Today’s post is an interview with my friend and fellow book coach, Heather Davis.
Heather Davis is an Author Accelerator Certified Book Coach, developmental editor, Certified Copyeditor, and host of the podcast Speculative Fiction Writing Made Simple. She’s also a Los Angeles Review of Books Publishing Workshop Fellow. With 10+ years of experience coaching writers and 15 years of teaching, she knows how to break down complex craft concepts and help authors level up their novels with clarity and confidence.
Her approach blends deep editorial insight with a strong foundation in story theory, shaped by learning from some of the best in the field—including Lisa Cron, Jennie Nash, and Ben Frahm. Writers who work with Heather don’t just finish their books—they become dramatically better writers, understand what agents and readers want on every page, and gain clarity on the full publishing path from idea to publication.
When she’s not coaching, Heather is writing her own speculative novel, hiking wooded trails, doing yoga, or dreaming up ways to change the world through coaching and writing stories that push boundaries and spark change.
You’ll hear us talk about it in the podcast, but Heather is putting on an AMAZING summit and I wanted to share a little bit about it before you get to the transcript.
WorldShift: The Speculative Fiction Writers’ Summit 2025 (August 20–23) is a free, 4-day online event for fantasy, sci-fi, horror, and genre-bending writers. These sessions go deep into craft and publishing. And honestly, any writer can benefit.
🎟️ Free 24-hour access to every talk
🎁 Want lifetime access + bonuses? Grab the All Access Pass for just $67
(One of those bonuses in the All Access Pass is a year of Truant Pen for free…so if you’ve ever wanted any bonus content I’ve put behind the paywall, this is a great way to get access!)
*Affiliate Disclosure: As a summit speaker, I may receive a commission if you choose to grab the All Access Pass using my link — at no extra cost to you!
Without further ado, here is the transcript of my conversation with Heather.
5 Secrets to Hook Your Reader in Chapter 1
Sam Cameron: Welcome to Truant Pen, a substack of actionable advice for stuck writers. I'm your host, Sam Cameron, and today I am joined by a good friend of mine, fellow book coach, Heather Davis.
Heather, thank you so much for coming on. Why don't we start by having you introduce yourself?
Heather Davis: Hi, Sam. I'm so excited to be here. So as you said, I am a fellow book coach. And what I do is I help speculative fiction writers get their big, beautiful words and worlds down on digital paper for the world to enjoy.
Sam: And Heather also has a podcast that she does to help with that. So if you guys haven't found Heather's podcast yet, it is called Speculative Fiction Writing Made Simple. Did I get the name right?
Heather: Yes, I think so.
Sam: And Heather also has a really cool event coming up. So Heather, why don't you start by telling us about that event?
Heather: Yeah, so between August 20th and August 23rd, I am hosting World Shift, the Speculative Fiction Writers Summit.
So this is the first year we're doing it, but boy, I have collected a powerhouse group of book coaches and editors and agents and writers, bestselling authors who are just so excited to share their knowledge for free.
There is a free version of the ticket if you're interested. And I would love to have anyone and everyone come out and listen.
We have folks like KJ Dell’Antonia, who is a New York Times bestseller. We have Lisa Cron, who is just a powerhouse in the writing world. We have so, so many people.
And like I said, there is a free version of the ticket. And even if you don't write speculative fiction, you should check it out because honestly, most of the writing advice just works for any writer. So you would definitely get a lot out of it.
Sam: Excellent. And in the free version, if I'm remembering correctly, people who are going to the summit for free, there's a limited window in which they can view the recordings of the talks. And they can also go to a live Q&A where some of the speakers will be present.
And then if you go for the paid version, you have a longer access window to the recordings. Is that correct?
Heather: Yes, exactly. So if you get the free ticket, you have 24 hours after talk airs to watch it and soak up as much of the brilliance as you can. And then it goes away. If you get the paid version, you have lifetime access to the summit, which will… I think is it's going to be such an important thing for writers to do. Because like I said, we have collected some incredibly brilliant powerhouse speakers of which Sam is one.
So, you definitely are going to at least want the free ticket, maybe want lifetime access to the summit.
Sam: Yes, I had a really good time recording my talk. Mine is about considerations for writing LGBTQ+ characters in speculative fiction. So, if that's something that you're interested in, you should definitely check it out.
And I, for one, I'm really excited to see what KJ Dell’Antonia and Lisa Cron have to say in the summit. So, we'll remind everybody at the end, and I'll put links in the show notes to all the summit information for those of you who are interested in attending.
But Heather, in her work as a book coach, while she mainly works with speculative authors, she also has some really good advice just for authors of any genre. And we all know that one of the most important parts of your book is the beginning, because the beginning of the book is when -- if you're trying to get traditionally published -- It's how you hook the agent or the editor.
Once your book is on the shelves, whether it's self-published, traditionally published books. That first chapter is how you get readers to keep reading. It's how you get them to sink in. And so Heather has some advice to share about what are the all-important things that you need to make sure are in the beginning of your story.
So, I will pass it over to Heather to share her words of wisdom on that.
Heather: Yeah, so what I did when I was trying to put together this idea to talk to writers about was I went through the first chapters of very successful books, both New York Times bestselling novels, but also the novels of the writers that I've worked with who have gotten traditional publishing deals.
So I'm like, what do they have in common?
What do I see as the common, what are the common denominators that they have? Not like my big wish list, but like what is, what really is the base level of what we need?
And so that's where I came up with this list. And I could certainly add to this list forever. I have so many wishes to tack on to the end, but the big five, like the most important five are the ones that I'll talk about today.
And I call them secrets, even though they're not really secrets, but they are things that I see almost invariably missing from the first chapters of writers that come to me. And even writers who know that those things belong there, which is kind of interesting. And I think there are things that go missing in all of our work.
It's the curse of knowledge, right?
We kind of know it's supposed to be there. And that's why even as a book coach, for instance, I have a book coach, right?
So let's dive into secret number one, which is you should have, the protagonist should have a troubled starting state that hints at a character arc.
Sam: Ooh, I like that.
Heather: Yeah.
So, the troubled starting state means that their life is not perfect. There's something wrong and the reader can get a sense of that right away when they start reading. Interestingly, the character doesn't always know something's wrong.
A lot of times they do, but sometimes they don't.
So, they have this troubled place and it's not random. Meaning it's not like the writer's like, oh yeah, they have to be in a troubled starting state. So today's the day they got fired, their car broke down, their wife left them and their dog died, right?
