Sarah Werner:

This is the Write Now podcast with Sarah Werner.

Sarah Werner:

Hey friends, welcome to the show. I am so glad that you are here listening and hanging out with us. I am here with my very, very good friend Kate Brauning, who I’ve just realized I’ve been pronouncing her name wrong for years and years. So it’s the little things, it’s the little things. I’m going to let you know a little bit about Kate, and then I’m going to let her talk a little bit about herself. Kate Brauning is a developmental editor at Dovetail Fiction, the YA branch of the powerhouse book package Working Partners. Kate is also an author of young adult thrillers with a twist of the unusual, including How We Fall, the short story Godzilla Girls, and a brand new book that we are going to talk about very, very shortly. Kate also runs the Breakthrough Writers’ Boot Camp, which is a professional development program for career fiction authors.

Sarah Werner:

I’m going to make sure to include a link to Kate’s program. I am a proud member of the Breakthrough Writers’ Boot Camp. So we’ll make sure that you have an opportunity to check that out and see if it’s the right fit for you. At the end of this episode, there will be links in the show notes, as usual.

Sarah Werner:

As a child, Kate spent a lot of her time at the local library, wandering the shelves and discovering all sorts of stories about all kinds of people. An incurable love for seeing real life through the pages of a book drew her to writing fiction. And at 15, she decided she wanted someone to find her own books by searching through the shelves of a library. And Kate has been writing ever since. Hello and welcome. Welcome, welcome my friends to the show.

Kate Brauning:

Hi Sarah. I’m such a fan of your podcast, and your coaching, and just you as a person. So it’s an honor to be here.

Sarah Werner:

Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. This is going to be so much fun. I’m so excited to talk to you finally on the show. Thank you for those kind words. I would love to hear, is there anything else that I needed to add in your introduction that you’d like to share with us? Either about yourself as a person, as a writer, as a creator in general. Anything else that we should know about you before we dive in?

Kate Brauning:

You know, I think I was not really sure where I wanted my life to go when I was in college. I had an English literature degree and I didn’t want to teach high school, but I think through just a winding career path, discovered that what I really love is story itself. And that led me to teaching, and also to working on other people’s books, working on my own books. So it’s really just this incurable love of story I think that’s shown up in just so many areas of my life that I kind of feel like my whole life revolves around story right now.

Sarah Werner:

I love that. I feel like all of our lives do, don’t we? In a way. Fantastic. I also had that English degree, not sure what I wanted to do with it. And ended up writing, and podcasting, and doing marketing. And I think we ended up doing all sorts of different things. How did you make the transition into becoming a very, very successful writer, teacher, book editor? I know that when we first met, you were in a place that I really longed to be. You were living as I saw it, the dream. I would love to hear if you’re comfortable sharing it, a little bit about how that journey has gone for you.

Kate Brauning:

Yeah, absolutely. I’ve written ever since I was a child. My first book I put stickers in because I didn’t know how to spell the nouns and verbs. So I used my giant sticker pad as a spelling aid really. But it was just a fun thing. I kept for myself my whole childhood, I didn’t know you could have a job doing it. And then I figured that out in college but a lot of the books that I read just weren’t ones that I loved. It was actually my teaching adolescent lit course, which was an education class that made me fall in love with books again. Where I got to read Holes, I got to read Harry Potter. We got to look critically at The Velveteen Rabbit, which for me was just wild. Got to look at a lot of Jerry Spinelli’s works and see the literary and developmental value of these things. And that was just so much more connective to me than a lot of the classics I was reading in my British and modern lit courses.

Kate Brauning:

And that just really kickstarted that childhood desire I had for writing again. And I started writing fiction again, not until after college. And started doing some research because I realized this was a job. I did still love it. I could do it for me, but I could also do it for a job. So I started looking into how that would look, and discovered the publishing industry is so competitive. You can’t just write a good book, you have to write a great book. And you have to have the connections, and you have to have the discipline, and you have to have money and resources, which a lot of people do not have and I did not have at the time either. So I decided if I was going to have this be a career, I needed to get to know the industry.

Kate Brauning:

So I sent out a bunch of applications, got a lot of rejections, and eventually ended up interning with publishing house, and then a literary agency, and then another publishing house. And then I got an assistantship in editorial at a small publishing house, and then moved to associate and then acquiring editing at a larger publishing house. So I really just was determined to work on the other side of the desk and figure out how not only the sales side of the industry, the reader facing side worked. But also, how books got to readers. And who was getting them there? And why were they picking this book over that book?

