And I’m not sure what the future holds, but while I have the energy to move forward, forward I shall move.

I’ve shared two posts this past week:

Holding the Bloodstone. I was able to complete my 30-day commitment to paying attention. I learned much during the practice. I will keep the bloodstone with me.

My reflection on character motivation and narrative paths was nearly complete before I had to step away, but I managed to touch it up and finally post it: Showing Character.

While I was resting, I realized the most recent set of four essays were all circling the same question:

how does character become story?

Although each of the essays have been published on Substack, I’ve gathered them into a short guide—a quiet attempt to follow that question a little further.

If you’re writing—or simply curious about how stories work—you may find something useful here:

The Inner Life of Story (PDF)

Thank you for reading, and for the quiet space this place allows.

~ jlynn

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Characters are not revealed through explanation.
They are revealed through what they do.

So far in this series, I’ve explored how motivation and fear shape believable characters [Where Characters Begin, The Enneagram and the Inner Logic of Character], and how those inner patterns generate plot [When Character Becomes Plot].

But readers never encounter that psychology directly.

Writers may understand their characters deeply.

Readers do not read dossiers.

They read story.

Story—not Dossier

A psychological profile is not a story.

Remember Donnán, the truth-seeking monk? His profile might look like this:

• abandoned (as he perceives it) by his parents

• distrustful of authority that withholds truth

• driven to question rather than accept

• quietly uncertain of his own worthiness

Dossier—not story.

Story begins when we see how those beliefs shape behavior.

I cannot simply tell you that Donnán questions authority. I have to show you.

A young boy asks his mother why he is being sent away. She answers, “Some things are just meant to be.”

He asks again.

She says nothing. She does not meet his eyes. She turns, leaves, and is never seen by the boy again.

No explanation.

And yet the reader understands.

Seeing is Believing

“Actions speak louder than words” is a familiar idea.

In fiction, it becomes something more precise:
behavior reveals belief.

This is how readers see the psychology behind the story.

Readers don’t have to know Donnán is an Enneagram Type 5 Investigator, with Type 1 Reformer tendencies. They have to see that he is perceptive, secretive, isolated, principled and purposeful.

Donnán’s worldview appears in what he does:

• who he trusts

• what he refuses

• what risks he accepts

• what questions he continues to ask

He does not force Columba to give him the answers. He looks elsewhere.

Columba distances himself from Donnán, recognizing the danger in his questioning—both within the Church and among the Picts.

Donnán trusts the Pict warrior queen because she speaks freely. But when she hushes a question that strikes too close—too personally—he pulls back.

We understand him not because we are told who he is, but because we see how he moves through the world.

Final Thoughts

By the time readers encounter a main character, the writer has already done the psychological work.

The reader never sees the Enneagram diagram, the motivational charts, or the notes about childhood wounds.

They see choices.

Readers understand characters most clearly not in explanation, but in moments of choice.

They simply see behavior that feels true.

Characters begin with a question.
Plot emerges from the strategies people develop to answer it.

And readers recognize those strategies not through explanation, but through action.

In the end, stories are not built from information about people.
They are built from the choices people make when what they believe is tested.

This thought experiment is part of an impromptu series, which may grow or may rest here. If you missed the preceding thoughts, they remain available.

• Where Characters Begin

• The Enneagram and the Inner Logic of Character

• When Character Becomes Plot

• Showing Character (current essay)

Ultimately, these essays spawned naturally from my ponder about narrative trust:

Narrative Trust—On Posture, Purpose, and the Viability of a Writer

Narrative Trust in a Noisy Age—On Language, Attention, and the Space Between

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I turn the bloodstone once in my palm
as if beginning a conversation

palms press against coolness
warmth gathers in the stone

flecks of iron peek through
red drops on a field of green

ancient silica and iron
my breathing slows

the stone in my pocket
a quiet weight

the bloodstone rests in my palm
long before and long after me

by the end of the week
the stone knows my hand

do I hold you to take your shape
are the blood flecks yours or mine

between thumb and forefinger, you resist
something in me gives

end to end I feel your height
however I measure you

your polished surface catches light
reflecting more than I like

from a distance you do not impose
I begin to ask more of you

you’ve known many places and purposes
are you settled here … am I

you’ve gathered the appearance of moss
I dare sense your stillness

where does memory rest in your form
I follow the lines that hold it

tilted trapezoid, I think
polished in someone else’s hands

obsessed with red flecks
do they mark your making or shape it

gentle curve, undeniable thumb fit
shaped by hands before me

did the rubbing erase or imprint a history
yours … mine … more

pushed, polished, and pressed
something held its shape

you have outlasted what I know
I hold you anyway

once held by wire as a talisman
now free in open light

tossed across the tabletop, wobbly then steady
you arrive whole

sitting in the shadow of raw heliotrope
your origin shows

rough-cut from another time
still, you fit in my hand

you fit in my hand softly
settling where you land

you fit wherever I place you
wherever I find you

I like how you feel in my pocket
the weight of attention

I reach for you with no intent
not needing to know

all month I thought I carried the stone
today I notice it has been carrying me

~ jlynn

Author’s note:

This piece grew from a thirty-day practice: carrying a small bloodstone and writing a two-line poem each day.

