There are three different types of personal conflict your romance book can showcase between your lead characters. And you might be accidentally making important decisions about your PLOT. Because if you don't give EACH of these three types its own unique external hook, your story might feel flat through the middle.

Inside, I share an example of one of these romance arc types—straight from a published book!—and how understanding the character push-pull it creates can prevent a saggy middle plot problem in a Friends-To-Lovers story. Then, I explain what each of the three relationship conflicts is and how to hook them into the external plot in a romance manuscript.

SPOILER WARNING: This episode reveals major moments in the book Hot Axe by May Archer. So if you hate spoilers and love reading May Archer, go buy Hot Axe first.

You'll learn:

• Why each of your leads is determined to stay just friends, and why neither one will make a move without plot help
• Three different ways their self-protections can enable and conflict with one another, and how each one needs a different type of external event to earn the HEA
• How to use the Friends-To-Lovers example from a real book to map out what your own lovers need in their story (even if you're writing a different trope!)
• Two super simple do-it-yourself questions that will test whether your romance arc is stuck in a rut mid-manuscript

This 35-minute episode is for romance writers who can feel that something is off with your story even though all the romance beats hit just where they should.

By the end, you'll learn a new technique for diagnosing where the problem might be by asking two deceptively deep questions that can inspire the right fix for your own manuscript today.

Resources from this episode:

• The Protection Pattern exercise (module inside Enemies To Experts) → suebrownmoore.com/enemies-to-experts
• The Turning Point Plot Milestone: Read this free article on the two-step framework for setting up a story arc → podcast.suebrownmoore.com/plot-milestones
• Augmentations intro: This article introduces 4 types of hero defenses that affect your story’s scenes → podcast.suebrownmoore.com/armor
• Flair examples: Read about how two different “big personality” characters break under pressure → podcast.suebrownmoore.com/flair
• Live Workshop: Write Without Resistance: Book this live workshop with Sue to learn how to identify and gently redirect the four types of emotional self-protections that show up as creative resistance, so you can write with more consistency, confidence, and joy. → podcast.suebrownmoore.com/wwrlive
• Workshop: Cake, Not Chaos: The Moment To Moment Method (replay inside E2E) → suebrownmoore.com/enemies-to-experts
• Community: Join Enemies To Experts → suebrownmoore.com/enemies-to-experts
• Author Spotlight: May Archer: Visit May Archer’s website and check out her books → podcast.suebrownmoore.com/mayarcher
• More Resources: Learn from Sue at your own pace → podcast.suebrownmoore.com/learn

• May Archer (author website)
• Write Without Resistance: Book your group’s private workshop with Sue
• Plot Milestones: The Opportunity & Turning Point
• Flair comparisons: Star-Lord vs Illium (Augmentation CCV)
• Hero “Armor” (Augmentations CCV) - Free article: The 4 types of hero defenses that affect your story’s scenes → podcast.suebrownmoore.com/armor
• 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.
• 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.

You're a third of the way into a friends-to-lovers book.

These two have known each other for years.

Nothing obvious is keeping them apart.

No ex, no distance, no secret.

But as an avid romance reader, you know that there's a reason

they haven't gotten together yet.

The attraction is probably already roiling beneath the surface, but

they're still just good friends.

The thing stopping them from choosing to be together is a self-protection, and

they'd rather endure being just friends than risk losing one another forever.

That's what the reader intuitively expects when they pick up

a friends-to-lovers story.

That conflict is built into the trope itself.

Now, you may have been nodding along just now thinking, "Yeah, that makes

total sense," because you've read enough romance books to know how tropes work.

What's harder to do is to make it work in your own manuscript.

And the thing you have to keep in mind as you're writing and revising is that

these two lovers aren't staying just friends because they've got walls up.

That's true, they do have walls up, each one protecting themself from something.

But the nuance to making this trope work is figuring out how their individual

defenses are enabling one another.

The way that one of them stays safe is what lets the other keep doing the same.

Their defenses are perfectly paired, like dance partners who have been

practicing the same waltz for years.

And you know that the story needs something that's keeping them apart, else

why haven't they already gotten together?

So you go looking for that something outside of the characters themselves,

some conflict you can throw in their way that will help them realize,

"Hey, you're the one I really want, and I need to step up and make this

happen." Maybe it's a joke in a text that one of them takes seriously.

Or they might be separated because of a job offer in another city.

Or maybe an old flame moves back into town, and one of these

lovers is not happy about it.

