Catch up on the latest episodes…
Episode 162: Mystically Curious: an interview with author Sanjena Sathian
Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: RSS In a robust conversation with the wonderful debut novelist Sanjena Sathian, Angie and Elizabeth pick her brain about craft, including defaulting to chronology as a built-in plot structure, and the benefit to…
Episode 161: Leading with Images: Interview with Yang Huang
Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: RSS In today’s episode, Angie and Elizabeth interview author Yang Huang about her new novel, My Good Son. Ideas come to Yang as images first, which she sees as mysteries to be solved and as uncensorable. She wants to…
Episode 160: Rest and Revolution: a conversation with author Hari Ziyad
Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: RSS In today’s episode, Angie and Elizabeth talk with author Hari Ziyad about Hari’s new memoir, Black Boy Out of Time. Because Hari is also a screenwriter who has had interest from the worlds of film and television in…
Episode 159: Is Tomorrow Yesterday? Chronology in Structure
Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: RSS The promise of knowledge management for the widely curious brain. Paper books and index cards and card catalogs and the art of tracking and linking your ideas. The act of writing is fundamental to thinking. Upended…
Episode 158: Loving Flawed Characters
Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: RSS This week, Elizabeth launches a new project, while Angie starts teaching in-person middle school math, thinking about individual learning strategies and styles. A listener asks, what is the secret to creating…
Episode 157: A Toast to the Friction Between Non- and Fiction
Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: RSS As Angie heads from Zoom into the classroom, she and Elizabeth discuss the switching of mediums, the differences between camera and stage. Body language. Elizabeth is working on deciding her next project. Then they…
Episode 156: What Shall I Work on Next? Deciding and Getting Started
Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: RSS In today’s episode, Angie and Elizabeth report in their debut trailer camping experience, amd compare it to a creative process. Meanwhile,Angie is doing animation, and Elizabeth gives a submissions update. They…
Episode 155: And That is When the Murders Began
Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: RSS The episode kicks off with a glance at the trouble with deep work in a pandemic with kids before diving into emotion in story: Emotional arc and emotion as action trigger, emional as both key and causal. It is…
Episode 154: The Character of Intuitive Planning
Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: RSS Angie teaches math and daydreams a new film while Elizabeth gets a mammogram and considers character questions. In today’s episode, Elizabeth explores the epiphany she began to have on last week’s episode by asking…
Episode 153: Time Management for Narrators
Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: RSS In this week’s episode, a listener asks a question about transitions and pacing, leading to a roving discussion of pacing, logistics, linearity, causality, and intentionality: what is significant—and how do you…
Episode 152: A Generous Frugality: Uses of Poetic Language in Prose
Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: RSS In this episode, Angie and Elizabeth answer a listener’s question about h ow to use poetic language to story’s advantage rather than distraction. This requires teasing apart what, exactly, poetic language…
Episode 151: Systems to Submit Your Work
Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: RSS Happy New Year! Angie and Elizabeth follow their “what are you working on” opening into a deep dive into the art and systems of submitting your work to literary journals, as Elizabeth has begun to do. This includes…
Episode 150: Angie Liked a Book
Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: RSS With Elizabeth fresh off virtual Sonoma County Writers Camp, she and Angie discuss the technological opportunities of this moment and how it will carry into the future. This evolves into a consideration of the…
Episode 149: Omniscient First Person: A Thanksgiving Episode
Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: RSS Yay, you voted! And look, it worked. Now buy books from your local indie bookstore. In today’s episode, Angie and Elizabeth talk about voice and POV, including the theatrical element of voice, leaning into voice,…
Episode 147: Only Connect
Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: RSS Today’s podcast mines for what we can learn about the moments we falter–as when Angie and Elizabeth stopped podcasting for a few weeks. The conversation wonders, Who has more free time right now? And briefly…
Episode 146:Stop the Presses! An Interview with Debut Novelist Carole Stivers
Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: RSS Today’s episode features an interview with scientist and debut novelist Carole Stivers, whose new book The Mother Code launches this week. The discussion ranges over climate science fiction, genetic engineering,…
Episode 145:Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Plot?
Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: RSS Angie and Elizabeth, car packed to flee amidst the smoke of the Lightening Complex Fires, tackle what is too much plot? What is the difference between significant escalation in a story and the heaping on of chaos…
Episode 144:Having Your Cake: Character’s Driving Desire Story
Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: RSS Angie is figuring out how to figure out what she’s working on, and Elizabeth is working on the external propeller of her novel while starting something new. They grapple with how character desire drives a story,…