Those seem like very bad things to have happen on the day that the novel starts.
But if those things are random, that wouldn't hint at a character arc. That would be sort of just random bad events, which we all have. And that wouldn't mean that the protagonist has growth that they need.
It was just a bad day.
Sam: So this is actually really interesting because I just started working on a new project that I'm improvising a little bit. And so I already was able to check off in my head.
I was like, yes, I have that. I have that in the first chapter. And in fact, I didn't know going in what this character's character arc was going to be. It just kind of came to me that there is this undercurrent of the troubled state and that hints at a character arc.
Do you have an example that you can share from like when you said you look at published works to come up with this list? Can you think of an example off the top of your head of an opening chapter where you've seen this?
Heather: Yeah, for sure.
So the two that come to mind, and I'll just briefly talk about them because they show one character who knows there's a problem and another who doesn't.
So, I think of The Hunger Games. It's very popular. I think most people have either seen the movie or read the book, so it might be familiar to them.
So Katniss Everdeen starts out… she is sort of a little bit of a curmudgeon. She is very surly. She doesn't have any friends except for one, Gale. And even Gale, she keeps at arm's length. She doesn't even ever want to think about getting married or having children. And she's solely focused on survival, nothing else.
It's all about survival.
And to the point, cause she wants to take care of her mom and her sister. So obviously Katniss knows that her world has a problem, but it's… it's caused by the society, right?
The society is causing the problem. They've put her in this place where survival has become paramount in her mind. She knows the world is a problem, but she feels powerless in it.
And that is really her problem, right?
So the world has a problem, but it's it's her feeling of powerlessness that she has to focus only on survival that the reader suddenly gets a sense this character has somewhere to go.
They have a path to travel. And I'm really interested to see where she's going to go with this. Is she going to always push people away and think that she should only be in it for her and her mom and sister? Or is she going to grow into a character who is willing to stand up for what's right and face down a government that is oppressive?
Sam: Gotcha. So this is an example of a character who knows what the external problem is, but she has not yet realized what her internal problem is, but the reader can kind of see it, hints of it.
Heather: Absolutely. And you can see it like… I think it turns out to be on the second page, maybe the first or second page of the book, which is…I love that it's placed there. The first hint of it, because there are hints, you don't come right out and say it, right?
But you give clues to the reader. And the first clue really that the reader gets is she's looking at this cat that her sister loves that's sitting next to her sister when she sleeps. And she's thinking that when this cat came to them as a kitten, she tried to drown it.
Now, that's a strange reaction for a teenage girl. Most teenage girls, like I would say, probably if a starving flea-bitten kitten comes to them, they think, oh, poor kitty. And they try to save it.
And her first reaction is, I'm going to drown this cat in a bucket because I can't have another mouth to feed. And that's a big hint right there. It's like, oh, this girl has some road to travel before she gets to who she's supposed to be.
Sam: Yeah, the first chapter of The Hunger Games is brilliant for a lot of reasons. So, I think that's a good example. And you said you had another example where the character knows a little bit what their problem is.
Heather: Well, actually, it's one where they have no idea. They think their life is great because this is the thing. The reader has to know that your protagonist has room to grow, but the protagonist doesn't always know.
So this is, it's Wallace Price from Under the Whispering Door. It's sort of a cozy fantasy novel. Really brilliant. I love it.
But it opens with Wallace Price, who is, who owns or is a a partner at a law firm, like he owns the thing and whatnot. And he's a real jerk.
He is awful. He is trying to fire an employee. And the entire chapter is just about him being completely callous and heartless and just the most Scrooge type of character you can possibly think of. You don't like this guy, but... Here's the thing. You realize immediately that his life is terrible because even though he thinks it's great, he's done all the things that he thinks he wants. His law firm runs really well. Everything works like a machine there. He just switches out parts when they need switching out and the parts are the people. He doesn't really even view them as people.
But he has this empty life.
He has nothing.
He doesn't see there's any kind of a problem with it.
Sam: I gotcha. Okay. So this is a character who, unlike Katniss, doesn't think there's a problem in his life. But both of them hint to the reader of an internal problem and the sense that this character has room to grow.
Heather: Yeah, absolutely.
Sam: All right. So that's thing number one is a hint that there is trouble under the surface and that the character has a character arc.
Heather: Yeah, because I mean, when we think about a story is about change, right? And if there's no room for change, there is no story. So that's why that is my number one. We have to know. And the character is the most important person to us. So we have to know that there's somewhere for them to go.
Sam: Excellent. So what's the second thing?
Heather: The second one is sort of a combination of things that work together and it's the goal, motivation, obstacles, risks and stakes that are involved in that first scene.
And so a lot of writers will come to me with an opening scene that has no goal and therefore the other things are not there as well. And I think it's a natural thing sometimes for this to happen because the writer's like, well, the inciting incident hasn't happened yet, right? They don't really need a goal. This is me showcasing just their everyday life, what life is like for the character, who they are. It's giving me all the vibes, right, of like who this person is.
But if they don't have at least a small goal…it does not have to be big. And it doesn't necessarily have to be related to the goal that they will pursue throughout the entire novel. But it does have to either relate somehow to the major goal or relate to showing us who the character is. That's going to, again, hint at the character arc and show the troubled starting state.
So yes, they need a goal and they need motivation behind it.
They need obstacles in the way.
They need risks like so that we buy into them pursuing this and we feel that tension and suspense.
And then, of course, there needs to be stakes on the other end of that as well.
Sam: Yeah, I think this is hugely important for characters to have goals in every scene, and especially the first scene that we see.
I know in my own writing, that was one of my big lightbulb moments in the past couple of years was realizing that I had a lot of scenes that weren't working or that weren't like tying together because I had a character in there with no goal. And if you don't have a goal, there's nothing to give direction to the scene. If there's no obstacles, then there's nothing stopping the character from getting their goal right away. There's no conflict. And if there's no stakes, then there's no reason for the reader to care whether or not this person gets their goal.
If we don't know why, and this goes back to motivation too, right? I think stakes and motivation are closely linked. If we don't know why this person cares about their goal, then we don't have a reason to care either.
Heather: Yeah. And I'd say even when writers get the goal in there, often it is the stakes and the motivation that go missing for two reasons. Sometimes because the writer simply has not thought of those yet. But more often than not, I say it's that curse of knowledge thing rearing its ugly head. Like they automatically know what the motivation and the stakes are. So, they feel like more is on the page than actually is.
