Your hero walks into a room and owns it. They're charming or tough or impossibly warm. And you wrote it that way on purpose. But if that personality feels more like a performance than a person, the problem may be deeper than surface level. When there's no wound driving the behavior, even "big" personalities can feel empty.

In episode 13, I'm walking you through the four types of protective behavior your romance characters use, how to spot which one your hero defaults to, and why knowing the difference between a personality trait and a coping mechanism is what makes your hero feel real.

You'll learn:

• Why a big, lovable personality can actually flatten your character arc if you don't know what's fueling it
• The four types of protective behaviors ("Augmentations": Armor, Shield, Mask, and Flair) and how each one shows up differently in your scenes
• How to trace a hero's protective behavior back to the Wound underneath, using an example from a published romance book
• What to ask about your own manuscript this week to find where your hero's protection is doing its heaviest lifting

This 33-minute episode is for romance writers who write heroes that have strong personalities on the page but still feel like something's missing. By the end, you'll understand which type of protection your character is using and how to write scenes that crack through it just enough to hook your reader.

Resources from this episode:

• Community: Join Enemies to Experts → suebrownmoore.com/enemies-to-experts
• The Flair Augmentation Showdown: How two different “big personality” characters break under pressure → podcast.suebrownmoore.com/flair
• The Character Core Values: Read this free article on the must-have traits for your heroes → https://podcast.suebrownmoore.com/ccvs
• The 5 growth arc phases: Read this free article to learn your hero's psychological arc → podcast.suebrownmoore.com/5-phases
• Growth arcs vs Fall arcs: Read this free article to learn the difference and decide which path your character needs to be on right now → podcast.suebrownmoore.com/growth-vs-fall
• Protective Augmentations: The 4 types of hero defenses that affect your story’s scenes → podcast.suebrownmoore.com/armor
• Author Spotlight: Adriana Locke: Visit Adriana Locke’s website and check out her books → podcast.suebrownmoore.com/adrianalocke
• Interview with Brennan Lee Mulligan: Sit back and listen to Brennan Lee Mulligan—one of the greatest storytellers of our generation—talk about how an unpredictable life has shaped a phenomenally interesting and unstoppable career on this interview with Hank Green on the Study Hall YouTube channel: “How DnD Became a Career: Brennan Lee Mulligan’s College Journey”
• More Resources: Learn from Sue at your own pace → podcast.suebrownmoore.com/learn

• Flair comparisons: Star-Lord vs Illium (Augmentation CCV)
• Adriana Locke (author website)
• Growth vs. Fall Arcs
• The Character Core Values (CCVs) - Free article: The Character Core Values that define who your hero is at their core, the good and the bad → https://podcast.suebrownmoore.com/ccvs
• Hero “Armor” (Augmentations CCV) - Free article: The 4 types of hero defenses that affect your story’s scenes → podcast.suebrownmoore.com/armor
• The Brennan Lee Mulligan interview - Sit back and listen to Brennan Lee Mulligan—one of the greatest storytellers of our generation—talk about how an unpredictable life has shaped a phenomenally interesting and unstoppable career on this interview with Hank Green on the Study Hall YouTube channel: “How DnD Became a Career: Brennan Lee Mulligan’s College Journey” (https://podcast.suebrownmoore.com/meetbrennan)
• Enemies To Experts™ - Learn more about the Enemies To Experts™ program with Sue Brown-Moore. Because falling in love with your manuscript starts with understanding it.
• The 5 Growth Phases - Free article: The 5 stages of every character arc → podcast.suebrownmoore.com/5-phases
• More resources - Learn from Sue at your own pace at podcast.suebrownmoore.com/learn

Subscribe to the Story Sorcery® podcast with Sue Brown-Moore on your favorite podcast app to never miss an episode.

Your hero walks into a room full of people, and within two

minutes everyone is laughing.

She's warm, she's magnetic.

She's the person you want at your dinner party.

And that warmth is a lie.

Okay, not completely.

She is funny and warm and friendly.

But right now, in this particular part of her story, she's

acting this way out of fear.

If you are writing a hero with a strong personality on the page, but their

scenes still feel like something's missing underneath, like they've

put on a mask of themself instead of actually being a compelling, vulnerable

person, this episode is going to show you exactly what's going on.

And it has to do with a kind of self-protection your character

might not even know they're using.

By the end of our time together today, you'll understand the four types

of protective behavior that romance characters use, how to recognize which

one your hero defaults to and why that recognition is the key to writing past the

performance and into the truth underneath.

