When I first started writing horror, I believed foreshadowing meant making sure the reader understood what was coming: dropping a hint, then circling back to explain it just in case they’d missed it. It took an early beta reader flat-out telling me “I saw that coming from a mile away” for me to realize why!

Foreshadowing Isn’t the Same as Telegraphing

Here’s the distinction I wish someone had handed me on day one: foreshadowing plants a feeling. Telegraphing plants an answer. The first trusts the reader; the second doesn’t… and nobody wants to feel like they’re “too dumb” to figure it out themselves, right?

When you telegraph a twist, you’re usually doing it out of fear… Fear that the reader won’t connect the dots, so you connect them for you. A character says something a little too on-the-nose; a detail gets described with just a little too much weight. The reader doesn’t get to feel the wrongness settle in; they get handed a flashing sign that says “This matters later!”— and that sign kills the very tension you were trying to build.

Real foreshadowing is quieter than that. It’s Chekhov’s old rule about the gun on the wall — if it’s there in Act One, it needs to go off eventually… But the audience shouldn’t know when (or even that they’re being warned at all). In Agony, some of the clues I’m proudest of are the ones that read as completely ordinary the first time through. A throwaway line. A small habit a character has. Nothing underlined, nothing bolded. Just… there, waiting.

This was one of those lessons I only learned by doing it wrong first.

Planting the Clue Is Only Half the Job

The other mistake I made constantly in early drafts: I’d plant a clue and forget I’d planted it. Foreshadowing isn’t just about the setup. It’s a promise, and promises need to be paid off or you’ll leave the reader feeling cheated instead of rewarded.

A few things that changed how I handle this in revision, from my editor:

• Track your plants in a separate document. I keep a running list of every detail I’ve seeded that needs a payoff later. It sounds unglamorous, but I’ve cut entire subplots because I realized (only after I got three drafts in, of course) that I’d made a promise I didn’t keep despite my best intentions at the time!
• Give the payoff more weight than the plant. The clue should be small. The moment it clicks into place shouldn’t be. If your reveal feels smaller than the setup, you’ve built the scene backwards.
• Let some plants pay off structurally, not just literally. Sometimes the payoff isn’t a line of dialogue getting explained: it’s a feeling returning. A location revisited. A phrase that meant nothing the first time and means everything the second.
• Don’t be afraid to cut a plant that isn’t earning its place. Not every early detail needs to become load-bearing. Some are just texture, and that’s allowed… As long as you’re honest with yourself about which is which!

The goal isn’t to trick the reader. It’s to let them feel smart when they catch it, and satisfied even when they don’t— because either way, the story was always heading exactly where it needed to.

How Repetition and Motif Quietly Connect Separate Stories

This is the part of foreshadowing I didn’t expect to fall in love with: using it not just within a single book, but between them.

I’ve talked about this before, but I want to mention it again here since I think it fits! Agony is part of a planned series right now, and I’ve always known I wanted future stories to exist in the same wider world— and one of the quiet joys of that has been planting motifs that don’t pay off within the book they first appear in at all. Now granted, sometimes they’re just a callout to another story: a recurring image; a phrase a character uses that means nothing yet (but will mean everything to a reader three books from now who happens to remember it!). But in this context: it’s foreshadowing on a much longer timeline, and it only works because it’s built on the same principle as foreshadowing within a single scene. You have to trust the reader to carry the detail with them, even when they don’t know yet that it matters.

Stephen King does this constantly: a balloon, a sewer, a recurring symbol that threads through entirely separate books and slowly reveals itself to be part of something much bigger. You don’t need the connection explained to still feel unsettled the second time an image resurfaces. Your subconscious clocks the repetition before your conscious mind catches up, and that’s exactly the sensation I’m chasing!

If You Want to Go Deeper

Just a friendly reminder: I AM NOT SPONSORED; I JUST DON’T BELIEVE IN GATEKEEPING! So here are a few free resources you can keep coming back to when you’re working through foreshadowing in your own drafts, recommended to me by my editor:

• Reedsy’s guide on foreshadowing is a solid overview of the different types, with examples across genres.
• MasterClass’s breakdown of foreshadowing techniques is quite useful for seeing how dialogue, titles, and setting can each carry a clue differently.
• NowNovel’s 8 laws of foreshadowing is a good gut-check list for revision, especially the reminder that not every event actually needs a warning shot.

