Dogs Are Smarter Than People via Anchor
313 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 1 year ago - ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsWelcome to Dogs are Smarter Than People with NYT and internationally bestselling quirky human author Carrie Jones, her slightly more normal husband, Shaun, and their dogs. Life tips. Writing tips. Dog noises. It's all here.
Bonus episodes of BE BRAVE FRIDAYS (telling people's stories of bravery) and LOVING THE STRANGE (all about celebrating the weird) and author-to-author interviews. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/carriejonesbooks/support
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Episodes
Bigfoot Fights, Trailer Sauce, Florida Man Pizza and How Not To Write Flat
October 05, 2021 14:00 - 21 minutes - 29.6 MBA lot of writers will worry that their stories seem flat. There’s a reason that they are worrying about that and it’s one of the core elements of good writing. Ready? You want to vary your sentence structure. Take a bit of writing that you’ve done that feels flat—or maybe even one that doesn’t. Count the words in your sentences for two or three paragraphs. Are they all five words? Twelve? Twenty-seven? That robotic sameness in sentence length is one of the main reasons that writing can ...
You Should Start Your Own Publishing Company – Be Brave Friday
October 02, 2021 13:30 - 5 minutes - 5.13 MBIT’S BE BRAVE FRIDAY WHERE SHAUN OR I (FROM DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE AND LOVING THE STRANGE AND JUST BEING AN AUTHOR IN MAINE) SHARE PEOPLE’S UNEDITED, UNFILTERED STORIES, SO WE CAN ALL CELEBRATE THE BIG AND LITTLE BRAVE THINGS WE DO ALL THE TIME. SOMETIMES WE DON’T EVEN REALIZE WE’RE BEING BRAVE. Here goes our email where she's being brave by telling us to be brave: I’ve been reading your stuff on Patreon and Medium and loving it, as always. I keep having this crazy idea pop up in m...
WEIRD, WILD DRINKING TRADITIONS and a LADY WHO CRUSHES THINGS WITH HER BREASTS
October 02, 2021 13:10 - 5 minutes - 5.13 MBThis week’s podcast is all about the weird, wild drinking traditions in our world, plus some random facts, which led us down a wormhole (thanks, Dee!) to discover a woman who crushes things with her breasts. We hope she’s okay. Allegedly, she has a house on an island in Maine. Maybe we’re neighbors? RESOURCES https://www.thrillist.com/vice/17-weird-drinking-laws-from-around-the-world-crazy-liquor-laws https://www.huffpost.com/entry/worlds-strangest-drinking-customs_n_5758554 https://www...
He Built a Guitar Out of His Uncle's Skeleton And Overexplaining Makes Bad Writing
September 28, 2021 15:00 - 23 minutes - 33 MBAuthors, let’s just admit it. We’re insecure. Writing is communication and we want to make sure that our readers are getting what we’re putting down (Translation: Understanding what we’re saying). SO, WHAT DO WE DO? We over-explain. And that over-explaining slows down our pacing and makes our reader not want to read anymore. THERE ARE LOTS OF BIGGER WAYS OF OVEREXPLAINING. And what is overexplaining? It’s when you just keep adding things on to make your reader get what you’re saying. ...
Helping Toxic People Even When They Didn't Help You - Be Brave Friday
September 24, 2021 14:25 - 9 minutes - 12.4 MBJordan's story is a bit too long to fit here so go to carriejonesbooks.blog for the notes or just click here. Please send us your be brave stories when you feel brave enough, okay? --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/carriejonesbooks/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/carriejonesbooks/support
Full-time Writer and Thinker – Martin Vidal QuarterLife Crises Led to Full-time Writing Career
September 23, 2021 17:00 - 28 minutes - 39 MBI was lucky enough to interview author and writer, Martin Vidal, and pick his brain. I hope you’ll check out the video or podcast and give this man some props. HERE ARE SOME HIGHLIGHTS TO ENTICE YOU TO LISTEN. On Martin’s website he says that he loves to write and figure things out, which really struck a chord with me because that’s what I do, too. I hope you’ll listen to one of my favorite interviews yet with one of my new favorite people. Martin’s Ambition Handbook is all about self-ex...
