Writing in the Tiny House

When writer's block happens because the characters arcs don't make sense anymore.

"Brigitte," Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse

Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com

Instagram: @authordevindavis

Twitter: @authordevind

The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show's webpage.

[00:00:00] So we were talking about writer's block and let's talk about another thing or another type of writer's block. Sometimes it's not so much that we don't understand the events that happened; it's that we don't understand our characters. So as we carry on with our second part of this writer's block series, we are going to delve into story arcs.

[00:00:30] Today on writing in the tiny house. Hello? Hello. Hello, and welcome to today's episode. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy who lives in a tiny house in Northern Utah who writes things and then likes to share what the writing process looks like. The whole point is to give you the tools and the inspiration and the knowledge necessary for you to start and finish a short story in three months, or to start and finish a novel in 18 months and above all to give you the wisdom and the foresight to understand that sometimes that timeline will need to be adjusted.

[00:01:32] I would dare say almost every time. Sometimes not understanding the time commitment that something like this has, can deter us from even getting started. And so understanding that it is something that can clip along at a fast pace if we want it to, and if we are prepared to make that happen can be valuable for a lot of us to even get started.

[00:01:53] So last week we talked about our cold hard outline. We talked about the scenes and we talked about reorganizing scenes. Revisiting and revising our outlines as a way to combat writer's block. Especially if we are writing a plot heavy book. If we are writing something super plot driven as fantasy and science fiction tend to be, sometimes our outlines need to be a bit more dynamic.

[00:02:23] And sometimes we need to give ourselves permission to take a day off of our word count goals in order to revise the map of what our story is going to be and where things are headed. So today, and this is a situation that I ran into pretty recently. It is not so much that we don't understand the structure of the story itself.

[00:02:47] It's not so much that we don't understand the roadmap. It's that as we get into the story and as we start composing and drafting, and these characters come more to life, sometimes we don't understand our characters very well. And so we get to a point where we simply don't know where else to go just because what is on our outline no longer matches our characters.

[00:03:17] I mentioned last week that I am in a lot of different Facebook groups, all geared toward creative writing. And the idea of writer's block comes up a lot and I like to pay attention and see what people suggest and see what people are doing as ways as a way to combat writer's block.

[00:03:37] And one thing that some people suggested recently that I really liked was the idea of sitting down and feeling out your characters. So the lady in the Facebook group suggested interviewing your characters. That can be whatever you want it to be. If you want to actually sit down and talk to a person or whatever, or if you want to like, say things in your character's stead or perhaps write out a script, whatever things look like. The point is to sit down and feel out your characters.

[00:04:20] With a work in progress, it can be very valuable to actually keep a running outline of where you have been so that you can remember where things went and where things are going and where some of the character things where some of the huge developmental character things happened and how they happened and what they were for.

[00:04:41] It can be really valuable to tease all of that apart into the separate character arcs so that you can see that if your main character is a woman named , which is the case in one of my books and you see that Hoshi co makes it to the main island and does the things, and gets in touch with an art collector and whatever else.

[00:05:06] you can see where the big important events happened and you can see why, and you can ask yourself does all of that make sense and does all of that support where the character needs to be now and where the character needs to be here in half a second when I keep writing. And oftentimes the answer is not quite yes.

[00:05:33] So it's important to do this with all of your characters that you are following through your story. All of the main characters, sit down and see where they're going. See where they have come from the big stepping stones that they stepped on or stepped over in order to get where they are now.

[00:05:51] And now as a character who is well developed and more into this story, because the story is more real to you at this point. And. You can further flesh out and further develop things in a different way, from a better informed stand point than you did before you started. Just because, I mean, if we're getting writer's block, odds are we're a chunk in, we're a chunk into the story.

[00:06:19] And we understand the story better than we did before we started. And so it is better to start making decisions like that at this point. Sometimes the inspiration or the solution to the writer's block can be that a character needs a specific thing or a certain event that isn't in your outline right now, needs to happen in order to get your character into a more believable place or some of the things that you wrote already may not have built up your character or your scene to a place where it needs to be.

[00:06:59] I experienced that pretty recently, actually I was getting to the end of a scene. I felt pretty good about the way that I had written it up to that point. And yet here I was standing. So I have a standing desk in the tiny house, right now I don't have an office chair. I've been meaning to buy an office chair for like seven months and I still haven't done it, but I was standing here.

[00:07:24] Dumbfounded mouth agape sort of staring at my computer because I could not figure out what was going on next, what needed to happen next. And what I came to realize was the source of the writer's block wasn't so much what was coming next. The source of the writer's block came from the previous couple of pages that I had written didn't build up the characters and the scene to a place where it needed to be.

[00:07:53] It had been a slightly different direction. And so I needed to go through what I had already written and revise stuff and delete stuff. And add some stuff in order to correct the course that the story had already been going. And once I did that, the writer's block was gone. I was able to get back into the flow of writing again, and I was able to touch base with the characters and see where they needed to be and plug in the necessary things in order to have a good story.

[00:08:26] That is just a simple, but a very good thing. It ties back into outlining, but you can see that it's bigger than just outlining. I mean, writer's block is bigger than just simply not being able to write. There are a lot of facets that go into writer's block and I wanted to touch on some of these things that go into that. So last week we talked about just structure of the story this week. Sometimes it's the character arc. Sometimes the characters need a thing, and sometimes what you have written does not support where they need to go. And so some revamping or some adding or some deleting or whatever is the right call to make that change and to get the flow back into the story.

[00:09:13] And next week as we conclude this series on writer's block, we are going to talk about your inner environment. Sometimes it's not actually about writing sometimes it's about you. So be sure to tune in next week, as we wrap up this little mini series on writer's block, on writing in the tiny house. Thank you so much, guys.

[00:09:36] Bye.

[00:09:37]

[00:09:37] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

One way to get over writer's block is to outline! Part 1 of 3!

"Brigitte," Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse

Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com

Instagram: @authordevindavis

Twitter: @authordevind

The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show's webpage.

[00:00:00] We've all been there before that moment where you're sitting in your dark room. And you have your outline ready. You have your character maps ready, and you have been plugging along your work in progress without any problems at all. And suddenly you get to a point in your manuscript where you simply cannot write more words, even though the story isn't finished. Today we are starting our three-part series on an in-depth look at writer's block. Today on Writing in the Tiny House.

[00:00:38] Hello. Hello. Hello and welcome to this week's episode of writing in the tiny house. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy who lives in a tiny house in Northern Utah, who likes to talk about creative writing.

[00:01:15] And I've done an amount of creative writing in my day. I've also done a lot of other types of writing. Anyway. The whole point of this podcast is to give you the information and the tools and the motivation for you to get started on a short story and have it finished in three months, or to get started on a novel and have that finished in 18 months.

[00:01:38] And to give you the wisdom to adjust that timeline, if you need to. I mean, if we look at last fall, I finished the short story, Bridgette from beginning to end, including edits, including beta readers, including first, second drafts, all the things clear to the copy edits in eight weeks. And it's a good short story.

[00:02:02] It's still available on amazon.com if you want to check it out today and it's a process that can be done again. However, most writing projects take longer than that. But it's good to know that it can be done quickly if it needs to be. And it's good to know if you are not an experienced writer, it's okay to have an idea about how long things can take, if you develop more experience.

[00:02:26] So today we are starting a three part series on the dreaded writer's block. I have touched on writer's block a very little bit in previous episodes. And up until very recently, I had the false notion that in order to get over writer's block, you need to simply outline better. I have since come to develop a new attitude toward writer's block.

[00:02:55] I am a member in many different Facebook groups that are all dedicated toward creative writing, and writers block comes up a lot. And I pay attention to some of the things that people suggest and some of the things that people say they do in order to overcome writer's block. And that's why I'm going to be doing this three part series, just because writer's block is more than simply, you need to outline better.

[00:03:21] It can be various different things. So with this episode today, we are going to be talking about outlining. We're going to be talking about the sequence of events in your novel and some different things to look for and some different ways to approach that. Next week we are going to be looking at some of the bigger picture of your novel, specifically the character arcs.

[00:03:44] We have focused a lot this year on character arcs, which is super cool. Character arcs are awesome. And sometimes it can be the way that the characters in the story are developing that can lead you to be in kind of a tight spot where there's no wiggle room. And sometimes things need to be reworked. And some elements of the outline need to be changed in order to get yourself out of that bind.

[00:04:10] And then the third part of this series is going to be a look at your internal environment. How are you feeling? What are you thinking? What is going on in your personal life? Just because so much of that can lead to writer's block. So much of that can also get you out of writer's block. Right now I have been taking a bit of a hiatus from writing. I'm still doing the podcast just because I have a good routine going. I have a lot to say. The podcast brings me a lot of joy, but when it comes to creative writing, I have also been being a lot more social recently and I have been dating a little bit. And that takes up a lot of free time, especially when you live in the middle of nowhere in Northern Utah, it is hard to casually date.

[00:05:04] And so a lot of my free evenings are spent being social right now. And then on the weekends I have my kids. So that is my reasoning for my hiatus presently, but we'll pick up the writing again when it is time and I feel that things are going to be calming down pretty soon. I just kind of feel it, just one of those spiritual, energetic things, I guess.

[00:05:29] And I have a lot of works in progress anyway, and I don't feel that I need to abandon them, but we're going to revisit just some of those things in the third episode of this series. Let's delve into this thing. One of the most common reasons that writer's block comes up is simply because,

[00:05:52] like I said at the very beginning, simply because we have not outlined. We have drafted and we have developed all of these fun scenes and now we're in a spot where we kind of don't know how to proceed. We don't know the very next step. We might know the step after that. Or we still might know the ending of our story, but we have not tied together how to get from right here right now to maybe the end of the next scene.

