These are the questions that came up for me early last month when I read this New Yorker article. It discusses a copyright infringement lawsuit between two authors (also involving at least one agent and a publishing house). What it all comes down to is that both authors work in the same genre—Romantasy—and that genre is governed by tropes, conventions, and expectations. This means there’s inevitably a lot of overlap between different stories. The question is, when does overlap become more than mere coincidence, and what are potential stumbling blocks for authors (aside from possible infringement)?

It’s a fine line between following genre conventions and giving readers what they want versus repeating yourself or sounding derivative. Most genre readers want things fresh and interesting, but also familiar—“the same, but different.” In other words, when they pick up a book, they want to know what they’re getting and they want to know what to expect. Of course, they don’t want an exact repeat of something they’ve read before, but they want something that follows similar conventions and gives those conventions a new spin.

Remember: for many readers, reading books is like eating comfort food. Yes, they want stories that feel fresh and new, but they also want that familiar feeling they always get when they read other stories in the same genre.  A romance reader wants the Happily Ever After. The mystery reader wants to solve the puzzle along with the sleuth. And the thriller reader wants that urgency of the protagonist’s race against the clock. So if tropes and genre conventions are so important, but we also want to be original, how do we walk that fine line?

Voice and Reading Experience Matter

When reading the New Yorker article, one element that struck me was how the defendants emphasized the difference in voice between the two books. One author’s book is “sassy, fun, commercial, and hot” while the other’s is “raw, ruminative, [and] interior.” In other words, these two books seem to differ dramatically in terms of voice and they each offer very different reading experiences.

This is where we can make our stories unique. Tropes are like cookie cutters, producing the same shape again and again. Voice is like the icing that decorates the cookies, making each one unique. A cookie with chocolate icing will provide a very different taste experience than one with vanilla.

So too is it with voice. A book with a dreamy, sentimental voice and lush descriptions will feel nothing like an action-packed book with a crisp, satirical voice, even if they use the exact same tropes. In fact, these books will also likely attract and resonate with a different pool of readers.

If you’re wondering about how to make your story unique, hone your voice first and foremost. Not sure how to do that? This article can help you jumpstart the process.

Understand the Tropes and Genre Conventions

If you’re going to play in the genre fiction sandbox, you have to understand how your genre operates. This means reading a lot and understanding the tropes, conventions, and expectations readers have for that genre. You have to know what themes and ideas fit those conventions without letting them feel stale or overdone. To complicate things further, tropes that seem fun and familiar to some readers might feel cliche to others, so even if you walk that tightrope perfectly, you might still disappoint some people.

To understand tropes and genre conventions, you first need to know what they are. Today we’ll take a look at some tropes that come up most frequently in different genres, but before we do that, we need to talk about what a trope actually is.

What is a Trope?

According to Merriam-Webster, a trope is a “common or overused theme or device,” i.e., a cliche. I beg to differ. I think of tropes as a useful shorthand, giving us a snapshot of some aspect of a story that is far more complex within the story itself. For example, if I told you a romance novel was enemies to lovers, you instantly get the gist of what the story is about but you wouldn’t get the specifics. On the other hand, if you were to watch the film When Harry Met Sally you would see a much more complex execution of that trope. After all, the trope doesn’t come close to capturing the idea of that famous “I’ll have what she’s having” scene.

Tropes come in many different flavors, including: premise tropes, structural tropes, pacing tropes and character tropes. These tropes can be found in several different genres and can be a useful shortcut to help us quickly express a complex aspect of the story without getting into all the details. Let’s take a look at some of the different types of tropes.

Premise Tropes

These are tropes that give us an idea of what the story is about. Premise tropes are sometimes also considered subgenres. When you define a book by one of these tropes, people instantly have a sense for the overall story. In some genres, the sub-genres also operate like premise tropes, giving us a quick snapshot of what the story is going to be about. Some examples of premise tropes include:

ROMANCE: Friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, fake relationship, love triangle, forbidden love, opposites attract (sometimes called “grumpy-sunshine”), and second chance.

MYSTERY: (often considered subgenres) amateur sleuth or cozy, police procedural, hardboiled or noir, locked room, and caper.

THRILLER: (again, often considered subgenres) spy/international, legal/political, science/medical, military, psychological, paranormal, and domestic suspense.

SCI-FI / FANTASY / HORROR: outsider (fish-out-of-water), quest (including side quests!), hidden truth (i.e., a prophecy or inheritance), weird things are happening, good vs. evil, coming into power.

HISTORICAL: war or political/social conflict, current events of time period, long journey.

Structural Tropes

These are tropes that impact the actual structure of the story, or how the story is told. These tropes relate to specific moments in the story that the genre reader will expect to see. While not all stories might include all of these tropes or expected story moments, they tend to come up frequently in their respective genres.

ROMANCE: In this genre, you often have the meet-cute at the beginning and a grand gesture at the end (at the climax of the story). Many stories also include a break-up, usually around 75% of the way into the story, where the characters are forced apart for some reason. Often this break-up stems from a misunderstanding (another structural trope) where one or both of the characters misreads a situation, leading them to break up.

Another structural trope that we often see in romance is forced proximity, where the couple is forced to be together in close quarters, leading them to fall in love. This trope is especially important in stories using the enemies to lovers premise, because there needs to be a reason for these two people who dislike each other to spend time together… and later fall in love. Forced proximity allows that to happen.

