Fable & The Verbivore

Today, Fable and the Verbivore discuss some ideas for how to approach writing authentic teenagers.

We start by discussing the importance of understanding the developmental stages (physical, cognitive, and social) that teenagers are going though and treating that with empathy. Another recommendation we mention is, as writers, connecting with our own personal experiences and memories from that time in our lives to help gain some compassion for our characters and ground our writing in a place of authentic emotion.

In this episode we talk about key examples where books used dialogue, identity struggles, character change and introspection, impulsive actions, and shifting relationship dynamics to tap into something real about the experience of adolescence. We also talk about how slang should be used with care and research into the context and timeframe. And above all teenage characters - no matter how flawed and caught up in their world - should be written with understanding and from a place of emotional honesty.

Lastly, we discuss the idea that writing for teenagers should include a message, however small, of hope. Hope from a physiological perspective is important to development, overcoming fear, finding motivation, and maintaining a positive outlook on life. Since our stories have the potential to influence young readers, we feel a responsibility to demonstrate why a life is worth living.

We hope you enjoy this episode, we sure learned a lot through this discussion. Keep creating and putting your unique voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Today, Fable and The Verbivore discuss the intricately woven themes and expertly crafted characters created by author Angie Thomas in her award winning novel The Hate U Give.

We start by talking about the dynamic character arcs in this book. The main character Star’s close 1st person perspective and inner dialogue help to tell a story that unfolds with truth over time and that feels honest and eye-opening, with situations incredibly relatable to the teenage experience and others that help you see the tenuous balance she must maintain between her worlds and all the versions of herself she has to be.

In this episode, we discuss how the author uses conversations and Star’s narration to very quickly and clearly establish relationship dynamics, the strategic and inventive ways that the author provides new information that allows clearer pictures of the story and characters to form over time, and the use of repetition to show new meaning to the overarching theme of The Hate U Give (THUG LIFE) and finding and choosing to use your voice.

We also mention how the author uses assumptions (even her character Star’s) to her advantage to setup surprising, but effective and believable character growth or change that challenges preconceptions. None of the characters are just one thing, they feel human because their choices are complex and feel grounded in reality.

This book has so much to teach based on its always timely and important message as well as the complex storytelling and character development. We both feel that everyone should read it.

Writer Angie Thomas has provided the character/storyline chart that she used to write this book on her Instagram story highlights under the heading “Writing Tips”. She has also recently published the story On the Come Up and has written a prequel to The Hate U Give titled Concrete Rose which is set to release in January 12th, 2021.

We hope you enjoy this episode, we certainly enjoyed recording it! Keep creating and putting your unique voice out there! Your voice matters and is needed!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

In this episode, Fable and the Verbivore dive into the question of how to explore social issues respectfully and honestly in writing.

We start off this conversation, by giving a broad definition for social issues as problems, experiences, or identities that impact or influence many citizens within a society. This means that writing about social issues could take the form of a character who is being bullied in school, someone working to manage a mental illness, an individual or group experiencing discrimination based on their appearance, or a child growing up in a food desert - along with many others.

In this episode, as writers we talk about checking in with ourselves to ensure we understand our reasons for choosing to write about a given topic. We discuss being respectful of experiences that are not our own, doing the research to ensure that our writing is representative of a given experience, and striving to not fall into stereotypes. We also talk about some of the resources out there from YouTube videos to websites that can help you keep your stories honest when writing about topics that we haven’t lived firsthand.

As readers, we discuss books that tackle difficult and painful experience, that there is a place for all types of stories from stories that are subtle to stories that are overt with their messages, and some examples of how authors choose to use a preface or letter to share their intention with their audience. We also discuss the benefit of authors including trigger warnings as part of their work, especially when dealing with topics that could have a negative impact on an individual’s mental state.

We hope you enjoy this episode. It gave us a lot to think about. Keep creating and putting your unique voice out there!

Into the woods, Fable & The Verbivore

Today, in our Author Answers mini-podcast, we have CK Donnelly with us talking about how early she shares her work and what that process looks like for her.

While other kids read comic books under the covers with a flashlight at bedtime, C.K. DONNELLY wrote fan fiction and fantasy stories.

She used her love of writing to pursue a career in journalism and was honored with several press awards for business and economic reporting. She has also held careers in healthcare, and currently runs her own freelance writing and marketing support firm.

