Welcome to The Writing Coach. On this podcast, I speak with the instructors, editors, coaches, and mentors who help writers and authors create their art, build their audience, and sell their work.
In episode #119 of The Writing Coach podcast, I speak with writer Carmone Harris.
Over the month of November, I ran my new group program, STORY PLAN INTENSIVE. The goal of the program was simple: rather than spend the month throwing together a stressful to create (and possibly disastrous) first draft of a manuscript via NaNoWriMo, the participants would instead spend the month planning their story, developing their macro-level story craft, and ultimately complete a rock-solid outline for their book that sets them up for long-term success. The program was a hit and I look forward to running it again before too long.
(If you would like to participate in the next round of STORY PLAN INTENSIVE, reach out to me at kevintjohns (at)gmail (dot)com.)
One of the participants in the program was Carmone Harriss. Carmone is a mother, embroiderer, and writer. When she’s not writing and being a mom, she loves to watch movies and television shows. She also enjoys reading and has a love for music. She’s a member of the Supernatural fandom and loves vampires and rock and roll. Her favorite book genres are YA/NA Paranormal romances, fantasy/urban fantasy, horror, and a few other romances.
Throughout STORY PLAN INTENSIVE, Carmone shared numerous resources with the group via our private forum. What impressed me about Carmone’s sharing was not just the helpful content she was able to find, but also the vast array of channels she was pulling content from. As such, I asked Carmone to be on the show to discuss the various sources she finds inspiration for her writing.
During our discussion, Carmone explains how writers can use:
- Role Playing Boards
- Music
- Youtube
- TikTok
- Podcasts
- And more!
Listen to the full podcast episode:
The Writing Coach Episode #119 Show Notes
Want to learn more about STORY PLAN INTENSIVE? Email me at kevintjohns (at) gmail (dot) com.
Role Playing Directory: http://rpg-directory.com/
Writing Excuses Podcast: https://writingexcuses.com/
Episode Transcript
Carmone, welcome to the show.
Hi, thanks for having me.
My pleasure. Carmone, we just finished the inaugural run of my new program STORY PLAN INTENSIVE. And you were one of the folks who participated and via the forum where we interact with each other on that program, you were sharing all sorts of awesome resources with everyone from all sorts of different places. And so I thought it would be really fun for us to have a conversation today about all these various different channels and venues that you find inspiration from for your writing.
Okay, cool.
Well. for the listeners, do you want to fill them in a little bit on who you are and kind of what your history is as a writer?
I’m a mom. I work in embroidery. I’m from Dayton, Ohio. I have been writing my whole life. I joined a creative writing class when I was in fifth grade and then my first little book back in the day and writing wise, I wrote on forums with friends, collaborating, writing for longest time, but I never really actually got into our thought about writing a book until I got a little older and that was my fiancé. He encouraged me to, to actually try and write something and a best friend of mine, her too. And then, so I started scratch and the thing is, is I, you know, education wise, I just go through the internet and I was just trying to figure out what I needed to do. Cause I didn’t know what I was doing. And right now I still don’t feel like I know what I’m doing, but that’s where I’m at.
I think we all feel that way.
Yeah.
Now when you talk about collaborative writing via forums, can you expand them on that? Through knowing you, I kind of know what that is, but maybe for the listeners explain what this collaborative writing via forums is all about.
Well, we call it RP, but it’s not our role-play, but us not the role-play and like Dungeons and dragons or what people would think it is. It’s more like a, it’s a board and each of these boards they’re called, you know, based sports and they have a, a theme and John are they’re supernatural. There’s Harry Potter, there’s real life ones. And they have a plot. Lord has a plot. And then they have a way where you can create these characters to go with these, the setting of whatever of this what that theme or that plot going for. And then you create characters and then you collaborate with other writers, use, created other characters on there, and then you make plots, you create plots and you just write together and threads. So like for instance, I’d have a guy character and he’s a vampire character and I’m plotting with a friend, a romance story with a friend of mine and she has a girl character.
And so we go in this, we start this thread and say, it’s a dinner thread. So I’m writing my character, I write his point of view and what he’s doing. And then she joins in and reacts to what my character is doing plus adds in a little bit more. So it’s kind of like step by step by step. I kind of think of it. Like each of those threads is kind of like a chapter in that those characters stories and then more and more people can come in if you want them. And then it just, yeah. Call it RP. That’s what I been doing. That’s how I’ve learned my writing as I went, but that’s a little different than actual novel writing because of the way you have to do that because, but it’s fun. But it has helped me grow as a writer.
