Story Deep Dive Podcast

About Story Deep Dive Podcast

Join editor and USA Today bestselling author Dana Pittman and developmental editor Rachel Arsenault for a weekly deep dive into great novels. storydeepdive.substack.com (https://storydeepdive.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Story Deep Dive

Category

arts · fiction

Language

en

Explicit

Yes

First episode

5 Jan 2025

Latest episode

8 Nov 2026

Latest episodes

99 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   8 Nov 2026

   Episode 97: Low Stakes, Ticking Clocks, and Romantic Conflict in The Christmas Fix

   Welcome to Story Deep Dive! In this episode, Dana and Rachel dig into the plot of The Christmas Fix by Lucy Score, a holiday romance with no villain where the love interest supplies all the conflict. Whether you’re a romance writer, paranormal author, or story strategist, you’ll gain valuable insights on building highs and lows when the stakes are small, using one firm deadline to hold a quiet plot together, and moving weeks of story time without losing your reader. You can also watch the video version of this podcast on YouTube! Estimate Timestamps 0:24 – The Danja Tales Holiday Collaboration Dana’s community collaboration is launching: a multi-genre set, every book with a romance thread, written, launched, and marketed together. She calls collaborations a safe place to “try a trope, to try a certain sort of lens on your work,” because you are only committed to one book. 5:49 – Stuck, or Does It Need More Time? Rachel separates two stalls that feel the same: “stuck is different from, oh, this thing just needs more time.” Dana’s starting question is “well, what do I know?” and her rule for the rest: “We’re not microwave. We crockpot over here.” 12:00 – StoryCypher: One Problem at a Time Rachel’s Novel 101 writers are in second drafts. They sort problems into broad categories, pick about three primary problems, and solve them one at a time. The win: “oh, I learned that I can solve story problems.” Dana notes these are usually the same problems that kept them from finishing before. 19:34 – The Agenda Dana brings classic contemporary romance, a holiday that’s more than a date, the love interest as antagonist, and low stakes at the dark moment. Rachel brings the “group project plot” and how Score handles the passage of time. 25:45 – The Love Interest Is the Antagonist Dana’s shorthand for the book: “a Hallmark story, but with steamy bits.” Cat and Noah “have a goal state for getting to the same end and they are not in alignment.” Both want Merry rebuilt and they fight over how. When they agree, Dana says, “it does get a little bit thin.” 33:44 – The Group Project Plot Rachel names the plot type: nature starts the trouble and everybody wants the same thing. “There’s no evil corporation trying to take over Merry.” The town never resists, so “all of the conflict is coming from the relationships.” 36:34 – Deadlines and the Killer Behind the Bush Dana: what keeps a quiet plot “from being jello is the fact that there was a deadline.” Her warning against overcorrecting: “Why do I have a killer hiding behind the bush?” The fix is one objective marker: “did they save the town by this date?” 40:24 – Highs and Lows in a Low-Stakes Story Rachel asks what a low looks like when nothing is life or death. Dana says hit all three threads at the low, and keep the stakes “low in the area of objectiveness” but “high on the relevancy to that character.” She also names who this book is for: small town, cozy, and Hallmark readers. 45:32 – The Flat Line Rachel describes the rebuild as a flat line that “pulls down the average” of the highs and lows. Dana points out that secondary characters cut off friction that could have created a dip. 48:50 – Make It Work Double Duty The deadline carried weight because Christmas and the town meant something to both leads. Dana: “If you don’t learn nothing, learn this. She made this stuff work double duty.” 52:05 – Time-Lapse, Then Zoom Rachel shows how Score summarizes eight weeks “with such focus and specificity” that we feel the progress, then zooms in on moments that are plot relevant and put the leads together. Dana adds that the projects were representative of the town, the family, Noah, and the tree. Real-time focus on everything would make it “10,000 pages long.” 59:11 – The Most Realistic Romance Dana says the dark moment needed firmer footing. She also calls this the most realistic romance they’ve covered: a single dad co-parenting, with a government job and an old house. 1:01:44 – Try It, Then Adapt Rachel connects the book to Dana’s collaborations: experiment, see what lands, and carry it into the next book. Dana: “a lot of times you’re not going to know how well it lands until it is outside of you.” Book Selection: Title: The Christmas Fix Author: Lucy Score She’ll save Christmas just to spite him… There’s only one thing standing in the way of Cat King saving a small town’s Christmas festival: Grumpy town manager Noah Yates. Single dad Noah takes his responsibilities seriously. When a late season hurricane turns Merry, Connecticut, into a disaster, he’s left scrambling to pick up the pieces of the town he loves. At least, until home renovation expert and smoking hot reality TV star Catalina King arrives with a camera crew and a budget big enough to put the town back together again. But Noah doesn’t want a celebrity diva capitalizing on their tragedy or filling his daughter’s head with visions of glitz and glam. Blonde bombshell Cat is used to being underestimated, but Noah has an uncanny knack for getting under her skin. They can’t be in a room together without rubbing each other the wrong way…except that time in the dark alley where the rubbing was just right. Can these enemies work together to pull off a Christmas miracle or will their fighting leave them both on the naughty list? Where to Find the Book The Christmas Fix by Lucy Score is available in several formats. It's also widely available in libraries and online retailers. Details on her website (https://www.lucyscore.net/book/the-christmas-fix). Next Episode: In the next episode, Dana and Rachel turn to the characters of The Christmas Fix: how Cat and Noah each change, and the big cast that makes Merry feel like a real town. Join the Conversation: Like what you heard? Subscribe, leave a review, and share your thoughts at storydeepdive.com (http://storydeepdive.com/). Follow Story Deep Dive on YouTube and Substack, and connect with Dana and Rachel to keep the discussion going! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storydeepdive.substack.com (https://storydeepdive.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

