Think ChatGPT can finish your creative writing exercises? Let’s find out! In this episode we’re testing the cutting-edge artificial intelligence on some old school writing prompts. We dug out our copies of John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction and typed in two of the back-of-the-book exercises. Faster than you could say “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” out came … words. Listen to us workshop those word: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Then, having proved we’re still at bit away from having an AI write our novels, we returned to Scene and Structure and our own literary self-improvement. In the final chapters of the Jack Bickham’s book, we learn the secrets to ending chapters and take a dive deep into how a full novel is structured (especially that boggy middle).

We’re on our penultimate episode for our reading of Jack Bickham’s Scene & Structure. So, what does the bullet point Meister have to squeeze into an end of a book that 90% of its readers will probably never get to?

Well, first we give ourselves a little pep talk and then we see if we can make sense of all of these specialized scene situations. And, dear listener, there are a lot of them: interrupted scenes and sequels, non-viewpoint character scenes, flashback scenes, scenes with all-dialog, or all-action or unseen opponents or multiple agendas.

After all that high level specialization, we stepped back and take stock of the eminently practical lessons that we’ve learned from reading Bickham. Also in this episode we interview authors Val Neil, Lee Clark, and Nick Chiarkas about how they keep their readers engaged in their novels.

Every composition teacher will draw out a rising action graph on the board (yes, we’re old school). But how do you translate that diagram into the sentences and paragraphs that keep your readers engaged in your story?

In his book, Scene and Structure, Jack Bickham says to do it through structure (because of course he does), and gives seven different plot structures. Yes, dear listeners, we’re going through all of them, and, unlike Bickham, we give examples. Next we try to make sense of what is “backstory” and “hidden story” in a novel (or movie). And what about subplots? Everyone loves a good subplot, and we go over some tips on how to make them work in your novel.

But first up in the podcast, video game narratives! Find out what goes into the game that keeps you glued to the screen. We interview three professionals in the gaming industry on their approach to pacing.

Today we tackle Jack Bickham’s Common Scene Errors, and boy, are there a lot of them, 14 to be precise. According to Scene and Sequel, these simple problems will derail your scenes, rob them of their impact and drag down your novel. We go through each error, identifying if they’re a problem in our own writing and discuss Bickham’s solution.

In this episode, Kim interviews award winning science fiction author, Charlie Jane Anders about her recently published craft book, Never Say You Can’t Survive!

After the interview, we take a break from our usual craft book analysis and writing exercise because…Kim and Renee went on a writing retreat! We abandoned our spouses, kids, and cats for five days to hole up in a secluded Airbnb. We discuss our expectations, preparations and what we managed to accomplish on our little adventure. Besides the entertainment value, we’re hoping our experiences will be useful and inspirational for when you plan your own get-this-damn-novel-written escape.

After 70 pages of Jack Bickham’s Scene and Structure we feel we’ve got a pretty good handle on how to break our stories down into action-packed, disaster-ending scenes and the more contemplative internal sequels that hold the book together. What we’ve had a harder time with is finding these scene-sequel sequences in the books we own.

So, what gives Bickham?

Apparently, there are multiple variations – in chapter nine, Bickham gives us ten options — to make one’s scene and sequel not so obvious. In this episode, we’ll go depth on two of these techniques: the scene-within-a-scene and imbedding a flashback within a sequel (which Renee then applies to section in her memoir.)

Chapter 8 – Scene & Structure Subscribe to our Newsletter How do you take a ponderous story into a page turner? How do you take a Michael Bay paced novel and make it about more than one disaster after the next? In this episode, we explain Jack Bickham’s techniques to speed up or slow down…

When you’re bored with action-packed scenes and want to dive deep into the mind of your protagonist, maybe you should try a Sequel. In today’s episode, we explore Bickham’s idea of sequel, its parts, and how it glues the scenes together. But we don’t just take Scene & Structure’s word for it, we go looking for sequels in several of our favorite books. Also, along the way, Renee has an existential crisis, but don’t worry, she gets better.

After last episode’s deep dive into scene structure, we thought we’d ask a few published novelists and professional editors if they use scene goals in their writing/editing.

Then, for our podcast proper, we move beyond the scene basics into more advance concerns, like does that disaster you carefully crafted have the proper scope, immediacy, finality, and does it steer your story in the right direction. But we still need to get that pig back home, and in Chapter 6, Bickham points out (with not one, but two numbered lists) other things that can go wrong with scenes, including not having enough “going wrong.”