Podcast appearances and mentions of angela ackerman

Crafting compelling backstories for your fictional characters is critical to developing a cohesive story, but it's sometimes easier said than done.There are endless options when it comes to which details you can include in your character's backstory, and what you do include will influence everything that happens in your story—from the plot events to your character's motivations to your own ability to manage the thematic subtext of your story on a scene-by-scene-basis.In this episode, I'm going to walk you through how to develop your character's backstory in three steps, including things like:[04:12] How to uncover your character's wounding event that gives rise to a specific fear (or inner obstacle) that haunts them in the present-day[06:57] A framework to help you crystalize your character's inner obstacle—and why doing this work helps you establish where their character arc starts[09:31] How your character's backstory can help inform your plot (and help you create meaningful conflict to help them grow and change)[12:55] An exploration of Simon Basset's backstory and character arc (from the first Bridgerton book, The Duke & I)[17:42] Episode recap and final thoughtsDeveloping your character's backstory before you start writing can help you develop your theme, craft your plot, build your story world, and so much more. That being said, there's no “right” or “wrong” time to flesh out your character's backstory. Do whatever works best for you and your process!Click here to listen!⭐ Rate + Review + Follow on Apple Podcasts"I love the Fiction Writing Made Easy podcast!" ← If that sounds like you, please consider rating and reviewing this show! Your rating and review will help other writers find this podcast, and they're also super fun for me to read. Just click here, scroll all the way to the bottom, tap five stars to rate the show, and then select "Write a Review." Be sure to let me know your favorite episodes, too! Also, if you haven't done so already, make sure you're following the podcast! I'll be adding a bunch of bonus episodes to the feed, and if you're not following the show, there's a good chance you'll miss them. Click here to follow now!

In this episode of Master Fiction Writing, I sit down with the remarkable Becca Puglisi, co-author of the bestselling series from Writers Helping Writers. Join us as Becca takes us on a journey from the inception of the first book to the expansion of the series, sharing invaluable insights into the art of character development along the way. Discover the inspiration behind the 'Emotion Thesaurus' and how it has become an essential tool for writers worldwide. Becca delves into the challenges and triumphs of creating the series, the collaborative process with co-author Angela Ackerman, and how feedback from the writing community has shaped their work. And don't forget the very latest book in the series - 'The Emotion Amplifier Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Stress and Volatility'!

This week Ines and Leslye tackle how to bring stories to a close with a deep dive on story endings. We dive into character arcs, open doors (and windows!), and resolutions. BOOKS MENTIONED Write Your Novel from the Middle by James Scott Bell: https://amzn.to/4a6NaqQ Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi: https://amzn.to/44v2TPn  One Stop for Writers: https://onestopforwriters.com/emotions  The Monsters We Defy by Leslye Penelope: https://amzn.to/4btzGXe Save the Cat by Blake Snyder: https://amzn.to/4abpK3A  Save the Cat Goes to the Movies by Blake Snyder: https://amzn.to/4bpDJUm  Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody: https://amzn.to/3xf7TFV The Heroine's Journey by Gail Carriger: https://amzn.to/3WuZD4t That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon by Kimberly Lemming: https://amzn.to/3WuZwG5   Ines' Substack where she breaks down Marvel movies according to the Five Part Finale https://ineswrites.substack.com/p/5-part-finale-of-the-incredible-hulk   Check out Margie Lawson's courses: https://www.margielawson.com/lecture-packets/  Sign up for author Nalini Singh's newsletter to receive fan service here: https://nalinisingh.com/ Want the official Psy-Changeling Reading Order? Click here: https://nalinisingh.com/books/psychangeling-series/   Want to learn worldbuilding from Leslye? Sign up here: https://learn.myimaginaryfriends.net/ Want to learn story structure from Ines? Sign up here: https://ineswrites.com/PTP Get ready for Shield of Winter, coming in 1 week! Grab your copy to read along: https://amzn.to/4b6r34L    Find the hosts online at: L. Penelope: https://lpenelope.com/  Ines Johnson: https://ineswrites.com/  Credits: "Moonlight Hall" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/umqeMohkOC0 Mentioned: ARC Giveaway - https://lpenelope.com/2024/03/daughter-of-the-merciful-deep-arc-giveaway/ Daughter of the Merciful Deep - preorder Publishers Weekly starred review Creating Character Arcs by K.M. Weiland  Write Your Novel from the Middle by James Scott Bell Plot vs. Character by Jeff Gerke  Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody  OneStopforWriters.com The Negative Trait Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi  Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin  Events: - The Authorprenuer Path workshop - 3/26/34  - Poconos Writers' Conference - 4/20/24  - My calendar - https://lpenelope.com/calendar/ The My Imaginary Friends podcast is a behind the scenes look at the journey of a working author navigating traditional and self-publishing. Join fantasy and paranormal romance author L. Penelope as she shares insights on the writing life, creativity, inspiration, and this week's best thing. Subscribe and view show notes at: https://lpenelope.com/podcast | Get the Footnotes newsletter & become an Imaginary Best Friend: https://myimaginaryfriends.net Support the show: Website | Instagram | Facebook Music credit: Say Good Night by Joakim Karud https://soundcloud.com/joakimkarud Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported— CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/SZkVShypKgM Affiliate Disclosure: I may receive compensation for links to products on this site either directly or indirectly via affiliate links. Heartspell Media, LLC is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

There's this really great book for writers by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi called The Emotional Wound Thesaurus. It came out way back in 2017. As they write in their prologue, “Life is painful, and not all the lessons we learn are positive ones. As with you and me, the characters in our stories have suffered emotional trauma that cannot easily be dispelled or forgotten. We call this type of trauma an emotional wound: a negative experience (or set of experiences) that causes pain on a deep psychological level. It is a lasting hurt that often involves someone close: A family member, loved one (etc.)… or results from a physical limitation, condition, or challenge.” So, the key here is to not just write a quick character study and be like, “My character Hammy the Hamster has resentment because his dad never thought he did a good enough job as exemplified by when he came in second place for the Hammy Olympic Wheel Roll.” The key is to make sure that this emotional wound impacts: The lie that festers inside of there (this is a false logic. Hammy believes he will never be good enough); The fear that gets bigger and bigger and bigger as time goes on, the fear that's because of this wound; Their view of themself (Hammy thinks he's a loser); How their personality shifts when things happen because of the wound or the lie. And there's even a website, that we've linked in the podcast notes where you can look up emotional wounds. That's called onestopforwriters. You have to pay to access the full features of that website. But it writes, pretty simply, “Emotional wounds from the past have the power to greatly impact our characters' personalities and choices in the future. Get to know your characters intimately by choosing the right emotional wound; understanding its effects will enable you to write realistic, fully-formed characters that resonate with readers and make sense for your story.” Angela and Becca even have a ton of resources (they call it the motherlode) here. And one of those things is a pdf for a backstory wound profile. It's all pretty amazing, honestly. DOG TIP FOR LIFE Pogie has a lot of emotional wounds and she says, "Don't let your wounds rule you; don't be afraid of them. You've got this." WRITING EXERCISE When was a time your character actually felt at peace? Describe it. Do they want to get back there again? Does your character do anything for self-care? What is it? Why or why don't they do it? How would your character be different if those traumatic events of their childhood never happened? PLACE TO SUBMIT Superpresent Spring Issue Deadline: March 1, 2024 Superpresent is seeking submissions on the theme Survival. We are looking for all forms of poetry, writing, video, and visual arts. Please look at our website for details of the call and to get a feel for our magazine. superpresent.org RANDOM LINK WE MENTION ABOUT KING CAKES AP article SHOUT OUT! The music we've clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here's a link to that and the artist's website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It's “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free. WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It's pretty awesome. We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie's Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here. Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot! Subscribe

#angelaackerman #podcasts #booktubeAngela Ackerman joins the podcast. We are sitting in a restaurant in Okotoks Alberta, Canada. Originally on my patreon, this podcast features Angela and I talking about Marketing, public speaking, imposter syndrome, books that jump the shark, and much more. Angela is one of the most influential people I've had the pleasure to have on the show, as her work has touched the life of authors everywhere. She's an amazing story. Check it out.Angela AckermanWriters Helping WritersSponsorsThe Corruptor - A hitman gets more than he bargained for after he dies. He is recruited on the side of evil to corrupt the souls he can, all the while the two sides are in eternal conflict. Set in the world of The Immortal Era, Edward Davis writes about the conflict of souls and where they go before death is taken away. Click on the link to support the kickstarter.ServicesMy Course on Podcasting - I have launched a podcasting course. Perfect for those seeking to build their platform, and if you're struggling with putting a show together or having the confidence to speak in front a camera, this course is for you. Kickstarter Services - Looking to reach your pledges in creative videos that inform and entertain your audience? I'm launching creating videos specific to your campaign and your platform.  Check it out if you want to reach your audience in more creative ways than just looking into the camera.Available Now:Alice Won? - Available now. Alice escaped the asylum and pursues the Queen of Hearts to the Greek Labyrinth in the underworld, there she must engage in a game of croquet unlike any other, against Jason of the Argonauts. Illustrated by Kenzie Kats, written by yours truly.Support And Subscribe:Buy my MerchBuy Me A CoffeeNewsletterTwitchYoutube

This week we chatted with Angela Ackerman, one of the authors of the classic writing book, The Emotion Thesaurus.  If you've never picked up one of the amazing thesauruses by Angela Ackerman and her co-writer, Becca Puglisi, you're missing out! Created especially for writers, the ten different thesauruses will help you add emotion, be more creative, and make your book sing!  In this particular episode (aside from Trudi and the other SPA Girls singing the praises of Angela's books) we talk to Angela about emotional wounds - what that means, why it's important for our characters and how we can add emotional wounds into our writing and give our characters more depth.

This week we chatted with Angela Ackerman, one of the authors of the classic writing book, The Emotion Thesaurus.  If you've never picked up one of the amazing thesauruses by Angela Ackerman and her co-writer, Becca Puglisi, you're missing out! Created especially for writers, the ten different thesauruses will help you add emotion, be more creative, and make your book sing!  In this particular episode (aside from Trudi and the other SPA Girls singing the praises of Angela's books) we talk to Angela about emotional wounds - what that means, why it's important for our characters and how we can add emotional wounds into our writing and give our characters more depth.

We're doing a hybrid writing tip and podcast this week. All the important stuff is written down here. All the fun stuff and Shaun aka The Talent is in the podcast where we talk about this important writing stuff and other things. So, let's get started. The big lie or the character's misbelief in your story is a major key to your character's story arc, which is basically the emotional change and development of who you character is. The lie drives the stupid or wonderful things that they do in the story. It's what motivates them in a way. Sometimes the protagonist or main character or hero of your story doesn't believe THE BIG LIE, but everyone else does. That's super cool, too. The lie can be a small deal—I am going to win the Little Miss New Hampshire Song and Dance Contest though I can't move my hips and I am ancient and the contest is for 8 year olds and under. (I now want to write this story) The lie can be a big deal on a societal and personal level—Might always makes right, so I'll beat everyone up to get my way. On Writers Helping Writers they say that the big thing is this: Your lie has to move the plot forward and it has to relate to your story's theme. They also break it down to inner and outer lies (which are a bit like character-driven lie and plot-driven lie, right?). They write: “Plot-driven stories often focus primarily on an outer-world Lie such as Hunger Games‘ Lie that “oppressive government is necessary” or Jurassic Park‘s Lie that “science should always be advanced.” Character-driven stories usually focus on an inner Lie, such as “men and women can't be friends” in When Harry Met Sally or “money is the measure of worth” in A Christmas Carol. “An inner-world Lie will affect the character's outer world, sometimes even to the point of becoming the outer world's Lie. And vice versa, an outer-world Lie will likely become crucial to the character's inner conflict and self-estimation. “The distinction is important not so much because of how the Lie manifests in the story as it is because of where the Lie originated. Where did this Lie come from? Who (or what) gave this Lie to the character? And what do the answers mean for the character's motivations and ultimate arc within this story?” Carrie is going to be talking more about this in the upcoming weeks, but we want for you to think about those questions for your own life too. Is there something you believe that might not be quite right? Sometimes it might be that you're bad at art or sports or school. Sometimes it might be that you can only be loved if you are perfect. Sometimes it might be that if you just work hard enough you can be Bill Gates rich. Just like for your characters, your lie can be destructive to your own life. On Writers Helping Writers, Angela Ackerman writes, “We are often our own biggest critics, aren't we? Whenever something goes wrong, we feel disappointed, frustrated, upset, or hurt. The fallout might cause others around us to suffer too, causing further anguish and guilt. When this happens, unless the situation was in no way tied to us, we tend to blame ourselves: “When the character's thoughts circle disempowering beliefs (that they are incompetent, naïve, defective, or they lack value) as a reason for their failure, it eats away at their self-worth. This, combined with a need to identify the pain's cause will lead to a specific effect: an internal lie will form. This Lie (also called a False Belief or Misbelief) is a conclusion reached through flawed logic. Caught in a vulnerable state, the character tries to understand or rationalize his painful experience, only to falsely conclude that fault somehow lies within.” DOG TIP FOR LIFE Pogie's big lie is that she's a super toughie. She is not. Do you have this lie? WRITING TIP OF THE POD Think about your character's lie. What is it that they wrongly believe? LINKS WE TALK ABOUT SHOUT OUT! The music we've clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here's a link to that and the artist's website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It's “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free. WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It's pretty awesome. AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! It's taking a bit of a hiatus, but there are a ton of tips over there. We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie's Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here. Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Lyssa Mia Smith and Anna Mercier start at the very beginning of their writing process: character. They provide insights into building character and how character can progress the plot as well as make for a book your reader can't put down! Resources Mentioned: Endings: The Good, The Bad, the Insanely Great Emotional Wound Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi

This week, Holly chats with Angela Ackerman, author of the Emotion Thesaurus and its many sequels. They cover: The foundations of realistic emotions in writing Show don't tell Creating conflict Bringing the setting to life and much more! Find out more at www.unstoppableauthors.com

