Making Your Story Believably Bad Ass (and your characters too)

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A lot of time you’ll write a story and a beta reader, agent, editor or reviewer will say, “This is not believable.” And a lot of time, you’ll tweet something and some rando on Twitter will say, “WTF. You lie.” And a lot of time, you’ll just be telling a story at a party (or during Zoom in COVID times) and people will say, “No way! No freaking way.” This can be annoying especially when you’re trying to sell a book and you get that note. Why Does This Happen? Sometimes people react that way because their world and experience doesn’t mesh with your own and they don’t understand that everyone in Downeast Maine calls everyone else “Darling,” even straight men say it to other straight men. Sometimes it’s because you just haven’t suspended disbelief for them. This happens in real life, too. Sometimes Lies Aren’t Believable This man who used to be a Houston police officer (He resigned January 14.) went into the Capitol Building on January 6. And when he was interviewed, he told the federal agents that he wasn’t really part of the riots. He just wanted to see the amazing art. He was only in D.C. to help out his wife who had a business (cooking). But his phone (which the agents looked at) showed a bunch of videos and photos of him. The photos and videos were allegedly in a deleted folder. But the folder was not all the way deleted. And he was arrested because his story? It wasn’t that believable to those federal agents, right? I’m sure that when Shaun used to be a cop, he heard a lot of stories like this, too. One time our youngest daughter who has autism and likes to make really big stories told other campers at the campground that we went to Disney but she had to sleep in a chair. The other campers gawped at us and said, “What?” They didn’t believe her because it wasn’t believable. It didn’t match the people we were. Every time she does this, we say, “Buddy, if you’re going to lie, which we hope you won’t, you kind of want to make it more believable.” And then I tell her about the girl I met in college who told everyone during freshman orientation that her parents died in a plane crash in Alaska. About two parties later that morphed to a plane crash in Hawaii. Then during homecoming weekend, her parents showed up in their BMW very much alive. Don’t be that girl. In life or in story. How To Make Your Story Believable and Bad Ass Michael Hauge over on “Story Mastery” has some great, easy ideas on how to make your story believable. They are pretty basic, but important to remember and those notes don't fit here, so check them out (and our resources and citations) over on carriejonesbooks.blog, okay? WRITING TIP OF THE POD Make your character do things that make sense for your character. DOG TIP FOR LIFE If you have to play it out and hype it up too much, it often isn’t believable. Don’t forget, the humans aren’t going to believe you’re starving if they are the ones who know how many treats you get. Backstory and evidence matter. SHOUT OUT! The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License.Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website.Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/carriejonesbooks/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/carriejonesbooks/support