Episodes
Thursday Nov 12, 2015
15. Interview with Oran Doyle
Thursday Nov 12, 2015
Thursday Nov 12, 2015
This week Máire met with Oran Doyle, an aspiring writer with a fair few writing achievements under his belt already. Oran was drawn to writing from a young age, and focused on film. He has had several shorts funded and made and spent two years as a freelance script editor. Early on however, he was challenged with figuring out whether had had something substantial to talk about, and went on to have another career in social work and aid in East Timor. So now, with lots of things to say, he has returned to writing with renewed focus and has recently become a full time writer. He’s continuing his screenwriting, but also working on writing for children.
We chat about the various challenges in writing, and what insights he gleaned from that early experience, and how he developed as a writer. You can follow Oran on twitter @Orandoyler
Presented and produced by Cathy Clarke, Kate Mulholland and Máire Brophy.
Music by Gavin Mulhall
Thursday Nov 05, 2015
14. The Grand Opening and NaNoWriMo
Thursday Nov 05, 2015
Thursday Nov 05, 2015
This week the discussion revolved around the opening lines. We looked at good and bad examples from a range of authors and then took these learnings to see how our own openings would fare under intense scrutiny.
We also discussed the upcoming NaNoWriMo and whether we would partaking.
Presented and produced by Cathy Clarke, Kate Mulholland and Máire Brophy.
Music by Gavin Mulhall
Thursday Oct 29, 2015
13. Making people care
Thursday Oct 29, 2015
Thursday Oct 29, 2015
While still trying to repress our coughs and sneezes, this week we tackled one of the core challenges of writing – how do you make people care? We discuss how to make likeable, relatable protagonists, how to build emotional attachments to the story, and what keeps us reading about complicated protagonists who aren’t so likeable. We move on to talking about creating mood and tone in writing and how we use language to reflect this. Our last topic is the role of ‘secondary writing’, what are the benefits and costs of writing other things aside from your main writing project. We talk about the value of building your audience through other writing and social media and the costs of that on your writing time... although, mysteriously, we never discussed the time costs of podcasting!
Presented and produced by Cathy Clarke, Kate Mulholland and Máire Brophy.
Music by Gavin Mulhall
Thursday Oct 22, 2015
12. Totally sick episode
Thursday Oct 22, 2015
Thursday Oct 22, 2015
In between coughs, snuffles and sneezes, this week we started out talking about the importance of book covers. Then Kate, in her usual philosophical manner, posed us a beardstroker about the muse, and we thrash out what we think it means and if we’ve ever experienced it. Returning to more practical issues, we talk about where we write, in cafes, pubs, or at home, and how distracted we are in those places. Kate adds an addendum to our discussion on genres in Episode 10, with a proper definition of science fiction and fantasy, and we all promise to do our homework better in future (with our fingers crossed).
Presented and produced by Cathy Clarke, Kate Mulholland and Máire Brophy.
Music by Gavin Mulhall
Thursday Oct 15, 2015
11. Telling an untold tale, and borrowing from past masters.
Thursday Oct 15, 2015
Thursday Oct 15, 2015
This week, following Viola Davis’ acceptance speech at the Emmy’s, we discuss diversity, women and how to open up those opportunities.
We also discuss reinventing the wheel; what do we do when we get stuck writing a particular scene we are not comfortable with – from awkward love scenes to stilted action- how can we learn from past masters?
Presented and produced by Cathy Clarke, Kate Mulholland and Máire Brophy.
Music by Gavin Mulhall
Thursday Oct 08, 2015
10. Into the Double Ds
Thursday Oct 08, 2015
Thursday Oct 08, 2015
In celebration of making double digits (episode 10!), we have an extended episode this week.
We started with a discussion of the rules of our different writing genres.
Kate started us off, discussing the rules of Sci-Fi and Fantasy, but we side-tracked into world building, Sweet Valley High, Sookie Stackhouse, Game of Thrones, before recovering to get back to the rules. Máire in typical fashion disagreed with all the established rules of comedy and invented her own, the fundamental one being NO KICKING DOWN! She is very clear on that! Cathy wrapped up this section with a rules of detective fiction.
