Many independent authors make one of their most expensive mistakes long before they publish their books.

They prewrite, draft, get feedback, and revise in the wrong order (sometimes missing vital steps).

Does the following sound familiar?

After months of writing, you finally finish your first draft. Knowing it’s not perfect, you immediately send it to an editor.

And you get back a list of suggested fixes as long as your arm, along with a bill that’s considerably bigger than it had to be.

Because many of those problems could have been avoided or fixed before you spent a dime.

Having edited professionally for more than a decade, I’ve seen how easily authors can waste precious time and money by tackling the publishing process out of order.

The secret to getting the most bang for your buck and time is knowing when to brainstorm, outline, draft, get feedback, revise, and bring in an editor.

Luckily, I’ve got the answers for you. Here’s the ten-step workflow I recommend.

🎧 First, a word on Nethereal

The Nethereal audiobook continues with Episode 3, featuring Wes Thompson’s narration of my Campbell Award-finalist debut novel.

Follow the unfolding voyage into dark mystery in this epic saga of cosmic horror, forbidden worlds, and supernatural warfare.

Listen to Nethereal Episode 3 on YouTube👇

Phase 1: Build the story

Step 1 - Brainstorm your ideas

Every novel starts as an idea. It could be a character, a setting, an intriguing conflict, or even a single scene.

Think about that element, and write down every detail that comes to mind. don’t fret over whether or not all of it belongs in the book. At this stage, you’re gathering raw material.

Keep a look out for the central conflict that will drive the story, the characters involved, and the stakes if your protagonist fails.

Once those elements start coalescing, you’re ready to organize them.

Step 2 - Outline

Your outline is the blueprint for your book. It needn’t describe every conversation or minor event. But you should know where the story begins, how its central conflict develops, and where it ends.

Pinpoint your major plot turns, pinches, and twists. And pay attention to chains of cause and effect. Each major development should follow logically from the last.

A good outline won’t eliminate every problem, but it can keep you from writing thousands of words that end up going nowhere.

And it’s the best way to keep the end from sucking.

Step 3 - Write the first draft

Now you actually write the book.

That means resisting perfectionism at every turn. You’ve got to give yourself permission to write suboptimally, even poorly, at this point.

Because your immediate objective is to produce a coherent manuscript (which is another compelling reason to outline).

Some scenes will be rough. Get over it. Certain characters may need more development. Work through it. You may even find that your planned ending just plain doesn’t work.

That is normal. Finish the draft before attempting any kind of revision. Composition and editing are two different operations that engage different parts of the brain (one creative; one analytical). Trying to do both at once won’t result in better prose but subpar writing and editing.

Phase 2: Be your own first editor

Step 4 - Let the draft rest

Once you’ve finished your first draft, pop the champagne and pat yourself on the back! You have achieved a feat that 80 percent of people aspire to but few accomplish.

Then set the MS aside for one to two weeks.

Fight the urge to tweak it. Don’t even read it.

Open up enough distance to return to the keyboard with a fresh perspective.

“But you said not to waste time!” I can hear some of you saying.

And the answer is, letting a pie cool on the windowsill is not a waste of time but a necessary part of baking it.

So it is with freshly drafted stories.

After writing, eating, breathing, and living the same story for months, you get accustomed to your own assumptions. You know what every character is thinking at all times and exactly why the smallest event occurs.

Unfortunately, readers don’t have access to that information unless you put it on the page.

Distancing yourself from the material for a while helps you see what is (and is not) actually in the book.

Step 5: Produce your second draft

Return to the MS and read it from start to finish. Look for big-picture structural problems before drilling down into individual paragraphs and sentences.

• Are the characters’ motivations clear?

• Does each scene advance the plot, reinforce, theme, or develop characters?

• Do major revelations have enough foreshadowing?

Fix any inconsistencies, remove unnecessary sections, and make sure the transition between any two story beats can be described as “but” or “therefore” instead of “and then.”

Only then should you zoom in to correct awkward prose, repetition, and typos.

After this stage, your MS should be ready for outside readers.

Let’s face it: Most independent authors would rather rewrite a whole chapter from scratch than introduce themselves to a stranger.

And I get it. Writing is a deeply personal act of the writer’s interior life. Many of us became authors because we love spending hours alone, creating imaginary worlds free of interruption.

But the need to publish our writing adds an uncomfortable complication.

You can write the best novel in the world. It won’t sell if nobody knows it exists.

That means finding readers, reviewers, editors, and other people who can help you reach a wider audience.

For introverted authors, approaching strangers can be a daunting prospect. Luckily, you needn’t reinvent yourself as a slick car salesman to succeed at networking.

You just have to start talking to people.

That’s it.

Let’s take a look at how.

The golden ticket hidden in your inbox

Two authors are planning book launches. The first canvasses social media for months with promotional posts, hoping enough strangers will take notice.

The second posts regularly, but strategically, taking fifteen minutes each day to contact people whose interests overlap with his new book.

At 9:00 he replies to a fellow author’s newsletter. Then he thanks a reviewer for an insightful critique at 9:05. Come 9:10, he asks another author with a big Kickstarter how she built her campaign.

