Episode 332 - Writing Rules You Can Break with Kristen Tate

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Kristen Tate discusses WRITING RULES YOU CAN BREAK, including why the longer you edit the fewer hard rules there seem to be, when adverbs earn their place and when they’re redundant, why telling is a tool novelists have that screenwriters envy, how passive voice can actually sharpen a mystery, what separates a prologue that hooks from one that delays, and how the convention around point of view is already shifting in commercial fiction.

Kristen Tate has been a freelance editor for over a decade, helping authors transform their work from rough draft to finished book. She has a PhD in English from Columbia University, with a focus on publishing history. She is the author of Novel Study: Decoding the Secrets and Structures of Contemporary Fiction and writes a regular newsletter full of craft advice and encouragement for authors.

Episode Links

https://www.thebluegarret.com/

https://www.instagram.com/bluegarret/

https://bsky.app/profile/kristentate.bsky.social

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebluegarret/

https://www.youtube.com/@BlueGarretBooks

Here's the link to that Emma Darwin piece Kristen mentioned about shifting POV: https://emmadarwin.substack.com/p/ten-ways-to-move-point-of-view-and

Here’s an article from Kristen about the S.A. Cosby chapter she mentioned: https://newsletter.thebluegarret.com/p/point-of-view-handoffs-and-the-interplay-of-action-and-interiority-in-king-of-ashes-by-s-a-cosby

And here's a piece about summary in Schwab's Bury Our Bones that relates to our showing vs telling discussion: https://newsletter.thebluegarret.com/p/summary-as-character-development-in-v-e-schwab-s-bury-our-bones-in-the-midnight-soil

Summary & Transcript

Kristen Tate is a freelance editor with over a decade of experience helping authors transform rough drafts into finished books. She holds a PhD in English from Columbia University with a focus on publishing history and is the author of NOVEL STUDY: DECODING THE SECRETS AND STRUCTURES OF CONTEMPORARY FICTION. Returning for her second appearance on the podcast, Kristen walked through five widely repeated writing rules—and explained why each one deserves to be questioned rather than followed blindly.

THE LONGER YOU EDIT, THE FEWER HARD RULES THERE ARE

Kristen opened by observing that many of her clients arrive with a classroom mentality—expecting to be graded on their commas. She encourages them to reframe the relationship: they are hiring her to be the comma expert so they can focus on craft. Among editors, she noted, a recurring realization is that the longer you work with language, the fewer absolutes you find. Fiction in particular rewards flexibility, and the real question is not whether a rule has been followed but whether the language is doing what the book needs it to do for its audience.

ADVERBS ARE NOT THE ENEMY

The familiar prohibition against adverbs has a legitimate core: a strong verb is almost always better than a weak verb propped up by an adverb, and a page dense with -ly words will sound clunky, especially on audio. Kristen also pointed out that adverbs tacked onto dialogue tags often duplicate work the dialogue itself has already done—a sign that the writer is second-guessing their own showing. But the solution is not to strip every adverb. The goal is to notice where they are doing real work and where they are redundant, and to dial back rather than eliminate.

SHOW, DON’T TELL—EXCEPT WHEN TELLING IS THE RIGHT TOOL

Kristen drew a distinction between showing and telling that goes beyond the usual advice. Showing creates visual, filmable scenes; telling encompasses interiority, summary, backstory, and emotional texture—tools that novelists have and screenwriters envy. She cited V.E. Schwab’s THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF ADDIE LARUE (published as BURY OUR BONES IN THE MIDNIGHT SOIL in some editions), which covers five hundred years of its characters’ lives and relies heavily on summary to bridge the gaps between the scenes Schwab wants the reader to witness. Telling, Kristen argued, is the salad dressing—the element that makes all the other ingredients come together. Elizabeth George’s mnemonic THAD (Talking Head Avoidance Devices) is useful for remembering to keep scenes grounded in setting and action, but the deeper craft is knowing when to shift from showing into a character’s thoughts, memories, or emotions.

PASSIVE VOICE HAS ITS USES

Kristen acknowledged that passive voice can dilute prose and obscure who is acting—the reason politicians reach for constructions like “mistakes were made.” In fiction, active verbs generally carry more force. But she identified situations where passive voice is the better choice: when the actor is unknown or unimportant, or when the writer deliberately wants to withhold that information. Her example was a mystery in which the point-of-view character notices a red Ferrari parked in a neighbor’s driveway. “There was a red Ferrari parked next door” keeps the spotlight on the car, which is the important detail; tap-dancing around the passive construction to identify who parked it would be clumsy and beside the point. Matty added that passive voice can also serve an unreliable narrator, allowing a writer to hold back information grammatically for a later reveal.

PROGRESSIVE VERB FORMS CREATE IMMEDIACY

The advice to avoid “-ing” verbs (progressive forms like “she was running” instead of “she ran”) follows similar logic to the passive voice rule: the simpler form is more forceful. But Kristen pointed out that progressive forms do something the simple past cannot—they drop the reader into an action that is still unfolding. “Matty ran” reports a completed event; “Matty was running” places us in the middle of it. That quality makes progressive forms especially useful for opening an action scene or layering backstory and interiority over a sense of ongoing motion. As with every other tool, the key is moderation: used sparingly and intentionally, the progressive form creates immersion; overused, the repeated -ing becomes its own distraction.

PROLOGUES, EPILOGUES, AND CHRONOLOGY

Kristen traced the anti-prologue sentiment to a legitimate concern: prologues that deliver a block of backstory delay the reader’s investment in the protagonist’s current problem. The better approach is usually to strip that backstory out and weave it in small chunks after the hook. But she cited Jane Harper’s THE DRY as an example of a prologue that works—a single page in omniscient point of view that ends with a devastating image of a crying baby alone in a house full of dead bodies and blowflies. It succeeds because it is short, stylistically distinct from the rest of the novel, and functions as a hook rather than an information dump. She also suggested that some prologues would work better simply labeled as Chapter One, and that writers with long backstories might consider restructuring their chronology—as Rebecca Roanhorse does in BLACK SUN—rather than front-loading it. On epilogues, Kristen noted that readers are more forgiving because they have already committed to the book but cautioned that if the epilogue is doing the work of wrapping up the main story, it should probably just be the last chapter.

HEAD-HOPPING AND THE EVOLUTION OF POINT OF VIEW

The conversation closed with what Kristen called the most historically contingent of the rules: never switch point of view within a scene. She traced the convention from the omniscient narrators of nineteenth-century fiction through the head-hopping common in thrillers of the 1970s and 1980s to the current preference for deep, close point of view. But she noted signs that the pendulum may be swinging back, citing omniscient narration in recent literary fiction by Lauren Groff (MATRIX) and Maggie O’Farrell (THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT), and a skillful mid-scene POV handoff in S.A. Cosby’s KING OF ASHES. She recommended Emma Darwin’s blog post “10 Ways to Move Point of View in a Scene” as a resource for writers interested in experimenting with the technique.

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This transcript was created by Descript and cleaned up by Claude; I don’t review these transcripts in detail, so consider the actual interview to be the authoritative source for this information.

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to the Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is Kristen Tate. Hey, Kristen, how are you doing?

[00:00:05] Kristen: Hey, Matty. I’m great. How are you doing?

[00:00:07] Matty: I am doing great. And just to give our listeners, I viewers, a little, reminder of you. Kristen Tate has been a freelance editor for over a decade, helping authors transform their work

She has a PhD in English from Columbia University with a focus on publishing history. She’s the author of NOVEL STUDY: DECODING THE SECRETS AND STRUCTURES OF CONTEMPORARY FICTION, and writes regular newsletter. Very good newsletter full of craft advice and encouragement for authors. And Kristen was on the podcast fairly recently, back in episode 322 when we talked about becoming a better writer by being a

And I think. as is the case with most of my returning guests, this episode came about because at some point we mentioned something in that episode and thought, oh, we have to get together and talk about that

[00:00:51] Matty: and the thing that came up was writing rules. You can break and, I love this topic.

I think I’ll, post a link to this episode. Well, I don’t even have a link to this episode in the show notes. Very early on in the podcast, I had one of these like, what rules can you, can you ignore? which was fun, but high time to get back to it. yeah.

[00:01:10] Kristen: Everyone loves to break rules.

[00:01:11] Matty: Yes. Yes, exactly.

And I think that the only, you know, I’ve heard many people who are very experienced in this, profession, say the only, the only hard and fast rule is that there are no hard and fast rules. So, it’s always good to take a look at, these things and make sure that we’re not following something just because we’ve heard it from someone we think

[00:01:30] Kristen: Yeah, a hundred percent.

[00:01:32] Matty: So, you suggested a couple of, writing rules that we should talk about, but I’m also curious just to, provide some context about how you see this playing out. Just generally, not rule specific, but generally among your editing clients, like, do people tend to adhere to the rules early because they don’t really know the ropes Or maybe later in their career because they’ve become like,they’ve

[00:01:57] Kristen: Yeah, I, I see it play out in a number of ways. Like, I think, especially for, writers who haven’t worked with an editor before, they often come to me with a frame of like, this is gonna be like English class and I’m going to be graded on my commas, or all

and I try to really, it’s hard to break people out of that, but I try to remind them that actually. Like they are hiring me to fix their commas. They are hiring me to be the comma expert, to be their like comma guru. I am not right. Like when I change something and track changes, that’s not like a, a red mark, right?

It’s not gonna go against their, their grade. So part of it’s just shifting the frame and then I think also encouraging people to kind of loosen up their sense of what a rule even is, right? As you were just saying, I think many people come to me and they, come from, writing in another field, and maybe that just was essays back in school where, you know, or even, nonfiction where there are more hard and fast rules, or very formal writing or, writing reports or something like that.

and fiction is just,The kind more rules you look at the bendier they seem and the more gray area there is. and I think, When I talk to fellow editors, that’s one of the things that we all kind of notice is like, the longer we do, we do this work, the, the fewer hard and fast rules there, there seem to be.

So part of it is just like helping people understand that language is changing, right? We’re not coming at this from like a. Constructivist, we are gonna like, hold fast to these language rules. We’re really coming at it from a, like, what, what does the language need to do for

Where do you wanna push the boundaries? If you wanna, if you wanna push the boundaries of language change, right? Like that’s, this is one way

[00:03:51] Matty: Yeah, I think it’s, interesting that there’s this kind of theme that’s come up in my last couple of conversations that is you should know the rules of the road and then break them intentionally, not break them unintentionally, and.

so if, if there’s some hard and fast rule air quotes, that you’re hearing, you should be aware of that, but not necessarily be bound by it. because you’ll need to recognize that some contingent of readers will think you’ve made a mistake if you break that rule. And it’s also interesting ’cause earlier today I was, I was formatting a book for a

And so the, the thing was going from like word to vellum and I noticed that. word and Vellum were flagging different words as incorrect. so even like the authoritative sources aren’t agreeing on something as as simple as like sort of straightforward grammatical rules. So, yeah, if even the, if even the theoretical experts are disagreeing, then that

[00:04:52] Kristen: Yeah.

[00:04:53] Kristen: And also, when I’m doing a, a copy edit or a line edit for a client, we talk about what, what the style guides, are, are gonna be to start with like, Chicago Manual of Style is kind of the basic for most copy editors in the us. But it’s built for nonfiction

But you know, depending on where the, the author is based or where the characters are from, we might use a different dictionary, right? Like, what are our spelling conventions gonna be? So it’s more about tailoring it, like which rules are the correct rules for this book and

[00:05:27] Matty: Yeah.

Yeah. The other example that popped into my head is I had a friend who got some feedback from. An editor that said in a sentence like she said that she was going to the store. They were striking out that in all those situations, so it was saying, she said she was going to the store, but there are certain automated spell checkers that it flag, it would flag that sentence as erroneous unless you put that, that in.

At which case, at which point it would think the sentence was okay. So,

[00:05:57] Kristen: yeah, and that’s the other, Some. That’s the other thing I kind of see with my clients. I can tell which ones have used a program like ProWritingAid, for example, which I actually like. If you’re gonna use any of them, I think that’s the one to use.

It is if you’re a fiction writer. Mm-hmm. in particular, it is really built for fiction. however, if you correct it to reach their a hundred percent score, you’re actually, you’ve probably overcorrected, right? So go through it. Notice what they’re saying, but there are some rules that, we might address today.

Like they, they flag every adverb, that’s something we, we talked about last time. Like, you don’t need to take out every adverb, you might need to dial it back. You probably don’t wanna take out every single one, because then you might be introducing new problems. Right. Passive

[00:06:45] Matty: Yeah.

[00:06:47] Matty: Well, let’s start out with the, with the classic no adverbs, So what do you think is the legitimate part of that

[00:06:56] Kristen: Yeah, I think, some of it is, like the legitimate part is that, sometimes a writer will lean on an adverb when the better choice is a stronger verb, right?

Stronger, more dramatic verb. So that’s one thing to notice. the other thing to notice. That is definitely true for this, piece of advice is that adverbs will stick out, especially if you are reading aloud or you’re listening to an an audio book because of the ly, right? So if

10 adverbs, the reader’s going to hear that repetition and it is gonna feel a little clunky. So that’s a case where you would want to dial it back, like figure out which ones are the most important. and sometimes it’s a craft thing too. I find sometimes writers, they’ve already

But they’re, they are adding the adverb to also tell us just in case we didn’t get it from the showing. Yeah. And so it’s, it’s, it they’re

[00:08:00] Matty: Yeah. There’s, I think, I can’t remember if it was in our conversation or another conversation where I was saying that, my dream is to have people who will, be advanced readers and read my

And then just stick in little notes about. Whatever they’re experiencing at that moment and having someone say like, yeah, I got it the first time in that circumstance, I think would be, would be very

[00:08:23] Kristen: Yeah. Well, and that’s, I mean that’s, your editor’s primary job too is to kind of be that stand in for the reader and we’re using our instincts and our ears and all of that too, to flag

[00:08:34] Matty: Yeah, I think that kind of thing is a lot easier to hear than to see on a page. And so if you’re reading a sentence or a scene out loud and it’s like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, he said, angrily, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. She responded, irritated, go blah, blah, blah, blah. He re, he rebutted with irritation.

it’s, it just jumps out at you when you’re hearing it.

[00:08:54] Kristen: Yeah, and I think, I mean, your examples are exactly right, like pay extra attention to adverbs that are just tacked onto the, the end of a dialogue tag, right? Because there’s so many better things you can do. Right? Get that emotion into the dialogue line itself, or add an action tag that shows us that character being angry,

Yeah. Or if we’re in that, that person’s point of view, like, like you can tell us through interiority, like that’s a great example of like,

[00:09:23] Matty: Yeah. So show don’t tell is another one of those things that writers are always hearing and. And again, let’s

[00:09:35] Kristen: I mean, it is generally good advice, right? You want,

[00:09:39] Matty: like you don’t want to have two heads in an empty room just talking at one another. the mystery writer, Elizabeth George has this great mnemonic that I, I use all the time.

[00:09:49] Kristen: It’s called she. Refers to Thad talking head avoidance devices. So really just having like something happening in a scene, like if you just need, two characters to have a conversation, like you want that to not be happening kind of in a blank box. So like. Put them in a setting, have them do something, have something visual, for the reader to visualize if this was filmed, like, think about like

Right? It also kind of adds to the, the realism effect that you want to achieve. on the other hand, you’re not, you’re writing a novel. You’re not writing a screenplay. so this is where I think writers can take it too far, especially if they have been doing more watching than reading. They forget that there are tools that we get to use as novelists that actually screenwriters they would kill for, right?

It’s very hard for screenwriters to use interiority, right? They have to reach for things like voiceover or things like that that can be a little clunky, but it’s very easy, especially if we’re writing. in kind of close first point of view or close third point of view, where we’re really deep in a character’s perspective, very easy to just kind of layer in, a detail about what a, a character’s thinking, a memory that they have or how they’re feeling about something, an emotion that they’re feeling, or a little bit of a memory that might be coming up.

All of that is telling, right? You can’t, you can’t film it. There’s nothing, it’s thoughts, there’s nothing for, for readers to, to see. And yet it just adds depth and texture. It makes your characters feel real. It makes your story world feel real. and then the other thing that

Right. so I’ve just been working on,the V.E. Schwab novel, BURY OUR BONES IN THE MIDNIGHT SOIL, which we, I have a NOVEL STUDY book group last year, and we read that and it’s, it’s fantastic. It’s also a enormous, it’s like 500 pages and she covers I think half a, like 500

[00:11:56] Matty: Yeah.

[00:11:57] Kristen: And so it has this vast scope. And in order to get us to this, the, the bits that she wants us to see in these, the lives of these very long lived characters, Schwab uses a lot of summary, because we need to know a tiny little bit about what’s happened in like, say the last hundred years of this character’s life.

But not all of it. and that’s, that’s a telling tool, right? So sometimes we need those tools. it’s, it’s kind of like if you think about, I dunno, building a salad or a sandwich, right? You, you need like the salad dressing, you need the mustard. You need those, those little bits that kind of make everything kind of come together and sing.

[00:12:37] Matty: Yeah, I was just wrestling with one aspect of show Don’t tell. I guess it’s, I think of it as show don’t tell. It was that I had a very short scene where I needed to have one character relay some information to another character so that that other character had it for a subsequent scene. And it was very, it was very short, and

That the reader had seen happen to that first character. And so I thought, oh, well, I’m just gonna ax that. And then in the subsequent scene I will have the character say, you know, she looked through the texts that her brother had sent her, letting her know that blahdi blah. And so I started writing that out and, and that also didn’t seem quite right, like then.

That seemed too, sort of just expository or, Awkward, but, but I couldn’t think of a good, like they both had downsides. It was just this piece of information that I need to convey to the To the reader that the one character got the information, and I also kind of have to convey that she got the information accurately, that nothing was lost in translation when she got the information from the other character.

And I, I’m gonna go back and forth like half a dozen times on this ’cause I just don’t see how either showing the person, giving her the information or just telling that the second character got the information, both seems kind of unsatisfying to satisfy that, plot need.

[00:13:57] Kristen: Yeah, it’s, we all have like those moments in

I think in that case, you kind of think about other tricks that you can use to make it interesting. Right. This is where, again, like, can this be happening? While, like, can that be layered over something else happening? Can it be tucked into a little moment where she’s got a brief break in the action from something else that’s happening in the

You know, she’s doing something and then this comes in and so readers are kind of distracted from the fact that, you’re giving it to us twice. the other option would be to kind of lean into on one side or the other. maybe she has a lot of feelings about, you know, a big reaction

these text messages, and that can be a way to just show us something different, Or, kind of exploit the, like part of what we’re doing all the time as novelists. And I think. We don’t always realize it is like exploit information. Asymmetries, An information gap where one character knows something or has a really different take on something than another

and so that provides instant tension for your readers. It’s really interesting, so that could be another way to kind of lean into it. So like showing us, even though you’ve already shown us. That thing. Show us something different about that thing if possible. Something that

[00:15:22] Matty: Yeah. Yeah, I think that it probably won’t end up being surprising, but I can see it becoming a good, just sort of check in with the reader about where things stand. And I can imagine, forming it in a scene where she reads like one part of the text and then she kind of considers how, like, thinks about that.

and then she reads another line of the text and thinks about that. So you are getting that interiority, you are getting another character’s perspective. and you’re interspersing this. Like he told her these three things, with information that is, is kind of new. But is also recalling for the reader, like, where do things stand now?

[00:15:58] Kristen: Yeah. I think that’s really, that’s really smart and kind of gets people, it’s one of the tricky things with when you’re writing, a mystery or a thriller or anything with a really big scope is, um,making sure your reader isn’t lost in your plot and remembering that, your reader is probably not gonna be reading quite as carefully as, as you are and they are not gonna know the story world as,

So, just get, getting readers back up to speed and trusting that like if a reader finds it boring, that they will skip ahead to the next exciting bit. Yeah,

[00:16:29] Matty: they’ll skim a bit.

[00:16:31] Kristen: Yeah. Um.

[00:16:33] Matty: So I think that another, this brings us another sort of stylistic, guideline, which is avoiding passive voice.

So, again, I think we’re, spoiler alert. We’re gonna say that this isn’t a hard and fast rule, but, talk, talk about the downside of pa,

[00:16:52] Kristen: So, I mean, I think, we’ve, we’ve seen many examples of say like a political figure using passive voice to avoid

Saying something like mistakes were made instead of, I made a mistake. It’s a very, it’s a kind of waffle move. That’s disappointing. Yeah. it’s something we watch for, if someone’s. Messed up. And they’re making an apology. An apology, right? Like, are they actually owning this? Like, do they understand that they messed up or not?

So that’s, I think that’s, and that’s correct. Right? you know, if, if a journalist is writing in that way, for example, we want them to be really clear about who the actor is. Like who shot the gun that killed the guy. Yeah. Right. We don’t, that should be in the headline, Um,

and then for fiction writers, the true part of this is that, active verbs do have more impact, you know, we get the direct form of the verb rather than like the form, you know, with a kind of was in front of it. Like that’s kind of cluttered up and diluted a little bit. So passive voice can dilute your writing and it also can obscure the actor.

But the flip side of that is that sometimes. The person who or thing that did the action is either not important or actually we don’t want to reveal it yet. so for example, if you’re writing a mystery novel and your character, your point of view character has like just, pulled up at their house, they’re driving their car and they notice that there’s a red Ferrari parked in the neighbor’s driveway, right?

It’s fine to say. There was a red Ferrari parked next door. they don’t, maybe they know that their neighbor doesn’t drive a red Ferrari, but they don’t know who parked that car there, and it’s not material. so I have seen cases where, a writer has like done a bunch of like, kind of clumsy tap dancing to avoid the passive voice.

When sometimes it’s absolutely fine and actually what you want, because the important part of that information is the red Ferrari. So like, let’s just highlight that and get to that, without worrying about now

[00:19:03] Matty: Yeah. And I can also imagine in a, Unreliable narrator kind of story that you could use passive voice to fun effect.

absolutely. Like setting an expectation with a reader that they think they know who is taking the action, and yet you’re grammatically,

[00:19:19] Kristen: Yeah. it’s, it’s a tool, right? And we get to use it as long as we are aware of how we’re using it and what effect

[00:19:27] Matty: Another sort of stylistic, piece of advice we’ll hear is avoid, progressive, verb forms like ING words. can you just give an example of, of what you mean by that and then, where that

[00:19:41] Kristen: Yeah. I mean, this is, again, this is very similar to passive voice, so, a progressive forum is like I was running.

Right. or whatever character is running, Matty—Matty is running. it’s, it’s basically you’re, you’ve got two, two words. You’ve kind of broken or like diluted the verb across two words rather than one. if you’re writing a past ha tense, it would be Matty ran, right?

So Matty ran is more forceful, however, Matty is running. Drops us into the scene, right? If you start a scene that way, we are running with you, you are in the middle of the action, right? Or, and this works in past tense too. Matty was running, right? So there are, there are times when you want to, to draw your reader right into the action and make it clear that this is an action that we’re in the middle of, and

We’re, we’re, we’re here, we’re still running. There’s other stuff happening, but we’re running. yeah,

[00:20:42] Matty: I like that. I often, when I’m arguing with my editor about this, I am tapping into that idea that it’s an in-progress action. but I never really thought about the. Reader experience of that? I was thinking of it more just mechanically or logistically like it’s,

So it made more sense to me to use I an ING word, but that idea of the involvement of the reader I think is a very cool observation.

[00:21:09] Kristen: And again, you don’t wanna use it every time, right? Save this for, say, an action scene or save it for a scene where actually you have a bunch of backstory or some interiority that you wanna layer in, but you wanna kind of give some, you, you wanna give the

Amidst all of that, use it in one of those scenarios. You know, don’t reach for it every single time. Use a verb. ’cause that would be. Annoying. And again, the, the ING, just like the ly, if you’re using it over and over again, a little bit of repetition can actually be cool, right? Just like we, like parallel sentences that come in threes.

three is good. If you’ve got more than that, someone might get

[00:21:52] Matty: I remember somewhere reading, I think it was a piece of dialogue in a book, but that it was like a conversation between a writer and someone else. And the, the other person said, you writers really like things in groups of three, don’t you?

It, in fact,

[00:22:07] Kristen: our brains like it. Yeah. It’s just the

[00:22:11] Matty: Yeah.

[00:22:12] Matty: So we’re gonna move from, sort of stylistic things to more structural things. and I know this one is gonna be a fun one. Don’t include a prologue. Where do you think this came from?

[00:22:24] Kristen: I mean, I think a lot of people have a lot of

I’ve heard a lot of feelings about this from agents in particular that,you know, especially like kind of first time novelists. can want to, like, they know that there’s a crucial piece of backstory that you know, is gonna reveal their protagonists, like life history and their

And because it is. Backstory, meaning that it happens before the real action of, of the story. One, impulse is to put it into a prologue and start the reader there. and that can, the, this is like the good reason for the, the rule is that. that can delay the reader, really getting invested in the protagonist’s current problem, right?

We have to wait for a long time to find out what their actual situation is. So that’s why I think many people say, just strip that off and not strip it off and like, forget about it, strip it off, and then artfully weave it in small chunks into your story. After you’ve started the action, right after we know what your protagonist is up against, like after we’ve seen, their big problem and we’re curious about it after you’ve hooked us, then start to give us some more of that backstory that we’re gonna need to understand, the choices that they’re gonna

[00:23:51] Kristen: all of that said, I’m sure you could look at your bookshelves and pull off a book and find, a novel that has a very successful prologue. but again, you need to know what this tool is for and why you are using it. So prologues I’ve seen that are very

Right. often they do something that’s stylistically really different from the rest of the book. the one I was just thinking about the other day, that’s a novel I wanna revisit is, really great like mystery slash thriller novel called THE DRY by Jane Harper. And, you know, we start with, the discovery of the bodies and we see it in the prologue.

It’s very short. It’s one page and it’s actually kind of in. Omniscient point of view, we’re, we have a kind of, kind of disembodied narrator and we’re seeing, we’re entering this house and we’re actually, if we’re kind of in anyone’s point of view, it’s these blowflies that are there, kind of gravitating towards these.

Bodies that are there, it’s very creepy. very effective. and then at the very end of the prologue,we’re told that this house is empty. or we’re, we’re told actually that there’s not another living heart within thousands of miles, I think is the phrasing. And then the very last line of the prologue is something like, and then a baby starts to

I mean, it, it really packs a whammy. Yeah. So we’ve got, a baby alone in this house with all of these dead bodies and these blowflies. So we know that they’ve been there for a while. It’s very effective and sets the stage. So, prologues can work, but you just need to really know. Why, why you’re doing it, and making sure that it’s part of what’s hooking the reader and not information that you are very, very eager for the reader to know, right?

So figure out which, which it, which it is, and just, be very careful. You only get those first few pages to really capture your reader and you don’t wanna throw them away on a backstory that’s less exciting than,

[00:26:02] Matty: Yeah, there’s all sorts of thoughts about that.

[00:26:06] Matty: One is that, I’m not sure this would be called a prologue, but I’m realizing that, I think of prologue as two things.

One is like stuff that happened in the past that we need the reader to know. We think we need, we need the reader to know, to set up the story. And then I think the other one is that it’s happening in the future and you give people a glimpse and then you go back in time like 10 years

Prologue that you described could be like that. I mean, I don’t know if it is, but it could be,what led up to this happening as opposed to this is setting the stage for stuff that’s gonna happen in the future. And I would think that the danger there is that, especially like. If you read that prologue that you’ve just described and you turn the page in the next chapter is, you know, Jane flipped the eggs in the griddle and, wondered if she should have wheat toast or rye, then that, that’s so

It can be so jarring to go from that like hooky sort of prologue to, now we’re, taking care of the shoe leather. I can imagine that could be, not a reason not to do a prologue, but one of the things you have to

[00:27:11] Kristen: Yeah,

[00:27:11] Matty: palatable.

[00:27:12] Kristen: Absolutely. Yeah. You have to think, you have

I mean, the other thing to think about is, should your prologue just be chapter one, right?

[00:27:23] Matty: Yeah.

[00:27:23] Kristen: That’s often the case is that,it might be something about the material, but it actually just could be that. This is chapter one, and then we go back in time for chapter two.

[00:27:34] Kristen: or it could point to, what you’re, you realize that your story has a slow start and a slow start can be fine.

Right? We, there are many successful novels that, that just have a really gradual build. Tana French is THE SEARCHER is one that I can think of, and it’s, it’s very deliberate. but if that’s not what you want, you might need to like actually kind of. mix up your entire chronology, especially if you’re writing like a fantasy or something

I’m thinking about, the fantasy novel BLACK SUN by Rebecca Roanhorse, where, It’s a very complex story and she’s very deliberate about where she drops us in. And it’s not in chronological order. We actually kind of jump ahead to this, like, the climax, we see the climax of the novel, from one character’s point of view, and then we kind of jump.

Several weeks back in time to kind of the beginning of the main thread of the novel, and then after that we jump way back in time to something that could, well, in a previous version of that, that novel been a much more extended prologue that covers the entire backstory. That is

We really need to have it. But instead of giving it in one big chunk, she takes us straight to the like, you know, we see something really exciting is gonna happen. We don’t know quite what to make of it yet. Then we get oriented in the present day timeline, and then she chunks up

Gives it to us, as we, as we’re on this kind of larger timeline journey. So every once in a while we’re dipping back in time. that’s something Laura Dave also does that in THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME. we kind of, jump back to the backstory in standalone chapters, but we’re never

So if you have this long prologue, that’s another thing to think about. Like, do I just need to. You know, do I need to mix up my chronology in some way so that I can really get readers hooked into the story and like

[00:29:40] Matty: Yeah. I do like the idea about, do you not call

Even if you then have to start out chapter two with 10 years later or

[00:29:51] Kristen: Yeah,

[00:29:52] Matty: 10 years earlier, whatever that might be. because then it seems more integral to the, to the story and not just like prologue often. Feels to me as a reader, like it was something that was just bolted on. yeah. And if I jump into chapter one and it has this sort of providing backstory or providing four story or whatever you would call that, then I don’t mind that I, I’d rather see it presented as a, just a chapter.

[00:30:14] Kristen: Yeah. Yep.

[00:30:16] Matty: Does any of this carry over to epilogue? So I just read a book that had an epilogue, like I got to the end of the last chapter and I was like, huh, well that’s interesting. And then the, the next thing was an epilogue and it had a lot of the wrap up that I was looking for. are, are any of these things we’re talking about related to prologues, also applicable to epilogues?

[00:30:34] Kristen: That’s a really good question. Um, well, so one thing is. Like readers will give you a lot more grace with an epilogue than they will with a prologue, right? Because they’ve made it to the end. in the situation you described, it actually sounds like that should have been the last chapter, right?

If they haven’t really wrapped up the story and it takes the epilogue to do that. I really think of the epilogue as. Again, like a prologue, something that exists outside of the mainframe of the story. Right? So, in a romance novel, for example, it’s very common for us to see an epilogue where, we’ve had the, the happy ending.

Like they’ve figured, they’ve figured everything out, they’re together, and then the epilogue shows us a snapshot of them being. Being happy, right? Yeah. Like five years down the road or whatever.

[00:31:23] Matty: Yeah.

[00:31:23] Kristen: it also, if you’re writing a series, this can be a place where you drop a really fun breadcrumb for the next book in

So I, I work with an author who writes zombie horror novels and he does this very successfully, where we just get like a little bit of a scene where we can’t tell exactly what’s gonna happen, but we’re like. Oh, oh, no. Like they’re safe for now. But this other thing that they don’t know about is, is, is percolating.

So that can, it’s a way of like pulling readers,you’ve, you’ve, you’ve finished, but you wanna pull them a little bit further into the

[00:31:56] Matty: Yeah, I have done that in my Lizzie Ballard thrillers where I’ve wrapped up the story and I think I presented as a, an epilogue because I want it to be very clearly separate from, it’s kind of like a slightly more, literary equivalent of, in the next adventure of Lizzie Ballard, such and such.

But I’m like in, in essence, kind of giving them the first chapter of the next story. And I even did that at the end of the, what will be the last book, book six. I had that kind of thing because I couldn’t help myself and I kind of wanted, because I intend to continue the series,

I wanted to pull people into that, but I also kind of wanted to, Just let them know that whether it ever showed up on the page or not, the

[00:32:37] Kristen: Yeah. I think and I,

[00:32:38] Matty: I have fun with those as a reader and

[00:32:40] Kristen: it’s really fun and you get to experiment with it again like you can. Um, it’s a place where.

You like readers will expect that the rules are off, all bets are off. This is an epilogue. It could be anything. So you could shift to a point of view that you’ve never written from before and that you won’t dip into again. That can be really fun. I’ve had an, I had an author once,

You. And it was really cool and really fun and she pulled it off. So like it’s just a fun place for you as an author to kind of play around a little bit and try, try something.

[00:33:20] Matty: Yeah. Yeah. now I’ll have to go back to that book, which is, has been in the early reader drawer for a little while. ’cause now I wanna go back and play with that last chapter.

[00:33:31] Kristen: Yeah. See what else you can get away with.

[00:33:33] Matty: Yeah. Um,

[00:33:37] Matty: and I think also that. I can imagine kind of a, a mechanical purpose of an epilogue of labeling. Something as an epilogue is that, especially with eBooks, because you don’t have that tactile sense that you’re getting near the end, I can imagine that

Convey to the reader that this is gonna be the last chapter. and so read it accordingly as opposed to, oh, that was interesting, that was interesting. And then they turn the page and they realize the book is over. it’s too bad that you can’t, I mean, unless you’re tracking the percentages on the screen of your e-reader, I’ve, I’ve run into that where I’ve gotten to the end of the book and I was like, wait, what?

And then I paged back electronically, back and forth a little bit to make sure I haven’t, like paged too far ahead. But it would be kind of a marker to say like, this is the last thing you’re gonna be hearing

[00:34:24] Kristen: Yeah, I think that’s true. Although I think, I think that’s a craft issue if that’s happened, right?

[00:34:31] Matty: Yeah, for sure.

[00:34:32] Kristen: sometimes, sometimes like, authors forget that we need kind of some falling action after the climax. Yeah. Right? Like, we need to get everyone kind of reoriented. This is also the place where you get to kind of lean back into your theme, right? Like the action is

Your readers actually wanna stay with you for at least a few more pages. Yeah. And so, thinking about why you wrote the book in the first place and coming back to that and maybe having, your protagonist or another character be thinking about that or voicing it or, or showing it in some

Like what’s a final scene that kind of encapsulates your theme? Like, where can you put these, these characters as they are. kind of coming back to earth after your earth shattering climax, right? Yeah, yeah. so I think if you have had a, the experience where you’re like, wait, this is over, then, I don’t know, maybe the, the writer missed that, that

[00:35:28] Matty: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:35:31] Matty: So, we’ve come to the last of the, writing rules you can break, to discuss. And this is gonna be interesting because this is one that I would say, oh, well, yeah, sure. This is just, this is just a rule, like there’s no reason to, to not to violate this rule. And it is never switch point of view within a scene.

