Writer's Fun Zone

CREDITS

EDITED WITH DESCRIPT: https://www.descript.com?lmref=_w1WCA (Refer-a-Friend link)
MUSIC CREDITS : Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/fuzz-buzz License code: UMMKDRL02DFGKJ0L. “Fuzz buzz” by Soundroll. Commercial license: https://musicvine.com/track/soundroll/fuzz-buzz.
DISTRIBUTED BY BUZZSPROUT: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1994465 (Refer-a-Friend link)
SHOW PRODUCTION BY Beth Barany
SHOW CO-PRODUCTION + NOTES by Kerry-Ann McDade
EDITORIAL by Iman Llompart

c 2026 BETH BARANY

For more “How To Write the Future” episodes, go here.

If you’d like to invite Beth onto your podcast, drop her a note here.

Like the work we do? Tip us! https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany

The post Juggling Creative Projects, Live from World Fantasy Con, How To Write the Future podcast, ep 230 appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

Edit Without Losing Your Creative Vision, How To Write the Future podcast, ep 229

Kerry-Ann McDade — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 11:57:53 +0000

Edit Without Losing Your Creative Vision – How To Write the Future podcast, episode 229

“You cannot edit your book in one day. You did not write your book in one day. Multiple passes are totally normal. Writing is rewriting, and the rewriting process is where you’re gonna do a lot of creation and recreation for your story. Keep in mind that the books you see on the shelves have been revised so much.”- Beth Barany

In this informative How To Write the Future podcast episode, titled “Edit Without Losing Your Creative Vision” host Beth Barany shares in detail how you can edit your novel without losing your vision.

Tips include: reading your first draft without fixing or adding touch ups so you get the authentic feel as a reader; defining your character and reader expectations; improving your characters arc; and how to build your revision plan.

Edit Without Losing Your Creative Vision will help guide you through the process, with an invitation to download the “Edit Your Novel Checklist“ to help you identify any problems you have along the way.

Platforms the podcast is available on: Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout | Spotify| YouTube

RESOURCES

Support the podcast! https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany

Get the workbook: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/world-building-resources/

Join the Edit Lab! https://bethbarany.com/editlab

Edit Your Novel Checklist: https://bethbarany.thrivecart.com/edit-your-novel-checklist/

About the How To Write the Future podcast

This podcast is for you if you have questions like:

– How do I create a believable world for my science fiction story?

– How do I figure out what’s not working if my story feels flat?

– How do I make my story more interesting and alive?

This podcast is for readers, too, if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

Transcript for episode 229 Edit Without Losing Your Creative Vision

Edit Without Losing Vision

BETH BARANY: How to edit your science fiction or fantasy novel without losing your creative vision.

Today I’m going to talk about how to strengthen your story, understand your genre, and create a book readers can disappear into, all the while keeping what makes it yours.

First off, I want to say you finished your first draft. Congratulations. That’s an incredible accomplishment.

Now what?

If you’re wondering how to edit a fantasy novel or how to edit a science fiction novel, you may also be wondering, “How do I make this book better without losing the story I wanted to tell?”

You’re not interested in chasing whatever is popular this month or this year. You want to write a good book, a professional book that can sit on the shelf beside the other books you love and still do something uniquely yours.

These goals can work together.

Let’s begin.

[00:56] Define Your Creative North Star

Your creative vision belongs in the editing process. The creativity that brought you through your first draft doesn’t suddenly stop being useful when you begin editing.

You had a vision, a feeling, a desire. You had characters talking to you. You trusted yourself enough to write their story. Now you get to deepen that trust as you revise.

Before you start making changes, take a moment to write down:

What drew me to the story?

What do I want readers to experience?

What makes this book mine?

Maybe it’s your character’s unexpected way of solving problems. Maybe it’s the hopeful future you’re imagining, or the relationship at the center of your fantasy adventure.

Keep those answers nearby. They can help you evaluate a suggested change. Does this bring my vision more clearly onto the page, or take the book somewhere I don’t wanna go?

That’s how you can evaluate any time you think of a change or someone else suggests a change to you. So how to edit a fantasy novel or science fiction novel.

[02:05] First Read No Fixing

Read this before you fix anything.

So my first recommendation is to read your entire manuscript without editing it, and I explain how to do that in step-by-step in my Edit Your Novel checklist.

Yes, even when you notice something you want to fix, do not edit your manuscript. Your goal in this first read-through is just to get the lay of the land. You’re reading as a reader. You’re noticing strengths. You’re noticing weaknesses, what’s working, what isn’t.

Give yourself enough distance from the draft to be curious about it. There’s no hard and fast rule for how long that takes. Could be a month, could be a year, could be a few days.

Print out your draft or send it to your Kindle or change the font or have a software read it aloud. However you like to do it is fine. The point is to look at your manuscript with fresh eyes.

I personally like to put my manuscript, my Word document, on my Kindle because it makes fixing things less tempting.

Also, it makes me feel like a reader because the Kindle is where I’m doing 99% of my reading. When you’re reading your manuscript for this first read-through, notice when you’re engaged. Also, notice when you’re confused, bored, or tempted to check your email. Put a question mark in the margin or a Post-It. Make a note, highlight it. That’s it. Keep reading.

Also, notice what you love. Those moments are important information, too. You want to notice what is actually working in your manuscript.

[03:43] Genre Expectations Not Trends

Now, know your genre without chasing trends. There is an art to this, and I know it can be done. Understanding your genre is not the same as copying another writer or following a trend.

You need to understand your genre so that you can understand the reader experience that you’re offering. If you’re not really sure, make your best guess about your genre and your subgenre.

Maybe your book is something new, some kind of mashup. Awesome, I love those. Write that down too. Make your best guesses.

The job here is to notice what it is, not what it should be or could be, but what it is. Then consider the expectations readers bring to those kinds of stories.

For science fiction and fantasy and all the subgenres, there are very specific reader expectations. See if you can nail those down. And if you’re bringing in other genres like mystery, thriller, suspense, or romance or horror, there’s actually a lot of horror in science fiction and fantasy already; get clear on what the reader expectations are for those elements as well.

Your job right now is just to notice, and as a side project, do research if you want to at this point. Because it is important to look at the books that your book would be a companion to on the shelf and do some research here. What do you enjoy about their pacing, characters, worlds, and endings? What experience do those other books deliver?

And then come back to your own manuscript and analyze it. Which tropes from those genres and subgenres are you using?

Tropes are elements that recur in stories, like an orphan setting out on an adventure, or a wicked witch or a good witch.

So identify your tropes and notice whether they are working for your story.

And where are you doing something different? What do you wanna keep? You’re not making any changes right now; you’re just doing analysis. So the question isn’t: How do I make my book exactly like those books? It’s how do I surprise my reader and still deliver the kind of story I’m inviting them in to read?

The worst thing to deliver is a book that promises one thing and delivers something completely different. So we wanna create a holistic presentation ultimately. That’s our goal. So that balance is part of genre and reader expectation work that I do share in the editing checklist.

[06:11] What Better Means

So decide what better means for this specific book of yours.

Writers sometimes say to me, “Beth, I made this change in my edits, but I’m not sure if it’s better.”

And I totally understand the question. First off, we need to start with: what does better mean for you? Here’s my own criteria for a better reading experience. Can the reader engage with the story and disappear into it?

Because when something bumps them out, like a confusing action, unclear motivation, or awkward language, that’s where we can make changes, and we as the writer can make those fixes when you get to edits.

For me, I often start with the character’s internal change. I get really clear on how they are at the beginning of the story and how they end up. And I’m curious: when I’m doing my early read-through, does that change show up on the page? Is it clear? So for example, a character might begin by thinking at the very beginning of the story, “I’m just an orphan.” And then throughout the story, they discover their heritage and come to understand who she is in a totally different way.

And by the end of the story, she’s like, “Oh, I belong to this lineage.” She’s no longer thinking of herself as an orphan. That is an example of a change.

[07:29] Character Arc Clarity

In your first read-through, you may notice that the character change isn’t clear. That’s good information. Something to think about when you notice that is: what does your character want? What does your character need? What is your character up against- their conflicts?

And what is driving your character, their motivation? Also, how does your character see herself? How does your character see herself, and how does your character see the world? This is core identity and beliefs. And is there a gap? Do you notice that what you intend for your character is not showing up on the page?

Or what I notice when I work with authors is they haven’t thought deeply enough about these things yet, and that’s why we’re not noticing them on the page. That’s okay.

You’ll be able to think about these things during the revision process. Recognize that what you intend may not show up on the page, which is very common. Don’t give up. You have a vision for your story. Keep going. Focus yourself by asking, “What do I want this moment to accomplish in this story? What is actually on the page, and what might fill in that gap? What will help the reader experience what I intended for them? And you’ll figure this out in the revision process.

[08:45] Build Your Revision Plan

Now, once you’ve read your whole manuscript, review your notes.

And my Edit Your Novel checklist looks at three broad areas: story and plot, character, and proofing, which I consider grammar and that kind of thing. Also included in there is world building. You’ll wanna consider things like pacing, story logic, character goals and motivation, point of view, dialogue, and language.

Score each element from one to five, one needing the least amount of work and five needing the most. This is just information. We’re not grading your worth as a writer. We’re just using this information to help you improve your manuscript. Now, you may wanna hone in on the biggest problem and do some learning there.

For me, I notice it’s often with my character. For others, it might be your plot. And you might wanna start with the easiest things to fix in your manuscript, or you might want to start with the hardest things. This is you creating a revision plan, so working through these step by step. If you’re not sure where you wanna start, just pick one and see if that is helpful to you.

You may notice that you’ll get stuck, and you may wanna switch gears. Switch over to plot if you started with character, or switch over to character if you started with plot. Brainstorm, make notes, and then you’ll be making changes to your manuscript. You don’t have to make changes today. In fact, it’s impossible.

You cannot edit your book in one day. You did not write your book in one day.

[10:17] Edit Logs And Multiple Passes

Multiple passes are totally normal. Writing is rewriting, and the rewriting process is where you’re gonna do a lot of creation and recreation for your story. Keep in mind that the books you see on the shelves have been revised so much.

And here’s a useful tip. I create an edit log in Scrivener where I do my brainstorming and first drafts, and I keep track of my editing process. I also keep one for writing, where I ask myself questions, including lots of what ifs. I brainstorm. I put research notes. It’s really nice having an edit log where you can basically talk to yourself about this editing process.

[10:57] Using Feedback Wisely

You may find that it’s time to get feedback, and when you do get feedback from others, it can be challenging to figure out what to use and what to throw away. Here is a big exercise in trust. So when you’ve taken the manuscript as far as you can on your own, now it’s time to get feedback. It can help you see what’s missing.

If you’re working with beta readers, tell them what kind of book you’re writing and what you want help evaluating. Ask them where they felt confused, where their attention wandered, and what they wanted more of.

Often a reader may identify a real problem and offer a proposed solution, but it may not fit your book, and that’s okay. You can use their input to help you identify problems. 9 times out of 10, you’re gonna be the one who comes up with the solution, not them, including critique partners, including editors.

Consider their feedback alongside your vision, and if it doesn’t match your vision, then throw it away. You can always find another way to fix the problem. Even if you hire an editor, you’re gonna need to evaluate their feedback. Don’t just take it at face value. Make sure it meets your creative vision.

Learning how to edit your own work is a decision process, one decision after another. And this is what I help authors with. I’m not gonna tell you how it should be. I may make suggestions, but at the end of the day, it’s up to you to decide and evaluate if the feedback I offer is matching your own creative vision.

[12:28] Gentle Focus And Next Steps

I really wanna encourage you to be gentle with yourself. You can learn how to be an excellent writer without being mean to yourself or harsh. It’s a learning curve, learning how to write fiction and learning how to edit our own fiction. One of the ways I handle the bigness of editing novels is I focus on what’s right in front of me, and I encourage you to do the same.

What is right in front of you? Today, it’s this scene, this paragraph, or even this sentence. Your next step, I encourage you to go grab my Edit Your Novel checklist at edityournovelchecklist.com and use it as your guide for this first read through.

If you would like more support along the way, join us at Edit Lab, a monthly paid membership. You get free weekly audio lessons and an invitation to come to our monthly live Edit Lab call, which is the first Wednesday of the month at 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern.

I encourage you to bring your creative vision alongside your questions, and I’m here to help you make your book the best book it can be so readers will disappear into it and want the next one.

[13:38] Wrap Up And Farewell

If you have any questions about what I shared here today, please let me know. You can just drop a comment in or leave a question on my contact page, and I will get back to you.

All right, that’s it for this week, everyone. Write long and prosper.

Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating here:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2012061

Need instructions on how to leave a review? Go here.

***

Support our work for creatives: leave a tip: https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany

***

ABOUT BETH BARANY

Learn more about Beth Barany at these sites:

Author site / Coaching site / School of Fiction / Writer’s Fun Zone blog

CONNECT

Email: Beth@BethBarany.com

CREDITS

EDITED WITH DESCRIPT: https://www.descript.com?lmref=_w1WCA (Refer-a-Friend link)
MUSIC CREDITS : Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/fuzz-buzz License code: UMMKDRL02DFGKJ0L. “Fuzz buzz” by Soundroll. Commercial license: https://musicvine.com/track/soundroll/fuzz-buzz.
DISTRIBUTED BY BUZZSPROUT: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1994465 (Refer-a-Friend link)
SHOW PRODUCTION BY Beth Barany
SHOW CO-PRODUCTION + NOTES by Kerry-Ann McDade
EDITORIAL by Iman Llompart

c 2026 BETH BARANY

https://dl.bookfunnel.com/d1pb8wtyfz

For more “How To Write the Future” episodes, go here.

If you’d like to invite Beth onto your podcast, drop her a note here.

Like the work we do? Tip us! https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany

The post Edit Without Losing Your Creative Vision, How To Write the Future podcast, ep 229 appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

PhD to Business Part 2 by Bailey Lang

Guest Contributor — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 08:00:36 +0000

Let’s welcome back Bailey Lang as they share with us “PhD to Business Part 2.” Enjoy!

***

Leaving higher ED to start a business is not a choice that is talked about often in academic spaces.

When I decided not to pursue a faculty role after completing my PhD, I had no clear roadmap to starting (much less running) a sustainable solo business.

At the time, I didn’t know many other people who had made a similar choice.

That has changed in the years since!

I’m now connected with so many PhDs who run businesses that I’m no longer surprised to find other people who have followed a similar path.

I interviewed many of those people for this article and met a few more along the way.

Building a solo business is a challenge no matter what your starting point is — but the challenges are balanced by the benefits.

That’s what I wanted to focus on in the second part of this series to wrap things up.

I often describe running a solo business as being in a constant dance.

Nothing is ever static or stable for long!

But being the Literary Witch is also a joy.

There are things I wish I’d known before I set off on this path — many of them are reflected in my interviewees’ responses in this article — and amazing experiences I’d never have had if I hadn’t been brave enough to take the first step.

Before we get into these conversations, here’s a quick reintroduction to the people featured in these articles.

Taylor Allbright, Allbright Coaching.

Taylor has a PhD in education policy.

Her dissertation was on the implementation of racial justice-intended initiatives at the school and district level.

Taylor is now an ADHD coach.

Kate Henry, Productivity Coach.

Kate has a PhD in rhetoric and writing studies.

Her dissertation was on the woman who wrote the first lesbian magazine in the U.S. Kate is now a productivity coach.

Amelia Hruby, Off the Grid.

Amelia has a PhD in philosophy.

Her dissertation was on feminist aesthetics.

Amelia is the creator of Off The Grid.

Jessica Kirk, Aspen Gold Consulting.

Jessica has a PhD in management and entrepreneurship.

Her dissertation and research focused on management, gender, sexual harassment, and diversity.

Jenn McClearen, Publish Not Perish.

Jenn has a PhD in media studies.

Her dissertation was about women in the UFC.

Jenn is now an academic writing coach and developmental editor.

Katy Peplin, Thrive PhD.

Katy has a PhD in film, television, and media studies.

Her dissertation was about the history of animals on screen.

Katy is now a coach and community facilitator for anyone who wants to be a scholar without sacrificing their humanity.

What’s something you wish you’d known when you started your business?

Taylor Allbright

I talked to someone who had left academia to start a business, and she said it takes a lot longer than you think to recover from academia, for your identity to change, and to get your business going.

The thing that was particularly challenging, and still is challenging sometimes, is the change of identity.

It happened at the same time I was transitioning into motherhood.

There were just a lot of big identity changes that felt very dramatic.

I did not expect as I was approaching midlife for my entire identity to shift, but up until that point, I had really defined who I was by what I did.

My job or the school program that I was in was very core to who I was.

Even though I enjoy ADHD coaching, it doesn’t feel like who I am the way being a professor felt like who I was.

I feel like I’m a person who happens to do ADHD coaching, like I also go to yoga.

It’s a thing I do, but it’s not a thing that I am.

