Show don’t tell Writing Podcast: Episode #67. Character First Writing and Writers’ Summits with Daniel David Wallace

Show, don’t Tell Writing Podcast Show Notes & Links

• 📰 Sign up for the Inspired Writing Newsletter HERE
• 📝 Submit Your Page for our Show, don’t Tell Coaching Episodes
• 🌟 Leave a Review on Apple Podcasts (Thank you!)
• Intro and Outro Music is Daisy by Zight and used under a CC by 4.0 DEED Attribution 4.0 International license. For more music by Zight visit https://www.youtube.com/zight

Send us a text

Register Here for the Escape the Plot Forest Writer’s Summit October 18th – 22nd

Daniel David Wallace’s Website

🌟 Grab your spot in Suzy’s Inner Circle for only $199 USD a month at www.suzyvadori.com/innercircle

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. I am thrilled to welcome to the show today, Daniel David Wallace.

He was an award-winning writer and teacher, and he spent four years of his PhD researching new ways to help writers tell a great story, which I find absolutely fascinating. His stories, reviews and essays have been published in great magazines like Tampa Review, MCs, Sweeney’s, internet Tenancy, air Schooner, and others, and is writing his won him awards like the Tom Brown Scholarship and Prizes.

Daniel designed a way of teaching storytelling, the character First approach, which we’re gonna talk about on this episode. This approach has resonated with so many people. More than 13,000 writers read his newsletter each week. And I have been so honored to be a guest twice this fall in his summit, which bring together all kinds of writers and teachers.

He is such a leader in our [00:02:00] field. Please welcome Daniel. David D. Wallace. Welcome, Daniel. It is so great to be hosting you. I’ve been to your communities and now you get to speak with my community. Welcome.

Daniel David Wallace: Thank you so much. It’s wonderful to be here.

Suzy Vadori: You have created such a unique community for writers, the character first writing community, and all of the summits that you have out there.

How did that all come about?

Daniel David Wallace: That’s a great question. The summits came about in part because some of my earlier attempts to make a community had not been very successful, and I had long been interested in trying to create. A Facebook group or a forum, an ongoing forum, and many people are very successful at this, but I really struggled, and I’m just sharing this story in case anyone else is interested in trying to create community.

And they’ve tried some things and they thought, this doesn’t feel exactly what I want to.

Suzy Vadori: Absolutely. I’m fascinated by this, so keep going, keep going.

Daniel David Wallace: I consider [00:03:00] myself to be quite extroverted. People, focused person. But I find that when I’m running an ongoing community by myself, I find that to be very stressful.

Like I feel like I have to be doing things all the time to get people to talk. And I think that there are some people I’ve seen who are really good at that. And also I think it, it soothes them. It makes them feel good. For me, it’s harder. I’m not really sure why, but that, that was my, that was some of my early forays into, into community building,

Suzy Vadori: and so that hence the summits where there’s lots of teachers and, and you get to speak to many audiences.

Awesome.

Daniel David Wallace: What I also like about summits is it’s a very intense experience, which is my, which is my ideal situation. I can come in, I devote myself completely to it for a week or two weeks. I feel like it makes a real impact to people and then I can kind of vanish and that I think really suits [00:04:00] how I like my sense of, you know, my creative brain.

In the future, I’d love to try the ongoing community again, but I’m gonna have help and I’m gonna have people helping me out to so that I’m not, yeah, trying to meddle in the posts every single day.

Suzy Vadori: I absolutely love that, Daniel, and they really resonate with it as well. I’m a project based person, so I attend.

I love doing those online courses or like a month, a week, whatever it is, and just really dive in deep. And then, but because we forget that even, you know, as we’re working with hundreds of writers to help their creative process, it drains us creatively too. We have to kind of. Read courage. I actually, it’s interesting that you just said that.

I just launched my very first ongoing program this July, so, and I had resisted it for years and years and years because of that same thing. And, but I do have, you know, a team helping and I have all those things in place so that I can make sure that I’m not gonna burn out doing this. Um, but I’m really excited about it.

[00:05:00] But yes, I am excited to hear when you do that as well. What greatest need that writers are missing? Like what drew you to start to teach writing in the first place? I love, love, love the way that you do, by the way. We’re gonna talk about that to you. But what was it that you saw was missing in writers’ processes that you knew you could help with?

Daniel David Wallace: That’s a great question. So I was really interested several years ago in the way that so many writers were, were writing stories that they considered to be. In a good way. Conventional stories, stories that made sense that were telling a kind of familiar arc or triangle or act structure, and yet it was clear the readers didn’t really understand them.

At first, I was doing this, I was doing a lot of classes in MFA workshops and I thought, this is just academia. Like we we’re too literary. We’re too. I’m trying to allude to things we’re being too subtle. But then I would go on Reddit and I’d look at people who were [00:06:00] sharing their stories for feedback. I would see the same thing, like I’m, I’m reading a story.

