Coffee Talks

With Emily Godhand

Hi, Emily, thank you for taking the time to get involved with Coffee Community. It's great to hear from authors like yourself and get to know a little bit about what motivates you to write longer works of fiction.

Even though I've left Wattpad, I still love and miss my community. Of course, I'm here.

So, to begin, tell us a little bit about yourself as an author on Wattpad. For anyone who hasn't met you before, how would you describe your fiction?

To be honest, I've taken my work off Wattpad. But my writing depends to be dark thrillers set in a fantasy or paranormal setting. I write about people with healing factors who can't die, so they have to learn how to live with the suffering they go through, whether that's physical, mental, or emotional. Oftentimes I like to throw in runes and chaos magic. I tend to write queer characters and ones with disabilities like mental illness.

Writing for sustained periods is a hurdle that every writer, beginner or experienced, faces from time to time. What powers you through those longer bursts of creativity and keeps you focused?

If you treat writing as a fun pastime you engage in when inspired, then the momentum will keep you going until you run out of that inspiration. But sometimes you have to treat writing as a job. What would you do at your job, or as a student who had a paper due? You have to get it done. So as a fiction writer without external deadlines, you have to give yourself reasonable deadlines, and stick to them.

On Wattpad, this could mean having a set schedule that you post, say- Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Or if that's too ambitious for your schedule, just Fridays. But knowing there are people who expect it can keep you on track.

You would also plan well by say outlining or researching, pace yourself, and take breaks as necessary. Sometimes if I hit a snag, I'll realize I need to go take a walk to let my mind wander, or take a break by doing something else productive to let my brain work on the problem in the background while I focus on something simple.

What top tips would you advise for getting a novella or a longer piece of fiction off the starting line? What kind of story developments motivate you to see it through to the end?

I outline in very tight detail, so much that it's like a first draft. That takes a lot of the pressure off me, and I still get the thrill of discovering what happens next without getting hung up on particulars. I can accomplish a lot (outlining a novel in one night, for example) without having to write the whole novel in one sitting. Though, I still have to go back and write it. No one wants to read my outline except my developmental editor.

Some people 'pants', or write on the fly without a set path, and that's okay, too. That works for them.

But I look at several things in the outline, and ask myself several questions before writing:

What happened to make this story happen? This your 'inciting incident'. If this didn't happen, the rest of the story wouldn't have happened.

What does the character think they want? (They'll strive for this in the first half)
Okay, now what does the character actually want? (They'll fight for this in the second half)

Generally, each 'act', whether you do three acts or five, is going to come about because of a pronounced change in development. The character has a chance! Now they don't. Now they have a new chance! Oh no, that failed too. They have one more chance, the fifth act, to get what they wanted.

What ending would make this character satisfied with the journey they've taken?

So when you ask those, you get a beginning and an end. Then I work backward: what needs to happen to get the character to that end? What needs to happen to get them there?

How much do you edit on the fly? Or do you prefer to edit after you've finished the initial draft?

If I see an egregious error I'll fix it, but it can slow me down, so sometimes I'll just put down the terrible descriptions ('the shadows were dark') and come back later because I'm more excited about building the structure, and then editing the decorations later.

Sometimes if I can't think of a word or a name or a description, I'll just write 'TK' and then do a search function to find them, and then I'll add in what was missing. I can't think of an English word that has T next to K, so this helps me find the markers I was looking for. This way I don't lose momentum, and I can fix it in edits.

Personally, what kind of novella -- be it any style, theme, or genre -- would you like to see emerge from the Open Novella Contest?

I personally love paranormal stories that force people to question what they believe to be true and to come out with a deeper understanding of the world and themselves. This can be romance, but personally, I'm very tired of the 'Innocent Girl Falls In Love With A Dark Inhuman Man and Gives Up Her Life to Be His Pretty Toy To Play With Because She Has No Other Goals That Are More Important, Oh Dear God Someone Ask To Give Her A Hug Without Putting Her in Chains First" story.

But if someone were to write that story and it still fit my first wish, go for it.

Write your truth, because then you're writing something someone else can relate to.

Lastly, because we're always curious... What was your ever first experience with the power of the written language?

It was a Tamora Pierce book. I already liked reading because it passed the time and was a distraction from the world I didn't want to be in, but I wanted to be in this world. Because in Ms. Pierce's world, girls could be knights. They could train, and fight, and learn magick. They could stand up to people, stand up for people. They could choose who they loved, and when, and how. And not really having been exposed to that sort of thinking before in a very religious, conservative family in a farming town, it shifted something in my brain and said, I can do this, too.

It's been great hearing from you, Emily, and thank you for sharing your valuable knowledge in storytelling.

Thank you for having me.

Best wishes for your future endeavours from Coffee Community.

Our goal is to bring you many more exclusive interviews with people who aren't just Wattpad Stars or Staff, but also some pretty awesome authors.
In that quest, next we will be talking to David Musk, so stick around for more fun!