That was very hard for me because it felt like there was a big hole for a while in terms of how I defined myself.

Kate Henry

Something different now is that I delegate things to people to help me.

I certainly make more money now than I did when I first started.

It wasn’t until two years into my business that I was able to have it be my full-time job.

When I first started my business, I was like, “I need to learn everything about business. I need to DIY everything.”

If I could tell myself something when I was starting the business, I would be like, “This is actually going to be a profitable, good thing. Just keep working on it. Don’t worry.”

I’m very grateful to be in a space where I can hire folks to do web design.

I have an assistant who helps me with stuff.

Whereas that was just not accessible in the early stages of my business.

Amelia Hruby

That self-employment is exciting but not easy!

And success takes so much longer than viral posts and online coaches might tell you.

Jessica Kirk

You are not going to have all the answers right away, and it’s going to shift and change and evolve.

When I did start out, I was like, “I’m going to do a feasibility analysis.”

Feasibility analysis works great when you have a specific product or a specific plan.

Early on, it’s so much searching.

It is the entrepreneurial method of starting with what you know and what you have, and doing a little bit, and talking to people and gaining a little bit of data, but it’s messy.

It’s not linear.

I think I did have this sense of, like, I’m a researcher, and I know this stuff.

I can go in, and I can get an answer: is this feasible or not?

And that’s just not true.

It’s going to take longer than you think.

That’s something that was told to me by a number of people in the beginning, and I would reiterate that. It takes a while.

Don’t underestimate the skills you have as an academic.

Sometimes, I forget that, oh wait, I have a PhD.

I often underutilize it in my messaging and when I’m talking to people.

Some people heavily lean on it.

It’s at the forefront.

I don’t know if that’s right or wrong.

That’s just not what I have been doing.

If I’m talking to the leader of an organization, maybe I haven’t been in their shoes for a long time.

But I’m bringing us something very different.

It’s just easy sometimes to forget, particularly if you’ve been in academia and you’re around a bunch of other PhDs all the time; you forget that not everyone has a PhD.

Jenn McClearen

When I was in academia, it became so singularly focused.

When I was in grad school, it was like, “Get the academic job.”

I set up my entire career pursuing that.

I wish I had known that I did not have to approach it with the same degree of single-minded pursuit.

I was constantly consumed by building the business and was I doing it right, and should I do it this way and should I do it that way?

I’ve gotten to this point where it doesn’t have to be so hard.

I don’t have to be hustling.

I would have told myself to be a little bit gentler because I was burned out from academia.

Just take it easy a little bit more.

I wish I’d known that.

I think it’s important to mention that in building my business, I had a partner who had a good, stable job.

Not everybody who becomes an academic entrepreneur has that, and so there’s a degree of hustle that you may have to do because you’re really literally trying to make ends meet.

I acknowledge that privilege because I think it does have an impact on where I am now and what I’ve been able to do, but I also think that that was true before when I was an academic.

In entrepreneurship, freelancing, and independent work, you’re responsible.

You’re bearing the risk; you have to provide your own health insurance, and you have to take on your own retirement plans.

It’s all on you, not on some company or university.

There’s a myth that there’s this unbridled freedom that is accessible for everyone in the same way, and it’s not always true.

It’s not easy for a lot of folks.

Part of the reason I chose this was to have that freedom, and I do have it to a degree, partially because of the privileges that I’ve already talked about.

Partially for some other things like luck and right place at the right time, the right sequence of events.

I hear some people that are like, “If you too want all the freedom and to live where you want and do what you want, then here’s this easy path forward.”

I don’t want anyone to think that it’s easy because a lot of factors have to line up.

There’s a lot of self-drivenness and self-starting that you need to have as an entrepreneur.

If those are not qualities that you find a strength in yourself, then it is something that you have to be prepared to develop.

I don’t think entrepreneurship is necessarily the path that everyone can take if you’re seeking an exit out of academia.

People look at me, and they’re like, “You moved to Europe and started your own business, and isn’t that great and wonderful?”

And yes, it is, but it’s more complicated than that.

Talking to people and getting realistic about the pros and the cons is important.

Katy Peplin

Self-employment is a way to deeply know yourself, and to deeply know how you understand yourself inside of different systems.

Seemingly benign tasks like “create marketing materials” can and will invite you into deep, if not existential, thoughts about what your beliefs and values are.

You can always, of course, adopt someone else’s framework and follow it wholesale to avoid some of these questions, but ultimately, it’s up to you to decide what you want your business to look like, and how you want it to behave in the world, and how you want to live within it, as well.

It can feel like that work is beside the point (and there are plenty of voices to encourage you to just post on Instagram!! make the TikTok! get your work out there!!), but I have only benefited — personally and professionally — from getting clear about what I believe, and what I stand for as a business owner and person.

What has been the best thing about running a creative business?

Taylor Allbright

The freedom, the autonomy.

I have the ability to design my life around what I need and what I want in a way that I’ve never had before.

If there’s something I don’t want to do, I can be like, “Do I have to do that?”

And a lot of times, the answer is no.

I spend far less of my time doing things I don’t want to do.

Also, just not being in that stress hustle culture, where everyone’s always tired, and everyone’s always struggling, and that’s normal.

Not being in that is very pleasant.

I get just the cream; I get the very best things that I enjoy doing in work and in providing a service.

I get to focus my time and energy on that.

My sense is that academia is in so many ways a hostile work environment.

You can make it into a great work environment with a combination of luck and very intense job crafting, a lot of active boundary-setting and strategic positioning, and you have to be at a good institution with good colleagues.

I see a lot of people who are thriving, but most of the people I know who enjoy academia have to fight for it.

You have to fight to make the job work for you, and I hit a point where I was like, I don’t feel like fighting anymore, and I had the luxury of the option of stopping.

Kate Henry

It’s hard to pick just one, but I feel like the best thing is helping people, actually supporting people.

Many of the folks who I work with have chronic health conditions or chronic illness or chronic fatigue, and that has been incredibly rewarding to make that the focus, and to have folks recommend their friends, and then to work with clients for years until they finish whatever they’re doing.

The best thing is supporting folks who may feel left out of academia or feel bad about themselves because it’s inaccessible, and helping them to actually thrive and get what they want out of it.

I’ve been running the business for six or seven years now, and last year, I hit a stage where I felt solid.

People know who I am.

Then, I started a podcast where I interview artists and writers.

I expanded what I focus on to creativity and productivity, at least with the podcast.

That’s something that’s very cool, where after I had done things for five or so years and felt pretty stable, I was like, “What am I interested in now?”

Amelia Hruby

I love the autonomy and the creativity!

I get to make money on the merit of my ideas and the excitement of my community.

That feels so much better than following instructions from a boss or begging for rewards from a gatekeeper.

Jessica Kirk

It’s so fun to me.

I mean, it’s nerve-wracking.

I’m a sole breadwinner, and I have to make it work, or I’ve got to do something else.

But probably my favorite is just being out and connecting with people because so much of what you have to do is networking.

That is so energizing for me, and I love it.

Sometimes, I think back.

I’m like, what was I doing all those years?

Why wasn’t I out doing more of this?

I’ve been going through those exercises of, okay, I have a 20-plus-year career, looking at the things that I’ve done, the skills I’ve built, like the education I have.

What do those translate into, and how can I add value for organizations and for leaders?

Putting that into something tangible, that’s fun too.

Even if I were to decide I wanted to get a job, I would be looking for such different jobs.

It has shifted so much of the way that I think about myself and what I bring to the table, and the skills I have and the way I work.

It’s been very transformative in that way.

When I think about talking to another academic who is considering entrepreneurship, whether it was consulting or not, just realize how many transferable skills you have.

Skills as a researcher: your ability to communicate in all different ways, teaching, your ability to stand up in front of all sorts of people and do all sorts of things.

Think about what that translates to.

There’s so much that we develop as academics that can be transferred in different ways.

The way that academia works, it can narrow so much of what is possible with these skills and expertise.

If you start to map out different ways that those could build a business or generate revenue for you, there’s a lot of possibility.

Jenn McClearen

It’s such a joy to be working with people who are doing important work and are working really hard.

I can provide context, support, and reassurance in a way that allows them to do their work better, in a way that allows them to get the work done more quickly.

I can see that in one session, we can actually work through a mindset that has been holding them back for years, and that has a reverberation for the rest of the time we work together.

In academia, so often our successes were so few and far between, and they were all focused on us.

It’s like when I got something published, when I got an award, when I did this and I did that.

Whereas now I’m measuring my success in other people breaking through mindsets that they’ve held for years, and something about that just feels so good.

It’s not so narcissistic anymore.

I really am committed to making sure that critical research gets out in the world, and a lot of the people that I work with are minoritized folks in the academy.

Those are the people that have the hardest time in the system, but those are the voices that we need the most.

Katy Peplin

I love the constraints on my creativity!

So many parts of my business feel like a puzzle — how do I do this task within the limits of time, energy, and budget?

How do I communicate this idea clearly and in a compelling way in a caption, a piece of copy, or a sticker?

As a person with nearly boundless curiosity, having constraints actually forces some limits on the process and gets me to the satisfaction stage of a task faster.

Final Thoughts

Making the decision to pursue a solo creative business is a big one, especially when so much of your academic work has been geared toward following a different path.

But the gifts of making the leap can be incredible, as these interviews showed.

Each person’s experiences fueled their decision and shaped the business they built.

The conversations also emphasize again how many structural inequalities people face inside academia and beyond, and point to the creative and collaborative solutions solo business owners find and make for themselves.

If you are a graduate student or faculty member who’s been confronted with a stark reality about the future of higher ED or who dreams of work beyond its walls, I hope these conversations offer you a stepping stone.

If you’re curious about what it’s like to build and run a solo creative business, I hope you continue to follow that curiosity.

Resources and Reading Recommendations

Leaving Academia: A Practical Guide (affiliate link)
Self-Compassionate Professor
From PhD to Life

***

About the Author

Dr. Bailey Lang is the Literary Witch, a book coach who helps visionary authors reclaim their creative magic and finish their books.

Bailey has a PhD in rhetoric and writing studies, and they love geeking out about writing, language, and magic.

You can sign up for Bailey’s free newsletter, Ink + Alchemy, for monthly missives that will help you build a writing practice you love.

Website

Newsletter

The post PhD to Business Part 2 by Bailey Lang appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

The Red Herring in a Mask: Decoy Suspects and Love Interests by M. Jayne LaDow

Guest Contributor — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 08:00:12 +0000

Let’s welcome back monthly columnist M. Jayne LaDow as she shares with us “The Red Herring in a Mask: Decoy Suspects and Love Interests.” Enjoy!

***

A red herring is, at its core, a costume.

A character or thing disguised to trick us — the suspect with the convenient alibi, the love interest who says all the right things.

And like any costume, it only works if it’s convincing.

Nobody’s ever been fooled by a bedsheet with two eye holes cut out.

Which is, coincidentally, the whole plot of Halloween.

Same Skeleton, Different Costume

Strip a red herring down to its bones, and a simple structure appears: a character built to look like the perfect answer.

In a mystery, the suspect with the obvious motive and the alibi is the person the detective really, really wants it to be because it would be so satisfying. In a romance, it’s the charming love interest.

The one who says all the right things, who the protagonist starts rooting for like it’s a contest.

How many of us were rooting for Tamlin in A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas?

Be honest.

All of us?

And then Maas taught us a thing or two about romantic red herrings.

The decoy has to feel like a legitimate answer before we can enjoy discovering it isn’t.

Plausibility is the costume.

Both mystery and romance authors are, in a sense, running a little con on the reader — a fun one, if it’s done right.

Because the goal isn’t to fool the reader, it’s to make them fool themselves.

The Three Things Every Decoy Needs

1. A genuine reason for being included

The decoy suspect needs a real reason to be at the scene and a real secret, even if it isn’t the one the detective is looking for.

The decoy love interest can’t be a cardboard placeholder waiting to be dumped.

They need their own reason to want the protagonist, their own place in the story — even if they’re not the person the protagonist belongs with.

In my novel, A Pilgrimage of Whispered Truths, Brian’s father does a lot of things a reader expects from someone hiding something.

He’s related to the victim, yet hustles his family out of a funeral early.

He has tense words with a stranger nobody can place.

He’s clearly on edge.

But his reasons for being on edge have to exist independently of the mystery.

He has a real job, a real family to protect, and a real reason to be uncomfortable around certain people.

His behavior can’t exist solely because I needed the reader to suspect him.

Half-built decoys read as half-built decoys.

Readers can smell a character who only exists to be wrong, the same way you can spot the guy at the Halloween party whose costume is just his regular clothes and a plastic pumpkin bucket.

2. A trait that reads two ways

The best red herrings have a quality that looks sinister in one light and completely innocent in another.

Nervousness that could be guilt — or is just a guy who’s terrible at eye contact.

In romance, a love decoy might look devoted in one light and controlling in another; the perfect boyfriend one day might be a loser the next.

In The Deal, the first book of Elle Kennedy’s Off-Campus series, Justin Kohl isn’t a placeholder.

He’s the reason Hannah has spent a semester quietly pining after him, and that crush kicks off the fake-dating scheme.

He’s a real target with real weight in the story, just not the person the story is ultimately about.

Authors aren’t lying to the reader; they hand the reader a flashlight and let their own assumptions do the work.

3. A door that closes for a reason

A red herring can’t be written off-page like a guest slipping out at the end of a party.

They need to reach the end of their arc.

Perhaps a lie unravels, or their self-interest slips, and suddenly the reader can see what’s underneath the costume.

This is where a lot of books and shows need to take better care.

Pretty Little Liars is an example.

After years of red herrings and suspects, the show’s final reveal pinned everything on a character the audience had never met: a secret twin with no meaningful connection to the story.

It wasn’t a door closing.

It was a door bolted on at the last minute.

And readers notice.

They know when an author has pulled a new rabbit out of a hat instead of revealing the rabbit from chapter three.

Why This Is Worth Noticing on Halloween

Costumes make an unusually good metaphor for red herrings because a disguise isn’t really a lie.

Everyone at the party knows it’s fake.

Half the fun is guessing who’s underneath.

A good red herring works the same way.

The genre-savvy reader already assumes something is being hidden.

An author isn’t trying to dupe them so much as invite them to follow the clues and figure out who’s in the costume before it’s revealed.

Giving the reader a fair, fun chase.

The Tell

Here’s the thing both genres share, and it’s easy to miss:

The unmasking should recontextualize, not contradict.

Go back and reread the decoy’s scenes after the reveal.

The good ones still hold up and nothing about the character changes.

The nervous suspect really was hiding something — just not murder.

The charming love interest really did want the protagonist — just not for the reasons that would have made a good ending.

The payoff is in the reread.

That’s the difference between a decoy and a cheap trick.

A good red herring says, You knew. I showed you.

That’s the sting — and the satisfaction.

Which, if you think about it, is also good advice for trick-or-treating and for stories: don’t be the person whose costume gives up the game.

Let the reveal earn the payoff because the best costume hides just enough to make you look twice, and the reward tastes like candy when it’s written right.

***

About the Author

M. Jayne Ladow writes rom-com and mystery romance where banter hides more heat than jokes.

Follow her on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook @mjayneladowauthor, read more on Substack at mjlong.substack.com, and visit mjladow.com for her full catalog and latest releases.

Curious about A Pilgrimage of Whispered Truths?

Here is the blurb:

Dani Jones thought surviving her seventeenth year of teaching would be the hardest part of her summer.

Then a student’s uncle corners her after class with a warning — and disappears before she can make sense of it.

Days later, during a Chesapeake Bay cleanup, Dani finds his body hidden in the marsh, and the quiet coastal town she’s called home for years starts giving up secrets it should have buried for good.

Gavin Larkhurst, a radio newsman with a protective streak and a voice made for late-night confessions, wants Dani far away from the arson, greed, and old lies clawing their way to the surface.

But the deeper she digs, the harder he falls — torn between keeping her safe and letting her run straight toward the danger neither of them can walk away from.

Set in June 1997 Virginia Beach, A Pilgrimage of Whispered Truths is a steamy mystery romance where every whispered truth comes with a price — and not everyone survives paying it.

You can purchase it here.

Freebie

Get a free copy of my first rom-com, One Night Stands and Lesson Plans.

Audrey Freemont, a professional middle school teacher, hasn’t had time or energy to find romance in five years.

When she sees Oz Taylor at a school happy hour, it’s one look, and they are sneaking out.

But after the one-night stand, reality catches up with them.

He’s the new algebra teacher at Marchfield Middle, and he wants more, but Audrey is caught between the world of expectations for teachers and her desire for more than a workaholic life.

