The State of Storytelling with Special Guest Michael Aspen

The State of Storytelling with Special Guest Michael Aspen

Matt: [00:00:00] Welcome everybody to the Write Out Loud Podcast. Podcast where we are talking about all things related to storytelling, writing and being an author of any type that you want. It doesn't have to be, you don't have to pigeonhole yourself. You don't have to put yourself in a little, box that I only write poems, or I only write short stories.

You can write whatever you want. Okay. It's fine. But anyway, I digress. Here we have the fabulous, the amazing, the wonderful.

Christina: Christina.

Matt: Christina, Back with me again. Feels so good, doesn't it?

Christina: not, oh, yes, good.

Matt: And I believe that the second also wanted to take a moment to recognize we have a very special guest with us today. Michael Aspen. Michael, hello.

Michael Aspen: I have to, I have to put my plug in here to say that Christina, being around Christina is like being around a warm blanket for your soul.

Christina: that's [00:01:00] sweet.

Matt: That is absolutely true.

Christina: Matt calls me his ray of sunshine.

Matt: Yep. do.Warm blanket, 

Christina: that's pretty good!'s.

Matt: Yeah. So, Facebook Messenger, you have the ability to rename somebody. I. Chat and I have my little chat with Christina and I have renamed her Amazing Ray of Light and love. So that is her name in that

Michael Aspen: Oh, very nice. Very, very nice.

Christina: I, I have various names.

Michael Aspen: She goes by many names Matt. Many names.

Matt: Yes she does. And Michael tell us a little bit about yourself.

Michael Aspen: Oh, absolutely. So, first and foremost is I'm a writer. I write story and I like to read story and I like to watch story and I'm really interested in story and how story works. So that I guess, is the reason why I'm here. Second of all, I am on a podcast of my own. So my real name is not actually Michael Aspen, for those of you who want to do a little [00:02:00] internet sleuthing.

But because of the nature of the podcast we do called the Writing Guys, you can find it on basically anywhere you do podcasts writing, guys. Net is also our website, little plug for the show there. It can get a little raunchy. So I don't want my real life friends and family finding me and listening to that and then coming to me and saying, why are you talking about how the penis feels?

Hopefully that isn't gonna get us demonetized on any platforms you guys are on. And so yeah. So the point of the show is if you have a question and you're writing a guy and you wanna know, man, what does a guy think? We can give you the answer and we will answer anything. So you can ask us anything and we'll answer it.

So yeah, check us out. We'd love to have you.

Christina: Yeah.

Matt: awesome. Well, thanks for being a guest today. For sure.

Michael Aspen: Well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Christina: preferably go to the Writing Guys podcast than this actually, believe it or not, just happened today on Taryn Fisher's stories. She had all of these [00:03:00] highlights from, there's an account called Men Writing Women, and it's these just terrible. Ways of writing women that just are atrocious, so

Michael Aspen: you know, and the, I guarantee you that there was a significant amount of attention paid to the woman's breasts, right? I don't think women are as aware of breasts as men are about when they're writing a woman.

Christina: believe it or not, it was something about a woman has to wait a few seconds to pee in the bathroom and men are just, I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. The yes, it was, was, like I said, it was,

Michael Aspen: I have never heard of a, never heard of a shy bladder on a woman, I can tell you standing in a urinal with a group of guys in the room, I've had shy bladder. That's, that's happened to me.

Matt: yes, it has. Can confirm not. That Michael has had it. I have had [00:04:00] it. I'll

Michael Aspen: Wait a minute.

Christina: this where I'm supposed say I've had it too?

Matt: no, I just wanted clarify. It was, it was a, a vague statement, so I wanted to, I wanted to clarify. Alright, very good. 

Michael Aspen: there's another, we'll probably do that as a topic on writing guys. get shy bladder? Yes, we do.

