Mommy's Pen

A writer's notes on family

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The Mommy’s Pen Podcast – S3, E1: The Rise of Cleopatra

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Season 3 is here! We’re combining Nora’s passion for history with Sue’s passion for story structure — giving you a historical story and pointing out the structural elements that make it compelling.

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:

Season 3, Episode 1: The Rise of Cleopatra

Here’s how this season will work:

Nora will tell a story from history, and I’ll interject at various points to point out story structure elements.

I’m using what Shawn Coyne calls the “Five Commandments of Storytelling.” These need to exist at both the macro and micro level of a long-form story. In other words, you need the five commandments in every scene, but also in every section of the story (the beginning part, the middle part and the end part) and over the story arc as a whole.

Here are the five commandments:

  • Inciting incident – An exciting thing that kicks off a story
  • Progressive complications – a series of events that make the story more, well, complicated –these can be either negative or positive
  • Crisis – a question that must be answered by a choice being made
  • Climax – what happens when the choice is made
  • Resolution – the ultimate results of that choice

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, including an advance copy of my forthcoming novel, The Cat, the Cash, the Leap and the List.
  • Shawn Coyne and the Story Grid. There’s a whole story grid universe: website, book and two podcasts: The Story Grid and the Story Grid Editors Roundtable.
  • “The Discovery of King Tut” exhibit at the Oregon Museum of Science Industry (OMSI).

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

The Mommy’s Pen Podcast: S2, E11 – Status Stories

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This is our final episode for season 2 and we’re looking at the Status genre. It’s all about characters trying to come up in the world and whether we glory in their success or pity their failure.

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:

Season 2, Episode 11: Status Stories

This week we’re looking at the Status genre. It’s all about characters trying to come up in the world and whether we glory in their success or pity their failure. Season 3 will start next week and we’ll be going back to stories from history!

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, including an advance copy of my forthcoming novel, The Cat, the Cash, the Leap and the List.
  • Shawn Coyne and the Story Grid. There’s a whole story grid universe: website, book and two podcasts: The Story Grid and the Story Grid Editors Roundtable, on which they’ve covered the morality genre a number of times.
  • The five leaf Genre Clover, or as Nora likes to call it, the Genre Flower.
  • Spirit Riding Free from Netflix. Specifically, S2, E4: Lucky and the Competition Conundrum 

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

The Mommy’s Pen Podcast: S2, E10 – Morality Stories

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This week it’s morality stories. Which sound lame, but can be incredibly fun if done right.

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:

Season 2, Episode 10: Morality Stories

Few kids are going to knowingly sit down to a Morality story, so you better add lots of humor to make it worth while. We look to Spirit Riding Free to show us how to make a morality story lots of fun using episode 3 of season 2: “Lucky’s Super Amazing and Fun Cousin Julian.”

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, including an advance copy of my forthcoming novel, The Cat, the Cash, the Leap and the List.
  • Shawn Coyne and the Story Grid. There’s a whole story grid universe: website, book and two podcasts: The Story Grid and the Story Grid Editors Roundtable, on which they’ve covered the morality genre a number of times.
  • The five leaf Genre Clover, or as Nora likes to call it, the Genre Flower.
  • Spirit Riding Free from Netflix. Specifically, S2, E3: Lucky’s Super Amazing and Fun Cousin Julian.

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

The Mommy’s Pen Podcast — S2, E9: The Crime Story

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This week it’s crime stories for kids! And they are SO fun.

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:

Season 2, Episode 9: The Crime Story

Crime stories for kids are just plain fun. No, really. We take a look at all the elements of a crime story and look at a great example in season 2, episode 2 of Spirit Riding Free.

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, including an advance copy of my forthcoming novel, The Cat, the Cash, the Leap and the List.
  • Shawn Coyne and the Story Grid. There’s a whole story grid universe: website, book and two podcasts: The Story Grid and the Story Grid Editors Roundtable, on which they’ve covered the crime genre a number of times.
  • The five leaf Genre Clover, or as Nora likes to call it, the Genre Flower.
  • Spirit Riding Free from Netflix, specifically, S2, E2: Lucky and the Pie P.I.
  • Ivy and Bean Take the Case, wherein Bean’s mom makes her watch a classic noir film and then Bean turns P.I. and goes around the neighborhood looking for mysteries to solve.

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

The Mommy’s Pen Podcast: S2, E8 — The Love Story

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This week we take a close look at love stories.

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:

Season 2, Episode 8: The Love Story and Jane Austen’s Emma

We continue our exploration of genre, this time with the help of Jane Austen. We look at Emma, and really, this novel is even more brilliant than I realized once we start looking at the ways it meets the obligatory scenes and conventions of the Love genre.

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, including an advance copy of my forthcoming novel, The Cat, the Cash, the Leap and the List.
  • Shawn Coyne and the Story Grid. There’s a whole story grid universe: website, book and two podcasts: The Story Grid and the Story Grid Editors Roundtable, on which they’ve covered the love genre a number of times.
  • The five leaf Genre Clover, or as Nora likes to call it, the Genre Flower.
  • Emma, by Jane Austen.
  • Movie adaptations: There’s this BBC miniseries from 2009, which is excellent and free with Amazon Prime. Or there’s the Gwyneth Paltrow vehicle from 1996 which you can also watch on Amazon but you have to have a Starz subscription, which is super lame.

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

The Mommy’s Pen Podcast — S2, E7: The Action Genre

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This week we take a look at the Action genre.

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:

Season 2, Episode 7: The Action Genre and Spirit Riding Free

We continue our exploration of genre, again with help from the Netflix series Spirit Riding Free. This time it’s episode 3 from season 6: Lucky and the Frontier Phillies. The Action Genre has sixteen different subgenres! This week, we’ll just look at one. It’s an Action/Adventure story where it’s person against nature and the environment is the villain.

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, including an advance copy of my forthcoming novel, The Cat, the Cash, the Leap and the List.
  • Shawn Coyne and the Story Grid. There’s a whole story grid universe: website, book and two podcasts: The Story Grid and the Story Grid Editors Roundtable. There’s even a great blog post on the Action genre by Rachelle Ramirez (a Story Grid editor who happens to be in my editing group).
  • The five leaf Genre Clover, or as Nora likes to call it, the Genre Flower.
  • Spirit Riding Free, a Netflix original series from DreamWorks.

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