know, 45 minutes, the end of a TV episode, you're like sucked. But two hours in a theater to get to like that kind of a twist, I would have been throwing popcorn at the screen and walking out thinking I just wasted two hours of my life. I could've been like kayaking or something. Exactly. Oh yeah. Okay. Well, I agree that once I I'm glad I never watched dark Knight rises. I never got around to it. I don't think I will anymore. No. Next time. Yeah. Next time I break my leg and I'm tied up in hospital for like months at an and or something.
Autumn (39m 20s):
I'll consider it until then. Yeah. No, I'm good. No. All right. All right. Good. You're number three then number three. So this one is my last movie and it was one when I watched it, I was like, oh, this is just horrible. So the producer shouldn't surprise you because he has he, after his first couple of movies, he made some flops. So the director is M night Shyamalan. I have him on Melissa as well. Well, you have to see which one he's got a couple of bad ones. I selected signs. Is that the one you picked or do you got a different one?
Autumn (40m 1s):
It might be. Yes. So this is the alien one where it was a good premise. You know, there's this, there was some good scenes, cornfields, everyone. I grew up in the countryside. My neighbors were Amish. I grew up in cornfields. So I do not find them frightening at all at dark. But for some reason, most of the human population thinks massive cornfields are terrifying at night. They think the woods are terrifying at night. I live in the woods too. So I'm just weird. But I, so there's these things happening. It's a, he's a widower. He's got his daughter and there's this threatening music and weird things happening. And you realize this is this alien invasion and it's sort of tense and terrifying.
Autumn (40m 45s):
And you're wondering how it's going to go actually pretty good up until that point until you find out, until you find out what defeats the aliens is, water, what is what 90% of this planet is made out of. If you're an alien species that can design faster than light ships, which you attack an alien world, that 90% of it is toxic to you. And then don't even bother throwing in the premonition of the little girl, leaving water glasses all over the house because she just subconsciously knows that her dad will need them to fight the aliens. And then they tie in his wife's dying words that are somehow our premonitions also for what was going to happen.
Autumn (41m 32s):
I'm just, I'm not, I just couldn't buy it. I mean, really, if you're an intelligent alien raised, you're not going to go. You would at least come in a stupid, a suit that could protect you from the thing that's going to kill you. You can design spaceships. Oh, it was just horrible. I just water. You're allergic to water. Yeah. Great.
Jesper (41m 54s):
I fully agree. It was number two on my list because I just hated so much.
Autumn (41m 59s):
So I took all your number two.
Jesper (42m 2s):
You know what I mean? Exactly. Because of what you say, you know, if you, if you know the water is going to kill you and you're like an highly intelligent alien race, number one, either, like you say, you would wear some protection on number two. Why don't you just pick another planet? Some something that wouldn't kill you. There's kind of, I mean, it makes no sense
Autumn (42m 22s):
Go to Mars.
Jesper (42m 23s):
Why do you even want it? Why do you even want invade a planet that kills you? It makes no sense.
Autumn (42m 31s):
I mean, yeah. I, I, we're only trying to go to Mars, which would kill us. I mean, we're not allergic to anything there, but it has no atmosphere, but we're trying to go there because it's like the only other place we have to go, we don't have spaceships. That'll take us across the, you know, solar system. But yeah, I'm pretty sure there's other places we'd go. It's like, we wouldn't choose, oh, look, there's this planet. 90% of it is composed compost of acidic acid. That's going to totally boil our skin. Let's go there. Yeah. That's a great vacation.
Jesper (43m 1s):
Yeah. And then we will be like, oh look, there are some people living dead. Let's invade. Then we need to conquer this planet. That will kill us. That's an excellent idea. Oh my God. Yeah. I really hated. Yeah.
Autumn (43m 15s):
Ah, wonderful. I think that was the first one I watched where I was like, I don't like a nighttime alone anymore. I like the village. I like sixth sense. There was the one with the, yeah. The one with the brittle bones disease that he ended up making into a trilogy. That one wasn't bad. Now I can't even think of the name of it, but
Jesper (43m 37s):
Mr. Glass or something
Autumn (43m 38s):
That would, I kind, that was not bad. But by the time I got to signs and like, oh, this is horrible.
Jesper (43m 47s):
I actually had a, an audio clip for it. Do you want to hear, Okay, here you go.
Autumn (44m 11s):
You did my homework.
Jesper (44m 12s):
Yeah. So that was also on my list. I absolutely agree. I hate that Twists that they put in there. That's ridiculous. And also because they just very easily defeat stadiums, then Indiana not like, oh, okay. They can't take water then boom, boom, boom. Then they are defeated. It's like
Autumn (44m 30s):
The irrigation system.
Jesper (44m 30s):
Why do we spend all this time building up to it? Then if you can just kill them off that easily, it makes no sense. Right? Waste of time,
Autumn (44m 39s):
The brain will kill them. As I think one of the commenters, it was one of the famous founders. Like, you know, this guy, the lead character is a former priests. There's all this kind of premonitions and godliness. Well, you know what? God could have just made it rain and no problem. So yeah, it was a bad Plot, such a bad flood. Okay. You're a number three.
Jesper (45m 5s):
You can, you can, yeah, you can get my number three here. And I think you might be able to get, guess what this one is because the dialogue in this audio clip is sort of pretty iconic, but I can give you another hint that this is the one that I mentioned. I had one on my list with will Smith. And this is, this is the one you ready.
Jesper (45m 49s):
You know what that is, right?
Autumn (45m 50s):
Oh yeah, that is, I am legend. And that was my runner up for the list. So that is awesome.
Jesper (45m 57s):
Cool. It's funny that we have the same thing that annoyed us. That's pretty cool.
Autumn (46m 1s):
I guess I like this. I love this movie up until.
Jesper (46m 7s):
Yeah. So in summary, I think most people probably know it, but just summary, 90% of the people's population is killed by a man-made virus designed to cure cancer and then it sort of mutates and then it starts killing everybody. And as a result, you get these, Somby kind of like creatures, which they are quite terrifying. And, and, and it's actually a pretty cool the first half of the movie that that's pretty cool, very dramatic and will Smith character. He is, he's like this brilliant scientist, who's working on finding a cure or vaccine or whatever you want to call it. And he's alone in New York city and is basically just sort of surviving and working. That's all he does.
Jesper (46m 47s):
And up until this point of the movie, the movie is pretty cool. I really, really liked it. And then he comes across to humans who are actually immune to the virus. So, and this, of course for him as a scientist, this is good news because then maybe he found the holy grail and now he can cure the disease. And it just so happens that when he then brings these people back to his house, this also leads to those kinds of some, be creatures to find his house, which he has like worked for years and years and years to make sure that they would never find him. And now they do and how she's under attack and all that is also fine. But then the twist comes now.
Jesper (47m 29s):
So because of these two people who are immune, he actually manages to find a cure, but then the houses overrun by these some B kind of creatures. And then he decides to help these two people escape down a cold shoot while he himself decides to stay behind and pull the pin of a grenade and blow himself up, taking all the Sunbury creatures with him. And then you might be wondering, well, why is that so bad? That's pretty heroic. Yeah. But not if I tell you that he could easily just jump down to shoot himself. There was absolutely no reason for him to blow himself up. And the other part is that
Autumn (48m 9s):
Jumped down the coal chute. Yeah.
Jesper (48m 10s):
He could. And the other thing is that if you just find a cure and he gives it to these two people who are like, they're not scientists, they have no idea. And then he just sends them off. Like, how does he even know if he wants to cure mankind? How does he even know that they know what to do with that cure? Or will they even be able to find people who know what to do with it? He doesn't know. So it's just like the whole thing. It's like what? So years and years and years to find the cue and then he just blows himself up because of two random people.
