It was great to catch up with Marian Palaia from her home in Missoula where she was a day or so away from a final, ready-to-submit to publishers draft of her next novel. We delved into the parts of writing we hate and why, the agony of waiting for a response, countering the criticism that a novel is quiet, the tricks of adding tension to a story, working against Chekhov’s gun rule, the possibilities of chronological order, flashforwards, questions, the refusal to outline, where to start, and then starting over again…and again…and again, empathy, time and poetry’s sudden turns. We also touched on what you need to know when you are negotiating with an editor who wants to buy your book!

 

Devi Laskar

Devi Laskar

Marian Palaia’s first novel, “The Given World,” (Simon and Schuster, 2015) was shortlisted for the Saroyan International Prize for Fiction, longlisted for The PEN/Bingham First Novel Prize, a finalist for the VCU/Cabell Award, and recognized by Kirkus as a Best Novel of 2015. She lives in San Francisco, California and in Missoula, Montana with her Mongolian Barking Shepherd, Tupelo. In the early 1980s she was the littlest logger in Lincoln, Montana, and neighbor, sort of, to Ted Kaczynski. Her second novel, “We Would be Amazed, if We Weren’t Already,” is forthcoming.

Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival–everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success.

The hosts:

Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com.

Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.