MYSTERY: There are certain structural expectations specific to mystery stories. These include the discovery of the crime/body at the beginning and the moment when the solution to the crime is revealed at the end. Many mysteries also include structural elements like collecting evidence and interviewing suspects, and of course, we also have red herrings which serve to set the reader off track for a bit. Some mysteries also include a moment where the crime becomes personal for the sleuth. This is often a moment where someone the sleuth cares about becomes a suspect and it’s up to the sleuth to clear their name.

THRILLER: I once heard agent Donald Maass say that most thrillers boil down to one of two storylines: “Stop!” and “Run!” With the “Stop!” type of story, the hero is trying to stop a big bad thing from happening (a bomb from going off, an assassination from happening, a serial killer from striking again). With the “Run!” type of story, the hero is trying to get away from some sort of monster or other bad thing (think horror/slasher movies where the characters are running away from the killer). Both of these structural tropes dictate how the story will unfold and what the protagonist needs to do to save the day.

Sometimes, in thrillers or adventure stories, we also see a trope called the MacGuffin—a plot device (or object/character) that moves the plot forward but is not actually important to the story itself. An example might be the Ark in Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark, which creates a reason for the adventure to happen, but doesn’t contribute very much to the overall story.

SCI-FI / FANTASY: Perhaps the most famous structural trope of all is one we often see in science fiction and fantasy. This is the hero’s journey. Originally developed by Joseph Campbell, this trope begins with the character living in an ordinary world. They get called to adventure and eventually meet a guide who will help them on their journey. Their journey takes them through various highs and lows, finally bringing them home, changed by their experience. While the hero’s journey is by no means the only possible storyline for these genres, it is one that appears quite often.

HISTORICAL: In historical fiction, one trope that sometimes comes up is the dual timeline, where you have two different time periods that are intertwined in some way. Historical fiction also sometimes overlaps with other genres, in which case it might pull structural tropes from another genre. For example, a historical mystery might include things like the discovery of the body or the sleuth announcing the solution to the crime.

Pacing Tropes

Not all genres have pacing-related tropes. The most common occur in romance—where you have insta-love and the slow burn—and with the ticking clock in thrillers. Other genres might borrow these tropes if they have a romance subplot or a thriller component.

Character Tropes

There are certain character types that tend to come up again and again in different genres. Here are some examples (with their typical genres in parentheses):

• Unexpected Love Interest (Romance)
• Plucky Best Friend (Romance)
• Someone Incapable of Love (Romance)
• Alpha Hero (Romance)
• Wisened Mentor (Sci-Fi / Fantasy)
• Chosen One (Sci-Fi / Fantasy)
• Unexpected Hero (Sci-Fi / Fantasy)
• Source of All Evil (Fantasy)
• Reluctant Hero (Sci-Fi / Fantasy)
• Unknowing Heir to the Throne (Fantasy)
• Found Family (Sci-Fi / Fantasy)
• Monsters or Aliens (Sci-Fi / Fantasy / Horror)
• Expendable Minor Character (Sci-Fi / Fantasy / Horror)
• Hero/Sleuth with a Troubled Past (Mystery / Thriller)
• Unlikeable Victim (Mystery / Thriller)
• Bumbling Law Enforcement (Mystery / Thriller)
• Unlikely Hero/Sleuth (Mystery / Thriller as well as some Sci-Fi / Fantasy)
• Criminal Mastermind (Mystery / Thriller)
• Protagonist Ahead of Their Time (Historical)
• Historical Figures as Characters (Historical)

Using Tropes and Navigating Genre Conventions

I share these tropes and genre conventions with you, not to make you feel pigeon-holed or limited, but rather to give you ideas of elements you could include in your story. Keep in mind, stories don’t need to include all the tropes listed above (because that would be overkill!) and what helps make stories unique are the different combinations of these elements.

Remember too, that your voice is what will make your story truly stand out from all the other books using the same tropes and formulas. In the end, tropes and genre conventions are just there to guide you and give you a sense for your options. It’s up to you to make your story sparkle!

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Understanding Tropes and Genre Conventions appeared first on DIY MFA.

For the last few months, we’ve been doing three-act analyses of various books and films. Today I thought I’d do an analysis of this fantastic short story. If you’re not familiar with the three-act structure (or want a refresher on how it works), check out this article.

Spoiler Alert! Thankfully, this time around I don’t have to warn you of spoilers because the story is so short that before you read this email you can click the link at the top and read it for yourself. There is a fabulous surprise twist at the climax of the story, so if you don’t want the analysis to ruin the ending for you, read the story first.

Alright, let’s dive into our analysis of “The Story of an Hour.”

ACT 1: The first act of this story is no more than two and a half paragraphs long. It begins with a line that hooks the readers and draws us in. “Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death.” This opening line is essential to the story, as it makes the stakes very clear.

As with most stories, “The Story of an Hour” makes five promises to the reader. These promises are: character, voice, world, problem, and event. Let’s look closer.

CHARACTER: Mrs. Mallard is the main character. Notice how she doesn’t have a first name, at least not at the opening. Her entire identity is wrapped up in being her husband’s wife and she has no identity of her own. As the story progresses, we eventually learn her first name is Louise, but at the end of the story, she goes back to being “his wife.”

VOICE: The voice here is typical of stories written at this time. It’s a third person narrator, who starts off feeling rather distant and omniscient in Act 1, but the author plays with narrative distance and eventually moves closer to Mrs. Mallard’s point of view in Act 2. That closer perspective continues until we get to Act 3, where we shift back into a more distant, omniscient narrator.

WORLD: The world of this story is not very expansive. We are in Mrs. Mallard’s house and the story begins with us downstairs in a parlor or some other such room. In Act 2, Mrs. Mallard retreats upstairs to her room where she sits and contemplates. We come back downstairs in Act 3 where the climax occurs just as she has descended the stairs.

