Writing down stories from your life can be great for therapy or family history purposes. But you might also be thinking about publishing these stories. This is where memoir comes in. Awyn Dawn, author of Paganism for Prisoners, joins Bonnie and Miranda to talk about publishing memoir—finding your niche, setting realistic expectations, and defining success. While publishing always involves a great deal of luck, having a strong hook and finding people who believe in your story are two keys to success. Listen now for more ideas on how to write and publish your life.

If you had to pick one story in your life to memoir-ize, what would it be? Share with us on our socials!

Links: 

Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

Becoming by Michelle Obama

American Sniper by Chris Kyle

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Miranda and Bonnie jump on board the AI-discussion bandwagon with screenwriter Alan O’Hashi to theorize how the future of writing will change with improvements in AI technology.

Is using AI in your writing comparable to using a calculator in math class? Will ChatGPT become the next tool like Grammarly and ProWritingAid? Though AI-generated content still lacks the human element, how can it be used as a learning tool or jumping off point to fuel creativity?

What’s your opinion on AI? Let us know on our socials!

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Today we talk about the nitty gritty of genres and how to cross them. Whether you want to write paranormal romance or your fantasy novel has an unexpected dash of horror, you may find that one genre is not enough to contain your story. Sarah Reichert joins Bonnie and Miranda to discuss the pros and cons of crossing genres: everything from the importance of choosing a genre to the importance of understanding tropes for your genres to the potential difficulties of marketing a cross-genre novel.

What cross-genre novels have you enjoyed? Let us know on our socials!

Links: 

NYC Midnight

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Though everyone knows a book needs a good cover, writers often overlook the importance of a well-designed book interior. Book designer Tamara Cribley lends her expertise to a discussion on the nitty gritty details of interior book design: from choosing (and licensing) fonts, formatting ebooks, preparing margins in a print book, deciding when and how to hire a book designer, and more.

Have you read any books whose interior design impressed you? @ our socials to share examples of beautiful books with us.

Links: 

The Book Designer

IBPA (Independent Book Publishers Association)

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Bonnie and Miranda discuss their takes on the infamous writing advice, “Show, don’t tell.” They explore the advice from an editor’s perspective as well as a writer’s, give some examples of showing and telling, and discuss when you would want to use one or the other.

So, what do you think about “show, don’t tell”? @ our socials to let us know your questions and comments on the hotly debated maxim.

Links: How to Show and When to Tell blog post

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Whether your story is set in a fantasy world or downtown Cleveland, scenic details are important—but how do you avoid getting caught up in the minutiae? Today, Steve Stratton joins Miranda to talk balancing worldbuilding details with story, in a variety of genres.

Links:

Pro-Writing Aid

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In today’s episode, Bonnie and Miranda chat with Leah Busboom about outsourcing for authors. They discuss what self-published authors can or should outsource; some best practices for collaborating with other publishing professionals; and how to balance budget, time, skillset, and enjoyment levels as you navigate the publishing process.

Links:

Alex K Newton of K-lytics. https://k-lytics.com/

Booksprout review service: https://booksprout.co/

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Prolific romance author and publisher Bernadette Marie brings her experience with the genre to help Miranda and Bonnie nail down the differences between Romance as a genre and romance as a B-plot in a greater story. Along the way, they’ll talk about the different aspects of romance from the importance of setting, to building relationships between characters, to different “spice” levels.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Links:

https://www.5princebooks.com/

https://www.romancingthebeat.com/

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Erin Austin, teacher and author of The Ultimate Guide to Selling Your Original World Language Resources, talks with Bonnie and Miranda about how to find time and motivation for your writing while balancing all other aspects of your life. 

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Dr. Melanie Peffer, author of Biology Everywhere, joins Bonnie and Miranda for this episode’s discussion of the old adage “Write what you know.” Whatever their day job is, any writer can utilize their day-to-day experiences to inspire and strengthen their writing.

