Before we get into today’s chapter, I want to thank you all for your kindness and support last week. Never have I received so much encouragement all at once, and it meant a lot!

Grad school has been hard for me in several ways. First, there’s a small, nagging voice inside that tells me I’m only doing this because I have generally failed as an author, that I wasn’t good enough to make a living at this, and that it was my fault for not writing better stories. That’s a horrible thing to tell yourself, isn’t it? And I know better than to listen to that negative, condemning voice in my head—yet it’s still there, like an annoying, magical shadow that doesn’t need the sun to follow me around.

Second, I’ve been working from home for sixteen years, and suddenly having more than full-time responsibilities has been a big change in my routine. I’m not home to cook dinner most nights—or to pay bills, do laundry, clean anything… I now try to do all that on Saturday, plus rest, which is kind of a joke. It’s been a challenge to keep up with grad school and all the things of life. I was so blessed to be able to work from home before that I now realize how spoiled I was.

Third, I’ve chosen an accelerated, intensive master’s degree in teaching elementary education program that also includes a teaching credential and nine months of observation/student teaching in a classroom. We were warned that it was a lot to cram in to eighteen months. Now that I am experiencing that, I realize there is no time to do anything but college or student teaching. All day. Pretty much every day. Yet, I’m Jill, and I’ve always done what I wanted. So I have been sneaking in other things, some of which have been easy, others much more of a challenge (ahem, I’m talking to you, book contract). So, I have no one to blame but myself for my extra stress and fatigue. Hem hem.

And, finally, I must also complete a performance-based, subject-specific assessment called the edTPA, which is a mandatory to be licensed as a teacher in the state of Washington. The unfortunate problem is, several things are piling up at once (right now), which makes each day its own challenge. Some days I can keep up. Other days, well… I survive. Or I do like I did last week—something has to get cut.

If you have experienced a time like this or are in one right now, I totally understand. You are on my heart. Know that this season will not last forever. And if you have to, cut something. My family has done so many things without me this year. Yet there was one time in particular when I knew I shouldn’t have, but I went with them anyway. I needed to! Of course then I had to stay up super late to finish my homework, but when I know that my brain and body desperately needs a break, I take it. Trust yourself to know what you need when you need it. That is the only way to survive a season like this.

Circling back to that mean old lie I told myself about failure. The thing is, I have already grown as a writer because of this program and the practice of becoming a teacher. I think about books in a way I never did before, which has put so many more book ideas in my head. So, while my writing career didn’t go as I had imagined it might, it is far from over. I’m still writing books, and I now see possibilities I never would have seen before . We humans can’t predict the future, no matter how hard we try. More times than not, we end up in much better places than we ever could have dreamed. What a relief that our lives aren’t really in our control. 😉

Thanks for indulging me on that cathartic confession. Another confession I have to share is that when I opened the Story Trumps Structure book this week and saw that the chapter was literally three pages long, I laughed and laughed. I’m glad I didn’t know it was three pages long, though. Because I would have said, “Jill! Three pages? You can fit that in.” And I would have crammed it into my schedule when I needed to be doing other things. It still makes me smile, though.

Today on the Go Teen Writers Book Club, we’re discussing “Continuity,” chapter sixteen of Story Trumps Structure by Steven James.

Chapter Recap:
This chapter is about weaving storylines and subplots together to create cohesiveness. Like I mentioned, it was super short. It’s important to remember the promises you made early on in the story, and to make good on those promises. It’s also important to foreshadow what needs to be foreshadowed. The goal is for your story to flow from one scene to the next with a good pace, all the while keeping the reader turning pages.

What Stood Out:

One thing I thought of over and over as I read this chapter was a book I’m currently listening to on audio. This book is not good. (Keep in mind, as a writer, I’m overly picky about the craft of writing.) And as I’ve read reviews and talked to friends, I’m not the only one who has realized this. So, how did this book not only get published by a huge publisher, but get an audio book with three amazing narrators? Audiobooks are expensive. Publishers do not produce them for every author. Now, perhaps this author had a previous series that was super famous, and that’s how she managed to get all this love for this new book. I don’t know. I haven’t researched her to find out. If it had been a physical book, I would have put it down long ago. The only reason I kept listening was because I was driving around town and didn’t have a second audiobook on hold waiting. That said, I still could have stopped listening. But I didn’t. So why? Why did I invest so much time in something so annoying and poorly plotted?

Well, I got connected to the main character. I liked this character enough to want to know what happened to him. The author succeeded in getting me emotionally involved. And that’s where this chapter starts. Mr. James says that readers can get so engrossed in the emotion of the story—in the promises the author made—that they don’t notice the mistakes. Or like me, they forgive them. This author has plenty of people raving about this book. Those people must not have noticed all the telling and worldbuilding holes I did. They were invested and satisfied, even with the story’s problems.

Why tell you this? Because I want you to realize that none of us need be perfect writers. Yes, we should strive to write the best book we can. But as long as we create a character who will engage readers emotionally, they will keep reading. We need to put our time in creating characters that our readers care deeply about. I’ve linked to some posts below on that topic, if you need help with that.

Tip of the Week:
As previously mentioned, in this chapter, Mr. James is focusing on weaving subplots into your story. This was my favorite takeaway:

“…if you can remove a subplot without changing
the outcome of the story, it’s not a subplot—
it’s a distraction.” ~Steven James

I had a real problem with this in my Mission League series. People still read them and love them, which is nice, but I know I did there were distracting scenes here and there. Which is likely worse. I knew they were distractions to the story, but because I wanted them in there—because I liked writing the scene or thought it was funny or I just didn’t want my readers to miss Spencer’s birthday or whatever, I found a way to include them. So, you can do this, but as always when purposely breaking a writing rule, be careful. Because if you do it too much, readers won’t keep reading.

Go Teen Writers Archived Articles to Help You Go Deeper:

Creating Compelling Characters
Write Characters Worth Caring About
How to Find the Heart of Your Characters
5 Tips for Editing and Cutting Scenes from Your Story

Questions:
• What stood out to you this week?
• Do you struggle with including scenes that should probably be cut? How do you handle it?
• Have you ever read a book all the way to the end even though you didn’t like it? Why? • Any questions?