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Which is

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: there we go, and people are starting to come in straight away, which is always a good sign. Let's open this chat, so I can see what's going on.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Do.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: do, do, do.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: It's a little bit late for me. But from the Us. And other places where it's not so late. Okay, talking off. So Hello, everyone. I can see people are filtering in, and the number is climbing. So I'm Sarah from prating aid. And thank you for joining us. Today we got someone saying back for more already, so if you can see and hear us hopefully, you can. Please drop your name and location in the chat, and we'll have a look

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: and see where people are calling in from. So we've got Shannon from Vancouver. Barbara said she was back for more from Victoria. British Columbia and Canada. We've got Cliff from Los Angeles. Oh, the chat goes so fast when we do this Georgia U.S.A. That's Hannah Sarah from New Hampshire.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid:  well, I did see someone Rihanna from Edinburgh in Scotland. So someone else who's on my time zone, where it's quite, quite late at the bonus, like just after 110'clock.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: I think lots of people are excited because we have Christina from fiction, too, from our community, and I always love to see her. These she was right at the beginning, went by so fast. I'm like, Oh, there's Linda kindness. I saw it in there. Awesome. Okay, right. Let me go

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: through the housekeeping items on my slides, so can everyone see my slides if you can just drop a yes in the in the chat. That's great.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: perfect. I've already got a few yeses. Brilliant. Okay, let's go. Okay, so how to access your replays. So if you want to watch this again, or if you want to watch any of the sessions again and like, you can start, stop, take notes, do what you like. Don't worry because we will post them on our romance writers. Week Hub page, and they do take a little while, for

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zoom to process, because they're at least about an hour long each, and zoom is

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: not great at processing them very quickly. So we tend to say, look maybe like the next day, and and they'll probably be there. And if they're not there early in the morning, because maybe we're on a different time zone which we are. Then you might see them, or maybe wait a little bit later. You can always write in, and I'm usually in the support in box. So I can answer and share with you if you need it. So that's where you'll find

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find the replays also replays are available for everyone for a week after the event. So this is till March first. After this date. The replays are available for premium and premium pro members only that will be in our community page, which I will mention again in a moment.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: So at the moment we've got a full packed week. Usually we only do this over 4 days, but we've got 3 we've got 5 days, not 3 days, 5 days this time. We're doing Monday to Thursday. Sessions are for free users, and then, if you want to join us on the Friday, then I recommend upgrading, because then, those ones are limited to premium and premium pro users

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only and you'll receive an email on Friday morning with the instructions for attending the live sessions and for viewing the replays from the premium like paid only day.

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So yeah, you've got until Friday to to upgrade for those. And if you are thinking of upgrading. We have an offer for 25% off yearly premium or premium pro. We're constantly adding new features. We've got so many ideas for this year. So you definitely want to be on board for this, and if you can get a discount, that's even better. So at the moment you get advanced suggestions or the comparisons integrations into all sorts of different apps which we're constantly working on. So if you've got an app recommendation, then

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: email Us. And we'll have a look into it. See if we can integrate into it, because we always want to work where writers work.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: You also have the options for AI features such as rephrase sparks, critique so if you need ideas for rewriting, which I'm always looking at myself thinking, can I write this better, and sometimes it's nice to have a little button that I can press to, to see an option and decide whether or not I want to go for it. So there you go. So the offer for the 25 cent off yearly premium or premium pro ends on March first as well.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: So you only have to remember one date for that. So if you want to keep talking romance writing, which I always do, so, you can come talk to me whenever you like, and I'll be on the writing community where I hope you guys will all join us because we're creating an amazing community on there we have all these events. We have events live chat I was on there between this last one that I hosted, and this one

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having a look at everyone who's joined since, and saying, Hey! In the in the hey Channel, and we have so many things that I know fictionary also has a really good community as well. So you know, if you wanna join their community, that's always great as well. We've got one the link is there? I'll probably put the link in the chat as well. After we get going so that you can, you can grab that and yeah, it's just a really nice place to to find stuff

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: going to be doing loads this year in communities. So it's definitely a good place to be

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and then just remind us for this session. So we have a Q&A box. So we've got the chat, and we've got the Q&A, so chat's gonna go really fast. We've already got over 200 people here. So you know, everyone's gonna be chatting to each other in in the chat, which you are more than welcome to do. But if you have questions for Christina, I do recommend you put them in the Q&A box, so that we can go through that towards the end. And it just makes it clearer for us if we don't get to your question. You know, because

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: we didn't get to all of them last time. People tend to write during the thing and then throw loads of them in at the end, and we'll we'll try and get through as many as we can, but we are very sorry if we don't get to all of them. And then yeah, links to everything like I say. I'll send the links in a moment, but they'll also already be on the hub for you. So I think that is everything for my slides. So let me stop sharing, and I will introduce

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Christina, our special guest. So today we're joined by Christina Stanley.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Combining her degree in computer mathematics, with her success as a bestselling, award, winning author and fiction. Editor, Christina Stanley is the creator and CEO of fictionary creating creative editing software for fiction writers and editors.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: She is a fictionary, certified story coach. Her novels include the Stone Mountain Mystery Series and look the other way. She is the author of the Author's Guide to selling books to non book stores, which sounds really interesting, and she's also a passionate guide, dog, trainer, and hiker. So lots going on in that bio. So I think I will hand it over to Christina.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Thank you, Sarah. Wow! We've got a big crowd here tonight. That's very exciting. So I'm gonna jump right to it and share my screen. So that we can get going. So first, Sarah, now, I can't see you anymore. Can you just tell me that you can see my screen?

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Yep, I can see your screen

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: all right. Perfect. So hey, it's romance week, and we're here to talk about the Romance Writer's Guide to effective story editing.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: So please tell me that one to chart, too.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: went to. Who am I, who am I perfect? That's great. Okay, I'd like to check that, because sometimes I'm talking, and it's not on the right chart. So I'll just give you a little bit more detail. So you know why I'm particularly talking to you about

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: story editing. So I'm CEO and I found it fictionary. I built it from a breath of an idea to it's now a software apps. It's a theory, and it's a community behind it.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: I am a super fan of pro writing aid. And we've been working with pro writing aid for years now, and we work fabulously together because fictionary focuses on story editing, which is structural editing of fictions. You may have heard of this substantial, various other terms, but, we do that piece, and then, once you're done that you move right on into copy editing, and there is pro writing aid. So the 2 tools together are fantastic.

