Writing Roots

If you’ve been writing for any length of time, you may have noticed a habit that is easy to fall into. From new to experienced writers, all of us have accidentally started sentences using the main character’s pronoun one too many times. There will be times, of course, where that is the best avenue. However, if you continue to use the same words and pattern to start each sentence, it begins to feel like a play-by-play rather than a detailed story.

Listen to this episode for tips and tricks on how to avoid starting each sentence with your MC’s name or pronoun.

First aired January 26, 2023.

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Psychic distance is a useful tool to understand in order to improve your writing in a way that will help the reader connect with the story. After all, that’s the basis of this concept.

According to John Gardner in his book The Art of Fiction, psychic distance is the “distance that the reader feels between [themselves] and the events of the story.” The closer the reader feels, the more invested they will be in the story’s ending. We break down psychic distance, how it relates to POV, and why it’s important to understand.

First aired January 23, 2023.

The post S39E7 – Understanding Psychic Distance for Your Writing appeared first on Writing Roots.

Emphasis can completely change the meaning of a sentence. Too much emphasis and the sentence looses meaning entirely. That’s why knowing how and when to use italics in the formatting of your writing is so important. Using too many italics is is often a sign of a new author.

You can use italics for more than just emphasis, though. In this episode, we talk about when and where to use this formatting technique to help deliver the right kind of message to your audience.

First aired January 19, 2023.

The post S39E6 – Knowing How to Use Italics in Your Novel appeared first on Writing Roots.

If you really want to improve your writing, you need to start pushing yourself. Try things you never would have considered before. Even if it turns out terribly, there is a lesson to be learned in the process of trying something else.

First aired January 16, 2022.

The post S39E5 – Going Outside Your Writing Comfort Zone appeared first on Writing Roots.

Short stories take all of the nuances of crafting a novel and slam them into fewer than ten-thousand words. No, you won’t have a lot of sub-plots or side characters or even points of view. You will, however, need an entire beginning, middle, and end. Writing short stories is one of the best ways to learn the arc of storytelling quickly.

In this episode, we talk specifically about how short stories can help improve your skills. If you’d like more information about how to write a short story, visit our past episode on the topic. Here, we talk about the principles of keeping it simple and condensed, along with why it’s such a useful tool to write outside of your main work in progress.

First aired January 12, 2023.

The post S39E4 – Improving Your Writing Through Short Stories appeared first on Writing Roots.

We’ve often said that reading is one of your best tools to learn how to write. It’s more than simply consuming the stories, though. To learn the art of writing through reading, you need to be able to read critically.

Critical reading is the process of analyzing not only the writing style, but your own thoughts and feelings toward the story. Writing is subjective. Not everyone is going to view a story in the same way. If you want to appeal to an audience like yourself, you need to know what about a story you find enticing or curious or compelling. You also need to identify what you specifically don’t like, so you can avoid it.

In this episode, we discuss the process of critical reading, some tricks we’ve learned to help in the process, and break down how it can help you.

First aired January 9, 2022.

The post S39E3 – Learning to Critically Read appeared first on Writing Roots.

An important step in improving your writing is learning how to participate in the feedback process. It’s more than just learning how to to take criticism of your work. You need to learn how to give feedback to other authors in a constructive and analytical way.

Giving and getting feedback will help you figure out what works in your writing. We are often blind to our own works for various reasons. Most notably, we know what it should say, and we know what we meant. It’s difficult to read our own writing with the same eye as a reader. To get better, you simply need to start critically reading writing from other people.

Listen to this episode for more about the feedback process and how to improve your writing by being critical.

First aired January 5, 2023.

The post S39E2 – Giving and Getting Feedback appeared first on Writing Roots.

It’s time to level up your writing.

If you’re new to writing communities, you may be daunted by the amount of acronyms, abbreviations, and jargon you encounter every day. Sifting through seemingly nonsensical posts makes an already difficult process feel overwhelming.

For our first episode of 2023, we wanted to dive into this lingo to help you understand. After all, if you can’t communicate with the community of writers, it’s difficult to get help improving your own works.

First aired January 2, 2023.

The post S38E1 – Understanding Writing Community Lingo appeared first on Writing Roots.

If you’re new to the podcast, you may have asked these questions. “Who are you? Who are these people telling me about writing?” To wrap up 2022 and our FAQ series, we wanted to give you some answers.

The podcast has grown so much in the last year. We are thrilled to be able to share our knowledge with all of you. For you to trust us, you should know our backgrounds.

Overall, we’re writers and editors. We are on the same journey as you, and we’re trying to share the things we’ve learned along the way so you don’t have to learn it the hard way. But there’s more to it than simply that we write.

Listen for more about who we are at Writing Roots, what we do, and how we aim to help new and aspiring authors.

First aired December 31, 2022.

The post S38 Bonus – Who Are You? appeared first on Writing Roots.

A surprising question we get often is “how do I make a podcast?” Though it may not be directly related to writing, it is still a topic we wanted to cover this month. Especially when you consider the benefits of using a fiction podcast to share your writing with the world.

Podcasts, whether fiction or non-fiction, are a great way to reach a wide audience. It’s easy enough to set one up and to create content. The difficulty, then, comes in trying to stand out. The podcast market is saturated with all kinds of shows. The ones that do the best are the ones that find a unique edge to a common topic.

First aired December 29, 2022.

The post S38E9 – How Do I Make a Podcast? appeared first on Writing Roots.