Matt: yes,

Christina: You I will send you the links to or maybe I'll take screenshots of her stories or something. But yeah, she had like five or six of her stories that were devoted to these men writing women, and they were just equally atrocious. Not even, like you said, you would think that it would be something more provocative.

But no, no, these were like, seriously, like where did, where did this stuff come from? Yeah,

Matt: So there

Michael Aspen: just added, do men get a shy bladder to our question list for our show? Seriously, I just added it to the list.

Matt: That's [00:05:00] perfect. That's perfect. Well, I will say that today's episode, we are not focused on shy bladders, but Writing Guys podcast will have that in a future to be determined. I. Episode perhaps. But today we're gonna talk a little bit about just the state of writing, the state of storytelling, the state of what's out there, right?

From a consumer's perspective. And by that I mean people who just read, people who watch shows, people who enjoy that type of media and content. And we wanted to have a little bit of a discussion around really what is that right now? What, what is the state that? So Christina, I know. Prior to this, you and I were talking a little bit about that and, we brought Michael in because we wanted to really have a, a deeper conversation, but tell us kind of what your thoughts were on it.

Christina: Well, it actually stems from a conversation you and I were having about, what books are we gonna talk about, what you know, interests and things like that. And I went from zero to Mind, [00:06:00] totally boggled because I was trying to think of books that. Are really good. That would be really good for discussion.

That would be like worthy of this podcast. And I was like, nothing was coming me. And I got to thinking when was the last time I read a really, really good book? And it's not that I don't read good books, I read a lot of stuff from my clients. Improving their work, improving their writing.

I consider them really good, but I also am not here to, feature all of my. Writers because they write really good. So I started thinking about when the last time I read a book for Pleasure that was really, really good. And it goes all the way back to untamed by Glennon Doyle. Colleen Hoover is having her second heyday, but I read those books, back when they [00:07:00] first came out.

I was finding all of these books that were not. Released in the last couple of years. Like I really got to thinking when was the last time. Now that's not to say that I'm not enjoying the reading, that I'm not finding books that are okay but. I have very high standards. I don't know if that's from my editorial years or whether that's just the state of the industry right now.

And it really kind of spiraled into, you've got self-publishing out there, that there is no, I don't wanna call it a gatekeeper, New York, they call 'em gatekeepers, if you're published by New York. It offers some sort of quality or expectation of quality. But you've got a lot of people that are self-publishing that [00:08:00] anybody can self-publish.

So plus from my knowledge now, I haven't personally come across any, but I am talking to a lot of readers. Other industry members, other authors that are saying the market is totally flooding with AI and it's not quality. What is the state of the industry right now? So it really started me thinking on, you know what quality books are out there, and I know there have to be some.

I'm just not finding 'em. I'm not connecting them. Maybe it's because I'm not, hanging out with a book club and figuring out what are the best things out there to read right now. But that's where I'm at.

Matt: Sure. Michael, what? What are your thoughts on that?

Michael Aspen: I, I guess I tend to be I think I'm less optimistic than Christina. So I too [00:09:00] am a story snob. I don't wanna watch or read Brain, brain dead type stuff. But. Society as a whole is pretty accepting of it. And to prove that point, I would like to point to the rise of reality television and its dominance on television stations like Discovery and History Channel and various other streaming services now that those shows were generated from.

 Reality TV is the, is the lowest of the low. They will say the same thing 20 times in an episode with almost exactly the same phrasing. And you can tell that a lot of those scenes were scripted, meaning that there literally was somebody who wrote that times

Christina: Yes.

Michael Aspen: and this person's reading from the script.

So. I think that, I think there's definitely two segments mini, a minimum of two segments to the market. There are, and, and I will watch a little bit of lower class tv. I'm [00:10:00] currently watching burn notice. I'm just rewatching I kind of ran outta stuff to

Matt: a good show.

Christina: Yeah.

Michael Aspen: And it, it's pretty good, but it has a little bit of a thinness to the characters and a high repetition to the plot.

