My Book: https://amzn.to/31UcCPg My Newsletter: danielpoppie.com/newsletter My Website: www.danielpoppie.com HTWG Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/howtowritegood HTWG Twitter: https://twitter.com/danielpoppie HTWG Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danielpoppie One Last Toast for Ebenezer Fleet: https://www.spreaker.com/show/one-last-toast-for-ebenezer-fleet...
My Book: https://amzn.to/31UcCPg My Newsletter: danielpoppie.com/newsletter My Website: www.danielpoppie.com HTWG Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/howtowritegood HTWG Twitter: https://twitter.com/danielpoppie HTWG Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danielpoppie One Last Toast for Ebenezer Fleet: https://www.spreaker.com/show/one-last-toast-for-ebenezer-fleet...
My Book: https://amzn.to/31UcCPg My Newsletter: danielpoppie.com/newsletter My Website: www.danielpoppie.com HTWG Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/howtowritegood HTWG Twitter: https://twitter.com/danielpoppie HTWG Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danielpoppie One Last Toast for Ebenezer Fleet: https://www.spreaker.com/show/one-last-toast-for-ebenezer-fleet...
Yesterday, we talked about words that we didn't like to use. Each writer has words he dislikes, but sometimes those words are exactly what is needed. As writers, it can also be tempting to use words that mean a very specific thing. Now, I am not opposed to this at certain times, especially if the writer uses this words naturally in speech, but big words can be something that obscures rather than clarifies for the reader. My Book: https://amzn.to/31UcCPg My Newsletter: danielpoppie.com/newsletter...
Some words sound gross (gross!). Some words are annoying. They don't roll off the tongue. They are overused, etc. . . There are a lot of reasons why a writer might want to disregard some words. Some of these reasons are better than others. In this episode of How to Write Good, we are going to be talk about words you dislike that you might not want to blacklist forever. Every part of language is useful, and I think we need to remember that. My Book: https://amzn.to/31UcCPg My Newsletter: danielpo...
When you first start writing, I think your goal should be clarity. Can a regular person understand what you are writing. It is more complex than it seems. If you can't write clearly, the purpose of your writing (being understood) has been stymied. One of the next goals I have when writing is making my writing easy to read. But this does not mean I am making my writing simple or childish. Maybe a better way to express this second goal is for me to say that you should try to make your writing plea...
A lot of writers are perfectionists. Personally, I think this is funny because the big authors I have run into who are perfectionists seem to not be that great of writers (Great sentence construction there, am I right?). Now, I am against perfectionism, but that is for another podcast episode (or maybe I've posted one about that already. Who knows). Today we are going to talk about something that writers forget when they writer: the reader. But we are not going to talk about it in the way you th...
For whatever reason, celebrities think they should be listened to. And it works. People see that someone has a following whether because they are an actor or an influencer on instagram (like me, lol, SAD), but it is generally the case that these people don't know what the heck they are talking about. On this episodes of How to Write Good, we are going to talk about how you should stop listening to celebrities. We are also going to talk about how artists (whether that is a painter, a musician, an...
Tim Ferris of 4 Hour Work Week fame, talks about an enticing idea in his book (He has a lot of enticing ideas in his book). It isn't about working only four hours a week. It isn't about setting up a muse business. It is about the way he approaches goals. He works in 6 month stints. I think that this is a great thing to adopt for any writer. This is what we are going to talk about on this week's episode of How to Write Good. My Book: https://amzn.to/31UcCPg My Newsletter: danielpoppie.com/newslet...
Writers block is a real thing. I think it is a thing that can be avoided, but is is a real thing. What we typically think of writers block is sitting at a blank page and not even knowing how to start writing. Another type of writers block exists though. Have you ever been writing and you suddenly get to a word you cannot remember. You have written that words perhaps thousands of times, but it has slipped your mind today. On today's episode of How to Write Good, we are going to be talking about h...
If you do some research on working as a writer, you will find one piece of advice that comes up in relation to marketing. That advice is to stick to one genre. This advice makes marketing sense. If you write in the same genre, the people who enjoy your books will enjoy all your books. If you are going to write westerns, and you build an audience that enjoys your westerns, they are less likely to enjoy the scifi you write. You are throwing them a curveball of some sort. But what if this marketing...
The first thing you should know before anything else is that you should not listen to me. You shouldn't listen to me. You shouldn't listen to other writers telling you what to do. What you need to do is figure out your own way of writing. But I don't think that setting out on your own trail is the way most writers decide to go. Most writers are reading or listening to other writing advice. The reason why people usually don't want to figure things out themselves is because it is hard, but it migh...
The publishing industry has been around for quite some time. Nowadays, the advent of self-publishing pushes against traditional publishing, but indie publishing has only created a tiny dent. We still live in a world that is dominated by the traditional publishing industry. I think there is a good reason for that at this time. But I have issues with the publishing industry (one major one, in fact), and I think that self-publishing can help us shift the publishing industry in a better direction. M...
Some writers are elitists. Some writers want to write the next great American novel (or English novel or Australian (if they read down there)). And writing for regular people is something that is left for bad writers. I think this is stupid (because I think a lot of things are stupid). Instead of writing for a small group of elites, consider writing for regular people. Just think of how much larger your impact could be. My Book: https://amzn.to/31UcCPg My Newsletter: danielpoppie.com/newsletter ...
Why do we write? That is is common question I ask when thinking about writing. Some people think that writing is only to make words sound good together, but I think this misses the point of the writing completely. My Book: https://amzn.to/31UcCPg My Newsletter: danielpoppie.com/newsletter My Website: www.danielpoppie.com HTWG Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/howtowritegood HTWG Twitter: https://twitter.com/danielpoppie HTWG Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danielpoppie One Last Toast for E...
I have a theory about most writers. I think most writers function with a higher level of anxiety than the rest of society. Maybe I am wrong about this. Maybe only I have this problem, but I doubt it. When I look around, I see a lot of writers you obsess over little and big things within there writing to an unhealthy degree. I don't think this is wholly a negative. I think this can be really helpful if you can direct it the correct way, but if you have trouble in this way, this episode is for you...
Some people dismiss fantasy fiction. They see it as something that is not serious. It is not considered high literature. High literature does not deal with things that aren't real, or high literature carries around specific ideas. But fantasy is a very unique type of story. It allows us to go into a different world, and that new world as so many different possibilities. I think that looking at what fantasy is can be extremely useful when understanding fiction. It provides us with a certain type ...
Politics in annoying. Politics is the worst. I am not a fan of politics at all. Unfortunately, politics invades other spaces. Because politics involves others spaces, we need to talk about how we should approach politics in fiction. Should politics in fiction? Should we put politics in our work? What is the purpose of fiction? On today's episode of How to Write Good, we are going to talk about this joyous topic. My Book: https://amzn.to/31UcCPg My Newsletter: danielpoppie.com/newsletter My Websi...
I have a writing rule. I think it is one of my first writing rules. That rule is that writing follows language, which means that writing follows the sound of language. More recently, I have run into some information about music that has challenged my conceptions about the art-form. Now, I am not a musician, but as I look how language manifests itself across the world, it seems that my writing rule can be adapted so that it is applicable to language as well. Which means that music would follow la...
You have probably heard the idea of theme within a story, and you probably have specific ideas of what a theme is. First, I think you are probably wrong about what a theme is because any deviation of what I think about theme is incorrect, so I am going to set you straight on that. But I am also going to be talking about something else, something I like to call a through-line that runs through your whole story, and I think that it is going to be different than what you would expect. My Book: http...
The internet is ubiquitous in our modern culture. The only person who doesn't have a smartphone of their own is my mom. We are always listening to podcasts or music in our ears. We always have something going on, and with this new and strange technology that we have developed, so to arrives problems. One of those problems is the ability to become addicted to the internet itself. In this episode of How to Write good, we are going to be talking about how getting addicted to the internet works and ...
Life is hard. Maybe there is someone out there with an easy life, but when I look around, it just looks like a lot of people have hard lives, especially if you are trying to do anything creative. I have learned something about life in general, and this something is a strategy you can use to do better in any area of your life. This is not my original thought, but I think it is something that you can take and apply directly to your writing. It is a strategy called daily minimums. And that is what ...
I've heard that writers need bad memories because everything they hear or read gets composted into a big pile. That compost becomes fertile, and then these writers can pluck from their bad memories anything that they need. I am not sure imagination works that way, but I think it is a good place to start. My Book: https://amzn.to/31UcCPg My Newsletter: danielpoppie.com/newsletter My Website: www.danielpoppie.com HTWG Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/howtowritegood HTWG Twitter: https://twitter....
Write what you know is one of the most well-known pieces of writing advice. Write what you know. It seems like a simple piece of advice, and I think many people have taken this advice to heart to their peril (peril, peril, peril). Is 'write what you know' a good piece of writing advice? On today's episode of How to Write Good, I am going to talk about this simple piece of writing advice. My Book: https://amzn.to/31UcCPg My Newsletter: danielpoppie.com/newsletter My Website: www.danielpoppie.com ...
Bad ideas are bad (It is a tautology. There is really know way to argue with this). So, we should avoid bad ideas. Bad ideas should not be in our writing, right? But what if this is the incorrect way of understanding bad ideas? What if bad ideas are a gift given to us to help us be better writers. What if, instead of trying to avoid that bad idea at the beginning of our writing journey, we grab onto that bad idea by the horns and let ourselves slip so far into that bad idea that we find somethin...
Have you ever seen someone paint a picture (Of course you have). When someone paints a picture, they do not pick up a bucket full of all types of paint and throw it at a canvas. It does not happen all at once. When a painter paints, he must put the paint on the canvas one single stroke at a time. He must also work in chunks, oftentimes working from the background to the foreground. On today's episode of How to Write Good, I am going to be talking about how one of the best ways to edit a book is ...
Originality. Is it something that we should seek to achieve when we write. Mark Twain doesn't think we should worry. In fact, he said something to the effect that all writing is derivative, so you should not worry about whether yours is as well. Now, is this good advice to follow. Today on How to Write good, we are going to dive into why you don't need to reinvent the wheel, you don't need to try to find that one idea that will break someone's skull open. On this episode of How to Write Good, we...
I think Ursula Le Guin. If you want to read a writer who knew her craft (RIP), you should read some Ursula Le Guin. Of all the writers I have ever read, I think she is in the top 10 (seriously). So, when she says something about writing, I think that people should perk up their ears and listen. Le Guin talks about this idea that when you start writing, you should start with how the language sounds. What does the language sound like? Enjoy the pleasure you get from the words and sounds themselves...
Lynda Barry has a really interesting view on how to start writing. She says that if we become curious about memory, we can use it as a spring board to begin writing. The example she gives to show how this would work is when you lose someone for whatever reason. In that period you are dealing with loss, it is the little things in life that bring the memories of that person back the most. Lynda Barry says that you should use the little details within your story to show your reader what is happenin...
Ray Bradbury. I am a big fan of Ray Bradbury. I think that he is one of those writers who has put out a lot of different stories that capture people's imaginations. Ray Bradbury puts out a piece of writing advice that seems very simple and doable for everyone. His piece of advice states that quantity will make up for quality. If you write enough, you will gain experience, and you will become a better writer. If this piece of advice is true, then it is good for everyone because a huge component o...
