By RJ Redden

Spring 2022. I'm driving home, radio low, one hand hovering over the blinker before I've even consciously decided to turn, because my body knows this route better than my brain does.

I come up on my usual Starbucks, read the sign, and do the sigh. Because I already know how this is gonna go. I’ll walk in, ask for my coffee, get The Face from the barista (kind, but useless), and walk back out holding whatever's closest on the menu. A consolation prize dressed up as a decision.

My favorite coffee is burnt butterscotch latte. And I do mean burnt: the kind that tastes like caramel that almost escaped the pan but didn't, sweet with a smoky shadow trailing right behind it. Starbucks makes a great one, but only in the fall.

So I'm sitting at a red light doing math on exactly how disappointed I'm about to be. And a thought saunters in sideways, hips first, like it already knows it's about to rearrange my whole life.

You see, I'd just started poking around with this GPT thing.

What if, instead of settling for whatever's next, I skipped the counter and ask AI how to build the drink myself?

I drove straight home, and my answer came back: butterscotch extract and a little liquid smoke, just enough to smell like trouble. I poured it over a shot of espresso still ticking hot from the machine and took a sip standing at my own kitchen counter. No barista, no apologetic face anywhere in sight. Burnt-sugar smell curling up out of the mug like it had been waiting just for me.

It worked. It actually worked. The whole mug tasted like a campfire had fallen hard for a butterscotch sundae. And somewhere behind my eyes, my brain cracked open like a jar giving up its seal.

If I can build one recipe this way, I thought, I can build more. The coffee shop stuff is always so boring anyway.The same fourteen syrups just wearing a different trench coat depending on the season. Surely I can do better than that…

Then One Recipe Turns Into a Hundred

So I went hunting for extracts, and not politely. Picture the counter of a woman who has fully lost her sense of reality: little glass soldiers of extract lined up like a spice rack that had a breakdown, vanilla and toffee crowded next to one bottle that just says “smoke #3” in Sharpie because I'd run out of names. My whole kitchen started smelling like a bakery that couldn't decide what it was baking.

I was off to the races, writing recipe after recipe, and somewhere around recipe number two, still cradling that first burnt butterscotch latte like a trophy, a second thought sat down right behind the first one.

This drink needed a real name, something that belonged to my world, the fantasy tavern I'd been building in my head for years called the Come Write Inn. A harmless project, right?

So I had GPT pitch me titles. I picked one. I had it pitch descriptions, then did what I always do. I took what it gave me, and marked it up in red pen

Then I kept going. A whole slate of coffees, each one carrying a name and a sliver of story poured right into the cup.

A hundred coffees later, that is still exactly how it works.

The Loop, Explained Like a Barista Who Can’t Quit

This is the part I need you to actually get, because it's the entire point. I do not take what the AI gives me and call it finished, not on coffee one, not on coffee ninety-four.

Think of it the way a judge on Chopped sends a plate back for missing the mark, except the plate is actually a paragraph. I ask GPT to write the description for a coffee called the Widow's Toast. Round one comes back.

It's fine. It's technically words in a row, just not words that sound like they came out of my mouth. So I send it back. I tell it exactly what's off and what needs to go. Round two comes back closer, but still not quite it. I cut a line here, sharpen a phrase there. Out that description comes again.

Four rounds. Six. Sometimes ten, if that recipe's being stubborn. Every pass, the only question that matters is whether the words are finally right. The answer is no, right up until the second it isn’t.

That's the loop, spelled out plain: draft, critique, resubmit. Then again. And again, until it's something I'd actually put my name on. The AI hands me the first draft. I'm the one doing the shaping, and somewhere in the back of my head Ted Allen is already clearing his throat to ask what inspired this coffee.

The point isn't the material. It's refusing to stop shaping the draft until the page is right.

Then the Pictures Started Talking Back

Chapter two of this saga: I had roughly ten coffees fully written and wanted images to go with them. GPT couldn't generate images yet, so I grabbed stock photos that were close enough and called it good for now. Flat and generic, tasting of nothing much at all. Understudies standing in for stars who hadn't yet been cast.

Then the day came. The tool could suddenly generate images, and I was at the stage door before it had even finished opening. I took the description already written for a coffee, fed it to AI, and asked for an image. What came back was so much closer than I’d ever been. My world went from two dimensions to three in as many seconds.

I saw it. My world. Right there on the screen. It’s that moment when you’ve been carrying something around with you so long, something that no one else had ever seen.

Then, because apparently I don't know the meaning of leaving well enough alone, I pushed one step further. I took the finished image and fed that back in too, asking a different question this time, one layer deeper than the coffee itself: tell me the story of how this exact picture came to be.

Out came an extended backstory nobody had asked for, lore behind the lore. Same loop, just a bit larger.