If I could go back and tell my earlier self one thing, it would be this: the reader doesn’t need you to point at the clue. They need you to trust that it’s there, and trust that they’ll find it— maybe on the first read, maybe on the second, maybe not until they close the book and something clicks days later. And if you’re still figuring out how to plant your own clues without giving the whole game away, that’s okay! Everyone learns at their own pace on their own time, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

The post Storytelling 101: The Art of Foreshadowing – Planting Clues the Reader Won’t See Coming appeared first on Author Claytth.

This was one of those lessons I only learned by doing it wrong first. Early on, I confused traits for personality constantly. I’d write “she’s sarcastic” or “he’s stubborn” and think the character work was done… But it wasn’t. Those are traits, just decorations. They tell you almost nothing about why the character exists the way they do.

Personality is the function underneath the trait. Sarcasm isn’t a personality… Sarcasm as a way of keeping people at a safe distance, because closeness has cost this character something before (such as Claire lost Dave). That’s personality! Stubbornness isn’t a personality… Stubbornness as the only form of control a character has ever been allowed to hold onto: that’s personality (like Amo).

The test I use now: if I can swap the trait for a different one, and the character still functions identically in every scene, then it was never doing real work. A trait should exist because the wound or the want demanded it, not because it sounded interesting on its own!

Why Contradiction Makes Characters Feel Human

Real people are not consistent, and yet a lot of many famous authors’ early character work chases consistency like it’s the goal. But I think that idea is a common misconception that most authors may believe at some point! Contradiction is what makes a character feel like a person, instead of a concept. These are where the true tests lie: when a character is confronted by a situation that directly opposes their personal foundations.

For instance, take the example of a character that can be generous with strangers and cruel to the people closest to them. Or one who is terrified of change, while actively sabotaging every stable thing in their life. These aren’t plot holes: they’re the actual texture of being human (and it makes for an excellent story-driving device, haha!). We contain things that don’t resolve neatly, and the characters who stick with readers are usually the ones who are allowed to as well. The key is that the contradiction has to make emotional sense, even when it doesn’t make logical sense. A reader doesn’t need a character’s contradictions explained outright… They need to sense that if they looked closely enough, the contradiction would trace back to the same wound or want to drive everything else. That’s the difference between a character who feels broken by the writer, and one who feels broken by their own life.

Putting It Together

When I’m building someone now, I try to hold all three pieces loosely at once: what happened to them, what they think will fix it, and where they contradict themselves trying to get there. I don’t always know the answers before I start writing since I’m more of a plantser creative than an organized type of creative, but that can be just as fun! Sometimes the contradictions only reveal themselves a few chapters in, and I go back and thread them earlier once I understand what I’m actually writing toward.

That’s the part nobody tells you starting out: character creation isn’t a worksheet you fill in before the real writing begins. It’s ongoing. The character you meet in chapter one is rarely finished being discovered by the time you reach the end… and even through the dozens of revision drafts that follow, in my case!

If I could go back and tell my earlier self one thing, it would be this: stop decorating characters and start excavating them. The traits will follow on their own once the person underneath is real.

Hey, You! – A Note to the Newbie/Aspiring Writers

And to the newbie or aspiring writer reading this who feels so overwhelmed at just the mere thought of writing a book, from one creative to another: it’s okay to not know where to start. But the important part is starting somewhere! That’s why I’m building an online resource bank in my other blog article (which, ironically enough, does involve a few character creation worksheets— I’m not sponsored, I swear, I just don’t believe in gatekeeping resources that could help even just one person !)

What My Process Taught Me About Trusting Myself

It’s a work in progress that’s still growing, and you can suggest your own additions, links, and lessons in the comments!

The post Storytelling 101: Character Development (The Foundations Every Writer Needs) appeared first on Author Claytth.

Dear Reader,

The first character that I can honestly say felt real when I wrote them would be Claire from Agony. Now, I don’t enjoy saying that because that is the book I am currently promoting… and that just feels off to me. But, if I’m being honest: she’s the one, and I’ll go over why in a bit. That being said, I can’t remember the first character I read that felt real… because that’s a lot of books, y’all, I ain’t goin back (lol)! But one that sticks out to me in recent memory is Kinsey, from the novel Spread Me by Sara Gailey. I spoke about that book before, but not really the main character in this way. So I will talk a bit about them and why they feel special in this way.

I’ll go with Kinsey from Spread Me first. Kinsey is a researcher in the desert working with several of her colleagues studying local algae (I think). What they find instead is a carcass that is obviously infested with something, and (for completely selfish reasons by Kinsey) she convinces everyone to take it inside the station so they can examine it. Kinsey is the first to recognize what the carcass has, and it recognizes her too.