And I think we all do that. Like you were saying about some scenes that aren't working. I remember, you know, looking at scenes in my book very, very early on in my first draft. And I'm like, why isn't the scene working? Why isn't it working?
Oh, yeah.
My character does not have even a small goal here.
Because that goal is like the yardstick for how the reader measures whether the scene is going well or going poorly, like it's what tells us whether there's tension or suspense, right? Because where is the protagonist in relation to their goal, right?
Sam: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's like a marker. Like when you're looking at your driving and you have your GPS on, the goal is like the little icon as you're driving. It's like, OK, where am I in this map?
Heather: I love that.
Sam: That's where I am. So the goal does that. And then the motivations and the stakes give the reader a reason to care whether this person gets it or not. And I've definitely found a lot of times that this is where the curse of knowledge I think really kicks in is...
I know for myself that sometimes I actually don't know fully which is why I don't put it on the page, but I've definitely worked with writers who they do know what their character's motivation is and they just haven't… you know because they know it, they think it's obvious to the reader yeah when in fact we all bring our own context to something so there's a lot of different reasons a person could want the same goal and so just making sure you're like clear about what it is this character -- why this character wants this thing.
Heather: Yeah. And I think that comes back to the idea that very often we're told to trust the reader, but we have to trust the reader once we've given them the information to work with. Right?
And the idea that the reader… and this took me a long time to actually accept, which is weird. Like I knew it on a surface level, but didn't accept it was that the reader is the co-creator of my world.
So, if I don't give them the pieces, they can't create the… I don't have to give them all the pieces, right?
Because like, I don't have to describe everything that's in the room, but I do have to give them the very important puzzle pieces of what my character is about so that they can put the right puzzle pieces together instead of just guess or wonder what's going on in their head.
Sam: Yeah, and I think both you and I are overwriters. And so I know that both of us would recommend to people that it's better to put more information on the page and then be able to pull it back and cut it out as opposed to not having enough.
And especially if you're thinking about submitting to agents or editors. They are more likely to when they're looking at something that is too much on the page, as long as it's not like so much too much…
Heather: Yeah.
Sam: They're more likely to say like, okay, I understand this. Here's where we can pull back. Whereas if they don't know at all, then it's a lot harder to like have a vision for the book.
Heather: Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, because they don't know what the deep emotional resonance of the work is if it's not on the page. If there's too much on the page, yeah, you can just edit that back and say, oh, we went a little bit too far on the explaining the internal workings and the internal thoughts and whatnot of the protagonist.
But if it's not there, it feels empty.
Sam: Yeah. And if you've been getting rejection… if you've been querying and you've been getting rejections on the flavor of I couldn't connect with the character or I didn't like fall in love with the character as much as I wanted to, which is a common type of agent rejection to get, that's probably what they mean is that the motivation or the stakes aren't there for them, that they're not understanding what it is the character wants and why it matters to them.
Heather: Yeah, for sure.
And that actually leads kind of very much into my next number three, which I would say, if you if you if nothing else, this is the one that I'm like, this is the asterisk. This is highlighted, bolded, italicized, all the things, a deep point of view.
And when I say deep point of view, I don't just mean, in fact, I don't at all mean whether it's first, third, second… like that to me is arbitrary.
That's not the point of view I mean.
What I mean by point of view here is that we have interiority. Deep interiority.
We have deep emotionality and we have a backstory that comes to the page in a way that works with the story without, you know, info dumping, of course.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, that's, I think that is super important. So for this one, why don't we talk about a couple of examples. So I already was like, oh, The Hunger Games is a great example of this.
Do you want to talk about how this shows up in The Hunger Games? Do you have a different example?
Heather: I have an example that I'll read you the difference between two things in a minute, but I want to explain just in case anybody out there is like interiority, emotionality, what are we talking about here?
Everyone knows backstories, but what about those first two? So the idea is that very often when writers come to me, they will have beautifully written paragraphs that are not interesting. And I know that sounds terrible, but they're beautifully written, meaning there is nothing innately wrong with them, but they are dry and they are not… They feel like the author speaking about the world, not the protagonist imparting their world to us.
And what readers crave these days…and it wasn't always so. You know, if you look back at older books that were published, this is not always true. But these days interiority and emotionality are paramount and interiority is what is the protagonist thinking feeling what do they expect to happen what do they fear might happen.
Like if you… instead of thinking of your writing as a video camera that's simply recording everything there as accurately as possible. You actually don't want that. You want to sink down into the head of your protagonist and you want to give everything from their unique perspective.
And if you do this, sort of every single protagonist becomes an unreliable narrator, right? Because we as human beings are unreliable. We might think things that are wrong. We might, instead of walking into a room and saying, the green couch by the window, I'd say that ugly ratty green couch by the window.
You know, like it's even down to the word choices in your paragraph. You have to think, is this me talking trying to give the reader information? Or is this my character describing their world as they move through it and their thoughts and their feelings.
Every single paragraph should never feel neutral it should always feel polarized by your protagonist if that makes sense.
Sam: Oh, yeah, I can completely visualize what it is you're talking about. Like, I'm just thinking about pages that I was reading earlier this week for the writers that I work with. And it is very clear, like when somebody has this versus when they don't. And I like the video camera analogy.
I've definitely used that before because I think that is how writers will often misinterpret the show don't tell advice.
Heather: Yeah.
Sam: It's like, oh, I need to show the external world. without editorializing how the character is interpreting it. And that loses out on what novels and prose in general is able to do, right? Because a film can kind of show us visuals much more effectively than a novel can. And so in order to actually tell the story and share the emotion, you do need a level of interiority.
And there's a… there's to me like a very clear difference between, OK, I read this paragraph and yeah, the choreography is there. I fully can see all the actions the characters are taking. I can see everything that's in the room, but doesn't mean anything to me versus someone who's written a couple of sentences about like one object, right? Or one action. But it's so like steeped in how the character feels about that action.
Heather: Yeah, exactly.
Sam: And the moment that they're having that it's just so much more compelling.
Heather: For sure. And I'd love to read you a little… I just have to find it very quickly. A little excerpt from a book that I love.
It's actually by Suzanne Collins. It's not The Hunger Games, but it is A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
And what I did was I took just a couple of paragraphs of the book and I removed the interiority and emotionality. So I'll read it to you without that first. And then I'll go back and read it to you the way that Suzanne Collins actually wrote it, which is so much better.
All right.
