Writing Roots

Intentional or not, you are always making promises to your reader. Whether it's promises related to the genre or how you establish your first chapter, you're setting the reader's expectations. When you break those promises, it can guarantee bad reviews - or at the very least, no word-of-mouth promotion. In this episode, we discuss the kinds of promises you make and how to be intentional about it.

The topic of this episode ventures slightly into written communication, though not within the bounds of the text itself. There are lots of useful tools with formatting that can help your readers navigate your book and understand the full context, especially with non-fiction books. In this episode, we talk about the table of contents, headers and footers.

The final formatting of a novel is a key part of connecting with your readers. From font size to chapter headers, it influences the reader's experience. In this episode, we talk about when font matters and basics of formatting chapters and scenes.

One of the questions we see often popping up in writing circles is "what is head hopping?" It's often confused with simply having multiple points of view, but they are two very different things. In this episode, we look at how to identify POV in order to avoid head hopping, and different formatting tools you can use to show your readers whose thoughts they're seeing on the page.

Another way to create a rhythm in storytelling is through the sentences themselves. From the length of each sentence to the choice of punctuation, you can direct how the reader interacts with each scene. In this episode, we discuss how to use these two tools to establish the pace you want.

Establishing a rhythm - not the kind used in poetry - in scenes can convey a message of its own to your reader. Within dialogue, it can help with pacing, direct focus to important pieces of information, and tell the reader a lot about the character speaking. When you understand how to use the three main ways to tag out dialogue, you can skillfully direct the reader through scenes and quickly or sl...

The use of white space in your book is a subtle, yet powerful way you can communicate with your readers. Lots of white space with extremely short paragraphs pushes the reader through the pages faster. Long, dense paragraphs and pages with little white space will slow the reader down. Understanding how to use this white space and paragraphing to your advantage will help you communicate better with...

There are a lot of ways to communicate to your readers, including ways that go beyond the words themselves. The reader's experience also involves elements such as pacing, epigraphs, and even how the words look on the page. Before we can talk about everything that goes into unwritten communication, we need to talk about how the readers consume their books, and how understanding this can make a diff...

The reason we have spent the month looking at the structures of storytelling, characters and more is for one reason: to improve your own instincts for writing. When you become familiar with concepts like pacing, it is easier to include it in your own stories without trying. This is especially important for pantsers. For this bonus episode, we wanted to dive more into how plot structures are still...

Our final storytelling case study of the month is Big Fish, directed by Tim Burton. Signature to his style, this movie relies a lot on visual elements to convey the stark difference between the two stories being told within the film. Even then, there is still a lot to learn from various choices, from character names to the overall structure.

Stranger than Fiction is an interesting study for authors, and not just because of the meta nature of it. There is a lot to learn by studying this movie, from writing distinctive character voices to planning a woven plot where decisions influence the lives of everyone else in the story.

For this episode of our Case Studies series, we turn to a modern murder mystery that harkens back to the classics such as Agatha Christie. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery uses visual misdirection and the power of suggestion to weave an intricate closed-door mystery. Though you don't have the same visual outlet when writing a book, there is still a lot to learn from the structure, characters, and...

If you're interested in writing a memoir, stories and movies based on true events are a great place to start. When deciding to write about your own experiences, finding where to start is one of your biggest challenges. Welcome to Marwen, our case study in this episode, made intentional choices that may not have been the obvious ones for what part of Mark's life they were going to highlight. Listen...

Jaws has maintained a place in popular culture, despite being nearly 50 years old. It has memorable and distinct characters, and a monster interesting enough to haunt the nightmares of many for decades. In this episode, we break down the movie and what we can take from it to improve our own storytelling.

Studio Ghibli is known for heartwarming and magical stories. They are a great source of inspiration for many writers, and often the perfect stories to study to learn about immersive storytelling. In this episode, our hosts review Kiki's Delivery Service and break down the aspects of characters, plot and the worldbuilding weaved throughout the movie.

Another one of our favorite movies at Writing Roots is The Princess Bride. From amazing characters to an intricate story-in-a-story plot, this movie is a classic that has a lot to teach us about storytelling. In this episode, join us as we discuss what makes the characters and world stand out so much in this beloved tale.

If you're looking for good story and character structures to study, a great place to start is with Pixar movies. One of our favorites at Writing Roots is Up. Even the first 10 minutes is a perfectly encapsulated story structure that sets the viewer up for the rest of the movie. Listen along with us as we break down the characters, plot and worldbuilding into something you can use for your own crea...

To begin our sixth year of Writing Roots, we wanted to equip you with the knowledge of how to break down stories that you consume so you can use them in your own writing. We've discussed before different tricks and ways to take influence from your favorite books and authors. This month, though, we'll be working together. We begin with an overview of what it is to analyze a story. We'll break down...

The crossover between writing and TTRPGs is nothing new, as represented by the long-running podcast Authors & Dragons . From character work to plot development, TTRPGs are the perfect place to get ideas or improve your skill in storytelling. We sat down with Rick Gualtieri , author of Bill of the Dead and The Girl Who Punches Werewolves and member of the Authors & Dragons podcast, to talk...

Tabletop games are a great place to test so many storytelling elements, from character dynamics to mechanics. It's also a great place to receive immediate feedback. You'll know if a joke landed if the other players laughed. You'll know a character makes sense if the other players can work well with them and the DM can integrate their backstory easily. There's a balance, though, to the feedback you...

LitRPGs are rising in popularity in the writing world, especially among fans of fantasy TTRPGs or video games. In this episode, we discuss the LitRPG genre and how you can pull from your gaming experiences to help you craft an interesting and fun story.

Even if you aren't are looking to write a fantasy or sci-fi story, one of the best tools you can use to write anything from fight scenes to the world itself, is to look at the mechanics of TTRPGs. Each kind of book has defined everything from travel to fighting. Action economy can help you build scenes that make sense, monsters that pose a challenge. Listen for more on how you can use the game mec...

If you plan to write fantasy or science fiction, a great resource will be tabletop games. There is so much you can learn from the structure provided for gameplay, and especially for the magic and tech systems. Each system comes with pre-built structure, limitations, and capabilities. Even without directly copying those systems, you can still learn a lot through learning and studying how they work...

Backstories are a key piece to characters in tabletop games, such as Dungeons & Dragons. Players usually create that backstory, and the game master helps determine what to do with that information. Then they work together to weave the backstory into the current storyline. For writers, having practice at this through gaming can help you figure out where that line is between backstory and curren...

From the other players at your table to the vast cultures available within the worlds, there is a lot to learn about diversity from engaging in TTRPGs. You can explore different experiences through your characters and their interactions. You can learn about team balance, where everyone has their unique role and contributions. All of this you can translate over into your own storytelling through wr...