PODCAST · arts
How to Write Good
by Daniel Poppie
The writing podcast that isn't about how to write. Looking at writing, creativity, and other artforms through a philosophical and lighthearted lens.
Episodes
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Steal Shakespeare's Strategy
My Book: https://amzn.to/31UcCPg My Newsletter: danielpoppie.com/newsletter My Website: www.danielpoppie.com HTWG Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/howtowritegood HTWG Twitter: https://twitter.com/danielpoppie HTWG Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danielpoppie One Last Toast for Ebenezer...
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Your Storytelling Goals Will Direct Your Writing
My Book: https://amzn.to/31UcCPg My Newsletter: danielpoppie.com/newsletter My Website: www.danielpoppie.com HTWG Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/howtowritegood HTWG Twitter: https://twitter.com/danielpoppie HTWG Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danielpoppie One Last Toast for Ebenezer...
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Doing Weird Stuff in Your Writing
My Book: https://amzn.to/31UcCPg My Newsletter: danielpoppie.com/newsletter My Website: www.danielpoppie.com HTWG Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/howtowritegood HTWG Twitter: https://twitter.com/danielpoppie HTWG Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danielpoppie One Last Toast for Ebenezer...
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Words You Don't Know
Yesterday, we talked about words that we didn't like to use. Each writer has words he dislikes, but sometimes those words are exactly what is needed. As writers, it can also be tempting to use words that mean a very specific thing. Now, I am not opposed to this at certain times, especially if the...
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Using Words You Don't Like
Some words sound gross (gross!). Some words are annoying. They don't roll off the tongue. They are overused, etc. . . There are a lot of reasons why a writer might want to disregard some words. Some of these reasons are better than others. In this episode of How to Write Good, we are going to be...
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Making Your Writing Easy to Read
When you first start writing, I think your goal should be clarity. Can a regular person understand what you are writing. It is more complex than it seems. If you can't write clearly, the purpose of your writing (being understood) has been stymied. One of the next goals I have when writing is…
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The Reader Will Fill in the Gaps
A lot of writers are perfectionists. Personally, I think this is funny because the big authors I have run into who are perfectionists seem to not be that great of writers (Great sentence construction there, am I right?). Now, I am against perfectionism, but that is for another podcast episode (or...
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The Place Artists Take In Society
For whatever reason, celebrities think they should be listened to. And it works. People see that someone has a following whether because they are an actor or an influencer on instagram (like me, lol, SAD), but it is generally the case that these people don't know what the heck they are talking...
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Six Month Projects
Tim Ferris of 4 Hour Work Week fame, talks about an enticing idea in his book (He has a lot of enticing ideas in his book). It isn't about working only four hours a week. It isn't about setting up a muse business. It is about the way he approaches goals. He works in 6 month stints. I think that...
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Words on the Tip of Your Tongue
Writers block is a real thing. I think it is a thing that can be avoided, but is is a real thing. What we typically think of writers block is sitting at a blank page and not even knowing how to start writing. Another type of writers block exists though. Have you ever been writing and you suddenly...
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Should you stick to one genre?
If you do some research on working as a writer, you will find one piece of advice that comes up in relation to marketing. That advice is to stick to one genre. This advice makes marketing sense. If you write in the same genre, the people who enjoy your books will enjoy all your books. If you are...
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Follow Your Own Writing Rules
The first thing you should know before anything else is that you should not listen to me. You shouldn't listen to me. You shouldn't listen to other writers telling you what to do. What you need to do is figure out your own way of writing. But I don't think that setting out on your own trail is…
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How the Publishing Industry Should Work
The publishing industry has been around for quite some time. Nowadays, the advent of self-publishing pushes against traditional publishing, but indie publishing has only created a tiny dent. We still live in a world that is dominated by the traditional publishing industry. I think there is a good...
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Write for Non-Writers
Some writers are elitists. Some writers want to write the next great American novel (or English novel or Australian (if they read down there)). And writing for regular people is something that is left for bad writers. I think this is stupid (because I think a lot of things are stupid). Instead of...
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The Goal of Writing
Why do we write? That is is common question I ask when thinking about writing. Some people think that writing is only to make words sound good together, but I think this misses the point of the writing completely. My Book: https://amzn.to/31UcCPg My Newsletter: danielpoppie.com/newsletter My...
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The Importance of Self-Forgetfulness when Writing
I have a theory about most writers. I think most writers function with a higher level of anxiety than the rest of society. Maybe I am wrong about this. Maybe only I have this problem, but I doubt it. When I look around, I see a lot of writers you obsess over little and big things within there...