You always know there's gonna be somebody that's the client and they're gonna be the one that they help. While they're trying to figure out what the big overarching story arc is for the season, the structure becomes pretty obvious once you've watched a season or two. And that gets, that gets a little tedious when you're on season four.

It's like, okay, all right. can we, can we some growth here? I get it. He wants to be. He wants to quit being a burn spy and wants to be a reset up spy in the CIA, but, but even still, I would rather watch that than some of the other television that's out there pretty low brow.

Matt: Mm-Hmm

Michael Aspen: Um, so, but I think there's two distinct audiences and, and I think right now the market has been pandering to that lower common denominator.

Matt: mm-Hmm.

Michael Aspen: I too struggle to find books that I enjoy reading. I too struggle to find [00:11:00] television shows that I enjoy watching. I too struggle to find movies that I enjoy watching. This might, this might offend Matt. I hate to say this on this podcast being my inaugural, I'll never get invited back after this, but I am.

I am bored with Marvel. Movies. I'm just bored with 'em. And after the first Avengers movie where it took 'em, 20 minutes of fighting to finally have Thor bring down the lightning, I'm like, oh, good. They learned, they know that Thor needs to bring the lightning when all these aliens are invading from outer space and they're not using close air support to, to, attack them.

Okay, fine, fine. Good deal. Next Avengers movie, it takes him 20 minutes of fighting before Thor brings. And I'm like, know that Thor should bring the lightning, right? This is like. Why we waiting? And so I'm bored with it. I feel this, I'm feeling that repetition again, and it's boring me.

So, but that, man, those movies have made how much money? Billions Billions of dollars. And, and they're, I mean, and overall the production quality is really good. The [00:12:00] script writing is really good. The story arcs are really good. The characters are really good. So I'm not trying to say they're not well done.

But they've gone through so much of their story now that it's like, okay, all right, all right, come on, let's move on. Let's do something different now. So I, so when I look at the three segments that you're gonna find, story, movies, TV, and, and reading the area that I think is being the most creative and the most exploratory and the most original is television.

I have seen more amazing work come out in TV in the past five years than I've seen in like the, my previous 20, but to, to Christina's point just a minute ago book writing has become, there's such a low bar to enter. Anybody can write a steaming pile of pros and dump it out there and you flood the market.

So when you type in a keyword search, like you wanna get a cozy mystery. You've gotta, you've gotta mine through hundreds of books before you find a good one you're, and the samples don't always do it justice. You don't let a sample from Kindle

Christina: That's [00:13:00] where. We are missing a piece of the puzzle, which is the reader. The reader used to have book blogs out there. I mean, that's a way that I used to find. What the next best read is. But now book blogs are kind of on the downturn and it's, book Tok, and not that I haven't seen, some of my favorites, again, Colleen Hoover has a second coming because of book Tok, so people are finding her stuff, and hers is always quality.

I, I don't know that I've read one of hers that . I've been disappointed in. So she is, again, very welcome. Having this resurgence and, and everything. I would agree with you, Michael, that right now where I am finding the best stories are TV and it's, it's dual purposes.

TV right now is either, rebooting old [00:14:00] stories, that's probably not where they're excelling. But they're also really taking a lot of books, a lot of good series that are out there. And, doing those very well. I think they have learned since the Harry Potter and Twilight Days that if you please the reader.

Then, you're gonna have a successful series. So I think they're a little more conscious. But there's one other layer to that too is that I have been finding things, I'm a huge fan of a Netflix series called The oa, which is Britt Marling and Zal, and I'm not gonna say his last name 'cause I'm gonna slaughter it.

 But they did the OA and they've got a new series coming out on FX slash Hulu in November. The name of that is escaping me right now. I think it's a murder at the end of the world. But I'm really excited for [00:15:00] that because these are actually new, unique stories and I think that's my issue and that's probably your issue with Marvel these stories, because, when they first started coming out, they were new and introducing new, new audiences to these characters.

But after you've had, the whole first phase it's. It's kind of been there, done that. Although I will say Wanda Visions on Disney Plus was beyond. Expectations, I mean, just beyond. It's too bad they wrote themselves into a corner and that's, just a one-off. I'm excited to see what Loki is gonna do.

I was a little worried. He is my favorite, of the marvel. Yeah. So I'm excited for season two for that. But yeah, I'm, I, I, I'm, I really do wish I could find. [00:16:00] More books. I'm not as, as Again, it's, I don't know where to go to discover the good stuff.

Michael Aspen: you know, and I've got, I've got a couple of thoughts on that too. So. Movies. Movies are, well, this is, this is changing now because of Covid and the movie theaters really struggling during that time. But movies, traditionally, they were opening wide release in a limited number of theaters and the limited number of release dates.

You couldn't go release in a theater because you know the number of screens they had and the number of weekends in a year. You had a very small schedule that you could release movies in. So movie theater, or I'm sorry, movie production companies were. One of the reasons why Marvel became such a huge juggernaut is because it made money and there was a lot of IP that they could turn around and turn into a movie that they knew would make money.

So they, they just dedicated a huge portion of the release cycle to Marvel movies because. [00:17:00] They knew it made money. So that's, that kind is filtering out new creative content at the movie scale. Right. Well, let's, let's go down to the book scale. I think it's a different problem. We have more distribution channels available to us now than ever before, but what I think we've lost is the humanity.

So when I used to back in, I'm old enough that I remember going to the mall and there were actually stores in the mall instead of all these blank, gates pulled down over the open are no longer there. So, and there were people in the mall and you had to, like dodge you were walking around.

And there was stores in the mall that sold books, like Books A Million and Borders. And you could walk in and you could see books that were prominently displayed by staff, and the books that were in the stores were chosen by somebody who read a book. And it was that human touch of. Somebody read it and they loved it so much that they're like, this has to get on shelves people can [00:18:00] buy the book and there is no hu, there is no algorithm that Amazon can provide replace that personal touch.

So. I think that there were in like the nineties and early two thousands, I think there were probably a lot of people that were writing substandard fiction, but it was just so much harder to get it in front of everybody. Right. And there were still outlets where a human or two or 10 or 20 were involved with putting forth selections to you to say.

These are books that you might wanna look at because we loved them and we read 'em and we've kind of filtered out the the crap for you. There isn't that on Amazon. There is no human touch. all a machine saying other people have bought like what you bought and maybe you'll like it. so that leaves the.

That leaves the middle, which is the tv. And TV has had two major factors I think that have really helped open it up. Number one, the [00:19:00] rise of streaming. All these streaming services showed up and they see dollar signs where like if we get subscribers, we're gonna get money, much money, and we don't have to share it with anybody else because we're not having to split off a piece to pay for.

The cable, the cable carrier, right? The cable's not giving us a slice of all the money they take in. We're getting all the money we get to keep it all. And so they, and they had these huge time slots to fill, so they're like, wow, let's go out and let's hire really creative people to make really great cornerstone shows that will draw people to our platform where they can start paying for us.

And then conveniently, we hope they'll forget that they have a subscription with us they'll keep paying us forever. Right? And so we we're kind of at this. This tail end of this streaming boom where we've had all these streaming services show up. First it was just Netflix. Now you got Hulu and Netflix and the and, and, well, I'm not even remember 'em all, paramount Plus [00:20:00] and so on and so forth on Down the Line.

And they're trying to draw you in with these shows that are record breaking shows. They're amazing, powerful stories that are written well. They got really good high production quality. But I don't know how much longer that's gonna last. Sooner or later they're gonna run out of market share to grow and then they're gonna look at and say, why are we spending all this money on these high production quality shows when we can reduce the costs and keep the subscribers?

And that's what I worry is gonna end up happening with TV in the next five or 10 years. So do you find good story right now? Streaming has allowed for TV to be a great place to find great story.