I bet. I mean, it’s almost like that idea of play-based learning. You know, it’s like you’re learning the skillset of a writer. You are writing and you’re creating fiction, but it almost feels like maybe like a less pressure filled situation where you’re not like, “Oh, I gotta write my great novel.” Instead you just say, “I’m RPing.”
That’s more for fun. Yeah. It’s just to have fun. And you know, it can get a little stressful sometimes, but and you gotta be able to people that you’re riding with have to really, you know, got to get along and beyond the same page and communicate with each other. But it’s yeah, it’s, it’s basically for fun. It’s not a very serious, you know, like we’re not gonna publish the stories, but people can read them, you know, join the boards and you can reel these threads that these people have written. I have a few of my own.
What’s the platform that all this is taking place on.
They have different ones. The most popular one is, let’s say there’s pro boards and J sync is the most popular ones. And if you go to like RPGdirectory.com, there’s all kinds of different sites. The one I’m currently was, well, I haven’t been on there lately, but the one I’m on a lot is Santa Virta. And it’s based in kind of California. It’s a fictional city in California and it’s supernatural based angels, demons, vampires where shifters and there’s even some bay in there. So there there’s different types. There’s fantasy, there’s horror there’s and the RPG directory sets them up in different they’re John Aras. They’re kind of like McDonald’s because they’re just base boards and it depends on what you want to, what you’re into. There’s some Victorian London, historical ones too. That a couple of friends of mine are trying to get me to join, but I’m fine to not get myself to. And that’s the thing too. It can get a little, not distracting, but addicting that’s. And if you get on too many then, cause if you can write with one person is fine, then you’re writing with one and two, then three, then sometimes, and then you have all of these threads and that’s the thing too. And you have all these threads and four or five different characters and different plots. So now you’ve got five or six different plots all in your head and you’re trying to figure out what to do. Okay.
Okay. So you’re coming from this background of doing a lot of this style of writing where you’re collaborating and you’re reacting to what the other person is bringing artistically. How different was STORY PLAN INTENSIVE from that? What was it like spending the last month going through this program with me?
It was challenging. I mean, just doing the, you know, me trying to write snaffle novel in general has been challenging compared to that. I mean, even then with there, you still have to create your character and you have to create a bio. And so you have to get these bios or applications of your character approved by people in order to be able to get on there so that, so you do have to do character development, but as far as like outlining a plot, that’s difficult because a lot of that is a lot of pantsing. You pretty much just going with the flow on those sites. A lot of, lot of the time there are people who do kind of outline a little bit, but not, you don’t plan too much on there because it is, let’s see what happens. Let’s do this and see what happens.
And that’s kind of what it is. So actually trying to plan is it’s very challenging for me. I mean, I’ve tried a few times and I’ve always stopped like in the middle and it’s finishing and because my mind does go everywhere and just starts spilling out stuff. And then it’s like, okay, where am I? Okay, I’m going to start over. I’m going to start over. And that’s what I keep doing. A friend of mine recently we have been collaborating a story of our own and I met her through RP. And she went to school and she’s actually a librarian now and she got me into reading more books. So after doing that, reading more variety of different types of romances. And so now we’re collaborating a story with witches, which she was very inspired by discovery of witches, which you’ve talked about.
And we, you know, we met through RP and we had a character or characters through there. And so now we’re collaborating together with the switch story, but we’re doing it in a way kind of like RP with trying to keep it in a way where we can still turn it into like a, like a novel base goes. We want to maybe, maybe try to publish it later, but we’re trying to think of it more in a planning stage. So I, I started planning more with her and having meetings with her and she’s a heavy duty planner, so she’s really good going through the outlines. And I mean, she goes hardcore into planning. So for me though, it’s keeping focus.
You mentioned having tried planning in the past and not finishing an outline. You DID finish this month! How did that feel and how did the program help? Was it having that deadline that kind of forced you to push through?
I think so. I think that was a lot of it because I kept stopping at the middle and it was, I think a lot of it was maybe the story itself. It made me start to see the story in a different way. And by, and I also noticed by doing that, I have a habit of when I’m writing, I do try to outline, but then as, okay, I get tired and I want to write the story. And so I do, so I write scenes and then I write more scenes and then I changed my mind and then I go write more scenes and that changed my mind. And then I write more scenes and then I have all of these scenes written for this story and not even a finished story where with the outline, I was able to do that same thing with the outline, but not actually keep writing all of these different scenes over and over and over again so that it felt like I don’t have to feel so overwhelmed because I have all these different scenes where later I’d read one scene, oh, I like this.
