This person had no prior marketing experience, but confidently announced they were ready for the role because they’d read a marketing book on the plane ride to the office.

“Call to action,” they proudly exclaimed during a campaign meeting on CTAs.

I remember sitting there thinking:

“Time to go back to consulting.”

If you’ve spent any time on LinkedIn, you’ve probably encountered the modern version of this person.

→ They’ve read a few books.
→ Taken a course.
→ Sent a handful of campaign emails.
→ Learned some marketing jargon.

And somehow they’ve become a recognized voice in the industry.

The Internet Often Mistakes Familiarity for Expertise

One of the strange side effects of social media is that it has lowered the barrier to becoming a thought leader.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

But visibility and expertise are not the same thing.

Knowing a framework is not the same as implementing it.

Knowing a best practice is not the same as defending it to a skeptical leadership team.

Knowing what a customer journey should look like is not the same as untangling a broken one while revenue targets are slipping.

Experience changes how you see problems.

And that perspective is difficult to acquire from books alone.

Why So Many Marketing Posts Sound Identical

Scroll through your feed, and you’ll notice the same advice appearing over and over again.

• Know your audience.

• Personalization matters.

• Focus on customer experience.

• Measure what matters.

Most of it is technically correct.

It’s also largely interchangeable.

Repeating established wisdom rarely builds authority, but interpreting it through the lens of your own experience does.

Your Experience Is the Differentiator

The most valuable thing about your career isn’t the knowledge you’ve accumulated.

It’s the conclusions you’ve drawn from it.

What did that failed product launch teach you?

What happened when attribution completely broke?

Which marketing trend looked promising but didn’t deliver?

What assumptions about growth have you changed your mind about over the last decade?

Those are the stories people remember.

Those are the insights AI cannot generate.

And those are the observations that separate expertise from content.

Stop Publishing What Everyone Already Knows

Many senior marketing leaders underestimate the value of their own experience.

They assume the lessons they’ve learned are obvious and that everyone else knows what they know.

Usually, neither is true.

There’s value in sharing how someone with years of experience evaluates tradeoffs, identifies patterns, and navigates uncertainty.

The next time you’re creating content, resist the urge to share another generic marketing lesson.

Instead, ask yourself: “What do I believe today that I wouldn’t have believed ten years ago?”

Experience Is Your Competitive Advantage

Thanks to the internet and AI, information is abundant.

What remains scarce is experience translated into perspective.

The marketers who build authority aren’t the ones repeating what everyone already knows. They’re the ones sharing what years of experience taught them. The lessons learned from failed launches, missed forecasts, broken attribution models, difficult stakeholder conversations, and strategies that looked great on paper but fell apart in execution.

The next time you’re tempted to publish another generic marketing lesson, ask yourself a different question:

What do I know today that I could only have learned through experience?

The answer is probably your next great piece of thought leadership.

Of course it can.

AI can generate a newsletter, a LinkedIn post, a blog article, or a whitepaper in seconds. Every week, the tools get faster, better, and more accessible.

The hard part is developing a perspective worth publishing.

That’s why I think many industry leaders are asking the wrong question.

Instead of asking whether AI can create content, they should be asking whether AI can build authority.

They’re not the same thing.

AI Doesn’t Have Access to Your Experience

The most valuable ideas come from years of experience.

Being behind the scenes of a:

• difficult product launch

• failed strategy

• customer conversation that changed your thinking

• market shift you saw before everyone else

Those experiences shape how you interpret data and respond to challenges.

But AI doesn’t have access to any of them.

Sure, AI can help organize your ideas and refine your writing.

But it cannot ask the right questions to dissect your experience and produce insights that build authority.

AI Can’t Tell Which Stories Matter

One of the biggest challenges many leaders face is recognizing which parts of their experience are actually valuable to others.

The lessons that feel obvious to you are often the most interesting to your audience.

Proximity creates blindness.

When you’ve spent years solving the same types of problems, it’s easy to assume everyone already knows what you know.

But they don’t.

Authority often comes from sharing experiences you’ve stopped thinking about because they’ve become second nature.

AI doesn’t know which story changed how you lead.

It doesn’t know which decision still influences your strategic approach today.

And it doesn’t know which lesson your audience needs to hear most.

AI Can’t Ask Better Questions

You already have the raw material for thought leadership.

But you lack a process for extracting it.

The best ideas often emerge through conversation.

Someone asks a question.

You answer.

They ask a follow-up.

Then another.

Suddenly you’re explaining something you’ve never articulated before.

That’s where many of the strongest newsletter ideas come from.