The post The Red Herring in a Mask: Decoy Suspects and Love Interests by M. Jayne LaDow appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

Fancy Fresh Ideas for Upcoming Episodes, How To Write the Future podcast, ep 228

Kerry-Ann McDade — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 12:37:14 +0000

Fancy Fresh Ideas for Upcoming Episodes How To Write the Future podcast, episode 225

“When I’m working on sci-fi, I’m really thinking about this a lot, and I’m thinking about it from my main character’s perspective. What is it like to be looking at the Earth from space and from various distances? That just blows me away.” – Beth Barany

In this How To Write the Future podcast episode, titled “Fancy Fresh Ideas for Your Sci-Fi/Fantasy Novels” host, Beth Barany shares insight into upcoming podcast episode topic ideas, including discussing what is a circular economy, viewing the world from a non human mind, and tone versus voice.

Beth also invites listeners to get in touch about topics they’d like to hear discussed on the podcast. Weigh in!

Platforms the podcast is available on: Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout | Spotify| YouTube

RESOURCES

Support the podcast! https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany

Get the workbook: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/world-building-resources/

Join the Edit Lab! https://bethbarany.com/editlab

About the How To Write the Future podcast

This podcast is for you if you have questions like:

– How do I create a believable world for my science fiction story?

– How do I figure out what’s not working if my story feels flat?

– How do I make my story more interesting and alive?

This podcast is for readers, too, if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

Transcript for episode 228 Fancy Fresh Ideas for Your Sci-Fi/Fantasy Novels

Curiosity Check-In

BETH BARANY: As a writer, as a human being, I’m infinitely curious about so many things, and I wanna know: what are you curious about? Here at How to Write the Future, I care about helping you, science fiction and fantasy writer, expand your writing skill set and also expand into what is possible for you as an author.

I’m a bit of a futurist. I’m always looking into the future. I feel like sometimes I’m a few steps ahead of everyone else. So I want to just pause here and see what you’re interested in and also tell you some of the topics that I am interested in doing some podcast episodes about.

[00:41] Circular Economy Ideas

One of them is circular economies.

I have heard about this term for a good 5, 10 years, and I wanna dig into it. What does that mean? What does that mean for our storytelling? How can we use the ideas of circular economy in our storytelling, and what is it?

The quickest way I can define circular economy is it’s about recycling, but it’s also much more than that. What if we built circular economy better into our infrastructure, into our factories, into how everything was created? That’s what I think it means. So that’s on sort of like the research world-building side.

[01:18] Writing Nonhuman Minds

Here’s another topic that I have thought about and actually have a little bit of experience about having written like 17 novels and published 12 so far is on the craft side, how do you inhabit a character that isn’t human and do it in a convincing way?

I’m 100% sure that everything we write is gonna be imbued with who we are as human beings. And what if we wanted to write about, I’ve long thought about writing a story about bees and bee culture and what is that really like and what would a bee creature really be going through?

One of my favorite writers, Judith Carr, writes about the world through the perspective of a horse sometimes, and I just adore that.

[02:02] Cat Interruption Demo

Uh, and I have cats. One of them’s trying to interrupt me right now. You wanna come here? My cat Rocket, what is life like for him and his brother Cinnamon, who you, you don’t see interrupting my calls at all, who has a totally different personality and seems very smart.

Whereas Rocket… Rocket, come up. Jump. There we go. You know, what does, what does Rocket think and feel, and how his whole life seems to be about being pet and cuddled and loved and in the middle of things, right?

Yeah.

[02:36] Tone Versus Voice

Another topic, this is very craft nerdy. A lot of people over the years have written about this topic, and I have thought about it myself, which is tone versus voice. Agents and editors will talk about tone and voice. What are they? I realize I might have a simplistic answer, but I believe voice is attitude and comes from the choices you make about your point of view character.

You have a voice. Each individual has a voice, a way of being in the world, talking, the actual sound of your voice, and how do we translate that onto the page?

And tone can vary from all kinds of things, and the first thing that comes to mind is, tongue in cheek or serious or earnest.

These things can actually vary within a book by the same voice. Now, this is my off-the-cuff answer. I am not an academic. What I care about the most is how can this help you as a writer?

How can I help you be a better writer? So that’s how I, I would angle that kind of topic.

[03:41] The Overview Effect

Another topic that I have wanting to talk about for a long time is the overview effect, which is something that really started in, I don’t know, 1969. I can’t remember who first coined it, and I can do the research on this, and I started doing the research on this.

What is it like to look at the Earth from space, and how that changes your perspective? I love to look at images of the Earth from space taken by our satellites and our astronauts, and this is a very recent human phenomena. It’s only happened since, what, the ’60s, since 19… I wanna say 1969.

I know they were coming back from their first moon landing in 1969. And those pictures that were taken from the other side of the Moon that showed Earthrise- just amazing.

So what happens to the human psychology when we start to all see the Earth from space? And we all have access to these images now.

And how that can change your perspective. When I’m working on sci-fi, I’m really thinking about this a lot, and I’m thinking about it from my main character’s perspective. What is it like to be looking at the Earth from space and from various distances? That is also just blows me away.

Like the famous image, the Pale Blue Dot, that was taken, I believe, beyond Saturn, that they pinpointed was it Carl Sagan, I think, who coined that phrase. And what is it like to imagine that we’re this pale blue dot? If we’re sitting outside of Saturn’s orbit looking back toward the Sun, and the Earth is just a dot in the frame out of many dots.

Incredible.

[05:18] Wrap Up And Requests

So those are just some of the topics that I have in my ideas file here. If any of these strike your fancy, let me know. If you have another topic you wish for me to talk about, let me know. I will dig into it if it also catches my fancy. It has to catch both of our fancies, if that’s a phrase.

All right, that’s it for this week, everyone. Write long and prosper.

Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating here:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2012061

Need instructions on how to leave a review? Go here.

***

Support our work for creatives: leave a tip: https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany

***

ABOUT BETH BARANY

Learn more about Beth Barany at these sites:

Author site / Coaching site / School of Fiction / Writer’s Fun Zone blog

Connect with Beth Barany

CREDITS [H2]

EDITED WITH DESCRIPT: https://www.descript.com?lmref=_w1WCA (Refer-a-Friend link)
MUSIC CREDITS : Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/fuzz-buzz License code: UMMKDRL02DFGKJ0L. “Fuzz buzz” by Soundroll. Commercial license: https://musicvine.com/track/soundroll/fuzz-buzz.
DISTRIBUTED BY BUZZSPROUT: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1994465 (Refer-a-Friend link)
SHOW PRODUCTION BY Beth Barany
SHOW CO-PRODUCTION + NOTES by Kerry-Ann McDade
EDITORIAL by Iman Llompart

c 2026 BETH BARANY

For more “How To Write the Future” episodes, go here.

If you’d like to invite Beth onto your podcast, drop her a note here.

Like the work we do? Tip us! https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany

The post Fancy Fresh Ideas for Upcoming Episodes, How To Write the Future podcast, ep 228 appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

What Happens to My Digital Assets When I Die? by Kelley Way

Guest Contributor — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 08:00:03 +0000

Let’s welcome back monthly columnist Kelley Way as she shares with us “What Happens to My Digital Assets When I Die?” Enjoy!

***

Understanding Digital Assets

But first, what are digital assets?

Digital assets is a broad term that includes any information, accounts, or files stored electronically, either on a local device such as a phone or computer or online.

Digital assets are included as part of your estate, but are rarely addressed in any detail, which can cause problems for your chosen administrator (i.e., your executor/trustee).

Managing Your Digital Assets After Death

The first problem is finding the digital assets.

Your administrator has to track down your digital assets, and they have no reason to do so if they don’t know the assets exist.

Some things are obvious, like email, social media, and bank accounts.

But other things are less obvious, such as digital wallets, websites, and, if you’re an author, your accounts with various distributors and publishing platforms.

If the administrator doesn’t know you well, they won’t know to look for these assets, and even if they do, they may not know exactly what to look for.

You can solve this problem by keeping a list of your digital assets (the ones that matter at least) so they know what’s worth tracking down.

The second problem is getting access.

If the administrator doesn’t know your passwords, they’re going to have trouble getting in.

And even if they have the passwords, getting the accounts updated to remove the deceased person’s name can often be problematic.

It would be very helpful if you can find a safe way to share your passwords after you’re gone.

An even better solution is to add a “digital assets clause” to your will or trust, which gives the administrator permission to access these accounts.

With this clause, the service providers will know they have permission to work with the administrator and give them access.

The third and final problem is what to do with these assets.

If you say nothing, the administrator will probably either shut the accounts down or let the assets languish, depending on the type of asset and where it’s stored.

If there is something you want preserved and/or passed on, you need to address it in your will or trust.

Final Thoughts

If you want to know more about digital assets or how to deal with them, you are welcome to reach out to me at kaway@kawaylaw.com.

***

Want to read more articles like this one Writer’s Fun Zone? Subscribe here.

***

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kelley Way was born and raised in Walnut Creek, California. She graduated from UC Davis with a B.A. in English, followed by a Juris Doctorate. Kelley is a member of the California Bar, and an aspiring writer of young adult fantasy novels. More information at kawaylaw.com.

The post What Happens to My Digital Assets When I Die? by Kelley Way appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

Writing Community: Your Secret Publishing Advantage, How To Write the Future podcast, ep 227

Kerry-Ann McDade — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 15:00:04 +0000

Writing Community: Your Secret Publishing Advantage – How To Write the Future podcast, ep. 227

“I realized I had to accelerate the pace. And I’ve seen this in other mediums with other people in completely different domains. If you wanna get better at something, hit the publish button.“ – Beth Barany

In this How To Write the Future podcast episode, titled “Writing Community: Your Secret Publishing Advantage” host Beth Barany shares how joining a supportive writing community can help advance you from first draft to published novel by receiving the right critique, building upon others successes, and discovering your healthy motivator to keep writing.

Beth’s raw honesty reflecting on the the successes she saw others achieve and how that motivated her to accelerate her own writing journey will be refreshing to hear.

Beth also shares about her 12-month Edit Mastermind group and monthly Edit Lab membership.

Platforms the podcast is available on: Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout | Spotify| YouTube

RESOURCES

Support the podcast! https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany

Get the workbook: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/world-building-resources/

Join the Edit Lab! https://bethbarany.com/editlab

About the How To Write the Future podcast

This podcast is for you if you have questions like:

– How do I create a believable world for my science fiction story?

– How do I figure out what’s not working if my story feels flat?

– How do I make my story more interesting and alive?

This podcast is for readers, too, if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

Transcript for Writing Community: Your Secret Publishing Advantage

Writing Is a Community Effort

BETH BARANY: In my opinion, we may write alone, but actually we are writers in community.

We actually aren’t in isolation. If you’re watching this on video, look at all the books around me. Yes, you’ll see some of my books, but there are a ton of books that aren’t mine.

I’m gonna lift my laptop here and just show you some of them.

And yes, there is a stack of my journals in there as well. Tons of books. Also client books and j- just so many books. It’s really easy to feel isolated as a writer. It is part of the relationship we’re having with ourselves when we’re writing. But actually to succeed as a writer- and by success I mean, for me, it meant being published.

For you, success might mean something else. So what does success look like for you? And I’m gonna be very insistent that you’re gonna get there with community.

Alone, you may never get there. You may, but it’s very, very rare. Human beings are social creatures, and actually, we thrive in community. That said, I know community can sometimes be problematic.

[01:13] The Challenges of Community Critique

It can be confronting when someone holds up a mirror to you to show you what you’re doing from their perspective. If people give you critique, some- not everybody gives critique in a compassionate, useful way.

I work hard to do compassionate, constructive cr- critique so that you can improve on your writing, and that’s what I do with my clients and inside of my two writing groups, which I will tell you about a little bit toward the end.

And also it can be very painful to see other writers succeeding in a way that you wish that you were.

So I have been in one form of writing group or another since I decided to dedicate myself to fiction writing 28 years ago. I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time seeing myself, and I know that when I’m in community, especially small groups, but also can be big groups, I get to hear what other people are doing, see what they’re doing, decide if I want that, and it, it motivates me.

[02:11] Using Envy as Motivation

In the past, I have definitely been envious or jealous of what other people have and what other people are doing, and for me, that always spurs me into action.

I somehow learned pretty early on how to use my envy and my jealousy to recognize, ” Oh, they have what I want. What can I do to get there?

What are they doing that I’m not doing that I can use in my own life to get to where I wanna go as an author? I saw authors being bestsellers.

I saw authors being very prolific and putting out book after book.

Seemed to be a correlation between being able to become a bestseller in a very specific niche and, in that case, it was romance at the time- and become a bestseller.

Now, of course, luck played a role. They were very clear about that. And hard work. They were very clear about that, too. I also noticed I lacked confidence, and the only way I knew from past experience in other domains of my life, the only way to gain confidence is to take action. Really, that is the only way.

[03:14] The Difference That Makes a Difference

Confidence comes from experience, and experience comes from doing the thing.

So there’s another question that I learned in my NLP training, neuro-linguistic programming training, that my trainers would say, and I was taken aback by this question because I had never heard anyone else ask this, and that is: What is the difference that makes a difference?

When I would see writers succeeding in ways that I wanted to succeed, what was the difference there that made the difference for them, that made all the difference?

Embedded in this question is also sometimes it’s something small or insignificant that is the difference that makes a difference. What’s amazing about this question is your brain will scurry off and look for what is the difference that makes the difference.

Try it. Try it on. If you see someone doing something that you wish you could be doing or that you wish you had, ask that question. See what comes up.

So for me personally, the biggest difference that I mention, and I mentioned this earlier, is that they were writing more and publishing more. So in a span of time, they would write more and publish more.

[04:22] Publish More, Faster

And I realized I had to accelerate the pace. And I’ve seen this in other mediums with other people in completely different domains. If you wanna get better at something, hit the publish button.

Maybe you’re not so comfortable releasing your novels right now; maybe write shorter novellas, short stories, that kind of thing.

If you are craving publishing but none of your stories are ready, I recommend blog posts or videos, or audios. Substack is a great medium to experiment on. So what I actually did was when I w- noticed my romance author colleagues having the kind of success I wanted, and I asked myself, “What is the difference that makes a difference?”

[05:05] The Gargoyle That Sparked a Novella Series

I realized that I needed to publish more, more often. So and then because I made that decision, I was searching for a project, and then a circumstance happened. I actually happened to be traveling in France, and I saw this amazing gargoyle sitting on the edge of a cathedral, not attached to the cathedral building but, like, on, on the wall of a cathedral that looked very odd.

And I was just taken by it. I’m like, “What is the story of this cathedral that looks so odd?”

And I’ve been an amateur student of the way cathedrals have been built in France, having lived there a few times, and I was just taken by how strange this cathedral was. So I took a picture of it, I put it up on social media, and I said, what if there’s a story around this gargoyle?

And then my critique partner saw that. I work with two other women in a critique group now for nearly 20 years, and one of them said, “Well, what if we all wrote romances that involved a gargoyle in some way?” And we all got excited about it, and we all did it, and we published it in a little anthology of three stories, one by each of us, about our gargoyles.

Now, that book is no longer published because we took it down and put out our own versions of these stories. And mine is now called Touchstone of Love, the first book in my Touchstone series.

And that actually sparked me to write short, so it was my first published novella. I went on to write four more novellas, and I published five novellas in two years.

And, and then I ended up writing a short story that’s in a collection, where I compiled the first four. I published in print the first four novellas plus the short story, and then I also published in print the fifth novella. And they’re, of course, they’re all e-books as well. And I also wrote a full-length novel that follows those stories that is still unpublished, but it’ll come out at some point soon.

[06:57] What This Experience Taught Me

So what did I learn from this experience?

Being in community really showed me what I wanted and helped me and spurred me on. And I admit, I am egged on by… It’s, it’s like a friendly competition for me.

Now that’s just my story about one particular example around community. I invite you to join a writing community.

[07:20] Introducing Edit Lab and Edit Mastermind

Get active in-person communities, online communities. Yes, I also offer two different kinds of communities. I have Edit Lab, which is $10 a month. You can show up once a month. We will look at 200 words of yours. It’s just for science fiction and fantasy writers.

We do a little writing. We do Q&A and I deliver premium audios just for you.

These premium audios, you can access them wherever you already get your podcasts.

And then the other group I have is an Edit Mastermind, also just for science fiction and fantasy authors. There, I do require that you have finished your first draft, whereas in the Edit Lab you don’t have to have finished your first draft.

You’re welcome to join whenever you feel ready, and that’s an ongoing monthly membership.

For the Edit Mastermind, on the other hand, you do need to have finished your first draft. Crappy first draft, totally fine. And there’s an application process for joining this Edit Mastermind because it is a 12-month commitment.

Yes, indeed, a 12-month commitment. I’m looking for people who really want to be novelists, no matter how long it takes. In the 12 months, I will help you learn how to edit your novel, get it to the next version, ideally so that you can hand it off to beta readers. And within our group, you will be able to bring your material to the group in a rotating basis.

[08:45] Inside the Edit Mastermind Program

We feature one author per time. It’s again 250 to 300 words, and it’s a 90-minute call where you learn, you do some freewriting, you help other writers, you look at their works. You’re also learning how to critique.

