Page Fright
Hosted by authors Sydney Kain (Our Love Language is Murder: coming Feb 2027), and Liza Petrov (Pre-Query). PAGE FRIGHT follows the journey of Sydney and Liza as they find their place in the literary world. Each week they offer a unique take on the ins and outs of the publishing industry, discuss craft and the vulnerability it takes to be a writer, and they answer questions from fans. New episodes every Tuesday.
Page Fright
Is Falling in Love With Your Work Bad For Your Career?
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Join Sydney and Liza as they talk horror movies, the trials of writing in different genres, and what it means to "fall in love" with your work.
Maybe this is just my fear talking because I'm not there yet. I this is just kind of how I'm imagining it. How am I gonna have to change in order to meet someone else's deadline?
SPEAKER_00Okay, I will say that I I've always feared that as well. And but I can speak from personal experience having all the time in the world to write my previous books because I had no deadline at all. And then this time they said they gave me the two book deal. And then they're like, okay, come up with a second book idea and have it ready for us by December. And I remember having this panic moment of like, how can I just come up with a book? Just come up with a book idea. What do you mean? You are late to the party. I can't believe you.
SPEAKER_01I usually am fashionably late, I would say. No, this is not fashionable at all. No one's even talking about this anymore. I can't believe you. But I also am extremely excited. Well, what did you think?
SPEAKER_00I finally watched Obsession and I loved it, of course. I knew you would. It really disturbed me.
SPEAKER_01It really bothered me. Okay, tell me. It didn't, it did not disturb me. It did not bother me. I like I don't know. It's it touched on my black soul, like that that part of my humor where I was just like, this is great. So tell tell me tell me your thoughts.
SPEAKER_00It wasn't the the horror itself. I thought it was beautifully done. I loved the story. What really disturbed me was how accurately they depicted this feeling of enmeshment and codependency, and like the feeling that if you don't have this other person, you're just this empty shell. I thought that the way they did that was so beautiful. And they didn't demonize it or because you know literally demonized it. I mean, she was a demon. Yeah. Well, I see that all the time in therapy when I was seeing clients is this codependency feeling. And a lot of times the other partner feels, well, how the guy did, like smothered and out of control and angry, and you're kind of seen as like the crazy girlfriend, but really it comes from these feelings of um hopelessness and insecurity and attachment issues, and just the way they made her so sad. I had a lot of empathy for her, actually, even though she for the demon? Yeah, for the demon, even though obviously she was kind of evil.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean, she and she was a like well, they do a really good thing that I usually like when demons are portrayed in media, where they make them childlike.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01There there's a certain innocence to their evil that I think is really fun and clever to do. And they did that really well in this movie. Like when she's first introduced, uh, actually, she does this several times where she kind of abruptly changes her strategy with him when she's speaking to him. She's like, Oh, I didn't say it right this way. I it's it's it's my first day on earth, you know? It's it's like this up here, I guess. I should say this. And you're like, no, no, that's even more fucked up.
SPEAKER_00I love that. There was this, there was the scene where she's standing there and he was saying he's gonna go out for a boys' night, and she's like describing that feeling of how she'll just that's fine. Well, but then she's like, I'll just lay there and my hands will slowly turn numb like bags of sand until eventually I turn into nothing. And she's describing that. That hit me so deep. I was like, wow, that really freaked me out. I love that.
SPEAKER_01I I I thought of you the second time I saw it. Because I saw it well, I saw it at a film festival at first. I had I had no idea what I was walking into, and this was before it's theatrical release. There's no buzz about it. It's just it's just part of a lineup. And I emerged with my friends and just unanimous agreement, film of the festival. If it gets a theatrical release, we hope it does. Movies are dead if it doesn't become a blockbuster. Because all of us were like, that theater was electric. And you don't always get that in all the showings. So I ended up theatrical release. It's a big hit. I get to take new friends to see it because they missed it at the festival. And that's why I saw it the second time. It's really fun. Anyway, my second time seeing it, I thought of you, and I thought of all my writer friends. During her fucked up monologue about uh, I forget what it was, but it was it was almost like raping him with her own flesh, where she like rolls it up like I forget what it was. She was like, she was like going to roll up her skin and then and insert it in him or something. I was I forget what it was. Do you know what I mean? But when she says, Yeah.
SPEAKER_00When she's like she was telling that story, like some kind of weird It was at the party, she's telling the story, and she's like, And then I would just like take cut off your arm and insert the flesh between my legs.
SPEAKER_01No, that was it, that was it. Yes, yes, no, she would roll up his skin and be able to and and insert it into herself, and I was just like, this form of you know, rape, basically. Like, I was like, this is gorgeous horror writing.
SPEAKER_00It was it was the way it was.
SPEAKER_01It was very creative, that's for sure. But you feel this as a horror reader and a horror writer. You get excited when someone writes something creatively messed up. You know? Like when it gets real dark, but in a new way, it's like chills. You did such a good job.
SPEAKER_00I love anything that's different and unique, and I feel like 2026 has been killer so far with all of these unique horror stories. I have been obsessed.
SPEAKER_01It's been it's been a horror year. Well, so with obsession in mind, have you seen any of the other like did you see backrooms?
SPEAKER_00Did you see No, you kind of turned me off of backrooms after No, go see it, go see it.
