28. [Show, don't Tell Page Review] From Screenplay to YA Novel with Jordan Bloomfield

In this episode of Show Don’t Tell Writing, Suzy conducts a live page review for Jordan Bloomfield’s young adult novel, Party Boys. Originally written as a screenplay, Party Boys is Jordan’s first novel, following a group of 16-year-olds navigating friendships, football, and risky social situations. Suzy shares insights on adapting a screenplay into a novel, emphasizing how to incorporate the 5 elements of writing to elevate storytelling. Together, Suzy and Jordan workshop a pivotal scene, offering listeners practical advice on crafting relatable characters and dynamic scenes. 

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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, nonfiction, that are going to wow your readers broken down step by step. We're going to explore writing techniques. I'm going to show you a glimpse behind the scenes of successful writers careers that you wouldn't have access to otherwise, and I'm also going to coach writers live on their pages so that you can learn and transform your own storytelling. Whether you're just starting out, you're drafting your first book, you're editing, or you're currently rewriting that book, or maybe even your tenth book, this show's gonna help you unlock the writing skills that you didn't even know you needed, but you definitely do. I'm so looking forward to helping you get your amazing ideas from your mind onto your pages in an exciting way for both you and your readers so that you can achieve your wildest writing dreams and you're gonna also have some fun doing it. Let's dive in. It's that time again when I get to do my favorite thing which is reviewing one page with a writer and geeking out about show don't tell helping them elevate it. I hope you enjoy when I do this and live coach because it is so much fun and I know that you are going to learn so much from Jordan Bloomfield, my guest today. I first met Jordan, uh, quite some time ago and he had written a script called Party Boys. He works in the school system, was inspired by the high schoolers that he works with, and he had written a script that he intended to be a film. And he wanted to turn it into a novel. And so he started working with me in one of my courses. And then he came back with his finished draft and worked through it with me in the Developmental Editing Mentorship recently. And I had the opportunity to work on 10 pages with him. And really help him deepen, because there's a lot of skills when you go from screenplay to novel writing. There's things that you need to add, right? We, we have to create. You don't have all the filmmaking tools like lighting and actors and all the things. We've got to add that in. And that's what Show Don't Tell is all about, is creating that visual moment. So it's been a lot of fun and to see where Jordan was able to take this script. I picked this one page in particular and I wanted to workshop it with Jordan because he's done a lot of things well. He's now combining inner thoughts and reactions and all those things onto the page that he didn't have in his, in his script because it wasn't necessary. But I really feel like this one page, I want him, he's got a really deep cast of characters for his young adult novel and they all kind of feel similar here. And so I wanted to talk with Jordan and see if we can just tease out a few things about each of these kids that are in his book to make them show their personalities versus having to guess or having to tell us. So, without further ado, I'm going to read you this one page. So basically, the premise of Party Boys is these kids who are 16, they're in 10th grade, and one of them somehow tricks a group of people into thinking he's a senior, right? That he's, that he's a senior in high school. And so he's acting older and he's trying to convince his buddies, they've been buddies for a long time. That they can do it too, and they're a little wary, and of course, as we can all imagine, it's going to end spectacularly badly. But this is a scene in which Mike, the character who is already sort of in, he joined the senior football team because he's this football protege. And so he somehow gets accepted into this group and he wants his buddies to do the same and they're like, I don't know. So that's what this scene is all about. They're in a skate park, which is already established earlier in the scene and we will go from there. Mike, Ben says, we're all 16, dude. There's no way they're going to believe we're all 18. If you blend in like me, chances are they will believe you're 18. Just do what I do. Dress how I dress and play it cool, Mike says. If it worked for me, then it will work for you. I've spent a month blending in with the seniors, and I've already built myself a reputation. I met other seniors who were actually really cool, so I've been making new friends, and a lot of them are girls. Older girls, Craig rephrases. I've seen multiple girls around Mike in the hallways in between classes, especially one that has dark long hair with gold highlights, who honeybee on a flower. Girls never used to talk to Mike that much, even girls his own age. Probably because of that one time when he sprayed soda on some of them in middle