 So we're just going to go over the goals for the day. We're not going to get to all of this, but we're going to get to some of it. And we're going to look at character motivation in your work in progress. Probably have thought a lot about, you're both experienced writers, you probably have thought a lot about character motivation. I'm going to give you some tips for getting a little bit deeper into character motivation, which for me is like the heart of my writing and the heart of sort of what drives the story in my writing. We're going to look at the elements of the 3x structure. I have a really simple way of looking at the 3x structure that can help reframe it. You've probably seen the 3x structure before, but it's always good to look at it again. I'm going to toss to your inciting incident, because this is the part we're probably not going to get to. I'm going to develop some scenes in Act 1. First thing I'll say is no matter what I say, take what you want and throw out the rest. People are always giving advice to writers, always do this, never have a prologue, that's my favorite one, always write in the first person. If you ever hear advice where there's an absolute like that, take the absolute and replace it with consider. Things like prologues, you do want to consider whether you want to have a prologue. Sometimes you actually don't need them, and it's a good question to ask yourself as a writer, do I actually need to do this or is it supporting the story? Sometimes you actually do want to have a prologue and sometimes it works really, really well, so always never get rid of them. Let's go on to character motivation. Let's go to the next slide. Here we have typical, we're going to go through a few things with character motivation. The first thing is just typical aspects of character development, and then we're going to go get into, we're going to get into something that I don't call this, I stole this idea from someone else, it's called the character, the motivational continuum. In life, you kind of live in the center of the motivational continuum, you kind of want to live in the center of the motivational continuum, because in life, you want to be comfortable. In fiction, you want to be on the very edges of the motivational continuum. You want to be living in your character's dreams and dreads. We're going to talk a little bit about how to get to the dreams and dreads of your characters. And we're going to do a couple of different activities to help get you there. So what you're going to need as we go forward, you're going to think of two characters in your current work in progress, or the one that you are trying to steal. You want one that you know really well, and you want one that you want to dig into and find out a little bit more about one that's been a little bit mysterious to you. You're going to want your paper and pencil, or your computer. And there are no handouts. People always ask that, but I will share the slides. And there are lots of activities in the slides. This is usually a four-hour presentation. And we're obviously not going to do four hours tonight. So I'm going to skip through a few things, but you'll get the activities anyway. You can do them on your own. OK, next slide. OK, so we're just going to take about two minutes to do this. It says 10 minutes there, but we're going to take two minutes to do that. These are the basic aspects of character development. The appearance, the accessories. What a character says and how they say it. What a character does and how they do it. Backstory. I'll go through each of these in the fact. Backstory. The personal history. What others say about a character. What a character thinks and what the stories narrate or tell. So appearance. You know, you want to think about contrasts in your novel. You always think of someone who dresses in really fancy clothes but has no money. That's a great contrast. Someone who, you know, what is unique about the appearance of your character? And how can you sum up your character in a few key details? And you can return to those details as the story goes on, so that you're clueing your reader into who that character is. Accessories. This is one I really like to play with. And again, going into that rich man, poor man thing. Think about a character who's very rich, who owns a Ferrari. That says something about that character. Hello, come on in. We're all sitting up close. Yep. Think about a character who is very rich and owns a Ferrari. That says something about that character. But think about a character who's very rich and drives a beat up for it. That says something completely different about that character. So think about the, think about not all of the accessories, but the accessories that help define who your character is. What a character says and how they say it. This is the joy of fiction, right? You get to delve into interiority. So a character may say something, I hate you, but the interiority delves into the fact that I actually love you. How can you set up those contrasts in a story? What a character does, why did you bring that dog here? Then you find the character secretly giving the dog, a dog biscuit with peanut butter on it. So where are those contrasts? You know, this is one of those never's and always, people always say never have back story in a novel. All characters have back story. There always has to be a little bit of it there. So what is important about the back story for your character? What others say about the character and how does that conflict with the interiority of that character and who you, the reader and the narrator know about the character and what a character thinks. So what people say and what a character thinks is very contrast with each other. And then what does the narrator tell us about a character? So the narrator is sometimes very, very close to the character. Sometimes there's a little bit of a removal from a character and sometimes the narrator sits way up here. So depending on how your story is told, you can use your narrator in different ways. So now