A brief moment of attention. Sometimes an image, sometimes a question, sometimes a shift.

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But about a year ago, I tried to explore the same questions in a different form—a short science fiction story.

At the center of it is something I’ve circled often, just from another angle:

What does it mean to be heard?
And what happens if we aren’t?

It follows a girl raised on a generation ship who has spent her life listening to space—convinced something out there might be listening back.

I published it quietly at the time and never really asked for response.

I think I’m ready for that now.

If a few of you would be willing to read it—not as a “beta reader,” but simply as a reader—I’d value your honest sense of it:

– where it held you
– where it drifted
– whether it felt like it was reaching something real

If you’re open to that, I’ll send the link.

No expectations beyond that.

Leave a comment

Just wanted you to know my writing will be a little light for a wee bit longer while I recover.

Let’s catch up … soon.

Jennifer

Author’s Note:

What started as a single, simple reflection has blossomed into an apparent series: Reflection on Character:

· Where Characters Begin

· The Enneagram and the Inner Logic of Character

· When Character Becomes Plot (current essay)

· Showing Character (to be published)

This essay examines how motivation generates conflict and narrative movement.

The Misunderstanding about Plot

Many writers begin with external events:

• a murder

• a war

• a mystery

• a disaster

But events alone do not create story.

Story begins when characters pursue goals shaped by their psychology.

The Strategy that Once Worked

In a previous essay, Where Characters Begin, we explored how psychological insight—or simply good writer instinct—reveals the pattern behind believable characters: wound, worldview, and coping strategy. At the beginning of story, we reveal the strategy that has protected the character—thus far. We show how control protects someone from chaos, or how loyalty protects someone from abandonment.

With Donnán, we saw that an unanswered question as a child—why his parents gave him to the Church—becomes the lens through which he views his entire world.

But then the world pushes back.

The World Pushes Back

The story may begin with a character’s status quo, but the plot does not begin until that status quo strategy no longer works; when circumstances change; or when another character has an opposing strategy. Or the character’s own belief proves incomplete.

Conflict begins to stir.

The plot begins to move.

When characters embody different coping mechanisms or psychological strategies to maneuver their own worldviews, we see conflict become even richer.

Donnán foresees his own death, and he uses that as a chance to prove that fate is not fixed. However, no matter how he changes the circumstances of his vision, the outcome remains the same. No matter how many times he escapes the isle of his demise, he is eventually drawn back.

Conflict becomes especially powerful when different characters pursue incompatible strategies for navigating the world.

Opposing Motivations Create Story

When truth-seeking Donnán attempts to align with Columba to find answers, he encounters a senior monk with something to prove and driven by power. When he seeks friendship, even comfort, with a seemingly sympathetic Pict warrior queen, he butts up against a fierce leader who is ultimately driven by respect and places the safety of her people above all else.

One challenges institutions.
One suppresses questions.
One defends loyalty.

Plot is the collision of worldviews.

And when characters double down on their strategies, the plot thickens.

Escalation to a Breaking Point

Story structure teaches us that our characters start in status quo, then become challenged. Status quo is disrupted, but not abandoned. Instead, characters push harder with what they know, doubling down on the strategies that once protected them.

Conflict escalates.

Columba sees Donnán’s open questioning as a threat to his power. Donnán sees the Pict queen’s loyalty to her people as dangerous to his own survival.

Escalation of conflict produces misunderstandings, moral dilemmas, and irreversible decisions.

We can’t move the story forward until what once worked no longer does.

The Strategy Breaks

Character arc insists we see a character change—‘growth’ for a positive arc. Story arc requires movement … and a final snap that propels the story toward conclusion or remedy.

Eventually, the character’s strategy must fail and bring us to the moment of crisis, which can only end one of two ways: the character must either abandon the strategy or reinterpret it.

Donnán encounters one obstacle after another as he attempts to change the circumstances of his foreseen death. Nevertheless, he refuses to relinquish his conviction that free will can bring about change, as his lifelong pursuit of truth has offered no evidence that fate is predetermined or inescapable.

The character’s arc cannot be completed unless the character gains a new understanding.

Transformation

What Donnán must eventually confront is his own worthiness of truth.

The search that once defined him must change. What began as a quest for answers becomes something deeper: a recognition that truth does not always arrive in the form he expected.

So, his transformation will come when he realizes that truth and answers are not always synonymous. This will require him to re-evaluate what he has genuinely been searching for.

Only then will we see what his full arc has become:

wound (parental abandonment) → belief (unworthy of the truth) → strategy (question authority) → failure (unable to disprove inevitability) → insight (truth does not always have an answer)

Closing Thoughts

I have not begun writing Donnán’s story, yet as I write this essay the plot begins to reveal itself almost effortlessly.

