Let's get granular! How much can your literal language -- the individual words you use, the cadence of your sentences, a conlang, a poetic tradition -- help convey your worldbuilding? Sarah Beth Durst joins us to talk about the fine tool of wordcraft in your prose and dialogue, as well as the importance of white space on the page. She also reminds us that fantasy fiction is always better with talking cats.
Our Guest: Sarah Beth Durst is the award-winning author of over twenty fantasy books for kids, teens, and adults, including Spark, Drink Slay Love, and The Queens of Renthia series. She won an American Library Association Alex Award and a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award and has been a finalist for SFWA's Andre Norton Nebula Award three times.
Sarah was born in Northboro, Massachusetts, a small town that later became the setting for her debut novel. At the age of ten, she decided she wanted to be a writer. (Before that, she wanted to be Wonder Woman, except with real flying ability instead of an invisible jet. She also would have accepted a career as a unicorn princess.) And she began writing fantasy stories. She later attended Princeton University, where she spent four years studying English, writing about dragons, and wondering what the campus gargoyles would say if they could talk.
Sarah lives in Stony Brook, New York, with her husband, her children, and her ill-mannered cat.
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Transcript for Episode 56 (thank you, dear scribes!)
Episode 58: L’Etat, C’est… Quoi? ft. C.L. POLK
Episode 57: Ask a Necromancer ft. AMANDA DOWNUM
Episode 55: Epic GrimDarkPunk Romance
Episode 54: Cyberpunk Worldbuilding ft. PJ MANNEY
Episode 53: Worldbuilding 301
Episode 52: Pot4ri
Episode 51: Gender, Equality, & Gender Equality ft. E.J. BEATON
Episode 50: Playing in Somebody Else's Sandbox, ft. DELILAH DAWSON, TINI HOWARD, DAVID MACK, and MIKE CHEN
Episode 49: An Immodest Proposal
Episode 48: That Belongs in a Museum, ft. MARINA LOSTETTER
Episode 47: The Timey-Wimey Episode
Episode 46: Join in If You Know the Chorus, Ft. C. L. CLARK
Episode 45: Let’s Be Diplomatic
Episode 44: Old MacDonald Had a Dragon
Episode 43: Getting There is Half the Fun, ft. KATE ELLIOTT
Episode 42: Life, Worldbuilding, & Everything, ft. STINA LEICHT
Episode 41: Myths, Legends and Other Lies of History ft. Marie Brennan & Alyc Helms (M.A. Carrick)
Episode 40: The Sacred and the Profane, ft. K. B. WAGERS!
Episode 39: Episode 39: Three-pourri
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It is Free
Voice of Mushfik
Lit Society: Books and Drama
Ex Libris
The Turn of the Screw
The Count of Monte Cristo
Fresh Air
Myths and Legends