And there’s two teachers, me and my husband, two sessions a month, with a targeted, in-depth lesson to support your learning.

People tell me it’s like getting an MFA. You’re working on your own book. You’re not reading other people’s books.

[09:16] Craft, Marketing, and Working Authors

We teach you everything around craft, story, character development, as well as help you start thinking about marketing your novel. How do you write a tagline? How do you write a book description?

How do you write a query letter? If you’re self-publishing, what goes into a cover? What kind of marketing plan might you wanna develop? So our focus is the deep dive into the editing process.

The program is 12 months because it took you a long time to write the book. It’s gonna take you some time to learn how to edit your novel.

Now, if you already have some experience, maybe you have one or two manuscripts under your belt, you are still welcome to join us, as long as whatever book you’re working on, you come to the group with it finished.

Now, people in the group also are working on new projects all the time as well, and so am I, and so is Ezra, my husband.

So we are working authors demonstrating for you what does it look like to be an author who’s working on material all the time, whether you’re writing, editing, or getting ready to publish.

In 12 months, can you publish a novel? Sure, and we encourage you to do that. That means that you are coming to the group, you’re coming to the twice-monthly meetings, and this group also comes with a meeting with me every month, where I will look at up to 20 manuscript pages per month and do a deep dive for you into those pages so that you can improve your writing quickly.

This group is for you if you’re ready to work with a small group of dedicated writers with two experienced teachers and bring your book beta reader ready, editor ready, and publishing ready.

All right, so that is my spiel, my little ad there. Whatever you do, writers, get yourself to a writing community.

[11:02] Closing Thoughts

That is how you will improve more quickly.

And if you’re having some challenges around giving and receiving critique, well, let me know. I have material on that that I can share with you.

All right, That’s it for this week, everyone. Write long and prosper.

Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating here:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2012061

Need instructions on how to leave a review? Go here.

***

Support our work for creatives: leave a tip: https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany

***

ABOUT BETH BARANY

Learn more about Beth Barany at these sites:

Author site / Coaching site / School of Fiction / Writer’s Fun Zone blog

CONNECT

Email: Beth@BethBarany.com

CREDITS

EDITED WITH DESCRIPT: https://www.descript.com?lmref=_w1WCA (Refer-a-Friend link)
MUSIC CREDITS : Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/fuzz-buzz License code: UMMKDRL02DFGKJ0L. “Fuzz buzz” by Soundroll. Commercial license: https://musicvine.com/track/soundroll/fuzz-buzz.
DISTRIBUTED BY BUZZSPROUT: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1994465 (Refer-a-Friend link)
SHOW PRODUCTION BY Beth Barany
SHOW CO-PRODUCTION + NOTES by Kerry-Ann McDade
EDITORIAL by Iman Llompart

c 2026 BETH BARANY

For more “How To Write the Future” episodes, go here.

If you’d like to invite Beth onto your podcast, drop her a note here.

Like the work we do? Tip us! https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany

The post Writing Community: Your Secret Publishing Advantage, How To Write the Future podcast, ep 227 appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

Write Unfiltered By Nicole Plumridge

Guest Contributor — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 08:00:38 +0000

Let’s welcome back Nicole Plumridge as she shares with us “Write Unfiltered.” Enjoy!

***

Analysis Paralysis

Many of us are familiar with the phrase ‘analysis leads to paralysis’.

Overthinking, second-guessing, doubting — all of this leads to one thing: nothing!

We become so overwhelmed by choices, decisions, ideas, that it feels easier to remain as we are than to potentially make the wrong move.

Most writers have experienced some form of writer’s block in their creative lives, when the words simply won’t flow.

Sometimes a block can be dissolved by immersing yourself in inspiring environments or going on a week-long writing retreat.

It may be necessary to drastically switch up your routine or even the people you spend time with.

However, sometimes we overcomplicate things.

Sometimes, alleviating a creative block is simply about getting out of your own way.

Unfiltered Writing: A Way Back to the Authentic Self

Without even realizing it, many of us present a filtered image of ourselves to the world, from our highlight reel on Instagram to a bunny-eared filter on Snapchat.

We wear a mask in the world so often that we ourselves forget what lies beneath.

It is the same with our writing.

We write with the audience in mind.

The editor.

The agent.

The book publisher.

There are so many voices in our heads clamoring for attention; we forget the most important voice of all — our own.

Writing — as with all forms of creativity — is a way back to the authentic self.

We must first discover who this is for ourselves before thinking about everyone else on the other side of the page.

Authenticity is what the world craves, and yet, we crouch behind words that won’t provoke an outcry or backlash.

We play it safe.

We write it safe.

We filter our words, allowing only the acceptable phrases through.

The raw, the wild, the volatile — these get tossed in the trashcan of our minds, ready to be recycled into a shinier, more polished version.

A version we think is more palatable for the world.

But it was never the writer’s job to be palatable.

The Undercurrent of Systemic Conditioning

From educational systems to societal restrictions to familial expectations, we are conditioned early on to believe that there is a ‘right’ way to do things and a ‘wrong’ way.

There is a correct structure to abide by when writing an essay.

A poem must be crafted following a specific format.

If your novel does not slot perfectly into an easily identifiable genre, it’s definitely a lost cause.

In the end, we are left with good grades, essays that emulate the classics, praise from instructors, but are no closer to understanding our own unique voice.

Having space on the page to fumble with words, experiment with nonsense poetry, or simply make mistakes has rarely been rewarded.

As a result, we fall into the habit of judging ourselves before the world gets the chance to.

We edit our voice, tone down our language, switch out entire plotlines and character arcs, all to save ourselves from potential embarrassment or rejection down the line.

We feel as if we’re doing the story justice, giving it the chance to be chosen in a competition or selected in a magazine, but we’re actually doing ourselves a disservice.

Not only are we blocking our unique creative voice, our signature style, but we are telling ourselves quietly that our voice is not good enough.

We stifle it.

Shove it down.

All the while, elevating a language, style, rhythm, or genre that is not quite our own in the hopes that it will be met with validation and approval.

Parameters: Helpful or Harmful?

Now, I am not advocating for total creative anarchy.

Syntax, punctuation, and grammar, iambic pentameter — these literary rules and devices provide helpful parameters within which to create.

They can give structure and form to our work.

Placing our creativity within a framework can make the process less intimidating, thus stimulating creativity.

However, while these forms may help birth beautiful work into the world, they may simultaneously restrict and squeeze all life force out of the unruly embryonic expression before it even takes form.

If you have a poem in your soul, is it any less a poem because it’s not a sonnet or a limerick?

If it does not rhyme but melts in the mouth as you speak it, is it any less evocative and heartfelt?

It is not about abandoning craft, technique, and writing rules.

Instead, it is about finding ways to ensure that these serve the authentic voice that is emerging, rather than silence it.

As the author and creator, it is up to you to find that unique balance between your honest creative voice and the rules that can make it sparkle rather than dull it down.

The Age of Authenticity vs. AI

We are in an age of simultaneous creative liberation as well as destruction.

Artists have their own platforms now.

The internet has created an avenue to bypass gatekeepers in the literary world.

Self-publishing is a viable option, and for all the ills social media may bring, it is also a place where creatives can showcase their work, unfiltered, unedited by anyone but themselves.

With direct visibility being an actual option for the modern-day creative, all it takes is a big swig of bravery to put your work out there.

What you create does not need to be tailored to fit certain requirements at the expense of losing your originality.

While we are being creatively liberated with more choices at our fingertips than ever before, in the age of AI, genuine soul-based creativity is at risk of being compromised.

Nowadays, AI can produce a perfect rhyming poem with just the right number of stanzas and verses.

In just a few clicks and prompts, it can generate your school essay.

A few more suggestions, perhaps a full-blown dissertation will magically appear on your screen.

However, what AI cannot emulate is your felt experience.

Your memories, quirks, experiences, and the lens through which you perceive the world cannot be generated through a couple of clicks and prompts.

Your voice — your signature in this world — can only be crafted, assimilated, and placed in the chrysalis of creation by you and you alone.

Concluding Thoughts

While I advocate for creativity to be unbridled, wild, and raw, this is not a critique against critiquing.

Feedback, insight, and professional suggestions can elevate a piece of writing from good to great.

Incorporating others’ opinions into our work is necessary for us to grow and develop as a writer.

However, at its heart, writing needs to come from somewhere deep within you — a place which is ultimately inaccessible to anyone but you.

It is especially necessary in the early stages of a writing project to give yourself permission to write messy and unfiltered.

Let it be you first, before you intentionally tweak it to fit a particular agent’s interests or judge’s preferences.

When starting out on a project, it is the writer’s job to protect the authentic voice that is emerging, rather than let it be instantly tainted by the perceived opinions of others.

Discerning what works for you and your process and what doesn’t is also an integral part of the creative life.

If certain rules help scaffold and support your writing, then incorporate them.

However, if they are inhibiting your expression, leaving you stuck and uninspired, cast them aside and search within.

So, try it out.

Give yourself permission to pick up a pen and write unfiltered.

Don’t polish it.

Don’t force it into a mold.

Just write.

You may be surprised by the words that come through.

***

About The Author

Nicole Plumridge is the author of three books, including an Amazon bestselling debut novel.

Her work has appeared in The Poetryhood and Half-Light Magazine.

She is also a coach and writing mentor who supports creatives in building creative practices, finding their unique voice, and reconnecting with their inner magic.

Connect with Nicole and book a discovery call if your creativity is calling you.

Website: https://nicoleplumridgecoaching.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/authornicoleplumridge/

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-plumridge-39512368

Novels by Nicole:

Healing House: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08X64LRL3/ref=rdr_ext_tmb

Erosabel: https://rb.gy/ypoyrf

The Ghost You Left Behind: https://rb.gy/72lt0o

The post Write Unfiltered By Nicole Plumridge appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

The Top Book Description Mistakes Romance Authors Make by Morgan Lee Clasper

Guest Contributor — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 08:00:03 +0000

Let’s welcome back monthly columnist Morgan Lee Clasper as he shares with us “The Top Book Description Mistakes Romance Authors Make.” Enjoy!

***

Romance is an immensely popular genre with a huge reader base.

But with a big audience comes serious competition.

One of your greatest tools for standing out and attracting readers is your book description (otherwise known as your blurb).

When readers land on your sales page, an effective blurb is often what turns them from curious shoppers into buyers and raving fans.

Which is why if your book description is making a fatal mistake, it could be seriously undermining your book’s appeal to readers.

Having read and worked on hundreds of romance blurbs, I’ve identified three major mistakes that romance authors often fall into.

While these mistakes can appear in blurbs from other genres, romance blurbs have some unique pitfalls — and potential strengths — that set them apart.

1. Describing the romance instead of selling the tension

This is a very common mistake, and it comes from authors treating their blurb as a simple summary of their plot.

They dedicate too much time to setup and backstory, resulting in the actual romance getting buried several paragraphs down.

The problem is that an effective romance blurb isn’t a mere summary of events.

It should also sell the emotional experience, making readers anticipate the romantic tension.

As a rule of thumb, “What happens” isn’t as important as how the characters feel about one another.

Enemies-to-lovers romance is a beautiful example of this.

Because the romantic leads begin by hating each other, the blurb can easily create suspense, raise questions (“will they get together?”), and highlight powerful stakes.

The result is a push-and-pull that immerses readers in the dynamic and makes them anticipate how the protagonists will fall in love.

Even in stories without this trope, the underlying question is “how will these characters get together?”

Tension can come from numerous sources:

They want each other but can’t be together
One wants a relationship while the other refuses to commit
They need each other’s help but don’t trust each other
They pretend not to care while they clearly actually do
They want to fall in love, but trauma or insecurity holds them back

In each case, the important thing is showing the relationship dynamic.

Readers need to understand why these characters could never be together, because the entire story is about how they actually can.

Additionally, the kinds of words you use in your blurb can either heighten the tension or undermine it.

This is particularly noticeable in enemies-to-lovers, rivals, forbidden romance, dark romance, and other dynamics where attraction is mixed with hostility, resentment, distrust, or power imbalance.

Consider the following examples:

“Ever since he broke her trust, Emma never liked Jake. But when they’re forced to work together, she starts to develop feelings for him.”

The language here is neutral and lacking in power.

The relationship reads like a mild inconvenience that happens to end in some romantic feelings.

Let’s see what would happen if we strengthened the wording:

“Emma has spent ten years despising Jake. Now she’s forced to work beside the man who exposed her darkest secret — and the more she tries to hate him, the harder it becomes to resist him.”

Now, the same events are charged with emotional tension.

This helps readers become more invested in the story and feel the underlying emotions for themselves.

Every kind of blurb can benefit from stronger wording.

Just like when editing your novel, look for places where you can swap out weak or unclear words for more powerful alternatives.

2. Hiding the Tropes Your Readers Crave

The romance genre is a great example of the power of story tropes.

Romance fans are voracious readers.

However, they can also be very particular about the kinds of stories they enjoy.

Romance boasts an immense number of tropes, with hyper-specific subgenres and niches that cater to almost any interest.

Romance fans may enjoy specific relationship dynamics, settings, themes, and protagonists.

One reader might only want cozy, small-town, later-in-life stories.

Another might binge-read college sports romance with palpable tension and snarky protagonists.

As authors, we can take advantage of our story tropes to attract readers who enjoy them.

One effective way to do this is in what I call your “selling paragraph”.

This is the final paragraph of your blurb, placed after your cliff-hanger.

It gives you an opportunity to mention similar authors (i.e., “Perfect for fans of X and Y”), as well as list your main tropes.

You could mention your book’s subgenre, for example:

Billionaire romance
Mafia romance
Sports romance
College romance
Clean romance
Romantasy
Paranormal romance
Regency romance
Romantic comedy

You can also mention your specific story details.

This could include the love interest’s personality or the relationship dynamic:

Fake dating
Slow burn
Forced proximity
Opposites attract
Grumpy/sunshine
Enemies-to-lovers
Friends-to-lovers
Second chances
Forbidden love
Fated mates
Secret relationship
Surprise pregnancy

This list is far from exhaustive.

There are hundreds of possible tropes with hyper-specific combinations, and readers will often binge their favorites.

By leaving your tropes out of your blurb, it makes it harder for readers to know if they’ll enjoy your story.

Authors may worry that they’re narrowing their audience with this tactic.

However, it’s better to attract a smaller readership that loves your kind of story, rather than a broad audience that feels lukewarm — or worse, actively dislikes your tropes.

I’m not saying to cram your blurb with every possible trope.

But by highlighting the top 3-5 tropes that feature prominently in your story, you can help your book appeal to your desired readers.

As a practical exercise, try chaining different subgenres and tropes together.

You could lead with your subgenre, then sprinkle in your relationship dynamic, protagonist’s personality, or setting:

Romantasy + Fated Mates + Forbidden Love

Clean Romance + Second Chances + Small Town

Dark Romance + Forced Proximity + Grumpy/Sunshine

These combinations give readers essential information about your story while using only a handful of words — and in a blurb, every word counts.

As an aside, remember to show how your specific tropes influence your book.

There’s a big difference between dumping an inventory of tropes on your reader vs. showing how those tropes shape your story.

Example: “Her ex-boyfriend is the man she swore she’d never forgive. Unfortunately, pretending to date him is the only way to keep her career afloat”.

If you were to then mention second chances, fake dating, and forced proximity in your blurb’s selling paragraph, readers can see exactly how those tropes apply.

Example: “Step into a thrilling second chances romance that will delight fans of fake dating and forced proximity.”

As an added bonus, taking the time to examine your story’s tropes will also give you potentially powerful keywords that will improve your book’s search ranking.

3. Ignoring The Power of First-Person Voice

Romance blurbs offer a unique opportunity that’s absent from many other genres.

Because these stories often place the reader in the shoes of the protagonist, letting them experience everything through a first-person perspective, the blurb can also be written in a first-person voice.

Doing this has several major benefits.

First, it allows readers to get a taste of your book’s writing style.

If your heroine is snarky and irreverent, consider using that tone in the blurb.

If the book is witty and ironic, having your POV character make sarcastic comments in the blurb lets readers know that this will be a recurring theme in the book.

Second, writing in first person allows readers to feel the romantic tension for themselves.

If our heroine is frustrated with the male love interest, or if she’s risking death by participating in a forbidden romance, a first-person blurb makes those emotions bleed through, letting us experience the character’s feelings for ourselves.

All of this combined can result in a punchy, voice-driven blurb that lets readers meet your protagonist before the first page.

The best blurbs using this technique feel like your protagonist is directly speaking to the reader.

Some authors worry that this approach won’t work for a dual-POV novel.

I find this fear to be misplaced.

I’ve seen (and written) many first-person blurbs for dual-POV novels.

Just like when you’re deciding which perspective to write a chapter from, the trick is to pick whichever character has the most to lose, is driving the action, or has the most interesting view of things.

