Latest / Show, don't Tell Writing with Suzy Vadori / 112. Writing with Humor: Structure and Historical Accuracy (Part 2)

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112. Writing with Humor: Structure and Historical Accuracy (Part 2) · Show, don't Tell Writing with Suzy Vadori

• 0:05
  Welcome to the Show, Don't Tell Writing Podcast with me, Susie Vadori, where I peel back the layers of how to wow your readers with your fiction, your nonfiction.
• 0:13
  Anybody can bang out a first draft, but it takes a little more work to make your book as amazing as it can be.
• 0:20
  Join me as I share the step-by-step writing techniques you could apply to your writing right away, as I host successful writers who share a behind-the-scenes look at their own writing lives, and as I live coach writers on their pages, giving practical writing examples that will make your own writing stronger.
• 0:38
  Nobody is born knowing how to write an engaging book.
• 0:42
  There are real and important skills that you need to learn.
• 0:45
  On this show, I cut through the noise and get you all the info you need.
• 0:49
  I can't wait to see how this information is going to transform your writing Fasten your seatbelts, listeners, because today we have Ian Page coming on the podcast to talk about writing with humor.
• 1:03
  I first met Ian several years ago when I developmentally edited his debut novel, which has just come out, The Naked Ambition.
• 1:12
  It was really fun to work with Ian because he has so many opinions and so much to say, and to work on the tone of his humor, to work on the sarcasm, to work on the political bent that he wanted to convey.
• 1:26
  We're gonna talk about all of that today on the podcast, so listen up.
• 1:30
  If you have ever considered writing with humor, wondering how to do it, wondering if you're doing it well, wondering why you'd wanna do it, we're gonna answer all of that today.
• 1:40
  Ian Page draws on decades of professional geophysics in the oil patch for his debut novel, The Naked Ambition.
• 1:46
  Ian gained his BSC in geophysics from University of Alberta, never to set foot in the halls of academia again.
• 1:53
  At various times, he's been a wretched musician, an unreliable soldier, and a failed treasure hunter.
• 2:01
  Ian is a native of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and currently resides in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia with his wife, where he spends ridiculous amounts of time playing hockey, golfing, walking, and goofing off, much to the annoyance of his publisher.
• 2:15
  As you can tell from the bio that he submitted, Ian is absolutely hilarious, and I can't wait for you to hear this episode.
• 2:23
  And the other one has, has, eventually gets to a ticking clock because of its, there, there's an opening night to, to the- Oh, there's an opening night.
• 2:30
  I'm not gonna spoil it, but it's amazing.
• 2:32
  But in the version that you edited has, and I think this is important for writers, you had pointed out an opportunity in the structure of the novel that I had not perceived.
• 2:44
  I'm like, I have no idea where you're going, but I'm excited to hear what resonated.
• 2:48
  Awesome.
• 2:48
  Keep going, keep going.
• 2:48
  Well, this is so we, we have a, a lo- a very strong subplot for one of, uh, Chester's friends, Craven Moorhead, who's- Right you know, he's the wing man.
• 2:56
  He's, and he's the crass guy.
• 2:58
  He'll say anything.
• 3:00
  And maybe that could be another favorite character because, you know, I can, I can put any kind of line through- Just the things you can put into his mouth are awesome, yeah.
• 3:07
  Oh, yeah.
• 3:08
  Love it.
• 3:08
  Yeah, so, you know, he, he's a lot of fun, and most of my beta readers would point that out.
• 3:12
  They, they would say, "You know, when, when I needed a laugh, that's the guy who's gonna give me the laugh." And, and- You always want him around… there is something- He, you need, you actually need him to, to balance, sorry, I'll let you finish, but you actually needed him to balance Chesterfield because you meant for Chesterfield to be so bland, at least in the beginning.
• 3:30
  So you need that sidekick that's gonna bring you on, uh, that challenge.
• 3:33
  Yeah.
• 3:34
  The first novel's in third person.
• 3:36
  Um, the next two are in first person, so you are see everything through Chester's eyes.
• 3:41
  And it turns out he's got a, a… He's sharply observant, even if he's, well, we'll call him book smart, street stupid as shorthand.
• 3:50
  So he gets himself into situations where his expertise is maybe organizing things and, and trying to checklist things off, but he doesn't understand the process.
• 4:01
  He doesn't understand the atmosphere or the culture that, that he's dumped himself into.
• 4:05
  So the theater is something he has no idea about and, and he gets pushed around pretty hard.
• 4:11
  But during that, that, towards the end when the, the climax is approaching And you had pointed out that there was an opportunity to move a particular chapter it back, and it, it all of a sudden, it threaded two major plots together.
• 4:27
  So the collision was better.
• 4:29
  It was a better accident- Yeah, very much … if you like- Yeah uh, than what was previously, uh, put together.
• 4:35
  Yeah, and so, so we have to, I mean, the way that we look at that as a devel- like the way that I look at things as a developmental editor, when we write things, we think about them in chronological order w- or how they come to us, or there's- Yeah … a number of ways that, that writers do it.
• 4:50
  But I'm always looking through a reader's lens, and when do we need that information?
• 4:54
  And as we said, I'm just gonna summarize a few things, 'cause you said so many good things about writing humor here.
• 5:00
  You've gotta plan the setup and the thread to educate the reader all the way along so that we're waiting for the punchline, and then the timing is really important to that because you don't wanna stop the action, right?
• 5:12
  You don't wanna give them that slap and then have it stop.
• 5:15
  So, so the timing of where you're putting it is important.
• 5:18
  It's also important to get beta readers involved to see, are these jokes landing, right?
• 5:22
  Like, a n- no comedian, well, most comedians don't go up on stage cold with something that they wrote for the very first time.
• 5:31
  They try out their material on their friends or their family or somebody first, and there's lots of, I mean, especially with humor, that feedback loop is really important.
• 5:40
  So yeah, that was absolutely something that then we would be tracking it.
• 5:45
  And you didn't have to change very much.
• 5:47
  That's one of the, my tenets of, of editing, is not to tell people to go and rewrite everything, but to say, "Hey, if you were just to move this one thing, you might have to, you know, weave it a little bit better or add some transition there." But it's gonna, the bang for your reader is gonna be so much more impactful, right?
• 6:04
  Yeah, I agree with that.
• 6:05
  I think when you're … I'm not very good with flipping narratives back and forth on timelines, and there, you had pointed out a, a reference I had, I had made, uh, where Chester actually addresses, you know, he breaks the fourth wall with the reader a bit.
• 6:19
  Yeah.
• 6:20
  And says, "Look, I, I hate doing this, but I th- gotta go back to August," you know, when in fact it was already October.
• 6:27
  Yeah.
• 6:28
  So I tend to, to write linear novels.
• 6:31
  They're easier for people to track, uh, naturally.
• 6:34
  But going back and forth, flashbacking and going back and forth, the, I'm troubled by that internally in my own head.
• 6:43
  But it's also, it doesn't always serve the story.
• 6:45
  Yeah.
• 6:45
  A lot of times writers will come to me with a very complex structure that they would like to, you know,'cause they just read Gone Girl or something where they're, you know, where it's really tricky, tricky.
• 6:54
  Yeah.
• 6:55
  The thing is, unless it serves the story or there's a reason to do it, it's so much more difficult as a writer and the payoff isn't there.
• 7:03
  If you're writing a thriller, psychological thriller like Gone Girl- The actual structure is part of the novel.
• 7:10
  It's important- Yeah … because you have to hide stuff, so the payoff is there.
• 7:14
  But for a regular book, doing it is adding complexity.
• 7:17
  It's difficult to do well, especially your first book.
• 7:20
  If you come to me for your seventh novel and you wanna try it 'cause your brain needs the challenge, that'll be different,'cause you'll be able to hold a lot more things in your head, and you'll understand a lot more about story structure, right?
• 7:31
  Yeah.
• 7:32
  The, and to serve humor, there, there's immediate jokes, and then there's longer term jokes, uh, the payoff of, you know, a, a longer arc. So usually it's enter, conflict, exit, right?
• 7:48
  Mm-hmm.
• 7:48
  And so we, the setup, the necessary background that has to get inserted, um, but then there's the punchline.
• 7:56
  Yeah.
