Would you like a collection of meditations specific to the writing process to appear in upcoming podcast episodes? Let me know! Reach out on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1 Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind

Would you like a collection of meditations specific to the writing process to appear in upcoming podcast episodes? Let me know! Reach out on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1</a> Become a patron today! Visit <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. <a href="http://www.littlesyllables.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.littlesyllables.com</a> Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind

Input, Please!

Join me as I take you through the thought process of completing a first draft. Everything was recorded in the moment! “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1 Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind

Join me as I take you through the thought process of completing a first draft. Everything was recorded in the moment! “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1</a> Become a patron today! Visit <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. <a href="http://www.littlesyllables.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.littlesyllables.com</a> Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind

On the Way to First Draft

Simple Carries IMPACT! #HEARTSTOPPER

“Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1 Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage.  [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the show Writing in the Tiny House. I am on a mission to abolish the idea of the tormented artist by sharing what I know about writing, publishing, and just life in general, so that you can have the tools to produce the content that you have been eager to write. If you have the steps in place, you can produce a short story in as few as three months or a novel in as few as 18 months. And hopefully through the ideas in this podcast, you will have the wisdom to adjust that timeline if you need to. I am Devin Davis, the guy who lives and writes in a tiny house in Northern Utah. Thank you for tuning in and please enjoy today's episode of Writing in the Tiny House.  [00:01:00] Hello, and welcome to today's episode of Writing in the Tiny House. My goodness friends. It is toward the end of June. Can you even believe it? This has been the most eventful June in the history of ever for me, at least, usually June is kind of that forgotten month in the summer before all of the vacations happen. And before the weather gets really, really hot, and it seems like I tend to forget that June even exists. However, with pride and with different things like that, this June has been crazy busy and it has been super eventful. Please tune into all of the other episodes this month. There's like three, all of them. And yeah, they've been super personal. They have been very inspirational at the same time. When it comes down to the nitty gritty of writing, that's kind of not what this month has really been all about. So today we are just going to do a bit of an [00:02:00] update as far as writing goes. And little bit of tips and tricks with some stuff that I have learned as I've been compiling some of these more special episodes. So you get to know that as of today, I have finished the first draft of Tiz which I have found out because of its word count is a modest novella. So it's about I think, 23,000 words, which makes it a novella according to the measurement of some. And that is super exciting. It means that I can delve right into editing and I prefer editing to drafting anyway. And so I have been itching to get this far. The next episode that we have with Writing in the Tiny House is going to be more of a clip episode that brings you along for the ride with Tiz, with doing this first draft. That is something that I have never done on this show before. It is nothing that I have heard of in a podcast episode anyway.[00:03:00]  And so it should be a pretty good experience. And I'm really eager to share that with you. Sometimes it's fun to talk about what the steps are, what they look like. Sometimes the mental tracks that we go down and the thought processes that we have along the way, and other times, it's fun to demonstrate what all of those things actually look like. And so while I have been drafting Tiz I have been recording thoughts and just feelings and challenges that I have encountered along the way and this way, as I compile another clip episode, you can kind of get the idea in real time, sort of in real time in the moment like live in the moment, but you understand what I'm saying? So Tiz the first draft is finished and I will keep you abreast as to what the other steps look like, just because it is going to require a lot of editing. They [00:04:00] all require a lot of editing, but this is the roughiest rough draft I have ever done in my life. And that is the whole point of today's episode. So I have learned the value of dictation. I can dictate four times as many words that I can write and so this doesn't mean that I still have two hours to simply dictate because that is really overwhelming. And that's not what I can handle. What it does mean though, is I can dictate the same amount of stuff that I could write in two hours in 30 minutes instead. And because I am a person who has no free time, and this is something that really stresses me out, being able to dictate what I would do in a day in 30 minutes, frees up a lot of the stress and gives me a lot more of my time back to me. And this matters just because I tend to be a person to stress [00:05:00] and worry about a lot of things. I also don't really allow myself to rest very much and I am prone to burnout. So to know that drafting is only going to be 30 minutes. It doesn't take me as long to fall into the groove of drafting. When I am blabbing to myself as a voice note into my phone, as it does, if, if I were to sit down and write, it takes longer for me to get into the flow and. Like I said, I can crash through this a lot faster. The draft is rough. I'm not going to lie about that. But to me, the magic of writing actually comes through editing more than it does through drafting. And so I'm eager to take this to the next place just because it requires a different part of my brain. It requires different energy. And I have been eager to get into that energy with this novella with Tiz. TIS has turned out to be a very special project. I am [00:06:00] eager to get it ready and to get it released. I'm also eager to start the next project, which could be another novella. It may actually end up being a novel called Mateo. It is the next installment of tales from Laar. So be sure to tune in for more updates with that. So we all noticed, I'm sure that the title of today's episode is eat your frog. Mark Twain once said when he was talking about being productive, he said this, if it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it's your job to eat two frogs. It's best to eat the biggest one first. I am a fan of these fun little sayings when it comes to being productive in whatever else. This is mark Twain's way [00:07:00] of saying whatever is the hardest for you to do prioritize it and get it done first. So for me, the priority right now, Is actually taking care of myself and allowing me to rest. And so just a, a review of some of the things that I do in my day, I have a full-time job and I have found out that unless I come home and rest for about an hour and a half, I am really going to be grumpy and hate the things that I work on for the remainder of the evening. So. The first thing that I need to do that is a priority above all of the rest is to allow myself some R and R. However, the next thing that I need to prioritize. So it is my job in a way in the evenings, the frogs that I get to eat , which is a really unpleasant way of saying writing and getting my drafts done.[00:08:00]  But the thing that makes me the very happiest is making progress in my first drafts and making progress in my projects. And so that is the next thing that I have to do first. The idea is get the horrible thing done in the morning so that it doesn't ruin the rest of your day. And if you need to eat two frogs eat the biggest one first. So to me, writing is important. Writing makes me happy and all of these other things that I also do, like the podcast. I love this podcast. I love writing more though. So, because I've discovered this trick of dictating. and because I can get as much done in less time, it is less of a commitment for me to write. And so it is easier for me to simply get that done to simply get 30 minutes of writing done before I do all of the rest, I had to record a lot of things with the podcast today. You can hear that I revamped the [00:09:00] intro and at the end of this, you're going to hear that I revamped the outro and yeah, that was the smaller frog. So I got the writing done and now I did the podcast editing and now I am recording a podcast and soon I am going to be recording a, a second podcast that I do for work. So that is the little tip and trick for today. If your job is to eat a frog, it is best to get it done in the morning. And if your job is to eat two frogs, it is best to start with the biggest one first.  And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte," Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my [00:10:00] writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

“Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1</a> Become a patron today! Visit <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. <a href="http://www.littlesyllables.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.littlesyllables.com</a> Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage.  [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the show Writing in the Tiny House. I am on a mission to abolish the idea of the tormented artist by sharing what I know about writing, publishing, and just life in general, so that you can have the tools to produce the content that you have been eager to write. If you have the steps in place, you can produce a short story in as few as three months or a novel in as few as 18 months. And hopefully through the ideas in this podcast, you will have the wisdom to adjust that timeline if you need to. I am Devin Davis, the guy who lives and writes in a tiny house in Northern Utah. Thank you for tuning in and please enjoy today's episode of Writing in the Tiny House.  [00:01:00] Hello, and welcome to today's episode of Writing in the Tiny House. My goodness friends. It is toward the end of June. Can you even believe it? This has been the most eventful June in the history of ever for me, at least, usually June is kind of that forgotten month in the summer before all of the vacations happen. And before the weather gets really, really hot, and it seems like I tend to forget that June even exists. However, with pride and with different things like that, this June has been crazy busy and it has been super eventful. Please tune into all of the other episodes this month. There's like three, all of them. And yeah, they've been super personal. They have been very inspirational at the same time. When it comes down to the nitty gritty of writing, that's kind of not what this month has really been all about. So today we are just going to do a bit of an [00:02:00] update as far as writing goes. And little bit of tips and tricks with some stuff that I have learned as I've been compiling some of these more special episodes. So you get to know that as of today, I have finished the first draft of Tiz which I have found out because of its word count is a modest novella. So it's about I think, 23,000 words, which makes it a novella according to the measurement of some. And that is super exciting. It means that I can delve right into editing and I prefer editing to drafting anyway. And so I have been itching to get this far. The next episode that we have with Writing in the Tiny House is going to be more of a clip episode that brings you along for the ride with Tiz, with doing this first draft. That is something that I have never done on this show before. It is nothing that I have heard of in a podcast episode anyway.[00:03:00]  And so it should be a pretty good experience. And I'm really eager to share that with you. Sometimes it's fun to talk about what the steps are, what they look like. Sometimes the mental tracks that we go down and the thought processes that we have along the way, and other times, it's fun to demonstrate what all of those things actually look like. And so while I have been drafting Tiz I have been recording thoughts and just feelings and challenges that I have encountered along the way and this way, as I compile another clip episode, you can kind of get the idea in real time, sort of in real time in the moment like live in the moment, but you understand what I'm saying? So Tiz the first draft is finished and I will keep you abreast as to what the other steps look like, just because it is going to require a lot of editing. They [00:04:00] all require a lot of editing, but this is the roughiest rough draft I have ever done in my life. And that is the whole point of today's episode. So I have learned the value of dictation. I can dictate four times as many words that I can write and so this doesn't mean that I still have two hours to simply dictate because that is really overwhelming. And that's not what I can handle. What it does mean though, is I can dictate the same amount of stuff that I could write in two hours in 30 minutes instead. And because I am a person who has no free time, and this is something that really stresses me out, being able to dictate what I would do in a day in 30 minutes, frees up a lot of the stress and gives me a lot more of my time back to me. And this matters just because I tend to be a person to stress [00:05:00] and worry about a lot of things. I also don't really allow myself to rest very much and I am prone to burnout. So to know that drafting is only going to be 30 minutes. It doesn't take me as long to fall into the groove of drafting. When I am blabbing to myself as a voice note into my phone, as it does, if, if I were to sit down and write, it takes longer for me to get into the flow and. Like I said, I can crash through this a lot faster. The draft is rough. I'm not going to lie about that. But to me, the magic of writing actually comes through editing more than it does through drafting. And so I'm eager to take this to the next place just because it requires a different part of my brain. It requires different energy. And I have been eager to get into that energy with this novella with Tiz. TIS has turned out to be a very special project. I am [00:06:00] eager to get it ready and to get it released. I'm also eager to start the next project, which could be another novella. It may actually end up being a novel called Mateo. It is the next installment of tales from Laar. So be sure to tune in for more updates with that. So we all noticed, I'm sure that the title of today's episode is eat your frog. Mark Twain once said when he was talking about being productive, he said this, if it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it's your job to eat two frogs. It's best to eat the biggest one first. I am a fan of these fun little sayings when it comes to being productive in whatever else. This is mark Twain's way [00:07:00] of saying whatever is the hardest for you to do prioritize it and get it done first. So for me, the priority right now, Is actually taking care of myself and allowing me to rest. And so just a, a review of some of the things that I do in my day, I have a full-time job and I have found out that unless I come home and rest for about an hour and a half, I am really going to be grumpy and hate the things that I work on for the remainder of the evening. So. The first thing that I need to do that is a priority above all of the rest is to allow myself some R and R. However, the next thing that I need to prioritize. So it is my job in a way in the evenings, the frogs that I get to eat , which is a really unpleasant way of saying writing and getting my drafts done.[00:08:00]  But the thing that makes me the very happiest is making progress in my first drafts and making progress in my projects. And so that is the next thing that I have to do first. The idea is get the horrible thing done in the morning so that it doesn't ruin the rest of your day. And if you need to eat two frogs eat the biggest one first. So to me, writing is important. Writing makes me happy and all of these other things that I also do, like the podcast. I love this podcast. I love writing more though. So, because I've discovered this trick of dictating. and because I can get as much done in less time, it is less of a commitment for me to write. And so it is easier for me to simply get that done to simply get 30 minutes of writing done before I do all of the rest, I had to record a lot of things with the podcast today. You can hear that I revamped the [00:09:00] intro and at the end of this, you're going to hear that I revamped the outro and yeah, that was the smaller frog. So I got the writing done and now I did the podcast editing and now I am recording a podcast and soon I am going to be recording a, a second podcast that I do for work. So that is the little tip and trick for today. If your job is to eat a frog, it is best to get it done in the morning. And if your job is to eat two frogs, it is best to start with the biggest one first.  And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte," Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> to support both my [00:10:00] writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

Eat Your Frog!

Sentiments about Pride! Also, Michael Allen shares with us the simple story of magic that came about in his life after he came out. Michael's IG and Facebook page: @themichaelallen What are the small things that are getting in the way of your creativity? How can you take charge of that? “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1 Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind

Sentiments about Pride! Also, Michael Allen shares with us the simple story of magic that came about in his life after he came out. Michael's IG and Facebook page: @themichaelallen What are the small things that are getting in the way of your creativity? How can you take charge of that? “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1</a> Become a patron today! Visit <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. <a href="http://www.littlesyllables.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.littlesyllables.com</a> Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind

Big Gay Magic!

Know how your people are getting around, and what they layout of the land looks like in order to make things like travel more believable. “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1 Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage.

Know how your people are getting around, and what they layout of the land looks like in order to make things like travel more believable. “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1</a> Become a patron today! Visit <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. <a href="http://www.littlesyllables.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.littlesyllables.com</a> Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage.

Research, Part III (Geography!)

One of June's special episodes celebrating Pride.

One of June's special episodes celebrating Pride.

Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are!

Elves. “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1 Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage. [00:00:00] So let's just settle a debate right now. Tolkien's elves are better than all other elves, right? I'll let you decide. Today. We are moving into part two of our mini series of research, as it pertains to fiction on Writing in the Tiny House. Hello. Hello. Hello. And welcome back to the show. Welcome to Writing in the Tiny House. [00:00:49] I am your host Devin Davis, and I live in a tiny house in Northern Utah, and I write stuff and tell you how to also write stuff. So the point of this podcast is to give you the steps and the insight and the advice needed so that you can produce a short story in as little as three months or a novel in as little as 18 months, and hopefully have the vision and foresight and wisdom necessary to adjust that timeline if you need to. Most projects are not done in that short amount of time. Last week, we kicked it off with research and fiction and how it is good if you are writing historical fiction and you are including nitty gritty details of a particular event in history that you are adding a fictitious point of view or fictitious related experience, or if you are changing that point in time completely or modifying it somehow.  [00:01:49] That it is good, it is common courtesy to include resources and references that you might've used to gather your information. With fiction you're not required to do a works cited page, but there's always the possibility of footnotes or even just author's notes at the end of your sections at the end of your chapters or whatever. [00:02:09] And if your novel does some stylistic stuff, like at the beginning of each chapter includes quotes by an important person in history or current day, it's important to include who said that and possibly when and where. So today we are moving on just with how to research as it pertains to fiction. [00:02:33] Like I said, if you're doing historical fiction, refer to the other episode, if you are doing something else, then go ahead and perk up the whole point of fiction is to create an experience that can be immersive and believable. [00:02:48] And sometimes it requires polling knowledge and theory and practices and cultures out of our real world and implementing them in some way into your own writing. So for those of you who are new to the game, I am a part of many different Facebook groups and there has been some debate, it seems weekly, probably not weekly, but monthly on elves. And it seems that everybody thinks that all elves belong to J R R Tolkien and they are tall and they are beautiful and they are immortal. And we forget that before Tolkien did that with the Lord of the rings, elves we're little horrible creatures. [00:03:30] And they were like little goblins and monsters and they fit into that category. So I bring this up just because sometimes we feel that there are cold, hard rules with how we are engaging our audience and how we are writing our stuff. And there are hard, like there are cold, hard rules. However, when it comes to elves and it comes to magic in general and it comes to any of these other particular things with elves, [00:04:04] Elves come from basic lore of different cultures in this world. So do dwarves, so do fairies. So do like Druids and such. It can be really good to investigate and to become better educated on your own as to where these things came from and how you want to further run with that, or if you want, instead to just invent your own thing. [00:04:34] I think about like Percy Jackson and Rick Riordan's implementation of Greek history or Greek mythology and Roman mythology and how he adds a modern spin on how those things come out. And sometimes I think that the books themselves are a little bit heavy. [00:04:58] Some of the mythology and some of it could be weeded out, but I appreciate what he's done. And it's obvious that he has done research and is familiar with those things. and even though he did not come up with a lot of the things that he mentions in his books and a lot of the iconic characters of [00:05:19] greek and Roman mythology, you can tell that he's still paying homage to those things. And he brings in some of his own stuff too. So when it comes to like elves and monsters and things, it's okay to know that not all elves are tall and beautiful. Not all elves have to be little monsters. Elves can be what you want, but if you choose to call those monsters, elves, you are representing a certain thing and it is really good for you to know what you are representing as good for. [00:05:49] To know that those words mean something to someone. And if that is not the picture you are trying to create, it's okay to try for something else. So when you are going through and gathering your information like I said, with fiction, you're not required to do like a work cited page. And for me, I like to be educated in a very general way, just so I can Bring some of these different elements into my own world. [00:06:19] And so when I say educated in a general way, what I mean is many of my stories in my world of late, or that I am building with these short stories and with some of the novels that I still have in progress, just because it seems as a writer, we get to have like 10 works in progress. They take place in a certain time period. [00:06:39] That time period is similar to an American or European industrial revolution. And I choose to keep their calendars and their years and stuff. I choose to have that kept in a similar way, just so I can actually have years and dates that represent a specific time period that is reflective of our world too. [00:07:02] And I wanted dress and appearance and culture to be represented of that. Just. Convey a specific time and place, or at least give a nod to a specific time and place. And so many of the stories that I'm writing in this world take place in what would be a late Victorian or early Edwardian equivalent of time. [00:07:30] And so. This means I get to know what a frock is and I get to know what Crystalens are. And and just all of these things that pertain to dress the ins and outs of corsets. I mean, I never thought in a million years that I would be researching corsets and I, I do all of this just so I can bring that familiarity and Draw from those ideas and pull the reader into the world. [00:07:59] It is okay to have some familiar elements in your writing if you choose to. And if you have those things already, it is easier for a reader to relate. So I encourage you to think about your work in progress and to come to a similar conscious decision on how you can pull from those familiar things. I think about the Bobiverse books, which is a science fiction series and how. The author, pulls so much scientific theory into his books. [00:08:35] And his books are fast paced. They are light hearted. They are a riot, they are fun and they challenge, or at least they show a possibility of what things would look like with artificial intelligence, with sentience artificial intelligence, and it's fun to have a sentient being exist entirely in a virtual world and only express outwardly through machines is. [00:09:01] A fun idea. And in order to do that accurately, he has had to show his own familiarity with some different scientific theory and with his understanding of chemistry and manufacturing of stuff and the physics of it all in a zero gravity environment. And so when you go through, make sure that, you know, if you are bringing in weapons or specific spells or references to LOR that comes from other cultures, make sure that you are doing that with sensitivity. Some people think that fairies and Fay and faithful and whatever else are all just fairies, that they are all like Sarah J mass fairies. [00:09:52] And the thing is, that's not right, even though they are like small Woodland creatures and many of them have wings, a lot of these ways to spell fairy or Fe or whatever. Ha. Some cultural background and I personally feel it's important to know what that background is before we just kind of dive into it, like spelling magic with a C at the end or magic with a K at the end, just make sure you know what you're doing so that you're not. [00:10:23] Blundering into some form of an insensitive situation. So that's it today. Be sure to tune in next week, as we further explore research, as it pertains to fiction, have a good day, guys. We'll see you then. [00:10:38]  [00:10:38] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