we're going to do our first exercise and we're going to take, let's take five minutes on this. I said two, but let's do five. So each of these things, you don't have to do all of them, but focus on the ones that you don't, that you can't quite, that you're having trouble answering. Okay, so this is for a character that you know well. So now you're going to delve into that character even more and think about the things you don't know about that character because now you'll know about them even more. So we're going to go until a quarter of seven. Okay, so we're going to go on. So these are things that you can use when you're developing a character. You don't need to use all of them. You don't need to go crazy with them. Like a character doesn't need 27 different accessories or you don't need to talk about the entire appearance of a character. But you want to, what's important to know about the character's appearance, what's important to know about what the character carries around with them. And use contrast as much as you can. Use that interiorly when you can't really create who the character is and how the character is perceived and how the character perceives themselves. Okay, that's right. Okay, so now we're going to talk a little bit about the motivational continuum. So here's the story. A man finds a lamp with a genie inside. Genie says, I'll grant you three wishes, whatever you desire can be yours. Man says, that's okay. I'm pretty content as I am. Tell that story. Is there anything interesting there? The end. That's the end of the story. He had some dinner. Everyone went home. Oh, maybe he does. I don't know. So now let's go on to the next slide. He says, same story. And the man says, could you help me forgive myself? Now try and tell that story, that you take that story in so many different directions, right? There's lots of tension there. There's lots of dramatic tension. There's lots of motivation for the character. There could be motivation for the genie, too, if the genie wants to make the genie the protagonist. So this is what I'm talking about when it comes to motivation. You can write a story that's about someone who's happy and doesn't want anything. It's going to make your life a lot harder. Okay. Okay. Next slide. So we're going to start out. I'm going to go through these quickly. This is one of the slides a little longer than we're going to go through tonight. So when we talk about expectations, I have a couple of examples of myself up here. Expectations. So the things that you do every day, the things that you go to work, pick your kids up at school, you make your meals, you know, you kind of do what you're supposed to do. Most of us live in expectation, in the center of the motivational continuance like this. Right at the center is expectation. That's where we mostly stay. That's where we feel comfortable because there's no drama. And so for my examples, I expect to finish the manuscript that's due at the end of this month. God help me. I expect to lead a successful class on Tuesday when I'm on campus. I teach at Emerson College. There's nothing exciting about either of those things. Okay. And we're not going to do this. You already know what this is. We're not going to do the exercise. You already know what this is. Let's go to the next slide. As you move away from expectations, you're going to get into hope and fears. And so you have expectations. And so if you have expectations in the middle, you move out to hope and fear. And so if you look at my two little examples here, I hope that my editor will like the manuscript and won't send me too many edits. And I fear I'll miss my deadline. I have to ask for an extension. There's nothing much. If I ask for an extension, guess what? He'll say yes. He always does. And if he sends me edits, he always sends me edits. I'll do what he says. You know, there's nothing there. There is some work that has to be done, and there's a little bit of anxiety around those things, and it'll be hard to build a novel around that. And I hope my students will come prepared to class. They never do. And I fear that there'll be a long empty silence that I'll feel compelled to fill. There always are. So I already know that those things are going to happen. Right? Okay. So those are your hopes and fears. So now we move to the edges of the motivation. I'll continue. Next slide. And now we get into the dreams and the dreads. And this is where you want to really push your characters. So sometimes it can be... I do this myself, in fact. I'll go through and I'll write a draft of my novel. And it's super boring. And I'll think to myself, why is this super boring? And it's because I'm not pushing... I'm not pushing my characters to really face the things that... I'm actually writing away from the drama of the novel. And I'm not pushing them to actually face whatever it is, the murder, the mayhem. And so here is a couple of... So we've taken my expectations. And now to hopes and fears. And now we're moving them out to dreams. I dream of having this book reviewed in the New York Times. And I dread that the main script will be rejected. My contract canceled and I'll die in obscurity. And so those have some consequences, right? And notice how they're not the opposites of each other. The hope... Sorry, the dream is getting the book reviewed in the New York Times. The opposite isn't that it's not reviewed. That I dread it not being reviewed in the New York Times. The dread is dying in obscurity. They're not opposites of each other. Same thing, I dream of inspiring my students to become leaders. That'd be awesome. And I dread getting terrible evaluations of being fired. That'd be terrible. And it could lead to autism and death, you know? So, okay. So that is dreams and dread. So now think of it just for one second. Just think about a book that you've read recently and think about the character of motivation. What was driving your protagonist for reading? And how would you... We're not immune to share this. Just kind of think about how that might have... how they might have