Episode 411 THE GREAT AMERICAN AUTHORS (Part 9) Pat Conroy, South Carolina's Own

Pat Conroy’s writing tips focus on using personal experience to craft honest, passionate prose. His advice emphasizes deep exploration of one's inner world, dedicated hard work, and the importance of reading widely. 

On finding your subject

• Write to understand your own life. Conroy wrote to make sense of his own story and invited readers to join him in the journey. He believed a writer's "central agony cowers in the limestone cave, licking its wounds, awaiting my discovery of it".
• Draw from your memories. Conroy frequently mined his difficult childhood, particularly his father's violence, as the central truth of his work. He wrote for the "people who can't speak" and explored where his life and relationships had gone off course.
• Use your life as fuel, not as a script. As a "creative non-fiction" writer, Conroy used his experiences to inform his fictional stories and craft complex characters, rather than simply presenting estranged family members with their names changed.
• Gather stories. Conroy was an avid collector of stories, treating them like "rare stamps" or a library of music. He was known to claim a good story for his own writing if he heard it. 

On the writing process

• Write the first draft by hand. Conroy famously wrote the first drafts of his books on long yellow legal pads with a pen, preferring to lose himself in the narrative flowing from his hand.
• Dedicate yourself to hard, fanatical work. Conroy described writing as "hard labor and one of the most pleasant forms that fanaticism can take." He believed nothing lazy should ever enter his books.
• Practice with an "ironclad" schedule. Writing requires discipline and a consistent schedule. Conroy committed to a routine no matter where he was, knowing that the process "does not permit much familiarity with chaos".
• Go deeper, then go deeper again. He instructed writers to dive past the surface of their narratives. Your job, he said, is to discover the angels or demons—the enigmas—buried within you.
• Write for yourself. While Conroy loved his readers and answered every letter he could, he believed that ultimately, you write for yourself. Your art is "desperately trying to make its own voice heard to you"—you just need to listen. 

On language and craft

• Listen to the sound of your sentences.  He insisted words had to "come out right".
• Pursue amplitude and exactness. Early in his career, Conroy was drawn to extravagance, but over time, he learned that "exactness is a virtue in even the most word-possessed writer". His writing balances lyrical, lush prose with simple and well-stated truths.
• Capture the spirit of a place. Conroy was a master of place, especially the South Carolina Lowcountry. He advised writers to make locations concrete, exact, and so vivid that they are indispensable to the story.
• Trust the power of story. The most powerful words, according to Conroy, are, "Tell me a story." 

On reading and learning

• Read everything, especially your contemporaries. 
• Read 200 pages a day. 
• Embrace the long apprenticeship. Conroy believed that his first, "naive" book, The Boo, taught him that he had a long way to go and would have to work as hard as any writer alive to master his craft. 

Questions or comments at , Randalrgw1@aol.com , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!!

Chapters

• 0:00 Pat Conroy dies at 70 - CBS News
• 1:48 Music Intro
• 2:13 South Carolina Hall of Fame Video from SCETV on Pat Conroy
• 11:28 Host Randal Wallace talks about Pat Conroy and the musical Conrack
• 15:15 From the Archives : Pat Conroy - CBS Sunday Morning
• 23:37 Host Randal Wallace intros the "The Prince of Tides"
• 25:44 Prince of Tides interview with Pat Conroy - Connie Markinson Talks Book Show
• 40:13 Host Randal Wallace talks about Ernest Hemingway's advice to base characters off of real people, that the characters become the most believable - Then he talks the Great Santini
• 41:27 Pat Conroy interview in 2013 New Book "The Death of Santini" examining the death of his father
• 46:06 Host Randal Wallace reads the writing tips of Pat Conroy from Google Artificial Intelligence
• 50:30 Pat Conroy Literary Center Short Video from 2025
• 55:02 Moment of silence in honor of Pat Conroy
• 55:10 Closing music