👏👏👏🎉🎉

10 years ago you and that were book were stunning and amazing. Fast forward to today and you and that book are stunning and amazing.

Just bought the first edition, haven’t even had a chance to crack it open.

Bought the old one. plot twist: bought the new one.

Way to go, K.M.! ! Looking beautiful as well :)

Purchased both books. Excited to read!

Congrats on the book launch! Looks like a very good book, will look forward to it. Thanks!

My copy arrives from Amazon on Saturday. 🙂

An educational book so useful it's worth buying a second copy

Just grabbed a copy. Great to see something new 🖐

Purchased. I've enjoyed your previous craft books very much, and look forward to learning from this one as well.

Thanks for all your great advice

Thanks

You are such a gift. Thank you for sharing your insights with us.

This was very helpful, thank you.

I’m still wondering how this works with sequels. Does the truth of part 1 become or at least inspire the lie of part 2? You don’t want to accidentally debunk the “truth” of your first volume, right? You also don’t want to regress the character to the same state they were in at the beginning of part 1, to essentially tell the same story all over again for part 2. Do you simply not let the character gain the complete understanding of the overarching truth of a trilogy for part 1? Meaning, you only give them a snippet of the truth, much like at the midpoint - but there’s still something missing, and that omission is the gap of knowledge that the new lie can sneak through?

Great way of explaining! Thanks!!

Awesome. I purchased "Next Level Plot Structure" last week, but I didn't realize you released the revised "Structuring Your Novel"! I just ordered it off of Amazon. :D

While I agree with your point, I found this piece less organized than some of your other pieces.

Thanks. I find this topic touches are many others. Do not podcaster and content creators face the same issues?

I feel that novels should open minds, not close them, undefine people, not define them.

I like studying psychology and therapy to understand how lies and inaccurate beliefs about ourselves and others make our lives worse (or prevent us from thriving, to put it a more optimistic/positive spin on things). The book “Games People Play” was a game changer for me in that regard. I also acted as a counselor as part of a college course in a low-stakes situation, and this firsthand experience really showed me how transformational an “ah ha” moment can be! It was a slow process that took about six sessions to reach with my “client”.

This is your work, not yur vacation.

Thanks for mentioning.

Thank you. Agreed. Great prose incorporates elements of poetry, (and musical flow) with meaningful details, such as a sign appearing backwards because it faces away from the person reading it and seeing actionable meaning in it. Yet, please allow me to say a word in defense of the painter. Many people are tempted to think that all painters work in the Bob Ross way, first a sky quite distant, second a mountain distant, third a forest in the mid-ground, fourth, a cabin in the slightly nearer ground, fifth a lake or stream bubbling by, and finally the nearest of flowers, rushes, and reads. Some painters in history did this well, Velazquez for example. But others such as Van Gogh, Monet (with his Cathedral Facades and Water Lillies) and Post-Impressionists like Serat worked the entire canvas in another flow. They worked this corner then that corner, this color, then that color, dancing around the canvas, painting one whole canvas in one elongated passage of time. I sometimes wonder if authors cannot/do not do the same, establishing a skeletal outline then added a little here and a little there, fleshing out the final product with a foreshadow here and an exposition there, with a development stage 1 here and a development stage 2 there, only to arrive at a conclusion near or at the end of the reading experience. Silly me. Thanks for the post. Perhaps real writers sit down with a machine, as simple as a pen, or as sophisticate as a computer, and punch it out as it will later appear to the reader.

Thank you for this. If your point is, and I think it is, that readers feel far more captivated by complex characters than the purely evil Hanibal Lector characters or the super-nice Dudley Do-Right characters, I would agree. I have read several books in the last few years in which I have seen the structure of the story in the first fifteen pages, identified the hero (not just a protagonist) and villain (not just an antagonist) with such clarity, I felt no desire to invest the time required to finish reading the book. Doing so would do nothing for me, but to pass time and help me fall asleep before the dawn of the next workday. That would be fine if the purpose of the book would be similar to a sleeping pill but that is not why I read. Characters are much more interesting and cheer-worthy if they are like me, a person who wrestles with complex personal, social, or moral issues, and no-cost choices. Are you aware of a play called "Miss Ever's Boys," a play that opened my eyes in ways I shall not soon forget. Miss Evers is no perfect hero, or villain, and her boys the victims of a political system. It is historically true; it happened, and it points to real human experience. Sometimes I enjoy thinking that readers today are more educated and sophisticated than they were right after WWII, while I must also admit that the flow of contemporary culture shows them as dullards who like things as simple as white hat gunslingers shooting black hat gunslingers. My mother, an aspiring author, once said, great books are about ordinary people doing extraordinary things, mostly through courage, or for love, and sometimes for lack of choice. Society. Choice. Destiny. Hmm. Thanks.

