Tools, not rules. For writers, by writers.
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…
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,…
The structure of The Fifth Season features both mirroring and inversion. How do these structural shifts interact with the three POVs? On today’s episode, we talk about the parallelism of the perspectives and the linguistic references to seasons. This leads us to the question, how many things need to work in sync…
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,…
Today, we’re taking a higher view on the techniques we’ve been talking about over the last four episodes and focusing on how you can use our takeaways in your own writing. We’ll go over our final thoughts on C.L. Clark’s short stories (until next week’s episode, when we interview them!).…
We have a theory that we want to work through on today’s episode: agency is the ability to take action, whereas choices are more about the interior life of the character. We use Mary Robinette’s talking cat, try-fail cycles, and C.L. Clark’s Your Eyes, My Beacon: Being an Account of Several…
Today, we’re focusing on C.L. Clark’s “The Cook,” as we explore external and internal expression. We chose this story because it’s a remarkably physical and touchable story with myriad sensory details. While the audience gets very little information about what Clark’s characters are thinking, you can still understand their internal landscapes by…
What cultural and worldbuilding information is embedded within the smallest of word choices? Today, we dive into three specific sections from throughout Martine’s “A Memory Called Empire”: the word for empire, assimilation and naming, and learning the word for bomb. We unpack how Martine uses language to establish important principles…
How do you use language and scale to focus your writing? Today, we think about scale and movement across vast spaces. What do characters’ movements tell us about empires and also—force? We talk about Martine’s incredible work establishing an empire across time, not (just) space. We read aloud some of…
