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What’s in my 683 pages of book notes

Chad S. White on November 15, 2025

In addition to my book files, I have a separate book notes file for Project: T.A.G., my dystopian sci-fi trilogy. That file is currently 683 pages, and includes over 100,000 words of copy I’ve cut or substantially rewritten, but wanted to save. The remaining 50,000 words are focused on two very different aspects of the project:

Continuity & story details

Information about each of the two superpowers, the Union of Nations and the Global Assembly, including the national anthems I wrote for them
Cast list, including details on appearance, backgrounds, motivations, mannerisms, speech patterns, etc.
A timeline that goes from 2048 to 2116, even though the action in each book takes place over a year or less, academy-style, between 2104 and 2106 over the course of the three books in the series
Locations around the world where scenes take place
A list of all weapons, equipment, and technologies used by characters
Themes for each book
A list of mirror scenes and echoes
The playlist for each book

Publication & marketing plans

Comparable books
Back cover copy and flap copy (book description, bio, etc.)
Potential blurb contributors
Notes on book cover concepts
Website updates to make, including creating an electronic press kit
Pre-publication launch marketing plan
Post-publication marketing plan

Along with my book notes, I have a separate spreadsheet to track my querying efforts. I also have a separate doc to plan my blog and social media content that has a running list of topics and draft posts for this trilogy and the next four novels I have planned.

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Why have I read so many books on novel writing?

While I’ve written five nonfiction books and nearly 4,000 articles and posts, I knew I didn’t know nearly enough about novel writing. I’d taken a couple of courses on it in college, but that was long ago and those were workshops rather than instructional. What I needed was a masterclass in novel writing, so I set out to create one for myself.

I started off with Hooked by Les Edgerton and How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy by Orson Scott Card, both of which my eldest son gave as birthday presents. Then I bought a few more books on craft I found at Barnes & Noble. And then I started buying the craft books mentioned in the craft books I was reading, plus ones mentioned in articles I’d read.

Admittedly, some advice is repeated by multiple authors, but I’ve found that just reinforces what the fundamentals are. At the same time, truly unique advice and frameworks have stood out, especially once I got a dozen books in.

Both kinds of advice were helpful, since I was writing and revising my novels as I read these books on novel writing. As I read, I reflect on what I’ve written in previous chapters and whether it needs tweaking. Or I can adjust my outline for future chapters, which happened after I read The Fantasy Fiction Formula—which I highly recommend.

I’ve since read two more craft books, and I have six more in the TBR pile on my desk. Every one I read makes me a little better writer.

Some of the books on novel writing I’ve read

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The Age of De-Skilling: Who do you want to be?

Chad S. White on November 7, 2025

From the gramophone to compass to the computer, advancements in technology routinely cause people to abandon skills, says The Atlantic’s Kwame Anthony Appiah in The Age of De-Skilling (link to gift article).

“It’s a reassuring pattern—something let go, something else acquired,” he says. “But some gains come with deeper costs. They unsettle not only what people can do but also who they feel themselves to be.”

Of course, AI is the next big advancement that’s causing the current cycle of de-skilling. The question is: What skills will people be giving up? And how will that impact their identity?

In these cycles, people have several paths available to them:

1. The cyborg

They can use the technology collaboratively, keeping their skills while gaining speed, precision, or other benefits from the technology.

2. The monitor

They watch over the technology as it does their former job, stepping in to assist when the technology falters. In this role, the person invariably loses skill and their former identity.

It’s around these two choices that most of the conversation about AI has revolved. Will you be the “human in the loop” that stays actively engaged in your craft? Or will you be the “human on the loop” that merely oversees and signs off on the work the technology does?

But I think there are two other options.

3. The innovator

Freed from some aspects of their profession or task, they specialize in one or more of the remaining aspects. In the age of AI, this means focusing on very niche subject areas where there’s relatively little domain knowledge—or, more commonly, being on the forefront of new discoveries. The innovator doesn’t compete with the new technology. Instead, they expand knowledge or pioneer new methods, which over time improve the new technology or fuel the next technology innovation.

4. The artisan

Some people will continue doing things the old way. They will maintain their skills and identity, but compete directly with the new technology. In some cases, a critical mass of consumers will appreciate this human- or hand-crafted product or service, making it a viable choice. In other cases, there won’t be a viable market.

