Write Pack Radio

Women in Fiction: Characters vs. Caricatures

Are women portrayed reasonably in fiction or is it a reflection of our current society? Does fiction display the social pressures placed on women or does it create caricatures? Whose fantasies are women characters written for? Are women in fiction written to be the fantasy of men or of women? What things do writers do that transfer the woman into caricatures?

Do women need to be rescued in fiction, even if she is an action heroin? How is it handled in crime stories? Fantasy? Other books? Games?

Why do women in fantasy have to be armored inappropriately in chainmail bikinis? Are women in fiction a female trope first?

How are women portrayed on book covers and movie posters? Why do they have to be portrayed as “ideal” woman? Why are women “underdressed” in comic books? Is making a strong female character only putting a man in a skirt? How do you show the real woman? Does a strong woman have to kick butt in the story or are there other ways to show the character’s strength? What are the kinds of strength that can be shown other than kicking butt?

Is it necessary for a strong woman characters to fall in love with the strong male characters?

Are bad female characters—the woman caricatures a result of malice writing or a result of lazy writing?

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Observations of a Serial Reader

What makes a series good? When should it end? When you write a series, you need to love your character but you can grow to hate them. Do writers continue to write a series once it grows stale because they are afraid they can’t write or publish anything else? Do fans force a writer to stay in a series even if the writer wants to write something else?

Should characters change throughout the series or should a series reset after each book, episode, etc.? Is it dangerous to a writer and the reader to have the character change and grow throughout the series? Can an author be pigeonholed? Do authors have to write under pen names to write different stories?

Why do you read the series you read? Why do you write the series you write? How do you set it up for the sequel or do you? What are the difference between standalone books and linked books?

Will you your throwaway lines get in trouble? Will you confuse your reader?

Should you play in other people’s universe? What happens when new writers change the series?

Should series writers maintain a series bible? What happens when you break the world the story is in? What causes you to feel like you “went to Starbucks and walked out with a fish filet?”

What happens when the characters stop behaving the way they had in the previous stories?

When does a series jump a shark? When does the series grow stale? In television, what can go wrong when you change the writing and directing staff?

What are series kinks? Are you willing to kill your characters or are they immortal? How do you or writers you like to read handle consequences of the events in the story?

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To Blog or Not to Blog

Wherever a writer turns, they are told to blog. But does an author or an author trying to break in should blog? Should we blog just to blog? What are the dangers of blogging? If time, strength, and readership attention spans are limited, what kind of blog is important? How do you blog? How can a blog draw readers to your books, stories, and poems? How does blogging help build your platform? What is a blog? How can you use a blog? Can blogs be a reference for yourself and your craft?

Where should you blog? How do you name your blog? What kind of schedule should you keep?

How do you market your blog? Can you make money from a blog? Does your blog have a reason? What are some of the wrong reasons to post a blog? What are some good reasons to post a blog?

What are blog tours? How can you use them?

Is there a magic number of readers you are wanting to attract to your blog to make it important?

So, should you blog? Well . . . what does your reader want?

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Is getting the idea for a story the hardest part of writing? Not in the opinion of the Write Pack. Despite many people coming up to writers with the aged old conversation of “I have an idea for a great [story] [book] [TV show] [movie].  If you write it we can split the profits,” the idea is not the hardest part in beginning a new project. So where do ideas come from? What is the most powerful question in writing? Should I write what I know?  What exactly does that question really mean?  What kinds of knowledge does a good writer pull into their project?

Is it possible to write about something you have never done or about a culture or society that you don’t know? What do you need to start a new project? Do you need the dark moment? Do you need the philosophical question?

How do you take an idea to the next stage? Do you plot? Do you free write? Do you research? Do you create a story bible? 

Every writer is different and the Write Pack explores these questions and more.

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Marks of a Writer Town

Recently, St. Louis was listed as the best city for writers. But, what makes a town appealing to writers? What do writers look for in the places where they live? What is so great about St. Louis as a writer’s town? How does the town’s culture inspire writers? What services are available to a writer?  Does the town have working writers? Is the community supportive of writers? Does the community support artists and creative events? Does the cost of living in the town help writers? Does it have coffee shops that invite you to stay and linger? Does the town have a creative personality? Are there locations in the town that are inspirational? What would your idea writers’ town have in it? How accessible are things in the town? Does the town draw in new people?

