Conflict is central to storytelling.

But too often when I tell my coaching clients that one of their scenes needs more conflict, they think I mean”big” conflict.

They think I mean buildings exploding, dragons being slain, and lovers breaking up.

Conflict, drama, and tension, however, do not require life and death stakes to evoke emotional resonance with a reader.

In this episode of The Writing Coach podcast, fresh from vacation, I share examples of real-life everyday conflicts I witnessed at a children’s resort focused on fun and happiness.

Listen to the episode or read the transcript below:

The Writing Coach Episode #134 Show Notes

Get Kevin’s FREE book: NOVEL ADVICE: MOTIVATION, INSPIRATION, AND CREATIVE WRITING TIPS FOR ASPIRING AUTHORS.

Click the above image to get the book for free now!

The Writing Coach Episode #134 Transcript

Hello, beloved listeners and welcome back to the Writing Coach podcast. It is your host as always writing coach Kevin T Johns here.

Last episode, we talked a bit about vacations, and there was a reason why vacations were on my mind. It was because my family had a vacation planned. We were going to go to Niagara Falls and visit something called the Great Wolf Lodge, which is a resort, I guess you would call it but focused on families in children. So they have a water park inside the resort and their story time and magic shows and video games and laser tag and all, all sorts of things that kids love. And so when I was prepping for that vacation, I also had that vacation episode in mind and now having returned from the vacation. I have another topic that I want to talk about today, and it’s based on experiences at the Great Wolf Lodge last week.

But first, let me tell you about my book, Novel Advice: Motivation, Inspiration, and Creative Writing Tips for Aspiring Authors. It’s an awesome book filled with tips, tricks, advice, stories, all about writing craft and the writer’s life. And I want to give it to you for free head on over to my website, www.kevintjohns.com. There’s a tab at the top that says free book. There’s also a popup that should come up and just throw your email address in there. And I will send you a free copy of that book. Now, when I’m working with my clients, something we’re always talking about is conflict and drama. I think it’s Lisa Cron, who has the definition of a story. A story is about a character who wants something, who takes action to get it, encounters obstacles, and is changed as a result. So according to that definition, which I certainly agree with, conflict is key to storytelling.

So often when I’m reviewing clients’ pages, something I’ll say to them is we need more conflict in this scene. There isn’t enough obstacles. There isn’t enough complications. And sometimes clients will come back and say, well, you know, like the bad guy doesn’t really know about the good guy yet, or the bomb, isn’t going to go off for like three more chapters, you know? And when I say conflict, they think about these big, giant operatic conflicts and obstacles. The knight fighting the dragon, the save the princess, these sorts of things. But if you just stop for a moment and think about all the little difficulties,

Everyone deserves a vacation from time to time.

We all need opportunities to rest, unwind, and recuperate.

For writers, however, vacation time can cause quite a dilemma.

I am pretty sure it was our literary friend Hamlet who once said, “To write, or not to write while on vacation? That is the question!”

In this week’s episode of The Writing Coach podcast, we tackle that question, and I share my advice on how to go about best mixing writing and relaxation.

Listen to the episode or read the transcript below:

The Writing Coach Episode #133 Show Notes

Get Kevin’s FREE book: NOVEL ADVICE: MOTIVATION, INSPIRATION, AND CREATIVE WRITING TIPS FOR ASPIRING AUTHORS.

Click the above image to get the book for free now!

The Writing Coach Episode #133 Transcript

Hello, beloved listeners, and welcome back to the writing coach podcast. It is your host as always writing coach Kevin T Johns here. And I am recording this and sending it out at the end of August 2022. When I think of August, when I, the late, late August, when I think of labour day weekend, my mind always goes to Stand By Me that incredible film starring River Phoenix, and will Wheaton movie from my childhood based on a Stephen King short story called the body, just an incredible film and in a film about summer coming to an end. But in, in that film, in that story summer really represents childhood and the end of childhood and that film, you know, I remember looking up to the kids in that film, their 12 going on 13. And I remember watching that movie and thinking those kids were so old.