AI can answer questions, but it still struggles to identify the deeper question hiding underneath the first answer.

AI Can’t Replicate a Recognizable Point of View

The internet is already full of accurate information.

What it’s increasingly short on is recognizable perspective.

As AI-generated content becomes more common, generic expertise becomes less valuable.

The executives who stand are the ones whose thinking feels distinct.

The people whose audience can recognize their ideas before they see their name attached.

That kind of authority is built over time.

AI can mimic a voice, but struggles to develop one.

AI Can’t Do the Thinking for You

I use AI regularly.

Most knowledge workers probably should.

But I think we need to be honest about where the leverage actually comes from.

The value isn’t in creating more AI content, but in using it to amplify existing insights.

The thinking still belongs to you.

And, honestly, that’s good news.

Because everyone has access to the same tools, so perspective becomes the competitive advantage.

And only you have that. AI can’t generate it on your behalf.

Authority Comes From Perspective, Not Content

AI is a powerful tool for creating content, refining ideas, and accelerating the writing process. But authority is built differently. It comes from experience, judgment, pattern recognition, and the ability to articulate a point of view that others find valuable.

AI doesn’t know which moments shaped your thinking. It can’t identify the stories hidden inside years of experience. It can’t ask the questions that uncover your most valuable insights. And it can’t develop a perspective that is uniquely yours.

The leaders who are building authority today are using AI to amplify their expertise while continuing to do the one thing technology can’t do for them: think.

I work with marketing leaders who want to build executive presence and shape their industry narrative in their voice, with their ideas. If that’s a conversation worth having, my inbox is open.

And I think that’s one reason so many founder newsletters fall flat.

They sound polished and professional.

Like they were reviewed by Legal, Corporate Communications, and three AI tools before hitting send.

They also sound nothing like the founder.

If you’ve ever opened a newsletter from a founder you admire, it probably feels more like a conversation and less like marketing.

Here are a few tips to sound like a real person with opinions, observations, and occasionally a strong take you’re willing to defend when writing your newsletter.

Write to One Person

Will a customer, investor, competitor, future employee, and random LinkedIn commenter all agree with what you’re about to say?

Probably not!

Instead of writing to your audience, write to one person. Picture a customer you genuinely enjoy talking to, an employee who asks thoughtful questions, or a founder friend who always gives you honest feedback.

And write to them.

Oddly enough, when you write for one person, everyone else feels like you’re speaking directly to them too.

Share What You Actually Think

Your readers can get a summary of AI news or startup trends from a hundred different newsletters, but only you can offer your perspective.

What are you seeing that others aren’t? What assumption do you disagree with? What lesson did you learn the hard way? What changed your mind recently?

Sharing those types of insights can feel a little vulnerable, but they’re the ones people remember.

Don’t Be Afraid of a Tangent

I’ve been known to add in side comments, a quick story, or a random observation in my writing.

And they’ve turned out to be some of the most memorable parts of my newsletters.

[Example from my SommeliYAY newsletter]

Those little detours make readers feel like they’re hearing from a person instead of consuming content.

Write the Way People Actually Talk

You don’t need to sound academic to sound intelligent.

In fact, some of the smartest founders I know write in surprisingly simple language.

They use contractions and start sentences with “and” and “but.”

They occasionally say things like “honestly” or “right?”

Because that’s how people speak.

Nobody sits down at dinner and says:

“In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape...”

If a sentence sounds unnatural when you read it aloud, rewrite it.

Ask Questions

A newsletter is technically one-way communication. But it shouldn’t feel that way.

Questions create participation.

As you’re writing, think about what you’d ask if the reader were sitting across the table from you.

Questions like:

• Have you noticed this too?

• What would you do in this situation?

• Is your company seeing the same shift?

You don’t need readers to respond. You just need them to think.

Readers are engaged the moment they start mentally answering your questions.

Mix Long and Short Sentences

Conversation has rhythm.

Some thoughts need room to breathe, while others land harder when they’re short.

Very short.

When every sentence is the same length, your writing starts to sound robotic. That’s one reason AI-generated content feels off, even when the information is correct.

People just don’t talk that way.

Use Active Voice

This one sounds technical, but it’s simple.

Instead of:

“The decision was made to reposition the company.”

Write:

“We repositioned the company.”

Instead of:

“Customer feedback was collected.”

Write:

“We talked to customers.”

Active voice sounds more direct, more confident, and more human.

Which is exactly what founder communication should sound like.

Let Your Personality Show

I’m not suggesting you turn every newsletter into a stand-up routine.