Episode Show Notes In this episode we cover:  Why accessibility is important What is assistive technology Easy ways to make our content more accessible How to use alt text The four main principles of accessibility This week's question is: Tell me something interesting you've learned this year. Recommendation of the week is: Guava Flavored Lies by JJ Arias Apple Kobo Amazon UK Amazon USA ***this show uses affiliate links Find out more about Jeff, Michele and accessible content: Content For Everyone Buy the Book Here Color Contrast Checker Rebel of the Week is: Angel Ackerman If you'd like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com 1 new patron this week, welcome and thank you to Wendy Karas. A big thank you to my existing patrons as well. If you'd like to support the show, and get early access to all the episodes as well as bonus content you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack   Transcript: Sacha: This is The Rebel Author Podcast, where we talk about books, business and occasionally bad words. Hello rebels, and welcome to episode 180. Today, I'm talking to Jeff and Michele all about accessible content and making our books, our social media, our websites more accessible for more readers. But first to last week's question, which was: what book has gotten you out of a reading slump? Carrie says, "I'm still in a slump. I'm always so tired by the time I have time to read that I can read a few pages before I shut down. I think I need an audible subscription again." Heather says, "The book that recently got me out of reading slump was the rage read that was Iron Widow, and it was just what I needed." Claire said, "Another Stupid Love Song by Miranda McLeod and Em Stevens. Last summer, I was racially abused on my way home and followed to the train station by a group of white man." I'm already fucking livid reading this. "It was really traumatic, and I fell into a deep depression afterwards. Stopped going out, stopped writing and reading." I hate reading this. I'm so sorry. "But then I saw Miranda mention that she had a new age gap romance. And the part of me that felt curious about stories began to wake up when I started reading the straightforward writing style, fast pacing and promise of a happily ever after made a good book to start with." I seriously don't know what the fuck is wrong with people. Like, I'm not going to get into a whole load of politics and opinions right now, but just know that reading that made me really crass, and I'm really sorry that you experienced that. I'm really really glad that reading and story and happy ever afters have helped you to at least heal a little bit from that experience. This week's question is: tell me something interesting that you've learned this year. We are heading towards the end of the first quarter. What the fuck? And so I want to know, what have you learned this year? It could be something small. It could be something not at all about writing. It could be anything really. So yeah, it can be about yourself as well. Let me know what you have learned about something this year. Okay, the book recommendation of the week this week is Guava Flavored Lies by JJ Arias. JJ is a fuckin master of bickering. This is the same JJ who interviewed me in the Ruby Roe launch episode. And JJ is coming on the show. We are literally just in the process of booking a date. Oh my god, I had the pleasure of reading Guava Flavored Lies in audio, and it was so good. It was the breath of fresh air that I needed. And okay, so let me tell you about it instead of just keep fucking ranting about how good it is. It's a contemporary romance, sapphic romance, contemporary sapphic romance with two Cuban families rowing. They've got a shit ton of like history, familial history, and like generational arguments between them. They're both pastry chef families and they own like pastry shops. The bickering went back to school girl days, and I've just never read anything where the bickering was so real and so funny and so brilliant. And I just like I literally laughed, and I don't know, I don't know. I think it actually will go down as my favorite contemporary romance that I've ever read. I loved it that much. It's kind of rivals to lovers as well. Yeah, enemies to lovers, rivals to lovers. Probably rivals to lovers, I would say. Just because there are no like stabbing knives. But it is just fantastic. So if you are looking for an example of dialogue that is sharp as fuck, and bickering that is just fantastic between two love interests, this is the story for you. I highly, highly recommend this book. Of course, links will be in the show notes. So in personal news and updates, I'm sick again. Literally can't fucking believe it. Woke up a couple of days ago feeling like rough as a dog, and I just honestly, I really want this to be a positive episode. I hate being whiny, you know what I'm like, I like to charge forward at 1000 miles per hour all of the time, and always look to the goal, to the future, to the whatever. I just, I'm struggling this week. It is a struggle. I am exhausted again. And I genuinely don't think it's any one thing in my life particularly, I just think it is the fact that it's all combined. And I really need to fucking slow down or like, not slow down, but just like take something off my plate before I crash and burn, because I sort of feel like this is a mini physical burnout. I have decided to reduce boot camps slightly. Instead of going five times a week, I'm gonna go three times a week for now. And I'm going to move one of those to the weekend so that I get a little bit more time in the week during the working days so that I can, you know, not work in the evenings so much. But yeah, I'm really over being sick this year. It is alarm bells to me. I am acutely aware that this is a problem and that I need to have a holiday or take some time off. The problem is I'm really shit at taking time off at home because my office is at home. So, you know, that's why I like to travel because then the office isn't here, the temptation isn't here. It's probably a very privileged thing to say. But you know, I do struggle to take time off at home. It just is what it is. It's a fact. So that's kind of where I'm at. Yeah, I don't feel well, and I would like to not be working today, if I'm honest. But there are things that need doing and things that have deadlines. So on I go. In terms of what I've been working on, I have started The Villains Journey. I'm super excited. I have been trying Rachel's method, which I know you guys will have heard about last week on The Black Herron. Oh, no, no. So for those listening on the podcast, you won't have heard about this yet. But for those on Patreon, you will have heard about it. So in the coming episode, Rachel and I discussed the fact that she started writing 500 new words a day on anything. They can be any project. And I was like, oh, that's amazing. And basically, if you do it every single day of the year, I think it's about 182,000 words a year. That's like three books, or more if you write nonfiction and shorter word counts. And I'm not going to do it every single day, I'm just trying to do it every working day. And so yeah, I have started The Villains Journey, and I'm already 3000 words in. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but I'm not supposed to start writing this until May, you know, and at this rate, I can go to May with about 20k in the bag. So feels like a lot to me. I'm very, very happy. I'm about 19,000 words into the second Girl Games book. This is the one that I already had 30k in, but no, as you know, I more or less scrapped it. I have salvage some of the stuff from the first version, and so yeah, I'm 19,000 words into the book. I've been doing about 5000-word days, which is great. And using a write to sprint in the morning, and that's really been helping. So yeah, I feel pretty good about the writing projects. And it's really nice to be writing words. I find that I get to a point where I'm exhausted and don't want to write anymore, probably because I burned so hard, and then I like get very sick and tired of doing the marketing or the entity or whatever it is, and want to go back to doing the drafting. So it's a good schedule to have to be able to switch between the two. So when you hear this, it will be my birthday week. And I am considering, given that I'm not feeling very well, that I might take a couple of days off. I don't know, we'll see. I would like to go down to London and go to the Big Waterstones and like spend some time in there, but we'll see. I don't know whether or not I'll actually get to do that. But it would be nice to, so we'll see. You know, given that I'm not feeling very well, I think that is probably everything that I'm going to update you with this week. So the rebel of the week this week is, and I have to say, I did pause for a second and have to reread the name, It's Angel Ackerman, which when you write it and you read quickly, very much read as Angela Ackerman. Not Angela Ackerman, ladies and gentlemen, it's definitely Angel Ackerman. So let me read Angel's story to you. "I work in the Stitch Fix warehouse in Pennsylvania folding clothes for eight hours a day. I'm a former journalist and needed a low stress job that could allow me time and energy to pursue my own creative interests. At the warehouse, which Stitch Fix refers to as Hizzies, with cute names for each, we are the Buzzy Hizzy, but there is also the breezy, the hoozy, the dizzy, and the fizzy. I'm allowed to listen to podcasts, and so as a writer, I discovered The Rebel Author podcast and many others in the industry. "I have racked my brain trying to capture a rebel story from memory and suddenly I realized my whole creative side hustle is rebellion. I founded Parisian Phoenix Publishing in 2021 as the brand behind my paranormal women's fiction series, Fashion and Fiends, debuting with the first volume, Manipulations, in September of that year. "One of my best friends is a graphic designer with an obsession with typography. In her first job as a graphic design professor had invented the name and logo for the company and a complete boxset of the novels in 2008, just to have something to submit for the faculty art show. At the time, I was shopping my novels to traditional publishers and agents, attending conferences and serving on the board of my local writers group. Motherhood prevented me from giving proper effort to that, and the book industry was changing so much in the aughts. "When the pandemic happened, I thought it would be fun and rebellious to self-publish preserve these stories for my now teen daughter. But the project barrel rolled into a full-fledged craft press as more people asked me to publish their books. I asked fellow writers and artists for help with projects being proposed because linking creative communities is one of our goals. "As of 2023 Parisian Phoenix has nine published books ranging from an anthology of marginalized voices, LGBTQ disability, mental health, body image, ethnicity, etc., to a romantic comedy with original photographs, a devotional focusing on how to protect yourself in a violent modern world without violating your Christian values in production, and an 11th book of short stories in the editing phase. Not to mention, poetry, a holocaust memoir, and nostalgic fiction. "Each book seems to host its own rebellion. Our tagline is: publishing unique voices and diverse perspectives. And many of our staff members and peer review board members have disabilities. I have cerebral palsy. My assistant editor has been blind since birth. And we have primarily women on board." This is an awesome, awesome rebellion. And yeah, look up Parisian Phoenix if you are interested in finding out more about them. I think this is such a cool rebellion, and the fact that you are creating communities and collecting people and helping to bring diverse voices into the world is just fantastic. So I absofuckinglutely love that rebellion. And also thank you for listening. If you would like to be a rebel of the week, please do send in your story. It can be any kind of rebellion, something big, something small, or something in between. You can email your rebel story to Becca over on rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com. A huge welcome and a warm thank you to new patron Wendy Karis. And of course, a gigantic thank you to all of my existing patrons. You guys help keep the show running. You make me feel like what I do is worthwhile and having a wonderful impact, so I really, really appreciate each and every single one of you. If you would like to support the show and get early access to all of the episodes, as well as a ton of bonus content, then you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting patreon.com/sachablack. Okay, that's it from me this week. Let's get on with the episode. Hello, and welcome to The Rebel Author Podcast. We are in for a special treat today because we have not one, but two guests on the show. First, we have Jeff Adams. Jeff is a creative entrepreneur, as an author of both queer romances and young adult fiction, as well as the co-host of The Big Gay Fiction Podcast. In his day job, Jeff's a certified professional and accessibility core competencies by the International Association of Accessibility Professionals. As the Accessibility Operations Director for UsableNet, a company focused on making the digital world more accessible and usable, he consults with clients around the world about digital accessibility. Next up we have Michele Lucchini. Michele is the Vice President of Delivery and Accessibility Operations for UsableNet and overseas the teams responsible for ensuring client success in their digital accessibility program. Michele's background is rooted in software development first, and moving to team and operation management later. Thanks to experience gathered in over two decades, Michele is an expert at helping companies from the largest to the smallest, making their digital experiences accessible. Hello, and welcome. Jeff: Thanks for having us, Sacha. It's great to be here. Sacha: So Jeff, you were first on the show back in episode 55, which I can't actually believe because that was October 2020. Jeff: It feels like a year ago, like years and years and years ago. Sacha: I know. I know. I mean, honestly, time is a lie. I was texting one of my friends this evening who was talking about the movie, Everything Everywhere... Jeff: Everything Everywhere All at Once, I think. Sacha: Yes, that one. And I was like, "Oh yeah, yeah, that was out like three years ago." And she was like, "Oh, actually, no, it's up for the Oscars now." And I was like, "Wait, what? No, no, no. It could not possibly have been out last year." Though it was. Yeah, time is a lie. It's weird. So normally I ask people like what their journey is, how they came to writing the book. But I'm gonna ask you first of all, like, what have you been up to since then? Because obviously, we know like your journey from the first episode, which I'll link in the show notes. Jeff: It's interesting as I went back to look at 55, and like what was going on in October of 2020. Like, within the month before you dropped that episode, so between the time we talked for that interview and you dropped the episode, we actually ended The Big Gay Author Podcast, which is one of the things we were talking about on that show. Mostly, because with pandemic and other things that were going on, like some of our priorities shifted, and it's like, we weren't sure that show was really relevant anymore. So as it's so popular, now, we learned how to say no and learned when to end something, and put that aside. Big Gay Fiction Podcast continues on. It went into its eighth year last November, so we're 400+ episodes now there. So that's been exciting. I've written the book we're about to talk about. And the neat thing about that, I think, is writing this nonfiction book, I think has resparked my fiction side a little bit, because I've been really stagnant over the last couple of years. I've done some rereleases of some things I got the rights back on, but writing new stuff has really been a struggle. So my fingers crossed, that the nonfiction kind of broke that kind of cloud over my head, if you will, and I'm gonna be able to hopefully get some new fiction out this year. Sacha: I always find nonfiction is a real palate cleanser. Like I adore fiction, but I definitely need to also write nonfiction, because it gets me excited to go back to the fiction. Otherwise, I do tend to find it's a bit of a burn. So Michele, have you written other books? Or is this your first one? Or? Michele: That's the very first one. Sacha: That's exciting. Michele: The last thing I wrote was my thesis at the university. And that was far from exciting. Well, actually, it was in home automation, so it was actually an interesting topic. But I've always loved writing, but I never dedicated myself enough to call myself like a producer or a writer of a proper book. Sacha: So before we dive into the questions like about the book, then how did you find writing, and writing together? Like what was the experience like for you? Michele: Well, let's also consider that it's not my mother language, right. So it was an extremely interesting experience. So I had the opportunity to learn on many different threads. So one is the challenge of transferring something that is my daily job knowledge, and the knowledge that has been built across 22 years, that I would use the word dedicate to this topic. Plus, learning the ability to put in words for somebody who is not an expert. One of the limits that I realize I have is that sometimes when you gather so much experience, you can lose the ability to explain and translate it in easy terms. I think that Jeff has experienced the same. I remember the first iteration of our review process, we were asking ourselves, does it make any sense for somebody if it's their first time approaching the topic of accessibility? So it was an interesting learning curve, but it was what made all the project extremely interesting for me. Sacha: Well, you both absolutely smashed it because it's the most meta book possible. For a book on accessibility, it's extremely accessible for someone who knows nothing about it. So you absolutely smashed it out of the park. So well done, both of you. And that is what we're here to talk about. And your new book is called Content for Everyone. And it focuses on the topic of accessibility. So before we dive into some more technical, practical tips and tricks, like why accessibility? What made you want to write a book on this topic? And why is it so important, particularly for the authors and writers listening? Jeff: The whole thing kind of became this big smashing together of my day job in accessibility. But the things that I do on the creative side, so even before the book was kind of a seed in my head to do, I was trying to make sure that my sites, my email, my social media, were as accessible as I could make them. You know, because I'm not technical. Knowing what you need to do and actually being able to do it can be two different things, you know. So, moving through this, and as I talked about content accessibility all the time, it's one of the things I trained UsableNet clients about, is that very topic. It's so in my brain, I can't not see issues almost everywhere I go on the net. No alt text on Facebook, bad color combinations here, things that don't work with keyboard. You know, all these things just keep being in front of me. And I know that nobody sets out to do that. You know, nobody sets out to make inaccessible content that can exclude, potentially, a lot of people. They just don't know what to do. And they don't know what the topic is. So it's like, why don't I try to create something that distills what you can work on, and also to a degree, things to watch out for, because there are things in the book that are--and keyboard navigation is a great example of this, and we'll probably talk about a little bit more about that piece of it later. But you're not going to fix your own keyboard navigation issues, but if you know you have them, you might get a new template or do something to start to mitigate those problems. And so that's kind of where it started. And then one day, as I was talking with Michele, as we do all the time, I was like, I'm gonna write this book. And he was interested, so we decided to kind of tackle it together. Sacha: I love this so much. And like, I think it was such a humbling experience for me to read as well, because my stepfather is disabled, and he uses a wheelchair. And so I have a reasonable amount of knowledge about accessibility in terms of like mobility and physical issues. And so I kind of went into the book thinking, oh, yeah, like, I'm gonna understand. Holy moly, I was so ignorant of digital issues. Like all of the bits and bobs, like on social media. Like just things that I wouldn't even have thought would be an issue. And that's what I love so much about this book is I genuinely feel like every single person listening to this podcast will go away having learned something. So I think it's really important that listeners do go and educate themselves, and buy your book, I read your book, because it's fucking brilliant. So in your book, one of the things that you talk about are the four main types of disability. And I think it'd be helpful for listeners to understand what they are to give some context to the rest of the podcast. And I don't know if you are able just to give some like references to a couple of the numbers, which were really quite significant. And I was quite shocked when I read it and saw some of those stats. You know, and by that, I mean, sort of how many people are affected by disability. So yeah, because this is an important topic. Michele: Yeah, it is. And numbers are shocking. And I think that we can identify four main categories of disabilities, which is mobility. And this is the largest group, so over 13%, almost 14%, of US population as some mobility impairment. So translated into a digital experience, it could be something preventing the user to use emails, or a regular pointing device. The second category is the cognitive disability. And here we are talking about over 10% of the US population. Any cognitive disorder, it could be learning difficulties, dyslexia, and I'm not just talking about very, very bad disabilities, but just simple conditions that are not preventing an individual to conduct a normal life. The third category is the auditory ability. The count is around 6% of the population. And the auditory disability is any form of hearing loss. And last but not least, is the visual disability. Here we are around 5% of the population. So within the visual disability, of course, we include the blind individual categories, but we might have any kind of low vision, color blindness, contrast deficits, and all impairments that are preventing a user to be able to see colors or transfer the content as the mainstream, which is a word I hate and a concept I hate, will experience on this side. There is one more, in my opinion, a shocking number. Beside the fact that with easy math, we are seeing that 20% of the population as a sort of disability. 20% of your audience, your customers potentially have a sort of visibility. But in these 20%, we're not counting all the temporary impairments. So somebody that broke his arm, somebody that is using his mobile phone under the sunlight, and the sun is hitting the screen and he's not able to see as well as he'd be able to see the screen in the dark. We are now also considering that the age of the digital population is increasing year after a year. I always use an example, so my dad is 74. He is active, smart, quick. His expectation is to keep interacting with his mobile phone, for example, as it is right now. Why should he accept that as his sight is becoming a little bit lower, as his precision with the movements might degredate. In the course of the years, he won't be able to use his phone, he won't be able to do what he's doing with his computer. So that becomes a basic expectation. So we need to take that in consideration. So that 20%, actually, is much, much more if we are considering all the, let's call them disability induced by the context of use. Or simply the population getting older. Sacha: I think one of the things that I found enlightening is the term assistive technology and what that captures. Because I think many of us are actually using some of these technologies without even realizing that actually, they are tools that help those people who do have accessibility issues. I know I certainly was like, oh, you know, I was just using this because this is a handy thing. And actually, they're integral to ensure that our content is accessible for everybody. So I wondered if you could talk about what assistive technology is and give some like examples, just to put it into context. Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. It's something that, as you noted, we use it every day and don't even think about it. You and I are wearing assistive technology right now, Sacha, because we're both in glasses. Think about what you would not be able to see if you didn't have your glasses on. Sacha: I really couldn't. Jeff: You know, it'd be a mess. Using speech to text technology, I think we use it all the time. Authors certainly use it a lot to dictate their manuscripts. You know, if you're dictating a text to your phone, and then sending it that way, or interacting with any home assistant, that's part of it. But also for some people who maybe are restricted in the mobility area, they may use speech to text of that kind to literally navigate the web. And that would be what they'd use in place of a mouse is speaking to the computer. The keyboard itself is a big assistive tool for some people, because theoretically, you know, by the rules of accessibility, you should be able to interact with the site completely on your keyboard, without interacting with the mouse at all. So things like that, you know, are some of the high level things. But then each of our computers, if we're on any kind of, you know, modern Mac or Windows machine, or if we're using Android or iOS phones and tablets, all of those have a huge array of accessibility things built right into them. Whether it's a screen reader, Zoom technology, more around voice to text, a whole bunch of things. And I would really encourage people to look in their settings for their computer and their devices just to see the long list of things that are present that people could use to be interacting with their digital content. Sacha: So like what is the consequence of this to authors if they don't engage with making their content accessible? Michele: I think that the easiest to perceive consequence is they may leave out of the door a good portion of a potential audience or potential customers. But besides the numbers, beside the, let's say, business aspect, I like to think about the impact on potential reputation. Michele: The impact on the idea that the audience, the customer, might have on just ignoring categories of people. So we need to, I think that it is time for us to all get sensitized on the fact that we need to build a more inclusive world. I mean, it is everyone's responsibility, it is not Jeff's, it is not Michele's, it is not Sacha's responsibility only. It is not an expert's responsibility only. Everyone can provide a contribution. So, in my opinion, the impact on the reputation is probably getting to be the most prominent one. And this is what my advice is. Jeff: If you think about the whole idea that not doing this excludes people, and of course, I think all of us creatives really want to be about inclusion. We talk in the book, we talked to four different people in the book who have different disabilities, and in some cases, different multiple disabilities. And one of the things that struck me was speaking to one of my fellow authors in the queer romance space. They were trying to interact with courses, you know, there's a whole array of courses available to independent authors for ads, and for marketing here, and marketing there, and writing craft and all these things. And repeatedly, they are not finding courses where like the live courses don't have live captions through whatever venue it is. And certainly Zoom is really good at live captions for any call that you're doing there. But even in the replays, captions or transcripts weren't available. So they either, you know, don't get to interact with the training at all because they're deaf and hard of hearing. I mean, they've got hearing aids, but those only give them about 30 - 40% of the full picture. So they either strain to hear that content, and try to work on it, which of course is taxing and tiring, or they abandon it all together. And they really feel like they're not getting information that other authors get because, you know, they're not included in that experience. Sacha: Yeah, transcripts is a real sticking point for me, because when I first started the podcast, I used to do transcripts for the show. But at moment, I only have school working hours, and you know, each transcript for an episode is a two hour job. You know, when you do four a month, that's a whole lot. That's more than one working day, and I just can't afford the time. But it is something that I provide for courses. And I do try to make sure I do video audio transcript, and you know, all of that stuff. It's very frustrating for me because I would like to have the sort of AI transcription software be more accurate because I can't just transcribe and leave it and put it up because there are things still that don't make sense. It's not accurate enough. And obviously, outsourcing, it's costly. So that's one of the things for me that I know that I could change, and I would really like to change. But obviously, it's a costly exercise one way or the or another. So we know that it's important to make sure our books and websites and social media are accessible to everyone. So what are some easy wins that people could take away from this episode? Anything practical that we could do to make our content more accessible? Jeff: You kind of hit on one of the things there in what you just said around auto generated. Auto generated anything doesn't make it accessible. Auto generated transcripts or captions are just riddled with mistakes. They come close, they're about 95% of the way there, and they're a great point to start the editing process, but they're not complete. And they will leave your audience feeling the same way, like if you just put out a first draft of a book without any copy editing and without any fixes to it. That's also true for alternative text because Facebook and Instagram, for example, will put alt text on anything you upload to it, and it's horrible. It'll be like, "might be one person standing outside with a beard," because they've got a beard on their face. And they'll just kind of tag that on the end. And it'll also try to read any text that's actually in the image. And if you think about those very popular book promo graphics right now with the book in the middle and all the little arrows pointing with like tropes and plot points and stuff. Sacha: I posted one of those today. Jeff: The AI will actually read left to right, trying to read each line of that, including the book title and the bylines, and present that. That's what Facebook offers. So you need to make sure on social that you're cleaning up the alt text that's present there so that it's not just some real garbage that's sitting there. Then another key I would give, knowing how everybody loves to use emojis, really limit the use of them. Like put them at the end to like finish the punctuation on a post or a sentence or something. Don't start with them, because especially for screen readers, each emoji has its own thing that it reads out, that may not be the context that you want it to be. Don't put emojis between the words for the same reason. Also you think about cognitively disabled people and emojis as well. The context and the way you want those to be perceived, if somebody is already having to parse the words you're putting in there because maybe they're dyslexic and they need a very clean line of text, or some other cognitive disability, you're just making it that much harder for them to get the message that you're trying to give because you're trying to add some visual sparkle with the emojis. So I would say that those are my three quick hits on some things that can start to make the content more accessible. Sacha: Yeah, I still remember the first time somebody asked me to put captions on my stories. And as far as I'm aware, they have no accessibility issues, but they used to watch my stories at work, and they couldn't watch them with sound on. I was like, "oh," and I was like, "yeah, sure, I can do that." And then, obviously, there were other comments from other people who were like, "Oh, actually, now I can like watch your story, like watch/read your stories." And like, that was a real eye opener. I just think so much of this is just pure, like, what's the word? Not nefarious, but it is still ignorance. You know, it's just accidental ignorance in a way. But the emojis, I definitely do far too many emojis and I am going to make an effort to make sure they're at the end instead. I definitely start with emojis, I put them in the middle, you don't even think about it. So yeah, now I will be thinking about it going forward. Okay, so you've just mentioned alt text there. But I wondered if you could give me an example of what good alt text is because I do some freelance work managing a blog, and I know that when we have pictures, we're supposed to put alt text on there. I never really know what it is I am supposed to be describing or what I'm supposed to be putting into the alt text sections. So like, how do I know where I'm supposed to use it and when it's not actually needed? And how do I know what a good sentence is to put in there? Michele: Somebody says that finding the right alt text is like an art. And I actually agree with that. There is no magic recipe to define a good alternative text. We always recommend it is important to understand what role an image plays within the context. The context of what? It could be the context of the page, the context of the message we are communicating. So in the case an image is purely decorative, you're just using an image as a sort of placeholder, an extremely nice placeholder, but it's only conveying a decorative meaning, in that case, your alternative tags should be empty. It does not mean that you don't have to put the alt attribute, because if you don't, assistive technology will read the file name of the image, making it very difficult to understand for the final user. But setting the alternative tax as an empty, the assistive technology will know that that image will need to be ignored. So it won't be read. Instead, if the image is conveying a message, an important message, you should describe it with the right message. I mean it was funny for us, not in the context that we found the issue, it was the classic search icon, the magnifier lens, and so the site we were reviewing had, as an alternative text of the magnifier lengths, magnifier length. Instead, there was supposed to be search, because the function of the image was search, it was not magnifying something. So you can just imagine how confusing would have been the experience of a blind user using a screen reader that was hearing that there was an input text field on the page, so maybe that is what I can use to search something, and then magnifier lens. When you experience that, people with disabilities now have a bad website. With very little effort, you can fix it, you can make your site more accessible and more meaningful to everyone. Sacha: Yeah, that's so interesting, because obviously, you derive meaning from seeing the image, but actually, it's the function of the image that's the important bit. I think that's a fantastic bit of learning for everybody to take away. One of the other things you talk about in the book are the four main principles of accessibility on a website. And I think these are things that authors should be aware of. So I wondered if you could just briefly go over them. Michele: Yeah, sure. The web content accessibility guideline, which is the sort of Bible to determine whether a digital property is accessible or not, are four. And actually, those four principles also apply to everyday object accessibility. So the first one is perceivable. It means that any user must be able to perceive the content and the interface of your website. So we just did the example around the alternative text, that falls under the perceivable principle. The second principle is operable. So it requires to provide the ability for all users, independently by their abilities, to operate with user interface. The classic example is, let's consider a motor impairment, and it prevents the user to interact with the mouse. So the site must provide the ability for the user to use just the keyboard to interact and browse the site. The third principle is understandable, which probably is the easiest to understand. So the interface and the content must be understandable to the user. This actually, on some of these success criteria, it becomes extremely interesting because it also covers cultural disabilities. So the use of an easy language and all these aspects are, I think, extremely interesting for authors. And last but not least, is the final principle, which is the robust. It is probably the most technical principle that is included into the guideline, but it is all about respecting the standards, and respecting the core compatibility. One of the things that we always have to remember is that users with disabilities are massively relying on their system. So they are probably not upgrading them 30 seconds after the operative system notifies us that there is an upgrade ready to be installed. They don't do that because the risk of losing the ability to, for example, have the system working as it was working before, it might generate a big problem. Imagine a blind user that relies on his computer or any screen reader to order the food, to book the train ticket, to book a taxi. If after the upgrade, it won't work anymore or won't work as it was working before, considering that learning how to use a screen reader is probably a multiyear experience. Sacha: I find that so interesting. Actually, that's going to make me slightly more empathetic, I think. So with my stepdad, we often help like change bills over and do things like internet swap over, but there's a lot of resistance to like upgrading. And I was like, you need better internet, like you need it. And, you know, I wasn't particularly empathetic about it, but actually I get it now. I get it. Yeah, I can understand because so much is reliant on the existing system. And I'm just like, yeah, well, we can change it and upgrade it and make it better. But actually, when there are so many systems, you know, phone systems and call systems and nurse systems that are based on it, I can understand why there's that resistance and reluctance to change it. And so yeah, thank you for that. Now, I'm not very empathetic person, but I'm going to try very hard now to be better. Yeah, thank you. I've read the book and learned so much and I'm still learning even more. This is a fantastic interview. Thank you, guys. One of the things, speaking of, that I learned was that using color to differentiate isn't always helpful, which blew my mind because I am an extremely visual person, and I actually rely on color to learn. Like when I was studying at university, I would put my psychology studies in certain colors, so that I could close my eyes and picture like my big brainstorm thing, like with all the different colors on it, and then I'd remember the numbers and the words and the authors and things. And so that helps me to categorize and it's how I find books on my bookshelf. And I was ignorant of, obviously, the fact that that's a huge problem for people who are colorblind. So what are some of the things that those of us who are able bodied take for granted that you wish that we would change? Michele: Yeah, relying on color to convey information is probably one of those. Just the color is not enough, you should use something else. Let's do an easy example. So imagine that the style that you have on your website highlights the links only with the color. Let's also make sure the links are underlined, which is the standard, let's say link style, because otherwise, people might not be able to perceive the difference between the link and the plain text. The same when you are providing instructions on how to do something. Recently, I've seen a sign that was suggesting to use the red button. But what if I'm using my interface only on a scale of gray? I will not be able to perceive what is the red button, and I will not be able to distinguish between the other buttons. So again, it is not necessarily a hyper technical aspect, it is the ability to start understanding which are the difficulties. And these are difficulties that you might be able to perceive, not just on the web, but on the everyday life. So this is, I think, one of the nicest thing around accessibility, that when you start learning, and Sacha, you confirmed that before, right? When you start learning it on a field, then you naturally apply it to a number of different fields. And the use of colors is a classic one that you can find on books, guides, instructions, websites, on Facebook post. It is a very popular mistake. Sacha: I think it's so natural for so many of us to, you know, we go through the world with our own rose tinted spectacles on. We go through the world with our own experience. And so often we take that for granted that that's everybody's experience. And it's not. And that's why this is so important because none of us are perfect. We all have things to learn. And I think as long as we are open to being humble, and to putting our hands up and say, "Actually, yeah, I had no idea. I'm going to change that now." I think that's one of the magical things about your book is that you say throughout it that nobody's expecting you to do everything in this book immediately. You can do one little thing this month, another thing next month, you know. And I think that's what's so encouraging because I actually left the book very motivated to try and fix some of these things. Jeff: The thing to remember, and you kind of touched on it there, that we tell you, you don't have to do everything, but it's also a mindset of progress over perfection. It's one of the big things talked about among all the advocates in this space, because you can't do everything all at once. And especially for who we're talking to here, which is really creative entrepreneurs, probably little to no technical experience, working with little to no budget, you know, maybe if they're lucky, a PA who helps with this stuff. But to know you can choose to do nothing on your existing content and always do better going forward, those little things add up. You don't want this to feel like a crushing like, oh god, now I've got two thousand other things to go do. Baby steps, parse out what you're gonna do, what you think the most important thing is, and just do something. Yeah. Sacha: And like, speaking of doing something, I think one of the things that authors spend a lot of their marketing time on is social media. So what are some of the things that we can do to be more inclusive and accessible on social media? Jeff: Really think about that emoji use. I mean, I will tie back to that, because emojis is one of the places that I think most people, if they're going to abuse emojis, it's abuse on social. Put them at the end of the post, don't bury them in the middle of it, so that your message comes through. And that's really what I look at in every instance when I'm thinking about social. It's let's make sure the message you're giving actually comes through. Instagram stories and TikTok, when you can add your own text to those, make sure you're using text that's actually big enough to read. Those stories, you can't pinch and zoom and do all that stuff. And there's so many Instagrams, people type these big, long missives on their Instagram stories, and it's really teeny, tiny text, and I'm like, I have no idea. And if I am not reading it with my glasses on, it's like, yeah, you're gonna lower your interaction with that. Make it bigger text, more screens, whatever that takes to get that across. The same thing when you're doing caption fonts, like I love your caption fonts when you're doing your stories. It's good, big text. I think I could read that with my glasses off, perhaps, which is great. Think about how you're using images and what you're doing with them. Images of text are used a lot, and you know, they're catchy, like those graphics we talked about with all the arrows pointing to the books. But make sure that that message is coming out into the post itself. Because, you know, we talked about using alt text, which is great, but there are people with low vision, who aren't going to use the screen reader to get to the alt text. So for that book example, all of those little pop points that are running around the outside of the book, make that part of the post in a sentence format. You know, "this book features these things," so that it's equivalent information presented. That comes back to the perceivable principle that Michele mentioned. Different people perceive in different ways, so make sure the content is available in all those different perceivable ways. Sacha: So I got halfway there with that trope's post because I put the tropes in the caption, but then I put a tick emoji by each one. I was so close. Michele: You need to read the book again. Sacha: Clearly, I do. Okay, last sort of major question then. Talk to me about font. You've mentioned font, about having it large in captions, but also there are things that we should know about choosing font for our websites or for our books or social media where possible. Jeff: I would say this is less about books and book covers because that's going to the brand and the feel of the book, and that kind of thing. And the book cover itself is really art. And yes, there are certain things you could do, but you don't want to like take away from the feel of your cover for that. When you're promoting the book, you want the text around that art to be properly accessible and stuff. You can't really adjust the font on aspects of social. You've got some font choices on stories and areas like that. But if you're gonna look at font families, for example, like Tahoma, Times New Roman, Verdana, and to a large degree, Arial, Calibri, Helvetica, those are generally well accessible fonts because the things that you're looking for are easily distinguishable letters. So a font where a lowercase L and an uppercase I and the numeral one, don't all look the same. Because then you're gonna start having people having difficulty parsing the letters if they're visually interacting with them. And then, of course, it's a good font size. So you know, well 14 size font on websites and in emails and stuff. Think about are you using on your emails, for example, a mobile friendly template so that somebody doesn't have to pinch and zoom even if you're using a big font, because it's not reformatting in the mobile window well. And if you're doing tiny text, don't go too tiny. Even if you're doing like rules for something, somebody's trying to read that. So you know, be considered about that as well. Very thin fonts, things with big flourishes in them, be wary of those. Those will be much harder for people with cognitive disabilities, potentially, to parse and low vision to parse out what those are. Coming back to like images of text and that promo graphic, if you do have swirly stuff in there because it's part of the brand feel of the book, just make sure you're getting that message in the post and in the alt text so that it's all considerable. Two other things I'll throw out about fonts, and one of these ties back to color, is color contrast. So beyond the use of color that Michele mentioned, think about the color contrast and the ability to discern what's in the background versus the foreground. So if you're thinking about text, does the text pop enough off of the background color to be readable. And I'll send you for the show notes a link to a color contrast checker that's available, you just put in the hex codes for your foreground and your background, and it's gonna tell you if it passes color contrast. It nice little sliders on it so you can darken and lighten text to find the right balance to ensure that those visually interacting can see and discern the color appropriately and not have to like work too hard on it. The last thing I'll mention around text is the alignment of the text. Centering text, especially large blocks of text, we're not talking like headlines, but large chunks of text, very cognitively draining to read because your eye is always have to find where the start of the line is. Same thing with justification because there's inconsistent spacing between words. Left justify it so that I can follow, you know, not so much with the indents because indentations are expected, but you know, start left align copy so that it's just a straight line. It makes for the easiest readability. Sacha: Yeah, do you know I've always hated center justified text and I've never really know known why. And it is actually exhausting to read it. Yeah, that's so interesting. Thank you both so, so much because I think this is a really, really important topic. And I hope that listeners, even if they're only got to go and do one thing, please do go and take one action after listening to this podcast. Well, two actions. One, read the book, and then two, take a take a practical action. But this is The Rebel Author Podcast, so tell everyone about a time you unleashed your inner rebel. And I don't mind who goes first. Jeff: I will say that I prepared better this time than the first time that we did this because I know Will I found this question to be like, oh my god, what is this even mean? I have one for this though. And I challenge everybody after they read the book to start doing this kind of same thing. And it's gently educating people about accessibility. As you learn it, pass it on. Like, even before I wrote the book, every now and then I would talk to an author colleague, a podcaster colleague, about newsletters or things that I saw that just very clearly popped out to me because of this work that I do. Like maybe think about doing this thing different than this thing, to spread the word. And I'm even more kind of out there with it now. Whether it's a colleague, or a business that I that I work with. You know, I use maybe widgets and plugins on my websites to get to make certain things happen. I'll either go look for new ones, or be like, hey, this is bad, can you do something about this place? It's all about gently. It's not about aggressively coming out of the gate and be like, oh, my God, why aren't you doing this. It's like, you may not know this, but XYZ. And that way, accessibility becomes something that we all start to think about a little more. So it's a little rebellion and it takes a little courage to just know you're gonna go reach out to somebody go, can I just give you some unsolicited advice about this? But it's all about trying to make everything more inclusive. Sacha: Yeah, absolutely. Exactly. And the more welcoming we can be, the better our community becomes, and the more, what's the word, the more appreciated our readers feel. So I love that rebellion. Michele, what about you? You've got to have a rebellion, too. Michele: I do, I do. It might be considered close to Jeff's one, but the message I want to convey is that we live in a world that relies on accessory to use something that has been just purely designed. And we need to stop. The concept of an assistive technology, or even worse, an alternative, it needs to stop. So the fact that the product that you are designing, often we see the main actor as the designer, not the user, is what causes the majority of the accessibility issues. So we need to invest something that is not necessarily related to the technology only, but in the way we speak. And I include myself, I mean, this is a message that I send to myself as well. So to be more inclusive, but in a way that we think we will learn, which could be all the difficulties, all the possible different abilities of our audience, and we try to be more inclusive, but in a way that we don't just consider that if he's not able to use my website, for sure, she will have an accessory that will make her able to. Well, it's not always like that. We can design better, we can write better, we can produce better products to be available for a wider audience. Sacha: Yeah, I love that. And I think the best marketers who are authors keep the end user being the reader at the fore of their design of their books and their marketing campaigns. And you know, they're the ones who are the most effective at this. And so I think that's an amazing rebellion. Okay, tell everyone where they can find out more about you, your book, and anything else you would like to add? Jeff: Absolutely. So you can find all about Content for Everyone at contentforeveryone.info. Information where you can get the book, we're also going to be putting up routine blog posts there to talk about examples that we've seen, news that would be of interest to creatives. So we'll start to have you know that be kind of an ongoing resource to help share even more around the book. And Content for Everyone is available everywhere, eBook, paperback, large print paperback and audiobook. And you should find that anywhere you want to pick up a book, or pick up an audio, it should be there. Sacha: Are you narrating? Jeff: I am actually, yes. Sacha: I love it. I love it. Jeff: If you want more about me, JeffAdamsWrites.com for the fiction, and BigGayFictionPodcast.com for the podcast. Sacha: Excellent. Thank you very much. Okay, well, thank you so much for your time today, and of course a gigantic thank you to all of the show's listeners and all of the show's patrons. If you'd like to get early access to all of the episodes, you can do so by visiting patreon.com/sachablack. I'm Sacha Black, you are listening to Jeff Adams and Michele Lucchini, and this was The Rebel Author Podcast. Next week I am joined by one of my fav humans, Ines Johnson, and we are going to be talking about business, processes, efficiency, and basically how she is a fucking badass author. So join me next week for that. Don't forget to tune in and subscribe on your podcatcher. And when you have a moment, please leave a review.  