PROBLEM: This is the substance of the opening sentence. Mrs. Mallard has a heart condition, making her fragile. This means that great care must be taken to break the news of her husband’s death.

EVENT: The event that kicks off the story is that Mrs. Mallard’s husband has died in a train crash.

PIVOT POINT 1:  After receiving the news from her sister (Josephine) and a family friend (Richards), Mrs. Mallard retreats upstairs to her room and she “would have no one follow her.” As with all pivot points, this one has both an external and internal component. The external factor is the breaking of the news; Josephine and Richards tell Mrs. Mallard that her husband has died.

The internal choice is how she reacts to the news. At first, she “wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment.” The narrator makes a point of saying that she does not receive the news as many other women would “with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance.” She gives in to grief right away. Then, once she has composed herself, she chooses to go to her room alone.

ACT 2:  Most of Act 2 is Louise Mallard sitting alone in her room. Now I don’t know about you, but writing a character alone in a room is just about the most challenging thing there is. There’s no one else in the scene for the character to interact with, and they are confined to a small space so there is little room for exploring the story’s world. Yet, the bulk of Act 2—and of this entire story, in fact—is Louise Mallard alone in her room, contemplating her future.

This second act starts with some ambiance. The window in her room is open, with an armchair in front of it. She sits down and looks out the window. Even though it’s a quiet moment, there is a fair amount of activity. There is a feeling of anticipation, like something big is brewing.

She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.

As she sits alone in her room, a thought begins to materialize. She realizes that without her husband, she will have a greater degree of freedom. Even though she at first tries to fight this notion “striving to beat it back with her will,” when she finally lets go of her self-restraint she says again and again “free, free, free!” She looks ahead to her future and sees “a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely.”

The narrator makes it clear that it’s not as though Louise Mallard dislikes her husband. She would likely cry again at his funeral and she had even loved him at times in the past. But what matters to her in this moment is the realization of her future freedom. As the narrator says: “There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself.”

MIDPOINT: Interestingly enough, we can look at this story as one giant midpoint. The majority of the narrative takes place during Act 2, where Louise Mallard is up in her room. And the bulk of that second act is taken up with her coming to grips with her future freedom. The midpoint begins with the section:

There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.

Later, when she says the words “free, free, free!” under her breath, the midpoint realization comes into focus. Remember, the midpoint is a moment of self-reflection, a place in the story where the character examines their own life and asks themselves do I like what I see? Eventually, she recognizes that her husband’s death means her freedom. The pinnacle of that realization is when she whispers: “Free! Body and soul free!”

The end of Act 2 is rather interesting because we get the only piece of true dialogue in the entire story. Louise’s sister, Josephine, comes to her door and begs to be let in. There’s a nice rule of three where she says “open the door” three times. The first time she simply says “Louise, open the door!” The second time is a little more forceful, where she brings up Louise’s health: “I beg, open the door—you will make yourself ill.” Finally, the third iteration is the most forceful of all: “What are you doing, Louise? For heaven’s sake open the door.”

Of course, to all of this, Louise tells her to go away, saying she is not making herself ill. In fact, as the narrator says “she was drinking the very elixir of life.” Louise looks ahead at her life, at all the days in front of her that would be her own and the midpoint culminates with: “She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she thought with a shudder that life might be long.” In other words, now that she has her freedom before her, she wants to enjoy it for as long as possible, whereas before, when her husband was alive, she shuddered at the idea of a long life.

PIVOT POINT 2: The second pivot point is a mirror image of the first. In the first pivot point, Louise Mallard walks up the stairs to her room, now in the second pivot point, she opens the door and, together with her sister, walks back down the stairs. As she descends the staircase, she carries “herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory.” In other words, she is a very changed woman from the one who ascended the staircase at the first pivot point.

ACT 3: At this stage of the story, the point of view telescopes back out to a more omniscient, distant perspective. In Act 2, we are deeply entrenched in Louise Mallard’s thoughts, but now we are back with a more bird’s-eye-view perspective of the scene. There’s someone at the door. We find out it’s Brently Mallard, Louise’s husband, and that he had been nowhere near the scene of the train crash when it happened. Josephine screams. Richards tries to intercept Brently and Louise. All of this action happens in a single paragraph.

A note about Richards: Aside from Louise, I find Richards to be the most fascinating character in this story. In Act 1, he takes it upon himself to be the one to deliver the news, and “had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.” He seems to take a certain level of pride in his relationship to the family, and I can’t help but wonder at his motives. Is he really just a friend, or does he want to be something more now that Brently Mallard is out of the picture?

Interestingly enough, at the end of Act 3, when Brently Mallard arrives back at home, what does Richards do? He steps between Louise and Brently, trying to “screen him from the view of his wife.” Notice how that’s phrased. Is he trying to screen Brently from seeing Louise or the other way around? It’s deliberately ambiguous. The only thing that’s not ambiguous is Richards’ choice to step between them. If his motivations were open to interpretation before, they now seem a bit more clear. He tries to appear as a dutiful friend, but there’s more to his true motivations than first meets the eye.

CLIMAX: The climax of the story is fascinating because it’s the only beat that doesn’t happen on the page. Every other moment (the pivot points, midpoint, denouement) all happen within the compressed scope of the story. The climax, on the other hand, is merely implied.

At this crucial point, Louise Mallard dies. We don’t actually see her die on the page, but we know it has happened because of the final sentence: “When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease—of the joy that kills.”

