Hosted by James Thayer, the podcast is a practical, step-by-step manual on how to craft a novel. It presents a set of tools for large issues such as story deve...
Episode 148: A magical way to end one scene and begin another.
Here is a magical way to end a scene and to begin another without worrying about travel and time between scenes. Also: avoiding dangling modifiers. And how Bernard Malamud worked, and Helen Dunmore's rules of writing.Support the show
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Episode 147 - Make sure it's important and make it short.
What should we do if we must--absolutely must--have an element in our story that might not be fully entertaining and engaging? 1) Make sure it's important and 2) make it short. Here are thoughts about this critical technique. Also, details in our descriptions are important, but which should we use and which should we leave out?Support the show
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Episode 146 - How to make our character unforgettable.
We writers can use lovely phrases and perceptive observations when describing our character in our story, and yet the reader may still quickly forget the character. Here's how to make a character stick in the reader's mind. Also, are you a born writer? Maybe so. Here's why you might be.Support the show
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Episode 145 - Bringing our settings to life.
We can show (as opposed to tell) as we create a setting for our story. Showing will make our settings vivid, and will allow the setting description to do double duty: describe the place and suggest a mood. Also, reasons to avoid meetings in our story.Support the show
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Episode 144 - One sentence can bring our character to life.
We'll build our character as we write along, adding descriptions and actions and dialogue. But there is a way with only one or two sentences to reveal something powerful and memorable about the character--in just a few words--and I'll talk about the technique here. Also, Joyce Carol Oates's rules of writing. And punctuating dialogue, with important techniques about our character's spoken sentences so that our dialogue is a clear window to the story.Support the show
Hosted by James Thayer, the podcast is a practical, step-by-step manual on how to craft a novel. It presents a set of tools for large issues such as story development and scene construction (Kirkus Reviews said Thayer's novels are "superbly crafted') and it also examines techniques that will make your sentence-by-sentence writing shine. The New York Times Book Review has said Thayer's "writing is smooth and clear. it wastes no words, and it has a rhythm only confident stylists achieve.
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