Fast forward six months: Author 2 has a growing network of people who know him and his books. Author 1 has lots of social media interest, but far less interest.

Because if there’s one common misconception that a decade in publishing has dispelled for me, it’s that you can found a career on social media spray and pray.

In truth, durable author careers are built one conversation at a time.

Let’s be real: Most discussions end with polite goodbyes, not instant results.

But some plant the seeds of lasting relationships. And those interactions are worth their weight in gold.

Do the math. You carve out a quarter-hour of your time for daily outreach. That’s a little over an hour each business week. Let’s say your writing earns you $25 an hour.

If even one of those discussions introduces you to a new reader who buys your whole catalogue, an editor whose improvements triple your sales, or a mentor whose advice doubles your crowdfunders’ profit margins, you’ve not only outearned what you’d have made spending that hour writing, you’ve multiplied your writing’s value going forward.

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Support a rising new author, and get a great story.

Tip 1: Start with people who share your interests

A peculiar habit is unusually prevalent among independent authors. And it’s the number one reason many of them stay broke.

They’ll devote months to writing a book, weeks to preparing its launch, and hundreds; even thousands, of dollars promoting it.

Then, when the launch window or Kickstarter ends, they move on.

Sure, they know the funding total, and how many copies they moved. But ask them how many backers or readers a specific ad brought in, which emails converted, or how many warm leads bought the book, and they stare at you like deer in headlights.

Because the hard truth is, many authors don’t want to know those answers.

This bad habit of hiding from the facts has a name: ostrich syndrome.

And it may be costing you more money than any A.I. flood or algorithmic curveball.

Why authors avoid the numbers

It kind of makes sense. Most authors get into publishing because they love telling stories. They’d rather spend an afternoon world building than studying email click rates or crowdfunding conversion data.

And believe me, I understand. I’ve written novels for more than a decade, and I still find the creative side of publishing far more appealing than poring over analytics.

But there’s another reason authors avoid measuring results …

The numbers might show them what they don’t want to see.

Maybe their supposedly enthusiastic audience isn’t buying.

Or the advertising campaign they spent $500 on gleaned three sales.

Perhaps their lovingly crafted newsletter got few opens and fewer clicks.

Such discoveries can be uncomfortable, no doubt about it.

But they also provide some of the most valuable information you can get.

📚 First, a word about Nethereal

What happens when the cast of Firefly hijacks a prototype ship bound for Hell?

Nethereal, my Campbell-nominated debut novel, launched the Soul Cycle: a horror-adventure saga of cosmic warfare ignited by forbidden knowledge.

If you enjoy dark fantasy, cosmic horror, and stories with not just worlds, but countless souls at stake, I’ve got a whole cosmos waiting for you.

The campaign that taught you nothing

Imagine that two authors each launch crowdfunding campaigns. Both raise $5,000.

The first author celebrates, fulfills rewards, and starts planning the next book.

The second author goes over the results. He discovers that most backers came from his mailing list. Social media posts got attention but few pledges. Meanwhile, a small group of returning customers accounted for a surprisingly large share of the total.

How will they run their next campaigns?

Author 1 reuses the same promotional schedule because it seemed to work.

But months earlier, Author 2 started making targeted efforts to grow that mailing list, cultivate returning backers, and improve his promotional posts’ conversion rates.

Who is likelier to raise more money this time?

Hear what your readers say; measure what they do

One of the most treacherous indie publishing pitfalls is confusing attention with success.

Authors celebrate when a post gets 50,000 views.

They pop the champagne when a crowdfunder draws 200 prelaunch followers.

Don’t get me wrong, those are impressive numbers.

But they only tell half the story … and not the important half.

Because what you really want to know is:

• The numberof viewers clicked through to the sales page?

• What percentage of newsletter subscribers bought the book?

• How many crowdfunding followers actually backed the campaign?

Remember: The closer a number is to a sale, the more it tells you about the actual state of your business.

That doesn’t mean impressions, opens, and follows are worthless. They can help you understand how leads go from cold to warm.

But you need to measure the whole process; not just the part that makes you feel popular. Otherwise, you may squander months of effort optimizing for applause instead of revenue.

The four numbers every indie author should track

The A.I. question is dividing authors along a thin red line: Can you outsource your writing to large language models?

A.I. adopters say that with the right prompts, an author can train LLMs to produce prose that readers can't tell from the genuine article.

And besides, they insist, the only way to beat A.I. slop farms at the volume game is to use the same tools, only for good.

But is the hype over A.I. writing justified?

Court of Kairos member Rawle Nyanzi and I recently put LLM-generated prose to the test.

Rawle supplied a sample of LLM-generated fiction, and I put it under the knife during an episode of Word Surgery, my live editing stream.

Watch the results for yourself:

The problem of judging A.I. writing

Most arguments over A.I. fixate on whether or not readers can spot machine-generated text.

But picking nits about repetitive phrases and verbal quirks never gets past the surface level.