Autumn (48m 42s):
But he wasn't, even though no, I remember saying that at the end, when they're approaching, like they find a as another little town, that's like got a wooden fence. And I'm like, yeah, that looks like it has a top secret, you know, lab Labrador, the moratory where they're going to know what to do to create, you know, spread this cure to other people. And so that's part of the reason it almost made into my list. But then what I didn't know is that the book, this is based on has a different ending it's and the movie completely changes the whole meaning of the book where the book, the, the vampire zombie, like creatures actually have found their own cure.
Autumn (49m 22s):
And they're not evil. They're basically a better race that it's going to just like we transplanted the new young Neanderthals. They were going to take over the human and humans are a legend. We're becoming something archaic from the past. And we're just fighting for our own last survival. But really, we just need to give up the ghost because we've created something that's better and stronger and more intelligent. And I mean, they have a whole culture, but so that's, doesn't show up in the movie. And I was like, no, they took the book and they completely changed the Authors meeting. Wow. So, yeah, there's a fair.
Jesper (49m 58s):
And what you just mentioned about the book, that's what makes it cool because then it's, there is an irony in the fact as well that he's been working years and years and years to find a cure for something that isn't about being cured. It's not about being cured, but he doesn't understand that. I know that that's what makes it pretty cool to me. I think the book ending that's cool. But yeah, I D I don't know what the heck they were doing when they made this movie. It's just like, it's so stupid to screw it up like that. Yeah.
Autumn (50m 29s):
I, they completely changed the character of the will plays. They changed the meaning of the story. They obviously did not understand how difficult sciences, other than it took him years to come up with this cure. And then he doesn't even know if they're going to be able to hand it over to someone who's surviving, who knows how to replicate it.
Jesper (50m 49s):
It's not like you just put it in like some chicken soup and you're good. Oh, that movie. Yeah. It that's why it was all I was trying to divide between Hancock and that one. And I'm just so glad you came up with iron legends. So I got to have both of them on the list. Oh, cool. Okay. Well, you already took my number too, so I guess you need to do two in a row. Now. I only have my one number one,
Autumn (51m 15s):
Right? Well, maybe I can grab one of your other ones. So my number two were, well, all of the rest of mine are books. So I know they're not going to be the same as yours. So this is actually mocking Jay from the final book in the hunger games series. And that is because, so this is the end where, you know, the whole story, three books, three movies lead up to the moment where Katniss is sent to, you know, take out snow and everything that's going on. And what happens. She actually gets knocked out towards the end of the movie and wakes up to find out the war is over. So it basically invalidates the entire book where she is.
Autumn (51m 58s):
She accomplishes nothing. And so she spends all of mocking Jay on her super secret mission to reach the Capitol and kill snow. And ultimately, and all these people die to help her get there. And ultimately she contributes nothing. The problem solved totally without her. And she made as well as stayed home. And what's pissed me off almost more than that, because I had already given up on her as a character. She never really resonated with me. She was too wishy washy, but her sister, a little sister prim, who just wanted to do something important. She trained as a nurse basically to go and help the soldiers who were fighting the battle. And she ends up getting killed.
Autumn (52m 39s):
And what ends up being a faked attack by the Capitol? It was actually the other side making it look like it was the Capitol. She dies as basically friendly fire, sort of, they kill out a whole bunch of people. It was so unnecessary and pointless. I was just frothing at the mouth. I was so furious. So that's why I made it to number two. It was just her Katniss herself. I've always said she, she has a flat character arc the entire trilogy. She never changes. She never does anything. She never grows into her role or takes control of her own life all the way down to getting knocked unconscious and everything happening without her.
Autumn (53m 20s):
And she's just the most pointless character. And you're really hope that, you know, book three, the third movie, that something exciting would have happened. And it doesn't, I still don't like her. I
Jesper (53m 35s):
Didn't read those books.
Autumn (53m 36s):
Yeah. It was just not worth it, not worth it. So I will stop beating it there. But yeah, it just was a pointless, it has such potential. It was so interesting. And I really was hoping that by the end of the book, she would be like, I'm, bad-ass, I'm going to go and stomp somebody. And it really just never resonated. It never grew into that. She never becomes really a hero in, she sort of stays as a propped up figure. And it's just whatever.
Jesper (54m 7s):
Yeah, because in the movies, I don't, I don't think that that's the case. I mean, in the movie she takes initiatives and she drives the plot forward. And so on. I don't, at least I don't recall it being such an issue in the movies.
Autumn (54m 20s):
I feel every once in a while she would pop up with something good, but she was always, it was never an upper word arc. She was always never fulfilling her true potential. She never reached it and it's just disappointing. It was very disappointing. All right. And so we're going to skip right ahead since we did your number two to my number one of WORST Plot Twists. And I think this one, it'll be interesting to see, cause this was a movie, but I always look at it from the book side, but it's actually Harry Potter and the chamber of secrets.
Jesper (54m 56s):
I would have to say, now I have not read any Harry Potter books and I'm not what's any Harry Potter movies. So I don't really know.
Autumn (55m 3s):
Okay, so this is not yours. So this is the one where Harry is at the end of book one. So he enters the legendary chamber of secrets and Harry finds them face to face with Tom riddle, the younger version of the evil wizard, Voldemort and Ray riddle sends in a ballot. Basilisk I can't pronounce that, which is an enormous Fang snake after him. And it's chasing after Harry and things seem, yeah, snake giant snake. This is not a snake. Well, that's what it is in the movie. We're not going to question what JK Rowling's uses for her creatures.
Jesper (55m 36s):
So, okay. So let me, sorry.
Autumn (55m 40s):
So things are looking really bad for Harry. He's very young. Yestermorrow this is the first year he's at Hogwarts and then suddenly a magical Phoenix flies into the chamber dropping the sorting hat in front of Harry, which happens to hold the sort of Griffin door. So he uses that to kill the basle Lisk. And the Fenix is tears even heal Harry's wounds. And professor Dumbledore later reveals that Harry's loyalty caused the Phoenix to fly to him. But really, I mean, up until this point, there's no mention of a Phoenix it's just and brings the sorting hat.
Autumn (56m 20s):
It brings the sword that Harry couldn't rim thing to bring himself. It's just comes out of nowhere. If that hadn't happened, Harry would have died. Book one, there goes the rest of the series.
Jesper (56m 33s):
There's Deus Ex Machina. Again,
Autumn (56m 34s):
It's such to me, it's one of the worst examples. It's like the whole book wasn't plotted and JK Rowling's realized she wrote written herself into a really bad spot instead of fixing what came earlier. She just thrown a Phoenix with a who brought the sorting hat that was holding the sword. Why would the sorting happy holding the sword?
Jesper (56m 53s):
Why is, I mean, considering how popular Harry Potter is, why is more people not complaining about this? Or maybe they are just noticed it
Autumn (57m 0s):
Maybe. And I just, even the fact is Harry Potter know how to use a sword. He can see, you know, how to use one. I just it's so ridiculous that, you know, it would've been better with the Phoenix had caused the bass list to blow up in flames. At least I could have said, well, that made no sense, but at least a Phoenix knows how to you know, like night something. So,
Jesper (57m 22s):
I mean, short fighting is not something you just do. Right? I mean, you have to train pretty well to do that, especially fighting a monster.
Autumn (57m 31s):
Oh exactly. I'm fighting something that's already, you know, poisoned you in a cut you in you're already in bad shape, but just because you got a magic sword, you're good to go.