This discussion was followed with a writing update and semi-writing-breakdown as Cathy shared her recent (horrible) revelation that her novel is not improving as Ishe goes through the structural edits and still will not fit comfortably in any established genre. This section is probably closer to group therapy than writing updates.
Presented and produced by Cathy Clarke, Kate Mulholland and Máire Brophy.
Music by Gavin Mulhall
Thursday Oct 01, 2015
9. Key resources and key people
Thursday Oct 01, 2015
Thursday Oct 01, 2015
This time we talk about the things that we’ve used that helped us: books, websites, courses, conferences, and everyone refuses to enable my insistence that movie watching counts as writing! I then asked when are you ready to go looking for an agent. And we talk about the agent’s role, finding the right agent, how writers become authors, and the luxury of time for first time authors…. and the beginnings of a Santa origin story.
Resources we mention are:
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Aerogramme Writers Studio http://www.aerogrammestudio.com/
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Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/76788.Becoming_a_Writer
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How to write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31363.How_to_Write_Science_Fiction_Fantasy
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Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12543.Bird_by_Bird
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Irish Writers Centre http://irishwriterscentre.ie/
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Write your Novel from the Middle by James Scott Bell http://jamesscottbell.com/styled-7/styled-35/index.html
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Thanks, But This Isn’t For Us by Jessica Page Morrell http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5945430-thanks-but-this-isn-t-for-us
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Write and Get Paid for it by Terry Prone http://www.londubh.ie/?p=239
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National Museum of Ireland www.museum.ie
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Scriptfrenzy http://nanowrimo.org/forums/script-frenzy
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Internet movie script database http://www.imsdb.com/
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2015 Oscar nominated screenplays https://screencraft.org/2015/02/22/2015-oscar-nominated-screenplays/
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More screenplays http://gointothestory.blcklst.com/free-script-downloads/
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Scriptnotes podcast http://johnaugust.com/podcast
- Save the Cat by Blake Snyder http://www.savethecat.com/
- Twitter #amwriting #amediting #writerstips
- Women Writers, Women Books http://booksbywomen.org/
- Writers and Artists Yearbook https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/
Presented and produced by Cathy Clarke, Kate Mulholland and Máire Brophy.
Music by Gavin Mulhall
Thursday Sep 24, 2015
8. Have we learned anything at all?
Thursday Sep 24, 2015
Thursday Sep 24, 2015
In this episode we discuss how sparks of ideas end up as written stories, what we look for in ideas to make them into stories, and ponder how we picked the subject or if the subject picked us. This segued neatly into talking about what we would do differently knowing what we now know, and how we’ve obviously developed the perfectly streamlined process by now... probably... or maybe not.
Presented and produced by Cathy Clarke, Kate Mulholland and Máire Brophy.
Music by Gavin Mulhall
Thursday Sep 17, 2015
7. Name calling and a writing update
Thursday Sep 17, 2015
Thursday Sep 17, 2015
This week we gave a writing update to see how far we had come since the pilot episode, and what were the obstacles in the way.
We then flowed into the thorny subject of naming characters, places and sometimes things. The question of using nicknames or borrowing the associations of distinctive names was .. well, not really answered to tell the truth (!) but they were both discussed.
Presented and produced by Cathy Clarke, Kate Mulholland and Máire Brophy.
Music by Gavin Mulhall
Thursday Sep 10, 2015
6. A beard stroker and putting it out there
Thursday Sep 10, 2015
Thursday Sep 10, 2015
This week Kate stumped us with an excellent question: what role does the act of listening play in our writing. We grappled with this and finally emerged with some very different thoughts and views (and a conspiracy theory was born: has this whole podcast been set up by my family to get me to listen more??).
Then we moved back to safer ground – putting your writing out there; advantages, challenges, hurdles. How do we do it and why.
Presented and produced by Cathy Clarke, Kate Mulholland and Máire Brophy.
Music by Gavin Mulhall