I think this is because I got this hammered into my head so much by my editor. That I’m very aware of it as a writer and also very aware of it as a reader. And it makes me crazy, especially if I’m reading like a very well-respected, critically acclaimed book and suddenly they’re like popping between people’s brains and I think, oh my gosh, how could

So, talk a little bit about why that is often a rule, but how maybe it

[00:36:14] Kristen: Yeah, so part of this is like helpful just to like, think about where we. like how we came to this point. and this is kind of where my academic background is helpful. So I, when I was an academic, I specialized in the 19th century British novel, and there we

Everyone’s heads, right? Like that omniscient narrator is in everyone’s business tells us all about it, right? Think about Dickens Austin. They know what’s happening everywhere, and they will tell us, but also that narrator has kind of a voice and a presence. Now the novel being, it’s a novel, right? There’s a reason we, we call it this way,

So even if you read, say, a thriller from like the 1970s or eighties, you’ll see something that to us we would now identify as head hopping, right? we’re, we’re clearly kind of primarily with this protagonist, but all of a sudden we’re able to like see into the bad guys’ thoughts. And that’s in part because we, in the last, I would say like 20 years have really gravitated towards like, really close, deep in POV

I think part of that is, I don’t know, hard, hard to know why that style has changed. I think it’s something about wanting to get closer to characters and also kind of understanding how different people are. Right. and, and, and really wanting to get a kind of closer view of the

That said like, the novel’s gonna keep changing. And I definitely, like, as I’ve been reading in the last couple years, I have taken note of, some trends and you’ll see it often first in literary fiction. So, we’ve seen some big literary fiction books. Where, the author’s using

Lauren Groff’s MATRIX is one. THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT by Maggie O’Farrell, who also is the author of HAMNET. That was, just up for an award is another, and omniscient point of view. A again, we’ll kind of hop around, but it, this omniscient point of view feels different now if

What is typical, not what like the literary fiction people might be trying out as an experiment. I am seeing commercial fiction writers, genre fiction writers play a little bit more with point of view, but do it, really carefully. So, S.A. Cosby’s novel, KING OF ASHES, which is. Very, very good and very like squarely commercial.

very well done. He does this really cool kind of point of view handoff in one scene where we have two characters, a brother and a sister. They’re together. We are clearly in the brother’s point of view. We’ve had a lot of his interior thoughts and then, The sister gets ready to leave the scene where they’re both in and she walks out the

We are then in her thoughts as she drives off, and it’s so clever. It feels very seamless, because, Cosby is kind of careful to, like, he doesn’t go straight from. The brother’s thoughts to the sister’s thoughts. There are some interim steps where we’re in the brother’s thoughts and then we’re just getting kind of neutral setting description, action description that’s not colored by, his interiority

And then we get kind of the same with the sister, kind of, doing these actions and then we get her interiority and also importantly. We don’t go back, we don’t hop back to the brother in the same scene. Once we move to the sister, we stay there. Um, so the, the writer, Emma Darwin, has this fantastic blog post, that actually just should be an entire book, I think called, 10 Ways to Move Point of View in a scene.

I think I’ll, I’ll send you the link so you can put it in the show notes. but there are many ways you can do this. You just have to be, again, you have to know what you’re doing. Do it once. Do it really carefully and have a reason for doing it right. Don’t just kind of do

[00:40:14] Matty: Well, I just have to say that I just saw S.A. Cosby at the Beta Ocean Writers Conference this past weekend, and he was, so charming and so funny and so inspirational, and I’ve been trying to figure out how I can reach out to him to invite him to the

And what I’m gonna do is send him, this, this interview with a timestamp for, when you started saying such nice things about him and I followed up with more nice things. We’ll see if we can’t get Sean on the, on the podcast through that. but for point of view, I think that where it’s jarring to me, like if it’s very consistently omniscient, I

It’s more jarring when it feels to me like someone for whom that’s not the natural way that, that I write or read when it just pops in. like I was reading something earlier today, and it was clearly from,person a’s point of view. And at the end it said, and then he disappeared into the

You really can’t have him disappearing into the forest unless in that last sentence, it’s from the other PO point of view of the person who’s watching him. And I think it’s those little trip ups where it doesn’t feel like I could think about that and say, is there some

Not that I can think of. So I think maybe it’s that, that sense of intentionality and consistency in its application versus, you’ve gotten through 97 pages and on page 98 there’s this weird thing about like

[00:41:41] Kristen: Right? Or is he like literally about to disappear, right?

Yeah. Some of this, for me as an editor, I would kind of, I would go look forward and see, okay, what’s coming next is that, a deliberate distancing because we are going to move into the point of view of a character. whose point of view we haven’t been in before, and the

But sometimes you can, it is just a slip up because the, the author. it is the author watching the character rather than being in the character and writing from that, from that perspective. And it’s, it’s hard to juggle all of those hats, especially if you’re doing a multi POV novel.

[00:42:19] Matty: Well, I do think that maybe a, a learning at the base of all this is that getting back to the, you can violate the rules, but you should know you’re violating them. Is that, I think that more people. Straight. I don’t even wanna say straight. They decide to not

for legitimate creative purposes, they just need to be aware that you’re sort of attracting attention to the language by doing that or attracting the attention to some other aspect of the book, like the structure, whatever that might be. In a way that is either desirable or maybe not desirable. Like if you’re writing something where a thriller, where you people want people to be really engaged in the action and then suddenly you’re doing something weird language wise, maybe that’s not

Whereas if you’re writing like a memoir or something, where attention to the language is what you’re going for, then. Using those variations from the guidelines can be exactly what you want, because now you’re attracting attention where otherwise a reader’s eye might just breeze

[00:43:25] Kristen: And I think that’s always that, like, that’s your final arbiter is the reader. Right? it can be hard for writers to, to put themselves in the reader’s head just because you have such deep familiarity with. Your creative world and your and your characters, but this is where an editor or a beta readers can kind of clue you in.

like if you’ve done something experimental like that and you’re not sure how it’s gonna land, get a reader in there to tell you, because that’s, Unless you are trying to confuse and disorient your reader, that’s, that’s generally not the, not the goal. And you know, if that’s what’s happened, then you have to go back and, and rethink what you’re, what you’re doing.

it’s, it’s fine to break the rule if it has the effect, the intended effect on the reader. Right. If it doesn’t have the attendant effect, then there is no point in you breaking the rule, right?

[00:44:19] Matty: Yeah. This is one where. It would be great to have a very, very cooperative beta. Reader and give them like a chapter of this sort of avant garde thing that you’re thinking of doing, and have them read it out loud and feel free to like editorialize, like

Or, oh, that’s so cool, or I have no idea what’s going on. Or it annoys me that you use commas in that way, or whatever it might be.

[00:44:41] Kristen: Yeah, it’s tricky because you have to also know kind of where your beta reader is coming from and are they a constructivist or a instructivist when it comes to their comma usage,

[00:44:52] Matty: Yeah, exactly. Well, so fun.

[00:44:54] Matty: I’m so glad we got together again and we’re gonna have a third conversation coming up. I’ll have that be a little secret about what that’s gonna be about, but I know people will look forward to that. so Kristen, thank you again and please let everyone know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do

[00:45:08] Kristen: Yeah, so my name is Kristen Tate and my business name is The Blue Garret, so you can find everything, at my website, the TheBlueGarret.com. I have a twice weekly newsletter that’s. Full of just kind of my musings about how, how are we, how’s the writing going these days? and that’s also where I linked to my NOVEL STUDY posts, and everything else I’m doing.

So that’s the best way to find me and keep up with what I’m up to.

[00:45:31] Matty: Great. Thank you so much.

[00:45:32] Kristen: Thanks, Matty.

Episode 331 - Tropes as Tools in Mysteries & Thrillers with Sara Rosett

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Sara Rosett discusses TROPES AS TOOLS IN MYSTERIES & THRILLERS, including the differences among tropes, genre conventions, and clichés, how scars and secrets function as plotting engines, how to scale the same trope for different genres, using tropes to inject new energy into a series, and what international mysteries can teach you about inventive plotting.

Sara Rosett is the USA Today bestselling author of over 30 mysteries for readers who enjoy atmospheric settings and puzzling whodunits. She also writes nonfiction for authors including, How to Write a Series, How to Outline a Cozy Mystery, and Trope Thesaurus: Mystery and Thriller. Sara hosts two podcasts: Mystery Books Podcast for readers and the Wish I’d Known Then For Writers Podcast with Jami Albright.

Episode Links

http://www.SaraRosett.com

http://www.SaraRosettBooks.com

https://www.instagram.com/sararosett/

https://www.x.com/sararosett

https://www.pinterest.com/srosett/

https://books2read.com/MysteryandThriller

Great companion episodes:

Episode 288 - Decoding Storytelling Tropes with Jennifer Hilt

Episode 325 - Reveals as the Striptease of Fiction with Tiffany Yates Martin

Episode 326 - Story First, Genre Second: Lessons from Romantasy for Every Writer with Brenna Bailey-Davies

Summary & Transcript

Sara Rosett is the USA Today bestselling author of over thirty mysteries and the host of the Mystery Books Podcast. She also co-hosts the Wish I’d Known Then for Writers podcast with Jami Albright and writes nonfiction for authors, including HOW TO WRITE A SERIES, HOW TO OUTLINE A COZY MYSTERY, and most recently THE TROPE THESAURUS: MYSTERY AND THRILLER, co-authored with Jennifer Hilt. In this conversation, Sara explored how tropes function as creative tools for mystery and thriller writers—and why understanding them can improve both your craft and your marketing.

TROPES ARE NOT CLICHÉS

Sara drew a clear line between tropes and clichés. A cliché is what you get when you use a trope without adding depth. The dumb jock who is dumb in every scene is a cliché; the dumb jock who secretly runs an online book club about classics is a character. The difference lies in layering—backstory, scars, secrets, surprises that complicate the reader’s initial assumption. Jennifer Hilt’s framework of scars and secrets is particularly useful here: give your characters wounds they do not want exposed, and those wounds become both the emotional engine and the plotting engine of the story.

SCARS AND SECRETS AS PLOTTING TOOLS

In mystery specifically, Sara explained, nearly every character needs a secret of some kind to keep the investigation alive. If six characters each carry a wound or a secret, the sleuth has six threads to pull—and those threads generate clues, red herrings, and misdirection. She described it as a solar system: the main whodunit is the sun, and the smaller character mysteries orbit around it. The key difference from romance, where scars often drive characters toward healing and connection, is that in mystery they function as puzzle pieces. A character’s secret explains why they lied about an alibi or behaved strangely in a particular scene. The reader’s pleasure comes from fitting those pieces together.

TROPES VERSUS GENRE CONVENTIONS

Matty raised the question of where tropes end and genre conventions begin. Sara distinguished between the two: a convention is a rule of the road—in cozy mystery, the murder happens offstage and the content stays clean. A trope is a recognizable story element that can be played with, inverted, or transplanted across genres. The locked room mystery is one of the few tropes that mystery readers actively seek out by name. Others, like the return to the small town or the animal sidekick, are more common in cozies but can be adapted to fit thrillers or other subgenres by adjusting tone and scale.

SCALING TROPES BETWEEN MYSTERY AND THRILLER

Sara and Jennifer divided the book along their respective strengths—Sara in mystery, Jennifer in thriller—and Sara described how the same trope operates differently depending on genre. Hidden identity in a thriller looks like THE BOURNE IDENTITY: international locations, high-speed action, life-or-death stakes. Hidden identity in a mystery looks like LUDWIG: a smaller, quieter story where a socially awkward man impersonates his missing twin brother, a police detective, and navigates a small cast of characters. The trope is identical; the scale and tone are not. Sara suggested that writers can take any trope and dial it up for thriller or dial it down for mystery, as long as they match the pacing and expectations of their audience.

She offered a particularly inventive example of playing with the locked room trope: instead of figuring out how someone got out of a locked room, what if the puzzle is how to get something into a locked room without being detected? That inversion—which she compared to a reverse bank heist—preserves the familiar structure while delivering a surprise.

REFRESHING A SERIES WITH TROPES

For series writers who feel they have exhausted their ideas, Sara recommended browsing a trope thesaurus the way you might browse a menu. Picking up a trope from another genre—enemies to lovers recast as a buddy-cop dynamic, for instance—can inject new energy into a long-running series without alienating readers who value familiarity. The goal is same but different: enough recognition to satisfy the reader’s expectations, enough novelty to keep the story sparkling.

USING AI TO IDENTIFY TROPES IN YOUR OWN WORK

Sara acknowledged that writers are often blind to the tropes in their own manuscripts. She and Jennifer traded drafts of THE TROPE THESAURUS and Jennifer spotted tropes Sara had missed entirely. For writers without a co-author to do that analysis, Sara suggested using AI: feed your manuscript in and ask it to identify the major tropes. Matty described doing exactly that with her thriller series and discovering that found family was central to her story—something she had written instinctively but never identified in marketing terms. Recognizing the trope allowed her to call it out in her sales description and reach readers who specifically seek it.

INTERNATIONAL MYSTERIES AS A STUDY TOOL

Sara closed with a recommendation that American mystery and thriller writers look beyond American entertainment. She has found lighter-toned mystery shows in French and British television, inventive plotting in Korean and Japanese dramas, and satisfying character arcs in limited series that tell a complete story in ten or sixteen episodes rather than stretching indefinitely across seasons. She cited MURDER BY THE LAKE, a German-Austrian series set around a border lake, as an example of how a single setting can generate an extraordinary variety of mystery plots. The show also layers one character’s backstory into the lake setting itself, using the location as both a plot device and a thematic element. Sara noted that core tropes—the great detective, the odd-couple pairing, the locked room—appear to be genuinely international, turning up in Korean dramas and Japanese fiction alongside their Western counterparts.

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This transcript was created by Descript and cleaned up by Claude; I don’t review these transcripts in detail, so consider the actual interview to be the authoritative source for this information.

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to the Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is Sara Rosett. Hey, Sara, how are you doing?

[00:00:05] Sara: Good. How are you?

[00:00:06] Matty: I am doing great, and just to give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Sara Rosett is the USA Today bestselling author of Over Their 30 Mysteries For readers who enjoy atmospheric settings and puzzling whodunit, Sara hosts two podcasts, Mystery Books Podcast for readers and the Wish I’d Known Then for Writers podcast with Jami Albright, which is a highly, highly

She also writes, nonfiction for authors, including HOW TO WRITE A SERIES, HOW TO OUTLINE A COZY MYSTERY, and most recently, THE TROPE THESAURUS: MYSTERY AND THRILLER with the trope queen herself. Jennifer Hiltt, who is has also been a guest on the podcast. And, not only do we have, Jennifer on the podcast back in episode 288 talking about

but this episode is coming at a really interesting time because two recent episodes were, episode 325 reveals as these strip tease of fiction with Tiffany Yates Martin, and I think talking about, mystery and thriller tropes in terms of reveals. We’ll be a fun follow onto that conversation. And then the other recent conversation was in episode 326, story first genre, second lessons from romantic for every writer with Brenna Bailey-Davies and Brenna And I had a lot of conversations about, the role of tropes in genre and, and the complications of, accommodating tropes when you’re doing genre blending

So we have kind of a theme going here. And today we’re going to be talking

[00:01:37] Matty: And I’m curious, first of all, just how did you and, Jen end up pairing up to write this book?

[00:01:41] Sara: I had always thought about writing a trope a, a book about mystery tropes because I feel like there that was kinda a gap in the market. There weren’t a lot of books about mystery tropes in particular. There were general trope books, and that was one, one. Partial reason I started Mystery Books podcast because I want to talk

But then I thought, well, I’ll just talk about these books. I’ll mention the tropes and then I’ll just save those episodes and transcripts and I’ll let them build up and then I’ll pull the tropes and you know, collate them into a book, which I never did. And then Jennifer was on our podcast and she mentioned, you know, she was working on this new, or she was planning, I think, to work on the new.

Mystery and Thriller trout book, and I thought, Hmm, I don’t think I’m ever going to do that book on my own. So I messaged her and said, Hey, if you’re interested in, you know, collaborating on that, I would love to do that. And she replied back and said, yes, you would love it. And, and we just went from there. It was, it was very easy to get going.

[00:02:39] Matty: Yeah, well I think that, Pairing you guys up is perfect because, you know, she’s so interested in tropes as a, as a writing mechanism, and you obviously had the deep dive experience on the mystery and thriller front. so that was really fun to see when I saw that you guys were, were paired up on that.

[00:02:54] Matty: And whenever I speak with anyone about tropes, I always like to talk about how tropes differ from cliches. Can you talk

[00:03:02] Sara: Yes, yes. So I feel like whatever you take could be a cliche, but you can make it not a cliche by going deeper. So if you have a character that’s, you know, the dumb jock character. If you write them as only a dumb jock and they’re dumb in every scene, then that’s what all you’ve got. But if you layer in some backstory and give them some more depth and maybe add a few surprises in there, maybe

You know about classics, you know, something like that, that you go, oh, that isn’t quite what I thought. You give them a little more depth and then you can let layer in, like Jennifer likes to talk about scars and secrets and things like that. And that really can make your character

So you may have, you know, something that starts out as a cliche, but the more you add to it, the more it becomes less of a cliche.

[00:04:02] Matty: Well, I like that idea about, the wounds and scars being important tropes and specific to mystery and thriller. How does that play out? Like what are examples of tropes that would serve

[00:04:18] Sara: Well, I think that they are great for thinking about. Secrets that your characters have. , because when I do a, when I plot a mystery, every, almost every character needs a secret of some type to keep the mystery element going and for to have things for your sleuth to discover. So if you have six characters and they all have

A or a secret, then you’ve got a lot that can be explored a lot for your sleuth to find, and your secrets may be things that are not. You know what? One person might consider a shameful secret. Another person might think, nah, that’s not a big deal. That’s, you know, take me or leave me that way. But other people, you know, it is something that they

They might have something that they don’t want exposed. So if you have wounds that people don’t want other people to know about. If you have scars, things that have, you know, wounded them, then you can use those things in your plotting and they can become clues and red herrings and

So you’ve got, you know, your main mystery of who done it usually. But then you have all these other little smaller mysteries, kind of like a solar system orbiting around the, the sun of the main mystery, you know?

[00:05:36] Matty: And would the use of, character wounds or scars be unto itself a trope? Or is it the case that for different genres, different genres are going to want to have those wounds and scars play out

[00:05:51] Sara: Oh, I would think each genre is going to have very specific sort of expectations around scars and secrets, because I feel like in a romance. you may have those, but I feel like romance is, you’re making progress towards healing a lot of times and towards a relationship. So maybe those scars and secrets are exposed in the

And then there’s a point where the two characters coming together, it’s. They help each other through these difficult times or learn to cope with things together. And I don’t know, you could have that in a mystery, but I don’t think mystery readers have that expectation with scars and secrets. I think it’s more, for them, it’s more of a puzzle.

There’s a lot of like trying to figure out how all the parts fit together. And so sometimes, you know, you get this, oh, this person has this secret and that’s why they behaved this way and that explains why they lied and said they didn’t have an alibi. So I don’t know that a mystery reader would have the same expectations of that type of trope, but you could use it, you know, however you want.

You could say, what would, what would my mystery be like if I tipped these, you know, things that are more familiar in this romance genre and applied them to my genre? And just see what happened. And if you don’t like it, you know, take it out.

[00:07:10] Matty: Yeah, this is a very nice companion piece to the conversation I had with Brenna about, genre blending. And I think it’s, one of the things we’ve. Talked about is the idea that genre is, oftentimes more useful from a marketing point of view than from a

There’s a mixture of that because the one that I always go back to is, I remember years and years and years ago, the first time someone explained to me that the difference between a romance and a love story is a romance had to have a happy ending and a love story doesn’t have

And I was like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. Like lots of things became clear to me about, you know, the types of books people liked and didn’t like the ones they recommended and didn’t recommend based on that. And so that is both a marketing decision because you have to decide if you’re going to have a happy ending or a sad ending.

And it’s a craft question because you have to, you have to either meet the expectations of the readers based on your presentation of the genre. Or you just have to accept that you’re really going to disappoint or possibly piss people off if you’re presenting it in one way, but

And I think, I mean, I guess that the same thing an, an equivalent for mysteries would be like the cozy mystery and the, trope. You can let me know if I’m using the word trope in the right way here of you can’t have the murder take place on, on the page. Would you consider that a

[00:08:36] Sara: Yeah, I think for me that’s a genre convention that a cozy is usually clean, you know, fairly like you clean, like in that there’s not a lot of violence and gore on the page. The death usually takes place off stage. yeah. So I would think that’s more of a convention that an expectation readers have. I think mystery does have,

Well, well-known tropes that are talked about among the readership. I think mystery doesn’t have that as much they, I, the main mystery specific trope that I think people talk about is the locked room. That’s one that it’s like, oh yes, locked room. We love locked room mysteries. , because it’s very much associated with the mystery and it’s

And that I think makes it more a recognizable mystery trope, whereas just, I think there’s a convention. Yeah.

[00:09:30] Matty: In the cozy mystery world, would a trope be something like, oftentimes there’s an, an animal, you know, associated with the, with the sleuth Is, would that be more of a trope?

[00:09:41] Sara: Yeah, it could be. Yeah. I think another, Like I, that’s a sidekick basically. So you could have an animal sidekick, you could have, you know, different, you could have a computer sidekick, you know, so you could personally, you know, have an AI sidekick or something for, you know, a futuristic type story.

But, yeah, I think another cozy mystery trope would be, the return to the small town. And you can use that in a thriller. You know, Jennifer uses that in the book, but her example she uses is justified, which. Not cozy, I don’t think really, but like in a cozy mystery, you would take

Away. Gone out into the big world to make their way. And usually something has happened, often something shameful, something that they’re not happy with and they have to return home because you know, the only place you can go when you’re down, out is home where you know they’ll have to take you in. And so, you know, you come back and then you’ve got all these relationships that you had that come back into

All the friendships and romantic relationships and then, you know, it’s just a different in tone, I think with that.

[00:10:48] Matty: Yeah, and I guess maybe a difference for me to clarify for myself the difference between the genre conventions and the tropes would be, that things like you can’t have the murder on the page or. is more, it’s like the rules of the road, assuming that you’re, you’re not intentionally writing a, a genre twisting kind of, plot.

You know, that, that you want to satisfy the reader, not like shock the reader or, or bring the reader up of short or something like that. and so those things have to be in place for a book to be considered a part

[00:11:21] Sara: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I think that, you know, you’re talking about shocking the reader or doing something unexpected. If you had, like you were talking about the mystery or the, the difference between a love story and a romance. And if you write a book where your readers are expecting one thing and you give them something else that does, it can create a lot of buzz.

And I think sometimes people do that intentionally. Like they intentionally take elements that maybe a cozy reader wouldn’t maybe want or expect, but then they. Add these things and it causes, you know, talk and controversy and you know, it can work in any genre. You know, you can flip things around and so sometimes that works to get buzz, but then I don’t know if that’s really helpful in building a readership.

[00:12:10] Matty: It does seem more like something that someone who is established and now has kind of the space in order to do something like that is better, better positioned to do it both because, you know, they’re not banking their whole career on this particular group of readers being satisfied. but. They, they’ve illustrated that they know how to comply with the genre conventions and the tropes.

And so it’s kind of like, you know, the recommendation that if you’re, if you’re going to, do abstract art, then you have to be able to illustrate that you can do representational art as well. And so it’s, it’s a choice. It’s not like, because this is the only way I know how to draw, draw whatever it is.

and if you’ve already illustrated that, you know how to com, you know, play within the lines and now you’re intentionally playing outside the lines, you could kind of get away with it more, I think.

[00:12:57] Sara: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Kind of like you have to know the

[00:13:01] Matty: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

[00:13:14] Matty: So we we’re talking a lot about mystery and I think that I don’t have as much trouble thinking about tropes in the mystery area as I do in the thriller area. So talk a little bit about what, what constitutes tropes in the thriller genre.

[00:13:18] Sara: Okay, well. When we sat down to break all this out, when we sat down to write this book, Jennifer is much more versed in thrillers and I’m more versed in industry, so we kind of just divvied everything up. But she has an interesting philosophy about tropes, which I’ve, I’m kind of coming around to. I didn’t, she’s much deeper in, into tropes than I am, but she feels like most tropes

maybe a orphan trope, and that can go in any genre. You can have, you know, friends to lovers or in the, but then you just kind of twist it and change it just a little bit in your genre. And so that in the

So like you’re maybe going from enemies to friends and you know, she feels like you can kind of sort things and shift them in each genre, like dial them in for that genre, I guess. And so I feel like the thriller genre, you can take the same trope and just change it just a

You can use that in a thriller and think about like THE BOURNE IDENTITY and then compare that to,a mystery use of the, hidden identity might be something like REMINGTON STEELE or LUDWIG. I don’t know if you’ve seen

[00:14:36] Matty: I haven’t,

[00:14:36] Sara: show. It’s a, a man who has a twin brother. His brother goes missing, and his brother.

A police detective and his sister-in-law calls him and says, I need you to go and pretend to be him and go find out what he was working on. And he’s not. He’s very socially awkward. And so it’s a, you know, it’s like this whole thing. So you can, like, if you think about THE BOURNE IDENTITY compared to something like LUDWIG, then you’ve kind of got,

So I think you can take different tropes and use them in each genre. But you just have to match the tone and the pacing of the genre you’re in because I feel like a thriller is much faster paced and a bigger A is usually a little bit smaller, so. The BOURNE IDENTITY is these going to all these different international locations and there’s lots of action.

Whereas like LUDWIG, it’s a smaller, quieter story, you know, and he goes to the police department, he meets the little cast of characters there, and it’s more of a puzzle. Like what was he working on? Who’s he, you know, interacting with? So I feel like you can kind of gauge

So I think you just have to know kind of if you’re running for a thriller audience. And they want that bigger scale. How can you take

[00:15:53] Matty: Yeah, I really like the idea of using, playing with tropes as a way of sort of, injecting new energy or a new spin into something. I think this is a good way of illustrating how tropes are different than cliches and I. I can especially see this and I’m curious for your opinions on this, for obvious reasons in how this plays out in a series because, you’ve written about series.

I think in one of our last conversations we talked about series and I would think that. You know, every people who are writing longer series, probably everybody gets to the point where like, Ugh, like I’ve done it all. I dunno what to do next. And it would be super fun to just like pick up the big book of the big trope thesaurus, you know, the big general trope thesaurus from Jen, and just start paging through it and saying like, oh, you know, enemies to lovers.

Well, I wasn’t really thinking about this as having a, a romance subplot, but how else can it play out? Like you’re saying, it doesn’t have to be lovers, it could be friends. and I’m curious as to whether you have ever used the tropes of mystery in that way, like using them as a tool to look at a story differently, or if you would now, going forward, now that you’ve written the book with Jen.

[00:17:04] Sara: Oh yeah, I think I will now much more than I did in the past because once you start seeing them, you know, you become more familiar with ’em and you’re like, oh, look at how this book or this TV show is, is using this trope that I hadn’t even thought of before. But yeah, I think I’ve done that in the past.

Well, there’s, you know, the locked room trope, and I decided one time I just, I want to write this book with a locked room mystery. Like that was my starting point. I think it would be interesting to take like locked room and say, how else could I have a locked room? I actually, I was brainstorming my, with my husband about this one time.

I was like, what can, what new thing can you do with locked room? And then I thought, you know what? If you had a story where. The room was locked, but you had to get something into the locked room instead of getting something outta locked room. You know, just like something like that, you could just take it and say, how can we change this up a little

How can we make it the same but different? You know? Because if readers want that familiarity, that’s why they like tropes. But you need a little something different to give it a little more sparkle, a little more interest, you know?

[00:18:13] Matty: I, I think that’s fantastic. When you, you started saying that I thought that the spin was going to be, it’s not a room, it’s a, it’s a. Ship or it’s a basket hanging from a balloon or something like that. But I like that idea of it’s not in the room, it’s, it’s out of the room and has to get in the room. That’s super

[00:18:31] Sara: Yeah. And to me that’s almost has thriller elements to it, right? Because like a, like a bank heist. What if you had a, a reverse bank heist where you know, you need to get something back into the safety deposit box without anybody finding out about it, you know? And you could still have all the, you know, the building the team and the, the planning.

And then you have things go wrong. You could still do the same pattern, you know, but you would just be, your goal would be different.

[00:18:56] Matty: It would be fun to find a work in a completely different genre that was known for like, hitting all the beats of its genre, beats tropes, like the, the conventions of that genre and say, okay, that’s a romance, but I’m going to write, you know, an urban fantasy based on that. Or I’m going to write a, a western based on it, or

and see how, how well you can match the. Match that kind of rhythm, but in a different genre and with a different set of tropes probably.

[00:19:27] Sara: Or you could take something and say, I’m going to write this. I mean, I don’t think there’s a market for this right now, but maybe someday I’m going to write this as a time travel mystery. I’m going to take the mystery elements and put them into a time travel story and see what happens. Add that element of time, travel or something like that, that you know, it’s just.

Would, it makes my brain go, oh, how would that work? How can I fit all

[00:19:53] Matty: I think the other reason that I find it very useful to look at lists of tropes for a certain genre is that I’m assuming there must be other writers out here out there like me that have a lot of trouble recognizing. Tropes in their own work. If you don’t go into it thinking that you’re going to use a trope.

So for example, I was thinking about locked room mystery. I think in one of the previous conversations I mentioned, I said that’s one of the few circumstances where every once in a while I’m like, as a reader looking for a particular trope. Like I’m in the mood for a locked room mystery and

but I don’t generally write. I don’t think of it in that way when I’m writing and for example, I’m writing, a story now based on a cruise ship. And so it’s like the limited group of people who have limited access to the outside world and bad things are about to happen. And I thought, oh yeah, that’s definitely a trope.

But I wasn’t going into it thinking that way. And so I, my fear is that I’m under utilizing the potential of that trope by not thinking about

[00:21:00] Sara: Yes. And I think I’ve noticed that the, since I’ve worked on this book, I can see them so much easier. Things that I hadn’t noticed before that, , because we, we traded our manuscripts. Like we each, we divvied up all the tropes and wrote everything. We each took half, then we traded and read each other’s stuff.

And I’ve tried to, you know, catch all the tropes. When Jennifer sent stuff back, she was like, Hey, did you realize this is a TR here and this is TR here? And I was like, oh, no, I totally missed it. You know? Oh, that, that is a con. I didn’t understand that. The, you know, I just didn’t pick up on it. So I think it takes, you know, somebody else

this might be something that you could use AI for. Just say, what are the tropes in here, the major tropes, and let me know, you know, give me a list because. AI’s good at analyzing big chunks of data that, I mean, some people don’t want to use it at all for anything, but I think this would be something that it, it would be a good like sort of supportive

And once you see it, then you can go, oh, like I had a, a lot of mysteries, you have the dead body is found and then for some reason. You have this clock that’s ticking. Jennifer calls this the ticking time bomb. And I always think that’s more of a thriller trope. You know, it’s more, you know, we have to save the world, you know, before you know the, the tragedy happens, but you can use it in mystery if you have

Sometimes it’s like, oh, you know, the, the feds are arriving. In a day, you have one evening to gather as much information as you possibly can to solve this yourself before you have to hand it off or I’ve, there was a mystery I watched one time where the law was changing and the, statutes of limitation was about to expire, and these people were like, okay, if we can find this one final clue, we can put together this case and we can file the charges before the deadline so you can create

In your mystery too, even though I feel like ticking time bomb is more, it’s more frequently used in thrillers or I recognize it faster in thrillers, you know? So there are probably lots of things like that that I just don’t see. But yeah, there are lots that I think familiarity and going over it and having somebody else look at it is probably the

[00:23:25] Matty: Yeah, well a couple of years ago, Jen and I had this, short video series where we would watch movies and then we would get together and talk about the tropes in the movies. I’ll put a link to that. That, playlist on YouTube in the show notes. but you’re absolutely right that seeing that, play out in other, in other works like movies for example, is, is really fun.

[00:23:48] Matty: is, are there tips you have for people or, going to, Things other than books, TVs, or shows or movies, things like that. Like is there some little part of their brain they can turn on so that they’re learning optimally from the tropes they’re seeing and maybe

[00:24:03] Sara: Sometimes, I will read a book or watch a show and I just enjoy it. I just. Watch it and enjoy it. And then if I really, if it was one of the ones that I’m like, sort of fascinated with, I’m thinking, I really enjoyed that. How did they make that work? You know, like, how, how did they make that, I want to go back and I’ll watch it again, read it again, and I’ll go slower and I’ll look for patterns

yeah. So that’s what I did when I did these, all these examples. I would watch the show and then I’d think, okay, what were the, the. What could I match up to this list that we have? That was very helpful. , because I was like, at least this is a starting point, and then maybe

But then a lot of times I would think, okay. What, like if I’m going to do, you were saying a, like they’re all on a cruise ship that’s forced proximity, so they’re all together. What other shows use forced proximity and it could be on a train, it could be they’re, you know, walk somewhere because of a natural disaster and then just go watch how, because you know, there’s infinite variety of ways you can do things.

[00:25:18] Matty: Yeah. I also wanted to loop back on something you had said earlier about,using the examination of tropes along with ai. And one of the other favors that Jen did for me is that I was reworking the sales descriptions of my thriller series. And I had drafted something and I sent it out to a circle of friends, including Jen and asking for input, and she said.

You should also ask the AI to identify the tropes that exist in the story. And so I did that and you know, at the end I would say it would be like perfect for readers who love fill in the blank. And, one of the things that is very, very central to my thriller series, but I had not

And so I was able to call out the found family concept in the marketing material. And to me that was just one of those things, like I had just written it into the story, but I had never analyzed it from that point of view about what expectation or what trope is that feeding and would

[00:26:18] Sara: Yes. I think that’s invaluable because we’re so close to it, it’s so hard to see. And when you get that. Outside view of it. I do find those things for me too. I’m like, oh, that is a friends to lovers subplot, that that’s just what I have in the series. That’s how I’m, you know, it’s that storyline that’s carrying out across the series among the, the two main characters.

But in my mind, that’s just the, this thing, I didn’t identify it as a trope, which once you do that, you can include that in the description

[00:26:52] Matty: Yeah, the, the conversation about making, making a little twist on a trope reminds me, I think that, I’m going to say Stephen King, but everything gets attributed to Stephen King, so I’m not sure this is true, but the idea that,taking things and changing one aspect of it. Like, let’s, let’s do truckers on the road encounter, you know, encounter something dangerous.

But what if we put them in space instead and now it’s aliens. I. I just think that that’s such a great sort of palate, cleanser, and especially when people are stuck and they might feel like they’re stuck because of the tropes that they feel like they need to hit. But if you think of it as a menu and, and look at some other genres, tropes, just like you were saying, and, see how people are playing with them there.

[00:27:37] Sara: Yeah. Yeah. It sort of like the, DIE HARD except on a plane, DIE HARD, except in the White House. You know, there are infinite variety of shows and movies and books that have been played off of that, that trope, you know, that, that situation,

[00:27:51] Matty: Exactly. Um,

[00:27:58] Matty: one of the things you had mentioned was the idea of why international mysteries should be on your watch list and your, to be read list. Talk a little bit about that. Why would international

[00:28:05] Sara: Well, for me, part of the reason I started watching, you know, and reading these other literature and TV shows from other countries is I feel like our entertainment in the US has gotten mo very dark and kind of gritty in many ways. A lot of the mysteries are,

You get rid of the network shows and then. People are drawn to this. I think the producers of them are drawn to the more dramatic, the gritty, the darker, the more hard hitting. And if you’re a cozy mystery writer, you’re like, oh, what am I going to watch? There’s no more, WHITE COLLAR,

She wrote, where am I going to go? But there is a lot of lighter entertainment. Around the world. And I, that’s where I’ve found a lot of the lighter shows. A lot of the lighter mystery shows, British and French especially. I love those. The Scandi stuff is still very dark, so, but they do have a couple of cozy, like cozy mysteries.

So for me it was like seeking out changes, more entertainment in the tone that I enjoy. And so that was kind of how I got started in it. And just, I feel like watching these shows, they have a different. Especially the Asian shows. I watch a lot of K-dramas, Korean dramas, Japanese dramas. They have a different type of structure because they

Unending series, they, they have a 10 episode, 10 a limited series. They have 10 episodes, they have 16 episodes, and you get the whole story arc and you get character arcs. Whereas in our shows, a lot of times the ideas that this series is going to go on as long as possible, so our characters. Are always going to be the same way because they can’t really complete their growth arc because then the series ends.

What do you do with them? So I enjoy those because you get to see the whole character arc. You get to see the whole plot line play out, and you get a resolution instead of the season one ends up on a cliffhanger. And then you come back in season two and then all of a sudden you’re

They kinda do a reset until you get to the end of the season, and then there’s a cliffhanger. But I feel like there’s not that progressive growth that you get to see in some of these series. I find them really satisfying and I’ve found that they, they just do some interesting

One of the I, I get some story possibilities from them. Like I watched one, it is called MURDER BY THE LAKE, and there’s another series called MURDER AT THE LAKE or something like that. So you have to really search

[00:30:39] Matty: There’s the murder trope and the lake trope.

