Tag: writing fiction

The Literary Engineer: Systems-Level Thinking for Science Fiction and Fantasy

May 16th, 2026
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When I embarked on my Masters of Arts in International Relations back in 2017, I never realized it would be the single most defining influence on my future.

No, not because it made me want to become a politician or diplomat or anything. Quite the opposite.

Rather, my IR degree gave me something unbelievably precious for a fantasy author: the ability to think in systems instead of mere plot points.

I do not see the Eirenic Verses as a collection of stories or characters, but a coherent world system populated by believable individuals. It has pressure, contradictions, history, economies, political strata, and religions, just like our world does. Each part informs the other and reveals how every aspect of both societies coalesced into what it is when the series begins.

Having spent thousands of hours analyzing the forces that have developed our own world, both in my undergrad and graduate degrees, I couldn’t help but apply that theoretical framework to my writing. I believe it’s paid off well, though the haters may disagree. Shrug.

I’m not going to give you an IR redux here, but coax you into thinking more like a systems analyst than a “hey, wouldn’t this be cool?” kind of writer. That kind of writing often causes big plot holes, flimsy worldbuilding, and unbelievable characters.

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Every world is built of interlocking systems that influence, inform, and conflict with one another.

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These systems can include (but are not restricted to):
- Intrapersonal
- Interpersonal
- Familial
- Societal
- Magical
- Religious
- Cultural
- Economic
- Political
- Ecological
- Geographic
- Climatological
I have tried to order these from the micro level (intrapersonal) to the macro level (climatological), though some of the systems may be in a different order depending on your specific world.

You do not need to fully expand on every single one of these, because it would be exhausting. The systems you focus on depend on what kind of story you want to tell and where your specific interests lie.

If you are like me and love character-driven stories, then you’ll probably hover closer to the intra- and interpersonal with glimpses of the broader strata, as they relate to the interpersonal.

But here’s the thing: though each one gets progressively wider, all of them act upon each other. For example, your geographic systems will influence your political systems, as I touched on in my writing research notes for politics. A small country will have more centralized government because it’s more expedient.

Ecological resources (minerals, vegetables, plants) influence economic systems, and they may also influence religious systems (themes in religious iconography) or cultural systems (favorite dishes).

So now, we’ll go into a bit of what each system entails – briefly, as otherwise this would be a million pages – and I’ll offer six questions for each category to get you thinking.

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Intrapersonal Systems: History, Trauma, and Defense Mechanisms

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All your primary characters are their very own systems, which then coexist and relate to other systems.

Questions to consider:
1. What human flaws compel the character?
2. What is the defining trait of this character (their Jenga block)?
3. How does this character’s history determine their behavior?
4. What defense mechanisms does this character have that create roadblocks?
5. What does the character value, and how might this be taken away from them to create a plot?
6. What is this character’s goal or desire beyond the plot, and how does the plot imperil that?
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Interpersonal Systems: Bonds, Conflicts, and Miscommunications

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Once you have your main characters, you must think about their interpersonal connections and how these create interesting conflicts. The whole point of a book is to have conflicts! So we have to make some.

Questions to consider:
1. How are the main characters connected to one another? Are they friends, family, lovers?
2. How does each character’s personal value system connect to other characters? Do they agree or disagree on what is important?
3. What personality traits do characters share, and what are polar opposites of those traits?
4. What are the degrees of personal separation between each character? What bonds are there that are not shown “on-screen?”
5. What communication style does each character have, and how does this differ between characters?
6. How might defense mechanisms, personal traumas, or flaws cause conflict?
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Familial Systems: Hierarchies, Dominance, and Rituals

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People tend to build families, whatever that looks like in your culture, but not all family systems are the same.

Questions to consider:
1. Is intergenerational living common, or is everyone separated into nuclear units?
2. Is this a clan-based system, where interrelated family units live together?
3. How many children do people have, and how is inheritance determined?
4. What personal rituals do the predominant family units in your book have? Birthdays, holidays, personal traditions?
5. What does this family value, and do all the characters agree?
6. What is the typical parenting style? Is it authoritarian, permissive, something else?
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Societal Systems: Norms, Beliefs, and Stigmas

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Next, we start Living In a Society, made up of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of families all smooshed up against one another and trying to work it all out.

Questions to consider:
1. What’s the filial piety situation here? Do children owe their parents something, or do children’s actions reflect on their parents? How does this spread out to other sectors of society?
2. What are common everyday rituals, like greetings, goodbyes, or tipping culture?
3. What are small but important norms? Staying out of other peoples’ business, offering help without being asked, helping raise other peoples’ children?
4. What do people believe about the world as a whole? Are people optimistic, pessimistic, out for themselves?
5. What is stigmatized? Premarital sex, usury, alcohol consumption, lying?
6. What causes friction in society? What societal factions are there, and how do they collide?
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Magical/Technological Systems: Powers, Weaknesses, and Specializations

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Magic is a primary facet of fantasy, which is paralleled in science fiction through technology. How magic or technology works will have ripple effects throughout the culture and generate plots.

Questions to consider:
1. How is magic/technology acquired? Is it natural, offered by a deity, taught?
2. Does everyone have some level of magic or technological prowess, or is it restricted to a certain class?
3. Are people specialists in certain types of magic/technology, or does it work the same across the society?
4. What weaknesses are present in the magic/technology? What can it work on versus what can’t it work on?
5. What beliefs surround the magic/technology? Is it prestigious, common, contested, stigmatized?
6. How is it typically used? Party trick, infrastructure, religious ceremony, all of the above?
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Religious Systems: Deities, Myths, and Prerogatives

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Contrary to popular belief, the absence of a religious system does not absolve you from thinking about religious systems. In fact, it may be more telling than having a religious system at all.

Questions to consider:
1. Is there one religion, multiple religions, no religion? Why?
2. What kinds of deities are there, and what is their backstory? How did they emerge? Do they specialize or are they omniscient?
3. What’s the supplicant’s relationship with the deity? Are they portrayed as capricious, forgiving, neutral, loving, vengeful?
4. How widespread is belief? Is religion a background radiation in the culture, omnipresent, a point of conflict between groups?
5. Who gets to interpret the deity’s will and why?
6. What demands does the deity impose on believers, and how strict are these?
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Cultural Systems: Values, Taboos, and Restrictions

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Society and culture might seem like they are the same thing, but that’s not necessarily true. A society can have multiple cultures – or thousands of them – that all meld together to make a society. So you may have subcultures that play a primary role in a character’s life, along with larger cultures that aren’t as important to them.

Questions to consider:
1. What does the culture value most? Creativity, strength, ingenuity, nurturance? How is this shown through the prestige provided to some people?
2. What are cultural taboos, such as whistling in a graveyard or saying certain things? How strictly are they enforced, and what are the social ramifications of breaking them?
3. What restrictions does the culture enforce, like access to certain resources or titles?
4. How would a person from this culture define themselves to someone else? What would they prioritize in their explanation?
5. How does the culture represent itself throughout the year? Are there holidays, special events, modes of dress, rituals?
6. What are people from this culture proud of? What do they think is important for outsiders to understand about them?
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Economic Systems: Resources, Inequalities, and Perceived Value

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No single person can have all the resources they need, so items need to be traded for something of similar value. And not everyone will have equal access to resources, no matter how egalitarian the society.

Questions to consider:
1. How is the value of products determined? Fiat currency, floating currency, bartering?
2. How do people earn a living here? Are there different trades, and which ones are most prioritized through pay or resource access?
3. What are the primary industries that are valued in this culture? How do they pertain to the natural resources?
4. How severe is the economic inequality? Is there a permanent underclass or is social movement easy?
5. How do goods get from one place to another? Are there large marketplaces, traveling caravans, small-scale trading?
6. What resources are scarcest and why? How are they valued, and what are they used for?
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Political Systems: Power, Alliances, and Procedures

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Whenever you’ve got a big group of people together, they are going to need to be organized somehow, and this typically produces a professional class of individuals whose job it is to manage all the other people. Which is what we call political systems.

Questions to consider:
1. What is the general shape of the political system? Monarchy, feudal, tribal, representative democracy, republic?
2. How is power determined and transferred? Is there an electoral process?
3. What is the day-to-day function of the government? What is its primary focus, and how are these things achieved?
4. How close are everyday people to their government, and what do they understand about it?
5. What alliances are there in the government? Are certain groups more powerful than others, or aligned against other branches of government?
6. How is the law determined and administered? What kinds of punishments are there for transgressors, and what is considered the most illegal thing?
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Ecological Systems: Flora, Fauna, and Biodiversity

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Ecology is often very underrepresented in worldbuilding, even in fantasy; people get to “dragons” and then kind of give up. But biodiversity actually has a lot to do with economic systems, government, and culture!

Questions to consider:
1. Simply put, what ecosystem are we in? Wetlands, desert, steppes, tundra, temperate rainforest?
2. What are the “charismatic megafauna” of this area? Dragons, unicorns, giant zapworms?
3. What’s the most common type of groundcover? Purple grass, moss, sedge?
4. What kinds of trees or large bushes exist here? Pine, alder, cacti?
5. What do people hunt or shepherd? Pigs, cows, buffalo, marmots?
6. What’s the aquatic biodiversity look like? Are there sharks, sea dragons, mostly just some little fishes?
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Geographic Systems: Boundaries, Distances, and Dangers

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Geography – mountains, rivers, and oceans – determines how people move through the world and what kinds of dangers they will face. As such, knowing the general terrain will give you an idea of how the land informs your plot.

But you genuinely do not need to make a map or name all the towns in order to have a consistent geography; in fact, doing too much mapmaking can screw you up.

Questions to consider:
1. How big of an area are you working with? Think about it in terms of a country in our world to give you a general idea. What’s the scale from Vatican City little to Australia huge?
2. What are the most distinctive geographic features in the area? Imposing mountains, ice floes, volcanoes, vast deserts?
3. What’s the water situation like? Are there large freshwater lakes, small rivers, one big river, an ocean?
4. What smaller features are there, and how do they pertain to the larger features? Think geothermal pools, caves, little islands, or coral reefs.
5. What are your main locations, and how do people get to them? Sailing to an island capital or riding long distances to a small outpost?
6. What geological dangers do people face when traveling? Avalanches, freezing cold, unstable mountain passes, dying of thirst in the desert?
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Climatological Systems: Seasons, Fluctuations, and Catastrophies

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Now we get to the planet-level stuff! You don’t need to terraform your whole world in order to understand the climate of your given area. Just a general idea of it can do wonders for your work.

Questions to consider:
1. How big is your world? Earth sized, Venus sized, even bigger?
2. How close is the nearest star, and how many moons are there?
3. What’s the season situation like in your area of the planet? Clear seasons, or is it more equatorial?
4. How predictable is the weather? Do people generally know what to expect when they step outside?
5. How hot and cold does it get throughout the year? Does it fluctuate wildly or are there defined parts of the year where it’s very cold/hot?
6. What kind of natural disasters hit the area? Flooding, tornadoes, tropical storms, wind storms? How often do these happen?
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Developing Your System Connections

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Now that you’ve answered all (or most) of these questions, start hopping between the system levels and answering questions that pop up.

For example, look at the connection between religion and economy. Back in medieval Europe, people would pay to have their sins removed, and rich people would fund cathedrals in hopes that it would get them into the afterlife. Religious festivals have always been big business for merchants the world over, and this also relates to the cultural values of a given area.

Ecology and culture have long been connected. The fauna and flora of a given area will influence folklore or symbology, like national heraldic animals. These animals often develop their own mythic personality that may be completely removed from their actual biology (and then you can ask yourself why that is).

Family systems may impact political systems. If this world has a clan-based family system, then the larger the clan, the greater its influence on the political system. Clans themselves may act as a smaller political unit with their own values and punishment systems.

Or you could consider how the climate impacts the intrapersonal. Did your character lose a loved one in a mudslide? Do they hate winter or love it? What does that say about them?

You do not have to answer every question or connect every level of a system to every other one. That would be too much, and it would leave no room for reader speculation. Part of what makes a world feel alive for readers is that they can build some of these connections on their own. They may notice little contradictions that intrigue them or simply fill in the blanks with their own biases, which allows for a more personalized experience.

However, try to ensure that each level of the system connects with at least one other one that does not touch it in the hierarchy. By that I mean that if you look at the list I provided in orders of magnitude, make at least one connection from somewhere much higher or lower in the order. It could be a political or religious connection, an intrapersonal and a geological one, etc.

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I could write a whole book on this, as I find it very fascinating; maybe someday I will. I also think that it’s this inattention to systems that has made me very disinterested in standard worldbuilding, as many authors just throw whatever they want in there and don’t think of the connective tissue.

While I cannot promise that this systems-level thinking will make you a multimillionaire best seller (nor that it will even get people interested), it will make your world feel realer and more coherent, even if you do not go into each aspect. Simply having these things in mind can subtly influence how you write, what you include, and what you choose to remove.
Fixing “Summarization Style” Prose

May 13th, 2026
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I recently grabbed a book that should have been my exact wheelhouse. It was medieval fantasy with an orphaned survivor of a Viking raid abandoning his homeland and going on fascinating quests with these toughened warriors.

Well, I gave it up after a chapter, and there’s a simple reason for it: the whole thing was basically a summary of a book that didn’t exist.

This is a different problem than the “TV brain prose” I discussed in another post, more to do with how the text tackles plot points than how it frames scenes. Essentially, summarization style just tells you what happens like one would tell a story to a friend.

And this is boring. And readers do not like it for the most part. So we don’t want to do that.

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A caveat: summarization vs. summarization style

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“Oh no,” I hear you saying. “I summarized this time skip on page 345 and then went back to the regular scene. Do I need to change that?”

No. Doing so would tip you into the other annoying not-quite-novel style, which is novelization style.

It is perfectly fine to summarize a time skip as long as it is clear you are catching readers up to speed, then you’ll go back to your typical style. I do it all the time; most writers do. Sometimes you have something you need to clarify but it happens off-page, or you need to give a sense of time passing. This is fine. It is not fine if your entire book feels like a long time skip to something important.

So let’s go through some of the hallmarks of summarization style really quick, then workshop some solutions.

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Symptoms of summarization style

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If you have summarization style, you probably have the sinking feeling that something is wrong but can’t quite put your finger on it. The writing feels flat and bland, even though it sounds amazing in your head. You’re not translating your great ideas to the page, and I’ll explain why.

Actions are not elaborated upon. Plot points happen in a predictable sequence, and everything takes the same amount of time to describe.

Everything happens very quickly. You might have a battle on page 1, and then by page 5 we are in a different country. Nothing lingers because you feel like you have so much to go through and cannot sit with anything.

Descriptions are minimal or absent. Summarization writers don’t want to expound upon the environment because they need to get to the next plot point. Items are just whatever they happen to be. Nothing is shattered, ugly, mossy, etc.

