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 space where they can just write? This past October, we did just that, renting an Airbnb for five days and making real progress on our memoir and novel. During those...
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, 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...
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 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...
Speeding Up and Slowing Down your Novel
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...
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 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...
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 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...
Making a Scene
If stories are made up of scenes, what are scenes made up of? According to Jack Bickham in his book, Scene & Structure, scenes start with a character’s stated goal and rumble through an evolving conflict until they reach … a disaster. In this episode, we examine each of these...
Common Scene Errors
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...