Jesper (57m 42s):
Oh, okay. That's convenient. Isn't
Autumn (57m 46s):
It just,
Jesper (57m 49s):
Okay. Yeah. All right. Yeah. I feel like I can, because this one is not Dave's X McKenna. This is just like screwing with your audience completely OTs. And it's, it's really bad in my view, but I have to admit that I really struggled with finding number one, my one number one entry, because I had to find something that was worse than everything else. And I had to do sort of, I did a lot of research on the internet just to see if I could, if it would jog my memory on something. And then I did find, find something that I actually had completely forgotten about. Oh, but this show that I'm gonna talk about. It's not a movie, it's a TV show, but it is one of my all time childhood favorites.
Jesper (58m 39s):
I absolutely loved this TV show and I'll play the theme song song in just a second. And I promise you, you will know exactly what it is. Oh, that'll be exciting. But the, the show took the world by storm and anyone growing up in the nineties, they will know what this is. Okay. So I ready for your son clip.
Jesper (59m 21s):
Yes. Okay. Here you go.
Autumn (59m 23s):
So the X-Files it's going to be the first Twilight zone. I'm like, no, no. That's a different theme song. So yes,
Jesper (59m 32s):
I guess all of your clips. I think, I feel like I wait, that's a bit, that's a bit of cheating because you didn't even have some place that I could guess. So I just lose automatically because you guessed. Right. And I didn't even have a chance to compete. Well, there
Autumn (59m 50s):
You go. Ah, I like this rule. I like this game. I
Jesper (59m 56s):
Think that's a crappy rule.
Autumn (59m 58s):
This is like playing dune. Every player has their own strategy to win. I know what my showed is. You have to figure out yours.
Jesper (1h 0m 6s):
Oh my God. Okay. Well, first of all, I want to say again that I love the show, however, and this is why it made it to number one on my list, because do you know like that feeling of your favorite show? Just being ruined completely. Maybe not completely, but they, they throw in some, some span into the wheel that just like what the heck is going on here. And it felt like it was just because the show creators, they had to do something to try to, I guess, spice things up a bit or something. But I had forgotten about this. Probably suppressed it to be honest, but what I found in doing my internet research, it came back to me.
Jesper (1h 0m 50s):
So let me just explain. So in season 11, in the very first episode, we learned that you remember the wrist is a mysterious secret smoking man, who is part of the series. He's really weird and you don't really know what he's, what's going on with him. But then in season 11, we all of a sudden learn. In the very first episode, we learned that he actually impregnated Scali using some sort of alien science with the aim to create like the first superhuman child. And we get a flashback to season seven where Scully accused the cigarette smoking man of dragging her.
Jesper (1h 1m 30s):
And it then becomes apparent that Scalia's son is in fact not molded after all then. So, you know, doing something like this, like four seasons later, it is just such a betrayal to the audience. You know, you for four seasons, you have believed that these two characters has have, they have a son together. They finally got together after all that time, you know where, or there was all this tension between them like romantic tension and so on and so on, they get a child and then four season later you'd just drop a bomb to say, well, actually it's not his child. Anyway. I mean, I liked plot twists. Don't get me wrong. And I can probably even stomach more plot twists than most people, because it does take quite a lot bef before I, it stops annoying me, but this one, it was just like, I really felt like a completely destroyed everything.
Jesper (1h 2m 22s):
I thought about these characters. And it came also completely out of the blue, like, like the created just that, what can we do to spice things up? Oh, let's throw this stuff in here just to create some drama for the sake of drama.
Autumn (1h 2m 35s):
Yeah. It's I don't know if they changed writers or what was going on, but I agree. I mean, they betrayed everything that the core essence of what you thought was sort of between these two characters and then it was just like, Nope, Nope, Nope. They're not a happy family. Sorry. Yeah, he don't do that.
Jesper (1h 2m 55s):
Not okay. It's it's such a betrayal
Autumn (1h 2m 58s):
And it's funny. Cause you, you were mentioning that reminded me of probably one that would have made my list and it might've even been number one. And that is the ending, the Firefly, the movie that pissed me off so much because they, again, not, not a twist so much as what they did to the characters, they killed off the pilot. They make it through this amazing crash landing and this happens and that happens and he gets spirited like by a piece of debris or something, right at the laughter everything is safe. And I'm like, no, it was such, it was done just to yank at the viewer's heartstrings, especially cause he was married to the, yeah, it was just, ah, there was a lot about the movie.
Autumn (1h 3m 44s):
I wish I had never watched the movie. Anyone who's a Firefly fan. If you have not watched the movie, don't watch the movie. It ruins everything. I wish it's an exist.
Jesper (1h 3m 55s):
Yeah. I love the series though. The
Autumn (1h 3m 57s):
Series is awesome. The movie sounds good. And I can't remember all the characters well to enunciate all the ways that it sucks, but it sucks in very, very, it's cruel to several of the characters in ways that it just didn't need to be the series. That was awesome.
Jesper (1h 4m 15s):
Okay. Well you said before that the it's like playing risk and you have to make up your own rules for how to win. So I actually just brought another one here because that's my way of winning. So if I can't beat you with five bad things on the list, I'll put six on the list.
Autumn (1h 4m 31s):
I guess we're both winners this week.
Jesper (1h 4m 36s):
So just an honorable mention here because some people will have this movie on their list of the worst of the worst. And let me just play you the short audio clip and then I will explain.
Autumn (1h 5m 16s):
Okay.
Jesper (1h 5m 16s):
I actually, I only watched it like probably a month ago or something like that. But this movie is called mother and it is staring a starring Jennifer Lawrence. And I included this one as an honorable mention because I'm really, really conflicted about this movie. You know, when I first watched the movie, I was like, what's going on? You know, the, the Mo the longer you get into the movie, the more crazy everything just becomes. And it's like, everything goes into chaos and it's like, it doesn't make any sense. It's like, where's what I, I can't even explain it. It's like, you have no idea what's going on.
Jesper (1h 5m 57s):
And it just makes no sense. There's all these kinds of people who does terrible things, all of a sudden in, in her house. And it's just like, what the heck is going on. And you're completely confused all the way through the first half of the movie is just like normal mystery kind of thing. Pretty, pretty good, actually. And then the second half is just complete chaos with nothing makes sense anymore. And I won't spoil it here and say two months, because, because people might not have watched it yet. And it was not that long ago since it came on Netflix. So I don't want to spoil it. Like some of the other movies that I've mentioned today, they were all very old movies. So I want, I want, don't want to spoil it, but I just have to say, because after I watched the movie, I was like, when it ended, I was like, I have no idea what went on here.
Jesper (1h 6m 42s):
So I actually went on the internet and I then didn't start searching for some explanations about what is the meaning of this movie. And then I found the answers. And then when I read those, I must admit that then all of a sudden, I say, ah, okay, I see, you know, and maybe it's just me being thick and not seeing it, but I understood it when I read. And it was explained to me what the point was and everything that happens in that movie, even though it seems completely insane, it actually has a purpose and an explanation to it. Oh. And I'm still conflicted about it because on one end, it's, it's, it's crappy because you, you don't understand what's going on and it just feels like complete chaos. But on the other hand, once you actually read the explanation for it, then it's like, okay, I, at least I can re I can respect what they were trying to do at least.
Autumn (1h 7m 32s):
So, yeah. I mean, it's good that it had a meeting, but it does sound like it was bad. Something filming, plotting something where they, you need to go and read it on YouTube. They're going to hand out a flyer on your way to the movie theater so that you can understand what you're about to watch.
Jesper (1h 7m 47s):
Yeah. I don't know be because once you, once you read the explanations, you want to also understand why it has to be shown as very chaotic. It's completely on purpose, but yeah. People can watch the movie if you want. I just want you it's. It's crazy. And then, and then go read about what I would definitely say. Don't read about what the movie is about first, because then it'll spoil everything. What's the movie just what's it. And then read about it afterwards and then make up your own mind whether you think it's just either this, either this movie complete stroke of genius oil, it's complete madness. I don't know.