To take our earlier example, a female perspective would work best because the heroine is the one driving the action (pretending to date her ex) and has the most to lose (saving her career).

A dark stalker romance, however, might benefit from a male POV because the male lead is the one stalking, obsessing over, and fantasizing about the female love interest.

It’s also possible to break your blurb into two points of view.

The first half can be written from one character’s perspective, while the second half can be written from that of the love interest.

This lets you show both sides of the situation and their separate feelings.

Not every romance blurb needs to be in first person.

There are many successful romance books that are written in third.

Nevertheless, it’s a missed opportunity to not consider whether your story is one that would benefit from the personality and immediacy of a first-person blurb.

Conclusion

These are the top three mistakes I’ve seen after hundreds of romance blurbs.

Fixing some of these mistakes might be as simple as swapping weak words for stronger alternatives, or adding a “selling paragraph” with your tropes.

Others might require you to rethink your current blurb.

To sum up, when writing your next romance blurb, remember to sell (and not merely describe) the emotional tension, mention the big tropes that your ideal readers enjoy, and consider whether your book would benefit from a first-person perspective.

With these tips in mind, you can craft a blurb that puts readers in the shoes of your protagonist, creates irresistible romantic tension, and leaves them desperate to read your story.

Happy blurb writing!

***

About the Author

Morgan Lee Clasper is a copywriter, book sales strategist, and author of The Blurb Puzzle.

With over seven years of experience in the publishing industry, he’s worked with New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling authors, writing 4,000 blurbs and counting.

To download a free copy of The Blurb Puzzle, visit https://morganclasperauthor.com/the-blurb-puzzle

The post The Top Book Description Mistakes Romance Authors Make by Morgan Lee Clasper appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

Story Alchemy for Sci-Fi and Fantasy Writers, How To Write the Future podcast, ep 226

Kerry-Ann McDade — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 21:05:31 +0000

Story Alchemy for Sci-Fi and Fantasy Writers – How To Write the Future podcast, episode 226

“I strived for many years to learn how to write fiction, and when I finally learned how, it just felt so magical. Even now, seventeen books in, it still feels magical.” – Beth Barany

In this latest How To Write the Future podcast episode, titled “Story Alchemy for Sci-Fi and Fantasy Writers” host Beth Barany shares the transformational journey writing a novel can have on you, including the feeling of magic it can imbue in you. Beth also shares how you can work with her and how to deepen the emotional experience with your readers.

Platforms the podcast is available on: Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout | Spotify|YouTube

RESOURCES

Support the podcast! https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany

Get the workbook: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/world-building-resources/

Join the Edit Lab! https://bethbarany.com/editlab

About the How To Write the Future podcast

This podcast is for you if you have questions like:

– How do I create a believable world for my science fiction story?

– How do I figure out what’s not working if my story feels flat?

– How do I make my story more interesting and alive?

This podcast is for readers, too, if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

Transcript for episode 266 Story Alchemy for Sci-Fi and Fantasy Writers

Novel Writing Alchemy

BETH BARANY: Novel writing as alchemy as an alchemical process in a novel is a transformational process. It’s gonna transform you. The ultimate goal is to transform the reader in some way. And being a writer, just learning how to do the craft of writing fiction is a transformational process.

Hi, everyone. I’m Beth Barany of How to Write the Future podcast. I’m a science fiction and fantasy writer, and I’m also a novel-writing alchemist. I’m testing out calling myself the novel-writing alchemist because I realize the work I do is transformational. I help writers shift into their identity as a writer; I help you create a transformational story, and learning the craft of fiction is itself transformational and magical.

So let me tell you what I mean by all of that.

[00:56] Magic of Making Books

Now, I’ve always felt that writing is magical. In fact, when I was a child, I wanted to be magic. I wanted to learn how to talk to the animals. I thought creating anything was magical, and I strived for many years. Strove? Strived? Strived. I strived for many years to learn how to write fiction, and when I finally learned how, it just felt so magical.

Even now, seventeen books in, it still feels magical. We are taking an idea that lives, like, way up here somewhere- I don’t know where it lives- and we’re turning it into a book. What is more transformational than that? It’s awesome. It’s amazing. That idea that we had that sticks with us forever or comes to us in a flash becomes a book that people can hold in their hands.

It’s amazing. It’s just so amazing.

[01:46] Hero’s Journey Threshold

So the hero’s journey, as laid out by Christopher Vogler in his book, The Hero’s Journey, where he took Joseph Campbell’s work and he adapted it for writers, specifically screenplay writers and fiction writers. And he took Joseph Campbell’s stages, which was, I think, eighteen, you’re welcome to correct me if I’m wrong, down to twelve stages.

And then he also talked about the archetypes: the hero, the mentor, and also the threshold guardian. And I realized I’ve been functioning like a threshold guardian all these years. Except instead of sitting with my arms crossed and you shall not enter and prove your worth, I’m more like, “Come, be a writer.Do you have what it takes? Here’s what it takes. Are you ready to cross the threshold?”

Now, that book, The Writer’s Journey, by Christopher Vogler, inspired my book, where I invite you as a writer to self-coach yourself, to coach yourself through your own writer’s journey.

And it is a transformational process. I didn’t always think of myself as a writer. It took me a long time to really own that role of being a writer. So now, not only do I totally own being a writer, which is amazing because I remember what it was like to strive for this, to reach for this, but also I’m a threshold guardian inviting you in to be a writer.

[03:09] Programs for Writers

And speaking directly to science fiction and fantasy writers, come on down. I work with you. I work with you in my Edit Lab, which is my ten dollars a month membership to teach you some tools, meet monthly, look at each other’s work, and learn skills and also mindset. And I also do the Edit Mastermind, which is enrolling a few times a year, and check for that because we might be enrolling by the time this episode airs.

And that is a twelve-month program for people who have already finished their first draft and want to edit it to publication. And it’s an intensive, and there’s an application process to get in there.

[03:47] Crossing Creative Thresholds

Now, when we build our story worlds, we have to enter the writing process. So every day, every time you sit down to write, you are crossing a threshold into your own creative process.

And that is one way in which you are entering into a special realm.

Now, I do set the bar high in my programs because I teach skills, and I invite people who are dedicated and committed to being science fiction and fantasy novelists.

[04:12] Three Layers Transformation

Okay, so we’re working with three layers of transformation.

You transform an idea into a story. You transform yourself into a writer. Not everyone starts out thinking they are a writer. Now, I feel confident I am a writer, but that took time.

It took a decade, maybe more. And then we also invite our readers into the transformation. So I invite you to think of your writing as a transformational experience and notice how you enter into your creative space and how you exit because chances are you’re doing that every day or multiple times a week or multiple times a month, and that in itself is an art form.

Also, where are you in your craft learning? How are you transforming your understanding of story? Are you studying all the craft parts that you need to learn?

[05:07] Intentional Reader Impact

And lastly, what are you doing to deepen into the emotional experience of being a writer? What I really want to say is there’s a transformational emotional experience that we invite our readers into, and are you understanding that for your genre? Are you putting intention behind that?

[05:26] Closing Invitation

If you have any questions about the alchemy of being a novelist, reach out to me. I am your, I am, how am I saying this? I am your novelist alchemist. I am the novelist alchemist helping you create a safe place, so you can do this transformative work. That’s it for this week, everyone.

Write long and prosper.

Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating here:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2012061

Need instructions on how to leave a review? Go here.

***

Support our work for creatives: leave a tip: https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany

***

ABOUT BETH BARANY

Learn more about Beth Barany at these sites:

Author site / Coaching site / School of Fiction / Writer’s Fun Zone blog

CONNECT

Email: Beth@BethBarany.com

CREDITS

EDITED WITH DESCRIPT: https://www.descript.com?lmref=_w1WCA (Refer-a-Friend link)
MUSIC CREDITS : Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/fuzz-buzz License code: UMMKDRL02DFGKJ0L. “Fuzz buzz” by Soundroll. Commercial license: https://musicvine.com/track/soundroll/fuzz-buzz.
DISTRIBUTED BY BUZZSPROUT: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1994465 (Refer-a-Friend link)
SHOW PRODUCTION BY Beth Barany
SHOW CO-PRODUCTION + NOTES by Kerry-Ann McDade
EDITORIAL by Iman Llompart

c 2026 BETH BARANY

For more “How To Write the Future” episodes, go here.

If you’d like to invite Beth onto your podcast, drop her a note here.

Like the work we do? Tip us! https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany

The post Story Alchemy for Sci-Fi and Fantasy Writers, How To Write the Future podcast, ep 226 appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

How to Talk About Your Art by Catharine Bramkamp

Guest Contributor — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 08:00:52 +0000

Let’s welcome back monthly columnist Catharine Bramkamp as she shares with us “How to Talk About Your Art.” Enjoy!

***

“The process of doing is the process of learning, and creativity is the act of turning experience into something new.” — John Dewey, philosopher and educational reformer.

Why Artists Struggle to Explain Their Work

Artists — even professional artists — are terrible at articulating what we do and why it’s important.

When asked, we fumble, mumbling generalities like, we sort of paint, or we write books you’ve never heard of, or we knit, or we are working with the city on a project.

As if the three-story knitted sculpture hanging in City Hall isn’t worth mentioning by name.

This is not false modesty; artists are notoriously vague about our work for a reason.

The first is that we want to avoid jinxing the project by explaining it, and second, we honestly haven’t a clue how to describe our work.

When Talking About Art Drains the Magic

Jinxing a project is real.

Writers know not to waste too much breath discussing a potential plot line or describing freshly drawn characters.

Talk about a book too much, and you risk dissipating the energy and the magic.

Too much talk deflates even a trial balloon.

After a lengthy conversation over lunch, we return to our desk and … nothing.

Just a limp rubber shell.

All the energy has leaked away.

Talking often replaces writing.

A deep dive over your book outline makes for great lunch conversation, but it may be disastrous when we return to our desks and realize all the ideas have been stated, reviewed, and are now finished.

When People Ask What You’re Doing

As self- protective as our artistic reticence is, it doesn’t help when our sister asks, “So what are you doing?”

You search your frozen brain for an adequate answer: how to express the art without risking it?

How to tell your sister you need to leave at 2:00 PM because the work is calling and you don’t want to disappoint your Muse?

You rehearse an erudite response in your head, but all that comes out of your mouth is something unimpressive like “I’m working?”

And if you can’t come up with something more compelling than that, she feels free to drop off the dog.

Again.

Artists are not skilled at discussing their art because creating something new is far easier and more compelling than explaining what just happened.

Yet when we are in the middle of a project, it’s so difficult to express, because we don’t KNOW what we’re doing.

And just try explaining how not knowing is the joy of doing art.

The Problem With Explaining the Process

Remember those classes when we were required to “show our work?”

The answer didn’t matter as much as the process — assigned steps to write out, as if solving another word problem would lead to any skill other than how to earn a passing grade.

In your developing sixth-grade soul, you knew you would never, ever use this pointless skill again.

Until your first grant proposal.

Damn.

Who knew adulting was all about word problems?

For grants, for shows, for proposals, you must outline your process, articulate your goals, and if a train leaves the station at 3:46 AM traveling at 63 miles per hour. . . bah, I’ll drive.

And then your sister calls about the dog.

And you mumble something about how your work will expand the universe and contribute to world peace.

And she’s not buying it at all.

Damn again.

You need the art to expand your own soul and make meaning in your life.

Yeah, and you can do that any time, she retorts.

No, actually you can’t; it must happen right here and right now.

Back to word problems.

How to Share Your Art Without Overexplaining

What can you say about your art that doesn’t sound pompous or obnoxious?

To another artist, you can say with a wave of your hand, indicating the universe, “I’m working on a project.”

And the artist will understand.

But family and friends do not understand.

Unlike a long division problem, you have options.

Don’t show or discuss your current project, but do find a project you can show.

Do you have a completed poem that most people will understand?

Do you have a small and finished quilt?

Can you find a good example of your painting or your latest song?

Include family and friends in your art by offering a small token of your work.

Invite them to the dance recital.

Share photos of recent cosplay costumes.

Send a small clip of your symphony rehearsal.

Photograph the painting.

Share the digital collage.

Ask for feedback.

Do you like this color?

Did you appreciate this sound?

Would you use this pot?

Would you read this story?

Sharing Without Asking for a Critique

You are not soliciting real critiques.

For the real deal, look for others in your specific field.

For writing, a writing coach; for art, a professional artist.

What you are doing here is sharing just enough to bring the non-artists to your side.

That’s all.

Listen to their opinion (there is too much red in this story; this doesn’t sound like the Grateful Dead), then smile and ignore it.

You are not sharing art; you are sharing the joy of creating.

When someone asks, what are you doing?

You say, “I’m working on a poem cycle; here are a couple of lines, What do you think?”

They are flattered you asked, and confused by your work.

So are you.

Now you all can move on to discussing the weather or their stiff knee, whatever.

But the message is sent.

They can now at least visualize what you are doing with your time.

And maybe, just maybe, they will respect it.

It may take a couple of tries, but it will work.

Learn More

Look for my new book — Take Up Space — Art is Your Second Act.

***

Want to read more articles like this one Writer’s Fun Zone? Subscribe here.

***

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The post How to Talk About Your Art by Catharine Bramkamp appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

How to Convey Backstory for Secondary and Tertiary Characters, How To Write the Future podcast, ep 225

Kerry-Ann McDade — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 20:03:18 +0000

How to Convey Backstory for Secondary and Tertiary Characters, How To Write the Future podcast, episode 225

“You only need to reveal backstory when the reader absolutely needs to know it.” – Beth Barany

Do you want to know how to add backstory to your secondary characters without slowing down the main plot and action of your story?

In this How To Write the Future podcast episode titled “How to Convey Backstory for Secondary and Tertiary Characters,” host Beth Barany describes how you can filter backstory through the secondary and tertiary characters and shares tools to reveal the story’s past. Plus, she goes over how to use your characters’ thoughts, feelings and history to help convey the worldbuilding in your story.

There is also an invitation to sign up to Beth’s Edit Lab, a monthly $10 subscription with a monthly call.

Platforms the podcast is available on: Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout | Spotify| YouTube

RESOURCES

Support the podcast! https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany

Get the workbook: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/world-building-resources/

Join the Edit Lab! https://bethbarany.com/editlab

About the How To Write the Future podcast

This podcast is for you if you have questions like:

– How do I create a believable world for my science fiction story?

– How do I figure out what’s not working if my story feels flat?

– How do I make my story more interesting and alive?

This podcast is for readers, too, if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

Transcript for episode 225 How to Convey Backstory for Secondary and Tertiary Characters

Welcome and Topic Setup

BETH BARANY: Hey, everyone. Beth Barany here with How to Write the Future podcast. I am coming to you from Oakland, California, across the bay from San Francisco, and I am passionate about writing science fiction and fantasy stories, and I’m passionate about helping writers with theirs.

That’s my whole focus in my writing business.

So today we’re gonna talk about how do you convey backstory for secondary and tertiary characters without slowing down the action, without boring the reader, without getting anyone confused. Now, of course, it is quite a feat. You’re not gonna figure it out right away.

This is usually something people figure out in edits, which is why I run Edit Lab, a monthly teaching and editing call where we go over your words. So everything I share with you today here is gonna hopefully help you, and really, I believe the best way to learn is to get eyes on your own words. So if you’re interested in that, I’ll share a little bit more about that later in the episode.

[01:05] Edit Phase Mindset

Now I’m gonna just jump in and give you some tips that you can use for editing your work. Now, I do recommend that you do this at the edit phase. Do not stress about it in the first drafting phase. That is for writing.

All right. I’m looking at my note. Looking at my note.

Also, so I’m gonna take off my glasses because the glare; I don’t know how to handle the glare.

[01:27] POV Filtered Backstory

So how do we convey the backstory of secondary and tertiary characters in our stories?

Most people here are writing in one point of view, or maybe if you write in other points of view, you might have a section or a chapter for each point-of-view character.

When you’re in your point-of-view character, you still need to describe other characters. The secondary characters, tertiary characters, anyone who crosses your point of view character’s path is someone whose backstory could be revealed.

So the best way to reveal backstory, number one, is it’s entirely filtered by what your point of view character knows, understands, guesses, even if it’s wrong, surmises, has learned somewhere.

Because they’re your guide for the story, you only can convey what they know.

So the other important thing to note is the main character is gonna have some kind of relationship with these other characters. So you need to know what that is, and that will also color what they reveal. Lastly, something to keep in mind that I jokingly tell my clients: share on a need-to-know basis, like we’re spies.

So you only need to reveal backstory when the reader needs to know it, absolutely needs to know it. Without it, things would be confusing. So let’s define some terms.

Backstory, in my mind, is anything that happens before page one to your character, to the other characters, to your story world. And so integrating those into your present, your story present, the story narrative, is what’s key here. We don’t wanna pause the story to do some kind of history dump, and pause the action to do any kind of flashbacks unless, again, it’s absolutely necessary, and it’s part of the reality for your point-of-view character.

