Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard
“Write what you know” gets misapplied a lot. In this episode we’ll talk about how to know things by listening well. In particular, we’re looking at writing interesting characters by listening to real people.
We also talk about the more formal act of interviewing people¹, and how to deal with the attendant complexities.
Liner Notes: Mary references her interviewing of rocket scientists and astronauts, which we just talked about last week. When this episode was recorded the JPL trip was still in our future, and was “will have been” extremely cool.
Comment Notes: The audio file wasn’t correctly linked until Tuesday. The irony of the our “how to listen” episode having exactly zero “listen” buttons is not lost on anyone.
Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson and engineered by Alex Jackson. Their fine work was obscured from public view by the careless hands of Howard Tayler.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:46 — 14.3MB)
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Interview some people! Find someone you don’t know, and then interview them, with a goal of learning something new.
Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer To Retrain Your Brain, by Stephen J Dubner and Steven D Leavitt, narrated by Stephen J. Dubner
Where’s the “Listen” button to actually listen to the cast? Is it just me?
Listening is hard! O.o
I don’t see it either. Hah! “Learning to Listen as a Writer”
No, I had the same thing. Thought it was me cuz I’m not very techy. 😎
No, it’s not just you.
I suspect GenCon may have caused a hiccup…
Nope, I can’t see it either. And I really want to listen to this episode!
same problem
No. I don’t see one!!
It’s not just you
Same problem using Google Chrome. Button appears on previous episodes. Geoff
Who is frustrated.
Oh, is that why this episode hasn’t shown up on my podcast app yet?
Mine neither
There is no listen button.
I don’t see download link. …. it’s giving me anxiety.
I can’t find the buttons to listen or download. Is it my phone?
I am currently listening to the silence 🙂
Anyone else see the joke? The “Listen” button is missing… on the ‘cast about learning to listen. I’d give it at least a coinflip that Howard did this on purpose.
Haha! You are right. It might have been a joke.
But it’s over now 8/7 and working again.
Yeah, no listen or download here either. Somewhat ironic, given the episode title.
Heh — ironic indeed. 🙂
Yeah—I thought I must really need to learn, if I can’t even listen to the podcast!
Huh?
Well the write-up has certainly built my anticipation!
Great episode! May we please get the author and title of the memoir Dan referenced that was authored by a female chaplain?
The book Dan mentioned sounds like “Here If You Need Me: A True Story,” by Kate Braestrup.
Thank you!!!
BTW, really needed this today, super-stressed at work and getting to listen to this was a huge source of “chill”.
Howard’s “what?” at the start was extra-funny given the missing LISTEN options yesterday. 🙂
Appreciated the take on “write what you know”. Since I tend to react literally, when people would say that to me I’d think “Well if I wrote only what I know I could only write a couple short articles.” LOL!!!!!
I guess I haven’t learned to articulate myself well enough yet–when I ask a subject matter expert an open ended question, they usually don’t end up answering what I need to know. Open ended is fine and I do agree that you learn more BUT I guess I’m not people oriented enough to convey the specific nature of my question without being blunt and obvious.
I’m not certain but I think the memoir Dan referenced was “Here If You Need Me” by Kate Braestrup — sounds like it anyway.
Thanks so much, Kate!
The episode is still not showing up on my podcast app.
Hey, did you hear about…? Yep, Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard talked about listening as a writer, to go along with the old adage write what you know. How do you take in ideas, personalities, attitudes, events, all that grist surrounding us and use it in your writing? Well, listen to the podcast, or read the transcript available now in the archives and over here
https://wetranscripts.dreamwidth.org/146059.html
You may learn something special! Something you never knew before…