SPEAKER_01I have my I have opinions about it, but it's you should absolutely see it. Oh, okay. 100%. I'm I'm a supporter of the movie. I think that if I were a professional critic, I would say 100% see this movie. Then read my critique and see if you agree with the things that I felt were flawed. But you might disagree with me and I'm completely happy with that. It's just like if I'm part of the discussion about it, I'm going to bring up my little quibbles with it. But other than that, I think it's incredibly imaginative. I think that it's on a subject that is very interesting. Uh, liminal spaces in it are absolutely I mean, they're all the rage right now, but also the way that they brought it to the screen is beautiful. And the accomplishment that was the set itself, everything that they put into the production for real, because it's all practical, is phenomenal. Like it it really is just you should see it because of all the work that went into it just at base.
SPEAKER_00So okay. All right, all right. I'm back in. I'm back in.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm sorry if I turned you off from it. I I really do hope that you go see it. Okay, see it in your house. I'll see it in my house now. I'll see it in my house.
SPEAKER_00I'll be late to the party once again.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Oh God. Is there any uh well, okay, for for the audience out there, I want to see if because I was I was out to dinner with some people last night and we were all talking about movies, and I was asked to recommend uh an eco-horror movie uh that kind of touched on themes of otherness. And I'm not sure if it counts as eco-horror, but it definitely touches on themes of otherness. I have a movie recommendation, and I want to see if any of the audience has ever seen this movie. It's called Border. It's set right now, like uh in Europe. It's about a border control agent who is uh not quite human. That's that's how I'm gonna put it.
SPEAKER_00I'm gonna write this down.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. When you look at them, you're like, something's off. And as you go more into the story, you realize exactly how, and it's wonderful. It's a wonderful, bizarre movie. I can promise you, if you haven't seen it, you're not ready for it. If you have seen it, I do want you to comment and tell me your thoughts because I thought it was really fun.
SPEAKER_00Let's move on to our wait, what? Yeah, let's get on track. Where we're talking about plotting versus pantsing and which genres require which one. Yeah. Because so I wanted to just have a relaxed conversation about this.
SPEAKER_01I let me just let me state this. I might speak authoritatively, but I am also speaking half the time in jest. I am open to criticism.
SPEAKER_00Let us state for the record, we are not masters in this field. We speak confidently, but on the inside, we're an insecure mess.
SPEAKER_01No, we're not. No, but we're just we're we're open to just having a conversation about it. But it's not this is not end all be all. Right. So this is just kind of my thoughts. Everything that I say are my general thoughts, my gut instinct about these things. So authoritatively, I think you cannot pants a mystery novel. Interesting. Yeah. I think I think a mystery novel is planned, planned, planned. But uh, that's just my personal experience uh writing my side project right now. It's like if I were to pants that thing, mystery novelists, tell me, would you ever pants your mystery? Would you ever just see what happens? Because like I find that the way that you have to think about your story and and how you, you know, handsel and griddle all of your little crumbs of of clues for who did it, it you gotta plan it. You can't just you can't just feel it.
SPEAKER_00Unless I th I tend to agree, but that's because I'm I'm turning more into a plotter as I progress in my career. But I could see a scenario where a pantser pants is a mystery, finds out who the killer is or whatever in the end, and then has to go back and do a million more drafts to get it in a place that's ready to query or ready to publish. Because then you would have to say, okay, I figured out the story. Now I have to go back and make this all make sense. I have to drop in the breadcrumbs. So it'd be kind of like a reverse engineering situation.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you have like a self-discovery of the clues that should have been in your first act, but you only you only realize them in your third. I, you know, I guess like I like to pants. I do, I do like to just come up with things as they flow in, and I'm not I'm no stranger to coming up with the things that should have been in the first act and the third. I just feel like a mystery is such a puzzle. You have to plot it. I agree.
SPEAKER_00Well, you know what I have really found? I used to think plotting would take away from the excitement or make me feel like I'm losing some of the art, but I've actually found the opposite. I've found that if I plot out my chapters, I know the beginning, middle, and for the most part. I'm still a little bit of a pantser. What I think is really fun is that in each chapter I can plant little clues. I make the dialogue kind of connect to the end. And so it's a different way of flexing that muscle. So instead of just finding out the story as I'm writing, I have a new way where I'm in control of the story and I can totally manipulate it and change it and make the audience believe or think what I want them to believe instead of me thinking the same thing as the audience. When you're pantsing, you know, you're kind of discovering with the audience. There's a whole different feeling when you're in charge and being able to manipulate people. And that's that I've been finding to be very, very fun, which I think could be really fun and a mystery to be a full-on plotting.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay. Well, so pantsing. A genre that I believe is made for it. It's already I already know what you're gonna say. Okay, what do you think I'm gonna say? You're gonna say horror. You're gonna say horror. No. Oh but you but you think so? I'll reserve mine. Do you think horror is made for pantsing?
SPEAKER_00I think any genre is made for pantsing or plotting. I really do. I can make an argument for both sides. What actually plotting is required, I think, in historical fiction.
