Craft

TSS075: Finding and Fixing Plot Holes and Problems in Your Story

December 6, 2016 by Stephen 3 Comments

plot holes

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Getting through that middle, making it all make sense, getting to where it all holds together, THAT is hard. And that is where so many people stumble and fall.

— Taylor

This week’s show opens with one of my favorite show beginnings ever, thanks to a listener who took the time to use our words from TSS072, How Important is the Title to the Success of Your Book, and put them together as book titles. We spend the first few minutes of the show laughing our way through those and offer our sincere thanks to David for the amazing creativity it took to put the titles together.

Our topic this week is started out as finding and fixing plot holes, but quickly evolved into a lesson on fixing story problems. Things that crop up from poorly understood character motivations, timelines and in a specific example, an antagonist that isn’t quite bad enough to drive a story.

In our call to action, Taylor wants to know how you define plot holes or plot problems? If you have a definition please let us know in either the comments or by calling the hotline (check the connect button above for the number.)

Thanks so much for joining us again this week.

If you have questions or suggestions for future shows, we’d love to hear from you. You can leave your suggestions as comments or find our contact information, including our Hotline Number for listener question on the Connect page.

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the left of the post.

Also, please leave an honest review for THE TAYLOR STEVENS SHOW Podcast on iTunes!

Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and mean a great deal to us. They matter in the rankings of the show, and we read every one of them.

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TSS072: How Important is a Title to the Success of Your Book?

November 15, 2016 by Stephen 4 Comments

titles

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You know it always makes me laugh when I hear someone going ‘I have the best title for this book,’ and they haven’t even written the book yet. And I’m just like oh good, good for you. Titles are important, and you know they are, but not as important as writing a good book.

— Taylor

This week’s show opens with a status update on Taylor’s latest book. She posted the “it is finished” message in her Facebook group last week, but Steve had some questions on exactly what that means.

screen-shot-2016-11-14-at-3-13-16-pm Now that Taylor’s new book is with her agent she’s turned her attention to titles. We discuss how the title for THE INFORMATIONIST came to be and how that title influenced the rest of the Vanessa Michael Munroe series.

girl-on-the-train title Then we get into current thriller titles and how certain words become popular in titles for a period of time, including the popularity of the word “girl” in right now. The success of books like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl have influenced titles to the point where five of the top twenty thrillers on Amazon have the word “girl” in the title on the day we recorded this episode.

How do you listen to the show?

Taylor asks two questions at the end of this week’s show. The first is how do you listen to the podcast? Are you in the car, or exercising, or maybe walking the dog? The second question is how did you find out about the show. Early listeners came primarily from Taylor’s email list, but the show has grown considerably since that time. How did you learn about the show?

Let us know and maybe even snap a selfie to show us how you listen. Click the connect button above to find all the different ways of reaching us, or just leave your answer in the comments below.

Thanks so much for joining us again this week.

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the left of the post.

Also, please leave an honest review for THE TAYLOR STEVENS SHOW Podcast on iTunes!

Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and mean a great deal to us. They matter in the rankings of the show, and we read every one of them.

And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher to get automatic updates.

TSS071: Heaping on the Hate: How Authors push or pull us toward story characters

November 8, 2016 by Stephen Leave a Comment

heaping-on-the-hate

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I think another thing, that maybe, for those who can see it, that makes her (Munroe) likeable, to them, because she’s not likeable to everybody, is she’s suffering.

— Taylor

51btelqsj8l-_sx306_bo1204203200_ Today’s show focuses on connecting readers to characters, even those characters who, if considered in a vacuum, could be thought of as unlikeable by a large group of readers. Steve tries to use Taylor’s Vanessa Michael Munroe as an example, but Taylor resists, and instead trots out Hanibal Lector from Silence of the Lambs. Then we move on to creating dislike between the reader and a character, and then some thoughts on rehabilitating characters in the eyes of your readers.

Taylor eventually relents, or maybe Steve just wore her down, but she finally shares some thoughts on what may draw some readers to Munroe.

We open the show with a comment from mystery author, C.A. Newsome, who chimes in on our discussion on dialog tags from a few weeks ago. Carol makes some great points and shines a spotlight on the Harry Potter series as an example of a skilled authors use of dialog tags and other techniques to distance readers from some pretty horrific action taking place on the page.

Carol’s latest is Muddy Mouth, the fifth book in her Lia Anderson Dog Park Mystery Series. It’s an engaging story about a well known indie writer, a group of knitting ladies who manage the writer’s business affairs and animals. All of Carol’s books feature dogs, but this one includes a pack of cats as well. The series is set in Cincinnati and a dog park, which happens to be a real place that Carol visits on a regular basis. It’s a fun story and Steve’s favorite (so far) in an always entertaining series.

Thanks so much for joining us again this week.

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the left of the post.

Also, please leave an honest review for THE TAYLOR STEVENS SHOW Podcast on iTunes!

Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and mean a great deal to us. They matter in the rankings of the show, and we read every one of them.

And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher to get automatic updates.

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