[00:30:42] Sara: they put ’em together. Yeah. But this one, it

I think it was, Germany and Austria both border on this lake. And so if something, if a crime happened in the lake, then you know, they needed this multi got multi-country team to investigate. So that was interesting, just the different dynamics involved there and the different. Ways of doing things and you know, the inner office politics, you know, that come with that.

But then each mystery, I was amazed at how many mysteries they came up with. That happened on that lake. , because everything had to happen in the lake. So, you know, you got, you know, boat desk, you’ve got different disappearances. But it was, I can’t remember them all now, but I remember watching it thinking, wow, look at all these varieties of

And then. One of the characters, her backstory had to do with the lake, and so it was like, it’s like a theme you can layer in as well as like the situation. So I dunno, just things like that I’ve just found very interesting. And I don’t know that I would’ve come across some of recommendation queue, you know?

[00:31:52] Matty: Yeah.

[00:31:54] Matty: I imagine most of our listeners are in the us. do you find, or did you get any sense as you ma made these ventures into your recommendation queue about to what extent people who are writing with. Audiences outside the US audience in mind need to take tropes into account? Like are tropes sort of international or are you seeing in your, in your viewing that different markets are treating them in

[00:32:23] Sara: No, I feel like they’re pretty international. I feel like the, Mike Sherlock Holmes, the great detective trope is pretty international. You know, I feel like there’s the, you know, different varieties of it. I did watch a, a Korean drama, called FLEX X COP. And they had one episode where they were like, oh, it’s a locked room

And I was like, you are kidding. But it wasn’t really a locked room mystery, but they wanted to throw that in because people, you know, recognize that, Japanese, I haven’t run across, I’ve been told that Japanese love locked room mysteries and the access to Japanese content isn’t as. Wide, you know, they’re harder to find with the subtitles

So I haven’t been able to watch any of those, but I’ve heard that they really love them. They have a lot of books that have been translated into English that have the locked room trope. So I think you can probably find out what people enjoy by looking at the, the content that that’s really popular in those countries, the types of shows they

yeah, that’s, those are the main ones that I’ve noticed is like the great detective. Odd couple pairing that seems to be popular wherever you go. Especially if you’ve got, you know, the, like a police detective and a consulting, some sort of, you know, variety of consultant, you know, working together.

And there are different personalities and they have different skillsets

[00:33:47] Matty: It does sort of seem like going back to what you were saying before about there are levels, like you were talking about, applying things that you think of as thriller tropes to mystery and the the. Example I thought of that. I, I originally thought of it in terms of, is this different market to market?

But I don’t think it is. I think it’s more different reader to reader is like the ticking time bomb. That, that definitely sounds like thriller. But if you think of it as the, the ticking clock or the sand, you know, sifting through the hourglass or something like that, it’s all the same idea, but you’re, you’re leading into it to different, in

To meet the needs of whatever readers you’re trying to attract.

[00:34:31] Sara: Yeah, and having some limits, time limits on, whatever you’re doing, whether it’s a, you know, save the world thriller or an investigation, it keeps the pace up. It helps you keep, keep things moving, which is great.

[00:34:44] Matty: Well, so I don’t, impose too much on your time and keeping the pacing up. Sara, it’s always fun to talk to you and, being able to combine tropes and series is super fun since you obviously, have expertise in both. And I know people are going to be interested in checking out the new book from you and Jennifer Hilt, so please let people know where they can go to find out more about that,

[00:35:06] Sara: Okay, well for me it’s SaraRosett.com and they have all my books are listed there. There’s a link to the series book and to the trope book and the Cozy Industry book. All that’s online and my website, and I’ll also give you a link that will go directly to the trope book for Jennifer and I. So it’s been great to catch up with you.

Episode 330 - Writing the Moments that Matter with Rene Gutteridge

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Rene Gutteridge discusses WRITING THE MOMENTS THAT MATTER, including how real-life dramatic events translate differently to film and to fiction, why interiority is the novelist’s greatest advantage over screenwriters, how to slow down a high-intensity scene so readers feel every decision, choosing the small unexpected details that make a scene feel real, why every chapter needs both a purpose and a hook, and why your job as a writer is to make your character’s life miserable until the very last page.

Rene Gutteridge has been writing professionally for over twenty years, with projects spanning fiction, non-fiction, comedy sketches, novelizations and screenwriting. She is the multi-genre author of 24 novels plus several non-fiction titles. Her indie film Skid won deadCenter’s Best Oklahoma Feature, and her novel My Life as a Doormat was adapted into the Hallmark movie Love’s Complicated. She is co-writer on the feature film Family Camp, which was a Movieguide award winner and a Dove Award nominee. She is also a Screencraft finalist in true crime. Rene is co-director of WriterCon in Oklahoma City, senior contributor at Writing Momentum and is the head writer at 231 Collective.

Episode Links

https://www.facebook.com/ReneGutteridgeAuthor

www.renegutteridge.com

Summary & Transcript

Rene Gutteridge is a multi-genre author of 24 novels and several nonfiction titles whose work spans fiction, nonfiction, comedy sketches, novelizations, and screenwriting. Her indie film SKID won deadCenter’s Best Oklahoma Feature, her novel MY LIFE AS A DOORMAT was adapted into the Hallmark movie LOVE’S COMPLICATED, and she co-wrote the feature film FAMILY CAMP. Returning for her third appearance on the podcast, Rene was originally scheduled to discuss the choreography of a scene—but an extraordinary personal story took the conversation in a different direction, exploring how real-life dramatic moments become compelling fiction.

A STORY THAT CHANGED THE CONVERSATION

Asked to share a fact listeners might not know, Rene described the time she saved a young girl from being kidnapped. Driving to pick up her own children from school, she noticed a girl she had been keeping an eye on struggling with her bike. After passing the girl, Rene checked her rearview mirror and saw an unfamiliar car stop. Something about the interaction felt wrong. The driver popped the trunk, the girl put her bike in, and Rene made a split-second decision to turn around. She found the car on a dead-end street, blocked it with her own vehicle, got out, and confronted the driver—a woman who appeared to be on drugs. Rene loaded the girl and her bike into her car and drove her home. She never called the police, a detail she still finds baffling—and one that became a jumping-off point for a conversation about how real events translate to the page.

NOVELS VERSUS FILM: WHERE THE REAL DIFFERENCE LIES

Rene explained that as a screenwriter she would render that scene visually—the audience would watch it unfold. As a novelist, she would enter the scene through the character’s emotions and interior monologue. The critical difference is interiority: in a novel, the reader experiences the hundred thoughts racing through the character’s mind simultaneously—am I putting my children in danger, have I seen this on Dateline, am I going to look incredibly stupid when this turns out to be nothing. A film has no access to that interior layer without resorting to voiceover or exposition. Matty noted that the competing emotions—genuine fear for one’s children on one end of the spectrum, fear of embarrassment on the other—represent exactly the kind of complexity that makes a scene productive to mine for fiction.

SLOW MOTION AND THE RIGHT DETAILS

Rene emphasized that high-intensity events that unfold in minutes should be written slowly. The instinct is to match the pace of the action, but the craft lies in expanding the moment so the reader feels every decision, every hesitation. She drew a parallel to the Oklahoma City bombing, which she drove up on just minutes after it happened. Of everything she witnessed that day, the detail she remembers most vividly is the sound of glass crunching under her tires. With the kidnapping rescue, the detail that stayed with her was the eye contact she made with the driver through the car window before either of them said a word. These small, specific, unexpected details—not the big dramatic ones—are what readers remember and what make a scene feel real.

THE SAME SCENE, THREE WAYS

Rene and Matty discussed how the same event placed at different points in a novel would be written three entirely different ways. As an opening scene, it hooks the reader with mystery boxes: who is this woman, why is she following this car? In the middle of the book, it serves to escalate or resolve conflict within the existing arc. As the climax, it becomes the moment the character finally rises to do something she could not have done in chapter one. They also noted that the same event written from three different characters’ perspectives—a dad, a mom, a twenty-year-old—would unfold differently each time, because the internal experience would vary even if the external events did not. That layered interiority is something novels can do that film cannot.

Rene also made a distinction between “scenes” and “passages,” suggesting that the word “scene” may have migrated into fiction from film and that thinking in terms of passages encourages writers to slow down and sink deeper into point of view rather than defaulting to visual storytelling.

EVERY CHAPTER NEEDS A PURPOSE AND A HOOK

The conversation broadened into principles that apply to any scene. Rene described asking writers a simple diagnostic question: if you removed this chapter, would your story fall apart? If the answer is no, the chapter has a problem. Every chapter needs a main event—something that serves the story’s purpose and holds the reader’s interest. Beautiful sentences and vivid description are not enough if nothing meaningful is happening.

She also stressed that how a scene ends determines whether the reader turns the page. If every thread is tied up and the character feels safe, the reader has permission to put the book down. The goal is to deny them that permission—to end on a moment that makes them think, I need to know what happens next. Rene framed this bluntly: stop being your character’s friend. The character does not get to be okay until the final chapter. Everything before that is the writer’s job to make their life difficult, interesting, and impossible to look away from.

Matty added a complementary scenario from her own life—finding a stranger’s driver’s license in a parking lot and driving it to the address on the card—and the two spent time spinning out the ways that simple event could become the seed of a thriller, a character study, or a relationship story, depending on where you cut the scene and what you choose to reveal.

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This transcript was created by Descript and cleaned up by Claude; I don’t review these transcripts in detail, so consider the actual interview to be the authoritative source for this information.

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to the Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is Rene Gutteridge. Hey, Rene, how are you doing? and this is the point at which normally I would introduce Rene, but Rene, this is her third appearance on the podcast. She has been on earlier talking about navigating the worlds of fiction and film and what authors

And so my new policy is when that’s the case, when I have a returning guest, they get to share a fact about themselves that the listeners

[00:00:28] Rene: This is so fun. so, you know, I. I have just very few to choose from. I don’t lead in a terribly exciting life, but I will share one thing about myself that I think is one of the most courageous things I ever did. so I one time saved a little girl from being kidnapped, and that’s a fact about myself.

[00:00:56] Matty: Good heavens. Well, of course we have to hear a little bit of detail, behind that. In fact, this could be a great, entree to our conversation. We’re is going to about be about the choreography of a scene, so please

[00:01:06] Rene: Let me, let me paint the scene. So I, I had, I, my children were young and I would go pick them up from school and, I had always kept my eye on this one little girl that walked home from school. she just, she seemed, seemed to struggle here and there and, I, I just, you know, as a mom you just kind of keep your eye on the neighborhood kids, and so I was driving, I, I probably should have.

Exercised and walked to get my kids. It was only three blocks, but I drove to get my kids and we were in our car and I drove past her and she was struggling. She had kind of fallen over on her bike, so I just kind of looked at her and made sure she wasn’t hurt. Kind of slowed down. She was okay. So I kept going and when I got to the first stop sign, I looked in the rear view mirror just to kind of make sure she was okay and a car had stopped and, didn’t recognize the car at all.

And I knew a lot of the cars around there. I had never seen anybody pick her up from school. So I sat there and watched what was happening, and I could tell by the way she was talking to the driver, something was off and the, the driver popped the trunk. she put her bike in and I thought, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

And I’m sitting there, you know, there’s a, there’s a moment where you think, am I crazy? Like, am I, am I getting ready to embarrass myself? Is this the mother? So I’m sitting there just thinking through what I should do, and I finally thought, no, I just can’t let, there’s something not right, sitting in my heart and spirit and alarm bells are

So I turned around, turned the car around, and by that time the car was gone. But when I got to the next stop sign, I saw it again, the car had turned down, a dead end because they weren’t familiar with the neighborhood. So, and my kids are like eight and five, and they’re like, mom, what are you doing? You know?

And. I blocked the car, from coming out with my car. And I got out and I walked up to the car and she was in the front seat with this lady and I said, do you know this woman? And she said, just, you know, shook her head very timidly. And I said, all right. I want you to get out and. I told the lady, I don’t know what I was thinking, but I should have just

But I said, pop the trunk. We’re getting the bike. I got the bike. this lady looked very much like she was on drugs and I loaded her bike and

[00:03:52] Matty: Wow, that’s incredible.

[00:03:55] Rene: Yeah.

[00:03:56] Matty: out anything more about the woman who had picked

[00:03:59] Rene: You know what’s so crazy, and this is something we can draw upon when we write, and I’ve been through, you know, I guess I was through, I went through the Oklahoma City bombing. So I’ve been through a, you know, two or three traumatic events in my life, and I, in fact, I wrote a blog one time about how to write trauma in a book

Like you think it, it should, and. I was in a little bit of shock, I think, and I delivered the girl to her home. and I yelled at the father. I don’t know why, I guess my adrenaline was, you know, I was like, your little girl almost got knocked. Oh my gosh. You know? And, and I went

I, you know, I just, I thought, this little girl almost got kidnapped and I just went home and just. Thank God that she didn’t, and that was the end of it. It, it’s crazy. To this day, I can’t believe I did not call the police, but to me I thought, well, the, it’s the end, you

[00:05:07] Matty: well first of all, good for you because I think in a lot of circumstances people would just think like, oh, that’s interesting. You know, she’s getting picked up today where she normally

[00:05:18] Matty: That there are lots of lessons we can learn, and especially related to the topic, which is the choreography of a scene.

And I have the feeling every time we talk, we always get partway through our conversation and say, oh, that, that like side topic would be really interesting to talk about. Then we have another episode to talk about it, and I’m pretty sure that’s how this one came about. but because our earlier conversations were sort of focused on, the worlds of fiction and film and what authors should not learn from movies, and so this idea

You know, I anticipate we’re going to be talking about the ways that, people should and should not think of choreography of the way book writers should or should not think about choreography in the sense of movie choreography. but I think that this is such a perfect, example because the way that scene would be rendered in a movie. The way it would be rendered in a book. There would be lots of overlap, and then I think there would be differences as well. when you think about that in your own experience in both, in both books and in film, like what is, what is your thought as a writer, as a screenwriter, as a, a director of

[00:06:23] Rene: Well. One thing. I think again, you know, the perspective of being a screenwriter and a novelist is interesting because I would approach that scene very differently, like the, the kidnapping, almost kidnapping scene, for instance, very differently as a screenwriter versus, a novelist, a screenwriter. I would visually tell

I would emotionally set up the scene and enter it through the character’s eyes. And what I would want to know as a reader is, you know, what has triggered this woman, maybe for the first time in her life? Courageously acting in some way, right? Like, I mean, what, what that day made me turn that car around and how does that make sense in

and so you in, in a movie, I would just very much tell it cinematically, visually. You can see it in a movie, right? Like you can, as I am. Telling the story. Probably everybody is seeing it visually as if it’s unfolding in a movie, but readers experience, seen very differently. And unfortunately film has bled so much into our, Novel, novel writing techniques that I think a lot of writers would simply tell that story visually and wouldn’t dive into the experience of the character a.

[00:08:08] Matty: Well, one of the things you said really struck me, which was you could tell something was off, you knew. Thing was off. And I think that that kind of interiority is probably easier to pro provide in a subtle way, as opposed to in a movie, you either just figure that it’s apparent why. Why they’re following the car that has

Or you might get a kind of a character like, Hmm, I wonder what’s happening, kind of exper expression.

[00:08:40] Matty: but talk a little bit about how you would render that you knew something was off in a novel that would be different than

[00:08:50] Rene: Yeah, so there’s, there’s really. No way to render that on the screen. You have no ability for interior thoughts. So on the screen, in order for that scene to work, you would have had to set up the whole movie up to this point. Right? And it would come to this moment. Will she or won’t she find the courage to go save a child?

Right. And so the, the decision the character makes, will either make sense or the audience will roll their eyes and go, well, that, that’s stupid. You know, why, why would that character do that? And we’ve all done it in movies, right? And we’ve seen the, we’ve seen the scene where we’re just like, that’s is, is not making any sense at all.

So, but in a novel, what you want to do is, Give the reader an experience. And so that experience comes from that interior monologue and. What I was thinking in the moment, which was a lot of things, everything from is this safe for my children to, I’ve seen this on Dateline all flashing through my head, you know, a hundred thoughts

On at once. That is the kind of experience, I mean, when a reader is reading a novel, they want to experience what it would be like to see a child actively being kidnapped and what they would do. That’s the experience they want. You know, what would I do if I were in those shoes? And so that’s all done through interior thoughts, interior monologue, plus we draw other things in.

In the moment we are, we do have to tell it visually, but we tell it visually through the eyes of a mother with two small kids in the back of her van and you know, and I mean there was a very much a sense for me of I am putting my kids in danger. To go save another kid. I, I actively knew that, they knew it.

They were old enough to know mom’s doing something real weird right now. And, they were old enough to, to kind of protest it. Like, you know, and I remember there, you know, it’s very patchy, kind of what I remember, which is true for sort of traumatic and stressful moments. I

I didn’t want to scare them, but I wanted them to understand, the seriousness of the moment, you know, to also, if they needed to do something about it themselves. For instance, duck, if this woman pulled a gun or something like that, you know, and, and it did. I remember it caused a, a silence to fall over.

The, the car,

[00:11:42] Matty: Well, it’s interesting also from the point of view of revealing, you know, thinking about this playing out in a fictional work, that having your children in the car is. It’s handy from the, from the point of view of the writer because you can watch them reacting to the situation. You could have the opportunity of you as the mom explaining to them, you know, verbalizing something, that if you had been in the car by yourself, you would not have had an

[00:12:04] Rene: You would’ve never, no, you might, might be talking to yourself. but it, it’s always handy to have that sidekick

[00:12:12] Matty: Yeah. And I, the other thing I was thinking is the idea of, well, two things that struck me, lots of things struck me, but two of them are, that idea that at the same time you’re worried that you’re putting your children in danger, which is like one end of the, oh my god, spectrum. At the other end of the, oh my God, spectrum is, am I going to look incredibly stupid when this is

[00:12:33] Rene: Totally.

[00:12:34] Matty: And that’s a very interesting and, and productive to plum sort of combination of, of emotions for a fictional

[00:12:44] Rene: That’s the exact right language, productive to plum. I mean, it’s, it’s exactly the kind of complexity. That makes a great scene. you know, it’s, you want the, the dynamics what you don’t want, and it’s certainly a possibility. You could, you could choose this way to write the scene as a woman drives by, sees a kid looks weird, gathers herself.

Decides to turn around with all the courage that she’s always had in every moment, and she runs and saves this kid. It’s like, well, that’s a choice, but an experience with the character is exactly what you are saying. I mean, just as strong of a feeling of am I putting myself and my kids in danger was. Am I going to look incredibly stupid when this is the ant, you know, or something.

so, and you know, this was back in the early. Oh, two thousands when this happened. you know, now child kidnappings are even more prevalent, or at least they’re more known and talked about. so even in that culture, you would need to, very, very much write this into that you, you know, culture and decade of,

how these kinds of things were perceived. and you know, that in that era, even though we knew about child kidnappings, Nobody was saying, Hey, go stop this. If you see it, or if you see something, say something that wasn’t really, going around in the culture, nowadays, it’s like, yes, please embarrass yourself.

Like, you know, go for it. So yeah, there were, there was all sides of the spectrum on this and, I just think that you’ve got to tackle all those, this would be. A very slow motion scene. I think writers might tend to write this scene very fast because it’s an, it happened fast. I mean, you know, if you’re talking minutes and how long I passed her,

Thought about it. Turned around. I mean, we’re talking. A matter of five minutes or less. but the way that you should roll this out when you’re writing it is much slower and the details matter and, and, that always makes a great scene, but it has to be the right details.

[00:15:32] Matty: Well, the, the other thing I was thinking of one of the, episodes right before this, just a couple of episodes back, 325, Reveals as the Striptease of Fiction with, Tiffany Yates Martin. I was thinking back as you were saying this to the conversation with Tiffany and the idea that if this is like, let’s say the first scene in a novel, then.

You’re wondering, you’re both wondering if, if the child is actually, you know, the subject of a kidnapping and how it’s going to turn out, like, will she get rescued? But you’re also thinking, why is the mother behaving in this particular way? Why does she make the choice to follow the, you know, why, why doesn’t she call the police?

Why, does she think to block the street? You know, all the things that you described and either you’ve, if it’s. If it’s the first scene in the story, then you’re planting the questions. But if it’s the seventh scene in the story, maybe you have enough background to know that she’s

Or, you know, setting up that idea of how, how much weight is the, am I going to look really stupid when this is over carrying, with this person as

[00:16:48] Rene: That’s so right, and I mean, this scene in three different spots in your novel will be told three different ways. If it’s your opening scene, you are hooking your reader with a lot of questions and mystery boxes. Who is this woman? Why is she going after this other woman? This is this. This would hook me, right?

If I open, if a book opened like this. I’m like, okay, well this seems pretty promising of what, what’s going to happen. if it’s in the middle of the book, then you would write it. It’s typically, setting something else up. It’s being used to create more conflict or solve another

And if it’s the climactic scene of the whole book, if this is the moment that she finally rises up. And finds the courage to do something she would’ve never done in chapter one, then you write it completely differently. So that’s the, that’s the magic of scenes and. You know, I, I call, I call them scenes myself.

and, and I don’t have any problem with it. I think in our modern writing, it’s a perfectly fine term, but really the proper term is passages. And I try to think through that when I’m writing novels, because it does help you separate. Yourself from writing a movie scene if you’re writing a passage versus, you know, a scene.

When we, the scene I, I, I can’t prove this, this is just conjecture, but I believe the term scene really came from the film world and we’ve adopted it into fiction. But I think before movies, we would call them passages. And, and when you think of it in terms of passages, It allows

and, and it allows you to sink deeper into that point of view, rather

[00:18:52] Matty: Yeah, I like the idea of passage because it does suggest that movement, you know, the a passage from the beginning of that event, that fictional event to the end of the fictional event. And the other thing I was thinking in terms of what is this setting up is I was picturing this scene where. You know, you, you put the, the little girl in her bike in your car, you let the kidnapping woman go, and then somebody else blocks you and says, who are you?

And why do you have this child in her bike in your car? Little girl. Do you know this woman? Oh, you don’t. I’m calling the police. And I thought that that could be like in the, in the, retail, like that could be an interesting setup for. The mom trying to convince someone that

[00:19:37] Rene: Oh yeah.

[00:19:38] Matty: did have like the child’s best interests at

[00:19:41] Rene: I do remember as I was driving off with this kid, obviously I know my intentions, but I just remember feeling so weird. I had another parent’s kid in my car, right? I mean, even though I knew. What I had done, I felt like I really need to do, explain myself, and, and you know, because you just don’t want to have some person’s child in

Explanation. and, you know, not a single car drove by during that time. it was like the whole neighborhood cleared out and it was just me and this car and, , because you would think somebody, if they saw my car, you know, kind of catawampus and then this other car and two adults out and all of this, you would probably take notice and.

There was nothing. No, it was, it was so, such a strange, the way that I remember it anyway was like the whole world went into a vacuum

[00:20:42] Matty: Yeah.

[00:20:43] Rene: it, it was, it was very strange and it, it very

[00:20:48] Rene: I can still remember that woman’s eyes, you know, and that’s the thing when we talk about picking out the correct

which is so important, what you remember from big moments. And, and each, each chapter needs to have a big moment. and you know, this would probably be it in a, in a chapter, but you, what you remember, what your character remembers is, very important in in how they tell it. And. Because they’re telling a story narratively, and we tend to want to.

Tell the big details, but it’s really the small details. Like, I’ll give you an example. When I went through the Oklahoma City bombing, I, I drove up on the bombing just a couple of minutes after it happened. I was on my way to work and missed, missed it by just minutes, thanks to my mom calling, and asking me to stop by her work.

so I drove up on the event with the first firetruck. And you know, it was, everybody knows what Oklahoma City bombing looked like. But what I remember about the event is I remember I was running around the federal building to get, try to get to the place that I worked, and I remember this crunching sound and I couldn’t figure out what was crunching.

I just thought, what is this noise? Well, later, I mean, days later, I. Remember thinking that was glass. That’s what it was. I was running on everywhere was glass. I mean, it was just a solid sheet of glass that you were stepping on, running on or whatever. It’s so funny to remember that detail of the entire event and with this woman in the car, I

I remember us making just. Eye contact before I ever went around to talk to this little girl. I stood there and she looked at me and I looked at her and we had a moment kind of like, okay, this is over. She’s clearly going with me. but it was a, I can still see those eyes through that. It was an old, dirty, beat up car, station wagon.

And, yeah, it was, it, it was a, it was a strange, it was it a station wagon? No, it wasn’t. , because she popped the trunk, but it was very long. It was one of those old, very long cars, you know, from the

[00:23:35] Matty: Well, another detail you mentioned that struck me is that, you were saying how uncomfortable you were with the idea that now you had a child that, that you didn’t know in the car and you had not been given permission to drive this child and so on, for obviously understandable reasons. And I realized that that detail is something you might not even have to present in some subtle way to a

But to me, as someone who doesn’t have children, that’s not as instantly. Understandable as a concern. Like once you said it, I was like, oh yeah, sure, it totally makes sense. But you would need to, plant that in some way for your audience if you know that some of your audience is going to get that very intuitively and some of your audience

[00:24:19] Rene: Ab Absolutely.

[00:24:20] Rene: And every, every character you create, this is going to be a different experience. So it would be fun to write this same e event from three different characters, points of view. A dad, a mom, a

[00:24:36] Matty: Yeah.

[00:24:37] Rene: And how this unfolds with each character. , because it is, it’s very different. And that’s the beauty of novel writing

You know, it’s a, in movies this would kind of unfold the same way. Maybe the actor would play a few things different, right? The actors has to portray the emotion of, of the moment. but visually it would all. Pretty much unfold the same way. and visually it could unfold the same way in an a scene from a novel, but internally, something different is going on with each character, you know,

[00:25:16] Matty: Yeah. Well we talked about the, you know, there, there’re the different characters points of view. There’s the, is this the first scene, the middle scene, or an end scene? it’s interesting to think about how, what does that scene look like if you were driving, if you had just been driving by in your Porsche, by yourself with your.

handbag dog, or, you know, like paint a different scenario where the person’s trying to make these, these decisions. And I think the decision process would be, quite different in all those circumstances. you know, what, if, what if you’re a retired police officer driving past the school than, than that’s putting it still a different spin on

[00:25:53] Rene: Totally. And I, I was a different person in that moment. You know, I’m a very nice, easygoing kind. I like to think person. and when I stepped outta that car, I don’t know what I became, but I just remember being something very different. Like I just walked up. I remember my voice being very low. You know, like I just put on some sort of sense of authority of like, this is done, she’s coming

I mean it, you know, I don’t talk like that,

[00:26:28] Matty: Yeah.

[00:26:30] Rene: you know, I’m kind of a passive person. So, there was something, and I think it’s the motherhood that rose up in me, you know, it was, it was like just something to protect this child. As soon as I saw that lady, I knew. I knew something was very wrong in this situation, so there wasn’t much guesswork to go along with this.

I knew that something was wrong, but, but yeah, I mean, it’s, and, and you want the run up to this, you know, like you said, you know, well, you’ve got to tell me a little more detail of the scene when, when I told you what had happened, how you run up to this scene. Is equally as

you know, what, what you’re doing with the scene and how you’re

[00:27:21] Matty: Yeah. The thing that, this is sort of the other

[00:27:28] Matty: The, the scene from my own life that this story reminded me of is, years ago. OI had stopped at a, a local convenience store place to get gas and there was a, driver’s license lying on the ground, and I picked it up and the, the address was just like a couple of blocks, maybe like half a mile from where the, the convenience store

So I thought, oh, I’ll just like drop, drop the license plate off with a person. So I drive to the house and it was, you know, like a, a suburban neighborhood, like a normal suburban neighborhood. And, So I thought, well, I’ll just put it in the mailbox. And then I thought, well, no, maybe somebody’s noticed that it’s missing and they’re,

So I went up to the house, knocked on the door. This guy answered it. it was maybe like, I don’t know, 50 or something like that. And I said, oh, are you John Smith? And he said, yes. And I said, I, you know, I found your driver’s license in the, in the, in the, parking lot. And he said, oh, that’s, That’s my, my sons.

do you want to come in? And I was like, I can’t even remember if at that moment or later I was like, this would be so easy to set up. You drop a license plate in a parking lot and you wait for some idiot to drive by and like, walk into your house. And I said, no, no. Here you go. I’m

So I did that. I handed over the license plate and I went back to my car. But I thought, you know, maybe because I write, thrillers and mystery and suspense, I, I would think through of all the ways that could go. Differently. And, obviously, you know, one could spin out a

or the person who finds the license plate assuming it’s going to go differently, when in fact it’s completely innocent. You know, there, there are lots of things you could do with that too. Just these ideas of playing through the same basic scenario in your mind. But how are all the ways you can tweak it to make it more interesting for the reader?

[00:29:15] Rene: Well, that’s a great point.

[00:29:39] Rene: And you know, one of the thing, one of the main questions I ask people when we’re talking about this topic and they’re working on chapters, is I’ll say, well, what is the point of the chapter? And. A lot of times people don’t know, you know, they’re, they’re making their way through their story, and they’re trying to get from point A to point Z and, you know, this is a stop off.

And, and when I, when we start to look at us, the question I ask them is, well, if we remove this chapter, would your story fall apart? And they. Oftentimes say, well, not really. And if that’s true, if you can remove the chapter or you can remove the scene and everything keeps going, then you’ve got a problem with the scene.

So you’ve got to, you’ve got to work your scenes for purpose and for interest. You know, those are, those are your two targets. What’s the purpose of this scene in this chapter? What is it working to achieve? Because you don’t want to write just a chapter of, you know, your character going along. And I think that’s what people can’t put their writers can’t put their finger on, is they’re writing a chapter and they know it’s not working, but they don’t know why.

you know, they’ve got all the great description, they’re using the perfect words, their sentences are just flying off the page in brilliance. It, it often is because there’s not a main purpose for the scene and, and you’ve got to identify that with each chapter. Each chapter should have a main event, a main thing, and whatever that main thing is, as you were saying, it’s got to be really interesting and you

And if it’s not interesting. To piggyback on your example, if she goes to the door, hands off the license and the man says, thank you very much, how kind of you? Goodbye. Goodbye. And that’s your scene, it’s, you’ve got a problem, right? Something weird needs to happen. There’s

You know, he, he needs to look at the woman and say, is your name Peggy? No, my name’s not Peggy. Are you sure you’d look just like a little girl I knew named Peggy? Who’s kidnapped from her mother or something like that, right? Like there has to be a very big point of interest in each chapter or your, your reader’s just going to, they’re going to start

They’re going to start reading fast. The last thing you want your readers to do is read fast. , because they know they’re not going to miss anything. You want them to, to where they’re, they’re like, ah man, I don’t want to miss the, this detail. , because this detail matters and this detail

so some that is something to keep in mind is every, every scene in every

[00:32:24] Matty: Well, I was thinking that if one wanted to spin that as from the, from the, you know, the person who lost their license, it was completely innocent. But now the woman who took it to the house. Is like replaying it and decides that there’s something nefarious going on and she decides she’s going to like stake out the house or report

Then it would be interesting to think about how do you, how do you plant that seed in that scene so that when the person gets to the end of the scene or the passage, they’re not saying. Well, okay. I guess that was nice of her, but they’re saying, oh, there’s something else going on

In a way, I didn’t anticipate it getting creepy.

[00:33:08] Rene: Absolutely. Yes. And that’s, every scene needs to be that high functioning. You just can’t have chapters where the ordinary happens. Nobody wants to read about the ordinary. I go from eight to five in complete ordinary. Every single day. You know, there’s just very rarely does anything super extraordinary happen in my day.

So when I get into bed at night and get to read, which is my treat for the day. I, I just, as, as wonderful and polite as it is for you to deliver, you know, that driver’s license, that man better pull you into that house, or you better look behind him and see a woman chained or something to where you’re getting ready to, things are getting ready to

You’re getting ready to go save a woman who’s been kidnapped or whatever the, whatever the scenario is. It, it needs to, it needs to be that high functioning and not, you know, some, something to, take note of here is we’re kind of talking through suspense genre, but the same is true if you are, you know, a, a good novel.

I think just in my opinion, ebbs and flows from, action moments to reaction moments to character moments. So you’ve got the external happening and then you have the internal happening. So you may save a child, right? Or. See something nefarious at your neighbor’s house, and the next scene then can be as important without a lot of action.

The next scene is you losing sleep all night because you’re wondering. What you should do about this John Smith and this weird thing you saw behind him. And, you know, you may be talking to your husband about it, and he’s like, oh, you, you’ve watched too many datelines, you know, dah, dah, dah, dah. get your nose out of it.

And. You know, et cetera, et cetera. You go into some backstory, about her, you know, maybe something happened in her childhood, some, some crime happened. if you’re, if you’re in the romance genre, you know, it’s the action of the two meeting and there’s chemistry and then the

You know, she’s working outer feelings, which can be just as interesting. It’s just that you have to make it interesting. There, there has to be unusual moments happening, that the reader can’t predict that she is going to act or behave in a way that goes against who she is or who she thinks she is, or she’s so ingrained with.

With some sort of worldview that she just can’t, she’s just never going to talk to him again because it’s too much, it’s too involved. You know, those kinds of things. Make a page turner, which is what we want

[00:36:18] Matty: Yeah, I was thinking of the scenario where, not thinking about it in terms of scenes or passages, but just the, the chronology, you know, the. The license plate is found, the person drives to the house. She turns the license plate over to the guy. She goes back to the car, she calls up her friend and said, Hey, guess what I did?

I’m so pleased with myself. And the friend says, are you crazy? You know, that could have been a, been a crazy person. And now the, the person who returned the license is sort of. Taken aback, but also freaked out, like retrospectively freaked out, and that sent her down some path of maybe rethinking things that came up in her past, or now she’s resentful of her friend because her friend, you know, it turns out to be a suspicious weirdo and, but it, it would be less that anyone, one stream of events is right or wrong, but where you cut it, like if

Now she’s, angry with her friend because her friend is suspicious, a suspicious weirdo. Then you have to cut the scene after her call with a friend. You can’t cut the scene with her, in an uneventful way, dropping off the license plate. And then in the next scene, have her talking with a friend. And this coming up because nobody’s ever going to get to the next scene to find out like what the big deal is with, with, that event, with the license plate.

[00:37:37] Rene: That’s completely a hundred percent true. How you end the scene is what gets your reader to the next scene. I always tell people, look. You’re not trying to be cruel, but you don’t want your reader to close that book at 10. PM and go to sleep. You want them to behave badly and decide to lose sleep because they can’t put the

That’s what you want, you, your job is not, you know, their choices. Your job is to get them into a story and they’re so enthralled with it that they can’t put the book down and. A trick of the trade is exactly what you’re talking about is where you stop and hook that reader into the next chapter, and if you tie everything up in a nice bow and they feel the character’s going to be okay, the world is okay.

Everything’s okay, I guess I’m okay. I’m going to go to bed and. They are not thinking about how that character’s doing the next day. So, you know, once a reader cracks open a book, they are with you for 90,000 words. They better buckle up because, you know, this isn’t just a, a calm walk through the forest that your own pace, I mean, you, this is,

You want them to feel like they’re on an adventure, an emotional adventure, or whatever your genre is. So. and it, it does take practice. it’s not natural for us to not tie up our things in bows and put them to bed. You know, we are one, one thing with, rider that I work with that is I continually push them on is stop being your character’s

You know, they just want their character to be okay at the end of the day. This is not what we are going for as writers. our character is not going to be okay until chapter 31 and the end. That’s when our character gets to be okay, a chapter one, and all the way through act two, we are

We, this is not, you know, stop being polite. stop making every conversation end. Well, this, your job is to just mess them up for a good 90,000 words, and then you can tie it up in a bow and the end and everybody’s okay after that. so in the middle of all that, you’re creating a lot of scenes in a lot of passages where they’re having to

[00:40:17] Matty: Yeah.

[00:40:18] Matty: Well, now we spent 35 minutes and never hit the choreography of a scene, so guess what? You’re going to need to come back

[00:40:27] Rene: Well, you know, I,

[00:40:29] Matty: of our con of our conversation today.