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My nonfiction. Books that aren't in my bio bio are secrets to editing success.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: And that is an in depth theory and actionable book that takes you through the process of what I'm gonna talk about today. The next one is secrets to outlining a novel. And it's it's a process of how to efficiently outline a novel and then sequence to writing a series is coming out April twelfth and you already mentioned, I'm a fiction author. So we don't need to talk about that. Okay? So what you're really interested in here is you've written a romance novel.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: So the question is, now, what and I know for me. When I finished my 80,000 words or 60,000 words or whatever it is.

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It's a hard moment because you think, okay, so what am I supposed to do with this? And so I created the fictionary story editing process. To help writers take their manuscript from a draft to a best-selling novel.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: and for everybody here I think you've chosen one of the most difficult genres to write, and I say this because. it has such high and specific reader expectations. And

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: not only that, the reader expects that you will do something unique with these boundaries that come around writing, writing, or romance. And I also think it's one of the most important genres to learn how to do well, because even if romance is not your primary genre, many, many novels have romance as their subgenre. And so, if your subplot is romance on a you know, a thriller, a murder mystery, whatever it is.

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It's gotta be just as strong.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Alright. So story editing. So what I'm talking about is, it's a structural review revision of your manuscript. So you're looking at it at the high level. We're not looking at the prose level yet. We're looking at creating a plan so that you can revise your novel.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: And we're looking at the story Arc. And I'm going to talk about that today in a little bit more depth. And in particular, I'm going to talk about it in the context of reader expectations from a romance novel.

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We're going to talk about characters, plot and settings. And so these are the things we're looking at from a structural point of view.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: And really why we're doing this, I'm gonna explain this. If there's no structure, there's no story, and if there's no story, there's no book, and I think we all wanna put our book out there, maybe don't. But you probably still wanna write a good story.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Okay? So this is the fictionary story editing journey.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: And we like to start with writing a story blurb

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: at the very beginning of the process, and we do it in something called a skeleton blurb. So that's the first thing we're going to cover today. The second thing we're going to cover is the story structure and the story arc.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Then we're gonna jump all the way to Number 6 there. And we're gonna look at how to edit a scene. And then we're gonna look at what you do at the end of the process. And I chose these out of all of the 9 steps, because I think in the hour well, less than an hour that we have it'll give you the most bang for your buck.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Alright. So what's Skeleton Blurb? So a skeleton blurb is for you the author, and it's the shortest version of a story blurb. So what is your story about? And it means knowing who is the protagonist.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: what's their goal, their overall story goal, and what's at stake if they don't achieve that goal.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: So

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: the reason we recommend doing this at the beginning of a story edit is, it keeps you focused. And so you always know where you're going with this story, and when you know your story goal, you pretty well know the climax scene. So if the story goal is a romance, you know that it's a happily ever after. And the climax scene is when the love views are gonna happen

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right? And if you're writing a tragedy they're not gonna happen, but it leads you the whole way through to make sure that you're writing the right scenes. That's gonna meet the reader expectations.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: You also know that every scene belongs in the story, and I say this because

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: lots of us write, including me, where you get all excited, and you write a bunch of scenes. You put your draft out, and then, when you're re-looking at it, you're thinking, why did I put that scene in this novel? It's got nothing to do with the story? And if you look at who's the protagonist, what's their goal and what's at stake? You can tell if every scene belongs in your story whether the protagonist is in it or not. Does it so have something to do with the skeleton blurb?

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: All right. So the most common romance editing question I get is related to the skeleton blurb. So I'm just going to start with that.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: And this is who is the protagonist. So I wanna say right up front spoiler alerts, I'm gonna I'm gonna give the whole story arc for both of these stories. So if you haven't read it, my apologies, and if you haven't read them, I recommend going and reading them and looking for their story arc scenes, and you'll see really clearly why they're in the story at certain places, and if you've read it, then you'll know you know what I'm talking about. So the first one is the first book in the Britishen Series.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: It is a Regency historical romance. The Duke and I, written by Julia Quinn. and the 2 main love interests are Daphne and Simon.

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The second book is the Wedding Date, which is a contemporary romance

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: by Jasmine gullory, and the 2 main protagonists are Alexa and Drew. And so we're going to talk about. Who's the protagonist in each of these stories?

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: And what we're going to talk about is

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: a concept of, are they a single protagonist or a combined protagonist. And so when you have a single protagonist like a thriller novel, Jason Bourne, really clear he's a single protagonist. It's his story. But in romance. It gets a little more blurry about who the protagonist actually is.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: So a single protagonist, the 2 love interests will have different goals and different things at stake, so that means one of them is the protagonist, the other is a main character, but not the protagonist.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: If they have the same goals and the same stakes. They're a combined protagonist, and what that means is.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: every scene is either good for both of them or bad for both of them. where in a single. It can be good for one and bad for the other. And that's important, because when you are writing your scenes or editing your scenes, you wanna make sure that you're focused on

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: what you're trying to retrieve with the skeleton blurb and knowing who your protagonist is. So we're gonna look at the Duke. And I first.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Okay. So if I wrote a skeleton blurb for the Duke and I, which I did here. I'm looking at who's a protagonist. So, Daphne, and what does she have to do? Her story goal? Well, she has to show Simon he is worthy. So the whole way through this book.

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Simon really doesn't believe he's worthy of being a father and having children, and if she can't show him this they will never have children, so that's her her goal, her stakes.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: His goal is to stay single because he doesn't want to have children.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: His primary goal through this is very different from hers, and his stakes are different. So if if she meets meets her goal, he doesn't, and and vice versa. So this means Daphne is the single protagonist in this story. And I just want to say here they both have point of use. So there are scenes written from both of their perspectives.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: So you can still do multiple point of view when you have a single protagonist. Okay? So that didn't go there we go. Okay. So for the wedding date.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Alexa must overcome her feelings of worthlessness, otherwise she won't find her happily ever after.

