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Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationDay 12: Monotony Must Die: How to Keep Your Sentences SurprisingNo Flat WritingA lot of writers will worry that their stories seem flat. There’s a reason that they are worrying about that and it’s one of the core elements of good writing.Ready?A lot of the times your story seems flat because all your sentences are the same layout.You want to vary your sentence structure.Take a bit of writing that you’ve done that feels flat—or maybe even one that doesn’t. Count the words in your sentences for two or three paragraphs...2025-02-1215 minDogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationDon't stop writingThis week? This week has been a bit rough for me.But I am still writing. And we are still podcasting! Gasp!I am still doing this because I think that writers write. That’s it. That’s all there is to it.Say it with me, okay?Writers write. That’s all it takes to be a writer—the actual writing things down.We write rebellion. We write acceptance. We write through grief. We write through joy.Sometimes our work is absolute poop, but that doesn’t matter...2025-02-0513 minDogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationWhy Are People Mean? And The Lowdown on Three Super Common Grammar MistakesIn our Random Thought, we talk about why people are mean. The link to our source is at the end of these notes.All you all,I (Carrie) am the WORST copyeditor for my own work. I’ll admit it and that’s because as a writer, I’m too close to it to pick out my errors, right?That’s why it’s good to have other people read your stories before you put them out there.So, we (Carrie and Shaun) are going to talk about some grammar mistakes: three supe...2025-01-2919 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationLet's Talk The Sexy One-Sentence SummaryTHE ONE SENTENCE SUMMARYLet’s be honest, here. Sometimes I throw the word “sexy” into a podcast title just to get Shaun to pay attention.But the one-sentence summary is kind of sexy.Over on the Advanced Fiction Writing Blog, Randy Ingermanson writes:In that summary, you want:To show us the setting via information about where or when the story is happening.
What Ingersoll calls “a paradoxical description of a major character.”
Something weird/shocking/surprising that makes you think of that story question
Something sexy. He calls this an em...2025-01-2310 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationIt's Okay To Dwell in the Negative SpaceWendy MacNaughton on her Substack Draw Together talked about negative space this week and she wrote,“Negative Space performs many functions: it focuses our eyes on the subject, it moves our eyes around a drawing or it keeps them still, it allows for visual space/room to breathe, and sometimes it gives the subject an extra layer of meaning.“For example, ever seen this logo before?“Sure, you’ve probably seen it a million times.“But have you noticed the hidden symbol in the logo?! Focus your attention on the negative space of t...2025-01-1518 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationDo Our Brains Hurt Too Much to Think & Read?And how we've blown off writing maxims to be successfulThere’s a feeling among many writers/bloggers/content creators that our brains are too overwhelmed by a high cognitive overload to want to read anything that isn’t super quick and fast.I get this.There is a lot of information out there in the world.Short-form content is, they say, the key.Tim Denning describes short-form content as “where you share big ideas, be a little contrarian, drop cliffhangers for your stories, and share who you are. It giv...2025-01-0721 minDogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationHappy holidays!Hey! It’s a quick happy holiday greeting from us. We took a quick pause in our celebrations to make the shortest podcast episode ever.We hope that you are having a wonderful holiday season. It snowed here yesterday and it’s still super cool out. 2024-12-2502 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationFlirt Your Eyelashes Off, WritersSHAUN IS SICK! Gasp! He is never sick. But he is, so I've made the executive decision to replay/republish one of our most popular episodes from three years ago. Ready? Let's go! A quick web search for the words 'flirting' and 'dangerous' gets a lot of hits. To be fair, so does a quick web search for the words 'flirting' and 'fun.' But we're not here to tell you about the perils and delights of flirting. We're here to talk about writing, life, and dogs. Actually, flirting is part...2024-12-1920 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationWe improvised this podcast and you can tellWe improvised this podcast and you know what? You can kind of tell. It's all about making mistakes (a tiny bit about what holds some of us back about making people pay for our work) and we quickly reference this guy! SHOUT OUT!The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.WE HAVE EXTRA...2024-12-1216 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationEvery Day Is a Whole New Life, Writers and Other HumansSo, recently, Vitaliy Katsenelson, CFA, who is a writer and investor had a Substack post that really resonated with me.And by recently, I mean yesterday.Anyway, in it Vitaliy said that “Each Day Is a Separate Life.”You wake up and you are born. You go to sleep and that’s the end of the day/life. You get it, right?This concept isn’t new. It comes from Seneca, this ancient philosopher and thinker in the Roman Empire, 2,000 years ago, who was rather hyper focused on thinking about wealth even tho...2024-12-0515 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationHow to Write Good Dialogue, Wallabies, and the Three-Beat RuleDogs are Smarter Than People, Writing Exercise, Cool Submission OpportunitySo, we’re been talking about dialogue in novels lately and tips about it and the purpose of it. To find any back posts, just head to LIVING HAPPY and search “dialogue.”One of the things that some writing stylists talk about is the three-beat rule, which is credited to Screenwriter Cynthia Whitcomb.Reedsy explains this as:“What this recommends, essentially, is to introduce a maximum of three dialogue ‘beats’ (the short phrases in speech you can say without pausing for breath) at a...2024-11-1220 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationDon't hiss "I Love You." Dialogue tag help and also throwing tacos isn't coolA few years ago, we posted this episode about dialogue, and honestly? We're . . . um. . . burnt out because of the election and people. So, since we're already focusing on dialogue over on LIVING HAPPY, we're recycling (upcycing) this from a few years ago.
