Following the "Right" Story

The Misfits & Daydreamers Primer Series, part 1

The Frenchman's German mother makes these cookies every Christmas. Quite delicious. 🤤 (Photo by Neven Krcmarek on Unsplash)

I love how I was like: I’m going to be more frequent in my posting, gang! And then here I am with almost a month between posts.¹

IN MY DEFENSE, life got hit with a series of speed bumps. We had 7 (7!!!) consecutive snow days with the kid home. Then I got super sick for two weeks, and it coincided with the Frenchman being out of town for an entire week. And then, write as my brain started to clear of mucus, winter break began and the kid was home again. 😑

On top of that, the post I had planned for today (actually a long series of posts) is something that took far longer to compile than I anticipated. More on this below.

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Random side note/correction: I referred to my plant in the last newsletter’s image as a money tree. It is not a money tree. 😂 My money tree is about three feet away and not in the picture at all. I have been beating myself up for almost four weeks about calling that thing a money tree!

Ahem. Now onto the things that actually matter here.

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The Misfits & Daydreamers Primer Series

One benefit of having a lot of content is that I have…well, a lot of content. There’s so much for readers and writers to wade into and learn from.

Another benefit is that if someone asks me about anything writing or publishing related, I’ve almost certainly discussed the subject before.

But of course, the downside of so much content is that it’s overwhelming. Not just for new (and old) subscribers, but for me as well. When those aforementioned people ask me the aforementioned questions, I’ll be so certain I wrote on that subject before, but…erm…where was it exactly?

And while yes, tis true I have organized my hundreds of pre-Substack writing newsletters on the Susan Dennard Writing Academy (and the Substack newsletters are there too!), the Academy is intended for rigorous learning for the committed writer.

For this series, I wanted to create an organized starting point that hits on all the many topics I’ve written about over the years.

I’m calling it the Misfits & Daydreamers Primer Series, and it’s broken down by theme:

1. Following the “Right” Story

2. Building Characters & Worlds

3. The Craft of Sentences & Scenes

4. Revisions & Editing

5. Finding Your Unique Process

6. When Things Get Hard

7. Publishing: the Honest Truth

So buckle up. I’ve got part 1 for you today.

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1. Following the “Right” Story

We’re kicking off the primer series with what I consider the beating heart of my writing advice: how I find and follow the “right” story.

As you all know if you’ve followed me any length of time, writing a novel (for me! everyone else is different!) is never about following an outline from Point A to Point B. It’s about feeling the story. About being inside the characters, inside the world, and following emotional dominoes wherever they might lead.

Does that mean I never outline? Hell no. Does that mean I simply float along chasing feelings? Hell no.

It’s far messier than that, involves heaps of stop[ing/starting, and is something that—even after almost 20 years of writing novels—can both frustrate me almost tp tears and bring me profound, unmatched joy.

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The Core Philosophy

How I Find the Right Story: Like the name on the tin describes, this is about what happens when the story stops flowing and I can no longer feel the character. I’m just telling the story instead. This post also dives into why forcing words from an outline, even a perfectly logical one that should work, can send my whole plot off the rails.

Magical Cookies, or Don’t Write the Boring Parts: This is the phrase that made me “famous” in the writing world (even if most people now use the phrase without knowing it started with me 😅). Magical cookies drive my entire drafting process, and this idea has helped more writers than almost anything else I’ve ever written about.

How to Stay Excited While You Write: This post is a deeper, more recent dive into the Magical Cookies method—and also an honest look at what happens when the cookies aren’t enough. Just because you find your process doesn’t mean the writing will always be easy! (IF ONLY. 😭)

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Unsticking When Stuck

Three Reasons I Usually Get Stuck In My Stories: After 14 published books (and 4 more on the way from HarperCollins + who knows how many on my hard drive?), I’ve noticed a pattern in what derails me. These three root causes are almost always to blame when a manuscript isn’t “working.”

What I Need to Know Before I Draft: This post is about why I’ve stopped trying to plan everything upfront and started leaning into my intuition instead. Not because planning is bad, by any means! But because my brain (and I repeat: not necessarily yours!) just has unique “on-ramp.”

Asking for Help During Story Stuckery: Shocking—I know—but you don’t actually have to figure it all out alone? I am so bad at not doing this, yet whenever I take the leap and ask for help, the results always speak for themselves. (Shout out to Rachel and Jo, my invaluable, go-to story helpers.)

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When to Push Through…or Not

When Just Finishing a Draft Isn’t Best for the Story: “Just finish the draft” is one of those pieces of advice that sounds like it should be true…but I’m sorry, it simply isn’t. Sure, it’s true for some, but I am living proof that such advice doesn’t always apply.

When to Let Go of a Story and When to Hang On: Should we listen to the ideas we can’t get out of our heads? For me, it’s almost a hard yes.

When You Have a Book You Keep Coming Back To: An unintentionally part 2 to the previous post—and the long, winding story of —a project I started years ago, abandoned, and have returned to again and again. (And that is finally coming out as a novelette soon with Owlcrate! 😱)

Combining Two Books Into One: This post details the long, agonizing saga that was Witchshadow. I give a behind-the-scenes look at the structural challenge of merging two books into one. It was…well, a saga worthy of the Witchlands.

When the Story Simply Flows Sometimes—only sometimes!—everything just clicks. And oh, the glory, my friends. THE GLORY. In this audio post, I talk all about the true, unmatched joy in that feeling and how I’ve been tapping into it in recent months.

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Aaaaand there you have it: part 1 in the new Misfits & Daydreamers Primer Series.

If there are any posts from my archives you think should be on this list about the “right” story, PLEASE SHARE!!! I will gladly add to this list. 😌

And of course, stay tuned for the upcoming part 2 with my “top hits” for Building Characters & Worlds.

💚 - Sooz

1. I haven’t posted on Instagram in over two months now. When I say that going hard on promo broke me and defeated me, I am not exaggerating. I would like to never get on that app for the rest of my life, if I can avoid it.