school. But now a lot of the senior girls are talking to him because of his white lie. One of the senior girls I've heard actually has a crush on me, Mike goes on. No way, Colin says as he skates away on his board. Can't be true, Colin adds in as he leans closer. Are you serious, Ben asks with a straight face. I'm not kidding, Mike replies. Her name is Sandra and she broke up with her boyfriend a couple of months ago. Now she's interested in me. This must be the same girl with the gold highlights who has been hanging around his arm. Ben bites back the urge to say he hates you, and instead says, Way to go, man. He claps him on the shoulder with a hard hit and slaps his hand with the urge to squeeze it tight, but resists. You guys could be a part of this too, Mike replies. All I have to do is introduce you. They might assume that you are both also 18. Ben isn't sure if this is true. It must take more than just blending in to convince seniors that they are older. Awesome. I am so excited to have Jordan Bloomfield here with me today. Hi Jordan. Hi Susie. Thank you so much for coming on this podcast today because we're going to workshop. Your book, do you wanna tell us a little bit about Party Boys and how this came about? Sure. So Party Boys was originally visualized as a, as a film, and I wrote it as a screenplay. It was over 200 pages long, and I wa I did have a plan to, uh, make it a movie, but it didn't happen that way because I chose to, I, I chose to go down the, uh, the novel route. And I thought about what genre I wanted to, uh, write novels in. So, uh, I, I figured I decided to adapt this party boys idea to a novel and promote it as a young adult novel. I thought that would be a good start. Cause this, this would be my first book. This would be a good start to my writing career. If you know. If I ever get that opportunity, so yeah, no, I think, I think you're well on your way and that makes so much sense to me knowing that it had been a screenplay because what we're going to work on today is sort of rounding that out, right? Like, there's five elements of writing and I know you've heard me say this before, but I'll say it for the podcast listeners. There's five elements of writing and we have setting and dialogue and inner thoughts and actions and reactions. Right? And, and. Those reactions and inner thoughts don't exist in a screenplay, and those are the things that we need to be adding in. And it's hard because it's already a long, right, you had a long screenplay. And so where do you focus is another thing that you have to work on when you adapt that. But I work with a lot of screenplay writers that want to learn to write novels. And they really have to get comfortable exploring that extra bit that you can do, this inner thoughts and reactions. I mean, technically you can have inner thoughts in this, in like a film if you have voiceover, but you can't do it all the time. Right. And the other thing that typically we do in novels, I mean, you could be omniscient. It's pretty rare in these days. It's not very popular, especially not in YA, but you know, a lot of people are watching how Netflix does it or how their favorite TV show does it. And they kind of go on these deep dives and they follow different people and they have all these characters and they can do that. But in books, we typically don't, it's really hard. For readers, you want your readers to connect with that one person. And so your protagonist, your main guy, his name is Ben. Tell me a little bit about Ben. What's going on with Ben? So Ben, he is 16 year old teen. He has a few friends, not a lot of friends, but he has a small group of friends. And in this particular scene, he's at a skateboarding park. And he, he's known these guys for a long time, since elementary school. And he's noticed one of his best friends has changed a little bit, since he joined the, the football team, which is a senior football team. And he happens to be the same age as Ben, so Ben is noticing some changes in this particular character. So, uh, he's starting to feel, he's starting to feel like he's losing a bit of a touch with the Uh, with his friend and, and this scene is about like him thinking like, why, like, why is he changing so much? That type of thing. It's not the same. Yeah. And they're in it. They're in a skate park. Right. And that's one of the things where I was looking for a little bit more. So if you're on a film, you don't have to put it all on the page because the producer is going to figure out how to make the skateboard park thing work and they can kind of stand around and talk. But in your, in your scene itself, I was looking for something to mirror what's going on. Right. Right. And so that's, we're going to. brainstorm and figure out here today. I love it. In, in your screenplay idea, did you actually have sort of, like I mentioned, did you have them flipping back and forth and going like from different perspectives and getting to know each of the characters or was it always Ben's sort of story? It was always Ben's story. Okay, uh, but actually yeah kind of a little bit of both actually so it was from uh, each perspective I would say but ben is not in every scene. So there's a lot of character development the other in the other, uh Boys as well. So, but