Lorna Faith

Clean Fiction Author

015 Story Structure and Success Mindset for Authors with Jennifer Blanchard

by

Subscribe: iTunes

I had fun interviewing story coach Jennifer Blanchard for this podcast. She is a professional novelist and story coach who turns struggling novelists into serious, emerging authors of amazing books that keep readers hooked from page one.

I learned a ton about story structure and having a success mindset from Jennifer, I hope you find the tips you need to write awesome books in this interview too 😉  You can find more about Jennifer on her website jenniferblanchard.net or connect with her on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.

Watch the Video Interview

Here’s some resources I share in the update:

1.Jennifer mentions her 6 week find your story book. She encourages writers who want to learn more details about story to grab the FREE book at jenniferblanchard.net/findyourstory, or you can grab the Kindle version for 99 cents on Amazon here. You can also join her Facebook Group for Free here: Emerging Novelists Incubator.

2. Story Engineering  and  Story Structure – Demystified, by Larry Brooks have been really helped me break down my story… answering the questions: what do I write next?  And where do I put it?

3. GMC: Goal, Motivation, and Conflict by Debra Dixon is a book every fiction writer should have in as one of their tools of the trade. This book helps fiction writers shape their stories and also lends urgency to their stories to keep readers turning the pages.

I hope these books will help you as much as they’ve helped me 😉

Summary of Interview

There are many helpful tips for struggling novelists on how write a story that is compelling in this interview.

*She shares how a few years ago, she first heard Larry Brooks talk about story structure and that’s when she had a light bulb moment, and really understood story structure for the first time. She decided from then on she would spread story structure as far as she could to as many writers as needed to hear it. In 2010 she put her first ebook out and began coaching writers.

 

Her first novel is a contemporary romance titled, SoundCheck.

Jennifer has just finished her second fiction book.

*Jennifer’s tips for writers who are just starting out writing stories. If you’re lacking ideas: 1) keep a journal. Journalling is a powerful tool for writers. Write down all the things you’ve been through and are doing right now. Writing down how you think about things is a good place to start. 2) Pay attention to what’s going on around you. Listen to other people’s life stories; listen for ideas seeds in little blips of things that are going on in the world around you.

*Once you have your story idea, let it marinate for awhile. Instead of madly writing a 50,000 word draft – think about it – get inspired by the truths you want to tell people. We tell lies in fiction to show a truth of some kind. This is the beginning point – then there’s story development that needs to happen.

*Jennifer recommends for each story you write, start by developing a concept and a premise. Concept: what is conceptual about your story? Is it a love story set on the Titanic? Add something more than just a man and woman meeting and falling in love. Add something that makes it interesting.  Concept is your story setting or landscape.                              Premise: is your plot. What’s happening in your story? Instead of just writing about the character’s life(which is an episodic narrative), write about what the protagonist wants. Short definition of story is: a protagonist that wants something, an antagonist that opposes what the protagonist wants and a journey that ensues because of it.

*Great questions to ask yourself as you develop your story: What is my core story? Who is my protagonist? What does my protagonist want? What opposition will they face trying to get to their goals?

*Questions for your protagonist: 1. What is their inner demon? What will they struggle with externally and internally? Sometimes we only have the internal battle going on and we don’t realize that there has to be an external battle happening at the same time.  2. What’s their goal in the story? It needs to be compelling for readers to be drawn to it. They have to have a goal of some kind. It will make them three dimensional… without that it falls flat.

*Questions for your antagonist: 1. What’s the opposing goal? What does the antagonist want that opposes the antagonist. In real life there doesn’t have to be a reason or motivation – but in a fiction story there has to be a reason behind why they do something.

*It’s important that your main character has grown from the beginning to the end of the story. In order for the hero to change and win, they need to change and to overcome their inner demon. During the course of the story they learn and experience things they need so they can defeat the bad guy.

Example: Happy Gilmore movie. In the beginning he wants to be a hockey player. But the First Plot Point is that his grandmother’s house is being repossessed and his goal now is to raise $250,000 by playing golf in order to save the house that his grandfather built. His hockey goal is put on hold for awhile.

*Jennifer coaches new fiction writers through a six week story planning process which she describes in detail in her book, Find Your Story: The 6-Week Story Planning Process or you can get the book for free at jenniferblanchard.net/findyourstory.

