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Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation

© 2018 Carrie Jones Books
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    Monotony Must Die: How to Keep Your Sentences Surprising
    No Flat Writing A lot of writers will worry that their stories seem flat. There’s a reason that they are worrying about that and it’s one of the core elements of good writing. Ready? A lot of...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    15:07
    Keep Writing
    This week? This week has been a bit rough for me. But I am still writing. And we are still podcasting! Gasp! I am still doing this because I think that writers write. That’s it. That’s all there...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    13:54
    Why Are People Mean? And The Lowdown on Three Super Common Grammar Mistakes.
    In our Random Thought, we talk about why people are mean. The link to our source is at the end of these notes. All you all, I (Carrie) am the WORST copyeditor for my own work. I’ll admit it an...
    • 2
    • 1 year ago
    19:58
    Let’s Talk The Sexy One-Sentence Summary
    THE ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY Let’s be honest, here. Sometimes I throw the word “sexy” into a podcast title just to get Shaun to pay attention. But the one-sentence summary is kind of sexy. Over o...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    10:51
    It’s Okay To Dwell in the Negative Space
    Wendy MacNaughton on her Substack Draw Together talked about negative space this week and she wrote, “Negative Space performs many functions: it focuses our eyes on the subject, it moves our eyes a...
    • 4
    • 1 year ago
    18:19
    Do Our Brains Hurt Too Much to Think & Read?
    And how we've blown off writing maxims to be successful There’s a feeling among many writers/bloggers/content creators that our brains are too overwhelmed by a high cognitive overload to want to ...
    • 2
    • 1 year ago
    21:01
    Happy Holidays!
    Hey! It’s a quick happy holiday greeting from us. We took a quick pause in our celebrations to make the shortest podcast episode ever. We hope that you are having a wonderful holiday season. It sno...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    02:03
    Flirt Your Eyelashes Off, Writers
    SHAUN IS SICK! Gasp! He is never sick. But he is, so I've made the executive decision to replay/republish one of our most popular episodes from three years ago. Ready? Let's go! A quick we...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    20:11
    We improvised this podcast and you can tell
    We improvised this podcast and you know what? You can kind of tell. It's all about making mistakes (a tiny bit about what holds some of us back about making people pay for our work) and we quickly ref...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    16:26
    Every Day Is a Whole New Life, Writers and Other Humans
    So, recently, Vitaliy Katsenelson, CFA, who is a writer and investor had a Substack post that really resonated with me. And by recently, I mean yesterday. Anyway, in it Vitaliy said that “...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    15:21
    How to Write Good Dialogue, Wallabies, and the Three-Beat Rule
    Dogs are Smarter Than People, Writing Exercise, Cool Submission Opportunity So, we’re been talking about dialogue in novels lately and tips about it and the purpose of it. To find any back posts,...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    20:04
    Don’t hiss “I Love You.” Dialogue tag help and also throwing tacos isn’t cool
    A few years ago, we posted this episode about dialogue, and honestly? We're . . . um. . . burnt out because of the election and people. So, since we're already focusing on dialogue over on LIVING ...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    20:24
    Do You Need a Beta Reader? Also, Georgia Police Say Don’t Copulate Outside McDonalds.
    So, in the world of writing, everyone talks about needing a beta reader and a critique partner. Everyone that is, except Carrie, who has trust issues and survives as a lonely, isolated writ...
    • 2
    • 1 year ago
    12:13
    Why Fractured Families Drive Bestseller Success and He Sniffs Shoes!
    We’ve started a series of paid and free posts and podcast episodes about writing bestsellers. Our first post about this is here. To see them all just look up “hit novel” or “bestselling” in the search...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    12:56
    Some features of the top selling novels
    Dogs are Smarter Than People There’s an old NPR article about writing bestsellers that quotes critic Ruth Franklin’s overview of American best-sellers as saying "No possible generalization ca...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    13:50
    Want to be popular? Try a fish out of water
    Dogs are Smarter than People podcast We’ve started a series of paid and free posts and podcast episodes about writing bestsellers. Our first post about this is here. To see them all just look...