it is mainly Ben's story. Yes. Awesome. Okay. And that's important, especially in ya, like, it's hard for them, it's hard for younger readers to track a ton of characters, you know, in an adult story you can have larger cast of characters, you know, YA story. You wanna keep it pretty tight so that, um, and really differentiate them because we, we need the needs to care, right? And we're gonna care about. And I mean, we can all relate to this. Were you a football player, Jordan? I was not. No, me either. I'm not a sports person at all. I'm not a sports person either. And I have three sporty teenagers that I sired somehow. Cause my husband is sporty and I'm trying, but I'm not a sports person either. I skied and swam and did ballet like individual things. And I know nothing about team sports, but my son does play football. So some of this resonates and you know, the struggles getting on the senior basketball team and the junior basketball team. So in this case, Mike has made a higher level team. Like he's only in 10th grade, but he's playing with the seniors because he's like this protege. And so he tricks them into thinking that he's older. And then the other kids, like his buddies, are like, what do you mean? Like, what is going on with you? Right? And they're trying to sort of fit in and be cool and all the things that we remember. You actually work with students, right? Jordan, can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah. Yeah. I'm a, I'm an educational assistant at a high school. Yeah. I work with, well, I work mainly with students, you know, who have varieties of exceptionalities like ASD and whatnot. So I support students with special needs. And yeah, I've been working, I've been in the EA for about two years now, and it's been a really good experience. And I think because I've been working at a high school, I'm learning more about, you know, teens. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, like such as behaviors and, you know, how they, how they behave and socially and whatnot. So it's sort of, sort of observing and, you know, it helps. It helps with, uh, with this particular, uh, book. Absolutely. I mean, you have such an advantage. A lot of times people want to write YA and they have no idea what a 16 year old would say or sound like or act like, and you have all that knowledge. And so what we need to do is get a little bit more of this on the page, and we're going to do that today. Okay, so the passage that we're working on, it's a little more than a page, but you had submitted a 10 page sample, and so we just took the page where I think we've got it, like, almost, and we just need to do a little bit more. And my hope is, Jordan, that after we work through this, And you can sort of see what's possible in a novel versus a screenplay that you'll be more confident in putting that stuff down that you actually know, right? The passage opens with Mike, Ben says, we're all 16, dude, there's no way we're going to believe we're all 18. And by the way, I think Ben is quite right. Um, eventually they're going to get caught, which is part of the fun of it, right? And the kids that are reading it are going to know as well. But here, they're in a skate park, right? And I'd love for you to show me a detail about his face or his posture. And it's not about, like, having three pages of description everywhere. You've already got a long word count. We don't want to be adding tons of invaluable description. It's like, Peppering it through. So mixing it up, right? So here, I would love to see Ben's face or his posture, meaning like, how is he standing? What's he doing? And you've got some of that in here, but right here where he's like, dude, no way, right? I don't know what he'd be looking like, but I've got some, we've lost a little bit of grounding in the scene. Like there's a lot of talking and there's some skateboard flipping. They're in a skateboard park and you've added some of that, but it's still missing like. An action or something happening. So when you've got characters standing around talking. A neat thing to think about is, how can I use whatever's happening in the scene, in this case it's flipping skateboards, many writers, I see this over and over again, please don't do this, they go make tea, 16 year olds are not going to go make tea, but when I tell people, okay, something has to be happening in the scene and I get the scene back. And I don't know why, they're always making tea or sipping tea. Maybe people, I mean, I drink tea, but like, it's not a big part of my life. You drink tea too? I do, yeah. Yeah, and maybe, maybe your characters, I don't know in this book if they ever drink tea. But it's not enough, right? Like, it's not enough to just have them doing something. What, what, what the cool thing about a novel and when it really, really works is when everything that you include Actually relates. So here we're talking about them setting themselves up for failure, basically, right? Yeah, exactly. Yes. Yes. They're gonna pretend that they're seniors to get into the parties and to get girls to do all the things that they think they want. I'm assuming they're going to go through some growth and realize maybe that that isn't really what they want. Jordan's nodding his head. See, the