I understand what the words mean. I understand what the sentences and the paragraphs are saying, but I don’t really get what the writer was trying to do with this the way that I do do. When I read successful famous novelists, I there, I’m like, I’m with the story. I experience it as real. I am able to enjoy it and understand at the same time.

And I would go to community groups in places like Philadelphia where I was studying at the time, and people would hand in their stories and things would be happening. And they clearly meant those things to mean something. Often. Tell the story about this penguin. A penguin died in someone’s story and they, they, we all started debating why the penguin had died and the person eventually stood up and tried to explain it to us.

And I just thought, what is happening here? We’re. Everyone’s working hard. Everyone’s serious. People are coming to these, these meetings in their free time. No one’s getting paid to do this, and yet we don’t really understand the [00:07:00] story and the writer doesn’t know how to convey it to us. And so that was my real, that was my first kind of interest in trying to solve that problem for people.

Suzy Vadori: Yeah, I get, I totally resonate with that so that you’ve got people who are compelled. I mean, writing a book is not easy or writing a story of any level. Exactly. Right. It’s not easy, and so there must be a reason behind it. The writer often always, I mean, always has a reason behind it, what they’re trying to say.

It’s not getting on the page, and that can be really frustrating, and that’s something that you’re trying to solve. So one of the things that I will hear you and been to many of your seminars and you talk a lot about character first and character first philosophy is that trying to solve that problem, that character first philosophy, how did that all come?

What’s that all about?

Daniel David Wallace: Well, I can give you the long answer as we run the podcast. Maybe I can do the long answer. Um, yeah, do it. We’re here for it. So, so the basic idea of character first, this is the short answer part. Is that I came to have come up with a [00:08:00] solution, which is for most writers working today, modern writers, it’s helpful to think that the reader makes sense of the story by forming a connection to one or maybe sometimes more than one main character.

And that’s why I call it character first. I think we read character first. We read by reading the story and thinking, okay, something just happened. Is that good for my person or bad for them? And if we can, and if we can instantly know the answer to that question and there’s a bunch of techniques that all writers already do, but we can do it more deliberately, if we know the answer to that question instantly, then we tend to be happy as readers.

We’re like, okay, I get it. The bad thing is happening. Yeah. We’re we’re tracking.

Suzy Vadori: We’re tracking whether or not they’re reaching what they’re trying to do, and we wanna cheer with them when they succeed. We wanna cry with them when they fail. I love that.

Daniel David Wallace: Yeah. Absolutely. And I found that. When readers can’t do this, even if it’s something in their preferred genre.

I’ve noticed this with sci-fi, [00:09:00] readers of a sci-fi novel, or romance readers, even with romance, then these are like aspiring texts. These are unfinished manuscripts. Someone’s working on them. They’re trying to work out, you know, why am I getting all this strange feedback from different beta readers, from editors, and even the readers that you’d think could be most predisposed to like, I don’t know, wanna learn about giant spaceships and lasers?

’cause they like sci-fi. When they can’t connect to the main character, they still have the same reaction of just like, I don’t quite get it. I don’t quite understand what’s happening. People often hear things like the pacing seems off, and it’s like, I think that a lot of those problems, not everything, but many of those problems can come back to, we don’t have that relationship to the main charact.

Suzy Vadori: Yeah. And it shows up in so many different ways. We might try to solve it by saying, oh, it’s info dumping ’cause we’re talking about the spaceship and they don’t care. But, but really I love that you’ve really honed in on that. It’s not in science fiction people, readers will actually tolerate a little bit of info [00:10:00] dumping or a little bit of information.

Yes. They care. Right. And if they absolutely. They see how it connects to the character. So yeah. I love that you break that down. It really speaks to me and speaks to what I see as well with writers and what they need. So I love that you’re teaching that. It’s awesome. I also see you teaching about what readers want versus what they actually need.

Right. And I love that you’re reader focused, so Yeah. How does that, how does that work? Well, because they don’t think that’s what they need. Right? They don’t think that’s what, no, that’s not what they’re asking for.

Daniel David Wallace: No, there’s no reason why the reader would, would, would be able to tell you this, and this is why I think many writers who have this kind of problem will go through many different sources of advice because it seems like all kinds of things could fix it.

Maybe the scene should be slower, maybe it should be faster. Maybe it should start in a slightly different place. One of the things that that, that helped me come up with this approach was reading the Victorian novelists who were really big, heavy [00:11:00] narrators, and so. What I saw with a writer like Anthony Trollop, this is back in PhD school.

Suzy Vadori: Yeah.

Daniel David Wallace: That trollop would just begin a scene by saying, here is a, here’s a character, here’s what he’s upset about. Look how disgusting and disgraceful he is. And then the, he’d run the dialogue and then he’d say, see, I told you. He interprets

Suzy Vadori: that for you, right? So everything for

Daniel David Wallace: you.

Suzy Vadori: Yeah.

Daniel David Wallace: And you, and apparently I haven’t read every trot novel, but apparently all but one of Trott’s many novels were all narrated by essentially the same voice, just telling you there’s no, there’s no sort of depth.