I want, you know, I want to put it in. And then later I decide, no, I don’t want to put it in. I want to do it this way. And if it gives me too many options, at least this way, I have something more to look at now, granted, I did change it completely, but I think I realized I was, I wanted to make it my own. And this was the story. This version that I finished was one that I’ve had in my head for a while. I just haven’t figured out how to put it in there. And this one that I finished is a bunch of different ideas that I’ve had over the years, but just put them all in together. And she changed around a little bit. I’ve always had this under the idea.
Yeah. I mean the outline that you ended up with is, as you said, filled with a lot of different ideas, but I think giving it that structure that we did through the program, it doesn’t feel like a story with a million ideas thrown together. It feels like a really coherent narrative when I look at your outline.
Yeah. I hope so! I was writing it when I was working on it. I was like, oh, I hope this is okay. And there times where I did get stuck and I was like, okay, what do I do next? And it took me a moment to figure out what to do and I still have to, you know, flesh it out a little better. But yeah, it was nice getting to that ending. The ending part, I think was the most challenging because I, I mean, I knew what I wanted to do. I knew I know what I want to happen. It’s just, I didn’t know how I wanted to wanted it to happen, how I want to make it happen. That was, and it still might change. I’m still not sure I’m happy with what it is right now.
That’s something we were talking about throughout the program: it’s going to change. It’s absolutely going to change, but it’s a starting place. It gives you some direction as you move forward.
Okay. In the program we had the group coaching calls, we had the forum, we had training videos, we had homework assignments. What was your favorite part of the various different ways that we came at this?
I liked the character development, which was strange because you know, when I RP, one of the things I dread is to make character bios. But I think I needed it because my main guy Devlin, I had ideas for him, but it really opened up who he was and what his motivations and things were. And same thing with my antagonist to my friend that I write with. When I started to make, I like writing bad guys and, and there was a time in the beginning, I would write a bad guy, says, oh, you’re making them to rule on evil, as you said all the time. And it’s so funny. So I really practice and study how villains are on TV and reading when I’m reading and how they’re done. So I don’t make them. So what ha I’m so evil, you know, I think all the time and devil was not a bad guy. He’s not the bad guy even know he going to be seen as the bad guy, but
Wreck-It Ralph, right? It’s like “Just because you’re a bad guy, doesn’t mean you’re a bad guy.”
Yeah.
Okay. Via the forum, you shared all these amazing resources from all these different places. I want to talk a bit about this, about how you as a writer find inspiration. Obviously, we’ve talked about how the RP Boards have definitely inspired your writing, but let’s talk about the role music plays. Music is something that you and I have connected with over the years. How do you see music inspiring your writing?
There’s certain music, certain songs, certain ones that I would hear. And usually what it does is it’ll spark something in my head and it’ll start out like a scene. Sometimes montage is like, like when you see the fan videos on YouTube that people create that kind of plays out in my head sometimes. So sometimes like I’ll hear a song and I’ll have certain words. And I really listened to the words and the story that they’re saying, singing in the song and a certain character will just pop in my head. There’s, you know, I’ll hear a song and say, okay. And then all of a sudden I’m seeing Willow and she is caring, you know, the angel blade and she’s fighting because it’s an action film type of song or hear a song and it’s more, are you a man or a monster? I think that’s one song.
And as I, okay, that’s definitely, that’s definitely Devlin. And it’s mainly, you gotta listen to the message. And usually the characters will pop in my head or sometimes, like I said, I’ll visualize and scene, or I visualize like this montage thing that, you know, like you said that you, you would see a fan video on YouTube and that’s kind of like, it plays in my head and that gives me, you know, inspiration. And lately I’ve been listening to these epic trailers songs and they played one at like, there’s a certain song, cross they’re usually covers of different songs. Survivor was one of them. It was played on the new latest Tomb Raider movie. And I love that one for Willow and it’s very epic and mutant like theatrical. And it’s very motivating when it comes to like the stories. And, like I said, it depends on who it is and what it’s speaking towards. And there’s some songs I was speaking, you know, for the love story and certain parts of the love story. It’s a sad song. If it’s a upbeat song, you know, different things like that,
Are you consciously seeking out songs or are you just listening to music and it kind of subconsciously surprises you with the inspiration?
Yeah. I don’t go searching. It’s kind of hard for me to do it that way. I guess I’ll, I’ll hear like instrumental music. And I said, okay, I need some I hear about, oh, I listened to instrumental music soccer. Let me try that. So I would search instrumental music and then I would listen to that. And if it sparks something in my brain or certain characters start to speak to me or a scene starts playing out, then I save it into the playlist, same thing with an effort trailer. If I hear one song and that song really sparks my interest, then I’ll search for more. And then, oh, I’ll find a playlist with more. And then whatever one makes a spark, I’ll just add some playlists. And that’s kind of how I do that.
