Story Works Round Table | Conversations About Craft

This week on the Story Works Round Table, Alida, Robert, & Kathryn discuss world religion and whether or not a story needs one. Religion is a large part of culture at the macro (world) level and micro (personal) level. Even if your character rejects religion, it's probably part of his world, something he's steeped in like it or not. Is religion-building genre specific? Can you ever ignore the...

This week on the Story Works Round Table, Alida, Kathryn, & Robert discuss the almighty endnote. What is it and why is it so important? Getting a handle on the final moment of your novel early on will help you shape your character’s journey through the plot, theme, and character arc. Kathryn gets inspired! Show notes and links at www. StoryWorksPodcast.com. Visit WordEssential.com and book a d...

Ever wonder what goes into translating a novel? How translators work with a text? What role, if any, the author of the original plays in the translation? Are you considering having your work translated into another language? Alida and Kathryn welcome special guests Anja Bauermeister and Christina Low to the Round Table to discuss translating works from English to German. This week, we check out an...

This week on the Story Works Round Table, Alida, Robert, and Kathryn discuss those tics we can't seem to avoid when we sit down at the writing desk. They're not all bad. Some actually help us get ourselves into a scene or feeling along with our characters. Key to knowing whether your writing tics are helpful or painful is identifying them and understanding the revision tactics that will turn a tic...

This week at the Story Works Round Table, Alida, Robert, and Kathryn continue to workshop each others strengths and weaknesses as productive writers. Last week, Alida took the hot seat. Now it's Kathryn's and Robert's turns. Kathryn builds a system to boost her productivity after mining her own life for inspiration--meal planning can make you a better writer. Robert seeks external, objective motiv...

This week at the Round Table, Alida, Kathryn, & Robert mastermind each other's progress during our mid-year check-in. We go way beyond basic talk of motivation, dropping the carrot and the stick in the middle of the road. We get meta! We all came away with exciting new insights, unique to each of us, that will help us reframe our process and our progress. These takeaways could help you go deep...

This week on the Story Works Round Table, Alida, Robert, and Kathryn continue to explore what makes a sentence great. We discuss lyrical prose, surprising readers with a sentence-level twist, the use of evocative verbs and adjectives, show don't tell, "wow" sentences that make you stop and re-read, and a dip into multiple POVs and how the voice of your sentences must vary according to the POV. We...

This week at the Round Table, Alida, Kathryn, & Robert continue their conversation about writing great sentences in novels of any genres. How many types of sentences are there? Do sentences need to be grammatically correct to be great? Do they need to be lyrical to be great? No. The sentences we craft serve a variety of purposes in our prose.  Show notes & links at www. StoryWorksPodc...

This week, Alida, Robert, & Kathryn discuss what makes a great sentence. There’s probably more to it than you’d think. We start off with a surprise—at least we surprised ourselves: it was a harder to find great sentences than we expected it to be. What’s the difference between a great sentence and a great novel? Show notes & links at www. StoryWorksPodcast.com. Visit WordEssential.com and...

This week at the Round Table, Alida and Kathryn discuss critiques from the red pen side of things. And what skills should a good critique partner have? No writer wants the "it's good" critique. Or the "trashed my work" critique. What actually goes into becoming a quality critiquer of others' work? We talk about both the etiquette and skills required to  give fair and constructive feedback to...

This week at the Round Table, Kathryn and Alida discuss discoveries they're making about planning and revising a novel midstream. Kathryn is between drafts on a science fiction work, and Alida is in the middle of a first draft of a historical fiction novel, so why are they both dealing with world building and research now ? What can you learn about prewriting, writing, and revision from their proc...

This week, Kathryn brings an interesting topic to the Round Table: how can we examine our supporting characters arcs, desires, or goals in relation to our other characters? How does one character influence another? Warning: this episode might change the way you do prewriting for the rest of your life. Show notes and links at www. StoryWorksPodcast.com. Visit WordEssential.com and book a discovery...