It’s just here is what, here’s the meaning of everything. And what I found in the class, we all read it as a group, is that people enjoyed this. I have been told they wouldn’t like it because it was telling, right? Not sure. I would’ve been told that this was like a crime against literature. Hemingway would appear in the doorway and, and you know, admonish us.

But it turned out that people, just [00:12:00] like back in the Victorian days, people enjoyed this, and at the very least, this, and maybe this is even more important, they didn’t dispute what Troll was saying. They basically accepted it. They’d say, well, he is disgraceful. I can’t believe they didn’t try to read against a narrative.

And I started to realize most stories are doing this just in a much less obvious way. Yeah, they’re being us to see what we’re supposed, how we’re supposed to understand these events. And trollop is just the most, I don’t know what to call it, obvious artless just like playing here it is

Suzy Vadori: artless. Oh my goodness.

Yes. But, but you’re right. And there’s other ways to do that where the char, you know, whatever point of view character you’re in. I like to say that it, there is your interpreter, right? If you’ve got a narrator, then yes, it’s like hitting somebody over the head with it. It’s a a little bit outdated style, but it can still work.

But your point of view character is the interpreter. So we do, we believe them and they tell us how to feel about [00:13:00] something, which is okay, right?

Daniel David Wallace: Yeah. Uh, there’s a great book by Wayne Booth called the, the Rhetoric of Fiction, and he tries to track how. The kind of the writers of the 20th century would take these lines that used to be delivered by the ma, by the narrator.

That would just be the nomination narrator, like telling you, he said this and this and this. She was devastated. And then slowly over the 20th century it become like she looked as though she were devastated. And it’s like the same thing is happening, but it’s getting focused on this main character because now it’s unfashionable, it’s unappealing to have this omni nature anymore.

And so that was kind of my, my sense of like. We’re still reading. I mean, we’re more sophisticated readers in some ways, but we are, we are looking for the same kind of a thing, but it’s just in some ways harder to do technically, and successful writers figure out how to do it. But I thought I could help a lot of people to figure out how they could do it in their own writing.

Suzy Vadori: Hey, you’re on the show. Don’t tell podcasts. So, I mean, that’s literally what we talk about. Almost every episode [00:14:00] is some aspect of that, because. There are so many ways to do that. Well, conversations that I’m having in the industry has been really interesting because you’re saying we have more sophisticated readers and Yes.

On one perspective and then on another perspective, we’re competing. With so many other mediums where they can literally be in AI or be in virtual reality as a character. And so that immersive writing becomes really something. And I’m not saying it’s good necessarily. So yes, on the one. One side, we have more sophisticated writers on the other side.

We have to kind of play to this other aspect where people can digest story very easily in other formats these days. And so it’s, it’s interesting to see how we have to evolve that technique and how that’s going to play out to keep readers reading.

Daniel David Wallace: I totally agree, and I think something that I think all writers should consider is like, how do you draw the [00:15:00] reader in on page one?

I think that there are some methods of plotting and structuring that may, maybe the right, they’ve created the, the inventors of these methods themselves wouldn’t agree with this, but. Sometimes the kind of folk wisdom of these ideas, the, the thing people are actually following suggests that you can have a few pages before things get interesting.

You can, yeah. To page five, and then there’s gonna be this inciting incident. And I think that that is, that is a mistake. I think that I agree. I what I love is the book that begins on page one. Ideally line one. And I think that often you see, not always, but you often see a connection to a character who is out of balance, off balance, out of whack, who’s troubled by something, who’s trying to get back to equilibrium.

And I think that a skilled writer can do that very quickly without much exposition. And so, so I think that even in like the first sentence, I’m sort of going for this character first approach to sentence one.

Suzy Vadori: [00:16:00] I’m, I’m, it’s true. It’s kind of sad in a way that we won’t wait five pages. And I get that a lot.

But Susie, it’s on, it’s on the page. It’s in the chapter. Like, aren’t they gonna read on? And I mean, it depends on your goals, right? If you really want to have that book that’s gonna capture an agent’s attention, a publisher’s attention, a reader’s attention, regardless of how you’ve published it. These days, we can look at the sample, right?

We can open up the ebook and check out that page one, and we will decide really quickly. We don’t necessarily give you three chapters anymore. And that’s, that’s where this comes in, right? You’ve really gotta focus on how connecting with that character, and I love that you teach that ’cause it’s true. And people argue with that all the time.

It’s a sad reality, right? They, they want people to want to work harder.

Daniel David Wallace: I sympathize with those people. I think that one of the great things about trying to study, um, and this is maybe back to community and, and audience building, one of the great things about studying sales and [00:17:00] marketing in a really comprehensive, serious way, not as like an embarrassing thing one has to do, but it’s a thing that is important to do is it helps you, I think, move past that kind of worry.

Like you just realize. Different people need to be reached in different ways.

Suzy Vadori: Yeah.

