Write On SC

Full show notes out on the blog here.

In entrepreneurship, we encourage founders to tell their stories so we can see all the millions of ways people come into ownership and no two stories are the same. And writing is the same. Everyone does their thing differently and so hearing a bunch of stories is a great way to stay encouraged.

That said, I found this awesome Joanna Penn blog with some “what I’ve learned” and thought we could riff on that. These are things she’s learned from being an authorprenuer for a decade and I think they’re relevant to those mid-stride authors like us and maybe even a little surprising and encouraging.

1. When you get bored or things feel a little stale, hang on a bit longer. Things will change, and you will, too.
2. You can keep a mature author business going with just a few consistent actions.
   1. Writing books
   2. Podcasting
   3. Email marketing (grow your list!)
   4. Other things?
3. You don’t have to grow your business.
   1. Some projects are meaningful even if they’re not profitable
   2. Some projects are FUN and this work should be fun

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Full show notes out on the blog here.

Professional writers who depend on volume for income (like those one-book-a-year professionals John Grisham and Nicholas Sparks) have the creative process down to a science. And all those teachers who teach “How to Write” have also disseminated their craft down to a process. We’re going to work on that today.

Since Rex teaches writing and I used to, many moons ago, we’re uniquely qualified to discuss what total horseshit some of this stuff is. We’ll break down the common elements of the process and some cool tips, tricks, and tools. Plus, we’ll debunk some stupid shit people say when they’re teaching you how to write and why you should ignore that garbage.

Ya’ll in? Let’s do this.

So Charlie’s gone back to school for nursing and he had to write his first paper this weekend and as he was talking about organizing his resources and writing his introduction, I got this weird deja vu from grad school when I had to be all intentional about writing. And then I thought about all the blogs (like this one!) that I write on the regular and whether I was following the tried-and-true or if I’d invented my own work habits around this thing I do for a living.

I consider myself a professional writer. Do you?

What delineates professional from novice? Or hobbyist?

What habits do we keep that support our distinction as “professional” writers?

The other thing that happened this week that made me think about this writing process concept is we hosted through SCWA a Writing Studio write-in on Thursday. The Columbia II chapter brought the prompts and we ran four 10-minute sprints with various prompts and some discussion afterwards.

Everyone thought it was very useful and productive. I used the prompts to think about the revisions I’m doing for the vampire novel. For two reasons: 1) I’m totally preoccupied with the vampire novel revisions right now and 2) I hate to waste my designated writing time on things that won’t move me forward. Meaning: I don’t want to doodle. I want to draw.

So some of the writing process steps include these forced-creativity activities that I can see having a place in a classroom but wonder if they have a place in the real world life of working writers. I wonder if Stephen King pulls out his trusty writing-prompt box of cards and decided to meander through some phrases like, “The thing you still need to know about me is…”

Do you “exercise” your writing? How? When? Where? What becomes of those exercises?

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Full show notes out on the blog here.

Today’s session is a good “beginning of the year” session, I think, because it can be part of your 2022 writing plan. We briefly touched on some writing goals we have and we’ve done entire episodes on setting, measuring, and keeping writing goals. So today’s exploration of the various writer types and what your type means for your writing habit should come in handy.

Take an actual quiz here.

Let’s start with the three levels:

• Lawful – this means you stick to this type no matter the project, it’s ingrained in you and difficult to change out of
• Neutral – this is conditional; so if you’re mostly this, but sometimes that, you’re in this category
• Chaotic – according to whim, day of the week, or color of the M&M you just drew from the package

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Get the complete show notes on the blog here.

Okay, today’s writing-related (non-goal) topic is Great Beginnings. New Beginnings. First lines and first pages. Starting off on the right foot. All those euphemisms for the most important page in the book. The first one.

When we did this topic in May of 2020 (episode 94) I told you about a terrible beginning to a romance novel that had triggered my gag reflex. It’s often the case that the first page of a book is a bit of a difficult entry point. Even a more recent read (that turned out to be quite good), The Beautiful, struggled to pull me in. Too much world-building and exposition dumping. Needed information? Sure. As fascinating to me, newbie to the world, as it is to the author? Probably not.

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Complete show notes out on the blog here.

Let’s get into this Character Arc thing. So I found this tweet and YouTube clip that talks about Rick’s character in Casablanca and how at each point of the character arc, one character comments on how Rick is changing. Sometimes it’s even Rick himself. And I thought, “Have we ever done character arcs?” and the answer is, “no.”