What events, groups, resources, inspirational locations and theaters are in St. Louis (and these are the ones we just mentioned, there are more) are for or inspire writers? St. Louis Writers Guild, Sisters in Crime, St. Louis Publishers Association,  Missouri Romance Writers of America, Saturday Writers, Missouri Writers Guild, St. Louis Poetry Association, Archon - Science Fiction/Fantasy Convention, Writers Festivals, Writers in the Park, Saint Louis Shakespeare in the Park, Jewish Book Festival, St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis Jazz, River Styx Writers Conference,  STLBooks, Independent Books Stores, City of St. Louis Library, St. Louis County Library, Municipal Library Consortium, St. Louis Repertory Theater, St. Louis Black Repertory Theater, The Muny, Fox Theater, Powel Symphony Hall, Creve Coeur Lake, Forest Park, Missouri Botanical Gardens, and coffee houses abound!

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The Schools of Mystery, the Tropes, and the Clichés

Recorded on Dashiell Hammett’s birthday, the Write Pack explore the schools, tropes, and clichés of the mystery genre, Why does there always have to be a murder? What are the sub-genres or schools or subgenres of the mystery genre? Do the crimes always have to be solved by a little old lady with no background in police work from a town where the murder victims outstrip the population of the town? What are some of the rules? What separates the subgenres? What are courtroom genres? What are police procedural stories? What are hardboiled mysteries? Why do detective characters have to be broken? What are crime novels? What separates the mystery from the adventure novel or are they separate?

Does there always need to be a sidekick? Do we always need justice? Do we always need the group of suspects gathered together in the drawing room or the court room for the criminal to be discovered? Is the evidence always quickly analyzed by the forensic lab?

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The Craft of World Building

Every fictional story is built in a world that the author creates, though the reader will only see just a small portion.  It is woven like a web. This can be a fun part of the creation process and yet contains one of the hardest lessons that the author has to learn. What makes a good story world? How do you, the world creator, create a believable plausible world? How is the world that you built change by the story you wrote? Is your world a character or just a setting? How does your world building cling to your passions? Do you play in your world before you write your story?

 

When does world building fail? What makes it bad? Why did it fail? What happens when it is not grounded in the real world? Can your world “jump the shark” and cause the story you are writing to fall down? Can you confuse the world by trying to give too much? What happens when you break your own cannon? Does the world throw the audience out of the story?

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No one writer’s journey on the path to being a writer is never the same as another. They are rocky. They have twists and turns that seem to take you away from the peak of the writing goal. These paths come with the same questions: How does it begin? When does it begin? When do you know you are a writer? Does it start with emulating others or playing in the universe of another story? Does it start with classes or outside of class? Where does encouragement come from? What drives the writer and the written piece? When and how do you push the boundaries and what boundaries are there?  How do you learn the writing and publishing industry? Do we always start of writing bad stories? What feedback do you need to improve your writing? How does the transformation as a writer begin and when? Does being a writer ruin the watching movies, TV, and reading books because you can guess the plot easily? Do you begin to identify how the other writers create characters that can’t be related to? Do you learn from other writers’ mistakes? Should there be stories that you write that should never be published? Do you ever come to a point where you run out of questions in this journey?

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What makes a science fiction story a science fiction story? What about fantasy? Are there tropes to these genres? Can they be mingled? Can they be mingled with other genres successfully? What things--call it stage settings--that are expected in these genres? Are they overdone? Explore with the Write Pack as we grab our Light Sabers and cast our Light Spell as we go in to the dungeon and seek out the treasure of these genres.

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(Avoiding) The Boring Hero

In our previous episode, the Write Pack explored the Necessary Villain. Now, we explore how to avoid an easy trap many beginning—and even some veteran writers fall into—the boring hero.  Heroes who seem able to conquer any villain, face the darkest elements of man and not bat an eye may have been the stable of fiction centuries ago, but now they are a sure cure for insomnia. What makes the hero of a story . . . a real yawn stimulator? Are there common traits?

Can you rehabilitate a boring hero? Is there a way to make the Superman hero in your story cry and bleed? Must they bleed? Why can’t they just get the treasure and be happy?

What must you do to make the Hero necessary to the story? Or is the hero nothing more than a literary version of the zombie ant?

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New episodes every Sunday