Writing Roots

There came a time in the history of storytelling, especially around the rise of Christianity in Europe, where story became a way to educate the general populace. However, it started long before Christianity was even established.

Back in the times of the Greeks and then Romans, theater was used to teach the common people about the gods and their workings. It was one of the main ways outside of direct worship, to tell people how the gods operated. This same trend continued into Christianity, when nunneries and other religious establishments would hold plays to teach bible stories.

One of the biggest changes this era brought to storytelling was the use of writing to not only preserve story, but to distribute it in a collaborative effort. Scripts would be written and sent out to be performed. This is also the time where tropes and character stereotypes became solidified beyond the idea of a “hero” working for unseen forces.

Ley and Leigh discuss this development in storytelling and what it can teach us today for our own writing and goals.

First aired September 13, 2021.

The post S24E4 – Educational Storytelling and the Use of Theater appeared first on Writing Roots.

There was a point in the history of storytelling where the tales began to include a character arc. They also became more about man versus man, rather than man versus monsters. The stories became about overcoming the external foe as well as becoming something better. About starting as the underdog and becoming the hero.

One such example is the biblical story of David and Goliath. Not only did the David overcome the giant of the enemy forces, but doing so changed him from a simple shepherd boy to king. The phrase David and Goliath has become commonplace even outside religious contexts to represent the tale of the underdog rising up to the challenge.

This era also saw the introduction of the Hero’s Journey in storytelling. That structure is still used in modern fiction, acting as a guide for how to develop a character arc from start to finish.

Listen to this episode for more about how stories about man versus man and the introduction of character arcs changed the storytelling world for good.

First aired September 9, 2021.

We’re still buying your books to celebrate our two-year anniversary and thank all of you listeners for your support! Hosts Leigh and Ley are buying self-published books from our listeners and followers. We’ll keep buying until our fund runs out. Find out more on our Facebook or Instagram. Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter (found on our homepage) while you’re here.

The post S24E3 – Introduction of Man vs. Man and Character Arcs appeared first on Writing Roots.

Some of the earliest stories we know from the time around the beginning of written language were stories about gods and fate. This is where stories started to transform from being primarily for survival to conveying ideas beyond the individual.

This was a pivotal time, not only because of the introduction of written language, but for the concept of believing there is something else out there – a something else that might be in control. This is when we got stories such as Gilgamesh, the Hebrew Bible, and even early Greek and Roman stories. There were great heroes who fought for and against the gods themselves.

In this episode, we discuss what came out of this time of gods and fate within storytelling and how it can still help our writing in modern times.

First aired September 6, 2021.

We’re still buying your books to celebrate our two-year anniversary and thank all of you listeners for your support! Hosts Leigh and Ley are buying self-published books from our listeners and followers. We’ll keep buying until our fund runs out. Find out more on our Facebook or Instagram. Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter (found on our homepage) while you’re here.

The post S24E2 – Stories of Gods and Fate appeared first on Writing Roots.

Story has been imbedded in human culture since the beginning, even since those prehistoric times before written language. Though we may not have those written records of what stories they told, we do know they were telling them. Prehistoric people showed story in their art on cave walls, in the traditions they passed down from generation to generation, in the warnings they gave to survive.

In those early days, story was all about survival. Before gods and heroes and invented monsters, there were stories about how to avoid predators. Even today, those themes are still relevant.

Listen to this episode to find out what we can learn and apply in our writing today from the traditions of prehistoric storytelling.

We’re still buying your books to celebrate our two-year anniversary and thank all of you listeners for your support! Hosts Leigh and Ley are buying self-published books from our listeners and followers. We’ll keep buying until our fund runs out. Find out more on our Facebook or Instagram. Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter (found on our homepage) while you’re here.

The post S24E1 – Storytelling in Prehistoric Times appeared first on Writing Roots.

Choose Your Adventure books are a unique way to involve the reader in the storytelling process. Many of you may remember the old Goosebumps “Choose Your Own Adventure” stories, but it’s not a structure reserved for middle grade books anymore.

Writing a Choose Your Adventure, or interactive, structure is difficult. For you pantsers out there, it’s even more difficult. This structure takes plotting out not just one ending, but several. Branching from those endings and beginnings is a complicated weave of different choices, allowing the reader to take control of how the story progresses.

Don’t let that discourage you, though. This is a structure that allows your creativity to flow. Have you ever written a story and thought of the multiple ways it could end? Choose Your Adventure lets you explore all of those options, then present them to the reader to discover. It also connects you with the reader in ways that other narrative plots don’t allow.

For more on how to use this style, listen n

First aired August 30, 2021.

We’re still buying your books to celebrate our two-year anniversary and thank all of you listeners for your support! Hosts Leigh and Ley are buying self-published books from our listeners and followers. We’ll keep buying until our fund runs out. Find out more on our Facebook or Instagram. Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter (found on our homepage) while you’re here.

The post S23E9 – Choose Your Adventure appeared first on Writing Roots.

Serial stories have started to make a comeback in the writing format recently. While it’s always been there in the form of comic books and fiction magazines, the internet has helped this unique structure gain popularity and strength.

Many authors have created episodic and serial stories over the centuries. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published the Sherlock Holmes detective stories as serials originally, creating a massive following that has continued to today. Television was a natural adaptation for this type of story. Comic books and other graphic novels also benefit greatly from being able to publish small pieces of a larger story over time. Fanfiction authors embraced the serial style as they crafted new tales for known characters and worlds. Websites such as Royal Road and Wattpad helped open this structure to authors original fiction. That interest is only growing stronger with Amazon’s recently released Vella, their own platform for serial stories.

