Episode 65: Don’t Fear the Process

Where does your novel start? How do you handle the parts that come before that start that feel relevant to the story? In this episode, we tackle these questions from a listener. We talk about the importance of finishing a draft before you’ll know where it really starts, about both planning and drafting as layers of the discovery process, about the difference between focused and diffuse work, about about wrong and right answers (does this binary exist?). Integrating backstory gets a look. We discuss how characters are conduits of backstory, consciously and unconsciously, through their thoughts, behavior and world view. We touch on backstory as revelation. You’ll also meet our rescue dog, Bandit, as we speculate about his back story, which we will never know. Links Discussed: Lauren Groff "The Trip Treatment” by Michael Pollen in the New Yorker 2.9.15: Dorothy Hearst Episode Tony Rock Picasso’s total work An American Marriage by Tayari Jones The Design Process Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival--everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success. The hosts: Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com. Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.