Explore " am writing" with insightful episodes like "Behind The Scenes with Tracy Sierra", "‘The End is the Beginning’ (A Non-Linear Finale)", "‘The End is the Beginning’ (A Non-Linear Finale)", "Episode 19: Kaaron Warren - Multi-Award Winning SFF and Horror Author." and "SPECIAL EPISODE: Zena Unpacks Critical Changes in the Marketplace that Impact the Types of Stories Being Sold as a Guest on Writer's Chat" from podcasts like ""In Suspense", "Auscast Literature Channel", "Word Docs", "Bohemiana" and "The Storyteller’s Mission with Zena Dell Lowe"" and more!
Welcome to series 11, episode 2 of In Suspense, a podcast for fans and writers of crime and thrillers. Today we are going Behind The Scenes with Tracy Sierra and chatting about her amazing book NIghtwatching which is out now & getting rave reviews! We also have some other book recommendations this week which are: 27 Minutes by Ashley Tate, The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey, Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout and Our Holiday by Louise Candlish.
They're baaaaaaaack! The Word Docs have spent the last couple of years recording random episodes and failing to release them. But today is the dawn of a new age. Otherwise known as 2023. Alex stops polishing his awards, Amy crawls out of the writing cave, and Sean returns from a galaxy far, far away (as in, Ireland) and the 'quite interesting' episodes have been collected into a 'transitional' season of uncontained writing joy. Time travel through a year and a half of delayed Word Doc-ery, with writing tips, pitch fests, research chats and more in the clap-free world of the new ambisonic sound studio. Happy Writing!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
They're baaaaaaaack! The Word Docs have spent the last couple of years recording random episodes and failing to release them. But today is the dawn of a new age. Otherwise known as 2023. Alex stops polishing his awards, Amy crawls out of the writing cave, and Sean returns from a galaxy far, far away (as in, Ireland) and the 'quite interesting' episodes have been collected into a 'transitional' season of uncontained writing joy. Time travel through a year and a half of delayed Word Doc-ery, with writing tips, pitch fests, research chats and more in the clap-free world of the new ambisonic sound studio. Happy Writing!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Today's episode is with the wonderful multi-award winner Kaaron Warren, whose horror and sff novels and short stories crackle on the page . Kaaron is a wonderful guest, hilarious and game to chat about anything. This conversation is all about the sheer enjoyment of words in all forms, embracing the similarities and differences between comedy and horror and everything in between.
S2_E38 This special episode replays Zena's recent presentation as a guest on Writer's Chat, where she was invited to speak on how writers can make their story ideas commercial. The answer, Zena says, is not as simple as it once was, because we've entered a new paradigm when it comes to storytelling. No longer do the old rules apply in terms of what gets published or made into a movie. Today, in order for you to have what the industry deems "a commercial story idea," you'll need a bigger story.
In other words, there's no room today for a one-off, or a stand alone story. What the powers that be want and need is for writers to create story WORLDS. You have to be able to create a universe that has the potential to host more than one kind of story, something with transmedia potential.
Given the realities of the way things are today, Zena discusses the kinds of things that writers need to take into account when they're developing their story ideas so that they can maximize their chances of success, but it's important that they don't lose sight of their own passions in the process. To this end, Zena also suggests important things for writers to consider so as to avoid letting the new paradigm stifle us, derail us or demoralize us completely.
DOWNLOAD FULL TRANSCRIPTS FOR FREE on the podcast page of our website.
UP NEXT - Next week, we will resume our series on A-ha moments, with key insights to improve your own writing.
HELPFUL LINKS AND RESOURCES - The Storyteller’s Mission online platform offers one-on-one COACHING, SCRIPT and MANUSCRIPT CRITIQUES, and ADVANCED CLASSES ON WRITING. Send us an email at info@thestorytellersmission.com, or if you have a question or a specific writing related topic that you would like Zena to consider addressing on a future episode, LEAVE US A VOICEMAIL!
Support the show
When do we find time to write? Well that's up to you. I figured on my way to my day job (for now) I'd try to give you all some tidbits, some info and maybe the needed kick in the butt for us all.
Things don't have to be perfect for us to CREATE. Take advantage of what is all around you.
Peace.
Thank you for joining us on this ride.
Follow our Patreon page and support our podcast https://www.patreon.com/LegionofWritersPod
Be sure to follow us on the web and support us though our Patreon page. You’ll have access to some of the behind the scene shenanigans and get some shout outs from us as well.
patreon.com/LegionofWritersPod
In this first solo episode of season 2, I share my story of why I write and how writing helped me reclaim my voice and my power. I dive into the healing process of writing to make a deeper meaning of our past and how being witnessed by our truth-telling can create change in the world. I also do a Q & A from questions asked on Instagram at the end of this episode and share details about what clients experience working with me as their writing coach as well as my personal memoir writing journey. If you are writing your memoir or considering starting this journey, this episode is for you.