Environments are written like schematics. The fireplace is on the north wall and the door is on the east wall. The window is next to the door. Etc. We’re forced to build a mental map of the area like an architect, and this takes up mental space we could use to feel the plot.

There is no sense of interiority. We only see what the characters are doing – similar to TV prose – but not how they feel about anything or what they are thinking of.

Character emotions are blunted or absent. A character could have their mother die a page ago and then is like, “Oh, okay, well, guess she’s dead.” We don’t feel their pain, anger, disappointment, or delight.

The POV character does not opine on anything. This is a little different from interiority. What I mean is that any descriptions of landscapes, characters, or objects are neutral and factual; they don’t seem to come from the POV character. There’s no “ugly, brutish sword” or “sour-faced woman.” Things are what they are.

Characters infodump in dialogue. Instead of the narrator infodumping, the character goes on for three pages without stopping, and we have to assume the listener is sitting there in total silence. The character explains their whole backstory, the situation in the world, etc.

Here’s a quick litmus test for you.

Imagine one of the chapters of your book, and imagine summarizing it for a listener who allows you to go on for as long as you need to.

Would you be able to recite it basically unchanged? Does everything follow along piece by piece like meeting minutes or a to-do list? Is there no point you’d struggle to describe and have to summarize?

If you could pretty easily list out everything that happens in a chapter without having to summarize that part or translate it into normal language, then you probably have a summary of a book you haven’t yet written.

And, fortunately, this is fixable! So let’s get into it.

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Use the Double Outline method.

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The Double Outline method is, hands down, the best way to fix summarization style, along with other problems like getting overwhelmed by your notes and losing motivation.

Summarization style often happens because the writer has put down every single thing they want in their book, and then (intentionally or not) they start using the outline as a plug-and-play guide. Instead of writing down the scenes as living, breathing artifacts of a story, they summarize them as dictated by the outline.

Here’s the basic premise of the Double Outline method, at least in the way I do it:
1. Write out everything you can think of about your book in a massive thought dump.
2. Arrange this into another document, with scenes as the headers (not chapters, because chapter breaks may change).
3. Use as many bullet points as you feel you need per scene, with as much detail as you feel necessary.
4. Let the long outline sit for a little bit.
5. Make a copy of the long outline and cut it down into only the barest necessities; maybe four bullet points per scene.
6. Only work off the short outline, with the long outline there if you need more help or forgot something.
This reduces anxiety for over-plotters but helps you avoid summarization style because your short outline doesn’t give you enough to summarize. It only explains the basic shape of a scene and the highlights, not the meticulous details.

Personally, I use Google Docs for my planning and Microsoft Word for my actual writing for several reasons:
- The outline and the draft are in different programs, forcing mental separation.
- Google Docs lets you use Tabs so that you can keep the thought dump, long outline, and shortline together but separated.
- Placing the shortline first makes me forget about the long outline because I have to click on it.
- Kindle Create only lets you import Word documents from your C:// drive. I’d have to download everything, put it on my hard drive, and then put it in Kindle Create. Too many extra steps, annoying.
If you still find yourself tempted even with different tabs on your Google Doc, then make your long outline harder to access; put it in a different document, or a different folder, or even on Notepad so it’s really annoying to read through.

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Get to know the MC before you start writing.

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Just like every human has a different voice, every character has a different voice. This is more noticeable if you are using first-person POV, but it happens in third-person and even omniscient POV too. (Check here to learn more about how to pick the right POV for your needs.)

Simply put, a realistic character will feel differently, even when in the same plot and performing the same actions. They do not feel like they’re summarizing things, but experiencing things in real time.

I have quite a few articles discussing characterization you can use to get familiar with your main character, but the best ones would be my discussions of a character’s Jenga Block and using human failures to make relatable characters.

If you’re still having problems, check out my guide on troubleshooting common character issues.

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Find the key moments and intentionally slow down.

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An issue with summarization style, as mentioned above, is that everything happens at the same speed – almost surgically so. There’s some dressing in between, but each little moment in time is given the same weight, the same intonation, the same pacing.

I think this happens because the writer isn’t necessarily thinking about how time is perceived by the POV character. And time perception is part of the strengths of a POV.

Downer moment incoming. My dog Luke passed away in August 2017. The euthanasia process took less than half an hour, from setup to him going limp in my arms. But it seemed much, much, much longer than that because my brain was processing everything in hyper-granular detail.

If I were to write that time in fiction just as I experienced things, it would probably take up five pages or more because it was so rich in sensory detail, emotion, and interiority. It would also break my heart all over again, so I’m not going to.

The time you take to describe something impresses its importance upon the reader. By slowing down at the big moments and giving them more detail, you’ll start to embody the moment and stop summarizing.

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Cut dialogue to four lines or less.

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Summarization-style writers have recognized that they don’t want to infodump because it’s annoying; in fact, they’ve pulled back from that so hard that nothing gets described in detail.

However, many simply move all this infodumping to dialogue instead. Characters will go on for pages explaining everything: their entire life story, the current situation, their plans for the future, etc. Meanwhile, the rest of the world seems to disappear, and we forget that someone else is listening to them say all this.

Remember: characters are not real people, but they should feel like real people. This means there should be some give and take in conversation. We shouldn’t forget that other characters are there because one character has been talking for two pages straight.

Most importantly, let the characters do something in between repartees. They could fiddle with an item, turn away, pace. If they are the POV character, they may note something in the environment or have a stray thought.

Here’s a short example from my upcoming book, Absent All Light:

“I apologize for the inconvenience, Priestess.” After a pause, Tshumanu turned to Uileac and spoke more quietly. “And sorry I have to do this at all.”

“They could have sent anyone else. Anyone but you.”

Tshumanu flinched and turned his head away. One of the soldiers behind him cleared his throat.

“At least you know I won’t torture you on the way there,” Tshumanu finally said in a feeble facsimile of a joke. No one laughed, least of all Uileac.

“Look, I’ll … I’ll give you time. We’ll let the horses rest. You can ride Hywel. I’ll rent another.”

Uileac gave a huff of disgust; even Priestess Daimhnait seemed unimpressed. Beside his husband, Orrinir curled up a bit tighter until his legs brushed the cavalryman’s side.

“I’ll give you time,” Tshumanu said again, more pleadingly. “An hour. Two hours. Don’t do anything rash.”

“Go to hell,” Uileac muttered as Priestess Daimhnait chased the men from the room. Behind the closed door, Cerie tried to discern the whispered argument’s content but couldn’t catch most. After a few moments, the front door of the meronym groaned open, then clanked shut.

No one speaks for more than four lines in a go. Even if they do speak for four lines, it’s typically broken up by something else: an action, a pause, a change in tone. There is a clear back and forth, and no one is dominating the conversation. We’re able to remember that others are there because they make small movements throughout.

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Insinuate rather than explain everything.

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Summarization prose often falls into the trap of laying out everything for the reader, like a history book. However, readers aren’t coming to your story to gather details about the characters or the world; they want to envision a story and flavor it with their own understanding.

Give readers the basics they need to create their own headcanons, scenes, and imagery. Often, this involves drip-feeding the information – and sometimes letting characters be wrong in their assumptions. This keeps a character from feeling omniscient and also allows the reader to feel a little sly when they realize something the character doesn’t.

Unless something is critical information, you can gloss over it, or remove it entirely. I talk about how I trimmed thousands of words from my next book, Poesy, including some random worldbuilding I hadn’t connected to anything else.

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Flavor descriptions with the character’s feelings.

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When you know your MC on a deep, instinctual level, you also know how they would describe things and approach the world. You understand that they would notice different parts of their environment, process things in a certain order, and have strong feelings about things that other people might not even care about.

The way I would describe a purse is much different than how someone who actually likes purses would describe it. I would think about its storage capacity, whether it can handle rough wear, if the fabric is finicky and will need to be cleaned.

Similarly, I’d have much stronger opinions about a horse than someone who doesn’t like horses. I’d look at its weight, color, breed, conformation, gait, and overall demeanor, whereas someone else would say, “yep, that’s a brown horse.”

(The proper term for a “brown” horse is chestnut, btw.)

Think about what your character knows, thinks, and values. Additionally, the way we describe things will be different depending on our mood and current needs. I’m not going to be rhapsodizing about a gorgeous Ohio sunset when I’m fleeing to the bathroom after some bad gas station sushi.

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Summarization style is not a catastrophic failure, nor does it mean you are a bad writer. In fact, I’d say it’s one of the easiest style issues to fix. You just have to slow down, elongate, and consider a character’s POV more. While that takes time, you’ve already built the story’s bones and only need to flesh them out.

Remember: if you can summarize the entire chapter just as it is written, there might be some fixing to do. But you’ve got it started. Dig a bit deeper, and see how much richer your work can be.
The Reader’s Inner Stopwatch: Pacing in Fiction

May 6th, 2026

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Pacing is one place where writers really struggle. A beta reader may tell them that a chapter feels laggy, but it’s actually fast-paced. Another beta reader may tell them that one chapter feels incomplete, but it’s a full scene.

There’s a reason for this, and it actually has nothing to do with how much space a scene takes up. Rather, it’s because readers experience books differently than writers do.

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Readers often experience chapters primarily as units of time rather than structural units of story.

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When applying theory of mind to our writing, we also must consider how readers conceptualize a book. Instead of considering pacing as the speed of a specific scene, readers think about how fast a chapter takes to read.

In other words: you think in word counts, but readers think in units of time. This is a different dimension of what I discussed before in etiquette for writers, which is that readers consider page count rather than word count.

Why do readers think in page count? Because this allows them to predict how long your book takes to read. They are familiar with typical page counts for other books and remember about how long they spent on it.

If you say your book is 400 pages, they think, “Ah, it’s something to settle in with for a few days, read after work.” Whereas, a 100-page book is a quick read that they can bang out in one afternoon.

The pacing of two 400-page books could be completely different: one might have massive chapters and dense prose, or it could cover a lot of territory very fast. Regardless, readers will adjust their expectations depending on the dozens (or hundreds) of books they have read around that page count.

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Regular chapter breaks provide an optimal blend of predictability + novelty.

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When you start to think of chapters less as scenes and more as units of time, you will understand why they’re important to readers.

A unique aspect of the human brain is that we crave novelty within a specific range of tolerance. Everyone has different ranges for novelty they can tolerate, but the most satisfying kinds of novelty are paired with a certain level of predictability.

I love rock climbing because it is in a predictable environment, with predictable procedures, but with new problems each time. I know what to expect when I go to the gym; I know the safety procedures that will (hopefully) keep me from dying; and I know how to do all moves I might use on a given route.

However, each route forces me to use the same moves in different ways and in different sequences. This provides novelty in a familiar framework so that I can focus on the challenge rather than second-guessing every little thing.

Reading a book is the same way. Chapter breaks provide the framework and predictability, while unique plot twists and interesting characters provide the novelty.

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Readers want natural stopping points where they can take a break.

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My first book, 9 Years Yearning, has been called slow, even though it is only 33,000 words. This is likely because the chapters were very long, so readers don’t get a break. I went back and fixed this so that instead of nine chapters, we have a prologue, epilogue, and 23 chapters. Exact same word count, completely different pace.

Readers always want to know when they can set the book down and pick it up again without feeling lost. They are likely reading between other things: on the bus, during a break at work, after the kids have gone to bed. When chapters are around the same length, they can guess when they’ll get relief without feeling they are going to miss something.

It’s easier to remember that you just finished chapter 21 rather than remembering you were on page 221 when reading a physical book. However, this still applies when readers are using e-books that automatically open to the same page; their brain will not feel “done” with the chapter until they get to the next rest point, so they’re left frustrated.

It’s the same reason that I tend to write my articles in one go rather than stopping in the middle and returning; I have a cognitive loose thread that I want to complete.

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The word count of your second and third chapters determines how much read time that a reader expects.

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Readers can often a tolerate a shorter first chapter because they recognize it as the opening scene, which is often meant to be punchier and more exciting. It’s around the second and third chapters where readers home in on expected chapter length and adjust their expectations.

For example, if you have a 1,900-word second chapter, then readers will expect that each chapter will take about 9.5 minutes to read, or 13 minutes for denser prose. They will then pace themselves through the rest of the book and continue zipping along through it, even during the slower-paced chapters, because they’re ready for their next stopping point.

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You can alternate chapter lengths, but this should be set up early.

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Most books establish a typical chapter length, and readers subconsciously calibrate their expectations around that rhythm. There are exceptions of course, but those writers have primed their readers to accept different lengths, such as by having a long first chapter and a short second chapter. Again, readers will start to calibrate around the third chapter and predict what you’re going to do.

Say that most of your chapters sit at around 2,400 words. Then you have one 1,800-word chapter that has only one scene, followed by a 3,000-word chapter that has three scenes.

Readers will likely feel the 1,800-word chapter is incomplete, while the 3,000-word chapter drags, even if it gets through a lot in that time. It all has to do with the fact that the chapter is a unit of time, not a unit of scene. The reader has apportioned a certain time block to that chapter, so when it is shorter or longer than that time block, it feels wrong.

Think about how you feel cheated if you paid for 30-minute massage, but the masseuse decided to dip out after 20 minutes, thinking you’d be so relaxed that you wouldn’t notice. Given that the human brain has a little mental clock embedded in it (the suprachiasmatic nucleus), you would notice, and you’d be annoyed. Likewise, a massage that was meant to last 30 minutes but actually lasted 45 would feel weird to you, even if you couldn’t articulate why.

But, if you start out with a 3k chapter, then a 1.8k chapter, then a 3k chapter, readers will catch on. You could compare this to when you had a 30-minute college class, then a 1.5 hour one, then another 30-minute class. Now you recognize how to organize your day, and you won’t feel cheated.

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The shorter the average chapter, the faster the pace will feel.

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Thrillers, romances, and horror stories often have very short chapters, maybe two or three pages. Being able to complete multiple chapters in one session makes the book feel faster than it might actually be because readers are clocking the time it takes to read each chapter.

Two readers might read for the exact same amount of time, say 30 minutes. If they can get through only one chapter in that 30 minutes, then they will feel the book goes along at a smooth and steady clip. But if they can read five or six chapters in that 30 minutes, the book seems to go much faster because there are more stopping points embedded in the pacing.

They may choose to keep reading much longer than they would otherwise because they keep getting little completionists hits each time they finish a chapter.

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Consider the potential attention span of your readers and adjust chapter length accordingly.

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Again, I ran into this issue with 9 Years Yearning, which is why I can tell you that 3k is about where people stop paying attention and feel the book is slow. My books with chapter lengths of around 2k to 2.5k have gotten the best feedback because they’re around 15 to 20 minutes long.

Remember the Pomodoro method, which suggests people should work in 25 minute blocks? That’s about how long the average person can provide sustained attention to a given task. Keeping your chapter read time a little shorter than that means readers can give each chapter full attention without getting bored or lost.

