There are a lot of people who advocate spending just an hour a day doing something to become awesome. That hour a day is often learning. You study up about what you want to do, you self learn, you teach yourself to be better by learning all about the thing you're into.

So, if you're into writing, you read books about writing and actual books. You study the craft.

So, if you're into knitting, you study knitting. Entrepeneurship? Same thing, but first you probably have to learn how to spell it. My bad there.

There's a cool graph here that talks about how if you read a certain number of books, how you compare to other American adults. It's also a bit depressing because it basically says most Americans read two books a year.

Hallel K has a post on Medium about how you can use the 1-hour rule to catapult yourself into the 1% and I think that's a great post, but it's a little hyperbolizing. We like hyperbole though, right? It makes things easy.

Hallel uses a quote by Earl Nightingale.

“One hour per day of study in your chosen field is all it takes. One hour per day of study will put you at the top of your field within three years. Within five years you’ll be a national authority. In seven years, you can be one of the best people in the world at what you do — Earl Nightingale”

This might make you think, "Yes! Right. So true. Epiphany moment."

Or it might make you think, "Who the hell is Earl Nightingale?"

Well, he has a Wikipedia page? But basically he was a motivational speaker and a radio show host that died in 1989. He wrote Strangest Secret. And to him it's all about risk taking and he also said that the problem with people's lives and lack of success isn't cowardice, but conformity.

According to his definition, a success is when you go after a goal and achieve it. Deliberately. And only 1 out of 20 do that, he said.

The key, he said, is creating, not conforming, deliberate creation. Goals, he said, bring you places. A ship, he says, that has a crew and captain has a destination and it gets out of the harbor and ends up to its destination. But a ship without a destination? Without a captain and crew? If you just turn on the boat's engines, it might not even make it out of the harbor.

Deliberate learning. Goals. Focus. That's what matters, he says. Reading, learning? Those are important aspects. Maybe you won't get in the top 1% of whatever you're going toward, but you will get smarter, closer, and have deliberate action.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Pogie claims to be in the top 1% of Begging. She's an International subject expert in Food begging. Study in the morning and at night. This, however, is a photo of her apprentice, Mr. Murphy.

COOL EXERCISE

This is from MasterClass and it's all about goals.

"Create Realistic Goals

"If your goals are unrealistic, they’ll be unachievable and overwhelming. Don’t let your passion for finishing your novel cause you to push yourself too hard and set goals that simply aren’t possible. For example, it might not be reasonable to set a goal that you will write your novel in one month. Neither should you set a word-count goal to write 10,000 words a day—especially if you also have a full-time job. Setting reasonable goals in the first place will make it much easier for you down the road.

"Consider setting writing goals that you can accomplish step-by-step, one day at a time. The best thing you can do is create daily habits that will help you reach your goals—rather than burn yourself out early wi

On last week’s podcast and the one a few before that, and in a post, Shaun and I talked a bit about plot structures and narrative structures and how here in the U.S. we think of these usually (not always!) as pretty linear, and pretty much in a three-act framework (think beginning, middle, end) with rising stakes and drama as you go along.

This is not the only way to write.

I am very much a product of the U.S. culture. And I’m going to talk a tiny bit in the next couple weeks about different forms/shapes of storytelling, but again . . . I am a student of this culture’s structures. I am not an expert at other structures. I adore them though. I’m going to be providing links.

And hopefully by quickly talking about some of them, you might go off and explore and adore, too. Maybe even get an epiphany for your own story?

So, another kind of storytelling is Middle Eastern and it's Frame Story in our language.

And it's so cool. Basically, as the Novelsmithy explains "many types of stories, characters, and symbols are woven together into a larger tale.

"One Thousand And One Nights is the most famous example of this. In this story, Shahrazad tells story after story to the Sultan in order to keep him from killing her. Her stories include a variety of complex narratives, different characters, conflicts, genres, and morals. There are even frame stories within the larger frame story!