Daniel David Wallace: And if you have a demand that everyone can be reached in a particular way, I think you’re gonna just go through life being very disappointed. And there are some people who are happy to be disappointed for a very long time, but I think that studying, like how do people who are really good at marketing talk about how do they make sense of it?

And seeing those like, well, how can I reach different people? We all know that there’s a ton of people who will not read to page five if they’re getting nothing from pages one to four. And yeah, it’d be lovely to cl to wish it’d be nice. It’s great to wish for a different world, but I think it, it can be good to face the world you actually have and think, okay, I can reach my, I dunno, 10, 20% of the writers or readers [00:18:00] with my page.

Five’s getting started story, but what about the other 80? How could I find. A way to connect to that. Yeah,

Suzy Vadori: exactly. And I think, you know, when you’re getting advice from a writing coach or from a teacher, really that’s what you’re trying to convey is how do you give your, yes, you’re right. You might find that one in 10 reader that will read on how do you give yourself the best chance?

How do you, how do you eliminate all those other things? And I think as well. This is where genre expectation and readers kind of sort themselves into those with the types of books that they like to read. And so it’s not about how do all readers like it, but if there’s a particular expectation, you know, if you’re writing romance, get me the make cute, don’t skip it because otherwise, you know, what are those expectations and what are those things and, and readers kind of sort themselves.

What do you, what do you think about that idea?

Daniel David Wallace: Yeah, I mean, I think even when we’re talking about a hundred percent, 80%, 10%. That’s not a hundred percent of all readers out there. That’s of a tiny [00:19:00] portion that would be interested. Exactly. In your book, if you’re writing a book about, I don’t know, a guy just walking around Seattle for the weekend in the rain, thinking about stuff, there’s a certain kind of reader that loves that kind of book and you probably need to figure out what are they looking for in the first five pages and make sure your five pages has something comparable to that and.

I think as well that particularly, you know, romance writing is such an interesting field and I find it, I find it endlessly fascinating and I think that in you, if you’re working in these kinds of genres, these kind of styles, like you have to give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s like you, there’s only so much clever rearranging you want to do, and often what I think many writers struggle with is in order to write the book you have to do, you have to do a lot of writing.

That really has only a limited relationship with the final product. The kind of famous killing your darling stuff or just the revising thing. Like, you often have to create a whole bunch of backstory, context, character being a [00:20:00] child, and it’s hard to grasp that. Almost none of that, um, depending on, doesn’t go in your mouth.

Yeah. I mean, depends on the story, but in many cases, almost none of that needs to go into the final draft. And realizing just how extensive that sort of, that trimming has to be is, can be difficult for people.

Suzy Vadori: Yeah, and that’s a great reminder for listeners ’cause I do have a lot of, you know, we’ve got seasoned writers on here.

We’ve got new, new writers on here that listen to this podcast. Yeah, I like to call it brainstorming docs and remind them it doesn’t go in your book, like don’t count it as part of your word count. If you’re doing like trying to hit the 50,000 or a hundred thousand or whatever your word count is, it doesn’t count.

But you, the writer, you need that information. So it’s not like you, you can’t skip it. Still have to do it. Just treat it as this other exercise and don’t put it. In the same document as your book. ’cause then you’ll feel like you’re killing your darlings when you have to pull it back out. Don’t ever put it in there in the first place, is what I like to teach for.

Daniel David Wallace: [00:21:00] Yeah, I, I, I totally agree. I think, I think as well, I wanna speak very carefully here because there are some books that really thrive on a lot of backstory. Book I really like is Daisy Darker, where there’s a parallel story, love it, flashbacks and there’s a present moment story. But I think in many books.

Writers underestimate how much the reader simply wants to know what happens next. Start a scene, start a chapter. Some things are happening, and I think that often in the writer’s mind, this is just part of a massive epic of things they could write about past, present, future. But in the reader’s mind, there is a clock ticking.

Like the story began on Tuesday at 9:00 AM okay, now it’s 9 0 5. What happens now? And I think that when the writer is sort of like. On some level, taking the eye off that clock and is giving you all kinds of other things that could be really interesting but really aren’t about what happens next. I just think you’re in dangerous territory and [00:22:00] obviously people have done amazing things with form and with timelines, but often you see what successful writers are doing is earning that extra stuff.

I want to tell you about the characters childhood. Okay. We need to do some really exciting stuff for the next 20 pages

Suzy Vadori: and we only care, your reader is only gonna care about that stuff that happened in the past. If it helps, like you said, the ticking timeline in story present, if it helps predict what’s gonna happen in story present and it gives us information that helps us predict how the character might act because of trauma that you’re dumping on us or the whatever you’re helping.

Exactly. Yeah. If you’re helping us figure out what’s gonna happen. Then cool. If you’re just telling us something that’s not related, you know that, that’s how we can discern. But you’re right. We don’t wanna just go into the past and see all that unless it helps us figure out what’s gonna happen next.

Right.

