Writing A Book in 7 Days | DAY 2 OF THE 7 DAY BOOK CHALLENGE with Special Guest Teacher Cade Scott

Full video transcript

Kade is going to be sharing with us a framework that’s kind of built off of the hero’s journey, as well as another iteration of it — a little bit more condensed versus the 12 steps — but we’re going to go through and see how this can apply to character development in general, and how you can use a recipe like this inside your process for writing books now or in the future with your marketing. Mike got his outline sent over, and we’re going to dive into his outline after Kade.

A participant shares: this process is really cool — I never knew I was going to get any words on the paper, but now I finally have my thoughts out. I haven’t finished the outline entirely, but I’m able to actually visually see what my book is. Before that I wasn’t able to have a vision for it. It made me realize a lot more about myself and my journey. For me it’s also brought sharper focus on who the target audience is going to be — I was erroring on the side of caution, not getting too narrow. But the more I wrote it and allowed myself to get sharper in focus, it was easier to write, because now I’m writing to 90% of the companies I’ve worked with over the last six years, specifically SaaS and related companies, early stage and growth stage.

Darby responds: in his experience, specificity wins — the more specific and focused you are throughout the outline process, the less daunting it becomes. That’s why the process starts with the why and the end in mind. The outline is one of the heavier pieces; once it’s out, it makes the path more visible from start to finish. If all you get done today is a solid outline you’re ready to work from, that’s the biggest win for today — it lets you hit the ground running the rest of the week. There’s no reason you can’t get 25,000 words out in that time; you can easily write 5,000 words a day with Jarvis making it easy to get the meat of it out. The biggest time investment after writing is refining and editing — don’t edit while you’re drafting, get it all out first, then come back with fresh eyes.

Another participant says this is the first time they’ve felt like they have all the tools in one place — the tools, the structure of the process — and thanks Darby for putting it together, calling Jarvis “becoming my buddy.”

Darby welcomes Kade Scott, a fiction writer and storyteller, to share a new recipe applicable to a lot of things. This is Darby’s first time seeing the recipe in action too, following an earlier interview with Kade on Jarvis Underground that covered storytelling, character development, and story arcs. Kade explains that Jarvis has changed his life as a fiction writer — his ability to write fiction and create templates out of his own framework, using AI to help when he’s stuck. He’s used the template both in his fiction and in web copy he creates. He hopes the framework helps participants build their own stories within chapters, whether writing fiction or nonfiction.

Kade introduces what he calls the “Epic Story Framework,” which he’s used to write short fiction stories, a couple of short films (one hitting 100,000 views on YouTube, one premiering in LA), and websites. The framework is inspired by Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey from The Hero with a Thousand Faces, filtered through Dan Harmon’s “story circle” adaptation (Harmon being the creator of Community and Rick and Morty). Kade adopted and tweaked Harmon’s version for his own process.

The framework is ABDCE (one letter appears out of alphabetical order): Action, Backstory, Development, Climax, End. Each story should start with action to hook and compel the reader, then set context and introduce the character entering a new world, develop the story from there to a climax, and end with a resolution.

Kade explains he’s learned to start stories with action first because it immediately hooks the audience and gets them invested, especially given how small the window is to catch someone’s attention today — comparing it to the “ADA” attention framework. Starting with action also makes audiences more willing to sit through the backstory section that follows. He identifies two ways to frame the action opening: a scene just before the actual adventure or life change begins, or a scene from the middle of the story flashed forward as a cliffhanger tease. He cites Star Wars (opening with Darth Vader’s star destroyer before cutting to Luke on Tatooine for backstory) and Breaking Bad (opening mid-crisis with no context) as examples. For nonfiction, he suggests asking: When was the moment you realized things needed to change? Describe a moment you realized you’d made the right choice, mid-adventure — give the reader a teaser of what success looks like before showing what life was like before that change.

Moving to Backstory: after starting with a bang, it’s time to set the audience up for the adventure by providing context. Every story needs a main character or hero the audience can empathize with, usually established through a specific want, desire, or need — external at first, even though the story ultimately brings an internal change. That desire is strong enough to compel the character to act. In Star Wars, Luke is stranded and wishes for a greater life; in Breaking Bad, Walt wants to leave his family money before he dies of cancer. For nonfiction, Kade suggests asking: What did life look like before the major change? When did you realize something needed to change, or that you wanted more?

Development is where most of a story’s word count should be spent — only as much backstory as needed to reach this stage. This is where the hero pursues their want and, like anything new, nothing comes easily the first time. In hero’s journey terms this is the “road of trials” — repeated failure, barely escaping, discovering who or what helps versus obstructs. Eventually the character reaches a midpoint where they wrestle with internal demons and decide either to abandon the pursuit or muster the strength to continue and adapt. In Star Wars, Luke adjusts to Jedi life but is captured, then decides to proactively save Princess Leia with Han and Chewbacca’s help; in Breaking Bad, Walt decides to cook meth, but the logistics don’t pay off as hoped, so he demands more money from his buyers. For nonfiction, Kade suggests asking: Did you fail, and how? Did you struggle to persevere, and what made you keep going? — since that internal transformation and battle with internal demons is what’s compelling to readers.

