Top ten favorite titles...?

5. Let them change — or fail to.
Growth (or refusal to grow) is what turns a character into a human being. By the end of the story, they should be different — even if that difference is heartbreakingly small.

4. Give them a past.
You don’t need to dump a backstory on the reader, but you should know it. The way someone walks into a room, reacts to rejection, or shows love — it all comes from somewhere.

3. Listen to their voice.
Dialogue is more than words; it’s rhythm, silence, and subtext. Pay attention to how your characters speak — their vocabulary, what they avoid saying, and what slips out when they’re tired or emotional.

2. Know what they want — and what they fear.
Every decision a person makes is a tug-of-war between desire and fear. A believable character has both, and those forces drive the story far more than external events do.

1. Start with contradictions. Real people are full of them — brave but insecure, generous but stubborn, kind yet selfish in moments that matter. A good character contains tensions that make them unpredictable but understandable.

I have written 4 fab #books (3 of these books are in the hands of many great agents). I graduated from a 4 year MFA program, where I studied craft & got weekly ass-kickings in workshop to make me a better writer and learn to cope w/ the 1,000s of rejections that have come my way in #publishing 4/?

But what do they want and how do we get the books they want into their hands when so much of promotion is done on socials? How do we know what readers want when #TraditionalPublishing latches onto trends? Readers buy these books because they can't buy what doesn't make it to the "shelves"? 3/?

Specifically, they are done scrolling AI and paid content infested #SocialMedia. They are ready to read books again! Some are actually going back to hardcopy. I heard other people say they are even tired of the myriad choices of TV series and movies. Yay!
2/?

Thank you, Raquel! Very helpful.

Thank you ! Always a joy and learning experience to read your posts. Good luck with the winter weather. I grew up in WI, so I am very familiar with March and April snow storms. Now I live in the south and tell people here that it's not the Midwestern winters that lead to madness, it's the springs!

Last year I did sub to you, and there was one 10q's that sounded exactly like mine but wasn't. I still think about that and wonder about the MS and author...

Thanks. I was actually referring to after a client has already written a book. Do you make suggestions to make it trendier? For ex, I had an agent say he would take a second look if I changed a character's career from gymnastics to basketball because more people can connect.

Hi Natasha! Wondering if you give your client advice about trends (modes of storytelling, themes/settings/characters that the industry is hungry for), and what would that look like? Do you ever edit a really well written book that you know won't get a deal because it's ahead of/ behind its time?

Meh, just follow them. This is a community in a pretty public space. Follows don't mean much.

Aw, I love this! Feels like the good ol' days again!

logline: When a girl saves the life of a mysterious fugitive he promises her immortality if she writes a bestseller by 25, but when she sets out to build the largest platform by any means necessary, her best friend’s mother, a billionaire recluse, ensnares her in the plans for her daughter's legacy