SPEAKER_01That is the that is the genre that I was going to say pantsing is required. Shut it down. Yeah, shut it down. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay, you make your argument, I'll make mine. Well, maybe it's because you have to have so much research and you have to know what you're researching to do it for historical fiction. Like you have to understand the setting and the people and I mean everything about it, which to me is so unappealing. I don't enjoy that type of writing, which I know you love, no offense. So to me, you just have to you just have to have a plan. That just makes sense to me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So the reason I say that historical fiction is made for panthers is because of the research. So part of what you do when you're writing historical fiction is there's a conundrum that a lot of historical fiction writers face, which is like, do I write first or do I research first? And they often go down these little rabbit holes of research and they spend most of their time on research instead of writing. That's the writer's block of historical fiction writers, right? They just, or their their biggest procrastination tool is that they're like, no, I wrote today, I spent my entire day researching. And you're like, you spent the past three years researching. Thank you very much. And you haven't written a word. And that's because I think that there is a magic moment with historical fiction writing where you find the weirdest shit in your research. You find it, and then that's what sparks a plot idea. And you always have to maintain a certain amount of flexibility that I think comes with pantsing writing, right? That kind of writing style, where your plot is open enough to discover that uh uh this historical figure that you want in your plot is actually completely different than you imagined before you researched them. Or this this event that is part of your setting. You know what? You always had this thought that, you know, prohibition, like you grew up thinking that prohibition was just an unbelievably stupid movement uh that just stopped everybody from having fun. And then you do a little bit of research and you find out that a lot of it was pushed by women's groups, by feminist groups, by suffragettes' groups, and by women's groups that were like, we just want our husbands to stop coming home and beating us. And we want our stuff our husbands to stop gambling while they're drunk and losing all of our money. Like that was a lot of the impetus behind it. And when you when you learn the other side of the historical argument, of the historical story, you find you sometimes find new sides of your story, but you don't find them all in a linear order for your that's comfortable for the plot that you planned. And you can't plan with your research all neatly done. So everything's kind of a hot mess all the time. And I think that that's why it's really good for for pantsing writing.
SPEAKER_00Interesting. I think so. This is confusing for me. Maybe you can answer this question. So if you're writing a historical fiction and you're doing it about prohibition. Yeah. Sure. How th this is where I'm confused about the line between fact and fiction. Like what has to be true and what can you make up?
SPEAKER_01I think that that line is defined in the disclaimer at the beginning of your book. Where you can say that this book is based on fact and fictions. The author has taken creative artistic liberty with certain events and don't use this as a history book. I think that that that is something that is completely fine to do. This is my personal feeling on this. I don't know what the industry rule is. I don't know if it it so for my historical fiction, I and if I go traditional publishing, I don't know what my agent will make me write at the beginning of the book about certain historical figures. And I do worry about that. Like, I wonder, you know, there are people in my book who still have family members that are alive, but they've been dead, you know, since the 60s. Like, they've been dead a long time, and who knows what will happen. I don't know if I can get sued, and I don't know what the what legal will tell me about, you know, what liberty I've taken with certain characters. So and I don't think that you necessarily like there are whole historical fictions, there's a whole kind of alternate history subgenre in historical fiction where you're like, okay, let's write a book of uh what if the South won the Civil War? What's that gonna be like? What if the the what a man in the high tower is a historical fiction where it's what if the Nazis won World War II?
SPEAKER_00So that makes sense to me because you can make up everything. That's all fake.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you can make up everything. I mean, I don't think any historical fiction is ever 100% right. And I think it's a constant source of debate within the historical fiction writing. I don't even want to call it community, but like just like people that do it and talk about it. I think that different people have different levels of comfort and different levels of expectation for how accurate you should be. I think you should always aim for accuracy. I think that there's almost a fetishization of accuracy amongst some writers where they're like, Well, I'm writing about a specific day in history and I want to know what the air tasted like in 1862 in this field. And I'm like, Well, I don't know if you're gonna get there. But but you can try. And I think that a lot of readers want that feeling, and you just you try to get as close as you can to that. It also depends on the book and the project for it, because you can also I would count historical romance as historical fiction, even though a lot of the books in the genre like they they can they can range. Some put more emphasis on the historicity of their book and the setting and how deeply they go into what was happening specifically at that time in that place, and some use it more as a veneer and backdrop that's just kind of fun to exist in. So interesting.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for sharing that with me. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I think do we have any more genres before we move on? Let's let's we've gotten three. Okay, let's talk about fantasy. Okay. Can you pant fantasy?
SPEAKER_00I say heck no.
SPEAKER_01Interesting. I think you can pant parts of it, but not the magic system. If you have if you have fantasy, you gotta plot it. You gotta you gotta plan it out. Because I feel like the the more intense or like the harder your fantasy is, like logically sound your setting and your magic has to be. Because like the magic in it is is an economy in itself. It has to be balanced with, you know, things that you gain, the magic that you that you do, and then its cost. And you do have to plan that out because I feel like that's where you're plotting, like that's where all of your energy, your drama comes from.
SPEAKER_00But and a lot of times the magic I feel like follows the character arc and so and it kind of mirrors the world in general. Like I think they're all kind of going together, and so you have to know where it's going, in my opinion. I mean, my brain, I guess, just would not be able to pants this. This is how I think of it is that you have a character now in book one. This is gonna be a six-book situation, and in book six, that character's daughter's aunt is gonna be a main villain that caused the sequence of events in book one and it all comes together. How can you pants that? I mean, you can't let's say you're going into book six and you need something, you've come up with a new idea that you're pantsing, but you didn't follow that seed of thought in book one through five. You can't go back and change that.
