This week on Alchemy, Tim and LeeAnna crack open the hood of modern romance to show us what love looks like when it’s firing on all cylinders… or stalling dramatically on the freeway of emotional dysfunction.

Writer's Prompts for the podcast "Love Unscripted | Love in Full Color: The Emotional Landscape"

Tim advises writers to build characters who are emotionally complex, full of contradictions, and hopefully not emotionally totaled by chapter three. He urges you to give your characters engines too - emotional ones, with inputs and outputs. Let them stall, restart, sputter, maybe explode.

The more improbable the situation, the more it often rings true to life.

Look, let’s be honest. Life’s full of narcissists, co-dependents, and all their messy, twisted relationships. 

In short: torture your readers—they’ll love you for it.

So here’s the challenge: create characters who have no idea how to live with their paradoxes—because, spoiler alert, neither do we!

Get ready for a wild ride of snark, bad decisions, and surprisingly insightful moments (we promise, they’re in there somewhere).

Writer's Prompts for the podcast "Welcome to Club Confusion"

Because at some point in life, we all stand in a metaphorical phone booth, trying to make peace with a past that doesn’t give a shit if we’re ready.

Writer's Prompts for the podcast "Panic Mode: Activated!"

Embrace the panic, and remember: chaos makes for unforgettable stories.

In this Alchemy Short n’ Sweet episode, Tim and LeeAnna delve into the joy of a crisis made so much worse by the person who panics!

Write your mess. Write your truth. Write what hurts. Someone out there needs it more than you know

“Small Talk, Big Deal” turns the tiniest human interactions into a beautiful mess of psychology, awkwardness, danger, and longing.

Sometimes the most mythic moment in your book should be the leg of a drowning mythological figure waving from a distant corner.

Writer's Prompts for the podcast "Enter Stage Left"

Writer's Prompts for the podcast "Pressure Makes Diamonds... Or Dust"

Fiction should be a mirror to our world’s darkest and lightest moments.

The messy, chaotic world of people cracking under pressure—because let’s face it, life’s a pressure cooker, and sometimes the lid just pops!