She no longer writes under the covers by flashlight. Usually.

CK Donnelly resides right here in Arizona and we had the pleasure of connecting with her through a mutual in-real-life friend. We also had the honor of receiving an ARC copy of CK’s new book, Trine Rising, which we are currently reading and thoroughly enjoying so far.

We love this quick look into another author’s process of sharing their work and we hope you will too.

Thanks so much for joining us, CK Donnelly!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Today, we are thrilled to share our latest author interview! In this episode, Fable and the Verbivore have the great pleasure of speaking with poet, author, and mental health counselor Marlene Devose.

Marlene independently published her first work of fiction, Poinsettia, on May 1st of this year. This book follows the journey of the character Leemi from adolescence to young adulthood as she struggles with her identity, place in the world, and tries to understand and manage mental illness on her own. It’s an honest and unflinching story about the often messy and winding road to accepting and loving who we are, finding glimpses of hope in life’s struggles, and learning about and working to actively support, and daily manage, mental health.

While reading Poinsettia, Laura (the Verbivore) and Bethany (Fable) were struck by Marlene’s poignant and truthful representation of Leemi’s daily experiences living with depression and OCD as well as the well rounded portrayal of Leemi as a person with many facets outside of her experience with mental illness. This story is a great example of telling an authentic and empathetic tale, while not shying away from some of the more painful and candid aspects of the human condition, but also finding a holistic view of a person and not defining them by their experience.

In this conversation, Marlene shares the story of how she came to write Poinsettia, which originally started as a journal to document the fictional character Leemi’s struggles with mental illness. This allowed Marlene as the writer to grapple with and start doing some self work in her own life by gaining distance and perspective on some of her own experiences. She discusses using the language of nature to help describe experiences that are difficult to pin down. She also gives some great advice about cultivating patience in the writing process and taking the time and care to make sure a story is meaningful, before releasing it out into the world. From a mental health perspective, she discusses the importance of finding beauty in the moment and focusing on it, clinging to those points of joy and having gratitude for them to help cope with the dark days.

Marlene explores more on the themes of mental health, grappling with spiritual uncertainty and identity in her writing on both her website https://marlenedevose.com/ and through her IGTV videos and story highlights found on her instagram channel @marlenedevose.

We hope you enjoy this episode, we greatly enjoyed speaking with Marlene and left this conversation having a lot to think about regarding writing truthful and heartfelt stories! Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

In this episode, Fable and the Verbivore decided to scrap their recording plans for the week in favor of an informal catch up conversation on how we are doing as human beings as well as how our writing, reading, creating and general living is going.

We start by revisiting some themes that we discussed in our episode 10 at the beginning of 2020 and how weirdly on target they have been for us. In this conversation from early January, we talked about words or themes that we saw for this year. Bethany (Fable) connected with the words “into the woods” and Laura (the Verbivore) resonated with “into the unknown” from Frozen II. These themes have felt acurate in describing this year for us - both the overwhelming and uncertain sides as well as the exciting and challenging/growing side.

Throughout this conversation, we delve into the reality of what our creative and writing projects are looking like right now and how we’ve had to shift to meet our current situations. We explore what we are learning and doing - from the difficulties creating while in survival mode, to the importance of doing the work of consistently showing up to the page, the benefits of pivoting into the areas where traction and development are happening (research, studying the craft, and reading), and letting go of fear and trusting that the words will come.

We hope that you enjoy this episode where we get real with where we are at and what we are doing! Keep creating and putting your unique voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Today is our second post in our Author Answers mini-podcast series! We are so excited to have Brooke Bohinc with us today!

Brooke Bohinc is a freelance book editor who is currently writing her first book. When she's not working with authors to get their books ready for publication, she's brainstorming plot twists for her own. 

We’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Brooke a little bit through Instagram and we love the authentic way she shares herself and her expertise with the world. Also, Brooke provides a wonderful free grammar checklist through her website — a great tool for writers everywhere!

We’re asking writers in our circle, “How early do you share your work and what does that process look like for you?” In response to this question, Brooke shares about the process she went through when writing her first book, which involved a lot of audience feedback and participation. We love Brookes unique take and hope you do too.

Thanks so much for joining us, Brooke!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Music from: https://filmmusic.io’Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Today we are thrilled to share our interview with writer Victoria McCombs!