listeners can't see that. Yeah, but, but the thing is, is like, how do we mirror that in the scene? So you can actually do more than just flipping skateboards. And what I was thinking was like, what if one of them is setting themselves up for failure here? And Colin skates away during this scene. And so I was thinking it would be great if it were him, right? Because he's like, I'm done with this. And then he goes and sets himself up for failure. And he tries a trick that he can't do. And he like crashes, right? We could actually mirror what their conversation is with what's happening in the scene and what that does is it reinforces it, right? We can mirror it. We can contrast it. We can, like, reinforce it. We can do all kinds of stuff. So when you're thinking about the actions. It's about more than just I'm standing around or showing my posture. It's, it's also what the heck is happening in the scene. And if you think about it, it'd be amazing when this eventually becomes a film, even if it's a novel first, maybe it will still become a film, right? Let's manifest that. It's gonna become a film. And so what could happen in the scene? You don't want them standing around the skate park talking for an entire scene. That's not very interesting on the screen. Right? So what could be happening in the background? Okay. But right here, even just grounding us back in the moment when we have long. Passages of dialogue, which tends to happen when we're adapting a screenplay to a novel, right? Obviously, because the screenplay is really heavy on dialogue and then all that other action stuff is stuff that gets added in later that the writer doesn't really do. So in this case, what's happened is because we don't have enough of that action in between, it's like The dialogue starts to float. Right. And we can become ungrounded or untethered to that scene as we read, we kind of forget where we are. And that's called, it's actually a thing called talking heads. It's like where the, they kind of like float up and it's like, eventually in your reader's mind, if you do it long enough, and you haven't done it long enough here, but it could be the fact that all you kind of picture is their heads. And they're like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And talking back and forth. Right. And that's not what we want. We want to still imagine them in their whole bodies. You In the state park, it's real, it's gritty, we're there, all the things, and so to do that, we have to check in with them. So here, I would love to see Ben's face, we're all 16 dudes, like, is he, like, scrunching up his nose? I think I've got some suggestions here. Again, if you love my suggestions, take them. He could, you know, Ben can scrunch up his nose to show his displeasure, or maybe he stands on his tiptoes, stretching himself to look taller with a big grin on his face. Like, what are you talking about? Right? Like, like, am I going to pretend to be 18 when I'm, like, gonna walk around like this? Right? Like, I don't know enough about Ben from this snippet to know what he might do. And Maybe, like, you could say also, Suzy, you're totally out to lunch, Ben wouldn't do any of those things, and I'd say, cool, what would he do? Yeah. So I won't put you on the spot if you have an awesome idea, but in here, but yeah, here he needs to do something to show us his personality, right? Okay. So then it says, if you blend in like me, so this is Mike going like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got this right. Chances are, they're going to believe you're 18. Just do what I do, dress how I dress and play it cool. I love that line. He's such like an arrogant guy. Again, he could mirror what he's saying. He's talking about do what I do, dress how I dress, play it cool. He could do something right here that reinforces it. Like maybe like I put in here, he's slipping on a dark pair of sunglasses. Right. I don't know if that's cool these days. Probably my kids would tell me that isn't cool. You're in the school system. You know, what's cool. What, what would that look like? If somebody is trying to pretend to be cool, right? Dress how I dress. Maybe he's brushing off his football jacket that he's dressing, like all those things, or, but give us an indication. So he's giving this instruction, but he's also in the moment locking this out. So show it. Don't tell us. Don't tell me that Mike is being cool. Show it. I don't know what that is. But you do, right? You can see what that cool kid in the hallway that you're inspired by to write this book is doing. So then we get to this part. Oh, sorry. I think it's, is it Craig that skates away or Colin? I'm getting confused by the names. And that is. Yeah, that is one thing sometimes. I mean, they are different and they will sound different in an audiobook. Again, we're manifesting here. When this becomes an audiobook, those will sound sufficiently different, but sometimes when we got like a group of kids or a group of characters that have similar names or names, even that just start with the first letter, the way that the human brain works is it will get them confused. Unless they're significantly different. And now this used to be, I mean, it's always been an issue for names with the first letter, especially, but