Hello Everyone and welcome back to the Rebel Author Podcast episode 16. Today’s podcast is all about learning how to improve your writing. I’m talking to Gabriela Pereira CEO of DIYMFA.com all about how to improve, hot tips and tricks for dialogue, description, building a writing community and much more. BUT FIRST something exciting to share.
Gabriela is hosting a LIVE webinar called How to Survive and Succeed as a Writer (without Breaking Your Heart or Losing Your Mind). This webinar will be on Tuesday, February 25th @ 1pm Eastern Time. Here’s the blurb for the webinar:
Here’s the secret about writing: survival (and also success) has nothing to do with talent or technique. It’s all about mindset and attitude. This is true whether you are just starting out or have been writing for decades. The most effective way to up your game is to understand yourself more fully, both as a writer and a human being. In this webinar, Gabriela debunks three major myths about writing, lets you in on her secret formula for conquering goals, and walks you through a fundamental technique that will change your writing process forever. You’ll leave this session energized and inspired, but also with the tools you need so you can write more, write better, write smarter.
If you can’t make the webinar, there will be a recording, but it will expire at 11:59pm on February 28th. If you want to attend, click the link below. Please note, I am a course student of Gabriela’s which is why I’m super enthusiastic as I know the quality of Gabriela’s courses. It’s also why I’m an affiliate for her courses.
https://members.diymfa.com/~access/a38c4372f/
THIS WEEK’S QUESTION IS
How do you intentionally learn or improve your craft and the business of writing?
Book recommendation this week is Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
Purchase on Kobo https://www.kobo.com/ebook/carry-on-12
Amazon UK https://amzn.to/2wgZ18x
Amazon USA https://amzn.to/2SrbrTS
Listener Rebel of the Week is Sam… Er I’ll be keeping his surname private because he has quite the rebellion!
If you’d like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com or tweet me @rebelauthorpod
No new Patrons today. Thank you so much for joining me and thank you to all my current patrons, who help to ensure that this podcast continues. If you’d like to support the show, and get access to all the bonus essays, posts and content, you can from as little as $2 a month all you have to do is visit: www.patreon.com/sachablack
Please note there are affiliate links in this post.
How to Improve Your Writing
More about Gabriela:
Gabriela Pereira is an author, speaker, and entrepreneur who wants to challenge the status quo of higher education. As the founder and instigator of DIYMFA.com, her mission is to empower writers, artists and other creatives to take an entrepreneurial approach to their education and professional growth.
Gabriela earned her MFA in writing from The New School and speaks at college campuses and national conferences. She is also the host of DIY MFA Radio, a popular podcast where she interviews bestselling authors and book industry professionals and author of the book DIY MFA: Write with Focus, Read with Purpose, Build Your Community.
Find her on her
Website: https://diymfa.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/diymfa/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DIYMFA
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DIYMFA/
Episode Transcript How to Improve Your Writing
Learn How to Develop Your Writing with @DIYMFA #selfpublishing #IARTG #ASMRG #amwriting #writingcommunity #writetip Share on X
Sacha Black
Hello and welcome back to The Rebel Author podcast. Today I am joined by Gabriela Pereira. Gabriela is the founder of DIY MFA.com the Do It Yourself alternative to a master’s degree in writing. She is also a speaker, podcast host for DIY MFA radio and author of the book DIY MFA. Right with focus, read with purpose, build your community. Welcome.
Gabriela Pereira
Thank you so much for having me.
Sacha Black
No, thank you. I read your book earlier in the gear as you do, and I loved it. I also recommended it in my facebook group. So I know loads of people went and brought it so yeah, I thought it was fantastic. And that’s why I wanted to speak to you. So thank you very much for giving us your time today. And so before we get into the nitty gritty, I wondered if you could tell us a little bit about your writing journey and how you got to where you are today.
Gabriela Pereira
Okay, let me think this through because there’s like all these origin stories, you know, like most superheroes have, like a origin story. I’ve got like, 27
Sacha Black
Oh you’re such a rebel.
Gabriela Pereira
I know. I know. Right? So like, I knew I was going to be a writer from pretty much like, really early in my life. So I was in first grade, going to school right here in my neighborhood, actually, right near where I still live. And I was in the library, and it was first grade. So like, you know, six ish in terms of age. And the library was organized where the books were like, by age, like how appropriate was for like your reading level. So me being a little snarky little precocious brat marched over to the fifth grade shelf. It was an elementary school. So that was the highest grade, and I pulled the book from the shelf and I still remember which one it was. It was The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander. And the reason I remember is because it has really cool illustration on the cover of a dude riding a horse. With a skull and antlers on this head, this is so cool. Like, I have to read this book. And so I read
the first I can read this. And then I read, like the next few pages and like this is library time. So by the end of the period, like the time period, I’d read the whole first chapter. And then I like had this meltdown in the middle of the library, because I started thinking, well, if I can read this book, and it’s, you know, on the fifth grade bookshelf, then I can read all the books in the library. And if I can read all these books in the library, then I can read all the books in the world, and then I’m going to be bored forever, I’m going to die. And so I had this like complete and total meltdown in the library after reading the first chapter of this book. And so the librarian told my teacher and the teacher came up with this activity, where it’s the Montessori school, so it was all very like hands on and like they don’t do lessons. It’s all like, you explore. And so she came up with like this new like exploration station, where you had blank paper and a canister with pencils, and then this tray, and so you’d write a story on the blank paper, and then you’d staple it together. And you’d your illustrations, you put it in the tray when it was finished, and then the teacher would read it during storytime.
So it was a very like official thing that we create our own books. And that was the moment where I realized, like, people actually write the books that we read. Like I think as a kid, you don’t really understand that there are authors that produce the work that we read, we just sort of take for granted that these books are there and that we can read them. So that was the first moment that I realized, like this was a thing I could do with my life. But then, you know, like most people, I guess I got sidetracked. So I went to college nice, you know, studied more practical things like psychology. And I thought for a while I wanted to be a psychology researcher, but that was me in academia, we did not match it was way too much red tape for me. So that didn’t work out. So well. Eventually, I decided to go get my MFA in creative writing. And I was doing writing for children because my voice tends to be kind of like a snarky teenager. So that seemed like a good fit. And I was sitting in graduation for the MFA. So this was like 2010, June ish. And I remember like, I’m sitting there and I’m thinking, well, the sun is going to stream in through the stained glass was in this like old church down in the West Village. And then like, the skies will part and Angel choirs will sing, and I’ll be anointed by the literary gods. And then I will become a real writer. And I had this idea that it was going to be this existential moment during graduation, where I’d suddenly feel like a writer, but I didn’t.
And so as I started reflecting on like, why isn’t this like moment happening? I started to think about all of my friends who didn’t go to an MFA program and thinking about like people who had said to me Oh, you’re so lucky. You get to go and like, dedicate your life to writing for two years. That’s so cool. I wish I could do that. And I started thinking like, Well, why can’t they? Like why couldn’t You just do this on your own. And I started to reflect on my own education in the MFA program. And don’t get me wrong. Like I’m not knocking the MFA, I loved my experience at a wonderful experience. And I’m super grateful for it. But I also recognize that I was coming from a very privileged place. Like I didn’t have children at the time, I could afford to take two years off from school, like there were a lot of comforts that I could, that allowed me to have that experience. So I started thinking about like, well, what if you wanted to do it yourself? How will How would that work? And so that’s where I started kicking around that idea. And I went home, and I did what any normal respectable writer would do. I had a blog at the time. And so I decided to blog about it. And at the time, I had about 12 followers, only one and one of which was my mother. So like, it was this really, really popular blog here. And I wrote this post and it’s still out there like basically saying, I had this weird idea. It’s about Do It Yourself MFA if it were a thing would you be interested? And I figured it would go out into the ether and nobody would ever respond. But what ended up happening is the next morning I woke up and my inbox was filled with emails. And I had all these comments. And this was like the heyday of blogging. So people like actually interacted with bloggers and stuff. So like, all of a sudden, I realized that other people reading my blog and like this actually resonated with them. So that’s where the kernel of the DIY MFA concept was born. From there, it’s been a long path of iteration and continuous development to build it out into what it is today. certainly wasn’t. You know what it is now back in 2010. In fact, 2020 is our one year and or 10 year anniversary of like, DIY MFA as a thing. So it’s kind of a special year, but um, it’s it’s definitely grown a lot since then. But that’s how it all got started.
Sacha Black
I love it. I love your origin story as well, because I was like smiling and nodding and laughing because so much of It is very similar to what? What happened to me. I also studied psychology thinking I needed a proper job. And yeah, and I also, you know, I finished I read through entire libraries and had to move libraries, because I’d literally read everything and in like the kids area, so yeah, I love I love that.
Gabriela Pereira
My mom used to whenever we’d go on family vacations, like even if it was in a foreign country, she’d find a way to finagle getting a library card for longer than like, a few days, because she’s like, we’re gonna run out of stuff to read and we’re not carrying books everywhere. So like, for a while, we had library cards from like, you know, Colorado and like Florida, she’d like somehow talk to the library and she’d be like, it’s just for a few weeks I read up but like some actually convinced them I think like we bet our eyes very like adoringly as children then they’d given
Sacha Black
That is literally amazing I was the kid with a second suitcase just full of books.
Gabriela Pereira
Now with like the limits and stuff like you can’t take books with you,
Sacha Black
I we literally have like a domestic argument every summer about how many books I’ve allowed to take holiday. I definitely still take at least ten! But anyway, this is such a sidetrack. Okay, so I think you’ve probably kind of answered this question already. But I was going to just ask you to talk everybody through the concept behind DIY MFA and what it can do for them. So I don’t know if you want to add any more.
Gabriela Pereira
Sure. So like, now you guys know like how it got started, essentially, how it’s built or like the, what it’s founded on, is founded on three principles. And where I came up with them was both from reflecting on my own MFA experience and sort of unpacking it and analyzing what that like pedagogically what was going on when I was in school, and This is where having a psychology degree actually was very helpful. And then also by looking and researching other schools. So like when I was applying to MFA programs, I’d also research like a whole, you know, several dozen other programs, and I saw a lot of things that were the same. And so and then I also saw gaps in a lot of the programs. And so I started to think like, Okay, if what are the commonalities, and then where are their holes that I can also plug and create something that’s even more robust in some ways than what you would find in a traditional program. So the three pillars are elements of an MFA are writing, reading, and community. And more recently, I’ve actually gone even more meta on that. I think of writing as any sort of creative output. So even if you’re not necessarily a writer, you could be doing a DIY MFA. As a photographer or as an artist. The output is the writing piece. The input is The reading. So obviously, in MFA programs, you have literature courses where you’re reading books, or you’re writing analyses, kind of like taking a English class in college or high school or something. And then of course, the community is often in the workshop setting where you’re getting feedback on your work. But then also some of the networking where like, speakers come and they’ll do public readings on their works, you know, fancy pants, famous authors and all that stuff. But then also learning about the business of writing and all those things.
And again, there, there’s that meta level, like it doesn’t have to be writing related the input creative input where you’re getting inspiration would be the reading component. And then when you’re exchanging ideas, creative exchange, that would be the community element. So as I started thinking about these three components, I also started looking at like what had been missing. So we did a lot of writing in terms of like, we had to produce a lot of stuff. But we didn’t talk so much about what does it mean to produce a body of work as a writer, there was a lot of like, you know, people coming in and having like, pieces of a novel, but they weren’t really thinking strategically about like, what is that goal that I want to publish? And like, what do I want my legacy as a creator to be? So I started this is where the concept of writing with focus came in the idea that it’s about both mastering the craft and understanding how the mechanics work, but it’s also about being really strategic and thinking about okay, is this project really going to move the needle in terms of my body of work as a writer, and obviously, at the beginning of one’s career, there’s always some level of, of experimentation, but at some point, you have to pick a lane and actually follow through on a project or you’re never going to get published. With the reading. There was a lot of, you know, let’s read and then regurgitate what the professor wants us to say. And as you can imagine, I was not very big fan of that. So I love looking at the reading. I call it reading like a revolutionary. Where you’re not just reading to understand what you’re reading, but you’re reading to say, what’s the author doing? And how can I do with you, and you’re trying to unpack the technique in the literature so that you can actually do that same thing in your own work.