Thanks for putting up with us! These next few podcasts, we thought we should get all nitty-gritty with some quick grammar tips or style tips for people writing fiction.It can help you nonfiction writers, too, we swear.When you’re writing dialogue (people talking to each other), you’re going to w...2024-11-0620 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationDo You Need a Beta Reader? Also, Georgia Police Say Don't Copulate Outside McDonalds.So, in the world of writing, everyone talks about needing a beta reader and a critique partner.Everyone that is, except Carrie, who has trust issues and survives as a lonely, isolated writer in Maine.What is a beta reader?It's that person who reads your story, gives you some mild suggestions that feel like a big hug. This is a person you want to party with, a person you can cry to, a person with no mean judgement. This person is basically the human equivalent of your dog: loyal, helpful, good and...2024-10-2912 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationHe Went Into His Neighbors' Homes To Smell Their Shoes--Allegedly and How Family Dynamics Are a Feature of Bestselling NovelsWe’ve started a series of paid and free posts and podcast episodes about writing bestsellers. Our first post about this is here. To see them all just look up “hit novel” or “bestselling” in the search bar.In his book Hit Lit, which we’ve been talking about, James W. Hall talks about 12 elements that he thinks really make those super-popular-multi-million-copy bestsellers in American fiction in the past 100 years or so.And one of those features?It’s a fractured family.Yep. That’s a big feature of what Hall found in the 12...2024-10-1712 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationSome features of the top selling novelsDogs are Smarter Than PeopleThere’s an old NPR article about writing bestsellers that quotes critic Ruth Franklin’s overview of American best-sellers as saying "No possible generalization can be made regarding the 1,150 books that have appeared in the top 10 of the fiction best-seller list since its inception."In his book Hit Lit, which we’ve been talking about, James W. Hall disagrees, talking about 12 elements that he thinks really make those super-popular-multi-million-copy bestsellers in American fiction in the past 100 years or so.We’ve been talking about that a lot. Hall analyzed...2024-10-0913 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationWant to be popular? Try a fish out of waterDogs are Smarter than People podcastWe’ve started a series of paid and free posts and podcast episodes about writing bestsellers. Our first post about this is here. To see them all just look up “hit novel” or “bestselling” in the search bar.Whew. Blah. Blah. Blah. Right? Not a bestselling way to start a podcast episode.What’s a better way?Well, according to Jack Hall who wrote Hit Lit, “In most bestsellers, there’s a central character who sets off on a journey that takes her from rustic America into tur...2024-10-0317 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationAmerica as Paradise? Part of Making A Bestselling Novel?We’ve started a series of paid and free posts about writing bestsellers. Our first post about this is here.
In James Hall’s book, HIT LIT, he looks at twelve top-selling novels and tries to find similarities to their success.One thing that he found in the twelve novels is the theme of “America as paradise.”He writes, “America-as-paradise, an idea that so powerfully shapes our national identity, is one of the key motifs.”Despite the decade the story was written in, he and his students, he wrote, kept discovering the motif of...2024-09-2712 minDogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationTick…Tick…Tick…Using Time to Make a Hit NovelSo, last week was Shaun’s birthday. Yay, Shaun!We’ve started a series of paid and free posts about writing bestsellers. Our first post about this is here.And today, we’re talking about a main element in writing a hit novel. Some people call it The Big Clock. Some people call it a Ticking Clock. Some people call it The Timer. Dramatic theory is fancy and calls it a Timelock, but basically, it’s the ticking bomb, a known and harsh deadline that your character has before it all explodes in her face.Gle...2024-09-1812 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationThe Absolutely Simplest Plot Structure EverA lot of the writers I teach get really freaked out about structure. They go on multiple craft book journeys trying to find the structure that resonates with them, the one that gives them that beautiful a-ha moment. Who can blame them?Don't we all want that beautiful a-ha moment?They learn about pinch points, rising action, falling action, subplots, inciting incidents, midpoints, themes, narrative arc, emotional arc, hamster zombies (just kidding) and they hyperventilate along the way.There is no reason to hyperventilate if this way of looking at writing structure doesn’t...2024-09-0412 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationShow, Don't Tell, Baby Face Cutie Pie CutieWe talked about this a long while ago, and I've revisited it, too, but it's time, my writing friends, to revisit it.So in writing one of the biggest tips that you start hearing starts in around third grade and it’s “SHOW DON’T TELL.”And it’s sound writing advice, but it’s pretty sound life advice, too.How many of us have heard the words, “I love you,” but never seen the actions that give proof to the words? You can tell someone you love them incessantly for hours, but if you don’t sho...2024-08-2813 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationWhat Do Readers Want? And the Kentucky Meat Shower Incident of 1876Readers want questions that they’ll get answers to.They want to be hooked along.They want to unwrap the answer the way people unwrap a birthday present.That’s what Robert Prince says, anyway, writing in his class at the University of Alaska,