Once the motivations of the characters become clear, the events of the story follow naturally.

Plot is rarely something we invent. More often, it is something that emerges when characters pursue their strategies to their inevitable breaking point.

In that sense, stories do not merely record what happens to people. They reveal how human beings search for meaning when the ways they have learned to survive the world finally stop working.

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Twenty years ago today—April 1, 2006—George Pincus introduced a new poetic form built on the Fibonacci sequence. The result was something deceptively simple and surprisingly expressive: the Fib.

The structure follows the Fibonacci pattern (1–1–2–3–5–8 syllables), creating a poem that grows the way patterns in nature grow—spiraling outward from a small beginning.

Math and poetry rarely share the same room, yet the Fib reminds us how naturally they can coexist.

You can read George Pincus’s original explanation and story here: The Fib.

While researching poetic structures and patterns, I rediscovered the form and began experimenting with it again. My second attempt plays with a cyclical movement, something like the returning tide.

Fittingly, this little form arrives again on the anniversary of my first year writing here.

I call it a “cyclic Fib.”

Ebb n’ Flow

its
call
taunts me
like never
was never before
lying submerged beneath the waves

hands holding silence
poised to breach
but sings
no
more

Below are a few Fibs generously shared by fellow Substack writers in celebration of the form’s twentieth anniversary.

here.
now.
this is
the only
place where you can stand.
The rest is Maya illusion.

Soft
Pink
Silence
Shrouds the world
Quietly spreading
wings of joy in silk vibrations

#1

thank
you
for words
that wander
and instill wonder
reaching from the depths to the stars

#2

time
flows
unbound
words distill
immediacy
a cosmology in writing

#3

glyphs
glow
singing
and dancing
a starbound language
understood in cosmic fathoms

#4

sky
tells
stories
to the ones
who look up and see
from all corners of our planet

#5

fun
sweet
magic
pegasus
manifestation
of unbound creativity

Small forms often reveal surprising depth. The Fib is a reminder that poetry can grow from the smallest seed—one syllable at a time.

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It marks one year since I began writing on Substack—an unexpected home for reflections, stories, and questions that continue to shape how I see the world.

It also marks the twentieth anniversary of the Fib poem, the deceptively simple poetry form built on the Fibonacci sequence—one that reminds us how structure and creativity often grow from the same mathematical seed.

Note: Some of you shared your own Fib(s) to help commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Fib (, , ). You can find the offerings at Twenty Years of the Fib. And if you missed the original tribute to Greg Pincus and his formalization of the Fibonacci Poem, Fib, you can find it here: Fibonacci Poetry

And of course, today begins National Poetry Month.

Taken together, it feels less like coincidence and more like invitation.

Over the past year, I’ve found myself drawn less to declaring answers and more to the act of paying attention—to language, to silence, to the spaces between what we think and what we know.

Poetry lives there.

Not necessarily in mastery, but in noticing.

So for the next thirty days, I’m going to try something small.

Each day in April, I’ll write a single couplet—two lines only. Nothing elaborate. Just a brief moment of attention. Perhaps an image, perhaps a question, perhaps a shift in understanding.

No promises of brilliance. Only presence.

If you’d like to follow along, I’ll gather these small pieces here as the month unfolds.

Holding the Bloodstone

A National Poetry Month practice

I thought I needed more words—
until the silence began answering back.

This month I’m carrying a small polished bloodstone in my pocket.

Each day I’ll write a two-line poem—a couplet—about whatever the day offers while that stone travels with me.

Thirty days.
Two lines at a time.

Sometimes poetry begins not with speaking, but with listening.

And so the listening begins.