Elves. “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1</a> Become a patron today! Visit <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. <a href="http://www.littlesyllables.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.littlesyllables.com</a> Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage. [00:00:00] So let's just settle a debate right now. Tolkien's elves are better than all other elves, right? I'll let you decide. Today. We are moving into part two of our mini series of research, as it pertains to fiction on Writing in the Tiny House. Hello. Hello. Hello. And welcome back to the show. Welcome to Writing in the Tiny House. [00:00:49] I am your host Devin Davis, and I live in a tiny house in Northern Utah, and I write stuff and tell you how to also write stuff. So the point of this podcast is to give you the steps and the insight and the advice needed so that you can produce a short story in as little as three months or a novel in as little as 18 months, and hopefully have the vision and foresight and wisdom necessary to adjust that timeline if you need to. Most projects are not done in that short amount of time. Last week, we kicked it off with research and fiction and how it is good if you are writing historical fiction and you are including nitty gritty details of a particular event in history that you are adding a fictitious point of view or fictitious related experience, or if you are changing that point in time completely or modifying it somehow.  [00:01:49] That it is good, it is common courtesy to include resources and references that you might've used to gather your information. With fiction you're not required to do a works cited page, but there's always the possibility of footnotes or even just author's notes at the end of your sections at the end of your chapters or whatever. [00:02:09] And if your novel does some stylistic stuff, like at the beginning of each chapter includes quotes by an important person in history or current day, it's important to include who said that and possibly when and where. So today we are moving on just with how to research as it pertains to fiction. [00:02:33] Like I said, if you're doing historical fiction, refer to the other episode, if you are doing something else, then go ahead and perk up the whole point of fiction is to create an experience that can be immersive and believable. [00:02:48] And sometimes it requires polling knowledge and theory and practices and cultures out of our real world and implementing them in some way into your own writing. So for those of you who are new to the game, I am a part of many different Facebook groups and there has been some debate, it seems weekly, probably not weekly, but monthly on elves. And it seems that everybody thinks that all elves belong to J R R Tolkien and they are tall and they are beautiful and they are immortal. And we forget that before Tolkien did that with the Lord of the rings, elves we're little horrible creatures. [00:03:30] And they were like little goblins and monsters and they fit into that category. So I bring this up just because sometimes we feel that there are cold, hard rules with how we are engaging our audience and how we are writing our stuff. And there are hard, like there are cold, hard rules. However, when it comes to elves and it comes to magic in general and it comes to any of these other particular things with elves, [00:04:04] Elves come from basic lore of different cultures in this world. So do dwarves, so do fairies. So do like Druids and such. It can be really good to investigate and to become better educated on your own as to where these things came from and how you want to further run with that, or if you want, instead to just invent your own thing. [00:04:34] I think about like Percy Jackson and Rick Riordan's implementation of Greek history or Greek mythology and Roman mythology and how he adds a modern spin on how those things come out. And sometimes I think that the books themselves are a little bit heavy. [00:04:58] Some of the mythology and some of it could be weeded out, but I appreciate what he's done. And it's obvious that he has done research and is familiar with those things. and even though he did not come up with a lot of the things that he mentions in his books and a lot of the iconic characters of [00:05:19] greek and Roman mythology, you can tell that he's still paying homage to those things. And he brings in some of his own stuff too. So when it comes to like elves and monsters and things, it's okay to know that not all elves are tall and beautiful. Not all elves have to be little monsters. Elves can be what you want, but if you choose to call those monsters, elves, you are representing a certain thing and it is really good for you to know what you are representing as good for. [00:05:49] To know that those words mean something to someone. And if that is not the picture you are trying to create, it's okay to try for something else. So when you are going through and gathering your information like I said, with fiction, you're not required to do like a work cited page. And for me, I like to be educated in a very general way, just so I can Bring some of these different elements into my own world. [00:06:19] And so when I say educated in a general way, what I mean is many of my stories in my world of late, or that I am building with these short stories and with some of the novels that I still have in progress, just because it seems as a writer, we get to have like 10 works in progress. They take place in a certain time period. [00:06:39] That time period is similar to an American or European industrial revolution. And I choose to keep their calendars and their years and stuff. I choose to have that kept in a similar way, just so I can actually have years and dates that represent a specific time period that is reflective of our world too. [00:07:02] And I wanted dress and appearance and culture to be represented of that. Just. Convey a specific time and place, or at least give a nod to a specific time and place. And so many of the stories that I'm writing in this world take place in what would be a late Victorian or early Edwardian equivalent of time. [00:07:30] And so. This means I get to know what a frock is and I get to know what Crystalens are. And and just all of these things that pertain to dress the ins and outs of corsets. I mean, I never thought in a million years that I would be researching corsets and I, I do all of this just so I can bring that familiarity and Draw from those ideas and pull the reader into the world. [00:07:59] It is okay to have some familiar elements in your writing if you choose to. And if you have those things already, it is easier for a reader to relate. So I encourage you to think about your work in progress and to come to a similar conscious decision on how you can pull from those familiar things. I think about the Bobiverse books, which is a science fiction series and how. The author, pulls so much scientific theory into his books. [00:08:35] And his books are fast paced. They are light hearted. They are a riot, they are fun and they challenge, or at least they show a possibility of what things would look like with artificial intelligence, with sentience artificial intelligence, and it's fun to have a sentient being exist entirely in a virtual world and only express outwardly through machines is. [00:09:01] A fun idea. And in order to do that accurately, he has had to show his own familiarity with some different scientific theory and with his understanding of chemistry and manufacturing of stuff and the physics of it all in a zero gravity environment. And so when you go through, make sure that, you know, if you are bringing in weapons or specific spells or references to LOR that comes from other cultures, make sure that you are doing that with sensitivity. Some people think that fairies and Fay and faithful and whatever else are all just fairies, that they are all like Sarah J mass fairies. [00:09:52] And the thing is, that's not right, even though they are like small Woodland creatures and many of them have wings, a lot of these ways to spell fairy or Fe or whatever. Ha. Some cultural background and I personally feel it's important to know what that background is before we just kind of dive into it, like spelling magic with a C at the end or magic with a K at the end, just make sure you know what you're doing so that you're not. [00:10:23] Blundering into some form of an insensitive situation. So that's it today. Be sure to tune in next week, as we further explore research, as it pertains to fiction, have a good day, guys. We'll see you then. [00:10:38]  [00:10:38] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

Research, Part 2 (Know Your Stuff)

Let's take a look at research as it partains to fiction! “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1 Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage.

Let's take a look at research as it partains to fiction! “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1</a> Become a patron today! Visit <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. <a href="http://www.littlesyllables.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.littlesyllables.com</a> Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage.

Research, Part I

You are in charge of your own marketing. For reals. “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1 Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage.

You are in charge of your own marketing. For reals. “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1</a> Become a patron today! Visit <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. <a href="http://www.littlesyllables.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.littlesyllables.com</a> Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage.

Pitfalls, Part 6 (Marketing

Author Devin Davis is a single father of three boys living in a tiny house in Northern Utah. He has a real goal to become a known author, and he's going to share with you that writing a book is completely possible regardless of the circumstances.

Vanity Pubs really aren't all that bad. “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1 Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage. [00:00:00] Last week, we concluded our little mini section of this series of pitfalls of writing with talking about layout with giving some good guidelines on how you should be laying out your text if you are self-publishing. Today, we are moving away from cover art design and text layout, and we are moving on to bigger things. [00:00:28] We are moving on to what happens after your book is done, or at least kind of. For this episode, we are going to be talking about vanity publishers today on Writing in the Tiny House. Hello. Hello. Hello, and welcome to the show. It is another Wednesday and I don't know about where you live, but here in Northern Utah, we've had another bout of cold weather. It snowed the other day. So we had to kick on our heaters again and here we are reliving like the eighth winter of this year.  [00:01:21] Welcome to Writing in the Tiny house. I am Devin Davis. I am the host of this show and I am the guy who writes things and tells you about it. And the whole point of this podcast is to give you the tools and the knowledge necessary to produce a short story in as little as three months, or to produce a novel in as little as 18 months, but to hopefully give you the wisdom and the foresight to adjust that timeline if you need. It is rare to produce a work that quickly, but it can be done. So today we are going to be talking about vanity publishers. I am a part of many different Facebook groups in this little world, and it seems almost every day or about every other day, somebody gets on the Facebook group and asks who should I pay to publish my book? [00:02:10] And here is like just upfront, this is a big misunderstanding. In traditional publishing if you want to be traditionally published, you will not pay any money for them to publish your book. In fact, With a traditional publisher, what they will do is they will take your book and pay you an advance on that book, and then hopefully pay you royalties after you have earned out your advance. Most authors don't earn out their advance by the way. If you are in a relationship with a company who says that publishing is what they do, but they are asking for you to pay them money, they are not a traditional publishing company. Traditional publishing companies, like I said, they pay you. [00:03:03] They pay you for your book. They pay you for the content that you are offering them so that everybody makes money through sales. A traditional publisher also will offer, well, we'll assign you to an editor and to a design team of some sort, and you may be involved with the design. You may be involved with the image production of your book. You may get to say yes or no to your book cover. You also may not. You may not even get to title your book. They may retitle your book, but all of that is the process of the traditional publisher. So we go through this, we have a book ready, we feel that it is time to take the next step towards releasing it out into the world for people to get it and to buy it and to read it. [00:03:52] And we see these other companies who are offering publishing services, but you get to pay them. There is nothing wrong or evil about these companies. I do feel that they are misleading sometimes, but if a company is offering publishing services in exchange for you giving them money, they are what we call vanity publishers. [00:04:19] And what a vanity publisher does is they offer you the services of doing the steps of self-publishing for you. When you publish under a vanity publisher, it will likely be under your name. You will have the rights to the book. And they may offer a few perks, like a newsletter or a magazine that circulates within their company. [00:04:44] Or they may have some connections here or there. They can probably get your book into some brick and mortar stores. I mean, there's always some form of a catch or a perk that is attractive to people who don't necessarily know what they're looking for. And none of that is bad. Some of that can be good to the appropriate customer. [00:05:06] If you are a person who has more money than they have time going through a vanity publisher, if you're not interested in querying and submitting to agents and going through the whole rigamarole of trying to traditionally publish sometimes approaching a vanity publisher as a way to do the self-publishing for you can be a very good thing just because self publishing takes even more time and it takes even more dedication and more brain real estate for your project. [00:05:45] And if you are a busy person, like I said, who has more money than they have time sometimes hiring a company to do those steps for you will save you a lot of headache and allow you to free up some space toward other projects that you have going. The issue is that a lot of the vanity publishers are not transparent about what they are offering. [00:06:09] Your book would still be considered self-published and That's just how that is. That's how vanity publishing works. Sometimes they will offer services to create a website for you. Sometimes they will offer a little bit of social media services, like. Offer you a spotlight on some of their platforms or offer you this we're that. [00:06:30] And the thing is all of those services are valuable. It is absolutely okay to have some recognition and to have some spotlight stuff on social media. Great to be able to tap into that type of a resource. The thing is with these vanity publishers, they usually cost a lot of money for you to take your book from start to finish. [00:06:52] Sometimes it can be upwards of $5,000. Sometimes it can be more than that. But the thing that they do offer is the connections to all of those different things. they know the artists, they know the people who can lay out your book. They have all of that ready because it is their business plan. They have the answers, they have solutions for that and you pay for it. [00:07:15] that is what a vanity publisher does. That is what they are for. They are to do the steps of self-publishing for you so that you can finish your project or you can move on to something else or so that you don't have to kind of figure out all of the different steps with self-publishing in order to get your book ready. [00:07:36] And that's okay. However, a vanity publisher is not a traditional publisher. I don't think that I can say that enough. And it all just boils down to an exchange of money. If they are giving you money, they are traditional publishers. If you are giving them money, they are not. This episode is definitely shorter than all of the other little episodes in this series of pitfalls of writing. But that's where we are. Vanity publishers are not bad. if you are giving somebody money in exchange for doing all of the steps for self publishing, your book is still going to be self-published. [00:08:13] And so just be aware of where your money is going and what the end result is going to be. So there's nothing. That, but next week we are going to be talking about marketing. So once you have your book ready, the fight isn't over. So join in next week. As we talk about marketing on writing and the tiny house. [00:08:34]  [00:08:34] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

Vanity Pubs really aren't all that bad. “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1</a> Become a patron today! Visit <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. <a href="http://www.littlesyllables.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.littlesyllables.com</a> Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage. [00:00:00] Last week, we concluded our little mini section of this series of pitfalls of writing with talking about layout with giving some good guidelines on how you should be laying out your text if you are self-publishing. Today, we are moving away from cover art design and text layout, and we are moving on to bigger things. [00:00:28] We are moving on to what happens after your book is done, or at least kind of. For this episode, we are going to be talking about vanity publishers today on Writing in the Tiny House. Hello. Hello. Hello, and welcome to the show. It is another Wednesday and I don't know about where you live, but here in Northern Utah, we've had another bout of cold weather. It snowed the other day. So we had to kick on our heaters again and here we are reliving like the eighth winter of this year.  [00:01:21] Welcome to Writing in the Tiny house. I am Devin Davis. I am the host of this show and I am the guy who writes things and tells you about it. And the whole point of this podcast is to give you the tools and the knowledge necessary to produce a short story in as little as three months, or to produce a novel in as little as 18 months, but to hopefully give you the wisdom and the foresight to adjust that timeline if you need. It is rare to produce a work that quickly, but it can be done. So today we are going to be talking about vanity publishers. I am a part of many different Facebook groups in this little world, and it seems almost every day or about every other day, somebody gets on the Facebook group and asks who should I pay to publish my book? [00:02:10] And here is like just upfront, this is a big misunderstanding. In traditional publishing if you want to be traditionally published, you will not pay any money for them to publish your book. In fact, With a traditional publisher, what they will do is they will take your book and pay you an advance on that book, and then hopefully pay you royalties after you have earned out your advance. Most authors don't earn out their advance by the way. If you are in a relationship with a company who says that publishing is what they do, but they are asking for you to pay them money, they are not a traditional publishing company. Traditional publishing companies, like I said, they pay you. [00:03:03] They pay you for your book. They pay you for the content that you are offering them so that everybody makes money through sales. A traditional publisher also will offer, well, we'll assign you to an editor and to a design team of some sort, and you may be involved with the design. You may be involved with the image production of your book. You may get to say yes or no to your book cover. You also may not. You may not even get to title your book. They may retitle your book, but all of that is the process of the traditional publisher. So we go through this, we have a book ready, we feel that it is time to take the next step towards releasing it out into the world for people to get it and to buy it and to read it. [00:03:52] And we see these other companies who are offering publishing services, but you get to pay them. There is nothing wrong or evil about these companies. I do feel that they are misleading sometimes, but if a company is offering publishing services in exchange for you giving them money, they are what we call vanity publishers. [00:04:19] And what a vanity publisher does is they offer you the services of doing the steps of self-publishing for you. When you publish under a vanity publisher, it will likely be under your name. You will have the rights to the book. And they may offer a few perks, like a newsletter or a magazine that circulates within their company. [00:04:44] Or they may have some connections here or there. They can probably get your book into some brick and mortar stores. I mean, there's always some form of a catch or a perk that is attractive to people who don't necessarily know what they're looking for. And none of that is bad. Some of that can be good to the appropriate customer. [00:05:06] If you are a person who has more money than they have time going through a vanity publisher, if you're not interested in querying and submitting to agents and going through the whole rigamarole of trying to traditionally publish sometimes approaching a vanity publisher as a way to do the self-publishing for you can be a very good thing just because self publishing takes even more time and it takes even more dedication and more brain real estate for your project. [00:05:45] And if you are a busy person, like I said, who has more money than they have time sometimes hiring a company to do those steps for you will save you a lot of headache and allow you to free up some space toward other projects that you have going. The issue is that a lot of the vanity publishers are not transparent about what they are offering. [00:06:09] Your book would still be considered self-published and That's just how that is. That's how vanity publishing works. Sometimes they will offer services to create a website for you. Sometimes they will offer a little bit of social media services, like. Offer you a spotlight on some of their platforms or offer you this we're that. [00:06:30] And the thing is all of those services are valuable. It is absolutely okay to have some recognition and to have some spotlight stuff on social media. Great to be able to tap into that type of a resource. The thing is with these vanity publishers, they usually cost a lot of money for you to take your book from start to finish. [00:06:52] Sometimes it can be upwards of $5,000. Sometimes it can be more than that. But the thing that they do offer is the connections to all of those different things. they know the artists, they know the people who can lay out your book. They have all of that ready because it is their business plan. They have the answers, they have solutions for that and you pay for it. [00:07:15] that is what a vanity publisher does. That is what they are for. They are to do the steps of self-publishing for you so that you can finish your project or you can move on to something else or so that you don't have to kind of figure out all of the different steps with self-publishing in order to get your book ready. [00:07:36] And that's okay. However, a vanity publisher is not a traditional publisher. I don't think that I can say that enough. And it all just boils down to an exchange of money. If they are giving you money, they are traditional publishers. If you are giving them money, they are not. This episode is definitely shorter than all of the other little episodes in this series of pitfalls of writing. But that's where we are. Vanity publishers are not bad. if you are giving somebody money in exchange for doing all of the steps for self publishing, your book is still going to be self-published. [00:08:13] And so just be aware of where your money is going and what the end result is going to be. So there's nothing. That, but next week we are going to be talking about marketing. So once you have your book ready, the fight isn't over. So join in next week. As we talk about marketing on writing and the tiny house. [00:08:34]  [00:08:34] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

Pitfalls, Part 5 (Vanity Pubs)

Find out some very basic tips to get a good layout to text if you are self publishing. “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1 Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind

Find out some very basic tips to get a good layout to text if you are self publishing. “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1</a> Become a patron today! Visit <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. <a href="http://www.littlesyllables.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.littlesyllables.com</a> Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind

Pitfalls, Part 4 (Layout)