[00:40:31] Rene: I guess I’m wordy. I don’t know. I probably

[00:40:34] Matty: I, I love that. I mean, with that opening of fact that people didn’t know about you, it just, that was too good to

And I think that, you’ve mentioned so many ways that people can play with those kind of moments, those moments in time. Like just look around, you think of a moment in time for your own past and, and then try it with different characters. Try it with different. End points in that passage. Try it with different, you know, the person driving a different kind of car now, do you have a different effect than you did,

[00:41:05] Rene: Completely true. And you know, if she had been driving a minivan, which is what all the moms had been, were driving or you know, an SUV of some sort. I may have just driven on by, right? I mean, it was, it was the whole package I saw but also a little something

This would take a second look. And I did. so yeah, it, it’s interesting and you know, when we, we get to talking about the choreography of a scene, super important and hopefully I can give some really good tips. On where to enter a scene, where to exit a scene, how to set up a scene. And then, you know, we, I would love to talk about,grounding a scene and, and making sure that your reader is oriented into, time and place. So, yeah.

[00:41:55] Matty: It’s going to be another lovely conversation. I know, and thank you both for sharing that detail and for, humoring the direction that, that, we took with the conversation. So, I think we’ve just demonstrated it. It’s always so much fun to talk with you, Rene.

[00:42:08] Matty: thank you so much for coming on the podcast again, and please let everyone know where they can go to find out more

[00:42:14] Rene: Oh, thanks. Well, ReneGutteridge.com is the easiest place to find out what’s going on, and I’d love to hear from

[00:42:22] Matty: Great. Thank.

Episode 329 - A Poet’s Guide to Craft, Publishing, and Community with Robert Lee Brewer

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Robert Lee Brewer discusses A POET’S GUIDE TO CRAFT, PUBLISHING, AND COMMUNITY, including how to recognize when an idea wants to be a poem, two very different approaches to revision, the publishing landscape for poets from journal submissions to full collections, how to handle rights and track simultaneous submissions, the annual Poem-a-Day challenge on WritersDigest.com for National Poetry Month, and why reading and writing poetry is a valuable exercise for writers working in any form.

Robert Lee Brewer is senior editor of Writer's Digest and author of SMASH POETRY JOURNAL, THE COMPLETE GUIDE OF POETIC FORMS, and the poetry collection SOLVING THE WORLD'S PROBLEMS. He leads daily poetry challenges on WritersDigest.com in April and November and shares weekly poetry prompts the rest of the year.

Episode Links

https://www.writersdigest.com/

https://www.facebook.com/robertleebrewer

Here are some novel-in-verse examples:

Long Way Down, by Jason Reynolds: https://bookshop.org/p/books/long-way-down-jason-reynolds/3a721799d05f3717?ean=9781481438261

The Poet X, by Elizabeth Acevedo: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-poet-x-elizabeth-acevedo/137b923eb6b14fc3?ean=9780062662811

Other Words for Home, by Jasmine Warga: https://bookshop.org/p/books/other-words-for-home-jasmine-warga/7961402

Summary & Transcript

Robert Lee Brewer is the senior editor of Writer’s Digest and the author of SMASH POETRY JOURNAL, THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO POETIC FORMS, and the poetry collection SOLVING THE WORLD’S PROBLEMS. He leads daily poetry challenges on WritersDigest.com in April and November and shares weekly poetry prompts for the rest of the year. In this conversation, Robert covered the ground from first poem to published collection—the craft of writing poetry, the editorial process, the publishing landscape, and the community rituals that keep poets connected.

HOW A POEM FOR A GIRL BECAME A CAREER

Robert traced his start in poetry to a high school crush: he wrote a poem for a girl he was attracted to, and when she asked about his other poems, he started writing more to prove he was serious. The relationship did not last, but his relationship with poetry did. By the end of high school he was self-publishing a fanzine containing his poems, other people’s work, art, and music reviews—an early sign that publishing was in his future, even if he did not recognize it at the time. In college he expanded into fiction and won several undergraduate awards for short stories, but poetry remained central. He described himself as someone who loves all types of writing, from poetry to email craft, which is part of why working at Writer’s Digest has been such a natural fit.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A POEM AND A STORY

Matty asked how Robert knows when an idea wants to be a poem rather than a short story. Robert identified two triggers. The first is language: a line or sentence whose sounds feel inherently poetic, where he follows the sounds before he even knows the meaning. The second is image: something observed on a walk—in nature or in a city—that he wants to capture. Some of his published poems do tell stories, he noted, but they tell them in the compressed way that poetry allows, without backstory or extensive development. The result is closer to a single scene than a narrative arc. Free verse and prose poetry have blurred the line between poetry and fiction even further, and Robert suggested that the forms feed each other in ways writers do not always recognize.

TWO STYLES OF REVISION

Robert described two approaches to revision that he and his wife—also a poet—represent. He is a quantity writer: he generates a large volume of first drafts and then mines them for lines and images worth developing. His wife spends a long time crafting a poem in her head before writing it down, then revises the same piece extensively, saving every version in a single Google Doc so she can compare drafts. Robert works on paper, collecting poems in composition notebooks that go all the way back to high school. When enough accumulate, he transfers the most promising ones into a new notebook and leaves the rest behind. Sound is his primary criterion for knowing when a poem is done—if the sounds work and the meaning is right, the poem is finished. If not, he may salvage a line or two and start a new poem built around them, a process that can stretch over years.

PUBLISHING PATHS FOR POETS

Robert outlined several routes to getting poetry in front of readers. Self-publishing is straightforward with current technology, and social media—particularly Instagram—offers a visual platform for sharing poems paired with images. He mentioned a series he did with Virginia Quarterly Review in which editor Jane Friedman paired his poems with images for an InstaPoetry series. Audio and video platforms, including YouTube and podcasts, offer additional outlets, particularly for poets drawn to slam and performance work.

For traditional publication, Robert emphasized that publishers of full collections typically expect the poet to have already placed individual poems in journals and magazines. He recommends starting with the directory at pw.org (Poets & Writers), which lists hundreds of publications across literary and genre-specific niches—including journals devoted to science fiction, fantasy, and other genre poetry. He noted that novels in verse have gained increasing recognition over the past decade, with several reaching the finalist stage for major literary awards.

RIGHTS, SUBMISSIONS, AND RECORD-KEEPING

Robert’s advice on rights mirrored standard short fiction guidance: give away only first publication rights, ensure the contract matches what the publisher actually does (an online-only publication should not hold print rights), and do not sign away more than is necessary. His own poetry collection was published by a press that did not produce digital editions, so the contract covered print rights only, leaving him free to pursue a digital version independently.

On submissions, Robert described the standard practice of sending three to five poems per batch. Most journals accept multiple submissions (several poems in one batch) and simultaneous submissions (the same poems sent to other journals at the same time). He stressed the importance of meticulous record-keeping: a master spreadsheet tracking which poems went where, when, and what the outcome was, supplemented by notes in his composition notebooks on each individual poem. The reason is practical—when a poem is accepted, the poet needs to immediately notify every other journal that still has it under consideration. Failing to do so can leave an editor with a hole in a layout they have already finalized.

NATIONAL POETRY MONTH AND THE POEM-A-DAY CHALLENGE

April is National Poetry Month in the United States and Canada, and Robert described the annual Poem-a-Day challenge he runs on WritersDigest.com—now in its nineteenth year. Each morning he posts a prompt and writes an example poem. Participants share their work in the comments, comment on one another’s poems, and often continue the conversation on Facebook and other platforms. The challenge draws poets from the U.S., Canada, India, the U.K., and beyond. Some participants have told Robert that entire published collections grew out of these prompts. The Academy of American Poets also organizes Poem in Your Pocket Day, which in 2026 falls on April 30. Robert closed by encouraging even writers who do not consider themselves poets to read poetry during April—the close, word-by-word attention that poetry demands is a craft skill that transfers to any form of writing.

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This transcript was created by Descript and cleaned up by Claude; I don’t review these transcripts in detail, so consider the actual interview to be the authoritative source for this information.

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to the Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is Robert Lee Brewer. Hey, Robert, how are you doing?

[00:00:06] Robert: Doing good. Thank you so much for having me,

[00:00:09] Matty: I am pleased to have you here and just to give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you. Robert Lee Brewer is Senior editor of Writer’s Digest and author of SMASH POETRY JOURNAL, THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO POETIC FORMS and the Poetry Collection, SOLVING THE WORLD’S PROBLEMS. He leads daily poetry challenges on WriterDigest.com in April and November, and he shares weekly poetry

And so. I realized that in, I’m looking back on the many, many episodes of the Indy Author Podcast I had out there, and I realized that I had really, I had, under, addressed poetry and, I was working with Robert on some other things and I thought he would be the perfect, person to address that, gap in my, in my list of episodes.

[00:00:50] Matty: So Robert, I think it would be fun to find out

[00:00:57] Robert: Yeah. Uh. I first got started in poetry writing a poem for a girl that, I was attracted to in high school, and, gave the poem to her. And then luckily, like she wanted to talk later that night, and then she started asking me about my other poems, and I was like thinking to myself, what other poems? So, I started writing poetry to, Kind of show that I wasn’t just a, a fool that would write one poem for one girl. And,the relationship, with her, did not last. But my relationship with poetry grew over time from there. And, I got so into it in high school that, I even started self-publishing a fanzine, with my poems, other people’s poems.

art and music reviews and all kinds of stuff, which means like, it makes sense now looking back that I’m in publishing, but at the time I was

[00:01:57] Matty: And did you, dabble in other forms of fiction? Did you ever, take a crack at like short stories or novels, novellas,

[00:02:05] Robert: Oh yeah. in high school it was more, it was more poetry When I got to college, you were not supposed to take, any kind of creative writing. Classes as a freshman. And of course I took like all the poetry stuff as a freshman on top of my regular course load. And, by the middle of my sophomore year was kind of burned out on poetry and, Then started doing fiction and that was a lot of fun to do, to, to get the short stories and, won a couple undergrad awards, writing stories there. And that, was great. And then I also took like, business and professional technical writing was in college. Like I’ve just found, and I think this is why working at Writer’s Digest works so well for me, is like, I’ve just found that I love all types of writing,

Poetry fiction, making instructions, crafting the perfect email to somebody like all of it, to me is a fun, challenge. So like every day that I have, a chance to do any kind of writing, is, is a happy day for

[00:03:10] Matty: And do you find that there are certain things that make you sit down and say, you know, today I want to work on a poem today, I want, want to work on a short story. Like are there ways that, poetry feeds your, your creative urges in a way that other forms don’t?

[00:03:24] Robert: Yeah, it is, it’s interesting like with, fiction, , because I, I do still like write, stories. it’s more of a,A planned type of attack. Like I’ve got, story ideas and like outlines that I’m working off of. And, I try to make a certain time to be able to work on, the fiction. Whereas with poetry, a lot of times, like outside of, my win state, outside of the April and November when I do

And then on Wednesdays when I, share poetry prompts. On Writer’s Digest, like I ha I also, in addition to writing the prompt, do an example poem, so it like forces me at least once a week, to try to write some kind of poem. but outside of that, like a, all of the poetry, it’s like more like just being ready for when like the lightning strikes and.

sometimes that might mean that I go several weeks where I just write my example poem on Wednesdays. But then, like recently, and I find this usually happens in March and April, just naturally. but the poet side of me starts to wake up and, I’ve had several days recently where I’ll

you know, these are all first drafts, so I’m not saying like these are ones that I’m going to get published, but, But it just starts to like, you know, there are different times of the year where it starts to kind of ebb, ebb and flow as far as like my creativity.

[00:04:49] Matty: Yeah. Since I write about, the business side of short fiction, I often get. Questions that are more related to craft, which I always try to deflect, but not always successfully. because, you know, I’m, I’m pleased with the short stories I write, but I, I haven’t gotten my mind around it in a way that I can share that in a

And one of the questions always is, when you have an idea, how do you know if it’s a short story or a novel? And I always find that that very difficult to answer. And I can imagine the same, you know, if I, if I were writing poetry. I think I’d have the same answer. Obviously I

[00:05:26] Matty: But, is one of the defining things for you, the actual language, let’s say, as opposed to the, I dunno if the storyline you want to convey? You can tell I’m coming at this more from a, a short

[00:05:39] Robert: Yeah. It’s interesting because, a lot of times it is one of two things for me. It’s usually either is the language, like there’s a, a line or a sentence that just sounds very, poetic to me. a lot of, sounds that are bouncing off of each other and, and that. In itself might just start a poem going where I don’t even know where the poem’s going, what the meaning is behind it.

I just start following the sounds and see at the end like, what do I have, what can I revise out of that? And then other times it’s an image. I like to go for, walks, whether in nature or in city areas. I just love, walking around and exploring. And sometimes like that in itself, I can see different images that I want to try to capture in a

that said though, like some of the poems that I’ve had published are actually kind of telling a story, but they’re telling it in a very concise manner where, you know, if, if I wanted to, to be a short story. You need to get a lot more developed, but with poetry, you can kind of tell a story without giving all the backstory, all the other stuff.

It’salmost, actually, it’s more likea scene, that you would have in a

[00:07:01] Matty: Yeah. I can imagine some like micro fiction and maybe not even, maybe. Longer than micro fiction, you know, feels very poetic. And sometimes it’s even presented in a format that visually suggests, poetry to me more than it visually suggests, you know, just, narrative fiction. and so I imagine the, the dividing line there is probably less clear than it would’ve been decades or hundreds of years

[00:07:30] Robert: Yeah,

[00:07:31] Matty: was more defined.

[00:07:33] Robert: yeah. And I, I think, free verse and, prose poetry, both like help blur, blur that line even more because, like you said, poetry used to be like all end rhymes and, and, and different like rhyme schemes, which you can still have, but,Free verse and, and prose poetry, both, like, kind of open it up a little bit.

what, what you can do there and, and blur the lines. And, I don’t know, like, I, like I mentioned, like I love all types of writing and, and I feel like there’s a lot that they, they all feed into each other. there

[00:08:07] Matty: Yeah, it would be a fun exercise to take the same, inspiration and see what you do with it. if you want to write it as a poem or write it as a piece of micro fiction or write it as a short story. Write it as a novel if it took you in that direction. But just seeing like the differences in how, that got expressed in those different formats and those different expectations of, of the writer and

[00:08:30] Robert: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I mean, you know, there are poets who will take, a how to list or a grocery list and turn that into a poem. So I mean, you, you can really, get very, creative with, the shells that you’re using.

[00:08:44] Matty: I think that that’s, a great sort of creative palette cleanser in the same way. Micro fiction can be that, you know, maybe you’re slogging through 150, thousand word novel, but, and you’re feeling a little bogged down and taking a moment to, to play in

[00:09:02] Matty: You had talked about the fact that, you know, you might write, Several poems in a day, but they were just, first draft. So talk a little bit about what editorial process you bring to

[00:09:12] Robert: Yeah. it’s interesting, like I am, I’m more of a, and I’ve found like a lot of poets like fall into two categories. I’m more of a poet who likes to suggest. Write a lot and then come back through and like find pieces out of the poems that, that I can work with. my wife is also a poet and she’s more of one who, will spend a long time kind of crafting the poem in her head before she writes it,

Just working on that same poem. And you know, even if she’s written a few other poems, she just keeps coming back to it. Where, a lot of times I’m more of a, a quantity poet for, lack of a better term. And I just like to keep coming at like the different ideas until finally like, I find something that, a lot of times, like for me, like sound is a very important part of how I write and if I’ve got, all the sounds down, how I like ’em, and then, the meaning out of it that I want out of it, I feel like the, the poem is done and, and that might.

It might mean that I go through revisions on a poem like five times through of really changing stuff and moving stuff around. But then it also might mean that I do it five times and then I’m still not happy. But I like a, a line or two in there, but then I go and write a new poem

Go through the same process and maybe I’ll like that and maybe I won’t. And, I, you know, I’ve got some lines that have been around for years and years and years that I hope someday I get a poem that I’m happy with to that, that does service to the line or the image that’s doing it because, like I feel like you just know if, if the, the more that that you write, if you’re getting the effect that you want or not.

And, I, I feel like that’s a big thing with all writers is you’ve got the thing in your head and what you want to do, and then actually

[00:11:28] Matty: Well, I’m going to.

[00:11:34] Matty: A very logistical question, which is that when you’re having all these ideas, and you had talked about being ready when lightning strikes, I find this with my longer writing that I’ll have an idea for a, a novel and then I’ll have an idea for a scene, or I have an idea for a fun line, I’d want to put in someone’s mouth, and I

I still haven’t come up with a good way to sort of organize all those so that they’re available to me when I need them. And I can imagine the same thing, even though the works are shorter. So in that sense, might be easier to manage. You probably have more of them. So do you have any system where you’re capturing those things like you found the perfect

you know, the light in this particular environment and, you want to use that someday, but you haven’t found the, the place to put it. Do you, do you have a, a management system for that kind of creative output?

[00:12:21] Robert: Yeah, not quite, that well where I could almost see like a database type thing where you’ve, and I. Love made some databases, but I’ve never really done it that way, with my poetry. But what I do, how I do handle like my poems is that uh, whether I am happy

I collect them all into composition notebooks. I’ve got, I don’t even know how many over the years to build up. I mean, they go all the way back. I still have like the first one I did when I was in high school. And,I just collect them in there. And then I, I’m always going through

witch poems, I feel like still have like a possibility of turning into something. and then, you know, and some of the poems that are in there are actually poems that have gotten published. And, and then once that’s done, like I’m done moving them over into new composition notebooks. But when I, get so many build up, I start to move.

Stuff into a new composition notebook and then kind of leave the past in the past. And, that’s just the way that I, I handle it for myself, but, it would, it would be interesting to try to collect, the ideas. uh, the thing that I, I have trouble with though, whenever I try to just do ideas and I, I do have.

plenty of journals that just have random bits and pieces. I have lots of, post-it notes with lots of ideas all over the place. and, and sometimes what they end up in is like a gallon size, baggy

[00:13:53] Matty: Yeah, my gosh.

[00:13:55] Robert: you know, but,Yeah, when, when you have lots of ideas, sometimes it gets a little unwieldy and, and you just have to try, try your best to organize it how you can, but

[00:14:06] Matty: I think if I were in that position, I’d have to get it into some electronic form, but I can imagine just having one enormous Word document or whatever, where I would put these things in unless they were like. If they sort of fell into the category of here’s a way of describing light that I want to be sure to use someday.

Or here’s like a line whose rhythm I like or whatever. Because I kind of think that I’d remember enough to say, oh, I made a note about that light description. I’m going to go look for light. and have it all there because I know that I would not be good either about remembering something from a physical journal from years ago or,being diligent about carrying forward the gold nuggets that I wanted to make sure that I

[00:14:49] Robert: Yeah, that, that’s actually interesting , because my wife, how she drafts, it’s like each poem is in a Google doc and she actually saves. Older versions of the poem and kind of like works her way down the document that way. I am just personally, like, I like working with paper. It’s a just kind of how, how I am.

but, but she actually does that where, she can go and look like five drafts earlier within the same document. Like, this is what it looked like then and, and then, and then she just starts going into this loop of. It better here or is it better here or is it better there? Somewhere in the middle, like and, and it’s fun to watch , because she always ends

[00:15:37] Matty: Yeah, yeah. being able to look through earlier versions would not only be interesting for other people, but probably also educational for the writer because you can kind of see how things are evolving. And I’m definitely a, a, an electronic content person, but, If I were to, to go to writing things out, it would definitely be with poetry because I think that that like active tactile interaction

And also just the fact that oftentimes the, the way the words are presented on the page is more important than they are in like a novel or something like that. You know, the placement or the spacing or, Things like that. So yeah, I would definitely, experiment with that. I would try to tear myself away from the keyboard a bit more if I were working

[00:16:24] Robert: Yeah. And I mean, for, for me, I just like drawing like little arrows everywhere and circling things and putting

[00:16:32] Robert: Well, and the other thing that you’re, you had mentioned about just the sound, the words, obviously brings to mind the idea of sharing an audio. do you have audio platforms where you share

I don’t, but,there are poets that do that. I mean, there are a lot of poets, especially that do like slam poetry. Uh, great thing about YouTube is you can find a lot of great slam poets on there who. Are more, into doing that. I personally hate the sound of my voice when I

So, so I just can’t do it because I can’t go through the process of editing myself, because everything that I hear just sounds like, nails

[00:17:15] Matty: You just have to do a lot of podcast episodes

[00:17:19] Robert: right. Yeah. If I, if I could get used to the sound of my voice. I could do it because then I would be, I think that’s the main thing is like just being able to go back and, and revise, like, and improve my performance.

I can do that on paper. I can look at the paper and go back and, and see the bad poem that I wrote and, and rework it. But, hearing it back in my own voice, not so much.

[00:17:44] Matty: Yeah. Well, I can imagine it would be a very useful editing pass because I think of any. Kind of, written content, the consumer is more likely to be saying it out loud than in any other format. And so, previewing what that experience is going to be like for the person who, who likes to read the poetry out loud to themselves, could be a, an a useful pass.

[00:18:05] Robert: Yeah. Now I, I will say,I do like to read poems out when I’m going through the editing process. I just don’t like recording it and hearing my voice played back to me. But,it’s helpful not only for, for writing it, like you said, like knowing how people might hear it, in their head, whether they’re reading it out loud or not, but also.

as part of the process of promoting my, collection of poetry, SOLVING THE WORLD’S PROBLEMS, it became apparent very early in the promotion process when I’m going to places and reading the poems that, it’s like a different experience when you’re, you’re up there reading it, the

And I would actually make revisions to poems. As part of that process and, it became a part of my revision process moving forward to, to go through that because I want it to sound a certain way on the page, but then also I want it to sound a certain way when it’s being read or

[00:19:15] Matty: Very interesting.

[00:19:18] Matty: Well, I think that, this conversation about how people are absorbing, the poetic work is sort of a nice lead into another angle. We, you know, we’ve, delved into the sort of craft side a little bit, but let’s talk a little bit about the, we’ll say business side of poetry and, different ways that people can get their

So. Just talk a little bit about what’s available out there, for people who are writing poetry and they’re, they are looking for a readership

[00:19:48] Robert: Yeah. with poetry, there’s so many different ways to write poems, but then there’s also so many different ways to distribute your poetry. as I mentioned earlier. When I first started writing poetry in high school, I ended up, self-publishing a fanzine that had my poetry. So, even though I didn’t think about it as the time as like self-publishing, like self-publishing is definitely like a route that, all posts can take.

you know, you, you can do that, with technology that we have. Now, you, you have poets who, who share their poems on Instagram, Facebook, all social networks. You have poets who, can share their work on YouTube.

[00:20:31] Matty: in a more audio type way, they could do it through a podcast. Can you give an example of, people who are sharing on social media like Instagram or something like that? do you have experience in terms of, is it normally a video of them reading it? Are they presenting the words like along with an image or music, or like how produced is it, I guess?

[00:20:52] Robert: yeah, yeah, actually,both ways.

there are poets that will,read their work, and, and have the audio. But then also poets who like Instagram is a lot better for, like the image with the poetry. I actually, At one point, I was doing a series for a

Jane Friedman had invited me over to collect some poems and then she would put images with the poems. it was called like a InstaPoetry

And then there’s like the traditional route, for people who are interested in that. one of the things I, one of the questions I get asked a lot is like, how do I get my book of poetry published traditionally? these, the, usually the people who ask are people who

And usually, it’s expected if you’re going to get a whole collection published that you’ve already had individual poems published in different places. So usually what I will tell these, writers who ask about this is like, instead of thinking about getting that whole collection published, start off submitting to like journals, online publications, And, poets and writers website, pw.org. It’s got a, like kind of directory in there of, different journals where people could submit their poetry. And, usually like for most of those publications, like they’ll have their own guidelines that specify exactly, but of. I expect poets to submit like three to five poems at once in a batch.

And, and if any get accepted, it might be one, but they might also accept a couple. And of course a lot of rejections, like that’s just part of submitting, Anywhere

[00:22:50] Matty: I did have a question about submitting to those kinds of platforms that I know when I’m advising people about submitting short fiction to platforms. One of the things I emphasize is make sure that you are, you understand at a deep level, what rights you’re signing away and for example, make sure you’re going to, get the

At some point you could pursue reprint opportunities and things like that. Is there any, is, is the world of poetry pretty much the same, or would you provide different advice to, poets who are trying to get there or published? Is it a matter of usually once it’s published there aren’t the same reprint rights or there are reprint rights?

What’s the, what’s the, scenario there?

[00:23:28] Robert: Yeah. I mean, usually you want to make sure that, you’re only giving away like the rights, like the first publication rights and,

as far as reprint rights, that can get, it can be a little fuzzy because, you know, maybe to the publisher, like when, when they’re talking about reprint rights, it’s just they want to have the ability to reprint, If they do a magazine, they want to have the ability to reprint it on their website or, or something like that.

I think it the short fiction world, that would be, there’s like the archive rights clause where, you know, that gives them the right to retain a poem on their website, for example, after they’ve published it

Yeah. you know, I’m sure it’s the same with, fiction as like, you know, you, you don’t want to give away all rights or, Any kind of rights that like, don’t make sense for them to have like TV rights or

[00:24:21] Matty: Yeah. Like audio, if they’ve never published

[00:24:24] Robert: right. Yeah. And if

[00:24:25] Matty: Canada, if they don’t have any presence in Canada, yeah.

[00:24:28] Robert: yeah, if it’s a online publication only, you know, you would only want to give them the online rights. You wouldn’t want ’em to have, first print rights. my collection was actually published by a publisher that did not do digital copies. So, in the contract it just, specified for print, publication writes that if, I ever wanted to do a digital version, I could.

so, so, yeah, I mean, you always. want to think about like, not giving

[00:25:07] Matty: Okay. And, are there any other roots that, people should be aware? Of, other than, poets and writers, maybe for specific, like genres within, within poetry or there are certain platforms that specialize in, you know what I’ll call poetic genres,

[00:25:25] Robert: yeah, so for poets and writers, like the main thing. For that side is that they have this kind of database of all these different publications. And within those publications there are a lot of them that are probably like more, they’re like kind of considered literary journals or, or poetry journals.

but then within the poetry journals there are like. Some that may only publish, poems that are like science fiction related or fantasy related. in a former life, I used to be the editor of, Writer’s Market and Poet’s Market and, and Guide to Literary Agents and like, for all those big market books, There was so many different opportunities where like some of ’em are literary, but then some of them are definitely like

[00:26:15] Matty: Well, I can also imagine that people who are writing. Longer poems shouldn’t overlook the opportunity of submitting to short fiction markets because I know having judged the Writer’s Digest short, short fiction contest for several years, I do get a certain number of, submissions to read that just like visually look more

you know, and I’m assessing those along with all the under 1500 word stories that I’m reading. So there might be more overlap there than people would. Initially think even, you know, as we were saying, people who are writing micro fiction might be able to be submitting to, platforms that are advertising themselves as poetry platforms.

[00:26:55] Robert: Yeah, and I, I’ve noticed, the past decade or so, I’ve noticed more and more examples of novels and verses that have been published, and quite a few of them have actually like, you know, been, finalists or even winners for like the, the major like literary

so, I don’t want to say that it’s ever going to like overtake, regular prose, but it’s a certain flavor that, I, I think there’s always going to be a market for us, like something a little different.

[00:27:24] Matty: so if people are going to these reputable sources like, poets and writers and, the other guides that you mentioned. and they’re getting ready to submit their poetry, like what expectations should they go into it with? What mindset should they go

What are some best practices that they should be following for those

[00:27:43] Robert: Yeah. Uh, so, you know, guidelines can vary, but I’m just going to go off like the, the most typical version is that a lot of places will ask for like three to five poems submitted. So usually what you’ll do is you’ll have your three to five poems each, like in their own. file. it could be like Word or a PDF or, or whatever.

And sometimes they’ll ask you to put them all in the same file. So, so yeah, all that’s always like specific guidelines, but then usually they’ll have like a cover letter. And in the cover letter, all you need to do you, it’s not like a query where you have to sell them on your story. Just have to say, you know, thank you for considering.

These five poems, I always like to list out the five poem titles in there so that there’s no confusion about, which poems, they’re looking at. And then, if I’ve published stuff before, I might just say like, I’ve been published in X, Y, Z, and not go on about it. , because it’s just basically letting them know that I’ve been published before.

And then thank you so much. , because what they’re really going to be judging you on in most cases, is your actual poems. And, depending on which publications, a lot of times they’ll give, poets a heads up on how fast they get through stuff. Some places will respond within a month. Some places will, like a year later, reach out to let you know

they like your work. for myself, I always tell people just expect, the rejection and then if you can accept, it’s great. And I’ve been accepted a lot of places, but I’ve also been rejected from a lot of places. with the one exception being my, my wife who always gets

So, she, she probably should be the person that you’re talking to on

[00:29:36] Matty: That’s.

[00:29:37] Robert: she is actually, she’s actually had publishers

[00:29:42] Matty: Oh my gosh. That’s got to be very unusual, I

[00:29:45] Robert: Yeah. It is very unusual, but that’s how she

[00:29:48] Robert: Um, so, um, but,

the process of submitting three to five poems at once, that’s called multiple submissions to, the one publication. So a lot of them accept multiple submissions and in fact encourage it. And then a lot of them also, allow simultaneous submissions, where they just expect that

So, and I, and I always like encourage poets like, if you know you’re doing that, like go ahead and take advantage of that. Submit to lots of places, because some places do get back to you in less than a month, but some do take longer than a year. So you don’t want to just be sitting around for a year with your poems, not doing anything.

and this is why I think it’s so important to keep really good records of your submissions when you’re doing poetry, because you have like three to five poems going here and three to five poems going there. And some of ’em might overlap to which publications you’re going to. And as soon as one gets accepted, you need to be able to know which places

To let those editors know that this is poem is now off the market because it’s been accepted somewhere else. And, you, you just, you have to have really good records to, to keep track of all that. So, like what I do personally is I’ve got kind of like a master sheet of, the publications that I’ve submitted to when I submitted to them and what I

I have like a date for when I submitted, and I have, columns for whether it’s gotten accepted or rejected and like what those dates are and if they’ve been accepted, what’s been accepted there. But then also on the individual poems in my back, in my composition notebooks, I also

Where have I submitted this poem and when, and I keep that up to date as well, so that. If the poem is accepted somewhere, I can reach out and say like, this has been accepted somewhere else. Please don’t consider it anymore. because there’s nothing worse than the, the horror story I hear from editors is, I’ve accepted this poem, ready to get it published because, you know, I’ve gone through all the submissions and

It’s the right page count. And now this poet’s letting me know that they’ve. It’s actually been published somewhere else already, so.

[00:32:30] Matty: Yeah. Being proactive about letting people, know that is very important. As you’re talking about that, I’m realizing the equivalent for me is nonfiction articles and, I do all the things you’re saying, but I also have the, the axis of, version of a

on a particular topic and I’m submitting it to one platform, so I’m. Kind of, you know, skewing it toward whatever the audience of that platform is. And then I write a slightly different one, and I wouldn’t

so if it got, if that got accepted in one, I would probably notify the others that like, something that’s close enough to what I submitted to you has gotten published. You probably don’t want this anymore.

[00:33:10] Robert: Yeah. And I’ve, you know, as an editor, I’m trying. Search of like content on WriterDigest.com and I run into that situation at times where, you know, people send me a pitch and and then like a day or two later they let me know that it’s already been accepted. I’m like, okay. Cool.

Awesome. And, and also thank you for letting me know,editors are totally fine with stuff getting accepted elsewhere. Like we’re happy for that, but we’re not as happy if we find out like. That, it’s already been published, you know, somewhere, and,

[00:33:46] Matty: Yeah, your centerpiece poem.

[00:33:48] Robert: in my case, I don’t think it’s as bad.

Like I, I’m not really flexible with the website, but if I had to print publication and I can accept like, let’s just say 40 pages of poetry, and I find out that two of the pages that I accepted are all of a sudden. not, not there anymore. And I’ve already gone through all the, acceptance process and I’m like, well, how do I fill these two pages?

[00:34:16] Matty: Yeah, you have to go through all the two page submissions now. Now you’re, uh, judging based on length that’s

[00:34:24] Robert: right. Yeah. And I, I don’t think like editors really want to like. Go back to poets who they’ve rejected and say, Hey,

Actually, we had somebody back out, so yeah.

[00:34:39] Matty: Um, so we’re coming up to kind of a, a, a milestone, a yearly milestone for poets, in April. So, Robert, let us know what’s coming up in April and what people can be doing to

[00:34:53] Robert: Yeah, so April is really big, uh, in the poetry world, for being a national poetry month, and, and I say poetry world, I I’m talking about, here in the US also in, in Canada. I believe in the UK National Poetry Month might be like October or something, and I don’t know how other places celebrate, but, one of the things I like to do in April, we actually are going to be celebrating our 19th annual April Poem-a-Day challenge, starting April 1st on the WriterDigest.com

there are other places that also, do Poem-a-Day, things as well. And, and they’re all great. I mean, there are people that participate in ours that, will extra challenge themselves by trying to do fit like two or three prompts together each day, which I think is fun and, and,

But, basically on WriterDigest.com each morning. I share a poetry prompt and I have an example poem that I write because I figure if I’m going to ask other people to write poems, I should do it as well. sometimes I’m happy with the poems and sometimes I’m not, and I feel like

but we have poets every year, that are based in the us, based in Canada, based in India, UK. Like it really is like kind of a world event. some people, share their poems in the comments on each post. Other poets have reached out to me to let me know that they like, just like to write along, silently along some who like to get their poems, published, in

even though like, I think a lot of editors are fine if you share in the comments of a, a post, but I’ve had poets who have told me like, almost like their whole poetry collections come from these prompts, during the monthly challenges. But,that’s how we celebrate national poetry Month. There are, other ways to do it.

basically like if you’re online and you’re a poet, like you’re, you’re getting hit with all kinds of poetry stuff all month. But, there’s a poem in your Pocket Day, which, the Academy of American Poets does, and this year, I believe it’s on April 30th. And, some people celebrate that by actually carrying a, a poem in their pocket.

I know my kids when they went through school, like they would always have, an elementary school, I should say there’s still a couple of ’em are still in school, but, When they were in elementary school, they would do actually, like, make little poems, fold it up and put it in

but, uh, it’s a great month for poetry. of course we can celebrate poetry throughout the year, but it is good to have this month where everything just like kind of builds up and. And it’s okay to be, it’s okay to be a poet, around normal people, so,

[00:37:55] Matty: Well, I do like the idea of there being more of a community opportunity. maybe it’s a virtual community opportunity, but it’s probably the month where there’s more of a grouping of people online talking about similar topics, you know, expressing similar interests, asking similar questions, and that’s a nice opportunity to sort of get, have that concentration at some time of the year, to enjoy

[00:38:17] Robert: Oh yeah, definitely. and that’s actually one of the great things about the Poem-a-Day challenge on the. Writer Digest site is, it is free. It’s free to do, like, we don’t, you know, it’s just fun, fun thing. But, you have all these poets that will share their poems and the comments and then they like, comment on each other’s

a lot of them also interact on Facebook and other. Social platforms, like they start on the site and then take it elsewhere. it is, it’s a

[00:38:51] Matty: I can imagine, we were talking before about reading one’s own poetry, and I can imagine, especially if you’re someone who doesn’t like to listen to yourself being recorded, it would be fun to partner with someone who’s comfortable with that kind of performance aspect and have them. Read it. And that would not only be an outlet for getting a workout there, but I think it would also be very informative in the same way that I’ve learned certain craft tips by listening to my audiobook narrator, narrate my novels, and she’ll, you know, every once in a while she’ll hit a sentence and I was like, whoa, I, that’s not how I heard it in my mind.

but that would be even more concentrated and valuable I think, for

[00:39:27] Robert: Oh, yeah. I, I think that’s, that’s a great exercise to have because yeah, you can hear if somebody, hits a line and they’re like really struggling through it, it, it might be like, it’s so easy for us when we know what we mean. To just be like, oh, this is easy to, like, this is the easy thing to read.