Alligator Romance with Darth Gator and the grammar behind the words in to vs into
September 21, 2021 13:00 - 21 minutes - 29.8 MBSo, now that we’re into the helpful part of the podcast and no longer talking about women in love with the alligators that attacked them or dogs and cats breaking records together, we thought we’d take a quick look at a big grammar mistake. And that’s when INTO is one word or two. IS IT . . . Dude, I am so into you. OR IS IT . . . Dude, I am so in to you. Here’s how it works. INTO all as one word is a preposition, which means it’s showing MOVEMENT of one thing to another thing. But I...
It Isn’t Too Late to Be There For Your Kids Our Most Personal Be Brave Friday Ever
September 17, 2021 18:52 - 6 minutes - 12.2 MBIt’s Be Brave Friday where Shaun or I (from Dogs are Smarter than People and Loving the Strange and just being an author in Maine) share people’s stories, but this week, I’m sharing ours. It’s the first time I’ve talked publicly about this and it’s kind of hard. Trigger Warning for parent issues (not us). We have an adorable kid who has autism and ODD and ADD. And here’s the thing. They are funny and creative and have big emotions about their world. That isn’t the easiest thing to handle ...
Throwing Poop on Your Landlord, Demon Texts, and Making Happy Endings
September 14, 2021 16:00 - 21 minutes - 29.9 MBCarrie reads a lot of novels in progress and helps writers make those novels better and one of the big things that happen that keep a book from being super star status is an unsatisfying ending. Yes. Yes, that is about books, not sex, Shaun. But some of the same principles apply to both. You want your ending to be satisfying even if it’s an unhappy ending. So, how do you make your ending satisfying? Ah, just like the copulation, it’s all about fulfilling your promises to the reader in th...
Writers, Don’t be basic. Run-on sentences are a turn-off just like your parents throwing away your porn
August 31, 2021 14:00 - 21 minutes - 29.6 MBWe’ve all met them. The human at a party, in a line, or god-forbid sitting next to you in an airplane and they talk and talk and talk and don’t pause to breathe. Do you enjoy those people? Not usually. Do you want them to shut the heck up for a half second? Usually. Well, writers, we hate to tell you all this, but we are guilty of doing this to our reader. Yes, you, writer, might be the annoying person on the plane talking about Aunt Sally’s hemorrhoids and all the fish you saw in Roata...
No More Toxic Friendships - Be Brave Friday
August 27, 2021 19:13 - 4 minutes - 4.99 MBBe Brave Friday – No More Toxic. Here on Be Brave Friday we share Be Brave stories from our home in Maine because we want us all to ban together and be stronger, braver humans. This week, we found a few Be Brave moments on a Reddit thread (link in the notes) about “what improved your quality of life so much, you wish you did it sooner.” That might not seem like a place where being brave stories would be, but the truth is that sometimes we hold ourselves back and have to make some brave mo...
Sea Snakes Humping and Three Principles of Good Writing
August 24, 2021 14:00 - 21 minutes - 29.6 MBWhen I started being a reporter, one of my editors took me aside and gave me some candy and two books. One was the AP Style Guide, which is the manual for all the punctuation rules our newspaper followed. The other was a book by E.B. White and William Strunk Jr., called The Elements of Style. My editor had met E.B. White who had a farm on the same peninsula that he did. “This,” he told me, “is all you need to know.” In that small book was a section called “The Elementary Principles of Com...
How to Be Brave
August 20, 2021 16:12 - 6 minutes - 5.78 MBBecause our daughter is home for the week, we’re taking the week off in posting BE BRAVE FRIDAY video and podcast and also our LOVING THE STRANGE podcast because we want to make family time a priority for this one week. I know! We never miss a week. And sometimes I have a tiny bit of anxiety over that, but it’s worth it. Family is worth it. So instead, I thought I might quickly talk about what it means to be brave. Ready? WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A BRAVE PERSON? It’s pretty simple really...
