Today’s installment of Fable and the Verbivore is not like our typical episodes.

This informal conversation took place directly following the interview with writer Lisa Baxmann. We kept our mics on and the sound rolling as we processed some ideas after the interview and discussed a variety of topics that we are working on with our writing.

In this episode - we talk about ways we as writers can encourage each other, putting in the hours of work to improve in the craft, and Fable discusses a breakthrough that she had in her own WIP. We also discuss testing to see if your dialogue reads well and assessing whether or not your characters and settings pull their weight and are worth the “cost” in terms of words.

We didn’t originally intend to release this discussion, but after listening to it found that it some interesting topics that we felt could be entertaining for our listeners. Fair warning, at some points in the conversation we laugh loudly or talk over each other, and the conversation goes in a wide range of directions. Also, we want to make sure to state that the high fives were done prior to our shelter-in-place. :-)

We also bring up some of what we are hoping to get out of the #100dayproject. We are now several weeks into that exercise and would love to share the things we are creating with you on instagram. And if you are interested, feel free to join us. We look forward to seeing what ideas and words you create. The hashtag we are using on Instagram is #imitatelikeawriter.

We hope that you are staying safe and finding time to practice self-care! Keep creating and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,
Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

The Verbivore talks about discussing the latest Star Wars with her sister. She is referencing the “Rise of Skywalker” movie, but also the overarching themes of the sequel trilogy and the full Star Wars saga of nine films.

The Verbivore mentions the Graveyard book conversation we had early on in our podcast, that conversation is in episode 5.

The Verbivore references this quote “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.” - George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

Fable mentions the “a book a year” goal, this came to us from writer Shawn Smucker, author of several books including “Light from Distant Stars” and the forthcoming “These Nameless Things” which is set to relese on June 30th.

The Verbivore mentions getting access to someone’s playlist, that was a reference to Lisa Baxmann’s writing playlist. We will be gathering together some writing playlists over the next several weeks, and hope to cover that topic in the future.

Books Mentioned:

• The Grace Year by Kim Liggett

• The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

• Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

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