See, Kinsey has a deep shame she has kept buried her entire life… a fetish, a sexual desire she cannot explain to others— and no ordinary person could accept it (or, in her position, even trust her) if they found out. Kinsey is attracted to viruses. She loves the idea of something growing inside of her, spreading through her body, taking over, and killing her. She has a black-and-white photo of a virus in its purest form that she pleasures herself to every night… and I’m not talking casually. I mean, this woman has full-body Os as she fantasizes about it! Now, that may seem strange, ridiculous, and a profoundly stupid thing to be attracted to… but the thing is, THAT’S real. People are attracted to things that don’t always make sense, and it’s not right (in my opinion) to judge people for that, especially if it hurts no one but themselves. People enjoy things that are not always sane or safe— hell, there are people out there with grape fantasies; and to the average person (including myself) that’s horrifying! But it’s not their fault for having a desire, an emotion they didn’t ask for, associated with something that doesn’t make sense. I think that Sara Gailey, the author of the novel, is brave. Writing a character with a dangerous attraction that makes no logical sense because it is real.

Now back to that carcass, it’s actually alive. It’s infested with a unique algae that consumes its target; it’s everything Kinsey has dreamt about her entire life. When she looks into its dead eyes, it stares back into her as they form an intense psychic connection that I, myself, have felt only once before. It’s powerful, scary, and arousing. Now, you might be thinking that Kinsey may be a threat to her entire team… she’s attracted to viruses and just had a “meet cute” with The Thing. But no, she is a professional; she is the hero of the story; and (despite her fetish) she is a normal person just like everyone else whose sole goal is to keep everyone safe. And that’s what really sells this character for me. She is a normal person. Sure, she is strange for her desire… but she is a professional and cares about the safety of others, despite wishing that thing in the next room would devour her slowly and sensually.

Now onto my character, Claire, from Agony (which is currently being edited for re-release). She has clinical depression, the 2nd worst version right next to bipolar. I suffer from just regular ol’ depression, nothing serious like Claire… But I felt hers had to be serious in order to get the point of the book across. Clinical depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain: for reasons entirely out of her control, she will become utterly and completely depressed— sinking into a state of living death. She becomes bedridden; the world closes in around her, making everything dark, meaningless, and bad. There is no light in these moments, only a profound growing emptiness inside of her that threatens to consume her life. She won’t be sad about anything in particular (because she’s not actually sad), it’s just her brain attacking her because it can’t regulate the chemicals that keep her balanced properly. Being miserable is neither her choice nor her fault!

I wrote Claire because I had learned that some people just don’t understand what it means to be depressed or anxious. Some people are blessed never knowing the pain of existence, never knowing that making a phone call can be as difficult as pulling out one’s own tooth— or that sometimes people are just miserable, and nothing can make it better. I wrote Claire because I wanted her pain to be a message to those who don’t know these things; but also be comforting for people like me (and others) who live like this too. Claire has goals, she has dreams, friends, and loved ones. She is very athletic and loves parkour. She wants to go into business with her friends and create a fusion gym of physical and mental wellness to help people. She pushes others away when she’s having an episode to ensure those she loves aren’t burdened by her misery, and that they get to be happy. She is a living, breathing, wonderful person… and I’m proud to have written her.

Claire and Kinsey are two different characters; they both suffer in different ways and have entirely different lives… but to me they are real because they represent the side of humanity that the average person doesn’t see too often. Kinsey, in particular, has taught me to be brave in my writing (or rather, Sara has taught me to be brave!); to not be ashamed of myself; and to be bolder in my writing. If I hadn’t read Spread Me, my writing would be a little more tame because I wouldn’t know if it would be too much for the average reader; or if maybe I’m the problem. But her character Kinsey has taught me not to, and I hope she (and my character, Claire) can help others too.

Now that was a lot… but there’s a little more. I have been writing since I was a kid, but I started trying to write seriously since I was in high school. I am 33 (turning 34!) in September, and I’ve written thousands of pages and characters— But it took this long to make a character I can feel proud to say is real. A lot of my early characters felt fake to me; they were trying to appear real as they were based on real people and emotions… but I did not know them. So they could only be surface-level characters. They weren’t bad. They just weren’t great. I could say I was trying too hard, but honestly, I simply hadn’t lived enough myself to give them life.

Lee Child, the author of the Jack Reacher novels, said in his BBC course that it’s best to be older as a writer because it means you have experience in life (that’s paraphrasing, now. Not the actual quote). Basically, if you haven’t done anything: it could be difficult to write something and have it feel real. Now he was never a 6ft tall military man with muscles like pipebombs— But he was able to write Jack Reacher because of the people he met, the things he did, places he went… Living allowed him the experience to create an incredible character he makes a career off of. That is exactly why all my early characters haven’t been as good as Claire.