The Lactating Armpit and How To Make Your Characters Have Different Voices
August 17, 2021 18:00 - 21 minutes - 29.7 MBVoice is such a big deal for making memorable and believable characters in your story, but it’s one of the harder things to understand sometimes. As writer Rita Mae Brown said, “People are funny. No doubt you’ve noticed that others are not nearly as reasonable as yourself. Shocking, isn’t it? This difference between you and other people comes out in speech. Obviously, difference displays itself in the subject matter people speak about, but on a deeper, more subtle level, it displays itself...
We are TOO Angry to Podcast Plus So Many Ways to Work on the Plot of Your Story
August 10, 2021 16:00 - 36 minutes - 50.1 MB(Carrie) was at a conference one time and hanging out with a bunch of celebrity young adult authors. One author said he wrote everything down in an outline form first. Another author said that she wrote expressly to the Save the Cat beatsheet. And I said, “I just kind of write.” They gasped. I ordered a drink with actual alcohol in it and another writer saved me by saying, “I, like Carrie, just write after doing decades of research in a dark and lonely hole in my basement drinking only Po...
There Is Nothing Better than a Sexy Setting, Writers
August 03, 2021 19:00 - 25 minutes - 34.7 MBLately, Carrie has been talking to a lot of writers that she coaches and edits about settings. That’s because a lot of writers are blowing them off. So, she’ll read a lot of passages like this: “Hey,” I sit at my desk, “you coming over later?” “Yep,” Shaun says. “Cool.” “I thought maybe we could have some hanky-panky.” “Okay?” So, we know that Shaun wants to have some hanky-panky and the “I” of the story is sitting at their desk. But we don’t know what kind of desk, where that desk is...
Naughty Transitions are A Writer’s Best Friend
July 27, 2021 19:00 - 25 minutes - 34.7 MBThere are certain traps us writers fall into. We generalize. We are too abstract. We summarize. We fail at transitions. And a lot of those negative tendencies can quite easily be fixed when you think about them a bit more and learn to recognize them. Scenes are a bit like connected shots in a movie. I think everyone from Blake Snyder to Robert Olen Butler has said this, but they’re right. The scene is the basic element of your story. You want to stay in one point of view. Think of it ...
Drug your readers. Five ways to get readers to want to lick your character like they’re the Bowling Ball Guy
July 20, 2021 14:00 - 20 minutes - 19.1 MBYou’re writing a book. Yay! You send it out to people to read. That’s so brave! Look at you, you rockstar. It feels awesome, right? And then you hear from those readers: I don’t like your character. I don’t—I don’t know—connect with them? When this happens, you are not allowed to: Yell at those readers. Threaten those readers. Give up on that story. Well, you could but you might go to jail and all your work on that novel will be for nothing. So, it’s totally okay to: Whine/cry for a...
Writers are Like Dust Mites Five Important Things Writers Need To Know
July 13, 2021 15:00 - 20 minutes - 28.1 MBSo, here on the podcast we try to be helpful sometimes. I know! I know! It’s hard to believe, but we thought this week, we’d give you a little insight about the writing life and writers. And lay down some truths. WE WRITERS ARE EVERYWHERE LIKE DUST MITES There are a butt ton of posts on what writers need to know. And you know why that is? Because there are a lot of us. Chuck Wendig wrote, “The internet is 55 percent porn and 45 percent writers.” And that means we aren’t alone. But it a...
Don't Write Like the Undead
July 06, 2021 16:00 - 18 minutes - 26.1 MBSometimes you’ll read a book and you’ll think—um, did a vampire write this? That’s not because it’s sexy and sparkling like the Twilight vampires or sexy and bloody with a rocking 1980s soundtrack like the Lost Boys vampires or sexy and in New Orleans like the Anne Rice vampires, but because the language in the story is so flowerly, so overwrought, so full of clauses that you think, “Only someone over two-hundred years old could have written this.” Yes, you could argue that M.T. Anderson s...
Dude, don’t nod. Four major writing mistakes that are easy to avoid
June 29, 2021 10:52 - 19 minutes - 18.3 MBHere in the Land of Writing Advice, we try not to lay down too many edicts because edicts are prickly things, but we’re going to put out four quick bits of writing advice that make you look a little more cool. Let’s get started. Nodding in acknowledgement. If you’re a writer and you write: Carrie nodded in acknowledgement. “Yes,” she said. “I do want to someday ride a manatee.” The reader/editor is going to think, “What the what?” A lot of writers worry that the reader isn’t going to g...
Getting High With Dolphins and Making Meaning How Do You Define Success
June 22, 2021 16:00 - 20 minutes - 28.5 MBHow do you make meaning in your life? That’s a big questions we’ve been struggling with here. Success is defined for us: It’s having a kid who graduates high school. It’s having your own home, your own car. It’s looking like a Kardashian. It’s being strong like the Rock. But when you were a little kid was that what you thought? Let’s say you’re two. Success is going on the potty, honestly, and not the floor. Success is not wearing a diaper. Success and happiness came from immediate t...
Being Swallowed by a Whale is So Bad Ass – Fear Setting and the Big Lie in Your Novel and Your Life
June 15, 2021 14:00 - 28 minutes - 38.9 MBHey! The full podcast notes with links are here! A lot of writers get blocks. Sometimes those blocks have to do with story ideas, with the fear that their idea sucks, that they don’t have the writing chops to pull off a novel. Sometimes those blocks have to do with worry that trolls will ridicule their story, nobody will read it, everyone will hate it. Sometimes those blocks have to do with the fear of typos, of not being perfect. But they all have to do with fear. As a writing coach, ...
Are You Brave Enough To Battle 15,000 Bees or Just Write a Book?
June 01, 2021 15:00 - 26 minutes - 36.2 MBWriting is a way of understanding stuff, not just yourself or the story in your book, but the way you look at the world. And that takes being brave. We are all brave and fearful in big and small ways in our own lives every damn day. For me, Carrie just putting my voice out here on the podcast is terrifying because I had a teacher who made me stay in from recess once to tell me that I needed to fix my sloshy s’s because nobody would ever love a girl who sounded like me, no employer would h...
DON’T STEAL ADULT TOYS THREE BIG TIPS FOR WRITING AND LIFE
May 25, 2021 15:00 - 19 minutes - 26.9 MBWe’re keeping it simple this week, my friends, with three big tips to write better novels and being a better human. Make your stories sexy and accurate. You can’t write a book that takes place in the south and not write ‘y’all’ or ‘bless your heart.’ You can’t write a book that takes place in the south and not have sugar in iced tea. Similarly, you can’t write a book in New England in the winter and not have the character’s breath puff out into the cold air. Your stories lose impact if ...
What Makes A Sexy Beginning and Emergency Poop?
May 18, 2021 14:00 - 18 minutes - 25.9 MBEvery writer and storyteller wants their beginning of their story to be enticing, sexy, something that someone can’t put down. A story is like a hot fudge sundae. You want the reader to gobble the whole thing down and that’s not going to happen if the first few bites suck. Luckily, there are a few components that absolutely help us writers make the beginnings of our stories sexy. Hook – This is the first sentence or first paragraph. You want it to clutch the reader in its hands and never ...
I’m Farting Carrots. Oh, the Mondegreen!
May 11, 2021 15:00 - 21 minutes - 19.9 MBWe’ve all done it. We’ve misheard song lyrics or actual words. We’ve argued about whether someone was saying Laurel or Yanni. But there is an actual term for that. According to Merriam Webster Dictionary, a mondegreen is “a word or phrase that results from a mishearing of something said or sung.” I had a whole character in my first book that did this all the time. Sylvia Wright made up the word in 1954 when she wrote an article about it for The Atlantic or possibly Harpers (these are the...
How Do You Make Your Story Thrilling and Sunbathing Your Testicles?
May 04, 2021 15:00 - 21 minutes - 29.9 MBYou’ve all read a story or heard a story that just bores you to tears, right? You don’t want to write that story UNLESS boring people is your goal. That’s a fine goal! You get to have that if you want it. Don’t let anyone take your goal away from you. But if that’s not your goal? Let’s talk. To not bore your reader, at the most basic level, you have to do three things. And these three things are the basic elements. Bare bones here, okay? Keeping your damn word. Just like in a relationsh...
