Fable & The Verbivore

Today we are thrilled to share our latest author interview! In this episode, Fable and the Verbivore have the chance to speak with author and fellow Phoenician Erica Wynters.

Erica is a romantic suspense and humourous romantic mystery writer as well as an active member within the Instagram writing community, where we first connected with her. Bethany (Fable) and Laura (the Verbivore) greatly enjoy Erica’s clear and crisp writing style, as well as her great use of the desert setting to add dimension and interest to the world of her stories.  

The fourth and final novella in her romantic suspense In the Desert series, Hunted in the Desert, released on August 27th. These stories follow the inquiries and romantic escapade of FBI profiler Dr. Alex Briggs as she works to solve crimes while simultaneously struggling to deal with past trauma from a close incounter with a serial killer.

In this episode, Erica talks about some of the writing tricks and tips she has learned over the years. She dives into the importance and complexity behind categorizing a book appropriately when querying agents. She also gives some great advice and examples for finding your writing community and building relationships with other creatives so that you can learn from their experience and share what you’ve learned. Towards the end of our conversation, she gives a great reminder that we all write in our own unique way and to treat trying different writing ideas and methods as an experiment to test what works best for you and your writing.

We’ve found Erica to be such an encouragind individual and greatly appreciate her honesty in sharing the experiences she has while navigating the writing and querying process. We highly recommend checking out her work and connecting with her on her Instagram account @ericawynters and on her website at ericawynters.com.

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

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

In today’s Author Answer episode we have Candice Yamnitz talking about her writing routine and how she gets writing done in the midst of a busy life.

Candice is a homeschooling mom, blogger and teacher who taught in an elementary dual-language classroom for seven years before having her three spirited children. She has been mentoring teen girls for another many years and aims to inspire through stories. In 2017, she joined the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) to improve her craft, and today she is vice president of the Chicago chapter. Her work has placed in four contests.

Candice shares some great advice about how to trick your brain into trying to get writing done before a day off and how to take advantage of the shifts in your schedule and mental acuity — for example knowing that editing takes more mental energy and doing it during the day, but knowing that your inner critic is quieter at night making that a good time to write first drafts and new words.

Thanks so much for sharing your process and insights with us Candice!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

In today’s episode, Fable and the Verbivore tackle the topic of writing violence and action. Within this topic, we look at the perspectives and lens you can take – as well as what makes these sequences hit home and resonate rather than fall flat.

We start off by discussing that there is a range that writers can work within between more detailed and overt depictions to the more subtle and implied descriptions – or even having these sequences appear off the page and only include allusions to them in the text. We reference an article called "Make Violent Scenes Matter" by author Carter Wilson that recommends writing a violent scene in two ways to determine if a more direct or subtle approach serves the story best.

Throughout this conversation, we discuss finding the personal and emotional connection within a violent or action sequence, writing these scenes with the goals of the book and what the reader expects in mind, and weighing the emotional costs to the story and the reader when considering killing off a character.

Lastly, we discuss how the choice of the point of view and distance to the violence is similar to how a director decides to frame and film a scene - where they choose to place the camera. It’s useful to pay attention in a given book or film scene to those viewpoint decisions and explore how they personally make you feel.

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

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

In today’s episode, Fable and the Verbivore discuss the delicate balance and learned skill of creating tension in a story. By its very definition, tension is “the state of being stretched tight”, “mental or emotional strain”.

Building tension is part of what keeps readers, including ourselves, turning pages in a book. It can be created by unanswered questions, internal conflict within a character, or friction between characters when their goals or viewpoints clash. It could also manifest through anticipation when you hope two characters will finally realize they are better together than apart, dread of a crime that’s unsolved and an unknown culprit poised to strike again, or anxiety for whether or not a hero or heroine will be able to stop the destruction of the world as they know it.  

We reflect from a writing perspective how the amount of information given to the reader at any given time helps to strengthen or lessen the tension. This makes striving to find the right balance of revealing information over time a key component of the editing process. We also discuss how setting up the stakes allow action scenes to fully land and having downbeats after action helps both characters and the reader emotionally grapple with the experience.