dreamed of something or dreaded something. Oh, this is another thing about this. A character doesn't have to have a dream and a dread in a novel. They can have both. They can have both. But you can just focus on one or the other, okay? Because we're about to do an exercise. So... Oh, next slide. Oh, so here's the motivational continuum. I stole this idea from this guy named Michael Cardos, who's awesome. And next slide. Okay, we are going to take five minutes on this exercise as well. This is also for a character that you know well. So think about a character you know really well in your current work in progress and complete the motivational continuum, but only focus on the dream and the dreaded. So if all of them up there, focus on the dream or the dreaded. Try to write three or four sentences that sum up what the character dreams of or what they dread and how that fuels the story, okay? I'll just take three minutes on this. I keep changing the times. When you're working on your dreams and dreads, try to have a because. So-and-so dreads this because and then fill in the because. Dreams of this because. Your story is the because. Okay, and like how does the- I'll get into this in a second, but how does the story come along to either thwart the dream, like what's blocking the dream from happening, or stir the dread, make the character actually fear what's happening with the dread. Okay, next slide. I think we're skipping that. Skip this. Okay. Sometimes, this is my favorite activity and I know we've just done two activities, but we're going to do this one as well. And I use this one all the time. Sometimes you don't know a character, so think of a character you don't know very well. And it should be a- it doesn't have to be the protagonist, but it should be a main character. So Winston would be a good example. Someone who isn't popping off the page, you aren't quite sure what to do with the character or even why they're in the story. First, I always ask myself, does the character need to be in the story when that happens? But if the character needs to be there, what do you need to know about this character? We're only going to do this for like three minutes, but I do this for like 15 minutes when I don't know enough about the character. I answer this question. The one thing he, she, they couldn't admit to anyone. The one thing he, she, they almost couldn't admit to themselves was. And you want to get to that deep, dark secret that that character is carrying with them. It doesn't have to be dark, but what is the thing that they hide from the world and that they keep only to themselves? And that's going to be your clue to getting to the character motivation. Okay, so we're just going to spend, like we have with everything, we're going to spend three minutes on this. So think of a character you don't know very well. Start with that prompt, and then just write continuously. Everyone knows what a free write is. Free write is when you just write. You never lift your pencil off the paper. If you can't think of what to say, you write. I don't know what to say. And you'll be surprised at what, how it opens up the creative mind. So again, we're going to do this for three minutes. Character you don't know very well. Okay, so this, you use all of these things for character development. So what does your character want? That's the motivation. Does your character get what she wants? That's the desire. So, and you want to think about what's pushing up against the motivation, right? So I dream of, I dread, what is either stirring up that dread or towarding that dream. And that's your plot basically. How does your character change? That's the character arc. And your character changes based on how they respond to their motivation. There are lots and lots of theories on character arcs. You can read about many of them on that website, which you will get when we share you this one. Next. Okay, we're going to skip this one. But this is, that's a good exercise to, after you've finished a draft, that exercise is all about making sure you've done your job. So your main character, your protagonist, there has to be some change there. They have to have gone from point A. A huge leap or anything like that. But there has to be some change for the character. Or no change. I say there has to be. That's an absolute. But you can't have a character who doesn't change at all. But they have, they probably have come up against something that helped that stop them, that they pushed against changing. Scarlett O'Hara is the exact same at the end of the novel as she is at the beginning of the novel. But the whole novel is about trying to get her to change, right? And she resists it. So there's a good example of something that is an anomaly, but you can do it. But in general, in novels, the main character changes in some way. You, as the author, you want to make sure that you've actually mapped that change. And so this is a good exercise to do at the end of your terrible first draft. When you have no idea what to do next, the thing that you want to ask yourself is, how can I make my character change even more? Okay, next slide. We're not taking a 15 minute break. Well, now we're going to talk a little bit about structure. Let's go on to the next one. So we're going to talk a little bit about some basic theory about structure. This is the basic story structure. You start here with your inciting incident, something that happens that sets the story off. So in a murder mystery, it's often a murder. Okay, so you have the murder. You have an inciting incident that happens somewhere between page one and page 50 in your main script. Modern day, you're going to be closer to one. Old-fashioned, you're going to be closer to 50. There are no rules on that. But in general, you're going to have your inciting incident somewhere in those first 50 pages. A lot of people, if you go back to our little Never Have a Prologue, a lot of people have the inciting incident in the prologue and it sets up the whole rest of the story. So there you do have a prologue and it works for your novel, right? And then you have rising action that just means things happen to your protagonist. You want things to happen to them. And all the way at the end, you have a climax. This is your basic story. And if you have these two things with rising action in between them, you'll have a novel. I'm going to go a little bit more in depth into some other ways to structure your plot. But this is where you are generally going to start. Next slide. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the three-act structure. There are all sorts of structures out there. There are like a million structures that you can read about. Almost all of them are derived from the three-act structures. That's one that I like to start with. And they get more complex. The three-act structure is pretty easy to understand because guess what it is? The beginning, the middle, and the end. You have the inciting incident. It happens sometime in the beginning. The climax, it happens sort of in the middle of the end. And then you have all of that stuff in the middle where you're actually putting your character through all sorts of different things. Next slide. Now we get a little more complex. And we have these things called plot points. And plot points are just... I find students have trouble understanding them. There's something in a story that happens where the story suddenly becomes about something different. Okay? So in a murder mystery, you have your murder here. You have your investigator. Investigating is the number one suspect. The plot point one is when your number one suspect turns up dead. Because now the novel is not about tending the murder to that suspect. It's about something else. And then the middle of your story is about whatever the detective does when they're on. So you want to think about what is happening in your novel that sort of turns it on its head. And I'll give you an example that most everyone knows. I hope everyone knows the example. And your midpoint tells us the exact same thing. You thought your novel was about one thing. You know, all of a sudden it's about something else. So I'll give you an example from the novel I'm working on right now. This novel is about a young man who lives on a lake with his family. His mother is killed and he sets out and his father, his long lost father, he's convinced that he sees his long lost father in a bar the night his mother's killed. So the first part of the novel, I'm giving this away to you, but the first part of the novel is him trying to find his father, like investigating whether his father's really alive. And the midpoint is when he discovers, he figures out that the cops actually think he killed his mother. So the novel was about him trying to find his father, and now it's not about that anymore. It's about him getting out of a bunch of trouble that he's gotten himself into. So you thought the novel was about one thing, now it's about something else. And so each of your plot points is going to do that for your novel in some way or other. Okay, next slide. Okay, this just kind of walks you through each of those in a little more detail. Let's go to the next slide. Okay, now this is the example that I love to use. This is The Wizard of Oz. Has everyone seen, this is the movie Wizard of Oz, not the book. Has everyone seen the movie? Yeah, okay. So we all know the movie. The inciting incident is Dorothy runs away to save Toto from imminent death. Remember, Miss Gulch wants to kill Toto? Some people say that it's when the cyclone lifts her up. I like to say it's when Dorothy runs away, because she's being active in that. She's making the decision to run away. Oh, and also, what do we know about Dorothy? What is her character motivation? What does she want? Yeah, we know because she tells us, right? She sings an entire song about it. So when you're coming up with your inciting incident, don't keep it secret. Okay, and in fact, in a first draft, be really obvious about it. Like say, I have your character say, I want blah. I'm afraid of blah. I dread blah. Because that gets you the author to be like, oh, yeah, I have to make this story about this thing. Okay, so Dorothy, she sings a song. Figure out what your song is for your character and get that into your first, into that first 50 page. Okay? So Dorothy runs away to save Toto. Plot point one is after going on her journey, she sets out to find the wizard. Remember, Glinda comes down. She says the only way, the only way to get home is to follow the yellow brick road and find the wizard. And Dorothy decides to follow the yellow brick road and find the wizard. Again, she's making an active decision, right? What is interesting about that, too, is what's her motivation now? What's just changed? The whole first part of the story was about leaving, and now she wants to go home, right? So now the story was about leaving, now it's about finding the wizard. It's about something completely different. Now we arrive at the midpoint. The whole novel, whole middle part of the movie is about finding the wizard, right? When she gets to find the wizard, at the midpoint of the movie, what happens? He sends her off. He says, you have to go kill the witch, right? So now we thought the movie was, like the whole movie could have been about Dorothy following the yellow brick road, getting to the Emerald City and getting sent home. Right? That could be a whole movie, but it's not, and that's what makes it a really good story because it turns out that that goal isn't the one that she needs. She has a new one. He sets the goal for her to get sent her off to not kill the witch to get the broomstick, but of course she has to kill the witch to do it. About point two, which happens, oh, by the way, this happens between one, page 150. This happens about a quarter of the way through the book. This happens right in the center of the book. So if you have a 300-page manuscript, it should happen on page 150. Plot point two, that happens about three quarters of the way through the book. So if you have a 300-page manuscript, it