Jesper (1h 8m 30s):
It's one of the two, that's a good note to end on. That sounds like a fun twist. Yes. I think our plot twists, we both declare ourselves winners, so, Hmm. I don't know if it was the counselors winners, but also because we actually had a few that we actually agreed on. So it's true. Yeah. That's pretty. Okay. We both win. We're good. I'll say I won and then we can close it with that. Yes. You won as well as I did. That's not what I said. That's what I understood.
Jesper (1h 9m 11s):
That doesn't count. No. Alright. Well, next Monday, we have an episode with writing a vice for you. We'll discuss how to create chapters that will read us. So see you then.
Narrator (1h 9m 22s):
If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Autumn and Jesper on patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you'll get awesome rewards and keep The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.
Monday Oct 25, 2021
Monday Oct 25, 2021
Many authors have considered starting a YouTube channel. Autumn and Jesper tried for a couple of years - and failed.
It's much harder than it looks. The questions is... will YouTube videos, focused on writing, actually help with fiction sales?
The extremely successful YouTuber, Jenna Moreci, joins the Am Writing Fantasy podcast to offer advice and guidance. She knows everything there is to know about leveraging YouTube as a marketing tool for authors and writers.
Check out Jenna's books:
The Savior’s Champion: https://books2read.com/tsc/
The Savior’s Sister: https://books2read.com/tss/
Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.
SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!
Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.
Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.
Read the full transcript below.
(Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).
Narrator (1s):
You're listening to The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need an literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.
Jesper (30s):
Hello, I'm Jesper. And this is episode 148 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast, and Autumn is taking care of some editing today. And once you use a way I've secured an amazing guest speaker for you, because today I'm going to talk to the very talented Jenna Moreci so welcome to The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast. Jenna,
Jenna (51s):
Thank you so much for having me. I'm super happy to be here.
Jesper (54s):
Yeah, it's a pleasure talking to you. And I just want to say for those who might not know, Jenna is a number one best-selling author of dark fantasy, and she also runs a very successful YouTube channel. So I couldn't think of anyone better to bring onto the podcast today to talk about YouTube for Authors, Jenna. Okay.
Jenna (1m 13s):
Well thank you. I'm super honored. Yeah. I kind of fell into YouTube sort of accidentally, or maybe not accidentally, but I didn't expect it to get to this level. So yeah, I'm, I'm super down to talk about it and everything that I've learned along the way.
Jesper (1m 31s):
Yeah, because wait, well maybe for context, I could just start out by saying Autumn and NAI and even myself before I sort of teamed up with Adam, tried my luck. If you want to call it that and running a YouTube channel and my God is difficult. And then Autumn and I tried for a while as well, probably like two years. And then we transitioned into podcasting and this is going much better to this, but the YouTube stuff is difficult. So yeah, it's, it's tough getting traction unusual. So I'm very going to be very curious during this episode here to sort of get your thoughts on it and maybe some tips and tricks for people who might want to try on their own to see if they can get a YouTube channel going.
Jenna (2m 19s):
Absolutely. I mean, I've been doing this for almost a decade now, so I've been, I've been around for awhile. I've made all the mistakes and you know, that's what you got to deal with in order to become successful. You got to mess up a few times. So I, I hope I can answer all of your questions.
Jesper (2m 37s):
Yeah, probably, but I don't know. Maybe we could just start a bit more on the, you know, not low side. I don't, that's not what you call it, but slowly and maybe, maybe you can just, yeah, a bit more about yourself and maybe put a more, a few more words on, on what you just said about why you started the YouTube channel in the first place.
Jenna (2m 56s):
So I have been wanting to be, you know, author since I was six years old, it's literally my lifelong dream. And around the time I heard what a lot of people, you know, are told when they're young, that's authors don't make any money. It's not, it's not a viable career. You should try something else. And so I started off in finance. I have a degree in business with a concentration in finance and I got a job in finance. I was a stockbroker and I hated it. It was driving me crazy. I, I just, there was a moment where I realized I CA like I can't do this every day of my life. I have to at least try to become an author. Even if it's just a side gig. I just need to know that I gave it a shot.
Jenna (3m 39s):
So at that point I started writing my first book and I started trying to build a platform. I researched the industry and, and I'm really glad I got a degree in business because I learned all about the business side of things and being an entrepreneur and creating a platform. And I started like most authors do with blogging. And I had a blog for a few years. It, you know, I had about 200 followers and I hated it. I hated blogging. I mean, I liked to write, but I like to write fiction. I don't like to write about, you know, normal life stuff. So I was blogging for a while. I'm working on my book, try to figure out a way to expand my platform even more. And a lot of people had told me, you should do YouTube.
Jenna (4m 21s):
You're funny. You're sarcastic. You give really good writing advice. I was also doing critiques at the time. So people were like, you should create a Writing YouTube channel. And like most introverted Authors. I was like, no, like there's no way I am. Yeah. The only way I'm sitting in front of a camera and putting myself on the internet like that, sorry, fast forward a couple years, my then boyfriend now fiance suffered a very terrible accident. He fell two stories and broke his spine. And I had to put, you know, I quit my job. I put everything on hold to be as caregiver. And when you go through something like that, it kind of changes your perspective on life. And you know how our time here, isn't guaranteed.
Jenna (5m 3s):
And I had paused working on my book. I had paused the blog and I just thought, you know what, like as he started to get better and I started to build my platform again, I was like, you know what, I'm just going to try YouTube. Okay. Like what have I got to lose? If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. But I, you know, my, my time here is it permanent. So I got make an account and I started the YouTube channel, made a couple of crappy videos and started to get the hang of it. Yeah. I mean, that's how it always works. It always starts off with the bad videos, but I started getting the hang of it and I started off trying to be very professional and like, you know, like, you know, oh, I'm a dignified writer and that's just not really my style.
Jenna (5m 46s):
And no one was watching the channel. And so finally I said, you know what? No one's watching anyway. So I'm just going to be myself and I'm going to be goofy and I'm going to be custody. I'm just going to be my normal personality. And literally the very next video, my channel skyrocketed, I went from a hundred subscribers to nine to 9,000 subscribers in a week. And, and the rest is history. Now I'm at 260,000 subscribers. I really did not expect to be in this place. But yeah. And because of YouTube, I was able to make Writing and YouTube my full-time career. And I'm doing a whole lot better at this than I was as a stockbroker financially. I'm making triple what I made as a stockbroker.
Jenna (6m 27s):
So it all worked out.
Jesper (6m 29s):
All right. Yes. Do you think actually considering that it was quite some time ago since you started out, do you think there's a difference in starting, you know, running a YouTube channel today versus back when you did it, do you think, has that sort of, is it more saturated market had more difficult now? How do you see that?
Jenna (6m 51s):
Absolutely. I really got in at the perfect time when I started my channel, I looked for other writers on YouTube and I could only find two and their channels were very small and they were really young. And I was inspired by that because at the time I was like 28 and they were teenagers. And I was like, you know, what, if these teens have the courage to do this, that I have no, excuse, I'm a, I'm a grown woman. I have no excuse. And now after my channel kind of blew up, now, there are tons of writing channels on YouTube. So it's, I'm not going to lie. It's definitely harder to get started. Now, the key is, is to find a way to stand out and authenticity.
Jenna (7m 34s):
Like I said, I started off very professional, a very phony and I wasn't going anywhere. Right. And once I became my authentic self people, people really, you know, gravitate toward that. You know? So I think that if you want to stand out in this market, you really have to create quality content that is consistent and authentic because people want someone that they can relate to. And they feel like they actually know.