2. 

   1 Nov 2026

   Episode 96: Old-School Romance, Group Projects, and Small Town Christmas in The Christmas Fix

   Welcome to Story Deep Dive! In this episode, Dana and Rachel kick off their month on The Christmas Fix by Lucy Score, a steamy small-town holiday romance with no villain and plenty of conflict. They map the threads they’ll follow all month: why this is a classic contemporary romance, how a rebuilding project carries the external plot, and why Christmas has to matter to the story instead of just sitting on the calendar. Whether you’re a romance writer, paranormal author, or story strategist, you’ll gain valuable insights on letting the relationship drive the story, positioning your leads so the plot creates conflict, and setting stakes by choosing where you point the reader’s attention. You can also watch the video version of this podcast on YouTube! Estimate Timestamps 0:05 – A Holiday Kickoff Rachel opens the month on a light, festive book after Hell Bent, and spends a minute apologizing for her choice of words. 1:31 – Dana at Danja Tales: You Already Do Hard Things Dana has been learning Spanish and feels like she’s learned nothing, but she keeps showing up. When her husband said writing a novel seemed much harder, she realized: “You do hard things all the time. And you don’t realize it’s not hard to you anymore.” Her message to writers: let the journey be what it is, and make room in your life for the thing you want. 9:05 – Rachel’s Runner Client Rachel shares how she helped a first-time novelist who runs: nobody starts at five miles a day, and some runs just suck. Her tool is the analogy itself, “finding something analogous so that your mind can kind of wrap around the experience.” Dana adds that grown-grown writers already carry transferable skills. 13:58 – Rachel at StoryCypher: A Gothic Reading List Rachel leans into her side-quest genre with The Hacienda, The Reformatory, and Interview with the Vampire. Gothic fiction, she says, is so good at atmosphere and prose. 17:46 – Gothic Romance and Dark Romance Roots Dana explains that early dark romance was shelved as gothic romance or romantic suspense. Rachel breaks down the classic gothic setup and why it lends itself to romance, while Dana backs slowly toward the door. 24:49 – The Agenda Dana brings classic contemporary romance, romance as a dual protagonist genre, making Christmas count, and “it’s not about perfection, but impact.” Rachel brings the plot archetype, character design, and the fact that this is early Lucy Score. 27:32 – Walking Into Book Two Rachel felt like she’d walked into the middle of something. Learning that the book follows Mr. Fixer Upper in a series that never continued cleared up her confusion about the big cast. 28:57 – A Classic Contemporary Romance Dana’s frame: the relationship drives the front half, and the physical relationship isn’t consummated until around the middle, “a good old, old school romance.” For anyone writing a romantic subplot: “Same rules apply. It’s just the scale.” Rachel notices the early language isn’t steamy either, and Dana explains what that signals to a reader. 33:00 – A Group Project Plot Rachel names the external plot archetype: a group project. Nature starts the conflict, nobody plays the villain, and the job is to rebuild the town. They compare it to Tempt Me at Twilight and Before I Let Go. 36:44 – Why the External Thread Still Matters Rachel says the rebuild gives the story something to do when the lovers aren’t together. Dana says the Christmas Eve deadline makes it concrete, where Before I Let Go stayed open-ended. Her Pride and Prejudice example shows how an external thread keeps the story moving while each lead changes at their own pace. 41:53 – Romance Is a Dual Protagonist Genre Dana explains why most craft books miss that romance has two protagonists, and both have to change. “When the two of them bump into each other’s worlds, that’s where the good stuff happens.” 44:56 – The Bulldozer and the Immovable Object Rachel shows how each lead’s position on the plot creates conflict: Cat comes in as construction plus reality TV, and Noah is the town manager guarding the budget. Dana adds that the reason each says no is “the epitome of what the other represents.” It’s low stakes, but high conflict. 48:30 – Making Christmas Count Dana lays out how Score layers Christmas into the deadline and into what the season means to Noah and Cat. Rachel: “This story almost could only happen at Christmas.” 52:47 – Stakes Live Where You Point the Reader Rachel notes that Score could have made the stakes financial ruin, but she drew attention to the internal stakes instead. Dana’s frame: “There is a Noah-sized hole in her life that only Noah can fit,” and the “more” beyond chemistry is what builds the small moments. 56:27 – Early Lucy Score Rachel compares this 2017 book with Things We Never Got Over (2023): you can see it’s early, and her humor, town, and banter are all already here. Dana closes on “it’s not about perfection, but impact.” 1:00:55 – Wrap Both recommend the audiobook, and Rachel praises how the narration works the dialogue cues into the dialogue itself. Book Selection: Title: The Christmas Fix Author: Lucy Score She’ll save Christmas just to spite him… There’s only one thing standing in the way of Cat King saving a small town’s Christmas festival: Grumpy town manager Noah Yates. Single dad Noah takes his responsibilities seriously. When a late season hurricane turns Merry, Connecticut, into a disaster, he’s left scrambling to pick up the pieces of the town he loves. At least, until home renovation expert and smoking hot reality TV star Catalina King arrives with a camera crew and a budget big enough to put the town back together again. But Noah doesn’t want a celebrity diva capitalizing on their tragedy or filling his daughter’s head with visions of glitz and glam. Blonde bombshell Cat is used to being underestimated, but Noah has an uncanny knack for getting under her skin. They can’t be in a room together without rubbing each other the wrong way…except that time in the dark alley where the rubbing was just right. Can these enemies work together to pull off a Christmas miracle or will their fighting leave them both on the naughty list? Where to Find the Book The Christmas Fix by Lucy Score is available in several formats. It's also widely available in libraries and online retailers. Details on her website (https://www.lucyscore.net/book/the-christmas-fix). Next Episode: In the next episode, Dana and Rachel dig into the plot of The Christmas Fix: the classic contemporary romance flow, the love interest as antagonist, and how Score moves time across a whole-town rebuild. Join the Conversation: Like what you heard? Subscribe, leave a review, and share your thoughts at storydeepdive.com (http://storydeepdive.com/). Follow Story Deep Dive on YouTube and Substack, and connect with Dana and Rachel to keep the discussion going! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storydeepdive.substack.com (https://storydeepdive.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

3. 

   25 Oct 2026

   Episode 95: Gifted Protagonists, Book Twos, and Story Promise in Hell Bent

   Welcome to Story Deep Dive! In this episode, Dana and Rachel wrap their month on Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo with their editor’s takeaways: how to write a gifted protagonist without draining your stakes, how to make a book two work for you, and why one clear focal point is the lesson to keep if you keep only one. They also reveal November’s palate cleanser, The Christmas Fix by Lucy Score. Whether you’re a romance writer, paranormal author, or story strategist, you’ll gain valuable insights on putting limits on a character’s power, pacing a book that is “fast paced, but not in a hurry,” and delivering on the promise your title makes. You can also watch the video version of this podcast on YouTube! Estimate Timestamps 1:16 – November’s Pick: The Christmas Fix Dana reveals the next read, a standalone enemies-to-lovers Christmas romance by Lucy Score with a renovation-crew heroine and a small town that does not want her there. Rachel calls it dessert after a very spicy meal, and a short one, about a ten-hour audiobook. 11:24 – The Agenda Rachel brings gifted protagonists, deepening the secondary cast, and failing forward. Dana brings making book two work for you, the focal point, and story promise. Her framing for the episode: sometimes the takeaway is simply “man, that is so good, I need to remember that.” 17:45 – When Power Undermines Stakes Rachel contrasts hard magic, where rules constrain even the most gifted hero, with soft magic, where abilities can become “this amorphous cluster.” Her warning: if the only limit is training, the hero becomes unstoppable and the antagonists lose their bite. Her three fixes: leave room to grow, add real limits or risks, and scale the antagonists. 18:52 – Kryptonite and Reverse Engineering Bardugo’s version: Alex learns to draw in Grays, then learns the cost, then meets forces that overpower her anyway, which shows the reader how dangerous they are. Dana’s image is Superman’s kryptonite, and her tip is to know where your character ends up and reverse engineer it, “then maybe taking it up just a notch.” 23:31 – Watch the Protagonist Solve Problems Rachel’s rule for fantasy writers: “The most interesting part of your story for reader is watching your protagonist solve problems.” Readers want to watch the character solve problems with the magic, “not watch the magic save the day.” Dana adds that the world pushes back as Alex tests her limits. 27:58 – Book One Is the Floor Dana on making book two work: “Book one really became the floor,” which let Bardugo drop deeper into history and into Alex’s gift and deliver “the same, but deeper.” Her favorite quality of the book: “fast paced, but not in a hurry.” It never rushes Alex’s growth and never stalls. 32:08 – Why Readers Stumble on Book Two Rachel, on her fourth read, names the reader complaint that book two is the one you “put up with.” Hell Bent avoids it by keeping everything readers loved in Ninth House while giving book two its own plot. Dana: “You don’t have to do a big thing. It just has to be a meaningful thing.” 32:54 – Deepening the Cast You Already Have Rachel argues an ensemble of strangers would have felt like a different series, and deeper stakes land harder with people we already know. Dana adds that it saves word count and protects the information management: “You already have ingredients, cook with what you have.” 40:17 – The Focal Point, If You Take Only One Thing Dana revisits get Darlington out of hell, which meant “we still understood what the assignment was.” Rachel makes it the month’s headline: “If you only take away one thing, I think the focal point is the thing to take away because that will hold true in any genre and any story.” 46:18 – Runway Without Losing the Reader Dana: without a focal point, writers take the runway they need anyway, “and then it’s boring or we DNF your book.” With one, side threads that look like squirrel moments turn out to be development. The two hosts nerd out on mind maps and Whirlybirds. 49:11 – Plot Armor and Failing Forward Rachel on literary sleight of hand: a hero who always just barely wins “has plot armor,” and the reader sees the author’s hand. The failed ritual is the model of a failure that costs something and opens a new door. Dana adds that fiction is art depicting life, and Bardugo has “no precious ones.” 55:41 – Knowing Your Story Promise Dana’s closer: deliver what the reader came for, then say “but watch this.” “You cannot title a book Hell Bent and not bring it.” The promise is what carries readers through the dense stretches until the setups pay off. 1:00:38 – Deadbeat Is Out Rachel’s final note: book three is out now, and Dana, who went into both books kicking and screaming, already bought it. Book Selection: Title: Hell Bent Author: Leigh Bardugo Wealth. Power. Murder. Magic. The Ivy League is going straight to hell in the sequel to the smash New York Times bestseller Ninth House from #1 bestselling author Leigh Bardugo. Find a gateway to the underworld. Steal a soul out of hell. A simple plan, except people who make this particular journey rarely come back. But Galaxy “Alex” Stern is determined to break Darlington out of purgatory—even if it costs her a future at Lethe and at Yale. Forbidden from attempting a rescue, Alex and Dawes can’t call on the Ninth House for help, so they assemble a team of dubious allies to save the gentleman of Lethe. Together, they will have to navigate a maze of arcane texts and bizarre artifacts to uncover the societies’ most closely guarded secrets, and break every rule doing it. But when faculty members begin to die off, Alex knows these aren’t just accidents. Something deadly is at work in New Haven, and if she is going to survive, she’ll have to reckon with the monsters of her past and a darkness built into the university’s very walls. Thick with history and packed with Bardugo’s signature twists, Hell Bent brings to life an intricate world full of magic, violence, and all too real monsters. Where to Find the Book Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo is available in several formats. It's also widely available in libraries and online retailers. Details on her website (https://www.leighbardugo.com/book/hell-bent/). Next Episode: In the next episode, Dana and Rachel begin their November deep dive on The Christmas Fix by Lucy Score, a standalone enemies-to-lovers holiday romance. Join the Conversation: Like what you heard? Subscribe, leave a review, and share your thoughts at storydeepdive.com (http://storydeepdive.com/). Follow Story Deep Dive on YouTube and Substack, and connect with Dana and Rachel to keep the discussion going! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storydeepdive.substack.com (https://storydeepdive.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

6 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 18 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

23

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

32