Where Does Inspiration Come From and Raccoons Robbing Banks
April 27, 2021 13:00 - 21 minutes - 29.7 MBA lot of writers go around saying that they can’t find anything to write about. Ideas are everywhere; I promise. Just this week there was a headline on theslate.com that read, “Two ‘masked bandits’ raid California bank, and they didn’t want money, officials say.” The masked bandits were actually raccoons who broke into Redwood City Bank though it was closed. They were reported when a guy using an ATM said he saw a stuffed animal moving around inside the bank. Humane society officials we...
The Five Senses of Farts, Dangerous Croissant Animals, and Random Writing Tips About Settings
April 20, 2021 16:00 - 21 minutes - 29.7 MBhe smell of a really bad fart at a sleepover. The sound of giggles after someone has been dutch ovened at that same sleepover. The touch of a Dorito on your tongue. The sight of Godzilla’s leg outside your window. The five senses are so important in your story. Those details yank readers into the narrative. They associate it with their own really bad farts, giggles, processed cheese tastes and um–Godzilla moments–and have an emotional reaction and recognition. That’s what you, the writer, ...
Florida river monsters and it’s not writer’s block. It’s writer’s burnout.
April 13, 2021 15:00 - 21 minutes - 29.4 MBIt’s 2021 and people are burnt out. There’s COVID-19. There’s political strife. Systemic bigotries and biases. There’s meanies at the grocery store and there’s that never-ending effort for some of us to pay for food, shelter, and health care, right? On Carrie’s blog, http://www.carriejonesbooks.blog, she talked about how you can burnout on self care even, but also how writers seem super susceptible to burnout and why she was a bit burnt out for awhile. All the podcast notes (they don't all ...
Goat Voyeurs and UFOs are Everywhere and Why You Should Write B Stories
April 13, 2021 15:00 - 23 minutes - 32.2 MBScreenwriter Blake Snyder and his Save the Cat method really made the term/lingo “B” story and “A” story super popular. And I think sometimes that damn “B” story gets us all confused a bit, right? So, basically let’s just go over the terms first. WHAT THE HECK IS AN A STORY AND A B STORY? The A story is the book or movie’s big essence. People call it the “dramatic” core. It is the big plotline that the hero of the story follows on her journey. The B story is the subplot basically. It sup...
Naked Lady in the Drain and Why Authors Should Show and Not Tell
March 30, 2021 15:00 - 21 minutes - 29.5 MBSo a lot of writers get rejections that say, “Show, don’t tell.” And then they are left wondering, what does that even mean? And then everyone uses the Chekov quote, “Don’t tell me the moon is shining. Show me the glint of light on broken glass.” That’s because writers and editors like to quote other writers and editors because it makes us sound: Pretentious. Cough. I mean intelligent! Like we know what we’re doing. DEFINITIONS TIME Showing is what it sounds like. You are showing what...
Bear in the Outhouse. Chapter Titles and You
March 23, 2021 14:00 - 20 minutes - 28 MBThis week on Carrie’s blog, carriejonesbooks.blog, she’s talking all about chapters and so we’re talking about them on the podcast, too, because Carrie’s controlling like that. And what we’re talking about specifically is chapter titles. You can divide your books into chapters and just label them numerically, 1, 2, 3… But you can also give them a title like: Chapter One Surviving the Podcast Here’s the thing. Chapter Titles Help Your Readers How do they help your readers? In a lot of ...
Trophy Husbands and Don’t Only Think About the Money, Think About the Creation
March 09, 2021 16:00 - 23 minutes - 31.9 MBIn our random thought (not transcribed here), we talk about Being a trophy wife A woman finding an abandoned apartment behind her bathroom mirror Another couple finding a hidden basement in their rental home. SO A LOT OF MEDIUM ARTICLES AND BLOGS FOCUSED ON WRITING ARE ALL ABOUT: How to increase your audience How to make 60-trillion-dollars a year off your writing. How to be like James Patterson and make 90-trillion-dollars a year. But all of them seem to forget that writers are crea...
