Don’t worry, this isn’t about money. It’s about emotional satisfaction. About boiling my whole writing process down to the most basic. And how I can still mess it up.

When I get editorial feedback on a draft it’s common for one of the points the editor makes to be “you need to earn this” or “you aren’t earning this” or something along those lines. That’s great! I need an editor to point out to me the differences between what’s in my head and heart and what’s actually on the page.

I think this happens to me because I write a whole book toward one scene. Or a small handful of scenes. They’re usually related to the MC’s dark night of the soul, or the actual dark night itself. I write about change, about choice, about emotional epiphany, and so what matters the most to me is nailing down why the MC changes, what they choose. Sometimes, that’s how I know who the POV character needs to be: it’s often whoever changes the most during the narrative.

I find the concept of the “dark night of the soul” very useful when conceptualizing character arcs and story itself. What does a character want/need in the beginning, what do they gain and lose, what’s taken away from them, how are they defeated in a way that makes them feel destroyed (entering the dark night) then decide to stand back up again and be who they’re meant to be (emotional epiphany that leads to climax). That’s a simplified version of how I think about an MC’s character arc, but still accurate. When I’m writing YA it’s often exactly this straightforward—one of my favorite things about writing YA is using this kind of straightforward character arc to pull the narrative along because that arrow gives me space to complicate…everything else.

I conceptualize of my adult books in more complicated ways, but without loosing what is essentially the same kind of character arc. It’s just that maybe there are 5 MCs all on their own journeys to their own dark nights and epiphanies that will hit them at different points in different ways—and maybe be in direct conflict with each other. (That’s my favorite.)

I wrote The Queens of Innis Lear for the tragedy of exactly that: putting a bunch of really interesting characters on their personal journeys to epiphany when what they all need is in opposition to each other. That’s what tragedy is, the catharsis of opposing needs crashing together in a beautiful and inevitable way. It’s sad! It feels so good! Not everybody dies in my version, because I also write stories about how to make the world better. Earning that catharsis was really difficult and really ambitious because it was so so so so so complex. I had to create characters with opposing ideals, opposing moralities, where those oppositions grew naturally from their shared world, shared culture, shared circumstances! I had to bring them together in ways that make sense to readers, both brain and heart sense. I think I did it? People who make it to the end of Queens seem to think so. It took a lot of my editor reminding me I need to earn this, that, this, that over there, too. Like 12 drafts or something.

Even though Lady Hotspur is on surface just as complicated of a story, I wrote it for the opposite reason. A very basic, simple reason: for Prince Hal to choose joy. To demand that her (queer) story not be a tragedy. She does her best to drag everybody with her toward joy, too. To earn it, I had to write Hal in a long downward spiral that’s self-destructive and in constant danger of giving in to depression and tragedy, and I had to make readers believe that in the end, she could actually have this epiphany. She was that kind of person to choose joy even when everything around her is tragic.

The scene I wrote Night Shine toward was a betrayal that kicks off Nothing’s dark night and was followed by a renaming. In Moon Dark Smile it’s a renaming, too, that happens as part of Raliel’s dark night. That’s why they’re a duology. In those books earning the moment of emotional revelation was equal parts character work and world building (magic building, really). My editor kicked my butt several times about it in Moon Dark Smile especially.

(The original version of Strange Grace was so fundamentally different from what it very abruptly became that it’s not even worth it to talk about the original dark night I wrote toward. The scene survived in a way, but it’s almost irrelevant to what the book eventually became.)

I could tell you exactly what I wrote all three USAsgard books toward, and The Blood Keeper, but when it comes to Blood Magic I have no clue whatsoever. Probably there was something, but it’s lost to time. 2009 to be exact.

This is all to say that the reason I (and my editors) are so fixed on earning the emotional epiphany is because it’s always a problem in my drafts that I’m required to solidify during various revision passes. That’s just…how it is. For me.

Until it suddenly isn’t.

I think I can accurately characterize my most basic writing process as “find the emotional epiphany of a story, and then earn it.”

Earning it can be about clarifying character motivation, world building, it can be romantic tension, interpersonal relationships and thematic relevance. It can be pretty much any aspect of writing a book.

But in order to earn it, there has to be an it.

In The Mercy Makers, Iriset doesn’t have a real dark night of the soul. She kind of has a murky evening, a shady dawn, an afternoon of fiery indignation, etc, but despite what she goes through, what she feels and chooses, she never truly feels lost enough to descend into a dark night.

(she has a few epiphanies, but she’s just an epiphany person—it’s part of her charm and arrogance. And they’re about magic, not emotion or justic.)

I did write The Mercy Makers to get to once scene, though. Chapter 37, “Husband and wife.” I couldn’t wait to write that scene, which is essentially just a really intense conversation. It’s when the blister of conflict, resentment, love, lust, anger, rebellion, etc between Iriset and Lyric pops and they have to like, deal with the pus.

Getting to that scene got me through everything before. In my first couple of drafts I was earning it for myself. To myself. To feel that cathartic release as I wrote it. Yessss, get to the open wound! Stick unsanitized tools in there and root around! I think I nailed that chapter, honestly. It’s one of those scenes where I like it so much I barely care if anybody else does. That feeling almost never happens to me (or anybody probably) but when it does it hits.

However…Iriset doesn’t actually feel that bad in that chapter. It’s emotionally fraught, but she’ll be fine. She’s confident that even if she made some wrong moves, ultimately she not only did her best, she did great. Sure she didn’t succeed in everything, sure there were losses that illuminated for her who she wanted to be (a rebel, Silk, tear down the empire). But Iriset wasn’t even a little bit broken.

(Lyric on the other hand…that scene is the beginning of his very long dark night. The entirety of The Shape of Monsters is Lyric’s dark night of the soul. Sorry, buddy. You rule an empire, you have an imperial-sized fall.)

