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Here’s Another Writing Tip! #authorlife #author #writer #writing #publishing

28 Sept 2026 · 1 min

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0:37

In this short video, the speaker presents a controversial writing principle called the "value shift," asserting that every scene in a novel must move the story’s overall value from one state to its opposite. The speaker defines a value shift as a change in the story’s emotional or situational polarity—e.g., a dictator declaring war shifts the story from peace to war, and a mother‑in‑law taking over Thanksgiving cooking similarly shifts the story from peace to conflict. The claim is positioned as a universal rule for scene construction, despite acknowledging that many writers disagree with it.

Chapters

This is something that most writers disagree with me on, but yet I just know I'm right. Every single scene in your book has to move the value of your story from one place to the opposite place. It's called a value shift. So if a dictator in your story declares war, he's moving the value of the story from peace to war. But it's not just a dictator doing this. If a mother-in-law announces she's the one cooking the family dinner this year for Thanksgiving, that can also be moving the value of the story from peace to war.