Episode 230: Craft Resources

Today, Fable and The Verbivore discuss a variety of books, YouTube videos, and articles that we’ve connected with on the writing craft.

As we done on previous episodes, we talk about several new writing craft books we’ve loved reading. But, we also end by talking about some fantastic free YouTube and internet article resources that are available to anyone and that we’ve personally found helpful in developing our writing.

Things like the following:

  • Lisa Cron’s Wired for Story - Storytelling from a neuroscience perspective, what our brains are doing as we interact with different elements of stories and how to use that to make our stories stronger and know when it makes sense for the rules to be followed and when they should be broken

  • James Scott Bell’s How to Make a Living as a Writer - Contains a great overview of the business side of writing. Includes: writing a business plan, increasing the speed at which you write, organizing yourself, marketing your book, where and how to invest in your work

  • Chuck Wendig’s Gentle Writing Advice: How to Be a Writer Without Destroying Yourself - Unpacks a lot of truths about the complexities and contradictions of the writing craft, and advice for what to do when you hit a wall or push yourself to the brink

  • Joanne Harris’ Ten Things About Writing: Build Your Story, One Word at a Time - Potent and consumable tweet sized information on a variety of craft related subjects. Useful at any part of your writing journey.

  • “TedEd Writing Workshop” and “TedTalk on Writing” YouTube Playlists - Short , entertaining, and packed full of useful writing nuggets.

  • “Diane Callahan - Quotidian Writer” YouTube Channel - Serves as an in-depth writing writing 101 class with video topics on a variety of topics from Book Titles to Under/Over writing

  • “Like Stories of Old” YouTube Channel - Unpacks current cinema from a variety of storytelling lens (such as: theme, symbolism, what we as humans believe, archetypes)

  • “Actors on Actors” and “Directors on Directors” YouTube Playlists by Variety - Actors unpacking the craft and emotional side of embodying characters and tell their stories authentically, Directors unpacking the elements that make up their story and the specifics behind individual scenes

  • Brandilyn Collins Getting Into Character: Seven Secrets A Novelist Can Learn From Actors - Helps writers get into your characters mindset and voice and develope their characters by using embodying techniques from actors

We end by talking about how sometimes the greatest resources we’ve come across have been in a small book with a terrible cover, a YouTube video essay, or are freely available articles on websites such as Writers Helping Writers & One Stop for Writers, MasterClass.com Articles, WritersDigest.com, Reedsy.com blog, and LitHub.

We hope you enjoy listening to this episode and that you find it encouraging wherever you are at on your writing journey!

Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

We’ve done a previous Fable and the Verbivore conversation on the subject of writing craft books. That episode is here:

The Verbivore references several YouTube video essays, interviews, websites, and articles as part of the free resources she loves. They are:

Books Mentioned:

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
’Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Bethany Stedman