A Hundred Coffees Later, I Still Can't Stop

That loop is still running right now, today, probably while you're reading this. Every coffee in my world has a title, ingredients, a description, a backstory, a character sheet, and in some cases a whole time-shifted history of how it came to sit on that tavern's menu.

We’re in over a hundred coffees deep. Forty-seven extracts currently live on my kitchen counter, lined up like a chorus line waiting for their cue, right next to a coffee machine that runs most of the day. A shrine nobody asked me to build and everybody who visits comments on anyway.

It isn't finished.

New flavors keep showing up. And somewhere along the way they stopped being just coffees. Characters started climbing out of them, and whole places came trailing right behind, magic items and all.

Start With Something That Doesn't Matter

This is the idea I actually want you to walk away with. I started with something fun and harmless.

Nothing was going to explode if a coffee description flopped. No client was waiting on the other end of a bad latte name. People write throwaway coffee shop copy every day of the week. It's about as low-stakes as language gets, and that's exactly why it made a safe door to walk through.

I fully expected the whole experiment to go nowhere. If that had happened, I'd have shrugged and gone on with my Tuesday.

Instead, one silly, doesn't-matter-if-it-flops drink order turned into the spine that holds up my entire fictional world. I'd tried building this world by hand before, with tea and notebooks and big brave stabs at a “series bible”. I stalled every time.

It just felt too big. I never knew which wall to start painting first. What actually cracked the world open was smaller than any plan I'd ever tried: one small idea nobody would miss if it flopped. Looped on with zero pressure to be brilliant. Then my whole world snuck in sideways while I was busy naming a latte.

So tell me. What's your burnt butterscotch latte? The one small, doesn't-matter-if-it-flops thing sitting in your writing life right now that you could hand to AI, just to see what loops back at you. Drop it in the comments. I read every one, and I will absolutely have thoughts.

CALL TO ACTION

If you want your own kitchen-counter moment, the kitchen's open. I'm hosting a Free Week of my NO BS AI class: seven days, two real things built by your own hands, no coding required, and I’m here to help you through. https://nobsai.now/free-week

About RJ

RJ Redden is your digital fairy godmother for audience engagement. Her wand wields AI, chatbots, and augmented reality to create experiences so engaging, your readers will forget Netflix exists. She also speaks fluent human in a world obsessed with algorithms. Find her at The Come Write Inn.com. This article was edited with AI assistance, because this fairy godmother believes in using every tool in the workshop — ethically and transparently.

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(Even When You’re Using Deep POV Correctly)

By Susan Watts

Recently, I found myself staring at a scene in my current work-in-progress, wondering why it wasn't working.

On paper, it should have been one of the strongest emotional scenes in the chapter. The stakes were high, and I'd woven visceral reactions and interiority (click here to read my blog on interiority) throughout the scene. If you're unfamiliar with those terms, visceral reactions are the body's immediate, involuntary response to emotion, while interiority reveals the character's private thoughts and interpretation of what's happening. Together, they create the emotional closeness that makes deep POV so immersive.

Those techniques helped transform my writing, which is why the problem I was having with this  chapter surprised me.

Every time I reread it, I found myself strangely disconnected. The emotion was obvious, yet the scene never quite came alive. My first instinct was to do add more internal thoughts, more physical reactions, and more explanation about why the moment mattered.

The chapter grew longer, but it didn't become more engaging.

Only later did I realize I wasn't dealing with a lack of emotion. I had become so focused on making sure readers understood what my character felt that I'd stopped paying attention to whether those emotions actually changed as the scene unfolded.

That realization completely altered the way I approach scene revision.

The Problem Wasn't a Lack of Emotion

When critique partners say a scene needs more emotion, we often assume the character lacks feeling. Occasionally that's true. Stronger visceral reactions, deeper interiority, or more specific emotional language can absolutely strengthen a scene.

But I've started noticing another problem. Sometimes the emotion is already on the page, yet it never changes.

Looking back, my character spent nearly the entire scene with the same emotion. She began the chapter afraid and ended it in much the same emotional place. Only then did I realize I'd never stopped to ask whether that fear was evolving. Every meaningful scene needs its own emotional arc because those small shifts eventually build the larger character arc readers remember.

That discovery reminded me of something I've watched hundreds of times while teaching martial arts.

Students spend a great deal of time perfecting their stance, as they should. However, standing in a technically perfect stance isn't enough to win a fight. As your opponent changes distance, rhythm, or strategy, your body should adapt. If you remain frozen in the same position simply because it's technically correct, you eventually lose the exchange.

The stance exists so you can move.

Emotion works much the same way.

I've come to think of this as emotional movement—the gradual change in a character's understanding that reshapes how they experience events. A scene's emotional arc isn't about changing emotions for the sake of variety but allowing that understanding to evolve. A character may begin and end a scene feeling fear, yet if they understand that fear differently by the final page, the emotional arc has moved.

