The Story Craft Cafe Podcast

reWrite A Novel With Dabble In 60 Days | The Plot Thickens... Or How To Make A Story Roux

In our second week of exploring plot, we look at how to ensure that the action rises and falls in a way that will keep your readers on the edge of their seats. Does your plot serve the story in a meaningful way? Let's talk about it.

reWrite A Novel With Dabble In 60 Days | Plot, Or What The Heck Happened?

We've talked characters for the last couple of weeks, but do you characters actually do anything? Plot is where we tell the story of what happened, and what that happening does to our characters. This week we talk about determining if your characters' journey is a good one.

Publishing as audiobook originals with William Kent Krueger | SCC 68

The Levee
Raised in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, William Kent Krueger briefly attended Stanford University—before being kicked out for radical activities. After that, he logged timber, worked construction, tried his hand at freelance journalism, and eventually ended up researching child development at the University of Minnesota. He’s been married for nearly fifty years to a marvelous woman who is a retired attorney. He makes his home in St. Paul, a city he dearly loves.
Krueger writes a mystery series set in the north woods of Minnesota. His protagonist is Cork O’Connor, the former sheriff of Tamarack County and a man of mixed heritage—part Irish and part Ojibwe. His work has received a number of awards, including the Minnesota Book Award, the Loft-McKnight Fiction Award, the Anthony Award, the Barry Award, the Dilys Award, and the Friends of American Writers Prize. His last nine novels were all New York Times bestsellers.
Ordinary Grace, his stand-alone novel published in 2013, received the Edgar Award, given by the Mystery Writers of America in recognition for the best novel published in that year. The companion novel, This Tender Land, was published in September 2019 and spent nearly six months on the New York Times bestseller list.

reWrite A Novel With Dabble In 60 Days | Filling Out The Rest Of Your Cast

So your protagonist has you feeling good, and you feel like their journey is solid, but what about the rest of the cast? No journey is a solitary one, and your protagonist is no different. How can he or she reach their potential without the help (or antics) of the folks around them? Join us this week as we look at the characters we choose to surround our protagonist with.

reWrite A Novel With Dabble In 60 Days | Putting your characters to the test SCC 66

In our second week of rewriting we are going to take a hard look at the characters that we've invited into our stories. Are these characters all we had hoped they could be? Do they move the plot forward and add emotional depth to our tale? Are we as writers giving our characters the best shot at success that we can? We're going to dig into it this week as we stand back and take an objective look at the characters we have created.

reWrite A Novel With Dabble In 60 Days Kickoff | SCC 65

It's time to take that novel that you've first-drafted and whip it into shape! Our panel of writers will work through the process–along with you, the audience–and hear from special guests along the way.

The State Of Writing And Publishing Sci Fi | SCC 64

Rhett is a USA Today bestselling and Nebula-nominated hybrid author who has been writing Sci-Fi & Fantasy since before he can remember. On the editing side, he has collected works for numerous anthologies through Sci-Fi & Fantasy Bridge, and served as the lead editor of the bestselling Bridge Across the Stars Anthology. He also served for a period as a consulting editor for ASIM magazine and as a 34freelance editor on Upwork, and has earned a Certificate in Screenwriting / Storytelling from the New School in NYC.
Rhett is passionate about science fiction and its role in our fast-moving society. He wants stories that focus on characters but also present the kind of concepts that keep readers up at night, dreaming of potential futures.

The Art Of The Whodunit With Deborah Crombie | SCC 63

Deborah Crombie was born in Dallas and grew up in Richardson, Texas, a suburb north of Dallas, the second child of Charlie and Mary Darden. Her maternal grandmother, Lillian Dozier, a retired teacher, taught her to read at the tender age of four. After a rather checkered educational career, which included dropping out of high school at sixteen, she graduated from Austin College in Sherman, Texas, with a degree in biology.
She then worked in advertising and newspapers and attended the Rice University Publishing Program. A post-university trip to England, however, cemented a life-long passion for Britain, and she later immigrated to the UK with her first husband, Peter Crombie, a Scot, living first in Edinburgh, Scotland, and then in Chester, England.
After returning to live in Dallas, a trip to Yorkshire inspired her first Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid/Sergeant Gemma James novel. A Share in Death [Scribner, 1993], was subsequently given Agatha and Macavity nominations for Best First Novel of 1993. The fifth novel, Dreaming of the Bones (Scribner 1997), a New York Times Notable Book for 1997, was short-listed by Mystery Writers of America for the 1997 Edgar Award for Best Novel, won the Macavity Award for Best Novel, and was voted by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association as one of the hundred best mysteries of the century. Her subsequent novels have been received with critical acclaim and are widely read internationally, particularly in Germany.
In 2009, Where Memories Lie won the Macavity Award for Best Novel.  In 2010, Necessary as Blood received a Macavity nomination for Best Novel.
Crombie's novels are published in North America, Japan, Germany, France, Czechoslovakia, Spain, Romania, Greece, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and numerous other countries. The latest novel in the series, A Killing of Innocents, is available in February 2023 from William Morrow.
Although she travels to England several times a year, Crombie lives in McKinney, Texas, a historic town north of Dallas, sharing a circa 1905 Texas Craftsman bungalow with her husband, Rick Wilson, two German shepherds (Dax and Jasmine), and two cats.  She is an aficionado of tea and cocktails, enjoys cooking and admiring her garden, reading, birdwatching, and playing with her dogs.
She is currently working on her twentieth Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James novel.

Writing Romance With A Touch Of Magic With Audrey Burges | SCC 62

Audrey Burges writes novels, humor, short fiction, and essays in Richmond, Virginia. Her presence is tolerated by her two rambunctious children and very patient husband, all of whom have become practiced at making supportive faces when she shouts, “listen to this sentence!” She is a frequent contributor to numerous humor outlets, including McSweeney’s, and her stories and essays have appeared in Pithead Chapel, Cease, Cows, and lengthy diatribes in the Notes app on her phone. Audrey was born and raised in Arizona by her linguist parents, which is a lot like being raised by wolves, but with better grammar. She moved to Virginia as an adult but still carries mountains and canyons in her heart, and sometimes, when she closes her eyes, she can still smell ponderosa pines in the sun.
 
 

Thrillers With A Sense Of Urgency With Brad Taylor | SCC 61

Brad Taylor was born on Okinawa, Japan, but grew up on 40-acres in rural Texas.  Graduating from the University of Texas, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Infantry.  Brad served for more than 21 years, retiring as a Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel.  During that time he held numerous Infantry and Special Forces positions, including eight years in 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment – Delta where he commanded multiple troops and a squadron.  He has conducted operations in support of US national interests in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other classified locations.
His final assignment was as the Assistant Professor of Military Science at The Citadel in Charleston, SC.  He holds a Master’s of Science in Defense Analysis from the Naval Postgraduate School, with a concentration in Irregular Warfare.  In 2011, Brad published his debut novel, One Rough Man, which was an immediate success and launched the Pike Logan series. Now with more than 15 installments and more than 3 million copies sold, the series has consistently hit the New York Times bestseller list. When not writing, he serves as a security consultant on asymmetric threats for various agencies.  He lives in Charleston, SC with his wife and two daughters.