Writers in the Storm

Tired of every writing guru offering conflicting advice? They say: Write what you love. No, write to market. Pick one genre. Diversify. Maybe you've tried an approach and readers love those stories—but you hate writing them. Or maybe you've tried them all with little success. Here's what every guru misses: their approach fails if you don't write with authenticity and emotional resonance. I get it. But telling you to write what matters to you is confusing because the phrase doesn’t mean what you think.

Your Roadmap

This process works best when your timeline looks similar to this:

1. Week 1: Complete all the mining exercises without judging the results
2. Week 2: Choose your strongest emotional material and practice the distance techniques
3. Week 3: Translate one experience into three different story scenarios
4. Week 4: Write a scene from your strongest scenario and test it with a beta reader

Don't rush this. Authentic writing develops over time as you get comfortable accessing and translating your emotional truth.

What “Write What Matters to You" Actually Means

The biggest misconception about what an authentic story is that it must be based on a literal experience, an autobiographical retelling.

It's Not Just Autobiography

If writing stories that matter to you means they must be based on literal personal experience, take a step back and look again. Just think how limited our stories would be if we only wrote things from "real life."

Then if it's not literal experiences, what creates a meaningful story? The answer lies in emotional truths and five types of personal connections that tap into emotions we all feel in our lives.

Emotional Truth vs. Factual Truth

Fictional stories aren’t meaningful because of factual accuracy but from the heartfelt feelings expressed through the story. More than the specific action, plot, or characters, a story's meaning is in the themes, the emotions and the questions raised.

You don't owe readers your literal experiences. Focus on capturing the heart of your feelings rather than factual details. Give yourself permission to lie about everything except feelings. The childhood terror of hearing your parents fight at 2 AM can become a space station crew facing system failures in the dark. Different facts, same fear of powerlessness and impending disaster.

Remember, as a fiction writer, you’re not writing your memoir or autobiography. You are a translator of real human emotions into stories that fulfill your readers’ needs, whether that’s entertainment, escape, or understanding.

Personal Connection

Every human on Earth has emotions, values and beliefs, persistent questions, fascinations and experiences with injustice. These connect us. They cross genders, cultures, nationalities, and genres. And it's not just big emotions—it's the complexity, the contradictory feelings that push and pull us—and make us human. (Yes, there are exceptions, but these connections apply to most people.)

Example:

On the surface, Iron Man is a superhero movie filled with over-the-top action scenes. None of us believe the Iron Man is real. And if the story were only about the Iron Man's superhuman feats, it would be entertaining, but it would not be the same story. It’s Tony Stark's transformation from arrogant rich boy inventor to a hero protecting others from harm that plucks our heartstrings. The emotional impact of his near-death experience challenges his arrogance and forces him to face the devastation his weapons wreak on people, which becomes the source of his deep, unrelenting guilt, which motivates him to be more selfless. Yet, his arrogance remains a challenge for him in later stories, and each time he confronts it, he learns to see the larger picture and to grow from this knowledge. The story speaks to the universal desire for the courage to face one's own worst self and become a better person. Notice how the writers didn’t need to experience weapon-manufacturing guilt. They understood the genuine emotion of realizing your life’s work has hurt people, and used that to tell the story of the billionaire named Tony Stark.

So how do you systematically find these connections in your own life? There are specific areas where everyone has material worth mining.

Types of Personal Connections

There are five basic areas in your life that you can mine for story ideas:

Emotional experiences grief, triumph, betrayal, discovery, alienation from others—your experience is the starting point.

Core values and beliefs help you understand why those emotions matter—what was threatened or affirmed.

Persistent questions come from your inner tension between what happened and what you believe should happen.

Fascinations often point to the genres or themes where you can best explore these questions.

Injustices provide the outside problems that make rankle you.

Now that you know the five connection types, let’s address your concerns about marketing realities and sharing too much.

Balancing Genuine Feelings with Marketing Realities

This doesn’t mean ignoring your audience or genre expectations. How do you balance the two? Find where your real-life emotions overlap with themes your readers crave. Romance readers want stories about vulnerability and trust. These are emotions you can mine even if you’ve never experienced lost love or a love triangle. Thriller readers want stories about betrayal and survival. You might have experienced these feelings during a difficult job situation or friendship. 

Ask yourself:

What emotions does my chosen genre explore? Then, look at your personal connections to see which ones naturally fit. Don’t force a mismatch. And don’t assume your emotions won’t work.

Using Personal Connections without Being Too Personal

If you think your life isn't interesting enough or something is too personal to share, you're taking the idea of using personal connection too literally. Personal connections can open truly meaningful story material by giving you access to genuine emotions. More than that, instead of being limited to what actually happened to you, you can explore those emotional connections through any setting, time period, character, or genre you choose.

Example:

Say you're haunted by a moment when you realized your parents weren't the heroes you thought they were. You don't write about your specific disillusionment—your dad's gambling or your mother's drinking. Instead, you might create a historical story where a deputy who idolizes his boss learns the sheriff is on the take. Or you could create a fantasy about an apprentice to the wizard who is secretly controlling the evil overlord. The same deep feelings of betrayal and shattered trust in a completely different context.

Even if you never had anything "interesting" happen, you had some pivotal event(s) and feelings or values that came from that event. Maybe you were ten and your parents had another baby. Or you got a haircut you didn't like. The events themselves do not have to be exotic or exciting. 

Tapping into one or all five connection types offers rich material for authentic storytelling, regardless of your genre or writing style. The key is to recall pivotal moments in your life and to identify the gut feelings you had at the time of the event.

Mining Your Life for Story Material

You might be thinking, 'This sounds great in theory, but where do I actually find this meaningful material in my own life?' The truth is, you already have everything you need. The experiences, values, and emotions that will fuel your most authentic stories are already there—you just need the right tools to uncover them.

The Experience Inventory

To uncover authentic emotions from your life, list positive and negative experiences without judgment. These can be big emotion moments or a mundane experience that sticks with you. How do you uncover these?

Try this:

1. Set a timer for 15 minutes.
2. List experiences that still trigger emotions when you remember them.
3. Include three categories: moments of intense feelings, times your values were tested, and situations that still puzzle you.
4. Write one sentence about how it felt in your body.

You’ll end up with a mix of big and small moments that still have an emotional charge. Once you have identified your authentic material through these exercises, the next challenge is turning personal emotions into storytelling fiction. For the next part, choose your three strongest reactions for the next step.

Find the Universal in the Personal

Now you'll identify the emotions associated with that experience. Yes, I said emotions plural. Emotions are complex. They grow out of our cultural expectations, environmental influences, parental examples, our personal history, our individual personalities, and the unique details of the situation. We often think of emotions as something in our hearts or in our minds, but emotions are psychological, behavioral, and physical.

Dig a little deeper and for each experience:

1. Write a sentence about what you wanted in the moment
2. Write about what you were afraid would happen next.

Dig deep. Use the granular details of your experience as the foundation for your character and her reactions, and it will resonate with your readers regardless of genre or setting.

Ask:

"What was this really about?" for each of your three strongest reactions.

For example: getting lost as a child might really be about trust, independence, or fear of abandonment. Winning the science fair in fifth grade might be about self-esteem or proving yourself to your parents or teachers or a desire to make your parents happy.

Create Distance for Perspective

Most of us can't be clear-headed about the positive or negative events in our lives. But in order to write effective and compelling scenes, we need to be able to remove ourselves from the emotions we wish to mine. Need more distance?

Try one or more of these exercises:

1. Change the character's gender, age, the time period, or genre.
2. Brainstorm metaphors or symbols that represent those experiences.
3. Try writing the experience with elements from fantasy such as witches and warlocks or swordsmen and women or dragons.
4. Change the setting to another planet or spaceship or change to a culture or country that is quite different from your own.

If those exercises give you story ideas, wonderful. Keep writing. Or, if you've gotten the distance you needed to treat your character and story as something other than yourself, you can return to your original setting and characters with a fresh perspective.

Values-Based Story Generation

Another way to mine your life for story material is to identify your top five core values. What are values, you ask?

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines values as "something (such as a principle or quality) intrinsically valuable or desirable."

To clarify what your values are:

1. Set a timer for 15 minutes.
2. List what makes you genuinely angry (not annoyed—angry).
3. List what you’d fight to protect
4. Identify your top five core values from these lists.

Don't worry if it seems you have conflicting values or beliefs. We humans are complex creatures full of contradictions. Besides, conflicting values or deeply held beliefs that cause guilt or indecision and internal or external pressure create compelling stories.

Dig a little deeper:

1. Create a situation where these values are tested, threatened, or triumphant.
2. Create characters who represent or test these values.

The "What If" Bridge

Your fascination with questions that don't have an answer can power a story that explores the question. Questions like: Is there such a thing as free will? What is love? Is true justice possible? Use the question that nags you when you can't sleep or you're bored and supply your characters with the conflicting answers. Stories that ask these questions without coming to a conclusive answer are often very powerful.

How do you get started? Take real emotions/situations and ask, "What if this happened in a different world/time/circumstance?"

Example:

You feel overlooked at work—colleagues ignore your suggestions, you’re not invited to important meetings, etc. Now ask, “What if?” What if a character could literally become invisible but discovers that being unseen is worse than being ignored? What if a whole society of invisible people existed? What if becoming visible again required facing exactly why you wanted to disappear? Same emotional starting point, multiple story possibilities. 

Excavating Childhood Obsessions

Rediscovering the things you were obsessed with as a child may provide your writer brain with rich story materials.

List five things you loved before the age of twelve. For each, ask: what emotional need did this fill? For example:

• dinosaurs and dragons (the need to feel powerful when the world sees you as helpless and small), 
• building forts (the need to feel safe when your environment is unsafe)
• collecting and organizing things (the need to control small pieces of the world when everything feels chaotic).

Once you’ve identified your childhood obsession and its emotional need, ask:

• How do I seek the same feeling today?
• When do I feel most frustrated in adult life? (Often, that indicates a need isn’t being met.)
• What could happen to a character if that need was threatened or completely fulfilled?

Your childhood obsession can become your emotional GPS for writing stories with themes and conflicts that will always matter to you as a writer and ultimately to your readers as well.

Crafting Authentic Stories from Personal Material

Once you've identified your most powerful emotional material, you face a new challenge: How do you turn deeply personal experiences into universal stories that resonate with readers who haven't lived your specific life? The answer lies in learning to be both vulnerable and strategic in your storytelling choices.

Avoiding the Therapy Session Trap

Stories aren't journals—they need structure, conflict, and resolution. Transform personal pain into character arcs that both reach into the reader’s heart and serve the story, not just your healing process. Guideline: If it was only meaningful to you, it's not ready to be a story yet.

The difference? A journal entry says, "My divorce was devastating." A story shows a character discovering strength they never knew they had when forced to rebuild their life from scratch. Same emotional territory, but one serves readers while the other only serves you.

The Character Filter Method

Instead of writing about yourself, create characters who face your fears or embody your questions. Give them different backgrounds, personalities, and choices than you'd make. Let them teach you something new about your own experiences.

This isn't about hiding from your emotions—it's about exploring them through fresh perspectives. When your protagonist makes choices you never would, you discover new aspects of the situation that your personal involvement originally blinded you to.

Creating distance through characters is just the first step. You also need to ensure your personal material connects with readers who haven't lived your specific experiences.

Balancing Personal and Universal

Start with what matters to you, then find ways to make readers care too. Include relatable human experiences alongside your unique perspective. Use beta readers to test the success of your story’s emotions: Do they connect emotionally, even if they haven't shared your specific experience?

The goal isn't for readers to have lived your life. It's for them to recognize the emotions you've translated into fiction and think, "Yes, I know exactly what that feels like," even if their version happened completely differently.

Warning Signs

The warning signs that you're too close to your material: you write long backstory explanations that don't advance the plot. Your character makes only the choices you made, with the same reasoning you used. You get defensive when readers don't interpret scenes the way you intended. When this happens, step back and create more distance using the techniques above.

The Passion Test

If you could write only one more story, what would it be about? That answer reveals what truly matters to you as a writer.

Signs you're not writing what matters:

• boredom during writing
• forcing yourself to continue
• caring more about word count than story quality.

Making This Work Across Genres

Focusing on genuine emotions will work in every genre. Here are a few examples:

Literary Fiction: focuses on emotional experiences and persistent questions. Your character's internal journey mirrors your own emotional discoveries.

Romance: mine your core values about relationships and your fascinations with connection. The external plot comes from threatening those values.

Thriller/Mystery: use your experiences with injustice and your fears. What makes you feel powerless? That's your character's external threat.

Fantasy/Sci-Fi: Your fascinations become world-building elements. Your persistent questions become the philosophical core that grounds fantastical elements in human truth.

Understanding how this works across genres is helpful, but you also need to recognize when you are successfully writing from your core emotions.

How You’ll Know It’s Working

Even when you know you’re doing these exercises for story ideas, it’s often difficult work that can feel disconnected from your actual writing. But there are ways to know.

Signs you’re writing authentically:

• You feel energized during writing sessions instead of drained
• You discover new things about your character mid-scene.
• Beta readers use emotion words in feedback (heartbreaking, inspiring, thrilling, I felt that)
• You write longer than planned because you’re engaged
• Readers mention specific moments or scenes that “felt real.”

Just as there are signs it’s working, there are warning signs.

Signs you’ve drifted away from the genuine emotions:

• Writing feels like you’re going through the motions
• You’re checking word count more than story progress
• Characters feel like puppets saying and doing what you say
• Beta readers say things like, “Well-written but didn’t connect with me.”

Overcoming Common Obstacles

Even when you develop a solid understanding of these techniques, you may hit some predictable obstacles. Here are the most common ones and how to push through them.