Interestingly, I rarely think about emotional movement while drafting my manuscript. At that stage, I'm still discovering the story. It's during revision that I begin asking whether the emotion changes from the beginning of a scene to the end, because that's when I can finally see whether the emotional arc is actually working.

Real Emotions Rarely Stay Still

Think about the last time you waited for news that mattered. Maybe it was a response from an agent, medical test results, or a difficult conversation you couldn't avoid.

Did you experience one emotion the entire time?

Probably not.

Hope gave way to doubt. Confidence slipped into worry. Every new possibility subtly changed how you interpreted the situation, even before anything actually happened.

Real emotions rarely remain fixed because our understanding keeps changing.

Readers respond to characters in much the same way. They aren't seeking stronger emotions. They're looking for emotions that evolve.

The Question That Changed My Revision Process

As I worked through that problem scene, I realized I'd been asking the wrong revision question.

For years, I'd asked myself:

How does my character feel?

It had always been a useful question because it pushed me toward deeper interiority.But this time, it wasn't enough. So I replaced it with a different question:

What is my character discovering?

That simple shift transformed everything.

Once I dug beneath the surface, I realized the scene wasn't really about immediate danger. It was about a previous failure my character had never forgiven herself for. The external conflict hadn't changed, but its meaning had. Suddenly the fear had somewhere to go because her understanding had shifted.

Meaning Creates Emotion

That revision taught me something I hadn't fully appreciated before.

Readers connect more with the character’s interpretation of events rather than the events themselves. Meaning acts like a filter between the event and the emotion. Two characters can experience exactly the same situation and leave with completely different emotional responses because each brings unique fears, beliefs, expectations, and history into the moment.

I've started thinking about emotional scenes as a simple progression:

Event → Meaning → Emotion → Action

As the character’s perception changes, so does the meaning. And the emotion naturally follows. That's where emotional movement begins.

Imagine two writers receiving the same rejection letter. One shrugs, files it away, and immediately sends another query. The other stares at the email long after the screen goes dark.

The rejection itself isn't different.

The meaning is.

Perhaps the second writer has spent years wondering whether they're talented enough. Or they promised themselves this manuscript would finally prove they belonged. The emotional weight comes from everything the rejection represents rather than the rejection itself.

Characters experience events the same way. A missed phone call, a failed test, or a broken promise only becomes emotionally significant because of what they represent to that particular character.

Sometimes the Emotion Is Hiding in the Character's World

One of my favorite revision techniques is to stop looking at the character for a moment and start looking at what they're noticing. Emotion changes perception.

A recently divorced woman notices the empty chair at the kitchen table.

A grieving father notices the school photograph attached to the refrigerator.

A detective notices the unlocked window.

The room hasn't changed. The character has.

I've found that what a character notices often reveals more emotion than a detailed explanation of their feelings. It also allows readers to participate in the experience by drawing conclusions for themselves instead of being told exactly what to think.

What Finally Fixed My Scene

The solution wasn't adding more visceral reactions, another paragraph of interiority, or stronger emotional language. It was allowing the character's emotional understanding to change.

That didn't mean rewriting every sentence. It meant looking for the places where her new awareness should naturally appear. Once I knew what had shifted internally, I found myself revising her thoughts, her observations, her decisions, and even the way she interpreted other people's words. Those changes weren't separate revisions. They all grew out of the emotional movement happening beneath the surface.

Although I added very little emotion to the page, the emotional impact rose dramatically. What changed was the direction the emotion moved.

If Readers Want More Emotion...

My scene revision process now begins with one question: Has the character's understanding changed from the beginning of the scene to the end? Once I know that answer, revising the prose becomes much easier.

When a scene feels emotionally flat, these are the questions I return to:

• What is my character discovering in this scene?
• How has their understanding changed by the end?
• What does this event now mean to them personally?

I've found those questions far more useful than simply trying to add more emotion. Once I understand the character's emotional movement, the rest of the revision usually follows naturally.

Have you ever revised a scene that contained plenty of visceral reactions and interiority, yet still felt emotionally flat?
If so, what finally unlocked it?

About Susan

Under the pen name Michelle Allums, Susan Watts has authored a young adult urban fantasy titled, The Jade Amulet and is currently writing the sequel. Her short stories are also included in the anthologies Christmas Roses and Forever and Always.

Susan has dedicated over four decades to training in multiple martial arts styles and holds the impressive title of a five-time US Karate Alliance world black belt fighting grand champion. Through her karate school, she is able to impart martial arts and life skills. Susan also incorporates her martial arts knowledge into her writing.

An avid triathlete, she keeps in shape by running, biking, and swimming. She lives in the country with her husband, where they raise animals and enjoy being outdoors. Susan also has three grown children and numerous grandchildren. In addition, she is a CPA and VP of finance for a company in her hometown. 