The fact that Louise Mallard’s death happens off the page creates all sorts of ambiguities. Does she die from the “joy that kills” when she learned that her husband is still alive? Does she die from a sudden pang of grief at losing her freedom? Does she throw herself down the stairs in a moment of sheer desperation? We don’t know. We can infer—based on everything that has passed in Act 2—that the most likely cause of her death is her lost freedom, but we can’t be absolutely certain.

DENOUEMENT: The denouement, of course, is that final sentence when the doctors arrive on the scene. We don’t need much beyond that sentence because the story ends when Louise dies. After everything the reader has seen of Louise in Act 2, we don’t really need to know how the other characters carry on without her. All we need to know is that she is dead. That is all that matters.

Notice, also, how that closing sentence pulls back into a truly omniscient point of view, almost as though the narrator is telling us all of this after the fact, after the action has already happened. This final sentence, by necessity, has to be distant and omniscient. This is because with our primary, focal character dead, there is no other way for the point of view to work. It would be too jarring to jump suddenly into Brently’s head (or Richards’ or Josephine’s for that matter). The only option is to pull back into an omniscient point of view. 

CONCLUSION: If you take only one thing away from this analysis, it’s that in only two pages, this story covers all components of the three-act structure. Sometimes, writers complain that they need more room to tell their story in full. And yet, this short piece manages to do it all in a compressed space. (In fact, the irony is not lost on me that this analysis is longer than the story itself.) So, when you struggle with word count and you need to keep your story tight, just think of “The Story of an Hour” and channel your inner Kate Chopin. If she could tell a full story in just two pages, you can do it, too.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Three-Act Analysis of “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin appeared first on DIY MFA.

Essentially, narration is a combination of the voice and the point of view. I’ve written about voice and point of view in the past, and today, I wanted to talk about how these two elements work to create a seamless story experience for the reader.

But first, we need to address the big question…

Why do we even care about narration? What’s the big deal?

In my opinion, narration is the single most important aspect of your story. It carries more weight than plot and matters more than your characters. Why is narration so crucial?

The answer is simple: narration forms a direct line between the story and the reader. It is the element of the story that draws the reader in and keeps them engaged long enough to fall in love with the characters or be intrigued by the plot. Without narration, we would have a stage play or a movie script, where all aspects of the story are conveyed by what the characters say and do. Narration is what makes reading different from watching a play or a movie. It’s the vehicle through which the reader engages with the story.

Most of the time, we don’t even notice the narration is there. We’re so focused on what’s happening to the characters that we don’t pay attention to the way the story is being told to us. But whether we notice it or not, there is still artistry in the telling. That artistry comes from choices the author makes with regard to the voice and the point of view. Let’s start by addressing some questions about point of view.

How do we choose the “right” point of view?

First and foremost, it’s important to acknowledge that there is no one “right” answer when it comes to point of view. You could choose any number of different options and they could all work. In fact, different point of view options have different advantages and disadvantages, and it’s important to understand all the choices so you can select the one that works best for your story.

Point of view is actually quite technical and a lot of choices the writer needs to make focus on the logistics of the storytelling. It all boils down to the sphere of knowledge—the pool of information and the worldview that a particular character or narrator has. Depending on what sphere of knowledge you need access to, that’s going to dictate which point of view choices you can use.

For example, suppose you are writing a thriller and you need to show the villain doing villainous things. In that scenario, you might need a multiple point of view option so you can show the hero being heroic in some scenes and the villain doing their evil deeds in others. Romance also tends to rely heavily on multiple points of view, with many books oscillating between the perspectives of each member of the couple.

When choosing the point of view, you need to ask yourself: “What sphere(s) of knowledge do I need access to? And what scenes do I need to be able to show in my story?” Depending on what information you need access to or need to show, that will impact your story’s point of view.

First person vs. third person… which one’s better?

The important thing to understand is that first and third person narrators relate to the story in different ways. The first person point of view (or “I” narrator) means that the narrator is a character within the story. This means that the narrator is experiencing the events of the story as they occur, and those events will impact how that narrator tells the story. If the narrator is also a character, they have skin in the game and the stakes of the story will influence that narrator.

The third person (or “he/she/they” narrator”) implies that the narrator is an entity outside the story. This means that the third person narrator may not actually be a person per se. In fact, in most stories, we don’t even know who that third person narrator is, we just know that someone (or thing) outside the story is recounting the events. This quality gives the third person an air of objectivity, like the narrator is observing the story but isn’t really involved.

Then, of course, there’s the second person (or “you” narrator) which presents its own set of challenges. This narrator is talking directly to the reader, pushing the reader into a role in the story. “You walk down the street and go to a bar where you sit on your usual barstool. You order your usual drink from Darryl, who’s been tending bar for as long as you’ve been coming here. Etc. etc..” In this type of narration the “you” isn’t necessarily the reader themselves but a character, except now the reader is being forced into that role. We see the second person a lot in self-help texts, where the author is instructing the reader about the topic at hand. In fiction, this point of view is hard to sustain, so we’re more likely to see it in short fiction than in book-length work.

So, if first and third person are the two main choices in front of us, how do we choose? First we need to go with our gut and try the point of view that feels right to us. Some writers love the first person (I happen to be one of them) because they enjoy the immediacy of it. It feels like the reader is hearing the story directly from the narrating character and that can pull the reader into the story in a very visceral way.

Third person, on the other hand, allows for more flexibility. You can play with narrative distance in a way that you can’t do with first person. In first person, that narrative distance is locked in and you’re up close and personal with the narrating character the whole way through the story. With third person, the narrative distance is more flexible and you can zoom in or out with more ease. Think of it like a movie camera, where you can zoom out to a panoramic view, or zoom in where you’re right up close to the focal character’s thoughts.

