Story Makers Show

Episode 162: Mystically Curious: an interview with author Sanjena Sathian

June 10, 2021 00:28 - 33 minutes - 75.8 MB

In a robust conversation with the wonderful debut novelist Sanjena Sathian, Angie and Elizabeth pick her brain about craft, including defaulting to chronology as a built-in plot structure, and the benefit to stabilizing one variable in an ambitious novel with a lot of moving parts. Other topics covered include: Head hopping to find a voice with range and inflection. Connecting to/ channeling voice. Writing a dominant identity from the position of a non-dominant identity. Giving parts of our...

Episode 161: Leading with Images: Interview with Yang Huang

May 18, 2021 14:41 - 33 minutes - 45.7 MB

In today’s episode, Angie and Elizabeth interview author Yang Huang about her new novel, My Good Son. Ideas come to Yang as images first, which she sees as mysteries to be solved and as uncensorable. She wants to tell the truth—through fiction and in English. Topics of discussion include the free will of characters, parents’ control over and visions for their kids, rebellion and surprise, clean beautiful language, and the many, many drafts it takes to finish a novel. In the initial draft, Y...

Episode 160: Rest and Revolution: a conversation with author Hari Ziyad

May 11, 2021 16:22 - 31 minutes - 43.5 MB

In today’s episode, Angie and Elizabeth talk with author Hari Ziyad about Hari’s new memoir, Black Boy Out of Time. Because Hari is also a screenwriter who has had interest from the worlds of film and television in adapting their memoir, the conversation touches on the opportunities and challenges of creating a series or movie out of a memoir written to a younger self, with some essayistic/ analytical threads. They discuss power of specific stories to resonate beyond their intended or imagi...

Episode 159: Is Tomorrow Yesterday? Chronology in Structure

April 27, 2021 20:33 - 28 minutes - 38.7 MB

The promise of knowledge management for the widely curious brain. Paper books and index cards and card catalogs and the art of tracking and linking your ideas. The act of writing is fundamental to thinking. Upended routines as in-person school begins in a small, irregular way. Speaking of nonlinear, how linear does plot need to be? Is chronology a friend to casualty? Is it necessary? The ways the backstory can circle back but acquire new meanings or trigger new understanding. Bringing causa...

Episode 158: Loving Flawed Characters

April 13, 2021 15:41 - 32 minutes - 44 MB

This week, Elizabeth launches a new project, while Angie starts teaching in-person middle school math, thinking about individual learning strategies and styles. A listener asks, what is the secret to creating flawed characters that readers still want to invest in? The episode zeroes in on some answers. Notes from the conversation: Is self-reflection a virtue? Do we prefer Clark Kent or Superman? Must readers like characters or is it only necessary that they can’t look away, as with a car c...

Episode 157: A Toast to the Friction Between Non- and Fiction

April 07, 2021 04:18 - 34 minutes - 47.1 MB

As Angie heads from Zoom into the classroom, she and Elizabeth discuss the switching of mediums, the differences between camera and stage. Body language. Elizabeth is working on deciding her next project. Then they dive into the differences and similarities between fictions and nonfiction, their strategies, their expectations, and even their definitions. Fictionalizing, omission, editing, exaggerating…what creates and what crosses the lines? What about auto-fiction, fiction based on life? T...

Episode 156: What Shall I Work on Next? Deciding and Getting Started

March 31, 2021 01:34 - 31 minutes - 42.8 MB

In today’s episode, Angie and Elizabeth report in their debut trailer camping experience, amd compare it to a creative process. Meanwhile,Angie is doing animation, and Elizabeth gives a submissions update. They turn them to answering a listener’s question about which project to choose, exploring the following approaches: Go pitch it to somebody (excitable). Ask yourself, Is it big enough to be a book? Write a treatment, premise, longline, or outline/ scenelist. Be messy. Explore whethe...

Episode 155: And That is When the Murders Began

March 03, 2021 18:15 - 33 minutes - 45.6 MB

The episode kicks off with a glance at the trouble with deep work in a pandemic with kids before diving into emotion in story: Emotional arc and emotion as action trigger, emional as both key and causal. It is emotion that drives readers to read, based on desired mood and emotion. There are writer who avoid emotion and the converse trouble of only focusing on emotion, musing, feeling. The discussion affirms the need for both action and emtion, as it examines the challenges of emotional log...

Episode 154: The Character of Intuitive Planning

February 23, 2021 12:12 - 30 minutes - 42.5 MB

Angie teaches math and daydreams a new film while Elizabeth gets a mammogram and considers character questions. In today’s episode, Elizabeth explores the epiphany she began to have on last week’s episode by asking Angie a lot of questions about balancing or toggling between chaos, intuition, planning, and structure. What is the relationship of character to action in a discovery draft and beyond? Is what we love about a discovery draft what means we can throw it away? Discovery v drafting. ...

Episode 153: Time Management for Narrators

February 16, 2021 12:37 - 32 minutes - 44.9 MB

In this week’s episode, a listener asks a question about transitions and pacing, leading to a roving discussion of pacing, logistics, linearity, causality, and intentionality: what is significant—and how do you know? Creating the reader’s experience through character work in both writing and editing, and then trusting character to emerge through necessary scenes allows for the shaping of meaningful transition. Angie and Elizabeth compare and contrast their mothers’ carrot chopping methodolo...

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