As always, there are exceptions. Different genres attract different readers. Those who gravitate toward dense, fact-heavy historical fiction will likely have a longer attention span and prefer longer chapters. YA has short chapters because children have short attention spans. And so on. Knowing your genre and audience helps you decide what those readers will expect from your book.

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Vary whether chapters end on a resolution point or a cliffhanger depending on how you want readers to progress.

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If every chapter hangs on a mini cliffhanger, readers might start to get fatigued. Their adrenaline spikes right before each chapter break where they feel the urge to continue.

However, as I said in my article about melodrama, you can only ramp up the pressure so much before readers begin checking out.

Just as you need breathing room in your plot (a la my Plot Mountain method), you also need to provide that breathing room at your stopping points. Let some chapters finish with a small resolution, and let some chapters finish at a cliffhanger.

This is where the “one more chapter” feeling hits readers very hard, and it pulls them toward the next mini resolution. If they keep getting the “one more chapter” urge, then they start feeling dragged along without their consent.

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One or two short “shocker” chapters will feel more intense, even if not much is happening.

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In my fanfic “Joya no Kane,” I got the most hype for Chapter 6; people in my Discord were exploding over it even though nothing really happens.

Why? Because it’s drastically shorter than all the other chapters. Basically just a mission directive. Given how the plot had been progressing, readers knew this was the turning point where everything would spiral out of control.

Ensure that this shorter chapter comes within similarly paced sections rather than scattering them all over the place, or sandwiching a standard-length chapter between two. That sandwiched chapter will feel sluggish even if it’s only one scene.

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A longer climax will feel more complete and engaging than one that is shorter than your standard length.

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Now, you might think, based on what I said, that the climax should also be short, but I would argue that the climax should be the longest chapter. This is where reader engagement is highest and where they expect the most depth.

A climax is the focal point of your story, so it deserves the greatest attention. Readers might feel cheated by a short climax because they feel like everything was working up to this, but then they received a “skimpy” chapter.

This is true even if you draw the climax out over several chapters. Readers are waiting for that hit, and they may not even realize they’re in the climax if it’s not noticeably longer than the other parts of the book.

I would suggest having your climax as one chapter that is about 1.25 or 1.5 times longer than your standard length, but ideally within about 30 minutes reading time based on the Pomodoro method. Readers can stretch their attention span a little longer than 25 minutes if they’re deeply engaged, but not over the entire book.

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To ensure your chapters are about the same length, do a reconciliation process after your first draft.

Reconciliation is a concept in accounting where the accountant will check that all internal financial records match any external documentation. For example, if an invoice says the company owed a contracted $25,000, but accounts payable only says $20,000, that’s a serious issue.

I’ve coopted the term for how I ensure that all chapters are around the same length. Unlike accounting, though, I give myself some wiggle room: about 200 words on either side.

This step is done after the drafting phase, which is only about getting the words down. Only after I understand where I’m going and have a full idea of the plot do I think about adding more.

To do this, I make a spreadsheet where I input each chapter length into a cell. I then use a formula (included below) where I set a standard word count, then determine how many words each chapter needs to get to that standard word count. This helps me see about how much more each chapter needs.

Once I know which chapters need more, I reread that chapter and leave a note for myself about additions. For example, if one chapter needs 600 more words, that means a whole new scene. One that only needs 200 more words can just have a bit of environmental description sprinkled in, or a short additional conversation.

I then go in and see which chapters are significantly above my standard word count and cut them down, or switch things around so that count is added to another chapter.

One little trick here is to check your current word count, then set your required addition as your stopping point. Keep an eye on how your word count is going up and you’ll know about how much you have left to do.

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Writing is a purely cognitive process – and reading is too. As such, a bit of psychology can make a huge difference in how your writing is perceived. By considering chapters as time blocks instead of scenes, you can coax readers into steady movement through your book without changing your writing style at all.
Fixing “TV Brain Prose”

May 2nd, 2026

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In this article, I am standing on the shoulders of giants. Lincoln Michel wrote two exceptional posts about this, called “Turning Off the TV In Your Mind” and “What Not Reading Does to Your Writing.” Recurring Bafflement also did a small series on the concept, though she called it “novelization style.” So, I am by no means the progenitor of this idea and won’t take credit for the thought.

I love these posts because they get at something that has aggravated me for a long time: the emerging trend of writers treating books like novelizations of a nonexistent TV show, movie, or anime. These writers really wanted to have a TV show of their grand idea, but they saw writing a book as a consolation prize.

The thing is that, as Lincoln Michel points out, TV and prose are completely different mediums with unique strengths. Would-be authors who write like they removed the line breaks in a screenplay are not harnessing the true strengths of prose because, frankly, they don’t want to. They’re hoping that someone will pick up their book and turn it into their preferred format. Which, as someone who has wanted to be an author (of a book) since age seven, kinda hurts my feels.

I’m not going to rehash everything that Michel and Recurring Bafflement said because then there’s no point to my article. Rather, I’m going to consider ways to shift your mentality away from the TV world and into prose through things that don’t necessarily have to anything to do with your prose itself.

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Do not rely on audiobooks to teach you writing.

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Yes, you do have to read in order to write (we’ll talk about this in a minute). There is no way around this. But I understand that if you’ve spent your whole life watching a lot of TV, then reading can be challenging. Your brain is more focused on processing visual stimuli than decoding written language.

Some TV brain writers tell themselves they are compromising by listening to audiobooks. Bzzt. Audiobooks are a fine way to entertain yourself, but here’s the problem. Just like the human brain uses different neural circuits to process visual stimuli, it also uses different neural circuits to process auditory language (with some overlap).

In fact, researchers from Johns Hopkins University have found that all three of these inputs – auditory, visual, and written – hit different wiring.

The circuits you use in reading books are similar (but not identical) to the ones you need to produce them. But, again, not the same circuits as those to process visual or auditory stimuli. This is all well and good for readers/listeners; they don’t need to process the written word to enjoy the story. But not so good for writers.

In other words, listening to an audiobook does not teach you how to write. It would be more akin to learning how to become a good old-timey storyteller around a campfire. Let me reiterate: spoken language hits different parts of the brain than written language. And visual formats also use alternative wiring, even though you need your eyeballs to read.

This is not a bad thing … if you want to be a film director, voice actor, or TV producer. But you need to study the art form you actually want to produce. You can only do that by putting words in front of your eyes and reading them.

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Read short stories every week.

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Reading a book when you have spent your whole life watching TV and movies is challenging. Your processing centers for written communication are weaker and must be stimulated through, well … written communication.

But we don’t need to dive in to War and Peace right away. After all, you likely aren’t going to be diving into writing a book like War and Peace on your first try. Books require strong attention to detail, juggling thousands of data points, and balancing a range of difficult skills, like characterization, themes, and dialogue. We can start small.

Challenge yourself to read one short story a week, or two if you’re ambitious. You can Google lists of “best short stories” and pick whichever one interests you. Take your time with it; don’t skim and let your eyes cross. Tell yourself you’ll give this just as much time as you would a full length novel.

The goal here is to get comfortable decoding written language, considering how word choice impacts the experience, the flow of words.

I’m a busy woman, so most of my reading recommendations in my weekly newsletter are short stories or articles I happened to like. Of course I read books, too, but it sometimes takes me longer than a week to read them because I’ve got so many other things going on.

Or they’re books I read for personal enjoyment that might not be, ah … most appropriate for my readership. Danmei novels are my poison.

Anyway, I also share a different poem every week, which is another great way to start thinking about the flow of language. They’re short, easy to digest, and infinitely rereadable.

If you’re struggling to develop a reading and writing habit, I encourage you to check out my newsletter. It only takes about five minutes a week to read and is full of good advice.

Plus, it’s completely free. No paywall whatsoever.

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Stop watching scripted visual media and start watching bodycam or interrogation footage.

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I do not watch live-action movies or TV shows. The last TV show I watched was The Untamed back in 2024; before that, the last one was The Expanse in 2018.

My primary visual media was the Touken Ranbu anime between 2021 and 2023, for which I wrote 1.6 million words of fanfic. Once I started writing the Eirenic Verses, I lost interest in anime entirely.

Yes. I know how that insane that sounds. But you must understand that I didn’t grow up watching TV or movies. I watched maybe three cartoon series my entire life, and a tiny handful of movies.

However, I am not a Luddite. I watch a lot of visual media; it’s just unscripted.

I credit my good dialogue skills with the fact that I watch a metric ass ton of interrogation videos and bodycam footage, in addition to being a nosy eavesdropper.

People speak differently in real life than they do in scripted shows because, well, scripted shows are not real. Someone getting arrested doesn’t have time to carefully choose every word, nor are they being told what to say by someone who had a lot of time to carefully choose every word.

As such, you get to see and hear how people act when they are confronted with unusual situations, processing conversation in real time, and in a heightened emotional state.

With the exception of some very unusual individuals (the creepy would-be movie villain from this video comes to mind), people don’t speak in long monologues in real life. They will generally say two sentences, maybe three, or less. You start to see that when you listen to the casual back-and-forth scene in bodycam footage.

You see me use these principles in the first chapter I showed from Absent All Light (coming June 23, 2026).

“Then tell me, dear one, what makes you accept these marks.” Rubbing her sigil-adorned thumb across Cerie’s knuckle, Irith waited. Her blue eyes seemed vacuous pools in the fire-shade, too hard to regard for more than a few seconds.

Cerie lowered her gaze to the slab floor. The answer burned in her chest: acrid smoke. Razed fields throwing up their ghostly alarm calls, long after the farmers had been killed. Glazed eyes of her dead parents staring sightless at the sun. Murdered by marauding Sinans drunk on victory.

“Because this is how we win the war,” she said, her low voice rough and slow. “Because High Poetry prevents others from losing their parents, too.”

Irith patted her hand again before letting go. Keeping her head down, Cerie listened to the shuffling in the cedar chest, the clink of different implements.

Cerie doesn’t give us some grand, melodramatic speech. She says it plainly, even though we can see from her point of view that she’s an intelligent and eloquent woman.

So, if you like visual media, you don’t have to surrender it entirely. Just change what you watch and get comfortable watching real people. After all, if you want your characters to feel realistic, then they must act realistic.

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Imagine your character’s eyes as cameras.

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If you have TV brain prose, then you are thinking of your POV as a camera. However, you’re doing it in a way that better suits film: an omniscient POV without access to the character’s thoughts.

We do not need to eradicate your cognition style, and I don’t think it’d be possible if you were raised on a steady diet of visual storytelling. After all, our early experiences in life do change the way we think and process the world around us.

Instead, we need to limit the perspective, narrow it down. Think of it like having one stationary camera rather than cutting between different camera angles. You can only see what is in front of that one single camera.

Just like you, as a real-life person, cannot look directly behind you, your character also cannot. They may be able to hear things behind them, or sense someone coming up behind them, but they can’t see another person’s expression unless that character is right in front of them.

Here’s an example of what I mean by a fixed camera. In this scene from What Is Cannot Be Unwritten, Mordrek is getting flogged.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Mordrek flinched when the flog came down hard on his exposed back. A spicy shock fired down his spine. As Paint pulled back the flog, he felt the agonizing scrape of the tiny barbs tearing his flesh.

“I don’t know!”

“Of course you don’t.”

The flog slammed into him again, and he clenched his teeth. Agonized distraction: analyzing the pain-pattern across his shoulder blades. That was better than hearing the fire whining as it heated up the branding rake. He doubted it was for show.

“A name or two, please.”

Smack. The blood itched as it oozed down the skin not yet brutalized by the flog. Mordrek rocked violently, sawing at his own knees and wrists to dull the burning.

Mordrek has his eyes closed here, so we don’t get to see anything, only feel or hear things. This immediately draws us into his body; we know we are embodying his perspective, no one else’s.

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Provide physical sensations.

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This brings up another unique aspect of prose, which is that we get to feel things through the character. TV brain often has everyone visually express pain rather than actually tell us how it feels because visual formats don’t allow you to embody the character.

As such, you’ll see sentences from the character’s POV where they grimace or move instead of truly experience the physical sensations. The writer has never had to consider what something feels like in someone’s body, so they don’t know how to explain it.

Physical feelings are hard to do in prose and are often best captured by simile or metaphor because otherwise you’re just talking about “his arm broke” or whatever.

Here’s an example from the upcoming Absent All Light, where Cerie has almost drowned:

Then, she was thrown onto her back, two fists pounding her chest in rhythm. Chapped lips sealed around her mouth, and hot air flew down her throat so fast she choked.

Of everything that had happened, this was the worst.

She shoved Uileac away, rolling onto her hands and knees. “I’m breathing, godsdamnit!”

A column of blood-tinged water spattered the dark grass. Now the fists had relocated to her back, where they beat unkindly against her spine.

“You’re a disgrace. A moron.” Uileac continued agitating the fluid in her lungs as she retched. “I’m so ashamed of you.”

Ignoring the comments, Cerie gulped air that burned like liquor in her chest. She wheezed; the hands slowed, then turned to gentle patting.

Icky. I’d be revolted by Uileac putting his nasty mouth on me too.

If you’ve ever almost drowned or gotten water in your lungs, you know that feeling of burning fire in your chest. This makes it easier to remember that we are in Cerie’s POV, not some omniscient camera.

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Include interiority.

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Your character is a camera, but they are a camera with a brain. This is the most remarkable aspect of prose that TV or movies cannot replicate, and it is the number one way to fix TV brain. Which is why I have left it for last. What a tease I am.

Now, we don’t want excessive interiority. This is a problem that fanfic writers often have when they are transitioning to original fiction, because one of the charms of fanfiction is being able to reinterpret characters.

A sentence or two between interaction is plenty enough. If you’ve got a full half-page of a character musing to themselves, you need to chunk it up with actions or dialogue.

Let your characters think and mentally react to things during a scene. This keeps them feeling like fully fleshed-out individuals instead of cardboard cutouts.

If you have them doing a bunch of actions, slip in a thought or two. Consider how you often have random stray thoughts even in tense moments, like noticing the color of the sky outside the window or remembering something you have to do tomorrow. These digressions let us know what the character values and reminds us that they are a fallible human being, with the intrusive thoughts we are all known to suffer from at times.

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If you have multiple POVs, ensure each of them has a different thinking style.

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This is a bit more challenging and only applies if you have multiple POV characters, either in different books or within the same one. Doing this means understanding how your character thinks (because good characters think). Some people have a snarky inner voice, others are softer and gentler.

In Funeral of Hopes, we get to see Uileac’s inner monologue while he and Orrinir perform a training exposition for a bunch of first-year students:

Orrinir was still recovering from the failed downswing, shoulders rounded as if in pain. But Uileac hadn’t struck true—not even close. Maybe his husband was running out of energy this soon into the fight.

He had one chance to end this, hopefully without disemboweling the love of his life. Rushing Orrinir gave the man an opportunity to sidestep, and he’d be propelled right into the wall. Stupid as he’d look, it’d be better than keeping this up. The kids would learn something, anyway, though he wasn’t sure what.