But a little personality goes a long way.

• A well-placed “oof”

• A “well, that didn’t go according to plan”

• An occasional ALL CAPS moment when emphasis matters

• Even a quick self-deprecating observation

These things create voice.

And voice is the only thing that separates your newsletter from the next founder’s.

The Real Goal

The best founder newsletters feel like thoughtful emails from someone who’s building something and willing to share both the wins and the mistakes.

So the next time you sit down to write, forget about your subscriber count for a minute.

Picture one person you respect, then write to them.

Your newsletter will sound more human.

And that’s usually what makes it more effective.

In addition to operational experience, Boards evaluate CMOs on strategic clarity, market perspective, and visible leadership presence. As AI shifts buyer behavior and economic pressure reshapes growth expectations, CMOs who publicly demonstrate pattern recognition and business judgment stand out faster than those who simply list accomplishments and call it thought leadership.

The CMOs gaining board visibility are building owned media channels that create a searchable, consistent record of strategic thinking.

In other words, they are giving the internet receipts.

Here are five tactics they’re using differently.

Lead With Board-Level Concerns Instead of Marketing Updates

Most CMO newsletters fail because they sound like internal team recaps with slightly better formatting.

They focus on campaign launches, webinar attendance, or quarterly marketing initiatives. Useful internally, but irrelevant to a board director evaluating whether an executive understands enterprise-level business challenges.

Board-level audiences care about growth durability, efficiency, competitive positioning, organizational transformation, and risk management. Strong executive thought leadership demonstrates understanding of those pressures and connects industry shifts to commercial impact.

Highly visible CMOs start with the tension, not the tactic.

Instead of:

“We launched three new campaigns this quarter.”

They write:

“Boards are demanding clearer proof of marketing efficiency right as AI disrupts attribution models. Here’s what that means for demand generation accountability.”

That framing immediately changes your perceived audience, making you sound like a strategic leader interpreting market conditions instead of someone recapping Q2 in bullet points no one asked for.

Many CMOs accidentally optimize their content for peer engagement rather than for board perception. They write content that earns likes from marketers but does little to establish strategic authority with decision-makers.

Those are two very different audiences. One wants tactics. The other wants judgment.

Establish Authority Through Contrarian Positioning

Most CMO content blends in with everyone else.

The internet is already saturated with recycled takes about AI transformation, personalization, pipeline acceleration, and “doing more with less.” At this point, some LinkedIn feeds read like they were generated by the same exhausted prompt.

Consensus content blends into the background, while distinct perspectives develop recognizable viewpoints.

That does not mean manufacturing controversy for engagement. It means articulating evidence-backed perspectives that challenge lazy industry assumptions.

The most effective CMOs usually anchor this around lived experience:

“Everyone says measurement made marketing more accountable. I think it made CMOs easier to replace.”

Or:

“AI won’t reduce the importance of brand. It will increase the premium on recognizable trust.”

Strong thought leadership introduces new interpretation with a point of view. Decision-makers value thought leadership that presents original insight or reframes existing assumptions.

Build Cumulative Authority Through Sustained Publishing

One viral article will not garner board visibility.

If it did, half of LinkedIn would already have a board seat and a TED Talk.

Authority compounds through consistency. Publish consistently to create a public archive of strategic thinking that becomes increasingly difficult to ignore over time.

A board member may discover you through LinkedIn, but credibility often forms after reviewing months of published thinking. A 40-issue newsletter signals discipline, pattern recognition, and sustained engagement with industry change. A single post signals almost nothing.

Commit to a realistic publishing rhythm and maintain it long enough for compounding effects to appear.

Typically, that means:

• Weekly or biweekly newsletters

• At least 90 days of uninterrupted publishing

• Public visibility into audience growth and engagement

• Clear thematic consistency over time

Treat audience metrics as credibility indicators. Did the newsletter grow 40% in Q2? Did an issue generate conversations with three PE-backed founders?

Those signals matter because they demonstrate resonance, not just reach.

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Distribute Across Multiple Channels

Board visibility rarely comes from a single channel. Thought leadership generates stronger authority when insights are amplified across multiple channels, including social platforms, earned media, speaking engagements, and industry publications.

Operationalize every newsletter issue into multiple assets:

• A LinkedIn post summarizing the core insight

• A contributed article pitch to industry publications

• Speaking abstracts for conferences

• Internal leadership memos

• Podcast talking points

• Executive briefing material

When board directors repeatedly encounter the same perspective in LinkedIn posts, industry articles, conference panels, and forwarded newsletters, the perception of authority increases.

