The heart of your story is in the hero's growth as a person. Learn how to start plotting the RIGHT story from your very first draft by digging deep into WHAT is holding your protagonist back and WHY they choose to become their best self. Sue's techniques break down storytelling in simple, intuitive ways that traditional writing methods often muddy. Stop wasting time spinning your creative wheels and start writing stories readers will remember... WITHOUT having to rewrite the story a million times.
๐คซ Confession: The BIG-time book I almost DNF'd ๐ฌ
Confession time. ๐ I almost DNF'd A Court of Thorns and Roses. (I KNOW. Put down the pitchforks. ๐ ) It wasn't the writing, and it wasn't because of Feyre. It was the squalor. The starving, the freezing, the hovel house, the hunting-to-survive desperation... ๐คฎ I read romance to escape. And living through Feyre's medieval survival struggle felt more like a camping trip gone very wrong. โบ๐ฉ (And I'm barely willing to glamp.) But plenty of readers LOVE that gritty opening. For some of them, like my cohost (๐ below), it's part of the reason they fell in love with the book. No one's in the wrong here. We all just came to the same book needing different things. And THAT became one of the best tangents in my Fourth Wing deep dive with Miranda Darrow: ๐ Why readers choose the books they do, and why we sometimes quit books "everyone" loves. ๐๐ฑ๏ธ Because when a reader says thanks-but-no to your book, it's probably not about your writing skills. ๐ Sometimes you're just not the book she needed that week (or that month or that... ever). Here's my brutal truth: I'm never going to enjoy reading about heroes in squalor. EVER. I will endure it for a whileโif I absolutely mustโand just "get through it", but it better not be a theme. And that's something Miranda and I talked about at length. ๐ (๐ค Editor Sue interjection: Don't let one reader define your style. Be sure you know who you are writing for. Scroll down to the PS for my best resource on this!) In this YouTube video, we also nerd out about: ๐ฐ Where Fourth Wing and ACOTAR overlap (and where they really don't), ๐ง Why Fourth Wing didn't "create" romantasy (and neither did ACOTAR ๐), ๐ฅพ And the "dumb" thing Violet does at Parapet that told me exactly who she is as a hero character. Click this link ๐ so the video is in your YouTube history (that's my shortcut when I'm posted up on the couch) and take a peek when you have time. ๐ฅโก๐ โWatch the Fourth Wing Novel Deep Dive here! โ๏ธ๐กโฃ๏ธ
P.S. The biggest reason that readers DNF ("Did Not Finish" rating) books is expectation mismatch. And tropes are the fastest way to tell your readers what they're getting into before they invest in the journey (which means more happy reviews and fewer angry ones). My free Flipped Trope Checklist comes with an email series that is basically a masterclass in how NOT to piss off a reader. Click here to get it now... ๐ ๐ฑ๏ธ Send me the Flipped Trope Checklist & Sue's pro tips emails! ๐ฅฐ |
Sue Brown-Moore
The heart of your story is in the hero's growth as a person. Learn how to start plotting the RIGHT story from your very first draft by digging deep into WHAT is holding your protagonist back and WHY they choose to become their best self. Sue's techniques break down storytelling in simple, intuitive ways that traditional writing methods often muddy. Stop wasting time spinning your creative wheels and start writing stories readers will remember... WITHOUT having to rewrite the story a million times.
Hi Reader! When I was an acquiring editor for a small press, I got to decide which books we published in my category romance lines. (Sounds exciting, right? What it really means is that I had to read a ton of slush, and that's not nearly as fun as it sounds. ๐ฅด๐) And there was this one story that I was SO excited to work on. It was the perfect fit, with all the right tropes and romantic chemistry that ๐ฅ promised to be off the charts. But when I got the manuscript, the story was kinda boring. I...
Hi Reader! Miranda and I disagreed. On camera. More than once. ๐ And we had SUCH a good time, we're doing it again! Stay tuned for our deep dive of Warrior, Princess, Assassin later this summer! And I'm not talking about the similar-but-different style of disagreement. I'm talking "Are we reading the same book??" disagreement. ๐ She prefers traditional, formal fantasy voice. I loved Fourth Wing's modern slang. (That book felt written for me.) ๐ I loved the Xaden bonus chapters. She thought...
Hi Reader! You know those romance books where everybody wants the heroine? It doesn't matter if she's a perfect Mary Sue ๐ฉ, a klutzy book nerd ๐ค, or a catty half-vampire ๐ง. Allll the boys (and even some of the girls) want in her pants. And I'm like, but WHY? ๐ณ๐คท I call this the "magical vagina" effect. (And yes, I said that out loud. On camera. On someone else's channel. ๐ ) It makes me crazy, because generic lust and forced relationships do not a good romance make. And it's a big reason I love...