I recognize that not every person in every instance will have full discretion over which of these paths they take as AI spreads across industries. However, in my day job, I’m going to lean into being a cyborg and specialist, as that makes me the most valuable as a digital marketer. And in my night job as a novelist, I’m going to lean into being an artisan, as that best aligns with my values as a novelist.

The final paragraph of *The Age of De-Skilling* by Kwame Anthony Appiah in *The Atlantic*

Related posts:

Where to draw the line with genAI

Confession: I love em dashes

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Villains vs. antagonists

Chad S. White on October 24, 2025

One of the questions my developmental editor asked me before taking me on was “Is there a villain or antagonist in your story? Who?” When I answered the question, I didn’t mention villains, only antagonists. That’s because I don’t think there are any true villains in my story, only characters who have desires that run counter to what the heroes want.

In fact, I have three tiers of antagonists in my story:

Series antagonists, who drive the entire series
Book antagonists, who drive the action of each book (some series antagonists become book antagonists)
Threshold guardian antagonists, who present mid-book blocks our heroes must overcome to progress toward their goals (Threshold guardians are a character type discussed in The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler.)

I like what Jack Anderson, the author of The Return of Moriarty, says about the differences between heroes and villains. In particular, I agree that while “heroes die for their beliefs, villains kill for them.” But I would add one more quality I think separates villains from antagonists: relatability.

DC Comics vs. Marvel Comics

There’s no better example of this distinction in action than the stories from DC and Marvel. DC features iconic villains like the Joker, the Riddler, Scarecrow, Two-Face, Bane, Lex Luthor, and Darkseid. Many of them are certifiably insane, while others are egomaniacal sociopaths and ruthless tyrants.

The Joker is insane, while Magneto is a zealous mutant rights advocate.

On the other hand, Marvel features iconic antagonists like Magneto, Thanos, Loki, and Kingpin. They’re bad and absolutely kill others in the name of their beliefs, but they’re not insane, two-dimensional characters. Their heinous actions stem from relatable worldviews, such as Magneto’s desire to protect mutants from racist persecution and Thanos’s desire to alleviate resource scarcity caused by overpopulation. These characters also have other redeeming characteristics, such as the ability to care for others.

If you’re into antagonists and protagonists who are rainbows of gray tones, rather than black and white cartoon characters of evil and good, then my sci-fi trilogy is for you.

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7 questions you should be able to answer before working with a developmental editor

Chad S. White on October 19, 2025

When I was in talks to work with my developmental editor, Chersti, she asked a bunch of required questions about me, including my writing experience, my goals, whether I’m a plotter or pantser, and why I wanted to work with them. She also asked me seven optional questions about my novel.

While I didn’t have to answer them, I couldn’t help but feel like it would signal a lack of commitment if I didn’t—or a lack of confidence in my novel if I couldn’t. So, I invested the time to answer these very reasonable questions:

What is the inciting incident of your story?
What is your main character’s goal?
What or who gets in the way of their goal?
Is there a villain or antagonist? Who?
What’s the hero moment during your climax?
How many point-of-view characters are there?
How many subplots are there?

Honestly, it felt great to be able to easily answer these questions. And that was despite the fact that the answers were complicated by having more than one POV character and my book being the first in a trilogy. For instance, there’s not only an inciting incident for the book, but also one for the series. Also, the POV characters each have their own goals and hero moments.

Those questions really get at the basic building blocks of a story, such as having a clear beginning and end, and having character conflict. In hindsight, if I hadn’t been able to answer those questions, I hopefully would have delayed moving forward with my developmental editor. Thankfully, I didn’t have to do that. Full steam ahead!

My sci-fi novel is now in the hands of a developmental editor

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Book review: ‘The Writer’s Journey’ by Christopher Vogler

Chad S. White on October 12, 2025

The Writer’s Journey is one of the core books in my writer’s library. Among other things, it provides a detailed discussion of the 12 parts of the Hero’s Journey. This popular story structure is found in many sci-fi, fantasy, thriller, and other stories, including cultural touchstones like Star Wars.

It also discusses 8 character archetypes, such as the hero, mentor, shadow, and shapeshifter. The book provides lots of examples of variations, so you can really understand the amazing richness of these archetypes.

I give The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler 5 stars, 19 dog-ears, and 3 Post-its.

The Hero’s Journey

In my dystopian sci-fi trilogy (Project: T.A.G.), I make extensive use of the Hero’s Journey story structure. However, I don’t hesitate to mix things up. For example, my male protagonist has to face two challenges, or threshold guardians, to cross the threshold into act 2 of book 1.