If you keep writing your hero's protective behavior as just 'who they are', as a

personality trait, instead of a coping mechanism with a wound underneath,

your reader will feel that flatness, even when the writing itself is good.

Because a coping mechanism with something real and human behind it reads

completely differently than a personality trait that just exists for fun.

Last episode, we talked about scenes that wear emotional masks, parts of

your story that seem like they're doing character work on the surface, but are

really just plot dressed up as character.

And at the end I introduced the word I use for those protective behaviors

your characters rely on: Augmentations.

Today, I'm unpacking that.

Because Augmentations aren't all the same.

Metaphorically, your hero doesn't just wear 'armor'.

They choose a specific type of self-protection.

And it looks and functions differently in the story, depending

on what they're afraid of and how they've learned to cope with it.

And if you're familiar with my storytelling frameworks, this

self-protection ties into their backstory and the character's Root Fear.

Once you know which type of Augmentation your character uses,

you'll know how their story needs to guide them through challenging

situations and important choices.

If we haven't met, hello, I'm Sue Brown-Moore.

I have been working as a developmental editor in romantic fiction since I

found out this was a real job, and then taught myself how to do it.

And the thing I love most about this work is the human psychology that anchors the

love story to the hero's personal growth.

Why do your heroes do what they do?

What are they protecting?

And what does the relationship ask them to risk?

I'm gonna get personal in this episode, more personal than

I usually do on this podcast.

Because the concept I'm teaching you today is something I

have lived, not just studied.

And I think hearing my experience will help you understand your own

characters from a human perspective in a way that theory alone just can't.

Here's what we're covering in this episode.

First I'm going to explain what Augmentations are and why

there are four distinct types.

Because each of the four looks completely different on the page.

Then, I've got an example from a published romance book, where a hero's

big personality is hiding something readers might not recognize, but

they'll feel when you do it right.

And then I'm gonna tell you something about myself that might surprise you.

Because you've gotten to know me through these episodes, and the

story I'm going to share with you shows how these protective behavior

patterns aren't just character theory.

You'll recognize how they have actually helped me become

the person that I am today.

Because the Augmentations that I'm going to teach you today and that

I'm going to share with you about myself are real human experiences.

And they can literally change who we are as people.

And at the end of today's episode, I'll give you an exercise for your own

manuscript, and I'll point you to some resources if you want to go deeper.

An Augmentation is a behavior that your character adopts, often without

even thinking about it, to protect themselves from emotional pain.

It's the thing they do so they don't have to experience what

they're afraid of feeling.

We all have Augmentations.

Every person walking around in the real world has developed

ways to keep themselves safe from the emotions that hurt the most.

So your characters should have them too.

But not all Augmentations look the same.

I've identified four different types, and they're important enough that

Augmentations is one of my seven Character Core Values, that loose

framework that drives what the hero does in their story and spotlights why.

The Character Core Values help us make important decisions as writers

and as editors, so that we can troubleshoot and design what needs

to happen when in a story for the biggest possible emotional impact.

Understanding which Augmentation your hero uses is important for setting

up a character journey that feels true to the hero and challenges

them to work through that fear.

The first type of augmentation is Armor.

This is full emotional shutdown.

Your character gives you one face on the outside to connect with.

Maybe it's coldness, hostility, total indifference.

And they do this so you can't get close enough to see anything real.

Armor keeps everyone out.

It's a room with no door.

The Armor augmentation is common in stoic character types like CEOs and

alpha males, people who need control over their life and every situation in it.

The second type is the Shield.

This one is similar to Armor, but it's directional.

A shielded character is open and vulnerable in most areas of their life.

There's one specific trigger, one wound, one fear that they guard ferociously.

If you don't hit that trigger, they'll let you in, no problem.

But if you get too close to that thing, they will shut you down hard.

The third type of augmentation is the Mask.

This is when the character intentionally hides part of themself by becoming

something else or someone else externally.

Now, this doesn't have to be dramatic, we're not talking like disguises

or something overt like that.

Although that can be a physical symbol of a Mask.

But what we're talking about is on the psychological level.

It's more like choosing to be agreeable, when they're furious or helpful, when

they're drowning in a huge workload.

Wearing a mask is often a deliberate choice, where our next one, Flair,

can become more instinctive.

The fourth and final type of augmentation is Flair.

This one is sneaky because it often doesn't look like protection at all.

