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Working: Charlie Jane Anders on Her New Book of Writing Advice

Slate Culture Feed

Slate Podcasts

Arts, Music, Tv & Film

4.22K Ratings

🗓️ 15 August 2021

⏱️ 51 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week, host June Thomas talks to Charlie Jane Anders, author of many novels and a new book of writing advice, Never Say You Can't Survive. In the interview, Charlie Jane offers tons of detailed writing tips and explains how escaping into fictional worlds can help people endure hard times.  After the interview, June and co-host Rumaan Alam discuss some of Charlie Jane’s writing tips, and then Rumaan talks about his recent profile of author Jason Reynolds, which was published in the New Yorker.  Send your questions about creativity and any other feedback to working@slate.com or give us a call at (304) 933-9675. Podcast production by Cameron Drews. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Big Mood, Little Mood—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on Working. Sign up now at slate.com/workingplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

This episode is brought to you by Kraken.

0:03.0

Crypto is like the financial system, but different.

0:07.0

It doesn't care where you come from, what you look like,

0:10.0

your credit score, or your outrageous food delivery habits.

0:13.0

Crypto is finance for everyone, everywhere, all the time.

0:18.0

Visit Kraken.com slash see what crypto can be to learn more.

0:22.0

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose all the money you invest.

0:25.0

This is a high risk investment and you should not expect to be protected

0:28.0

if something goes wrong.

0:36.0

The first version of any scene I write is kind of the lifeless version,

0:39.0

which people are just being very reasonable and sensible,

0:42.0

and everybody's just getting a long fine.

0:44.0

And then suddenly as I go to the opposite extreme,

0:46.0

I'll rewrite the scene so it's just like people screaming and throwing things.

0:49.0

I'm like, okay, that's also not the interesting version of the scene.

0:52.0

I have to kind of find the right pitch,

0:54.0

and oftentimes it's like acting the scene out in my head a few times.

0:59.0

Welcome back to working.

1:01.0

I'm your host, Ramon Alam.

1:03.0

And I'm your other host, June Thomas.

1:06.0

June, at the top of this episode,

1:08.0

we heard someone talking about writing a scene.

...

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