• 7:56
  And to keep humor fresh and re-readable or re-watchable if you, if you wanna talk about, uh, the visual arts, there has to be some, uh, reasonable linearity for people to understand and appreciate.
• 8:10
  I'm not gonna blow somebody away with, you know, Steinbeckian, uh, technique or something like that.
• 8:16
  That's not the point of my novels.
• 8:17
  I, I, I wanna write something that's gonna have some degree of legacy for my family.
• 8:22
  They, I want them to en- enjoy my voice as some sort of distant echo long after I'm gone.
• 8:29
  And, you know, I'm dedicating the second book to my granddaughter.
• 8:32
  Mm. She loves to laugh.
• 8:34
  That kid loves to laugh.
• 8:36
  So, you know, as she gets older and, and starts to, you know, evolve her reading list into, uh, adult fare, she'll pick this up.
• 8:44
  And she'll hear your humor.
• 8:45
  Yeah.
• 8:46
  I love that.
• 8:47
  She'll hear Grandpa.
• 8:47
  Okay, so Ian, here's a question for you.
• 8:49
  Would you consider yourself funny in real life?
• 8:53
  No, my wife says no.
• 8:54
  Right?
• 8:54
  So- Because- So that's- Because it's different … so again, that, that's a double joke, right?
• 8:57
  Just an easy, simple response.
• 9:00
  I lay it out on somebody else so that there's a bit of misdirection.
• 9:04
  It's my wife's fault that I'm not funny, or she doesn't think I'm funny.
• 9:08
  You can interpret it a couple different ways, but you know, I've always enjoyed the pithy remark.
• 9:13
  When I'm in the dressing room with the guys in, in hockey, I'm still playing, they, they get my humor.
• 9:18
  I do farsight mock-ups when I put out the rosters for, uh, ice times.
• 9:23
  So I've learned to be quick and quippy with certain things.
• 9:30
  I can't tell a long joke So, y- you know, if you ask me a, you know, a three men walk into a bar kind of joke or something, I can't tell those.
• 9:38
  I can't do that.
• 9:39
  But if you're talking about something maybe in the British tradition or the absurdity tradition of, uh, you know, Monty Python or something like that, oh, I get that humor, and I can, I can provide some sort of imitation of that.
• 9:53
  Yeah.
• 9:53
  And I think, I, I just point it out because you probably could tell a guy walked into a bar joke in writing because you have that skill, right?
• 10:01
  Like, you could probably do that if you wanted to.
• 10:05
  Um, but- Yes, if you, if you can, if you can give me enough time to, you know- Yeah … think about the setup, think about the, the content.
• 10:12
  Well, that's what I'm saying, you do more of that style, not the guy walks into a bar, but the kind of setup and all the things is what you have to do in writing.
• 10:18
  Yeah.
• 10:18
  And yet you're saying that's not what you would quip in the dressing room.
• 10:21
  And it- so for those listeners, if you're thinking about writing humor, it doesn't necessarily have to be because you're funny in real life.
• 10:28
  In fact, I ran into somebody that I went to university with when I first started writing and my first novel came out, and I shared with him that my novel came out, and he's like, "Oh, I can't wait to see your biting humor on the page." And I was like- Hmm … "My book isn't funny." He's like, "Why not?
• 10:45
  You're funny." And I was like, "Okay, I mean, I do have a wit and humor," and we were talking about, you know, within your own cohort, whatever you see that as, y- I think you used the example of your ladies who lunch or your golfing buddies or whatever it is.
• 10:59
  But swearing is the same within those cohorts.
• 11:03
  Like, you can kind of push the limits within whatever that is.
• 11:06
  Students, like kids might push the limits with kids, but they wouldn't say that to their parents, or vice versa.
• 11:11
  The parents might also say it w- to another parent, but not to the kids, right?
• 11:15
  There's these crossing- Mm-hmm … of boundaries.
• 11:17
  But however your humor expresses itself in real life, you can try different things on the page.
• 11:23
  They don't necessarily need to match.
• 11:25
  Yeah, I d- I mean, n- a, a first draft, a, a fifth draft, and a final draft are all experiments.
• 11:32
  Yeah.
• 11:32
  And if I was to apply the scientific method of, you know, hypothesis, gather data, analyze and conclude, and then revise the hypothesis, th- that's in effect what a writer does.