Flair is when a character takes an existing personality trait, usually

a positive one, and dials it up so high that it becomes a distraction.

They're so funny, so warm, so charming that you never get past the shiny surface.

You think you know them, but you don't.

You only know the show they're putting on for you.

Every one of these Augmentations is a valid character choice.

And any one of them can make your story feel alive.

If you understand that it's there, and you're writing it on purpose, you can even

combine more than one of these, depending on the situation, for any given character.

When you don't know what augmentation your hero defaults to, you might not

be including it in their scenes, and their personality can read as flat.

But when you do understand what augmentations are and how to use

them, every part of your story where that character trait is in play adds

a layer of tension and a clue about who the hero appears to be versus

who they actually are underneath.

And that clue signals the reader that this character can transform

into something even better.

If you've ever read back something you've written, where your hero

is being charming or brave or cold and thought, 'This is fine, but it

doesn't feel real', this might be why.

The behavior is there on the page, but there's no wound or

fear underneath that's driving it.

The story is showing it as a personality trait that's just kind of floating out

there on its own, instead of a coping mechanism rooted in something painful

that your hero hasn't dealt with.

Because remember, stories are a snapshot in time of this character's life,

and we have to choose what moments to show and what moments not to show.

We're not narrating the character's every day, everything

that happens in their life.

We're just showing the reader what the most important pieces are so they can

start building that story for themself as they experience it along with the hero.

So let's look at an example of what Flair looks like when

it is done incredibly well.

Because this is the Augmentation type that is the easiest to see,

but the hardest to understand.

In the book Fraud by Adriana Locke, that's the fourth book in her Carmichael

Family series, the hero Banks has one of the biggest, warmest personalities

I've ever seen in a romance book.

He shows up uninvited at his brother's houses, sleeps on

their couches, eats their food, pulls practical jokes constantly.

Banks is impossible to ignore and impossible to stay mad at.

And if you're just speeding through this book, you might

think, ' Eh, that's just Banks.

He's the lovable, annoying one.

That's his personality.' But the author is doing something much deeper here than

just writing a funny brother character.

Banks' Root Fear is that he's not good enough to keep, that the people

he loves will eventually forget about him or realize he doesn't

contribute enough or just stop caring.

The Lie that he tells himself is that he's not worthy of the closeness he craves.

So what does he do?

He makes himself big and visible.

He shows up everywhere.

He fills every room he walks into.

He's so present, so loud, so warm that you literally cannot forget he exists.

That's Flair.

And it's not fake.

Banks genuinely is warm and funny and lovable.

But the reason he dials it up to 11 is because he's terrified of what happens

when he's not the center of attention.

When he's forgettable.

When he's still and quiet and nobody comes looking for him.

Here's why this matters for your stories.

If you write a character like Banks without understanding what role Flair

is playing in the growth journey, your hero will just be the funny one.

That bigness will just be a personality type.

Entertaining to read for sure, but not someone who keeps your reader

up until three in the morning because they just have to know more.

They have to spend more time with that character.

When you understand what's driving the protection, when you know that every

joke, every uninvited visit, every time he crashes on someone's couch is Banks

making sure he's not forgotten, that same behavior reads completely differently.

Now, it's more than a big personality.

It's protection, and there's tension in every part of your story where

that hero is stealing the scene.

Because you know what they're compensating for.

And because you understand your hero on that deep, personal level, your

story will intuitively reflect that in the tiniest line-level details.

Which means that your reader can feel that tension, even

when they can't tell you why.

And that's exactly the kind of catnip that keeps readers hooked.

Your hero's Augmentation isn't necessarily a behavior they need to

fix, but it is the compensation they need to understand about themself.

And you need to understand it first.

Because if you don't know what your hero is protecting, you can't

write the parts of their story that dig underneath that protection and

challenge them to face that deeper fear.

I wanna share something with you about myself here, because I think

it will make this concept really click in a way that examples from

published books maybe can't always do.

I grew up in the South at a time when women were supposed to be gracious.

Welcoming.

Never mad, publicly.

Always warm, publicly.

Always willing to sacrifice our wants and desires for the family,

especially for the men in the family, even if it was the opposite of

what we actually needed as humans.

I remember being forced into a table setting and service training for

a Mother's Day brunch at church.

Even though I had zero interest in anything domestic, and I

really did not want to be there.

At my core, I have always been a sensitive, kind person, someone who

literally doesn't want to kill a fly.

But I'm also stubborn and headstrong.