Thank you. I too like words and lament the ways of shallow contemporary pop culture.

Thanks. I agree. Whether the communicator is a writer, poet, dancer, painter, the more we seek to dig deep, understand, risk, and express our inner-most self, the more we tap into what it means to be human, and thus the more we unlock an opportunity to invite other humans to discover their humanity.

I agree and appreciate such brand name sponsors as Powder Milk Biscuits, made from pure whole wheat grown by bachelor Norwegian (-descended) farmers, that give shy persons the energy to get up and do what needs to be done, available in the bright blue box or ready-made in brown bags with dark stains that indicate freshens. It's a long plug, but good, as well as The Chatterbox Cafe and Ralph's Pretty-Good Grocery (If you can't find it at Ralph's, you can probably get along without it.) All of these sponsors of a nationally broadcast radio show are entirely fictional. These examples highlight the temperament of the show's creators and writers, while not caving to the money-hungry crud in most fiction. Most product placements bring nothing to the story and serve only to increase the wider cultural trend of valuing living (not fictional) human beings on a basis of the cost or popularity of the products a person uses. In the example you gave, I thought 'expensive' would serve much better than 'Prada.' Yes, some visual details can help the reader more deeply enter the story, while I am sure you will say later that too many such details overload the reader and hinder the reader's capacity to get into step with the story's pace. I recall a fictional character telling another that he began to read Moby Dick on strong advice but stopped reading and destroyed the copy of the book when Melville spent thirty pages detailing different types of whale blubber. You may be aware of a word in English, gargantuan (monstrously large). The word comes from the title and opening page of Gargantua et Pantagruel, an early Renaissance French Classic. When a certain man first met his newborn son, the infant cried out. The man was so surprised by such a large sound coming from such a small mouth, the man named the son Gargantua (Que grand tu as! tr. What an enormous gullet you have.) The book is hilarious in this character's insatiable appetite, not only for food, but for learning, sport, and all of life. The lists in the book eventually become so long most people figure they have read the point and stop. A few good details help draw the reader into the story. Too many are like this comment, too long to reach the end. Thank you.

thank you for this video it's so helpful

Such well analyzed application of theory. It’s obvious that a great deal of work has gone into this. So very clear. So immediately applicable. Almost Racine of her lessons can be regarded as classic.

This is an incredible exposition of the Crone Archetype. I am still digesting the meaning and import of this. Thank you.

I don't see a video here. Just a back screen where there should be an image, and a title: yWriter Software Tutorial. Where is the video?

The way you explain things is very clear. Thank you! Subbed.

This was really good. Thank you.

What if Luke's father really wasn't Anakin, but everyone BELIEVED this to be true. What then?

This information is so dense and covers so much (thank you, by the way!), I can't help but think your delivery would be helped by adding a co-host withw whom you could discuss each step of the message in a back and forth manner.

thx u ms weiland!

Thanks so much for all the work you have done to help writers!!!

I love the clarity and definition in your answers! You have helped me outline and plot my mystery. Thank you, KM. Just purchased your "Outlining Your Novel" and "Outlining Your Novel Workbook." I'm spending the long weekend of Independence Day 2024 plotting and scheming!

Oh wow! I just bought your book a month or so ago and love it! Awesome work!

nice job describing this.

Could you talk about how this character arc concept might be different (or similar) when applied to the antagonist rather than the protagonist?

love you KM

What if the truth, the real truth, that the character is finally forced to accept, is this dark and terrible thing?

What is a good method to determine if the ending is or is not working? When I write, I often get tunnel vision in order to finish the story and not see the problems it may have.

Thanks for another enjoyable and educational presentation!

Nicely done! It's always fun to learn new truths, see new perspectives, and ponder how that can improve our own lives.

the matrix would be the perfect example.

Can you talk about how this works in serialised fiction and short stories? I'm not trying to be fatuous with this question, but what is the lie that Sherlock Holmes believes in each story, or for a Spiderman comic, what is his mistaken perspective? In serials and short stories we don't see a lot of character change. Wolverine doesn't have an epiphany every time he whips his claws out in the X-Men comics. It's just fight the bad guys and please buy another comic book next month. I can only see this in Rick & Morty where Morty wants something, he gets it, and he has a learning experience: Morty realises maybe that's not what he wanted at all, or oh boy there is more responsibility involved in this thing than I realised. So Rick & Morty seems to be about Morty's growth but Sherlock Holmes and Spiderman do not. Yet Sherlock Holmes and Spiderman are effective serials.