Fable & The Verbivore

Today’s installment of Fable and the Verbivore is not like our typical episodes.

This informal conversation took place directly following the interview with writer Lisa Baxmann. We kept our mics on and the sound rolling as we processed some ideas after the interview and discussed a variety of topics that we are working on with our writing.

In this episode - we talk about ways we as writers can encourage each other, putting in the hours of work to improve in the craft, and Fable discusses a breakthrough that she had in her own WIP. We also discuss testing to see if your dialogue reads well and assessing whether or not your characters and settings pull their weight and are worth the “cost” in terms of words.

We didn’t originally intend to release this discussion, but after listening to it found that it some interesting topics that we felt could be entertaining for our listeners. Fair warning, at some points in the conversation we laugh loudly or talk over each other, and the conversation goes in a wide range of directions. Also, we want to make sure to state that the high fives were done prior to our shelter-in-place. :-)

We also bring up some of what we are hoping to get out of the #100dayproject. We are now several weeks into that exercise and would love to share the things we are creating with youon instagram. And if you are interested, feel free to join us. We look forward to seeing what ideas and words you create. The hashtag we are using on Instagram is #imitatelikeawriter.

We hope that you are staying safe and finding time to practice self-care! Keep creating and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Today we are thrilled to share our latest author interview! In this episode, Fable and the Verbivore speak with writer Lisa Baxmann. Lisa is currently working to finish the full draft of her first fantasy trilogy series and will soon be starting the editing phase of this project before querying it out to agents. She also just so happens to be the Verbivore’s sister.

Discussing the setup for her book, Lisa describes the hook and some of her main characters, as well as the portfolio she created to manage the details of her character arcs and the world of her story. Laura has helped with some early edits of this series and has greatly enjoyed the portions she’s read so far. We are both excited to read these books once they’re complete!

In this episode, Lisa unpacks her unique path to becoming a writer, rejecting doubts and the belief that you need specific training or education to be creative, reminding ourselves that our brain is a muscle and can be strengthened and trained in whatever direction you choose to pursue, and the positives and negatives that come with tackling all three books in a trilogy at the same time.

Lisa provides some great advice and encouragement to anyone who has a story in their heart but are uncertain whether or not they have the gifts or abilities to fulfill that dream. We also chat about how there is no one right way to tackle a novel, and sometimes you can proceed best by writing out of order and leaning in to write what you are naturally ready to put down on paper rather than the scene that chronologically comes next.

We talked with Lisa for over an hour and it was difficult to cut this conversation down close to the length of our typical episodes. If you want to hear the full discussion, you can find it on our Patreon page. For just $5 a month you can support this podcast and get full author interviews each month.

We hope you enjoy listening to this week’s episode, we sure enjoyed recording it! Keep reading, and writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

In this our first episode recorded post COVID-19, Fable and the Verbivore discuss from our respective quarantines some of the challenges associated with creating and reading during this timeframe.

We talk about what our writing looks like right now, what books we are reading, movies we are watching, and some short YouTube videos on writing and story that we’re learning from. Along with these topics, we dive into movie adaptations and how it’s the details that set a story apart.

We also continue to discuss how we each have approached the #100dayproject, and what things we’ve been doing to prepare and motivate ouselves. As we mentioned in our last episode, we would love for you to join in this exercise and look forward to hearing what ideas and words you create. The hashtag we are using on Instagram is #imitatelikeawriter.

We hope that you are staying safe and finding time to practice self-care! Keep creating and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Fable and the Verbivore get personal about their writing journeys and ask the question “Who are we to create?”.

In this episode, we explore some of the lies that we as writers have told ourselves and how they have sometimes undermined our ability to move forward on our projects. We also discuss methods that have been useful to us for breaking through those mental barriers, how we reframed our thinking of what creatives look like and found motivation to get our words out into the world even when we are afraid.

We hope you enjoy hearing about some of our own struggles as we walk our writing path and look forward to sharing our creations during the upcoming 100 days projects starting on April 7th.

We would also love for you to join us in this exercise and look forward to hearing what ideas and words you create. The hashtag we are using on Instagram is #imitatelikeawriter.