"Characteristics of Middle Eastern Storytelling:

• Outer 'frame story' tying multiple stories together
• Multiple characters and narratives
• Variety of genres, fantasy, and high action."

It's very influenced by The Qur’an.

Gulf News writes,

"One of the most revered traditions of oral storytelling is the hakawati. As intricate and complex as a weaving pattern, this motif-rich narrative style darts in and out of stories, offering unending drama where the storyteller begins one tale, deftly leaves it mid-way to pick up another and then has a third story emerging from a subplot of the first and so on. All this is done using the tools of allegory, folklore, satire, music and a visual spectacle of grand sweeping gestures and facial expressions to finally create an enthralling experience for his listeners."

There's a great piece about frame stories here.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Pogie's like "hey dude, I live my style and life in the frame story style of way. It always comes back to me. I'll always be doing something. I'll see a cat and I'll change my storyline." And that keeps happening. It's all about multiple stories in a brain.

WRITING EXERCISE

Do the Forrest Gump. Find a setting like a park bench and tell the stories that make a life. OR at least outline it.

PLACE TO SUBMIT

Voyage simply aims to publish good work and provide a space for new and established voices. To get an idea of what we publish, please read our archives. General submissions are open year-round with no fee to submit.

We only accept submissions via our online submission managing system, Sub

Last week, maybe a week ago, maybe 82 years ago, who knows, we talked about alternative plot structures.

Much of American film and novels is built on what's considered to be the classic three-act structure, which basically goes beginning-middle-end, and there's this rising line of the plot.

It ends up looking like a bit of a triangle.

As readers, we can sort of anticipate and feel that structure happening. In a rom-com, we almost always know how far into the book or movie it will be when the couple breaks up and then someone has to chase down a car or airplane or something so they can get back together. There's a lovely familiarity in that, but us writers don't always want a lovely familiarity with beats in all the prescribed places and a structure that looks like a triangle.

In an earlier podcast, Shaun, was asking me about the different structures and plots. And this is a pretty big question that people write entire books about, but I'm going to start here.

First, a structure is sort of the diagram of rising and falling and action that links all of the plot points together

The plot is something that connects the moments of the novel in a way that gives a novel its meaning. .

Janet Burroway defines plot as a “series of events deliberately arranged so as to reveal their dramatic, thematic, and emotional significance …. Plot’s concern is ‘what, how, and why,’ with scenes ordered to highlight cause-and-effect.”

Plot, according to Ingrid Sundberg, is about patterns, rhythm, and energy. It’s about the movement and feeling your particular arrangement creates. The triangle (often called the Aristotelian story shape) is a visual metaphor for the escalating energy that is meant to come as a result of a classic design arrangement.”

This podcast, we're talking about all the different types of plots. Next time? We'll go all structure on you.

• Mini-plot

• Daisy chain plot,

• Cautionary tale plot

• Ensemble plot

• Along for the ride plot

• Symbolic juxtaposition plot

• Repeated event plot

• Repeated action plot

Explanations of the Possibilities

Mini Plot – This is the emotional plot. It’s minimalistic. It might even seem like it does not have a plot, but it does. It’s just that the cause-and-effect is about emotional evolution and growth.

Example: Tender Mercies

Daisy Chain Plot - We have no main protagonist, so we have no main goal. A bunch of characters and situations are here and they are linked via cause-and-effect like a physical object.

Examples: Thirteen Reasons Why (has a protagonist, but it kind of works). Lethal Passage.

Cautionary Tale Plot - Hero? There is no hero! Comfort? There is no comfort! Our main character sucks. And instead the reader is the protagonist.

Examples: Jumped by Rita Williams-Garcia. Inexcusable by Chris Lynch.

Ensemble Plot - According to Berg, this happens when you have protagonists grouped in the same place and it is “characterized by the interaction of several voices, consciousnesses, or world views, none of which unifies or is superior to the others.”