When you are writing, keep that in mind. This isn’t meant to discourage you if you haven’t done anything yet; or, like me, spent about 6 years trapped in a room doing nothing and wishing I could escape. It’s okay to be bad in the beginning; it’s okay to be young and write— but remember, to make a character feel real, you need to know what that is first!

Thinking & Inking,

Clay Tarlton Hensley

The post The Characters Who Taught Me How to Write appeared first on Author Claytth.

This is my best attempt at some guidance to other new writers: I didn’t get college courses or a degree, unfortunately. I wanted to… but my area didn’t have what I needed, and I’d rather not waste time. I have, however, read a lot— and not only that, but I’ve read and focused on what interests me (i.e watching films, etc); and that’s what I write about. I’ve been teaching myself everything I want to know about what I want to write, so that when I am writing, it makes it a bit easier to see if something is wrong. Does that make sense?

Everyone needs to find their own path when it comes to writing a book. Sure, there are some amazing tools & guides out there… which I’ll direct you to now, haha!

Let me know if there are any others I should add to the bank– it’d be great to host a compendium of knowledge for writers here on my very own website

Worksheets & Resources

How to Write a Book: A Book for Anyone Who Has Never Written a Book (But Wants To) by Lauren Bingham

How To Write A Book Guide: 101 Dream To A Book Tips And Tutorial by Earma Brown

Start Writing Your Book Today: A Step-by-Step Plan to Write Your Nonfiction Book, From First Draft to Finished Manuscript by Morgan Gist MacDonald

Free Novel Writing Worksheets (PDFs) from Novel Factory

Storyplotter.net & App 

“5 planning tools for novel writing: Scrivener, Scapple, Xmind, Aeon Timeline and Trello” Blog Article by Medium

The 7 Writing Styles by Reedsy YouTube Channel

The Archive of Story Writing Academy

Aeon Timeline: A powerful, flexible visual timeline and tracking software designed to help writers, project managers, legal professionals, and researchers map out complex chronologies.

Storyflow: A free, medium-neutral canvas where your whole plot, character motives, and beats live together and can be read contextually by an integrated AI before you lock into a final format. 

Reedsy Studio: A free online book planning app featuring visual “Boards” to map out chapters, organize character profiles, research locations, and arrange plot cards. 

Wavemaker: A 100% free, full cross-platform writing and planning application designed specifically for story organization. 

Twine: An open-source tool best suited for planning interactive, branching, or non-linear stories.

Notion: A customizable database system where you can build your own or use free community templates to track story beats, lore, and characters.

The post What My Process Taught Me About Trusting Myself – RESOURCE BANK INSIDE appeared first on Author Claytth.

There’s No Single “Correct” Way to Draft

You’ve probably know about the two “camps” already: plotters (those who map the whole story out before writing a single scene) and pantsers (those who start with an idea and let the story reveal itself organically). Writing advice tends to present these as a binary. It feels like the community is screaming at you, “Pick one, commit, and that’s your identity as a writer now!”.

I spent a long time trying to force myself into the plotter camp because it felt like the “responsible” choice. Detailed outlines, chapter breakdowns, character arcs mapped in advance— it seemed like the version of writing that “serious” authors did. You hear about all the extensive mapping that The Greats do, right? But what I actually produced were outlines I abandoned by chapter four, because the story kept wanting to go somewhere the outline hadn’t accounted for.

The truth (which I eventually landed on, lol) is a lot less tidy than either camp wants to admit: there isn’t a correct process. The right way is the one that actually gets your book written! What works for another writer— even one you admire or emulate— was built for their brain, their story, their relationship with uncertainty. It was never a blueprint for yours!

The Hybrid “Plantser” Approach

This was one of those lessons I only learned by doing it wrong first… Seems to be happening to me a lot lately, huh? Oh well… what can I say, it’s all just growing pains

Somewhere between the two camps is where I actually live, and where a lot of writers end up once they stop trying to force a label: the “plantser” approach. It’s less of a method, more of a compromise… I need just enough of a skeleton to keep me oriented, but enough open space to let the story surprise me.

I’ve talked about this before, but for me: that looks like knowing a small handful of fixed points before I start (i.e how the story opens, one or two major turns I’m writing toward, and how it ends emotionally) even if I don’t yet know exactly how it gets there. It allows my characters, my plot lines, time to breathe… and I enjoy sculpting their stories as I watch them play out on paper. But everything between those points stays undiscovered until I’m actually in the scene… I need just enough structure to keep from feeling lost, and just enough unknown to keep the writing feeling alive instead of like transcription!