Each one of those conflict situations buys you a few chapters of story energy, but

they're not enough to carry the entire conflict between these two best friends.

Because if the heroes didn't already have something holding them back, this

new disruption would just be a little tiny thing they could talk through.

And that story wouldn't be nearly as exciting, right?

The thing that makes that new situation work as a conflict starter

is how it ignites a fear or a belief that is already living under

the surface of your hero's skin.

That's why when you try to figure out why the relationship part

of your story feels kind of meh, it's hard to find a clear reason.

Because nothing is really wrong in those chapters.

Both leads are likable, their scenes are hitting the romance

beats, the dialogue is strong.

So you can't pinpoint any one spot where the relationship loses steam, which

means that every fix you try is a guess.

And the longer you force your heroes to stay apart with those external events

that you just drop on them like bombs, the weaker their relationship is going

to feel at the end of your story.

Sure, your reader still gets all the kissing and the sex scenes, if

open-door is what you write, but they don't understand the reasons

beneath the chemistry, and the story just feels like something is missing.

So today I'm gonna show you how to look at the lovers themselves to understand

the deepest, truest reason that each one believes they cannot be with the other.

If we haven't met yet, hello, I'm Sue Brown-Moore, and I have

not read a romance novel purely for fun in more than 10 years.

Because that's how long I've been troubleshooting romance

books as a profession.

And you know, I've just had to accept that this is a side effect of what I do

for a living, so I can't be mad about it.

But I'll be in the bathtub, happily listening to those beautiful narrator

voices, while mentally begging these two angsty people to just talk to one another.

And then in some back corner of my brain, I realize, "Huh, she only

touches him when there's no one else in the room." And that's all it takes

to flip my brain into editor mode.

That intuitive understanding of romance novels is why I'm so skilled at

troubleshooting romance book manuscripts, and it's why I love this job so much.

Because there's no other genre where we get to help these vastly different

characters make one another better through their romantic relationship.

So today I'm gonna focus on the relationship itself and

how each hero's personal need plays an important role in it.

Last episode, we analyzed a hero whose method of protecting himself cost him

a little more every time he used it.

We focused on just that one hero, his one protection, and the cost that kept

hurting him until it was too much to bear.

But in most romances, you'll have two heroes going through that

same journey at the same time.

And a lot of conventional advice says, "Raise the stakes. Throw an obstacle

in their path. Give them something to fight about." And that's not

bad advice, it's just not nuanced.

It doesn't take into account why the heroes are holding themselves back from

one another, and it doesn't recognize that every hero character deals with

change and conflict in different ways.

In a friends-to-lovers story, there's an element of comfort built into the

relationship that both heroes rely on for their own reasons, and that's

the safety net you need to threaten.

Because as long as your heroes have no reason to try for more, for

a deeper relationship, they have no incentive to take that risk.

So here's what we're doing today.

First, I'll show you three different ways your heroes' self-protections

can pair up when they're both guarding something within themselves.

And each of those sets the stage for a completely different love story.

So you might be making choices about your romance beats without even realizing it.

Then we'll look inside a published friends-to-lovers story together.

I'll show you how the connection between the two heroes has allowed them to stay

just friends for over a decade, even when they're hiding a love so fierce

that everybody else can clearly see it.

And finally, we'll break down what has to change in each hero character to

push them past that friendship barrier to make taking that risk worth their

possible happily ever after together.

And I'll give you two questions you can ask about your own romantic leads today,

so you can make sure that your heroes' love story feels deep and fulfilling,

not just convenience in an external plot.

Now, if you're thinking, "Sue, I'm not writing a friends-to-lovers

story," stick with me anyway, because what I'm teaching you today can work

for just about any relationship.

Okay, let's talk about how those self-protections for your lovers can pair

up, and it doesn't matter whether you have two lovers or three or even more.

The first pairing is the Interlock.

That's when the result of one person's defense pacifies

the trigger of the other's.

Now, I know that sounded kind of complicated, so here's

what it might look like.

He never asks for anything, so she never has to give anything.

Or she keeps every conversation light, so he never has to

say the hard thing out loud.

Neither one of them is uncomfortable, and no one has a reason to risk that

comfortable friendship they value so much.

Their interactions are kind of like a dance where each person knows exactly what

they can and cannot say to the other to keep that delicate, comfortable balance.

When your heroes' self-defenses interlock, the comfort between them

is what your story needs to poke at.

Because as long as neither one of them wants it to end, there's

nothing pushing them through that hard middle of their growth arcs.

