After just over three years the Creative Writer's Toolbelt reaches 100 episodes! To mark the occasion I'm reflecting on some of the best advice and insight I've received over that time, and to do that I am joined by writer, editor, speaker and fellow podcaster Sarah Werner. In our conversation I ask Sarah some great questions(!) and we reflect on story structure, character, setting, genre, research and the writers life. I'll also give you an update on the Handbook, which is due out in October, and there's news about the "Writer's Jumpstart" conference which is in London on November 11th, where I will be speaking with Scottish Crime writer Wendy H Jones. ...
So you've identified the key information about your settings and characters, and now you have to seed it into your work. If you do it right, you can carry your readers into a rich and immersive world with characters they will want to care about; if you do it wrong you may lose your readers altogether. The stakes are that high, and in this episode we explore the techniques and strategies for avoiding the mistakes and making the best of the information you need to give your readers. ...
This episode is the second part of a conversation I had with Dr Sandra O'Donnell, founding partner of RO Literary. Sandra is a book coach and literary agent, and author of "Your first fifteen pages" an agent's guide to writing a novel that editors will publish and readers will buy. In this episode, we look at how the 'why' of your novel has to hook the reader, how character and place work with the inciting incident and Sandra gives us her advice on mastering 3rd person Point of View in the ensemble story. We also discuss three of the most useful tools a writer can use: Airtable, Grammarly, and Story Grid. ...