    • 2
    • 1 year ago
    17:33
    America as Paradise? Part of Making A Bestselling Novel?
    We’ve started a series of paid and free posts about writing bestsellers. Our first post about this is here. In James Hall’s book, HIT LIT, he looks at twelve top-selling novels and tries to fi...
    • 2
    • 1 year ago
    12:49
    Tick…Tick…Tick…Using Time to Make a Hit Novel
    So, last week was Shaun’s birthday. Yay, Shaun! We’ve started a series of paid and free posts about writing bestsellers. Our first post about this is here. And today, we’re talking about a main ...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    12:49
    The Absolutely Simplest Plot Structure Ever
    A lot of the writers I teach get really freaked out about structure. They go on multiple craft book journeys trying to find the structure that resonates with them, the one that gives them that beautif...
    • 4
    • 1 year ago
    12:51
    Show, Don’t Tell, Baby Face Cutie Pie Cutie
    We talked about this a long while ago, and I've revisited it, too, but it's time, my writing friends, to revisit it. So in writing one of the biggest tips that you start hearing starts in aroun...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    13:55
    What Do Readers Want and the Kentucky Meat Shower Incident
    Readers want questions that they’ll get answers to. They want to be hooked along. They want to unwrap the answer the way people unwrap a birthday present. That’s what Robert Prince says, anyw...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    14:08
    The Elements of Storytelling: The Atomic Bomb Test
    Author, podcaster and professor Robert Prince has this thing he does when he watches a movie: the Atomic Bomb test.  “After I’ve watched about 20 minutes of the film I ask myself, ‘If an a...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    12:40
    Five Quick Ways To Get Story Ideas
    Brainstorming . . . Even the word sounds a little creepy. Like there is a storm inside your brain. It sounds... It sounds sort of violent and hazardous and windy. In this podcast, we talk about the st...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    17:15
    Setting Is SO FREAKING Important
    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 reall...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    20:37
    Why Are Publishing Imprints Closing?
    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...
    • 2
    • 1 year ago
    17:32
    How To Write a Book Description That Gets Readers Tingling All Over
    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 se...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    16:47
    Pinch, there it is; googly eyes on the train, and yes, we are on our 37th career this year
    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...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    20:07
    Pinch Me, Baby, Talking Sexy to Writers
    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 ...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    15:22
    Just an Hour a Day Makes You More Bad Ass
    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...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    17:10
    Fighting, Commerce, and Ten-Cent Beer: Welcome to America and How to Frame Stories
    On last week’s podcast and the one a few before that, and in a post, Shaun and I talked a bit about plot structures and narrative structures and how here in the U.S. we think of these u...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    20:21
    Pot Plants Invade Wisconsin and Alternate That Plot Structure
    Last week, maybe a week ago, maybe 82 years ago, who knows, we talked about alternative plot structures. Much of American film and novels is built on what's considered to be the classic three-act s...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    24:37
    No cow cuddles, no brain worms: Do you want to be happy?
    Do you want to be happy? It’s a question philosopher Sebastian Purcell asks his students every year. Do you want to be happy? For Purcell being happy has a lot in common with living a good li...
    • 2
    • 2 years ago
    24:23
    Celestial Bodies, Sexy Knees and Story Structure via Robert McKee
    You can learn a lot about culture by how it looks at what makes a good story and a good story structure. In Western culture right now, we tend to think of stories as three acts (a beginnin...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    23:17
    Strangeness Free-for-all
    It ended up being a bit of a free-for-all as we talked about the strange things people do sometimes. SHOUT OUT TO STUBHY! The snippet of our intro and outro music is only a snippet of this ...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    55:37
    How Not to be a Butt-Hole in Real Life and on the Page
    So building a sympathetic character on the page is a lot like being a sympathetic character in real life. This sympathetic character is basically the opposite of a butt-hole. There’s this great pos...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    24:10
    Someone was sleeping outside her tent right next to her and how to make good writing habits
    A lot of writers that I work with have a problem. The problem is that they want to be a writer, but before they come to me? They don’t write. Here’s the thing. For a lot of us, we have to make time...
