How Setting Informs Plot and Character
The Shit No One Tells You About Writing
Bianca Marais, Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra
4.8 • 733 Ratings
🗓️ 27 April 2023
⏱️ 74 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In today’s Books with Hooks segment, Carly and CeCe discuss descriptive specificity; comping to famous writers; sensitivity when describing mental health and mental illness; picking the correct comps; the importance of interiority to dual narrative experience; and choosing titles that work best for you.
After which, Bianca chats with J Ryan Stradal, author of Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club, about his path to publication; being a good literary citizen; standing your ground with setting; having setting inform plot elements and character; outlining multi-POV and multi-timeline novels; flashback vs separate timelines, starting a book with a theme; knowing the ending and starting far away from it; how you learn from each book that you write; and advice for emerging writers regarding querying agents.
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Facebook: @tsnotyaw
Websites: www.theshitaboutwriting.com, www.biancamarais.com, www.carlywatters.com and www.cecilialyra.com
More information about J Ryan can be found at www.jryanstradal.com. He's on Twitter @jryanstradal and Instagram @jryanstradal.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi there and welcome to our show, the shit no one tells you about writing. I'm Bianca |
| 0:12.7 | Moray and I'm joined by Carly Waters and Cici Lira from PS Literary Agency. We'll be kicking |
| 0:20.1 | off today's episode with our usual Books with Hook segment, |
| 0:23.8 | after which we'll go to today's guest. |
| 0:26.8 | Our friends over at Now Novel are running a limited time offer |
| 0:31.2 | for their group coaching program. |
| 0:33.8 | If you haven't heard of Now Novel, |
| 0:35.9 | they're an online writing platform and crit community |
| 0:39.1 | that helps aspiring authors write more together. Until the 8th of May, get $200 off group |
| 0:46.2 | coaching, a six-month course including writing sprints, webinars with published authors and editors, |
| 0:53.2 | and weekly craft workbooks and feedback. |
| 0:56.6 | Alumni have finished drafts in two months, reached the querying stage and achieve their writing |
| 1:02.1 | goals. But that's not all. To make things even more exciting, we're teaming up for a contest |
| 1:07.1 | for you to win a place in the course. Here's how to enter. Go to our website under the |
| 1:14.3 | contests page. You will find a link to now novel where you will fill in the blanks to enter. |
| 1:21.3 | The sentence that you're going to have to fill in the blanks for is, nobody ever told me |
| 1:26.6 | about the secret something in something w t f you will share |
| 1:33.4 | your creative sentence on socials tagging us at the podcast and at now novel the deadline is the |
| 1:41.1 | first of may so don't miss your chance to win. |
| 1:48.9 | Remember, you'll find all of those details on our website under the contest page. |
| 1:50.2 | What are you waiting for? |
| 1:52.4 | Go ahead and enter straight away. |
... |
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