Matt: Yeah, I, I do think we're gonna continue to see that happen though with like the Netflixes, the Apple TV pluses, the Paramount pluses, right? Because they have to differentiate themselves. So it used to be a thing where they said, okay, fine. If you wanted to have a successful streaming service, you better go out and accumulate all of this ip.

I. bring in subscribers. And they very quickly realized, well sure we need some of that in some cases, but we also need to generate our own [00:21:00] original content. That gives people a reason to say, I need to have that service because I can't watch that show anywhere else. Right. And I do think to some degree, that is gonna continue, and I think that's part of why we see a lot of the quality that we see come out of those streaming services versus books where again, it goes back to your comment, both your comments about the lack of like a gatekeeper.

Michael Aspen: Yeah.

Matt: For book, for written content. There are blogs, websites, everybody's writing something out there, and there isn't a whole lot of just moderating the content and making sure that the content is high quality. I.

Christina: So what's interesting about the whole gatekeeper idea, and if we're looking at the self-publishing platforms, so Amazon, apple all of the other ones that you can self-publish on. Eventually quality does win out, but it's on the back end that it gets filtered through. So what I mean by that is [00:22:00] you can put the piece of crap out there and it can sell initially, but eventually people are gonna stop buying it.

The reviews are gonna, two and three stars and all of that kind of stuff. But it's almost too long. At some point I think. People are afraid to try new authors on those platforms because it's new. And if I haven't gotten this name from another recommendation on that, another reader, a bestseller list or something of that nature, then you know, it becomes again, how do you find new authors?

How do you find. The good quality stuff. It, it's, it's, it's an interesting question because on one hand, self-publishing has really opened doors and there have been some really great forward movement in storytelling. Great storytelling. When you guys were talking about the Dreamers, that's where some of these [00:23:00] innovative, really unique stories.

Came first because network television was not willing to give this stuff a shot. New York is not willing to give some of this stuff a shot because it's not proven. New York is looking for, someone that has a social media following someone that has, already proven sales to come over.

So there are very few new authors that they're willing to take on where in the past. New York has had, its entry level authors, mid-list, and then the top tier. So that's, again, it's, it's, it's great on one hand, but on the other, you do have to filter through some muck.

Matt: I think as a consumer of Of books, right? Or a consumer of the written word. I think part of that Covid has done a number on that [00:24:00] audience or has done a number on that. Population of people. And I mean that in the sense that when you, when we were, everybody was at home, they had all kinds of time to do things.

They learned new skills, they did new hobbies, they did all this stuff, right? Everybody had this thing. And there was almost a little bit of like injecting A-D-A-D-H-D to everybody because everybody's trying all these different things to keep themselves occupied and not, not going insane. And then we started to kind of get back to quote unquote normal.

And everybody now is afraid to take that chance because even you said it. If I commit to a book, it's gonna take me eight to 10 hours to maybe read through that entire book. Do I wanna spend what little time I have, when I'm not going to when I'm not exercising, when I'm not making dinner, when I'm not doing the things I have to do, do I want to really commit that time to something that I don't know is gonna be any good?

Right? I do think that Covid has, has changed fundamentally the way that we allow ourselves to sort of, budget out our attention span.

Michael Aspen: The, another, another [00:25:00] point there you're talking about the muck, Christina. So are you familiar with the concept of a barrier to entry when it comes to business? Have you heard of that term? I.

Christina: No.

Michael Aspen: So, uh, the investor, Warren Buffet talks about choosing companies that he wants to invest in, and one of the things that he chooses a company on is what he calls the moat, which is the difficulty it would be for another company to replicate the product or service that the company he's investing in.

Can do. So he gives, he likes to give the example of Coca-Cola. Right. Nobody's been able to dethrone Coca-Cola because nobody can replicate that particular formula. Exactly. There's some that are pretty close, Pepsi's pretty close. And those two have been battling it out since I was before I was born.

Right, but what,

Matt: better, some would say.

