Show don’t tell Writing Podcast: 54. Show don’t Tell Page Review: Fantasy with Alyson Hathaway

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In this episode, Suzy dives into how to use showing details to bring an introverted character to life, how to sprinkle fantasy details without info-dumping, and how to avoid point of view errors. 

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Podcast Episode Transcript (unedited)

Suzy Vadori: [00:00:00] Welcome to Show. Don’t Tell Writing with me, Suzy Vadori, where I teach you the tried and true secrets to writing fiction nonfiction that are gonna wow your readers broken down step by step. We’re gonna explore writing techniques. I’m gonna show you a glimpse behind the scenes of successful writers’ careers that you wouldn’t have access to otherwise.

And I’m also gonna coach writers live on their pages so that you can learn and transform your own storytelling. Whether you’re just starting out, you’re drafting your first book, you’re editing, or you’re currently rewriting that book, or maybe even your 10th book, this show’s gonna help you unlock the writing skills that you didn’t even know you needed, but you definitely do.

I’m so looking forward to helping you get your amazing ideas from your mind onto your pages in an exciting way for both you and your readers so that you can achieve your wildest writing dreams, [00:01:00] and you’re gonna also have some fun doing it. Let’s dive in today. We welcome Alyson Hathaway to this show Tell Writing podcast, and we are going to do a one page show, tell review from her work in progress.

Alyson is a software test engineer and she’s a 20 year USAF veteran and General Bookworm who both reads and writes primarily urban fantasy. She almost always incorporates history, mythology, and alternate universe or secret world elements into her writing because she started reading with a Greek mythology picture book and it stuck.

She was born and raised in Massachusetts, but currently lives in California with her husband and two children. Today we are going to read a page with her from her work in progress, and then we are going to brainstorm ways to add some shooting to it. So I’m gonna read you that page right now. Well, what do you have?

Dr. Ard was [00:02:00] almost hopping foot to foot as he appeared over Ariadne’s shoulder trying to make out the details of the surface. She was delicately brushing, clean, the sun baked her shoulders, the top of her head, the sandy dirt where she knelt. After two more brush strokes. She sat back on her heels and wiped the back of her hand across her forehead.

Sweat stung her eyes. Sure she lied and frowned at the slab of baked clay as if confused. It looks like Lydia B, but this is much larger than any of the other tablets we found so far. Some sort of larger report or announcement. Maybe Dr. Ranard buttered unhappily to himself before turning to wave over Mullins.

He added a piercing whistle to get the younger man’s attention. A moment later, Mullin’s head popped into view over the edge of the dig pit. The intern waved back, then finished climbing up the ladder to jog over to Ariadne and the site lead. Damn she’d really hoped ran garb, would bite off on the [00:03:00] announcement lead.

The man was smart though. He wouldn’t have been leading the dig if he weren’t. She patted her hip, found the canteen there, and took a long block while they waited for Mullins. Mullins was gonna be even harder to distract or mislead than ranard. Maybe something more direct here. Mullins. Have a look at this.

Hey, what do you think it is? Dr. Ranard had out his notebook. It was already scribbling notes. Ariadne here is guessing an announcement or linear B, but this framing is unusual. The S script isn’t quite right. Mullins agreed as he crouched across from Ariadne. Looking at the tablet from the other end, you should tell when you’re upside down to the writing the way you two are.

Of course, linear B isn’t your specialty either, is it Ney? No. She said instead of spinning the smugness right off his face, it isn’t, it didn’t need to be her specialty. She’d been there when the scribe had copied out the text, and it certainly wasn’t just linear. B. Better with later. My Sienna Greek lies.

Lies, lies. She smiled [00:04:00] pleasantly at Mullins. Mullins leaned in for a better look at the carved lines. She saw the moment when he realized what he was looking at. His eyes widened and he held his breath before letting it out on a sigh. You probably have a libation table, he said, and she frowned briefly.

Mullins was lying too. Then she put on a curious expression and leaned in as well. Oh, well that’s unusual for this area, isn’t it? We have all the documentation of the dig, the photographs. Yes. We’re gonna need to support our findings when we publish. Most of the libation tables I’m aware of are on the other end of the island.

We still have most of the site left to uncover. This could be another temple. Durang Gar was working himself up. He’d been dreaming of finding a major site for years. Ariadne had been trying to steer him away from this one for almost as long. It’s likely something much simpler, she said with a shrug as she sat back on her heels again, the lidar didn’t show any extensive remains, and this is near one of the trade roads.[00:05:00]

It could have been made near here for another site maybe. Zach Rose, welcome to the show. Alyson. It is so good to have you here today. Thank you. I’m glad to be here. So Alyson, before we dive into this page that I’ve just read, I just wanted to get to know you a little bit. What’s the name of this book that this page is from?

I haven’t actually. Does it have a name

Alyson H.: yet? No. And is this your debut novel that you’re writing? I would say yes. It’s my first composed novel that I’m trying to actually finish. My friend and I, I have a writing partner and we’ve been writing together for 12 or 13 years. We have several million words worth of an ongoing story.

We haven’t actually taken the time and broken it out, so this is something independent of that.

Suzy Vadori: Oh, I love that you guys are gonna have so many books to pull together at some point, right? Absolutely. How do you like writing as a team? Do you, how do you do that? How do you write together?

Alyson H.: There’s kind of two flows that we go through [00:06:00] sometimes.

We are both. Like on Discord or another program and we’re just, we each kind of take a character and throw them back and forth. In this situation, we’ll improvise. It’s a very yes and mythology if with acting, but then the other thing we’ll sometimes do is each write three or four pages or a short, like interval with one character specifically, and then see where that goes.

That sounds like such a blast.

Suzy Vadori: I hope it, it probably ends up being a little bit complicated to try to pull those into books, but I bet it’s fun while you’re doing it.

Alyson H.: It’s a lot of fun while we’re doing it, the editing is the most complicated part. Yes. And that’s why we haven’t gotten farther with it.

Suzy Vadori: Yeah. I wish the listeners could see, because we record this on video, but we don’t use the video. I wish they could see you smile and how much you truly enjoy working as a team There.

Alyson H.: She is absolutely my best friend, so I love that. I love that. Okay. [00:07:00]

Suzy Vadori: So yes, and she’s your best friend and you’re writing this independently now.

So what made you want to start this book at this moment in your life?

Alyson H.: So this actually started as an action scene from a story grid workshop, and I saw that you just had one of the blogs about the story grid. Yes. And I just. I put out the scene and we got the feedback a little bit on it, but then I was like, I really think I can do something with this.

I can take this farther. So

Suzy Vadori: I absolutely agree. I can’t wait to start brainstorming with you on it. Okay. So this scene started out as a story grid scene example from a workshop, right? Yep. And, but how far are you, have you written more to the book, or is this the very beginning of it, or how, where are you at in the

Alyson H.: writing process?

I’ve got a loose plot and I’ve done some writing beyond this, but I haven’t gotten anything as I would say, complete as this is Okay.

Suzy Vadori: [00:08:00] For your loose plot. Where in the book does this scene appear, do you think?

Alyson H.: This is early, but not at the very beginning. I’m thinking that the beginning is gonna be a little bit more kind of intro to her as a character and some of the background, but this would be probably like chapter two or three.

Okay.

Suzy Vadori: Chapter two or three. And this is the beginning of a chapter that you’ve sent? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I would call it that. Perfect. Excellent. And can you tell us what you think this book is going to be about?

Alyson H.: I think in my one line I said, Hey, she’s been protecting her brother from the world and the world from her brother.

So it’s gonna be about that sort of conflict of where does family intersect with when family is not a good person or thing.

Suzy Vadori: Okay. Yeah. And we’re beating your character at this really critical moment. Which is why I love that you sent the scene where she discovers something that is potentially really [00:09:00] important and she chooses to lie.

