How does an author find their audience? Do the methods of finding an audience differ between traditionally and self-published authors? How can you establish an initial connection with readers, and how can you turn them into superfans of your work? All these questions and more were considered during our latest author panel, appropriately titled “Knowing Your Audience.” Featuring traditionally published author Jessica Brody, self-published romance author Marie Robinson, and grizzled book marketing vet Corinne Kalasky, the panel discussed the most effective ways to reach potential readers and turn them into lifelong devotees of anything you write.

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You welcome to the hybrid pub Scout podcast, where

we are mapping the frontier between traditional and indie

publishing. This is Emily einlander, back from hiatus, and

we are pleased today to share with you a live recording from

Jan's bookstore in Beaverton as part of the business of being an

author series today's topic knowing your audience, our

guests will be our own, Corinne kolasky, Brianne, Marie Robinson

and Jessica Brody. The sound quality is not quite what we

wanted it to be due to some technical difficulties, but I've

cleaned it up as much as possible, and hopefully it will

not mar your experience too much. Let's get into it all

right. Well, thank you all for coming. My name is Emily

einerlander. I'm the host of the hybrid pub Scout podcast, and

this is my co host, Corinne Pulaski, that's right, and we're

recording live.

We're recording live from jams in Beaverton. I'm going to

introduce our three panelists. The first one is Corinne, who

listeners will know already. Corinne kolasky has spent 15

years working in the book publishing industry. She began

her career as a publicist at Harper Collins, and has spent

time in Nashville, the Bay Area and Portland, working in both

marketing and publicity roles for mid size publishers as well

as small Indies. And then we have next to her, we have

Jessica Brody. And Jessica. Brody is the author of more than

15 books for teens, tweens and adults, including Addie Bell's

shortcut to growing up a week of Mondays. Boys of summer, 52

reasons to hate my father, the three books in the Sci Fi,

unremembered trilogy and save the cat writes a novel she's

yay. She's also the author of the descendants School of

secrets series based on the hit Disney Channel Original Movie

descendants. Her books have been translated and published in over

23 countries and unremembered and 52 reasons to hate my father

are currently in development as major motion pictures. She lives

with her husband and four dogs, and splits her time between

California and Colorado, and then at the very end, there we

have.

Marie Robinson lives in the Pacific Northwest with her

husband, son and fur babies. During the day, she wrangles her

child who was clearly a crocodile in a past life and by

nights and weekends. She writes about women who get happily ever

afters with more than one man because they shouldn't have to

choose. She loves fantasy and creating engaging worlds for her

readers to disappear into if she's not writing or child

wrangling. She can often be found on trails in the woods or

climbing mountains. Let's give our lovely panelists a little

round of applause,

and let's just get this ball rolling. So this question is for

everyone on the panel. It is, how does one figure out who

their audience is in the first place?

I think I found my audience by mistake.

I started out writing women's fiction, and because I thought,

well, I'm an adult, I should write for adults. What do I know

about being a teenager? It's been too long, and I wrote two

women's fiction novels that really did not sell very well.

And then I came up with a new idea about 330 year old women

who you know, get together to take karma into their own hands

and get revenge on all the men who have been mean to them. And

I pitched it to my agent. She said, 30 year old women getting

revenge on people. That sounds really sad. And I was like,

Okay, well, I won't mention I based it on my own friends, but

whatever. So she's like, that's a terrible idea. Don't write

that. But I was really determined, and so I had this

kind of, you know, stroke of genius. And I said, Well, what

if they're not 30? What if they're, I don't know, 17? She

said, Oh, see, that's funny.

So I wrote the book as with 317 year olds, and I'd never even

thought about writing routines, and it's old, and I've been

writing for teens ever since, and now tweens, and so I feel

like I just I the story comes to me, and I think the audience

kind of follows based on what story pops in my head. Okay, so

I'm gonna say the complete opposite, because I'm an indie

author, and.

And I'm an indie author who likes to pay my bills with my

stories, so I'm always going to be coming at this with a

business mindset. So when I first started, my Marie Robinson

pin name, that's not my first pen name. I've been writing for

a few years now, indie publishing for a few years. I

for my first or for this pen name, I went out and I looked at

the market, I saw what genre I could write in that would allow

me to write the type of stories I wanted, which was romantic

fantasy. And I was like, Okay, I don't want to have a paid job. I

just had a kid. I'm on maternity leave. I don't want to go back

in 90 days. What? Who can I write to? And I saw this romance

sub genre, reverse harem, and I was like, okay, cool. They like

romantic fantasy. I just have to have a romance with three or

more guys, and I could do this. And so that's how I did it, and

how I found the audience. And how I would say, if you're an

independent author who wants to find your market and your

audience, you go to the reviews like, you figure out what genre

you want to write in, and then go read the books you love, like

the tropes you love, like take notes of what tropes you love,

and then write those tropes in the genre that you want, and

then once you have that, you can put it out to that audience. And

because you've already done your research on your audience, you

know what tropes are doing well in that genre because you've

read it and you're writing the tropes that you like your

audience is already built in. And then you can be like, Look,

you like these books. I also like this book. And look, I

wrote a book, and so you market to your audience. Well, that

perfectly leads into the next question, which was, what's the

difference between audience for self published books and

traditionally published books? So you've kind of answered the

indie side of it a little bit already. Do you want to speak

Jessica to the traditional side. Do you think that there's a

difference? I think there's a big difference. Okay, you speak

to it first, then

so I have, I started, I put my toes in the water in traditional

publishing, and that's where I really wanted to be before I

transitioned to independent publishing. And I've noticed,

and I've done a few conferences where we've talked about this,

that the people who read traditional publishing will

often read independent publishing books, like if you

read a harlequin published novel, you're going to read a

indie romance novel. However, I've noticed that if you only

read Pulp Fiction, which is what most independent authors write,

most of those readers won't transition to traditional and

that's usually because they, these are the readers that are

reading two to three to even four books a day. And yeah, it's

intense. They slavery, but so financially, they can't keep up

with their reading habit with traditional publishing, because

take for Kindle Unlimited, they have all the options to read all

of these books, technically for their 999, membership

subscription, whereas that's potentially one paperback novel,

unless, like, you're great and you have a wonderful brick

independent bookstore, like Jan was here

with free coffee. No. So I do think that there is a

difference. And I also think that there is a difference that

the readers expect in quality, and that is not at all shaming

independent books at all, because I'm an independent

author like I deal with this all the time, but these readers for

independent books typically want the good story. They want a good

story if you don't have any

typos or any weird sentencing, that's going to throw them out

of the story. They don't care if it's award winning level editing

or going to be nominated for Hugo or world con. Like they

don't care. They just want the escapism. And so I think that

in in readers for self publishing are more forgiving

towards books than the readers who typically are with

traditional focused

I have really nothing to add. I really have nothing to add,

because I, I like her perspective, that she's

comparing them. I never self published. I'm only

traditionally published, so I don't I really can't speak to

any differences, because I only have experience in one so it's

like, this is my experience.