So we have our protagonist here, which is Coriolanus Snow. He was the bad guy from The Hunger Games books. But in this, he is the protagonist. He's a young man. And, you know, he's not the bad guy yet.
And he is on a train with a tribute who he wants to protect and help through the Hunger Games.
Anyway, so here it is. So this is with no interiority and no emotionality.
“Let's kill him,” the tiny boy said viciously. “Can't do nothing worse to us.” Several other tributes murmured in agreement and took a step in. Coriolanus’ heart pounded in his chest and he crouched slightly, fist extended in anticipation of imminent attack.
So there's nothing wrong with that. And I see writers bring that sort of thing to me all the time. It is definitely describing what we're seeing. We very much understand what's happening from a video camera.
Now, this is how Suzanne Collins actually wrote it.
“Let's kill him,” the tiny boy said viciously. “Can't do nothing worse to us.” Several other tributes murmured in agreement and took a step in. Coriolanus went rigid with fear. Kill him? Did they really mean to beat him to death right here in broad daylight in the middle of the Capitol? Suddenly he knew they did. What after all did they have to lose? His heart pounded in his chest and he crouched slightly, fists extended in anticipation of the imminent attack.
So we can see the difference. We went, we go external, something happens. And then Suzanne Collins brilliantly knows that then we have to go internal and into Coriolanus’ head to tell us what does he think about what he just heard that little boy say? What does he think it means? What does he fear is going to happen next? And then we go external again. What does he do in response?
Sam: Yeah, and I think what's really helpful about the example you just shared… you said at the beginning that this doesn't matter what person the POV is in. You're not talking about first, second, third, et cetera. And I think that a lot of writers have a tendency to think that if they're going to have deep POV or a lot of interiority, that it needs to be first person.
This is not first person. And we still have that interiority. So you can... there are ways in third person to still have a point of view right in the narration.
Heather: Oh, for sure. And it is harder. I know personally this, right? As I've been writing my book, I have two points of view in it, one first and one third. My first person point of view, it is so much easier to get into the deep POV.
It's true.
And with the second character, as you well know, it's been a fit getting down there into that deeper POV, but it is possible. And you just have to understand that you're not off the hook.
And I know what I do personally is… And it does, you know, there's always missing stuff, right? There's always that curse of knowledge. But what I do is when I read a paragraph, when I've written it from my protagonist's perspective, I go back and I say, did I really write it from their perspective? Or is that me?
And if I see me, it doesn't matter how pretty I think the paragraph was, I have to get rid of it and say, what words would my protagonist use? How do they interpret this event? Not how do I know it is, but what do they think it means?
Sam: Yeah. And someone, there's a writer who I think is… I love this writer, so I use him as an example for lots of things. Alexis Hall, if you look at a lot of his books, his voice and POV are so fantastic. And he's a good example of how he does it both with first and third person. Not necessarily in the same book, but like you can see how the same writer uses point of view in third person, in first person, and it's still like a very deep point of view.
So I'm thinking of something that he does that I've noticed is when he's writing from the perspective of women, he tends to choose to write those from third person or some other sort of... like a little more distance than when he's writing from the perspective of men, which I think is a very clever thing for him to have done.
So one of his books, my favorite of his books is Boyfriend Material, which is first person POV. And then another book, so that's a queer contemporary rom-com. And he has another series of queer contemporary rom-coms that are... Great British Bake Off rom-coms, basically. And the first one in that series, Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake, is third person POV.
But it's like you can see Boyfriend Material, you can see Rosaline Palmer, and they are clearly like both very voicey, both very POV, deep in the POV. One's first person, one's third person.
Heather: Nice. Yeah, it's… I think what you were just saying there about basically studying other authors and see how they do it.
That's one of the biggest things, right? So once you start noticing these things like, well, oh, what is the deep POV? Where do I see it? And how do I see writers handling it in first, third, second?
Some writers do it beautiful, like N.K. Jemisin. Oh my God, she can write from the second person.
How does anyone ever do that?
But it's voicey and it's beautiful and there's such deep POV. Yeah, it's lovely.
So definitely study novels once you realize what you need to add to your own and you never stop, right? Still, as an editor, as a writer, as a book coach, I study novels all the time. I cannot stop studying and say, oh, how did that? Because it's like you're a magician, right? And you're studying how the magic tricks are done.
Sam: Yeah. And I don't know about you, but it's rare for me to be so immersed in something that I'm not thinking about like what the writer's doing while I'm reading. So whenever I do encounter something where I'm just like along for the ride, after I've read it, it's like, OK, now I have to read it again and see how they did that.
Heather: Yes.
Sam: Because most of the time I am consciously thinking about it as I'm reading.
Heather: Yeah, no, there have been very few times. But yeah, those books that do that to me, that somehow bamboozle me, no matter how much I'm trying to pay attention to their magic tricks, and I'm still falling for them. I'm like, wait, what did you just do there?
There's actually a writer that I recently found, and I think I might be saying his name wrong. It's like John Wishwell or John Wishell. I can't recall. But he writes this book called Someone to Build a Nest In.
And he also writes short stories like... there's one about a haunted house on the opening day of it being on the market to be sold but he writes from these point of views that you would never think you would want to read like an insect creature or the haunted house itself but, his point of view that he brings to these characters… you'd say that's unpublishable right? No one's gonna read that, but he is brilliant. I mean oh my god he gives me chills when I read him. Why am I reading this? Why do I want to read from this character's perspective? Because it's marvelously executed.
Sam: Okay. So far we have: you got to open up with a character who has some sort of deep internal problem and it's you're hinting at it and hinting at how they have a character arc. Number two the character has to have a goal. They have to have motivations. There have to be obstacles. They have to have stakes. They have to have… was that all of them? Goals, motivation, stakes…
Heather: Risks. Those are just they risk along the way.
Sam: Yeah. So something in an opening scene that has all of the components that a scene should have in terms of plots and then third is a deep point of view and that doesn't necessarily mean that it's in first person but it does mean that everything we are told is filtered through the eyes of the protagonist whether that is teenage Katniss Everdeen or a haunted house.
Heather: Yes, exactly. Exactly. And I brilliantly said, yes, it is. Even if you're from the perspective of a haunted house.
Sam: OK, so what's number four?
Heather: Number four. So this is bleed in the first line. So your first line is important. The first line of a novel is…Probably won't make or break it, but I will say that if you open with a really strong first line, then you are, I would say, at least 50% there with making sure that the reader is going to stick around.