At the end of the day, there’s no better or worse option between first and third person, but each type of point of view accomplishes different things. We need to understand the pros and cons of both choices so we can select the one that will work best for our story.

What about voice? Where does that come in?

When I talk about voice, I refer to it as being your literary DNA. A lot of writing teachers say you have to “find your voice,” as if it’s loose change stuck between couch cushions. Voice isn’t something you find, it’s something you already have. You just have to hone it and make it fit the story you want to tell. I’ve said this before: just as you can’t grow roses from sunflower seeds, you can’t make your voice into something that it’s not. Yet, with a lot of sunshine and plenty of water and plant food, you can grow some pretty awesome sunflowers. Similarly, when you cultivate your voice, you can make it better and stronger.

What we have to remember is that voice isn’t one-dimensional. It has layers. The most fundamental layer of voice is that of the characters speaking in dialogue. At that layer, your primary concern is making sure your characters sound distinct, like different individuals.

The second layer of voice is that of the narrator. Here is where voice and point of view overlap. If you’re writing in first person, then the voice of the narrator will be the same as the voice of the character telling the story (because narrator and character are one and the same). That said, even though the character and narrator are the same person, the voice of the narration might be slightly different from how that character speaks in dialogue. This is because the narration in first person essentially amounts to the character’s thoughts, and we all know that people don’t always say and think the exact same things.

In third person, on the other hand, the narration comes from a different entity outside the story and that entity has a voice all its own. Sometimes that voice is very in-your-face and opinionated, sometimes it’s nearly invisible. Regardless, the voice of the narrator and the voice of the characters can range from very similar to wildly different. These are all choices that the author must make when crafting their story.

What if you choose the “wrong” voice or point of view?

If this happens, don’t panic. You can always reboot the scenes of your story in a new voice or point of view. The key is not to try and tinker with the text. Don’t just go in and change the “he/she/theys” to “I” and call it a day. If you do that, you’ll squash your voice and make the point of view feel stilted and artificial. Instead, I recommend doing what I call a “scene reboot.” Read the original version of the scene, then set it aside and rewrite it from memory. Don’t worry that you might forget some important detail. Your brain will hang on to the essential components of that scene and let go of anything else you don’t need.

The advantage of rebooting a scene is that it keeps your voice fresh. It captures that energy you feel when you’ve just written a draft, but because you already wrote the scene before, you’re now rewriting it with a direction in mind. Your brain will preserve the important parts while still capturing that just-wrote-this energy of drafting for the first time.

How do you get started?

When you first start drafting a story, don’t worry too much about voice and point of view. Work more by intuition than by method. Just write in the voice and point of view that feels right to you. This will give your narration energy and spark. Then, once you’ve got around 15,000-20,000 words, pause and assess. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Is the narration working? Does it hook the reader?
• Does the point of view accomplish what I need it to?
• Are there any logistical reasons why I might need a different point of view?
• Does the voice sparkle? Is it uniquely me, or does it feel derivative?

At this stage, you may want to experiment with the narration and write a couple of scenes in a different point of view or voice. Don’t just think through the options in your head, actually put words on the page and see if they work. If something works better, great. If it doesn’t, just go back to the previous version of the narration.

From here, keep writing forward until you get to the end of the manuscript. Don’t go back and tinker with the voice and point of view. Not yet. Instead, write forward until you get to “The End,” then go back and reboot any scenes that need it.

At the end of the day, narration tends to take care of itself by the end of the first draft. Your job during that draft is to try out different options and find the version of the narration that works best for your story.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: The Role of Narration in Storytelling appeared first on DIY MFA.

Have you gotten the DIY MFA Starter Kit yet? This is a two week email series full of worksheets to help you DIY your MFA, so you can get the “knowledge without the college.” You’ll learn more about how to write with focus, read with purpose, and build your community. You’ll also receive Writer Fuel, our newsletter full of words of wisdom and resources to help you keep the momentum going in your writing. And you’ll be the first to hear about other fun goodies we only share via email. Best of all, it’s free to join! You can sign up with your email at diymfa.com/join.

In this episode I discuss:

• My end-of-year process for taking stock and evaluating my progress.
• Why you need to understand your natural tendencies before setting goals.
• The importance of giving each year a theme or name.
• How to use that yearly theme to course-correct or keep yourself on track

Link to Episode 485

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to Apple or Spotify and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 485: Lesson 10 – Embrace the Journey appeared first on DIY MFA.

Have you gotten the DIY MFA Starter Kit yet? This is a two week email series full of worksheets to help you DIY your MFA, so you can get the “knowledge without the college.” You’ll learn more about how to write with focus, read with purpose, and build your community. You’ll also receive Writer Fuel, our newsletter full of words of wisdom and resources to help you keep the momentum going in your writing. And you’ll be the first to hear about other fun goodies we only share via email. Best of all, it’s free to join! You can sign up with your email at diymfa.com/join.

In this episode I discuss:

• The importance of dreaming big but executing through small “baby steps.”
• How goal setting is a lot like climbing a mountain.
• The “plant the flag” moment, what it is and why it matters.
• Why it’s essential to reverse-engineer the action steps toward your goals.

Link to Episode 484

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to Apple or Spotify and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 484: Lesson 9 – Take Baby Steps appeared first on DIY MFA.

Early Decisions with Long-Term Impact

When we write, we often have our eyes on what’s right in front of us: the current project or even the current chapter. What we often don’t realize is that decisions we make right now with one project might have a ripple effect long after that project is done.

