Podcast: How to Write Strong Protagonists and Supporting Characters with Gabriela Pereira
hosted by Sue Campbell
Here's a question that might change how you think about your main character: Does your protagonist want to change things—or preserve them? In this episode, Gabriela Pereira of DIYMFA breaks down her Storytelling Superpower framework—a surprisingly simple way to understand what makes protagonists like Elizabeth Bennett and Katniss Everdeen work so well on the page.
You’ll also Learn
Why "supporting character" is a better term than "side character”
The crucial difference between a villain and an antagonist
What Shakespeare's Fool can teach you about the characters your protagonist doesn't want to listen to (but really should)
resources mentioned
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transcript
Anne Hawley: Writers, is your protagonist wandering off course? Are you unsure of the difference between an antagonist and a villain? How many characters do you need anyway? If you've been wondering, well, this one's for you.
Hello and welcome to the Write Anyway podcast from Pages & Platforms and the Happily Ever Author Club. In today's episode, Sue Chats with Gabriela Pereira, founder of the DIYMFA online writing program about her storytelling superpower framework for writing compelling characters. Let's listen in.
Sue Campbell: Gabriela Pereira from DIYMFA. Welcome to the Write Anyway Podcast, it's so good to see you again.
Gabriela Pereira: It is so great to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Sue Campbell: Yay. All right, so we are here to nerd out on character. We're gonna talk about writing a good protagonist. We're gonna talk about writing supporting characters. Question for you is where do you see people struggling the most? Is it protagonist struggles or supporting character struggles?
Gabriela Pereira: I think it makes sense to start with the protagonist because if we understand the main character then we can kind of fit the supporting characters around that. But it's sort of hard to fit around if we don't know what's at the center.
Sue Campbell: All right. Well let's start with protagonists. What are some of the books that you think have really strong protagonists where when you think about, like, I wanna give somebody an example of a really strong, well-written protagonist, what do you think of? What are your go-tos?
Gabriela Pereira: So anyone who has been in the DIYMFA ecosystem for more than five minutes knows that I have certain classic examples. One of them, of course, is Pride and Prejudice, which is my favorite book. Elizabeth Bennett is a fantastic example of a really deep, well-rounded protagonist. Another example that we use a lot at DIYMFA is the Hunger Games.
I tend to rely on the book version, but some people also prefer the movie. The movie followed the book pretty closely, so, you can kind of take your pick. But Katniss Everdeen is a great character as well.
Sue Campbell: I have to admit that it's possible that I hold the record for the most audiobook listens of Pride and Prejudice because it has been my bedtime listening music on and off for literally years. So I have probably listened to that book up in the hundred hundred-plus times, and I love it so, so much. So I love both of those examples. So I'm just gonna let you take it away and talk about what it takes to write a protagonist that hopefully gets somewhere close to the success of Elizabeth Bennett or Katniss.
Gabriela Pereira: Yeah, so when I think of protagonists, I like to think in terms of archetypes. And the archetypes that I've developed around protagonists have come from some time ago, back when I was launching the DIYMFA book, I had to give this presentation on main characters, and I started thinking to myself like, if there were a personality quiz for main characters, what would that look like?
And so I started thinking, I'm a big fan of the Myers-Briggs Personality Assessment. I'm an INTJ all the way, so like I totally nerd out over that. And so I started thinking like if there was a Myers-Briggs version for characters, like what might that look like?
And so I developed what I call the Storytelling Superpower framework, which is this framework of four, archetypal characters. And the way you get to those characters is there are two parameters. So if you're familiar with the Myers-Briggs, you know that they're like four different parameters and you're either this or you're that for each of the different parameters. And depending on where you fall on each of the four parameters, that gives you your personality type.
So the storytelling superpower is a little bit simpler. It's only two parameters instead of four. The two parameters are the type of character, whether they're a relatable character or an aspirational character.
And then the other parameter is what the character wants. Does the character's desire tend toward change, either change in themselves, change in their surroundings, change in the whole big, wide world, or does it stem towards you know, preservation. Like, do they wanna keep things the same? They don't wanna shake things up at any point.
So, when you take those two things, if you imagine like a box and you cross the two things you've got type across the top and you've got want along the side, you end up with four archetypes, four boxes within that big box. And when you have a relatable character who wants change, that's called an underdog.
Sue Campbell: Okay.