• 11:44
  Yeah.
• 11:44
  In fact, it, it's funny you mention profanity because, um, there is a certain amount of it in, in the first book, and it started, it carried over into the next two, but it, it started to disappear And I'm looking at it slightly differently now and, uh, as more- Do you see why?
• 12:00
  'Cause I can maybe guess why.
• 12:02
  I, I think- But I didn't notice… it's probably fatigue as one the absurd often is mocking.
• 12:11
  Profanity is, is the invective of anger and, and so on.
• 12:14
  And there are moments of anger that, that show up.
• 12:17
  So now I'm attempting to use it more as a buttoning of a certain, well, it could be a joke.
• 12:23
  It may, it could be a, it's usually just a situation, uh, that a character finds themselves in.
• 12:28
  And then there's the dialogue of trying to pull somebody back from a brink Yeah.
• 12:34
  And I think as well, just looking at it, and I have to go back through them to see if this holds true, but I'll just ask you, because in book one, Chester Field and his friends are quite separate from the older characters in your book, and in the next books they are forced to work with them, and they probably would use less profanity because they are not within their cohort as often.
• 12:54
  They're in that larger group.
• 12:57
  Just a thought.
• 12:57
  Yeah.
• 12:58
  I think in, in the case of the older generation that you're speaking of, those are mostly board members- Mm-hmm … um, you know, at Sanders Oil, which is the, the company that, uh, Chester works at.
• 13:08
  Those- And then the theater, then the theater characters … they're all, they're all military men Yeah And if y- and if you've ever spent any time with military men, profanity leaks through a, a lot of their conversation anyway.
• 13:19
  Certainly does, you know, amongst themselves, uh, when certain topics are brought up.
• 13:24
  But most of the time they're, they're dealing with, with other traumas and, and so on.
• 13:30
  You know, as, as I kind of float through my head, d- does the sergeant major actually swear a lot?
• 13:36
  No, he doesn't.
• 13:37
  Yeah.
• 13:37
  Apparently.
• 13:38
  Uh, uh, Craven does more often.
• 13:40
  He didn't need to.
• 13:41
  But- His, his words are so biting he might as well not very, you know, he's, he says what he thinks.
• 13:46
  Certainly the sergeant major is, is not gonna hold back on you.
• 13:49
  He, but his delivery is clipped, you know?
• 13:52
  I- Yeah … it, it's, it, the words are, are like m- like a machine gun.
• 13:55
  It's, it's a staccato.
• 13:57
  Um, so he does not tend to suffer fools gladly, but at the same time, he's not reading them out with a, a, a, like a, a, I can think of the character from Full Metal Jacket, the Lee Emery's, uh, performance there.
• 14:11
  He basically did 20 minutes to two hours in front of Kubrick just going through the, the drill sergeant's, uh, manual of, of every kind of insult you could possibly imagine, and, and some of them are, are pretty darn harsh.
• 14:25
  I've, I've heard softer versions of it from my own military life.
• 14:29
  He was an expert.
• 14:29
  But again, that doesn't, you know, that doesn't always translate onto the page.
• 14:33
  We, you know- That's correct.
• 14:34
  Yeah.
• 14:34
  That's the problem.
• 14:35
  So the immediacy of, of certain dialogue works in real life, but it doesn't necessarily translate to the page.
• 14:44
  You gotta pick and choose.
• 14:44
  We, we talk differently, just you and I conversing here on a podcast, talk differently than the characters talk on a page.
• 14:52
  Oh, definitely.
• 14:53
  Definitely.
• 14:53
  That's a whole other podcast episode, right?
• 14:55
  Yeah.
• 14:55
  I could talk about dialogue all day long.
• 14:57
  Okay.
• 14:58
  Your book is set in the '90s.
• 15:00
  Yep.
• 15:01
  And now that is considered historical.
• 15:03
  I was actually at a conference, um, last week where, you know, agents were talking about that, and I know it's insulting.
• 15:09
  Um, I had been working with a, a woman there whose book was set in the '80s.
• 15:14
  So depending on where you go, it's 30 to 50 years, right?
• 15:18
  Yeah.
• 15:18
  Um, that the, that the sort of historical title goes.
