Our podcast title is “How To Write a Book Description That Gets Readers Tingling All Over” and that just sounds naughty, doesn’t it? And it is a little naughty because this, my friends, is about selling a book, your book, and that requires being a little bit sexy. Sexy is something I, Carrie, am very very bad at. Let’s start by thinking about it th…

Dogs are Smarter Than People/Write Better Now Last week, we talked about pinch points both on the podcast and on the blog, and honestly? Nobody seemed super into it, but we’re finishing up this week. This post is going to be a bit more about the first part of act two of a three-act story, focusing on the time from the first pinch point to the midpo…

There are some things in the writing world that don’t make a ton of sense in the world of regular humans. One of those things is pinch points. This podcast episode is going to be the start of a quick series of podcasts and regular posts about pinch points. The regular posts will be at our Substack LIVING HAPPY under the WRITE BETTER NOW publication…

There are a lot of people who advocate spending just an hour a day doing something to become awesome. That hour a day is often learning. You study up about what you want to do, you self learn, you teach yourself to be better by learning all about the thing you're into. So, if you're into writing, you read books about writing and actual books. You s…

THIS WEEK!!! Rodney delves into Bill And Ted's nemesis, Rodney created Dr. Marlon Rebrando, the greatest pop culture plastic surgeon in all the land, and, after an interlude featuring the latest Most Annoying Song Ever, we sink into the weird world of how you might choose what path you would take, or if you even would choose in this wild world of a…

On last week’s podcast and the one a few before that, and in a post, Shaun and I talked a bit about plot structures and narrative structures and how here in the U.S. we think of these usually (not always!) as pretty linear, and pretty much in a three-act framework (think beginning, middle, end) with rising stakes and drama as you go along. This is …

Last week, maybe a week ago, maybe 82 years ago, who knows, we talked about alternative plot structures. Much of American film and novels is built on what's considered to be the classic three-act structure, which basically goes beginning-middle-end, and there's this rising line of the plot. It ends up looking like a bit of a triangle. As readers, w…

Do you want to be happy? It’s a question philosopher Sebastian Purcell asks his students every year. Do you want to be happy? For Purcell being happy has a lot in common with living a good life, “The Stoic answer to this question, that the good life consists in flourishing (eudaimonia), has seen a resurgent interest that is indicative of a cultural…

THIS WEEK!! Well, Graham is a worm. Yup. That's the episode. ALL 31 MINUTES OF IT. You gotta hear it. You just do, you know, to get it. Because we promise there is more to get than just "Graham is a worm".By ADGROD

You can learn a lot about culture by how it looks at what makes a good story and a good story structure. In Western culture right now, we tend to think of stories as three acts (a beginning, middle, and end with the bulk being in the middle), and with a protagonist or hero or main character (whatever you want to call it) who drives the story forwar…

It ended up being a bit of a free-for-all as we talked about the strange things people do sometimes. SHOUT OUT TO STUBHY! The snippet of our intro and outro music is only a snippet of this guy’s awesome talent. Many thanks to Kaustubh Pandav. You can check out a bit of his work at the links below. www.luckyboysconfusion.Net or www.Facebook.com/mrms…

So building a sympathetic character on the page is a lot like being a sympathetic character in real life. This sympathetic character is basically the opposite of a butt-hole. There’s this great post on the SocialSelf blog that talks about what makes people likable and what keeps people from being likeable. And writers can learn from this, really. T…

A lot of writers that I work with have a problem. The problem is that they want to be a writer, but before they come to me? They don’t write. Here’s the thing. For a lot of us, we have to make time to be a writer. That’s just how our brains and process work. There are some writers who manage to get 10 days of alone time and writer time and they pow…

We found a topic! It ended up mostly being about poop and creepiness and three-foot tall humanoids. Links we mention: https://www.ranker.com/list/creepy-forest-ranger-stories/amandasedlakhevenerBy Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar

Have you ever been in a situation where you have absolutely been present, but you don't feel like you were, or don't remember being there? It's like you're in the room, but you're hanging out about three feet from the other humans. There is a near pause in the matrix, and you can feel your senses to the maximum degree, but are also completely disco…

Being an author or an artist or almost anyone is about navigating. You have to walk a fine line with criticism and praise, discern what's real and what's not, what matters or not, what is noise and what is important. And sometimes? Well, sometimes we only hear and dwell on the one negative thing that someone has said to us or written about us even …

Here's our main premise this week: it's okay to read books you've already read. Not only is it okay. It's helpful. This is true for both writers and normal humans. Rereading books gives you: New ideas Reminds you of ideas you'd forgotten about Let's you notice new things because you aren't the same you who read that book the last time. DONALD LATUM…

Recently, I read an interview with an author who talked about how much children loved her book and how they tell her this. It annoyed me. It may have been good marketing, but it sure didn't feel like good human-ing, you know? When you're interviewed by a reporter or when you do a school visit, as a children's book author, you have the ability to to…

THIS WEEK!! Oh boy, it's chock full, like one of those ice cream cakes that's two chocolate chip cookies with chocolate chip ice cream in the middle. Those things are so goddamn good! So, the first song is about how we do this podcast for us, and not for you, but we're glad that you listen. Second song is Personal Space Invaders, and it's about tho…

This is obviously not the full transcript. You have to listen to hear the full weirdness, but . . . here's the core. How Do You Sustain a Career as an Author? It's a really good question, right? One, all of us authors are trying to figure out. Rise With Drew writes, "Creative careers are slippery. One-hit wonders abound, but fewer are enduring supe…

Talking about show vs tell at the scene level is a little bit harder than talking about it at the paragraph and scene levels. But it’s also a tiny bit easier. When you’re looking for telling at this level of the story, what you’re looking for is a couple of things: A butt ton of backstory. A butt ton of info dumps A lot of flashback. You can have b…

THIS WEEK!! We explore the challenging life of an adult Dennis the Menace. Then, a surprise Bidet party...no, not B-day...Bidet. Yup. Then, your parents, and grandparents, and great grandparents did this thing, so you will also do it. Even if you absolutely suck Shai-Hulud ass at it. It's called: Inneptotism. Rodney eventually pronounces it right. …

Babe, I know you don’t want to talk about showing vs telling any longer, our massive series, but it’s really really important. It’s sunk many a cool book idea, stopped others in its tracks. It is a chaos agent in the life of many a good writer. And there are so many damn facets to it. I could fill a year of podcasts talking about it. Don’t worry, I…

Award-winning author of YA novels? Check. Printz honor author, ALA Best Book winner, National Book Award finalist? Check. Has a middle grade coming out March 11 that's about to rock the world? Definitely. Was so cool that Carrie was afraid to talk to him back in 2005 or 2006 or something? You know it. Chris Lynch, award winning human and ridiculous…

THIS WEEK!!! Rodney delves into what might happen if everything simply reset, or updated like a computer. Would you even know if it happened? Would it matter? Would you profess your love for that barista? Would you throw fecal matter at senior citizens at the YMCA? Would you tell your boss that you're done with your job? You don't have the right, o…

Hey! Welcome to our series of podcasts and posts all about showing vs. telling, which we are on fire about right now, right Shaun? Growls. You can check out the rest of the series on Carrie’s Substack Write Better Now or just the podcast episodes on her blog, https://carriejonesbooks.blog/ So, a lot of my writers have a brain like mine, which is sa…

THIS WEEK!! They took my Potato Bread, first and foremost. Then, My Dealer Wants To Be My Friend, which may or may not be based on a true story. Then, STOCK BLOCKED, and finally, competitive gaming comes to the Adgrodcast and minds are lost. Lost, I tell you! WHEW! Man, what a year. Already.By ADGROD

We’re continuing with our monster “Show Don’t Tell” series of podcasts and posts. So, hey! Welcome to our series of podcasts and posts all about showing vs. telling, which we are on fire about right now, right Shaun? Growls. You can check out the rest of the series on Carrie’s Substack Write Better Now or just the podcast episodes on her website. A…

THIS WEEK! It's like you've been gooning for us for, like, months, and we STILL don't have new episodes! Well, that's mostly true. Unfortunately, we aren't in control of the goddamn universe, despite what it may seem like. BUT, we will be back with more fresh ADGRODcast content very soon. In the meantime, please check out our Bandcamp page for our …

We’re continuing with our monster “Show Don’t Tell” series of podcasts and posts. Adverbs are a big place where you tell and not show. So, if I wrote, “You are the sexiest manatee in the world,” Ham-Ham said hopelessly. Would you think that works? Would you feel how Ham-Ham said it hopelessly? Janice Hardy is brilliant and she has a really simple w…

There’s this really great book for writers by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi called The Emotional Wound Thesaurus. It came out way back in 2017. As they write in their prologue, “Life is painful, and not all the lessons we learn are positive ones. As with you and me, the characters in our stories have suffered emotional trauma that cannot easily…

Writers Are Promise Makers Writers are promise makers. We tell our readers that we’re going to give them something just because of the cultural expectations that happen when someone opens our books. What do we promise them? We promise a character The book is about someone. We reveal different aspects about that character as we show them act or reac…

There’s a lot of ways that trope is defined, but for us here on DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE, we’re going with the Grammarist’s definition, which is: “A trope is simply a common or recurring theme or method used in storytelling across all forms of media. Tropes serve as a way for creators to convey certain ideas and messages to their audience in a …

I’ve been going through holes of Reels and short-form videos at night lately, watching people remodel their house or home, decorate for holidays, and then, um, being an Amazon affiliate. At the same time, a lot of the writers I work with are having BIG DOUBT MOMENTS as they query and read Twitter/X and see authors behaving badly or agents behaving …

How to Dig Deeper in Your Scenes A lot of time, a writer will get feedback and it’ll say something vague-ish like, “Dig deeper.” And then the author cries or gets angry or feels an emotion that no author wants to feel. The thing is that this advice is sort of vague, but what it usually means is: 1. You have no setting in your scene or chapter or st…

When I was a baby newspaper reporter, one of my editors, Grady Holloway, used to call me over to his desk. A lot. I loved Grady. He had this great, grizzly beard before it was cool, wore a dirty hat, had been married to an ambassador’s daughter, rode horses, drove cab in Colorado when all the beat poets and journalists were out there, and liked noi…

When I go to classrooms on book tour or for school visits, teachers (or kids prompted by teachers) always ask me what the most important skill is for being a writer. And I tell them a couple things. No, it’s not about what a comma splice is or the coolness of objective correlatives. It’s really a two part answer: Notice what people are doing, their…

When I help writers with their stories, a lot of the times one of the things I tell them is that they need to dig more deeply. They need to dig more deeply into the emotion and feel it with the characters. They need to dig more deeply into the scene and see the characters there, interacting with their surroundings and each other. And a lot of us wr…

Two weeks ago, we started talking about how to write a book blurb for your story and began with the first step, which is a hook. You can check that out here. And the second step is here. So, if the first step is creating that hook, the second step, according to Shayla Raquel is dangling the characters. Then our next step is what Shaun has no proble…

Last week, we started talking about how to write a book blurb for your story and began with the first step, which is a hook. You can check that out here. So, if the first step is creating that hook, the second step, according to Shayla Raquel is dangling the characters. What does that mean? It means that the thing that propels your story needs to b…

I’ve decided it’s time for a new series of podcast now that we whacked character lies down to a mush of sobs. There are all different ways to write these blurbs and make them tantalizing to readers, but there are set steps. We’re going to focus on the first one here. First let’s explain what a book blurb is, right? It’s just the description of your…

So far we’ve talked (and written) twice about character misbeliefs. Then we took a baby break because we’re like that, but we’re back on it now, my friends. Those earlier posts are linked below. First off to recap, the big lie or character misbelief in your story is what motivates them or causes them to act in a certain way. If your character grows…

It’s a romance brawl. Not really. But it’s a bit of one. And it comes down to this: Does a romance have to have Happily Ever After or Happy For Now to be a romance? Does there need to be a positive, happy ending in order for a book to be a romance? Let’s talk about it. Unspoken agreement with the reader WRITING TIP OF THE POD If your story isn’t ha…

THIS WEEK!! On it's face, this may not really seem like a sacrilegious episode, but, you know, things--like religion--aren't always what they seem. Sure, there's a story of a man panda. And also some tales of a samurai. But, if you listen harder (listen hard, listener, *rock* hard), you will be astonished at the insight, pertinence, permanence, and…

On our last podcast and post, we talked about the character misbelief, which is basically what the character in your story believes that isn’t real or true.The big component of this is that your character believes this big lie about life or about themselves because of something that hurt them in the past. The thing that hurt them in the past that c…

Are you prepared to take on Buff Jesus in mortal combat? Graham is. Rodney has mixed feelings about the whole thing. Adam is apparently oblivious, like always. Also, the Gazpacho Police show up for a sting. SOUP! CITRUS! SWOLE! SAVIOR!!By ADGROD

We’re doing a hybrid writing tip and podcast this week. All the important stuff is written down here. All the fun stuff and Shaun aka The Talent is in the podcast where we talk about this important writing stuff and other things. So, let’s get started. The big lie or the character’s misbelief in your story is a major key to your character’s story a…

It's a weird, wild, not PC live ride into strange storm things as we wait for Hurricane Lee. I tried to keep this podcast on track. I failed. Links We Mention https://www.factretriever.com/hurricane-facts https://bestlifeonline.com/storm-facts/ http://www.theworldgeography.com/2011/04/top-8-weirdest-natural-disasters.html https://news.yahoo.com/7-w…

In our random thought we talk all about the Ig Nobles. We don't transcribe that, so you'll have to listen. Sorry! But now, let’s talk about logic. When you are writing a novel and something doesn’t make sense—let’s say someone has brown eyes on page 2 and blue eyes on page 1—your editor if you have one is going to call you on that. If they don’t ca…

THIS WEEK!! We channel the inner spirits/demons of all the great 1970's hard rock musicians...and proceed to essentially attempt to destroy their legacy in one fell swoop. I mean, you know how it goes with us, it never goes to plan. Still, there's a song about a man/panda hybrid, so there's that. This one is quite unhinged, folks, so strap in!…