Kate Brauning:

And discovered along the way that editing is not only something I’m good at, but it’s something I really enjoy. And that’s kind of where the teacher in me shows up.

Sarah Werner:

I love that. I love that. And thank you for telling us about all of those steps. I think a lot of us think, “I work hard. I quit my day job. I looked for publishing jobs maybe. And I land one and that’s it forever.” And it sounds like you really had to iterate and go through a lot of different steps and a lot of different positions, and really kind of work your way up to get there.

Sarah Werner:

You talked a little bit about your editing experience using your teaching skills. Tell us a little bit about how this editing experience affected you as a writer, or maybe changed you as a writer, or developed you as a writer. Let us know all of the things.

Kate Brauning:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s such an interesting thing to talk about because they hold hands. But neither one of them can really do the job of the other. The same time I was editing USA Today bestselling books, and the Kirkus Indie Book of the Month, and all these books getting critical acclaim, it was an entirely different journey from the ground up as a writer. So in some areas, I felt like an accomplished professional as an editor, but a baby author on the other side.

Kate Brauning:

And there were so many steps along the way involved in becoming an author as well that I think a lot of people don’t necessarily know are involved. I had to query two separate books before I signed with my first agent. And we sold that book immediately just about in six weeks, which is very fast submission time with my agent. But then went on to not sell the next two books. And I ended up having to part ways with that agent, which felt like starting all over. She was the perfect advocate for my early career in that first book. But as my writing changed and I changed as a writer, I needed a new fit. And it took quite some time for me to write a fourth novel that hadn’t been out on submission, and that was right for the current market, and that showcased the skills I had built, and to sign with a brand new agent. And then of course, we went out on submission with that book, and it too sold pretty quickly. So the waiting periods really were in the writing time and in the resigning with an agent, finding the right fit, deciding where I wanted my career to go.

Kate Brauning:

So waiting shows up all over publishing, and these steps, this snowball of the writing career proceeds at different paces in all these different timelines. But I think really, what helped me as an editor was seeing the author side of my career happening across the other side of the desk. Knowing what my clients were going through when it came to signing with an agent, waiting for a publishing deal helps me be more responsive as an editor. And then knowing as an author all the decisions made at the sales desk, at the acquisitions desk from the perspective of the publicists helped me shape the types of stories I would pick to write, or even just the angle on those stories I would take so that I could take a more informed approach as a concept of the story. And then also, it just helps with the waiting, knowing what might be going on. Not necessarily taking it as I’m not a good writer, that’s why the book got rejected. It could simply be they had competing title on their list. Some things like that. So the business angle of it really helps me as an author to know those things that I learned as an editor as well.

Sarah Werner:

Oh my gosh. And that’s something that a lot of the people listen to the show, or maybe new writers, or people who are looking to maybe start looking for an agent, or to maybe even send out their first novel, or even finish their first novel. So to someone like that, what kind of advice would you give. Even just, I love what you said about being patient. And again, that’s a perspective that a lot of new writers wouldn’t have. What would you advise new writers? In what way would you advise them? That was a terribly worded question, but I hope you got the gist of it.

Kate Brauning:

Yeah, absolutely. I think the first thing is to realize that what you’re participating in here, if you want to right as a career, if you want to write story for other people to experience. Not just for yourself or for catharsis. If you want to write professionally, you’re really participating in an Olympic career. This will ask more of you than other careers. You have to be very disciplined. You have to be very passionate. And don’t get frustrated or think that you can’t make the cut if it’s harder than you think it will be at the start, because you are participating in a very competitive field. It’s not enough to just be good. There’s other things involved.

Kate Brauning:

The other thing I would say is to remember that if you did it once, you can do it again. If you wrote one book, you can write another book. If you wrote one chapter, you can write another chapter. If you wrote a great line, but this revision just doesn’t support that line, rather than shaping your revision around the moment you want to keep, realize that you can nail that moment or a similar moment again. So let that help you be brave, and persistent, and kind of revolutionary in your process as you write. And also like me, if you signed with one agent and it wasn’t the right fit, you can do it again.