For example, when I first started DIY MFA, I had the opportunity to submit my Masters thesis for a contest. I decided to opt-out of the contest altogether because I had too much on my plate getting DIY MFA off the ground. I can’t help wondering, however, whether that choice to put DIY MFA ahead of my fiction writing hasn’t had a long-term impact on my writing career, pushing me in one direction rather than another.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my work at DIY MFA, but I’d be lying if I said that it afforded me tons of time for writing. That early decision to put DIY MFA ahead of my fiction has had a ripple effect that has lasted until now and will probably continue well into the future.

The same is true with renovations. It boggles my mind that we haven’t even started on demolition yet and already I have had to make choices about what tiles go in the bathroom or what the lighting in the living room will look like. Of course, I understand that there are things that have to happen at the gut level of a living space (electrical and plumbing, for example) that have a ripple effect on everything else. Still, it blows my mind that I’m making choices now that I’ll have to live with for thirty or forty years. It’s a little bit terrifying, to be honest.

Similarly, at the draft level of a book project, we might make choices early on that will have an impact far beyond what we would expect. Suppose you decide to combine two characters into one, or you choose to have your character do one thing instead of another, those things can change the entire shape of a story. Think of the movie Sliding Doors, where the story explores what happens when one simple twist of fate—making a subway or missing it altogether—can have a huge impact on a story’s direction.

Realizing that small decisions can have a massive impact can sometimes leave us stuck in our tracks. We become so afraid of making the wrong choice that we don’t make any choice at all and our story flounders. In the words of Maimonides, “The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision.” This means that sooner or later we have to take the leap and make a choice or risk being stuck in decision-making limbo forever.

The thing to remember is that unlike home improvements, that messy first draft is supposed to be in flux. Sure, we might make the wrong choice at first, but we can always backtrack, something that’s not quite so easy to do when it comes to construction. Rather than think we are locked into our choices, we must think of that messy first draft as an experiment, where we try out different ideas to see what works. Then we can always course-correct down the road.

Understand Gut-Level Structure

I’m not a contractor, an architect, or an engineer. I don’t understand the inner workings of construction, but with this renovation I’ve had to develop a basic working knowledge of how things are put together. This means being able to look at construction drawings and make sense of what I see. It means trying to visualize what the finished product might look like, even if I don’t have an example in front of me. It also means having a basic understanding of the timeline and what steps need to come at what different points in the process.

The same is also true with writing. We may not need to be experts on the three-act structure and know all the story beats down to the scene-by-scene level, but we need to have a basic sense of what comes first and what comes later in the story trajectory. Whether we are plotters and like to plan every inch of a novel, or we are a pantsers and write by the seat of our pants, there are certain fundamental storytelling elements that we need to know. These are:

Act 1: The Status Quo. Whether your Act 1 is only a few chapters long or takes up half the novel, the purpose of it is to establish the status quo. The idea is to give the reader a sense for what “normal” is like for your main character, so that when you shake things up, the reader will notice the difference. This is important because it bakes the idea of transformation right into the heart of your story.

Pivot Point 1: The Point of No Return. At some point in the story, some external event will happen that will force the character’s hand and push them to make a choice. That choice often operates as a one-way door, where once the character makes it, they can’t go back to how things were. Think of Katniss Everdeen volunteering to take her sister’s place in the Hunger Games, or Dorothy’s house getting picked up by the tornado and plunked down in Oz. Once these events happen, the character can’t go back the way they came, they can only move forward.

Act 2: The Quest. This part of the story is where you deliver on the premise. If your story is about a girl magically plunked down in a strange new world called Oz, then this is where you have her exploring that world and making new friends. If the story is about a girl fighting in a tournament called The Hunger Games, then this is the part where the games play themselves out. Act 2 can be as short as a third of your book and as long as 80-90%. Really it’s all about what you need to happen in your story and how much space those plot events will require. Just keep in mind that the longer you make Act 2, the shorter Acts 1&3 will have to be. Also, remember that it can feel like a long slog to get through Act 2—there’s a reason some people call it the “muddle in the middle.”

Pivot Point 2: Dark Night of the Soul. At some point, the character must hit their lowest point. Things need to get bad before they can get better, and this is the darkest moment before things turn around. At this point, the character must legitimately feel that it’s okay for them to give up. (Of course they don’t give up, but it has to feel plausible.)

Act 3: The Ending. This is the point where things start ramping up and building momentum toward the climax. The Climax is the scene where the central conflict of the story comes to a head and gets decided one way or another. Either Katniss wins the Hunger Games, or she does not. Either Dorothy gets back home to Kansas or she does not. The climax is where we get a sense of resolution.

This is the basic foundation of how stories are built, but this structure should not be constraining. Think of it as a basic framework… like a floorplan. Different apartments might have the exact same floor plan, but it’s the design and detail that gives a space its own unique flair. Similarly, this basic structure can serve as a guide while still giving the writer ample space to build their story their way. Just as in home improvements it’s important to understand basic structural concepts, the same is true with writing as well. The three-act structure can serve as a framework for us to build something magical.

Hurry Up and Wait

I’ve talked about the publishing process in the past and the realities of what it takes to get a book out on the market. One thing that cannot be stressed enough is that the pace of publishing is weird. One minute you’re scrambling to make a deadline, the next you’re stuck waiting for months before you get any updates. We can sum up the pace of publishing with one phrase: “Hurry up and wait.”

The same is true with home improvements. It can feel like the construction is dragging on forever, and then the next minute you have to scramble to make some fast decisions or else you’ll hold up the whole process. Publishing and home improvements both require us to become phenomenal jugglers, being able to hop from one task to another without missing a beat.