That’s the page that we just read, right? Yeah. Awesome. So we’re gonna dive in because I have so many questions I can’t wait to talk about, about this. Yeah. And I love that you chose this one page. Because I always ask writers to choose a page, not that you think is fully polished, but a page that you know needs some showing details.

Yeah, and I think there’s so much going on, Alyson, in your mind when you do this, and then I looked at the page and there was so much missing. Yeah. So I can’t wait to hear. And I know it’s a really early draft, so it’s not fair. Yeah. But that’s why we’re work workshopping it and brainstorming it together.

There is a lot of teasing on this page is what I would call it. Where Yeah, where you’re hinting and you’re holding back. Right. So as a reader on this page, I’m not learning much. So there’s room to educate us. You write urban fantasy. This is about Greek pathology. I think it’s an interest of yours. You know a lot about it, right?

Yeah. So let us know something about it too. So I wanted to be [00:10:00] a little bit more involved, especially because Mariane is really brilliant at this. So we’re in her point of view, and I wanted to learn a little bit more. So most of what I want talk about here is how to put those details on the page without being an info dump, right?

Like where do you put them and how do you make it less, less cryptic? Right, because even in a mystery when something’s happening, and even if you want to hold it back, and we could talk about whether you were trying to hold it back or not, I don’t know the answer, but even when you think that you wanna hold it back, it’s almost always the right answer to give the reader something, even if it’s a red herring, even if you’re putting them in a different direction.

But you have to answer some of these questions. Absolutely. So we wanna make sure that this part is really moving the story forward. So the, a few well placed details are, I’m gonna immediately bring this to life. Okay. Okay. So let’s go. I bet you know these details and you’re gonna be like, of course it’s this and that.

And we’re gonna be like, why is that all the page? So it’ll be a lot of fun. So [00:11:00] for example, on this first paragraph here, what do you have? Dr. Ranard was almost hopping from foot to foot. And I just, I made a few suggestions here just to take out the passive voice or to take out some of the filters. Sure.

Um, and I’ll send you this afterwards, but as appeared over Ariadne’s shoulder, so. When you open the scene, I actually made the assumption that we were in Dr. Vanguard’s point of view. So it’s not a hard and fast rule. It doesn’t mean that you have to do it, but if we’re in Arianna’s point of view, which we are in this scene, right, or in her head, oftentimes if you start with that character, then we automatically make that assumption.

So it’s a little trick to make it easier on your reader. Do you think you’ll have more than one point of view character, or is she gonna narrate the whole book?

Alyson H.: She’s gonna be the primary. If I have another character, it’s gonna be very secondary. Very secondary. Okay. Yeah. Awesome.

Suzy Vadori: Just make sure that you’re doing more than one scene in somebody else’s point of view.

Right? Yeah. So it’s not very satisfying. So we wanna have 20% of the book or something in [00:12:00] somebody else’s. They can still be secondary, but if you’re gonna do it otherwise, find a creative way to keep it in one point of view. Mm-hmm. Because if you just flip for one scene, it’s discombobulating for the reader.

Okay. So he’s peering over our ane shoulder trying to make out details of the surface. She was delicately brushing clean. Okay, so this really, I actually made a few comments and then in the next paragraphs I realized that we weren’t in his point of view. So because we feel like we are there and that’s a tricky thing, but, but you could see what I’m, you’re like, oh yeah, I see it.

So if he’s trying to make out the details, we can’t know that, right? Just watch because it’s a point of view error. If we know why he’s doing things and later on you try to accommodate that and I’ll show you where, and it works better. But here, I would love to see it in her point of view. And what are we seeing to make out the details of the surface?

She was delicately brushing clean. There’s no reason why you wouldn’t even add any words to actually show us something. So I don’t know what it looks like. [00:13:00] So I’ve got a few suggestions here in the margin. Take them if you love them, and if you don’t, then you know what they are, right? Yeah. A slate gray surface was emerging where she delicately brushed the soil away.

