Essential Guide to Writing a Novel
Hosted by James Thayer, the podcast is a practical, step-by-step manual on how to craft a novel. It presents a set of tools for large issues such as story development and scene construction (Kirkus Reviews said Thayer's novels are "superbly crafted') and it also examines techniques that will make your sentence-by-sentence writing shine. The New York Times Book Review has said Thayer's "writing is smooth and clear. it wastes no words, and it has a rhythm only confident stylists achieve.
Essential Guide to Writing a Novel
Episode 195 - The adopt a dog technique.
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James Thayer
One of the best ways to have readers like our story is to have readers like--maybe even love--our main character. But we usually don't want our protagonist to be a Pollyanna, always sweet and understanding. Rather we want to create a fully-formed character--maybe with some weird or off-putting angles, maybe some flaws and shortcomings--to make the character interesting and believable. Here's a technique to make sure readers will root for our main character even if the character isn't usually endearing. Also, here is how a master writer describes her settings.