Okay, so Corinne, I have a question for you.

Oh, I should be speaking.

I have a question for you. Karen, yeah, as a marketing

professional in the world of traditional book publishing, how

does an author get the reader that they want to read their

book to actually pick up the book in the first place and read

it?

Um, I think I don't know, I was thinking about this the other

day, about, like, what works these days, because so

everything is, you know, online, social media, blah, blah, which

is great. I am not at all a prepared, but

anyway, but I do think, I know,

I do think there is a lot of value in sort of, like going to

like in person, events that kind of stuff. Like going to like

book signings, going to straight shows, to conferences where you

know your readers are going to be, and establishing that sort

of in person, like personal connection with people. Because

I feel like that's really lost these days, because everything

lives online. So I think that's a really valuable thing to do.

It's worth the author's time to, like, instead, just start sort

of establishing those connections with people that you

know already are going to be interested in your books. That

would be how I would start doing it anyway. So, yeah, yeah. I,

you know, it's funny, everyone's like, Oh, you have to have

Instagram, you have to have a website. You have to put all

this money in all these, you know, you have to post

regularly. But the research keeps coming back that it's all

about word of mouth, and like the most, the most marketing you

can get is from that one person who tells seven, who tells

seven, who tells seven. And that's unfortunately out of our

control. So the things that we can control is you can write a

really good book, and you make sure that it's, you know, it's

the kind of quality that people are going to talk about, you can

get a really great cover, which unfortunately is for traditional

publisher published authors is not always in our control. Most

of the time, it's the publisher who chooses the cover, but

having a cover that really speaks to the right audience.

And I'm very torn about that whole eye, that whole thing,

because my books tend to be geared towards girls, female,

girl, teen readers, so they tend to have a lot of pink and hearts

and things like that. And on one hand, I'm like, great, because

girls are picking it up. And on the other hand, I'm like,

Really, are we really still like, pitching heart pink hearts

to girls, like, have we not come farther than that? And then, on

the other hand, I'm like, Why can't boys read books about girl

main characters? You know, when it's the other way around, it's

not a problem. Girls have no problem reading, picking up a

book that looks like a boy book, but they won't. You know, it

often does not go the other way. So I'm getting really off topic

with my rants, but,

well, anyway, so the Yeah, so I think you know, it is sort of

this double edged sword, like you want to hit your market with

the right cover, but at the same time, are we isolating potential

readers with a cover that they may not have picked up when I

wrote my unremembered trilogy, the first book had a very gender

neutral cover. It did have a girl on it, but it just did not

it did not read like girl book. And I got a lot of boy readers

picking that up, and it was great. And then for the sequel,

unfortunately, it had a picture of two people kissing on it,

even though it was not a romance, it was still a sci fi

and

it was

a sci fi and I was like, please don't put the kissing people on,

because the boy, I'm gonna lose my boy readers. And I think that

I did, you know, maybe not all of them, but enough. So it's

something that I'm definitely struggling with on both sides,

like you, you really have, it's a fine balance. And if you can

speak to that more from coming from a publisher. Well,

unfortunately, I do not have any say in the covers, because, you

know, I will say, I know,

a couple jobs ago to different publisher, we would all, like

everyone in the office would kind of sit around and, like,

talk about the different options and critique them and consider

them. But with these where I worked, like the author's

opinions were also taken into consideration. So it is, yeah,

okay, it's different experiences. Okay, okay, yeah,

because I feel like that's pretty crucial. I mean, you

don't want the author to be like, What the hell is this? I

hate this. It also depends on your literary agent. Oh, yes, do

talk about that? It also depends on your literary agent. I, when

I was pitching a few romance novels to or Christian romance

novels to a publisher, one thing that my author really wanted was

control over, not total control over the cover, but veto rights.

Basically, she was like, I want to make sure that this is an

appropriate cover. And so that was something that I did argue

for. And so anyone wanting to go, traditionally publish and

get a literary agent when you finally Book One, when they're

selling your book, and.

The

contract with the editor when they're negotiating. What I

always told my authors was, hey, what are your main things that

you really want your contract, and what are you willing to

compromise on? And some people wanted at least in their input

on the cover. And if you want that, tell your agent that,

because then they can pitch that to the editor. You might get

shut down, but nothing ventured, nothing gay. If you don't ask

for those options, you're not going to be given them. They're

not publishers are baseline run. They're going to try to make

money, and so they're not going to offer any concessions to you

if you don't ask for them, and I mean, they're that's fine

because they're paying you money, and they're also trying

to make money off of you, but you do have more leeway than you

would expect, but that's when your editor or your agent and

client relationship comes in well, and it's why we have

agents When we work with traditional publishers, because

there's no one because there's no one at the publishing house

that has your best interests at heart. They have their own. So

you need someone who has your best interest at heart, and

that's what an agent does. Can I tell a funny story? Yes. Okay,

good. So at this one independent publisher I worked at a couple

years ago, we would have, you know, like, quarterly meetings

with, like the district, our district, or distributor, and

the sales VP there, no matter which cover we showed her, like

her response was always like, I don't know if you guys know this

book. It was, it was a big book, I would think, maybe five years

ago or so, called Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter. And the

