Some of my most popular Deviate podcast episodes have been about the craft of writing (and, often, travel writing specifically). This has dovetailed nicely with the creative writing classes I offer in Paris each summer — and I have, over the years, featured interviews with such Paris co-teachers as Major Jackson, Hala Alyan, and Elena Passarello.
Often, however, my writing-themed podcast episodes focus on genres in which I have less professional and teaching experience — genres like screenwriting for film and television, which embrace the art of storytelling in ways I find inspiring and influential, even for my own non-screen professional pursuits, like essays and travel writing.
Here are some of my favorite writing-craft episodes from recent seasons:
How to write a travel memoir (and how failure is the best teacher)
One of my favorite writing-craft Deviate episodes is actually a remix of an interview Jeremy Bassetti did with me for his Travel Writing World podcast, which has also featured interviews with such authors as Alexandra Fuller, Paul Theroux, and Pico Iyer. Jeremy steered the discussion specifically to the craft of travel memoir, and my strategies for the one-week classes I teach on the topic each summer in Paris. Along the way, we discuss how travel memoir is different from other kinds of travel writing, the role of research in travel reportage, and the balance between personal expression and reportage in telling a travel story.
Ryan Holiday on how to conceive, research, and write a “Big Idea” book
One of the classes I’ve taught in Paris in the past is a Big-Idea Book Bootcamp, which trains students to meld real-world expertise with personal storytelling to create book-narratives that transform readers’ perspectives on the world. I use a lot of examples from Ryan Holiday’s writings on Stoicism in class, so it was nice to get a podcast perspective on how he puts his books together. Together, we discuss topics like how writing for general audiences differs from writing for “elite” audiences, the difference in focus between the research phase and the writing phase of a book, and how a “commonplace book” can fuel your creative life.
Writer-producer LaToya Morgan on TV storytelling and creative self-discipline
I met TV writer and producer LaToya Morgan at the Austin Film Festival, where the script for a baseball sports-drama I’d written was a finalist in the festival’s screenwriting competition. LaToya stood out among the festival’s other professional TV and film writers for her unpretentious openness to all the aspiring screenwriters in attendance. I found her perspective on the industry to be really helpful and insightful – and she shares a lot of that insight in this podcast episode from the first season of Deviate.
Remembering Bettina Gilois (and what writers can learn from her work)
Most people identify movies by their actors or directors, but I’ve always been a fan of screenwriters – I’ve interviewed several on Deviate – and talking to McFarland USA screenwriter Bettina Gilois was kind of a fan moment for me. My conversation with her proved to be full of insights about how to research and write real-life stories for the screen, based on her own experience of writing scripts about people like Bessie Smith, Mahalia Jackson, and the 1966 national-champion Texas Western College basketball team depicted in Glory Road.
Benjamin Percy on how comics and movies teach the best lessons about telling stories
Ben Percy taught a fiction class for me at the Paris Writing Workshop in 2019, and for this episode I sat down with him in the Luxembourg Gardens and talk about his book Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction, and how pulp genres like movies and comic books can teach great lessons about story structure, suspense, and how to craft literary narratives. This episode dropped in tandem with an episode taped in Ben’s classroom, entitled “Storytelling for the screen: A lecture from the Paris Writing Workshop.”
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