Now I’m a 42-year-old man looking back on watching that movie in my childhood. And again, it’s just August ends, September starts and I think of Stand By Me. And I think of the end of things in terms of the year coming to an end in a new school year, beginning. Yes, obviously we have new year’s Eve and the actual turning over of the clock. But I think in some ways, certainly, if we’re parents, but even not our, our minds stay wired to that idea of September being the beginning of something new. And certainly even as an adult, I, I really start to think of it as the final sprint to the end of the year. I think as adults and young people, we need goals, and quarterly goals and yearly goals are really a reasonable timeline to look at things.

So when I come up on September, I start saying, did I accomplish this year what I wanted to accomplish? There are only three or four more months until the new year until 2023. And am I going to be able to look back on 2022 and say I accomplished the things that I wanted to accomplish? I know right now, one of my major priorities is finishing my novel, The Page Turners Part 3, that’s been a long, long project. I’m near the end. I, I have about 20 scenes. I’m guessing that I need to Polish up and finish off I’m. I’m kind of on a near-final draft of that book. And rather than just sitting here and saying, oh, well, I hope I can get it done by the end of the year, I did the math on it. You know, there’s say 16 weeks left in the year. And so I’ve got 26 scenes to write in 16 weeks. You know, it basically means I need to be revising two scenes a week every week for the rest of the year if I want to get that book done in 2022.

But that sort of goal setting and that sort of monitoring of wheth...

Every night I read to my daughter.

The Hobbit, Harry Potter, The Dark is Rising . . .

Most recently, I’ve been reading her The Pages Turners trilogy (written by yours truly).  

It got me thinking about the process of rereading our own work and how our opinion about what is good, and what isn’t, changes over time.

In this episode of The Writing Coach podcast, I discuss how the ever-changing perspective we have about our own art functions at the macro and micro levels, and how you can use that perspective to get through those particularly challenging writing days.

Listen to the episode or read the transcript below:

The Writing Coach Episode #132 Show Notes

Get Kevin’s FREE book: NOVEL ADVICE: MOTIVATION, INSPIRATION, AND CREATIVE WRITING TIPS FOR ASPIRING AUTHORS.

The Writing Coach Episode #132 Transcript

Hello, beloved listeners and welcome back to The Writing Coach podcast. It is your host, as always, writing coach Kevin T. Johns.

I am recording this episode on Friday, August 19th. It’s going to be released today as well. How’s that for fresh? How’s that for a quick production? You’re hearing this the same day I recorded it. If you’re listening to the day it was released. Time, calendars, these are things that actually matter right now because given we’re nearing the end of August, it is the end of the summer. Kids are going back to school in a couple of weeks and the end of the year is only four months away. And now is the time to start asking yourself, did you accomplish the things you wanted to accomplish in 2022? If you started writing the first draft of a manuscript this year, I suspect you anticipated being done it by the end of this year.

Are you going to be, if not consider joining my FIRST DRAFT group coaching program, the outcome of the program is simple: I’m going to help you finish the first draft of your manuscript before the end of the year. And that first draft is going to read like a third draft, and it’s actually going to be fun to write. Inside FIRST DRAFT, we take distracted focus, and we turn it into focused progress on your manuscript. We take any existing skillset gaps in the fundamentals of writer’s craft, and we help develop that skillset. We fill your toolbox with craft tools that you can use to improve your writing. We take the emotional roller coaster ride with all of its ups and downs that is writing a book, and we turn it into a community environment where you are able to get your work completed with the support of a community of writers who are going to provide fun and friendship to the entire writing process.

If you want to get the first draft of that manuscript finished before the end of 2022, now is the time to join FIRST DRAFT. Head on over to my website and grab the free book I offer there: Novel Advice: Motivation, Inspiration, and Creative Writing Tips for Aspiring Authors. Get on my mailing list, hit reply, and let me know you are interested in learning more about FIRST DRAFT and I’ll get you all the information you need, but how we work, what the program offers, what dates we meet and all the information you need to make a decision about whether you want to finish that book this year or not.

Speaking of books, isn’t that what we always talk about here? For the most part,

If you’ve listened to my podcast, taken one of my courses, read one of my books, or just spend more than twenty minutes around me, then you probably know I’m a big Star Wars fan.

That said, I was less than thrilled with the recent Obi-Wan Kenobi series, and it left me pondering the state of writing and storytelling on streaming television shows.

In this episode of the podcast, I discuss two different approaches to writing that can result in the creation of a masterpiece, and how current television shows like Kenobi are not following either of those paths.