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Day 1—Paying Attention

I turn the bloodstone once in my palm
as if beginning a conversation

Day 2—Paying Attention

palms press against coolness
warmth gathers in the stone

Day 3—Paying Attention

flecks of iron peek through
red drops on a field of green

Day 4—Paying Attention

ancient silica and iron
my breathing slows

Day 5—Paying Attention

the stone in my pocket
a quiet weight

Day 6—Paying Attention

the bloodstone rests in my palm
long before and long after me

Day 7—Paying Attention

by the end of the week
the stone knows my hand

Day 8—Asking

do I hold you to take your shape
are the blood flecks yours or mine

Day 9—Asking

between thumb and forefinger, you resist
something in me gives

Day 10—Asking

end to end I feel your height
however I measure you

Day 11—Asking

your polished surface catches light
reflecting more than I like

Day 12—Asking

from a distance you do not impose
I begin to ask more of you

Day 13—Asking

you’ve known many places and purposes
are you settled here … am I

Day 14—Asking

you’ve gathered the appearance of moss
I dare sense your stillness

Day 15—Listening

where does memory rest in your form
I follow the lines that hold it

Day 16—Listening

tilted trapezoid, I think
polished in someone else’s hands

Day 17—Listening

obsessed with red flecks
do they mark your making or shape it

Day 18—Listening

gentle curve, undeniable thumb fit
shaped by hands before me

Day 19—Listening

did the rubbing erase or imprint a history
yours … mine … more

Day 20—Listening

pushed, polished, and pressed
something held its shape

Day 21—Listening

you have outlasted what I know
I hold you anyway

Day 22—Seeing

once held by wire as a talisman
now free in open light

Day 23—Seeing

tossed across the tabletop, wobbly then steady
you arrive whole

Day 24—Seeing

sitting in the shadow of raw heliotrope
your origin shows

Day 25—Seeing

rough-cut from another time
still, you fit in my hand

Day 26—Seeing

you fit in my hand softly
settling where you land

Day 27—Seeing

you fit wherever I place you
wherever I find you

Day 28—Seeing

I like how you feel in my pocket
the weight of attention

Day 29—Held

I reach for you with no intent
not needing to know

Day 30—Held

all month I thought I carried the stone
today I notice it has been carrying me

One year ago, I pressed “publish” here for the first time.
Thank you for reading, thinking, and wandering with me.

A character storms out of a room, challenges authority, refuses help, or pursues a dangerous idea. The behavior may feel right, but without understanding the deeper motivation behind it, the character can quickly become inconsistent—or worse, predictable.

In my previous essay, Where Characters Begin, I explored how wounds and beliefs shape character motivation. The Enneagram offers another lens for examining those patterns.

And for writers, it turns out to be remarkably useful.

Whether you outline every scene or write by discovery, the Enneagram offers a way to deepen character motivation while also serving as a kind of internal compass. It helps clarify what a particular character would realistically tolerate, resist, or pursue.

In other words, it helps keep characters operating within their own internal logic.

What the Enneagram actually describes

Many personality systems describe what people are like.

The Enneagram focuses instead on why people behave the way they do.

In the previous essay we discussed several elements of character psychology—core fear, core desire, and coping strategy. The Enneagram organizes personality around these same dynamics.

Seen this way, the Enneagram becomes less a rigid classification and more a lens through which writers can examine motivation.

And for storytelling, motivation is far more useful than a list of personality traits.

Why it works surprisingly well for fiction

The Enneagram aligns naturally with narrative structure because it is built around three things stories require: motivation, tension, and transformation.

At its heart, the Enneagram organizes personality around three questions:
What do we fear most? What do we desire most? And what strategies do we use to protect ourselves from that fear?

Each of the nine personality patterns contains an internal contradiction. These tensions are exactly the kind that generate narrative conflict.

For example:

Stories emerge naturally from contradictions because characters are pulled in opposing directions.

The Enneagram also describes psychological defense mechanisms—the habitual strategies people use to protect themselves from their deepest fears. These defenses include intellectualizing, controlling, pleasing others, withdrawing, or proving competence.

All of these behaviors create predictable narrative outcomes:

• conflict with other characters

• misinterpretation of events

• escalating mistakes

In that sense, the Enneagram provides something writers always need: engines for plot.

Finally, the system includes the possibility of change. Many personality frameworks describe people statically. The Enneagram explicitly explores how individuals behave under stress and how they grow beyond their defenses.

That dynamic mirrors the movement of a character arc.

The nine motivational patterns (brief overview)

At its core, the Enneagram describes nine motivational patterns organized around fear and strategy.

For writers, these are narrative engines, not labels.

Using the Enneagram in character design

There is no single correct way to apply the Enneagram to storytelling.

In my experience, the most effective approach is not to assign a type first, but to discover it gradually.

Many writers follow a sequence like this:

1. discover the character’s wound

2. identify the belief that grows from it

3. examine the coping strategy

4. notice which Enneagram pattern it resembles

The type usually emerges after the character begins to take shape.

Theory is useful, but stories only become interesting when the theory meets an actual character.

When I applied this framework to Donnán, the Enneagram pattern appeared almost accidentally.

• wound: sent away as a child

• belief: truth was withheld

• strategy: question authority

• goal: prove fate is not absolute

The motivational structure appeared first. The Enneagram pattern only became visible afterward.

Once I identified Donnán’s motivational pattern, something interesting happened: his opponents began to reveal themselves.

Expanding the story world

Once I recognized Donnán’s motivational pattern—closest to a Type 5 Investigator with strong Type 1 tendencies—it began suggesting other characters almost automatically.

If Donnán questions authority, then authority itself becomes a natural antagonist.

A character driven by moral order and institutional certainty—a stronger Type 1 personality—creates immediate tension. One believes truth must be discovered through inquiry; the other believes truth already exists within established structure.

The conflict becomes philosophical as well as personal.

A relational or “false antagonist” can add another layer. Imagine a Type 8 Challenger with strong Type 2 Helper tendencies: someone who values loyalty and human bonds above abstract inquiry.

