All Things Writing

Show versus tell... show versus tell... show versus tell...

If we are true to ourselves, no other bit of writing advice has been given out more times than any other. Editors are perpetually yelling at us to show and not tell.

For old hands at the wheel, we know it when we see it and usually say something. Editors have magic red pens that can write "Show... not tell" on your manuscripts automatically by saying some sort of incantation.

For the rest of us in the world, we have wonderful insights from other authors and some great articles we can consult from time to time to help us on our writing journey. Won't you join me?

By the way, the articles mentioned in this podcast are:

• From Writer's Write, https://www.writerswrite.co.za/5-instances-when-you-need-to-tell/, by Amanda Patterson
• From Autocrit, https://www.autocrit.com/editing/support/showing-vs-telling-indicators/ 

Please, if you enjoyed this episode, hit like and consider a financial donation to help keep things rolling.

Have a blessed day,
Bryan the Writer

Thank you for listening. Consider supporting an indie author by signing up to Patreon today. After you sign up, I will send you the book of your choice.

Some days are just cooler than others in all respects and this is one of those days. Why? You might ask? Well, I have as a guest today guy that I’m happy to call a friend and fellow horror writer. But his talents do not just stop there. I became an instant fan when I read his books, The Night Parade and Bone White. You may know of him from the band Veer. Of course, I am talking about Mr. Ronald Malfi. 

Join us as we talk about all kinds of different things. On this episode we talk about:

• How many books he has written.
• When did he start writing and how it all began.
• How do you write characters with such depth and substance to them.
• His top three bits of advice for aspiring writers.
• When did he know he had made it as a professional writer and he was going to dedicate his life to the craft?
• Hear him talk about his new book, Come With Me. 
• Where can people pre-order Come With Me?
• Ronald will discuss the main characters and what inspirations he took them from.
• We are going to discuss settings for Come With Me.
• I talk Ronald into giving us his elevator pitch.
• Most importantly, where can people find the book to pre-order.
• Pre-order your copy of Come with Me, today!

 Find out more about the talented Mr. Ronald Malfi, here.

This has been another episode of all things writing. I want to remind the listening audience that if you liked the show, hit that like button so you know when new shows come out and to see all of the old ones. Also, if you want to support the show you can hit the link in the show notes, or paypal me directly. Remember we have tons of sponsorship slots available. If you are interested, contact me and let me know you are interested in sponsorship.

Thank you for listening. Consider supporting an indie author by signing up to Patreon today. After you sign up, I will send you the book of your choice.

Back to horror. Horror, at least the term horror, really is an umbrella. It covers a lot of different things from the stories which make you want to close the cover of the book and put it down to the stories that cause you to sniggle wildly at something that should not be funny, but is. Like a plant, shooting its head off. That to me is impossibly hilarious. Now the implications of the story are essentially that planet earth is doomed as an alien plant is about to take over the world, but still, a plant shooting itself is hilarious.

In this episode we talk about the following examples

The Oddkins by Dean Koontz
Riapoke by Bryan Nowak
Crimson Tassels by Bryan Nowak
Gutted; Beautiful Horror Stories by various authors
Unbury Carol, by Josh Malerman
Cold Cuts, by Robert Payne Cabeen
Dracul, by Dacre Stoker and J.D. Barker
Paid in Full by Rachel Rawlings
Payable on Death by Rachel Rawlings
Literally anything by Ronald Malfi

We have come to an end of another episode of All Things Writing. I am going to take a week off and work on some more guests for you, but when we come back I plan on doing a show about pitches for your books. What works, and what doesn’t?

Remember, that if you like the show, hit follow so you know when new episodes are out there. If you are interested in sponsoring a show or shows, you can hit me up at my e-mail, [email protected]. Remember, that is Bryan with a Y.

Until then, thanks for listening, this is Bryan the Writer, signing off.