The pitfalls of book covers! “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1 Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage. [00:00:00] Over the past two weeks, we have talked about the pitfalls that come in writing. So the pitfalls or these two pitfalls that come with craft. Today, we are going to do episode one of two about the pitfalls of design, layout, and design today on Writing in the Tiny House. Hello, hello. Hello, and welcome to the show. [00:00:49] Welcome to Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis and I live in a tiny house in Northern Utah, and writing is one of my very favorite things to do, and I write things and I have this podcast to tell you guys all about it. I have produced a number of different things in my day. I have also done a lot of research and whatever. [00:01:13] I tend to do my best to be as current as I can be on the things that we talk about in this podcast. And I'm here to show you that a short story can be produced in three months and a novel can be produced in 18 months. And hopefully through this podcast and through whatever other resources you are using, you can get the wisdom to understand that sometimes that timeline needs to be modified. [00:01:45] Back in October, I released the short story Brigitte and from draft to publish that short story was cranked out in two months. And it's a good short story, guys. I feel it's proof that a system can work if you are prepared for it. But as we can see, simply six months later, uh, my next short story, which is going to be Tiz, the second installment of tales from Vlaydor, is still in the drafting stage. And I have not looked at it for many Wiles for many weeks, and that is because life happens and sometimes you get to allow for that. So today we are talking about specifically your book cover if it's not going to be a book, the cover art that you are using for your stuff, the cover art that represents your work. So here's the deal, guys. I'm going to hurry and lay down some truth about your book cover, some kind of hard to swallow truth. Your book cover is your most powerful marketing tool. [00:02:57] So here's the deal and it truly is your book cover represents a certain amount of value of what is inside the cover of what is the content of this thing. It represents that. If it is not designed correctly, your work may be misrepresented and people will not be interested in reading it or buying it. [00:03:21] And so here's the deal, with a lot of this, especially with like self publishing. Sometimes we feel that we need to do all of the things. And the fact of the matter is even if you are traditionally published, you are going to be doing most of your promotion. Most of your advertising will be done yourself. [00:03:40] And it's okay to know that. It's okay to be prepared for that. If you get traditionally published, I hope that your traditional publisher will give certain amounts of resources to you, especially they tend to do that for debut novelists, not necessarily for a second book. As much. And the thing is with publishers, they are here to make money, which means they funnel their marketing resources to the people and the books that are already bringing in money instead of risking all of it on all of these newbies or specifically on all these people who have written a second book. [00:04:21] So debut novelists often make a bigger splash than the second book that they write. And if the second book is one of a trilogy, it will sell fewer copies than the first book does. And the third book will sell fewer copies than the second one, it's just how that tends to go. You will find plenty of exceptions to that rule, but you will find plenty more that fall in to what I just said. [00:04:49] So with your book cover, a lot of us feel that we are doing all of the things by ourselves. And so in order to save money or in order to save time, we feel that we need to also design a book cover in addition to writing an amazing book. My experience is, and this is going to be hard to swallow, perhaps, but this is my experience. [00:05:15] Not all writers make good graphic arts designer. Not all writers should design their own book cover. Me included. So if you look at Tales from Vlaydor, Installment One: Brigitte, you will see that I designed that. So here I am saying don't do what I did. I designed that on my iPhone. And the thing is, Bridgette was largely an experiment in many different ways to test a system. [00:05:45] And I had all of the resources in place for the content of the story. I had my editor in, I had my trusted team of beta readers to bounce ideas off of, and I did not have the resource of a graphic arts designer on board with that. So I did my own because we were doing a system. We were testing a system. [00:06:06] If you look at the book cover for Brigitte, there are too many words on it. It's okay. It's not great. I'm not going to tell you that it's great. It's okay enough though. It's okay ish. In further, I guess, versions of Brigitte when I have a larger collection of these Tales from Vlaydor under my belt, I will have better artwork that is already on the plan. [00:06:30] So here's the deal. When you look at your cover art and you go to design a book cover, or if you are hiring a graphic arts designer, there are things that you really need to pay attention to. Just like the content of your book, it needs to be recognizable as being assigned to a genre while at the same time eye-catching and interesting. [00:06:56] And it's really hard to play that game of balance sometimes. Am I original enough to catch people's attention and to keep their focus, but Am I so different that people can't figure out where my book should be? Just because people like genres, people like to read specific genres and if your book doesn't seem to fit, they're not going to be as inclined to pick it up. [00:07:23] And so there is a certain look to contemporary romance. There is a certain look to contemporary fiction. There's a certain look to many historical fiction, and there's a, certain look to many different sub-genres of fantasy. It's important to be familiar with what you're going for and what you feel your book could fit in with where your book could go and find that balance between [00:07:52] interesting, but also understandable as to where it can go. So interesting. But categorizable, Your book needs to have certain symmetry. It also needs to have certain fonts, like a certain font effect. Don't use the font [00:08:10] Papyrus. Don't use that. You don't get to have that unless your graphic arts designer is going to be modifying that in some way. [00:08:17] Your book cover needs to be readable. And so if you are doing a big fancy something or another, with the words itself, turning the words themselves into a type of art, it needs to be readable and it needs to be readable from a distance. This was, a bit of a complication that we were having when we were going through the design process of my first novel as magic shifts. [00:08:45] So with that book, the word magic is very artistic. It's not a font. It's. Lettered after like magical smoke. And at first the artist who did the art for the book wanted the entire title of the book to be in that style of smoke. So he wanted all three words as magic shifts to be. This smokiness and it was super fun, but it was really hard to read, especially if it's going to be the front cover of the book. [00:09:22] So what we did was we kept magic. Magic was easy enough to read, but as and shifts, we made more legible with a font and it works. And then on the back cover where. The art history stuff is not as important because it's not noticed first. We had a smaller version of the entirely artistic title as magic shifts in that magical smoke on the back cover. [00:09:53] And that was a fun touch. the artist also included a couple other images that he gave to me in the package deal, I guess, that we brought in to the chapter headings as icons. And so the chapter headings themselves have some original artwork, which was fun to incorporate, but that is going to be talked about on the next episode. [00:10:16] So tune in for that next week. But like I said, Earlier your book cover is your most powerful marketing tool. When you save up your money and you hire a graphic arts designer and you hire an artist, the thing is guys be prepared to save up some money for that. There are some other options though. I have been on some. [00:10:41] Specific Facebook groups of graphic arts designers that crank out book covers and the art is actually very good. And if you can find one that works for your story or needs some very simple modifications, you can get away with a decent book cover for 70 to $300, depending on where you look, I pay. [00:11:06] For completely original artwork. I paid $800 for as magic shifts. For the witch's pupil, which in my opinion is even better artwork. And I can say that without hesitation, because the same artists did it for the witches pupil. I paid $650 for that because I went with the same artist, the artists who did those book covers is a man named Tyler at the time he worked for Marvel comics. [00:11:33] I don't know if he still works there. I haven't kept in touch with him over the years. save your money when you get your book cover, Make sure that your artist or your graphic arts designer, sometimes you hire an artist for the artwork and then a graphic arts designer to design the cover and incorporate that artwork as a book cover. [00:11:54] I'm likely going to do that when I do some bigger projects here, I don't think I'm going to do it exactly that way with my short stories, just because the short stories don't represent the same time commitment as a novel does. When all of that happens, make sure you have a portrait version of your book cover and to make sure that you have a square version of your book cover. [00:12:17] you want those two, if not more different versions of your book cover for several different reasons. If you ever choose to do an audio book of your book. The cover art for audio books is square. Also, if you're posting your book cover, on social media, like Instagram, you post square pictures, those posts are square, and it's good to use those. [00:12:44] If you have those two images. Ratio sizes then you can make on your own, the various different images that you are going to do to promote the release of your book, the sale of your book, and any type of other promotions that are going along so long as the book is available. And you can do that very easily through apps. [00:13:08] that you can get on your phone, like Canva or a couple other apps like that. So the images that people are only going to see likely once. With big text about like releasing February 1st or whatever the text may be. You can do those on your own, but the book cover itself, I will never recommend a writer to sign their own book cover. [00:13:35] Also, if you're a writer and you are reaching out to an artist and a book designer, don't require them to read your book, you get to be talented enough to write. a summary of your book anyway, or a hook or the stuff you're, you're going to be including on the back of your book called the back matter or whatever, or on the inside sleeve, that needs to be enough to make the book understandable. [00:14:02] And that needs to be enough for, you know, a person to start a basic design and then get some feedback along the way. requiring an artist to read your book cover to cover in order to effectively design artwork is not feasible and nobody is probably going to jump to do that. So I have seen some artwork by writers that is usually pretty laughable. [00:14:26] the artwork tends to be pretty low Rez. It tends to be a patch work of stock images, which is fine. But, a graphic arts designer will often use stock images, but they know how to knit it all together and make it. Professional looking. Sometimes it can include original photography, which becomes really weird and confusing. [00:14:51] If you are doing a fantasy book and your homemade cover arts is like your neighbor dressed up in a homemade wizards, robe beside a Creek in your backyard. And they're like chanting and casting a spell and it looks like someone snapped a polar or. it can get really weird and confusing. So my challenge to you is to find a sub genre. [00:15:19] If you are in fantasy or whatever, find a genre or a sub genre that your book belongs in and See what the other cover arts of many books that belong in that genre looks like, see how they do things. just see and pick out some things that you like, pick out some things that you want to represent. [00:15:39] and then finds an artist That can mimic that or do that, or has the style that is similar to that so that your book cover will be original, but still fit. So that is my take on book covers. If you are a writer, don't design your book cover. just don't do that. [00:16:01] You have already written a big thing and you have gone through the revision process and whatever else, but I can tell you, it is not the same work to design art as it is to design. A story. It's not the same work. It requires a different set of skills. So cut yourself some slack and simply save up some money to hire somebody hire professional or get professional work done somehow. [00:16:26] So that is it for today on cover arts. Join me next week. As we talk about the layout of your book on writing and the tiny house. [00:16:38]  [00:16:38] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time. 

The pitfalls of book covers! “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1</a> Become a patron today! Visit <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. <a href="http://www.littlesyllables.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.littlesyllables.com</a> Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage. [00:00:00] Over the past two weeks, we have talked about the pitfalls that come in writing. So the pitfalls or these two pitfalls that come with craft. Today, we are going to do episode one of two about the pitfalls of design, layout, and design today on Writing in the Tiny House. Hello, hello. Hello, and welcome to the show. [00:00:49] Welcome to Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis and I live in a tiny house in Northern Utah, and writing is one of my very favorite things to do, and I write things and I have this podcast to tell you guys all about it. I have produced a number of different things in my day. I have also done a lot of research and whatever. [00:01:13] I tend to do my best to be as current as I can be on the things that we talk about in this podcast. And I'm here to show you that a short story can be produced in three months and a novel can be produced in 18 months. And hopefully through this podcast and through whatever other resources you are using, you can get the wisdom to understand that sometimes that timeline needs to be modified. [00:01:45] Back in October, I released the short story Brigitte and from draft to publish that short story was cranked out in two months. And it's a good short story, guys. I feel it's proof that a system can work if you are prepared for it. But as we can see, simply six months later, uh, my next short story, which is going to be Tiz, the second installment of tales from Vlaydor, is still in the drafting stage. And I have not looked at it for many Wiles for many weeks, and that is because life happens and sometimes you get to allow for that. So today we are talking about specifically your book cover if it's not going to be a book, the cover art that you are using for your stuff, the cover art that represents your work. So here's the deal, guys. I'm going to hurry and lay down some truth about your book cover, some kind of hard to swallow truth. Your book cover is your most powerful marketing tool. [00:02:57] So here's the deal and it truly is your book cover represents a certain amount of value of what is inside the cover of what is the content of this thing. It represents that. If it is not designed correctly, your work may be misrepresented and people will not be interested in reading it or buying it. [00:03:21] And so here's the deal, with a lot of this, especially with like self publishing. Sometimes we feel that we need to do all of the things. And the fact of the matter is even if you are traditionally published, you are going to be doing most of your promotion. Most of your advertising will be done yourself. [00:03:40] And it's okay to know that. It's okay to be prepared for that. If you get traditionally published, I hope that your traditional publisher will give certain amounts of resources to you, especially they tend to do that for debut novelists, not necessarily for a second book. As much. And the thing is with publishers, they are here to make money, which means they funnel their marketing resources to the people and the books that are already bringing in money instead of risking all of it on all of these newbies or specifically on all these people who have written a second book. [00:04:21] So debut novelists often make a bigger splash than the second book that they write. And if the second book is one of a trilogy, it will sell fewer copies than the first book does. And the third book will sell fewer copies than the second one, it's just how that tends to go. You will find plenty of exceptions to that rule, but you will find plenty more that fall in to what I just said. [00:04:49] So with your book cover, a lot of us feel that we are doing all of the things by ourselves. And so in order to save money or in order to save time, we feel that we need to also design a book cover in addition to writing an amazing book. My experience is, and this is going to be hard to swallow, perhaps, but this is my experience. [00:05:15] Not all writers make good graphic arts designer. Not all writers should design their own book cover. Me included. So if you look at Tales from Vlaydor, Installment One: Brigitte, you will see that I designed that. So here I am saying don't do what I did. I designed that on my iPhone. And the thing is, Bridgette was largely an experiment in many different ways to test a system. [00:05:45] And I had all of the resources in place for the content of the story. I had my editor in, I had my trusted team of beta readers to bounce ideas off of, and I did not have the resource of a graphic arts designer on board with that. So I did my own because we were doing a system. We were testing a system. [00:06:06] If you look at the book cover for Brigitte, there are too many words on it. It's okay. It's not great. I'm not going to tell you that it's great. It's okay enough though. It's okay ish. In further, I guess, versions of Brigitte when I have a larger collection of these Tales from Vlaydor under my belt, I will have better artwork that is already on the plan. [00:06:30] So here's the deal. When you look at your cover art and you go to design a book cover, or if you are hiring a graphic arts designer, there are things that you really need to pay attention to. Just like the content of your book, it needs to be recognizable as being assigned to a genre while at the same time eye-catching and interesting. [00:06:56] And it's really hard to play that game of balance sometimes. Am I original enough to catch people's attention and to keep their focus, but Am I so different that people can't figure out where my book should be? Just because people like genres, people like to read specific genres and if your book doesn't seem to fit, they're not going to be as inclined to pick it up. [00:07:23] And so there is a certain look to contemporary romance. There is a certain look to contemporary fiction. There's a certain look to many historical fiction, and there's a, certain look to many different sub-genres of fantasy. It's important to be familiar with what you're going for and what you feel your book could fit in with where your book could go and find that balance between [00:07:52] interesting, but also understandable as to where it can go. So interesting. But categorizable, Your book needs to have certain symmetry. It also needs to have certain fonts, like a certain font effect. Don't use the font [00:08:10] Papyrus. Don't use that. You don't get to have that unless your graphic arts designer is going to be modifying that in some way. [00:08:17] Your book cover needs to be readable. And so if you are doing a big fancy something or another, with the words itself, turning the words themselves into a type of art, it needs to be readable and it needs to be readable from a distance. This was, a bit of a complication that we were having when we were going through the design process of my first novel as magic shifts. [00:08:45] So with that book, the word magic is very artistic. It's not a font. It's. Lettered after like magical smoke. And at first the artist who did the art for the book wanted the entire title of the book to be in that style of smoke. So he wanted all three words as magic shifts to be. This smokiness and it was super fun, but it was really hard to read, especially if it's going to be the front cover of the book. [00:09:22] So what we did was we kept magic. Magic was easy enough to read, but as and shifts, we made more legible with a font and it works. And then on the back cover where. The art history stuff is not as important because it's not noticed first. We had a smaller version of the entirely artistic title as magic shifts in that magical smoke on the back cover. [00:09:53] And that was a fun touch. the artist also included a couple other images that he gave to me in the package deal, I guess, that we brought in to the chapter headings as icons. And so the chapter headings themselves have some original artwork, which was fun to incorporate, but that is going to be talked about on the next episode. [00:10:16] So tune in for that next week. But like I said, Earlier your book cover is your most powerful marketing tool. When you save up your money and you hire a graphic arts designer and you hire an artist, the thing is guys be prepared to save up some money for that. There are some other options though. I have been on some. [00:10:41] Specific Facebook groups of graphic arts designers that crank out book covers and the art is actually very good. And if you can find one that works for your story or needs some very simple modifications, you can get away with a decent book cover for 70 to $300, depending on where you look, I pay. [00:11:06] For completely original artwork. I paid $800 for as magic shifts. For the witch's pupil, which in my opinion is even better artwork. And I can say that without hesitation, because the same artists did it for the witches pupil. I paid $650 for that because I went with the same artist, the artists who did those book covers is a man named Tyler at the time he worked for Marvel comics. [00:11:33] I don't know if he still works there. I haven't kept in touch with him over the years. save your money when you get your book cover, Make sure that your artist or your graphic arts designer, sometimes you hire an artist for the artwork and then a graphic arts designer to design the cover and incorporate that artwork as a book cover. [00:11:54] I'm likely going to do that when I do some bigger projects here, I don't think I'm going to do it exactly that way with my short stories, just because the short stories don't represent the same time commitment as a novel does. When all of that happens, make sure you have a portrait version of your book cover and to make sure that you have a square version of your book cover. [00:12:17] you want those two, if not more different versions of your book cover for several different reasons. If you ever choose to do an audio book of your book. The cover art for audio books is square. Also, if you're posting your book cover, on social media, like Instagram, you post square pictures, those posts are square, and it's good to use those. [00:12:44] If you have those two images. Ratio sizes then you can make on your own, the various different images that you are going to do to promote the release of your book, the sale of your book, and any type of other promotions that are going along so long as the book is available. And you can do that very easily through apps. [00:13:08] that you can get on your phone, like Canva or a couple other apps like that. So the images that people are only going to see likely once. With big text about like releasing February 1st or whatever the text may be. You can do those on your own, but the book cover itself, I will never recommend a writer to sign their own book cover. [00:13:35] Also, if you're a writer and you are reaching out to an artist and a book designer, don't require them to read your book, you get to be talented enough to write. a summary of your book anyway, or a hook or the stuff you're, you're going to be including on the back of your book called the back matter or whatever, or on the inside sleeve, that needs to be enough to make the book understandable. [00:14:02] And that needs to be enough for, you know, a person to start a basic design and then get some feedback along the way. requiring an artist to read your book cover to cover in order to effectively design artwork is not feasible and nobody is probably going to jump to do that. So I have seen some artwork by writers that is usually pretty laughable. [00:14:26] the artwork tends to be pretty low Rez. It tends to be a patch work of stock images, which is fine. But, a graphic arts designer will often use stock images, but they know how to knit it all together and make it. Professional looking. Sometimes it can include original photography, which becomes really weird and confusing. [00:14:51] If you are doing a fantasy book and your homemade cover arts is like your neighbor dressed up in a homemade wizards, robe beside a Creek in your backyard. And they're like chanting and casting a spell and it looks like someone snapped a polar or. it can get really weird and confusing. So my challenge to you is to find a sub genre. [00:15:19] If you are in fantasy or whatever, find a genre or a sub genre that your book belongs in and See what the other cover arts of many books that belong in that genre looks like, see how they do things. just see and pick out some things that you like, pick out some things that you want to represent. [00:15:39] and then finds an artist That can mimic that or do that, or has the style that is similar to that so that your book cover will be original, but still fit. So that is my take on book covers. If you are a writer, don't design your book cover. just don't do that. [00:16:01] You have already written a big thing and you have gone through the revision process and whatever else, but I can tell you, it is not the same work to design art as it is to design. A story. It's not the same work. It requires a different set of skills. So cut yourself some slack and simply save up some money to hire somebody hire professional or get professional work done somehow. [00:16:26] So that is it for today on cover arts. Join me next week. As we talk about the layout of your book on writing and the tiny house. [00:16:38]  [00:16:38] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

Pitfalls, Part 3 (Book Covers!)