You Feel Stuck

It’s okay. We all get stuck. Look at why you’re stuck and what you can do to get unstuck.

For example:

• Problem: Nothing feels story-worthy.
  • Solution: You’re judging too quickly. Take your most “boring” experience and ask: what was at stake emotionally? A bad haircut might reveal fears about acceptance or identity. 
• Problem: My authentic emotions don’t fit my genre
  • Solution: You may be focusing on surface tropes rather than underlying themes. Every genre explores human emotions. Look deeper at your genre to find the themes and what emotions are behind it.
• Problem: I have lots of emotions, but I can’t turn them into a story.
  • Solution: You’re skipping the translation step. Don’t recreate the experience—go back through the steps outlined in “Balancing Personal and Universal.”

My Life Isn't Interesting Enough

Every life contains universal human experiences. Ordinary moments often resonate more than dramatic ones. The quiet devastation of realizing your best friend has been talking behind your back hits harder than most thriller plots because everyone has felt that betrayal.

Stop measuring your experiences against movie plots. Start measuring them against human truth.

It's Too Personal to Share

You control how much to reveal through fiction techniques. Start with safer material and build courage. Remember, readers respond to emotional honesty, not the facts of your life story. You can write about abandonment without revealing who abandoned you or when.

Fear of Judgment

Remember: opening up to your emotions creates a connection with your readers. Your specific truth will resonate with someone who needs to hear it. The stories that feel most risky to share are often the ones that help others feel less alone.

Writing with Purpose

Meaningful stories come from a genuine connection with your own experiences and values. Readers sense when you care about what you're writing—passion is contagious, and authenticity is magnetic. When you write from your emotional core, you give readers permission to care deeply too.

The stories only you can tell are the ones the world needs most. Not because your experiences are unique, but because your particular way of understanding and translating human experience through fiction is one-of-a-kind. Every reader who connects with your authentic voice is finding a piece of themselves reflected back—and that's the real magic of stories that matter.

Your Next Step

But understanding this magic isn't enough. You have everything you need—now you need to act.

Start with one small thing that matters to you and build from there. Maybe it's a moment of unexpected kindness from a stranger, or the weight of keeping a family secret, or the specific loneliness of moving to a new city. Whatever it is, dig into the emotions beneath the facts.

Here's what to do right now: choose one exercise from this guide and complete it today. Set a timer for 15 minutes and begin with whichever exercise feels easiest. The Experience Inventory works well for most writers because everyone has experiences that still carry an emotional charge.

Once you've completed your first exercise, commit to the four-week timeline. Mark it on your calendar. Share it with an accountability partner.

Every day you postpone this work is another day those stories stay locked inside, unable to help the readers who need them most. Your authentic voice isn't just nice to have—it's essential. The world has enough generic stories. It needs yours.

Start today.

Do you find it harder to identify meaningful material from your own life, or to translate that material into compelling story scenarios once you've found it?

About Lynette

Lynette M. Burrows is an author, blogger, writing coach, and Yorkie wrangler. She survived moving seventeen times between kindergarten and her high school graduation. Her stories weave her experiences into speculative fiction stories that balance character growth with thrilling action and social themes.

Her Fellowship Dystopia series has been described as intense and gripping. Book One, My Soul to Keep, and Book Two, If I Should Die, are available at your favorite online book seller. Book Three, And When I Wake, will be published in late 2025.

When Lynette’s not writing she avoids housework and plays with her two yorkies. They live in Dorothy’s home state of Kansas. You can follow Lynette on her website or her Facebook page or Sign up for her newsletter.

by James R. Preston

In 1961 Marlboro Cigarettes promised that "It's What's Up Front That Counts" iin a magazine ad, and, while the ad featuring a smirking woman holding a smoke with a filter is (mercifully) gone, if it’s that thought that counts then possibly some up-front information will help readers navigate your novel. 

In other words, a . . . 

Table of Contents

Definition 

Later we’ll get to what Wikipedia has to say. I know it’s traditional to start with a definition, for a lot of good reasons, we’ll get to it later. Quite a bit later, in fact. 

Dune

“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.”

Princess Irulan

The Princess was right. Starting your story is important; if it weren’t the countless How-To Write books would not always say things like grab the reader’s attention early, and even before that first sentence there’s the up front material that can also help hook the reader and let them know what they’re in for. 

A Table of Contents is a pre-organizer, a guide for your readers. Back in the day, potential readers standing in front of a shelf in a bookstore could look at a TOC to get a clue about the book’s structure. Not all novels have this sort of up-front skeleton, in some cases the structure is hidden and reveals itself as the story progresses. We have an example of this later in this essay. 

So, a TOC is a structure, but there are many different approaches, just as a mid-century house has a very different look from one of the Victorian “painted ladies” in San Francisco.

Do you need to tell the reader the structure ahead of time?

Yes . . . and no. 

You saw that one coming, didn’t you? 

Do you need an overriding structure?

Insert previous answer. 

First, some boundaries. This essay is about novels. Nonfiction works are a different kettle of fish, with different requirements.

“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.”

Right. Thanks, Princess. When I started this essay I felt I needed a structure. Searching for a structure I started thinking about old friends, not the flesh-and-blood kind, but the ones that live between covers and begin “Once upon a time.”

Now from Dune to 007: 

Goldfinger 

“Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago. The first time is happenstance, the second time coincidence, and the third time is enemy action.”

Ok, that works for a discussion of ways to structure your novel. 

Happenstance 

This is an interesting one. Look at Robert B. Parker’s Spenser books. Each chapter is about the same length, and usually one scene. This approach does several things for the writer and the reader. For the writer you don’t have to worry about when to break for the next chapter; it comes naturally. The result is a series of chapters of approximately the same length. So the readers know what to expect, making it a bit easier to decide whether or not to stay up and read a little more. (Most of us, including me, always answer that question “Sure, a few more pages.”) But with Spenser, Hawk, and Susan you have an idea how long “a few more pages” will be. 

So, you want a straightforward structure — Chapter One, Chapter Two and so on. There are two ways to approach it. The first is to list the chapters and page numbers in a Table of Contents at the front of the book. The second is to skip that and let the Chapters reveal themselves to the reader. 

Coincidence 

Many novels are a series of chapters, given names to pique interest. Take a look at Dumas’ The Three Musketeers which opens with “The Three Presents of D’Artagnan The Elder.” I know the purists among you (and I know you’re out there) will say, “Wait, The Three Musketeers was published as a serial in a newspaper, something different.” Well, yes, but the chapters live in our books today. Cut me a little slack. It’s one of my favorite novels and I saw a chance to include it. 

Look at Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons in Chemistry. There’s no Table of Contents, but there are chapters and each one is named. I personally like this kind of structure. It provides the reader with a clue as to what’s coming next, and — I’m speculating here but I bet I’m right — it’s kind of fun for the writer. “How much should I give away in the chapter title?” But the reader doesn’t get to see them all at once. 

Books that take place over a short period of time have a natural built-in structure: Monday, Tuesday, and so on. For example, F. Paul Wilson in Bloodline uses a TOC divided into days, with each day broken into Chapter One, and so on. So there’s Monday, followed by Chapters 1 - 10, Tuesday followed by Chapters 1 -12. F. Paul Wilson does this in several of his Repairman Jack thrillers. 

Quick review:

• Table of Contents with Chapter One, and so on, and page numbers. 
• Table of Contents with Chapter One, and so on, with names for each chapter.
• Chapters, with or without names, not listed in a TOC. 

Enemy Action 

The Andromeda Strain

Micael Crichton does the opposite. He divides The Andromeda Strain into days, and the days into chapter, but the numbering continues. In other words, Day One has Chapters 1-4 and Day 2 starts with Chapter 5.

Another Crichton, with another interesting structure,

Jurassic Park

No TOC..

“First Iteration” “At the earliest drawings of the fractal curve, few clues to the underlying mathematical structure will be seen.”

--Ian Malcolm 

“Second iteration. . . 

This structure says plainly that trouble is brewing. 

The Definition 

And now for Wikipedia

A table of contents is an ordered list of a document's sections, chapters, or topics and their corresponding page numbers, typically placed at the beginning of a long document like a book or report. Its purpose is to provide readers with an organized overview of the content and act as a navigation tool to quickly find specific information. You can create a table of contents by using a word processor's built-in feature,

“Hey, Siri, gimme a Table of Contents .” (Aka “Look, Ma, no hands!”)

Keystroke the document in Word, insert the appropriate tags, push a button and viola! Your TOC presents itself. 

Send me the doc and my PC can read it aloud to me while I drive to work. Back home, the AI can offer an opinion on the story, maybe along the lines of “all right plot but the characters are mechanical.” (It’s possible that AIs are not that good at irony. Yet.) My feelings on this are outside the scope of this essay, so I’ll just say that I regard the decisions that go into creating a structure as part of the creative process and best left to the author. 

So, when you start your novel, you have some choices to make. 

1. Build the Table of Contents including titles, and the structure first, then fill in the missing pieces. Advantages: you think about the whole thing and see the parts. Disadvantage: you may very well find that one of your beloved chapter titles simply doesn’t fit and that you must get rid of it. Oh, the pain! 

