Catch up on the latest episodes...

Angie, fresh off a week of making an experimental short film, discusses the lessons learned. She and Elizabeth look especially at how some set design lessons apply to setting in fiction, memoir and narrative non-fiction. They also touch on Angie’s...

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This week Elizabeth finds still more lessons in the “still waiting” process while Angie continues to work on her rapidly approaching end-of-July film experiment, wondering if she’s procrastinating or gathering from a variety of sources. They discuss how...

This week, Elizabeth is working on what it means to wait and Angie is getting out of her comfort zone. They discuss how it’s harder to be successful if you’re focused on the product instead of the process. Going between a focused view on a project and...

In this week’s episode, Angie and Elizabeth discuss the question, can fiction save your life? Elizabeth rapidly fires off a few examples of fiction that served as sign posts for her as she grew up. They once again discuss whether or not we are wired for...

In today’s episode, Angie and Elizabeth share 3 (or is it 7?) tips and tricks for using this summer (or any time you are in between routines) to be a productive writer. They discuss Elizabeth’s continued revisions and how to look at beginnings, as well as...

In this week’s episode, while Elizabeth finishes up this latest round of edits, while Angie turns her attention to her summer project. She’ll be creating the scaffolding of a short film and, with a small number of actors, will work on improvising a film....

In today’s episode Angie and Elizabeth discuss reaction shots and how they differ between screen and prose. In film, reaction shots are indispensable. The audience turns to the reactions of others to understand how they should react themselves. In a...

This week’s episode is episode 100!!! In "Story is a Side Effect," Angie and Elizabeth discuss how story engages the same things that therapy does in order to catalyze growth. Both modes focus on human beings changing. Angie and Elizabeth dive into...

Today, Angie and Elizabeth are sitting outside at a restaurant as they discuss how the 7 steps can be seen even in a short scene. They take an excerpt from The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai and look at how each beat is a different step, perhaps one...

In today’s podcast Angie and Elizabeth discuss how the quality of writing is not as markedly varied as our emotions tell us. This came up because Elizabeth is currently retyping her novel, something she has never done before and adores, and during the...

While Angie is prepping an after dinner chat for Sonoma County Writer’s Camp and Elizabeth continues to revise, they talk with Rachel Howard about her process. First having worked on a memoir, Rachel recently launched novel The Risk of Us. They discuss...

Elizabeth continues to re-write and Angie is preparing to “collect rejections” as she begins submitting her film Lost in the Middle to festivals. They discuss complicated versus complex stories—is the difference in the eye of the beholder?  Elizabeth...

In today’s podcast Angie and Elizabeth discuss brevity. Briefly. 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...

Elizabeth and Angie talk about simplicity. How to strip out what isn’t necessary. Why simple motives are more convincing, according to Angie and Matt Bird. What Einstein might have said about simplicity. What Elaine Scarry might have said about reading....

After Angie almost pulls an all nighter and while Elizabeth exists in a new waiting state, they find themselves with their own inciting incident and metaphor for character. Mice. People and characters tend to take the path of least resistance, and it is...

Elizabeth and Angie discuss what we LOVE about writing. Because, why not? The conversation also touches on how much we retrain of what we hear v. what we teach, Ellen Sussman’s Rule of Three, thinking about what’s going to happen next in a story, the joy...