cover was of, like a Mediterranean coastline or

something. Every single book that we would show to her, she

would be like, have you guys thought about trying this more

like, beautiful runsy, and it was like, not even if it was

like, had nothing to do, like, was completely off the genre,

but it's like, to your point of like, publishers are gonna look

for the things that sell, and if runes told incredibly well,

or the snake covers, there was a massive trend of Yeah. Snake

Yeah. Okay, so I talked as literary agent and traditional

but to get your book into the right reader for independent

publishing is very similar, except you have to do all the

research. What you need is the right cover, the right title and

the right subtitle. So the right cover, your book isn't going to

sell if your cover does not look like the top 50 on Amazon or

whichever distributor you are using, if it does not look like

it belongs in that cover or in that top 20 list. It will not

sell because readers want to be you're basically trying to tell

your reader, hey, you just read this book. You should really

read this one because it looks similar. So it's going to be

similar. You really like this one. You're going to really like

this one. And then your titles

also are very important as an independent publisher for when I

wrote Jane Austen fan fiction books would not sell if there

was not Mr. Darcy or Elizabeth in the title, because otherwise

it would just look like another Regency historical romance. And

that's not the readers I wanted. I wanted the people who wanted

the Jane Austen with those characters, and then your

subtitles for like paranormal or contemporary romance. As an

independent author, you need to take advantage of those such as

a billionaire romance or a paranormal romance or a dark

mafia shift or romance. It's literally telling I know I just

self plugged myself later, literally

telling your reader who's looking at the page, who's not,

excuse me, who is not going to read your blurb more than your

first two lines what the book is they are just going through

because they want to pick up another book because their kid

Just took a nap, and they have two hours to read something, so

they're not going to take time. They just see the cover that

matches what they already liked. They see a title with keywords,

and they see a subtitle telling them exactly what genre and what

tropes to expect. And so that's how you get infinite books.

Let's let's get a little bit more into that room where you're

all making the decisions about how a book should look like. How

do the people at the publishing house decide who the audience is

that you want to sell to and they are and where they can be

found? Okay,

well, I feel like the most of those decisions generally kind

of fall, at least in the very beginning, to the acquisitions

editors, because they're the ones doing all the research on,

like, comparative titles. And if there's a market for this, if

it's a trend that, like, people actually care about that kind of

stuff. So once it gets to marketing, I feel like hopefully

they've already figured out that there is a market for it.

Because if it gets to marketing, there.

Isn't you're pretty screwed. Like, you can't do much, you

know, to be perfectly honest. So, yeah, I mean, like, I don't

know where to go with that question, apart from, if there's

not a market by the time it gets to you and that decisions

already been been made, you kind of just like, throw a bunch of

crap at the wall and see what sticks, you know. So, so, like,

assuming that the acquisitions people have made a decision

where there is an audience that exists. How do you interpret

their I guess their like research, and what they tell you

is out there in order to, like, reach the audience?

Well, I mean, I would say, you know, it's kind of, it's not,

obviously not the same for every book, but a lot of it these days

is like social media. Of course, a lot of, you know, making

connections there. A lot of, again, like, hopefully, you

know, the author has some kind of platform that they can use to

sort of reach out to an audience, that it's great if

it's already built in, and then you don't have to do quite as

much work. And again, like signings, readings, conferences,

trade shows, all that kind of stuff where they you know, like

your audience is going to be,

I think that's really valuable, too. And then just more

traditional stuff, like we still do advertising, we still do, you

know, like Co Op and bookstores and all that kind of stuff

that's still, that still exists. So I don't know, does that

answer that question? Yeah, yeah. All right, okay, okay,

your turn. I

was just gonna say, from the author's point of view, it is

very disheartening when you know you get a rejection letter from

a publisher that says we just don't think there's a market for

this right now. Or I've heard we just had a book just like this,

that we put all of the dollars into, and it failed. So we don't

want that anymore. Um, but I just want to say, like, no book

is ever dead because the market changes. And you know what?

Like, vampires are gonna be back somewhere.

So is dystopian, and they everything comes around. So,

like, I've had several books I just finished. I just turned

into a first draft of a middle grade book that five years ago,

a different editor, a different house. Didn't want and I ended

up moving houses and having a new editor, and I pitched it to

her in a list of, like, 20 different ideas, because I

thought, I'll just throw that one in. Nobody wants it. Why

not? And that's the one she picked out of 20 ideas. And

it's, you know, now done so, you know, don't give up on your

ideas. It just means that it might not be the right time

right now for that idea, but you might have to shelve it and

until, and wait until there is a market for it. All right, so I

would like you to speak again, because there is a chapter in

save the cat writes a novel all about pitching. Can you kind of

talk a little bit? I know that it's very complicated, and

brings all the moving parts from save the cat into there. But if

you can kind of sum up how you would make like a short, very

short and like a slightly longer pitch of your book,

sure. So I usually, when I'm coaching authors, I usually tell

them to develop four different pitches. The first is a long

line, which is a one sentence description of your book that

should have something about the main character and something

about the some kind of flaw that they're trying to overcome. It

should hint at some sort of inciting incident that happens

to them, and it should hint at some sort of new world or new

adventure that they go on, and additionally hint at some sort

of conflict that they experience. And I know that

sounds like a lot for one sentence, but it is totally

doable. Like a awkward orphan boy discovers he has magic

powers and goes to a school for witches and wizards, where he

finds out that the evilest wizard of all time is trying to

kill him. It's one sentence, and we got a flaw, that he's

awkward. We got a new world that he enters, which is this magical

Witchers and wizards school, and we have a conflict that medieval

wizards out to get it. So it's totally doable. And I have a lot

of examples of more log lines in my book. And then the second

pitch I tell people to do is an elevator pitch, which is sort of

like an extended version of the log line. It's a little bit

longer. It's a little bit more colloquial. It's, you know, the

elevator pitch is like, named after, if you were to get stuck

in an elevator, for not get stuck. But if you're riding an

elevator from floor one to floor 20, and you've got 30 seconds,

and like, the head of random houses in the elevator, you

know, because that happens,

and they say, Oh, you're a writer, what's your book about?

And you have these 20 floors to basically tell them and sell it

to them. So that's called an elevator pitch. And then

probably the most important in terms of getting agents and

getting published is what I call the short synopsis, which is

usually like a three paragraph, half page to full page synopsis

of your book. And I break down exactly how to do that in save

the cat, but that's what's probably going to go into your

query letter when you're looking for agents. And if it's really

good, your agent's literally going to copy and paste it into

their query letter that goes to publishers. And if it's really

good, they're going to copy and paste it into their query that

goes to the media and the bookstores and all of that. So a

good.

Short synopsis can go a long way. And then the final pitch I

tell people to do is along a long synopsis, which is kind of

a synopsis of the whole book. The reason you would need

something like that is if you're if you're pitching a book to an

agent, and a lot of times, they will ask for the first three

chapters and a synopsis, and they want to see where the story

is going, without having to read the 400 page book. So those are

the four I tell people to start with, and they kind of grow on

each other from they kind of, if you get you start with the log

line, and you kind of build out from there. And I tell people to

start with the log line, because it's actually a lot harder to

write one sentence than it is to write a four page synopsis. But

if you can tell your entire story in one sentence, then you

know what the story is. If you can't do that yet, then you

haven't quite defined the story in your head and what you're

trying to say.