Book Memoir Momentum, a 90-minute coaching intensive to help you write a chapter of your memoir and learn the embodied storytelling framework you can use throughout your writing process.
https://www.sincerelymissmary.com/memoirmomentum
Get a bird’s-eye view of A Wizard of Earthsea while Leslie and Valerie offer a macro analysis of this fantasy origin story using Story Grid’s Editor’s Six Core Question. The 1968 story was written by Ursula K. Le Guin.
McCauley discusses the motivations behind the fourth book in the Aaron Mackey / Billy Sunday series as well as what's next for these two great characters.
Terrence continues to discuss his western works, this time with the second book in the acclaimed Aaron Mackey / Billy Sunday series, DARK TERRITORY. He discusses the lessons he learned from trying a new genre, how to improve his work and how feedback from WHERE THE BULLETS FLY helped him craft this new novel.
Listen to Terrence talk about his first award-winning western WHERE THE BULLETS FLY as well as his inspiration for trying a new genre.
In this episode, Terrence discusses how he hit his stride in the third book of the acclaimed Aaron Mackey / Billy Sunday series GET OUT OF TOWN. He talks about introducing new characters while allowing the universe he created to evolve on its own. He also drops some hints about what happens in the next explosive entry in the series - THE DARK SUNRISE.
Learn what The Terrence McCauley Podcast is going to be about!
Announcement:The Slow Novel Lab is open for a special summer benefit session, with 50% of the profit going to Direct Relief!
Nina examines the anchors in her life: her work, her desk, the mug she drinks her morning coffee from. She offers a writing exercise to ease you into exploring your own anchors, and the anchors in your fiction.
If you’d like to share your anchor, or what you wrote about it, or your experience of writing (or not writing) during this time, we'd love to hear from you! Use the hashtag #writinginplace on Twitter and Instagram.
Follow along with the project on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/nina_lacour/
and
https://www.instagram.com/theslownovellab/
Subscribe to Letters from Nina for the full text of this season along more photographs of Nina's home.
Enroll in The Slow Novel Lab for an transformative and interactive six weeks with Nina and fellow participants.
Jessica Lahey, author of The Gift of Failure and storied educator, shares the secrets of what makes teens successful in academics, at home, and in the world. If your teen does fail, Lahey knows where to look to find the silver lining.
Bonfire Digital Wellness has a diverse team of seasoned, compassionate school counselors, ready to coach your teen. Check it out today and take advantage of a 1-month FREE trial: BonfireDW.org/talkingtoteens
Full show notes
Picture the scene: your teen sends you a frantic message from school, telling you that they left an important piece of weekly vocab homework behind. You walk to their room, check their desk, and immediately spot their homework sitting off to the side of their desk, buried under an empty glass of water and their video game system. What is the right thing to do in this situation?
This is no easy dilemma for a parent to solve, and an even greater question is how to improve your life as a teenager to not make these mistakes.
On one hand, you would allow your child to fail by not bringing their work to them. On the other hand, is it totally right to fix every problem for you child? The idea of failure so often challenges the deepest motivations of a person, and how one responds to failure is a defining aspect of character. Improvement from failure demonstrates a person’s fortitude and drive for success.
Culturally, the idea of failure for children has been sometimes rejected by parents, as one of the core goals of parenthood is to raise your child to be successful. The mentality of “my kids are always right” can be exemplified as a parent meeting with their kid’s teacher in order to advocate for their child’s work, replacing a bad grade with one that the parent deems appropriate.
How to improve your life as a teenager is a problem that I’ve had on my mind lately. We all know that failure is human because nobody is perfect. But how do we help teens learn how to improve your life as a teenager through failure?
Failure has been on my mind because children who, say, always forget their homework but have Mom or Dad to save the day never learn the lesson of forgetting their homework. The lesson parents are telling their children is that they will always have someone to cover for their mistakes. This is not how to improve your life as a teenager. How is it possible for children and teens to improve into the best version of themselves if they are never forced to confront failure even once in their lives?
With me this week on Talking to Teens is Jessica Lahey. Jessica is an astounding woman who has taught for years in middle school and high school, written the New York Times parent-teacher advice column, the Atlantic and Washington Post. Her book, The Gift of Failure, is a NYT bestseller and can be found in bookstores across the world, from Argentina to the United States and everywhere in between. Jessica is an expert on the idea of failure and how it should be used by parents to encourage teens on how to improve your life as a teenager, and I am so excited to have her with me this week!
Solving the Dilemma
The product of steering kids away from failure makes them unable to cope with the idea of failure, and therefore are unable to find an angle to improve from their failure. By coincidence, Jessica had encountered the same conundrum of whether or not she should bring her child’s homework to school for them. Jessica was going to her son’s school that day for an unrelated reason, but she was faced with the dilemma of bringing her son’s homework to school, or leave it at home and force him to confront his mistake?
