On my last live masterclass, “The Bones of Winter,” I decided to do something that felt risky, right there at the beginning of the call: I admitted to everyone that I was now being called upon to start a medical treatment that could come with long-term cognitive consequences.
Honestly? For a writer—or really, maybe anyone whose identity and livelihood has always been primarily associated with their brain—there’s nothing scarier.
But I just didn’t feel that I could present the class the way I would want to without being entirely honest with everyone about what I was going through, emotionally speaking.
And because I embraced that challenge, and revealed my squishy underbelly? Honestly, a little miracle occurred.
A woman who was on the call reached out to tell me that she had undergone a treatment with similar projected side effects nearly 20 years ago—and that her well-meaning doctor had told her she’d never write again, or hold a job that was more than part-time manual labor.
She wanted me to know that she went on to publish with one of the most prestigious periodicals in the US, and that she’s now a mid-level manager with a large company. She also shared the exact strategies she used to preserve and build back her brain.
Because I had the bravery to admit my fears aloud, this woman was able to respond with exactly what I needed in order to embrace what I now understand to be a life-saving treatment at this stage of my journey back to health.
And in this, I was really only doing something I advise my clients and student to do in their own stories—which is to share what makes your protagonist vulnerable right there the first chapter.
When I talk about vulnerability, I’m talking about:
1. Fears
What your protagonist is afraid of tells you a lot about who they are, and how they’ve lived their life thus far.
2. Anxieties
We all have things we’re worried about, be they rational or far-fetched. These anxieties also tend to reveal character and backstory.
3. Secrets
What does your protagonist hide, and why? Readers LOVE to be let in on secrets, not only because they represent vulnerabilities, but also because secrets do have a way of getting out…which promises to be juicy.
4. What the protagonist loves
It may seem counterintuitive at first, but the truth is, loving anybody or anything makes us vulnerable. The thing or person we love could be taken from us, or go away of their own accord—or antagonistic forces could threaten them and therefore threaten us.
So: Why do I recommend getting one or more of these sorts of things in your novel in chapter one?
Because of the essential role of oxytocin in storytelling.
Oxytocin is the bonding chemical released by our brains when we empathize with someone. And it is absolutely critical to making your reader care about this wholly invented human you’ve got here on the page—your protagonist.
When we learn of this person’s vulnerabilities, we line those vulnerabilities up with our own, or those of someone we love. As a consequence, we begin to model their emotional experience as our own.
And that, my friends, is half the battle of convincing your reader to keep reading.
The woman who wrote back to me after my last masterclass gave me an incredibly generous gift. And so, in the spirit of that gift, I’m making a change to the way I do my monthly masterclasses moving forward.
From this point out, the replays of all of my free masterclasses will be made available to anyone who registers (for a period of a week after the call).
Bear in mind, though, that if you’re interested in being selected for one of the 2-3 hot-seat coaching slots at the end the masterclass, you’ll still need to tune in live.
Being that the protagonist’s goal is the third layer of the storytelling structure I teach in Anatomy of the Novel, I thought I’d offer you a further gift by unlocking the replays of the past masterclasses where I’ve focused on layers one and two of this process—so you can get a sense for how these layers stack right up on top of each other to create a novel that comes alive from your reader’s POV.
Here are those replay links:
And now, a final note: In November and December, I sold out 13 of the GUARANTEED live coaching slots I’m offering to new members of the Story Medicine Community through June 1, which comes with a full year of access to my self-paced alternative MFA program, Workshops Against Empire—the program that includes all five of my robust, well-refined courses, which teach the art of the novel from big-picture structure right down to prose and pitching.
There are now a limited number of these slots remaining, and I’m offering the year-long membership of $997 to this program now on a super-affordable payment plan of just $97/month.
If you’ve been with me for a while, you know that I’m scaling way back on one-on-one book coaching and editing in 2025. So if you’d like to work with me in 2025—and gain access to absolutely everything I teach, including monthly live events exclusive to the Story Medicine Community—this is your chance to make it happen.
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