Sacha Black
Can you just say that last bit again, just because it broke up a little bit, so I don’t know, just in case anybody missed it, and it didn’t quite capture it. Because I think that is so vital, and that I underlined that about 800 times.
Gabriela Pereira
Reading, like a revolutionary isn’t just about reading to understand like when we’re learning to read in school, first you learn how to read right? Like you learn to read the words and my son is actually doing that right now. We’re like you first you learn to read and then you read to learn, like you learn, you read and then you’re focusing on what does it mean what is the author saying who, what, when, where, why like those things. That’s kind of like how we’re taught to read in grade school and even in high school, even in some college courses, where we can take it to the next level. is when we can look at what the author is doing on the page. And we ask ourselves, what’s the author doing? What effect is it having on me as the reader? And then how can I do it too? In a way I like I like to say that writing is a supreme act of manipulation. Essentially, as writers, we are controlling language in order to plant an idea in our readers mind, whether or not the reader chooses to agree with our idea is up to the reader. But if we’re really good at crafting that argument, or crafting that idea, we can, in fact influence what other people think. And it’s kind of exciting. It’s also you know, with great power comes great responsibility. But it also means that as readers, if we’re aware that writers can be doing that to us, then we’re less likely to fall into the trap of just blindly believing whatever the writers telling us. So understanding that there’s a the word agenda sounds too sinister. But there’s like a behind the scenes element that there is a craft behind the craft that the writer is engaging in or can engage in, and that we as readers can actually dissect that and use that to our advantage.
Sacha Black
Absolutely. And I think there’s a couple of things there. The first one is that and I mean this with no disrespect to newer writers, but often the mark of a newer writer, are those telltale signs of showing the craft. So things like exposition tells the reader that they are reading and therefore takes them out of the story. And some I I like started out because I, as you know, I’m working on a book called The Anatomy of Prose. And I think one of the things that I try to address because this has come up in conversations with writers is the fear of dissecting and looking at those top those tactics and techniques. I’ll put my teeth in and that another author is using and then the fear that they are then going to write in their voice. But it’s not about that it’s about not their particular word choice or their addiction or their comments. It’s about how you take the technique or method that they’ve used and then put it into your own voice. So for anybody freaking out thinking, Oh, you know, I can’t look in that much detail. No, you absolutely can. And,
Gabriela Pereira
In fact, by looking in that level of detail, you’re actually less likely to copycat.
The problem that happens oftentimes that the copycat stuff happens is because we’re skimming the surface. And so it becomes almost like a pseudo copy paste operation where we’re taking this like surface level perspective on a text and then we’re trying to like paste it onto our own work. Whereas if we look deep, then we actually understand how the mechanics are working. And we’re actually building at the deep level, how it’s going to manifest at the surface level on our work is going to look totally Different. I also want to add an anecdote. The way I learned to write like this was in junior year in high school, where I had, I’ve seen this history class, which I did not like. And the teacher was one of those teachers who I, we, we came to an understanding by the end of the semester, but it’s, we were off to a rocky start, mostly because she had very strong opinions. And she expected everybody to buy into all of her opinions. And most of the girls, it was an all girls school. So most of the girls in class would sit there like, you know, raptured by this teacher who was so amazing and had so many insights. Anyway, I decided I wanted to mess with her. So for every single assignment that we had, and this was like a class that was all about politics and government and stuff like that, so every assignment she was very, very liberal, very, very feminist. I decided to take the most conservative, possible opposite to her belief stands. On every single essay, but to craft it in such a way that she couldn’t actually give me a bad grade. So it became this like banter between the two of us in the columns and like in the margins of my essays. And I actually still have some of these essays. Like, by the end of the year, we had come to this understanding where like, I just keep my mouth shut, and I wouldn’t make her look bad and for the class, and then we’d have our banter behind the scenes on the page. And like, she respected me, I sort of respected her, we were in a good place. But it also taught me a really important lesson, which is that you don’t actually have to believe what you’re writing in order to write it and in order to write it convincingly, and that it might sound like I was doing something bad and manipulative in a way could be I mean, this is something that can be misused and often is misused by a lot of people particularly in current events, but it’s used well it’s actually it unshackles us as writers because it makes us realize that, like the craft is a tool, and we can actually use that tool to achieve ends. And if our ends are noble, then that’s actually a really powerful tool that we can use. So we don’t necessarily have to align our own personal belief systems to that the way we execute the craft, and still get results from that craft.
Sacha Black
Yeah,
Absolutely. And don’t you find that some of the most fascinating and interesting characters to write all those characters that are nothing like you. Um, so, okay, what are some key methods or tricks that writers can use to actually learn and develop their craft?
Gabriela Pereira
Wow, there are so many, like, I don’t even know where to start. Um, I would say one of the things is to read because and to read at that deep level of understanding the craft. So one of the things that I like to to do is when I’m reading. Actually DIY MFA right now is doing a reading challenge where we’re basically doing this as a community and unpacking books we read as like, through the lens of reading like a writer. But essentially, it’s like looking at all those craft things that you read about in craft books, like the mechanics of dialogue, and actually looking at it in action in a book that you’re reading, whatever that book may be, and start to analyze it and see like, Okay, what is the dialogue doing here? How is the author using the dialogue tags, or using the stage directions to bring the dialogue to life in the scene or all those things? I’m thinking about characters, like if you’re looking at your protagonist, trying to identify like, does this protagonist is it more of like an everyman kind of protagonist? Or is it more of a, you know, larger than life hero, heroic character? If so, what effect does that have on the story? What if the author had made it the other one? How would the story be different? thinking about things like, like, for instance, key moments in the story, what if the author had not done it that way and done it a different way. One thing that I thought about a lot was in the Hunger Games, the choice of having prims name be pulled from the jar and not Katniss says, that’s a very deliberate choice on the part of the author, but also incredibly important because it creates a whole different dynamic. I mean, imagine if Katniss his name had been pulled from the jar, it would have been not half the book that it had been, and Katniss wouldn’t have volunteered, she would have just been shoved into the games. So asking these questions like why did the author do it this way? And what effect does that have on me the reader, then from there, you can start to like, it’s by seeing the craft in action, that we can start to take the abstract ideas that we can read about in craft books or websites or hear about on podcasts, but actually see how it’s executed. And whether it’s done effectively. Some authors might not do it as effectively as others and seeing examples of it not being done well can sometimes be as illuminating as seeing examples of it being done well,
Sacha Black
absolutely. I love the love love The Hunger Games because there’s such a classic and like you can pull examples of pretty much any type of craft from it and and I do use the Hunger Games so often because even though it’s one of those guilty teenage pleasure, you know, reading books I i right YA so I absolutely loved it. But you know, it is I think the whole theme of the book is sacrifice and she had to do that because it is the very first sacrifice but um, yeah, I love that I’d find going now for the Hunger Games, but yeah, so any any nitty gritty things that writers need to do when they’re reading do they need to read more consciously do they need to slow down today? How do they pick out the things that they need to pick out?
Gabriela Pereira
Alright, so I’m gonna let you Going on a little secret. Like it’s like the secret formula that I use. I discovered this in high school. And I did. class I’ve taken since. And I swear every time I use this formula, I always got a good, great. So here’s what it is you have to ask this question of yourself. How does the what reflect the why? So what that means is how like, this is the mechanics, the craft, does the What does the word choice? Does the character development does the this particular thematic element of food that comes up throughout the Hunger Games trilogy? How does that thing reflect the why? The why being sacrifice or the theme? I would take the theme even further in the Hunger Games, that it’s the idea that when you sacrifice you actually it’s only through sacrifice that you can gain what you truly want. And so how does the theme of food or lack thereof illustrate that theme of sacrifice being the vehicle that allows you to achieve what your heart most wants and needs. Well, there’s so many amazing examples of the part, the scene with Peeta and the bread, the part in the President’s mansion where people are eating and stuffing themselves and then like purging themselves so they can eat more. All of these things illustrate both like the over like, you know, the how the food is sort of a mechanism for illustrating this idea of sacrificing or not being willing to sacrifice and the effect that that has on people’s on their humanity.
So it’s by when you ask that question, notice how it was started out very simple question like, how does the what reflect the why, and yet automatically, when we start unpacking it, we can go deep, and it takes us really into what’s at the core of the story. And the reason that this works, is because it’s pulling together all three levels of reading at the same time. So what I mean by levels of reading is that there’s that surface level that we talked it up before where it people often will just copy paste. And that’s just the who, what, when, where, why it’s the stuff that we learn to do in like first grade when we’re first starting to understand like see spot run well who’s doing the running? Well its spot, okay? Like it’s the the really easy stuff.
Then there’s the why level, there’s the, the, why did the author write this book? What does the author really mean? It’s like the philosophy level. This is the level that we usually are taught to stay in as readers and writers. It’s where like, it gets drummed into our heads, like talk about the theme and talk about why Shakespeare was writing about love and blah blah. But it’s always like stuck in that middle zone. Nobody goes deeper than that. The How is the deepest level, which is the level where we’re thinking, Okay, Shakespeare did this and he’s writing about love, but he’s using a particular type of structure in this one particular sonnet. The rhythm is off from his other sonnets. Why is that the case? What’s going On and this poem that makes it stand out from the other ones. That’s the how level. And that’s how we go deep. So when we ask that question, how does the what reflect the why, it ties all of those elements together and allows us for a very short, focused period of time to analyze the book on this multi level way. That said, I do want to offer a word of caution to our listeners, you do not have to read in this manner all the time, you will go nuts. I don’t read like this all the time. Most of the time, I can only sustain my reading in this way. When I have a specific thing that I want to convey, like when I want to make an argument about food and how it relates to the theme of The Hunger Games. I will then look for examples and unpack those examples at this deep level. I’m not reading the whole book from page one to the end of the trilogy. At this level, I’ll lose my mind and it’ll be boring as all hell So yeah,
Sacha Black
I I spent a long time I’m doing this subconsciously. And I know it’s sacrilege, but I have a pencil and sticky tabs. And I never get through a book without underlining things. And what I do afterwards is I collect all of the sentences, and I typed them up. And I noticed patterns. So I don’t also read like that all the way through a book. But when something catches my eye, I’ll have a tendency to underline it. And I’ll just move on, I won’t sit there and analyze it at that time, but you at the end of the book, there is almost always a overarching theme. So one author might be very good at dialogue, and I’ve underlined loads of dialogue or another one might be good at, you know, description or something, which is a great segue to my next question. But
Unknown Speaker
yeah, so
Sacha Black
I, I don’t also read in that level of depth, but I tend to do my analysis at the end.
Gabriela Pereira
I love that idea. And I want to add to it, one of the things that I often encourage readers to do is to create their own personalized anthology. So what this means is Like when we’re reading, you know, when we go to a an MFA program, or we take a literature class, usually the professor gives us a reading list or they give us Anthology, all the books, all the stories we’re going to read this semester in this book, you know, learn it, love it. But that’s not actually picked by us based on our own tastes and our own interests. And what I realized as the where this idea came from was that I’d read short stories just because I felt like reading them or I’d read them in classes or what have you. And I started to notice that some of them spoke to me, and they spoke to me because they illustrated a certain type of craft. So like one particular story might be really great for illustrating plot. Another one might be great for illustrating dialogue. And you can also do the same thing by the way with snippets of a novel. So what I started doing was I just photocopy like that one page and then mark up in the the margins like what it was about that page that spoke to me, and then I’d start putting them in a binder and what’s ended up is I have this like binder this huge chunky binder under my desk that is now the Gabriella anthology of really cool writing that illustrates specific elements of the craft and I have them like in little categories and when I have a question about like character development or how do we convey a good villain or an anti hero I just go to like the character section and I look for that one example and I’m like All right, here it is.
Sacha Black
Oh, that is such a good idea and said I I literally try to remember all of the things from all of the different books I obviously I as I’ve said I collect the sentences but I don’t put them in any logical like, you know, all of the different books together instead, I just remember which book was from and then have to bloody you know, search through all of the sticky tabs to find the exact… That is such a good idea, I am literally gonna go and do that after this. Okay. One of my personal obsessions is description. And I loved one particular quote in your book, which I’m just gonna, I hope you don’t mind I’m just going to just briefly read the short quote, and it says rich, engrossing description is a mysterious combination of imagery detail and word choice, which I think is so true. You can teach lots of tips and tricks covering imagery detail and word choice but often there’s also this mysterious layer and you know, je ne sais quoi about a particular office description that makes it so good and gives it that flair. So je ne sais quoi aside what one or two things can a writer do to improve their description?
Gabriela Pereira
So again, it’s I go back to reading, like read, read, read, and here’s why you want to read but then you want to practice. So one of the things that I love to do is I tried I so I, I call this example this assignment, the like, nursery rhyme assignment. Basically, you take a children’s nursery rhyme, and that becomes your plot for whatever scene You’re gonna create, so like Itsy Bitsy Spider, okay, that’s the plot. And then you try to write that narrative in like 500 words or a few, whatever based on in the voice of or in the style of an author you admire. What this forces you to do is it forces you to actually look at that author’s work and think about? What is it that like, obviously, Toni Morrison never wrote a version of the Itsy Bitsy Spider going up the waterspout. But what is it about Toni Morrison’s language? What is it about the way she leaves her words together and the imagery together what makes Toni Morrison’s imagery and descriptions of that scene, different from say, Ernest Hemingway’s or Shakespeare’s and so looking at it like it forces you so it’s both like reading but then actually trying to apply it? The reason I like using a nursery rhyme or it could also just be like, you know, anything that comes into your head, but like You want to take the pressure off of yourself of having to come up with the plot and the characters, because that is sort of like a broader thing. And you want to like, sort of take that burden off yourself. So you can focus on the minutiae at the sentence level.
Sacha Black
I love that. I think that is a really, I might even go play. Because I love writing, you know, like flashing different experimenting with things like that. So I might have to do that. And
Gabriela Pereira
I also recommend doing the same exercise multiple times. Like one of the things I see a lot of newer writers do is they’ll do an assignment once and then Okay, I’m done. It’s like nothing, no, no, like, choose like, eight different authors. And over the course of the next like month, do this exercise twice a week so that you really start it’s like, it’s when you push past that slog the point that you actually get to the good stuff. I’ve noticed this when I’ve worked with writers one on one is oftentimes like, I have to give them an assignment. Men have 1000 words, because if I gave them only 500 words, they’d stop before they actually made the breakthrough. But if they were like, one time I told the writer, we were working on description, I said, I want you to describe dirt for 1000 words and you cannot use site, you can only use the other four sentences 1000 words of dirt. And it was hard. She had a hard time, I would have had a hard time it is a hard assignment. But when you write about dirt for 800 words, all of a sudden, it’s like something it’s like that switch flips, but you have to push through. You can’t just do the assignment like the mechanical assignment one time or to a certain point, you have to like get past, you have to get to the point where you’re like, I cannot write another frickin word about the itsy bitsy spider. Because that on the other side of that is when you’re going to make that breakthrough.
Sacha Black
And I it’s so funny as you’re talking about this. I’m like, Oh, that’s what we do in Taekwondo. So my indestructible drilling and drill us and drill us and drill us until we are so bored of our, you know, our patterns that, you know, we can we could literally do them in our sleep. And it’s only then that you get those go past that kind of one to 3% incremental development and all of a sudden you see this shift in the, you know, the power that you put through each move, and it’s exactly, it’s exactly the same. And it’s a comparison.
Gabriela Pereira
It makes total sense because I firmly believe that as writers, we are building muscle memory, except instead of it being like physical muscle memory, it’s mental muscle memory. And it’s the same thing when you’re doing a sport like Taekwondo. Or in my case with my kids, they play musical instruments, and I played the violin for like, a bajillion years. So like, there’s that muscle memory where like, in the beginning, you don’t know where your fingers are supposed to go, or you’re trying to play a scale and you’re like, what the heck is this, but then all of a sudden, it like clicks and that’s when when you no longer have to Think about it that you can actually make it into music.
Sacha Black
And I also find that dialogue can be a real sticking point for writers and one of my favorite sections in your book because it was so crystal clear was the section on dialogue. So I wondered if you could maybe highlight some of the mistakes that you often see writers making with dialogue.
Gabriela Pereira
So I call them the nine NOs and I probably won’t remember all nine of them off the top of my head. But basically, the idea with this is that this does not mean that you should never ever, ever use these things. These are the things that people often lean on too often, and that they’re things that should send up a signal flare. But if you have a reason to use it, you should keep it by the way, like authors that we know and love us. Many of these nine NOs all the time. For instance, the nine knows around adverbs, JK Rowling, I mean, she seems to be doing pretty well for herself and yet she uses a lot of adverb so like their authors who can break these rules as it were. But basic like a couple of things that we need to think about. First is that we often when we’re looking at dialogue, we’re thinking that it has to feel like it’s realistic. But the truth is that realistic dialogue is really, really boring because humans are generally boring creatures when they’re just talking and shooting the breeze. Dialogue on the page has to be like regular real dialogue, but like amped up 1,000%. So it has something without all the other crap. So in order to eliminate all that other crap, we have to take things out like when, you know, people use names in dialogue, like hey, Susie, how’s it going? I’m doing great bill. Nobody talks like that. And when they do, it’s released. It’s like weird. So that’s one of those mistakes or crutches that often writers will lean on, especially when they have many people in the same scene. So they want to make sure that it’s clear that it’s bill talking and not Susie talking so They do that whole like name a thing, but it sounds really weird and doesn’t flow and it just feels stilted. The adverb thing can be a big one. People often will stuff adverbs, she said quietly, he said loudly. Well, she said quietly could be she whispered or he said loudly can be he shouted, or you could just have it be like a heck were you thinking? He said, Well, I think he probably said that. Loudly let him dialogue by itself probably conveys the intonation of the dialogue. So there are places where you don’t even need those, you know, whisper chortled. That’s the other one. Like when people say like he chortle, like how can you chortles? Like, it’s like, physically, like how do you actually like she was like, I can’t even do it. Like how would that mechanically work? You can’t chortle and talk at the same
Sacha Black
My favorite is he choked because that shits dangerous like you could die.
Gabriela Pereira
That that’s not okay. Yeah. Other things like talking heads syndrome where characters are like ping pong dialogue back and forth. Again, it can work. hills like white elephants by Ernest Hemingway is a beautiful, heart wrenching, short story that is mostly talking head syndrome. There’s like maybe a line or two that establishes where the characters are at the beginning, and then another line toward the end. But throughout the story, it’s pretty much just dialogue back and forth. And then he said, she said tags that it still works because we have enough information to know where we where they are. Also, it’s a short story, and you can get away with a lot more in short stories. You can withhold more information in short stories, then you’d probably be able to do in a novel. And also like the context of the dialogue allows us to fill in what’s going on so we as readers, like the author clearly trusted his readers to be able to fill in those gaps. So he didn’t have to describe the space that they were in and what they were doing and whether they’re sipping their coffee. But sometimes it can feel like the talking heads, you know, like those old comic strips, where you have like, the two characters were just sort of talking at each other and like the whole entire comic strip it like the whole joke is told between the characters talking to each other and look, nothing happens. Well, that’s, that’s no fun.
So there are a lot of these things that often writers will rely on because they either they forget or it’s just easier, like they get lazy or whatever. Um, again, it’s one of those things where like, I wouldn’t try to edit it as you’re writing because as you’re writing, you just want to get the dialogue down. Like I know when I’m writing dialogue, I’m not thinking like, did like if chortle comes up? I’m like, I just saw that on the page. It’s when I’m going back and revising it, that I’ll start being like, well, he choked probably here because then he’d be dead. All right. change that. Or Like, wow, I have no idea what room these characters are in or what they’re even doing. Maybe I need to add a little line or two of what’s going on and Steve’s directions to ground, the scene and a place, things like that. I’m also a common thread in this conversation, read, read, read. One of the best examples of a dialogue driven scene of all time, in my opinion, is the first chapter of Pride and Prejudice. That scene alone is a masterful, it’s like a masterclass in crafting a group dialogue scene. You’ve got the five sisters, the two parents and there might even be a servant or two that walks in or out of the scene. Yet, whenever you’re reading that chapter, like within that chapter, you know exactly who’s talking when, and you know exactly who these characters are, and you’ve just met them like we don’t have any previous context of who these people are. in that chapter. We are meeting them for the first time and yet they’re crystal clear in our minds. And it is an efficient first chapter. It’s not like 100 pages long it is a tight first chapter. So that’s one place where if someone’s struggling with dialogue, particularly dialogue with multiple characters, look at how Austin does that on the page, examine how she’s the mechanics of what she’s doing and how she’s working on the group dynamics of that scene, and then see how you can apply similar concepts to your own writing.
Sacha Black
Amazing, I often like to write a scene, that’s only dialogue, because it forces you to differentiate. And so I love that as an exercise as well.
Gabriela Pereira
A couple of other exercises, using a scene that’s only dialogue is a really good one. And doing a scene where you only get half of the dialogue like if someone’s on the phone, and you’re only getting the dialogue of the person whose side of the conversation you’re hearing. That can be a really good exercise too because then it forces you to convey how what would the other person be saying? and still have it makes sense but not make it feel like wait a minute Joe? What do you mean that like yeah, like Batman and Robin stuff like what it Holy guacamole Batman, what do you mean that the thing just went over the bridge like you need to like actually make it better than that. So that’s another way to do it. And then another exercise is when you can’t actually hear the dialogue, like you’re seeing people through a window. Like imagine like the rear window scenario where you’re like in one building, and you’re looking across the alley to another building, and you’re seeing like an argument or a conversation. What, what would they be saying based on what those people are, like their behaviors. And that forces you to think about the stage directions and how they affect what’s being said.
Sacha Black
I think that is a cracking idea. And so, the last thing I wanted to talk about was community. And building a community obviously is one third of your book. So I wonder If you could tell listeners, what you how you view community and what that really means.
Gabriela Pereira
So there are a couple of different. there I see it as there’s actually three. One is community with fellow writers, your colleagues, community with your readers, and then navigating the industry or navigating sort of the business world community. Those three communities while there’s some intersection, obviously, some of your colleagues who are writers will probably read your books and vice versa. And there probably be some professional connections there too. But they do have very different needs. And you also have to bring different things to the table at each of those communities. So one of the mistakes I often see a lot of writers make is that they talk to their readers the way they talk to fellow writers. And that’s not always effective. Now. This is one of those moments where it’s like, Do as I say, not as I do, because my readers happen to writers, the fact that I talk a lot about writing works, because that is who my readers are. But if I were writing romance novels, predominantly, if that was mainly my, my source of writing work, that it wouldn’t make sense for me to be only talking about the craft of writing and only talking about being stuck on, you know, chapter seven of the new novel or whatever. Gone are the days where blogging about your writing project is a sufficient way to connect with your readers. Maybe this worked back in 2008, or 2009, 2010, even were 10 years later. This is not it’s a different beast now. So you, you have to think about what it is that your readers want. Like when your readers come to connect with you as a person. They clearly they want something beyond what you offer in your book. They want to see that you’re an interesting human being they want to see what it’s like to be an author, but they don’t necessarily need to know how sausage is made. Like we don’t need all the nitty gritty details.
So it’s finding that balance. They want hints of like what’s coming up next. I mean, the authors that I see who do this really, really well, are ones who are really good at getting the readers like making the readers feel like they’re insiders, like they’re part of the special fan club. And that because they’re part of the special fan community, they get to be in on all the cool new stuff before everyone else does knows about it. And that’s incredibly effective because it makes your diehard reader so engaged and then they become really big advocates for your work. So thinking about like, not treating your readers the way you treat fellow writers and thinking about the readers distinctly. The other thing that I see is often people behave. The people do weird things when they start navigating the industry. Either they get like super casual, and it’s like dude be professional, or, like, you wouldn’t believe some stuff I’ve heard about and seen at conferences, or like, people get so uptight and so anxious and so nervous. It’s like, agents and editors are these crazy beings that I’m going to die. And it’s like, no, they’re humans. It’s it. But at the same time, like you need to treat it professionally. It’s also a business. And while it may be a very fun business, and we’re lucky enough to be doing work that we, I hope enjoy, if you don’t enjoy writing, then maybe you shouldn’t be doing it. So like, we’re lucky to be doing work, that’s fun, but it’s still work. And so we have to have that level of professionalism. So just being aware that there are those different types of community and you want to show up as the best version of you for that community. It’ll possibly be different. There will be nuanced differences between how you show up with your fellow writers how you show up to your readers and how you show up in the industry.
Sacha Black
Absolutely. And I think, you know, that is reflected in, across, you know, people in all different industries because we are not the same with our mother and father as we are with our children. It’s a you know, different a different voice even. And, you know, and again, you are different at work, and everybody has a work phone voice, like let’s be real.
Gabriela Pereira
I have a podcasting voice. Like when I like I realized that I do this, like every time I start a podcast, I’m like, hello. And they’re like, it’s like, even the intonation the same and I’m like, Whoa, I do that, but it’s what I do, so I’m not gonna mess with it.
Sacha Black
Yeah, exactly. When when I see the side off, you’ll hear my voice drops a little bit and I go into like flick, and I do it the same when I introduce the podcast as well, and I definitely you know more. What’s the word energetic, I think on the podcast because I do a lot of silly voices, but you know, and I probably don’t, but I’ve offered the podcast but it is that is, you just it’s a persona, isn’t it that that is who you are, when you when you go into that environment. And okay, so one of the questions
Gabriela Pereira
I actually wanted to add something to that too, because I think one of the things that sometimes writers worry about when it comes to marketing and presenting yourself is that idea that like, but I’ll be fake, like, it’s gonna it’s not going to be authentic. And I’m, we’re not talking about in authenticity here. We’re talking about selectively choosing different components of your authentic self to bring to the table in these different environments. And so it’s like the way I act with my kids is going to be just as authentic as the way I act when I’m hanging out or talking with my word nerds where my readers, but I might use different language. I might You know, have different tone of voice, it’s still authentically me. I’m just bringing different things to the table from that authentic personality.
Sacha Black
Absolutely. And I was, I think I was writing a chapter about how lots of people, you know, particularly in voice, get confused between author voice and character voice because because character voices are consistent in one book, but that doesn’t mean your author voice has to be the same in every single book or every single series, you know, you go and read a psychological thriller, and it is it’s clean, you know, the prose is sharp, it’s clean things are much. You know, they’re less flowery where you go and read an epic fantasy novel and you only have to look at the difference in the names to see how different it is, but it’s, it is the same. That doesn’t mean you know, just because of writer writes. With that clean voice in the thrillers and flowery voice in the in the epic fantasy that could be the same author, you know, it is still their voice. They are just using a different aspects of themselves.
Gabriela Pereira
And to add an even bigger wrinkle to that, when you have a third person narration, you don’t just have the author voice and the character voice you have the narrator voice. And sometimes the narrator might be the author’s authentic voice often in memoir that is the case. Although memoirs first person usually, but sometimes it’s not like think Lemony Snicket or something like that is not I there might be parts of the author in that narrators voice but it’s probably not 100% the author’s voice. So there’s, there’s a certain level of modulation. And when I talk about voice in the in DIY MFA, essentially, it’s the same ideas talking about what we’re talking about with community. There’s an essence that you have in your voice and your personality and your core persona, that is always going to be the same, that It’s you It’s like your DNA, but you can modulate it. You can emphasize certain things, you can highlight certain things and downplay other things. And that’s where the wiggle room comes in. My guess would be if you had that author who has the thriller versus the fantasy, there’s still going to be commonalities in that author’s voice. And you’ll identify things that make both books very much that authors body of work, but there’s a modulation there’s wiggle room. And my guess is that the fantasy that that author writes is probably not going to be as flowery or whatever, as some other authors fantasy, because that author’s voice is in this other in this one realm that won’t modulate that far.
Sacha Black
And if if listeners are interested in a real example of this, go and read Harry Potter and then read Robert Galbraith and you will see exactly what we are talking about. And okay, so the last bit of the penultimate question, I often hear from writers who might be more On the introvert side struggling to build a community, and they can’t find beta readers, they can’t find fellow writers. And they can’t find a trusted circle. So I wondered if you had any tips or tricks for writers and listeners to start building their community.
Gabriela Pereira
So we live in the digital age where it’s really easy to go online and find stuff. But the problem is that there is that element of being removed. So while I do think that online communities can be a great place to start, nothing beats in person. I’ve made most of my really good writer friends because I’ve met them in person. Most of them have become like, a lot of times it’s like we’re sort of writer friends online, and then we meet in person at a conference and then we’re besties. Like, that’s often how the progression works. So I would say like, get out of the house, and go out and connect with your birds of a feather. Some listeners might be going but there’s nothing near me like I don’t know where I would even go Well, there are a lot at least in the United States. It’s a lot of organizations like the international thriller writers or Mystery Writers of America a WP that don’t just have like the big honkin national conferences. And this can be kind of scary, especially if you’re sort of shy, where you know, there’s thousands of people it might be a little overwhelming, but they also have like local chapters where you can go and hang out at a local chapter meeting or at a smaller conference.
So looking for places like that, like I would say, start by looking in your backyard and see if there’s a local chapter of some writers organization, and if they are somewhere within, you know, an hour’s drive from where you are, and at the very least, even if you don’t go like all the time, like even if you don’t join the organization, like go once and see if you can make friends and from there, you can You know, once you’ve met a couple of people, there’s nothing preventing you from hanging out with them, just them. So like, what ended up happening for me was a lot of my writing friends, I met by either going to conferences or by taking a writing class, like an in person writing class. And then there were a couple people who I was like, Oh, I kind of like these people. So we stayed in touch. And then we stayed friends. And then we started meeting up after and like outside of writing class, and all of a sudden, we had a critique group and we had a group of writing friends. So yeah, it’s like the in person allows you to make those connections is like authentic, heartfelt connections, I think faster than if you try to do it online. It is possible to do online, but it is a lot harder. At DIY MFA. We do have a wonderful community, both in our more public community and then also in our courses, where people really do bond and they do connect with each other and make friends and they live in like, you know, opposite ends of the world. Like folks in Australia and folks in America, and They’re like, you know, and they still make friends and hang out. But it’s and then it’s all virtual. But it’s hard to do that it’s it’s a lot easier. I think if you go and you meet people in person.
Sacha Black
Absolutely. I, I have a mixture. I’ve mostly started online and then met in person. And then you know, you continue online. And I, one of the things I absolutely love about the internet is that we can meet people that are 5000 miles away, you know, it’s amazing. It is it is, I mean, what part of what part of the state’s event, I’m in New York City, which is a wonderful place to be if you’re in writing and publishing is a very expensive place to be. It is also my favorite place in the world. I love New York. So I am very jealous right now.
Gabriela Pereira
Yeah, I’m a New Yorker born and raised. You can take a girl out in the city, but it can’t take the city out of a girl.
Sacha Black
Yeah. I am very excited for the answer to this question. This is The Rebel Author Podcast. So, tell me about the time you unleash your inner rebel another time because I love the one you already gave us.
Gabriela Pereira
Oh, Lord, I’ve, I’ve done so many rebellious things. So like it’s sort of hard to pinpoint, I’ll share one that I shared actually with my newsletter recently. So in college, I decided to rebel by throwing the best non-alcoholic party that the campus had ever seen. And this was a big deal because I went to the small liberal arts college where literally the drinking scene was the entire social scene. It was kind of sad actually. So most of like the social dynamics involved like house parties with kegs and it was kind of gross and and I got this idea in my head that, like, what if we could throw a party? That was amazing that like people would line up at the door and be talking about 10 years later. But we don’t serve alcohol. Like what if? What’s keeping us from doing that, and don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a glass of wine here and there. But I wanted to prove that it was possible that it can be done. So I started by talking to, we got a party space, we decided to do it over homecoming, because you know, like, let’s choose the date where everyone wants to get wasted. And we’re going to make that the date that we’re going to do our amazing non alcoholic party. And then I convinced the dean’s office to give us money. They’ve never done that before for social events. But I was like, it’s non alcoholic, and it’s for a good cause. And so they’re like, how much do you want? I’m like, okay, it was crazy. Like, this is where I learned like sometimes you just have to ask nicely, and people say yes, it’s really weird.
And then it became like the strategy game it became this like mental chess game, where I started thinking like, okay, who can I get to help me for the least amount of money so that we can because we didn’t have a ton of money but we had enough that like if we really stretched it, we could throw a totally kick ass party. So I got a friend of mine who was a theater major and he did all the all of the theater to do the decorations. And she got an army of volunteers from all the theater students. I got a friend of mine because I played violin and I was in the jazz band. I got a friend of mine who was in the jazz band, he convinced a couple of his buddies to play to be like the jazz band and to play I got the the friend of mine who worked in the mailroom who hand delivered invitations to the entire campus all these crazy things I convinced the security office to like give us the security like the you know, because they have to have security guards on call to do that for free. The we got like catering instead of like like gross like chips and dip and whatever we got like actual like wine and cheese but not real wine cheese spread. And like we had a friend of mine who had worked as a bartender came up with all these really cool drinks that were non alcoholic but tasted really good. So became this like thing.
And then we needed manpower, we needed people to actually, man the event and like, you know, bartend even though there was an actual alcohol, greet people at the door, like I wanted this to be super classy. This was like black tie optional, we were going to like raise the stakes of what an event at our campus was going to be. And so I started thinking, like, where I’m having to find these people. And then I realized, like, I’m Catholic, and I went to church, and I was like a church and I’m like, look at all these nice Catholic kids. And then I like had friends who were part of the Christian club, and I’m looking at all those nice people who like wholesome fun. And then I was like, Well, if the Catholics and the Christians are doing it, we can get the Jewish kids on board and all the you know Islamic kids on board like we can get all these different, so like, every single religious group, like I hit them all up, and I was like, I just need a couple of people to volunteer. Here to help us set up and break down and like man the door and yada yada. So anyway, the end result we had the room that we had was the capacity of 500 people. The entire student body is 2000. And we had a line of 100 people waiting at the door because we maxed out capacity. So that meant more than a quarter of the campus showed up at this party. That was like my moment of rebellion victory was throwing a non alcoholic party that completely kicked ass.
Sacha Black
I love it. I love it also because I love a good party. But yeah, I’m so impressed. That is amazing. And, okay, so can you tell listeners where they can find out more about you your books, your courses, and all that jazz?
Gabriela Pereira
So it’s super easy DIYmfa.com. If you go there, you basically find it all. If you want to join our community. If you go to DIYMFA.com/Join that’ll like, you can sign up for our newsletter updates. And you’ll also get a starter kit. And that’s sort of how you can get into our community, which means like Facebook group and getting emails from me, and that’s how people usually get started. But yeah, if you just go to the website, you’ll find our podcasts there. You’ll find the link to the book there, you’ll find pretty much everything. They’re amazing.
Sacha Black
Well, thank you very much to everybody listening, and thank you to all of the supporters on Patreon. If you would like to get early access to all of the episodes, you can do so by visiting www.patreon.com/Sacha Black. I’m Sacha Black. You were listening to Gabriela Pereira, and this was The Rebel Author Podcast.
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Brilliant! I really need to get reading that Book!
It’s there on my shelf!!!
I think you’ll love it 😀
It’ll be my next non fiction read!
Great interview. It’s a topic I think many Indie writers ignore. A good book which some might find useful is “The Art of X-Ray Reading” by Roy Peter Clark. His book called “Writing Tools” is one of my favourite craft books on writing.
oooh I will be adding this to my amazon basket. Thank you for the recommendation 🙂