What of the storyteller who stands before a live audience, to entrance, to entertain, to warn, to engage? What can we learn from the most ancient form of story making? Today we talk with acclaimed storyteller--and former psychotherapist--Hari Meyers about the art, archetypes and activism of the storyteller. In his latest project, Hari is resurrecting the reference for the goddess Isis away from the terrorist organization. We dig into archetypal understandings of character and mythical structure, the ways to tell psychological propaganda from a particular time versus deeper internal question in a story, and the necessity of exhausting a character’s flaws as you move toward empathy. The thrill of live theater, the amplification provided by a large audience, the purposes of story and even the failings of Freud as storyteller come under our examination in this far ranging conversation that gets to the ur-art under all story making: live myth telling.

Links Discussed:

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

Oedipus in Colonus

The Epic Gilgamesh

The Iliad and the Odyssey

The Great Gatsby

The First Bad Man

The 12 Labors of Hercules

Science of the Magical

The Mahabharata

Of Isis and Osiris

Joseph Campbell

King David and the story of David and Goliath

Medea the play 

Oedipus by Sophocles

Clarence Fountain and the Five Blind Boys of Alabama/ The Gospel at Colonus 

Johan Sebastian Bach

Walt Whitman

Tony Zhou video essays

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.

This week Angie interviewed Elizabeth, just to get really meta or, you know, narcissistic. Actually, we thought this would be a good way to introduce us to our listeners: Who are these people asking these questions? Why are they so hungry to know everything about story? Angie pulls out her hardball questions and we dig how to make writing as high a priority as any other kind of work even though it's not usually as lucrative, the tremendous freedom of writing badly, vulnerability, and what meditating and writing have in common. We talk about the importance of story and ways to find it, including extremism, bad behavior, flaws and the dangerous project of staying alive. We ponder whether a writer’s greatest fear is always also her greatest desire, and how intuition and fascination will fuel your writing. A little bit of life story, from pre-teen busking to years of morning pages, comes into play. And we end of talking a lot about Stephen King.

Links

Audition

On Writing

Misery

Lolita

Where You Dream

Sonny's Blues

"The Langoliers"

Podcast Guest Nina Schuyler

Jessica Hinds

Ethan Canin

Bob Shacochis

"Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin

Writing Short Screenplays That Connect

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.

In this honest conversation with Meredith Maran, prolific memoirist, book reviewer, novelist and editor of the newly released Why We Write About Ourselves, we dive into the risks of writing a memoir whose story you are still living. Meredith gives us her excellent test for “memoirability”--how to tell if your story should be a memoir. Having just interviewed 20 top memoirists publishing today and now under contract and deadline for her own next memoir, Meredith is uniquely poised to talk about the challenges, rewards and necessary tests and tips for the genre. She also tells us how she “cheated on her agent” to pitch the book to an editor while the agent was out of town, and the key information she learned about whether to make her memoir humorous with touches of poignancy or poignant with traces of humor. Find out how Facebook and iCal served her writing process. Get crucial insight into a book reviewer's perspective on publicity, the publishing world, the fate of a book and the future of freelance.

Books and links discussed:

Meredith Maran

Meredith’s Review of recent podcast guest Paul Lisicky’s memoir, The Narrow Door

Novelist Susan Sherman (her writing partner)

Counterpoint Press

Dan Smetanka, editor at Counterpoint

Olivia de Havilland

Abigail Thomas

Jennifer Egan

Kathryn Harrison 

Victor Frankel Institute

A.M. Holmes

Anne Lamott

A Theory of Small Earthquakes

What It’s Like to Live Now

A Seahorse Year

Just Kids

The Bean Trees

Anima, Vegetable, Miracle

Middlesex

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.

What does it feel like to be an overnight success after 17 years of publishing? In our lovely conversation with novelist, memoirist and essayist Paul Lisicky, we discuss the benefit of low expectations and the liberation of not worrying about having a huge audience followed by the surprise of getting one with his new memoir, The Narrow Door. We look at the role of discouragement in shaping a life/ life story, what it’s like to be writing the book while the story is still unfolding, inhabiting each moment of a narrative with feeling and intelligence, questions of perspective and time, and decisions around anonymity and using names. Paul talks shop: the process of placing work in journals and lit mags, submissions, and a surprising thought about online vs print publications. Writing while walking seems to be a theme in the Story Maker podcasts, and it comes up in a fun way here. This rich and winding conversation also covers boredom, randomness, the importance of paying attention to the way your mind works.

Links

Paul Lisicky

Bluets

The Adderall Diaries

The Ticking is the Bomb

What Belongs to You

Outline

Black Deutchland

The Door

The Mare
“The Pain Scale” by Eula Bliss

Home for the Holidays (movie)

Loorie Moore

Virginia Woolf

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.