un-blocking your plotting process + Cancelled cover reveal ❤️🔥
let's talk about plot.
1 Method That Simplifies The Plotting Process
How do you start writing a book? There’s new nothing I can say about structure that’s universally groundbreaking. For me, it’s about using tidbits of what I’ve learned and shaping that particular Play-Doh ball of knowledge in a way that my brain enjoys.
However!
Writing a book feels like a huge feat in and of itself. Staring at a blank page is intimidating. So what is the least daunting way to start?
Simplification.
I can recommend Save The Cat all day long, but I also think there is a simpler way to begin plotting. The Nine Boxes method (which is not mine, for what it’s worth) gives you one-sheet, at-a-glance look at what your story will become.
The document gives a detailed explanation for how to fill in these boxes. It also makes for a good brainstorming exercise if you’re still on your plotting journey. The key is to write your major story beats, which will (hopefully) help you avoid getting stuck.
And, listen, not all plot and structure methods work for every single person. But if you’ve been intimidated to dive into your book, it may not hurt to give it a try!
7 Findings That Changed How I Write
I love a good craft book. So when I stumbled upon Writing for Impact: 8 Secrets From Science That Will Fire Up Your Readers’ Brains I thought, huh. Okay. This seems interesting. I’m in.
There are a lot of craft books that focus on characters and revision and plot, but what I found interesting about Birchard’s book is that it uses scientific knowledge to reveal how our brains process language.
How does language impact reading comprehension? What does it mean to create compelling prose? Backed with scientific findings and psychological and neurological studies, Birchard sets out to explain why we like certain sentences, plot, and structure—and why our brain tends to reject certain stylistic choices.
I recommend reading the entire book if you haven’t already. But for the time being, I wanted to share seven revelations that stuck with me:
Complex sentences can lead to reading comprehension mistakes.
Simplify your prose. It pays off in processing fluency.
The simpler explanation is often the better one: Occam’s razor.
People comprehend more when offered less.
Shorter words, shorter sentences, shorter paragraphs. Simpler wording strikes readers as more honest.
People are wired to hunger for and devour surprise. They yearn to feel the click of the unexpected. Readers want novelty.
People also enjoy reading stories more when they know the ending. In stories, it doesn’t spoil overall enjoyment. Anticipation of how events play out winds up reward circuits. We know what happens, but now how it happens.
Cover Reveal — Cancelled: Coming 3/19/24
It’s happening! ❤️🔥
I’m thrilled to share the cover and synopsis for Cancelled with you today! The phenomenal cover art credit goes to the talented Sadie Lewski, whose talent and portfolio blew me away, and design credit goes to the incredible Kelley Brady. It’s very much giving Aries vibes and I’m 100% here for it.
There were things I needed to get off my chest when I started writing this book in early 2020. The health and sex education courses presented to me at two very different schools were equally abysmal. I wish they hadn’t normalized pain. I wish I would’ve known when to advocate for myself. And I wish I wasn’t educated through a very heteronormative lens. I also know I’m not alone in this.
Maybe shame culture has slightly improved, but it’s not completely erased. That’s when the idea was planted: What if a serial dating flirt finds herself falsely blamed for a scandal? How do you come back from that? Do you try and find the person who was involved so they can take the heat—or do you try and fix the mindset?
Teens have incredible bullshit detectors. Many are unafraid to let double standards slide. They voice concerns, they stay active against injustices. And after spitballing my way through a first draft, I knew I’d created a character who’d carry this story. Brynn makes mistakes. She doesn’t handle situations perfectly. That’s a huge reason I loved being in her head. Because at the end of the day, she’s trying her best. We all are.
Cancelled is sex-positive. It’s feminist and unapologetic. It tackles mental health and broken families and the impossible pressures society places on young people. It’s about the strength of friendships and knowing yourself when everyone else thinks negatively of you. It’s about learning what you can control and when you should lean on others. And because I operate through life with a candy-coated heart, it has the sweetness of romance too.
If you’d like, you can pre-order Cancelled now! I cannot properly express how much it'd mean to me if you did. If I could toss confetti and chocolate and buckets of my unfiltered enthusiasm through this screen, I would in a heartbeat. Thank you for being here.
Preorder Cancelled from Barnes & Noble
Preorder Cancelled from Amazon
Read the excerpt here.
Synopsis:
With its clever snark and unyielding perspective, Cancelled is a funny, fearless novel about the realistic pitfalls and unforgettable moments high school has to offer, perfect for fans of Jenny Han and Emma Lord.
Not to brag, but Brynn Whittaker is basically killing her senior year. She's got the looks, the grades, and a thriving "flirt coach" business that will help pay for her ultimate dream school: Stanford University.
But when a highly incriminating video goes viral after the first rager of the year, Brynn finds herself at the center of a school-wide scandal of ruinous proportions. She knows she's not the girl in the video hooking up with her former best friend's boyfriend (While wearing a banana costume, no less. Hey, points for style), but adding that to her reputation of being a serial dater, she quickly starts losing friends and customers. On top of that, the scorn she receives exposes the culture of misogyny that is rampant at her school . . . and Brynn and her three best friends are determined to take down all the haters.
But as she gets closer to identifying the person in the video that got her cancelled, Brynn must decide—is exposing the girl worth losing everything she's worked so hard for?
This witty, unapologetic novel by Farrah Penn boldly tackles the problematic double standards that seek to bring girls down, and shines a light on the loving, uplifting friendships that can help them make it through those brutal four years.
