Write On SC

Got my manuscript back from the developmental editor and while a lot of what he had to say was great, one word stuck out: ReWrite. He may have even pluralized it. So what’s next? What do you do? How do you do it?

This week we talk reasons and strategies for rewrites and build in some practical work for Kāsie during our conversation. It’s time to roll up our sleeves and do the real work of writing a great book.

Get the full show notes out on the blog here.

Two weeks ago, we did an episode on lazy writing and came upon this blog talking about plot holes, character under-development and other story-level sins. It picks mostly on Wonder Woman 1984 and Star Wars Episode 7, two films I (Kasie) admittedly liked. But it’s not wrong and it actually makes me cringe to think about how right the author is and whether these scripts needed more work before they went into production.

If so, what does that say about all the crap I’m publishing? Don’t we think movies that actually get made and especially those with ginormous marketing budgets and hype are actually better than my own novice indie suchness? Maybe not.

In any case, the section on exposition caught us as particularly interesting because it’s been a while since we did exposition in the “what not to do” approach during NaNoWriMo in episode 166 and a little more recent, but not much more so when we took on origin stories for the Christmas episode 170. 

Today, we’re going to approach exposition from a character backstory angle, specifically focused on those things the writerhas to know but the audience doesn’t. Let’s start with an experiment.

Link to the show notes here.

We’re visiting with Dr. Thaddeus Jones, filmmaker and entrepreneur. But above all, storyteller. Here’s some relevant links to learn more about Thad:

• His IMDB profile – you gotta know this impressed the hell out of my family
• News from the Augusts Chronicle – a homecoming of sorts for film camp
• Doko Film Festival includes Thad
• Link to The Harvest on FilmFreeway so you can see some of Thad’s work

So let’s talk about where good story comes from.

Here are the show notes on the blog.

There are a few kinds of literary short cuts and usually your English teacher just called it lazy writing. But it’s not always lazy, sometimes it’s just a faster way to communicate a bigger idea to people who know what you mean. Today we break down the kinds of short cuts and justify or reject them. As usual, there are no hard rules in this. It all depends on the phrase and the context.

Get the full show notes here.

Authors are typically doing one of 5 things:

1. Reading
2. Writing
3. Revising
4. Querying
5. Marketing / selling

Each activity has its own positive impact on the writer’s work. And each one has its own tools and takes its own allocated time. Some can be done simultaneously.

Get the full show notes here.

Here are a few things I think we can safely take on in a general “How does this affect authors” kind of way:

• Digital platform building and the insights we’re giving away
• Digital marketing tools like email lists
• Digital plagiarism
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Scrivener, Google Docs, Word and other tools writers use to create manuscripts
• Temi and other voice-to-text options
• Wattpad, Vella and other serialization platforms
• Digital submissions – via email or submittable
• Twitter and other ways to find and stalk agents and publishers

Get the full show notes here.

Full show notes are out on the blog here.

So let’s start with the basic outline of the Hero’s Journey and then we’ll do some examples and pick apart our favorite parts:

• The Call — being chosen to undertake the journey
• The Companions — who will accompany the hero?
• The journey itself — distance, obstacles, treachery
  • Monsters
  • Temptations
  • Deadly opposites or opposing dangers — think colliding armies
  • The underworld — death itself or a glimpse of the other side in the form of visions and insights gleaned by ghosts and spirits
  • The helpers — maintain posts along the path and assist the hero and companions in some way
• Arrival and frustration — within sight of the goal but a new and terrible series of obstacles presents
• The final ordeal — the last test of the hero’s personal transformation
• Achievement of the goal — life affirming, it was all worth it finale of the story.

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Get the full original show notes here.

At the beginning of November, to help out our NaNoWriMo’ers, we did an episode on Character Arcs. In the third segment we briefly touched on the negative arc, or the moral descent. Here’s some notes from that episode:

The disillusionment (or negative change) arc, the character also believes a lie, is confronted with the truth and is able to overcome the lie, but the new truth — existence after accepting the truth — is tragic.