Thank you for listening. Consider supporting an indie author by signing up to Patreon today. After you sign up, I will send you the book of your choice.

Last show was all about mysteries. We talked about different types of mysteries, stuff I have read, stuff I loved to read and some of you will remember I made an admission that day. I admitted to liking a good cozy mystery from time to time.

Which brings me to something amazing that happened. I am so happy to announce my next guest, someone who wrote a book I loved, called “Death is Long Overdue.” So yes, I am talking about the wonderful Amy E. Lilly.

In this episode we talk about all kinds of things like:

• What inspired you to write the cozy mysteries in the first place? Was there a particular attraction to the genre you had?
• Phee Jefferson hits on one of the most important aspects of characters I need to see in order to be truly into a book is if I care about them. And I found myself caring about her. Where did you come up with her?
• I know you have a thing for libraries, and so does Phee who works in a library if I remember correctly, what part of you is in Phee?
• Let’s talk about the series, how many are there in the Phee series. Actually, why don’t you tell us a little about all of your books.
• Why do you think people like cozies? I know why I enjoy them, but I am curious what your fans have told you

See you next week where I think we are going to dissect the horror genre. Thanks for joining us. This is Bryan the Writer and Amy E. Lilly, signing off.

Check out Amy here! http://www.amyelilly.com

Thank you for listening. Consider supporting an indie author by signing up to Patreon today. After you sign up, I will send you the book of your choice.

Welcome to the show! 

So, what the heck is a mystery? I would love to claim to have come up with all of this stuff myself, but I didn't. Valerie Peterson wrote a wonderful article on the topic. So good, in fact that I would have a hard time improving on it. So, instead of doing that, I am going to follow her outline closely and add my own commentary. 

But You Can Read The Article Here

I think we can all agree that ultimately when we write or read a Mystery the most important element of that work is having a question or a puzzle we are trying to solve. The antagonist (and in some cases a protagonist) can be the person trying to solve a mystery.

Tradition has had it in the past that the protagonist is a detective or private investigator of some sort. By the way, we make the mistake of calling Sherlock Holmes a detective when we discuss him. He would correct you and tell you that he is a consulting detective. But those are not the only types of protagonists we have. It is not uncommon for regular old people to become the protagonists involved in solving a mystery. Remind me when we get to the topic of cozy mysteries to tell you a story about one of my favorite cozy mystery novellas. 

As Valerie would remind us in her article, the mystery can include easily a theft or kidnapping. Lies, deceptions, and red-herrings (false clues) and these add to the story. One of the things that I hate in a mystery is if I have figured it out in the first chapter. That is just wrong. Give me something to go off of. Make me thing. The best books are ones that make you lay in bed wondering about that next page and what is going to happen to the characters.

Mysteries fall into a few general categories. 

• Hard-boiled
• Soft-Boiled 
• Cozy Mysteries 
• Procedurals
• Criminal Fiction
• And lost of sub categories

Victoria does, in her article, make a few other distinctions, but I will keep my distinctions truncated. There were a few on here list that I would not necessarily agree with, but I understand why she put them on there.

I also mention the book, Death is Long Overdue, by Amy E. Lilly. If you want to check out her book, see it here! 

Remember that next week there will be no show, but then I will come back with a couple of new shows. I want to do another show like this where I dissect, pun intended, horror novels and what the different types are.

Then, I want to do a deep dive into my Dramatic Dead series and talk about them a bit.

At any rate, thank you for spending some time with me. This is Bryan the writer, for all things writing, signing off.

Thank you for listening. Consider supporting an indie author by signing up to Patreon today. After you sign up, I will send you the book of your choice.

As a reminder, if there is any topic you want me to cover on the show, I am more than happy to entertain requests. Just drop me a line at [email protected].

The show, thanks to you all, is going to smash, or will nearly smash a thousand downloads in the month of February or get really close. Most of you are listening to me on iheart radio. Love iheart radio, and no they did not pay me to say that. I actually do listen to iheart radio as well as SyriusXM when I listen to tunes or podcasts.