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Bonnie and Miranda welcome in Season 2 of the show by discussing goal setting for writers. It’s important to define what your goal as a writer is, and we discuss four broad paths you can take to define what kind of writer you want to be.

Thanks for listening, we can't wait for the amazing guests and information coming up this season.

 

Links:

Shutupwrite.com

habitica.com

 

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On this holiday special of The Writing Forge, Bonnie and Miranda get in the Christmas spirit by discussing the movie The Man Who Invented Christmas. Though the movie is a historical fiction take on Charles Dickens writing A Christmas Carol, it has a lot of relevance to modern writers. We cover a range of topics from publishing vs self publishing, traditional book binding, tropes about authors, and the writing process. 

Happy holidays and we’ll see you all again in Season 2!

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Humor writer Julie Vick joins us this week to talk about all things funny.

Tips and Tricks:

• Surprise is a key element for writing humor. Play up the unexpected. The rule of three is part of this.
• If you’re going to be satirizing someone directly, make sure not to “punch down.”
• You don’t having to be funny on the first draft. Editing can and should make things funnier.
• Read your work out loud to judge your comedic timing
• Put the funniest bits at the end of a paragraph.
• Analyze reading that you find funny to figure out how the writer did it.
• Your type and level of humor will depend on your genre. Make sure to think about your intended audience as you’re crafting jokes.
• Humor can work differently in fiction vs. nonfiction, particularly if you’re writing fiction in a 3rd person POV. Formatting like footnotes and parentheses and italics can change how your funny elements come through in the end.
• Humor can carry the reader along so they don’t pay as much attention to other aspects of the writing.
• Certain phonemes are inherently funnier than others. Saying “Tropicana” is funnier than saying “orange juice.”
• Comparisons can be very helpful for adding humor to writing.

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Lawyer, author, and publisher Thea Rademacher, of Flint Hills Publishing, joins Bonnie and Miranda to talk about common copyright misconceptions writers have as well as ways to protect and strengthen your copyright.

Tips and Tricks:

• As soon as you’ve written something original, you own the copyright to it. Copyright law, under the umbrella of intellectual property law, protects the intangible asset of your writing.
• Make sure to provide for your writing in your will. Can your heirs publish your unpublished works? Who gets the royalties for published books? Etc.
• Three best practices for strengthening your copyright:
• Register it with the US Copyright Office—perhaps not on your very first rough draft, but once you have a respectable draft that you’re ready to pitch to agents and publishers if you’re traditional publishing.
• For self-publishing, buy your own ISBN instead of using Amazon’s free one.
• Apply for a Library of Congress control number
• Tech solutions to help protect your copyright
• Bowker’s CopyrightsLock service (though it might be overkill for most authors)
• The Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act (CASE Act) of 2020 provides new options for authors
• Check out Thea’s book, Authors Beware: Arm Yourself With Knowledge to Avoid Legal Pitfalls! for a ton more information about common legal issues writers run into.
• Always consult an actual lawyer before making legal decisions!

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Amanda Headlee joins Miranda and Bonnie to discuss subgenres and tropes—their similarities, differences, and how you can utilize either to strengthen your writing.

Tips and Tricks:

• Properly identifying your subgenre can be important for marketing and successful sales.
• Sometimes a trope becomes popular and used enough to set up a whole subgenre.
• Depending on how much your story relies on a certain idea can determine whether it’s a trope or a subgenre.
• Subgenres and tropes are useful for setting reader expectations. If you’re heavily emphasizing certain tropes or aspects of your genre at the beginning of your book, then swap at the end you will probably confuse and disappoint your readers.
• Some tropes help move a story forward, but be wary of overusing common tropes and slipping into stereotypes and cliches.
• Genres go in cycles, with some subgenres becoming more popular then fading from popularity. What you see being traditionally published.

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In this twofold Halloween episode Miranda and Bonnie talk with Steve Anderson about how to write for Kindle Vella as well as how to write spooky stories.

This week’s question: Have you tried out Kindle Vella? Let us know of any stories you’ve liked and link them at our socials!

Tips and Tricks:

• Kindle Vella is a new(ish) platform on Amazon that specializes in serialized content and is separate from Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Direct Publishing.
• As it is a serialized platform, the sweet spot for views and reads seems to be for the author to post about 2 -3 short “episodes” per week. About 1,000 to 2,000 words per episode, with lower 1,000s being preferable.
• When writing for Kindle Vella, it’s helpful to think of the episode as a cable TV show with commercial breaks built in. Where there would be a commercial break, that’s usually a good place to stop the episode.
• Episodes cost tokens and readers spend tokens to unlock the next episode. Different episodes cost different amounts.
• Horror, spooky, and suspenseful stories all share common traits.
• For tension, you want to feed your readers enough information to get them anticipating the next step in the story. From there you can twist the story if you’d like. You want to aim for “surprising yet inevitable.”
• Managing to generate a sense of unease or that something is “off” is a great way to build up the spooky factor of a story.
• Vella seems to be a rather ideal platform for ratcheting tension in a story, especially for stories along the lines of mystery and horror.

Links:

Steve’s paranormal mystery serial, If These Walls Could Talk: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B09WKDR3S4

Rise: An Anthology of Change, containing Miranda’s spooky short story: https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Anthology-Change-Bonnie-McKnight/dp/0578577593/

Supernatural (TV show): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460681/

Castle (TV show): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1219024/

Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files: https://www.goodreads.com/series/40346-the-dresden-files

The Others (movie): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0230600/

More on “surprising yet inevitable”: https://writingexcuses.com/tag/surprising-yet-inevitable/

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Today Miranda and Bonnie are talking with Stina Branson about National Novel Writing Month

(NaNoWriMo for short). This week’s question: Have you participated in NaNoWriMo before? If you have, or are signing up this year, drop your username in our socials—we’d love to be NaNo buddies with you!

Tips and Tricks:

● NaNoWriMo takes place in November with the goal of writing 50,000 words in 30 days, which roughly comes out to 1,667 words to write per day.

● A traditional NaNoWriMo project is to start a brand new fiction novel, however people have come to use the program for things like their dissertation, code programming, a collection of short stories, cover creation, editing, or a host of other projects.

● NaNoWriMo is ultimately a tool to help you get work done that you wouldn’t have otherwise.

● A traditional “win” for NaNoWriMo is reaching the 50k mark by November 30th, but generally we consider any new words a win, even if the website doesn’t.

○ We recommend coming up with your own definition of success.

● Some strategies to help get through NaNoWriMo: treat it like a race to see how fast you can reach your word goal; turn it into a competition, break off into teams and see which team gets the most words; make challenges: roll a die multiply the number by 100 and try to reach that number within a certain timeframe; find what really incentivizes you.

● Pantser–someone writing by the seat of their pants, also known as a discovery writer.

● Plotter–someone who plots their novel ahead of time.

● Plantser–someone who knows what direction their story is headed, but not the specifics of how to get there.

● Prepping for NaNoWriMo: You can make an outline, do research on your subject so you don’t have to stop during November, cook a lot of meals ahead of time and freeze them so you don’t have to spend as much time cooking during the month.

● If you’re looking for a NaNoWriMo community, definitely check out the website to see if there is a chapter in your geographical area. If there isn’t, search the internet for forums and groups. Also, don’t be afraid to strike out on your own and create your own.

Links:

NaNoWriMo website: https://nanowrimo.org/

NaNoWriMo Handles:

Miranda: mmiranda

Bonnie: Idriana

Sisters in Crime: https://www.sistersincrime.org/

The Writing Forge is a podcast brought to you by Northern Colorado Writers. You can find us at

www.northerncoloradowriters.com/writingforge

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Miranda and Bonnie talk with Gary Raham about how science fiction can generate interest and learning when it comes to the sciences.

Question for the week: What piece of fiction inspired your interest in a topic that you might not have otherwise had?