Eking out a weak scream, Uileac charged toward Orrinir with his blade in front of him for a strong forward thrust.

But his partner did not move.

Orrinir had perhaps six seconds to change the outcome. Uileac had always been faster than his taller, heftier husband. With a running start and a big target, there would be little chance of missing. This dim horror dawned on him after he’d already committed to the strike.

Uileac is always thinking ahead: calculating, assessing weak spots, estimating how much time Orrinir has to sidestep.

We also see he’s a pretty prideful person, worried about looking stupid in front of a bunch of children. Even though he’s been getting his ass beat this whole fight because he’s a dumbass cavalryman and not skilled in swordplay.

Contrast this with Mordrek from What Is Cannot Be Unwritten, who is renowned for his gallows humor and constant mockery of pretty much everything – including himself.

Rock bottom. How appropriate.

He pushed against the ground with a burst of dying energy; his head exploded from the surface, and he gasped, reaching out for some ledge he wasn’t sure was there. Only a small spot of light trickled down from behind him, where a veil of rain replenished the pool from the cliffs above. Not enough to see the ends of this infernal cesspit that had lain dormant for centuries.

Like floating in the Melinun Sea, he told himself. Just lay on the water’s surface until he gathered more information or bumped into an edge. Spreading his arms and legs out, Mordrek reoriented himself to face the hole he’d fallen from, trying to identify how tall this cavern was. Perhaps half a story in height. The pool itself was maybe the depth of two average men. So about two-and-a-half Mordreks.

While Mordrek is also tactical, it’s not quite so cold and dispassionate as Uileac. He’s more self-deprecating with a sardonic twist that shows up even when he’s in serious peril.

That’s why it’s going to be so fun when these two idiots are forced to go on an adventure in the seventh book, Shadow and Sword. Fighting like cats and dogs! I can’t wait for their reluctant buddy-cop moment.

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If you really want to have a TV series, please do not think of books as some inferior stepping stone. They are completely separate art forms that require different approaches.

The best screen adaptations were from books that were originally meant as books. Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Outlander, Dune, and the Hunger Games series were all books that were never intended to be transferred to a visual format.

These beloved series may have beautiful storylines and settings, but turning them into movies or TV shows took expertise and planning. It was not a ready-made transition, and their richness came from the fact that they were perfectly suited to their original form. They became popular enough for film because the stories resonated emotionally, not visually.

TV brain books aren’t memorable because they don’t have the very things that make people want to adapt them. They don’t make anyone feel anything; they are too overwhelming because, as Lincoln Michel noted, they focus on mechanical descriptions and stacking visuals rather than interiority or beautiful prose.

Simply put, you are not going to get your book to the silver screen by mimicking the screen itself. There’s nothing wrong with dreaming about your books being turned into a movie series – I occasionally muse about that myself – but that should not be the primary focus. The focus should be on making a good book, not a knock-off of a nonexistent movie.
How to Avoid Plot Armor

April 22nd, 2026

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If you’ve never heard this term, it basically means that the character is always magically saved from consequences through wildly unrealistic and strange means. Whether that’s suddenly meeting a wise guru who gives them a solution, an enemy changing their mind and sparing the MC, or a freak accident that turns out as a blessing in disguise, too much plot armor and characters start to feel like little dolls rather than real people.

Now, I will admit that I enjoy some books with impenetrable plot armor. Danmei is notorious for this shtick, and I like danmei novels because I get to shut my brain off and be merrily led along.

Do these books have reread value? Not really. I enjoy them, but I don’t feel the need to luxuriate in them again. I don’t think much about these books when I’m done with them, other than perhaps envisioning non-plot-armored scenarios for the characters.

Plot armor often goes along with Mary Sues. The MC is the strongest and greatest and bestest ever who everyone loves and wants to save even after trying to kill them in the last chapter. Childish writing, fun for a little bit, but exhausting eventually.

You can write a book with plot armor if you want; it can, indeed, be fun. I can’t tell you what to do. But I can warn you that in certain genres, like literary fantasy (my specialty), it’s heavily frowned upon and you’ll be ripped apart.

So let’s see how to untangle that plot armor and create exciting consequences.

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Ensure that danger is survivable based on the realities of the world.

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Anyone who is on ground level within a 1-mile radius of a nuclear bomb detonation is going to die. There is no ifs, ands, or buts about that. They will be instantly vaporized due to the extreme heat and force unless they are in extremely, extremely specific circumstances, such as locked in a very deep bank vault that is reinforced with heavy metals.

Those within a five-mile radius will almost certainly die of radiation sickness, with only a scant few survivors who will be crippled for life. It is a gruesome, horrific death that is possibly one of the most painful things a person can suffer. And everyone within a 10-mile radius will suffer some sort of damage, whether that is broken bones from flying debris or third-degree burns over the majority of their body.

Having a character walk away unscathed from an air burst right above their heads is physically impossible. Readers will think you are stupid if you have a character crouch under a desk and then get up like nothing happened.

There are subtler versions of this, though, like having a character get pressed half to death and not suffer any long-term effects, or managing to talk their way out of a hostage situation with a world-renowned assassin.

Am I saying you can never ever have these kinds of miracles? I’m not. I can’t tell you what to do with your writing; you can have a million of them if you want. But readers will lose trust in you pretty fast, especially if several miracles occur in rapid succession.

To avoid accusations of plot armor, consider whether an injury or circumstance is survivable for the average person. People survive getting shot all the time, depending on how trained the shooter was and where the bullets penetrated. People have survived strokes, or heart attacks, or poisonings. They will have consequences (more on that later), but they can function.

This goes for fantasy settings as well. If you have insisted that one spell will absolutely, positively, certainly kill someone if it is cast correctly, then welp, that person has to die when they’re faced with a highly skilled spellcaster. Irreversible poisons are irreversible. Being in direct fire of a dragon is fatal. And so on and so on.

Since you are the one who created the rules for your world, your readers must trust that you will follow them. Constantly reversing course and hunting down loopholes makes readers lose interest. They may keep reading just because they want to see how many more of your own rules you break and roll their eyes at their ridiculousness. But they likely won’t want to read more of your work because they already know the jist: the character will survive anything and end up in a happily ever after.

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Give the character a real flaw, not just a pratfall.

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Don’t get me wrong: pratfalls are fun. These are little annoying habits or minor deficiencies, like not being able to cook or always having to make a bad joke. But if your character only has pratfalls, they may very well be a Mary Sue.

Realistic characters have fatal flaws. This could be laziness, a bad attitude, or excessive pride (looking at you, Mr. Uileac Korviridi). The fatal flaw gets them into trouble that other characters would easily bypass, but that they simply can’t because of who they are.

The interesting thing is that a character deficiency can become a strength in another circumstance. For example, a stubborn character can beat their head against the wall trying to solve a problem themselves. They could also be persistent in a circumstance where everyone else gave up, resulting in a well-earned victory. It’s the same trait but framed differently depending on the context.

Whatever conflict you choose, make sure it will grind against the character’s Jenga Block: their essential personality trait that determines how they move in the world. This molds the plot around the character rather than dragging them along without agency.

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Demonstrate – and utilize – a character’s primary skill.

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There are few things more annoying to me than when an author says a character is really good at something and then never shows them doing that thing. Every problem gets solved through some other means, possibly because the writer doesn’t know much about that particular topic.

If you are not intimately familiar with your subject matter, then read up on it more. You should not make up everything even if you are in fantasy or scifi. Keep things a little vague so you don’t constantly get called out for being stupid, but show us the character using the tools you already gave them.

Cerie Korviridi is a High Poet. Once she undergoes the Sigillum ritual, we see her using High Poetry to solve things. Not every problem that comes her way – otherwise High Poetry becomes a Mary Sue skill – but enough to keep peoples’ interest (I hope).

I, unlike some people who use poetry magic (cough cough), am a poet. I know poetry very well because I’ve been writing it for over 20 years. Writing the poems throughout the series – there will be over 100! – is a genuine pleasure for me, so I have no problem sharing them.

So whatever important skill that your character has, use it. This reduces plot armor because we can see that the character is equipped for the challenges they face.

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Spread competency amongst multiple characters.

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As I said before, plot armor is often closely associated with Mary Sues because the main character is somehow able to do everything they could possibly need to survive. They’re a healer, a fighter, a scholar, a schemer, and incredibly charismatic. Everyone wants to help them, so any issues they face are easily solved because they’re so special.

When we always know that a character will pull through mostly unscathed, then we lose interest. It’s impossible for them to fail because they just need to use one of their seven thousand skills.

But the story gets more interesting when someone else has the skills they need. Now the main character must build alliances, negotiate, and compromise. The other character could refuse to help at a pivotal moment, or be unavailable, or simply not have quite the level of skill required. We don’t know how they will react, but we do know that there will be conflict involved in extracting this utility.

My Plot Mountain method, which is mostly geared toward quest-type narratives, emphasizes that each member of the main cast should have a competency and a reason for being there. They may be a healer, a mystic, a badass knight, whatever. These strengths should be explained early on, before there is any danger, so that we’re familiar with what each character can do.

By highlighting their competencies, we are not surprised when they come up with a solution for a problem. This also prevents the issue of when characters randomly are able to save the day when no one ever suggested they were capable of that.

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Ensure proper foreshadowing to avoid lucky breaks.

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One common issue with plot armor is that lucky breaks come out of nowhere. There’s no logical reason for the protagonist to receive this reward; it was never hinted at or discussed.

For example, someone will magically hear a rumor that something works in a highly specific way that readers never would have guessed, and it just so happens to work that way several pages later. Or when a character is on the brink of death, someone just so happens to have a magical elixer that solves everything.

You can have these sudden reversals without being accused of plot armor – as long as the solution to the problem was hinted at earlier, and the character only needs to act on the information they already have.

In my next book, Absent All Light (coming June 23, 2026), Cerie gets into a sticky spot and needs healing from another High Poet. She does not randomly stumble onto a High Poet while in the wilderness; her mentor, Irith, mentioned an ally in the general area where Cerie was headed.

This way, Cerie goes, “Hey, Irith said something about a High Poet around here,” and they set off to find her. While it does end up fortuitous, Cerie knew that poet was nearby, so finding her was the logical choice.

If your character ends up being saved by a mysterious character, mention them earlier. If there’s a magical tool that fixes things, have it discussed in passing but dismissed. Readers will logically assume the Chekov’s Gun principle and guess that the info will be useful later. They’re then satisfied by the solution, even though they weren’t sure when it would become relevant.

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Ensure several coincidences lead to terrible outcomes.

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Plot armor characters are notorious for their interesting coincidences that always help them out. These happenstance encounters never have bad repercussions and neatly solve whatever the problem was so they don’t have to think about it again.

But coincidences become more interesting when we don’t know whether they will be helpful or harmful.

Let me give you an example of an awkward coincidence. I had a pretty weird and uncomfortable breakup with an ex who attended a university halfway across the state. By unfortunate chance, I ran into this ex at a restaurant while I was in town for a conference.

Neither of us expected to see one another; it’s a relatively large city, and we had not been in contact for months. Being the big coward I am, I had my friends pack up my food, ran back to the conference site, and ate my greasy noodles in stoic silence while everyone stared at me.

You could have your character run into an enemy while they’re out shopping, or they miss a bus and end up getting caught in a massive firefight. Wrong place and wrong time situations are far more interesting than right place, right time.

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Victories should include both benefits and consequences.

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High-stakes stories are interesting not because we think the protagonist is going to die if they don’t succeed, but because we suspect that there will be other issues that arise from the resolution. Things aren’t tied up with a neat bow, and there are tragic losses that can’t be reversed.

The hero may live, but the love interest dies. The world is saved, but thousands lost everything during the war. The dragon is dead, but it was so aggressive because it was guarding a clutch of eggs, and now everyone’s fighting about whether to kill the eggs too.

We typically expect that the protagonist is going to limp through the end because that is who we are following throughout the story. The story ends if the MC dies, unless there are multiple POVs. But everyone else is fair game, and the protagonist’s actions can have consequences we would not have expected.

And sometimes what we thought was a happy ending was actually a Phyrric victory. The protagonist loses so much of what is dear to them that, while the campaign was a success on paper, it feels more like a defeat. They may lose their agency, their sanity, their relationships and loved ones; everything they truly cared about is gone because they chose to pursue this endeavor.

My seventh book, Shadow and Sword, is very much what I am calling a consequences book. It is all about the fallout from the sixth book, which had a world-changing climax (yes really). Because the climax was so intense, I needed a whole other book to untangle all those threads.

As I am coming to learn, consequence books are extremely hard to write, which is likely why so many people refuse to do them. Building a new conflict on top of the old one requires some ingenuity, and I can’t constantly rehash the old plot or people will get bored. Still, I love being challenged, so I’m excited to dive in and explore all the loose threads from the sixth book, Poesy.

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Avoid “damsel in distress” syndrome by letting the character save themselves sometimes.

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Contary to the name, both male and female characters can be damsels in distress. Danmei novels, being primarily focused on gay relationships, typically have a damsel and a savior, though sometimes the situations reverse throughout the book.

This endless loop of saving and being saved gets annoying after a bit. Yes, sometimes a character will be utterly helpless and need someone else to swoop in – Orrinir’s sort of a damsel in the next book – but they should at least try to self-rescue.

Not only does this make it more interesting, but it also demonstrates agency and assures us that this MC was a good choice as a protagonist. A completely passive character doesn’t inspire sympathy, nor do we feel particularly bonded to them. If we wanted to see a lazy louch, we’d just open Facebook and watch people bitch about the problems they created.

If their self-rescue fails, then we see they don’t have plot armor. This is then a good opportunity to use the rest of your main cast to fix the problem, showing that the MC doesn’t have everything they need to succeed and must rely on others.

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Again, I’m not saying you can’t write a book with zero plot armor. In fact, I’m not saying you have to do anything at all. I’m not the ultimate truth in writing. Armored protagonists can be useful if that is something readers want; maybe they, like me, sometimes just want to be led along by the nose.

But other readerships are much more resistant to plot armor. They will complain if your characters never have problems, never suffer consequences, and always have the perfect solution. Knowing who you’re writing for and what kind of story you want to tell will ensure you satisfy your ideal audience while also building a more complex narrative.
Commitment and Execution: Avoiding Reader Frustration Through Expertise

April 18th, 2026
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This article comes to you from a personal complaint. A deeply frustrating, deeply personal complaint.

For over a year, I was waiting for the release of The Poet Empress, which is one of the few books I have found that uses poetry magic. The other one I have found is A Shadow In Summer, which I found unbearable.

I was hoping The Poet Empress avoided the mistakes of A Shadow In Summer. It did not. I kept pushing through to see whether the mistake was ever fixed. And it was not.

What was the mistake?

There were barely any poems. In a book about poetry magic.

Both of these books/series are framed around magical poetry … but the authors do everything possible to dance around actually having to do the poetry magic.

