Character Choices
How to walk your character toward one door, only to pivot and dash toward a different one.
let’s start with Anna’s big news…!
character choices
resources/fact check 📋
TTS giveaway!
1. let’s start with Anna’s big news…!
And we’re back from our winter break! We planned to return in mid-January, but there were lots of exciting things happening behind the scenes, such as…
🎉🎉🎉 ANNA’S BOOK DEAL!!!! 🎉🎉🎉
That’s right, the book of Anna’s heart, the one she’s been talking about since our very first episode, the one she revised throughout Pitch Wars, then again with her agent, then again through an R&R (revise and resubmit, for those who don’t know: it means an editor was interested in reading a version with specific changes, but made no promises of publication)— will be on shelves in spring 2026! Keep an eye out for ALL WE HUNGER FOR!
We (well, Lyssa’s typing this out, we all know Anna would be far too humble about it) are so excited to share this news, not only because we love Anna, but because her journey is a quintessential example of the TTS ethos. Anna has worked HARD. She has focused on her craft, making her manuscript better and better and better until it’s the un-put-down-able masterpiece that it is. And now, she’ll have the opportunity to do revisions with an editor from a top publishing house, giving her even more deliberate practice. I could go on all day, but instead, here’s one of the many ways Anna kept herself going for years:
And here is Anna’s deal announcement, all Publisher’s Marketplace official.
Lyssa, meanwhile, shared details of “Book 2” which is officially titled GILDED IN VENGEANCE. You can read more about it here, if you’d like.
We spend the first ~15 minutes of this episode hearing more about Anna’s journey (and touching on Lyssa’s updates, too) before diving into Character Choices, which is an incredibly useful tool to guide your major plot points. In the words of our bestie Taylor, are you ready for it?
2. character choices
In your novel, you should1 have 2+ MAJOR character choices that point the plot (and character arc) in a new direction.
Good choices don’t have to be characters doing the “right” thing (and often aren’t). Good choice = engaging decisions that make the plot more interesting.
Good choices consider both external choice (“oh crap, I’m walking out of my job”) and internal choice (“I’m going to break my own rule and LeT LoOsE!”)
Good choices , per Lynn D. Jung, as explained by Anna, consist of the 3 C’s:
Context: in what conditions does the story take place?
Choice: given the context, what are they going to do?
Consequence: does the choice impact the plot, pushing it forward for better or for worse?
Chocolate: just testing your reading comprehension ;-)
Okay, but why bother? Why include choice in your plots? Here at #TeamCuriosity, aka #TeamTurningToStory, aka #TeamBishBashBosh, we are always searching for ways to maximize reader engagement with our stories. Choice is a powerful way to accomplish this, as it hits on a few TTS favorite principles:
Choice makes the reader do the work. It gives the reader something to chew on by pivoting direction.
Choice increases character agency, which makes your characters more vibrant and authentic.
Choice allows your characters to affect the plot, rather than just the other way around.
Chocolate. Once again, just checkin’. If you comment on this post with “chocolate,” I’ll give you an extra entry in the giveaway.
3. resources/fact check 📋
Anna recommends the following video on character choice and plot structure:
We fangirl pretty hard over Arcane in this episode. Here’s the interview Anna mentioned regarding Arcane’s writers and how they use character choices purposefully. It is aptly titled, How ‘Arcane’ Writer Amanda Overton Gets Character Choices to Feel Like a Punch in the Face
And here is the video on the 3 C’s of good choice, by Lynn D. Jung.
We also mention the following episodes:
4. TTS giveaway!
Because we’re all sorts of excited and want to share our joy with the very best (you), we’re giving away three id list journals! If you’re not familiar with the concept of the id list, you can check it out here. And if you’d like to enter to win your own beautiful, bulleted id list notebook, reply to this email or leave a comment on substack! U.S. entries only (sorry, but our international mail has like a 80% chance of failure).
That’s all for today! We’ll see you next week with a new topic to continue season three. Stay curious, spider monkeys!
“Should” is a word we don’t use lightly, but we couldn’t think of an example of a good story in which the main character DOESN’T make meaningful decisions, so until you prove us wrong, “should” remains.
Congrats to you both for steller acheivements and so happy to have another episode out!
I'm tooootally not addicted to podcasts... Just yours :)
You gals are the best :)