Latest / Show, don't Tell Writing with Suzy Vadori / 120. Character Agency for Introverted and Secondary Characters (Part 2)

Transcript

120. Character Agency for Introverted and Secondary Characters (Part 2) · Show, don't Tell Writing with Suzy Vadori

• 0:05
  Welcome to the Show, Don't Tell writing podcast with me, Suzy Vadori, where I peel back the layers of how to wow your readers with your fiction, your nonfiction.
• 0:13
  Anybody can bang out a first draft, but it takes a little more work to make your book as amazing as it can be.
• 0:20
  Join me as I share the step-by-step writing techniques you could apply to your writing right away, as I host successful writers who share a behind-the-scenes look at their own writing lives, and as I live coach writers on their pages, giving practical writing examples that will make your own writing stronger.
• 0:38
  Nobody is born knowing how to write an engaging book.
• 0:42
  There are real and important skills that you need to learn.
• 0:45
  On this show, I cut through the noise and get you all the info you need.
• 0:49
  I can't wait to see how this information is going to transform your writing Today we're talking about a topic that's near and dear to my heart, and that is agency for your characters, like character agency in your books.
• 1:02
  And I know it's a topic that felt really nebulous to me for a long time, and now I can see it really clearly.
• 1:09
  When I was at When Words Collide last month, I had the opportunity to hang out with Natalie Pohlson, my colleague from Ottawa, who I had never met in person, but we'd worked together online for a while.
• 1:20
  And, uh, we started to geek out a little bit about this topic, and I was like,"She's the perfect person to have this discussion with," because we think about it a little bit differently.
• 1:30
  But we're gonna get into the nuts and bolts of it.
• 1:33
  So in this discussion, if you are struggling with agency, if you've ever been told that you have it, that you don't have it in your characters and you're like, "What is it exactly?" We're gonna talk about it not in really nebulous terms, but in really specific terms.
• 1:47
  What can you do in your scenes?
• 1:48
  What does it look like?
• 1:49
  What about this?
• 1:50
  What about that?
• 1:51
  What about in different genres?
• 1:52
  So stay tuned for this one.
• 1:54
  If you've ever wondered about it or if you're thinking about it in your current work in progress, in a future work in progress, if you want to make sure that your characters are driving the story forward and that you're immersing your readers as much as possible, this one you cannot skip.
• 2:08
  Natalie Pohlson is a writer, and she's also an Author Accelerator certified book coach like me.
• 2:14
  She works with women writing historical and speculative fiction, although we talk about all kinds of genres in this episode, who know that there's a better version of their story hiding inside the draft that they have.
• 2:25
  She guides writers to reconnect with the heart of their story and revise toward it with confidence.
• 2:30
  Natalie's graduate degree in education and background in communications shape how she listens and supports writers.
• 2:36
  She's absolutely amazing.
• 2:37
  She lives in Ottawa, Canada, in a family steeped in story with filmmakers, musicians, gamers, and jokesters alike.
• 2:45
  Most days you'll find her researching her latest novel with a cup of Earl Grey and her golden retriever at her feet.
• 2:51
  I just wanted to talk a little bit about, you said, you know, they can go backward as well, 'cause they can, absolutely, and we don't- not everything is in a straight line, and we wanna throw obstacles.
• 3:02
  But when you're looking at your entire book as a whole, we do wanna throw lots of obstacles, but we don't wanna always be going back,'cause that can also be frustrating.
• 3:10
  Like, uh, I like to say like once or twice that we take a huge step backward.
• 3:15
  If you're doing it every scene, like they go forward and back and f- it just starts to feel like a yo-yo.
• 3:20
  Everything's an arc, right?
• 3:21
  We wanna- Yeah… kind of smooth those things out.
• 3:24
  Okay.
• 3:26
  So do secondary characters get agency?
• 3:29
  Does that matter?
• 3:30
  'Cause we've been talking a lot about your protagonist, right?
• 3:33
  This is a question that I have not thought about, and I'm glad that you asked.
• 3:36
  But, so if agency is about your character acting in pursuit of their goal- Secondary characters would have agency in pursuit of their own goals.
• 3:50
  So like an, an antagonist should have agency- Yeah, absolutely … and we should understand why they're doing what they're doing.