Daniel David Wallace: I have another theory. Yeah, let’s hear it. I think that many people, when they read, we naturally tend to remember [00:23:00] the middle and the sort of ending ish of books. We tend to remember the second half better. There’s more going on, there’s more drama. It’s we care

Suzy Vadori: more. Right. Exactly. We really,

Daniel David Wallace: yeah, totally.

Yeah. And I have had many conversations with writers where they’ll say, well, I’ve gotta start with this prologue like material, because that’s what happens in this other famous book. And I’ll, and sometimes it’s even, it’s even something that, what they’re describing to me is something that HA doesn’t happen in book one of the famous book.

I’m like, we had to wait multiple books to get to that moment. In that famous book you’re describing and you want to put it on page one.

Suzy Vadori: Yeah. Maybe there’s reason why, and this book might be, and that book might be 20 years old that you’re comparing writing styles with. Right. That’s true. So let’s take a look at that too.

Daniel David Wallace: Yeah.

Suzy Vadori: Yeah.

Daniel David Wallace: Often it’s like people, we, we, we naturally think of a story and we think, well, halfway through the book, Jack Ricio was, was shooting all these people or some other character. There was, there was a huge space battle or something like that. [00:24:00] It’s hard to remember that that’s not actually what was happening on On Chapter one.

Chapter two, yeah. And our memory is gonna deceive us of like what was actually start, how the book actually began.

Suzy Vadori: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So talking about levels of writers that listen to the podcast. Right. And so for your programs and the summit, what level of writer do you invite? What are the expectations in terms of who can come to the summits?

Daniel David Wallace: That’s a great question. I think with summits in particular, the way a summit works on a functional level is that you can attend for free if you watch live. So if you attend the whole thing in the moment, you can watch it for free. If you want the luxury and, and the time to rewatch things, to take your time to come back and watch another talk.

I talk to you like twice. Then you could upgrade to PayPal and get a whole bunch of other great stuff. But that’s the system of summits that I did not invent. I just try and adopt and use, and in that situation, I try to make things [00:25:00] really accessible for everybody because I think that the premise of a summit is there are people all over the world arriving, many people who can’t afford.

A course or a, a developmental editor maybe, or definitely can’t, don’t have the time to go and do an MFA. And there’s this amazing promise of like, if you can stay up from morning to night for several days, you can get a really great writing education.

Suzy Vadori: Yeah.

Daniel David Wallace: Um, what I try and do in my event is very simple, but it’s surprising how I think it makes a real difference, which is I just try and get my speakers to talk for a bit longer.

And I find that as speakers go talking talk for longer, they tend to deliver. More and more detailed, in depth, profound ideas, and I think that there’s something in there for everyone, something in there for the more advanced writer. But the other great thing about doing a summit is that there are lots of different teachers and so one talk that will, you know, naturally go over a beginner’s head a little bit there that understand that there’s something interesting [00:26:00] there maybe, but it’s, it won’t, they won’t be able to latch onto it in a way that they would like to, could really help the advanced writer.

And sometimes it’s. Hard as the host to kind of signal that to people, but hopefully the person who’s going through the event looking at talks, the advanced writer sees a lot that they can, they can benefit from and enjoy.

Suzy Vadori: Yeah. I love that you say that you let people talk longer, which is why I have this long format podcast, right?

Because we wanna get past that sort of shtick. ’cause all of us, as writing teachers, we have sort of the basics, but we could geek out. I mean, I actually sit here all day talk about writing, um, would be no problem at all.

Daniel David Wallace: Yeah. I had a, my, my event is funny. I mean, my core audience, if someone talks for 20 minutes and stops.

The audience thinks something’s gone wrong with the Zoom link. Like they, they’re like, Hey, what’s happened? Video just stopped. Do you what? Where’s the rest of it? I had one talk that went on for two hours over two different Zoom rooms. We had to move everybody out of the main zoom room so the next session could begin, [00:27:00] and they were delighted.

I mean, as the scheduler and host, I was sitting there. Oh

Suzy Vadori: yeah, I was gonna say, Hey, that’s great to know ’cause I’m gonna be seeking at one of your coming summits. I’m like, maybe not. No, I’m just joking. I won’t make that happen. But

Daniel David Wallace: yeah.

Suzy Vadori: Um,

Daniel David Wallace: yeah, I think that people really like that. People really like to just see someone have the space to explain something in a lot of detail.

And

Suzy Vadori: Well, it gives space for questions as well, right? Like so that we can, we can give detailed answers because I think that’s what, yes. I mean, you’ve got this, the way that you described the summit, yes, it’s free to come live, but the thing is, is for the speakers, having a live audience and getting that energy out of it and knowing what it is, like who’s in the room and what is it that they’re needing and what do they want?

Like there’s energy in that. And so, you know, if everybody’s gonna watch the replay and nobody’s there live, it isn’t much fun for the speaker for sure.

Daniel David Wallace: One thing I really love about my events is, is that through the event, there is this [00:28:00] core audience that tries to go to seemingly every talk, or at least a lot of them.