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And this is a beautiful

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: romance novel to look at, because it very clearly shows you

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Kristina CEO Fictionary:  the five-story arc scenes, and it has a really clear blurb

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Drew. The love interest must overcome his feelings of worthlessness, otherwise he won't find as happily ever after. So the 2 of them in this story both don't feel worthy of love. They both have a reason that they can't be in a committed relationship. The reasons are are different.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: but it is about their self-worth. and so if they can't get over that, they're never going to find there happily ever after. So these 2 are a combined protagonist because they're on the same journey with the same goal and the same stakes.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: All right. So

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: sorry. I just wanted to

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: bump over to the app here so Sarah, can you just tell me you can see the app.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Sorry I lost my cousin. Yeah, I can see the app. Okay, perfect. Okay? So now we're in. This is

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: the fiction software. And we're in the story editing journey. And we're on the blurb step here. So what we wanna do here is. So we always know here. So we've just said that Daphne is

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: a single protagonist. So for the Duke and I, and that she doesn't need to find out who killed her husband. That's just showing if you can see that that's just showing up. So then we we put the story goal here.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Oh, yes, the story goal is.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: I just forgot Simon's name.

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She must show Simon. He's he's worth it. So I'll just write it really quick. I just put show. Simonie's worth it. Otherwise

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she'll never have children. Please ignore my bad typing.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: So that's her now we have that. The story blurb is what would go on the back of your book. So you can. You can put that here as well, and then you can see this showed up at the story at any journey, so you always have it for reference, as you're going through your story.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Okay? So that's just a very quick look. There.

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now, if we back up here, the next thing we're going to do, if you remember this story. Editing journey was Story Blurb. And then it's story structure. And the first thing in story structure is to name each scene in 3 to 5 words.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: And

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: you're doing this. So you know what the scene is about. And so you create an after draft outline. And I'm gonna show you in a different novel. So I'm just gonna jump to my bookshelf.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: And

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: I'm going to open up a novel. So this is a novel that's just been imported in a fictionary, and here you'll see there, there are no scene names here. so we've got the novel in. It's organized into chapters and and scenes.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: I'm going to go to the plot Tab, and then I'm going to name my scenes. And what fictionary is doing here is is it's it's basically going through the novel. And I'm sorry it's slow. It always gets slow on Zoom, and it's naming every scene in the novel. And this then gives you a view of

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: what the AI. Actually thinks your novel is about, and it gives you some interesting things. So if you see, seat 3 scenes in a row that say, going to the store, going to the store, going to the store might be too much about going to the store. If you see something totally unexpected.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: the scene might not be focused. And so it really helps you quickly find places within your story. That maybe the scenes, not doing what you think it should be doing. And it's also gonna show you in a moment how it looks on top of the story arc the novel we're using here is called Look the other way, and it's sitting on the boundaries of is it A romance novel, or is it a mystery novel.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: And so, if the author's intent is that it's a romance novel.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: then. You want to edit it as a romance novel, and that's different than if it's a mystery novel with a subplot of romance.

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So here.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: what fiction does is it draws all of your I'll just go sorted to the middle. It draws out your story in the context of the story arc. And so while you're editing, you can actually see where your scenes sit, you can always rename these if you don't like the name, or if the scenes are too short or too long.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: A I won't name it. It doesn't have enough information. Or if the scene's not focused enough, it can't pull out a name. And that's an indication. This is a scene that needs editing.

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Okay, so that's C naming.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Now, we're going to go on to the story Arc. And this is my very favourite thing about about editing is identifying the story arc scenes. And honestly, I cannot read a book without pulling out these scenes. I can't watch a movie any more without pulling out these scenes. It's just

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: it's just how a good story is told.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: So the story arc. We've taken it down to 5 key scenes. There's lots of structural

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: theories at the hero's journey, the writer's journey, save the cat, etc.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: They're all great, and lots of people write to them, and what we've went through, and we pulled out all of the

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: scenes that were in common. And all of these have these 5 scenes in common. And so that's why they're important to us. And so I'm going to show you with the story, Arc, how you can use it to determine one if you have a story.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: I know you've written a draft. But is there actually a story in there? And 2, how do you use it to evaluate your story structure and pacing?

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Okay? So I'm gonna start with the inciting incident. So we're gonna cover the inciting incident plot point one, the Midpoint plot point 2 and the climax. And those are the 5

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: key scenes. That must be in the story. So the inciting incident happens somewhere between 0 to 15%. And it can actually happen before the story opens and sometimes is, is, is it can be given in the blurb, so that before the reader even starts reading, they know what the inciting incident is, it can be given in in backstory, a flashback before 15% in the story.

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And all the inciting incident is is the event that happens to shake up the protagonist's world.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: And if this doesn't happen, there is no story. And I say that because if

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: without an inciting incident without the protagonist world changing.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: we're just watching somebody's ordinary world. It's not that interesting. And if you've ever read a book where you're thinking something has to happen, it's because the inciting incident is too late.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: So in a romance novel, the inciting incident is typically where the love interests meet. meat could be in person, it could be on the phone. It could be someone's on Mars and someone's on Earth. It doesn't. It doesn't matter

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: how they meet, but they have to connect.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: And if you think about. You know a love story without the love interest meeting. There's no love story. It's gone. So it ha! It has to be there. And so if we look at the wedding date, Alexa drew meat in an elevator and the elevator breaks down and they're stuck there, and she happens to have champagne and crackers and things, cause she's going to some other thing, and so

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: they're stuck, they meet, and off they go.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Then we look at Plot point one. So plot point one is when the protagonist accepts the story goal. And in a romance, this is typically when they you know the love interests are actually interested in each other.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: So there's some sort of spark now. There may be, and should be, a little bit of a spark in the inciting incident. So you know, there's something there. But Plot point one is where they both actually realize. Yep, this is this is great.

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So this is Alexis. And Drew's first kiss. And they're at a they

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: basically from the elevator scene to hear they go to a wedding, and she's a fake date. And he needed a date. It's his ex-girlfriend's wedding. It's his best friend is the groom, and so he doesn't want to go without a date. He convinces her to go

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: and if they didn't have their first real kiss again. There's no story, because the story can't move forward unless they go from this fake date. Otherwise we're just watching someone fake date forever to accepting that they have feelings for each other.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: if it was just a fake date, the story's over and everybody goes home. And it's not very interesting. I do wanna say the first kiss doesn't have to happen here. And I'm gonna show you an example, where it happens later.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Then we have the middle plot point. And this is where the protagonist moves from reactive to proactive. And again, if the protagonist doesn't change their behavior. Then we're reading about the protagonist's ordinary life again. It just gets too dull. Something has to change. And so here you can have a false victory or a false defeat.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: and in the wedding date it's a false defeat, because Alexa's best friend tells her that Drew, she thinks Drew is cheating. And so then.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: obviously, Alexa has problems with that. So

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: if everything was perfect and nothing bad happened again.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: they're they're already out there, happily, ever after. And the story's over. So she thinks Drew is cheating. Things start to slide down, and of course this is false. Then we get to Plot point 2 and plot point 2 does 2 things, one, its lowest point in the story for the protagonist and 2. They get a final piece of information that's going to drive them forward in the story to the climax.