SPEAKER_01You know, it's funny. So there is such a thing as retconning where authors do it, you know, writers, writing teams do it all the time. What do you mean? It's good. I mean, just you're in book five and you're like, you know what, crab people always existed. I know I didn't reference them in book one, but crab people are actually an essential part of this world and this economy. And they're the main plot driver of book five, and they have a deep history. Like, I feel like that's a that that is a thing that that definitely does happen.
SPEAKER_00I'm not condoning it. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing because that person could be exploring and understanding their world, and then all of a sudden now they're introduced to the crab people and they're like, wow, I never knew that you were a part of this world. Girl, it's not morally bad.
SPEAKER_01I think it might be. Look, I gotta be careful not to speak authoritatively. It might be technically bad to retcon. Retconners don't come after me. Anyway. Do you know retconning? Do you know what that means? No, I've never heard that term. Sorry. So retconning is basically where you change something fundamental later on and act like it was always that way. So you can see that in television shows, book series. You basically see it in things where a universe, like a fictional universe, has existed linearly, you know, because they've been putting out episode after episode after episode, chapter after chapter. And then they clearly come up with a thing midway through or later on that they want to be important for everything. And then they just kind of bluff their way through, like, of course. It's always been this way. So that's it's called retconning. Let's move on to our main act where we're gonna talk about whether it is actually a good thing to fall in love with the story you're writing. Should you love your work? Or is it better for your career to kind of have a distance from it? Like, can it actually hurt you if you fall in love with your characters, fall in love with your plot? Uh and uh I wanted to propose this topic this week because it took me a long time psychologically, from the beginning of my writing journey where I was hiding all my writing and feeling like I had no right to write, to now where I've totally fallen in love with my story. There was a whole section where whenever I would write something down, I would hate it. And I felt like nothing was good enough. So I had to go from this place of hating my story to To loving my story, hating what I had the urge to write, to accepting myself. And that acceptance had to come through love, had to come through kind of almost an obsessiveness where I was just like, oh, I can't stop thinking about this. And I feel like now I'm at a point where loving the story is holding me back from finishing it. So I'm getting, I've I've personally experienced both sides where I was just like, well, I need to get to this point. And it's now coming back to haunt me a bit.
SPEAKER_00Interesting. Interesting that it's keeping so for me, I fall in love with all of my work in the same way of where I have to keep writing until I know the ending. Except for my natural stopping points. Like right now I'm in my a paralyzed phase that I normally hit, always at the same word count. It's so annoying. What's the word count? What's your paralysis word count? The first, the first one is between one and ten. I really struggle. And then the next one is at 20, the next one is at 30. It's like at the tens, all the way up, I get paralyzed. But I always want to know the ending. Interesting. I fall in love with my work. I have to, or I can't write. And tying back to our beginning discussion of obsession, I think where it can become detrimental to you in your career is if once you finish the book, I always think writing this book is for me. I'm going to tell this story how I want to tell it. I'm going to make it end the way I want it to end. It's all for me and I want to fall in love with it. But then at that point moving forward, I sort of let go a little bit. I have a little bit of a detachment and I don't love it in the same way. Usually I kind of think I start something new and then I think, ugh, this book's not good anymore. I don't like it anymore. And then I am pretty open to saying, okay, now this is not for me anymore. This is for the industry. This is for audiences. And I need to make tweaks to it to make it marketable, to make it what audiences want to read. And I don't feel the same, what's the word I'm looking for? The same like ownership over it or the same weird obsessiveness where I'm like, it has to be exactly how I want it. I don't feel that anymore once it's finished.
SPEAKER_01Do you um do you think that you would ever be able to start a book and have enough energy to get to the end without the the love feeling? Like it basically just knowing this is this is for someone else, this is for the industry, this is for my job. Like, because there are writers out there that I'm like, I envy you if you can just go, I'm gonna write this book. And I'm not gonna become obsessive about it. I'm not going to walk around in a dream state going, oh, this happens, and then this happens. Just like, you just go, you write it. Maybe this is just in my imagination that people do this, but you do it as a job. It's completing an essay for class when you're in school, and you turn it into your teacher, the agent. And then it just goes through a whole sausage making factory machine and and and then it's a book. And then you have like 30 books behind you. I feel like that's that's my assumption on how prolific writers work.
SPEAKER_00That's honestly, that's my assumption as well. And I have thought about that recently. Like, could I do it? Because it takes so much out of me to write a book. It's exhausting, and you feel like you can't be present because you're always dissociated into this other world and you think about it all the time, and it takes yeah, it takes something from me, I feel like. And so sometimes I'm like, can't you just sit down and write this and not be so emotionally attached to it? I do feel like that sometimes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And some of my favorite writers are prolific, and like I kind of imagine like, okay, so some of my favorite writers, one of them, our books always end really abruptly. And it's so funny because I'm like, your book was so witty and fun and clever all the way through. And then I can literally feel you in through your words at the end, going, All right, this is done. I literally don't care about saying another word about these people. It's it's kind of charming at this point. It's just very, very prolific. It's just, I don't know if she ever was in love with her commercial work. Would you ever want to get to that state? Like where you could do that? I mean, I feel like you already said you would, but do you think so?
