The Creative Writer's Toolbelt

This is the second of two podcasts focusing on stage three of the six stage story process. What can you achieve during the broad expanse of your story from the inciting incident through to the climax? This episode will show you how to make your story sparkle as you use the 'momentum' stage of the story process to develop complex and intriguing characters, enrich the setting of your story, present your themes to the reader, and beguile them (and the commissioning editor) with a distinctive voice.

In this episode we start to explore the third of the six stages of story, and answer the question: how can we make this tricky middle section of our work as compelling and excellent as possible? The answer comes from knowing one of the fundamental truths of human psychology: we all love a challenge, and we all love to see others challenged. This episode explores how to harness this truth in the third stage of story, and capture readers and keep them all the way through to the end.

How do you get the most out of the inciting incident in your story? Here are three challenges that you should set your inciting incident, and it should be equal to them all. First it should answer the need for action you created at the start of your story, second it needs to transform the story, and grip the reader as it does so, and finally it needs to be the springboard into the next stage, providing the necessary momentum to draw the reader in as the main part of your story.

What are the three key objectives you need to achieve at the start of your story? In this episode we will be exploring in more detail stage one of the six stages of story I outlined in episode 36. And in this opening stage there are three things you must achieve as your story gets started: first grab your reader and keep them, second, set out your stall in terms of setting character and voice, and third, create the need for change and action.

How do stories work? What are the stages in a story, and what are the objectives of those different stages? Understanding the answers to these questions will help you understand the way a great story can be constructed. In this episode we delve a bit deeper into the concept of the six stage story process, and show how this model represents the DNA of great stories, and how you can apply the model to inform and improve your writing

This episode is an interview with Lee Harris, Senior Editor at Tor.com. We find out what keeps him reading a manuscript, the MOST important lesson you need to learn before you submit anything anywhere, and why a Batman novella can never be properly be regarded as Epic Fantasy. There are also hints and tips for anyone thinking about going to a convention.

Studying story theory might sound like a bit of an academic exercise, but don't be put off! In this episode we explore how story theory can help you understand what stories are, how they work, how they are structured, and how the theory can be applied to make your work excellent.

Four different writers, four different approaches to publishing your own work. In the first half of this episode, I talk to bestselling author and professional speaker JOANNA PENN about defining goals, thinking globally, and writing what we love. Then I talk to the local historian Heather Flack, NGO writer-in-residence Glenn Myers, and sixth form student, Holly Phipps – each of whom have used self-publishing for their own, very different projects.

This is a bonus episode, featuring an interview with the British Science Fiction writer Alastair Reynolds. In this interview we discuss Al's advice to aspiring SciFi writers, the state of Science Fiction literature, and why the future doesn't have to end up in the hands of flesh eating zombies.

In this episode we condense about 2,300 years of story theory into ten minutes(!) and then look at four practical lessons we can apply to our writing, including how to make a great first impression with an opening line, why it's so important that we get our work into the best possible state, and how to tell whether a clever plot element really is as clever as we think it is.