Kevin on Kraft: EPISODE 1!
**Kevin on Kraft** is an occasional conversation between writers Kevin Tumlinson and Donn King about the craft, process, and strange magic of writing.
**Your first draft is supposed to be bad.** Seriously.
One of the biggest mistakes writers make is expecting the first draft to look anything like the finished book. That pressure to get everything right—to nail the characters, plot, dialogue, pacing, and prose on the first try—can make finishing the book exponentially harder.
In this first episode of **Kevin on Kraft**, Donn King and I dig into how stories actually get written: discovery writing, plotting versus pantsing, developing characters as you go, getting unstuck when the story stalls, and why sometimes the best solution to writer’s block is to **blow up the spaceship** and see what happens.
We also get into where ideas come from, why originality may be overrated, how writers can borrow familiar storytelling patterns without copying, and one of my favorite principles of storytelling:
**Same—but different.**
If you're writing your first novel, your seventieth, or you're simply trying to make a living doing creative work, this conversation is a reminder that you don't have to know everything before you begin.
You just have to begin.
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☕ **IN THIS EPISODE**
00:00 — Welcome to Kevin on Kraft
05:20 — Why we're talking about writing craft
09:25 — Kevin's path through writing and publishing
13:17 — Why persistence matters for creative careers
15:20 — Everyone is creative—even if they don't think they are
16:37 — How Kevin builds stories from a title
22:26 — What actually makes a story a story?
25:55 — Plotters, pantsers, and discovery writers
30:50 — Why trying to write a perfect first draft is a mistake
32:23 — What to do when your story gets stuck
32:49 — The “looping” technique for getting your momentum back
33:56 — Sometimes you should just blow up the spaceship
36:45 — Using rewriting to change the past
39:47 — How to create plot twists that make you look like a genius
40:30 — Kevin's “Ash Bin” trick for deleted scenes
43:16 — Inspiration, homage, and when it becomes copying
46:02 — Why every story uses the same ingredients
46:32 — The secret is “same but different”
47:30 — What's next for Kevin on Kraft?
🎙️ **FIND DONN KING**
Donn King's website: https://donnking.com
Donn King on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/daking2742
The Alignment Show: https://thealignmentshow.com
King's Chronicles on Substack: https://kingschronicles.substack.com
✍️ **FIND Kevin**
Find Kevin and his books:
https://kevintumlinson.com
Join Kevin on Substack:
https://kevintumlinson.substack.com
Wordslinger Podcast home page:
https://wordslingerpodcast.com
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🔔 **SUBSCRIBE TO WORDSLINGER**
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And leave a comment: **Are you a plotter, a pantser, or somewhere in between? And what do you do when your story gets stuck?**
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