• 3:56
  And this, and any point of view characters, like if you're kind of- Yeah … going back and forth between point of view characters, they need to have it.
• 4:02
  It doesn't need to be as, you know, as well-developed sometimes- No as the protag- like as your, you know, main character.
• 4:09
  But yeah, they definitely do.
• 4:12
  And they could be, and that's where it's kind of fun, 'cause they can be, they can play off one another.
• 4:17
  And that's where especially, you know, if you're looking at like a romance, for example, with dual point of view, and you've got the two different love interests, whether that be male/male, female/female, male/female, whatever it is, then if they want different things, that's where the fun part comes in,'cause we're like, "Oh my gosh, they are not on the same page," and it's super frustrating.
• 4:37
  Yeah.
• 4:37
  Same thing.
• 4:38
  Yeah.
• 4:38
  Yeah.
• 4:39
  The, it, you can play with that a lot.
• 4:42
  If everybody wants the same thing in life, I think that'd be boring.
• 4:45
  Like, I, I can't think of an example where we've got a lot of different characters who all want the same thing.
• 4:50
  Like you said, you need an antagonist somewhere in there.
• 4:52
  I wanna just explore fully this characteristics that are diff- more difficult.
• 4:57
  You talked about historical constraints.
• 4:59
  What about the example, because I get this all the time.
• 5:02
  I, I mean, I'm, it's kind of a joke.
• 5:05
  Angela Ackerman said it in her session, and she were there.
• 5:08
  She called me out and said, "Oh, writers are all introverts." And then she's like, "Except Suzy Bador." And so I, I know that I'm the exception, but i- in general, writers and probably a lot of our listeners tend to be introverted, and we wanna show characters that are like ourselves.
• 5:24
  And so I get this argument a lot when I talk about agency with writers that, "But Suzy, my person isn't gonna be gregarious and like go out and like order people around and make all these decisions and all these things. I wanna show introversion." Do you wanna t- I wanna talk about this, 'cause it's really cool things that you can do for wallflowers.
• 5:43
  Like, if your literal character arc is going from wallflower to ruling the world or whatever that character arc is, how do you show that?
• 5:52
  Because I think this is something that stumps a lot of writers, where they think that they don't have agency or that they can't give their character agency, and it's- Yeah, it's a good question.
• 6:03
  I think, I mean, there's a lot of things that you can play with, and this is where we circle back around to the idea of interiority.
• 6:11
  But you can show things like internal resistance.
• 6:15
  You can show defiance or a choice to be silent.
• 6:19
  You can show, you can have surrogate agency.
• 6:22
  If You Emnet by Maggie O'Farrell is one of my favorite novels, and one of the things that the main protagonist, I'm gonna call her Agnes because I can't actually do the pronunciation properly, but one of the things that she does is she sets up this conversation so that her brother is the one that convinces her husband to go to London and try to become a playwright.
• 6:48
  So that kind of surrogate agency where you're setting up other people to do things that, in pursuit of your goal.
• 6:55
  We talked a little bit about complicity or non-action.
• 6:58
  If we understand that's a choice, if we understand the choice and why, then that works, so long as it's, it's kind of related to the character's goal.
• 7:09
  Yeah, also, so there's a really great book called Confessions of, I don't know if it's Franny or Fanny Langton.
• 7:18
  It's a really fantastic book out of the UK, and it's about a woman who was raised enslaved and goes to London and becomes free, but then is charged with the murder of the people that she's working for.
• 7:30
  And throughout a lot of that book, because of her circumstances, she doesn't have a lot of agency.
• 7:37
  Stuff is happening.
• 7:38
  She's got swept up in the decisions that other people are making.
• 7:42
  But there is a kind of framing of the novel where she has narrative control, and she is telling the story, and she makes it very clear from the beginning, this is not, I'm gonna use the word slaves because that's the word that's used in the, in the novel.
• 7:58
  It's just like, this is not a slave tale.
• 8:00
  This is not a tale for you to pity me or do any of these things.
• 8:03
  And she really kind of takes control of her own story and the telling of it, even though some of the events sometimes are things that, you know, are happening to her and not things that she is affecting.
• 8:17
  I'm not entirely sure if that answers your question, but I think that there's ways- It does… of playing with agency, of playing character kind of- We understand why they're making choices, even if they might be quite small choices.