Now, the first thing to keep in mind is: what does your main character know about these other characters? And it’s going to be filtered also through the main character’s needs and wants and fears and misunderstandings and biases, and that’s also what makes it interesting.

[03:32] Character Roles and Archetypes

The first thing I like to think about when I come up with who my secondary and tertiary characters are is to be very clear on how this secondary or tertiary character is helping or hindering my main character.

Are they an antagonist? Are they a best friend helper character? Are they a catalyst? Are they a witness? Are they a minor obstacle? Or perhaps they form some other role, like love interest, like mentor, like ally, like threshold guardian. Now, if you’re familiar with archetypes, I just named a bunch of archetypes.

It’s really helpful to start with that so you understand what the point of view character’s relationship is to these other characters, and that will also help you make decisions on what to reveal and what they wouldn’t know.

[04:23] Need to Know Exposition

So as I said, you wanna reveal backstory on a need-to-know basis.

The real test here is the reader gonna understand this without any context?

If you’re starting a story, they don’t know the story. You need to add little tiny tidbits. You need to add a little tiny bit of exposition, which is information that the main character would know about their world.

They’re acting like a little bit of an explainer to the reader, but you do it in a way that is completely in the point of view character’s voice and entirely based on what they would actually know. Maybe you need to explain an action, like maybe the main character is guessing at the motivation of another’s action. That’s always helpful.

Maybe the main character is noticing that the secondary or tertiary character is doing something that they need to respond to, and in that way, we can also learn something about the past of the secondary or tertiary character. Or what they do and the explanation of it by the main point of view character is gonna deepen the story world.

[05:25] Tools for Revealing Past

So on a practical level as a writer, what are your tools? In your toolkit you have dialogue, you have description, you have action, you have implying or subtext, you have the main character having a memory, and you also have their internal experience, their interiority, their thoughts and feelings. These are all the ways that you can convey another character’s backstory.

[05:49] Speculation and Expectations

So another thing that is so fun to play with is expectations. The main character, and also the reader, will have expectations about a kind of character that shows up maybe looking and acting like a pirate until suddenly they don’t, and then that can make the main character wonder or guess, like maybe they’re more than a pirate.

Maybe there’re, there’s something else about them. And they can speculate.

One of the biggest problems I see in my clients’ manuscripts is they don’t use the tool of playing with speculation. We all have guesses and wonderings about each other in the real world. Bring that into your fiction. Your point of view character is not just describing the world or having thoughts and feelings that relate to themselves.

They’re gonna have expectations and guesses about the other people.

[06:41] World-building Through Others

And that is so much fun to play with. Now also, a secondary character, through their own dialogue, through their own action, through something they provoke in your main character, they also can be revealing a little bit about their past that will directly relate to your story world.

And it can reveal so many things about the story world. It can reveal culture, power, status, conflict, social expectations through the way a secondary character or tertiary character will respond to your main character.

So here’s a little exercise for you to do, is to describe, in two to three adjectives, a secondary character from your main point-of-view character’s perspective.

Write down their name. What is their expected story role? And given that, what is your main character, and even the readers, expecting will be the outcome of this character in the story? And then you can also play with, because of that, what things might happen to your secondary character, good or bad, again, through the point of view character’s eyes.

In what way will the secondary or tertiary character break expectations, create some kind of contradiction, make us surprised, and also teach us something about the story world? When we write in science fiction and fantasy, it is our job to provide context, and the way to provide context is often through what other characters in the story do and say.

So now we get some kind of context of the culture. And remember, everybody filters science fiction and fantasy through what they know about the contemporary world.

[08:21] Language and Terminology Tips

So we have to be skillful about using contemporary references in a way that do not take us out of the story world. So, for example, just one small example from one of my clients in a recent edit lab class: they used a phrase that lacked a few words to give us context.

They used the phrase “birth form,” which could imply “baby”. But really what they’re talking about is gender. So we were asking them to say the ” original gender form” or something like that. So that could convey that this was about the fact that people had different genders throughout their lives, at least some characters did.

So when you are playing with trying to share new concepts that no one has ever heard of, you have to play with language until you find the terminology that readers will associate with what you’re trying to accomplish. And this is really hard to do on your own.

[09:19] Edit Lab and Programs

This is why I recommend people get critique partners or hire editors, uh, or join groups like mine. I have an edit lab at $10 a month. I told you I would tell you about that. You’re welcome to join. We have our monthly call on the first Wednesday of the month at 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern.

And then if you are ready for some intensive work on your novel, I have a 12-month program, the Edit Mastermind for science fiction and fantasy writers. Both these groups are for science fiction and fantasy writers, and I recommend that you contact me if you’re curious about that. Enrollment for that will be opening soon.

[09:54] Wrap Up and Resources

So I hope that this was helpful today give you some ideas on how to convey backstory for your secondary and tertiary characters.

If you have any questions about this or backstory, be sure to check out my resources. I’ve done a lot of episodes on backstory, so check out the resources section of this podcast so you can see what I’ve done and find some resources for you.

So be sure to check out my episode on where to insert backstory, episode 113, and that link is in the show notes. And I also have an article on my blog, Writer’s Fun Zone blog: “Three Powerful Techniques to Weave Backstory into Your Novel.”

I hope to see you in our edit lab or edit mastermind.

If you have any questions about backstory, let me know.

And if you’d like to join us in either of these, be sure to follow the links in the resource section, or just reach out to me directly.

That’s it for this week, everyone. Write long and prosper.

Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating here:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2012061

Need instructions on how to leave a review? Go here.

***

Support our work for creatives: leave a tip: https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany

***

ABOUT BETH BARANY

Learn more about Beth Barany at these sites:

Author site / Coaching site / School of Fiction / Writer’s Fun Zone blog

TConnect with Beth Barany

CREDITS

EDITED WITH DESCRIPT: https://www.descript.com?lmref=_w1WCA (Refer-a-Friend link)
MUSIC CREDITS : Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/fuzz-buzz License code: UMMKDRL02DFGKJ0L. “Fuzz buzz” by Soundroll. Commercial license: https://musicvine.com/track/soundroll/fuzz-buzz.
DISTRIBUTED BY BUZZSPROUT: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1994465 (Refer-a-Friend link)
SHOW PRODUCTION BY Beth Barany
SHOW CO-PRODUCTION + NOTES by Kerry-Ann McDade
EDITORIAL by Iman Llompart

2026 BETH BARANY

For more “How To Write the Future” episodes, go here.

If you’d like to invite Beth onto your podcast, drop her a note here.

Like the work we do? Tip us! https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany

The post How to Convey Backstory for Secondary and Tertiary Characters, How To Write the Future podcast, ep 225 appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

Protecting the Creative Life: The Structure That Supports Creativity by Iman Llompart

Guest Contributor — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 08:00:17 +0000

Let’s welcome back Iman Llompart as she shares with us “Protecting the Creative Life: The Structure That Supports Creativity.” Enjoy!

***

Creativity vs. Structure

For the longest time, I thought that if you weren’t a structured creative, you would never finish your art.

It’s only recently that I’ve discovered the two don’t necessarily go together.

The word structure has its positives.

It makes me think of being organized and disciplined, but it also makes me think of rigidity, strict schedules, and no room for fun.

I think that’s why some writers resist it.

I wish I were more structured with my writing, but I’m just not.

Keeping up momentum for a while makes me feel good, but I’ve never been someone who can maintain the same routine consistently.

I get bored easily.

Then, when I do write but don’t achieve the daily word count I’ve set for myself, I knock myself over the head for it.

And I think that’s another reason some of us — and I include myself in this — can start turning away from what we love.

We’re not living up to the expectations we’ve set for ourselves.

Expectations that are often unrealistic and unattainable.

Why create if you can’t have fun doing it?

But what if structure isn’t meant to control creativity, but protect it?

Your Brain Can’t Hold Everything

When life throws lemons, it’s hard not to start associating passion with burden.

We have so many things to worry about outside of work, and when you add running your own business to that list, sometimes there is barely enough time in the day to take a moment for yourself.

And when you finally do, who wants to spend it thinking up new problems and trying to solve them?

Think about the responsibilities in your business that take you away from your craft.

It’s usually things like:

Deadlines
Emails and follow-ups
Research
Querying and submissions
Client work
Marketing
Appointments

That’s a lot of information to keep floating around in your head.

Your brain shouldn’t have to be your filing cabinet.

Structure Can Be Simple

Structure doesn’t have to be complicated or intimidating.

Sometimes, it can simply be the solution to a problem.

There’s a reason businesses need structure to thrive.

And there are simple forms of structure that can make life easier.

Structure helps us keep track of things.

It can be as simple as:

A calendar for deadlines
A place to capture ideas
A simple query tracker
Organized research folders
A weekly priorities list

You don’t need an elaborate system for everything.

The tool isn’t the solution.

Structure is only useful if it reduces friction.

Fewer Decisions = More Creative Energy

Structure helps cut down on unnecessary decisions and gives you more space to create.

Think about what happens before you actually give yourself the energy to write.

If you’re focused on running a business, you probably have several questions taking up far too much space in your mind:

Where did I save that?

What was I supposed to work on?

Which version is the newest?

What was that idea I had?

What deadline am I forgetting?

Now think about the decisions that are currently draining you.

Could you integrate some of them into a system so there are fewer things to remember and manage?

And more importantly, where would you rather spend that energy?

When you’re no longer using so much of it on small logistical decisions, you have more room for the creative ones:

What does my character want?

Why isn’t this scene working?

What happens next?

Those are the questions I’d rather have taking up space in my head.

Structure Should Fit the Writer

Structure isn’t one-size-fits-all.

It should be tailored to the person who needs it.

Not every system works for everyone because we don’t all have the same needs, and every business has different priorities.

I’m sure you’ve received unsolicited advice from someone who thinks they know exactly what your business needs, while instinctively, you know their suggestion won’t work for you.

I’d probably thank them enthusiastically and then toss their advice into the trash bin of my mind.

Just because someone has a handle on running their own business doesn’t mean their approach will work for yours.

It’s the same with creating.

And with writing.

Writing routines are different because writers are different.

Just because your favorite author gets up to write at 4 a.m. every morning doesn’t mean that will work for you.

Focus on your own creative process.

You sleep until noon every day?

Getting up at the butt crack of dawn probably isn’t going to be sustainable for you.

You go to bed at 7 p.m.?

Writing late into the evening will be a pretty difficult goal to achieve.

Write when it works best for your schedule and when it feels natural to you.

I wish I could write in the morning, punch out my words, and move on with my day.

But I can’t.

I’m a night owl.

Sometimes my ideas arrive at 10 or 11 p.m., and that’s when I get the urge to write.

I hardly ever get the bug when the sun is out.

I also don’t write every day, and that’s fine.

Consistency

Consistency can mean five days a week for one writer, two days for another, or one day for someone else.

If you only write twice a month, that can be fine too, as long as you’re making progress and nurturing that creative space in a way you can actually sustain.

Don’t build your writing life around how you think a productive writer should work.

Build it around how you actually work.

Organize Around the Creativity, Not the Creativity Itself

As a freelancer or business owner who is also a creative, you have to consider two different spaces:

The Creative: where ideas, experimentation, characters, drafting, discovery, and play live.

The Supporting: where files, deadlines, research, communication, finances, scheduling, submissions, and marketing live.

The goal isn’t necessarily to bring more structure into the first space.

It’s to organize the second so you have more of yourself left to give to the first.

Consider:

Which parts of your writing life benefit from freedom?
Which parts create unnecessary chaos?
What could you organize without interfering with your creative process?

You don’t have to organize creativity.

You can organize what surrounds it.

One Real Example

As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, I’m starting my own business, Sage Lantern co.

As a writer myself, finding structure within the company is essential because I want to dedicate more time to my craft and other creative initiatives.

One thing I’ve done has helped immensely.

We’re still in the early stages, and there are two of us running the business together.

That means whatever I’m doing, my business partner needs to know about, and vice versa.

We were doing outreach but didn’t have an effective way to keep each other updated.

I would need to ask who she’d spoken to, whether we had new leads, or send her an email summarizing what I’d been working on.

None of those things took an enormous amount of time individually, but together they added unnecessary work.

So I created an outreach system for us.

Now I don’t have to constantly ask my partner who she’s spoken to or whether we have new leads.

I don’t need to send her an email summarizing my tasks.

The information is already there for both of us to see.

The system didn’t magically give me more creative energy.

It simply removed some of the unnecessary work that was taking it away.

You don’t need a dramatic transformation.

Sometimes applying a little structure to one repetitive task can free up more time and energy to fill your creative cup.

When Structure Becomes Procrastination

Don’t let your new systems take over your life, though.

That’s a trap I almost fell into.

Remember that outreach system I just mentioned?

I recently updated it, and it doubled in size.

At first, I thought it might be too much, but I realized all of the tabs served an important purpose.

The problem wasn’t the system.

The problem was that I became distracted by making it perfect.

The visuals needed to be just so.

The old tabs and the new ones weren’t consistent.

The fonts needed fixing.

The headers needed changing.

And yes, to an extent, a system should be visually pleasing and easy to use.

But its main purpose was to keep us organized, and I was getting too hung up on the details.

If a system serves its purpose, the visual changes can come later.

They can be improved little by little.

There’s no reason to spend six hours changing banner colors, headers, or fonts — especially if you do all that work and then don’t actually use the system enough to become familiar with it.

Ask yourself:

Does this system make creating easier?

If the answer is no, the structure may need to be simplified.

Make Room for Creativity

Structure is supposed to give you peace of mind.

It’s meant to give you more time and energy to focus on the things you really want to do but have been too drained to tackle.

It allows your brain to let go of some of the tedious parts of running a business so you can actually enjoy the space you’ve created.

If you could give some of those responsibilities a place to live outside your head, what would you do with the energy you got back?

Structure can’t do the creative thinking for you.

It can’t finish your manuscript.

It can’t plot your scenes.

It can’t create your characters or manufacture inspiration.

But it can create more room for you to do those things.

The goal isn’t to build a perfectly organized writing life.

It’s to create enough structure around your creativity that your creativity has room to breathe.

***

About The Author

Iman Llompart is a Creative Systems & Delegation Strategist who helps writers, book coaches, and creative founders protect their creative capacity by building the structure around their work — through workflows, client systems, and operational clarity.

Take her Creative Capacity Check-In Assessment to identify where your business may be quietly draining your creative energy.

Instagram @imanllompart • Instagram photos and videos

The post Protecting the Creative Life: The Structure That Supports Creativity by Iman Llompart appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

Dictating Fiction: Tools and Workflow – How To Write the Future podcast, Ep 224

Kerry-Ann McDade — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 08:01:07 +0000

Dictating Fiction: Tools and Workflow, How To Write the Future podcast, episode 224

“Dictation can be a creative process partner, meaning it can help you think through ideas at the idea phase.” – Beth Barany

In the latest How To Write the Future podcast episode, titled “Dictating Fiction: Tools and Workflow,” host, Beth Barany shares how she uses dictation as a tool in her fiction and nonfiction writing process and why it’s been helpful to how she writes, plus she shares the apps or websites she’s found most useful. There’s also a special mention of the fiction dictation app from Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer.

***

Platforms the podcast is available on: Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout | Spotify| YouTube

RESOURCES

Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer’s Fictation resources:

Her app: https://www.fictateapp.com/r/RF3GGCAK
Free Dictation for Authors Quick Start Guide is here.
Fictation® course, the full digital course: (30% off for my audience) https://fictioncourses.thrivecart.com/fictation/?coupon=WRITETHEFUTURE (code: WRITETHEFUTURE)
Her podcast: “The Confident Fiction Author”: https://fictioncourses.substack.com/s/the-confident-fiction-author-podcast

***

Support the podcast! https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany

Get the workbook: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/world-building-resources/

Join the Edit Lab! https://bethbarany.com/editlab

About the How To Write the Future podcast

This podcast is for you if you have questions like:

– How do I create a believable world for my science fiction story?

– How do I figure out what’s not working if my story feels flat?

– How do I make my story more interesting and alive?

This podcast is for readers, too, if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

Transcript for episode 224 Dictating Fiction: Tools and Workflow

Welcome and Focus

BETH BARANY: Hey everyone, Beth Barany here with How to Write the Future podcast. Today, I am going to talk about dictation for fiction writers. And if you’re watching on video, you’ll see I do not have my glasses on because I could not get rid of the glare. All right, if you’re new here, welcome.

How to Write the Future podcast is for science fiction and fantasy writers who are curious about improving their writing process, editing process, publishing, and marketing, and especially those who are interested in creating positive, optimistic stories so that we can put our new ideas of being into our stories and into the world. Because I believe that story is very powerful, and it is through story that we can reshape humanity for the good of all.

So that’s a little bit about me. Today, we’re gonna dive into dictation.

