A writing podcast for writers and curious readers, featuring interviews with authors, poets, agents and editors. Twice chosen as one of Writer’s Digest Magazine’s 101 Best Website for Writers. Vermont-grown.
Episodes
Tuesday Feb 02, 2021
Tuesday Feb 02, 2021
A conversation about setting with Susan Conley, author of Landslide, and Lauren Fox, author of Send For Me, both published by Knopf.
This week we have four Write the Book Prompts, thanks to the generosity of my guests.
From Susan:
- During the interview, Susan urges writers not to be fooled by "description for description's sake.” Instead of just being happy with beautiful sentences about place, take your setting to the next level with this activity: Go to a place that has the most heat for you in your mind, in your project. Think about that setting and "describe the heck out of it" in a free write for 2-4 minutes. Then in the second half of the prompt, bring a huge problem to that place. Susan suggests that two characters have a big fight in that setting. Suddenly you introduce complexity, which brings in place as conduit for trouble and emotion. Leap from pure description and the beautiful sentence to the catalyzing action. She says she speaks of this with humility, having come to fiction through poetry. She liked writing beautiful sentences. But now she realizes that, in fiction, action really is necessary. It's not enough to describe the ocean. You have to have, in her case, "a teenager imploding in a boat on the ocean."
- Read "The Colonel," by Caroline Forché. A powerful poem, it begins, "What you have heard is true." Susan offers this line as a prompt for students and asks them to write without censorship for ten minutes. Something about that line often cracks open some big stuff for people.
From Lauren:
- Write a short scene, and then rewrite the same scene in a different setting. As Lauren mentions during our interview, playing with setting—inventing, changing, renaming, re-placing (literally)—can present opportunities that open up our work in new ways.
- She also suggests an exercise that both she and her husband have shared with students; he's an English professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Inspired by The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard (Library of America), the prompt is to write a series of sentences, all of which begin with "I remember." Lauren says that beginning with these two words tends to almost magically unlock memories and ideas.
Good luck with your work in the coming week, and tune in next week for another prompt or suggestion.
Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro
662
Thursday Jun 05, 2014
Thursday Jun 05, 2014
National Book Award Finalist Joshua Ferris, whose new novel is To
Rise Again At A Decent Hour, published by Little Brown.
This week's Write The Book Prompt concerns titles, because I think To Rise Again At A Decent Hour is a fantastic title. I’d love to do an entire show about finding good titles. They are the first words most of us ever see about a book, and they can prompt a potential reader to investigate further, or just walk on by. This week, spend a little time thinking about how you might like to title a piece you’re working on. Initially, just spend time with the piece, without making comparisons about other titles that are out there in the world. Then do a study: scan titles at a library or bookstore. Pick up a collection of stories or poems (preferably an anthology, or a Best American collection, so that you’re studying the names of various writers’ works). Take notes about which selections you might want to read, based on title alone. Look for patterns in your own tastes, and in what you see getting published. Are you more drawn to titles that include a character’s name, or a place, or a hint of the plot? Do you prefer titles that are quirky, like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time or Me Talk Pretty One Day? Or do you gravitate to more straightforward titles: The Goldfinch, The Bird Artist. Look once more at the piece you’re working on and think about how you might title it. Hopefully you’ll have some new ideas.
Good luck with this prompt and please listen next week for another.
Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several former South Burlington High School students, now alums).