Angela Ackerman is co-author of 6 best-selling writing guides and enjoys sharing her passion for storytelling with writers across the globe. Her desire to help writers in new, innovative ways is a love she shares with Becca Puglisi and Lee Powell and led to a powerful collaboration that became One Stop for Writers®. The post #169 – Angela Ackerman on How to Add Emotions to the Characters in Your Book first appeared on Write Your Book in a Flash Podcast with Dan Janal.

Angela Ackerman is co-author of 6 best-selling writing guides and enjoys sharing her passion for storytelling with writers across the globe. Her desire to help writers in new, innovative ways is a love she shares with Becca Puglisi and Lee Powell and led to a powerful collaboration that became One Stop for Writers®. The post #168 – Angela Ackerman on How to Put Emotion Into Your Book first appeared on Write Your Book in a Flash Podcast with Dan Janal.

How do you answer the question, "What do you want for Christmas?" In this episode, Kenny shares 12 gift ideas for writers. Physical Gifts: 1. Noise Cancelling Headphones 2. Blue Light Glasses 3. Laptop Stand 4. Travel mug, coffee cup, or sticker with an encouraging saying or a phrase stating what you want to be ex. Future Best-Selling Author 5. A Gift Card to your local bookstore Books: 6. Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody 7. The Ten Commandments of Author Branding by Shayla Raquel 8. The Secrets of Character by Matt Bird 9. The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi 10. Author Your Dream by Kenny MacKay Program/Subscriptions: 11. Grammarly 12. Milanote

Shayla Raquel is an author, self publishing mentor, speaker, editor, wifey, and dog mom. She's been helping authors on their publishing journey for over a decade and has writing tips to spare! We chat all things NaNoWriMo and how writers can get invested in any stage of the word count. As a former NaNo winner, Shayla divulges her current methods and tools that set her up for success. Plus, teach you how to apply the tricks for your own writing!Connect with Shayla:https://linktr.ee/shaylaleeraquelTwitter - @shaylaleeraquelTikTok - @shaylaleeraquelInstagram - @shaylaleeraquelPinterest - @shaylaleeraquelShayla's Bookshttps://amzn.to/3NADtFHNaNoWriMo 2022 Planner and Workbookhttps://www.etsy.com/listing/1304802050/nanowrimo-2022-planner-and-workbook-22Shayla's Facebook Group NaNoWriMo Adventureshttps://www.facebook.com/groups/nanowrimoadventures---------Resources Mentioned: A Writer's Guide to Active Setting: How to Enhance Your Fiction with More Descriptive, Dynamic Settings by Mary Buckhamhttps://amzn.to/3t03LcFThe Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Expression by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi https://amzn.to/3FVwDux---------*SPECIAL FOR NOVEMBER*$20 for 20-minute tarot reading for your writing with L.J. KeysTo book, fill out the Google Form below for an appointment and mention the $20 for 20 mins at the end of the form when prompted for questions.Tarot for Writers Google Form:tinyurl.com/yeyvenrtL.J. Keys' website:https://thekeystothesoul.com/---------The YouTube Channel:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPcGXevs2NQk3Ab9OD66zuQSupport the Show:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/romancethestoryFind me below:Twitter - @RomancetheStoryInstagram - @RomancetheStoryFacebook - @RomancetheStorySupport the show

D.C. and Avery discuss their techniques and processes when creating new characters. Mentioned: Character Development Worksheet Writing Thesaurus Books by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi

A conversation on how character goals shape your plot wanders into a discussion about writing characters who think differently than you, and why goals are important to your story. Mentioned: Books by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi: Emotional Wound Thesaurus Positive Trait Thesaurus Negative Trait Thesaurus Emotion Thesaurus Character Development Questions Worksheet

How can I find another word for happy? What kind of conflict would a childhood of excess create? How can I describe a rural setting with real language? Becca Puglisi and Angela Ackerman have the solution for you! Their Writers Helping Writers Descriptive Thesaurus Guides are best-selling writing guides that have helped authors and professionals alike. Today I talk with Becca Puglisi, one of the founders of the website Writers Helping Writers and One Stop For Writers as well as the co-author of the thesarus series.   Want to support the show? Become a patron! Looking for tips on writing, publishing, and storytelling? Join my writers' newsletter! Want more information on my books, author swaps, short stories and what I'm reading? Sign up for my readers' newsletter.

Exploring the physical, mental, emotional signs of worry as well as worry as weather. When worry is normalized we can no longer separate worry from living, worry from loving, etc.. Learn to recognize the signs of exhaustive worry to find your empowerment to choose where your energy goes and where it doesn't. The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi.  For exclusive content visit our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/emotionalbadass

In this episode host Pamela Cook shares her top ten writing craft books, plus a couple of bonus titles. If you want to see the books you can actually watch the video on the Writes4Women YouTube channel, and you can find the video on YouTube or on the Writes4Women website.  Whether you're a newbie writer or more experienced you're sure to find something of interest in this top ten list which includes books on inspiration, plotting, showing not telling, Nanowrimo and more. Pamela also gives her personal writing update and reviews what's coming up on the podcast. Grab your notebook, a pen and a cuppa and join Pam for this solo episode of Writes4Women. SHOW NOTES: Writes4Women www.writes4women.com Facebook @writes4women Twitter / Instagram @w4wpodcast   W4W Patreon https://www.writes4women.com/support-us-on-patreon   Pamela Cook www.pamelacook.com.au Facebook: click here Twitter: click here  Instagram: click here   Craft Books mentioned in this episode: Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert From Where You Dream by Robert Olin Butler How to Write A Novel by John Birmingham The Kickass Writer by Chuck Wendig The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donal Maass Revision and Self Editing by James Scott Bell The Right to Write by Julia Cameron Method Acting for Writers by Lisa Hall Wilson No plot? No problem by Chris Baty Save The Cat by Blake Snyder storymastery.com - Michael hague onestopforwriters.com The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne     This episode produced by  Pamela Cook for Writes4Women.         Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/writes4women?fan_landing=true See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today's episode is a Craft of Writing episode with Angela Ackerman, co-author of eight best-selling resource books printed in eight different languages through which she shares her passion for the writing craft. If you are a writer, you may have heard of Angela's first book, The Emotion Thesaurus, a tool which helps writers show emotions through body language and internal reactions.  The desire to help writers in new and innovative ways led to a website called one stop for writers. It's a unique site originally co-founded with Becca Puglisi and Lee Powell, the creator of Scrivener for windows, and Lena Lennox. This creative portal contains game-changing tools and resources that enable writers to craft powerful fiction. As any writer knows, conflict is the engine of fiction and Angela has a wealth of information on how we can use it to power up our writing. Angela also takes us on a tour of the onstopforwriters.com website which has a myriad of resources authors can use to create compelling characters and page-turning plots. Join Pam and Angela on The Convo Couch as they talk all about conflict.   SHOW NOTES: Writes4Women www.writes4women.com Facebook @writes4women Twitter / Instagram @w4wpodcast   W4W Patreon https://www.writes4women.com/support-us-on-patreon   Resources Find more about the book here. Sign up for a notification here. See the master list of conflict scenario entries here. One Stop for Writers: https://onestopforwriters.com/ Writers Helping Writers: https://writershelpingwriters.net/   Find Angela on: Instagram: click here Facebook: click here Twitter: click here   Pamela Cook www.pamelacook.com.au Facebook: click here Twitter: click here  Instagram: click here   This episode produced by  Pamela Cook for Writes4Women.       Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/writes4women?fan_landing=true See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre interviews Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi of WRITERS HELPING WRITERS. Angela and Becca are the co-authors of the “gold standard” of writing guides, the Writers Helping Writers thesaurus collection. The series is available in eight languages and has sold over 600,000 copies. These books are used in universities and by editors, agents, writing coaches & authors all over the world. Learn more about Writers Helping Writers at https://writershelpingwriters.net//Draft2Digital is where you start your Indie Author Career// Looking for your path to self-publishing success? Draft2Digital is the leading ebook publisher and distributor. We'll convert your manuscript, distribute it online, and support you the whole way, and we won't charge you a dime. We take a cut of royalties on each sale you make through us, so we only make money when you make money! • Get started: https://Draft2Digital.com Get insider info on indie author success from our blog. • Visit: https://Draft2Digital.com/blog Tune in to our monthly livestreams and ask us anything! • D2D Live: https://D2DLive.com Promote your books with our Universal Book Links! • Books2Read: https://books2read.com//Get ahead of the Self-Publishing game with our Amazing Partners// Findaway Voices || Find a narrator, produce your audiobook, and distribute it to retailers worldwide, including Audible.com and Apple Books. • http://findawayvoices.com/d2dReedsy || Assemble your team of publishing professionals! Find editors, cover designers, marketing experts, ghostwriters and more. • https://reedsy.comBookBrush || Build graphics and video that help you market and promote your books. • https://bookbrush.com/d2d-mockups///Join the D2D Community Online// Facebook || https://facebook.com/draft2digitalTwitter || https://twitter.com/draft2digital

On this talking shop episode, Sarah reviewed a book she believes every writer should have in their toolkit: 'The Emotion Thesaurus' by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. Ashley reviewed a chapter on dystopian fiction in the academic book, 'Beyond the Blockbusters: Themes and Trends in Young Adult Fiction' by Rebekah Fitzsimmons and Casey Alane Wilson.

Episode Show Notes In this episode we cover:  Why formatting is important Mistakes to avoid with formatting Why you might consider a formatting company Differences between print and ebook formatting What to look for in a professional formatting company This week's question is: How do you format your books? Recommendation of the week is: 10 Steps to Hero: How to Craft a Kickass Protagonist by ME! books2read.com/10stepstohero  books2read.com/heroworkbook **Please note this show uses affiliate links Links and shows I mentioned are: 3 Mistakes to Avoid with Your Side Characters on Angela Ackerman's site Writers Cookbook Book Echoes Find out more about Formatted Books and their services on: Website Facebook Instagram Twitter LinkedIn   Rebel of the Week is: Claire L. Fishback If you'd like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com or instagram me @sachablackauthor No new patrons this week, but a big thank you to my existing patrons. If you'd like to support the show, and get early access to all the episodes as well as bonus content you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack   This Show is Sponsored by ProWritingAid Find out more about ProWritingAid here. DISCOUNT CODE: REBEL25 Twitter, Facebook, Instagram  

Avery and D.C. discuss the classic writing advice "Show, Don't Tell" while revising an old snippet of Avery's writing and enjoying some old-fashioned cocktails. Plus, everything is better with pizza. ----more---- Books mentioned in this episode: Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi   Drink Pairing: Writer's Tears Old Fashioned 2.5oz Writer's Tears Copper Pot Whiskey 1.5 tsp brown sugar syrup Dash angostura bitters Orange peel Luxardo cherry (for garnish) Add syrup and bitters in a rocks glass and stir well.  Add a large ice cube, then pour in whiskey and stir well to dilute.  Spritz orange peel over the top and drop peel into glass.  Garnish with luxardo cherry.

Here’s what you’ll learn in this solo episode:how you can develop a well-rounded villainhow and when to introduce them in your storyfive questions to ask about your character as you develop thema few specific ways you can make them force your protagonist to actBooks Mentioned in this EpisodeCharacters & Viewpoint (Elements of Fiction Writing) by Orson Scott CardThe Emotional Wound Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Psychological Trauma by Angela Ackerman and Becca PuglisiThe Negative Trait Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Flaws by Angela Ackerman and Becca PuglisiLike the Podcast?Are you a subscriber? If not, I invite you to subscribe, so you’ll get notified every time a new episode goes up.Click here to subscribe on iTunes.Click here to subscribe on Stitcher.And, if you’re enjoying what you’re hearing, I’d be super grateful if you left a review. Those help other creative souls find this show, and they’re fun to read. To leave a review, open up the Dear Creativity Let’s Play podcast in your podcast player. Scroll down to the bottom and let the world know what you think!Stay Connected with AmySubscribe to the newsletter to get ideas, tips, and inspiration to get started writing and creating and bringing your creative gifts and books into the world. You’ll also have access to twice-monthly co-writing sessions.Connect on Facebook or Join Amy’s Facebook group for Aspiring Authors.Connect on Instagram.

Angela Ackerman is one of the co-founders of Writer's Helping Writers and One Stop for Writers. She is also the co-author of 8 different writer's thesauri designed to help writers improve their craft. In this episode, Jeff and author Jeannette Bedard fan out about Angela's work and talk to her about realistic sounding emotions. Check out all of Angela's tools at WritersHelpingWriters.net. For more on dialogue, go to DialogueDoctor.com. 

PubTalk Live is a publishing talk show, broadcasting live to YouTube every 2nd and 4th Saturday at 9pm Eastern. Host Sarah Nicolas is joined in each episode by a Guest Co-Host and at least one Special Guest. They talk about all aspects of the book publishing industry, including its intersections with other media and libraries. This episode of PubTalk Live features Guest Co-Host Kylie Schachte and Special Guest Angela Ackerman, co-creator of The Emotion Thesaurus. →Kylie Schachte https://kylieschachte.com https://twitter.com/KylieSchachte https://www.instagram.com/kylieschachte https://amzn.to/3dWyKhZ →Angela Ackerman http://writershelpingwriters.net/ https://onestopforwriters.com/ https://www.facebook.com/AuthorAngelaAckerman https://twitter.com/AngelaAckerman https://www.instagram.com/writers_helping_writers_angela/ https://amzn.to/3uFFyXR →Your Host, Sarah Nicolas: https://sarahnicolas.com https://twitter.com/Sarah_Nicolas https://instagram.com/presidentsarah →Become a PubTalk Live patron: https://www.patreon.com/pubtalklive →Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/sarahs-place →Subscribe via email: http://eepurl.com/gE3ahb →Originally Streamed at: https://youtu.be/SdKgOUp_18c →PubTalk Live Logo adapted from art from freepik.com. →Audiobook of the week: THE LOST APOTHECARY by Sarah Penner: http://libro.fm/referral?isbn=9781488210761&rf_code=lfm164099 https://amzn.to/3njZFbz --News-- Shadow and Bone on Netflix. https://www.buzzfeed.com/jennaguillaume/shadow-and-bone-characters-cast-world-plot →Philip Roth biographer Blake Bailey accused of sexual misconduct. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/86140-norton-halts-shipments-of-roth-biography.html →International Booker Prize shortlist. https://bookriot.com/2021-international-booker-prize-shortlist/ →LA Times Book Award winners. https://events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks/bookprize-winners-2020/ →Independent Bookstore Day. https://www.indiebound.org/independent-bookstore-day https://oxfordeagle.com/2021/04/23/president-barack-obama-virtually-visits-square-books-for-independent-bookstore-day/ →S&S defends Pence memoir. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/86136-karp-defends-pence-post-hill-decisions.html --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this Craft of Writing Episode Pam talks to best-selling Australian author Rachael Johns about transforming her initial ideas into a first draft. An English teacher  in a previous life, Rachael is now an ABIA-winning author writing across a number of genres including romance, rural romance and women's fiction – or her own preferred terminology life lit. Her recent books include The Patterson Girls, Something to Talk About,Just One Wish and Flying the Nest. Rachael is currently Australia’s leading writer of contemporary relationship stories around women’s issues. Jilted (her first rural romance) won Favourite Australian Contemporary Romance in 2012, and The Patterson Girls won the 2016 Romance Writers of Australia RUBY Award and also the 2015 Australian Book Industry Award for General Fiction. She continually places in Booktopia’s Top 50 Aussie Authors poll. Pam and Rachael have a shared mania for stocking their shelves with books on writing craft and, having compared notes about their respective writing processes, pretty much agree they don’t know what they are! All this prompted Pam to invite Rachael onto the podcast to try and pin down what her process is for getting from that first seed of an idea to the end of a first draft. So listen in while Rachael and Pam compare notes on The Convo Couch. SHOW NOTES: Writes4Women www.writes4women.com Facebook @writes4women Twitter / Instagram @w4wpodcast   W4W Patreon https://www.writes4women.com/support-us-on-patreon   Rachael Johns Website : click here Facebook: click here Instagram: click here   Pamela Cook www.pamelacook.com.au Facebook: click here Twitter: click here  Instagram: click here   Books Mentioned by Rachael in this episode: The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi Ten Things About Writing by Joanne Harris Save the Cat Writes A Novel by Jessica Brody The Complete Writer’s Guide to Heroes & Heroines by Tami D, Cowden, Caro LeFever and Sue Viders Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert On Writing by Stephen King     This episode produced by Pamela Cook for Writes4Women.     Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/writes4women?fan_landing=true See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This was such a delightful and deep episode with guest Angela Ackerman, co-writer of books like The Emotion Thesaurus, The Positive Trait thesaurus, etc. Angela's books were on one of my blog posts "TOP 10 Book Recommendations for Writers". Her books have been a resource of knowledge, inspiration, and excitement when I'm crafting and exploring my characters. Today Angela and I discuss how psychology helps writers bring creativity to their characters and their arcs. DARE TO TUNE IN! LEAVE A REVIEW ON ITUNES & SPOTIFY ANGELA'S LATEST RESOURCE PROGRAM https://onestopforwriters.com/ CHECK OUT ANGELA! INSTAGRAM: @writers_helping_writers_angela TWITTER: @WriterThesaurus READ THE DTW BLOG https://www.liznotlizzy.com/blog SUPPORT THE PODCAST All links: https://daretowritepodcast.carrd.co/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/daretowrite/support

In episode 41, Ashley and Gabrielle discussed maintaining our creative flows in general, but especially during this panorama. We chatted about how social media platforms affect us, our dream offices + farm life goals, and the fact that you can’t use up creativity—the more you use, the more you have. Word to Dr. Maya Angelou.  Life Hack: Money Planner In Our Words: Ashley: The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi  Gabrielle: More than One Thing podcast by Athena Calderone Music/Captions:  A: “Did you know that you saved me? Did you know that you saved me from the fall?” - Alicia Keys ft. Snoh Aalegra, You Save Me  G: “So just stay right here, Love me from the mountain to the grave right here, Ain't no way it's ever gonna change right here, yeah” - Stay Right Here, Saba ft. Xavier Omar & Mick Jenkins Remember to rate, like, and subscribe to this podcast. Join the conversation on social media using #EightyTwoNinetySix or by mentioning @eighty2ninety6. 

The king is figures prominently in myth, religion, and fairy tale. This compelling archetypal image has roots in our earliest human beginnings, when the king embodied his tribe’s earthly vitality and supra-human connection to spirit. Today, the king symbolizes universal psychic functions; each of us has an internal ruler. Like Solomon, the king presides over standards of ordering and lawgiving that undergird processes of discernment and decision. As warrior, the king protects and defends the kingdom of selfhood he has built; he has access to aggression and takes responsibility for the consequences of his actions. The masculine principle is also a symbol of the fertilizing presence that creates new psychic life and fuels libido for growth. And the king has the power to confer blessings. Like King Arthur, he provides all aspects of internal life with a seat at the round table of consciousness—and wholeness.  Here's the dream we analyze: "I'm in a beautiful old building, it looks to be a library with large windows and oak desks. I'm there to talk to a man that my bossy/controlling neighbor friend is interested in. She wants me to convince him to ask her on a date. I'm carrying the book How to Be An Adult by David Richo in a semi-translucent grocery bag. As I start talking to him, we really hit it off and I'm very attracted to him; I want him for myself. Getting caught up in our connection, I almost forget why I'm there to talk to him but I also completely forget my friend's name. I go looking for her and find her bathing in a large metal tub in a back room of the library and I'm scared to tell her I didn't do what I was supposed to do (and that I even betrayed her in a way). I'm trying to get her to tell me how to pronounce her name, acting as if I still remember it but just can't pronounce it. The dream ends there." References Robert Moore. King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine. Sir James George Frazer. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion.  Jordan Peterson. 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.  Bella Puglisi and Angela Ackerman. The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression. 

This week we talk with young adult scifi adventure writer, Scott Coon. He's here to talk about he questions of science fiction, his debut novel LOST HELIX, his journey to publication, and what Phineas and Ferb have to do with his process. Transcript available at: https://www.charitybradford-riverford.com/scott-coon-interview For questions or topic requests, email me at: charity.bradford@gmail.com Intro and Outro music by Kahle von Bose Charity/River's Website: Website: https://www.charitybradford-riverford.com Hillary Ann Sperry's Website: https://www.hillarysperry.com Kahle's Soundcloud RSS (get to know a different side of him!) https://soundcloud.com/kahle-von-bose Scott Coon Website http://www.scottcoonscifi.com Scott Coon YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClTEIEwVV9p8LJAyhgd74nA Lost Helix https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Helix-Scott-Coon-ebook/dp/B082XTSZLQ Emotions Thesaurus and others: https://www.amazon.com/Angela-Ackerman/e/B0081BBQ7Q --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/charity-bradford/support

July was full of surprises. A well known free ebook platform shared my novella with its audience. And I'm going to share the results of this with you. While we're on the topic of book marketing, I will also discuss the outcome of my free promotion on Kobo. After careful deliberation, I took steps to self-publish my reader magnet on all stores, and I talk about the reasoning behind this decision. As I was publishing my mystery short story, I had a tonne of pricing issues with Apple. The word nightmare is an understatement. Now, on to the writing-related news. In terms of writing, I had a writing epiphany thanks to a YouTube video, that led me, to make progress with writing Duplicity, which is book two in the James Lalonde series. And I started working on the story idea for Book Three.Check Out the Show Notes:  https://authorpreneurpodcast.com/bts034/Podcasts, Books, and Tools MentionedFree BooksyBargain BooksyMy Writing Epiphany iTunes Producer (Mac Only)authors.apple.com (PC only)Grammarly ProWriting AidAutoCrit *Glastonbury Abbey RuinsIn the Name of the Rose (US)In the Name of the Rose (UK)75 Words that Describe Smells106 Ways to Describe Sounds Cheat Sheets for Writing Body LanguageThe Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca PuglisiEvernoteScrivener *Rory's Story CubesSupport the show by buying me a coffeeWant the podcast straight to your inbox? My BooksMy Novella, Missing My Short Story, the LawnBecome a Beta Reader and Start Reading Duplicity Connect with Me on Social MediaTwitter: @WriterADHayFacebook: www.facebook.com/authorpreneurpodcastFB group: The Authorpreneur Podcast CommunityInstagram: @authorpreneurpodcastYouTube: www.youtube.com/c/authorpreneurpodcast/videosGoodreads: www.goodreads.com/authoradhay

Writing collaboratively can be a great opportunity for indie, hybrid and traditionally published authors. Whether you're good at working with others or see the potential benefits that a collaboration could bring to your business, joining forces with another writer could help you level up many of your writing projects. This is what happened to Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi, the authors of the well-loved series of thesaurus guides that sit on many writers' desks.  In this episode Angela and Becca tell us about the opportunities and the challenges of working collaboratively, how they compensate for each other's weaknesses by dividing up the work based on their strengths, and why looking at readers' needs is the best thing an author can do to level up their writing career. (Bonus! In the past episode we officially reached our first big milestone for downloads of the podcast! If you want to see how we celebrated this event, don't miss out the first ten minutes of the episode. Thanks to all the listeners and viewers out there that helped us achieve this. You're awesome! :D)

In Part 2 of my interview with Angela Ackerman, co-author of The Emotion Thesaurus and host of Writers Helping Writers, we talk about how to use details to write great characters, immerse readers in your story, and even figure out your plot. Links: Writers Helping Writers: http://stada.me/whw One Stop For Writers: http://stada.me/osfw

In today’s episode, Rea and Joe share some of the best resources from their writing experience. As you think about crafting each piece of your book, you’ll definitely want to check out these tools. *Today Rea and Joe discuss:* * When to bring resources & methodology into your writing process * Listening to your instincts vs. utilizing tools & resources * The importance of making space for and away from your writing *Resources:* * Submission-Ready in Six Weeks: WritewayCo.com ( https://www.writewayco.com/submission-ready-in-6-weeks ) * Rea & Joe’s book recommendations: * Save the Cat! Writes a Novel ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32805475-save-the-cat-writes-a-novel ) by Jessica Brody * Story Genius ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27833542-story-genius?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=TYvgAq6KKE&rank=3 ) by Lisa Cron * Wired for Story ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13126099-wired-for-story ) by Lisa Cron * The Emotional Wound Thesaurus ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36407946-the-emotional-wound-thesaurus?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=JSObPlALLq&rank=1 ) by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi * The Negative Trait Thesaurus ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18517230-the-negative-trait-thesaurus ) by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi * The Emotion Thesaurus ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43666740-the-emotion-thesaurus ) by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi * Outrageous Openness ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21471479-outrageous-openness?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=KXfSXAzJOL&rank=1 ) by Tosha Silver * Bird by Bird ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12543.Bird_by_Bird?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=QPVJs9vZjK&rank=1 ) by Anne Lamott * On Writing ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10569.On_Writing?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=gNNy7QM2VU&rank=1 ) by Stephen King * Books ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2421737.Books?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=MDvvdFbIf2&rank=3 ) by Larry McMurtry * A Movable Feast ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4631.A_Moveable_Feast?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=MQcHRDRwsg&rank=4 ) by Ernest Hemingway * Any dictionary and thesaurus * Chicago Manual of Style ( https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html ) * AP Stylebook ( https://www.apstylebook.com/ ) *Connect with Rea + Joe* * Instagram: @writewayco ( https://www.instagram.com/writewayco ) and @reafrey ( https://www.instagram.com/reafrey/ ) * Website: Writewayco.com ( https://www.writewayco.com/ ) This show is produced by Soulfire Productions ( http://soulfireproductionsco.com/ )

Angela Ackerman is the co-author of the Emotion Thesaurus range of writing books and the One Stop for Writers site. In this episode I talked to her about creativity and how a big writing challenge might be just the thing you need right now. Links: Angela's post: http://stada.me/angela One Stop For Writers: http://stada.me/osfw

Episode Show Notes   This week's questions is: What part of character creation do you find the hardest?   Book recommendation of the week is: The Occupation Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi   My blog review and lessons learned How to use character occupations to deepen your characterization    Grab The Occupation Thesaurus here.   I was delighted to be interviewed by AG Billig on her Self-Publishing Mastery talks channel. We had an amazing chat  about adulting, parenting, creativity, routine and more. Watch here.   Find out more about today's guest:   Website: www.alexbryantauthor.com  Read his books: https://books2read.com/theidentitythief  Instagram: @alexbryantauthor  Facebook: @alexbryantauthor   *** Rebel of the week this week is HB Lyne If you'd like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com or tweet me @rebelauthorpod ***   Thank you to new patron Cari Buziak. Also a huge thank you to all my current patrons, you help not only to keep the podcast running. You make me feel like my potty mouth antics are worthwhile.   If you'd like to support the show, and get access to all the bonus essays, posts and content, you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting:   www.patreon.com/sachablack   That's sacha with a C not an S THIS EPISODE WAS SPONSORED BY KOBO WRITING LIFE   Visit Kobo Writing Life here, read the Kobo Writing Life blog here, and listen to their podcast here.

