14. [Show, don't Tell Page Review] Women's Fiction with Bobbi Jo Beaver

"And so your opening page is really a contract with your reader, right? And so you want to give them a taste of what it is that they're going to read."- Suzy

In this episode of Show Don’t Tell Writing, Suzy Vadori provides live coaching and feedback on the opening page of Bobbi Jo Beaver’s women’s fiction novel. Bobbi Jo, a professional photographer from Omaha, Nebraska, shares her writing journey and the inspiration behind her novel. Suzy offers guidance on improving the first page, focusing on character development, setting, and hooking readers early on. They discuss the importance of grounding readers in the protagonist’s perspective and ensuring that the opening scene clearly conveys the character's age, motivation, and context. 

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Transcript

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Welcome to Show Don't Tell Writing with me, Suzy Vadori, where I teach you the tried and true secrets to writing fiction and nonfiction that will wow your readers, broken down step by step. This show explores writing techniques and shows you a glimpse behind the scenes of successful writing careers and coaches writers live on their pages so you can learn and transform your own storytelling. Whether you're just starting out crafting, editing, or currently rewriting your first book or maybe even your 10th, this show will help you unlock the writing skills you didn't know you needed but you definitely do. I'm looking forward to helping you get your amazing ideas for From your mind onto the page in an exciting way for both you and your readers so that you can achieve your wildest writing dreams while having fun doing it. Let's dive in. Today I have a special guest on my show. We're gonna do a one page review of show. Don't Tell. I have with me today, Bobbi Jo Beaver. She is a certified professional photographer who has been writing for years and completed a lot of different shorter projects like short stories. But this is her first full length novel that she's tackling. It's a women's fiction novel. It's got themes in it of, um, it's got some romantic undertones. It's got lots of things. And Bobbi Jo's about halfway through this novel. I met Bobbi Jo. A few weeks back and she actually won a contest to come on the podcast when she came to the podcast launch and the opportunity to review this page with me and to be live coached on the show. If you also want to be live coached with me and you've got a page in your manuscript that you just aren't sure is working. And I would love to have you apply to come on the show. I would love to speak with you and to give you tons of feedback and to just have chit chat super casually and support you with your writing. So you can apply to come on the show with your one page, just follow the instructions in the show notes. So welcome Bobbi Jo for coming on the podcast this morning. Where are you calling in from? Near Omaha, Nebraska. Tell me a little bit about yourself, like how long have you been writing? Bobbi. So I've been writing since I was a kid, I, we had a typewriter, you know, I'm old, so we had a typewriter and it was a lot of fun to play with. And then I started telling stories and I ended up as an English major in college and, but I'm actually a professional photographer, so I diverged a little bit, um, but I still love to write. And so I'm still writing. I haven't like actually put anything. You know, to completion yet, but I'm working on it. Amazing. So we also had a typewriter, so I guess that makes me old too. Okay. You're young. I like to think I am. So that's awesome. So you've been writing and you're working on, tell us about the project. What is this page that we're going to review even further? So this started as a little bit of a different story and then, um, it's morphing. So I've got chapters that need changing because it changed with time, but basically it's about a woman who had been caring for her father with dementia and he's passed away. Her mom has basically abandoned the whole project. She's just like, I'm done with this. This. And the woman kind of feels. Like, what am I supposed to do now? You know, life is, is that, that was my purpose. This is what I did. And so she starts doing Meals on Wheels and she finds a man who he, there's a letter on his table as she's serving the meal, and it's from his grandson that he didn't know he had, and he wants to try to find him. He wants to go meet him, but he also has some deficits. Probably dementia early, you know, Alzheimer's or something, and he can't travel alone. And so they make a road trip to go meet the grandson. So that's the story. Amazing. Amazing. Part of me makes it kind of a romance with the grandson, but part of me is like, I don't know. I'm kind of in the line of, I really like Catherine Center, how she tells a story. You know, I'm, I'm, it's humorous. It's, it's. Thoughtful. I mean, at least I hope it is. Awesome. Okay. So it's a full length novel? I mean, it will be, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're working on what you're hoping will be a full length novel. And it sounds like it's going to be women's fiction? Yes. Okay. And because the reason, I know you said that there might be a romance