Your backstage pass to the world’s most prolific authors

JD Barker
Christine Daigle
Kevin Tumlinson
Jena Brown

What does it take to succeed as a writer? Join hosts J.D. Barker, Christine Daigle, Kevin Tumlinson and Jena Brown as they pull back the curtain and gain rare insight from the household names found on bookshelves worldwide.

Want to ask your favorite author a question? Click here!

How to Dictate a Novel with Kevin J Anderson

Writing icon Kevin J Anderson creates his stories through a unique medium: dictation. By drafting through dictation instead of typing, he both produces ideas naturally without the stress of grammatically picking apart each sentence and easily comes up with casual, believable dialogue. Anderson has been in the writing industry for over thirty years and has written with all kinds of artistic legends, from Brian Herbert to Rush’s Neil Peart. To order Dune: The Lady of Caladan, his latest release, follow the link below.

From Amazon.com:

I have written more than 165 books, including 56 national or international bestsellers. I have over 23 million books in print worldwide in thirty languages. I’ve been nominated for the Nebula Award, Hugo Award, Bram Stoker Award, Shamus Award, and Silver Falchion Award, and I’ve won the SFX Readers’ Choice Award, Golden Duck Award, Scribe Award, and New York Times Notable Book; in 2012 at San Diego Comic Con I received the Faust Grand Master Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Whether you’re traditionally published or indie, writing a good book is only the first step in becoming a successful author. The days of just turning a manuscript into your editor and walking away are gone. If you want to succeed in today’s publishing world, you need to understand every aspect of the business – editing, formatting, marketing, contracts. It all starts with a good book, then the real work begins.

Join international bestselling author J.D. Barker and indie powerhouses, J. Thorn and Zach Bohannon, as they gain unique insight and valuable advice from the most prolific and accomplished authors in the business.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

  • How Kevin befriended Neil Peart
  • Why to dictate your dialogue
  • How to outline your dictation
  • Why “stealing” ideas can be helpful
  • The importance of a writing community

Links:

J. D. Barker – http://jdbarker.com/

J. Thorn – https://theauthorlife.com/

Zach Bohannon – https://zachbohannon.com/

Kevin J Anderson – https://www.wordfire.com/

Dune: The Lady of Caladanhttps://mybook.to/Caladan

The Relaxed Author (Books For Writers Book 13) Kindle Edition by Joanna Penn  (Author), Mark Leslie Lefebvre – https://books2read.com/u/4jo7Xv 

J.’s NFT Experiment – https://theauthorlife.com/sharing-royalties-with-readers-everyone-wins/

Story Rubric – http://storyrubric.com  

Nonfic Rubric – http://nonficrubric.com  

Proudly sponsored by Kobo Writing Life – https://kobowritinglife.com/

Music by Nicorus – https://cctrax.com/nicorus/dust-to-dust-ep 

Voice Over by Rick Ganley – http://www.nhpr.com and recorded at Mill Pond Studio – http://www.millpondstudio.com

Contact – https://writersinkpodcast.com/dev/contact/ 

*Full disclosure: Some of the links are affiliate links.

5 Comments

  1. Antal

    2 years ago  

    Well, I am glad that this gimmick is working. Since being alien by birth to English I have been struggling with spelling and compelled to continuous correcting typos what resulted in my thoughtless stare at the notebook screen.
    W10 diktafon is a built in app, easy to preserve ideas popping up.

    1. J. Thorn

      2 years ago  

      I’ve been there too!

  2. Christopher Wills

    2 years ago  

    Fascinating interview today. Always happy to listen to people talk about dictation because I am one of the many people who have tried it and failed at it. Interested in the idea that dialogue is more natural from dictation than typing, which is obvious when you think about it. Listening to Kevin and JD have encouraged me to give it another go.
    Fun listening to him talk about Ray Bradbury. I remember seeing ‘The Martian Chronicles’ on UK TV in 1984. A couple of years ago I bought the DVD. Although it has dated, I still love all 3 parts and it has one of the best endings ever.
    Listening to Kevin talk about writing to famous authors has given me an idea. I wonder if J K Rowling or Stephen King currently need a collaborator. I won’t bother James Patterson because I am not a former POTUS.
    Great show today.

    1. J. Thorn

      2 years ago  

      I’ve gone through phases of dictation, but I agree its worth getting over the learning curve. Thanks for listening!

  3. S.A. Schneider

    2 years ago  

    Probably my favorite interview so far. I have all of his Star Wars novels – no surprise, huh J ;). And he worked with Rush – one of my top 3 favorite bands of all time. Clockwork Angels is definitely a beautiful story, album and graphic novel.
    I fail a bit because I only have a couple of his x-files novels and Dune books. And I will look up Drumbeat – hold on. OK, got it.
    I remember advice (probably Tony Robbins) that if you want to be successful to mimic what successful people do. Guess that means I need to give dictation another try. I’ve been thinking about it because an author on my podcast talked about dictation and got me thinking about it differently, so this might be my sign to do it.

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