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For our seventh episode, we talk to USA Today-bestselling author Tiffany Reisz. Tiffany shares two writing prompts that will help you check in with your characters and engage your readers.
A JCPL librarian interviews published writers about their favorite writing prompts—exercises that can help inspire, focus, and improve your creative writing. Whether you’re a beginner or a pro, a novelist, essayist, or poet, you’ll find ideas and advice to motivate you to keep writing. A partnership with the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning.
Prompt to Page Ep. 7/Reisz
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[00:00:00] Carrie: Welcome to the Prompt to Page Podcast, a partnership between the Jessamine County Public Library and the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning. I'm your host, librarian and poet, Carrie Green. Each episode, we interview a published writer who shares their favorite writing prompt. Our guest today is Tiffany Reisz.
Tiffany Reisz is the USA Today bestselling author of the Original Sinner series from Harlequins Mira Books. Born in Owensboro, Kentucky, Tiffany graduated from Center College with a BA in English. Her first novel, The Siren, has sold nearly half a million copies worldwide. Her adult fantasy, The Red, was named an NPR best book of the year.
Her books include the Lambda Literary Award winner, The King, and the RITA winner, The Saint. Tiffany also writes mainstream women's suspense fiction, including The Bourbon Thief, winner of the RT book reviews, seal of excellence award, and the RITA nominated The Night mark. Tiffany lives in Louisville, Kentucky with her husband, author, Andrew Shaffer, and their two cats.
The cats are not writers.
[00:01:13] Tiffany: Yeah. So the only ones in the family who are not writers are the cats. Everybody else is a writer in the family.
[00:01:19] Carrie: Well you know, it's good to have some balance.
[00:01:21] Tiffany: Yes, exactly. We couldn't handle any more writers in the family. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:27] Carrie: Oh, we're really excited to have you here.
So I read that you spent some time in Jessamine County as an Asbury Seminary student.
[00:01:37] Tiffany: Yes, this is true. I did go to Asbury Theological Seminary for a couple of years. When I was thinking of being a professor of theology, I was never planning on getting my MDiv and becoming a Methodist minister or anything, but I have a
long fascination and interest in theology. So I was getting my master's in theology and hopefully to become a professor. And then I started writing to really, I just started writing books, writing stories to help me get through grad school. And then they took over my life and I realized, this is, this is what I was supposed to be doing with my life.
But yeah, I had a, I had a great time at Asbury. I remember when I decided to quit, my resident advisor met me for coffee and she was going to try to talk me out of quitting school to become a writer and, and I explained how much joy I took in it and how much passion I had for it and how I wanted to do it all the time.
And by the end of the conversation, she said, go, go do this. You have to do this. I believe in you. You can do it. Which I thought, I still remember her very fondly for being so supportive. And there, there was, I remember thinking back a few times. I have to make this work because this, this woman believed in me.
I convinced her, this was the right thing to do. So it needs to be the right thing to do. And now 30 books later, it's the right thing.
[00:03:00] Carrie: I think it's safe to say yes.
[00:03:02] Tiffany: Yes. It's turned out very well. It's turned out very well. My first book helped pay off my student loans from Asbury. So,
[00:03:09] Carrie: Oh, wow.
Yeah. I think being a professor, it would have taken a few more years to do that.
[00:03:16] Tiffany: A lot.
Yeah. A lot of years, a lot of years. And I ended up using that theology in my Original Sinner series. One of the characters is in the ministry, so, so it was not wasted time. It ended up paying for itself.
[00:03:29] Carrie: Yeah. That's
great. So what's your experience with writing prompts? What role do they play? Do they play a role in your writing process
currently? Have they, in the past?
[00:03:40] Tiffany: I have had fun with writing prompts as doing writing exercises that helped me sort of flesh out a character, but it's, it's never inspired a full novel or, or anything like that. I remember going to the Eagle Creek writers group in Lexington. Eagle Creek used to be one of the branches in Lexington and they had a writing group that's still meets, but it's at the new, the new library.
And we were using tarot cards. So we would pick a tarot card out of the Major Arcana and meditate on it and try to write a character based on the image or something like that. And that that helped helped me flesh out a character I was working on in the story at the time. And I always thought that was, that was fun.
