Good Writing Podcast

Blake Butler's Molly is a memoir about the suicide of his late wife, poet and memoirist Molly Brodak. It's one of the most controversial alt lit book of the past year – rightfully! – and, with photographs integrated and no line or chapter breaks, it's also a fascinating work of art. (New tardiness record: we recorded this in April.) Good Writing is a podcast where two MFA friends read like writers...

Haha this was recorded like months ago. Please excuse the mess. More Good Writing coming on a reliably unreliable schedule.   Good Writing is a podcast where two MFA friends read like writers and lay out craft ideas for fellow writers to steal. Co-hosted by Emily Donovan and Benjamin Kerns. Twitter: @goodwritingpod Email: goodwritingpodcast@gmail.com

What are more tools we can use to further develop theme and the point-of-view character's worldview? In her novel The Book of X , Sarah Rose Etter regularly breaks the action with lists of facts. Find the photo of Ben that reminded Emily of Edward Cullen in the Two Dollar Radio Tattoo Club Don't Let Me Be Lonely by Claudia Rankine Louie Zong's new album Rat Taxi Good Writing is a podcast where two...

Point-of-view characters. You love them. You understand them. They still do mean things. How can you keep your reader empathizing with your point-of-view character even if they do something villainous? Also: Ben (a philosophy major) and Emily (an outdoor enthusiast) interpret the climax pretty differently. Read this short story before listening to the episode: "Algal Bloom" by Kathryn Harlan in Mi...

Do you have to write about a topic in the chronological order that it happened in to understand it better? No, definitely not. In fact - maybe you shouldn't? This episode, we discuss Enjoy Me Among My Ruins by Juniper Fitzgerald (2022). It's a memoir that uses 3 forms (diary entry, flash about an influential woman in her life, and essays) to explore sex work, academic theory, and how having a daug...

In this episode we consider what it takes to write young people in a way that feels both honest and honoring with a difficult piece of fiction by B.R. Yeager from his newest collection, Burn You the Fuck Alive.   Burn You the Fuck Alive by B.R. Yeager   Good Writing is a podcast where two MFA friends read like writers and lay out craft ideas for fellow writers to steal. Co-hosted by Emily Donovan...

Carmen from Julia Armfield's debut novel Our Wives Under the Sea isn't necessary for the plot, but Emily got obsessed anyway (of course). In this episode, we discuss bringing side characters to life and using them to establish themes that your point-of-view character is too clueless to pick up on. Other links: B.R. Yeager (friend of the pod)'s new story collection  Burn You the Fuck Alive   Here's...

Today we discuss "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" with poet David van den Berg.   David's magazine - Prometheus Dreaming His new book - Love Letters from an Arsonist   Good Writing is a podcast where two MFA friends read like writers and lay out craft ideas for fellow writers to steal. Co-hosted by Emily Donovan and Benjamin Kerns. Twitter: @goodwritingpod   Email: goodwritingpodcast@gmail.com

Emily has Ben read sections from Eula Biss's Having and Being Had this week because she knows he loves to think about capitalism.  How can you come up with rules to how you write about a topic? Eula Biss sets out with constraints that make her essays both dreamlike and punchy. Good Writing is a podcast where two MFA friends read like writers and lay out craft ideas for fellow writers to steal. Co-...

Happy (belated) Halloween, Good Writing subscribers! In today's episode, we discuss Shirley Jackson's 1959 gothic horror novel The Haunting of Hill House. What makes this "psychological ghost story" work so well? Subjectivity. The characters tell us their subjection version of the events, which leaves the reader to fill in the gaps with maximum spookiness. Plus, we discuss a sentence that Ben call...

Dune is a weird book. Some might even say, a bad book. Emily does on this episode, and so does Ben (sort of). Herbert’s prose style is definitely stilted, but what Ben and Emily get into on this episode is the absolutely strange choice he’s made to write the entire thing in third person omniscient, and they try to figure out how thinking works in fiction. Ben recommends Flow my Tears, the Policema...

We love insights and character motivation on this podcast! 😤 But we also like scenes that move the story forward. This week, we discuss the hilarious Milk Fed by Melissa Broder (2021) and how she introduces a therapist character who feels realistic while still creating all of the insights that we expect when a character goes to therapy. A link we promised to include in the show notes: Listen to D...