Donnán questions bonds.
She embodies them.

He seeks truth beyond structure.
She defends meaning within it.

Suddenly the story contains not only conflict, but multiple psychological perspectives.

Testing the character logic

Of course, fictional characters cannot literally take personality tests.

But I found it useful to design situational questions that reveal how a character instinctively responds to authority, uncertainty, belonging, and truth.

For example:

When the monks refuse to explain why he was sent away, what troubles Donnán most?

Is it that the answer might reveal something shameful about him?
That authority expects obedience without explanation?
Or that they refuse to explain how things actually work?

Each response reflects a different motivational pattern.

To explore this further, I created a short set of situational questions and asked an AI system to generate responses corresponding to the nine Enneagram types. By examining which responses aligned most consistently with Donnán’s behavior in the story, I could see whether my interpretation of his personality held together.

Was the result a scientifically valid Enneagram assessment?

Certainly not.

But as a test of narrative coherence, it proved surprisingly useful.

The exercise confirmed that Donnán’s decisions consistently reflected the same motivational pattern.

And that consistency is what makes characters feel real.

The limits of personality frameworks

Of course, no psychological system can fully capture the complexity of a human being—or a fictional character.

These tools should never replace imagination.

What they can do is help writers recognize patterns in human behavior. They give us language for understanding why characters make certain choices and resist others.

Ultimately, stories succeed when characters follow their own internal logic.

Why these tools matter

Readers believe in characters when their behavior reflects recognizable human patterns.

Psychology does not create those patterns. But it can help writers see them more clearly.

Characters begin with a question.

The Enneagram simply helps reveal the strategies people develop while trying to answer it.

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Why does someone act the way they do? Why do two people, faced with the same circumstances, make entirely different choices? And why do certain characters feel unmistakably real while others remain little more than names moving through events?

When I began writing long-form fiction, I discovered that the answer rarely lies in plot alone. It lies in psychology—specifically in the hidden motivations that grow from early wounds and shape how a character understands the world.

Life taught me that people act the way they do because of deep-seated motivations born from early wounds—drivers that shape everything that follows. That realization became a guiding principle for me both in my professional life and in storytelling.

My focus in crafting compelling characters lies in their psychological realism.

Most fiction writers aim to create believable characters, and I suspect the most successful ones do so by consciously—or unconsciously—following psychological patterns.

During a recent writing course, I was tasked with developing an entirely new story idea from scratch. To illustrate my process, I’ll use Donnán, a character I created for that assignment. Calling it my process may be an overstatement—I haven’t invented anything new—but the exercise confirmed that this approach works well for me.

This is not meant as a how-to guide so much as a reflection on how I did it.

The Psychological Spine of Character

Most compelling fictional characters share a small set of underlying psychological variables. Writers often discover these intuitively, but they closely align with ideas explored by psychologists such as Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, and Erik Erikson.

These elements appear again and again in enduring characters:

• a formative wound
• a central belief about the world
• a coping strategy
• a core desire
• an internal contradiction
• a moment when the strategy stops working
• a revised understanding of self or reality

Together they form the psychological spine of a character arc.

The Character Wound

Alfred Adler proposed that personality often grows from an early sense of injury or deficiency. People develop strategies to compensate for that wound, and those strategies gradually become their personality.

In fiction, this looks strikingly similar to character design. What psychology describes as “early inferiority” becomes what writers call a character wound. Compensatory striving becomes motivation, and lifestyle patterns become personality traits.

The first step in my process is identifying the character’s early wound.

For Donnán, it begins when he is sent away as a child to be raised in a monastery. The practice itself was common in seventh-century Ireland. What matters is not the cultural norm but how the child interprets the experience.

Donnán asks why he has been sent away. No one answers him.

He is told only that it was “meant to be.”

Over time, that unanswered question becomes the emotional center of his life.

The Character’s Worldview

A wound does more than provide backstory. It shapes how a character interprets the world.

If someone experiences betrayal, they may believe no one can be trusted. Someone who was abandoned may feel compelled to prove their worth. A person who hides weakness may have once been humiliated for showing it.

Donnán’s wound leads him to believe that truth is something withheld by authority. If no one will answer his questions, then answers must be pursued rather than accepted.

The monks who raise him reinforce this belief by discouraging inquiry. Acceptance, they suggest, is more virtuous than questioning.

For Donnán, that lesson never takes root.

Instead, the unanswered question becomes the lens through which he interprets everything.

A Coping Strategy

If the child believes he is not worthy of the truth, the adult may spend his life trying to prove otherwise.

Donnán’s coping strategy becomes relentless questioning. He tests ideas, challenges authority, and searches for explanations where others accept tradition.

This strategy gradually becomes his personality pattern.

Psychologist Erik Erikson described identity as forming through a series of existential questions. Who am I? Can I trust the world? Do I have a purpose?

Donnán’s psychological question might be framed this way:

Can truth be trusted when authority controls knowledge?