• 8:35
  It could be like when to talk or who to trust, when to be silent.
• 8:39
  All of those are things that can be moving them toward or further from their goal.
• 8:45
  Absolutely, and I think, you know, for all of you out there who are listening to this and, and recognizing themselves and saying, "Oh, I'm trying to write a character like myself, I don't see that enough," I can tell you, I mean, in my household, we've got three teenagers.
• 8:59
  I guess my oldest is now no longer a teenager, she's in her 20s now.
• 9:03
  But I have two extreme introverts in my family, and th- when I say extreme, I only say that because anybody compared to me is introverted.
• 9:11
  But I've got two kids who are kinda more extroverted.
• 9:14
  But I can tell you, those two, they've got opinions.
• 9:16
  It's not like they're just floating through life the way that people who tend to, you know, show introversion.
• 9:22
  They have strong opinions.
• 9:23
  They think stuff, and they want stuff, and they have all the ig- all the hallmarks of agency, absolutely.
• 9:30
  But their actual presentation of it is different.
• 9:32
  So you're absolutely right, Natalie.
• 9:34
  The, the gift that we have in writing and that you gotta get good at, especially if you wanna show something like that, is interiority, which, I mean, we're throwing around this word.
• 9:43
  I'll define it as I do for everything on this podcast, so if you're new to the space, interiority is simply the idea that we can hear their inner thoughts, right?
• 9:52
  And it's one of the five elements of writing that we have, which are setting, dialogue, actions, reactions, inner thoughts.
• 9:59
  If you are not using a lot of inner thoughts in your book right now, learn it, because in modern writing, that is what we need, right?
• 10:07
  That is what we need to connect.
• 10:08
  We are competing with And if you're comparing yourself to a book that's 20 years old, you may not see this as much, but this is where it's going, especially … Well, I'll make the exception, as I'm sure Natalie's gonna say.
• 10:20
  If you're writing literary, if you're writing even upmarket, there may be other rules, but in genre fiction right now, you need to have that, that inner thought, inner thought.
• 10:28
  We gotta be right there in that close perspective.
• 10:31
  That doesn't mean you have to write in first person.
• 10:33
  You can write in third person close.
• 10:35
  But that is what's selling right now because that is what people are craving, is to be inside that character's life.
• 10:42
  Yeah, and interiority, I mean, it is about their inner thoughts, but it's also about It's like the way that your character is processing their world.
• 10:50
  If, if they're … If you have a description about an ugly green couch, that ugly is their interiority.
• 10:58
  It's their judgment.
• 11:00
  So it's like what they're thinking, but also how they're assessing their situation.
• 11:05
  It's kind of their whole worldview that is bringing them as a fully formed character onto the page, and nothing is kind of objective.
• 11:15
  No, and don't be afraid to splash their point of view all over the place, right?
• 11:19
  Like, what would they see that somebody else wouldn't see?
• 11:22
  And exactly, what, what do they think?
• 11:25
  A lot of times it's really important, you know, it's all related to agency.
• 11:28
  We're kind of going on a tangent, which I tend to do, and you, you know, this is great.
• 11:33
  But their view of things and what they think of them is really important because, in a lot of times, you know, let's say that there is a war that starts in your book.
• 11:43
  What they think of it is actually important because it, it informs your reader how to think about it.
• 11:49
  I don't know whether that's good because it's going to evoke change that's needed, or whether it's dangerous, right?
• 11:56
  Like, I don't know what your character thinks, and I don't know what to think.
• 11:59
  And so if you just- Yeah … leave the facts there without coloring it with their point of view, then yeah, you have kind of an issue because then the reader's kind of like, "How do I feel about this war?
• 12:07
  I don't know.
• 12:08
  Who am I, whose side am I on?
• 12:10
  What do I, what do I think?" Yeah.
• 12:11
  "What do I feel?" Yeah.
• 12:12
  They're spending a lot of time in their own head rather than in your character's.
• 12:16
  Absolutely.
• 12:16
  And the whole point of fiction is for them to be in your character's lived experience.
• 12:22
  Okay.
• 12:23
  So let's talk about, we've talked a little bit about overall goals.
• 12:26
  What does your character want?