But, but other people can definitely like, clue, clue you in or, or give you a different emotion than, than what you had in your mind. Like you’re, you’re thinking of it in a, a certain, a mood and then it

[00:39:58] Matty: Well, maybe that can be an assignment for people who don’t think of themselves as poets, A national poetry month. They can go read some poetry, go, you know, like get out your, your high school poetry book or whatever and read some poetry because I think we would all have something to learn, even if we decide not to go ahead and then write a poem as a result, there’s lots of good craft learning that can be, Gained from reading work of, from people who have spent that much time word by word, making sure it’s saying exactly what they

[00:40:26] Robert: Yeah, I love that idea.

[00:40:28] Matty: So, Robert, thank you so much for coming on and sharing some, insights into poetry, filling that gap in the, in the episode, backlog. And please let everyone know where they can go to find

[00:40:40] Robert: Yeah, the best place, just WritersDigest.com. We’ve always got lots of stuff happening there. Like of course we’re excited about poetry month coming up, but we’re. Helping writers with nonfiction, fiction, getting published, finding agent, all that fun stuff. Uh, it’s the, it’s the place to be. Yeah. Thank you.

Episode 328 - Learn to Write It, Learn to Publish It: Western Colorado University Master’s Programs in Publishing and Genre Fiction with Kevin J. Anderson & Johanna Parkhurst

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Kevin J. Anderson & Johanna Parkhurst discusses LEARN TO WRITE IT, LEARN TO PUBLISH IT, about Western Colorado University's master's programs in publishing and genre fiction, which treat commercial fiction as worthy of serious study and teach students every step from manuscript to market. They discuss the hands-on anthology project that drew nearly a thousand submissions, why understanding both indie and traditional publishing gives writers more career options, and what makes these programs unlike anything else in academia.

Kevin J. Anderson has published more than 190 books, 58 of which have been national or international bestsellers, with over 24 million copies in print in 34 languages. He has written numerous novels in the Star Wars, X-Files, and Dune universes and too many original works novels and series to mention. All this in addition to editing anthologies, writing comics and games, and composing the lyrics to three rock albums. Anderson and his wife Rebecca MESS-ta are the publishers of WordFire Press, and he is the director of the graduate program in Publishing at Western Colorado University.

Johanna Parkhurst, who also writes as J.E. Birk, is the author of award-winning and bestselling fiction and romance and primarily writes stories featuring LGBTQ+ characters. She has been published traditionally, by small presses, and also via her imprint Maple Mountains Press. Johanna is a Colorado Book Award winner and a Rainbow Romance Award winner. She is also a long-time teacher, recognized as Faculty of the Year at Pueblo Community College and as Faculty Mentor of the Year at Western Colorado University.

Episode Links

https://western.edu/landing/gpcw/

https://wordfire.com

https://wordfirepress.com

https://www.facebook.com/KJAauthor

Summary & Transcript

Kevin J. Anderson has published more than 190 books—58 of which have been national or international bestsellers—with over 24 million copies in print in 34 languages. He is the director of the graduate program in publishing at Western Colorado University and, with his wife Rebecca Moesta, the publisher of WordFire Press. Johanna Parkhurst, who also writes as J.E. Burke, is a Colorado Book Award–winning and Rainbow Romance Award–winning author of fiction and romance featuring LGBTQ+ characters, and serves as faculty mentor and instructor in Western Colorado University's graduate program in genre fiction. In this conversation, Kevin and Johanna described a pair of graduate programs that take a fundamentally practical approach to teaching writers how to build sustainable careers.

A PROGRAM BUILT ON WHAT THEY WISHED SOMEONE HAD TAUGHT THEM

Kevin founded the publishing program after the university approached him about creating a master's degree. His condition was that he would teach only what he wished someone had taught him when he was starting out—the practical mechanics of both traditional and indie publishing, organized so that students could learn in one year what took him four decades to piece together. The program covers every step from manuscript to market: cover design, interior layout with Vellum, uploading to retailers, running Amazon ads, building Kickstarter campaigns, and understanding the economics of how publishers, authors, and bookstores each make money from a sale.

Johanna came to the genre fiction MFA with a similar frustration. When she was looking for graduate programs, she could not find one willing to work with her on romance, mystery, or sci-fi. The genre fiction program fills that gap by treating commercial fiction as worthy of serious academic study—reading bestsellers across every genre, analyzing what makes them work, and requiring students to write in genres outside their comfort zone.

LEARNING BY DOING

Both programs center on hands-on projects rather than traditional thesis papers. Kevin's publishing students produce a yearly anthology that pays professional rates, funded by a grant from Draft2Digital. The current anthology, INTO THE DEEP DARK WOODS, drew 998 submissions. Students read the slush pile, make multiple rounds of cuts, negotiate a budget, write acceptance and rejection letters, copyedit the accepted stories, design the cover, lay out the interior, and manage the book launch—including a formal gala at the university.

The previous year's cohort went further: they created four books to support the Elk River Writers Workshop, an indigenous-taught writing workshop in Montana that had lost its federal arts grants. The students built and ran a Kickstarter that raised roughly $10,000 and saved the workshop. Kevin noted that twelve to fifteen graduates have gone on to run successful Kickstarters of their own.

On the genre fiction side, Johanna described a thesis project that requires students to draft a novel or short story collection with publication as the explicit goal. Each student works with an assigned writing coach from brainstorming through final draft, and the finished projects are designed either for querying agents or for independent publication. Several thesis projects are currently out on submission, and several more were being prepared for indie release.

GENRE FICTION CHANGES THE WORLD

Johanna made the case that genre fiction has historically driven cultural change—from LGBTQ+ romance built on the backs of small and indie publishers before traditional houses recognized the market, to LitRPG as an entire form created by indie authors blending genres in ways traditional publishing would not have permitted. Kevin reinforced the point with his own experience: traditional editors used to forbid genre-blending because bookstores would not know which shelf to put it on. Indie publishing removed that constraint entirely.

Both described this as what Kevin calls the golden age of publishing—an era when writers have more career paths available than ever before. Kickstarter, Patreon, direct sales at comic cons, library talks, hybrid trad-indie careers—the options multiply in ways that did not exist even a decade ago. The programs aim to prepare students for all of them.

HYBRID CAREERS AND BUSINESS FUNDAMENTALS

The genre fiction program prepares students for both indie and traditional paths. They learn to write queries, prepare pitches (this year, with a live agent session), read contracts, understand tax obligations, and build author platforms. Kevin's publishing program complements this with deep dives into printing, distribution, copyrights, and the full mechanics of indie production.

Kevin acknowledged that some students arrive wanting only the indie track and resist learning the traditional side. His response: even if you want to be a rock star, you should still understand classical music. Understanding how printing, distribution, and bookstore economics work gives indie authors a foundation for making better decisions about their own businesses.

COMMUNITY AS INFRASTRUCTURE

Both Kevin and Johanna emphasized that community is central to the program's design. The low-residency format—one week in person each July in Gunnison, Colorado, with the rest conducted asynchronously online—draws students from around the world, including a current student studying from Denmark. Students frequently cross between the publishing and genre fiction programs, and many stay connected to the community long after graduating.

Kevin also described Superstars Writing Seminars, which he co-founded with Brandon Sanderson, Eric Flint, David Farland, Rebecca Moesta, and James A. Owen roughly sixteen years ago as what he calls the original business-of-writing conference. The same community-minded ethos—rising tides lift all boats, share what you learn—runs through both Superstars and the university programs. Applications for the summer 2026 cohort are open now, with online classes beginning in June and the residency week in July.

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This transcript was created by Descript and cleaned up by Claude; I don’t review these transcripts in detail, so consider the actual interview to be the authoritative source for this information.

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to the Indy Author Podcast. Today my guests are Kevin J. Anderson and Johanna Parkhurst. How are you doing?

[00:00:06] Johanna: Doing well.

[00:00:08] Kevin: having us on.

[00:00:09] Matty: I am pleased to have you here and just to give a little introduction of you for our listeners, Kevin J. Anderson has published more than 190 books, 58 of which have been national or international bestsellers with over 24 million copies in print in 34 languages. He’s written numerous novels in the Star Wars, X-Files, and Dune universes, which, I think is very interesting because I just got a chance to talk with Jonathan Maberry about media tie in work.

Too many original works, novels and series to mention all this. In addition to editing anthologies writing comics and games and composing the lyrics to three rock albums,

Anderson and his wife Rebecca Moesta, are the publishers of WordFire Press, and he is the director of the graduate program in publishing at

And Johanna Parkhurst, who also writes as J.E. Burke, is the author of award-winning and bestselling fiction and romance, and primarily writes stories featuring LGBTQ+ characters. She’s been published traditionally by small presses and also via her imprint, Maple Mountains Press. She’s a Colorado Book Award winner and a Rainbow Romance Award winner, and she’s also a longtime teacher recognized as Faculty of the year at Pueblo Community College and as faculty mentor of the year at

And for people who are listening carefully to those two bios, I think you will, notice the commonality there, which was Western Colorado

[00:01:27] Matty: So I am very pleased to have, Kevin and Johanna on the, podcast to talk about Western Colorado University’s master’s program in publishing and genre fiction, which I think is, is, a unique offering among the educational opportunities for writers out there.

And so I’m just gonna first of all throw it open and ask you guys to describe what is the Western Colorado University Master’s program in

[00:01:51] Kevin: Uh, well, Western Colorado University is, is a huge university and, well, no, it’s, it’s, it’s a small University of the mountains of Colorado. but it doesn’t really matter that much because all of our teaching is,low residency and it’s almost all

[00:02:07] Kevin: look, I, I got out of college with my va, my bachelor’s degree, and I went right off into being a writer.

And I published novels traditionally and, and had a big full career for it. We never really felt you needed to have a master’s degree to be successful writing genre fiction or publishing stuff like that. but this program came about. I, I formed the publishing program. About seven years ago when they approached me and asked if I would, put together a,

And I said, well, only if I can teach the stuff that I wish somebody had taught me when I was learning it. And I’ve been doing this for decades in traditional publishing and I form my own indie. Imprint kind of at the beginning of indie in 2009 when people were just starting it. And so I’ve got a whole track record in both traditional publishing, very

And, I put together this program that I, I think is unlike anything else in any other university. ’cause we teach half and half full traditional publishing and we teach them all indie publishing and. I learned all this stuff over the course of 40 years, but we kind of organized it so

it’s kind of start to finish organized, and I’m not an academic at all. I wanted to teach people. Like practical how to do stuff that when they come out of the publishing program, they know every step from start to finish of creating and publishing their book, designing their cover, uploading it, advertising it, running Amazon ads, doing everything so

Something at the end of it. And when I joined Western Colorado University, they also had a program that taught an MFA in genre fiction. And most MFAs are it’s Master of Fine Arts. And so they were teaching, you know, literature and, and not. Westerns and romances and mysteries and science fiction, and I just thought that was really cool that they

And, Johanna wasn’t the person running it at the time, but she’s now, and I’ll, I’ll punt it over to you to talk about what, what genre

[00:04:19] Johanna: Yeah. Thank you Kevin.

[00:04:20] Johanna: I, I jokingly say that I can talk about this program all day long because similarly to what Kevin just said, this is the program that I looked for years ago and couldn’t find. This is the program I always needed. I’ve been a teacher for a long time, but I’ve

And when I was looking for MFA programs. There wasn’t anybody who was interested in working with me on what I really wanted to write. you know, I’ve, I’ve loved genre since I was very small. I love all different types of it, and I just wanted to play in genre blends and I wanted to write romance and I wanted to write mystery, and I wanted to

And it was very hard when I was first. Starting out on this track to find those programs. so my soapbox for this program is if you love genre and you believe that your writing has a space in the world and you wanna be a part of a community of. Many other writers who love genre as much as you do and who wanna study what it means to read like a writer and study the best genre fiction, the most successful genre fiction, really

This is the place for you. because something that I think Kevin and I and all the directors at the graduate program of Creative Writing believe we all believe very strongly in community, community is incredibly important to us. We believe that rising tides lift all boats.

They should be setting you up for a lifetime of art and a lifetime of a success doing what you love to do. We have a lot of students who study genre fiction and publishing in either order. Kevin jokingly calls it the learn how to write a book and then learn how to publish it track, but it’s actually pretty accurate, right?

That’s basically what it is. we were just talking about this last night in class. Actually, several of my genre fiction writers came over from publishing. One of them was showing off a Kickstarter that she just finished and we were talking about, you know, the succession of being able to really study both and practically walk out into the world feeling like not only have you built more skills or advanced your skills, because we have a lot of writers in this program who have long and storied careers, and they come because they love learning and they

Grow and they wanna build a deeper community. and they were talking about the practicality of that piece, how you can build this community and you can come out knowing how to do a Kickstarter and write a great book that will keep those readers from your Kickstarters engaged with

[00:06:32] Johanna: And we’re a residency like Kevin was saying. So a big part of our sort of ethos is we believe writers should come from everywhere. That you shouldn’t be limited in what you can study because of where you are. So we all meet in person one week. A year in Gunnison, Colorado, which is beautiful in July, I have to say.

And the rest of the year everything’s online. It’s over Zoom, just like this. It’s in discussion boards, it’s in other online spaces. So we have students from all over the world. I have a student studying in Denmark right now. Kevin actually got to visit her when he was at a Comic-Con there recently, which is very cool.

[00:07:05] Kevin: Actually, I wanna pick up on that, just the idea. can you imagine, think in your head what, what an MFA program is? Can you imagine an MFA program at a, some other university teaching you how to build and run a Kickstarter? I mean we, I’ve got a Kickstarter running right now at Launched yesterday, but my students shadowed me the whole time as, as I built it.

They watched the, i I made them collaborators and they’re inside the back office watching me put all the stuff together and doing the BackerKit ads and, and the pre-launch stuff. And then they launched it and they’re helping to promote it and we’re going through this and, and we

[00:07:41] Matty: That’s fantastic.

[00:07:42] Kevin: but that they’re actually learning how to. Do this stuff and last year’s group of students for, for publishing. Instead of just watching me do a Kickstarter, we actually put one together ourselves that there is a, the Elk River Writers Workshop, which is a, an indigenous taught writing workshop up in Montana.

And they had, surprise, surprise, a bunch of their federal, arts grants. canceled. So they weren’t gonna survive. They couldn’t run this workshop. And so our publishing students put together four books, like the collected stories from the people who attended there and, and a book

And so they created and published four books that they ran the Kickstarter for. They raised something like \$10,000 and saved the workshop. And that’s what their classwork was. They built and ran a Kickstarter and now they all know how to do it. And I think of my publishing grads, we’ve had like 12 to 15 of them that went off to do their own Kickstarters that were successful and we’re just very much

They wanna be able to hold up a book and say, yes, I know how to make this. Rather than that, they wrote a thesis paper somewhere that. Nobody will read that. This is really practical stuff that we just try to teach

[00:08:54] Johanna: I was just gonna say on the genre side of the practicality piece, our thesis project is writing a novel or short story collection for your goals as a publication. So the goal is that you’re walking out with a project that you can either query to agents if you wanna go in a trad direction with it, or if you’re studying Kevin’s

Publish yourself. And those thesis projects are written with writing coaches every step of the way. So you have a very specific coach who’s assigned to you on the MFA track who works with you throughout the whole process, from brainstorming all the way to the very end. and we, you know, we’re really excited.

We have several out in subs, several being planned for independent publication right now. Like, this is the work that our students are doing, like Kevin was saying, like, we are, we all want to be working in this industry together in whatever fashion that means for our students.

[00:09:39] Matty: Yeah, I really like the practicality of it. I’d love to dive into a few more examples of the kind of, actual work the students are doing. I’m curious about on the writing front, Johanna. How does the program, how does the work of refining one’s writing differ in your program than it would in a traditional MFA, beyond?

I mean, obviously the, the work that’s being studied is different, but then can you describe differences in how the students act on the work

[00:10:10] Johanna: Yeah, I mean, I think the similarities are in the fact that we’re trying to build a community of authors who help lift one another’s writing up, right? So we do workshops just like any other MFA does. But one of the things that we specifically do in our workshops. Or try to do is we try to make them really open spaces where

So there’s some traditional MFA formats out there where you’re kind of sitting in silence and being told what’s right or wrong about your story. But since we’re functioning in genre spaces where we want readers and writers to be able to communicate across what’s working.

Our workshops are kind of designed around what works best for the author. So different authors run different types of workshops in every story they’re producing across. Every genre we study is an opportunity for publication. Kevin’s program, the publishing program, puts together an anthology. Every year they get a massive numbers of submissions.

I think they had something like 999 last year. I am so proud to say that. I think seven or eight. Kevin, correct me if I’m wrong, of the

[00:11:10] Kevin: think seven previous and current students got in there and they got i’ll, I’ll talk about the anthology in, in a minute, but that’s what I would like to point out though, is that you’re, they might come in going, I want to be a fantasy writer, but you make them understand how romance works, how westerns work, how mysteries work, and they have to write a mystery story.

They have to write a romance story and they. they actually learn how to do it, and some of them have excelled outside of the genre that they

[00:11:38] Johanna: One of my funny stories about this is, so I am a romance writer and every genre has. Folks who are like, I love that genre. I don’t engage with that genre. Right. And there’s always a few folks who come in with romance, like, I’ve never read a romance before. And it’s always so funny to me. I think I’ve had three students who had never written a romance where romance ended up being their very first publication because they just fell in love with a genre.

When Kevin did a romance anthology in the program a few years ago, we had so many submissions from out of that workshop. Yeah. I was really proud that I, I think, yeah, I think believe it is eight. genre fiction, former and past writers are in that anthology this year, ’cause several

The goal is that, as Kevin said, they’re writing in every genre. They’re playing with genre blends. They’re looking at where they can take new ideas from what they’re reading. Because we read a lot in our program. The writers will tell you so much of how you learn to develop

Right? Like, how do you read like a writer? What are you studying in other people’s crafts? So we’re reading the bestselling romances, we’re reading the best. Selling mysteries. We’re reading the bestselling thrillers, we’re reading the bestselling sci-fi. we’re reading the interesting and new genre blends of sci-fi and fantasy, and we’re talking about what makes them work, what makes them tick.

What is it that you can take from these books and bring into your own craft so that you can write this new story and something you’ve never written before, and you can submit it to the WordFire anthologies and

[00:12:57] Kevin: You mean an MFA program that makes them read bestselling fiction? How, how dare you. How? How dare you.

[00:13:03] Johanna: People laugh so hard when I tell them what we read in our program. a few titles from this year have included, I’ll just throw some of it out there. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros is on that list. Rebecca Roanhorse is on that list. oh my gosh, so many. And we change them every year.

We change our book lists every year to reflect what’s coming out and what’s moving up. We’re in the horror unit now, so

[00:13:24] Matty: Do you get in touch with the authors of those books? do they know that, that their books are being used as, academic

[00:13:31] Johanna: Yeah, we have several speak and it’s, I remember when we invited Cat Sebastian, who is a really well-known, queer romance writer. She was like, you’re asking me to speak my, my book’s being used in an MFA book? I was like, yes, it really is.

[00:13:44] Matty: probably a, an item they didn’t even realize

[00:13:48] Johanna: She was, she was thrilled and she was such a great guest. Yeah, we have some amazing speakers who are just so excited to be able to come in and, and see the ways that their books are being

[00:13:56] Kevin: Well, and that is one of the things like Matty, you, you, you and I have interacted for a long time and I’ve been involved in the industry. So we can bring in like the captains of industry to just be guest speakers for us. And we have major bestselling authors and like the heads of Audible and the heads of Draft2Digital and, and like all.

All the people that are in our space. And it’s a, it, it’s kind of cool when I think of it ’cause we are just a little university, but we’re getting all these, these Titan speakers that are, that are there and, let I, I’d like to talk a little bit about what we.

[00:14:33] Kevin: What our, our main project is for the publishing people is that, they put together an original anthology every year.

And again, this is the learning how to do stuff from start to finish. And we get a, a really, really nice grant every year from Draft2Digital. And they, they, they give us, a, a nice chunk of money that we can use to pay professional rates for. An original anthology and the students come up when they meet in summer, they get together and they brainstorm and come up with, this is the anthology they wanna edit.

And the one that they’re working on this year is called Into the Deep Dark Woods. And they wrote up their, their description, their call for submissions. They, they send it out and posted it. Everywhere in the writers’ groups and Author Nation and, and successful indie author and all these different places, and we get submissions because we’re paying

So people are writing stories and they’re sending ’em in and into the deep dark woods. We got 998 submissions that came in and the students. They read the slush pile that they’re broken into teams, but they go through and they read them and they reject them. They clear through, and then they do another cut, and they reject the next round and then and the next round, and they get down to what we call the thunderdome call with two stories enter and one story leaves because they, they have to

Which ones they can have because they have a budget. We’re, this is a business that you got this much money and you can buy this many words. And that what usually happens is they’re like 80 stories that they wanna buy and they can only buy 26 and then they have to fight over which, which ones. And that is incredible learning spirits for them because they realize all 80 of those stories were perfectly good and

But they still got rejected and they really learned a lot from their own writing. Like, wait, just ’cause they got rejected, maybe it didn’t mean the story was terrible. And then they, they write the last rejections, they write the acceptance letters. They send out the contracts. They, they work with the authors to copy edit them.

they work to design the cover. They lay it out and we make them get vellum. So they all learn how to use vellum. And then we publish the book and we run, they develop Canva ads and they put it out. And then the following summer in Gunnison, when they all get together for their second time, we have this really cool gala book launch at the University Center, and it’s kind of all black tie.

I wear my, my tux and, and Allison Longueira, my co-pro professor, wears her cocktail dress and everybody kind of gets dressed up and we have like 300 people there that come in and, and they, they sell their books and they, they buy the books and, Oh, and, and the students also produce

It’s like a reissue of a classic of literature that they do from start to finish, but here’s kind of a little off the radar, which I think is one of the most interesting things that they learn. So after that big book launch, so they publish their anthology, they publish their classic books, we print them up and we sell ’em at the book launch.

[00:17:28] Kevin: Well, there are three parties that make money when a book is published and sold. The publisher makes money. So that’s Word fire Press. That’s my publisher publishing house. The author makes money, in this case it’s Western Colorado University. ’cause they get the royalties and the bookstore makes money and we have a separate bookstore entity that, so the bookstore buys the books, that 40% discount from the publisher the way any bookstore does with any

And they buy all these books. We put them out, we sell them that night, and then we run this whole spreadsheet together afterward. Where you figure out exactly how much money did the publisher make for all these books that we printed up and sent into this book event. And then how much money did the author make the Western Colorado University for their

And how much money did the bookstore make because they had to buy them and then they resell them and they get to see like, like with actual numbers with the books that they handed in their own hands. This is how much the publisher made, how much the author made, and how much the bookstore made. And invariably every single year, it’s the bookstore

the bookstore has the most risk though, because they have to buy all these books. And if there’s a tornado that night and nobody shows up, well, then they’re stuck with all this inventory that they can’t sell. So it’s, again, that’s just, it’s, it’s a very long description of how, how practical and pragmatic this stuff is.

[00:18:51] Matty: Well, I do really like the idea of them getting some direct exposure to the business side of, the writing and publishing world. And I do just wanna second that idea that having that exposure to the editorials. Side of being the person who’s having to read and accept or reject stories, I think is so valuable and, really highlights

And there’s so many other things that go into whether you get an acceptance or whether you get a rejection. I think it’s great that they

[00:19:22] Kevin: To go back to what Johanna was saying before, a lot of the submissions, do you require your students to submit to our

[00:19:30] Johanna: I don’t require, but it works out really well. your deadline is always right after one of our first workshop.

[00:19:33] Kevin: So. these stories come in and because some of her students were actually the editors the previous year, they learned so much about what catches your eye in the slush pile and what doesn’t

I think we had seven or eight in this coming one. And this was on their own merits. ’cause they come in basically blind and people are reading all these submissions and out of 998 submissions. seven or eight of the current students got in there on their own merits because their stories

[00:20:05] Matty: That’s very cool.

[00:20:09] Matty: One of the things you had said earlier, Johanna, about the, submitting to, traditional publishing outlets. I can see obviously all the things we’re talking about, about the, the practical end of if somebody wants to. be it like a solo, indie, author, publisher, then this is gonna equip them well for it.

Can you also talk about in what way it, equips them better for an

[00:20:29] Johanna: I mean, to borrow a quote from Kevin, he likes to say this is the golden age of publishing. And I would agree because authors have more opportunity than ever, so we wanna sort of.

[00:20:37] Johanna: From the genre fiction side of things, and this is similar to how Kevin approaches things in the publishing program. We wanna sort of prepare our writers, those who are either in the field or are thinking of advancing in different areas of in the

so like I teach the business class and the genre fiction, side of the house for example. And we do a lot of combination with Kevin. We do a lot of speakers together and things like that. ’cause there’s a lot of crossover and in that business course. We’re essentially preparing them for what are the practical things you need to know to exist in both of these worlds so that whatever your career brings to you, you can move

We’re seeing more and more indie authors also pick up trad contracts, particularly for their print works that’s, you know, becoming more and more popular. We’re seeing more and more TRA authors also want to have an indie side to their career. You just don’t know where this golden

[00:21:25] Johanna: So in the business class, we kind of prep everybody for how to write queries. How to do a pitch. we’re actually piloting something this year where we have an agent coming in directly and doing pitches with the students in the class. and we were very lucky to be able to do that. The projects don’t always align that way that they can come into class and everybody’s project will work for the same agent, but it did this year.

So we’re trying that this year. But either way, we prepped for all of that. We prep for the pitches. We make sure they know how to read contracts that are gonna come their way. You know, that’s something that. Kevin also covers again in publishing. So we’re really trying to set them up for everything. And then those that wanna go down more of an indie route, if the publishing track is good for them, that’s very often where they’ll also study there so they can go more in depth

but at least they leave feeling like they know how to build a platform. They know how to exist in these different realms and they know what they don’t know because I think that’s. Such a difficult part about being a writer. You know, I remember when I was first starting out, and even as my career has grown, the hardest part is always you don’t know what you

Like if nobody tells you. I, we were, we had a CPA on a call the other night and I was thinking about these horror stories we used to hear and still sometimes do about like debut authors who get these big contracts, you know, kind of win the literary lottery and don’t know that they have to pay taxes on that so they like blow the whole check on paying

Then tax time comes up in trouble, right? Because you don’t know what you don’t know. So we’re trying, hopefully, in these classes to not only prepare you for the craft side of this world, but what the practicalities of everything else are going to feel like. And what I, I, you know, I don’t say pros and cons in either a positive or negative

Everything publishing, every publishing path has pros and cons, so we’re sort of trying to. Give them the foundation of understanding, like when you’re looking at a project and thinking about what is the best path for this project, making sure they know the why and the how of how to approach that path, if that makes sense.

[00:23:12] Matty: Well, I do like the idea that you’re covering both Indie and rad because I always try to spread the word that you, a writer shouldn’t. Think about making a choice for their career. They should think about making a choice for each work and then further each format and further each geography and you know, all the other ways you

So having a pool of knowledge about all the options available, I think

[00:23:36] Johanna: So well.

[00:23:37] Kevin: And we, we’ve had some, like more militant indie authors going like, well, I don’t wanna learn the trad side. And I go, guys, if you wanna be a rock star, you still should understand classical music. And, and there’s so much in trad just the bookstore distribution and copyrights and contracts and, and just, just printing

Look at all the options we have now with BookVault and with, with,other print on demand things and, and fancy vendors. You have to know how printing works and, and all the various things that you have. And, and yes, if you are a very ambitious indie author, you can go on a million different writers groups and, and Facebook groups, and you can go to conferences and you can learn all of this stuff in a completely random

F, but what, what we offer is like, okay guys, we’re gonna start, start here and we’re gonna give you this whole organized. Game plan to go through and, and finish it. A

[00:24:33] Kevin: nd, and just because Johanna and I field a lot of these questions, I’m gonna preempt one and just mention that the stuff that we’re teaching, because it is low residency and all online, most of it is asynchronous, which means you, you do it on your own time.

And yes, there are zoom calls that we meet ourselves in class, but mainly you’ll be given, here’s your work or here’s your lecture, here’s your reading that you have to do, and you do that on your own time. And a great many of our students in publishing, and I think a lot of them in genre as well. they’re not like white-eyed kids fresh out of undergrad, that these are people who have already established their careers and they’ve got a full-time job, they’ve got families, they’ve got other things, and they’re still putting this on top of it.

And they managed to do it. And, you know, to me, to them it’s, it’s something feasible to do. and just the, the pragmatic thing, so for publishing, it’s a one year program, so it starts in July. June, some online classes, and then it ends the following July, and the, the total cost is 27,000, I think.

[00:25:36] Kevin: And the, well, you talk about genre, it’s an MA

[00:25:42] Johanna: Yeah, so we have the one year or the two year option. So the one year is very similar to the track, Kevin, just. It’s basically. June to July. and that’s the master’s degree. And the master’s degree is basically what I like to call the genre bootcamp. It’s that first year of you’re deep dive studying every genre you’re

You’re building these great workshop communities where you’re getting a lot of feedback on your work. You’re conferencing with your instructors, really figuring out how to grow your craft. We do have some students, some writers who just do the MA and then they graduate from that year. The majority of the genre fiction writers tend to do the two year program, the MFA program.

Because the second year is when you do the short forms course, which is a deep dive into some other forms. the novelette, flash fiction, things like that. The business course that we were just talking about. There’s also a pedagogy course in there that sort of helps prepare those who wanna go into classrooms because MFA is a terminal degree, or those who just wanna be really strong conference speakers and create things like this, right?

Create spaces where other writers can learn from them and continue to push their work forward. And that’s the year you’re writing your thesis, your novel project with your, with your mentor. So the majority of our writers tend to do the two year program, although there are a few

It really just depends on goals, right? Like what are you in the program for? What are you looking to get out of it? What are you, what do you wanna achieve? What is, what is your variation on, you know, we were talking about ROI. What does ROI look for you and look like for you?

[00:27:05] Johanna: And we do have students who cross and we’ll do like the MA in publishing and the MA in genre or the MFA in genre and the MA in publishing. We also have a nature writing program, poetry program, a screenwriting program. So we have multiple students who will

I’ve had students go on to study screenwriting or come to us from screenwriting. I think Kevin has a screenwriter going to publishing this year. We also, we are a small and very tightly knit community, so you get to know the other instructors in the program once you’re there, and we have a lot of folks who stay because they love the community we’ve

[00:27:36] Matty: I do think that the idea of being able to be part of this, very, Both like high powered audience, both among the instructors and the student body. and also a very committed group. Obviously committed because they’re making this commitment to the program is great. And I, I know that there’s a certain amount of

I recognize it’s not part of the program, but I think that that idea of community, it’s like a great adjunct offering. and I’d love to give

[00:28:08] Kevin: Superstars writing seminar. Something that I founded with Brandon Sanderson, Eric Flint, David Farland, my wife Rebecca Moesta, and, and we brought on James A. Owen. We, this was, I call it the OG Business of Writing Conference. ’cause like 15, 16 years ago, we all got together and talked business and we said, how come there

This was long before Author Nation long, before 20Books to 50K. And so we, we did Superstars writing seminar to. To teach people about contracts and ips and, and Eric Flynn, our, our first year he did this, this talk about this, you know, I think we should pay attention to this

And, and he was the only one that was even doing anything with it. And, what, what developed out of that and Superstars has grown, we’re now a pro non-Pro 501(c)(3) nonprofit. what the best thing that came out of that is our full on nurturing community. Mindset that everybody there is like on the same team and they wanna learn and they want, and you, you’ve seen indie authors out there that indie authors are so different from what most professionals are in that they, you can’t stop them from sharing the stuff that they learned that they’re so eager to, to like, oh, look what I found out.

Look what I mean. Like most other people are like, no, it’s trade

[00:29:38] Kevin: But that’s not indie authors, and that’s what superstars is and that’s what we are at Western Colorado University too, that it’s very much a, well, it’s a little subversive that I want to talk about because we, We are teaching people how to remake the entire publishing industry and, and you know that as indie authors, that what we’re, there are a lot of people in publishing, in traditional publishing, and I still know a lot of them in traditional public, like the, my editors at the Big Five and my, my Big New York agents and

They still don’t quite understand what’s going on out here that they, they cannot believe that you can make a lot of money on Kickstart Kickstarter for a project that they couldn’t sell to another publisher. I had one of those two years ago where I, I did a seven volume set of my collected reprint, short stories, and I asked my, my agent and I said, well, would, would you be able to sell this?

He said, nobody would want a reprint set of your short stories and not seven volumes. And I said, okay. And I ran a Kickstarter and made \$80,000 for it. And he’s still like. I was speaking a different language, and we really want to be, we want to get respect for genre fiction and academia, and I’ll let Jo Johanna talk about that.

I wanna get respect for indie publishing in academia because other programs will, you can get an MFA that will teach you how to go work for the Big five publishers, but there aren’t that many jobs out there anymore. What we’re finding is among our applicants, they don’t really

They wanna learn how to be indie publishers themselves, or at the very least, to be hybrid so that they know both sides of the fence. And, and Johanna, you were the same way, where we’re like, well, wait, how come other MFAs don’t teach genre fiction? That’s what people wanna read.

[00:31:18] Johanna: Yeah.

[00:31:18] Johanna: I mean our kind of our, our longstanding slogan in this program is genre fiction changes the world, and Indie publishing has allowed genre fiction. To change the world. We should put that on T-shirts, Kevin.

[00:31:29] Kevin: Oh, I like that. I got it.

[00:31:31] Johanna: But it’s, it’s true, right? Like we, when we look back at the course of history and we really think about various literary content that has changed society and moved society forward,

And yet for some reason. We don’t talk about it the same way in academia that I think we should be. and when we look at how genre fiction has been allowed to change and move spheres, I mean, I’m, I’m a product of one of those circles. LGBTQ+ romance is a space that only really existed or only has sort of existed and has kind of changed how we talk about romance and how we talk about the way that people communicate with one another and what it means to be accepted included

If you’re not in a, you know, very traditional looking. Relationship. That’s the kind of thing that was built on the back of small publishers and indie publishers. And then, quite frankly, I’ll just be honest here, right? Like one day trad publishing went, oh, there’s money over there. And all of a sudden you saw a lot of LGBTQ+ romance popping up

and that’s just one story, right? Like there’s. So many stories of how small publishers and indie publishers helped give rise. Another one that we talk a lot about right now is LitRPG and Lit. RPG is just an interesting example of an entire field of writers who basically created something because they were like, we can blend these genres and we can

We’re gonna like, make this form exist. And it exists out in the world. It changed the sphere of an entire genre because of indie publishing. I, I kind of have made an argument before that I don’t think LitRPG. Would have existed nearly as quickly or in the same way if it wasn’t

[00:33:01] Kevin: They wouldn’t have known how to publish it. And let me even go back to my trad days ’cause I was always loving to do genre mixing and cross genre things. And I like steampunk vampires and all that stuff and my editors would always slap my hand. I go, don’t mix genres because we won’t know which bookshelf to put it on in the

They that was you was really frowned upon to do any sort of genre blending. But indie authors are like, well, I don’t care. I’m just gonna put the keywords on there. And then people will find the steampunk, vampire, LGBTQ+ horror thriller novel or something like that. And guess what? The readers are there and they come out of the woodwork

And you know, that’s, as I said, and as Johanna said, this is the coolest time ever to get into publishing that we have, we have this, like, this whole treasure chest in front of us that we can do this, we can do that. And, when I was starting out, you basically had this lockstep path. You did this and then did this and did this, and you know, again, 99% of the people never made it to each next step.

And if you made it, then you had your career in traditional publishing. Well, now you can do all kinds. You can run a Kickstarter, you can have your Patreon, you can, you can publish your own books and find your audience. You can, I personally make a lot more money just going to my own comic cons and selling off my own table than I do by selling

Well, I make money there too. But, you can have a perfectly good career selling your books by doing library talks every month. And still nobody would’ve heard of you, but you’re making money at it. And there are

[00:34:45] Matty: I am curious as to, for each of your programs, what is one thing that your students learn and they wouldn’t learn it anywhere else, and it sort of lights them up. Like, what is the big, aha moment for them? Johanna, do you wanna take a crack at that question?