And then are you listening to this while you’re writing or you just use it to inspire the writing?
I use it to inspire the writing. It’s kind of hard for me to do it while I’m writing lately. I have been listening to it before I start to write. I usually like I’ve been getting on the bike, the spin bike, and listening to it while I do that and then try to do my writing after that. And that way it can, you know, help with that, wake my brain up, so to speak.
That covers the music side of things. What about Pinterest? You’ve been a big Pinterest user for a long time. How do you use Pinterest for your writing?
Well, Pinterest, I got into that because a few of my friends on the RP boards were doing that on theirs. So I didn’t realize that’s what it was at first. I thought, oh, it’s just crafts and all that. I didn’t, I ain’t not going to do that. But then I realized you could, you know, search up certain actors or actresses that we use. We call them play buys. But pretty much they’re just the face for the character. I think of it. Like if this story was a movie who would play this part. And so I would find, we would look for actor or actress and search them. If I don’t know, I would just search. I know they have blonde hair and blue eyes, blonde hair, blue eyes, female actresses, blonde, blue eyed, male actors, and then they’ll pop up and I’ll search them.
Whatever one speaks to me that, for that character, then I’ll pick that. And then Pinterest starts showing you all these different other ones. But the key is you got to pick the ones that makes for me. I pick the ones that fit the care. So for instance, if the character is blonde and the actor has the picture where they have brown here, I’m not going to pick the one where they have brown hair. If this character is more broody and not upbeat, I want to pick the ones that are dark and broody, not the worst, more serious, not the ones where they’re smiling and dimples and their cheeks and all of that. So it has to hit the character. And it’s the same thing with aesthetics. If it’s a dark themed type burst story, you want to find darker themes for your settings or just the aesthetic part to it.
If it’s an upbeat story, then you want to have more lighter themes. I try to put each character, they have like out a character section and then I have each character, they have their own section, a board, whichever like for Jesse and my Abernathy story, Jesse, I had a bunch of skateboards and ghosts books. And, you know, he had a big trench coat that he wore and brand and alternative type based stuff. Cause that’s kinda who Jesse was for Derek is, was like old sports, old cars, dirt roads, and yeah, Jensen Ackles Dean Winchester as his character. And he just got to find stuff to fix the character. The problem with Pinterest is you’ve got it’s can get addicting too, because you’ll pick one thing and then more and more and more keep popping up and you just hinting. You’re finding yourself, least me. I find myself constantly penning. And, but it’s, it helps me visually cause I am a visual learner. And when I want to describe someone, I like to have something I can look at when I want to describe. And I also try to do these, you know, when I find the pictures of their faces, I try to do it where they’re making different facial expressions. So when I go to write their facial expressions or whatever, I can know what to look at. Same thing with the settings settings are the same way.
It’s funny, in fine art one of the first things you do is paint a bowl of fruit. You look at fruit and then you paint it. Writers don’t always think of using visual cues in this manner, but it’s so helpful. Like why sit there at your keyboard and go, “Okay, what does a bowl of fruit look like?” when you can just hop on Google images or hop on Pinterest and type “bowl of fruit”, right?
Exactly.
Are you doing that as part of your kind of prep work or just doing it midway to clarify the story, what characters look like, what the setting looks like as you’re writing,
I can kind of do both. When a story comes to mind, I started out for, to find the characters and then I try to think of the settings and I try to find different cards that have fit the story. And then as I’m going, you know, if I have to be on interest, I don’t like, I’m going to go on Pinterest and add stuff on here. I just I’m in the mood, I’m on it. And then I see something they’ll usually a notification will pop up and, oh, that’s a good thing. And so I’ll click that. Sometimes they’ll give ’em recommendations, but like I said, you gotta be careful not get drawn too much into it because it will draw you in
All right, let’s move on to YouTube. I tend to look at books and stuff when I’m doing my craft research, so I’m not really that familiar with the world of writer training on YouTube. But I know you certainly shared some good things, so can you fill in the listeners a bit about what type of stuff they might be able to find on YouTube to help with their writing?
For me with reading, if I’m a slow reader or very slow reader. And sometimes that’s why I like the audio books because I tend to absorb it better that way. And I kind of see YouTube like that. And sometimes there are times where I can’t afford to pay for classes or different things. And so I’m constantly trying to find other ways that’ll help me. And if I’m trying to find one day, it’s like, you know what? I want to learn how to, if I’m a, pantser, what’s a good way for a pantser per plot. And so I would go to YouTube and type plotting for pantsers and then, you know, they’ll shirt. And some of them are just more opinion-based topped in my 10 tips of this or that. And that’s, those are fun. And sometimes I’ll pull, but you gotta be careful with those because they are highly opinion-based and they’re, you know, they do give a good advice, but don’t take them like literal don’t.