in there with the grandson and the daughter, right? Right. Well, yeah, I'm thinking there might be, I don't know, there will definitely be some fun texts back and forth because obviously they're not going to meet until they meet, you know, but I think there could be a lot of fun to be had in there. So I'm thinking about it. Yeah. Yeah. So, so just. Just to be clear, you're writing like a women's fiction with a bit of a romantic storyline potentially, or some romantic tension at least, we're not writing a romance where it would want to follow like a certain, so if you, if you were to call it a romance, we'd have to follow certain beats or you'd kind of lose your readers, right? And so we don't have that expectation here. No, yeah, I would, I would agree. It's not, they're not really going to meet until. You know, they have to meet and do you know how long it's going to be like when you're done? Do you have a plan yet? I don't know. I don't, I'm, I'm not that good. Yeah. Well, you know, it's, it's important to pay attention to word count. I mean, not to bog you down in it as you're going, but to, but to just talk about it and have a bit in mind, women's fiction, you're going to want to be somewhere north of 75, 000 words to a hundred thousand words. I mean, you don't want to be sort of much beyond that or much lower than that, or you wouldn't fit into that category. And there's lots of reasons for that, that I talk about lots of times, I don't get too stuck on it, but just because a lot of writers, the first time that they're going about this, they don't think about it. And then they end up with a book that doesn't fit a category and it's hard to sell, whether that's traditional or something else. So I just thought I'd throw that out there. Okay. Awesome. So usually I ask when you come on the show and Bobbi Joe was awesome. So brave to come on the show. Um, she actually won it. She attended our live launch of the podcast, which is a lot of fun. And all those episodes have been dropping that were from that day, but she actually won this as a prize and then wasn't sure what to send in. So I usually ask to send in one page and then we review it from a show don't tell perspective, and I also get feedback. So we'll work on that one page. But I usually ask writers, or I ask Bobbie Jo, to send in a page that she wasn't sure was quite there yet, and I don't know if that's what you ended up doing, but don't send me, you know, don't send me your best page that you think is awesome and you want me to rubber stamp, but send me a page that isn't quite working yet. So, what was it that made you choose this page? Was it that, or something else? So I was struggling with that and I think Liz helped me to just say, you know, send the first page and we'll, we'll talk it through and, and honestly, I'm not even part of the reason why the first page worked was because I'm not sure that that is where it needs to start. I just thought something similar to the 1st page actually happened to me and I thought it was hilarious. And I was like, oh, this could actually work. Work, you know, to introduce this gentleman. So that's kind of where that came from. And so I was like, well, let's see if it does work. So, yeah, there's a lot of things about this page that work really well, just so, you know, just to get in the, like, just relax. A lot of things about this page that work really well as an opening, and it's a lot of fun. I can't wait to talk about it. But just before we get going, yeah, like the, the choice to send in page one is usually a great one because that's the one that you're going to rework so many times. That's the one where it's, you're not always sure where to start. Yeah. Right. Okay, so let's dive in. You ready? Yeah, I think so. Chapter 1. It wasn't that he called my cell phone three times asking for a dental appointment. And it wasn't his obvious age or even the slight whistle when he said, This is Dennis Abbott. It was the fact that he dialed the same number again and again just in case, as if recent technology hadn't gifted him the answer right at his fingertips. It Yes, this is the same number. No, it wasn't the correct one. Maybe try something else. Over the course of ten minutes or so, not one of these thoughts ever occurred to him, and I was unduly impressed. I glanced past the kitchen island to the pear tree framed in the window over the sink in my parents house. Well, that's it. Just mom's house now, I supposed. It was in its annual burgeoning stage, perennially weighted down by its own manufacturing. Every fall, the heavy fruit threatened to take the branches down with it. If I were to paint it as a human, it would be a mother with dozens of children pulling at her limbs, bending her low to hear their secrets. Let me see what number I dialed. There was a distinct fumbling on the line. Then a gap, a vacuum of air and time that made me wonder why I was still hanging on. Did I need to be present for this? I didn't think so, but clearly he thought so. I hung on. This is Dennis Abbott. Can you see the number I dialed? He spoke from a distance. I imagined his phone held away from his ear so he could examine its screen. I was unsure whether to answer. If I replied, would he even hear me? I caught what sounded like a pig oinking in the distance. Oh, he