Balancing Art & Commerce with Ines Johnson

Speaker 1: 0:37

Hi everyone and welcome to the Author Wheel podcast. I'm Greta Boris, USA Today bestselling mystery thriller author.

Speaker 2: 0:44

And I'm Megan Haskell, award-winning fantasy adventure author. Together we are the Author Wheel. I met today's guest a couple of years ago at a conference and we've been meaning to have her on the show ever since. Unfortunately, due to my own disorganized contacts list, it took us a while to actually get her here, but it was 100% worth the wait. Inez Johnson is a romance writer and teacher with a background in screenwriting. That gives her a wealth of information to share and the skills to share it. We talked about the patterns in story and the patterns in book marketing and how she identifies the marketing trends and studies the market each month to find out what she wants to write that fits within the trends. It's a truly insightful conversation, so get ready to take notes. It's a good one. But first, before we get into that, greta, how's your week going?

Speaker 1: 1:38

It is flying by. I'm telling you I do. On the positive side, I do feel, though, that I've caught up from vacation. I'm just back to my normal level of chaos instead of my even more chaos on top of chaos, right series. And I'm telling you it's really a lot of fun to go back and visit with those characters that I haven't visited with in several years, you know, yeah, yeah, really really enjoying that.

Speaker 2: 2:09

So our listeners know we are going to do a deep dive onto Greta's process, or into, rather, greta's process on how she's rewritten these books. So I'm going to interview Greta on a future episode, so stay tuned for that.

Speaker 1: 2:24

Yeah, and I'm glad we haven't done it yet because I'm still perfecting the process. It's taken me about four books to do it. Yeah yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:34

The only other thing of interest in my life, I think, is that and I'm kind of saying this to all you listeners because you now are my accountability I really want to sit down this week or early next week and plan out the second quarter of the year. I realize I'm quite late, but, you know, better late than never, and I'm trying to stick to our clarify, simplify, implement principles that I've been so busy implementing. I'm just having trouble getting back to the other pieces of the puzzle, so what about you?

Speaker 2: 3:07

Yeah, I feel that, I feel that hard.

Speaker 1: 3:10

Well, you know what though I think it's on a little pat ourselves on the back thing, it is because we did a lot of clarifying and simplifying. I believe that we are deep into this implementing thing and maybe, rather than beating ourselves up if we don't do it quarterly, we recognize I mean, I kind of did it with a year in mind and that it's good because I haven't run out of things to do, that's for sure.

Speaker 1: 3:41

And I also don't feel like I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off, doing wrong things or silly things. I'm doing things that I feel are good, yeah, and profitable and in the right direction.

Speaker 2: 3:54

So oh, that's great, that's great.

Speaker 1: 3:56

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:57

Well, on my side of the world, I actually just got back from the LA Times Festival of Books, which was such an amazing event. It's just incredible to be around a crowd of people who are there specifically to celebrate books. I mean, most of the other events that I typically do are, you know, they're either sci-fi, fantasy, comic con conventions or their local craft fairs or local small book fairs, and it's just not quite the same vibe. But the la times festival of books is, first of all, it's massive. It's I you know I knew it took over the entire usc campus, but like it really takes over the entire, yeah, usc campus seeing it is.

Speaker 1: 4:39

Oh, you can think, you can imagine it, but when you see it you're like yeah, and. And they say reading is dead. They have not been to the la times book fair.

Speaker 2: 4:49

No no, it was. It was an incredible event and so I'm hoping I'll get invited back to do it again with the same group. Um, we just had a blast and we all worked together really well and it was a lot of fun. So I am hoping to make this an annual um, you know book event that I do, so so that was fun.

Speaker 2: 5:09

But now I'm getting back to work and actually I have a new secret not so secret, uh project that I'm doing with my friend, rachel Renner, who is an award-winning and best-selling author. Our books are super complimentary. She writes in a very similar style to me. Hers are a little bit spicier, a little bit more romance on her, like regular series, but they're portal fantasies and they're just really good comps. Plus, we're really good friends. So, uh, yeah, we are putting together a short story anthology and I'm really excited about it. We already have a title. It's going to be called myths, magic and mayhem and it's going to feature norse myths, retired dragons, escaped souls and magic quills. So it's going to be a lot of fun and I'll have more information on that in the future. But that's my big exciting news of the week.

Speaker 1: 6:07

And we did interview Rachel on the podcast last year, so we could put that, if we remember, we can put a link to that episode in the show notes and if we forget, just go scroll back and look for Rachel Renner. It was a great interview. She's really fun and her books are awesome.

Speaker 2: 6:29

Yeah, I think she was in season one. I think she was one of our, or maybe early season two, but I think she was season one. Anyway, yeah, I'll try and find that link. I cannot tell you. Yeah, anyway, now on, for we have a shout out for our first subscriber sponsor.

Speaker 1: 6:49

So exciting, so many thanks and I mean that from the bottom of my heart to Maddie Dal Rimple of the Indie Author Podcast. She has launched a coaching program that teaches authors how to pitch and perform on podcasts, and I actually participated in it. I had a pod pro author coaching session and I learned a lot. So I will just say, if you're at all nervous about going on podcasts or thinking about starting your own podcast, I would totally do this. Maddie will encourage, not discourage, you. I really came away feeling excited about making some changes to tackle my next online opportunity. Maddie is a real pro. So thank you, maddie, for sponsoring the show. Her link is in the notes, and now on with the show.