Listen to the full episode or read the transcript below:

The Writing Coach Episode #131 Show Notes

Get Kevin’s FREE book: NOVEL ADVICE: MOTIVATION, INSPIRATION, AND CREATIVE WRITING TIPS FOR ASPIRING AUTHORS.

The Writing Coach Episode #131 Transcript

Hello, beloved listeners and welcome back to The Writing Coach podcast. It is your host as always writing coach Kevin T. Johns.

As a thank you for listening to this podcast, I want to give you a free book. My book, Novel Advice: Motivation, Inspiration, and Creative Writing Tips for Aspiring Authors. It’s available on my website, www.kevintjohns.com. Head over there. There is a link at the top that says free book. There’s also a popup that should come up and put your email address in there. And I’ll get you a free copy of my book, novel advice.

All right, now, today on the podcast, I want to talk about something that has been on my mind lately. Largely probably stemming from the OB one Kenobi television series. So we’re going to talk about movies and we’re going to talk about TV, but it all comes back to writing. And I think a lot of the things we’re going to talk about here are applicable to novel writing who are most of the people I work with as a writing coach, most people are writing a novel or a nonfiction book.

So everything we’re going to talk about here does apply to that. But I’m going to use some examples from television and music and other things because that’s really what got me thinking about this stuff. I think we can all . Well, I don’t know if we all agree, but these last few years have been probably the worst of times. culture has been bad even before the pandemic, right? For a while. Things have been great. And I would argue storytelling hasn’t necessarily been that great for a while. And there are all sorts of cultural and technological reasons why that is. And maybe we’ll touch on some of them here, but I am a huge star wars fan. If you’ve ever worked with me as a writing coach, or if I’ve ever taught you a workshop, you’ve probably heard me make some reference to star wars. I grew up on the series, really loved the original films, but kind of fell away from it in my twenties as the prequels were coming out.

But then as an adult, a few years ago, I kind of was looking for a hobby or something. And I kind of said, you know what? Star Wars is going to be? My hobby Disney has purchased it from George Lucas. All sorts of products are going to be made and all sorts of behind-the-scenes drama started happening fairly quickly. So anyway, for the last five or six years or something, I’ve been following star wars fairly closely. And when Disney plus launched a few years ago,

Do you “Wake Up Exhausted” like Tegan and Sara’s song?

Do you relate to Post Malone’s “Always Tired” face tattoos?

Has age or health problems reduced your energy levels?

Do you lack the energy to do the writing you want to do?  

If so, this episode of The Writing Coach podcast is for you!

In this episode, I discuss productivity, time management, and dealing with reduced energy levels. 

Listen to the full episode or read the transcript below:

The Writing Coach Episode #130 Show Notes

Get Kevin’s FREE book: NOVEL ADVICE: MOTIVATION, INSPIRATION, AND CREATIVE WRITING TIPS FOR ASPIRING AUTHORS.

The Writing Coach Episode #130 Transcript

Hello, beloved listeners. And welcome back to the writing coach podcast. It is your host as always writing coach Kevin T. Johns here. How are you doing? I have a confession to make I’m tired. as I’ve record this, I am tired. And that is actually the topic of today’s podcast. We’re gonna talk about tiredness, energy productivity, and all of these things. Now I have a free book that I gave away on my website, head on over to www dot Kevin T John’s dot com and click on the link at the top that says free book, or look for a popup and drop your email address in there. And you’ll get a free copy of my book, Novel Advice: Motivation, Inspiration, and Creative Writing Tips for Aspiring Authors. Now, as I was getting ready to launch that book, I was sending it out to all sorts of people asking for book blurbs that I could use in the marketing of the book.

And a ton of people give me really great blurbs, which I was able to use. I’m so thankful to all of them, but one of the first people I asked, denied giving me a blurb. And his explanation was that the advice I was giving in the book around productivity and working hard was antithetical to the advice he generally gives. He was telling me he was really concerned about people working too hard, burning out not having enough energy. And he said he could just couldn’t get behind a book. that said work hard. You know, I had a chapter in there called “Work like a Roofer.” I tell a story about watching through the window as I’m writing away on my novel. I’m looking out, and I’m seeing these guys working on a roof across from me. And it really made me think about as writers, do we work hard enough?