• 12:27
  And that can change throughout your novel, right?
• 12:30
  Like, that might change, and I would caution writers, if you're gonna change it, make sure that you open a new want before you resolve it, 'cause otherwise everything's hunky dory and it's resolved, and your reader's like, "Ah, my character's fine.
• 12:42
  I'll just go take a nap," and then maybe we won't pick it up again.
• 12:45
  So always make sure that they want something.
• 12:47
  But how does that relate to scene level goals and agency within a scene?
• 12:53
  Well, I think that's such a good question because I think your character does probably have a, a main kind of story-level goal that is, the whole plot is revolving around, but they should also have scene-level goals.
• 13:07
  And so I always, when I'm working with a writer or in my own writing, I have like a whole kind of spreadsheet template, and I always ask, like, what is this character expecting to happen as they go into this scene?
• 13:22
  What are they, like, kind of bringing to it with their energy that they're bringing to this?
• 13:26
  What actually happened?
• 13:28
  And what is the main point of conflict?
• 13:31
  And by the end of the scene, are we further toward the goal or further away from the goal or, or have we taken a step forward?
• 13:39
  And what is the kind of choice that's been made?
• 13:41
  Or like, even if it's like a tiny, tiny little thing, it could just be in a bit of dialogue where a character was on one trajectory and something kind of falls into place for them and they decide to, to push back.
• 13:55
  Or maybe they go into a scene expecting to have a certain conversation, but then their emotions overtake them and they decide, you know what?
• 14:03
  F you, I'm not doing that, because of the way that the conversation unfolded.
• 14:08
  But really, um, making sure that there are these little pivot points in your scene.
• 14:13
  They don't need to be massive, but they need to be little decisions or action that are taken that moves your character either toward their scene-level goal, but also their story-level goal or away from it.
• 14:27
  Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 14:27
  I feel like that was a convoluted answer.
• 14:29
  No, it's great.
• 14:31
  It's great.
• 14:31
  I think it's super helpful, and I'm sure that everybody's… If your, if your mind is worrying as you're listening and you're thinking about your own scenes, definitely do that.
• 14:39
  Take a look and, and you know, like I become a broken record with my clients.
• 14:42
  They're like, "Suzy, I can literally hear your voice saying, 'What does your character want?'" And then I think I do it, and then you read the scene and you're like, "But what does your character want?" And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I forgot to put it on the page." So yeah, because if they don't want something, like, like Natalie said, even if it's a smaller goal, even if Natalie's just hoping that her dog doesn't bark right now, so she's opening the door to let him in, or what- You guys can't see this happening while we're recording this podcast.
• 15:08
  There's scene level goals, and what it does is it gives Natalie something to do to get up and open the door and let the dog in, right?
• 15:14
  So that they're not barking at the door.
• 15:17
  But yeah, those scene level goals, if you don't have your character wanting anything in your scene, you have a problem because they won't have anything to do, and then they're gonna end up just watching, right?
• 15:26
  They don't have things to do as, as you move it forward.
• 15:29
  So there's a lot of things to think about.
• 15:31
  I love that you've got like a sheet for each… I have something similar.
• 15:34
  It's like the, the Mack Daddy of it all is if you do the story grid approach, which is like totally evaluate every single scene.
• 15:41
  And I actually really love, I'm gonna listen to this back and, and I wanna talk to you about it later, but like how you just framed the outcomes of a scene.
• 15:48
  Like, I think about it a little bit more simply, but I like, I like what you said as well.
• 15:53
  And there's only really three outcomes to a scene.
• 15:56
  Either they reach their goal, which we don't want very often, by the way, because then we're always having to make new goals, um, to keep the story interesting.
• 16:04
  So we want, like, a lot more failure than success.
• 16:07
  So they can, they can succeed, they can fail, or they can get a new piece of information, and you said this, which is, changes the trajectory, right?
• 16:16
  Like, this is really obvious in mystery when they get a new clue and kind of- Yeah… sends them off in a new direction, but this is true of any genre where, you know, if they want something and you know where they're going, that it can change the trajectory of their, of the story based on information that unfolds in that scene.
• 16:33
  So those are the three outcomes.
• 16:35
  Okay.
• 16:36
  Amazing.