It’s not a lack of commitment. It’s a different kind of commitment— one to the story’s process, instead of a predetermined shape I arbitrarily assigned it based off of an incomplete vision in my head. 

How to Tell If Your Process Is Actually Working, And Not Just Familiar

Here’s the part that actually matters, and the part most craft advice skips: familiarity and effectiveness are not the same thing. Just because a process feels comfortable doesn’t mean it’s the one getting your book finished.

A few honest questions I ask myself now when I’m not sure if my process is working or just habitual:

• Am I finishing drafts, or am I finishing outlines? If the planning stage is where all your energy goes and the actual manuscript stalls out: the process might be serving your anxiety more than your book.

• Is the “stuck” feeling boredom, or is it fear? Boredom with an overly rigid outline is a signal to loosen up… Fear of the blank page with no plan at all is a signal you might need more structure than you’re giving yourself credit for.

• Are you revising the same three chapters over and over instead of moving forward? That’s often a process mismatch, not a talent problem.

• Would you recommend your current process to a friend, or are you just used to it? Those are different things, and the gap between them is worth paying attention to.

• Does the process change per project, or are you forcing every story into the same shape regardless of what it needs? Some books want a map. Some want room to wander. The same writer can need both at different times.

None of these questions have a universal “right” answer… They’re just a gauge for checking whether your process is actually working for the book in front of you, or whether it’s just the version of writing you’ve always done without asking if it’s serving you.

A Few Free Resources, If You Want to Experiment

If you’re in the middle of figuring out where you land on this spectrum, here are a few free tools and reads that are worth a look (I am NOT SPONSORED… I just don’t believe in gatekeeping):

• Reedsy Studio’s book outline templates — free, genre-specific outlining starter kits if you want to test-drive a more structured approach without committing to it long-term.

• Reedsy’s guide to the Snowflake Method — a step-by-step plotting technique that builds a story gradually from a single sentence, useful if full outlines feel overwhelming but total pantsing feels too loose.

• Pantser, Plotter, Plantser: What Is Your Writing Style? — a free, open-access chapter that breaks down all three approaches clearly if you want a more academic take before deciding where you fall.

None of these will tell you the “right” answer. That part’s still on you. But they’re useful for testing the edges of your own process without a financial commitment.

Where I’ve Landed, For Now

I don’t think I’ll ever be a full plotter, and I’ve stopped feeling like that’s a failure. My process has shifted with every project, and I expect it to keep shifting. The goal was never to find the process. It was to find the one that gets this particular story out of my head intact.

If I could go back and tell my earlier self one thing, it would be this: the process isn’t the achievement. The finished book is. Whatever gets you there honestly is the right one.

And if you’re still in the middle of figuring out your own, you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be!

The post Plotter, Plantser, Or Somewhere In Between? Finding Your Process appeared first on Author Claytth.

I’m not one to judge people who genuinely want to write (or tell) a story… But I do have a problem with people who think they can make a quick buck by telling a story, thinking they know how and not bothering to learn! We see this a lot in AI-generated stories (I’m not calling them books). These people think they can write— but don’t actually pick up the metaphorical pen! They let a computer do it for them (and neither of them understands what makes a story), so it ends up being garbage and “slop”. So, in this post, I’m going to go over what I feel makes a story… though I do encourage everyone to tell me your thoughts on it as well!

Back in the old days: stories were meant to have morals, a point, or a lesson— the goal was to teach in either an entertaining (but mostly grim) way if you really look at those old tales. You— or the average reader— might be amiss to think this is no longer the case… but it’s only more subtle than it used to be. For instance, “From Below” by Darcy Coates may seem like just an underwater adventure in a ship with possible supernatural danger. Something to itch that craving for suspense! However, it’s a prime example of how dangerous the human mind is in unfamiliar locations and situations— anxiety and our need to fill empty spaces can be more dangerous & lethal than any fish or ghost! It’s subtle, but that is the moral of half the story (since it’s written as a dual-period perspective). So, subtle as they may be: all stories today mean and say something important, and that is the core of what makes a story!

My book, “Agony” (the one currently being re-edited for a re-release), is a supernatural horror that follows a group of friends trapped in a ghost town. They’re being hunted by a monster. Simple premise packed with gore, blood, and body horror— but the heart of the book (and the story as a whole) is about Claire’s desperate chase to save herself from herself. She wants to end her own life. Our tale is about fighting against the monster within, more so than the monster chasing her! It’s about hope and asking for help. This moral undertone is what turns this from what could be just another horror novel into something that (I hope) is helpful and meaningful for others. 