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So here

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: they break up and Alexa leaves Drew, and the piece of information drew leaves is that he's forced to learn how much he truly loves her. And without this he's still gonna believe that

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: he doesn't really need this relationship. He's not worthy of it. He's he's not gonna go for it. He's out. And so this brings them toward the climax. And again, if there is no plot point to. Then the story can't finish, because there's not that last piece of piece of information to drive the characters to there happily, ever after.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Okay. And then the I love you. Moment. Somewhere between 85 and 95 typically, it can be a little later, depending on the resolution and again in a love story if there isn't, and I love you moment, there's not really a love story, and I call it the I love you moment. But whatever that means to you

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: that they get there happily ever after moment together. Okay, so that's how it all as you're going through, you're gonna edit. And you're gonna look for these scenes in your story, see that they're doing the right things, and that they're generally in the right place.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: So if we look at the wedding date together. And I just wanna say, this story arc is not to scale. It's it's just a drawing. But the percentages are there. So at 1% in Alexa drew me in the elevator and at 98% in there's the I'd love you moment. So she stretched the story arc across the whole story. She does a lovely thing where she

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: The first scene is them in an elevator, and so is the final scene so, and in the same elevator. So it's it's a very romantic mirroring of the 2 scenes, and it feels like great closure. You can see in the middle the plot point one middle and Plot point 2 are

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are right on point. And so this is part of what makes this such an appealing story.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: If we look at the Duke and I.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: She's done it a little bit differently, and I'm showing this so you can see the flexibility in the story. Arc. It's not meant to box you in. It's meant to give you some ideas of where these scenes scenes work best. So the inciting incident happens. 11% in and they meet. They meet at a ball.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: And then plot point 1. Simon offers a daphne a fake dating, and she, of course, accepts. And so that's at 2024%. And so it's right on target of where it should be. Their first kiss is just before the midpoint

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: and then, of course this causes a duel with Daphne's brother, and she saves Simon from the duel, and then they have to get married. And so that's that's their false victory because she wants to get married and have children. So it's her false victory that this is now gonna be great.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Then at 75% in before. Right before this the lead up. Daphne discovers Simon can have children, but won't, so she tricks him, which obviously makes him very angry, and at set right on 75%. He leaves her. So this is the worst moment in the book for Daphne.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: And then, the I love you. Moment comes at 83%. Inn, where he returns. They decide to have children together, and they have their I love you moment. And so there is a beautiful story. Arc.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: okay, so where did that go? Oops? Sorry. I do want to just show you the story, arc, I'm gonna go back here

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: and I'm gonna go to. Yeah. an example here. So here, when I look at the story, arc and fictionary draws the story arc for you

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: and they they the software. There's no lay behind her the software. Every time you update your draft it will redraw for you. So as you edit scenes move scenes around you can see this. And here is an example. This is plot point one and it's

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quite late. And so what this means that the story acts that I showed you were quite

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: close to the blue line, and the orange line is the actual book that's been imported. And what this is showing is the story's dragging here. So the plot point one is happening too late.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: And here it's going to feel rushed and lack lack of depth because this is late.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Too close to here. There's not enough room to put anything in here that's gonna give it the right balance. And so the editing advice here would be. Can you move any of this stuff farther out? Can you cut backstory description? What's in here that doesn't need to be in here? And also what's missing in here? And so, as you edit, then you can. You know this will redraw every time for you.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Okay, so that brings us to editing each scene.

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So once you've done the story structure

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: and you feel like, Okay, it's it's close enough. And even the the story act that I showed you for evolution. I would probably leave it there until I did my scene by scene editing. Because when you do your scene by scene editing, this is when you're gonna cut scenes, move scenes, lengthen scenes, shorten scenes, and that's all going to redraw the story arc for you.

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So

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: really, what a editing Hc. Means. It's an in-depth evaluation and revision to make sure every scene moves the story forward, so every scene has to have a purpose. It has to be related to the story goal, and it has to be either moving the protagonist closer to or farther away from their story goal. And that's gonna increase pacing in your story.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: And really, we do this because a great story is a collection of great scenes at the right order at the right time.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Okay, so we have in fiction. There's 38 story elements under character plot and setting, and I've pulled out just 9 here so that we can talk through how they relate to a romance novel

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: one is the point of view characters. So in a romance point of view, typically there is both both love interest or however, many love interest. Get a point of view because the reader wants to experience what they're thinking and feeling for romance is a subplot. Not necessarily. It might just be the main plot protagonist who has a point of view for those scenes. So it's it's a little bit different.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Each scene, that point of view. Character is going to have a goal in that scene that needs to be clear from the beginning of the scene, and there has to be consequences. If that goal fails, and if there aren't any.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: it's not the right goal or the goal is just not strong enough, and the reason consequences are important is, that's what makes the reader worry. So they want. They want to cheer for this character. They want them to succeed. So there has to be doubt.