And I wanted ever since then, I have wanted to write a book with the Major Arcana of the tarot cards as actual characters in a book. I haven't gotten around to it yet. I mean, I wrote, I wrote in rough draft, but it's not there yet. But one of these days. So that's the one time a writing prompt did inspire me to write a book. It just has never, never been finished, never been published, but a. There's a lot of questions that I asked myself that prompt me to think deeper as a writer that, that help when I'm writing novels. So not for, writing prompts, don't inspire the full book, but writing prompts to do help flesh out characters and stuff.
[00:05:02] Carrie: Yeah. I think that's something that some of the other novelists we've had on the podcast have talked about too, that they use them when they're stuck or...
[00:05:11] Tiffany: Yes, absolutely. When you're stuck and that's, that's what I tell my writing students all the time is that when you're stuck, when you, when you have written something, when you've written a draft or part of a draft, that's the best time when, when you get stuck, that's the best time to get a writing craft book or you know, to read
Writer's Digest essays or listen to a podcast like this. Cause when you're stuck, that's your brain trying to tell you, we need to go in a different direction. And, and writing prompts or writing craft books can help you find that direction. It's always, the writer's block is always trying to tell you something. It's, it's not a wall, it's a sign and you need to learn how to read the sign.
So it's just, you gotta pause and figure out how to read the sign that, that your, your story is trying to tell you.
[00:05:55] Carrie: That is a very interesting way of looking at it. I like that.
[00:05:59] Tiffany: Yeah.
I, every time I've had writer's block that I've started writing a book and it just isn't working and I don't know what to do next.
That's when I know I have to take a couple of days off and beat my head against the wall a little bit, or, or read something like Save the Cat by Blake Snyder, which is a famous writing craft book for screenwriters or read something like Anatomy of Story by John Truby or something, you know, something that, that gives you suggestions for ways to write better.
And one line will always stick out and go, oh, that's what I'm doing wrong. You know, I, I had terrible writer's block for my novel, The Rose. And I was reading John Truby, his Anatomy Story about how to create a main character. And he said something in the book about your main character needs to have a problem before
the story even begins. And, uh, what I had was a very nice, very innocent character who wanted to help her dad out. Her father had the problem and she wanted to help him. And that was not working. She was too sweet and innocent. She didn't have any kind of problems. So I had to make the problem, a personal problem to her.
So when I hit that writer's block and, and I went in and read some John Truby and that helps so much, it completely changed the book completely changed the story. And once I figured that out, then, then the book took off and I was able to finish writing it. And it ended up being one of my favorite stories, but it also had my worst writer's block, like a month of writer's block.
But yeah, it was trying to tell me something. It was, you are doing something wrong here. Your character is not right. You need to stop and rethink, rethink, rewrite, throw out, start over. And, and so I have learned the hard way to listen to writer's block. It's trying to tell me something.
[00:07:35] Carrie: Well, thank you for passing that on to all of us,
[00:07:38] Tiffany: So many people stop writing when they hit writer's block.
And they think that their book is fatally flawed, and then they stop writing and they start a completely different story when really, if they just stayed with it, if they sat in it and they thought about it, they might have overcome it and come up with a good idea and kept going or, or, you know, just thrown a little bit out and then started rewriting and then they wouldn't have to throw it all away.
So I do want, I tell my writing students that all the time, cause I don't want them to give up on their book just because it starts to get hard.
[00:08:06] Carrie: Right.
Do you want to go ahead and talk about your writing prompt that you want to share with us?
[00:08:10] Tiffany: Sure. I have, yeah, I have two and they're not your, your classic writing prompts, but I think they're very helpful.
One's general and one's specific. So VE Schwab, a fabulous fantasy young adult writer, Victoria Schwab also publishes as VE Schwab. She tweeted this. It's the question she asked when creating characters and I think this is helpful for short story writers and novelists to ask themselves these three questions and she, she tweeted question number one:
what do they fear? Question number two: what do they want? And question number three: what are they willing to do to get it? And I made a note that they almost, your main character, almost always will have to face their fear to get what they want. So those are two separate questions. They're combined, you know, so Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, his fear is being stuck on Tattooin his whole life and being a moisture farmer his whole life.