When I first published the DIY MFA book, I got flustered with this feast or famine timeline. Why couldn’t things get planned more slowly and methodically? Why did I always have to drop everything and rush? Of course, what I didn’t realize is that just as I was having to hurry up and wait on my side, everyone else who was part of the process also had to do the same thing.

When you have a lot of different moving parts to a project and each section is done by a different person, everyone has to hurry up and wait or the whole process would grind to a halt. Yes, it means that sometimes you have to drop everything and focus on that one thing that demands your attention right now, but once your step is done and you hand things off to the next person and take a breath… at least until you have to hurry up and wait again.

Everything’s a Mess… Until It’s Not

When I was 14, my parents decided to renovate their living room, dining room, and kitchen all with us still living in the apartment. It was a fiasco. If you’ve ever gone through a major renovation while still living in the place, you know exactly what I’m talking about. We ate nothing but takeout for months on end. Everything was covered in dust. Plus, my parents wanted to redo the living/dining room floors so we had to walk across those areas on planks like it was something out of a pirate movie.

Home improvements are messy and you have to make a mess before you can clean things up and make it all look beautiful. The same is true with writing. That first draft you write is going to be garbage. It will be embarrassingly terrible, and that’s okay because it gives you a starting point where you can build something wonderful. That first draft doesn’t have to be pretty. It just has to do one thing: Exist.

Other forms of art—like sculpture, pottery, even painting—have raw materials. You have stone and clay to shape or empty canvases to fill. In writing, we need to create our own raw material and this is our first draft or “draft zero.” The raw material doesn’t exist before we make it, and we have to embrace the fact that this initial draft will be a complete mess. The artistry comes from what we do with that mess, how we shape it and mold it and make it beautiful.

Remember, writing is a slow and steady process. A book doesn’t get written in a day and it’s all about putting in a consistent effort, one word at a time. So keep taking those baby steps and in a few months, you’ll see the miles of progress you’ve made. 

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: How Home Improvements Are Like Writing a Book appeared first on DIY MFA.

Have you gotten the DIY MFA Starter Kit yet? This is a two week email series full of worksheets to help you DIY your MFA, so you can get the “knowledge without the college.” You’ll learn more about how to write with focus, read with purpose, and build your community. You’ll also receive Writer Fuel, our newsletter full of words of wisdom and resources to help you keep the momentum going in your writing. And you’ll be the first to hear about other fun goodies we only share via email. Best of all, it’s free to join! You can sign up with your email at diymfa.com/join.

In this episode I discuss:

• The importance of a practice-based approach in writing.
• Different types of practice, and why “deliberate practice” is most effective.
• The four essential components of a writing practice and why they matter.
• Why it’s important to iterate on your practice to make sure it’s working for you.

Link to Episode 482

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to Apple or Spotify and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 482: Lesson 7 – Practice, Practice, Practice appeared first on DIY MFA.

For folks who may not be familiar, let’s define what DIY MFA means. We all know that DIY stands for “do-it-yourself” but what about the MFA part? No, it’s not short for “mafia,” though we do get that a lot. Actually, MFA is the abbreviation for “Master of Fine Arts” which is the graduate degree most frequently offered for creative writing.

Why would you DIY your MFA?

I got a traditional MFA myself, and while I absolutely loved my graduate school experience, I also recognized that I was in a very privileged position to be able to get that degree. At the time, I was married with no kids and lawyer-hubby was working at a big, fancy law firm, so it was okay for me to take two years off work and go back to school. We also lived in NYC, where there are dozens of schools with traditional MFA programs right in our backyard. I could go back to school without having to move.

Today’s Gabriela (by the way) would never be able to do that. Between running DIY MFA full-time and having two kiddos, ages 10 and 12, there is no way I would ever be able to go back to school at this stage in my life. I’m grateful that I had that opportunity at the time and I loved every minute of it, but I also recognize that the traditional MFA is not feasible for everyone.

DIY MFA grew out of this realization that while traditional graduate programs are wonderful and can serve some people very well, they are by no means the best fit for every writer. What I discovered in developing DIY MFA is that there are many writers out there who want the rigor of a graduate education, but the logistics are just not in their favor.

For some, it might be a matter of geography. Many writers don’t have a school with a writing program within commuting distance. Or it might have to do with the time commitment and other logistics. For a lot of writers, day jobs and family responsibilities need to take precedence, and they have to fit their writing around all these things.

For others it might come down to the type of writing they want to do. Most traditional MFA programs emphasize literary fiction, so folks writing children’s books or genre fiction would be out of luck. Yes, there are some rare programs that offer genre or writing for children concentrations, but they are few and far between.

And, of course, there is the matter of tuition. While there are some schools that offer fully-funded MFA programs, it’s certainly not true of all programs by any stretch. And if you were to pay full freight for some of these schools it could end up costing you $80,000+ per year. Unlike medical school or law school, where there’s a clear career pathway after graduation and odds are reasonable that you might be able to recoup that tuition, things in the writing space are quite a bit fuzzier. You might get a great book deal, or you might work for years and years and never pay back those loans.

With tuition rates increasing faster than inflation and the tricky state of publishing (what with the advent of AI), now more than ever, writers need a do-it-yourself education option. We need ways to build that academic rigor into our lives without the major time commitment and the ridiculous costs. DIY MFA offers many workshops and courses to help writers deepen their knowledge of the craft, but today I wanted to make the fundamentals available to everyone and walk you through—step by step—how to DIY your MFA.

