How do you figure out your character’s objective? How do you stay on top of your writing deadline using spreadsheets? How do you balance the plot demands of suspense with character development? What’s the relationship like between an author and an editor? Get ready for this motivating conversation featuring today’s special guest Gretchen McNeil.
Gretchen is the author of the YA horror/suspense novels POSSESS, 3:59, RELIC, GET EVEN, GET DIRTY, and TEN and her latest novel #MURDERTRENDING.
Gretchen shares all the advice and tips she’s learned from her own experiences transitioning from a performing background into a writing career. Along with her technique of applying Stanislavski’s acting tehcniques towards analyzing a writer’s manuscript, she walks us through the details of finding the right literary agent and shares querying tips.
Books & Resources Mentioned in Gretchen’s Episode:
Self Editing for Fiction Writers by Browne and King
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
If you got some awesome takeaways from this episode and would love to show your appreciation, the best way would be through any of the following:
- Help sustain 88 Cups of Tea by making a monthly gift in any amount through our ‘tokens of love’ page
- A one-time contribution by clicking here
- Pick up our carefully crafted writing prompts with your gift of $10 or more
We dedicate a ton of heart and soul into fostering a space that encourages learning, creativity, growth, and community. The most sincerest thank you for your love and support!
Check out these highlights:
- Tapping into a performance background to access empathy and compassion for character creations
- How Gretchen applies and teaches Stanislavski’s acting technique towards analyzing your manuscript
- Why it’s important to write in the margins to find out your character’s objective
- We deep-dive into Gretchen’s latest novel “#MURDERTRENDING”
- How Gretchen uses Excel spreadsheets to stay on time with her writing deadlines
- Gretchen walks us through the relationship between an editor and an author
- How to choose the right literary agent for you
- Detailed querying advice for writers
- Listener questions featured:
- Does Gretchen have any tips for balancing the plot demands of suspense with character development?
- Does Gretchen have any tips for integrating those breadcrumbs during drafting season or is that something she works on in revisions?
- Did you pull from current social media apps and/or create some new aspects for your own?
- When it comes to horror, do you find mixing it with other genres makes it easier to write?
Say ‘Hi’ to Gretchen McNeil!
Learn More About “#MURDERTRENDING”
Scream Queens meets The Hunger Games in #MURDERTRENDING (On Sale 8/8/18) by Gretchen McNeil. In this gruesome young adult novel, seventeen-year-old Dee Guerrera is wrongfully convicted and sent to a prison island where government-sanctioned killers hunt down convicts and stream their deaths on social media for “spikes.” With its morbid, tongue-in-cheek sense of humor and twisty, gasp-inducing mystery, this novel has already been optioned for development by television studio ABC Signature.
WELCOME TO THE NEAR FUTURE, where good and honest citizens can enjoy watching the executions of society’s most infamous convicted felons, streaming live on The Postman app from the suburbanized prison island Alcatraz 2.0.
When Dee wakes up in a haze, lying on the ground of a dimly lit warehouse, she realizes she’s about to be the next victim of the app. Knowing hardened criminals are getting a taste of their own medicine in this place is one thing, but Dee refuses to roll over and die for a heinous crime she didn’t commit. Can Dee and her newly formed posse, the Death Row Breakfast Club, prove she’s innocent before she ends up wrongfully murdered for the world to see? Or will The Postman’s cast of executioners kill them off one by one?
Learn More About Gretchen McNeil
Gretchen McNeil is the author of the YA horror/suspense novels POSSESS, 3:59, RELIC, GET EVEN, GET DIRTY, and TEN (a YALSA Top Ten Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers, a Romantic Times Top Pick, and a Booklist Top Ten Horror Fiction for Youth) all with Balzer + Bray for HarperCollins. Gretchen’s first YA contemporary I’M NOT YOUR MANIC PIXIE DREAM GIRL, also with Balzer + Bray, hit shelves in 2016, and her next novel will be the horror-comedy #MURDERTRENDING for Disney/Freeform in 2018.
Gretchen’s novels have been published internationally in Chinese, Spanish, Turkish, and Czech. The film adaptation of TEN starring China Anne McClain (Descendants 2, Black Lightning), Rome Flynn (The Bold and the Beautiful), and Callan McAuliffe (Flipped, I Am Number Four), directed by Chris Robert for Rain Maker Films, premiered on Lifetime in 2017.
Gretchen is repped by Ginger Clark of Curtis Brown, Ltd.