Sarah Werner:

I love that advice. I love that advice. I think a lot of us writers and creators really struggle with a lot of fear and with a lot of scarcity, like, “I’m never going to have a good idea like this again.” A lot of us believe that, and you can’t afford to. Like you were just saying, if you have one good idea, there are more good ideas where that came from. If you write one paragraph, there’s more paragraphs in there. I love that. Thank you. Thank you for saying that.

Sarah Werner:

Is there anything completely unexpected or that people outside of the industry might find unexpected about this whole process?

Kate Brauning:

I think one thing that might be unexpected is just how long it takes for the development of a book. For you to write the book, authors may take anywhere from a few months to several years. And then querying can take anywhere from a few weeks to a couple years. And then the acquisitions process can take months or years. And then usually, you’re looking at, depending on which arena you’re publishing, a year to even two and a half years from the time you get a contract offer to when the book hits shelves. So just expect a long lens, which is good. If this is going to be your career, you have that time. And that will help you stay focused during all that waiting process on your next project.

Kate Brauning:

More philosophically or encouragement focused I think that would be unexpected is that I feel like a lot of writers, and I myself when I first started out thought I had to be like other authors that I read. I needed to be the next John Green or something like that. And really, the industry loves those authors who are out there already. But we don’t need another John Green. We need your voice. And every author who has the passion and the creativity to write a book has something inside themselves that readers need. There are readers who are going to connect only to your voice, or primarily, or specially to your voice. So don’t try to be the next Judy Blume. Develop your voice, be yourself. Because that’s the one we need to see.

Sarah Werner:

That is tasty good advice. And I absolutely love it so much. Gosh Kate, thank you. I have so many more things to ask you. Did you ever have a point in your life where you were trying to juggle writing or editing with something else? And did you ever have to really try hard to prioritize your own work? Or what did that shuffle ever look like for you?

Kate Brauning:

I feel like I’m constantly going through that shuffle. It’s an endless process. We’ve moved several times in the last couple years. We’ve gotten a new puppy. We’ve had family and life changes. We’ve been ill. We’ve had tons of travel involved and promotions or changes at work. And unless you’re one of the lucky few in career publishing where the books you write pay all of your bills, and allow you to save for retirement, and all the vacations you want and everything, most of us are working at least one other job. So there’s always that shuffle. I have really struggled to prioritize my writing.

Kate Brauning:

Sometimes, it feels like the first thing to go or the easy thing to cut. And there has been times when that has been true, and that has needed to be the case. And I’ve had to set aside my writing for weeks or even months at a time.

Kate Brauning:

The difficult thing is to make sure you come back to it. Not everyone is privileged enough to have daily, or weekly, or even monthly writing time. That doesn’t mean you’re not a writer. If you write, you are a writer. That is the only qualification. And it is important to develop that consistency because otherwise, books don’t get written. They’re long, long things. So that discipline, and commitment, and consistency is important. But it’s also important to realize you can’t burn the candle at both ends for forever. So there is a shuffle and a balance that’s right for each individual writer. And there’s also seasons to it. The past year, I have not written as much as I wanted to, but I’ve written more than I thought I would. And I’m happy with that.

Sarah Werner:

Thank you for saying that. I know that so many of us who grew up dreaming of being writers or who recently developed the writing bug, wherever you land on that spectrum, we think that, “If I can finish a book and sell it, then I’m set.” But I love that you brought up this point that so many writers, most writers in fact don’t write full-time as their day job. So for you, in order to make that work, you also do editing, and you also have the Breakthrough Writers’ Boot Camp. Can you tell us a little bit about what is a writing boot camp? What does it even look like?

Kate Brauning:

Yeah, absolutely. So the Breakthrough Writers’ Boot Camp is an effort I’m really proud of. It’s a professional development program for career fiction writers. You don’t have to be at any particular stage to join. You just have to have the skills necessary to really engage with the content that we’re going through in the program.

Kate Brauning:

So I started it because there really aren’t that many programs out there for authors who have maybe been around the block in some way with their writing. They know what they’re doing. They know what they want. But they can’t go back to school for an MFA or don’t want to. And a lot of MFAs do not specialize in modern market fiction, the way career authors really want to dig in and learn.

Kate Brauning:

So there’s just not that much out there that can teach you as a writer the ins and outs of how the industry functions, what to look for in an agent. Not just at the blog post five signs of a good or bad agent level, but at the okay, so what do they need to be doing with a contract? What should I look out for? What does an option clause mean? And then at the craft level, not just what’s publishable quality, but what’s the missing ingredient that is going to make this book a breakout book? And how do we cultivate that in a way that’s true to your voice?

