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 and disaster in the real world? Create meaning via choices and understand the ways events press on a character in need of a story journey. The conversation touches on multiple universes, individual stakes v. larger issues, immediate v. long-term danger, consequences, intersectional identities and vampires, not to mention MacGuffins, Casablanca, and Humphrey Bogart. What does it mean to write in a time of chaos, and how and where should we focus? There is no right or single answer, but let’s discuss! 

Links in this episode:  

Explaining the Pandemic to My Past Self

Link to Professor Crunk

Jewelle Gomez The Gilda Stories

One Tin Soldier--Link to song from my friend Danielle

Questions? Email questions at storymakersshow.com 

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.

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, and how a character’s limiting belief impacts that desire, and how both build the premise. Want versus need comes up, and much about story, character worldview, American expectations and desire regarding story, values in conflict, powerful stakes, dog love as a solution to all problems, and more!

Links in this episode:

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

Room by Emma Donoghue

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

Elf

30 Rock

Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

The Distant Dead by Heather Young

FREE Class Weds. Aug. 5, Writing in the Time of Covid-19

Questions? Email questions at storymakersshow.com

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.