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Today, Fable and the Verbivore are talking about the poetry that we’ve recently been reading and listening to - from slam poetry to Emily Dickinson. And the lessons that we’ve learned from it.

In this episode, we touch on different poets and poems we’ve connected with and unpack some of what we’ve learned.

Here are a few of the poets we talk about:

Slam poets Pages Matam, Elizabeth Acevedo, and G. Yamazawa.

Classic poets Anne Sexton, Emily Dickinson, and Rainer Maria Rilke.

Modern poets Nikita Gil, Morgan Harper Nichols, and Amanda Gorman.

As we talk about slam poets and spoken word, we discuss how reading our work aloud can help us identify where our words don’t flow quite right. That the act of listening can connect us with the rhythm and the language of our work on another level, as well as with our voice.

We talk about rhythm and pattern and making promises to the reader for what they should expect from your work - and how breaking those patterns or promises in a way that feels erratic and without purpose can lose the trust of your audience. We also discuss how words - and poetry especially - has the power to shift our mental lens and change our emotional state.

Lastly, we talk honestly about the barriers and benefits to sharing our words and our voice. We mention how spoken word poet Amanda Gorman shared in a Ted Talk about how terrifying getting up and speaking is still for her - and the process she goes through to remind her that her voice has value.

Though we both are intimidated by the idea of sharing our poetry in a public setting, we’ve made a commitment to each perform one of our original poems at an open mic night sometime over the next couple months - as well as to share our thoughts and takeaways from the experience in an podcast episode after we do.

We hope you enjoy this episode! Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

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Today, Fable and the Verbivore are talking about Poetry - both what it is and how it can be used to help to find our voice.

We start by using a general definition of poetry and what characteristics it typically has. Poetry comes from a Greek word that means “to make, to create”. It often includes - but does not require - these three elements:

- Emphasis on language's musical qualities

- Condensed or boiled down language

- Intense feelings or exploration of what it means to be human

The form of poetry is often important. There could be a rhyming structure, lyrical rhythm, or a visual structure. Using Billy Collins “Elk River Falls” and Barbara Kingsolver’s “How to Do Absolutely Nothing” as examples, we talk about how the shape of the poem can help add meaning.

Towards the second part of this conversation, we talk about using poetry to help connect with our voice and identify the words that feel authentically ours. One of the main points we touch on is how adding a constraint to a writing piece can help overcome “decision paralysis” and spark creativity through funneling down the options and narrowing the scope of the project.

As we end, we talk about listening to performance of poetry by the author. How connecting with a poets actual voice can help add layers of understanding to their words.

We hope you enjoy this episode! Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

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Today, Fable and the Verbivore are thrilled to share part two of our conversation with author Dicky Kitchen Jr.

Dicky has self-published four books - a 1st and 2nd edition of his thriller novel Prey/Pray: Origin of The Average Man and an origin story novella Prey/Pray: Hunting Party: The Nurse, as well as a kids picture book titled The True Tale of Peter Piper. He’s also a very funny and supportive presence within the Instagram writing community.

In this episode, Dicky talks about why he loves thrillers and how broad the genre feels. To him, the essence of thriller is suspense and tension - building that up and playing with it to suit the specific story you’re telling.

Dicky gives some personal thriller recommendations from the kids book Bunnicula to World War Z to the Orphan X and Lincoln Rhyme series. But he also points out how thriller elements are often present in Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and even Romance stories.

He ends this conversation with a reminder that there is no right way to write and that writing is an artform as well as a craft. If it works for you, it’s the right way. And to not let your characters die in your head. If you have an idea living inside you, write it.

We hope you enjoy this episode. It was an encouraging conversation for us and we hope it is for you too!

Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

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This week, Fable and the Verbivore are excited to share part one of our conversation with thriller author Dicky Kitchen Jr.

Dicky has self-published four books - a 1st and 2nd edition of his thriller novel Prey/Pray: Origin of The Average Man and an origin story novella Prey/Pray: Hunting Party: The Nurse, as well as a kids picture book titled The True Tale of Peter Piper. He’s also a very funny and supportive presence within the Instagram writing community.

