In these bonus episodes of the podcast, you'll find interviews with industry experts and quick refreshers on key aspects of story theory.
You can do it. We can help. Take it one step at a time, and have fun!

Story editor Valerie Francis and literary agent Kathleen Foxx (The Rights Factory, Toronto) offer their professional advice on the query letters and first ten pages writing samples sent in by Story Nerd listeners. If you’d like feedback on your work, click here to submit.

Everything in story flows from its genre. The problem is that there is no standard definition of what genre is, or how it works. So, this season, Valerie and Melanie did a deep dive into dozens of theory concepts to find the best approach to genre for writers (because the marketing approach is very different from the writer’s approach). What they discovered may surprise you. 

Not much has been written about The Hero’s Gift Expressed, yet it’s one of the most crucial storytelling principles to incorporate into your story. This season, Valerie explains the concept and shows how it impacts the entire story, especially the climax. Meanwhile, Melanie examines Forces of Antagonism. Your protagonist might be the most important character in your novel, but the antagonist is the second most important; without him, you don’t have a story. The best part about this season is that these two storytelling principles dovetail perfectly. 

Writing a novel is a massive project, and like all big tasks a winning strategy is to break it down into smaller, more manageable pieces. This season, Valerie looks at two of a story's Acts (the Beginning Hook (or first Act) and the Ending Payoff (or last act)) and how they work together. And Melanie breaks the Acts down even further into Sequences.

This season, Valerie continues her study of a story's Act structure with a deep dive into the second Act which is called the Middle Build. What exactly does Act 2 build and how can you avoid a saggy middle in your story? Having finished her study of Sequences, Melanie is tackling a very different topic: subtext. Because characters don't always say what they mean, or mean what they say. Plus, a character's actions and behaviours also convey meaning. 

Are you writing an archplot, a miniplot or an antiplot story? Does your story have a single protagonist, or multiple protagonists? The answers to these questions will have a huge impact on the way you structure your story and in this season, Valerie will tell you why.

All new stories evolve from the stories that came before them. Understanding how to tap into a reader’s desire to revisit the stories they long for is essential to writing a book readers will love. This is the study of Resonance (recurring themes, motifs, and conventions in writing) and it's Melanie's focus this season. 

Readers must empathize with a protagonist because nobody cares about what's happening unless they care about who it's happening to. But what is empathy and how do writers create it? That's exactly what Valerie explores in this season of the podcast.

Writers are asked 'what's at stake' or told to 'raise the stakes'. So, what are stakes and why do they matter? This season, Melanie will deep dive into this widely spoken about, but little understood, topic.

Flat characters spell disaster for our novels because they're boring. Nobody wants to read a story where the main character is exactly who they appear to be. So what do we do? We create characters with dimension. This season, Valerie explores what "dimensi on" means and how writers create it.

A fictional world is a key feature of all stories (not just fantasy and sci - fi) because it is literally the space in which the narrative takes place. As such, it enhances the storytelling in myriad ways including illum inating character and underpinning symbolism. This season, Melanie does a very deep dive into fictional worlds and how to create them.

For Valerie, seasons 6, 7 and 8 are all on the theme of character. In the past she's studied creating empathy for the main character and how to create dimensional characters. This season, it's all about cast design and knowing whether your supporting cast is doing their job to support the protagonist.

This season, Melanie is focusing on internal and external conflict. Since conflict in a story comes from more than one thing, Melanie is drawing on her study from season 2 (Forces of Antagonism) and season 6 (Stakes). She also discusses object of desire, consequences to action and the protagonist's struggle to change.

This season, Valerie and Melanie are both studying the same topic: left - brained stories (a term Valerie has made up!). These are stories that are primarily designed to appeal to a reader's intellect and while they tend to include mysteries, spy stories, crime stories and thrillers, left - brained stories can fall under any genre. They can also have main characters with dramatic arcs.

Steven Pressfield taught Valerie that, when writing stories, authors should include nothing new after Act 2. What exactly does that mean? Why is it true? Well, that’s exactly what Valerie explores in Season 10 of the podcast. Meanwhile, Melanie is doing a deep dive into female protagonists and female archetypes in storytelling. So many amazing insights!

Conflict triangles are one of those little writing secrets that has the potential to really bring your stories to life. In this season, Valerie explains what a conflict triangle is and from episode to episode, she reveals many different ways it can be used. What’s Melanie up to this season? She’s tackling narrative drive which she describes as a “storytelling iceberg”. Follow her on this exploration of managing both the emotional state of a reader and the information in a story.

This season, Valerie dives into one of the most important skills a writer needs to develop: handling exposition. Every story you’ve ever consumed, in every form, contains exposition. It impacts pacing, narrative drive, and overall readability of your story. For her part, Melanie is studying character arcs with a particular focus on negative character arcs and stories that are called cautionary tales. She’s examining the decisions characters make that lead them from where they start to where they finish.

One of the most foundational concepts in story theory is what Valerie calls The 4 Story Questions. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by all this theory, just focus on the 4SQ and your storytelling skills will dramatically improve! And this season, Melanie is studying tension. Tension is often confused with conflict or suspense. So, what is tension if it's not conflict or suspense, and how is it used in stories? Using a simple definition, Melanie sets out to see if tension exists independently or if it co-exists with other storytelling techniques.

This season, Valerie is studying the all-important core event, also known as the story’s climax. This is the moment your reader is waiting for and everything in your story leads up to it, so it had better be good. Melanie is studying progressive complications, which are an underrated and undervalued storytelling essential, and one that helps a writer create great scenes, sequences, acts and stories.

Ah, the villain’s monologue...Valerie is having too much fun with this one! No matter which kind of antagonist you’re creating, you’ll need to give them a monologue. Once you see the villain’s monologue and how it’s used, you’ll wonder why you never noticed it before. Last season, Melanie studied progressive complications. This season, she’s studying the progressive complication that forces characters to make an irreversible decision – the turning point.

If the villain has a monologue, then the hero must have one too. Why does the hero act the way she does? That’s what Valerie is exploring this season.

Melanie is trying to bring The Shadow out from the shadows this season. The Shadow gets a bad rap, because it's often associated with negative character traits. There's more to the Shadow than meets the eye — and that's the point. A character's shadow is what's hidden or suppressed and we need to bring it out into the open. This season we learn how and when a shadow reveals itself and what happens if The Shadow is acknowledged, or if it's not acknowledged by our characters.

The antagonist drives the action in at least half of your story, so you’ve got to create a villain worthy of the task. The power, smarts, superiority and sheer awesomeness of the villain must be acknowledged by the other characters in the story, and the way you do that is through the Speech in Praise of the Villain. That’s exactly what Valerie is exploring this season.

Writers get all tangled up about Character Arcs, but what happens when a character doesn't have an arc? Well, the story still works because constant characters are loved and enduring — especially in series. This season, we're going to discover more about constant characters and their versatility.

In past seasons we’ve studied constant and change characters, as well as character traits and dimensions. This season we’re adding to our understanding of main characters by studying the four types of protagonists: hero, everywoman, underdog, and anti-hero.

What do you say when someone asks you what your story is about? A Premise not only helps you answer the question, but it also helps you write the story. It's the idea that runs through a story. Most importantly, it can also help you market your story by doubling as the tagline or the one-sentence pitch.