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Dialogue: Interview with Romance, Fantasy and Sci-Fi Author Alyce Johnson
Welcome back to The Writing Apothecary and to our interview all about Dialogue with romance, fantasy and sci-fi writer Alyce Johnson. In our chat we have a cover: How important dialogue is to a story. What classifies as bad dialogue. If a story can survive without dialogue. How Alyce uses tension in her stories. I had so much fun and her novella was a brilliant read. If you love this episode feel free to send it to someone who would love to listen to it. Alyce’s BioAlyce moved to Victoria from sleepy Tasmania in 2013 to attend the Victorian College of the Arts and study Screenwriting, completing her bachelors in…
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Dialogue: Bad writing and character
Welcome back to The Writing Apothecary and our last lesson on dialogue. I’d like to think that we all agree on how good dialogue is and what its purpose can be. You can use dialogue to make a story more lifelike and really it’s the part that allows your characters to speak for themselves. In real life, you can’t really get to know someone unless you talk to them and it’s the same principle for fiction. Your readers will decide if they like your character just by what they say and then they will make the assumption of whether or not they want to actually spend time with them. The…
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Dialogue: conventions, indirect and direct dialogue
Welcome back to The Writing Apothecary and to our next lesson on dialogue. Today we’re going to dig into the conventions of dialogue and have a look at indirect and direct speech. I think this is such an important aspect of writing dialogue. Without I think it’s harder to understand how to write it and how to get it down on the page. We all know that when we are reading a story there are conventions that are required when it comes to signifying who is speaking. The main points in today’s lesson:– Dialogue conventions include: quotation marks, new paragraphs, and tags.– Using conventions consistently will make sure that your…
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Welcome to Dialogue
Welcome back to another lesson and a new month. We’re going to explore dialogue, a topic that can make or break your story. We’re going to look at the purpose of dialogue, indirect and direct dialogue, bad dialogue and conventions when it comes to dialogue. Today is a little introduction and some of the important points we cover in this episode: It’s exactly why a reader is so invested. Your character moves through the story with the ability to gives us dialogue, whether it’s indirect or direct. Dialogue is everything in fiction that isn’t narration. Two main ways to show dialogue: Summary and Scene. Summary is where the action is…
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Plot: An Interview with YA Urban Fantasy Author Sarah Wendt
Welcome back to another interview for The Writing Apothecary and our last chat about Plot. It’s seriously been so fun to walk through this all with you. It’s been both eye-opening and invigorating for me as well as I am sure it has been for you. Plot is important but in the end it all comes back to character. Sarah and I have an amazing chat about all things plot, her WIP Acanthus and just how characters and plot are inseparable. In today’s chat we cover: Just how Sarah breaks her plot down. How her plot arrived and she wrote it. And how she approaches her plotting. Sarah’s BioSarah’s childhood fascination with…
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Plot: The Structure
Episode 023 Welcome back to the last lesson on plot. Once you’ve got your major dramatical question there needs to be a structure to support it and it might sound simple, but sometimes it gets lost with everything that is going on. Every plot has a beginning, middle and ending. Plot and structure are inseparable. You can’t have one without the other. The main plot points of today’s lesson: The beginning has three key points It has to drop your reader into the middle of the action. It has to provide all of the background information to get the reader up to speed. And it has to establish your major…
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Plot: Drama, real life and plot steps
Episode 022 Welcome back to another episode of The Writing Apothecary, this is a week at looking at drama, real life and plot steps when we start to play around with plot. Every plot has a major dramatical question that is either a yes or a no, with the few cases where it’s a maybe. It’s the central-most organised force in a novel, no matter what you’re writing, there will always be a single question that will need to be answered and your plot? The main points in today’s lesson:– Your protagonist is your most fleshed out, cohesive and dimensional character.– They need a desire.– Their desire leads to their…
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Welcome to Plot
Episode 021 Hey guys, welcome back to a new month and a new topic. Drum roll please! This month we’re tackling plot and like all fo the previous lessons this is just a step that we’re building into our tool box. Today we’re going to dig into a little bit of an introduction about plot. We all know that they’re really important and that thy serve to be an essential part of the story, but they’re not what makes your readers pick up your book. It’s the characters and they’re extraordinary snippet of life that you’re writing about. The major points of today’s podcast are: Plot is the core part…
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POV: An interview with writer and photographer Av
Welcome back to The Writing Apothecary and today I have a treat for you. We’re sitting down to chat about Point of View with another dear friend of mine, Av. We met during our Writing and Publishing degree and is always a wealth of knowledge. Today we chat about all things point of view, focalisation and cats, because what is a writer without their cat? We go into detail about characters because, down to the wire, all of our storytelling comes back to our characters and just what point of view means to her. It also is a good look at the creative brain of something who is neurotypical and…
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POV: Distance and Focalisation
Episode 019 Welcome back to The Writing Apothecary podcast and the last theory less on Point of View. Today we’re looking at Distance and Focalisation. Just a word of warning, focalisation is a lot to wrap your head around it and I feel like every writer needs to understand to get the most out of their writing. The major points of today’s podcast are: There are two kinds of distances: Emotional and Time. Emotional distance is the distance that readers sense between the narrator and the characters. It’s a distance that affects how close the reader feels to a character. Time distance, our readers assume that the events of the…