As of now, I have written over 100 original poems for The Eirenic Verses. While the first and second books don’t have that many, there are enough to ensure readers that no, the series doesn’t avoid poetry, and yes, there are likely to be more in the future. As the series continues, there are more and more poems included in each book, carefully integrated into the text so as to feel natural.

This is simple for me because I have been writing poetry for over 20 years at this point. And it deeply frustrates me that others won’t commit to their book’s premise but still expect a readership.

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There will be people who like the work, but they likely aren’t the ones you wanted.

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Now, I will note that The Poet Empress does have a good rating on Goodreads. But I also know that big publishers make this possible through nefarious means, and frankly, I don’t really trust star ratings much anymore. There have been far too many books that everyone screams about but that I find atrocious for me not to consider that, just maybe, publishers ensure their books never get poor ratings.

Still, people seemed to love it because it was, well, shallow, as I noted in my post about tradpub being cooked. It contains extremely graphic content but is written in an annoying YA style that is both very slow and very fast at the same time (strange, I know). And I suspect that many of them gave it such a high review because they liked how the book looked.

And they didn’t care that the book doesn’t have any poetry because they didn’t give a shit about that aspect anyway: they wanted the doomed romance and the evil MMC.

But more discerning readers clocked the exact same thing I did: there’s nothing about the power of writing itself. At all.

Others, while still glowing and squealing about it, did acknowledge that there’s almost no poetry magic at all.

And I am not glad about that. It’s a structural issue that the protagonist cannot do poetry magic: a convenient way to sidestep doing the very thing that the book is supposed to do.

Readers often seem to act as if a book’s structure was inevitable and there was no way to avoid its pitfalls, but that’s not true. The author here intentionally chose a structure that would avoid delivering on the premise, precisely so that she did not have to learn how to write poetry.

Which I have to ask, then: what’s the entire point of writing a book about poetry magic if you don’t like poetry?

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If you don’t like something enough to explore it, then you don’t like it enough to write about it.

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Simple as that. Do not write a book about a topic you don’t care about because you want dibs on a fresh idea.

People may like your book if they don’t know much about the topic. They’re not going to like if they do know a lot about the topic. The very people who could have become your champions are going to turn away in disappointment, never recommending your work to others in the field.

There’s a reason why certain books become cult classics and others don’t: because the author actually understood what they were talking about. Lewis Carroll was a mathematician who was fed up with weird math, so he wrote Alice in Wonderland to complain about it. Even though the story is allegorical, non-math people can still sense the logic behind it and feel there’s a greater theme, which builds intrigue.

Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi is iconic because he was a steamboat operator before writing the book. It feels grounded and real, a genuine travelogue by someone who understood each twist of the river.

You cannot fake that authenticity, and adept readers will feel that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

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You have to show the premise of the book, not simply describe it.

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Someone coming to a book about poetry magic is not going to expect poetry magic every single page, but they’re going to expect at least one example. Or at least some poetry.

I think I remember there being three singular poems in The Poet Empress, which is almost 400 pages. So one poem per 133 pages. And, most importantly, none of them were magical. We were simply told that poetry magic was happening but never allowed to see it.

Even in the climax, where the protagonist wields this supposedly incredible magic poem, we don’t get to see it. We’re told it has amazing effects and that it solves the problem, etc etc.

Then why can’t the author narrate it for us?

I’m assuming two possibilities. First, the author simply doesn’t feel comfortable writing poetry and so would rather say it happened. Second, the publisher asked for the poems to be removed. But I’m leaning toward the first, because I would assume a publisher would realize the significance of poetry – and had allowed several other poems.

This leads to an important lesson, obviously. The premise must be visible. You must show it happening, not just say it happens.

If your character loves horses, they have to interact with horses. If they are a physicist, then have them talk physics. Otherwise, it seems like you don’t know what you’re talking about, which automatically reduces trust.

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Authenticity matters in fantasy, too.

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Other reviewers complained that The Poet Empress also did not accurately depict the court dynamics it was based upon, leading to weak and confusing worldbuilding.

I’m sure that some will hand-wave this away by claiming that it’s fine because the book is fantasy. In fact, I suspect this is why so many younger writers want to pursue fantasy: they think it means less work since they don’t have to research anything.

But I do not ascribe to the idea that your worldbuilding can just be whatever you feel like, especially when you’re clearly working within a remix of a real-world place. This makes for chaotic, muddled settings that feel cobbled together rather than coherent places.

For example, if you have a setting that is meant to be a fantasy version of ancient China, why would you have corn? It’s indigenous to North and South America. Ancient Chinese people weren’t eating corn because they didn’t know what it was. Corn didn’t arrive to other continents until the 1500s at the very, very earliest.

Breme is based on Mongolia. It is not a perfect one-to-one depiction and I never claim it is. However, I work hard to imbue authenticity through the climate, the produce, the foods, and so on. There’s a little Easter egg in Funeral of Hopes where I reference a smoked herb from traditional Mongolian medicine that is meant to improve sexual stamina.

Did anyone else catch that or care? Probably not. I don’t think I have a big Mongolian readership. But these little details matter, if only to suggest a certain relationship to herbal medicine. People don’t need to know what exactly that is to feel authenticity; it creates a subconscious sense of, “Oh, okay, this is something unique to the world and the culture.”

You don’t have to be perfect and you don’t have to adhere one-to-one with whatever culture influenced the setting. But readers will sense something is off if you regularly introduce things that don’t quite fit into the atmosphere you want to portray.

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For best results, actually try everything you show in the books – or at least immerse yourself in the subject.

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I am not an expert in every single activity from the Eirenic Verses, but I’ve tried almost all of them, which includes:
- Archery
- Poetry (of course)
- Swordfighting (via Kendo)
- Horseback riding
- Rock climbing
- Rappelling
- Kayaking (briefly mentioned in later books)
- Caving
And, as I mentioned in my post about therapeutic writing, the mutilation and near-drowning scenes lean into my own past.

There are several sailing scenes in the eighth book, so I intend to take some sailing lessons this summer. Thankfully, I live right next to Lake Erie, so though sailing is expensive, the conduit for it is accessible.

Writers often complain about the whole “write what you know” mantra, claiming it’s classist or that people are assuming you have to spend two decades learning something. Not true. You just have to try it at least a few times. That’s all.

No one is expecting you to become a perfect expert in things you write about, especially if you keep it a little bit vague. Understanding the movements and the feeling of it is what really matters, and much of the more technical aspects can be glossed over. After all, if your readers wanted nonfiction on the subject, they would pick up a different book.

So just give it a shot. Find a cheap or free class in your area and commit to at least a few lessons.

If that’s completely impossible, then watch videos of people doing it and lurk on Reddits about the topic.

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On some topics, guided coursework can be valuable.

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I am not vain enough to claim that I’m a world-class expert in my themes, but I do have professional training in the things I discuss. I have a Master’s degree in International Relations and a Bachelor’s in English Literature. I’ve taken courses in gender studies, postcolonialism, political economy, and world religions.

I don’t use IR terms in my books because readers would not care and don’t want to have to look those up. It’s the setup and structure that matters here. The political systems are coherent but background figures. There is subtle tension between agrarian and nomadic communities. Spycraft is ubiquitous. People get eaten up by systems they don’t fully understand.

I’m not saying you need to get a PhD in whatever topic you’re writing about, but you need to be somewhat familiar with it. Write down a list of all your themes and come up with an action plan to learn more about them.

At least read some nonfiction books on the subject. Take a free course online. Consider how this can make your work deeper.

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Everyday life and relationships can provide valuable intel for your books.

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And lastly, here’s something accessible to everyone. The subtle sensory details you infuse in your books can provide incredible richness that can’t be faked.

For example, have you ever noticed how when it’s extremely cold, you can hear snowflakes falling? They tinkle a little bit. Having lived in the Midwest my whole life, I’m highly familiar with this. Or when leaves are turning and some of them are halfway green, halfway red.

Consider how people don’t say what they really mean most of the time. Half of conversations are just people sliding across one another, both trying not to share too much. There is plentiful shorthand we use to avoid talking about serious issues, as I discussed in my avoiding therapy speak post.

Or think about all the ways people say “I love you” without saying it, whether that’s making someone their favorite meal or promising to be back soon. These moments are far more impactful than simply saying “I love you” all the time, as that tends to lose its polish after a while.

Consider the ways you can tell someone has a crush on you but won’t say anything, and how you encourage or avoid the subject.

Again, these are things that sort of need to be experienced; textual knowledge can’t suffice. If you want someone to feel the feelings in your book, you need to feel them first.

This is another reason why I caution people from debuting too early – unless you’re leaning toward YA. I would argue it becomes more difficult to write YA the further you get into adulthood because it’s hard to embody that feeling unless you have a bunch of teens in your life. Things get foggy and confused with your adult feelings over time.

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There are few things I hate more than being burned by a book I was excited to read. It genuinely stings. Perhaps people have experienced that with my books, too, but I would hope not.

If you do not know what you are talking about on a deep level, you will burn some readers, and they won’t want to read anything else you produce. I will not be reading any further books by that above mentioned author because I recognize she isn’t willing to delve into her subject matter.

Writing is hard. I wouldn’t have over 140 blog posts on this website if writing were easy and anyone could do it. Mastering the craft doesn’t just take time writing and practicing, but also time learning and experiencing a plethora of other things that can inform your work.

At a certain level, writing is no longer a hobby or occupation but a lifestyle, one that requires consistent, sustained focus. I have dedicated my entire life to it. Maybe some don’t want to do that, and that’s reasonable, but the commitment is what creates high-quality products. Not something that will disappoint the very people you wanted to woo.
Writing Research Notes: Trauma Aftermath

April 11th, 2026

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Warning: obviously I’m talking about trauma here. It’s clear from the title. I don’t go into explicit or excruciating detail, but if you don’t like talking about these serious topics, then this is not the post for you. I’m not censoring myself on my own website. Carry on.

Anyway, trauma. We love to impose it on our characters. Many readers lap it up. And for some of us, writing about trauma is a form of therapy to soothe our own wounds.

But here’s the issue. Authors often reach for the most obvious forms of trauma, like sexual assault or murder, rather than digging deep and finding different elements to talk about. In doing so, they leave blind spots in the fiction space, losing opportunities to connect with readers who may not have ever seen their own experiences mirrored.

Today, I’m talking about the aftermath of these traumas here, not the experience “in the trenches,” so to speak. Too many focus only on the immediate suffering rather than the subtler reverberations througout a person’s life. Probably because showing bad things happening on the page is more exciting and obvious, while showing the long-term effects requires care and precision.

You can reverse-engineer the reality of these experiences from my suggestions, but I often find it most interesting to see how a person lives after the active suffering has ended and they have to go their own way. That’s where I am in my stage of life, and that’s what I want to discuss.

Today, I’m going to share some possibilities of different types of trauma you could represent in your work. This isn’t an exhaustive list; there are others I may not have considered. I’m also not the Arbiter of Trauma, so there may be unique experiences I haven’t encountered before. Consider this a tasting menu rather than a full deep dive.

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A quick recap/disclaimer

I did a full article into how to respectfully portray trauma, and all my caveats there still apply.

Do your research and speak to survivors. Balance the trauma you include rather than using every single type of trauma ever. Rely on trauma-informed beta readers who can ensure you’re not becoming melodramatic. Represent the person first and the trauma second.

If you’re unsure whether you’re doing it right, please feel free to review the above linked post.

I’m not explaining every nuance of these experiences here because that is beyond the scope of the post and is not necessarily about how to write them. You will need to do your own research.

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Self-Harm

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Self-harm is a form of control that is often seen in adolescent girls, similar to eating disorders. This isn’t to say that everyone who self-harms or suffers from anorexia/bulimia is a teen girl, but that’s the primary demographic. Women tend to turn their suffering inward rather than outward because that’s how we’re socialized to deal with our feelings.

When the environment is chaotic and painful, we seek forms of pain that we can control and thus metabolize our suffering into something we can understand. It also serves as a form of self-punishment, contextualizing the feeling of being “wrong” and “bad” into a physical sign.

This, of course, leaves lasting repercussions for our psyche, not to mention our bodies.

Potential topics to explore:

Feeling guilt or discomfort with one’s scars.

Constantly covering up to avoid showing anyone.

Embracing them as a part of your life history.

Intrusive questions about why you would do that to yourself; shock and horror from others that causes shame.

Being forced to educate others about the etiology of self-harm when you don’t want to.

“White knighting” from others who see you as “broken” or in need of care.

Perverse sadness when scars start to fade, perhaps causing urges to make new ones.

Sudden and overwhelming urges to self-harm again when you’re faced with extreme emotions.

Being forced to find new coping strategies.

Getting addicted to tattoos or piercings as a way to safely experience the same high.

Surprise when other things hurt because you thought you had a higher pain threshold.

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Emotional Incest

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Emotional incest occurs when an adult, typically a parent, relies heavily on a child for their emotional regulation and self-esteem. It may be associated with sexual incest, or it may not. Many “boy moms” are emotionally incestuous, and there are often weird romantic overtones.

A child should never be responsible for an adult’s emotional comfort; a parent should have the skills to self-soothe and the adult community necessary to process their feelings. Unfortunately, a lot of parents are basically children themselves and don’t bother developing their own self-esteem, instead sticking it on their kids. This then results in a vicious cycle of children parenting children unless the victim identifies the issue and treats it.

Potential topics to explore:

Trouble understanding the difference between healthy relationships and codependency.

Confusion when others have a healthy relationship with their parents, particularly the gender of the incestuous parent.

Difficulty with close, intimate friendships, perhaps crossing boundaries without meaning to.

Unease with others of the incestuous parent’s gender.

Intrusive thoughts about sexual or romantic activities with people who match the incestuous parent’s description.

Need to “reparent” and rebuild healthy boundaries.

Learned helplessness and a pattern of codependence in romantic relationships.

Shunning romantic relationships for fear of being hurt, consumed, or erased.

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Medical Neglect

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Whether it’s because your shitty parent didn’t take you to the doctor when you were growing up, or constant belittling from the medical industry, many people (especially women and people of color) do not get the high-quality medical care they deserve. This often leads to fear around medical treatment, delayed diagnosis, and shame from others who don’t understand why you won’t just go to the damn doctor.

Potential topics to explore:

Feeling the need to handle all pain without medical intervention because you haven’t been taught to go to the doctor.

“Toughing it out” as both a badge of pride and a constant frustration.

Fear, suspicion, and dislike of the medical industry.

Delayed reactions to pain; realizing years later that you’re in pain due to an old injury that never healed.

Being surprised when an old pain resurfaces and struggling to connect where it comes from.

Delayed diagnoses due to refusing treatment.

Treating primary care as a waste of time, resulting in severe consequences later.

Others being surprised and horrified when you admit that you underwent a serious illness without medical intervention.

Dismissive and judgmental comments from medical professionals who don’t understand why you didn’t come in sooner or get your needs met earlier.