Gabriela Pereira: And if you want a aspirational character who wants change, that's the disruptor type. When you have the relatable character, but they want to preserve things, those are the survivor types. And when you want a character who is aspirational but wants to preserve things, that's the protector type.
Sue Campbell: Okay.
Gabriela Pereira: You know, this gives you kind of like a personality type.
And each of these four archetypes has certain qualities that they, that tend to come out and they tend to track across different books and across different works of literature. Like you'll see sort of certain trends with characters that fall into each of these types. So, for example Katniss Everdeen is an interesting example because she starts as an underdog, right?
Like she starts as this girl from District 12, nobody really thinks very much of her. They think she's just gonna fail. They think she's gonna die. Nobody really is rooting for her. And then she starts like slowly showing signs of, Wow, there's more to her than what we thought.
Toward about two thirds to three quarters of the way through book one of the trilogy, she actually makes a full shift from underdog disruptor. And so then by the end of the first book, she is firmly planted, like she has gone from girl from District 12 to the Mockingjay, like that's sort of her personality shift.
And it's this big shift from underdog to disruptor. And what's, uh, really interesting when you're shifting from one type, like the relatable type to the aspirational type, or you could also shift from the aspirational type to the relatable type. The way you do that is very specific. So I have this theory, I call it the "opposite is possible theory and the idea behind it is that you want, as an author, to show the possibility that character can become the opposite of who they are. Now, this doesn't mean the character's gonna be out of character, that they're gonna just start acting weird, but it means that you're showing little clues of the growth that the character can have.
And what's interesting, oh yes, go ahead.
Sue Campbell: that also feels related to stakes to me.
Gabriela Pereira: Yes. Yes,
Sue Campbell: Yeah, because,
it's like, okay, the opposite is also true. So everything we love about this character could be at stake and they could backslide or everything we hate about this character and we're frustrated with them, they could actually solve it and move forward.
Gabriela Pereira: Exactly. So the stakes are kind of woven into that journey as well.
Sue Campbell: Yeah.
Gabriela Pereira: So what's interesting is if you take relatable on one side and aspirational on one side, when we're looking at it in terms of the matrix, you know the four boxes, it kind of feels like they're buckets, right? That like you put the character in a bucket, but it's not really a bucket, it's more like a spectrum.
So you have like Katniss Everdeen starts on the relatable side and she gradually kind of shifts over to the aspirational side. And what's interesting is we see these little hints like the author plants these little clues. Like for example, when she volunteers to take her sister's place, that's the first hint, you know, that shows her potential for greatness, that shows her potential to do something.
Really important. Then we see like that moment with the arrow and the pig and the apple. That's another moment where, you know, Katniss Everdeen sort of shows what she can do, shows who she is, and then we see other moments as she kind of develops and as she grows until we get to that moment. At the moment, after Ru Rue dies, when she does the whole burial for Rue and then she looks at the camera and she does the peace symbol thingy. Basically, it's her first moment where she's kind of like saying to the Capital like, I'm coming for you. That's the moment where she shifts fully, like steps into disruptor land from underdog land.
Sue Campbell: Is that at the middle of the book? Pretty much where she pivots that way.
Gabriela Pereira: Two thirds to the three quarter way through. So it's what I call the second pivot point or the dark night of the soul. So it's like, not the midpoint, but it's kind of that doorway into act three.
Sue Campbell: Got it.
Gabriela Pereira: So that's the idea when you're shifting archetypes in terms of their type is you're kind of like showing clues, but with the disruptor or the protector types, the larger than life aspirational types, the journey's different, right? Because they're already aspirational. Like we can't push them further down that spectrum 'cause that just doesn't resonate.
So what we need to do is we actually have to move them in the opposite direction. And the way they grow is actually by becoming more vulnerable, by showing their softer side. So while the underdog survivors are sort of showing their potential for greatness, the disruptor are showing their vulnerability, and we see that in Elizabeth Bennett.
Elizabeth Bennett is a disruptor all the way. She stays in disruptor Land the whole way through the book, but we see clues of her vulnerability, like the moment where she reads the letter and she says, till this moment I never knew myself. That's the moment of vulnerability. The moment when she gets the letter from her sister saying, Lydia's eloped, and she tells Darcy, you know, that's another moment of vulnerability where Elizabeth Bennett shows her potential to move more in that relatable direction.