    • 4
    • 2 years ago
    23:23
    Strange Things In the Woods
    We found a topic! It ended up mostly being about poop and creepiness and three-foot tall humanoids. Links we mention: https://www.ranker.com/list/creepy-forest-ranger-stories/amandasedlakheven...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    01:01:49
    Overcoming Negativity Bias & Toilet Rats
    Being an author or an artist or almost anyone is about navigating. You have to walk a fine line with criticism and praise, discern what's real and what's not, what matters or not, what is noise an...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    19:01
    Why it is okay to read books you’ve already read and sometimes there’s an alligator in your kitchen
    Here's our main premise this week: it's okay to read books you've already read. Not only is it okay. It's helpful. This is true for both writers and normal humans. Rereading books give...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    28:25
    The Spiral of Ick and Quiet Winners: You Don’t Have to Flaunt Yourself to Succeed
    Recently, I read an interview with an author who talked about how much children loved her book and how they tell her this. It annoyed me. It may have been good marketing, but it sure didn't feel l...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    26:37
    Shaun went off the rails, but this was supposed to be about how do you sustain a career as an author
    This is obviously not the full transcript. You have to listen to hear the full weirdness, but . . . here's the core. How Do You Sustain a Career as an Author? It's a really good question, right...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    30:55
    The Info Dump from Hell and How to Avoid Them and Also UFOs
    Talking about show vs tell at the scene level is a little bit harder than talking about it at the paragraph and scene levels. But it’s also a tiny bit easier. When you’re looking for...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    19:43
    Control Your Tells, Don’t Give In To the Passive
    Babe, I know you don’t want to talk about showing vs telling any longer, our massive series, but it’s really really important. It’s sunk many a cool book idea, stopped others in its tracks. I...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    20:53
    Author to Author: Chris Lynch Interview
    Award-winning author of YA novels? Check. Printz honor author, ALA Best Book winner, National Book Award finalist? Check. Has a middle grade coming out March 11 that's about to rock the world? D...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    30:24
    LET’S SHOW YOU HOW SHOW VS TELL WORKS! Florida Man Poops on a Possum. We won’t show you that
    Hey! Welcome to our series of podcasts and posts all about showing vs. telling, which we are on fire about right now, right Shaun? Growls. You can check out the rest of the series on Carrie’...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    18:01
    RELATED TO MONSTERS AND WRITERS, GET INTO THE READER’S BRAIN IF YOU WANT TO SHOW AND NOT TELL
    We’re continuing with our monster “Show Don’t Tell” series of podcasts and posts. So, hey! Welcome to our series of podcasts and posts all about showing vs. telling, which we are on fire about ...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    18:01
    THE PROBLEM WITH ADVERBS & BEARS IN THE DOGGY DOOR: Let’s Show, Not Tell.
    We’re continuing with our monster “Show Don’t Tell” series of podcasts and posts. Adverbs are a big place where you tell and not show. So, if I wrote, “You are the sexiest manatee in the wor...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    15:37
    Show Us Your Wounds Writers and Stealing Seven King Cakes
    There’s this really great book for writers by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi called The Emotional Wound Thesaurus. It came out way back in 2017. As they write in their prologue, “Life is pa...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    18:55
    Promises, Promises, Writers Promise Readers a Lot Plus a Screech Owl Chilling With Board Games
    Writers Are Promise Makers Writers are promise makers. We tell our readers that we’re going to give them something just because of the cultural expectations that happen when someone opens our b...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    14:01
    TROPE ME OUT, BABY: THE JUMP SCARE AND JANUARY IS A BLISSED OUT MONTH
    There’s a lot of ways that trope is defined, but for us here on DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE, we’re going with the Grammarist’s definition, which is: “A trope is simply a common or recurring...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    16:53
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