Example: Give a Boy a Gun.

Along For The Ride Plot - Ah. Where is our protagonist doing proactive things? Not here. Here we have the secondary character pushing the action and the protagonist is there, zooming along with them. The prot

Do you want to be happy?

It’s a question philosopher Sebastian Purcell asks his students every year.

Do you want to be happy?

For Purcell being happy has a lot in common with living a good life,

“The Stoic answer to this question, that the good life consists in flourishing (eudaimonia), has seen a resurgent interest that is indicative of a cultural shift. Interestingly, it looks to be taking the place left open by the retreat of religious belief,” he writes.

And stoicism? It’s a way to look at life and how the world connects, how they work. It’s physical, Purcell says, and metaphysical.

Most people think of me as a pretty happy person, and I possibly am. To be fair, before I started to feel a bit overwhelmed by my life, I’d always thought positively about things, expected good outcomes.

When I lived in another town and would drive from place to place for my job as a reporter or to pick up my daughter, Em, from school, I’d hear from people later.

“You just drive around smiling. What are you even thinking about?”

I couldn’t ever tell them. They’d scoff. I’d laugh. I’m pretty sure one city councilor called me a weirdo about it. I know a baseball coach did. It didn’t matter. I was who I was.

When Em was little, she and I would talk about her worries, I’d run through logically how outcomes were probably not what she’d expect. I do that with Xane, our other kiddo, too.

“If you fail a test, will you end up in jail? Will anyone die?” I’d ask.

Em would roll her eyes at me and say things like, “You’re being ridiculous, Mommy.”

I’d bounce back with and say brilliantly, “You don’t have to expect the worst case scenarios all the time because a bad grade is not a worst case scenario.”

“I’m just being realistic,” she’d say.

“No. You’re being pessimistic,” I’d tell her, “because you aren’t going to fail anyway.”

The truth is that though I’ve told both of them these things and even though I motor through my day staying pretty chill and positive, often I would flop in bed at night and stare at the darkness for an hour, a weird shiver of anxiety creeping through me—anxiety stemming from things that I couldn’t quite place.

That doesn’t sound all that happy to me, but the truth was that even as I smiled in my car all by myself, even as I sold positive outcomes to my kids, I didn’t know how to even define happiness. I don’t think I’d ever really tried.

And I’m trying now.

Harvard professor, Arthur Brooks, says that “happiness equals enjoyment plus satisfaction plus meaning.”

Brooks tells his students to think of happiness as “a portfolio with four big categories of investments.”

He says, “We need all of them so our happiness can grow in a balanced way. The first investment is faith or life philosophy, it's how you make sense of the world.”

Family and relationships that will most likely stay with you throughout your life though you don’t choose them is the second category.

The third is the relationships we choose. What he calls our “most intimate relationships.”

“The fourth is meaningful work,” he says. "That doesn't mean work that pays a fortune or features a fancy title. Rather, it's work that allows you to earn your success and serve others.”

A HAPPINESS PORTFOLIO

Those four categories aren’t solo acts. They work together and they all have to be there, he believes and that means? Well, it means that we don’t get to be in charge of our happiness all the time. Sometimes horrible things happen. Circumstances exist. And heredity is a factor, too.

I think I’m pretty lucky because despite all the choices she made and things she went through, my mom was a pretty happy human. And my biological father was always happy too. That account

You can learn a lot about culture by how it looks at what makes a good story and a good story structure.

In Western culture right now, we tend to think of stories as three acts (a beginning, middle, and end with the bulk being in the middle), and with a protagonist or hero or main character (whatever you want to call it) who drives the story forward.

So, it's sometimes good to remember that there are other ways of making story and other cultures where the bulk might not be in the middle or the main character might not be so proactive. Story reflects who we are as a people.

Nobody keys into this as much as Robert McKee, who is quite the guru of screenwriting and story.

There are three of his maxims, explained by No Film School that really show that.

