The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

How do you research a book in the most appropriate way? How can you keep track of your sources and attribute them correctly, as well as avoiding inadvertent plagiarism? How can you get your book/s into libraries? Vikki Carter talks about all these questions and more. In the intro, Has Amazon Changed Fiction? [New Republic]; The Bigger the Publisher, The Blander the Books [The Atlantic]; A basic income pilot scheme for artists [Irish Times]; Struggles we face as authors [6 Figure Authors]; My 5-day solo walk along the St Cuthbert's Way. This episode is sponsored by Publisher Rocket, which will help you get your book in front of more Amazon readers so you can spend less time marketing and more time writing. I use Publisher Rocket for researching book titles, categories, and keywords — for new books and for updating my backlist. Check it out at www.PublisherRocket.com Vikki Carter is the author of Research Like a Librarian: Research Help and Tips for Writers for Researching in the Digital Age. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Overcoming dyslexia and learning to love booksResearch as a disciplineChoosing where to focus researchDifferent ways to research your bookHow do we know when a source is good enough?How to avoid accidental plagiarismHow to cite sourcesHow to get your books into libraries — this article will also help. You can find Vikki Carter at TheAuthorsLibrarian.com and on Twitter @theauthorslib Transcript of Interview with Vikki Carter Joanna: Vikki Carter is the author of Research Like a Librarian: Research Help and Tips for Writers for Researching in the Digital Age. Welcome, Vikki. Vikki: Hi there, Joanna. Hi, everyone. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you today about this because I think it's so important. Before we get into it, tell us a bit more about your background because I know you struggled a bit in your early experiences with books. Vikki: Oh, I did. And it's such an interesting part of my story and I just actually started to talk about it with people as I wrote my first book. When I was younger, in elementary school, I had a speech impediment and I also was a very slow reader and very slow learner. We didn't discover this until about halfway through first grade. When I was in school, I didn't talk very often, which surprises everybody when they know me now, like all she does is talk. I really struggled with reading and seeing words formulate on a page or on a chalkboard. My brain couldn't quite grasp that concept. Now we know it's dyslexia, and it was very severe dyslexia. But at the time when I was little, I didn't know that. And then compounded with a speech impediment, I just turned super shy because I would get teased all the time, as kids do that. So when I was little, I wouldn't go out and play on recess very often. I would hide myself away in the libraries of our schools because the librarians were awesome. They let me come in, get books, and I'd always get picture books. I would sit and I would look at the picture books, trying to decipher how the pictures were related to the words until I did get some help. I had two amazing teachers that identified that there was some possibility of some help for me, and I started with speech therapy and then we started with reading and writing therapy. So about the fifth grade, I caught up a little bit with everybody else but I've always been painfully slow reader and a very painfully slow writer. That experience of being around the library and the librarians, it became a sanctuary to me. So books have become my sanctuary now. Joanna: I think for many of us, the library is a sanctuary. It certainly was for me as an introvert child, totally bookish. I spent a lot of time in the library and I think that's why so many of us care about libraries now. It's because of how they've affected us in earlier life. You actually became a librarian, is that right? Vikki: I did. I had this interesting journey to a librarian. It was a little later on in life. I went back to college/university as an adult student with two children in tow and I wasn't sure what I really wanted to do. I kept going back to the idea of books, writing, researching, but I didn't know how that would work out into a career. It didn't really dawn on me as a librarian until I started to work in the school district where my daughters were and I worked in the school library, and I'm like, ‘Oh, this could be a thing.' It dawned on me. I started to go back to school and I ended up working at the public library in our area while I was working on my bachelor's because I really felt like I wanted to have a broad experience. I worked in the public library, and I loved that. And then finally when I started on my master's, I was recruited to work at the community college library in our area in the library department. I finished my master's and stayed with academic library work. So that was my journey. I didn't come out of high school, go right to college. I lived a life, traveled with my kids and husband, and then went back to school as an adult and I landed in the library world and I absolutely loved it. And now I'm in higher education. I work as a librarian as a faculty member as well as a faculty member for university online. Joanna: I love your story because I really think that dyslexia, speech impediment, slow learner, all these words that you say, many people would think, ‘Well, you'll never have a future with books.' But you know what, it's not a problem with books, it's a problem with seeing how the words fit in a page, as you say, and in the world. I love that you've come through that and I know, obviously, you help other people and there are lots of people listening who know people with learning difficulties, I guess, we call them now. I hope that encourages people if their kids are going through it or whatever, or even as an adult. It's not that you need to fix it — because you're not broken — but there are ways that you can adapt either yourself or the world to make it make sense. Vikki: Yeah. And that's exactly what I learned. I didn't learn that out of the bat. I did feel like all the way through high school that I was broken. Even when I was working, I worked in journalism in high school in our newspaper, and I had a teacher, she was really harsh on me, and instead of sitting down and helping me find the tools to edit my work, she was really a challenge for me to work with. It wasn't until I got older and in college and started working with adult education myself, I realized there's some awesome tools out there. For dyslexics, the number one awesome tool is audio. Having things read back to you in an audio version or having somebody else read it back to you, or even reading it back to yourself, that's going to help you find a lot of your errors. When I discovered that, I'm like, ‘Oh, the world is now open. Forget it. I'm writing my books.' Joanna: Oh, excellent. I'm so glad. So let's get into this book then. Why is research important regardless of genre and how can it help us as writers? Vikki: I love that question, and it's a question I get asked a lot. As a librarian, I really believe that authors can have their voice strengthened very well with excellent research, and it gives their voice an awesome authority. Research is a discipline, just like the writing craft is a discipline, and it's a learned discipline. None of us came out of the womb knowing how to write epic novels and most of us don't come out knowing how to do excellent research. Research is a higher-level thinking skill. As you're processing questions that you may need to go define and redefine your storyline, it's actually helping you in a higher-level thinking. I look at it this way, the truth is in the world. There's a lot of literary voices out there and not all of them are necessarily excellent in their researching skills. But what makes researching fabulous for authors is it lends to their voice. Let me give an example of that. You probably have seen this before in conferences or in online chats or whatever with an author and an author's character or plot development or even some of their aspects of their work was challenged by a reader. “That didn't really happen that way,” or “I don't believe that's realistic.” With those challenges come the opportunity for authors to really show their authority in their voice if they've done research prior to writing. Even if it's a fantasy world, I believe that you can do some research to really lend to authority and it strengthens author's voices because it gives them the ability to stand up on what they've created. I have to stop and say, not all challenges are necessarily meaningful for authors to get into. Some are just based on subjective ideas or taste or value, that kind of a thing. But as far as an author goes, if they had a source that inspired them and they have research that helped inspire them creating their world, their story that they're telling, and they do get challenged, what's really great is that authority gives them the ability to stand up on what they've created. I really feel like when authors do research well, that's what that authority in creating their voice is all about. Joanna: And yes, just to stress, this is for fiction and nonfiction. I think you're right, you have to choose what you research. I was just thinking then around Tom Clancy, well-known for highly technical details of certain guns and tanks and things, and I couldn't care less about that, but if you read one of my novels, you're going to get the architectural details of a particular cathedral. And if we find a work of art, it's going to be described in an exactly researched way. You have to choose what you're going to research. It doesn't have to be every single thing. Vikki: Exactly. For example, I'll give you an example of a book I'm working on right now is around the planning of the city that I live in. It's going to have its hundredth-year anniversary in two years, its birthday. And I live in one of the original homes. For a long time, I've had the idea of writing historical fiction around the planned city in the 1920s. And it was literally planned by the lumber baron and there's tons of history around it. I'm not going for accuracy here. I really want to tell the story of the feeling of what it would have been like to come and live here and help build a city. Even though I'm researching a lot about what the buildings would have looked like and how they would have created the city and all the ups and downs it would have done, I'm not going to go accurate detail verbatim. There's already a book out there that tells that in a factual way. I'm going for that as an inspirational way to give the feeling of what it would have been like for the people that came here to help build that city. That's inspiration, but I still have to do a tremendous amount of research. I'm not living in the '20s and I'm looking for firsthand accounts of those experiences, if I can find them, and read what their words were, and then I'm retelling that story in a fictional version of it. Joanna: You mentioned firsthand accounts there, so that would probably be newspapers or maybe books at the time. I love to go places. Physically visiting, obviously difficult in the pandemic, but I find that going places really helps me find details that I find interesting. What are some of the other ways that authors can do research? Vikki: I love it. I call what you just described living research. The traveling to different regions, even going online and watching travel channels, TV shows, YouTube channels, things like that are what I consider living research. Anything that you do in your daily life to be considered research, amazingly enough. So that's one thing. The other thing is in the digital age, we can definitely conduct research online. But I would always encourage authors to steer clear of just doing research on just Google or Wikipedia, to totally broaden themselves. I talk a lot in my book about academic library websites, museum websites, using library research guides on academic libraries. There's a wealth of information out online that is reliable besides Google and Wikipedia. Google and Wikipedia can be useful but online, you can go to so many things. I had a girlfriend remind me how great YouTube is for doing some research. And so there's just a lot on there. The other one that I really encourage individuals, authors to use is to conduct research using what I call expert witnesses or firsthand accounts. In the digital age, we have such a great opportunity for that because there's many libraries, major libraries, like here in the United States, the Library of Congress has done a lot of digital archiving of firsthand interviews of individuals from all parts of history and they have volunteers that do this, that will go out and interview individuals from their past, in the 1920s, and even beyond if they got those. They're putting those in digital records so that people can go and listen to those firsthand accounts, as well as a lot of journals and newspapers and those kinds of things are being digitized. So you can access those things, which I feel are a goldmine for an author. And then also, I feel like everybody kind of looks at research as going to these big, gigantic caverns of a library, the big archives and dusting off the old books and sitting there, and I think that is valuable and it's fun and you can do that. When the pandemic, I think, comes back, we could go do some of that again. But it also is not necessarily the most effective way of doing research because it's hard to really grasp what's going on in those gigantic archives. Luckily for us in the digital age, most major libraries are putting a lot of their archives in museums and things like that are putting their collections online for us to do research. Joanna: I researched Cologne Cathedral, they only recently just put on this amazing 3D scrolling thing. So you could stand at different points in the cathedral and then turn the mouse and things and look up to the ceiling and see the colors. I really just wanted to go to Cologne and see the cathedral. Vikki: Isn't it fantastic? I think there's a lot more of that because I saw at the beginning of the pandemic, I put together a whole bunch of resources for my students who are adult students, on museums that were trying to get people to visit virtual museums and there were so many of them and they're keeping them online. It's phenomenal to me. Joanna: It's definitely changed since the pandemic started. I think in the first sort of six months, they didn't do anything, and then suddenly, there was this acceleration of everything going online. So that's really good. I think one of the issues is when a source is good enough. And again, that will depend on the situation. Say, for example, I watched a video at an Appalachian snake-handling church. Vikki: Right up my alley. Joanna: It was about an hour and it was actually a church service in the Appalachian Mountains and I essentially just wrote down what I saw and that became my first scene in my thriller End of Days. In a way, it doesn't matter so much in that situation whether I got specific details right because it was for fiction, but I still got enough right for that to matter. But if it's nonfiction, if it's, like you said, historical fiction, which people get really upset about, how do we know when a source is good enough? Like you said, don't just use Google or Wikipedia. Even these days with plenty of self-publishers out there. How do we know when a source is good enough? Vikki: That's such a great question, Joanna, and that's what us librarians call information literacy. It's what we teach in academic universities to our students and it's something that I feel like everybody in this decade needs to know an understanding of information literacy because there's so much vast information out there. There's quite a few criteria that us librarians like to teach, but I boiled it down to three of them and made it really easy with the letter A: accuracy, authority, and aim. When you're looking at a resource, if you can remember those three things as you're evaluating, using that higher-level thinking skill as you're looking at a source, there are some things that you need to really consider. How accurate is information are you using? And now that might be where your question comes from, right? How accurate is, I don't know. Do I need to go and look for other sources that show me that this was accurate? And that's a possibility. Does that source show authority? Who put that source out there? What is their authority? And I'll go into some of the questions in that in a second. Aim is what is the objectivity of that particular source? What's the whole point of what they're doing? Why are they sharing their information with the world? And so for accuracy, does that information correlate and line with information you can find in other reputable sources? For example, for you with that source, that if you really wanted to use it in historical fiction or maybe nonfiction, you can go and verify if that is how a church setting would have been done possibly through other sources and you can collaborate those two together and then you can say, ‘Okay, this is accurate'? For authority, the credentials, the background of the authors, the training and the experience of the authors, and that could be the creators, that's something you might have to do a little digging on to see, what is their background? Do they have any authority to be talking about this subject? In that example that you gave to us, it might have been their pastors that wanted to evangelize using the medium of showing off what they do. What's their background? I would seriously be doing digging on the background, because that's just me, but that's kind of one thing you want to look for in authority. And these are just one question. In my book, I have quite a few more questions that authors can ask as you're evaluating sources. And finally, I missed one, aim. Aim: what is the purpose of this particular piece, the source, this content? Are they trying to sell me something? Are they trying to persuade me? If so, you know, what is that that they're trying to sell? What are they trying to persuade? What are they trying to give, you know, that information? What's the point of it? If you can remember those three things and do that higher-level thinking, and then finally try to collaborate your source as close to a primary or an original or an authoritative source as possible, then that is going to be the best you're going to get for knowing if this source is good enough and reliable enough. Joanna: I think that's great. And again, we're not suggesting that authors need to do this for every single thing that they're writing about, it's more a case of, when you said aim, the aim of the source but also your aim as the author is important to know how much you should research and when it's important. One of the things that I find very important when I'm researching is if I'm reading a book, I will write notes in quotes. So if I am copying a quote down, I've got quote marks. At the top of the page, it will say the book name and the author name, and then I'll have quote marks and then I'll have my own thoughts, won't have quote marks. So that's a way that I make sure that I keep information in a certain way. What are your recommendations for keeping notes as we research so we don't plagiarize or do something bad? Vikki: I love it. And your example is exactly what I would suggest. Here's one thing I wanted to touch on as far as the last few things I talked about. There's a difference between, and this needs to be talked about in your notes too, is what is used for your inspiration and what might be used for actual source, like, quoting, right? Joanna: A quote. Vikki: Yes, a quote. So what I do in my notes, which is really important is I will also write, how will I use this work, or how is this work or this source going to be used in my work? I'll just do how to use it. If it's for inspiration, I'll just say for inspiration or inspirational idea or something like that. But if I'm going to be using it for direct quotation or whatever that, then I'll say, ‘Use for direct quotation on this topic.' My memory is not fantastic so I have to make sure I put down in my notes that. Note-taking is probably one of the best questions I get all the time and notes are really about a personal preference but I think notes should be incredibly short for memory purposes. And I think that's where people get a little sidetracked or put off on doing research is that they're like, ‘Oh my gosh, I gotta take all these notes.' And in reality, you really don't. What you need to be doing is writing at least the title, the author, possibly the publication of the information, how you accessed it because I don't know about you, Joanna, but like I said, my memory can be bad and I could forget where that book, I found it, or where that online source was that I found. And then again, paraphrasing. You can paraphrase what that source is talking about. If it's a document that has some data, statistics data for deaths in the 1920s, that I was really going for one thing, right, then I'll say, ‘This talks about examples for A, B, and C.' And then like I said, how am I going to use that in my work? That's kind of the minimum when it comes to note-taking, in my opinion. All of the title, author, publication, all that, that can all be handled very well with a citation. If you're using an online citation generator, which I talk about a little in my book and also I talk about in a workshop that I'm going to be doing here soon, how to do that, you can cut out a lot of that with just getting all of that, the reference information in that and then use the rest of that note of paraphrasing what the source is about and how are you going to use it in your work. And that's really to help your memory. Joanna: I think that citations, footnotes, etc., I think they are very common in academic books and certain types of nonfiction. But with fiction or even just more pop-nonfiction like I write, I use appendices, I use an author's note, I use a resource list. Obviously, if I quote people within the text, that's usually a nonfiction and I'll have their name and the book and everything, but I personally don't use footnotes or citations but I always, in my fiction, if you read the author's note, I'm going to tell you where I got the ideas and also a book list. I always have a bibliography as well. You said there about using citations, but what should authors do? What's the minimum? We have to do something. Vikki: I love this question. I just had this conversation with another author on our Patreon group this weekend because we were talking about this. This is in my mind how I separate the two, and this is for fiction. Nonfiction, we've already established. For most nonfiction, almost all nonfiction, there will be some sort of citations, in-text citations, or at the end, there'll be a list. For fiction, where do we come into this? That's where the number one question I get a lot, in fiction, what are you talking about, Vikki? Why do I need to do this? I love when authors use author notes or they use acknowledgments in fiction work at the end where what inspired them or how this world or this book or storyline was created from resources that they've used, and they somehow let me know what those are. As a reader, I love that because once again, that goes back to the authority of the author. I know they've taken the time to do some higher-level thinking about their storyline, and even if it was inspiration. What I challenge fiction authors, regardless if you use a source or not and it was just inspiration, you should at least keep it in your personal notes as a log of what those research basics were, which is the title of the book, possibly how it inspired you, or the source, and how you did use it or you planned on using it in your book, for two reasons. One, you never know when that inspiration is going to hit for something else later, for another storyline or another book. Number two, once again, if there's ever a reason for any sorts of challenges from anywhere, you know that you can go back, ‘Oh, wait, I know how this inspiration came.' You can go back to your notes and you can verify where that inspiration came and you can address anything that may come up. It doesn't always come up. I don't want people to think that every book is going to get challenged but it is very uncomfortable in a situation when it does happen. And it just lends to that authority as an author that says, ‘I know how I created this book in this world and it was inspired by people.' I also believe that keeping a log of what inspired authors in your work is giving a kind of acknowledgment to where you're inspired is very important. So that's that karma aspect in my mind. If you do that at the end of your fiction book and say, ‘This is what inspired me,' that also gives the readers an opportunity to explore other opportunities of how this writer was inspired, which gives the reader more knowledge of who you are as a writer. And that also just brings in so much good things for writers in my world. Joanna: I agree with you. As a reader, I want an author's note. I get upset if there isn't one. Vikki: I do too. Joanna: I want the book list and I will often go and follow, and this is for fiction, let alone nonfiction. And then it was interesting hearing you talk because I've definitely always done this, I have a lot of journals and I write out notes from books and things. So I've always got a kind of log but I realized that not everyone does this in the same way. What we're also saying is it's important to do it for acknowledgments and attribution to stop plagiarism. Vikki: Absolutely. Joanna: The other thing is we can try our very hardest and something might creep in that we didn't mean. I'm assuming that people are not doing it on purpose. How can we make sure we have not plagiarized someone else's work even if we didn't do it on purpose? Vikki: When I get asked this question, that's the number one thing I like to point out. As a librarian, especially in the academic world, I've had to be involved in cases where students had been flagged for their work for plagiarism. And what's interesting in all the cases, which there have been a few, right, in my world, I have discovered when I sat down and talked with that student, and we'll call them an author at this point, I find out that it's not intentional. Almost 99% of plagiarism is unintentional. Now, if you're asking the question, how can I avoid plagiarism, it's pretty safe and sound that you're probably not going to plagiarize. The intentional plagiarism is a whole different animal, and I wrote a piece just recently that came out here in the United States, about how I was actually plagiarized at the very beginning of my writing career when I was very young, and the devastation that happens for the writer when you realize your work was intentionally plagiarized and how to recover from that. But as far as how to avoid plagiarism, there's some really wonderful aspects that every writer, author should remember, and this goes for if you're doing this in your notes or if you're going to use this in your work. If you do use quotes or somebody else's work in your work, you can use signal words, which means ‘according to' and there's quite a few lists of signal words that you can use to indicate that you're not the one that's speaking these words, even if you paraphrase. And then you should paraphrase. You should never directly take somebody's work, cut and paste and put it directly into your work and claim it as your own. I know that sounds very basic but you would be surprised how often that happens. Once again, I don't think it's intentional. I think what happens is that people will use a cut and paste as a marker for them to go back and try to remember to rewrite that or re-paraphrase, but then they forget, they get rushed or whatever and they don't do that. And so that's where it's just best not to cut and paste. What's best is to immediately paraphrase in your notes or in your work what that author was saying, and then acknowledge that, acknowledge who the original creator was. And then once again, citations are valuable. If you do those in your own work when you go to publish, or in your notes, I think that will help to keep us from accidentally plagiarizing because it really is not intentional for a majority of people. Joanna: You're exactly right. Do not cut and paste or copy and paste. If I want to describe, let's say, Cologne Cathedral, I do not copy and paste from Wikipedia into my Scrivener document. What I might well do is open up my notebook and copy out from Wikipedia, Gothic spire, whatever, I might write down words that come from Wikipedia, but into my Scrivener, I am then paraphrasing from my written notes. And we should say, it is okay to use a direct quote in quotation marks as long as either you have permission or it is fair use. So for example, me quoting one line out of a very long book is completely fine, me quoting a song lyric is not okay. Vikki: Song lyrics are a nightmare. Just stay away from the song lyrics. [From Joanna: For more legal info on fair use, lyrics etc, check out The Self-Publisher's Legal Handbook by Helen Sedwick] Joanna: Yes, exactly. So I think you're exactly right. The main thing is do not cut and paste or copy and paste from one thing into your master manuscripts. I think that's a good point. However, where you take your notes is a different place to what your actual manuscript is. What about plagiarism checkers? ProWritingAid has one, So does Grammarly, etc.? Vikki: They're useful and I think they're valuable that you can run your pieces through plagiarism checkers. We do instruct our students in the university that they have to do that before they submit to us for grading. You cannot have more than I think it's 20% of anything. It will trigger us to just immediately kick it back to a student and say, ‘Okay, let's have a discussion about how you handle citations, notations, and things like that.' I think that if you're really that concerned about your writing as far as if you're plagiarizing or not, I think the first step is to really practice paraphrasing in your notes first and practice creating citations. And then if you've done all that and you still are concerned, then run it through a checker. I feel like if you really work that higher-order level of paraphrasing a source, you're probably not going to plagiarize, but it could be possible that you do. Joanna: Even with paraphrasing, still, let's say I paraphrase an idea that came from someone else. Vikki: Oh, heavens. Acknowledge where you got that inspiration. Absolutely. Joanna: Exactly. Vikki: And that is a professionalism. That's giving credit where credit is due. And unfortunately, not everybody does that. We just have to look at blogs, writing blogs, or whatever, and there's been a lot of controversy over that not happening and it's devastating. So in all honesty, if you're going to paraphrase, give credit to where that inspiration is. Joanna: You mentioned karma, it's about respect, it's about copyright. As you said, it's professionalism. Also, it's about marketing each other. With my nonfiction, in particular, I always look for author friends who I can quote things from so that I can link to their books. Vikki: Yes. I did that with my book with you. Joanna: Thank you. Vikki: You talked very distinctly, and it was funny because I was listening to one of your books and I was writing mine and you were talking about Wikipedia and not cut and paste. I'm like, ‘Oh, I don't even have to say it. Joanna just said it so I'll just quote her in the book.' Joanna: Exactly. And we want that. As authors, we want other people to quote our work in a respectful way and link back to us, and then it creates this web of referrals. I think what we're saying is it's a very positive thing to quote people, to cite people, to reference other people, and that that is an important part of the process. Vikki: It really is. And what it does as well is, once again, it gives that authority to the writer because it acknowledges that that writer is exploring their craft and their world and they're learning from others and they want to share what they've learned from others and they're presenting that to their reader from what they have learned from somebody else in an authoritative way. That lends authority to your voice when you do it and you do it correctly and you give credit and then it just does create that really great community connection for readers as well as in the writer's community. Joanna: Absolutely. So the book is Research Like a Librarian and many listeners want to get their books into libraries. As a librarian, and what are your tips for authors on approaching librarians in an appropriate way rather than just like, ‘Hey, here is my book?' Vikki: Appropriate way is fantastic. You just said the right word, appropriate way. So this comes all down to, once again, a lot of things. Some of the keys to remember to getting your book in a library is I am a big believer in relationship building and libraries and librarians are humans as well. And so the appropriate way is to start out by thinking about getting your books in the library as a relationship builder as well. If you haven't already connected with that library somehow, it's probably really important to get connected with that library without selling your book first, if there's a way that you can do that. Prior to COVID, there's a lot of libraries, local libraries, and other libraries that will hold events, call for speakers, especially authors. They love to bring authors in. If you jump on that, then you can get to know those individual players in the library that might be the potential buyers. And that's where it comes down to doing a little bit of research as well because in the library industry and in the library world, there are specific purchase requirements and criteria for every library. Not every person that stands behind a desk at a library is going to be able to purchase a book for the library. There's very specific guidelines. For example, the public library that I worked at, we could make formal recommendations to our library director and he would take the written document that we had, we could email to him if we had a book we wanted him to purchase for the collection, and then he would take those, and he only had a budget and a specific time that he would be purchasing. So that's another thing you need to remember is that the library doesn't have infinite amount of funds. Most libraries are funded by municipal properties, taxes, things like that, and they have budgets, and they will only do some spending at certain times of the year for books as well. That's where that relationships of getting to know people in the library and also doing your research on them, you're going to be able to target when you do your pitch for them to buy in a more appropriate manner. What would happen with us is that he would take all those recommendations and when it was time for him to purchase, he would go through the catalogs. So that's another tip. You have to know what distribution that library is going to be purchasing from. As independent authors, we now have great opportunities to get our books in specific distributions to be able to get your books into the hands of libraries. Joanna: On that, is it e-book, print book, audio, does it still work for print? Vikki: Libraries, from what I've heard in the industry, is they are going a lot with e-books as well. Print is fantastic but they tend to be more expensive. So they can purchase more and have access more for e-books. There is just the issue with some libraries of how they distribute those to individuals. But there is a lot of availability for e-books as well. I want to share with the listeners two amazing resources that I have found about this particular question. And one is really funny because it's on your page. It's from Eric Simmons and his book marketing, how to get your book into a library. I think it was a couple of years ago, he was on your website, and he wrote an article about it and it is phenomenal. I read it quite a few years ago, when it came out, and I have it bookmarked because it's one of the best resources. He has done a great job of laying out some steps for authors on how to approach libraries, what distribution, and he also give a phenomenal resource for how he did it, his own database, and his email, his professional email pitch that he used for those libraries that he didn't have a working relationship with. I highly recommend finding that on Joanna's website because if you're asking that question, that's a great resource. And then Anne Merrick on the Alliance for Independent Authors Advice Center, she also wrote a really great article, I think was a year ago, about this subject. And the Alliance for Independent Authors Advice Center also has several other articles about how to get your e-books into libraries and it's very up to date as well. So those are two awesome resources. You just have to remember that it's really about a relationship-building first, getting to know how that library purchases, and where they purchase, and what type of items, we call them items in the library, they will purchase, when they purchase, and then how to professionally pitch your particular book to them. And it's all going to come from some sort of relationship that you're building. Now, if you're doing research in that library, that's your key in. So if you're already there asking questions about your book while you're writing it and you've made connections with the librarians at that time and you acknowledge those librarians in that book, there's a pretty vast chance that they're going to purchase that book for the collection. So that's a great tip right there. Joanna: That is great. I would also say my tips on this are to publish wide. Make sure your e-books, print books, and audiobooks can be bought by libraries. And the second thing is ask your readers to ask. Vikki: Oh, I forgot about that one. Joanna: It's a great one. So, of course, anyone listening, you can ask your library…you should be able to do this pretty much anywhere in the world now, ask your librarian to order your favorite authors' books or mine or Vikki's into your library. I have found that that's pretty much how my books have appeared in libraries is because readers have actually asked for them to be put into the catalog. Even if they're on something like Overdrive, I think most libraries…that's a digital e-book catalog. Vikki: It is their main one. Yes. Joanna: And people still need curation in some way. So asking your readers to ask librarians for your books is a really good way. Vikki: Here's the hierarchy that I'm going to share with you as a backstage person in the library. If a patron, we call them patrons in the library world, but they are people that come and use the services, they make a recommendation for a book, that gets put up on a higher order than if a library staff member does, because automatically that indicates to the buyer – the buyer can be the library director, it could be a subject matter expert, meaning a reference library in history, depending on how big the library is, there may be specific librarians that do specific purchasing as well. If a patron or a customer comes and makes a recommendation, that goes up a little bit higher on the list than any other recommendations, including recommendations from blogs or publishers. Joanna: Oh, that's exciting. Vikki: I forgot about that tip, Joanna, because it's really important, and it's because there's already an audience that they know that is going to possibly check out this book. Where us as authors, purchasing books is important, in a library, how often that book gets checked out or circulated is another importance because circulation numbers matters. That's what keeps the doors open. If it's a high-demand book that there's a lot of people asking to have it available in the collection, it's going to be patrons asking, it's going to be more than likely they're going to get that book purchased. Joanna: That is a great tip. So lots more tips in your books. Where can people find you and everything you do online? Vikki: I've got a lot going online. So my website is theauthorslibrarian.com, and that's specifically for where you can go to purchase my book. You can visit my new growing YouTube channel because I'm trying to do a YouTube channel with discussing these topics. I will be doing an online course for authors on research and I do have a checklist for authors on how to avoid plagiarism. So there's a checklist there. I'm on social media, Vikki J. Carter is my main Instagram, but I also have Authors Librarian. I live on Instagram. That's the one I prefer. But I do have a Facebook and Twitter. I'm very visual so Instagram lends to that for me. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Vikki. That was great. Vikki: Thank you, Joanna.The post How to Research Your Book With Vikki Carter, The Author’s Librarian first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can anthropology — the study of human cultures — teach us to build richer and more convincing worlds for our stories? What questions do we need to ask of our characters and settings to bring them alive? Michael Kilman talks about how anthropology can help with world-building in this episode. In the intro, the late Sue Grafton's books licensed for film and TV even though she stated otherwise before she died [BookRiot]; Tina Turner sells IP rights [The Guardian]; Estate planning for authors; NaNoWriMo Storybundle; Pics from my St Cuthbert's Way walk on Instagram and Facebook; Relaxed Author interviews – 6 Figure Author and The Indy Author; Focus on your strengths [Ask ALLi] Today's show is sponsored by IngramSpark, which I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 39,000+ retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries and more. It's your content – do more with it through IngramSpark.com. Michael Kilman is an anthropologist, filmmaker, artist, science fiction author, and musician. Today we're talking about Build Better Worlds: An Introduction to Anthropology for Game Designers, Fiction Writers, and Filmmakers, co-written with Kyra Wellstrom. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes How knowing even a little bit about anthropology can support fictional world-buildingHow artifacts reflect what matters to a societyImportant features of urban anthropologyCautions about info-dumping when describing a world you’ve builtThinking of cultures in terms of how the pieces work together to form a cohesive wholeWriting about different cultures without straying into cultural appropriation You can find Michael Kilman at LoridiansLaboratory.com and on Twitter @LoridiansLab Transcript of the Interview with Michael Kilman Joanna: Michael Kilman is an anthropologist, filmmaker, artist, science fiction author, and musician. Today we're talking about Build Better Worlds: An Introduction to Anthropology for Game Designers, Fiction Writers, and Filmmakers, co-written with Kyra Wellstrom. Welcome, Michael. Michael: Hi. Nice to be on the show. Joanna: It's good to have you here. Tell us a bit more about you and your background and how you got into anthropology and writing. Michael: I fell in love with anthropology in undergraduate after trying many majors, and really trying to figure out who I was. And on a whim, I took a class called Anthropology. I said, ‘Anthropology, what in the world is anthropology?' Reading the course description it says, the study of human cultures. I was like, ‘Hmm, okay, all right.' I took the class and fell in love. After that, I was just set on a path for studying other cultures around the world. I had already been writing for quite a while. I started writing when I was about 14, 15 years old, I started my first attempt at a book. It was terrible, of course, and so was much of my other work for quite a few years, I really didn't publish anything fiction-wise until my 30s. So it was a long process for me. But in the meantime, I went off to grad school in my mid-20s, and I started working with other cultures, I've worked with a lot of Native American tribes. Over the years, I lived and worked in a rural village in Mexico, and a lot of like urban anthropology, which means we study populations, and cities, and stuff. My area of focus in anthropology ultimately became media systems and representation. So looking at how media represents people, and why is that problematic? Or why is it good? All those various things, trying to uncover exactly what happens when you represent people in spaces like fiction, for example, although video production was in my background, and so I focused a lot on that kind of media at the time. And then, a couple years ago, Kira and I ran into each other again. Ironically, we went to the same college as an undergraduate, but we never actually met each other until we were both teaching again at the same college we were both undergraduates in. So we met there, and we became friends, and we started talking. Kira, she's a biological anthropologist, which means she focuses on the biological side of culture, how does biology and environment impact humans? And her area of specialty is in forensics. If you've seen the show, ‘Bones,' that's the kind of stuff she does, although she doesn't really like to be compared to ‘Bones,' because there's a lot of problematic science in that show, forensics is not so magical. And there's a number of other things that are troublesome with that. Although on the other hand, ‘Bones' has made physical anthropology very popular, so we can't fault it for that either. But we were both talking about how representation in fiction, or how a lot of these fictional worlds, they just don't work, or they have big problems, they're not holistic, like real-world cultures. We started really thinking about it, and then one day, I was just like, ‘Hey, we should write a book on worldbuilding and use all of our anthropological knowledge, both of our graduate degrees to drive the book, and then also as a teaching tool.' So we use a textbook version of this that we've created, which is a little bit different than the commercial version that people would buy off Amazon because it's got a few more chapters, but those chapters focus on things like methodology, or things that you would do in the field that you wouldn't necessarily be interested in for building a fictional world, and built-in quizzes, and all kinds of other stuff that textbook companies do. Obviously, we have to project a little bit with alien cultures or elven culture, or troll culture, or anything like that. But understanding a little anthropology can go a very long way into building a more solid and immersive kind of fictional world. Joanna: It is an excellent book. The book is incredibly rich, and there are many different areas that writers can explore. For me, and many people listening who like thrillers, or action-adventure, or fantasy, there's lots of things around artifacts, around seeking things, group of people go and find something. Obviously, talking would be a famous one, go and find something or go and return something and often called the MacGuffin in thrillers. It was interesting because you have this whole chapter on the things we make and the things we leave behind. And that was really evocative chapter name as well. What are some of the things we can consider in this area? Michael: Obviously you're talking about films like ‘Indiana Jones' or ‘The Mummy'; the idea that you have some sort of object you're chasing. But our chapter is really more about the archeology of things like, and I think, largely what our chapter was trying to drive at is when you're building a fictional world, you're going to want unique objects in there. If, for example, I mean, certainly The Lord of the Rings, you have the ring itself is a MacGuffin. But that's such a present one because it's everywhere. The whole story is about that one particular ring. But of course, a lot of thrillers are using more like, ‘We're chasing this artifact,' or, ‘We're hunting it down,' or those kinds of things. What does that object represent is a good question. We have a section in the book on cultural purity, and talking about how in all arenas of life, we're constructing these notions of purity, clean and dirty, right and wrong, good and bad. And we're always measuring these ideas. This comes from an anthropologist by the name of Mary Douglas. And so you should think about when you're having the sacred object that you're chasing around, not even necessarily sacred, but this object that everyone's following around. George Lucas, uses R2-D2 and C-3PO as kind of like an interactive sort of MacGuffin in a way. What does it mean to the culture that originally built it? What does it mean to the people who are chasing it? Those are the kinds of questions that obviously a lot of thrillers are asking, but how is it constructed? Or why was it constructed is another question. In archaeology, we don't just look at artifacts, we also look at features, which are kind of like the immovable version. A feature is a wall, or it's a temple, or it's a statue, it's something not easily moved, it would take a lot of effort, or eco-facts, flora and fauna, those kind of things. What animals are around? What plants are around? What can we know about that stuff, right? So it's really interesting, because we always joke like with all these MacGuffins out in the world, that's like the early archeology. The early archaeology was the adventurers, they were like, kicking ass, taking names, going around the world and doing a lot of looting really, quite honestly, not such very good ethical things in the early days of archaeology, a lot of very problematic stuff. It's known that the British Museum, even to this day has all kinds of issues with repatriation of artifacts that they took during the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries, and kept them in the British Museum. And it's a lot of countries and cultures want their stuff back or whatever. Early archaeology is about this kind of adventure thing. But it's later on that, and I love to see a story like this, where you have these treasure hunters looking for this object. But in reality, they find out that the object maybe is not so important, but it's what knowledge comes from the object because modern archaeology is not about the objects, it's about what we can find out from them. Kira and I, we had this wonderful archaeology professor undergraduate named Dr. Kent, and Dr. Kent had a saying, ‘It's not what you find, but what you find out.' In fact, it's such a saying, I think two of my fellow undergraduates got it tattooed on them somewhere. So like, it's another Ph.D. archaeologist, so they got very into that stuff. Joanna: I think that's really interesting, and asking these questions is so important. You mentioned that you have a specialty in urban anthropology and cities. And of course, our culture right now, a lot of stuff won't remain of our particular culture. Because it's digital, it's technology, and it won't be able to be found. My iPhone could be found in years to come. But it will be like, well, ‘What is this metal thing? And what does it do?' And it's like you say, if it's what you can find out, well, then you can't actually find out because it's all disappeared. I find that fascinating. If people are constructing cities, what are some of the things that you think are important around cities and the urban anthropology? Michael: There's something so important, we talk about organizing government, it's called political integration. And really, it's how integrated is your city? Or how integrated is the political system with the day-to-day lives of people? In class, the example I use is poop. Because if you think about it, if you're in a small-scale society, and you need to poop, where do you go? You just go off into the woods somewhere. You dig a ditch and you're done because you only have 40, or 50, or 100 people. It's not a big deal. You're not going to need to build a whole public works. But if you look at a city and you think about what sanitation does. How many thousands of people it employs to deal with the sewers, to deal with public restrooms, to deal with waste treatment management, to deal with the power systems, to build or to collect and manufacture the toilets and the materials for the toilets. All of this stuff, you're talking about thousands of people every day, just to deal with sanitation, and sanitation is one of the most important things to managing a clean city. Because if you don't deal with sanitation well, you get disease, and you get all kinds of other things that go very poorly for you. I use that example, kind of comedically in class, I have students tell me all the things that they need to deal with, when you're dealing with integrating a political system with waste management, but it's also with everything. When you're building a city, you have to think about how are people going to get clothing? How are they going to get food? Where is it manufactured? How is it distributed? And really, it comes down to the fundamental problem of managing energy systems. It's also why people in this country, in particular, we talk about small government, small government, small government, and I know I'm sure they do in the UK, quite a bit too. But the reality is, once you reach a certain size of civilization, small government is laughable. You can't not deal with infrastructure, it's not a question of, if there'll be a bigger government, it's how big it will be. Because there's just so many things that you have to regulate to make power systems work, or organ waste management, or food distribution, in order to make sure that your population isn't starving, or freezing to death, or all these other things, you have to do so many things. And then, of course, the more technologically advanced you get, the more things you have to deal with, because now we have telecommunications, Wi-Fi, phone calls, we're on Zoom here right now. And that has to be regulated to some degree in order for all the systems to work. So if you're thinking about building a city in another world, you're going to have to think about these kinds of things, and what kind of systems are in place. And the one way that I got away with this in my own fictional series the Chronicles of the Great Migration is, one of my characters is a sanitation worker, for example. And now my series has a number of different main characters. But I showed different faces of the city. And this is something you can try, and George R.R. Martin, Stephen King, a bunch of other big writers are really good at switching point of views between different characters that you get a bigger picture of culture. Now, you don't have to do it that way, of course, but I'm a big fan of if you're going to make a really complex society, it's really useful to show different facets of that, through different characters and different experiences. Joanna: You've given an example there of a character who can see a certain thing. And also, I think it also has a practical application in terms of locations and settings. So you mentioned there, like sewers, I mean, sewers appear in loads of different stories as ways, a place that some marginalized people live, a place for people to travel without being seen. I was thinking as you were talking about removing the dead, and in London here in Europe, when the plagues happened. Under Paris, you've got the catacombs, which are full of the bones of the plague dead, because what else do you do with them, and these sort of places where they stored the dead, and that's because the city didn't have anywhere to put them. Or in London, the floods would lift the bodies up out the graves. And so as you say, and that is so rich, when you consider, okay, and I've written in one of my books, I have the Paris Catacombs, and then you think, ‘Okay, so why do they exist?' And they exist for that reason. So for people listening, it's thinking about your character and giving a glimpse that way, and also your settings. Michael: Yeah. And it's tough, because when you're doing world-building, and you want to do it really well, you have to be careful of info-dumping, like you can't just dump all the information on it. One way to do it is to show characters' daily life, what's it like to be just an average citizen who suddenly gets wrapped up in this big story inadvertently. It's like the whole Hero's Journey thing, the call for adventure from the farm boy, or a lot of those fantasy stories uses that kind of trope, where you have this kind of thing, but you can do that on all kinds of levels. Your character doesn't even have to be like the hero. He can just be the victim or she could be the victim of the circumstances of maybe war between two giant fantasy armies or something like that. It could just be the experiences of what is it like to be sitting there in the middle of a siege as trebuchets are launching into your city. You can just give that feeling and drive a lot of tension and action simply by showing what it's like to be a person in your city. You can even use that character for one chapter and then kill them off in maybe a prologue or something like that. I know George R.R. Martin loves to use like a prologue with a foreign character in Game of Thrones, and then kill them off at the end of the prologue. And, it's funny, because I was thinking about that the other day, when I was working on my next book. That's actually a really clever way of doing something because it gives you a unique perspective. And then this is a character, not necessarily a character just to be discarded, but it shows you a slice of life that you wouldn't have gotten otherwise. That can be really powerful, and that can be really useful for worldbuilding. If you're trying to show a picture or a side of your world that the main character just isn't going to get to. Joanna: I pretty much always use a prologue as well. In the one I'm writing at the moment, it's 1000 years ago, in medieval times, for example, and then it jumps forward into now. But it's interesting, because I feel like you could get so into all these details that you forget to actually write a book. Michael: Oh, yeah. Joanna: You mentioned problems with info-dumping there. And let's be honest, you mentioned sewers, but I don't put sewers in my books, I don't need to. They're just not necessary, so we don't have to build every kind of aspect of a world. Michael: No, absolutely not. Joanna: If you were to say, right, if you just did these two things, your worlds would be better? What are some of the things that you find writers are particularly weak at? Michael: There's no real easy, simple answer to that. Because obviously, everyone's worldbuilding from a different point of view, or a different background of knowledge. But I think making your world holistic. In other words, we know that in the real world, when something changes in one arena of culture, it's going to ripple out into other arenas of culture. Think about how much has our culture changed, introducing the smartphone. Every arena of our lives has been altered by the smartphone. That's the way with any introduction of any new idea or anything. Now, of course, it's a scalable. So small things, small changes, like the little pops in the back of our phones, the little handle things that people put on the back of their phone. Obviously, that's going to change a few things, but it's not going to have sweeping systemic change, because it's already like an existing major culture change having the cell phone in the first place. But a new religion coming to town would then affect the political life of people, it would affect gender systems, it would affect their sexuality, it would affect a class, for example. In fact, when Christian missionaries go to town, a lot of times what they do is they completely disrupt the economic activity of people's lives, sometimes on purpose, sometimes not on purpose. And then people who are of lower status will often take advantage of a new religion or a new ideology in town to gain advantage for themselves. We see this all the time in indigenous societies, that a missionary comes to town, and it fractures the culture that's established, and the people who maybe didn't have access to society before suddenly have new access, and use that kind of power to change their lives in a lot of ways. The number one thing I tell people all the time is, when you build a world, you can't just throw together a bunch of elements, because that's just not how culture works. You need to be thinking about how do these systems work together to make a cohesive, entire culture. How does the religion integrate with your economics, with your political system, with identity in general? How does all this work on an individual identity level? What kind of challenges or changes are people going to experience when this change comes to town? One thing we also know very well is, culture is constantly changing. And really the debate is over how much change will be allowed. Right now people who consider themselves more conservative, can have a tendency to be more fearful of these changes and new ideas. And so they'll look back to this kind of imagine the glorious past and say, ‘Hey, we should go back like this.' But there is no real going back. And the people who are considered more progressive have a tendency, and again, these are trends or tendencies. Obviously, people are complex, you can't just say conservatives do X and progressives do X, because almost everybody has some ideas that they're progressive at, and some ideas that they're conservative about, and that's another thing to consider is you're building these whole cultural systems, human agency, people make choices. This is one way getting into avoiding stereotypes or getting these kind of places where we misrepresent people is, instead of just making someone a two-dimensional standard, stereotypical character, we give them complex choices and things. And those, holism and complex human agency, are the two big things that I think are so important that I think you can tell the difference between a good writer and a bad writer by those two things. I honestly do think that, and that doesn't mean that your worldbuilding is going to be perfect. No one's worldbuilding is going to be perfect, because we all have gaps in our knowledge. We just can't know certain things. And that's why things like research are important into understanding in cultural systems. That's why we wrote this book, so people have a better understanding of what is in a world. Joanna: The other thing I think is interesting in terms of creating these worlds, and these can also be modern worlds; I build ‘a world' for my ARKANE thrillers, for example. There are certain rules and things like that, but we humans are the same across time. I take our current culture, sure, we have technology and stuff. But humans are behaving in exactly the same way as they did during other plagues and other threats in the End Times kind of millenarianism is what's going on right now. It's crazy. Michael: Yeah. Joanna: And you mentioned politics there. People think, ‘Oh, things are different now, because we're so much more sophisticated.' But we're really not. I feel like you could put that, you can write a historical novel, and things will be different, but many things will be exactly the same. You mentioned, fear, and conspiracies about plagues have always happened. Like it was that group or that group. And so, I would encourage people that you don't have to reinvent everything from scratch. You can borrow things from culture or periods in history, with the knowledge that people and/or aliens might behave in a similar way to how they did. Michael: Absolutely. And what's the name of that series, but it's about dragon riders during the Napoleonic Wars, ‘Temeraire', ‘Temeraire' is the name of the book. So instead of having just the Napoleonic Wars, they also throw dragon riders, and dragons as kind of like this air force. It's so fun because, and these are a young adult kind of book I read to one of my kids, and it just really does a good job of taking the different cultural dimensions. Later in the series, they go to other cultures with dragons and see how the dragons are treated differently based on different cultural systems. And that author did such a great job of really just taking one big element, which is simultaneously a fantastical creature, and also a technology or a tool of war, and just showing what would have been different. I don't know what the author's process was. But I think obviously, you can take the First World War with the fighter planes, and make some good guesses about what it would be like to have an intelligent, thoughtful dragon kind of creature intermixed with that whole system. What are the hopes and dreams of dragons amidst this air core and all this other kind of stuff? And what's unusual about this particular dragon or those kinds of things? So, yes, absolutely you don't have to reinvent the wheel, you can take a cultural system, look at how it's holistic and say, ‘Hey, I'm going to throw dragons in there.‘ And then you can just think about, okay, well, what would dragons do to politics? What are the economic things that we need to deal with dragons? Would dragons change religion and how so? Would some people worship them or fear them, or consider them like the devil? How would all of this work? You don't have to get too super crazy. You don't have to do what I did, which is build a world 1300 years in the future, with giant cities, and then try to figure out how that social system would work in an enclosed ecosystem. You don't have to do anything like that. You can make small changes to historical periods or to the modern world. A lot of people do this to zombie apocalypses. And just really try to understand what drives the change, who are the winners and losers is another good question to ask. Every society has winners and losers. So who are they? Especially when you add in a new technology, who would that benefit, and who would that disenfranchise? That's another really good question to ask yourself. Joanna: I was just looking up that book. That sounds awesome. This series is by Naomi Novik, and there's nine alternate history fantasy novels about that, ‘Temeraire,' as you mentioned, is the first one. That sounds awesome. I think that's actually a really good idea is to pick one thing that you can twist. I guess George R.R. Martin just took a historical novel and added dragons and zombies. Michael: Pretty much. A lot of what he's writing about, people say, ‘Game of Thrones is so brutal,' Did you not read about medieval times? Joanna: Yeah. Michael: It's a terrible, terrible time. People were just jerks. And women, they did not do well in that time period. So he does a really good job. His books are so good. I just wish he would finish the damn thing. That's all. Joanna: When you've been paid that amount of money, it's like, why bother? You've mentioned that you worked with Native American tribes, and you specialize in this idea of media representation. We're living in a difficult time. A good time in that we're trying to redress difficulties in representation within culture. But also people are struggling with that in trying to do it in an authentic way. And you are a white American man. Michael: Yes. Joanna: And yet you've written about all these different cultures, and many people are afraid of trying to write about different cultures for fear of being accused of cultural appropriation. And we also do want to write diversity. I write very diverse characters in my books. And I don't particularly worry about it to be honest, because I really try very hard to make it good. I also have readers who are from those cultures who read them and tell me if I've made a mistake. How do you suggest that we can use aspects of culture without going over the line with cultural appropriation? Michael: I mentioned a little earlier about agency. Agency in anthropology is defined essentially, as the ability to act within a given cultural system. So it's not as if your choices are totally free or unlimited. This idea of total free will is kind of like, well, how can you make a choice if you don't know about something? Or how can you make a choice if you have a systematic oppression going on? Agency is limited by the cultural system in a lot of ways or your choices are. One thing to think about, though, is like a Christian is not a Christian is not a Christian. You have many varieties of Christians. They did a survey of the American Catholic Church a few years back on their political beliefs; how do they feel about things like abortion? Or how do they feel like things about gay rights? It turned out that on most of the major issues it was split pretty much 50-50 among American Catholics and all these issues that are fundamental to the church. What does that tell you? That tells you that no matter what cultural system a person is born into, that doesn't mean they have to agree with everything that the cultural system offers. This is why stereotypes are really dangerous, because in our minds, it's so easy to categorize people and lump them in with an entire group of people forgetting that they're human beings with thoughts, hopes, and dreams and all this other stuff. We have a chapter in the book called, Why the hell did they do that: Understanding the context, conditions, and choices made by people in fictional characters. The reason we wrote that chapter is because when you're writing about another culture, you need to understand the historical context in which this person is living. What are the cultural conditions that their life is also in? And then what choices do they make? When we talk about context, that's the history, that's the language they're born into, that's really the system that they're born into. The conditions are, what's their individual experience? I often use the metaphor of a city block, the context is a city block. The conditions are the house that the person lives in, and then the choices are their life within that house. One of the ways to avoid stereotypes is to consider, okay, here's this cultural system. And that means you're going to have to do research in the cultural system. Especially when it comes to marginalized people, you really need to do your homework. That's the first step, then you need to look at the conditions of that particular character's life, what was it like to grow up? Let's say if you're Native American growing up in American society, the conditions of your life are going to be very different than like someone like me, who is a white person who grew up in a suburban area of a city. Being on a reservation is a completely different experience. What are the conditions and what are my conditions in the same culture versus that person's? Then you can begin to understand people's choices. And so using that model is helpful. But the other thing that's really helpful is things like sensitivity readers. If you're writing about a disabled character, it might be super useful to hire a sensitivity reader who, A, has the disability themselves, or B, works with the people who have disabilities, or at least has a background in studying those things. A lot of the ways to avoid cultural appropriation is through the due diligence of research. And then also consultation with a culture, if you're going to be writing about a particularly oppressed group, then it does not hurt to reach out to those groups to read as many books as you can on those groups, and really try to understand those things. It's just like any other thing in writing, it requires diligence, it requires discipline. And if you want to be a better writer, then you have to do those things. If you just use lazy stereotypes, then, of course, you're going to further the difficult situation. And then when we're talking about media anthropology, the one thing we see is how people are represented in long-term narratives. So not just once or twice in a book here or there, or even for a decade or two, but you're talking about decades or centuries, how people are represented over time is how we come to think of them on an unconscious level. Our implicit bias. When we're culture appropriating, or we're misrepresenting diverse populations, then we're essentially contributing to those same stereotypes over and over again, and we're furthering the difficult situation of those people. It's really important to consider what am I recycling? Or if I'm going to use a stereotype, like a certain group is in a certain economic position, for example, how is that useful? Is it useful because I'm trying to tell a story of the complexity of their identity? Is it useful because I'm trying to explain what that world is like for them? Why are you picking this particular character? For what reason? You have to write diversity, you have to, unless you're doing something very specific, like the Star Trek-style, where everyone is one, looks exactly the same in one side, and everyone looks exactly the same in the other. Unless you're doing something specific to bring attention to issues of diversity, you have to write diversely, because the world is diverse. You can't go into any city and not meet a diverse group of people within a few minutes, who's got different inclinations, thoughts, hopes, dreams, and all that stuff. So I think the most important thing to remember is that people are people wherever you go. They have to do the same things to survive and get through their day. But how they take that on, depends on their context and the conditions of their life. Joanna: We're out of time. But coming back to where you started, which is anthropology is the study of human culture, that has to underpin all of our writings. This is just a fascinating topic. I definitely recommend your book, Build Better Worlds. Where can people find you, and your books, and everything you do online? Michael: You can find us on Amazon. My book series, the sci-fi series, ‘Chronicles of the Great Migration' is also on Amazon and Kindle. I am also now answering worldbuilding questions on TikTok, so you can find me, author Michael Kilman. I try to do a couple a week at least. When people ask me questions, I do my best to answer them in a semi timely manner. You can also find my website where a series of anthropology called ‘Anthropology in 10 or Less.' That's all based on my website, which is loridianslaboratory.com. And, all my stuff is up in there. Joanna: Okay, great. Well, thanks so much for your time, Michael. That was fantastic. Michael: Thank you so much for having me on. You have a great show.The post Build Better Worlds: Anthropology For Writers With Michael Kilman first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you use elements of mystery to hook your readers, regardless of the genre you write? How can you make sure your writing process prevents errors or plagiarism? Jonah Lehrer covers these aspects and more. In the intro, KDP Print available in hardback; Bookvolts book-specific NFT platform [Medium]; Books for writers in the NaNoWriMo Storybundle; ALLi self-publishing conference; Tomb of Relics. Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with Scrivener, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent, or publisher. Check it out for free or get 25% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna Jonah Lehrer is a New York Times bestselling author of non-fiction and a journalist. His latest book is Mystery: A Seduction, A Strategy, A Solution. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes How children’s Surprise Egg YouTube videos inspired the bookHow do we know when an idea is big enough for a book?Practical ways of bringing mystery into any storyHow spoilers aren’t always badUsing the rules of mystery in non-fictionRecovering from a career-changing writing mistake, and how it has changed Jonah's writing process You can find Jonah Lehrer at JonahLehrer.com. Transcript of Interview with Jonah Lehrer Joanna: Jonah Lehrer is a New York Times bestselling author of non-fiction and a journalist. His latest book is Mystery: A Seduction, A Strategy, A Solution. Welcome, Jonah. Jonah: Thank you so much for having me. Joanna: Oh, I'm excited to talk to you. So, let's get right into it. Why a book about mystery? What was it that drew you to write about this topic? Jonah: The book is full of examples drawn from the canon, from great works of literature, from ‘Hamlet' to Emily Dickinson, but what actually inspired me to write this book was watching my son watch YouTube videos. He fell down the rabbit hole, this specific genre of kids YouTube video called ‘Surprise Eggs,' which, to make a long story short, if you haven't had the pleasure of watching these inane videos, it's essentially parents make these giant paper mache eggs and stuff them full of toys. And what a child does is he punches a hole in the paper mache egg, and then pulls out the toys one by one. It's like a slot machine for toddlers, they never know what toy is going to come next. So it's incredibly exciting. I watched him watch these videos and just become enthralled by them. And then I quickly realized he wasn't the only one that a lot of these ‘Surprise Egg' videos on YouTube. The ‘Surprise Egg' genre is now one of the most popular genres in the YouTube Kids world, that he was just enthralled by this narrative trick of not knowing what toy was going to come next. And you can look at these videos and their stats on YouTube, and they have billion plus views. Ryan's Toy Review in particular, he's one of the most subscribed YouTubers in the world. He's credited with pioneering the ‘Surprise Egg' and it's the 33rd YouTube video of all time. I became fascinated by this idea of why kids were so entranced by mystery, by these mystery boxes. And that is really what led me down this long, winding path, this investigation into mystery, not just on YouTube Kids, but in Shakespeare, but in poetry, in advertising, in magic tricks, and so forth. Joanna: For all the people who want to write non-fiction who are listening, or do write non-fiction, I'm one of them, how do we know when an idea is big enough for a book? Because you're pretty academic, from what I read, and you go deep into it. Mystery, in one way, it's really massive, and in another way, it's really small. How did you know that this idea was big enough for a book? Jonah: It's such a good question, and I wish I had a better answer. But for me, I don't know. I just kind of follow the thread. It began with me thinking about why my child was so entranced by the YouTube videos that I found so inane, and consumerism at its most banal, just like a kid tearing up in toys, and not even playing with them. So, that's where it began. Then I start to see connections everywhere, and I just start putting them together, I create these massive Word files. Then give it some time to breathe. And I see what hangs together. Slowly, over the course of, I think for this book, probably two years, a structure gradually emerged. But at the beginning, what I'm really looking for is a subject that's capacious enough, that's wide-ranging enough that I guess is vague enough, where I can just start to collect stories that fit. And then I fall in love with the stories. Joanna: So, diving down a publishing rabbit hole already, we'll get back to the book in a minute. When do you pitch the book to your publisher? I know you're traditionally published. Is that something that you do once you've got that structure? Because, again, just the word mystery, to me, I think fiction, but you've turned it into this non-fiction book. When did you pitch that to a publisher? When did you know it was right? Jonah: I'm fortunate enough to have a really wonderful relationship with my editor at Simon & Schuster, Ben Loehnen, who's just one of the best. We have a casual relationship where I was able to go to him fairly early in the ideation process, and just say, ‘I'm really interested in these kids YouTube videos, and I think they've got something to do with characters in ‘Hamlet.' I think he probably gave me a pretty funny look. But he was encouraging and said, ‘Keep pulling up the thread, see what happens.' And then, I'd say, six months later, I sent him a messy proposal. It was sprawling, and I think what I wanted to do with that proposal was to give him a sense of the breadth of the idea, that this wasn't just a book about detective stories. I certainly talk about Agatha Christie and Edgar Allan Poe and ‘Law and Order' and all the rest. But it was a book about mystery broadly defined, about why we're drawn to the unknown across all these different domains. Really, I wanted it to be an investigation of this fundamental hook of culture, how great artists throughout history have always used the unknown to intrigue and seduce the audience. He had some truly wonderful thoughts. I think a great editor, they bring that outside perspective, they read it as the reader and not as the writer. And they see all your flaws, they see all the structural issues. Throughout the process, I think what he really helped me with this book in particular on was the structure, was trying to take this very amorphous topic and try to give it an arc. So it would build to something. And that advice was there, thinking back on, it was there from the start. Joanna: The subtitle is, A Seduction, A Strategy, A Solution. I was thinking about it from the point of view of the people listening and writers in general, to me, it's a strategy, really, for our books. How can we bring elements of mystery into our books, regardless of genre? Jonah: I think there's something to be learned from looking at how the great ones have done it. One can deconstruct an Agatha Christie story, or an Edgar Allan Poe story, and try to figure out what is it about this detective genre that I think Poe largely invented, that makes it so predictable, that makes it last? It's not just a popular genre of literature, but it's also one of most popular genres of television, the procedural. And it's the same basic idea. It's this omniscient detective, this deductive cop who can solve the impossible crime, they connect the dots that no one else can connect. What is it that's so appealing about that? The basic assumption of this book is that we can learn from successful art. That the art that works and the art that lasts can teach us something, not just about the art, but also how the mind works, and what the audience wants, and how we can create art that really fits those strange grooves of the human mind. So, as a strategy more generally, I think it's important to remember that what the audience is most intrigued by is the unknown. When we say something is suspenseful, that the pace is quickening, what we're really saying is that we don't know what's going to happen next. I think too often we put too much information in, we're too concerned about people getting lost, people being a little confused, people being surprised by twists that come out of nowhere, when the reality is, that's the fun part. That's the part that we love the most. At a high level, I think the strategy is to remember that people are really fascinated by the unknown, whether it's toys in a paper mache egg, or not knowing who committed the crime. Joanna: I'm looking for some more practical ideas for how people can do that. For example, Lee Child, obviously great thriller writer, talks about open questions. I like to use cliffhangers at the end of a chapter, an open the door, but we don't know what's behind the door. What you said there about not giving too much information upfront is really important and is one of the main things. What are some other practical ways we can bring mystery into our books? Jonah: There are a couple discreet ways. One is the mystery box. The mystery box is a specific technique where you create, I talk about in the book in terms of George Lucas in ‘Star Wars.' The idea that when you watch the first ‘Star Wars,' the movie really does lurch from one mystery box to the next. You don't know who the Jedi are, you don't know what the Force is, you don't know who Obi-Wan Kenobi is. And I think if you're reading that from an editor's perspective, you might say, ‘George, this is just too confusing. You need to give us more background here.' We're completely lost for the first hour of the movie. Yet I think what Lucas realizes is, that's what keeps us engaged, we're in this immersive world, we have no idea what's going on, and that's why we pay attention. It's the same with the first chapter of Harry Potter, which I dissect in the book, which all these strange things are happening. Talking cats on this very ordinary street, this bizarre world is unfolding, and we don't understand any of it. And we kind of see the world through the eyes of Harry Potter. And that's what's so interesting, the fact that we don't understand it. I think especially when you're introducing a new world, I think it's important to let the reader be confused, to let the reader not know what's going to happen next. I think, at the level of plot, it's important to not give too much away, as Agatha Christie put it, it's the chase that people want. The who done it is most interesting before we know who did it. But also at the level of character. I think this is the more neglected virtue of mystery, which is that sometimes we want to ensure our characters have clear motivations, our characters are transparent and easy to understand, that they make sense in some larger sense. I think when you look at literature and the best characters, the characters are most interesting, they're the ones that befuddle us. They're the Hamlet's of the world, the Tony Soprano's of the world, the characters who we don't know what they're going to do. And that's why we really have to engage with them and simulate their minds, and really try to figure them out. And that's what's most interesting to us. So I'd say it's also not just plot but also character. Joanna: You're right, when a character is in the ‘Star Wars' example, they know what the Force is, so they don't need to explain it to each other. The worst extra dialogue is, ‘You remember, Jonah, when we went to that thing last week?' Backstory thrown in dialogue because we don't know how else to do it. Jonah: That can be so tempting because you feel like you're giving the reader a hand, you're doing those data dumps. That doesn't just slow down the pace of the story, it actually detracts from what we find most interesting, that at some deep level, we don't want to understand. I was lucky enough to spend time with the writing staff of ‘Law and Order.' They really see their job as confusing and surprising the audience for 41 minutes. It's the 42nd minute where you give away the answer and the crime has to be satisfying, and the gears have to click into place. But they really see their job as, for most of the show, for the first 41 minutes of the show, you don't want to know who did it. You don't want to solve the crime, because then it's not interesting. Joanna: I feel like mystery readers, crime readers and watchers, obviously now TV and film are some of the most intelligent readers and it takes a lot to actually hide things from these readers. It's annoying to many of us who read the genre, publishers now put in a fiction subtitle, “The most explosive twist you will never expect.” And of course, we all go, ‘Well, of course we're going to figure it out.' Where's the line between making it so difficult to figure out that we surprise people but also avoiding that deus ex machina, ‘oh, suddenly it was this person who we'd never seen before,' which betrays the rules of story? Jonah: I think that's where the art comes in. There's no simple formula that can tell you exactly how to calibrate it. On the one hand, of course, you don't want to completely befuddle parts of the ‘Star Wars,' to return to the ‘Star Wars' analogy. Parts of that world have to make sense, we can't be completely lost. We need a guide, we need a character who can lead us through, whether it's Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker. We need to feel like there's someone there we can trust. And I think that's part of the virtue of the detective formula, is we feel better, even though we ourselves are confused. We're there to be confused. We're there to not know the answer. I think what mitigates that confusion, that sense of anxiety is this detective, is the Sherlock Holmes who's going to lead us through and we're confident, in the end, he will figure it out and show us how it worked. There are also the principles, and this is something Poe and Conan Doyle really perfected, this notion that the crime should be deducted in some way, that at the end, we should be able to look back and understand how it happened. So it shouldn't feel random. That's an important principle of the genre that is often violated. I find personally when I read a detective story, and there is that deus ex machina coming in, swooping in at the end. You just get so angry. It's, ‘Oh my gosh, I just wasted a lot of time here.' There are those basic principles of the genre that I think the best ones do obey. And yet at the end of the day, it's a formula that shouldn't feel formulaic. When you look at my favorite detective story writers, my favorite crime writers, they often use other aspects of the genre, other aspects of the novel, to bring in layers of richness, whether it's deep, complicated characters, who aren't just xeroxes of Sherlock, or really interesting crimes, or introduce you to an entire underworld that you never thought about before. So, it's not just the same old crime story, they find other elements to also make it richer. Joanna: I think this is really interesting too, between discovery writers, I'm a discovery writer, and plotters and planners. Obviously with non-fiction you're a plotter and a planner structure. Those of us who are discovery writers, I find, I only really know the ending once I get to the ending, and then it's a case of actually going back and adding in a few lines, not to make it obvious, but to foreshadow the inevitable, and that is the trick, isn't it? Making it seem like an inevitable who did it or ending, but you can put in that later. I feel like many people who are just starting out writing don't realize that you don't have to write in order. You can go in and add things in. You can add in a red herring later. You can add in some foreshadowing later, in order to make it not too obvious, but also inevitable in some way. Jonah: Absolutely. One of my favorite stories in the book was told to me by Otto Penzler, who runs The Mystery Bookshop in New York City, and Elmore Leonard was one of his dear friends. He tells a story about Elmore Leonard coming to him in the middle of the night and saying, ‘Otto, Otto, I got this terrible problem.' And I'm paraphrasing here. ‘So my main character died on page 122.' And Otto says, ‘Well, just unkill him, just like change it.' He says, ‘I can't.' In a sense, he was the quintessential discovery writer, that here he had this character he loved, but he was writing this bar scene, and his main character got shot and died. And he couldn't undo it. The twist felt right to him. So then he had to solve the rest of the book with a dead main character. To me, that was such a great example of why Leonard's work rises above the genre, in part because he's constantly violating the rules of the genre. He's following these characters, who are these rich, complicated human beings on the page. And if they die on page 122, they die on page 122. Then he's got to discover the rest of the book. But to me, it was like, this great example of why it doesn't have to be this meticulously plotted and outlined work. You can also trust these characters, that they're interesting and they'll tell an interesting story too. Joanna: J. K. Rowling obviously has the famous spreadsheet that you can find online, if you Google, J. K. Rowling's spreadsheet. And clear plot lines and all of this, it can definitely work both ways. You have this really good section around reviews that reveal plot twists, and many authors get very upset about this. But we all know, engaging with reviewers on Amazon over reviews is often not a good idea. Why is the ‘spoiler' not such a big deal after all? Jonah: To be honest, this is one of the social science findings I found most surprising in the books. This was a real plot twist for me. We live in this age full of spoiler anxiety, spoiler alerts are everywhere. And yet when you look at the scientific literature, and this is mostly the work of Nicholas Christenfeld at UCSD, he'll give people a variety of works of literature from different genres. Detective stories, literary short stories, and so forth. Everyone from ‘Sherlock Holmes' to James Joyce, and then he'll give them different kinds of spoilers. Some, he'll just include a sentence at the front saying how it's going to end, some he'll write the story, so at the beginning of the story, he'll rewrite it, the beginning the story actually gives away the end, and so forth. What he finds is that for good works of literature, for good stories, stories that people like to begin with, spoilers actually make them more enjoyable, that we actually enjoy the story even more, we give it higher ratings when it's spoiled at the start. Now, there's no easy explanation for this finding. I think there are a couple of different things going on. The one I find most persuasive is that when a book is good, there are many layers to it. There are many mysteries built in. The mystery of ‘Harry Potter' isn't just who's going to win, Harry or Voldemort? In many respects, we kind of know Harry's going to win. Most genre fiction, it's got a predictable ending, the good guys are going to triumph, there'll be a wedding at the end and so forth. So, the big part of what we enjoy in the book is everything else, the building of the characters, the writing itself, the layers to the world, the way the story unfolds. And it turns out, when you give away the ending, when you know how it's going to end, that frees up more mental bandwidth. It gives you the space and the ability to really enjoy all those other layers. That's one of Christenfeld's leading explanations is that it gives you more space to enjoy our favorite parts of the book, which it turns out is not just the mystery box at the end. So I think we should be less anxious about spoilers. I also see spoilers as a really good test of a story's worth. No one complains that ‘Hamlet' is ruined when you know Hamlet dies. No one complains that if you know Harry Potter wins at the end, you're not going to want to read ‘Harry Potter.' These are works that endure, even when you know the end. And that's why we keep rereading them. That's why we keep watching Hamlet over and over again, it's why my 10-year-old daughter has read through ‘Harry Potter.' I think she's on trip number five. Because these books are unspoilable. It becomes this really interesting test of the worth of a story is if you spoil it, do you still want to read it? In many cases, the answer is yes. We'll enjoy it even more. Joanna: I think that's so useful. I've read the book, obviously, I think this is one of the most useful insights for my audience, because I feel like everyone, especially in the mystery genre, the crime genre, this