• 16:37
  C- let's talk about for a minute, so you're listening to this podcast and you're like, "I think so. I re- I don't really know that we're doing this." Okay.
• 16:44
  I have- I'm gonna put you on the spot, Natalie.
• 16:46
  I know I've been doing that a lot here, and you're, like, rising to the challenge, and I thank you.
• 16:50
  Um, because we talk about writing in slightly different ways, so you're like, "What are you getting at?" But what are the signs that a character doesn't have enough agency?
• 16:58
  Like, if, if you're listening to this podcast and you're like, "I don't know," what are the signs that you have an agency problem in your book?
• 17:09
  I mean, the, the big one that comes to mind is that just having a character who feels like they're observing the- Yeah … what's happening in the story rather than engaging with it actively.
• 17:21
  For me, a big flag, especially in the climax or something, if your protagonist is not leading the charge in the climax, and they're, like, literally taking orders from somebody or following, just flip it.
• 17:33
  Some of these things are really easy to fix.
• 17:35
  Like, we're going through a tunnel, why are you letting the secondary character, especially if they're male, lead your female protagonist?
• 17:41
  Why?
• 17:42
  Why isn't she in front?
• 17:44
  There's some little things that you can do to show that they are, that they are in charge.
• 17:49
  You can also give them some of the dialogue.
• 17:51
  Like, if they're just watching, like, what if they're making those decisions?
• 17:55
  Make sure that they are making those big decisions, that they are involved in those big aha moments where the, where the mystery gets solved or whatever.
• 18:03
  You need to make sure that your protagonist, and sometimes it's as easy in a scene as giving them the dialogue that you gave away to somebody else.
• 18:10
  You've given away the agency to somebody else in the scene.
• 18:13
  Let's pull it back.
• 18:15
  Make sure that your character is leading because you're … Remember, your reader is your character, and we want them to feel like they, they solved it, right?
• 18:23
  We want them to feel like they were involved.
• 18:26
  Yeah.
• 18:27
  I mean, there's a reason that we talk these days about main character energy, right?
• 18:31
  That idea of someone being the hero of their own story.
• 18:35
  Why are we sitting with characters who don't feel like the hero of their own story?
• 18:40
  They just feel like what my kids would call an NPC, a non-player character, in a video game that's just kind of background as events unfold.
• 18:49
  And, uh, just what you were saying about giving a bit of dialogue or, you know, just, like, shifting something to your protagonist that is in the hands of another character right now.
• 18:59
  I was working, um, I am working with a, a writer on her second book, and she had a lot of that, where her character, because she had a dual timeline, in one … Uh, sorry, not a dual timeline, a dual point of view.
• 19:15
  Sometimes we were in one point of view character's head, but she's basically observing the other point of view character and what's happening, but not acting on that.
• 19:29
  And so many times I said, "Well, why doesn't she suggest this instead of-" Yeah … "this other point of view character?" And then it feels like she's kind of more involved in the story.
• 19:40
  But also, one of the things I was thinking about in terms of your question was, if you have a lot of scenes where you get to the end of a scene and nothing's changed in your story, maybe you've, like, delivered backstory, or you delivered kind of information about world-building, but nothing's actually changed- Too many of those, like more than just a few, two or three, is a sign that you're- And you're being nice because you, you coach, you know, a literary style and in historical, in most genres, you can have zero of those.
• 20:13
  Just so you know.
• 20:14
  Zero of those scenes where nothing has changed, but in some genres you can.
• 20:19
  Yeah.
• 20:19
  Yeah.
• 20:20
  And so that can be a red flag.
• 20:22
  If nothing, if you get to the end of a scene and nothing has changed, that can be a red flag that you have an agency problem.
• 20:28
  Yeah.
• 20:28
  Okay, amazing.
• 20:29
  If you could have every writer go after they listen to this podcast and check one thing to see if they have enough agency in their book, what would it be?
• 20:41
  I feel like there should be like one really quick answer to this, and, but I'm gonna give a bigger one because that's how my brain works.
• 20:47
  If you were to draw your character's emotional arc and plot along it all of the kind of things that led them from the beginning of the story to the resolution of the story, are those, are most of those things that happened that created that change, things that happened because of who they are and what they chose to do in the story, or are they just kind of random events that made them Yeah, are they just kind of random events that they're reacting to?