[00:35:01] Johanna: It’s a fun time for you to ask that. ’cause I was just reading their mid-semester reflections today. We happen to be in the middle of the semester, so I was just reading exactly that and in the first year, I think so many of the aha moments are really about what is possible in craft. And what that means for what they wanna do in

you know, a lot of the reflections I was reading today are like, wow, I’d never thought about doing this genre blend before. And now you know, this really cool idea for the story I just brought to workshop with this AI monster that falls in love and, you know, goes through these themes of what it means to be disenfranchised and modern society.

Now I know how to do it right? Like those are the most exciting reflections for me. Those, those craft aha moments of. This is something I didn’t know I could do in a space that I feel very comfortable doing now and or I wanna take that experiment, I wanna take that risk and I’m

I think that’s, you know, as a teacher too, that’s just one of the most exciting things you can see is that somebody’s really lit up with a writing idea. And the second year of my program, I think a lot of the aha moments are around their thesis project. So that’s the moment. Like whether it’s an aha from somebody who’s written eight different novels and tried something really, or 20 different novels for that matter, and tried something really new with their thesis of going like, oh, I

And here I am doing long form fantasy or the aha of the person who had done a lot of short form when they came to us, but had never actually written like an 80,000 word novel. And did it start to finish? Drafted it? You know, the way our process works, you’re essentially drafting a

And for some folks that seems, you know, really. Really complex and like a very big challenge when they first come. so that sort of aha moment, there’s so many different aha moments across the thesis project. I could go on all day, so I’ll let Kevin pick up.

[00:36:41] Kevin: Well, because we make them hands-on for their solo book, their classic book that they do. they do every single step from start to finish that they go in. Find an old book that they wanna reprint and they prove that it’s outta copyright. And then they either scan or obtain the text somewhere and then they proofread it and then they, they’ll edit it as they need to, and then they’ll, they’ll lay it out, inve em.

They will design their own cover, they’ll make their own ads for it. And now realistically we teach them, you’re not gonna wanna do every step of this, but I want you to know how to do every step of this. And some of them like. we had won this this year. It’s like, I never, ever

I’m good at it. and they had never even thought about doing. Graphic design and, just, just the beautiful books that you can make with, with velum and layout software. And I, I just gave them the printing masters for our into the Deep dark Woods anthology. ’cause I’m, I did that

And I’m playing around and just, if you pay attention, you add the little flourishes and the step back artwork on the title pages and, and just all this fancy stuff that. Trad publishers just don’t bother doing anymore. It’s the indie people that are making the pretty beautiful books and, and they’re, they’re laying out their own books and they

And, and in fact, they all just finished, all 12 students did their 12 covers, and we just shared with them, here’s all 12 year covers. And they were just like, like stunned. Wow. Look at how beautiful those covers are. And we did them ourselves. And, and that’s, that’s the cool. Aha moment that they realize and, and I myself still get that aha moment when, when our books are published and I hold it and I go.

I can’t believe I did this. I remember being a kid looking up to publishers as the Gods on Olympus because only they could make a book. And now I’m like, but I just made this one. And it’s prettier than anything that Bantam did or Harper Collins did, or Simon and Schuster did. And you know, I, I think that that’s a power that we have that is

[00:38:51] Matty: Well, I do, love the educational aspect that I think you guys are sharing information that isn’t available anywhere. I love this idea of expansion that people, who thought they were gonna, become romance writers, turned out to be thriller authors or whatever that might be. And I love the empowerment aspect of giving people the tools and the, and the confidence in order to.

Dive into all of these and, and understand it from all different perspectives. I think it’s just a, a wonderful program.

[00:39:17] Matty: And, please, I’d love to give you a chance to each share where, people can go to find out more about your programs. Johanna, can we start with you?

[00:39:26] Johanna: I mean, we should all be on the same page, so literally the same webpage. If you go to Western Colorado University graduate program for creative writing. I think we can give you a link for the show notes. Matty, you can access all the information about our different concentrations, all the information about how to apply.

Kevin and I are always happy to talk to interested writers. As you can tell, we love talking about this program, so it’s not hard. It’s

[00:39:51] Kevin: we are open for applications now. Classes start in, well, their online classes in June, and then the residency is in

So that’s when you would have to Be in Colorado for one week in July. and I think apps close at the end of May, so it’s, still got plenty of time, but not like forever time. And we would love to see some of you guys as our students this year. So either take genre fiction first and then publishing, or the other way around.

[00:40:21] Matty: And then you’ll, you’ll leave with the full,

[00:40:25] Johanna: And hopefully a lovely writing community and many years of. I, I like to think that we are one of the few MFA programs in the country that recently spent 20 minutes talking about the genres of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. I say that jokingly,

[00:40:41] Matty: Well, that’s gotta be the best ad for the program.

[00:40:48] Johanna: Thank you so much.

Episode 327 - Media Tie-ins for Fun and Profit with Jonathan Maberry

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Jonathan Maberry discusses MEDIA TIE-INS FOR FUN AND PROFIT, including what media tie-in writing is, how the licensing works, the creative constraints of writing in someone else’s world, how to find open calls and pitch editors, the career strategy of when to pursue tie-in work and when to focus on your own brand, and why the writers who treat editing as a business interaction rather than a personal attack are the ones who keep getting hired.

Jonathan Maberry is a New York Times bestselling author, five-time Bram Stoker Award winner, four-time Scribe Award winner, Inkpot Award winner, poet, and comic book writer. He writes in multiple genres including suspense, thriller, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and action. V-WARS (Netflix) was based on his books/comics; Alcon is developing his teen post-apocalyptic novels for film; and Chad Stahelski, director of John Wick, is developing his bestselling Joe Ledger thrillers for TV. Marvel’s BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER was partly based on his work. He’s president of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, and the editor of WEIRD TALES MAGAZINE.

Episode Links

www.jonathanmaberry.com

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanmaberry/

https://www.instagram.com/jonathanmaberry/

https://bsky.app/profile/jonathanmaberry.bsky.social

https://www.threads.com/@jonathanmaberry

https://substack.com/@jonathanmaberry

Summary & Transcript

Jonathan Maberry is a New York Times bestselling author, five-time Bram Stoker Award winner, four-time Scribe Award winner, and the president of the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers. He writes across multiple genres—suspense, thriller, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and action—and his work has crossed into comics, television, and film, including Netflix’s V WARS and elements of Marvel’s BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER. In this conversation, Jonathan laid out the landscape of media tie-in writing: what it is, how to break in, and what working writers should know before they pitch.

WHAT MEDIA TIE-IN ACTUALLY MEANS

Jonathan explained that media tie-in falls into two main categories. The first is direct novelization—adapting a film or television script into a novel. His own entry into tie-in work was novelizing the 2010 remake of THE WOLFMAN, a project that required building a full gothic novel from a screenplay without ever seeing the finished film. The second category is original work set in a licensed world: writing a new Star Wars novel, for instance, or a short story set in the Aliens universe. A third, unofficial category—fan fiction—can’t be sold, but Jonathan noted that several successful tie-in careers started with fan fiction used as a writing sample to pitch licensed work.

NAVIGATING LICENSES AND RIGHTS HOLDERS

The conversation turned to the practical mechanics of finding and approaching license holders. Jonathan recommended starting with research: browsing bookstores or Amazon to identify which publishers hold specific licenses, then searching for the in-house editor overseeing that property. He described a hierarchy that runs from the license holder (often a film studio or game company) through a licensing overseer, to a publishing house editor, and finally to the writer. For properties not yet in print, he suggested contacting the vice president of licensing at the studio directly—an approach that led to his current involvement with the John Wick franchise.

Jonathan also clarified the public domain landscape, noting that what’s public domain varies by country. Sherlock Holmes and the Wizard of Oz are fair game in the United States, but James Bond and King Kong are still under license there while available in Australia. He pointed writers toward Project Gutenberg for the most accurate public domain listings and cautioned them to verify jurisdiction before proceeding.

THE CREATIVE CONSTRAINTS OF LICENSED WORLDS

Working within someone else’s intellectual property demands a particular creative temperament. Jonathan described writing for Blizzard Entertainment’s video game franchises, where characters cannot do anything in prose that they cannot do in gameplay—a constraint that requires absorbing extensive documentation before writing a single word. He noted that multiple executives will provide notes on a draft, sometimes contradicting one another, and that adaptability is essential.

For anthology editing, Jonathan described a chain of approval that can include the license holder, a licensing overseer, the in-house editor, and the anthology editor before a story even reaches the writer. He shared an example from his X-Files anthologies where stories written before the show’s revival had to be reconciled with continuity changes introduced by the new seasons—changes no one could have anticipated when the anthology was commissioned.

SPEED, OUTLINING, AND THE WORK ETHIC OF TIE-IN WRITING

Media tie-in writing operates on compressed timelines. Jonathan described completing an X-Files novel in five weeks and THE WOLFMAN novelization in seven. He emphasized that outlining is non-negotiable in tie-in work—license holders require a full outline every time—and that writers who rely on waiting for inspiration will not survive the deadlines.

His own routine involves writing three to four thousand words per day across two four-hour blocks, treating it as a professional workday that begins at the same time every morning. He recommended a rolling edit approach—reviewing the previous day’s work before starting new pages—rather than falling into the trap of endlessly revising early chapters. For unknown details that require research, he uses an inline placeholder (“EDIT THIS” followed by a note) so the draft’s momentum is never interrupted.

CAREER STRATEGY AND THE TIE-IN TRAP

Jonathan offered pointed advice about where media tie-in should sit in a writer’s career. He recommended establishing an independent voice first—through novels, short stories, comics, or indie publishing—and treating tie-in work as a complement to an existing brand rather than the foundation of one. The advances for tie-in novels typically run between five and eight thousand dollars, and writers who build their reputation primarily on licensed work can find it difficult to sell original material later.

For breaking in, he suggested that short stories offer the most accessible entry point. Writers can search for open anthology calls by Googling a license name plus “guidelines” with a one-year date filter. He also recommended joining the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers at iamtw.org and leveraging networking at conferences and through groups like his own Writer’s Coffeehouse Facebook page, where editors and established tie-in writers regularly participate.

THE BUSINESS OF BEING EDITED

Jonathan closed with advice that applies well beyond tie-in writing: take the ego out of the editing process. He noted that editing is a business function, not a personal attack, and that writers who push back on every edit or demand special treatment in anthologies quickly find themselves off editors’ lists. The writers who sustain long careers—he cited his friend R.L. Stine as an example—are the ones who treat the business side as business and reserve the personal investment for the actual writing.

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This transcript was created by Descript and cleaned up by Claude; I don’t review these transcripts in detail, so consider the actual interview to be the authoritative source for this information.

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is Jonathan Maberry. Hey, Jonathan, how are you doing?

[00:00:06] Jonathan: I am great. How are you?

[00:00:07] Matty: I am wonderful and pleased to have you here. And just to give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you—Jonathan Maberry is a New York Times bestselling author, five-time Bram Stoker Award winner, four-time Scribe Award winner, Inkpot Award winner, poet, and comic book writer.

He writes in multiple genres, including suspense, thriller, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and action. V WARS on Netflix was based on his books and comics. He’s developing his teen post-apocalyptic novels for film, and Chad Stahelski, director of JOHN WICK, is developing his bestselling Joe Ledger thrillers for TV.

Marvel’s BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER was partly based on his work. And he’s president of the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers and the editor of Weird Tales magazine. And so I got to listen to several of Jonathan’s talks at Superstars Writing Seminars, and they were fantastic. And so he was kind enough to agree to join me for The Indy Author Podcast.

And as I was looking over his very impressive bio, I got very intrigued by the idea of media tie-in—the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers. And so we agreed that we’d chat a little bit about that today. And Jonathan, just to make sure we’re all coming at this from the same point of view—

[00:01:19] Matty: When you talk about media tie-in, what are you talking about?

[00:01:22] Jonathan: So there are two kinds of media tie-in.

[00:01:24] Jonathan: One is when you’re doing a direct novelization of a movie. Like, my first exposure to media tie-in was I was hired to novelize the script for the 2010 remake of THE WOLFMAN. And you don’t get to see the movie. You actually just get the script.

So you have to build a novel based on the script, which is a lot more—there’s a lot more involved than just simply wrapping a paragraph around each line in the script. You don’t know how the actors are going to inflect or deliver their lines. You don’t know what the costumes are going to look like.

There’s a lot of information you don’t have because you haven’t seen the film. So you have to do a body of research in order to build a good, strong novel about it. And I decided, since it was my fifth novel, and I wanted it to represent my fairly new career at the time—so I did research and I wrote a gothic novel.

And that was my first New York Times bestseller.

[00:02:24] Jonathan: Now, the other part of media tie-in is doing original works in licensed worlds. So if you write a Star Wars novel, or a Star Trek, or whatever—it doesn’t have to be a novelization of an episode or a movie. It’s an original work set in that world.

And the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers was created by Max Allan Collins and Lee Goldberg some years ago. And the whole thing is to celebrate that kind of writing. There’s good and there’s bad in everything. There have been some really sketchy, questionable media tie-in novels over the years, but there’s a lot more really good stuff.

And I think one of the areas that shines best is its original works. And we give out the Scribe Awards for these types of works in a variety of categories—from graphic novels to original novels and a couple different categories, to short stories, nonfiction, and so on. Movie scripts, so on.

It’s a lot of fun to be involved in it because you get to play with other people’s toys, and they’re really cool toys. But at the same time, you have to bring originality and game to your writing while still respecting the license and so on. And you have to work within the confines of the license as dictated by the license holder.

And sometimes that gets complicated. Like, for example, some years ago I did an anthology of Aliens versus Predator from the two different movie franchises. Both were owned by Fox, so we had to go through Fox licensing. But then now Disney owns those properties. So you would have to go through Disney, and that’s a complicated process.

They’re a very difficult company to work easily with. They’re a good company to work with, but complex. And so there’s a lot of that side of it. Some companies give you extensive guidelines for what they want and some don’t. With THE WOLFMAN, I got very little guidance other than—the Wolfman was, unlike Frankenstein and Dracula, there was never an original Wolfman novel.

There were werewolf novels, but the Wolfman Larry Talbot story was never novelized. So I had to write in that while hitting certain notes and ignoring temptation to go off completely on my own tangent. And I liked the book I came out with. It was a fun book.

It respected the original source material but built on it. And when I saw the movie—which unfortunately I did not like that much—the original script was gorgeous. David Self did an amazing script. They apparently shot the original script, but then they did a bunch of reshoots to remove a lot of the character development in favor of more gory action.

[00:04:54] Matty: Not thought that was a misstep. Yeah.

[00:04:56] Jonathan: They should have just done it originally. But so my novel doesn’t actually resemble the movie entirely. And unfortunately, the New York Times book reviewer said, “I don’t like the movie. Read the book instead.”

[00:05:09] Matty: Oh, well that’s a silver lining.

[00:05:11] Jonathan: Oh yeah, it got me onto the bestseller list. But at the same time did not endear me to Universal.

Like, it’s not my fault. They’re the ones that cut the movie, and I never spoke ill of the movie when it was out. Of course, I love the cast too. So media tie-in is a pretty complex world. Most of it—probably the biggest chunk of media tie-in is short stories. There’s a lot of licenses out there that are active for that.

And there are some older licenses that are not like modern-day name brands—like Carl Kolchak, the Night Stalker, and the Green Hornet and things like that. They’re still under license or still owned. You still have to get permission and probably pay fees. But at the same time, those aren’t the high-profile ones. They’re not on the level of Star Wars, where everyone in the world knows Star Wars. But it’s fun and it’s a great way to break into the career.

[00:06:04] Jonathan: There’s a third kind of media tie-in, but it’s the unofficial type—we call fan fiction. Which is where anybody just writes a story set in one of the literary or video or whatever worlds they like.

But you can’t sell that because it’s not under license, and the license holder will sue. But quite a few people started off writing fan fiction and used their fan fiction as a writing sample when breaking into media tie-in. And a lot of folks did that during the era of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

So Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder and so on kind of broke in through the fan fiction direction, but what they pitched was an actual licensed thing, and they wound up building excellent careers. And his career is still going.

[00:06:47] Matty: It is interesting. As you were talking, fan fiction popped into my head as sort of, from my perspective, one end of the complexity or authorization spectrum. With the other end of the spectrum being like doing work with Marvel or Disney or things like that.

And then it seems like there’s a huge gap in between there that if people are thinking about—like, oh, I love this world, I would love to write a media tie-in—you sort of suggested that fan fiction might be an entrée to that. What are some other things they should be doing?

[00:07:21] Jonathan: Let me clarify. The fan fiction—you can’t sell the fan fiction. But if you want to pitch to, say, Titan, which does a lot of media tie-in books, and you’re a published author—if you go to them and say, hey, I’m interested in writing a novel. I have a pitch for you. But here’s also a sample of my writing in that world. And if you had written fan fiction about one of those licensed worlds, you can include the URL to that and it becomes a writing sample. So it serves as a writing sample to help you sell into the paid license world. Not all editors want to see it, but I’ve known quite a few, myself included, who have wanted to look at that.

Because you get to see how that person handles the license. Because you can handle it well—you bring new storytelling and nuance to that character or that license. But some people are writing adoring fan fiction, or they’re playing with it a little too much. Like, when Sherlock came out, there was a ton of erotic romance stuff that came out with Holmes and Watson.

And where it’s interesting, and people have suggested or wondered whether Holmes and Watson may have been a couple—even back then—it wasn’t written that way and it wasn’t shot that way, and that would not have been a good piece of fan fiction to use to sell. If you want to do a Sherlock piece.

[00:08:48] Jonathan: Now of course, side note there—Sherlock Holmes himself is in public domain, and any characters that have gone into public domain you actually can write about. You just can’t write about the specific version of it that’s shown in Sherlock or the new show Young Sherlock or Watson or Elementary or any of the other Sherlock Holmes shows. You can’t do that specific version, but you can do a Sherlock Holmes story just like you can do a Wizard of Oz story, because the Frank L. Baum Wizard of Oz books are in public domain.

So that is also kind of a neat thing. It’s not licensed work anymore because the license has expired, but you get to play with those characters. One caution though—when people look up what is public domain, Project Gutenberg usually has the most accurate list, but you have to be careful because what’s public domain in America is different than what’s public domain in Canada or Australia.

Or England. Other English-speaking countries don’t necessarily have the same things because they’re different actual countries with different laws related to copyright. So for example, in Australia you can write a King Kong or a James Bond story. Can’t do that in America without a license. So you have to be careful navigating the world.

But if you learn about it—and joining our organization, iamtw.org, International Association of Media Tie-In Writers—that’s a question you can ask. You can also find guidelines on our website, a lot of other things that can kind of help you move forward into that world, if that’s what you want to do.

[00:10:19] Matty: I did have a question about that—the idea of the different markets having different guidelines for what’s in the public domain. So if I were an American writer and I wanted to write about James Bond and I was only selling the story in Australia—if I got my facts right there—is that permissible, or is it governed—

[00:10:36] Jonathan: It’s where it’s published. So if another country has it as public domain, you can write for that country. It cannot be published in America—not until the rights eventually expire. And I don’t see the James Bond rights ever expiring because they keep renewing them. The original novels may expire, but they were written in the fifties and sixties, so it’s going to be another twenty, twenty-five years before even the first one—CASINO ROYALE—hits public domain.

[00:11:04] Matty: It seems as if there must also be hierarchies within the companies that you might want to approach. So maybe your first crack isn’t going to be for Disney. But how do people find other organizations that might be interested in being approached about media tie-ins?

[00:11:22] Jonathan: Well, there’s a couple different ways. You can browse in a bookstore and browse online, because you can see who’s publishing it. So if you want to do a Doctor Who thing or something, Titan may be publishing that, or Dark Horse, or a couple other companies that publish media tie-in.

It’ll say on the cover which company it is. Or you can go to any book-selling site—Amazon or indie or whatever—and just look up the book. And they always list the publisher. Now, once you know the license name—so say if you were looking up Aliens and Titan Books—you can just put in a Google search: Aliens, Titan Books, editor.

And then very often the editor’s name will pop up. Used to be Steve Saffel. He retired about two years ago, but for years he was the guy overseeing that at Titan. So if you did a search, his name popped up as the editor overseeing a lot of that.

And it changes. Editors come and go. Licenses come and go too. For example, IDW had the Doctor Who license, then Titan had it. Somebody else may have the novel rights and somebody else may have the comic book rights. So you have to—once you decide which form you’re going to do—short stories, novels, comics—you have to then find out who has the rights for that.

And usually it’s going to be in a Wikipedia search, an Amazon or Barnes & Noble search, indie bookstore search. It’ll have that information there.

[00:12:46] Matty: So you’re looking for people that have already ventured into the media tie-in world, and you’re asking to add to that catalog of works—

[00:12:54] Jonathan: Yes. Unless—

[00:12:55] Matty: —with those characters or that—

[00:12:56] Jonathan: —you have an idea for something that hasn’t been done but you think could be. And in which case, almost always the prose rights are tied to a publisher, even though the studios may own them. Like, for example, I’m doing some stuff with the John Wick license right now, and Lionsgate owns the rights to it because they make the movies. And everything that’s a byproduct of the movies is part of their license.

So Dark Horse may do the comics, Macmillan may do the novels. You have to find out who. But if there’s none of that stuff out already, you could just simply say, well, who owns the rights to John Wick? And it’ll turn out to be Lionsgate. There’s always a vice president of licensing at every company.

Or some—if it’s not a vice president, it’s somebody similar. But whoever’s in charge of licensing, that’s the person to reach out to. And sometimes that is what it takes. And I’ve had success with just simply shooting for the person who has the rights, and then they make a deal with a publisher. And with John Wick, they’re in discussions with a comic book company and a book publishing company for projects that I would be involved in.

And I kind of kicked that off a little bit.

[00:14:10] Matty: I can imagine from the creative side, it would be quite a different experience to be writing within a world that someone else has created. So you had said earlier about sometimes certain rights holders are more stringent about the guidelines they put down for what you can and can’t do with their characters.

And I can imagine a couple of ways people might come to media tie-in—one would be they just love a franchise or a world and they want to be more actively a part of it. I can also imagine there could be people who just have a knack for being able to hit that perfect balance between their own creativity but working within the boundaries that are set for them.

Are there certain creative tendencies that lend themselves easier to this kind of work?

[00:14:55] Jonathan: The more precious you are about your own work, the less you’re going to be open to doing media tie-in, because it’s not your work. And I’ll give you an example. Blizzard Entertainment, which has a lot of video games—they hire me to do short stories tied to their video games. They have a very complex set of rules about what the characters can and cannot do.

Because it’s based on the gameplay of the games. You can’t have a character do something in a story that the character can’t do in the game. You have to stay within those rules. And you may not be familiar with the rules. Like, for example, I don’t play video games at all. I have nothing against them, I just don’t have the time.

But I get hired to write video game short stories. So the license holder will send me a huge PDF, sometimes many PDFs, and then part of what earns you the fee is going through and learning about that gameplay enough to be able to write that story, and then you pitch it.

But then every executive tied to that game is going to give you notes. And some of those notes will actually contradict one another because they don’t bother reading the other person’s notes. It’s really a challenge. The editors who work with the freelancers like me have to wrangle all those cats.

And it’s one of the reasons they overpay you to write a video game short story.

[00:16:24] Jonathan: Now, if you’re writing a story for a regular anthology like an Aliens anthology, the editor is going to have to deal with a lot of the rights. Now, we may then have to vet pitches and then drafts of stories back through the licensing people to make sure that it’s not interfering with anything.

And an example of that would be the X-Files. I did three X-Files anthologies as editor, and we did those before they came back and did the additional seasons. Those last two seasons, which were like fifteen, twenty years after the show was off the air.

And when I pitched the anthology, that show was not even in development. But we pitched the anthology and coincidentally—maybe coincidentally—a few months later they decided to do a new season. And there were some things in that season that wouldn’t work with some of the short stories, because we wanted the stories to be in continuity.

Some people wrote stories that were set after the original series ended with Mulder and Scully. Well, the nature of their relationship was eventually changed and edited for that new season.

Well, that new season then contradicts that story, and the story can’t be canon. So sometimes you don’t know what you can’t do until you send it in. In the Aliens versus Predator anthology, we had a couple people who wrote very visionary stories, but we were told they can’t do that one thing. And they don’t necessarily give you an explanation of why.

And then two years later you see the movie PREY come out. Well, they were working on something that had a similar theme, but they don’t want to tell you that, because they’re not obligated to tell you. They just say, you can’t do that. Give us another pitch. You have to be very adaptable.

[00:18:06] Matty: Yeah, I can also imagine that because of the learning curve you described—like with video games—that once you’ve absorbed all that information in the PDFs, you probably want to tap that opportunity for all it’s worth. Because you get more ROI the second and third and fourth story, because you know the world now. You don’t have to be learning a whole new world.

[00:18:25] Jonathan: Right. But unlike most editing situations, with the game thing, they may have decided how many short stories they need for the new expansion of a game. Pitching more would probably not get you anywhere, because they have their own agenda, which again they’re not sharing their calendar with you.

But you can ask. You can always ask, hey, I did the story. Certainly open to more of these things. When they know that you’re open to more—and maybe five months later you ping them again saying, hey, I’m looking forward to the release of that story, and I’m certainly open for more.

Sometimes that will help them remember that you were an easy person to work with, and they will send you another project. Or sometimes it’s not in the same world though. So after I had done a Diablo IV story for that game, they liked my writing enough that they asked me if I would do a World of Warcraft story.

And now I’ve done four World of Warcraft stories for Blizzard. But I try to stay in touch with editors like that because you want to stay on their radar—more in the front of the mind than the back. Also, if you go to things like Comic-Con, either New York or San Diego, those people are usually at the Blizzard booth.

A lot of times the executives and the editors are at the booth. Doesn’t hurt to go and chat them up a little bit.

[00:19:41] Matty: It also made me think—the idea of the guardrails that you have to stay within—that I don’t know how many opportunities there would be to write media tie-in for secondary characters. Like Mycroft. I don’t know. Or Mrs.—

[00:19:55] Jonathan: Tough, tough. They did that with Buffy. There were Willow novels and Angel novels and Oz novels. So a lot of times if a character’s breaking out and you pitch a novel based on that character—

[00:20:06] Jonathan: Now, little side note—in media tie-in, you’re expected to turn that novel in fast. I’ve had media tie-in deals where I’ve had five weeks to do a novel.

Bam. This is after all the getting through all the licensing and wrangling back and forth. That’s the time that’s left. And they say, can you do it? And your answer should be yes. And then you go and do it. I did a novel about Dana Scully as a teenager.

By the time we cleared that deal, I had five weeks to do it. With THE WOLFMAN—they, for some reason, got so far into the shooting and editing of the film, and they wanted the novel out there. And that left me seven weeks to write that.

[00:20:53] Matty: Can you just describe what that five weeks looked like? Like, how did that break down for you?

[00:20:58] Jonathan: A lot of coffee. Well, the thing about writing is—some people, and unfortunately there’s a chunk of our colleagues who seem to lean into the mythology of writing. They have to wait for the muse to hit them. They have to be wearing their lucky pair of socks or whatever. And all that does is delay the actual writing.

Get your ass in the chair and start writing. Start outlining. And you will need to outline. You can’t be a pantser and do media tie-in. They want a full outline every time. Not a question. So if you’re not already a plotter, it’s a skill to add.

You may not want to do it with your own stuff, but for media tie-in, you’ll have to. Anyway. So as that process is unfolding, you have to be able to—what I did is like, okay, what can I reasonably do per day? How many words can I do? Now, I’m a fast writer anyway. I write between three and four thousand words every day, so I’ve always been a fast writer.

Last year I did close to a million words for publication. And I’ve done two years where I’m over a million words for publication. So they can give me a project like that and I could do it. But this was early in my career with THE WOLFMAN—it was my fifth book. I had never done anything shorter than nine months for a novel.

So I had to sit down and say, okay, well it’s X number of words. How many words can I do per day? I didn’t take a lot of days off during that process, but I had to take some, because you have to have a life. So I just made sure that when I sat down to write, that was my day. That was my business day.

It’s like going to work. And one of the things that helped me set my mindframe for it is—I write from home, my bedroom’s right next door to my office here. I don’t come out here in my pajamas to write. I take a shower, I get dressed for work. Because that helps me set my mind.

I’m in my chair at the same time every morning. I write for four hours. I take a lunch and exercise break, and I write for four more hours. That’s my day. And if I don’t want to do something as regimented as that, don’t become a professional. And don’t do media tie-in, because that’s what’s expected of you.

You need to just get in the saddle and ride. That’s the thing. And editing—one of the things that slows most people down is they edit while writing. The only type of editing while writing that has any real value in terms of productivity is a rolling edit where you read yesterday’s stuff, tweak it a little bit, and then go into today’s.

But some people fall back and they keep trying to revise the early parts. And the problem there is that chews up days and days of time without advancing the completion of the manuscript. And also it means that some parts of the book will have been edited more often than the later parts of the book. So you now have an uneven book.

So I keep—when I’m doing a media tie-in project, especially when I’m on a deadline—I have the file I’m working on and then I have another file I can toggle over to, another Word document of revision notes. And I’m constantly making notes to myself.

That way, when I’m done, I have a plan. And if there are little things in there that I don’t know while writing, I have a little code I put on the page in all caps: EDIT THIS, and then a note to myself. It might be—what type of handgun were the police using in London in 1895, which was a factor?

EDIT THIS, check handgun, 1895, city police. And I just move on. Later on I can do a search—like a day when I’m maybe either done with the draft or I just have a little extra time—I’ll search on EDIT THIS and then do those spot researches. And that way I don’t slow the progress of the manuscript down.

[00:24:39] Matty: When you’re doing this work as media tie-in during that five weeks or seven weeks or whatever it ends up being, is there a lot of back and forth? Or once you start, you’ve gotten the outline signed off and so you can just roll along with it?

[00:24:50] Jonathan: The back and forth is before you start writing and after you’ve turned in your draft. During the time that you’re just writing, you may get a note from the editor saying, how’s it going?—which is basically him saying, please for the love of God hit your deadline, because he’s on a production schedule that can’t be altered because it’s set by the film company.

They’re not going to alter it for a publisher. What they might do if you miss deadlines is find another publisher. So you don’t want that. You want to make sure the editor looks good and satisfies their end of the contract. And that editor will be pleased with you and likely keep you in mind for further work.

Which has happened.

[00:25:29] Matty: I’m interested in the anthologies because I can imagine the process for that is somewhat different. As an editor of an anthology, you have sort of a similar role to the VP of Rights.

[00:25:43] Jonathan: To a degree. I become another step in it. So you have the license holder, then you have the person within the license—so say the VP of licensing sets the job—then you have somebody who is kind of overseeing licensing. They’re the ones who should know that license very well and be able to answer all questions.

Then you have your in-house editor at the publishing house. Then you, and then the writers you’ve hired for the anthology. It’s a lot of folks. So when I’m doing an anthology, what I usually do—what makes it easier—looking at the anthologies by different companies, you see their different policies.

Some—like Titan—love to have a bunch of New York Times bestseller names as marquee names on the cover. That’s their big thing. They love being able to go out there with a lot of New York Times bestsellers. It’s the model.

[00:26:29] Jonathan: So in order to do an anthology, I need to reach out to colleagues and say, hey, I’m pitching—you never say the deal’s locked down until it’s actually locked down—I’m pitching an anthology on this topic. Please keep this off social media. It’s on the down low. If a deal comes through with pro rates for stories of this length, with a due date approximately X number of months out, might you be interested?

So what you have is a list of people who said they might be interested if the deal points work out. That’s the list you take to the in-house editor to pitch it. And if it’s approved, you then have to lock those people down.

[00:27:06] Jonathan: Now I’m doing an anthology right now with Henry Herz, a buddy of mine. And we’re doing one called BIG BAD BOOK OF KAIJU—giant monsters like Godzilla and so on.

We can’t use those licenses because we don’t have access to them. They’re all different companies. So it’s all original kaiju. So it’s not media tie-in, but it’s media tie-in adjacent. And when we were doing this, we sold this idea to Titan Books. They liked our list of New York Times bestsellers.

They had some other suggestions. We were able to contact some of those, get them in there. But along the way, three of our people had to bail—one for health issues, one for a book deadline that got shifted on them, and another one because of some other issue. So we lost three of our marquee names. I was able to replace two of them with New York Times bestsellers, but the third, we had to just get a simply really good writer.

[00:28:00] Jonathan: Now, I prefer not to stock my table of contents based on how many copies of books they’ve sold. I curate mine.

For the most part, I want to base it on whose writing I really admire and whose business practices I like. And so generally when I do an anthology—I’m doing my twenty-eighth now, I think, somewhere in that zone—I’ll usually curate eighty percent of the people. And if I don’t have a collaborator—I do with this one—

If I don’t have a collaborator, I’ll fish around for some folks. I’ll do a lot of reading of short stories in recent anthologies and see whose work I like and maybe try to bring in some folks I haven’t worked with before. What I don’t do is open call. Open call drives me absolutely out of my mind. I did that when I took over Weird Tales as editor.

The first issue, I curated all of it but one story, and I put up an open call for short stories. 12,421. Yeah. So I don’t do that anymore. Now I do—if I do an open call, it’s usually going to be a pitch. Give me a one-paragraph pitch, because I can read a bunch of those in a day. Reading 12,000 short stories is insane.

[00:29:14] Matty: Writers whose craft you appreciate and their business process—can you talk a little bit about what you’re talking about there?

[00:29:24] Jonathan: There are some writers out there—I will not name names—but some writers out there don’t like to be edited. They don’t like to be told that their word choice may not be the right word choice. And they get really aggressive about it. I’m not looking to get into a fist fight with somebody over the edit.

Editing takes something—the version you turn in is the version you felt most passionate about. The editing process gives you an objective view on that, and also tries to edge closer to the version of that that would likely sell the most copies. It is a business decision. Writing is art. Publishing is business. And a lot of people conflate the two.

They think rejection of a story or edit notes means that it’s a personal attack. There’s nothing personal in this business. It’s a business. The personal is when you actually write. But when you’re being edited and worked through the business part, take the ego and the emotions out of gear.

It’s a business thing. Follow the business things. And it doesn’t matter if you’re mainly traditional or mainly indie. If you’re working with media tie-in, that is trad. And so you have to follow the rules of trad in that you have to follow the business etiquette. And that’s easy enough for anyone to do.

But a lot of people—they push and push and push, or they’ll try to argue with you on every single edit. I’ve been edited—I’ve written fifty-five novels and well over two hundred short stories and comics. I’ve been edited on everything. Plus twelve hundred feature articles I did. I’ve been edited on every single one.

Editing makes your work better. But you don’t have to follow every edit note. You can say, I don’t agree with this change. I want to keep it, and here’s my reason. If you can have a decent reason, editors will have a reasonable conversation with you. If you just simply reject without reason, they’re probably going to put you on a list of—well, I’m not working with this person again, because I just don’t need it.

And also there are people who think that their stories should be given—their name on the cover, guaranteed, and their story being the first one in the anthology. There’s no one I would guarantee that slot to. And I’ve worked with some mega bestsellers. I mean, my friend R.L. Stine, who sold more books than anyone alive except J.K. Rowling—he—not that he ever would demand something like that, but even if he made a demand like that, it’s up to me as to what order the stories fall in.

That’s not his decision. Luckily Bob is a really understanding guy and has been in the business for a long time and doesn’t make those demands. But I have—

[00:31:54] Matty: Probably been in the business a long time because of that.

[00:31:57] Jonathan: Yes. And he has sold, what, three hundred million books. Now, earlier we talked a little bit about playing with other people’s toys, and I kind of got off the topic.

I want to go back to that just for a second.

[00:32:11] Jonathan: So one of the situations in which you really have to understand how a license works is working with comics. So I got hired by Marvel because of my novels. The editor-in-chief read one of my novels and hired me to write Punisher and Wolverine and other things.

And some of these characters have forty, fifty, sixty, seventy years of backstory. There’s no way to know every story that’s ever been written about that character. So the editors there give you like a general outline of—here’s what’s been going on with this character.

But a lot of it you have to do on your own. And it is a daunting amount of material sometimes. Like, when I did Black Panther, I needed to know what was the state of Wakanda, the state of T’Challa’s character. Who is he? He’d just had a really big story arc written about that part of his life.