Jessica decided to leave her son’s work at home, reasoning that she wanted to give him the chance to prove that he could adapt to his mistakes and learn how to improve your life as a teenager. When her son came home that day, he had already spent some time thinking about what had happened with his teacher. He told Jessica that he wanted to create a checklist so that he could practice remembering his homework every day. For the past couple years, Jessica’s son has made a checklist every year for the things he needs before he goes to school.
This is a perfect demonstration of the positive learning and improvement that can arise from situations when teens are forced to confront the idea of failure. Moments of failure can be some of the strongest lessons for parents to use because the way teens respond to adversary is a core function of a human being. By being placed into situations where teens will be forced to confront their shortcomings, they will be able to learn how to improve your life as a teenager. For this reason, it is important that parents don’t maintain the façade of perfection with their children.
Identifying Failure as Growth
It could be difficult for a parent to understand how to improve your life as a teenager and when they can use failure as a moment to grow. One example of how to use a moment for growth is when your teen doesn’t complete a chore in the right manner. As a parent, your impulse might be to redo the chore in a manner that you are satisfied with, but this overrides the potential for your teen to grow in the situation.
A good method to demonstrate how to improve your life as a teenager would be to bring your kid back in to the situation and explain to them why you aren’t satisfied with their chore. Asking them to fix the chore so that its done in an efficient and productive manner gives your child the chance to learn from their mistakes and practice methods to remember how to do it properly when they are asked again. Doing things right the first time can save teens a lifetime of stress.
Additionally, it is good to remember that teens are teens, and nobody is perfect! They are still developing all the time, and it should be easy to forgive your young adult if they do make a mistake. Feeling afraid to fail is not how to improve your life as a teenager.
Sometimes teens will totally forget how to load the dishwasher correctly, or where the broom is kept in the house. Forgiveness for instances of forgetfulness is a wonderful skill to assist parents when teaching their children failure. Kids become more and more competent with each passing day, and to expect them to be completely perfect is absurd. They’re absolutely better at emptying the dishwasher today than they were a year ago. Keeping a mindset over long-term growth can help parents be more comfortable in teaching failure, because you know that teens are always improving.
In addition to how to improve your life as a teenager, Jessica and I discuss…
Thank you so much for tuning in! I hope that you have been able to take away some of this wonderful information Jessica Lahey shared about how to improve your life as a teenager. If you’re interested in learning more tips from Jessica on the art of failure, check out her book The Gift of Failure, available wherever books are sold. Have a great day!
Back in 1970, apparently love meant never having to say you were sorry. Or so Love Story, that year’s popular tearjerker, would have us believe. The film was directed by Arthur Hiller from a screenplay by Erich Segal, who also wrote the accompanying novel.
Each week one of the Story Grid Editors—Jarie Bolander, Valerie Francis, Anne Hawley, Kim Kessler, or Leslie Watts—pitches a film as an example of a significant story principle. The rest of us explore different aspects of the story so we can all understand it better.
We’re in Nashville this week for Story Grid University’s second Editor Certification course. Join us for some lively interviews with the students who are about to join the exclusive club of Story Grid Certified Editors, along with our own insights and next steps.
In our typical episodes, one of the Story Grid Editors—Jarie Bolander, Valerie Francis, Anne Hawley, Kim Kessler, or Leslie Watts—pitches a film as an example of a significant story principle. The rest of us explore different aspects of the story so we can all understand it better.
“It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but you are not well-read enough.”
It’s 20 minutes of professional inspiration for writers and editors this time as the Roundtablers interview Shawn Coyne on the critical importance of reading more widely and deeply.
Welcome to the Bite Size Edition of the Editor Roundtable Podcast. Here on the Roundtable we're dedicated to helping you become a better writer, following the Story Grid method developed by Shawn Coyne.
In these episodes we bring you some shorter solo articles and interviews on topics that interest us as writers.
This week, the team goes global with the foreign language film A Man Called Ove to study Global Internal Genres. This 2015 Swedish comedy-drama was written and directed by Hannes Holm.
Each week one of the Story Grid Editors—Jarie Bolander, Valerie Francis, Anne Hawley, Kim Kessler, or Leslie Watts—pitches a film as an example of a significant story principle. The rest of us explore different aspects of the story so we can all understand it better.
Sit in a chair and watch the suspense unfold this week as Valerie and the other Roundtablers examine Rear Window.
Each week one of the Story Grid Editors—Jarie Bolander, Valerie Francis, Anne Hawley, Kim Kessler, or Leslie Watts—pitches a film as an example of a significant story principle. The rest of us explore different aspects of the story so we can all understand it better.
Stay up to date
For any inquiries, please email us at hello@podcastworld.io