Speaker 2: 7:40

Today we are absolutely thrilled to have Inez Johnson on the show with us. I met Inez about a year or two ago I can't even quite remember now, but it's been a bit and I've wanted to have her on the show forever and unfortunately, due to my own procrastination, never quite made the offer. So we're excited to finally bring her on. It's gonna be a really fun conversation. So quick bio here. Ines Johnson is a lover of fairy tales, folklore and mythology. She spends her days reimagining the stories of old in a modern world and writes books where damsels cause the distress, princesses wield swords and moms save the world.

Speaker 1: 8:23

Love that Woohoo.

Speaker 2: 8:27

Aside from being a writer, professional reader and teacher, inez is a very bad Buddhist. She sits in Sangha I think I said that right Sangha each week, and while others are meditating and getting their Zen on, she's contemplating how to use the teachings to strengthen her plots and character motivations.

Speaker 1: 8:46

I love that too.

Speaker 2: 8:48

I know that's great too. Basically, we love your bio and we love all things about you. This is amazing. Inez lives outside Washington DC with her two little sidekicks, who are growing up way too fast, and I can a 100% relate to that as well. So, inez, we're so glad to have you on the show and welcome.

Speaker 3: 9:07

Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.

Speaker 2: 9:12

This is a long time coming, and so we're very thrilled to have you.

Speaker 1: 9:16

We are.

Speaker 3: 9:17

Thanks guys, I'm glad to be here.

Speaker 2: 9:20

So why don't we start and just with our usual? Tell us a little bit more about your journey into writing and publishing and all things books.

Speaker 3: 9:32

Well, I was born storyteller. I was born into a funk band, is a bass player and I can still remember his big green Scooby-Doo psychedelic van that we would be in the back of as he would drive around to various gigs. But so I grew up. My first storyteller was music and I remember my dad just explaining to me how. You know, the bass had its own beat and that was the basis story. The drums had their own beat and the vocals had their own beats, and that just has always stuck with me how stories are layered. And my family is huge on libraries. That was the treat you get to go to the library and you get any book that you want. So I took all that and I grew up.

Speaker 3: 10:18

I was a child, a very proud child of the 80s, and so I loved my after school specials and my Saturday morning cartoons. You know when cartoons and children's television, they had stories, they had morals to teach us. It wasn't like any type of politics or anything like that, and that's what I thought story was. So that when I came into this world, I entered the world of storytelling professionally as a screenwriter. That's what my bachelor's degree is in and that's what I wanted to do? I wanted to be the next Sesame Street Workshop the makers of Sesame Street. Oh, that's amazing, yeah. And somehow I wound up writing very smutty stories Not for Sesame Street.

Speaker 2: 10:59

Sesame Street to smut yeah.

Speaker 1: 11:02

Yeah, okay, that's your bio title when you get around to writing your memoir. Sesame Street to Smut. Yeah, yeah, hey, that's your bio title when you get around to writing your memoir.

Speaker 3: 11:06

Sesame Street to Smut.

Speaker 1: 11:10

I love it. So were the screenplays that you wrote um smutty too no, they were not.

Speaker 3: 11:19

I worked for National Geographic and then for Children's Television. Okay, oh, wow, yeah.

Speaker 1: 11:26

Just wanted to clarify that that we're not talking to a writer of porn movies or anything like that here on the show.

Speaker 3: 11:35

No, that would be too much story yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:38

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 11:40

Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 11:41

How long were you a screenwriter then, before you wrote your first novel?

Speaker 3: 11:45

So I worked in television. So pretty much when I was in college I started to work. I my freshman year I overheard someone one of the guidance counselors telling like we're rating a student like you don't have an internship yet, you better get that started. You think you're going to have a job in this student. Like you don't have an internship yet, you better get that started. You think you're gonna have a job in this industry? You need to have an internship. And I was like, oh no, I don't have an internship. I was a freshman senior. What did I do? I went out and I found an internship, but that was one of the best things that I did because I had an internship every single year that I was in school so that by the time I graduated, people were were calling me. I didn't have to call people. So I worked first. I always worked in television. I never worked in like film or Hollywood and I worked like I said.

Speaker 3: 12:29

I worked for National Geographic television and if you remember National Geographic, they had what they call their blue chip documentaries, which were where there were just animals and there were no people. And that's when I learned this word animals and there were no people. And that's when I learned this word anthropomorphizing where you had to give the animals human-like characteristics in order to tell the story. Those animals aren't aren't thinking about oh no, the winter's gonna be harsh. They're not thinking procreate. But that's where I that's where I really started to hone my chops is being in those writers rooms where those really crazy smart people were talking about how to tell these stories of these animals. So I did that.

Speaker 3: 13:11

I worked at the Discovery Channel for a brief stint. Then I went and I worked for the Black Family Channel where I wrote children's media. I loved the Saturday morning cartoons. I basically started to work doing things like that. Kind of had my little Sesame Workshop little dream come true. So literally as soon as I was, before I even left school, I was already working and I worked actively in television until maybe 2009, maybe.

