Stupid Shit Other People Pass Off as ‘How to Write’

A debut novelist, Roger Jones, author of The Final Victory, joined Kasie and Rex in the studio on January 20, 2024. 

Welcome to the studio, Roger Jones. The Final Victory is set to be released April 30th and is available for pre-order now on Amazon.

The Final Victory follows Tripp Avery, a prominent businessman whose life gets disrupted by a cancer diagnosis. Tripp decides, during the peak of his battle with cancer to coach a mixed masters dragon boat on its way to the national championships. While the rowers work through their own cancer battles, personal lives, and identity crises, Tripp finds himself pushing himself and everyone else to overcompensate for being dealt a bad hand.

In Tuesday’s Summer Series session on marketing, a writer asked how she could protect her idea at pitchfest. She was going to share it with agents and publishers and didn’t want them to steal it or give it to another writer.

Interestingly, the same thing had JUST come up on an episode of Suits which Charlie is watching and I’m giving one ear/one eye to when I’m between songs on Spotify or stories on my kindle. In the episode, a writer wanted to sue the bookstore/publisher she worked for because she had shared an idea with her boss and her boss had shared the idea with an established author. That author then wrote the book and the publisher and store was selling the book. The writer, a clerk at the store, claimed she’d had other ideas that the publisher took as well.

When the clerk first told the lawyer this story, I responded, “Write the book. The idea doesn’t count until it’s written.”

Anyway, the story went on with the lawyer trying to help the clerk only to finally turn on her saying, that same idea could have been any one of these titles and present her with a stack of books. The point? Ideas are nothing. It’s the work of writing the actual story that counts.

So, after delivering this same advice to the woman on the Summer Series session I said, “Have you written the book?” She said no. I said, “Don’t pitch. Don’t query. Go somewhere and write that book. Then query and pitch. No one pays for ideas. They pay for finished books.”

Read more on the blog.

So last week we did time travel and I have to confess, it was a LOT so I could think through my own time traveling vampires novel and the needs, uses, and functionality of time travel in the plot. So thanks.

This week we’re doing the mentor-apprentice relationship and once again, I’m using it for my own purposes. See, I’m writing about a new-ish vampire, Blue, and his sire, Raven, and the hero-worship of progeny to sire – especially given the rules of their faith – and how eventually Raven will betray Blue because, well, some might say our heroes always let us down.

What is the mentor-apprentice relationship? So this link talks about the mentor specifically and defines it as: The mentor is a source of knowledge, wisdom and support to the main character, and is typically a side character who is static.

The mentor’s role in the story is to be wise and unwavering, to offer an objective view of the hero’s struggles and to instruct and teach the hero. They’re usually experienced, have some wisdom the hero needs, and can show up in the nick of time to save the hero or bail him out of a tough spot.

Read more in the blog.

Rex is back from vacay. Renewed, refreshed, ready to hit the ground running? But he didn’t have a topic idea so I hijacked the show for a time travel discussion. I’ll admit it’s a Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) from-the-vault inspired topic.

The song is Timeless and it’s on Taylor’s recently released re-recorded album Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) there’s a great story behind her re-recording the music, BTW, we can chat about that if we want. But this song was one she’d imagined for the album and cut way-back-when and so with the re-record she’s added it in. She said later it was inspired by Caroline and Klaus, characters in The Vampire Diaries, so appropriate I’d be into it, right? 

The theme of the song is that no matter when they met, they would have had an epic love – we would have been timeless.

Read more on the blog

Full show notes including links to both books on the blog here.

Full show notes out on the blog here.

Joining me in the studio today is Dr. Anna Courie, an Army wife, nurse, corporate social responsibility officer, and author of six titles. Anna’s 20+ years in the healthcare field include experience in public and private sector health promotion. Anna is a graduate of Clemson University, the University of Wyoming, and Ohio State University. In her spare time, she consults in public health, facilitates retreats, writes books, and blogs for Living Compass Ministries, Christ Walk, 50 Days of Fabulous, Earth and Altar, and Lent Madness. Anna loves her family, Clemson football, traveling, reading and hiking. Home is wherever the Army (and God) sends her.

Let’s talk about what Anna’s been up to recently. Whether there are any new book ideas on the horizon. How the changes happening in her personal and professional life are sending her to the page to write or keeping her from that creative space. We’ll just riff a bit with Anna cuz she’s my bud and I think a really cool person to hang out with.

We’ve done the 7 Basic Plots before (March 2022) so we’re just going to quick review it and then deep dive on the ones Anna’s most interested in.

So this comes from the book by Christopher Booker which was basically his opus. It was the culmination of his career studying literature, and, honestly, is a pretty comprehensive list. So a couple of caveats:

• It’s a list of basics which means they’re not all encompassing and there are certainly exceptions.
• It’s an attempt to generalize which means they’re open for interpretation.

Here are the 7 Basic Plots:

1. Overcoming the Monster
2. Rags to Riches
3. The Quest
4. Voyage and Return
5. Comedy
6. Tragedy
7. Rebirth

Too general to be useful? Helpful in terms of a general outline for setting (and meeting) expectations?

This week I’m joined by Paul Davis, prize-winning journalist and Brown University grad. As a freelance writer and reporter, he has written for large and small newspapers from the Tampa Tribune to The New York Times. At the Providence Journal, he chaired the newspaper’s in-house writing committee. He won awards for his stories about the homeless, New England’s struggling fishermen, the Narragansett Indians and the working poor. The Journal submitted his seven-part series on the Rhode Island-South Carolina-West Africa slave trade for a Pulitzer Prize. Paul’s also our SCWA Vice President and chair of the Events & Education committee which is responsible for the upcoming Fall 2023 Storyfest event (more on that later).

Ash Smith, another SCWA Board member with a BFA in creative and professional writing. Ash is currently are working on their first novel. We met at the Fall 2022 Pawley’s Island Conference for SCWA and were fast friends. Ash has served with the Membership Committee in the capacity of outreach at events including Charleston’s AtomaCON in April and Columbia Writers’ Alliance’s Literary Arts Festival in May. As with most volunteer positions, once is never enough and everytime I’ve asked Ash to serve, they’ve stepped forward with enthusiasm. So thanks, both of you for being here.

We’re going to talk a LOT about Storyfest and what it is and how people can learn more and get registered.

Full show notes out on the blog here.

Full show notes out on the blog here.

Full show notes out on the blog here.

Full episode show notes out on the blog here.