Cause I ran into the problem with, oh gosh, then I’m a, I’m a bad writer because I want to write triangles, you know, love triangles, you know, but that’s just that certain YouTubers or book tubers or whatever point of view. So I try now to find ones that are actually geared towards education based or geared, stir, helping then their opinion, the opinion ones a more for, you know, fun, you know, you want to listen to you and see what they say. And like I said, sometimes I do have good advice, so yeah. So I’ve found a few and you really got to search.
They’re not showing up on page one of YouTube.
Yeah. Yeah. Usually it’s scroll through and find ones that appeal to you. And then I, once I find ones that are informative, I subscribe to them. So that way, if they give a new video, they’ll pop up on my subscription and then I can usually watch it that way. I do that with KM. Weiland’s too. I’ve I’ve read her blogs and I have searched and, and I listened to her audio books and I know she has videos that go along with her blogs too. So I watch, you know, watching those two.
Yeah. She’s great. Okay. Now this one surprised me a bit . . . I only know about TikTok via my children. My daughters love to do TikTok dances. That’s about the extent of my experience with TikTok. But you mentioned there’s some books stuff going on there. What is it like?
It’s, I mean, that’s another one that can get highly addicting because it’s so short. Like you’re constantly scrolling with the comes to the writing and the books you have to search, I put more writing or certain ones and then you’ll start and then people will pop up given writing advice. There’s they call them book talkers and they give book recommendations and, and that’s how you get different books and things to read. But there’s also writers, writers talk, but you type, you know, writers and the, you get different tick talks where they show they give advice and there’s different authors and there’s also other authors promoting their books on chick doc as well, a bunch of self-published authors and the authors are on TikToK trying to sell their books on there and they give advice too.
I’m a little more into like the hour-long podcast discussion like we’re doing right now, as opposed to ten second blips or whatever, but let’s talk podcasts. You’ve been listening to podcasts for a long time and you have some writing shows that you really like.
Yeah. My friend that I’ve talked about that I’ve writing that book with, she introduced me to writing excuses and that’s been out for a long time as Dan Wells, Brandon Sanderson, Howard, I can’t remember his last name, but, and Mary Robinson. I hope I don’t get their names wrong. Anyway, they’re a group of authors and they give writing advice and I’ve been listening to them for the longest time. I got to go to one of them at gen con a couple of years ago. And I met Dan Wells in person, which was pretty cool. And he writes that I’m not a serial killer series, the John Cleaver series. And he also has some Saifai young adult books too. But I think everyone knows who Brandon Sanderson is. And then I, I guess, same with podcasts. I search for them if I hear about them in another podcast, or if I hear about them in a YouTube video a lot of the YouTube of, well, I should say not a lot, but a few of them have their own podcasts as well. And so I searched for them and do it that way.
Fantastic. Well, Carmone, thank you so much for being part of STORY PLAN INTENSIVE. It was awesome having you in there and just seeing you share all these different cool platforms where people can get more information to support their writing. Any final thoughts on STORY PLAN INTENSIVE. Would you recommend it? Did you have a good time? Were you happy with the product at the end?
I like working with other people and having other people authors or fellow writers involved, especially ones that are working on the same genre that I’m working on was very helpful. And it does, it helps the, you know, one of my downfalls is I don’t like to be by myself when I’m writing that date that, you know, that’s usually when I give up, like I am boring, I’m lonely, but having more people there to cheer you on or to talk or chat with, or if you have a trouble having trouble, you can talk with them. It was nice. I enjoyed it. And then, like I said, I enjoyed working on the outlining part and doing the homework and really digging deep and being forced to not really be enforced for forcing myself, being forced to force myself to get it. Like you were like a drill Sergeant or anything, but,
Well, I was really happy with where you ended up. This was the first time I ran the program. This was the pilot. And I was like, I think I can get everyone to a completed outline by the end of this month. But, I mean, it could have gone totally off the rails. Midway through, I was kind of like, oh boy, are we going to do this? But then we get to that final week and you and everyone else have these beautiful stories that have beginnings, middles, and endings. It was just like such a thrill for me to see it all come together in such a short period of time.
Yeah. It definitely was surprising, you know, surprising for me. That last week came, and I was like, am I going to be able to finish this? But I did.
Awesome. Well, Carmone, thank you so much for being on The Writing Coach podcast today.
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
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