Welcome to another LEGENDARY episode of Storybeast! Our Legendaries are special guests who are an expert within their area of storytelling. In this episode, Ghabiba Weston and Courtney Shack have the pleasure of interviewing legendary Carla Hoch.

CARLA HOCH is the author of the Writer’s Digest book Fight Write: How to Write Believable Fight Scenes as well as Fight Write, Round Two: Crafting Chaos, Combat and Crime. Carla has been teaching the craft of writing fight scenes, action and violence since 2017 and is an instructor for both Writer’s Digest University and Writing Mastery Academy. Her award-winning blog, FightWrite.net, has been named in Writer’s Digest 100 Best Sites for Writers five years in a row.

Carla is a world champion jiujitsu player and has experience in almost a dozen fighting styles. She lives outside Houston, Texas with her family and judgmental cats.

In this episode, you'll:

• hear about Carla's research process
• find your new weapon motto
• discover whether your character should store their second weapon in their boot
• learn what your two most important considerations in a fight scene should be
• hear how to teach yourself to write a fight scene
• hear how to pace a fight scene
• face the question of what's more useful in storytelling: being realistic versus authentic
• hear about Carlas's top pet fight scene peeves
• hear about Carla's consultation sessions on fight scenes
• uncover "dating" advice from Carla
• hear therapist Courtney talk about the power of enclothed cognition

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Feel free to reach out if you want to talk story or snacks!

A warm thank you to Deore for our musical number. You can find more of her creative work on Spotify.

As ever, thank you for listening, Beasties! Please consider leaving a review to support this podcast.

Be brave, stay beastly!