Speaker 3: 13:44

And then I started to. I got really into teaching and as I was teaching wasn't working as much in television. I would do a little bit here, a little bit like a small project here, a small project there. But I'd started to write somewhere around then and I had just gotten bitten by the book because I love story, like when my dad told me about the layers. It just struck something in me and I started to understand the structure of screenplays and the structure of how to make people feel things with moving images. And then I was like, well, I'm writing this stuff, I should be able to make them feel things and do things and want to design things with the words. So I just took everything that I learned in music and in television and then just translated that into novel writing.

Speaker 1: 14:32

She was more opera, so it was the classics and all that. But I agree with you, she would also teach and I would be upstairs and I'd be listening to all her students singing all the songs from all the musicals at the time. And it's all story. It is set to music and somebody had bought me that Peter and the Wolf, which is a classical, and the oboe is one animal and the flute is another animal and all the voices, and I think it's a fabulous way to teach children.

Speaker 2: 15:10

Is that musical morphine? No, animusical morphine, that sounds like a drug.

Speaker 1: 15:18

I don't recommend that on the podcast. But this is a quick rabbit trail before we get back to our normal questions. But do you find because I feel like this is true for me that the language itself, as you're writing your novels, has a musical quality and like, if you write a sentence that doesn't sound right, it could be grammatically correct, it could be all the things, but it just drives you up a tree and you have to fix it?

Speaker 3: 15:51

Yeah, it's not only that, but you start to get into just like you were saying about the oboe and the flute, like if a character is a flute and then they all of a sudden make a bass sound. It's wrong and you want to go back and you want to change that tone for it to strike the right note.

Speaker 1: 16:09

So yeah, I love that too. I do think sometimes there's a lot of things that can be taught practically about writing, and people can become excellent writers all different ways. But I love hearing about people with a musical background because I always think it gives them a little, a little lyrical step up. That is very hard to teach. It's just something you got in your bones.

Speaker 3: 16:33

True, but there's patterns to music. Like some people can't read music, but they can hear those patterns. They can create those patterns themselves, and that's to me what storytelling is can hear those patterns, they can create those patterns themselves, and that's to me what storytelling is. It's patterns, and if you can sit down and understand, if you can study the patterns, if you can understand them, if you can try to twist them and turn them in different types of ways, that is art. There's a process and then there's the artistry that you put on top of the process. And because I taught artists, I taught screenwriters and video editors and sound designers.

Speaker 3: 17:08

I think there's a really unique talent in people who are teaching other artists, because there's this duality of well, what are you grading?

Speaker 3: 17:16

Do you just prefer that person's the way that they art as opposed to the way that that other person arts? At the end of the day, like if you're teaching painting, like red and blue make purple, that's the only way you're going to get it. But one student might decide to put a little bit of white in there, another student might decide to put a little yellow in there, and that's the artistry. You showed me the competency Red and blue, purple, but light purple, darker purple, a purple with with umber tones. That's the artistry and I think we can start to separate that out, because people in our industry you hear people talk about oh I can't plot, I can't outline, that's going to ruin it for me and I'm like you're going to do it anyway. You're just not writing down beforehand that you're outlining, but you are following a pattern and I just think it's so important to study those patterns, to get stronger, to build up your craft.

Speaker 1: 18:15

Yeah, that's a beautiful way of saying it. I do love that.

Speaker 2: 18:19

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 18:20

So when did you publish your first novel?

Speaker 3: 18:23

December 2014,. I published an erotic, dystopian male, male, female amalgamation of a whole bunch of things that I thought was science fiction and it apparently wasn't science fiction.

Speaker 1: 18:42

No, it wasn't, no not even slightly.

Speaker 3: 18:44

I didn't know, I didn't know. And then the next thing that I did is I published. After that, in the spring, I published one of my favorite books that I wrote, pumpkin, a Cinder Mama Story where I retold the Cinderella tale, but starring a single mother. Oh, I love that and there was a little bit of magical realism in it, but it was contemporary. I was all over the place.

Speaker 2: 19:05

But I think that that's so common for and I don't even want to say beginning writers, because that's that's not quite. I mean, you could be have been writing for years and years and years, so you're not really beginning anymore, but for first novels or the first few novels, I feel like you know they kind of publishers.

Speaker 2: 19:21

Yeah, yeah, I mean that's, that's so common. You kind of have to work through that, like I'm going to throw everything in the kitchen sink into my story, cause I love it yeah, that's what we do and start to get a little bit more focused. So, um, I'm normally we go into roadblocks now, but I'm going to just ask you, how have you, or has your career, progressed from everything in the kitchen sink to a more focused genre or marketing or I don't even know what you want to call it, but a more focused author career?

Speaker 3: 19:57

Well, I'm going to lead us into roadblocks with that answer, because I keep coming up to this roadblock. I know what the market wants. The market tells me what it wants. I can see the market moving. If you're studying the patterns, you can see what's happening right. But do I write a hockey romance? No, I decide I wanna write. I have to go and set that grain and do something completely different, because that's the story that is dying to get out of me and I have to tell it. So I keep doing that over and over again, but I but it's, but I'm, I'm. I'm so blessed and lucky and thankful that I do. I am a prolific writer and I can work on more than one thing at a time. So I'm always writing some book that is in my heart that just has to come out. But, but I start my day writing what I know is to market, and then, with the time left over in my writing brain, I will write the thing that just has to come out of me.

