Better off Read

In the fourth episode in the Point season of Elements, I talk to Kirsten McDougall about point of view and how it relates to her writing. We use as starting point for this discussion first-person perspective.

Some of the things we talk about are:

Here’s a link to Kirsten’s new book She’s a Killer

Here’s a link to Maggie Shipstead’s book Great Circle

Here’s a link to Olga Ravn’s book The Employees

Exercise:

Think of three people who you saw yesterday. Now write three first-person perspectives of yesterday. What does each person choose to tell you about their day?

In the third episode in the Point season of Elements, I talk to Ebony Lamb about point of view and how it relates to her work as a photographer and song-writer. We use as starting point for this discussion Ebony's portrait below.

Which you can see here: https://better-read.com/2021/09/08/ep-103-elements-17/

 

Some of the things we talk about are:

Here's a link to Cassie's website which includes information about all of Cassie's work

Exercise:

Cassie and I talk about using existing structures. Maybe you could think of a 'type' of story - a romance, a whodunit, a first contact novel. Now spend 30 seconds writing everything about that type of story that you know. Now take another type of story and write it in using your list. So, you might end up writing a romance using the rules of a murder mystery, or a first contact novel as a noire detective story.

Here's a link to Pip's article 'The story of a take-down'

In the second episode in the Point season of Elements, I talk to Emma Hislop about point of view and what it is to write it. We use as starting point for this discussion Daisy Johnson's short story 'The Hunt' which is part of 'The Scattering: a story in three parts' and is published in Johnson's amazing collection Fen. Here's a link to more information about Fen

Some of the things we talk about are:

Here's a link to Emma Hislop's short story 'The Game'

Here's a link to Sarah Hall's short story 'Mrs Fox'

Here's a link to Karen Russel's short story 'Orange World'

Here's a link to Emma's Instagram

Here's a link to Emma on Twitter

Exercise:

Emma's story 'The Game' does an amazing job of limiting what the point of view character knows. Think of an object. Name three facts about this object. Now get three people in the room with this object and give each of them one of the facts about the object but not the other two. Each of them wants the object. Now write the dialogue.

First of all, thank you so much for helping us reach 100 episodes. I am very grateful to everyone who has been on the podcast and everyone who has listened. Thank you.

Show notes at: https://better-read.com/2021/07/09/ep-100-elements-14/

https://better-read.com/2021/06/21/ep-99-ash-davida-jane/

Ash reads both poems at the start of this podcast but you can read ‘Kiss of the Sun’ by Mary Ruefle here https://www.ronnowpoetry.com/contents/ruefle/KissoftheSun.html

And ‘pool party’ is in Ash’s collection How to Live with Mammal is published by VUP

Some of the things we talk about are:

Heather Christle’s The Crying Book

Intan Paramaditha’s choose your own adventure novel The Wandering

Vivian Gornick’s The Situation and the Story

Here is an interview with David Wallace-Wells who wrote The Uninhabitable Earth: A story of the future

In this bonus 'Place' episode of Elements, I talk to Richard Larsen about the first Glass Vaults album 'Glass' as a way to talk about place and music in place

Some of the things we talk about are:

We talk a lot about one of Richard's projects Glass Vaults. Glass Vaults are Richard Larsen, Bevan Smith, Rowan Pierce + friends.

Bevan makes music as Aspen, Introverted Dancefloor and Signer. Signer has been releasing editions of his Isolated Dreams series of EPs onto Bandcamp at an impressively steady clip, since kicking off the low key project in October 2020. You can listen to Signer's 'Isolated Dreams EP07' here: https://www.undertheradar.co.nz/news/18545/Listen-To-Signers-Isolated-Dreams-EP07.utr

Rowan Pierce is multi award winning artist who produces and exhibits work, collaboratively and individually, across a range of mediums including live performance, music, film and installation. You can see Rowan's work in Te Mauri o Pōhutu a new series of collaborative installation and time-based artworks by Bianca Hyslop, Rowan Pierce and Tūī Matira Ranapiri Ransfield. https://toiponeke.nz/events/2021temauriopohutu

Glass Vaults is on Bandcamp and you can listen and buy their music here: https://glassvaults.bandcamp.com/

Richard also makes work as Richard Dada which is also on Bandcamp: https://dadada.bandcamp.com/

Richard mentions David Byrne talking about how architecture helped music evolve. Here is a TED talk David Byrne gave about this topic: https://www.ted.com/talks/david_byrne_how_architecture_helped_music_evolve/transcript

Toward the end we talk about the Glass Vaults' song 'Sojourn'. You can watch the video Richard talks about here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4f95qIzBvE

You can see Glass Vaults performing live on RNZ here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptTEY248pE0

Formula 1: Drive to Survive is a Netflix Original series which you can read about here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_1:_Drive_to_Survive

Doug's film You Could Have Seen The Mona Lisa is showing at the 2021 Doc Edge Festival 4-11 June https://festival.docedge.nz/film/you-could-have-seen-the-mona-lisa/

Doug's podcast which he makes with Steve Skeet and Darren Waugh is Ludicrously Specific

https://www.stitcher.com/show/ludicrously-specific

Doug's feature is Jake and you can read about it and find out how to see it here:

http://www.jakethemovie.com/

Doug is on Twitter https://twitter.com/dillamonster

Laura chose two of her poems to talk about, you can read them here:

ACTIVITIES by Laura Vincent, The Friday Poem in The Spinoff https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/12-07-2019/the-friday-poem-activities-by-laura-vincent/

Anecdotal happiness by Laura Vincent, The Friday Poem in The Spinoff https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/10-01-2020/the-friday-poem-anecdotal-happiness-by-laura-vincent/

Some of the things we talk about are:

We talk about the work of Billy Wilder in particular his film Ace in the Hole: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043338/?ref_=nm_flmg_wr_33

Laura blogs at Hungry and Frozen https://hungryandfrozen.com/ where you can also find Laura's Patreon.

Other good places to find Laura are on here Twitter account https://twitter.com/HungryandFrozen, Intragram https://www.instagram.com/hungryandfrozen/ and TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@hungryandfrozen

To raise awareness, and hopefully some money, for the Wellington Rape Crisis Annual Appeal we live-streamed this episode of Better off Read on Sunday 2 May at 8.00 pm.

I talked with M. Darusha Wehm about their work with a special focus on narrative and plot. I'm particularly excited to talk to Darusha about their new work The Qubit Zirconium a riotous science fantasy novel from the smash hit game, KeyForge.

We don't talk directly about sexual violence in this live-stream, but I do talk at the start of the episode, in a general way, about the work Wellington Rape Crisis does.

You can watch the livestream on PIp's YouTube channel here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yazbjVRKrqE&t=215s

You can donate to Wellington Rape Crisis at https://wellingtonrapecrisis.org.nz/donate-now/