TOO MUCH DESCRIPTION! “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1 Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage. [00:00:00] Last week we began another mini series because thus far, this year has been the year of mini-series. But we started another mini series on the pitfalls of writing, just some things to avoid. And we are carrying on with the pitfalls of writing today with the second episode of this little mini series on craft. [00:00:25] So I explained last week that we're going to do craft, we're going to do a couple other things, but we're talking about the pitfalls of craft today on Writing and the Tiny House. Hello, hello. Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy who writes things in a tiny house in Northern Utah, and then tells you all about it. [00:01:14] So the point of this podcast is to give you the tips and tricks to create a good finished piece in order to share it with whomever you want to share it with. If you want to make money, if you want to sell it and make a profit, which is making money, this is kind of how it can be done. So I'm here to show you that a short story can be written in three months. [00:01:38] From drafting to publishing, and a novel can be written in 18 months. I'm also here to tell you that sometimes if you decide to do things that way, or if you rush through the process, you can kind of screw yourself over. And so we're giving you the wisdom to avoid all of those things as well. The writing process can be done pretty rapidly if you know what you're doing, and if you've done it before, if you have not done it before, it can take a little while longer. [00:02:08] last week we talked about the pitfalls of L Y adverbs. It's just a way to doll up your work. A way to add words, a way to increase your word count. but a better way is to use verbs that don't need adverbs and to use stronger descriptions so you can get rid of your L Y adverbs. Today on Writing in the Tiny House [00:02:34] so we are going to be talking about using too much description. So there is a lot to be said about this. I Recently started a short story. It was a thing on Amazon Vela. So it's a serial novel, I guess. Vela is a way for authors to release short story segments periodically, or I guess, chapters of a novel periodically so that you can kind of have this serial [00:03:05] effect like, this is what, this is how things happened in like the Victorian days. A lot of the classic literature that we call classics now, like Lamees and some other ones were actually released serially. They were released in parts and it's just kind of a fun way to revisit that, to revisit the way that things were, but with a modern adaptation. [00:03:28] So I was reading this piece from Vela and there was so much description in what I was reading, that it was hard to actually understand what I was reading. It was hard to pick up on the plot. It was hard to identify with the characters. It was hard to do all those things just because the writing was so heavy Laden with description. It was down to the sounds. It was down to the appearance of everything, the appearance of absolutely everything. I mean, the story opened up with this like undead army coming to life and like storming this farmhouse, which is a really exciting concept. But. There was so much of the farmhouse and so much of the method that these undead soldiers were marching and so much of the bunny Hutch and the various different things found in the farm that it was hard to pick out the story itself. [00:04:33] So this is the thing when it comes to description, a lot of us think that the more we add, the more delicious the piece becomes. And that is not always the case. I mean, sometimes like if, if we are having a cake, if we want to move away from writing and talk about cake, because really who doesn't want to talk about cake, it is entirely possible to add too much crap onto a cake and it ruins the cake. [00:05:02] It is entirely possible to have too much frosting, to have too much decoration, to have too much stuff. So that the cake itself is not really a part of the dessert anymore. And we miss the cake because of everything else. The same is true with writing. So if things are. So descriptive. If we describe every little bug movement, if we describe every little freckle on a person's face if we describe every thread in their clothing, everything, it pulls us out of the story and more into the description. [00:05:39] Which isn't what we want. And it's funny that that is entirely true. What I just said, it pulls this out of the story and sinks us into the description instead. that's not, it, that's not what we want. So I have been reading still the book, a swim in a pond in the rain, by George Saunders. And one of the things that he talked about that relates to description, but can also be tied into many other things. [00:06:06] In a work in progress in any other book that you can think of is it is the difference between having a conversation with somebody where it is give and take, and the conversation happens, and you're both expressing your original thoughts but still following the same train of thought, it is the difference between doing that and having. [00:06:32] A conversation that is pre scripted. So. stay with me cause this totally it made sense to me. If you were meeting a person for the first time and you meet them and things are great and organic and you're having a great time and it's easy to exchange ideas it's easy to communicate what's on your mind and share beliefs and whatever else, things get super interesting. [00:06:57] And you end up leaving feeling like you are full. However, if you are a nervous type and this, brings memories of the show monk that came out years and years ago, if you are the type where you are nervous by a conversation. And so you kind of write down some talking points and you go to sit down with somebody and you're talking and then like you pull out the next talking points and then you talk about that and then you pull out the next talking point. [00:07:25] The other person is not as involved in the conversation as you are. You are dominating the topic of the conversation by leaving out that. It's kind of like a job interview. That's how job interviews tend to work much of the time. And so with writing, it is best to simply use enough that works and then stop. [00:07:49] you, as the writer are conveying thoughts that are super important to you and you certainly want. Everything to work in a desired way. There is a formulation to what you are doing. There is a reason why things are being laid out as they are, because you get to get there. [00:08:07] You get to take a person from the beginning to the end, and this is the way you do it. However, oftentimes we forget that the reader has a brain and the reader is a person and the reader has. Memories and backgrounds and similar interests and things to us that they can draw from if they are allowed to, to make whatever you are writing, just as enriching to. [00:08:36] And so it is important to sit down and see kind of where you are going with the current chapter that you're in or the short story that you're in or whatever, see where you are going and see if all of the description is 100% necessary, just because it is super great to allow a reader to fill in some of the blanks. [00:08:58] Sometimes I have had. Discussions with many of my closest friends about books. always seem to be about books and with something like a novel with something like fiction, it is interesting to talk about how they envision things, how they envision the house, especially if the layout of the house isn't super important. [00:09:23] To describe or how they envisioned the person's outfit or the person's hairstyle or whatever. And from those conversations, I have come to see that my friend and I had different experiences overall of many of those stories. They were different experiences that led to kind of the same feelings and the same life lessons and the same, you know, stirring moments. [00:09:54] But as far as envisioning who Mr. Darcy is, or whatever, the person that I envisioned was different from the person that they envisioned. And that was okay to allow me that wiggle room as a reader. To fill in the blanks as I could, in ways that made sense to me was beneficial to me it allowed me to be more involved with my reading experience and it allowed me to enrich the experience on my own to use my own brain and to understand things in my own. [00:10:32] Realm of understanding so that I was more involved in my own reading experience sometimes we choose to fill in a lot of description because we don't trust that our reader knows what they are supposed to be envisioning. And sometimes that can serve the reader a disservice. So. I invite you to come over your work in progress and to think about the moments where it feels like the job interview with the descriptions where you are not allowing a moment for the reader to fill in the blanks on their own. [00:11:09] Allowing the reader to draw from their own understanding of words and understanding of situations and enjoy the book in their own way. So next week we are going to carry on with some of these pitfalls that we are changing to another subject. We are changing over to design and cover art. So be sure to join in next week on a new episode of Writing in the Tiny House. Thank you so much, guys. We will see you then. [00:11:42]  [00:11:42] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time. 

TOO MUCH DESCRIPTION! “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1</a> Become a patron today! Visit <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. <a href="http://www.littlesyllables.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.littlesyllables.com</a> Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage. [00:00:00] Last week we began another mini series because thus far, this year has been the year of mini-series. But we started another mini series on the pitfalls of writing, just some things to avoid. And we are carrying on with the pitfalls of writing today with the second episode of this little mini series on craft. [00:00:25] So I explained last week that we're going to do craft, we're going to do a couple other things, but we're talking about the pitfalls of craft today on Writing and the Tiny House. Hello, hello. Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy who writes things in a tiny house in Northern Utah, and then tells you all about it. [00:01:14] So the point of this podcast is to give you the tips and tricks to create a good finished piece in order to share it with whomever you want to share it with. If you want to make money, if you want to sell it and make a profit, which is making money, this is kind of how it can be done. So I'm here to show you that a short story can be written in three months. [00:01:38] From drafting to publishing, and a novel can be written in 18 months. I'm also here to tell you that sometimes if you decide to do things that way, or if you rush through the process, you can kind of screw yourself over. And so we're giving you the wisdom to avoid all of those things as well. The writing process can be done pretty rapidly if you know what you're doing, and if you've done it before, if you have not done it before, it can take a little while longer. [00:02:08] last week we talked about the pitfalls of L Y adverbs. It's just a way to doll up your work. A way to add words, a way to increase your word count. but a better way is to use verbs that don't need adverbs and to use stronger descriptions so you can get rid of your L Y adverbs. Today on Writing in the Tiny House [00:02:34] so we are going to be talking about using too much description. So there is a lot to be said about this. I Recently started a short story. It was a thing on Amazon Vela. So it's a serial novel, I guess. Vela is a way for authors to release short story segments periodically, or I guess, chapters of a novel periodically so that you can kind of have this serial [00:03:05] effect like, this is what, this is how things happened in like the Victorian days. A lot of the classic literature that we call classics now, like Lamees and some other ones were actually released serially. They were released in parts and it's just kind of a fun way to revisit that, to revisit the way that things were, but with a modern adaptation. [00:03:28] So I was reading this piece from Vela and there was so much description in what I was reading, that it was hard to actually understand what I was reading. It was hard to pick up on the plot. It was hard to identify with the characters. It was hard to do all those things just because the writing was so heavy Laden with description. It was down to the sounds. It was down to the appearance of everything, the appearance of absolutely everything. I mean, the story opened up with this like undead army coming to life and like storming this farmhouse, which is a really exciting concept. But. There was so much of the farmhouse and so much of the method that these undead soldiers were marching and so much of the bunny Hutch and the various different things found in the farm that it was hard to pick out the story itself. [00:04:33] So this is the thing when it comes to description, a lot of us think that the more we add, the more delicious the piece becomes. And that is not always the case. I mean, sometimes like if, if we are having a cake, if we want to move away from writing and talk about cake, because really who doesn't want to talk about cake, it is entirely possible to add too much crap onto a cake and it ruins the cake. [00:05:02] It is entirely possible to have too much frosting, to have too much decoration, to have too much stuff. So that the cake itself is not really a part of the dessert anymore. And we miss the cake because of everything else. The same is true with writing. So if things are. So descriptive. If we describe every little bug movement, if we describe every little freckle on a person's face if we describe every thread in their clothing, everything, it pulls us out of the story and more into the description. [00:05:39] Which isn't what we want. And it's funny that that is entirely true. What I just said, it pulls this out of the story and sinks us into the description instead. that's not, it, that's not what we want. So I have been reading still the book, a swim in a pond in the rain, by George Saunders. And one of the things that he talked about that relates to description, but can also be tied into many other things. [00:06:06] In a work in progress in any other book that you can think of is it is the difference between having a conversation with somebody where it is give and take, and the conversation happens, and you're both expressing your original thoughts but still following the same train of thought, it is the difference between doing that and having. [00:06:32] A conversation that is pre scripted. So. stay with me cause this totally it made sense to me. If you were meeting a person for the first time and you meet them and things are great and organic and you're having a great time and it's easy to exchange ideas it's easy to communicate what's on your mind and share beliefs and whatever else, things get super interesting. [00:06:57] And you end up leaving feeling like you are full. However, if you are a nervous type and this, brings memories of the show monk that came out years and years ago, if you are the type where you are nervous by a conversation. And so you kind of write down some talking points and you go to sit down with somebody and you're talking and then like you pull out the next talking points and then you talk about that and then you pull out the next talking point. [00:07:25] The other person is not as involved in the conversation as you are. You are dominating the topic of the conversation by leaving out that. It's kind of like a job interview. That's how job interviews tend to work much of the time. And so with writing, it is best to simply use enough that works and then stop. [00:07:49] you, as the writer are conveying thoughts that are super important to you and you certainly want. Everything to work in a desired way. There is a formulation to what you are doing. There is a reason why things are being laid out as they are, because you get to get there. [00:08:07] You get to take a person from the beginning to the end, and this is the way you do it. However, oftentimes we forget that the reader has a brain and the reader is a person and the reader has. Memories and backgrounds and similar interests and things to us that they can draw from if they are allowed to, to make whatever you are writing, just as enriching to. [00:08:36] And so it is important to sit down and see kind of where you are going with the current chapter that you're in or the short story that you're in or whatever, see where you are going and see if all of the description is 100% necessary, just because it is super great to allow a reader to fill in some of the blanks. [00:08:58] Sometimes I have had. Discussions with many of my closest friends about books. always seem to be about books and with something like a novel with something like fiction, it is interesting to talk about how they envision things, how they envision the house, especially if the layout of the house isn't super important. [00:09:23] To describe or how they envisioned the person's outfit or the person's hairstyle or whatever. And from those conversations, I have come to see that my friend and I had different experiences overall of many of those stories. They were different experiences that led to kind of the same feelings and the same life lessons and the same, you know, stirring moments. [00:09:54] But as far as envisioning who Mr. Darcy is, or whatever, the person that I envisioned was different from the person that they envisioned. And that was okay to allow me that wiggle room as a reader. To fill in the blanks as I could, in ways that made sense to me was beneficial to me it allowed me to be more involved with my reading experience and it allowed me to enrich the experience on my own to use my own brain and to understand things in my own. [00:10:32] Realm of understanding so that I was more involved in my own reading experience sometimes we choose to fill in a lot of description because we don't trust that our reader knows what they are supposed to be envisioning. And sometimes that can serve the reader a disservice. So. I invite you to come over your work in progress and to think about the moments where it feels like the job interview with the descriptions where you are not allowing a moment for the reader to fill in the blanks on their own. [00:11:09] Allowing the reader to draw from their own understanding of words and understanding of situations and enjoy the book in their own way. So next week we are going to carry on with some of these pitfalls that we are changing to another subject. We are changing over to design and cover art. So be sure to join in next week on a new episode of Writing in the Tiny House. Thank you so much, guys. We will see you then. [00:11:42]  [00:11:42] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

Pitfalls, Part 2

“Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1 Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage. [00:00:00] So you're a new writer. You are about to get started on your very first work in progress, but you are a little timid to get started because you don't know some of the danger that lies ahead. We are going to be talking about the pitfalls of writing. Today on Writing in the Tiny House.  [00:00:21] Hello. Hello. Hello and welcome to today's episode of Writing in the Tiny House. [00:00:48] I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy who lives in a tiny house in Northern Utah who tells you about writing as I write. Or as I want to write right now, my works in progress are a little bit put on pause due to personal reasons, but I love to share the way that writing works and the way that publishing works and the way that self publishing works. [00:01:16] I have decided to do this next little series, because I guess this year, we're all about the series of episodes. This upcoming series is all about the pitfalls of writing. Some of the things that we get ourselves tangled up in that can make writing hard or disappointing, and that is anything from craft to publishing. [00:01:39] And so I'm going to do two episodes on craft, two episodes on design, and then wrap up this little mini series on publishing itself. So let's get into the first episode on the pitfalls of writing that many newbies find themselves doing, and that is the trap of L Y adverbs. If you have ever read the very first Harry Potter book and you have read it out loud, [00:02:15] I encourage you to do that. Most of us have read Harry Potter and so take Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and sit down for a while and read it out loud. L Y adverbs, if you are new to the game of writing, L Y adverbs are one of those things that we do in order. There they are a crutch. They are words that we use to make things pretty, to make things prettier sounding, but they are a crutch to not using better words. [00:02:52] L Y adverbs allow us to use weak verbs And then put a bandaid on them by using an L Y adverb. L Y adverbs are the difference between [00:03:05] speaking loudly and yelling or [00:03:09] walking quickly and running. L Y adverbs you will find, can usually just be stricken from your manuscript. And if you really like your L Y adverb and what it's doing for you, see if you can simply use a stronger verb so that you can get rid of the L Y adverb. So a writer who struggles with L Y adverbs, it is usually something that can be pinned down very early in the editing process. [00:03:42] You send your work to a critique partner or whatever, usually a critique partner can pick up an L by adverb problem within the first 500 words of your manuscript. And if they know what they're doing, they will send it back to you with that type of feedback before having to read the rest of your manuscript. Or if you are early in the drafting process and you haven't finished your work yet, sending your work to do ,a quick, like first five pages or whatever, first chapter to a critique partner [00:04:19] so that you can get feedback like L Y adverbs, like passive voice, some different things like this, so that you can correct it early in your craft, early in your work in progress, and then address that as you carry on. So, like I said, L Y adverbs are the bandaid on a weak verb. And the way to get around L by adverbs is to use stronger verbs. [00:04:44] Now I'm not ever going to say that L Y adverbs are off limits, but I might as well, especially if you are new to the game. L Y adverbs are great. They serve a purpose and using them sparingly is great, but it is better to lean towards not using them at all. And so if you want to just open up your work in progress and do a quick find for L Y it will bring to your attention all of the times that you use L Y adverbs. [00:05:19] And I'm going to throw in the word. Very is not an L by adverb, but it is an adverb that can just be removed from your manuscript. I believe it was mark Twain that said the way to deal with, or I'm paraphrasing. I'm not quoting this directly and it may not be from mark Twain. Don't. Quote me on any of this, but a great writer once said, and I'm paraphrasing that an easy way to to deal with the word very is to change all of the instances of very, to the word. [00:05:55] Damn. And then your editor will remove all of the times you swore in your manuscript, and it's an easy way to get rid of all of it. So very and L Y advert. Oftentimes can simply be deleted if you read your work in progress and you come across all of these L Y adverbs, read it again with the LOI adverbs simply deleted. [00:06:22] Sometimes the fix is easier than you think. Sometimes we don't have to futz around with $10 words. Or fancy words or consult our thesaurus so that we can still come up with a good verb. Sometimes the verb is okay and the LOI adverb can simply be removed. [00:06:46] So this was one of the things that I struggled with with my first book as magic shifts, which was released, I think in 2008. As magic shifts took me, I think, 13 months to complete the first draft and my editor, Luanne Staley, who is no longer with us. She passed away a number of years ago. She did exactly what I just described to you. [00:07:15] She took my manuscript. She didn't have to read it all in order to address some things that I could work on myself to clean up throughout my manuscript. Oftentimes, that can be a big waste of time for both of you. And she addressed my LOI adverbs and what she did was in my document. She actually highlighted them. [00:07:36] She went through and made them all yellow. And so I had these glaring. From my document and it was obvious to me that I was using them too often. So I invite you to do the same, simply do a search for L Y and see how many instances you use L Y adverbs and work on greatly reducing them. LOI, adverbs, weaken your voice. [00:08:03] They weaken the strength of your tech. They weaken your pros and they can really get in the way with pacing with the way that the words are flowing and the way that things are unfolding in your story, they can trip you up. And another way, aside from the search that I suggested a moment ago is to read your manuscript out loud. [00:08:26] If you can tell that you are saying words that. And in the sound Lee too often, and you can tell that it's tripping up the cadence of your sentences and it's tripping up the flow of your words and it's tripping up all the other things that I mentioned. Then you need to remove your L Y adverbs. So replace them with a stronger verb. [00:08:53] Or just delete them and see how your verb holds up on its own. So that is L Y adverbs for today. This is kind of a shorter episode. Next week, we are going to be focusing on another pitfall, which is too much description. So join me then on the next episode of writing in the tiny house, have a great day guys. [00:09:18]  [00:09:18] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time. 

“Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1</a> Become a patron today! Visit <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. <a href="http://www.littlesyllables.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.littlesyllables.com</a> Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage. [00:00:00] So you're a new writer. You are about to get started on your very first work in progress, but you are a little timid to get started because you don't know some of the danger that lies ahead. We are going to be talking about the pitfalls of writing. Today on Writing in the Tiny House.  [00:00:21] Hello. Hello. Hello and welcome to today's episode of Writing in the Tiny House. [00:00:48] I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy who lives in a tiny house in Northern Utah who tells you about writing as I write. Or as I want to write right now, my works in progress are a little bit put on pause due to personal reasons, but I love to share the way that writing works and the way that publishing works and the way that self publishing works. [00:01:16] I have decided to do this next little series, because I guess this year, we're all about the series of episodes. This upcoming series is all about the pitfalls of writing. Some of the things that we get ourselves tangled up in that can make writing hard or disappointing, and that is anything from craft to publishing. [00:01:39] And so I'm going to do two episodes on craft, two episodes on design, and then wrap up this little mini series on publishing itself. So let's get into the first episode on the pitfalls of writing that many newbies find themselves doing, and that is the trap of L Y adverbs. If you have ever read the very first Harry Potter book and you have read it out loud, [00:02:15] I encourage you to do that. Most of us have read Harry Potter and so take Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and sit down for a while and read it out loud. L Y adverbs, if you are new to the game of writing, L Y adverbs are one of those things that we do in order. There they are a crutch. They are words that we use to make things pretty, to make things prettier sounding, but they are a crutch to not using better words. [00:02:52] L Y adverbs allow us to use weak verbs And then put a bandaid on them by using an L Y adverb. L Y adverbs are the difference between [00:03:05] speaking loudly and yelling or [00:03:09] walking quickly and running. L Y adverbs you will find, can usually just be stricken from your manuscript. And if you really like your L Y adverb and what it's doing for you, see if you can simply use a stronger verb so that you can get rid of the L Y adverb. So a writer who struggles with L Y adverbs, it is usually something that can be pinned down very early in the editing process. [00:03:42] You send your work to a critique partner or whatever, usually a critique partner can pick up an L by adverb problem within the first 500 words of your manuscript. And if they know what they're doing, they will send it back to you with that type of feedback before having to read the rest of your manuscript. Or if you are early in the drafting process and you haven't finished your work yet, sending your work to do ,a quick, like first five pages or whatever, first chapter to a critique partner [00:04:19] so that you can get feedback like L Y adverbs, like passive voice, some different things like this, so that you can correct it early in your craft, early in your work in progress, and then address that as you carry on. So, like I said, L Y adverbs are the bandaid on a weak verb. And the way to get around L by adverbs is to use stronger verbs. [00:04:44] Now I'm not ever going to say that L Y adverbs are off limits, but I might as well, especially if you are new to the game. L Y adverbs are great. They serve a purpose and using them sparingly is great, but it is better to lean towards not using them at all. And so if you want to just open up your work in progress and do a quick find for L Y it will bring to your attention all of the times that you use L Y adverbs. [00:05:19] And I'm going to throw in the word. Very is not an L by adverb, but it is an adverb that can just be removed from your manuscript. I believe it was mark Twain that said the way to deal with, or I'm paraphrasing. I'm not quoting this directly and it may not be from mark Twain. Don't. Quote me on any of this, but a great writer once said, and I'm paraphrasing that an easy way to to deal with the word very is to change all of the instances of very, to the word. [00:05:55] Damn. And then your editor will remove all of the times you swore in your manuscript, and it's an easy way to get rid of all of it. So very and L Y advert. Oftentimes can simply be deleted if you read your work in progress and you come across all of these L Y adverbs, read it again with the LOI adverbs simply deleted. [00:06:22] Sometimes the fix is easier than you think. Sometimes we don't have to futz around with $10 words. Or fancy words or consult our thesaurus so that we can still come up with a good verb. Sometimes the verb is okay and the LOI adverb can simply be removed. [00:06:46] So this was one of the things that I struggled with with my first book as magic shifts, which was released, I think in 2008. As magic shifts took me, I think, 13 months to complete the first draft and my editor, Luanne Staley, who is no longer with us. She passed away a number of years ago. She did exactly what I just described to you. [00:07:15] She took my manuscript. She didn't have to read it all in order to address some things that I could work on myself to clean up throughout my manuscript. Oftentimes, that can be a big waste of time for both of you. And she addressed my LOI adverbs and what she did was in my document. She actually highlighted them. [00:07:36] She went through and made them all yellow. And so I had these glaring. From my document and it was obvious to me that I was using them too often. So I invite you to do the same, simply do a search for L Y and see how many instances you use L Y adverbs and work on greatly reducing them. LOI, adverbs, weaken your voice. [00:08:03] They weaken the strength of your tech. They weaken your pros and they can really get in the way with pacing with the way that the words are flowing and the way that things are unfolding in your story, they can trip you up. And another way, aside from the search that I suggested a moment ago is to read your manuscript out loud. [00:08:26] If you can tell that you are saying words that. And in the sound Lee too often, and you can tell that it's tripping up the cadence of your sentences and it's tripping up the flow of your words and it's tripping up all the other things that I mentioned. Then you need to remove your L Y adverbs. So replace them with a stronger verb. [00:08:53] Or just delete them and see how your verb holds up on its own. So that is L Y adverbs for today. This is kind of a shorter episode. Next week, we are going to be focusing on another pitfall, which is too much description. So join me then on the next episode of writing in the tiny house, have a great day guys. [00:09:18]  [00:09:18] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

Pitfalls, Part 1

The final part of our Writer's Block series. What to do when you encounter writer's block because of your mood and the circumstances of your life. “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1 Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage. So we've talked about writer's block for a couple weeks. Now this is week number three. We talked about the structure of the outline itself. We talked about the story arc, but what if it is simply you getting in your own way? We've all been there too, my friends. So let's talk about your inner environment and how that can lead to writer's block today on Writing in the Tiny House. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to this week's episode of Writing in the [00:01:00] Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy who lives in the tiny house in Northern Utah. And I write things and I tell you about the process so that you can write things. The whole point of this podcast is to give you the tools and the knowledge necessary for you to do your own creative writing so that you can crank out a short story in three months or crank out a novel in 18 months and still have the wisdom and the foresight to adjust that timeline if you feel you need to. Most things aren't done that fast, but it's good to know that they can be. So today we are on part three of our little mini series on writer's block. And today we are talking about the inner conflict that each of us has with our work in progress. So regardless, especially if you are writing a long thing, if you are writing a thing that is not going to be over [00:02:00] and done with in like one day, you are bound to have days where you hate what you've written. And you hate your work in progress. You hate your computer. You hate the place where you write, you hate your desk. You hate your chair. I don't have a chair. I hate my floor. I hate my standing desk. There are days where you will have a really bad attitude and there are days where t he energy of your work in progress doesn't match what you are going through. Sometimes this can be a really big thing. Most of the time it will be kind of a smaller thing that you can figure out and push through or figure out and resolve, and then get back to work on your work in progress. And other times it might require something else. So with your work in progress, if you are a person who has been pushing and pushing to get your word count in, and you have developed this cool writing routine, you have developed [00:03:00] this wonderful routine of writing every day, you have a nice lofty word count, and you have been achieving that word count all the time, but sometimes you feel like you're still spinning your wheels just because the work in progress can be a pretty complicated and a pretty long thing. It is completely normal to set out and think that your short story is going to be 9,000 words and it ends up being 20 or that your novel is going to be 95,000 words. And it ends up being like 125,000 words. That happened with my first book. I wasn't expecting it to be as long as it was. So anyway, word counts can surprise us. And sometimes even though we're writing a ton of words and we are being these good disciplined writers, sometimes some times writer's block can happen just when you need an emotional break. [00:04:00] Sometimes you need a break. Sometimes the very best thing to do is to put some distance between you and your work in progress and let that work in progress cool off. And when we say that work in progress cool off what we actually mean is you get to cool off. All of these attitudes, all of this despair, all of this, you know, grumpiness or whatever. All of the negativity associated with your work in progress. If you take a second, you save your work, you close it out and you let it sit there for an amount of time. If you have wrapped up a novel and you're at the end of your novel, it is good to let it sit there for at least two weeks and let it cool down. If you are struggling through a work in progress, sometimes, give it a day, give it two days, give it a weekend. If you are going on vacation, maybe you can write up until the day before you go on vacation and then like go on vacation and make sure that your vacation is [00:05:00] a way from all the things. And perhaps it needs to include your work in progress. And then when you get back, you can pick it up again and you'll be in a better place. Sometimes it can be just letting it go for the night. So that you can go outside, you can breathe some fresh air, you can get some exercise, you can play with your kids. You can play with your dog. You can go see a movie. You can go do all of these other things that perhaps you have not done as much of, because you have been focusing more on being your version of this studious dedicated writer. And taking a break from your work in progress can be enough to simply let your brain calm down, let the negativity that has been building up, disperse, disappear, go away so that after your break and I don't mean forever. I mean sometimes, I mean, forever in a second, I'm [00:06:00] going to mean forever, but let your break be a simple way to recharge your batteries in whichever way charges your batteries best so that you don't develop a negative relationship with your work in progress. Just because if you have. A story or a novel or whatever that you're working on and you absolutely hate it. It will show in your writing. And if you are, writing as a way to beat yourself up, because you have something to prove or because if you don't write every day, then you're not a good writer, which is not right. Then developing a negative relationship with writing will eventually wear down your desire to write, and it will wear that away. And so I personally don't ever want to get into the spot where I hate writing period, the end. I instead find ways to give myself space and find ways to take care of myself so that [00:07:00] I can pick it up at a later date. Even if I don't know when the later date is going to be. So let's talk about a time where maybe you get to step away for forever and all ways. This shouldn't happen to you a lot. There are plenty of writers in this world who have written a lot more than they have shared. I am one of those people. So to just be cranking out creative content is certainly a possible thing too. it's a thing that we can do. It's a thing that I've done, but sometimes a person's published list is not an accurate reflection of all of the writing they've actually done. Back in November, if you have been following this podcast you are aware that we have been on the air, so to speak for more than a year now. We are in the sixties with our episodes, which is super cool. And like the downloading numbers for this podcast have been going [00:08:00] up slowly but surely this is pretty niche. I mean, creative writing is pretty niche when it comes to podcast content, but we're doing it. We're growing, we're getting more people involved and things are fun, and it's really fun to see it grow. But if you were around, back in November, You may remember that I was drafting a short story called auto and auto was something that I was really passionate about at the time. However, the content of the story itself was going to be really heavy. It was going to kind of take on an amount of like the little match girl. Type of story where there are definitely some glimmers of hope, but the overall story is pretty sad. I mean, with a little match girl, the poor girl dies at the end. It wasn't going to be exactly like that, but it was a thing where everything was just really sad and there's a little. [00:09:00] Of hope at the end, but it's all still really sad. Now, if you remember back in January 1st, I came out as gay on Facebook and to my friends and family. And there were weeks and weeks of preparing for that. That was a really big courageous, emotional moment for me. And. Back in November is actually when I started doing the mental and emotional work for whatever possibilities would come about from doing that from coming out at age 37 on January 1st there was a lot to worry about. There was a lot to work through and so dealing with real life back in November. And having such a dark and sad work in progress. I mean, had it been a different time in my life, I would have. Loved to finish drafting auto and I would've made it [00:10:00] the saddest thing in the entire world and it would have been great. It would have been heavy. It would have been sad. It would have also been great, but because of personal things, there came a moment because of life, because of real life, there came a very big moment in my journey with Otto that I simply could not write more and I wanted to power through it and I wanted to stay. I wanted to still write, I wanted to finish it. I'm a finisher of things. I start projects and I finish them and finishing things makes me feel like I've accomplished a thing. It's something that I find a lot of value with. Instead, I had another idea for another short story. Tos that I am still working on right now. I have taken a brief hiatus from writing just because I've decided to start [00:11:00] dating a little bit and so free time. I mean, it's a. But with TIS with tos, it's a story of two dedicated lovers. It's a story that fills me with hope and brought a lot of my beliefs about relationships and about unconditional love and what unconditional love actually means and how it would manifest in the lifetime of, of two partners. And I was excited to write that. And so. At the time I told myself that I was putting auto on the back burner and I started writing TIS instead. And tos fills me with joy. It fills me with hope. it is a message that I love that I want to run with. Whereas Otto was more of a message about bullying and I wasn't in a good mental space for that. And so. Sometimes to deal with writer's block, we get to write something else. that [00:12:00] means creating space between yourself and your current work in progress in order to start a different work in progress. And you can always revisit what you are leaving behind, or sometimes you. Bid add you to the things that you are leaving behind, which is what I think is going to happen with auto. I'm not sure that I'm ever going to pick that up again. Maybe sometime in the future. I mean, I guess never say never, but certainly not today. And probably not tomorrow. So this has been the final episode of our three-part series on writer's block. sometimes you get to pay attention to your internal world and take care of yourself. As a way to combat writer's block. So thank you so much for joining me. Let me know your thoughts on the past three episodes of writing in the tiny house [00:13:00] and be sure to tune in next week with a new episode of writing in the tiny house. Thank you so much for your time. We will see you there. Devin Davis: And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.[00:14:00]

The final part of our Writer's Block series. What to do when you encounter writer's block because of your mood and the circumstances of your life. “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1</a> Become a patron today! Visit <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. <a href="http://www.littlesyllables.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.littlesyllables.com</a> Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage. So we've talked about writer's block for a couple weeks. Now this is week number three. We talked about the structure of the outline itself. We talked about the story arc, but what if it is simply you getting in your own way? We've all been there too, my friends. So let's talk about your inner environment and how that can lead to writer's block today on Writing in the Tiny House. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to this week's episode of Writing in the [00:01:00] Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy who lives in the tiny house in Northern Utah. And I write things and I tell you about the process so that you can write things. The whole point of this podcast is to give you the tools and the knowledge necessary for you to do your own creative writing so that you can crank out a short story in three months or crank out a novel in 18 months and still have the wisdom and the foresight to adjust that timeline if you feel you need to. Most things aren't done that fast, but it's good to know that they can be. So today we are on part three of our little mini series on writer's block. And today we are talking about the inner conflict that each of us has with our work in progress. So regardless, especially if you are writing a long thing, if you are writing a thing that is not going to be over [00:02:00] and done with in like one day, you are bound to have days where you hate what you've written. And you hate your work in progress. You hate your computer. You hate the place where you write, you hate your desk. You hate your chair. I don't have a chair. I hate my floor. I hate my standing desk. There are days where you will have a really bad attitude and there are days where t he energy of your work in progress doesn't match what you are going through. Sometimes this can be a really big thing. Most of the time it will be kind of a smaller thing that you can figure out and push through or figure out and resolve, and then get back to work on your work in progress. And other times it might require something else. So with your work in progress, if you are a person who has been pushing and pushing to get your word count in, and you have developed this cool writing routine, you have developed [00:03:00] this wonderful routine of writing every day, you have a nice lofty word count, and you have been achieving that word count all the time, but sometimes you feel like you're still spinning your wheels just because the work in progress can be a pretty complicated and a pretty long thing. It is completely normal to set out and think that your short story is going to be 9,000 words and it ends up being 20 or that your novel is going to be 95,000 words. And it ends up being like 125,000 words. That happened with my first book. I wasn't expecting it to be as long as it was. So anyway, word counts can surprise us. And sometimes even though we're writing a ton of words and we are being these good disciplined writers, sometimes some times writer's block can happen just when you need an emotional break. [00:04:00] Sometimes you need a break. Sometimes the very best thing to do is to put some distance between you and your work in progress and let that work in progress cool off. And when we say that work in progress cool off what we actually mean is you get to cool off. All of these attitudes, all of this despair, all of this, you know, grumpiness or whatever. All of the negativity associated with your work in progress. If you take a second, you save your work, you close it out and you let it sit there for an amount of time. If you have wrapped up a novel and you're at the end of your novel, it is good to let it sit there for at least two weeks and let it cool down. If you are struggling through a work in progress, sometimes, give it a day, give it two days, give it a weekend. If you are going on vacation, maybe you can write up until the day before you go on vacation and then like go on vacation and make sure that your vacation is [00:05:00] a way from all the things. And perhaps it needs to include your work in progress. And then when you get back, you can pick it up again and you'll be in a better place. Sometimes it can be just letting it go for the night. So that you can go outside, you can breathe some fresh air, you can get some exercise, you can play with your kids. You can play with your dog. You can go see a movie. You can go do all of these other things that perhaps you have not done as much of, because you have been focusing more on being your version of this studious dedicated writer. And taking a break from your work in progress can be enough to simply let your brain calm down, let the negativity that has been building up, disperse, disappear, go away so that after your break and I don't mean forever. I mean sometimes, I mean, forever in a second, I'm [00:06:00] going to mean forever, but let your break be a simple way to recharge your batteries in whichever way charges your batteries best so that you don't develop a negative relationship with your work in progress. Just because if you have. A story or a novel or whatever that you're working on and you absolutely hate it. It will show in your writing. And if you are, writing as a way to beat yourself up, because you have something to prove or because if you don't write every day, then you're not a good writer, which is not right. Then developing a negative relationship with writing will eventually wear down your desire to write, and it will wear that away. And so I personally don't ever want to get into the spot where I hate writing period, the end. I instead find ways to give myself space and find ways to take care of myself so that [00:07:00] I can pick it up at a later date. Even if I don't know when the later date is going to be. So let's talk about a time where maybe you get to step away for forever and all ways. This shouldn't happen to you a lot. There are plenty of writers in this world who have written a lot more than they have shared. I am one of those people. So to just be cranking out creative content is certainly a possible thing too. it's a thing that we can do. It's a thing that I've done, but sometimes a person's published list is not an accurate reflection of all of the writing they've actually done. Back in November, if you have been following this podcast you are aware that we have been on the air, so to speak for more than a year now. We are in the sixties with our episodes, which is super cool. And like the downloading numbers for this podcast have been going [00:08:00] up slowly but surely this is pretty niche. I mean, creative writing is pretty niche when it comes to podcast content, but we're doing it. We're growing, we're getting more people involved and things are fun, and it's really fun to see it grow. But if you were around, back in November, You may remember that I was drafting a short story called auto and auto was something that I was really passionate about at the time. However, the content of the story itself was going to be really heavy. It was going to kind of take on an amount of like the little match girl. Type of story where there are definitely some glimmers of hope, but the overall story is pretty sad. I mean, with a little match girl, the poor girl dies at the end. It wasn't going to be exactly like that, but it was a thing where everything was just really sad and there's a little. [00:09:00] Of hope at the end, but it's all still really sad. Now, if you remember back in January 1st, I came out as gay on Facebook and to my friends and family. And there were weeks and weeks of preparing for that. That was a really big courageous, emotional moment for me. And. Back in November is actually when I started doing the mental and emotional work for whatever possibilities would come about from doing that from coming out at age 37 on January 1st there was a lot to worry about. There was a lot to work through and so dealing with real life back in November. And having such a dark and sad work in progress. I mean, had it been a different time in my life, I would have. Loved to finish drafting auto and I would've made it [00:10:00] the saddest thing in the entire world and it would have been great. It would have been heavy. It would have been sad. It would have also been great, but because of personal things, there came a moment because of life, because of real life, there came a very big moment in my journey with Otto that I simply could not write more and I wanted to power through it and I wanted to stay. I wanted to still write, I wanted to finish it. I'm a finisher of things. I start projects and I finish them and finishing things makes me feel like I've accomplished a thing. It's something that I find a lot of value with. Instead, I had another idea for another short story. Tos that I am still working on right now. I have taken a brief hiatus from writing just because I've decided to start [00:11:00] dating a little bit and so free time. I mean, it's a. But with TIS with tos, it's a story of two dedicated lovers. It's a story that fills me with hope and brought a lot of my beliefs about relationships and about unconditional love and what unconditional love actually means and how it would manifest in the lifetime of, of two partners. And I was excited to write that. And so. At the time I told myself that I was putting auto on the back burner and I started writing TIS instead. And tos fills me with joy. It fills me with hope. it is a message that I love that I want to run with. Whereas Otto was more of a message about bullying and I wasn't in a good mental space for that. And so. Sometimes to deal with writer's block, we get to write something else. that [00:12:00] means creating space between yourself and your current work in progress in order to start a different work in progress. And you can always revisit what you are leaving behind, or sometimes you. Bid add you to the things that you are leaving behind, which is what I think is going to happen with auto. I'm not sure that I'm ever going to pick that up again. Maybe sometime in the future. I mean, I guess never say never, but certainly not today. And probably not tomorrow. So this has been the final episode of our three-part series on writer's block. sometimes you get to pay attention to your internal world and take care of yourself. As a way to combat writer's block. So thank you so much for joining me. Let me know your thoughts on the past three episodes of writing in the tiny house [00:13:00] and be sure to tune in next week with a new episode of writing in the tiny house. Thank you so much for your time. We will see you there. Devin Davis: And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.[00:14:00]

Writer's Block, Part 3

When writer's block happens because the characters arcs don't make sense anymore. “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1 Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage. [00:00:00] So we were talking about writer's block and let's talk about another thing or another type of writer's block. Sometimes it's not so much that we don't understand the events that happened; it's that we don't understand our characters. So as we carry on with our second part of this writer's block series, we are going to delve into story arcs. [00:00:30] Today on writing in the tiny house. Hello? Hello. Hello, and welcome to today's episode. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy who lives in a tiny house in Northern Utah who writes things and then likes to share what the writing process looks like. The whole point is to give you the tools and the inspiration and the knowledge necessary for you to start and finish a short story in three months, or to start and finish a novel in 18 months and above all to give you the wisdom and the foresight to understand that sometimes that timeline will need to be adjusted. [00:01:32] I would dare say almost every time. Sometimes not understanding the time commitment that something like this has, can deter us from even getting started. And so understanding that it is something that can clip along at a fast pace if we want it to, and if we are prepared to make that happen can be valuable for a lot of us to even get started. [00:01:53] So last week we talked about our cold hard outline. We talked about the scenes and we talked about reorganizing scenes. Revisiting and revising our outlines as a way to combat writer's block. Especially if we are writing a plot heavy book. If we are writing something super plot driven as fantasy and science fiction tend to be, sometimes our outlines need to be a bit more dynamic. [00:02:23] And sometimes we need to give ourselves permission to take a day off of our word count goals in order to revise the map of what our story is going to be and where things are headed. So today, and this is a situation that I ran into pretty recently. It is not so much that we don't understand the structure of the story itself. [00:02:47] It's not so much that we don't understand the roadmap. It's that as we get into the story and as we start composing and drafting, and these characters come more to life, sometimes we don't understand our characters very well. And so we get to a point where we simply don't know where else to go just because what is on our outline no longer matches our characters. [00:03:17] I mentioned last week that I am in a lot of different Facebook groups, all geared toward creative writing. And the idea of writer's block comes up a lot and I like to pay attention and see what people suggest and see what people are doing as ways as a way to combat writer's block. [00:03:37] And one thing that some people suggested recently that I really liked was the idea of sitting down and feeling out your characters. So the lady in the Facebook group suggested interviewing your characters. That can be whatever you want it to be. If you want to actually sit down and talk to a person or whatever, or if you want to like, say things in your character's stead or perhaps write out a script, whatever things look like. The point is to sit down and feel out your characters. [00:04:20] With a work in progress, it can be very valuable to actually keep a running outline of where you have been so that you can remember where things went and where things are going and where some of the character things where some of the huge developmental character things happened and how they happened and what they were for. [00:04:41] It can be really valuable to tease all of that apart into the separate character arcs so that you can see that if your main character is a woman named , which is the case in one of my books and you see that Hoshi co makes it to the main island and does the things, and gets in touch with an art collector and whatever else. [00:05:06] you can see where the big important events happened and you can see why, and you can ask yourself does all of that make sense and does all of that support where the character needs to be now and where the character needs to be here in half a second when I keep writing. And oftentimes the answer is not quite yes. [00:05:33] So it's important to do this with all of your characters that you are following through your story. All of the main characters, sit down and see where they're going. See where they have come from the big stepping stones that they stepped on or stepped over in order to get where they are now. [00:05:51] And now as a character who is well developed and more into this story, because the story is more real to you at this point. And. You can further flesh out and further develop things in a different way, from a better informed stand point than you did before you started. Just because, I mean, if we're getting writer's block, odds are we're a chunk in, we're a chunk into the story. [00:06:19] And we understand the story better than we did before we started. And so it is better to start making decisions like that at this point. Sometimes the inspiration or the solution to the writer's block can be that a character needs a specific thing or a certain event that isn't in your outline right now, needs to happen in order to get your character into a more believable place or some of the things that you wrote already may not have built up your character or your scene to a place where it needs to be. [00:06:59] I experienced that pretty recently, actually I was getting to the end of a scene. I felt pretty good about the way that I had written it up to that point. And yet here I was standing. So I have a standing desk in the tiny house, right now I don't have an office chair. I've been meaning to buy an office chair for like seven months and I still haven't done it, but I was standing here. [00:07:24] Dumbfounded mouth agape sort of staring at my computer because I could not figure out what was going on next, what needed to happen next. And what I came to realize was the source of the writer's block wasn't so much what was coming next. The source of the writer's block came from the previous couple of pages that I had written didn't build up the characters and the scene to a place where it needed to be. [00:07:53] It had been a slightly different direction. And so I needed to go through what I had already written and revise stuff and delete stuff. And add some stuff in order to correct the course that the story had already been going. And once I did that, the writer's block was gone. I was able to get back into the flow of writing again, and I was able to touch base with the characters and see where they needed to be and plug in the necessary things in order to have a good story. [00:08:26] That is just a simple, but a very good thing. It ties back into outlining, but you can see that it's bigger than just outlining. I mean, writer's block is bigger than just simply not being able to write. There are a lot of facets that go into writer's block and I wanted to touch on some of these things that go into that. So last week we talked about just structure of the story this week. Sometimes it's the character arc. Sometimes the characters need a thing, and sometimes what you have written does not support where they need to go. And so some revamping or some adding or some deleting or whatever is the right call to make that change and to get the flow back into the story. [00:09:13] And next week as we conclude this series on writer's block, we are going to talk about your inner environment. Sometimes it's not actually about writing sometimes it's about you. So be sure to tune in next week, as we wrap up this little mini series on writer's block, on writing in the tiny house. Thank you so much, guys. [00:09:36] Bye. [00:09:37]  [00:09:37] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time. 

When writer's block happens because the characters arcs don't make sense anymore. “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1</a> Become a patron today! Visit <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. <a href="http://www.littlesyllables.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.littlesyllables.com</a> Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage. [00:00:00] So we were talking about writer's block and let's talk about another thing or another type of writer's block. Sometimes it's not so much that we don't understand the events that happened; it's that we don't understand our characters. So as we carry on with our second part of this writer's block series, we are going to delve into story arcs. [00:00:30] Today on writing in the tiny house. Hello? Hello. Hello, and welcome to today's episode. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy who lives in a tiny house in Northern Utah who writes things and then likes to share what the writing process looks like. The whole point is to give you the tools and the inspiration and the knowledge necessary for you to start and finish a short story in three months, or to start and finish a novel in 18 months and above all to give you the wisdom and the foresight to understand that sometimes that timeline will need to be adjusted. [00:01:32] I would dare say almost every time. Sometimes not understanding the time commitment that something like this has, can deter us from even getting started. And so understanding that it is something that can clip along at a fast pace if we want it to, and if we are prepared to make that happen can be valuable for a lot of us to even get started. [00:01:53] So last week we talked about our cold hard outline. We talked about the scenes and we talked about reorganizing scenes. Revisiting and revising our outlines as a way to combat writer's block. Especially if we are writing a plot heavy book. If we are writing something super plot driven as fantasy and science fiction tend to be, sometimes our outlines need to be a bit more dynamic. [00:02:23] And sometimes we need to give ourselves permission to take a day off of our word count goals in order to revise the map of what our story is going to be and where things are headed. So today, and this is a situation that I ran into pretty recently. It is not so much that we don't understand the structure of the story itself. [00:02:47] It's not so much that we don't understand the roadmap. It's that as we get into the story and as we start composing and drafting, and these characters come more to life, sometimes we don't understand our characters very well. And so we get to a point where we simply don't know where else to go just because what is on our outline no longer matches our characters. [00:03:17] I mentioned last week that I am in a lot of different Facebook groups, all geared toward creative writing. And the idea of writer's block comes up a lot and I like to pay attention and see what people suggest and see what people are doing as ways as a way to combat writer's block. [00:03:37] And one thing that some people suggested recently that I really liked was the idea of sitting down and feeling out your characters. So the lady in the Facebook group suggested interviewing your characters. That can be whatever you want it to be. If you want to actually sit down and talk to a person or whatever, or if you want to like, say things in your character's stead or perhaps write out a script, whatever things look like. The point is to sit down and feel out your characters. [00:04:20] With a work in progress, it can be very valuable to actually keep a running outline of where you have been so that you can remember where things went and where things are going and where some of the character things where some of the huge developmental character things happened and how they happened and what they were for. [00:04:41] It can be really valuable to tease all of that apart into the separate character arcs so that you can see that if your main character is a woman named , which is the case in one of my books and you see that Hoshi co makes it to the main island and does the things, and gets in touch with an art collector and whatever else. [00:05:06] you can see where the big important events happened and you can see why, and you can ask yourself does all of that make sense and does all of that support where the character needs to be now and where the character needs to be here in half a second when I keep writing. And oftentimes the answer is not quite yes. [00:05:33] So it's important to do this with all of your characters that you are following through your story. All of the main characters, sit down and see where they're going. See where they have come from the big stepping stones that they stepped on or stepped over in order to get where they are now. [00:05:51] And now as a character who is well developed and more into this story, because the story is more real to you at this point. And. You can further flesh out and further develop things in a different way, from a better informed stand point than you did before you started. Just because, I mean, if we're getting writer's block, odds are we're a chunk in, we're a chunk into the story. [00:06:19] And we understand the story better than we did before we started. And so it is better to start making decisions like that at this point. Sometimes the inspiration or the solution to the writer's block can be that a character needs a specific thing or a certain event that isn't in your outline right now, needs to happen in order to get your character into a more believable place or some of the things that you wrote already may not have built up your character or your scene to a place where it needs to be. [00:06:59] I experienced that pretty recently, actually I was getting to the end of a scene. I felt pretty good about the way that I had written it up to that point. And yet here I was standing. So I have a standing desk in the tiny house, right now I don't have an office chair. I've been meaning to buy an office chair for like seven months and I still haven't done it, but I was standing here. [00:07:24] Dumbfounded mouth agape sort of staring at my computer because I could not figure out what was going on next, what needed to happen next. And what I came to realize was the source of the writer's block wasn't so much what was coming next. The source of the writer's block came from the previous couple of pages that I had written didn't build up the characters and the scene to a place where it needed to be. [00:07:53] It had been a slightly different direction. And so I needed to go through what I had already written and revise stuff and delete stuff. And add some stuff in order to correct the course that the story had already been going. And once I did that, the writer's block was gone. I was able to get back into the flow of writing again, and I was able to touch base with the characters and see where they needed to be and plug in the necessary things in order to have a good story. [00:08:26] That is just a simple, but a very good thing. It ties back into outlining, but you can see that it's bigger than just outlining. I mean, writer's block is bigger than just simply not being able to write. There are a lot of facets that go into writer's block and I wanted to touch on some of these things that go into that. So last week we talked about just structure of the story this week. Sometimes it's the character arc. Sometimes the characters need a thing, and sometimes what you have written does not support where they need to go. And so some revamping or some adding or some deleting or whatever is the right call to make that change and to get the flow back into the story. [00:09:13] And next week as we conclude this series on writer's block, we are going to talk about your inner environment. Sometimes it's not actually about writing sometimes it's about you. So be sure to tune in next week, as we wrap up this little mini series on writer's block, on writing in the tiny house. Thank you so much, guys. [00:09:36] Bye. [00:09:37]  [00:09:37] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

Writer's Block, Part 2

One way to get over writer’s block is to outline! Part 1 of 3! “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1 Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage.   [00:00:00] We've all been there before that moment where you're sitting in your dark room. And you have your outline ready. You have your character maps ready, and you have been plugging along your work in progress without any problems at all. And suddenly you get to a point in your manuscript where you simply cannot write more words, even though the story isn't finished. Today we are starting our three-part series on an in-depth look at writer's block. Today on Writing in the Tiny House.  [00:00:38] Hello. Hello. Hello and welcome to this week's episode of writing in the tiny house. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy who lives in a tiny house in Northern Utah, who likes to talk about creative writing. [00:01:15] And I've done an amount of creative writing in my day. I've also done a lot of other types of writing. Anyway. The whole point of this podcast is to give you the information and the tools and the motivation for you to get started on a short story and have it finished in three months, or to get started on a novel and have that finished in 18 months. [00:01:38] And to give you the wisdom to adjust that timeline, if you need to. I mean, if we look at last fall, I finished the short story, Bridgette from beginning to end, including edits, including beta readers, including first, second drafts, all the things clear to the copy edits in eight weeks. And it's a good short story. [00:02:02] It's still available on amazon.com if you want to check it out today and it's a process that can be done again. However, most writing projects take longer than that. But it's good to know that it can be done quickly if it needs to be. And it's good to know if you are not an experienced writer, it's okay to have an idea about how long things can take, if you develop more experience. [00:02:26] So today we are starting a three part series on the dreaded writer's block. I have touched on writer's block a very little bit in previous episodes. And up until very recently, I had the false notion that in order to get over writer's block, you need to simply outline better. I have since come to develop a new attitude toward writer's block. [00:02:55] I am a member in many different Facebook groups that are all dedicated toward creative writing, and writers block comes up a lot. And I pay attention to some of the things that people suggest and some of the things that people say they do in order to overcome writer's block. And that's why I'm going to be doing this three part series, just because writer's block is more than simply, you need to outline better. [00:03:21] It can be various different things. So with this episode today, we are going to be talking about outlining. We're going to be talking about the sequence of events in your novel and some different things to look for and some different ways to approach that. Next week we are going to be looking at some of the bigger picture of your novel, specifically the character arcs. [00:03:44] We have focused a lot this year on character arcs, which is super cool. Character arcs are awesome. And sometimes it can be the way that the characters in the story are developing that can lead you to be in kind of a tight spot where there's no wiggle room. And sometimes things need to be reworked. And some elements of the outline need to be changed in order to get yourself out of that bind. [00:04:10] And then the third part of this series is going to be a look at your internal environment. How are you feeling? What are you thinking? What is going on in your personal life? Just because so much of that can lead to writer's block. So much of that can also get you out of writer's block. Right now I have been taking a bit of a hiatus from writing. I'm still doing the podcast just because I have a good routine going. I have a lot to say. The podcast brings me a lot of joy, but when it comes to creative writing, I have also been being a lot more social recently and I have been dating a little bit. And that takes up a lot of free time, especially when you live in the middle of nowhere in Northern Utah, it is hard to casually date. [00:05:04] And so a lot of my free evenings are spent being social right now. And then on the weekends I have my kids. So that is my reasoning for my hiatus presently, but we'll pick up the writing again when it is time and I feel that things are going to be calming down pretty soon. I just kind of feel it, just one of those spiritual, energetic things, I guess. [00:05:29] And I have a lot of works in progress anyway, and I don't feel that I need to abandon them, but we're going to revisit just some of those things in the third episode of this series. Let's delve into this thing. One of the most common reasons that writer's block comes up is simply because, [00:05:52] like I said at the very beginning, simply because we have not outlined. We have drafted and we have developed all of these fun scenes and now we're in a spot where we kind of don't know how to proceed. We don't know the very next step. We might know the step after that. Or we still might know the ending of our story, but we have not tied together how to get from right here right now to maybe the end of the next scene. [00:06:24] So one person suggested in this situation, you just power through and you write, and I feel that there is wisdom in that. The thing is with your work in progress, writer's block comes during the first draft. Or if you are doing some like super big revising where you are rewriting entire swaths of your work in progress, then it could come at that time too. [00:06:48] But to simply have the creative process stop, and then you're left a bit dumb founded is what happens during the first draft. And my friends, I am here to tell you that the magic of writing comes after the first draft. I mean, there there's magic to be experienced in the first draft too. Don't get me wrong. [00:07:08] But as far as coaxing out the beauty and the imagery and the poetry of your writing, that is kind of not what the first draft is for. That's what the revisions are. That's what the revisions help you do is to get to the, the golden nuggets in your story, and to bring them out and to refine things and to bring shine and glitter to your writing, where it may not exist in the first draft, because in the first draft, you are simply getting it done. [00:07:41] You're getting it out of your brain and into your computer or down onto paper, whatever your processes. So. There is wisdom in simply powering through and writing something that sucks so that you can get to the rest of the story where it all makes sense again. And then you can get back into the flow of writing. [00:08:04] Another thing can be. if you are drafting a fantasy novel, or very often a scifi novel. These books tend to have a lot of plot. They tend to be very plot heavy and they tend to have a lot of subplots too. And so that means that sometimes the way that the plot and the subplots and all of those different parts weave together can get confusing and they can trip you up. [00:08:36] And so sometimes. It is valuable to step back and to review what you have already written and where you need to go if you are writing a very plot, heavy book, it can be very hard to pants that book. It can be very hard to simply draft by the seat of your pants a lot of people call that discovery writing. [00:09:00] I attend a lot of people tend to do a blend of both discovery writing and outlining. I think it's impossible to simply only do one and not the other, especially if you're writing a plot heavy book, a plot driven book, but it can be really valuable to simply step back. I mean, Especially when we're in drafting mode, we set aside time every day and we have like a word count and we have these goals that we want to achieve. [00:09:28] Sometimes it is absolutely worth the hour or two to give yourself permission, to figure out your outline again, instead of achieving a word count, sometimes you need to simply step back and see what you've done and where you need to go. Especially, if you have a lot of plots that you need to weave together, it is important to have a board of some form or whatever system you choose to do. [00:09:57] You can do something like melanoma. You can do a cork board on your wall, whatever, but with the subplots and with the plots, you have the big events and where they need to fall. And it's important to organize them in the way that they will. Be presented in your story, be presented in your text, just because it's important to write things in the order that they're going to be read. [00:10:21] Sometimes if that's not possible, then you kind of gotta do what you got to do, but it's important to know that like if this big event happens here with this plot, Then this other big event in subplot B or whatever, can't happen on the very next page, that would be too much, or it needs to come sooner just to pick up the pace and give us something exciting to read or whatever it's important to feel out and orchestrate those big events and those things. [00:10:52] So that first of all, it is easier to write and then it will be easier to revise and easier to read. So having an outline, if you are doing a plot, heavy book is super important. And if you are choosing instead to do the discovery approach with a plot heavy book, I mean, best of luck to you, but. Don't be afraid to, you know, jot down notes, especially if all of your subplots and stuff are becoming confusing. [00:11:21] So Sometimes we get writer's block because it is unclear to us what happens next, or it is unclear to us how things need to happen next. And so one approach is to simply power through so that you can get to an area in the novel that is more clear to you right now. Another option is to skip and then write. [00:11:44] The next part of the book that is clear to you now, but I don't recommend doing that. I like to write things in order. And the third thing is to give yourself permission to step back and to reorganize your outline. I have found that with my outlines, my outlines tend to be pretty spot. And the more that I write, the more I can fill in with my outline, just because things become better. [00:12:07] I understand my characters more. I understand the plot more than I did before I started. And so now there is more, there's more to flesh out. There's more to develop. And so it's okay to have your outline be somewhat dynamic. And if you need to revisit that and revise and tweak and rearrange. That can be an excellent way to combat writer's block. [00:12:35] And so thank you for joining me on this week's episode of writing and the tiny house. Next week, we will go on to part two of this series with writer's block. So please join me next week. We'll see you then. [00:12:49]  [00:12:49] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time. 