especially if they're in the same scene, then it can be confusing because they're kind of skimming, especially the, the dialogue tags, like we're skimming those dialogue tags. Like, if, if you've got a strong reader reading this. And so we want to kind of make sure that they're different. So consider that. And then with the advent of audio books, which this will become, of course, we're manifesting again, then you also want to say them out loud and make sure they don't sound the same. One of my colleagues who. Did some Audible exclusives or Audible originals and her books came out first on audio. She started to realize as people wrote, it was a fantasy book, and she started to realize as people wrote reviews for her book that people had no idea what the names of the characters were. Like, they couldn't, they couldn't spell them and they couldn't, they couldn't figure it out or they got it wrong, uh, or they misheard them because they were unusual names. So audio is, audio is doing all kinds of funky things. And then she learned from that. And the next time she did that, which was released on audio first, she put a pronunciation guide or like a glossary of the names just so that people could actually have a conversation. Her books did really well. And you know, people weren't able to have that conversation about the names, which was kind of. Weird. Okay. So, as well, we've got some dialogue tags. I know that we've talked about this before. Your punctuation in this, by the way, is perfect. You've totally nailed how to actually punctuate dialogue, which is no mean feat, right? It's, it's actually really hard. Writers that have been writing for years get this wrong. And it's really difficult, if you get it wrong the first time, it's very difficult to fix it. Because when you read it back to yourself, you hear the character's voices. So you, you're also ignoring them. Right? So we ignore dialogue tags when we read. Now, if you are writing for sort of a lower, we've had this debate before, like, what age group are you writing for? In YA, the protagonist's age, the age of your main character, is the main determinant of whether or not it's, like, what category it falls into. Because Readers will only read about characters who are older than them. So we, you and I have had this debate, you know, you've been in my courses, we've had this debate. You've made them 16, which is perfect, because now you're an upper YA, which means that 14 plus will read your book. Now, 14 plus and the higher reading level means that you don't need all of these dialogue tags. So Craig said, Craig, Craig rephrases. You don't need them necessarily if you replace them with action beats. So one thing that you can do because you had this sort of bloated manuscript or bloated screenplay, like with lots of words, you, and you need to add stuff, you can actually replace some of these, these dialogue tags, but don't just remove them. Like people sometimes misunderstand this advice. And just remove them entirely and then I have no idea who's talking and I get totally lost. Don't do that. You can remove them if it's totally obvious there's only two characters in the scene and they have sort of a quick back and forth, then you might get away with it, but do that as an exception, not a rule. Instead, you can add So here, older girls, Craig rephrases. I love it. So here, instead of using that boring tag, Craig rephrases, right? Which by the way, again, when it becomes an audio book is going to hear like sound really redundant. When we're reading, we skip it. Especially older readers at 14 plus readers already are reading really quickly. Those who are going to read these books. So change it, make it an action beat instead. And then you save some word count. Right? So he pretends to swoon older girls, Craig pretends to swoon, right? Or older girls, Craig nods with respect. Can you see how different those are? And again, I don't know, Craig, I don't know which one of those he might do. He might do neither of those, but make it interesting. And we're not adding a ton of word count. Does that make sense? Okay. How are you feeling so far, Jordan? Good. Good. This is very helpful. Awesome. Yeah, I appreciate this. What's Craig's role in their group? Do you know? Um, so Craig They have different personalities, right? They do they all have different personalities. Mhm. I do envision Craig as, uh, pretty loony. Very, uh, energetic. Yeah, so he, he can be very, you know, enthusiastic with certain things. He's the drama guy, right? Like, he's the guy that's gonna bring the drama? Is that right? Drama, or even, I suppose, comic relief, too. Like, he Okay. Yeah, so he's just kind of, for lack of a better word, kind of a wacky character, in a sense. Awesome, so give him a wacky action here, right? Like, I can envision older girls, and Craig rephrases, and maybe he's, I mean, I don't know how spicy you want to get here, but maybe he's pretending to like, hold up his boobs or something, like, I don't know what he's gonna do, but he's the comic relief guy, then give him a comic relief thing, right? So you've got all of this in your head, Jordan, and you're not going to have the opportunity to produce this as a play or a, or a film and to, you know, hire the actors