The second pairing is the Mirror.

Your two heroes believe the same Lie about themselves, but they're

scared of different things, so they protect themselves in opposite ways.

Let's say both believe, "I'm only worth keeping if I'm useful." So maybe

she's afraid of feeling unnecessary, so she makes herself the one who

handles everything and never lets anyone else have any responsibility.

He's afraid of being found out as not good enough, as the imposter, so he refuses

help so no one knows he's even struggling.

The same belief is driving both of them, but it manifests in opposing directions.

Which is why your heroes can be so drawn to one another and yet so frustrated

and uncomfortable at the same time.

The third pairing is the Trigger.

This is where one hero's way of staying safe digs right

into the other's deepest fear.

Maybe he shuts down for a couple days, whenever he gets stressed.

And she's terrified that being ignored means she's disappointing him.

So every time he protects himself, he hurts her.

And every time she tries to defend herself, she hurts him.

He's not doing anything wrong, and neither is she.

They're both just doing what's kept them safe for their whole lives.

It just happens to be the worst possible thing they could do to one another.

The conflict here is that these two can't be in the same room during a crisis

without one or both of them getting hurt.

Each one of these pairings sets up a completely different romance arc.

Different pacing, different beats, and a different reason that your reader has

bought in to go along with this journey.

So earlier, when I said you might not have realized you were making decisions about

your romance arc, this is what I meant.

Because how each of your heroes protects themself also sets up what

kind of romance they'll have together.

So if the relationship in your manuscript feels a little flat, look closer and see

if their self-defensive mechanisms are interlocking, mirroring, or triggering.

Now, I know I just threw a lot of new ideas at you, and your

brain might be like, "Uh, what?"

So let's back out of the theory zone and look at an example from a real book.

Because your romance heroes are likely already using one of these

three pairings right now, in the manuscript that's saved on your laptop.

And you probably didn't pick that from some list.

Because as a human, with all the experience that we humans accumulate as

we grow and the lessons we learn, you intuitively understand relationships.

The gap between that intuitive understanding and the technical

know-how you need to troubleshoot your romance manuscript is in the details.

So let's look at that example.

The book we're studying today is Hot Axe by May Archer.

Yes, this is the same book and one of the same heroes I talked

you through in my last episode.

So if you listened to Episode 18, you already know our first hero, Robbie.

But this time, we also get to take a look at Ames, Robbie's best friend

for what feels like a lifetime.

As we look deeper into each hero's self-protection and the way those

two defenses interact, pay attention for the moment where you realize

why neither of them ever said anything to risk their friendship.

Let's start with Robbie.

Robbie is the guy everybody likes to be around.

He's kinda like a golden retriever, just excited to have your

attention and make you happy.

And he says yes to pretty much anything you ask of him.

Now that, the need to say yes all the time, is what I call an Augmentation,

which is just a fancy way of saying that it's his go-to way of behaving or

reacting when he starts to doubt himself.

Augmentations are self-protection habits, and there are four different

types of these Augmentation behaviors.

Robbie's is Flair.

Flair is when your hero takes a trait, usually something positive and with

big energy that is already part of their personality, and turns it up so

high that it becomes a distraction.

Robbie's Flair is generosity, because underneath all that big

yes energy is a fear of being left.

His Flair is how Robbie keeps people in his life, how he keeps from even

thinking about feeling abandoned.

As long as he makes everybody else's life easy, nobody has a

reason to walk away from him.

And he believes something that a lot of us probably do, which

is that loving your family means it's okay to let them hurt you.

Because the alternative is that they might leave you.

Now, that belief did not come from Ames.

Robbie learned this lesson through his history with his own family.

That backstory is important, and we're gonna come back to it in a minute.

But first, watch how an Augmentation like Flair can affect a relationship.

Robbie has known Ames for many years.

In all that time, he has made sure that he is there for Ames whenever he needs him.

They're best friends, and they do everything together.

He likes pleasing Ames, but he also fears disappointing him, even if

he won't consciously admit that.

He's made it so easy for Ames to share his life in this friend way, and for

himself to fit in to Ames' family too.

Now, that sounds lovely, and it is, but it's also half of the reason that

nothing has ever changed between them.

Why they're still just best friends after all these years, even though

all the people around them can see how much they love one another

in that potentially romantic way.

Robbie's warmth and generosity is genuine, and he shares it with everybody.

His family, Ames's family, people at work, the town.

So when Robbie gives of himself in that same way to Ames, there's nothing special

in those acts that clearly signals that Robbie thinks of Ames in a different,

closer way, that their relationship is the most important thing in his life.

But he does, and it is.

And the reason that their romantic relationship would never

happen on its own is that Robbie doesn't realize any of this.

He's kind of clueless that he's in love with Ames.

It's not that he's hiding it.

He just is that warm, and he is that generous, and those same qualities

are what kept every person in his life at a comfortable distance from

the parts of him that are vulnerable.

Because if he disagrees with them or becomes less useful, that's when things

really start to feel scary for him.

Before the book starts, Robbie gets engaged to his longtime

girlfriend, Lissa, and that's the event that starts pressuring this

comfortable relationship these two guys have been just settling for.

That pressure affects each of them in different ways.

So let's meet Ames, because he uses a completely different Augmentation

that interlocks with Robbie's Flair.

Ames knows he is in love with Robbie, and he cannot bear the thought of Robbie

committing his life to anyone else.

Unlike Robbie, Ames is self-aware.

His deep love for his best friend isn't a revelation.

It's a burden that he's been carrying for a long time.

And he doesn't wanna face that hard choice, to either accept that Robbie will

belong to someone else or make his move.

So what he does about it, at least in the early story, is nothing.

He doesn't tell Robbie how deeply he feels.

That's an Augmentation too, and it's a different type than Robbie's.

Ames is using a Shield.

A Shield defends against one emotional direction.

Your hero can be wide open everywhere else in their life, but there's a

vulnerability that they will guard against, and if you get anywhere

near it, they will shut you down.

Ames may not be as golden-retriever-eager-to-please as

Robbie is, and even though he's got a snarky personality, he's a relatively

calm and agreeable guy in most situations.

But he will shut down anything that threatens the possibility of losing the

person he already shares his life with.

So Ames thinks that as long as he never tells Robbie how he feels, they can just

keep living their lives as best friends.

Because nothing has threatened his comfort zone.

He gets Robbie every day of his life.

They share jokes and an implicit agreement that they'll do everything

together, including Robbie coming to Ames's family's dinners.

The most important thing about their arrangement is that Ames never has to

risk Robbie walking away, and if silence is the price he has to pay, then he will.

But then Robbie gets engaged, and Ames is wrecked.

That Shield that was supposed to keep him safe now feels like a cage.

He still hasn't told Robbie how he feels, but now he can't.

Because asking Robbie to choose between him and the woman he

wants to marry might mean losing Robbie's friendship completely.

And the day Robbie gets married and ties his life to Lissa's, Ames believes

he will lose not just the man he loves, but the comfort of a friendship

that keeps him balanced and happy.

And his friend will slip away, little by little, in wedding plans

and calendar dates and the ordinary business of a man building a

life with somebody who isn't him.

Ames hasn't made any obvious, grievous mistakes, but the insidious side of

this Shield Augmentation is that the hero has been protecting against it

so hard for so long that they can't fathom a world where they get to

have what they so desperately want.

Even when Robbie finally realizes he loves Ames romantically and pushes for more,

Ames still keeps up a wall between them.

He pushes his best friend to try dating other men to get "experience".

And he hides behind that as an even deeper layer of his Shield defense,

because he cannot stop believing the Lie that Robbie will never

choose him as his forever partner

. This section of the story is a gorgeous piece of writing from May Archer.

Ames creates the separation he is most afraid of.

He forces something to happen that's gonna hurt him, thinking about Robbie

be with other people romantically, because it's less painful than

losing Robbie's friendship for good.

And he justifies this because, unlike Lissa's engagement to Robbie, Ames thinks

that he is in control of this situation.

Because Robbie respects his opinion and he's eager to

please, so it's a safer path.

But ultimately, this decision moment in the story is what sets

up Ames's personal Turning Point.

That's the scene where your hero finally makes the choice they've

been avoiding for the whole story.

Because he needs to realize that living without Robbie as his

partner is more painful than risking losing that friendship.

And the one night Robbie takes him up on it and says, "I'll go on a date

with somebody else," is what finally pushes him into that mindset switch.

So now you've met both of our example heroes.

Robbie is eager to please, and Ames is harmfully protective

of his friendship with Robbie.

When these two self-defense mechanisms interlock intentionally in a story,

the conflict is simple to set up.

And one of these heroes, Ames, even produced his own conflict, when

he insisted Robbie date other men, without any need for external plot

moments to push them in that direction.

So let's take a closer look at how that Interlock pairing

works in a story like this.

Because your own romantic leads, whether it's now or sometime in the

future, may have a similar setup.

Here's what makes their arrangement work.

Robbie needs to be needed, and Ames can't get through a week without him.

Not in a dramatic way, but in the ordinary, everyday way where you're

the person somebody calls first.

Robbie fills that desire for Ames, and that makes both of them happy.

For more than a decade, neither of them was willing to break this

fragile balance because they were both getting something out of it

that they thought made them happy.

And they were only willing to take that risk when the

alternative was even scarier.

For Ames to grow past that fear mindset he's locked himself into,

he needs Robbie to stray outside of the friend zone in some way.

And Robbie needs to believe that he matters for who he is, not what he

does for other people, including Ames.

Now, remember when I told you Robbie's belief about family didn't come from Ames?

Robbie's backstory in this book sets up his growth arc to be

separate from the romance itself.

His wound came from his own family years in the past, which means the

thing he has to work through doesn't actually require Ames personally at all.

But the growth arc for Ames is directly tied to the romantic arc. His Lie and his

self-protection, that Shield Augmentation, is all about Robbie specifically.

Ames has a family who loves him and happily accepts him for who he is.

The only place in his life where he can't be honest about his feelings

is with Robbie, his best friend.

So Ames requires the romantic relationship in the story in order to grow.

Robbie benefits from his romantic relationship with Ames, and of

course, he loves his partner.

But it's his external plot moments that push him through

his final Turning Point decision.

That's why their safe, comfortable arrangement lasted for as long as it did.

Ames had to be put in a situation where he felt like he was losing his best friend,

and Robbie needed external events to push him to his own personal breaking point.

Without both of those things in the plot, the romance wouldn't truly work.

Now, after hearing all of that, you might be worried because your

romance isn't set up that way.

Don't panic.

This is just one example of a romantic arc, and it's totally

fine if yours feels different.

So let's bring this back to your manuscript.

Because each of these three pairings needs a different pressure point to push the

heroes to their Turning Point decisions.

And if you don't push on the right wound, no new scenes or tweaks

will break that mid-story stalemate between your romantic leads.

An Interlock needs something from outside the romance to interfere.

That's what happened in Hot Axe.

Neither Robbie nor Ames was ever going to volunteer to end an arrangement

that worked so well for both of them.

It took Robbie getting engaged to someone else to push Ames across that

line, then external pressure from Robbie's brother to tip him over.

So if your lovers' Augmentations are interlocked, you can't just wait for one

of them to work up the courage, without some sort of external plot intervention.

Because that's gonna lead to a laggy middle section of the story and

probably an underwhelming climax too.

A mirrored set of Augmentations needs a different push.

Your leads believe the same Lie about themselves, so neither one

can talk the other out of it.

Think about the woman who handles everything so nobody finds out she's

unnecessary, and the man who refuses help so nobody finds out he's not good enough.

She can't argue him out of that belief because that's exactly what she

believes, just from a different angle.

What cracks a mirror pairing is the moment one of your leads watches

their partner make a big mistake that they recognize themself in.

She sees him white-knuckle the most intense and traumatic

situation of his life, all alone.

And she understands why he feels like he has to do it that way.

And once she realizes why he does it, she can't un-know why she

does that same thing to herself.

That recognition is what gives your romance arc its breakthrough moment.

Now, Augmentations that trigger one another will happily keep those lovers

in conflict until they're forced to spend time together and deal with

the pain points that they cause in one another and have been avoiding.

This is why enemies to lovers is such a fun trope.

The thing they proclaim to hate most about their partner is usually the thing

that represents their own self-lies.

Not like in a Mirror where they're the same Lie, but where

one Lie triggers the other.

Think about the man who shuts down for a couple days, whenever he's under pressure,

and the woman who reads that silence as proof that she's disappointing him.

If you let these two people walk away from one another, they will never

solve those internal belief problems.

Forced proximity leads to escalating tension, which leads to the

self-realizations that set up their individual Turning Point moments.

That's what your romance needs when your lead's defenses

are triggering one another.

So let's put this to work in your own manuscript.

Open up your story or think about your story and find a scene where your romantic

leads are alone together and comfortable.

Not a fight, not a big stressful moment, just an ordinary scene where they're

being themselves with one another.

Maybe they're in the car on a road trip.

Maybe one of them is cooking and the other one is leaning on the

counter, talking about their day.

Maybe they're at somebody else's party, standing off to the side together.

Got a scene in mind?

Okay, great.

Now read through or think through that scene and notice what each of your leads

does to keep themself safe when they might feel uncomfortable about something, or

even slightly threatened by the situation.

One of them might change the subject when a conversation gets a little too personal.

One of them might make a joke instead of answering a direct question.

Somebody might say yes to a favor they don't really have time for.

If you don't have a moment like that in your scene, the one you've

picked to work with, that's okay.

Just imagine sort of expanding and tweaking and changing that scene, just in

your mind, until you can find a thread to work with just for this thought exercise.

And then ask yourself these two questions.

The first is, "If nothing outside their relationship ever changed, would

your two romantic leads be content to stay just the way they are?"

And then question number two to follow up on that is, " And in that situation,

whether it's yes or no, would they truly be happy or just settling?"

Whichever way you answered, look back at the behavior you noticed.

Because that's probably their Augmentation, or at least a clue to it.

The same kind of go-to habit that Robbie uses when he says

yes to everything and that Ames uses when he says nothing at all.

And if your next thought was, "Okay, I've got it, but what do I do with

these two answers?" That's what I teach inside Enemies to Experts.

Module 6 is called The Protection Pattern, and it's all about

these Augmentation behaviors.

The exercise guides you to focus on one hero and one scene, and you work

through each of my fill-in-the-blank steps until you can clearly state

what that hero is protecting and what it costs them every time they do.

This is a skill that can diagnose and help fix the muddy middle of a manuscript.

Because when you know what vulnerability each of your leads is protecting,

you can adjust the scenes you already have and stop bloating your manuscript

with more scenes that are just trying to show those missing emotions.

And if you're thinking of joining Enemies to Experts, but you're

worried that you're already behind, well, I promise you're not.

Because every module stands on its own.

You can start with the Protection Pattern if you want, and work backward or forward

through whichever topic grabs you next.

I do think the system works best if you go in order, but each one does stand alone.

If you're already a member of Enemies to Experts, I'm so glad you're listening.

I hope this episode helped you understand your heroes even better.

And your Protection Pattern module builds on what you just learned today.

So your exercise line lib should be even easier to fill in.

All you need to do is take the answer you just came up with about

your leads, those two questions that we asked, and use it as a starting

point for your September exercise.

Now, regardless of whether you are a member of Enemies to Experts, if you want

to learn about all four Augmentations in depth, I teach a live workshop that

explains the pros and cons, the benefits and the drawbacks, of each of the four

Augmentations and shows you how to work with your own protective defenses as a

writer, rather than fighting against them.

That workshop is called Write Without Resistance, and I would be delighted

to present it to your writing group.

The info page that has all the details you need about that workshop and how to

book it is in the show notes if you want to learn more or book your own date.

And while you're down there in the show notes, I've linked in two articles about

Augmentations that are already published on my website and explain even more

about the role they play in your story.

There's a reason that your romantic leads haven't gotten together yet when

the story starts, and there's a reason that they can't just jump straight into

their HEA as soon as they meet on page.

I mean, there'd be no story, right?

But if you're not sure what that reason is, or if you can't clearly state it

or pinpoint or say, "This right here, that's the thing driving the middle of

the story," I want you to stop and think through everything you learned today.

Re-listen to this episode if you need to.

Take notes.

Because sometimes the "quick", and I'm saying that in air quotes, the

"quick" fixes that we think are obvious just cause more problems.

So look at your manuscript's romantic relationship with a critical eye, just

like we did today for Hot Axe, and ask yourself how each lover is protecting

themself from something they dread.

When you can concisely state that, you can stop guessing and

start revising with confidence.

Your storytelling instincts have already brought you this far, so trust where they

were leading you and let your analytical brain carry the torch from here.

Because what we walked through today is a skill that you can use in every new

manuscript that you write or revise from here on, for the rest of your career.

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.

In the next episode, we're going one layer deeper into your hero's self-protection.

Ames knew what he wanted.

He just believed he couldn't have it, and he convinced himself

that as long as he stayed in the friend zone, he wouldn't get hurt.

That's a Limiting Belief, and it's what allows your hero to stay in

their comfort zone and make decisions in the early story that set them up

for real growth later in the plot.

Your hero should have a Limiting Belief, too.

Because if they don't, and you're feeling that the pacing or the

focus in your early chapters is not quite right, that missing or muddy

Limiting Belief might be the culprit.