Notes:The definition of tension is "the state of being stretched tight, a strained state or condition resulting from forces acting in opposition to each other, a relationship between ideas or qualities with conflicting demands or implications".The “Mystery Box” story style mentioned by the Verbivore was created by J. J. Abrams and tends to be seen in most of his work including the TV show Lost which he co-created. In his Ted Talk, J. J. proposes that this style of storytelling makes the unknown mysteries (hidden in the Mystery Box) that intrigue and generate questions more important than the solution to that mystery. The rabbit’s foot device that is the MacGuffin that everyone is after in Mission Impossible III and remains undefined throughout serves as a good example of this concept.The Verbivore mentions managing the white space of your work as a way to keep the reader engaged and the pace moving. Here is a definition from the writerswrite.co.az:“White space is a design principle. Simply, the absence of text draws your eye to the text. It literally refers to the amount of space around and between the words”.While doing research for these notes, we stumbled on this great article from WriteItSideways.com that shows some good examples of how writers can use white space to break up ideas, she also includes an example where the author choose to have a large block of text. The choice of how to employ white space is something every writer can decide for themselves based on the needs of the work.Fable references the Writescast Network blog post on Micro-pacing and Macro-pacing that she read prior to our conversation. That post is titled “Pace Your Way to Pro-Level Publishing”.The Stephen King 10% rule comes from his book On Writing, where he received advice from an editor that the formula for the 2nd draft should be the first draft minus 10% of your words.Fable and the Verbivore discuss the idea of “Killing Your Darlings”. In his book On Writing, Stephen King says “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.” This idea is often discussed in reference to favorite characters who may have outlived their purpose, but the meaning is trully about any element (scene, title, sentence, theme) in a work where the author may have lost objectivity and kept it in solely due to sentiment rather than benefit to the story. The websites WritingCoopoerative.com and TheWritePractice.com each have an interesting article about this topic, with ideas about how a writer can identify these elements in their work.Fable mentions the Emotion Thesaurus (2nd Edition) as a tool to find realistic physical movements that express the emotion your character is feeling (ex. hands shaking when afraid). This is a great resource currated by writers Becca Pulisi and Angela Ackerman. They also have additional character emotional and personality development resource books titled The Emotional Wound Thesaurus, The Positive Trait Thesaurus, and The Negative Trait Thesaurus. Their website Writers Helping Writing is also a good place to find a list of recommended craft books for writers.The Verbivore discusses the important role of nonverbal communication in expressing what a character is feeling in a work of fiction. There are many articles that discuss and debate from a Psychological perspective the breakdown of what impact verbal and nonverbal elements have on the receiving end of our communications to each others. However, Albert Mehrabian’s research suggests that in some situtions our nonverbal communication (what we do) may be as important or more important than our verbal communication (what we say).https://www.helpguide.org/articles/relationships-communication/nonverbal-communication.htmhttps://www.businesstopia.net/communication/verbal-vs-non-verbal-communicationBooks Mentioned:The Graveyard Book by Neil GaimanDivergent Series: Divergent, Insurgent, Allegiant, and Four by Veronica RothRed Queen by Victoria AveyardRed Rising by Pierce BrownCaraval by Stephanie GarberThe Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Expression (Second Edition) (Writers Helping Writers Series) by Becca Puglisi and Angela AckermanSix of Crows by Leigh BardugoBig Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions by Daniel WallaceLight From Distant Stars by Shawn SmuckerFarm Girl by Corinne CunninghamTV Shows Mentioned:Lost Series - Seasons 1-6Music from: https://filmmusic.io’Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Whether you're a feature or TV writer, actor, or novelist, The Emotion Thesaurus is an indispensable tool for your arsenal. Find out why, in this week's insightful interview with co-author Angela Ackerman! Angela Ackerman lives in Calgary, Alberta with her husband and two teen boys. A lover of mystery and mythology, her chapter books, middle grade and young adult novels are represented by Jill Corcoran of The Herman Agency. Angela is also the co-author of The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide To Character Expression, a unique writing resource that tackles the “show-don't-tell” aspect of character emotion. A strong believer in writers helping writers, Angela teaches workshops, runs critique groups both online and in person, and blogs at the award-winning resource, The Bookshelf Muse, a description hub for writers, editors and teachers. In the interview, we discuss the many uses for The Emotion Thesaurus: to help train your powers of observation, as a scene tool, to help rewriting, to enhance readability of your scripts, and much more! Website: thebookshelfmuse.blogspot.ca Twitter: @AngelaAckerman Buy Gray's book for only $4.99! Look for it on Amazon – How To Break In To TV Writing: Insider Interviews. Didn't get your questions asked? Make sure you follow Gray on Twitter (@GrayJones) so you can get the scoop on who is being interviewed and how to get your questions in. Also check out our TV Writer Twitter Database to find Twitter addresses for over 1,200 TV writers. Find our previous episodes and other resources at www.tvwriterpodcast.com or on Gray's YouTube channel. First published February 10, 2013.

Whether you’re a feature or TV writer, actor, or novelist, The Emotion Thesaurus is an indispensable tool for your arsenal. Find out why, in this week’s insightful interview with co-author Angela Ackerman!Angela Ackerman lives in Calgary, Alberta with her husband and two teen boys. A lover of mystery and mythology, her chapter books, middle grade and young adult novels are represented by Jill Corcoran of The Herman Agency.Angela is also the co-author of The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide To Character Expression, a unique writing resource that tackles the “show-don’t-tell” aspect of character emotion. A strong believer in writers helping writers, Angela teaches workshops, runs critique groups both online and in person, and blogs at the award-winning resource, The Bookshelf Muse, a description hub for writers, editors and teachers.In the interview, we discuss the many uses for The Emotion Thesaurus: to help train your powers of observation, as a scene tool, to help rewriting, to enhance readability of your scripts, and much more!Website: thebookshelfmuse.blogspot.caTwitter: @AngelaAckermanBuy Gray’s book for only $4.99! Look for it on Amazon – How To Break In To TV Writing: Insider Interviews.Didn’t get your questions asked? Make sure you follow Gray on Twitter (@GrayJones) so you can get the scoop on who is being interviewed and how to get your questions in. Also check out our TV Writer Twitter Database to find Twitter addresses for over 1,200 TV writers. Find our previous episodes and other resources at www.tvwriterpodcast.com or on Gray’s YouTube channel.First published February 10, 2013.

This week’s book spotlight is on The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi, and tonight we’ll discuss revising character and setting choices. Our guest is a writing coach and co-author of The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression, along with six other writing guides. Join us in our discussion to dig deep into the emotions that make our characters tick. --- Become a Medium today! https://keystrokemedium.com/mediums/ Don't forget to Subscribe and get involved with the mayhem and shenanigans in the live chat! http://www.youtube.com/c/keystrokemedium If you have any thoughts or ideas for show topics or if you have authors you'd like to see on the show, let us know. Visit our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/KeystrokeMedium For all the latest and greatest KSM Gear, check out our store at: https://keystrokemedium.com/ksm-store/ Also, subscribe to Sci Fi Explorations for the best discounted and free books we come across through our contacts: http://www.scifiexplorations.com Keystroke Medium Anthologies      Kingdoms of Iron and Stone - https://amzn.to/2GjbE6I       Horizons Beyond - https://amzn.to/2SrJ6uX     Farthest Reach – https://amzn.to/2UZINeo The Writing Dream – and How to Make it to Happily Ever After – Keystroke Medium’s first non-fiction book. https://amzn.to/2UZINeo If you enjoy this podcast, please leave us a review and rate the show on iTunes, Podbean, Stitcher, or where ever else you found us!

HOW TO CREATE WELL-DEVELOPED CHARACTERS With Angela Ackerman Episode 1 – Show Notes   It’s not enough to simply write a great story. You must include characters, like your protagonist, who are well-rounded, well-developed, likeable, and relatable (while still flawed and human). In today’s episode, I sit down with Angela Ackerman, co-author of The Emotions Thesaurus and co-founder of Writers Helping Writers.   In this episode, we will: Learn why it’s so important to flesh out your characters Learn how to come up with a backstory for your characters Learn how to create motive for your characters’ actions Learn how to consider your genre when creating your characters And much, much more!   Hosts & Guests Host – Christina Kaye Guest Host – Angela Ackerman   Resources Mentioned: The Emotions Thesaurus - https://writershelpingwriters.net/the-emotion-thesaurus-collectors-edition/ One Stop For Writers – www.onestopforwriters.com Character Builder - https://onestopforwriters.com/about_cbt Writers Helping Writers - https://writershelpingwriters.net/   To Contact Christina Kaye: www.topshelfedits.com info@topshelfedits.com   To Follow Christina Kaye https://www.facebook.com/topshelfeditingllc https://twitter.com/topshelfedits https://www.instagram.com/topshelfediting/   To Join Creative Authors Network https://www.facebook.com/groups/creativeauthorsnetwork/  

HOW TO CREATE WELL-DEVELOPED CHARACTERS With Angela Ackerman Episode 1 – Show Notes   It’s not enough to simply write a great story. You must include characters, like your protagonist, who are well-rounded, well-developed, likeable, and...

Hello and welcome to episode 12 of The Rebel Author Podcast. Today I am joined by Angela Ackerman and we're talking pay it forward marketing, business planning and crafting emotions. More About Angela Ackerman Find her books here: https://writershelpingwriters.net/bookstore/ One Stop for Writers software here: https://onestopforwriters.com/ Read her article on business planning here: https://www.janefriedman.com/business-plans-for-writers/ Find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Episode Question: what business planning methods you find most useful? The two articles I've written recently: One on setting up money and finance basics for your writing business is over on writers helping writers: https://writershelpingwriters.net/2020/01/six-steps-to-setting-yourself-up-financially-as-a-writer-in-2020/ The other on crafting villains appears on the Insecure Writer's Support Group https://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/2020/01/4-tips-for-creating-villains.html Don't forget the Alliance of Independent Authors is running a sale on it's twice yearly self-publishing conference which I happen to run. If you'd like to grab over 100 hours of content, you can use my affiliate link below: https://selfpublishingadviceconference.com/?pa=0A19CBF504 Listener Rebel of the Week is Zack Geoffrey If you'd like to support the show, and get access to all the bonus essays, posts and content, you can support the show by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack Book Recommendation The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert Kobo https://www.kobo.com/ebook/the-hazel-wood-1 Amazon UK https://amzn.to/2R8X9GI Amazon USA https://amzn.to/2TQoFeb

On this episode, Jeni and Melissa talk with author Angela Ackerman about character development. 

Angela Ackerman joins the podcast. This is the marketing episode. Angela and I talk about marketing in terms of expanding brands, having fun with brand building, when words collide, and much, much more. Plus, this is my first broadcast in Vancouver, plus I talk about goings on in the canadian publishing scene.