Even though she does kind of stay, like, if we think of it as a spectrum, she still stays, you know, to the other side of the dividing line, but she's kind of moving a little closer to the center.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, and I know Darcy's a secondary character, but he is also a protector, I think who has almost the same arc as Elizabeth, right?
Gabriela Pereira: Exactly, and it's interesting Elizabeth is a disruptor. Darcy is very much a protector. He doesn't wanna change things. He likes things exactly the way they are. He doesn't wanna shake things up 'cause he's in a good place, you know, he's comfortable. Everybody looks up to him and thinks he's amazing. And so he just wants to keep things like that.
And what's really interesting is when you have two characters who are aspirational characters, they tend to butt heads.
Sue Campbell: yep. That
Gabriela Pereira: So you'll often see villain and hero pairs being both aspirational characters, or in this case, it's an enemies to lovers kind of story. They're both aspirational characters and then their arc is to kind of come together as they both become more vulnerable.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, that makes sense Then. Then they would have to slide along that same vulnerability slider in order to line up.
Gabriela Pereira: Exactly. Exactly. So the idea behind these archetypes is it's not to put your story and your character in a box, but it's to help you sort of understand what your character's about and like what your character wants and who your character is in terms of their personality.
And then you can start to think about like, what's the wiggle room? How can I shift my character from one to another? And a lot of books, the journey really is moving from one archetype to a different archetype. That's the arc.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, and I wanna pause here and dig into this a little bit because people do push back on the idea that something is formulaic. And what I wanna propose is if you don't have a solid archetype sitting behind that character, what you have is reader confusion and reader boredom. This just feels like a hot mess, and I don't trust this author to get me from point A to point B.
Gabriela Pereira: Exactly. It's not paint by numbers, but it's more like narrowing the focus. So your character isn't like, a foot in each of the archetypal boxes. Your character's sort of narrowed their focus and now, like you said, there's less reader confusion because you're sort of, zooming in to that type that your character is and you're kind of bringing out more of those qualities in your character.
Sue Campbell: Yeah. Yeah, I'd love that.
Gabriela Pereira: The other thing to think about too is your character can also shift up and down on the matrix. So you can shift what the character wants. Like your character could start out wanting one thing and they could end up wanting something very different.
Sue Campbell: Versus Darcy.
Gabriela Pereira: exactly. And it's interesting, Elizabeth Bennett's arc, in some ways it kind of depends on the direction that you look at it from. If you look at it from a "Will Darcy and Elizabeth get together?" Arc, then it's very much like she goes from being, I wanna be single. I don't want any, anyone in my life. I want Jane to be happy and I'm just gonna be her, you know spinster younger sister who's gonna like teach her children how to play their instruments and embroider cushions and whatever. Like that's her plan for the future. And then when once you know, she meets Darcy and things kind of move along, eventually she realizes that her happiness is really tied to being with him.
In fact, at the end of the book, when she writes a letter to her aunt, Aunt Gardner, she says, you know, Jane only smiles. I laugh. Like she's so happy because she's with Darcy. But if you look at it from the perspective of Elizabeth's happiness, it's front and center all the way through.
Like in the beginning, she thinks her happiness is tied to being single and all of that. But in the end, it's just that the happiness kind of goes sideways. But it's still all about happiness. It's about she knows what's gonna make her happy, and that's what she's pursuing all the way through, it just the thing that makes her happy is what changes.
Sue Campbell: Yes. Yep. I like that. I like that a lot.
Gabriela Pereira: You can have like a character who starts out wanting to change something and then they end up wanting to preserve something different. In fact, you could argue that toward the end of the Hunger Games trilogy Katniss actually shifts from disruptor mode to protector mode because now she's trying to protect district 13.
She's trying to sort of, you know, hold onto the life that she has, hold onto the life with her sister and all of that. And so she kind of shifts her desire from like. I'm the Mockingjay. I'm gonna change things to like, okay, now I kind of know where I stand. I wanna stay here. And then, it kind of shifts a little back and forth because then when she shoots President Coin, that completely changes things.
And that's a total sideways move. But you could make an argument that she shifts from disruptor to protector.
Sue Campbell: And I think that's also an important point to underscore for people. Like all of this is open to a little bit interpretation. Like you can look at Elizabeth Bennett's arc from this lens or from that lens, and you can look at Katniss's arc from this lens or from that lens or, so. It's not like this rigid, mathematical, sucks all the creativity and art out of it kind of thing.