Repetition builds familiarity. Familiarity builds trust. Trust gets your name mentioned in rooms you are not yet sitting in.

Name Real Examples and Outcomes

The fastest way to weaken authority is to write as if you have only observed leadership rather than practiced it.

Anchor your ideas in execution.

Reference hiring decisions, organizational failures, revenue pressure, transformation challenges, and measurable outcomes. Explain what actually happened, what changed, and what you learned from it.

For example:

“We reduced launch timelines from four months to six weeks by restructuring cross-functional approvals.”

Or:

“The highest-performing marketing leader I hired was not the most technical. They were the best translator between finance and growth.”

Thought leadership becomes more persuasive when it includes concrete examples, operational detail, measurable outcomes, and demonstrated practitioner expertise.

Because boards can tell the difference between operator insight and content written entirely from airport lounge observations.

If you’ve signed an NDA, use anonymized case studies, directional metrics, and operational observations in your content.

You do not need to reveal confidential information. You just need to sound like someone who has actually been in the room when difficult decisions were made.

Closing

These tactics work because they collectively build a track record of strategic thinking that’s bigger than a personal brand.

Boards increasingly evaluate leadership through publicly available signals. A well-run newsletter gives directors, recruiters, investors, and peers direct access to how you interpret change, frame business challenges, and communicate judgment under uncertainty.

The internet already has plenty of marketers creating content.

What boards are actually looking for is executives who create perspective.

Most CMOs are far more influential inside their companies than outside of them.

Internally, they shape positioning, messaging, growth strategy, customer understanding, GTM execution, and increasingly, the company’s relationship with AI and modern media.

They sit in executive meetings.

They understand market shifts before most people do.

They often have a clearer view of customer behavior than almost anyone else in the organization.

And yet, publicly, many of them are almost invisible.

Search for a surprising number of CMOs online, and you’ll find:

• a neglected LinkedIn profile

• a corporate bio

• maybe a podcast appearance from three years ago

• and a handful of generic posts about leadership or innovation

We are entering a business environment where visibility and authority are becoming increasingly intertwined.

People Are Googling You Before They Ever Meet You

Boards Google your name. Recruiters Google your name. Investors Google your name. Journalists Google your name. Prospective employees Google your name.

What they find shapes their perception long before a conversation ever happens.

And right now, many highly capable marketing leaders have almost no durable public presence, despite possessing decades of experience and knowledge.

CMOs Have Built Company Brands Instead Of Their Own

For years, corporate visibility largely belonged to founders and CEOs. CMOs operated behind the scenes. Their work was evident in company growth, campaigns, launches, and revenue performance, not in public intellectual presence.

But the internet rewards visible expertise.

And increasingly, marketing leaders are being evaluated based on external recognition.

Unfortunately for many senior marketing leaders, that means they are least publicly known.

Meanwhile, their junior colleagues with far less experience are building significant authority simply by publishing consistently.

Why Newsletters Matter More Than LinkedIn Posts

This is one of the reasons newsletters matter so much right now.

A newsletter gives leaders something social platforms and corporate communications rarely provide: owned authority.

A newsletter creates a direct relationship between an executive and an audience over time. It allows ideas to compound rather than disappear into a feed after 24 hours.

More importantly, newsletters allow executives to demonstrate their thinking.

The Internet Rewards Perspective and Visibility

Most executive content online is optimized for brevity, consensus, and engagement. But authority is rarely built through generic observations packaged for maximum reach.

Authority is built through recognizable thinking.

A newsletter gives CMOs space to voice their perspective over time.

It allows them to move beyond company-approved soundbites and contribute an informed perspective grounded in actual operational experience.

AI Has Flooded The Internet With Generic Expertise

AI is rapidly increasing the amount of content on the internet. The supply of polished, competent commentary is exploding. Which means generic visibility is becoming less valuable by the day.

But original perspective is becoming more valuable.

The leaders who stand out over the next decade will likely be the ones developing recognizable professional identities.

That certainly does not require posting constantly or becoming a creator/influencer.

It just requires a unique perspective and consistency on a platform you actually own.

You Have The Expertise. Now Get The Visibility.

The irony is that many CMOs already possess the raw material for exceptional thought leadership:

• market insight

• operational pattern recognition

• executive experience

• customer understanding

• strategic context

• proximity to transformation happening inside organizations

What many lack is visibility.

Newsletters can solve that.

I work with marketing leaders who want to build authority through thought leadership. If that’s a conversation worth having, my inbox is open.