Writing dialogue can be fun, but also challenging. What do you need to be aware of? How do you write strong and meaningful dialogue between characters in your novel? In this episode 45 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast, Autumn and Jesper will give you all the insights you need to become better at writing interesting dialogue. Looking for more? Here are the links to the four blog posts mentioned in the podcast: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/who-said-that-dialogue-and-your-writing-post-1-dialogue-tags/ https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/dialogue-post-2-adverbs/ https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/dialogue-post-3-action-tags/ https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/dialogue-post-4-line-breaks/ And the Emotional Thesaurus. It's an amazing companion book that any writer will enjoy: https://www.amazon.com/Emotion-Thesaurus-Writers-Character-Expression-ebook/dp/B07MTQ7W6Q/ Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday. SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you'll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going. Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (2s): You're listening to the amwritingfantasy podcast in today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need in literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing join to best selling authors who have self-published more than 20 books between them. Now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt. Jesper (31s): Hello. I am Jesper and I'm Autumn. This is episode 45 of the amwritingfantasy podcast and we are going to discuss ways in which you can write not only believable but also compelling and rich dialogue. Yay. Should be interesting. Yeah. Like, podcast is also a bit of a dialogue. So, guess that works. Yeah, we'll be talking about talking. It almost sounds a bit weird. I'm sure we'll work it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But dialogue is important, so I'm looking forward to get into that. But, um, but before we get that far, I have to say, I mean we are, we actually recording off schedule right now because normally we record these podcasts on Mondays and today it's a Wednesday because I had to shift things around because this week here in Denmark, the kids are off school isn't a holiday for you guys or it's a school holiday this week. So, uh, so day off school from school and then, uh, Monday we uh, we tried to do like a family day and just to do some stuff together. So we went to the cinema and watched a movie together with the kids, which was nice. And then yesterday, uh, I after work, um, after I was done with my work day, I done drove and Mike our kids off and delivered them to my mother's place. But that's a across the country. So I think by us standards, it's not that far. You're in Denmark is a two and a half hour drive each way, which is quite a lot in this country. I drove them there in the afternoon, then I have some dinner and then drove back. So I was back here home at midnight yesterday and then I was up this morning and I think I've been working for 11 hours today, so I can feel it a bit now. Autumn (2m 33s): It's, as I said, if you get a little loopy or low energy towards the end, we'll know why. But yeah, driving two and a half hours, I think that's sorta like driving across most States. But it's gonna say a Texas, I think it's eight hours across. So you're, you're a smaller state is what they had to be like. Here yeah, I'll, I'll country he is not that big, but that's actually nice when you have to get around. Jesper (2m 58s): Right. And you don't have to drive that far. Autumn (3m 0s): Yeah, exactly. No, I think it, I think good, cozy community and even cozy States because yeah, it feels more like, you know, it community. You get to know places really intimately. So I think that's actually a huge benefit. Um, I can't tell you how many as we are driving the last three years am across the entire country. How many times we've met people, you know, from the Midwest who had never seen the ocean or maybe they'd only seen Lake superior, just people who'd never seen the mountains are never seen the desert. And you know, we're actually, I'm really odd, my husband and I, we have seen as much as we have of cross of the United States. So kind of changes your perspective a little bit. Jesper (3m 41s): Yeah, and I, I mean for sure here in this country, if you don't travel then uh, you know, outside the country to other countries, then you will never see a mountain. That's just impossible. It's true. I have something, we have something we call a mountain in a, it's, it's base, it's in Jutland in the middle of Jutland and I, th I, I'm going off memory here and I could be wrong, but it's like 250 meters high or something like that. So that's all my own. Autumn (4m 7s): It's like a hell yeah. That's why every time I sent pictures of the mountains in the Rockies, you're like, wow, that's amazing. Jesper (4m 17s): Yeah. Well I love mountain. So we went to Greece two years ago. There was mountains outside the windows and also when we went to New Zealand two years ago. I mean, I love that the nature stuff that it's so different from my own country. Here Autumn (4m 31s): well you make me think when we finally get to meet up in person, we'll have to like make it somewhere in like the Rockies just so you can see some mountains. Jesper (4m 39s): Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's cool. All right. Well a huge forest and stuff like that as holds it. Autumn (4m 44s): Yeah. Yeah. I S yeah, there's so many spectacular places like that glacier NEC national part for anyone who's in Montana. Um, I think it's one of the prettiest national parks of the United States. It is just all inspiring. Astounding. And I have to admit, the first time I saw it was just in the fall, right after a light snow and all the mountain tops were white in the trees, still had some color and it was just like, wow. It was amazing. Amazing. So I cannot wait to some day, get back there hopefully soon. But it's funny. So you're talking about your week and you know, there's a lot of the readers or listeners will not, but I've been actually helping out at a cafe. It's actually a friends downtown and it's only been open for like five or six months. And here recording this, this is only like mid October. So what's released, you know, much later. But we're just getting into the height of Halloween here in Maine. And uh, we just had this huge festival called pumpkin Fest. And so there's these massive, I think that winner was 1800 pounds am that was the largest pumpkin grown. So they have these massive pumpkins and they put them all downtown and they decorate them. And there was like lanterns, fish. There's like a dragon. There's Audrey from the little shop of horrors or is hedgehogs? It's just so much fun. But the fun thing is, is I've never, I, you know, I love tea. I'm not a coffee drinker though. My husband is. Um, and then two, I'm a Baker, so they've been huge use of my baking skills, but to be thrown into a cafe setting and trying to learn this espresso machine and what a macchiato is, I couldn't even pronounce machiatto like go of core Tado and actually kind of starting to pick up with some of these drinks are, is really fun and it's humbling. I think anyone who thinks that they are top of their game and something in life needs to go do something entirely new, a brand new enterprise at least once a year so that you can be a little bit humbled and realize you are, you got, you're not top of everything. You may be an awesome whatever you are. Calligrapher cross Stitcher, cross country skier, I don't know, whatever, you're so obvious. I hopefully a writers if you're listening to this, you may be so, so very good. But it is so humbling to throw yourself back into something entirely new, especially in a sink or swim situation with the housing. You know all these people coming in from the parade and Oh, it was just a madhouse, but it was kind of fun. I actually managed to keep up with the 20 somethings on work was working with, so that's another humbling experience when they're talking about what they want to major in. You're like, Oh, Oh, Oh, back in the day. Yeah, I don't drink coffee. I then I hopped from what you just mentioned, I don't understand why this was the biggest surprise for me is one of my coworkers said, you've got to try a dirty chai. I'm like, what the heck is a dirty chai? Because they knew I like T. so a dirty chai is a sh hot chai with a shot of espresso in it. And as far as I'm concerned, tea and coffee should never meet. I have sent back with water. Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. Yeah. I've sent back water that had been run through the coffee pot going, I do you know what? Coffee water. I want real water. I am such a tea snob. Totally. Just, yeah, I know. I admit that, but Oh my gosh. Dirty chai there. Especially I do decaf because I cannot do espressos. Um, but it tastes like kind of like a rich warm pumpkin pie. You don't taste the coffee. It's just makes it deeper and richer. So anyone else out there who is crazy like me and things, coffee and tea should never meet, try a dirty chai or maybe don't because I have to admit now I'm slightly addicted and that's going to kill with me for a long after the cafe. It'll stick a no, just waiting, you know, before you know when all of it, then you will stop drinking coffee as well. And then you're addicted to that. No, I only drink coffee on, I like coffee on and only decaf again on rainy days because to me coffee tastes like mud and there's just something about money, cold days. And I'm like, Oh, I gotta go for a cup of coffee. It kind of feels like that's the weather, but I have to admit a nice Earl grey as much better in a rainy day. Jesper (9m 12s): Right, right. Oh yeah. That's a lot of stuff. I mean, yeah, I think we've both have had quite busy, busy times going on. Uh, actually over the past week as well. Not only this week but also last week am I've been preparing notes for our completely free costs that we are going to release probably, I don't know in 2020. So yeah, it's been really busy. But I thought that maybe I should just give a very, very quick like short overview of the modules that I'm currently making the notes for do you think that would be good? I think that'd be awesome. I know you showed them to me and they, I just cannot wait for this course. It's going to be so awesome. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe I could just do a quick rundown of course for the listener, it's going to take a while before this is done, but, but maybe just as a short teaser or something here. But uh, so module one, we entitle why 2% of authors succeed and 98% don't. And, uh, in that module we are going to share a bit of, of the myth that people believe about self publishing and what it really takes to make it. And that's followed by module two, which is the mindset that most authors don't understand. Um, and I guess that title pretty much says it. So apart from making you understand how, uh, how you should understand your future career as an author, we also share our top five tips you need to know in order to make it. And that is followed by module three, which is the author platform. Um, and I think our, the platform is like a term that is often thrown around, but uh, but here in this module three, at least, we're going to lay out exactly what it is, how to build it, and how to make it work for you. Yeah. Fantastic. And module four is, uh, how do online retailers like Amazon actually work? So we're going to talk about the online landscape of bookselling retailers and explain which factors will actually affect your sales. And I think that one module fois is pretty tightly knitted together with module five which is Amazon explains, uh, Amazon explained is what we call it because basically whether we like it or not, Amazon is an incredibly important to all indie author authors and it's therefore really important to understand how the algorithm actually works and how to make your books appear in searches and a lot more so. And yeah. Also I'm going to share how you can become an Amazon bestselling authors and then maybe your favorite topic, a autumn module six is book covers AA, I love buck covers. Yeah. And they also amazingly important. So we're going to go deep into the topic of book covers in module six and explain everything you need to know about that. And the same can be said about module seven on book descriptions. That's also important. Absolutely altered covid ad and modulate. I have a feeling that this is one of those where some love it, some hate it. It's about advertising because I mean in, in here in 2019, nobody can make it without advertising. So there's an entire module dedicated to that topic. And then once we have retina or written our books, then we need to launch them. So much in line is gone a share approval, some proven strategies on how to make you book launch is successful. And then module 10 is the cornerstone you can't live without. Can you guess what that is? And probably remember, Oh shoot, I do remember but now I can't think of no, you say this is a question that wasn't fair of me. It's email marketing, email list that I remember that when now it was just only fitting cause I only just sent out my newsletter yesterday. So all right. Indeed. Yeah. So we're going to share some, some facts about email marketing in, in that module 10 and then of course, and if you have not done so already, you need to get going and get your email list started to today. Yes. So all of that we're going to give for free and giving all this away for free. This is sad. I know we have been crazy for us. It'd be great. We in the city and I think, I think we are, but I've always said that. So that's all right. Yeah, indeed. I mean, I, I've looked around a bit, um, of, of course we have a, well this is the way we have decided to structure it and what we have decided to do. But if we compare to slightly similar courses, uh, I guess we could call it, uh, I've looked around and they usually charge for about $500 for this type of information. So, uh, yeah, I dunno, we are stupid or they're going to be mad at us. So yeah. But it's the old still early days and the am but I have my notes completed for half the cost by now. So we are making good progress. Yay. Oh, we go on the internet with the amwritingfantasy podcast. So maybe just a in prolonged nation. Can you say that a lot? Like, I dunno, it works, whatever. But adding onto, uh, the, the CRE cost that I was just talking about, uh, we also, I shared it, uh, the cost modules on patron as well to our patron supporters and we will got to a lot of nice messages back. That was nice. Yeah, there aren't really excited about this course and I've been, I'm excited about the course, but it's always good. I mean, good to get feedback and find out it's really going Autumn (14m 52s): to be valuable and really appreciate hearing that. So it makes us more excited to get it done. Jesper (14m 58s): Yeah, exactly. And then of course at the point in time where you're listening to this podcast episode, those who supports us on Patrion and have already known about this costs, these costs modules that are just yet for several weeks because we do try to maintain a close relationship to the pupil on Patrion and apart from the awesome rewards that we offer in there, we are also, we also share dedicated posts about writing every week. So there's a lot of additional tips and advice that you can pick up on Patrion and we even had our monthly Q and a session recently. So yeah, go check out patron by the link in the show notes and uh, there's a lot of help you can get there for as little as a dollar a month. Autumn (15m 41s): Yes. It was really awesome to see the comments on the chorus and actually, because when we're listening to this, while we were recording, it is going to be different from when we launched, but as we're recording this, we only just released episode 42, which was the one where I really gave some personal tips and feedback on how uh, overwhelmed at how my summer was going and the comments of course, Pat the Patriot number has got that early, which was so I got to get that before I hit the general public on Monday. So it was nice to get those like, yes, thank you. You know, it's so important. But then even once it hit, uh, the general public was a general release. The comments I've gotten back from so many authors and people who are saying, this is not just, you know, authors, but so much of today's life is dealing with being overwhelmed and too many tasks and not knowing how to sort them out. So one, I appreciate all the positive messages, um, with people thanking me for sharing that, but also just wanted to give another shout out to everyone else. If you're feeling overwhelmed and just struggling, you're not alone. I, I've heard from so many people that if it's not something you're going through now, it's something you've gone through. So, yeah, you know, always reach out, talk to someone, take a deep breath. I used to joke when I was am at my day job and was a manager that if it wasn't life, death or world peace, I was not going to get work worked up. So, uh, you know, reach out to people, keep that in mind and realize that, you know, if no one's going to die, um, if you know you're not going to save someone's life with this news or you know, you're not going to solve all the problems in the world and all Wars were a mill e-stop uh, go, just take a breath. It's going to be okay to take a few minutes off, a half an hour off a day off and get your head on straight, or at least get back to feeling a little bit like yourself. Don't, don't keep pressing yourself to you. The point of collapse. There's no, there's nothing to be gained in that. Jesper (17m 40s): No, no. Yeah. I'm not good at that either, to be honest. So I'm listening to you advice here as well. You Autumn (17m 45s): better, well, I heard you're going to the movies maybe with wife while your kids are away. So that's a very good thing. Executive dialogue yes. This is the, I guess this, this conversation can go in all kinds of directions. Dialogue is so important from a great way to share character stuff. They'll wait. Can't wait to break up the pros in your novel, uh, giving out information and hinting at things. I mean, it's so exciting and so important. It's an amazingly useful tool if you can get it right. Yeah. Well that's the trick with, with all of the writing stuff really, really is. Yeah. But I think as well when we're talking about dialogue we can get all into, into how to, to write the good dialogue and all that. But, but even before we get that far, I think there is a mechanical point around dialogue to make us well mean. And what I mean by that is that apart from dialogue keeping the story interesting and, and you know, moving, moving quickly for the reader, all those white spaces that appears when you start adding dialogue and the shorter lines that appears on the page. It did just a mechanics part of that. I don't know if you can call it mechanics, but you know, once you reach pages in a book where, okay, here's a lot of white space there, shorter liner so you can see the dialogue is going on. It just makes for great greater Rita experience. So, so there is that added benefit for for the for dialogue which has nothing to do with writing the dialogue but, but, but I think that's an important point to make as well. I do too. I mean it definitely breaks up the page visually. Just like if anyone writes blog posts and stuff, there's a lot of techniques to making sure you have white space around what you're writing or breaking it up with quotes and things. Dialogue does the exact same thing. You have pages and pages of prose and plus by following dialogue correctly and having lots of line breaks and the shorter sentences you actually add to your page count. So you know, I know a lot of first time authors and they're like, how many pages is this going to be when it comes a novel and you know, add more dialogue you'll actually get a little bit longer extended page count. Then you might have, if you even despite your word count. So it's kind of fun that way. Right? Yeah, true. Although I would say I don't really care how long it's going to be. I mean it's, it's as long as it takes to tell the story. Right. That is actually a very good comment and one that they've been debating on the amwritingfantasy Facebook group. I just noticed. So that was kind of very funny. Okay, cool. So I have, I've sort of prepared some notes. So a list of different things that I probably have like 10 different chapters, she or something, but I don't know where do we want to stop street? I'd just to wrap one. And then you, you, you take some of your points as well or how do you want to do it? Yes. Why don't you, since you are the list maker, why don't we start with that? And I mentioned before we started that is your job. You're good at making lists. Um, I've written I think a series of four or five blog posts that are on the amwritingfantasy website. So I have those and am yes, it's going to be almost like a, it is going to be a little bit like a quiz show. You start with your list and I will chime in with the tips. I've done an ad too. Even the ones I added on the blog post. Jesper (21m 10s): Okay. Okay. Uh, yeah, so there was no particular order to this at all. This is just a, it's going to go a bit here and a bit there. These are just the points that I noted. The another one to make a and. I think the first one I could start with is that all dialogue needs to have some sort of purpose. You know all the, if you compare to real life, when we start talking to people a lot of the times that you know, at least if it's not like somebody you know really well, you will start talking about plus and trees like a talking about the weather or some ice breaking stuff and all that you need to kill when it comes to dialogue between characters. Even if they don't know each other, we don't want to read about what they think about the weather and all that stuff. That's really boring. So you need to build towards something called Creek concrete within that scene. With your dialogue so that there is no pointless dialogue that that's really important. Autumn (22m 3s): I agree. And one of my least favorite pieces of advice on writing doll dialogue is to listen to people talking around you. That is horrible. Have you listened to people talking around you? They usually don't make any sense. They're using like O M G and lots of ums and we're, you know, you can't follow often with writing dialogue you actually need to add in some explanation and it's like jumping to the heart of a personal to person conversation between people who either know each other really well that, but you still need to explain something. It's totally different from listening to someone if you're sitting at a cafe because there's a lot of pointless dialogue that goes on at cafes. You have to have a purpose and there's a lot of different purposes you could have. It could be sharing information, it could be character building, it could be something humorous there. But there is a purpose and you've got to get to the heart of it very quickly. You can't sit there and kind of beat about the Bush and you know, talk about, like you said, the weather. What are we having for dinner? Why is he late? Unless of course the why he's late is really important because he just got eaten by an ogre. Okay. So Jesper (23m 17s): yeah, that's better. Oh, dragon. Oh, try again. That, that actually am well puts me right on the path to the next point that I was, because when you, you know, listening to others or listening to real speeches is indeed, or I was also gonna say that it's a bad idea. First of all, that might be a lot of slang words and you don't want to have a lot of slang words in your writing because Rita's don't understand what's going on. It seems, it seems confusing. So you don't want that. And you also want to kill filler words or at least reduce them to the absolute minimum. So when we're talking here on the podcast, uh, we have our, you know, speech am, what is it called? Like limit, not limitations, but we have our habits in how we are speaking. Correct. And, uh, either some people say a lot of, um, some people say like all the time or whatever it may be, but we need to kill all that stuff when we are writing. Dialogue and uh, you, you're not supposed to write realistic speeds with a, with a lot of those filler words, but you're more supposed to write interesting. Dialogue I would say or interesting things that the characters are saying that leads to some sort of purpose. Autumn (24m 27s): Exactly. I read a book once where they literally had someone instead of writing exclaimed in glee, which would've been fine. They actually use the dialogue and I was like, Oh, this is terrible gig views. Exclaimed in glee, don't use actual descriptions of wheeze or ohms or legs. And I know a lot of people want to add in like some kind of charac characteristic phrase. Well that's fine, but you still don't put it every single sentence. And if you're from the 80s and you remember the Valley girl phase where it was like, um, like this, like that, that's so cool. He don't need to add that to your dialogue either. A, unless you happen to be writing a really obnoxious teenager and even then please keep it to a minimum just, you know, twice in a chapter. Just show it and that's about it. Jesper (25m 18s): Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean you can, you can write the am here and there in a, in a revocation if there's a, if you're trying to make a point that the characters really unsure in the situation or something, then here and there it can be okay, but, but you really need to keep it short and you need to let dialogue flow naturally and then get to the point instead of all that blah, blah, blah stuff. So yeah, that's just a, that's just it. Exactly. Okay. The next one, next one. Let me see here. So next one is that, of course it will. This is a bit of a well almost formatting type of way, but it's also a good idea to make sure that you give each speaker their own paragraphs so that it's easy to distinguish who's actually saying something. Because I don't, dunno in sometimes in books it's not really clear who is saying what and you go back and you reread the section two times to understand who set that. And that is really annoying. So you don't want to do that. Autumn (26m 15s): No. It can throw the reader totally out of the story cause they're trying to figure out who's talking and who actually has the information. And that's horrible. And I mean this one is so important. I actually wrote an entire blog post on formatting and yeah, if you, every speaker should get their own, you know, paragraph and then a space. And so yeah, you might end up having, you know, three words and maybe a dialogue tiger, an action tag or maybe not depending on how many people are speaking. So you might have three words and then you're hitting the, you know, the paragraph return again for the next person speaking. That's okay. That's like what we were talking at the top when we first started. It creates white space. It's a visual break. You do not need to make dialogue look as packed as an info dump, which shouldn't be in your novel anyway. You don't want it to look like this heavy prose. It should be this little, you know, almost like poetry, lots of spaces and white and different varying sentence lengths. That's kind of what makes it fun. Jesper (27m 12s): Mmm. Yeah. And that, that varying sentence length is, it's a good point as well. Um, and especially also don't, don't make the really, really long monologues. Nobody wants to read that either. No. There should definitely even annoying in real life. Autumn (27m 29s): Here that one is, is, so that is a real life example you can follow, but it's definitely, definitely back and forth. You want to have some play on words and again, that's what makes dialogue fun because its purpose, like I said, it can actually have multiple purposes. So one of them should definitely be, you know, ramping up tension maybe and getting some sparring going and for that you're going to have really short sentences. Jesper (27m 53s): True, true. And I don't know, this next one, it might sound a bit weird when we're talking about dialogue or the, but it's still applicable and that is don't forget to use silence as well. You know, it can work really well when a character character suddenly just falls silence instead of, uh, arguing that that works really well. I have a character from my dystopian post-apocalyptic Autumn (28m 17s): Siri is that he is a master. I wish I could master this. Oh my gosh. I tried to channel him all the time, but uh, he just, Jared, he can, he knows that people will just start talking to fill that silence and eventually they're going to reveal what it is he's waiting for them to reveal. He's so darn good. But yes, that is perfect to have one character who is basically controlling the sentence or maybe just he's not, they're not ready to say something. That's fantastic. They can just fall silent. And I think that is fantastic advice. Jesper (28m 51s): Yeah. And I think if, if you look at the, maybe the reason why a lot of the time we don't think about writing or writing silence. That sounds really weird. Maybe a lot of the times we don't think about it is because in real life it feels extremely awkward. Now I have am, I've been negotiating contracts and stuff like that with, with clients in my, in my, um, uh, day job thing for many, many, many times. And one of the things that it is incredibly difficult to do, but one of the things that works wonderfully well is if you're negotiating something and you've sort of, you've made your points and then of course the other party will argue that the, they want something else. A lot of the times it works amazing to just to keep quiet because they can't, people cannot take it that there was just a silence. So they'll stop talking about something and sooner or later they will start giving you something because, uh, well, okay, maybe we can do like this and that and then, yeah, okay, maybe we could, you know, uh, of course you try when negotiate and of course you are trying to make a win win situation rather than a win lose situation. But, but if they're really not botching anywhere, sometimes it works wonderfully well too. Just keep silent and let them do the talking because they to come up with such suggestion all of a sudden that didn't you have something to work from. Autumn (30m 12s): I have this visualization of someone going into their like annual review now and their boss is telling them all this stuff and they just kind of sit there like, Oh huh. Jesper (30m 22s): Yeah. Autumn (30m 24s): I'm not sure if we're giving that kind of advice right now, but consider a silence the next time you're in a tough negotiation. Jesper (30m 30s): Yeah. I'm, I'm going to give you like a $20 pay raise and then you just sit there silent looking at the boss. You are you happy with that? Still silence. See how that works. I love it. I have a 25. Is that make you happy? Yeah. Still silence. If anyone uses this technique, please let us know. Yeah, yeah. I would love to hear a story about that. Alright, so the next, next tip, uh, next tip is remember that in many cases actually coaches won't actually say precisely what they're thinking. And this is also what we do in real life all the time. Um, but if, if you are making dialogue where the characters just laying out exactly how they feel about something and exactly what their plan is, it's, it feels extremely unrealistic Autumn (31m 21s): and people don't talk like that. No writing either. Exactly. And so many people are not really that self aware. So you're character shouldn't be that self-aware. Maybe they're just like, something's bothering me or I don't think we should go that way. And they're not really articulating why or what their overall plans or overall hopes are. Maybe it should just be, you know, those kind of loose terms. Like hopefully we can make it through the past. If we leave early in the morning, that's better than saying we will get up in the morning and we're going to go to the past and we're going to get through and no, it sounds better if you at least make some possibilities and kind of couch it in those little terms of not quite sure though. I have to admit, I sometimes also say when you're writing, you know, get rid of those questionable things. You know, people don't do things halfway, but when it comes to dialogue, that's okay. You can have some quasi, I'm not really sure of statements, but when you're doing action, you either do it or you don't do it. Don't do these. Almost get rid of all the almost, unless it's in dialogue then it's okay. Yeah, no, and sometimes as well, people say one thing, but they mean something else. Um, so that's also something to consider. Absolutely. And it's also, you know, it's great to, if you're on the point of view, point of view, if someone is a very powerful character and a great manipulator, so you can know, you can have them thinking one thing or you know, you could have them really manipulating through their dialogue and that's really fun for the reader to start figuring out that, wait, no, they weren't. They were thinking something else and now they're doing this. Why are they doing this? Curiosity. Oh, that drives readers nuts and keeps them reading. Jesper (33m 6s): Yeah. Yeah, indeed. Uh, so I have one more. Um, and then you, you can fill in if you have more after that. Um, if you probably have, but um, this one is a, it's one that can really drive me nuts sometimes. The Asar her speech to text. Autumn (33m 25s): Ah, that's actually what I was going to bring up too. So I know there's this huge advice out there that said, always use said, and I've gotten into a lot of debate about this with other authors. So what do you think? Should you always use said Jesper (33m 41s): no? Absolutely. I think, uh, I think it's on writing the, if you know the book from Stephen King, I think, I think it's him saying in that book that if you're writing, he said or she said it's almost invisible to the reader because our, I sort of just skims over it. We register if it says he or she, but otherwise we don't really notice it then. And I think there is some truth to that, if that's all you're doing. There was not much variance in your speech, tach and attacks and this should be Autumn (34m 13s): for. Fantasy. Um, we have a little bit more allowance to use the adverts, the adjectives had in those descriptors, uh, than say if you're a writing, you know, well, okay, scientific something. But it's definitely, I think we're allowed to be a little more flavorful for the our words. And that's kind of fun. I think it's a lot more fun. So yeah, I, I agree the CEDS, you know, maybe 50% if of the actual dialogue tags, which again, you don't need to just use dialogue tags, but definitely like, you know, you don't have to use set 100% of the time. It's just boring. Jesper (34m 57s): It is. Absolutely. And. And I think the, the other thing, and this, this is, this is the part that that drives me nuts sometimes is when speech tax I used incorrectly by that one. I mean, is that if you're using the L Y at works, so you're saying, like he said angrily are, she's said sadly or something like that. It drives me absolutely bonkers. There's, I think there's this tendency to use those lly at work because that's how we, we, we think that it shows emotion but in fact it doesn't, we're back to the show don't tell, which I think we've mentioned a hundred times already, but it is just much, much more engaging if you're using the actions and steps, you know, you can describe how the facial expressions that are showing that he's angry or anything like that or maybe a, maybe a tear rolls down the cheek because they're sad or are they slam the door or whatever they do. But, but that's sort of dialogue tech is a million times better than writing she sets. Sadly. It's like what the, and I was just about to say B Autumn (36m 11s): I'll do it for you. No, I agree. I think on the blog post on adverbs, I wrote that, uh, you know, the first time the character, the reader here is that the character is angry is because of using anger. You know, shouted angrily, which I hopefully never would've had ever used sheltered angrily. But if that's the first time the reader sees that the character's angry is because you just told them in a dialogue time was an adverb, Oh, you're not doing this right? No, it's not supposed to work that way. You're supposed to be showing the emotion yet you could use shouted instead of said, that's a great one. But yes, I am the cup against the floor, hit the wall gestures, you know, moving so quickly that they knock something over to show, you know, some kind of emotion. And those are often called action tag. So if you said, I don't know what you mean. And then said as he slammed, you know the cup onto the table, that is an action tag and you immediately relate that whoever is speaking is also doing the action. So of course this would all be in just one paragraph. And then when you switch to the next speaker, you go to the next paragraph. But those are action tags versus the dialogue tags like shouted, swore, whispered, those are dialogue tags and they're, you know, and you can intersperse, use one or the other. Some people prefer to use one. I think a mix is great and again, if there's only two people speaking and they're alternating pretty regularly, you can go a couple of lines without using any tags. As long as you, you know, either throwing an action tag, you need to make sure the reader doesn't get too confused. You don't go like six lines with no nothing but definitely like three or four sometimes that is visually fun and makes it go really quick when two people are having a very intense exchange to just skip the dialogue or action tags. As long as it's only two people. Once you throw on the third, you're going to have to make sure everyone knows who's talking. Jesper (38m 12s): Yeah, I mean a, and of course it can be difficult to come up with new stuff or new ways to express am emotions and all that. And and we can also end up repeating a lot of the same stuff because that's just how we work when we don't think about it. But, uh, I actually wanted to mention, and I can put the link in the show notes to this, but there are some really, really awesome books that you can buy that it's going to help you a lot. And am these are there, it's like a series a but it's written by Angela Ackerman and Becca put Felicia, I think that's how you say it, but it's basically a, you can get like a writers guy, two character flaws, a writers guy too. Character attributes. Uh, so these are called the negative trot, a treat thesaurus and the positive trait thesaurus and what you can do with these books is that basically just has tons of different uh, uh, like a trait. So I can look up anything like a, I can see, okay, ignorant for example. And then this, uh, I'm just doing it now, of course you can see it, but it'll have, it'll have like a, a whole list of like 40 different associated behaviors to being ignorant. And then there'll be like 40 different things that you can then use as inspiration on how to show it when it in you know, when writing and how the character might react and how, how they might, you know, what they might do and so forth and so forth. So it's, it's, it's really amazing and it works extremely well, especially when you're in the editing phase and you're trying to make your dialogue tax better. Then use these books as inspiration and am and try to, you know, very your dialogue tax it, it really helps a lot these books. So I will, I'll put a link Autumn (40m 2s): to them into the, in the show notes. So if you're interested. Yeah. And are they the ones who also wrote the emotional thesaurus cause I know I've seen that one. Yes. Yes. Those are, they're fantastic inspiration for really enhancing your writing and being able to show emotions other than the heart pump, you know, chest, the heart beating in the chest and the brows. Scrunching there's so much more to emotional. Yes, there's a lot of other ones in there and you can pick some of those tweaks. And give one specifically to a character that helps with your character building. And I think that's, you know, yeah, it's fantastic. And they're great books. Absolutely. Uh, okay. That's what I ended up my list. Autumn do you have more about dialogue I think I go into a little bit more in the blog post. Maybe we should, you know, link to them or at least tell folks, you know, check out the amwritingfantasy website and look up the dialogue tips there. Cause there's four or five blog posts that we've covered and they actually, part of it is like just taking the same set of words. It's slowly adding to them so that you can see a dialogue developing into something that's different and more concrete. And that might give you some tips to, to get going. And there if you want more questions on action tags and dialogue tags and when you should or shouldn't use adverbs, that is all posted in there. So that'll help make it a little bit more clear. If you're visual in listening in and want to look at something, they're there. Well, of course we always want to make things easy. So we'll Jesper (41m 34s): put a link to those articles or blog posts in the show notes as well. So there's a lot of good stuff you can link or you can click in the show notes this time around and check out yourself. So that was all about, uh, dialogue. And the next week we are gonna. We're going to have another amazing episode, so see you there. Narrator (41m 59s): If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the amwritingfantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join autumn and Yesper on patrion.com/amwritingfantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the amwritingfantasy podcast going to stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