Tips and Tricks:

• Children hold a natural wonder for the world and this matches well with the inherent wonder and curiosity that’s pervasive in science fiction. This can create great foundations for future learning.
• With science fiction (and all other forms of fiction), children can learn how to navigate society, culture, dangers, and a number of different things, all through the lens of a fun story that will stick with them.
• It’s important to get facts in science fiction correct. Readers of the genre will notice those kind of mistakes and, for many people, that story might be their only exposure to that kind of science.
• Most science fiction allows for one big “lie”—or rather, one big inaccuracy. Typically you can ask a reader to suspend their belief for one fantastical element, but because of that, everything else around it must be as accurate as possible so as not to put too much strain on that suspension. 
• We learn more about the world as time goes on. So older science fiction is full of inaccuracies but was correct with the knowledge available at the time. This can be used to help compare and contrast the kind of science we know now. 
• “Science fiction is the precursor to science fact.” Much of what we see in science fiction—technology, social structures, exploration—can give us something to strive for as people and as a society. 

Links:

The Writing Forge is a podcast brought to you by Northern Colorado Writers. You can find us at www.northerncoloradowriters.com/writingforge

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Chrysta Bairre joins Miranda and Bonnie to talk about Imposter Syndrome in this week’s episode of The Writing Forge. We referenced NCW’s annual writing retreat a lot. This year’s is coming up in October, and registration is still open. Come join us in the Rockies for three days of quiet writing time! https://northerncoloradowriters.com/retreat

This week’s question: Do you also suffer from Imposter Syndrome? If you do, what are some ways you counteract it? Let us know at the social links below.

Tips and Tricks:

• Imposter syndrome is defined as the persistent inability to believe that one’s success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one’s own efforts or skills.
• Sometimes imposter syndrome is sneaky, not necessarily feeling like a “fraud." For instance, the inability to accept compliments while immediately internalizing anything negative said about your work.
• You can experience imposter syndrome even if you've published multiple books or done the work of a profession—nothing will feel like it “counts.”
• A few practical tips to dealing with imposter syndrome:
• Practice receiving positive feedback differently
• Get more practiced at talking about your contributions and accomplishments and how you’re proud of yourself
• Resist the urge to talk about and point out all the imperfections in your work
• Imposter syndrome can stop you in unconscious ways, such as missing out on opportunities or not even considering options because you don’t think you’re “worthy” or you “belong.”
• Try having an accountability partner to talk about your weekly wins: how you showed up, what you accomplished, progress you’ve made
• Also try a “Win Jar” (can be physical or digital): every time someone pays you a compliment or you get good feedback, put it in the jar. When you're feeling low, you can return to the jar and go through the things there.
• Appreciate the people in your life. Help reflect on their wins and accomplishments; yours will start to sink in for yourself as well.
• Join or create communities to help empower your skills and your belief in them.

Links:

For more about Chrysta, visit https://liveandlovework.com/

Beautiful Badass: https://smile.amazon.com/Beautiful-Badass-Believe-Yourself-Against/dp/1734584106/

Chrysta’s blog post on compliment dodgeball: https://liveandlovework.com/2018/03/29/the-1-reason-you-are-underpaid/

Original 1978 study on “The Imposter Phenomenon:” https://www.paulineroseclance.com/pdf/ip_high_achieving_women.pdf

The Writing Forge is a podcast brought to you by Northern Colorado Writers. You can find us at www.northerncoloradowriters.com/writingforge

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The Writing Forge Episode 12: A Talk with Shawn Amos

In this week’s episode Bonnie and Miranda talk with blues-musician-turned-author Shawn Amos about living different creative lives, transferring skills from one creative pursuit to another, and capitalizing on the power of music in writing.

Links:

Find out more about Shawn at https://www.shawnamos.com/ 

Cookies & Milk: https://www.smile.amazon.com/dp/B09FL821JR/

The Writing Forge is a podcast brought to you by Northern Colorado Writers. You can find us at www.northerncoloradowriters.com/writingforge

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