After more than a decade as an editor, I’ve learned that perfectly cromulent text can hide some of the worst problems. You can have a grammatically correct and vividly descriptive piece of prose that still fails as a story.

Because if you don’t have a clear protagonist with a concrete goal setting out to achieve it against opposition, at best you’ve got atmosphere.

But no story.

That’s not to say human authors never write novels with developmental-level problems. Far from it!

But it is to say that armchair A.I. diagnoses tend to miss the developmental forest for the line-level trees.

Want the full editorial diagnosis?

“I understand what the character is feeling, but I didn’t feel it.”

That’s one of the most dreaded, and common, pieces of beta reader feedback a new author can get.

I’ve heard every version of that complaint throughout my editing career, usually in regard to a scene the author meant to deliver an emotional gut punch. The characters confess their love or their sins. They make heroic sacrifices. Maybe they overtly cry and rage.

All the ingredients seem to be there. Yet the scene hits with a thud.

What’s especially frustrating is the author probably found the same scene deeply compelling. Because he understood what was supposed to happen.

But understanding where an emotion should be evoked and actually making readers feel it are two different propositions.

And whether or not you understand that difference can make or break your novel.

Luckily, I’m here to show you how to give your big scenes maximum emotional impact.

📚 First, a word about Kairos Publications’ author services

You’ve put in months, or years, on your novel. You know the mood and tone you want the book to convey, but how can you make those emotions come through the page?

That’s where a professional editor comes in.

Kairos Publications brings more than a decade of editing experience to your project. We help you spot problems beta readers miss and show you exactly how to fix them.

From plot structure and character arcs to sentence-level prose, we help you turn a three-star draft into a five-star novel.

The tearjerker that almost was

Imagine a young monk learns his master has died in a duel with a bitter rival.

The author describes the monk falling to his knees, weeping, and swearing vengeance against the killer.

The author knows the master was the monk’s father figure. He also knows they spent years training together and that the young monk became the man he is today because of his master’s teachings.

So to the author, the young monk’s outpouring of grief seems justified.

But there’s one problem:

The reader met the master two chapters ago. Since then, he’s appeared in one brief scene to deliver some exposition about the martial arts school’s history.

Now he’s dead, and the author expects us to mourn him.

The author has given the reader enough information to understand why the young monk is devastated. What he hasn’t done is give the reader enough reason to care.

The missing emotional foundation

Every new author wants to be original.

It’s an understandable desire. Nobody sets out to write an inferior copy of somebody else’s novel. You want to tell stories nobody else has told, create memorable characters, and develop a voice that’s unmistakably yours.

Those are worthy ambitions.

But I’ve noticed that many aspiring authors let their devotion to originality spill over into areas where it’s more curse than blessing.

In effect, they insist on inventing their own writing careers from scratch.

Which is akin to reinventing the wheel.

What do I mean? Let’s take a closer look at how success actually happens.

📚 First, a word about a novel widely praised for its originality, Nethereal:

Space pirates OD on the spice from Dune; wake up on Cthulhu’s couch.

The Sublime Brotherhood of Steersmen holds the Middle Stratum in its iron grip. Jaren Peregrine, last of the Gen, raids across fringe space with Nakvin—her captain’s best pilot and only friend, apprentice steersman Deim, and mercenary Teg Cross.

Hunted by the ruthless Master Malachi, Jaren and his crew join a conspiracy to break the Guild’s monopoly with an experimental ship. But when its maiden voyage goes awry, the Exodus flies farther off course than its crew could have imagined.

Writing and publishing are different jobs

First, let’s define our terms. Writing is a creative endeavor; publishing is a business.

The former prizes originality. But the latter bestows success on those who identify what works and do that work consistently.

Confusing those activities has taken a bigger toll in time and heartbreak from new authors than crafting any first novel yet written.

I know authors who’ve experimented fruitlessly for years with sales gimmicks, platform algo hacks, and scattershot ad spend. Their mistake? Not taking the time before they started to discern whether those tactics have worked for anyone else.

Authors who approach business with the same degree of originality as art are feeling their way through problems that have already been solved for years.

The costs are staggering. Each failed experiment consumes time, money, and attention better spent on writing books or reaching readers.

And as I know from personal experience, new authors can seldom spare those resources.

The reassuring truth is, you needn’t blaze a new trail toward a destination someone else has built a superhighway to.

Your career path is not as unique as your books

Your novel is special. Your publishing problems aren’t.

Every author before you has struggled to find readers and turn a modest following into sustainable income.

The fact to keep in mind is that some succeeded.

And the successful ones used strategies that can be studied. Just like one general reading another’s book, you can examine how other authors won. Their publishing schedules, promotional methods, price structures; and now their crowdfunders and social media tactics, are all matters of public record.

Yet aspiring authors too often pass over the answers that are right under their noses.

All because they want to make their own way.

Don’t get me wrong, originality is admiral when it comes to developing a literary voice. It’s less so when you’re trying to pay the bills.

The mistake that even experienced authors make

Some authors do realize the value of studying successful people. But most of them make one critical mistake:

Imagine two independent authors.