Are we working like roofers? Are we out there, you know, eight hours a day in the sun working . And, and so that was what that chapter was about. But I think to him, it was dangerous to tell people to work as hard as roofers, maybe, maybe roofers shouldn’t be working as hard as they do. And at the time, I mean, I could see where he was coming from,

My group coaching programs First Draft (for writers working on their first draft) and Final Draft (for writers in the revisions process) include weekly question and answer sessions and group discussions.

These are agenda-free office hours group calls where the writers in the group are given the opportunity to discuss whatever writing-related challenges they are dealing with or topics they have on their minds.

In this week’s episode of The Writing Coach podcast, I thought it would be fun to give you a glimpse behind the curtain and share with you fifty (!) different topics the group has discussed over the last two months.

What types of things do writers talk about when they come together? Listen to this episode to find out now!

The Writing Coach Episode #129 Show Notes

Get Kevin’s FREE book: NOVEL ADVICE: MOTIVATION, INSPIRATION, AND CREATIVE WRITING TIPS FOR ASPIRING AUTHORS.

The Writing Coach Episode #129 Transcript

Hello beloved listeners, and welcome back to the writing coach podcast. It is your host, as always, writing coach Kevin T Johns here. The summer days are flying by here in Ottawa, Canada. We have bad weather for most of the year. These nice, wonderful summer days are so rare. Summer for us is really only July and August. We get two months of nice weather and then it starts cooling it down again, pretty swiftly. And then by October by Halloween, sometimes we send the kids out in their snowsuits for Halloween. We often have to our Halloween shopping strategy, that costume strategy needs to involve wearing a costume, either over a snowsuit or under a snowsuit, or perhaps it’ll still be warm and you have no snowsuit need at all. You never know. You never know in an Ottawa autumn, but here we are. We’re still in summer and the days are nice.

Now, if you’ve listened to the last few episodes of the podcast, you probably heard me talking about First Draft and Final Draft. My group coaching programs. First Draft is a program for writers looking to get the first draft of their manuscript done in six months or less. And our model in the program is fun and focused writing. So we are very serious about getting our work done, but we also have a lot of fun doing it. And then Final Draft is for people who finish their first draft, they can graduate to Final Draft. Final Draft includes all of the features within First Draft, as well as several other additional resources, coaching sessions, all sorts of things. But today, today, what I wanted to talk to you about was our first draft office hours calls. So we have two coaching calls, two office hours calls every week within this program.

The second call of the week is a hot seat call. And what this means is one member in the program submits a scene about 2000 words to me a couple days before the call, and I go over it and I provide a critique. I provide advice. I provide developmental editorial advice, and we hop on a call and, we talk about these things. We go over them. It’s the same format I primarily use in my one-on-one coaching session. Someone gives me pages. I go over them, we meet, and we discuss the pages, and we use the scenes in someone’s manuscript as the launching pad for our craft discussions. I very rarely come into a hot seat or a coaching session saying, I’m going to teach this. Instead. We look at what’s there and we say, what topics arise? What craft elements arise from reviewing someone’s work in progre...

No writer wants to be told by a doctor (or anyone else) that they need to step away from the keyboard for any period of time, or, worse yet, that they require surgery on their wrists.

All the same, carpal tunnel syndrome remains a real and significant risk for writers.

That’s why, in this episode of The Writing Coach podcast, we discuss not only the importance of wrist health and good ergonomics for writers, but also several approaches to writing that don’t involve typing at a keyboard.

Listen to the full episode now or read the transcript below. 

The Writing Coach Episode #127 Show Notes

Get Kevin’s FREE book: NOVEL ADVICE: MOTIVATION, INSPIRATION, AND CREATIVE WRITING TIPS FOR ASPIRING AUTHORS.

Books by Eric and Jen Desmarais:

The Writing Coach Episode #128 Transcript

Hello beloved listeners. And welcome back to the ready coach podcast. It is your host as always writing coach Kevin T Johns here. I have got health on the mind. I have got wrist health, elbow health, and finger health in the mind. These are things that are essential to writers. If your fingers aren’t feeling good, you are in big trouble. Now, one of the reasons this is on my mind is because a local writer here in Ottawa, where I live, a friend of mine, Eric Desmarais recently posted on Facebook that he’s been diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome. Now he’s a prolific author. He writes a ton and co-writes books with his partner and the idea of him not being able to write for a period of time. I was just, oh man, my heart went out to him. I know how passionate an author. He is.