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under plot.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: purpose of a scene becomes very important, and so, in particular, in a romance, your purpose is going to change throughout the story.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: and what I mean by that there'll be an ordinary world. And so the purpose of each scene.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: The main love interests might have a goal, but it could just be. I got to get to work, or I got to get on this elevator so I can get to my sisters. That's the goal. That's fine. The purpose of the scene is to set them up to meet.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: That's it as you go farther. The purpose of the scene is that you know they get to know each other. They get to love each other. Then the purpose is well, they're gonna have problems. You have to put something in there all the way through. And again the purpose has to be related to the main story goal.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Otherwise it's just a distraction from the main story.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: and then entry and exit. Hooks are a thing of beauty for keeping the pacing going, because an entry hook is the question you make the reader ask at the beginning of a scene, and the exit hook is at the end of the scene, and this then, keeps your scenes flowing quickly, and it makes your book page Turner.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: and then setting. So setting has some very specific things to do for a romance novel, and particularly you know where

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: you put your couple

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: so that they. life is either easy or difficult for them when things happen, what are the main objects? And so I'm gonna just show you a little bit more of that.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Sorry I'm gonna switch tabs here and I'm gonna go back to a different novel. So I wanna have a look again and just show you

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: look the other way, and I want to go to Scene 5. So in this version I've named the scenes you can see here. This is the inciting incident, which is the meat cute

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: and if we start with the character tab.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: The point of view character is Jake Hunter.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: I'm just going to show you the blurb. So you know who the characters are. So shannon and Jake must overcome their feelings of loss, otherwise they'll never get there. Happy. Happily, ever after.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: So both of them have a fear of being hurt because of previous relationships and an accident. The subgenre here is murder, mystery.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: and the subplot is. Shannon must find out who killed her uncle, otherwise she won't learn who she really is, and so there's a mystery behind who her parents actually are, and who killed her uncle, and to write this as a romance that has to be subplot and secondary to Shannon and Jake, having there happily ever after.

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So when we look at the point of view, this is early in the story. This is where Jake meets Shannon, and it's written from his point of view, and his goal at the beginning of the scene is to meet his new employer.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: It brings him closer to the story goal because he's gonna meet Shannon. We'll just skip down to what if the goal fails? Well, he won't meet Shannon, and there is no story. So he has to meet Shannon at some point. And so that's his goal here

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: on the plot side

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: we're looking at. So it's the inciting incident I've named it. The me cute Shannon meets Jake. It opens with action. It closes with dialogue. And the entry hook is here. He'd been in Florida for one day, and no one had looked at him with Pityfield eyes. So the question is, well, why would people look at him with pity filled eyes, and we find out later in the story through his back story. Why, people looked at him. He had a very famous

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accident, and so everybody knows him from where he's from, and he's trying to. He's trying to get away. and the axet hook

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: is. He comes to the boat he meets Shannon and her aunt, and and Shannon and this dog are coming along the trip, which he didn't expect. So he's wondering, like what else is in store here, because it's not really what I signed up for.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: So that's all good when we get to the setting. Here is where it really comes in for the romance.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: So we have some some setting. The location is on a Marina dock. The timing of the scene is a few hours after the previous scene. So when you

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: say when a scene is happening. It doesn't have to be at 7, 27, or on a Wednesday. It can be just related to the previous scene. So the reader has in context, when it happens.

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the big object here is the catamaran, the sailboat. The story takes place on this on the catamaran, so it's also the introduction of that boat.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Now, here's where it gets interesting as a romance. There's some issues with this scene, and one is Debbie's the aunt. So he sees Debbie walking towards him.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: He smells Debbie's perfume.

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he hears halliards and mass so, and there's the atmosphere around him.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: The problem with this is Debbie is not the love interest, and he doesn't get to Shannon until way down here. and he has one little sort of thing about her and describes her. And so this scene has a couple of issues from that side. The emotional impact is

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Kristina CEO Fictionary:  is it the best place

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: to have this scene for there to be tension in the scene. And here this boat is where they're going to end up being stuck together on, and so for their initial meet. It's a great place for it.

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So what we write over here in our notes is, you know, it's it's the first meeting from Jake's point of view.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: And with the current structure. Shannon doesn't have a reaction to the to the meat cute. And so if you look at the structure here

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: and I'm going to explain why, I say that.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary:  we have all of our point of view characters. And so this book has been structured. So there's 3 point of view characters. Shannon and Jake, who are the combined protagonist, and she's point of view for 49% of the scenes. And he's 40%. There's also this other character, the boy who has 11% and he ends up being

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: the antagonist. And you can see down here

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: first chapter Shannon. Then we've got Jake Jake, the boy, the boy, back to Shannon, and here's the meat cute.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: and then we don't get a reaction from either of them

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: right away. And so that could be a structural issue.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: So that's the first thing I would look at

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: the other is, the sensors show too much interest in Debbie instead of Shannon.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: because Shannon's a love interest and Debbie's the aunt. However, if this were a murder mystery, then it's good, because we see Jake looking around and he's figuring out the whole scene, and not just Shannon. And so this is what I mean by when you're editing. You have to know what your primary genre is so that you can make sure that the powerful story arc scenes are really focusing on that genre and not the subgenres.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: So the options are, write a separate scene where Jake meets Debbie first and then Shannon arrives. Revise the scene. So it's focused on Jake and Shannon meeting. Add a reaction scene to Shannon. So at this point in my edit, I would just leave that here in my notes and continue on with my edit without making any changes, because

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: I wanna see what the rest of the story does in the context of a romance. And then I can go back and move things around and change things. If I start changing stuff too early, I might change something that I actually need and want till I get my overview picture. And doing this also helps you get away from that endless rewriting. The first scene. So it's perfect.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: My advice is, just leave the first scene as it is, and keep going and come back to it at the end. Because then you really know your story.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Okay? So that is

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: story elements.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: And then what you're going to do is you're going to test it. And so you want to confirm that your story arc scenes are all in the right place.

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and

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: when you do that. You're gonna make sure that you have pacing and story still working. And why this is important now is as you edit. You change so much. So you started with an original story, art that looked pretty good for the story.

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And then you're gonna end up with a different story Arc. And so you have to go back and re-look at it. and then that way, you know, and if the story arc is way out of whack, then you've got to go back to your scene by scene editing, and figure out why

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and then in between all of this, so on the structure side, the other things that are important to look at after you. Do your story blurb, and this and the story arc and your scene namings. You look at your chapter structure, and see how many scenes are in a chapter. What's your word, Count pricing? And are there any outliers of you know all your scenes are a thousand words long. And then all of a sudden, there's one that's 5,000 words long. It's not a story arc scene

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that's going to feel really long in the context of the rest of the story. And so you start looking for structural changes there. And sometimes it's just as simple as breaking a chapter into 2.

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You'll analyze your point of view once you've finished your editing to make sure it's balanced, and you know it's it's really

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: you have it under control. And here it's easy to write too many points of view. So when you're getting up 7 and more, you should start looking at. Do you need that many. The other thing is looking for tension and conflict in every scene.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: And here really, for tension and conflict. There's a really easy way to do this, and one is, you look at your goal.