Yeah. Has the same names coming up, and I find that it’s both people on the paid pass and people on the free one. It’s just this group of people, they show up in the chat, they’re talking, they’re like, here we go.

Suzy Vadori: They’ve like cleared their schedule. It’s, it’s somehow it resonates with them. And this moment, like, I’m dropping everything and I’m focusing on my writing for these days.

That’s it. Right. Like I love that.

Daniel David Wallace: Yeah. I mean, I, I really feel. Like the, the shepherd, the rider of these events, not the owner. Like, I feel like I stumbled onto something back in 2020 with the first one of these summits, and at times I feel inadequate to, to keep them, to be the person in charge of them.

Whereas with my courses, I feel like, okay, this is my vision. I’m laying it out. If it doesn’t, if it doesn’t make sense, I’ll fix it. Like I, I really feel clear about what I’m doing. But with the summits, it is always this collaborative experience, [00:29:00] collaborative with the audience, collaborative with the speakers, with the people who, who sort of come through the event and

Suzy Vadori: they’re always different, right?

Daniel David Wallace: Yeah. And so I feel very. Honored and blessed that there are so many people that keep coming to these events. Many people have been, this is year six of Escape the Clock Forest and many people have come to every year, many people. That’s

Suzy Vadori: a huge testament.

Daniel David Wallace: That’s amazing. Buy the, the ticket for Escape the Clock Forest a year in advance.

’cause I do a sale, so on Black Friday for the whole year of summits. And it’s just a really magical experience and one that in, in many ways things like the code of conduct. Were created by attendees telling me, Daniel, you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta write all this down. Like, you’ve gotta make it clear to people what, what they was expected of them.

And it did. That wasn’t something that I came up with. It was that attendees are suggesting things to me and I thought, that’s a very good idea. I should do that.

Suzy Vadori: I’d love that. Because I think what’s unique about your community that actually shared in my community is the [00:30:00] positivity. And the absolute acceptance of everyone and the positive vibe, because that isn’t the case everywhere on the internet for writers.

It’s not always so welcoming. So what is it that you do that creates that? Is it the code of conduct?

Daniel David Wallace: One thing that I, that I try to do, and, you know, if anyone else is considering trying to create their own community like this, I think it’s a really important thing to consider is that, there’s a few ways to put this, but like, one way of looking at it is like, once the sessions begin, each individual audience member attendee is not, is not really the focus of my, is not my focus of my attention.

Like I’m trying to make sure that the Beacon can deliver their talk. Uninterrupted with a positive chat with comments that make them feel good and questions that help them develop their ideas and make it clear. There are so many ways that one person can derail a session and you can be sitting there, sitting there at your desk as I’m sitting right now and you can, watching the [00:31:00] chat and you think that’s a bit of an odd thing to say, but I’ll just ignore it.

I’m sure that person won’t say anything else. Or you see people, two attendees starting to have some kind of strange interaction about biology or something and you just think, and it, it’s very easy to just sit there and think, well, I won’t say anything about it.

Suzy Vadori: I could see where this is going.

Daniel David Wallace: My experiences gotta do is you gotta just intervene very quickly and say a bunch of things, like even this is gonna sound maybe weird, but even like the per the person who’s like a performative, non understander.

I don’t get this, I don’t understand. I’m leaving and you repeat this? Yeah, yeah. I don’t understand this at all. I’m gonna get out the room. I’m leaving two minutes later. I don’t understand. It’s like, didn’t you leave the room? Like I thought you’re still here?

Suzy Vadori: I’m leaving the room. Maybe they didn’t know how, right?

Yeah. Like Yes. You can leave the room. Go ahead.

Daniel David Wallace: And I think it’s really valuable as a host, just fairly quickly and as as quickly as you can to start trying to just clarify to people. What is expected of them. And one thing that comes up all the time, and it comes up the most, maybe this is gonna be unsurprising with female [00:32:00] speakers, is that people are incredibly rude to the, the speaker often about the way someone talks, the way someone looks, and often the person is right there in the room, the person is in the chat answering questions, they are going through the comments, responding to people.

And you have to remind people, like, you wouldn’t say that at a in-person reading, would you, you wouldn’t turn to your friend and, and make some kind of comment that everyone could overhear. Trying to be really clear about that. Deleting comments. I mean, very rarely actually removing someone from a room, but just clarifying to people what is expected and what, what’s the vibe?

And eventually, you know, the good thing about doing the event that the stays essentially the same, the same sort of message, same branding talks, change is the, the core audience starts doing that themselves and they will start saying like, oh, that’s a bit of an un unnecessarily harsh comment. And, and we, we roll on.

Is that helpful? Yeah,

Suzy Vadori: I love that. Yeah. I just think, and I’ve, I’ve had a similar experience, although I, I, when I started my communities, I was terrified that it was going to be like a ton [00:33:00] of work to moderate or to kick people out or to like manage all of that. And honestly, I find writers so welcome in general.