And it's not random. You don't want to open with...
It's not like hit or miss, I should say. It's not like a stroke of luck. You have to be very intentional about your opening line because what you want to do is you want to create curiosity. So when I'm thinking about bleeding in the first line, it means I'm going to say something. I'm going to give some sort of a bold statement or a foreshadowing or something really interesting about the character's current position, their current situation that is going to make my readers curious about a very specific thing. Not confused, but curious.
So curiously, like, wait, what?
And they keep reading.
Sam: Nice. So I… as you were saying that, I was thinking about how, you know how it's like a cliche, the first, the opening line being like, it was a dark and stormy day.
And you're like, not supposed to do that.
So when I was a kid, I loved A Wrinkle in Time. And I went back as… it was read to me by my fourth grade teacher.
And like, that's how I got really, really into it. And then I went back and reread it later, like as a teenager. After I realized that I wanted to like write and was learning about writing and had become familiar with that cliche that is literally the first line of A Wrinkle in Time. “It was a dark and stormy night.” I was like… did everybody like come up with this after this specific book or like there are other books that started this way? I don't know. But whenever I think about first lines I can't help but thinking of the first line of that book because you know… I was so quickly into the story because the next line is something about you know Meg being in the attic and not able to sleep or whatever then like you know right away I'm in um but I find it very funny that you know this is like a classic you know this very classic beloved, well-written children's science fiction novel and that's the first line of the book.
Heather: Yeah for sure but first lines are incredibly important. Yeah, you just have to create curiosity.
So I want to read you a couple of first lines of novels to illustrate what I'm talking about. So again, I like to group them into three different categories. I like to group them into, you could start, and there are other ways to do this, but these are the safe ways.
These are like the big safe ones. You could start with the protagonist's current situation. You can start with a bold statement, or you can start with foreshadowing. These are big safe ways, and I'm going to read you a couple from each category.
I'm going to start with a bold statement here.
This is from The Fifth Season. N.K. Jemisin wrote it. She writes, Let's start with the end of the world, why don't we?
Sam: Wow.
Heather: That's quite a bold statement. Right. And I'm like, yes, let's start with… because this makes it creates questions in the reader's minds like, wait, the world is ending. Why is it ending? How is it ending?
I'm not confused. I know the world is ending. But now I'm curious to find out like she's not confused me, but she's made me curious to find out a very specific thing. And I'm going to read forward to find out that very specific thing.
All right. One more from the bold.
Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher. The trees were full of crows and the woods were full of madmen.
I'm hooked. Why are the trees full of crows? Who are the madmen? Why is the woods full of them? I don't know, but I want to find out.
So immediately I'm immersed because it doesn't start like Tony opened the door and walked through with two cups of coffee in his hand. I don't, care, right? I mean, I don't care about boring, um, uh, like scene level movement. I want something bigger when I start.
Okay. So that's bold statement. Let's go on to an example of the protagonist's current situation.
So if I go back to TJ Klune Under the Whispering Door, he starts out, Patricia is crying.
I don't know who she is, but that's the current. And I'm curious to find out why is Patricia crying? Soon we'll find out that it's because Wallace Price is a jerk. But we don't know that yet.
V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. It starts out, A girl is running for her life.
I want to know why.
Okay, so let's go on to foreshadowing.
This is from Matt Haig The Midnight Library. So this is the opening line. Nineteen years before she decided to die, Nora Seed sat in the warmth of the small library in Hazelden School in the town of Bedford.
So nineteen years before she decided to die that's quite a bombshell to drop right there. I love that the author did this because the rest of it she sat in a library who cares that she sat in a library? But because we know it's nineteen years before she decided to die now it makes it more interesting.
The final one in this category of foreshadowing, this is from Yellowface by R.F. Kuang, The night I watched Athena Liu, die we were celebrating her TV deal with Netflix.
Okay. Like, I mean, there are two interesting things there. First: TV deal with Netflix. Okay. I'm kind of interested in that, but she died that night. Now it makes everything that happens after that really, really interesting.
Sam: I was thinking about that because I have a book actually sitting next to me. I just recently interviewed Amy James, who's the author of Crash Test, which is still sitting next to me on my desk.
And it has a really compelling opening line. And she said that actually the first paragraph just kind of came to her. And then she wrote the rest of the book.
So the first chapter is called After. And the first line is, No one thinks to tell me about the crash, not until an hour after it's happened.
Heather: Oh, I love that. I love that. That's so good, right?
Because it creates so many sorts of questions like, okay, what is the crash? Why did it happen? Why are you being, you know, all these questions that are happening?
Sam: Yeah. And probably if anyone's picked up this book by, you know, and you get to the point of like opening it and reading it, it's about a Formula One driver and his boyfriend who is a Formula Two driver. And so that's the crash that they're referring to. It's in the jacket copy.
But if you didn't know that…um so if you've read the jacket copy you're like okay we're starting with the crash like we're in it right away. And if you don't if you didn't read the jacket copy you're already at the questions like, okay what was the crash? Why is this important? Why did nobody tell this guy about this crash?
At what point in the writing process…Well, why don't we get to… I was going to ask at what point in the writing process people should be thinking about their first line. But why don't we go ahead and talk about secret number five? And then we can talk about like at what point in the writing process people should be thinking about each of these five.
Heather: Yeah, that makes sense. Secret number five is actually very much related to secret number four. And it's you also want to bleed in the last line of your chapter of your scene of wherever it meaning you don't want to fizzle out. You don't want to just like make it feel wrapped up and contained so that the reader feels like every their questions have been answered and everything feels you know very much like they can move on.
Because if you do that, you risk them putting the book down and not continuing.
What you want to do is end your chapter in some sort of a way, again, that is what I call a curiosity spark. Meaning, just like the first line, you want to create something that creates questions in the reader's mind of what's going to happen next?
A feeling of this momentum of moving forward in the story. And you can do this in so many ways. You don't have to always end on a cliffhanger, although some writers do this marvelously.
For instance, Suzanne Collins, she will often… so chapters and scenes…chapters are artificial constructs, right? Writers get to decide where they begin and end. Scenes are a unit. And what she will do to create that leaning in the last line almost invariably and I love this about her, she'll take a scene and chop it in half and leave you at the halfway point of some big dramatic feeling or action it doesn't always have to be an external thing it can be an internal thing.
