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So You Want to be a Screenwriter

In todays episode, Bradbury tells us how loathing Ireland pushed him to becoming a playwright/screenwriter,  why these absurdest plays are no good, and the secret to successfully turning his short stories into film.

Full disclosure, Renee and Kim pretty much disagree with these two chapters in Zen in the Art of Writing, and they have no clue what “Shooting Haiku in a Barrel means. But disagreements make for good podcasts. And if you’re into film analysis, this is the episode for you. 

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Writing Marathons and Playing with Memories

According to Bradbury’s retelling, it took him nine days, a library typewriter, and a pocketful of dimes to crank out his first version of Fahrenheit 451. Is such a feat possible in today’s distracting world? We decide to give it a try (or at least one day of a try) and report on the results it in this episode. In another chapter of his writing craft book, Zen in the Art of Writing, Bradbury recounts how he mined his childhood memories to write his book Dandelion Wine. As a memoirist, Renee shares how she digs deep into her younger self’s recollections, which aren’t quite as idyllic.

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How to Feed and Care for your Muse

Oh Muse, well-spring of creativity, why are you so unreliable? How can we entice you? In this episode, we discuss what the muse is and get some advice on nurturing and strengthening our own from Ray Bradbury’s book Zen in the Art of Writing. We also discuss Bradbury’s journey to becoming a writer and how it compares to our own. Finally, we put all that muse-wisdom into practice as we develop a daily “Reading Menu.”

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Goodbye Gardner, Hello Bradbury

Thinking of reading The Art of Fiction, “Young Writer?” Listen to this podcast first. Despite dying in a motorcycle crash in 1982, John Gardner achieved immortality (at least in the writing community) with the posthumous publication of the Art of Fiction

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Come for the Plot. Stay for the Stripper

Wow! We’ve gotten to the final chapter of John Gardner’s book, The Art of Fiction and it’s all about plotting your short story, or novella, or novel (there are, apparently differences). We also learn some fancy plot vocabulary. Oh, and the stripper? Her name is Fanny, and her story is the example that Gardner uses to explain how to devise a plot. Our guess is that most readers don’t make it to Fanny, but trust us, she’s totally worth it.

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Techniques

Gardner promises to show us the proper way for the young writer to achieve artistic mastery. Doesn’t that sound marvelous? We take him to task on his analysis and advice on the techniques of Imitation, Vocabulary, The Sentence, Point of View, Delay and Style from chapter 6 of The Art of Fiction.

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Common Errors

Enough with the theoretical, in this episode we get some practical advice out of Gardner’s book, The Art of Fiction. Specifically, he tells us what we’re doing wrong. We discuss a few of what Gardner call’s clumsy errors before moving onto Faults of the Soul – Sentimentality, Frigidity, and Mannerisms.

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Metafiction, Deconstruction, and Jazzing Around

After last episode’s mother of all chapters, we get a reprieve – a much shorter and lighthearted chapter devoted to those weird genres of metafiction, deconstruction, and jazzing around (that last one we’re pretty sure Gardner made up.) While we do discuss Gardner’s take, we mostly just have fun geeking out over our favorite examples of the genres.

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