should happen on about page 225, or so. So we get to plot point two, Dorothy kills the witch, and then the climax is she goes back to the Emerald City. Turns out the wizard has been on a sham the entire time, and of course she has to rely on herself to get home. And that's where she learns the theme of the book, which is there's no place I come, right? So there's the theme. Okay, and the Day New Mont. The Day New Mont is like a little tiny scene at the end of your novel. At the end of a novel, in general, a Day New Mont says, we just ended this story, but life goes on. It's not always like this, but in general you want to have a Day New Mont say, this is over. We restore justice if that's what your novel is about. We restore justice, or we've come back to some kind of normal thing, and this character who you like, because you just spend an old novel with that character, he's going to go on and do something else. You may never visit them again if it's not part of a series, but you want to know that. And that's what we get from Dorothy, right? I mean, everyone's disappointed at the end of The Wizard of Oz, right? Because we want her to stay there, but we want her to stay in this magical world, and not in the boring black and white world, but we do know that she goes on with her life. So these are the acts of a traditional story. This class is normally four hours long, so normally we would sit down and we would go through your own novel, and we would at least do not everyone always knows everything about their novel when I teach this course, but if you can kind of figure out what the inciting incident is, and maybe the plot point one, that gives you a goal. Because the hardest part about writing a novel is writing it, right? Like sitting down and doing it. And so what I love about the 3x structure is it breaks the novel up into pieces, so this has to happen somewhere before page 50. This has to happen somewhere before page 75. So writing 75 pages is a lot easier than writing 300 pages, right? And then so once you get to your plot point one, you have to write about 75, 100 more pages before you get to your midpoint, and again that's a lot easier than going through and having to write 300, like looking down how am I going to fill those 300 pages. So just, I always look at this, I always look at my novels as being five pieces basically. I'm writing from one island to the next, and I just have to figure out those pieces of it. And so normally in this class what I would do is we'd sit down and figure out some of these pieces and we'd talk about what those pieces are and then we would try and fill some of the gaps between them. But I assign that to you as homework, okay? And I'm actually going to pause and stop there and see what questions you might have. But actually musicals are really good examples for all of this stuff because musicals are like they have a beginning, a middle and an end. And they are marked really well. Dorothy says she wants to go over the rainbow, she goes over the rainbow. At the end of the story she says there's no place like home and we're like oh that's what the whole story was about. There's nothing not obvious in this story. And again, don't be too subtle in your, especially in your first draft, because when you're telling your story to yourself, you're telling the story to yourself so know what the pieces are. You can get the subtlety into the second and the third drafts. And sometimes you don't want subtle. Readers don't want subtle as much as you think they do. My own, the way I do my own writing is I'm sort of like a planter I guess they call it. So I'll figure out, I'll do some plotting. I'm not someone who can do the plot the whole novel and figure out everything. But I'll try and figure out as many pieces as I can. And then I'll write this is this is baby Nana Rhino month, right? So I did Nana Rhino for the novel I'm working on right now in November. And I knew a few things and every few days I would stop and I'd be like, what have I figured out? And I'd go back into my outline and I'd sort of try and figure out what pieces were there and what pieces weren't there. But no, I don't know all of the plot points. What I try to do, but the novel that I have right now is called The Secretory Share. So I wrote that and there was a plot point there was a first plot point and then there was a midpoint and I was reading it after I finished the maybe the second draft I was like, this is really, really boring. And so what am I going to do to make it less boring than it is? And what I decided to do was take a midpoint that I just thought was the midpoint and move it up to the plot point I want. That whole part of that whole part of the novel into that section when I would come up with a new plot point too. But what it did was it made my plot point much bigger and it made me really have to think about what that midpoint was going to be. Your midpoint really think about your midpoints really important. Think about how you can shift the story so that it turns on itself. So like someone else who's not me gave me this good example. Do you remember the movie, sorry I used a lot of movies as examples, but do you remember the movie Fatal Attraction? Fatal Attraction is about this man and this woman who have an affair like totally not up to date, but it's about this man and this woman who have an affair the woman becomes obsessed with him and he's married, of course and the whole first part of the movie up to the midpoint is about him wanting to get rid of her. He's like he keeps trying to placate her, he keeps trying to convince her to go away. He thinks he can talk her out of bothering him. He basically says stop bothering me. And then the midpoint is she's pregnant and she's keeping the baby she wants him to pay child support. All reasonable requests by the way the movie then becomes very unreasonable, but now the movie is no longer about him just wanting her to go away, now the movie is shifted and she's a major problem and she's going to disrupt his life. So think about how your