said. He must have remembered to hold the phone to his ear because the voice was suddenly closer. Can you see the number I dialed? Then, oink. I looked around the kitchen, imagining a hidden camera and all my closest friends having a laugh at my expense. Finally, I stifled a laugh of my own and asked, What's the name of the dentist you're trying to reach? Watley. Boink. Mental art. So, couple of things when we drop into this first page. It does start in your point of view character's head. Now, I didn't know, I didn't have the context that you shared here today, which was that this is a woman. Um, I didn't know whether it was a woman or a man, so I didn't know, you know, where she was, or what was happening. So some of the comments are going to be about that. Um, but, and so we want to, we want to give us some information as quickly as possible, just to ground readers in the scene. So you did a pretty good job, Of that other than I didn't know, you know, what her situation was. She's at her parents house is made clear pretty quickly, but you know, what age is she? Is she a university student coming back, you know, a college student coming back to visit her parents and her father has passed, or is she in midlife and that's, you know, where she's at. So, so, so a few things there might be interesting. You don't have to, please don't dump like a whole bunch of paragraphs on that information, but there might be something in there that you could say in particular why she's there. There's some places here that you could move that up and, and help us understand it faster because what happens if we don't know. Does it need to be on the first page? Cause I mean, I think it comes out maybe in the first chapter, not necessarily first page. She was in her medical residency and her dad got sick and mom took off. And so she had to quit to go take care of him. So she's. Pushing 30 and was a good actor. Yeah. So she's pretty young. I mean, at least by my standards, that's pretty young. Yeah. So, okay. That's awesome. Yeah. It doesn't all have to be there. That's what I'm saying. I don't want like, I'm not saying put paragraphs on the first page, but something to give me. An indication of her age would be helpful because what we want in the first two paragraphs, actually. Is to ground of every scene every chapter is to ground your readers to give them something to hang on to to give them some context of what we're watching right or what we're reading what we're experiencing. Because if they don't have that what's going to happen is they're not going to connect and they will just start skipping ahead to figure it out. Right. Okay. Um, so, so yes, you don't have to give the whole background if it's in, you know, chapter one or chapter two, that's fine. But something here pretty quickly would be easy. And, okay, let's go through and I'll show you where it might belong. Okay. So, It starts out, it wasn't that he called my cell phone three times asking for a dental appointment and it wasn't his obvious age or even the slight whistle when he said, This is Dennis Savage, right? Which is awesome. My one suggestion here, and this is all about Show Don't Tell, and again, I could geek out about this all day long. You say it wasn't, right? It wasn't, And then they don't know what you're referring to. So I was saying, I suggest that you finish the thought for context, and again, it doesn't add a whole lot of words to say, it wasn't that he called my cell phone three times asking for a dental appointment that threw me or that piqued my interest on edge, right? So right away, we know how your character is feeling about this moment, because She's sitting back a little bit and is a bit just letting things happen. So what we want in our opening pages, especially is for readers to connect with this character, which is why I'm like, okay, I want to know how old she is or, or what her circumstances are pretty quickly, because we need to care. About what it is that she wants pretty quickly. And I know there's so many expectations. I could tell you a thousand things to put on page one. It's not really fair. Your job is to weave it in, right? Your job is to weave it in without making it a hundred thousand words for chapter one. So, so a little suggestion there. So rather than saying it wasn't and not defining that, cause you know. What, what is it that she's feeling at that moment? Do you know, I think, I guess in my mind, she just thought it was funny or that she thought it was, Curious. Like it piqued her interest, like you said, it kept her, it kept her answering the phone, you know, like, well, there he is again, like, what is the deal here? You know, it just kind of made her laugh, you know, but exactly, and as I read further down the page, you gave us some more hints, which is that she was unduly impressed, which I love. And it's cheeky. It's like, it's kind of cheeky, but she's still annoyed. So it's kind of fun. Um, love and, and I would say, I would give you bonus points in this particular moment if you could also show how this feels in her body. Right. So when we talk about showing and not telling it's like, okay, she was unduly impressed, but that maybe raise an eyebrow and like, Give the, give the thing a nod. Like, I, I don't know what it would be. I make suggestions and