Two Writers, No Hook

Alan Langford and Michael Pinkus

Every two weeks authors Alan Langford and Michael Pinkus talk about an aspect of the writing process, set our writing goals, and report on our progress since the last episode. Note: We're Canadian, we swear a bit. Marked explicit for occasional strong language. This started as a way for us to hold each other accountable to our writing goals. Two conversations in, we decided to publicly embarrass ourselves and post our conversations on YouTube, the idea being that if there was an audience out there (ha!) we'd be even more committed to our goals. After we spent far too much time trying to come up with a name for this show, Alan got frustrated and said "You'd think two writers could come up with a decent hook!" and Michel said, "that's it!" and so the "Two Writers, No Hook Podcast" was born. We start with Episode 3 because our first two conversations were not recorded.

  1. Oct 20

    Mentors and Learning

    Content warning: occasional profanity. Michael starts with a first: no tea to drink since we recorded this session in the late afternoon. I mention that we're starting our second year of broadcasting. Bonus: we're now an "official" podcast, available on all the major podcasting platforms. Search for "Two Writers, No Hook" to find it. Michael reports: 12,904 words written. He's trying for consistently getting a number of writing days in per week. His editor's evaluation of his latest book came in, the editor liked the book, offered several minor fixes and suggested cutting part of it out. I have written a net 53 words, but that's the result of cutting many words out as well as adding new ones. I've been doing fine-grained edits as a way of procrastinating filling in my missing scenes, but that's the result of a nagging feeling that things weren't set up well. Earlier today I think I resolved that problem. We discuss our relative processes when it comes to changing the order of events in our stories, how we reveal events through multiple characters, and painting (or plotting) ourselves into a corner. We continue to explore the differences in our writing approached (plotting vs. pantsing). We discuss how if Michael knows where the plot is going, he worries that he'll telegraph it too early in the work. I ask if he's in his head or in the head of his characters when he writes. Goals: Mine are the same as four or six weeks ago: fill in some missing scenes and get this draft done, fingers crossed. Michael's are keep writing regularly, setting a days when he was writing as the goal, rather than the number of words. He also plans to go over his editor's feedback. We get onto mentors and learning. I say my inspiration is reading a book I really enjoy and wanting to write like that. I mention some books on writing. Michael talks about being inspired by books where he thinks he can do a better job, and I agree. There's a "well if this can make it to print, I can too" feeling you get. We talk about several other places where we find knowledge and inspiration to keep writing. Next week: momentum vs. significance. We're not quite sure what that means either, but we'll figure it out! Links to all the places I can be found online: https://alanlangford.com/places

    Mentors and Learning

  2. Oct 7

    Exposition vs. Dialog

    I start with my progress. Not a lot of new words (but many words replaced). Organizing scenes into chapters and discovering places where I can optimize. Draft 2 is now maybe 10% complete (instead of the 90% I had hoped for) so I moan a little about how everything in this process takes much longer than initially expected. Michael talks about how it took him five years to get his current work to the editing phase. I talk about blowing past my target word count (80K) and guess I'll wind up in the mid 90's. Michael started a new story, is at 12,119 words. He did a 500 word story for a competition and found that the diversion threw him off his main story, and that he's finding getting back into it more of a challenge than he expected. My goal is simple: keep at it. We digress into editing, wrapping up my story, confusion in dialog. Before getting back to Michael's goals: 5-10K new words in his story. The topic for this episode is dialog vs. exposition and we talk about the role of each in our different genres. Next Episode: Mentors and Learning. Books we mentioned: Plot Twist by Harlan Coben and Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott

  3. Oct 7

    Where We Get Our Characters From

    Recorded 2026-09-21 We start talking about a heart balloon that unhelpfully is out of frame. It's the first day of fall and we talk about birthdays briefly. I start reporting with Michael telling me why he skims my newsletter. Then I do a dump of my very productive two weeks, including a bunch of non-writing stuff. Michael has sent his manuscript to an editor, is putting finishing touches on his website, aiming to have it finished by the end of October. He woke up early the day before, sat down, and wound up writing 5,000 words of a new story. This after about a week of downtime not being sure what to do next. Michael gives me an overview of the opening of his story and I ask him what the spark was that got him started on it. We talk about Michael's writing pace, which is a fast start and then slower as he gets to the ending. Since we're both consuming Harlan Coben's latest book, Plot Twist, I contrast that with Coben's pace which is to start fast and pick up the rate exponentially as he approaches the end. Michael's Goals: finish his website, continue writing his new story, hoping to get feedback from his editor by the end of this month(ish). We digress into how there are lots of authors who talk about the writing process, but not about editing. My goals carry over from the last episode, get through the second draft of my novel. On to where we get our inspiration from. My characters, at least in my current novel, are synthetic. I might lift a characteristic from someone I know, but none of my friends would think I modelled a character on them. Michael tends to take a set of attributes from people he knows, so there is a larger set of similarities between his characters and real people. I contradict myself, because I have another novel on the back burner that's a fictionalization of real life experiences, and there the problem is to alter the characteristics of real people so that they become distinct characters in the book. This leads into a discussion of the challenges of letting people you know read your drafts, and how you tend to not get the kind of feedback you are looking for. For our next episode, how we manage dialog vs. exposition.

  4. Oct 7

    Scammers Targeting Authors

    Recorded 2026-09-08 We start talking about beverages while recording, and the cliché of the alcohol-fuelled writers labouring over their manuscript. Then we move to updates. I feel like screaming this: I have finally finished the never-ending edit round! Michael goes over the chronology of his work on his novel. He's taking another pass at his last few chapters and is close to finishing his edit. His website is also almost ready. There's a little digression into reviewing the endings of our stories, and then about our beginnings and how they've changed as the work evolved. Michael has three goals: finish the edit, send it to his editor, and read Harlan Coben's book Plot Twist. My goal is to get my missing scenes done. On to our hook: scam messages that come in. Where they come from, how to spot them, and what to do about them. We talk about how their pitches try to suck you in with glowing praise, even for books that don't exist yet. I give my number one tip for detecting a scammer: if it's from a free-mail account (Gmail, Hotmail, etc.) then it's a scam. Period. We talk about how these organizations get your information. I rant (gently) about being controlled by our devices and then set up for next episode's hook: Where do we get inspiration for our characters?

  5. Oct 7

    Staying on Track

    Recorded 2026-08-24 In this episode we dive right into progress (relatively speaking, less than a minute of chat). I edited 32 pages, two over my minimum goal, and just ten pages short of finishing this pass (my real goal). We had a discussion about the "start on second draft stretch goal" Michael added to my list in the last episode. I didn't get where I wanted because it took an entire week to revise one single scene, so if I break down my progress it was just one page in the first week, and thirty-one in the second. The upside is that resolving the problems with that scene have pointed me in the right direction for solving some other issues. Michael joined a peer-reviewed writing battle without fully realizing that he was one of the peers. We digress into a discussion about the challenges in doing critiques, and people who are skilled in one form of writing and less good in others. Then we return to Michael's progress report. Although he didn't hit his five chapter goal, he did take another pass at seven others. On to goals: Michael wants to finish his edit by the end of the month (six chapters). For me, finish the edit and start filling in missing scenes. We chat a bit about book series versus book serials, and how you carry characters across books. Then we get onto this episode's topic: Staying on Track. Do we get bored with writing or need a break, and how do we deal with that. Some of this is the difference between writing as a dream and writing as a job, and how it takes real effort to get through the aspects of the work that we're less fond of or less skilled at. Next episode: reviews, critiques, and scammers.

  6. Oct 7

    Breaking Through the Wall

    Recorded 2026-08-10 We start with a very brief mention of an AI tool that purports to write for you. Surprisingly it's not called "Slopomatic." Enough of that, we go to progress reporting. I report being on page 242, 28 pages edited since our last episode and two short of my goal of 30. In "stuff other than writing", I've done work on an end-to-end publishing workflow, and set up a project manager to track it. I report that editing has been easier, and has been giving me more confidence that a lot of it is honing in on getting the right words in the right order. We have a side conversation about writing tools and subscription services, lifetime memberships, and market forces. Michael reports signing up for a writing challenge that was a bad fit: two three hundred word stories, a word limit he finds impossible. He hit three chapters edited, short of his five chapter goal, but reworked another four, so we'll call that seven edited. Future goals: Michael wants to finish edits, and to dictate a short story for audiobook release. I'm shooting for another 30 pages, maybe more as I'm 50 pages or so from the end. We talk about both of us getting over a wall of low productivity. I talk about how productivity and happiness are strongly correlated for me. I talk about cycles of productivity and then the ADD challenge of managing which projects I work on during those productive periods. We talk about to-do lists. We talk about the folly of measuring ourselves against others. We talk about how these conversations have helped us both keep on task. Next episode: Combating Tedium

  7. Oct 7

    Timelines in Fiction

    Recorded 2026-07-27 We start by trying to not talk about the weather, without success. We do manage to limit it to a mere minute and 38 seconds. If you think climate change is a myth you probably want to skip that bit. On to progress. I report a pathetic 16 pages of editing and 880 words into a new short story. Michael read the short story I've been bugging him to read for the last three episodes. He's making progress on his editing, tightening the story up. He's starting to gain some momentum in the process and is enjoying that. He's ten chapters away from the finish line. We discuss handing the work to an editor and our trepidation over the feedback we will get. We talk about reading our reviews. The discussion of what a good review is takes us into a side trip into story structure and plot. Back on track, we set our goals for the next two weeks. I go for another thirty pages edited. Michael's goal is to finish the edits on his book and to launch his website. We get onto our topic: timelines. I talk about jumping around in my novel, because the story starts with a crisis, but then I need to step back to explain how that crisis got set up. Michael talks about placing a story into a known time period and getting the context right, something I need to do with another story that's set in the late 1990's. We talk about how different authors have approached timelines, and time travel stories that change the course of future events. Next week's topic: breakthroughs and the excitement of a breakthrough and the wall that comes before it.

  8. Oct 7

    Finding Our Style

    Recorded 2026-07-17 As usual we start off topic for a few minutes before getting into progress reporting. I've gone through 68 pages of my most recent edit, well over my goal of 50, the first time I've truly killed a goal in the past few months. As a follow-up to our last episode, I came very close to killing one of my darlings. Fortunately I found a fix that let me keep it. Michael edited four chapters in full, and is in a second cycle through the fifth. We decided he's 4.5 chapters toward his 5 chapter goal. After Michael reports, I remember to mention that I wrote a little piece of flash fiction. This takes us into a side discussion of the sort of feedback Michael gets in his feedback and how sometimes it doesn't make sense to him. I mention that I'm thinking of writing stories based on new technological developments that I see in newsletters and we discuss where we get ideas from. We get back on track and set some goals. I go for another 30 pages of edit, Michael is aiming to get his word count down to 90K and plans to edit five chapters over the next two weeks. We talk about how editing can be such a slow process. This episode's topic: finding our style. Michael starts by trying to identify what he means by style: style as in method of writing, style of prose, and genre as a style. Michael writes mysteries because those are the kinds of story he enjoys. He talks about having difficulty writing for a competition that wants something in a different style (genre). I talk about why I primarily write science fiction. We talk about some of our methods, how we keep track of our story ideas. Next episode: dealing with timelines.

See All (26)

About

Every two weeks authors Alan Langford and Michael Pinkus talk about an aspect of the writing process, set our writing goals, and report on our progress since the last episode. Note: We're Canadian, we swear a bit. Marked explicit for occasional strong language. This started as a way for us to hold each other accountable to our writing goals. Two conversations in, we decided to publicly embarrass ourselves and post our conversations on YouTube, the idea being that if there was an audience out there (ha!) we'd be even more committed to our goals. After we spent far too much time trying to come up with a name for this show, Alan got frustrated and said "You'd think two writers could come up with a decent hook!" and Michel said, "that's it!" and so the "Two Writers, No Hook Podcast" was born. We start with Episode 3 because our first two conversations were not recorded.

Information

  • Creator
    Alan Langford and Michael Pinkus
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    26
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Alan Langford and Michael Pinkus
  • Show Website
    Two Writers, No Hook