Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchEpisode 24 - Showing others our work. And strong sentence-by-sentence writing techniques.
Should we show friends and family our manuscripts as we compose them? Good reasons for and against exist. The key to vivid writing: be specific, de…
3 years, 8 months ago
Episode 23: Editing our own manuscript
What should we look for when editing our own manuscript? How do famous authors do it? What should we look for as we edit? This episode discusses t…
3 years, 8 months ago
Episode 22: A summary of earlier episodes, and techniques for musical writing.
Topics of earlier episodes are boiled down to sixteen points, and we'll talk about them briefly. Also, here are some things we can do to make our se…
3 years, 9 months ago
Episode 21: Creativity and how to get it.
How can we shake loose from our brains plots for our novels? Here's my favorite way. Plus, benefits and perils of writing with a partner. More on …
3 years, 9 months ago
Episode 20 - Reasons we fail to start.
Why don't we begin our novel? Here's a reason, and a way to avoid it. Plus, we'll talk about qualifiers and intensifiers, the leeches of language. …
3 years, 9 months ago
Episode 19 - More on modifiers, including the useless and the dangling. And clunky reach words.
Many adjective and adverb s do nothing but pad a sentence, making the sentence rickety. Here are some techniques on avoiding these useless or uninte…
3 years, 10 months ago
Episode 18 - Lots of things to avoid: the negative, cliches, and too many modifiers.
In this episode we focus on sentence-by-sentence writing. How can we make our sentences vivid and powerful? Some strong techniques are discussed, …
3 years, 10 months ago
Episode 17 - Keep it simple but not too simple, and metaphors.
Our writing should be a clear window to the story, and a technique is to, in Einstein's phrase, keep it simple but not too simple. Here are some tec…
3 years, 10 months ago
Episode 16: Theme, odd questions, more on conflict, and vivid writing.
As writers, should we be concerned with a themes for our stories? And a critical question: are writers allowed to be weird? We'll also return to t…
3 years, 11 months ago
Episode 15 - Techniques for writing about settings.
Our setting -- the place and time of the scene -- anchor our characters the the ground. Here are techniques for writing our settings to get the most…
3 years, 11 months ago