Ask them about it over coffee, and they’ll talk for an hour. Ask them to write it down, and they’ll tell you they’ve been meaning to.

They’ve been meaning to for three years.

I was in the same boat. “I don’t have time for that.” At the time, everything is moving so fast. And who wants to write about work at the end of the day?

But I’ve come to realize the time excuse is covering up a deeper, more interesting hesitation.

Writing a point of view makes it real. Permanent. Arguable.

You can quietly form an opinion in a meeting without sharing it with the group. Put it in writing, and you’ve staked a claim.

Someone might disagree publicly. Someone might quote you back to yourself in six months. The idea stops being yours privately and becomes yours on the record.

And I think a lot of marketing leaders feel that weight even if they wouldn’t describe it that way.

But that weight is exactly the point.

The marketing leaders who are building real authority right now, the ones whose names come up in searches, who get asked to keynote, who attract inbound interest without running ads, they’re not the ones with the most impressive resumes. They’re the ones who’ve made their thinking consistently visible.

They’ve built authority!

A well-crafted online newsletter or LinkedIn article doesn’t just perform on the day it goes out. It shows up in search results. It gets forwarded by someone who found it three months later. It becomes the reason a stranger reaches out to say they’ve been following your work. Credentials can get you into rooms. But writing keeps you in rooms you’re not physically in.

And here’s the part that I think surprises people. Your point of view doesn’t have to be radical. It doesn’t have to pick a fight.

The most resonant thought leadership I’ve seen from marketing leaders isn’t contrarian for the sake of engagement. It’s just honest.

It says what experienced practitioners already know to be true but haven’t seen articulated clearly. It names the thing.

Marketing leaders have spent their careers being precise and measured in professional communications. Board decks. Executive summaries. Campaign briefs.

And find it challenging to write in a way that builds authority - direct, more personal language.

What someone knows versus how they’d naturally write it is where most thought leadership efforts stall. Either the piece never gets written, or it gets written with AI, and sounds like everyone else.

I’ve spent the past year as a ghostwriter working with other marketing leaders to clearly and concisely demonstrate their thought leadership through newsletters and LinkedIn articles.

My job is to find the point of view that’s already there, already fully formed, already being expressed in meetings and conversations and offhand remarks, and translate it into writing that actually sounds like the person who holds it.

The leaders I work with have their own marketing philosophies. They don’t need me to tell them what to think. They need someone who understands marketing, can relate to their work, and can help them articulate it in a way that builds something over time.

If you’re a marketing leader who’s been meaning to start writing, I’d offer this: the hesitation you feel is not a signal to wait longer. It’s a signal that you actually have something worth saying.

The leaders who write badly about nothing don’t hesitate.

The ones who hesitate usually have more to say than they realize, and have a cleaner, more distinct point of view than they’d give themselves credit for.

You’ve earned a perspective. The only question is whether anyone outside your immediate circle will ever hear it.

I work with marketing leaders who want to build executive presence and shape their industry narrative in their voice, with their ideas. If that’s a conversation worth having, my inbox is open.

Amp walks out of a building. He reads a text. He gets in a car.

That’s it. That’s the scene.

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No monologue explaining what he’s feeling. No phone call where he tells someone what just happened and why it matters. No unnecessary best friend who exists solely to receive exposition that the audience could have figured out on their own.

Just a man. A text message. A building directory visible behind him. And a rideshare pulling up to the curb.

The plan is moving forward, and Amp’s surroundings are telling you everything you need to know.

The Thing I Cannot Stand About Tyler Perry Productions

It’s a TV show. Not a radio drama or a podcast.

We don’t need the characters to narrate their own actions.

I cannot tell you how many times I have watched an All the Queen’s Men scene where a character makes a decision, discovers something, or feels something, and then immediately explains what they just did to another character who was standing right there watching them do it.

“I just did the thing.” “Yes, I saw you do the thing.” “The thing I did was significant because—”

No. Stop. We saw it. We are not blind. We are watching a television program with our eyes.

One of my personal rules for Obsidian from the very beginning was this: if the camera can show it, I will not write dialogue to explain it.

Scene 3 is that rule in practice.

What the Surroundings Are Doing

Amp doesn’t say a single word in Scene 3. He doesn’t need to.

The building directory behind him — Marcus L. Hayes, Esq. Business & Contract Law — tells you he’s been getting professional advice. The leather portfolio under his arm tells you he’s been taking this seriously. The rideshare app tells you he still doesn’t have a car. The almost smile when he reads Alonzo’s text tells you the plan is working.