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and the tension comes from what if the goal fails? And if there is no consequences, most likely

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: there's not enough tension in that scene. The conflict is so tension is that you know the the apprehension that something bad is gonna happen, and conflict is is actually happening, and the way to know if conflict is any good and that it's not conflict for conflict's sake is again you look at the story goal.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: And if the story goal is

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: for one character to rush somewhere to reach the other character, if that's the scene goal, sorry, not the story goal, the scene goal.

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than any conflict in the scene that stops that character from getting there

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: is is good conflict. But if there's irrelevant contracts, somebody else has a fistfight or something like that. Then the conflict is not related to the goal for that scene. And it's not. Gonna it's not gonna keep the pacing fast

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: scene structures the overall layout. Do you have an entry hook? Is there a middle? Is there climates? Is there an exit? Hook timelines and settings we looked at. And then story, goal and story pacing is when you look at the scenes in the context of is every single scene moving the protagonist closer to or farther away from, the story goal. And you look at how many action scenes versus sequel scenes you have and the order of them.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: and that's the whole thing. I just wanna show off some of our writers for a moment. These are people who have written their books in a fictionary and edited them and gone on to be best sellers. There's some, and and and win awards and things. And there's some really interesting stories here of of people who some of them are traditionally published. Some are self published, and my favorite is the self published Authors who publish their book.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: and the books didn't do well, and they took them down. They edited them in fiction. They put them back up, and then they did really well, and I'm so proud of those books and anyway, these are just some of the ones that that I particularly like. So fiction live in fiction. So if you're looking for a way to learn more with our our storyteller premium software. We have live classes.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: and and these classes are designed that you show up and you edit, live with an editor, a trained editor from from fictionary. And so we do. A 6 weeks to outline your novel. We do 6 weeks to how to write scenes using deep structure, novel editing, part one, part 2, and then coming up in May is how to plan and structure series. And so

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: we have these so that the writer has a place really where they can work, live. We don't record them. So it's a safe space. You can actually talk about your story. They're really fun.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: And then also in fiction. So our our 2 products are fictionary story teller, fictionary, story teller, premium are for writers, story coach for editors, and of course we have a special on for romance writers week, and the coupon is PWA. Dash romance, and you'll save 25%

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: off the software. And with premium you also get the guided story editing courses which we call fictionary live in in inside our community, and everybody is welcome in our community, whether you subscribe or not to our software. It's full of writers and editors. We have certified story coach editors who answer your questions within the community. So you can ask very specific questions.

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We help people with blurbs, synopsis, all of that stuff. And it's a really friendly, friendly community, and our motto in the community is kindness.

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So you can see the link to our landing page. So it's fictionary.co. Slash Pwa dash romance, and you can start a free trial. Free trial asks for 14 days.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: There's no credit card required, so there's no risk to come in and just try it. You can run your manuscript through. See the story arc, draw the word, count for scene, draw chapters for scenes, all of that stuff. You can come in and take a look, and I wish you would, and if you do, let me know, and and I'm happy to help and answer questions, so on that I will stop sharing and go over to QA.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Nice one. Well, thank you for all of that. That was amazing. We had a lot of people commenting about how they think they need to go and grab a dictionary now, and I think I might be one of those as well. Some people are just uncomfortable software, and that's fine, too. You can get so much advice and meet people there

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: anyway. So come, join at least come and join the community. Yeah, exactly. And and it's always fun joining a writing community. You get to meet people and talk about our favorite thing which is writing so. And there's a romance group within the fiction community. So also, there you go. Perfect. Okay, well, we. So so far, we have 11 questions. And some of them are really interesting. We've got a couple that are about sort of more of the editing side, and we've got some about fiction itself.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: So the first one is is fiction. Only in English, so would it only work on English writing, or do you have compatibility with other languages. Oh, that's a fantastic question. And yes, so. And we have people who so all of the commands are in English.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: And if you're listening here. Your English, I'm gonna guess, is pretty good. But the actual software itself works on any Roman character based language. So we have people with French, Spanish, Swedish.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Dutch.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary:  anyway, a bunch. So it sometimes has a little trouble pulling out the character names, but that also happens with fantasy novels when it's just a completely made-up, crazy name.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: But other than that, everything works great

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: fancy and sci-fi, because spelling mistakes, underlines, especially referring it as well. They said that you've already mentioned it as well, just maybe to reiterate the free version. Is it a free version of the app, or is it a free trial. So it's a free trial. So there's 14 days to

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: come in and try it and play around, and the community itself is free. You can come and hang out as long as you want, and be as friendly as one.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Thank you, Jackie. So we got a couple of questions about plotting. Now it looks like. So going back to sort of the arcs that you were showing us. So it says, Do these plot points shift in dark romance versus traditional romance. Okay, that is an also an awesome question. So they don't shift in the

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: context of

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: all the five-story arc scenes have to be there.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: but they could be in a different order. Hmm! Or they could do different things. So if if you know.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: there's specific requirements that come with the dark fantasy, romance. And so in an inciting incident, for that

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: those requirements would fit in versus a contemporary versus a historical versus a.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: I mean, there's so many so many

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: different types of romance.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: so what we did is we took those 5 story arc scenes. Every story has to have them. and then you can see some of the stories like the couples get together like way out by almost plot point 2, and it's done so that it's really tragic when there's a some bad happens in plot point 2 etc. So

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: the key here is to to make sure the basic structure's there, and then add the genre details on top of it.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Nice one perfect.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: So next one. So they said, Abby says, would you kindly explain plot plot point 2 without the third act breakup. So I'm wondering if you could achieve a plot point 2 without the breakup.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Then it might be a different type of romance. In general for most stories. Plot point 2 means you're you're putting the characters in the worst scenario. So maybe for a romance it looks like one of them has died or left the country, or something that forces them to be a part. It doesn't necessarily have to be. I'm breaking up with you, but there's some separation there of. They're not gonna be together.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: and as soon as they're together the stories over, she's done