Victoria released her first book The Storyteller’s Daughter on July 14th through independent publisher The Parliament House. This tale revolves around a reimagining of Rumpelstiltskin, where “every child in Westfallen has been born with a Gift, and these Gifts defined them. Then Cosette is born, Giftless.” A father’s desire to help his child feel accepted backfires as a seemingly harmless lie has serious consequences.

The cover for this story is a great example of visual storytelling and based on her descriptions we cannot wait to read it! This book is the first in a 4-book series of reimagined fairy tales in the vein of Ella Enchanted. The cover for her 2nd book Woods of Silver and Light was just revealed on July 16th, check it out @Victoria_McComb on Instagram and Twitter.      

In this episode, Victoria discusses the two series of books that she is in various stages of creating, her process that includes separating her writing activities from her reading as well as how she goes about actively seeking tools to develop her craft, what she’s learned through working with beta readers, and her experience being a 3rd generation writer and how that history has influenced her process. She also gives some practical advice for those in the process of pitching their book to a publisher or seeking to query their work to an agent.

We hope you enjoy this episode, we were really encouraged by the advice and insight she shared and we hope you will be too! Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

In the final part of our 2-part Pixar conversation, Fable and the Verbivore discuss the unique facets that help make Pixar’s movies some of the most effective and emotionally connected narratives seen in movies over the last 25 years. We feel that tips and tricks gleaned from their fundamental story elements have the potential to make any story, regardless of their medium, resonate more closely with their audience.

Our conversation covers how the opening sequences of Ratatouille connects you with Remy’s everyday struggles in his normal life as well as sets up the central conflict around the idea that “Anyone can cook”, how the creators of Up use an early sequence where Carl first meets Ellie to help establish the logistics of how he is able to fly his house to South America, and what change the director of The Incredibles made to a marital argument sequence between Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl to change the dynamics and salvage a moment that wasn’t working.

We unpack several more of the 22 Pixar storytelling rules through discussing: 1) their basic story structure that allows for the creation of unique story forms while ensuring that they set up their tales in a way that is satisfying to an audience, 2) how they purposely give their characters opinions that are in opposition to one another leading to natural conflict, 3) that they often figure out the intended ending before writing the middle of the story allowing them to write to connect the beginning to the end, and 4) the importance of checking in with yourself to understand what it is you personally connect with in a story so that you can use those elements moving forward.

As we closed out our review of Pixar storytelling, we focused on some of the key aspects of their narratives. The ways that they write towards a given ending and how the story beats serve as building blocks to reach that resonating moment, the lengths that they go to write and rewrite something to make it what it needs to be and not being afraid to scrap what doesn’t work, and the attention to detail and specificity of language that they use to further their stories.

We hope that you enjoy this episode and that you are staying safe! Keep creating and putting your unique voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

In part 1 of our 2-part conversation, Fable and the Verbivore discuss some of the unique facets that help make Pixar’s movies some of the most effective and emotionally connected narratives seen in movies over the last 25 years. We feel that tips and tricks gleaned from their fundamental story elements have the potential to make any story, regardless of their medium, resonate more closely with their audience.

Our conversation touches on the emotional impact of the first 3 minutes of Finding Nemo which invests the audience in Marlin’s perspective, how changes the storytellers made to Toy Story 2 allowed the audience to experience clearly the emotional stakes of the story, and how the story makers setup Woody in Toy Story as a likeable character who has just had a condition for his life crossed which throws him into crisis.

We unpack several of the 22 Pixar storytelling rules while discussing how Pixar emotionally connects the audience to their characters, creates drama by figuring out in what situations their character thrive and throwing the opposite at them, uses their own experience and feelings to lend emotional authenticity to the story, and sets up safe spaces where it is alright to experiment with your stories and share your ideas without fear of failure.

Towards the end of our conversation, we discuss Pixar’s team approach to writing and testing out story elements along the way as a story is coming together rather than just at the end. This gives way to a conversation about giving feedback on a creative project in such a way that identifies an issue without being overly prescriptive as to how that issue should be resolved.

We also bring up some of the ideas that are behind our #100dayproject. We are now almost at the end of this project and would love to share the things we created on instagram. Feel free to check out our work under the hashtag #imitatelikeawriter.

We hope that you enjoy this episode and that you are staying safe! Keep creating and putting your unique voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore