#carriejones

Setting is where your story happens. It’s the time period. It’s the physical place. You can have more than one setting. There. That’s the definition. We’re all good, right? Wrong. Let’s really talk about setting. WHAT SETTING DOES Setting is the foundation of your story. It is the ModPodge that has an addictive smell (Cough. Not addicted to ModPodge. Look away.) and glues all the story…

I was Nominated for Woman of the Year and My Heart is Hitching All Over the Place

My heart hitched yesterday.

This email came that I was nominated for the local YWCA’s woman of the year. I stared at it.

And stared at it.

And stared.

I know this might not be a big deal to some people, but me? I flipped out.

It had been a weird rollercoaster day. I signed with a new agent of awesome. I traced down the smell of dog poop to Gabby’s front paw and managed to pry the smooshed and…

Make Your Setting Kick Butt

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of writing where setting is just… Well, it’s missing.

You begin a chapter and there are just these talking heads and you’re not quite sure where they actually are.

Chapter One of Book Of Pretend

I grabbed a Coke.

“I am so upset with you,” I said.

“I’m more upset,” he said.

“No way in heck.”

“Seriously.”

  And the reader is like, “Cool. They have Coke. They are…

This week? This week has been a bit rough for me. But I am still writing. And we are still podcasting! Gasp! I am still doing this because I think that writers write. That’s it. That’s all there is to it. Say it with me, okay? Writers write. That’s all it takes to be a writer—the actual writing things down. We write rebellion. We write acceptance. We write through grief. We write through…

THE ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY Let’s be honest, here. Sometimes I throw the word “sexy” into a podcast title just to get Shaun to pay attention. But the one-sentence summary is kind of sexy. Over on the Advanced Fiction Writing Blog, Randy Ingermanson writes: In that summary, you want: To show us the setting via information about where or when the story is happening. What Ingersoll calls “a…

We improvised this podcast and you know what? You can kind of tell. It’s all about making mistakes (a tiny bit about what holds some of us back about making people pay for our work) and we quickly reference this guy! SHOUT OUT! The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License.  Here’s a link to that and the artist’s…

So, recently, Vitaliy Katsenelson, CFA, who is a writer and investor had a Substack post that really resonated with me. And by recently, I mean yesterday. Anyway, in it Vitaliy said that “Each Day Is a Separate Life.” You wake up and you are born. You go to sleep and that’s the end of the day/life. You get it, right? This concept isn’t new. It comes from Seneca, this ancient philosopher and…

Dogs are Smarter Than People, Writing Exercise, Cool Submission Opportunity So, we’re been talking about dialogue in novels lately and tips about it and the purpose of it. To find any back posts, just head to LIVING HAPPY and search “dialogue.” One of the things that some writing stylists talk about is the three-beat rule, which is credited to Screenwriter Cynthia Whitcomb. Reedsy explains…