There you go. I talked for a while, so actually, going off of

that as an independent publisher, you're pitching right

to your readers, and what's really important is that log

line, because that's the only thing that they are likely to

read when they're browsing on their phone. And so a log line

that I was thinking of earlier was like a billion or

billionaire Mark meets his match in the young teacher Camilla. I

can

remember this teacher, Camilla in the small mountain town of

zigzag, what that is that's telling you it's a billionaire

and a billionaire romance with a potentially virgin teacher,

because keywords,

there's a whole like code word thing that romance off, or

romance readers know, but it's also going to feature a mountain

and which means rugged billionaire, or because,

surprisingly, there are a lot of billionaires who live in cabins

in the mountains, according to mountain

men Roman there's a genre for everything that should

definitely be a panel.

And then also it's a small town. And so your logline for your

independently published book should be your key tropes,

because, again, that's telling you or your audience, the people

browsing so quickly because they have a 600 book Good, Good Reads

challenge for the year, exactly what they're going to be

getting. So that's great. Blog line is great.

I'm loving this, like, two different markets that we're in,

and I'm learning so much from you.

I'm just so much I

heard you have books.

Okay, so I think you've already touched on this a little bit.

But

So yeah, we were talking about, if you want to make money as a

self published genre author that you write to the audience

specifically.

Is there a different way that a traditional author may approach

that? And also, after that, Marie, can you put a finer point

on that? Yes, I can tell you. Want to.

I think you would ask 100 different traditionally

published authors, and they probably have 100 different

answers, because it's, it's such a personal choice on, you know,

on your creative process, I definitely have my audience in

mind when I'm writing especially for younger for my younger

books, like for the tweens or the younger teens. I like

keeping my books clean because I like them to get into middle

schools. I like them to get into Scholastic Book Fair, which is a

whole huge market that is really great, but they're not going to

take it if it's got certain content, certain language. So

that, you know, I keep that in the back of my head. I also, you

know, I want, I want, I want to write the kind of books that

kids don't have to hide from their parents, and it's fine to

have those kind of books. I don't, you know, I'm not, I'm

not trying to censor those books, but the kind of books

that I write are those kinds. And so I keep that in mind, but

then at the same time, like I write the kind of books I want

to write, and I tell the stories I want to tell, and when I'm

inspired by something, that's what I write. I try not to

I try not to curb myself too much based on what I think

somebody's gonna want or what I think is gonna sell.

But at the same time, I'm in a place in my career where I sell

the book before I write it, so I kind of know if the public.

Publisher is going to want this idea when you're first starting

out, you know, it's a different story. You've got to write

something that you hope the publisher is going to buy, and

you have to finish the whole thing first, which is very

daunting, and it ends with a lot of unpublished manuscripts,

which I have as well. So that's when you really have to kind of

look into these questions that we've been answering about how

to find that market and doing the research and finding out

what editors are buying today.

So I definitely agree, as when I was in traditional I was like,

don't write the market. Like write the book you want to

write, especially because I focused on speculative fiction,

specifically adult fantasy. It's like that market changes so

quickly that the books editors buy today and make deals of

today, they're not going to come out for two years, and the

market could be totally different. So yeah, if you're

wanting the traditional route, my advice was always write the

story you really want to write as

an independent publisher who wants to make money, I still

write what I want to write, but I see I list what my favorite

things to write about are. I'm like, Okay, what do I really

love? I love enemies to lovers. I love forced proximity. I like

the chosen one. I love these tropes, and how can I fit these

into a market? And there are ways to do that, and you just

have to study tropes which are not bad. They are just story

elements. They are the building blocks of a story. Every genre

has tropes. Every genre uses them, and if you break them,

your readers aren't going to understand why they aren't

really a fan of your story, but they'll know something was wrong

and that you disappointed them. And so what I do is I find all

of my tropes that I love, I look at the current demands and the

audience, and I figure out, can I write something to the current

demands that is still everything that I love to write, and more

often than not, once you do this for a while, you definitely can.

So that is how

I let my audience affect my writing, like I do, I see what

they want, but I still write a book that I want, but also one

that they're gonna want.

Yeah, it's really easy when you're actually a 12 year old

girl at heart, to write for a 12 year old audience.

Well, I'm gonna come back to the one that you hinted at earlier.

Marie,

how do you make your audience angry? And I think you might

have something to say ideas. How do you make a man? Well, I think

sometimes, if you're JK Rowling and you'd say Twitter,

I mean, it's true. It is true anyway.

I think sometimes if you if your audience is expect, their

expectations are sort of like heading in one direction, and

you give them something completely different that

they're not expecting,

that can sometimes, I don't know if it makes them mad, but it's

probably very disappointing if they sort of look to you for

like, one particular genre, or you're writing whatever, and

you're like, Oh, I just want to try something different. Try

something different, you know, I don't know that they'll come

with you, you know, or all of them will sort of follow you.

Um, so I would say that that's a good way to probably make your

audience mad or just disappoint them in general. So,

yeah, so it's always a fine balance between giving them what

they expect and surprising them. You know, if you write a book,

it's too predictable. Then everybody's like, it was so

predictable, like, well, it was a rom com, what use,

but at the same time. So I like the quote, it seems, William

Goldman, who said, give them the ending they want, but not in the

way they expect. And that's sort of what I always strive to do,

is I try to give them the ending that I think they're going to

want, but I try to give it to them with a twist, because I'm

like, I'm not going to just give it to you. I'm going to give it

to you with my own twist. Audiences get angry when, yeah,

you don't give them a happy ever after if the character doesn't

end up with who they think it is. But they're usually that

usually happens to me, my audiences get really angry that

I don't write sequels to my standalones.

I write, I write Sci Fi series, and I write regular standalones,

Rom Com standalones, and they, that's probably the number one

fan letter I get, is, why aren't you writing a sequel to this?

And then they usually pitch me an idea, like, you could make it

about this character who falls in love with that character,

just go write it.

So I think that maybe it's not really angry, it's just, it's

always great though. I mean, I think whenever you anger

someone, it means you've engaged them, and it means you've made

them feel and honestly, I would, I will take a one star review or

a three star review, because a one.

Star reviews like means I got to you, I got to some level that

made you go Warp Star versus three stars, which I'd much

rather do. Are we talking about right?

