Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar

Setting is where your story happens. It’s the time period. It’s the physical place. You can have more than one setting.



There. That’s the definition. We’re all good, right?



Wrong.



Let’s really talk about setting.



WHAT SETTING DOES



Setting is the foundation of your story. It is the ModPodge that has an addictive smell (Cough. Not addicted to ModPodge. Look away.) and glues all the story together.



WHAT HAPPENS WITHOUT SETTING



Your characters float around in nothingness.



Your plot makes no sense. You can’t have hamsters taking over the world if there is no world.



You have no theme. You can’t care about the kindness of strangers if there is no reason for the strangers to need to be kind.



You have no atmosphere. Atmosphere is sexy. It’s the feeling of the story. The ambience.



LITTLE THINGS SHOW IT



Just by defining a tree you are telling the reader something about the setting.



Like if you write:




She stared up at the palm tree.




You’re giving the reader clues. A palm tree will not be in Iceland. They are somewhere comparatively warm.



If you write:




She got out of bed.




You’re giving the reader a clue that she is wealthy enough to have a bed and in a culture or world where people sleep in beds.



And the thing is that clues are needed. Specific clues. Real clues. Without a setting, without a place where the story happens and a time where the story happens, the reader floats there in the sky, ungrounded, unanchored.



You know what happens when a reader floats in the sky? The reader drifts away. Your character does an action--like a fart. So you want to fart in some specific setting to help the reader sniff out and remember where they are.



Being specific anchors the reader. It ties them to your story and its characters. You will remember a fart that smells like eggs mixed with tuna mixed with a McDonald’s french-fry in church during a funeral. So be specific in details.



More than that though? Setting anchors your characters and your plot. Place makes us (and our characters) who they are. It gives a story atmosphere. It gives the character a world to interact with.



Think of a creepy Stephen King novel. It’s creepy because he takes certain aspects of Maine and creepifies them. Think of Crazy Rich Asians or The Bridgerton novels. They are luxurious because of the places where they take place AND the places where they take place help inform the novels, the characters and the plots.





HOW DO YOU MAKE SETTING?



Go in slow. Don’t overwhelm us with details about the Hamster World of Ham-Ham-Ster and its 87 leaders of the Teddy Bear Nation and all their names that start with H. Establish it. Move on with your plot and sprinkle in important details as you go. Be sparing. Only add to overall story.



Figure out what pieces of the setting matter the most. Is it the claustrophobic trees? The swarms of tourists disembarking cruise ships. The smell of blood coming from the old, wooden floorboards? Use those details. Not the kind of coffee your heroine puts in her Keurig unless that's really important.



Make it active. The setting matters as the characters see it, move through it, react to it. Whatever is weird about that place and how your characters interact with it? Focus on that.



Don’t be afraid to go places, to use Google maps, the internet. Do everything you can to get fully into that place so you use it later in your work. Pay attention to all the settings and use it.





DOG TIP FOR LIFE







Pay attention to where you are. That helps you know how to react, interact and be. So sniff all the fire hydrants. Don't Google Map your life. Experience it for real.



SHOUT OUT!



The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. 



Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke

Algonquin Young Readers Will End in September







The traditional book publishing world is a bit like the wild west if the cowboys wore pink-framed eyeglasses and could quote Derrida.



People are heroes. People are let go. Entire divisions of publishing houses close. And so on.



And this continues this week with the changes at Hachette Book Group and its announcement of the closure of Workman: Algonquin Young Readers this September.



According to Editorial Director Cheryl Klein, “Our backlist and all books under contract will be absorbed into the Little, Brown Books for Young Readers list.”



But her team Adah Li, Sarah Alpert, and Shaelyn McDaniel will be gone.



Klein stays as editorial director for the Workman Kids Trade list.



Last week, the New York Times’ Alexandra Alter wrote,



“Last month, Hachette Book Group laid off seven employees at its Little, Brown imprint, as part of a corporate restructuring. It has since hired three new editors to fill positions at Little, Brown. These changes followed a reshuffling at the top. Little, Brown’s former editor in chief, Judy Clain, left to run an imprint at Simon & Schuster in January, and in March, Sally Kim, who previously worked as the publisher of Putnam, a Penguin Random House imprint, was appointed as the president and publisher of Little, Brown, becoming the first woman of color to lead the imprint.”



An imprint like Algonquin Young Readers is the way a publisher groups and markets books within the larger umbrella (in this case Workman, which is within the Hachette publishing group).



When an imprint like AYR ends, the authors feel stranded—editor-less—and that can be pretty scary.