[00:06:24] So one person suggested in this situation, you just power through and you write, and I feel that there is wisdom in that. The thing is with your work in progress, writer's block comes during the first draft. Or if you are doing some like super big revising where you are rewriting entire swaths of your work in progress, then it could come at that time too.

[00:06:48] But to simply have the creative process stop, and then you're left a bit dumb founded is what happens during the first draft. And my friends, I am here to tell you that the magic of writing comes after the first draft. I mean, there there's magic to be experienced in the first draft too. Don't get me wrong.

[00:07:08] But as far as coaxing out the beauty and the imagery and the poetry of your writing, that is kind of not what the first draft is for. That's what the revisions are. That's what the revisions help you do is to get to the, the golden nuggets in your story, and to bring them out and to refine things and to bring shine and glitter to your writing, where it may not exist in the first draft, because in the first draft, you are simply getting it done.

[00:07:41] You're getting it out of your brain and into your computer or down onto paper, whatever your processes. So. There is wisdom in simply powering through and writing something that sucks so that you can get to the rest of the story where it all makes sense again. And then you can get back into the flow of writing.

[00:08:04] Another thing can be. if you are drafting a fantasy novel, or very often a scifi novel. These books tend to have a lot of plot. They tend to be very plot heavy and they tend to have a lot of subplots too. And so that means that sometimes the way that the plot and the subplots and all of those different parts weave together can get confusing and they can trip you up.

[00:08:36] And so sometimes. It is valuable to step back and to review what you have already written and where you need to go if you are writing a very plot, heavy book, it can be very hard to pants that book. It can be very hard to simply draft by the seat of your pants a lot of people call that discovery writing.

[00:09:00] I attend a lot of people tend to do a blend of both discovery writing and outlining. I think it's impossible to simply only do one and not the other, especially if you're writing a plot heavy book, a plot driven book, but it can be really valuable to simply step back. I mean, Especially when we're in drafting mode, we set aside time every day and we have like a word count and we have these goals that we want to achieve.

[00:09:28] Sometimes it is absolutely worth the hour or two to give yourself permission, to figure out your outline again, instead of achieving a word count, sometimes you need to simply step back and see what you've done and where you need to go. Especially, if you have a lot of plots that you need to weave together, it is important to have a board of some form or whatever system you choose to do.

[00:09:57] You can do something like melanoma. You can do a cork board on your wall, whatever, but with the subplots and with the plots, you have the big events and where they need to fall. And it's important to organize them in the way that they will. Be presented in your story, be presented in your text, just because it's important to write things in the order that they're going to be read.

[00:10:21] Sometimes if that's not possible, then you kind of gotta do what you got to do, but it's important to know that like if this big event happens here with this plot, Then this other big event in subplot B or whatever, can't happen on the very next page, that would be too much, or it needs to come sooner just to pick up the pace and give us something exciting to read or whatever it's important to feel out and orchestrate those big events and those things.

[00:10:52] So that first of all, it is easier to write and then it will be easier to revise and easier to read. So having an outline, if you are doing a plot, heavy book is super important. And if you are choosing instead to do the discovery approach with a plot heavy book, I mean, best of luck to you, but. Don't be afraid to, you know, jot down notes, especially if all of your subplots and stuff are becoming confusing.

[00:11:21] So Sometimes we get writer's block because it is unclear to us what happens next, or it is unclear to us how things need to happen next. And so one approach is to simply power through so that you can get to an area in the novel that is more clear to you right now. Another option is to skip and then write.

[00:11:44] The next part of the book that is clear to you now, but I don't recommend doing that. I like to write things in order. And the third thing is to give yourself permission to step back and to reorganize your outline. I have found that with my outlines, my outlines tend to be pretty spot. And the more that I write, the more I can fill in with my outline, just because things become better.

[00:12:07] I understand my characters more. I understand the plot more than I did before I started. And so now there is more, there's more to flesh out. There's more to develop. And so it's okay to have your outline be somewhat dynamic. And if you need to revisit that and revise and tweak and rearrange. That can be an excellent way to combat writer's block.

[00:12:35] And so thank you for joining me on this week's episode of writing and the tiny house. Next week, we will go on to part two of this series with writer's block. So please join me next week. We'll see you then.

[00:12:49]

[00:12:49] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

How to build a story arc, and then ruin it. It's a cautionary tale, my friends.

"Brigitte," Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse

Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com

Instagram: @authordevindavis

Twitter: @authordevind

The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show's webpage.

[00:00:00] Last week, we talked about character arcs, especially transformation arcs, and how we need to keep the essence of the character still intact, even though they are making different decisions. And today we are going to talk about how to ruin all of that just by the reaction or how the other characters in the story behave.

[00:00:24] Today on Writing in the Tiny House. Hello, hello, hello. And welcome to today's episode of Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy who writes and talks about writing. The whole point of this podcast is to get you to write a novel in 18 months and to have the wisdom to adjust that timeline, if you need to. So today we are talking about character arcs again. Last week, we talked about how to make a good character arc, how you need to preserve the essence of that character.

[00:01:20] And reflect that while they are still making better decisions or worse decisions, depending on the direction the arc is going. And today we are going to talk about how to ruin all of that based on the reaction of the other characters in the story. So I told you last week that I have been reading the book of Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders.

[00:01:42] And this book is one of the best references on developmental edits. It is the deep developmental edit. It is meat as opposed to milk. He takes the very underlying, the really deep, the really thoughtful, amazing parts of a story and brings it out and shows you how it worked or how it didn't work.

[00:02:05] And it is astounding. It is incredible how he is so in touch with his craft and so in touch with the way that storytelling happens, that he can simply share with you how to do it better by breaking apart seven classical Russian short stories. In the one that we focused on most recently, it's the story of a man who sacrifices himself to save another man while they are trapped in a blizzard.

[00:02:36] And because of his sacrifice, this other man survives while he dies, he perishes in the blizzard. This is where we take this wonderful transformation of this selfish ornery man who is focused on himself, who loves money and whatever. And we take him through this cool arc of self-discovery sort of, and better choices in order to sacrifice himself to save this other character.

[00:03:04] And we love that. And it is cool to see that demonstrated in this short story. However, then we have this other character who is saved, who is written in more of a two dimensional way and who represents kind of this idealistic arc type of a surf, like just kind of the idea that the working man is the best man that a simple man is the good man that we all need to aspire to become.

[00:03:36] And it's interesting because in the rest of the story, this man does not reflect on that sacrifice. That sacrifice is not brought up again, it doesn't stir up things within him and it doesn't inspire him to live his life in a different way. The sacrifice happens, this guy survives and the savior like this other guy--the guy who saved him-- is largely forgotten in the rest of the story. It's a moment where you kind of get to sit back and wonder what happened. And so we can question the story arc of the one character of the savior and ask, why did we even do that? And we can question, why do we have this simpleton who just got saved and it didn't seem to matter to him. So why does it matter to me and why did it matter to the author or does it? And just in doing that, it cheapens the experience of the savior, of the guy who sacrificed himself to save this other guy from a blizzard. I once read a story, just to demonstrate this point, I read a story. It was kind of like portal fantasy, I guess. So the guy found himself in a new and a strange world with magic, and there were some differences in his body just because in the real world he had a specific sickness that made his body function poorly. He couldn't feel things. He had a hard time just living a normal life and suddenly he wakes up in this magical world and that condition doesn't exist here.

[00:05:19] So he has this strong body. He can make these really cool things happen. And he is feeling things again, unlike he has felt them in a long time. with that in mind, this is what happens. And in this story, this is pretty gross anyway, but it was more confusing with the way that it was handled.

[00:05:41] So toward the beginning of this story, this middle aged man befriend. Or something is discovered by this woman in her late teens, early twenties, I believe was her age and she's beautiful and she's attractive. And he now has this body with new found senses that he has not lived with in a very long time.

[00:06:03] So a new discovery of this vigor and this attraction to this woman anyway, there comes about a sexual assault and it happens by the main character, which I cannot handle reading anyway. But. The thing that happens later or immediately after, and then throughout the book. So in my mind, sexual assault is very important. It is always a very big pivotal moment in a story, and it needs to be treated with sensitivity and it needs to be given very sensitive. Proper attention in order to make sense that we are including such violence and such horror in our stories like sexual assault needs to be there for a reason.

[00:06:55] And it needs to be a damn good reason. With this story there was the sexual assault, it was done by the main character, which is already a hard thing to figure out why that happened. And then this young woman kind of disappears for the rest of the novel. And her mother immediately comes into the story and serves as the guide to this man to get him to his destination.

[00:07:25] Now if we're talking about choices and dealing with things and cheapening experiences and making things unbelievable. In my mind, if a person just had a violent sexual encounter with a woman and then is now forced to be in the company of that woman's mom for kind of a long time and to have to trust her and to have to like, trust his safety with her and trust that she's going to like lead him to where he needs to go and whatever else.

[00:07:59] There would be certain internal monologue going on. There would be a certain mannerisms. There would be paranoia. There would be something, there would be a reaction to that strange and awful situation. In this story that didn't happen at all. This mom came in and the sexual assault was never mentioned again.

[00:08:25] The mom came in and led this man to his destination. And she was actually with him throughout kind of a big chunk of the book. And then the book ends and we have no idea why the sexual assault was even in there to begin with why it needed to come about that way. Why a rediscovery of this body that could feel and lust and

[00:08:50] perform and whatever else needed to be explored and rediscovered in such a violent way. There were so many questions left unanswered, and because of all of that, instead of me hating the character, I mean, I wasn't terribly fond of the character anyway. What it instead made me do is question the author.