The first has spent ten years mastering his prose. He’s attended workshops, studied bestselling novels, and hired professional editors. He’s got well-written books with respectable covers, and his readers generally enjoy them.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many of those readers.

The second author is competent but less accomplished. Yet his books consistently sell, his Kickstarters hit every stretch goal, and his readers await each new release with bated breath.

If it’s not a skill issue, what accounts for the difference?

Most struggling writers will assume the second author has more money to throw at ads, an influential benefactor; some kind of unfair advantage.

So they throw themselves into their writing, convinced that more hard work will close the gap.

But the real difference may be a more fundamental element most people never notice.

The second author occupies a better position.

📕 First, a chance to read my fiction for yourself:

Space pirates OD on the spice from Dune; wake up on Cthulhu’s couch.

The Sublime Brotherhood of Steersmen holds the Middle Stratum in its iron grip. Jaren Peregrine, last of the Gen, raids across fringe space with Nakvin—her captain’s best pilot and only friend, apprentice steersman Deim, and mercenary Teg Cross.

Hunted by the ruthless Master Malachi, Jaren and his crew join a conspiracy to break the Guild’s monopoly with an experimental ship. But when its maiden voyage goes awry, the Exodus flies farther off course than its crew could have imagined.

What Machiavelli can teach indie authors

A modern business theory inspired by Niccolo Machiavelli distinguishes between two entirely separate assets: ability and position.

Ability determines what you can accomplish.

Position determines which opportunities are available to you and how much benefit you can extract from your efforts.

What does that mean?

Consider two miners.

One has the finest equipment and decades of experience but digs where only small traces of gold are to be found.

The other has used equipment and modest skill but stakes his claim right on the motherlode.

Assume both put in equal work; heck, let’s say the more highly skilled miner works twice as hard as the other.

When all is said and done, who gets more gold?

To ask the question is to answer it. And buying the first miner a better pickaxe won’t solve his problem.

Because there’s just not enough for it to dig up.

The same concept applies just as well to publishing. An author can put in years improving his writing, speeding up releases, and refining ads without breaking through to a higher income level.

Because if all of that effort is poured into places with few readers, it will yield diminishing returns.

If you’ve heard the complaint about indie authors mostly selling to other authors, you’re familiar with a positioning problem, whether you knew it or not.

That observation describes a weak position common to newpub. But oldpub authors aren’t immune. Beholden to publishers, their careers can be taken away at the whim of a single gatekeeper. That situation is what Machiavelli would describe as a dangerous position.

So, how to improve a weak or precarious position?

The first step toward changing your fortunes is identifying where paying readers are.

One enduring mystery of editing fiction is how often a scene can contain all the right information and still leave the reader completely lost.

Every important setting detail is in place. All the characters’ motivations make sense. And each action follows logically from the last. At least, that’s how it looks to the author. From the reader’s point of view, it’s a different story.

📕 First, a chance to read my writing and see the proof for yourself:

Space pirates OD on the spice from Dune; wake up on Cthulhu’s couch.

The Sublime Brotherhood of Steersmen holds the Middle Stratum in its iron grip. Jaren Peregrine, last of the Gen, raids across fringe space with Nakvin—her captain’s best pilot and only friend, apprentice steersman Deim, and mercenary Teg Cross.

Hunted by the ruthless Master Malachi, Jaren and his crew join a conspiracy to break the Guild’s monopoly with an experimental ship. But when its maiden voyage goes awry, the Exodus flies farther off course than its crew could have imagined.

The scene you see isn’t the one they read

When you picture a scene you’re writing, it appears to you as a complete sequence of events. All the characters’ positions relative to the setting and each other is clear in your mind. You know who is armed, and who’s hiding behind the door.

Here is the fact many new writers miss: Readers come in knowing none of the above. They know only what’s conveyed through the words you type on the page, in the order you wrote them.

That’s why a scene that seems perfectly clear when you’re writing it can confuse everyone else who reads it.

Consider this example:

Daniel rounded on the source of the scream. His brother ran. The old man reached for the door, but he was struck before he could open it. Daniel raised his pistol and fired.

Plenty of exciting action is happening there, no doubt about it.

But what action, exactly?

For three years, I dismissed crowdfunding.

I’d started my independent author career in 2015 with my debut novel, Nethereal.

Like many indie authors of the day, I’d come to believe that Amazon was the only game in town.

If you wanted to find readers, sell books, and build a durable career without a big New York publisher, the only way was through KDP.

That belief wasn’t entirely unreasonable. Amazon had demolished the old barriers to publication, letting indies access a global market without asking permission.

But I’d made one miscalculation:

I’d confused the biggest paradigm shift in the publishing industry for the only opportunity in newpub.

And for three years, that assumption kept me from leveraging one of the most powerful tools for building a sustainable writing career.

📕 First, a chance to read Nethereal yourself:

Space pirates OD on the spice from Dune; wake up on Cthulhu’s couch.