Speaker 1: 20:57

Oh, that is so interesting and it's really really wise. Yeah, Because you know it's like any job, right, the reason anybody gets into any job. Well, no, I take that back. You don't go get a job at Costco because you feel it's the thing of your heart, that's just for money, but maybe some people do.

Speaker 2: 21:19

Not me.

Speaker 1: 21:20

But I guess the point being is that, like, every job has its fun things and it's not fun things, and if we're going to be professionals, so it's like sometimes we talk to writers and they're like the professional, you need to know what the market way, you know, and you don't ever get writer's block because this is a job and blah, blah, blah. But yet I love what you're saying. It is also an art, and in order to do it, we have to nurture our artist's soul, and so I finding that balance is really critical, and I love how you found it by writing both.

Speaker 2: 21:56

So I have a question, though, for writing both, because I personally, I mean I can write one thing and edit a different thing. That's possible for me, but writing two things, I'm not sure my brain has that capacity. I mean, to be fair, I'm not sure I've ever really tried, but yeah, it seems more challenging. But how do you break up your day more specifically to make sure that you're feeding both sides of that professional creative?

Speaker 3: 22:23

soul. My brain prefers to write one book and edit another book. So I do prefer because that feels very balanced to me If I'm just writing, I'm missing editing. If I'm just editing, I'm missing drafting. So my brain prefers that balance.

Speaker 3: 22:39

But another trick that I have is that I will start my day typically in my office and I will do whatever is the market. Mostly we'll do whatever is the market thing that I need to do. That I know is going to sell, but I also it's this to eat the frog time, like the thing that I don't want to do. I'm going to do that first and then I will either go, depending upon the weather, I will go sit downstairs on my living room couch, and then that just change of venue, that much will let my brain know oh okay, we're in a different place, we're in a different time, let's do something different. Or I will go out to a local coffee shop and I will write there. So and I always have very specific goals, because that works really well for me I don't, I'm not a by word count person, because the goal then is to get as many words as possible, and I literally will break apart contractions and add adjective and adverb just to get the word count. So I can't have that word count goal.

Speaker 2: 23:38

I need to have a chapter goal because a chapter is a contained thing.

Speaker 3: 23:45

For me, a chapter has a goal, motivation, conflict. It moves along the plot. So I have, depending upon how much I'm writing, I might do two chapters in the morning for the to market thing, and then I might do one to two chapters after that, either later in the morning or in the afternoon. Sometimes I will go like when my kids were younger and they needed to get out of the house to get homework done. We maybe go to the library and I'd write, or we go sit at Panera Bread and I'd write while they would do their work. So I'm having that division. That and having that division and having a very specific goal works the best for me.

Speaker 1: 24:21

Oh, that's great. Yeah, I'm with you on the chapter goal. I've tried the word count goal and for some reason, I just get really stressed. It gives me anxiety instead of me feeling like, oh, this is a, like you said. A chapter is like a contained thing. So I felt like I created something. Yes, when I wrote a chapter, but it was just words. It was yeah, me and math, we don't do letters. Yes, when I wrote a chapter, but it was just words.

Speaker 3: 24:48

It was yeah, me and math. You do letters, not numbers. I get you yeah.

Speaker 1: 24:53

I know I do love that, so would you say that that has been your biggest roadblock? Then is this nurturing both the artist in you and the businesswoman in you at the same time?

Speaker 3: 25:06

No, not the nurturing the artist and the businesswoman. Nurturing well, maybe, yeah, nurturing the artist and the businesswoman, but very specifically writing that balance of writing to market versus writing from the heart, because sometimes what's coming from my heart is not to market. Whenever I'm looking, I, every quarter, at the very least every quarter I sit down and I do a deep dive of what does the market want right now. How has it shifted? I go look at the bestsellers charts and just do a serious deep dive where I'm taking notes on covers, taking notes on titles, I'm looking at tropes what are people putting in their blurbs? What's at the top, what's at the bottom, what are readers saying? And then I then I check with my heart.

Speaker 3: 25:47

I'm like, okay, like last lot a couple of quarters ago it was bully romance like, can you do it? Can you do it? My heart was like, no, I don't want to write a bully romance. But at the same time I was like, but I can write enemies to lovers. I just can't go to that extreme. Just like now, like hockey is so popular. And I was like, can you do it? Can you do it? I was like, no, I don't want to write a hockey romance, but I can still write like. One of the things that I think is working with hockey romance is that all those men are on a team and that's very attractive. So I can do some kind of a team found family kind of thing, but not necessarily hockey, because I think all that padding is just too much. You have to take off so much stuff. I write slutty books. You have to take off so much stuff and it's sweaty stuff.

Speaker 2: 26:37

There's also the missing teeth, and you know, yeah, hockey's not my sport either.

Speaker 3: 26:46

I did see it. Some people are starting to do soccer books and that's getting exciting. So I'm like, oh, soccer. Oh, there you go Love it yeah.

Speaker 2: 26:52

So jump on that early.

Speaker 1: 26:55

What about a fire station? I don't know Firemen, everybody knows they're hot, literally no pun intended.

Speaker 3: 27:04

Literally. Maybe Xbox players are now in a fire all in the same ladder. Maybe, I don't know.

Speaker 1: 27:11

Love it or you know, firemen are always like weightlifting and stuff fire. They could start a team and then they could play against another, the police or something like that it's right.

