The Creative Writer's Toolbelt

Hello and welcome to one of my occasional episodes of the Creative Writers Toolbelt, this is episode 181, and I want to ask you a question - Do you know your dead salmon from your downpipe? If you know what these phrases mean, well done! But whether you do or don't, please do keep listening. In any event, I hope you found that title amusing, and that would be entirely appropriate as the subject of this episode is comedic writing, the subtle art of writing something funny. And to join me to explore this is my good friend the blogger, speak and author Ruth Leigh. Ruth is the author of the Issy Smugge series, the third installment of which is titled “The Continued Times of Isabella M Smugge.” Has just been released as of September 2022. If you’ve ever thought about comedic writing , or you’ve discovered just how difficult it is to do well, then this episode is for you – enjoy!

This episode is a conversation with Written Word Media's Senior Marketing Manager, Clayton Noblit. In this episode we talk about what basics an author needs to focus on, using our own email lists, Facebook pages, and social media, and web pages, we also talk about how Written Word Media can take away some of the pain that authors at every level of success will feel.

Erik Harper Klass is the founder of Submitit, a company that directly addresses the stress and uncertainty of the submissions treadmill. Submitting your work, again and again, can be time-consuming and exhaustive, especially if you get more than enough rejection slips to cover the walls of your bathroom. Submitit is a company that takes on the job of reviewing the journals to which writers might submit their work and decides on the best places to make a submission. Submitit will select the journals to submit to, craft the submission, and even make some of the editorial improvements that might be required. Submitit takes the bad dating app reality of trying to find a journal for your work and replaces it with the wise and kindly matchmaker, finding the best match for your work, and approaching the right journals. if you are writing literary fiction or narrative non-fiction this kind of service might be helpful for you. Find out more at www.submititnow.com

My guest for this episode is the non-fiction and science fiction writer Jessie Kwak. In this episode, we talk about the different writing processes that people use, how to choose the right one, and why some writers have found the pandemic such a difficult time. We discuss the importance of finding a writing process that brings us joy, how essential it is for us to know ourselves as writers, and when and how to hire the right professionals to help you with your writing. I had a great time talking to Jessie I hope you find the conversation useful to listen to, here it is.

Nick Narbutovskih grew up knowing that he wanted to be a pilot in the military, now Assistant Operations Officer Narbutovskih with Air Force Special Operations Command, and he now trains others who are going to be pilots in the US Air Force. On the day of our conversation, Nick was supposed to be able to talk to me from the comfort of his own home but the military being what it is he was required at the base that day so we conducted the conversation with Nick stepping out for a few minutes to his car, so I’m afraid the sound quality is a little off what I would normally hope to bring you. But this is a fascinating conversation, with some great insights for writers into the minds and characters of those in the military, there are some real gems here for anyone who wants to know how a military context would actually work, and how groups of soldiers, sailors, and airforce personnel think and behave with each other, both outside of and in combat situations. In this conversation, we talk about how the habits and disciplines of the military have helped Nick with his writing, the character traits and behaviors of people in the military, both in and out of combat situations, and why the reason people stay in the military might be different from the reason they joined. I hope you find this conversation helpful, here it is.

In this episode, my guest is the Digital Marketing expert Jason Smith. In this conversation, we talk about the essentials of setting up a web and managing social media accounts for your brand as a writer. We talk about the best platform to use to design a first website, the importance of design aesthetics, and what the author needs to use their website for. We also talk about social media, how to make it not scary, what the functions of social media engagement are, how to choose the right platforms, and what kind of content to put on it. This was a fascinating conversation, full of the kind of smart insights you need to get to grips with a website and social media as an author, I hope you enjoy it, here it is. If you are listening to this before September 2022 and you are a Christian author please join us for the British Christian Writers Conference, where you can hear Jason speaking and talk to him about your digital needs. We will be at Ridley Hall in Cambridge on Saturday 3 September, join us for marketing tips, craft insights, and encouragement for you and your writing, just search for The British Christian Writing Conference online, or go to: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/storycraftpress/636912

My guest for this episode is someone who has spent nearly 50 years in publishing. Tony Collins has worked for a number of publishing houses, owned three magazines, published an astonishing 1,400 books, and is now a literary agent. In this conversation, we talk about the lessons he’s learned in his career. We talk about the most common error that writers make when with their work, how the author must remember they are a guest at the reader's table, and there are many other things for readers to do. We talk about the essential power of narrative, why we can’t write in the way Dickens did, the place for anecdote in non-fiction, finding the right publisher, engaging well with them, and why it's essential for your book to get the title and your hook right. Tony speaks with decades of experience and there are some wonderful, fundamental insights here, I hope you find the conversation useful, here it is.