In this week’s Story Works Round Table, Alida, Kathryn, and Robert talk about good characters doing bad things. When your protagonist makes more than a mistake, when she actually does something...well, bad. Bad enough to turn a reader against her. Show notes and links at www. StoryWorksPodcast.com. Visit WordEssential.com and book a discovery call today!

This week on the Story Works Round Table, Alida, Kathryn, and Robert discuss plausibility. How can we keep our stories plausible in the reader's eyes when we're crafting a world full of the improbable? From cozy mysteries where half the village dies and the dog holds the key to solving the case to hard science fiction where the story world's facts are beyond the scope of our known world, it's our...

This week, Alida, Robert, & Kathryn spar at the Round Table. What makes a fight scene memorable to readers? How do you manage both choreography & time in fight scenes? How much detail is just enough? What about wounding your characters? Making the epic specific? And more! Show notes and links at www. StoryWorksPodcast.com. Visit WordEssential.com and book a discovery call today!

This week, Alida, Robert, and Kathryn discuss what it takes to get a character from point A to point B in your story without boring your reader. Sometimes a traveling chapter is about covering actual distance through your setting, but more often it's about mental traveling, getting your character and your reader to understand some piece of information important to your plot. Done poorly, a traveli...

This week, Alida and Nico continue their in depth conversation about fantasy. We discuss intrusion and liminal fantasy, world building, inspiration, theme, and more. Show notes and links at www. StoryWorksPodcast.com. Visit WordEssential.com and book a discovery call today!

This week we do something never done before at the Round Table. My very special friend, Nicodemus Wolfgang Taranovsky, joins me in my living room for an actual sit-down chat all about...writing fantasy! Show notes & more at www. StoryWorksPodcast.com. Visit WordEssential.com and book a discovery call today!

This week, Alida, Robert, & Kathryn have Mike Stop Continues back at the Round Table to discuss the ways we use narrative to guide a reader into and through your story. We cover common issues with sequencing, action, & delivering surprise. We explore how to guide the reader with narrative prowess, and give you tips for finding problems in your manuscript as you revise. Show notes & mor...

This week, Alida, Kathryn, & Robert welcome special guest Mike Stop Continues back to the Round Table to continue our discussion about theme. This week, we’re looking at how theme functions in our revision process. We talk about the role of theme in description, action, and dialogue; making each story element carry its weight; the role of specific detail; and making your story meaningful. Show...

This week, Alida, Kathryn welcome Mike Stop Continues back to the show to discuss prewriting theme. We cover:  Show notes and more at www. StoryWorksPodcast.com. Visit WordEssential.com and book a discovery call today!

This week, Alida, Kathryn, and Robert discuss reveals. What they are. How many you should have. How they work in the plot arc. When they fail (when they upset readers like Kathryn!). How to write them.  Show notes and more at www. StoryWorksPodcast.com. Visit WordEssential.com and book a discovery call today!

This week Alida, Kathryn, & Robert celebrate our 100th episode and revisit the past. What is the role of flashbacks in the forward movement of a story? How can you use them effectively? What's the danger of using a flashback? What do you need to consider when choosing how to effectively reveal your character's past to the reader?  If you're enjoying the show, please rate, review, and shar...

This week, Alida, Robert, and Kathryn discuss the problem of multiple projects. Our listener Deanna wanted to know how should we prioritize what to work on when we have multiple projects and no specific deadline? The question raised the issues of carrying multiple projects, productivity and making progress, how to set up priorities, and the role of passion in your writing life. Then we addressed K...

This week, Alida and Robert discuss capturing your character's shadow side. We all have aspects of ourselves that a little bit dark. When your character's dark side surfaces, how do you keep it real without disengaging your reader? What is the role of the shadow in story? How do we discover our character's shadow side and play it out in story, when the character's not aware of it him or herself? S...