The Story Craft Cafe Podcast
Story Crafters talking about the magic of storytelling and giving you the tools to craft your story. We’re launching a new kind of online writing community. One where we can all find support, encouragement, ideas, and inspiration. A place where we can all write together. A place where we can celebrate failures and successes, find mentors, and work together to get published.
Episodes
What if the problem with your creativity is not that you need more freedom? What if you need a smaller box? In this Fireside Chat, Hank Garner and Abby Mathews talk about forced scarcity: the creative practice of putting restrictions on yourself so your imagination has something to push against. Page limits. Time limits. Genre limits. A tiny cast. One location. One point of view. One impossible problem. It sounds like a prison, but...
What do you do with a first draft once you finally type “The End”? You put it in a drawer. At least for a little while. In this Fireside Chat, Hank Garner and Abby Mathews talk about one of the hardest transitions in the writing process: moving from finishing a draft to actually being ready to revise it. When you’ve lived inside a manuscript for weeks, months, or even years, you’re too close to it to see it ...
Some characters walk onto the page, do their job, and disappear.
Others stay with us.
In this Fireside Chat, Hank Garner and Abby Mathews talk about round, flat, and foil characters—and why each one matters more than writers often realize. Not every character needs a tragic backstory, a ten-page wound, and a fully mapped emotional arc. Some characters are meant to change. Some are meant to stay wonderfully, stubbornly the sam...
Kevin Tumlinson, the Wordslinger, is back on the StoryCraft Cafe. We both came up during the first Kindle wave, and lately we've both felt it: that scrappy, take-the-bull-by-the-horns indie spirit is back, and a lot of it is being driven by what's happening in traditional publishing right now.
We talk about why authors are walking away from trad deals, why AI detectors are a scam with a subscription button, how the Claude watermark...
A protagonist is only as strong as the wall they're trying to break through. Your antagonist isn't the obstacle to your story, and your antagonist IS your story.
A protagonist is only as strong as the wall they're trying to break through. Your antagonist isn't the obstacle to your story — your antagonist IS your story.
Pull up a chair. Before we dive into Workshop 4, Hank Garner and Abby sit down for a relaxed fireside conversation about the most underrated character in fiction: the one standing in your hero's way. We're talking villains, rivals, systems, storms, and the quiet "no" th...
Why do readers stay up until 2 a.m. turning pages?
It's rarely because of the plot.
It's because they care about the person living through it.
In this one-hour writing workshop, Hank Garner breaks down the core principles behind unforgettable protagonists—the characters readers will follow anywhere, even when they aren't always likable.
You'll learn how to build characters with emotional depth, compelling motivations, and aut...
Readers don't read your book because of your clever plot. Readers fall in love with your book because of your CHARACTERS. Each book is about a person, and your protagonist is the lightning rod of your book.
In this Fireside chat, Hank and Brooke talk about what makes a great protagonist and how to craft characters that bring people back time and again.
This is an exciting week where we finally get to unveil what's new in Dabble 3.0. Join Abby and Hank as they discuss their favorite new Dabble 3.0 features.
Most unfinished manuscripts in the world died somewhere between chapter eight and chapter sixteen. The writer didn't lose interest. They lost the shape of it. The plot started to drift. The scenes started to feel disconnected. The book stalled.
This 65-minute workshop is about the shape. The bones of a novel that works — and the structural diagnostic that tells you, every time, which beat in your draft is the one that needs w...
Most new writers freeze on the first line because they think it has to be brilliant. It doesn’t. The opening line isn’t the point. The opening page is. And the opening page is doing a job. In this 60-minute workshop, novelist and writing coach Hank Garner walks through what an opening actually has to do, the three kinds of hooks that work, and a five-question diagnostic you can run on any opening you’ve ever writt...
Beginnings are everything. Not only for starting the journey that you hope the reader takes with you, but the first thing you have to do is HOOK your reader. Want them to go on a journey with you? give them a reason. Join Hank and Abby as they discuss this.
Welcome to First Novel Problems, a brand-new YouTube series from Dabble Writer for anyone who's ever wanted to write a novel and didn't know where to start (or got stuck partway through and gave up).
In this introduction episode, meet your hosts:
Abby Mathews: Community Manager at Dabble, published middle-grade author, and someone who tried (and failed) to write a novel three times before finally figuring it out
Brooke: brand-new t...
Plot gets a lot of attention, but characters are what make people fall in love with your story. Want to write a memorable book? Create characters that your readers want to invite to Thanksgiving, or run from! Join Hank and Abby as they discuss the most important element in your writing, CHARACTERS.
You have a story in you, I know you do. But where do you start? Does the thought of writing a whole novel give you anxiety and keep you from starting at all?
Join published author Hank Garner from Dabble for a live brainstorming workshop on how to write a book when all you've got is a spark. We'll break down how to mine your creative well for character, setting, and plot ideas that will help you start your first novel (or your fift...
Get your copy of the workbook and slides here: https://www.dabbleu.com/c/upcoming-events-e63100/outlining-for-non-outliners
Are you the kind of writer that needs a little extra freedom in your process? Are you frustrated by people that tell you that you need to outline more, but that just makes you feel stifled? This workshop is for you.
Try out Dabble free for 14 days and see why it’s the best writing tool on the plane...
So, you want to write a novel. The question is, where on earth do you start?
Come hang out for a live Dabble Writer Fireside Chat about what to think about BEFORE you start writing that book. We're taking your questions in real time. Plotter, pantser, or anywhere in the middle. Everyone's welcome!
Hi, I'm Abby. I'm a middle-grade author, and I run the writing community at Dabble, the novel-writing software built for real writers. A...
Does your dialogue feel flat? Do all your characters sound a little too much alike? Bring it to the Dialogue Doctor.
Join Jeff Elkins (author, editor, and host of the Dialogue Doctor Podcast) for a live craft session on dialogue. We're talking how to make every conversation pull its weight, how to build character voices readers can tell apart on the page, and how to turn a scene of people talking into a scene readers can't stop rea...
Jim Butcher, author of the Dresden Files, Codex Alera, and the Cinder Spires, joins us live on Story Craft Cafe to talk about the hardest moment in any series. The "All Is Lost" beat. The point where everything your protagonist has built comes apart, right before the climax.
We're asking Jim how he lands this beat across a long-running series (one that started over 20 years ago and is still going). How does "All Is Lost" work in bo...
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