Dear Writer

This week we had another of our author spotlight episodes, and we welcomed Dan Rice onto the show. Dan is a young adult urban fantasy author based in the West Coast of the US. Dan’s award winning debut novel, Dragons Walk Among Us, was published in 2021, with the sequel, The Blood of Faeries, released in February earlier this year. Dan hopes to eventually achieve his dream of making a living writing speculative fiction.

This week, we talk about writing the keystone emotional scenes in your novel. We discuss why these scenes are important, how to build up to one of these scenes, and how we draw on our personal experiences to make these scenes feel authentic.

This week on our author spotlight we hosted Pamela S Thibodeaux. Pamela is an award winning author and has published both fiction and non-fiction books. Her contemporary romance fiction novels feature flawed, true to life characters, and have Pamela’s Christian faith and hope interwoven into the narratives, while Pamela’s non-fiction writing features her faith and spiritual journey. Pamela’s goals are to continue to write and share stories that inspire and entertain, as well as glorifying God.

This week on Dear Writer we tried out an exercise that involved choosing a random object and writing from it's point of view. To hear how it all turned out and whether we thought this exercise was helpful for creativity, listen to the full episode.

This week, we continue our discussion on plotting and give you our guide to outlining your novel, from the idea scatter gun to chapter plans. We also talk about the importance of character and subplots when plotting, and give you some handy tips if you are plotting for the first time.

This week we give you Part 1 of our Plotting 101 guide. We talk about how we came to be plotters, how we generate ideas, and how we turn those ideas into a coherent plot. Finally, we discuss the importance of story structure and how to choose the best one for your novel.

This episode of Dear Writer featured another of our author spotlight interviews, and we were happy to welcome AJ Skelly. AJ Skelly is a YA author based in Ohio, with a passion for all things for all things fantasy, medieval, fairy-tale romance, and (most especially) werewolves. As an avid reader and former English teacher, AJ has always been interested in the written word. She lives with her husband and children, who share her love for books. AJ’s goals are to provide positivity in the YA genre, and inspire young readers through unforgettable characters, leaving them with hope and the feeling of satisfaction in a book well-read. We very much enjoyed our chat with AJ, and as always took something new and fresh away from speaking with another writer.

This week on Dear Writer we tried out an exercise from imagine forest.com, which asked us to write a short paragraph about our scariest memory. The exercise sounded simple, but was fraught with challenges. Listen to the episode to hear our (lengthy) paragraphs and to see how it panned out.

This week, we continue our discussion about Historical Fiction. We talk about diversity and inclusivity in Historical fiction, how to create historical characters, and the importance of tone/language when crafting your novel.

This week, we explore the historical fiction genre. We talk about what attracts us to the genre, and discuss the importance of historical accuracy and research in creating a compelling historical fiction novel.

This week on Dear Writer we welcomed Susan L Markloff on the show to talk about her books and writing journey. We greatly enjoyed talking to Susan about the highs and lows of the road so far, including everything from the success of seeing her book in print, and the challenges of marketing and finding a readership.

This week on Dear Writer we attempted Haiku poetry, looking at both the contemporary and traditional forms. We shared our results and our experiences, discussing whether we thought writing Haikus were a good way to develop creativity. The exercise this week was taken from the following website: https://www.writingforward.com/writing_exercises/poetry-writing-exercises/creative-writing-exercises-haiku

This week, we continue our discussion about the YA genre. We explore the importance of character voice, the issue of preachiness in YA novels, and give some tips on writing good YA stories.

This week, we take a closer look at the YA genre of fiction. We discuss the characteristics of YA fiction, and look at the popular sub-genres that are common in YA. We also talk about the different ways tense and point of view can be used to good effect when writing in this genre.

This week we hosted Elizabeth Moore Kraus on our podcast. Elizabeth had recently retired from her job as an English professor and, during covid, compiled her experiences of traveling with her sisters into a memoir, titled "Three Sisters, Three Weeks, Three Countries (Still Talking). It was a pleasure to talk to Elizabeth about her writing and her life.