2. Type “Chapter One” and you’re on your way. Advantage: not a lot of up-front musing about the parts of the book. Disadvantage: you are faced with the dreaded, “What happens next?” over and over again.

3. Let the chapters reveal themselves. The advantage is the same as the disadvantage: you are letting your subconscious do the work but you aren’t aware yet.

Finally a few stories of my own adventures with structure. In my first thriller I had great chapters worked out, but after I wrote it something nagged at me, and it wouldn’t let go. The TOC actually helped, providing an overview, and then it hurt because that overview showed clearly that one chapter, one of my favorites, a piece of work that explained one of my characters, that sparkled but simply didn’t belong. The story didn’t need it, and the chapter head showed me. 

In one of my later books I used chapters and gave each one a name and, you know what? It made the work more enjoyable (I called one of the chapters With a Little Help From My Friends and it gave me a chuckle).

So let’s sum up. 

A Table of Contents can be an up-front organizer, and most often it is. It can also be revealed as the reader progresses through the story. It can be straightforward— Chapter One, and so on. It can be straightforward with names — Chapter One, The Three Presents of of D’Artagnan The Elder. As a writer you can create it first, or as you write, or add it on after you have a draft. 

It could be assembled by an AI, but why you would want to turn that important part of the creative process over to a machine, particularly a machine whose word-play is literal (anything but playful) is beyond me.

Now it’s your turn.

How do you build your TOCs? What flavor do you prefer? Have you used such a pre-organizer to identify parts of the story that need work or need to be removed? Have you encountered other structures in your reading and writing? What worked for you?

Always remember we are all in this together and I guarantee that other ink-stained wretches will benefit from your sharing.

About James

James R. Preston is the author of the multiple-award-winning Surf City Mysteries. He is currently at work on the sixth, called Remains To Be Seen. His most recent works are Crashpad and Buzzkill, two historical novellas set in the 1960’s at Cal State Long Beach. Kirkus Reviews called Buzzkill “A historical thriller enriched by characters who sparkle and refuse to be forgotten.” His books are collected as part of the California Detective Fiction collection at the University of California Berkeley. 

Find out more about James at his website.

Studying published novels, movies, and TV series episodes to improve your own works of fiction

by Lisa Miller

I’m a story junkie. Always looking for powerful elements in the books I’m reading, or movies or TV shows I’m watching. 

The Power of Breaking Down Stories

My desire to break down books and movies came out of necessity. I got overwhelmed when I tried writing fiction. A novel felt like this complicated concoction of characters and story elements. It was so BIG, daunting.

Then I discovered Four-Part Story Structure and realized dealing with these smaller, one-quarter chunks, of a novel were much easier to manage. That eventually led me to create my Story Structure Safari class. Guiding students through the four parts of a story. 

I later created my Creating a Constellation of Characters to Inhabit Your Story or Series to add focus on character creation and development and relationships in stories. 

Personal Explorations of Creative Guides

I’m a practical teacher. Find examples from successful writers or filmmakers. Study what an effective scene or character looks like on the page or in a show. 

During my classes, I ask students to find a book that is similar to what you are writing or wanting to write. It might also be a TV show or series episode, or a movie that may have characters, a plot, tone, setting, time- period or other elements that resonate with them. I call these books, shows, or movies Creative Guides. 

I ask my Constellation students to reflect on how their Creative Guide author/movie/episode may have handled a particular element we are studying in the lessons.

One powerful answer I got:

“There was so much conflict in the scene. It made me realize I didn’t have near enough in my story.”

That level of self-discovery of a student’s writing is something I want to encourage. 

Students learning for themselves what their stories or characters need to have or are missing is a skill all writers can use. 

By studying the work of others, it will spark your thinking and creativity in different parts of the character and story development process. Identifying what attracts you to a particular character or keeps you turning those pages to find out what happens next will help you plan your own characters and stories. 

Becoming a Part of My Reference Library

Some books have multiple good examples and I know I need to buy that book and dissect it for future reference and examples in one or both of my classes. 

Published novels, movies and TV episodes are all potential resources for boosting our own creativity and understanding of what makes a compelling story and creates an unforgettable character. 

Writers must also be mindful of how a story and its characters meet reader expectations of a genre. If I’m wanting to read a cozy mystery, I don’t expect multiple grisly murders and a former Navy Seal who is now a police detective.

Dissection: Without the Blood and Guts

This is where the skill of dissection can be so helpful. Dissection is the process of separating or cutting apart something, often for detailed examination or analysis. For most people, that suggests medical students studying cadavers in anatomy class. 

I want to help create Story Surgeons. Experts in the field of story dissection.  