[00:09:17] Like why, why, why was this the way that we did it? So I read this book back in college and one of my best friends at the time also read the book. I recommended it to her. Not because it was good, but because it was bad. And we spent an entire evening in village in eating pie and ripping up hard. This book, I'm not going to mention it, what the title of this book is, So much of the believability of the story stemmed from that choice of inviting this horrendous, active violence into the story, and then responding in no way at all to that act throughout the rest of the story. And as a result of that, it cheapened the story and it made. I believe the main character less and it made us not too interested in the author from then on, that is how. We take these really big moments and it can be a big achievement. It can be a big act of violence. It can be good. It can be bad. It can be a great many things. That's how we take it. And we ruin it by letting it fall flat with the other characters in the story or with the main character itself.

[00:10:37] Let's remember the gravity of the choices that we put our characters through. Let's remember everybody's reaction to the things that they are exposed to and let all of that to build your story. When you include everything. If this horrendous act of violence had been fleshed out and there had been attention brought to this character's thought process or an encounter by the mother or anything, if anything at all had come about.

[00:11:06] the entire story would have been better Revisiting the short story that George Saunders analyzes in a swim in a pond in the rain. If the simpleton who was saved had allowed that sacrifice to change his life and make him a better person, the sacrifice itself would have been so much more meaningful and it would have been better, but because none of that happened, the sacrifice ended up feeling ch.

[00:11:35] Be sure to tune in next week with another episode of Writing in the Tiny House. Thank you so much for your time. Have a good day.

[00:11:45]

[00:11:45] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

How to make a character's transformation arc believable.

"Brigitte," Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse

Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com

Instagram: @authordevindavis

Twitter: @authordevind

The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show's webpage.

[00:00:00] Last week, we talked about languages, sort of, I guess the title of last week's episode was a bit misleading because it said all of the languages. And I realized that I probably should have included a list of languages, which is what the title implied. Anyway today, we're going to be talking about character transformation and how to make it believable today on Writing in the Tiny House.

[00:00:28] Hello. Hello. Hello, and welcome to today's episode of Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis. And I am the guy living in a tiny house who writes things and tells you about how writing works and what to do and how to do it. The point of this podcast is to empower you to be able to write a novel in 18 months and to have the wisdom to adjust that timeline if you feel you need to.

[00:01:17] So today, We are going to be talking about transformations. We are going to be talking about taking a character who's kind of awful or kind of persnickety or kind of negative or something and changing them in a believable way. So one of the most famous story arcs or at least most known story arcs that follow something like this is the story of Scrooge in a Christmas Carol.

[00:01:46] It is the story of a man who sees his life and then sees what all of that is going to lead to and decides to change. Right now arcs like that are really popular. An arc that I also love instead of a redemption arc is also a corruption arc where you take someone good and because of circumstances and because of personal weakness and because of things like that, choices and events and trauma, you turn them into a villain.

[00:02:18] One of my very favorite corruption arcs is actually not in literature. It's in TV. Well, it's on Netflix, it's in the series arcane. The corruption arc of the character Powder is fantastic. If you are not familiar with the series Arcane, I suggest that you watch that series today. But all of these things require a character to start out one way and to turn out another way.

[00:02:47] I've been reading the book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders and this has been a completely transformative thing for me. As far as learning how to developmental edit in a more grown up and in a more meaningful way, it has been the best resource I have read in a very long time. George Saunders is freaking amazing when it comes to simply knowing his craft and how to explain how he knows his craft.

[00:03:21] If you are unfamiliar with the book, with the way that it's structured is there are seven classic Russian short stories. I don't fully know why Saunders chose to stick with seven Russian short stories, but they are some of his favorites. I don't fully understand the choice of that, but whatever.

[00:03:42] And he goes through and he picks them apart and he shows you what the author is doing. He's showing you what they did well, and actually what they didn't do well. And he picks each of these short stories as a way to demonstrate craft, as a way to demonstrate something awesome. And talk about it. So what I recently read, it is a story about these two men who get stuck in a snow storm and one of them sacrifices himself in order to save the other.

[00:04:13] And it's one of those things where the snow storm, they can't get away from it. And the man uses himself as a shield against the weather to save the other man. And the thing that Saunders brings to light in this short story, that makes the transformation of that man so believable. So this man starts off as a very self-centered person and he is distrustful. He and the other main character or the person that he saves, don't have a super great relationship. And he's complaining about things like money and whatever else. He's not a warm, fuzzy kind of guy. As far as the universe goes, he is in the center of his own universe. And he is the hero of his own story.

[00:05:06] I mean, yes, we can say the same thing about each of us, but t hat's how this character is. And so the whole point behind this episode of Writing in the Tiny House is to touch on what a good arc or a good transformation arc does, what it looks like. Just the mechanism behind all of that. What I mean is it is important to understand how your character makes choices that energy behind their day to day. Their thought processes, the way that all of these things are formulated so that you can understand how they make choices. And the cool thing about a believable arc that leads to some form of transformation is

[00:05:58] all of the choices that lead to this better outcome are still done in the manner that this person lives their life. That means that if a person is paranoid and they tend to obsess and they tend to stew, it is more believable for them to simply take that energy of obsessing and stewing and still do all of that, but point that energy toward better choices.

[00:06:27] So with Ebeneezer Scrooge, he was a person who is short. He lacked understanding. He also was quick to decide And quick to make choices to bring about a resolution. And so that's how he ran his business. Everything was decided on the spot. His word was always final. And so even while he visits with the spirits of Christmas, past, present, and future and all of that stuff, and in the end, he is a better person with a better outlook on life and a better outlook on the meaning of life and the meaning of Christmas, which is the whole point of a Christmas Carol. He still is making decisions the same way he made decisions. He commands a boy to go buy a Turkey. He is still, you know, bossing people around.

[00:07:19] I mean, still in the spirit of Christmas that he is still himself. So if you have a person who tends to be loud and ornery and uses colorful language. Odds are, even though they are going to be making better decisions in the end, they still will use the same language. They will still be loud. They will still do all of those things.

[00:07:44] If you take a person who is a rebel and then turn them into a priest. I'm not saying that isn't believable because we've all read stories where it is. You need to pay attention to how that rebel made his decisions, even while he was in the throws of maybe breaking the law. Was he following his heart?

[00:08:06] Was he still standing up for what he thought was right? Was he still standing up for himself. Was he using aggressive language and a lot of self-confident stuff. Was he physically aggressive, things like that. And if you can tie all of that back into how he is as a priest so that we can still see that he is there.

[00:08:28] That's what makes it all more believable. So again, with this story That is mentioned in A Swim in the Pond, in the Rain, this guy who is self-centered, who is kind of the hero of his own story. he still makes those decisions. He decides for himself that it would be best to use himself as a shield against the weather for this other man, so that this other man can survive.

[00:08:56] It's still done in kind of that self centered way, but in one of those ways that we still see the change, but we still see the person. If that makes sense, it's important to include the essence of the person as we bring about this arc.. If we want to visit this corruption arc that I mentioned there is a girl in the story of Arcane.

[00:09:22] Her name is Powder. She is tinkery. She likes to make things. She is very submissive and moldable and she doesn't want to be a screw up and so bad things happen. And the bad guy is able to capitalize on those things and bring her to do bad things. And so we still see the same girl.

[00:09:49] She still makes decisions the same way that she always has just in this other framework of now she's a bad guy and now she's like this henchmen to the bigger, bad guy. And so we see this corruption arc, but we still see the character. So. This is kind of a shorter episode today, but the next episode. So I'm going to make this into a two part series.

[00:10:16] The next episode is actually going to be kind of the sad side of this, how to take all of these important redemptive qualities and how to make them fall flat. Bye reactions from other characters in your story. So we need to remember that the character is all tie into one another and sometimes because of.

[00:10:46] Overlooked something we can make this transformation, or we can make these choices or the impact of these choices fall flat, just because of how the other characters behave. And that is next week on Writing and the Tiny House.

[00:11:03]

[00:11:03] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

Let's talk about made up langauges and SPELLS!

"Brigitte," Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse

Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com

Instagram: @authordevindavis

Twitter: @authordevind

The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show's webpage.

[00:00:00] last week, we talked about the beauty of including open empty space of not using too many words in your manuscript. And today we are going to be talking about languages about fantasy made up languages today on writing in the tiny house. Hello. Hello. Hello, and welcome to Writing in the Tiny House. I am Devin Davis.

I am the guy living in a tiny house who writes things and tells you all about them. The whole point of this podcast is to give the tips and tricks and a little bit of guidance so that you can produce a short story in three [00:01:00] months. And you can produce a novel in about 18 months or even shorter.

And you will have the wherewithal to adjust that timeline if you need to. If we remember back in October, I released Brigitte, which was Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, and it went from drafting to publishing in eight weeks. And if you read the short story, it's a great short story.

It is something that can be done. And a lot of people don't know how long different things take. And this is why a lot of people don't write, is just because they don't know how long it could take for them to get started and finished. And so. The whole point of this podcast is to shed light on that entire process.

Today, we are talking about fantasy languages. I have been giving some different insights from George Saunders. I have been reading his book very closely, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, and I have been sharing some of the things that I [00:02:00] have gleaned from that.

Today we're not going to do that. Next time we will, though. Today we're going to be talking about made up languages. With this, we think of things like Klingon and we think of things like the Elvin or Elvish. I don't remember languages from the Lord of the rings and a Tolkien making up an entire language That's really cool and super admirable that somebody did that. At the same time, though, when I approach my writing, it is hard for me to just make up things that people are going to say and pretend that those things are going to be meaningful. Also, when I include what would be a foreign language in my book,

I know that I talked about this in a previous episode, but I want to mention it again. I really like to include another language from this world to be representative of another [00:03:00] language of the world that I'm creaing. So that means that I fully understand that my people and the people in my world don't speak English and that English is already kind of representing whatever language they would be speaking otherwise.

