Essential Guide to Writing a Novel
A podcast by James Thayer - Fridays

Categories:
163 Episodes
-
Episode 23: Editing our own manuscript
Published: 7/29/2022 -
Episode 22: A summary of earlier episodes, and techniques for musical writing.
Published: 7/22/2022 -
Episode 21: Creativity and how to get it.
Published: 7/15/2022 -
Episode 20 - Reasons we fail to start.
Published: 7/7/2022 -
Episode 19 - More on modifiers, including the useless and the dangling. And clunky reach words.
Published: 6/6/2022 -
Episode 18 - Lots of things to avoid: the negative, cliches, and too many modifiers.
Published: 6/4/2022 -
Episode 17 - Keep it simple but not too simple, and metaphors.
Published: 5/29/2022 -
Episode 16: Theme, odd questions, more on conflict, and vivid writing.
Published: 5/21/2022 -
Episode 15 - Techniques for writing about settings.
Published: 5/16/2022 -
Episode14: The fourth wall, the ending, and some bad writing.
Published: 5/11/2022 -
Episode 13: More on dialogue, and techniques about foreshadowing and coincidences
Published: 5/6/2022 -
Episode 12 - Dialogue
Published: 4/28/2022 -
Episode 11: Point of view and voice.
Published: 4/21/2022 -
Episode 10: More show and tell, and the grammatical person.
Published: 4/16/2022 -
Episode 9: Showing versus telling
Published: 4/9/2022 -
Episode 8 - Scene and summary
Published: 4/4/2022 -
Episode 7 - Crafting a scene
Published: 3/27/2022 -
Episode 6: Villains and sidekicks.
Published: 3/23/2022 -
Episode 5: How to develop appealing characters
Published: 3/10/2022 -
Episode 4: Pace, the first sentence, back-story, over-description
Published: 3/9/2022
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.