Episode 131B - Shannon Felton - Theme

Overview With horror, theme can be even more important than other genres and you can get a theme that you didn’t expect. Shannon has developed her own way of finding her theme, and we discuss that in this episode. Her Book https://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Stewartville-Shannon-Felton/dp/1957537310?keywords=the+prisoners+of+stewartville&qid=1669400707&sprefix=prisoner+of+stewar%2Caps%2C102&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=19233c51de9a29eba766a07f6d4a1d5e&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_il YouTube Transcript Okay, so let’s move on and talk author stuff, and I think this is a great, uh, discussion, uh, on theme because we’re recording this in October and October’s a big team month with all the Halloween and horror stuff. So, uh, before we get onto that, let me ask you a couple hard questions. You’re working on your second book, you wrote this first one. What are some things you’ve learned writing that first one that you’re doing different with the second one? Shannon: Definitely don’t worry about the first draft. That’s a really hard one to get, um, okay with. But don’t worry about the first draft. Just write it all out. When that muse comes calling, listen, sit down just right. Don’t worry about anything else. Um, The what readers liked. It was good to see what readers liked from my first book, and then knowing, okay, I can do this more in my second book and add it in there. She. I don’t have a good answer for this one. Stephen: No, that’s, that’s fine. And uh, I mean, you’ve only written one book, so there’s probably still a lot of things you’re learning. Shannon: Uh, yeah, I just don’t, I’m still kind of feeling lost in the weeds a little bit . And Stephen: that’s perfect too because, you know, the focus of the podcast is new authors. Not someone who has, you know, New York Times bestsellers, I’m not gonna talk to Patterson. You know? Yeah. Talking to new authors and a lot of times new authors feel like, oh man, everybody else has it all together and know what they’re doing. And that’s not true. Just about every author I talk with, you know, is, is the same way. It’s like, man, Like you said, the second book’s hard. Oh my gosh. You know, it’s not the easiest thing in the world just cause I, no. Yeah, and you Shannon: think it’s, you think you’ll get that first one published and it’ll just be easy and you’ll be confident and you’re like, oh, I’m really a writer now. And no, that’s, that doesn’t make everything go away. It’s still work and it’s still difficult. Yes. Stephen: Yeah, absolutely. Um, so what, uh, when you’re writing, what software and services do you use? Do you have anything special that you really. Shannon: I just use Google Docs. Okay. Um, sometimes I might pop it into Grammarly and just make sure I’m doing okay there. There’s a fun little, um, website Hemingway edits. Oh gosh, I don’t remember that. But it’s based on Hemingway’s writing. You just pop something in there, it’ll tell you too many ad verbs or shorten your sentences. It’s just fun to. Um, Stephen: to use and I use pro writing aid help, like you said, learning more, uh, you know, tells me what I did wrong and why, and it helps me improve. I use it, you know, as alerting tool, not just