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

As a follow-up to “Episode 12: Here Are My Words”, Fable and the Verbivore revisit the imitation exercises that they used previously with poetry to refine their voices on the prose side of writing. Embracing again the exciting and intimidating place of reading our own words, we set out to delve into different ways in which we can use this practice to help analyze and refine our writing styles.

Pulling from Stephen King’s On Writing, C. S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces, and Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life, we each took a different approach with our inspiration pieces which served to show how dynamic this exercise can be depending on what aspects of your writing you are hoping to explore.   

The Verbivore choose to use a story setting, description piece from Stephen King’s On Writing (Pg. 173-178), as a way to look at his stripped down writing style and simple word choices to delve further into her own writing structure and editing preferences.

Fable turned to the opening sequence from C. S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces (Pg. 3), to explore the emotional interest and intrigue of this piece while also accusing the gods of treating mortals as their playthings.

And lastly, Fable shares a second piece where she retells an anecdote from Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life (Pg. 85-88), that reads like a parable meant to illustrate the push and pull of the life of a creative.

We hope you enjoy the pieces that we share on this episode and would highly recommend this practice as a way to continue refining your own voice and analyzing what resonates with you as part of a given work of writing. We would also love for you to join us in this exercise as part of the 100 days project starting on April 7th and look forward to hearing what ideas and words you create. The hashtag we are using on Instagram is #imitatelikeawriter.

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Today, Fable and The Verbivore delve into the enchanting and mystical world created in the novel Hunted by author Meagan Spooner. This book is a loose retelling of Beauty and the Beast that feels like its steeped in classic folktale and fairytale traditions, while also being refreshingly contemporary with its characters and story choices.

We recorded this several weeks ago sitting in a park soaking up the sun, with birdsong as our background music and the wind breezing through the trees. It felt like an appropriate setting to converse about a story that takes place on the edge of and within a forest of mythical proportions filled with picturesque views and unusual creatures.

We start by talking about the lovely dedication that Meagan gave at the beginning of the book to young readers, which set the tone for the overarching feel of the story with a call to adventure.

In this episode, we discuss the richness of the characters, the complexity of the relationships and dynamics that feel grounded in reality, and the choice to switch between first person present and third person past voices that allow the reader to step into the Beast’s mind while also keeping the feel of a fairytale with the main narrative. We also describe how the author uses reader assumptions and expectations from different versions of the Beauty and the Beast tale to create unexpected twists on some iconic story moments.

We also dive into the author’s use of a longer story timeline to create character transformations that feel natural and unhurried, as well as the use of images that accompany the beast’s first person entries to reflect the mental state of that character without saying one word. We greatly enjoyed her use of visual elements to communicate information. Throughout the course of the story, we could almost feel the character of Yeva being pulled into the tales that she loved so much as a child.

We don’t discuss Meagan Spooner’s other work as part of our episode, but she has also written the standalone book Sherwood as well as the Skylark trilogy and two series that she co-wrote with writer Amie Kaufman: These Broken Stars (Starbound Trilogy) and Unearthed duology.  

We hope you enjoyed listening to this episode, with our unique recording location! Keep reading, and writing, and putting yourself out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

In today’s episode, Fable and the Verbivore take on the topic of cover designs and story blurbs as representations of an author’s work. We focus on the writer perspective of doing the utmost to ensure the front and back cover elements make a promise to the reader and that the story delivers on that promise, and as a reader not judging a book solely on its cover and hook alone.

Starting with an anecdote from Brené Brown as she worked with her publisher’s art department to create a cover that appropriately reflected her book Daring Greatly, we discuss how it’s important as authors to invest our attention and work to get the cover and hook details right so that it represents the work accurately and augments the story without misleading the audience.

We also discuss examples that we have noticed as readers where the cover may not have felt fully reflective of the story, but where we were glad that we ignored that initial value judgment based on our first impression and gave the story a chance. We also bring up some examples where the aesthetic elements and story fully support one another, and where the cover and blurb did their job in creating interest in us as readers to pick up and devour a book.   