Another protagonist, when faced with the call to adventure, refuses it repeatedly. Eventually, they face a refusal disaster, which is another twist on the standard formula.

The Hero’s Journey story structure from *The Writer’s Journey* by Christopher Vogler

Character archetypes

Every major character in my story has been assigned one of the eight archetypes: hero, mentor, threshold guardian, herald, shapeshifter, shadow, ally, or trickster. While I, of course, love my heroes, I’ve probably had the most fun writing the shapeshifters in my trilogy.

My heroes aren’t perfect and my villains aren’t cartoon villains, but the shapeshifters are a step up in complexity. These characters aren’t just shades of grey, but actually change their colors over the course of the series. For that reason, these are the characters that will surprise readers the most.

Book review: ‘Story’ by Robert McKee

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Tiffany Haddish: ‘Sharing is caring’

Chad S. White on October 11, 2025

While she’s best known as a comedian, Tiffany Haddish is also the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Black Unicorn. On Thursday, I had the pleasure of hearing her talk about her latest book, I Curse You with Joy.

“When you say something on stage, they don’t always believe you. They think you’re making it up,” she said, adding that when you put it in a book, people assume what you’re saying is true.

Tiffany Haddish speaking at Zeta Live 2025 this week

Another difference between her standup work and her books is that her books give her space to tell some of her stories that aren’t funny. While she told the crowd to “find the funny” in their lives, she confessed she’s still trying to find the funny in some of the darker episodes of her upbringing as she bounced from foster home to foster home.

For example, when asked about the best gift she ever received, Tiffany Haddish said it was a suitcase she got from one of her foster parents. “I had all my clothes in garbage bags,” she said, “and I felt like garbage.”

She encouraged the audience to share their stories, even the tough ones, saying it makes people feel less alone. “Sharing is caring,” she stressed.

I couldn’t help but hear echoes of sportscaster and broadcaster Robin Roberts, who has encouraged people to “Make your mess your message.” It was that advice, in part, that led me to start writing my dystopian sci-fi trilogy, Project T.A.G., which is inspired by the loss of my daughter. Beyond a good story, I hope others can see that tragedy can be turned into something beautiful.

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‘Write what you know’ is too limiting

Chad S. White on October 5, 2025

I’m not the first to say it, but this cliché advice is routinely misunderstood and used to stifle authors and put them in a box that limits their imagination to what they’ve experienced firsthand. Even worse, some writers hear that advice and put themselves in a box. Here are three much better ways to interpret this advice:

1. Write what you want to know about

When you don’t know something, you research it. For my sci-fi trilogy, Project T.A.G., I googled a lot of stuff and read tons of articles. For instance, while I’ve visited locations for another work in progress, Project W.A., I unfortunately wasn’t able to visit any of the largely international locations for Project T.A.G. So, I did some research to get a basic understanding of those places, and then imagined how they might change by the year 2104, which is when much of Book 1’s action takes place.

Military academies and bases are major settings for my story. As someone who hasn’t served in the military (much less the military of 2104), I did more research and some imaginative extrapolation to fit a post–nuclear war era where combat drones are common.

2. Write what you know emotionally

Lisa Cron shares that freeing interpretation in Wired for Story. This is the core of all the projects I’m working on now. For instance, the series arc of my work in progress Project T.A.G. is driven by a man who loses his daughter at birth. Unfortunately, I know what losing a daughter feels like. Essentially, that character is a shadow version of myself. While I was able to move on, he became bitter and blamed the world.

**3. Write what you would like to imagine knowing**

Learn by doing doesn’t make any sense for sci-fi authors who write about aliens or wizards, or most historical fiction authors, or horror and thriller authors writing about sociopaths and serial killers (hopefully).

In these instances, the world you create just has to be credible. Sometimes that entails some degree of plausibility. Other times that entails painting a vivid enough picture to create the suspension of disbelief. Every time, it requires being consistent and true to the rules you’ve created for your world.

Some people might think this third interpretation gives authors too much latitude. But I agree with While My Baby Sleeps author Natali Simmonds, who says, “Limiting yourself solely to your own life can narrow your creative possibilities. Good fiction and writing often involve imagining the experiences of others—especially those with perspectives and backgrounds different from your own.”