I don’t know. A pale square with dull with a dull sheen emerged right? Or something better, but just show me. Sure. I wanna feel what it’s like. I assume they’re archeologists of some sort, right? Yeah. Or thieves. I don’t know. Maybe they’re both.

Alyson H.: So interesting you say that the, it is an archeological site, but the other character Mullins is not so ethical.

Let’s put it like that.

Suzy Vadori: And I can tell that from these pages. So I’m excited, but they at least are trained as archeologists. So make me feel smart, show me what that feels like, and feel free to lean in without being boring about it and giving me a dissertation on how to, on earth a dig. But if you know those details, then share them with us.

Right? Okay, so moving on down here, after two more brush strokes, she sat back on her heels and wiped the back of her hand [00:14:00] across her forehead. Sweat stung her eyes. So great showing details there. Excellent. I could feel that. I can almost taste that sweat stinging my eyes, right? Like excellent. I’m not sure she lied.

And fr the slab of baked clay as if confused, I was like, okay, wait now, now we’re getting somewhere. This is interesting. So will we know why I haven’t read the opening? Will we already know why she lied? Or should you be sharing that right here?

Alyson H.: You’ll have at least a general understanding of why. And it boils down to they’re getting too close to the site where her brother is being held.

Okay.

Suzy Vadori: Okay, so she lied. So I would love, even if we know that she doesn’t want them to get close to the site where her brother is being held, I would love to follow her logic. So one of the coolest elements that we have in the written word is this inner thoughts element. Mm-hmm. Something that you can’t do in film or plays, or.

All these other mediums, [00:15:00] we get to be in her point of view. So use it, so don’t it out. So we don’t wanna have three paragraphs saying, no, ney didn’t want them to get closer to her brothers, blah, blah, blah. Right? You don’t need to explain it. Put it right here. She lied. Thinking quickly, because I don’t actually understand why she would lie about this thing if they’re getting too close.

Or is it because if it’s really interesting that they would get closer, like why would she lie here? How would that protect her? When the tablet

Alyson H.: is revealed more, and again later on the page talks about it being a rose set of stone of sorts, where you have three languages. Yes. If or when that gets translated, it is.

Actually her and her brother’s original story.

Suzy Vadori: Okay, so she’s a, she’s not a human. That’s just an archeologist. Okay. No, and we already know this. Okay, so even a hint here to say she recognized it and it was too precious for their eyes [00:16:00] or something. Right? Give us something to show why she’s lying here would be great.

Because even if we have that backstory. Somewhere in the opening chapters, which is great, that we’re actually talking about fantasy and she’s a, she’s more than meets the eye. I still really wanted to know why she was lying here, so you don’t have to give us the full story, but something follow her logic.

What I was missing here was what does she want and what are the consequences, right? So he wants them to let her be. Maybe she stops, like maybe she’s brushing it really slowly. Mm-hmm. Hoping to pick it up tomorrow. Yeah. Maybe she’s, or to wait until they leave. Maybe she suggests they take, like what would she do?

So with what she wants is for them not to see how important this is. Then what are the things that she might actually do? What are her a like her give her agency here, have her doing things to hide it. She can lie. Yes. And she could move her body and she could ask them about something over at [00:17:00] the other side of the dig that maybe would send them over there.

I heard so and so was looking for you, right? Yeah. I don’t know. Yeah, I would love to see her be a little bit more tricky to try to do this right here. You’re doing a great job. This other guy, Mullins comes up and he comes over to her and she says, damn, she really hoped Ranard would bite off on the announcement lead.

The man was smart though. He wouldn’t have been leading the dig if he weren’t right. So I love, even this dam like that is an amazing showing detail where you’re using her inner voice or her inner thoughts to show us what she thinks. So what you’re doing is you’re making meaning of this activity for us.

You’re helping us understand. So I was looking for that more, but this is a great example of how to do it. So you’ve got it here. She doesn’t want him there. It’s very clear she doesn’t want him there. So what does she do think about? I’m hoping that she’s gonna be a, like a really smart, sassy, strong female protagonist in this archeology world that is [00:18:00] probably very male driven still.