You just have to know as an author how you feel about the character. But other people might end up putting a different interpretation on it once it's out in the world and you don't have any control over that, but it's gonna help you write the novel if you know where your character is in this matrix.
Gabriela Pereira: Exactly. And when you think of the desires too, sometimes the actual desire changes, like Elizabeth Bennett goes from wanting to be single to wanting to be with Darcy, but sometimes it's the angle at which you're looking at the desire. So for example, let's suppose you have a romance novel and the character's looking for love.
So that's a change thing. But then they meet somebody who they had been with in the past, and now they're like trying to regain, rekindle this love that they had before. That's a preserve driven desire. It's still a romance novel. It's still a romance. There's still gonna be the happily ever after at the end, but now you're kind of angling the desire in a slightly different direction, and that shifts them from one archetype to the other.
Sue Campbell: Yes. Yeah, and you can play, like once you know the archetype, there are all, like you called it, wiggle room. There are ways where you can kind of subvert expectations and keep it fresh and fun. That's when you're bringing your particular spin to it as well.
Gabriela Pereira: Exactly. And there are also certain types of narratives that are more compatible with certain archetypes than with others. Now, it doesn't mean that you can't combine an archetypal character with a narrative that kind of belongs to a different archetype and you know, kind of do a mashup like that. Like it's totally fair game.
But understanding which types of stories are more compatible is also really important. For example. Stories like rags to riches stories or David and Goliath, like us versus them , big guy versus the little guy that is classic underdog storytelling. You could have a disruptor doing an, you know, big guy versus little guy story.
But now you have to be thinking like, okay, the big guy's gotta be much bigger if you've got aspirational character instead of an underdog character as the protagonist. So it kind of helps you to also frame how you're gonna put your story together if you understand which types of stories go with which of the archetypes.
Sue Campbell: Is now a good time to shift and talk about supporting characters?
Gabriela Pereira: Yeah, I think that's a great idea.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, and I think you made a really good point of like, we gotta know who our protagonist is before we develop a supporting cast of characters, right? Like Ducky in Pretty and Pink is the way he is because of the Molly Ringwald character, right?
You want supporting characters who are gonna push on your protagonist in the right way to get them to change in the way that they're gonna change.
Gabriela Pereira: Yeah, exactly. So here's how I think of supporting characters and notice I use the word supporting. I don't use side characters. I don't use secondary characters because I don't like this idea of supporting characters kinda be like shoved to the side, like they're important. Darcy's a really important character in Pride and Prejudice, like he is not a side character by any stretch, but the word supporting implies a relationship between the supporting character and the protagonist, and that relationship is that the supporting character is there to support the journey of the main character. So the main character, it's their story. They're the ones driving the bus, but the supporting characters are kind of like holding that story up.
They're supporting that story and helping that character, either by creating obstacles for that character or by helping them along in their journey.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, absolutely.
Gabriela Pereira: The way I like to think of supporting characters, again, I'm all about types, so I like systems because systems give order and then once you know the rules, you can go out and break them all. But you need to kind of know how the things are put together.
It's sort of like when you take something apart to see how it's put together and then put it back together again. It's sort of that same idea. So the way I like to think of supporting characters is that there are certain types that tend to come up again and again and again. So the classic type is the villain or the opponent and I wanna make a distinction here between a villain slash opponent and an antagonist.
Sue Campbell: Mm-hmm.
Gabriela Pereira: Most people use antagonists to mean villains, and that's totally true. Villains are a type of antagonist, but an antagonist really, by definition, is a thing that is causing problems and like anti your protagonist. So it could be a character, it could be a person, it could also be a shark, like in the movie Jaws.
it could be the dinosaurs in jurassic Park. Or it could be the perfect storm like it could be, it could be the matrix, it could be any number of things. And when you have these antagonists that are not human, a lot of times what you'll see is you'll see like a secondary villain, like a, I call them the everyday villain that puts a face to the faceless other antagonist.
So like in Jaws you have the mayor who's trying to keep the beach open even though there's this shark on the loose. So like now we kind of know who to root against because you can't really root against the shark, like the shark's just doing what sharks do. You can't hate on the shark.
And same thing with the Jurassic Park dinosaurs. They're just being dinosaurs, like you can't hate on them, but. You know, you've got the guy who tries to steal the embryos and then ends up releasing all the dinosaurs, like that's the one that we're rooting against. So you kind of have these layers of villains or layers of antagonists, and sometimes the antagonist is like a big amorphous force.