SPEAKER_00I think I as long as the quality was still good. My fear would be that there would be no spark in it. It would just be very formulaic where I'm like, okay, and now's this part, and now's this part, and now's this part, and then it comes to the end. It doesn't I I worry that the excitement that I'm lacking will show in the book. Uh but if I could make it have good quality and for it to not take so much from me emotionally, then I would, yeah, that would be great.
SPEAKER_01I keep on thinking that the spark is all in my head. It's some sort of romanticism that I hold that's just not real. I don't know. It's it's almost like asking whether people have souls or not. You know, does your book have a soul that's based on the amount of pain an author felt while creating it? You know, interesting. And because there's almost this feeling of if you feel no pain while you write your book, then it's not going to be interesting to the reader. And I look at some of these books out there and I'm just like, nah, this author felt no pain. They just they put it out. And this is not a comment on whether the writing was good or clever or anything like that. I it's just I know the information about this writer. Like I know about their their life and their view of their work and and how they like how they felt about making it. And I know that they felt no pain. They were just putting out commercial content. And it's just as gripping. You know, I have I I think it's just as maybe they're just a genius, though. Maybe it takes a genius to do that.
SPEAKER_00Maybe it's depend maybe it's more about what the author is trying to get from the work. If if a writer is writing to just tell a fun story or write something that's marketable, then maybe there's a separation there versus the author that's writing to hopefully have the writing tell them something about themselves. Or because I know that for me, all my books, even my commercial books, say something about my life or help me process something emotionally. So maybe that's why it's so exhausting, is because it's our own form of therapy. Yeah. And it's it's like a children's fairy tale story where you're learning life lessons from these fairy tale stories, and we're learning life lessons from these huge novels that we're writing where you get to the end and you're all, wow, this commercial book about a couple trying to murder each other was about trying to understand attachment and love and all the different forms that it takes, you know?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Do you think that do you think that level of emotional attachment helped or hindered you writing your first book? Like the this this past book that's coming out?
SPEAKER_00I feel like it helped because I was putting so much of myself into it. And wait, no, I want to start over. It's okay. I feel like for this first one, I struggled in the beginning because I was trying to put too much of myself into it and my own understanding of these topics like love and chaotic relationships and toxicity, things that I'd seen in my life. And so I was kind of putting other people into my characters and setting that instead of letting my characters just be themselves. And then as I went, I sort of figured it out and I was able to edit them and make them more themselves. Um, but I definitely think it was a skill that I had to learn. And now in my subsequent books, I'm able to process things, but not put my own self into the characters. Does that make sense? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I get that. Yeah, I I I don't know how much of myself or how much of other people I know is in my book, like I I was able to I was able to fall in love with my story when the characters became themselves and them like their own their own living, breathing entity that is separate from anyone I know and separate from myself. So I think that distance that helped me feel like it was real and helped me respect it. I think that like I really do think that there is a connection between respecting yourself, your writing, and loving your story. And I think that it might be a mark of an amateur writer or a beginning writer to need to love your story. This is also kind of like what it I I don't know if there's any point in uh thinking about amateur-ness when you're learning to write. I feel like it it almost just holds people back. It just hurts to think of yourself as amateur, uh at least at least for me. Like I'm not sure if it's a helpful uh designator, but I do wonder if it's a marker of being on the in the beginning stages of your journey to or to be in on the side of and I'm not trying to be offensive. Like I'm not using this term as negative, unprofessional. You know, like there's a certain marker of professionalism when you're able to churn out things without feeling bad, like without too much emotion. You're able to complete a task and treat uh the work as deliverable because that's kind of what the industry needs of you. If you're uh dealing with a publishing house, if you're dealing with an agent, I feel like they're like you're on our schedule and you need to continually put out work in order to keep your name relevant, in order to help us market you, uh all of that stuff in order to keep your readers reading. And I don't think that there's room for love when you reach that level of professionalism.
SPEAKER_00I don't know.
SPEAKER_01I think there is. Okay. Tell me. Because I maybe this is just my fear talking because I'm not there yet. I this is just kind of how I'm imagining it. It's just like, how am I gonna have to change in order to meet someone else's deadline?
SPEAKER_00Okay, I will say that I I've always feared that as well. And but I can speak from personal experience having all the time in the world to write my previous books because I had no deadline at all. And then this time they said they gave me the two-book deal, and then they're like, okay, come up with a second book idea and have it ready for us by December. And I remember having this panic moment of like, how can I just come up with a book? Just come up with a book idea. What do you mean? And I need to be tortured over this and think about it for a long time.
SPEAKER_01And I came up with a- I need to I need to birth it inside of myself in some sort of deep, dark, magical way that's unexplainable. Exactly. Exactly. I need candles lit in a dark room. Yeah, that's the only way it feels real and has a soul. Yes. But I I I do think that there's like some some psychological space where we're like, this this is an entity that needs a soul, and then so you need something unexplainable to create it. Go on, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00So I had to come up with the book in about a week and a half, which I did. I had to write the full synopsis and get approval for it. And actually, when I submitted the synopsis, I thought to myself, I'm gonna hate this book. I don't like it at all. Because I had to just think of it very quickly and be like, okay, here's the story idea, here's all the things I think will happen, here's the ending. And they were like, Great, go ahead and write it. And I was like, I don't want to write this book. But then I started writing, I guess in February, I want to say. And I'm only 17,000 words in, but I've had a lot of time to think about it and go through my birthing process, and now I'm excited and I feel like I've found love for it, which ha is propelling me forward. An industry question for you then. Okay. So they gave you two and a half weeks?