A question like that naturally generates plot.

Internal Tension

Carl Jung suggested that personality develops through tension between opposing forces.

For Donnán, those tensions include:

faith → inquiry
acceptance → questioning
belonging → independence

Stories emerge when a character cannot reconcile such opposites.

Donnán longs for acceptance within his faith, yet he cannot stop questioning the foundations of that faith. At the same time, he hopes to prove that fate does not dictate human lives.

That tension drives the story forward.

The Breaking Point

Eventually the character’s strategy must fail.

Donnán begins with a simple belief: if he pursues a question far enough, the truth will reveal itself.

His lifelong challenge to fate grows from that belief. If fate dictates events, then questioning it should expose its limits.

But the question driving him is smaller—and far more personal.

Why was I given away?

He believes that if he can prove free will exists, then his parents must have chosen to send him away. And if they chose, then there must have been a reason.

He wants the reason.

But the answer is forever denied to him.

At that moment he discovers something painful:

truth and answers are not the same thing.

Transformation

Donnán spends much of his life trying to prove that fate does not rule everything. In the end he discovers something more subtle.

The absence of answers is not fate.

It is simply the boundary of being human.

He may never learn why he was sent away, but he can decide what that unanswered question will mean for the rest of his life. That decision—how he interprets the silence—becomes the one place where his freedom truly exists.

Through that realization the character arrives at a new understanding of the world, completing the arc.

Closing Thoughts

This essay outlines one way of developing character motivation and its role in shaping a story. It represents only one piece of my broader creative process, but it is a method I find myself returning to again and again.

For me, characters must feel psychologically real. I need to understand their origins and perspectives—even if I disagree with them.

Psychological models provide useful frameworks for exploring motivation, but they are not substitutes for imagination. At their best, they simply help writers articulate patterns they may already sense.

For me, the Enneagram has also proven to be a helpful tool for grounding character psychology—but that is a subject for another essay.

What I discovered in building Donnán is something that now feels obvious in hindsight: characters are not constructed from traits, but from questions. Somewhere in their past something happened that left the world slightly unresolved. The rest of their life becomes an attempt—conscious or not—to answer that question.

For writers, understanding that question changes everything. Plot no longer feels like something imposed from the outside. Instead, it grows naturally from the character’s search for meaning.

And sometimes the most powerful discovery a character can make is not the answer they were seeking, but the realization that some questions remain unanswered—and that life must still be lived in their shadow.

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I started this Substack to chronicle my journey writing World Beyond the Song.

I haven’t talked about it lately. I only recently brushed the dust from it.

So, I had to ask myself: Have I been hiding from World Beyond the Song in my essays?

I had gotten so caught up in the cosmology and the worlds I was building that when I finally turned back to writing the story—the characters and the plot felt small against the giants of inventing languages and ancient sky poets.

It took me some time to figure out what I was really feeling.

I landed on one word: exposed. Vulnerable.

Inventing languages and tracing connections between stars and human words felt huge—revelatory—but safe.

When I returned to the characters and plot of World Beyond the Song, I sat face to face with the overarching themes of the book—worthiness and connection.

It suddenly felt incredibly personal. Too personal. It felt … unsettling.

Yes—we write what we know. But I respectfully submit that it may be truer that we write who we know.

I had been touching on exile, belonging, narrative trust. The Guardian impulse and the Incubator’s inward retreat.

I had been circling worthiness and connection intellectually.

Circling is one thing; living is another.

Writing World Beyond the Song, not only would my characters have to live it … I would have to live it.

Exposure feels raw.

Vulnerability is the reframe.

We’re always vulnerable as writers, but I hadn’t expected to feel so exposed when I returned to World Beyond the Song. I knew I was bleeding into my characters. It was necessary. Cathartic.

But I paused when it felt “too personal.”

However, upon further reflection, I found the more personal it felt, the more surely it was real.

Of course, it felt too deep as I approached the center.

I feared reaching a depth in my fiction that could parallel the depth of my essays. I questioned whether fiction should even be that deep, or if I could even write it that real.

It might suggest imposter syndrome, but it doesn’t feel that way. I committed to writing; I hadn’t grasped the commitment to vulnerability.

Essays and nonfiction feel like approaching truth.

I had assumed fiction stood apart from it simply because we label it “fiction.”

Whoever said selling fiction is selling lies might not be the same kind of writer I am, because vulnerability in writing World Beyond the Song is related to how closely it approaches truth.

So, why have I shared this with you?

To widen the circle.

As humans we’re vulnerable and prefer not to be.

As writers we’re vulnerable, because we need to be.

Not narrative trust.

Simply trust.

When does fiction begin to feel true for you?

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Some weeks feel expansive.

This one feels more like guarding what is still forming.

I feel like that turtle on the beach, digging a nest and trusting my future to the hatchlings that will later emerge. Ultimately, I know I can only return to the sea—its depth and its calling.