In this episode, Dicky talks us through some of the unique choices he made when writing Prey/Pray: Origin of The Average Man. This book is written using both present and past tense to tell different facets of the story, and that choice sprang naturally from the story that unfolded in his mind as he wrote it. Also, he deliberately chose not to name his characters, but to refer to them as an aspect of their character. He admits it was a risk, but one that felt right within the context of this story. As readers, we agree that it absolutely paid off.

He also talks about his organic writing process - writing with his heart but receiving feedback detached from emotion, rereading what he wrote last and creating space to let his mind wander so that his characters can speak, and taking chances when they feel right but not falling into patterns or formulas.

We connected strongly with his advice to writers who are stuck, he recommends being willing to walk away and come back later, as well as to not put undo stress on creating a certain number of words. Reminding yourself that it’s the quality rather than the quantity that matters, and that putting too much pressure on a specific goal can actually kill creativity.

We hope you enjoy this episode, we’re grateful to have been a part of this conversation!

Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

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Today, Fable and the Verbivore are thrilled to share our March book club episode on the thought-provoking and pulse-pounding Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton.

“An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now humankind’s most thrilling fantasies have come true. Creatures extinct for eons roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery, and all the world can visit them—for a price. Until something goes wrong. . . .” - Amazon.com

We open this episode by announcing that our first $5 Writing Class live training at the end of March will be on the movie version of Jurassic Park. We chose this topic because the script and story elements are ripe for analysis - and most people have seen it. We’ll be taking apart different scenes and diving into topics such as: establishing clear stakes, exposition hidden in movement, characters with diverse viewpoints, and conflict in entertaining dialogue - and will also create moments for discussion. We’ll be announcing more details this week on social media. We hope you join us!

In this episode, we talk about the context for Jurassic Park - the original draft told the story from a child’s viewpoint and it took many rounds of rewrites and rejections before it was picked up for publication as more of a thriller. We unpack elements that Michael Crichton used really well in this book and others that we felt detracted from the story. Here are some of our key takeaways:

- Setup suspense and heightened stakes through showing what harm and violence the dinosaurs where capable of using smaller side characters. And then make it clear that it’s about to happen again with someone we’re more connected with.

- Create a sense of proximity to the action through using visceral descriptions that immerse the reader in the story world - especially evoking the senses of sound, smell, and touch.

- Choose the right viewpoint to maximize the fear and switch at just the right moment to stretch out the tension.

- Slow down time to make the most out of all the suspense and tension of a ticking clock that would result in disaster that has global implications.

We didn’t love this book - but feel it has a lot to teach about imersing a reader within the story world, playing the lens of viewpoint, racheting up the suspese to 11, and as an exploration of a strong theme.

We hope you enjoy this episode! Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

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Today, Fable and the Verbivore unpack James Scott Bell’s book “Elements of Fiction Writing: Conflict and Suspense”.

We both feel that this is one of the most clearly written and applicable books on the craft of writing that we’ve read to date. The author uses examples from a wide range of media (books across genres, classic novels, TV, and film) to show the many ways the elements he’s exploring can be used to tell stories. He also gives useful exercises to help identify how these writing tools could fit within your own work.

In this episode, we talk about our main takeaways from this book. Such as:

- The reader should have an understanding of what the character hopes and desires

- The stakes of the story need to be clear and should always feel like death - physical, professional, or psychological

- Slowing down and stretching out time in a high stakes scene can be an effective way to stretch the tension and emotion out for the reader

- Interest and suspense can be added to a scene by putting a small obstacle, like a locked door, in the way of your protagonist

- Adding a small disagreement to dialogue can add instant conflict and uncertainty

We’d highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to explore ways to add interest and increase conflict in their work, and who is looking to help keep readers turning pages.

We hope you enjoy this episode! Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

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Today, Fable and the Verbivore are diving into the Thriller genre.

We start by defining Thriller by how it makes you feel. That pulse pounding, relentless rush of dread or excitement that keeps you on the edge of your seat.