Therefore, if they meet people who are out of town and those people are speaking something else, I think it is perfectly acceptable for that out of town language to be French. If you have red Bridgette, you totally understand that's what I did with the people who live in the city of Brianne.

They speak a different language that is represented by French. And I have another short story stewing in my brain that is going to be from another region of the world that I'm creating that will be represented by Spanish. And so I think it's kind of fun [00:04:00] if the reader already has some background in French or Spanish or whatever other language that they'll be able to kind of pick out what this foreign language is and kind of know things before the main characters know them. It's a real language and it's something that the reader might already know. And I like that. I like the idea of that.

If you want to make up your own entire language, you absolutely can. There is certainly nothing wrong with inventing a language, however, with including it in your manuscript, a lot of people tend to not focus very hard on things that they don't know how to say. And in an adult book to have a grown up reader, to expect them to slow down and sound out whatever you are trying to create as far as a new and a unique [00:05:00] language,

it is something that a lot of your readers may not do. And it affects the flow of the story. Most people read fiction for entertainment, and that means that when they sit down, they want the reading experience to be pretty straight forward. And so to pick apart and to sound out a bunch of words that they don't know, and a bunch of words that are likely not real anyway, it can come across as a pretty big ask.

so if you are working on an entirely new language, good for you. I recommend though limiting how much you're going to have in your manuscript, just because your reader is not really going to pay close attention to it anyway. Also what about spells? Because spells in many books, Their own language.

And a lot of [00:06:00] people like, well, spells are kind of their own unique thing. I guess a lot of people like to have spells be a form of poetry that rhymes, or a bunch of like really powerful statements of truth or commands that could be in English or whatever. and then a spell happens because that's how the magic is working, or it can be a bunch of chanting and nobody ever actually spells out the words that are chanting.

It is just like incoherent noise, like other worldly mysterious, strange syllables and sounds and different things that the magician is producing. A lot of other people like to spell out the command words, they like to spell out the spells. They like to have key phrases that actually represent something.

And so, I mean, if you pay attention to Harry Potter, there are a certain number of commands that come up all the time. And so [00:07:00] even though a lot of them are derived from a Latin word, they at least sort of They come up over and over again, and they are short it is a fun way to world build with something like that, because it's something that we can pay attention.

And it's something that we can learn. And it's something that adds consistency and a certain feeling of familiarity as future books come as additional things happen later on in the story or in the books, especially if you're writing a series. And that can be super fun. If you choose to spell out your spells, I recommend keeping them to maybe one word or as specific phrase and bringing those phrases up more than once or finding ways to include them. Throughout the book or throughout your story so that the reader can come to recognize them [00:08:00] and come.

understand them and really like that type of familiarity that comes with it. So that is very much in a nutshell, my 2 cents about languages today. Like I said, in my short story, Bridgette, which was installment, one of tales from Vlaydor the local yokels of Brianne, which is the city that it takes place in speak.

Or there is a very heavy French influence on their language, even though France doesn't exist in my world. And in a future short story that I will likely be composing later this year, it is going to be focusing on a different area of the world with a different culture a different language that I am likely going to represent with Spanish.

So do what you want. Let me know what you do and what works for you. And yeah. Thank you for joining me today with today's episode on languages. [00:09:00] Next week, we are going to dive back in to George Saunders, A Swim in the Pond in the Rain and dive into more ways to do development. It's on Writing in the Tiny House.

Devin Davis: And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.[00:10:00]

Learn about the value of sometimes using fewer words!

"Brigitte," Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse

Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com

Instagram: @authordevindavis

Twitter: @authordevind

The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show's webpage.

[00:00:00]

Last week we asked the question, did Delphine save the cat in the short story, Brigitte which was Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor that I released back in October, but today we are going to move in a slightly different direction as we talk about trusting your audience by limiting the amount of words that you use today on writing in the tiny house.

Hello, hello, hello. I am [00:01:00] Devin Davis. Welcome to this show. I am the guy who lives in a tiny house who writes stuff and talks about it on a podcast. And the reason behind this podcast is for us to improve our creative writing, to learn the parts of creative writing, to learn how it all works together to develop a practice.

And then to complete a manuscript that is ready to publish in a short amount of time. It is possible to write a short story in three months, and it is possible to write a novel in 18 months. Hopefully through this podcast, you will also have the knowledge and the wherewithal to adjust that timeline if you need to. Many of us hesitate to even get started on a project because we don't know how long it will take. But if we are prepared with the right tools and if we know how everything works, and if we approach it with better understanding of how it all [00:02:00] happens, we can get things done with really good quality and on a better timeline.

So this week we are going to discuss something that is a touchy subject. A lot of people say things like show don't tell. Or whatever other cliche words, cliche phrases that we hear in the writing community. And oftentimes we are led to believe that if we describe, describe, describe, we are helping our readers fully understand what is going on in the story and what is going on in the scene and what is happening with everything. There is a problem with describing stuff like that, with using a lot of words. And that is what we are hoping to tackle today. I have been reading the book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, by george [00:03:00] Saunders,

and one of the things that hit home so much was the authority that the story itself plays in the story telling. And what that means is the story itself gets to dictate what is important and what is not important. And that's okay. Just to quickly demonstrate. So this is going to be a pretty short episode and that is just fine, but to quickly demonstrate there was a trick that I described in a previous episode where you describe the cat in the house, and in describing the cat, you also describe the house. That way you don't have to describe the house.

You don't need to take up the pages and the paragraphs to describe the house if we already understand the cat that lives there. It's this this fancy shortcut to making things precise [00:04:00] and still conveying something without using 5 million words to do so. And with something like a short story specifically, there is no room for fluff.

There is no room to simply, uh, blow smoke in our pros. And so one of those tricks is to describe the cat in order to describe the house. This one is kind of the opposite, but a similar thing. So if I were to tell you that our main character, Brian has a family photo that he keeps on his desk, what do we already understand or can safely assume about that photo?

If it is a photo that he keeps on his desk, odds are, it is framed. Odds are it sits on his desk in a frame and it sits in a way for him to see it all the time. Unless I take time to describe that differently, because that [00:05:00] is a normal thing that people do, we can let the reader assume that it's going to be a normal thing that our main character does too.

When we mentioned the picture on the desk, we don't need to say that it's in a frame unless the frame is important. We don't need to describe the frame because the frame is not important, but we kind of get that the frame is there. Why is the frame important or why is the frame not important? This is what we like to touch on when we say that the story itself has authority on what's important and what's not. It's not important because the story doesn't mention it. The story does not bring attention to the frame because it doesn't need to. And, allowing the reader to just assume a couple things to assume normal behavior and to figure some stuff out [00:06:00] on their own.

It allows the reader to imagine for themselves kind of a little bit what is going on here, especially if it's in a typical setting. I read a book recently that was laden with so much description that it slowed down the pacing of the story, and it made the story hard to pay attention to, and really challenging to read.

And sometimes you get to let the story dictate what is important by leaving things out. In the book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, there is a short story in that book called Darling that George Saunders analyzes for you. And, in that short story, it is a pattern short story.

And George Saunders goes crazy with what we can do with a pattern story. So it's one of those things where we just see the pattern of behavior. A woman meets a man and falls in love, and then the [00:07:00] man dies. And then she meets a man and falls in love. And then the man dies. It's more than that. But you understand what I'm trying to say. And some of the things that the story purposefully leaves out, George Saunders brings attention to as a way to highlight what negative space can do to improve storytelling. So after this woman's husband died, six months go by and she meets who will become the next love of her life.

But the story doesn't say the grieving process of those six months, the story leaves all of that out and just simply says, six months later. Because the story doesn't say those things, the pacing of the story is better. And focusing on the manner that this woman is grieving, isn't the point of the story.

And so we don't focus on it. The story says that that is not important. And so it's left [00:08:00] out and we are left to assume. And so that is something that we can do with our own work. Sometimes when we sit back and we go to revise our stuff and we go to revise our works in progress or whatever, sometimes there is too much. Sometimes more is not better. With things like prose especially in prose sometimes in dialogue, more isn't better.

We get to trust that our reader is intelligent and we get to trust that sometimes the negative space or the ability to fill in the blanks is actually a very good gift for the reader. And it improves the pacing and the flow of the way the story is going. And so with your work in progress, I challenge you to comb through and see if there are parts that you can clip or tighten up.

I have been listening to another book. It's [00:09:00] another fantasy book. Sometimes you just get to read a fun, YA fantasy book. I started paying attention to this more closely after I read this analysis by George Saunders. And so I was like, I wonder how often that happens because I was under the impression that in fantasy specifically, it happens a lot.

And so I have been listening more closely to exposition based dialogue. And I think to myself, how much of this was actually necessary to the story. And did it have to come out this way? Would it have been okay to simply remove this little bit of dialogue altogether so that this response could have been shorter? So a lot of the exposition that we get, especially exposition based dialogue is largely for world building. A lot of people understand that info dump in their prose isn't a good [00:10:00] thing. And so they info dump in their dialogue instead. And oftentimes it is to world build. It is to help the reader understand how the world works.

And if it's a fantasy novel, oftentimes it's to help understand that the magic system that the author is trying to establish. And so with that, with the book that I have been listening to recently that I finished just the other day, the magic system is a pretty hard magic system. It's largely not very mysterious.

It has a lot of rules. I mean, the author could have written a text book explaining the magic system that he created in this world. And the thing is, as the reader, I don't care. I don't care about the magic system as much as I care about the story. And so the story gets to hold the authority on what is important.

