#carriejones

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…

So, in the world of writing, everyone talks about needing a beta reader and a critique partner. Everyone that is, except Carrie, who has trust issues and survives as a lonely, isolated writer in Maine. What is a beta reader? It’s that person who reads your story, gives you some mild suggestions that feel like a big hug. This is a person you want to party with, a person you can cry to, a person…

We’ve started a series of paid and free posts about writing bestsellers. Our first post about this is here. In James Hall’s book, HIT LIT, he looks at twelve top-selling novels and tries to find similarities to their success. One thing that he found in the twelve novels is the theme of “America as paradise.” He writes, “America-as-paradise, an idea that so powerfully shapes our national…

So, last week was Shaun’s birthday. Yay, Shaun! We’ve started a series of paid and free posts about writing bestsellers. Our first post about this is here. And today, we’re talking about a main element in writing a hit novel. Some people call it The Big Clock. Some people call it a Ticking Clock. Some people call it The Timer. Dramatic theory is fancy and calls it a Timelock, but basically,…