Four visual details. Zero dialogue. Complete picture.

That’s the job of a scene. Not to tell you what’s happening, but to show you what’s happening, and trust you to be smart enough to receive it.

Tyler Perry does not always trust his audience to be smart enough.

I do.

Amp Is Alone, and That’s the Point

Every scene in Act One where Amp is truly alone — Scene 3, Scene 5 — is a scene about who he is when nobody is watching.

In Scene 3, he’s businesslike. Focused. Already three steps ahead.

Alonzo texts him six words: “I’m done with Eden. Just told Madam,” and Amp’s response is not surprise or relief or celebration.

It’s an almost smile and a practical reply.

“Coming through later. We got business to discuss.”

Not “that’s great news” or “I knew you’d do it” or any of the things a lesser-written character would say to make sure the audience understood the emotional significance of the moment.

Just: we have business. Come through.

He’s already moving.

That’s It, and That’s All

Scene 3 exists to tell you one thing: Amp is about his business, and the plan is in motion.

It does that in thirty seconds without a single wasted word.

Scene 4 is where things get interesting. It will make you understand exactly why Obsidian is going to change everything.

Scene 3 is live on Wattpad!

The gig just fell into my lap. It was offered to a friend of a friend who didn’t want it.

I stepped in.

Gladly.

The job description was basically nonexistent.

“Just write about our CSR and post to the blog every week.”

“How about SEO?”

“Don’t worry about that. Here’s the login.”

So I logged in. I wrote. I posted. Every week.

I wrote about Coca-Cola donating shipping containers to women in underserved communities in Africa so they could run small businesses from them. About clean water initiatives in India. Real things happening in the world, with a Fortune 500 company’s name attached.

I didn’t know what I had.

In freelance writing, there’s a term for a client like this: a bread-and-butter client. Reliable. Recurring. The work that keeps the lights on while you figure out the rest. I didn’t know that term then either. I didn’t know any of the terms. I didn’t even know I was a writer.

I was just writing.

I thought about all of this last night, out of nowhere. Tried to look up the posts. No luck! No byline, and this was sixteen years ago.

The work is just… gone.

Like so much of my work that was in print brochures, published to Twitter (before the term “social media” existed), or was removed from the company website during a rebrand.

No trace under my name. Nothing I can point to.

And yet.

I wrote for Coca-Cola.

That happened. The words existed. People read them. The containers got donated, whether or not my name was attached.

There’s something worth sitting with in that.

How much work do we do before we have language for what we’re doing? Before we claim the title. Before we think to keep receipts.

The identity comes later. Sometimes much later. The work was always happening.

I wasn’t waiting to become a freelance writer. I already was one. I just hadn’t introduced myself yet.

Gigs don’t fall into my lap like that anymore. I know that now. But I also know something I didn’t know then — that I started earlier than I thought, and further along than I gave myself credit for.

Sixteen years ago, I was a freelance writer with a Fortune 500 client.

After binge-watching All the Queen’s Men on Prime Live every single morning (yes, every morning, don’t judge me), I was so sick and tired of watching Amp throw a damn temper tantrum.

Is that even a realistic response for a man who was almost erroneously deleted by his aunt?

I say no.

A grown man. A former D-1 athlete. Nine years in prison. And his response to his aunt trying to kill him is to spiral into alcohol abuse and promiscuity?

Sir.

SIR.

So I rewrote Scene 1 to try to redeem this character.

But while I was rewriting Scene 1, I had too many ideas.

One scene became a short story outline. The short story became a screenplay outline. And it ballooned from there!

All because Amp needed to stop throwing tantrums.

Anyway. Scene 2.

So Why Does Scene 2 Exist?

Scene 1 is Amp’s aftermath.

Scene 2 is Madam’s.

She almost killed her nephew. Her own blood. Her own family.

And she is completely unbothered.

She’s in the rafters. Surveying her floor. Making sure the operation runs the way she designed it. When Blue mentions Amp hasn’t checked in, she says four words, “He hasn’t checked in,” and walks away.

That’s it.

No guilt. No second thoughts. No dramatic monologue about what she did and why.

Just Madam. Being Madam.

I needed to show that before Amp’s plan really gets moving. Because if you don’t understand what he’s up against, if her power doesn’t feel real and earned and almost impressive, then everything he builds in the next seventeen scenes is just two guys running around Atlanta.

And Obsidian is not that.

A Note on Scene Length

I hate long scenes with unnecessary dialogue.

There. I said it.