I do not like being told what to do or how to do it.

And at the same time, I am thin-skinned, easy to embarrass, even

slower to build personal confidence.

So to protect myself from feeling taken advantage of in these young,

early years, I put on Armor that helped me avoid confrontation and judgment.

I became reclusive, never smiled, projected pride even when I didn't

have any, and actively pushed away relationships with anyone

who might see through that act.

Because I was afraid of everything.

And letting people down was the worst feeling.

So I made it my mission to have no one to let down.

But then in junior high, I started making some friends.

And I let that mask slip.

I let people get close to me and see my vulnerabilities.

And when I accidentally offended one of those so-called friends, she

recruited a bunch of boys in our class to be rude to me for an entire week.

Just constant low grade hostility, everywhere I went.

So having learned my earlier lesson of how to protect myself, I called

on that Southern hospitality that had been drilled into me since birth.

And I became the warmest, friendliest, most gracious version

of myself to every single person who was being terrible to me.

And it worked.

By not giving them the reaction they wanted, my anger or lashing out, my

friend eventually forgot about the fight.

The whole thing faded and we never talked about it again.

Those are examples of Armor and a Mask.

I made a deliberate choice to avoid what I was afraid of and hide what I was feeling.

It was strategic.

And it was survival.

But what I realize now, as an adult, is that I never took that Mask off.

I just turned it into a permanent part of my personality.

I kept being warm and friendly and likable, until it was my default setting.

I realized that when I was easy to like, people treated me better.

I felt safer.

And over time, I didn't have to choose that protection anymore.

I didn't have to put it on.

It just became part of who I am.

What started as a Mask turned into something real.

I genuinely am that warm, friendly person now.

I like who I am when I'm that way.

And when I revert into that scared little girl who's defensive and

reclusive and lashes out, it feels bad.

It reminds me of that lonely, outcast person I used to be.

So I self-correct.

And I set a standard of excellence for myself that is so high in

everything I do, that I can't even satisfy myself most of the time.

Because when I hold myself to an impossible standard, everything I

am and everything I do will smash through most people's expectations.

That makes it really hard to find something about me to criticize, or

at least that's what I tell myself.

Because, that protects me from feeling vulnerable.

So today, in my right-now era, my primary augmentation is Flair.

And it has become my most valuable method of self-protection on an everyday basis.

But, and this is the part that matters for your heroes, the original wounds

that caused me to put on that Armor and wear that Mask are still there.

The reason I first embraced that Southern hospitality Mask was because I was

afraid of what would happen if people could see the real unprotected me.

Life had taught me that people didn't like that version of me.

And sometimes, even now, that fear is what's driving the warmth.

Not joy or love or generosity like it would be without the Augmentation.

Sometimes my friendliness is Flair.

It's instinctive, it's reactive.

It's hard to turn off.

Because being likable and over-delivering is how I keep myself safe.

I have proven to myself that this method works, so I keep using it.

It's real now, and it started as protection.

Both things can be true at the same time.

That's what makes the concept of Augmentations so difficult to layer

into a character with believable depth.

Your heroes can hold that same contradiction, and they should.

Because that's what makes them human.

If you listened to Episode 11, you heard me talk about Brennan Lee Mulligan's

interview, where he described being stuffed into trash cans as a kid

and how that created his drive to overdeliver in every room he walks into.

Woo boy, do I identify with Brennan.

He is hands down my favorite dungeon master.

He is a person that I feel like I already know, that he's genuinely my

friend, and he has no idea who I am.

We've never met.

But because he has made himself so likable, so big, so essential in

every space he's in, his presence stretches across time and distance.

That big, impossible-to-ignore personality started out the same way that my warm

as a response to a wound.

And like mine, it became one of the most genuine things about Brennan Lee Mulligan.

But there's still a wound underneath that's driving that behavior.

And that trauma may never stop hurting.

This is what makes Augmentations so powerful for your characters.

We're not just talking about defense mechanisms you strip away during

the growth arc. These personality traits are layered and embedded into

the fabric of who that character is.

They can be the most lovable thing about your hero and the thing

that's keeping them from getting what they need in a relationship.

Conversely, they can also be the most hateable thing about your

character and the reason their partner sticks around long term.

In a few minutes, I'm gonna give you an exercise that helps you find your hero's

Augmentation in your own manuscript.

But first I wanna show you what happens when a character's Augmentation

starts to crack, because that's where your best writing, your most

emotional moments shine through.