The story itself would have been much easier [00:11:00] and natural had the author chosen to simplify the magic system or chosen to let some of the things that happened with his magic remain mysterious instead of explaining away every little detail, because he wanted so badly for whatever reason to have this be a hard magic system, which is a magic system that is very well-defined instead of a soft magic system, which is one that is more mysterious and not as well understood.

I'm sure that there are good reasons for all of the rules and all of the ways that the magic works and governs itself in this world, in this book. At the same time, I know that a lot of it did not specifically apply to this story. And instead it was hard to read and it was kind of hard to slug through.

So again, Go through your work in progress [00:12:00] and see what you can remove and give your reader the gift of negative space so that sometimes they can use their own imagination to fill in the blanks. It's a fun thing to do. It requires an amount of trust, but you would be surprised or not.

By how much better? A couple perfect words are compared to several paragraphs of a lot of description.

Devin Davis:

And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse [00:13:00] to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

Let's go through an analysis of my short story Brigitte and compare it to the beat sheet Save the Cat.

"Brigitte," Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse

Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com

Instagram: @authordevindavis

Twitter: @authordevind

The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show's webpage.

[00:00:00] Last week we learned about beats. Now we are going to save the cat today on Writing in the Tiny House. Hello. Hello. Hello. And welcome back to the show. Welcome to Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy who lives in a tiny house who writes stuff and talks about it on a podcast.

The goal of this podcast is to introduce the language of writing of creative writing, help you to develop a process so that you can have a manuscript that is ready to publish, whether you choose to self-publish or [00:01:00] whether you choose to approach an agent and do the traditional route, your manuscript will be ready.

And if you are doing a short story, perhaps you can crank it out in three months. If you are doing a novel, perhaps you can do it in 18 months. And I hope that with this podcast, you can also have the foresight to see if you need to adjust that timeline or not.

So we're going to be talking about my short story, Brigitte that I released back in October, and I wrote that and published it in eight weeks.

It is totally possible to do. Some people are super fast at it. Some people aren't. Hurray for timelines. At the same time, let's use our brains and our wisdom and make sure that we are publishing good things. We talked last week about beats. We talked about what a beat is, that a beat is something in the story.

It is the smallest thing in a story that advances the story, that makes the story [00:02:00] move forward. And it can be an action and inaction. It can be a response. It can also just be a setting, just something like that that makes the plot move forward. And I said, last week that this week we are going to go through what is called a beat sheet.

So it is a collection of beats and how they are organized as a way to just kind of touch base to see if your story is working. Doing this in this way, it makes writing pretty formulaic and there are good and bad qualities to having a formulaic way of writing. First of all, it kind of cranks out things that all resemble each other.

And some people don't like that. At the same time, though, it can be a good tool. I have found. Many of the different things that I do. I'm a person who has like a million different hobbies that the more that I understand the rules of something, the [00:03:00] easier it is for me to naturally incorporate them into what I'm doing.

And it is easier for me to bend or break them and do that with purpose to do that intentionally. And so, while something like Save the Cat is formulaic and mechanical in its approach to creative writing. A few weeks ago, we also talked about the hero's journey, which is very much along these same lines.

It is good to see where the things fall, just because all of these are common points and common events and common things in good stories that have all been successful. I'm not going to pretend that all successful things have each of these beats in them, but as we go through this and compare it to my short story, Bree sheets, we can see that it's all there.

Like it's there. There might be something. May not work. And we'll talk about that. [00:04:00] I did not consult the beat sheet of Save the Cat when I wrote Brigitte back in October. And so this is going to be kind of an experiment for all of us. So Save the Cat was made by a gentleman named Blake Snyder. He died a few years ago, but he was a filmmaker and a screenwriter and Save the Cat is actually the original of it is actually meant for screenplays, but it's all storytelling. And so it applies very strongly to novels. And this goes with a three act structure. And if you remember how I said things a few weeks ago with the three act structure, act one very generally speaking is about 25% of your book. Act two is 50 and then act three is the remaining 25. And so just bear that in mind, as we go through the different [00:05:00] beats of Save the Cat, as we see if Delphine the main character of Bridgette, which was Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor did she save the cat or not?

So yeah, like I said, I did not reference this while I wrote the book. However, we're going to find out together. If these things are all still there, if it's all kind of there. And with the short story, we get to understand that these things are likely all in there somewhere, but condensed. There's not a lot of room in a short story to fill a thing with 15 different beats.

With a novel, when you have a higher word count, it's easier to work in all of the beats. So let's go through and talk about this.

Let's, let's start with act one. Again, act one is the first fourth of the novel or the story.

[00:06:00] So the first beat of Save the Cat is the opening image and it is a snapshot of how the world is. So the first scene of this short story actually takes place at the end of the story. I did one of these really weird framework things where I give you a glimpse at the end of the story as a way to set a tone for the whole story itself. And so Delphine is at the train station.

You can tell that she is on edge. She is tired. She has a bag of money and she is being chased. She is being pursued or at least feels that she is, she's being pursued by a group of people, an unknown group of people. And she is taking her daughter to flee to another city to start a new life. And from there, it's a short scene, but it is a great snapshot of what the entire story is going to be like. It brings [00:07:00] in a lot of questions. It brings in a lot of intrigue and it sets the stage for the entire rest of the story by glimpsing at how the story ends. So that was just kind of a trick there as a way to fulfill this setting the scene.

Before the story starts or before, like the action of the story happens. So with Bridgette, we have Delphine who is about to deliver her daughter, Bridgette.

She is alone in a monastery and she has a midwife with her. We can kind of get a sense of time and place a little bit from the lack of technology and just this way of delivering a baby. Also she goes through and we talk about the flowers that were delivered to her room from the crone and. We understand that there is contention between Delphine and the crone based on Delphine's attitude toward those [00:08:00] flowers.

And so we get a sense of what her world is like, what her own personal world is like through the various flashbacks that she has while she is in transitional labor. And so, yeah, the opening image is established there. The next beat is the theme is stated a single scene beat in which a statement is made by someone other than the protagonist, that hints at what the protagonist will learn before the end of the story.

So this is more complicated. The thing is all of this is general and so we can make things work and see how it fits. So a statement by someone other than the main character to just kind of show how the main character is going to be or what their circumstances will be and what they want to avoid. In her flashbacks, Delphine reflects on an old friend named Jackleen who had an affair and was kicked out [00:09:00] of their city, who was removed from this priestess hood and lost her status and her place in the city. And so she knew from that experience, that things got to be handled differently with this new pregnancy of hers. The next beat is the setup and this can take place over several scenes, but

we get a sense of the protagonist life and what the world is like with all of its flaws and everything as it is. And so throughout her reflections and throughout her flashbacks, we see Delphine, we see her struggle with her faith. We see her struggle with her place as the high priestess of this church and the struggle that she has with the crone, who is kind of over the priestess program of the city of Brianne.

The next beat is the catalyst, and this is the life-changing event that happens to catapult the [00:10:00] protagonist into this new world or a new way of thinking. So the catalyst was Bridgette herself. So the thing that happens is Delphine has a baby and the delivery almost kills Delphine and it's this new daughter.

The daughter is also a legitimate And it creates a big change in Delphine's world because she wants to keep the history and the origin of her daughter a secret. And they don't understand. She doesn't understand her daughter's abilities. The next beat is a debate. So it's a Multisim beat where the protagonist debates what they will be doing next.

All of this happens in the first chapter, too. Just going through the flashbacks, Delphine finally arrives at the conclusion that she will be protecting her daughter [00:11:00] at all costs and that she will be keeping her daughter away from the crone, especially. Until she comes to understand what it is about her daughter that makes her daughter so dangerous so that things can be dealt with on her terms rather than on the Crone's terms.

The next beat in act one is break into two. It's the scene Where we are catapulted into act two. And the protagonist decides to accept whatever the next actions are going to be. And so there was the moment of insecurity and worry about what would happen to have an illegitimate child, and then to have an illegitimate child with such a dangerous ability.

Brought on more complications. And then the break into two beats is where phene decides to keep her [00:12:00] daughter more of a secret, the origins, a secret so that she can decide. What her daughter is actually all about what her daughter can do and to hide the fact that her daughter is a legitimate.

So let's move on to act two. All of that was act one, act one has a lot of beets. It has a lot of foundational stuff to set the scene for the story act two, the beats are a little bit more broad. one Of the beats for act two is the B story. So it's the B plot with Bridgette and with Devin, we have the subplot of the crone wanting to make money.

We have her little background, we have what she is doing with the enchanted water source found in the basement of the monastery. We have that. The next beat is fun and games. It's where the reader gets to see the protagonist, either shine or flounder in this new world. So there wasn't a lot of [00:13:00] struggle between Delphine and this new world, but there was an amount of figuring out she was with her daughter, Bridgette and Bridgette was playing with toys.

Bridgette was cutting a tooth and any way throughout this process, Delphine pieced it together. What Bridgette little ability is that Bridgette actually SAPs energy from people around her in order to heal herself. And that was why during her traumatic birth, she almost killed her mom. So that's a cool thing.

That's what fun and games are all about. The next beat of act two is the midpoint. It's where the fun and games section either culminates into a false victory or a false defeat. So this is the scene where Delphine and the crone have a confrontation. And it is a short conversation about [00:14:00] how the crone wants to do a ritual on Bridgette in order to find out for herself and therefore publicize what Bridgette can do if she has a gift at all and declare her lineage.

If this were allowed to happen, Bridgette would be ratted out as legitimate and Delphine would be forced out of the city, which the crone wants anyway. In that confrontation, Delphine's stands up to the crone and puts her in her place at the same time though.