He wants to leave the farm and go to the academy, but he has to face this fear. And he has to face disappointing his aunt and uncle, he has to face getting off his home world. He has, he's afraid of the Empire and, and very quickly, once he leaves the planet, he has to face the Empire. So he's willing, he's willing to face his fears, which is leaving home and the, and facing the Empire to get what he wants.
And ultimately at the end of the story, he has joined the rebellion. He is a pilot. He does get what he wants, but not until he faces his fears first. So just to repeat, what do they fear? What do they want, what are they willing to do to get it? And sometimes, you know, it's sometimes what they fear is something simple like snakes, Indiana Jones, famously afraid of snakes.
So of course there's always snakes that he has to face at some point in his adventures or rats to get, to get his man or to get the artifact that he's trying to get. But it, in many places, it's also much, much deeper you know, in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana, and his father played by Sean Connery have this, this they're estranged from each other.
At the end of the movie you know, his Indiana Jones, his father has wanted to find the Holy Grail, his entire life. But he can only get the Holy Grail if Indiana Jones reaches for it and he might fall to his death. And so he has to let it go. So he faces the fear of losing the Holy Grail because he discovers, he wants his son more.
So the thing he wants most in the world, what does he want? He wants the Holy Grail. What does he fear? Not getting the Holy Grail. And he has to face the fear of not getting the Holy Grail, but he does get his son instead. So what you want as a character can also change and it should change as your, as your main character
grows up you know, it's a maturation process, a growing up process as their character arc, moving from, from, you know, cowardice to courage from, from loneliness to being with someone and sharing your life with someone, that sort of thing. It's a growing up process. So that, you know, when we're kids, we want one thing.
And we become adults. You know, I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid, but as I, as I've grown up my, my desires to what I want to do with my life have changed. And, and almost everyone's will. So, so that's fine that, that what they want changes and it probably should. And that should inspire your writing as well.
So that's the first prompt I have that I think is really, really helpful for character creation.
[00:11:29] Carrie: And so at what point did, do you recommend using that prompt? Would that be something you would use periodically as you're writing?
[00:11:38] Tiffany: Yeah. So before you start writing, it's a good idea to, to, you know, we, we tend to think foolishly that our main character should just be living their normal life and being every man. And we get this idea from a lot of writing books, you know, we, the writing books and the writing crafts say, you start off in the characters, normal world, your main character, living their normal life in their normal world.
And then something comes along and shakes them out of their complacency and their normalcy. So it helps before you even begin to flesh out that that every man or every woman type character, by giving them something that they want to deep down and something that they fear deep down. And then they're not, they're not such a generic every man anymore.
It's one of the ironies of literature, of art that the more specific something is, the more relatable it is. So, you know, a generic character, just generic woman going to generic job, living generic life. It's not something there's, there's nothing to latch onto. There's nothing to grab. She doesn't have anything we can get our fingers into and say, okay, yes, I, this is a real person.
I know this person; they're fictional but, but I relate to them. But if you make her suddenly a cat person. Well, I have two cats. I was like, okay, so she's not generic anymore. She's a cat person. She has two cats or three cats or whatever. And she loves cats. I was like, okay, I can get that. That's somebody I can relate to.
A lot of writers are, will be afraid. Oh, I can't make her a cat person. Cause then I'll alienate dog people, you know, but then you're, you're making your character bland. They don't love love or like anything at that point. They don't have anything that they have affection toward or relationship with
before their adventure starts. So yeah, give them, give them really specific interests, really specific wants, and fears, and your character will be much more interesting and much more relatable. So yeah, at the beginning before you start, while you're writing, at the end of every chapter, go, okay. Do they still want what they originally wanted?
Or they, are they starting to want something else? You know, the, there are our hero who, you know, Luke just wanted to go to the academy and very shortly in Star Wars, the academy is blown out of the water. Now he wants to save Princess Leia off the Death Star. So his want changes very quickly, but basically the, the deep want of, I want to be somebody other than a moisture farmer never really changes.
It just, the face of it changes if not the heart.
[00:14:03] Carrie: Right. Okay. And then what is your, your next prompt?
[00:14:07] Tiffany: This one is, this one is for me as a reader. So this is the kind of stuff I love to read, and I wish more people would, would write stuff like this. I came up with this myself and I was, I was laying in bed trying to apply it to stories.