Kate Brauning:

So the content I work through in the program is both craft centered and business centered. And we go through some of those things that don’t necessarily get taught to writers because publishing is such an insider industry. And so much of that knowledge stays on the other side of the desk from authors.

Sarah Werner:

Yeah. And I’ve been a member of the Breakthrough Writers’ Boot Camp. I don’t know why that’s hard for me to say right now. I don’t know if I’m post-lunch sleepy, or if it’s the sun or the heat or whatever. But I’m just like, we’ll just go with it, whatever my pronunciation ends up being. And it’s been so wonderful. What do you think is the biggest takeaway for most of the people who invest in the boot camp?

Kate Brauning:

I think access is a big takeaway, getting to hear professionals. I’ve had guest, everything from screenwriters, to agents, to editors, and publicists come in and talk about the things people don’t know about their jobs. Or have those people take a look at materials and give their insights on what might be missing or what to follow through on and double down on what they’re doing well with.As well as my own industry experience in editorial.

Sarah Werner:

Which is considerable.

Kate Brauning:

Thank you. That’s really good to hear. So I think access to those resources and that knowledge is a big thing. I think the other thing really is the focus often gets missed when we’re writing on the reader. The focus on the reader.

Sarah Werner:

Tell me more. Yeah. Sorry. I interrupted you, but tell us more about that.

Kate Brauning:

Yeah. So I think one of the ingredients of a book that can land a contract, or if you’re working in indie publishing really can resonate with readers enough to do what you want it to as an indie author is a focus on the reader’s emotional experience. So often as writers, we’re focused on our emotional experience of writing, or the character’s emotional experience. And those are important lenses to view the story through what it means to us, what it means to the character. The loss, or grief, or betrayal, or friendship that we are forming with that character.

Kate Brauning:

But you have to flip that coin around I think, and really focus on what the reader is going to be experiencing as they read. And that’s such an important lens because that is really the attachment ingredient that is going to make that reader fall in love with your book and make them use that word of mouth. It’s the most powerful publicity tool we have as writers is the word of mouth of our readers.

Kate Brauning:

So when you focus on what experience you want to deliver to the reader and how to develop that, really it’s psychology in action, right? Psychology through art that allows us to connect with a reader that way and really move them, and then enable them through that to go spread the word.

Sarah Werner:

I love that. If this is something that is completely blowing our minds right now, and I think it is for me as well, where would you even start with that? Do you start by sketching out an arc of how the reader goes through your book? Or where would you even start doing that?

Kate Brauning:

I would think the first thing to do is to think about your favorite books and think about the emotional experience that it gave you. For example, when I think about the Harry Potter series, there’s a number of emotional experiences there, because it’s expansive, it’s a whole series. But primarily, the emotional experience that I and I think a lot of readers have is one of loneliness and friendship. Those two emotions, experiences, loss and friendship, loneliness and friendship, loneliness and community really define the whole arc of the series. And they define Harry’s experience. And it’s the thing that the reader walks through to point of catharsis along with the characters. So a lot of the character arcs, the plot points, the characters themselves are built to examine various points of that experience all along the way.

Kate Brauning:

So I would say the first thing is, look at your favorite books. Even look at The Velveteen Rabbit again, that like those sorts of stories resonate with me so strongly because that’s a story of loneliness to friendship. That’s a story of loss to community. And I think it says a lot about the reader you’re trying to reach if those are the primary experiences that they’re attaching to. So it’s a good thing to know what type of reader you’re wanting to reach with these experiences.

Kate Brauning:

So think about your favorite books and what emotional experiences they provided you. And then go read The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass.

Sarah Werner:

I own that.

Kate Brauning:

You read it?

Sarah Werner:

I own it. It’s one of those books that I own, and it’s on my shelf, and I haven’t read it.

Kate Brauning:

Please read it. It breaks down this concept to really nuanced degree. And it’s so approachable and so fun to read. And it really honestly is that missing ingredient in so many writers who really they’re wonderful writers, but something’s not quite landing. To me, it’s the difference between the response I liked it and I loved it.

Sarah Werner:

And I was going to ask you, I was going to circle back earlier in our conversation. You had talked about the difference between writing a good book and a great book. And is that one of the large distinguishers you see there?