and tell them what to do. It's got to be on the page, right? So yeah, let him do something. I mean, older girls, there is so many things he could do here that are hilarious, right? So think of something hilarious, make him do it. I'm not really There's very, it's funny actually because when I met with a colleague or somebody that I grew up with like years ago when I was first writing a book and he said to me, Oh my gosh, I can't wait to read your book and see the biting your biting humor in a book is going to be amazing. And I just looked at him and I kind of was like. I don't write funny. I mean, I guess I'm funny in real life and you guys probably see that but my friends and family think I'm pretty funny or I have this like biting sense of humor and it's not usually in my books. So I applaud anybody who's willing to put comic relief in their books. Good job. I don't know. I can't do it. Okay, so next we're, we're moving on. Okay, so now we've got a great example. You're going into Ben's inner thoughts. So you've actually done a good job on this page of sort of mixing those five elements. Which is something that we've been working on. So great job in giving us a specific instance here. Ben has seen multiple girls around Mike in the hallways in between classes. Especially one that has dark long hair with gold highlights. Okay, I love that. She's memorable, right? Dark long hair with gold highlights is pretty interesting. But I also love, you know, that you didn't just leave it with multiple girls. That's one of the tenets that I teach at Show Don't Tell. When we're in a crowd, right? And I think that's probably what you did, because I think I've read this one before and it didn't have it. And then show me one specific example. It's way more interesting. So good job. And you've got constantly clings on to him like a honeybee on a flower. Which is awesome, and that shows me a little bit about Ben, because anybody who thinks like that, my honey beyond a flower, is probably, you know, a little bit more prosy, a little bit more reedy. My Jordan's nodding his head, am I nailing Ben? I don't know. But we're in his point of view, so it has to, anything that's in his inner thoughts, can show us what he's like. Is this something that Ben would say? I believe so. Yeah, that's, I think that is how I depict him. Yeah, he's, he does have, he is, he does have a sensitive side, I suppose. Yeah. Awesome. It's like poetic almost. I like it. Yeah. So we've got girls never talked to Mike that much, not even girls his own age, probably because of that time when he sprayed soda on some of them in middle school, right? And again, here's where I would love you to take this further because it's a hilarious image. You know, we sprayed soda on some of them in middle school, and I was suggesting that you take it like even further. I want you to be confident in these examples, right? It's great. It's alive in your mind. You're imagining, like, getting soda sprayed all over you in middle school. Take it even further, and the girls had to sit through afternoon classes with wet, sticky hair that clung to their faces, right? Like, I, yeah, and I see you smirking. You're like, yeah, that's cool. Right? Like, we want to see that image. Show it to us. Right? Because you've told us what happened. Now, like, show us what the consequences of that were. Make it uncomfortable. I mean, everybody spilled soda on them somewhere and hopefully not have to sit through class. Yeah, but yeah, yuck. And then senior girls are talking to him now because of a white lie, right? So then Mike starts bragging about the one that has a crush on him and now Colin's like out, right? Colin says, no way and skates away on his board, which is great. I think you mean to have him skate away to show that he's not into this conversation. Is that right? That's right. Yes. Yeah, so you've done a great job of showing us and not telling us that he's not into this conversation, but I mostly care and I'm tracking Ben's thoughts on it, right? So we also need Ben's thoughts pretty quick because he's my main character. So everybody's like scoffing this, right? I'm sorry, Colin skates away on his board, Craig says that can't be true, but leans in closer, right? You're doing a great job here. You're showing me with their body language how they feel about this. So I'm assuming, Craig, leaning in closer, you're trying to show me that he's clearly more interested than he's letting on. Yes, exactly. So they're all reacting differently. Now, Ben's was kind of odd. So you did a great job with Colin and Craig. And then Ben says, are you serious? With a straight face. And I wasn't sure where you were going with that. Yeah, I was having trouble trying to think of a visual for Ben's reaction. I just wrote straight face for now. I do plan to change it for sure. Because I know I can do better than that. Yeah, and I mean, we're in Ben's head as well. So remember, Ben can't see his own face. So straight face kind of works, because you know that, like, you're trying, like, maybe you're trying to keep a straight face, right? Like, if you're, if you're staying internal to your character, because we can't really see our own face when we're standing in a skate park. But yeah, he's a main character, so I really