Check in Day 4!
Jun. 4th, 2025 03:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Did you write today?
How's it going today?
Check in Day 3!
Jun. 3rd, 2025 01:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Did you write today?
Hope everyone finds a minute to write something today, or has an excellent break if not :D
Your protagonist’s plans are useful, especially when they don’t pan out
Jun. 2nd, 2025 08:53 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png)

When I’m editing novels, one of my most common margin notes–particularly at the start of scenes–is “What’s the plan here?”
Providing the reader with insight into a character’s plans is an incredibly powerful storytelling technique. Plans build anticipation and suspense. They give the reader a sense of what’s at stake if the character succeeds or fails. And if the plan comes off–or, even better, if it goes spectacularly awry–you don’t have to tell the reader things went well or badly. The reader already knows what good looks like.
Too many writers withhold plans, either because they are insufficiently crafting a character’s interiority, or they’re trying too hard to be mysterious and are withholding too much from the reader.
Sharpen those plans and make them vivid! Here are some ways they’re useful.
A character’s hopes and dreams connect us to the overarching quest
Near the outset of a novel, establishing a character’s overarching dreams are a terrific way of helping the reader understand what makes them tick.
This goes for everything from Disney animation musicals, where princesses and lion kings-to-be sing about what they want in their future, to more literary novels like Invisible Man, where a mission statement is established from the outset about what the protagonist is seeking:
It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naïve. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!
When we understand the character’s broader hopes and dreams, it tells us a lot about their values and desires and makes them seem more vivid. A character who wants to scare everyone with his mighty roar is different from a character who wants to go dancing on those what do you call them feet. The reader understands the differences intuitively and the specificity around their dreams helps us conjure them more vividly.
For the novel as a whole, if your protagonist had a magic wand, what would they do with it? What would their life look like? Help the reader understand that broader north star and show the protagonist always going after it.
Plans orient the reader and build anticipation
But plans don’t just apply to overarching quests. On a scene-by-scene level, it’s useful to keep re-orienting the reader around what the protagonist is trying to do and why it matters to them, particularly at the outset of scenes.
Plans build anticipation. When readers know what the protagonist wants, why it matters to them, and how they plan to get it, we immediately start wondering if it’s going to work or not. As the character then goes after that thing they want and experiences obstacles, it builds suspense and uncertainty. The more the protagonist tries, and the more we see them invest, the more invested we become on their behalf.
In order to start the timer on the suspense clock, it’s so important to first prime the reader. What’s the plan? What is the very specific reward if it works? What’s the very specific consequence if it fails? Anticipation and suspense needs room to build.
Establish plans, then send the character in motion. When everything happens swimmingly, we’ll feel a sense of excitement. If someone finds themselves dangling over a lava pit, we’ll know precisely what hangs in the balance.
Instead, too often writers keep readers in the dark. They show a bunch of activity and action, hoping the reader will find mystery in what’s happening. And then, when the climactic moment happens in the scene, they end up needing to dribble out an explanation for its significance after the fact.
Anything can be made to work, but withholding a protagonist’s plans is typically not as effective as simply priming the reader around what the protagonist is trying to do, sending them off to accomplish the thing, and letting the reader experience for ourselves the triumph or failure if they succeed or fail.
Put storytelling essentials on the page
Show don’t tell is an oft-misunderstood bit of writing advice. Sometimes writers think that if they put a character’s desires on the page, or provide context for why a character is doing what they’re doing, they’re “telling” the reader too much.
There are some writing elements you can’t be too clear about, and they form some of the most important storytelling essentials: motivations, goals, stakes, and plans. You can’t possibly be clear enough about these things.
You’re not telling the reader what is going to happen or is happening, you’re simply helping the reader understand what the character wants and why it matters to them. It’s priming the reader for the story to come.
Think about it. Would you enjoy The Little Mermaid as much if we never knew what Ariel was hoping to do on land? Would it make any sense whatsoever what Belle might see in the Beast if we didn’t know how much she felt misunderstood and craved adventure in the great wide somewhere?
Get those plans on the page! Prime the reader and reap the rewards.
Need help with your book? I’m available for manuscript edits, query critiques, and coaching!
For my best advice, check out my online classes, my guide to writing a novel and my guide to publishing a book.
And if you like this post: subscribe to my newsletter!
Art: Equestrian portrait of Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne by Adam Frans van der Meulen
Check in Day 2!
Jun. 2nd, 2025 04:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Did you write today?
I'm a "I plan to" person myself today...
Check in Day 1!
Jun. 1st, 2025 02:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Did you write today?