Sometimes it's a very specific human being, like Hans Gruber in Die Hard. Understanding that relationship between antagonist and villain I think is really important because you can have these layers, but those aren't the only types of supporting characters.
You could also have characters who are allies to your main character, and that can include things like BFFs, sidekicks, love interests, and people like that who are like we're in it with you.
Love interests are interesting when they come into play, especially if it's not a romance, but you have a romance subplot. Usually the best way to bring them into play is to create like a situation where the love interest wants something that's counter to what the main character wants.
Sue Campbell: Almost an antagonist.
Gabriela Pereira: They're almost an antagonist. They're not like antagonizing the main character. They might still be a love interest, but they have different goals.
Their goals are in opposition and so now the main character's stuck thinking, do I pursue this thing that I want or do I do something that is gonna help the person that I care about? And that kind of conflict is really what makes the story interesting. And the same thing can come into play with a BFF character.
Sue Campbell: Ducky comes to mind again there because he's the BFF character, but he wants to be the love interest. Yeah.
Gabriela Pereira: Exactly. Exactly. And that creates complications and it creates an interesting relationship dynamic between the two main characters or between the main character and Ducky.
You also sometimes have advisory characters. So these include characters like the classic mentor, like the Obiwan Kenobi or the Dumbledore, you know, like the character who's giving instruction to the main character. You see that a lot in adventure, fantasy type stories. There's a danger zone with the mentor character. , And that is very, very tempting because you have this character who knows everything, and it's very tempting to make them wanna jump in and solve all the problems.
And you really have to hold back. So, you know, and you wanna also make sure that they don't like info dump all the information onto the main character. Like, let me explain the whole history of the entire world that you are now in. That's gonna be very unsatisfying to the reader.
And then there's a really interesting advisory character that I call the Fool. And this character, this archetypal, supporting character is one that you see dating back all the way to the Greek plays where you'd have stuff happening on stage and then the chorus would come in and kind of editorialize on what's going on, and then they would leave and more stuff would happen and then they'd come back.
And that whole dynamic. And you also see the fool in Shakespeare. You have characters like the Clown in Twelfth Night, and The Fool in King Lear. And the purpose of the fool type of supporting character is they are there to tell the main character all the things the main character doesn't wanna hear, but really, really needs to know.
So the main character is like, la la, la, la, la. I don't wanna hear this. Don't tell me, don't tell me. And the fool is there. Like, no, no, no, no, no. You need to know this. Like, pay attention. And that creates dynamic and tension and, and all of that in your story as well.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, I love a fool character. I love that archetype so much. That's one for my ID list.
Gabriela Pereira: You know, the Fool in Lear is really interesting because if you've seen some productions of King Lear, the Fool is actually played by the same actor as Cordelia. And Cordelia appears in the first act and in the fifth act, and then the fool appears in Acts two, three, and four. And what's interesting is that both Cordelia and the fool are telling Lear all the things he doesn't wanna hear but needs to know.
And so like they're doing the same thing, but they're just doing it in the form of different characters. And at the end of the fifth act, when Cordelia dies, lear says, my poor little fool, like he calls her the fool. The dots all of a sudden connect in act five.
It's so cool. I love it.
Sue Campbell: That's fantastic. Any other supporting characters we wanna touch on?
Gabriela Pereira: So there are some characters, I call these adjacent characters and they're characters that you don't see very much, but their influence is felt. So there's one type, I call it the linchpin character. It's basically a McGuffin in the form of a character. It's the character that kind of like creates the situation that the rest of the story unfolds with, so I would call Prim Everdeen in the Hunger Games a linchpin character because the fact that she exists and that her name gets picked out of the jar is the event that knocks over all the dominoes that then creates the whole rest of the trilogy. So that's one example.
Toto in the Wizard of Oz movie. the whole reason Dorothy is running away and then gets stuck in the tornado is because she was trying to protect Toto and, you know, Toto was causing problems. So, that's the linchpin character.
And then you have a shadow character, and these are characters who you don't see in the story, but you feel their presence. So I would characterize the father figure in the Hunger Games. We see him in memories like Katniss will remember things about him and we see his influence on Katniss, but we don't actually see him because he's dead.
But his presence is felt throughout the series.
Sue Campbell: Okay. I love it. I see this a lot in early drafts of things where we've got too many characters and they could be combined.