But she'll leave you at that precipice moment that you get the sense, even if you don't know what a scene is and you don't know that it's not the full scene, you get the feeling that is not complete and you need to go forward to find out.
Sam: Yeah. One of my absolute favorite writing blog posts I've ever read is. I think it was Emily Golden of Golden May Editing. It was either her or her business partner, Rachel. But I think Emily is the one who wrote this. But they both talk a lot in their coaching and editing practice about scene structure and the scene beats.
And so they wrote this really great article that I'll link for you all. That's about like, what are the beats in a scene?
But structurally, basically, a scene should have a character enters with a goal. They encounter obstacles. They then have to sort of like pivot what they're doing to try to get their goal, right? Maybe they pivot to a new goal. Maybe they pivot to a new plan of how they're going to get their goal. Things escalate and escalate and escalate, reaching to like a point of complication that, the character is now backed into a corner and they have to make a decision in order to resolve the scene.
And whatever that decision is …it's something that is revealing about who they are as a character and creates consequences that kind of move the story forward. So like that's a scene. That's like a complete story.
And as Heather was saying, chapters can have multiple scenes in them. Chapters can end in the middle of a scene as a trick to get the reader to keep reading forward. And so often you will find chapter ends like what you're talking about with Suzanne Collins, where it's sort of like... ending the chapter at the decision point, right?
Where the character hasn't made the decision yet, but they've now been backed into the corner. So it's not a complete scene, but you, again, you have that sense of like, oh, they need to decide something. They need to do something. I have to keep reading to find out what it is.
Heather: Yeah, for instance, in the first chapter of The Hunger Games, she chooses to end chapter one as soon… So Katniss is sitting there in the town square and the reaping is going on and they're calling names. And Katniss is incredibly worried. This is her interiority. She's worried that she will be called because her name is in the bucket to be pulled many, many, many times.
She's not at all worried about her sister because her sister's name is in there only one time. That's statistically improbable. So she's sitting there consumed with herself. And then she hears that they didn't, she says, they didn't call my name.
It's Primrose Everdeen.
That's her sister.
They called Prim's name.
And that's where she ends it. It's Primrose Everdeen because we know that's the like, oh, moment. The worst possible thing that could happen. And that's where she leaves us.
No one is going to stop reading on chapter one. That's why that book has been the phenomenon that it is. No one can stop there. And that's how she consistently does things.
Sam: Yes. Yeah, I remember…So when I remember the first time I read that book, so many times -- and all of my favorite books, I have this experience of -- I'm a very fast reader. And so when I'm like getting like really into the tension of something like, oh, this is happening, it’s happening, it’s happening. I have to actually like cover the bottom of the page to keep my eyes from like darting down to the bottom of the page to see what's, you know, and I can remember this building tension in that chapter of all right the name's gonna be drawn, the name's gonna be drawn, the name's gonna be drawn. And like, this tension's been building up for the whole chapter. Like we know this is what's gonna happen, and you know…I know going into the book that Katniss is going to go into the Hunger Games, I just don't know why yet and yeah so to have then that cut off of like… you can anticipate how Katniss is gonna react but you have to turn the page to find out and like you're desperate for that.
Heather: Yeah, yeah. And if we go to, for instance, Under the Whispering Door with TJ Klune, the idea of that Wallace Price, who is a jerk, and he's been so evil throughout the whole chapter and heartlessly fired someone, that one ends like this.
So he's planning on, you know, next week, he'll hire a new person, blah, blah, blah, like to take Patricia, who's crying’s place. Like, you know, and he's thinking about all the things he's going to do next week.
And then it says he never got the chance. Instead, two days later, Wallace Price died.
And it's like, oh, wait, what? Like, it's not leaving us mid-scene, but it is leaving us with this big, like, oh, my, what is happening now feeling.
And I really want to go on because I really hated this guy. I wasn't sure I wanted to read a whole book about him. But he just died. So this is going to get very, very interesting, right?
Sam: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm looking at – I flipped to the last – the last page of the first chapter of Crash Test, which is when I kind of pulled out the opening line for that. So in this first chapter, Travis is the narrator of the first chapter. So at the very beginning of the chapter, he's found out that there's been a massive crash. His secret boyfriend is in that crash. Someone has died on the scene. He doesn't know who it is. A bunch of other people have been med-evaced. So he finds out his boyfriend's still alive, but he's in very critical condition at this hospital. And he's found his way to the hospital, but he's not family. So he can't see him. And so the last line of the first chapter is...or the last two lines of the last chapter, But I'm not family. And so while he dies behind frosted glass walls, I lock myself in the first bathroom I can find and cry until I'm sick.
Heather: Oh, yeah. Who could possibly stop there, right? Propels you immediately emotionally forward into the second chapter. That's so good.
Sam: Yeah. And it's a very good book. It's a good one. All right.
So to recap... I'll recap the five secrets, and then we can talk about, as you're in the work of doing the writing, when to think about each of these five.
So number one was a hint of the character arc, right? A hint of the trouble, the internal trouble this character is in. Number two was a character who has goal, obstacles, stakes, motivation, risks, all that. Number three is deep point of view. Number four is bleed in the first line and number five is bleed in the last line.
Heather: Yes.
Sam: So at what point in the writing process should writers be thinking about each of those things?
Heather: Yeah, that's a really good question. I'm just going to go through each one and say when I start working with my writers on those.
So the troubled starting state that hints at a character arc, that's before they ever start the book typically. I am definitely a proponent of at the very least, even if you consider yourself a pantser, you need to deeply understand the character arc and your protagonist.
Because I think plot is… can be improvised if you have a very, very deep understanding of your character. So that part, I would say, before you start the book, you really should understand what will be your protagonist's troubled starting state and what is their character arc. Like, where are you going emotionally, internally with this novel before you get started?
So for secret number two, the goal, motivation, stakes, and risks... I would say that at least as your... This one's tough.
There's the right answer and there's the true answer. The right answer is you probably should have all of it pretty much figured out before you go into a scene. The truth of it is even when we have pretty much all of it sorted out before we go into a scene, invariably things change and they grow and they deepen and scenes take... they take turns that we don't always know they're going to take.
But I would say that as you're writing it, make sure that you are seeing these elements being reflected. And if you're not, you can go back and tweak the scene and say, oh, what is missing in this scene? Did I forget to talk about the motivation? Like why?
Because sometimes we're so excited to get it on the page that we do forget to put that down. So that would be like as you're writing the scene and reflecting on it after you're writing it.