I mean, there’s always going to be something, and when you run events as large as yours and as often there’s going to be things, but. In general, like such an amazing community. If you just lead by example, like you don’t let it go down that path, it’s, it stays that way. Like you said, it starts to moderate itself and I love opening up one of my communities and somebody that I’ve worked with has, is answering the question exactly the way that I would’ve answered because I’ve answered it for that right.

This is the way that it works. One of the most surprising things to me, when I first became a writer 15 years ago, I was terrified to go to communities, and at that time they were in person conferences, but I was trying to first get my book represented and get my first books out there and all those things.

So many years ago, I. And I was really amazed at how welcoming writers were. I always thought, I mean, I was from the cutthroat world of business. I worked on Wall Street, all the things. I thought that they were gonna [00:34:00] be like, oh my gosh, you’re new and you’re this and you’re that. And like, not gimme me the time of day.

And that wasn’t my experience. People were really wonderful. And then, you know, over the years I’ve kind of realized that. We are not competitors and even, you know how you treat these summits. We are not competitors because if I get somebody interested in writing, they can also learn from you. If they learn from me, they can learn from you.

They can keep learning their entire writing career. Same thing with books. If another writer has created a reader for your genre or your type of. Guess what they wanna do when they finish. They want another book that’s kind of like that. And so, you know, somebody else’s success, if you think of it that way, is actually lifting up or creating more space for your book to be successful.

And I think once you kind of like think about it that way, it’s not that surprising that the writing community is actually pretty awesome if you let it be.

Daniel David Wallace: Yes. And I want to be absolutely clear to everyone that what I’m not describing is that these events are like a kind of Lord of the fly situation.

[00:35:00] And I’m no, no bashing people with my, no, I.

Suzy Vadori: I think it’s rare, right?

Daniel David Wallace: It’s very rare. And so what you’re really doing is just clarifying to people what is expected. It’s often a tiny number of people who are either knowingly or unknowingly causing issues, and you’re just showing the vast majority of people who want this event to go well, who are welcoming, supportive, other people.

You’re just showing them like, this is how we try to do things. And I would just say as well to anyone who’s thinking of trying to make their own community in that sense that in my experience, the moments of intervention, correction, whatever you wanna call it, those really bond the community together.

Like when you sort of say, Hey everyone, we have a have a set of rules, we have a way we like to do things here, and something happens. I’m not gonna name who it was when something happened earlier that I wasn’t really happy with. That’s where like in some ways, the event really gets started. Yeah, that’s like the core venture, the act one turning point for the event where people are like, okay, we’re in it now.

Wow, this person really cares about me. I thought I was just [00:36:00] gonna watch a bunch of videos. But

Suzy Vadori: I love that you’re putting on plot, like you’re putting plot to it. It’s awesome. I mean, that’s the way that we. How to consume it. How do you decide what topics you’re gonna do for your summits each year?

Daniel David Wallace: Well, I am incredibly unoriginal and so I have, I doubt

Suzy Vadori: that I have

Daniel David Wallace: the exact same summits every year.

I, my very first one was back in October, 2020. This is a bit of a writing teaching moment here, but I had been running my business of courses and, and classes for a few years, and I was just feeling really burnt out. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have time to keep marketing. I didn’t have the money to pay for marketing, and so I was just kind of thinking like, what am I doing here?

My email list never changes. I got some great customers, but it just feels like it’s a great, I’m working with great writers and I went to a talk by Brian Harris, the marketing teacher, and he sort of said like, spend a year getting in front of other people’s audiences. And I thought I could just do that in a weekend with a summit.

Then I thought, well, [00:37:00] what’s the summit that people would most want to keep care about? And I thought, for fiction writers, it’s plots. That was the first one. I have another one in the spring about process and a third in the summer about marketing for early stage authors. So not marketing finished books, but how do you start thinking about building an audience, even if you feel like you are not ready for it?

And you know, I really try to. Create these events, a kind of holistic writing education for people that takes people through a journey of general tips and guidance and the essentials with plot. Things like structure, things like Acts, hero’s journey, and so on, and then works its way into specifics, like how do you structure a mystery novel?

How do you think about this romantic subplot? And then what I’ve found as well is that as people get one of their needs met, say with plot advice, their mind inevitably turns to things like, well, how do I just sit, you know, get down and do the writing? And so I always have some talks about [00:38:00] confidence, about process, and also some talks about getting published because people, once people feel like they’ve, they’re like, okay, I, I got a great idea of what I’m gonna do for my story.

Their mind turns to, okay, well what do you do with it next?

Suzy Vadori: Absolutely. And so I just

Daniel David Wallace: try to create a great experience, but I’m also just always looking, you know, looking for people to speak at these events, looking for new teachers. And I also would wanna give the teachers their time to shine. And I always wanna make sure that they’re talking about something that interests them, that’s exciting to them, and that fits in the kind of things they usually teach.

Suzy Vadori: I love that. I love that. Okay, so we’re nearing the end of our talk together, but I want to ask you my traditional quickfire questions. Are you ready?

Daniel David Wallace: It’s Friday.