The crone gets that last word in it, just as that last stabbing remark that. If Delphine does not comply by a certain day, the crone is going to declare Bridgette to be a bastard, which would ruin Delphine and her family. So moving on to the next bits of act two the bad guys closed in.

So this is right after the false victory. This happens in the story when it Bridgette is [00:15:00] kidnapped and then all is lost. This is Delphine reacting to Bridgette going missing. Aunt, her daughter's reacting to that to Delphina already has a lot of daughters and they were in charge of watching Bridgette and breezy.

Disappeared. So those beets still happened and then all is lost.

All is lost is when the bad guys. Appear to be winning. And so you have the captors of Bridgette over-powering her, of her struggling of her getting away. And then the dark night of the soul is the 12th beats of this entire thing. A dark night of the soul is. Multisim beat in which the protagonist takes time to process everything that's happened so far.

And it is the darkest hour. In, in my short story, Bridgette, this happens pretty rapidly. This is when everything [00:16:00] falls apart. This is when Bridgette falls into the spring, bumps her head. And due to her injury and the nature of the spring combined causes everybody around her to die.

So there's a big commitment there and a huge escalation of stakes. That's what the dark night of the soul is all about. And it is at that point that we break into act three. It's where the protagonist realizes that they must do a thing to fix the story.

So this is when the protagonist deals with the aftermath of this climax of this dark night of the soul. This is when, in my story, it is when Del phene finds breezy. And she goes into the basement of the monastery where this magical spring is located. Bridgette is there, she's wet. She's okay. Due to her own strange and dangerous healing abilities and everyone around her is dead.[00:17:00]

And so Delphine takes a moment to process through all of this and then decides that they need to skip town. And that propels us into act three.

And act three, there are a couple different little parts of, one big beat. The beat is the finale. This is Delphina. Speaking to her daughters revealing the affair that she had. That brought Bridgette into this world. And then her daughter is working in concert to get Delphine and Bridgette out of the city to catch a train to flee away.

So the finale has a lot of different parts. The parts here are gathering the team. Delphine speaks to her daughters. And that is kind of a way of gathering the team, gathering resources, packing a bag, executing the plan. The higher tower surprise is the protagonist spaces, a twist or a surprise that forces them to prove their worth.[00:18:00]

The high tower surprise is not really a part of the finale of my story. There's not really that. The dig deep down is not having a backup plan. The protagonist has to dig deep inside themselves to find the most important weapon of all the strength and courage to overcome their fear or false belief. And then the execution of a new plan.

So all of these are little sub-parts Of this larger beat, that is the finale. And some of those don't 100% apply to my story. I said earlier that Bridgette was not written in reference to Save the Cat, but as we go through and we see the way that the different points play out, you can see that I touched on a lot of these points pretty.

Okay. The points are there and so it is good to know. Beat sheets. It's it is good to know where things happen and where they should happen, so that you can become familiar with that when you are formulating your own stories. And as you're writing also as you're revising. [00:19:00] So these are a good thing to reference while you are doing the revision of your own short stories.

And as we demonstrated, I did pretty okay with this. There are some details in the finale beat that don't 100% apply to my story, but that's okay. I mean, This is a list of 15 beats and they're all there in the story. So that's pretty okay. I did pretty okay with this guys. That is what. Save the cat is all about.

Now we need to visit the title itself, save the cat. Like why are we calling anything? Save the cat when saving a cat is not a beat in the story. And I bring this up at the end on purpose. The guy who came up with saved the cat, he said, in different versions of this beat sheets. You can find these beat sheets kind of everywhere.

If you look up, save the cat beat sheet, you can find some, and they all say similar things. I recommend. [00:20:00] Referencing the original resource material all the time, but you can find beat sheets all over the place. This gentlemen said that one of the things that is missing from most stories, especially nowadays most modern stories, modern films, screenplays novels, is this beats in particular.

And like I said, in the original save the cat, there was a beat called save the cat. And it was the moment where we find that the hero is worth rooting for that the hero is worth cheering for And so I ask you my dear listeners in your experience of reading Bridgette installment, one of tales from late, or did Del phene ever save the cat.

next week, we're going to talk about a few other things with developmental edits inspired by the works [00:21:00] of George Saunders. And so tune in next week for another episode of writing and the tiny house.

Devin Davis:

And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

"Brigitte," Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse

Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com

Instagram: @authordevindavis

Twitter: @authordevind

The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show's webpage.

The episodes this year have mainly been about story structure. And today we are going to cover what beats are as we continue covering story structure today on Writing in the Tiny House. Hello? Hello. Hello. Welcome to the show. Welcome to Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy in the tiny house in Northern Utah who writes stuff.

And talks about it on a podcast. So in the intro of this show, I have said that mainly this this podcast is for adults who work a nine to five, who really just want [00:01:00] to get that work of fiction out of their brains and onto paper. And while I certainly still stand by that, I've decided to refine that whole target audience.

this is what this show is. And I really like this on this show. This show pertains to everybody who wants to write, whether you work a nine to five, whether you are a 15 year old in high school, who wants to write short stories or work on your first novel or whatever this show has stuff for all of you.

If you want to do your own memoir, if you want to do this or that a collection of short stories. We like all the things on this show, we learn the terminology. And we develop a process so that you can have a manuscript that is ready to publish. If you are writing a short story, you can get that manuscript ready in as little as three months. And if you [00:02:00] are writing a novel, you can get it ready. in as little as 18 months, and hopefully in this podcast, We also give you the big picture and the reality that you might need longer than that, which is great. And some of you might say, no, there are plenty of short stories in this world that took years and years to write. And I am not going to disagree with you. And there are novels in this world.

There are flash fiction novels that took under three months to write. And so. What is the value of putting a timeframe on completing a work in progress when it is going to be different for everybody, it is simply to convey a possibility. The Thing is sometimes we don't get started with projects just because we don't understand how big the project is going to be. But knowing that getting started and with some practice, you can crank out a good short story in a pretty short amount of time. I [00:03:00] can give you encouragement to get started in the first place.

And to know that when you are writing a novel, if you stick with it and you practice, eventually you can get your process down to 18 months or 12 months, just depending on how diligent you are with it. Granted, there are a lot of long novels in this world that took years to write. I don't want to try to fill your head with unrealistic expectations, but to me, those expectations are realistic. from start to finish, I wrote the short story Brigitte in eight weeks. And so if you have your process down, you can definitely whittle out some of the time that it takes to get a good story.

And that is what this show is for. It is to learn the terminology and develop a process in order to have a manuscript ready to publish in a short amount of time. That's the thing and it can be done. And for your first few works in progress, it will take longer [00:04:00] than that.

So just know the things also, your process will likely be different from mine, and it just might be slower or faster. And that is why we are all different people. And that makes the world interesting to live in. Just some quick housekeeping stuff with with creativity. I have felt my creativity battery gradually recharge over the month of January.

For those of you who paid attention to my podcast. At the beginning of this year, there was a lot of personal stuff to get through from November until January 1st and going through that really drained my creative battery. And so I had a short story that I was in the middle of in the beginning of November.

That died on the vine. I am shelving that short story. It was called auto. I may pick it up again in the future. I may not. It was going to beInstallment Two of Tales from Vlaydor. But [00:05:00] instead Instllment Two of Tales from Vlaydor is now called Tiz. The idea of this short story has been in my head for the past six months.

And I have been eager to get started on this short story, but I thought for the longest time that I simply had to finish auto first before I could carry on. Tos and the thing is with creativity, it doesn't have to be linear and it doesn't have to work that way. And so, because I am eager to get started on this short story, I decided I might as well just start on it and we can deal with auto later.

So Tiz takes place about 170 years before Bridgette does. And it is about a linguist whose discoveries bring about the magical industrial revolution of the entire land ofVlaydor, so it's going to be a treat. It's going to be a wild ride. And I am very excited to explore the relationship of Tiz with her fiance [00:06:00] and.

It's just going to be good times and I'm so excited about it, guys. It is so good to be excited also with Tiz I have described before that, as far as writing goes, I am largely a pantser. I don't like to outline in a lot of detail, but with this one, I decided to approach it differently. And I decided to shove aside the pantser part of my creative writing process.

And to focus on outlining so that I can be the plotter and it's okay to flex both sets of muscles. And so I have been outlining, I have been doing character maps. I have been doing a real map. I mean, a real map of a fake place, because this is all fiction. But it's been good. And just the preparation that comes from doing all of that first has been very valuable.

And so there's value in all of it friends and it's okay. If for one short story, you are largely a pantser and [00:07:00] that equates to a lot more revisions and it's okay. If the next short story you are more of a plotter. So that your first draft can be a little farther along the process because you have such a good outline.

So there's that. We are excited to be back in the writing process and it's been good to build that foundational creativity so that in the next few days I'm going to start drafting this sucker and it's going to be great. I have over the past few episodes, I've talked about the three act structure and I went into what each of those acts is.

I also covered the hero's journey, which is a big outline of different points. That are typically found in an adventure story. And last week I covered the arc types that are found in the hero's journey and the arc types are just the different types of people that show up and the roles that they play in order [00:08:00] to further the story along.

So the hero, the mentor and more, and the list goes on. Today we are going to step back and talk about something a little bit more basic. One of the goals of this podcast is to talk about the terminology. Just because if you are hoping to revise your work and you're going to be sending it to people you don't know, or you're going to be sending it to professionals in order to get it critiqued.

Edited and improved upon if you are hoping to get any sort of positive feedback or feedback that is meant to help you in your process, you need to know the terminology. And I'm not talking about just sentence, structure and grammar. I'm talking about the terminology as it pertains to storytelling and as it pertains to creative writing.

