134. Top 6 Most Popular Episodes in 2024

"From planning your writing life to exploring tropes, storytelling, and world-building, these episodes showcase the diverse topics we've covered this past year to help you write positive futures."

In this episode of How To Write the Future, host Beth Barany shares clips from the “Top 6 Most Popular Episodes in 2024.” From delving into the how, when, and why to use tropes with USA Today Bestselling author Jennifer Hilt, to discussing the concept of Feminine Sovereignty with author Maggie Ostara, to Beth sharing insights into how to plan your writing life, what she loves about planning, and her philosophy around it, plus more, get inspired and get writing in 2025. Enjoy this excerpts!

RESOURCES

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• SHOW PRODUCTION BY Beth Barany
• SHOW CO-PRODUCTION + NOTES by Kerry-Ann McDade

c. 2025 BETH BARANY

https://bethbarany.com/

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Transcript

134. Top 6 Most Popular Episodes in 2024

[00:00] Introduction: The Writing Process

Beth Barany: Beth Barany here for How to Write The Future Podcast. I'm a science fiction, novelist and creativity coach for writers. If this is your first time here, welcome. I'm excited to share with you our top six most popular episodes from 2024, from planning your writing life to exploring tropes, storytelling, and world-building. These six episodes showcase the diverse topics we've covered this past year to help you write positive futures. 

So let's dive into what resonated most with our listeners this year. Enjoy.

[00:35] Clip from 78. How To Plan Your Writing Life

Beth Barany: This episode is all about planning. Not everybody likes to plan. I totally get it. And if you are one of those people who really prefers to be spontaneous, Awesome. There's so much power in that. I love being spontaneous and I actually really love to plan. 

And when I don't have things planned out, I actually feel ungrounded. I feel out of control. I feel. Like I'm missing something. And I also know what it's like to feel ungrounded and out of control and like I'm missing something. I feel like I spend half of my time, like that. And when I plan. I feel so much better. 

[01:17] My Philosophy about Planning

Beth Barany: A little bit about my philosophy of planning and then a few tips to offer you if you want some tips on planning as a writer, as a creative. And that's where I'm coming from.

I have my hat, my writing teacher hat on my right creativity coach hat on, and I'm an NLP practitioner, a certified NLP practitioner. And I have that hat on as well. 

I've been using planning tools for a really long time of various kinds, both, uh, in my business life and in my personal life. And I really remember using, uh, plans. I called them game plans when I was 17 in high school, senior year in high school, up in Santa Rosa, California, and I wanted to ace all my classes. Which I did. 

And I did that. Because I set up game plans. That's what I called them then. And that was the first time I really remember being very planning oriented.

I love planning so much. I even have a book for fiction writers called Plan Your novel, Like a Pro that I co-wrote with my husband Ezra Barany. Go check that out if you want tips on planning your novel. 

[02:30] What I Love About Planning

Beth Barany: So, what I love about planning.

Planning is like- how are we going to get from San Francisco to New York? 

Well, you could make that decision every day of the trip, if you're driving. 

Or you could take some time and decide, oh, I want to take the Northern route across the United States. 

Or I want to take the Southern route or the middle of the route, middle of the country. Or no, I don't want to drive. I want to fly or no, like my husband did over Thanksgiving recently.

He's like, let's take a train. So he took a train. I did not. I flew across the country. He took a train with his mother and they had a great time. Took them three days. 

So my point is when you think about where you want to go, and you think about how you want to get there. And you spend some time on those two things. That's planning.

[03:20] Clip from 94. Tropes for Fiction Writing with Jennifer Hilt

Beth Barany: So for example, I don't know, I'm in revisions right now and my protagonist is in a completely new environment. 

[03:30] Meeting New Characters

Beth Barany: She's meeting all these people. And so far I'm on chapter three and she's met, let's see, one, two, three, four, five people. We've got five new named people that are in addition to her. And so far they feel pretty essential. 

[03:45] Balancing Character Roles

Beth Barany: Yes, at some point, I can hear my critique partners in my head.

They're like, why don't you just conflate some of them, and so when you say tropes, you're like, what if the best friend becomes the betrayer or ff the helper. The 

JENNIFER HILT: helper 

[03:59] Understanding Tropes and Archetypes

Beth Barany: Character, also is a threshold guardian type character, so that's an archetype. So this also, yeah, 

JENNIFER HILT: I find it's helpful to dump them into the same pot, so to speak, with archetypes, because then it's a big, area to draw out when I'm working on a story.

I don't generally make a big distinction about, Oh, that's an archetype. That's a trope. because mostly people talk about tropes as even if they are an archetype, people are more familiar with the word tropes. 