And when you look at. Pride and prejudice, there are five sisters, but she, Jane Austen points you immediately to the three that matter in like a single sentence.
I can't like recite it line by line. I almost can, but it's like, oh, these are the only three. We're tracking elizabeth, Jane, and Lydia.
So I think it's really important after you've done like a first draft and you think you have all your characters, to really look through a critical lens. Do you have ideas on how to use your framework to pare down or add. some people are lean draft writers and they don't have all the characters they need.
Gabriela Pereira: So the first thing to be aware of is like you could have the same character serve different functions. So you could have a character who is a mentor character, but they're also serving the function of the bff. So they could be a really close friend, like think of in the prequels of Star Wars, that Obiwan Kenobi is both like a best friend friend to Anakin Skywalker, but he's also the advisor advisor and the sort of Jedi leader guy. So that's one way to do it, to have characters who are serving multiple roles.
The other thing, and if you're thinking of characters also you can think about using characters as a unit. One thing you see in Pride and Prejudice a lot is that Kitty and Lydia are kind of a unit.
They sort of move together. And even though Lydia's the dominant one in that pairing, kitty's kind of along for the ride. And she's almost like an extra. She's there on the periphery, sort of fill in space.
And so you could have things like that where you sort of collect characters. Like in the movie mean girls, you've got the dominant mean girl and then you've got the two mean girls who are on the side and they have their own characteristics. But they're sort of a unit, like they kind of move as a group, so you don't have to think about like three characters. Now you're sort of thinking of like a unit that you're moving around in your story.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, I think that's really good advice. And then the reason there are Five Bennett sisters is just of the stakes of having to marry off that many daughters, right?
But we can't track five sisters as closely as we're tracking those three. The other thing in Pride and Prejudice that I love is like Mrs. Long, right? And her niece. We never see them. They're only talked about. And it's just sort of like reminding of the competition,
right? For the scarcity of gentlemen and the competition. Not every character in your book needs to be walking around and in scenes and fully fleshed out to do the job that your book needs it to do. I think people think, oh, once I put somebody in there, I gotta do something with them, and it's like, how are they actually serving the story and then let 'em do the bare minimum to do that.
Gabriela Pereira: And that goes back to what we were talking about earlier, where the role of the supporting characters is to support the journey of the main character. So Mrs. Long supports the journey. I would consider her a shadow character. We feel her presence in the story, but we never actually see her anywhere in the story.
the important thing is that she's supporting the journey by raising the stakes, by us realizing there is competition there. The gentlemen are scarce and there are lots of ladies around. So, you know, it kind of makes it even more urgent for a Bennet sister to find and marry somebody.
Sue Campbell: Yep. Yeah. Oh my God, this is so fun. Any parting words that you wanna give to people out there who really wanna make their characters sing and shine and just, you know, sparkle on the page?
Gabriela Pereira: Yeah, the thing I always say over and over again is it's not paint by numbers, so don't think of this as prescriptive advice. Don't go into your story thinking, all right, I have a disruptor character and I'm gonna do this, and I'm gonna show their vulnerability and I'm gonna do blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I've got a shadow character over here, and I've got mentor character over there. It's gonna be way too confusing. So instead, what I like to do is use these frameworks retroactively. So write your story the way you're gonna write your story, and just have fun and just be on the page and write great scenes and just see where they go.
Then when you're in the revision process, that's when you start to look and you go, oh, I see this character's a mentor, or this character over here is a fool. Okay, how can I up the ante and make things even more, you know, butting heads between that fool character and my protagonist? That's the stuff that you do in the revision process rather than the writing process. So not paint by numbers.
Sue Campbell: great advice, Gabriela. Thank you so much. Where can people learn more about you and DIYMFA?
Gabriela Pereira: Well, the best way to connect with me is by joining my newsletter over at diymfa.com/join JOIN, and you'll get a starter kit that kind of introduces you to the whole DIYMFA ecosystem and our methodology and all of that. It's a little mini course delivered over email over a couple of days.
So, that's the best way to connect with me.
Sue Campbell: Beautiful. Thank you so much for your time, Gabriela. It's always a pleasure to talk to you.
Gabriela Pereira: Thank you so much for having me. It's been a blast.
Anne Hawley: If you'd like a weekly dose of writing insight and mindset and marketing tips in your inbox, subscribe to the write anyway newsletter at pagesandplatforms.com/subscribe.
And that's it for this episode of the Write Anyway podcast. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.