So here we go. What is a character arc and what are some examples of types? This link will be of use.

The character arc is how the character changes over time and is linear — it has a beginning, middle, and end — but does not have to follow the plot arc.

Four basic types:

1. Positive change (moral ascent)
2. Transformational (hero’s journey — might include ups and downs)
3. Negative change (moral descent)
4. Flat
5. Open-ended

The lie your character believes about themself will be the thing they fight against and ultimately overcome to end the story. We covered this extensively in the core wound episode. 

Character arcs are the whole purpose of fiction. The change that a character makes is the reason the story exists. Without change, there is no story. And change creates drama (tension) and that creates meaning.

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Get the full show notes out on the blog here.

Mark Allan Gunnells loves to tell stories. He has since he was a kid, penning one-page tales that were Twilight Zone knockoffs. He likes to think he has gotten a little better since then. He loves reader feedback, and above all he loves telling stories. He lives in Greer, SC, with his husband Craig A. Metcalf.

Full show notes out on the blog here.

Google does it again. I found this link to the 30 scariest scenes in Western literature which was a goldmine for what we want to do today which is really break it down. What’s happening in the scene? How is it constructed and how does it work?

The rage of Achilles — when he arrives on the battlefield, the Trojans quake with fear and when he unleashes his battle cry, some of them fall back and impale themselves on their own spears. Um. Wow.

Banquo returns to haunt his killer — in Macbeth we know they won’t get away with it, right? But Shakespeare lets the dead man’s ghost show up with all of his descendents and scare the shit out of Macbeth.

The creature and the uncanny valley — in Frankenstein, Mary Shelley writes the creator’s rebuke of his creation as a rage-filled verbal lashing, but the creature’s response is exponentially worse.

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Photo credit: ArtHouse Studio on Pexels.com

Get the full show notes out on the blog here.

Theme for the day

Scary Series: Serial Killers

Agenda

• SCWA Upcoming events and goings-on
• It’s October! Let’s Halloween!
• What’s up with Serial Killers?
• How to write a convincing serial killer

I’m reading You right now which is a thriller about a stalker / serial killer that was made into a Netflix series. It’s crazy good. The narrator is so compelling I’m having a hard time putting it down. And the violence is so matter-of-fact and seemingly the next-logical-step that you don’t even have time to anticipate or dread it.

Thing is, I (Kasie) don’t know anything about how to do this. And Rex had done it before, so this might be a “how to” and it might be a general explanation of why a writer would take this on.

I googled “Writing Serial Killers” and found this awesome article. So let’s start there. Essential elements:

• The killer — who is s/he? What do they want?
• The victim — how do the two know one another? What was the last interaction the two had?
• The location and condition of the body — direct quote from the blog: Where was the victim killed? Was the body transported and dumped? Was there and attempt to hide the victims identity? Why? How were they killed? Was it overkill? Rage?

Get the full show notes on the blog here.

Scary Series: Vampires

Agenda

• SCWA Upcoming events and goings-on
• It’s October! Let’s Halloween!
• Vampires aren’t scary
• How to write a convincing vampire (no sparkling!)

I found a How Stuff Works (yeah, the science site) entry for How Vampires Work which is just awesome. Here’s the link. Here are the highlights:

• They were once human
• They died and “rose again” which makes them “undead”
• Can be attractive, highly sexual beings
• Can also transform into animals (most commonly a bat)
• Death by beheading, stake to heart, fire, and direct sunlight
• Injured by crucifixes, holy water, and garlic
• Immortal and do not visibly age
• Cannot cast a reflection
• Have superhuman strength (and speed)

Get the full show notes here.

Theme for the day

Paying Your Writerly Dues

Agenda

• SCWA Upcoming events and goings-on
• How have those book promotional events gone?
• What to know about “paying your dues”
• Even some super famous authors sat alone in a bookstore

My mom joined me at M Judson Books in Greenville back on September 12th. Four people bought books, two bought shot glasses and one got a wine glass, too. Then last week’s library event, two publishers of an online magazine and the librarian attended. I sold six books, a wine glass and a shot glass. At the neighborhood event my friends threw, two people came by and bought four books. Then I signed another half dozen that had been purchased by people who couldn’t attend.

So, overall, three events sold 20 books. Because COVID shut down my After December promotional calendar, these events were my first ever.

Is it usual to sit, lonely, waiting for people to stop and ask about your work? What are author events? What should you expect? How should you prepare?