obsession with the twist, the surprise, the ending, who murdered is who, but you're exactly right. I want to enjoy my whole experience of the book. And in fact, if you over-hype that bit of it, then the rest of it might fall short. So, I love this. I think it's so important. I wanted to emphasize it to everyone listening. Obviously, we still want to have good endings and good twists and good stories. But the whole thing, as you mentioned, your daughter, my husband, he's in his late 40s, but he's watched ‘The Lord of the Rings,' I don't even know how many times. He reads it and listens to it in every single format, hundreds of times over his life. That story never stops being so brilliant to him. Jonah: You keep discovering new things. The greatest mysteries are really infant games, they're stories you can go back to again and again and again. And they keep giving you new questions. Not the same answers, but new questions. I think that's the real test. And that's what makes them so unspoilable. Now, that said, I don't want to diminish the fun that can be had in puzzle fiction, in detective stories that maybe I don't want to read again. But, man, they were fun on the airplane that first time, or they were fun on the beach, or they were fun, just they kept me awake till 2 a.m. because I needed to know how it ended. There's tremendous joy to be had in those works, too. And I think those can be spoiled. So I don't think it's true if all fiction that it's unspoilable. But it's true of a particular kind of fiction, which is the fiction we want to go back to again and again, and I think that's what most writers aspire to. So, not a book that shouldn't be spoiled, a book that can't be spoiled. Joanna: If perhaps you all aspire to write that. But for those of us who earn a living with writing books, sometimes the rules of genre and story are important. And we write a book that people race through. As James Patterson, obviously, the highest earning author in the world, it's all about page turners. There's a room for both. Just one question also, on non-fiction, obviously, you're a non-fiction writer primarily. Can the rules of mystery be used in non-fiction to get people to keep reading? Jonah: Absolutely, I think it's the same basic principle, which is, you don't want to give away the answer at the beginning. You want people to feel like you're still unfolding new information, that there are new twists in a sense. In this book, I structured the book loosely from the simplest way to create mystery, which is with mystery boxes, to talk about the magic trick approach, which is art that essentially hides the mechanics of its making. So you see a magician perform a trick, and it's not who did it, but how did he do it? That's a trick of creativity that's been used by magicians, of course, but also painters throughout history, how did they paint that that way? And they hide their tricks, so, that becomes the mystery. There's the mystery of disfluency, making the work a little bit more difficult so it forces the audience to engage. And that brings us in deeper into the world and wakes us up. It makes the art more fulfilling to solve. There's the mystery of character we talked about. And I think there are all these different strategies one can use to create mystery. My goal with the structure of the book was to keep introducing these new facets, these new twists, so to speak, and at the end to put them all together. It's certainly not plotted tightly like a great James Patterson book, or an Agatha Christie book. Even in non-fiction, you want to keep asking yourself, why would a reader read this chapter? What is new here? What am I teaching myself? What do I expect to learn from this? And that's why for me as a writer of this genre book, I think it's really helpful to see the book as an investigation. You asked me in the beginning how I choose a subject, and I think, for me, it has to be a subject I really feel like I don't understand. In the hope that part of the joy of that investigation will rub off in the writing and you'll feel my curiosity as I explored the subject, the fact that I'm writing this to discover myself, I'm writing this because I don't know and I want to figure this out. Joanna: Absolutely. That's why I write non-fiction as well is generally, I don't really know what I think about this, or I need to learn about this. So, I might as well write a book about it. Jonah: You hope the fun of that discovery, that childish joy of not knowing, you hope that rubs off, you hope that's somehow maintained in the writing, I think, especially as we go back and work on version 112. It's easy to scrub that out. It's easy to kind of feign omniscience at the start. I'm very conscious as a writer, as I go back and edit and edit and edit, to not lose it all, to maintain some of the joy that was there as I made these connections in the moment. Joanna: Now, I wanted to tend to your career as an author, and you actually just said the phrase, losing it all. In your pitch email, you mentioned this very public failure nearly a decade ago now. What happened, and how did you come back? How did writing help you recover? Jonah: It was a devastating failure. I made some really terrible mistakes in a book proposal I was writing on creativity, I was rushing to finish, I was taking on way too many projects. I included some fabricated Bob Dylan quotes, some Bob Dylan quotes that captured the gist of what he was trying to say about the creative process, but were not his quotes, were completely mangled. In essence, I broke the most basic rule of my profession, which is to quote accurately. Those mistakes were discovered, the book was pulled from the shelves, and I lost my job as a staff writer at a magazine and all the rest. It was very public, it was very humiliating. For a long time, I really didn't think I'd ever write again. I didn't think I should, I thought I'd failed too badly. I didn't trust myself. And then as the years went by, I realized how much I missed writing, that, for me, writing was really a way of making sense of the world, as we've discussed. It wasn't just a job, it was a way I walk through life and ask questions about it. And when I lost that ability, I just missed it terribly. So I started writing for myself. Slowly those drafts, and this was a book that came out five years ago, about love and attachment theory, that book really became an investigation into, I lost my job, I lost everything I thought I wanted in life, professionally, and yet I was still standing, something was holding me together. And it was my family. It was these loving relationships. That became an investigation of attachment theory, and the science of how these relationships give us support, and get us through the toughest times. So, that was that investigation. But that book really began as 2 a.m. journal entries, these late-night musings when I couldn't sleep. And to be honest, I've never enjoyed writing more. I've never had more fun on a book than I did on this book. So I think there's something clarifying, looking back on it, about my professional failure. It, I think, definitely made me a better writer. Definitely helped me figure out why I wanted to write, it wasn't just for the praise, or the sales figures, or whatever. It was because I need to, because this is part of who I am. I think in the fall, that was a very, very clarifying revelation that I write because I need to. And so, that is really why I write today. Joanna: I'm really glad you've come back to it. I do remember, when you emailed me, I was like, ‘Oh, I remember that name.' And I sort of remembered that happening. I'm so glad you've been able to forgive yourself and get over it. Because what's so crazy now is we're in this even more difficult time, I think, with a cancel culture and social media and things that make it difficult for writers. In the grand scheme of things, what happened, what you did was not exactly a matter of life and death, you said it was the most important thing in your job was quite accurately. But there are so many important things more important in life, right? Jonah: I see it from the perspective of journalism and non-fiction writing, there are rules, there are sacred rules, and it's a self-enforcing profession. And that's why I think they come down very hard on people like me who broke the most basic rules. In terms of the cancel culture aspect and the public shame aspect. I do get asked about that a fair bit. I never quite know how to respond, because looking back on it now, the most painful parts are all private. It's not what Twitter said about me. And this is just, I should be very clear, this is just my experience, other people are going to have very different experiences. But for me, looking back on it, it was my own private shame of, ‘I made these mistakes. How could I let this happen? How could I do this?' It wasn't the noise happening on social media. For me, before I trusted myself to write again, it was really, how can I ensure this will never happen again? How can I construct the process as a discovery writer, someone who writes to figure out what they want to say, which is very inefficient and comes with its own downside. But how can I, knowing that's my process, how can I construct a method that ensures I will never fail again? Because I couldn't go through that again. Joanna: Oh, absolutely. I think that's inadvertent plagiarism. Even if people don't intend to use someone else's quote, or make up a quote, or something, sometimes these things happen, as you say, if you don't have a process. If people want to stop anything like that happening, what are the rules and practices that you have that others might be able to adopt? Jonah: This is just my process, I want to be very clear about that, I should be the last person giving out advice on writing methods. But my own process now is I, of course, tape-record every interview, I have the interviews independently transcribed, and then when I'm done writing about the subject, I don't just send them the interview, I send them the entire section of the book. This is very unconventional, and I totally appreciate that it wouldn't work for, say, a Bob Woodward or investigative reporter. But when I cover a scientist say, or when I cover an artist, when I write about Nicholas Christenfeld's work on spoilers, or his work on what makes sports interesting, or if I spend time with the writers of ‘Law and Order,' I want them to feel like the book accurately reflects their experience as well. I send them the actual material that covers them in the book. And if they want a larger context, I'll send them a large context. I'd say 95% of the time, it comes back with no notes or very minimal notes, small requested changes. Occasionally, people will say, ‘I know I said the quote this way, but here's what I actually meant.' And, with very few exceptions, I see to their changes. Again, I realize this is completely unconventional, but this is my method now. And then, at the end of that process, after I go through and send the book out to everyone in the book, or everyone whose research I write about in the book, I then hire an independent fact-checker to go through it again. That's my process, it is time-consuming. To be honest, I couldn't imagine writing without it. Looking back on myself 10 years ago, I am frankly astonished at how careless I was in terms of not hiring a fact-checker, not sending out the material to my subjects in any way, shape, or form. So, this is just my, again, to repeat, and I'm starting to sound like a broken record here, this is just my method. I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone else. But this is the method that has evolved over time so I feel comfortable, at the end of the day, putting a book out there, ensuring that I've done everything possible to make sure it's as accurate as possible, and reflects the views, ideas, and experiences of those in the book. Joanna: Well, of course, this is a podcast that is about your opinion and your experience. But I would add, I do a lot of non-fiction but I don't generally do interviews, but with books, when I write notes, I will always put quote marks around things that someone else said. Anything that is not my words has quotes around it, so that I always attribute. And for people listening, you can also use plagiarism checkers online and things like that. I worry about accidentally using a quote as my own words, that's what I worry about. Because sometimes you're using things and for some reason they came in somehow. So I worry about inadvertently doing it. But there are, as you say, there are practices that we can all put in place, we're careful. And then we check things. I think all of this is good practice whatever genre you write. Jonah: The brain is a connection machine, and it often loses track of where its ideas come from. And it remembers in fragments and snippets. So, in many respects, plagiarism is an understandable sin. But it happens and it's still a sin. And that's why I run my own plagiarism check and the fact-checker runs their plagiarism check, just it's like a double safe process. And it's just one more step. But, again, it's to help me feel okay putting a book back out into the world, dealing with my own anxieties about it. It is time-consuming, it is expensive, but I couldn't imagine doing it any other way at this point. Joanna: I think that's great. You've obviously matured as a writer and as a professional. So, that's fantastic. Your first book in traditional publishing was 2006. And of course, we're now living in quite a different time. You had the love book, but this is probably your biggest book for a while. How has publishing changed since you started? And what are you doing differently in terms of book marketing, which everyone listening always wants to know about? Jonah: Oh, that's a great question. 2006 feels like a lifetime ago, just in terms of the available channels. Podcasts didn't exist. The world has only gotten, I think, harder for books to compete in. At a high-level, what struck me in 2021 publishing a book in the hopefully, knock on wood, the waning days of a pandemic, is just how many alternatives people have. I would look at the price of my book, it's $20 on Amazon, or whatever, and think, ‘Oh, my goodness, that's two months of Netflix, or that's an infinite months of Instagram.' I would do the accounting in my head. I think books are a hard ask, especially of a younger audience. Books require engagement and work, there aren't flickering screens that have been optimized through A/B testing to grab your attention and keep you engaged. And I think that was part of the background for why I wanted to write a book about mystery for artists and writers, was just because I think we've never needed to work harder to engage the audience, we've never needed to be more aware of the tricks that work and the strategies that seduce. Our audience has so many options, so many other devices and screens and platforms competing for their attention. As a writer, you can't run those A/B tests, you're just writing what you can, you're just writing what makes sense to you. Sorry, that was a long winding digression. I think it's never been harder to market a book, I think is my general impression of 2021. It's never been more difficult to grab the attention, the various scarce attention of an audience. In 2006, we did a lot of drive-time radio, and the big aspiration was, in the states, national public radio talk shows, so a lot of local NPR shows. And what's made this book so fun has been being able to do all these podcasts. So, podcasts I've loved, being able to be a guest on them. Being a longtime fan, and then being on the show is super fun. But it also gives you a diversity of questions that I've never had before with the book. People will read it and approach it from so many different directions and find different parts of the book or different parts of my story interesting. And that keeps it fresh. My memories of publishing books in 2006 and 2010 were everyone would ask the same questions based on reading the book jacket. And so you do drivetime radio, and it'd be six hours of saying the same thing over and over again. Obviously, it's a privilege to be able to talk about your book, but there was something mechanical about it. I really love the informality and differentiation and uniqueness that comes with being on a podcast. That's the big change for me is thinking at a higher level about it. Kind of at a more practical level, I'm not sure I got very good advice. To be honest, I don't think I'm particularly good at marketing my books. I just try to write a book that I think other people hopefully find interesting. And then just try to be honest about the way I came to the book and what I find meaningful about it and why I wrote it, and hopefully, people respond to it. Joanna: I totally agree with you on podcasting, obviously. But it's interesting to me that you pitched me, personally, unless it was someone… Jonah: No, no, no. Joanna: It was you personally, and I get so many pitches every day from PR people. Obviously I'd heard your name before, so, that helped. But equally, I think the author pitching directly, and you obviously included some things that I would find interesting, that to me is the secret of a successful pitch. I would much rather hear from the author with something that I might be interested in than a PR person with just the general, here's the top point. So, in that way, you are doing good marketing, because you're pitching personally. Obviously, traditional publishers often will give you a PR person to do that for you. Was that a deliberate choice? Jonah: I had a great PR person who pitched the national media. And we've done some national media, but the parts I enjoy, as I said, being on podcasts I enjoy. So, being a longtime listener, and then you get to have a conversation too, the little boy in me just finds that thrilling. So I personally pitched a shortlist of my favorite podcasts in different genres. I pitched my favorite sports podcast, my favorite writing podcast, my favorite literature podcast. And it's a very short list. But for me, also, given my story, my personal story, I wanted to make sure people understood that I wanted to talk about everything, that the conversation didn't need to be limited in any way, shape, or form. Joanna: And I think, again, that's a really good marketing hook. Because people want to know the author behind the book, don't they? It's not just, ‘Here's what's in my book.' It's also the deeper stuff about you and you as a creative. I actually think you've got quite a few marketing tips there. Jonah: Well, I think that's part of the pleasure of podcasts for me too, is that they can be more expansive, they can meander, they're less formal, they have more time. And so you want to make sure you can tell the story as fully as possible. Joanna: Absolutely. Where can people find you and your books and everything you do online? Jonah: The book Mystery is in bookstores everywhere. It's on all the online sellers. And I have a blog I should update on jonahlehrer.com. Maybe if I send people there, I will be guilted into writing a new blog post. Joanna: Thanks so much for your time, Jonah. That was great. Jonah: Thank you so much for having me. It was so much fun.The post How To Use Mystery To Hook Your Readers With Jonah Lehrer first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you expand your creative and financial opportunities with audiobooks and podcasting? Will Dages from Findaway Voices talks about options as well as introducing the new Marketplace. Will Dages is the head of Findaway Voices, which helps authors produce and distribute audiobooks to a global network of platforms and listeners. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Current trends and stats in the audiobook industry Subscription services, libraries, and the future of audiobook consumption Social audio The crossover between podcasts and audiobooks and the potential for new forms of creativity when an audio product doesn't have to match a ‘book.' Introducing Findaway Voices Marketplace, where authors can find and work directly with pro narrators You can find Will Dages at FindawayVoices.com and on Twitter @FindawayVoices Transcript of Interview with Will Dages Joanna: Will Dages is the head of Findaway Voices, which helps authors produce and distribute audiobooks to a global network of platforms and listeners. Findaway Voices was recently announced as London Book Fair's Audiobook Publisher of the Year in 2021, which is fantastic and well-deserved. Welcome back to the show Will. Will: Thank you so much, Joanna. Always great to talk to you. Joanna: We always geek out on audio. You were last on the show in early 2019. And the world has certainly changed since then. Can you give us a high level overview of what the audiobook market looks like right now? And how has the pandemic changed things? Will: Absolutely. Man, that feels like a lifetime ago. I'm sure you agree? Joanna: Yeah. Will: The world has been through a lot in those last two years. Luckily, though, one thing that has been pretty constant is the growth of audiobooks. The latest APA stats show another 16% growth in sales year over year, which means eight straight years of double-digit revenue growth for audiobooks, which is fantastic. Talking about the industry, they also have some interesting stats like 50% of audiobook listeners say they're making new time to listen to audiobooks. And I think the interesting thing there is, more and more surveys are coming out that the home is the most popular place to listen. Where a few years ago, I think that would be much more skewed towards cars and commute. A lot of people think of audiobooks as being this kind of commute buddy. But more people are really carving out time in their leisure time at home, while doing chores, or housework, or exercising, or going on walks and finding time to listen there, which is helping grow the entire industry. The other trend that we've been seeing industry-wide is shorter books getting more traction, people picking up books that are one, two, or three hours long. And as the market grows outside of Audible, where the credit model demands longer books. You want to get your credit's worth out of that credit by looking at the number of hours. When the market grows around that and the books are appropriately priced, or they're in subscription models or libraries like shorter content is having its day. And we're seeing a lot more trends towards shorter content being really profitable. Joanna: What about on a global basis, because a lot of the stats seem to be U.S. focused, as usual. But it feels to me from some of the things I've heard at London Book Fair and other things that there's been growth in other languages and also other countries, whereas the market probably was more dominant in the U.S., UK, Canada before. Have you got any feeling for the global market? Will: It is unfortunate that most of the surveys and the organizations that pay for the research are in the U.S. So it is a little U.S. focused. But we release every year, the ‘Headphone Report‘ is what we call it, and this is on our blog and stuff. And you can see some of our stats where the Findaway Voices reports we put out are not including big publisher data. So it's a little bit more representative of what this audience of your listeners is seeing. We're seeing growth outside the U.S., especially in Canada, Australia, Sweden, England, Mexico, and different languages that are really growing. Spanish, obviously is our fastest non-English language that has been growing like crazy. And then behind that, German, Italian, Russian, and French are all really picking up steam. So our catalog is still really weighted towards English content, just because that's where the market seems to be more mature. But these emerging markets are really growing at a fast rate. We're seeing a lot more diversity in sales worldwide for authors. Joanna: You mentioned subscription models and libraries, and this seems to be a very big discussion both amongst indie authors and traditional publishers. And on the one hand, people say, subscription models are going to kill everything. And they take everything to zero. On the other hand, it expands markets, and the customer loves it. What subscription platforms does Findaway distribute to? And how can authors take advantage of the growth of these services? Will: I think subscription models are so strong and so important to an author's overall portfolio. There's no denying that a lot of consumer sentiment is moving towards subscription, or has already moved towards subscription. How many subscription movie platforms do we subscribe to? Disney Plus, Netflix, and Hulu, and all of these. This is how you consume content and audiobooks are growing in the same way. So we have a really strong base of subscription partners; we have about 15 of them on the retail side that we work with. Obviously, Audible is still a subscription even though it's a credit subscription, we still classify it as a subscription. Kobo has a subscription. Anyplay, Scribd, is a big one. Storytel, is a big one. We work with a whole bunch of others. I don't need to list them all out. But they're growing, they're helping really diversify and be incremental revenue for a lot of authors. It's a platform where you're on equal footing with every other book on the platform, because there's no price next to the book. If somebody has paid elsewhere for access to the book, and you don't have a price war on Scribd, and there's no price next to your book. It's really seamless for consumers. And we're seeing that really gaining popularity and help authors out in a good way. Joanna: I think I feel like the difference is if people are used to being paid by let's say, ACX with that credit model and the a la carte model, the micropayments that go around subscription and library services can take a bit of getting used to. It's just a very different way of doing audio. Will: Yeah, you have to approach it differently. You don't want to approach it with an a la carte mindset to just start buying ads and pushing people towards subscription platforms. That's not going to be profitable. But using it as incremental, using it as additive, or trying to get some real scale going. We have some customers who, like the a la carte, the paper use library model gives pretty small payouts, you're talking between 50 cents and $1 per check out. But I've seen people who regularly consistently every month are making five figures, just from that business model, because they've been able to get traction with book clubs and library clubs. And they've effectively marketed to libraries. The strategies are much different than if you're doing a la carte sales. Because of a lot of different reasons. One that your consumer is not paying; they're getting it for free from their library. But at the same time, you're not going to want to spend $3, in your cost of acquisition, in marketing to somebody who's going to pay it back $1 per listen. You have to think about it a little bit differently. But it's a great tool in the tool belt. And there's not many people on the platform that are just making library sales. They're not just making subscription sales, it's one part of a really healthy sales portfolio. Joanna: I think that's really important. I put on various audiobook pages on my website, and on my email list, I say ‘Hey, remember, you can get my books for free at the library or on your favorite subscription platform.' When I look at my Findaway sales report it is across all these different areas, rather than just one vendor, which is the wide mindset, isn't it? Will: That is the world we're striving for. That's the audiobook world we want to exist. And that's why our whole service exists. That's why we don't have three partners, we have 40. We want that diversity and that healthiness in the ecosystem. We want everybody to help build the audiobook ecosystem up. And that's why we're positioned the way we are. And that's why we're happy when we see that diversity in the sales reports. Joanna: One of the other things that's pretty awesome is the shared partnership with Chirpbooks, and the fact that I can do promotions there. And again, it's U.S. focused, but it's still a really interesting time. I feel like with audiobook promotion, we haven't had such great options before. Are you finding a lot of good opportunities for authors through Chirp? Will: Yeah, don't sleep on Chirp. If you're listening to this, and you haven't submitted your audiobook to a Chirp deal, I would highly recommend that you do it. You mentioned it's U.S.-focused they have recently expanded into Canada. If you're a listener in the U.S. or Canada, you can buy on Chirp. But it's open to authors anywhere in the world. Joanna you can put all your books on Chirp. Joanna: Oh, I have. Will: I'm sure they are on Chirp. Just because you can't listen as a consumer they haven't opened up to the UK yet, it doesn't mean that you can't put your books as an author there. And it's free to get your feature deal right now, unlike BookBub, which are pretty expensive, they're worth it, but they're expensive. On the Chirp side, you're not paying anything right now for a Chirp deal. So you can apply once a month through the BookBub Partner dashboard. I would encourage everybody to do that because we're not only seeing great results on the book that gets featured, but the rest of the series gets bumped for months, the resulting reviews that happen from that help boost it. Because remember, Chirp is a full retailer, they're not just a platform for the feature deals. They're a platform that helps sell books just kind of every day. And the feature deals help bring people in. But more people are loving the app and continuing to use it for follow-up purchases. The other thing that they just launched…I don't know if you've seen this yet, Joanna? But they launched the ability to follow authors. So you can market yourself on the Chirp platform and to have people follow you. And then they get email notifications anytime you discount your price, even if you're not running a feature deal. So it's a great base, another marketing tactic is getting people to follow you on Chirp. And then whenever you run a sale, even if it's not a featured deal, they'll get notified via email for sure, which is fantastic. Joanna: I love it. And you can also on BookBub itself do BookBub ads for audiobooks, and the cost-per-click is much, much lower right now. And some authors are clearly focusing on Chirp because I found some great target authors with many, many, many, more listeners than they have readers on the eBook promotion. So that's one option. Now I wanted to ask you about social audio, which I find very difficult as an introvert. This is about social as I get on audio. You and me. But you're doing chats on Clubhouse, and I just got an invitation to a session about Fireside. Facebook have audio, Twitter have social something coming. What are your thoughts on how social audio fits into this wider ecosystem of voice-first marketing? Will: Personally, I've had a lot of fun with Clubhouse. I got in pretty early on it. And I actually have the handle @audiobooks. So if you're interested in working with me on Clubhouse, you can find me that way. I've had a lot of great talks with authors. And there's a really strong narrator community there as well. In general, my perspective on marketing doesn't really change based on the platform, it's you go where the attention is. Your currency in marketing is attention. If there's a lot of people on a platform, I think you want to be there. Nobody likes to be sold to either. So you have to find ways of marketing your book and marketing yourself that are natural. And I think you can have a lot of fun with it on some new platforms that are still getting their legs and the best practices haven't been written yet. I think we saw this with TikTok for the last couple of years. TikTok is getting huge in book marketing right now. And it's very different from all the other forms of marketing, but it's where the attention is. I think Clubhouse is the exact same way. There's a lot of attention around these platforms. Which one will win? I don't know. Is it going to be Clubhouse? Is it going to be Greenroom? Is it going to be Facebook's or Twitter's? That doesn't matter to me as much as where does the attention go? And how can you innovate on those platforms to grab more attention? Because that will lead to good things for your book sales. Joanna: I did go on to Clubhouse, but because it's a live platform, again, this is the international perspective. If everything is done in the time zone of the U.S., then when I log on, it's either completely the wrong time of day for me or at all, when I log on, actually most people on there seem to be in Asia. So it's a very different time zone thing. I don't believe they have recordings still. So it means that yes, you get a certain sociability, but it's only within a time zone, which when all the marketing that I've done for over a decade has been international in focus. That to me is is difficult. Will: I totally see that. But I also see it as an opportunity. Have you never reached people in those time zones before? And is this a unique opportunity to reach other English speakers in those time zones and establish yourself in a new way? I've also seen some really interesting things in the narrative communities about, ‘Early bird UK narrators meet late-night U.S. authors.' These matchups where you're embracing the time zone difference and saying, ‘Boy, us night owls have never talked to you morning birds before.' We're going to mash up in a new way here because it doesn't have to be live. So I always encourage you to look for the opportunity there that comes from that limitation. Joanna: It's a good attitude. I think it fits with, as you said, the growth in audiobook listening, and also podcast listening, which is people are sick of their screens. You and I are on Zoom, but we've turned off the video. And it's too stressful to always have screens on. I almost feel like the rise of the social audio platforms is because people are sick of live video and too much video and all of that. Do you think that social audio has happened more because of the pandemic zoom fatigue? Will: I think so. I think that if you connect with people on an audio platform, it's only going to be good for your audiobooks. It shows that people are hungry for more listening. And it's a unique platform. I'm excited to see where it goes. I don't know which one will win again. And I'm not sure what the winning strategy will be on any of them. But anything that's giving more popularity to audio is good in my book. Joanna: Absolutely. And then I guess now old school would be just podcasts like this, which are also still growing. You've been listening to podcasts for many years, but some people have only really discovered them in the pandemic. I believe one of the statistics out of the APA is about the crossover between people who listen to podcasts and people who listen to audiobooks. What are your thoughts on using podcasts for audiobook marketing? Will: I love it. I've actually seen it go both ways. I've seen authors go on a blog tour of podcasts, and they'll do things that way. But also, I've seen authors leveraging audiobook markets as a monetization channel as well. There's a lot of interesting crossover both ways, both for listeners and authors. And I think the line is increasingly blurring between a podcast and an audiobook, in a lot of ways, maybe not in an interview show like this one. There's still a pretty thick line between that, but something that's a little bit more narrative and storytelling, and is not taking on different guests every week, or month, or whatever the cadence is. I've seen a lot of podcasters who starting to poke around the audiobook space as a potential way to monetize instead of just going to podcasting, bundling that up and selling it as an audiobook. I think consumers just want a good story. They just want to be entertained. And I think that there's a lot of room for some crossover marketing between the two. Joanna: That brings us to the actual product of an audiobook because as you said, there are more and more crossovers. We've seen Malcolm Gladwell and I think it's Pushkin, his publisher for his audio anyway, do an audio first launch, that they're actually selling direct from their own platform. I think I remember he launched as a sell direct link originally, which is fascinating. I heard a lot of publishers at one of the events saying, ‘Yeah, we're going to do more audio first product.' So given that Findaway, have rules around what is an audiobook, and what is a podcast? What are your thoughts on where the lines blur between them both? What is an audiobook product versus, say, a multi-cast audio production? Will: I'm really open about this kind of stuff. If you have a podcast that's narrative, and you want to bundle it up as an audiobook and sell it, there's no problem. There's no requirement that all of the content that comes through Findaway Voices has to be based on a written book. We are building more tools and more processes to help bring more of those stories in. There are some technical things like you need opening and closing credits that might not exist. But there's also some things that I think can be borrowed from podcasts that maybe should make their way into audiobooks more. If you listen to a serialized podcast, at the beginning of every one, they're reminding you what happened at the last episode. And you don't get that in audiobooks, chapter to chapter, but nobody listens to a whole 10 hour audiobook in one sitting, or very few people do. Those little reminders every once in a while where you are in the story might be helpful. The audiobook does not have to mirror the ebook or the print book at all. It doesn't even have to be sourced on that. I think one of the interesting things Malcolm Gladwell is doing there is he's writing them for the ear, not writing them for the eye. And that changes the way you write and the way you present a story. Maybe there's a little less exposition, and maybe you get into things a little bit faster. Because there's no skimming through a page or something when you're listening to an audiobook. I think more authors take that mindset of borrowing some of the best things from podcasts, and changing up the narrative style, I think that's what's going to help evolve the audiobook industry in a really interesting way. That then in turn blurs the lines even more for consumers. Joanna: I totally agree. I find this fascinating. Definitely my writing has changed since I have written with an awareness that it will be narrated. Once you understand how narration works, it really changes your brain. I love the fact that you said there that the audio product doesn't have to be linked to a specific ebook or print book, because that to me, just frees it. I feel like as soon as people put constraints around things, you think that that is all there is. So the constraint that ACX has, it has to be linked to a ‘book' book. And this just expands the possibilities. I'm really excited about that. Findaway has tools and processes that can help authors and you've got some exciting new things happening. So tell us about the Marketplace. Will: I'm so excited about this, because we've been working on this for a really long time. And I'm excited to break the news to your audience here. We are building a marketplace for audiobook production. It's going to be a free platform for creating audiobooks. You can use it anywhere in the world. It's not limited to just a couple of countries. It's going to be a set of tools that will help an author and a narrator both find each other, and work through a production to get a finished audiobook. So we've taken everything we've learned over the last 15 years as a company, and we've rebuilt these tools from the ground up. We're giving the tools away for free. We want to be in the center of the audiobook production world. And we're going out with really great terms as well. We're not locking you into our platform, we're not charging anything extra for this. The only charge for the audiobook will be the cost of the narration that you do. There's no extra upfront charge from Findaway Voices. I'm really excited about that. Because there's not a great global hub for audiobook production. Joanna, if you were to say, be on Clubhouse, and you met a narrator, and you wanted to like learn more about them? Where would you go to learn more about that narrator? How would you find them? Joanna: I'd probably just google them and hope they had a website. Will: That's what we want to solve, we want to say, ‘I am going to go look for the narrator.' And I know the first result that pops up is going to be on Findaway and I'm going to be able to learn about them. I'm going to be able to hear all their samples. And I'm going to be able to see how many productions they've done in the past and what books that they've done. So we're really building this hub, there's going to be public narrative profiles for anybody who wants one which are beautiful, I'm really excited. I wish this was a more visual medium, so I could share, but you'll see them soon because they are opened up for narrators to sign up now, and start building these out. They're going to be the hub for their narrator business. And we have some really, really cool stuff to help them sell themselves and present themselves in really cool ways. From an author's perspective, this is going to be a great way to take the control yourself on finding the narrator you want. We've done casting services and full-service productions since the start. But we've never just opened up the catalogue of narrators and said, ‘Search yourself. And here's the great tools to help you work through production on your own.' So that's what's different between yesterday and today, which is we're opened up for narrators to start building their profiles, and later this fall will be open for authors to search for narrators and work through productions themselves. Joanna: That's fantastic, very exciting. A couple of questions there. It's one thing to find one narrator and one author who get together and do a project. But what about you mentioned full production with multiple people casting? And also sometimes there are co-authors on books. Can we have more than just one narrator, one author? Is that something you might include in the future? Will: Absolutely. We want to include that in the future, it's not going to be there for the launch. This has been an enormous undertaking to get it to launch. Joanna: Of course. Will: And we want to get it in people's hands soon. So at the launch, it's going to be one narrator, one author. But after that, we definitely want to start supporting more and more use cases, including co-authors, or more. And multiple narrators on a production as well. Joanna: This is a broader question; does Findaway allow sound effects in audiobooks? Will: We do. But we caution people who do that, that it may be rejected by some platforms. Sometimes it gets flagged by the ACXs extraneous noise, music and sound effects, and stuff like that. Most of our other partners though, will take it no problem. And that's great. So if you want to bake those in, just know that you may not be able to sell that book on Audible. But other than that, all of our partners are happy to take those kinds of audiobooks. Joanna: That's good. Because this is where I feel like we're going next. For example, when I've listened to World War Z by Max Brooks, almost every chapter is narrated by a different author. And there are also various sound effects and also that Malcolm Gladwell bomber something about a bomber, isn't it? Will: Bomber Mafia. Yeah. Joanna: Yeah, Bomber Mafia. These types of projects, I feel this is the future of audio. Will: I agree. Joanna: How much more we can do? Will: Absolutely. And like I said earlier, there's no requirement that what you have the narrator record is based on a book as long as they know what to read. It can be a script instead of a manuscript, but there's no problem there. I think narrators would be excited about that as well. Narrators are an innovative creative bunch as well. They bring a lot to a production. I think if you were to really inspire them with some crazy idea, most of them would be all about it and excited to experiment too. Joanna: Definitely. Well, it's great to hear about that collaboration platform coming. So very excited. And just on one thing; I'm obviously a narrator, as well as an author and I have a number of books I've narrated on Findaway. Does that mean I'll be able to create a narrator profile as well? Will: Absolutely. I would encourage anybody who wants to be hired for narration work to create a narrator profile. If you're only going to narrate your own books, it's not necessary. But your listeners could absolutely find that and it could add some credibility to your narration to have a profile on Findaway, I would love to see that. There's some really cool features, I won't get into it too much, because I would encourage your listeners to go search it out and sign up for a narrative profile if the listener is a narrator. We have, for example, an audio introduction on a page. So most of the time when you're listening to narrator samples, they're from books and pieces of work that they've done, obviously, the work samples, but we thought, ‘Oh, well, instead of a bio, where you just type it out, why not let these narratives introduce themselves with their voice and say, ‘Hi, I'm Will Dages, I'm the narrator of romance audio books, and I love blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.' These kind of tools, we've sprinkled in a lot of fun things like that. And we're excited to see the creativity in the community, leverage those for, maybe in your case, you'd say, ‘I'm Joanna Penn, and I narrate all my own books, and blah, blah, blah.' However you want to introduce yourself to consumers, because maybe you're not as interested in getting another nonfiction author to hire you to record books, or however you want to use it. But it's open for everyone today. I'm really excited to see how people start using them. Joanna: Cool. So people just go to findawayvoices.com? Or is there a special link? Will: Yep. If you are already signed up as a narrator on Findaway Voices, you'll see a path to update your profile when you next log in. And otherwise go to Findaway Voices and sign up as a narrator and you'll be shuffled right through the process to build your profile. Joanna: If people want to do an audiobook with the narrator, again, do they just go to Findaway Voices, and sign up? Will: Yes, if you want to go to findawayvoices.com right on the homepage, there's a way to sign up for updates, we're going to keep you updated on the progress, we're going to show you behind the scenes, we're going to offer a beta test at some point, if you want to participate in that. If you don't want to miss the actual launch of the tools to make a production as an author, you should definitely sign up at findawayvoices.com. And we'll keep you up to date, and make sure you don't miss it. Joanna: Oh, I'm very excited about that. And of course, I always feel, as Jeff Bezos says, ‘We're always day one with audio.' There seem to be more and more opportunities all the time. So again, this opens up more opportunities. So that's pretty exciting. And it won't be the end of it, for sure right? Will: No, thank you so much for saying that. We're the center of the audiobook world right now. And you don't get to keep that crown by staying still. So we're always thinking of what the next thing is. I'm really excited for this as the start of something really big that we're going to keep building on. And we have big plans for the future too. Plans to take us beyond just being an audiobook distributor and help provide more value to authors in different ways. I can only tease those at this point, because they're still early testing and early ideas, but we're going to keep growing, keep innovating, in really fun ways. Joanna: Excellent. I did want to ask you, given that you and I have, for many years now discussed the interesting AI narration of audiobooks. Google recently did a session on auto narration at BookWire Audio Event. I've actually had Ryan Dingler from Google on this show talking about their AI narration. And they are offering AI voices for free. And they've said they're launching that by the end of 2021. Now, both of us really do value human narrators. And I actually think we're going to expand the market with audio. I don't think it will be taking anyone's jobs. So I think it will mean other languages. Other accents, more accessibility. So that's not what we're talking about here. What are your thoughts on AI auto narration and how it might impact the market? Will: I think it's really interesting. We've obviously been keeping an ear on the demos as they've improved over the years. And I think what Google is doing is really interesting. I enjoyed listening to Ryan on your podcast, I thought that was a great episode that was really, really interesting and informative. At this point, we're putting all our chips on human narration, as you can see, with all the investment we've made into the marketplace platform. For us, it's all about human narrators and the human narrator community, and investing in that. At this time, we don't have any plans to or even allow distribution of non-human narrated audiobooks. That's where we are right now. Joanna: Do you think you will know? For example, you allow upload of finished files for distribution, given the quality of some of the voices coming out of Google and there are other companies. Will the Findaway system even know? Will: That's a great question. We do QA of every single title that comes through our platform. So we have people who listen to a sampling of chapters, and credits, and everything, and it's still pretty obvious when an AI book comes through. Every once in a while, one slips through, and maybe a consumer complains about it. Because when it does happen, nobody's going to want to not know. If a consumer believes they're paying for human narration, and then they realize when they get the book that it's actually a computer, they feel slighted. There's going to have to be some transparency. As of right now, everyone's expecting a human performance. So we get complaints if one falls through, and we take it down immediately and handle that. But we're listening to every book. I will say, it's still pretty obvious. When you're listening to audiobooks all day long. And you're listening to narratives all day long. As somebody in QA, who's listening to these books, thousands books a month they get submitted, it's still pretty obvious when an AI book tries to slip through. Joanna: And just for people listening, if they don't know it's not the voice, the voice is fine. It's the intonation, right? There will be a weird intonation that makes you go, ‘A human wouldn't say it like that.' Will: It can be that, it can be artifacts that are like little glitches and stuff in the audio that gives it away. But yeah, a lot of time, it's the cadence and the porosity of the narration, not necessarily the quality of the voice itself. And it is much further ahead in short form than long-form. When you ask Siri or Alexa to answer a question, you're much more forgiving when it's one sentence answer than when you're sitting down for a 10-hour audiobook. So yeah, big difference in the industry there. But as of now, it's still pretty easy to catch. We don't have any plans to allow that on the platform. Joanna: Any other thoughts about where audio might be going in the next few years? Is there anything you're particularly excited about? For example, right now, I'm talking to you with a microphone, but I'm listening to you with a Jawbone headset, whatever you want to call it. I don't actually have anything in my ears. And this is really weird. I've only just got this to stop putting things in my ears basically. This is very weird, but it feels completely fine. I wondered if there was anything that you think is cool at the moment, since we're geeking out on audio? Will: I think the Smart Home Speakers, are just going to continue to get gain in popularity. We've seen a big uptick on people who use those to listen to audiobooks. So I'm excited to see where that moves. And beyond that, we already touched on this before. So I don't want to belabor it. But the intersection between best practices, and podcasting, and audiobooks, and how can each innovate off each other? I think that is really interesting for the growth of the audiobook industry to move beyond books, to thinking more about stories. And I think when that author mindset shifts a little bit, we're going to see some crazy cool innovation in that area. Joanna: Brilliant, well, exciting times ahead. So just tell people one more time where they can find you and everything Findaway, does online. Will: The best place to go is findawayvoices.com all one word, and we're on social everywhere to at Findaway Voices. But start from the website and go from there. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time Will, that was great. Will: Thanks, Joanna. This was so much fun.The post Opportunities For Audiobooks And Introducing The Findaway Voices Marketplace With Will Dages first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you be a more relaxed author when there is always so much more to do? How can you co-write a book and retain different voices in written text as well as audio? Mark Leslie Lefebvre and I discuss how we co-wrote The Relaxed Author and how we're publishing and marketing it. In the intro, Netflix buys the Roald Dahl catalog [The Verge]; Chuck Palahniuk launches a Substack [LitReactor]; Gillian Flynn launches her own imprint [New York Times]; Tomb of Relics in edits; ProWritingAid tutorial Do you want to be a more relaxed author? The Relaxed Author: Take The Pressure Off Your Art and Enjoy The Creative Journey, out now in all the usual formats in all the usual places. You can also buy it direct from us here, as well as bundle deals. Mark Leslie Lefebvre is a horror writer, publishing consultant, speaker, author of books for writers, and my co-writer for The Relaxed Author. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes What matters when choosing a co-writing partner Why a legal agreement is so important — even if you're friends Sharing the various roles while writing and publishing How royalty splitting works with Draft2Digital Different styles of working The benefits of recording conversations to use as a first draft — and the resulting challenges Sharing launch duties and marketing tasks Principles for the long-game You can find Mark Leslie Lefebvre at MarkLeslie.ca and on Twitter @MarkLeslie Transcript of Interview with Mark Leslie Lefebvre Joanna: I'm here with Mark Leslie Lefebvre, horror writer, publishing consultant, speaker, author of books for writers and my co-writer for The Relaxed Author. Welcome back to the show, Mark. Mark: Hey, Joanna. It's great to be here. Joanna: So here we are finally. We both have the book The Relaxed Author and it's actually very pretty. I'm quite pleased with it. Are you happy with it? Mark: Oh, you know what? When Liz saw it, she…because she hadn't seen anything. She just heard me talk, ‘You know what? I'm working on this book with Jo.' And when she saw it she went, ‘Oh, my god. That is so gorgeous.' Your cover designer did such a brilliant job. Just absolutely gorgeous. Joanna: Oh, good. I'm glad you like it because I feel like it's difficult with co-writing…well, lots of difficulties. We'll get into that. But let's go back to the beginning. How did we even come up with the idea for this book? It's not like we had other things going on and we were like, ‘Oh, here's a surprise book.' When did we come up with the idea and why did we go forward with it? Mark: Was it back in March that I was being interviewed on your podcast? Maybe the episode aired in March, or was it April? I'm trying to remember how far back it was. Joanna: It was the ‘Wide for the Win.' You came on to talk about ‘Wide for the Win' basically. And I think we said, ‘Yes, going wide makes us more relaxed.' And we started to laugh about how we were relaxed authors. And then we got so many emails about it. I emailed you and said, ‘Hey, should we do The Relaxed Author?' So when I did email you and asked you, you already had a lot of books planned for this year. What were your feelings when I asked you that? When we're offered a project or we come up with a project, when should we say no? When should we go for it? Mark: Honestly, that's one of our chapters in the book. We talk about the importance of saying no because there are so many great ideas you have to say no to and so many opportunities. For example, you are very selective in not just going and speaking anywhere. It has to be something. Maybe you can tie in…well, post or pre-pandemic, travel to a place because you want to research it for a novel or something like that. But I think I remember saying, ‘We can have some easy listening music and smoking jackets and just go chill and relax.' But your listeners responded in a big way saying, ‘Oh, my, I need that book.' I had a lot of projects already. I had four other book projects between then and the end of the year that I had on my plate. And I'll always get all of them done. Some of them are up for pre-order already, which causes stress but also causes me to work better at it, which is part of how I work. I think what happened is when that came and you emailed me, I had already been chewing on it because I saw those comments on Twitter and went, ‘Yeah, you know what? I think a book like that would be needed. Wouldn't that be helpful?' But here's the thing, and I want to throw this question back at you, Jo, because I think we agreed on it actually. So I immediately thought, ‘This is a brilliant idea. We have to do this book.' So I was in 100%. Let's do this. How about you? How did you reply to that? Joanna: It was funny because I was also feeling this is a necessary topic before we even came up with it. And we should say that as well, there's a lot of stress in the author community. It's not just about the pandemic. It's also about almost what we don't want the indie movement to become. We don't want people to be burned out writing a book a month. And, of course, if you do write a book a month, brilliant. Go for it if you love it and that's the way you work. And there are a small percentage of people for whom that does work. But for a lot of people, authors are losing sight of the love of why they do this and are getting stressed around publishing, around marketing, around business and it's just a lot of angst. We did a survey as part of this and we asked, ‘What are you stressed about?' And it was literally everything. Mark: And then there were things that I forgot that I was stressed about. There was, ‘Oh yeah, that stresses me, too,' when I saw the survey. Joanna: And then it's funny because, actually, I had almost said I'm never going to co-write a book again because I do find it quite difficult, and we'll come to the challenges in a minute. The other thing we should say about our relationship is that we've known each other for over a decade now online, and we're going to have some photos in the show notes. There'll be some photos of us basically when we first met in person. Joanna Penn and Mark Leslie Lefebvre at london book fair, 2013 I think it was 2013 at London Book Fair. And then there was Toronto, we hung out. Charleston and Florida and all these different places over the years. Our karaoke shall remain forever without a photo! But we sang together. Mark: I wonder if anyone did take photos of that, or hopefully no video. Joanna: I think we sang Bon Jovi, ‘Living on a Prayer' together. Mark: We did. That was very fun. That was just remarkable creativity from the two of us right there with a little bit of alcohol. Joanna: Exactly. But I guess the point is that because we've known each other personally but also professionally now for so long that I felt like, ‘Well, we know each other well enough,' or I thought we did before, and we'll get into some of the things that surprised us both, but I felt like, yes, I can trust you. This is a tip for co-writing, isn't it? Trust is so important. If you don't actually trust the person you're working with, both creatively and financially, you're going to struggle to co-write. I don't know how anyone could co-write with a complete stranger. I've co-written now with a number of people. You do a lot more collaboration than me, actually. What do you think are some tips for making sure it's the right partnership to even agree with at the beginning? Mark: Trust is a major factor. You get this a lot I'm sure. This is a common thing for writers. ‘Hey, you're a writer. I have an idea. Why don't I give you my idea and we'll collaborate?' Meaning, you do all the writing because that's what you do, and I have ideas. That's so cute. I have co-written with a number of people. And you're right. It was a thing I never even thought about but it was, do I trust this person to actually uphold their end? And, obviously, there was no question about you because we've had such a long-standing relationship, professional, personal relationship. We know each other. It's just been playing catch up and our chats about the industry. We're so aligned in so many other ways that we think and feel about the industry in terms of long term, wanting to support authors, and wanting to help people become better at what they do and feel better about what they do. And yet, and you alluded to this earlier, and yet we did discover that we have differences in the way we approach work. It was intriguing that we fell into this really interesting set of roles that we both felt really comfortable in. So had, for example, I taken over the project management of this, that would have stressed you out remarkably, right? It would have stressed me out, too. So can we talk a little bit about how we ended up approaching this and then realizing, ‘Oh, yeah, we are actually different in our approach?' Not just in our responses to the various questions that came up, too. Joanna: I'm partly an independent author because I'm a control freak. And we all are, to an extent, but I think possibly because I spent 13 years in consulting, possibly because it's just my personality type, but I do like to be in control. You were very good because you essentially let me be in control and I have been telling you what to do. But, luckily, we both know what to do, so it's not like I needed to explain what these things are. We should say upfront, we do have a contract between us even though we're friends. We have a contract because this is joint copyright. You're with Liz. I'm with Jonathan. But our marriages don't last as long as copyright. Actually, we should say that in our document, we talked about what would happen if either of us died. We even went that far. And I think that's important, too. Even if you're friends, you need to have an agreement. So that was important. [You can find an example agreement and more tips on co-writing in Co-Writing A Book: Collaboration and Co-Creation For Authors, co-written with J. Thorn.] And then I took this primary organizational role and took the publisher role. So the book is published under Curl Up Press. It's my cover design and my branding rather than yours. Let's just be brutally honest, how did you find my project management? You're welcome to say whatever you like! Mark: As you know, I work to deadline. When I have a deadline, when I have a commitment, when I know I need to get something done by a certain date, that is what motivates me. That's what kicks the muse into gear. It's like, ‘Listen, there's no wishy-washiness here. You gotta get it done.' And so having you take that role relieved a bit of stress that I have. When I'm publishing independently, I have certain projects that have been on the back burners for years because like, ‘Yeah, I'll get to it one day.' But knowing that somebody that I respect and admire and trust trusts me in the same way, is relying on me, that motivates me to get the job done. To make sure I'm not just doing it because I need to get it done. I'm doing it because I don't want to let Joanna down. So that was an important element of it. And the fact that you did that, it made sense for you to do it under Curl Up Press. Curl Up Press, for example, is…well, let's be honest. There's no surprise here. Joanna Penn is a much larger, more significant brand, and so is Curl Up Press in terms of what you've done in the author community. Is this the 13th book or the 15th non-fiction book? Joanna: Goodness knows at this point. Mark: As of the time when we started to write on this, I only had four books in my Stark Publishing Solutions series, books for writers, similar kind of feel. And then, of course, I had this other book in the works on the side that I was already planning when we discussed this. And I'm like, ‘Okay. I guess I'm doing two books for writers this year.' I think having you in charge of that took a lot of the stress off of me. I actually felt bad that you were doing the extra work. You know what I mean? The onus is on you. But I think you fell into that role and felt it more comfortable. Like, ‘Okay, now I know what's going on.' And the way that you structured things, the way that we shared things was great because we still had to figure out, okay, so we had the contract. We had to figure out who's publishing and what were the logistics, how are we going to deal with the expenses, how are we going to deal when the money comes in? Now, obviously, you're using Draft2Digital for a significant chunk of it in terms of the automatic royalty split, which means some of the payments are just going to come straight to me and straight to you and we don't have to worry about it. But then, I remember a discussion we had. I've always defaulted to my personal use of eBooks, with the small e and a capital B. And so we when we're going through each other's notes in the proofreading, I was like, ‘Well, we need to discuss these things.' Again, it's Curl Up Press, so it gave us a very clear answer. It wasn't just us butting heads. It was a clear answer, ‘No, this is the style guide for Curl Up Press.' And that's important. One of the editors I work with, she does an amazing job and provides a style guide that you can use in your series, which is just absolutely phenomenal. I was like, ‘No, no. This is the style guide for Curl Up Press so I'm going to stick with it.' I work with traditional publishers, too, it was no different. This is the way they want it done so this is the way I'm going to do it. It's professional. Joanna: I think, just coming back, you mentioned that we're using Draft2Digital. We're using that for the eBooks, so we're using the payment splitting for the eBook. But we're still selling the ebook and audiobook directly through my payhip.com/thecreativepenn. And then we're doing the print books separately through Amazon KDP print and through IngramSpark. And with the audiobook, we're wide with the audio as well. So we're basically selling in every format on every platform, as is our principle, but, as you said, Draft2Digital does offer the payment splitting so we are using that. But it's so funny because on the one hand, I really appreciate it because, yes, you get money that is directly split and it's great for co-writing. Equally, I do feel that lack of control because I can't see that book on my other platforms like when I log into Amazon or Kobo. Mark: Oh, that's right. The sales are all coming through one platform. Joanna: Yes, and that's the first time this has happened to me because I've only ever used Draft2Digital for smaller platforms. Mark: It caused stress for you. Joanna: Yes, it has caused stress for me, but equally, I'm really glad we did it because I wanted to try it. And I do think one of the biggest overheads of co-writing is paying people. Not the first couple of months because there's decent money, but realistically, I basically will pay monthly for the first couple of months and then move to a sort of three-month or even six-month, depending on how long it's been because it's not worth the time to…especially when you're wide because… Mark: Eighteen cents, Amazon Mexico, right? Or whatever. Joanna: Yeah. I just don't want to deal with that. So, yes, so we did that. Let's go back to the actual writing process because what I discovered, what it surprised me so much is that you use Microsoft Word. You don't use Scrivener. And I was like, ‘What? Sorry, you don't use Scrivener? What is going on with you?' I found that really weird that you didn't use Scrivener and I use Scrivener and I use it to organize. So this was another thing. Right upfront you were like, ‘Here's a spreadsheet with a table of contents.' Mark: What? Joanna: ‘I don't do that. My table of contents emerges from the writing.' I don't outline at first. How was the writing process for you, because we're quite different in that way? Mark: Yes, it's funny. I don't outline either, especially in fiction. But non-fiction's a little bit different. But, see, I thought you would have been so excited to have a spreadsheet because I'm like, ‘Oh, cool. Because she's organized and I'm disorganized.' So the fact that I have a spreadsheet, it's like, ‘Mark actually does spreadsheets?' So that's how I've done all of my other collaborations. Google Sheets is probably the easiest way where we just need to decide how we're going to [divide the work] because typically, we would divide out the chapters. And so I'm going to do research and write this chapter. You're going to do this one. Maybe we co-write some of them but most of the time we just go off and do our things and then edit each other's work. That's how we start before sending it to the publisher because I think almost all of my other collaborations, the majority of them were with a traditional publisher. So we each had to sign a contract with the publisher. I led it because I was the one who had been experienced with that publisher and had other books with them. What I often do is I'll create a spreadsheet and what I think is the outline, I think we're going to do this. And as I'm writing chapters, I go in and go, ‘No, I need to do another.' I use that and I know you use Scrivener in that way where you organize. Now I tried Scrivener and I had some challenges with once it gets from Scrivener to Word because a lot of the books I had been working on, either the editors I worked with independently or the editors of the publishing houses required a manuscript in Microsoft Word with the tracked changes. And so for me, it was less stressful to go and use a different platform and then have to translate it and then just go to Word. And so, for the most part, I just use Word and Excel, if it's on my own, like on my own desktop, or a Google Doc if it's a collaboration. But I think what I like about that is you were able to do the same thing. You just translated Scrivener to a format in a Dropbox folder that I could go in and see where we were. Joanna: Yes. Well, let's say this was a big decision because, again, in the books we've co-written before, the two authors meld, like mind meld, and the edits become…or as you say, either write separate chapters or collaborate within a chapter. What we've done, and we went back and forwards on this, but what we've done is every chapter has you writing a section and me writing a section. I'm really happy we did that now. One of the reasons was for the audiobook. The audiobook is brilliant. I've really enjoyed listening to it. I don't listen to my bits, I've listened to your bits. Well, obviously, I've proofed mine, but it was like having your voice and my voice. For example, we have a chapter called ‘Write What You Love.' I put my thoughts and you put your thoughts in the same chapter. And we do think similarly in many areas but not all of them, but our separate voices come through both in the written word and the audio. I think it's quite unusual but I actually love it. I think it's great. How do you feel this has turned out? Mark: In most of the other collaborations I did, and I imagine it's the same. I remember having this discussion with Shana on Macabre Montreal. We took out any reference to ‘I' wherever possible and tried to blend it so you couldn't tell who wrote it. Now, there were obviously distinctions in voices, but we removed any personal stuff and we talked about ‘us' anytime you had to refer to stuff like that. So when we made that decision, I thought, well, that's different. It's interesting. I'm curious to see how it goes. And there was some confusion, especially because of the way…and I think we're going to talk about the way we wrote this I thought was also fascinating and interesting. It reminded me, when I think back to it and I was looking at the book visually, because I was like, ‘How are we going to represent that this is my voice?' And while you just put ‘Joanna:' or ‘Mark:' the audiobook is absolutely brilliant because, especially with the people who know us. Oftentimes, I'm usually recognized when someone hears my voice and they go, ‘You're Mark Lefebvre. I heard you on Joanna Penn's podcast.' That's usually the reference most people have. We've had this experience where we've sat together on a panel and a question comes out and we each answer it and they're somewhat complementary and somewhat diverse or different in terms of the way we approach things. I love the fact that what we're illustrating, which I think is an important message from this book, is that there is no single way to be relaxed. That we all have our own way and it's kind of like you've got to get into your groove. And so we're going to show you that even though Jo and I agree and have a similar approach, we do have different ways of doing those things or finding relaxation because, again, we're not relaxed authors. Let's be honest. We stress out like anyone else. It's human. So it's like pretending that we don't have imposter syndrome. It exists. And so do stress and anxiety. But how do you deal with that? How do you curb it? So, yeah, the voice thing is just absolutely brilliant. Every time I look back at the book, I'm just so proud and so excited that we decided because it wasn't easy to do that. Joanna: You mentioned there the way we did. So what we did was we did brainstorm a list of topics that we thought. Obviously, there are sections on relaxed writing, relaxed publishing, relaxed marketing, relaxed business. And then what we did is, we got on Zoom and we talked about it. We did, I think, four separate sessions where we recorded a discussion like this basically, and then we got the transcript and then we divided it into you and me. Because I think when I learned that you worked in Microsoft Word, I realized it was going to be very hard for us to co-write in the way that I'm used to doing it. And also, because of our different schedules and how busy things are, and also, as you say, the way you write to deadline. I don't think it's time zone because J. Thorn and I've done different time zones. It's more that I am far more…I think I was way ahead of you in terms of…I get things done earlier whereas you work more to deadline. And I was like, I can't deal. Mark: You're like the Flash and I'm just kind of wandering down the street. Joanna: You're very relaxed in your timelines. And I'm like, ‘No, I want to get it all done.' And, actually, because I got COVID in the middle of this and, luckily, I had already finished. I'd basically finished. Mark: And that's, I think, evidence why that works for you really, really well because what if something happens? ‘No, I've got it done now.' So, ‘Oh, I got COVID. So I can just be in bed for a week and not do anything.' Joanna: Several weeks. Mark: Had that happened to me, it would have been, ‘Uh-oh.' Joanna: Yes, and it's interesting because I am much more relaxed by scheduling everything in advance and I work way out from my deadlines. Whereas you like to work to, right up to a deadline. So that's interesting. But, yes, the dictation, there were pros and cons, right? Because we paid for quite a lot of transcription. It was just easier to get a human to do that, but then it was quite a lot of editing. I go back and forwards on it. I feel like it did keep our voices quite well, but equally, I did have to rewrite quite a lot. When you were editing the stuff, did you rewrite a lot of it? Did it help? Mark: When I did An Author's Guide to Working with Bookstores and Libraries, it was based on two separate episodes of my podcast, almost an hour each. I did take the transcription and I started from there and then I broke things down and then moved them around. So I'd done something like that already. I didn't realize that that's what I had done until we started doing it and I realized, ‘This guy talks too much.' It was the first thing, so I had to, ‘Get to the point.' And so that was an important element. But then also I realized I completely missed things in that first pass, like that first draft. I thought of that dialogue in the first draft. For example, when you talked about writing tools and you use Scrivener and you use ProWritingAid and you use this and you use that, I was like, ‘Well, I don't use any tools I don't think.' But then when I was editing that chapter, it was like, ‘You moron. Are you kidding? You use tools like crazy.' That was one of the other ones was ScribeCount. When you talked about being stressed that you can't see your sales, I love that because I can go there and I can see. I don't have to log in to Amazon and then Kobo and then Draft2Digital and any of the other platforms. I can just go to one place and go, ‘There it is. Took me five seconds. I can see where I am,' because it's pulling it right from each dashboard automatically. So that was kind of cool. When I realized, that was one of the chapters that I think I had one paragraph. And then when I sent it back to you, it was like six pages for some reason. Joanna: It was super long. That's what's so funny. Some chapters you do go on and I'm really short. And other chapters I go on and you're really short. So that was good. Mark: Yes. It was interesting to see that. How did you find that process? Had you ever done that original draft in audio first? Joanna: I have done some stuff like that like with J. Thorn, for example. And I've also done my own non-fiction with dictation first with the courses. For example, How to Write Non-Fiction, I did the book and the course at the same time. And what's interesting, because we had a discussion, and when you're having a discussion you interrupt each other and you're going back and forwards. The transcription was quite funny because it was full of asides and private jokes and we just got off-topic, which we do. Mark: Which is fun to do. Joanna: Yes, but what was good was that then what happened, so just to explain to people, you then got your bit. I got my bit. And I said, ‘By this date, send me your relaxed writing chapters.' And then what I did was copy and paste your sections into Scrivener, which was the master document, and then it emerged to me, the table of contents emerged, and then we realized we had missing things. So we actually ended up writing quite a lot of stuff we hadn't even talked about because it came up in the writing process, which is completely normal. And then, as you say, what happened when Scrivener was full of both of our first drafts, then I exported it to Word and then we used Dropbox. We've got a shared Dropbox folder where I put the whole thing and said, ‘This is now yours, Mark. You have the master MS Word document. Knock yourself out.' Let's talk about the editing process. How did you go through that? Mark: That was an intriguing process. I think there were moments where I got to a part that looked like it was attributed to me and I said, ‘There's no way I said something that brilliant. That had to have been you.' It was funny because this does happen in co-writing is you sometimes can't remember if that's something you wrote or your co-author wrote. Joanna: But you did write it, by the way. You often did write it. Mark: Yeah, but it was like, ‘No, no. That sounds like Jo. That was really smart.' But I think there are elements because of the way, when we were interacting, I was talking about something and then you reminded me, interjected and said, ‘What about this?' And I'm like, ‘Yeah.' The benefit of that dialogue I think helped us bring more things to the table. In terms of that process, it was a little bit stressful. I was still worried about the logistics of what it was going to look like and flow and how we were going to divide this up. I was worried about all those elements. But then once I got into it, once I sat down, and once I started working on it, it started to feel better. And then I was worried about, ‘Our voices are very different even though we have a similar perspective.' And then I was worried about that, and comparison. I just said something like, ‘I'm nowhere near as smart as Jo and not as eloquent.' So I worried about that and then just realized, they can skip my parts if they don't like it. Joanna: Or skip mine. Mark: Then I realized that's just part of being our authentic selves. What I found was intriguing was just how much that comes out. And now, obviously, because I've again gone back and proof-listened to the audiobook, it is so cool to hear both of our voices and go, ‘Yeah, that's neat.' It's interesting how we have a different take on the same topic. So, what a fascinating process. Did you have any challenges with any of that as we were working through? Joanna: I think the editing, obviously, what's difficult with editing with a co-writer is we have to go backwards and forwards. I did the first main draft but I didn't touch your work. Well, I did a little bit of organizing or whatever but I didn't really touch it. And then it came to you. You did your big edit, gave it back to me. But then what I was basically doing was copying and pasting each chapter back in because, again, we both did an edit as we did the audiobook narration. But because you were behind, again, behind me because you were busy with other things, you were still on time according to our original plan. But this is very much me. I'll be like, ‘There's my deadline.' But I will still do it much, much earlier to the dates. Mark: Earlier. Okay. Joanna: So I was a little bit frustrated that you were still sending me changes when I'd basically sent for print design because I work with my designer to do a print design. And I did have to give you a final deadline and be like, ‘I'm not taking anymore…print. We are done.' The audiobook and the print are exactly the same. But the ebook, obviously, you can make some changes later because it's much easier to upload another file. But it was like 99.99999% the same. It was funny because I was like, ‘I can't change that now. Enough. Stop it already.' Mark: Because I was going on a different deadline. I think the challenge was I know we did have a proofreader look at it, and we had a proof-listener as well, which is fantastic. Joanna: Yes. But there's always more. There's always more stuff. Mark: Yeah. But it was the reading of the chapters. I'd noticed that before that, oftentimes, with my fiction, my final proofreaders caught over…the audiobook narrator, because he finds stuff that everyone missed, which is kind of cool. So I thought, okay, so that's where I found it. And I did. I think I had about 20 or 30 changes of little things like, ‘Oh, that just sounds dumb when I say it out loud.' Joanna: And it was completely right. It was right. It was just the timeline, I guess, I was on. In terms of how we did the audiobook, just so people know, so we basically both recorded our sections. And this is where you did some of the heavy lifting is that I did my section, edited mine. We put all the audio files in the folder and then you did all the audio editing and mastering. You were comfortable to do that. But that is some work. Mark: Yeah. Although the great thing about that process, so I could only do the narration, the audiobooks in certain windows, and Liz was home. So that was one of my challenges. She's at school now, so at work. So that'd be fine. I get the most of the day so long as I don't have other meetings, whatever. I can just block off time. She's home doing construction right below me. The garage is right below the office so I had to negotiate with her on when I could do the recordings. The mastering, I could do that at any time, sitting down, headphones in. It doesn't require a quiet space where I have to hang curtains and stuff around my space. I think what I liked was, so I took them and then I copied them together and then tried to negotiate the number of seconds between your voice and my voice, the number of seconds between the title. And then we even had to negotiate who reads part 1, who reads the chapter title, who reads the quotes, because we have so many quotes from brilliant submissions from the authors. Was it 200 authors who did the survey? Joanna: About 230 authors. And we should say then, yes, we got permission for some people to have their quotes. But we read them and we had said, ‘Well, maybe you read the male quotes and I will…' And then we were like, ‘No, we're just going to divide it. Whoever hits that does that.' Mark: If you're at the end of the chapter, then you read that. If you're at the beginning of the chapter, then you read the quote if there's a quote that opens the chapter as well. So it was interesting. And then also you read the introduction and conclusion. It made the most sense. It's also, you've got to remember, this is Curl Up Press. So this is a Joanna Penn book with Mark Leslie Lefebvre. Joanna: Although, I think you had more airtime because, as you said, you tend to be more wordy. So I think you actually had more of the number of minutes in total. Mark: I'm sure I do. Joanna: People are listening to this so we would like to recommend the audiobook because we really like it. And what I think is interesting about it is the main reason, in the end, we decided to do it this way because we both have voice brands. We both have podcast audiences. And it was like, ‘Well, how do we retain that?' Working backwards, if we want to do this audio product, how do we put that into the writing product, the written product that reflects how we would do the audio? Because neither of us wanted to just do, you read a chapter, I read a chapter, because that doesn't reflect our thoughts. I'm actually really pleased with it and I think, to me, this is how I would be happy co-writing again in the future. I actually feel that I can say, it's very obvious which bits are mine and which bits are yours, and therefore it was easier to write that way than it is to try and mind-meld or word-meld. Mark: For sure. Neither of us have traveled. I think the last time we saw each other was probably in Vegas, probably just a few months before the pandemic, right? With Dean and Kris at the WMG Workshop. I remember going out for coffee with you and sitting on panels together. And I think I have a selfie, I gotta throw that into the mix for the images or the selfies. You were talking on stage and I was trying to take a selfie and then you looked over and smiled while you were in the middle of talking. Joanna Penn and Mark Leslie Lefebvre speaking in las vegas, 2019. Photo by Mark Leslie Lefebvre Joanna: I want to see that one. Mark: It was brilliant. I love that. But I think that's one of the things I love so much about this book is because I am an introvert like you. I'm fine on stage but I do need that time. I've had more than enough time to decompress by myself. So it was so good because it almost felt like we were hanging out together. And when I listened to the audiobook, it felt like it could have been the two of us sitting on stage answering questions on a panel and smiling at one another and listening and nodding while the other one's speaking or sometimes going, ‘Huh? Really? You use Word?' I thought that was fascinating, that whole process. I am so pleased. As a matter of fact, realizing just how much fun I had doing the audiobook with you has inspired me to go back because I only have one of the audiobooks for my ‘Non-Fiction for Writers,' and I realized, ‘Well, that's dumb.' Joanna: Yeah. Mark: Actually, a mastermind group that I'm part of, and they said, ‘Really? Why don't you have the other audiobooks? Because if people like this, then maybe they're going to want to check them out. And if they're not available in audio, guess what? They're not going to get.' So it's inspired me to put more work on my plate but I'm not stressed out about it. Joanna: That's good. I think that's really good. Let's talk about the publishing and marketing. Obviously, we've mentioned how we're doing the publishing, and it's under my name. So most of the money is coming into my bank account. Yay! And then I'm obviously going to run away and just spend it all. No. I will be paying you as we go through. But the marketing, we've already started marketing. Obviously, we've talked about it on our shows and we've started doing things. And we've basically decided that the marketing costs we will just pay for ourselves, so giving books away, ads, that kind of thing. It just becomes too hard to manage. We've essentially settled up with production costs and then going forwards, we'll just do what we do and split it 50%. And, again, that's part of trust, part of the writing and publishing. It's like, ‘Sure, but that's up to when it goes out,' and then it's the marketing. We just both have to trust that we will both market this book. But let's talk about our relaxed approach to launch because I feel like it's really funny. I'm going away. I'm going to be away on the day it all goes live. What will you be doing at launch? Mark: I'm going to be away, too, actually. I was supposed to be in Nashville for The Career Author Summit with J, and Zach. Joanna: So was I originally. Mark: I'm so verklempt that I can't be there because I love those guys and I really wanted to be at The Career Author Summit. It's a more intimate group of really fine people I really enjoy hanging out with. Obviously, travel is just too challenging right now to get there in terms of being isolated and having to quarantine when you get back and stuff. I'm still trying to work that out, so it was a really tough call. I was supposed to be there anyways, which would have been cool, hey, because we were both supposed to be there at one point in time. But then you can't leave. You can't even fly into North America. I'm going up to my mom's to help her get things ready for the fall. She doesn't even have Wi-Fi. The only way I can get on Wi-Fi is if I jump on a borrowed Wi-Fi from the neighborhood of someone who hasn't locked their Wi-Fi down, which thank goodness for the last 10 years has been fine. Until that neighbor moves away, I'm not going to have Wi-Fi when I go up there. I'll have to pre-schedule some things. I have a publicist as well, so Mickey is working on a press release. He'll be doing some of that where he sends it out to a bunch of different media. Fortunately, you're going to be away. I'm going to be traveling as well so we can schedule. We can schedule social media. We can schedule email blasts. We can schedule things. The book launch is on September 18th. It's not like we're going to be sitting there glued to our dashboards going, ‘Oh, how's it selling? How's it selling?' Joanna: Not at all. And I think that's why I wanted to mention, essentially, what we're both going to do is there will be an email that we send to our email lists. We'll put this version of this out on our podcast feeds. We will put the video up on our YouTube channels and we will schedule some social media links. And that is about it. You said you were going to do a press release. Mark: It's just one of those things you do that may get some things to pick it up. Joanna: Yes. Might get something, but I never do that. And I think, again, part of this, and one of our tips is to think long-term and never to be obsessed, actually, about the launch. The launch is a very traditional publishing thing, when the books go into a physical bookstore and then they leave again. Whereas for us, this is an evergreen book actually. This is very much more of a mindset book. Yes, it's got practical tips, but we're not obsessing about September the 18th, 2021. Hopefully, people are listening to this in the years to come and find it useful in years to come. And that is a relaxed approach to launch and marketing. All of our books link to the other books. So part of it is having a similar brand for non-fiction that will just keep help selling each other's other books as well. So it becomes part of the ecosystem. But this, again, I don't think either of us has stressed about launch. Mark: It's really funny when you talk about traditional publishing. It's the launch, it's the first month or two in bookstores. And then that's it. Ironically, you would think the indie author community would say, ‘No, I reject that.' But the indie author community, in many ways, is all stressed about the launch. And, okay, on launch day you gotta do this and you gotta do that and you gotta do that. And it's like, ‘Ah. That scares me. I got too much other things to worry about and do.' It's like, ‘I'm just going to do it. I'm going to write it. It's going to be the best book I can. I'm going to get it out there and we'll see what happens.' And, again, not see what happens. Obviously, we strategize and we plan things out but I love the fact that neither one of us is obsessed and freaking out. This is like, ‘Okay, it's out. I've emailed my people. I let people know I'm going to share it. I'm going to probably share…' I think even some outtakes from this video would be hilarious. I think maybe having fun with it, too. I even think highlighting how there were moments where we weren't relaxed would be an intriguing way of marketing The Relaxed Author. It's like admitting, ‘Yes, we're going to help you, but we're going to admit that we're human too'. Joanna: Absolutely. And we do say that in the book. It's not like we're all zen and never stressed. That's not true, obviously. But I think this has become even more clear to me because of having COVID, and I really was in bed for two weeks and then after the two weeks, I was able to do a little more each day. But it was at least a month, five weeks of just being well below my capacity. What I realized is, okay, I can only do one thing a day with the amount of energy I have. And when I thought about the principles that we've included…and, in fact, I made probably more money that month than I have other months of the year because I was able to pull some levers within my business that meant I could essentially…well, it wasn't really relaxing but I didn't have to work. I haven't done that ever. I'm hardly ever sick. Really not very sick. Yes, I take some breaks and holiday, occasionally. But it felt like, oh, my goodness, I actually can be more relaxed about my author business at this point because of the principles that we've gone through. So we've talked about some. We both said the long-term mindset is very important, both for the business but also the writing. And to come back and say, ‘I still want to be doing this, I don't want to burn out, I don't want to give up writing, I want to have the long-term view,' that is one of the principles that is important to both of us. And, partly, we wrote this because you've been doing this 20-plus years and I've been doing this full-time for over a decade. I've been writing for 15 years. So we've seen people crash out because they're so stressed, they can't do it anymore, whereas we're still here. Mark: Yay. Look at us go. Joanna: We're still here. But I think the practices that we talked about help us stay. We're still here because we have these practices rather than the sort of super, super stressed way. You can be stressed for a short amount of time as you hit a deadline, but you cannot be stressed all the time or you will give up and just get a normal job, right? Mark: Yeah, that's like a mental breakdown. That's not good. Even good stress, even happy stress. Even like, ‘Hey, it's number one,' or, ‘Hey, we're two,' or whatever.' I know it sounds silly but it's like having that high all the time is not necessarily a good thing. I think one of the things I loved about this process is there were so many things that we pulled out of ourselves for this book that I didn't realize until we had the conversation and started thinking about it. And it's only after thinking about it that I reminded myself some of the things I'd forgotten along the way. Books, in many ways, fiction or non-fiction, are therapeutic for me. It's a story I have to tell and I'm not going to feel good until I tell the story. Or I need to exorcise these demons or I need to express this feeling I have. This book, in a very significant way, was therapeutic for me. I'm so glad we did it. When we got stuff back from the proofreader and I went back and I was listening in again with the proofreader's notes, which was fantastic, by the way, great guy, and that just really brought it home to me in a way that I don't think I've had that experience on previous either collaborations or even previous books that I've written because of the multi-layered way we had to go back and forth. For example, I couldn't just make a decision. I had to make the decision with my co-author because of the structure or whatever. So, yeah, long-term thinking and just remembering the things you learn along the way, like pausing to actually acknowledge some of those things because we forget about those things. And we don't take the time to appreciate those experiences we've had. Joanna: We should say that both of us, obviously, have other books for authors and you could say that all of the things we said are in all of our books in some way. I feel like the difference here is that we have bought it all together under this relaxed angle. For example, under relaxed marketing, we're not going to tell you how to do anything. We're talking more about the attitude towards it, and some of the decisions we've made. I also do want to say that we have acknowledged for example, we've said publish wide — or don't. Because sometimes it is more relaxing to be exclusive. We absolutely know that. So I want people to realize that we're quite inclusive in the way that we're doing. Or, for example, social media, choose social media that works for you or don't do it at all. Mark: Exactly. Because if it doesn't work for you, then why would you? Joanna: Why would you? Mark: I love that inclusivity. And it's funny you mentioned that because when I was looking at this book, there's so many elements of things I've already said on my podcast, that you said on your podcast, shared in books, said when you're being interviewed anywhere. Ironically, none of the stuff that I put in the books is not stuff that I don't already give to the community anyway. The whole idea is like we're collecting it and outlining it in a very packaged way that's concise so you don't have to scramble to go find all these bits and pieces. Joanna: Exactly. Mark: Which should be more relaxed. Joanna: Exactly. So I guess, as we come to the end of this, we really hope this helps because this isn't about the pandemic but the pandemic has added a lot of stress for people. Your author life should not be the stressful bit. Your writing should be where you go for comfort and solace and working things out, and your writing should be where you run to when you are stressed. And it shouldn't be the thing that stresses you out. And any stress you do have should be short-term. So we really hope that The Relaxed Author is going to help you. You can find it on all your favorite platforms, in all your favorite formats. And if you don't, then you should just email one of us and we will make sure it gets there. You can also buy the eBook and audiobook direct at payhip.com/thecreativepenn. And, of course, we make more money if you buy direct from us. So go ahead and do that. But is there anything else you wanted to say as we wind up, Mark? Mark: I just want to remind authors of the reason what probably drew them in to writing in the first place was passion and the enthusiasm and excitement. I'm hoping that they can find, like we have found, and rediscover, they can rediscover, rekindle that passion, that enthusiasm for what drew them to storytelling and writing in the first place. And hopefully, this book will help them. So thank you, Joanna, for this amazing experience of getting to write this book with you. Joanna: And thanks so much for your time today, Mark. That was great.The post Co-Writing The Relaxed Author with Mark Leslie Lefebvre first appeared on The Creative Penn.

The opportunities for creation and marketing in audio format continue to expand and the lines are blurring between audiobooks, podcasts and other forms of audio storytelling. In this episode, Sarah Werner talks about writing for audio first and the challenges of full-cast audio drama and podcast fiction. In the intro, problems with publishing distribution and supply chain for print books [Kris Rusch]; Reader Reach [Written Word Media]; Do authors need to advertise? [6 Figure Authors]; AI-narrated audio and NFTs from virtual Digital Book World sessions; AI 2041: 10 Visions for our Future by Kai-fu Lee and Chen Qiufan; all the future creativity episodes; The Relaxed Author out now; and my pics from the Wye Valley and the Forest of Dean @jfpennauthor. Today's show is sponsored by Audio for Authors: Audiobooks, Podcasting, and Voice Technologies. Do you want to create, publish and market your audiobooks? Are you ready to use podcasting to grow your author brand and reach more readers with your books? It's still early days for audio and opportunities are expanding all the time. This book will help you get started — or expand your audio reach. Available on all the usual platforms in all the usual formats (and yes, I narrated the audiobook!) Sarah Rhea Werner is a writer, professional speaker, and executive producer of Girl In Space, a multiple award-winning sci-fi mystery podcast, as well as the host of the Write Now podcast, and executive producer of fantasy audio drama Omen. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Switching from blogging to podcastingHow writing for audio differs from writing a bookDo different kinds of novels work better as audio drama?Is having a narrator an option for audio drama?Options for monetizing a podcast or audio dramaOn the potential for using AI voices for audio dramaFinding actors, sound effects and music, as well as important copyright issuesMarketing tips for podcasts and audio drama You can find Sarah Werner at SarahWerner.com and on Twitter @SarahRheaWerner or check out her Write Now Podcast. Transcript of Interview with Sarah Werner Joanna: Sarah Rhea Werner is a writer, professional speaker, and executive producer of Girl In Space, a multiple award-winning sci-fi mystery podcast, as well as the host of the Write Now podcast, and executive producer of fantasy audio drama Omen. Welcome, Sarah. Sarah: Hi. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here. Joanna: It's so interesting to talk to you today. Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing for audio? Sarah: I feel like I fell into it, like I've fallen into so many other things in my writing career. I started out as just a novelist, a writer, a blogger, and never really published anything, never really did anything with what I was writing for myself. I decided I wanted to start a blog that would help other writers. This was back in 2013, 2014. And so, I started this blog, and it was not getting any traction. At the time, I was working for a marketing company, a digital marketing company. A good friend there said, ‘Why don't you start podcasting?' And I was like, ‘I don't know. That sounds really intimidating. And it has a lot of dials and levers and stuff, and something I'm not really prepared for.' But eventually, I ended up experimenting with auto and I changed my blog into a nonfiction podcast called ‘Write Now.' I just really loved both the experience of speaking into a microphone. It felt so much more authentic, despite being a writer and despite identifying as a writer, it just felt better to speak than it did to write this blog. It also saw a lot more traction than my blog. I think that was partly due to the time, with there being a very saturated blog market, and back in 2014, 2015, not a ton of podcasts. So, then, after the success of the ‘Write Now' podcast, and given how much I enjoyed doing it, I was like, ‘Oh, man, what if I spoke a fictional story into my microphone? Oh, wait, maybe I should script it.‘ And so, I started just writing for audio, and turned some ideas that I had had floating around for a novel into the ‘Girl In Space' podcast. I started it as an experiment, just to see if it would be fun, if it would be viable. And when I launched the first episode, fortunately, it took off, and I was like, ‘Okay, I guess I'm going to write some more of these episodes.' And so really, I stumbled and flailed my way into it, and realized that I just really enjoyed it. Joanna: I like that you said you were intimidated, and then you gave it a try, and you enjoyed it. I feel like so many of the things, especially in this new world, with this tech, and you have to master a little bit of tech, but the main thing is, ‘Oh, I'm scared of it. And then I try it. And then I enjoy it.' And you don't know unless you try, do you? Sarah: Absolutely. Oh, that's so, so true. Joanna: Have you gone on with your writing in book format, or are you really concentrating on the audio now? Sarah: Oh, what a beautiful question. I think about this a lot. Writing is not a monolith. Writing is not just one thing to everybody. I think about my writing for audio, which really scratches an itch, because I love writing dialogue. It's largely dialogue, and then sound effects and descriptions that really don't end up coming out of the microphone. So really, what you're writing is dialogue, and I love writing dialogue. I was thinking the other day, like, ‘Oh is this it? Is this where my path is leading? Have I gone down a path where I've excluded all other possibilities?' And I was like, ‘Well, of course, not. I could still write a novel. It's always been my dream to write a novel.' Growing up, I read book after book after book, like I think many writers today read as children. And I wasn't allowed to watch TV growing up. And so, it was just, books were everything to me. And while audio felt very accessible, there are really no gatekeepers, and you can write and publish and do the whole thing yourself, writing a book is still very intimidating to me. It's funny because I've also ghostwritten many books, and I can write for other people very easily. But writing a novel for myself, there's just something there that's still very intimidating, like, ‘Oh, how dare I place myself among the ranks of all of these other beloved novelists that I grew up venerating?' So it's kind of a tricky question for me. I would love to write a novel. But I don't know. I don't feel like I'm ready. Joanna: It's so interesting, though, because, so, you say you identify as a writer. And of course, you've done ghostwriting things, but you are writing, for audio. Sarah: I am. Joanna: I'm writing before I'm creating audio. I just recorded a solo episode on London for my Books and Travel show. I wrote the whole thing. And then I performed it. I feel like people object to the word ‘writer' when it comes to audio, but everything is writing first, right? Sarah: It is. TV is writing first. Movies, that's writing first. Everything is writing first. Joanna: What you've done for ‘Girl In Space,' obviously, you mentioned it's dialogue, versus writing a novel and then adapting it for audio, because they're two very different things, I think. Sarah: Oh, absolutely. Very, very different. And in all of this, I've just sort of learned as I've gone. It's really interesting writing for audio. Again, like you said, that dialogue is a really heavy piece. But when you're writing for audio, there are three things to consider. There's the dialogue, there is the sound effects/music, and that can be anything from a hand knocking on a door, that being a sound effect, to ambient music in the background. And there's also the unspoken cues for your actors. And it's so different. You're writing using different puzzle pieces than you are when you're writing for a novel. For a novel, you're thinking about is my prose is coming across beautifully. My voice as a writer is coming out through the narrator or through whoever is the main point of view in the story. Whereas, I feel like when you're writing for audio, you're really giving that over to your actors, for them to insert their own voice later. It was so interesting, giving my script over to other actors for the first time and hearing my dialogue come out of their mouths. I actually worked with them to revise a lot of the script, because I liked their own spin, I liked their own voice. And so, I took my voice out of it even more with my other actors, like, ‘Oh, yeah, this character wouldn't say it this way, they would say it this way.' So, it was really kind of a more collaborative process, too, and more of a slow burn sort of edit. We were changing the script up until recording. There's just so much going on there that I wouldn't have known ahead of time, that I learned while doing it. And really, what helped me there was being willing to be flexible, and not being too precious with my own work. Joanna: It's so interesting. I really want people to get the point that this is not a book that a narrator has read, as in an audiobook. This is an audio drama, which, as you say, is more like a script. I've got so many questions. Did you use scriptwriting software, like Final Draft, or what technical format did you use? Sarah: First, I started off using just Google Docs, because I didn't know any better. Again, when I say I stumbled into this, I mean in the most clumsy way. So, I started with Google Docs. And I was like, ‘Well, this looks like I think a script should look like.' As I moved on, and as I started working more seriously with my actors and taking the project more seriously, treating it less like an experiment and more like an actual living project, I started researching, like, ‘Okay, how do people write scripts? What does the formatting look like?' So I gave myself a little crash course. And I started using Celtx which is a free screenwriting program, very similar to Final Draft. That's what I ended up using at the end of season one of ‘Girl In Space.' I was writing in what I felt like was a real format. But it's interesting. To keep the door open for everybody who might be interested in doing this, you can start off however it works best for you, and you can learn as you go. You don't need all of these things in the way to start. You don't need to master some kind of technical program before you start writing. You can just write with what you have and where you are. Joanna: Scrivener has a screenplay template as well. When I was writing some screenplays, I wrote in Scrivener and then exported it to Final Draft. So people can use that as well. But it's a good recommendation to have a free one. That's excellent. Final Draft is not free. Sarah: It is not free. I found that out later. Joanna: Yeah, it can be difficult. So, okay, so that's one thing. Then you said ‘dialogue.' Obviously, this is audio, so dialogue is a voice that is spoken out loud. It can be a character thinking to themself, rather than just two or three, or however many characters talking together. I feel like that's a difference too. Dialogue can still be internal thoughts, right? Sarah: It is, absolutely. My character in ‘Girl In Space,' she's carrying around a recorder, and she's ostensibly talking to her father, who we find out later has passed away, but this is the way that she stays connected with him. I was really thinking how do I get some of this stuff across? How do I know that my character is looking into a stereo microscope? And to take that question a step back, is it even important that the audience knows that she's looking into a stereo microscope? So you really have to decide, what is so important that I cannot leave it out, that I must find a way to work into the dialogue here? And, for me, I don't know if I would do it the same way again. I don't know if I would do it, and have the narrator say, ‘Well, okay, here, I've got my stereo microscope, and now I'm looking into it.' Because there's also what is the audience willing to put up with? What sounds realistic? How far is the audience willing to suspend their disbelief? Obviously, they realize they're listening to an audio-only story. But at what point are you taking them out of that story by over-explaining things? It's really become a balancing act of what do you need to explain? What can you convey with sound effects? And then, if you do want to convey things, how can you do it in the most natural-sounding way? Can you have other people comment in interesting ways, like, ‘Wow, that's a really big gun?' Obviously, not that trite, but how can you convey things in a way that doesn't make it too obvious or too staged-sounding? The other thing that I've noticed is, there's a real cool thing you can do when writing for audio, that I was not even thinking about when I was writing novels, and that is how characters interact with each other, and how they constantly interrupt each other and how sometimes, different characters, especially if you have an ensemble cast, will have two or three conversational threads going at a time instead of just one. It ends up being a lot less of a tennis match, like it would be in a novel, where this person says a complete thought, often an entire paragraph, and then knocks the ball back over to the next character, who says their next complete thought. In audio, I found that it sounds a lot more realistic to have people trail off, to have people constantly interrupting each other. And that can also be a great way to convey character, if somebody is constantly interrupting someone else, that says a lot about who they are and what they think of themselves as a character. And so, that's been fun to play around with as well. Joanna: I've given up completely on screenwriting because it is a completely different industry. It's a job, basically. Screenwriting is a job. And you can't do it on your own. Whereas I feel like audio drama, you can, as you say, you can write your own script, you can find actors, you can put it together, you can get it out there, so it is a much more independent type of creative thing. If someone wants to adapt a novel, are there particular types of novels that are going to work better? Or do you have to assess your work and check that it's got X amount of dialogue? How difficult it's going to be? Sarah: That is such an excellent question. I love this question. And I'm going to have a very disappointing answer. I going to be ‘it kind of depends.' What you're going to be looking for when you're looking to adapt a work is how will this work in audio format? And to understand your answer to that question, even to answer that question, you have to understand, why did I write this as a book first? What makes it work as a book? Does my character have a lot of rich inner life going on? Is this book 90% my character thinking and looking around at things? Does it have a lot of dialogue that could come out in an audio story? How much do I want to come out in audio? And what can I do in audio that I was limited and doing in my novel? What are the possibilities here? And how can that enrich and serve the story? There are definitely stories, I think, that work really well in audio, and there are definitely stories that work better as novels. I had been struggling to think about how to adapt a novel that I have in my drawer here, that has never seen the light of day, into an audio drama now that I'm more familiar with the medium. And it's like, ‘Oh, this maybe isn't a good fit. There's a lot of sort of internal thought. There's a lot of really juicy visuals, that normal people won't narrate in their day-to-day dialogue.' It is possible to have a narrator if you're interested in doing that. It's possible to say, like, ‘Oh, and then Dorothy walked down the street and the rain was beautiful, and that's really terrible.' So it's possible to have a narrator, but I haven't seen a lot of really engaging audio dramas with narrators. Again, rules are meant to be broken, and you should definitely break that rule if you can do it and you can do it well. Joanna: I agree with you. I think this is where the lines are blurred now, between an audiobook that someone can put out on a podcast feed in chapters, which was how I first listened to audio… Well, I say ‘first,' I mean, when digital audio…Podiobooks, which is gone now, and I got I them, I think it's in Scribl or something. I used to listen to authors reading out their own books chapter by chapter. Scott Sigler is a good one. Sarah: Yes. Joanna: I found Scott Sigler because of his audio. But that is still an audiobook, narrated chapter by chapter, whereas what you're talking about is a performance by actors of a drama that is probably closer to a screenplay than a novel. And obviously, nonfiction can be the same. Malcolm Gladwell's recent ‘Bomber Mafia,‘ designed for audio, and then put out in a book. Have you seen any other interesting blurring of the line between books and podcasts, and audio products? Sarah: I have, and it's really interesting that you asked that. I see a lot of, especially on Reddit, where people are having discussions about ‘Oh, is this project actually an audiobook? Or is it an audio drama?' There's a lot of blurring of the lines there. And there's also people who want to very strictly label things and say, ‘No, it's not an audio drama unless you have different voices for each character, unless you have music and sound effects in the background…' They start listing out all these criteria to separate the two. I don't know if this is something that you or your audience is familiar with. There's a lot of what's called ‘actual play' podcasts, which are essentially D&D games. There's actual play podcasts, which are a group, a D&D group that comes together, and each person has their own character, and then later, the producer of the show will add in music and sound effects. There's even a question as to whether that counts as an audio drama or not, because it's unscripted. I don't know how I feel about the labels, I think they can be helpful, if people are necessarily looking for something. Like, ‘I'm definitely looking for an actual play podcast. Or ‘I'm definitely looking for a scripted fiction experience.' Or, ‘I'm definitely looking for an audiobook.' But I question sometimes the importance or the necessity of those labels, as storytelling in audio becomes more and more ubiquitous. Joanna: I agree with you in one way, in that the labels are difficult. But what the labels do help is consumers and paying for things. So, right now, I can get podcast fiction for free on podcast platforms. I have to pay, or I have a monthly subscription, to an audiobook platform. You sell an audiobook, but a podcast is free, and it's monetized in other ways. How do you manage the money side of an audio drama? And what are the options for monetization if it's not a direct sale? Sarah: This is so weird to talk about, because we start getting into ‘Who deserves to be paid for their storytelling?' and ‘Who's releasing this for free, and why, and how?' and, ‘How did this all come about?' Basically, there's a lot of different ways that you can monetize a podcast. One of those being, of course, the most obvious, which is advertising. A lot of shows have ads. They have, if it comes before the show, it's called pre-roll, if it's in the middle of the show, it's called mid-roll. And then there's also ads that roll at the very end. You might have heard these in different podcasts. It's a very popular method. Often, advertising opportunities aren't available to podcasts until they grow to a certain size. Another is to rely on donations, which is what I do. I rely on a third-party platform called Patreon, which you may have heard of, where people can donate either per month or per episode, however they feel is a good amount of money. [I also use Patreon. I do a monthly Q&A and you get $ off my books and courses at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn] It's very unreliable, especially if you are trying to work that into a business plan. You don't know when people will come and go. You're not guaranteed a certain amount of money. There's no contract involved. And so, that is another way to make money. Then you also mentioned indirect ways of making money. And this is often what I recommend people do when they are first starting out to make money, is use your podcast as a business card. Use your podcast as a way to advertise something else that you're doing that makes money. For the ‘Write Now' podcast, I drive people to my newsletter, which then I use to sell things. I drive people to my podcasting course, which helps me bring in passive income. With ‘Girl In Space,' which is my fictional show, it was a little different. I'm not really using that to sell anything, but I did end up selling the intellectual property itself after the show took off. And that's another avenue, is your podcast could turn into a book deal, a movie deal, a TV deal. It could be adapted for other things, people might want to buy the rights for it. Those are the three biggest ways, is advertising, donations, and then using the intellectual property in some way, either to indirectly make sales, or to…well, I guess that counts as four ways. It's not three ways. The fourth way is actually selling the intellectual property and making money that way. So, those are the four that I've experimented with. There might be more. Obviously, if you're working with a service like Spotify, or I know Apple does subscriptions now, you might make money subscription-wise through that. Joanna: I think it's much harder to monetize a fiction podcast than it is a nonfiction show, because there are so many more people making money in a niche. I have advertising, I have a Patreon, I do affiliate stuff. And there are people who want to reach a particular audience who they know will pay. Whereas the problem with a fiction audience is they're not necessarily going to pay, or even if they are going to buy something, it's usually not very expensive, like another $5 book or something. So it is, that is interesting in itself. I did want to just come back on the IP, the intellectual property. You mentioned there selling the IP. Do you mean licensing it, so, you've signed a license to someone and they might be able to use it in other ways? Or did you actually sell the copyright to someone else? Sarah: Initially, I had optioned out. Listeners are probably familiar with what optioning means. I'd optioned out ‘Girl In Space' for specifically TV and film, and then I got to keep my own rights for books and the podcast, and a couple other things. But all of that is, that's all a possibility, is you could sell the entire thing and wash your hands of it and say, ‘Okay, that's yours now. I'm going to go make something else.' Or you can also option it, see if it gets made, and all of that kind of stuff. I don't know if that answers your question. Joanna: Ye, I think that's good. I always get very particular about the word selling versus licensing, because we all make money out of licensing our rights. And yes, you can do work for hire or you can sell your project. That would be another thing, actually, writing for hire. I know quite a lot of people now who write for hire as audio drama, writers, and they don't own any of that IP. That's work for hire. So the copyright is owned by the company that pays them. I think there are all kinds of options, but I guess what we're saying is don't start a podcast expecting to get a TV show from it. Sarah: Exactly. I've noticed that a lot of TV shows are being made from podcasts, but having that expectation going in, I think you'll just end up feeling a lot of resentment. Joanna: Yes. And also, they are starting…they are generally made from these bigger brands, so, I think Amazon just bought Wondery. Sarah: Yes, they did. Joanna: Yes. So that is, again, it's an IP play. It's about, ‘Here are some popular shows that we can potentially turn into other media.' Turning things into other media is the key, right, for all of us? Sarah: It is. Yes. Joanna: I want to come back on the actors. So, how did you find actors? And do you pay them? What are the terms for working with actors? Sarah: This is a little embarrassing. when I started out, again, I cannot stress enough how much I did not know what I was doing. All of the actors in Season One, or at least Part One of Season One of ‘Girl In Space,' are me, my mother-in-law, and my brother-in-law's roommates. Those are my actors. And then I had a co-worker, from the marketing company that I used to work for, and that was my cast. And they were very accommodating. They were very sweet. Later on, as I learned more about the industry, and as I made more connections within the industry, and I started adding new roles, those were actual actors. I did send out casting calls, and set up a contract that said, ‘Okay, this is how you're going to get paid. This is how much I'm going to pay you. This is how this whole thing is going to work.' I am a huge advocate of paying your actors, but also, I realized if you're a college student who's starting an audio drama, and you can't even afford to buy food, ‘Oh, how am I going to pay an actor $300 for this role?' So, initially, what I was also doing was trading. One of my actors has their own audio drama, and so I voiced a role on that audio drama in exchange for this person voicing a role on my show, and that exchange worked out very nicely. I also did some marketing consulting for some people, just because I have a background in marketing. There's different ways that you can work things out. If you're a composer, you can compose music for their show in exchange for them acting. I don't know if this is a thing in the UK, but here in the States, we have the Screen Actors Guild, SAG-AFTRA. There's a lot of discussion going on right now, especially in the indie space, where, ‘Oh, my gosh, we cannot afford to pay these union rates.' And so, ‘Who is acting in our show? Who's available to act in our show? What are we going to do moving forward?' That's just a discussion that's happening right now, too, is how long will this remain a possibility for people to create indie shows with a very shoestring budget? Joanna: This brings me on to the question about AI voices because they are getting better and better. We acknowledge the wonderful job that actors do, and audiobook narrators do, and voice actors and all of that. And that it is a professional skill, absolutely, and they should be paid. On the other hand, as you say, there is lots of potential in the AI voice space, which is being already used a lot in the gaming industry, to generate voices for characters and all this kind of thing. So, is there a way that we could use a bit of both, to spread the budget? What do you think about this very emotional issue of AI voices? Sarah: This is really interesting, because I was approached by a company who essentially wants to use my voice as an AI voice. I still haven't responded to that request, because I just don't know how I feel about it. Am I putting myself out of work by making my voice available? Or am I enabling people to create with a shoestring budget? It's so touchy. I think a lot of it comes down to what do you need out of the performance? If it's a narrator, if it is a background voice, I can see that being used. But if you need a really heart-wrenching, emotional performance I think you're going to want to go with an actor. Knowing that from the start of your project, I think, is going to be really tricky is, like, ‘Where do I want this character to go? How do I want this character to grow? And what is that going to look like when it's conveyed through purely voice?' For me, I think it's difficult to think that far ahead, because I'm very much a write-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of person, and I'm not sure that, like, ‘Oh, this person is going to have an emotional breakdown in Season Two, and I need you to prepare for that, and I need to cast accordingly.' So, I feel like I've given you a very, very non-answer, but I don't know if there is necessarily an answer right now. I think it's something that we're going to have to feel out and experiment with, and really decide individually what's right for our show. I know there are also some ethical questions about, ‘Are we putting actors out of work? Or are we opening up doors for people with smaller budgets?' And the answer is yes, to all of that, I think. Joanna: I think this hybrid idea is far more likely. We all have secondary characters and small parts and stuff like that, that presumably could be done by smaller voices. Or, what you were talking about, I've been looking into voice licensing. For example, Samuel L. Jackson is a voice on Alexa. And there's no way he just gave his voice to Amazon. He's licensed his voice to be used as an Alexa voice. And that's what I see. What I would say to the company that's emailed you is, I would say, ‘Show me the contract.' Because what we will be doing, and I've had companies too, is it's voice licensing in the same way that you license your IP to be used in another product. It's licensing your voice to be used in future productions that you want to keep control of. So I think these are going to be opportunities, and the biggest voice actors will be able to license their voices and make money while they sleep. It's the ultimate kind of passive income for a voice brand. Sarah: It is. And there's something beautiful about that. We have this technology. Let's use it. Let's see what it can do. Joanna: Absolutely. You mentioned there, you had two extremes for actors, which was your mates and your family, and then the Screen Actors Guild. Surely there's somewhere in between where people can find voice actors. Is it just a case of networking within the fiction, audio drama podcasting space? Sarah: It is. I found mine on Twitter. I know that there are websites like Backstage, where you can kind of put out casting calls, and you won't necessarily get the most famous voice actor, but you might find someone who fits your show really well. Mine ended up being later on, a lot of networking. I'm part of the podcasting community, especially the audio drama community now, and so I kind of know who to ask, ‘Hey, can you share this casting call with the voice actors you work with?' and word just gets around. But again, there are more formal avenues for doing that, like backstage.com and some other places. Joanna: And then, another really important point, sound effects and music. Sarah: Ooh, yes. Joanna: If people don't know, these things are also copyright, generally. Sarah: They are, yes. Joanna: Yes. So you can't just go, ‘Oh, yeah, I really like that song by Taylor Swift,' or whatever, ‘so I'm going to stick it in my podcast.' What are your recommendations around sound effects and music, and making sure they're royalty-free or Creative Commons and stuff like that? Sarah: I always tell people to be very, very careful, and very respectful when you are using any kind of sound that you don't make yourself. I usually advise people if you're able to, if you have a small Zoom recorder, or if you have a portable recorder, to try making your own. It's very hard to get a very clean recording, but it's also kind of fun to learn and experiment with. However, if it's not possible for you to make your own background sounds or sound effects, please, again, be very, very careful. I use a website called freesound.org. And you can filter on that website. You can search and filter for sound effects. So if I'm looking for feet walking on gravel, you can find things that are Creative Commons 0. You can find things that are Creative Commons Attribution, which means that you need to reference and source those in the credits of your show, and provide links as necessary in your show notes. There's a huge wild world there. As you're searching for sound effects, if that's something that you're doing, please be very, very careful about the licensing. I don't want you to get into trouble. There are also sound effect libraries that you can purchase. And again, you're licensing those from different corporations, and A Sound Effect is a great place to start. They have some great libraries. And then, as far as music goes, again, yes, please do not use a Taylor Swift song unless you are Taylor Swift or you have a contract with her personally. It can be really difficult to find music that is what we call ‘podsafe.' There's a website called Incompetech that's done by Kevin MacLeod. You can hear Kevin MacLeod's music in so many podcasts, because he creates Podsafe music that is a Creative Commons 0 license. So I would definitely encourage you to start there. There are also possibilities for working with a composer. My partner, Tim, for his audio drama, ‘Omen,' just looked on Twitter and said, ‘Hey, are there any composers who would like to get paid money to make music for my show?' He had a few people say, ‘I'd love to do that.' He worked out contracts with them, and they composed the intro song, the outro song, and then some transitional music for between scenes. And he really enjoyed that. It really is kind of cool to have music that is specifically written for your show, that exactly is tailored to the tone, and the mood that you want to set with your show. The only thing with that is it does get a little expensive, because you are paying another artist for their time to create something for you. Joanna: It's funny you mentioned Incompetech, because this show uses one of Kevin's pieces, which I got from Incompetech, and credit him on the show notes page. And also, for my ‘Books and Travel' show, I licensed it from AudioJungle, which you can license up to a certain number of downloads per episode, or total number of downloads or something. So I bought a really massive license. I also wanted to mention OpenCulture.com and places like the British Library, and they release sound effects and libraries of all kinds of things, video and audio, and images and things for people to use, so that would be another thing. Sarah: Absolutely. And WNYC, here in the States, is a New York public radio station, and they also have a large library of royalty-free songs that you can use. Joanna: Yes. So, emphasis on the royalty-free or the Creative Commons, and look at those licenses. Super important. But I do want to ask you about marketing, because what's so funny is you mentioned 2013, your blog wasn't getting any traction, but you were able to get traction on your podcast because the market wasn't so full. And of course, we're now a few years ahead of that. There are a lot more podcasts out there. This show, part of its success is that I started it in 2009. So if you're around longer, it's easier to get traction. That is a tip. Just stick around long enough, and everyone else will fade away. Sarah: Absolutely, it really is. Yes. Joanna: On the marketing, for audio dramas like that, and I'm particularly interested in what Facebook is doing with podcasts. If people do write an audio drama, or they set up a podcast, what are the best ways to market them? Sarah: This is one of my favorite things to talk about. I take just a full-spectrum approach to marketing. And that includes asking yourself a lot of questions about why you're doing this in the first place, and what you want to achieve with your show. We really start by identifying, number one, what do you want out of this experience? Because how you market it will determine what you get out of that. If you want to build a huge fan base, if you want people making fan art about your show, if you want people writing fanfiction, then you're going to do one thing, whereas if you want to create your show and make money and eventually license it to someone else to be adapted into something else, you're going to do things slightly different. Understanding why are you doing this and what you want out of the experience is going to be your very first step. Your second step is going to be understanding who is this for? Who is the audience that is going to really, really love my work? We talk about audience demographics, based on gender, location, age. There's all those sort of ready-made marketing demographics. I encourage people to also think about where are the people who are going to be listening to your show? What else do they enjoy? What other spaces are they in? I found that that can be a lot more valuable than identifying the gender or the age of a potential listener. It tells you more about them. What are their other interests? So the ‘Write Now' podcast obviously is going to appeal to writers and book lovers. ‘Girl In Space' is going to appeal to people who really perhaps enjoyed the Mass Effect video games, or they love science fiction. There are ways to identify common interests, and then those are the spaces that you're going to become a part of those communities online. There's also the question of budget. And if you want to do it all for free, so, with what's called organic reach, then you're going to do things a little bit differently than if you have a budget for an ad spend. I did both of my shows…I have not done any ad spend, I've done it just all organically, and so that's what I kind of prefer to talk about, especially since the podcasters I work with, they're already struggling to pay their actors, and they don't really have hundreds of dollars for a Google ad spend. After we've identified why we're doing this, what we want to get out of it, and who our audience is, we need to identify where our audience is online. I've noticed a lot of, specifically audio drama audiences, right now, and this is going to become outdated probably with even a year, or even six months, is Instagram, Tumblr, and Twitter. There's also a huge fan base for audio dramas on Reddit, if you're a part of that community. But really, it comes down to not simply using a social media platform to shout about your show, but it's using those platforms to build and become a part of a community. Because marketing, at least the way that I've done marketing in the past, has been very community-based, where you become a part of a community, and whether that community is other creators, or whether that community is fans of your show, or whether there's a little crossover of both, is going to determine how you talk about your show and where you talk about it. Social media-wise, I call it the 80/20 approach. Eighty percent of the time, you should be engaging with your community, providing value, providing whatever it is the tone of your show is. So, if you have an educational show, share resources, share interviews, promote other shows that are like yours. Yes, it's not a dangerous thing to do that, yes, we can all get along in a big happy space. I'm very much an advocate that. There's not a lot of competition that I'd want to encourage. And then, understanding where people are congregating about sort of the fan side. Often, they're two very different audiences, and this is something that a lot of independent creators don't realize is, ‘Oh, am I marketing to other creators? Am I building community with other creators? Or am I marketing to people who are going to potentially listen to my show?' I feel like there's this 10-hour talk I could give about marketing. But the 80/20 rule is basically 80% of the time provide value, 20% of the time, you can talk about your own show. You can promote your own work and say, ‘Hey, listen to my show.' But really, the majority of what you should be doing in any sort of online community is giving, instead of what I call taking, which is advertising your show. Again, that's just me. That's the parameters that I've set for myself and that I advise for other people. But there are, of course, a million different ways to market and advertise your show online. Joanna: It's very similar to book marketing. Everything you said is what I would say about being an author. And this show is entirely organic. I've never done any paid advertising for this podcast. Again, we talked about longevity, the longer you're around, the more things spread by word-of-mouth, and that is gold. Sarah: Yes. Joanna: Thank you to everyone listening who spreads the word. But also, I would say, audio marketing, going on podcasts. You're here, you're talking about shows. And some people are going to come over and check out your podcasts because you're right now talking to audio people, people who listen. I feel like that's the other thing people forget is if your product is in audio, then do audio marketing. That's probably an important thing. Sarah: Oh, it absolutely is. And especially, that reminds me, too, another way that's a great way to promote your show is to do promo swaps with other shows. So, if there's another indie show that has a similar audience to you, you can send each other a thirty-second clip, or some kind of little ad to play, and share in each other's audiences that way, and that's a great way to grow your show. Joanna: Absolutely. Where can people find you and your podcast, and everything you do online? Sarah: People can find me out at sarahwerner.com. There are links there to the ‘Write Now' podcast, to ‘Girl In Space,' which is my fictional podcast, and also my newsletter and all sorts of free ebooks and stuff that are just kind of available for download. So, check those out. I do have a ‘Write Now' podcast episode with Joanna Penn, which was the highlight of my early podcasting career, so thank you for that. Joanna: I was going to say, it's quite old now, isn't it? Sarah: It is. Thank you for being a guest years ago. I appreciate you so much. And I want to say thank you to you and to your listeners for listening to me ramble about podcasting and writing today. Joanna: Oh, well, thanks so much for your time, Sarah. That was great. Sarah: Thank you.The post Writing And Producing Audio Drama And Podcast Fiction With Sarah Werner first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What are the different types of travel books and how can you blend them within the genre? How can we tackle our imposter syndrome when writing in a genre we love? Jeremy Bassetti explores these questions and more in today's show. In the intro, my 10-year author entrepreneur lessons learned; the different stages of an author business [Ask Alli]; London: A Personal History. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, where you can get free ebook formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Get your free Author Marketing Guide at www.draft2digital.com/penn Jeremy Bassetti is a travel writer, editor, teacher, and author of historical fiction. He's the host of two podcasts, Travel Writing World and Sonus Loci: The Sound of Place. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes What drives the human desire for travel?The different types of travel books. Jeremy has a great article on this: 10 Travel Book Sub-Genres with ExamplesIs an emotional journey necessary in a travel memoir?How nature writing and travel writing overlapPitfalls to watch out for in travel writingSensory descriptions that bring readers a richer experienceHow to deal with travel writer imposter syndrome — and how practice can help you break through it (and I have some personal reflections on this in the show introduction!) You can find Jeremy Bassetti at JeremyBassetti.com and on Twitter @jeremybassetti Transcript of Interview with Jeremy Bassetti Joanna: Jeremy Bassetti is a travel writer, editor, teacher, and author of historical fiction. He's the host of two podcasts, Travel Writing World and Sonus Loci: The Sound of Place. Welcome, Jeremy. Jeremy: Thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be here, Jo. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you. Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. Jeremy: I'm a teacher and I've been doing academic research and writing for literally half of my life since university. My plan was always to turn my attention to creative writing, to creative nonfiction when I finished grad school. I always said that like I didn't want to be a secondary source. I wanted to be a primary source. I wanted to create the type of things that I was studying. But anyway, so that's what I did around 2015. I was studying and researching about the business and craft of writing in my free time and that's when I founded a podcast. I dabbled a little bit in self-publishing. I published a book, Denounced. It's a historical fiction set in Seville and Renaissance Spain. What I'm really interested in now is travel literature because I found out during the writing process of my historical fiction, I was drawing on a lot of my personal experiences living in Spain for that book and it dawned on me that this is a type of travel writing, I read and travel writing. This is what I'm interested in, that's my home. So I found my home in travel literature. That's where I belong. That's my story in a nutshell. Joanna: We met a couple of years ago at Podcast Movement and share this love of travel and with my Books and Travel, we share our podcasts. We're both working towards our own travel memoirs, but as we speak, the pandemic goes on and on. And we're both passionate about travel. You mentioned setting a bit there, but maybe go a bit deeper on that. What do you think drives our desire to travel and how can traveling help our writing regardless of genre? Jeremy: I think travel springs from deep within us, movement and migration are part of the human experience now. It's in our DNA. We have legs, right? We walk and I think the modern travel industry plays off these instincts a little bit. Movement is a necessity, people follow food, right? They follow the herds and maybe people move for spiritual or economic necessities and reasons, but I'm not sure that that's travel. When those needs are met, I think what drives our desire to travel is adventure, or curiosity, or boredom or marketing agencies or something like that. I can speak for myself here, but what drives me and my desire to travel was a little bit of curiosity and I think a little bit of restlessness. You talk about from time to time, Jo, about refilling the creative well. And like you, I think I need routine, but I also need to break away from the familiar because I need to be inspired, and traveling exposes us to new people and places and things. And I think it's cliché to say this, but travel can be transformative and inspirational. So you asked about how can this help with writing? People say write what you know. And I think that the curious traveler knows a little bit more. Travel can expose us to new ideas, and experiences, and settings, and situations, places, and character can renew our energy to write and live. So I think it's inspirational, transformative, and it exposes us to much more. Joanna: Let's get into the different types of travel books and travel writing because on your podcast, ‘Travel Writing World,' you've interviewed loads of very famous travel writers. And, of course, I talk to a lot of people too and we both read a lot. What are the different sub-genres within the broad sense of travel? Jeremy: Right. I've tried to break it down. The travel genre or the travel writing genre are two different subgenres. And I'm not sure that that's the right term, but let's go with it. Sub-genres or frameworks, or I don't know, styles, they're different ones. I think that part of the reason why I did this was because like me, and I'm assuming other people too, we tend to conflate travel book and travel memoir as this one thing and if you read a lot of travel literature, you'll understand that there's much more diversity in terms of the styles of the books. Many people think of a travel-logue when they think of travel book or travel memoir. But I think they are distinct things. Sub-genres. So there are many and I've listed out maybe like 10 or something on a post on my website: 10 Travel Book Sub-Genres with Examples One of the main examples is what I like to call the quest or the mission. It's a sub-genre of travel book where the author subject traveler, he or she goes off in search of something or to go somewhere. There's an external motivating factor for the narrative or the book. One of the kind of common or most recent examples of this is a book by Sophy Roberts called The Lost Pianos of Siberia. In this book, Sophy travels throughout Siberia looking for an old piano for one of her friends. She's a Mongolian musician. The inciting incident of this book is Sophy is looking for a piano in Siberia, but the book branches out into Russian history, Siberian history, music history. So, from this quest, the book becomes something bigger or more meaningful than just the quest itself. Another one I like to call the journey. This is a style of travel book where just like the quest, but instead of searching for something external to the author, subject writer, that person is searching for something within. It's a book more about self-discovery than external discovery, if that makes any sense. I conflate this with a travel memoir. For me, the word memoir comes loaded with a lot of connotations. I think of a memoir as an intimate book, a book that deals with some kind of psychodrama, there's an intimacy there, memoir has a particular tone to it. And, for me, a travel memoir has the same tone of a memoir, but it's set within the context of a travel experience. When the book is about self-transformation or self-discovery, this is what I think of as a travel memoir. And my term for this is the journey. It's just a term to describe the same thing. Joanna: An example would be Wild by Cheryl Strayed or Eat, Pray, Love. Jeremy. Exactly. Joanna: Which have a travel element, but is a journey structure. Jeremy: Right. It's in three parts, right? In the title itself, it's a three-part. Eat, Pray, Love. Another great example of this is Peter Matheson's The Snow Leopard. On the surface, it's about him and a friend trying to spot one of these elusive snow leopards, but it's a book that's much more than that. There's an inner journey element to the book. Another one is what I like to call the mode or the method. And this is a type of travel book where the method of travel is front and center. So walking travel books are really fashionable of late. In these books, we expect the author to give us an account of what it's like to travel on foot, for example, or on train, or whatever the mode may be. One of the things that we notice when we read in the genre is that these, like I like to delineate any of these sub-genres nicely, but they're never really like that. The quest and the journey and the mode, these sub-genres are often blended together. So the quest can have an element of walking or the journey can have an element of the quest or whatever. They're blended in together. I think what is central to all of those is setting. The place. Readers of travel books want to read about the experience of traveling someplace. They want a sense of place. Joanna: Which is clearly super important. I think what's held me back for so long – and I'm interested in your thoughts on this. I've been thinking about a travel memoir for many, many years and the ones that are the famous ones, here in the UK, there's a big one at the moment, The Salt Path. Well, it was a big one a year ago or the year before. It's won all kinds of awards here and it's the journey of a couple of walking the South-West Coast Path, which is about 700 kilometers, something like that. It's a really big walk, but they start off homeless and kind of dying and then it's a transformation journey. Eat, Pray, Love, she starts off divorced and miserable and changes her life and then while there's the same, the sort of miserable, “my life is broken, I'm so unhappy.” And then the journey is this transformation to happy. I've been kind of stuck on this. I'm very happily married. I'm happy with my career. It's not like I'm going on a journey to try and go from miserable to happy. And also, I'm not climbing Everest, so it's not one of those just big journey things. Jeremy: The adventure. Yeah. Joanna: The adventure book. I feel like we maybe trap ourselves into thinking that it has to be from terrible place to “I'm fine again,” type of thing. What do you think about that emotional journey in the travel book? Is it necessary? Jeremy: I wouldn't say that it's necessary, but we're going back to this question of tone and an intention here. If it's part of your narrative, if it's part of your story, this kind of transformation, then yeah, have it be front and center. But I read many books, travel books that are travel-logues where the inner transformation or the inner journey isn't as front and center as it would be in the journey or travel and more type books, if that makes any sense. And that's totally fine, but some of the rewarding travel books indeed, famous ones are ones that have an element of inner transformation along with the external journey. Joanna: I think you can put the two within the same book. Although it's so funny, when you say travel-logue, again, there's this continuum, but on one hand, you've got the guidebook, which is this many miles from here to here and this is the history of the oldest building and this is where you should stay. That's the guidebook. And then, there's the middle ground of some discussion of the more emotional side, and then there's almost nothing to do with the practical elements along the way. What are you thinking in terms of your travel writing? Jeremy: We didn't mention this earlier in terms of one of the sub-genres, but one of my favorites sub-genres of travel book is a sub-genre that I call the big idea book. This is a book where the writer has a big idea and he or she travels to different parts of the world or different places to investigate that idea. It doesn't have a traditional narrative, not necessarily that we find in the quest or the journey narrative books, doesn't have that arc necessarily. But the reason why I like it is because it deals with ideas, it's heady, it's a different type of book. So the type of things that I'm working on and the other books that pulled me are these kind of big-idea books. A great example of this is MacFarlane's book, Underland. Joanna: One of my favorite books. Jeremy: In this book, this idea of kind of subterranean spaces and the author goes to different subterranean spaces broadly defined around the world. And so that's really interesting to me. Another great book, I don't know if you've heard of this one, it's Cal Flyn's Islands of Abandonment. Have you heard of that one? Joanna: I have heard of it. Someone's recommended that one. I haven't read it. Jeremy: It's a great book. The author, I think she lives in Oregon. She's exploring spaces around the world that have been abandoned by humans. It's a fascinating premise for a travel book, but necessarily, she bounces around to different places, investigating this idea of human abandonment. That's an awesome travel book. Joanna: I've got another one for you. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes — (I actually meant From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death) by Caitlin Doughty. And it's all about death culture in different places. Jeremy: That's great. Joanna: I like this big idea travel book, and with people listening, you and I are total geeks in the travel genre. You could say Underland actually fits within the nature writing niche as much as it fits. And, in fact, maybe they put that in travel because he has written a lot more travel books, but actually, it could be in geology, it could be in geography, in that way. So I think to encourage people listening and what I found, I think, in the interviews, I've done for Books and Travel Podcast is that I've learned more about these structures and it's helped me think, what kind of structure do I want to write? Could I write? And in that way, in fact, I've just been thinking about this, is that I've got one kind of memoir in my head. I also want to write a more list-type book around English pilgrimages which would contain a lot more practical stuff that I don't really want to put in a memoir. Jeremy: Right. I want to circle back here about something you said about MacFarlane's book being more nature writing. This is one of the things that people have been talking about lately, is that the travel writing is, I don't know if being absorbed is the right word, but there's a conflation between travel writing and nature writing, which one is it? It can be both. And that's fine. When you think about travel writing, it doesn't always need to deal with trains and planes and automobiles. It doesn't always need to deal with culture. It can deal with nature or other frameworks. I think that one of the beauties of travel writing is that it's a chameleon. It takes on different forms, it's forever changing and transforming. It's a wonderful space to be in. But back to this other point about the English pilgrimage idea that you have. I think those would be more service-oriented type of travel books, like the guide books that you mentioned earlier. And, of course, personal narrative can be sprinkled into it, but it's fundamentally a different type of book. Joanna: Absolutely. And just practical things where you find things out. And I think because my non-fiction genre is for self-help, I want to help people make the journeys in a way that is useful, but those things don't fit within a memoir. What's hilarious is it looks like at the moment, what I thought was one book is turning into two or three different things and I'm putting different things in different Scrivener projects. Which is really interesting. We've talked about a lot of the things there that we like in travel books, but again, we both read a lot of them. What do you think are some of the common weaknesses that will bring a book down in some way and any thoughts on fixing those? Jeremy: I'm speaking from personal preference here, but what I find to be one of the main weaknesses in travel writing is the over-reliance on the travel-logue. And by that I mean books that are just step-by-step accounts of a vacation with no story or substance, it's like one croissant or bad hotel after another. It gets tedious a little bit for me personally. I know some people who love that style, but personally, I don't. One of the things I think it's helpful here is to think about, and we're going to go into nerd land here for a minute, but I think it's helpful to think about the definitions of vacation and travel or the etymology of these words. Vacation, think about that word. It means empty. It means emptiness in some ways. And I think this might be interesting to you, Jo, but this is one of the earliest examples of this word in English languages is in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and it deals with ‘The Wife of Bath.' And I know you live in the Bath. Joanna: I live in Bath. I am a wife in Bath. Jeremy: One of her husbands, I think he's a misogynist and gets pushed into fire, but he's reading a book, the Book of Wikked Wyves and they mentioned something about he's reading this book when he had leisure and vacation from worldly occupation. So vacation literally is defined in the opposition of work. When someone is not working, whereas in travel, travail literally means work. It means difficulty. It means a burden in French. Travail means work. So these are opposing ideas. Narratives about leisure without tension, or complication, or burdens, or difficulties are sometimes boring to read. But narratives with some sort of work involves personal work, personal struggle of a memoir, or somebody in Mount Everest or whatever, or books that take a great deal of time and work to craft and write. Sometimes those are a little bit more interesting to me. So weaknesses, I think, is just like this, you know, step-by-step croissant account. You know what I mean? Joanna: I totally know what you mean. And it's so funny because – I'm not going to say the name of this – but when I had laser eye surgery a few years back, and, of course, you can't open your eyes for a few days. And so I listened to a lot of audiobooks. And, in fact, again, when I had COVID recently, I listened to these travelogues day by day, by day. “I got up and this was my view and we were walking” kind of things. “I walked from here to here” because while I'm in bed and can't do anything, I like to hear the step-by-step journey and try and imagine looking out at the sea or whatever. I didn't really want to have the emotional angst side of it. And then once I'm fine again, I like the deeper, more meaningful memoir-y thoughts. I agree with you in terms of the poorest travel books, I think the ones where they haven't edited for theme, or metaphor, or meaning. I think the worst travel book could probably be made better by a good edit and cutting out a lot of the extraneous stuff. And as I said, editing for theme, or meaning, or something like that. Every single travel experience could have that, couldn't it? Jeremy: Right. I know what you mean. It gets tedious to read about how a beer was the most delicious beer someone has ever had, but I don't want to like pooh-pooh the idea as you're mentioning here. If someone wants to write a travelogue, if they're compelled to write one, that's a completely legitimate creative outlet. Writing about your travels, I get it and that's fine, but I think a lot of good can come from thinking about story and thinking about structure and thinking about point and editing for editing for story and trying to craft together something that's interesting for someone else to read. Joanna: Absolutely. I'm going through a lot of my journals at the moment from various things and my journals are written for me. They're not full of things that are interesting for other people. But when I'm thinking about putting them into the travel book, I need to expand those and make them more travel-y. And actually, there's something I wanted to ask you because you've got this interesting podcast, ‘Sonus Loci: The Sound of Place‘ and what we need in, I think, a good a travel book, like we mentioned, Underland, sensory detail is critical in bringing a book alive, especially when it's an environment where you can't even really imagine what it might feel like. What is your fascination with sound and how do we bring in these sensory details into our writing? Jeremy: Thanks for mentioning that other podcast, ‘Sonus Loci,' we Americans pronounce it Loci, but it's L-O-C-I. It's a podcast for me where I publish soundscapes from travel. I had these cool binaural microphones and they go in my ear as if they're earphones, but they're not earphones. They're recording sounds as naturally as possible. I started to do this so I could force myself to slow down and pay attention to the world a little bit more. I live in Florida, not so far from the beach and one of my pet peeves is when people go to the beach, they bring their radios and it seems like they do whatever it takes to pull them away from the space that they're in. I get it. I love to jam to tunes, but I found that the silence that people dislike isn't really silent at all if it's filled with sounds. It's an exercise in paying attention. But sounds, like everything else, I think, they're the raw data for the writer just like any other sensation. And I think sound is really tricky to write about. I think the point or the trick is to not overuse it, but to sprinkle it in along with the other senses to give a full portrait of a place. Sound is a way to give life and credibility and texture to the writing. And as I think you can agree, like it seems to be missing in a lot of writing. Joanna: Smell I find very difficult and again, can be super overused and it is difficult because often the word that you come up with is kind of the same word. And if you want to explain it without using the same word, it has to be different. But I also think you can do sound through action. So, for example, Jeremy put the kettle on, to me, does bring sound into the writing because we all know what a kettle boiling sounds like. Jeremy: It's suggested. Joanna: Yes. Suggested rather than like here in Bath, we're inland but we have really noisy seagulls down by the abbey. And this is a very unusual thing in this area. If I was writing about Bath saying the sound of seagulls playing with the rubbish at 4:00 a.m. is actually a unique sound for this area, which makes it more interesting than mentioning maybe the seagulls by the sea. I don't know. It's difficult. Jeremy: It's difficult and you're right. You're completely right. People can suggest sounds by writing about things in the environment, but people could also use onomatopoeia to great effect in the story or to describe it things like the rattle, and the hissing, and the gurgling of things. The trick again is not to overuse it, but how great can sounds be? Sound is so important to travel like going to a country in the Middle Eastern or North Africa and you hear like the morning called to prayer. You don't need to mention that every day of your travelogue or every day of your book for whatever genre you're writing about. But by mentioning that it's something that can transport you into the place. And you don't need to reinforce us all the time, but you can just mention the prayer hour or whatever. Suggesting the sound, I think, is a good way about. Joanna: Definitely. I find it so interesting. Often, as I'm writing things, I'm going back to places. It's so great now, I can go back to a place on Google Earth to have a look or I can go on YouTube and I can probably find a video of some street over like of Souk in the Middle East and you can pick up things that you didn't pick up the first time. I do personally read a lot of travel books to mine them for ideas for my own writing as we do with any genre and how things are described. Underland I've got in e-book, and hardback, and audiobook and I just listen to it. I did want to ask you, because I feel like we both are suffering from this and which is a little bit of imposter syndrome around travel writing because we have both read and talk to people who write what is frankly, award-winning literature. I always feel like it's how I felt before I wrote my first thriller, which is, “oh, I'm only allowed to write a book if it wins a prize or some kind of a famous publisher publishes it.” How do you feel about imposter syndrome in the travel niche? Jeremy: Part of the tension, I think, that you and I both feel is we want to write about our experiences, but we also want to write something that's good and meaningful for other people. And sometimes that can get in the way of execution or actually writing the darn book. Just the analysis paralysis or the imposter syndrome, stopping us in our tracks and preventing us from doing the work of actually writing because we're interested in the prize or whatever fantasy we have in our minds about the book being good. It's certainly something that gets in my way. And part of the other issue here with travel writing, Jo, and I'm sure you'll understand this, is that the travel writing is a broad genre that we see a lot of it in print publications and that type of media for journalists and that world is lock and key behind gatekeepers. You have to pitch to publications and editors and most of the time they reject your work. Travel writers are bombarded with rejection on a daily basis. And that can be humiliating in some ways. It can make us feel like we're not up to snuff or writing good quality work, whatever that means. So it's something that I think travel writers feel very strongly about. What do you think about that? Joanna: I definitely struggled, but I think I'm getting to the point where I want to do it. And I think the pandemic's helped in terms of, I always say memento mori, remember you're going to die, but I've definitely felt it more this year. When I lay in my bed with COVID, I was like, ‘Oh, I'd be so annoyed if I die right now.' I have a few books that I want to write before I die and I'm like, ‘I should just get on with that.' And walking the Camino, I've wanted to do that for so long and it's time to stop putting off. Perfect is the enemy of good. And the other thing is, I think, is the acknowledgment. I've learned this from memoir writers too, is that, that one memoir does not need to be the only one. And I think for you and for me, we love travel and writing. This first travel book doesn't need to be the last travel book. So it doesn't need to be the book that represents your entire life. In fact, coming back to Macfarlane again with Underland, he's written a ton of other books, but that one seems to have hit a chord with so many people and perhaps because it's quite different. I clearly want to interview you on Books and Travel to share about your travel book. So how are you going to get over this? Jeremy: I think like many of us, the pandemic proved to be complicated. It gave me some complications in my plans. In fact, right now I'm supposed to be in China. I've had this sabbatical thing. So what I'm doing to get on – I still have, like you, many ideas swirling around. I have many different Scrivener projects. So there's always forward movement on one project or another. What I'm doing to bide my time now is research. And just for the type of travel books that I like, these big idea books, they're rooted in research and history. So I've been trying to do most of that now while I'm stuck at home and not traveling. I'm kind of deep in it with research and history and, in fact, language study as well because I was supposed to go to China, so I'm studying a little bit of Chinese to help me with that. So there are things that you can do, I think to bide the time when you can't travel because of pandemic or whatever reason, you can do research for the book that's swirling in your mind. Joanna: Absolutely. And I think practice. I've been doing solo shows. In fact, I was writing this morning. I've got a personal solo podcast episode on London coming, which is incredibly hard to boil down London to one episode, but it's almost like I'm practicing for the travel book. So I think that's good too. I did want to ask a final question around podcasting because both of us obviously have travel podcasts. We both get a lot of pitches, obviously. Do you think podcast interviews help sell books? And if people do write travel, what are your tips on pitching? Jeremy: Short answer is yes. I just want to circle back if we have the time to talk about this idea of practice that you mentioned. I'm not avoiding your question. Joanna: Oh, yeah. Go for that. Jeremy: The idea of practice, I think, that's an excellent point to bring up because you don't need to be somewhere exotic or whatever to practice writing, or doing the work. When I go for my walks, I bring my recorder with me and I'm recording sounds, of course, but I'm also dictating the experience of what it's like to be in a place. And that can be a form of practice. A form of practice of dictation, but also a practice of observation. Place-making is so important to travel books and if you're not paying attention to what a place is like and you're not practicing, describing, or communicating that sensation to other people, then perhaps you're not doing a travel book. That's such a core element to the travel writing experience that it serves you, I think, good to practice on a daily basis or whenever you can. So in interviewing and pitching yeah, absolutely. Podcasts and books. It's part of the machinery of marketing. Our podcasts are a part of this machinery too, in terms of content marketing. But also more importantly for the guests. This is exposure marketing and it certainly helps sell books. And how, or why, I think it's a good example. You often talk about, Jo, when you were in, I think, Australia and you self-published your first book and I think you had the books in your garage and you went on all the news outlets and you were talking to people on the radio stations trying to pitch and promote your book. But those audiences have such a kind of vast listenership or such a wide audience that very small percentage of those listeners will actually have any preexisting interest in the subject that you're talking about. But if you come on your podcast, Books and Travel, or my podcast, Travel Writing World to talk about your travel book, 100% of those listeners will be interested in the subject. It's a dedicated audience of built-in and interested in your work. Absolutely, it's going to help to sell books. In terms of pitching I'm sure you get it a lot. ‘Hey, I published a book. I'm available to be interviewed.' That's probably not the good way to do it, for me. I don't know about you. I like emails that spell out as much as possible, potential topics, links to the author's website and books; just as much information as possible so that we're not doing extra work to dig around and do research on it. You're busy, I'm busy, as much help as possible in that email is tremendous help. What do you think about that? Joanna: Especially because our travel podcasts are not monetized either of us. I have to spend time and money and energy on that podcast. So the more you can give me in a pitch, the better. And, in fact, someone needs to have listened or understand a bit about us, our characters or whatever, or what we're interested in. So for my Books and Travel, it better be an angle that I haven't covered. I've just had six pitches for Portugal in a row and I've done several episodes. And I'm like, ‘Well, could you pitch me again in a year because I've already done two on Portugal and I'd really like to do some other things?' Whereas, one lady, pitched me about Djibouti in Africa and I was like, ‘Okay. Yeah. Totally. You don't even need to say anything more. I want to talk about Djibouti.' And I'm like yes. Jeremy: You had me at Djibouti. Joanna: Yes. Because most people, we have to find that on a map and that's cool. Jeremy: I totally know what you mean. On my podcast, one of my angles is that we talk about the books but we also talk about the business and the craft side of travel writing and the pitches that don't address that part of the show, it doesn't mean that they haven't listened to the show, but maybe they don't understand what the show is trying to do. The pitches that do have that element in them show me that the person that's pitching actually listens and gets what's going on and those rise to the top in terms of priority. Joanna: Exactly. Because at the end of the day, we're doing this because we are passionate about it and love it and we want to just have a good conversation with people. And also, you mentioned curiosity earlier. It is about curiosity and I come away going, ‘Oh yeah, that was really cool. I want to visit that place and read those books.' And that's just awesome. Jeremy: Totally. Joanna: We can talk about this forever, but tell people where they can find you and everything you do online. Jeremy: The best place to go is my personal website. It's my first and last name. So jeremybassetti.com. Or if that's too hard to remember, my website, travelwritingworld.com has links to everything there as well. You can find me on Twitter, on Instagram. I'm in all the places, but I think jeremybassetti.com or travelwritingworld.com will be the best place. Joanna: Fantastic. And you have a really good freebie on ‘Travel Writing World.' And I was saying to you before we started recording, you should publish that. So people should go get that for free at ‘Travel Writing World.' Thanks so much for your time, Jeremy. That was great. Jeremy: Thanks for having me, Jo.The post Travel Writing With Jeremy Bassetti first appeared on The Creative Penn.

We all have different strengths as writers, but sometimes we don't know what they are. Or we get frustrated because we try to succeed at something that just won't work for our personality. In this interview, Becca Syme explains how our strengths can help us and how to ‘question the premise' whenever we face different career choices and varied writing advice. In the intro, 14 Reasons Agenting is Harder Now than 20 Years Ago [Kristin Nelson]; Salman Rushdie will release his novel on SubStack [The Guardian]; Tree of Life on special; Transience and Permanence on the Pilgrim's Way [Sacred Steps] This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.  Becca Syme is an author, coach, and creator of the Better-Faster Academy. She is a USA Today bestselling author of small-town romance and cozy mystery and also writes the ‘Dear Writer' series of non-fiction books. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Lessons learned from burnoutWhy we need to be aware of how we spend energyQuestioning the premiseHow knowing our individual strengths can help us as writers. Becca and her team specialize in the Clifton Strengths assessment and coaching. You can also just do the assessment at Gallup, but it's not specifically for writers. [If you're interested, my top 5 strengths are Learner, Intellection, Strategic, Input, and Futuristic.] How Becca uses video for content marketing and prefers word of mouth to ads for her business. You can find Becca Syme at BetterFasterAcademy.com and on Twitter @beck_a_tron. Check out her QuitCast on YouTube. Transcript of Interview with Becca Syme Joanna: Becca Syme is an author, coach, and creator of the Better-Faster Academy. She is a USA Today bestselling author of small-town romance and cozy mystery, and also writes the ‘Dear Writer' series of non-fiction books. Welcome, Becca. Becca: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Joanna: I'm looking forward to talking to you. Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. Becca: I've been one of those people who wanted to write my whole life. But I actually got into writing romance specifically because I was a reader. Because I loved reading and I loved the stories and the characters. So I definitely came to writing from a love of reading and then realized just how much I actually love the process. Beginning to end, I just love the process of writing books. And so I started full time in 2012, 2013, and then just never looked back. I really love it. Joanna: Did you have a previous career? Becca: I did. What I'm doing now in terms of I write fiction and nonfiction. The nonfiction is really aligned with what I used to do. Which is a combination of strategic leadership development, consulting, or leadership in nonprofits. My background is very much in what I'm currently doing with writers, which is success alignment and strengths coaching. We use the CliftonStrengths program. I've been a certified CliftonStrengths coach for almost 16 years now. That's definitely what I loved doing before I was writing, and then I fell into doing it with writers after I became a fiction writer because there was so much need for people to understand how and why they're successful. It's not something that's innate for a lot of us and so I found that there was a big need for that, and fell into that second career after also having been a fiction writer. Joanna: I've read a number of your books. And in Dear Writer, You Need to Quit. Which, it's a very provocative title… Becca: Right. Joanna: …which I'm sure you designed on purpose! But I think it's very interesting. And, of course, you go through a number of different things that writers should think about quitting. But you talk about how you burned out. Can you talk about that experience of burnout and how you got through that process in order to change things? Becca: The way that I burned out initially, I was an executive director at a nonprofit at a very young age and I didn't understand that there was an end to energy. I didn't understand that you couldn't just keep overworking. I think a lot of us are like that. We learn about burnout from having burned out. What I realized through that experience, the initial burnout that I went through which was very devastating. I was not able to, really, even get up off the floor out of bed. It was a very, very thorough burnout. But what I learned was that there is an end to how much energy I can expend. And if I'm not cautious about how I expend energy over time, that I'm going to end up right back there. Because, of course, I burned out again in 2013. There is absolutely a learning curve to burnout. But I feel like the key for me was the knowledge that if you can steward your energy, then burnout is not inevitable even for people who work hard, who ‘Phoenix' like that. Who work really, really hard and then burn hot, and then need to recover a little bit. You can still not ‘burnout' where you just can't work if you're cautious about how you stored your energy. Joanna: I think I'm one of those people. I tend to work super, super, super, super hard and then I sleep a lot. Like, I'm a 9, 10-hour night girl. Which I'm very lucky to do and then I can go at quite a high pace when I do go. But, just coming back, again, to, you said 2013 then, so that was when you had gone full time? Becca: Mm-hmm. Joanna: And I feel like in the indie community, there are some behaviors that can lead to this kind of burnout. What was it specifically for you? Becca: It was definitely the thought that I had to keep up with what everyone else was doing. And I think the whole concept for me of watching what other people do and trying to copycat them is one of the things that I think gets us in the most trouble as an indie community. There is a very small segment of personality-driven people who are personality wired to look at other people and copycat them but it's like 12% of the entire population. Most of us should not be copycatting other people. And I think there's this mentality and a lot of success studying that says, ‘If I copy what people are doing, then I'm going to have their results.' So if someone is writing, 8,000, 10,000, 12,000, 20,000 words a day or a week, that, that is how they are successful. I didn't realize that, that wasn't the case. Because, of course, that's not my pace. And I needed to learn how to own that, the fact that it wasn't my pace. But I came into the industry looking at, ‘What are all these successful people doing and how do I copy their actions to get their results?' That so rarely works for people. And we don't ever question like, ‘Well, why doesn't that work for me? Is it because I'm lazy or stupid?' No, it's because you're different than them and you have a different success pattern. So I had to learn that the hard way. Joanna: I think a lot of people are learning that. And, actually, in fact, just today on Twitter, a writer friend of mine put up a tweet saying, ‘Is anyone else just feeling…?' I mean, people use the term burnout and I think that that means a certain thing. But at this point, I didn't want to mention the virus but here I go! Becca: Right. Joanna: But in the pandemic, we're 18 months, 20 months in, we feel this kind of exhaustion in our creativity. Now, last year in 2020, I did something like six books because I was driven. I was really driven. And this year I feel like I'm just not. I feel like a lot of that is exhaustion. And I don't think it's necessarily burnout, but I feel, maybe, creatively, we haven't been able to fill the creative well or anything like that. Becca: Yes. Joanna: So I feel like we need to talk about, ‘It's okay to feel like this.' Becca: Yeah. Joanna: Rather than, ‘You just have to muscle through'. Becca: It's not weird for us to feel this exhausted. Not just that it's normal in the pandemic. In any pandemic, it's normal to reach pandemic fatigue. That's well documented. Additionally, if you think about the concept of what it means to spend energy, we don't often think about the fact that we also need to get energy from somewhere. Because we do make energy when we sleep, when we eat, when we have fun, when we research or learn, when we do all of these different things, but we're not as aware of it as we are of how we spend energy. So let's say you had 1,000 pennies of energy over the last 20 months to write, and you had been spending all of them but never creating any more. Then at some point, and I'll talk about this in a second, you've been spending them but not creating any, or you reach the end of the extra. The leftover that you had. Then it's completely normal to feel like, ‘I am out. I'm tapped, I can't.' And then what we need to do is think, ‘That's not weird, it's not bad, it's not abnormal.' It's that what used to cost us one penny to do now costs us five. So it used to cost me one penny to open Twitter, or Facebook, or Instagram and now I have to spend more energy because I'm either seeing something that makes me frustrated or watching someone else's success and getting, ‘Why can't I have that?' I'm fighting more against different things than I used to be, so even just one simple thing can cost me more energy than it used to. Think about how we used to go to the grocery store. It was so easy to go to the grocery store we didn't even think about it. Now, we think about it. It costs us more to do those things. So, of course, we're more expended than we were. All we need to do is just think about, ‘Okay, how do I get more creative energy? Do I need to read books, do I need to watch Netflix, do I need to talk to other writers? What is it that's going to fill those pennies in my bank so that I have them to spend because it's going to cost more to do those things now?' Joanna: That's a good analogy. And for me, my fiction comes from my travels and I'm completely exhausted, as in, my pennies are exhausted. Becca: Wow. Joanna: As this goes now, hopefully, I'll be finished. But I was writing a novel. And, in fact, yesterday when I was sitting trying to figure out why the hell I couldn't write? And then I was like: ‘Do you know what? I'm just tapped out of ideas so it's going to be a novella.' And that's a good way to deal with it. Becca: I love that. And also, is there a way to simulate the travel that you used to get? So not necessarily just watching a movie, but, could you experience something new of your high input or high individualization or something like that in the Clifton Strengths which is the personality assessment we use? You have a higher need for new and different than other people. And so if you have that higher need, that it's good to try and find some places. ‘Where can I research, or watch a documentary, or talk to a person who lives in a place I've never been to? Look at pictures, experience something that I've never experienced before.' Because if your energy for writing comes from that new and different energy, then you'll absolutely run out of it when it runs out. And then, can we look for alternative sources of that? Joanna: In the book Dear Writer, You Need to Quit, you have this key recommendation which is, ‘Quit accepting the premise.' And you use that a lot in what you talk about and I really love it. What can that be applied to and how can we use it to improve our experience as an author? Becca: So accepting the premise is, well, first of all, when I hear something, I assume it's true because I've heard it a lot. And, honestly, a lot of us believe things because either they rhyme or they're symmetrical. Think about something like, ‘A penny saved is a penny earned.' How often have we heard that? But it's not actually true. If you save a penny, yes, you have an extra penny but you didn't earn that penny, you didn't do anything to get it, right? So that type of questioning the premise, like, ‘You should work eight hours a day.' Do you actually know where the concept of the eight-hour workday comes from and why it's applied? It actually doesn't apply to fields at all like creativity. In fact, there's the colloquial joke about, ‘Where does the eight-hour workday come from?' One of the industrial revolution fathers actually said that people should work eight hours a day, they should sleep eight hours a day, and they should shop eight hours a day. Joanna: Yeah. Becca: So that's where the eight-hour workday comes from. It's an expectation that we're contributing to an economy somehow. Otherwise, you would work 20 hours a day, right? The eight hours is meant to balance economy. If you think about things like questioning the premise of, let's say for instance, ‘writers write.' Some writers think and some writers need to think to write. If I'm forcing myself to write just because somebody said writers write and it felt very resonant to me or they believed it a lot, they had a lot of certainty about it and I never think to question like, ‘Does that actually work for me?' Or, ‘You can't edit a blank page,' is another one. People edit blank pages in their head all the time. It's just, for about 50% of people, we found editing a blank page does not actually help them be more productive. But for about 50% of writers, it does help you be more productive if you allow yourself to edit before you write. So there's so much of this advice that we hear for writers that we just accept without thinking about it because the person who is telling us is either very certain and worth sensing their emotions of certainty or they sound smart or they're successful. We assume if they're successful, we should listen to what they say. And, again, it's not to say no one should give advice. That's definitely not what I'm saying. It's to say, when it doesn't work for you as an individual, don't assume you're at fault and you're stupid or unmotivated. Assume that that advice is not for you because no advice is for everyone. Joanna: I almost think that by questioning the premise, you're trying to boil down where people are coming from. So, for example, ‘You must have an agent and a traditional publisher,' is a particular premise for a type of author career. Or, ‘You must write fast and use KU,' is a different premise for a different author career. By questioning all of these things, you can shape your own path. I feel like too often, it's very hard, for new authors in particular, to know who to listen to and whose premise to accept. I guess, people are listening to us right now or they've turned off. Becca: Right. Joanna: How do people find the appropriate people to listen to in order to get to that premise? Becca: I do think that there is some questioning that needs to happen of, ‘Why am I listening to this person?' If the only reason I'm listening to them is