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Delayed Mental Health Diagnoses

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Going along with the above, many (again, especially women and people of color) are not diagnosed with mental illnesses until much later in life. Prompt intervention would have saved them years of discomfort and feeling out of place, but now they’re forced to pick up the pieces and try to figure out how to move forward.

Potential topics to explore:

Retracing your life history and seeing how the signs were always there despite how everyone ignored them.

Constantly feeling out of place and like an alien among others.

Overpathologizing yourself and seeing everything as a symptom of your disorder.

Wanting to tell everyone about your diagnosis as a way to prove that you’re not “broken.”

Overidentifying with the diagnosis and making it your entire personality.

Conversely, not wanting to tell anyone for fear of being called a faker.

Being forced to relearn everything in light of new information.

Avoiding community because you want to be “not like other girls.”

Feeling helpless and overwhelmed by the amount of information available on the condition; wondering why you didn’t see it before.

Anger and resentment toward the medical industry and your loved ones for not intervening sooner.

Avoiding information about the disorder because it destabilizes your sense of self.

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Being Disowned/Ambiguous Loss

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According to Psychology Today, about half of LGBTQ people are estranged from at least one family member, which is markedly higher than the general population. Homophobia and transphobia are alive and well.

This creates something called ambiguous loss, where the person is alive but can’t be accessed, either by choice or for safety reasons. Ambiguous loss is something society simply doesn’t talk about; it’s another form of disenfranchised grief, as we’ll talk about in a minute. And it causes a remarkable sort of pain that is almost more excruciating than someone dying.

Potential topics to explore:

Pressure from others to “leave the past in the past” and reconcile before it’s “too late.”

Waves of resentment, anger, and sorrow about how you were treated.

Questioning your own life history and wondering whether it was really as bad as you thought.

Going back and forth between wanting to punish the perpetrator and wanting to be left alone.

Spiteful, petty commentary about the person; wanting to see them suffer.

Sense of loss that you didn’t get have the childhood you wanted.

Anger that you don’t see your experiences portrayed by others.

Resentment toward those who had a happy childhood or who don’t have experiences that you do.

Overidentifying as a victim; feeling like a martyr and uniquely persecuted.

Trying to compete with others who have trauma and proving you had it worse than them.

Dismissing others’ experiences or insisting that they can’t understand how you feel.

Ruminating on how much different you would have been if you had been treated well.

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Disenfranchised Grief/Parental Estrangement

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There are many forms of disenfranchised grief, such as miscarriages or pets dying, but I’m mostly talking about when an estranged or abusive parent passes away. You can likely universalize this with some tweaks, but I’m not going to overstep my bounds.

Disenfranchised grief was the topic of my book, Funeral of Hopes, wherein Orrinir struggles about whether to reconcile with his abusive, estranged father who is dying of alcoholism-related disease. So, if you’d like to see this advice in action, you can take a gander at my book.

Potential topics to explore:

Feeling like you don’t have the “right” to grieve because you didn’t want contact with the person before they died.

Wondering if reconciliation would have fixed anything or made you feel better.

Feeling like it was your fault or you weren’t good enough.

Feeling broken, wrong, alien, or unwanted.

Struggle to accept consolation or sympathy from other people.

Anger and grief at the person’s death.

Unspoken feelings that you don’t want to express to others.

If you’re still in contact with another relative, shame or embarrassment that they’re not “enough” for you.

Revisiting old memories and wondering if you overreacted.

Longing for praise from the person who is now gone (similar to ambiguous loss).

Vacillating between wanting to have the last word and wanting to move on.

Frustration that others offer sympathy without truly understanding how you feel.

Feeling you need to feel a certain way for your grief to be valid.

Feeling nothing, and feeling bad for feeling nothing.

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Survivor’s Guilt

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Survivor’s guilt doesn’t just come from surviving a car accident; it can arise from many circumstances. That could be living through a war, watching a loved one die of a disease, or fleeing from a school shooting.

The other person doesn’t even need to die from the issue; they could instead be horribly maimed or be left with lifelong disabilities. Regardless, when someone suffers and we don’t, it causes its own form of suffering.

Potential topics to explore:

Feeling like you live on borrowed time.

Thinking you must avenge the other or live in their stead.

Feeling bad that you feel bad because “nothing happened to you.”

A sense of responsibility for the other person’s memory or safeguarding their legacy.

Constant “what ifs” about how the incident occurred and what would have made you die instead.

Resentment that you’re left to pick up the pieces or care for the other person.

Sense of invincibility or magical thinking about being called to a higher purpose because you survived.

Anger at the unfairness or the caprice of fate.

Worrying about fate or wondering if your time will be “revoked” if you make a poor decision.

Anxiety about not being good enough to have survived.

Hypercompetency and obsession with doing more with your life.

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Childhood Bullying

Years of anti-bullying PSAs have made a big dent in childhood bullying, but what about those who didn’t have the luxury of parental or teacher oversight? These harmful comments end up living with us for years until we address them ourselves, impacting our self-esteem and how we engage with others.

Unfortunately, people often stop caring about the issue once the victim is all grown up, assuming we’ll get over it. But without dedicated treatment, these wounds fester.

Potential topics to explore:

Obsession with being liked and likable, often removing parts of one’s personality that would be undesirable.

Fawning behaviors and overagreeableness.

Placing yourself in uncomfortable positions because you’re afraid to speak up.

Fear that no one really likes you or that they’re always laughing about your behind your back.

Trouble accepting praise or assuming there’s going to be a hidden cost.

Difficulty making friends; feeling awkward and out of place.

Needing constant reassurance.

Shunning friendship because it feels fake.

Always waiting for people to turn on you; difficulty trusting anyone’s intentions.

Brushing past your own accomplishments or not wanting to talk about yourself with anyone.

Constant worries about being “too much,” whether that is talking too much or being needy.

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Limerence (from the Limerent Object’s Perspective)

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Essentially, limerence is a form of “romantic” obsession with a fantasy version of a human, called the Limerent Object (LO). It’s not love, but rather a type of delusion where the limerent makes up a perfect caricature of someone they know (or think they know).

Limerents are happy to tell you all about how badly they suffer and how miserable they are, as you can see over on the r/limerence subreddit. So we don’t really need to talk about them. I’m talking instead about how the Limerent Object (who may not even know they are an LO) feels.

Potential topics to explore:

Paranoia about other people watching you; always feeling surveilled.

Trouble setting boundaries with the limerent.

Discomfort with the situation, but fear of hurting their feelings.

Cognitive dissonance about how the person sees you versus how you really are.

Pressure from others to “play nice,” pursue a relationship, or accept their attention as positive.

Nagging feeling of something being off but not being sure how to address it.

Being gaslit into thinking that the situation is normal from those who don’t understand what limerence is.

Loneliness because you can’t put the experience into words or underscore its severity.

Anger with the person for being delusional and treating you like an object.

Avoiding any situation where you have to be into contact with the person.

Fawning and freezing behaviors when the limerent acts inappropriately, like touching you without consent or making sexual comments.

Damage to other relationships, including mutual friendships.

Sense of loss, especially if you had a friendship with the limerent before they turned on you.

Concern for the limerent’s mental health and helplessness because intervening would make it worse.

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Humans treat each other terribly, and many things are beyond our control. Trauma can manifest almost anywhere that bad things happen, whether that is fantasy fiction or books set in our world.

You don’t have to limit yourself to capital-t Trauma. As long as you address the issues with respect and care, you can open up a brand new world of interesting insights through your work.
Writing Research Notes: Bipolar

March 21st, 2026
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This post was published on Tumblr on September 20, 2024

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age 19 and had a psychotic episode at age 21, so I’d like to say I know a bit about what I’m talking about. And I’m a writer! So today, I’d like to provide some facts about bipolar as a jumping-off point for your research.

This is just my opinion as someone who has lived with bipolar for a long time. Everyone experiences bipolar a bit differently, so not everything I mention will apply to everyone, and my own story may not reflect every single bipolar person. With that disclaimer, let’s go.

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Types of Bipolar Disorder

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Bipolar is typically separated into two types. What kind you have depends on your predisposition to either extreme: mania or depression.

Bipolar 1

People with Bipolar 1 tend to have more severe manic episodes and less severe depressive episodes. They are more predisposed to experience psychotic episodes, though psychosis can happen in Bipolar 2 as well. Bipolar 1 patients may only have very brief depressive episodes or they may only experience their “baseline” and mania. (As an aside, I have Bipolar 1.)

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Bipolar 2

People with Bipolar 2 lean more toward depressive episodes. They may experience hypomania, which is a less severe form of mania, but their primary symptom will be depression.

It’s important to note that while many say Bipolar 1 is more severe because of the manic episodes and risk of psychosis, this does not discount the extreme suffering that can result from Bipolar 2. Patients with Bipolar 2 have just as many struggles as Bipolar 1 patients.

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Phases of Bipolar

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Depression

This works much the same as the typical depression that people with Major Depressive Disorder experience, but bipolar patients may be more agitated, self-destructive, and aggressive when depressed.

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Hypomania

This is the “less severe” version of mania. This is demonstrated by DIG-FAST: distractibility, impulsivity, grandiosity, flight of ideas, activity increases, sleeplessness, and talkativeness. These happen in full mania too, but to a greater extent.

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Mania

A more severe, destructive version of hypomania: everything is dialed up to 11. People may become hypersexual, spend money they don’t have, destroy relationships, make inappropriate comments at work, or even fly into destructive rages.

Mania can be terrifying, both for the sufferer and for those around them. You can be so extremely happy that it’s almost painful, or so angry that you feel like you’re going to tear your own skin off.

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Psychosis

This typically is the “end result” of mania which happens to about 50% of people experiencing a manic episode. It is typified by delusions and hallucinations. We’ll discuss these a bit more later.

Contrary to popular belief, psychotic hallucinations are typically auditory, not visual, though visual hallucinations can occur as well. Other strange and less common hallucinations include olfactory (smelling things that aren’t there), gustatory (tasting things that aren’t there), or sensory (feeling people touching you).

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Euthymia

This is the normal, calm state in between depressive and manic episodes, where one has a sense of well-being and stability. It is the goal of therapy and medication management.

However, experiencing euthymia doesn’t mean that the bipolar disorder is gone: it just means that it is in remission. Bipolar patients must always be on alert for warning signs of mania and be active participants in their own care.

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Warning Signs of Mania

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Manic episodes often come with prodomes, symptoms that appear before full-blown mania.

Bipolar patients and their families should be on alert for these warning signs and, if they continue to occur for more than a week or so, schedule an appointment with the patient’s psychiatrist to see if they need a higher medication dosage.

Here are some common signs that happen before full-blown mania:

Feeling either really great or really terrible for no reason. Sometimes you can feel really great and really terrible at the same time. It’s a very weird feeling.

Functioning well on little sleep for days on end. Not just one sleepless night, but being able to go to work and function on like 4 hours of sleep night after night.

Increased or decreased appetite. Either you hate food or it’s the most important thing in your life. Can fluctuate day by day.

Increased productivity. You’re getting soooo much done and so quickly! (It probably sucks but we’ll put that aside for now.) You just want to work on your passion projects constantly.

Sudden interest in multiple new hobbies all at once, and throwing yourself into them with such passion that it’s scary.

Weird physical symptoms. You may find yourself locked into a position and not want to move, or your skin may feel odd, like it’s too tight or prickly.

Sudden bouts of tinnitus. It sounds really weird, but it’s been proven to be a sign of impending mania along with the skin symptoms I mentioned before.

Your eyes look different. Your pupils are always dilated.

Not everyone will get all of these, but most people will have at least one trigger that happens to them every time before a manic episode. For me, it was hypergraphia (because of course it was).

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Symptoms of Mania

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Not all of these symptoms will happen to everyone, and every manic episode can be a little different. It all really depends on who you are. Now, I must say that anyone, bipolar or not, can have these symptoms. It is the intensity of them that defines mania.

Being physically incapable of sleeping.

It’s not insomnia like normal people experience, where you pop a melatonin or do some breathing exercises and manage to fall asleep. You cannot fall asleep.

Becoming extremely focused on random things, projects, and subjects.

For me, it was cleaning the house: I started throwing out old photos that I thought we didn’t need because I didn’t want any clutter. I would sweep the floor for hours at a time.

I also got really obsessed with Neolithic Scotland of all things. Now I can’t even remember half the shit I learned.

Hypersexuality, overspending, and kleptomania.

Unintentional pregnancies, STDs, and a whole lot of bad feelings can come from this.

Many people will go into extreme debt because of their mania, especially if they don’t have family support.

Other bipolar people feel an uncontrollable urge to steal things they didn’t even need to: they could afford it, they just wanted the thrill of stealing it.

Worsening of any addictions or developing new addictions.

Especially seen in gambling addictions because, well, you already want to spend a lot of money and it’s an extreme dopamine hit.

Sudden and intense aggression or emotional volatility.

Normally calm and relaxed people will go off the deep end about pretty much anything: screaming, throwing things, and then bursting into tears out of guilt.

Feeling invincible, or terrified of everything.

Manic people are convinced that nothing bad could ever happen to them and they can do whatever they want. Think of someone running into traffic, sure that no one will hit them.

On the other hand, others became terrified of random things or situations that never bothered them before. This can happen to the same person, sometimes simultaneously. You may believe everything is a threat, even when there is no clear and obvious threat.

Talking extremely fast and in an extremely disconnected way.

This is called flight of ideas; you start jumping from one discussion to another in ways that other people can’t follow. Your brain has made that leap but can’t articulate it for other people.

Shiny eyes.

You really can see mania in the eyes; it’s very unsettling. Manic eyes look dark, wide, and shimmery.

Mania can cause amnesia afterward, and the person may not remember large swathes of what happened, or it will feel “dream-like” and confusing. Of course, they’ve got some major damage control to do that can plummet them into depression.

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Symptoms of Psychosis

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Again, just like with mania, not everyone will experience all of these. If a person has multiple psychotic episodes, each one may be a bit different every time.

I’m going to separate this into several sections: common delusions, common hallucinations, and Other symptoms (which are often not discussed as much).

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Common Delusions

Delusions can shift throughout the course of a psychotic episode, seamlessly morphing from one to another without clear cause.

With psychoanalysis, one can often find that there are “seeds” of a delusion in the person’s everyday life, and they may be connected to current events. For example, someone may think they’re the reincarnation of a previous president during a presidential election.