In this episode of the Good Writing Podcast, Ben and Emily discuss what it means to write an image that by no right can actually be seen. Good Writing is a podcast where two MFA friends read like writers and lay out craft ideas for fellow writers to steal. Co-hosted by Emily Donovan and Benjamin Kerns. Twitter: @goodwritingpod   Email: goodwritingpodcast@gmail.com

It's been 6 months of podcasting! Ben and Emily review some of their favorite prompts and exercises from the past 25 episodes of the Good Writing Podcast. Listen to the full episodes clipped here: Brett Biebel - On Compactness, Objects and Perfection with Josephine Rowe How to Write with Yourself as the Subject - Megan Boyle’s Liveblog Real Settings That Mess With Your Characters from Kristen Arne...

This episode of the Good Writing Podcast deals with the ethics that the writer must grapple with when writing, especially when that writing deals with people from the so-called real world with the help of Melissa Febos' parables. " A Big Shitty Party " by Melissa Febos. Good Writing is a podcast where two MFA friends read like writers and lay out craft ideas for fellow writers to steal. Co-hosted...

Borges often looked to his work as an essayist and literary critic when looking for inspiration for his fiction, be it in the form of using that fiction to better understand writing or taking on the forms of non-fiction directly. While the first of these is inevitably touched upon in this episode, we focus more directly on the formal effort of "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" to discuss ways...

Emily picked up The Fellowship of the Ring and bought in hard. What makes the whimsical and meandering opening work so well? Ben and Emily also discuss listener mail and workshop peer pet peeves. Good Writing is a podcast where two MFA friends read like writers and lay out craft ideas for fellow writers to steal. Co-hosted by Emily Donovan and Benjamin Kerns. Twitter: @goodwritingpod   Email: good...

Author and editor John Trefry joins us to discuss (among many other things) the ways in which language itself has aesthetic value, the unknowable contours of spacetime, why writing without emotion can lead you to interesting places, and death metal. Read John's writing on the Neutral Spaces blog . Visit Inside the Castle here . The Amityville films on Tubi . "Claustrophobic Dysentery" by Cabinet G...

Today on the Good Writing Podcast we are joined by flash fiction author Brett Bieble. Topics discussed include the ways in which flash fiction approaches "perfection," the advantages of brevity, the ways that stories utilize objects, and comma patrol. Josephine Rowe's " The Vending Machine at the End of the World " Brett's Twitter Brett's story " Big Red Nation " Good Writing is a podcast where tw...

Texas poet Esteban Rodriguez joins us to discuss an excerpt from Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 (1965). We talk about writing about stuff you hate and combining long and short sentence lengths for realism and momentum. Esteban recommends The Folly by Ivan Vladislavic (2015), An Explanation of the Birds by António Lobo Antunes (translated by Richard Zenith) (1981), and Rapture by Susan Mitch...

John-Paul Hurley joins us to discuss an excerpt from Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth. How can writers make the readers feel lost in memories? We also discuss unlikeable protagonists. Other links from this week: Follow J.P. Hurley on Twitter here Hear about how a fantasy writer raised $31M on Kickstarter to self-publish four books on the Print Run Podcast here Good Writing is a podcast where two M...

We always bring ourselves with us wherever we go, even into our writing. Even if we think that writing is about something completely other to ourselves, it is impossible for that wherever to escape whoever we are. Megan Boyle takes this to the farthest extent in her autofiction piece Liveblog in which she attempted to write down every single thing that happened to her over the course of a few mont...

The co-editors in chief of Alien Literary Magazine join us to talk about two of their favorite pieces from a recent issue. We talk about the magazine’s reading process and two elements of craft that made these submissions stand out: momentum and juxtaposition. “Pilgrimage” by Brett Biebel in Alien Literary Magazine “Rave” by Esteban Rodriguez in Alien Literary Magazine Other links from this week:...

Emily has Ben read an Anton Chekhov short story about a sad lady’s sad day and discuss occasion for story. Why is this the day that you tune into your character’s life? How can we as writers make a story feel complete? On the way, Ben and Emily get derailed by a difference of opinion sparked by George Saunders’s analysis of the story. Should you consider the reader’s interpretation and anticipate...

We discuss Richard Brautigan’s novel Trout Fishing in America and the way he seems to have no interest in following any sort of rule when he’s writing. The phrase “Trout Fishing in America” can be anything; a character, a place, the phrase itself, or maybe even something more, something spiritual. Ben and Emily talk about why that’s cool and why it’s weird. Trout Fishing in America (1967) - buy it...