If you’re familiar with my AuthorKind Archetypes, you may recognize this phase. My Guardian archetype is waxing while my Incubator is waning. I’m in a state of care—setting firmer boundaries and protecting the energy I need.

It’s interesting to observe how our physical states can guide our writing phases.

My writing phase right now is wrapped around well-being. No surprise—yours may be too.

Are you caring for yourself?

Please do.

Last week, I shared:

• Blood Moon Rising - the weekly “Wander Echoes”

• No Loofies Today - a phaiku

• an image of Wednesday

• Narrative Trust in a Noisy Age - an essay

• Crazy Love - an unannounced poem

I’m currently immersed in a course that’s giving structure to a historical fiction idea I thought I had lost. It turns out it was simply waiting for the right moment to take shape.

(Remind me I said that when the plot thickens.)

What arrives this week will follow the pattern you’re likely familiar with—no pre-planning. Whatever appears will do so organically.

Guarding the nest.

—Jennifer
JL Tooker

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This is often how I respond …

with a poem

Crazy Love

My son,

you drive me

crazy—

I lose

whole thoughts

in the middle

of you.

We’re good though,

as long as

I

never lose you.

~jlynn

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Recently, I wrote about narrative trust as a personal posture—a way of understanding my own relationship to writing and to readers. But the longer I sit with the phrase, the more it feels less like a private resolution and more like a cultural question.

We live among a great many words. They arrive quickly. They compete. They ask for reaction before reflection. Headlines compress complexity into certainty. Posts are shaped to travel.

Even sincerity can feel staged, because so much of what reaches us has been optimized to do so. In such an environment, it becomes difficult to tell the difference between language that seeks to connect and language that seeks to convert.

When language is frequently strategic, readers adapt.

We learn to skim for motive. To look for the angle. To anticipate the persuasion beneath the prose. Suspicion, in this sense, is not foolish. It protects us. It keeps us from being easily misled.

But suspicion, when it becomes reflex, narrows the space between people. It flattens nuance. It shortens patience. It can make every sentence feel like a negotiation.

In such a climate, trust can begin to feel naive.

And yet, I am not convinced that trust is naive. I am beginning to wonder if it is simply slower.

I was recently reading a book.

Its pages a crisp white against the worn wooden table. My fingers traced a line of text, the ink a stark black. A sentence jumped out, sharp and absolute, too much like a pronouncement.

My mind bristled—a quick, almost audible protest forming. I felt an urge to dismiss it. But then a different impulse grabbed me.

I drew my finger back and reread the words, the silence of the room amplifying their weight. Then, my eyes swept over the surrounding sentences.

The sentence's sharp edges softened, its boldness no longer seeming like overreach but a tightly coiled spring, holding a universe of meaning within its narrow confines.

My initial resistance ebbed, not with agreement, but with a deeper, quieter comprehension of the author's purpose.

The sentence had not been trying to corner me. I had simply been moving too quickly to meet it.

That small pause felt instructive.

Narrative trust, as I am coming to understand it, is not agreement. It is not shared ideology.

It is not the promise that writer and reader will arrive at the same conclusion. It is the quieter assurance that language is not trying to corner you.

That it is not inflating urgency. That it is not manufacturing stakes.

It leaves room.

Where language makes room, trust can enter.

Room for interpretation. Room for disagreement. Room for meaning to unfold without coercion.

Trust grows where room exists.

But that room is not created by the writer alone. It is also shaped by the reader.

The writer may resist exaggeration; the reader may resist reflex dismissal. The writer may avoid artificial certainty; the reader may extend interpretive charity. Both gestures require patience.

In a faster world, patience feels radical.

Perhaps narrative trust is not a solution to cultural noise.

Perhaps it is simply a slower rhythm within it. A way of offering words without strategic edge, and of receiving them without defensive armor.

It may not transform the entire landscape. But within reachable circles, it can make language feel inhabitable again.

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treasure of Aisla Craig

ancient blue cleaved to green

cost twenty a ton

~jlynn

I have a long fascination with rock and stones. I’m a bonafide petrophilist. It’s natural that I’m drawn to a sport of tossing stones.

Ailsa Craig, the small volcanic island in Scotland’s Firth of Clyde, has supplied the blue hone granite used in curling stones for centuries.

You can learn more about curling stones from The Curling History Blog or The Scotia News.

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umbra slides through dark

earth’s shadow claims the orbit

a blood moon rising

Just sayin’.

Moving into March … I’m gearing up for a big month.

How about you—what March madness are you taking part in? A writing challenge perhaps? If so, check out ‘s daily writing challenge for March here.

Me? I’m taking an online course from one of my favorite instructors—Laurie Schnebly. She’ll have me designing an entirely new novel—just what I need. 😂

But before moving into March, let’s pay homage to the final week of February.

There was my continuing awe with Mongolian and Tuvan throat singing with the poem Khoomei, accompanied by an exemplar of my wanderings into digital art.