And so today we are going to cover beats [00:09:00] and what beats are. And then next week we are going to see how Bridgette. Holds up to one of the most common and widely used set of beats. And just see how it goes. So a beat is the smallest measurable thing of storytelling.

A beat is an event or a moment or whatever that furthers the plot along. So a beats can be a moment of action. It can be a moment of reaction. It can be a moment of inaction. It can also be a scene. It can be a various number of different things so long as the plot progresses and if you get smaller than a beat, you're no longer working with just story elements.

You're more working with the fundamentals of sentence structure. So you're kind of stepping out of story if you are getting smaller than a [00:10:00] beat. So in the book, a swim in a pond in the rain by George Saunders, I highly recommend reading that book. That book has been one of the biggest. Resources for me on developmental edits and developmental edits.

You cover beats. It's all about beats. A swim in a pond in the rain is a collection of seven classic Russian short stories that George Saunders, who is a very successful, very well-known various. Celebrated and loved short story author. He goes through and picks them apart and analyzes them in many different ways, as a way to show you how you can do it, how all of this can be done.

And so sometimes it is pretty technical, which includes like charts and graphs. Sometimes it is more broad and it is actually more of a lesson in life, which I like all of that. I love a [00:11:00] really big approach to something like this. And so I have been eating up this book. I started this book a long time ago.

I didn't finish it, but with the way that my week has now started to unfold, now that I've taken on some additional activities, I have some time. To sit down and actually read a book. That's not on tape. That's not a recorded audio book. So I listened to audio books in the car, but I wanted something like this, like a resource book to be a physical copy so that I can reference it more easily.

I don't reference audio books very easily. So that's why I chose to do it this way. But in that book, in the book, a swim in the pond, in the rain by George Saunders, he says, The way to build intensity and the way to escalate your plot is to never repeat your beats. [00:12:00] So. Beats are these little events. They are the little things that drive the plot forward.

And if you repeat your beats, if you have a beat that shows up more than once in an identical way, it causes. The steam in your story to just kind of deflate and the story loses energy and your reader will lose interest. So that's what beets are when you have your first draft completed, or if you are detailing out a really good outline

depending on how you approach your process. If you like to do the big outlines or if you like to do just kind of a first draft and then fill in whatever is missing in your first draft, it is really good to compare your story to a sheet of beats. So there are things in this world called beat sheets, and to be perfectly honest, the hero's journey is a beat sheet.

It [00:13:00] has. Just the little different events and what they are for and what they do. And if you are writing an adventure story, you can kind of go through and see where the things are. You can see what they are and the order that they typically would go in and you can assign that to your story. You're like, oh, well, yeah.

I mean, crossing. Threshold happens in my story when this kid who, who has an overbearing dad stands up to his dad and then leaves. And that happens, you know, really early in the story. And it totally fits with this beat sheet. One of the more common or very well-known. Beat sheets. It's also a book it's called save the cat.

And it is a collection of 15 beats and it is structured in a similar way to the hero's journey. So it is a three act structure and important things happen in each [00:14:00] act. And we are going to go through next week. I am going to take you through an analysis of my short story, Brie sheets and plug it in to save the cat.

So save the cat. Like I said, it is a book.

It is written by Blake Snyder and there are actually several different versions of save the cat now. save the cat is originally for storytelling and screenwriting, but it absolutely applies to novels and other forms of storytelling too. And so you'll, you'll find many different applications. Of save the cat, but yeah, all those books are available on Amazon and I highly recommend referencing those books.

It is okay to have the references so that you know, the terminology. tuned in for that next week where we go through an analysis of Bri sheets and if breezy. [00:15:00] Saved the cat or rather if Del phene the main character of Bridgette saved the cat next week on writing in the tiny house.

Devin Davis:

And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

"Brigitte," Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse

Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com

Instagram: @authordevindavis

Twitter: @authordevind

The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show's webpage.

[00:00:00] Last week, we went over the three act structure of the hero's journey. And this week we are going to cover the arc types or the different people we meet in the hero's journey today on writing in the tiny house. Hello. Hello. Hello, and welcome back to the show. Welcome to writing in the tiny house. I am the host of this show, Devin Davis, and I live in a tiny house in Northern Utah, and I write things.

[00:00:51] Mainly fiction, mainly fantasy fiction. And I'm here to show you the different ways to get started with writing so that whatever work of fiction you have in your brain, you can actually get to work starting it so that you can have that done. By the time you die or so you can have it done in a timely manner.

[00:01:14] Sometimes it takes a long time to write a book and that's just fine, but it's important to know the easy ways to get there. So last week we discovered the different events or the different beats that happen with the hero's journey. I explained last week that the hero's journey is kind of the step-by-step outline that many epic stories seem to follow, and it is meant to be generic because.

[00:01:45] Is meant to be applied and followed in its own unique way. But as we went through those different points and as they fell into act one and two and three, we saw where those points are in many popular works of fiction. I talked about the Lord of the rings. I talked about Harry Potter. I also brought up the broken earth trilogy by NK Jemisin.

[00:02:08] And today we're not going to be talking about plot structure, but we are going to be talking about archetypes. And an archetype is the type of person that you see represented in fiction or in mythology or whatever. And they serve different roles in progressing the plot and they need to be in the story to keep the story interesting.

[00:02:34] And to keep the story complete. If you have a story where everybody has the same personality type, that story will not have as much conflict as it could. And the characters won't be related to. The easiest way to build a character that is relatable is to see how they interact with other people. And that means that you get to have a lot of different types of people.

[00:03:00] So this is eldest of things that relates back to the hero's journey, which is a book that I referenced last week. The hero's journey written by Christopher Vogler. And so if you want to check that out, go ahead and do so. But these eight arch types are commonly found in all types of high adventure series, where a person leaves their home to go out on an adventure And does all of the things along the way until they come back, if they come back. So the first arc type or the first type of character that is mentioned in this collection of things is the hero. And according to this specific list, So the hero is not necessarily the main character, just because of this one personality type or this one quality that, that this hero has a hero must be willing to self sacrifice.

[00:04:07] So a hero needs to be willing to leave their house to go out on the adventure. If you are writing a novel. That the main character doesn't have that quality. Then your main character doesn't fit the role of the hero in this respect. However, another character might. And so if you're still writing an adventure novel, it is entirely possible that you have a hero, even though it's not your main character, which is interesting because sometimes that can be fun.

[00:04:38] Sometimes. Main character can be like really afraid and really look up to somebody else who is the hero, who is their hero. And so the role of the hero is still filled, which is cool. The next archetype is the mentor. Last week I talked about Dumbledore and I talked about Gandalf and I also talked about some different characters in the lion, the witch and the wardrobe by CS Lewis, just because many different characters can be mentors.

[00:05:12] However, It's easiest to see the ones that that's their entire role at all. So Gandalf comes into the story. He is there to teach. He is there to protect and he is there to provide gifts. So the reason why I brought up the lion, the witch and the wardrobe. Last week is because there are several characters who fulfill this role in order to teach.

[00:05:40] We have Mr. , who is talking about the world and about life as. Creature in servitude or in slavery or whatever, to the white, which we have the white, which herself, who teaches specific things to one of the children. And we have as LAN who teaches the biggest things to, or the biggest, most important things, the biggest life lessons to the children.

[00:06:07] And it's interesting. One of these qualities is to provide a gifts in the lion, the witch and the wardrobe. Who is the guy who gives the gifts. It's Santa Claus. I've kind of ranted about Santa Claus in the lion, the witch and the wardrobe before, because it's one of the biggest plot conveniences in fiction.

[00:06:30] Luckily this is a children's story, so we can allow the plot conveniences, Santa Claus doesn't belong in the lion, the witch and the wardrobe. But, but I bring it up here just because. As Christmas gifts because it was Santa Claus. He brings these children weapons that are used in the great battle at the end and are used to win that battle.

[00:06:56] And so in a way, Santa Claus, even though he has a very limited role and really shouldn't be in that story anyway, meets the criteria of being a mentor, just because he gives them weapons that. Proved to be vital to the success of the war. So that's an interesting thing. The next step or the next arc type is the threshold guardian.

[00:07:25] This is the character that has meant to be menacing, but can still be overcome. So sometimes that can be perhaps a parent. Like the dad or the mom who is not approving of the child's decision to do this or that, and is standing in the way what this arc type does is provide the hero a moment to be brave.

[00:07:54] Usually the first moment to be brave as a way to. To see to the reader and to the hero and to whatever else to prove that they can go out and do the harder things after. The next archetype is the Herald, who is the person who brings a new challenge. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any specific character who simply serves as a Herald.

[00:08:20] it's easier to think of examples of mentors and heroes, but these next four fall into. The categories of just kind of the sub character cast. And as we talk about them, you can see how they all need to be there in order to have a rich cast. So the first is the shape shifter, or it is the character who changes constantly in the hero's point of view.

[00:08:48] And sometimes from the reader's point of view, it's the person who sometimes they're good. Sometimes they're bad. It's the one who keeps you guessing. The next is the shadow that represents the power of the dark force of this adventure. So in like space operas, like star wars, it's really easy to identify the people who fall into the dark side of the force.

[00:09:15] Like we have the emperor and. They represent and embody the dark side or the evil side of whatever is at work in this book. The next is the ally and an ally is a person who travels with the hero. And supports and serves them The ultimate ally is Sam in the Lord of the rings. Especially how he's portrayed in the movies, just because, especially in the movies, Sam did a lot and Sam.