SPEAKER_01Is that what you said? To write your synopsis, your idea, and how how quickly did you have to come up with it?
SPEAKER_00They didn't uh give me a timeline, but I knew for myself that if I wanted to have time to write the book, I needed to come up with it. So I gave myself two weeks to come up with the idea. Okay.
SPEAKER_01So uh it's just to just to address this. So you came up with it pretty quickly and then you gave it to them. Industry question. How much are you allowed to deviate from the synopsis that you gave originally of the book? Like, do you have kind of an innate sense? Did you ever discuss it with your agent? Like, because like here's the thing. If you're an editor and like you're gonna be working with their editors and stuff, like developmental editors all the time are like, you gotta remove this whole section. Like, remove this section in the plot. It doesn't make sense. It like there's a domino effects here that like because you have this happen here, it makes everything else not make sense. Maybe you should move this here. And there's like structural big plot changes that end up fixing things and making things pace better uh and make more sense. Are you allowed to do that on your own? Or what do you think would happen if you just were like, uh, plot's gonna change this way, guys?
SPEAKER_00Well, I gave them a very bare bones synopsis and I have not discussed it with anyone, but I have changed and added a lot of things. So I guess we will find out in December if it's accept if it's an acceptable thing to do. I I you know, my my thinking is it has to be.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I think so. Because agents, in a sense, also are collaborators. Like when when your agent reads this, they're also going to have an innate sense of like, I think this worked, but this didn't work. And they want the book to succeed and breathe on its own. Maybe the line is like, if you made a change in the synopsis that was like, well, this change changes the genre completely, then people would have a problem. Yeah, you know. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. That I added in a very strong romantic subplot. I made it a little darker than I had initially submitted. I added in actually two or three additional subplots. I think what I submitted to them was boring because I had to come up with it so quickly. And I just gave them, okay, here's a big bare bones idea of one plot that I would like to do. And then as the story developed in my mind, I just it just grew all these branches and leaves. And so it's still the story I submitted, but it's bloomed. It has a bunch of flowers now.
SPEAKER_01That's good. I'm so happy. I I'm I essentially maybe maybe my question boils down to like, do you have to it is there a bare bones form of love and passion that you can have for your story, like in order to move quickly in the industry and and and make things at a faster pace? Which is essentially kind of coming back to that word respect. Where you get this baseline respect for your characters, for your story. Like you started out going, I don't I'm not gonna want to write this. Oh my god, what is this? And then those flowers bloomed, and you're like, Oh, okay, okay, I like this and I like this, and I'm kind of I'm hooked in. I'm attached to what happens. And but it's not necessarily obsessive and personal and emotional.
SPEAKER_00The first book I ever wrote was very emotional, very, and I loved that book, even though now I despise it. Then Love Language, the one that's coming out, loved that one again. The Rotting Tree. I liked it. I thought it was good, but I didn't feel the same attachment. You like that one? I like that one a lot, yeah. But I didn't feel that same passion. Flyaway Kite, the one that's on submission right now, I fell in love with that one because it was my first time dipping my toe in the horror genre, and I fell in love with the Fem Rage. And then this one I also I think is really fun and I love it, but it's not in the same deep, passionate way that maybe Flyaway Kite was. It's a different kind of love. It's a this is super entertaining, this is fun. I'm practicing different skills. I'm thinking of it more as like a professional author of like what skills can I develop? How can I push myself here? How can I add more cast members? I'm thinking about it differently. That sounds like pride then. And in in the best way.
SPEAKER_01Like take pride in what you make, where you're like, I'm proud of myself. I feel competent, I feel good. And it's fun to explore this new strength of mine. That's what it sounds like to me. Which I think is essentially different from love, but possibly more effective when you are further in your professional writing life with different expectations on you. Like you have colleagues that that need deliverables, you know? Because I'm before that. My writings are not deliverables yet. And I'm I'm kind of looking forward to the day that they are. I think I'm gonna get more done. I think I'm going to move faster. But there'll be more of a sense of duty around it where I'm gonna owe someone that work. And I think that that pressure is going to help me. Interesting. I actually wonder if the way that the industry is set up, like in video games, for example, when you're looking for a publisher, you don't have to finish the entire game. Interesting. You submit like a level of the game. It's kind of like, oh, you have a pilot episode for a television show. You know, just finish the first episode, please. And I'm like, can I just can I just finish a couple chapters? Can I give you a synopsis? I cannot wait to get to that point where like I have I already have an agent who believes in me. I have a possible publisher, and they I I'm waiting to be told, okay, you have in two weeks, please give us a a a pitch and a synopsis for a book. It doesn't have to be done. And usually a chapter or two. Yeah. Uh I I will be over the moon to be able to do that. That is really nice. Yeah. Because I feel like the the way that the industry is set up, it weeds out writers like me, I guess, who struggle to finish. But I feel like I would finish my projects more if I already had a built-in expectation ladder of colleagues and stuff.
SPEAKER_00Well, thinking of love, how do you think you'll feel about this new romance that you're writing? I'm not in love with it yet.
