On Writing (And Fanfiction)

We say the F word a lot in this episode. Formatting, not fuck.

Back by unpopular demand, it's the On Writing (and Fanfiction) Podcast! In this episode, Zoey and Jake talk word counts, page counts, reading and writing preferences with regards to shortform and longform (fan)fiction, and the pros and cons of a posting schedule. Plus, Jake has finally scuttled forth from his fish tank and gotten a proper microphone. We're officially in the Good Audio Arc of the podcast. Got a question for us? Contact us at [email protected]! Follow us on Instagram @owff_podcast! Zoey's guest spot: Stranger Than Fanfiction Episode 28: What Happened Before ft. Zoey (HereBeHobbits) Music Credit: RetroFuture Clean by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4277-retrofuture-clean License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

On this episode, Zoey and Jake follow up their discussion from last episode on how to begin a story with how to end one! They discuss good foreshadowing, why predictability isn't necessarily a bad thing, how hard it really is to handle twist endings effectively, whether or not to resolve all your story's threads by the end, and what kinds of endings will leave your reader wishing a plague on your house. !! SPOILERS FOR THE MANDALORIAN SEASON 2 FINALE FROM 55:13–57:39 !! Got a question for us? Contact us at [email protected]! Follow us on Instagram @owff_podcast and show some love to our Creative Director Ciara for all the hard work she does in running the show over there. Music Credit: RetroFuture Clean by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4277-retrofuture-clean License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

I'm gonna run out of ways to start these eventually. But that's not today so welcome! On this episode of the OWFFPOD, Zoey and Jake talk about one of the hardest parts of a story to write—the beginning. We ask where inspiration comes from, we talk about what makes a beginning good and bad, about picking the right tense for your story, and we cap it all off with a discussion on titling your story! Did we only realize that our podcast has a parenthetical title after the discussion on how we don't really like them that all that much? Don't be preposterous.  Got a question for us? Contact us at [email protected]! Follow us on Instagram @owff_podcast and show some love to our Creative Director Ciara for all the hard work she does in running the show over there. Works and authors referenced in this episode: Seven Blades in Black by Sam Sykes (http://www.samsykes.com/) The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger by Stephen King (https://stephenking.com/) Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut (https://www.vonnegutlibrary.org/) One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1982/marquez/biographical/) “Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1995/09/25/bullet-in-the-brain) The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell (http://www.bernardcornwell.net/) The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson (https://www.emilyrcwilson.com/the-odyssey) For it is a Pleasure and a Surprise to Breathe by Gary Barwin (https://garybarwin.com/) The Perilous Trade: Book Publishing in Canada from 1946-2006 by Roy MacSkimming (http://www.roymacskimming.com/) The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (http://fallsapart.com/) Music Credit: RetroFuture Clean by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4277-retrofuture-clean License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The prodigal podcast returns! The prodcast? P(r)od(igal)cast? WHATEVER WE'RE BACK While we were gone, we scoured the Umbral Plains for one who possessed the ancestral knowledge of writing such that we might cast aside the veil concealing the eldritch authorial truth. Meaning we found some sucker more qualified than us to be on the podcast. Which brings us to this episode's special guest, Zoey's longtime friend and editor, Giddy! Giddy has an MFA in Creative Writing Fiction, and is a practiced pedagogue in the field, meaning we finally have someone to validate our shitty opinions and lend our inane ramblings a semblance of credence. Most radical, my esteemed listener. Follow Giddy over on IG: @thegiddyowl Got a question for us? Contact us at [email protected]! Follow us on Instagram @owff_podcast and show some love to our Creative Director Ciara for all the hard work she does in running the show over there. Music Credit: RetroFuture Clean by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4277-retrofuture-clean License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Our first guest appearance! We're in the big leagues now, fellas. On this episode, we welcome Zoey's good friend and fellow fanfiction aficionado Catherine, who's here to round out our writerly expertise with an incredibly important point of view—the reader's! Welcome Catherine with us as we talk about what keeps us reading a story, what stops us from finishing it, what "comment culture" is like for the reader, and a whole bunch of other zany bullshit because we burn through the topics we wrote down for the episode outline in twenty minutes. WE ARE THE TURBOCAST. Got a question for us? Contact us at [email protected]! Follow us on Instagram @owff_podcast and show some love to our Creative Director Ciara for all the hard work she does in running the show over there. Music Credit: RetroFuture Clean by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4277-retrofuture-clean License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

It's a new year, and with it, a new episode of the On Writing (And Fanfiction) Podcast! 2021 is already looking up because there's nothing it can do short of radioactive gibbons with machine guns to be worse than [REDACTED], so let's kick things off with some stimulating discussion, eh? This episode is all about comments—how important they are to leave on works you enjoy, and how damaging they can really be. Comments are little extra steps you as a reader can take that go a long way towards encouraging a writer and inspiring them to keep being creative, but that power can be corrupted. Tune in to hear our discussion on the place constructive criticism has in fandom, and heed our sage wisdom and insightful answers to this complex issue (we don't have any). Got a question for us? Contact us at [email protected]! Follow us on Instagram @owff_podcast and show some love to our Creative Director Ciara for all the hard work she does in running the show over there. Music Credit: RetroFuture Clean by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4277-retrofuture-clean License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Characterization! Research! Media Analysis! All the things you should do—and a whole lot you shouldn't—on Episode 6 of the On Writing (And Fanfiction) Podcast. This episode is all about characterization and all the ingredients you need to spice yours up so that your writing and characters are as authentic as they can be. Characterization is a rich gumbo, and this is a Michelin Star-winning podcast. Click here for Cherie Dimaline's website. Click here for Don Lee (the Korean-American author Zoey couldn't remember the name of when we were recording)'s website.  Click here to check out Writing With Color! Got a question for us? Contact us at [email protected]! Follow us on Instagram @owff_podcast, managed by our wonderful Creative Director and friend, Ciara! Music Credit: RetroFuture Clean by Kevin MacLeod https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4277-retrofuture-clean License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ If you enjoyed what you heard today, feel free to drop us a like, a subscription, a review, etc. on your listening platform of choice!

Episode 5 of the Tangentcast is live, and with it, our proper foray into fandom half of this podcast! Kept you waiting, huh? Join us as we cover some basic definitions of a few common fandom terms, talk about the Work-in-Progress and the difficulties of sticking with them, and ponder the frightening and repulsive frailty of our own mortality.  Got a question for us? Contact us at [email protected]! Follow us on Instagram @owff_podcast, managed by our wonderful Creative Director and friend, Ciara! Music Credit: RetroFuture Clean by Kevin MacLeod https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4277-retrofuture-clean License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ If you enjoyed what you heard today, feel free to drop us a like, a subscription, a review, etc. on your listening platform of choice!

Zoey's laptop is back from the hospital, and with it, a new episode! Thanks for waitin', folks. This week, Jake is giddy with nerd excitement as we talk about the wizardly wordsmithery of poetry, and how it can be a great tool for the emergent writer to really get a hold of figurative language. Stick around at the end for a reading of Peter Redgrove's Who's Your Daddy?, and feel free to read along with us as we dissect poems with literally no cohesion at all! Got a question for us? Contact us at [email protected]! Follow us on Instagram @owff_podcast! There, you'll find both Zoey and Jake's reading lists, containing the poems we talk about on today's episode. All the poems we talk about can be found at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/. Music Credit: RetroFuture Clean by Kevin MacLeod https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4277-retrofuture-clean License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ If you enjoyed what you heard today, feel free to drop us a like, a subscription, a review, etc. on your listening platform of choice!