was looking for a little bit more of his thoughts here. Why does he have a straight face? Is he curious but doesn't want to let on? Like, I just didn't know. And you can use thoughts instead of, sometimes when we can't think of a reaction or like an expression. Again, it could be facial expression or posture are the two that are sort of the most obvious ones to use. So he could be shifting from foot to foot, or he could be, and again, I don't know what else you've used, so don't let me, these are. You know, fairly generic one. So get creative. If he's this poetic guy asks, maybe he's looking something, you know, adjusting his zipper or doing like looking down and like trying to, trying to be small. I don't know, but I'd love to know. And you can add in her thoughts here as well. Might be a good one if you can't think of an action. So are you serious Ben? And then whatever he's thinking Ben's curious. But he doesn't want to let on, right? And that's a tell, but it's okay sometimes to have a tell, especially if we can't interpret the action. So Mike says, no, no, no. And then he starts giving us some details about this girl named Sandra. She broke up with her boyfriend and now she's interested in me. So here, yeah, I want to see a detail about his posture or his expression. I want to see Mike being super confident and kind of, is he, is he, you know, exuding confidence. So I gave you an example here, because it could be anything, but he peels a stick of gum from a pack and folds it into his mouth. He holds the pack out to Ben, who shakes his head, right? Like, he's like, just saying it's so cash. And I'll send you all of this. Yeah, so, so Ben kind of muses in his inner thoughts. Good job adding them here. Okay, it must be the girl that I've seen him with. And he bites back the urge to say, I hate you, right, to Mike. And instead he says, way to go, man. So he says something, I love that sort of tension, right? He says way to go, but he's kind of pissed off, and he claps him on the shoulder with a hard hit and slaps his hand with the urge to squeeze it tight, but resists, right? Here's where I was like, okay, there's, there's things happening and you've got them, you know, you're getting the, the sort of shows here, but I'm looking for something bigger, right? So, because they're still talking. Colin had skated away a minute ago, so I'd love to have seen him clatter to the ground or something, right? Like, we want to mirror this, this bravado. So Colin had skated way a minute ago, so what if he clattered to the ground here and have them have to go help him up while they're still talking? Which is a metaphor for the failure that Ben's worried about in this plan. We're setting ourselves up, we're trying something that's beyond our reach, right? Like, you don't have to use that, but something bigger needs to happen in this scene. Right, yeah. Any thoughts? Yeah, no, I like that idea. You know, if something, like a foreshadow almost, right? Like something that occurred like exactly in the screenplay. It'd be a foreshadow or something planted. But here we're actually reinforcing right? So so that you don't have to tell us so much. We're reinforcing this and and it's subtle enough that most readers won't pick up on it overtly. They'll actually notice it, like, the thing that happens over and over again is when we apply these techniques, I get comments or my writers get comments from agents and publishers and from readers. Like, I don't know what happened, but the scene is amazing. Right? And it's like this subtle reinforcement. It's like this psychological thing where something's happening and then something else is happening and they do it all the time in film. And it's something that we miss a lot of times in writing until that sort of third, fourth draft. So yeah, so when you're adding something, make it more paralleling, if that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. So again, like the next paragraph, I'm looking for like, how does it feel in their body? Right? Like, if you're trying to convey, so Ben isn't sure, this is what it says. Ben isn't sure if it's true. It must take more than just blending in to convince seniors that they're older, right? And so we're doing a little bit of telling, which is fine. But what is he experiencing in his body right now? I want to be Ben, like, doubting this. He's kind of, like, I think he's excited. Like, ooh, maybe this is, like, maybe this is an option. Maybe I can do this. But if you're trying to convey excitement, maybe Ben's head was spinning. Could it be that easy? Maybe he's wary. I don't know. Again, I don't know Ben well enough, but you know. Is he wary? Like, what the hell? Like, a knot was forming in Ben's stomach. Like, this is a bad idea, right? I don't know what he's thinking. So yeah, I'd love to add in some emotion there as well. So how are you feeling about all of that, Jordan? Can you see how we could take this? Like, you're getting it. You've got the five elements. I think that you need to relax a little bit into it and give yourself permission to really spell these things out. How does that feel? Good, yeah, I like the sound of that for sure. I, I believe that I could definitely do all that tweaking and make it, you know. Yeah, and it will add word