Do you like vampires? Of course you do, who doesn't. Okay, other than Dr. von Helsing. But, I promise you that most of the world does, if the gazillions of dollars that has been spent on the genre is any indication.

The vampire novel I am writing is called, The App. It is, naturally, a working title, subject to change, but that is what I am going with for now since calling it That One Book I am Working On, just seems silly.

In todays show I am going to dive into The App and talk about the main characters a bit. Where they came from, and why I wrote them the way I wrote them. Hope you enjoy this week's episode of All Things Writing!

This week, in addition to talking about the book I am working on right now, in depth as it turned out, I am also thanking the good people of Old Ox Brewery. Come on out and visit their locations in Ashburn or Middleburg, Virginia.

As always, any donations to the program are greatly appreciated! 

Thank you for listening. Consider supporting an indie author by signing up to Patreon today. After you sign up, I will send you the book of your choice.

Hey everyone and welcome to this, our fourth show of the season. I want to thank all of you for joining me today.

Welcome to a cold and snowy day out here in Northern Virginia (at least when I recorded this).

On this episode I give you a quick update on what is going on in the life of Bryan the Writer and then I launch into a discussion about ISBN. Not necessarily what it is, but where did it come from in the first place.

You know the company as R.R. Bowker. But do you know who R.R. Bowker was? Did you know there was a connection between R.R. Bowker and the founder of the Dewy Decimal System? No, well, take a listen and find out about something we take for granted. 

http://www.bowker.com/about/Bowker-History--Milestones.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._R._Bowker

Thank you for listening. Consider supporting an indie author by signing up to Patreon today. After you sign up, I will send you the book of your choice.

I know copyright doesn't sound like and interesting topic for a podcast. But there is more than meets the eye in terms of history where copyright is concerned. Plus you get to hear me do my best British accent.

For more info about copyright and its implications, check out these resources.

Wikipedia has, at least as of this recording, a pretty good page on the issue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright

The U.S. Copyright office has an excellent page dedicated to the history as it pertains to U.S. law. You can also find the current version of Title 17, which I reference in the show.

https://www.copyright.gov/history/

This is the site where you can see The Treaty of Anne. It is worth reading if you really want to see where we get some of our legal concepts of what copyright should look like.

http://www.copyrighthistory.com/anne.html


As always, thank you for joining me! If you would like more information on how you can be a show sponsor, or just want to reach out and say hello. Click here and send me a message. 

Thank you for listening. Consider supporting an indie author by signing up to Patreon today. After you sign up, I will send you the book of your choice.

I want to give a big shout out to the listeners in San Jose California who are listening the heck out of the show. I greatly appreciate it, you guys are the best.

As a reminder, if you like anything you here please remember to hit that like button. But enough of that, now onto her show. At the beginning I read a quote and that quote comes from a book written by a good friend of the show, Michael Thompson.

World of the orb fits into what could rightly be considered the midgrade and young adult categories. So why what I read it? After all, Bryan the Writer is a horror, mystery, and science fiction Writer. However, that really doesn’t do justice to what I read.

I know I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s really important to remember that if you are an author, reading far and wide is really important. The example I read to you at the beginning of the show is a wonderful example of world building.

Let me read you the back of the book, so you can get an idea of what the storyline is about. “Best friends Marvin and Andy have just discovered the Museum of Natural History’s unnatural secret: the orb, a mysterious relic that plunges these two modern teens into a medieval world of monsters, myth, and magic. To return home, they must embark on a global treasure hunt to unite five elemental crystals, all while eluding the eye of a tyrannical warlock bent on conquering the realms. This isn’t the field trip they expected.”

The world that Michael has built is called Enkartai and is divided into six different lands. In order to complete their quest, this band must cover all of the different lands to retrieve these crystals.

Intrigued yet?

