Today’s podcast is all about growth mindset, from the very beginning checking in about what they are working on. Angie is learning a lot as she re-created the Book in a Year curriculum videos, and Elizabeth teaches best when she is at her own edge. Brain plasticity is the topic, and how it applies to writers, filmmakers and other artists. They dig into giftedness v. the trainable brain. “You,” Angie proclaims, “could become the writer of your dreams.” It’s a matter of practicing to be better in your chosen field, expanding your brain’s capacities. Struggle is a key component to learning and growing, so find your challenge, your edge, look for it, and enjoy it. They touch on parenting as an art where struggle is a key component, and look at the power of being internally driven. They mention a tool they advocate: writing a letter to self about your book before getting input from others. Elizabeth claims that the theories and science Angie lays out would make a good Pixar film, a follow up to Inside Out but about neurology rather than emotions. You heard it here first.

Links Discussed:

Jo Boaler Limitless Mind: Learn, Lead, and Live Without Barriers

Carol Dweck Mindset: the New Psychology of Success

Nassim Nicholas Taleb Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Daniel Coyle The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How.

Light This Location Contest

The Golden Girls

Writing advice was from https://twitter.com/Massawyrm

Don't forget to send in your questions!

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.

Today on the show, Angie and Elizabeth discuss burnout--what it feels like, where it comes from, whether it matters where it comes from, what to do about it, if there is anything to do about it, and more. What is productivity and how are we managing it? Are the things we are checking off our to do lists the things we want to check off our bucket lists? Included in this episode: permission to set boundaries, take time off, say no, go outside, work with your hands, read and rest. The curative properties of the real, sensual world. Being unapologetically emotional.

Links Discussed:

Donna Tartt

Tiny Love Stories

Film: More Beautiful for Having Been Broken

Writers on Writing podcast interview with Ann Patchett

Don't forget to send in your questions!

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.

A listener asks about setting up expectations and then defying them in the use of scene. This leads to a deep dive into expectations--how turning them, upturning them, overturning them is what story is all about. Patterns and meaning. Why story relies on expectation, why we seek learning and when we seek novelty, what motivates us and our characters and our readers. Elizabeth and Angie touch on the difference between an action’s being out of character versus reflecting a character change. They also get into the art and suffering of submitting manuscripts, the professionalism of collecting rejections, the importance of getting feedback in a timely fashion--and the role of submission and rejection in that loop. Wrestling with the math around submissions and success, they decide to launch a contest between them--and open to Story Makers Show listeners--to complete and submit a short story by the next podcast. This episode also points to theme as a sandbox, creating parameters in which to play with and juxtapose ideas.

Links Discussed:

Ira Glass This American Life

Italo Calvino on classics

The Bible

Joyce Carol Oates Masterclass trailer

Don't forget to send in your questions!

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 today’s episode, Angie and Elizabeth discuss what it might mean when someone says a memoir is like a novel or a novel is like a movie. Hashing through the elements of shaping a true story into a compelling narrative, and the pros and cons of cross-genre identification, they look at what “good writing” means when lobbed at a television show. They play “novel neener”  (a kind of “would you rather”), where Angie pushes Elizabeth to articulate which elements most make a story “like a novel.” The conversation digs into causality v. thematic organization, dramatic changes, definitions of creative nonfiction, stakes--and whether the blockbuster superhero movie glut stems from a failure to imagine stakes other than life-or-death. Elizabeth pitches her novel and Angie analyzes why people might say it sounds “like a movie.” Angie makes a claim that movies are more emotionally distant than novels. Steal This focuses on productivity this week. Finally, join Angie this Friday, Sept. 27, at 5 pm at the Mary Pickford in Cathedral City!

Links Discussed:

Lost in the Middle at Cinema Diverse, Palm Springs LGBTQ Film Festival

For They Know Not What They Do a documentary by Daniel Karslake

Tara Westover Educated

Cheryl Strayed Wild

Annie Dillard The Writing Life

Mary Karr Lit

Jeanette Walls The Glass Castle

Maggie Nelson The Argonauts

Karen Russel Swamplandia

Natalie Saurotte Childhood

Scott Young Ultralearning

Stever Robbins Get It Done Guy on Mark Forster’s Speed-dating Your Tasks

Blake Snyder Six Things that Need Fixing

Emma Thompson in Remains of the Day

Don't forget to send in your questions!

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.

By what method to you guide and structure story? This episode aims to take down any dichotomy between planning and accessing your intuition. Angie and Elizabeth delve into right- and left-brain approaches and exercises that can help you dig a framework out of your unconscious. Yes, make lists, but gut check them. We resist intuition because it’s vulnerable and scary, so they offer strategies for moving forward toward fear. Let the constraints lead you to greater freedom, and connect deeply with what matters to you most, because that will sustain you.

Links Discussed:

Book in a Year: http://bookinayear.com/classes-available-now

Free Kick-off Party and 7-step Lesson: https://bookwritingworld.com/free-BIAY-kickoff-lesson/

Broad Humor Film Festival: https://www.broadhumorfilmfest.com

D.A.R.E. book and program on anxiety: https://dareresponse.com/

 The 21st Century Screenplay: http://www.lindaaronson.com/21st-century-screenplay.html

Lost in the Middle at Cinema Diverse in Palm Springs https://psculturalcenter.org/filmfest/movie/lost-in-the-middle 

Antifragility by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/176227/antifragile-by-nassim-nicholas-taleb/9780812979688/

The Life Coach School podcast where Elizabeth heard about Antifragility

https://thelifecoachschool.com/podcast/284/

Where’d You Go, Bernadette?

Film: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2365580/

Book: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780316204262

Don't forget to send in your questions!

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 and Elizabeth focus today on answering a listener’s question about when to use scene, when to use summary, and how/ when you should know which one is right. Hints: if there is no fundamental change and/ or a lot of repetitive action, summary is a good bet; if you can cut a scene, summary or section, cut it or find a reason why it’s indispensable. The conversation generates several tips about summary, scene and editing, as well as good reminders of the difference between drafting and revision, the importance of build and arc, the distinction between tools and restrictions, and the ways once you’ve mastered your tools you can “go McGyver on them.” Also: What are the ways that film does summary and what can prose writers learn from those approaches? How can scene detail and character behavior set expectations and clarify the rhythms of the world in a story? And: scene lists, waiting for feedback, besting yourself (v. competing with others), electronic press kids, the small things we give up to make time for writing, and the way that art is also a learning project.

Links Discussed:

Becoming Michelle Obama

Scott Young

Middlesex Jeffery Eugenedies   

Adaptation (film)

The Orchid Thief Susan Orlean

Don't forget to send in your questions!

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.