Grandiosity
- Being god or a reincarnation of a famous person
- A belief that they have found the “key” to the universe and that everything is connected by some vast conspiracy
- Having some special role to play or a special status
- Being a member of a special community
- Having special knowledge or insight into issues, like world affairs
- Being ageless, immortal, or invincible
- Having a special connection with a celebrity, famous person, fictional character, people you know, or even strangers
Paranoia
- Being surveilled by a government entity, sometimes with the belief that they have had tracking devices installed without their consent
- Being stalked, harassed, or tormented by unknown entities or by strangers (gang-stalking)
- Being persecuted for a certain identity
- Being ill with another disease, like cancer or dementia
- A sense that loved ones have been replaced with clones or copies
- Believing that there is a secret “play” going on and other people are playing along with a secret “script”
- Believing other people can hear your thoughts, or that you can hear theirs
- A sense that a person’s face is not their “real” face and they are wearing a mask
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Common Hallucinations

Auditory
- Repeating noises, words, or phrases in distinct voices
- Spectral, unhearable music
- Nonexistent environmental noises, like train whistles or construction sounds
- “Ear worms” that loop for days or weeks
- Humming, whirring, or ringing
Visual
- Mutated or blurry faces, even of people you know well
- Haloes, auras, sparkles, flashes, and black spots
- Colorful lights, ribbons, or strings
- Seeing people you know who could not feasibly be there, like old coworkers, old partners, or deceased relatives
- Vague blurry shapes, or distinct monster-like entities
- Strangely shaped or mutated animals or people
- “String people,” “stick people,” or “void people”
- Shadows and skittering bugs, rodents, or snakes, often black or blurry
Tactile
- Bugs or small creatures crawling on the skin
- Itchiness or grittiness on the skin
- Light feathery touches along the skin, especially on the back or hands
- Goosebumps with no clear cause that don’t go away
- Sense that the mouth is full when nothing is there
- Prickly tongue
Gustatory
- Bad smells, like feces, garbage, body odor, or burning plastic
- Good smells, often those from childhood
- Losing sense of smell or taste
- Metallic taste (may be a medication side effect)
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Other Symptoms
- Muscle stiffness
- Catatonia
- Slurred or fast speech
- Lack of appetite
- Weight loss
- Migraines
- Parkinsonian symptoms (tremors)
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How Bipolar Is Treated

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Bipolar is treated in a few ways, with the most important and prominent being medication.

Medication

Bipolar is typically treated with mood stabilizers, which is a vague class that includes anticonvulsants, SSRIs, SNRIs, and other groups of medications. (The medication I use, Lamictal, is an anticonvulsant.)

Psychiatrists must be very careful when prescribing antidepressants for Bipolar I patients because too much can bring on mania. Bipolar 1 patients will often have an antipsychotic added to their regimen as well. There are new classes of drugs that combine antidepressants with antipsychotics for a one-and-done deal.

Bipolar patients may also have antianxiety medications added to their regimen.

Psychosis is a medical emergency and must be treated as soon as possible. Fast-acting antipsychotics can be injected in the emergency room to stablize a psychotic patient. They may also use tranquilizers to calm a paranoid or combative patient.

Like with schizophrenia, patients who are not medication-compliant may opt for a long-lasting antipsychotic injection that only needs to be done once a month or once every three months.

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Therapy

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A history of trauma is one of the things that predisposes a person to bipolar disorder, so working on this can help reduce symptoms. EMDR therapy can be a safe and effective way to process trauma for bipolar patients.

However, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) doesn’t work very well for bipolar patients because, well, their cognitive distortions are brought about by chemical changes in the brain, not just seeing the world “wrong.”

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy is a better choice for bipolar patients because it helps them become more aware of their thoughts and, therefore, better able to manage their emotions.

Other options include equine-assisted therapy (my favorite!), art therapy, and family therapy to help build a stronger support system.

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Lifestyle Changes

All the stuff that helps “normal” people can help bipolar patients, too. For example, having a set routine, eating well, setting and keeping a bedtime, getting exercise, and eating well are all crucial for managing bipolar, in addition to medication and therapy.

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Common Myths About Bipolar

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Bipolar people are dangerous and never get better.

Not necessarily true, though common media depictions show this as if all bipolar people are roving murderers.

In fact, bipolar people are more likely to kill themselves than anyone else: it has the highest suicide rate of any psychiatric illness, about 20 to 30 times more than the general population.

Bipolar comes with other issues, like executive dysfunction, that cannot always be managed or treated. BUT bipolar people very much can become stable and mostly asymptomatic with the right treatment.

A caveat, though. Even if you are in remission, you still have bipolar disorder and can relapse at any time. It is a brain dysfunction that causes measurable structural differences in the brain which do not go away.

Medication is a crutch and bipolar people can get better by themselves.

Wrong. Just like someone doesn’t magically get better from Type I Diabetes without treatment, bipolar people need medication.

Again, just like someone with Type I diabetes, you can’t just will the bipolar away. It is a chronic illness with genetic, epigenetic, and lifestyle factors. You need treatment.

Medication turns bipolar people into emotionless zombies.

Incorrect, with a caveat. The wrong dosage or type of medication very much can make someone into a zombie; I’ve certainly felt that way before. However, the correct treatment allows bipolar people to thrive and stay stable for years to come.

Once you snap out of psychosis/mania, you’re right back to normal.

Wrong. You don’t just wake up and are not psychotic anymore. It takes time for your brain to equalize and come back to baseline. I remember it as feeling like I was rising out of a long, long sleep.

Mania or depression causes brain changes that can last years after the episode. On average, the brain damage from mania exists for up to seven years after the last episode, and it worsens with each subsequent episode.

Any fluctuation in mood is a symptom of bipolar.

This is so, so, so annoying. Bipolar people are allowed to have bad days just like anyone else. If I’m having a shitty day but I’m not throwing phones at people, then I’m probably just having a bad day. If I’m really happy, it doesn’t mean I’m manic.

Bipolar people can’t help it and shouldn’t be punished for their actions.

What I like to say is that my bipolar doesn’t excuse my behavior, but it does explain it. Never use it as an excuse to be an asshole.

Everything about bipolar is terrible.

Wrong! Bipolar can have benefits like creativity, empathy, good problem-solving, and a unique perspective on life. A stable bipolar person can be a delight to be around. But these don’t discount the downsides and should not be a reason to refuse treatment.

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How to Create an Authentic Bipolar Character

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Do your research.

Read a mixture of medical journals, stories from bipolar people, and good depictions of bipolar disorder in the media. Go beyond what I have discussed here and seek out good, peer-reviewed research.

Create the character first, then add the bipolar.

Don’t add bipolar just for the shock value. This is annoying.

Every bipolar person is different, just like every person is different. Get a feel for your character and then determine how they might act when manic or depressed.

Use an array of symptoms.

Don’t just go for “ooooh scary monster in the corner of my eye” because that’s boring and overdone. Look through the list I provided and consider how you can fit a few of them in there.

Remember that it takes time to recover from an episode.

You should not just have your character wake up one day and be cured. They will feel “off” for a while after an episode, like a very very long hangover.

Consider medication symptoms.

Decide what medication they will use and then look up the symptoms. Demonstrate how this makes them feel and whether it makes them want to continue treatment.

Think about how a character feels about their bipolar.

Some people don’t think it’s a problem because they like the energy, and others are terrified of relapsing. Some see it as a challenge to be overcome, and others find it to be a burden that they want to be rid of. And many will feel all of these at different times.

Show the impact on other characters.

Remember that your other characters are seeing and reacting to this. They may be terrified, frustrated, hurt, dismissive, or not want to deal with it.

Demonstrate times of stability, too.

Too many people use bipolar as an “ooooh soo sad” (especially psychosis) and don’t show the character just being a normal human being.

Show the ableism bipolar people face.

Yes, we do face ableism. People calling us crazy, denying us medical care, passing us up for jobs, or my very least favorite, “have you taken your meds today?”

Remember that many people are not medication compliant.

Medication compliance is one of the number one indicators of whether a person will stay stable long term. If your character refuses to take their medication, then they are more likely to relapse.

People have many reasons for not accepting treatment: they don’t like the way it feels, they’re embarrassed, they don’t see it as a problem, or they can’t afford it (some of these meds can be hundreds of dollars a month even with insurance). So make sure to explain why they are medication non-compliant.

And that’s about it. I hope you learned something that will help you create more realistic (and compassionate) fiction.
How To Write Strong Female Characters

March 18th, 2026
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

This post was originally posted on Tumblr on August 27, 2024.

Let’s get right into it without any preamble. Here are the main points we will be discussing:
- Trauma is not a stand-in for a personality.
- Strong does not always mean argumentative and/or stoic.
- Strong female characters do not necessarily have to be warriors or powerful leaders.
- Expertise can make strength.
- Even tough characters have moments of weakness.
- Being emotional does not negate strength.
- Give each strong female character a secret goal that gets in the way.
As usual, this is my opinion, I’m not the absolute source of writing information, you’re free to disagree, etc etc. Okay. Let’s go.

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What do I mean by “strong female character?”

When I say “strong female character,” I do not necessarily mean warrior badass. Instead, I’m talking about female characters who can hold a narrative on their own; who are not mere background pieces for a man, but who are fully-fledged and interesting people on their own.

These are characters that we love and think about fondly, no matter what genre they come from. They are not simple walking tropes, but interesting individuals who we want to understand and explore across a series.

My own beloved female character, Cerie Korviridi, is a strong woman who only grows more powerful over the series. We watch her grow into her own, and it’s all due to these simple tips.

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Trauma is not a stand-in for personality.

Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels.com

This happens with male characters too, but it seems to be an absolute curse when it comes to female characters. A lot of writers think that we’ll magically know a character is ~tough~ and ~resilient~ by telling us that they were abused as a child or having them be sexually assaulted on the page.

In all reality, trauma can blunt your personality. A lot (but not all) of people who were abused, especially as children, become numb and quiet and withdrawn. They lose personality, not gain it. There are so many people who just walk around in a daze because they haven’t processed their trauma, and it makes them less interesting as characters because … they’re not feeling or doing anything. (Again, not all, but some, or even many.)

I recently started a book that I gave up on because the author literally did a flashback just to show the female character being raped. Like, that was supposed to really do something for us. It was supposed to show us her character or something.

Well, it didn’t do anything but tell me that the author really wanted to write a rape scene. How am I supposed to take you, or the character, or the book seriously if you have to shove my face in it like “LOOK! There’s her personality!! Traumatized girl!! Feel bad for her!”

Some of the best books I have read with female characters who have gone through trauma don’t show it. Like at all. We feel their pain as aftershocks; we know it happened; but we’re seeing them for themselves, not for the horrible things that happened to them. This way, we understand how it informed their personality, but the trauma itself is not serving as the personality. It is serving as an explanation for why they are the way they are.

This takes more work, yes, but that’s the point: you can’t just lean on the trauma as a crutch. You have to create a personality and then twist it, or at least color it with what happened to them.

You’re totally free to give your character trauma. You’re free to discuss uncomfortable topics; in fact, if you’re comfortable with doing so, you should, in order to give better awareness to the topic. But you have to ask yourself if it’s actually necessary to show us the blood and guts on-page. Does it really do much for the character development to grab your reader by the face and make them watch?

My typical ethos (and again this is just my opinion) is that past character trauma does not need to be shown in flashbacks, but current character trauma can certainly happen on-page if you feel it’s necessary. This is especially true if we have already come to like the character; then we feel bad for them and we know they already have a personality.

If you’re going into flashbacks to show us fucked-up things that don’t necessarily have anything to do with the current plot, maybe you should ask yourself why you want to do that.

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Strong does not always mean argumentative and/or stoic.

Photo by Afif Ramdhasuma on Pexels.com

One of my very favorite female characters I have ever written, Asari, is the gentlest, sweetest lady ever. I don’t think I ever had her yell at anyone during the time that I wrote her, even in the worst situations.

She isn’t stoic, nor is she bold and brash; her strength comes from her calm. Asari exudes this commanding energy without raising her voice, nor does she hide her feelings.

In the same vein, one of my favorite female characters is Marta Cabrera from Knives Out. Why do I like her and consider her a strong female character? Because she’s nice but not a pushover. She’s excellent at her job (something I’ll discuss in a minute) and genuinely cares about people, and that’s why she prevails.

Marta does the right thing even when it would screw her over; yes, she fucks up and gets scared sometimes, but when it matters most, she follows her heart.

Kindness and softness can be its own kind of power, even if it’s not necessarily a cool and flashy kind. There are many different kinds of strength, even if we generally only see certain kinds depicted in media.

It takes strength to be kind in this cruel, fucked-up world. Stoic unemotional people are taking the easy way out by numbing their feelings and refusing to connect with others, and it makes them feel flat and uninteresting. The most interesting female characters are those that truly, deeply care about others.

You can make an interesting, complex, and enjoyable female character that people want to root for without making them loudmouth badasses.

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Strong female characters do not necessarily need to be warriors or powerful leaders.

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This should be a given but, for some reason, it does not always seem to be the case. Someone thinks “strong female character” and immediately goes “give that lady a sword!”

Sure, you can give the lady a sword. I’m always for beautiful women with swords. But this doesn’t automatically make them a strong female character.

In fact, a lot of the time, Girl With Sword just comes across as a different type of substitution: brute force replaces personality rather than trauma. Someone assumes that just because the girl is hacking through monsters, she’s automatically a good, strong, powerful character, but that’s not true.

Another of my favorite female characters is Temperance Brennan (from the books, not the show). Honestly, they did her so dirty in the Bones: she’s not this cold, stoic badass in the books. In fact, she’s just a normal lady who is really good at her job and who really, really cares about getting answers for things, even when it’s not her job to do so.

In the grand scheme of things, Temperance Brennan isn’t some powerful leader who can change the whole world; she’s solving one crime at a time in different locations around the US and Canada. She’s brilliant in forensic anthropology and can notice clues that no one else does due to her experience and keen eye.

I’d like to challenge you to break the paradigm of the strong female character being the Chosen One, the ultimate badass, the most importantest lady there ever was. Think about how you can make a strong character without just “wow she’s so tough and she’s so fierce and she’s so special.”

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Expertise can make strength.

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This one is more challenging because it requires you to become an expert in what you’re talking about, and to balance that expertise with creating interesting characters.

The Temperance Brennan books are so great because Dr. Kathy Reichs herself is actually a forensic anthropologist. An incredible forensic anthropologist who testified before the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal about the Rwandan genocide and who helped identify victims at the World Trade Center. She’s a truly awe-inspiring woman and a damn good writer.

Dr. Reichs’ experience infuses the entire series with this sense of gravitas. You can feel that she knows what she’s doing, and that, by extension, Temperance Brennan knows what she’s doing. This, in addition to having a well-rounded personality, makes Temperance a great character because we understand that she worked very hard to get to where she is: she had to face a lot of challenges and setbacks to become such an expert.

One reason that this creates a strong female character is because to become good at anything, you need to believe in yourself, at least a little. You have to have persistence and not give up when shit gets hard; plus, you have to be very passionate about what you’re doing or, again, you’ll just give up.

Having authority in any field creates strength that you can lean on, and it also presupposes certain character traits that got your character to where they are right now.

A character that has an earned accomplishment, not just a Chosen One, is going to have some heft to them by dint of knowing shit. Of course, you need to give you some other traits, too; they could be shy but brilliant, and they had to overcome some of their shyness to get where they are. Or they could be really lazy but they were so curious about this one singular thing that it consumed them. That makes for interesting characters.