Speaker 2: 27:24

yeah, the uh firefighters versus the police in the annual baseball softball game. There you go. There you go Done. We just wrote your book for you, thank you I appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 27:38

So you segued then from your science fiction fantasy into romance. When did you like finally say to yourself okay, Inez, get it together, I am writing romance.

Speaker 3: 27:52

Oh, I was always romance. I just did not understand subgenres. I thought that that was the subgenre, that romance was the subgenre of fiction, and that's all that I needed to understand. And that was wrong. So at some point, maybe two, three years into it, because I'd written that dystopian that was not a sci-fi, I'd written that contemporary but also had magical realism, then I wrote paranormal, but it was all paranormal, set inspired by Christmas stories, don't ask me. Oh, I love that. I just kept going all over the place, just writing what I wanted to write.

Speaker 3: 28:31

And when I started to see that the readers who would email me were not the same people and they would talk specifically about certain series of books and not about the others, I was like, what's going on here? These are all romances. Why aren't you reading all of them? What's going on here? These are all romances. Why aren't you reading all of them? And that's what it took for me to understand that there's readers that like paranormal romance, there's readers that like science fiction romance, there's readers that like contemporary romance, and then even within contemporary and paranormal there's differences. So it was the readers that taught me, because if there's kissing in it, I'm going to read it. But readers taught me that no, I want this type of kiss in this kind of place and I want him to say this specifically.

Speaker 3: 29:12

So that's when I I air quotes got my act together and I, I, I separated myself. So, um, and I separated myself based upon the steam level. So if the books were steamy, then they went under the Ines Johnson pen name. If the were steamy, then they went under the Ines Johnson pen name. If the books were sweet, then they went under the Sinead Johnson pen name, and that's the most boundaries that I have. I did try to do like a third way split where it was just purely erotic romance and then like purely fantasy or paranormal romance. I tried to do that split but those readers were like, yeah, we'll read both of those. It's just the sweet stuff that we're not interested in. So that's how I made the decisions. I let the readers tell me.

Speaker 2: 29:54

So one of the things we started talking about before we started recording was how your marketing is actually in your craft, and so when you talk about marketing, it's in a lot of ways inseparable from the actual story. So can you talk a little bit more about that? I mean, obviously, separating the pen names is a big component of that to make sure you're meeting reader expectations. But what do you do specifically, or what are you looking for specifically, when you're putting the marketing in your book and then pulling the marketing out of your book?

Speaker 3: 30:27

So let's go back on my journey. So I learned that romance is a category of fiction. And then in romance, then you have subcategories where it could be paranormal, contemporary science fiction, mysteries, thriller, suspense, we could go on right. And then within that there's tropes. There's tropes like enemies to lovers, there's tropes like us as romance right. So I did deep dives on tropes because I started to see the pattern. A lot, I'm sure we all do so.

Speaker 3: 30:57

You see, a trope is a pattern. It's something that people want repeated over and over again. If it's an enemies to lovers, these two people, for some reason they're at each other's throats. But and enemies to lovers, these two people, for some reason they're at each other's throats. But there's some reason that they adhere, that they have to stick together for this romance. And I was reading an article where someone was looking at the enemies to lovers trope in Shakespeare and they called it a merry war. And I just love that term because that's what is pretty much going on Within this trope of a merry war.

Speaker 3: 31:24

Enemies to lovers or opposites attract. At some point the, the hero is going to insist that they try. Whatever it is that they're doing his way like. If it's an office, if it's an, if it's a romance uh, contemporary office romance with the with the enemies to lovers trope. You see how we go down that ladder. Then at some point the hero is going to say we're going to do this assignment my way and it it goes wrong. And then another point, the hero is going to say no, no, no, no, we're going to do it my way, and it goes wrong. But then once they start to work together, things start to work out. That always happens in enemies to lovers trope.

Speaker 3: 32:01

If you look at another trope, like, for example, the hidden identity trope, if you look at um another trope, like, for example, the hidden identity trope, in a hidden identity trope somebody is pretending to be someone they're not like. One of my favorites is when it's royalty and the person who is the princess or the prince is pretending to be a commoner and at some point someone's gonna wreck. While they're pretending with the love interest, someone's gonna come up and recognize them like you're such and they're gonna play it off like oh, no, no. So there's these close calls. When you have a hidden identity trope, even if it's not a royal person, there's always going to be a close call. It's always going to be that the the the love interest falls in love with the person who's hiding because they see behind the mask, they see that person's true identity. That's who they fall in love with.

Speaker 3: 32:44

And there's all this friction because the person who's hiding is pretending to be who they are not and it's confusing the love interest and they're like I don't get it. I keep thinking that I love you, but then you do this right, and then at some point the mask comes off. But that's a moment of betrayal. How could you hide this from me? And then they come back together.

Speaker 3: 33:05

If you love a trope and you keep looking at it, you're gonna see patterns, and I love patterns.

Speaker 3: 33:12

All that just to answer your question of once you see the patterns over and over again and you see what readers are looking for, then you can say ah well, I know I'm gonna be using the hidden identity trope and I know that the universal fantasy thank you, thea Thora Taylor the universal fantasy of the hidden identity trope is that the love interest can see past the mask to who you really are.

Speaker 3: 33:35

And don't we all want someone to be able to see past that mask and see who we truly are? So if that's the universal fantasy. Then you need to put moments in there, what I call heartbeat moments. You need to put the heartbeat moments in there where maybe he's, if she's the one that's hiding he leans in close and he's looking at her, he's gazing at her so, so intensely. And he asked her the question of where you can tell he sees who she truly is and you see, on, like things like TikTok and Instagram, where it'll say something like when he leans over you in the doorway and he looks deeply into your eyes and you feel like he can see into your soul. That's marketing copy. But that marketing copy came from that moment that you had to put there because of a trope, because you put it in an office romance, that's, in a contemporary romance, so it just builds itself up and down. But you have to realize the patterns in order to put them there and then pull the patterns back out that.

Speaker 1: 34:29

No, that's really really good. You know, we have, uh, tried to. We talk about trips, that neither megan nor I write romance, but we always have romance in our stories and I think most people have some form of romance in their stories. But tropes are, they're in and they're in every kind, even literary fiction. That that shows and I.

Speaker 1: 34:51

But what I think is so fun about talking to a romance writer is that they just don't make any bones about it. It's like here that here it is and here is what works, because this is the way that your readers are going to engage and I think it's taking. One of the things I loved about what you said is that when you're baking the marketing into your story, it's like as if you were baking some treat for your family. You want to please them. You want like, oh, my daughter loves chocolate, or oh, my son loves bananas, and you're baking something in knowing that that's what's going to tempt the person you're making it for. And I think that's where sometimes all of us, as early writers, miss the boat. We forget that we're creating a treat for someone else and we just make what we want.

Speaker 3: 35:49

I wonder if this is a lot, too, about women. Well, women will say this is what I want, this is what makes me happy, and then someone will come and say no, no, no, no, no, I'm not going to give you chocolate, I'm going to give you a licorice or beef jerky. And then they don't come back. They're no, that said, that's not what I want. I think romance readers are very vocal and I think that romance writers because we all are readers we listen and we do it and we and we put surprises in it too, because even if you're leading them all along that pattern, maybe sometimes you zig, but if you zig, you come right back to that line, so you kind of like oh, and then you, then you delight us again by going back on it, whereas another person again they might hand you beef jerky when you want chocolate, they never produce the chocolate.

Speaker 1: 36:37

Yeah, I know, and just beef jerky muffins sounds terrible.

Speaker 3: 36:41

Oh gosh.

Speaker 2: 36:43

Beef jerky dipped in chocolate.

Speaker 1: 36:46

I think that's always a bacon thing. You're talking to a non-meat eater here, so it just all sounds bad to me. Oh, yeah, yeah, but that is a really the way you just described. That is really good and it makes me want to start writing right now. I want to just like okay, bye, inez, I'm going to go write. It's so good. Tell listeners if you don't mind a little bit about the courses you have available, because I was looking on your website and it was like oh, that looks good. Oh, I want to take that. That looks amazing. That looks amazing.

Speaker 3: 37:23

So let me preface this by saying that I started to teach when I had kids and I needed to slow down and I couldn't be available 24 hours a day because, working at National Geographic, I had crews all over the world in every time frame and there was no such thing as a nine to five. So pretty soon after I had children, I was like I don't want to leave this industry, but this cannot be my full-time income anymore, and that's when I started to teach. I love teaching. I taught for 15 years Screenwriting, video editing, history of media, loved it, but at some point I burned out. I was just tired of teaching.

Speaker 3: 38:03

The quality of student changed as well, and there were just students that just didn't really want to be there. I don't understand why they're there. Anyway, I burned out and I was burned out for maybe three years and then I started missing it. And you could tell I started missing it because if you came up to me in a conference and you asked me a question, I would talk your ear off and then I might email you with some other information, because I just wanted to explain and explain.

Speaker 3: 38:27

So the courses came about when I saw that I was telling people the same things and I was like, well, here, let me just write it down for you. And I wrote it down and it became the Page Turner Pacing Course how to Write a Benchworthy Novel in 21 Days. Because, as I said, I'm a prolific writer because I come from screenwriting. So, again, in screenwriting we didn't know there was no such thing as a plotter versus pantser. Like, a plot is the structure of the story. So I didn't understand what people were saying. But they were saying pantsers, they write by the seat of their pants. I was like, okay, cool, but there's still a structure. So I sat down and I wrote this, basically a manifesto, to explain to people how I go about writing. And remember I said I'm usually writing one to two chapters a day. Those chapters are all plot points. Like I will start, I will write. I usually write dual perspective, so I'll write the ordinary world of the hero, that's chapter one, the ordinary world of the hero and that's chapter two. And then I keep going back and forth. There's a meet cute. There's a reason that they can't be together, then another reason the reason that they are that they have to be together in the book. And then we go into act two, where there's the falling in love moments, and then there's a moment where they're like I can't live without this person. But oh no, here comes a bad guy and now it's the dark night. These patterns happen all over again and I just took the patterns and I put them in 21 days and it's pretty much how I write all of my books in 21 days. And that became the patient repacing course how to write a binge-worthy novel in 21 days, and from there that's. So. That was far better than I could have ever imagined it doing, and people started asking me more questions. They started asking me because they knew I wrote both clean and wholesome sweet romance and I also write really dirty, smutty romance. And they asked well, how do you do this? And so then I wrote two more manifestos. I wrote my writing dirty and my writing sweet courses, which takes you on how to emotionally write. Because people also would ask me how do you keep writing all these sex scenes? You have all these books and how do you? Aren't all the sex scenes the same. Like what are you talking about? They're never the same Because, again, the way that I saw things, that the love scenes always came there was always a sectional awakening journey and the love scenes always come out of character development.