No, I got caught up on that one star review because I, I'm the

author. So they always tell you don't go to Goodreads. Don't for

your reviews. See, I love

I love them. For one thing, I I'm confident enough in my

writing skills that I I'm not worried about someone crafting

on my book. But I also know I'm like, hey, my books aren't going

to be for everybody. There are gonna be people who don't like

them. And I got so excited when I got a one star review, because

as an independent author, that means enough people have read

your book that someone doesn't like it. It's true. I hate

getting like 45 star reviews. I'm like, come on. So we just

hate see

a book that only has 45 star reviews, you're like, like, Is

this someone just like giving out free copies for five star

reviews paid all their friends? Yeah, all their friends. Even

though that skin Sam is on terms of service, don't do that, even

though they kept my grandmother's review up on my

book. Oh yeah.

But luckily,

everyone was like, Don't worry, it just reads like she borrowed

her granddaughter.

I was like, you remove other legitimate reviews, but you keep

my grandmother's up anyway.

So making your audience mad at you, as you were saying, like

not giving them a happily ever after, there was a big Twitter

storm over the summer, or maybe it was last winter 2019, was

like five years, but where people got in a tent because

they were trying to say that their books were romance, and

that romance doesn't have to end with a happily ever after. And

everyone was like, we're about to throw down, because romance

has to have a happily ever after, or it's not a romance.

One rule, one

is the two. Partners get together and have a happily ever

after, or a happily ever for now, like a happy for now. And

when you break that, oh, it pisses people off, and they're

like, why is this in romance? It shouldn't be a romance. It

should be a tragedy. I don't care if he dies and she's sad

and she still loves him like he died, they're not happy

romance. That's like literary fiction at that point, or

whichever genre. And

another thing I've noticed so getting off of that rant,

because that was last summer,

getting off of that rant. Another way to make audience mad

at you is something I toyed with, and I had to do it really

delicately in my first series, because it like people other

authors were killing off their love interest, and it was making

people mad. And because that's another thing, you don't kill

off love interest, even in a reverse harem. Like, you don't

kill off a harem or it pisses people off. And this is like a

six figure audience, like you can make six figures, not easily

anymore, but you can make it. And so, like, it's not a small

niche, it's not a small genre. And so when you have a lot of

readers mad at you, it can really take your royalties. And

so what I did is, I did kill the character, and then I

immediately brought him back in the second or the next chapter,

because I was like, I'm gonna terrify you and make you think

that I did kill him. And then, hey, look, don't forget, this is

a magic book. So he comes back, and I've already set up the

magic system, so it makes sense. And people were like, I got so

scared, but then he brought him back, and so it was okay, so

yeah, oh, and then I wanted to point out with the covers, as

the gentleman said, you don't put the wrong cover on your

book. You don't want to put a contemporary cover on a

paranormal cover, because when someone goes to read it, they're

going to be like, This is not what I wanted, and they are

going to review badly.

Say,

more.

Um, no. Okay, so last question, before we open it up to

questions from the folks who are here. So Jessica in particular,

because you are having a couple of your books turned into films,

right? And so we've come to know in publishing that we're not

just competing with other books.

Uhm when we create them and try to sell them, but we're creating

we're competing against all forms of attention, getting

media, social media, films, etc, TV. So with all of that stuff

out there, do you find that there is an overlap in

those audiences, like film audiences in particular, and

people who get really into books. And if so, or if not,

like, how would someone get as much audience out of that as

possible?

Well more so than my books being developed is I wrote a book that

is an adaptation of how to write a screenplay. So save the cat is

originally a screenplay writing guide. And I took the same

philosophy and the same methodology, and I said,

actually, this works for books, for novels, and I wrote an

adaptation of it, because what I found is, yes, we are competing

with movies, we're competing with TV, we're competing with

everything, and we're competing with a rapidly diminishing

attention span of the public, which means that our pacing has

to be fast and we have to have all the right beats in all the

right places. And when we are competing with things like

movies,

audiences are used to seeing a certain structure and a certain

timing of these beats of these plot points. So when we write

our novels, the closer we can stay to those, the more familiar

the structure is going to feel, and the more engaged the reader

is going to feel. And this structure is not something that

was invented by Blake Snyder, who wrote save the cat. It's

something he just noticed that has been around for all of time

in all of storytelling. So so the more we can stick to that

and use that as a template, the more likely that people are

going to keep reading and finish in in the same vein, I think

when you write books that feel like movies, there is sort of a

like I said, it's a pacing thing, but it's also this, like,

this level of excitement. But I also think that it doesn't hurt

to pitch your books in comparison to movies. So I often

say when you're pitching a book, especially to the public, that

you should always have a comp, which is short for comparable.

And so I would say, like

my unremember trilogy was the matrix. Sorry, not the matrix.

The Maze Runner meets Orphan Black. So there's, like, a book

and a TV show mixed together. And the more kind of mediums you

can bring into your pitch, like, if you can take a book, held

them together, it's like this meets this, you know, it's like

Star Wars meets, you know, Pride and Prejudice. I don't know

someone has to write that,

then you're gonna get both of those audiences in with that

pitch. And because movies are so visual, it's easier for someone

to imagine what it's going to be like if you compare it to a

movie. I totally agree. My co authored series, The Rose wild

Academy of magic. We pitched it and advertised it as the

magicians meet Harry Potter, and people were snapping it up and

kind of on that too.

Independent publishing is so fast, like the market changes so

quickly. Over the summer, Academy books exploded.

Everybody wanted Academy books in a lot of romance genres and

so and even non romance genres. A lot of YA independent books

were also Academy and what's the academy book? Academy books is

basically centered around the characters in an academy like I

a lot of them are, Ya, well, not ya, I can go on a rant about

that, but

they're younger. They're high school age, so that's why they

classify it as ya, even though the content is not ya, and or

you can be in college, which is what my center was, because I

was like, I'm not writing ya, and my characters have sex on

the page like, this is not ya. And so

a big part of that that we saw was the Umbrella Academy came

out on Netflix. Suddenly, readers in the big Facebook

groups were like, is there any books like The Umbrella Academy?

And now we're seeing, are there any books like The Witcher,

like, what? So we get as independent authors, because our

market changes so quickly, and we have to put out books so

quickly,

and like, we have to wait at least a year and a half, yeah,

whereas those windows Exactly. And so we see these trends. We

see these readers who are posting in big reader crits,

like, Hey, does anyone have books like this?

Because we're like we see the demand growing in the audience.