One way to get over writer’s block is to outline! Part 1 of 3! “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1</a> Become a patron today! Visit <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. <a href="http://www.littlesyllables.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.littlesyllables.com</a> Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage. [00:00:00] We've all been there before that moment where you're sitting in your dark room. And you have your outline ready. You have your character maps ready, and you have been plugging along your work in progress without any problems at all. And suddenly you get to a point in your manuscript where you simply cannot write more words, even though the story isn't finished. Today we are starting our three-part series on an in-depth look at writer's block. Today on Writing in the Tiny House.  [00:00:38] Hello. Hello. Hello and welcome to this week's episode of writing in the tiny house. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy who lives in a tiny house in Northern Utah, who likes to talk about creative writing. [00:01:15] And I've done an amount of creative writing in my day. I've also done a lot of other types of writing. Anyway. The whole point of this podcast is to give you the information and the tools and the motivation for you to get started on a short story and have it finished in three months, or to get started on a novel and have that finished in 18 months. [00:01:38] And to give you the wisdom to adjust that timeline, if you need to. I mean, if we look at last fall, I finished the short story, Bridgette from beginning to end, including edits, including beta readers, including first, second drafts, all the things clear to the copy edits in eight weeks. And it's a good short story. [00:02:02] It's still available on <a href="http://amazon.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">amazon.com</a> if you want to check it out today and it's a process that can be done again. However, most writing projects take longer than that. But it's good to know that it can be done quickly if it needs to be. And it's good to know if you are not an experienced writer, it's okay to have an idea about how long things can take, if you develop more experience. [00:02:26] So today we are starting a three part series on the dreaded writer's block. I have touched on writer's block a very little bit in previous episodes. And up until very recently, I had the false notion that in order to get over writer's block, you need to simply outline better. I have since come to develop a new attitude toward writer's block. [00:02:55] I am a member in many different Facebook groups that are all dedicated toward creative writing, and writers block comes up a lot. And I pay attention to some of the things that people suggest and some of the things that people say they do in order to overcome writer's block. And that's why I'm going to be doing this three part series, just because writer's block is more than simply, you need to outline better. [00:03:21] It can be various different things. So with this episode today, we are going to be talking about outlining. We're going to be talking about the sequence of events in your novel and some different things to look for and some different ways to approach that. Next week we are going to be looking at some of the bigger picture of your novel, specifically the character arcs. [00:03:44] We have focused a lot this year on character arcs, which is super cool. Character arcs are awesome. And sometimes it can be the way that the characters in the story are developing that can lead you to be in kind of a tight spot where there's no wiggle room. And sometimes things need to be reworked. And some elements of the outline need to be changed in order to get yourself out of that bind. [00:04:10] And then the third part of this series is going to be a look at your internal environment. How are you feeling? What are you thinking? What is going on in your personal life? Just because so much of that can lead to writer's block. So much of that can also get you out of writer's block. Right now I have been taking a bit of a hiatus from writing. I'm still doing the podcast just because I have a good routine going. I have a lot to say. The podcast brings me a lot of joy, but when it comes to creative writing, I have also been being a lot more social recently and I have been dating a little bit. And that takes up a lot of free time, especially when you live in the middle of nowhere in Northern Utah, it is hard to casually date. [00:05:04] And so a lot of my free evenings are spent being social right now. And then on the weekends I have my kids. So that is my reasoning for my hiatus presently, but we'll pick up the writing again when it is time and I feel that things are going to be calming down pretty soon. I just kind of feel it, just one of those spiritual, energetic things, I guess. [00:05:29] And I have a lot of works in progress anyway, and I don't feel that I need to abandon them, but we're going to revisit just some of those things in the third episode of this series. Let's delve into this thing. One of the most common reasons that writer's block comes up is simply because, [00:05:52] like I said at the very beginning, simply because we have not outlined. We have drafted and we have developed all of these fun scenes and now we're in a spot where we kind of don't know how to proceed. We don't know the very next step. We might know the step after that. Or we still might know the ending of our story, but we have not tied together how to get from right here right now to maybe the end of the next scene. [00:06:24] So one person suggested in this situation, you just power through and you write, and I feel that there is wisdom in that. The thing is with your work in progress, writer's block comes during the first draft. Or if you are doing some like super big revising where you are rewriting entire swaths of your work in progress, then it could come at that time too. [00:06:48] But to simply have the creative process stop, and then you're left a bit dumb founded is what happens during the first draft. And my friends, I am here to tell you that the magic of writing comes after the first draft. I mean, there there's magic to be experienced in the first draft too. Don't get me wrong. [00:07:08] But as far as coaxing out the beauty and the imagery and the poetry of your writing, that is kind of not what the first draft is for. That's what the revisions are. That's what the revisions help you do is to get to the, the golden nuggets in your story, and to bring them out and to refine things and to bring shine and glitter to your writing, where it may not exist in the first draft, because in the first draft, you are simply getting it done. [00:07:41] You're getting it out of your brain and into your computer or down onto paper, whatever your processes. So. There is wisdom in simply powering through and writing something that sucks so that you can get to the rest of the story where it all makes sense again. And then you can get back into the flow of writing. [00:08:04] Another thing can be. if you are drafting a fantasy novel, or very often a scifi novel. These books tend to have a lot of plot. They tend to be very plot heavy and they tend to have a lot of subplots too. And so that means that sometimes the way that the plot and the subplots and all of those different parts weave together can get confusing and they can trip you up. [00:08:36] And so sometimes. It is valuable to step back and to review what you have already written and where you need to go if you are writing a very plot, heavy book, it can be very hard to pants that book. It can be very hard to simply draft by the seat of your pants a lot of people call that discovery writing. [00:09:00] I attend a lot of people tend to do a blend of both discovery writing and outlining. I think it's impossible to simply only do one and not the other, especially if you're writing a plot heavy book, a plot driven book, but it can be really valuable to simply step back. I mean, Especially when we're in drafting mode, we set aside time every day and we have like a word count and we have these goals that we want to achieve. [00:09:28] Sometimes it is absolutely worth the hour or two to give yourself permission, to figure out your outline again, instead of achieving a word count, sometimes you need to simply step back and see what you've done and where you need to go. Especially, if you have a lot of plots that you need to weave together, it is important to have a board of some form or whatever system you choose to do. [00:09:57] You can do something like melanoma. You can do a cork board on your wall, whatever, but with the subplots and with the plots, you have the big events and where they need to fall. And it's important to organize them in the way that they will. Be presented in your story, be presented in your text, just because it's important to write things in the order that they're going to be read. [00:10:21] Sometimes if that's not possible, then you kind of gotta do what you got to do, but it's important to know that like if this big event happens here with this plot, Then this other big event in subplot B or whatever, can't happen on the very next page, that would be too much, or it needs to come sooner just to pick up the pace and give us something exciting to read or whatever it's important to feel out and orchestrate those big events and those things. [00:10:52] So that first of all, it is easier to write and then it will be easier to revise and easier to read. So having an outline, if you are doing a plot, heavy book is super important. And if you are choosing instead to do the discovery approach with a plot heavy book, I mean, best of luck to you, but. Don't be afraid to, you know, jot down notes, especially if all of your subplots and stuff are becoming confusing. [00:11:21] So Sometimes we get writer's block because it is unclear to us what happens next, or it is unclear to us how things need to happen next. And so one approach is to simply power through so that you can get to an area in the novel that is more clear to you right now. Another option is to skip and then write. [00:11:44] The next part of the book that is clear to you now, but I don't recommend doing that. I like to write things in order. And the third thing is to give yourself permission to step back and to reorganize your outline. I have found that with my outlines, my outlines tend to be pretty spot. And the more that I write, the more I can fill in with my outline, just because things become better. [00:12:07] I understand my characters more. I understand the plot more than I did before I started. And so now there is more, there's more to flesh out. There's more to develop. And so it's okay to have your outline be somewhat dynamic. And if you need to revisit that and revise and tweak and rearrange. That can be an excellent way to combat writer's block. [00:12:35] And so thank you for joining me on this week's episode of writing and the tiny house. Next week, we will go on to part two of this series with writer's block. So please join me next week. We'll see you then. [00:12:49]  [00:12:49] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

Writer's Block, Part 1

How to build a story arc, and then ruin it. It's a cautionary tale, my friends. “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1 Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage. [00:00:00] Last week, we talked about character arcs, especially transformation arcs, and how we need to keep the essence of the character still intact, even though they are making different decisions. And today we are going to talk about how to ruin all of that just by the reaction or how the other characters in the story behave. [00:00:24] Today on Writing in the Tiny House. Hello, hello, hello. And welcome to today's episode of Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy who writes and talks about writing. The whole point of this podcast is to get you to write a novel in 18 months and to have the wisdom to adjust that timeline, if you need to. So today we are talking about character arcs again. Last week, we talked about how to make a good character arc, how you need to preserve the essence of that character. [00:01:20] And reflect that while they are still making better decisions or worse decisions, depending on the direction the arc is going. And today we are going to talk about how to ruin all of that based on the reaction of the other characters in the story. So I told you last week that I have been reading the book of Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders. [00:01:42] And this book is one of the best references on developmental edits. It is the deep developmental edit. It is meat as opposed to milk. He takes the very underlying, the really deep, the really thoughtful, amazing parts of a story and brings it out and shows you how it worked or how it didn't work. [00:02:05] And it is astounding. It is incredible how he is so in touch with his craft and so in touch with the way that storytelling happens, that he can simply share with you how to do it better by breaking apart seven classical Russian short stories. In the one that we focused on most recently, it's the story of a man who sacrifices himself to save another man while they are trapped in a blizzard. [00:02:36] And because of his sacrifice, this other man survives while he dies, he perishes in the blizzard. This is where we take this wonderful transformation of this selfish ornery man who is focused on himself, who loves money and whatever. And we take him through this cool arc of self-discovery sort of, and better choices in order to sacrifice himself to save this other character. [00:03:04] And we love that. And it is cool to see that demonstrated in this short story. However, then we have this other character who is saved, who is written in more of a two dimensional way and who represents kind of this idealistic arc type of a surf, like just kind of the idea that the working man is the best man that a simple man is the good man that we all need to aspire to become. [00:03:36] And it's interesting because in the rest of the story, this man does not reflect on that sacrifice. That sacrifice is not brought up again, it doesn't stir up things within him and it doesn't inspire him to live his life in a different way. The sacrifice happens, this guy survives and the savior like this other guy--the guy who saved him-- is largely forgotten in the rest of the story. It's a moment where you kind of get to sit back and wonder what happened. And so we can question the story arc of the one character of the savior and ask, why did we even do that? And we can question, why do we have this simpleton who just got saved and it didn't seem to matter to him. So why does it matter to me and why did it matter to the author or does it? And just in doing that, it cheapens the experience of the savior, of the guy who sacrificed himself to save this other guy from a blizzard. I once read a story, just to demonstrate this point, I read a story. It was kind of like portal fantasy, I guess. So the guy found himself in a new and a strange world with magic, and there were some differences in his body just because in the real world he had a specific sickness that made his body function poorly. He couldn't feel things. He had a hard time just living a normal life and suddenly he wakes up in this magical world and that condition doesn't exist here. [00:05:19] So he has this strong body. He can make these really cool things happen. And he is feeling things again, unlike he has felt them in a long time. with that in mind, this is what happens. And in this story, this is pretty gross anyway, but it was more confusing with the way that it was handled. [00:05:41] So toward the beginning of this story, this middle aged man befriend. Or something is discovered by this woman in her late teens, early twenties, I believe was her age and she's beautiful and she's attractive. And he now has this body with new found senses that he has not lived with in a very long time. [00:06:03] So a new discovery of this vigor and this attraction to this woman anyway, there comes about a sexual assault and it happens by the main character, which I cannot handle reading anyway. But. The thing that happens later or immediately after, and then throughout the book. So in my mind, sexual assault is very important. It is always a very big pivotal moment in a story, and it needs to be treated with sensitivity and it needs to be given very sensitive. Proper attention in order to make sense that we are including such violence and such horror in our stories like sexual assault needs to be there for a reason. [00:06:55] And it needs to be a damn good reason. With this story there was the sexual assault, it was done by the main character, which is already a hard thing to figure out why that happened. And then this young woman kind of disappears for the rest of the novel. And her mother immediately comes into the story and serves as the guide to this man to get him to his destination. [00:07:25] Now if we're talking about choices and dealing with things and cheapening experiences and making things unbelievable. In my mind, if a person just had a violent sexual encounter with a woman and then is now forced to be in the company of that woman's mom for kind of a long time and to have to trust her and to have to like, trust his safety with her and trust that she's going to like lead him to where he needs to go and whatever else. [00:07:59] There would be certain internal monologue going on. There would be a certain mannerisms. There would be paranoia. There would be something, there would be a reaction to that strange and awful situation. In this story that didn't happen at all. This mom came in and the sexual assault was never mentioned again. [00:08:25] The mom came in and led this man to his destination. And she was actually with him throughout kind of a big chunk of the book. And then the book ends and we have no idea why the sexual assault was even in there to begin with why it needed to come about that way. Why a rediscovery of this body that could feel and lust and [00:08:50] perform and whatever else needed to be explored and rediscovered in such a violent way. There were so many questions left unanswered, and because of all of that, instead of me hating the character, I mean, I wasn't terribly fond of the character anyway. What it instead made me do is question the author. [00:09:17] Like why, why, why was this the way that we did it? So I read this book back in college and one of my best friends at the time also read the book. I recommended it to her. Not because it was good, but because it was bad. And we spent an entire evening in village in eating pie and ripping up hard. This book, I'm not going to mention it, what the title of this book is, So much of the believability of the story stemmed from that choice of inviting this horrendous, active violence into the story, and then responding in no way at all to that act throughout the rest of the story. And as a result of that, it cheapened the story and it made. I believe the main character less and it made us not too interested in the author from then on, that is how. We take these really big moments and it can be a big achievement. It can be a big act of violence. It can be good. It can be bad. It can be a great many things. That's how we take it. And we ruin it by letting it fall flat with the other characters in the story or with the main character itself. [00:10:37] Let's remember the gravity of the choices that we put our characters through. Let's remember everybody's reaction to the things that they are exposed to and let all of that to build your story. When you include everything. If this horrendous act of violence had been fleshed out and there had been attention brought to this character's thought process or an encounter by the mother or anything, if anything at all had come about. [00:11:06] the entire story would have been better Revisiting the short story that George Saunders analyzes in a swim in a pond in the rain. If the simpleton who was saved had allowed that sacrifice to change his life and make him a better person, the sacrifice itself would have been so much more meaningful and it would have been better, but because none of that happened, the sacrifice ended up feeling ch. [00:11:35] Be sure to tune in next week with another episode of Writing in the Tiny House. Thank you so much for your time. Have a good day. [00:11:45]  [00:11:45] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time. 