This is Michael Corleone. He believes himself to be good, to be righteous. But he is a criminal, a ruthless loyalist to his corrupt family. When he accepts this about himself, he is tragically doomed to lead the family after his father’s death.

This video calls this the “corruption arc” wherein the character has the truth, and is very aware of it, but as he is tested, he decides to exchange the truth for a lie — i.e. the Corleones must kill their enemies.

So what are the elements of the moral descent character arc? How do you know you’re in one?

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Complete show notes and links to Carolyn's books here.

You’ve met Carolyn Hartley before, she’s one of our Patrons and the owner of J. Merrill Press in Chapin, South Carolina. The vision for J. Merrill Press has always been to publish stories of courageous women and never is this more true than in Adele’s duet.

The first book, Redemption: One Woman’s Dream to Overcome Oppression, Find Family, Love, and Forgivenessintroduced us to Adele. Born into wealth before her father died, Adele and her mother found very different circumstances with her stepfather. Spun away from family into a life of poverty, strife and violence, Adele nonetheless retains the memory of a happier destiny. When she sets off in search of her place in the world, she finds more than she asked for. Themes of courage, family, determination, and resilience dominate Redemption and our connection to Adele is deep and wide.

It’s no surprise, then, that Carolyn picked up Adele’s story on the day of her grandmother’s funeral in Reconciliation: Atone the Devil in Buried Sunshine. No longer the timid, naïve girl of Redemption, Adele (though only 19) has inherited the family’s struggling coal mining business and her grandmother’s role as matriarch. Doing what’s best for her sisters and the town that depends upon their family, Adele navigates distrust, betrayal, and even her half-crazed step father’s relentless attempts at revenge. Reconciliation is a satisfying next installment in a saga that has so much to offer.

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Full show notes out on the blog here.

After reading an article about the reason we need to keep reading novels, I (Kasie) suggested to Rex that we take on this idea of critical reading and how we build that skill set. We take it for granted that people read. For two reasons: 1) we read a TON and think that’s normal and 2) we write and we are hoping (hoping!) that people will buy our shit and read it.

This week we take a look at this reading thing. What do the trends look like? What are the opportunities (to think about this like entrepreneurs) and what are the worrisome numbers? When I couldn’t find the original article I read, I just googled “screens are making us reading” (seriously) thinking I’d find it. Turns out, I found a lot of conversation, going back as far as 10 years, related to reading on screens versus reading on paper and predicting the end of books. Yup.

Let’s unpack.

Rumors of the long-form demise:

• No one reads novels anymore
  • This article is about how no one will read your book – is this a supply and demand problem? Are there not enough readers consuming enough books to meet the supply of so.many.writers.? Publishers Weekly thinks so. Stats: 16 minutes per day reading (for those few Americans who actually do read books) and 3 hours per day of Netflix (if you wonder WTF is with that ratio you’re not alone).
  • The big 4 represent 75% of the commercial book market and people tend to read books that are already popular. Sigh.
• Former bibliophiles confess to having a hard time reading or finishing a book in this esquire article.
  • Blame our smartphones and their incessant notifications
  • We’ve been training our brains to skim and scroll instead of reading for depth and understanding
  • The author says, “my mechanisms for focus and attention have been gradually worn out and I find it harder now to shift gears.” Does that resonate?
  • And this: “Reading is a prolonged and concentrated effort in dealing with only the subject at hand, weaving through the logical transitions paragraph after paragraph and building a comprehensive thought after one has gone through the entirety of the text. It is, after all, a skill that requires considerable and constant practice. Simply put, the kind of reading we do in social media is easy, messy, random and incidental.”
• Is this about reading comprehension skills? If you had a strong reading comprehension skill set, would the extensive social media reading have degraded those skills? Or, if you had a poor reading comprehension skill set, was social media made for you and is exploiting that?

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