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Cutting your ‘warmup sentences’

Chad S. White on October 3, 2025

When I was a journalist, one of the tricks I was taught was to delete the first sentence of the article I was writing. That’s because that first sentence is often a “warmup sentence.” It’s a sentence you write just to get into your story and into the flow. It’s that second sentence that’s usually much stronger and the true start of the story.

I was reminded of this while reading a post from Roselyn Teukolsky, the author of A Reluctant Spy. While attending Mystery Writers of America University, novelist Hallie Ephron advised her to “cut out the first two paragraphs of every scene” in her novel.

From *Perseverance* by Roselyn Teukolsky

Since novels are so much longer than articles, it makes sense that it might take extra time to get into the flow of a chapter or scene. I definitely experienced that in spades when writing chapter 1 of the first book of my dystopian sci-fi trilogy.

During the fourth revision, I cut about 1,500 words from the opening chapter, with most of that coming right off the top. That’s right, the true beginning of my novel was buried under 1,500 words of unnecessary exposition that included two characters that are never seen again.

There’s nothing wrong with writing warmup sentences—or warmup paragraphs or pages. They’re often a necessary part of the writing process. The trick is to identify them during revisions and cut them.

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Is it okay to use emojis in books?

Chad S. White on September 29, 2025

Better yet: Is it wise to use emojis in books?

My dystopian sci-fi trilogy has an AI character that routinely uses emojis as part of its digital dialogue, and in the first book, it uses the nine emojis highlighted below. It’s one of the things that makes his dialogue unique.

But after writing it, I wondered if there were downsides to using emojis in books. After some research, here are some key issues people brought up, plus my thoughts:

Books are printed in black, with few exceptions. This does make emojis less visually appealing, and perhaps less recognizable, too.
The need to license an emoji font. I was initially using Segoe UI Emoji, which definitely has to be licensed. However, I found a comparable Google Font, Noto Emoji. All Google Fonts are open source, so I made the switch.
Longevity and dating a book. Emojis are definitely a product of their time. That can be both good and bad. Emojis are a big part of casual modern communication, so they’d help reinforce a 2010’s and 2020’s setting. Beyond that, though, I’d argue that some emojis have well-established meanings that are likely to persist. For instance, it’s hard for me to imagine the eggplant emoji’s meaning changing at this point. It’s also difficult to imagine emojis falling out of the lexicon anytime soon, as language tends toward brevity and ease, something that’s evident with slang today.
Clarity and shifting meanings. My eggplant emoji example aside, there are plenty of instances where the meaning of an emoji has changed. Also, a reader may not even be aware of the meaning of well-established emojis, especially if they’re from another culture. However, is that any different from a reader encountering a word or pop culture reference they’re unfamiliar with? As long as it’s not an overly frequent occurrence, they’ll just guess at the meaning by using context clues and move on. The same will be true for unfamiliar emojis.
Audio book verbalization. If you’re doing an audio book version, this is definitely something to consider. Some emojis have cumbersome names, and that’s in addition to having to say “emoji” after each name. However, why not exercise some creative license? For instance, in the Noto Emoji font, the eggplant emoji is called “Aubergine.” But in the audio book script, I’ll just specify that it be called “eggplant emoji.” Same thing with Noto Emoji’s “Fisted Hand Sign,” which I’ll change to “fist bump emoji” in the script for greater clarity.

While those are all reasons to be thoughtful and constrained in your use of emojis, none of those are reasons to eliminate emojis from your writer’s toolbox. In the first book of my trilogy, emojis represented fewer than 20 characters out of more than 420,000 characters. That seems pretty constrained, while adding some levity and characterization.

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Tag: Writing

What’s in my 683 pages of book notes

Continuity & story details

Publication & marketing plans

Recommended reading on novel writing from my developmental editor—and what I’d already read

Why have I read so many books on novel writing?

The Age of De-Skilling: Who do you want to be?

1. The cyborg

2. The monitor

3. The innovator

4. The artisan

Villains vs. antagonists

DC Comics vs. Marvel Comics

7 questions you should be able to answer before working with a developmental editor

Book review: ‘The Writer’s Journey’ by Christopher Vogler

The Hero’s Journey

Character archetypes

Tiffany Haddish: ‘Sharing is caring’

‘Write what you know’ is too limiting

1. Write what you want to know about

2. Write what you know emotionally

**3. Write what you would like to imagine knowing**

Cutting your ‘warmup sentences’

Is it okay to use emojis in books?