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SWRT 140 | Writing Book Ads Copy with Bryan Cohen
How is ad writing different from your book description? How do you avoid creating ad copy that is all the same? How do you get to a really good ad sentence? And how do you convey genre in one sentence?
SWRT 138 | Writing – Life Balance, part 2
How can you reset your creative motivation when it has fallen to the wayside? How can you balance your life to give yourself the most willpower for your creative pursuits? And where do you need to re-evaluate your life and your habits? In the end, it’s all about finding the balance that works for you, your life, and your creative goals!
SWRT 136 | Refilling the Creative Well with Alina Sayre, part 2
Has Alina refilled her creative well, or recharged her creative batteries? What would she advise those of us who need to find that balance in our lives? How do we write out of our own experiences? And how do we go out and get more of those experiences?
SWRT 134 | The Art of Death, part 2
How will your personal history affect how you portray death? What about if you have never experienced anything as tragic as your character is experiencing? How can you use the element of surprise to turn a story on a death? And how should you use death in Act two? We talk about the problem of proximity in death, and whether or not death has genre conventions. In the end, we all agree that this is a great book, if you are ready to really sit and think about death!
SWRT 132 | Strong Female Protagonists with Judy K Walker, part 2
How is writing a female protagonist different from writing any protagonist? Are there genre pressures to what your female protagonist should be like, act like, or look like? How has television affected character driven fiction? And how does that effect the female protagonist? Finally, we give tips on how to address the female protagonist writing for today’s reader, no matter the genre.
SWRT 139 | The Craft of Writing Book Copy with Bryan Cohen
Why should author’s know how to craft copy for their book? What are the fundamentals? How do you find the number one conflict in your book? And then how do you make it exciting? What is the structure of a book blurb? And where do most author’s run into problems?
SWRT 137 | Writing – Life Balance
How did 2019 go in our writing lives? And what lessons have we learned about how we have balanced, or failed to balance, our writing with our life? How can you shift your perspective from the outputs to the inputs? And how can we achieve that balance where our lives feed our creativity, and our creativity our lives?
SWRT 135 | Refilling the Creative Well with Alina Sayre
How did finishing a project bring Alina to a realization about herself, and her life outside of her author career? What experiences did she undertake in order to refill her creative well? And how does working on a project outside of what you previously finished help broaden your artistic horizons? We finish with a poem from Alina’s new book, Fire by Night.
SWRT 133 | The Art of Death, part 1
What was our experience with The Art of Death? What were our biggest takeaways? What makes death meaningful for the story? And what tools should you bring to write a death well? How can we make them authentic? And what is the power of the point of view?
SWRT 131 | Strong Female Protagonists with Judy K Walker
What makes a female protagonist a strong female protagonist? And where does that strength come from? How aware of social and cultural norms should you be when developing a strong female protagonist? And is strength unique to genre?
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About the Hosts
Matt is the author of The Auriga Project, a scifi thriller, Scrivener Superpowers, a how-to book for writers, and the forthcoming Tales of the Republic, a serialized novel set in a specualtive future. He also founded the Indie Author Society, an organization that offers community and support for indie authors. When he’s not bending words to his will, Matt likes to climb mountains, throw a frisbee for his Boxer mutt, Elsa, and travel to expand his mind. Learn more about him and his books at www.mgherron.com.