Hi Reader!

Picture opening your editor's notes and finding this on a pivotal scene: "Needs more emotional impact."

Cool. Cool cool cool. 🙃

More how? Bigger reactions? Higher stakes? A tearful confession??

A writer I worked with got that note on her fake-dating romance.

📍 The flagged scene: Her heroine is at a spaceport, about to leave with a bounty hunter she barely knows, to play his fake girlfriend for a month. 🏝️

This writer's instinct was to go bigger, bolder, more dramatic.

(Mine might've been too, back before I learned where to look. 😅)

🧐 But the real answer was hiding one layer down in the story.

This heroine believes she's only worthy of people 💔 when she makes them happy. And on this trip, she's about to deceive everyone she meets, in a role she's terrified she can't pull off.

The original scene read like a brave new adventure, setting the stage for grand travel and new experiences.

But for our HEROINE, this was her deepest fear triggered by a boarding pass. 😨

And that ☝️ wasn't coming through in the scene. (That's why the editor flagged it.)

💡 Sometimes an editor—or beta reader or critique partner or even brutally honest reviewer—will tell you that something is wrong with a very specific part of the story.

And, when they can get that specific, 🎯 their instincts are usually right.

But if you don't know how to diagnose the REASON that triggered the instinct, you can't even begin to fix it.

And when I helped this writer dial in that reason, we discovered that the disconnect was not the scene itself.

🗺️ Because this scene needed to happen in order to move the plot forward.

The problem—the disconnect the editor felt—was that the scene only touched ONE story layer.

🤯 And that made it feel shallow.

(If you're not sure what I mean by "story layer", scroll to the bottom for more info.)

💡⚡😍

So instead of adding drama, the writer enhanced what the moment felt like to the heroine. Hesitation in her body. Doubt threading through her inner voice. The ache of needing to get this right for everyone but herself.

And that one fix was so simple that, 😍 in the author's own words, "It's just a few sentences here and there."

A few sentences. ⚡

Not a full rewrite. No burning down the character arc or tweaking the tropes or adding extra scenes.

Just a simple prose-level enhancement that added that second story layer touchpoint, so that now the scene hits TWO layers (the character arc and a trope).

👋🤔

That diagnostic skill is what I teach in Enemies To Experts. And any program that can teach you how to save time, money, and energy—because you know how to avoid the stress of not knowing what to do next—is worth $37 a month.

I built E2E for the romance writer who's ❌ done guessing at what's wrong with your manuscript.

I built it because I am one of those reader fans who can't WAIT for your next story (I am a serious addict enjoyer of romantic fiction), who wants you to have that thriving career that everybody else told you was a pipe dream.

👀👉 Straight up? E2E is not for writers who want shortcuts.

It's not for people who want a ❌🔮 magic one-time fix.

⚡ Enemies To Experts is where you go to WORK, every month, in manageable lessons that build and combine over time.

This is the space where the quietly serious romance writer thrives. Because you get to learn new things and use them right away.

And the more you practice with us, the better (and better and better) you get at doing exactly what this writer did: ⚡ getting feedback and figuring out what to do with it.

✍️ Do the work with us HERE ⚡

If reading that page ☝️ doesn't answer your questions, hit reply and I'll help you decide if E2E is right for you.

Because why keep circling the same story frustrations when you can learn how to trust your own story instincts?

👋🍰 Curious about "story layers"?

I teach the 4-Part Romance Beat Stack (the four story layers that every romance book needs) in my workshop Cake, Not Chaos: The Moment To Moment Method.

And you can learn the four layers and start filling in YOUR beat stack right now. Instead of charging a one-time fee, like with some of my courses, this workshop lives inside Enemies To Experts.

🤩 So for the cost of one month of membership, you get access to:

• the entire workshop, including the four layers and guided sprints to start using them 💻
• the comprehensive (and printable) workbook, with all the exercises and examples from the workshop itself
• ➕ my ENTIRE archive of Enemies To Experts lessons...

Where you can dive right in and start working through it all as quickly or slowly as fits your rhythm.

Because as long as you're a member, your access to all of it never expires. No time gates, no penalties for "falling behind".

So if you want to get started building those essential storytelling skills that my writer friend benefited from, join Enemies To Experts and do your first bite-sized skill exercise (or the 🍰 Cake, Not Chaos workshop!) today.

👀 Join here! ⚡