Next, I’d like to go back over what I mentioned in the beginning: stories that TRY, but don’t understand. Take this, for example… Someone who wants to write about female empowerment, always fun, and tries to craft a story of a woman who has potential to be a hero— but something is holding her back. The journey is about overcoming that personal flaw (or trauma, or danger, etc.) until she finally becomes her true self and evolves into the hero she wants to be. Sounds good so far, right? The execution, however, let’s say misses the mark and instead: the only real problem is her lack of belief in herself. Now, on the surface, that’s okay! It happens to everyone! Almost every writer I know (or have heard of) is guilty of that, at some point (or multiple times) in their life. However, the issue begins when that little hiccup is the ONLY problem! If this character can overcome every challenge the author throws at them but still doubts themself regardless, then there’s no resolution— because there’s no real conflict. It has the elements of a story, but that’s it.

This problem can (of course) be solved with a beta reader and an editor; never skimp on the professionals because no matter what, you can fail. Don’t let that be the death of your own book!

The post Storytelling 101: What Makes A Story (The Foundations Every Write Needs) appeared first on Author Claytth.

Sometimes, it can become incredibly difficult to know how to move forward. This can happen with just a single scene, or an entire novel… and it’s most prevalent in sequels/prequels (where the second book becomes a bridge to the third, which is bad). Other times, the second novel can become so convoluted and confusing that you get lost— and then, irritated to the point you feel like scrapping it! But you can’t, of course. 

An example I have heard about —though not read myself as of just yet— is “Stay In The Light” by A.M Shine, the sequel to “The Watchers”. Many reviews I have read say it suffers from the trope of only existing to introduce the third book. It has some interesting characters and plotlines, however: the story itself drags on and ends on a cliffhanger, making the book feel pointless (according to reviews). I haven’t read it myself yet since I need to read “The Watchers” first, but I am currently reading his newest novel, “Grace”. The same problem that “Stay in the Light” allegedly has is common in sequels, but thankfully… it can be avoided!

First off, recognizing this problem is the most difficult step… but once you do, it is possible to fix. The way to recognize it (from my own experience) is to trust your gut that something is wrong— and to read the plot aloud. When speaking the lines out loud to yourself— even to a friend or a trusted colleague— you should be able to say them all without pausing, questioning, or rewording any of it. If you can do that, congrats! Listen to what your friend has to say first, though, before patting yourself on the back (and actually listen! Don’t be a fool!). Now… if you did pause, or change something, or ask a question: then congrats, you now know your plot is flawed. It’ll need reworking, or perhaps entire revamping. Because if you go through with it anyway, you’ll only invite struggle onto yourself and you’ll wind up publishing something that readers look down on because you felt it was okay to release that trash! (Sorry if it’s harsh, but I’m speaking from a place of having done it myself!)

Once you recognize that something with your plot is critically wrong: you need to isolate it, talk it out again, and narrow it down. Once you do that, then you can begin cutting it and reworking the plot; characters; or whatever the problem turns out to be. Congrats, you’re on your way to writing something good! 

An example of this is the prequel to my book, “Agony”. I had the entire trilogy planned out 100%, and I was so excited! Wrote the first book easily… but the second book? Well, I just started— It’s been almost a year since I wrote the first draft of Agony, and just starting the second has taken this long due to this exact problem! The plot felt off. I knew what I wanted; knew how it ended & how it started; the characters, themes, everything… But something wouldn’t let me start! I eventually talked out the plot to one of my best friends, and right there: I paused. In that moment, my friend and I both knew something was wrong (and he isn’t even a writer). Since that moment, I spent months trying to figure it out. I went through a dozen different plots, and it was driving me insane! I almost cancelled the trilogy— but I knew I couldn’t, because these stories need to be told and these characters need to be read. Eventually (after reading other books, watching movies, playing games, listening to a random podcast about a cult of children targeting other children encouraging self-harm and suicide), I finally narrowed down the plot. It’s completely different from the original. I do think I can keep the original plot… but it would be a different book than the sequel I had planned at that point. My solution to fix it was messy and not easily replicated. It was a soul-searching experience, and it was a chance collection of unrelated things that all coalesced into the book I am currently writing.

If you are struggling with something similar to this… Always remember the great inspiring words that have helped many in times of need! To quote Michael Jordan, “Stop it, get some help.”