Not writing what your inner parent says you “should” be writing? How to get over it.Fellow writers, KJ here. I have gathered you here today to discuss the moment last week when I sat down on my bed, surveying a pile of literary fiction, some of which I liked and some of which I most emphatically did not, and asked myself, as I have many times on other topics—should I be writing something other than what I am writing? Should I be good at something other than that which I am good at? This week, I lay it out there: sometimes I feel ashamed that I don’t write something more … serious. Then Sarina slaps me around a little, and Jess declares that even writers of serious stuff (I give her that title) sometimes feel like they’re not using their time wisely.Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a preview of the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, October 7, 2019: Top Five Reasons to Embrace NaWhateverWriMo. It’s a good one! And I happen to know the next one’s on dictation tools and is even better. Not joined that club yet? You’ll want to get on that. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month.As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode.Keep scrolling—there’s some cool free stuff from Author Accelerator, below.LINKS FROM THE PODCASTThe Snobs and Me(essay) Jennifer WeinerFrom Uber Driving to Huge Book Deal(Adrian McKinty and The Chain)#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Jess: The Chain, Adrian McKinty, Pride and Prejudiceread by [Rosamund Pike] and Sense and Sensibilityread by [Emma Thompson]KJ AND Sarina: Things You Save In a Fire, Katherine Center#FaveIndieBookstoreThe Flying Pig, Shelburne VTFind more about Jess here, Sarina hereand about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.COOL OPPORTUNITIES FROM OUR SPONSOR:Every episode of #AmWriting is sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE—and they have two free webinars coming up. Details:CHARACTER CLINICAuthor Accelerator is excited to team up with Writers Helping Writers to showcase the NEW Character Builder tool in the One Stop for Writers software.Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi from One Stop for Writers and Author Accelerator coach Julie Artz will be co-hosting a free Character Clinic webinar on Tuesday, October 8 at 11 AM Pacific. During the event Julie, will be coaching a writer through the character work they have done using the Character Builder.We encourage everyone to register for the event even if you cannot attend live, as a replay will be sent to everyone who has registered.REGISTER FOR THE WEBINAR NOWTHE INSIDE OUTLINE Jennie Nash developed the Inside Outline in her work as a book coach, and it has been tested in the trenches by hundreds of writers. It can be used to help you start a book, to help you rescue one that isn’t working, and to guide a revision.We're hosting another webinar about this life-changing writing tool on Monday, October 14 at Noon Pacific/2 PM Central/3 PM Eastern.We encourage everyone to register for the event even if you cannot attend live, as a replay will be sent to everyone who has registered.REGISTER FOR THE WEBINAR NOWThe image in our podcast illustration is by Markus Spiske on Unsplash.Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)KJ:                                        00:01                    Hey there listeners, KJ here. In this episode, you’ll hear both me and Sarina give a shout-out to Author Accelerator’s Inside-Outlining process. The Inside-Outline is a took that helps you make sure your book has a strong enough spine to support the story you want to tell. It forces you to spot the holes in your character’s arc and your story logic before you throw 50 thousand words on the page—without being the kind of outline that feels limiting to writers who prefer to see where the story takes you. #AmWriting listeners have exclusive access to a free download that describes what the outline is, why it works and how to do it—and if you’re writing fiction or memoir, I highly encourage you to grab it. Use it before you write, while you’re writing or even as you’re doing final revisions to give your story the momentum that keeps readers turning pages. Only at https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwriting. Is it recording?Jess:                                     00:01                    Now it's recording. Go ahead.KJ:                                        00:01                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess:                                     00:01                    All right, let's start over.KJ:                                        00:01                    Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers.Jess:                                     00:01                    Okay.KJ:                                        00:01                    Now one, two, three. I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is the weekly podcast about writing all the things, be they fiction, nonfiction, proposals, pitches, essays, freelance work. This is the podcast about sitting down and getting your writing done.Jess:                                     01:40                    I'm Jess Lahey and I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a book I'm just finishing, it's due so soon, on preventing childhood substance abuse and you can also find me at the Washington Post and The Atlantic and the New York Times and places like that.Sarina:                                 01:55                    And I'm Sarina Bowen. I'm the author of 30 odd, contemporary romance novels and you can find me at sarinabowen.com.KJ:                                        02:02                    They're not all odd. Sorry, I just had to, some of them, though. I am KJ Dell'Antonia, I always hit the softballs, and I am the author of How To Be a Happier Parent, the former editor of the New York Times' Motherlode blog, you can still find me as a contributor there. And I'm the author of a novel, The Chicken Sisters, which will be out next summer. That's who we are and we are downright giddy with joy today for Jess who is on the downhill slide, the good downhill slide.Jess:                                     02:49                    I'm just so discombobulated. So here's where I am. The day that we're recording this, I'm 14 days out from my book deadline. I am going to make it. I'm in the stretch, I'm in that place where nothing else happens. I haven't left the house in days. I am barely getting dressed in the morning. Yesterday I wrote for 14 hours straight, literally all I stopped to do a couple of times was let the dogs out and grab something that I'd already prepared and stuck in the refrigerator and microwave that. So, I'm in a crazy space, but there's something a little fun about being in that full deep dive. Like this is all I think about and my family's being really lovely. They're cooking for me, they're doing the laundry. I've got a lot of support, so that's great.KJ:                                        03:46                    Is this what the last deadline felt like, too? I do not remember.Jess:                                     03:50                    Well, here's the thing, I was talking to someone about that just recently. Writing a book is like having children, you forget a lot of the worst parts because you know, we'd never have children again if we remembered it all. And honestly, I handed in Gift of Failure a whole day early. I was very proud of myself. I don't remember it being this bonkers.KJ:                                        04:14                    I don't remember it being this bonkers for you. But I do remember all the bad parts about having children, but I'm not sure I remember the bad parts about you having children.Jess:                                     04:25                    Well keep in mind also, I learned a lot from doing Gift of Failure. So a lot of the editing that I had to do after the fact I'm now doing before the fact. It's really funny, every time I compile a chapter in Scrivener and then put it into Word for submitting to our agent and then later on to the editor, I've got this huge list of 'Have you done this?', 'Have you done that?' So when I finish a chapter, it takes me like two hours to go through all of my lists. Like search for all recurrences of the word that, and then remove like 50% of them. Have you used a hyphen the right way? How many commas are there? You know, that kind of crazy stuff that just saves Lori from having to remind me that I overuse the word that. So, yeah, there's a lot of my launch codes that have to be run before I submit. I don't remember it being this bonkers.KJ:                                        05:31                    This is your experience of finishing this book. Who knows? Like last time, maybe not quite like this. Next time, who knows?Jess:                                     05:39                    It's interesting. I did learn a lot last time and I feel better about what I'm producing this time simply because last time I didn't know. I was like, I had no idea if my editor was going to come back and say this is great or this is ridiculously bad. Because I had nothing, I had never done it before, I had nothing to judge it against. So this is really a different experience for me in a good way. In that number one, she's seen chapters as we go along and I've already gotten feedback on those chapters and oh my gosh, she loves it and that makes me so happy. But she's also been able to give me feedback and I've been able to change direction. So like the chapter I handed in last night is different from the previous three chapters because she'd given me feedback on those previous three chapters, which I'll go back and fix later. But I'm able to make course corrections midway, which has been really great. It has helped me eliminate a lot of work on the other end. So yeah, it's different. The answer to your question is I think it's different.KJ:                                        06:44                    I'm just probably different every, it's probably different every time up to a point. And now we turn to the author of some 30 odd books, Sarina. Is it different every time, up until it suddenly isn't different or is it still different every time?Sarina:                                 07:00                    You know, I am trying to make it less the same every time. Because you and I, KJ, have spent a lot of time lately thinking about outlining. And I'm trying to shift my whole game towards becoming a better outliner so that I don't have a repeat experience, which is 'freak out about the ending on every single book'.Jess:                                     07:26                    Well, but one thing I wanted to ask you about is you just recently had basically what I'm going through right now except with editing. And that seemed pretty intense for you. Does that stay the same or has that changed and does it depend on whether you're working with a coauthor?Sarina:                                 07:41                    Well, I shot myself in the foot a little bit and set up a month where I had to do edits on two books in the same month. And that that was just either bad luck or bad planning, take your pick. But I find it quite exhausting to have to make everything perfect on two books in a row where you don't give yourself the fun part of drafting and inventing in between to break up the tedium of perfection.Jess:                                     08:09                    Oh, that's a good point.KJ:                                        08:12                    When I was doing the big edit of my novel, I couldn't draft. I thought it was going to be able to. If you go back about eight podcasts, I'm like, 'I'm going to do both. I'm going to edit a little every day and I'll write a little every day. And that lasted a week. Mostly because the editing was just more intense. Drafting is fun, sometimes. Editing is fun, sometimes. Making things perfect, maybe not so much.Jess:                                     08:46                    Well, the 14 hours I spent yesterday were sort of a combination of the two. Mainly it was editing, which can be really tedious and all that stuff. But yesterday I did get to have one of those moments where it got a little buzzy and I was like, 'Oh, I like that.' I got to have those, even in the editing process. In fact, I changed how the chapter ended and I had one of those sort of moments where it feels like the minor chord changes to a major chord and there's that big breath you can take at the end and you're like, 'Ah, it works.' It was really a nice moment. And that happened in editing, so that was really fun.KJ:                                        09:29                    I just don't think I have ever had an experience of writing that feels like what I hear you reflecting. So part of me is sitting thinking should I be writing for 14 hours a day? That's not something that's up. I mean, I've had a full time writing job that sometimes took that, but I wouldn't have been writing the whole time. I would've been writing and editing and screaming and coding and frantically going through the comments and all the other things. The intensity with which you are writing right now is not something that I have ever experienced.Jess:                                     10:06                    Okay. Here's the thing, though. It's not about the intensity and it's not about the amount of time. The only, and this is really helpful information for me, the only times I have gotten this really serious - it's like a runner's high kind of thing. It's a writer's high. And the times I get it, reliably, are when I'm writing creative nonfiction. It happened when I wrote for Creative Nonfiction. That piece 'I've Taught Monsters'. It's happening in this book and the good news is that my editor is encouraging me to write more that way and less like a research paper, which is great cause I get less of it when I write that sort of sciency kind of stuff. But it's nice to know that there is this genre that gives me writer's high and it's the stuff I like to read the most. So, it's kind of like knowing what your sweet spot is. So for me it's a genre.KJ:                                        10:56                    That is the perfect segue into the topic, which I have gathered us here today to discuss. Which is - what we write, how much we choose that, and how much it chooses us, and how we feel about it. Which is a very complicated way of saying that I had a crisis of confidence last week in which I sort of sat down on the bed, convinced that the fact that I do not and will not and never going to write literary fiction, basically meant that I had wasted my entire education.Sarina:                                 11:36                    Well, I have a crisis of confidence pretty much every day at noon schedule.KJ:                                        11:56                    I wouldn't call it a crisis of confidence, though. I like the book that I wrote, and I like How To Be a Happier Parent, and I like the work that I do, and I like the experience that I have doing it. But I have frequently had the experience of feeling like I should be doing something else. When I spent years writing about parenting for the New York Times, it was the gutter of New York Times writing when I was doing it. And it may be that the experience has changed, but you know, it wasn't something really important like sports. It wasn't finance, it wasn't politics, although it frequently was finance, and it frequently was politics. I just would often feel like, you know, a smart person should be doing something else. And I'm having a little bit of that same feeling, you know, contemplating my undeniably fun romp of a book, which I enjoyed writing and is exactly the kind of thing that I like to read. But, then I just sort of think you go to the bookstore right now and everything is sort of really deep, and dark, and meaningful, and apocalyptic.Sarina:                                 13:31                    Sorry, I have some things to say. Well, first of all, my ghetto is located down the alleyway, you know, past a flap of tattered burlap, from your ghetto. Because romance writers are very accustomed to being in a ghetto that is ghetto-ier than everyone else's. And in fact, I remember this hilarious essay that Jennifer Wiener wrote for the New York Times a couple of years ago about going to the Princeton reunion as a commercial fiction author. And I remember tweeting to her, 'Well, you know, I sometimes roll up to the Yale reunion as a writer of occasionally erotic romance. And so, my ghetto mocks your ghetto. But, the funny thing is that Jennifer Wiener, I love her so much, and her favorite book of mine is a work of gay romance. So, she totally gets it. It was just a funny moment. And romance authors are very much accustomed to this idea of you're not a real author even if you're making six figures because there's a guys chest on the cover of your book. And we all have days where that doesn't seem fair or you get the weird look from the mom at the soccer game. But I always tell people who are struggling with this, that when you write some amazing line of dialogue, or that thing that happened in chapter two comes back as the perfect call out in chapter nine, it doesn't matter what you're writing that in, you feel just as good about it either way. When it works, it works.Jess:                                     15:36                    In the end, you're a storyteller. I mean the whole point of being a writer is to express yourself in stories. And frankly, you have told me on this podcast that there are awards for literary stuff that are out there that automatically mean they're books that you're not going to like. And you don't want to be trying to write that stuff because it would stink. Because you don't like writing it, you don't even like reading.KJ:                                        16:13                    I feel fine, I'm super excited about my book. In some ways, I'm more excited about it than I was about the nonfiction. It's funny how I think we all do this to ourselves. How I think we all have a should. And do you have a should at all?Jess:                                     17:10                    For me, because the stuff I really like to write about has to do with children's welfare, and ways prisons could be better and help kids. I really do love writing that stuff. The problem with that stuff is not a lot of people care, even though it's about kids. You know, as soon as you start talking about prisons or something, people are like, 'Yeah, yeah, whatever.' I get upset that I don't write that stuff more, because I feel like I should. Because that feels like if I were really doing my job and using the bullhorn that I have, because I'm lucky enough to have an audience, I need to be writing stuff that's more worthy. And so that can be really tough, cause sometimes I just want to write an essay about fishing with my dad. So yeah, I feel that, too. Should I be using these words to help kids be better or do I get to just enjoy writing?KJ:                                        18:11                    I had an idea for a new question we should ask everyone that comes on the podcast - 'What do you write when you write in your head?' You know what I mean? James Thurber used to tell, a possibly apocryphal story, about how his wife would walk up to him at parties and say, 'James, stop writing'.Jess:                                     18:33                    It's definitely creative nonfiction. I just thought about it and yeah, that's what I'm writing in my head.KJ:                                        18:40                    Are you writing essays or are you writing like opinions? Sarina, what do you write when you write in your head?Sarina:                                 18:49                    Well, I always am happy to admit that I'm a little bit trapped in romance at the moment. Because I have a platform and the bigger it gets, the harder it is for me to find tons of enthusiasm for striking out in a new direction.KJ:                                        19:06                    And you're kind of good at it.Sarina:                                 19:08                    Well, thank you.Jess:                                     19:09                    She's also incredibly good at YA, too. My favorite book of your happens to be a YA novel.Sarina:                                 19:18                    I actually love YA and I would like to write more of it. The Accidentals was a really good time for me to write. But the thing about YA though is that I don't love where the market for it is right now. So very objectively, I am not sorry that I'm not trying to sell something into that space right now. I might next year, perhaps. But not because I think the market will be any better next year. I don't love the direction of the young adult market and what's happening with it. So even though I feel suited to write it, even potentially better suited than I am to romance, that would be a really tough decision to make.Jess:                                     20:06                    KJ, what do you write in your head?KJ:                                        20:11                    I'm not necessarily sure that the question reflects like what we've written, I think it also reflects what we are accustomed to write. I write essays in my head. Sometimes they're angry, ranty essays. Sometimes they turn into actual essays, and sometimes they turn into actual angry, ranty essays. I recently penned an epic called 'Why Salad Is Just Too Hard'.Jess:                                     20:47                    I'm not going to talk about the details, but on the personal side, besides writing this book, there's a lot that's going on right now in my life. There's a lot I want to remember about what's going on in my life right now. There has been some funny and tragic and weird things that have happened. And it's been really frustrating for me not to have the extra time to sit down and write a lot of that down, so I've had to just jot down notes. But that's the stuff I've been writing in my head because I need to process that stuff. And the way I process is by writing creative nonfiction essays about it in my head. So, it's really weird. It's sort of like I'm constantly sorting through the weirdness of my life in terms of creative nonfiction essays. It's very bizarre.Sarina:                                 21:49                    So you're saying you have an inner David Sedaris?Jess:                                     21:52                    Yeah, I guess I have thought about it that way and also feeling bad that I don't have time to do what the crazy manic thing he does everyday. Obsessively writing notes and then transcribing those notes, because ideally that's what I would be doing right now if I had time, because so much is happening in my personal life right now that I'm afraid I'm gonna forget. If this was a perfect world, I would have two hours a day to process my notes into writing that I would then do something with eventually down the line. But I don't have time.KJ:                                        22:25                    I feel like you can only mentally do that if your day job is bartending or something. It's like if you're writing all day then to sit down and also write...Jess:                                     22:40                    I'm out of words, this happened during Gift of Failure, too. Although, during Gift of Failure somehow I was writing a column every two weeks, too. I don't know how that worked, I honestly have no memory of it, I've blocked it out. Since we're talking about people who have had a crisis of confidence, I have a cool story. It's about a book I read recently. So, there was this article in The Guardian that just just killed me it was so good. It was written by Alison Flood. It was in The Guardian recently and is about an author named Adrian McKinty. And Adrian McKinty has been in the media recently because he has a book called The Chain that was really a fun listen and I really liked it. And I was curious about what this guy's all about because it turns out he's written a bunch of mysteries in the past. He's been an author for a long time, he's written a lot of stuff, stuff that got critical acclaim, but just no one else read it apparently. So there's this article in The Guardian and it's called 'From Uber Driving to Huge Book Deal: Adrian McKinty's Life-Changing Phone Call'. Get this, so Adrian McKinty has decided to give up, he's decided I can't support my family as an author, he's Uber driving, he's working a couple of jobs just to make ends meet. Even though his books have gotten great reviews and critical acclaim, he's giving up. So he had mentioned this to Don Winslow, huge author Don Winslow, at a conference. This freaks Don Winslow out because Don Winslow has been through something like this, a similar situation, and he doesn't want Adrian McKinty to give up. So Don Winslow tells his agent Shane Salerno that Adrian McKinty is giving up writing. And Shane Salerno calls Adrian McKinty and says, 'Don tells me you've given up writing and I just don't think you should do that. Have you thought about writing a book set in the U.S.?' So Adrian McKinty has had an idea for a book and he writes 30 pages of it, like bangs out 30 pages of this book that he'd been thinking about. And at around three in the morning, he hands it in and at 4:15, the phone rings. And here's what Shane Salerno,agent to Don Winslow says, 'Forget bartending. Forget driving a bloody Uber.' Salerno said, 'You're writing this book.'. And he's like, 'No, I can't. I can't support my family.' He gets an offer of some short-term financial support from Shane Salerno. He's like, 'You need some money, just to get by so you can write this thing? I'll help.' Anyway, he writes the book, he gets a huge book deal for it, and then an even huger film deal. He got a six figure deal for The Chain and a seven figure deal for The Chain as a film. So yeah, he didn't quit. It's a crazy story. It's just nuts. Well, what was cool about it is that he had this idea for these two - it's sort of like when Stephen King talks about how he got the idea for Carrie - it was these two ideas that didn't work on their own, but when they came together, bang, there's a plot. So he had this thing kind of marinating in there, but he pushed back pretty hard. He's like, 'Nope, I'm done. No, really.' And there's also a nice moment when he gets the film deal, McKinty says to Salerno, 'I said, mate, you should have told me to sit down first. Can you say it all again really slowly as if you're talking to an idiot?' So anyway, it was a cool story. You might not love it, it's a people in peril sort of story, but a very cool idea. This is not a spoiler because it's right there on the book, but essentially your kid gets kidnapped and the only way your kid gets returned is if you kidnap another kid. and so on, and so on, and so on. So anyway, it's gonna make a killer movie. It's just compulsively read. I listened and it was a great listen. So anyway, cool story.KJ:                                        27:45                    So are we on what we're reading?Jess:                                     27:48                    Well, I don't know. Would we like to talk about what happened with the New York Times book lists?KJ:                                        27:52                    Oh yeah, that's right. Speaking of ghettos and having your ghetto sort of semi-recognized, but not really.Jess:                                     28:00                    Yeah, The Times is changing their lists. Who would like to take this one? Sarina?Sarina:                                 28:27                    My response was that this isn't even news. Because what they've expanded is that they brought back something they cut more than a year ago, which was the mass market paperback list used to be a weekly list and they also cut graphic novels at exactly the same time. So, bringing it back as a monthly is a non-event, especially because what sells in mass market paperback is a lot of romance and genre fiction.Jess:                                     29:00                    So Sarina, for our listeners who may not be as familiar, I would say, 'Sarina, why aren't you super excited about that? Mass market means romance. Why aren't you excited?'Sarina:                                 29:11                    Because the romance market keeps moving further and further away from mass market fiction. So they cut it at the moment when it could have made a difference and now it's just not interesting.Jess:                                     29:23                    For anyone who may not know, what does mass market mean?KJ:                                        29:26                    They actually haven't changed it on their website, the lists still look the same.Sarina:                                 29:32                    Right. It says the new lists don't even hit print until the end of October. So mass market is those rack sized books that they have at the grocery store. The market for those fundamentally changed a few years ago when the distribution company that was handling most of them stopped doing their business. And then publishers began to move away from mass market paperback and into the trade size, which is the slightly larger paperback you mostly see on tables if you go to a bookstore. So mass market gets two kinds of releases. They get some romance releases, just straight up. It'll be like e-book and that. Or, if you have a mega best seller then you might also get a pocket sized release after your regular paperback release. So by adding this, it's a really strange decision because there aren't that many books that come out in mass market anymore and the romance ones are selling most of their copies in e-book form. So when I read this change I thought, 'Oh the New York Times is trying to make a nod toward romance without having to touch anything that's independently published.' They basically are holding up a sign that says 'Self-published do not apply.'Jess:                                     30:59                    Here's a question, though. They do have an e-book list, so that wouldn't include self-published books then, is what you're saying?Sarina:                                 31:10                    Well, the e-book, it's called combined fiction. That's the list they have. They don't have an e-book bestseller list anymore that's just for e-books. Because it would have lots and lots of self-published things on it. And they didn't like that, so they got rid of it.KJ:                                        31:29                    Yeah, I was going to say there is no e-book list.Sarina:                                 31:35                    Nope, there was, but there isn't any more.KJ:                                        31:39                    Speaking of ghettos and not recognized. And I will also just note that they pulled their parenting list at the same time and they didn't even restore that one. They're not even pretending that if you don't manage to make advice and how-to (which some people do) you're just not.Jess:                                     31:59                    That's going to affect how publishers market books, too. You know, is my next book a parenting book? Is it an advice or how-to? Well, if I'm a smart publisher and I want it to make the list, I'm gonna make sure I push it as an advice or how-to. If I go into a bookstore looking for Gift of Failure it's never in the advice or how-to, it's in the parenting section. But if I were releasing that now, I would say, 'Well, we need to really push this as an advice or how-to.KJ:                                        32:30                    I don't think, and I could be totally misinformed here, but I think advice, how-to, and miscellaneous incorporates all the other. So it does incorporate parenting and now it'll have to incorporate sports and science, too.Jess:                                     33:15                    Since I already talked about The Chain, can I also just mention really quickly since we're going to talk about what we're reading? So when I'm in this crazy place like I am right now with this book. It's been really hard for me to find moments to calm down and relax. And I have been relistening to Jane Austen, but specifically, I had been listening to Rosamund Pike read Pride and Prejudice, who had played the sister Jane in one of the film versions of it. But now I'm listening to Sense and Sensibility read by the actress Juliet Stevenson and it's really lovely. And the nice thing about it is my mind can wander, because I already know the stories by heart. It's like when your kids are really, really little and they love having the same story read over and over and over again. I think that's soothing on some very primal level for me, so that's what I've been listening to.KJ:                                        34:25                    Yeah, definitely relistening is really good for that. I've been relistening to something that I have listened to twice already, partly just for that. Some of the reasons I had to listen to it was that one of my children was compelled to memorize the Declaration of International Human Rights or something along those lines. And said child required both an audience and to do that out loud, but did not actually require you to listen. So, earbuds, that's what I have to say about that particular experience. I do have some books, but Sarina, you want to go?Sarina:                                 35:13                    Yeah, I just bought a hardcover copy of Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center. Because not only did KJ like this book, but she told me that I would love it.KJ:                                        35:25                    That was the one I was sitting here before the podcast going, 'I know I read something I really liked recently. What did I read?' That was what it was! Found it. Now I have to change mine.Jess:                                     35:44                    What is Things You Save in a Fire? Is it nonfiction? Is it fiction? What's happening?KJ:                                        35:48                    It is flat out romance that has been marketed as commercial women's fiction and it is that, as well. But I see nothing about the story that violates the genre rules of romance. It is not one of those things where there are two people and only one of them gets her... We've talked about this before, the line is interesting and strange. And this one is a clear, fun, rollicking trip to the H E A. That would be the happily ever after.Jess:                                     36:22                    So it's not going to give me any guidance about what I should save if my house catches on fire.KJ:                                        36:27                    No, how-to and miscellaneous it is not.Jess:                                     36:32                    Alright, sorry. KJ, what have you been reading?KJ:                                        36:36                    That's it, I read that, I really liked it, it was really good. She has an amazing Instagram feed, too. Her name is Katherine Center and she is an artist, as well as a writer. So she paints on the books, which is killer. And as a doodler, I'm thinking I'm going to doodle on my books. I'm going to doodle chickens on my books for Instagram and I cannot wait to do it.Jess:                                     37:00                    Oh, that's a really cool idea. I like it. I can't wait. I have a cool bookstore for this week. When we first moved to Vermont, of course I had to go looking for all the independent bookstores in the area. And I've talked about some of them, but I have not talked about this lovely little one. There is a little town near us called Shelburne that has the sweetest little town center, there's a gorgeous museum that has all these old buildings from all over Vermont and New England that have been restored. And across the street from that is this little little village, it's really cute. And in that village is a lovely little bookstore called The Flying Pig Bookstore. It is small, but it is lovely, and they really know their books. And I have been trying to order my books through there because I can ride my bike to it, which is nice. I have a little basket on the front of my bike and so I have this very romantic vision of riding to my local bookstore and picking up my books and putting them in the basket of my bike. These are the kinds of things I live for at the moment, so I highly recommend it.Sarina:                                 38:09                    Sounds great, I think you should take us there when we see you next.Jess:                                     40:10                    Alright. Are we good, people? Have we done our job this week?KJ:                                        40:16                    And let me just say that if you agree and think that we have done our job, we hope you'll head over to amwritingpodcast.com and sign up for our weekly email. You get a transcript of all the things about riding around with your dog in the car and possibly some more useful things as well. And if you really love the podcast and crave more useful things, you can sign up for our writer top fives at the same place. That's a subscription service, supports the podcast, which is and always will be free. Also enables you to get our writer top five lists every Monday. Coming up, we've got top five reasons you should do NaNoWriMo, we've had top five questions you should ask your fictional character, top five reasons you should be on Instagram, we got top five ways to make your reader laugh.Jess:                                     41:15                    The burnchart one was great. And I can say that because I have nothing to do with them, because as I may have already mentioned, I have no other time to do anything but write this book. So this is all you two and I am so impressed with what you guys have done with these top five. They've been fantastic. I've enjoyed them as a reader that has nothing to do with them at the moment, but I will.KJ:                                        41:36                    All right, so head over to amwriting podcast.com. Check us out, support us, subscribe to us, and of course as always, subscribe to us and rate us should you care to on iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcast.Jess:                                     41:59                    This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Where is your scene happening? Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi’s “Urban and Rural Thesaurus” guides and onestopforwriters.com are mentioned in this episode. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/daria-white/message

Today's Topic Not the internal tools either Please Subscribe, Rate and Review us on iTunes For complete Fantasy Worldbuilding, show notes go to Gardul.com Podcast Show flow Notebooks Creative Friends Google ,Great Courses Plus, and Email Readers Grammarly Thesaurus The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi Worldbuilding Task Right a paragraph about the last time you got angry by only describing how you acted, or how you felt Real world task Read something Michael's Resources Use Gardul.com/Amazon when shopping online to help support the show   Links ((((((((((((((((((((((((((( Visit Show notes ))))))))))))))))))))))))) https://www.gardul.com/blog/episode-291-5-invaluable-tools-in-writing/   ((((((((((((((((((((((((((( Mentions links ))))))))))))))))))))))))) HowToWorldbuild.com HowToWorldbuild.com/soon   ((((((((((((((((((((((((((( Rate and Review us in iTunes ))))))))))))))))))))))))) https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/worldbuilders-anvil/id956705643?mt=2   ((((((((((((((((((((((((((( Like our Facebook Page ))))))))))))))))))))))))) https://www.facebook.com/GardulStories/   ((((((((((((((((((((((((((( Join our Facebook Group ))))))))))))))))))))))))) https://www.facebook.com/groups/undercroft/   ((((((((((((((((((((((( Support us by using our Amazon Affiliate Link ))))))))))))))))))))) http://gardul.com/Amazon   ((((((((((((((((((((((((((( Jeff on Twitter  ))))))))))))))))))))))))) https://twitter.com/JefferyWIngram  

In this episode:This week Mel had to do some Kemlo-ordered homework – reading the Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maas, Understanding Show Don’t Tell by Janice Hardy, and The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. She has trouble connecting emotion to her writing and needs to do more work on Chapter 5 before moving on.“When writing body sensations, you yourself have to be in touch with your own body. A lot of times we ignore our body sensations because we’re focusing on other things.” – MelanieKemlo says that it’s hard to layer emotion because it needs to be pervasive – it needs to be on every page, all the time. We as readers don’t cease to be human, and sometimes it takes as little as one or two lines of tweaking to add that nuance.Sometimes, just adding a character’s thoughts is enough to get the emotion across—and not just “I feel afraid” – what are they afraid of? What do they think is going to happen, or what do they want/not want to happen? There’s more power behind it if it’s character-specific.“One of the things I find fascinating when I read, say, the book A Man Called Ove – when you read it, there are places I’ve cried in that book. He’s just doing it in a really nuanced, really subtle way. Sometimes it’s the whole Gestalt of what you’re getting across. What makes it so hard is trying to get it on every page.” – Kemlo AkiMel points out that she and Abby (who has a graduate degree in) could walk into an art museum and while Mel could say “Hey, what a nice painting” Abby would see so much more because she’s got more experience with the subject. The same goes for writing – until you write a book, it’s hard to have a sincere appreciation of all that goes into the process. An experienced writer can look at a book and see all the different threads the author spent likely hundreds of hours weaving through their story, the subtle details that take seconds to read but add so much to the final product.Even mid-revision, Mel and Abby are reminded again that practice might not ever make perfect (what writer is happy with their book when the send it off to their publisher?), but it makes it better.