[00:09:51] Is a hero in his own. Right. But absolutely serves the role of the ally when it comes to these different archetypes of the hero's journey. And the final arc type is the trickster. This is the person who is into mischief and has a desire to change. So it is not necessarily pranks. It is not. Necessarily the guy who wants to just blow crap up all the time.

[00:10:19] Usually this is the person with a more radical moral code who has more radical thoughts and is more eager to act on those thoughts and make really fast, big decisions. Having that character. Really drives the plot forward and can create higher stakes and a bigger sense of urgency in the story itself.

[00:10:46] So those are the eight archetypes of the hero's journey.

[00:10:52]

[00:10:52] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

1. Ordinary World, 2. Call to Adventure, 3. Refusal of the Call, 4. Meeting the Mentor, 5. Crossing the first threshold.

6. Tests, allies, and enemies, 7. Approach to the inmost cave, 8. The ordeal, 9. The reward.

10. The road back, 11. The resurrection, 12. Return with the elixir.

"Brigitte," Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse

Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com

Instagram: @authordevindavis

Twitter: @authordevind

The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. I complete transcript can be found on the show's webpage.

[00:00:00] Last week we covered the three act structure, or at least we finished covering the three act structure of how to structure a novel of how to structure a story. Just the different pattern. Generally speaking on how to do that. And this week, we are going to delve into something far more specific as we cover the hero's journey today on writing in the tiny.

[00:00:27] Hello. Hello. Hello. And welcome back to the show. Welcome to writing in the tiny house. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy in a tiny house who is here to show you all of the ways that you can get that work of fiction out of your mind and into a word processor or whatever, despite how busy you may think that you are.

[00:01:12] Up until this point, we have been speaking very generally this year about the three act structure of most stories. Just the introduction, the rising action and the conclusion and delving into what each of those parts is. As we've gone through this whole, this whole little lesson series, I guess. Today, we are going to go into the hero's journey, which is kind of a map on how to do that.

[00:01:40] At adventure novel. It lays out all of the important steps and the important beats. So the important events, the important things that happen in the story that is typical of most adventure stories. And it's interesting to see how all of it plays into the bigger picture, the hero's journey.

[00:02:03] Was first, I guess, distilled out of the studies of a person named Joseph Campbell who lived from 1904 to 1987. He was a big a student of mythology. And he found in all of these very classic, very, very old stories that each of them followed a pattern. And in his studies, he put together that pattern called the hero's journey and his version of it has.

[00:02:31] Teen steps that fall into three acts. It's a lot, 17 steps is a lot. Later much later, a person named Christopher Vogler Vogel. I don't know how to say his last name, but he worked as a screenwriter for Disney and likely for other people or other companies, he developed a different, or at least a more modern model of the hero's journey that he published back in 2007.

[00:03:00] I appreciate looking at this, but just because it is more modern. It applies even more perfectly to the more current works of fiction that we see coming out. And. It has 12 parts instead of 17. And so today on writing in the tiny house, we are going to cover those 12 parts.

[00:03:20] So these 12 parts are unique to Christopher Vogler, Vogler. But they have a lot in common with the original person who came up with the hero's journey, Joseph Campbell. So this Chris Vogler the screenwriter he wrote a book about the hero's journey.

[00:03:36] There's a full on book about it, and it covers each of these points in more detail than we're going to cover in a 15 minute episodes. Here on the podcast. And I need to give a full confession that I have not read this book. That doesn't mean that you don't have to, or that you shouldn't. There are a lot of references and a lot of really good material on how to structure and properly execute a work of fiction.

[00:04:02] And diving into the hero's journey is not something that I have done. Also my works of fiction. Don't 100% reflect the hero's journey. And so I have chosen to focus on some other things, but we're covering it today on writing in the tiny house, just because. You will see as we go through these different points that these points are everywhere in fiction, especially if the story revolves around calling a hero.

[00:04:34] From somewhere the anointing of a hero and having them leave their home to go on this adventure and then come back with a solution. There are a lot of stories that cover that there are a lot of stories that have that as the main premise and the overall, you know, arching theme of either the trilogy or just the book or the many books.

[00:04:59] And so we're going to go over that and you will find. As we go through these points that a lot of them will apply to your work in progress as well. Even if you are not writing an adventure novel these things fall into place, and many of them don't necessarily have to go in this order, but you will find that these little collections of points.

[00:05:25] Very much need to go into either act one or all of them into act two or all of them into act three, just because of the formula of this story the formula of this structure, this is all very general stuff. And the cool thing about general stuff is it can apply in many delicious ways to many different things.

[00:05:48] Diving right in this entire thing is based in three acts. And I covered what those three acts are already. So let's see how they all just kind of intermingle and what the 12 parts of this structure of writing fiction called the hero's journey is actually all about. act one. Is called the departure.

[00:06:14] This is where we see the ordinary world, or we see the world as it is. it can be the fact that this is an ordinary day to day world or with something like hunger games. We see the dystopia, we see the problem and how a problem has become. The ordinary world, we see Katniss and we see her going through the day-to-day things and we see that it's.

[00:06:41] Not okay. It's not good, but that is her reality. That is her day today. a picture of the ordinary world is the first step. Next, there is a call to adventure or a call to do something, a call to change. So this can be. Harry receiving a letter from Hogwarts. This can be Frodo getting the ring of power.

[00:07:07] It can be a vast, many different things. It can be a vision, it can be a dream. It can be simply the challenge of this is a problem and I want to fix it. So just the invitation to step up and make things different. The third thing is the refusal of the call. if you look at all of these stories, I've mentioned Harry Potter, I've mentioned the Lord of the rings.

[00:07:33] I've mentioned hunger games. There comes a moment very early in the story in almost all of them where the hero of the story doesn't want to be the hero. And that can actually be a running theme throughout the story and throughout the book itself. But. There comes a time just in this structure where the hero refuses, the call, where for whatever reason they're not going to do it, it can be for pride.

[00:07:59] It can be for self doubt. It can be because they feel there is someone more qualified. And then there is me. The mentor. So who are the most popular mentors in fiction? In fantasy, at least we have Gandalf and we have Dumbledore. However, there are other mentors, sometimes the characters can play the role of a mentor and another role.

[00:08:26] And so if we look at the lion, the witch and the wardrobe by CS Lewis Mr. Toughness is in a way a mentor. He is the guy who first introduces the world of Narnia to the reader and to the main characters. Also as LAN is a mentor. And there is the white witch, the ice queen of Narnia because one of the children falls under her protection. As a way to groom him. There is an amount of tutoring or amount of mentoring of introducing him to the world of introducing him to things and conditioning him to, to be a specific thing.

[00:09:12] So sometimes the mentor can come across as many different things, but generally the mentor is the person who. teaches the hero about the journey, teaches the hero about the world. If they are stepping out into a new world, teaches them about the magic and sometimes provides them gifts.

[00:09:34] So if you have read the broken earth trilogy by NK Jemisin, which is one of my favorites in the whole wide world. The character alabaster is the main, character's mentor. And he does just that he teaches her magic and he teaches her how to find her own type of magic. It's an, it's an amazing thing.

[00:09:54] The next step in act one is crossing the first threshold. So it is that decision to go out on your journey. It is. Stepping out of Hobbiton and going onto the road to go onto your adventure and to go off into this strange new world. So that is what wraps up. Act two, there are more points act two is called the initiation.

[00:10:21] So the first thing is you get your tests, your allies, and your enemies on all of these adventure novels. I have read and I have read a lot of them. There are a lot of characters to be met along the way that do not come in. Act one, you meet them in a Tavern, you meet them at a store or on the road or something, or you get jumped by bandits and then these people come swinging in from the trees and save you and to become your ally.

[00:10:54] Or your enemy or whatever. And these tests are all of these challenges that come along the way. That happens a lot in act two. That's kind of the big part of act two, which is a huge act anyway, but at the end of act two the point is number seven is to approach the inmost cave.

[00:11:16] So if you think back on like the classic. Mythology and stuff. It seems like a final test was always in like this cave or at the top of a mountain, just that final place to go and to reach out and to get there. And there were a lot of problems along the way, but here we are, and it is the end boss of a video game.

[00:11:41] And they're in the inmost cave. The main character faces an ordeal, which is often a crowning test or sometimes defeating the big end boss. So it can be defeating a bad guy. It can be defeating. A really big henchman of the bad guy as a way to prove worth. It can be a lot of different things like that.

[00:12:11] And then they are given a reward. So either it is a magical item, maybe sometimes It is a way to defeat the scourge that has plagued the land, or it is, you know, the magical spell that can cure whatever illness has befallen your sister, different things like that.

[00:12:32] And then enact three. It is the return. It is going back to their hometown. The first step is the road back or to the ultimate destination. This means that on the way back, sometimes they go to And even higher place or a more special place to learn and receive more counsel and this is called the resurrection.

[00:12:58] So resurrection is point number 11 on this list of 12. So this is where in classic mythology, the hero is killed and then reborn and is presented as new and pure So it's a form of rebirth or a coming back to life or in the event of Harry Potter, he actually did die and then did come back to life.

[00:13:23] That is the ultimate resurrection of that entire story. And then they go back to their city returning with the elixir. So the elixir is whatever key ingredient. That is required to get rid of the problem. So sometimes returning with the elixir is winning the prize money. Sometimes it's coming back with the spell or a way to eradicate whatever, you know, strange, magical diseases across the land or maybe it's just a potion to heal a loved one or whatever. There are a lot of different applications to that, but that in a nutshell is the hero's journey. And as you saw, it follows that three act structure. So I will include these 12 points in the show notes, and we will see you next time when we discuss some of the archetypes or some of the character types.

[00:14:25] If you want to use more common language that also come into the hero's journey next time on writing in the tiny house.

[00:14:33]

[00:14:33] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.