because they've sold a lot of books, then I want to make sure to listen for my own internal alignment. If they're talking about, ‘Don't edit as you go,' is the example I use a lot. If they're saying, ‘Don't edit as you go,' the reasons they might be saying that have to do with how their personality aligns with that particular strategy. If you're feeling that and hearing, ‘But, wait a minute, I need to do that in order to write effectively,' then you need to listen to your own intuition. And, again, I feel like it's so weird to say this out loud. But all of what successful people have learned, they've learned by trial and error. So it's not like there's some secret hidden code that they understand, they literally learned it by succeeding and failing themselves. And so some of it, and especially in younger or newer to a particular industry authors is, it's actually really good to succeed and fail sometimes because it's how you learn what works for you as well. But in terms of alignment, though, who should you listen to? Most people can tell pretty quickly when a particular piece of advice does not work for them. I've tried, and tried, and tried to dictate and literally just cannot. Because, and, again, for my personality, as an external processor, I don't know how to speak out loud in the same voice that I write in. It's not possible for me. So dictation will never work for me. And it's not a matter of me trying harder or me learning something. It's that, that's not a voice I can talk out loud in. So then I know that's not a capacity issue for me. It's not that I'm not good at something, it's just dictation is not for me. So I feel like I push trial and error as an intuition builder. But also, I do think listening to our own resonance is really important. When you hear someone who is not resonating with you but you feel like you have to listen to them for some reason, question that premise. Including me. Joanna: Exactly. Including me too. So it seems people are listening to us. I want to come back on the Clifton Strengths thing that you do. And it's so funny because I'd heard of this before and then my friend, and fellow author, and podcaster Sacha Black recommended it. She's done your course and she was like, ‘It's life-changing.' We'd had a few drinks at the time so I took that with a pinch of salt. But then I came home, and I was like, ‘I'm going to do this.' And I did it and it did truly, truly help me in terms of understanding aspects of my personality that I was getting frustrated with. Obviously, there were lots of these different personality tools. Tell us a bit about the Clifton Strengths in particular and why it's useful to people. Becca: And also, because there are so many personality tools, I do think that they can all be useful on some level in terms of either placing myself on a continuum somewhere. Because that's where a lot of my work and success alignment is about like, ‘Okay, so where do you fall on that continuum, how much of that trait do you have?' The reason I like the Clifton Strengths so much is that it specifically is about success. So it's not just like, ‘How am I wired or what are my preferences?' It's where can you expect the most success based on where millions of other successful people have indicated that their success also comes from? The top 10% of an industry because that's who Dr. Clifton went after when he was interviewing people to figure this out. A lot of personality tests that are out there are, one person has decided there's four kinds of people. And those can be helpful because they do apply to, by standard deviation, 68%, roughly, of people will fit into some realm of that. But it's not individual enough. What I love about Clifton Strengths is that there are 34 different possibilities and it's your areas of consistent near-perfect performance. But then also, you have five of them. And so it's very, very individualized to how your success will happen. One of my top strengths is input. I am the person who will google everything. If you have a question, I want to know the answer to it. I'm super curious. I have an interest level in so many different things. And the way that that impacts my writing is, I like to put little pieces of information into my writing or little unique things into my writing that are like Easter eggs for people who love high input. And a number of letters I get from people who are like, ‘Oh, my gosh, that one shoe designer from 1906.' From a book I wrote 12 years ago. Because it lights up input people, when they learn new pieces of information even from their fiction. A lot of us who are high input can feel like that's not a beneficial thing, but it's actually a way that you can stand out. And many of us who love to do that don't even realize that we do it. For instance, when you travel, your input is taking in all this information of all the things around you, the smells, the sights, what things look like, how you would describe them, what it feels like to be immersed in that place. And then when you write, you can write a sense of place in such a realistic way because your input is pulling all of those little details and will remember them. You'll file them into your memory and so that becomes more immersive. And you don't have to write very many words on the page for that to happen. It's not like you have to fill up with description. It's just when you write the detail, it'll be real, it will be resonant. And that's something not everyone can do. Joanna: And in my top five is Input as well. And Learner is my number one. And it's exactly what you say, my fiction is very detail-heavy about lots of things. It's not an info dump, but if I describe a setting of a cathedral, every single detail is exactly right. Becca: Yes. Joanna: I love all that, like you. And my readers appreciate the massive historical details and all of this type of stuff. And I love it, this is why I do what I do. Becca: Even your non-fiction. You're a learner input in your non-fiction as well. You gather information from reputable people and you learn. I remember reading your health book, and, writing with a doctor, and talking to the doctor about all of that. That's a very Input/Learner way of doing non-fiction which seems very commonsensical. And this is one of the things about strengths, it's so fascinating. Is like you might say, ‘Well, of course, you would do that because that just makes sense to do it that way, it's what you do.' And I would say, right. But most people wouldn't think to do that and that's what makes your work stand out. And this is the core, I think, of the Clifton Strengths, especially for writers is that what you do the most instinctively is often something that you would toss away. As a high Intellection, I think all the time. Well, of course, you do because that's just what you do, right? But did you know 58% of writers have intellection. So if you think deeply about something, if you iterate that over and over in your mind, you come to such clarity and certainty about that character plot concept setting detail, Strategy that you have a depth that other people are not able to reach because they don't have that strength. But it seems so commonsensical to those of us who are high Intellection because, ‘Well, of course, I would do that.' So part of Clifton Strengths is understanding just how unique and different you are from everyone else. And then, how to utilize those traits to be that successful, to be more successful than you are. To be that standout person. Joanna: It's funny because I mainly did it because I was feeling like, ‘Why don't I want a writer's group?' Some said, ‘Why don't I do a mastermind, or why don't I do coaching, or why don't I want to be in groups of people?' And I also was questioning whether I should be doing these futurist episodes for the podcast, because, frankly, they're not as popular as the main show. And I was like, ‘Should I do this?' Then I did this Clifton Strengths and Strategic and Futurist were in my top five. And, pretty much, all my bottom things were in relationship building. And I felt, and really, it was hilarious. And I was like, ‘This has helped me in knowing my strengths which are strategic and futuristic, but also my weaknesses which are around relationships.' Now, that doesn't mean I'm going to give up on relationships, but it just made me feel better about what I was feeling in terms of my career. Becca: Yeah. Joanna: Anything else on that? How should we treat those things that are at the bottom? Becca: We usually say ignore the bottom because it's just not where you're going to be strong. It doesn't necessarily mean you can't do those things. Like you're an incredibly warm person relationally, on a person-to-person level. And you're utilizing that effectively in your career. So it's not like you can't relate to people, that's just not where you lead, right? Joanna: Mm-hmm. Becca: So we always tell people to ignore the bottom because that's just not where your strong traits are going to be. But also to talk about the strategic and futuristic. Whether those episodes are popular today or not, and whether they're going to be popular a year from now. Most futuristic people are way ahead of where everyone is. What's so fascinating, we have a number one futuristic writer because paranormal women's fiction is really big right now, in 2021. And she was writing paranormal women's fiction about two years before anyone else was and it wasn't selling. And she was extremely frustrated by it. All of a sudden, the PWF big boom started. And we all pointed at that and we're like, ‘Oh, my gosh, you wrote paranormal women's fiction two years before anyone else did.' So as a futuristic, it's really common to be ahead of everybody else. Knowing that about yourself and knowing, ‘Hey, it's okay for me to be like that, I could potentially be on the leading edge of something.' Instead of feeling, ‘Not everybody's around me yet.' That might be a good thing. It might be how you stand out in your career. But I would bet those episodes will be popular once the middle adopters really start to listen to you, right? Joanna: Yes, once the world catches up. Becca: Yep. Joanna: It is frustrating when you feel like, ‘Oh, this is going to happen.' And people just ignore you for years. But the same happened with self-publishing and podcasting. Becca: Yes, exactly. Joanna: I feel like I've got a bit of history now. But coming back to what you do. Tell us a bit more about what your business looks like now and how you help writers particularly with this Clifton Strengths stuff and what you do. Becca: All of our Clifton Strengths stuff is coaching one-on-one. Because, as much as it's interesting to learn about strengths, it really isn't helpful to just learn the information. It can be helpful like with Joanna, because now Gallup has so many resources that are very individualized. So if you end up reading your full 34 report, it's now individualized completely to you based on all where your 34 rank. Which is something that they're able to do because they've been, now I think 50 years, into this research which is amazing. But, specifically, what we do is, we do a lot of coaching. One-on-one coaching. We do have some classes but they're more like here are the six parts of your writing life and how do we align you for success in each part of your life based on where you fall in different continuum metrics? That's our Write Better Faster. Specifically with the strengths, our goal is to customize success for everybody. Because I think that's where we see, I want to see 100% success. I want everybody who comes in to be able to figure out, ‘How am I going to be at my most successful?' And that's our business model, I guess, is very, very individualized. Which, similarly to what you were saying about, ‘Why am I not doing this, why am I not doing that?' I have a crisis of strategy every once in a while, when I realized, we don't have any evergreen classes. We don't have any short-form paid content. There are a lot of things that we just don't do because it doesn't align with who I am as a person. I want to individualize and customize everything. And so that's, very much, what my business model looks like. Is that the closest you'll get to evergreen is the ‘Quit Books,' the ‘Dear Writer' books. And even those are customized almost chapter by chapter to different people because they're about an individual person, they're almost like case studies. So that's, very much, my business model. I'm a number four individualization in the Clifton Strengths so I want everything to be for one person. Joanna: I'm just looking at mine now. I'm 17 for individualization so it's way down. I do find this so interesting and your books are excellent. I want to encourage people that they cannot come to your website and say, ‘Becca, teach me about ads.' Becca: Yes. That's definitely not something we do. Although, we did just start an intuitive ads program. But that's more because I feel like that's a missing personality trait. We're not actually teaching ad strategy, we're teaching intuitive personality decision-making. Because it's very different from non-intuitive or from concrete objective decision-making. We do have ads discussions. You will definitely not learn best practice strategy from Becca. I don't do that. Joanna: So, your business model, even though I don't do coaching and things. I'm the same as you in that I have non-fiction and I have fiction. Who does speaking anymore?! But at some point, that might come back in person post-pandemic. I still feel that's a bit like my podcast, it's individual to group as opposed to one-on-one like what you're doing. You've talked a bit about the business. In terms of encouraging people who might want to have these more multiple streams of income. I love that you decided not to be a full-time fiction author. How has your business model grown, and how can you encourage people who want to build a more holistic business model? Becca: I do think that, for most of us, I would say from a personality perspective, more than 60% of people will not function in a very linear business model. Just in terms of only doing one thing. Most of us have some form of one of the Clifton Strengths and I'll just name them, learner, individualization, input, context, strategic, adaptability, activator. If you have any of those strengths that are dominant in you, especially learner and input, you're not going to be satisfied long-term with only one thing. Let's say only one series, or only one genre even, or potentially only one business. So many of us have that, ‘I need that new and different, or I need something challenging, or I get bored quickly.' We feel like that's a weakness and it's not. It's actually a strength. And so I do think that the multiple streams of income concept is going to work for most people in terms of, it'll keep you engaged in something so that you can come back to. On a daily basis, I don't do only one business. Every single day, I do fiction, non-fiction, I still am working at a nonprofit. So I do some form every single day of those because I need the difference in order to stay engaged in all of the different projects. There's this idea that if you don't narrow down for every single person, that, somehow, you're not going to be long-term successful. But, actually, that's not true for everybody. And to a point where you may want to narrow down on a day-by-day basis. But many of us will actually be more engaged long term if we don't silo quite as much in terms of completely not doing anything else. There are many of us who are just made for that. I found, for myself especially, the multiple streams of income was less of a business strategy in terms of, it was not a money-making strategy; it was a sanity strategy. I wanted to do this, all of this as long as I could. I knew that I would burn out on it if I only did one thing. And I really did. The fiction, I definitely burned out on because it was just too much in one direction. Once I allowed myself to widen, I actually got a lot more focused in all of those different areas because of my particular personality. Again, roughly 60% of people will be dominant in some strength that requires them to have multiple focuses. Joanna: I hope that's making lots of people feel better. Becca: I hope so. Joanna: And I think that book ‘The ONE Thing' by Gary Keller caused so many people, so many issues. Becca: There are so many books like that, ‘Be Obsessed or Be Average.' There's a ton of these books that are all about, ‘You have to do only one thing.' And I would say, ‘Oh, right, some people do definitely.' There are people in the world. And it's not 60/40. It's more like 60% absolutely need to have multiple things, and about another 20% would be okay with one thing but probably not forever. And then there's about 20% of people who are just like, ‘You need to do only one thing and that will be your most successful.' Some of those people can do it forever because that's just how their personality is wired. But what we don't take into account so often is the lens through which people see things when they're giving advice. So this whole, ‘You should write every day or you should only do one thing.' All of those are lenses through which those experts see the world and it helps them to function better, but it doesn't necessarily help everyone to function better to do that thing. And so the, ‘Only do one thing,' is a perfect example. Just by personality alone, that's not true for everyone. Joanna: Super helpful. And then, I just wanted to ask you one thing about marketing. Given that we have a similar business model and we attract people to our businesses, but we're not necessarily doing paid ads for it. And, in fact, you have a chapter on ‘Quit thinking Facebook is your friend,' which is great. And even question the premise that social media is even necessary anymore. What have you found works for you in terms of attraction marketing for your business? Becca: Content is definitely king in our business just in terms of whenever we find that something is really helpful, we share it. I do both either in non-fiction form like written form or in verbal form, podcasts or YouTube videos. Because I do find that when you can provide the right kind of content for people, that's what they need and it's what they want. And so I feel like if the content is not helpful… Like, every single time I do any kind of public thing anywhere, I always say, ‘Go watch my YouTube channel. If you don't like it, like, you're not obligated to do anything else. Don't buy a book, or buy a class, or whatever. First watch the YouTube channel because you will be able to tell if we are a place for you or not by listening me talk.' As opposed to hooking people in with an ad or something. Not that that's bad, it's just, it really doesn't work for me. Because, for me, I would rather see the right people at the right time. And that always has to be about, ‘Is my content right for you or not?' I'm, very much, a person who, I would prefer word-of-mouth marketing to anything else, so I only want people to come to us if we have helped them or if they think that we will help them because of something they've read, or seen, or heard. Because, otherwise, having people just come to me if I'm not aligned with them, it's like, ‘Well, I'm not going to be able to help you if this doesn't resonate.' So, content is definitely our primary strategy. Joanna: That's awesome. And as someone who doesn't watch YouTube videos, I would also encourage people to read your books because I got Dear Writer, You Need to Quit. And the funny thing is, I've seen that book in, probably even in my also-boughts for years. And I hadn't read it until recently because, of course, in my head, I was like, ‘I don't need to quit anything.' But I had got it wrong. And, clearly, by reading your books and then several of the others, I'm like, ‘Yeah, that's quite a few things.' Becca: The pushback that I got when I first released it, of course, was I don't actually want any writers to quit writing unless that's really what they need to do for their sanity. But, in general, I think, the reason that I titled the books the way that I do… Like, I was just having a conversation with somebody this morning where they were asking me, ‘Why don't you have more strategic brandable titles? Why don't you say, ‘Here is how to be successful as an author?' And I'm like, ‘Well, because that's way too open loop for me. And it promises something that I don't know that I can deliver on.' One of my coaches says, ‘Here's what you do, Becca. You take this piece of gold, you put it in a box, you sink it to the bottom of the ocean, you cover it in cement, and then you expect people to be able to find it by the way that I title stuff.' And I'm like, ‘Well, yeah. That's okay because if somebody tells you, ‘Hey, there's this really cool piece of gold down there, you'll go look for it and then I don't get anybody who doesn't belong in the content.' I'm not just casting a wide net, but that's definitely a strategy on my personalities part. That is, I want to make sure that it's significant, that it makes a significant impact when people read it. So I definitely titled the book the way that I did so that you would only read it when it was the right time for you to find it. Joanna: I hope today we've brought up some gold from the depths and the people will go check out your stuff. Where can people find you and everything you do online? Becca: The easiest place is to go to is YouTube and to search for the Quit Cast, Q-U-I-T C-A-S-T. And, of course, if you're not a video person, which it's totally okay, not everybody is, definitely check out the ‘QuitBooks for Writers' on Amazon, or Kobo, or Barnes & Noble, or Apple. Wherever you like to buy books, because I'm an aggressively wide author. Please check out the content. And thanks so much for having me, this was a blast. Joanna: It's been so good to talk to you. Thank you so much, Becca. That was great.The post Author Mindset: Strengths For Writers With Becca Syme first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you design a story that branches into multiple directions? How does writing for games help with writing a novel? Ed McRae explains narrative design and the opportunities for writers in the gaming industry. In the intro, ‘the inevitable decline of open platforms' [Seth Godin]; pros and cons of different print distribution models [Adam Croft; ALLi]; Canterbury: A History of England Written in Stone. Do you need help with editing and cover design, marketing, or translations? Find a curated list of vetted professionals at the Reedsy marketplace, along with free training on writing, self-publishing, and book marketing. Check it out at: www.TheCreativePenn.com/reedsy Edwin McRae is a freelance narrative designer for the games industry. He's also a game design teacher, and writer of nonfiction for authors, including Narrative Design for Writers. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes What is narrative design in video games?Why is gaming important to the entertainment industry?How writing for games differs from writing a linear bookCreating many options for story beats and character actionsWriting like a readerThe skills needed to break into different areas of writing for gamesThe increased opportunities for writers with gaming, AI, VR and AR You can find Edwin McRae at EdMcRae.com and on Twitter @edmcraewriter Transcript of Interview with Edwin McRae Joanna: Edwin McRae is a freelance narrative designer for the games industry. He's also a game design teacher, and writer of nonfiction for authors, including Narrative Design for Writers. Welcome, Edwin. Edwin: Kia ora Joanna, and tena koutou to your audience. It's really cool to be here. Joanna: You should probably just explain that. Edwin: I just said, basically, ‘Hello,' and ‘Hello everyone,' in Maori. Joanna: It's because you're in New Zealand, right? Edwin: Exactly. Joanna: Just so everybody knows. Edwin: Yeah, it's quite nice. A lot of people here we try to use Te Reo, which is Te Reo Maori, in everyday conversation as much as possible these days. So, we're all gradually becoming bilingual. Joanna: Interesting. Tell us a bit more about how you got into writing and what your job actually is like. What is narrative design? Edwin: I'll start with the second part of that question, to discuss where I've got to. Narrative design is effectively the design of story elements that then go into video games. I steer away from the general term of writing for video games, because often within the industry, the games industry, writing gets siloed into things like dialogue and flavor text. And the player-facing material that you would see in a video game. Whereas narrative design, there's a lot more behind the scenes than that, creating the story experience for a video game, which I'm happy to elaborate on more what a story experience for a video game is. I started out writing a novel, pitched that around, almost got picked up by HarperCollins at one point, but to no avail. And then shifted to doing theater for a while, and then studied screenwriting for film. And then on that course, which is at Victoria University in Wellington, I managed to get a work placement on New Zealand's soap opera, ‘Shortland Street.' I ended up as a storyliner and script writer there for four years, which taught me a lot about churning out a lot of story and the best practices for that kind of fast-paced storytelling. And then I got to the end of my tenure with writing for soap opera, I wanted to do other things. I started to hang out with some game developers in Auckland at the time, at a game developers meetup, met the guys at Grinding Gear Games who make the game ‘Path of Exile.' They Facebook messaged me one day and said, ‘Hey, do you want to try writing some dialogue for us?' And then that kind of, the rest is history. Joanna: It's so interesting. You've done lots of different types of writing, obviously. But I wonder if you would also maybe start by giving us more of an overview of the gaming industry, because I feel like there's a lot of misconceptions. I'm 46, and a lot of the gaming I know would have been the really old games that were around 20 years ago when I watched my brother play things. But gaming is such a huge industry now compared to the author industry which is also part of entertainment, we're all part of that. Why is gaming so important in the entertainment industry? Give us an overview. Edwin: It's certainly become a large industry. It has eclipsed cinema as an industry. I was looking a few things up, I think cinema is around $110 billion, games are around $150 billion as an industry internationally, which you compare that to books. Publishing still sits around over $200 billion, but of that, books I think are around the $120 billion mark. I would see games as a platform being as large as the books industry pretty much at the moment. So it's certainly a significant thing out there. And interestingly, your average gamer, I was looking at, is apparently I think 34 years old, has children, and owns a house. So it's not the teenage stereotype that often is assumed with video gaming. Looking at various stats it ranges…for instance in Australia, 80% of gamers are over 18 and the U.S., 70% are over 18. So it's actually, it's quite a mature audience, and perhaps more mature than people might assume. Joanna: And what about the gender split? Because there used to be this sort of thing that it was mostly guys. From what I've read now, a lot of women are gaming, a lot of women getting into game design and things. And also there are educational games, it's not just shooting, is it? Edwin: Oh, absolutely. That's the curious thing with games. It's almost like referring to a game is the same as referring to a book, as a book can be anything from a thriller to a dad's joke book, could be horror to a kid's picture book. It's the same range with games, it can be everything from yes, your ‘Grand Theft Auto' and your ‘Call of Duty' shooters back right to…for instance there's a company here in Dunedin, Runaway Play, that makes effectively nature simulation games and games about cat cafes, and games about dog refuge centers. There's a full range within the type of games that are out there, there's really something for everyone. Joanna: There are obviously the high-end games where you need whole consoles and things, but then you see people playing games on their mobile phone. What kind of devices are people using now? Edwin: Exactly. And actually, I've realized I missed the gender question is that, but especially with mobile phone, the gender split is 50/50 in many countries, in fact, in most countries. So there is no bias either way with gaming. I think with mobile especially the female audiences is significantly larger, 60%, almost to 70%. Joanna: I find it fascinating, and definitely think things have changed. As you mentioned there, people, the ‘average' in inverted commas being 34 with children and a house, we're talking about people with money now. Some of these games, I would say they don't sound expensive. You might pay $70 or something for one of these really premium games, but then the amount of hours you can play that, it actually seems quite good value. There's obviously the cheap ones on the mobile, isn't there? The games I hear people talk about are these quite immersive ones. Edwin: They're the ones that get the most press is the really big ones like ‘Cyberpunk 2077,' or ‘Witcher 3,' or ‘Skyrim,' big games that you can explore for up to, oh gosh, 100 hours, 200 hours, 300 hours for some. But those are your larger titles that cost between say $50 to $100, $120. But then especially in the indie game dev scene, you'll get games that are anywhere from $2 to $20. And even in those, you'll tend to have a good 10 to 20 hours of gameplay in those. Again, it can be on mobile, it can be on PC, it can be on console. There's that epic, massive series that you can explore, there are short stories, and novellas in the game scene as well. So, again, it's a full range of experience on offer. Joanna: That is a really great overview. And as you said, a full range of experience. I think this experience idea and this idea of entertainment, I think sometimes we forget that as authors, we get into the book we're doing and we forget that out there people want entertainment, education, inspiration, and sometimes it doesn't matter what medium they get it from, and so I often feel that it's just a very different experience. Let's talk about writing then. Obviously, we can't talk about every different type, but it feels like it's a very different thing writing for an experience than it is for a sort of linear book. How does writing for these games differ from writing a linear book? Edwin: It absolutely is. I've written novels myself, and the experience I would liken it to is that it's almost like you're designing a sideshow ride, like if you were going to do like a horror themed train ride for a sideshow, that would be closer to what say a narrative designer does. So you're not necessarily writing a plot for the people to sit in the train and experience. It's more like you're thinking about what is the overall emotion I want them to experience? And in that case, it might be fear, shock, things like that. Then it's thinking about how can I create a cohesive world that these people can ride through and get a sense that everything fits together on this horror train, all the pieces work together to create an overall experience? In there are elements of story, there will be characters, there will be settings, there will be little bits of dialogue, there will be images and all sorts of elements that go into there. But the narrative designers job is more of that thinking of how do all these different pieces fit together, I guess I realized with the train example, that's actually, that's still linear. So in many respects that's still quite similar to say writing a novel; you're doing all of those things with writing a novel as well. You're thinking about setting, character, how you're going to describe the environment, the characters are moving through, how you describe the action and all of those elements. The tricky thing is then when the train starts to branch off into 10 possibilities, when the players get to a junction and go, ‘Okay, I've got 10 options here,' and somebody has to write each of those 10 options and what's going to happen in those options that's where it starts to get tricky and much more gamer like. Joanna: That's what fascinates me, because I did the ‘MasterClass' with James Patterson, have you seen that? Edwin: I've heard of it. Joanna: It's very, very good. Because obviously James Patterson being one of the top sellers in the world and whatever people think of his writing, the dude is obviously very successful. I did his ‘MasterClass' and that's one of the things he talks about. He's a plotter and an outliner, and does a lot of co-writing. But with every single thing, he comes up with several different ways that character could go and writes down those different things. So he'll be like, okay, like you said, call a junction point that might be does the character go this way and fight this person or go this way after this particular thing? It's fascinating to me that kind of planning, because I don't do that. I'm a discovery writer and in my head, there is only one line. I've heard Lee Child say this actually, it's like, this is what happens. And if he's told to make changes to his book, he's like, ‘No, that's what happens. There's only one way it happened and that's the way.' It's so interesting to me because what you're talking about is this, you have to write the 10 different options, and then the character gets to choose which way to go. So I guess my question here for you would be, so how do we come up with 10 or even 3 different options for each of these decision points? What are some of the tricks you use to come up with the different options? Edwin: It depends on the sort of game you're working on. I worked on a game called ‘Guardian Maia,' which is a dark fantasy, interactive fiction game that you play on a mobile device with a wahine, a woman, she's a warrior, Maori warrior, and you help her basically go through the story. But there are a lot of choices in that that you can make for Maia that will then alter the story. And so, the trick is always working out scope. Scope being how big do you want the story to be and how much writing do you actually want to do? And how much writing can the production team afford to pay you to do? At each decision point, what you do is you work out, ‘Is this decision going to be a massive decision that's going to change the world?' If so, then I need to think about how is it going to change the world, and then start to think about how much of that I'm going to show the player. But then you've got at the other end of the scale, if you want there to be decisions but them not to be earth-shattering, to completely change the world and therefore require a lot more writing, you can start to play around with tweaks in behavior, and tweaks in reactions from the world. For instance, in ‘Guardian Maia,' we had a thing called a mana counter. So mana being the Maori concept of self-esteem plus the esteem gained from others of respect. If you chose to interact with the characters in the story in generally positive ways, you tended to build mana. And then what I would write in is reactions from the other characters based on what Maia's mana score was at that time. So if it was high, they would treat her quite respectfully. If it was low, they might treat her with suspicion, they might be wary of her, they might be a little bit sarcastic with her. I could do that with, small, single lines that would change depending on what that mana score was. I did all of that in a tool called Ink Script, which for me is my favorite narrative design tool because it still feels like writing when I'm making things like that. So that's one trick is always thinking about how big an effect I want this option to have, and then thinking about the scope of the story as a whole. If I make this change, is it going to be massive? Is it going to require a lot of writing? Or can I make small tweaks that still have the world reacting to the player, but not necessarily having to write millions and millions of options. Joanna: That is interesting; a scale of how big the change is, because of course if you go this way and you kill off a character that makes a big difference to the rest of things. I've definitely written myself into issues where I'm like, ‘This character dies now.' And then I'm like, ‘Now what do I do?' Edwin: I've done exactly the same thing in my novels, because I'm also a discovery writer when I do novels. I think it's because I like to take a holiday from all the heavy planning I have to do with narrative design. But what's also quite cool is when I'm being a discovery writer, I feel like I can put myself in the player's position. Because, again, as a narrative designer, you're thinking about what do you want the player to discover? And it's the discovery that's enjoyable for the player a lot of the time, like ‘What's next? What am I going to experience next?' I listened to your episode about Sudowrite, and about this guy being in a laboratory, so, what you can do is as a novelist you can write out, and you can describe that whole laboratory. Now, when your character interacts with that laboratory, let's say there's a fight in there and you need to know things like, ‘What beaker is the hero going to smash over the villains head?' That kind of thing, or ‘What elements of the room are you going to use?' You can just write that through. But if you describe the entire laboratory, what you're doing is you are then setting it up so a player can explore all the elements of that laboratory without you having to guide them towards any sequence of how they do it or try and draw their attention to any paths. So it's that same sort of process when you go in and you've got to a setting you describe the whole thing. And then, of course there are constraints when you're working with an app theme or production budgets, like how much they can actually make, but as a principle, that's a good way to approach it. Describe the whole environment so that then the player has the option of discovering what they want to discover in that room, rather than specifically what you might want them to discover, if that makes sense. Joanna: I feel like when we write a book, a lot of the time we are just writing for us. But with a game, obviously, it's a business from day one. It's a company. I know you have some independent game companies and things, but people are thinking of the gamer, the person who's experiencing the game, from the beginning. So you almost have to keep that mindset. It's interesting that you're a discovery writer with your own novels. What tips do you have for authors that you've learned from gaming that you put into your novels? Edwin: That's a really interesting question. I've been mulling that over lately. It's like, I bring up this kind of experience design principle again. It's something that I would like to employ more when I'm actually writing a novel. I'm going to on this next novel I'm just starting work on. We are, again, thinking about the player, or in this case the reader, and you're sorting out, not the actual plot, not the actual storyline, but what emotional experiences you want the reader to have as they consume your story. So it's almost, again, thinking like a player, like, what route? If I go into this room, what things do I want them to be able to interact with in their own time and enjoy and get a fright from potentially, that kind of thing. The same thing when approaching a novel, if you are writing a scene is thinking about what is the key emotion that you want to evoke with this scene? Is it anxiety? Is it excitement? Is it a sense of fun? Whatever the style of story you're writing, whatever it pertains to, it's thinking of experience first. What do you want the reader to emotionally experience from that scene? And then work up from that. As opposed to maybe the approach of what's next on the plot. What part of the story do I want to deliver? Joanna: I think that's really important. And this idea of what you enjoy has to come into that too. For example, when you're talking about discovering what's in the lab. For me, curiosity is a really big driver for why I read books and why I want to learn about things. So that's what I have in my books is interesting settings, and interesting things that are actually in the real world because I enjoy those things and my readers do. And that's not for everyone. So you do have to find the things that you want to do, and then go ahead that way, which I think many readers, or many writers even might shy away from, because they're worried about what they like, or they think x will sell better. But what you're talking about there is experience first. It's definitely the experience for the reader and based on what you love, which I think's super important. Edwin: Exactly. As I mentioned, this next novel I'm going to delve into, which is a horror Western, the reason I'm writing it is because I can't find enough good horror Westerns out there to read. So I really am treating myself as the ideal reader. When I go on to create a scene I'll be looking at what emotion do I want to evoke in that scene that I would enjoy? Would I enjoy being frightened at this point? Would I enjoy being intrigued at that point? So, again, it's a very different process for me when I am tackling my novels as opposed to when I'm working on games, because it's a business. You have to always keep the audience in mind because at the end of the day that's the audience you're selling to. If you've got your player profile right, and you've tailored your game to that profile, then chances are it'll do well. If you've not hit the player profile, then things get a little squiffier. Joanna: It's so funny that you're not writing LitRPG, which to me would be obvious because you know this world so much. But clearly the horror Western, as soon as you said that, in my mind, I thought about ‘Westworld,' which I know is sci-fi, but it's sci-fi horror Western. Edwin: I love the first two seasons of ‘Westworld.' They're just amazing. Joanna: I only watched the first two as well. Edwin: I wouldn't advise to try the third. Joanna: There's definitely a niche there. Coming back on this software, Ink Script, and also the fact that you don't sound like you're a programmer. If someone listening wants to get into writing for games, how would they go about that? And is this software Ink Script something that's important? Edwin: Ink Script's a great place to start because it's open source for a start. So the company that created it, Inkle, they have been doing interactive fictions for a long time now, they do really sophisticated, fancy ones. '80 Days' is a mobile game where you, is it Phileas Fogg and Passepartout, and you basically have to get around the world in 80 days, but it's in a slightly alternative steam punky version of the world. And it's all done on text, a thread of text, and Ink Script is what runs underneath. I would say as far as writing tools go, it's an accessible one, because like I said, it still feels like writing, especially if you're a discovery writer. I think that's important to still have that sense of, ‘Hey, I'm actually…as I'm creating this game, I'm still writing this game.' There are other tools for those who are more a good planner type writer, articy draft is a really good one, which allows you to plot everything out in a really visual style, and also allows you to do all of your different branches about how the story might go. This way if the player makes choice A, or this way if the player makes choice B and C and so on. You can do it all visually in a nice big kind of map. And they also have cool tools in there. You can even create literal maps of your world and then tie your story to the world, so you can see how the player might be exploring the physical landscape at the same time as they're exploring the story. It's got lots of cool features to it. But it really, again, depends what sort of writer you are, and how you approach story. As far as getting into the industry side, I think there are two very distinct roles. There's game writing and then there's narrative design. So as I mentioned, the narrative design is more of the experience design behind the scenes kind of stuff, whereas game writing is the literal writing of dialogue, flavor text. Flavor text is the text that often comes on small items that you pick up on the game or other bits and pieces in the game if there's like collectibles in the game and might have little pieces of poetry on it and so on. There's barks, which have another thing. So that's all the sort of game development terminology which takes a while to get your head around. But barks are all the things that the characters will say as you're moving through the world. So for instance, on ‘Witcher 3,' you are Geralt of Rivia and you ride your horse through all of these villages and all the villages have things to say to you. Those are called barks. You can imagine that world is so big and so populated with NPCs, non-player characters. You can imagine how many lines of dialogue one would have to write in bark. So, there is a demand for writers to get in and write a lot of stuff. Especially if you've got a background in poetry or short story, and also script writing and I would say especially for theatre, because you already understand the base relationship between story and audience from theater, then that's a good place to start, is freelancing, writing, dialogue flavor text, cutscenes which are when the game stops and basically plays you a mini-movie. That's often a good starting point for screenplay writers in fact, or anybody from the movie industry wanting to come in. They'll often start writing cut scenes. There are a lot of different elements to games that you can start on without any technical skill whatsoever. However, if you want a bit more control over your work and you want to be a bit more involved in the development process and be the champion of story and the development of process, then it does pay to have some technical skills, and that's one of the reasons I learned Ink Script, which does involve things like wrangling variables, and states, and programming stuff. I've also started learning how to use Unity 3D which is a game engine and has a scripting language called C#, although that's been quite a steep learning curve for me. But I think if you want to future proof yourself in the games industry as a writer or narrative designer, I think having at least the willingness to learn the more technical tools would be really, really helpful. Joanna: It's interesting, this future proofing is something that I think about a lot obviously, and I talk about on this show, and one of the things that I hear talked about a lot at the moment is the spatial web, which is this kind of future, when I say future looks like the first headsets. Obviously, at the moment, there are gaming headsets, Oculus and stuff like that, but if Apple comes out with their VR, AR glasses, or whatever they're going to come out with, we could see this spatial web 3D world moving into more of the mainstream. And it feels like that suits gamers completely. What I've heard people talk about in this new web 3.0 or whatever people are calling it, is experience. And you said experience first; you're designing experiences and that's the way we need to think. Where do you see gaming going with the rise of essentially putting a screen on your face? We had ‘Pokémon Go' a few years ago. But I'm certainly very interested in how