The Sublime Brotherhood of Steersmen holds the Middle Stratum in its iron grip. Jaren Peregrine, last of the Gen, raids across fringe space with Nakvin—her captain’s best pilot and only friend, apprentice steersman Deim, and mercenary Teg Cross.

Hunted by the ruthless Master Malachi, Jaren and his crew join a conspiracy to break the Guild’s monopoly with an experimental ship. But when its maiden voyage goes awry, the Exodus flies farther off course than its crew could have imagined.

The Experiment That Changed My Mind

By 2018, I’d completed publication of my first series, the Soul Cycle.

My debut novel had sold better than I’d thought possible and earned me a Campbell Award nomination. Its sequel, Souldancer, had achieved comparable sales and won the Dragon Award for Best Horror Novel.

I’d proven that I could write books people wanted to read. But I was still thinking about newpub almost exclusively in terms of Amazon.

With the Soul Cycle in the can, I was making ready to launch a new series in a whole new genre. Combat Frame XSeed would give readers a military sci fi adventure to refresh the mech genre by combining the best of Mobile Suit Gundam and Battletech.

Instead of falling back on the old indie playbook of just dumping the first book on Amazon, I broke down and decided to crowdfund it as an experiment.

So I set a modest funding goal of $1,000 and launched the campaign.

Fifteen hours and eight minutes later, it was funded. By the time the campaign ended, 103 backers had pledged $3,465.

I’d raised almost three and a half times my goal.

But the money came second to an even more important result. I’d learned that readers were willing to support my work directly; no need for a middleman to get the books in front of them.

The experiment had disproved an misconception I’d labored under for three years. And it changed my fundamental approach to newpub.

The wait is over! I’m excited to announce that Part 1 of the Nethereal audiobook is now live on YouTube. Watch it free now:

A major advantage of newpub is that you have full control.

One disadvantage is that the buck stops with you.

“Which book do I write next?”

“How should I sell it?”

“When to pull the plug on a project that’s not getting results?”

Those are the kinds of questions that come up every month in the Court of Kairos.

Our September Council session covered a wide range of topics from the results of my Souldancer 10th Anniversary Kickstarter to marketing tactics, reader expectations, and the problems that crop up when authors plan their next projects.

We also made time for a recommended reading list of pulp sci fi classics.

Here’s a sample of what we discussed. The full list of questions comes afterward.

FIRST, A QUESTION ABOUT SPACE OPERA

One Council member asked:

“Any space opera works you especially recommend to get to know the genre better, especially since my knowledge of said genre effectively goes no further than Star Wars?”

The Court’s recommendations included:

• Edmond Hamilton’s Captain Future

• Leigh Brackett’s John Eric Stark stories

• Lensman and Skylark of Space by E. E. “Doc” Smith

• John C. Wright’s Starquest series

• Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter novels.

These books and series make great introductions to the literary tradition behind popular space opera.

For aspiring genre authors, reading stories written before 1980 is indispensable. The more you understand the conventions that earlier writers established, the better equipped you’ll be to choose which ones to employ in your own fiction.

WHAT ELSE DID THE COUNCIL DISCUSS?

The September session raised several questions of practical value to independent creators.

Crowdfunding and promotion

• What went differently than expected with the Souldancer 10th Anniversary Kickstarter?

• What’s one marketing step an author can take right now?

• How should an author approach establishing a presence on X and Substack?

Writing and editorial decisions

• Should a novelist fulfill expected genre promises right away or gradually meet those expectations over the opening chapters?

• How can an author plan a second novel while still finishing the first?

• When does brainstorming the next project distract from completing the current book?

Publishing platforms and creative projects

• How is the new Word Surgery editing livestream progressing?

• What do viewers and manuscript submitters think of the format?

• What should authors consider when choosing tools and platforms for their projects?

The Council also discussed the relationship between Patreon style patronage and traditional book sales, along with several questions about technical publishing tools.

Advice that sounds obvious in isolation can be challenging to act on when it affects how you spend your limited time and money. That’s why the Council’s conversations address the tough calls independent authors have to make every day.

HEAR THE COUNCIL FOR YOURSELF

Here’s a sample from September’s Council session. Listen in to hear how we field real questions from real indie authors.

Want the whole discussion? The full September Council question transcript continues below for paid subscribers, covering crowdfunding, author marketing, writing decisions, and publishing challenges. Founding members also get the complete AMA recording.

One of the trickier problems I come across in my professional fiction editing is a protagonist who seems to have everything a good main character needs.

A clear goal? Check. Motivations that make sense? Double check. The stakes are high, and the author has imposed plenty of obstacles to surmount.

Yet reading the story feels like watching somebody else play a video game.

The hero travels the land, overcomes enemies, gains wisdom, and eventually confronts the villain. It all unfolds more or less as the author intended.

Maybe a scene or two even elicits a legitimate thrill. But the hero himself never catches the reader’s interest.

Early readers will usually suggest making the hero’s backstory traumatic, giving him some odd personality quirk, or tacking on inner conflict.

Well-meant as they may be, those suggestions just distract from the underlying problem:

The protagonist goes through the whole novel reacting to the plot without making decisions that fundamentally change the course of events.