count and I know that's not what you want to hear, but you can, you can take out some of the dialogue and you can take out some of the things that we've worked on some of that before to make space for it. But I really feel like you need that extra layer in these scenes to turn it from a screenplay into a novel, a novel. And it makes so much sense that that's where you started. I mean, as a screenplay. You do, you really do rely heavily on dialogue and the rest is kind of for interpretation and setting. Dialogue and setting are sort of the things that you can do. Okay. So where are you going to go from here with this? What's your goal for, it's early 2025. What's your goal? So, uh, I'm currently working on my fifth draft on this and I feel like it's almost there. It's definitely, I feel good about it. It's getting there. I think it's almost ready for readers, like beta readers. Yeah, beta readers. And so, will you, do you have the opportunity? I mean, I don't know if it's appropriate to ask your own students. Um, do you have the opportunity to, to ask them? Or how will you go about getting beta readers? Do you know? Yeah, that's something I've been thinking about. Yeah, I have to make sure, you know, whether it's appropriate for, uh, You know, high school'cause uh, you know, it is, well, especially given your content, you've got them doing drugs, and drinking and things. Yeah. Maybe not exactly right. Maybe go outside, maybe play it safe. Yeah. Yeah. Play it safe. And I think, you know, there's a lot of things with beta readers. I'd highly recommend when you do get a group of beta readers, Jordan, that you get adult readers. And teen readers. And the reason I say that is because ultimately at the end of the day, you, you want teens to love it. But here's the thing. Guess who reviews these books? Not teens. Adults review the books. And so even if you had a hundred teens and ten adults end up reading it, The 10 adults opinions actually matter more, I hate to say that, in terms of the reviews that you'll get. The, like, formal reviews. And the reason is, number one, teens don't, I mean, they'll review it by giving it to a friend. And you may never know that, or you may meet them later. This is what happens to me, is my books are also for young adults, and I do a lot of tours and school visits, or People might meet me now and it's been a while. I think it's eight years since my first book came out. So those teens that read them or that, you know, when they were 13, 14, and that was the first book that they knew and loved and all that stuff are now in their twenties. Yeah. Right. Early twenties. And I meet them sometimes and they'll be like, Oh my gosh, are you Susie? Like you're Suzy Vadori. I read The Fountain. I'm not famous. Like this is within, um, you know, my own community or whatever. It does happen though. And they're like, that was my favorite book ever. I bought copies for all of my friends and we all read it over and over. And then we talked about it. And then, you know, when the next book came and they tell me this when you don't find out, they never reviewed it. They never wrote to me. They never told me, right? Like you don't get to hear it, but an adult review reading it might review it. So it matters. Disproportionately, as well, especially for younger readers, like those sort of 12, 13, 14 year olds, they don't have credit cards. I mean, well, they don't have credit cards until they're 18. They can't and now, now they can do it with debit credit and all those Visa debit and things like that. But you can't, they don't have Amazon accounts. They can't buy stuff. They have to ask their parents. Um, or order it through their parents and so they're the parents are going to read it and decide right in some cases. And so it does matter. I actually, when I wrote book two in my, the fountain series, the Westwoods. And I had beta readers that were adults and kids. The kids, or the adults, gave me rave reviews on one particular scene and the kids hated it. They were stressed by it. And it was weird because it was like, I knew it was a great scene. It was great writing. I really challenged myself. Nobody's ever read it, by the way, except for those beta readers because it's gone. And what happened was I asked the adults and to a T seven people said that was their favorite scene, the adults and to a T the eight teens that read it. I forget the numbers. I have an episode on it somewhere. So it may not be the same, but something like that. And, and to a T eight teens said that was my least favorite scene. I understand why it's there, but I was so sad. I didn't want to keep reading. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I gotta take this out. So yeah, so you gotta, it's, it's a weird thing in YA. It's like this extra step where you've got these two different audiences that you have to, you have to, and the only way to know, yeah, to have to satisfy. And so the only, the only way to know that is to make sure that you've got both. Okay. Awesome. All right. So this year is your year beta readers and onward, and I can't wait to see where you take it. Thank you so much. You're so welcome. Thanks for tuning in to Show Don't Tell Writing with me, Susie Vidori. 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