Jesper (7m 60s):
Yeah. Because I think reflecting back on the time that we spent on attempting to run a YouTube channel, I think once I reflect back to it nowadays, look, you know, couple of years since we transitioned into podcasting instead, I think I was very much focused at the point in time around probably thinking too much about how do you make a YouTube video that is engaging. And also because, you know, usually when people watch YouTube videos, at least as far as I've sort of in investigated or researched my way into, it's also about, you know, keeping people's attention in a YouTube videos.
Jesper (8m 45s):
It's very difficult. It's not like the same as a podcast here. We are talking to each other. People are probably doing the dishes while they're listening to this stuff. And you can sort of do other things, which is very nice. I podcasts a lot for this particular reason myself, but with YouTube, you're competing against them clicking onto Netflix instead of something, right.
Jenna (9m 4s):
So you really need to grab their attention. And I found that I was probably thinking, overthinking it too much about how to do that best rather the being authentic, like you're saying, but at the same time, your authenticity has to be attention grabbing, you know, I kinda like it to being on a date in the sense that when you're on. And I mean, like, I hate that analogy because dating sucks. But when you're on a date, the idea is to be yourself, but be the best version of yourself. So I'm very, I'm very honest and authentic on my channel. I talk about the fact that, you know, my fiance is disabled and has a chronic pain condition.
Jenna (9m 49s):
I talk about the fact that I have mental illness. You know, I'm not saying you should say all this stuff on a first date, but the point is real people know about my life. They know about who I am. I I'm giving them my honest, authentic personality, but you also don't want to be authentic to the point where it's like, okay, you know, this is, this is getting to be like a bummer or downer or overshare or something like that. You know, it's like being on a first date, you give them the best version of yourself. Again, I'm not saying that all the other authentic stuff I was talking about is the best version, but people appreciate the honesty, but at the same time, I'm not going to go create a video where I'm ranting because I'm having a bad day.
Jenna (10m 30s):
And I'm just like, oh my gosh, I had the worst day, I got a bad review and I did this. And you know, like I show them the sides of myself that are fun and quirky and goofy and, and people like that because they can relate to it.
Jesper (10m 45s):
Yeah. And I think for most part, people are watching YouTube because they want a bit of entertainment as well. I mean, they can certainly watch YouTube videos also to learn something, but unless it's a bit entertaining as well then. Yeah. Well, you're probably going to click on something else instead. Right.
Jenna (11m 1s):
Exactly. And, and I think that's the key is to be entertaining in your authentic way. I've seen some people because I'm, I've just, since I was a teenager, I've been a potty mouth. Like, that's just how I am my family jokes about it. My, I don't know if anyone used to watch the show Dexter, but there's a character on the show named Deborah who cusses a lot. And my nickname when I was a stockbroker was Deborah because of that, I just do what I taught. And so when I'm on my channel, you know, I'm, Kasie because that's my authentic self. Sometimes I will see other people talk to me and they'll be like, well, I'm trying to be like you, Jenna, you know, like I'm cursing and I'm doing that and I'm not getting followers. And I'm like, well, that's because you're trying to be like me. Like, I am not doing that to get the followers.
Jenna (11m 43s):
I'm doing that because that's how I talk. And in fact, they get people commenting. Like you're not being a proper lady, you know, like mad about that, but I'm just being me and people are, people can smell a phony a mile away. So it's not about emulating someone else's entertainment factor. It's about being your own kind of entertainment. There are channels that are really successful where the people are very prim and proper, but they have a cute kind of entertainment style or their sense of humor is deadpan. You know, you got to do it your way.
Jesper (12m 16s):
So would you say that some people will just struggle a lot to ever get success? You know, because I'm also, it's like, some people might want to be an actor or something. Right. But not everybody can be an actor because it's not a, it takes some, you have to have this kind of thing to be successful at it. And do you think it's the same for YouTube that you have to have some sort of, I don't know what you want to call it, but YouTube factor or something, you know, something that makes you entertaining to what your videos or the way you speak about things or whatever. Do you think everybody can do it? Or do you think it sort of requires some unspoken skill or whatever you want to go?
Jenna (12m 58s):
I think it's a little bit of both. I think you can absolutely learn to, you know, improve your craft. Its kind of like Writing. Like you can, you can learn the skill, you can improve your craft over time, but some people have a natural talent and that makes the improvement and skill like learning easier. It makes that aspect of it easier. And there are some people who really, really struggle with a certain thing. Like, like for example, I'm terrible at all things athletic. Like I have no coordination. I can't even, I can't even shoot the aliens on the buzz light year ride at Disneyland. Like I have no hand-eye coordination and I could practice as much as I want and I will probably still suck.
Jenna (13m 39s):
And that's just kinda how it is in a lot of activities in life. So I definitely think you can learn the skill and get better. Some people are more naturally inclined for it. Some people it's just not for them. And I think the problem is is that people don't give themselves enough time to learn where they fall in that spectrum. A lot of people will quit if the channel isn't making it after a month, it took me six months to get from a hundred subscribers to 9,000 subscribers. It took me six months to, to experience that leap. And now I'm at 260,000 subscribers. So you got to give yourself the time, but you also need to know when it's like, okay, this just does it for me. You know, I know people who've had their channels for years almost as long as me and they have, you know, less than a thousand subscribers.
Jenna (14m 25s):
It's like, okay, well maybe, maybe this isn't really, you know, your forte and there's nothing wrong with that. You, you know, we, failure is a part of success. You know, it's a part of learning what you're good at, where your strengths are, where your passion is. And quite often, if, if you're not good at something, a lot of times it comes to the passion element of it. Maybe your passion is, you know, better spent elsewhere. And so sometimes you just got to something a shot and realize if it's for you or not, but you got give yourself the time to figure it out.
Jesper (14m 57s):
Yeah. But I, I think actually that is an excellent, good point because you know, looking at our, our, you know, myON Autumn's YouTube channel, it's probably been there for like five, six years. There's 2000 subscribers on it. Most videos don't get many views because well we moved into podcasting. So it was just a secondary sort of channel. It just sits there. We don't do much with it anymore other than just uploading these podcast episodes. Right. Whereas the podcasts are getting a much, much, much more and more downloads, but, and I think as well, that it's a good point because we gave it a good run probably longer than we should have to be honest, but we didn't give up right away. We, we kept at it. But at some point we also just had a Frank discussion between ourselves and sort of said, this is not going anywhere.
Jesper (15m 41s):
Is it? And it's like, no, it's not okay. Let's do something else. We did our best. But I, I, I think as well that we are enjoying the podcast much more and that probably shines through,
Jenna (15m 54s):
Well, it's like me with blogging versus YouTube. I hated blogging. And I plateaued at 200 followers. I, you know, it, it's kinda like with writing, you know, when you are passionate about the story you're telling it shines through, you can see it in the words, my blog kind of plateaued, whereas YouTube, I get to be silly. I get to be animated. You know, it, it's a more enjoyable experience for me. It's easier for me than blogging. And I think that's why I was better suited for you too. But I think that's why my channel is way more successful than my blog is because you can see that I'm enjoying it more, this feels more on brand.
Jenna (16m 35s):
It feels more Jenna, you know?
Jesper (16m 38s):
Yeah. Yeah. So if people are thinking, okay, I think I want to have a go with this stuff. I want to try to do a YouTube channel and I want to be authentic. And I I'm gonna see if I can get a bit of success with this. Just on practical terms. What would you recommend in terms of, you know, you know, they, they need a bit of a recording equipment. They need some microphone stuff, you know, all the equipment things. What would you suggest in terms of just getting started? Because you can buy yourself crazy equipment if you want it.