SPEAKER_01I do get kind of sparks of passion for it, but uh I think that this might be an exercise in pride, in being proud of myself and my skill set. I do want to turn it into that because I would like it to be something that is uh more an expression of the strengths that I've gained as a professional. I would like to complete it in a shorter amount of time with less emotional attachment to how the words are on the page or how the characters express themselves. Because I have this weird thing with uh, are the characters being true to themselves? Have I been able to write the prose well enough to showcase exactly how I feel they are in my mind? Sometimes I feel like I know what the character is, and then I read my writing, and I'm like, they don't move that way. They don't, they're not quite that way, they wouldn't speak quite that way. And I think that I get in my own way, I think I do it too much. You should have that a little bit. You should have a a desire to express your characters correctly, but I get a little perfectionisty, a very perfectionisty around how they express themselves. With dialogue, you mean and movement? Dialogue, movement, deciding what they would do or how they would act in a scene. For example, uh my my main female lead, she is very different from me. And it it's hard to write her sometimes because she's the kind of character that that goes towards danger, goes toward the mistake, but does things unthinkingly sometimes. She's she's she's kind of she's young and she's fiery and and that's the point of her. And I'm I'm not I've ne I've always been a kind of more like, oh, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna run into the burning building. What do you mean? I'm not gonna drive my cars too fast. And I have to like when I read her scene, sometimes I see myself getting in her way, holding her back and keeping her more demure than she actually is. And I need her to say fuck you in the scene. You know? Interesting. And she says excuse me instead. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, and that's the good side of it. But then the bad side of it is when I I'm fiddling with the way that she says fuck you. Like I got her to say it. But oh, does she say it like this with this tone of voice? Does she say it sitting this way? Does she say you know?
SPEAKER_00That's so interesting. I do not think about my book like that at all. I approach it totally differently. I'm looking at How do you approach it? The overall I do look at dialogue. I think dialogue is very important. I look at the flow of the scene. Am I staying interested? Are the sentences flowing or they feel too choppy or too long? Am I telling the story in a way that's quick and fast paced, but you can also imagine it in your head. It's descriptive enough, but not too descriptive. And is it keeping up the intensity at the pace I want? I look for those types of things, not necessarily down to the nitty-gritty prose or movement or I I look for like you seem to think you you think of the pros differently than I do.
SPEAKER_01Uh and I've read your writing and it's very effective. I like the way that you think about your writing because the end result is really good. It moves very quickly, it's always engaging, and I always know where I am without too much fiddling around with over explanation. And so it flows very, very well. Everything's very self-evident. And I think that everything that you do is correct. Like what you just described. But it's funny because I'm like, wow, we do is so different. Because for me, when I think about the pros, like the pros for me are a reflection of the character, the theme, the setting. Like the the length of the sentences is, you know, there's a side of it where I'm like, okay, I'm trying to get a nice, engaging flow on the page so that the reader doesn't get bored and they're constantly plugged in. But I'm also remembering that one character, one POV character has a much lower level of education than the other. And they think in a fundamentally different way. They process information in different ways. So like the lengths of their sentences are going to vary in different ways in order to reflect their personalities and their capabilities, their strengths and weaknesses. And I like to play with that. But, you know, I don't know if that's helping or hurting me.
SPEAKER_00No, and I don't know if it translates to the reader out. I love your writing. And actually, I've learned so much from you. I think it's good for us to have each other in a critique group because I'm very here's what I'm saying, and I'm gonna say it to you directly. And you're like, I'm gonna tell you another story that's gonna be connected to what you should be thinking is going on, but I don't really want you to know what's going on. It's so beautiful and long winded in the back. Way and I have really tried. I feel like your writing has influenced me. My my writing has gotten better. Your writing has influenced me.
SPEAKER_01My writing has gotten better.
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_01Because I want to go for that kind of atmospheric long-windedness. That's kind of part of my personal style. But I absolutely need to rein myself in, you know? And I need to learn the art of brevity. Because there I think that there's a level of trust that the author needs to have in their own skill to communicate briefly and know that the audience got it. And you have it. You have it in space. And it's very impressive where you will communicate like the I read the your your beginning chapters of your newest story. And you launch a write-in. And I immediately know who everybody is, what's going on, what are the stakes, and you do it in so few words. And it's gripping yet clear. That's really hard to be able to be brief and yet trust that the audience didn't need anything else.
SPEAKER_00Well, thank you. That was a nice push forward as I continue trying to write today. Yeah, get get past 17,000 words. Yes. Yeah. Hopefully you will remember my voice. I am. I'm like, this is gripping. This is good.