midpoint and all of your plot points should be like this. How all of a sudden maybe can become something else. Does that make sense? And make them big. So sometimes you'll be like, oh this is nice, this doesn't make it bigger, you know? Murder mysteries are really helpful though because you can always kill someone. Yep, yep you can always kill someone. So like a typical for murder mysteries here are some that you can always use. You can have a suspect you can have the whoever the suspect is finds a dead. Whoever the suspect is, with having an alibi. The person who's investigating is suddenly suspected. You have another you have two plot points, two plot lines that suddenly convert, that's a great midpoint. So like this thing over here this thing over here, oh all of a sudden we realize that they're actually related to each other and that's really satisfying to the reader. Because they're like, oh how's this puzzle going to come together. This is something that I do this thing called a character audit and again I do this after a first or a second draft. I take all the characters that have names, I put them down on a paper, you have your protagonists, every novel has to have a protagonist, or at least most do, remember there are no rules and fiction, but you have your protagonist and then everyone else in secondary. So you write them all down and then you ask yourself what's their purpose? What service are they doing for this novel? And if you can't answer that, these are only named characters by the way. So any character with a name, what's their purpose? If you can't answer that, if you have two characters that are doing the same thing like a two best friends, ask yourself do you need two best friends? I mean sometimes you do. Do they serve a different purpose as best friends? If you do need two best friends, keep them but if you don't, one of them goes. You combine them into one character. So all sorts of different things. You also look for characters that have names that don't need them. So if you have a lot of people do this, if you have a tendency to have everyone have a name, like the taxi driver has a name, they don't need names. And if your taxi driver is suddenly taking over the story, that really needs to go because that's just fluff. And so if you have characters, like if you're taking a taxi, just call the taxi driver, taxi driver. That is actually a favor to your reader because your reader says, oh, I don't have to pay attention to this character. But you have to be, I will say this, being ruthless with your secondary characters will, it saves you time because it makes your life easier. Readers can only, readers do not want a lot of characters with names in their novels. I will tell you this from my Goodreads reviews experience. And like if you can narrow down the number of characters in your novel, you're doing your reader a favor. And you're doing yourself a favor because it makes your life much easier. And by the way, you cut a character that is not working for this novel, you just save it for another novel. Like writing a first draft is all about getting the words, right? So you have a goal, you want to write 80, 90,000 words. And sometimes, and especially someday, like I try to write every day. But you don't have to. But that's what I do. Some days, you just have to fill those words. And some days, you have to write about going from point A to point B to point C to kind of figure out what's going on in the story yourself. And just leave it. And then when you're revising, know that you have to take that out. I do that all the time. But the novel I'm working on right now takes place in New Hampshire, where people drive a lot. And so they're like always driving. And I'm like, Oh, God. And like people live far apart from each other. So I know for a fact that all of this is gonna have to come out. But right now, I'm not gonna worry about it. Yep. Other tip, like another tip for a first draft is just keep going. So oftentimes, I'll be writing a lot. And I'll be like, Oh, this, this character, like, has to get the heave ho. But I'm not going to go back to the beginning and take the like, take the character out in this draft. I'm just gonna like, that character just kind of drops out of the story. And from the and then when I know that when I when I have to go back to revise that, I have to take the character out at that point. But and same thing, if you suddenly add a character that maybe you have to thread in earlier, but like, just keep going on your first draft and try to get the I mean, this is easier said than done. I'm terrible at this in real life. But try to get those inner voices to just shut up. You can only fix if you have. I'll do as much of the structure as I can think of. And I'm I'm not smart enough to do the whole thing. But I'll try and have a few pieces of the structure in place. And then I'll write for, you know, a couple weeks, and then I'll be like, Oh, what do I know about this story now? And then I'll put more of the structure in. And again, I'm always like the one of the tricks to writing is to always being open to change. So like with secrets we share, I knew I read it was boring. And I knew I had to change something. So I moved that that midpoint up to the up to the first block. And I compressed a lot of like really boring stories. So, okay, this is what we worked on today. We're going to share these slides with you. I think there's one more. I think my contact information is in here. Oh, yeah, that's my contact information. Feel free to drop me a note if you have questions, if you think of something later on. Let's update this with my new book. But that's fine. I have a new book coming out in January that I'm excited about. It's called Who to Believe. Look for it at your local bookshop. No, I have another one that came out after that. And then I have another one coming out after that. I didn't update this. Thank you. I appreciate that. But drop me a note if you think of anything, okay. And thank you so much for coming and for great questions. And just keep at it.