Speaker 3: 40:43

So one of the examples that I love to give is like if the heroine of your book is an assassin and she's falling for this, maybe she's falling for an ordinary guy, maybe she's falling for another assassin, but the first time that they come together to make love, she's like I have to be on top and she has to see the door. Okay, probably doesn't trust him so much, but then they go through some more ups and downs and trials and tribulations. The next time that they make love, she doesn't have to be on top and she doesn't have to see the door. That's character development. And guess what? They're going to touch each other differently. And that's how every sex scene should be. It should come out of the characters and how they are changing and evolving. Because if you're just writing, he inserted tab A into slot B. Yeah, I'm going to skip past that too. It's not interesting, oh my gosh.

Speaker 3: 41:32

So that's what the writing journey course became, and I also wrote the writings, because people were like, well, how can you write these books that are all this tension filled and there's only kissing? And I was like, let me show you how I did it. So I wrote those two and then it just kept going somewhat. I started doing direct sales about two years ago and once again someone asked how are you doing this? And I literally wrote a PowerPoint and I was like, here, this is how I do, I'm doing it. And then I was like this is a course. So I put that up and that's the course, and I just keep going. Now people are asking me about tropes and literally someone asked me about the hidden identity trope and I was like, oh it's. It's the person falling in love with the truth, with the true essence, while they're trying to hide their, their, their, behind this false identity. And I literally the next day, wrote 20 pages explaining this. I was like, here you go. Oh, this is a course, that's how it happens.

Speaker 2: 42:22

Well, I love that because I think what you're doing is you. You seem to have the ability to break down your own process into a way that is that is easily digestible by other writers, authors, people who want to learn story, want to learn writing technique, and so forth and I love that because you are a teacher and it comes from that teaching experience and now I need to go take all your courses.

Speaker 1: 42:50

You know what I think it is too. I mean, is that you are a pattern person. Yeah, you see patterns. I mean, you're just wired that way.

Speaker 1: 43:00

And so I, and I do think that that's a lot of the problem when people first begin writing novels is that they don't see the forest for the trees. They're just wandering through this world and they're not exactly there. You know one of my forgive me listeners if you say this, but one of my least favorite things I hear writers say is oh, my characters. Just, you know, I had it planned and they just led me in a different direction. I'm like, seriously, they are in your head, you have control. I just don't. I mean, but I do understand what they're saying in one sense of the word, but but I also think that it's. It is that pattern thing and sometimes your characters surprise you and I love that. That's great. But still it's that understanding that stories have to have a certain structure in it that isn't formulaic. I mean it could be, but it isn't necessarily formulaic. It's something that gives readers a place to grab onto and that makes them want to read it.

Speaker 2: 44:11

See, I will say, I'm going to argue with you for a second here, Greta.

Speaker 1: 44:17

Poor Inez. Yeah, just sit back and drink your coffee, inez.

Speaker 2: 44:21

I do have. I mean, I think having that sense of structure, having that sense of plot and the key beats to the story, of the story that you're trying to tell, whatever that is, is very important. And I think, for the quote unquote pancers or discovery writers amongst us, I think that that's a little bit more maybe ingrained in our heads. But for me, like if I went and threw and wrote and what I would consider a traditional outline, which is to say, you know, heroine does a, then goes to b, then you know, does c, and then there's the you know like, where you actually um outline the events of the story, like the specific things that your, your protagonist, is going to do.

Speaker 2: 45:04

For me I will get to points where the character is like no, I'm not doing that and it's because the motivation doesn't make sense for that anymore. So I do have to veer off. But I do know that you know you have to have the mirror moment in the middle of the story where the protagonist goes from reactive to proactive and there's a change and they, you know, come to some new understanding about themselves. I know that moment has to exist. I just don't necessarily know what the events surrounding that moment are going to be. So I'm arguing with you because I think characters do veer off, but it's because when you wrote out that initial event outline you weren't necessarily understanding your character's motivations and development for the story. So there I'm off my soapbox now okay, we'll let annis break the tie here.

Speaker 2: 45:57

What's your perspective that you both are right?

Speaker 1: 46:01

oh, she is such a diplomat, not even because you both talked about patterns.

Speaker 3: 46:05

You both absolutely did that, but one of you wants to come at the patterns organically, whereas another of you was like, oh look, I can see the dots, let me work at connecting them. It's the same thing. That's why a lot of times when people have the plotter versus pantser discussion or argument, I just sit quietly because they're talking about the same stuff.

Speaker 2: 46:25

Yeah, no, and you know what? You're absolutely right, I think. It's just you have to have structure, otherwise your story wanders and I think we've all written that story in the very beginning of our writing journey as well where you, you know, your character, sits there and stares at their belly button for an hour.

Speaker 1: 46:41

Well, and I do think sometimes it takes you, it takes you some time to really find out who this character is, because it's like you were talking about Inez, with the characters like motivation. If, if you're picking something like a trope, that is a trope about motivation. So say, like enemies to lovers. I mean that's kind of about their character, like who they are and their motivation. It's a little more emotional and I don't know what I'm trying to say here. Then, for instance, megan writing fantasy and me writing mystery thriller.