”The key to understanding what audiences really want in a story is to understand that the audience doesn’t want to know everything they need to know when they need to know it! They want questions that get answered later. Questions are what intrigue audiences and keep them sticking around bec...2024-08-2014 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationThe Elements of Storytelling: The Atomic Bomb TestAuthor, podcaster and professor Robert Prince has this thing he does when he watches a movie: the Atomic Bomb test. “After I’ve watched about 20 minutes of the film I ask myself, ‘If an atomic bomb were to go off and destroy everyone in this film, would I care all that much?’ If the answer is no, I don’t keep watching the film,” he says in his class at the University of Alaska.He has this test because to make your reader keep reading, they have to care what happens to the characters in the story....2024-08-1412 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationFive Quick Ways to Find Story IdeasBrainstorming . . . Even the word sounds a little creepy. Like there is a storm inside your brain. It sounds... It sounds sort of violent and hazardous and windy. In this podcast, we talk about the storms inside our brain and how those storms can become story ideas.Five Ways To Get Story IdeasSome authors have a really hard time just getting an idea for a new story. They burn out. They can't find anything that they think is 'good enough.' They just don't know where to start and that lack of a start makes...2024-08-0117 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationSetting Is SO FREAKING ImportantSetting is where your story happens. It’s the time period. It’s the physical place. You can have more than one setting.There. That’s the definition. We’re all good, right?Wrong.Let’s really talk about setting.WHAT SETTING DOESSetting is the foundation of your story. It is the ModPodge that has an addictive smell (Cough. Not addicted to ModPodge. Look away.) and glues all the story together.WHAT HAPPENS WITHOUT SETTINGYour characters float around in nothingness.Your plot makes...2024-07-2520 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationWhy Are Publishing Imprints ClosingAlgonquin Young Readers Will End in SeptemberThe traditional book publishing world is a bit like the wild west if the cowboys wore pink-framed eyeglasses and could quote Derrida.People are heroes. People are let go. Entire divisions of publishing houses close. And so on.And this continues this week with the changes at Hachette Book Group and its announcement of the closure of Workman: Algonquin Young Readers this September.According to Editorial Director Cheryl Klein, “Our backlist and all books under contract will be absorbed into the Little, Brown Books fo...2024-07-1717 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationHow To Write a Book Description That Gets Readers Tingling All OverOur podcast title is “How To Write a Book Description That Gets Readers Tingling All Over” and that just sounds naughty, doesn’t it?And it is a little naughty because this, my friends, is about selling a book, your book, and that requires being a little bit sexy.Sexy is something I, Carrie, am very very bad at.Let’s start by thinking about it this way:A book description is an adverstisement for your book.Writing a bad ad for your book doesn’t make you a sucky nove...2024-07-1016 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationPinch, there it is; googly eyes on the train, and yes, we are on our 37th career this yearDogs are Smarter Than People/Write Better NowLast week, we talked about pinch points both on the podcast and on the blog, and honestly? Nobody seemed super into it, but we’re finishing up this week. This post is going to be a bit more about the first part of act two of a three-act story, focusing on the time from the first pinch point to the midpoint.Pause for a plea: Look, I know plot structure isn’t sexy the way character development or drama and obstacles and conflict are, but it’s super...2024-07-0220 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationPinch Me, Baby, Talking Sexy to WritersThere are some things in the writing world that don’t make a ton of sense in the world of regular humans.One of those things is pinch points.This podcast episode is going to be the start of a quick series of podcasts and regular posts about pinch points. The regular posts will be at our Substack LIVING HAPPY under the WRITE BETTER NOW publication.So, what are these little twerps called pinch points?They a way of thinking about novel or story structure that helps us keep the reader en...2024-06-2615 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationJust an Hour a Day Makes You More Bad AssThere are a lot of people who advocate spending just an hour a day doing something to become awesome. That hour a day is often learning. You study up about what you want to do, you self learn, you teach yourself to be better by learning all about the thing you're into.So, if you're into writing, you read books about writing and actual books. You study the craft. So, if you're into knitting, you study knitting. Entrepeneurship? Same thing, but first you probably have to learn how to spell it. My bad there. 2024-06-1817 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationFighting, Commerce, and Ten-Cent Beer: Welcome to America and How to Frame StoriesOn last week’s podcast and the one a few before that, and in a post, Shaun and I talked a bit about plot structures and narrative structures and how here in the U.S. we think of these usually (not always!) as pretty linear, and pretty much in a three-act framework (think beginning, middle, end) with rising stakes and drama as you go along.This is not the only way to write.I am very much a product of the U.S. culture. And I’m going to talk a tiny bit in the next cou...2024-06-0620 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationPot Plants Invade Wisconsin and Alternate That Plot StructureLast week, maybe a week ago, maybe 82 years ago, who knows, we talked about alternative plot structures.Much of American film and novels is built on what's considered to be the classic three-act structure, which basically goes beginning-middle-end, and there's this rising line of the plot. It ends up looking like a bit of a triangle. As readers, we can sort of anticipate and feel that structure happening. In a rom-com, we almost always know how far into the book or movie it will be when the couple breaks up and then someone...2024-05-3024 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationNo cow cuddles, no brain worms: Do you want to be happy?Do you want to be happy?It’s a question philosopher Sebastian Purcell asks his students every year.Do you want to be happy?For Purcell being happy has a lot in common with living a good life,“The Stoic answer to this question, that the good life consists in flourishing (eudaimonia), has seen a resurgent interest that is indicative of a cultural shift. Interestingly, it looks to be taking the place left open by the retreat of religious belief,” he writes.And stoicism? It’s a way to look at...2024-05-1624 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationCelestial Bodies, Sexy Knees and Story Structure via Robert McKeeYou can learn a lot about culture by how it looks at what makes a good story and a good story structure. In Western culture right now, we tend to think of stories as three acts (a beginning, middle, and end with the bulk being in the middle), and with a protagonist or hero or main character (whatever you want to call it) who drives the story forward.So, it's sometimes good to remember that there are other ways of making story and other cultures where the bulk might not be in the middle or...2024-05-0823 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationStrangeness free for allIt ended up being a bit of a free-for-all as we talked about the strange things people do sometimes. SHOUT OUT TO STUBHY!
The snippet of our intro and outro music is only a snippet of this guy’s awesome talent. Many thanks to Kaustubh Pandav. You can check out a bit of his work at the links below.
www.luckyboysconfusion.Net or www.Facebook.com/mrmsandtheinfusions
Thanks for hanging out with us! And remember, don’t be afraid to let your strange out.2024-05-0455 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationHow Not to be a Butt-Hole in Real Life and on the PageSo building a sympathetic character on the page is a lot like being a sympathetic character in real life. This sympathetic character is basically the opposite of a butt-hole.There’s this great post on the SocialSelf blog that talks about what makes people likable and what keeps people from being likeable. And writers can learn from this, really.The big things that make people likeable in real life are like a top ten list of awesome:Be funny
Be a good listener
Don’t judge
Be authentic
Be warm and friendly immediately
Show peop...2024-05-0224 minDogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationSomeone was sleeping outside her tent right next to her and how to make good writing habitsA lot of writers that I work with have a problem. The problem is that they want to be a writer, but before they come to me? They don’t write.Here’s the thing. For a lot of us, we have to make time to be a writer. That’s just how our brains and process work. There are some writers who manage to get 10 days of alone time and writer time and they power through a book in that time, but most of us aren’t that wealthy or that lucky.That means to be a...2024-04-2423 minDogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationStrange Things in the Woods like poop and SquatchWe found a topic! It ended up mostly being about poop and creepiness and three-foot tall humanoids.Links we mention:https://www.ranker.com/list/creepy-forest-ranger-stories/amandasedlakhevener2024-04-201h 01
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationOvercoming Negativity Bias & Toilet RatsBeing an author or an artist or almost anyone is about navigating. You have to walk a fine line with criticism and praise, discern what's real and what's not, what matters or not, what is noise and what is important.And sometimes? Well, sometimes we only hear and dwell on the one negative thing that someone has said to us or written about us even though they (or others) have also said 100 positive things. You're an author. You get a glowing review but there's one line in there that says, "I didn't like...2024-04-1619 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationWhy it is okay to read books you've already read and sometimes there's an alligator in your kitchenHere's our main premise this week: it's okay to read books you've already read. Not only is it okay. It's helpful. This is true for both writers and normal humans. Rereading books gives you: New ideas
Reminds you of ideas you'd forgotten about
Let's you notice new things because you aren't the same you who read that book the last time.DONALD LATUMAHINA writes for LifeOptimizer, "'"Research shows that in just 24 hours people would forget most of what they’ve read. You might get a lot of good ideas from a...2024-04-0928 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationThe Spiral of Ick and Quiet Winners: You Don't Have to Flaunt Yourself to SucceedRecently, I read an interview with an author who talked about how much children loved her book and how they tell her this. It annoyed me. It may have been good marketing, but it sure didn't feel like good human-ing, you know? When you're interviewed by a reporter or when you do a school visit, as a children's book author, you have the ability to toot your own horn or you have the ability to toot someone else's. This interview I read sort of sent me into a spiral of ick. ...2024-04-0426 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationShaun went off the rails, but this was supposed to be about how do you sustain a career as an authorThis is obviously not the full transcript. You have to listen to hear the full weirdness, but . . . here's the core. How Do You Sustain a Career as an Author?It's a really good question, right? One, all of us authors are trying to figure out. Rise With Drew writes, "Creative careers are slippery. One-hit wonders abound, but fewer are enduring superstars,” Steven writes. “And this level of commitment requires not just originality but rather that ultimate expression of originality: the consistent reinvention of self. Again and again. “Long-haul creativity isn’t a...2024-03-2630 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationThe Info Dump from Hell and How to Avoid ThemTalking about show vs tell at the scene level is a little bit harder than talking about it at the paragraph and scene levels.But it’s also a tiny bit easier.When you’re looking for telling at this level of the story, what you’re looking for is a couple of things:A butt ton of backstory.
A butt ton of info dumps
A lot of flashback.You can have bits of these things in your stories. Where us authors get into trouble is when we have a lot of it and we...2024-03-1919 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationControl Your Tells, Don't Give In To the PassiveBabe,I know you don’t want to talk about showing vs telling any longer, our massive series, but it’s really really important. It’s sunk many a cool book idea, stopped others in its tracks. It is a chaos agent in the life of many a good writer. And there are so many damn facets to it. I could fill a year of podcasts talking about it.Don’t worry, I won’t.But I would be remiss—no, we would be remiss—if we didn’t give people a couple more hints about...2024-03-1220 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationAuthor to Author. Carrie Jones and Chris Lynch Talk Walkin the DogAward-winning author of YA novels? Check.Printz honor author, ALA Best Book winner, National Book Award finalist? Check.Has a middle grade coming out March 11 that's about to rock the world? Definitely.Was so cool that Carrie was afraid to talk to him back in 2005 or 2006 or something? You know it.Chris Lynch, award winning human and ridiculously gracious interviewee, graced Dogs are Smarter Than People with an author-to-author interview with Carrie Jones this week. He ignored Carrie's frazzled face, vaguely sweaty hair, and minor emergency to be one of the...2024-03-0530 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationLET’S SHOW YOU HOW SHOW VS TELL WORKS! Florida Man Poops on a Possum. We won't show you thatHey! Welcome to our series of podcasts and posts all about showing vs. telling, which we are on fire about right now, right Shaun?Growls.You can check out the rest of the series on Carrie’s Substack Write Better Now or just the podcast episodes on her blog, https://carriejonesbooks.blog/So, a lot of my writers have a brain like mine, which is sad for them. Just kidding! Just kidding! A lot of them do better when they see an explanation of show vs tell rather than just having their editor or...2024-02-2718 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationRELATED TO MONSTERS AND WRITERS, GET INTO THE READER'S BRAIN IF YOU WANT TO SHOW AND NOT TELLWe’re continuing with our monster “Show Don’t Tell” series of podcasts and posts.So, hey! Welcome to our series of podcasts and posts all about showing vs. telling, which we are on fire about right now, right Shaun?Growls.You can check out the rest of the series on Carrie’s Substack Write Better Now or just the podcast episodes on her website.And we're soon going to have some monthly author interviews starting with Chris Lynch. One of the hardest places to differentiate showing rather than telling in...2024-02-2018 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationTHE PROBLEM WITH ADVERBS & BEARS IN THE DOGGY DOOR: Let’s Show, Not TellWe’re continuing with our monster “Show Don’t Tell” series of podcasts and posts.Adverbs are a big place where you tell and not show.So, if I wrote,“You are the sexiest manatee in the world,” Ham-Ham said hopelessly.Would you think that works? Would you feel how Ham-Ham said it hopelessly?Janice Hardy is brilliant and she has a really simple way of explaining how to determine whether or not you’re showing rather than telling. According to her, you should ask yourself if you can act something...2024-02-1315 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationShow Us Your Wounds Writers and Stealing Seven King CakesThere’s this really great book for writers by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi called The Emotional Wound Thesaurus. It came out way back in 2017.As they write in their prologue, “Life is painful, and not all the lessons we learn are positive ones. As with you and me, the characters in our stories have suffered emotional trauma that cannot easily be dispelled or forgotten. We call this type of trauma an emotional wound: a negative experience (or set of experiences) that causes pain on a deep psychological level. It is a lasting hurt that ofte...2024-01-3018 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationPromises, Promises, Writers Promise Readers a Lot Plus a Screech Owl Chilling With Board GamesWriters Are Promise MakersWriters are promise makers. We tell our readers that we’re going to give them something just because of the cultural expectations that happen when someone opens our books.What do we promise them?We promise a characterThe book is about someone. We reveal different aspects about that character as we show them act or react to the things that go on in the book.The character will likely have something they want and something they yearn for and there will be things that ke...2024-01-2314 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationTROPE ME OUT, BABY: THE JUMP SCARE AND JANUARY IS A BLISSED OUT MONTHThere’s a lot of ways that trope is defined, but for us here on DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE, we’re going with the Grammarist’s definition, which is:“A trope is simply a common or recurring theme or method used in storytelling across all forms of media. Tropes serve as a way for creators to convey certain ideas and messages to their audience in a familiar and recognizable way.”They go on to write,“Think of the last book you read or a movie you recently watched. Did you reach a point where...2024-01-1616 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationHate Hard, the Beer Poems, and Building the Life You Want
I’ve been going through holes of Reels and short-form videos at night lately, watching people remodel their house or home, decorate for holidays, and then, um, being an Amazon affiliate.At the same time, a lot of the writers I work with are having BIG DOUBT MOMENTS as they query and read Twitter/X and see authors behaving badly or agents behaving badly or people getting yelled at for sucking at something.And they are scared.Now, there’s one part of this in that you need to put stuff into perspective. Losi...2023-12-2121 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationDig Deep and Baby Owl in the Christmas TreeHow to Dig Deeper in Your ScenesA lot of time, a writer will get feedback and it’ll say something vague-ish like, “Dig deeper.”And then the author cries or gets angry or feels an emotion that no author wants to feel.The thing is that this advice is sort of vague, but what it usually means is:1. You have no setting in your scene or chapter or story;2. Your character doesn’t react to things and then act on thin...2023-12-1516 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationWHY YOU WANT TO NOT USE ING VERBS AND IF I WERE A FISH IS THE BEST SONG EVERWhen I was a baby newspaper reporter, one of my editors, Grady Holloway, used to call me over to his desk. A lot.I loved Grady. He had this great, grizzly beard before it was cool, wore a dirty hat, had been married to an ambassador’s daughter, rode horses, drove cab in Colorado when all the beat poets and journalists were out there, and liked noir mysteries.But whenever he pulled me over to his big metal desk in the newsroom, I knew that I was about to get advised.“Cici,” he’d say wi...2023-12-0818 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationRandom Life Advice: Let’s Look At Each Other It Makes Us Better WritersWhen I go to classrooms on book tour or for school visits, teachers (or kids prompted by teachers) always ask me what the most important skill is for being a writer.And I tell them a couple things.No, it’s not about what a comma splice is or the coolness of objective correlatives.It’s really a two part answer:Notice what people are doing, their mannerisms, how they act, interact, hold their heads.