Jenna (17m 14s):
Right. Well, when I first got started, I just used my face time camera, my laptop, microphone and natural lighting. It's a little bit of a different environment right now. So that might be a bit risky. But what I will say is that the quality of your content matters more than the quality of the video. So if you are going to start off with any equipment at all, I would recommend it being a microphone because if your voice is Peaky or annoying, that's, what's going to make someone turn off in terms of the quality of the video, it's going to be the audio that turns someone off people can tolerate, you know, video footage that is, you know, clear, unclear, or grainy.
Jenna (17m 58s):
They can tolerate that. They can tolerate bad lighting. They can't tolerate bad audio. So if you can get yourself a decent microphone, that's the equipment I would start off with. I know people who have really large channels and they're still filming on their iPhone, the, the, the image itself. So you don't need the, the camera and the lighting yet. You can park yourself in front of a window and do natural lighting. I would recommend this for when you're just getting started when you're just figuring out if this is for you. I say this because I know people who spent thousands of dollars right off the gate only to find out that their channel is just, you know, no one likes it. They're not good at it. It's, it's not for them. So, you know, start off with a microphone and let everything else be, you know, the homemade at the beginning as you grow, that's when you want to invest in a camera and lighting and things like that, as you start to see, okay, this is a viable option for me.
Jenna (18m 55s):
Outside of that, the editing of the video is very important. It's different than podcasts with podcasts. It's conversational, you know, all that good stuff on YouTube. Time is money. People have things to do, and you know, they could be watching Netflix or Hulu. They don't have to be watching you. So edit out the ums. If you need to script your content beforehand, I script all my videos because I am a rambler. So I script them all or else they'd be like, you know, an hour long of me just repeating myself, script your videos, edit out the ums and UHS, you know, make it, get to the point, make it, you know, concise, give them the quality information or, you know, content that you are here for.
Jenna (19m 41s):
Get rid of all the long pauses. That's the most important thing to start off with and of course being authentic. So if, if you're just getting started, those are the key things that I would recommend because the, even if you're funny and you've got a great personality, if you've got all of the pauses and lagging and the stumbling over words in there, it'll totally destroy the funny it'll destroy the entertainment factor. So get yourself a good editing program. And it's great because a lot of them are free. You know, I movie comes with, you know, apple products. I, I use I movie for like 75% of my editing. And I, and I've been doing this for years. You know, you don't, you don't need to get the fancy stuff right out the gate.
Jesper (20m 22s):
No, exactly. My, my oldest son just bought a, some editing software. I think he paid like 80 bucks for it or something. And it's, it's very good. I know. So it's not even that expensive, at least that pot, the cameras can be expensive, I imagine, but at least editing software, that's not that bad.
Jenna (20m 38s):
Yeah. I, I ha I now use I movie alongside final cut pro final cut pro was pretty affordable. And I basically just use that for all the overlays and texts and little doodads that flow on the screen. But in terms of just trimming your video down and getting the sharp cuts and getting out all the crud that you don't need it and your content, something like I move, he works just fine. And I believe PC has something, another free program, but I'm not, I don't, I'm not familiar.
Jesper (21m 6s):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but then there was also things like thumbnail images, titles of the videos, keywords and that sort of thing. So do you have any good tips when it comes to those things
Jenna (21m 20s):
For thumbnails? I would recommend something eye catching, you know, funny faces always work. I usually am doing a goofy face in my thumbnails text that, you know, you know, it's gonna catch your attention. When I do my trope videos where I talk about the worst tropes. Oh, right. Something like your romance book sucks. You know, it's just like, it catches people's attention. I make a disgusted face, you know, bright colors, things like that. The title is something that a lot of people mess up and it really hurts their place in the algorithm. People are always trying to make their title stand out. You know, like the clickbait title that time has sort of passed.
Jenna (22m 4s):
And by that, I mean, you can make your title stand out without it being click baity, without it being like I'm pregnant with an alien. You know what I mean? Like be specific about what your, your video is about, because the idea is you want to get in the algorithm. You want people who are typing in, for example, if I were giving tips for writing a first draft, you want people who are, people are not typing pregnant alien baby. They are typing Well, you never know, but you want to attract the people who are typing in first draft. So put that in the title. You know what I mean? Like if you're, if you're talking about romance novels, you want people who are typing in romance novels.
Jenna (22m 48s):
So you say what your video's about. And a lot of people don't do that because they think it's not catchy enough, but it's like, it's, you know, go with the common sense title. And then as you work, you'll see that certain words perform better than others. For example, book performs better than novels. So in a lot of my titles, I will say like how to write a romance book, as opposed to how to write a romance novel. YouTube gives you all these analytics. So they make it really easy to figure out like what, you know, what you should be typing and what works. There's also free platforms that you can use that show you, you know, how keywords know perform a lot of my videos, if it has writing or writer in the title, it performs better than videos that don't have writing or writer.
Jenna (23m 32s):
People like lists, you know, 10 best, 10 worst. And so a lot of my videos have that, you know, and of course, you know, best and worst. These are these, those are sort of the click baity words, best worst. You know, it kind of creates a hierarchy. People like the idea of, Ooh, this might be juicy. There might be drama here, you know, and that, and that's where that comes into play.
Jesper (23m 55s):
Yeah. Do, do you do any research when it comes to sort of the topics of your videos? So what should you talk about next week and the week after and so on? Or, or do you just go with what you feel like talking about
Jenna (24m 7s):
A little bit of both, but mostly the former, I'd say it's 75% research and 25% of what I feel like. And by that, I mean, you know, I will, I, about every six months I go through my videos and I see how they're performing. And I look for trends. I also have a wonderful assistant who helps me with that as well. I know not everyone is starting at a place where they can have an assistant, so, right. So I've been, I've been doing this for years. I did it on my own for years. Trust me, you can do it. YouTube makes it super easy, but I go through the videos and I see which ones performed the best, which ones performed the worst. I look for trends. And then I, I, you know, sort of plan my YouTube schedule around that.
Jenna (24m 48s):
So for example, my best performing videos by far, or my trope videos, you know, the 10 worst romance tropes, the 10 best romance tropes, the 10 worst scifi tropes, et cetera, those performed the best. You don't want to make your entire channel, just that thing, because then it becomes, you know, a one trick pony. It's not, you need, you need variety. You know what I mean? So you want to offer variety. So I try to mix it up with that kind of content, along with the second and third best kind of content. And then w when I plan my videos, you know, I, I know what performs best. And then I just think, okay, of all this kind of content, what do I most feel like talking about right now? So I give, I give myself a pool of the best performers, and then it's like, what am I in the mood to discuss?
Jenna (25m 32s):
And then I will pick and choose from there every once in a while, I will do a video that isn't as well performing, but I really enjoy it. Or the diehard fans enjoy it. A perfect example of this is my unboxing videos about once every other month, I unboxed presence and books and goodies that fans send me in the mail. They are by far my lowest performing videos, but they are the favorite videos of my diehard fans. The people are all about the brand, all about the platform who really love to support me. They are constantly like, when's the next unboxing video coming out. So for me, it's fine that they're not as high performing because it makes the people who've got my back no matter what it makes them happy.
Jenna (26m 16s):
So I'm happy to deliver that content to them, but yeah,
Jesper (26m 20s):
Once in a while,
Jenna (26m 22s):
Right, exactly about once every other month. And it's fun for me. I mean, I get to basically have Christmas all the time. I enjoy it. So,
Jesper (26m 31s):
Yeah, for sure. I understand that. But there was one thing I was wondering that I, that I definitely added to my list of things that I wanted to ask you because, and I don't know if this is true or not. So this could just be my, you know, me misunderstanding the situation or miss calculating or whatever you want to call it. But I have always been wondering, because when you have all kinds of different authors often have, you know, the ones who have YouTube channels, they will mostly like you do as well. They will talk about writing more as almost, it can be fun like you do it, but, but it'll be writing advice kind of information more, I would say, mostly targeting people who are interested in writing, meaning other authors and so on.