Rather than have her sitting around just continuing to do her work diligently. What else might she do? To try to, to try to hide this. Give her some smarts here. So when Mullins arrives, have we met Mullins before? No,

Alyson H.: I don’t think so.

Suzy Vadori: Okay. So the place where you actually can do a little bit extra info dumping or not info dumping, but give us a little bit more detail without it feeling like info dumping is on first meeting of a character.

So it’s not like three pages in right. Where I’ve already. Where I’ve already pictured them. So you can get away with when a new character pops up, especially, he literally pops up out of a dig pit, right? Yeah. So show me a detail or two about him the first time that we meet him. So you’ve got that. He’s smart already, but I didn’t get anything else That’s gonna help me recognize him later.

Because sometimes, especially when you have a lot of characters and we’re picturing them all in like archeological dirty clothes. [00:19:00] Yeah, dirty uniforms or I don’t know if they actually wear the safari hats and things that we see on in the movies, but yeah, like a couple of things, maybe his glasses were smeared with dirt and his brow glisten with sweat.

That might help me remember him a little bit better. Maybe his hat was listening to one side and he wiped his palms on his brown shorts, right? Mm-hmm. He’s pretty pedantic in these descriptions. I don’t know if that’s right. Is he eccentric? Is he wearing a bright red silk blouse, even though that makes no sense on the dig, because that’s just who he is, right?

So give me something, show me each character when they first appear in your writing and give you a detail or two. Visuals are great. It’s gonna be primarily visual, but they might be a, maybe he whistles through his teeth or he clicks or he like something to help me remember him because otherwise they, they start to all blend.

There’s a bunch of guys with her, right? How do we make them different? I really disliked him when Kar was correcting her. Yeah, so Ariadne here is guessing an [00:20:00] announcement, linear B, but this framing is unusual. So he’s basically like mansplaining or correcting her without being so overt. Right. I would love for her to react to that.

She reacts a little bit later.

Alyson H.: Does she notice she is actually going along with his, not the correction part. She’s hoping that he will take that linear B rather than what it actually is.

Suzy Vadori: Yeah. So let us into her thoughts here. Okay. So maybe she’s, what would she be doing physically holding her breath or brushing casually or trying to be nonchalant?

Does she argue it? Does she try? Does she just hope? Does she have any powers? Can she change his mind? I don’t know. She does not have direct powers like that? No. Okay. Unfortunately.

Alyson H.: Okay.

Suzy Vadori: No, I’m just saying sometimes magic’s your get out of jail free card. No, I make it hard

Alyson H.: on myself.

Suzy Vadori: You make it hard ’cause there’s not a ton of magic in it.

That’s fine. Yeah. That’s a skill in itself and definitely has a huge audience. But yeah. Okay. So she just let her react because [00:21:00] here, I mean, she does on the next page, like at the top of the next page, she does start to react. She just answers calmly instead of spinning the smugness right off his face. So she is reacting.

We know that she wants to react, but she’s not. We just don’t know why. So I actually love that. That’s my comment that you got instead of spinning the smugness right off his face. So she’s, so we’re learning about your characters as they interact. We’re learning that she’s a bit measured, maybe a bit of a hothead and needs to pull back.

I wasn’t sure. Then she’s got, she’d been there when the scribe had copied out the text. So now that you’ve actually given me the information that this is her origin story, that makes sense. But when I read it, it didn’t make sense. So if we don’t know that yet. Then you might need to connect that with the object.

I don’t, because don’t that’ll be part

Alyson H.: of the like

Suzy Vadori: Yeah. That intro chapter or so. Okay. So she knows what she’s uncovering and she’s trying to do it. Yeah. So she should probably stop brushing right about now. [00:22:00] Yeah. Find a way to stop uncovering this while there’s all these men that she doesn’t want to look over it.

