You are Now Leaving the Ordinary World
If you have read even just the first part of a blog post on the Hero’s Journey, you know the hero starts off in the Ordinary World before embarking...
The Scene Book
Boy Bands & Archetypes
In our regular podcast, we’ve successfully made it through all of Vogler’s archetypes (from his book, The Writer’s Journey). Armed with this knowledge we decided to see if we...
The Role of the Trickster and Other Archetypes
Are we done with archetypes now? Almost! There are just three more archetype chapters in Christopher Vogler’s book, The Writer’s Journey, and we have issues with two of them. The...
Workshop with Madix: Writing and Revising LitRPG
What if writing the first draft was the easy part? Every week on serial writing websites like Royal Road, hundreds of authors will upload 5, 10, 20,000, or more words...
Female Shapeshifters and Other Questionable Archetypes
Everyone who’s read a blog post on the Hero’s Journey can spot the Hero and Mentor archetypes, but what about a Threshold Guardian, or Herald, or elusive Shapeshifter? Are...
Workshop with Elana Gomel: What to do if your Hero is a Girl?
In response to Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousands Faces, aka The Hero's Journey, folklorists and academics (many of them female) countered some of the major steps and archetypes...
The Mentor Behind Every Great Hero
The Mentor -- arguably the second most identified archetype from The Hero's Journey (after the eponymous hero). In his book, The Writer's Journey, Christopher Vogler has a lot to...
Shitty First Drafts and Beyond!
How does one write an entire novel? It’s a bit like the advice for eating an elephant, one bite...
And now for something completely different … Bird by Bird
It’s time for a new season and it’s time for a new book! We’re starting Anne Lamott’s Bird by...
ChatGPT, Write me my Novel
Think ChatGPT can finish your creative writing exercises? Let’s find out! In this episode we’re testing the cutting-edge artificial...
Bend It Like Bickham (the scene, that is)
We’re on our penultimate episode for our reading of Jack Bickham’s Scene & Structure. So, what does the bullet...
Dramatic Principals & Devices FTW
Every composition teacher will draw out a rising action graph on the board (yes, we’re old school). But how...
Common Scene Errors
Today we tackle Jack Bickham’s Common Scene Errors, and boy, are there a lot of them, 14 to be...
Dispatches from a DIY Writing Retreat
What writer hasn’t dreamed of leaving behind the stress and obligations of their day-to-day lives for a quiet, secluded...
The One Where We Go on a Writing Retreat
In this episode, Kim interviews award winning science fiction author, Charlie Jane Anders about her recently published craft book,...
Getting Wild with Scene and Sequels
After 70 pages of Jack Bickham’s Scene and Structure we feel we’ve got a pretty good handle on how...
Speeding Up and Slowing Down your Novel
Chapter 8 – Scene & Structure Subscribe to our Newsletter How do you take a ponderous story into a...
Sequels: the Glue that Holds Scenes Together
When you’re bored with action-packed scenes and want to dive deep into the mind of your protagonist, maybe you...
Tactical Disasters, Meaningful Change, and More Scene Rules. Oh, My!
After last episode’s deep dive into scene structure, we thought we’d ask a few published novelists and professional editors...
Making a Scene
If stories are made up of scenes, what are scenes made up of? According to Jack Bickham in his...
The Cart Goes After the Horse – Getting Cause and Effect Right in your Story
This episode is all about cause and effect, what it is, why it is critical in fiction despite being...
Starting Your Book Off Right
In this podcast we give our first impressions of our new book, Jack Bickham's Scene and Structure, and, being the...
Workshop: Plotting a Murder with Colette Clark
Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey The Hero’s Journey Study Guide Subscribe to our Newsletter Does the mystery genre follow the Hero’s Journey? According to historical mystery writer Colette Clark....