• 21:27
  And if you have too many random events that your character is reacting to, that's not really deep emotional, psychological transformation, as much as if they are kind of driving that story themselves.
• 21:43
  Yeah.
• 21:43
  No, great answer.
• 21:44
  Great answer.
• 21:45
  Okay, we've reached the quick-fire portion of this podcast segment.
• 21:49
  Okay, so here's my questions for you, Natalie.
• 21:52
  How long have you been working on your current work in progress?
• 21:56
  Well, define working, Suzy.
• 21:59
  When was it, when did you first think of it?
• 22:01
  I think it's been at least three years.
• 22:04
  Okay.
• 22:04
  Yeah.
• 22:04
  And it's been a bit sporadic, um- No, that's totally normal.
• 22:09
  We get, we get- Yeah … all kinds of answers here on the podcast.
• 22:12
  Okay.
• 22:12
  And what was your first big break where you knew that writing was your destiny, and coaching, and all of this?
• 22:19
  Like, how did, how did you come to decide to just dive in?
• 22:24
  Yeah.
• 22:25
  I don't have a short answer to this question.
• 22:27
  I always knew that writing was the thing I was best at, but I didn't feel like I had a story to tell yet.
• 22:34
  Yeah.
• 22:34
  So kind of all my life since I was really little thought, "Sometime I'm gonna write a novel," but I didn't know what that was.
• 22:40
  And I'm not a person who feels compelled to write when I don't have something to write.
• 22:44
  But I did, on the night before my 40th birthday, I fell off a chair and broke my foot, and spent- Oh my goodness like really destroyed my foot, and spent months and months in a hospital bed.
• 22:56
  Falling off a chair?
• 22:56
  Like, 'cause you were standing on a chair dancing?
• 22:58
  I was standing on a chair.
• 23:00
  Okay, yeah.
• 23:00
  Good, good.
• 23:00
  I'm like, I'm like picturing- Yeah … my kids when they fall off a chair.
• 23:03
  I'm like, how do you smash your foot?
• 23:05
  But okay, yeah, night before your 40th birthday.
• 23:08
  Yeah.
• 23:08
  Was, was it a party?
• 23:08
  Night before my 40th birthday, and- I'm like, so I'm like looking for the story here Yeah.
• 23:13
  Well, the story was for the first time in forever, my kids were quite young, I didn't need to do bath time or groceries or any of these things, and where I had so much mental space and that this novel just poured out of me.
• 23:26
  Wow.
• 23:27
  Um, and it was an amazing experience, but I had so much to learn from that process.
• 23:33
  But the real answer to your question, the thing I think matters the most, is that I actually put that novel in a drawer when I didn't know what to do with it after bringing it through several drafts.
• 23:46
  And I was doing a course on passion-led learning 'cause I was homeschooling my kids, and the instructor said something about What are you doing to model passion-led learning for your family?
• 23:59
  And I thought- Wow… book.
• 24:01
  I have to finish my book.
• 24:03
  Yeah.
• 24:03
  And so I really started this whole journey of really deliberately learning my craft, and then moving into coaching.
• 24:11
  At first, because I wanted to show them what it means to have a dream, to have grit, and determination, and resilience, and to fail a lot, and get back up.
• 24:24
  And it started for them, but it very quickly became, like, this thing that sustains me, and I love it so much.
• 24:31
  Yeah.
• 24:31
  And I mean, like, yeah, I just, your story gives me chills, and thank you for sharing it.
• 24:37
  But I love that passion-led learning, and I think, you know, I, I maybe model that too much for my son as they're choosing a career.
• 24:44
  They think that everything should be, you know, really fulfilling, and maybe it won't be at first.
• 24:50
  Um, but we'll see.
• 24:51
  We'll see how this all pans out.
• 24:52
  It's all an experiment, this parenting thing, right?
• 24:54
  Okay.
• 24:55
  What's your best advice for writers just starting out?
• 25:00
  Get the story down.
• 25:02
  Tell yourself the story.
• 25:03
  Don't think about… I, this is, I'm gonna go against Jenny Nash, an author accelerator who has certified us.
• 25:11
  Uh, she talks a lot about your ideal reader and knowing who they are, and I do think that that's important.
