A Must-Read Substack: The Butter Letter
aka 7 Figure Fiction
#AmWriting Listeners, listen up: We’re in love with this Substack from Theodora Taylor. She’s our guest this week on the podcast we’re sharing, the author of 50 romance novels and one gloriously entertaining craft book, 7 Figure Fiction: How to Use Universal Fantasy to Sell Your Book to Anyone.
Now, hang on. I hear you. You’re writing literary fiction. Or nonfiction. And these “butter” ideas (butter has officially entered the #AmWriting lexicon) sound like tropes from fairy tales and romance!
Open your mind. Give this a minute. “Butter”, or Universal Fantasies, are anything that reaches out and grab you by the reader-hand and says, buy me. THey work in literary fiction, memoir, even non-fiction, once you start understanding what you’re looking for. Is your non-fiction shelf filled with “things that aren’t they way you thought they were” titles? That’s some butter. Like a good “child proving worth to neglectful/dismissive parent story? Butter. Winning the big game, proving the fancy detective was wrong all along, realizing that love is worth the pain? Butter, butter, butter. And the way TT (as we call her around here) talks about this stuff is direct, honest and super-helpful.
SO. We strongly suggest you subscribe, and here’s a taste of what you’ll get. (Don’t want to click? Full text way below.
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FROM A RECENT EMAIL:
I’ve been thinking a lot about story butter (obvs).
And I’ve determined that it basically has three stages: Spreading, Baking, and Serving.
Or, for us structure-heads: Set-Up, Build-up, and Execution.
Spreading the butter often looks like the antithesis of the butter you’ll eventually serve.
In an example of the Bully Really Likes You, this would be the bully doing something mean (and super dramatic) to make you feel that he doesn’t like you.
In Beauty and the Beast, this is the actual pull from normal life.
In the first five minutes of Virgin River, it’s Meg’s first night in town turning into a triple disaster of a car accident, unintended future boss insult, and the discovery that the beautiful cabin she was promised is anything but.
Spreading the Butter often takes the shape of anything that makes your main character miserable—but sets them up later for a mirror scene where they are the opposite of miserable.
And, of course, Spreading the Butter can be totally positive and exciting too. Some of my favorite butter in both fantasy and real life is the stuff that reeks of potential.
The cold-but-Regency-hot (and totally eligible) Mr. Darcy walks into a party (Pride & Prejudice). Honestly, A Bachelor In Need of a Wife butter never gets old.
Charlie finds out that his new assigned deskmate in homeroom (or whatever it’s called in British grammar school) is Nick, an insanely cute ginger rugby player (Heartstopper)—that’s spreading the butter, for sure. I mean they even used it for the main marketing graphic.
Dude, every meet-cute you’ve ever seen or read is basically Spreading the Butter.
But Spreading the Butter is also Dani, Florence Pugh’s character in Midsommar, reluctantly getting invited by her distant boyfriend to an excursion to a special summer festival in Sweden.
Seriously, since it’s October, have you ever noticed how many horror stories begin with an invitation to a special event (Squid Games), a move into an inherited (Locke and Key, Ghostbusters: Afterlife), or a spectacular (The Girl Before) house? Unexpected Invitations—that’s definitely Spreading the Butter.
Think about your favorite entertainments from 2022 so far. What butter was spread in the very first episode or act? Let us know in the comments.
And, don’t forget about your WIP: What butter are you spreading in your first chapter?
In general, make sure you know whether you’re spreading, baking, or serving butter if you want to achieve WEB (well-executed butter). But we’ll talk more about that after we discuss Baking the Butter and Serving the Butter in posts 2 and 3 of this series.
Thanks for reading 7 Figure Fiction! If you loved this post, please forward it to a creative friend and encourage them to subscribe! 🧈❤️✍️
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