In my opinion, understanding who your target audience is, and what they want, and writing to them (and only them!) is the most important component of being successful as an author. - John Locke

Writing Roots

S12E1 – Finding Your Target Audience

Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy. - Robert Half

S11E9 – Best: Improving Your Writing to Achieve Your Best

The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book. - Samuel Johnson

S11 Bonus Episode – Read: How to Read as a Writer

I don’t plot my books rigidly, follow a preconceived structure. A novel mustn’t be a closed system - it’s a quest. - Kurt Vonnegut

S11E8 – Plan: Basics of Planning a Story from Start to Finish

Making sure that geography and timelines work is always the hardest part of writing. But you owe it to the readers to get it right. - Michael Scott

S11E7 – Time: Maintaining Momentum Through a Story

Writing without revising is the literary equivalent of waltzing gaily out of the house in your underwear. - Patricia Fuller

S11E6 – Edit: Why Editingis Essential for the Business of Publishing

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things because we’re curious. And curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. - Walt Disney

S11E5 – Stop: Making the Decision to Abandon or Pause a Story

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. - Oscar Wilde

S11E4 Extended – LGBT+: Further Discussion of Quality Representation of the LGBTQ+ Community in Writing

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. - Oscar Wilde

S11E4 – LGBT: Writing Quality Representation of the LGBTQ+ Community

I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it's these things I'd believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn't all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything. - F. Scott Fitzgerald

S11E3 – Kiss: Why and How to Include Romantic Subplots

Books. It's always easier to tell people that a character is funny rather than attempt to hit the punchline of a joke that character would've said. But if we all simply told, books would cease to exist. And so would empathy. And feeling. - Joyce Rachelle

S11E2 – Tell: How to Identify and Correct Cases of Telling

If a book about failures doesn't sell, is it a success? - Jerry Seinfeld

S11E1 – Sell: How to Decide to Market Your Writing

The librarian, the warrior, the free spirit… archetypes are a great jumping off point to help clarify where we want to go with a character. - Kristan Higgins

S10E8 – Character Archetypes

You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are. - Joss Whedon

S10E7 – Developing Character Strengths

In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations! - Anton Chekhov

S10E6 – Developing Character Flaws

We're here to help authors, published or not, improve. Each episode focuses on a step in the process, whether it's actually writing or getting your book out into the world through self-publishing.

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Writing Roots

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