Suzy Vadori: What was your first big break where you were like, oh my gosh, I am going to be a writing teacher, and this is the moment and I know it’s true, it’s gonna happen.

Daniel David Wallace: I read an article when I was getting started. I, I had a blog. The blog was mildly successful, but I thought, I’ve started reading, taking something. I’m gonna relaunch it with a [00:39:00] professional big thing and have a newsletter and I’m gonna have lead magnets. So you will consent to free writing courses and they’ll join my email list.

Yeah, and I read this great article, said how I made Pinterest my full-time job and. I just read that and I, I read that over and over again. It a thousand word blog post and I just did that for six months and I grew about 2000 people on it. My email list, very quickly, I was re-pinning stuff at the zoo. I was re-pinning stuff at home.

I was contacting people with big group boards. Stuff you can’t do now, Pinterest to change the algorithm, but at the time it was really magical and I had this feeling of like, people say that if you have an email list of 2000 people, that’s like. $2,000 a month. Don’t, the listener should not take that as gospel.

But that’s what people said. And I was thinking, I’m doing this. I haven’t made $2,000 a month yet, but I’m doing it. Wow.

Suzy Vadori: But, but people are interested in what you have to say. I love that. I, when I teach and, and it’s actually what I taught at your last summit, the 30 ways to promote your book. [00:40:00] Is just find something that you can do and show up and do it over and over again.

And that’s essentially what you did. You’re like, alright, I can do this blog thing. I’m a writer. I can use my reading. I’m gonna do it. And show up. And show up and show up. And that’s what works, right? I love that. Uh, it works for books, it works for all kinds of different things. What’s your best advice for writers?

Just starting out, not all the advice, I know you could, but what’s, you could just give new writers one thing. What would it be?

Daniel David Wallace: If you are writing fiction? Oh, one one tip. Oh, this is so difficult.

Suzy Vadori: I know, right? I’m to go with

Daniel David Wallace: my instinct.

Suzy Vadori: Right.

Daniel David Wallace: I feel like I say a few more things, but the first thought is really work on designing a good scene.

I think that if you can design a good scene. You’ll be in a stronger place than if you’re trying to come up with some really complicated multi character, multi timeline story. The character wants something, they try to get it. They are surprised in some way for good or [00:41:00] ill, and they try to react to what, to this surprise and try to figure out something new.

And I think just working on that for as, for a while, for some period of time, I think is a really good starting point. Because from there, that same thing I just said can be the description of a whole novel. A person wants a thing, they try to get it. They’re surprised they come to a new reality. But I think that trying to work on that craft technique, that framework can be really powerful.

Suzy Vadori: Yeah. I love that. I, and it’s true. A lot of times newer writers come wanting to emulate this really complex structure of a book, and the truth is. A lot of times they aren’t ready to tackle that ’cause it’s makes it way harder. It makes the writing like 10 times harder to do it and the chance that they’re gonna do it not well is high.

And the thing is, at the end of the day, that plot structure doesn’t necessarily make for a stronger book unless you’re writing something like a thriller or psychological thriller or suspense where [00:42:00] you need that. For most books it’s not, but tackle it. One at a time, right? Like the next book. Yeah, next book.

When you’re bored of writing. ’cause you know it so well then you can throw in those little things that make it really unique. Yeah, I love that. Okay, so you’ve got a summit coming up really soon. Uh, escape the Plot Horse is happening October 18th to 24th. 2025. If you’re listening to this later, then there’s lots of other ones.

So where can we find you your, at your upcoming summits, whatever they might be, whenever people are listening. Your ongoing programs for writers.

Daniel David Wallace: If you are listening before, uh, October 18th, you should go to, you could just Google it, escape the plot forest or forest dot plot summit.com. It’s gonna be amazing.

We’ve got some amazing speakers, including Susie. Thank you so much. It’s gonna be fantastic. It’s five very in-depth days, all about how to improve your writing. If you are. Listening to this podcast some other time of the year. Then I have a free course for writers that I think is [00:43:00] a great way to, to try this.

Some of these ideas out. It’s called the Character First Story. You can find it sometimes if you type in character first story.com, it will come up. You can also go to my website, danny david wallace.com and you’ll find it there. And it’s, I sort of teach some of these character first ideas in the framework of a short story.

And it’s all free. It’s got 12 parts, it’s got all handouts. And it’s self-paced so you can, well, you can go through it in one long binge session or you can take a couple of weeks or do it.

Suzy Vadori: Amazing. And we’ll drop all those links in the show notes. Thank you so much, Daniel, for being here today and will see you at the summit.

Daniel David Wallace: This has been fantastic. Thank you so much, Suzy.

Suzy Vadori: Thank you. Bye.

Thanks for tuning in to show. No. Tell Writing with me, Susie Vidori. I’ll me 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, [00:44:00] Spotify, or wherever else you’re listening. Also visit susie vidori.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 you make it the absolute best you’re feeling called to write that book.

Keep going and I’m gonna be right here cheering you on. See you again next week.