[00:55] Why Dictation Helps

So I am not speaking theoretically here today. I am speaking as someone who is now using dictation. Dictation can be a creative process partner, meaning it, it can help you think through ideas at the idea phase. And writers like me and others, and I’ll be mentioning a fabulous colleague of mine who’s working deeply in this space in a moment, it can really help us write faster, deal with physical limitations like I have to deal with, capture stories quickly, and it’s a great way to take rough drafts and move them into polished prose while keeping the writer 100% front and center. The writer’s responsible for the story, not AI. But there are AI tools involved in my process, and I will explain how I use them, and this might inspire you.

[01:46] Background and Tools

Now, just a little bit of background. I have been running a podcast for 4 years. I have been a teacher and a coach and a speaker for 20 years, and I am used to speaking off the cuff as a teacher, but I’m also used to preparing quickly and giving little dedicated talks on specific subjects, in my subject matter, teaching writers.

And I have been dictating nonfiction for years now. When I have an idea for my weekly newsletter, I would dictate it into the tools, and there’s lots of tools. Lately, it’s Voice Memo on my iPhone. I used to use Dragon, and I also have played with dictation right into Google Docs, which works pretty well.

And you can also dictate into the Notes app on your iPhone, and I’ve also played with dictating into Gmail. So these are all worthwhile tools. So it happened organically for me that since I was already dictating to-do lists and nonfiction articles, I just started dictating my stories after a bunch of time spending on dictating nonfiction.

And with my clients, I was dictating notes into the comments field in Word. Sometimes, dictating fiction, a sentence example for them, like, “Hey, re- you know, you could write it like this,” and I would dictate the prose into the comments section. So by the time just in the last few months that I started dictating fiction, I had all this practice.

[03:21] Practice and Speed Gains

So just to say, if you are wanting to dictate your fiction, maybe start out with the easy stuff, and maybe that’s nonfiction, or maybe that’s to-do lists or other ideas or just rambling. For years too, one more thing, is I have been sending messages back and forth using a voice message app called Voxer. So I was also in the habit of talking out my ideas, and including story ideas.

I am an audio processor, meaning I like to talk it out. My husband and I do that all the time. I have an idea. I’m like, “Can I just talk this out?” So if this is you as well, dictation for your fiction is probably right up your alley. It does take time and practice. Normally, what happens is in about 10 minutes, I can dictate 1,000 words, which normally would take me an hour to type.

For example, and I’ve been dictating short stories. I did a 1,500-word Henrietta the Dragon Slayer short story. I did that in about 12 minutes. I also dictated a novella in an entirely new series, my fantasy romance adventure series. I did a 13,000-word novella in about two weeks, and I’m every day drafting memos, like I said, for nonfiction for my Creativity Sparks newsletter.

[04:41] My Dictation Workflow

Now, here’s the process. First, I dictate into the Voice Memo app, and then I have it set up. I actually Vibe coded a, an app so I can talk right into Voice Memo. I created a shortcut on my iPhone so I could dictate into the Voice Memo. It would land in Notion. I could go into Notion, and I talk to Notion, and I tell it to compile all of the notes for the story that I’ve dictated and then I ask Notion to clean up my grammar and the speech-to-text errors that voice memo has made.

And then I copy and paste that, and I move it into Microsoft Word to edit. So I have used AI to clean up my grammar and the speech-to-text errors, and also I have trained it so it knows my character names, so it can make good guesses. And then I tell it- and this is an AI functionality, I tell it to indicate anything that was unclear in the transcript and to bracket it for me so when I’m going through the edits myself, no AI, I can see where the errors were.

Now, alternatively, I’ve also dictated into Descript where I record and edit my podcasts. And there the transcript is actually much cleaner, and from there I just download the transcript, and sometimes I will throw it back into Notion to correct grammar and any weird errors, and then put it back into Microsoft Word to edit. So this really works well for me because I have- I’m dealing with ongoing repetitive stress injuries.

I have physical limitations in my hands. Also, I can walk and talk, which is one of my very favorite things to do, and it’s a low pressure activity, for me. And I can go sit at the cafe, put on a headset, and talk right into the voice memo app or uh, this also helps me right now create these short stories that are gonna be for the fans, and it helps me also work on going from short story to script, which is something else I’m working on.

[06:39] Using AI the Right Way

Now, just to be clear, I use Notion AI in a very specific way to only clean up, organize, and call out anything that is grammatically incorrect or not correct because it’s transcription. I’d never use AI to write my own stories. That’s no fun. I would not enjoy that.

So you may wanna try this to record right into the voice memo app. Now it exists that it’s on the computer as well, so it’s easy to copy and paste the transcription, get that cleaned up, and put it into a Word doc. I also use Notion to organize all my thoughts so I can easily reference it again later on.

The transcript is always there, so I always have the raw information, and when I’m recording into Descript, I also have the raw audio so I can listen to myself and catch anything the transcription and cleanup missed.

[07:28] Resources to Learn More

So here’s my resource for you, and there’ll be more resource notes in the resource area for this podcast.

My colleague and friend, Sarah Elizabeth Sawyer, has a fiction dictation app and courses, and other materials. I developed my process on my own without consulting her material or anybody else’s. I know there’s books on this topic as well. But I highly recommend Sarah as a resource because she has done some amazing things with her app, and she even offers tutorials and all kinds of good stuff.

So be sure to check out her resource in the resource section that is connected to this podcast, uh, if you need some guidance and support and training and wanna check out her really cool app. All right.

[08:13] Wrap Up and Next Steps

Do let me know if you are dictating your fiction or if you have any questions about dictating fiction.

I will point you in the right direction. Most likely I’ll probably point you to Sarah Elizabeth Sawyer’s app and material. But there’s probably some other things too. All right. That’s it for this week, everyone. Write long and prosper.

Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating here:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2012061

Need instructions on how to leave a review? Go here.

***

Support our work for creatives: leave a tip: https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany

***

ABOUT BETH BARANY

Learn more about Beth Barany at these sites:

Author site / Coaching site / School of Fiction / Writer’s Fun Zone blog

CONNECT

CREDITS

EDITED WITH DESCRIPT: https://www.descript.com?lmref=_w1WCA (Refer-a-Friend link)
MUSIC CREDITS : Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/fuzz-buzz License code: UMMKDRL02DFGKJ0L. “Fuzz buzz” by Soundroll. Commercial license: https://musicvine.com/track/soundroll/fuzz-buzz.
DISTRIBUTED BY BUZZSPROUT: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1994465 (Refer-a-Friend link)
SHOW PRODUCTION BY Beth Barany
SHOW CO-PRODUCTION + NOTES by Kerry-Ann McDade
EDITORIAL by Iman Llompart

c 2026 BETH BARANY

https://dl.bookfunnel.com/d1pb8wtyfz

For more “How To Write the Future” episodes, go here.

If you’d like to invite Beth onto your podcast, drop her a note here.

Like the work we do? Tip us! https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany

The post Dictating Fiction: Tools and Workflow – How To Write the Future podcast, Ep 224 appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

PhD to Business part 1 by Bailey Lang

Guest Contributor — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 08:00:41 +0000

Let’s welcome back Bailey Lang as they/them shares with us “PhD to Business part 1.” Enjoy!

***

When I finished my PhD in rhetoric and writing studies in 2021, I knew I wasn’t going to stay in academia.

The pandemic had all but obliterated the job market (which hadn’t been in great shape before that), and I was deeply burned out.

I did not want to continue burning myself out for an unlikely shot at a tenure-track role — but neither did I want to go back to a corporate job.

Instead, I built my own business.

I’m now a book coach, the Literary Witch, and my work allows me to combine my academic writing studies expertise with everything I love about supporting writers.

Plus, I get to introduce my own weird, witchy flair in a way that brings real magic to my working life and what I offer to my clients.

As I built my business, I started meeting people who followed a similar path: They got a PhD and, at some point, they became entrepreneurs.

Some launched a company as soon as they graduated; others had positions as lecturers or professors and left those roles.

The PhD-to-business path was almost never discussed during my time as a graduate student.

Many of the people I interviewed shared that experience.

Despite the fact that there are not enough faculty jobs for everyone with a PhD, too few graduate students are presented with any advice beyond trying to stay in academia at all costs.

This gap leaves many graduate students in the dark about alternate career trajectories.

Entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone, as people I spoke with pointed out, but it is a rich, interesting path forward, and one that allows PhDs to use their skills to make a difference and build a career they love.

To start, we’ll learn about the business each scholar created and why they chose to leave academia.

Next time, we’ll talk about the lessons they’ve learned throughout the process.

Allow me to introduce you to some of my colleagues and share what I learned from them about building a business after finishing a PhD.

- Taylor Allbright, Allbright Coaching.

Taylor has a PhD in education policy.

Her dissertation was on the implementation of racial justice-intended initiatives at the school and district level.

Taylor is an ADHD coach.

- Kate Henry, Productivity Coach.

Kate has a PhD in rhetoric and writing studies.

Her dissertation was on the woman who wrote the first lesbian magazine in the U.S. Kate is a productivity coach.

- Amelia Hruby, Off the Grid.

Amelia has a PhD in philosophy. Her dissertation was on feminist aesthetics.

Amelia is a podcast producer and the creator of Off The Grid.

- Jessica Kirk, Aspen Gold Consulting.

Jessica has a PhD in management and entrepreneurship.

Her dissertation and research focused on management, gender, sexual harassment, and diversity.

Jessica is a consultant.

- Jenn McClearen, Publish Not Perish.

Jenn has a PhD in media studies.

Her dissertation was about women in the UFC.

Jenn is an academic writing coach and developmental editor.

- Katy Peplin, Thrive PhD.

Katy has a PhD in film, television, and media studies.

Her dissertation was about the history of animals on screen.

Katy is a coach and community facilitator.

How would you describe your business?

Taylor Allbright

I am an ADHD coach, and I work with professionals who are having executive functioning challenges.

My typical client is someone who is very bright, very accomplished, who is in a PhD program or on the tenure track, or is a doctor or a senior software engineer, or they have these fancy titles.

They have these degrees, and then they hit a ceiling in how far they can go without figuring out how to support their overall executive functioning.

They’re dealing with procrastination, following through, stress management, and then perfectionism, burnout, all the things that go with executive function challenges.

It’ll be people who got by either with a lot of adrenaline and pulling all-nighters, or they happen to be very quick and catch on quickly and could slide by.

I bounced around with different business ideas.

I looked more for a while into general life coaching and stuff around burnout and self-care.

I thought about doing a dissertation coaching business, and then I ended up on ADHD coaching.

My husband has ADHD.

I do not, which is unusual in the ADHD coaching world, from my experience.

My husband, early in our relationship, asked for help finding support around ADHD.

I found out what ADHD coaching was, and I had the thought, “Wow, what a cool job! I wish I could do that.”

And then I put it away because I was like, “I can’t do that. Why would I do that?”

When I was playing around with different ideas for a business, I kept returning to that thought, and finally I was like, “Well, I could do that. Of course I could if I wanted to.”

I started a Substack about ADHD, did a lot of research about ADHD and learned a lot that way, and then enrolled in an ADHD coach credentialing program.

It was very clear that it was exactly the kind of thing I wanted to be working on.

Kate Henry

As soon as I graduated, I knew I wanted to start my business coaching academics, doing productivity coaching.

A couple of years before I finished the PhD, I was publishing online, I was writing blogs, and I was starting to practice coaching.

Over time, I have niched into productivity coaching and supporting project management for people who are in the final stages of finishing a writing project.

People who are like, “I’m out of time, and I have to finish.”

I love working with grad students on their dissertations, but the majority of my clients are professors who are a couple of years from getting tenure and trying to get everything done and not burn themselves out too much with that.

Amelia Hruby

I was a freelance audio editor for a decade (including through graduate school), and for the past five years, I’ve run a podcast production company called Softer Sounds.

I work for myself with a small team of editors and admin support.

This year my work has shifted toward my podcast Off the Grid: Leaving Social Media, where I help creatives make money online without relying on social media.

Jessica Kirk

It’s a consulting business, so I’m working with organizations.

I work with founders in small founder-led firms, and I’m trying to get more business within larger organizations on building capabilities and better ways of working.

A lot of that looks like leader development, learning development programs, or redesigning how people work together with a very strong people focus.

There’s some emphasis on AEC (architecture, engineering, construction) because of my engineering background.

But I have clients that are not in that industry.

I’m still pretty early on in my business, so it’s still evolving.

I taught entrepreneurship at Colorado, and I’m teaching entrepreneurship currently at the University of Missouri St. Louis as an adjunct.

It is a different experience doing it than teaching it.

Jenn McClearen

I do two major modes of work with people that are sometimes separate and sometimes in combination.

I am a coach for academics on writing specifically, and then navigating how you manage the whole job.

I also do developmental editing of the manuscripts themselves.

I always say coaching is working with and supporting a writer, and developmental editing is supporting the writing.

On the coaching side of things, we’re talking about time management or priority management, and working through mindsets that are helpful or hinder getting your writing done, or how you feel about the writing itself.

With developmental editing, I primarily work with book authors who are trying to manage a big, unwieldy project, sometimes for the first time, and they haven’t been trained on what the book genre should actually look like.

I work with scholars in the humanities and the qualitative social sciences, people who are in disparate fields.

I’m getting to dig into these projects or hear about their work in ways that I wasn’t able to as a faculty member, which has been a nice advantage.

Katy Peplin

I founded Thrive PhD in 2017 because I didn’t want all the work I had done to get myself through graduate school to be lost when I left academia.

I now facilitate workshops, teach courses, coach groups and individuals, and facilitate communities for anyone who wants to be a scholar without sacrificing their humanity.

I work primarily with graduate students and early career faculty, but I especially love working with people who are ‘non-traditional’ in some way or another.

I love helping people build a foothold in academia who don’t already have a clear path up that particular mountain.

What made you decide to start a business vs. staying in academia or getting a corporate job?

Taylor Allbright

I had a baby.

Plenty of people have babies and stay in academia.

But there was a little voice that was like, “I don’t know if I like this.”

I was going, “No, it’s great, I love it,” trying to convince myself that I liked it more than I did.

There was a nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite right, that it wasn’t quite a good fit.

There was this confusion in discerning what I liked to do versus what I’m good at doing, and disentangling those.

When I was on maternity leave, I struggled a lot with postpartum depression.

I dreaded going back.

I didn’t want to go back to work — and it wasn’t because I wanted to spend time with my baby.

I had postpartum depression.

I did not want to spend time with my baby.

I started listening to a podcast called The Self-Compassionate Professor, and she was interviewing a lot of people who had left academia.

There was one person who made the decision to leave, also on maternity leave.

She described having this moment where she was like, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

I was like, “I also don’t want to do this anymore. I feel that way too.”

It started out with listening to the stories of people who had left and envying them.

I had a tenure-track job in a place that I wanted to live, and that’s the dream, right?

I did it.

I had all the things that are really hard to get in this terrible job market, in the way higher ED is set up, which is so unsustainable and manipulative to academics, and I did it.

I had the thing I wanted.

I had the benefits.

The pay was not bad for academia, for social sciences. So there was a lot of like, “I’m supposed to want this.”

And I didn’t.

I was in a privileged enough position, being married to a partner who was employed, that gave me the flexibility to take risks whereas if I had been single and dependent on that income for my survival, it would have looked quite different.

Kate Henry

I developed chronic pain and chronic illness in 2017, and didn’t know if I physically was capable of the pace and output that was required to be a professor.

Up until that point, my whole life, I wanted to be an English professor.

That’s when I started considering alternatives.

Throughout graduate school, I had been doing gigs anyway.

I was doing writing consultant work, or tutoring, or whatever.

I was used to having these nontraditional gigs.

I was actually very excited to do that, and I was very fortunate that my dissertation advisor was supportive as well.

She didn’t judge me; she was very supportive even though I was the only person in my graduating class who didn’t have a job.

Everyone from my program got jobs, and I was like, “No, I’m starting a business.”

I had a professor who was like, “Well, why did you even do the PhD if you weren’t going to go into academia?”

I was excited physically to be able to work from home, to set my own hours, to work with folks around the world in a timeline that worked for me.

I didn’t have the urgency of a publishing schedule or something like that.

That was really super appealing, and still is really appealing.

Amelia Hruby

In my last two years of graduate school, it became very clear to me that getting a job would be nearly impossible.

I watched my peers finish degrees, then work as adjuncts for 3-5 years before landing tenuous one-year lectureships and moving far away for those roles.

I wanted more financial independence and security than the academic humanities path offered, so I sought out part-time employment as I finished my PhD and developed my business alongside that.

I was full-time self-employed about a year after I conferred my degree.

Jessica Kirk

I took a tenure-track position at the University of Memphis and was there for five years.

It was a journey.

It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that this tenure-track academic path was not the right one for me.

I went through periods of, like, “I’m failing at this. I’m not getting publications I need to get or think I should be getting.”