The post Navigating the Messy Middle: When the Magic Fades, and the Work Begins! appeared first on Author Claytth.

So, I grew up in Hawaii (“Ha-Va-ee”, if you’re curious!). Everyone always asks why I left when I tell them that, and my answer is simple: Couldn’t find a job. I didn’t get my first job until I was maybe 21 or 22— well, my first official job, anyway. I did some tile work with my uncle’s business for a month (which was really fun, and I wish I was able to work more with my family like that). Regardless, that’s why I left!

If you’re wondering what Hawaii is like: in a word, it’s awesome. Everything you heard is true, and I miss my home! I miss the days I sat on the bleachers with the entire gym class because no one wanted to play dodgeball with giant Samoans (you had to be there; it was genuinely a health hazard for us much smaller boys & girls!). I miss being able to walk out into the rain and not freeze to death because the rain in Hawaii has no temperature. Imagine my surprise when I moved to Texas and went out in the rain for the first time! Hawaii is great: the people are full of love, trusting, chill… It’s such a unique place.

One of my favorite stories from my childhood is from my history teacher, Mr. Mitchell. He used to be a lawyer, and switched careers at one point before moving to Hawaii. Well, he had a lot of road rage (or perhaps he truly was a mainlander and just drove differently). He was cutting people off, using the limit as a guideline, honking— Man was going places, and he was impatient. He stopped at a gas station… well, out of nowhere: the biggest man he had ever met (at the time) walked up to him and said, “Ho, brada, you can’t drive li dat.” Mr. Mitchell was wide-eyed and terrified; he just nodded with a “Yes, sir” to everything this local said. He said the guy was just tryna explain you cannot drive like a madman on the road in Hawaii… Chillax, take it slow, be respectful— There’s aunties out there, and they gonna get scared if you cut em off. Needless to say, he drove real polite afta that!

Hawaii is awesome. Bring money, haha!

Missing the Fun in the Sun (and the luau!),
Clay Tarlton-Hensley

Image Credit: Haunama Bay, Hawaii by “photosforyou!” via Pixabay

The post Sunkissed Memories: What It Was Like Growing Up in Hawaii appeared first on Author Claytth.

Why Breathing Room Isn’t Wasted Space

I admit, this took an embarrassingly long time to understand: a scene with nothing “happening” in it isn’t a dead scene. Sometimes it’s the most important one in the book!

Breathing room is the quiet stretch between one unsettling moment and the next… It’s the ordinary dinner conversation, the walk home, the mundane errand— and it does more work than it looks like it’s doing. It gives the reader’s nervous system a chance to reset just enough so the next hit actually lands. Horror without any breathing room stops being horror, and turns into just plain old noise. The death of a good story! The reader goes numb. Nothing surprises them, because nothing was ever allowed to feel normal in the first place. See?

This was one of those lessons I only learned by doing it wrong first. Early drafts of “Agony” had scenes stacked on top of scenes, tension piled on tension, and early access readers told me the same thing in different words: it was exhausting, not scary. I had to learn that dread needs contrast to register… You can’t feel the temperature drop if the room was never warm!

How to Build Tension Incrementally

Once I understood breathing room, the next problem was figuring out how to actually escalate *out* of it… How to take a calm scene and slowly tighten the screws, without the reader noticing exactly when it happened!

A few things that changed how I approach this:

• Withhold before you reveal. Give the reader a fragment of information, not the whole picture. Let them sit with the incomplete version longer than feels comfortable.
• Let small details go slightly wrong before anything goes wrong. A door that’s usually locked. A neighbor who doesn’t wave back. Wrongness in miniature reads as more unsettling than wrongness announced!
• Slow the sentence rhythm as tension rises. Shorter, more deliberate sentences near a turn in the scene can do as much work as the content of the scene itself.
• Delay the payoff past the point you think is safe (especially if you’ve never written before!). My instinct is almost always to reveal a beat too early. Pushing it further than feels comfortable is usually the right call.
• Anchor tension in something the character (and by extension, the reader) actually cares about. Dread attached to a relationship or a fear the reader already understands lands harder than dread attached to a stranger or an abstract threat.

None of this is about withholding for its own sake. It’s about making sure that when something finally happens, it has weight— because the reader spent real time not knowing. You don’t have to look far to see this technique working! Here are a few reading recommendations that I think about often when I’m pacing my own scenes:

• Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House” rarely relies on anything overtly supernatural in its early chapters— the dread comes from atmosphere and character unease, masterfully set to brew long before anything happens. Netflix’s adaptation of the same story stretches its reveals across an entire season, letting grief and family tension build the horror as much as the house itself does!
• Ari Aster’s “Hereditary” is patient almost to a fault in its first act, and that patience is exactly why the midpoint lands as hard as it does.
• Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw” builds its entire sense of dread through ambiguity and restraint rather than incident (which made it arguably one of the earliest and most influential slow burns in the genre!)