New month, new goals? Doing anything different this month?
check in day 31
May. 31st, 2025 10:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Today I
wrote
1 (25.0%)
edited
2 (50.0%)
posted
0 (0.0%)
sent to beta
0 (0.0%)
researched
0 (0.0%)
planned
0 (0.0%)
had a cheeky break
2 (50.0%)
dealt with life
1 (25.0%)
Feel free to share a snippet of something that you're working on, link to something you've posted. Ask for any help you need. Chat amongst yourselves.
Discussion: it's the last day of the month, did you meet any of the goals you set?
A devastating censorship ruling (This week in books)
May. 30th, 2025 07:00 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png)

The last few weeks! Books!
I’m back! Though I’m quite busy catching up, and extraordinarily jet-lagged. Today’s collection of links will be presented mainly in list format, but there are lots of good ones. Enjoy!
Appeals Court Reverses Ruling in Texas Book Ban Case – Nathalie op de Beeck, Publishers Weekly – An extremely disappointing ruling that could open the door to more governmental censorship, written in an infuriatingly glib tone.
Pulitzer Prizes: 2025 Winners List – The New York Times. For books:
- James by Percival Everett – Fiction
- Native Nations: A Millennium in North America by Kathleen DuVal and Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War by Edda L. Fields-Black – History
- Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life by Jason Roberts – Biography
- Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir by Tessa Hulls – Memoir or Autobiography
- New and Selected Poems by Marie Howe – Poetry
- To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement by Benjamin Nathans – General Nonfiction
Did the Pulitzer Board just overrule the Jury to give Percival Everett the prize? – Drew Broussard, Lit Hub
‘Heart Lamp’ Wins 2025 International Booker Prize – Sam Spratford, Publishers Weekly
NEA Literary Grants Terminated, Staff Depart as Trump Proposes Eliminating the Agency – Sophia Stewart, Publishers Weekly
The Fyre Fest of BookTok – Taylor Lorenz, User Mag
writer cons – Leigh Stein, Attention Economy – A more sympathetic take on A Million Lives in Baltimore. It’s not easy launching reader-oriented conferences.
Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College – James D. Walsh, Intelligencer
The Rise of the Submission Industrial Complex – Benjamin Davis, Lit Hub
Agatha Christie, Who Died in 1976, Will See You in Class – Amelia Nierenberg, The New York TImes
Kazuo Ishiguro Reflects on Never Let Me Go, 20 Years Later – Kazuo Ishiguro, Lit Hub
From Family Tradition to Global Self-Published Sensation: The 20-Year Journey of The Elf on the Shelf – Chanda A. Bell, Writers Digest
Can Literary Agents Change Literature? – Kate McKean, Agents and Books
Newspapers Are Recommending AI-Hallucinated Novels – Lincoln Michel, Counter Craft
At Least Two Newspapers Syndicated AI Garbage – Damon Beres and Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic
How Taylor Jenkins Reid Became a Publishing Powerhouse – Lucy Feldman, Time
Readers Annoyed When Fantasy Novel Accidentally Leaves AI Prompt in Published Version, Showing Request to Copy Another Writer’s Style – Victor Tangermann, Futurism
5 Reasons a Literary Agent Isn’t Going to Steal Your Story, Make Millions, and Cut You Out – Sarah Chauncey, Jane Friedman
Why Silicon Valley’s Most Powerful People Are So Obsessed With Hobbits – Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
The Bloomsbury Miracle, Chapter 1 – Ken Whyte, SHuSH
This week in bestsellers
Here are the top five NY Times bestsellers in a few key categories. (All links are affiliate links):
Adult print and e-book fiction:
- Nightshade by Michael Connelly
- The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig
- Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros
- The Tenant by Freida McFadden
- Rewind It Back by Liz Tomforde
Adult print and e-book nonfiction:
- Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson
- Uncommon Favor by Dawn Staley
- Mark Twain by Ron Chernow
- Apple in China by Patrick McGee
- The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
Young adult hardcover:
- Watch Me by Tahereh Mafi
- Wings of Starlight by Allison Saft
- Nothing Like the Movies by Lynn Painter
- Heartless Hunter by Kristen Ciccarelli
- Rebel Witch by Kristen Ciccarelli
Middle grade hardcover:
- Wonder by R.J. Palacio
- Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell
- Refugee by Alan Gratz
- Malcolm Lives! by Ibram X. Kendi
- River of Spirits by Shana Targosz
This week on the blog
In case you missed them, here are this week’s posts:
- N/A
And keep up with the discussion in all the places!
- Follow me on Bluesky
- Check out the Bransforums
And finally:
How “Andor” Injects Contemporary Politics Into “Star Wars” I.P. – Kyle Chayka, The New Yorker
Have a great weekend!
Need help with your book? I’m available for manuscript edits, query critiques, and coaching!
For my best advice, check out my online classes, my guide to writing a novel and my guide to publishing a book.
And if you like this post: subscribe to my newsletter!
Photo: The Great Wall of China. Photo by me.