You can connect with Susan on social media or her website.

Featured picture from Canva Magic Media. Extra picture: Susan Watts

by Tari Lynn Jewett

I’m a rule follower. That person who stops at a stop sign, even though there’s no one around… that’s me. I won’t use the ten items or less check-out line with eleven items, even if I have eleven chocolate bars, and I never return my library books late. Well, there was that one time, but I paid my fines and stayed away from the library for more than a year out of shame.

And yet, I have been known to break a few rules. (Don’t tell my parents. Wait, don’t tell my kids!) Sometimes I knew the rules and made a choice, and I’ll admit, sometimes I just didn’t know the rules.

As a writer, (even if you’re not a ‘writer’) there are an overabundance of rules, and I’m likely to break a few in the approximately thousand words of this post. There are punctuation and spelling rules, formatting rules, rules for non-fiction and rules for fiction. There are rules specific to the genre you write, rules of business and etiquette, marketing rules. And to make it more challenging, every now and then the rules change! One of the most basic rules. Write What You Know.

I’ve told this story before, but here it is.

I never considered myself a writer. I mean I wrote. Writing has been my passion since…well, always, but a writer, or maybe I should say A WRITER was someone special, someone with magical power that could transport you to other worlds, someone who offered you the opportunity to live other lives. I just wrote.

So, at twenty-one years old with a nine-month-old baby, I decided that I had all of the answer to parenthood, and that I’d write a parenting column for our local newspaper, The Butterfield Express. (Why yes, I do write in run-on sentences…it’s also how I talk!)

I wrote several sample columns, walked into the offices of The Butterfield Express, and asked to speak to the editor. That was probably the first rule I broke. I didn’t send a query letter, I didn’t make an appointment, I just walked in and asked to speak to an editor. But I didn’t know any better, and they gave me the column.

The second rule that I broke was – Write What You Know.

I’ll give myself credit for thinking I was writing something I knew, but I’ll admit it was pretty naïve. More than forty years later, after raising three boys you couldn’t pay me enough to write a parenting column. I KNOW that I don’t know.

But I wrote that column, and I’m glad it was before the internet, because I’ll be happy if those columns are never seen again! More importantly, I learned a few things about writing and working with a publisher.

What I didn’t learn was that you didn’t walk into an editor’s office unannounced and ask for a column on a topic in which you really had no expertise, so…

…a few years later, I decided I wanted to write a consumer law column for The Moreno Valley News. Despite having no law degree, no legal background of any kind…unless dating a lawyer counts, and being told no one would give me a law column, I prepared several sample columns and marched into the offices of The Moreno Valley News and asked to see an editor.

Maybe I didn’t learn anything from my first experience, because I made the exact same mistakes. I didn’t make an appointment, and I didn’t Write What I Knew.

But they gave me the column, and I probably learned more from this experience.

The third column I wrote was a cooking column for The Antelope Valley Press Enterprise; no, this time I didn’t walk into the office with an envelope of samples and ask to see an editor. This time, the editor called me by accident. Yes, it was a wrong number phone call, and I took the opportunity to pitch a food column…but I still wasn’t writing what I knew. At this point I had a handful of recipes in my repertoire, and they all contained some flavor of cream of -insert a flavor here- soup. Yes, I got the column, and once again, I wrote what I didn’t know.

Making an appointment to see an editor instead of walking into their office unannounced, is probably a rule that should be followed. I might have gotten lucky…twice.

But, writing what you know is a rule that can be broken.

Writing what you know is intrinsic. It’s going to happen while you write, and knowing your subject well, whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction gives it depth, and helps the reader to connect with your words.

Writing what you don’t know offers an opportunity to explore things you’re curious about, and build new areas of knowledge, and can help your readers to do the same.

I no longer write for magazines and newspaper, my focus is fiction, and while I definitely write about what I know, and my experiences and those others have share appear in all of my stories, I also write about what I don’t know. It’s the curiosity about the things that I don’t know that make me dig deeper, that send me looking for more.

And if we all wrote what we knew, there would be no vampire stories, no Little Mermaid, Captain Kirk wouldn’t have had what is basically a flip phone today…because they didn’t exist and the writer couldn’t have KNOWN them. It’s our imaginations that build a story.

So, write what you know…and write what you don’t.

What rules have you broken and still won?

About Tari Lynn Jewett

Tari Lynn Jewett lives off Route 66 with her husband of 37 years. They have three amazing sons, a board game designer, a sound engineer and a musician. For over fifteen years she wrote freelance for magazines and newspapers, wrote television commercials, radio spots, numerous press releases, and many, MANY PTA newsletters. As much as she loved writing those things, she always wanted to write fiction . . . and now she is.

She also believes in happily ever after . . . because she’s living hers.

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