We're seeing an organic growth of a new audience, and we can

start pumping out books in three months in my reverse harem

genre, we counted over 400 books we're releasing in those three

months for Academy like it, the market got oversaturated so

quickly, but it's because so many people wanted them and so

yeah, we're competing with the

binge watching of Netflix and these new movies coming out,

like the on Amazon Prime, like the expanse, and all these great

movies that a lot of these binge readers also binge watch, and

they'll ask for books like that, and we can suddenly start

providing those books, especially now that Amazon lets

you

do pre orders for a year. Now, as an independent author, you

can now put up a pre order for more than 90 days and be like,

hey, look, I'm ready, getting pre orders. You should get this.

You wanted this. Let me write the book.

Now, Pride and Prejudice. Pride and Prejudice with Star Wars,

isn't that just like Han Solo and Princess Leia? Yes.

All right. Well, thank you so much. And let's open it up to

questions. I'm just getting started, and I do a lot of genre

hopping. So as I'm getting started and I'm getting you

know, I'm going to have an audience that expects, you know,

if I get one book out, they're going to expect something, but

can't. How do I fulfill the expectation of the audience when

I know the next book is, you know, this one was science

fiction, and the next one's a mystery.

Are you trying to go traditional or independent publishing? I

have no idea. Well,

I'm gonna go on the record, on hyperpubscopic, and say that if

you are writing a book and you independently publish it, do not

then go try to sell that already published book to an agent. They

can't do much for you, like they really can't. So if you're going

to save a book and go traditional, keep writing,

because the solution to anything as an author is just write

another book, and it's true. It's true like just write

another book and so save that book. Write another book, if it

doesn't sell within whatever time frame you decide to an

agent, you can go ahead and self publish it then, or you can save

it and try to wait for the market to change. But if you're

independently publishing and you want a genre hop that's going to

really mess with your author branding, and branding is really

huge for both independent authors and traditionally

published authors, because you start getting known for

something. And I'm kind of a bad example, because on my pin name

i i have

second World Fantasy as well as contemporary paranormal on mine,

but I done that specifically to I've made my brand fantasy

adventure and romance, and so long as my books contain and

focus on those elements. My audience knows that that's the

type of book I write. Is something that deals with

fantasy adventure and mermaids and so you really need to

consider what your brand is, and that is something that,

especially if you're starting out as an independent author,

you want to go in with that idea, because if you're starting

out brand new as an independent author, you you need to build

your audience, because you can't just throw a book out there and

like hope it's going to take off, because most likely it's

going to sink. I hate to say it's most likely going to sink.

And so if you go into it with as much knowledge and as much

fortification, basically, of your brand, as you can you can

be like, Look, I write science fiction mystery, and so long as

you do a few books like that, once you get your core 1000

readers, because you want to try to aim for 1000 readers that

will always buy your books, and that's when you can have

sustainable audience. Those readers will then start buying

anything that you write. And so independent publishing is as a

career, is also a long game, kind of like traditional

publishing, like it's a long game. You gotta keep putting out

new books. You gotta You can't expect to be

living the life of you know Brandon Sanderson by the end of

your first year. So it's a slow game. Slowly build it up, and

then once you're established, that's when I would suggest you

can start genre hopping.

Yeah, I absolutely agree with the branding I started out doing

raw.

Comms. I also write sci fi. I just really space opera trilogy.

So I'm definitely a genre Hopper, because for me, I get

bored writing the same genre. I just am, like, I've told this

story already. I need something different. But if you're just

starting out, I don't think there's any harm in testing the

market either with different genres. So you know, let's say

you write a mystery and you put it out there and it doesn't do

well, or you try to get it traditionally published, and you

can't, and then at the same time, you're working on a rom

com, and then send that one out, maybe that one will do better. I

don't think there's any harm in in when you're first starting

out, it's trying different things, because maybe you won't

find an audience in the genre you think, and maybe you'll find

it in something else. So I hate to tell people like, limit

yourself as a writer. It's already so hard to be a writer

like you should be passionate about what you're writing. So if

tomorrow, you know, if you finish a book tomorrow and the

next day you're passionate about writing something completely

different, then write that too. Like, just put your work out

there, and maybe you'll find that one of them hits and the

other doesn't. Maybe you'll find that they both hit and then

you'll have two audiences. I can't say for sure whether my

rom com readers also read my sci fi. Maybe if I had just written

rom com this whole time, I would basically be, you know. Jenny

Han which

I'm not but, but you know, another great example which,

which kind of speaks to what you said, is Stephanie Perkins, who

wrote Anna in the French kiss and Isla in the happily ever

after and little on the boy next door. I might be confusing the

titles she did so well,

ya rom com scene, and then decided she was gonna write a

slasher. And it's called, there's someone in my house, and

it was her first time hitting the New York Times list. She has

a Netflix series based on it going, I think maybe it's

Netflix, maybe it's something else. But she just like, I mean,

it took off. And here's someone who was like, we always thought

of Stephanie Perkins as the rom com author. And she just was

like, No, I don't want to be the rom com author anymore. I want

to be a structure author. And so, you know, I think more power

to her, like, Don't pigeonhole yourself in to try to fit a

market.

I would agree with both of those responses. I think it is really

important to breeze point of establishing your core, sort of

like 1000 readers to start with. I think once you have your

reputation, and people come to expect, like, a certain thing

from you, and they're gonna read you're there to read pretty much

anything you write, you know, because they love you and it

doesn't matter you could, like, write, I don't know, a calendar,

and they'd be like, right?

What's on June 1? Yeah, exactly. But I think, like, once you

establish that, and you have a reputation with those people,

and they'll follow you, that's totally you can do whatever you

want. You know, like, yeah, right. Slash or, why not? We

need more of those. So, yeah, yeah.

So particularly with indie publishing, you were talking

about the core 1000 readers. Is there a limit or a burnout for

them on how many they'll buy from you a year. What's the

sweet spot there? Can you burn your audience out with the

number of books you write too many books?

I would say that, no, you can't burn your audience out. I mean,

okay, so there's a lot of drama surrounding this, and I won't

get into it, but Alexa Riley, she is now banned from Amazon.

They're the duo writing partners,

and the gitlauters were going after them, saying they were

scammers and ghost writing. Who knows if they were, I firmly

believe they want scamming the way that the gitlars claim. But

they were releasing every two weeks. They were quite literally

millionaires, but it's because it's what they love to do. They

were like, I like these short stories, 25,000 words, yeah,

like, it's novellas. They're high heat over the top, romance

and women and probably some men just laughed them up. And so

like it got to the point where their husbands were got to be

like trophy husbands who took care of the house, and all they

did was write these over the top, high heat romances that

were the same beats and same things every time. But their

readers loved it like they were getting massive pre orders. They

were getting massive, like sales. They were jumping to

number two in the entire Amazon bookstore, like they were huge.

