As writers and entrepreneurs, it’s easy to hit burnout. We’re driven to succeed, but that ambition doesn’t take away the fact that there’s a lot of mental, emotional, financial, and physical pressure that comes with having high expectations of ourselves. 

Just in time for a new year of goal setting, here are ten ways to honor your body and mind and let them heal, while still making progress toward your goals. 

Resources mentioned:

• Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski
• The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks Than Others Do in 12 Months by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington

Characters are the heart and soul of your story. They are who your readers identify with. They’re who we cheer for. You can have the best plot in the world, and if we don’t care about the characters, we’re not emotionally engaged in the story. Falling in love with the characters is what makes a book last in our memories and become one of our favorites. 

In the book Building a Storybrand, Donald Miller says: “If three questions can’t be answered within the first fifteen to twenty minutes, the story has already descended into noise and will almost certainly fail…”

We’ll talk about what these three questions are and how to apply them to our own characters. 

We’ll talk about a few creative ways to develop great characters, but however you develop them, my one piece of advice is:  

Know the basics, but then treat that character like someone you’ve just met that you’re going on a road trip with. Get to know them organically. Move forward and feel the story. Don’t get stuck in the stage of trying to overdesign and overthink them. 

Characters are the final tool in our discussion of Messy Mapping. After this, you’ll have a blueprint to create a unique and wonderful story. Are you ready to get started? 

*Note: I said in the episode that Brandon Sanderson said (paraphrasing) if you want to know who the bad guy is, have him kill a puppy. What I meant was KICK. He said have them kick a puppy. Killing the puppy is what happens in John Wick. My apologies!

Resources mentioned:

·      Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller

·      The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide: Prompts and Activities to Create the Most Interesting Story for Your Character by James D’Amato

·      The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface by Donald Maass 

·      Letters to the Lost by Brigid Kemmerer 

In this episode of the Messy Mapping mini-series, we talk about knowing your guideposts. The guideposts are simply the structural highlights of your novel. We’ll talk about a story from Brian Tracy’s Eat that Frog that exemplifies why guideposts are so helpful in keeping us motivated and on track and save time in the editing stage of our books. 

 We’ll talk about my five favorite methods for identifying guideposts, so you can find what works for you without it being too overwhelming. 

 This is the stage of writing where you can play around and brainstorm and throw crazy ideas out without boxing yourself in. You can figure out what will work and what won’t. Have fun with it and save yourself a lot of pain in the drafting stage where you might paint yourself into a corner or run into plot holes. 

 Guideposts will help you maintain your momentum, know where you’re going, and keep you excited about getting there.