New Video: Irony

Remember how shocked you were when I put out a new podcast episode, after more than a year away?  Well get ready to be flabbergasted, because here’s a new video after more than two years!  When I launched my book in late 2016, I had an ambitious plan that I would have a new video every other week from then on and a podcast episode on all the off weeks.  Ha!  Turns out that videos are a lot of work.  But I'm very happy with the four I’ve made and I’ve wanted to do a new one on irony for a while.  And I’m mostly talking about a movie we haven’t already discussed to death on the blog!  Let me know what you think, please.

(I’ve also replaced the Moment of Humanity video with a cleaner version, since kids like the videos.  No more 40 Year Old Virgin opening shot!)

The Secrets of Story Book Videos: The Archive

Hey guys, I’ve never put my book videos into the sidebar, so here they are! I would love to go back and do some more of these if I get the time (each represents many, many hours of work!)

Video #1 is about how you should let objects do the talking:
Video #2 is about how characters should use tricks and traps:

Video #3 is about creating moments of humanity for your characters. I recently updated this one just a bit: 
Video #4 is about how to work exposition into your story:

Video #5 is about the need to have as many ironies as possible:

New Video on Exposition!

Hey guys, it seems impossible to go on, but we must go on. Let’s all pretend that my silly little story advice has any meaning in post-apocalyptic America! That said, here’s a new video on exposition: This one is the shortest yet, barely squeaking in over three minutes. Is it too short? Let me know!

New Video: Moments of Humanity

My last video got me lots of hits and followers, and they’ve all been waiting patiently for video #3, so here it is: Moments of Humanity! I hope you enjoy it! As usual, please let me know what you think! This one is a little different, in that the advice is not as counterintuitive, so it seems less “cool” to me, but hopefully it’ll be useful to see all these examples thrown together. Let me know!

New Book Video: Tricks and Traps

Hey guys, time for video #2: Tricks and Traps. I’ll be honest with you, folks, I was pretty bummed to get no comments on the first video. Tell me what you think, guys! Could I do better? Should I do more? Comments, please!

Our First Video: Let Your Objects Do the Talking

Okay, guys, here’s a big change six months in the making: I’ll now be posting videos!  I had to relearn Final Cut Pro (the lobotomized version) to put this together, but I think it turned out well, so I’m glad I put that time in.

This one has actually been done for a while, but I’d intended to stockpile more before I posted this, because I’m now going to commit to posting one of these every week! Unfortunately, I’ve only got one more ready to go, so I’ve got a lot of work to do! Hopefully this huge deadline on my head will light a fire under me every week!

For our first weekly video, I cheated and combined several rules / blog posts into one, all about ways to use objects in your writing. I hope you like it!

Now I’ll be honest with you: My whole goal in making these videos is to get one hosted on a site like io9 or the AVClub, where they regularly host these sorts of videos, so I really need your help publicizing this video: Share it far and wide until someone up there likes me and posts this in a widely-seen venue. Please share it on Facebook, share it on Twitter, put it on your own blogs, etc. Please help me get these videos out in the world.

Let me know what you think! And look for another big multi-media debut soon! The site it is a-changin’.