How to DIY Your MFA

This is a topic I get asked to speak on all the time and it’s one of my favorite things to discuss. I love giving writers the tools they need to succeed and my favorite thing is seeing my fellow word nerds reach their goals. This is why I started DIY MFA, after all.

So, how do you do it? How do you DIY your MFA?

The key is understanding DIY MFA’s three-pronged approach. There are three pillars of DIY MFA and these are: (1) write with focus, (2) read with purpose, and (3) build your community. If you’re going to DIY your MFA, you need to build all three components into your author life.

I developed this framework after studying many different traditional MFA programs. I visited several MFA websites and looked at how they laid out their curricula and what courses they required of their students. From all this research, a pattern emerged. There were three elements that kept coming up again and again, and these were writing, reading, and community.

From this, I deduced that in order to create a DIY version of the traditional MFA you needed to have these three things. First and foremost, you need to write and practice your craft. Second (and equally important) you need to learn how to read with a writer’s eye. Finally, you also need to engage with your community, both that of fellow writers as well as your readers.

Write with Focus

Writing with focus means writing with an end-goal in mind. Sure, it’s great to noodle around and try out different ideas, but sooner or later you need to decide on a project, then knuckle down and write it. Finishing projects is probably one of the most important skills a writer will need to develop.

When you write with focus, you also take the time to study the craft and improve your skills. Lately, I’ve been revisiting the book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool, who I interviewed for DIY MFA Radio some time ago. In this book, they talk about how to use deliberate practice in order to improve your skills. Just as a top athlete or accomplished musician needs to practice in order to reach a level of excellence, so too is it with writing. If we want to reach a higher level with our writing, we need to practice.

Finally, it’s important to track your progress, because you can’t modify what you can’t measure. Many writers make a note of their word counts every time they write. Other writers might track the amount of time they spend writing. I find that word count and time are both good measures of writing progress, but they apply to different situations. Word count is best for measuring how much progress you make when first drafting a manuscript, whereas time might be a better measure if you’re in the revision process.

Read with Purpose

One of the first things I recommend to people when they ask me about how to read like a writer is I tell them to build a reading list. Just as a professor puts together a syllabus with all the books you need to read in a given semester, you need to do the same thing if you’re going to DIY your MFA. The key is understanding what kinds of books to put on your list.

When putting together a reading list, I like to think of the 4Cs: comps, contextual books, contemporary books, and classics. Comps are books similar to the one you’re writing. Imagine your book sitting on a bookstore shelf; the comps are the books on the shelf next to it. Contextual books are your research, books you read in order to inform your writing. Contemporary books are any books in your genre published within the past two years. These books do not need to be similar to your current project. Finally, classics are self-explanatory, but these are books that have stood the test of time. A good reading list is like a well-balanced diet and should include a couple of books from each of these categories.

Once you’ve selected your books, you need to practice reading them with a writer’s eye. This means not just considering what the book is about or why the author wrote it, but also focusing on how the writer crafts the story. The key to reading like a writer is to ask yourself two questions: (1) How did the writer achieve this effect? and (2) How can I do that in my own work?

Build Your Community

Finally, we come to the community piece of the puzzle. To build your community, you need to consider three different groups of people with whom you need to connect: fellow writers, your readers, and the industry as a whole. In other words, it boils down to 3Ps: peers, platform, and publishing.

When it comes to connecting with your peers, you want to consider many different questions. Do you want feedback on your writing? If so, maybe a workshop or critique group might be your best bet. How will you build support and accountability into your writing life? To do this, you may want to surround yourself with writer friends, be it via social media, a writing class, or some other type of community. Finally, do you have advisors to whom you can go for help? All writers need advisors of some kind, whether it be a mentor you admire from afar or someone you work with closely.

Building your platform is a subject that comes a little bit later in a writer’s development, but it’s good to have it on your radar so you know what’s coming down the line. Remember that as you build your platform, you want to develop an audience of readers, not necessarily of fellow writers (though writers can be readers, too!). This means that as you develop your platform, you need to do so in a way that attracts the ideal readers for your book.

Finally, at some point, you will want to get your writing out in the world, and to do that you will need to publish. There are a lot of experts out there helping writers get published, but not all are of the same high caliber. One expert whose work I highly recommend is Jane Friedman. She has two newsletters, one called Electric Speed (free) where she shares digital resources for creative people, and the other called The Hot Sheet (paid) where she reports on the publishing industry. I read both, and highly recommend them.

Putting It All Together

So, you’ve got plans to write with focus, read with purpose, and build your community. Now what? How do you know if you’re “doing it right”? The truth is, there’s no one right way to DIY your MFA. There are just two guidelines I can offer you:

1. Make sure all three elements are present in your writing life at any given time.
2. Be flexible and allow for ebb and flow between the three elements.

The way I like to think of the writing life is as a pie, where writing, reading, and community each make up a slice. You could have a perfectly balanced pie with each element taking up one third, or you can vary the sizes of the slices. Personally, I like my DIY MFA pie to look like the diagram below, where half of the pie is dedicated to writing and the other half is split evenly between reading and community.

This pie isn’t static, though. For example, if I were at a conference, the community slice would probably take up 90% of my pie, and the last 10% might be split evenly between writing and reading. The key is that all three elements are represented in some capacity, and the pie proportions can shift depending on what’s happening in my author life at that moment.

HOMEWORK: Try this experiment for one or two weeks. At the end of each day, draw a pie that represents what you did that day as part of your writing life. Over the course of a couple of weeks, you’ll start to see a pattern and you’ll get a sense for your writing life’s natural balance.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: How to DIY Your MFA appeared first on DIY MFA.