• 15:22
  So we're kind of getting into that.
• 15:24
  So there's, there's other things that you did which were cool for world-building and to, to help people who didn't maybe live in corporate, in the corporate world in the '90s sort of understand what it's like.
• 15:35
  But in terms of humor, humor evolves as well, right?
• 15:40
  And now that is 30-plus years ago, and what's acceptable for humor, our humor evolves some of the fastest of any evolution of language in terms of how quickly it changes and what's acceptable through the years.
• 15:55
  How did you decide to address this in the book?
• 15:57
  'Cause I know that this is something that we discussed.
• 15:59
  Um- That wasn't easy, but keep in mind that I'm part of what's, I guess, some people now call Generation Jones.
• 16:06
  So I was born in '62.
• 16:08
  Okay.
• 16:08
  So I came of, of age professionally in the '80s and '90s.
• 16:13
  So it, it wasn't difficult for me to, to bring back, um, some of the- To remember what was said in the day.
• 16:21
  Yeah.
• 16:21
  Right.
• 16:21
  And what, what was acceptable then is certainly not acceptable now.
• 16:25
  I think there, there's been a narrowing of discourse, at least in, in a lot of the corporate offices.
• 16:30
  So but it, it's interesting how we, we talk about what's allowed.
• 16:34
  There's a, I think I just made a reference in one of my edits about how women, because women, the number of women, the percentage of women had climbed so quickly through the late '70s, '80s, and '90s that- Yeah, I was starting my career in the'90s, and, and I joined a firm who had just allowed women to wear pants.
• 16:55
  Yeah.
• 16:57
  I mean, like- That is a form of humor … right, like, like, I mean, it's a time, right?
• 16:59
  Like, it's a time when it, when it was, and I lived through that.
• 17:03
  Yep.
• 17:03
  I don't believe very much, right?
• 17:03
  And that's chapter one of, of The Naked Ambition, because the, uh, one of the main characters, Isabella Towers, is wearing a pantsuit, and her older recruiter, the brash Andrea, says, "Well, you can't wear that.
• 17:17
  The people you're gonna be speaking to, they're, they're World War II combat vets." You know?
• 17:22
  I was only allowed to wear pants if it was a black or navy suit.
• 17:27
  Like no dress code for sure.
• 17:28
  Like not even other colors at the time.
• 17:31
  Yeah.
• 17:32
  Yes.
• 17:32
  So styles change, and Chester is very fussy about that, so there's some, uh, rich commentary about that through, through, uh, a lot of the books.
• 17:41
  But the second thing, uh, I would suggest is that, uh, how we spoke in the office, how we addressed issues- Of marginalized populations, right?
• 17:51
  Yeah.
• 17:51
  And- Marginalized populations changes throughout… yeah, when, when, when I was building people I was working with through the'90s and onward, it was quite a diverse crowd, but it was just naturally so.
• 18:04
  It wa- it wasn't forced.
• 18:05
  In, in other words, there, the, we, we never had a policy of, you know, affirmative action or anything like that in, in the oil patch.
• 18:13
  One of the curious things, um, I'll tell you a quick story about a geologist I worked with.
• 18:17
  His name is, uh, Peter Albrecht.
• 18:19
  Really interesting guy, and he grew up in the same province I did, Nova Scotia.
• 18:24
  But he was in the northern Nova Scotia where he couldn't get summer jobs because of his last name.
• 18:30
  He was, he was Hungarian by, by, by background, and he got shut out of, uh, summer jobs because he wasn't named, you know, uh, Gillis, Douglas, or McDonald, or whatever.
• 18:41
  Conway.
• 18:41
  Corbett stuff.
• 18:42
  Also from Nova Scotia.
• 18:43
  Yeah.
• 18:47
  That's why we So the- I don't think we've ever talked about that … no, we haven't.
• 18:48
  And, and so, so the strange thing- That's cool.
• 18:49
  It's been a whole gang up here.
• 18:50
  So the strange thing is, you know, you're now in Alberta.
• 18:53
  Um- Mm-hmm … he, but he made the same trip I did.
• 18:56
  We, we, uh, we didn't know each other at the time, but his first experience coming to Alberta, he walked onto a construction site uninvited and, and asked the supervisor there,"Have you got work for a laborer?" And he had no skills.
• 19:12
  And, uh, the guy looked at him and said, "You wanna work hard?" And Pete said, "Yeah, you're hired." Yeah.
• 19:20
  And that was that.
• 19:21
  And so I think there's, in the oil patch had a lot of the same attitude.
• 19:25
  A lot of the people I ran into, th- they're from diverse backgrounds of, of any and all sorts.
• 19:31
  You, you know, name the diversity and, and it's there.
• 19:34
  Nobody cares.
• 19:36
  They only cared about one thing: are you interested in doing something?
• 19:41
  They only cared about one thing: Yeah.
• 19:42
  They only cared about one thing: Are you interested in creating- But it's hard because when we're trying to represent things, we wanna show how far we've come.
• 19:47
  They only cared about one thing: There's ways, but your readers have a different lens, and we don't want to inadvertently reinforce negative stereotypes from the past.
• 19:54
  They only cared about one thing: And I think, you know, that was something that we worked on and, and you've done a good job of in the end.
• 19:59
  They only cared about one thing: You can still have the jokes and have the tension without giving voice to some of the hate speech that, that might have actually- Yeah.
• 20:06
  They only cared about one thing: The version that you see now is, has been toned down for just personal mockery of the people- It's there, but- What the characters, characters would normally do, and, you know, because they're friends, and Craven ends up being the best man at Dar's wedding.
• 20:21
  They only cared about one thing: So they're great pals.
• 20:24
  They only cared about one thing: But do you think they're gonna, uh, stop mocking one another?
• 20:28
  They only cared about one thing: That's not how guys work.
• 20:30
  They only cared about one thing: Yeah.
• 20:31
  They only cared about one thing: Yeah, I hear you.
• 20:32
  They only cared about one thing: Okay, we're to the quick-fire portion of this podcast.
• 20:37
  They only cared about one thing: So are you ready?
• 20:38
  They only cared about one thing: Okay.
• 20:39
  They only cared about one thing: Okay.
• 20:40
  They only cared about one thing: How long did it take you from the first time that you thought up Chester Field to publishing The Naked Ambition?
• 20:49
  They only cared about one thing: 15 years 15 years.
• 20:51
  They only cared about one thing: Yeah, and we hear that a lot.
• 20:52
  They only cared about one thing: Okay.
• 20:53
  They only cared about one thing: What was your first big break where you realized you were actually gonna do something with this novel and it was gonna happen?
• 20:59
  They only cared about one thing: Um, I had a conversation with a fellow named, uh, Ron Barney, a friend of my wife's.
• 21:04
  They only cared about one thing: Uh, we were just sitting around the cottage kind of thing one day at his place and, and, um, he told me about self-publishing.
• 21:13
  They only cared about one thing: And I would, I had spent a f- a year querying traditional, uh, publishing, and humor is probably the closest thing in the publishing world to typhus.
• 21:25
  They only cared about one thing: Um, it, it's- It's hard, and you, you kind of cross genres, and it's not easy to find a home for it- Yeah … that's for sure.
• 21:31
  They only cared about one thing: It, the tagline I would use now is, and, and, uh, what I should've used then, was Wodehouse meets Succession.
• 21:38
  They only cared about one thing: So everyone has watched Succession.
• 21:40
  They only cared about one thing: They, they love the family dynamics and, and, you know, the old man kind of kicks off and then just disaster ensues.
• 21:46
  They only cared about one thing: And then I've always liked wordplay.
• 21:48
  They only cared about one thing: I've always liked the humor world, so Wodehouse is a favorite.
• 21:51
  They only cared about one thing: I've got a stack of his books.
• 21:54
  They only cared about one thing: You know, that was an easy shorthand.
• 21:56
  They only cared about one thing: Yeah.
• 21:56
  They only cared about one thing: Okay.
• 21:57
  They only cared about one thing: And what's the best advice that you have, Ian, looking back from the other side of having published your book, for those who want to write humor?
• 22:06
  They only cared about one thing: Oh, keep doing it.
• 22:07
  They only cared about one thing: Keep, you know, there, there, look for any opportunity for some sort of outlet.
• 22:13
  They only cared about one thing: I, uh, I'm on X as BertieWoosterSauce.
• 22:18
  They only cared about one thing: Um, so- Go find him.
• 22:19
  They only cared about one thing: Yeah, go find him.
• 22:20
  They only cared about one thing: There, there's a few witticisms there, but, uh, it's an excellent training ground, especially if you are not verified.
• 22:26
  They only cared about one thing: You've got 280 characters.
• 22:29
  They only cared about one thing: You get your humor out.
• 22:30
  They only cared about one thing: And see- Yeah, try it.
• 22:32
  They only cared about one thing: Try out your material… you know, if you can- See what you get… sharpen that, sharpen the stone.
• 22:36
  They only cared about one thing: Oh, and by the way, just as a personal note, uh, one of the things that you had mentioned about, uh, setting, uh, uh, it just popped in my head.
• 22:46
  They only cared about one thing: I've now named the town that all the stuff- What's the town?
• 22:51
  They only cared about one thing: Whetstone I love it Yeah, two Ts, but yeah, um, instead of just one for wet.
• 22:58
  They only cared about one thing: But the, um- Yeah, 'cause there was always the debate, where is this?
• 23:02
  They only cared about one thing: Is it Calgary?
• 23:03
  They only cared about one thing: Is it somewhere out?
• 23:04
  They only cared about one thing: Is it- Yeah … a made-up town?
• 23:05
  They only cared about one thing: The, the only two possibilities really were Calgary or Denver and, and- Mm-hmm you know, and being the, uh, the, the guy who can't make a decision sometimes, I left it open, and I want people- Yeah, I love it … to read it in, in their own minds as one or the other.
• 23:19
  They only cared about one thing: If the town is so important, you have mayor, and you have the council, and you have all these things that revolve around the town that never had a name, so I love it.
• 23:25
  They only cared about one thing: Yeah, and, and the town's unique.
• 23:26
  They only cared about one thing: Like, they don't have their elections in November, so you've got it in January.
• 23:30
  They only cared about one thing: So there, there, there's all kinds of goofy stuff.
• 23:32
  They only cared about one thing: So, so Whetstone as a made-up name made more sense, and, and metaphorically, it, uh, you know, the sharpening stone that the, uh, oiliness, uh, is sometimes involved.
• 23:43
  They only cared about one thing: You know, it was perfect.
• 23:45
  They only cared about one thing: Yeah, I love it.
• 23:46
  They only cared about one thing: Okay.
• 23:47
  They only cared about one thing: Thank you so much, Ian.
• 23:48
  They only cared about one thing: We will drop all the links of where to get The Naked Ambition and where to follow you and how to interact with Ian.
• 23:55
  They only cared about one thing: Thank you so much for sharing this on the podcast.
• 23:57
  They only cared about one thing: It was a blast.
• 23:59
  They only cared about one thing: Oh, thank you very much.
• 24:07
  They only cared about one thing: Thanks for tuning in to the Show, Don't Tell writing podcast with me, Susie Vadori.
• 24:11
  They only cared about one thing: It is my absolute honor to bring you the straight goods for that book you're writing or the book that you're planning to write.
• 24:18
  They only cared about one thing: Please help me keep the podcast going by helping people find us.
• 24:22
  They only cared about one thing: You can subscribe to the podcast and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you're listening to show how much you enjoy the show.
• 24:31
  They only cared about one thing: That's how other listeners will find us.
• 24:33
  They only cared about one thing: Also, visit susievadori.com/newsletter to hop on my weekly inspired writing newsletter list, where you'll stay inspired and be the first to know about all the upcoming training events and writing courses that happen in my community.
• 24:48
  They only cared about one thing: Want my eyes on your writing?
• 24:49
  They only cared about one thing: Submit a page of your current draft for a chance to come on the podcast at the link in the show notes.
• 24:55
  They only cared about one thing: I'd love to chat with you about your writing in my always positive, incredibly supportive way so that you can make great strides towards your writing goals.
• 25:05
  They only cared about one thing: I'm here to cheer you on.
• 25:06
  They only cared about one thing: Remember, that book you're writing is gonna open doors that you haven't even thought of yet, and I can't wait to help you make that it the absolute best it can be.
• 25:16
  They only cared about one thing: See you again right here next week