Michael Aspen: yeah. Yeah, but, well, no, that's fine. That's a personal opinion, the point being that. You have only room in that business for two competitors. There really isn't room for three or four. [00:26:00] So if you're trying to come in and you're trying to create a new carbonated cola car, cola flavored beverage, and you're trying to beat Coke and Pepsi, I.

You are gonna have a really long, hard road. They've got deep pockets, they've got well-established brands globally. They've got very loyal fans. There are people like me that like Coca-Cola, and then there are the fools that like Pepsi. And then there. And you get the idea, there's this high barrier. You, you have to get over a lot to get people to even try your stuff.

And then if they do, if they don't like it on the first sip, you've lost them. Right? Well, in the writing world we have the opposite issue. There's a really, a really low barrier to entry. Anybody who has a keyboard and a little bit of time, and an internet connection, which almost everybody does in, in the United States at least.

You can write a book. You don't, I mean, you don't even need to buy writing software. [00:27:00] You don't need to do, you don't need to buy anything. You can just write it out in Google Drive and it costs you nothing, right? Just sign up for a Gmail account and then sign up for a free account with Amazon and you're published.

The, the barrier to entry is so low for writing that it increases the muck. And I do wonder if part of the reason why we struggle to find books is not because the amount of quality stuff has dropped, but because the muck has risen so high. There's just so much of it.

Matt: Yeah, 

Christina: way of, of pointing it out. Yeah.

Matt: like the signal to noise ratio.

Michael Aspen: Yeah.

Matt: There's so much noise out there and not a lot of signal getting through from a writing

Michael Aspen: I, I think the number of people that can, and the number of people that want to go through and refining their craft and get better, and this is what I aspire to do. I look at the authors that inspired me from the 1990s and the early two thousands, and even back into the 1980s when I was young. I read their books [00:28:00] and I, I try to emulate what they did when they told a story and.

I Don't think that quality writing really changes that much decade over decade. It might over centuries, right? You go back and you read Herman Melville, it's like, oh my God.

Christina: Yeah. Yeah. No

Michael Aspen: enough about, enough the oil, the, the the whale oil industry. Buddy. Let's move on to, the actual ship in the water in the, in the whale that you're fighting.

Come on, let's go. So. But anyway, back to the point. So decade, over decade, I don't think you see a huge fluctuation. You can get a, you can make a little bit more up to date and a little bit more streamlined maybe, and stuff like that, but high quality writing is high quality writing, and it's, it's pretty timeless.

I mean, look at Jane Austen and, and you. I think that if you aspire for that and you put in the time and you get with a story editor and you get with a, and you go through and you go through the. I'm going to write a draft, and then I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna write it and be better, and then I'm gonna write my next [00:29:00] book and I'm gonna write it better than the one I wrote before and keep doing that.

I don't know how many people do that that are self-publishers. And I think the ones that do rise to the top, it's just, gonna ever have a X percentage that do that, but the percentage of people that are just pumping out garbage is growing

Christina: what, what you said right there is actually something that I have seen before. Self-published, became a thing back with, New York. What I noticed back then was if the writers, writing is not growing with their audience because we as human beings grow and mature and learn, and our tastes therefore grow.

And I'm, this isn't necessarily. tAlking about quality, I'm just talking about growth. And so if you're not growing as a writer, period. Then [00:30:00] your audience is eventually gonna grow out of you, and then you're gonna have to wait for whoever's growing into you, to read you. And this is a topic for another time.

'cause we're not gonna be able to, touch on this. But something that you said earlier Michael in specifics to television in that, they, the reality TV versus, scripted, good juicy stories. I would actually say in writing and specifically in books.

One thing that I talk to my clients about quite a bit is the idea that there are surface readers. There are readers that are looking for more depth and those writers who can hit both audiences. So satisfy the people that are just looking for, five hours of fun. Take me away from, this, this awful, world we're living in.