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: so they kind of have to.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: It's for a novel-length story. They kind of have to at some point split.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Yeah, yeah, you need the tension, I guess. Exactly awesome. So we had a similar ish question. So since what happens is a climax, moment is the opposite. So where one of them realizes they won't work and they break up. So would that be a climax? Or would that be the plot point, too? So that's a climax. But what you've written is a love story. That's a tragedy and not a romance.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: So when you're talking about romance, there is a happily, ever after, or the common term. Happily for now is the romance genre. Lots of love stories, you know. Just okay. Romeo and Juliet.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: That is a love story tragedy.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: They clearly break up in a very bad way.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Yeah, absolutely awesome. Okay? So let's have a look so referencing. So Alex says, referencing scene by scene editing, where does this sit in the editing order passes. So I like this. So this is talking about the different types of editing that you can do so. Developmental character, integrity, scene by scene, or is it scene by scene than part developmental. So it's quite a good question, this one. It is a good question. So there.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary:  okay, so usually how it works. And

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: let me just caveat. This with every writer's different, and every writer brings their own strengths, and some are really good at some things, and not screw to others, and vice versa. So let's just say, in a general process you would create your first draft.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: and by first draft I mean the 5 story arcs are there, and you have a main plot, and the in between scenes are filled out. Don't have to have your subplots yet. You can.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Some people edit a main plot first, then write the subplots, then put them in. You can have it all there, so let's say you have some form of a draft. Then you do.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: You start your structural edit with starts at the high level. Is the story there? Then you do your scene by scene editing, and with that we're talking about the structure of the scene, the the content, not the pros. So what's the actions happening in that scene?

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: So then you make sure you have a really strong story, and then, once you're sure your story is solid, you move on to copy editing and copy editing is looking at the prose level where someone, either you're doing it yourself or you're having somebody help you. And you're looking at the sentence level of

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: are the sentences in the right order. Do is there too much repetition? All of that stuff. And then, once that's all set and you're done, then you move on to basically, you format your book, and once your book is formatted, then you then you proofread it. And that's pretty well the whole process. But that's just a standard process.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Yeah, everyone. Everyone can sort of choose how it works for them, I guess.

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Awesome. Okay, okay, so that's that one done. So going back to more fiction related questions, so will this work for an

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: epistolary novel. I can never pronounce that word. I don't want to say the word, but but we don't need to pronounce it. So yeah, now, here's the trick. So that's a very that takes a very specific talent to write a story. In the form of letters right? And so there

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: you still need an inciting incident, a plot point one, a middle plot point plot point 2. In a climax. There has to be a story, or it's a box of letters that somebody found and is just reading through them, and it can come across as episodic.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: And then, once it's episodic. People stop reading it.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: So it needs it needs to fill in a story. You know, the one that I can think of is is kinda I guess Bridgetone's diary where it's her diary. It's not really letters, but it's her diary still written a story format.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Yeah, it's one of my favorite books. To be honest, it's on the I've read it like twice and I think a a lot of modern people tend to write with things like text messages and things like that or email. II read a short story recently. That was just emails. And it was amazing.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Okay. Awesome. So this question next question came up a couple of times, I think, in the chat as well. And I I'm gonna ask you to answer it, because obviously we don't share the chat. So can you use the software if you don't have an entire novel written. So if you have a partial story, does it? Would it read it as the whole manuscript, you know, when it it breaks down scenes and things like that, or it adds it to the Arc. Would it understand

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: all of that? And they've also asked if Ferrier works within the software which it does, you'd need the browser extension. So I can answer that bit. But if you could.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: So yeah, lot, we have people who write from word 0. So we have a feature where you can just write your novel within fiction area. We have lots of people who import whatever they've written and go from there, and the value in doing that everything works. The story arc is funky until

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: you actually have a story. So it's gonna try and draw it. But it's not really meaningful until you have a draft. Everything else, all of the story elements.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: all of the like looking at your entry and exit hooks all of those things you're doing. And as you're writing, those things are all sitting there. So when you're writing, I need an entry hook, I'm just gonna write it right. I'm gonna start with my entry hook and just keep going right now, where's my seam mill? I'm gonna have whatever happened. Oh, look, here's my climax, and so it helps you focus while you're writing. And then the story arc itself is the one inside that becomes valuable.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: When you have a story. When you've got that you've got your beginning, middle, and end done, not done, done, but and and then, even if you've just done a like, if you wrote your main plot line first and then write your subplot in. You can see exactly where the subplot is bumping the story arc, and where you need to add more depth and take some away and things, and it helps you before you get too far carried away to go.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: I'm writing too much here. This subplus, taken over

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: nice. One. Awesome. Yeah. So I saw that one a couple of times, and I was thinking that myself. So I'm glad you you answered that question. Thank you. Okido next. So we've got from yellow mud. Do you recommend a goal? Tension and conflict in each scene in each chapter? Yes, yes, and I'll tell you why. Because if the protagonist doesn't, or the point of view character sorry doesn't have a goal, what are they doing?

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: And if you're not doing anything.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: then

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: kind of Nope.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: So they must be trying to achieve. Something like every story is about the protagonist trying to achieve something that you know in the Bridgeton. It could be you know. Simon doesn't want to go to the ball. That's his goal. He doesn't want to go to the ball. Okay, it's related to the story because he needs to go to the ball, cause he's got to meet Daphne, or

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: he doesn't meet her. And then there's no story, right? So he had. That's his goal in particular scene. And of course, if you've read it, you know how he meets her on the way in and stuff and

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Kristina CEO Fictionary:  you know it kicks off the story, but with without without without that.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: And if there's a goal there has to be consequences. So of course, there's tension in every scene. There doesn't have to be conflict in every scene, but there should be obstacles to the scene goal.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: so that there's more tension

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: perfect. There you go.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Okay. So we've got a couple of questions about the six-week writing course. So Joshua asked, is the six-week writing course suitable for panzers or only outliners.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Yeah. So here, no, it's for cause, I love to pants so. And we have some fiction people here. They can tell you a lot of them when we did the the Beta testing for this course.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: are pancers, and the way we've designed the outlining is to to be creative about coming up with ideas and just doing enough that you go. Okay, I have enough that I know what my story is. And now I can go away and write to my heart's content. But and then there's others who wanna go really in depth and outline every single scene, and that's great, too. But the course is really designed on setting up a foundation, and then you can go away and pan

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nice one, thank you. And then the other question about the six-week program is, what is the cost? Or is it a subscription that comes like there's a part of the subscription, basically. Or can it be purchased separately?