The skills I teach don’t have to take much time or call for too many materials and best of all, no blood and guts. 

Selecting A Creative Guide

The first time you try the dissection process, you may want to select an author, book or show that you are familiar with. That way you may already have some understanding of the setting and the characters. 

For this dissection, I’ve picked Susan Wiggs’ novel Between You & Me. Wiggs is one of my go-to authors for personal reading. 

In this story, Wiggs weaves the Romance genre with Society (Domestic) and Status genres. These three genres woven together give the story greater depth, intensity, and makes me wonder and worry what will happen. 

Many of her elements were dramatic and easy to understand. It fits into the selling category of Women’s Fiction. Reader expectations is something writers always need to be aware of. 

The Dissection Process: Finding a Framework

When dissecting a story, the first thing to do is break it into four parts. I call these Zones. Each zone has its own functions and characteristics. I taught science so the process of dissection made perfect sense. This gives us a framework or skeletal-like system for our story. Each of those quarters is much easier to wrangle and study than the novel as a whole. 

Helpful Tools 

• Notebook-spiral, bound, or 3-ring
• 4 x 4 Post It notes or larger
• Post It Flags
• I use a pencil to make notes in the book while I’m writing. 
• Colored pens
• Calculator

Designate a specific Dissection notebook to keep close by where you read or watch TV. That way you can make quick notes of a character or a part of a story that is of interest. I write down my calculations of the book or show here first. 

Dissecting a Book: Between You & Me

Between You & Me is made up of 356 pages. I start counting with the first page of the story and end with the last page of the story. Not including blank pages before or after the story. Divide those total pages by 4. 

356/4= 89 pages per zone

The two Pinch Points occur at the middle of Zones 2 and 3. 

89/2 = 44.5 pages per ½ Zone.

Zone One begins on page 1 and ends on page 89=1^st Plot Point-Side Flag it

Zone Two ends on page 178=Midpoint of book - Side Flag it

1^st Pinch Point 133.5    89+ 44.5 = 135.5 – Up Flag

Zone Three ends on page 267= 2^nd Plot Point/All is Lost-Side Flag it

2^nd Pinch Point 222.5 178 + 44.5 = 222.5 – Up Flag 

Zone Four ends on page 356

Keep in mind these story page numbers may not be exact locations of events within the story. But they should be close. An excellent starting place to look. 

Flagging the Book 

Once I have my calculations, I transfer them to a 4” x 4” Post it note on the free (not glued down) endpaper when I open the book’s cover. Easy to refer to when I’m wanting to go to a specific Zone or element in the book. 

On that Post it, I write the title of the book. Below that I show my mathematical break down which includes some of the story landmarks which we’ll discuss in more detail. 

I use Post it flags to physically mark these points in the book. 

I put a flag on the right fore-edge peeking out from the side at the end of Zones 1, 2 and 3. 

This shows me where all four zones begin and end. 

Pinch Points are specific landmarks, associated with the antagonist, in the middle of Zones 2 and 3. I have them peak out from the top of those pages. 

Dissecting eBooks

Making note of these divisions and landmarks in an eBook isn’t as clear cut. Because the font size can be changed, to best suit the reader’s needs, the number of pages for the book will vary. You can find the four Zones, but they may vary slightly from a physical book. 

Zone One: The Set-Up of Between You and Me

There are two main characters:

Caleb Stolz, a 30’s Amish farmer and horse expert. He’s raising his teenage niece and around 10-year-old nephew at the family farm. Caleb’s brother and sister-in-law were murdered, and Caleb had promised to raise their children within the Amish community. 

Reese Powell is a 4^th year medical student doing a trauma rotation at a major hospital in Philadelphia. Her doctor parents run a successful pediatric practice and Reese is expected to get into an elite residency program and then join them in their work. 

The Zone 1 Protagonist is referred to as The Orphan. That fits Caleb because his mother abandoned the family when he was a young boy. The father was abusive to her. Caleb’s brother protected him from his father’s abuse. So, it was another big loss when Caleb’s brother was killed. 

Caleb was estranged from his parents and felt like an orphan. His niece and nephew are literal orphans after their parents die so it is important to Caleb to take on that role of parent and protector of them. 

Reese is no literal orphan but feels somewhat separated from her parents because of their high expectations that she follows their career choice of being a part of their pediatric practice. Go to the best schools and get into the most prestigious resident programs. She’s realizing that’s not a life choice that will be fulfilling and make her happy. 

The Ordinary World

The setting of Zone 1 illustrates the Ordinary Worlds of the main characters. Caleb’s Amish community and beliefs have dominated his life and work. Though we learn that he had plans to leave the community for good. Teens can experience the outside world during a time call rumspringa. 