these experiences could work. Where do you see gaming going? Edwin: It's interesting that the spatial web space, especially virtual reality and augmented reality have been a lot slower to take the main stage of the games industry than a lot of people have thought. It has been because the technology hasn't been ready. A lot of people steer away from VR because they get motion sick when they try and use it. I've not experienced that myself, I've actually found VR extremely immersive. But it's also interesting, as soon as you place someone in a virtual environment the intensity levels, I think, go up. It actually becomes hard work to be in there because suddenly your brain is just processing like crazy with that new world that you've just been dropped into. And it means that, I think play sessions for virtual reality tend to be a lot shorter, because the player just gets tired more quickly. Much more tiring than say, reading a book or even, you know, playing a mobile game, or even playing a console game. So the cognitive load on the player has been a real challenge with virtual reality. I've just seen for instance Unreal Engine I believe 6 has just, I don't know if they've released it or it's on its way. Unreal is the go to engine for creating virtual reality and enables you to create super realistic environments relatively easily using a lot of AI rendering tech behind the scenes. I think as virtual reality gets closer to reality, I think that will ease that cognitive load on the player and make it easier to actually be in that space. Because that moment, literally, you're throwing a person into a completely alien environment. Even if it looks kind of like the real world, your brain is also processing the fact that it's not at the same time. So, I think that's an interesting challenge for VR to overcome. Joanna: Coming back on the motion sickness, I feel like that was some of the earlier iterations whereas with some of the stuff that they're doing now that's moved on. You mentioned Unreal Engine. I heard the CEO talk about that these aren't just virtual worlds for gaming, or that they might have started out as gaming but like Roblox for example, there are virtual concepts in these spaces, and these may be the type of spaces where we go to do our work for example or have these types of conversations and so that they're the worlds that were originally being built for, I say ‘just games' in inverted commas, may also be platforms for other forms of I guess commerce and relaxation for example. Edwin: Absolutely. This is an anecdote that just popped in mind about a company. They were having staff meetings in one of the online games, it might have been ‘World of Warcraft' or one of those. So they were already starting to use virtual environments as conference rooms so that people could dress up as their favorite avatar and hang out in a familiar, comfortable space to them, and while they're working. I think that side of things is also heading into some really interesting spaces. And particularly, I think, the more that virtual technology can create spaces that people can join together and inhabit together, and they're comfortable. That again, it's future-proofing against things like COVID, where if your office gets shut down because of a pandemic then you've already got systems in place where you can hang out with people, communicate freely from the comfort of your own home. So, I think there's a lot of potential on that space. The AR side of things is also interesting. Because again, I think it's been slow to take off because you've had this phone in your way. When even say games like ‘Pokémon Go,' you're going into an environment and you're using your phone to look through the phone to find the Pokémon. But you still have this barrier of a device and a screen in front of you. I think yes, once the glasses become where it's a lot more comfortable, easy to use, and you can ignore it, the better those experiences are they're going to become so that reality truly does feel like it's augmented, you've got added bits that you want to be there, but you're not feeling like you're missing out on the world because you're holding up a screen still in front of your face. At least that's how I feel about it. Joanna: Me too. And personally, I feel more attracted to the AR, the augmented reality side of things. We all wear glasses at different times, either for seeing or sunglasses or whatever. So I feel like that is going to be more natural. And also, we look down at our phones too much. If this screen is the world in front of you, then I think that's really interesting. But for people listening, neither of us are experts on all this but I don't think it's too futurist now, I think we're talking 3 to 5 years as opposed to 10 to 20 years. Especially if Apple come out with a device like they did in 2007, the launch of the iPhone, within a couple of years the whole mobile economy changed. New app store and all this kind of thing. My encouragement with this and talking about gaming is there's loads of different writing work. And there's loads of different ways of telling stories. You can license as well, I feel like there's a lot of licensing possibilities into gaming. To me, this is a real positive move. It just brings more opportunity for writers, because all these people want writers, right? Edwin: Absolutely. And that's the thing. There's a remarkable amount of writing that needs to be done still in so many of these games, and the larger the game, the more writing is required. Also the licensing is really interesting, because a very description-rich novel can be more easily translated into a virtual environment or an AR environment because all the elements are being described and the experience is being described. So it makes it easier for development team to kind of take that and then thread it into a visual interactable environment. So, I think there's scope, A for writers to have their work gamified as it were, but there's also, these projects are so big and involve so many millions of words that there's plenty of work going. Joanna: Of course you mentioned AI rendering with like Unreal Engine, and I feel like in gaming, AI voices have already happened, they don't necessarily have actors doing all the voices of the characters now, there are lots of different AI generated voices in gaming, so they're kind of ahead of that. I don't believe they're going to replace humans, obviously, but I do think we all have to work with AI. How else are you seeing AI being used now and moving forward? How much will you have to work with these tools? Edwin: Yes, in the games industry, we're working with AI all the time and have been for a while. For instance, if you look at say a fantasy game, where you are exploring a fantasy world, and let's say you are involved in combat quite a bit. So you are battling goblins and orcs and slaying dragons, and that kind of classic fantasy stereotypical stuff, then those enemies have always had a certain level of AI behind them. That could be really simple stuff as in, for instance, it's relatively simple to go into Unity and then program what's called a patrol loop. Let's say you have a werewolf, and you want them to patrol a certain part of the forest, you can set them going on there and they will do that, and then you can set some parameters to say how far can the werewolf see? How far can a werewolf hear? How far can it smell? As the player comes in, then you can trigger certain responses from the werewolf based on whether they've smelled them, heard them, or seen them. And that's gotten quite advanced in games like ‘Dead Cells' for instance, where it's all centered around battling these massive, hideous creatures. The behaviors for those creatures respond to what you do. And so if you can think about that, there's AI in all sorts of elements in games now that are reacting to the player's actions. So this stuff is already happening. And, for instance, specifically the indie publishing scene like what I've been playing around with, is a website and system called Replika. I don't know, have you heard of that one Joanna? Joanna: Yes, I have. Yeah. It's replika.ai I think. Edwin: I think so. I've had to play around with some of their voices, and some of them are just fantastic. And their ability to render quite natural sounding speech very quickly I think is a really interesting place. Again, I don't think it's going to replace voice actors anytime soon, but it's not a bad second best as far as the enjoyability of listening. It does require a different type of writing though, because you almost have to iterate with the AI. So you'll write your paragraph, it will say it back to you, and it will invariably get some words wrong. And you almost have to start to alter your spelling to, and almost spell things wrong to get the AI voice to actually say it properly. Don't know if you've had that experience with some of your AI voice. Joanna: It's really funny because even AI itself like the letter A followed by the letter I, actually had to spell that out. A-Y-dash-E-Y-E or something. Edwin: I almost want to ask, ‘Whoa, who's programming who here, robot?' Joanna: That's exactly the point, iterating with an AI tool, learning to work with AI tools, that's exactly what I think our future is. It's working with these tools to achieve more than we could do alone. I think this is super exciting. We could talk about this all day. I do have one more question for you before we go which is, you have a family, you have a day job, you're a busy guy and I have heard from many writers that they either have to give up gaming as enjoyment because it takes too much time, and also people who feel guilty about their gaming time for example, if they have kids and they're worried about this, that and the other. How do you manage your time with gaming given that it's your job, and also fun, and also presumably inspiration? Edwin: It is interesting. One thing that happens whenever you make a job out of something is that the enjoyment can unfortunately come off the thing that you're working with every day. It's almost like the time I spend helping to make games has colonized some of my time that I used to spend playing games. And that's just an occupational hazard of working in the games industry. So I guess that would be one piece of advice I would have to writers looking at the games industry, that if you really, really, really love games, just be aware that if you make it your job, you may not love games quite as much as you used to. But that's it. I do still play games. With regards to with family, what I tend to do, especially my youngest is quite the gamer. I've spent many hours of ‘Roblox' time with her, especially online. We have tended to go on ‘Roblox' adventures together. So playing games with your kids is a great thing. And two, what I'll tend to do is if I am researching a game, and it is, you know, kid friendly. So, Necroes, who's my eldest is now 15, middle one's 13, youngest is nine, that depending on what game I'm playing I may share that with them and we can, again, experience that game together and they can let me know what they think about it. It's often really nice to get a totally different perspective. But three girls, they bring a very different perspective to the games that I'm playing than that I might have. So yeah, definitely, it's a cool collaborative thing to do. And I guess the other thing too is I no longer tackle massive games that I know will take 100 hours to even just scratch the surface of. I actively look for games that are in the 2 hour to at most 20-hour mark, and even then that's getting a bit much these days. But I guess then if I think about it, it's like, well, actually a 20-hour game, what's that? Is that even two seasons with ‘Peaky Blinders?' I don't think it is. It's often not as much as you would think. So I would hasten to assure people that no, gaming can be a very managed and sustainable part of your life. I heard that Jane McGonigal, she does a lot of research into the positive effects of video games. And she said 23 hours per week is the cutoff point. This was done with high school students. Up until that point, gaming seemed to actually improve their performance at school. After 23 hours per week, then there was a definite drop off. So, it's all about healthy gaming. Just as you've talked quite a bit about healthy writing, I would suggest healthy gaming. Be careful about the games you pick to play and just manage your time that way and play with others as much as possible. Joanna: It can be a lot more active than say watching just back-to-back TV, hours of boxsets. Jane McGonigal is a great example. I've definitely linked it to her. She's got a couple of books as well on gaming. I think the other message is, there's a lot more out there than you think. And there's educational stuff, and there's lots and lots of variability as you mentioned at the beginning. I think this is a very exciting space. So thank you so much. Where can people find you and your book and everything you do online? Edwin: Everything is on my website, which is www.edmcrae.com. And for tracking down my books, I publish wide. I followed your advice Joanna and Rachel handles all the publishing side of our small press. So the books are available pretty much everywhere. And, but specifically on the website is just the www.edMcRae.com/books. And yeah, that's where everything is. Joanna: Fantastic. Well thanks so much for your time Edwin, that was great. Edwin: Thanks, it's been awesome Joanna. Thank you.The post Narrative Design In The Gaming Industry With Edwin McRae first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Writing can help us process trauma — whatever that means for you — as well as help others through our words. In this episode, David Chrisinger explains why stories can save us. In the intro, thoughts on print distribution [Jane Friedman]; Hachette's acquisition of Workman and why backlist is key [The New Publishing Standard]; Your Author Business Plan; The Magic Bakery. Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with Scrivener, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 25% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna. David Chrisinger is an award-winning nonfiction author and teaches writing at the University of Chicago. His latest book is Stories Are What Save Us: A Survivor's Guide to Writing About Trauma. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes What is trauma and how is it different for different people?How to write about trauma without suffering furtherIs it possible to write a factual memoir?Tips for creating space between you and the ‘character’ you are writing aboutHow do we deal with people who might be hurt by what we write? You can find David Chrisinger at DavidChrisinger.com and on Twitter @StrongerAtBP Transcript of interview with David Chrisinger Joanna: David Chrisinger is an award-winning nonfiction author and teaches writing at the University of Chicago. His latest book is Stories Are What Save Us: A Survivor's Guide to Writing About Trauma. Welcome, David. David: Thank you so much for having me. Joanna: It's great to have you on the show. Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. David: I sometimes joke that I'm about a million miles from where I thought I was going to be when I started college because I went to college initially to be either a wildlife or a forest manager. And I even got certified to fight wildlife and forest fires. For whatever reason, I realized halfway through that, it was more of an interest or a hobby, it wasn't really a passion. And there were so many students that I was in classes with who I knew I was going to have to compete someday for a job and they were going to win. And so, I tried to think of, well, what do I think I can be the best at? What can I put everything into? I settled on art and history. So, I did 3D art and focused on modern American and European history, and wrote lots of papers, obviously, in college. And it was my sophomore year that I took a historical methods course, actually doing historical research. And that's where I think I really caught the writing bug. I started to see history as this story that people told that was based on evidence, and interviews, and dozens of other kinds of records. And it was a way of people making sense of something. And there was just something about that, that really connected with me. And so I decided I wanted to be a history professor. I graduated from college as the great recession was starting. And it turned out to be a pretty bad year to apply to graduate programs. I got in to the University of Chicago. I did my Master's degree and then had a heart-to-heart with an advisor who said I think the academic job market's not coming back and you should really think of doing something else. I had no plan B. But he suggested I start looking for jobs in the federal government, maybe in public policy. A lot of social science folks end up in that sort of route. And that's what landed me at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which is basically the research department, the evaluation department for Congress, and wrote a lot of reports and testimonies and had to really learn how to connect with an audience, with a reader that doesn't have the same expertise or the same experience that the researchers have. And I started doing my own writing. It's been a very serendipitous journey to writing, and not something I intended to do from an early age. Joanna: I think that's fascinating. And it's interesting because you mentioned history as a story. And I guess that's also what we're talking about in terms of what survivor means, and what trauma means, and what our writing is because when we write our writing's only ever from one perspective, but as you say, we are connecting with an audience. I can see how your various interests have come together, which is fascinating. Let's get into the topic of the book because I think the word trauma, particularly at this time in history, is quite a difficult word. When people say trauma, it has very, very heavy connotations, maybe a very bad injury or experience of war. What is trauma? How can the experience of what is traumatic differ between people, especially in these times? David: It was 2017 I think the dictionary.com labeled trauma as the word of the year. That was something at least in the United States that was starting to get a lot more attention. When I set out to write this book, it was one of those things where the timing lined up in a really odd way. And trust me, I would not have wished for a pandemic to try to help with book sales here, but I think the idea that we've all experienced something that is on that scale of trauma. Now, there are things that are undeniably, clinically, by definition, traumatic. Like you mentioned, combat, people who survive sexual assaults, natural disasters, these situations where your life is really at risk. And then on the other side of that scale, there are experiences where, let's say, I behaved in a way that I'm not proud of or something outside of my control happened to me that changed the course of my life or helped me to see the world in a different way, not everyone's going to call that trauma. So I try to be pretty clear in the beginning of the book, that it's not really my job as a teacher and it's not really a reader's job to say, ‘Oh, that wasn't traumatic. Or, that doesn't matter because it's not as bad as this other thing.' There's this really famous quote from Viktor Frankl, who is a Holocaust survivor and a psychotherapist, and he said, ‘Trauma behaves much like a gas.' So if you were to pump gas into a box, it doesn't matter how big that box is, the gas is going to expand to fill the space. That's what trauma does, too. If it's something that's knocked you off the course of your life or something that makes you feel less whole than you used to feel, then to me, that's the sign that there's a story there. There's a story that when you're ready to tell it, other people are going to want to hear. Joanna: I think this is so important. And I was reading your book, and I felt this several times during the pandemic. it's like, “I'm having a really difficult time right now but my life is very good compared to other people. So I feel guilty about labeling this in any way bad for me.” And I say that because I feel like a lot of writers have the same experience or a lot of people have the same experience, which is, “oh, what's happened to me isn't as bad as what's happened to X other person.” And even different people who go through a similar experience, someone might come out of that traumatized and another person can just write it off as not a big deal. Personal perspective is so key, isn't it, in terms of both your experience and also the reader's experience? David: That's exactly right. And I would add to that when we set out or when I set out to write a story, that there's going to be some kind of, let's just call it trauma, whether it's what other people would agree is trauma or not, beside the point, if I want to write about that. Obviously, that thing that happened or that experience that I had is going to be central to the story but it's not the whole story. And part of what I think makes personal essay writing and memoir so exciting to write and also so exciting to read is you can imagine yourself in the author's position. How would I react to that? If that happened to me or what step would I take if I had survived that? It's almost like a computer simulation as you're reading it. When I read a memoir, I'm not there to be voyeuristic of someone's trauma. And in fact, that sometimes makes me feel quite uncomfortable as a reader if I'm starting to feel voyeuristic. What I'm looking for in those stories is, okay, how did this person change? How did they react to this situation? What did they learn? How are they different? That's really where some of the ideas from this book came from, or, what were the kind of stories that resonated with me. And lots of times it was that there was a point to them. There was a reason why the person was sharing that story more than to say, ‘Here's what happened,' which lots of times, that's a very appropriate thing to do, especially when you are documenting real traumatic events. It's incredibly important to say, here's what happened. But when we're talking about these kind of personal essays, memoirs, I think the thing that keeps the reader engaged is what did you learn from that? Joanna: From the perspective of the person writing, so forget about publication and readers, we can talk about them in a minute but in terms of just writing: Why is writing about trauma a helpful thing and how can we write about these dark and difficult times without going through more suffering or even drowning in these memories? David: One of the most prolific researchers and writers, let's call them, about this topic, has this rule that he calls the freakout rule, which is anytime that you want to express yourself in writing, if you start to feel that panic or that wave of depression, that freakout, that's a signal from your body that you're just probably not ready to do that kind of writing. And you should listen to it. The way that I sometimes explain this to students is it's sort of like exercise. If there's a little bit of burn, then you know you're doing it right. But if it's painful, you need to stop. That means you're doing something that's not good for your body. Sometimes it's just a matter of kind of figuring out, well, what experience or what thing do you want to write about that you've got a little distance from, you have a little perspective, you can approach it from different vantage points? That can be a really good topic to start writing about in the style that I teach in this book. The research that's been done on these sorts of practices, it points to a lot of different results and a lot of maybe potential causes for why writing can be so helpful. But some of the leading theories, if you will, show that by writing a story, you're bringing coherence to it. You're wrapping your arms around something that seemed fragmented or sort of discombobulated even. And that there's a real pleasure and a real benefit to being able to articulate something in a coherent way. Our brains want to do that, naturally. And sometimes trauma impacts the brain's ability to do that. And so, forcing yourself to wrap your arms around it can be really, really helpful. I think it was Joan Didion, who said, ‘I need to write to understand what I think about something.' I know that's true for me as well, that sitting down to write a story helps me work through, ‘What do I really think about that? And how did I feel at that moment? And why was I feeling that way? Did it have something to do with the relationship that I had with that person? Is there something unexplored that I haven't thought about and maybe I need to start thinking about.' It's using writing almost as a way to get ideas out onto the page and, again, to make sense of it. And then there's just the idea, and I think this is true, as well of unloading that emotional burden onto the page, even if it's momentary. I know when I write something down, whether it's in a Word document or in a journal, I know it's there and I know I don't have to constantly be thinking about it anymore or trying to remind myself of it. So I think there's a psychic weight loss that also happens with this kind of writing. Joanna: I totally agree with you. And as you were talking now, I think there's often a mode of a person's preferred expression. And obviously, you're a writer. I'm a writer, people listening are generally writers, as this is a podcast for writers, but I feel like sometimes people say, ‘You could go to therapy.' And I'm like, ‘Well, do you know what, I don't really talk my issues. I write my issues.' My first husband, this was over a decade ago… I'm happily in my second marriage now. But my first husband left me and I have a whole load of journals from that time. And I read them and I don't even recognize the person in those journals. As you say, it all comes out on the page. It was about a year, I closed the last book on that and it doesn't hurt now to look back. And yet when I open one of those journals, I'm like, ‘Whoa, who is that person?' So writing this down and I haven't published any of those, by the way, they were just journals but it is almost a preferred mode. If someone wants to talk or someone wants to create art, or someone wants to dance, or however you express your feelings and work through that, and for some people it's writing. David: I think that's totally true. I'm curious when you go back and read some of those things, do you feel very differently than the feelings that you put on the page or are those still kind of close anyway? Joanna: No, they're like another person. As in I read them, I can see it's my handwriting, but I can't even access all the kind of self-destructive stuff and that, say, hate and things, terrible poetry, all the things that I wrote down, then, it's almost like I exorcised it onto the page. By putting it there, it exists there, not in my head. I feel like it was very healing for me to do that. And of course divorce is an incredibly common thing. But my parents got divorced and I feel that they were traumatized by that experience. Where I don't feel I'm traumatized because I almost dealt with it by writing, which is why it's so powerful. David: That's so interesting. I feel very similar, when I go back to read things, I have that thought of, ‘Who was I when I was feeling this way?' I had a therapist once who told me about this mental trick, I guess you could call it. She called it the fives or the five questions or something like that, where she said, ‘When you're feeling these really intense feelings, ask yourself, ‘Is this going to matter in five minutes? Is it going to matter in five hours? Is it going to matter in five days,' right, and you just keep going, maybe five years is where you cut it off.' That can sometimes give you enough perspective to say, ‘Okay, I had a really, really bad morning, but this probably isn't going to matter in a few days.' And just to get that perspective. Sometimes I think it's helpful to do that with the subject matter of the things I want to write about is this something that is still affecting me more than five years after it happened? That might be an indication that I need to work through it, right, that it's big enough, it has enough of an effect on my day-to-day life that I haven't buried it, I haven't made sense to that, I haven't wrapped my arms around it. Whereas, when you're in that moment and you're thinking, ‘All this rage is pouring out onto the page and this feels so good. And someone should read this.' Are you sure that you're going to want someone to be able to read that five years from now? Angie Ricketts wrote the afterword for my book. This is something her and I talk about all the time, that her memoir, she sold a proposal for the memoir and the publisher had it in their mind that this book had to come out at a very, very specific time to kind of hit the book club, list creation time. And there was also a TV show that was very popular that was related to the same topic, and we wanted to have that available at the same time. So she ended up having to write the memoir in three months. And she spent the first two months panicking about it. And then finally, in the last month, really sat down to write it. Her memoir is written in present tense because she had all the journals and the diaries from all the years that she was writing about. The book has this immediacy to it and it's unfolding before your face to impact on the reader. And now, when we talk, she says the same thing you did, ‘I read that, and I don't even know who that person was.' I asked her a similar question, ‘Do you wish you maybe wouldn't have put it out into the world?' And she said, ‘No, absolutely not,' because what that book does is it gives this snapshot of who she was as a person at that time. And the fact that she doesn't feel like that person anymore, is a sign that the writing did something for her. It helped her get past some of those things and look at them in a different way. And she also said there are things in her book that maybe she would rewrite now, if she was doing a second edition or something. She said lots of people were frustrated or upset about things that she wrote, but that no one called her a liar. And that was the definition of success for her at that time was to just get it out onto the page. But now, if she sat down to write, it would be a very different book. Joanna: You're going to have to tell us the name of that book now. David: Angie's book is called No Man's War. And Angie was married to an army officer who deployed I believe it was nine times to Iraq and Afghanistan. And so the book is about her life as an army wife. Joanna: You mentioned the word liar there. Truth and lies and something in between, I feel is very difficult in memoir or as you said, personal essay because our memories are attached to emotions. We experience something from our perspective. I completely appreciate that my own journals about my divorce are not my ex-husband's perspective. But this is a question that I keep coming back to. Just so you know, I've written over 30 books now, none of them are memoir. I have a memoir in progress. So I think about this a lot. How can we even tell or can we write things that serve the story beneath the story, as you call it? Does everything need to be factually true? David: So this is where my journalism friends will probably disagree with me but my memoir and personal essay friends will agree. I think the premise itself is probably not exactly accurate. I'm not convinced that I can write a totally objective, factually correct story. I just don't know that my human brain is capable of doing that because like you said, when we remember things, there are emotions tied to it. There are also ways that our body copes with traumatic experiences that results in memories being stored in weird ways and fragmentation. And there's just tons of things that happen in the brain during a traumatic experience, that, I think having the standard of, I'm going to write something that is objectively fact-based and evidence-based and true, is maybe just something that's not possible with this kind of writing. Now, I think that there's a freedom and kind of a beauty in recognizing that and leaning into it for lack of a better phrase. So when I write, I try to be very transparent about whether this is something I remembered, whether this was something based on evidence or based on a document or based on a letter, for example, or if this is something I had recorded or had preserved in some other way. I try to be transparent about where the information is coming from and also being careful not to put emotions onto other people or to try to speculate about what they are thinking or feeling unless there's a point to me speculating, to maybe show the reader that I can't read this situation. I'm not sure if this person is feeling this or feeling that, and giving the reader an opportunity to collect the evidence themselves and maybe come to their own conclusion. It's not fun, I don't think for the average reader to be told everything constantly. It's also, I think, pleasurable, frankly, to read something and know that the author is trusting you to come to your own conclusion or is okay with you bringing yourself to the story and making sense of it in your own way. Now, if I am writing a scene, let's say, and I have no documentation except my memory, I'm going to be really clear about that. If it's something that I think happened or that I'm pretty sure happened or I know it happened, but I don't know the details of it, that's when I might start looking for corroborating evidence. Can I find a picture of the setting where this happened? That's from that period. Can I say something factual about what things look like there? Can I find information? Let's say the scene is across the street from an ice cream shop, can I then say, ”Well, it smelled like waffle cone.' I better make sure that that place sells waffle cones. There's this kind of detective or investigative work that I actually find quite enjoyable as a writer, where I'm searching for those sensory details and I'm searching for the essence of a place or of a person. What can we infer from someone's letters, for example, about how they felt or about who they were? We can make those inferences and we can make those speculations but we also want to show, I think, where the evidence comes from and how we got to that conclusion, again, to show that we're not just making stuff up. But I think that the key is transparency and then also thinking about, well, if I wanted to write the scene, what details would I need and how can I find those? Joanna: It's interesting because as part of writing novels, sensory detail is so critical for getting deep into a character's point of view. And you talk about this in the book is turning ourselves into a character in a story but this is so difficult in terms of this is me. Yes, you could write in first person, like, I think you mentioned your friend did. But even if you do, you still have to almost create the character that is you at whatever point in your life you're writing about. How can we do this? What are your tips for separating ourselves enough and how would we tell the story with this character? David: I'll say two things. So the first is, I am sure you picked up on this in my own writing, but I'm pretty honest about my own failings, and my own shortcomings, and character flaws, and even times where I regret how something happened, I regret my behavior, I try to be as honest as I can about what happened, not in a defensive way, but in a descriptive way of showing that I'm not that reliable of a narrator in most cases. I think a reader really appreciates seeing a narrator as flawed, that this isn't a book of here are all the ways that I'm so smart and smarter than you, and you should listen to me. It's about, I've made these mistakes too or these things have happened to me too, or I had this bad reaction in this situation. So that's the first thing I think is it's important to present yourself as a three-dimensional human, flawed, wonderful, beautiful, sometimes ugly person. And giving that same kind of grace and that same perspective to the other characters in your book as well. I have this good writing friend of mine who said you don't have to call someone a jerk in your writing. You can just describe what they do. And if that is how a jerk behaves, your reader will come to that conclusion. You don't have to tell them someone is a jerk. And at the same time presenting yourself, like I said, as someone who can do no wrong is not really that interesting, I don't think. I like to see when people roll up their sleeves and say, ‘Here's my scar and here's how I got it.” Now, so that's the first thing. Second thing is I'm an outline writer. That's how my brain works. That's how I have to do it. I know that's not true for everyone. So if you're a writer who writes by the seat of your pants, this might sound really awful. But for the outlining folks I try to first understand the action in a story in a paragraph. So, this is how the story starts, here are the ways that the tension builds, this is the big crisis moment, here's how things get resolved. I want to have that understanding of a story before I start writing. Then the next step is okay, well, I have to show either myself or I have to show other people acting in the story. What are the things that the reader is going to want to know or that they need to know about those characters to make sense of what's happening in the story or to make sense of the action that the character takes? The example I use in the book is a friend of mine wrote a book about a trip that I went on with him. And in the first few pages of the chapter where he introduces me, he mentions my weight three separate times. I played football in college. I'm a bigger guy. I'm 6'4′, about 250-some pounds. And he makes this comment about three different times in the beginning of the chapter. And when I read it, I thought, ‘Why is he doing this? I am more than just my body weight.' Then, towards the end of the chapter, he has this climactic scene where we're in the middle of this really terrible storm that could have really ended the trip. I had to drag our canoe that was full of supplies, about 500 pounds worth of supplies. I had to pull it straight up the side of a hill. And so when I asked him, ‘Why did you keep bringing up my weight?' He said, ‘I wanted people to believe that you could actually do that, that you could pull this canoe up the side of a hill. And I felt like if I didn't stress that you're a big strong guy, then people wouldn't believe it or they would doubt my claim.' So it's sort of almost like reverse engineering. I want to show how this person acted. Why do I think they did that and what are the details that I can present about them? What are the little vignettes that I can present? What are the anecdotes that maybe will help explain this behavior just a little bit to the reader? That's where I'm going to start, is figuring out what are those little quirks, those little things about the character, that you can see this when you're a seasoned storyteller. You see this in movies and TV and stories where you learn this detail about someone and you think, ‘Oh, this is going to come back? This is going to come back at some point.' This is a clue of how they're going to behave later. Those are the sorts of things I look for. And then it's a matter of making sure that character, whether it's yourself or someone else is a real like three-dimensional character and that they're not all good. They're not all bad. And there are a bunch of stuff in between. Joanna: This is what's so hard, I think, with memoir and story because when I create a novel, and I'm a discovery writer, by the way. I prefer the term discovery writer. David: Oh, I like that. Going to use that now. Joanna: Yes, definitely use it. We're trying to change the language away from seat of the pants or pantser, which is just such a terrible word and very American, because, of course, pants is underwear here in England. David: Oh, okay. Well, that makes sense. Joanna: When I write a novel, I create a character that fits my plot or my narrative, why did this bad person do the bad thing, like, blow up the world or whatever? And it's easy to choose the vignette to support my story. But you're talking there about, you mentioned grace for the other characters, but we can't write three-dimensional characters for everyone in this book. So, for example, your example with your weight or your build in your friend's book, it wasn't about you. The book wasn't about you. So that was one detail that didn't encapsulate your entire self. Now, one of the things I get a lot of emails from people writing memoir, people worried about either getting sued if they've written something that could be taken the wrong way by people in a serious way or just damaging friendships or relationships by taking a particular point of view. Let's say you were actually offended about comments about your size and then you just didn't talk to that friend anymore, or whatever. So you can see, especially in these times where people get quite wound up on social media. What are your thoughts on the concern of offending people or getting sued, and how do we portray other characters, especially with trauma, because these are going to be difficult relationships? David: I struggle with this. I don't want to present myself as the expert who's got it all figured out. But I can share maybe some of the influences that I think about. There's this great American writer named William Zinsser, who wrote a book called On Writing Well, and he makes this point about memoir where he says, let's say you write your story and your sister gets really upset about it, you can tell her that she can write her own memoir if she doesn't like it. So there's that kind of this is my story and I don't care what you think about it sort of approach. That feels to my Midwestern sensibilities, that feels like really aggressive and mean. The other side of the spectrum is only writing things that people find flattering or that they would be happy or at least not upset about the world knowing. And I do think that there are times in which it does pay to give that kind of deference to a character. For example, when I'm doing a more journalistic piece and I'm writing about someone and I am not a character in the piece, this is a story completely about them, I will run the story by them. I won't send them the story so that they can read it word for word. I will read it to them either on Zoom or on a phone. And I'll read the details that are about them. I always say, the reason I'm calling here is because I want to make sure that there's nothing factually inaccurate about what I'm saying. But at the same time, I want you to know that I get to decide how this affects the story. So if I then started saying, ‘Okay, here's this scene where I talk about how you did X,' and the person might say, ‘Well, that's not exactly how I felt. What I really thought was this.' That might be something I definitely want to change that because I don't want to mischaracterize how they felt. Now, if I make a judgment about the person, and they say, ‘Well, I don't like that judgment,' then that means not something I will change unless they can give me information that would change my mind about the judgment. Now, when I'm writing about myself and there are other characters in the book or in the story that I'm related to, or that I'm friends with, or that I teach, or whatever the relationship is, I always try to make sure that the story is from my perspective, that I'm not trying to tell their story in my story. I want to present things from my vantage point, from my perspective. From there, I want to try to figure out what were they thinking? What were they feeling? I think the only way to really do that, if the person's living, of course, is to interview them and to ask those questions. I've done that with several members of my family. There are lots of stories in the book from my family. I had questions and I asked for answers, and I probed for details. I asked them to describe things. That became my evidence for the thing that I wrote. Now, I know that there are big differences in libel laws between the UK and the U.S., I want to say that that's much more of a concern in the UK. I don't want to advise anyone on legal precedent for what they can say, but I try to use that that criteria that Angie told me about, which is someone might be upset with me, but as long as they don't think I lied, that's the thing that I'm looking for. Then the other question you have to ask is how important is the relationship to you? There are, I think, reasons to write about people in a way where it's like, ‘Well, if you wanted me to write a better story about you, you should have treated me better.' If you wanted to be the hero in my story, then you should have been the hero in my story. I would never suggest that someone should gloss over or sugarcoat someone's flaws, just because that would upset them. Because at the end of the day, it's really your story and you trying to understand what you went through, and then trying to communicate that with other people so that they can understand too. And like I said, if you present a character for who they are, the reader will come to that conclusion on their own. And it will feel more natural and less of an attack. And, for lack of a better word, it's sort of like, well, this is what happened and this is how I felt about it. There are times then where you might want to incorporate what other people were thinking and feeling, and times when you might not want to. And that's really, totally up to the writer to make that decision. I don't necessarily have rules that I follow, but I try to listen to the feeling I get when I'm writing something. And if I start to feel like, oh, they're not going to like this, then I want to interrogate that. Why aren't they going to like it? Is it because I'm being too harsh or is it because this is really embarrassing for them and they know it? Okay, well, if it's really embarrassing for them and they know it, and they've tried to make amends or apologize, how can I put that into the story or how can I give this context that would leave a reader thinking, ‘Wow, that was a really difficult situation, but it sounds like they're in a better place?' If that's the case. If it's not, don't invent that, right? Don't try to invent a resolution when there isn't one. Sometimes stories don't really end. Another story begins. Joanna: Yeah, absolutely. And memoir never ends, I think until we're dead. David: For sure. Joanna: There's always another book. So that was fantastic. David, tell us where people can find you and your book and everything you do online. David: Thank you so much. I have a website, davidchrisinger.com. You can find all my latest stuff there, upcoming events, other books I've written articles, what have you. In terms of buying the book, obviously, there's Amazon. In the United States, indiebound.com is a great resource as well. You can buy books from your local bookstores. I'm not sure who to point you to in the UK, but the publisher is Johns Hopkins University Press. I think that's the best way to find it. Joanna: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, David. That was great. David: All right. Thank you.The post Stories Are What Save Us: Writing About Trauma With David Chrisinger first appeared on The Creative Penn.