A PROTAGONIST CAN BE ACTIVE YET LACK AGENCY

Think about a fantasy novel in which a young soldier’s village is destroyed by an invading army serving an ancient evil. He vows revenge and falls in with a plucky resistance group. Our soldier takes part in a series of battles until the rebel leader orders an attack on the villain’s fortress itself.

On paper, that’s an active protagonist.

But look closer at how the story actually takes shape.

First, our hero’s village is destroyed by a force beyond his control. He’s recruited by the rebels because his skills are of use to them. Then he fights on their orders.

At every stage, someone else decides what happens next.

The hero responds with competence, but the major plot points would still happen regardless of whether he made the same choices, the exact opposite choices, or none at all.

In fact, his main achievement is surviving until the ending.

It should go without saying, but some do need to hear it: An active character takes action. Character agency means taking actions that influence the story’s direction.

That’s the difference between a hero readers find interesting and one who’s just along for the ride.

WHY MORE CONFLICT WON’T FIX THE PROBLEM

Let’s suppose a beta reader renders the dreaded verdict that “The middle drags.”

The common response would be to add another, even tougher battle. Then go back and make the mentor’s training more brutal to justify the hero’s win. Toss in a rival soldier for good measure, and hand the rebels a defeat that runs up the death toll.

Without a doubt, the hero would face more danger.

But he’d still have no real influence over the events playing out around him.

Adding obstacles might punch up individual chapters, but they won’t necessarily make the protagonist more compelling.

How would a professional editor address the problem? By tracing the causal chain connecting those plot points. Which choices does the protagonist make, and why? What happens as a result?

If the answers are “The ones the plot and other characters dictate,” “because the author needs him to,” and “what the author wants to happen next,” no number of added action sequences will save the book.

GIVE YOUR HERO A CHOICE WITH A PRICE TAG

Let’s get back to our young soldier.

Instead of having the resistance recruit him, suppose he learns on his own that its commander plans to sacrifice the surviving villagers to gain a battlefield advantage.

Our hero can follow orders and pursue his revenge or betray the resistance to save the people he’s vowed to protect.

The price of one choice is complicity in the atrocity that destroyed his village. The cost of the other could be losing his powerful new allies.

Notice what changed: Now the hero’s choice determines the next plot development instead of getting carried along within it. And readers will have a reason to care about the protagonist’s actions.

Because such a choice reveals his character more effectively than an extra chapter explaining his childhood trauma.

Remember: Character is most clearly revealed when competing desires force a decision.

FOUR-QUESTION SCENE EVALUATION

None of this is to say you need to rewrite your book from scratch.

Instead, start by analyzing three to five key scenes; especially ones in which the protagonist gains information, faces a challenge, or suffers a setback. Evaluate each according to the following questions:

1. What does the protagonist want?

A peculiarity of writing for a living is that success can make you more reluctant to take risks.

When you’re starting out, you have little to lose. Your first book is probably a mess, nobody knows who you are, and no one expects much from you.

But after you’ve published a few books, built an audience, and earned some street cred, the prospect of starting over can feel intimidating.

You can recognize good writing. You’ve learned to spot rookie mistakes. And you know how much you still don’t know.

So the prospect of launching a new series, experimenting with crowdfunding, or starting a YouTube channel gives you pause.

Maybe you brute-force past the inertia and start doing research. After all, you keep telling yourself, fools rush in where angels fear to tread. But not you; you’re going in prepared.

And six months later, you’re still preparing.

Therein lies the problem: You can’t get good at a skill you’ve never let yourself be bad at.

KNOWING TOO MUCH

A first-time novelist can write a terrible first chapter without recognizing all its faults. An experienced author live streaming for the first time enjoys no such blissful ignorance.

And because he can recognize, if not yet replicate, professional presentation, he compares his first attempt with a bigger YouTuber’s 100th.

That comparison is guaranteed not to flatter.

An established novelist branching out into a new genre faces the same problem. Different fiction conventions make different demands on the author, requiring that he flex underused muscles.

Yes, prior achievements may shorten the learning curve. But they won’t eliminate it.

The temptation is to put off trying until you’ve gained enough knowledge to perform at the level you’re accustomed to. Yet much of the knowledge you need can only be acquired by making the attempt.

And, sometimes, failing.

YOUR FIRST ATTEMPT IS FOR LEARNING

Lets imagine you’re planning your first crowdfunding campaign. You study several other creators’ successful campaigns from reward tiers to shipping costs.

Not even a year of intensively studying other campaigns will show you how your audience will respond to yours.

Maybe you get a ton of follows that convert poorly to actual pledges. Then, those who do pledge want signed hardcovers more than the paperback you’re featuring.

You had no way of knowing until you took the plunge and hit launch.

After that, even a disappointing campaign can ferret out weaknesses in your positioning, presentation, or promotion that no amount of speculation would have revealed.

That’s not to say you should go out and fail on purpose. Preparation has its place. And that place is to reduce your risk by the greatest extent possible with a reasonable amount of time and effort.

