Fifteen minutes long, because you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart.
As the end of Season 19 approaches, we want to help you integrate what you’ve learned over the year. For December, we’ll be releasing episodes designed to help you make measurable progress on a writing project. So dust off your current work-in-progress, or pull out your brainstorming documents—we’re here to…
As the end of Season 19 approaches, we want to help you integrate what you’ve learned over the year. For December, we’ll be releasing episodes designed to help you make measurable progress on a writing project. So dust off your current work-in-progress, or pull out your brainstorming documents—we’re here to…
As we wrap up our Close Reading Series, we’re shifting our focus towards helping you integrate what you’ve learned. For December, we’ll be releasing episodes designed to help you make measurable progress on a writing project. So dust off your current work-in-progress, or pull out your brainstorming documents—we’re here to…
As we wrap up our Close Reading Series, we’re shifting our focus towards helping you integrate what you’ve learned. For December, we’ll be releasing episodes designed to help you make measurable progress on a writing project. So dust off your current work-in-progress, or pull out your brainstorming documents—we’re here to…
We reminisce on when we were on a writing retreat on a cruise in 2023, planning this close reading series. We have loved how this series grounded our conversations, allowing us to dive into works that were complex in specific ways. We have loved wading into the waters of voice,…
We’ve loved doing our close reading series throughout 2024, and The Fifth Season has been no different. Today, we’re reflecting on what we learned in our episodes focusing on N.K. Jemisin’s incredible work. We reflect on POV as structure, parallelism, and finding the beating heart of your manuscript. Thing of the Week: I Saw…
Today we’re zooming out to see where N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season fits into the canon of fantasy literature. How does Jemisin interact with magic, words, and the expectations of the genre? And what expectations do the readers bring themselves? How does Jemisin repurpose parts of the hero’s journey while creating something…
Just a reminder that we will be talking about a lot of spoilers, so if you haven’t read The Fifth Season, go and do so now! As we dive into N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season, we wanted to tell you why we chose this work to examine the importance of structure. The structure of the…
We sat down with the author of Ring Shout, P. Djèlí Clark, in order to wrap up our close reading of tension. We talked with Clark about his influences, which ranged from Birth of a Nation to Beyonce’s “Formation.” We dive into contextual vs. narrative tension, why food is the unsung hero of worldbuilding,…
This episode, we’re talking about how important tension is in creating a world where your readers feel fully immersed. We talk about the importance of using tropes and techniques while also using variation in order to make your story less predictable. We dive into the difference between tension and conflict,…