sometimes, I mean, if you love them, take them. If you're like, Susie, my character would never do that. Then sometimes that's even better if you hate it, because then you can be like, Ooh, but she wouldn't do that. But she might do something, you know, exactly what she wants to do. Yeah. So, so somewhere in there just to make that, I mean, we're talking about show. Don't tell just to make it. A little bit more in the moment what we want to do in that opening is to ground readers in that kitchen and you do it pretty quickly, but also to ground us in that character's body and what she's all about and something tells me she's going to be a lot of fun. Okay. Right. Okay. Is that accurate? Yeah. And you're going to have a bit of humor in here as well. And so your opening page is really a contract with your reader, right? And so you want to give them a taste of what it is that they're going to read. And a lot of times we think, okay, I want to hold that back or yes, it unfolds later. And oftentimes if you give readers more, it's better, right? This is almost never the answer to save things. It's all later, especially when it comes to establishing your character. So it's a tall order. It's a tall order. Okay. So then we've got, it was the fact that he dialed the same number again and again, just in case as if recent technology hadn't gifted him the answer right at his fingertips. And so here I wasn't actually sure because I'm just reading this cold, right? I don't know. Did this happen in 1920? Did this happen in 2024? Did this happen in 1998? I'm gonna guess when we got call display, right? Like what, what technology are you referring to? So I would love, again, I guessed it was call display. And especially if he's an older gentleman, which is her assumption, even today, he may not be calling from a cell phone. So he might have to say that or something. Right. Okay. I still have a landline, but yeah, people do still have that. So I think as I read on, it became very clear that it was an assumption that it was a cell phone. Just throw that in there somewhere so that we are not wondering that. One of the parts of grounding is where are we in time and space? Right. So you're, you know, Um, your women's fiction novel could be historical, it could be contemporary, it could be anything. So help us out. Okay, we've got the cell phone display. Yes, that was the same number. No, it wasn't the correct one. Maybe try something else, right? Like, I love her sarcasm and the inner thoughts. So, You've also done an excellent job of balancing the different parts or different tools of story here, where you've got dialogue, you've got actions, you've got reactions, you've got inner thoughts, and you've got some setting. There's a little bit of room on the setting to go a little bit more, but a kitchen is a kitchen, right? So you start to get into that on the next paragraph. So I glanced past the kitchen island to the pear tree framed in the window over the sink in my parent's house. Now when I first read that just I actually thought it was a picture of a pear tree because it was framed. So just, I mean, easy, easy fix but just know that on first read that that's what I got out of it then it's made very clear but you don't want to confuse your reader right. Okay. And then you slip this in here really nicely. Well, just mom's house now, I suppose. So that was a really great way to show us with her thoughts rather than say, my dad died and now my mom lives here alone. Like you didn't have to tell us you did that in a really, really great way. Good job. Thanks. And then I just love this next description. You're excellent, excellent at showing here. It was in its annual burgeoning stage, perennially weighted down by its own manufacturing, right? Like, I'm just seeing this like pregnant pear tree or something, right? Like, that's just laden. It's a beautiful phrase. This is what we're looking for. We don't always need that sort of fancy phrasing, but this in the first Sort of a couple of paragraphs tells me that I'm in for a great ride and that your writing is going to be superb through this book. So congratulations. I'm not letting you go. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. So every fall, and then you tell us the season, which is nice. So you are grounding us in time and space it's fall. Now that I know that she's meant to be in medical school, that probably has other implications, right? It's fall, but she's not going back. Right. Yeah, and she's eventually you'll find out that what she ended up doing was she went viral on tick tock for this art that she made with her cats paw print. And now she's like, just overburdened trying to get this art out for all of these orders and she's just like now art has become my, you know, it's not fun anymore. I've turned this all into something that's work and it's not fun anymore. So anyway, that's where she's at later. I love that. I love that. And there's so many layers. I think what we find when, when we go to write an entire novel, have you, have you finished shorter projects before, like short stories and things? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And when you go to write an entire novel, it's tricky because you have to come up with all these different storylines and all these different ideas and then which ones belong and which ones are extraneous and how do you make them all point in the same direction. So that's, that's an exciting challenge. I love that for you, that, that she becomes a TikTok star. And if you had that, you know, somewhere here is, then that would date us in, you know, the 2020s. Somewhere. Right. And not that, not that you, I wouldn't put that on the first page. I'm not saying that, but immediately it's gonna be really, really clear. Okay. Okay. So, and then she talks about, if I were to paint it, which again, you, you don't have to say she's a painter, she's an artist. She has, you know, that skillset because you've really gone deep into her point of view and you're showing us from her perspective what she thinks about. If I were to paint it, see, I would never think that because I'm not a painter. But if if, you know, your character is a painter, then every single thing needs to do some work. And so seeing the pear tree, you've done a bunch of things here, which I love, um, you've told us that it's fall. Right? You've told us that she notices these things and that it's familiar because this was her home, probably. I don't know if she lived there before, or if it moved. And you've also told us that she's a painter, or at least that she thinks like an artist, right? So great job, without, without putting paragraphs and paragraphs describing characters. So we're learning about her. So I, I'm interested in her. This is where I'm saying it would feel very different if she was middle aged like me versus now that I know that she's in her twenties. I think about her differently. So somewhere in here, there's gotta be, I don't know what a 20 year old might do. That's a little bit different than a 50 year old, right? Yeah. Yeah. I maybe haven't dialed that in yet. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. And it's, it's because I mean, I, there's a big difference in a 20 year old having to deal with aging parents or sick parents than a 50 year old or a 70 year old dealing with aging parents. Yeah. And so it's a different story. And again, this is a contract, a contract with your reader to show them what happens. Right. And so here, so I assume it's daytime. Right. I guess you could see a pear tree at night. Right. And this character is at their mom's place. So this is what I know halfway through the first page. Good job, by the way. I know a lot. I know it's daytime, I assume, and this character is at their mom's place, and they're either standing or sitting in the kitchen. That isn't necessarily clear, but not necessarily important. And I say, I'll be watching for why they're there, because it's so far, it's not a huge inconvenience for her to be on the phone. Right? And so I'm not really sure. I'm kind of watching for what does your, what, what should your character be doing instead of answering this dark phone? Because what we want is a little bit of tension. Yeah, okay. Okay. I'm not sure that I've done that. Yeah. Do you know what she should be doing or she's just hanging around and happens to be? That's where she paints. So there's like a sunroom off the kitchen and that's where all of her canvases are. And she was painting. And she's baking. So, like, that's her distraction is baking. So, she has no other place to be. They're really, the tension is she does though. So, so you're right. You're right in some way, but I love those things. So she's baking and she's painting. This is really easy with a couple of words to slip in. You know, as she's got the phone at her ear, the timer goes off and she grabs the tray, right? There's stuff going on that is beyond her just staring out the window and answering the phone, right? Or she's got to get back to her paints because the paint's going to dry. Or she rinses the cup because the reason she'd come in here in the first place was to get a fresh cup of water because her cup was too muddy or whatever. I don't know. Um, are you a painter? You're, you're a writer and also a photographer. So I just have to figure out the painting end. Okay. Yeah. And that's really, really neat. And you might want to have at some point, a painter read those quick sections and give you some of those details. But yeah, she's, she's going to have stuff going on. And so her like sort of cheeky annoyance, I think we called it at the beginning at this guy calling is like, you know, I guess I didn't really have, but if it doesn't get back, the paint's going to dry and I won't be able to do my next layer. Like I'm going to make something up. I'm not a painter, but figure out what I like. Yeah, sure. I get it. Okay. And so, again, you don't need paragraphs and paragraphs, it's just, it's that ability to weave all of these different elements together that would bring us into, because I don't know if page two and three is probably about her painting or probably about the baking, right? And so you could kind of meld it all together, then we get there faster. First pages are really difficult because you got to do a lot of things and there are times in your book where you can sort of do one thing at a time, but this isn't it. We want to drop the person in. We want them to be the painter. All right. Okay. So I also love you did have some terrific imagery here with the pear tree. And then you've also got