In this episode, we talk about several aspects of the element of suspense and specifically about Thriller stories. Such as:

Surprise vs. Suspense

Superior position / Dramatic irony - when the audience knows something that the characters don’t

The wide range of thriller subgenres

Some intriguing advice a writer gave for how to get yourself into the emotional and Physiological space to write a thriller

We also reference Dan Brown’s MasterClass article where he talks about elements that are typically in thrillers: The element of suspense, a hero, a sidekick, a villain, plot twists, red herrings, cliffhangers, and an exciting climax. He also believes that a thriller should have the three C’s:

The contract - an implied promise you make to the reader about what will be delivered by the end of the book.

The clock - the fact that adding time pressure to any character’s struggle will create higher stakes and more interest for the reader.

The crucible - a box that constrains your characters, offers them no escape, and forces them to act.

We end our conversation talking about different thriller books and movies that we enjoy, including some YA fantasy ones that we love and feel fit the definition. And lastly, we talk about some advice for hiding twists in plain sight.

We hope you enjoy this episode! Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

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Today, Fable and the Verbivore are sharing a small bonus episode that came at the end of one of our recording sessions. We didn’t originally plan on releasing this part of the conversation, but upon hearing it thought it might be something fun.

Fable recently shared that she’d finished “The Love Hypothesis”, so the Verbivore asked about her thoughts on it. We then spent a few minutes talking about what we’ve been reading, both for the podcast and on our own.

We hope you enjoy this informal glimpse into our current reading interests. Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

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Today, Fable and the Verbivore are sharing our February book club episode on the funny, endearing, and hopeful Opposite of Always by Justin A. Reynolds.

This book opens with high school senior Jack King sharing a couple of lessons he’s learned while stuck in a time loop as he attempts to save the life of someone he cares about. Then we go back with him to when it all began - witnessing all the circumstances that bring him to this place, the relationships in his orbit, and the choices he’s made as he tries to change the way the story ends.

In this episode, we discuss the many lessons that this book taught us. For example:

• That a story can be funny, heartwarming, heartbreaking, edge-of-your-seat exciting, and thoughtful. But it can’t be all those things all at once, space needs to be given to allow the different emotions to land and breath.

• Showing relationship growth in a variety of ways. Taking time to let the dynamics take shape through character dialogue and e-mail conversations. Allowing someone to stumble upon a close secret of another character and seeing how they respond. Showing development by changes in the levels of trust and willingness to share vulnerable things.

• That sometimes in speculative fiction, you don’t need to know the mechanism for how the strange/unexpected things work. But that it’s good to be able to connect with the why in terms of its significance within the story - the impetus that’s causing the phenomenon, rather than how it’s achieved.

If it’s not already evident, we both strongly connected with this book. It has complex and lovable characters and character relationships, witty dialogue, and hidden gems of human wisdom sprinkled throughout. It also has a premise that to us seems like it would have been really difficult to pull off but feels effortless in author Justin A. Reynolds hands.

We hope you enjoy this episode and would highly recommend checking this book out! Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

This week, Fable and the Verbivore are so excited to share our conversation with paranormal romance author Tiffany Ann.

Tiffany has self-published five books in her magical realism romance The Soulmate Call series and book one in her paranormal romance Hotel Lamia series. Her next book is Hotel Lamia New York: Where Immortals Sleep is being released on February 15, 2022.

In this episode, Tiffany talks about getting the story out from within over time by continuing to ask “what could have happened”, listening to writing advice but feeling comfortable with throwing out what doesn’t fit with your process, and not being afraid of listening to your characters and following where they lead you. She also speaks about following the character whose voice is urgent and needing to share their story - even if that’s several books down the line in a series - getting down that portion of the story while it’s ready.

From a romance perspective, she talks about deciding what level of physical intimacy belongs on the page and not allowing fear of who’s going to read it to stop you from including a scene that belongs in the story. She also talks about how someone encouraged her to cut some of the dialogue to soften one of her characters, and she realized that she had to let her character be herself - even if that meant not everyone would like it.

Towards the end of our interview, Tiffany drops some sage advice about remembering to write for ourselves and not allow all of the external things to distract from experiencing the joy and peace that comes from doing the thing you love and bringing your stories to life. “If it’s in you, just do it. Do it for yourself and no one else.”

We hope you enjoy this episode, we’re grateful to have been a part of this conversation!

Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore