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Mommy’s Pen Podcast – Episode 6: Full Story Analysis of Ivy & Bean

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Trumpets blaring: We are now available on Apple podcasts! Pretty please, leave us a review. Reviews are VERY important to help us grow.

This week we take every story element we’ve learned in the five previous episodes and put them together to analyze Ivy & Bean by Annie Barrows.

You can also listen using any number of podcast platforms and apps including Spotify, Breaker, Pocket Casts, Radio Public, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts.

Show Notes:

Ivy and Bean - Book 1

Season 1, Episode 6: Full Story Analysis of Ivy & Bean

This week we build on the five previous episodes by analyzing the story structure of one whole book, Ivy & Bean by Annie Barrows. We also get excited for the eleventh book in the series, Ivy & Bean: One Big Happy Family, due out later this month. Nora is on a roll in this one — thankfully, most of the screaming has been edited out.

Read the transcript.

Things we mention that you should check out:

  • Our mailing list! Sign up today and you’ll get cool subscriber only perks like bonus material and artwork from my forthcoming novel, The Cat, the Cash, the Leap and the List.
  • All the other Ivy & Bean books and more about Annie Barrows.
  • If you want to learn more about the second plot point and the four-act structure for stories, I highly recommend the work of Larry Brooks. You can see a list of his books at the Story Fix website.

This post was lovingly sponsored by our Patreon supporters (you can become one, too!). 

Announcing the Mommy’s Pen Podcast!

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What could be better than sharing a passion with your kid? Nora (age 11) and I love to talk about books and what makes a good story, so we decided to start a podcast so everyone else can listen in.

So, go ahead!

You can also listen using any number of podcast platforms and apps including Breaker, Pocket Casts, Radio Public, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts.

We’ll be on iTunes soon, but in the meantime, you can add us to the Apple podcast player manually by navigating thusly:

Shows—>Edit—>Add a Podcast by URL—>https://anchor.fm/mommyspen

Show Notes:


Season 1, Episode 1: Inciting Incident

Nora reviews My Name is Victoria, a historical middle grade novel by Lucy Worsley, including her take on the inciting incident of the novel. We also fight about Lucy W.’s eyebrows and whether or not she has the help of a ghostwriter for her novels. (I mean, holy cow, if she doesn’t, this woman is good at everything and insanely productive. She’s also a historian, the Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces in Great Britain and a well known presenter for the BBC.)

We also discuss our plans for the podcast: we’re gonna talk about books, stories, and story structure. Specifically, in each episode we’ll discuss some aspect of story structure. This time around, it’s “inciting incident.” This is an event that thrusts a character into a particular situation and sucks a reader into a story.

Read the full transcript.

Other things we mention that you may want to check out:

  • Our mailing list! Sign up today and you’ll get cool subscriber only perks like bonus material and artwork from my forthcoming novel, The Cat, the Cash, the Leap and the List.
  • The Penderwicks Series by Jeanne Birdsall
  • More from Lucy Worsley at her website, including all her fabulous work with the BBC.
  • If you want to know more about story structure and don’t want to wait for the next podcast, I highly recommend The Story Grid website, book and podcast.

This post was lovingly sponsored by my Patreon supporters (you can become one, too!).