And then also hit the readers that are [00:31:00] looking for depth, that are looking for clues and hints. To, Ooh, what's happening with this character? What's, what's going on? If you can hit those two audiences, that's what makes a bestseller. That what, that's what makes longevity in a career. If you're just hitting the surface readers, you're gonna lose that audience again.

That's growing and they're gonna grow out of you. And as long as you're not writing. As you say, Melville style where you're losing your audience you can't write too smart. You really can't.

Michael Aspen: You know,

Matt: Mm-Hmm.

Michael Aspen: you, you bring up a good point and I wanna, I wanna mention something that I've noticed about myself is, and, and so I'm speaking for all readers now. Congratulations audience. You have a, you have right here on the show,

Matt: have been appointed.

Michael Aspen: I've been appointed by myself. So, um, I have found that I self edit as I'm reading.

If I feel like the prose is a [00:32:00] little bit too flowery. Once I get into the groove and understand how the writer's going, as I will skimm without realizing I'm doing it like my brain just automatically. Skips over the overly flowery language, and I don't even realize I'm doing it. And I've noticed it, especially when I will stop reading a book, say mid chapter, and I will come back to it next day or two days later or whatever, and I'll pick it back up and I'll start reading again and I'm like, oh yeah, where was I?

And I'll go back a page or two and I'll start rereading and I'm like, huh. I don't remember this level of detail when I read this like yesterday. And the reason why is 'cause my brain was self-editing to move the story along at my But the thing is, you can only self-edit like that. As a reader, a certain percentage of the pros coming into your eyes, right?

So if you've got way too much, then it's really hard to filter it out. You, you end up doing the, flip, flip.

Christina: Yeah.

Michael Aspen: Ah, right. [00:33:00] And if you don't give enough. Then for readers like me that, if you don't give me enough depth, which I find a lot of times these 80,000 word novels that I pick up on Amazon from a lot of times from self-published authors, but there's some that aren't.

There's some from traditional publishers, I feel like they move the story too quickly. Like they don't give me enough depth. Right? And so I feel like the, I feel like the story's pulling me along faster than I want to go. I'm like, no, I wanna know more about this great hall that you're in. No, no, no. We've gotta get to the spaceship right

Christina: Well, so says the editor of this group. This is why you have editors, they check your

Michael Aspen: Right, exactly.

Matt: Yep. Yep. We

Michael Aspen: I would to second that statement emphatically.

Matt: Yeah, I mean we, we had an episode where we had a guest Rania. Glockner was on, we were talking about heart stopper, and one of the things that she pointed out was the pacing and heart stopper, for example, was so well done that you built up and, and everything was earned, right?

Every single friendship, every single stage of the relationship was earned. So as a [00:34:00] writer, if you can focus on that and not to your point, move it along too quickly just to get to the. The fun stuff, or maybe, 'cause I think sometimes authors get bored with what they're writing and they're like, I just wanna move this along.

Christina: Yeah.

Michael Aspen: Right.

Matt: But, think about it from the, does the pace actually do you justice? Does it hurt you? Does it help you? How does, how does that look right? And that's something that we don't always think about as a writer. And I think I would also reflect on some of the past episodes that we've put out where we've talked about things like show versus tell, we've talked about some of the different writing techniques.

That authors can use to really bring that story to life and make it a readable, functional story. Because if you do that, you're gonna be able to much more easily put out work that other people want to consume, that other people want to commit that eight to 10 hours to be able to

Christina: Yeah. Well, to Michael's point, that's why you do, your first draft, your second draft, you keep working at it. You keep working the material until [00:35:00] the point. Becomes, oh, okay, this is really working well, things are happening at, at the pacing, the author is not rushing the ending because, oh, I'm almost done.

I'm almost done, I'm almost done. Get a little bit more of that, happily ever after. In any way, shape or form. It doesn't just, once the plot ends. That's not necessarily the end of the story for the reader,

Matt: Sure. So if we were gonna challenge our listeners to kind of reflect on what we've discussed and, and think about how they're going to actually. Put work out there that everybody wants to enjoy. What is that challenge? What do we wanna, what do we wanna lay at their feet and say, do this thing.