And yet, despite focusing on earning that scene in chapter 37, when I got my (first) professional edit letter for The Mercy Makers there was something my editor said I needed to earn.

It wasn’t an emotional beat! It wasn’t a scene I’d been spiraling around trying to make matter. It was…a murder.

My editor was like, you kill this person, this person, and this person, and they’re all effective for this and that reason, and they show a progression re: Iriset’s skills and emotional responses/development. But this particular murder is just repeating the same shock as this previous one, and not as emotionally relevant as the following one. So don’t bother killing this character, or find a way to make it matter differently from the other murders.

I tell you what! That character is alive and well and causing me issues in book 3.

Then in The Shape of Monsters, there was a whole thread that belonged to Iriset that included a moment to finally put a crack in her emotional foundation by making her confront the fact that she may be a prodigy and genius but her mistakes can cost people everything. Including herself.

My editor said I wasn’t earning that thread at all. ;__;

I laid myself down on the floor for hours and hours over this one. I didn’t have the two years I needed to really figure out how to earn it and use it and make it not only relevant but matter. So I cut it. I found a different place for Iriset to crack. It doesn’t lead her directly into a dark night, but the crack is there. (I spent both pass pages passes on Shape earning this new thread, though, and I hope it worked!)

This all brings me to Book 3, which does have a title, and we’re already working on the cover, despite the fact that I am still drafting it. *insert skull emoji*

I wrote a draft last autumn and winter, and turned it in without a climax bc I couldn’t figure out wtf I was trying to do in the climax. I had the pieces, I had the world, I had the characters and conflicting wants, but something was missing. I wrote that draft toward two scenes, both of which I liked and were rough for Iriset, but I realized, well.

This is embarrassing.

I realized three days ago, 80,000 words into the second full draft, that the reason I have been flailing and struggling with ending this trilogy is because Iriset never has a freaking dark night of the soul. Bad things—terrible things—happen to her. She perpetrates terrible things! She feels tragedy, she experiences even more loss, she struggles, and she even thinks that she’s hit rock bottom—but she hasn’t, and do you know why? Because she never doubts herself. Imposter syndrome? Iriset doesn’t know her.

Part of me is like, that’s great! Iriset can make mistakes but not be broken by them, she can have ups and downs and wants and needs and successes and failures, but still be herself. Still “win.”

And I think that’s true. Not all MCs need to be broken down, and honestly, especially when we’re dealing with stories about marginalized lives.

I had to lay down on the floor again. Ask myself what I want from Iriset’s story, from her character arc. Do I want or need her to change? How is she different at the end of Book 3 from how she was at the start of Book 1 (other than being an overpowered sex god now)?

I do want her to change, just a little bit. I want her change to matter. And yes, by halfway through Book 3 Iriset is an overpowered sex god.* So really, when nobody is as powerful as her, she has to be her own worst enemy. That’s always been true. She’s prideful, selfish, judgy, bites off more than she can chew so she has to make her own mouth bigger to keep from choking.

Having a character be their own worst enemy is FUN. I’ve done it before! Arthur Couch, all the Lear sisters and Ban the Fox, Signy Valborn the Strange Maid, Prince Hal and Banna Mora, Kirin Dark Smile for sure, that beautiful bastard. Lyric, the Moon-Eater, River, oh River, and of course Iriset, the Rebel Silk. (Are all these my favorite characters…shit, maybe!)

So I came up with something for Iriset. It’s basic. So basic. It calls back to an early conflict in Book 1! Finally I’m writing towards a dark night of the soul and an epiphany. Iriset has had plenty of design epiphanies, she’s a genius after all and her dominant inner design is ecstatic, which lends her toward epiphany.

But this one is about who she IS. Who she’s always been accidentally, and how to be herself on purpose.

It’s almost like I did this accidentally and now I’m trying to pass it off like I, too, am doing it on purpose.

Regardless, I feel so much better about book 3 than I did on Friday, though I’d like two more years to write it please. Ha. Now my biggest problem is time, and also I can’t go back and fix anything in books 1-2 in order to earn this scene. They’re published! They’re fixed. If my editor comes back and says “You haven’t earned this dark night” then I only have book 3 to work with. Nothing can be changed in the texts of the early parts.

And hopefully everybody who reads it, who doesn’t read this newsletter, will think I planned it all along!

I’ve said for over a decade that I never start a book unless I know the emotional epiphany. No, not even my Star Wars! I’ve stuck to the rule, until I didn’t. Like I thought, “oh trilogies don’t count. You can’t write them the same way.” Which is true, you can’t write them the same way you write stand alones or interconnected series. But that doesn’t mean I can strip out what makes me the writer I am. DUH!

So I’m still learning, I’ve had what one might call a…dark night of the soul that lasted the past two months. Just ask my wife who frequently finds me staring into the middle distance or crying or deleting everything I wrote the day before or pouring whiskey or zoning out to animal reels in an attempt to keep breathing.

No wait! Don’t ask Natalie! She’ll say, “yeah it was rougher than usual, but this happens every time. Tess doesn’t learn.”

I’M LEARNING NATALIE. maybe. (a little.)

I nearly scrapped this whole draft to write about Jurassic Park and Sam Neill and how adaptations and adapting made me the writer I am, and animal videos like his got me through the pandemic. But I’ll save it for later, and give you this newsletter now, since some of what Sam Neill talked about was imposter syndrome and depression, about making connections and getting better. This newsletter fits, too.

In the meantime, watch this video of him talking about his dream. <3 <3 <3

Next time I send out a newsletter it better include the phrase “I turned in Book 3.”

Thanks for reading!

Tessa

*someday I’ll write about the influence of Luo Bing-ge on Book 3 Iriset. And Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky on me.