And I came up with all this stuff I wanted to write suddenly. So. Here's my, this is the Tiffany Reisz prompt. Okay. So think of a specific place. It has to be a specific place. It can't just be a castle. It has to be the castle of the evil king who used to murder his subjects in sacrificial rights or something like that.
So not just a castle, but the castle of a specific person and a specific place. You can invent it. It doesn't have to be the White House. It can, it can be a specific place that you invent. But it is a specific place. Okay. Number two. Your main character is forbidden specifically from going into that place.
So it's not, oh, that house is haunted. You shouldn't go in there because it's unsafe. It's you specifically, the main character, your main character is, is forbidden. Other people can go in, but for some reason, the main character cannot go in. And the third part of this prompt is your main character goes in. Why?
So I'll give you two completely different examples of applying this. So we have a young girl is our main character and she's forbidden to go into , the wealthy, mysterious, old duchess' s manor house out in the country, outside the village, where she's being raised, even though all the other children in the village get to go to parties at the old duchess's house.
She is forbidden by her parents from going, she gets frustrated cause they won't tell her why she can't go. So one day she sneaks off and goes to, goes to the manor house to meet the Duchess. Cause she wants to know why she's forbidden. Um, and there may be, she discovers that the Duchess is her biological grandmother and her adopted parents don't want her to be involved with her biological family.
Maybe they're evil, maybe her adopted family's evil and the Duchess is good. Maybe there's some witchcraft going on and maybe there's some, something really evil happening. Maybe there's something really good happening. Maybe it's a class dispute or that sort of thing where they're worried about a custody issue.
You know, it could, it could go anywhere. But you start off with a specific place that our main character is specifically forbidden from going, and then she has a good reason to go. And, and that kicks off the story. And this one's completely different. Let's go into contemporary. So we have a young man who's obsessed with a famous actress and she has a restraining order against him.
He can't go anywhere near her or near her apartment, but while he's stalking her from a distance, he discovered she has another stalker. So to protect her. He thinks in his head, he has to stalk her stalker, which means at some point going into her apartment. Completely different books, but from, from the same, from the same writing prompt.
So again, think of a specific place. Your main character is specifically forbidden from going in there. You have to figure out why, and then your main character goes in there anyway, and you have to figure out why. So two completely different stories. And there's thousands of permutations of that. When we've got,
you know, sort of a could be a Victorian-set, you know, fantasy novel with the Duchess in, in the Manor house. And then we have a contemporary thriller with a stalker who's stalking an actress's other stalker which could be a really fun, you know, cinematic dramatic, thriller type book.
So those are my two writing prompts that I hope are helpful.
[00:17:31] Carrie: I like how that one really raises the stakes immediately
[00:17:35] Tiffany: because it's specific. It's not, we're all forbidden from running into the White House. We're all fo rbidden from going into a stranger's house. I'm not allowed to just go into my neighbor's house, but if my neighbor said, everyone in the neighborhood can come into my house tomorrow
for the party, but not you Tiffany Reisz. I would want to know why, that is an immediate mystery. That's immediately raising the stakes if I go into the house I'm specifically forbidden from going into and it makes readers curious. It makes the main character curious, why am I forbidden? But it makes the reader curious.
Why are they forbidden? And let's find out. Can go in all kinds of different directions there. So that's a fun one. I love, I love Gothics and there's nothing more Gothic than a forbidden house. You know, it's a forbidden love. It's very symbolic of a forbidden love, you know, you're drawn to it, but you're not supposed to be it's very dangerous.
[00:18:29] Carrie: Yeah.
[00:18:30] Tiffany: Very classic Gothic prompt there. Yes. So I hope, I hope it inspires a lot of Gothic stories for me.
[00:18:38] Carrie: I think even a poet like me who doesn't really do plot, I think I could, might be able to come up with a plot with something like
that.
So.
[00:18:47] Tiffany: You know, you think about My Last Duchess by Robert Browning.
I think it was Robert Browning who wrote My Last Duchess and his monologue about having his wife killed because she was, she smiled too much. It's very Gothic and it's a story poem. So I think you've used that prompt to come up with a story poem and have a lot of fun with it. And if you, if you write that, I'd love to read it. I love a good Gothic poem.
