This week at the Story Works Round Table podcast, Alida and Kathryn explore the power of sensory details in writing with award-winning author Paulette Stout. Join us as we discuss how to bring scenes to life through sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. Paulette shares insights into her writing process, her latest work, and how she uses sensory details to build vivid, immersive worlds.
This week, the Story Works Round Table is turned: Alida is interviewed by guest host, Lainey Cameron, award-winning author, podcaster, and book marketing expert.
They discuss writing without genre in mind, starting with a vision only described as magical realism. Alida’s novel, A Stone’s Throw, explores themes of relationships, and motherhood, while highlighting the complexities of artistic identity and validation and the transformative power of community.
Lainey asks Alida about her inspiration, process, and the roles of creativity and community in her life and work.
Why should we talk about world-building with religion? Should your characters have a belief system? And how can you use it to create rich depth for your world and your character motivation? How should you present it in your work? And how can you make it natural to your world and your characters?
What is an endnote and why are we talking about it? How is it different from a resolution? Or the end of a scene or chapter? How can you use a “full circle” moment to really make your endnote powerful? And why should you craft it before you even get to the end of your story?
This week, we check out an episode from the library, formerly published as video-only episode 20. Ever wonder what goes into translating a novel? How translators work with a text? What role, if any, the author of the original plays in the translation? Are you...
What is a writing tic? And is it always a bad thing? We talk about throat clearing, voice issues, using filter words, and having a POV stranglehold. All of these are things you want to fix in revision, but having them isn’t necessarily a bad thing as long as you recognize them. And what you do after you recognize them can change your writing behaviors for the better!
We start off this episode with a recounting of Kathryn’s progress, before diving into bringing self-awareness and cross-contextualization into your goals processes. How can we adapt systems in our life that already work in order to help us complete our goals? And how much productivity are we actually capable of each day? Robert gives us an update on his progress and we talk about the insane amount of pressure we put on ourselves, and how we can help motivate ourselves each and every day. We all want to live the life we love, one day at a time. It’s just about finding the balance to do so!
We jump into reviewing our progress on this year’s goals, and spiral into a conversation about our processes, mindset, and how to measure progress. Are we motivated by pain, reward, or something else? How can you re-frame your goals in order to recognize what you have accomplished, rather than beat yourself up for what you didn’t? Ultimately, it all comes down to living the life you want to live, one day at a time!
How can you use a sentence to evoke mood? What about varying sentence structure to reflect different characters voice? Should you change your sentence structure by genre? Or by book? We all agree, reading great sentences make yours better!
This week at the Round Table, Alida, Kathryn, and Robert continue their conversation about writing great sentences in novels of any genres. How many types of sentences are there? Do sentences need to be grammatically correct to be great? Do they need to be lyrical to be great? No. The sentences we craft serve a variety of purposes in our prose.
What did we find when we set out to find great sentences? Is it all about the grammar? We talk about the categories a sentence can fit into, and why looking at the paragraph and sentence level is so important in your writing. We look at a couple of sentences from The Passion and Unaccustomed Earth. FInally, we talk about long sentences, poetic sentences, and use of metaphorical sentences to spice up your writing!