Jesper (27m 20s):
And I've always been wondering when it comes to actually selling fiction books. If somebody wanted to start a YouTube channel and the stuff you have to talk about is writing, because that sort of makes sense. Does it actually help on selling fiction books or is it more like a different audience that you're building and therefore you're building like a business on YouTube Prada and then you have fiction sales over on the other end, or what's your experience there?
Jenna (27m 47s):
It w it can help if you do it the right way. And by that, I mean, I write dark fantasy action, adventure and romance. I write adult fiction. My channel is geared towards writers and readers in that group. By that, I mean, you know, like I mentioned before, I have a bit of a potty mouth. My books feature cursing. If you do not like a potty mouse woman, you're not going to like my books. Also, sometimes people will be like, well, you know, if you, if you talked a little bit different and you made less raunchy jokes, younger people could watch your channel. And it's like, okay, well, that's not my target audience at all fiction.
Jenna (28m 27s):
I don't write children's books. I've had people be like, can you make your videos better for second graders? And I'm like, well, seventh graders are not going to read my book about the fights or the death tournament. You know, so no I'm not doing that. You need to gear your channel toward that segment. And a bulk of my videos are about dark fantasy fantasy. They're about romance. They're about adventure fight scenes. I gear my content specifically toward what I enjoy, what I'm writing, what, and thus, obviously I'm going to attract a ton of writers, but typically if you're writing FANTASY, you like reading FANTASY. And I actually have a huge audience base of people who don't write at all.
Jenna (29m 8s):
They just think I'm funny, which I really appreciate it. And they're like, I don't write. I just think you're funny. And I like your books, you know? So I've had acquaintances in the past where they, it didn't translate well, they had a YouTube channel. It didn't translate well to their book sales because their channels brand was completely off from what, from the book they were selling, you know, like the, the channel being very professional, being very all ages friendly. And in the book they re they released as like raunchy. And you know what I mean? Like you, right. And they've attracted the wrong audience. And people are like, whoa, this is, you know, this is, this is dirty and salacious. And it's like, well, you didn't attract the right audience.
Jenna (29m 50s):
You know? So it, you have to be aware of who you want, reading your books. That's gotta be who you make your channel for. You know? So, you know, if me dropping an F bomb, bothers a person and prevents them from subscribing, that's great because they wouldn't like my books, you know, so I don't need them. I don't need them in the audience. So it's all about being very cognizant of your brand and the image that you are releasing.
Jesper (30m 16s):
Okay. Very cool. Yeah. And I said to you, before we started recording that I actually asked in our Am Writing Fantasy Facebook group, what people wanted me to ask you, Jenna. So there was quite a number of questions, but I tried to pick the ones that I sort of thought was on topic of what we're talking about here, and also would be a more general interest to more people than maybe the person asking. So, so if you're ready, I would like to just go through some of these questions with you here. I have five for you.
Jenna (30m 50s):
Okay. Go for it.
Jesper (30m 53s):
Because Anita asks, if it's worth starting a YouTube channel, if you haven't published anything yet, or is it better to wait until you're ready to launch your novel? I thought that was a good question.
Jenna (31m 5s):
Absolutely started before. If you're starting it after you're, it's like an uphill battle because the book is already out and, you know, unless you have a big platform already and you're, you're, you know, you've got good sales and things like that, but usually people are starting the YouTube channel in order to, you know, to, to get the sales in order to boost their presence. So if you've got a big platform, you can start gentle whenever you want. But if you're doing this for the sake of selling a book, definitely start the channel before one, because it takes years to build an audience. And you don't want your books sitting, collecting dust published for years.
Jenna (31m 45s):
And then finally it starts to get sales. And to, if you start the channel after, and then you direct people to the published book and it has no reviews and it's not performing, people are going to be like, oh, well, what's wrong with this book that no one's buying it. You know what I mean? So it's better to start it before that said, I'm saying like a YouTube channel in general, sometimes people, you know, I give writing advice and I also make satirical con content about writing. I started my channel before I was published and I was qualified to give writing advice because I've been in studying storytelling. At that point, I'd been studying, writing and storytelling for about 20 years.
Jenna (32m 25s):
And I had been doing giving critiques for other writers. They asked me to create the channel. I've had poetry published and things like that. You know, I, I had some, you know, you know, some, some content that made me like qualified to give the writing advice. Sometimes people hop on YouTube and give writing advice because they see that other writers are doing it. And they don't really feel like they're qualified, but they're doing it because it's, you know, what's going on. If you don't feel qualified to do something, don't do it. You can make a video about something else. You can just track your writing journey. You can talk about, you know, the, if you're going traditionally could talk about the Query process or something like that. You, you don't have to give writing advice. So if that's your concern about starting before you're published, then make your video about something else or make your channel about something else.
Jesper (33m 11s):
Yeah. And I think what you're saying that tracks very much with what Autumn. And I usually say, because we not, we don't get the question specific to YouTube, of course, but we often get the question about mailing lists. Like, do you start the mailing list before you publish the books or after you publish the books? And we also always say started we'll we'll we'll before, because that's the only way you can get enough people on that list. So you can actually sell some books once you do publish it later on. So it's never too early to begin. It's usually our moderate rare.
Jenna (33m 41s):
Yes. And people always think, well, I have nothing of value to say, and it's like, don't sell yourself. So short, of course he has something of value to say, you just have to have the confidence and you've got to figure out what your voice is and what it is that you want to say. If you have, if you have the ability to write a book, which is obviously what you're trying to do, then you have the ability to do a mailing list or a YouTube channel, you know, just got to figure out what your voice and messages.
Jesper (34m 8s):
Yeah. Okay. So let me move on to Stephanie's question, because Stephanie wanted to know how much time you actually spent on marketing, your books, working on your YouTube channel and writing new books. Like, do you split your time, like 20% marketing and 20% writing on and so on?
Jenna (34m 24s):
Oh, I've I couldn't tell you. I honestly don't know. I work about what I can say is I work about 10 to 12 hours a day. Usually it's gotten a little bit better now that I have an assistant, but it really varies. It's I wish that I could give a straight answer, but it's hard for me to track because I'm also a caregiver. My fiance suffers from a chronic pain condition, and he's in a lot of like recovery programs to try and build back a strength. So everyday for me is very flexible. Every week is completely different. So it's really hard for me to track how much time I spend doing each thing. What I can say is that I usually try to devote a week every month to YouTube.
Jenna (35m 6s):
And by that, I mean, a cumulative amount of time of scripting content for a month filming content for a month. And my assistant does the editing and then I do the little doodads bells and whistles the effects and uploading it. So that is the one thing I can say with certainty about one week out of every month is devoted to my YouTube channel. And then the rest of it is a hodgepodge of writing and marketing.
Jesper (35m 33s):
Fair enough. Fair enough. Okay. So an angel also asked a question that, but I am going to paraphrase it a bit here just to sort of boil it down and get to the point of what I think more or less she was asking, but she wanted to know how you basically built such a great following on YouTube. I think you've talked a lot about it already, and maybe there was also a part of you saying that you got in at the right time. So, but I don't know if you have anything more to add on, on, on that question.
Jenna (36m 6s):
I really think it's because people appreciate, you know, someone being themselves and being authentic because a lot of the things that I get, you know, cause obviously I'm a woman on YouTube. I get trolls, I get hate comments. A lot of the things that I get hate comments for are the reasons that people, you know, subscribe, they, you know, appreciate that. I'm a straightforward woman on the internet. They appreciate that. I'm myself. Even if it's not always those flattering version of myself, they appreciate the fact that I'm willing to dress up like a pizza or a hot dog. And my channel is if it makes people laugh, like I, you know, being yourself really goes a long way. And also one thing I didn't touch on is, you know, learn and evolve. You know, if you look at my very first videos, they are not the same as they are now, you know, I've upgraded you, you constantly have to learn, okay, how can I make this better?