Pawn of Prophecy | Chapter 20 Where Sondra’s muddled and wallowing in her slippery nipples, Alysia’s goofy AF with a cold and forgets it’s her dad’s birthday, and is seducing Sondra with talk of spreadsheets, and they’re both finding fearlessness a challenge. Time for Garion to remember he has a mark on his hand. (How do you forget a thing like that?) Random fact: Kombucha is is a fermented, slightly alcoholic, lightly effervescent, sweetened black or green tea drink commonly intended as a functional beverage for its supposed health benefits. Sometimes the beverage is called kombucha tea to distinguish it from the culture of bacteria and yeast. Books we used for prophecy this week - The Emotion Thesaurus, by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi - The Wonder Soul, by Alysia Seymour Visit us! ♥ Website belgariadandbeyond.goddesskindled.com + Facebook + Instagram @belgariadandbeyond + Twitter @beyondbelgariad How to be awesome: rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you found our show! That’s how other people will find us. You can also go to this episode on our website and leave a comment that we can actually respond to. That’s another level of cool. You can find the episode segment times at the website if you'd like to jump right to your favourite part. Theme music by Muwan © 2018 Bone Deep Sound Productions This podcast is a Goddess Kindled Universe production © 2019 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/belgariadandbeyond/message

Chet is a line editor. He gives us a solid crash course on line editing and shares practical examples of common author mistakes. Writing is a craft that no one ever masters fully and it's always helpful to get inputs on how to improve. Chet delivers lots of tips and tricks. Whether you're an experienced writer and a newbie, there's lessons for everyone in the conversation Chet and I had. Enjoy some advice from a line editor. During the video, Chet mentions The Emotion Thesaurus. It's written by Becca Puglisi and Angela Ackerman. It's an incredible helpful tool for authors. You can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Emotion-Thesaurus-Writers-Character-Expression-ebook/dp/B07MTQ7W6Q/ref=sr_1_2?  New episodes EVERY single Monday. To subscribe on YouTube, go here: http://bit.ly/1WIwIVC  PATREON! Many bonus perks for those who become a patrons. https://www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy  LET'S CONNECT! Closed Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmWritingFantasy/  Blog and Courses: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/  Jesper on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SchmidtJesper  Autumn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/weifarer  Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Jesper (12s): Welcome to amwritingfantasy together with autumn. I run this, uh, the amwritingfantasy website where we share blog posts and uh, there was these YouTube videos, there is a podcast episodes of these videos as well. So if you're listening on podcasts right now, welcome. Uh, but today we are gonna talk or I'm going to talk with Chet about editing, which I thought was quite interesting because actually we haven't had any real videos or episodes around editing before, so, so this was an excellent topic to get into today. Jesper (47s): And uh, thank you so much for joining us on amwritingfantasy. Chet. Chet (51s): Thank you. Thanks for having me. Jesper (55s): Maybe you want to share a bit about yourself and what you're up to. Chet (59s): Yeah. Uh, my name is Chet Sandberg. Um, I am a fantasy writer, uh, as yet unpublished probably because I'm an editor so I'm pretty hard on myself. Uh, uh, I'm aligned in solid earth, which is kind of in between a copy editor. Proofer is, is getting the typos, getting the punctuation and I copy and he's doing a lot of that is also to make sure it things from ATPCO. Correct. I'm aligned in style editor. So what I do is I am not going to just make sure that your dialogue is grammatically correct. I'm going to make it sound like something somebody might actually say. Chet (1m 30s): So I'm going to do things like if you, if you've got two people in a conversation and they're using one another's names, a lot, we don't do that. We rely on context to do that. So, I mean, we don't need to completely sound like real human beings, but I would take out some of those things that are more artificial or would sound a unnatural or I would take out or point out, um, dialogue that is only there as a storytelling technique. Uh, you know, as, as you well know, magic works like this while blah, blah, blah. You know, instead of technically having it as exposition, you have it as dialect. Chet (2m 3s): You really don't. Uh, so stuff like that. Um, uh, my first major client was a journalist, uh, background, and so he gets a little tingle of excitement when I cut his five words down to to. So I focus a lot on concision. Um, if you're gonna, uh, talk about, say a top, you're going to say in front of, I'll say before, you know, a lot of stuff like that where I tend to cut things down. I also tend to, um, uh, well for a couple of things and I've got like a, a Google doc that I, uh, usually try to give out to people with their data perspective clients or, uh, I don't really have to do with my main client cause he, he understands everything when I'm cutting stuff. Chet (2m 44s): Um, w there are some things very, you know, if you've signed a lot of the word Barry in your approach to replace that word with what is, so if you say the thing very fast, you can say, you know, ran, walked very fast as rant or, or hurried or whatever it is, it gives more of a flavor. It's more unique. Um, I tend to really am stomp all over the use of the past continuous, which is, I don't know if it's completely unique to English, but I know beginning English writers love to do this and it makes total sense. Chet (3m 17s): I do it all the time and have to cut it out. And the reason you do it is because you're describing the scene in your head as it's happening. So you say he was standing by the door, she was talking, but every time you do that, you have a was in an ING around a unique verb when it's much, much has much more bite. If you give all of your verbs, uh, their own unique flavor in, in, in the reader's mind and in their mouth, if they're reading out loud. So instead of saying he was standing, you say he stood, it happened in the past tense. Like I said, the reason you do it while you're seeing it in your head is because you're literally seeing it as it happens. Chet (3m 49s): For the same reason, um, began or started to ends up in a lot of people's pros, especially beginners, um, where you'll say he began to you never, you only write began for, uh, activities that don't complete because that's all you have to tell them that something began. He began to say, but it was cut off, that kind of thing. If he completes it, you can just say it. He or she, if the character complete it, you can just say the simple past tense. They, they did the thing right. You can say, you know, instead of saying, well, he began to stumble, he started, he began to stutter. Chet (4m 21s): You just say he started. OK. um, and the reason you do that is because I'm in small works. These things don't really, uh, cause that many problems. But over the course of a long and fantasy run hobbles let's face it, we write a lot of long do works. You're getting what you really want unique. You really want concision. You really want to get rid of those things that can be repetitive. Uh, another thing that I tried to work on is something called new. During. The verb make a plan is planned. Make is a general all purpose verb that can apply to a whole bunch of things. Chet (4m 53s): Planned is a very specific word. But when you, when you say make a plan, you've made the focus, the verb, a very generic verb, and then you made the plan. Would you actually did, you made it a noun, makeup line. Uh, manage. If you write manage, I will write you a snarky notes in the comments about, uh, you know, like a Denny's what he's talking about. You know, man, if she managed to manage demand, these are things that I see a lot of times too where you just cut that out. Um, here's a big one. Um, could, could he could something, something, well, anything could happen. Chet (5m 25s): Tell us what actually did happen. And the reason people do this is I think sometimes they're trying to tell us through the POV character that they're unsure about something and occasionally that works. The main thing that I look for when I see code though is that people are putting in filtering. And this is one that's something I just was watching with Autumn's thing. Get the census involved, get all the senses I have to under described on my first draft and then have to go in and really described. Um, or sometimes there's two things I like, I want to talk about here. Chet (5m 56s): One is something I'm still trying to learn how to do really well. Can't really always add it in as a line style editor. It's something I like to use is if you've ever read the magicians, he does a lot of things that drive me up a tree, but I w Lev Grossman writes his description from his character point of view in such a way that he never really has to tell you directly how these characters feel because you can get so much about what his character's mind state is by how he describes things. It's amazing. It's like magic powers. I'm like, wow. Chet (6m 27s): I if, if, if you wanna I, I'm sure there are a ton of authors that do that. The first one that I really noticed it on, uh, was Lev Grossman with conditions and like I said, you know, there's a lot of stuff he does pass, continues up the wazoo he filters a little bit and now I want to switch over into filtering. Filtering is when I want to do this specifically because of something autumn said where you're talking about using census. I love using census. You really want to ground people in the scene and you need to do it with more than just the eyes. It's the one really great thing that people say the book was better than the movie. Chet (6m 59s): Part of what they're saying is in a novel, like with Lev Grossman, of course you can, you can use a description to tell something about the character. The character is what, what they're going through. But the other thing is you have all of these other aspects, internal monologues and thoughts. Uh, you know, you might have an internal argument with yourself. You might have, you know, uh, you might notice a smell that has a significant, she might notice a sound or, or something might spring to the foreground that you can't always do very well with cinematography. Chet (7m 30s): And, but with that, uh, that, uh, cinematography, he never asked you, what is that? Try not to filter the sensations through your character. Every time you do that, you were reminding the reader that they aren't the character and it pulls people out of immersion out for some things. You're going to want to do that. Uh, very occasionally, if you're writing something very disturbing, you're going to want to pull people out of it. But instead of saying something like, she heard shot from across the room, okay. You don't have to tell her that. Sh tell us that she heard it in her POV. You can simply present it. You can say a shot rang out across the firm, across the, from the other side of them. Chet (8m 1s): Okay, tell us the location, tell us what happened. But you don't have to remind us that we aren't, they're experiencing, when you say a sh, something simply happened, you know, um, um, the moon Rose, the moon Rose over the horizon or dips down or whatever the sun Rose, uh, from her eyes instead of saying he saw the sunrise, you know what I mean? We know he saw it because we're describing it. We're in their third close to the point of view. So as much as you can, if you can get rid of filtering, um, you know, instead of saying she felt sweat rundown, you know, that's that he'd say, you know, a drip of sweat, uh, you know, you can go to on more specificity, but you can just say it happened and the, and the reader will automatically insert themselves into the POB, a character's point of view. Chet (8m 45s): So filterings a big one. Um, and I think especially with the sweat there, you know, if you can sort of get into what it feels like on the skin and stuff like that, because Jesper (8m 57s): then it works. Right. Rather, I was flying back from am, I had a business trip to Cairo last week and I was flying back and then on the airplane and somebody was sitting next to me reading a book and it just sort of peaked over in it. And it was quite interesting because it has a, it's not really filtering, but it's more like a, I don't know if you have a more correct, if that's a word for it, but you know, it was summarizing a lot. So every piece that was more like, okay, and then in the morning this and this happened and that doesn't tell me the dialogue and then tell me what a day, blah, blah, blah, blah. Jesper (9m 29s): Something happened. It was just like I was looking at it and like that, that's so boring. You know, it just, I don't feel connected to what's happening at all. This is just a summary of whatever happened that day, that day. Chet (9m 40s): And that's what tell him versus, no. Okay. You'd have to show people and one of the best tools for that. Well, I don't think I have a Wiki cause I think I had a backward, I do most of my writing, which is as an ingredient one in there, but it's the emotion thesaurus uh, for English writing especially, it's, it's amazing. Um, you don't have to trust your reader. You don't always have to tell them that somebody said is feeling something. You can show it, you know, you can have the fidget if they're nervous, you can, uh, point out showing versus telling is something people always talk about. Chet (10m 19s): And nobody really, I hate these little snippets, you know the adverbs things because you need to know the why. If you don't know the why, you can follow the rules. But it's like being blind and carrying the lamp. You know, it's an old Zen story. Uh, I'm a, I'm a Zen Buddhist, so there's old gen story. He says, you know, there's a blind man and the son usually carry around. I says, why do I need a lamp? I'm blind. I'm gonna be able to see any way. So he's, you know, but you should carry a lamp because other people can see you. So he's walking around and somebody slammed into him, he gets upset. It's like, didn't you see my lap? He says, he said, you you crazy old names is your lamp has gone out. Chet (10m 50s): And if you don't know, he didn't know cause he's blind. So that's the thing. You don't know the why. So the reason for adverse, you know, Stephen King has said road to hell is paved with adverbs. And the reason he says this isn't because adverbs are always wrong. Good luck trying to, you know, don't spend three sentences explaining what doing something gingerly looks like when you have gingerly change release, just easier to get there. We get there faster. Where you really don't want it is in dialogue tags. You don't want it in dialogue techs. And the reason you don't want to dial it takes is one of two things is happening. Chet (11m 22s): Either it's in the dialogue but you don't trust it. It's in the dialogue. Okay. Um, in which case trust us in the dog or it's not in the dialogue and you think that you can tack it on by having an adverb. And I pull back on this for purely mechanical adverbs. So you know, if, if you want to say said slowly, okay, that might be the more preferable thing to say then slow then growled or S. cause sometimes those, those unique, um, dialogue tags, uh, distract from over there. Chet (11m 56s): Anything else you said is invisible? Yeah, I was just about to say because it, because you can also overdo that stuff. You know, it can be like, it's, it's almost a tour reading it because there's so many tax all the time and it's just like, what the hell? These emotional people all the time, you know, sometimes it's just better to just Chuck in as she said, and then move on as an experiment. Remove all your tags, remove all your tags when you're doing editing, do it in substitution mode and just move all your tags and then put back the ones that you actually need because you will, you'll find, especially if you get further into it or work, your characters will know the tone of voice of you writing your characters really well. Chet (12m 35s): See, part of what I'm, I'm kind of a slower writing compared to a lot of people and reason is eight I. I don't do as much telling you to go out my showing. But the other thing is I really entered the eyes and enter the experience of my characters. And so when you do that, they speak like different people. Um, so yeah, definitely stripping out tags. So what I look for is I look for covid could I always like, could cause, could, if you look for, could, first of all, it's, it's, it's, uh, you're really, um, uh, what's the word I'm looking? You're equivocating when you don't need to. Chet (13m 6s): But the other thing is that almost always is involved with filter work. Almost always it's could see, could hear, could whatever, could remember, you know. Uh, and so it's a very good hint to look for a, an equivocating filter. I filter in general. I also hate things like a little, a bit and a little bit in small short works, they don't matter so much, but Oh my God, if you writing along work, you know, and you're writing chapters that are, some people I write short chapters, people write long chapters, 2,500. If you have a bit, a little, a little bit in, you know, 16, 17, 18, 25 times, you know, imagine how repetitive that gets and it adds nothing. Chet (13m 43s): It doesn't tell us. It's not specific enough to really give us anything. You know what I mean? It's, it's, it's, there is as a repetitive flavor that you really don't need. I was just about to say instead of a little or a bit or whatever, if you just say it is a small ass, what do I know? Then you're showing what it is as small as instead of just saying a little, which is, it doesn't really say anything and let a competitor what yeah, it's exactly, it's completely, it's the same thing about slightly, I don't like slightly, you can use it sometimes, but people over it. Chet (14m 21s): These are things that people overuse slightly. It's the same idea. Here's one that one of my critique partners early on really keyed me into that is amazing and has always helped me. And that is, this follows a rule that I'm going to go into a little bit right after this. But look, you look for these, let me search for these times. Turn or turn look or looked. And what it is, is that almost always we assume if somebody's speaking to somebody, they're looking at them. Um, uh, you know, um, you don't have to tell us every action that leads to the, when it's implied in the next, in the final action. Chet (15m 0s): So like you can say, and sometimes you want to, if you're, it's like I say, if it's a very first time you're describing your major preparing to spell, you might want to go into great detail about what that looks like. Okay. But if it's something like paying the bill, the waiter, you don't have to say he reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet and pulled out his card and handed as a waiter then signed it when it came back and doing some things. He paid the waiter. You know what I mean? We don't care enough. We need to know that things have concluded. We don't need to know every little piece of detail. You don't have to say he lifted his left leg then is right and in, in sequence until he ended up arriving at Heather's house. Chet (15m 36s): You can just say here that, you know what I mean? Yeah. So, um, these are all things that usually ends up in the second draft where you have to go back in and say, okay, how much of this, it's the same thing and this is more of a developmental stuff and style stuff. But I like to do time jumps. I like to jump to what is important. I don't, I'm not a token ask. Uh, uh, I mean I love him. He is my one of my first fantasy but I don't, it's just like, uh, George RR Martin, you know, I don't need pages and pages of banners, man-to-man stuff that, it literally, I'm, I'm already forgetting the first part of this. Chet (16m 7s): Like a math problem, a complex math problem where I'm already forgetting the first part of what you said. By the time we get to the third part of what you said. Literally none of this information is in my head anymore. I have spaced out halfway through. So, so I tend to like to do a time jobs, but you know, what I'm trying to work on is that about one in five people. Um, I ended up just losing somebody. They don't make the jump with me. So I've learned how to like put a little summary at the very beginning saying it was a day later, blah, blah, blah, blah. Jesper (16m 32s): Yeah. Well I think that the description part that that's obviously a very big matter of taste. I mean some people really love to have more description, which is fine as long as the stuff that you're describing is something that is relevant for me. Because also from a character point of view, I character wouldn't start to explain to them. I mean if you, if you go to visit, visit one of your friends, know you're not going to start explaining the friend that how you opened the car door and you put in the key into the ignition and then I turned on the car by turning to the right and you know, you don't do that. Jesper (17m 4s): You just say, I took the car to get here because we all know what it means. And even even in the fantasy setting, two characters talking to each other who might know what this means, but the reader might not exactly meet no one. It made you want to have a way to, to give that information because the characters won't start telling each other about it because they both know how it works. Chet (17m 24s): Expository dialogue. Exactly. That's what I'm saying and that was something I was talking about earlier, but what I really like to do there is just, just especially happens in Laura, could you, you know, there are terms that you can have there and be like, we need to explain this. No, you can get it from context of J one or two more paragraphs and you'll get it from context or I'm doing something wrong or I'm doing things wrong, but, but you can't just shortcut to what magic is your blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. A word that you can oftentimes get almost as another word that I like to get rid of almost. You know, it was almost as if it was as if it doesn't add anything. Chet (17m 55s): Again, um, that the word that there are so many places where you just do a search for that and every time you see it, ask if you really need it. Very, very rarely do you actually need the word that. Um, of course, if you're gonna say, of course it's not dialogue. There's no point in mentioning it. It is. Of course it is. It should already be evident. If it isn't, then it isn't. Of course. And you shouldn't write that decided is another filter. But it's one that people, a lot of people, well they decided to do this. You know how we know they decided it. Chet (18m 25s): They did it. Now you can have them grapple with the question. You know, man would he have gone left? You know, he was going here. He might've gone, yeah. Am I done this? And then he went left. Well you know, we decided to go left because he did it. You don't have to tell us that you decided to do it cause you're showing this to me. I'm talking about filter. We talked about actions as soon by later actions. Okay. This is a big one that I'm really working on and that is a dialogue. Tags versus action tags. Now, some people really prefer if you read am Oh was it Patterson? Chet (18m 56s): And I know he doesn't write his own stuff anymore. I was reading that it was a thriller novel and there was literally not a single dialogue tag and it was all action. Now if you do too much of that, it's going to sound like you're doing a screenplay about methods. Okay. Cause everybody's jewelry is L get out in there then they're just stumbling around. But what you really don't want to do is something like, and what I wrote here is um, you know the rules either dialogue or action but not both. So I would say this, don't forget the sausage Jerry said, looking me straight in the eye and make sure I knew how important it was, but we were better is to say don't forget the sauce period, not a comma. Chet (19m 32s): Jerry looked at me straight in the eye and make sure I get home port was, you don't have to tell us that he said it if he's literally doing an action right after it. The way we do this in paragraphs is, you know, the dialogue and the act are in the same paragraph, should have a new actor. You put them in a new paragraph typically. So get rid of the dialogue, take if you have action, you know. Um, Jesper (19m 51s): yeah, and I also quite like to do that on purpose in the way that the I put in a bit of action here, there just to get rid of not having to say this person said, and that person said, because it also gets a bit jarring to keep reading who said what? Where's it's nice to have it breaking up sometimes with somebody. He uh, he slammed the door and then he said, Oh, you know, and, and then you can add what he said. So he slammed the sniper guy full stop. And then there is the, uh, the, the dialogue piece there, right. I mean, but then it also shows you emotion then apparently he's angry about something. Jesper (20m 21s): So, and then you'd be, you don't even have to explain that then start saying if he looked at her angry or whatever, you know. Exactly. Chet (20m 28s): There's so much you can put in the context of actually, that's why I really love the emotion of the source for that. Um, something else you got to remember is like even the way we're talking, right. We're trying to be very respectful of one another but we interrupt each other. Yeah. And people talk that way. You when you, when you write dialogue, don't write dialogue thinking they have the luxury of going on on a a 10 sentence monologue. Right. I'm going to say what I'm going to say as concisely as possible because I'm afraid you might interrupt me at any second. Okay. The other thing is am got, Oh, a dialer preamble. Chet (20m 60s): Yes, yes. Comma blah, blah, blah, blah blah. If you asked me a question, I don't have to say yes. I can just give you the answer. The only time he really going to say yes a lot. You might do it occasionally but that is if you're slowing down cause you're trying to think of what to say next or if that's all you want to say where you here. Yes, but, but what's not said there is the important part of that dialogue. Yes. And then you should show it action saying he's the shows that he's a reluctant to keep going. Otherwise you could just get rid of the yes and you can just have the actual answer, you know? Chet (21m 33s): Yeah. Um, I told you about adverbs in the dialogue tags. Boy, I tell you that's, that one is one that I had to go, I had to go on a hunt through my own stuff. You know, there's really funny, like sometimes you, um, are there other things that are more developmental? And I'm still, I'm still trying to learn them so I'm not, I'm not really that great as our developmental editor for, for all the genres. I don't like prologues. Uh, if you are going to have a prologue for the love of God, please let it be me and character or at least introduce the main character somewhere in the prologue. Jesper (22m 5s): Yeah. And it cannot be an info dump. It, there has to be some relevant action taking place in the prologue. Just sort of like if you ha, I mean there are situations where I do think that a prologue is beneficial to have, but it has to be written in a way that is engaging and ups on a piece of history dump of stuff that happened 2000 years ago that maybe it would be nice for you, dear reader to know. Uh, I mean, well fine, but couldn't you just tell me when it becomes relevant in there in the chapter then Chet (22m 32s): it's the same thing with POB jobs. Don't make, don't you know you can do this with romance, but he said, she said romance. Yeah, as long as you've got was founded early, his point of view, her point of view, his point of view, her point of that, you can do that. But if you're writing, so imagine you're writing a fantasy novel with multiple points of view. You write a prologue connected to nothing. And anyway, then you write the main character for a chapter. Then you skip to another chapter. You've now gotten me about five to 10, five going on 10,000 words into your book and you've made me start it three times. Chet (23m 3s): That's three times you have to get me so involved that I will not put the book down. Good luck as a new way. Right? Cause what we all do as new writers I'm sure you did this on yours. I do this online. My God, it took me 15 chapters to get to the inciting incident. Now they're short. Thanks. We'd be Jesus the short the short chapters, but, but it, you know, you don't want to take that long. Now on the other hand, I don't really like books that start with action with characters. I don't know what care about yet either. So it's a fine line. Um, but just think almost every first novel writer I ever seen that does fantasy or scifi starts with a prologue and I would say 80 to 85% of the time it's either the wrong prologue or it shouldn't be there at all. Chet (23m 49s): That you can, you can, you can fill us in as we go. We can learn a lot from context. I'm still trying to learn how to write very compelling openers and I'm getting better with every new work that I start. But am Jesper (24m 2s): yeah. And I think we should probably also point out, you know, because the opening of a novel is the hot, one of the hardest things to write, uh, uh, it is, uh, well, okay, fair enough. Every part of the novel is difficult, the middle of social difficult because you need to keep the attention where sometimes in the middle of sort of gets a bit boring and it just sort of drags off because we want the, we want to get to the end. That is exciting again, but, but, but there is so much tied up in the beginning. There's so much you need to achieve with the beginning to read the same that it is very, very difficult to write. Jesper (24m 36s): And it takes a lot of the of uh, let's say, uh, trial and error. And even when you're written several, several books you there's still a lot to learn to do the better intro. So it's, it's not easy stuff, but that's also why you work with an editor to help you. Chet (24m 51s): It's hard, and I'm not a developmental editor. I am not always. Now, there's some people I have helped and I've worked with her. I said, you can cut all of these paragraphs away and start with them at the bureaucrat getting, getting their benefits denied. That's really where the story starts. That's where we have character. They're in a jam. I don't need to know how he got into the gym yet. You can let me know as we go. Okay. If it's just background stuff, you know, I don't need to know the political structure. I should learn that fruit interacting with the bureaucrat, interacting with the streets, interacting with the people on them, all of these things. Chet (25m 23s): So much things that are in cinematography. You know, people, it's so funny. You know, you look at something like star Wars or Marvel movies are so, so much as is, and you don't have this when you're writing, but you see it when you look at good movies in that. So you think about star Wars, remember, um, all of those machines were beaten up and dirty and messed up. Right. So much is told to you about the world that unconsciously you don't even know you, you're getting, it does that you don't get with with writing. So you really have to learn how to give enough description. The other thing too is that um, this is something I see a lot too. Chet (25m 56s): Sometimes people go into extreme specificity about their, about their am description and the problem with that is I get lost and then I get anxious that I'm not visualizing it correctly every single time they come up now I'm like, am I, is that I get that jacket right? And they switched, they change. Give me some highlights and some things I can remember and you know what, you're just going to have to live with it. If the jacket that I conjure in my head differs from yours as, as if you really want me to know exactly what you should go into writing you should go into, into uh, making movies and doing some photography and all that kind of stuff. Chet (26m 29s): Cause then you can really, really guy. But, but give me some highlights and then, and then from that point on, you know, it's really, it's really my, it's going to be my story now. At this point. You're, you're using telepathy, you're showing me important things. But you know, if you go into the exact physical details of a situation, you're going to lose me. Um, you're going to write acres, acres of words. You don't need a board to write. And the other thing is too, like if you're a reader like me, I start to get anxious about whether I actually know if I've got it right in my head, you know? And that's something a lot of times people don't think about. Jesper (26m 59s): Yeah. Indeed. I, I still have a, well, at least a one paragraph. Uh, I remember in my first book that is still, it's in the published version, however it got through all the editing. I don't know, but I that one's still pains me. It's like every time that those plays, I can't remember the exact details of it, but I'm explaining that it's a very dark place and they'd just go way too much into the specifics, specifics of how dark it is and move on. But you know, it happens to all of us. Jesper (27m 29s): It's a learning process. Chet (27m 31s): Yeah, no, it's so that's funny that you say that. You know, I got dinged really hard on the critique, uh, a person because I actually wrote sense via touch as afraid. I said that's a ridiculous phrase. Like, you know, felt that's what that was to be a touch. And my critiquer, you know, Ryan, he says, he says, he says, I sense to be a reading that maybe you got a little lost in it. Chet (28m 1s): I always so hilarious. You know, and you gotta you just gotta laugh cause there's stuff where you're going to be like, you know, and then of course there's the obvious stuff that I catch that that w copy editors will catch two, which is the repetition of awards three times in two sentences. You know, starting, you know, stuff that pro-rider aid is great for is are you starting three sentences or four sentences in a row with exact same pronoun or proper noun or word in general, you know, um, yeah, don't ever write very unique. There is no such thing. Unique is not a scale. Unique means one of a kind unique, you're not very unique, you're not pretty unique. Chet (28m 34s): Unique means there is one of these items is one of those things. Um, Jesper (28m 41s): yeah and I, I think, I mean with all of it is so good to, you know, get some editors perspective on writing and sort of what are other things that you, once you be careful about it. But I also sort of want to tell everybody who's watching and listening here that when you are doing your first draft, don't worry about all of this, you know, just get the story. I would get it onto the page and then in the later drafts you can revision all of this together with the Hill up, the editor's notes. They'll sit there and agonize over, am I not doing this or I'm not doing this right, or is this wrong at the first rest States? Jesper (29m 15s): It doesn't matter. Just get the story out. However choppy it's going to be, it doesn't matter. Just get it out. So that's the one thing I would say, don't, don't worry about it that at that point and just move on because otherwise go into after the fact. Yeah. Because, because you kind of get stuck in editing mode and then you'll kind of be kind of go over the same chapter again and again and again. And at some point did the amendments or corrections you're making is probably going to move the needle. Like what? Less than 1%. So it maybe, yeah. Which one reader album a million who would appreciate the energy? Jesper (29m 47s): Just sit, but there nine, 999,999 other readers don't give a Chet (29m 53s): crappy or they were good to notice. They won't even know. Um, you know, the guy that, that, that the main author that I, that I started at anything with a journalist, um, he said he spent an extra year and a half on his first novel and probably only improved it by about 5%. Right, right. Jesper (30m 9s): Yeah. So it's important to everybody who gets into writing, especially when you're starting out. You know, the thing with, with the writing as I've said over and over and over again, it, it, it, it improves your training and your only way you can improve this by writing more. So if you, if you get stuck up on, on the first three chapters and editing out 200 million times, you know, you're not gonna get any better, you're just going to sit there with the same stuff over and over. So, so just keep running, keep producing work and, and then what would somebody who knows what they're doing work with the emphasis that I would never, I mean obviously I'm not native English became so I would never ever put out a book that I hadn't gone through an editor because I make grammar mistakes all the time because this is not my mother tongue. Jesper (30m 53s): But, Chet (30m 54s): but you don't have the unique specificity. You know, sometimes you can tell when somebody has looked at the thesaurus for synonyms, right. They don't realize that every synonym is, is contextually dependent. Yeah. Like technically on a broad sense, these two words are synonyms, but you would never in a million people look at you like you were crazy. Do you use this word in place of another and you can't get, I mean, if I tried to learn, you know, uh, uh, uh, um, uh, Danish, you know, I mean, I've tried to learn Swedish. It's hardest. Jesus. Jesus. Chet (31m 26s): Well, cause I'm about to Swedish to sign it. You know, my back that Vince Gilligan is Swedish for winterize. Um, um, and I'm probably pronouncing it badly. I'm sorry. It's been to, we're going to Alanon and dad's gone and I'd probably really screwed it up, but it just, we dries, looked at just way too. Like I should have pictures of wolves in the background, kind of looking at the moon kind of. It's very eighties cheesy will sweat, you know what I mean? But at the same time, that really is the heart of, of a cold place. You know what I mean? Writing the second one is all about passion, so it's gone. Um, or elderly I I'm screwed it up. Chet (31m 56s): I know him. Am yeah, Jesper (31m 57s): but maybe a sort of a in, in wrapping up here, I'm thinking if, especially for, because those who are already further along in their writing endeavors, uh, they, they, I'm, I'm sure that there was some very good points and inputs here that they can pick up throughout the, what we've been talking about on what to avoid and then they can, they can sort of assault that on their own. But right now, I'm thinking a bit in wrapping up around those who are just starting out because that w is there some sort of a few common mistakes that you could advise to say those who are just starting out, but when you're just starting writing, is there like a top three thing that maybe somebody could just internalize it and just on those who are stopped Chet (32m 40s): to if you see what I mean? About four things. Four most important things. I think from a line and stop perspective, not from a developmental perspective, because I do not have, you know, you know what they say? They say when you write a book, you think that when you write a book, you learn how to write a book. No, you learn how to write that book. The next book is totally new book in your comment. I totally different. So, so developmentally, I don't have much to say, but style and, and, and that kind of lies. First of all, good Lord. Let's start with grammar. If you want to learn grammar, just read Elmore Leonard. I mean, you're not always gonna be using this line, but that man understands dialogue. Chet (33m 14s): But, um, I would say filtering, get your senses in, but don't filter. Okay. Uh, saw, heard, felt, remembered, noticed, uh, recognized I might've already said that one. Decided, you know, look for those filters. Every time you're doing that, you're pulling people out. Okay. And that leads into the next one, which is show don't tell. And what that means is don't tell me how somebody, what something was or how let the reader come to the conclusions by writing what happened. Chet (33m 49s): Okay. So to some extent, you know, um, show me anxious, show me angry. He could, his teeth, uh, slammed the door, slammed the door, yet it doesn't have to be that really seriously get, get, uh, the, the emotion thesaurus will you help with this? Um, cause I can always think of two or three different things. But the problem is if you're writing the same emotions over the course of the novel, you're gonna write the same three or four different. Chet (34m 20s): But, but, but yeah, so show, don't tell, but what does that mean? That means, um, um, don't, don't tell me what happened. Show me what happened. Put me in the middle of the action. Uh, I love this and know if it's, to me it feels like I have, uh, the federal makes me feel like I have superpowers when I know that the other thing that it makes me feel like I have superpowers is the am past continuous, if you're writing in the past tense was something, was standing, was sitting, was it? Chet (34m 52s): Whenever I see that, and I see this in professional writing, I see this in traditional publishing, I see this all over the place and it's not technically wrong. It's just you. I want you to remember that when you have a wall isn't an IMG wrote, every verb you're starting in your ending are all the same. They all blend together and you can give every single one of those verbs so much more bite. And when you put more bite in every single one more more juice and every single one of those verbs, you're doing such a better job at getting your, your reader into the text, into the situation when everything is distinct. Chet (35m 23s): It just, and I know, I guess the same thing with neutering the verb made a plan. Nope. Managed to Nope, don't found myself. No thought. Found myself as okay colloquial like you as like a folksy way of saying things every now and again. So I would say yeah am the big ones are filtering past continuous am and showed him to and I hate that hate even leaving somebody with show don't tell because for the longest time I had no idea what that meant. Chet (35m 53s): Yeah. Bit tough here. That show don't tell. What does that mean? You know? And what it means is, you know, Mark said angrily is telling am what the fuck was that for? You know, Mark balled his fists or you and he slammed his hand on anything. Why didn't you do that? You know what I mean? So sometimes it's just straight up in the dialogue. You don't even need an action. Like if you've got an exclamation point that you know, a lot of that gets, it gets to do with the context. Um, um, and instead of don't with fantasy so many people want to put you on a travel log, then we went here and then we want to hear them. Chet (36m 25s): We hear them when really, you know, take me on a journey. Put me in these places, you know, put in certainly into the story. That's what every reader is reading for their reading to be that character in that story. Not doing, they're not reading to read about other people. Notice their reading in order to be all, all fiction reading is, is, is a, is a, uh, it is building up your empathy muscles. It's why so many people would read so many books end up wanting to come writers because it's magic. Chet (36m 56s): You know? Am forcing yourself into somebody else's eyes and becoming that person. That's what you want. And so getting rid of the filtering helps with that and then showing instead. So telling you what I mean by that really is trying not to try not to take the easy way of, of angry can mean so many different things, but you can show it distinctively in a way that is very specific to that character that I then now and taking on for myself as as a Jesper (37m 23s): indeed. Thanks for thanks for right down. And it is funny because of what you just said made me think because I'm, I'm just, uh, I'm currently writing a nonfiction book on how to plot a or our autumn and I am writing the book, uh, and Chet (37m 39s): she's a high rep. she told me only part clause and part pants is right. She knows where to go. Let me, she doesn't tell them how to get there. Jesper (37m 45s): No, indeed. Uh, and, and because, and it just makes me think because when you set the fantasy likes to sort of get into a travel log, uh, because one of the things that I just wrote in the chapter the other day was basically that all stories are about the character. It is not about where they go. It is about the character and it's about the change that they go undergo throughout the novel. That's what the story is about. Where do you go matters less. Um, so, so that's, uh, I think it just made me what you said just made me think about that. Jesper (38m 15s): So, but, but I want to thank you a lot Chet for, for coming onto amwritingfantasy and sharing a lot of the editing inputs, uh, that, that I hope will be very, very useful for, for those watching and listening whether you're on YouTube or autumn. Chet (38m 30s): Yeah. Um, I wanna leave you with, um, a few if you want learn more about story. Um, I think his name is, I think his name's Brad bird. He wrote a book called the secret of story and the secrets of story and it really just mind melting. You know, he uses the word, uh, all kinds of uses that nice way, way, way. He didn't edit it for that, but all my God, like he'll just introduce you to some things where you're like, I never thought of that, but I know that instinctively about story. You don't know that. You know it until somebody really just points it out there, like, you know, so he's got a lot of the really good juicy, if you want to learn stories stuff. Chet (39m 8s): So the things I would plug would be that every, every writer should have the emotion thesaurus. If you want to learn how to show, not tell. Yeah, Jesper (39m 15s): yeah. We'll put a, I'll put a link to that one in the description field in the show notes so that, uh, for the, for those of you watching or listening you Chet (39m 23s): you can find it there if you want it. And, uh, I have a website that runs that is not, it's not optimized. So if, but I do have a am I do have a, a Raider fan group, uh, on Facebook. It's called Chet. Sandberg's close readers. You can find me there and I will probably put up a, I didn't want it. Like I said, I was telling you, I don't want to put a new butter tied, something to get away so people seek, my writing is like, uh, before they looked at it for editing, you know. Um, I typically, um, I usually get most of my jobs to interacting with authors and giving them sample pages. Chet (39m 57s): I'll give them a sample chapter. Uh, this is what I would change is what I fixed. A little bit of developmental, a lot of copy, but I'll, but, but I really focus on the stuff that's a little harder than copy, which is a line and style. I'll try not to, I try not to strip out anybody's voice. Uh, sometimes people want to insist on, on, on bad habits as being a voice in. It usually isn't. Usually they have something more distinctive in there that's, that's, that can be fixed with line style. But I hope, I hope that I just get people on the right foot with, with just those three or four little things, you know? Jesper (40m 30s): Yeah. That was our purpose here. And, uh, and of course if you email me a link to your website and whatnot, then I'll put it into, Chet (40m 38s): yeah. Within that function soon. But yeah, hopefully, hopefully before this comes out, maybe I'll have something that functions. I gotta figure out some way to get, uh, you know how it is. You've got to get a newsletter saying, I am not good at, I'm not good at anything. That requires multiple steps of, you can only do this one way. It's like a bottle of wine and Stella did, or not a proofreader. Okay. I don't want to look to make sure that every period isn't the right place. I want to get you I want to get your dialogue. That sounds like something a human from earth would say. That's what I wanted to do, right? Yeah. Absolutely. Chet (41m 8s): All right. Cool. Jesper (41m 9s): Thanks a lot. Chet and uh, thank you for listening or watching out there and, uh, we'll see you next time. Chet (41m 14s): Monday.