We hope you enjoy listening to this week’s episode! Keep reading, and writing, and putting yourself out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

In this episode, Fable and the Verbivore return for a third time to the question “What makes a book a page turner?” Join us, as we dive into how writers use pacing, action, and suspense to keep us (as readers) engrossed in their novels.

We discuss such things as creating a sense of tension through planting questions in the mind of the reader, using the framing of your words and whitespace on the page to create and maintain pacing, and keeping action sequences taut and clear to keep the tempo. This conversation also unpacks the importance of a good edit that ensures all of the words pull their weight in the story.

As with our previous page turner episodes, we reference many different works of fiction as examples to reinforce our points, but we try not to give away any spoilers so that everyone can enjoy the episode even if you haven’t read the books.

We hope you enjoy this week’s conversation about page turners, and that you find it helpful in your own writing (or reading) journey as well.

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

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Today we are thrilled to share our latest author interview! For this episode, Fable and the Verbivore spoke with writer Kelsie Engen. Kelsie has self-published several standalone short stories as well as contributed to the JL Anthology short story collections. She also self-published two novels (Fog & Mist and Fire & Frost) within her YA twisted fairy tale fantasy series the Canens Chronicles, with another novel currently in development and more planned.

Bethany and I greatly enjoyed the twisted and re-imagined fairy tale elements within the world that Kelsie built for this series, along with the subtle allusions to the greater story world that setup new places and ideas to explore in the future. We’re looking forward to the release of the next chapter in this delightful tale!

In this interview, Kelsie discusses her writing journey, the freedom to change direction that comes with self-publishing, the challenges of creating a series project of this magnitude, paying attention to logistics that keep a world realistic and believable, and managing ongoing story threads for future novels.

We talked with Kelsie for nearly an hour and it was a significant challenge to cut this conversation down to the length of our typical episodes. If you want to hear the full conversation, you can find it on our Patreon page. For just $5 a month you can support this podcast and get full author interviews each month.

We would also highly recommend checking out Kelsie’s #storybible posts on her Instagram account (@kelsieengen) that describe the process she’s undertaking to manage the story threads for her fantasy series as she develops and writes the 3rd instalment with her unique take on the tale of Aladdin.

We hope you enjoy listening to this week’s episode! Keep reading, and writing, and putting yourself out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

For their third book club episode, Fable and the Verbivore plunge into the fascinating world of mystery and intrigue found in the Lady Sherlock series by author Sherry Thomas. This episode covers the first three novels of the series (A Study In Scarlet Women, A Conspiracy in Belgravia, and Hollow of Fear). A fourth book titled The Art of Theft was released in Fall 2019, and a fifth book is being released in Fall 2020 under the title Murder on Cold Street.

The Lady Sherlock series asks the question, what if Sherlock Holmes was a woman? And that being so, how would that look within a society that gives woman very little power over their own destinies? This story revolves around the intellectually gifted character of Charlotte Holmes who chooses an unconventional course of action that both lands her as an outcast of her class of society and frees her from some of its constraints. With the help of a fictitious brother in the next room and her business partner Mrs. Watson, she is able to sidestep some of society’s conventions and support herself as a consulting detective, solving enigmas for civilians and the police.

Throughout this episode, we talk about a variety of aspects that we found enthralling about these books. The storylines are woven into fascinating and surprising mysteries that kept us excited for what would happen next. This series boasts a variety of well-developed characters with layers of depth to their personalities, and that have believable and changing dynamics and complex relationships that are engaging. From a historical fiction perspective, the setting feels so well researched and grounded within this time period and the descriptions of the social implications of the story are clear and used to great effect. In addition to this, the story also has fresh themes that feel important today.

If you haven’t read these books, we do get into plot points and changing character dynamics over the three books, so listen at your own discretion and feel free to skip this if you plan to read these books in the future.

We also touch briefly on Sherry’s other fictional work which are detailed on her website including her Elemental Fantasy Trilogy series (which the Verbivore incorrectly calls a Sci-Fi series), The Magnolia Sword: A Ballad of Mulan novel, and historical fiction romance novels.

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

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore