Episode 4: Our Writing Process (part one)
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Danikka: Hey there, welcome to the Snailed It podcast with Danikka and Erin, brought to you by Authors Own Publishing.
Erin: Hi everyone, welcome to the Snailed It podcast. Today we are talking about writing craft and process and all that that entails.
Danikka: Yes, I'm excited because we haven't really talked much about this yet, like we've done a book review, we did a little bit of writing process in episode with Lauren about Blue Pointed Star.
Erin: We did.
Danikka: But yeah, we haven't really like talked about our individual processes that much.
And I thought it would be fun.
Erin: You have just sort of added yourself as a writer on the side as well.
Danikka: Yes, yes. I've always been very secretive about it because I only started writing again like well after I started editing. So, but yeah, I'm like, no, I'm going to take it seriously. I'm more than halfway through this thing that I'm working on, Project November.
So, I'm going to talk about it.
Erin: Is that the secret name for it? Project November.
Danikka: Yeah, that's my code name, Project November.
Erin: Yeah, I feel like I need to get better at code names. My code names always just end up being the name of the couple because I always know, I tend to know their names. So it's like whoever and whoever.
And then if I think of a title, it's like the first letters of the names, but it's not as exciting as Project November. That sounds way cooler.
Danikka: I think that's because I'm still not really decided on my title and no one knows my characters because I think with yours, it was like people knew the characters because they all cameo in each other's books.
Erin: True.
Danikka: Where with mine, it's very like different. And no one knows what I'm writing about.
Erin: And you've got multiple characters going on. Like you don't just have two people who look about.
Danikka: Yeah. At the moment, I've got four points of view and now I'm undecided if I should add another one in. Kate Schumacher said this to me when I said I had four. She's like, careful, it's a slippery slope from four to nine.
[Laughing]
Danikka: Yeah.
Erin: She’d know from experience.
Danikka: She's right.
Erin: Yeah.
Danikka: Yeah. So yeah, it's funny.
Erin: So writing, so I only ever write two points of view. Let's just get straight into the process. How do you keep track or how do you keep all of your points of view? Like how do you keep track of them all? And do you know whose point of view you're going to be writing from in each thing? Or are you just kind of letting it see where it goes?
Danikka: So it's really interesting because when I first wrote like the very first iteration of this, I only had one point of view. I was just from Rowena's point of view, my main character. And I found her point of view quite limiting.
And also because she has a speech impediment, I thought having everything from her point of view might get a bit tiring to read. Also, as like the politics of the world developed more in my head. So for those listening who haven't seen my Instagram posts, I'm writing a political fantasy and a romance and cozy and all these other elements. But primarily I'm always a bit on the political side of things. So as the politics of the story developed more in my head, I realized that I needed other points of view to show the other moving parts that were kind of happening. So initially then it was just Rowena's love interest who had another point of view, so I had two. And then as his kind of background developed, then his best friend got a point of view. And then Rowena's sister got a point of view.
So that's the points of view that I've got at the moment. But then there's his manservant. So Rowena's love interest's manservant. I feel like I might need a point of view now as well. So just because he like is in on like all stuff that's happening in the palace where I feel like the well not the palace, the castle, whereas the other characters might not necessarily because they're all in the, you know, the upper echelon of like command.
Erin: You want like the Downtown Abbey like in the servants quarters convos.
Danikka: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So now I'm a bit like, oh. Plus, I don't know if you've got to that part yet, but there's a twist involving the manservant as well.
Erin: Oh, no, I'm not there yet. Because yeah, Erin's critiquing for me.
[Laughing]
Erin: Which I thoroughly enjoyed so far.
Danikka: Yeah, but yeah, so I guess the process was very much like I kind of developed each person individually. It was like, oh, as the story kind of grew in my mind, I realised I needed more people's perspectives on what was happening. And it just kind of expanded from there.
But then as I'm continuing to write with those four perspectives at the moment, potentially five, I kind of am writing each of their arcs individually. So like I've got like a mind map where I've got the characters and I've drawn lines between them with like what connects them. So if they have interactions in one of their POVs, then I can look at what both of their agendas are in the story more broadly.
And then that kind of affects how they interact together. So for example, there's a lot of tension between Rowena the heroine and her husband's best friend because, you know, that happens a lot.
Erin: Where I'm up to, where I've read up to, they haven't even met yet and there's tension.
Danikka: Yeah, exactly. So yeah, that's been fun because it like the interactions between those two characters are extremely different to, you know, Rowena's interaction with her husband versus you know, her sister's interactions with the Duke, their father.
Erin: Yeah.
Danikka: So there's so much happening in all these different layers and it actually makes it easier for me to keep track of.
Erin: Yeah because you need them all
Danikka: Yeah, because they all play important parts in the story. It's not like they're all in the same place necessarily.
But then also because...
Erin: No, I think that would make it easier, them not being in the same place.
Danikka: Yeah.
Erin: Because if they were all in the same place all the time, you'd be like, who's talking? What's going on? Whereas if you've got some like separation, yeah.
Danikka: Yeah, so like Rowena and all of the people from that end of the kingdom are all down there and then Corliss, the sister is off at the other end. So her point of view is actually very easy to write because there's no other characters that she's really interacting with that are going to have perspective on what's happening with what she's doing. And then with the other end, because Rowena and her husband Enryn and Malkyn all have secrets and backstories and things that they're not telling each other, then when it comes to their conversations, that's why having their agenda and like what's contributing to their actions is really important to have forefront because it will very much influence one, how they're perceiving conversations happening. But then if a conversation with that character is happening in the point of view of another character, it's going to influence how the point of view character is interpreting their actions as well. So there's lots of like silent misunderstandings and things like that, that just come from them not communicating and not trusting each other yet because, you know, from different sides of politics.
Erin: It’s fresh. Yeah.
Danikka: Yeah. But yeah, I like with your points of view, like I know you've talked about how you always just want both sides when you're writing romance.
Erin: I do.
Danikka: And I think Fourth Wing was a good example of why, you know, that can be important or sometimes give away spoilers if it's not there.
Erin: If it's not there, yeah. Not everyone writes in dual when they're writing romance, like there's quite a lot of just single point of view.
But I just like having that insight. It's usually into the guy. You don't get the guy's point of view. I like that. Yeah. I like having that insight into his head.
Danikka: I just feel like it gives the story more dimension, especially a romance, when you're getting both sides.
Erin: Yeah, I think so.
Danikka: Something that's always really stood out to me with your writing, too, is like you're Australian, but you write books based in Brooklyn, New York.
Erin: [Laughs] Yes
Danikka: New York has just always felt really real to me in your books, like someone who lives there has written it. I mean, that's coming from me. I haven't been to Brooklyn.
The closest I've been to New York is Toronto.
Erin: [Laughs] Close-ish
Danikka: But the cities over there do feel very different. But it still feels very alive and very different to if you wrote something based in Melbourne.
Erin: Yeah. I don't know how I would write something based in Melbourne now. Well, I mean, I will. I probably will eventually. But when I started writing, it was like an escape, right? So to write something set where I live was not an escape.
[Both laugh]
Erin: I was trying to go somewhere else. Yeah. And then especially writing during COVID, I'm like COVID doesn't exist in my little bubble world where I've written my characters.
It's not a thing. And then having read books where they talk about COVID, it's really interesting being like, I occasionally find myself wondering like, what would have happened if I had addressed COVID or whatever? Well, the first book probably wouldn't have even happened because of lockdowns and things.
But anyway.
Danikka: Yeah.
Erin: Yeah.
Danikka: Well, all of your characters are hospitality workers. So it would have made their lives pretty impossible.
Erin: Yeah. So they would have been heavily affected. But also I think I'm, what some people, some people say that I'm a fast writer, some say I'm slow. But like, it's been like about a year between each book. So to write them, or for me to write them, but then in the span of the books, it's like they're rolling like right on after one another.
So to write, I don't know, to be able to write things like that, like current events in there, it just wouldn't, I can't, I can't write books out fast enough to be writing them with current sort of events in them. So it was easier as well for my brain to just pretend like COVID never happened.
Danikka: Pretend it didn't exist.
Erin: Yeah.
Danikka: Yeah. And I mean, you never put like an actual year on your timeline or anything like that. So people can imagine that it's before or after.
Erin: Whenever they want, yeah.
Danikka: Yeah.
Erin: I'm very, I'm very mindful of not putting years in, mainly so that I don't get myself in trouble with saying someone is however old, and then this happened in this year, because otherwise then I'll just go down a spiral.
Danikka: Yeah it’s too hard to keep track of
Erin: Someone, someone posted something the other day about saying, oh, something was 30 years ago. And in my head, that was 1973, but no, they were talking about 1993. Like, that's how I would get myself in trouble.
Danikka: [Laughing] Yeah. Yeah. You imagine 20 years ago as being in the eighties and it's like, no.
Erin: 30 years ago was not 1993 and it's like, no, it was, it was Erin, you know?
Danikka: [Laughs]
Erin: So it's easier to just pretend that we're just in this kind of like timeless space.
Danikka: Yeah.
Erin: People can think what they want about when it is. I mean, there'll be certain references that will date it like in years to come, but at the moment it's sort of in that, you know. It could be any time.
Danikka: Yeah. It's current.
Erin: Hopefully.
Danikka: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's like in Strings Attached, the one that we're working on at the moment, that's coming out very soon. We'll probably be out by the time this podcast comes out. You've got a reference to the Avengers and it's like, well, they're current.
Erin: They're current. Yes. But then even then, they're kind of almost, well, they still are, but like post-Endgame, like when was Endgame now? Years gone by.
Danikka: Years ago. Yeah.
Erin: Yeah. So there's like, it's current, but it's almost, it's almost not now. But I did like that particular scene. I know what scene you’re talking about it and I liked it. That was a fun thing to write.
Danikka: Yeah. It's fun. We'll have to play that once the book is out.
Erin: We will. Yeah. So it's, it is tricky because I remember when I first started writing, I would throw in heaps of pop culture references just naturally. And then I was like, oh, I can't, like, I need to tear these back because it is going to make, well, one, I threw in certain ones that were from my sort of era. They didn't necessarily gel with the characters that I was writing. So I had to be really mindful about what they would actually be talking about. And it wasn't Seinfeld because that was my direction. But anyway.
Danikka: [Laughs] Yeah. Depends. My brother's obsessed with Seinfeld when he's younger than me. It depends. Yeah.
Erin: It depends. But yeah. Anyway, that's not really a process. Well, it's kind of a process. It's kind of a writing process, isn't it? Yeah. Putting aside your own biases and things.
Danikka: So when you're coming up with a new couple, how do you kind of flesh them out in a way that you know they're going to gel together? Like when you first initially have them as a concept?
Or do you like more pants it?
Erin: I am a bit of both. I tend to start with the couple and I often just sort of hear snippets of conversation in my head, which I understand is not terribly helpful for anyone who wants actual tips.
Danikka: [Laughs]
Erin: But then I like to know certain things about them, but I sometimes find that if I get too much detail, I get a bit bogged down because I'm like, I don't know. And like I see other authors saying, oh, you know, I know their birthday and their star sign and their personality. Like, that's great.
But I'm like, I don't even know my character's birthdays. Because in the context of their particular story, it's not actually important. Unless one of them was having a birthday during the book.
Yeah. So it's, I don't know, they just sort of, they also sort of grow pretty organically as I'm writing because I, and I think I might've said this when we were on our podcast with Lauren, I can think about stuff as much as I want, but until I actually sit down and write it, I don't know for sure what's going to happen. Cause I'll have signposts like, well, and in romance, obviously it is particularly easy because it's like, they meet, they kiss, they get it on, they usually break up. They get back together. Like that's the whole thing.
So I have some signposts of, oh, I think they'll, you know, they'll kiss here or they'll argue about this or whatever. But until I actually sit down to write it, I've got no idea what they're going to say to each other or how their chemistry will come about or any of that. So it's, I'm as much as I would like to be more of a plotter because I think it would make my life a bit easier.
Erin: I'm just, my characters have far too much freedom, but they, I think if they're doing their own thing, then it means I'm doing something right.
Danikka: I think it's a bit like, it's a balance with creative freedom. Because yeah, I've done a lot of like with fantasy, if you talk to talk about a different genre, cause yeah, with romance, most people are looking for those particular signposts, whereas fantasy, you've got a little bit, even more freedom. There's not necessarily that in place structure, unless you're writing something specifically to appeal to an audience who wants particular tropes or something like that. And even then tropes are not plot points necessarily. So you can use a trope and still have a completely different plot to another story.
So like, well, I can't remember what I was going to say about that now. I've done a lot of planning as far as like world building, like I've finally drawn a map and named the provinces and things like that because I was finding with the politics getting heavier and becoming clearer in my mind, it was like, well, I need to know who the heavy players are. I need to know locations and what they're protecting, what the defensive positions are, if there were to be a war and that kind of thing.
And so I was like, no, I need to. So I haven't actually done a lot of writing for about three or four weeks now because I've just been, okay, stepping back. How do I make what's happening in the story plausible as far as, you know, the geography of the land, where is the food coming from, how is like supply affected, if there's a war, where is the water, like monster infestations, how do they affect things and whose rank is what and who's, you know, higher up in the hierarchy if they got, you know, taken out.
Erin: Yeah, there's so much planning. You need to have all of that. Yeah.
Danikka: Yeah. So like that kind of thing. But then as far as like my actual characters, I haven't done a lot of planning. And because of that, a lot of the twists that have come about it because the characters have gone off script while I've been writing and then I've had to do damage control. [Laughs]
Erin: Which is my favourite thing. I love it when that happens though. Yeah.
Danikka: Yeah. No, it's the best. So yeah, they go off script and then it's like, oh, well, and I think that's why it's good to be a good combination between a planner and a pants-er because like with romance, you kind of got that pre-ordained plan of the genre.
So then you've got your freedom to create characters and create tension with the characters and add other things in as you want. And then with fantasy, it's like you've got the preordained rules of whatever world you've created. So you can plan the world, you can plan the rules, whether you're going to use a hard magic system or a soft magic system, that kind of thing. Or if you're going to have magic at all.
Erin: Yeah.
Danikka: And then once you have the world, then you can kind of just set your characters loose on it, like playing D&D in your head. Kind of. Not that I play D&D because I can't sit still for that long. Oh, well, actually I can, but just not playing D&D.
Erin: Just crocheting.
Danikka: Yeah.
Erin: Yeah. So I don't know. I often, as far as like when characters start, like as little seeds, I think it's usually a picture. Like I said, I'll see a picture of someone and go, oh, I think that's so-and-so. Or I just, when I hear them sort of talking in my head, then I get sort of an idea of what they look like. And then I do like this sort of fleshing out of like, oh, what do they do for fun?
Do they have hobbies? Do they like doing things? Are they a bit of a workaholic?
Like all of that stuff comes, I sort of make lists, various lists in various notebooks. Although I try and have a notebook for every book and then all this stuff just kind of gets dumped in there.
Danikka: Yeah, I like that strategy because you can kind of, yeah, brain dump into the notebook in regards to that book.
And it's good if you've got multiple projects happening in your head at once, like what you do. If you've got a notebook dedicated to each couple and you're getting distracted by one couple while you're writing another couple's book, it's like, okay, I'm going to go dump it in your notebook and then I'm going to come back to what I'm doing.
Erin: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Danikka: Yeah. Which is great. And that's kind of what I've been doing.
I've got, cause I use my Notion template for writing a book for the initial draft. If I'm getting distracted by another scene, I go and write the scene on another card on the database. And then I just go back to wherever I'm working.
Like I try, I can't, I try to write relatively in order, but sometimes I have to go out of order or I have to like go, I don't write super detailed backstories for my characters, but like for some of them they do, like there's specific things that have happened in their life that are impacting how they are now. So I have to go back and write that down and write anything relevant to it so that then I can refer back to it when it becomes relevant again. So there's just lots of bouncing around and yeah, I don't use notebooks because I like lose them. [Laughs]
And because I hate, cause I'm left-handed,
Erin: Me too
Danikka: I just always end up with pens that have like ink and I just hate the smudging.
Erin: Oh, I have. So I, whenever anyone, I'm also left-handed. And whenever anyone sees me write, they're like, what is wrong with you? Because I turn my page 90 degrees to one direction. So I write down pages so that I'm not smudging.
And everyone's like, what are you doing? How can you figure out what you're writing? I'm like, I don't know. It's just, I don't want to smudge. I don't want ink on my hand. And I find there's something like soothing about writing stuff down.
So I like, I do like the analog planning and I think it sort of sticks in my head better maybe when I'm writing it down. And there is, when I've gotten, I did it quite a bit for Chase and Mack, but not so much for Harley and Jake. But when I was writing Five Dates, if I got really stuck and I couldn't work out where I was going, I would handwrite scenes just to kind of get things, like just to change it up a little bit.
And that tended to help if I was having trouble. And if I'm really stuck on characters, I did it for Jemma in The Wedding Planners. I'll write, like you're saying, if there's a specific thing that sort of informed how they are now, I'll write full backstory scenes that don't necessarily go anywhere.
But it's just so that I know I'm like, oh, so that's what happened to them, to that person. So that happens too sometimes.
Danikka: Yeah, that's kind of what I do on my character cards is I write those backstory scenes. And like, when I was having trouble figuring out their motivations and things like that, when I first introduced the fourth point of view, I did a tarot reading on each of the characters. Yeah, so I did a tarot reading. Let me just check what I said.
I think one was like how they, how the world perceives them. And then one card was how they perceive themselves or like their emotional well-being. And then the third card was what their character arc or growth was going to look like across the book.
Erin: Yeah okay. Interesting.
Danikka: So and then that kind of helped me look at, okay, well, this is their internal compass versus how the internal compass maybe affects their actions, which affects how other people perceive them, which helps them when I'm writing other people's points of view, looking at them. And then I kind of know where they start at the beginning of the story and then where they're going to end up in their kind of growth arc. Yeah.
Erin: Yeah. Well, that's a bit like, so writing Strings, because Harley has obviously been the first two books, but you only ever see surface level of her. So then when I got to this one, figuring out her voice, like writing from her voice was tricky.
Danikka: Yeah.
Erin: Because writing, you know, the odd crazy thing that she says or whatever was one thing, but then trying to figure out what her backstory was and what, yeah, what she's really like underneath everything.
Danikka: Yeah. And what kind of person is that outrageous.
Erin: Yeah.
Danikka: Also, you know, a human being, not just a caricature as comic relief in someone else's book.
Erin: Exactly. Yeah. So that was tricky. We got there though in the end.
Danikka: Yeah. I think, I think Harley's probably one of my favourites so far.
Erin: I think so too.
Danikka: Of the girls. Yeah.
Erin: Although I think, yeah, I've started putting together things for Odette now. Odette may be my favourite. We'll see.
Danikka: Odette's definitely, I feel like she's a wild card. She's very different to the others. So I'm excited.
Erin: Yeah. Although I did realise the other day that I think she's going to be a bit of a grump, like Chase was. Like I was just kind of looking at things and I think I sent you a reel of like, oh, I think this might be Odette and Hunter.
Danikka: Yeah.
Erin: Yeah. But it's finding things like that. So sometimes you're not even really intentionally looking for things, but you'll see something and you're like, oh, this is absolutely there. And I think it was something about Jiu Jitsu, like neither of those characters, neither of my characters know Jiu Jitsu, but it was just the kind of their interaction and the way that they were with each other. I'm like, that's how they would be.
Danikka: Yeah. Like I can see them in that.
Erin: Yeah. So sometimes it's not even stuff that you can write down. Like it's just, not wanting to sound like the castle, but sometimes it's just a vibe. It's just a vibe.
See, there's another thing I'm showing my age. The castle.
Danikka: [Laughs] It's a vibe.
Erin: And for any international listeners, that is an Australian film from the nineties, which probably make no sense to anyone who's not from Australia. And it's got Eric Banner in it anyway. Yeah.
Danikka: We love Eric Banner.
Erin: Yeah, we do. Yeah.
Danikka: I think overall, like I think getting to know your characters is more important than planning out the whole plot
Erin: I agree
Danikka: Because even if you've got more of a plot driven book than a character driven one, your characters are still the ones making the plot happen. Yeah. Or like responding to things that happen in the plot to then drive the story forward.
So I think it's better to have a fairly strong idea of your characters as who they are as humans, which, you know, if you are into astrology and you want to use that to kind of base their personality around it, then yeah, pick a star sign for them. But I don't really do that. I kind of look more at their moral compasses and potential trauma that they've gone through and how that might shape them.
Erin: Trauma informs people.
Danikka: [Laughs]
Erin: Trauma is informative.
Danikka: [Laughing] Yeah. And I mean in Gemma's case, that was definitely. Yeah, exactly.
Erin: Jemma had some trauma. Chase had some trauma. They've all had a little bit of trauma. Harley's got some. Yeah.
Danikka: Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
Erin: Well, and I think have you seen, there's two books that I tend to use when I'm sort of starting and looking at my very vague outlines. Save the Cat Writes A Novel and Story Genius. Have you seen Story Genius?
Danikka: I've got Story Genius on my TBR. So I've been listening, I've been listening to Save the Cat Writes A Novel as kind of like a podcast between doing things. Mostly because I've like, I've gone through the worksheets of it before, but just never read the book back-to-back. So I was like, oh, well, I'll treat it like a podcast and just come in and out of it.
And then, yeah, I've got Story Genius saved on my Kindle TBR.
Erin: So Story Genius, if Save the Cat is all plot, Story Genius is all character. Like what you were saying, like you need to know your character before you know your plot. And so it's finding, I can't remember how she phrases it, finding their shard of glass, I think she calls it. So like that thing that's at the very bottom of like all of the other things and then how that, like how that informs everyone, like how they work, how they are with friends, how they are with partners, like how it makes them behave in every aspect of their life. So that it's interesting.
It's a lot of work to really go through it and it's probably more detailed than I would do in mine. But like for a start, like it's, if you're kind of looking at starting character and you don't quite know where to start looking at things, that's a really good book to look at.
Danikka: Yeah, definitely.
Erin: I reckon
Danikka: And I think, I think things like that are really good because a lot of times if people are just starting off writing or like, because I know you wrote a few things before you worked on the wedding planners. So you'd kind of been, you know, honing things a bit before you were like, oh, this is the one that's going to get published. So I think people need to remember that's pretty normal.
And like I've been writing since I was a kid and haven't taken it seriously until like last year. So like there's definitely a skill to be honed there. So, you know, you and I can sit here and talk about it all we like, but at the end it's also, we've put in heaps of practice.
Erin: Yeah. And it's not, and don't think that you're gonna like, obviously no book is perfect the first time, but even if it's the first thing you're writing, like it doesn't have to be great. It just has to be there because it might just be showing you the first thing I wrote. It was just showing me that I could write something that was 90,000 words long.
Like, you know, doesn't have to be anything other than that. Yeah.
Danikka: It's like going back and looking at the first photo that someone posted on Instagram five years ago versus what they posted recently.
It's that level of growth. [Laughs]
Erin: It is. And that might take six months or it might take six years or it might take, you know, not that long at all, like who knows?
Danikka: Yeah. Some people started writing during the pandemic and have now written like 12 books or something. Like, cause people like to pump them out. and then like, I definitely could not do that.
Erin: Exactly, which is amazing
Danikka: But like lots of people do,
Erin: No me neither
Danikka: which is fantastic. So yeah, I think, you know, find the process that works for you. And yeah, just kind of run with it and have fun.
Erin: There’s also in the, so there's the, Save the Cat Writes A Novel, which has got the beat sheet in it. Then there's another one, I can't remember who it's by, but it's called Romancing the Beat.
Danikka: Oh, yes
Erin: So it's specific for romance. And there's, so usually it's like in the Save the Cat, there's like a three-act structure. Whereas in romancing the beat, you've kind of got four.
So you've got like an intro and then a, I think she calls it falling into love maybe, and then falling out of love. And then like, so leading up to your third act breakup and then getting back together and being happy. Yeah.
I think for me, I think it's a little bit too structured because I give my characters so much free reign to do what they want. But some people really like that structure. So like, if you're starting out, then just go through it, like, write what you think might happen in each of the beats and then start working.
If your characters go off script, it happens. Just see where they go. Don't try and like force them back into your outline, because if they're going off that way, it means that that's what they're supposed to be doing.
And if you, and you may find if you force them back to your outline-
Danikka: And it means this way your imagination is sparked more.
Erin: Yeah. And if you're forcing them back to the outline, it's like, it just might not read as authentic sounds like a wanky word, but like, it just may not read the same way as if you just followed where they were trying to go, where your imagination was trying to go.
Danikka: It's not going to be as believable. It's going to feel a bit more wooden, not as natural.
Erin: Natural. That was the word I was looking for. Yeah.
Danikka: I think it's really fun to talk about this kind of stuff because like a lot of people who are writers don't have friends who are writers.
So that's kind of what we wanted this podcast to feel like is that you had a couple of friends who you were having writing coffee with every time you listened to a podcast. So if you've got anything that you want us to chat about in another writing episode, if there's anything you want to know about, you know, specifically our process, then yeah, please, you know, send one of us a DM and yeah, we'll definitely do that for you.
Erin: Because we could literally talk about this all day.
Danikka: Yeah. I was just thinking that. I was just thinking that.
Erin: I was like, yeah, I don't even know if I've said anything helpful, but you know, I can keep going.
Danikka: Yeah. But your book recommendations are really good because it's actually been a long time since I've read any writing craft books. One, because I did writing craft at uni. So like I studied it quite academically. So I don't use, you know, commercial books as much. But then also a lot of the books that I read were like books that I read when I was in high school to help with my writing then. So it was like, they're not things that are necessarily trendy or that anyone would know anymore because they were, you know, they were what people were reading back then. Yeah, I think it's good to kind of...
Erin: Oh, there was another one that I've got. What's it called? It might be the Emotion Thesaurus. I can't remember what that one is.
Danikka: Yeah, there's a whole kind of series of them.
Erin: There is, like there's an Occupation... I think I’ve got the occupation one and the emotion one and obviously they’re not exhaustive, but it's just they just give you a good sort of base of how to, yeah, like how people would behave if they're feeling this way. Anyway, they're good too.
Danikka: Yeah.
Erin: That's when you get a little bit deeper into it. Yeah. Rather than just the starting point.
Danikka: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I guess that's kind of like where we both start a lot of the time is you just kind of take, for me, it was Rowena who talked to me first. So I went with her point of view for, I think it was 12-ish chapters. And then I was like, no, I need more points of view. And so I went back and rewrote all the way through as each character kind of introduced themselves to me.
And the same for you. You hear those snippets of conversation, you start exploring them, you start writing scenes, and then you just kind of keep going back and adding new layers as they develop in your brain. There's no, you don't have everything at the start, at least for us.
Erin: Yeah I think that’s important to know
Danikka: It'd be really interesting to talk to someone who does have it at the start. Yeah.
Erin: Does anyone have everything at the start though? I feel like it's important.
Danikka: Well I don’t think they do because I don't think it's realistic.
Erin: Well, because even if you don't, even if you had more than snippets of conversation, you're not going to have all of it because it's none of it comes even in the first draft or the second draft. Like it's all like constantly, and it may not evolve a lot, but like there's a, it changes a little bit each time, you know?
Danikka: Yeah.
Erin: So even like when I'm writing or reading, when I've got like proof copies of the book, I'm going through that and going, Oh no, I don't like that word. Like I'm still, I'm changing it up until like I hit publish basically.
Danikka: Yeah.
Erin: So yeah, I don't think anyone has anything straight away, but I would be, I would be curious to know. Cause yeah, my, my first ones, like without even punctuation, are just like a running dialogue.
Danikka: Yeah.
Erin: And then I go back and go, okay, so maybe I need to work out like, I know who's talking when I read it, but no one else would. Yeah. So I'm like, Oh, so we need dialogue tags and we need some movement and we need it. Yeah. All that stuff. You need to know where they are.
Danikka: Conflicts and background
Erin: They're not just in a, yeah. They're not just in a white room.
Danikka: Yeah.
Erin: Yeah.
Danikka: Well, this was so fun, but we might leave it there for this episode and we'll talk to you in the next one. We'll talk to you on the gram in between episodes.
Erin: Yeah. Bye!
Danikka: Bye.
Danikka: Thank you for listening to the Snailed It podcast with Danikka and Erin. Brought to you by Author's Own Publishing, the Home of Indie Publishing.
Don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts and follow us on Instagram at Author's Own Publishing. Music brought to you by Mikel with more details in the show notes.
Episode Description
Danikka and Erin get together to discuss their individual writing processes and how their characters come to life in their books.
Books mentioned:
Save the Cat! Writes a Novel - Jessica Brody
Story Genius - Lisa Cron
Romancing the Beat - Gwen Hayes
The Occupation Thesaurus - Becca Puglisi & Angela Ackerman
The Emotion Thesaurus - Becca Puglisi & Angela Ackerman
Brought to you by: Authors Own Publishing, Danikka Taylor, and Erin Thomson.
Danikka’s Details:
Website: www.authorsownpublishing.com
Instagram: @danikkataylor or @authorsownpublishing
Erin’s Details:
Website: www.erinthomsonauthor.com
Instagram: @authorerinthomson
Intro & Outro Music by Mikel & GameChops. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily reflect the views of Authors Own Publishing. Thanks for Listening!