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: No, that we do. Basically, the storyteller premium software comes with the subscription. So anyone who subscribes to that is just automatically in fiction live. And the reason we do that is because the classes are designed for live editing, and we wanna work with you on your manuscript while you're there in the zoom room and so we go alright. Everybody open the app. We're gonna go now, go to the evaluator. We're gonna do story blurbs today. So let's get the blurbs up. Okay, let's try this. Who's got a goal? What's the goal? Okay, that doesn't work this work? Blah.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: And so we we rely heavily on the on the software tool to teach.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Awesome. Yeah. Nice one. And Kiriki so I think some people are dropping off just because we are at the just over the hour now. So if you're willing to stay on for another couple of questions. Nice one. Okay, so we had one from Pippa. Which, says Christia, thank you so much. Are there any word limits associated with running your novel through the software.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: No, I think the largest novel we have in there is 350,000 words we kind of suggest. Maybe you might have 3 books, 4 bars, and that's yeah, awesome. We'll find the break in there to help you position those. And then you have a series, and you can publish this series. But no, there is no word limit. Some of the insights will might take just a little bit longer. So instead of 30 s, it's 40 s.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: That's about it.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: because that's the most

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: common thing everybody can convert to Doc. X. And if each chapter starts with the word chapter, and there's a scene, break character like a Tilde or a star in between the scenes. Fiction will just pick it up and break it out for you, and then it draws this everything from there. Nice one awesome.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Let's have a look.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: There's a good one about love interest falling in love later.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Connie. There is a no, it's up from. Don't me to just read it. Yeah, okay, will a book fail if the love interests don't have a spark until much later in the book, for instance, the male character love the protagonist in the past, and she doesn't remember it.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: He wants to remember it on her own, if and if she remembers it at all. Okay, so here's the trick with that. So no, it won't fail. It sounds like a great story. And what you do is in your story, Blurb, that goes on the back of the book. You put that information there. Not that they won't have a spark, but that they used to be in love, and that's the story. And then the reader is completely watching to see. Is she going to remember, or whichever one is going to. Are they going to remember

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: that they were in love in the past? And you'll see lots of commercially successful books use this technique with the book description.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: so that the reader knows it, and then the whole way through. And I'll give you an example. Peter James is one of his last books. He's a detective novelist, but there's a scene at the beginning of the book where the main character is dropping his wife off at the grocery store.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: but it's totally tense, because in the book description, you know, when he drops her off she never comes back. So you know, these are the last words they're gonna say before she disappears right? And so it's a totally tense scene by using the book description. And that's how you deal with stuff like that

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: sounds amazing. I mean, I agree, perfect. Okay, let's see.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: we've got a question about, is this one shot, or is it a monthly subscription for fiction? So I guess. Do you have a lifetime, or is it just a monthly subscription? We don't have a lifetime. We have either. You can buy it monthly.

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Of course you can cancel at any time. Or you can buy an annual subscription totally up to you, whatever

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: you know, whatever works for you.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Awesome. So now we've got Connie's question, which is, would this work if there were 3 point-of-view characters who each have a story arc? But between 2 characters, a strong romance, and a happy ever after at the end.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Yes, and there you would use. You know how I show that insight with the point of view characters. Then you use that to show how you're controlling the point of view characters and the 3 of them, and who you're giving balance to.

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And it's really important when you're trying to do 3 in particular, you wanna you wanna follow each of their journeys through it

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: perfect than a girl. Okay, let's see if there's anything else in here.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Well, let me address the AI question. Yeah, I was gonna say, that did actually come up. Is it AI making the chart? So that was a good question. No, so AI is not making. The only thing we use. AI for is scene naming

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: the the story arc itself. As you mentioned, my bio have a math degree. So I developed personally developed a mathematical formulas to to look at the manuscript. So that's our own software that does that.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: We've chosen with AI. We never touch your manuscript. We don't use it for training. We nobody can see it but you. It's a private. It's yours. You would own full rights to it. There's no discrepancy there, and so we never touch the text. What we're using it for, and see naming was our first test to see can we do that is to help you edit faster. And so scene names are really valuable for editing

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takes a long time to name 60 scenes, 70, 80, 90 scenes, whatever you have in your book, and so we chose that one to to test it out. And so we've got that up in Betamo to see what our our subscribers think of it? And is it working for them, and do they like it before we do any more DNA development.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: That's a really good way of yeah testing out the AI features like that. I think that's

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: I think we've covered the majority of them. And like, I say, it's about 10 min over now. So thanks everyone for joining us. That was amazing. Thank you, Christina, for sharing insights into plotting, editing within fiction. I think I'm gonna have to go and subscribe now, because I think I might just actually finish writing all of my novels. Feedback things that I saw was that people

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: had done maybe halfway or 3 quarters of the way through a novel through it in fiction, was able to actually get across the line and actually edit it and stuff. So I'm thinking that might help me for that, too, because it motivates people to

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: go together. And if you're having a motivational people, people cheer, you're on. And some people have. Pom, Pom, it's kinda cool. Yeah, yeah, community is is absolutely amazing. And then then there's events as well. That can also help you. If you're not feeling the motivation, you can come along to an event like this and get the energy coming from Christina. And II just wanna think Claudia's

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comment, thank you so much. I haven't been able to read all of them, and I'm just seeing yours. This is one of the most important classes I've seen for romance. Yay, that just made my whole evening. Thank you, Claudia.

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: Yeah, this. This has been a very, very supportive and loving you know, session, and everyone's been so positive. I think I've seen, is it, Linda? She's been amazing. She's been answering so many questions in the chat, and she's just like it's like a cheerleader for kindnesses. The word exactly. She's she's just been amazing with us. And I can

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see so many people loving it. So yeah, so go ahead and try fiction, like we said, for writing a works with it. You just need to download the browser extension and get going. If you have any issues, then contact us via Hello, app prorating a com, and if you put it for the attention of Sarah, then I'll answer it for you, because I'm always in the supporting book. Yeah, join us tomorrow. This is the last romance writers, we

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Kristina CEO Fictionary: session today, but we've got another 3 free days and one premium day left to go. There's all loads of content for such happy jazzy comments there. And I just all the nice things coming out at the end, really, really appreciate the support and kindness that came through today.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Brilliant? Thank you so much. And yeah, good night for Uk people, and good evening. Yes, Sarah, go to bed, bye.