We also bring up examples of great tension from our own reading:

- The subtly crafted questions about the truth of the main character’s life and impending death in Marilyn’s Robison’s Gilead

- The enthralling and simmering romantic and dramatic tension woven throughout Renee Ahdieh’s The Wrath and the Dawn

- The gripping action and horrifying dread that sets off Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book

- The masterful use of cliffhanger chapter breaks to propel the reader forward in Stephanie Garber’s Caraval

- The use of repetition with key differences to highlight character transformation and growth in Shawn Smucker’s Light From Distant Stars

In the end, we brought up that thoughtful editing is integral to the process as well as checking in with beta readers to understand what questions they have and what emotions they feel at given points to ensure the story is resonating as hoped. It’s also important as writers to allow your readers opportunities to read between the lines and sit with uncertainty, so long as you are ultimately delivering on the promises and questions you set up.

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

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

For today’s episode, Fable and the Verbivore enjoy themselves far too much discussing Sherry Thomas’ novel The Magnolia Sword: A Ballad of Mulan.

Spoiler alert for this episode as we dissect some of the plot twists and the end of this book.

We dive right into our conversation talking about how Sherry Thomas uses the locations, food, fighting sequences, cultural rituals, and historical setting to ground the story firmly within its rich and complex world. The great dialogue, well-rounded and interesting personalities, and the limited viewpoint of Mulan navigating these unfamiliar spaces in disguise all help create story tension around what each character knows and what they are each hoping to achieve.

Throughout this episode, we also talk about how the author used each character’s weaknesses and strengths to build and change relationship dynamics while also adding layers and dimension to her characters. We felt that she took a lot of care to make Mulan’s abilities feel well earned through her practice and dedication, and greatly enjoyed that Mulan’s character journey was grounded in her identity and finding her place in the world rather than simply whether or not she would be able to win the fight. We also discuss the breath of fresh air that is Sherry Thomas’ character development of Kai, with all of his strengths and flaws, who comes off as such a believable, appealing, and supportive partner.

We previously discussed Sherry Thomas’ Lady Sherlock series in Episode 17: Being kind to your readers and writing subtle character growth. Sherry’s author website also contains information on her many other books including historical romance novels, the Elemental fantasy trilogy, and a science fiction/fantasy novella titled The Heart is a Universe.

We hope you enjoy listening to this episode, we sure enjoyed recording it! And keep reading, and writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

In this episode, Fable and the Verbivore planned to record on a completely different topic - but we ended up leaning into the need to just be two friends talking about some hard truths around the vulnerable process of sharing our words and our work with others.

This conversation unfolded from an Instagram post that Fable shared on her personal account about sending out the first draft of her current book to beta readers. Her post can be read here.

Through this therapeutic writing conversation, we both discuss recent experiences where we shared our voice or our words with others – along with some of the insecurities and messages that we’ve needed to work through as part of opening our work up to others to experience. We talk about working through the struggles of getting comfortable with being seen, clarifying our views of success in this podcast and our creative life, and letting go of the things outside our control.

But possibly most important, we discuss reframing our value and worth as writers and people. Reminding ourselves that there is value in the creative journey and in personally enjoying what we create, and that our work is important no matter how it is received.

We hope that you enjoy this episode where we get real with how scary this creating gig can be when we put our voice out into the world, but we also feel that it’s rewarding and worth the risk! Keep creating and putting your own unique voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Today marks the 50th episode of Fable and the Verbivore and we are excited to share our latest author interview! In this episode, we get the chance to speak with indie author Stephanie Ascough.

Stephanie is an active member within the Instagram writing community, where we first connected with her. Her independently published debut novel A Land of Light and Shadow was released on May 24th of this year. This middle grade fantasy story follows the journey of the character Ardin, Princess of Sedonia, as she strives to forge her own path while uncovering secrets of the past that, unless brought into the light, could destroy their future.

While reading A Land of Light and Shadow, Bethany (Fable) and Laura (the Verbivore) connected with the engaging visual storytelling elements and the intriguing myth-like tales from Sedonia’s past that helped to underpin Ardin’s story of personal transformation and struggle to find out the truth of her people’s history that has been lost.