Climax is the final showdown resulting in character transformation — the hero faces the “big bad” (external, internal, or both) that the story has been building toward. All the internal change and failure manifests externally as the character faces their toughest test and, ultimately, overcomes it and acquires what they wanted — ideally at some cost, whether becoming someone different to attain the goal or ending up wanting something different than they originally sought. For nonfiction: What was the final obstacle you had to overcome, and how did that experience change you?

End is the return to the (now-changed) normal world with a gift to give someone — a physical gift, or a shift in perspective or wisdom, or both. This resolution should be quick, mainly showing how much the character has changed since the beginning. For nonfiction: How did this new perspective change your day-to-day routine, and could the people around you see a difference?

Kade explains he simplified the fuller story circle into ABDCE because the full version has many parts and components that are easy to get lost in — some used only in certain situations. If you get lost, the five-part framework is there as a general overlay. Applied to nonfiction: start each chapter with a personal story following this framework, then the wisdom you impart based on that story becomes the chapter’s how-to content — you return to the normal world with the gift you give your audience, and that’s what you’re setting up with the story at the start of each chapter.

Kade then demonstrates the fiction version live using Jarvis, noting Jarvis can help with any part of the fiction process — generating story ideas, fleshing out a premise, developing a main character. He starts with the action framework, then fills in the story’s gaps using questions from the framework: what does the character want, how will they get it (the call to action), what’s the refusal of the call, what’s the inciting incident, how do they adapt to the new world, what price do they pay, and what wisdom or gift do they return with.

Working through a live example, Kade builds a persona for a fictional main character: an early-to-mid-30s first-time CEO of a software company with a technical background and no sales experience — married, college-educated, altruistic, seeking win-win outcomes, has raised some money and has revenue but is under investor pressure to scale sales without knowing where to start. Kade explains that for character personas, he asks three core questions: What does the character want (external)? What do they need (internal)? What do they fear (inner or outer demons)? These three questions get at who the character is at their core, which lets the writer speak to and place them into context from there.

Prompting Jarvis with these questions live, Kade and Darby walk through outputs about what the CEO character (named Mike in this fictional exercise) wants, why he’d rather not “roll up his sleeves” on sales himself, and why hiring a VP of Sales too early tends to be a mistake if the founder hasn’t understood the sales fundamentals themselves first — since an experienced sales hire may lack the agility to navigate an early-stage company’s ambiguity and instead simply reapply what worked at a previous, more established employer. Darby notes that Jarvis works by recognizing the pattern building in the preceding text and prompting itself based on it — which is why the output starts to feel close to how they’d actually talk through this themselves.

Darby connects this back to the “who, what, when, why, how” content brief approach: even outside a strict ABDCE story, stating who the piece is for, why they need it, and what the main solution is in a content brief helps keep Jarvis on track.

The conversation shifts to Mike’s real nonfiction outline and where he’s hitting a roadblock. Mike’s question: how long should the introduction be? He has a lot of background and experience but isn’t sure how much belongs in the intro — noting some books he owns have 20-page introductions and others 5 pages. Darby pulls up a structure referenced from “Austin’s video” that Mike had watched that morning: establish who the book is for, what they’re tired of, what they want more of, address the skeptics, explain three ways the book is different, explain how to read the book (in Mike’s case, sequential order with exercises completed along the way), and set the expectation that this is a process, not a two-hour fix.

Mike explains that in Austin’s video, Austin originally put his own story at the front of the introduction, but found from reader feedback that it worked better at the end of the introduction — readers wanted the substantive content first, with the author’s personal story landing with more impact once earned rather than up front. The introduction’s three objectives, per this structure, are getting the reader to believe it’s the right book for them, believing the author can help, and believing they themselves can do it. Mike says this exercise unstuck him on a section he’d been stuck on until reviewing Austin’s video that morning — reworking his outline from what had been “a mess three hours ago.”

Darby ties this back to the value of advance readers: getting the book (or even just the outline) in front of a few people who can give direct feedback matters more than hitting a specific structure or length, because you don’t need a finished book to start learning whether the material lands — if key points aren’t landing, that’s a sign to go deeper on that topic. He also encourages trusting your own expertise as an author while assuming readers know nothing about the topic, and either answering the most common reader questions broadly or staying tightly focused on one specific problem.

Turning to the rest of Mike’s outline, Darby walks through how each chapter can open with a personal story (using the recipe, StoryBrand, or another structure) that transitions smoothly into that chapter’s specific topic, followed by a call to action in the conclusion. If the chapter titles and topics are already defined, covering each chapter’s core content is enough — there’s no need to pad chapters just to hit a word count, since a properly outlined 10-chapter book (in Mike’s case, potentially built from 10 personal stories tied to specific sales lessons — metrics, messaging, buyer personas, target audience) will naturally reach a full, printable length. Each chapter’s action step (e.g., “download this worksheet” or “watch this video”) should point clearly toward the next chapter so the reader always knows the next step, preventing them from feeling lost partway through and never reaching the conclusion. Darby notes each chapter subsection can also later be repurposed as standalone marketing content, such as a YouTube video.

Wrapping up, Darby recommends Mike outline chapters three through ten using the same structure as chapters one and two, reminding participants that Jarvis is a powerful tool but the author’s own direction and expertise are what keep it useful rather than confused. The session closes with a brief exchange about SaaS companies among investor audiences, a reminder not to be afraid to act as the expert, and a sign-off until the next session.