I was losing motivation and wasn’t entirely sure why.

I have two kids that are donor-conceived, and when I was pregnant with my second, I was like, okay, if I’m going to have a second kid on my own, I need to be closer to family.

The isolation of research, even though you’ve got co-authors, was just not well-suited for me.

I’m more of an extrovert, and I like working with people.

With a lot of projects, I was like, I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.

I love research.

I love collecting the data and writing up a paper, but then I’m a year or two into rewriting to try to satisfy these reviewers.

I don’t even know what we’re studying anymore.

I did some work with the Hubble Space Telescope on redesigning the application process for time on their telescope.

It was a huge process because it’s like the telescope to get.

This was right before James Webb was launched.

I analyzed data and worked with them for a few years, and they actually paid for my last year at Colorado to help them redesign it to be more dual anonymous to try to reduce some of the bias in the process.

We got an award from NASA.

I got so much out of it, but nothing that came out of it helped at all for tenure.

Nothing.

No publication meant anything for tenure.

We published in an astronomical journal because people in that community were paying attention.

But it didn’t mean anything for tenure, and that felt misaligned for me. I’m doing work that has a real impact.

It’s very personally satisfying, and it doesn’t mean anything for what I’m trying to do.

I did apply for industry jobs for about a month.

I got my PMP.

I considered all the different paths I could take given my background and everything.

I was like, man, none of these jobs are like what I want to do.

I couldn’t find anything that leveraged the skills and experience that I had.

I always thought consulting would be a good fit for me, but so much of it’s like you have to travel, and I can’t.

I’ve got two young kids on my own, I can’t travel.

It came down to, I’m going to give myself the gift of seeing if this will work.

That is the way that I framed it.

Jenn McClearen

Right after I got my PhD, I moved to the University of Texas and was a lecturer for two years.

I was very much diehard: “I’m going to be in academia for a while.”

I ended up getting a position as an assistant professor, and at first, it was really, really good.

They literally wrote the job description for me.

I felt so blessed because that is not a story that you hear in academia.

It was like survivor’s guilt in a lot of ways.

Several things started happening politically with the pandemic, and the way Texas responded to that, sending us back into the classrooms way too early.

I was very angry about the way that the state government was intervening in our classrooms and our lives and our health.

A series of things just got worse and worse.

There was a greater incursion into how the university was being managed, in that they started attacking diversity and equity, and inclusion.

They outlawed centers around DEI and centers that were supporting marginalized students.

I decided I needed to find another pathway.

I developed my newsletter, Publish Not Perish, while I was still an assistant professor, and part of its goal was to make the system more transparent, to make people feel like they weren’t alone in writing struggles, or in the struggles of navigating academia in general.

I started thinking about ways that I might turn that into a job.

Not only was I dissatisfied with the politics in Texas, but my partner and I also didn’t enjoy living there.

We wanted more geographical freedom.

In academia, you have to go where the job is.

Going into business for myself meant I was able to live where we wanted to live.

We ended up moving to Europe.

I started my business here, which turned out to be a great decision, not just because of the way the politics in the U.S. have gone, but a really good personal decision for us.R

Katy Peplin

My husband took a new job out of state 6 months before I defended my PhD, and when I graduated, I decided to prioritize living in the same state (which was shocking and upsetting to much of my committee).

I actually worked a lot of different jobs after graduation (retail, managing a yoga studio, web design, scheduling in a doctor’s office, developmental editing) and built Thrive PhD along the way.

It’s been less of a conscious choice to be in or out of academia and more optimizing for what I want and need from my work at various points in my life.

Right now, flexibility is paramount (chronically ill parent life is not for the rigid schedule), so self-employment really suits me.

Final Thoughts

I loved learning from these entrepreneurs about how they formed their businesses and why they chose to strike out on their own, even after some of them secured a tenure-track job.

Our academic backgrounds and personal interests fueled the creation of our businesses in powerful and unique ways.

These conversations also reveal many of the structural inequalities that continue to plague higher ED and put people in a position where they have to make difficult choices about their future.

Some of those decisions might have been easier to make if more graduate programs held space to learn from PhD entrepreneurs.

In the next article, we’ll turn to the lessons these business owners have learned as they built their businesses — and what they love most about the careers they’ve created.

***

About the Author

Dr. Bailey Lang is the Literary Witch, a book coach who helps visionary authors reclaim their creative magic and finish their books.

Bailey has a PhD in rhetoric and writing studies, and they love geeking out about writing, language, and magic.

You can sign up for Bailey’s free newsletter, Ink + Alchemy, for monthly missives that will help you build a writing practice you love.

Website

Newsletter

The post PhD to Business part 1 by Bailey Lang appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

Rom-Com Vs Rom-Mystery? Turns Out They Use the Same Skills in Different Costumes by M. Jayne Ladow

Guest Contributor — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 08:00:06 +0000

Today we welcome a new guest writer to Writer’s Fun Zone, M. Jayne Ladow who is stopping by to chat with us about “Rom-Com Vs Rom-Mystery? Turns Out They Use the Same Skills in Different Costumes.” Enjoy!

***

For many years, I thought of romantic comedies and mystery suspense romance as two separate muscles.

Write the funny one on Monday, write the tense one on Tuesday, and never let the two touch.

Recently, I mapped out both genres side by side in a Venn diagram — old teacher habits die hard — and realized the overlap wasn’t much larger than I’d imagined.

With this chart in hand, I stopped treating funny and suspenseful as opposite settings on a dial and started treating them as the same craft tool, aimed at two different questions: who did it and who do they love?

Withhold and Reveal

Both genres, mystery and romance, run on the same underlying mechanic: control what the reader knows, and when they find it out.

In the game of love, characters are not always honest with themselves or others.

Unspoken fears, insecurities, and personal beliefs feed the conflict. In mystery romance, a character might withhold a fact — a lie, an alibi, a character’s motives.

These characters all have a motive, and the fun becomes trying to untangle these details, motivations, and characters to own up to it.

Knowing the similarity helps me create a will-they-won’t-they arc into the plot.

They aren’t separate skills; you just need to point the same flashlight in a different direction.

Misdirection

Think about the charming suspect in a mystery — the one who’s a little too smooth or helpful, and you can’t tell if that’s suspicious or just his personality.

Now think about the rom-com love interest who seems too good to be true, and the heroine keeps waiting for the catch.

That’s the exact same reader-doubt mechanic.

One resolves with he’s innocent, the other with he’s not playing games, he’s just genuinely great.

Writers build the doubt with identical tools: charm, plus withheld information, plus a reader trained by genre to expect a twist.

This is also where the “red herring/ love interest” trope lives.

Mystery romance and rom-com both love the decoy — the rival suitor, the wrong suspect, the person the reader is led to believe matters more than they do.

It’s misdirection, and writers choose whether the reveal breaks a heart or solves a case.

Forced Proximity

Stakeouts.

Locked-downs.

Shared investigations.

Road trips.

Workplace romance.

Forced proximity is the most reliable trope in both genres because it generates chemistry and suspicion simultaneously.

Why does she keep turning up near the crime scene?

Why can’t he stop noticing her lips when she argues?

You don’t need two different scenes to build tension and romance.

One well-built proximity scene can carry both loads if you let the dialogue do double work: banter that’s also an interrogation, flirtation that’s also information-gathering.

Eccentric Side Characters

Every mystery has the witness who’s clearly holding something back.

Every rom-com has the best friend who is the voice of reason (just talk to him already, Karen).

Interesting side characters play both roles.

In a mystery, they know more than they’re telling.

In a Rom-Com, they sling the truth like shots at a party.

If you’re a mystery author stuck on how to reveal a plot fact naturally, borrow this trick: let it slip out (oops) through banter, deflection, or a joke that lands a little too close to the truth.

The Reveal

This is the trope I think is most underused on purpose: the big reveal in both genres asks the reader to mentally flip back through earlier chapters and see them differently.

The mystery reveal turns clues into evidence with a big a ha moment.

In rom-coms a grand gesture turns banter into “he’s loved her since chapter three.”

If you’re writing mystery romance, you get to do this twice — once for the case, once for the relationship — and the strongest books I’ve read stagger those reveals instead of stacking them on the same page, so neither one steals the other’s air.

The Takeaway

If you’re building a mystery romance or want to give your rom-com some real tension, don’t think of it as juggling two plots.

Map two timelines: a mystery clock and a romance clock — and ask, at every major beat, what’s being withheld on the romance side and suspense side, and who’s suspected of what on each side?

When you can answer both questions at every turning point, you’re not splitting your attention between two genres.

You’re using one skill, pointed in two directions at once.

That’s the whole trick.

Rom-com and mystery romance aren’t cousins who happen to get along.

They’re the same craft skills wearing two different outfits, and once you see the overlap, you’ll never plot either genre the same way again.

Two Mentor Texts for Your Venn Diagram

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne: Banter, comic timing, forced proximity, withhold and reveal, misdirection in an enemies-to-lovers rom-com.

Naked in Death by J.D. Robb: A police procedural running in parallel with a slow-burn romance. Forced proximity, withhold and reveal, misdirection, and eccentric side characters in a romantic mystery.

***

About the Author

M. Jayne Ladow writes rom-com and mystery romance where banter hides more heat than jokes.

Follow her on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook @mjayneladowauthor, read more on Substack at mjlong.substack.com, and visit mjladow.com for her full catalog and latest releases.

Freebie

Get a free copy of my first rom-com, One Night Stands and Lesson Plans.

Audrey Freemont, a professional middle school teacher, hasn’t had time or energy to find romance in five years.

When she sees Oz Taylor at a school happy hour, it’s one look, and they are sneaking out.

But after the one-night stand, reality catches up with them.

He’s the new algebra teacher at Marchfield Middle, and he wants more, but Audrey is caught between the world of expectations for teachers and her desire for more than a workaholic life.

The post Rom-Com Vs Rom-Mystery? Turns Out They Use the Same Skills in Different Costumes by M. Jayne Ladow appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

Shamanic Writing: Traveling Between Fictional Worlds – How To Write the Future podcast, Ep 223

Kerry-Ann McDade — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 11:10:20 +0000

Shamanic Writing: Traveling Between Fictional Worlds – How To Write the Future podcast, episode 223

“We are traveling all the time. We are traveling into our science fiction worlds, into our fantasy worlds, into worlds that we may not even have labels for at first.” – Beth Barany

In this How To Write the Future episode titled ”Shamanic Writing: Traveling Between Fictional World” host Beth Barany, takes you on a journey and guides you through a thought-provoking episode on writer as shaman, sharing why writing is hard, and why you need to find your own path.

There’s also information on how to get support from Beth in the Edit lab (link below).

Platforms the podcast is available on: Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout | Spotify| YouTube

RESOURCES

Support the podcast! https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany

Get the workbook: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/world-building-resources/

Join the Edit Lab! https://bethbarany.com/editlab

About the How To Write the Future podcast

This podcast is for you if you have questions like:

– How do I create a believable world for my science fiction story?

– How do I figure out what’s not working if my story feels flat?

– How do I make my story more interesting and alive?

This podcast is for readers, too, if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

Transcript for episode 233 Shamanic Writing: Traveling Between Fictional Worlds

Writer as Shaman

BETH BARANY: Writer as shaman, especially science fiction and fantasy writers, we are traveling all the time.

We are traveling into our science fiction worlds, into our fantasy worlds, into worlds that we may not even have labels for at first. The word shaman I know has a very certain specific cultural background And there have been people and cultures around the world throughout human history who become specialists in being able to travel with their imagination into other realms.

And of course, there’s religions and movements: the New Age movement, personal development movement, trance work, channeling, healing work of all kinds. There are a lot of different ways that we as humans have, throughout our human evolution traveled with our imagination into other places and times and realms and dimensions.

It’s amazing, and I think the work of any artist, not just writers, is to travel and bring back what they discover into a form that others can feel and hear and smell and taste and imagine. So our work as science fiction and fantasy writers is this work, and this is also what makes it challenging.

[01:23] Why Writing Is Hard

There are a lot of emotional, psychological factors to being able to be a writer.

We need to be able to travel into another person’s experience and convey that through words. We need to be able to imagine things that we do not have in our daily lives and bring that back and explain it through words. So let’s not pretend this is easy. It is challenging. It is hard. But with the right kind of support and lots of nourishment for our bodies and our souls, and our imagination, we can do it.

[01:59] Find Your Own Path

And even though I grew up in a very creative family, I had to find my own way into being a fiction writer and because my passion has always been science fiction and fantasy, not the classics, not things that were assigned in school but things I read on my own, I had to find my own way into writing science fiction and fantasy. All that said, in today’s world there are so many resources out there on how to write science fiction and fantasy, how to edit it, market it, make money at it. It’s amazing.

So it’s still customized, though, to each of you. There is no one right way to go about it, although there are like rules of the road and ways that you can respect the way things have been done even while you innovate. I really encourage you to continue to innovate and don’t try to follow someone else’s path, but really listen to yourself, your own instincts, your own intuition, your own emotions, your own visions, ’cause that is where the magic is.

Your vision is unlike anybody else’s vision, so keep at it.

[03:03] Get Support and Feedback

And if you would like guidance and feedback, this is the time to search out support from beta readers, critique partners, your fellow writers, an editor, a coach like me; actually, I serve as a coach and an editor, or join our edit lab.

[03:19] Inside the Edit Lab

I just want to take a minute to share with you our edit lab.

This is for science fiction and fantasy writers who have finished their first draft or near to it and want to get ready for the editing process and want to learn editing tools in the company of other like-minded writers. We meet every month when you join the edit lab. We meet every month on a Zoom call, and we look at people’s words.

We do 250 words per person. We usually have two or three writers, sometimes more, sometimes less. We do a little bit of free writing with a prompt that you’re welcome to follow to give you some focus, and we answer questions. You bring your questions to us, and we answer them.

And not only that, but there’s already a library of premium podcast episodes for you to listen to that are just for the members, where I’ve answered your questions and I’ve also done teaching.

I have a whole edit-your-novel curriculum that you can access through these premium episodes. And if there are questions that you have that I haven’t answered there, you bring them to the call, you write me. I can make a specific episode just for you. And there’s more goodies coming. I’m always coming up with new material to answer your specific needs.

[04:38] Stuck Ask Better Questions

Everyone working on a science fiction and fantasy novel knows that their imagination is doing this amazing work, and I know your imagination is doing amazing work. And so honor the hard work that you’re doing. Bring your joy and enthusiasm to it, as I know you do. And if you’re stuck, that’s just a signal that it’s time to reach out for help.

Formulate your question. We’re doing magic with fiction. We’re weaving a spell. Asking a good question is like weaving a spell as well. And you have the power to ask a good question, and then you will find the answer by putting that question in the amazing search tools that we have nowadays with all the LLMs that are hooked up, and ask it to real people, to live people because the machines can only give you so much.

All right. So that is my little spiel today on writer as shaman.

[05:39] Shamanic Journey Steps

And what are the process? What are the steps of going into a shamanic journey? There’s an entryway. There is setting up into trance-like state, and then there’s an entryway, and then there is sometimes a guide who shows up in a shaman-shamanic vision that will take us to the upper world or to the lower world or to some new dimension.

So as you write, think of how you get yourself ready. That’s like setting up the trance-like state.

What is the initiation or the passage that you go through, the doorway? For some people, that’s setting a timer or turning on music, and then you enter, and sometimes you know where you’re going, and sometimes you don’t.

And then when it’s time to leave, there’s usually an exit clearly marked, and then you can close the session and thank the powers that be that guided you and your own power that brought you through this session.

[06:43] Practice and Farewell

Now, I don’t pretend to be a shaman in any traditional sense, but I feel like being a writer is like being a shaman.

We are going into another realm, and then we come back home to the ordinary realm. And we do this again and again day after day, and we get really good at it because we practice it. It’s the only way we get good at it is we do it a lot. If you have any questions about what I just shared here today or any of my offerings, let me know. I look forward to seeing you in the Edit Lab if that is your next step. All right, everyone. Write long and prosper.

Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating here:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2012061

Need instructions on how to leave a review? Go here.

***

Support our work for creatives: leave a tip: https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany

***

ABOUT BETH BARANY

Learn more about Beth Barany at these sites:

Author site / Coaching site / School of Fiction / Writer’s Fun Zone blog

CONNECT

CREDITS

EDITED WITH DESCRIPT: https://www.descript.com?lmref=_w1WCA (Refer-a-Friend link)
MUSIC CREDITS : Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/fuzz-buzz License code: UMMKDRL02DFGKJ0L. “Fuzz buzz” by Soundroll. Commercial license: https://musicvine.com/track/soundroll/fuzz-buzz.
DISTRIBUTED BY BUZZSPROUT: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1994465 (Refer-a-Friend link)
SHOW PRODUCTION BY Beth Barany
SHOW CO-PRODUCTION + NOTES by Kerry-Ann McDade
EDITORIAL by Iman Llompart

c 2026 BETH BARANY