WEDGIES AND THREE BIG STEPS TO LEARN HOW TO WRITE GOOD STUFF
March 02, 2021 16:00 - 22 minutes - 30.3 MBIn the random thoughts part of the podcast we talk about Big Foot, wedgies and how you can tell when predators are looking at you. THREE BIG STEPS TO LEARN HOW TO WRITE GOOD STUFF There’s a lot of people out there who say that if you write every day you’ll become a better writer and that’s true … sort of. You also need the basics. If you write every day, but you don’t learn about writing every day then you don’t get to improve. You just write. And that’s not good enough. Learning how to...
Literary Agents Behaving Badly
February 23, 2021 17:00 - 22 minutes - 31.2 MBSo, there’s a lot of scuttlebutt in the children’s book world about agents behaving badly, which sounds like a Spring Fling Road Trip kind of thing, honestly. But it’s more about agents being dicks and unprofessional. One recent superstar agent has been outed for allegedly “no longer agenting ethically” and not telling clients about their foreign rights, submissions, and speaking badly about authors to other industry professionals or being sexually harassing, bigoted, racists schmucks. The...
Keep Your Cat Out Of Tinder and Other Sucky Advice
February 16, 2021 17:00 - 24 minutes - 33 MBIn our Random Thought section of the podcast (Notes not transcribed), we talk about how straight men aren’t supposed to let the world know they like/have cats on social media. Shaun has thoughts. More here. The rest of the podcast follows. Every weekday Carrie posts on her personal Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin, inspiring quotes from our dogs and cats. Sometimes they are just about bacon and naps because bacon and naps can be inspiring. But it made us think of famous writing...
Werewolves on Bikes and Stupid Bad Writing and Life Advice
February 09, 2021 17:00 - 20 minutes - 28.5 MBRANDOM THOUGHTS In our random thought, we talk about werewolves on bikes and what would happen if SuperBowl players dressed up like zombies and vampires. Who would win? The photos we promised are here along with the rest of our podcast notes that don't fit here. The Advice Part! So, advice is cool, right? It’s other people sharing their wisdom, but sometimes advice? It just sucks. This goes for writing advice and life advice. CarrieI was driving from Manhattan to Long Island with my b...
Florida Man and the semicolon is too sexy for its own good
February 02, 2021 16:00 - 23 minutes - 31.7 MBOkay, recently I’ve been working on a lot of people’s stories that are fantastic except for one thing—one easily fixable thing—they have semicolons everywhere. The semicolon is that little bit of punctuation that looks like there’s a comma on the bottom and a period topping it. And judging from people’s use of it? It’s an addictive, sexy beast. Most people think they understand the semicolon. It’s a period topping a comma, right? You use it to do something or um … yeah …? Here’s the thing...
Making Your Story Believably Bad Ass (and your characters too)
January 26, 2021 16:00 - 31 minutes - 43 MBA lot of time you’ll write a story and a beta reader, agent, editor or reviewer will say, “This is not believable.” And a lot of time, you’ll tweet something and some rando on Twitter will say, “WTF. You lie.” And a lot of time, you’ll just be telling a story at a party (or during Zoom in COVID times) and people will say, “No way! No freaking way.” This can be annoying especially when you’re trying to sell a book and you get that note. Why Does This Happen? Sometimes people react that w...
Are You Brilliant but Things Still Suck? F Your Way Through February
January 19, 2021 15:00 - 26 minutes - 37 MBThere are people out there who are just brilliant. Their brains are amazing. Their art is gasp-inducing. But they can’t seem to achieve their goals. These are the people who know twenty-two languages, have maybe five masters degrees, and shrug it off like it’s no big deal. They can quote Derrida and Angela Davis in the same breath and make the connections between the two. According to writer/blogger Jessica Wildfire, some people are ‘too good for their own good.’ She calls this the Cold...