Okay. So here’s where you did remember to stay in her point of view, right? You’ve got, she saw the moment when he realized what he was looking at. His eyes widened and he held breath before letting it out on his side. It’s a wordy way to get here, but I see why you did it, but I’d rather hear her thoughts.

There’s ways to do it with less words that are more impactful. So try something like Mullins leaned in, squinting at the carve lines. Then his eyes widened. Ariadne held her breath. He recognized, I don’t know what it is, right? So yeah, I put X, but he recognized the thing in her words, right? If he told the, and here’s where I want the stakes.

If he told the others, or if he recognizes it, then why? What’s gonna happen? Why is she lying? What are the stakes and the consequences? So what’s gonna happen if this blows up?

Alyson H.: That

Suzy Vadori: makes sense. So that’s where I would look for that there. So he’s saying you [00:23:00] probably have a libation table. So he’s lying also.

And then I was like, wait a minute, why is he lying? So then she put on a curious expression. Here’s just one where I can’t picture that. So you could probably show that, right? Mm-hmm. So a curious expression is hard for me. I don’t know what a curious expression is, but she maybe cleared her throat and leaned in as well, keeping her face neutral.

Maybe that’s the expression, right? Trying not to. Or something better. I just can’t, I can’t do anything with a curious expression. You won’t put anything in your reader’s mind there. So he’s lying as well. And then later on, and it was beyond the page, and Alyson sent me a little bit more to read, but later on he actually suggests that they sell it and make a lot of money and she goes along with that.

But you could tell that she didn’t want to. So again, I just had questions. Yeah.

Alyson H.: So this is, and. I guess more for your personal satisfaction, but yeah, absolutely. Uh, so where she’s saying, I’ll see you again tonight, brother. This is NY and the UR [00:24:00] effectively. Okay. And so she is luring him. To the labyrinths at that point where she’s saying, Hey, meet me here tonight.

Love it. Okay. So

Suzy Vadori: let us anticipate that it’s not really a secret, so just spell some of it out because your reader will miss it. It’s very subtle. You don’t have a hundred thousand words and we’re not trying to cut it down yet. Right? Yeah. I know that you will, ’cause you said that you have millions of words written with your writing partner on other bits, so I know that you will, but spend them.

Wisely spend those words wisely and bring us along on the story because it’s, we always wanna surprise readers and be like, oh surprise, this is the new ending. But if we know what she’s trying to do, here’s what we set up in every single scene. So Story Grid will say this as well, you know what? Yeah. What does the character want?

What are they going for? What is their motivation? What are their scene level goals? All of those words. Right? Right. ’cause if we know what those are, what happens is as [00:25:00] humans reading this, we’re excited ’cause we’re tracking. We actually wanna see her fail more than we wanna see her succeed. Because if she succeeds, it’s over.

Right? The whole book is over really quickly. Yeah. But we don’t know if she’s succeeding or failing unless we know what she’s trying to do. Right. So the more that you can let us in on her plans, of course it’s not going to go swimmingly. Let us in on her strategy because we as humans, we have all these things that we want, and at the end of the day.

We go out and get them in different ways, or we don’t, and then we don’t get them. But we wanna cheer for her. We want to be on her side. Is she a likable character? I’m beginning to wonder if we’re gonna like her.

Alyson H.: I would say that if you think about someone who’s been alive for, I don’t know, four or five, 6,000 years, they are probably not as connected to humanity as you and I are.

Right? Yeah. So she has, I would say. She’s not unlikeable, but she has a very [00:26:00] different perspective on some things.

Suzy Vadori: Awesome. I actually, it’s funny people, people sometimes ask what my hobbies are and I have to share. I watch a lot of television because I consume story, and so two series that I am into right now, or two, one of them’s a movie.

Is the old guard. Oh, I love that movie. That was a great, yeah, I mean I just watched two ’cause I think it just got on Netflix, but I just watched the old guard too, and I liked it less because it feels like a bridge. Like I’m like, nothing really happened in it. It just feels like a setup for the next one.

