Even more, I love when you say things which can be boiled down to one-line reminders I can stick on my wall. This week, I’m taking “…the entire point of the story is to refine SOME characteristic your MC lacks that is critical for the final showdown.”

I kept getting mired down with trying to plot the first book *and* the series. Even during this pandemic, I still haven’t figured out how to kill off about 7 billion humans in my universe…. I finally just focused on plotting the first book which is going much better. I’m tempted to lock myself out of the internet during work hours, but… then I couldn’t read your posts! 😉

Anne

Yes, that definitely makes sense, and the Footloose example helps a lot. Thank you! I look forward to your future posts on this. Meantime, I think I’ll go back through some of your older posts on BBT. I’m trying to get a better grip on Book 2 than I had on Book 1. I was trying to crank that one out before Christmas. 🙂

Yes but it has to be manifested in a proxy. I’ll explain this in another post. But, for instance, in ‘Footloose’ religious fundamentalism that forbids dancing is the BBT, but it has a face…well-respected town minister and father of the girl our MC falls for. The goal of the story is to have a dance. No dance? No win. The point is to change the town preacher’s mind and get him to lighten up and realize that he can love God and the town can have a dance and the world won’t end.

So you need to have a person who represents that fear. Make sense? I will be blogging more on this concept so stay tuned.

I’ve been reading about BBT on your blog for a long time, and as new author who pantsed her first novel, I have a question about the BBT for my second book. Can another person’s fear be a BBT? It’s a fear that keeps my MMC from taking risks he otherwise might take because he doesn’t want to worry the other person (his mother, who lost a young child before MC was born). Example: The book begins during the Vietnam War era, when MMC is in high school. Mother’s afraid he’ll be drafted, so she encourages him to study something that will get him a deferment, but not necessarily the major he would choose for himself. Her fear holds him back in many ways. Is that a BBT?

Thanks for always making me laugh – and think!