I’ll link to some of his books in the show notes for this episode, head on over to www.kevintjohns.com. This is episode 128 of the writing coach podcast. And I’ll have some links to Eric’s books in there. Maybe you can go pick up a copy or two of his books to help him out while he’s down and out with carpal tunnel syndrome. But just thinking about what that was going to be like for him. I mean, my heart went out for him. It went out to him. It it’s as a writer. It’s no fun having someone tell you, you can’t write. And so what I want to talk about today is some alternatives to typing on a keyboard. I think so much these days, people think all writing needs to be done sitting at a computer, typing into a keyboard. And of course that’s only the way things have been written for like the last 30 years.

for the rest of the 20th century, all the books you love were being written on typewriters. And then for hundreds of years before that Quill ink paper, you do not have to always be sitting at a computer to write. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Now, my first experience with this idea of carpal tunnel syndrome, this idea of repetitive use injuries from working at a computer was actually my mother, my mother was an executive at a telecom business long before computers were a popular modern thing. My mother was working on them as long as I could remember. She was always working on computers. And in my early teens, I remember she was diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome, and she had to get surgery. You know, she went in and she, she got surgery on both of her wrists.

And so I was made aware of this perhaps earlier on in life than some people are, but it was certainly on my mind. And so when I did my masters in English literature, it was a 12-month program,

In last’s week’s episode, I briefly touched on the positive impact a punk rock mentality has had on my creative output.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized the multitude of lessons I have learned from the world of punk rock.

As such, in episode #127 of The Writing Coach podcast, I reveal ten lessons writers can take from the world of punk rock.

Listen to the full episode now or read the transcript below. 

The Writing Coach Episode #127 Show Notes

Get Kevin’s FREE book: NOVEL ADVICE: MOTIVATION, INSPIRATION, AND CREATIVE WRITING TIPS FOR ASPIRING AUTHORS.

Nirvana book mentioned in the episode:

The Writing Coach Episode #127 Transcript

Hello beloved listeners, and welcome back to the writing coach podcast. It is your host as always writing coach Kevin T John’s here in last week’s episode, we talked about waiting for perfect. And I mentioned a little bit about my experience in the punk rock scene and how thankful I am that I grew up a punk rocker. And one of my clients right now who I’m working with on his book is still a punk rocker. He’s still in punk, rock bands, making music. And so he and I really connect on that level. And so I was telling them about last week’s podcast and it got me thinking, you know, there’s so many great lessons I learned from being a punk rocker that come into play every day as a writer. So what I wanna share in this episode is 10 lessons writers can learn from punk rockers.

Now it all began in 1991. I was 11 years old in 1991, and that was the year Nirvana’s album Nevermind came out and completely changed popular culture. It was the stake in the heart of the eighties, and it really birthed the nineties. And I, you know, I got that tape, that cassette tape along with everyone else that year and loved it. And around that time, where shortly after, as Nirvana was blowing up, Sonic youth released a video called The Year Punk Broke. And it was a documentary of the tour that Nirvana and Sonic youth, and some other bands all went on, I guess, around 1990 or early 91, it was just before Nirvana got huge. And I think that was really my introduction to the word punk to this idea of punk rock is Sonic youth calling themselves punk. And of course there’s so many different definitions of punk is, is Sonic Youth punk or is Fugazi punk or is Green Day punk?

I kind of consider all of it punk and speaking of Fugazi, so into Nirvana and I was reading a book, I believe it was called Route 666: On the Road to Nirvana. If I’m remembering the name of the book correctly, I’ll link to it in the show notes for this episode, so that you can get the right book, Head on over to www.kevintjohns.com and have the link to that great book there, it’s a really great book about the independent rock punk rock scene in the early nineties. And anyway, there were some great chapters about Fugazi in that book and that got Fugazi on my radar. And that was an introduction into kind of a deeper world of P. So, you know, from Nirvana to Sonic youth to Fugazi, and around this time a couple years after Nirv...

Host Kevin T. Johns speaks with author Michelle Cornish.

Host Kevin T. Johns speaks with author Michelle Cornish.