But I really enjoy that. So you’re saying people who’ve been alive for many years. And then the other series that I’ve been watching is the Sandman. Oh yeah.

Alyson H.: Yeah. That’s great. And it’s great.

Suzy Vadori: Yeah. And again, so people who’ve been around for millennia, and you’re right, they do become aloof and less connected to humanity.

But then I would love for her to, you know, it doesn’t have to necessarily, it’s not all going to go on this page, also other, in other places in the book. [00:27:00] But I would love for her to really. Be judging these humans that like everybody else in the scene is human. Correct? Yeah. Yeah. So I would love for her to be judging or belittling or thinking like, oh geez, you guys have no idea what you’re dealing with.

And

Alyson H.: I was trying to, but I think I was probably a little too subtle with it, so,

Suzy Vadori: yeah.

Alyson H.: And

Suzy Vadori: I think that’s why it’s fun to, to do these brainstorming sessions with somebody else because it’s like everything is so alive in your own mind and it is on the page, but you’re like, oh, okay. It didn’t actually come through.

I was trying to be aloof, and so I pulled back a little bit too far. You still need to be giving us something. What is she like? Is she snarky? Occasionally

Alyson H.: she is, yeah. Yeah, she’s. Tends to be, I think you captured it really well earlier when you said that she’s very restrained in some ways. She holds herself back because, again, complications over thousands of years, but she doesn’t like many people.

Suzy Vadori: Okay. [00:28:00] She doesn’t like many people, I actually have people in my life that, that are like that many introverted people in my life. My daughter loves to say that she doesn’t like people, but that’s not really true. Yeah.

Alyson H.: That she needs

Suzy Vadori: her space sometimes. It’s very

Alyson H.: selective.

Suzy Vadori: Yeah, she’s very selective and that is an awesome trait for characters.

And we need characters from every background. It is trickier when we wanna write, I’ll say introverted, it might be a little bit different than that, somebody who’s reserved. But remember, we have their inner thoughts. And so what’s cool about it is just because we’re introverted or reserved doesn’t mean we’re not thinking all the things.

We’re just not going around shouting about it. So sometimes when I make suggestions about sharing their motivations, writers might say, but I want her to be me who’s more introverted. And I wouldn’t go around shouting what I’m about to do at the top of my lungs. And the answer, right? Yeah. And the answer is, of course not.

But just because we’re introverted or [00:29:00] whatever doesn’t mean that we don’t have dreams and motivations and all those things. We just have it playing inside. The head and the cool thing about books is that you can show that. Yeah. So even if she’s reserved, she might be still playing that inner monologue and not showing it overtly so they don’t have to be loud and extroverts just to be able to show these things in a scene.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Alison, for sharing this page. Do keep in touch and let us know how this all goes. Do you have a target when you wanna finish writing this book?

Alyson H.: Being ambitious? I would say by the end of the year being realistic. I would say probably by spring or summer.

Suzy Vadori: Okay. I think we’ve covered a lot of different places.

I think the biggest feedback that I have here is just share a couple of really specific details as you go along to really help us feel like we’re at this dig site and have this come to life for us. Absolutely. Thank you. You’re so welcome. We’ll speak to you soon and keep in touch. Thank you. Bye [00:30:00] now.

Thanks for tuning in to show. No. Tell Writing with me, Susie Vadori. I’ll be continue to bring you the straight goods for that book you’re writing or planning to write. Please consider subscribing to this podcast and leaving a review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever else you’re listening. Also visit susie Vadori.com/newsletter to hop on my weekly inspired writing newsletter list where you’ll stay inspired and be the first to know about upcoming training events and writing courses that happen in my community.

If you’re feeling brave, check the show notes and send us a page. If you’re writing that isn’t quite where you want it to be, yet for our show to tell page review. Episodes. Remember that book and your writing is going to open doors that you haven’t even thought of yet, and I can’t wait to help Make it the absolute best.

You’re feeling called to write that book. Keep going and I’m gonna be [00:31:00] right here cheering you on. See you again next week.

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