  • Week One: Idea, Concept, Premise.
  • Week Two: Creating Characters.
  • Week Three: Story Structure(Take 1).
  • Week Four: Story Structure(Take 2).
  • Week Five: Story Beat Sheet.
  • Week Six: Story Roadmap.

 

*Jennifer has a new perspective on how to create a success mindset as a writer. Instead of thinking that you’re always trying to move toward something, instead see yourself as if you already are at that specific place where you want to be. For example: if you want to be a bestselling novelist, act like you already are one. Ask yourself what would a bestselling novelist do? Would they skip their writing session that morning, or would they write until they got their word count finished?

Success Habits for Authors…

The following is what Jennifer does everyday to develop a success mindset – to get rid of the negative self doubts and limitations.

1. Journal. Write in 3 journals as soon as you wake up in the morning.

  • Write Morning Pages. This is 3 handwritten pages which is just writing down what’s in  your head. Write in the morning and before you go to bed. You can reprogram yourself by writing in your journal around those times.  It gets rid of all the negative unbelief.
  • Write your reality Journal. Basically this is where you pretend you already have everything you want. For example if you want to be a bestselling novelist write things like: tonight I’m going to the movie premiere for my novel. What ends up happening – is by writing this over and over again you program yourself to give our dream life.
  • Write statements about yourself.  Write a half page of I AM; I WILL statements. Write something like: I am strong; I am brave; I am excited for today… etc. After that write gratitude statements. Thank you for my bestselling novel… etc.

2.Write in short bursts using a timer. Jennifer says she times her writing and that has done so much for her productivity. Start with 10 or 15 minutes of writing bursts.

3.Follow a Checklist. Write down the actions that you need to do for that day. Do this for every single day. Each item on there should be timed. For example: write a blogpost = 1 hour.  A timer is very useful in improving your productivity.

“Writers tend to have a limited belief and negative thoughts about themselves. Much of these are from Societal things we’re told: you can’t make money as a writer; being a novelist is not a career choice, etc. You can create your own reality and you can do it based on the things you believe, the thoughts you think and the actions that you take. If you want something, go for it.” Jennifer Blanchard

Whenever you can, work on your mindset. Being positive and believing you can(fill in blank here) is 90% of success in anything.

To learn more about what Jennifer is up to, you can find her on her website where she has a ton of blog posts, videos and you can get access to her membership site here.  Right now you can get story tips from Jennifer on Instagram where she does 15 seconds of story videos and connect with her when you join the Facebook Group: Emerging Novelists Incubator.

What tips did you find most helpful in this interview? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

 

 

*Photo credit: Jennifer Blanchard

*Some of the above links are affiliate links and help to support this blog

013 Lorna Faith on How to Uncover the Author Inside You Interviewed by Parker J Cole

by

Subscribe: iTunes

This is an interview I had with Parker J. Cole on BlogTalkRadio PJC Media a little over a week ago. It is all about the process of getting past the fear of writing and getting your ideas from the page into book form.  I am still learning, so I hope this interview helps you too. You can follow Parker J. Cole on Twitter.

In the Update I mention helpful resources for writers:

  • Daring Greatly  by Dr. Brene Brown. This is a book that helped me to unlock creative blocks and understand how to have compassion on myself as a writer. It is so helpful to getting past writing blocks, fear insecurity and many other forms of resistance that we face as writers.
  • Iterate and Optimize: Optimize Your Creative Business for Profit by Sean Platt, Johnny B. Truant and David Wright. This book really helps writers to understand how to grow their creative business wisely. How to 1)do a self-assessment so you can lay a solid foundation to improve yourself as a authorpreneur 2) learn by example 3)steps to take to optimize your business so it’s more profitable 4) lessons learned from other successful authors.
  • I also mention my online course for first-time writers or for writers struggling to get their books written, formatted and self-published. You can find more details at https://www.writeandpublishyourfirstbook.com.

Also, I’m excited that my next book in the Historical Romance series – Anchoring Annaveta – will be released April 1, 2015… that’s tomorrow!

I hope these resources are helpful to you. Please add your comments or questions below… I’d love to hear from you 😉

In this Podcast, you will learn:

About me and my own story of overcoming resistance and self doubt and why I started this blog and the Create A Story You Love Podcast.

  • How you can know if you are a writer inside
  • What is stopping you from writing your book and how an elementary teacher’s negative words stopped me from writing for over 20 years)
  • Steps you can take to help you give yourself permission to use your creativity
  • 3 Ways that you can tap into your creativity
  • How having a deadline can help you to finish the book you are writing or want to write
  • The aspects of a good story that grab your attention
  • 4 Part Story Structure and how this structure helps you to write popular genre fiction
  • Some tropes to great stories
  • I share how since I started blogging I share my writing and indie author journey and how my posts reflect what I’m continually learning.
  • that it’s okay to give yourself permission to make mistakes. That sometimes what it takes to learn and grow is for you to be a ‘not-so-good artist for awhile so you can be a good artist later.’
  • How by writing with vulnerability, helps us to understand ourselves and helps us to overcome fear and unbelief in ourselves and our ability to write the story we love.

How did you know you were a writer? Please share! I’d love to hear your story in the comments 🙂

5 Tips on Turning Pro for Writers as inspired by Steven Pressfield

by

During a recent interview I had with Creative Business coach, Charlie Gilkey, I had an aha moment that’s it’s time to level up my writing game – and go Pro.

There are some books, blogs and podcasts that as writers, we keep coming back to because of the inspiration and motivation they offer.

Two books by Steven Pressfield, have been eye-openers for me. The first book that helped me understand and slay the dragon of resistance, was The War of Art. Another book that has challenged me – which I’ve been re-reading lately – is his book on how to turn professional and create your life’s work by Turning Pro.

This book has challenged me in my goals as a writer in so many ways that I thought I’d write a post to share what I learned…

tips on turning pro for writers

Some tips that help writers to Turn Pro…

I’ve discovered to a greater degree that the decision to be a professional writer, is one I must make everyday.

This is why, I am choosing to blog only on Thursdays of each week… so I can get more writing done. I see this as a experiment, to see if this improves the number of books I can write and self-publish.

Resistance tries its best to stop us from writing that book, and I have many times given in.

 

 

 

Reading through this book has challenged me to choose whether to be a professional or amateur.

I hope you find these thoughts helpful in your own writing journey.

1.Resistance does it’s best to keep us shallow and unfocused… and hates it when creatives have concentration and depth. Resistance will do everything it can to make you addicted to all things superficial and shallow.  This is a big one that I’ve dealt with over and over again. Ask yourself if you’ve checked social media or your email in the last hour. I still struggle with this most days, but it helped for me to choose to no longer check email or social media until noon each day. There are still days that I struggle, but wow, just the conscious choice to turn off email and social media during creative time, has made a big difference 😉 Choose to no longer multi-task. Your Muse doesn’t like distractions.

2.Plan your activities so that you can accomplish a goal. Steven Pressfield says, we now structure our hours not to flee from fear, but to confront it and overcome it. We plan our activities in order to accomplish an aim. And we bring our will to bear so that we stick to this resolution. This changes our days completely. This is how the work – your goal – gets done. A professional writer’s days are focused around writing, researching or some other aspect of reaching their goal of their latest book. When you create and do your best to stick to your goals, this empowers you to say no to things that don’t fit in that framework.

3.Consider the difference between an amateur and a professional. This really struck home as I’ve been thinking about this for awhile now. Steven Pressfield makes the distinction: The difference between an amateur and a professional is in their habits. A professional has professional habits. A professional writers has habits that they’ve chosen to put in their life around how they will get their books written, with the main habit being that they get the writing done. Successful pro writers like Steven Pressfield, have many books that they continue to produce even when some of those books aren’t selling like they expected. A pro doesn’t stop writing just because of short term disappointments. Over time, as they continue to write, they produce a body of work.

4.I learned in this book that… there are two rewards for what we do as professional creatives. There is the customary reward of attention, applause and money. And there’s also the psychological reward, which is expressing our own creativity which brings amazing benefits to each of us as artists. Many times the practice of writing will keep us creating, even when the normal customary reward isn’t there.

5.On the field of the self stand a knight and a dragon. You are the knight. Resistance is the dragon. The battle must be fought anew every day. These are powerful words by Steven Pressfield and have really helped me to battle fear and insecurity when I’m writing. Each day, I have to begin and win this battle and choose to be a professional writer. Many days I lose this battle, but I’m choosing still, to keep fighting resistance everyday. I feel like I’m beginning to head in the right direction and develop more creative output. Writing is not an easy skill to learn and be consistent at, but I’m convinced it’s one that has so many benefits and rewards.

I encourage you to buy this book.

I hope these thoughts from Steven Pressfield ‘s book, inspire you to write the books that keep you awake late at night. I re-read through this book at least once a year, and it truly lights a fire under me and inspires me to keep writing. A read through of a chapter or two is just what the doctor ordered on days when resistance is especially brutal.

Buy Turning Pro on Amazon.com now.

Do any of these statements resonate with you and your writing journey? What is your biggest struggle as a writer? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

 

*Photo created with Canva

*Some of the above links are affiliate links and help to support this blog

010 Create Your Own Success as a Multipotentialite with Emilie Wapnick

by

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.” Steve Jobs

I had the privilege of interviewing Emilie Wapnick, a few months ago. 

Emilie is a multipotentialite who explores many topics and passions in life. She doesn’t like labels, but she says if she had to describe herself, she’d probably use some combination of artist, entrepreneur, writer, speaker, and coach.

BUT, she says all of this could change tomorrow. Because she’s not just one thing. And chances are if you’re a multipotentialite, you aren’t one thing either.  

A few years ago she started Puttylike.com where many other people have connected into the Putty Tribe where they listen and encourage each other to follow their many passions. You can find Emilie on her blog or she’d love to connect with you Facebook or Twitter.

Watch the Video Interview

Sorry there was no update with this podcast. I’m having difficulty talking right now because of this cold ;(  As for resources, check out some of books Emilie said helped her. I found them very helpful and I’m re-reading the Barbara Sher book again.

Summary of the Interview

*Emilie defined the term multipotentialite: Someone with many interests and creative pursuits. A person who has many different interests at one time or having many interests and doing them more sequentially. In the dictionary, multipotentiality is defined as students who display aptitudes in many areas – often called polymath of scanner – which is a term Barbara Sher introduced in her book Refuse to Choose!: A Revolutionary Program for Doing Everything That You Love. 

*She explores many topics like how culture tells us to have only one true calling, when in fact we might have many talents or gifts that can be explored that can benefit others. Emilie encourages creative people, that instead of stuffing all those passions you have inside, to instead give yourself permission to explore those passions and allow yourself to live a richer, fuller life.

*Emilie shares a little about her story. When she was younger she had many passions and she continued to try different things… but it caused her alot of anxiety because she got bored quickly. She wondered why she couldn’t commit to one thing and thought something was wrong with her. When she was done high school she went into Web design, studied at Film School, was a serious musician and also got her Law Degree from McGill. Lately she’s been interested in the Health Sciences and woodworking.

*Emilie started Puttlike.com to see if there were other people like her with many different passions. And was surprised to find many other people who originally thought they were weird, find that there were many other people who were also multipotentialites. And they’ve been learning to do all their passions successfully as they talk and learn together on the PuttyTribe.

*There are a few great innovators who are successful multipotentialites of our time like Richard Branson, Steve Jobs and Oprah Winfrey. Steve Jobs talked to creatives in Wired.

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after awhile. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.” Steve Jobs 

*Emilie has interviewed  many people on how they make exploring many passions work financially. She’s currently writing a book about that. Many people have said that the Group Hug approach – which is to create an over-arching theme with all your interests(a renaissance business) which adds cohesiveness to your passions is one approach. Another approach is the Slash Approach – which is to separate each different passion -and have a different website for each business, especially if your interests are really different from one another.

*She talked about how she coaches people who aren’t sure how to do this and they brainstorm and bounce ideas around. 

*There are many people with more than one passion. Emilie encourages multi – passionate people to stop looking at each interest as a waste of time. She shares the example of Steve Jobs who took a calligraphy class in college and years later that became the type face for the Apple Computer. So you never know which passions you’ve experienced in your life will later be useful to you.

*She also encourages artists to not undervalue themselves and the gifts and talents they offer to the world. If you don’t take your art seriously, then no one else will either. See the value in what you’re creating, learn what the industry standard is on what to charge for your work and then become more comfortable earning an income from your work.

*Emilie says books like The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated: Expanded and Updated, With Over 100 New Pages of Cutting-Edge Content by Tim Ferriss and The Art of Non-Conformity: Set Your Own Rules, Live the Life You Want, and Change the World (Perigee Book.) by Chris Guillibeau were real game changers for her. These books helped her understand how to grow her business, be more productive and to connect with her audience.

Emilie just released a New Book to help people to get a clearer understanding on how they can connect all their passions and grow a business from what they love to do.

After reading Emilie’s definition of multipotentialite, do you feel like that describes you? Please share, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

 

*Photo Credit By: Emilie Wapnick

*Some of the above links are affiliate links and help to support this blog

Malcare WordPress Security