[04:28] Practical Use of Tropes in Storytelling

JENNIFER HILT: And I think the industry uses them so much and we hear them about, for marketing purposes and all this, but I don't worry about, oh no, I can't use that.

That's an archetype versus a trope. I wouldn't think anybody needs to lose me sleep over that. They're all just storytelling tools. 

[04:41] Clip from 97. Storytelling to Share Complex Ideas with Maggie Ostara (part 1)

Beth Barany: How does your book, Feminine Sovereignty-- what can it offer, what does it offer to people who are working on their stories or work on their novels, their fiction that is maybe about the future, maybe about another world, like a fantastical setting.

Yeah. Can you connect how your book connects to what we're working on? Storytellers. 

Yeah. So in terms of writing the future--

I just want to say Beth and I really reconnected in a class called Thrutopia, which was offered by Manda Scott, who wrote one of the forewords for my book and has been a mentor of mine for a few years now. And I just love her. 

And so by going through that genre is about how do we get from where we are now to the culture and the society that we would be delighted to leave to future generations. And so it stimulated even more for me, the question about how are we getting to the future that we would be proud to leave when we go, right?

How do we get there? What does that entail? 

[05:46] The Cool Thing About Thrutopia

Beth Barany: And the cool thing about Thrutopia is it's there's many things, but one is it's not about writing a utopia. It's really much based in what is going on in our lives now and what are the next steps that we need to do. And originally it was conceived as a fiction genre, fiction or, the short stories or poetry or film or whatever, very much narrative, focused on narrative.

And one of the things that I learned and that was really important to me in writing my book. 

[06:12] Clip from 99. World Building with Andrew Zimba

ANDREW ZIMBA: You're gonna figure it out. You probably know the least amount about the world at the beginning. I think that's fair to say. And you continually are growing and expanding it. I think it's being comfortable, leaning into those things. 

[06:25] Advice for Aspiring Writers

ANDREW ZIMBA: But if I had advice for people, I would say, how do you want to look at this.

And part of it is what do you show the reader. Where's the camera located? Where's the lighting? But also what's that track that's running behind the scenes where you as an author know this is what's actually going on. Here's what the characters know, and then, okay, here's what I'm gonna tell the reader. How much continuity you want with that, versus, I'm okay if this is floating out there. That doesn't bother me.

That's an individual choice as well. 

Beth Barany: Yeah, absolutely. 

[06:55] Understanding Reader Perception

Beth Barany: I'll just speak from a working writer's perspective. That people are- They crave things that are grounded, even while they love the fantastical, whether it's in a sci-fi, or fantasy world of all kinds,Readers and viewers are super savvy. Especially the younger generation, like I, I didn't grow up with the internet, but I notice in people, 20, 30 years younger,when they're in their twenties, they have viewed and watched so much more media than I did at that age. Yeah. Because access. So just speaking from someone who didn't have that when I was growing up writers have to be aware that their readers are going to be able to see deeper into stories today than maybe before. Readers tend to be a bit more sophisticated and so we need to make world building choices, if we want, make world building choices in relation to that level of knowledge that our readers have.

Yeah. 

[07:50] World Building Techniques

Beth Barany: and just make decisions, Some people think my fantasy world is fantasy light because I'm not writing like Tolkien, but then other people say, wow, it felt so real because I'm writing from my character's lived experiences. I'm not writing encyclopedic entries. So I always bring that up.

[08:08] Character-Centric World Building

Beth Barany: In terms of world building, we don't have to know the entire world. We just need to understand how our characters interact and view the world. And then we can do some authorial things like you're saying, You can know more about your world than your character does and that's super fun.

[08:22] Clip from 92. Adam Fleming - Creative Writing and AI

Beth Barany: So you also, have this great question here, which is: what does the process of writing a book from scratch do for you? And you touched on this, so we're contrasting that with AI and you talked about the discovery, or I guess that was my word, but also you're a pantser, so you must really trust yourself. Trust the process. Trust that you'll figure it out. Yeah. What is that like for you? 

[08:48] Challenges in Writing Series

ADAM FLEMING: Yeah, that's so interesting because like in the fifth book of the Satchel Pong series, I had to work really hard to pull together the last four or five chapters. In the sixth book of the of the Stetson Jeff adventures, Stetson Jeff is from Texas. It was obvious that it had to end in Texas. And it just fell together. So I guess the answer is, yeah, I got lucky one time at the end of a six book series. At the end of the five book series, And those are my two longest series. whether it's a standalone novel. But when it's a series, like you've got a lot invested, especially if you've been releasing them one at a time and readers are following along and they're like, how's come we never got any, final book from George R. R. Martin?