A writer in my Story Sorcery Society, Leah Merrill, was working

on a dark romance where her heroine was tough, edgy, surrounded by

dangerous people all the time.

The character's whole personality was built around that toughness.

She was reactive to the dark world she lived in, and every part of her story

read as 'this woman does not flinch'.

That toughness was part of her survival.

It was her Augmentation to keep herself safe.

In her case it was probably Armor, and it worked.

Because on the page, it made her feel like she had protection from all of

that outside pressure and darkness.

But it also made her feel one dimensional.

She didn't quite feel like a person.

She was more like a charicature.

And that's why Leah brought this to the group.

During this hot seat call, when Leah figured out who this woman was outside of

that dangerous world, what she did when nobody was watching, what brought her

genuine joy, Leah realized something that surprised and delighted the entire group.

Her heroine makes tiny felted animals in her downtime.

And suddenly the tough mafia guy love interest in the scene is

holding a felted fox with absolutely no idea what to do with it.

That tenderness, this small private hobby that had nothing to do with survival,

cracked through that Armor augmentation.

It gave the reader a glimpse of the real woman underneath the necessary toughness.

That's what your story needs to do.

These story threads can be big or small, frequent or a standalone spotlight moment.

Sometimes the hero needs to shed that Augmentation, especially if it's

hurting them or someone they care about.

Sometimes they need to take off that Mask or that Armor or put down that Shield.

But sometimes they just need to recognize it for what it is.

Not remove it, necessarily, just crack it open enough that the

reader can feel what's underneath.

That's why I still embrace my own Flair augmentation.

Because it brings me joy.

It's helping me, not hurting me, for the most part.

I have worked through my personal why enough to understand when I'm using

my warmth as defensive protection, and when it's something that's simply me.

Because I'm already in phase five of the growth arc that this

Augmentation was a key part of.

Okay, quick tangent about the growth arc, because I might have

confused a few of you just now.

Each character has one growth arc in their story.

As humans, we have many growth arcs that are all happening at the same time.

That's part of what makes identifying what that growth arc needs to be so

difficult for you as a writer, because you are literally just looking at a

single snapshot of your character's life, and you have to be very picky

about what you put in that snapshot.

So when I say I'm in phase five of the growth arc, I mean the one that this

Flair augmentation was a core part of.

But I have a transformation arc that's happening right now in my life.

We all do, as people, all the time.

And we get to choose whether we want those transformations to become

growth arcs, where we become better versions of ourselves, or fall arcs

where we let ourselves give into that fear and live with it permanently.

Okay, aside finished.

Transforming doesn't have to mean a character sheds all of their protections.

The world is still a cruel place.

And just like we need to live in a way that feels comfortable, our heroes do too.

As writers, we just have to be sure that at the end of our hero's journey, they're

not overcompensating or causing harm to themselves or the people that they love.

Is this Augmentation spotlighted in the right places in the story to

really start digging beneath it?'

Because those are the details that will keep readers up all night.

Not the moments where the hero is just performing their personality,

but the scenes where the personality spotlights a deeper need.

In my Story Sorcery Society group, when we're working through a part of someone's

story that feels flat, one of the first questions I ask is, 'What is your hero

protecting themself from right now?

And how are they doing that?' The answer tells us which Augmentation is active

and what that part of the story needs to accomplish beneath the surface.

If there's no active Augmentation, if the hero is just being themselves

without any reason, without adding any tension, that's just an empty performance.

And that story, especially that part of the story, is gonna feel

shallow to a reader, even when the writing itself is beautiful.

So here's something you can try this week.

Go to the first half of your manuscript.

Not the second half, because by the end of your story, your heroes should be

growing, and their protection should either be loosening up or totally gone.

The first half is where the Augmentation is at full strength.

So find a part of your story where your hero's personality

is doing a lot of heavy lifting, where they're being the most them.

The loudest, the coldest, the funniest, the most helpful, the most guarded, the

most agreeable, whatever their default mode is when the world gets uncomfortable.

Then ask yourself, 'What would my hero feel if they

couldn't be this way right now?

If the charm didn't work, if the wall came down, if the joke fell flat, if the mask

slipped, what emotion would they feel?'

That emotion, the one hiding underneath the Augmentation,

that protective behavior, is a clue to your hero's Root Fear.

It's what they've been protecting themselves throughout their entire story.

And once you understand what they're afraid of facing and feeling,

you know what every part of their story needs to be centered around.