Those are:

"Your protagonist needs to be the one who makes the decision that brings about the climactic action.

"Is your protagonist driving the story forward? Are their actions and choices putting the story into focus and kicking it into gear? Make sure they are active, and not just along for the ride. Give them something to do.

"Desire in your character is key.

"What does your character want? We talk about goals on here a lot. They need to have a goal, but also the reasoning behind it. That's where desires come in. I want to solve the case to make the city safer. I want to bring all my friends back from Thanos' snap. Give them something tangible and obvious.

"Character payoffs should always be emotional unless you have a special reason.

"Think about not only what happens inside your story but how these moments affect people internally. Does someone let a character down, or crush their heart with a rejection? Is there a way to hook that into the goal and show how things evolve within them? What do these emotional hurdles do to them or cause them to do? Let emotion guide the way."

For literature in our time, right now, and our culture, those are three big keys to making stories that will be purchased and will resonate with readers.

How does that reflect with our life though, right?

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

You've got to make things happen. Be the hero of your own story and make your people have emotional rewards when they give you what you want.

COOL WRITING EXERCISE

This is from Robert McKee and his book, Story:

"Lean back and ask, 'What would it be like to live my character’s life hour by hour, day by day?' In vivid detail sketch how your characters shop, make love, pray — scenes that may or may not find their way into your story, but draw you into your imagined world until it feels like déjà vu.

"While memory gives us whole chunks of life, imagination takes fragments, slivers of dream, and chips of experience that seem unrelated, then seeks their hidden connections and merges them into a whole. Having found these links and envisioned the scenes, write them down. A working imagination is research."

PLACE TO SUBMIT

The Bath Novel Award 2024 £5,000 international writing prize

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available throu

It ended up being a bit of a free-for-all as we talked about the strange things people do sometimes.

SHOUT OUT TO STUBHY!

The snippet of our intro and outro music is only a snippet of this guy’s awesome talent. Many thanks to Kaustubh Pandav. You can check out a bit of his work at the links below.

www.luckyboysconfusion.Net or www.Facebook.com/mrmsandtheinfusions

Thanks for hanging out with us! And remember, don’t be afraid to let your strange out.

So building a sympathetic character on the page is a lot like being a sympathetic character in real life. This sympathetic character is basically the opposite of a butt-hole.

There’s this great post on the SocialSelf blog that talks about what makes people likable and what keeps people from being likeable. And writers can learn from this, really.

The big things that make people likeable in real life are like a top ten list of awesome:

1. Be funny
2. Be a good listener
3. Don’t judge
4. Be authentic
5. Be warm and friendly immediately
6. Show people that you like them
7. Smile
8. Be humble, but also confident
9. Keep your promises
10. Know people’s names
11. Ask questions that aren’t yes or no answers.

They even have a bar graph about it.

When we’re writing, it’s hard to make a character listen to the reader or make eye contact with the reader, which scores high, but we can show them listening to other people, being kind to other characters instead of being all self-self-self and me-me-me all the time.

And you can make the character funny if that’s who they are. If you think back to ancient Buffy the Vampire Slayer shows, the characters were a bit much sometimes, right? Buffy especially, but they became likeable and fun because they were funny and they tried super hard to keep their promises and be there for each other.

But just as importantly, that blog has ways that people sabotage their likability in real life.

What are those ways?

1. Humble bragging
2. Name dropping
3. Gossiping
4. Oversharing on social media

Now, for a book character, humble bragging and gossiping can happen in dialogue and be annoying and off-putting. But oversharing can happen, too, in a first-person narrative, right? You can tell too much, so much, that it feels like the action isn’t happening and that will distance the reader.

When it comes to keeping those unlikable aspects off that page, it gets a little bit trickier because you have to keep the reader interested enough in what happens to the character to keep reading. That's all about likability.

