Write The Book: Conversations on Craft

Award-winning Vermont Author Brad Kessler in conversation about his 2021 novel, North (Overlook Press).

One review of Brad Kessler’s work, a blurb by the author Chris Abani, mentions  the way that Brad lets his characters’ dignity lead the story. I love this observation, and have been thinking a lot about it. This week’s Write the Book Prompt is to consider the dignity of your characters, no matter what their goals, obstacles, or plight. Consider their dignity as you work to make them real, honest, not caricatures of good or bad. Keep their dignity in mind as you try to find your way, and help them find theirs.

Good luck with your work in the coming week, and tune in next week for another prompt or suggestion.

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

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British Author Caroline Lea, whose new novel is PrizeWomen (Harper Perennial). 

This week's Write the Book Prompt was suggested by my guest, Caroline Lea. It's an assignment she sometimes gives to her students. Go somewhere you wouldn't normally go, and write about it. (Don’t get arrested, she says. Or if you do, don’t blame her!) Her students have visited cemeteries, they've gone to other dorms and spoken with students they wouldn’t usually speak to. Caroline says that there's something about putting yourself in a different space or hopefully a slightly uncomfortably position that forces something often very brilliant into your writing. 

Good luck with your work in the coming week and please tune in next week for another prompt or suggestion. 

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

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An interview from 2015 (with our old music!) with literary agent Emily Forland, of the Brandt Hochman Agency in New York. 

This week’s  Write The Book Prompt is to write about a season you are not presently experiencing. Is it warm where you are? Write about the cold. Is spring coming on? Write about the fall. Work from memory, as much as you can, and then in revising, allow yourself to look at pictures, read online, and check your weather app to be sure you're not forgetting what that other season actually feels like. 

 

Good luck with this exercise and please listen next week for another.  

 

Music Credit: John Fink

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Vermont Author Annie Seyler, whose debut novel is The Wisdom of Winter (Atmosphere Press). 

This week's Write the Book Prompt was generously offered by my guest, Annie Seyler. Identify a moment from your childhood that shaped you somehow and write it out as a scene, but with a different ending or outcome than the way you lived it.

Good luck with your work in the coming week, and tune in next week for another prompt or suggestion.

 

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

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