And you can strategize how to use that augmentation to both support and challenge

the hero throughout their growth arc.

If you've taken my Cake, Not Chaos: Moment To Moment Method workshop and

learned the four story layer framework, then I want you to recognize that

your hero's Augmentation can work in any scenes on any layer of the story,

and also connect with the character growth layer at the same time.

This is one way to get those multi-layered touchpoints I talked about in Episode 6

and that I demonstrate in the workshop.

When you do today's exercise for yourself, don't let it pressure you.

You don't have to rewrite anything immediately.

Just sit with that question, 'What emotion would they feel if their

protection were stripped away?' for one character, in one part of your story.

Whatever comes to mind for you, whatever's calling to you, that's the part of

your story you're gonna work with.

If an answer comes easily, you may already know what your

hero's Root Fear is, intuitively.

Your instincts might be ahead of your conscious understanding

of the story, which is great.

We love when that happens.

That is one of the most satisfying parts of being a pantser or an intuitive writer.

But the downside to that is sometimes you can't always answer that question.

Sometimes you don't know what they're afraid of, and it's

really hard to figure out.

So if you can't figure out what that Augmentation is representing,

if you don't know what's underneath that behavior, driving it,

that is useful information too.

Because it gives you a place to start digging deeper.

Last episode I introduced the Moment Snapshot, a structured exercise I teach

inside my Enemies To Experts membership.

The Moment Snapshot gives you a way to test whether a part of your story has

real internal purpose for your hero's growth, or is just taking up word count.

When you pair the Moment Snapshot with what you learned today, understanding your

hero's Augmentation, you can start asking one incredibly powerful revision question.

And that's this: ' Is this part of my story tapping into what's

underneath my hero's protection?

Or is it just letting them perform?'

If you're already a member of Enemies to Experts, you can start pairing what

we talked about today with the Moment Snapshot exercise and your story layer

cake framework, where you put the moment dots on those different layers.

You can start working with all of these together right now.

If you're not a member, and you want the foundation underneath all of

this that I've talked about today and access to these special dig-deeper

members-only lessons and exercise, all of that is waiting for you inside my

monthly membership, Enemies To Experts.

And you can try it out for a month today.

Understanding which layer your hero's Augmentation is anchored to, the character

growth layer, is what makes everything I taught today something you can actually

use when you sit down to revise.

I have an article on my website that explains the four Augmentations in

more depth and has more examples.

I also have an article about the five phases of the hero's growth arc, and

another that introduces the seven character core values that create the

framework for all of my storytelling decisions as a developmental editor.

You can find all these links, plus Enemies To Experts, which includes

the Moment To Moment Method workshop in the show notes for this episode.

Throughout this podcast, we've been talking about the revision struggles

that keep you stuck at the surface level when the real fix is much deeper.

That rewrite loop, the romance beats that feel empty, the scenes that

wear emotional masks in your story.

Every one of these traces back to something happening on the character layer

that you just haven't recognized yet.

Today, we took that one step further.

Your hero's Augmentation, whether it's Armor, Shield, Mask, or Flair,

is the behavior they use to protect themself from that Root Fear.

It's the thing they do so they don't have to feel something awful.

The parts of your story where that Augmentation is active are the scenes

and even the lines or the words with the most potential to hook a reader.

Because underneath the warmth, the coldness, the humor, and the people

pleasing, whatever performance your hero is depending on to survive, is the

truth your reader is waiting to feel.

You don't have to fully strip away the Augmentation.

Growth doesn't always work like that, in fiction or in life.

You just have to set up the story to establish that self-protective mechanism

as part of your hero's everyday life.

Then crack it open or dig underneath it, in just the right story moments.

Where the wall wobbles, where the charm doesn't land, where

the mask slips for half a second and something real shows through.

That's where your reader falls in love with your hero.

Not when they're performing, but when they're struggling to find

that ultra-important inner peace.

Because that struggle is human, and it's relatable.

I'm Sue Brown-Moore, and what you learned today is another key to

unlock your storytelling instincts.

You don't need to learn more craft.

You just need to trust the writer you already are.

That is Story Sorcery.

Next episode, I'll show you why the scene that you might be tempted to skip

or deprioritize in your manuscript, that quiet one where it seems like

nothing's really happening, might be doing more emotional work in your story

than even your biggest plot twist.

And how you can use what you learned today to go deep into that scene so

that years from now readers remember how they felt when they read it, and

they can picture it in their minds.