Last summer, Penguin Random House (PRH) said it was merging Razorbill into Putnam Children’s; HarperCollins closed Inkyard formerly known as Harlequin Teen.



It’s usually about sales. Traditional publishers rely on sales to pay employees, pay for the books produced, pay the authors, and if the sales are not big enough? Things change. Sometimes it’s about personnel. Sometimes it’s about vision.



While it absolutely stinks for the people who lose their jobs or the authors who lose their inprint and people, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the sky is falling for an entire industry. It means things are shifting around.



DOG TIP FOR LIFE





Sometimes where you end up is better than where you started.- Mr. Murphy



RANDOM THOUGHT LINK



That Bored Panda article is here.







SHOUT OUT!



The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. 



Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.



WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It's pretty awesome.



We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.



Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!







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Our podcast title is “How To Write a Book Description That Gets Readers Tingling All Over” and that just sounds naughty, doesn’t it?



And it is a little naughty because this, my friends, is about selling a book, your book, and that requires being a little bit sexy.



Sexy is something I, Carrie, am very very bad at.



Let’s start by thinking about it this way:



A book description is an adverstisement for your book.



Writing a bad ad for your book doesn’t make you a sucky novelist. It just makes you unskilled at that. And that’s okay. You’ve been learning character development and plotting and novel structure and pacing. It’s okay to not know this part of the book world too.



Yet.



Here are the things you need to know about how to write a book description



MAKE IT BETWEEN 150 AND 250 WORDS



You want it to not be as long as the book. Or even as long as a novella. Or even as long as this post.



Any longer? People apparently stop paying attention.



FOCUS ON THE BARE PLOT MINIMUM AND THE HERO/PROTAGONIST



Show us how the main character’s decision has set them toward the adventure of the book.



MAKE IT IN THE THIRD PERSON



The third person is when you talk about other people and don’t use the “I.”



So,



Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar decided to adopt a hamster, little did they know, it was a zombie.



Not



We adopted a zombie hamster.



DO NOT BE CHEESY



You don’t want to go all fancy-pants on the book description. Stay away from adverbs and adjectives and a zillion clauses. Simple wins.



So, don’t write:



In the adorable town of Bar Harbor, Maine where tourist avidly romp in the summer and locals stoically manage the hard winters beneath the mini mountains and rocky coast, two hard-working podcasters tried to adopt a small rodent.



HOOK THEM IN



Book hooks happen in the first pages of the story, but they also need to happen in story descriptions.



A good way to do this is to show how your hero is unlikely to achieve their goal on their adventure.



Absolutely clueless podcasters Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar decided to adopt a hamster, hopelessly hoping for something easy to love. Little did they know that Hammy the Hamster was a zombie.



MAKE YOUR WORD CHOICE COUNT AND WORK FOR THE BOOK



If you use one or two words that are emotional and full of power, you can impact the reader and make them want your book.



Our book looks like some quirky fantasy, right? We know that from the plot.



If it was a mystery, we might use a word like MURDER>




Two podcasters. One zombie hamster. And a little Maine town about to host a million tourists.



Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar weren’t expecting that the hamster they’d adopted to help their podcast ratings would end up a zombie. Or that it would threaten all the tourists heading in to celebrate Acadia National Park’s bicentennial.



Now, these clueless podcasters, looking for a way out of their podunk town have a choice: find a way to get people to listen to them and protect both the tourists and Hammy the Hamster or just give up and hunker down with some Doritos (Hammy’s favorite) before it’s too late.



The future of Bar Harbor, Maine—and a million tourists—depend on them.




DOG TIP FOR LIFE





Hook ‘em and they’ll buy your book. In dog world, they’ll give you a treat when you hook ‘em. Show them what they need but bring them along, wanting more.



PLACE TO SUBMIT



These are from Duotrope which has an AMAZING list. You should check it out.




21 Jul 2024 06:59 UTC Macrame Literary Journal (Gold Star Program): Fiction



21 Jul 2024 06:59 UTC Macrame Literary Journal (Gold Star Program): Micro-Fiction



31 Jul 2024 14:29 UTC Witcraft (Gold Star Program): Witcraft Annual Humour Competition (Charges fees.)



31 Jul 2024 22:59 UTC The Passionfruit Review (Gold Star Program): Issue 11



31 Jul 2024 23:59 UTC Sunspot Literary Journal (Gold Star Program): Novella-length ficti

Dogs are Smarter Than People/Write Better Now







Last week, we talked about pinch points both on the podcast and on the blog, and honestly? Nobody seemed super into it, but we’re finishing up this week. This post is going to be a bit more about the first part of act two of a three-act story, focusing on the time from the first pinch point to the midpoint.



Pause for a plea: Look, I know plot structure isn’t sexy the way character development or drama and obstacles and conflict are, but it’s super important. It makes a difference in your book wooing readers and in it wooing agents.



K.M. Weiland has a really lovely graphic that we’ve included in the podcast notes about where to put those pinch points.





Weiland is a bit of a goddess about structure and what she says about this first pinch point is this:




It comes about 37% of the way into the story.



It tells us that the bad guy has some power.



It can be a whole big scene or just the tiniest of moments



It sets up “the next 1/8th of the story, in which the character will slowly begin to grow into a new awareness of his story’s many truths–and specifically the truth about the nature of the conflict in which he is engaged.”




Right after this big and important pinch point, the hero of your story aka your protagonist moves into the section of the book that comes before the book’s halfway point or midpoint. Weiland calls this space from 37% to 50% a realization place and scenes for your character growth. The protagonist understand what’s going on a bit more. She starts to react with that knowledge informing her reactions and then her actions. Cool, right?



She writes, “In itself, the First Pinch Point does not reveal the true nature of the conflict to the protagonist. Rather, it foreshadows it by providing a peek at facts the protagonist has barely grasped as yet.”



She uses the movie ALIEN a lot to explain this. At the first pinch point, the crew realizes that the alien creature isn’t what they were thinking it was. Their choices start to be informed by that until the midpoint, which Weiland calls the MOMENT OF TRUTH.



At the midpoint in ALIEN that alien smashes its way out of one of the crew’s chest.



The truth of what they are dealing has exploded in the ship and on the screen (and on your novel’s page).



“It’s instructive when watching movies to observe the protagonist’s facial expressions prior to the Moment of Truth and then afterward. Before the Midpoint, he’ll often look baffled as he struggles to keep up with the conflict. Then the light dawns in his eyes at the Midpoint, and from that moment on, there’s a look of knowing determination on his face,” she writes.



Larry Brooks defines pinch points as “An example, or reminder, of the nature and implications of the antagonist force, that is not filtered by the hero’s experience.”





DOG TIP FOR LIFE





Sometimes in life, your defining moments don’t come at the midpoint. - Mr. Murphy



So, what he’s saying is don’t think that there are certain points and ages in your life where you have to get things done. Life is not a book and it doesn’t need to be a three-act structure.





PLACE TO SUBMIT



These are via Authors’ Publish.



Bannister Press: Other – the 2024 fantasy short story anthology
Bannister Press specializes in supernatural and fantasy stories loved by adults and young adults. For this fiction anthology, they only want submissions from writers who identify as women. “We are seeking international short story submissions by writers who identify as women for an anthology with a focus on what it means to be on the outside looking in, or comfortably or uncomfortably out of step with the world(s) at large, and with a fantasy element (either subtle or writ large). The story can be visually focused, or character/narrative focused, as long as it leaves the reader thinking about the story long after closing the book. We

There are some things in the writing world that don’t make a ton of sense in the world of regular humans.



One of those things is pinch points.



This podcast episode is going to be the start of a quick series of podcasts and regular posts about pinch points. The regular posts will be at our Substack LIVING HAPPY under the WRITE BETTER NOW publication.



So, what are these little twerps called pinch points?



They a way of thinking about novel or story structure that helps us keep the reader engaged.



Pinch points are moments where the tension emerges again or is heightened. It’s a place where you seductively say to the reader, “Hey, baby. Let’s engage again.” Or maybe it’s that they are saying, “Dear Reader, let me remind you what exactly is at stake here for our poor, dear, pathetic hero.”



The pinch points are where the protagonist or hero of your story gets a little bit of pain. Ouch. So mean, us writers are so very mean.



As Writing Mastery describes, “They rekindle the tension that may have waned by reminding us of the primary conflict and what it means for the characters. Without stakes, readers will quickly lose interest—therefore, pinch points are events of the plot that, strategically placed, keep the narrative from losing steam.”



“In the traditional Three-Act Structure, the first act introduces the characters, setting, and conflict, while the third act culminates in the resolution. The second act, which constitutes the middle portion of the story, is often the longest and contains the rising action. Pinch points punctuate this act to create a sense of urgency and drive the story forward.”



Pinch Points Are Not Plot Points



So, here’s the super important thing. Pinch points are not plot points. Yes, there is a lot of P-words in there, but to pinch is not to plot, though a dastardly villain might plot how to pinch.



Plot points




move the story forward



are events



connect the events of your story so it’s not episodic.




Pinch points




Raise stakes or increase the conflict.



Obstruct the hero from getting her goal, so often focus on the bad guy of the story or the antagonist and this is a big part of it, this is what makes it not a turning point



Make the reader curious about what might happen, make them worried about what might happen, so keeps them reading



Show us what our heroes are made of because of the extra pressure that these challenges create.




As Writers Helping Writers writes, “New writers often concentrate on the Hook, Midpoint, and the big twist at the end. But without well-placed Pinch Points, the story will lose its sense of rising action, conflict, and tension. The quest cannot exist without an opponent, and the Pinch Points show the reader what that opposition is all about. 



“Pinch Points show how high the stakes are. They also set up the emotional change within the hero as they react to the new situation.”



So, tomorrow on the blog, I’ll be talking about where these babies go in your story.



DOG TIP FOR LIFE





Do not let the pinch points keep you from moving forward toward your goals.



COOL EXERCISE



Think about the bad guy in your story. Now write down:




Their fetish



What they’d buy at the grocery store



What they’d buy at Wal-Mart



What they could do to make things harder on the hero and easier on themselves




PLACE TO SUBMIT



River Styx



The Castro Prize, named for our founding editor, Michael Castro, is a new prize awarded annually to exemplary works of poetry and fiction. River Styx editors carefully read and discuss contest entries and ultimately submit the strongest ten entries to the judges. For our 2024 contest, Christopher Castellani will judge fiction and Dg Okpik will judge poetry. We will award one winner for fiction and one for poetry, with one runner-up in each genre. The first-place prizes are $1000 each, plus publication in print and online. 



The entry fee is $20

There are a lot of people who advocate spending just an hour a day doing something to become awesome. That hour a day is often learning. You study up about what you want to do, you self learn, you teach yourself to be better by learning all about the thing you're into.



So, if you're into writing, you read books about writing and actual books. You study the craft.



So, if you're into knitting, you study knitting. Entrepeneurship? Same thing, but first you probably have to learn how to spell it. My bad there.



There's a cool graph here that talks about how if you read a certain number of books, how you compare to other American adults. It's also a bit depressing because it basically says most Americans read two books a year.





Hallel K has a post on Medium about how you can use the 1-hour rule to catapult yourself into the 1% and I think that's a great post, but it's a little hyperbolizing. We like hyperbole though, right? It makes things easy.



Hallel uses a quote by Earl Nightingale.



“One hour per day of study in your chosen field is all it takes. One hour per day of study will put you at the top of your field within three years. Within five years you’ll be a national authority. In seven years, you can be one of the best people in the world at what you do — Earl Nightingale”



This might make you think, "Yes! Right. So true. Epiphany moment."



Or it might make you think, "Who the hell is Earl Nightingale?"



Well, he has a Wikipedia page? But basically he was a motivational speaker and a radio show host that died in 1989. He wrote Strangest Secret. And to him it's all about risk taking and he also said that the problem with people's lives and lack of success isn't cowardice, but conformity.









According to his definition, a success is when you go after a goal and achieve it. Deliberately. And only 1 out of 20 do that, he said.



The key, he said, is creating, not conforming, deliberate creation. Goals, he said, bring you places. A ship, he says, that has a crew and captain has a destination and it gets out of the harbor and ends up to its destination. But a ship without a destination? Without a captain and crew? If you just turn on the boat's engines, it might not even make it out of the harbor.



Deliberate learning. Goals. Focus. That's what matters, he says. Reading, learning? Those are important aspects. Maybe you won't get in the top 1% of whatever you're going toward, but you will get smarter, closer, and have deliberate action.



DOG TIP FOR LIFE






Pogie claims to be in the top 1% of Begging. She's an International subject expert in Food begging. Study in the morning and at night. This, however, is a photo of her apprentice, Mr. Murphy.



COOL EXERCISE



This is from MasterClass and it's all about goals.



"Create Realistic Goals



"If your goals are unrealistic, they’ll be unachievable and overwhelming. Don’t let your passion for finishing your novel cause you to push yourself too hard and set goals that simply aren’t possible. For example, it might not be reasonable to set a goal that you will write your novel in one month. Neither should you set a word-count goal to write 10,000 words a day—especially if you also have a full-time job. Setting reasonable goals in the first place will make it much easier for you down the road.



"Consider setting writing goals that you can accomplish step-by-step, one day at a time. The best thing you can do is create daily habits that will help you reach your goals—rather than burn yourself out early with ambitious expectations for yourself. Here are some goals that many writers will set for themselves:




Write 1,500 words every day



Write for three hours every day at a scheduled time



Finish one chapter each week



Practice morning journaling"




PLACE TO SUBMIT



River Styx Castro Prize 2025 (Deadline September 30)




The Castro Prize, named for our founding editor, Michael Castro, is a new prize awarded a