Most want to experience driving cars, smoking cigarettes and weed, listening to loud music and going to shopping malls and movies.  Caleb went to the library and read books not available in his community. He wanted to learn and not live the Amish life. His brother’s deathbed request changed that. Asking Caleb to raise his children in the Amish way. 

Jacob is seriously injured in a farming accident. His recovery forced Caleb to leave the community for life-saving help. This brings him to the Exotic world of a modern city. 

By getting to know Caleb and Jacob, Reese learns about the lifestyle of the Amish and other rural people. Making her more aware of a rural and simpler type of medicine. Different from the sterile work she would do as a pediatric surgeon. 

Landmark scenes: The Inciting Incident

The Inciting Incident kick starts the story. 

Jacob is seriously injured when his arm gets caught in some farming machinery while helping neighbors with their corn crop. The only hope to save his life is to take a rescue helicopter flight to a major hospital for immediate care. 

Caleb feels he must go with Jacob. Jacob has never been outside of his Amish community. It is against Amish rules to fly in a helicopter and that goes against Caleb’s father’s expectations. 

Reese Powell is on the trauma team at the hospital. She grew up in the big city and has no real knowledge of Amish life. Meeting Caleb and working on Jacob before he goes to surgery are her Inciting Incident. She is drawn to help this man who is clueless about hospitals and how to navigate the terrible injuries Jacob has and dealing with the hospital staff. 

The Defining Moment

The Defining Moment is another Landmark scene. It’s often a conversation between the protagonist and another character that brings clarity and focus to an Internal dilemma. 

Reese and Leroy, a neighbor in her apartment building, have this conversation. They are in her apartment, and he points out the lack of any social life noted on her calendar hanging on the refrigerator. No dates. Not even just meeting friends for fun. 

Reese realizes she doesn’t really have any friends. Just work and the people there. Nothing personal. Leroy becomes more important to her and Caleb because he grew up Amish and knows their ways and how to talk in their language. He left that life and is a physical therapist at the hospital. 

Caleb will stay with Leroy during Jacob’s early recovery at the hospital. Leroy becomes a translator of the foreign worlds that Reese and Caleb need to learn. He is an encourager of them building a relationship. 

Reese and Caleb spend time together. Learning what it’s like to enjoy the company of another person and discover a way to love and accept who they each are to themselves. 

The Call to Action

Jacob is fearful of being alone in this strange place and with his arm amputated. Caleb can’t leave him, so he agrees to stay with Leroy, across the hall from Reese. 

Both Reese and Caleb feel an attraction to each other. In this big city and hospital and feeling this attraction to a non-Amish woman is so different than he’s ever felt before. This Call to Action is allowing himself to be close to a woman. 

The First Plot Point

The First Plot Point is an event or occurrence that flips the story toward a new direction. 

Caleb and Reese go on a date together. He’s staying away from his Amish community and willing to learn about the Exotic world in Philadelphia but also the possibility of a relationship with a woman. She’s learning to open up and enjoy being with a man and have some fun together. 

Story Dissection: One Zone At a Time 

Starting with one Zone of the story makes the process much less intimidating. Then moving to that next quarter and focusing in on it. Looking for the Landmark scenes in each Zone. Seeing how Zone 1 leads into Zone 2 and recognizing if there are holes and planning how to add to or make changes in Zone 1 to help it do its job better. 

Making the Process Personal

In my Safari class, I ask students to find the four Zones of their Work In Progress (WIP). It helps them get a good look at where they are and decide what changes and additions or editing may be needed, depending upon the genre of their story. This process gives them a big picture look at where they are, verses where they need to be when the story is complete. This gives them goals to work on during the class and beyond. 

Pick Up That Story Scalpel and Give Dissection a Try

Is there a book or show you would enjoy dissecting?

For me, the new Ballard series on Prime has these fascinating characters I want to dig in to. I love police procedurals and this one is based upon a character from Michael Connelly’s Bosch novels. 

About Lisa

A veteran teacher, as well as certified counselor, Lisa's passion for teaching met her love of writing contemporary, young adult fiction. A native Texan, her stories take place in Texas with strong, smart female protagonists in an ethnically diverse cast of characters. Lisa writes what she knows, what she lives, and what she cares about.

After not finding the writing classes she needed, Lisa spent several years on a deep study of story structure. She then merged her passions into a powerful and well-loved online course Story Structure Safari. She has joined the staff at Deleyna Marr’s No Stress Writing Academy  where she is developing new classes. Her Creating A Constellation of Characters is available there now. An updated Story Structure Safari will be available in 2026. Dissecting Creative Guides will be expanded into a class in 2025.