Carter Wilson's Making It Up
Making It Up is an unscripted conversation series about the messy reality of being a writer.
Each episode is a deep, unplanned conversation with writers at every stage of the journey. New York Times bestselling authors. Award winners. Debut novelists just getting started. No prepared questions. No talking points. Just two people following the conversation wherever it leads.
We talk about where stories really come from. Childhood influences. Fear. Luck. Loss. Discipline. Doubt. The highs, the lows, and the long stretches in between that rarely get talked about.
At the end of every episode, we put the philosophy into practice. We choose a random sentence from a random book and use it to create an impromptu short story. No prep. No outline. Just making something out of nothing.
Because that is the job.
And that is the point.
Visit Carter at www.carterwilson.com.
Carter Wilson's Making It Up
Making It Up with Bryan Gruley, author of Bitterfrost
“I got 26 rejections, and I’d kind of given up. Then Simon & Schuster gave me a three-book deal. And I thought, oh, this is awesome—then, oh shit, I have to write the other two.” – Bryan Gruley
Bryan Gruley is the award-winning, critically acclaimed author of the forthcoming thriller BITTERFROST. Gruley is also the author of the Starvation Lake trilogy, the first book of which was nominated for an Edgar Award and won Anthony, Barry, and Strand awards. A journalist for over forty years, Gruley shared in The Wall Street Journal’s Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and has won numerous awards for his nonfiction.
Among other things, Bryan and Carter discuss designing merchandise for your novels, having “something to say” in your writing, and building suspense by creating questions and leaving them unanswered. At the end of their conversation, they make up an intense story using a line from Karin Slaughter’s This Is Why We Lied.