Coaching the character—a new technique for writers

Plus an announcement. I've got good news, I've got bad news. But it's mostly good!

Hello and happy Wednesday!

I’m taking a break from our financial literacy series to touch on craft this week. In the beginning of April, I went to NYC to reunite with editor Sally Kim (who edited my first two novels) and her new team at Little Brown. (My first book was with Sally at Simon & Schuster, then I followed her to Putnam, and now she’s at a great new house again. As you can see, I’m a groupie for my editors!)

I made this graphic from our lunch because I am a nerd who makes Canva images of things to motivate me! If I look wet it’s because I was—I walked to the Little Brown offices from Grand Central Station in the rain.

Over lunch, we discussed the secondary plot lines and character arcs that need strengthening and texturizing in my next round of novel edits. If you’re not familiar with publishing timelines, for an early summer 2026 publishing date (which is what my novel has been given), this is what I’m looking at for the rest of the year:

• Until mid-July: I will be working on developmental edits. (Stay tuned for a video post about how I’m tackling those— but in the meantime you can check out the highlight reel entitled “revision land” on my personal Instagram account to see how I’m prepping for another big revision.)

• Sometime in August: I’ll get notes back from my editor and I’ll have to address those.

• Autumn: We’ll move into the “pass” phase. Traditionally, authors get three passes before a book moves into production. The closer you get to the last pass, the less that you can change. Copyedits will also hit during this time. Oddly enough, copyedits are the hardest stage for me because it’s the last chance you’ll ever have to change something in the manuscript. I freeze up during copyedits and need a lot of time to thaw.

• Late autumn/early winter: I imagine we’ll have ARCS (or whatever will pass for ARCs if the tariffs keep up and render paper and ink prohibitively expensive.)

• Winter 2026 + spring: I’ll develop off-the-book pieces to pitch and place to support the book. In tandem with Little Brown’s publicity and marketing department, I’ll also be developing a marketing strategy, pre-order campaign, publicity support and all of the promotional steps I outline in the “After” section of my guidebook Before and After the Book Deal. I’ll also be outlining a new novel—a terrifying prospect! But when you have a lead title at a Big Five publisher, it behooves you to have something in the pipeline in case the book is a success and they want to lock down what you’re doing next.

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Okay, that’s quite a timeline, but what am I doing now?

This month finds me in the pep-talk phase, getting ready to go back into my book and edit. As you know from following me here, I have been writing and revising and otherwise working my a** off on this novel, ALAN OPTS OUT, for well over two years. The book and I….well, it’s not that we’re tired of one another, but the spark is somewhat dimmed. We’ve just been spending so much time together is the thing. I know my agent’s viewpoint because we worked closely together on this project almost nonstop over the last year, and I know my editor’s position on the edits because we’ve been on the phone about them frequently, but I’m the one that needs to get back into the word doc with panache and energy, so I have to hype myself up for these revisions. In order to get to a place of unbridled excitement, I enlisted one of my oldest, dearest friends, Rebecca Babcock, to help me. Here’s why, and here’s how.

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Coaching the character—and why it worked for me

I’ve known Rebecca since I was 6 years old and her mother was like a second mom to me (both Rebecca and her mother appear in my memoir). We grew up in Greenwich, CT together in the 80s with fathers who were bigwigs in their Manhattan jobs, and we both lived through the dynamics and the fallout of having a successful father off-stage and a hyper-present, self-sacrificing mom at home. I’m mentioning all this because my new book, ALAN OPTS OUT, takes place in Greenwich, CT and is very much about the workaholic father/selfless mother dynamic that we both grew up with.

Rebecca lives in a studio, so while I was staying with her during my NY trip, she overheard the work calls I had about my novel. In addition to being an extremely upbeat person with a chronic illness, Rebecca is also a renowned career and life coach, and on the day that I was leaving, she offered to help me coach my character. “I’ll run you through the questions and exercises I do with my human clients,” she said. “Except we’ll be doing them for fictional people.”

Reader, I was enthralled by this idea. I’ve struggled from the beginning with the woman character in my book (the novel is dual perspective alternating between the husband’s POV and the wife’s) and I knew Rebecca could help me get past blocks that I’ve been having; push me out of grooves my characters are stuck in. I also knew she’d call me out where I was phoning things in. (My agent and editor do this very well, too, but there’s just something extra special about hearing pushback from someone you learned to shave your legs with.)

And so we had our coaching call, and holy moly, listen. Because I know how smart and quick Rebecca is and how good she is at her job, I knew that this would be a dynamic and positive phone call, but because I can be squirrely and hyper private about on-the-page issues with my writing, I wasn’t sure I’d get vulnerable enough to let her help me. But because she takes the same questions-based approach to coaching as I do, I gave myself over to the process and it was phenomenal. In the space of an hour, Rebecca helped me bash down walls and preconceptions I had erected around my characters, protecting them from their own potential.

I’m sharing the entirety of our coaching call here with Rebecca’s permission so that you can see the many ah-ha moments she helped me dig up. I do hope that you enjoy it!

Wasn’t that amazing? I’ve started working some of the ideas we discussed into the manuscript and it’s moving the prose in fresh new directions that feel exciting and true.

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And now for my announcement.

I’ve worked so hard on this novel that now that it’s sold, I want to work even harder to make sure it’s the best possible version of itself when it goes to print. To do that, I’m shutting down my consultation services through 2025. Not my Substack—I’ll still be publishing my newsletter nearly every week—but I won’t be doing any one-on-one coaching for a while.

I was already carrying the knowledge that I had to scale back in my work-life when I visited Rebecca, so we’ve been discussing her taking on some of my writing clients, especially those who can’t see the forest for the trees in terms of character development, those whose stories have no stakes and little momentum, and writers who need serious help with accountability and confidence.

We’ve been delighted to discover how much our coaching methods overlap. Here’s a grid we worked on that shows how “writer lingo” translates in the personal coaching world:

The sheet of translations Rebecca and I came up with.

Tempted to coach your character?

Rebecca has set up a calendar where you can book a 20-minute long (free) clarity call to see if you (and your characters) are a good match for her services. She doesn’t have a ton of spots for coaching clients so I’d get on the horn if I were you! Rebecca’s prepared to take on a select group of people for longer term coaching, but she’s also excited to welcome those who just need a session or two to breakthrough to a place where they can see their project in a brand new light.

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For those of you who have been here for a while, you know I don’t personally recommend people unless I trust them, know them, believe that they can help. I’ve known Rebecca for forty years (which is crazy!) and I know that she can help.

I’d love to hear from people who have a positive experience with Rebecca! I hope she helps you as much as she did me. In the meantime, I’ll be over here rounding out my characters and tightening my sub-plots. We’re all in this together.

Thanks for being here. Let me know in the comments whether you think that character coaching might unlock something for you!

Courtney