For deep point of view, that's a muscle. You just have to try from the very first time you put words on a page. And what will happen if you're not used to writing this way? It will grow and change over time, your ability to write with a deep point of view. I've seen this with almost all of the writers I've worked with, that when we first start writing the novel, you have to start and you have to keep going, right? And it's a muscle. It's a practice. It's something you're developing.
And the first half of the novel emotionally and internally looks very different than the second half of the novel. But then you can go back and layer those things in where you see them missing. So it's not like, well, I have to not write until I get all of this figured out. It's like, okay, I can layer it in piece at a time. I can get better at doing it, pay attention to doing it. And then when I'm really good at it, when I'm over here, I can go back and layer it in.
And we all have to go back and layer things in because we never all get it the first time, no matter what.
For secret number four, don't worry about your first line at all, at least until like your second or third draft. I mean, you can put down a nice starting line, but the truth is that your first chapter will probably be rewritten more than any other chapter in your novel. So if you worry about it in the beginning, you'll just never move forward and you won't get it right the first times.
You won't.
I know that for the novel I'm writing right now, I have a first line that I love, but I would never have been able to write that first line in the first draft because I just didn't know enough. Even though I planned out the whole thing, I didn't know enough to make a very deep and powerful first line that felt like it had momentum moving through the story.
Sam: So I think as I was listening to you lay all of these out, in my mind, I was kind of thinking very similar to what you were saying that elements or secrets one and two, which are about the internal character and the goals, stakes, etc. I would call those like structural considerations.
Those are things that even if you don't plan in advance, which I don't always, they're the types of things you'd want to figure out first when you are revising. Because you're right, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to really get fixated on the opening and closing lines until you figured out the character arc.
So for example, in the book… in one of my recent books that I was writing… I'm very good at closing lines of chapters. That's just something that I have a natural ear for. And so I come up with these great zingers.
And when I'm...When I'm pantsing my way through something, I don't always know why it's there when I first am writing. So I had this character who had a great closing line for one of her early chapters that was something like, I promised myself that I was done lying to him. This really is the last time I swear.
That's a great closing line. There's so much intrigue there. But as I kept going further into the story, I hadn't figured out who this character was yet or like what her internal arc was or what the deal was with her and this character who she was “done lying to” and I realized like as I got deeper into the structural work that that zinger just didn't fit it didn't make sense with who the character was. So, you may find that as you're drafting that the pieces will come to you out of order.
But in terms of like what you spend your time obsessively focusing on, like when you're revising, it sounds like you first want to make sure that you're clear on... character arc, goals, stakes, motivations, all of those plot level structural things. And then the other three are more at the line level right and arguably the point number three like you said it's the most important one. It takes a lot of practice to like be consistent about putting it on the page, right? But it is ultimately a line level thing that you're doing. You're just doing it everywhere.
So if you were to like revise, you've got your first chapter, you're revising it you first want to make sure that the structural elements are there then you want to make sure that the POV elements are there, and then you can go play with your first and your last line.
Heather: Exactly, exactly, because they're like the decorations. They're incredibly important, but they are the decorations that, you know, they are single lines or a couple of lines at the end.
They're big things that you can think of. How do I begin or end this in an interesting question-raising way?
And one of the things I found out that I'm working with a writer right now she just maybe about halfway through a little over halfway through the second draft of her novel she'll probably have three drafts and the third draft is what I call the ironing draft. It's you know just kind of making sure everything's where it needs to be but she had started the opening of the second draft she rewrote her first chapter for it. And it started in just sort of a humdrum place in that the opening line was like, Thea -- I'm paraphrasing here -- but like Thea crossed her bike over to the left side of the road or something like that, headed for lunch with her daughter.
Okay, I don't care.
Right? I mean, it it's not in… it's not bad writing. It was great writing, but it didn't raise anything in me that made me want to keep reading but um about three paragraphs down there was a line that said Thea hated magic and then it went on. And I'm like there's your first line: Thea hated magic. Right? Because that creates questions and it is the problem the character faces right that Thea hates magic and it immediately makes me ask questions like Oh, why does Thea hate magic? What's going on in this world? There's magic in this world.
So it creates all sorts of, so very often you do find your really fun lines are already there. You just have to realize that you need to move them up or move them down, right? You're like, where do I need to put this thing?
Sam: Yeah, absolutely. And again, you might find that you've put those lines in there when you were drafting, or that maybe you did actually naturally come up with what the opening and closing lines were for the first chapter. But the point is, don't obsess over those lines until you're sure that you're solid on everything else.
Heather: Yeah. I would say do not obsess over them until you're very close to the finish line because so many things change. And you can get ones in place like in your second or third draft. You're like, oh, I really think these are good. But don't let it hang you up on moving forward to get like your zinger or you're like, oh, that's a really good one.
You just have to like they are equal parts science and mystery, right? Like where do they come from? Where do these beautiful lines come from? You have to wait for them very often.
Sam: Yeah. And I'm going to let everyone in on a secret number six, which is that everything that Heather just said belongs in every single chapter of the book, not just the first chapter.
Heather: Yes, that is so true.
Sam: Obviously, the first chapter is really important to, you know, getting the agent or the editor or the reader to keep reading. But if you also have all five of these elements in every chapter, then you're going to have people finishing your book and requesting full manuscripts and making offers and… So yes, it's important to have all this in the first chapter, but then you should also go ahead and look at all of your other chapters and make sure they're there too.
Heather: Yeah, and I think sometimes I'll see… I know there's one writer that I work with who keeps obsessing, and this is not a writer that I coached, but someone that I did a developmental edit for, but keeps obsessing over the first like 20 or 50 pages that I go, this is what will make the agent decide. And I, you know… one of the things I try and convince writers like this is no, it's not just those pages.
Like they might get you a full request, but if they then read the rest of the novel and you don't aren't consistent, you know, they aren't going to offer representation. So like the whole novel is equally important.
It's not just that first milestone of the first few pages. So you have to kind of go through and say, is it consistently good? Am I consistently doing these things?
Sam: Yeah. So one final question I have for you is and this is kind of a big question. A really common struggle is figuring out what scene to start a novel with.
Heather: Yeah.
Sam: And you have sometimes like the writers starting too early. Sometimes they're starting too late.
Heather: Yeah.
Sam: Do you have any advice about figuring out what the opening scene of a novel should be?
Heather: I mean, I would say that you have to start in a place that you don't wanna, first of all, you don't wanna be too far from the inciting incident, right?