He was with a woman, Yuriko, and she dies. And all these things have to happen. So I needed to just go do my homework. One of my exposures to this sort of thing is—

Max Brooks, who is Mel Brooks’s son, and he’s a bestselling author of WORLD WAR Z and THE DEVOLUTION and a bunch of other things. And he was editing an anthology of G.I. Joe stories. Now, when I was a kid, G.I. Joe was a twelve-inch-tall World War II action figure. But when my son was a kid, G.I. Joe was this little science fiction action story thing.

It’s a completely different world. And so I told Max—Max asked me if I wanted to do a story for it. I said I don’t know the characters. He did something that’s a little more unusual. He actually had reached out to Hasbro and they sent me a box of G.I. Joe toys, graphic novels, and DVDs. So yes, I spent a day sitting on my floor, reading comics, watching cartoons, and playing with toys for research.

Because I’m a responsible working professional. And I was able to write a G.I. Joe story for it.

[00:36:12] Matty: That is very interesting. Yeah—when the original creative product is a toy, or I’m thinking of—like, this is a little bit different, but in terms of evolution of a character, like the James Bond of today looks quite different than the James Bond of CASINO ROYALE. And that evolution is coming from somewhere.

I guess I always assumed it was coming from the screenwriters, but—

[00:36:34] Jonathan: Most of it is. But sometimes they take notes from what people have done about it. I mean, I know that there was a definite nod to the John Gardner James Bond novels when they were doing the Pierce Brosnan James Bond movies. Because he was writing them a little more differently.

And then there were some later James Bond novels—I forget who did them—where the personality of Bond was a lot rougher. And that informed some of the Daniel Craig scripts. So sometimes it goes back and forth.

[00:37:06] Jonathan: With THE WOLFMAN—when I turned in my first draft, there were a couple scenes in there that weren’t in the script. And they wound up in the movie, because they—

[00:37:16] Matty: Oh wow.

[00:37:17] Jonathan: It’s work for hire. They can do anything they want with it. And so they were doing reshoots. I don’t know if you ever saw the movie, but there’s a scene where Emily Blunt is kind of running from the wolf, and she falls down on the edge of a cliff, and the Wolfman’s going after her. She’s like, “Lawrence, you know who I am.”

Well, that’s from my novel, not the script. And it’s kind of cool. You don’t get extra money for it, unfortunately, because it is work for hire. Like, when Disney Marvel used so many of my elements from my Black Panther run on the comic back in 2008 and 2009—

They showed up as—I mean, I was the first one to put Shuri in the armor. I put her up against Namor. I created the Midnight Angels and a bunch of other things that made it into the movie. I didn’t get paid more for it. But it did—my career worlds of good. And the graphic novel that collects all the comics I wrote for Marvel with that character—the sales for that went crazy, and that was royalties. So—

[00:38:10] Matty: And are the comics you’ve worked on—are they all—like, what was the origin of those? Were they movies or—

[00:38:17] Jonathan: No, no, no. I didn’t write anything tied to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I wrote Marvel—Marvel. And also, this was 2008. They were just launching IRON MAN, the first movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So that was not even on the horizon, really. I started writing for Marvel before Disney even bought Marvel.

But so you have to do research. And again, sometimes they provide you with information. Marvel does not, which is weird. So I subscribed to the Marvel—there’s a database where you can access seventy years’ worth of Marvel comics. So I just did a lot of that. Plus I bought a lot of graphic novels, and some of them are on the shelves behind me here.

And I did my research so I could write the characters. And what’s fun though is when you’ve written some stuff in, say, your own run on Black Panther—I did a couple of things related to the vibranium, the metal that they use—and then the person who took the comic after me, and also the person who wrote Spider-Man after me—

Both used elements of my story, because now it’s part of the Marvel official canon. And so they read my stuff and said, I’ll take that element, I can build on it here. And that’s perfectly cool. And it’s fun for us to see those little echoes going through it.

[00:39:34] Matty: Yeah. I think anyone who enjoys Easter eggs as a reader would enjoy that experience—and maybe planting Easter eggs as the creator of tie-in material.

[00:39:43] Jonathan: Yep. And with comics, I’ve since gone on to do my own comics with Dark Horse, IDW, and others. And one of those—V WARS—became its own license, became a TV series, which was wonderfully fun. And another one I have, that I won a Bram Stoker Award for, called BAD BLOOD—

We’re in discussions with a company in Germany about adapting that for TV in Europe. But see, that’s my license. So I get to be the person they have to go through for continuity and so on. And I would get paid. And that’s nice.

[00:40:16] Matty: So if you want a career where you’re doing your own stuff, media tie-in should not be your first call. Establish your own voice as a writer in any form that you can.

[00:40:33] Jonathan: Novels, short stories, whatever. Indie, published, comics, whatever. Establish your voice. And then when you do media tie-in, that’s a byproduct of the brand. If you just focus on media tie-in at first to make your bones, it becomes your brand. You become a media tie-in writer. Media tie-in novels, though they will often come back to you with book after book after book to do—

They don’t pay very much. I mean, the advances for media tie-in books are in the five to eight thousand dollar range. Which, if you’ve never published a book, sounds yummy. But if you’re a working pro, that’s a lot of work for not a lot of money. So those of us who continue to do media tie-in into our career—our primary focus is our main stuff.

Our stuff. Media tie-in is side projects that are fun for our regular readers to go look at. But it’s not what we define ourselves as. And I have friends who have gotten stuck in the media tie-in world. They’ll try to get their own stuff out there, but they’re known for media tie-in, and their own stuff doesn’t sell because editors see that their biggest stuff is all writing in someone else’s universe.

It’s okay if it’s a side thing or an additional thing you’re doing, but it shouldn’t be the main thing. Second thing—one of the ways to break in, one of the best ways to break in is through short stories. If it’s an expired license and you are a writer and you have writer friends, you can create a little LLC publishing company and do a Sherlock Holmes anthology or a Wizard of Oz anthology.

Without having to pay licensing fees, because they’re public domain. And since your company does not bear your name, it is the name of your group. It does not have any of the resistance some people might have to it being indie published. Then they get to read it and find out the quality is every bit as good as trad. And then you can build from there.

The company JournalStone started sort of that way. Chris Payne was a guy who wrote a couple of nonfiction books, couldn’t sell them. He self-published them under the banner of JournalStone. Now he’s gone on to publish thousands of books from other people, including some stuff that have hit bestseller lists.

I’ve published extensively with him. But one of the quick ways of finding an active license that is doing an anthology—put in your favorite license name—CSI, Supernatural, whatever it’s going to be—in a Google search with the word “guidelines.” And then set the search for no more than a year back.

The guidelines will be submission guidelines. If there is an open call for stories and an anthology of stories in that license, that will pop up in a Google search. And a lot of people have found it that way. So it’s an easy shortcut.

[00:43:21] Jonathan: And also going to writers’ conferences. My own group, Writer’s Coffeehouse, is a—we have a free Facebook page and we do free networking and so on. You can go there and say, hey, does anybody know of any media tie-in license anthologies? Post it. We’ll start a conversation, because God knows there’s a good thirty or forty editors of media tie-in stuff who are in that group.

Quite a lot of other writers. And a lot of writers—professionals like myself—we wear a lot of hats. We’re writers, we’re editors, we’re this, we’re that. So sometimes the writers that you talk to, some of them may be editors for media tie-in, or have written novels for media tie-in and know who the in-house editors are.

Networking does a lot of good in media tie-in.

[00:44:04] Matty: Yeah, I’m a big proponent of networking in all its forms—media tie-in or not. But I love finding that as another example of that. And I know as the president of International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, is there anything you’d like to add about the benefits they offer members or the information they provide?

[00:44:21] Jonathan: Quite often, because of being the president of the group, my visibility makes me a target for license holders. Whether it’s an editor or a company will say, hey, do you or any of the people in your group know this license? I had one—I can’t name it right now, it’s under NDA—but they reached out to me and said, hey, do any of your people write in this genre, or read this sort of stuff, or play this game, or whatever?

And then I go on our group page and say, hey—if you’re a fan of this license, hit me with your background on it, your bio, and your list of published media tie-in credits. Because I want to pass it along to an editor. And I’ve done that a lot of times and gotten a lot of people paid gigs because we’re the organization.

And probably only about sixty percent of publishing, of movie studios, know that there’s an actual organization. But six years ago when I took over that group, it was about fifteen percent. So I’ve been trying to build that up—having more awareness of our group—and that brings more work our way.

[00:45:29] Matty: Yeah, that’s so great.

[00:45:31] Matty: Well, Jonathan, I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but it was lovely to speak with you. I’m so glad to have gotten an expert perspective on the behind the scenes of media tie-ins.

[00:45:40] Jonathan: It’s a lot of fun too.

[00:45:42] Matty: It does sound like a lot of fun. I think about some of the franchises I’ve loved. I was a big X-Files fan, a big Fringe fan. I can imagine it would be super fun to write media tie-ins for some—

[00:45:52] Jonathan: Well, speaking of which—I mean, X-Files is coming back. Ryan Coogler is bringing it back to TV. And as soon as that casting is completed and it’s actually in production, I will be pitching more X-Files anthologies.

[00:46:06] Matty: That’s so great. I’m going to keep an eye out for that and rewatch some of the episodes that I haven’t watched for however many years.

[00:46:13] Jonathan: Yeah, I wouldn’t pay too much attention to those last two seasons they did—the ones that they did when they came back. There were only a couple good episodes in there. And there’s a reason it only lasted two more seasons coming back.

[00:46:23] Matty: I don’t think I even watched those at all, because the whole idea of them coming back was kind of not what I wanted to experience—which maybe suggests I shouldn’t be writing media tie-ins.

[00:46:33] Jonathan: There were two or three really good ones. And some that were like—I don’t know why they even bothered. But, of course, they didn’t bother consulting me or any of my writer friends, who all said, those are the good ones, those are the bad ones.

That happens. That’s opinion. But media tie-in’s always looking for new talent. So there’s that.

[00:46:51] Matty: Yeah, it’s a great tip. And it sounds like you have some other things going on outside of media tie-in. So if people want to hear more about that, where should they go to find out?

[00:46:59] Jonathan: Well, normally I would direct them immediately to my website, but it is down for a couple of days. But it’s jonathanmaberry.com. And when it’s back up—if anyone listening to this is a writer, there’s a page on my website called Free Stuff for Writers. It has tons of free downloadable PDFs, one of my comic book scripts, all sorts of stuff. Go to that.

But also I’m all over social media—Jonathan Maberry. And Tuesday I have my new book coming out, which is RED EMPIRE, the fifteenth in the Joe Ledger series. I’m currently writing the sixteenth. And that is the series that’s in development by the director of JOHN WICK.

[00:47:34] Matty: Congratulations, and thank you very much.

[00:47:36] Jonathan: This was a pleasure. Thanks.

Episode 315 - Reigniting Your Creativity with Writing Contests with Polly Campbell

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Polly Campbell discusses REIGNITING YOUR CREATIVITY WITH WRITING CONTESTS, including

how contests can boost your creativity, help you generate new story ideas, and strengthen your writing craft; how prompts and deadlines can push you out of your comfort zone in a positive way; why low-stakes experimentation leads to better work; and how connecting with other writers through contests can build community, motivation, and momentum in your writing life.

Polly Campbell is the author of You, Recharged: How to Beat Fatigue (Mostly), Amp Up Your Energy (Usually), and Enjoy Life Again, (Always), and three other books. She is the host of the Simply Write w/Polly Campbell podcast and her magazine articles about writing and strategies for living a better life appear regularly in online and print publications. She is a regular speaker at writer's conferences. Find her insights on writing craft and crafting a writer's life at simplywrite.substack.com.

Episode Links

https://simplywrite.substack.com/

https://pollycampbell.com/

https://www.instagram.com/pollylcampbell/

Referenced in the podcast:

Matty’s appearance on Polly’s podcast, Simply Write: https://open.spotify.com/episode/70wGA0erZcc5rgwtViqhr5

More resources:

https://selfpublishingadvice.org/author-awards-contests-rated-reviewed/

Episode 295 - Unlocking the Power of Book Awards with Hannah Jacobson

Episode 280 - Insider Tips from Writing Contest Judges with Clay Stafford

Episode 205 - The Pros and Cons of Writing Contests with Becky Tuch

Summary

In this episode of The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Polly Campbell about the unexpected creative and professional benefits of entering writing contests. Drawing from Polly’s experience as an author, podcaster, and magazine contributor, the conversation explores how contests can provide structure, motivation, community, and a renewed sense of creative freedom for writers.

WHY WRITERS ENTER CONTESTS
Polly explains that her interest in writing contests began when she noticed how many people in her writer’s group participated in them—not necessarily to win, but for other reasons entirely. When she asked why writers submitted to contests that attracted hundreds or thousands of entries, one colleague told her, “It has nothing to do with whether I’m gonna win or not.” This perspective surprised her in a culture focused on outcomes, and it inspired her to explore contests as a way to improve the writing process itself.

Polly shares that her own first contest entry began almost as a “lark,” squeezed between errands and family activities. Without the pressure of contracts, edits, or publication timelines, she found the experience fun and creatively liberating. The difference, she says, is that contest writing has a built-in deadline, but it is not tied to payment or business goals. This combination creates what she calls “useful pressure”—the kind of structure that motivates without overwhelming.

THE BENEFITS OF DEADLINES AND STRUCTURE
A major theme of the conversation is the value of deadlines. Polly says that even though her professional writing life is filled with deadlines, the constraint of writing a story in 24 hours for a contest was different because the stakes were low and the creative space was wide open. She describes receiving a prompt at midnight and having until the next midnight to produce a story, all while living her regular life. This forced her to write quickly, without overthinking or over-editing.

Polly explains that such structure helps writers “play within the boundaries” and pushes them past perfectionism. She notes that when writers polish too much, they can “revise and edit that energy right out of the piece.” Contests prevent this by limiting the time available and encouraging writers to trust their instincts.

CREATIVE FREEDOM AND EXPERIMENTATION
Polly talks about how contest prompts and short word counts encouraged her to approach writing more playfully. One of her prompts required a sleeping bag to appear in the story—something she had never written about before. Instead of feeling restricted, she found the randomness energizing. She says she wrote a “ludicrous little story” and had “the best time,” and that the experience reminded her why she loved writing in the first place.

She also notes that one of her writing friends enters contests year-round specifically because he likes having both the structure and the freedom that contests provide. He later uses these raw, energetic drafts to build anthologies, demonstrating how contest submissions can become publishable material.

COMMUNITY AND CONNECTION
One of the surprising benefits Polly discovered was the sense of community surrounding many writing contests. Although she describes herself as “not a joiner,” her participation in a large contest hosted by NYCMidnight introduced her to writers across genres and experience levels. The contest provided forums where participants could discuss prompts, share entries, and connect with others writing in the same round.

Polly notes that some writers she interviewed for an article had formed lasting friendships through these forums, even becoming daily writing partners despite living on opposite coasts. She emphasizes that in a time when writing can feel isolating, contests can bring writers together into supportive, energized groups.

Matty adds that genre-focused contests may be especially useful for writers who want feedback or community connected directly to their style or subject matter. Both agree that contests with active communities can be an excellent way for writers to meet others who share their interests and goals.

CONTESTS AS A TOOL FOR PRODUCTIVITY
Polly underscores that many writers benefit from contests because they offer a concrete reason to write—especially helpful for those balancing writing with day jobs or family commitments. One writer she knows openly admits, “I would not write without a deadline.”

This resonates with Matty, who shares that she has a personal goal of completing twelve short stories for a planned collection, but stalled after nine. She jokes that entering more contests may be the push she needs to finish the remaining stories.

AUTHOR NOTES AND READER ENGAGEMENT
Matty also describes how contests can enhance the reader experience. She enjoys writing author’s notes that reveal how a story began—especially when the idea sprang from an unexpected prompt, such as a requirement that “the bad guy has to win” or that profanity be encouraged. She says readers appreciate learning those behind-the-scenes elements, and Polly agrees, saying she loves hearing “where ideas come from” because it reminds writers that inspiration can emerge from anywhere.

CONSIDERING FEEDBACK AND CRITIQUE
The conversation touches on contests that include peer critique. Polly acknowledges that some writers enjoy receiving feedback from fellow participants, but she personally prefers not to open her work to large numbers of strangers who may not understand her goals or experience level. She encourages writers to read contest rules carefully to understand what rights they are granting and whether their work will be publicly shared or critiqued.

Matty mentions the importance of avoiding predatory contests and suggests looking for contests that meet standards such as transparent judging processes, appropriate prize structures, and fair rights retention. Polly adds that many legitimate contests do not require an entry fee, providing options for writers at all budget levels.

LOW-STAKES PRACTICE AND LONG-TERM GROWTH
Polly believes that writing contests help writers grow because they provide short, high-energy opportunities to practice essential storytelling skills—strong openings, tension, character, and structure—without the pressure of a large project. She says that good writing requires these fundamentals in every format, whether “an email or a book.” Contest entries, with their tight deadlines and focused prompts, allow writers to practice these skills in concentrated bursts.

She also highlights the satisfaction that comes from finishing a piece quickly, especially compared to longer works like books or feature-length articles. Small wins build momentum and help writers rediscover joy in the craft.

CONCLUSION
The episode concludes with both Matty and Polly agreeing that writing contests offer valuable opportunities for creativity, community, and skill-building. Whether a writer enters to improve craft, meet other writers, or simply enjoy a creative challenge, contests can provide a structured-yet-playful space for experimentation. Polly encourages writers to explore contests that match their comfort level and objectives, and to embrace the aspects of the process that help them stay motivated and connected to their work.

Episode 313 - Unearthing Story Treasures with Beth Daley of Europeana

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Beth Daley discusses UNEARTHING STORY TREASURES WITH EUROPEANA, including how writers and storytellers can use the Europeana digital archive to spark creativity, deepen research, and find free resources for their projects—whether you’re looking for historical details, artistic inspiration, or unique images for your book covers. Beth Daley shares tips on navigating millions of cultural artifacts, using visual prompts to fuel your writing, and turning research rabbit holes into story gold.

Dr. Beth Daley is a novelist, cultural and creative writer and Europeana's Editorial Adviser. She works on engaging a broad range of audiences in Europeana’s work and content. She has a PhD in Creative Writing, runs a range of writing workshops and her first novel, ‘Blood and Water' is published by Hic Dragones in Manchester. A self-confessed story addict, Beth has led various initiatives in digital storytelling with Europeana, including acting as new writing mentor in Europeana’s Digital Storytelling Festival Online Creative Residency.

Episode Links

https://www.europeana.eu/en

https://www.linkedin.com/in/beth-daley-a032b537/

Related episodes:

Episode 312 - Storytelling through Epistolary Fiction with David Viergutz

Summary

In this episode of The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Dr. Beth Daley about Unearthing Story Treasures with Europeana, including how writers and storytellers can use this free digital resource to find inspiration, conduct research, and access millions of images, texts, and artifacts to enrich their creative work.

WHAT IS EUROPEANA?
Beth explains that Europeana is a website funded by the European Commission that brings together digitized collections from museums, galleries, libraries, and archives across Europe and beyond. It includes photographs, scans, 3D models, videos, audio recordings, and written materials. “You can go to the website and search for something and you can get results from a tiny museum in rural Estonia next to something from the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands or the British Library,” she says. Europeana currently houses about 60 million items, roughly half of which are licensed for reuse. All materials are free to access, and users can filter their searches based on rights and licensing to determine what can be used commercially.

HOW WRITERS CAN USE EUROPEANA
Beth notes that writers have always used libraries as sources of inspiration and research, and Europeana serves a similar purpose in digital form. Writers can explore the collections for creative writing prompts, detailed research, or even practical applications like book cover art and marketing materials. “If you want some inspiration, you could look at our most popular items,” Beth suggests, noting that the site refreshes frequently so there’s always something new to discover. Writers can search for topics that match their story’s setting or theme—such as seventeenth-century fashion, World War I artifacts, or folk traditions—and use the visuals or historical details to add authenticity and texture to their writing.

Beth also emphasizes that half the materials on Europeana are licensed for reuse. Each item has a rights statement indicating its status—public domain, Creative Commons, or in copyright—so creators know how they can use it. “You can take an illustration and use it in your magazine article or maybe for your cover art,” she says.

EUROPEANA’S WRITERS’ ROOM AND CREATIVE EVENTS
Beyond the collections themselves, Europeana offers resources specifically designed for writers. Beth describes the Europeana Writers’ Room, a monthly free online creative writing workshop that uses “ekphrastic prompts”—images used as inspiration for writing. Participants meet on the first Wednesday of each month, view an image from the collection, and then write freely based on what it evokes. “Nobody has to share anything, but you can if you want,” Beth says. The sessions are designed to spark creativity and build a sense of community among writers.

She also discusses additional interactive activities tied to Europeana, including “Shut Up and Write” sessions and downloadable “story dice.” The Shut Up and Write sessions provide structured writing time and accountability. While participants work quietly, she displays images from the Europeana collection on screen for optional inspiration. The story dice feature printable templates with images from the archive—faces, emotions, landscapes, objects, and genres—that can be rolled to generate writing prompts or story elements. They’re useful for solo writers, workshops, or even classroom settings.

SEARCHING EUROPEANA EFFECTIVELY
Matty asks for tips on how to navigate such a vast archive, and Beth offers practical advice. “You can start with a word, but quite often that gives you thousands and thousands of results,” she says. The key is to use filters. Writers can filter by country, rights status, or even color. “Let’s say you are looking for stilettos and you want red stilettos—you can narrow it down by color and only have red stilettos returned to you.” For academic or detailed research, there’s also an advanced search feature that allows users to drill down into metadata.

For those who prefer to browse rather than search, Beth recommends starting with the “Collections” page, which organizes materials around themes such as migration, sports, newspapers, or the First World War. These curated sections include editorial articles, virtual exhibitions, and educational materials. The site also highlights the most popular items from the past day or two, which Beth says is “a really nice way of browsing because you’ll always get something unexpected.”

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSING
Beth acknowledges that copyright can be complicated, especially because it varies by country. However, Europeana makes the process easier by providing a rights statement with each item. Items in the public domain or with Creative Commons Zero licenses can be used freely. Others may require attribution or prohibit commercial use or alterations. “Europeana can’t grant permission because we don’t own the items,” Beth notes. “All the rights come from the individual institutions that hold the items.”

Beth also mentions that users can filter by image quality, which is useful for those wanting to use images in design projects like book covers. High-resolution images are ideal for professional applications.

TURNING RESEARCH INTO STORY
Matty raises the challenge of balancing research and writing, noting how easy it is for authors to get lost in rabbit holes. Beth agrees and advises writers to separate research from drafting. She suggests using free writing to explore what details stand out after the research phase. “Find that bespoke little detail about something that you can use to manifest all the rest of it,” she says. “You might conjure a lot of that by just picking out a particular detail or using it as a seasoning here and there rather than over-salting everything.”

Matty adds that separating research and writing in time helps authors focus on what’s truly important to the story. “What sticks in your mind is maybe an indicator of what’s going to be that telling detail,” she says. Beth agrees: “If you remember it after it’s sat in the drawer for a week, that may be the detail that you want to include.”

DIGITAL STORYTELLING AND CREATIVE RESIDENCIES
Beth also shares details about Europeana’s Digital Storytelling Festival, a two-day online event held annually in May that celebrates innovative storytelling across mediums. The festival features talks, workshops, and social sessions showcasing creative uses of cultural heritage. It also includes a digital creative residency program with a writing strand. Each year, the residency explores a different theme—such as LGBTQ+ stories, journeys, or food—and participants create new works under the guidance of mentors.

As the writing mentor for the residency, Beth has seen how participants blend personal stories with historical research. She recalls a visual artist who invented a “beer god” as part of an exhibition and used the residency to research the history of beer. Another participant, a writer in Corfu, explored traditional red sauce recipes and connected them to memories of his grandmothers. “We encourage people to connect with their own experience as well as use the historical collections,” Beth says. “That’s what really makes these stories come to life.”

She explains that while digital storytelling can involve multimedia elements like animation, collage, or video, the storytelling itself remains at the heart of the process. “Sometimes people get a bit carried away with the technology,” Beth notes. “The important part is the storytelling because the digital and technological elements should melt into the background so that the story is brought to the front.”

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF EUROPEANA
Beth encourages writers, artists, and teachers to explore Europeana without hesitation. “You can’t break anything,” she says. “Just go and enter something and have a go.” Whether for inspiration, research, or practical creative use, the platform offers endless opportunities to explore cultural heritage and spark new ideas. Matty adds that after exploring the site herself, she quickly found herself lost in an evening of discovery—particularly enjoying architectural cutaway drawings.

Beth closes by reminding listeners that Europeana.eu is available worldwide and open to everyone, including users outside Europe. “Go down rabbit holes and just enjoy it,” she says. “We’d love to know what you find.”

Episode 299 - What Writers Can Learn from Theater with Jean Burgess

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Jean Burgess discusses WHAT WRITERS CAN LEARN FROM THEATER, including how writers can use techniques like improvisation to overcome writer's block, the importance of visualization and spatial awareness in storytelling, how much detail is just enough and not too much in your writing, and the role of thematic consistency.

Jean Burgess is a writer, editor, playwright, and workshop presenter. As a former professional stage actor and director, many of her written works relate to the performing arts, including her debut novel, THAT SUMMER SHE FOUND HER VOICE: A RETRO NOVEL (Apprentice House, 2024). Her nonfiction, entitled COLLABORATIVE STAGE DIRECTING: A Guide to Creating and Managing a Positive Theatre Environment, was published by Routledge/Taylor & Francis in 2019. Before diving into a writing career, Jean taught theatre and speech communications on both the secondary and college levels for twenty-three years. She holds an M.A. in Theatre from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in Educational Theatre from New York University.

Episode Links

https://www.jeanburgessauthor.com/

https://www.facebook.com/jeanmburgess/

https://www.instagram.com/jeanburgessauthor/

Referenced in episode:

Episode 253 - Navigating the Worlds of Fiction and Film with Rene Gutteridge

Summary

In this episode of The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Jean Burgess about how her background in theater has influenced her approach to writing. They explore various aspects of theater, including acting, directing, set design, and playwriting, and discuss how these elements can be integrated into the writing process to enhance storytelling.

Jean Burgess shares insights on how acting skills can open new avenues in writing. She conducts workshops encouraging writers to adopt the mindsets of theater professionals like actors and directors, to deepen their characters and storytelling. For instance, she uses improvisation techniques to ignite creativity, urging writers to use the "Yes, and..." strategy to explore different plot directions. This method helps both discovery writers and outliners find new ways to develop their stories.

Matty and Jean also delve into how acting influences dialogue and character development. Jean suggests that writers sometimes struggle with dialogue and can benefit from performing improvisational exercises to get comfortable with the spontaneity and realism it demands. She emphasizes the importance of stepping into the character's role to make dialogue more natural and engaging.

Directing skills, according to Jean, are valuable in structuring the spatial elements of a story. This extends to understanding how characters move through a setting, much like actors on a stage. She explains that a writer must visualize the entire setting, similar to how a director visualizes a stage, ensuring that every action and movement is plausible and coherent within the narrative. This planning is crucial for maintaining consistency and avoiding logistical errors that can disrupt the reader's immersion.

Set and costume design further illustrate the connection between theater and writing. Jean reveals how set designers research to create the world of the play, which parallels a writer's task of world-building. Her strategy involves creating vision boards filled with images and concepts relevant to her story's setting and characters, aiding in visualizing and grounding the narrative in a distinct world. This technique helps maintain a coherent atmosphere throughout a book, offering a tangible reference that keeps details consistent.

Through the lens of playwriting, Jean emphasizes the importance of effective dialogue, noting that playwriting only relies on dialogue to convey action and emotion. This experience helps her write dialogue that efficiently propels the story forward and reveals character dynamics. Newer writers, she notes, can fall into the trap of including unnecessary dialogue, which serves no purpose in advancing the plot or developing characters.

Jean also explores character development and how deeply understanding characters can shape their involvement in the story. She recalls how a minor character unexpectedly evolved into a protagonist's love interest, highlighting the fluid nature of storytelling and the need to adapt character roles as a narrative develops.

Matty and Jean discuss how writers should strive to balance vivid descriptions with the reader's imagination, allowing readers to visualize aspects like clothing or settings without excessive detail. They touch on the importance of choosing which elements to describe in detail and which to suggest, depending on the story's theme and the expectations of the readers. Through this, they advocate for a focus on details that enhance the story's concept and hook the audience, leaving room for readers' interpretations.

The discussion offers valuable guidance for writers aspiring to enrich their storytelling by incorporating theatrical elements, showing that skills from one creative discipline can significantly enhance another. The conversation serves as a resourceful guide for writers looking to deepen their approach to narrative construction, character development, and dialogue through insights drawn from theater.

Episode 294 - Warfare for Writers with Timons Esaias

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Timons Esaias discusses WARFARE FOR WRITERS, including how military history can serve as an invaluable resource for authors crafting stories that involve conflict, whether they are set in fantasy, science fiction, or historical periods. While warfare might seem intimidating to many writers, Esaias provides insights and guidance on how to incorporate elements of military history and strategy into fiction in a way that's engaging and informative.

Timons Esaias is a satirist, writer and poet living in Pittsburgh. His works, ranging from literary to genre, have been published in twenty-two languages. He has been a finalist for the British Science Fiction Award, and he won the Winter Anthology Contest, the SFPA Poetry Contest, and the Asimov's Readers Award (twice). He is a recent Pushcart nominee and Intrepid Award winner for the story "To Do." He is widely deplored for using a pillow as a protagonist, and, in another story, Concord grape jelly packets as an antagonist. His poetry collection is Why Elephants No Longer Communicate in Greek.

Episode Links

https://timonsesaias.com/

https://bsky.app/profile/timonse.bsky.social

https://x.com/EsaiasTimons

https://www.facebook.com/timons.esaias

Episode 246 - The Secrets of World-Building: It’s the Small Stuff with Timons Esaias

Summary

In this episode of The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Timons Esaias about warfare for writers and how military history can serve as an invaluable resource for authors crafting stories that involve conflict, whether they are set in fantasy, science fiction, or historical periods. While warfare might seem intimidating to many writers, Timons provides insights and guidance on how to incorporate elements of military history and strategy into fiction in a way that's engaging and informative.

Timons begins by sharing his childhood fascination with military history, sparked by family visits to historic battlefields and reading books such as Teddy Roosevelt’s account of the War of 1812. This interest laid the groundwork for his later expertise in both real and fictional warfare, which he shares with writers needing guidance on military topics.

Matty and Timons explore the topic of historical accuracy in warfare writing. Timons emphasizes the universality of certain aspects of warfare across time periods, citing Genghis Khan dealing with issues similar to those faced in modern-day conflicts. The conversation covers the importance of logistics, survival in warfare, and the surprising lack of resources available for writers, which led Timons to work on a comprehensive guide himself.

The discussion highlights the narrative opportunities presented by focusing on military units as almost character-like entities within a story. Timons describes military units as "machines made out of people," where the roles within, such as officers and shared objectives, are critical to the plot. For writers, understanding this machinery helps to construct more robust and realistic military fiction.

Timons also provides practical advice for writers seeking to integrate warfare into non-military stories. By looking at battles as complex problems, akin to non-war tasks, writers can find inspiration in military history for stories outside the warfare genre. The logistics of war, for example, can be applied to any scenario where large-scale coordination and planning are required.

The episode deep-dives into the role of character development within military narratives, using popular media such as "Band of Brothers" and "Saving Private Ryan" as illustrators of balancing action with character focus. Timons discusses how the interplay between command structure and individual experiences can shape dynamic storylines without relying solely on battle sequences.

Finally, Timons stresses the significance of logistics in warfare, a crucial yet often overlooked element. Logistics shape every aspect of a military campaign, from supply lines to the feasibility of engaging in combat in certain locations. Understanding logistics can be incredibly beneficial for writers aiming to depict realistic and compelling military actions.

Timons closes the conversation by guiding writers on resources for current warfare understanding. He notes how journalism guides and military manuals can provide foundational knowledge for writers working within modern military contexts.

This episode is a treasure trove for authors interested in exploring warfare in their work, offering both tactical advice and philosophical insights into the nature of conflict across history. Whether writing about medieval skirmishes, futuristic space battles, or character-driven narratives set against the backdrop of war, authors will find Timons’ expertise and practical tips immensely helpful.

Episode 293 - What Writers Can Learn from "The Full Monty" with Jennifer Hilt and Ran Walker

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Jennifer Hilt and Ran Walker discusses WHAT WRITERS CAN LEARN FROM "THE FULL MONTY," including the idea of characters'  external wants versus internal needs; the use of tropes such as found family, ticking time bombs, and ugly duckling progressions; and how the film uses one element to convey multiple messages. We discuss how the movie explores themes of masculinity, self-image, and societal expectations, and reflect on what makes the movie universally appealing and emotionally impactful so that writers can apply those techniques to their own work.

Jennifer Hilt is a USA Today Bestselling author and the creator of The Trope Thesaurus: An Author Resource, a five-book series beloved by writers seeking to hone their craft. With a diverse portfolio spanning twenty-four books under four pen names, she has also authored the urban fantasy trilogy The Undead Detective.

Ran Walker is an award-winning author of 38 books. He is an associate professor of creative writing at Hampton University and teaches with Writer's Digest University. He lives in Virginia with his wife, daughter, and puppy.

Episode Links

Jennifer Hilt

https://jenniferhilt.substack.com/

https://www.youtube.com/@TropeTalk

https://www.facebook.com/jennifer.hilt

Episode 288 - Decoding Storytelling Tropes with Jennifer Hilt

Episode 230 - The Good, the Bad, and the Surprising of Kickstarter with Megan Haskell and Jennifer Hilt

Episode 163 - Year End: The Writing Craft And The Publishing Voyage with Jennifer Hilt & Michael La Ronn

Episode 140 - Troping Your Way to a Stronger Story with Jennifer Hilt

Ran Walker

https://www.ranwalker.com/

Episode 289 - Crafting Poetic Prose with Ran Walker

Episode 098 - Redefining Indy Success through Short Fiction with Ran Walker

Summary

In this episode of The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with authors Jennifer Hilt and Ran Walker about what writers can learn from the 1997 film "The Full Monty." The discussion pivots around the film's key themes, character development, and storytelling techniques. The conversation explores how both authors view storytelling elements within "The Full Monty," with Matty expressing her fondness for the film's direct and economic storytelling style.

External Wants vs. Internal Needs

The discussion centers around the film's portrayal of external wants versus internal needs. The primary character, Gaz, played by Robert Carlisle, exemplifies this theme. Gaz's external want is to earn money for child support to see his son, Nathan. Internally, Gaz needs to prove he can follow through on something, showcasing this through the microcosm of preparing for a strip show.

Ran notes Gaz's duality as both the best and worst father, which is visually represented in scenes where he involves his son in adult situations. They explore how Gaz's progression to assuming responsibility resonates with audiences, particularly through heartfelt moments between him and his son, Nathan.

Character Dynamics and Development

The podcast delves into the character dynamics and development, specifically focusing on Dave, Gerald, Lomper, and Guy. Dave represents many people's self-doubt and issues with body image. His journey towards self-acceptance and understanding his wife's love for him is both humorous and deeply touching.

Gerald, once a figure of authority, struggles with the loss of his job and societal image. The podcast highlights a symbolic element—the gnome—as a representation of his crumbling facade and the resultant personal growth.

Lomper's story, depicting isolation and eventual embracing of love with Guy, highlights themes of friendship and acceptance. Matty points out that the film beautifully illustrates brotherhood and the forming of a found family, something that resonates universally.

Ran emphasizes the irony and complexity in seemingly minor characters, like Horse, bringing depth to moments that might initially appear comedic. These layers add to the richness of the film's narrative and the relatability of its characters.

Storytelling Economy and Symbols

Another crucial aspect discussed is the film's economical storytelling. Matty appreciates how the film conveys much with few words or scenes, such as Dave's symbolic struggle to fit through a window and Gaz's prison-sewing skills. Jennifer agrees, noting the film's ability to achieve significant character revelations and plot advancement in concise moments.