If you don’t have any special expertise, that’s okay: it just means that if you want to create a strong character based on their experience, you need to do some research and talk to people who know what they’re doing.

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Even tough characters have moments of weakness.

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A pitfall that many writers fall into is thinking that their characters have to be strong all the damn time and can never cry, get upset, yell, have a little freakout moment.

The strongest woman I know is my mother. She survived 20 years of domestic violence and went on to get two Master’s degrees in her 50s while working full-time, and she’s now doing a PhD program in Death Studies. In her work, she has helped some of the largest companies in the world implement enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, which I can’t even explain to you how it works frankly.

Truly a very accomplished woman, and my absolute inspiration. However, she certainly has her bad moments. Of course she does – she’s a human being! When our family dog died, she was an inconsolable wreck, as were all of us. I’ve seen her ranting about the dumbest things, and she’s a total baby about any form of physical pain.

This does not make her any less of a strong person, nor does it make me respect her less. In fact, it makes me remember that she is very accomplished and strong despite having all the same stupid human temptations that we all do.

Characters aren’t people, but we want them to feel like people. That means letting them have a little cry once in a while, or screw up, or say something stupid and regret it. It doesn’t make them weak; it makes them complex.

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Being emotional does not negate strength.

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Let us look at the ultimate magical girl: Sailor Moon. Usagi Tsukino is the archetype Cancerian who cries about fucking everything. She’s such a big disaster baby, but she’s also a very strong female character, and part of the reason she’s a strong female character is because she is a big disaster baby.

Usagi shows that you can feel deeply without it making you a lesser person; in fact, part of the reason that she’s so tough is because she channels her energy into her magical persona.

All of the Sailor Scouts are quite emotional in their own way, which makes sense because, you know, they’re teenagers. They get upset and cry, or yell at each other and have fights, but it doesn’t get in the way of what they need to do.

We like Usagi and root for her because she puts her whole heart out there and doesn’t pretend that she doesn’t have feelings. She just oozes emotion all the time, and part of her journey is learning how to make her emotions work for her rather than the other way around.

It’s not necessary to make your female characters stoic, empty, and unaffectionate. They can be loving and kind without it detracting from their power.

As I have said before in other posts, people read fiction to feel things. Even if we don’t necessarily admire or enjoy a certain character, we’re going to have strong feelings about them if they show emotions. This is because human beings have mirror neurons that become activated when we see emotions. Characters feeling things makes us feel things. That develops a bond with them and, when combined with other character elements, makes for memorable characters.

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Give each strong female character a secret goal that gets in the way.

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Typically, a character’s goal, especially if they are the MC, is obvious and straightforward. They want to save the world, or solve a mystery, or get the boy, or whatever. But strong characters often have a secret goal that is at odds with their ultimate quest, and it is this push-pull between their outward goal and their secret inner goal that creates complexity.

The secret inner goal may not even be necessarily known to the character; its mere existence will cause internal strife that leaks out into their actions.

For example, let’s say that we have a typical saving-the-world girl character. Perhaps their side quest is to find love. But what’s their secret goal? Maybe it’s finding a sense of belonging, having been a black sheep as a little girl.

Will saving the world fix that? Probably not, because now she stands alone; she may be loved and revered, but she’s also apart from other people by this brand-new status. She’s accepted yes, but she doesn’t necessarily belong.

Maybe her secret goal is to come to terms with her past. Will saving the world fix that? It could; perhaps it helps her accept that she can’t save everyone, but she can save as many as she can.

Or, perhaps, her secret goal is to feel normal. This is a nebulous term that means different things to different people. Saving the world will probably not make her feel normal, because now she’s a superhuman freak. So here we have her struggling to feel normal when she is decidedly even less normal than before.

Perhaps we see her trying to shape this newly-saved world into something that will make her feel that normalcy, and in doing so, she becomes a tyrant. That’s a fascinating problem to have!

The most satisfying triumphs are the ones where, against all odds, the character manages to get both. In a bittersweet ending, they may achieve the secret goal but fail at the outward goal. It may also be a tragedy if they achieve their outward goal but, in doing so, have to sacrifice the secret goal.

Most importantly, the secret goal needs to be secret. It can’t be outwardly stated because then it’s not a secret goal anymore. By holding it close, you perfume this story with a longing and tugging; you develop internal contradictions that make us wonder what the character is thinking or why they do things that may seem contraindicative to their ultimate goal.

Some possible secret goals include:
- Having a family (whatever that means to the character)
- Feeling wanted
- Feeling normal
- Feeling adequate
- Developing self-love
- Overcoming imposter syndrome
- Getting revenge for a past slight
- Living up to expectations
- Forgiving themselves for past mistakes
- Honoring someone’s memory
- Paying back a previous kindness
- Healing old wounds
That’s about it. Again, these are all my opinions based on my experience. I’m not telling you how to write your book or saying you can’t do anything.
The Writer-Psychologist: Literature as Therapy

March 14th, 2026

I often joke that in a different universe, I’m a psychologist. The human mind in all its permutation has been a persistent fascination throughout my life, perhaps because I have bipolar disorder and have spent a lot of time in therapy. Understanding my mind isn’t just an idle curiosity, but a necessity if I am to remain well.

As such, it should come as no surprise that I am also fascinated by what my work reveals about me. I don’t just think about what themes I place in my books, but also why I do so. Sometimes I’m not sure, but many times, I’m perfectly aware – and helpless to stop doing that.

Writing has been very therapeutic for me, and I doubt I’d be as healthy as I am without it. You have likely noticed the same thing in yourself, which means you can use this insight for self-improvement.

I will note that this is a more personal post than others; after all, I can’t very well discuss the therapeutic benefits of writing without sharing some of what it has done for me. But I still believe you’ll gain some benefit from reading it and that it may resonate with you.

Let’s examine some ways that writing can serve as its own form of therapy, especially around untangling our subconscious. By doing so, we can make fresher and more enticing work that remains true to our unique voice.

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The themes in our work often reveal past experiences that we have struggled to overcome.

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As I mentioned in an Authoriview post, I have multiple characters almost drown in my books because I myself almost drowned when I was younger – and a friend of mine actually did drown around that same time. I’ve wrestled on and off with survivor’s guilt because of this; it feels very unfair that I lived while she died. I’m glad I did, of course, but I can’t help but feel that our fates were switched somehow, and I’m living the life she should have had.

I firmly believe that if something continually crops up in your work – a scenario, a theme, an idea – that’s something your subconscious wants to work through. Maybe you have multiple characters get betrayed by someone they love, or several people fall off cliffs, and so on.

Was this something you experienced before? Perhaps it’s time to go to therapy and work through that so that you can stop repeating that theme in your work. This will allow you to move on and find new themes to discuss, keeping your writing from getting repetitive.

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We don’t write just what we know, but also what we want to know.

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Most of my works focus not on finding a partner, but keeping one. Yes, we see Uileac and Orrinir get together, but this is only a tiny part of their entire character arc, while the rest of it is an established relationship.

It probably doesn’t shock you, then, to hear that I have been single for most of my adult life. Sure, I’ve had my flings here and there, but nothing as enduring as what these two characters share.

For many people, writing is wish fulfillment; that’s why we have the entire trope of Mary Sues. If we did not crave power, beauty, or inner strength, then we wouldn’t want so badly to make our characters reflect this.

I believe that our characters are primarily a combination of what we have and what we want. We write perspectives we can understand, but we also provide those characters with the tools and benefits that we might lack, that we believe will help us reach those statuses.

What do your characters always have that you don’t? Is it a close circle of loved ones, a biting wit, an ethereal beauty? Of course, it might not be possible to achieve those things, but what if you could use your characters as an action plan to close the gap between what you have and what you want?

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We may also use our stories to explore questions whose answers have evaded us.

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Later on in the Eirenic Verses, I have a sociopath character. Daiski Aina, bastard son of the Sinan royal family, has no conscience. He does whatever he wants without concern for how it may hurt others; there’s a reptilian quality about him. This is especially evident in his eyes, which I repeatedly discuss as being dark and soulless.

Sociopaths have a particular look about their eyes, as I know well. There’s a vacancy behind them, especially when they’re angry. Something’s missing there, a quality we can’t quite define except by its absence.

Some readers may scoff at the “simplicity” of a sociopath character. After all, isn’t that the true definition of evil: to have no conscience or empathy? I don’t think it’s quite that simple, though.

Much as people may want to ignore it, about 4% of the Western population are sociopaths. Daiski works as a character because he is very real. You’ve met someone like him, even if you don’t know it.

I was raised by a sociopath, as I mention in my birthday post about Funeral of Hopes. This has something I have struggled with throughout my life because no matter how hard I try to understand, I simply cannot comprehend why someone would so easily hurt others and feel no remorse. I can’t understand how someone could batter their own flesh and blood without blinking.

Reading the book The Sociopath Next Door provided me significant relief and insight, but I continue to wrestle with the concept of sociopathy. Every time I stop to let a deer cross the road, or offer to help with something even though I don’t want to, or listen to someone prattle on about something I don’t care about to be nice, I wonder what it would feel like to not have that urge.

It’s a chilling thought as someone who prides herself on empathy. And I can’t help but consider what quirk of fate allowed me to develop this quality despite having some of the genetic markers that would create sociopathy.

Your existential squabbles may not be so visceral or evident, but I’m sure they’re there somewhere.

What’s a question that you constantly return to in each of your works? Is it the nature of evil, the possibility of impossible bargains, the concept of fate? Have you gained deeper insight by exploring this, or has it only frustrated you more?

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Each of our characters’ flaws represents one of our shadow sides.

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Everyone, whether they like it or not, has a dark side. I’m not saying you’re evil, nor that you may have any propensity to violence; don’t think I believe your fiction makes you a bad person. (I’ll discuss that more in a minute.)

Rather, I adhere to Stephen King’s principle of characterization: that our characters’ flaws and mistakes mirror one of our personal weaknesses. King said candidly that The Shining reflected his struggle with alcoholism and the demon it unleashes in him, albeit with a supernatural twist.

All my characters have something I don’t like about myself. I’ve said before that Uileac Korviridi is most like me because of his temperamental nature, but I’ve revised that: I think Cerie is.

Her holier-than-though attitude and rigid thinking most closely parallels my own downfall, which is that I really struggle to accept differing opinions because I’m so convinced that I’m right. I’m an extremely judgmental person, much as I try not to be. Everything has to be how I want it, or it’s bad; others who don’t think like me must be wrong.

This isn’t unusal for a bipolar person. Black-and-white thinking is one of our most glaring cognitive distortions, and it also reflects childhood trauma. I’m stuck in a lower developmental stage, even as I try to unglue myself from these preconceptions. I can see others’ perspectives and recognize why they may think that way, but I can’t stop my knee-jerk reaction to judge them as wrong.

But depicting this isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it makes your characters more relatable because others also struggle with these problems. A genuine flaw allows your characters to make realistic mistakes and exert pressure on the plot that moves it forward, all without resorting to idiot plots.

Pursuing this to its natural end can reveal opportunities for you to grow in real life by considering the negative impacts of your character flaws – and workshopping solutions.

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We can explore the grotesque.

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Part of the reason I don’t think our writing necessarily reflects our proclivity for evil is because, well, I’m not an evil person. I feel bad about killing gnats. You’re not going to find me torturing anyone any time soon.

But I torture my characters a lot. In What Is Cannot Be Unwritten, Mordrek undergoes a horrific interrogation where he actually pisses himself. Cerie eventually gets her fingernails ripped out, like all High Poets, and I show this in vivid technicolor. There are other pretty grotesque scenes throughout the series.

And no, I don’t provide trigger warnings for any of these. My readers are adults, and I trust them to stop reading if something is too uncomfortable for them.

But why do I write such disturbing things? Am I sadist who gets off on these scenes?

No. I don’t feel any different about writing torture than I do about any other scene. Sometimes it makes me wince or grimace, but I don’t go to sleep at night cringing – or feeling particularly satisfied.

The reason I write so many disturbing things is because I know such disturbing things exist in real life. People do get tortured like that. People die in awful ways. It is senseless, evil, and unfair.

I am not going to be one of those people who says, “Life is hard. Suck it up, buttercup.” But I’m also not going to be one of those people who thinks that fiction should be all sunshine and rainbows and happy endings.

Fiction is a safe way to conceptualize the horrible – to accept that it exists and that, unfortunately, we can’t stop it all. The best we can do, at times, is refusing to look away.

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Fiction enables us to safely release painful experiences.

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In the book Happy Death Club, Westerman notes that trauma survivors are often drawn to horror because it allows us to relieve those painful feelings in a safe way. This has been proven, time and time again, in my writing.

I write so much about mutilation because I self-harmed for about a decade. I have a deep burn on my wrist from over 15 years ago that will probably be on my body, in some capacity, forever.

When my characters are branded, burned, or cut, I am drawing from my own experiences of doing the same thing. That’s why those scenes feel real in a way that some authors can’t quite pull off.

Of course, I would never, ever encourage you to do that to yourself in hopes of making your writing more visceral. The myth of the martyr-artist extends to self-harm, too.

One might think that someone who has done this to herself wouldn’t want to relive it, but the opposite is true. When I think of relapsing, I write a torture scene, and then I never want to do it again.

Through branding, burning, and cutting characters, I am able to channel those urges in a safe way. Perhaps not very safe for my readers, but it definitely reduces my desire to relapse.

I remember, viscerally, both the pain and the extreme endorphin rush that made me feel sick. So I don’t feel the need to do it in real life anymore.

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Writing is a way to rewrite the past and build a better future.

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One of the most powerful aspects of writing is that it allows us to re-explore things that happened to us and, in a way, retell them to better fit our desires. This is something that is common in the therapeutic process as well.

People often don’t realize that each time we remember something, we rewrite it. The more we recall a period in our lives, the more permeable it comes and the more likely it is to be overlaid by new experiences.

Our reflections become colored with our current cognitive state, just like Tame Impala sings in “Lost in Yesterday:” eventually terrible memories turn into great ones.

This is often an unconscious process, but you can make it a conscious one, as I have throughout my writing career.

If something bad happened to you in the past with a non-optimal outcome, you can change that in a story you write. For example, I was bullied as a child, but I never stood up for myself. In 9 Years Yearning, Uileac gets bullied by Paint, but instead of lying down and taking it, he whips out a sword and attacks his attackers. Said bullies then get dressed down in front of the whole school for breaking the codes of valor. How absolutely cathartic, yet plot-appropriate!

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Writing is not a substitute for professional support in working through your problems. A good therapist can be invaluable for your healing journey and provide an objective perspective on your cognitive distortions. But writing can be a powerful adjunct to professional guidance, letting you process those insights on your own time.

I have benefited tremendously from my writing. To my greatest pleasure, readers have reached out to discuss how my work has helped them, too. I think you’ll find that in baring your soul to others, you can serve as a mirror for their problems, accelerating the social healing process for everyone who comes across your books.