something that's really working, which is she's looking at the pear tree and she's being interrupted by the mundane, right? So she's trying to be in the moment and then she's like, Oh yeah, this guy really. And so I love the juxtaposition there, even though we don't know. A lot of things about the character. It's interesting enough that I would definitely hang on. But here's a spot in the next paragraph where you could kind of state what she wants, and what, why they're hanging on, and what she should be doing, right? Like, oh my gosh, I've really got to get back to, My painting or the paint's going to dry or the timer goes off or something could be right here. Yeah, that's what he says. Yeah. Yeah, I like it. So, you know, it's right here after then a gap of vacuum of air and time that made me wonder why I was still hanging on and I'm also wondering that as the reader, by the way. So, yeah. I should really be and then the timer goes off and I'm like, I got to get back to my muffins. And she could even say that out loud, right? Um, did I need to be present for this? I didn't think so. Um, and then here's where I'm like, okay, I assume he's on a cell phone, but she wouldn't know that. So he's got to sort of say something and he would, an older person might do that. How old is the gentleman that's calling? I'm putting him late seventies, early eighties, probably. Okay. So he might say, It's on a cell phone, like you might say something that doesn't make a lot of sense, right. And then that, that would work there because you have a point of view issue if you don't know she's picturing him looking at a cell phone, but really, you know, if I think about. The seven year olds and 80 year olds in my life, which there are a lot. They call me, I'm a landline , so, oh, okay. And when they call on a cell phone, the cell phone, so I can, yeah. Yeah. And when they call on a cell phone, sometimes they would say that like, oh, this stupid phone. Right? Like, yeah. Oh, that's good idea. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And when she's unsure whether or not to answer him, if I replied, would he even hear me? I caught what sounded like a pig oinking in the distance. Okay. So then I was unsure whether to answer. So here you could change that to a showing detail. So if your character is unsure, then your reader is also unsure. Right? Okay. So always know that we are your character. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but if you were to change that to a showing detail, you could put us into your character's body and help us experience what she's feeling, right? So instead of, I was unsure whether to answer, which is a tell. You could say, I blew a breath out in frustration, right? Or my finger hovered over the hang up button. I'm thinking, dude, I should really hang up on this guy, right? Or something better, right? So, so when you're, when your character's unsure, when your character's confused, we don't want them to stay there very long. That's what's called lacking agency. Right. So agency is about your character having things to do and having things to say and wanting, okay, I've got to get off the phone because I really should, but I'm intrigued, but I really should go because my paint is drying and my muffins are ready. Okay. I can do that. Yeah. And then, so I love this last paragraph and I want to talk to you about what's going to happen next. But the last sort of lines of this. First page, I looked around the kitchen imagining a hidden camera and all my closest friends having a laugh at my expense. So this is the first clue that I had that she's younger, right? And so that she maybe has, I mean, there it's, it's one of the first hints that your character has a group of friends that might play pranks, right? So it could be somebody older, but it does sort of lend to younger. It makes them feel younger. And it would be really easy to establish this along the way. as well in this page earlier. And so she stifles a laugh of her own and asks, what's the name of the dentist you're trying to reach? And then Watley Oink Dental Art. And then I want to know, is he a pig? Is he the pig? Or I'm not sure what's happening or what the story is about. So I was really intrigued there. Oh, good. I'm glad. Now, uh, so what's going to happen is he has a dog that is playing with a pig and the reason why he needs to go to the dentist is because the dog bonked him in the teeth and he chipped a tooth because of this. Because the pig, he was throwing the pig and he brought it back. He was very excited. So when she goes to deliver meals on wheels, she's not sure she's delivering it to him because she's actually, I think we need to remove his last name from the first part. But anyway, so because she's got all these names and addresses to deliver to, and she gets there and she hears the oinking and she's like, this is my dentist, this is the guy who kept calling me the other day. So then she's going to piece it all together and that's kind of how they form their relationship. Did you notice that dentist and Dennis are similar? Right. Is it too much? I don't know why. Well, I didn't notice it until you said it out loud. So I didn't notice it in the first page. Just think about it because when this book becomes successful, you will have an audio book and