And then Amazon decided to ban them. But there's a whole

there's a whole drama going on. We have no idea what's going on

with them, because they are talking illegal and be quiet

about it, as you should when you have a scandal like this. Be

quiet anyways.

What you can do is you can burn out your readers and your

audience on failed promises. There is an author who there's

actually multiple authors who have repeatedly put up a.

Pre orders for a lot of books and then claim some life issue

happen and cancel them. Somehow got their pre order privileges

back, put them all up again, canceled them again. And people,

their audience has started to be like, I'm going to wait until

the book actually comes out. And then what happens then is they

found other authors to read. And so once you start breaking your

promises and ruining your brand with them, or your brand becomes

the person who the author who can't publish, or the author who

has published books that they promised a year ago, or

basically your that's the brand you become, and that's how you

can burn out readers. So I wouldn't say that you can burn

out readers with too many books.

That also depends on the market saturation, like, if everybody

in that genre is putting out that many books, that market is

going to be really saturated. And as an independent author,

that means the royalties that you make are going down, and

there's a whole market flow with that. And if you sustain through

it, once that over saturation drifts away, the people who

really love that genre will keep reading it, but there's going to

be a really hard time financially with your royalties.

And if you can survive, making it through that, like, if you

have a partner, like I do, like, the only reason I'm Hawaii I can

make this as my job and deal with the ebbs and flows is

because my husband works for Nike. Anyways.

Yeah, you so long as you don't release, so long as you don't

bring your promises to your readers with your branding and

what books you're putting out, you're not going to burn out.

Cool. Thank you.

So I've heard a couple of comments about if you can't, if

you aren't finding your audience, go ahead and put the

book in the drawer as

an independent author, if the audience doesn't exist quite

yet, is there a drawback to going ahead and publishing it,

accepting that it might not make sales right away, but seeing if

it can find an audience.

So if your book isn't doing well when you first pitch it or first

publish it for independent publishing, I don't immediately

say that there's no audience. What I say is that there's a

problem with the book, with how it's presented. What's your

cover look like? What's your blurb look like? Are they

there's, as I was saying, with tropes. Those are story

elements. Every book has tropes, even if you say you're not

writing with tropes, you are. And so identify those and put

them in the blurb, put them in the log line. Look at what genre

might be closest like if you're writing post epoch. But it's

like,

I don't know. I'm trying to come up with, like, a hospital drama.

Er, but it's post epoch. You're gonna want to do a post

apocalyptic

cover. You don't want to put a dude in scrubs

on

and so I would say definitely. Like building your back catalog

as a independent author never hurts you, but you want to keep

your branding consistent, we often the success six figure

authors recover their books every year to match the market.

Because, yeah, like, I'm about to recover, uh, all of my

magical kingdom series, because the markets change like these.

There's more demand for fantasy or romantic fantasy, but my

covers are outdated now, and so the readers are aren't going to

be attracted so I update them. Suddenly they're selling better.

And then I look at the blurb. I've gone through and changed my

blurb like four times, because as an independent author, we can

do that. We can go back and see what's going on wrong and fix

it. I changed the ending to my first book because I didn't see

a good sell through. I didn't change it very much. All I did

was make it more hooky and cliffhangery

book, because coming from traditional publishing, I was

like, I can't just do a drop off cliffhanger. I have to have a

complete, contained story in my first book and then something.

And the pulp fiction writers were like, No, I'm good. Like,

this is complete story. So I was like, Okay, let me drop a bomb

right at the end after everything. Like, let's make

that bomb a little bit bigger and so if you don't think that

there's an audience out there, there's most likely an audience

out there, because you wrote it, you wanted to read it, so

there's going to be other people who want to read it. It might

not be a huge audience, but if you can look at similar,

comparable titles, you're.

Put it market to those people with your tropes and your blurb

and your cover, you're gonna find readers. The readers are

gonna find it, and you'll be surprised at how big of an

audience there might actually be. So

I'm gonna tell you a little story about this author who put

a book up on his blog. He wrote a sci fi and he decided there

was no market for it except for his friends. So he put it on his

blog so that his friends could read it. And his friends started

to complain that they couldn't get it on their Kindle because

it was all you know, you had to read it on the screen. I don't

want to read on the screen. He's like, Fine, I'll put it on

Kindle. It was called The Martian by Andy Weir,

who

I love

it. All right, thank you again.

Do you want to go more? Probably for Corinne nuts and bolts of

mark me, we're talking about knowing your audience. Okay, how

do you find out, like, your stats? Of like, where to market,

spend your marketing dollars, spend your marketing

advertising, like, where do you find your nuts and bolts? Of

like, this is where I need to spend my energy.

Um, I would say there's probably a lot of research involved in

that, just trying to figure out, like, I think, just like, yeah,

researching like a typical reader for the genre that you're

thinking of. And you know, just like thinking about their habits

and like, where do they spend their time? Do they spend most

of their time online? Do they spend most of their time

somewhere else, if they're online? Like, are they engaging

with one platform over another? Are they like a person who only

read print books? Are they a person who's gonna only read

like Kindle, or a person who's like, gonna read both of them?

So just, yeah, I think you really have to spend time

thinking about like, certain demographics and what their

habits are, and they're kind of making the decisions from there.

You said research, but where would you research? I mean,

sometimes it's just as easy, like if you have a friend who

only reads like this certain genre, you know what I mean.

Like, you ask them, like, Okay, well, where do you get your

books? Like, where do you like, like, look for new books. Like,

where do you Where are you hearing about things basically,

like, where are you sort of, like, plugging in to hear about,

like, I don't know, new authors, like that kind of stuff. Like,

where are they getting their their selections from or

whatever, like, that kind of thing. Does that make sense? I

know it doesn't. Let's like, you know, it's not always ideal. You

don't have a friend who's like, into the genre that you sort of

want to, I don't know, but I think that's and like, I mean,

otherwise, research is just a lot of, like, I don't know,

Googling.

I know that's really boring, but it's, it really is. I mean, it's

just like trying to fight. I mean, it's the same thing as,

like, these guys try to figure out who their readers are. I

mean, it's a lot of trial and error. It's a lot of, like, just

putting stuff out of the world and hoping somebody consumes it.