Live the biggest life you can, take opportunities, feel things, have adventures.That’s what makes a diff...2023-12-0116 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationA Simple Trick to Write Better: Get Rid of the NodsWhen I help writers with their stories, a lot of the times one of the things I tell them is that they need to dig more deeply.They need to dig more deeply into the emotion and feel it with the characters.They need to dig more deeply into the scene and see the characters there, interacting with their surroundings and each other.And a lot of us writers in our early drafts of story, don’t dig all that deeply because we’re too busy making sure we get words on the page...2023-11-1617 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationDive Into The Conflict and Make Your Book Blurb SingTwo weeks ago, we started talking about how to write a book blurb for your story and began with the first step, which is a hook. You can check that out here. And the second step is here.So, if the first step is creating that hook, the second step, according to Shayla Raquel is dangling the characters. Then our next step is what Shaun has no problem doing in real life with anyone other than his own daughter, dive into the conflict.So:Create hook
Dangle characters
Dive into conflictWhat does “dive...2023-11-0922 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationBaby bears are the new bison and how to write a book blurbLast week, we started talking about how to write a book blurb for your story and began with the first step, which is a hook. You can check that out here.So, if the first step is creating that hook, the second step, according to Shayla Raquel is dangling the characters.What does that mean?It means that the thing that propels your story needs to be in your book blurb.Or as Shayla says, “Your characters are the story.”You only have 150 to 200 words in that blurb, so you...2023-11-0318 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationDo Not Shart: How to Make Your Book Blurb. Plus, Trippy Art About Dragon IntimacyI’ve decided it’s time for a new series of podcast now that we whacked character lies down to a mush of sobs.There are all different ways to write these blurbs and make them tantalizing to readers, but there are set steps. We’re going to focus on the first one here.First let’s explain what a book blurb is, right? It’s just the description of your novel that goes on the sell page on Amazon or other places. It’s short. It’s sexy. It’s enticing. You use it on social media...2023-10-2724 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationSmuggling Giraffe Poop and Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies: Character Misbelief is Hot When You Write NovelsSo far we’ve talked (and written) twice about character misbeliefs. Then we took a baby break because we’re like that, but we’re back on it now, my friends.Those earlier posts are linked below.First off to recap, the big lie or character misbelief in your story is what motivates them or causes them to act in a certain way. If your character grows in a positive way, during the story, they usually realize by the end that the lie was a big ole lie and not a glorious simple truth and voila—...2023-10-1922 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationHappily Ever After or Happy For NowIt’s a romance brawl. Not really. But it’s a bit of one. And it comes down to this:Does a romance have to have Happily Ever After or Happy For Now to be a romance?Does there need to be a positive, happy ending in order for a book to be a romance?Let’s talk about it.Unspoken agreement with the readerWRITING TIP OF THE PODIf your story isn’t happily ever after, it may be a love story, but it might be hard...2023-10-1325 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationNeither of Us are Lookers, Seventh Grade Insults and Character MisbeliefsOn our last podcast and post, we talked about the character misbelief, which is basically what the character in your story believes that isn’t real or true.The big component of this is that your character believes this big lie about life or about themselves because of something that hurt them in the past.The thing that hurt them in the past that causes that big untruth that dictates their lives is often called a wound.Whew. So much lingo.False belief/big lie
Wound/thing that hurt them in the pastSo...2023-09-2926 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationYOUR BIG LIE OR CHARACTER’S MISBELIEFWe’re doing a hybrid writing tip and podcast this week.All the important stuff is written down here. All the fun stuff and Shaun aka The Talent is in the podcast where we talk about this important writing stuff and other things.So, let’s get started.The big lie or the character’s misbelief in your story is a major key to your character’s story arc, which is basically the emotional change and development of who you character is.The lie drives the stupid or wonderful things that they do...2023-09-2220 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationStrange Storm THingsIt's a weird, wild, not PC live ride into strange storm things as we wait for Hurricane Lee. I tried to keep this podcast on track. I failed. Links We Mentionhttps://www.factretriever.com/hurricane-factshttps://bestlifeonline.com/storm-facts/http://www.theworldgeography.com/2011/04/top-8-weirdest-natural-disasters.htmlhttps://news.yahoo.com/7-weird-weather-phenomena-around-200000567.htmlSHOUT OUT TO STUBHY!
The snippet of our intro and outro music is only a snippet of this guy’s awesome talent. Many thanks to Kaustubh Pandav. You can check out a bit...2023-09-161h 01
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationRepurposing Spider Hairs Licking Rocks and Counting Dead People's Nose Hairs: Logic Matters and so do the Ig NoblesIn our random thought we talk all about the Ig Nobles. We don't transcribe that, so you'll have to listen. Sorry! But now, let’s talk about logic.When you are writing a novel and something doesn’t make sense—let’s say someone has brown eyes on page 2 and blue eyes on page 1—your editor if you have one is going to call you on that. If they don’t call you on that, the readers’ brain will hitch when they are reading.Editors are awesome.And what I’m saying is that w...2023-09-1521 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationIs Your Life a Stand Alone or A Series?Chuck Wendig has a piece on his blog, Terrible Minds, called "Series vs Standalone: Cage Match," which shows that Wendig is great at blog headlines and marketing.But his riff on a BlueSky conversation between a lot of writer elite. And it’s why he’s writing standalones mostly from now on instead of a series.Quickly, his reasons are:"Writing a series is depressing.
Publishers tend to give all the support only to that first book.
Standalones have new hope for ancillary rights
Standalones have a new shot at discoverability.
If that first book...2023-08-3016 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationYoung Woman at the Cocktail PartyA poem for Monday! 2023-08-2801 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationA Deep Dive into the StrangeThis week we tried to take a deep dive into the strange, but basically just told four stories. God only knows what went wrong, honestly. LINKS WE MENTION:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/8htqnq/what_strange_thing_have_you_witnessedexperienced/https://www.reddit.com/r/Weird/2023-08-191h 01
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationBrave Fart and Florida Man, Let's Talk About How Anger is Not The Enemy for Writers and Other HumansSo, a lot of self-help out there on TikTok and blogs is all about being . . . Well, happier, more efficient, better humans. We explore this all the time ourselves as we try to lead better lives, but one of the big things about this is that it sort of makes it seem like we live in a bubble where only we exist, that if we just work harder, better, more, in a different way, then we can get everything we need. That's what we talk about, plus brave fart and Florida Man headlines and writing.DOG T...2023-08-1522 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and MotivationHow to Stay Motivated Even If You’re a WriterHow to Stay Motivated Even If You’re a WriterA lot of writers hate writing. They sit and stare at the blank page or screen. They end up posting about how hard writing is, how torturous. Their post will get them a million likes.But it wasn’t always like that for that.Most of us write because at one point we really loved writing. Drawing? The same thing.There was a study of little kids in a school setting and these little kids really loved to draw. They chose it a...2023-08-0219 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivationfeel the awe and get through the tough timesAwe can get us through time times, scientists are saying. We'll check this theory out, define awe a bit, and obviously--get goofy.DOG THOUGHT FOR LIFESparty says: Slow down. You move too fast. Smell every tree and fire hydrant. LINKS WE MENTIONhttps://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_awe_can_help_us_through_tough_timeshttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-35200-whttps://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/six_ways_to_incorporate_awe_into_your_daily_lifeSHOUT OUT!...2023-07-2625 min
DUDE, NO!Dude No BeginsIt’s Dude, No! Our first full episode is September 6, but listen to find out what we’re all about. Hosts Shaun Farrar and Carrie Jone have been friends for years and years now, and they even got married. They met while Shaun was a cop and Carrie was a reporter, and bonded over their love...2022-08-2403 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People via AnchorThree Big Pieces To Building a StoryHi, welcome to Write Better Now, a podcast of quick, weekly writing tips meant to help you become a better writer. We’re your hosts with NYT bestselling author Carrie Jones and copyeditor extraordinaire Shaun Farrar. Thank you for joining us.
Story is basically a sequence of events, right? And to create a story you have to put that sequence of events together in a way that’s going to jive to the reader or for the reader.
To do that you need scenes, which make up that sequence of events.
A scene is t...2022-06-0806 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People via AnchorWriters Get Addicted to Things Not Just Drugs and Booze and CoffeeHi, welcome to Write Better Now, a podcast of quick, weekly writing tips meant to help you become a better writer. We’re your hosts with NYT bestselling author Carrie Jones and copyeditor extraordinaire Shaun Farrar. Thank you for joining us.
Sometimes us writers become a little stylistic. We get addictions. We might fall in love with the ellipses or certain words. Or, we might forget things like what a comma splice is or—gasp—what a sentence is.
Yes, I said it.
Sometimes writers forget what it is to make an awesome senten...2022-05-1807 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People via AnchorThe Big Scary Fear Monster Is Really the Rock Star of Your NovelHi, welcome to Write Better Now, a podcast of quick, weekly writing tips meant to help you become a better writer. We’re your hosts with NYT bestselling author Carrie Jones and copyeditor extraordinaire Shaun Farrar. Thank you for joining us.
One of my favorite writing exercises is super simple. I take a bunch of novelists and ask them:
What is your protagonists more afraid of happening than anything else in the whole freaking universe?