that's a really tough one, especially if you're having him slur or hiss. Uh, dentist, you know, like, and then you've got the dentist, unless there's a reason or that becomes a joke. Oh, my brain just went there. Yeah, no. Then you might want to, it's a tricky thing, right? Audiobooks have changed the game, especially with names, because if you don't ever see, like, if you just listen to the audio book and you don't have them written down. Anyways, just an aside, because when you said that. Good to Yeah, in general, I think this page is in really good shape and you should have, you know, you should be really, really proud. I would love to know that she's a young woman. That's the piece that I challenge you to put in here so that we kind of have an idea of what's happening. That's the one piece that was a miss for me in terms of knowing who your main character was. And that's difficult to do. Don't have her stop and look at herself in the mirror or the window and describe herself, right? That's a really tired cliche and you can't cheat on it, but, but definitely there's room to ground us in that moment right away and then have us know what it is that she wants to do instead. It doesn't mean like what she wants to do with her life necessarily. But as long as we don't know what that character wants, then she's going to be reacting to things and not be able to move it forward. So right now it kind of feels like she's hanging out in the kitchen, entertaining this guy and has nothing better to do. And that is the case because she actually has like several projects on the go. Yeah. Okay. I can do that. Does that make sense? Yeah. Alright. Yeah, that's very, so what are your, yeah, what are your next steps for this project? Where are you hoping it'll go? What's your timing? All that stuff so we can cheer you off. So I'm trying to commit to even to just sitting down and writing every day, whether I'm going very far or not. I think my biggest struggle is just the commitment because sometimes I, and I'm sure. I hope this isn't just me. Obviously I sit down and I think that I don't really have anything. Like I don't have something new or I don't necessarily know the direction or I'm kind of muddling through whatever place that we're at. So it's paralyzes me. And I also get paralyzed by too much choice. And so, and if I I'm writing the story, so all the choices are mine, you know? So that kind of. Freezes me. So mainly it's about getting like, I can imagine the whole story in my head, but in words, it's, it's a little different, you know, like, yeah, absolutely. So, so much to unpack there. You know, when you're, when you're looking at the congratulations on having a daily practice and a time and a place and committing to that. And I, I wanna say one thing about that is that writing and contributing to your book doesn't always mean writing new words during that time. And so if you could recognize that, because if you haven't made decisions, for instance, right? You said all the decisions are mine and I have trouble moving forward. That that is the classic overwhelm, right? Yeah. Like you've got a fork in the road and your brain has to choose one direction or the other. And if you don't choose, you're going to stand there at the fork in the road because you can't move forward. Know that you can always change it. Choose a fork, right? So even if your writing time that day is to make several decisions, Right. Just make them. And I know it's easy for me to say, but, but make them and then write them and see what happens. And if you're like, Ooh, this isn't working, then change it. I mean, if you're changing it all the time, then you're going to get stuck in a revision cycle and go nowhere. But if you really try to commit to one of those things and it doesn't work out, then definitely you can change it. Nobody's gonna. Hold your feet to the fire and say, you can't go down that other road, right? Yeah, right. But yeah, if you don't make those decisions, then that's where that feeling of overwhelm will paralyze you. That's exactly what happens is the brain shuts down because it doesn't have a path. It doesn't know exactly what happens. Like I sit and I committed to just writing in a notebook that kind of an outline just saying, okay, so what's going to happen next, what's happening next. Yeah. And I, I feel like I got really far on it and then actually writing the, how that's going to work out seems to be paralyzing me too. So I don't, it's not, it's not that I don't know the story. It's that I can't say, I can't tell the story. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Well, or you can't show the story. Right? Yeah. Right. Because, because you know that you want to make it interesting. You could tell the story. Yeah. Um, but you got to choose the moments that are going to demonstrate that story the best, right? You got to figure out what scenes, even if you know what needs to happen. So that was my next question is about outlining. And it sounds like you have a loose outline at least. And even if it's not, yeah. And maybe not all the way to the end, but I've got a, a pretty, I'm definitely through the middle line and, and very thin to the end, but okay. Do you know, do you know what change your character has to undergo? So I think there has to be some, I think there has to be like a forgiveness or she needs to let go of. She has some anger and frustration because she had to quit med school to take care of her dad and her mom just, you know, took off. So I think there's some, there's got to be some, she's got to let go of, of that and decide. You know, am I going to continue being an artist? Am I going to go back to med school or, you know, finish my residency or whatever? And part of her is like, did I even want to be a doctor? I think I'm becoming a doctor because of my dad wanted me to be a doctor, but did I really want to be a doctor? And so there's a little bit of that in there too. Excellent. So as quickly as you can. Right? That opening scene, even if you've got all the plot points and you know what's going to happen, you should be weaving in where she is on her character arc at some point in chapter one, right? If she's baking, maybe she's rummaging around in the drawer and she finds her stethoscope from medical school and she's pissed that her mom's just thrown it in a drawer, right? Like, why is this here? Right? I don't know, something, but, but symbolically think about how you can show that. And then what I would say about your outline is, If you don't know where she's headed, it's pretty tricky to put the beats in that you need to, right? You want your opening to mirror what she is today, and then you want your closing to show her new normal at the end, right? And so this opening scene, I can't tell you if it's the right opening scene or yet not, or not yet, because You don't know where she's going. So you're going to have to make that decision. Where is she going from the beginning of the book to the end of the book? And again, maybe that's what you do with one of your writing times rather than writing forward. And yes, it might feel like you're not, you know, progressing, but actually you are. Hugely, because you're going to be not at that fork of the road where you're kind of writing down this one pathway, but you don't know where you're going. Right. So it might be really helpful to just spend 20 minutes, half an hour and make a decision. She ends up doing, sometimes our characters end up doing something else and then you can stop and adjust. But if you knew, you know, if she was going from a place of anger to a place of forgiveness, right, then you could mirror everything. Okay. Right? You could, you would know what you need to have in this opening in order to get her there and it will help you figure out the scenes along the way. Even drafting that ending scene, it's going to change, so don't polish it. Don't spend a lot of time. But typically what I would suggest if you're in that situation and you're feeling a little bit stuck is draft that ending scene. Where do you want her to be? Okay. Just really rough. Time yourself. Like, how long are your writing sessions typically? How long do you sit down every day? Oh, I, I shoot for an hour. I would love it to be two. Yeah. Okay. So of that hour, spend 30 minutes, spend 30 minutes having her do something at the end. that helps you visualize where she needs to go. Okay. You'll find it will unlock that piece where you're like, yeah, I don't know. Right. It'll unlock that piece. And then you'll be able to finish your outline, but you have to make that choice. And you have to know where you're headed. What do you think? What is it? Aim the, aim the gun before you fire. Right. Or you're just going to. That's a good, that's a good, you're going to get wherever and write that down. There's a thousand ways to write a book and whatever's working for you, don't stop. But if you're finding yourself stuck, these are some of the ways that you can get through it. It sounds like if you haven't made that decision, then yes. And it's a, it's an actual, like, It's not like you and your willpower and not, you know, like, so don't take that on if you haven't made a decision, you literally can't move forward and your brain will freeze. So that tracks with what you were experiencing. Okay. I like that. Okay. Awesome. Okay. Well, we are right here cheering you on. If you, I'm going to send you this, this one page with all of my comments. It's in very good shape. I think with a few small tweaks, you're going to pull your rear in really quickly and help us really care about your, what's your character's name actually. Uh, her name is Addie. Okay. We're going to really care about Addie's journey. And that's okay that we don't know that by the way, because it's in first person, that's okay. We can find that out at some point in the future, but we do need to know a little bit more about her to care about her on that page one. Sure. Well, this has been invaluable. I, I so appreciate your time and, and your knowledge and just, this is a gift. Thank you. Oh, thank you for coming. Come on again when you're, uh, when you're, when you're ready, come on again with that last scene sometime. I'd love to have that. Thanks for tuning in to Show Don't Tell Writing with me, Suzy Vadori. To help me continue to bring you the straight goods for that book you're writing, planning to write, please consider subscribing to this podcast and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts Spotify or wherever you're listening. 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