As a rule of thumb, if a new endeavor could make you, and you’ve de-risked enough that failure won’t break you; do it.

START SMALL ENOUGH TO FINISH

Here’s how I’d deal with the urge to overprepare for a new publishing venture:

1. Define the smallest useful version

Who can forget Han Solo getting frozen in carbonite?

Or Boromir giving Sean Bean yet another dramatic death while heroically fighting to save Merry and Pippin?

How about Conan getting crucified?

Not all that long ago, popular stories understood what the manufacturers of pop culture have now forgotten:

How to imbue fiction with a ring of reality ...

“The pacing feels too slow.”

That’s one of the most common pieces of feedback new authors get from readers of their early drafts.

And nine times out of ten, those alpha and beta readers are wrong.

Because trimming descriptions, slashing dialogue, and even cutting whole scenes won’t fix the issue that’s really making your novel boring.

Why not?

When writers are told their books suffer from slow pacing, they usually jump to the conclusion that not enough is happening. And that assumption sound reasonable. After all, pretty much everyone has been conditioned to equate excitement with rapid-fire action.

It’s a tendency I see a lot while professionally editing my author clients’ novels.

But let’s take a look at a novel that’s widely considered one of the most gripping works of popular science fiction in recent times: Jurassic Park.

Read the full post on Substack.

Before Gaming Ground Zero, we took it for granted that you could load a physical copy of God of War into a PS3 or Final Fantasy VIII into a PS2 and enjoy hours of fun.

Yet somewhere along the line, as gaming console power and price increased, reverse compatibility fell by the wayside.

Now, independent modders have restored once-standard functionality Sony doesn’t want you to have.

A vibe coder known as Sword has released PS5SX2, a homebrew emulator that allows jailbroken PlayStation 5 consoles to run original PlayStation 2 games from physical DVDs.

In case you just landed from Mars, the PlayStation 2 is one of the most beloved consoles ever made. With a vast library boasting the likes of Final Fantasy X, Metal Gear Solid 3, Gran Turismo 4, and hundreds of other landmark games, the PS2 defined a generation of gaming.

And much of that prolific catalogue is no less available today than twenty years ago. You can walk into any secondhand game store and find shelves full of PS2 games.

But as far as Sony’s latest console is concerned, that vast treasury of discs may as well be coasters.

Read the full post on Substack.

In the olden days, American genre fiction belonged to the people who actually read it. They bought cheap magazines printed on rough wood pulp paper at newsstands by the millions. Inside they found detectives, cowboys, and spacemen adventuring through grimy cities, trackless deserts, and strange worlds.

It’s a lasting testament to the popularity of the pulps that the legends of the writers who made their names there are with us to this day. Edgar Rice Burroughs gave readers John Carter and Tarzan. Robert E. Howard unleashed Conan. Walter B. Gibson turned the Shadow into a defining hero of American pop culture.

Far from obscurities indulged as guilty pleasures by small circles of niche enthusiasts, these characters dominated mass entertainment. We would not have Elric without Conan or Batman without the Shadow.

In the early 1930s, the pulps were a decidedly mainstream American entertainment medium. The Shadow became successful enough to spawn not just a hit radio show, but a whole wave of hero magazines. Weird Tales introduced generations to Howard and Lovecraft.

Imagine the popularity that Batman, Spider-Man, or the Avengers enjoy today. Back in the monoculture of the 30s, there were pulp characters with even greater cultural reach.

The pulps had a good thing going.

But one day, it all changed.

Read the full post on Substack.

Over the past twenty years, tech companies assured us that physical media were outdated relics. Why fill your shelves with books, CDs, and vidya discs when you could access any story, song, or game from your phone?

The future they promised was convenient, affordable, and permanently accessible.

People accepted the deal. Until companies started revoking access to media their customers paid for.

So those customers can hardly be blamed for wondering If I paid for it, why can someone else take it away?

A recent article reported on growing enthusiasm for CDs, DVDs, vinyl records, and other tangible entertainment formats. Against expectations, younger consumers are increasingly embracing old media.

It’s important to place that phenomenon in the proper perspective. Generation Z grew up with streaming as the default. They have no personal memories of the time when buying music required visiting a record shop, or reading the newest release meant a trip to Barnes & Noble.

Yet more and more Zoomers are seeking out physical media.

Nostalgia, is a fair explanation for the retro trend among Gen X and Gen Y; the Mall Generation and the NES Generation. But pining for a fondly remembered past can’t account for old media adoption by people who can’t remember it.

The real reason people of all ages are flocking back to physical formats; one megacorps won’t want to hear, is that those same companies rug-pulled their customers. They promised better pricing and convenience, along with unlimited access. Then they systematically restricted access while jacking up prices and making the consumer experience a frustrating ordeal.

One wonders just what these companies thought would happen when they replaced property with permissions. The only rational answer is they somehow assumed customers would never notice the bait and switch.

Unfortunately for the megacorps, people are starting to notice.

A lot of people.

Look, the original streaming pitch made sense. Why buy a box set containing a whole season of a TV series on DVD if you only want to watch one episode? Even more to the point, why buy the whole album for $20 when it only has one good song?

We won’t even get into the bloated ripoff that was cable TV.

For a while, streaming looked like an excellent bargain. Then every studio, network, and label launched its own streaming service. The tangled web of licenses scattered their catalogs across myriad platforms.

And at last, like cable before, it, streaming raised subscription fees and brought back ads.

Streaming gradually turned into early aughts TV, but costlier, less coherent, and with worse programming.

Then platforms started pulling movies and whole series without warning, and we remembered why DVDs are still pretty great.

It didn’t have to be this way. All these companies had to do was add convenient digital delivery without taking away ownership. Independent authors like me have offered our readers DRM-free eBooks for years.

So how did the entertainment companies flub what should have been a slam dunk?

Read the full post on Substack.

The scene should work. But for some reason, it feels lifeless.

Early readers are usually the first to sound the alarm. And while they’ll rightly sense a problem, their diagnoses and prescriptions will often miss the mark. Maybe they’ll tell you to punch up the dialogue. Or they’ll suggest dialing up the tension, or cutting exposition in service to the usual suspect: pacing.

The trouble is, those fixes slap Band-Aids on a more fundamental problem: Your characters aren’t changing their behavior in response to each other’s actions.

Let’s consider a simple scene. Jane wants her brother Tom to sell their recently deceased father’s house.

Tom refuses.

Jane says she needs the money.

Tom insists that the house belongs in the family.

They argue for two pages before Jane storms out.

Now, that scene checks all the basic writers’ workshop boxes. It has two characters with well-defined yet mutually exclusive goals, leading naturally to conflict.

So why does it read like a small claims court transcript instead of a story?

Because Jane exits with her goal unchanged from the moment she walked in. Likewise, Tom’s position remains unmoved from the start of the argument.

It’s an issue I’ve come across more than once while editing for clients of my author services. To sum up, nothing either character said or did had the slightest effect on the other.

99 percent of beta readers miss that problem precisely because such scenes contain all the elements writers are taught to include:

Read the full post on Substack.

But whether it’s the novel, the movie, or the album, received artistic wisdom has it that putting in years working on the material will open the gates to a career.

And that assumption made sense when the people guarding those gates also controlled access to the public. But it makes less sense now that creators can reach global audiences directly.

In fact, the creator economy is now exposing a reversal that many artists still haven’t grasped: Your audience may be worth more than the works you created to attract them.

Throughout the twentieth century, artists brought artworks to cultural institutions that cultivated audiences. Your book, film, or song had value because one of those institutions could put it in front of millions of customers.

The old status quo taught creators to think of each project as the prize. But digital distribution broke the old arrangement. Creators know they can reach people without institutional permission. What they’ve largely missed is that the democratization of distribution has changed where the real value is now concetrated.

Your novel can go out of print. The audience that always shows up for the next one can keep producing value for decades.

Hence the increasing emphasis on direct audience relationships.

Epidemic Sound’s 2026 creator survey found that 72 percent of creators are developing audiences they can reach directly. More creatives in the survey prioritized smaller, more loyal audiences over reaching the largest customer base possible.

They’ve learned a lesson that old media hid on purpose: A customer who buys one book adds value; a reader who wants your next ten books lays the foundation of your career.

But due to years of propaganda, artists still organize their careers around the first, more transactive relationship. They devote years to writing a book and spend months launching it, only to watch sales dwindle. And they jump to the conclusion that the product lacks worth.

So, they try to engineer a hit, triangulating for mass appeal; seldom stopping to think about the people who did like the previous project.

That lack of foresight explains how a lot of creators end up in a rut. They don’t set up means of reaching their original customers again, forcing them to start from scratch with every release. Those are the guys you see constantly playing the algorithm or begging gatekeepers for attention.

So, what’s the alternative?

Read the full post on Substack.

Who could blame them? Big studios had the equipment, financing, marketing, and distribution needed to get a movie in front of millions of people. You could make a film without them, but good luck getting anyone to see it.

So generations of creators learned the same career path: Make a picture impressive enough to get noticed, take the ticket to get past the gates, then let the institution introduce you to its audience.

Now creators have a new path. And Hollywood investors are driving the reversal of that time-honored process.

At last week’s TheGrill conference, movie industry dealmakers said that with fewer studios left to merge, they’re now on the hunt for individual creators, independent companies, and intellectual properties.

One investment banker pointed to YouTube, where creators can now assemble audiences on a scale that once required muscle once wielded only by studios and networks.

For a century, Hollywood made creators audition for access to its audience.

Now it’s shopping for creators who already have their own.

The writing has been on the wall for a while. Studios founded online are expanding their footprints in Burbank while Los Angeles-based production contracts. Digital shoot days rose 47 percent year over year in the second quarter, even as on-location filming days fell 13 percent.

And as creator-run operations sign deals with Disney and Netflix, the common wisdom inside the entertainment business has changed.

A recent survey of creators and industry professionals found the same recommendations cropping up repeatedly:

Read the full post on Substack.