Ran highlights symbolic gestures like the passing of a hat from Nathan to Gaz in key scenes, encapsulating themes of support and growth. These elements reflect the calculated and intentional crafting that makes the film enduring.

Themes and Tropes

Jennifer remarks on tropes prevalent in the film, such as ticking time bombs tied to economic desperation and the forced proximity that naturally evolves into a found family narrative. Matty reflects on how these motifs enhance the storytelling's emotional pull and engage viewers deeply.

The conversation concludes with reflections on how "The Full Monty" succeeds in creating a story devoid of villainy, focusing instead on self-inflicted obstacles and growth. Matty and her guests express appreciation for the film's ability to foster emotional depth without excessive dialogue or complex plots, leaving listeners with insights into the art of creating relatable, enduring stories.

By exploring the film's character arcs, symbolic storytelling, and inherent humor, this episode of The Indy Author Podcast provides listeners with rich examples and actionable takeaways for their writing journeys.

Episode 292 - Reviving a Series with Greta Boris

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Greta Boris discusses REVIVING A SERIES, including the process authors can use to evaluate what went wrong with the original work; the importance of ensuring that titles, covers, and marketing strategies are brand right; and the specific steps authors can take to improve the books' craft, tighten plots, and align better with genre expectations.

Greta Boris is the USA Today Bestselling author of The Mortician Murders, a humor-filled ghostly mystery series, and The Almost True Crime Stories, a psychological suspense series. She hails from sunny Southern California, where—based on her stories which are all set there—things are darker than you’d expect. She loves coffee, wine-tasting, and dogs but not necessarily in that order.

Episode Links

https://www.gretaboris.com

https://www.facebook.com/greta.boris

Greta’s previous appearances:

Episode 248 - Constructing a Multi-Layered Villain with Greta Boris

Episode 242 - Uncovering Your Author Purpose with Greta Boris and Megan Haskell

Episode 184 - Planning a Novel with Greta Boris and Megan Haskell

Summary

In this episode of The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Greta Boris, USA Today bestselling author of the Mortician Murders and Almost True Crime series, about reviving an old book series. Greta shares her approach and insights into transforming her original series, The Seven Deadly Sins, into a new successful venture, shedding light on her experiences and strategies to breathe new life into her stories.

Greta begins by detailing how her initial series did not achieve the level of success she had hoped for. Despite positive feedback from book clubs, the series failed to capture significant commercial attention. This prompted Boris to re-evaluate and analyze what went wrong, leading her to explore various avenues for rejuvenating the series.

As Greta explains, one of the primary steps in her process was evaluating the craft, marketing, and genre expectations of the original series. She outlines three key areas she examined:

1. Craft and Storytelling Issues: She acknowledges that some of her initial books had draggy spots and unclear motivation for characters, particularly the villains. This can be detrimental to a thriller or suspense series, where pacing and plot coherence are vital.

2. Marketing Missteps: Boris realized that the series title "The Seven Deadly Sins" misled readers, often signaling either horror or romance rather than the intended thriller genre. Moreover, the covers, though attractive, were signaling women's fiction, causing a disconnect with her target audience.

3. Genre Mismatch: The original series struggled with its position in the mystery thriller genre. Greta describes her attempt to align the books more closely with psychological suspense, noting her analysis involved reading bestsellers and award-winning titles in her target genre to identify common elements such as writing style, pacing, and narrative perspective.

Through discussion with her publisher and other authors, Greta decided to pivot the series conceptually by introducing a new overarching theme—framing each book as a season of a true crime podcast hosted by a recurring character. This allowed for a thematic unity that connected the books more cohesively.

The conversation also tackles practical aspects of manuscript revision. Greta elaborated on how the first book in the series required the most extensive rewriting, where she retained only about 30% of the original text. She emphasized the importance of ensuring that the character motivations were clear to avoid confusion and dissatisfaction among readers.

For marketing, Greta capitalized on updated blurbs using tools like ChatGPT to reframe her narrative hooks, ensuring they were punchy and compelling. Additionally, she worked with her publisher to redesign covers that were consistent across the series and aligned better with genre expectations, opting for place-based titles with stylistic similarities to increase visual uniformity and brand recognition.

She mentioned that the revamp proved financially beneficial, noting that the newly launched series has already generated more income than the original series ever did. Although traditional publishing restricts instantaneous sales tracking, Boris found reassurance in indicators such as rights deals for audiobooks and positive reviews on platforms like Goodreads.

Towards the episode's conclusion, Matty and Greta reflect on the dual benefits of revisiting and revamping previous work, emphasizing both the potential financial gains and the satisfaction of elevating storytelling quality. Greta encourages authors to adopt a critical editor's mindset, suggesting that the effort can lead to a more extensive backlist with increased sales potential.

Ultimately, this podcast episode serves as a comprehensive guide for authors looking to reassess their existing series. Greta Boris's experience provides valuable lessons on refining narrative craft, targeting marketing efforts more effectively, and embracing genre conventions to align better with readers' expectations, all while maintaining engagement with an evolving readership.

Episode 290 - The Traveling Writer in Life and on the Page with Luke Richardson

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Luke Richardson discusses THE TRAVELING WRITER IN LIFE AND ON THE PAGE, including how his travels to places like India, Hong Kong, Nepal, and Morocco have inspired his novels, as well as his process for incorporating realistic and vivid settings into his stories. He addresses the challenges writers face when creating stories set in places they haven't visited, shares research resources authors can use for book promotion as well as for writing, and offers best practices for capturing the essence of a location to create an immersive experience for readers.

Luke Richardson is an Amazon bestselling author known for his action-packed thrillers that blend history, adventure, and suspense. Inspired by his travels, he crafts gripping stories that transport readers to exotic locations like Egypt, Hong Kong, and Nepal. His Archaeological Thrillers Series follows Eden Black, as she uncovers ancient secrets and lost legends, while his International Detective books feature Leo Keane & Allissa Stockwell tracking missing persons worldwide. Praised for intricate plots, fast pacing, and vivid storytelling, Luke’s books make readers feel like they’ve traveled the world—without leaving home.

Episode Links

https://www.lukerichardsonauthor.com/

https://www.facebook.com/lukerichardsonauthor/

https://www.storyblocks.com/

http://lukerichardsonauthor.com/adventureauthorinsider

Summary

In this episode of The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Amazon bestselling author Luke Richardson about THE TRAVELING WRITER IN LIFE AND ON THE PAGE. Luke is known for his action-packed thrillers that incorporate elements of history, adventure, and suspense. Inspired by his travels, he crafts stories set in exotic locations like Egypt, Hong Kong, and Nepal. In this conversation, they explore the influence of travel on writing, particularly how to depict locations that writers may not have visited personally.

Luke shares his journey of becoming a writer, which began during his first trip outside Europe to India. The overwhelming and vibrant culture of Mumbai inspired him to evoke similar emotions in his readers through his writing. This transformative experience sparked his desire to create stories that provide a sense of travel and adventure to readers.

The discussion explores how authors can write convincingly about foreign locations, even without visiting them. Luke emphasizes that while setting is crucial, the story remains paramount. Authors should focus on capturing the essence and spirit of a place rather than obsessing over every detail. He recalls instances when movies portray London inaccurately, stressing the importance of maintaining the story’s flow over exact geographical accuracy.

For those who can't visit a location, Luke suggests leveraging online resources like Google Maps, YouTube videos, and podcasts to gather information and gain a sense of the environment. Matty and Luke discuss the challenges of capturing sensory details, such as sounds and smells, which enhance the authenticity of a scene. Luke advises listening to podcasts and watching street-level videos for auditory experience and suggests visiting cultural hubs or neighborhoods to grasp the atmosphere and nuances of a particular location.

Another vital aspect discussed is writing authentic characters and understanding cultural differences. Luke illustrates this by mentioning how family structures vary worldwide and how these differences can enrich character development. He advises focusing on universal human experiences like family to create relatable characters, regardless of cultural backgrounds.

Luke also highlights the importance of incorporating feedback from locals or those familiar with the setting to avoid inaccuracies and stereotypes. This step helps ensure cultural representation is both respectful and believable. Matty shares her practice of giving fictional names to real-life locations to avoid being strictly tied to specific geographical accuracies.

Throughout the podcast, Luke shares how his personal travel experiences have influenced his stories, stressing that inspiration can come from both far-flung locales and nearby settings. He encourages writers to keep an open mind while exploring, as even mundane environments can provide compelling story ideas.

Matty and Luke underscore the idea that writers can find exotic elements in their local surroundings, proving that inspiration is all around us. Luke concludes by mentioning his approach to travel: exploring with curiosity and letting creativity take shape from new experiences, ensuring his stories captivate readers by transporting them to different parts of the world.

In summary, this podcast episode provides insightful guidance for authors on how to effectively write about locations they have not visited. By using online tools, focusing on sensory details, and acknowledging cultural nuances, writers can create immersive and authentic stories. Luke Richardson’s experience offers valuable lessons for authors seeking to broaden their narrative horizons and bring far-away places into their storytelling.

Episode 289 - Crafting Poetic Prose with Ran Walker

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Ran Walker discusses CRAFTING POETIC PROSE, including the nuanced art of using poetic devices in fiction to bring language to life, venturing into various literary techniques, including metaphor and simile, personification, symbolism, homonyms, homophones, and homographs, and onomatopoeia, and exploring how these elements can enrich narratives and engage readers in more profound ways.

Ran Walker is an award-winning author of 38 books. He is an associate professor of creative writing at Hampton University and teaches with Writer's Digest University. He lives in Virginia with his wife, daughter, and puppy.

Episode Links

https://www.ranwalker.com/

Episode 098 - Redefining Indy Success through Short Fiction with Ran Walker

Summary

In this episode of The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Ran Walker about the nuanced art of using poetic devices in fiction to bring language to life, venturing into various literary techniques, including metaphor and simile, personification, symbolism, homonyms, homophones, and homographs, and onomatopoeia, and exploring how these elements can enrich narratives and engage readers in more profound ways.

The conversation kicks off with a discussion about metaphors and similes, starting with their basic definitions and distinctions. Ran explains that while both compare two things, a metaphor is a stronger assertion of similarity ('He was a beast'), while a simile relies on 'like' or 'as' ('He was like a beast'), which suggests a weaker or partial resemblance. He advises fiction writers to consider how strongly they want their comparisons to resonate and choose accordingly.

Matty then inquires about ensuring the metaphors and similes chosen serve the story rather than distract from it. Ran advises that if a metaphor or simile takes readers out of the narrative, it might be too much. For humorous contexts, however, a bolder metaphor might work when it's intended to pause the narrative momentarily for comedic relief.

Conversation transitions into the poetic devices of personification and its variant, anthropomorphism. Ran describes personification as a way to make inanimate settings more vibrant, painting scenes where "the rocking chair moaned" or "the light from the lamp leaped up the wall." It's a strategy to maintain reader interest during scene descriptions. To find these opportunities, Ran suggests writers draft scenes naturally and, during edits, pinpoint subjects in sentences that could use an imaginative touch of personification.

On symbolism, Ran reflects on how writers often unintentionally create repeating symbols and motifs, such as rings in a narrative to denote never-ending cycles. Once identified, authors can weave these symbols more deliberately into their stories, adding layers of meaning without overtly drawing attention to them.

They also delve into the use of homophones, homonyms, and homographs, where the similarity or identicality in words’ sounds, spellings, or meanings (like 'bear' the animal and 'bear' as in tolerate) can open avenues for linguistic playfulness. Ran shares how these can enrich a text when used sparingly and effectively, enhancing the work's texture by creating intentional echoes or exploring double meanings in context.

The discussion naturally extends to one of Matty's favorites — the concept of onomatopoeia — where words imitate natural sounds within narrative descriptions. Ran warns against excessive use, as seen in comics, but acknowledges that the right application can indeed evoke strong reader reactions.

Throughout, both Matty and Ran emphasize subtlety and intention behind employing literary devices. They remind authors that while different styles can make writing unique, clarity and enhancement of the story should always remain at their core. It's about enriching narrative language in ways that are thoughtful and deliberate, allowing readers enough room to draw meanings deeper than what’s presented on the surface.

Concluding with takeaways, Matty and Ran stress the importance of experimenting with these techniques to elevate writing, recommending that authors engage readers' senses and imagination without detracting from the storytelling.

This podcast episode serves as a valuable resource for writers seeking to enhance their craft through poetic devices. It underlines the power of language choices in narrative construction, the depth symbolic threads can contribute, and the pleasure found in the playful interaction between language and meaning. Through their conversation, aspiring authors gain insightful guidance on striking an effective balance between creativity and coherence in storytelling.

Episode 288 - Decoding Storytelling Tropes with Jennifer Hilt

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Jennifer Hilt discusses DECODING STORYTELLING TROPES, including the universality of about 40 tropes that cross various genres, especially the tropes of found family, misdirection, secrets and scars, and the ticking time bomb. Jennifer shares insights about how tropes like these help shape narratives and character motivations, touching on examples from popular books and movies.

Jennifer Hilt is a USA Today Bestselling author and the creator of The Trope Thesaurus: An Author Resource, a five-book series beloved by writers seeking to hone their craft. With a diverse portfolio spanning twenty-four books under four pen names, she has also authored the urban fantasy trilogy The Undead Detective. As a professional plotter and concept creator, Jennifer has helped countless writers develop unforgettable stories. Holding degrees in linguistics and literature, Jennifer loves collecting obscure dictionaries, binge-watching Scandi-noir series, and shouting out tropes from her couch.

Episode Links

https://jenniferhilt.substack.com/

https://www.youtube.com/@TropeTalk

https://www.facebook.com/jennifer.hilt

Episode 230 - The Good, the Bad, and the Surprising of Kickstarter with Megan Haskell and Jennifer Hilt

Episode 163 - Year End: The Writing Craft And The Publishing Voyage with Jennifer Hilt & Michael La Ronn

Episode 140 - Troping Your Way to a Stronger Story with Jennifer Hilt

Summary

In this episode of The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Jennifer Hilt about the role of tropes in writing, particularly within the mystery and thriller genres. They explore how these storytelling elements can transcend genres and enhance narrative depth and reader engagement.

The conversation kicks off with Jennifer discussing her love for open-water swimming, drawing parallels between the vastness of the ocean and the feeling of being a small part of a much larger world. This sense of exploration and stepping outside one's comfort zone seamlessly transitions into the exploration of narrative tropes, which provide a framework for storytelling across various genres.

Jennifer emphasizes that tropes are not genre-specific but rather universal storytelling mechanisms that can be applied creatively across different genres. She highlights around 40 tropes, suggesting that these can be mixed and matched depending on the story's needs. In particular, she notes how mystery and thriller tropes share commonalities with those in other genres, such as romance, sci-fi, and general fiction. The key is in how these tropes are paired with genre expectations to achieve unique storytelling outcomes.

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the popularity of the domestic thriller market, highlighting examples like Frida McFadden's "The Housemaid." Jennifer explains how this genre has embraced simple yet impactful storylines involving a limited number of characters. The domestic thriller's appeal lies in its ability to combine the familiar with high-tension narrative elements, often exploring themes like found family and the darker undercurrents of seemingly ordinary lives.

The concept of misdirection—a staple in mystery and thriller narratives—is dissected in the context of its broader applicability. Jennifer and Matty discuss how misdirection can enrich character development and plot twists in any genre, using examples like Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" and the film "Knives Out" to illustrate its versatility. Misdirection, they note, is about guiding the audience's perception and strategically revealing hidden truths, which can lead to compelling and engaging storytelling.

Similarly, the "secrets and scars" trope is examined for its potential to drive character motivation and conflict. Jennifer points out that both secrets (hidden information) and scars (past traumas) serve as powerful narrative devices. They can provide depth to characters by showcasing their vulnerabilities and the lengths they go to to protect themselves. For instance, the emotional unraveling depicted in "Gone Girl" vividly illustrates how deeply embedded secrets and scars can propel a storyline.

The conversation also touches on the importance of the "ticking time bomb" trope, which creates urgency and momentum in storytelling. Jennifer shares insights into how even non-thriller genres can benefit from time-sensitive plot elements. By incorporating major life events such as weddings, moves, or job changes, authors can introduce natural deadlines that keep the narrative from stagnating, thus maintaining reader interest.

Lastly, the episode delves into the potential overlap between narrative structure and audience appeal. Matty recounts a personal revelation about her affinity for settings characterized by isolation and seasonal quietude, suggesting that understanding the underlying themes within one's work can help in identifying suitable comparisons for marketing purposes. Recognizing and embracing these recurring themes can offer fresh perspectives and draw in new readers who resonate with those elements.

This episode of The Indy Author Podcast with Jennifer Hilt provides valuable insights into how tropes function as a universal language in storytelling. By exploring their application, whether it's through the lens of mystery, thriller, or any other genre, authors can enhance their narratives, create engaging twists, and ultimately connect more deeply with their readers.

Episode 287 - Managing Your Editorial Crew with Roz Morris

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Roz Morris discusses MANAGING YOUR EDITORIAL CREW, including how authors can effectively manage their editing process, the role beta readers play in the development of an author's work, what the needs are for editing before submitting a work to a traditional publisher or an agent, and tips for indie authors on making the most out of their editing experiences and dollars.

Roz Morris’s novels and memoir have been recognized by major mainstream awards. She’s coached award-winning writers in both fiction and non-fiction, taught creative writing for The Guardian masterclasses, blogged for Writers & Artists Yearbook, and been a regular judge on Litopia’s Pop-Up Submissions show, critiquing manuscripts from promising writers. Roz is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Alliance of Independent Authors.

Episode Links

https://nailyournovel.wordpress.com/

https://rozmorris.org/

https://x.com/Roz_Morris

Episode 247 - Newsletter Marketing as a Creative Endeavor with Roz Morris

Episode 088 - How to Receive and Give Critique with Tiffany Yates Martin

Summary

This week on The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Roz Morris about the evolution of authors' editing needs as their careers progress. They dive into the different types of editing, provide insights into how authors can effectively manage their editing process, and explore the role beta readers play in the development of an author's work. This podcast episode highlights the changing landscape of editing and provides tips for indie authors on making the most out of their editing experiences.

Roz Morris begins by outlining the three general categories of editing: developmental editing, copy editing, and proofreading. Developmental editing focuses on the content of a manuscript, ensuring that it works for its intended audience and fulfills its potential. Following that is copy editing, where inconsistencies and inaccuracies are addressed. The final stage is proofreading, which checks for any remaining minor errors, making the book ready for publication.

Matty explains her approach to editing, describing how she uses a single editor for her novels to identify major issues, focusing primarily on the character's motivations. Additionally, she relies on beta readers to provide insights and feedback that go beyond what's typically covered in a traditional edit. This tailored method has evolved over time, informed by her growing expertise, a network of sophisticated beta readers, and the advancement of editorial tools like Microsoft Word.

Roz discusses the change in editing needs that occurs as authors become more experienced. Early on, comprehensive developmental editing may be essential. However, as authors grow more proficient, they learn what to watch for in their own work and can rely more on beta readers and targeted editorial feedback to address their "blind spots." Roz explains how seasoned writers often transition away from needing extensive developmental edits unless they venture into unfamiliar genres or styles.

A significant point made by both Matty and Roz is the importance of having a network of beta readers that are knowledgeable about the author's specific genre. Beta readers not only help identify issues but can also provide market research by giving feedback on characters, plot elements, and story satisfaction. They caution, however, that authors should carefully weigh beta readers' suggestions and maintain their vision for their work.

Matty shares an anecdote where her editor suggested a change that led her to think deeper about setting and plot possibilities, ultimately enriching the story. Roz emphasizes that effective editors engage in discussions with authors, offering guidance rather than dictating changes. This collaborative process helps authors refine their craft and produce work that aligns with both their artistic vision and market expectations.

Roz and Matty agree that as writers become more practiced, they can better judge what feedback is useful and where they need external help. Matty notes a sophisticated use of tools like AI for organizing thoughts and reaching clarity on plot points before seeking external input.

The conversation shifts towards leveraging beta readers and editors according to their strengths. Matty reveals how she strategically positions her editor within her editing process, taking advantage of different individuals' expertise. They discuss the valuable role that contests with editorial feedback can play in providing impartial insights into one's work.

In the context of traditional publishing, Roz advises against unnecessary copy editing or proofreading before submitting a manuscript, suggesting that the focus should be on developmental improvements instead. The expectation is that publishers and literary agents will undertake their own developmental edits once a manuscript is submitted.

Ending on a reflective note, they discuss when it might be time for an author to seek new editorial relationships. If an author consistently disagrees with their editor’s feedback, it may indicate that they've outgrown that editorial partnership. Roz encourages authors to remain open to collaboration and to continuously assess their editorial needs as they develop their skills and grow their careers.

In summary, this podcast episode provides insightful guidance for indie authors on adapting their editing strategies to match their evolving competencies, highlighting the critical role of both editors and beta readers in an author’s development. It underscores the importance of building a supportive creative team and remaining adaptive in one’s approach to producing compelling, polished narratives.

Episode 285 - Writing Short with Art Taylor

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Art Taylor discusses WRITING SHORT, including common challenges faced by novelists transitioning to short stories. Art emphasizes the importance of economy, efficiency, and focus; shares practical advice on trimming word count while maintaining narrative impact, such as eliminating redundant phrases and opting for active voice; and explores how key elements—like conflict escalation and character development—must be handled differently in short stories.

Art Taylor is the Edgar Award-winning author of two short story collections—The Adventure of the Castle Thief and Other Expeditions and Indiscretions and The Boy Detective & The Summer of ’74 and Other Tales of Suspense—and of the novel in stories On the Road with Del & Louise, winner of the Agatha Award for Best First Novel. He is a professor of English at George Mason University.

Episode Links

https://www.facebook.com/ArtTaylorShortStories

https://www.instagram.com/arttaylorwriter/

https://bsky.app/profile/arttaylorwriter.bsky.social

Episode 212 - What Writers Can Learn from The First Two Pages with Art Taylor

Episode 193 - The Path to Short Story Publication with Michael Bracken

Episode 098 - Redefining Indy Success through Short Fiction with Ran Walker

Summary

This week on The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with guest Art Taylor about the intricate art of crafting short stories. Art, an Edgar Award-winning author, provides insightful guidance for writers, especially those accustomed to long-form fiction, who wish to delve into short fiction. The discussion focuses on strategies for creating compelling short stories by emphasizing economy, efficiency, and focus.

Art begins the conversation by reflecting on the common struggle many novelists face when writing short stories. He shares anecdotes from his own experiences and from those of colleagues in the writing community. Art explains that the challenge often lies in adapting to a smaller "canvas." Whereas novels allow for elaborate character development and expansive subplots, short stories demand brevity and concentration on a singular narrative arc. He also notes that while characters in short stories can be as rich as those in novels, achieving this requires a different approach. 

Delving deeper into the essence of short story craft, Art highlights three critical principles: economy, efficiency, and focus. He defines focus as maintaining a singular narrative arc without diverging into unnecessary subplots, and economy as ensuring every element in the story has a purpose. Efficiency, on the other hand, involves ensuring that every component of the story fulfills multiple functions. For instance, a piece of dialogue should not only advance the plot but also reveal character traits and enhance the story's atmosphere. 

Art also shares practical exercises to help writers condense their work. He describes a classroom exercise where students are tasked with composing a six-sentence story to outline the core elements: character, desire, action, conflict, climax, and resolution. This exercise forces writers to distill the essence and framework of their narrative, whether they're just beginning a short story or refining an existing draft.

He further discusses the concept of an "armature" in short story writing—an idea borrowed from sculpture. Just as a sculptor begins with a skeletal framework to support their creation, a writer should identify the core structure of their story. Art introduces a six-sentence breakdown of "The Speckled Band" by Arthur Conan Doyle, demonstrating an example of how to incorporate layered plots and suspense within a concise format.

Throughout the episode, Art offers several strategic trimming tips. He advises writers to escalate conflicts rather than repeat them, and to be mindful of pacing and rhythm. He suggests using dialogue to create a natural ebb and flow, providing necessary pauses for the reader to reflect. Additionally, he warns against excessive density in writing, which can exhaust the reader, and emphasizes the importance of finding a balance that keeps the reader engaged.

Art and Matty explore potential pitfalls for writers transitioning from long-form to short-form fiction. Art warns against creating vignettes—beautifully descriptive but narratively shallow—and encourages writers to ensure their stories include a complete arc with a clear conflict and resolution. He suggests writers use feedback from others to gauge where their story might lag or require more development.

In discussing the technical aspects, Art recommends writing with clarity and precision by eliminating unnecessary qualifiers and avoiding passive voice unless strategically used.

Overall, this podcast episode provides a comprehensive discussion on the nuances of short story writing. By offering detailed methodologies, illustrative examples, and helpful exercises, Matty and Art successfully guide long-form writers through the transition to mastering short fiction. Aspiring writers and seasoned authors alike can gain valuable insights into the art of distilling expansive ideas into powerful short stories.

Episode 284 - Training the Brain for Fiction Dictation with Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer

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Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer discusses TRAINING THE BRAIN FOR FICTION DICTATION, including the differences in approach for fiction versus nonfiction. Sarah describes the challenges authors face when transitioning to dictating fiction and offers practical advice for overcoming mental blocks. Sarah also highlights the flexibility of dictation, allowing authors to work in different environments and in shorter time blocks. And she discusses how dictation can improve other audio assets and can engage audiences in new ways.
 
Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer is an author and writing instructor who takes authors struggling to master the tools and knowledge of their author journey and helps them become confident in writing their books. She has been featured on Joanna Penn’s The Creative Penn podcast, Jane Friedman’s blog, Writer’s Digest magazine, and more. She’s published 19 books, 11 of which she wrote solely by dictation. Sarah is also host of The Confident Fiction Author podcast which empowers authors to live their best creative lifestyle. Her Fictation Digital Course takes authors through the exact process of mastering dictation to write fiction.

Episode Links

www.fictioncourses.com
https://www.facebook.com/fictioncourses
Explore Sarah's fiction dictation course via my affiliate link: https://theindyauthor--fictioncourses.thrivecart.com/fictation/

Summary

This week on The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer about the art of dictation for authors. Sarah, an established author and writing instructor, emphasizes the distinct skills required for dictating fiction versus nonfiction. She shares insights for authors looking to delve into dictation or improve their current practices, highlighting practical tips and overcoming mental barriers associated with this method.
 
Sarah explains that many authors are used to dictating emails or text messages but find themselves struggling when transitioning to dictating fiction. The mental shift involves creating new neural pathways, which she describes as a different skill set from nonfiction dictation. Authors must train their minds to verbalize fictional characters and worlds, which can initially seem daunting. Sarah recounts her own journey of overcoming these barriers and the eventual success and confidence she gained from becoming adept in dictating fiction.
 
For those getting started, Sarah advises joining communities of authors who are mastering dictation, reading published fiction out loud to practice using dictation technology, and vocalizing punctuation to improve accuracy. Practicing speaking one's fiction out loud allows authors to become accustomed to hearing their own voices telling the story, which can help bridge the gap to full-fledged dictation. She reassures authors that while moving from typing to dictating might be gradual, it's possible to become as comfortable with dictating as they are with typing.
 
Matty raises a point about storytelling speed, noting that many authors pursue dictation to capture thoughts faster than typing allows. In response, Sarah shares how dictation can benefit authors beyond speed, such as accommodating health issues or offering flexibility to dictate in various environments like walking or doing household chores.
 
The discussion also delves into technological solutions for dictation. Matty expresses a desire for voice-activated recording when driving or walking, which would enhance hands-free dictation. While Sarah has yet to find a perfect app, she suggests setups where phones are mounted for safe hands-free operation and encourages experimentation with different tools and approaches.
 
For Sarah, the editing phase after dictation involves a crucial cleanup step where potential transcription errors are addressed, ensuring the draft is as clean as a typical typed one. This process allows authors to focus on storytelling without being hindered by transcription inaccuracies during subsequent editing.
 
Sarah also touches on preserving author voice in dictated works, sharing that her oral storytelling background contributed greatly to maintaining her distinct style. Authors looking to safeguard their voice might consider storytelling practices, such as engaging with live audiences or recording narrative videos, to integrate oral storytelling into their writing habits.
 
For those already experienced in dictation, Sarah suggests trying new methods or tools to enhance efficiency and enjoyment. Exploring various environments and embracing new technologies can refresh the dictation experience, making writing more dynamic and productive.
 
The episode concludes with Sarah providing resources for authors interested in dictation, including a quick start guide and a comprehensive training bootcamp via her website. These resources aim to help authors at any stage of their dictation journey discover a smoother, more efficient writing process.
 
In summary, Matty and Sarah's conversation sheds light on dictation as a valuable tool for authors. By addressing mental barriers, exploring technological options, and providing actionable advice, they offer insights into how authors can incorporate dictation into their creative processes, improving not just speed but overall storytelling flexibility and health.

Episode 273 - Showrunning Your Series Novels with Cheryl McKay

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Cheryl McKay discusses SHOWRUNNING YOUR SERIES NOVELS, including how to plan for standalone versus series formats; the role of episodic elements; the benefits of feeling inspired by and using real-world locations in storytelling; the importance of character development and story arcs; and the importance of making strong standalone stories with potential for growth or spinoffs. We also discuss the responsibilities of a showrunner and how this role parallels the varied duties of an indie author.
 
CHERYL MCKAY been professionally writing since 1997. Before creating, showrunning, and executive producing the multi-award-winning Season One of These Stones, Cheryl wrote the screenplay for The Ultimate Gift. Cheryl co-wrote the faith-based feature films, Indivisible and Extraordinary, as well as multiple children’s projects, including five episodes of Superbook and forty episodes of the audio drama, The Wild & Wacky Totally True Bible Stories with Frank Peretti. In addition to film and television, Cheryl has enjoyed penning novels like Song of Springhill and the award-winning Never the Bride (with Rene Gutteridge), as well as nonfiction books.

Episode Links

www.purplepenworks.com
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100027726262011
https://www.instagram.com/cherylmckayscreenwriter/
https://www.youtube.com/@thesestones

Summary

This week on The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Cheryl McKay about the valuable lessons series novelists can draw from TV series. The conversation delves into structuring series narratives, incorporating cliffhangers, and planning for both standalone and ongoing stories.
 
Matty opens the discussion by highlighting the initial challenge for authors deciding between writing a standalone book or a series. Speaking from her experience, Cheryl notes that this dilemma is paralleled in the screenwriting world, where screenwriters often face the decision of whether their work fits better as a standalone movie or an expanding series. Cheryl shares an anecdote about transforming her screenplay, "Never the Bride," initially intended as a standalone, into a series. She draws a parallel to the "Bruce Almighty" series, where a strong character in the first movie inspired the subsequent "Evan Almighty."
 
Cheryl emphasizes the importance of planning for character and story arcs that can expand beyond the first instance of work. She suggests series writers consider ongoing character development and multiple storylines that can extend through several books or episodes. Cheryl’s insights highlight how detailed planning, like creating a "show bible," is crucial in ensuring consistency and depth in storytelling. This planning aids in setting rules for the world, creating characters with scalable arcs, and contemplating potential storylines.
 
Matty and Cheryl explore the concept of resolving narratives versus leaving doors open for future installments. Cheryl explains the strategic balance between offering enough closure in a story to satisfy the audience while leaving threads that entice them to come back for more. They discuss the fact that readers are often wary of starting an unfinished series, emphasizing the need for authors to ensure that their first book is strong enough to stand alone while setting up potential sequels.
 
Cheryl also underscores the differing freedoms and constraints faced by indie authors versus screenwriters in traditional TV. Where screenwriters often hand over control post-script and might face rushed story completions due to network decisions, indie authors generally maintain creative control, deciding the length and arcs of their series based on interest and sales. This leads to a discussion of audience influence on storytelling. Matty mentions how direct feedback from readers allows indie authors to adjust future installments, a luxury less available to screenwriters.
 
The role of guest characters in series is another area of discussion. Cheryl explains how "guest stars" can enrich TV shows and novels alike, offering fresh stories and conflicts. These characters may appear in specific episodes or books but can evolve into recurring roles or even inspire spin-offs. Cheryl illustrates this with an example of a crime series writer whose secondary characters or unique professions may spawn their own narratives.
 
Exploring spin-offs, Cheryl suggests leveraging interesting side characters to explore new stories, much like the transition from "Bruce Almighty" to "Evan Almighty." The adaptation of characters into different tones or genres can attract different audiences, though maintaining the original's spirit can be challenging. Cheryl remarks that changing a story's tone, as seen in "Evan Almighty," can surprise audiences, and creators should tread carefully when altering the formula of a beloved concept.
 
The conversation wraps up with insights into the multifaceted role of a showrunner in TV production, akin to an indie author’s balancing act of writing, marketing, and overseeing book production. Cheryl describes how a showrunner manages the creative vision, casting, and logistics, emphasizing the importance of collaboration and communication akin to an indie author's need to manage various aspects of book publication.
 
Matty draws parallels between a showrunner’s operational overview and an indie author's need to manage the entire writing-to-publishing process, encouraging authors to take a holistic approach to their craft. Cheryl’s experiences highlight the similarities between TV production and indie publishing, offering authors insights into effectively managing their series and maintaining engagement with their audience.

Episode 272 - The Evolving Author and Second Editions with Joanna Penn

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Joanna Penn discusses THE EVOLVING AUTHOR AND SECOND EDITIONS, including the release of the second edition of Joanna's book, HOW TO WRITE NON-FICTION. Joanna discusses the changes in nonfiction writing, including the importance of storytelling, which led her to apply some of the personal elements and insights she has used in her memoir works into this new edition. We delve into the challenges and benefits of putting out a new edition versus updating the existing one, the evolving landscape of self-publishing, and the impact of new technologies on the writing business.
 
Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers, dark fantasy, and memoir as J.F. Penn. She’s also an award-winning podcaster of The Creative Penn Podcast, a creative entrepreneur, and an international professional speaker.

Episode Links

www.TheCreativePenn.com
https://x.com/thecreativepenn
Episode 054 - Futurist Trends We Can Prepare for Now with Joanna Penn

Summary

This week on The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Joanna Penn about the evolution of Joanna’s book, "How to Write Nonfiction," as it moves into its second edition. They delve into the shifts in nonfiction writing, driven by both personal growth and technological changes.
 
Joanna highlights how the personal touch in nonfiction writing has become more critical as AI can generate standard content. She shares that her own experiences, particularly writing a memoir, have significantly altered her approach to nonfiction. This emphasizes the need for personal stories and emotions in nonfiction, transforming it into a more humanized and relatable genre.
 
The conversation uncovers the restructuring of Joanna's book, including the blending of topics like publishing, marketing, and business into a cohesive unit. This decision reflects changes in the publishing landscape and her own creative evolution, moving towards a more evergreen approach.
 
Matty and Joanna discuss the pros and cons of revising existing books versus writing new content. Joanna points out the critical balance between updating books for factual correctness and maintaining voice authenticity. She says that a new edition can sometimes feel like an entirely different book, requiring new ISBNs and marketing strategies. However, she acknowledges that it's essential for such revisions to represent genuine shifts in perspective or content to be worthwhile.
 
In aligning with the theme of nonfiction's evolution, Joanna and Matty explore the role of storytelling in nonfiction writing, such as the incorporation of personal anecdotes and experiences. Joanna stresses the importance of this blending of factual writing with personal narrative to ensure nonfiction books remain engaging amidst the rise of AI-generated content.
 
Another significant discussion point is the future of audiobooks and AI. Joanna covers how AI could revolutionize audiobook production, making it more accessible and diverse in language and accent. This innovation could significantly lower costs and broaden market reach for authors, enabling them to share their work without language barriers. Matty adds to this by discussing her aspirations to use AI-generated voices trained on her own, providing a consistent and customized reading experience across different languages and works.
 
Throughout the episode, Matty and Joanna also touch upon the shifting landscape of author platforms and content. They consider the evolving utility of platforms like Medium and Substack and the enduring value of owning one’s platform. This discussion brings forth the idea of not building on rented land and the safety of keeping control over content and audience interaction.
 
Joanna shares her stance on various publishing formats, emphasizing selling directly to readers as a more lucrative and controlled option for authors. This ties into the broader theme of how technological shifts are impacting author strategies and book marketing efforts.