I won’t be doing that to you. Scene 2 is short, it’s sharp, it has one comic beat, courtesy of Trouble, and then…

End scene.

No monologues. No over-explanation. No character announcing their feelings to another character who already knows their feelings.

Just Madam on her floor. Amp’s name hanging in the air. And the quiet beginning of something she doesn’t know is coming.

What I Want You To Take From Scene 2

One thing.

Madam Deville isn’t a cartoon villain. She’s a competent one. She built something real. She maintains it. She makes everyone around her dependent on its survival.

The Eden Empire is real and pretty impressive.

That matters. Because the only revenge story worth telling is one where the thing being dismantled actually deserved to be feared.

Scene 2 is live on Wattpad now!

I’ve been watching All the Queen’s Men recently on Prime Live TV, and I was hooked because the storylines were so ridiculous. I dropped in around Season 2, and couldn’t wait to go back to Season 1 to see what started it all. To my disappointment, not much changed from Season 1 to Season 2.

From the very beginning, something about Amp Anthony nagged at me in the way that only genuinely wasted potential can.

Since Prime plays the same episodes over and over, I pinpointed what could have been a pivotal moment for Amp, but alas, the show just let him play out an emotional tirade for several seasons.

That’s what brought me to the scene that quickly ballooned into a spinoff.

What the show actually gave us.

Here’s what we know about Xavier Amp Anthony.

He was an upper-middle-class kid. A D-1 athlete. Not a bad guy, not a gang member, not someone destined to become part of the system. He developed a drinking problem because vulnerability wasn’t an option, and one bad night cost him everything. A drunk driving accident. His girlfriend, Shannon. Nine years of his life.

He came home to a world that had moved on without him and an aunt who ran a criminal empire out of a nightclub.

That is a rich foundation.

The show used approximately twelve percent of it.

The accident was backstory. Shannon was a name. The drinking and the spiral became a plot device to explain why Dime was choosing Big D instead. His upper-middle-class background, his parents, his athlete identity, and the version of himself that existed before prison were mentioned once in an interview with the actor, but never on screen.

Which is exactly why I’m here.

The gap I was most interested in.

Every character in All the Queen’s Men who stays at Eden stays for a reason.

Madam has leverage. The dancers have debt, loyalty, or fear. And Alonzo, aka El Fuego, has a combination of all three, along with integrity that continues to appear throughout the series.

The show told us he was brilliant. A tech mind, a hacker, a man with a vision for a company he was building on the side while dancing at a strip club to pay for school and possibly fund his tech company. It told us he had tried to leave Eden and learned the hard way that leaving wasn’t easy.

And then it moved on.

I kept thinking: what if someone gave him a reason that was bigger than the reason to stay?

What if that someone was Amp?

Not because Amp is a hero. Not because he’s purely generous. But because Amp is the only other person at Eden who is a bit of an outsider, when it comes to the crime for the sake of Madam.

Why this scene? Why this morning?

The scene I chose to rewrite takes place the morning after Madam almost kills Amp for stealing her $1 million.

I want you to sit with that for a second.

The morning after your aunt, the woman who is supposed to be your family, your safety net, the person you came home to after nine years in prison, almost kills you. No questions asked.

The show’s version of that morning was about anger and uncertainty. Amp’s feelings were hurt. He felt betrayed by Madam and Dime. And he was over Eden.

In my version, Amp wants to be anywhere besides Eden, and he is not willing to let Madam jeopardize his sobriety or his progress. He can use the settlement money to build the life he wants, away from Madam. And maybe, get revenge on her for trying to kill him.

And then Alonzo shows up to study.

This is the first hint that these two have a connection outside of Eden.

So, I ran with it!

The character I wanted to write.

Alonzo, El Fuego’s real name, is not a reluctant ally.

That’s the thing the show kept missing about him.

He’s been ready. He’s been building Obsidian in the background for seasons, using Eden as his testing ground without Madam’s knowledge. He has the prototype. He has the architecture. He has the vision.

What he doesn’t have is a reason to believe the timing is right.

Amp gives him that.

Not with a speech. Not with a plan. With a question, a duffel bag, and four words that change everything.

How much do you need?

A note on the money.

The settlement money was quickly addressed on the show during the interrogation scene. The cash has been in a safe deposit box this whole time, so Amp now has something north of $725,000.

Physically, in a duffel bag under his bed. Which tells you everything about where his head has been. He hasn’t invested it. He hasn’t spent it. He hasn’t deposited it somewhere Madam could trace.

He’s been waiting to know what to do with it.

Now he knows.

What I want you to notice in Scene 1.