Kate Brauning:

I think really it is. It’s the emotional connectiveness with the reader. It’s the ability of the book to take on a life of its own in their own mind at heart, really. And that’s that connectiveness at work there. The personal level that the story works on, how deeply you feel, that loneliness of The Velveteen Rabbit. How wildly you felt the magic in Where the Wild Things Are.

Sarah Werner:

I love that.

Kate Brauning:

And that’s really, I think the thing that can make a book a classic and be bigger than its genre, bigger than the one story, become personal to the reader. The other thing I think really is the concept of a hook.

Sarah Werner:

Do go on.

Kate Brauning:

I would love to go on, I am all about hooks. So people define this, it’s not a scientific word. People define it differently. But really, I think it’s the word of mouth appeal of a story. Usually it can be the X meets Y, Stranger Things meets Breaking Bad quality of a story really. But it really comes down to the pitchability of a story in one line and how interesting that is. Sometimes it’s called the commercial nature of a book. Sometimes it’s just that really fascinating factor in a story that makes you say, “I have to know more.” And that can be the difference between a good book and a great book, because it can be the thing that makes the reader pick up a book.

Kate Brauning:

The emotional experience would be what makes you connect to it after it’s open, but you’re not ever going to connect to it if you don’t open it to start with. So that hook really can make a huge difference in how commercial, how cinematic, how gripping the concept is as a hook can make a huge difference in a good versus a great book.

Kate Brauning:

For example, take Hamilton. There’s a huge hook to that story. The tale of the forefathers rewritten to include in center marginalized people. That’s an enormous hook that was personal and relevant to so many people and made them want to go see, go listen, pick up that story.

Sarah Werner:

So oh my gosh, this is fantastic. And also, I’m remembering, this is one of the very first things that I learned in the Breakthrough Writers’ Boot Camp was your amazing talk on building a hook.

Sarah Werner:

So when we’re talking about hooks, they’re so crucial, they’re so critical. Do you write them before you get the idea for a story? Do you write them during, while you’re writing your novel? If I’ve already maybe written a novel, is it too late to write a hook? Tell us a little bit about how the hook works in the not only book writing process, but storytelling process.

Kate Brauning:

Yeah, absolutely. Hooks can function on a couple of different levels. You can have hooks all through the story. For example, Cozy Mysteries often rely on fresh baked goods as a hook, right? Cupcakes, pies, pastries, tea in the afternoon. That’s a hook. It’s very comforting. It’s very sensory. They’re not always the part of the concept. So a hook can be just something included in the story like pets, or the beach, or airplanes. Anything that’s fascinating or interesting to a group of people can be included and be a hook.

Kate Brauning:

But I think the most effective hooks when you’re talking about a good versus great book or launching a career as a writer, forming concept of a novel, is when the hook is the concept of the novel, or involved in the concept of the novel. And there’s a whole-

Sarah Werner:

Real quick. So we have hook, we have concept, and I think we also have premise.

Kate Brauning:

Absolutely.

Sarah Werner:

So these are all terms that we’re dealing with right now. And the hook is not the premise, and the concept can be the hook. Can you help us dig through and clarify these terms just a little bit?

Kate Brauning:

Yeah, I would love to. So a hook really is anything that’s going to grab the reader’s attention. It can be a subgenre like a little kid murder mystery sleuth story. They have to figure out how their favorite neighbor across the street died. Was it murder or no? That subgenre can be a hook itself, or it can be something interesting in the novel like cupcakes or airplanes.

Kate Brauning:

I think it’s really effective when the hook is part of the premise or the concept of the story. And the premise or the concept really are just the baseline arc of the story, what it’s about.

Kate Brauning:

So in Breaking Bad, it would be chemistry teachers sets out to make meth to pay for his cancer treatment. That would be the concept or the premise of the story. In The Velveteen Rabbit, it’s the stuffed bunny gets given to a boy and slowly over time becomes real.

Kate Brauning:

So those are examples of premises, like the overarching concept of the story, the basic plot movement that is really fascinating and gripping to a certain group of people. A large group of people, if it’s a commercial hook, as a whole. So a stuffed bunny becoming real through love. A chemistry teacher who’s kind of beaten down, downtrodden, lost his pride in life, having to become this drug kingpin in order to save his own life and his family from financial ruin. Those are very gripping, emotional, active hooks. And they’re a hook because they make the reader say, “I have to know more.”

Sarah Werner:

Thank you for clarifying that. I really appreciate it.

Kate Brauning:

Absolutely.

Sarah Werner:

So, okay. Before I very rudely interrupted you, we were talking about how you craft one of these hooks and where it goes in the process.

Kate Brauning:

Yeah, absolutely. You can get to hooks in a number of different ways. You can combine two surprising things. Breaking Bad does that with a downtrodden chemistry teacher becoming a meth king. You could do that with an immigrant becoming a founding father of the country. Those are two disparate things that they combine in order to get the effect from the reader that says, “I’ve not seen that before. That’s new.” We’ve seen politicians. We’ve seen immigrants. We’ve seen stuffed bunnies. We’ve seen real bunnies. But when you have X becomes Y or X and Y together, that can become a hook.

Kate Brauning:

Breaking Bad has the additional hook of the really motivated professional scientific chemistry teacher combined with Jesse Pinkman’s character who’s this very, very much a stoner kid who doesn’t take anything seriously, lives life by the seat of his pants. He’s the exact opposite of Walter. So Jesse and Walter’s relationship, two completely disparate elements forced together becomes a hook in the story. So you can combine two disparate things.

Kate Brauning:

That’s also why Cozy Mysteries tend to work. Cupcakes and murder, right? Beaches and mysteries, that we put those two things together. They’re automatically more interesting together than they are apart. A cupcake is not a story. A murder might be a story, but we’ve seen it before. But a cupcake murder, now that I want to know more about.

Sarah Werner:

I do too, immediately.

Kate Brauning:

You can also involve things we don’t get to see much of in story. Darcy Woods does this in Summer of Supernovas, where she involves astrology in a young adult romance. And through this connection to her mother following these astrological charts to her true love. That’s fresh and unique. And there’s a section of readers out there who love to see astrology involved in a young adult romance.

Kate Brauning:

So you can take any of those things that you’re interested in. Search and rescue stories have done this to a great success. There’s a category romances out there, or even police procedurals that use K9 units, search and rescue dogs, those sorts of things. We don’t get to see much of that in everyday life. And there’s people who are interested in it. So you combine animals with the procedural elements of search and rescue. The danger, the thrill that tap into our survival mechanisms, plus a little romance. And you have several hooks all there together that’s going to make somebody go, “Okay. Now that’s how I want to spend my afternoon.”

Sarah Werner:

Right. That book is for me. Oh my gosh. I would read the heck out of that, honestly. So can you tell us a little bit … so am I allowed to talk about your new book?

Kate Brauning:

Please do.

Sarah Werner:

So you have a new book, The Ballad of Dinah Caldwell. And the hook for this is, “True Grit meets Sadie in this Own Voices near-future revenge thriller that tackles capitalism, queerness, and revolution.” Can you tell us a little bit about how you came up with that particular hook for your novel? Did you come up with that first? Did you write first? And maybe it’s not so much about procedure, but that’s sort of the only angle I know to ask about it. So please just feel free to talk about it in whichever way is best for you.

Kate Brauning:

Oh yeah, absolutely. I talk with somewhat craft driven language about this process of coming up with a hook. And that’s an excellent way to start. But sometimes, coming up with a hook is just the process of living your life, and your brain slowly puts it together for you. And that was the case for me with The Ballad of Dinah Caldwell. I have written and rewritten this book for five years. It’s been a labor of love the whole way. And really for me, the concept started with my emotional process as a young person. I grew up in a home that had a lot of abuse, and domestic violence, and neglect in it. And I was perpetually afraid of what if the worst happened to one of my siblings. I raised my younger siblings to quite an extensive degree, and they relied on me, and I relied on them. And I was frequently afraid that things were going to go wrong in an irreversible way, and I might lose one of them.

Kate Brauning:

So that emotional experience of what if you go through the deepest and worst loss, what then? What’s left of you? What’s left of your identity? What’s the path forward and is there a path forward? So that’s kind of where that story started for me was having to dig through that as an adult and figure out how to write that into a story in order for me to process it. So it was very personal in that way.

Kate Brauning:

And then I heard the song Dust Bowl Dance by Mumford & Sons, and I realized that’s what I’ve been feeling. If you haven’t heard that song, go listen to it. It’s wonderful folk music. It’s great banjo. It’s good stomp. It’s a real revenge tale. I love how it taps into the folk roots of these revenge tales. It feels very true grit in that way. And in this, I lost a family member and now here I go hell bent on revenge.

Kate Brauning:

And I listened to that and I thought, this is what I’ve been feeling. But how would I write that story? And I thought, “Well, I would gender flip it and make it a young woman.” And I would set it in the future, because a lot of what I want to talk about as a person recovering from these family dynamics and finding my own way forward, and even as a queer person is where do we go in the future? So I set it in the future, and I made it queer. And I set it in the Ozarks, which is a place of really fun family memories for me. And I had to think about revenge. And whether or not that brings healing, whether or not that brings catharsis. And if so, how? And if not, then what? What is that path forward?

Kate Brauning:

So I took a hard look at vigilante justice that a lot of these old westerns have. And the way that they’ve cut marginalized people out of this national story we have of these Western vigilante justice heroes, these revenge tales like True Grit and think, what do I want to say? Both to my younger self that wanted this revenge, and to readers who might be feeling this way too. And come up with some sort of process through all that to say, “You know what, maybe it’s not revenge. Maybe it’s revolution. Maybe it’s not vigilante justice, maybe it’s communal justice.” And try and write a story that felt real, and true, and emotional to me through that revenge out the other side to something a little bit better and brighter.

Sarah Werner:

I love that so much. Oh gosh. I have so many questions now, too. I want to ask a very not smart question.

Kate Brauning:

Please do.

Sarah Werner:

Okay. So you’re wrestling with this story that’s essentially or at least partially your own story. How did you put enough distance between yourself and the subject, but also stay close enough in order for it to remain emotionally resonant for you?

Kate Brauning:

That’s an excellent question. And it’s one I think I’ve spent years unraveling and I’m still unraveling. First, it takes messy drafts. And that’s part of the reason I spent five years working on this book. It went through three complete front page one revisions. And those revisions, those rewrites really were not a waste. I had to write a messy first draft that was way too close to home, and way too autobiographical for me to see how I needed to remove it from myself. And I had to think a lot about the reader’s emotional experience. You can’t put 25 years of life into a novel. Or if you can, it’s a very different kind of novel than I was attempting to write.

Kate Brauning:

So you have to pick your focus. And I think the thing that helped me focus was what did I want the reader to experience? And what portion of my own experience could be funneled into that and focused then by the reader’s experience? The same as Harry Potter’s journey is one from loneliness to friendship and community, I wanted this book to be a journey from just being completely shattered and focusing on revenge, to a tiny bit of healing that would allow others in again. That little bit of healing that allows you to take one step into the future. That tiny piece of catharsis, I think. So that helped me focus the story a lot.

Kate Brauning:

Craft wise, setting in the future. Setting in a place I don’t currently live really helps. Setting it in a different time really helps. Building a different sort of family structure really helps. Because then you’re not inserting people. You might be borrowing traits and experiences. But if you’re writing sci-fi, if you’re writing fantasy, if you’re writing a genre that you don’t live in, it becomes easier to not wholly transport some of those things.

Kate Brauning:

But yeah, a lot of it is a process of completely rewriting, choosing your focus, being brutal with the amount of emotional experience that you import from your own life. And being really empathetic with your own character. They’re different people than you. Each of my characters have a huge piece of myself in them, but they’re not me. And they’re not me in very important ways. And the allowing the character to show up fully in the story the way they are, not you are can really help change the content, and the responses, and the emotional journey such that it’s informed by your life, but it’s not your life.

Sarah Werner:

That’s so good. Character development wise, do you develop your characters before you dive into the story, or do they sort of come out during all of these different revisions?

Kate Brauning:

You know honestly, I think both. There’s usually a piece of myself I really want to explore and a way I want to twist that to make it interesting and new to me. As much as learning ourselves is a lifelong journey, I also spend a lot of time with myself. And I would much rather spend time with a character who’s interesting and different than me as well. So I’m intentional in the ways that I develop them to be different from myself. And doing that at the start can really help.

Kate Brauning:

But then also I think, learning how they respond or really thinking more deeply and processing how they respond is really helpful through the draft of a story. So I do start with a basic outline of who this person is, where they’ve been in life, what their attachment style is, what their personality type is, their birth order and how that affects who they are as a person. Their hopes, and dreams, and fears. The wounds they’re trying to overcome in life or the fear, insecurity. And then, I start applying the story in layers to them, and seeing how they respond, and pushing myself to develop them further as I write.

Sarah Werner:

Gosh, I love this. And I love talking about this beautiful relationship between ourselves as creators, and the characters we create, and the characters maybe we are an accidentally are. And are maybe slightly accidentally creating in our image and other’s images. And I’m really intrigued by this. And I feel like we’ve talked a little bit about maybe some struggles that you had writing this book. And I don’t know, it can be this book in particular, it can be writing in general. For you, what is the most joyful element? What brings you joy and fulfillment with your creative work?

Kate Brauning:

For me, it’s the connectivity. Getting to sort through how I think and feel, or what I believe, or what I hope for the future or for another person, and being able to translate that experience to the page I think is really magical. It’s an inherently creative, powerful feeling to be able to translate a piece of the human experience onto the page.

Kate Brauning:

And then to have that connect with somebody else. I think that’s a level of connection we don’t find many other places in life. It’s a level of personalness and intimacy that is just incredibly powerful. And it’s something that reassures me. We are part of a greater whole, we are a connective relational species. And this is a way that I get to participate in that with people I will never meet. And I just love the connected nature of it. And I think it’s the magic of writing.

Sarah Werner:

Oh my gosh, I love that so much. Community seems to be a large theme with your fictional works. Is that also one of the things that you enjoy developing for the boot camp?

Kate Brauning:

You know, it really is. I think writing sometimes suffers from the fact that we don’t have colleagues in the traditional sense that other industries and careers get to have. And in a way, it’s amazing because it’s very self-driven. And a lot of writers are very entrepreneurial people. We’re very independent, creative people. But also, we are a relational species, and writing is about people. So I think we can really suffer as creative professionals when we don’t have people in the trenches with us, when we don’t have people to inspire, when we don’t have people to be inspired by, mentors to learn from. And that’s one of the things I try to cultivate in my work as an editor is community. And all of the both business, and creative, and therapeutic effects of having people around you who are going through what you’re going through or have been there themselves.

Sarah Werner:

I love that. And it’s so easy to forget how important that is. And it’s so easy to even make it seem glamorous that you’re alone, and you’re struggling, and you’re alone, and you’re alone, and you’re alone, and you’re in your ivory tower alone. I feel like there’s just so much of the writing lifestyle that is glamorized because it is so isolated. And I really love the idea of breaking that down and letting other people in and making it more of a community. So I think that that’s so amazing.

Sarah Werner:

I’m really happy that I got to talk to you today about hooks and about emotional resonance. These are such wonderful things. I will make sure to have a link to the book that you mentioned earlier that people need to read in the show notes, but I also would like to highlight your own amazing and incredible work. So Kate, where can people find you online? Where can people purchase copies of The Ballad of Dinah Caldwell, How We Fall, and any of your other works? Where can people sign up for the Breakthrough Writers’ Boot Camp? Where can we find you and how can we engage with and support you?

Kate Brauning:

Well, that is such a lovely question. I would love to engage with all of you. My website is katebrauning.com. And you’ll find links to my books there as well as to the boot camp. I’m on Twitter @KateBrauning. And The Ballad of Dinah Caldwell will be available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, Walmart, and your favorite local indies on November 2. It’s also on Goodreads. So you can sign up there as well.

Sarah Werner:

I love it. I am so, so excited. You just do so much amazing work. Again everyone, please visit katebrauning.com. That’s K-A-T-E-B-R-A-U-N-I-N-G.com or follow Kate on Twitter. Following Kate on Twitter is probably one of the best things that you’re going to do today. Seriously, seriously. We’re friends, but I learned so much from creeping on your Twitter. So please do follow Kate on Twitter as well. Kate, we’ll make sure to have links to your books, and to you on Goodreads, and to your website, and to your Twitter, and to the Breakthrough Writers’ Boot Camp, and all of the good things right here in the show notes for today’s episode. But for now, gosh, thank you so much for talking with us today. Your time is so valuable. You are one of the people who has really helped me move forward in my career as a writer. And I am just so fricking grateful to you for that. So thank you for everything you do. Thank you for being here with us. I hope that you get to work with some of our listeners moving forward. But just thank you for being here.

Kate Brauning:

Thank you so much, Sarah. That’s so sweet of you to say. It’s just been an honor and a delight to chat with you and your listeners.