What all of these share isn’t a lack of events. It’s a willingness to trust the reader to sit in uncertainty far longer than most stories are comfortable asking of them.

Where I Still Get This Wrong

I’d love to say I’ve mastered this. I haven’t. My first instinct is still to rush— to get to the part I’m excited to write instead of trusting the slow lead-up. What’s changed is that I notice it now, and I’ve learned to go back and add the quiet back in during revision rather than trying to force it in on the first pass.

If I could go back and tell my earlier self one thing, it would be this: the silence before the scare is doing just as much work as the scare itself. Don’t rush past it to get to the part you think is the point.

And if you’re still figuring out where your own pacing needs more room to breathe, that’s okay. We’re all on this learning curve together! Don’t get discouraged, and reach out to the online writing communities for help

The post Mastering the Slow Burn: Pacing for Maximum Impact appeared first on Author Claytth.

As children, most of us were probably scared of the dark: when the lights go out, and you can’t reach the light switch, and you need to leave your room to go to the bathroom/kitchen. But it’s dark— You can’t see! What can’t you see? That question is what begins the spiral of a thousand unknown possibilities and fantasies; anxieties and irrational fears; chilling and paralyzing horrors that cripple you… until you decide to just pull the blanket over your head ’cause you’re staying in bed until morning!

If you just went out to the hallway and turned on the light, you would (probably) see there was nothing.

However, there is another possibility: if you did go and try to turn on the light to illuminate the darkness… something could touch and grab your hand. Suddenly, your fears have come true— and you scream, but you as you run, you know that you now have truth. Your anxieties and fantasies aren’t false; everything you thought of to dispel them is now factually a lie, and the safety you took for granted from the warmth of your bed no longer exists. Realistically, then, if only what you saw and felt remains… That terror that kept you in bed as a child (though still rightfully scary) would be nothing compared to realizing you were right: there was something in the dark!

Ah, just kidding! Lucky for you, haha. If we can come back to reality for a moment (unfortunate, I know)… I have gone over my fear of the deep water before, but I feel my experience is a great example. Once (when I was desperately trying to conquer my fear), I was swimming in a pool with my friends. I knew nothing was in the water; I could see the bottom clearly. Sure, I would vividly hallucinate and get panic attacks soon after and retreat to the shallows… but in reality, I could see nothing was there. In a different scenario, I was much younger at a pond and floating in a dinosaur inflatable (which was much too small for me but still kept me afloat). I had suddenly drifted much too far from where I was comfortable, and from what I could see: I was floating over a deep abyss of black; a large bottomless hole beneath my tiny wet toes. I wasn’t very confident in my swimming, but what was worse… was the idea of what could have been in that hole. Was there an eldritch being with tentacles coiling out for my feet? Perhaps the gaping maw of a whale was swimming up to swallow me whole? I don’t know, but these fears sent me into a panic, and I desperately paddled for my life back to the shore. To repeat: in reality, there probably wasn’t a hole to begin with. It was likely just dark black rock, too deep for me to see (because I was a child). But this is the core of the concept: “What you don’t see is what really scares you.”

When it comes to books, I take this philosophy and I run with it. In Agony, I don’t ever truly describe the monster in a way that matters because I want you (the reader) to imagine your own monster. If I show you mine, then it is real and known— but what you need is something unknown to be scared. You could probably imagine something much scarier than I could, and to be honest: I wasn’t going for scary when I designed the monster, anyway.

Regardless, in order to practice this philosophy, you need to only allow in minor details for whatever it is you are trying to accomplish. You can have the entire painting in your head— but to scare the reader, the tactic I employ is to take little pieces instead. This way, the reader can (at minimum) understand where they are and what is happening. From there, they can do the rest all by themselves. We bookworms tend to be good at that, haha! Something is chasing them down the hallway, and they can hear stomps or heavy breathing… Perhaps feel it on their neck. Something is on the other side of the door, calling their name and trying to work the lock. Little pieces here-and-there are all that is necessary to spark imagination and let it run wild!

Because once you see the shitty CGI monster reveal itself on TV, the novelty is over and the fear is gone. It is no longer unknown… and at that point, what’s the fun in any of it anymore?

The post The Anatomy of Dread: Why We Fear the Unseen appeared first on Author Claytth.