On paper, Heated Rivalry should have flopped - niche subgenres, sex in the first episode, a miscommunication trope everyone claims to hate. Instead it turned two unknown actors into overnight stars, swept the Canadian Screen Awards, won a Peabody, and gave rise to an absolutely obsessed (affectionate) fandom that is still analyzing and dissecting scenes months after the last episode aired.
And yet...
Welcome to a two-hour deep dive into the genius storytelling elements of Heated Rivalry that unexpectedly cultivated a worldwide community of fans. Learn how to reverse-engineer the literary devices - theme and symbols, parallels and callbacks, tension, hyper-specific character traits, and more - so you can layer them into your own books and build your own devoted readership.
We're going to take the time to develop that skill
This master class is designed for writers who have watched all six episodes of the Heated Rivalry television adaptation and want to understand the technical craft behind its magnetic hold. Because we dive straight into scene analysis without plot recaps, familiarity with the show - not the book - is required.
The live presentation will be on Sep 26 and you’ll have access to the recording afterward, so you’ve got plenty of time to watch six TV episodes!
So many of us learn, learn, learn but never put our knowledge into play. That stops now.
Recognizing great storytelling is easy, but recreating that same emotional impact in your own manuscript can feel nearly impossible. You might know your draft is missing something, yet vague advice leaves you struggling to make your scenes truly unforgettable.
Most writing advice stops at generalities like "add tension" or "make your characters relatable." It never gets granular enough to show you how open loops keep readers up past their bedtime or how sexual tension can build with just a brush of fingers.
It’s time to get granular…
You will walk away with a flexible buffet of storytelling tools that allow you to make deliberate choices during writing and revisions without feeling forced to use every device. By learning how to layer symbols, microtension, callbacks, and character-specific traits, you will stop relying on instinct alone and start building stories that trigger deep reader investment.
In addition to my appreciation for you letting me yap at you for two hours about my favorite topic...
Registration includes the live two-hour Zoom presentation on September 26, 2026 with time for Q&A at the end. You will also receive bonus videos on consent and pacing, along with a broad suite of trackers and worksheets to help you apply everything to your own work. You'll get the recording too, so you can come back to it every time you start a new project.
Let's figure out why you're hesitating...
The storytelling craft in this show is objectively phenomenal. Yes, I like hyperbole and I exaggerate a lot, but I don’t often use words like “objectively” to describe something that most people would consider subjective.
I’m going to show you how boring literary devices like theme and parallels and tension can be combined to create stories that readers go wild for, and I’m doing it using clear examples from a queer hockey show that won a Peabody, which is a prestigious award for stories that “powerfully reflect pressing social issues.”
That’s okay. Love is love and everyone deserves love, right? 💞 Plus, we can always learn different techniques and skills from new media and genres. Studying incredible craft outside our usual comfort zone is often where our biggest lightbulb moments happen.
Consider this workplace romance and the office is an ice rink. I saw a description online: “it’s essentially a high-pressure workplace setting for two people who can't stop colliding.” 😆 The rules of hockey aren’t important in this story - the culture of hockey is, and that conflict is very clearly explained for the audience.
It’s only 6 episodes, and they run 45-55 minutes each. That’s less than six hours. Plus, the recording is available, so if don't get a chance to watch before our live call on Sep 26, you can still finish the show after that then come back for the replay.
Girl (gender neutral), same. But this is the most faithful adaptation I’ve ever seen. The showrunner loved the books first and foremost, and as he’s the screenwriter, director and owns the production company, he didn’t have to get a dozen other executives to sign off on his project. This show was a labor of love.
So was Game of Thrones. The difference is that all of these intimate scenes highlight consent and communication and boundaries and pleasure while driving the narrative forward rather than abuse and harm and force. I definitely prefer watching the first type.
Not at all. They prioritized some of the best equipment available to ensure quality production, based some of the visual vibe off Casino Royale, and used films like The Remains of the Day as inspiration. None of that is cheesy. And if you’ve heard chatter about their lack of budget, it’s just that they didn’t have a Hollywood budget of $10 million per episode to produce it.
What a great question! Yes, let me break it down for you. Over about 90 minutes (as long as I stop adding content), we’re going to cover around two dozen writing craft and literary devices that are used in the show and discuss and analyze specific examples to understand how and why they work. We’re focusing on techniques that will easily translate to written fiction, which means I’m not going to talk about lighting or camera angles (other than how it relates to point of view) or the use of mirrors and reflections. But I am going to walk you through tension and conflict; parallels, mirror moments and callbacks; symbols, motif and theme; the id list; communication styles and dialogue; character traits; deep point of view (because I never shut up about that topic anyway) and more.
I’m also building some worksheets that I’m really proud of that will help you (and me, tbh!) create and track a lot of things that often get lost in the writing of the story - things like subplots we forget we started or meaningful character traits that pop up once but never again.
And there will be bonus recordings because I want to get granular about a couple things - namely, consent and microtension - and including those in the main presentation would make it last three days instead of two hours.