Welcome to Ep 174, my guest for this episode is the writer and writing coach Lynn Hightower. Lynn writers thriller with a darkly paranormal twist. In this conversation, we discuss why we do need to tell as well as show, especially in terms of plot, why we need to hear the character’s voice in our head rather than try to pick and mix their traits and characteristics. We also talk about why clarity in your prose is so important, what do you do to keep the reader hooked, and why every writer needs to try to limit the number of desks they own! I had a wide-ranging conversation with Lynn, full of humour, insight, and craft advice – I hope you enjoy listening to it.

Suppose you discovered that nearly all of the great stories written conform to a particular structure, a structure that would help to guide you in your writing and that, subconsciously at least, your readers are expecting to see in your work. This is the contention of my guest today, the writer and creative writing tutor, Jessica Brody. Jessica took the classic screenwriting text “Save the cat” and applied it to the process of writing a novel, producing the appropriately titled “Save the cat writes a novel”. In our conversation, Jessica and I explored the key beats in the 15 beat structure, why pacing is so important, how you create a problem, a want, and a need for your protagonist, and why it’s important to make your reader feel smart. This was a fun and informative conversation I hope you enjoy listening to it, here it is.

I have always believed that there are important lessons for prose writers to learn from poetry, and I also think we can always gain something from the joy and discipline of listening to good poetry. To test and prove this belief, in this episode, I am talking to the teacher, poet, and translator Aaron Poochigian. Aaron has a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Minnesota and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University. In this episode, we talk about the rise of the prose form over poetry, why anyone might write poetry, why poetry is like music and should be heard as music, how we can push out into the world with our work. We talk about good and bad ambiguity, what novelists can learn from poetry, including the use of rhythm, compression or the economy of language, and using the full range of senses in description and setting. This is an episode of those who love poetry or at least see its potential to teach us something for our craft, I hope you enjoy it, here it is.

Welcome to episode 171 of the Creative Writers Toolbelt. My guest today is the author, writing consultant, and presenter Claire Taylor. Claire will be known to many of you as one-half of the team at the Sell More Books Show with her co-presenter, Bryan Cohen. In this episode we talk about what narrative cohesion is and why it matters, the way in which characters operate on a physical, emotional, and philosophical level, and how to use, (and how not to use) tropes, this was a really fun conversation I enjoyed talking to Claire, I hope you enjoy listening to it, here it is.

Those of you who have read the book that accompanies this podcast will know that, in my opinion, one of the best explanations and representations of the way story works comes from the executive coach, speaker, and author Donna Lichaw. Donna is not a creative writing professor, nor is she a best-selling fiction author. She comes from the world of tech, she knows about leadership development, product development, user experience, and how companies can create excellent products for their customers, and she knows how story is bound up with all of this. I’ve been meaning to talk to Donna for years now. I wish we’d had three hours to really unpack this stuff, but we had 40 minutes and so we made the most of that, and so in this episode, Donna talks to us about how classic story structure is still a powerful tool for understanding how humans communicate with each other and have done since the dawn of civilisation; we discuss how this concept applies to the art of showing and telling, and how the most important story for us to work out as writers is our own story, the most important story for each of us is the one in which we are the hero, and if we can understand that story, we can better unlock the power of all the other stories we want to tell. I had a great time talking to Donna, I hope you enjoy listening to our conversation, here it is.

Welcome to episode 169 of the Creative Writer’s Toolbelt. In the next few episodes, I am going to be exploring the fundamentals of story structure. We’re going to look at different perspectives on story and story structure with the help of a number of guests and I am looking forward to hearing what they have to say and sharing those insights with you. By way of an introduction, in this episode I want to ask a deceptively simple question, and it’s this: what does a really good story look like? And I am going to try to answer this question by first exploring what I mean by the word “story” and then looking at what the content of a good story should be, and what structures we could use to present that story in the best possible way.

Welcome to Ep 168 of the Creative Writer’s Toolbelt podcast. My guest for this episode is Dave Chesson. Dave is an author, entrepreneur and something of a famous name in the self-publishing scene. For many years he has been creating free courses and articles as well as applications that help writers to publish and promote their work, applications like publisher rocket and the newly arrived Atticus, which combines editing, sharing, and formatting functionality. I have been using Dave’s publishing tools for a number of years and I was particularly interested in finding out how Atticus might work and how it can help authors, and while we did talk about this Dave also had some wisdom for the attitude, disciplines, and focus that we need to succeed as writers, here’s our conversation.

Welcome to episode 167 of the Creative Writer’s Toolbelt podcast. My guest for this episode is the writer, journalist and blogger Bryan Collins. Bryan has written for Forbes, the Huffington Post, and Fast Company. He has published 16 books on creativity, non-fiction, and being a productive writer. Bryan loves stories and is especially interested in how the power of story can be applied to non-fiction. In this episode, we talk about how telling a story is much more powerful than talking about features when it comes to persuading people to buy a product or a concept, we also talk about how you can build your authority as a writer, and the power of owning your own work and your own space online. We also talk about some of the tools that we writers can use to improve their productivity and help us present our work to the world. Bryan and I had a good chat that helped me to think about how and where I can use stories in my work, and what tools and services I can use to help me do this, I hope it’s useful for you, here it is.