Writing a good story in this format, though, takes more than just breaking up a story into chapters. There are a few tips and tricks that can help you stand out in the crowd. Leigh and Ley discuss framing devices, the difference between episodic and serial, and break down Vella and it’s uses in this episode.

First aired August 28, 2021.

We’re still buying your books to celebrate our two-year anniversary and thank all of you listeners for your support! Hosts Leigh and Ley are buying self-published books from our listeners and followers. We’ll keep buying until our fund runs out. Find out more on our Facebook or Instagram. Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter (found on our homepage) while you’re here.

The post S23 Bonus – Episodic and Serial Stories appeared first on Writing Roots.

If you’re looking for a unique way to tell a slow burn suspense, consider the reverse story structure. This is all about going backwards in time.

The reverse structure isn’t just hitting rewind and watching the whole thing from front to back, but by taking pieces of the story and telling them out of order. Most often it’s happening to the main character. Maybe they’re suffering from amnesia and remembering how they got where they are in reverse order, like in Momento. Maybe it’s a detective following the trail of a crime to its source.

No matter what the plot of the story is, using the reverse story structure takes time and planning. It’s a focus on the how of a story, the what. We know how it ends – that’s where we started – but we need to find out why.

Listen to the episode below to get a closer look at this structure and the best practices when you decide to use it.

First aired August 26, 2021.

We’re still buying your books to celebrate our two-year anniversary and thank all of you listeners for your support! Hosts Leigh and Ley are buying self-published books from our listeners and followers. We’ll keep buying until our fund runs out. Find out more on our Facebook or Instagram. Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter (found on our homepage) while you’re here.

The post S23E8 – Reverse, Reverse! Telling a Story Backwards appeared first on Writing Roots.

“Story within a story” is a fun framing device for writing your novel in a unique way. The idea behind this structure is that the narrator is actually a character. We get to see what is happening in their life as well as what’s happening in the tale they’re telling.

This structure is anything but new. One of the oldest uses is in the 12th century tale One Thousand and One Nights. The main character, Scheherazade, begins to tell her husband, the king, a new tale every night. She stops before finishing the tale with the promise to continue the next night, which keeps him from beheading her in the morning. The story is of Scheherazade, while the stories within are tales such as Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp.

We also see modern uses of this structure in shows like The Simpsons with their Treehouse of Horror episodes, The Princess Bride, and even in The Emperor’s New Groove.

This structure doesn’t always have to be a framework for the entire plot. Sometimes it’s a simple as a single scene, like Shakespeare’s famous use of a play within a play.

There are things to consider, though, before jumping into this structure. We discuss how to and how not to use a “story within a story” structure in this episode.

First aired August 23, 2021.

We’re still buying your books to celebrate our two-year anniversary and thank all of you listeners for your support! Hosts Leigh and Ley are buying self-published books from our listeners and followers. We’ll keep buying until our fund runs out. Find out more on our Facebook or Instagram. Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter (found on our homepage) while you’re here.

The post S23E7 – A Story Within a Story appeared first on Writing Roots.

A paradigm shift structure is more than a simple plot twist. As the definition states, it’s a fundamental change to the underlying assumptions. One of the most famous uses of this structure is The Sixth Sense, a film by M. Night Shyamalan. In the movie, both the audience and the main character experience a paradigm shift that completely reframes the entire story.

Authors who want to use this structure must be prepared to plan how the story will unfold. In the beginning, the audience needs to make key assumptions about the story. In The Sixth Sense, that assumption was that Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) is a child psychologist assigned to help a young boy who sees dead people. The paradigm shift comes when both Crowe and the audience discover that he’s been dead the entire time. Suddenly, the whole story is different. Events that took place earlier suddenly make more sense. And if you read or watch it a second time with the knowledge of that paradigm shift, it becomes a whole new experience.

The difficulty, though, comes in making sure that second read still makes sense. In this episode, we discuss using this paradigm shift structure to tell a unique story.

First aired August 19, 2021.

We’re still buying your books to celebrate our two-year anniversary and thank all of you listeners for your support! Hosts Leigh and Ley are buying self-published books from our listeners and followers. We’ll keep buying until our fund runs out. Find out more on our Facebook or Instagram. Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter (found on our homepage) while you’re here.

The post S23E6 – Structuring a Paradigm Shift appeared first on Writing Roots.

Amnesia has been used in storytelling for a very long time. Soap operas and telenovelas use lost memory frequently to ramp up the drama in their stories. You can use it to, and for more than just a subplot in your own story.

There are lots of ways to use amnesia. It can be a witness to a crime having to remember what exactly they saw, or a character who lost their memory once they passed through a portal to a new fantasy world. This device is not limited to any genre in particular, which is another reason any author can use it.

Another benefit is that readers usually forgive authors for unrealistic representations of amnesia. In fact, that’s almost guaranteed. Amnesia is rarely accurate in fiction, though it helps to still understand the different kinds in order to tell a good story.

In this episode, we discuss amnesia in fiction and how you can use it for your own plot.

First aired August 16, 2021.

We’re still buying your books to celebrate our two-year anniversary and thank all of you listeners for your support! Hosts Leigh and Ley are buying self-published books from our listeners and followers. We’ll keep buying until our fund runs out. Find out more on our Facebook or Instagram. Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter (found on our homepage) while you’re here.

The post S23E5 – Using Amnesia in a Story Plot appeared first on Writing Roots.