SPEAKER_01Keep going. Yes. Yes. Well, do you want to jump into some bad reviews? Yes. Because I basically looked up like famous passion projects that became hits. Uh so I have a I have a fun, nice little set of reviews for that. Okay. Let's hear it. Okay. So uh I picked a super famous book, but it is famously a a passion project for J.R.R. Tolkien. Lord of the Rings. And it's famously incredibly long, but it really was an exploration for him. It was it was a kind of um it was him diving into his passion for ancient epic storytelling and uh linguistics and coming up with this world and this mythos around it. And uh at the time, what he was coming up with in some senses, like he was a very serious academic, and it was kind of treated like being almost childish, just indulging so much in something so fantastical. Interesting. Kind of unserious and not necessarily fully respectable. But if you look back at a lot of writers throughout history, um, a lot of their passions were not necessarily uh, they weren't gonna make them the coolest kid at the party. Let's just let's just put it that way. They'd get a lot of side eyes going, what do you what what do you mean you do? Um uh but yeah, so and and so he devoted all of his time to creating this unbelievable world that we all now respect and love. And and a lot of fantasy authors, it's their first introduction into this obsession that they have uh to create their own worlds. So here's a bad review for it. Uh but I absolutely love it. It's one star. It says, I give up. I fucking give up. After four weeks of struggling through this book, I've decided life is too short. And I went to Goodreads and I love all the comments back, so I hope you don't mind, but I thought the community around this comment was interesting. So first of responder says, honestly, I think you should just stop trying. Not everything can be everyone's cup of tea, no matter how famous it is. My favorite part about reading negative reviews for books I like is that they're not even wrong. Uh it's just that we see it differently. I was like, I love the sentiment. I think that that's absolutely true. Uh, and then the very next one is please have more appreciation for true English literature. Some people may find it hard to read, but it's becoming rarer and rarer these days. We should cherish and treasure it. And I'm like, I agree, we should cherish and treasure it. It is becoming rarer that people like this, but you know, can't get in the way of what someone else doesn't like. Even if it is genius and one of the best books written in the 20th century. So yeah. Anyway, so I I thought that that was uh a nice little dive into uh a passion project that happens to be very famous and very on theme.
SPEAKER_00Mine is not on theme, but mine kind of goes with things that I talk about a lot, which is how people put their own feelings and beliefs onto books. And then if the book doesn't align with it or brings up negative emotions in them, then they don't like the book. And we've kind of been talking a lot lately. Get over it, people, yeah. About what is expected of authors and are we supposed to be always saying the right thing, always telling stories to send a bigger message, to be representing these morals and ethics. And if we don't represent the moral you represent, then is it terrible writing? And so Oh, big questions. I feel like we should devote the next episode to that's that. Okay, let's do it. So I I think last week's episode, you know, has been triggering a lot of these thoughts in me. And like, what is our responsibility as an author? And like, do we always have to be upstanding in the stories that we tell and like with the messages they send? Yeah. So this one is Me Before You. Do you know that one? Okay.
SPEAKER_01No, I haven't.
SPEAKER_00Me Before You is a about uh a girl. It's been so long since I've read it, so I don't totally remember it. It's like detail for detail. But the main idea is that she goes to be a caretaker for a man who is a wheelchair-bound and can't do anything for himself, can't move his arms or his legs, and she's very inexperienced, so it's kind of unclear about why she even gets this job. Okay. And it turns up being a love story where uh they completely fall in love, and you find out that the mom hired her to take care of her son. He's uh not like young, he's like a young man, takes hires her to take care of her son because she's hoping that they'll fall in love, and he has actually planned assisted suicide because he doesn't like his life anymore, and he's hoping she's hoping that her son will change his mind and see the worth see that it's worth living with this new love. And they do fall in love, and he does end up in the end going through with the assisted suicide.
SPEAKER_01And like you're just telling everybody this?
SPEAKER_00Well, this review's gonna give it away. So but I think it's okay. This is like a very well-known story. So this woman, I cried and cried when I read it. I oh my gosh, I was up until 3 a.m. reading this book. I cried and cried.
SPEAKER_01Do you like crying? Do you pick books? No. I don't cry.
SPEAKER_00I do not like to cry when I read books. I had I thought this was a love story when I picked it up that was gonna have a happily ever after, to be honest with you.
SPEAKER_01Oh, did you?
SPEAKER_00Oh, did you feel betrayed? No, I didn't. I felt devastated, but I thought, wow, what a powerful love story that talks about.
SPEAKER_01Was it marketed as a romance?
SPEAKER_00I could I couldn't tell you. I don't know. I mean, probably not, because it ends sad. But okay, let's get to the review. So this woman gave it one star. Blasphemy. Said, did anyone else notice that the ultimate message of this book is that a disabled life is not worth living? Even despite a caring family, endless wealth, the best medical care, and by the end of the book, a devoted, loving, romantic partner? For a while I was enjoying the story, but by the end I was deeply distressed about the moral and ethical implications of the book's ending. The book juxtaposes an adventurous, athletic, and sexually active lifestyle with life in a wheelchair, and decides that life in a wheelchair is not worth living. For those of us with close friends or loved ones with similar disabilities, this is a disturbing and morally callous ending. And I thought that review was so interesting. Is that an author's responsibility to always have a moral ending? You know.
SPEAKER_01I have so many thoughts on this, and I I truly do think that we should devote next episode to this particular topic. I'll I'll give a little preview for next episode with my answer. No. I don't think that the author is responsible for other people's feelings about their work, honestly. I agree. And I I think that you could make an argument. Uh there are people that, you know, have disabilities who have had dark thoughts and found it a relief to see that someone wrote about this and didn't think that they were saying that they should follow through with it. And and there are people that thought the exact opposite who do have disabilities that have profoundly impacted their life, who were deeply offended by the end of this book. And I still think that this book should be written.
SPEAKER_00Agree. But let's say no more and let's save it for next week.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, what a fun, gripping episode. And what a yeah, absolutely gripping from beginning to end. No lulls. It was fantastic. Let's let's applaud ourselves.
SPEAKER_00Just pat on the back. And uh, we will stay ever humble, and we will see you back here next week on Page Fright. Uh, like and subscribe. You just listened to Page Fright. Don't forget to like and subscribe and write to us at PageFrightcontact at gmail.com.