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Fantasy is Another World
Some people dismiss fantasy fiction. They see it as something that is not serious. It is not considered high literature. High literature does not deal with things that aren't real, or high literature carries around specific ideas. But fantasy is a very unique type of story. It allows us to go…
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Politics in Fiction
Politics in annoying. Politics is the worst. I am not a fan of politics at all. Unfortunately, politics invades other spaces. Because politics involves others spaces, we need to talk about how we should approach politics in fiction. Should politics in fiction? Should we put politics in our work?...
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Music Follows Language
I have a writing rule. I think it is one of my first writing rules. That rule is that writing follows language, which means that writing follows the sound of language. More recently, I have run into some information about music that has challenged my conceptions about the art-form. Now, I am not…
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The Through-Line of a Story
You have probably heard the idea of theme within a story, and you probably have specific ideas of what a theme is. First, I think you are probably wrong about what a theme is because any deviation of what I think about theme is incorrect, so I am going to set you straight on that. But I am also...
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Internet Addiction
The internet is ubiquitous in our modern culture. The only person who doesn't have a smartphone of their own is my mom. We are always listening to podcasts or music in our ears. We always have something going on, and with this new and strange technology that we have developed, so to arrives...
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Daily Minimums
Life is hard. Maybe there is someone out there with an easy life, but when I look around, it just looks like a lot of people have hard lives, especially if you are trying to do anything creative. I have learned something about life in general, and this something is a strategy you can use to do...
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The Compost of Imagination
I've heard that writers need bad memories because everything they hear or read gets composted into a big pile. That compost becomes fertile, and then these writers can pluck from their bad memories anything that they need. I am not sure imagination works that way, but I think it is a good place…
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Should you write what you know?
Write what you know is one of the most well-known pieces of writing advice. Write what you know. It seems like a simple piece of advice, and I think many people have taken this advice to heart to their peril (peril, peril, peril). Is 'write what you know' a good piece of writing advice? On…
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Start with the Bad Idea
Bad ideas are bad (It is a tautology. There is really know way to argue with this). So, we should avoid bad ideas. Bad ideas should not be in our writing, right? But what if this is the incorrect way of understanding bad ideas? What if bad ideas are a gift given to us to help us be better…
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Working in Layers as You Write
Have you ever seen someone paint a picture (Of course you have). When someone paints a picture, they do not pick up a bucket full of all types of paint and throw it at a canvas. It does not happen all at once. When a painter paints, he must put the paint on the canvas one single stroke at a time....
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Don't Worry About Being Original
Originality. Is it something that we should seek to achieve when we write. Mark Twain doesn't think we should worry. In fact, he said something to the effect that all writing is derivative, so you should not worry about whether yours is as well. Now, is this good advice to follow. Today on How to...
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Writing Follows the Sound of Language
I think Ursula Le Guin. If you want to read a writer who knew her craft (RIP), you should read some Ursula Le Guin. Of all the writers I have ever read, I think she is in the top 10 (seriously). So, when she says something about writing, I think that people should perk up their ears and listen.…
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Using Memory and Writing the Little Details
Lynda Barry has a really interesting view on how to start writing. She says that if we become curious about memory, we can use it as a spring board to begin writing. The example she gives to show how this would work is when you lose someone for whatever reason. In that period you are dealing with...
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Will Quantity Make Up For Quality?
Ray Bradbury. I am a big fan of Ray Bradbury. I think that he is one of those writers who has put out a lot of different stories that capture people's imaginations. Ray Bradbury puts out a piece of writing advice that seems very simple and doable for everyone. His piece of advice states that...
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From Where Does Art Originate?
Robert Butler talks about how art does not originate in the mind. He states that art originate in the core of a person. He states that you cannot arrive at good art if you are trying to think to that end. Now, if you have been listening to me for quite a long time, you know that I don't like to...
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Is Writing Just about what to Omit?
Samuel Delany, a science fiction author, once said that writing is more about what to omit from your writing. He states that most writing advice you receive is about what you should not do. Though I don't disagree with this second statement, I disagree with this idea that the core of writing is...
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Setting Aside Time to Write
Lisa Dordal gives the specific piece of advice that writers should sets aside a specific day for reading and writing instead of trying to write every day. I don't think this is just a piece of writing advice, but a piece of advice we can apply across all types of platforms. Today, on How to Write...
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Building Yourself Up to the Writing Process
Denis Johnson gives the advice that you should build yourself up to the actual act of writing. Johnson does this by what he calls "tinkering." He takes time to play around with specific things within his writing, whether that be the voice a a character, dialogue, setting, etc. . . On Today's...
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Write Even What You Won't Use
Cormac McCarthy has a piece of writing advice that says you should write everything, even scenes you are not going to use. Now, Cormac McCarthy is a good write, so we should look into his writing advice. On today's episode of How to Write Good, we are going to talk about whether this piece of...
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Should we Work in Short Chapters?
Anthony Doerr gives an interesting piece of writing advice. He says that we should work in short chapters. His reason for doing this is because it is easier to work in short chapters. In this week's episode of How to Write Good, we are going to talk about if working in short chapters is better…
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Is Writing Anything Better than Writing Nothing?
Katherine Mansfield has a specific piece of writing advice that we are going to talk about today: "Writing anything is better than writing nothing" (Or something to that effect. Is it better to write anything, even if that thing is bad, or should be only be writing something that is good. We know...
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Should You Kill Your Darlings?
Kill your darlings. This is one of the most popular pieces of writing advice of all time. I don't know why this specific piece of writing advice rose to the top out of the entire book Stephen King's writing advice, but it is one of the biggest. Now, Stephen King does know how to write. I have…
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Another Strategy for Writing Dialogue
I love dialogue. Have I ever told you I love dialogue, because, dang, I love dialogue. Dialogue is the aspect of writing that sticks out more than anything, and it is the type of writing we remember. What do you remember from the movies? What do people quote from books? Most times it is dialogue.…
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Should You Omit Unneeded Words?
Omit unneeded words. This is a famous piece of writing advice from The Elements of Style by William Strunk, and his little manual on writing might be the most famous book on writing to exist. But is the advice above good advice. On Today's episode of How to write good, I am going to talk about...
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Three Strategies for Writing Characters
What is the best part of a book? Or maybe I should ask another question: what is the core of a story? I would say the answer to that question is character. Who am I journeying with? Who am I getting to know. Now, you most likely learned a specific way to describe characters in your stories. That...
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How to Start Tension in Your Story
Tension. That is the good stuff. If we can create tension in our stories, we can grab those readers, and if we can grab those readers, we can rule the world with a microphone (Or a piece of paper. Something like that. It doesn't really matter). But if we can create tension in our story, we are...
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1st vs 3rd Person
We write from two different viewpoints in English. We either write in first person or third person. And some people have very strong feelings about writing in one or the other of these tenses. I don;t really care. I think they both useful, and I am willing to write in either. In this episode of…
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Fall In Love with Learning
This is a piece of life advice, but it is also something that is good to remember when you are writing: fall in love with learning. Benjerman Frankerlman once said that if you want to be remembered you either need to do something worth writing about or write something worth reading. Since we are...
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Why Writing Frustrates You
I was going to make this episode about how to finish your book. In the future, I will actually make an episode about that, but when I was going through this topic, I found I had something I needed to say about the act of writing itself. Specifically, I thought it was very important to explain why…
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Should you use tropes?
Cowboy hats. Metal walls with rivets. Redshirts. Duels. Towering skycrapers. There are many tropes that show up in stories. Where these show up depends up which type of story they are in. Because these things have been used over and over again, people have learned to hate them. But if you are one...
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Invisible Writing
What shoot you shoot for when writing? What is the goal of the writing? My first answer to that question would be to make someone understand what you are thinking. Another way of saying this is that you are trying to express things as clearly as possible. Besides this goal, I have another goal…
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Writing for the Sake of Writing
I stumbled on a piece of writing advice that rubbed me the wrong way today. The piece of writing advice was that you should write for the sake of writing. Now, this got on my bad side because I believe writing has one very clear goal. That goal is to take what is in my head and put it into…
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There Is No Muse
I used to write on a boom and bust model. I would write a lot. Maybe I would stay up most of the write. I would have a surge of inspiration, and then I would have long periods where I would not write. And I can tell you, it is not a very effective model because you can go for loooooong stretches...
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Teasing Out Your Story
You ever read one of those books that almost forces you to finish it. I have read those books as well. I have stayed up late into the night so that I could finish a book. I love books like this. I think most people like books like this. But as writers, how do we learn to be writers who can grab...
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does How to Write Good have?
How to Write Good currently has 231 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is How to Write Good about?
The writing podcast that isn't about how to write. Looking at writing, creativity, and other artforms through a philosophical and lighthearted lens.
How often does How to Write Good release new episodes?
How to Write Good publishes regularly with 231 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to How to Write Good?
You can listen to How to Write Good on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts How to Write Good?
How to Write Good is created and hosted by Daniel Poppie.
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