We authors talk a lot about what our characters wants are, their yearnings, their goals, but we often forget about th...2022-04-2704 minDogs Are Smarter Than People via AnchorDon’t Be Chunky – Put Your Dialogue in ParagraphsHi, welcome to Write Better Now, a podcast of quick, weekly writing tips meant to help you become a better writer. We’re your hosts with NYT bestselling author Carrie Jones and copyeditor extraordinaire Shaun Farrar. Thank you for joining us.
It’s a super quick writing tip again today. Ready?
When you’re writing dialogue, make every new speaker a new paragraph. If you’re writing kids books? You might as well just keep each dialogue a paragraph of their own?
Why? Our brains are wired to read each paragraph as a new spea...2022-04-2008 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People via AnchorQuick Grammar Break Some Day vs SomedayHi, welcome to Write Better Now, a podcast of quick, weekly writing tips meant to help you become a better writer. We’re your hosts with NYT bestselling author Carrie Jones and copyeditor extraordinaire Shaun Farrar. Thank you for joining us.
No lofty talk about exposition or your story’s theme this week. Instead, we’re going back to basics with an easy grammar tip.
Some day (two words) vs. someday (one word). It’s a debate that happens on the page over and over.
Here’s how it works.
Someday (one word...2022-04-1303 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People via AnchorThree Hot Tips To Make Awesome First PagesHi, welcome to Write Better Now, a podcast of quick, weekly writing tips meant to help you become a better writer. We’re your hosts with NYT bestselling author Carrie Jones and copyeditor extraordinaire Shaun Farrar. Thank you for joining us.
Carrie has been talking to a lot of her authors lately about the beginning of their stories and how to make them awesome. And Carrie has a lot of tips for the writers she works with, but we’re going to be fast here.
Make it Tense AF
You don’t want to mak...2022-03-2304 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People via AnchorThe Simplest Writing Tip to Make You a Better WriterHi, welcome to Write Better Now, a podcast of quick, weekly writing tips meant to help you become a better writer. We’re your hosts with NYT bestselling author Carrie Jones and copyeditor extraordinaire Shaun Farrar. Thank you for joining us.
Here’s a really simple writing tip to make you a better writer.
I (Carrie) talk a lot to my writers about distancing words, which are words in writing that keep the reader away from the action. Those are words like:
Saw,
Heard,
Noticed,
Smelled,
And they take away from the immediacy of t...2022-03-1606 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People via AnchorNever Shut Up: You Get To Write History TooHi, welcome to Write Better Now, a podcast of quick, weekly writing tips meant to help you become a better writer. We’re your hosts with NYT bestselling author Carrie Jones and copyeditor extraordinaire Shaun Farrar. Thank you for joining us.
What is your story? Really? It’s more than you’re a writer. You’re a citizen of your community, your country, your world. You might be a certain race, religion, a sex (or not). You might have a faith, an economic status, a job. You might have hobbies, traits.
But you might not think yo...2022-03-0209 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People via AnchorOther Ways to Find the Theme in Your NovelHi, welcome to Write Better Now, a podcast of quick, weekly writing tips meant to help you become a better writer. We’re your hosts with NYT bestselling author Carrie Jones and copyeditor extraordinaire Shaun Farrar. Thank you for joining us.
So, over here on WRITE BETTER NOW, we’ve had a three-post series about how to develop your theme and what the hell even in a theme and blah, blah, blah.
This last post is really just focusing quickly on how to develop your theme.
Step One:
Think what the hell...2022-02-2310 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People via AnchorI lost my book's damn theme now what do i doHi, welcome to Write Better Now, a podcast of quick, weekly writing tips meant to help you become a better writer. We’re your hosts with NYT bestselling author Carrie Jones and copyeditor extraordinaire Shaun Farrar. Thank you for joining us.
Last week on our podcast we talked about theme, and we’re going back there again.
We know! We know! So scary. Why risk it again? We risk it for you, dear listener. Like a matyr-parent from the early 2000s, we’re writing your college essays and yelling at the soccer coach and doing the wo...2022-02-1609 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People via AnchorNo More Nodding in Books - Writing Tips About Making You A Better WriterHi, welcome to Write Better Now, a podcast of quick, weekly writing tips meant to help you become a better writer. We’re your hosts with NYT bestselling author Carrie Jones and copyeditor extraordinaire Shaun Farrar. Thank you for joining us.
One of the big things that Carrie sees in stories a lot is nodding.
Here’s what it looks like:
Shaun nodded. “I agree that’s a lot nodding.”Carrie nodded in affirmation. “Yes. There really is.”For a moment they sat there and then Shaun smiled. “You want to get out of this excerpt and...2022-01-2607 min
Dogs Are Smarter Than People via AnchorPassive Aggressive Much? And How to Become More Awesome in Just 30 Minutes a DayOver on the random thought part of the podcast, we hear about Carrie being passive-aggressive at the campground bathroom, Shaun sing, and random people at Smokey's Barbecue and Lobster.
But here is the more intellectual stuff. Um. Slightly more intellectual stuff?
This guy Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book Outliersand in it he outlines his belief that if you practice something for 10,000 hours and do that in a deliberate way, then you’ll become a top performer.
Who are the outliers? They are the best and the brightest.
We don’t want you to...2019-09-0324 min