You want to make sure that you're at least placing it usually in the first 10% of the novel, which can be a struggle. I know that from personal experience, right? Can be a struggle placing it there, but it should be there. And then with that in mind, you have to start at a place where there is an interesting question, right?
That where you can create a curiosity spark of what do I want the reader to be interested in? That's always where when I'm writing a scene and especially when I was deciding where do I start my novels, what do I want the reader to be deeply interested in?
What do I need to tell them that will interest them? And start there, start with that feeling where you can showcase that there is that momentum moving forward, right?
Where something, we get that sense, if you love Save the Cat, you'll recognize this language, but it's that stasis equals death moment, right?
Where we can deeply see that the protagonist must move forward in their character arc because they cannot stay where they are. And I wish I could say it's as easy as start in the daytime where they're talking to someone and blah, blah, blah. Right. I wish I could give like definitive… but it is start where it feels immediate, if not to the character, at least to the reader, that something must change.
And you must start where you can create curiosity about what is going to happen in this scene.
Sam: So in Under the Whispering Door, we start with the day that Wallace dies.
Heather: Yes. We start with a moment where we get a showcase of who he is. We don't know what's going to happen after he dies, but we know that he needed change. And obviously that change couldn't come in this lifetime, but it's going to come before he moves on to the next one. So we do know that. We get that.
We didn't need to start earlier and see all the times he's been a jerk. We needed one really good moment with Patricia to show us who he was and why his life and death needs to change.
Sam: And The Hunger Games we have just enough context of who Katniss is before the reaping to know why Prim's name being drawn is the worst possible thing that could happen.
Heather: Exactly. And you'd…very often writers think and this is another thing that a couple of writers who have come to me for developmental edits have said. Well, I need to start with the inciting incident. The agents are saying it's not interesting enough yet. I need to start with a “stupid action scene’ – I actually have one writer who says that he has to put in a “stupid action” he hates action. I have to put in a stupid action scene and I'm like no. But you do… what makes readers curious isn't action and you don't all… usually there's… there's never an always or never um but you usually don't want to start with the inciting incident because that's we don't care enough yet. You have to show us who the protagonist is and you have to create context for why anything matters before we get thrown into this emotionally heightened moment. Usually.
Sam: Yeah. Crash Test, which I've used now as a couple of times as an example, is an example of it does literally start with the inciting incident, which is the crash. But Amy James does a really good job of... It is very clearly... It is very clear quickly why this crash matters to the narrator.
And also, like, the stasis for this character has been keeping this relationship a secret. And this crash... dramatically tests the ability to keep this relationship a secret. And then the next chapter, she shares some backstory about the relationship. So you the reader know a little bit more about why to care about the relationship. But I think it wouldn't have worked as well if she'd started with, here's this whole backstory about me and my boyfriend and yeah, he's the love of my life.
Instead, it's the love of my life is dying and nobody knows that we're together.
Heather: Yeah, and I think that's something that we really have to think about when we're writing. It's not like most of the things that we say don't do, you know, for most writers. It's not that they can't be done. It's that it takes a particularly masterful storyteller to pull it off. And typically, if you're writing your first novel, you're not quite there yet. Like that is a challenge maybe for another book.
But when you're making things harder for yourself, it's not that you cannot write like Amy James, clearly writing a brilliant opening scene that starts with an inciting incident, but it's harder what she did. And so you would only be making your life harder by doing it, not making it easier, because most writers think, if I start with the inciting incident, I'm automatically making things more interesting.
You're not.
You're making it harder for you to help the reader connect to the protagonist. And only if you are a storyteller up here are you going to pull that off. And most of us, at least in our first novels, are probably not way up here.
We're not the ultimate storyteller yet. We're not the storyteller we will be someday. We need to make life a little bit easier on ourselves.
Sam: Yeah, like in one of my books, one of my early books, I had an opening scene. I opened with the inciting incident and I got a revise and resubmit letter from an agent. And one of the things that she said in that revise and resubmit letter is she said that she felt like she needed more context for the character in her world before that first chapter.
I will also add that if you're sitting here listening to this and you're in the middle of working on your draft and you're like, Crap, am I starting too late? Am I starting too early? Don't worry about it yet. Get to the end of your draft first because if you're trying to make those fixes now you may not have enough information yet. The answer may be more obvious later. You might need someone to read it and give you feedback before you can answer that question.
Heather: Yeah, for sure. I think that's one of the things that has changed most about the work that I'm doing right now is where am I starting? Like, I've been all over the place. And I think each time I think about it, it gets easier to know where the right place is, right?
So, I think those are decisions that are easily made much later on.
Sam: Yeah, absolutely. And I've also run into the problem with a different book where I was like, oh, this feels like it's too long. It's going to be too long. And then in the middle of the draft, I decided to start it later. And I had to shelve that project because it got too messy to work on.
So, learn from my mistakes. Go ahead and finish your draft. And then you can worry about where it starts.
Heather: For sure. For sure.
Sam: So, Heather, this was really helpful and informative. And hopefully this will help people now have a little checklist they can use when they're looking at their opening chapters. If you thought this was helpful, you should definitely attend Heather's summit. So, Heather, can you remind us the details of the summit?
Heather: Yes, absolutely. So it's called World Shift, the Speculative Fiction Writers Summit, and it's for speculative fiction writers, but it's for all writers because almost everything that we talk about really is just broadly applicable. So even if you don't write speculative fiction, please come to the summit. You will learn so, so much from our speakers.
It happens between August 20th and August 23rd. [2025] So there'll be several days of summit where you'll get to listen to speakers talk and be in the chat with the speakers very often. And then on the final day, there'll be a live Q&A for the speakers who can attend where you can get your questions answered by those speakers.
So it'll be phenomenal. Again, we have just an absolutely phenomenal lineup of speakers. I am so, so grateful and so happy and excited to watch all the writers learn all the things.
Sam: Amazing. And if writers want to hear other tidbits of very excellent advice from you, where can they find you online?
Heather: You can find me at manyworldswriting.com. That's my website. But I would definitely tell you to come listen to my podcast, which is Speculative Fiction Writing Made Simple Podcast.
I would love to have you there. I give all my thoughts and all my stuff. It's mainly a teaching podcast. I do have guests now and then, but it's mainly a teaching podcast. So if you want to learn lots of things, come listen to me ramble about them for a while.
Sam: All right. Thank you so much, Heather.
Heather: Thanks so much for having me, Sam.