[00:19:13] Carrie: Great, well, do you have any final tips that you'd like to give our listeners about writing or prompts, or
whatever?
[00:19:20] Tiffany: I'll tell you the one that I tell everybody, and, and since this is a kentucky set podcast for a local Kentucky library. I'll give you a writing tip from a local Kentucky writer, which was my English professor at Centre, Dr.
Mark Lucas, who wrote a bunch of short stories. So he wasn't just a professor of English. He's written, he's written short stories and published them too, but we, uh, we were stuck at a table one day. It was like a freshmen orientation. And so every major was represented by a professor and a student who was in the major.
So Dr. Lucas, who was chair of the English department, and me sitting at this table for three or four hours talking to freshmen about my, why they might want to be English majors. So there was a lot of downtime. And I remember asking Dr. Lucas of all the, the aspiring writers students at Centre, who did he think would make it?
And he mentioned a student who was writing poetry at the time. And he said, I think he's got a good chance because he throws a lot away. And this blew my mind. I was 19, 20 years old. What does that mean? He throws a lot away. And he said, well, it means he's, he's a critic of his own writing. He's hard on himself.
He doesn't, he doesn't keep a poem just because he wrote it. He only keeps a poem if it's good, he throws out a lot of stuff. And that's when I learned how important it was to be willing to hit the delete key, that the delete key would be your best friend as a writer. And so when my, I was writing my first book, I finished writing it, The Siren.
And I went to try to find agents. One of the first seven agents that I queried asked for the full manuscript and I sent it to her. And then a couple of weeks later, she got back to me and she said, I love your writing, but your book has no plot. If you were willing to rewrite it and put a real plot in it, I think I could sell it, but I can't sell it as it is now.
And so that's, I remembered that I remember Dr. Lucas saying you have to be willing to throw your stuff away. So I deleted 70,000 words. I deleted them and like the beginning was okay. The end was okay, but the middle was just a muddle. So I deleted 70,000 words and rewrote the book in six to eight weeks.
And I sent it back to that agent and she started rereading it and she was like, wow. I tell people to do that all the time. They never actually rewrite anything. It might change the color of the guy's sweater on page 56 and say, they've done rewrites. But you actually completely changed the book. I was like, yes.
I really, really wanted to have you as an agent. So she offered me representation and we sold the book and that was the first of 30 published novels. So yes, you've got to make the delete key your best friend. And I don't mean a paragraph here or a scene there. I mean, sometimes the entire book, I will write 300,000 words to get one 90,000 word book.
That's just how it is with all art. I read a, uh, a statistic, something like there, they're usually, you know, 14 to 17 photographs in a National Geographic article, you know, the Savannah in Africa or cheetahs or something like that. That usually the final published has 14 to seven. Photographs. Well, the photographer will take 10 to 20,000 photographs to get those 14 to 17 pictures.
And that's kind of how it is. You've got to be that way as a writer, you've got to be willing to write and write and write and then get rid of the bad stuff and keep all the good stuff. So make the delete key your best friend says I and Dr. Lucas of Centre College, Danville, Kentucky. Oh, by the way, the writer, he told me about the student writer
he told me about who he thought would make it. His name is Will Lavender and he published with, with major publishers that were big hits. So he was right. He should've also predicted that I would be a big writing success because I did, but thank you, Dr. Lucas. I owe it all to you.
[00:23:04] Carrie: Well,
we're glad, we're glad Dr.
Lucas gave you that advice and that you passed it on to all of us. So thank you so much for giving us these great prompts. We really appreciate you being here and good luck with the rest of your writings.
[00:23:17] Tiffany: Thank you very much. It's
been my pleasure. Happy writing everybody.
[00:23:26] Carrie: Thank you for listening to the Prompt to Page podcast. We welcome you to join the Jessamine County Public Library's, Prompt to Page writing group, which will meet on Tuesday, March 29th at 6:00 PM. Register on our website. To learn more about the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning, visit Carnegiecenterlex.org.
Our music is by Archipelago an all instrumental musical collaboration between three Lexington based university professors. Find out more about Archipelago: Songs from Quarantine volumes one and two, at the links on our podcast website.