Christina: I would say. What is the one author TV show, movie storytelling thing that we're all missing out on? Because, there's not enough people talking about it. [00:36:00] There's not enough, attention paid to it. They're not a New York Times bestselling author, but this is simply one of the best things you've ever read.

And if only it could get in front of readers, they would love it too, or watchers or whatever. That's what I would say. Give us that one thing that no one is talking about yet, that you've read. TV show that you've watched, movie that you've seen.

Matt: Michael.

Michael Aspen: think my challenge is gonna be more centered around style. Eddie Murphy. Arguably one of the best comedians to ever hit the stage was one time asked how he got his start. He said he got his start in his living room telling jokes that sounded like Richard Pryor jokes because he loved Richard Pryor.

So literally in single digit age, Eddie Murphy was learning about timing, dissecting the joke. [00:37:00] Dissecting the the callback, understanding how comedy worked at a atomic level. And then he went and he made his own comedy and there were hints of Richard Pryor and his comedy. If you watch his stage shows from back, like Raw Eddie, Eddie Murphy's Raw, there are hints of what you would see from a Richard Pryor show in Eddie's show, but it was all Eddie, right?

Eddie took it and made it his own. So my advice, and this is what I'm doing hopefully it will pay out, is find the authors that grab you and don't let you go and learn how to write like they do emulate them. At an atomic level. And then once you understand and you sliced and diced it, you understand how the, the sentences are structured and the, the adjectives are added and in what order and how they introduce new characters and how they drive the plot and what twists and turns they make.

Once you [00:38:00] kind of learn that at some atomic level, take that and apply it to whatever story you're wanting to tell. Combined space aliens and space mobsters and, and and a sex trade. Okay, fine. Just make sure you're telling it in a way that you find so fascinating. You can't put down because you're emulating somebody that was so fascinating.

You couldn't put 'em down. And, and that's that, that I think is gonna cover a big part of just being able to tell a good story and then hire an editor.

Christina: Yes.

Michael Aspen: They're well worth it.

Matt: And don't take the easy way out, right? Like write that first draft, write that second draft, write that third and fourth and fifth draft if you have to. But I think my challenge to the listeners is this, write the stories that you would wanna watch or wanna listen to or want to read, right? If you're writing for yourself, if you're writing for the things that speak to you.

The natural ability for you to tell that story. The natural way for you to communicate with others is gonna come through and it's going to pull people in because you're [00:39:00] writing, and we've talked about this before, you're writing authentically, you're writing true to what you enjoy, and that kind of heart is not easy to replicate.

So take all of these tips, take all these challenges, pull them together, and put some work out there. The rest of us are just dying to read.

Michael Aspen: Yeah,

Matt: Awesome.

Michael Aspen: I think my, I think my favorite piece of positive advice I ever read was the universe. Wants you to succeed

Matt: Hmm.

Michael Aspen: the the, it's cheering you on. You just gotta put in the work.

Matt: Absolutely.

Christina: You just have to rise and meet it.

Michael Aspen: Mm-hmm.

Matt: I love that. Well, thank you very much especially Michael Aspen. Thank you for joining us as our featured guest in this episode. We very much appreciate that. Thank you as

Michael Aspen: was my, yeah, was gonna say it was my pleasure. Thank you for having me. And now I'm sorry I cut off Christina's outro, so I'll let you say it again.

Matt: fine. You're fine.

Christina: my, my outro is always goodbye. I [00:40:00] mean, that's that's all I say at the end.

Matt: yeah, no, I would say thank you very much, my darling. Christina, always good to get together and talk about our most favorite topic, which is storytelling. Yeah.

Christina: No,

Matt: Well, thank you both and till next time everybody.

Christina: goodbye.

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