The transitions that Michael uses to get from one spit of land to another are equally as engaging. You feel the chill of the air when the characters are moving through snowy landscapes. You feel the grit of the dirt when you’re on rocky and barren lands. When the characters first arrive in the dark lands, there’s a wonderful passage where you’re getting a description of the change in atmosphere. You can feel the oppressive change from the other parts of Enkartai.

Fortunately, no matter how much we say we grow up, in some respects we never really do. There’s a part of us that still loves to watch animated cartoons, no matter how old we are. There’s a part of us that still likes reading comic books, chewing bubblegum, feeling the wind through her hair a bike ride, there’s a part of us that always will want to go on a grand adventure.

That’s why reading this book is such a great experience. You get to tap into these emotions which are latent inside of you. In some ways you’re always going to put yourself in the place of the main character, as you live in this world that was created. And that’s what Michael does particularly well.

That’s it this week for all things writing. Next week is a bye week for me, so there will be no show. However, after that I am going to cover the topics of copywriting and what the heck is an ISBN anyway, and why should you have one.

If you enjoyed today’s show, remember to hit that like button and also feel free to donate to the show, you can do so by hitting the button in the upper right-hand corner which will take you to a page where you can donate directly to my cause.

Until next time, that’s it for me. This is Bryan the writer, signing off.

Thank you for listening. Consider supporting an indie author by signing up to Patreon today. After you sign up, I will send you the book of your choice.

Welcome to 2021! 

My plan this year is to do 35 shows in 2021. This first show really is a kind of reintroduction to me. However, that doesn't take very long so I am going to spend more time discussing how to plan out your writing year.

Well, if you are new to the show, I would encourage you to go back and listen to the shows I did last year. There are some amazing shows, with some great interviews. But, in the meantime, let me re-introduce myself. I am Bryan Nowak. I am the author of the novels No Name, The Dramatic Dead, The Reverent Dead, Dean Cordaine and the Diamond Studded Legs Matter, and The Fallen Oath Matter, Riapoke, Crimson Tassels, The Bagorian Chronicles, and I also took part in the anthology, Bizarre: 14 Horror Stories.

I am primarily a horror writer, but I also work in the closely related genre of mystery and I dabble in some science fiction. I have been writing for over seven years, pretty much non-stop and I have been podcasting for a year.

I want you to reach out to me with your questions and suggestions. Hit me up at https://bryannowak.com/contact-me

Planning your Year:

• Have an honest assessment of where you are at in your writing journey
• Set honest goals with yourself
• Pull out a calendar and set benchmarks for yourself or buy a planner like this one that I recommend
• Figure out what you want to get our of the writing year and back plan from there
• Decide how you want to a achieve that goal
• Have an honest discussion about the physical and temporal limitations in your life

Be realistic with yourself. For example, if you are a stay-at-home parent of four, carving out precious time will be hard. If you work 50 hours a week to support that same size family, then it will also be hard.

You will notice I said hard, but not impossible. Figure out when you can put your butt into a seat and write. It may take an honest talk with your spouse about making sure those kids stay in the basement while you write. You may only find ten minutes a day to write. Then, guess what? Write the hell out of those ten minutes. It isn’t how many words you can write that matter. It is how consistently you can commit to that time.

So, that is the first episode of All Things Writing in season two (the first of 2021). Remember to tune in next week to hear my book review of Michael Thompson’s “World of the Orb”. I am a fan and friend of Michael’s and he has been on the show. I totally want to get him on again to talk about the book, but we will have to figure that out.

Plus, next week, I want to revisit the idea of an editing process and how to negotiate those waters without making yourself nutty. And yes, you can make yourself nutz.

Thanks again for hanging out with us today on All Things Writing. We will see you next week. Until then, this is Bryan the writer, signing off.

Thank you for listening. Consider supporting an indie author by signing up to Patreon today. After you sign up, I will send you the book of your choice.