In this conversation, Stephanie shares a sweet memory of the first childhood story that she created and illustrated about an anthropomorphic ant, talks about how the theme of the journey of Ardin to push through and find her voice was mirrored in her own winding writing path, and demonstrates how being connected and engaged with a community of writers and creatives can help you support one another and learn from each other in unique ways.

Stephanie gives some great advice about embracing and navigating the self-publishing process, as well as provides some fantastic tools and resources that helped her along the way. She also discusses the need as creatives to give ourselves permission to create and share our work, to go at our own speed, and to stop comparing ourselves to others and do what works best for us.

Stephanie has a lot of wisdom to share about the writing and self-publishing journey. We highly recommend checking out her work and connecting with her on her Instagram account @stephanieascough.

We hope you enjoy this episode, we immensely enjoyed our conversation with Stephanie and left with a lot of helpful tools and advice to consider! Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Today we have Stephanie Ascough joining us for our Author Answer’s mini-episode. Stephanie is answering our question “How early do you share your work and what does that process look like for you?” We really enjoy Stephanie’s insight and awareness about how she responds to feedback and appreciate how openly she shared that here.

When Stephanie Ascough isn't writing or parenting her four children, she likes to read, create imaginary worlds, dream about the mountains, and occasionally play around on strings (guitar and mandolin, to be specific). Her love languages include listening without interruption, dark chocolate, and burnt cheese. She believes in the value of everyone's participation in the human narrative. She and her husband are raising their family in Florida.

A Land of Light and Shadow is Stephanie’s first novel. You can sign up for her newsletter through her blog (stephanieascough.wordpress.com) and receive her free short story, Antics in Alvar, a prequel to A Land of Light and Shadow. You can also find her on Instagram @stephanieascough.

Thanks so much for joining us, Stephanie!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

This week, Fable and the Verbivore talk about the differences between Middle Grade and YA fiction as well as why it’s important to understand the defining features of these two genres.

We start by discussing some of the more surface level differences of Middle Grade fiction in comparison with YA and Adult fiction — from the typical number of pages, the age of the main character, and acceptable content when it comes to violence and sex. Though these general guidelines are beneficial in understanding what is typically expected by agents, publishers, and readers; a book’s themes, message, and mind-set also tend to weigh heavily when determining a book’s genre.

As part of this discussion, we cover the importance in assigning the right genre to a work of fiction as it helps get the book into the hands of readers who are most likely to connect with and enjoy it, and that identifying comparison (comp) titles can help a writer categorize their work appropriately. We also discuss the relatively new history of Middle Grade and YA fiction in comparison to Adult fiction, and how the industry and categories change with what is successful and sells.

Another aspect we dive into is the decision of whether or not to follow trends, as well as situations in which it may be important to follow the needs of your narrative rather than fear if the work is likely to be banned by school libraries for language and violence.

We end by making the recommendation for writers to try to find beta readers in different age ranges to obtain feedback as to if the characters feel authentic and see if the story connects with the intended audience.

We hope you enjoy this episode. Keep creating and putting your unique voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

In today’s Author Answer’s mini-episode we have Emily Barnett with us. Emily talks about the process of sharing her manuscript with others and getting feedback on her writing. We love Emily’s relaxed take on getting feedback early and her assertion that as writers you need to do what works best for you.

Emily Barnett resides in Illinois where she dreams up magical worlds that feel a bit like home. She is married to a wonderful, bearded man, and they have two boys who love cars and trucks entirely too much.

Emily has loved writing since she wrote about a horse and a wizard in her Lisa Frank notebook in grade school. She still has it around for laughs (and inspiration). It wasn't until many years and many affirming people later, that she decided to take her calling as a storyteller seriously and do something brave with it: write books. 

Emily is currently working on a contemporary fantasy about a girl who finds a magical "Secret Garden" and learns to deal with her own world by stepping into another. She also hosts a flash fiction challenge each week through her Instagram @thebarnettburrow.

Thanks so much for joining us, Emily!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore