Hide and Create

This week on Hide and Create, Jaye Wells interviews Jordan Ellinger about ghost writing, Warhammer, and tie-in writing. Part two of our series of episodes where we interview the hosts of Hide and Create.

This week on Hide and Create, Moses Siregar interviews Jaye Wells about her writing, her path, and traditional publishing. Today, we kick off a series of interviews with each of the Hide and Create crew discussing our chosen paths into the world of publishing.

This week on Hide and Create, Moses Siregar interviews Jaye Wells about her writing, her path, and traditional publishing. Today, we kick off a series of interviews with each of the Hide and Create crew discussing our chosen paths into the world of publishing.

This week on Hide and Create, Moses Siregar interviews Jaye Wells about her writing, her career, and traditional publishing. Jaye and Moses start off a series of interviews featuring each of the Hide and Create crew to talk about our writing and publishing paths.  

This week on Hide and Create, Jaye Wells, Joshua Essoe, Moses Siregar and Jordan Ellinger continue talking with Jim Hines about blogging! Some standard advice is if you are a writer you should blog. Blog consistently and interestingly and [slowly] you will build a platform. I see why people dig it so much. You write stuff and others see it. And they see it immediately, there is no waiting around. Your content is available for anyone who cares to read it the moment you upload. So why is having a blog good? 1) You can show off your awesomeness. A blog is a great way to show that you are, and why you are, an expert in your field, or that you’re entertaining. Obviously that means you have to write compelling content that appeals to your target audience. 2) You can build platform. A blog is a great way to get readers talking about you, to you, and to each other—again, assuming your content is interesting enough to talk about. 3) Search engine rankings. If you’re blogging about writing and publishing, the search engines will pick up all the keywords you’re using that readers might search for. The more relevant your content is, the more traffic, engines will divert to your site. And why is having a blog bad? Time sink. I mentioned consistency, and that it is important. Why? Because your blog is like a locomotive. It’s slow to get moving, but if it keeps being fed, it will pick up steam and get more and more momentum. But what happens if you stop feeding it? It starts to slow down until it grinds to a halt. The only way to keep your momentum is to keep feeding it new content. If you don’t have the consistency, you’ll lose what you spent so much effort and so many words to get. Readers are fickle. Especially now — it’s a reader’s market. There is so much out there, that they can afford to be as choosey and picky and finicky as they want. No new content on your site? Oh well, on to the next author who does. It could be your time would be better spent writing your next story. And in case you want to jump down the rabbit hole, here is the link to RaceFail ’09 we talk about in the show.

This week on Hide and Create, Jordan Ellinger, Joshua Essoe, Moses Siregar and Jaye Wells talk with Jim Hines about blogging! Get to know Jim, one of the kings of blogs. Next week we get more into the nitty-gritty of blogging and how, why, and even if, you should. Jim’s URLs Blog:  http://www.jimchines.com/blog// Benefit Calendar: http://thetinkerspacks.bigcartel.com/product/2014-year-of-the-poser-calendar   

This week on Hide and Create, Joshua Essoe, Jordan Ellinger, Moses Siregar, Jaye Wells, and a returning Diana Rowland discuss the last year developing and recording Hide and Create. First there was an Essoe and an Ellinger. Then there was a Dalglish and a Rowland. The Dalglish had to move along, move along, but then came a Siregar the Third. The Rowland went Walk About and gave us a Wells. The Rowland will be back. Happy Holidays! Thanks for making this first year of shows so much fun and so successful. We’ll be back again next week with Season 2! No rest for the wicked.

This week on Hide and Create, Jaye Wells, Jordan Ellinger, Moses Siregar and Joshua Essoe, continue our chat with Rebecca Strauss of DeFiore and Co. about the duties and life of a literary agent. Agents as publishers, dropped authors, etiquette, and cookies, oh my!

This week on Hide and Create, Jaye Wells, Jordan Ellinger, Moses Siregar and Joshua Essoe, talk with Rebecca Strauss of DeFiore and Co. about the duties and life of a literary agent. Ever wonder about agents? Ever wonder what they might do for you? Ever wonder how the field is changing? Ever wonder who Rebecca Strauss is, or what kind of books she wants to see come across her desk? This is the episode for you!

This week on Hide and Create, Joshua Essoe, Jordan Ellinger, Jaye Wells, and Moses Siregar talk about why the path they took into publishing is the best. When you decide to get become writer you should definitely start with tie-in writing. Or when you hit the path toward a  professional writing career, the best way to begin is to go through a traditional publisher with your original novel. Perhaps, what I mean to say is, if you want to make a living as a pro-author you have to go indie, cause it’s the best. Well, actually, what most don’t know is if you really want to break into the publishing industry the absolute best way is to first become an editor and get your chops working on both your own and others’ work. There, the secret is out.

This week on Hide and Create, Jaye Wells, Jordan Ellinger, Moses Siregar and Joshua Essoe talk about stupid writer tricks. We all use them, we all have them, and we’ve all heard of some of them. This is where we each share more of our cool and perhaps not-commonly-heard-of tips and shortcuts of the trade. And here is the post Moses references from the book he recommends, Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer.

This week on Hide and Create Joshua Essoe, Jaye Wells, Moses Siregar, and Jordan Ellinger talk about creating your voice. It’s interesting to me how a writer can have a strong voice and be a very good storyteller, but fall down when it comes to the line-by-line writing. Everyone has gifts and genius, and some can do things that others just can’t duplicate no matter how much they learn or practice. But I don’t think that should bother you, because you have your strengths as well. Everybody does. Don’t discount them. Figure out what they are, and take advantage of them. If you kick ass at writing battle scenes, then you should have battle scenes in your book. If you write amazing dialogue, then you should have a lot of dialogue in your book. If you’re genius at pacing, then you take advantage of that and make sure that your readers a glued to your pages for the whole ride. If you’re really good at dissecting ideas and creating compelling, thoughtful arguments, then emphasize your themes. And if you get an MS back from me or another editor, and it’s absolutely filled with red ink, that doesn’t mean you suck and you shouldn’t write. If I include in my critique that I really liked the story and think it has huge promise, I’m not lying, and all that red ink isn’t the proof of that. What that means is that you have an awesome voice, you’re a good storyteller and you need to work on your technical skills.

This week on Hide And Create, Moses Siregar, Joshua Essoe, Jordan Ellinger, and Jaye Wells talk about creating tension. Maybe it need not be said, but don’t use one of the tools we talked about in this episode, use a bunch of them and mash them together. Take a time-bomb, use short, punchy sentences, be unpredictable, and present lose-lose choices all in one story, and really drag your readers through the trenches before giving them the release of a satisfying conclusion. A final note. If you fear that your tension is getting stale, the cause is probably that you’re hitting the same emotional beat too many times, and you and your readers are going deaf to it. When that’s happening you have to defeat your reader’s expectations and use an opposing emotional beat. If everything is haha-funny, and you think that your humor is flagging and things just aren’t as amusing, throw in something profound, like Jack Palance telling you the secret of life. If you’ve got action-action-action, sigh, action-action, change it up and throw in a romantic beat or a mystery beat. This is an emotional twist, like a plot twist except it doesn’t affect the story, it affects the mood. As promised, here is the link to Margie Lawson and her workshops that Jaye gushed over. Also to David Farland who has marvelous things to teach about creating tension and all things writing related.  

This week on Hide and Create Moses Siregar, Jaye Wells, Jordan Ellinger and Joshua Essoe continue last week’s discussion on the monomyth. Actually, we argue for a bit to finish up as we examine the trope of the Chosen One.

This week on Hide and Create Joshua Essoe, Jordan Ellinger, Moses Siregar and Jaye Wells start talking about the Hero’s Journey. The Hero’s Journey is a skeletal framework that should be fleshed out with the details and surprises of the individual story. The structure should not call attention to itself, nor should it be followed too precisely. The order of the stages given here is only one of many possible variations. The stages can be deleted, added to, and drastically shuffled without losing any of their power. The Hero’s Journey is infinitely flexible, capable of endless variation without sacrificing any of its magic, and it will outlive us all.