Catch up on the latest episodes...

In a robust conversation with the wonderful debut novelist Sanjena Sathian, Angie and Elizabeth pick her brain about craft, including defaulting to chronology as a built-in plot structure, and the benefit to stabilizing one variable in an ambitious novel...

In today’s episode, Angie and Elizabeth interview author Yang Huang about her new novel, My Good Son. Ideas come to Yang as images first, which she sees as mysteries to be solved and as uncensorable. She wants to tell the truth—through fiction and in...

In today’s episode, Angie and Elizabeth talk with author Hari Ziyad about Hari’s new memoir, Black Boy Out of Time. Because Hari is also a screenwriter who has had interest from the worlds of film and television in adapting their memoir, the conversation...

The promise of knowledge management for the widely curious brain. Paper books and index cards and card catalogs and the art of tracking and linking your ideas. The act of writing is fundamental to thinking. Upended routines as in-person school begins in a...

This week, Elizabeth launches a new project, while Angie starts teaching in-person middle school math, thinking about individual learning strategies and styles. A listener asks, what is the secret to creating flawed characters that readers still want to...

As Angie heads from Zoom into the classroom, she and Elizabeth discuss the switching of mediums, the differences between camera and stage. Body language. Elizabeth is working on deciding her next project. Then they dive into the differences and...

In today’s episode, Angie and Elizabeth report in their debut trailer camping experience, amd compare it to a creative process. Meanwhile,Angie is doing animation, and Elizabeth gives a submissions update. They turn them to answering a listener’s question...

The episode kicks off with a glance at the trouble with deep work in a pandemic with kids before diving into emotion in story: Emotional arc and emotion as action trigger, emional as both key and causal. It is emotion that drives readers to read, based on...

Angie teaches math and daydreams a new film while Elizabeth gets a mammogram and considers character questions. In today’s episode, Elizabeth explores the epiphany she began to have on last week’s episode by asking Angie a lot of questions about balancing...

In this week’s episode, a listener asks a question about transitions and pacing, leading to a roving discussion of pacing, logistics, linearity, causality, and intentionality: what is significant—and how do you know? Creating the reader’s experience...

In this episode, Angie and Elizabeth answer a listener’s question about how to use poetic language to story's advantage rather than distraction. This requires teasing apart what, exactly, poetic language entails--compression, metaphor, white space,...

Happy New Year! Angie and Elizabeth follow their “what are you working on” opening into a deep dive into the art and systems of submitting your work to literary journals, as Elizabeth has begun to do. This includes learning the markets, curating your own...

With Elizabeth fresh off virtual Sonoma County Writers Camp, she and Angie discuss the technological opportunities of this moment and how it will carry into the future. This evolves into a consideration of the advantages of dictation and whether typing...

Yay, you voted! And look, it worked. Now buy books from your local indie bookstore. In today’s episode, Angie and Elizabeth talk about voice and POV, including the theatrical element of voice, leaning into voice, and when analysis should kick voice into...

Today’s podcast mines for what we can learn about the moments we falter--as when Angie and Elizabeth stopped podcasting for a few weeks. The conversation wonders, Who has more free time right now? And briefly explores revision—how do you know what’s...

Today’s episode features an interview with scientist and debut novelist Carole Stivers, whose new book The Mother Code launches this week. The discussion ranges over climate science fiction, genetic engineering, military biological warfare, parenting, and...

Angie and Elizabeth, car packed to flee amidst the smoke of the Lightening Complex Fires, tackle what is too much plot? What is the difference between significant escalation in a story and the heaping on of chaos and disaster in the real world? Create...

Angie is figuring out how to figure out what she’s working on, and Elizabeth is working on the external propeller of her novel while starting something new. They grapple with how character desire drives a story, and how a character’s limiting belief...