Speaker 1: 47:28

Sometimes we are not looking at our characters hearts as much in the initial phases. We're more looking about the who killed who, how did they do it, what substance did they use and whose magic thingy goes through which porthole too? Oh, oh, dear greta, listen, my son has a boat, so I'm talking about portholes. It's not a bad word, okay, anyway, my point was that it's not. The books are not as um. First rounds are often not as like emotionally, motivationally driven as a romance would be. Yeah, so maybe that's why we sometimes struggle with characters going awry and not where we expected them to. But do you think that happens in romance as well, enos, that the characters go awry.

Speaker 1: 48:20

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 48:21

They can and if they do. That's why I think that if you are an outliner, then you catch some of this before you start to write, whereas if you are more of a discovery writer, you write it down, you think about it and you might have to get all the way through to the end and come back, and I really call it those people cyclers, like they have to come back and cycle, cycle, cycle. So you've got to do it anyway. It just some of the people. It just doesn't make sense to them to do it first. They need to, they need to walk through it, and both ways are absolutely fine. I do not I do not begrudge anyone for the way that they produce their art, as long as they get it done.

Speaker 1: 49:02

Yeah, I love that. It's going to happen at one point or another is your point, yep, and I agree with you too that understanding the patterns it's kind of like learning your scales and you know learning the difference between a major and a minor and a diminished and an augmented, and all those things that make you a better musician. It puts more tools in your toolbox when you go to create something, and I think learning your tropes is exactly that it's putting more tools in your toolbox.

Speaker 3: 49:32

Agreed. And just because you study this stuff and you learn it, it's not going to disrupt the way that you do art. So if you start to study structure and you do a diehard panzer, it's not going to stop you from being a panzer, it's just going to make you better, period, period.

Speaker 2: 49:48

Yeah, well, we are coming up on the end of our time here I know this has been a fabulous conversation. We're going to have to have you on again and we're going to talk more about craft and all of the things, but for now, why don't you tell us a little bit more about where our listeners can find you and what you know, what they can sign up for?

Speaker 3: 50:11

currently, I guess, as far as courses, what you have running right now free 15 page guideline- of how to write a romance novel, the five necessary scenes that you need if you're writing a romance or romantic subplot, and from there I will then send you weekly, just short, helpful tips on how to not just craft, but also a bit on marketing, and you'll see my courses in there, the courses that we talked about. You can access them all when you go there and you see what it is that I'm talking about.

Speaker 2: 50:50

Perfect, I'm going to going to go sign up right now.

Speaker 1: 50:54

Didn't you tell us, before we started recording, that you have a new, a new something that you're launching? Tell us about that you're launching?

Speaker 3: 51:08

tell us about that. Yes, so at first I was just. I was just happily just breaking down all of this information for people, and I had a podcast called Annette Johnson Breaks it Down, but I've since stopped doing the podcast. I'm still doing the breakdowns, but I've stopped doing the podcast because I've realized that I want to go really into depth, and so what I'm in the process of developing is the Romance Rights Club, kind of like Fight Club, where I do more in-depth dives, like I just did with you guys on the hidden identity trope, on the fake relationship trope and tons more.

Speaker 3: 51:37

So the Romance Rights Club is coming soon it's not out yet, maybe in May it'll be done where you can go and you can just grab these tropes and like literally 20 pages is my norm for explaining how these work, including with a full outline of what I call a generic outline of all the plot points that you're going to need. But they're very generic, so you can take these plot points and you can plug them into. If you're doing a science fiction story, you can put them on a ship. If you're fiction story, you can put them on a ship. If you're doing historical, you can put them on a carriage. If you're doing contemporary, you can put them on a road trip, whatever, but you'll have the outline. You'll have examples of where you can see this.

Speaker 3: 52:18

I come from TV and film so I use TV and film examples. So you would see this in like one of my favorites Cyrano de Bergerac's story. But because I'm a proud child of the 80s, I explained to you if you remember the film Roxanne with Steve Martin and Daryl Hannah, right, so I do it there. Coming to America is another hidden identity trope with Eddie Murphy as Prince Akeem. 80s baby, what can I tell you? I break things down with some of my favorite movies, showing you where were you going to hit all of these tropes and also how they kind of um move them around a little bit, but they're all still there. Then I talked to you about the universal fantasies of the tropes, like why do readers love it? And then I give you some ideas on the heartbeat moments that you want to put in there that you can then pull out and use for marketing.

Speaker 1: 53:14

So yeah, 20 page long lectures that I hope people are going to really enjoy because I really am having so much fun writing them. That's great. That sounds amazing.

Speaker 2: 53:18

And again I'll be signing up. You're going to take all my money.

Speaker 1: 53:24

Sounds sounds so good. I know Sounds so good, Fantastic Yep. So to all you listeners out there, do run, don't walk to Ines Johnson's website and check all this stuff out. And also, would you like us to give your book or book series a shout out on the podcast If you would just go down in the show notes and find that little button that says support the show. If you sponsor the show for as little as $3, we will tell the world about it. We will be so grateful. Your support helps us pay for editing and hosting and lets us know that you appreciate what we're doing. As I said, the link is in the show notes and thank you in advance. So until next time, keep your stories rolling.