A few things I made deliberate choices about and why.

Alonzo’s name. I use Alonzo throughout the scene, not Fuego. El Fuego is his stage name. His performer identity. The version of himself that belongs to Eden. Amp isn’t talking to the dancer. He’s talking to the man underneath. A friend. And the name signals that to the reader before a single line of dialogue lands.

The MVP explanation. Alonzo doesn’t explain what a minimum viable product is in textbook language. He explains it using Eden. Because Eden is the language both of them speak, and because the irony is the point. Madam’s club is the model Alonzo has been learning from this whole time. She funded her own disruption and never knew it.

“If I couldn’t save her life, maybe I can save yours.” This is the emotional center of the entire screenplay in one sentence. Amp is not a businessman making a cold investment. He’s a man trying to find a use for guilt that has been sitting in a duffel bag under his bed. That matters. It changes what Obsidian means, not just to Amp, but to the story.

What’s coming next?

Scene 2 drops next week.

Amp is alone after Alonzo leaves. The duffel bag is on the table. He’s not celebrating. He’s not grieving. He’s calculating, and for the first time in four seasons, the audience gets to see what Amp Anthony looks like when he’s actually decided something.

It’s quiet. It’s cold. And it is my favorite scene in the screenplay.

Subscribe so you don’t miss it.

One last thing.

If you watched All the Queen’s Men and you have a character you want me to reinvent, drop them in the comments. I have a running list, and you never know who might pop up in Obsidian.

We have a lot of fixing to do!

Scene 1 of Obsidian is available now. Start from the beginning.

It’s Tuesday morning, and All the Queen’s Men is streaming in the background.

Don’t judge me; I like background noise while I work!

Amp is on screen, throwing yet another temper tantrum, and clearly sitting on a whole backstory the writers have zero intention of exploring.

Instead of “enjoying” the episode, I’m mentally rewriting the scene the way it should have happened.

Again.

This has been my life for as long as I can remember.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a Tyler Perry production, a crime drama, or a sci-fi series set somewhere with two suns and a complicated political system. If there’s a character being wasted in the background while the main cast collects all the screen time, I notice and take notes

The only difference now is that I’m actually publishing it.

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Welcome to the inner workings of my brain

This Substack is where I give underdeveloped characters their due.

Not just in one show. Not just in one genre. Across drama, sci-fi, fantasy, thriller, and whatever else catches my attention on any given night when I should probably be going to sleep.

The premise is simple.

Mainstream television keeps leaving brilliant characters on the table. Supporting roles with interesting faces and zero screen time. Dropped storylines that never got picked up. Rushed endings that made you close the app and stare at the ceiling.

I’m fixing those.

One story at a time.

The first project is called Obsidian.

It starts with a duffel bag full of settlement money and a question nobody on the show thought to ask.

All the Queen’s Men gave us Amp Anthony, Madam’s nephew, a former D-1 athlete, a man who went to prison for killing his girlfriend in an intentional accident (?), and came back to a world that had him in a tailspin for four seasons.

Which is…fine, I guess.

But here’s what I kept thinking about.

What if Amp was smarter than that? What if, instead of chasing Dime, clashing with everyone, and *@$%&^% patrons to death, he was quietly plotting the whole time?

And what if the person he chose to plot with was Alonzo, also known as El Fuego, the most talented tech mind in the building, a man Madam has been exploiting for years without realizing it?

Obsidian is their story.

It’s a revenge story where nobody throws a punch. The weapon is a cybersecurity platform. The battlefield is the Atlanta nightclub industry. And the goal isn’t to destroy Madam’s empire.

Just to make it irrelevant and build their own.

Here’s how this works.

Obsidian publishes as a screenplay, one scene per week, on Wattpad.

Every release comes with a behind-the-scenes companion post: the research, the character decisions, the gaps the show left open, and why I chose to fill them the way I did.

Think of it as the commentary track. For people who want the commentary track.

Between Obsidian scenes, I’ll be publishing character breakdowns, scene rewrites from other shows, and eventually, when the right project is ready, something in the sci-fi space that I am very excited about and not quite ready to talk about yet.

Scene one of Obsidian is available now.

Who this is for.

You’ve paused a TV show to ask, wait, what’s their story?

You’ve defended a background character to someone who just didn’t get it.

You’ve finished a season finale and immediately opened your notes app.

You know the difference between a character being underdeveloped and a character being uninteresting, and you will not accept the conflation of those two things.

This is for you.

Got a show? A character? A storyline that deserved so much better? Drop it in the comments. I’m taking notes.