Jenna (36m 53s):
How can I improve? You know, I now have professional lighting equipment. I now have, you know, professional camera and all that stuff. I I'm looking for ways to improve the effects to improve the editing, to, you know, looking for what my audience wants more of. Do they want more giveaways? Do you know, do they want more interviews? I'm I'm constantly asking my audience. Okay. What do you want me to talk about? You know, so I think that's really important too. Sometimes people get complacent and they get comfortable and then they never branch out and improve. And when you do that, you plateau.
Jesper (37m 28s):
Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. I, we still, I think we have like probably, I don't know, maybe 200 videos or something on our channel and I can promise you, I do not dare go back and watch the first one. It's horrible.
Jenna (37m 43s):
My first one is long since been deleted. It's like, but I mean like at the time it worked, you know, at the time, but like, and that's another thing is like, give yourself time to suck. You know, everyone is they're so they're so embarrassed to post their first video. They're like, it's going to suck. It's like sorted mine and look where I'm at now I've got 260,000 subscribers. Like it's going to suck for a while. You're you're just shaking off the cobwebs. It's okay. Just get into the, like, get into the flow. You're just embrace the fact that you're going to suck at first and that's fine. It's all just, yeah.
Jesper (38m 13s):
Yeah. It speaks to everything about our personal YouTube, a strategy that we didn't even, we even not even deleted those ones, the old ones they're still there. It's just there.
Jenna (38m 23s):
Well, to be fair, it took me years to delete my,
Jesper (38m 30s):
Yeah. So Rob also was asking a question because he was wondering if organic growth is a business model for YouTube, rather than paying for advertising.
Jenna (38m 41s):
I've never paid for advertising for my channel. So I'm going to say organic growth, but I'm not speaking from a place of personal experience because I've never paid for advertising. I do know other YouTubers who pay for advertising. I even, I mean, we see it all the time. Some of them have really big channels and some of them, it doesn't really look like the advertising has done a whole lot for them. I think it, it really depends on, on the strategy behind it. You know, if your ad sucks and isn't interesting or engaging people probably aren't gonna be interested, but as someone whose entire growth happened organically, then you know, I'm all for that.
Jesper (39m 22s):
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. What you just said about placing ads and stuff, this complete detour here, but it just reminded me that it was, I think a couple of weeks ago, usually when I exercise in the morning, I listen to music on YouTube. And then of course, because I'm exercising, I can't click the skip button for when the abs pops up and then this ad popped up and this guy was talking and talking, it just went on and on and on. And I was wondering, when does this commercial stop? And then I looked at my phone and it was, it said there was 45 minutes left. And I was like, what? This is an ad what's going on? You can't have an ad for 45 minutes.
Jesper (40m 1s):
Oh my God.
Jenna (40m 3s):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean like, you know, the, a lot of people, they do not do the research and I understand that writers are a creative bunch, but it's a business. This YouTube is a business. You know, selling books as a business marketing is a part of business. Do do the research. That's why I, you know, even though I ended up veering off from finance, I'm really glad I went to business school because it prepared me for self publishing my novels and starting my YouTube channel. And so do the research before you spend money on ads, make sure you're, you know, spending it wisely.
Jesper (40m 35s):
Yeah, for sure. I have one last question and this not, this one is not sort of directly related to being a YouTuber, but I thought I wanted to include it because the first part is just something that I always find interesting. But then the second part is just a bit, bit of a weird and funny questions. Yeah. I think she was just having a bit of fun, but Terry wanted to know first, how much plotting you actually do for your books and Autumn. And I have written a guide book on how to plot novels. So I'm always interesting hearing that, but, and then she added. And could you also ask Jenna if their cyborg queen would make an Alliance with a chaos potato?
Jesper (41m 15s):
I have no idea what that means. Maybe you do.
Jenna (41m 19s):
Okay. So I'll start with plotting. I do a ton applauding. Like I'm on my channel. I am like the outline queen. I'm just like everyone knows that I'm always going to give advice that upsets the pants there is. If you're a pantser, that's fine. I just, it's not for me, but I, I, I, my outlines are hefty. Like my outlines are 30 pages long. I plot everything out. I have a method with no cars and organizing for me, people say that plotting and outlining ruins the fun or excitement for me, it is the fun and excitement because it's like putting together a puzzle and it's like, how is it going to turn out? You know, like, I, I love it. I, for me, it's a very creative part of the process.
Jenna (41m 59s):
And it's one of my favorite parts. So I'm very heavily into plotting apps for the cyber queen thing. So cyber queen is, is my nickname as a delegated by my audience. My nickname in college was cyborg. And I mentioned it in a video and it blew up. And now in the cyber queen, I would, I would be open to an Alliance with a chaos potato. If the, if the terms and conditions were equal and fair, we can get into it. We just, we need to make sure we're on the same side. Okay. We, we have the same beliefs in world domination.
Jesper (42m 37s):
Yeah. And also the word chaos. There might be a bit concerning if you're looking at an Alliance, you know, with, with something chaotic. That's I don't know how trustful is that
Jenna (42m 49s):
Exactly. That's why we need to have a meeting and discuss what, how chaotic is this potato? I need to know.
Jesper (42m 57s):
Yeah. I don't even know what I was thinking. Ks potato is that maybe something Jenna said in a past video or something, because it felt so odd. Like kid, where did you get that from? I don't know.
Jenna (43m 9s):
I just imagine a chaos. Potato is like a mashed potato. That's been like splattered across a room. That's a chaos potato. Or that just might be a dead potato.
Jesper (43m 17s):
Well, maybe it's one of, maybe it's more like you open the door to the room and throw it inside and close the door. Maybe that's what you do.
Jenna (43m 26s):
But then that grease was splattered. That's a violent potato man
Jesper (43m 33s):
And people screaming and stuff like that. Well, okay. I asked him I'm at my end of my list of questions for you Janet today. And I w is there anything sort of, I should have asked you that I didn't some very good voice that we never got to?
Jenna (43m 53s):
Where can everyone buy my books? How about that?
Jesper (43m 57s):
Of course, of course.
Jenna (43m 60s):
So right now I'm in the middle of the Savior series. The first two books, the saver's champion and the Savior sister are available wide all over the place at all, major retailers, they are number one bestsellers in dark fantasy romance. The Savior Sheffield was voted one of the best books of all time by book depository, which basically was the highlight of my life. I will never get over that. So yeah, pick them up. They're great. If you like your books filled with magic and steamy swooning, us and stabby stabby die die, then there are the books for you pick them up today. Hey,
Jesper (44m 36s):
Excellent. Yeah. And if you, you, you can also send me a link to where people can pick up your books or where you want them to go to Jenna. Then I will definitely put it in the show notes so people can just click through from there. And it will also go into the description field on YouTube. If anybody's watching there and then they can go and check out your book. So feel free to send me that link. Jenna,
Jenna (44m 58s):
Thank you so much.
Jesper (45m 0s):
And thank you for coming and having a chat here and offer all your advice and expertise today. I appreciate that, Jenna.
Jenna (45m 8s):
Thank you for having me. It was so much fun.
Jesper (45m 12s):
All right. So next Monday, Autumn, we'll be back and we're going to do one of our popular and some people call them dreaded worst top 10 lists. See you then.
Narrator (45m 24s):
If you like, what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Autumn and Jesper on patrion.com/ Am. Writing Fantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast, going, stay safe out there and see you next Monday.