And as you can see, they consume it in droves. So, you know, I

mean, yeah, I think it's just a lot of trial and error. I so I

also do online courses. And every time I create an online

course, I create in my head what I call an avatar. And the avatar

is my student. It's like the, you know, generic. Who am I

creating this course for? So I have, like, you know, all these

different courses, like one for beginning writers. It's called

Foundations of fiction. And this is the person I when I would

create that course, I would picture this person in this

writer in my head, and they would ask me questions like,

what font size do I use? But that's

a good question. When you're just starting out, you don't

know these things and like, okay, that's the person that I'm

creating this course for. I'm not creating this course for the

person who's like, how do I put more conflict into the, you

know, into the finale, or whatever? Because they don't

know what those things are. So then, when I create a course,

like my save the cat course, I'm creating that course for the

person who's going I need help plotting my novel. I need help

with pacing. So it helps me to really, I don't know how this

translates, but it helps me to kind of picture who I'm creating

those courses for, and the kind of questions they're asking.

And, you know, like, I picture them in my head, and I hold them

in my head, and I create the course for that person, and that

kind of helps me sort of identify who that market is.

I'm terrible at marketing. I approach it with the shotgun

approach of throwing money at Amazon ads or Facebook ads or

sometimes like applying to BookBub and crossing my fingers

and then getting sad three days later.

No there. There are some fantastic independent authors

who have mastered marketing and research, but a lot of it's a

lot of tri mail, Googling and word of mouth. And what would

you Google, though? How to do AMS ads. That's what I Googled.

But I.

Talk to my other authors. I'm like, How the hell do you do

this? And then Elena Jaden sent me, or told me how she breaks it

down. And I was like, That is way too complicated. I have 20

hours a week to work on my career. I am not doing that. It

was intense, and that's why she now pays a PA to do that.

Can I throw a potential answer out? Yeah.

One thing that I think is it might be useful is, if you have

a newsletter, ask them where they found you. You know, if you

have a Facebook group or whatever, whatever your reader

contact surface is, even if it's small, even if it's small, How'd

you find me? Where'd you find me? Yes, How'd you hear about

that? Yeah, that's really great. Thank you for bringing that up.

So I hired a social media marketing specialist for my last

book launch. She was fantastic. And one thing that she did do,

we did a bunch of campaigns where you had to, you know,

enter some sort of form to get whatever it was pre order, you

know, it was a pre order campaign or a giveaway or some

sort of contest. And the thing she put in every single form

was, how did you hear about this? How did you hear about

this campaign? And, you know, there was no drop down. It was

just people were just filling it in Instagram, just because

newsletter, an event, you know, and it was really helpful to be

able to go back and see where all these people were coming

from. And I do the same thing at every signing I go to, like,

especially if it's a teenager who comes up because, you know,

like, I care about the adults, really. I care about you guys,

but I write for teens. I want to know how the teens are finding

my books. So every teenager who comes up to get a book signing,

like, how did you hear about this? You know, and they just,

they can't wait to tell you, like my best friend told me, or

I'm on your newsletter, or the bookstore sent a thing out, but

that is tea, yes, yeah. And

you had another question, yeah, I let's say you have a first

draft. It's a nice story, but now you're saying, Okay, I'm

going to do my revisions, and I want to really key into my

audience, and I realize I need to add something. How do I know

what the audience I'm going to work with wants from this story?

What the something I need to add?

BETA readers, theta readers. Theta readers was my answer.

I love there's this site. I don't know how long it's been

up, but it's betabooks.co

they have directory that you can search like, Hey, what are your

favorite authors? And it lists reader profiles of people who

love these authors or what they like in books. And you can

invite them to beta read your book, and you can update them,

and they can inline comment again, beta readers, or then a

developmental editor who

knows the genre that theta readers are green, so that's why

I choose them.

What did you say? That was beta Books. Betabooks.co.co.

Also in the same vein as critique groups, critique

partners. Honestly, just google how to find a critique partner,

and there's a really there's some really great information

about out there, but finding people who are writing in your

same genre can really help, because not only are they giving

you feedback, but you're reading theirs, and as soon as you put

on your editor hat, you become a different kind of writer. So the

the act of having to give feedback to someone else puts

your brain in a totally different state, where you are

now looking for that thing that you're looking for on your own.

And you'd be amazed how, when you go, huh? I didn't do that,

and she did, or she's missing this. Did I do that in my book?

And it just, it just really opens your brain up in a new

way.

I wanted to piggyback on that real fast, just because I think

it might help. I was watching the Romance Writers summit that

Chris Kennedy put on over the summer, and one of the things

that a lot of the authors she had on talked about over and

over was if you find yourself at a point where you can't you know

something's wrong, and you can't figure out what it is, or you're

stuck, go back to the last decision your character made,

and play with the idea of flipping it around and having

them do the opposite and just see what happens. Because a lot

of times the problem's further back than you think it is. Yes,

you can push forward that way. Yeah. So piggybacking off of

that, which is, I'm not sure if it

picked it up, but it was if

you if you're struggling with something, go back to see what

your characters last this decision was, and play with

flipping it around.

One thing that that reminded me of was Mary Robinette Cowell

said that if you're having an issue in your third act, go back

to your first act, because it's usually there, and that's what

the Mice Quotient comes in, which is a plotting technique

that was developed by Orson Scott Card, I know, I know, but

it's actually really smart and

and so what that is, is it sets up in your first act.

Fact, the promises that you're making for your character, like

the hobbits first act or one of its promises was Bilbo Baggins

is leaving the Shire. That is the Milu I just read. I don't

speak out

loud, yeah, there we go.

And so to fulfill that promise in the third act, you've got to

show him coming back, and that's why you see him coming back. And

it takes, like, 30 freaking minutes, because it takes

forever. Sorry, I'm not actually the biggest Tolkien fan, but if

they're really good, Tolkien is really good at showing the Mice

Quotient, which is you make promises. So you make a promise,

or you can make multiple promises in the first act, and

then in the third act, you mirror those promises by solving

them. So whatever is the last promise you made in your first

act is the first promise you solve in the third act. And so

the first one you made in your first act is the last one that's

resolved. It should mirror your first act. And then your act two

is a try fail system, like that's when your characters are

trying to fulfill the promises, but they fail. So yes, they do

something, but this happens, or no, they can't do this, and this

happens, and then your act three is try wins, like yes and they

did this or no, but they found out actually, that it's not that

bad. So that's what I would say. If you're struggling. Like, look

at your first act two and see what promises you've made or and

what you need to get your characters to and then, yeah,

just play with it, put them in different situations and be

like, Hey, what's going on? Okay, well, let's, let's give

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