Welcome to episode 166 of the creative writer’s toolbelt podcast. My guest for this episode is the actor and writer and Lutheran Susan Isaacs. Susan has worked in TV, and got a Masters degree in screen writing. She moved to New York, and worked in comedy there before moving back to California to be close to her mother, who had dementia. She turned some of the most difficult times of her life into a one-woman stage show and that led to a publishing deal. She is now Professor of Screenwriting at Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. In our conversation we talk about the fact that successful stories need a compelling character, who is relatable but also wounded, and who has a desire or goal. We discuss how story structure goes back to Aristotle, and has been worked out by great storytellers have worked with and worked out this structure since then, from Shakespeare to Tolkien, from St Augustine to Margaret Mitchell. We discuss the fact that great stories have an internal and an external journey for the main characters and how this works within the three-act structure, and how stories live in specificity. We talk about how script writing is the same as the novel but also different in terms of structure, we discuss active verbs, and reflect on how our stories are never going to be as horrible, or wonderful, as we think they are. I learnt a lot from my conversation with Susan, I hope you find it an enjoyable and informative listen.

Welcome to episode 165 of the Creative Writer’s Toolbelt My guest for this episode is the author, James Blatch. Some of you will know James as one half of the team who present the hugely popular Self Publishing Show with Mark Dawson. James is a former radio and television journalist, he has worked for the BBFC, the British Board of Film Classification, so the organisation here in the UK the UK that decides what certificate a film gets. James’ family has a long relationship with the Royal Air Force, his father was a test pilot with the RAF and James has a passion for the planes, which he has carried over into the subject of his first novel, called The Final Flight, which is set on an RAF base in the 1960’s. In this episode we talk about respecting the material you are working with in your novel, the challenge of marketing your first book, and the importance of building an email list. I would also say, I am aware that not all of you listening to this want to self-publish your work, you want to get a traditional publishing contract and that’s a good aim to have, but I would suggest that all of the writing advice and a good part of the marketing advice you here in this episode and on the Creative Writer’s Toolbelt Podcast generally is useful and applicable to you. Even if you do get a traditional publishing contract, and congratulations if you do, you should still be thinking about how you can market your books and your brand, and in particular as it applies to this episode, how important it is for you to build your own email list, however you are published. I had a great conversation with James, I hope you enjoy it and find it useful, here it is

The American writers Joyce Carol Oates famously said: “The biggest obstacle for writers is distraction from other people." And it’s substantially true. But those who say we should exclude these distracting people are offering a solution that is both naïve and selfish, and doesn’t really allow for the reality of our lives. In truth, it’s usually the people that we love who are the most distracting, and we choose to continue to love them and engage with them rather than cut ourselves off from them; our partner, our children, family members, close friends, maybe even vulnerable people to whom we have made some kind of commitment. We have to find a way of acknowledging our responsibilities to those who we have a commitment to, whilst still finding the time and energy to write, and to achieve this balance is an essential skill for the writers life. To help us explore this issue, and to offer practical steps to help us all with this tight rope act, I am joined by two writers, Sam Mills and Michael J Harvey. Sam Mills studied English Language and Literature at Oxford University, and worked as a journalist and publicist before giving it all up to write full time. She has published seven books, the latest of which is “The Fragments of My Father” which explores her personal story of becoming a carer to her father, who has schizophrenia. Michael J. Harvey is a fantasy novelist with degrees in History from the Universities of Leicester and Cambridge. He is a blogger, writer and traveller, and also a husband and father to two young children. Both of my guests have had to learn to create and manage time for their writing, this is their story.

So much of how we engage with our writing is bound up with the disciplines, good and bad, we apply to ourselves, and how we feel about ourselves as writers. In this episode I tackle these issues, together with the thorny subject of dealing with our own inner critic, with speaker writer and marathon runner, Cami Ostman.

Yes! The Creative Writer’s Toolbelt is back after a hiatus of about 18 months and it’s a delight to talking to you again. If you haven't subscribed you can do so at: https://the-creative-writers-toolbelt.castos.com/ My guest for this first episode of the relaunched podcast is the author and teacher Sarah Moorhead. Sarah is every inch the the scouser that she sounds, she's funny and honest and determined, all qualities that I think we need to have in big quantities as writers. In our conversation we talk about keeping the faith in our stories and our voice, asking ourselves the question: who are you as a writer? And nurturing the determination to see a writing project through to the end. I had a great time talking to Sarah, I hope you will enjoy listening to our conversation, here it is.