What a year this has been! For me, it was a year utterly defined by the major life change of buying and moving into a new house. (I’ll talk more about that in my annual New Year retrospective, for those interested in my personal adventures.) On the writing front, this meant I tackled the (possibly crazy) feat of cramming a year’s worth of work (including a course, two books, and 40+ blog posts and podcasts) into four months, freeing me up for the incredible adventure of making a new home.
- This year, I was very pleased to release the eight-week email course Shadow Archetypes: Writing Complex Fictional Characters. I’m super-proud of this course and had so much fun creating it. It builds on the eight primary life archetypes I talk about in my book Writing Archetypal Character Arcs and goes even deeper in exploring how each archetype’s passive and aggressive shadows create the crucial inner conflict that allows for ultimate transformation.
- I was also so humbled and honored to get to release a revised and expanded 10-year-anniversary 2nd edition of one of my flagship books Structuring Your Novel. After ten years (or actually eleven—I was a year late!) and 80,000 copies sold, this book has become such an important part of my life. I am so proud it has played such an important role in helping so many people write their best stories. Ten years later, I felt it was time to revisit this work and update it with some of the things I’ve learned along the way, including full chapters on the Inciting Event, Midpoint, and Third Plot Point.
- In prepping the second edition of Structuring Your Novel, I realized I had collected so many new ideas and information that I really had a second book’s worth! I didn’t want to change Structuring Your Novel *too* much, so I released a brand new book, Next Level Plot Structure. This book goes much deeper into story theory to explore the idea of chiastic, or ring, structure, in which the beats in each half of the story mirror each other, as well as how every plot beat consists of two crucial halves.
- I was also able to release the long-awaited audiobook version of Writing Archetypal Character Arcs. (And, yes, for those wondering, the audio version of the second edition of Structuring Your Novel should be out very soon—just after the first of the year—and Next Level Plot Structure will follow.)
- Helping Writers Become Authors was also granted its 11th mention on Writer’s Digest‘s list of 101 Best Websites for Writers, which is always a tremendous honor.
- On the personal front, the year was pretty much all house-themed all the time. I didn’t get to do much traveling, and I put my fiction on the shelf for the summer and fall months, while I focused my creative energy elsewhere.
Moving into 2025, I am excited to see what the new year brings. Aside from my own personal growth stretches, 2024 was also a year of changes on the business front. Google’s AI updates are changing the Internet landscape, and I will definitely need to sit down and see what I can do to adjust and make sure HWBA stays up to date and as relevant as possible. Thank you all for your recent suggestions about how I can best serve you in the coming year. I will be reviewing all your ideas and posting about as many of them as possible.
For those wondering, I am planning to release a similarly updated second edition of the Structuring Your Novel Workbook, which will mirror the changes made in the main book this year.
I also have a brand new idea up my sleeve. Building on the success of the Archetypal Character Guided Meditations I released last year, I’m wanting to see if I can figure out a way to bring these dreamzoning tools to some live sessions where we can all dream our stories together. Stay tuned for more on that!
And, of course, I hope to pick up my fiction WIP once more. I continue my adventure with learning how to honor and nurture the creative spirit, something I’m sure I will be sharing with all of you.
See you around the corner!
My Top 10 Posts of 2024
And now, just in case you missed them (or want to revisit them):
1. From Lead to Gold: The Alchemy of Character Arc With Carl Jung
2. 6 Tips to Write Deeply Emotional Fiction
3. Writing Multiple Plotlines: Everything You Need to Know
4. How to Use Symbolic and Archetypal Settings in Your Story
5. Checklist for Beginning Your Story: Introducing Your Characters
6. Checklist for Beginning Your Story: Plot Considerations
7. 5 Reasons Story Structure Is Important
8. A Writer’s Comprehensive Guide to Backstory
9. 12 Places to Find a Beta Reader
10. How to Use Antagonists in Your Story: The Right Way and the Wrong Way
Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! What was the most memorable writing event for you in 2024? Tell me in the comments!
The post originally appeared on following source : Source link