Thumbnail art:

Violet & Xaden by rezle_ on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DFGOA1wNKtX/?img_index=1

Aelin & Rowan by liaramirezillustration on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DCDR_z_OeZS/?img_index=1

Oraya & Raihn by vallerony_ on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DEm_1oKsptp/?hl=en

Mische & Asar cludi_a_ on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DNBI7OcNfpE/

In this episode, we discuss fated mates! We go over what we think works well and doesn’t work as well with this trope. We discuss our own approaches as well as the way it works in some popular romantasy books!

Who’s your favorite set of fated mates??

Poem of the Week: “Forfeiting My Mystique” by Kaveh Akbar:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/145989/forfeiting-my-mystique

Intro and Outro Music is by Chasing West

https://www.instagram.com/chvsingwest/

http://www.youtube.com/@chasingwest

Chapters:

00:00–Cold open, intro song, and episode intro

00:41–Writing check-ins:

Sam got 0 (writing lull)

Allie got 1200 words

6:03–Reading check-ins:

Allie is mad at Outlander (spoiler alert for first book and a half!)

Sam is in the middle of ToG reread

9:37–Main discussion: Fated Mates

Some light spoilers for Beast of the Briars, Fourth Wing, Throne of Glass, ACOTAR, Crowns of Nyaxia

54:52–Poem of the Week: “Forfeiting My Mystique” by Kaveh Akbar:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/145989/forfeiting-my-mystique

1:04:17–Next week, closing & outro music

In this episode, we discuss Brandon Sanderson’s Three-Pronged Character Development concept! This concept is a really interesting one generally about how to balance characters by using this sliding scale tool for three different key components of a character: proactivity, relatability, and competency. We discuss this with our own characters and some popular BookTok characters to see how this really works in practice.

Have you heard of this approach? Where do your characters land?

Link to Sanderson’s YouTube video longer explanation: https://youtu.be/G-6z7JqvDoE?si=XJeSbe6VIyZq36Gv

Link to Gina Denny’s shorter TikTok going over this idea: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTMkfPB8m/

Another explanation link: https://stormwritingschool.com/character-mixing-board/

The poem for this week was “Summer Solstice, New York City” by Sharon Olds: https://www.ronnowpoetry.com/contents/olds/SummerSolstice.html

Intro and Outro Music is by Chasing West

https://www.instagram.com/chvsingwest/

http://www.youtube.com/@chasingwest

In this episode, we chat through different story structures and talk through how we approach these in our stories (especially as one of us is a panster and the other is a plotter!) and discuss different approaches for how we could do things.

If you’re a writer, what story structure do you use??

Intro and Outro Music is by Chasing West

https://www.instagram.com/chvsingwest/

http://www.youtube.com/@chasingwest

Link to the gigantic picture of allll structures: https://imgur.com/onltNgA

Save the Cat Beatsheet https://newbietonovelist.com/2020/09/23/save-the-cat-fifteen-beats-vs-the-seven-point-story-structure/