Maybe he never figured out how to end it. I don't know. 

[09:37] Trusting the Process

ADAM FLEMING: Maybe he was like, stuck, but you do have to trust yourself that you'll either- it'll fall into place, or you'll be willing to do the work to, satisfy your audience and yourself that this is wrapped up, let's say adequately, because maybe not every series wraps up as well as the next.

You had to do a lot of work, did that mean you had to do a lot of versions to make it work? You had to try a lot of different things to find the right thing?

Man, I don't really remember. I remember just having to do a lot of thinking about it, like where do I want to leave this? And, who should die and who should not? The world is burning, somebody's gonna die. I don't think of myself as a real dark, dystopian writer.

Yeah. But there is an aspect of like, when the world is ending, some people aren't gonna make it out and that makes it interesting. Mm-Hmm. If everybody was fine at the end, it'd probably be a little bit ridiculous. 

Beth Barany: Yeah, you set it up to be a dystopia. So right.

Domebody has to die. 

ADAM FLEMING: But how, and, and where, when, and. Doing what? 

Beth Barany: Yeah. What's interesting? What's intriguing? What keeps your interest? What do you think the readers will be really attracted to, or like it pulls at their heartstrings?

[10:50] Character Development and Story Arcs

ADAM FLEMING: And because I'm a pantser, I'm constantly including new characters, some of whom develop later in a third book or fourth book into somebody really important and others never show up again. And which is like a red herring in a mystery, I think. and then sometimes But when you've got a five book series and you've been folding into the dough, like three or four new main characters every book, you get into the fifth one. Now you've got like, oh, probably 15 or 20 characters that had a significant enough storyline that they needed to be wrapped up.

[00:11:23] Clip from 84. Why do we procrastinate on our writing?

Beth Barany: We all have priorities in any given moment and any given moment, something can feel more important than our writing.

We have a lot of administrative duties to perform in our life, just the day-to-day living-- the dishes, the obligations, and just doing things that feel important to the infrastructure. of being a human being.

Yes. So, I want to say that each person is different. And something that I have seen across the board with all the writers I've worked with and I've worked with hundreds of writers is that the people who get the writing done on a regular basis, prioritize the writing. 

[00:12:01] Finding Your Prime Writing Time

Beth Barany: Now that doesn't mean you have to put your writing first thing in the morning. Some people advocate that. Wake up and when you're barely awake, start writing. in your journal. and just take what you had from dreamland and put it into writing. I'm not actually an advocate for that. 

I'm not awake first thing in the morning, if that is you though, go for it. 

[00:12:22] Adapting Writing Schedules to Life's Obligations

Beth Barany: I believe that each person has a time of day where their energy is in a natural flow state where, if you're following your own rhythm and your own schedule, this is where you naturally put the things you love the most, if you didn't have to be doing anything on anyone else's schedule, or other obligations and I totally get it. 

We all have obligations and some more than others. 

So what I see people do who have children and I don't have children, so I didn't have to face this, but I thought about it because at one point I thought I might have children-- is I watched the women who are writers arrange their lives. with support. They have support. And they make sure that their prime time for writing is set aside for writing. 

So what does that look like? 

Some writers love writing at night. Some writers love writing. First thing in the morning. Some writers like myself-- I like writing in the middle of the day right after lunch. So I had to learn how to block off time. So that I could now have my lunch, feel that leisure time that I really love. And take the next hour after I've eaten lunch to work on my writing. So that has just grown over the years and even on my calendar, it says lunch and write.

[00:13:46] Personal Experience: Prioritizing Writing

Beth Barany: So, how did I get here?

I realized that-- a few things.

One-- my most important client was me. So I run a business, helping writers, and I was putting everybody else's needs first. The business needs, the client needs-- all of that. And I was miserable. I was so unhappy and like here I am running a business, helping writers and I'm not even doing my writing.

What's going on. So upset. And this would happen periodically, especially in the first few years of my business. 

And I felt so pressured to, to make money and to get things moving. And, and yet I was suffering deep inside my soul because I wasn't working on my creative work regularly I would go through these waves where I was like, oh, I would remember that writing is so important to me. And then I would do it. But I'd always feel like I was taking away from the business. 

So it felt like my business and my creative work were fighting. fighting for dominance. Me, no me. 

[00:14:44] The Importance of Prime Writing Time

Beth Barany: Over time I realized I have to, number one, find the prime time for writing. 

[00:14:48] That's a Wrap

Beth Barany: That's it for this week, everyone Let me know what was your favorite episode of 2024. I would love to know. Write long and prosper.