How to build a story arc, and then ruin it. It's a cautionary tale, my friends. “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1</a> Become a patron today! Visit <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. <a href="http://www.littlesyllables.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.littlesyllables.com</a> Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage. [00:00:00] Last week, we talked about character arcs, especially transformation arcs, and how we need to keep the essence of the character still intact, even though they are making different decisions. And today we are going to talk about how to ruin all of that just by the reaction or how the other characters in the story behave. [00:00:24] Today on Writing in the Tiny House. Hello, hello, hello. And welcome to today's episode of Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy who writes and talks about writing. The whole point of this podcast is to get you to write a novel in 18 months and to have the wisdom to adjust that timeline, if you need to. So today we are talking about character arcs again. Last week, we talked about how to make a good character arc, how you need to preserve the essence of that character. [00:01:20] And reflect that while they are still making better decisions or worse decisions, depending on the direction the arc is going. And today we are going to talk about how to ruin all of that based on the reaction of the other characters in the story. So I told you last week that I have been reading the book of Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders. [00:01:42] And this book is one of the best references on developmental edits. It is the deep developmental edit. It is meat as opposed to milk. He takes the very underlying, the really deep, the really thoughtful, amazing parts of a story and brings it out and shows you how it worked or how it didn't work. [00:02:05] And it is astounding. It is incredible how he is so in touch with his craft and so in touch with the way that storytelling happens, that he can simply share with you how to do it better by breaking apart seven classical Russian short stories. In the one that we focused on most recently, it's the story of a man who sacrifices himself to save another man while they are trapped in a blizzard. [00:02:36] And because of his sacrifice, this other man survives while he dies, he perishes in the blizzard. This is where we take this wonderful transformation of this selfish ornery man who is focused on himself, who loves money and whatever. And we take him through this cool arc of self-discovery sort of, and better choices in order to sacrifice himself to save this other character. [00:03:04] And we love that. And it is cool to see that demonstrated in this short story. However, then we have this other character who is saved, who is written in more of a two dimensional way and who represents kind of this idealistic arc type of a surf, like just kind of the idea that the working man is the best man that a simple man is the good man that we all need to aspire to become. [00:03:36] And it's interesting because in the rest of the story, this man does not reflect on that sacrifice. That sacrifice is not brought up again, it doesn't stir up things within him and it doesn't inspire him to live his life in a different way. The sacrifice happens, this guy survives and the savior like this other guy--the guy who saved him-- is largely forgotten in the rest of the story. It's a moment where you kind of get to sit back and wonder what happened. And so we can question the story arc of the one character of the savior and ask, why did we even do that? And we can question, why do we have this simpleton who just got saved and it didn't seem to matter to him. So why does it matter to me and why did it matter to the author or does it? And just in doing that, it cheapens the experience of the savior, of the guy who sacrificed himself to save this other guy from a blizzard. I once read a story, just to demonstrate this point, I read a story. It was kind of like portal fantasy, I guess. So the guy found himself in a new and a strange world with magic, and there were some differences in his body just because in the real world he had a specific sickness that made his body function poorly. He couldn't feel things. He had a hard time just living a normal life and suddenly he wakes up in this magical world and that condition doesn't exist here. [00:05:19] So he has this strong body. He can make these really cool things happen. And he is feeling things again, unlike he has felt them in a long time. with that in mind, this is what happens. And in this story, this is pretty gross anyway, but it was more confusing with the way that it was handled. [00:05:41] So toward the beginning of this story, this middle aged man befriend. Or something is discovered by this woman in her late teens, early twenties, I believe was her age and she's beautiful and she's attractive. And he now has this body with new found senses that he has not lived with in a very long time. [00:06:03] So a new discovery of this vigor and this attraction to this woman anyway, there comes about a sexual assault and it happens by the main character, which I cannot handle reading anyway. But. The thing that happens later or immediately after, and then throughout the book. So in my mind, sexual assault is very important. It is always a very big pivotal moment in a story, and it needs to be treated with sensitivity and it needs to be given very sensitive. Proper attention in order to make sense that we are including such violence and such horror in our stories like sexual assault needs to be there for a reason. [00:06:55] And it needs to be a damn good reason. With this story there was the sexual assault, it was done by the main character, which is already a hard thing to figure out why that happened. And then this young woman kind of disappears for the rest of the novel. And her mother immediately comes into the story and serves as the guide to this man to get him to his destination. [00:07:25] Now if we're talking about choices and dealing with things and cheapening experiences and making things unbelievable. In my mind, if a person just had a violent sexual encounter with a woman and then is now forced to be in the company of that woman's mom for kind of a long time and to have to trust her and to have to like, trust his safety with her and trust that she's going to like lead him to where he needs to go and whatever else. [00:07:59] There would be certain internal monologue going on. There would be a certain mannerisms. There would be paranoia. There would be something, there would be a reaction to that strange and awful situation. In this story that didn't happen at all. This mom came in and the sexual assault was never mentioned again. [00:08:25] The mom came in and led this man to his destination. And she was actually with him throughout kind of a big chunk of the book. And then the book ends and we have no idea why the sexual assault was even in there to begin with why it needed to come about that way. Why a rediscovery of this body that could feel and lust and [00:08:50] perform and whatever else needed to be explored and rediscovered in such a violent way. There were so many questions left unanswered, and because of all of that, instead of me hating the character, I mean, I wasn't terribly fond of the character anyway. What it instead made me do is question the author. [00:09:17] Like why, why, why was this the way that we did it? So I read this book back in college and one of my best friends at the time also read the book. I recommended it to her. Not because it was good, but because it was bad. And we spent an entire evening in village in eating pie and ripping up hard. This book, I'm not going to mention it, what the title of this book is, So much of the believability of the story stemmed from that choice of inviting this horrendous, active violence into the story, and then responding in no way at all to that act throughout the rest of the story. And as a result of that, it cheapened the story and it made. I believe the main character less and it made us not too interested in the author from then on, that is how. We take these really big moments and it can be a big achievement. It can be a big act of violence. It can be good. It can be bad. It can be a great many things. That's how we take it. And we ruin it by letting it fall flat with the other characters in the story or with the main character itself. [00:10:37] Let's remember the gravity of the choices that we put our characters through. Let's remember everybody's reaction to the things that they are exposed to and let all of that to build your story. When you include everything. If this horrendous act of violence had been fleshed out and there had been attention brought to this character's thought process or an encounter by the mother or anything, if anything at all had come about. [00:11:06] the entire story would have been better Revisiting the short story that George Saunders analyzes in a swim in a pond in the rain. If the simpleton who was saved had allowed that sacrifice to change his life and make him a better person, the sacrifice itself would have been so much more meaningful and it would have been better, but because none of that happened, the sacrifice ended up feeling ch. [00:11:35] Be sure to tune in next week with another episode of Writing in the Tiny House. Thank you so much for your time. Have a good day. [00:11:45]  [00:11:45] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

Believable Change, Part 2

How to make a character's transformation arc believable. “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1 Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage. [00:00:00] Last week, we talked about languages, sort of, I guess the title of last week's episode was a bit misleading because it said all of the languages. And I realized that I probably should have included a list of languages, which is what the title implied. Anyway today, we're going to be talking about character transformation and how to make it believable today on Writing in the Tiny House. [00:00:28] Hello. Hello. Hello, and welcome to today's episode of Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis. And I am the guy living in a tiny house who writes things and tells you about how writing works and what to do and how to do it. The point of this podcast is to empower you to be able to write a novel in 18 months and to have the wisdom to adjust that timeline if you feel you need to. [00:01:17] So today, We are going to be talking about transformations. We are going to be talking about taking a character who's kind of awful or kind of persnickety or kind of negative or something and changing them in a believable way. So one of the most famous story arcs or at least most known story arcs that follow something like this is the story of Scrooge in a Christmas Carol. [00:01:46] It is the story of a man who sees his life and then sees what all of that is going to lead to and decides to change. Right now arcs like that are really popular. An arc that I also love instead of a redemption arc is also a corruption arc where you take someone good and because of circumstances and because of personal weakness and because of things like that, choices and events and trauma, you turn them into a villain. [00:02:18] One of my very favorite corruption arcs is actually not in literature. It's in TV. Well, it's on Netflix, it's in the series arcane. The corruption arc of the character Powder is fantastic. If you are not familiar with the series Arcane, I suggest that you watch that series today. But all of these things require a character to start out one way and to turn out another way. [00:02:47] I've been reading the book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders and this has been a completely transformative thing for me. As far as learning how to developmental edit in a more grown up and in a more meaningful way, it has been the best resource I have read in a very long time. George Saunders is freaking amazing when it comes to simply knowing his craft and how to explain how he knows his craft. [00:03:21] If you are unfamiliar with the book, with the way that it's structured is there are seven classic Russian short stories. I don't fully know why Saunders chose to stick with seven Russian short stories, but they are some of his favorites. I don't fully understand the choice of that, but whatever. [00:03:42] And he goes through and he picks them apart and he shows you what the author is doing. He's showing you what they did well, and actually what they didn't do well. And he picks each of these short stories as a way to demonstrate craft, as a way to demonstrate something awesome. And talk about it. So what I recently read, it is a story about these two men who get stuck in a snow storm and one of them sacrifices himself in order to save the other. [00:04:13] And it's one of those things where the snow storm, they can't get away from it. And the man uses himself as a shield against the weather to save the other man. And the thing that Saunders brings to light in this short story, that makes the transformation of that man so believable. So this man starts off as a very self-centered person and he is distrustful. He and the other main character or the person that he saves, don't have a super great relationship. And he's complaining about things like money and whatever else. He's not a warm, fuzzy kind of guy. As far as the universe goes, he is in the center of his own universe. And he is the hero of his own story. [00:05:06] I mean, yes, we can say the same thing about each of us, but t hat's how this character is. And so the whole point behind this episode of Writing in the Tiny House is to touch on what a good arc or a good transformation arc does, what it looks like. Just the mechanism behind all of that. What I mean is it is important to understand how your character makes choices that energy behind their day to day. Their thought processes, the way that all of these things are formulated so that you can understand how they make choices. And the cool thing about a believable arc that leads to some form of transformation is [00:05:58] all of the choices that lead to this better outcome are still done in the manner that this person lives their life. That means that if a person is paranoid and they tend to obsess and they tend to stew, it is more believable for them to simply take that energy of obsessing and stewing and still do all of that, but point that energy toward better choices. [00:06:27] So with Ebeneezer Scrooge, he was a person who is short. He lacked understanding. He also was quick to decide And quick to make choices to bring about a resolution. And so that's how he ran his business. Everything was decided on the spot. His word was always final. And so even while he visits with the spirits of Christmas, past, present, and future and all of that stuff, and in the end, he is a better person with a better outlook on life and a better outlook on the meaning of life and the meaning of Christmas, which is the whole point of a Christmas Carol. He still is making decisions the same way he made decisions. He commands a boy to go buy a Turkey. He is still, you know, bossing people around. [00:07:19] I mean, still in the spirit of Christmas that he is still himself. So if you have a person who tends to be loud and ornery and uses colorful language. Odds are, even though they are going to be making better decisions in the end, they still will use the same language. They will still be loud. They will still do all of those things. [00:07:44] If you take a person who is a rebel and then turn them into a priest. I'm not saying that isn't believable because we've all read stories where it is. You need to pay attention to how that rebel made his decisions, even while he was in the throws of maybe breaking the law. Was he following his heart? [00:08:06] Was he still standing up for what he thought was right? Was he still standing up for himself. Was he using aggressive language and a lot of self-confident stuff. Was he physically aggressive, things like that. And if you can tie all of that back into how he is as a priest so that we can still see that he is there. [00:08:28] That's what makes it all more believable. So again, with this story That is mentioned in A Swim in the Pond, in the Rain, this guy who is self-centered, who is kind of the hero of his own story. he still makes those decisions. He decides for himself that it would be best to use himself as a shield against the weather for this other man, so that this other man can survive. [00:08:56] It's still done in kind of that self centered way, but in one of those ways that we still see the change, but we still see the person. If that makes sense, it's important to include the essence of the person as we bring about this arc.. If we want to visit this corruption arc that I mentioned there is a girl in the story of Arcane. [00:09:22] Her name is Powder. She is tinkery. She likes to make things. She is very submissive and moldable and she doesn't want to be a screw up and so bad things happen. And the bad guy is able to capitalize on those things and bring her to do bad things. And so we still see the same girl. [00:09:49] She still makes decisions the same way that she always has just in this other framework of now she's a bad guy and now she's like this henchmen to the bigger, bad guy. And so we see this corruption arc, but we still see the character. So. This is kind of a shorter episode today, but the next episode. So I'm going to make this into a two part series. [00:10:16] The next episode is actually going to be kind of the sad side of this, how to take all of these important redemptive qualities and how to make them fall flat. Bye reactions from other characters in your story. So we need to remember that the character is all tie into one another and sometimes because of. [00:10:46] Overlooked something we can make this transformation, or we can make these choices or the impact of these choices fall flat, just because of how the other characters behave. And that is next week on Writing and the Tiny House. [00:11:03]  [00:11:03] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time. 

How to make a character's transformation arc believable. “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1</a> Become a patron today! Visit <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. <a href="http://www.littlesyllables.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.littlesyllables.com</a> Instagram: @authordevindavis Twitter: @authordevind The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage. [00:00:00] Last week, we talked about languages, sort of, I guess the title of last week's episode was a bit misleading because it said all of the languages. And I realized that I probably should have included a list of languages, which is what the title implied. Anyway today, we're going to be talking about character transformation and how to make it believable today on Writing in the Tiny House. [00:00:28] Hello. Hello. Hello, and welcome to today's episode of Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis. And I am the guy living in a tiny house who writes things and tells you about how writing works and what to do and how to do it. The point of this podcast is to empower you to be able to write a novel in 18 months and to have the wisdom to adjust that timeline if you feel you need to. [00:01:17] So today, We are going to be talking about transformations. We are going to be talking about taking a character who's kind of awful or kind of persnickety or kind of negative or something and changing them in a believable way. So one of the most famous story arcs or at least most known story arcs that follow something like this is the story of Scrooge in a Christmas Carol. [00:01:46] It is the story of a man who sees his life and then sees what all of that is going to lead to and decides to change. Right now arcs like that are really popular. An arc that I also love instead of a redemption arc is also a corruption arc where you take someone good and because of circumstances and because of personal weakness and because of things like that, choices and events and trauma, you turn them into a villain. [00:02:18] One of my very favorite corruption arcs is actually not in literature. It's in TV. Well, it's on Netflix, it's in the series arcane. The corruption arc of the character Powder is fantastic. If you are not familiar with the series Arcane, I suggest that you watch that series today. But all of these things require a character to start out one way and to turn out another way. [00:02:47] I've been reading the book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders and this has been a completely transformative thing for me. As far as learning how to developmental edit in a more grown up and in a more meaningful way, it has been the best resource I have read in a very long time. George Saunders is freaking amazing when it comes to simply knowing his craft and how to explain how he knows his craft. [00:03:21] If you are unfamiliar with the book, with the way that it's structured is there are seven classic Russian short stories. I don't fully know why Saunders chose to stick with seven Russian short stories, but they are some of his favorites. I don't fully understand the choice of that, but whatever. [00:03:42] And he goes through and he picks them apart and he shows you what the author is doing. He's showing you what they did well, and actually what they didn't do well. And he picks each of these short stories as a way to demonstrate craft, as a way to demonstrate something awesome. And talk about it. So what I recently read, it is a story about these two men who get stuck in a snow storm and one of them sacrifices himself in order to save the other. [00:04:13] And it's one of those things where the snow storm, they can't get away from it. And the man uses himself as a shield against the weather to save the other man. And the thing that Saunders brings to light in this short story, that makes the transformation of that man so believable. So this man starts off as a very self-centered person and he is distrustful. He and the other main character or the person that he saves, don't have a super great relationship. And he's complaining about things like money and whatever else. He's not a warm, fuzzy kind of guy. As far as the universe goes, he is in the center of his own universe. And he is the hero of his own story. [00:05:06] I mean, yes, we can say the same thing about each of us, but t hat's how this character is. And so the whole point behind this episode of Writing in the Tiny House is to touch on what a good arc or a good transformation arc does, what it looks like. Just the mechanism behind all of that. What I mean is it is important to understand how your character makes choices that energy behind their day to day. Their thought processes, the way that all of these things are formulated so that you can understand how they make choices. And the cool thing about a believable arc that leads to some form of transformation is [00:05:58] all of the choices that lead to this better outcome are still done in the manner that this person lives their life. That means that if a person is paranoid and they tend to obsess and they tend to stew, it is more believable for them to simply take that energy of obsessing and stewing and still do all of that, but point that energy toward better choices. [00:06:27] So with Ebeneezer Scrooge, he was a person who is short. He lacked understanding. He also was quick to decide And quick to make choices to bring about a resolution. And so that's how he ran his business. Everything was decided on the spot. His word was always final. And so even while he visits with the spirits of Christmas, past, present, and future and all of that stuff, and in the end, he is a better person with a better outlook on life and a better outlook on the meaning of life and the meaning of Christmas, which is the whole point of a Christmas Carol. He still is making decisions the same way he made decisions. He commands a boy to go buy a Turkey. He is still, you know, bossing people around. [00:07:19] I mean, still in the spirit of Christmas that he is still himself. So if you have a person who tends to be loud and ornery and uses colorful language. Odds are, even though they are going to be making better decisions in the end, they still will use the same language. They will still be loud. They will still do all of those things. [00:07:44] If you take a person who is a rebel and then turn them into a priest. I'm not saying that isn't believable because we've all read stories where it is. You need to pay attention to how that rebel made his decisions, even while he was in the throws of maybe breaking the law. Was he following his heart? [00:08:06] Was he still standing up for what he thought was right? Was he still standing up for himself. Was he using aggressive language and a lot of self-confident stuff. Was he physically aggressive, things like that. And if you can tie all of that back into how he is as a priest so that we can still see that he is there. [00:08:28] That's what makes it all more believable. So again, with this story That is mentioned in A Swim in the Pond, in the Rain, this guy who is self-centered, who is kind of the hero of his own story. he still makes those decisions. He decides for himself that it would be best to use himself as a shield against the weather for this other man, so that this other man can survive. [00:08:56] It's still done in kind of that self centered way, but in one of those ways that we still see the change, but we still see the person. If that makes sense, it's important to include the essence of the person as we bring about this arc.. If we want to visit this corruption arc that I mentioned there is a girl in the story of Arcane. [00:09:22] Her name is Powder. She is tinkery. She likes to make things. She is very submissive and moldable and she doesn't want to be a screw up and so bad things happen. And the bad guy is able to capitalize on those things and bring her to do bad things. And so we still see the same girl. [00:09:49] She still makes decisions the same way that she always has just in this other framework of now she's a bad guy and now she's like this henchmen to the bigger, bad guy. And so we see this corruption arc, but we still see the character. So. This is kind of a shorter episode today, but the next episode. So I'm going to make this into a two part series. [00:10:16] The next episode is actually going to be kind of the sad side of this, how to take all of these important redemptive qualities and how to make them fall flat. Bye reactions from other characters in your story. So we need to remember that the character is all tie into one another and sometimes because of. [00:10:46] Overlooked something we can make this transformation, or we can make these choices or the impact of these choices fall flat, just because of how the other characters behave. And that is next week on Writing and the Tiny House. [00:11:03]  [00:11:03] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting <a href="http://patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse</a> to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

Believable Change, Part 1

Writing in the Tiny House

The Best Multi-Part Documentaries, with documentaries on Obama, Federer vs Nadal, the making of Star Wars, Netflix vs Blockbuster and more. Add episodes you're interested into your queue below!

Best Multi-Part Documentaries

The best philosophy podcast episodes. Asking questions about how to live a better life, what it means to be and do good, to the idea of God. This topic includes episodes that bring about important questions that everyone should be asking themselves. Add episodes you're interested into your queue below!