Lee Powell is a writer and expert in technology. He works with Angela Ackerman and her co-creator Becca Puglisi at One Stop for Writers. He also created the Windows version of renowned writing program Scrivener. When the team collaborated, they came up with the Character Building Tool, which combines Powell’s software design skills with Ackerman and Puglisi’s thesaurus writing skills. In this episode, we chat about the following: the importance of collaboration Scrivener for Windows One Stop For Writers the Character Building Tool following your passion what happens when creativity and coding meet integrating technology into the writing process lifelong learning the importance of deep thinking   You can find out more about Powell, One Stop For Writers and the Character Building tool https://onestopforwriters.com/ (here) and buy Passion Driven https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Driven-Have-Found-Your/dp/0975177001 (here.) You can download your FREE Issue 3 of Author Success Stories Magazine https://writerontheroad.com/author-success-stories-magazine/ (here) for your chance to win one of two six-month subscriptions to One Stop For Writers. Entries close 31st March, 2019.   Read Full Transcript Mel Lee Powell is an expert in technology, who works with featured author Angela Ackerman and her co-creator Becca Puglisi on their site One Stop for Writers. He also created the Windows version of renowned writing program Scrivener. Lee I can't take credit for the inception of Scrivener itself. Keith Blount created the program for the Mac – I actually had to buy a Mac to use it as I was studying in the UK. I wrote to him in 2008 and said, “This is an amazing tool. You have a total paradigm shift. It's non-linear. It allows me to make a mess and write in any way I want. Have you thought about doing a Windows or Linux version?” He hadn't. He was busy enough trying to rewrite the base version of Scrivener – the first write of that code had been a disaster. He's not a programmer by trade. He was a teacher and working towards a PhD in medieval history, or something like that. When there was so much interest in Scrivener, he had to go back and write it properly. He's a really interesting guy. We formed a reasonably good friendship over the years, and eventually he acquiesced to my petitioning and we started collaborating in 2008 or 2009. Mel What kind of process was involved in creating the program? Lee It took me about three years to even get to version one of Scrivener for Windows and Linux. We were so far behind the Mac – he had a seven-year start on me. As a software engineer by trade, I thought it would be reasonably easy. I'd been building banking, finance, and trading systems during my career. Unfortunately I was totally depressed. I used to write a lot when I was a kid (terrible novels that thankfully never saw the light of day). I used to write poetry and songs as well. I'm a terrible musician, but I'm quite good with the lyrics side of things. Scrivener saved me. I was in my late thirties and had all the things I thought I wanted in life – kids, family, my wife. We've been married for 28 years now. It's had its ups and downs, and fundamentally we're happy. But I was totally depressed. I thought, ‘I've got to get out of this corporate thing,' but of course you get used to the money. It was a Catch-22. I just wanted to align myself with my core values. I've always loved writing, and the whole creative aspect of coding. The Windows version of Scrivener is completely rewritten from the ground up. We had to start from scratch, which was a wonderful experience. We had many years of seven-day weeks, until there was a little bit of money coming in and we could step back. It was a huge risk, stepping away from the corporate work. But it's like anything in life, anything to do with writing. You have to start on the side. The reality is probably only 100 authors...

The One Stop for Writers by Angela Ackerman, Becca Puglisi, and Lee Powell. Does this work? From character building, world building, and mapping scenes, you’ll find it here. Is the investment worth it? onestopforwriters.com is mentioned in this episode

Which writer’s guides are most helpful? Do I even need one? Decisions...decisions. In this episode, I mention guides by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi, along with works by K.M. Weiland, Bryn Donovan, Mary Gray, and Nicholas C. Rossis. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/daria-white/message

Angela Ackerman is a writing coach, international speaker and co-author of six best-selling books with the latest one the updated Emotion Thesaurus: a Writer’s Guide to Character Expression. Angela is an international speaker and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also enjoys dreaming up new tools and resources for https://onestopforwriters.com/ (One Stop For Writers), a library built to help writers elevate their storytelling. She’s also one half of the team over at Writers Helping Writers, alongside Becca Puglisi. You can find out more https://writershelpingwriters.net/about-writers-helping-writers/ (here.) In this episode we chat about the following: getting inside our characters’ heads creating strong experiences for our readers the relationship between setting and character the mistakes new writers make internal and external balance show and tell how to include backstory sensor detail – making details earn their keep emotional wounds authenticity and the human experience emotional layers and much more In fact, our podcast this week is more of a free writing workshop delivered by one of the best in the writing business. Thanks, Angela. You can find out more about Angela and The Emotion Thesaurus https://writershelpingwriters.net/author/angela/ (here.) Read Full Transcript Mel: Welcome to another episode of road around the road. It's not very often that we get to travel to Canada in the middle of winter so I'm pretty excited about that as we sweat through an Australian summer. I'd like to welcome Angela Akerman. Good morning Angela. Angela: Good morning and thank you. Mel: Angela a writing coach, international speaker and co-author of six best-selling books with the latest one the updated Emotion Thesaurus: a Writer's Guide to Character Expression. Angela: That was our very first book that we wrote, The Emotion Thesaurus, and it's kind of spread like wildfire. I think because it really tackled a topic that a lot of writers struggle with and there's not a lot written about there's not a lot of help in the emotion space. And I think the way we approached our book making it a really practical brainstorming tool that you can use as your writing or as you're revising it just really appealed to a lot of writers but being our very first book you know we were kind of feeling our way around it was we published it in 2012 when self publishing was really getting going and we were kind of nervous. You know will people like this or not. And so we've always wanted to go back over the years and kind of update it simply because we've learned so much in that space in that time we've grown as writers and as writing coaches and there's so many more aspects of writing that writing an emotion that we wanted to cover and there's so many other motions that we could cover in the emotional thesaurus so seeing that all of our books are a lot bigger. We've kind of gotten more verbose as we go along. We have as many motions as we can or as many settings as we can or whatever our topic is. So we have room to develop this book and so we finally decided that we were going to do it and we were going to go back and add fifty five new emotions to it. Mel: There were about 75 emotions to start with weren't they? Angela: Yes. Seventy five to start with and now this one has one hundred and thirty. Mel: It's an online resource as well as a beautiful physical book it's coming out? Angela: I think emotion can be kind of a taboo topic if you've got male characters you know in the sense that. Some people some males are not comfortable thinking about the deeper emotions that we have as people. But the reality is is we all have these emotions whether or not we show them or not and what we're trying to do through our fiction is connect to readers connect with them in a very realistic way which means you know. Pulling on...

Angela is brilliant at supporting other authors in improving their writing craft. She writes and markets with excellence and integrity. In this episode shares how she does both. Here are just a few of the things we touched on: Get the shownotes at https://authorlikeaboss.com/episode26

Angela is brilliant at supporting other authors in improving their writing craft. She writes and markets with excellence and integrity. In this episode shares how she does both. Here are just a few of the things we touched on: Some of the tools for writers available at One Stop for Writers Her recommended resource for building good story structure - Michael Hauge How to describe emotion in your writing in creative ways How to incorporate realistic responses into your character so your readers feel like they are right there The importance of knowing your crutch gestures, and how to fix them How marketing doesn’t have to be “selling,” but instead it is building relationships Why Angela Ackerman is my new author-crush And more Get the shownotes at https://authorlikeaboss.com/episode26

We talk about the book The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Expression by Becca Puglisis, Angela Ackerman as a mindfulness tool, break down the feeling Embarrassment, consider the parallels to trauma and anxiety in recovery for HSPs, and open to therapeutic healing and understanding in our everyday existence. Come find Emotional Badass on Patreon to access bonus content, the monthly video live stream, behind the scenes clips, & opportunities to work with Nikki in group format www.patreon.com/emotionalbadass

Hey there word nerds! Today I am so excited to have bestselling co-authors Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi on the show! Angela and Becca co-founded the popular Writers Helping Writers site, a hub where authors can hone their craft, as well as One Stop for Writers, an innovative online library built to help writers elevate their storytelling. I happen to be part of their current cohort of Resident Writing Coaches on Writers Helping Writers and have been a longtime fan of their work. They are also both writing coaches and international speakers, and their books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. Angela and Becca’s popular Writer’s Thesauruses series is now up to fourteen books in total with their latest edition, The Emotional Wound Thesaurus, which is available now. Listen in as we chat about their latest thesaurus, and dig deep into what an emotional wound is and how to use to create more believable characters.   In this episode Angela, Becca, and I discuss: Tips to find and use a character’s emotional wound to draw your readers in. Avoiding the research rabbit hole, finding what you need to know to write the story. What “show don’t tell” really means and how to do it right. Backstory, when to use it and why. The want, the wound, and the desire,how to combine them in your characters. Plus, each of these ladies’ #1 tip for writers. For more info and show notes: DIYMFA.com/185

Welcome to Write Through The Roof, the podcast for writers who want to improve their craft. Episode 15 with Angela Ackerman – best-selling writing reference book author “Embrace the fact that there’s always more to learn.” Episode 15 – Angela Ackerman – Show Notes Chocolate Boyfriend of the Week Helping writers with descriptions for emotions […] The post #15 – Angela Ackerman – Write Through The Roof appeared first on .

Alex and Nick celebrate the end of 2017 by taking a look back at Paper Team's past year, and a look forward at what is to come in 2018. What were the most popular Paper Team episodes of the year? What was the best thing of 2017? What new gifts did Nick and Alex exchange with one another? Plus, a word about contacting our guests. The Paper Team throws some confetti... SHOWNOTES Content Paper Scraps: A word about etiquette (01:10) 1 - Paper Team 2017: A year in review (03:26) 2 - Best of 2017 and our milestones (11:39) 3 - Preparing for 2018 as a TV writer (35:37) 4 - Paper Team goals for 2018 (44:29) Gift Exchange and Next Time On (48:10) Links "Networking 101: How to Talk With People in Hollywood" (PT05) "How to Follow Up (Without Seeming Desperate)" (PT07) "TV Pilot 101" (PT30) "TV Spec Script 101" (PT34) "TV Writer vs. Fandom: Writers’ Rooms and Fan Interaction – Paper Team Live at WonderCon 2017" (PT38) "Should You Pay for TV Writing Education?" (PT19) "Managing TV Writers ft. Daniela Garcia-Brcek (Circle of Confusion)" (PT59) "Assisting TV Comedy Writers ft. Gary Sundt (Superstore/The Goldbergs)" (PT43) "Writing Adult Comedy Animation ft. Alison Tafel (BoJack Horseman)" (PT39) "Spec v. Pilot: What You Should Be Writing Next" (PT04) "Breaking in & Writing From “Outside the System” ft. Hilliard Guess (The Screenwriter’s Rant Room)" (PT47) "TV Writing Competition Winners: What Happens Next?" (PT55) "Finding Frances" (4x07 - Nathan For You) "The Movement" (3x03 - Nathan For You) "The Movement" - Jack Garbarino "Git Gone" (1x04 - American Gods) "Firestorm" (1x10 - The Orville) "Dance Dance Resolution" (2x02 - The Good Place) "The Ricklantis Mixup" (3x07 - Rick & Morty) Dark DuckTales 2017 Draemings Julien Baker Jordan Peele Breaks Down "Get Out" Fan Theories (Video) Paper Girls "SLAM!" - Pamela Ribon "Navigating Your First TV Writing Job ft. Britta Lundin (Riverdale)" (PT67) "The Emotion Thesaurus" - Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi Hemingway Editor The Salmon Pages Scorpius comics Codenames Duet This episode brought to you by Tracking Board's Launch Pad Writing Competitions Use code PAPERTEAM to get $15 OFF when you enter a Launch Pad Competition Special thanks to Alex Switzky for helping us edit this episode. If you enjoyed this episode (and others), please consider leaving us an iTunes review at paperteam.co/itunes! :) You can find Paper Team on Twitter: Alex - @TVCalling Nick - @_njwatson If you have any questions, comments or feedback, you can e-mail us: ask@paperteam.co

Update: PT46 transcript now available Alex and Nick discuss one of the most important parts of television writing: creating compelling characters. Why are characters so vital to television shows? What are some key elements to watch out for when writing characters in a TV script? Why are character introductions so important in screenwriting? How can you create interesting people that fit your TV show? The Paper Team explores their existence... SHOWNOTES Content A special announcement (00:46) 1 - Television is a character's medium (01:41) 2 - Describing characters: introductions, archetypes, and traits (02:42) 3 - Character voices, filler characters, and empathy (17:38) 4 - Characters in the story: goals and arcs (23:43) Takeaways and Resources (28:25) Links House, M.D. Hugh Laurie "The Hero's Journey" - Joseph Campbell "The Writer's Journey" - Christopher Vogler Michael Clayton (Film) Sam Seaborn "Pilot" (1x01 - The West Wing) "Pilot" (1x01-02 - Lost) "Pilot" (1x01 - Community) Legion (TV Series) Anton Chigurh "Assisting TV Comedy Writers ft. Gary Sundt" (PT43) Maslow's hierarchy of needs Resources "The Art Of Dramatic Writing" - Lajos Egri "The Emotion Thesaurus" - Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi This episode brought to you by Tracking Board's Launch Pad Writing Competitions Use code PAPERTEAM to get $15 OFF when you enter a Launch Pad Competition Special thanks to Alex Switzky for helping us edit this episode. If you enjoyed this episode (and others), please consider leaving us an iTunes review at paperteam.co/itunes! :) You can find Paper Team on Twitter: Alex - @TVCalling Nick - @_njwatson If you have any questions, comments or feedback, you can e-mail us: ask@paperteam.co

In this prompt, Angela Ackerman invites us to explore our characters' pasts, to find out what made them the people they are today.   The Prompt: http://storyaday.org/20170506-angela/   Angela's books: http://amzn.to/2p60wgn

Amanda Shofner satisfies her need for adventure through the written word. She’s a self-published author who has written urban fantasy, non-fiction and romantic suspense. She’s a voracious reader, TV-watcher and Minneapolis native. We chatted with Amanda about her writing process, alpha readers, beta readers, pantsing, plotting and a little bit of everything in between. Here’s where to find Amanda Shofner: Website/blog: http://amandashofner.com/ My blog posts at Mill City Press/where my non-personal writing content is: https://www.millcitypress.net/blog/authors/amanda-shofner Published: http://published.com/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/amshofner Instagram: http://instagram.com/amshofner Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amshofnerauthor/ Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/amshofner/ Writing Sprint Hashtags: #NaNoWriMo #AmWriting Mill City Press self-publishing services: https://www.millcitypress.net Here’s where to find Ashley: Website: www.BrooksEditorial.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/brookseditorial Instagram: http://instagram.com/brookseditorial Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/brookseditorial Here’s where to find Abbigail: Website: www.InkwellsandImages.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/abbigailekriebs Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abbigailekriebs/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/inkwellsandimages/ Mini Book Club: The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi The Lunar Chronicle Series by Marissa Meyer Shadow & Bone by Leigh Bardugo Quotes: “Everything I have done in life has led me to where I am now.” -- Amanda “Writing is a priority and I had to figure out how to fit it in my life.” -- Amanda “I started writing 30 minutes every morning. A morning is not a morning without writing.” -- Amanda “Your self control stumbles over into other areas of your life when you choose to be really diligent about something.” -- Abbigail “You don’t need a lot of time to write.” -- Amanda “A lot of the things that I told myself about writing were wrong. Writing is what you make it.” - Amanda “If you commit to writing and if it is something you really want to do, you will be surprised in where you can find the time.” -- Amanda “[Netflix] is kind of an easy pit to fall into.” -- Ashley “It’s tough to find a balance: sometimes you do need those days where you don’t do anything.” -- Ashley “Sometimes just doing the work in your daily life takes a fair amount of creativity.” -- Ashley “The first draft can be terrible. I can hit delete later on in revision. But I need to write terrible now to get to the next point.” -- Amanda “Given the choice between something that I am really excited about and something that I want to never look at again, it was an easy choice.” -- Amanda “You need to be excited about the project that you are working on.” -- Ashley “You still run into problems, but writing can be enjoyable.” -- Amanda “Times are changing in self-publishing: it’s no longer a last resort.” -- Amanda “It’s probably smarter to focus on one thing at a time.” -- Ashley “That’s why I have a full-time job: I can write as much as I want and not have to worry about what is paying my bills.” -- Amanda “Having a full time job allows you to take a little more risk and fail a little more often.” -- Abbigail “The ability to fail is huge. You have to be able to fail in order to succeed. Failing means you are trying things.” -- Amanda “Creativity is more like a muscle: you have to train it to do what you want it to do.” -- Amanda “Writers struggle at finding other people to connect with. It is a very isolating experience.” -- Amanda “Writing sprints are how I am able to do as much as I do.” - Amanda