This is K.M. Island, and you are listening to the 380 secondnd episode of the Helping Writers Become Authors Podcast.

This week I finished my quote-unquote research which consisted solely of reading Dreamlander,

the first book in my projected portal fantasy trilogy.

I read through it to help me maintain continuity as I get ready to dive into the first draft of its sequel Dreambreaker.

So I was highlighting everything that had to do with set-up. draft of its sequel Dreambreaker.

So I was highlighting everything that had to do with setting and character descriptions,

favored words and vocabulary ticks of certain characters, and any little tidbits that could be sewn back in as foreshadowing in the subsequent

stories.

I ended up with over 500 highlights and notes.

By the time I reached the end, my Kindle was not very happy with me and was taking about three seconds just to turn the page.

It also meant I had to spend several hours collecting and categorizing my highlights.

I still have to organize them into topic titled folders within Scrivener,

but hopefully it will help me avoid any big continuity errors going forward.

The latest post on my blog is three tips to choose the right protagonist. Choose the right protagonist by first using these three tips to make him the single most interesting

person in your entire story. To read the post, visit Helping Writers Become Authors.com.

And now I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast entitled How to Make Sure Your Story

has Emotional Stakes. story has emotional stakes. You can do almost everything right in a story and it

well not matter. Acing your story structure, constructing a solid thematic premise, and punching your card on every important character arc beat.

Well, not matter.

If you don't also nail the emotional stakes.

The craft of storytelling is largely logical.

We study story theory to discover the patterns that emerge from story to story and then apply these

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