Making Sexy Mission Statements and Writing Platforms
January 12, 2021 16:00 - 29 minutes - 40.9 MBOn thought of the podcast, which is not transcribed here, Shaun gets a bit mad at political things. If you’re not into that, you might want to skip to the eight-minute mark. Okay, first things first. What is a writing platform? An author’s platform is basically just the author’s presence on the web. Your website. Your TikTok, your Facebook, your Twitter, your Instagram, your podcast, your blog. Unlike Coke or Spanx, your platform isn’t faceless. It’s all about you, the writer. As the foun...
Picking the Writer Wedgie and Transitions
January 05, 2021 17:00 - 26 minutes - 35.9 MBIn life and in story, you have these things called transitions. Places were things change. You go from one place to another, one scene to another, one chapter to another, one husband to another, one president to another. A really good transition is really just a bridge that helps the reader go logically from one section, scene, chapter to another without it being awkward like a bad date or making their brain hitch where they say things like “We were just in space and now we’re at Wal-Mart?...
THE SEX TALK FOR WRITERS
December 29, 2020 16:00 - 26 minutes - 36.3 MBEight Sexy Ways to Write Sexy Carrie’s been editing a lot of erotica lately and despite her uptight New England ways, we thought it was time to give you all a few hints about writing sex scenes. Gasp! I know! I know! Here we go… Hint #1 It needs to make sense. We’ve all seen really un-sexy writing, right? You’re reading the passage and they are in a kitchen in a house in Wyoming and doing it on the counter and then—poof—they are in four-some on some beach in Belize. And you’re reading...
Having a Manly Christmas, Martial Law and How To Show Character
December 22, 2020 16:00 - 20 minutes - 28.3 MBCHARACTER VS CHARACTERIZATION Robert McPhee has a bit in his book, STORY, where he talks about character and characterization and one of my favorite aspects of that discussion is just this simple quote, which will hopefully be of some use to you: TRUE CHARACTER is revealed in the choices a human being makes under the pressure—the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character’s essential nature. We show who our character is by putting her/him/them u...
Don’t Be So Wordy, Punk, plus Stabbings and Vampires
December 15, 2020 16:00 - 20 minutes - 28.4 MBA lot of us humans and writers spend a lot of time trying to impress people by being extra wordy. And it seems like we’re all trying to avoid the word “because.” This is extremely cruel to the word “because,” which probably gets hurt feelings, but it’s also super cruel to your readers and/or listeners who deserve clarity. They need to understand what you’re putting down. So, when it comes to “because,” we do not need to say: The reason is because (that’s redundant). Due to the fact tha...
It Doesn’t Matter If The Rock Retweets You
December 01, 2020 16:00 - 16 minutes - 23.2 MBOkay, you all. We know this is harsh, but it’s truth time. Life isn’t about random interactions. Success isn’t about it either. When Carrie became Andrew Yang’s Twitter friend, it made her super happy, but it didn’t actually do anything for her. When the Rock retweeted her tweet about disabilities… Full disclosure: Carrie has no depth perception and also has epilepsy. …but when that happened? It was cool because it was the Rock, but it didn’t make her suddenly more successful or cooler. ...
How To Invest In The Most Important Thing In Your Writing Career
November 24, 2020 16:00 - 21 minutes - 29.2 MBHere’s the spoiler: The Most Important Thing You Have In Your Writing Career Is You We know! We know! You were probably hoping for a cool app, or the perfect book about plot beats, but nope. It’s you. You can’t write if you don’t exist. You write best when you’re doing pretty fine. So here are the ways to actually invest in yourself. Stay healthy for your brain It’s pretty hard to write when you feel like crap because when your brain is all broken. As Harvard Healthbeat says, “First it...
Make Your Books Like Wedgies and Commitment is Not a Dirty Word or Is It?
November 17, 2020 15:00 - 22 minutes - 31.2 MBSeriously. The best books are like wedgies. You can’t ignore them. They get right up inside you and into places they aren’t supposed to go. And sometimes it’s hard to get them out. This week Carrie talked to a lot of her writers about how if you don’t long to write your scenes, your readers probably aren’t going to long to read those scenes either. And recently the New York Times talked to Steve Martin (actor, writer, comedian) about books. He’s allegedly addicted to audiobooks, which is ...