Narrative Trust followed—a personal essay that still lingers with me alongside your many thought-provoking comments.

Then there was the image added to the Wednesday musings. It’s a growing reflection of a different kind. I usually post the image in notes, and then add it to the “Wednesday” post, where you can see the progression.

Currently the first image sits at the top, but I may reverse the order so the newest appears first. Would scrolling downward feel like regression? Hmmm.

Finally, an unexpected phaiku appeared on Friday and challenged me to extend my drawing attempts. It was Sublime.

I’m noticing how these pieces keep circling the same questions—attention, voice, shadow, trust. The themes will continue this week.

Tuesday has a new phaiku that found me.

Wednesday the musings will continue in the form of my digital art adventure.

And Thursday is a follow-up to Narrative Trust, in which I examine the concept from a distance.

Will Friday find another poem or another musing? Or perhaps I’ll share a brand new project encouraged by my online course.

And just a quietish reminder:

April approaches.

If you wanted to submit a Fibonacci poem (a syllabic form based on the Fibonacci sequence) for the April 1st publication, between now and March 31st would be ideal. Message or email me with your submissions: jltooker (at) jltooker (dot) com. 🙏

Until next we meet …

be true.

—Jennifer
JL Tooker

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swaying rhythm coaxing ants

sublime duplicity

~jlynn

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I don’t like marketing. I don’t like the thought of monetizing my writing.

For a long time, I confused visibility with viability. I believed that if readers saw me, I would be a “real” writer. I may have believed it, but it never felt settled.

I still write for myself. Mostly. But I have readers now—something I never imagined—and that reality has changed me. Not because I need mass readership, but because I have come to understand something else entirely:

What makes a writer viable is not scale.
It’s posture and purpose.

Knowing your capabilities. Knowing your tolerances. Reaching an honest agreement with your goals.

I’m retired, and that affords me the luxury of writing without market volatility or algorithmic panic. I can pursue coherence over performance. But I would gently challenge any writer to ask: what truly makes you viable?

Mass appeal—or resonance?
A list—or a circle?

What I have been building, whether I named it or not, is narrative trust.

Not trust that you “get it.”
Not agreement.
Not branding.

Narrative trust is relational.

It’s the assurance that language here is not manipulative. That meaning is not a trick. That what is offered is offered sincerely.

My words may be mine.
But the meaning is yours.

That does not dilute authorship. It deepens it. Meaning happens between us. It asks something of both writer and reader—attention, charity, interpretation.

Narrative trust also means I am not exploiting attention.

I write about attention because I practice it. I invite you to attend—not to adopt my vision, but to see more fully through your own.

The invitation to share this space is genuine. If there is anything self-serving in it, it is this: you expand my perspective.

Narrative trust is slow. It is relational. It grows in reachable circles.

It may not be new to me, but articulating it feels clarifying. Settling. A recognition of the posture I have been moving toward all along.

What I offer now is an extension of that trust—in the form of a poem.

Without asking, “Do you get it?”
Because I trust you do.
Or will.

FLOREANA

havoc
among
the helpless

giant
saddleback
lineage

extinction
consequence
return

Floreana
found
Isabela

~ jlynn

Inspired by the presumed extinction and rediscovery of the Floreana giant tortoise lineage in the Galápagos.

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vibration growls
in my feet

mid-calf muscles
pulse

a rumble
low in my gut

one by one
vertebrae

rattling
what’s caged
in bone

~jlynn

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Luna. Moon. Moonstruck. Moonshine. Lunatic.

What is it about this pale orb that has me looking for her whenever I step outside after dark?

Did you know the moon is etymologically tied to measure and meter?
Sounds like poetry to me.

But then most things do.

Let me ask you something:

Are you a poem?
A short story?
Flash fiction—or an epic novel?

Are you fiction or nonfiction?

That’s like asking nature or nurture.
Isn’t it always some measure of both?

The moon holds me because she marks time.

And of time, I know this:

Last week passed beneath her light.

You saw how the Egg Nebula stirred my imagination. You watched me take liberties with the lineage of archetypes—a meditation still unfolding. Wednesday wound up at Attention, a quieter musing.

But I was most over the moon about Grasslands Produce Riders—my reflection on how landscape shapes culture. It feels like an essay with longer legs. For now, I let it rest.

A new week rises—a waxing crescent following the dark.

Here’s what’s forming:

Tuesday
A new poem inspired by Mongolian throat singing. Watch for Khoomei. I’m partial to it.

Wednesday
A surprise—even to me. Unplanned, but arriving nonetheless.

Thursday
An essay in progress. I feel myself in transition—the Incubator strong, the Guardian close behind. My clearest reading yet of the AuthorKind Archetypes. Lately I’ve been circling one question:

Is narrative trust something writers build—or something readers grant?

We’ll see what phase we’re in when it lands.

—Jennifer
JL Tooker

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