• 25:16
  But for writers just starting out- Yeah … just tell yourself the story, and don't worry about anything else.
• 25:23
  Because most of writing, in my humble personal opinion, happens in revision, and you need to have something to work with to be able to revise.
• 25:34
  So just get it down.
• 25:36
  I, yeah.
• 25:36
  And I would agree with that on agency, too.
• 25:38
  Don't let it stop you from getting, I mean, you've learned so much, hopefully, during this time together and during this episode.
• 25:45
  But if, it, it is really something that you, you know, should have an idea of before you start, but don't stress about it.
• 25:52
  Just check it, and continually, you know, make sure that you had an idea to begin with.
• 25:57
  What does your character want?
• 25:59
  What is their deeply personal reason for being willing to go above and beyond what any regular human would do in order to get what they want?
• 26:07
  And roll with it, and then go and check it later.
• 26:10
  And you can always deepen it.
• 26:11
  I'm a big fan of sort of getting a, a draft down, and then doing it during revision.
• 26:17
  When you do books subsequently, you may build a lot more of this in.
• 26:21
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 26:23
  But if you're just starting, just get that story down, and you'll have a lot to learn.
• 26:28
  But learning it in the abstract is so much harder than having something to work with and play with.
• 26:35
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 26:35
  Okay.
• 26:36
  So Natalie, tell us a little bit about your coaching business, what you're up to.
• 26:40
  Where can we find you?
• 26:42
  Yeah.
• 26:42
  So I am at Six of Wands Coaching, and I work mostly with women writing historical and speculative fiction, and I love the revision process.
• 26:53
  It is my jam.
• 26:54
  So I do work at all stages of the writing process, but if you are stuck in a revision spiral and not sure how to work your way out, if you're not sure whether you're just making, you're making changes but not making anything better, or you don't even know where to start, I am absolutely your girl.
• 27:12
  I love revision so much.
• 27:13
  I'm also on Substack.
• 27:15
  I have a very active sub- well, very active.
• 27:18
  I, I post, uh, twice a month.
• 27:21
  Lots of story craft stuff, revision tips, and stuff about creative living.
• 27:25
  I just did two posts about kind of the science behind flow and how to work with that while also not trying to, like, optimize the hell out of your creative life, because I don't think that those things necessarily go together.
• 27:38
  And so my Substack is, I think, Six of Wands Writes.
• 27:42
  Yeah.
• 27:43
  And we'll put, we'll put all the- Yeah … the links in the show notes.
• 27:46
  So yeah.
• 27:47
  And Natalie's, uh, Natalie's Substack, she puts a lot of information in there.
• 27:51
  And so yeah, definitely go check it out.
• 27:53
  Thank you so much- I work so hard … for being on.
• 27:56
  Yeah, you do.
• 27:57
  You work so hard and give so much, and, and we, you know, so many writers are grateful for it, and we are grateful for you as well.
• 28:03
  I'm very grateful for you coming onto the podcast today and sharing your expertise on agency.
• 28:09
  Thanks for geeking out about it with me.
• 28:11
  It's been fantastic.
• 28:12
  Thanks, Suzy.
• 28:20
  Thanks for tuning in to the Show, Don't Tell writing podcast with me, Suzy Vadori.
• 28:23
  It is my absolute honor to bring you the straight goods for that book you're writing or the book that you're planning to write.
• 28:30
  Please help me keep the podcast going by helping people find us.
• 28:34
  You could subscribe to the podcast and leave a review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever else you're listening to show how much you enjoy the show.
• 28:43
  That's how other listeners will find us.
• 28:47
  Also, visit Suzyvadori.com/newsletter to hop on my weekly inspired writing newsletter list, where you'll stay inspired and be the first to know about all the upcoming training events and writing courses that happen in my community.
• 29:01
  Want my eyes on your writing?
• 29:02
  Submit a page of your current draft for a chance to come on the podcast at the link in the show notes.
• 29:07
  I'd love to chat with you about your writing in my always positive, incredibly supportive way so that you can make great strides towards your writing goals.
• 29:17
  I'm here to cheer you on.
• 29:19
  Remember, that book you're writing is gonna open doors that you haven't even thought of yet, and I can't wait to help you make that it the absolute best it can be.
• 29:29
  See you again right here next week