This is K.M. Wyland and you are listening to the 186th episode of the wordplay podcast. I can finally put a big

red checkmark next to my latest rewrite of the deepest breath. It's taken me two months

longer than I anticipated but the bulk of the work is finished.

I have a few descriptions I want to go back and tweak and then I plan, print it off, and read it through

once more before relinquishing it to beta readers and forgetting about it for a while.

I'm really happy with how it's turned out.

My major goals were to switch the narrative from present to past tense,

to strengthen the cohesion of the scenes, and to modify two of the primary

characters' arcs. We'll see what the betas say, but I feel like it's a much better animal than

it was four months ago. The biggest problem with trick endings. The

latest post in the video series on my blog talks about the pitfalls of the always

tempting twist ending. To watch it, visit my website at

W.W. helping writers become authors.com. New videos are posted every Wednesday.

And now I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast.

The 11th in the series, Structuring Your Story's Scenes.

This installment is titled Variations on the sequel.

Sequals, even more than scenes, offer all kinds of flexibility.

In large part, this flexibility is what can make sequels difficult to quantify in stories.

Unlike the scene, sequels can be so subtle they blend right into the scenery.

This can sometimes lead authors to believe

sequels aren't as important as scenes, but their flexibility in no way eliminates

their necessity. For every scene there must be a sequel even if it isn't

...