This is why I talk about those super objectives and desire lines a lot. If you can give your character a yearning/a goal in each scene and chapter (sometimes it’s more pronounced that other times), then the reader will wonder if the character will get it. This helps to get the reader involved and gives you a little more time to build up the connection with the character. That's because the readers want to know what happens and if the character will get their goal/yearning/want. That gives you more time to make them care about the character.

But to make them really care about what happens, you have to make them care about the character and to do that, it can help to let the reader see the character’s wound, that defect, that thing that haunts them. You want to see them in a moment of weakness or vulnerability or loneliness.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Smelling buttholes is great but you don't want to be one! - Mr. Murphy quote of the day.

PLACE TO SUBMIT

BLUE LYNZ PRIZE FOR POETRY

The annual Blue Lynx Prize for Poetry awards $2000 plus publication for a full-length poetry collection. The Prize is awarded for an unpublished, full-length volume of poems by a U.S. author, which includes foreign nationals living and writing in the U.S. and U.S. citizens living abroad. Lynx House Press has been publishing fine poetry and prose since 1975. Our titles are distributed by the University of Washington Press.

Top Prize:

$2,000

A lot of writers that I work with have a problem. The problem is that they want to be a writer, but before they come to me? They don’t write.

Here’s the thing. For a lot of us, we have to make time to be a writer. That’s just how our brains and process work. There are some writers who manage to get 10 days of alone time and writer time and they power through a book in that time, but most of us aren’t that wealthy or that lucky.

That means to be a writer, we have to create the habit of writing.

This is where James Clear’s method comes into play. This guy has built an empire around helping people create habits. And he believes there are four steps to creating a habit.

Those steps are:

• Cue
• Craving
• Response
• Reward

This man has a ton of books and information all over the internet and bookshelves about this, but very basically, what he defines each as is:

The Cue

This triggers your brain to do the behavior.

He writes: “It is a bit of information that predicts a reward. Our prehistoric ancestors were paying attention to cues that signaled the location of primary rewards like food, water, and sex. Today, we spend most of our time learning cues that predict secondary rewards like money and fame, power and status, praise and approval, love and friendship, or a sense of personal satisfaction.”

The Craving

This is the motivation, the force, the desire, the reason to act.

He writes: “What you crave is not the habit itself but the change in state it delivers. You do not crave smoking a cigarette, you crave the feeling of relief it provides. You are not motivated by brushing your teeth but rather by the feeling of a clean mouth. You do not want to turn on the television, you want to be entertained.”

The Response

This is the habit. It might be sitting at your desk at 8 p.m. every night and writing. It might be writing 250 words during lunch or waiting to pick up your kid from swim practice. It’s the habit.

“Whether a response occurs depends on how motivated you are and how much friction is associated with the behavior. If a particular action requires more physical or mental effort than you are willing to expend, then you won’t do it. Your response also depends on your ability. It sounds simple, but a habit can occur only if you are capable of doing it. If you want to dunk a basketball but can’t jump high enough to reach the hoop, well, you’re out of luck,” he writes.

The Reward

These are things that satisfy our craving.

He writes, “Rewards are the end goal of every habit. . . .We chase rewards because they serve two purposes: (1) they satisfy us and (2) they teach us.”

So, we sit down and write every day and eventually we get a book. That’s super simplified, but whatever.

There’s also that second part about how they teach us, right?

Clear writes, “Rewards teach us which actions are worth remembering in the future. Your brain is a reward detector. As you go about your life, your sensory nervous system is continuously monitoring which actions satisfy your desires and deliver pleasure. Feelings of pleasure and disappointment are part of the feedback mechanism that helps your brain distinguish useful actions from useless ones. Rewards close the feedback loop and complete the habit cycle.”

So, to build a habit, he says, to change your behavior, you want to think of each step (he calls them laws) to do the behaviors. The keys, he said are these (all direct from the post linked above and below):

It's pretty cool stuff, and you should probably check out his book or site if you're into this system and it rings true for you.

But for writers, especially,