1. The One Quality That Means a Writer Will be Successful, Every Time

Episode 1: Do You Have What It Takes to Be a Writer?

Welcome to the very first episode of "Show Don't Tell Writing" with your host, Suzy Vadori! In this episode, Suzy dives into the one key quality that guarantees a writer's success—and it's not talent. Debunking Hollywood myths about overnight successes, she emphasizes the importance of learning and practicing the craft of writing. Whether you're just starting your writing journey or looking to improve, this episode is packed with insights to help you transform your storytelling. Join Suzy as she shares her own experiences and offers practical advice to help you write stories that captivate and engage readers.

Main Topics of This Episode Include:

• The one quality that ensures a writer's success: being open to learning
• Debunking the myth of innate talent and overnight success in writing
• Comparing the process of becoming a writer to learning other professions

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Remember, the book you’re writing is going to open doors you haven't even thought of yet, and I can't wait to help you make it the absolute best to can be. If you're feeling called to write that book, keep going and I'll be right here cheering you on.  See you again next week!

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Intro and Outro Music is Daisy by Zight and used under a CC by 4.0 DEED Attribution 4.0 International license. For more music by Zight visit https://www.youtube.com/zight

Transcript

0:49

Welcome to Show Don't Tell Writing with me, Suzy Vadori, where I teach you the tried and true secrets to writing fiction and nonfiction that will wow your readers, broken down step by step. This show explores writing techniques and This shows you a glimpse behind the scenes of successful writing careers, and coaches writers live on their pages so you can learn and transform your own storytelling. Whether you're just starting out, drafting, editing, or currently rewriting your first book or maybe even your tenth, this show will help you unlock the writing skills you didn't know you needed, but you definitely do. I'm looking forward to helping you get your amazing ideas from your mind onto the page in an exciting way. for both you and your readers so that you can achieve your wildest writing dreams while having fun doing it. Let's dive in. Do you have what it takes to be a writer? This is the one quality that means a writer will be successful every time. In today's episode, our very first official Show Don't Tell Writing episode together, whoo hoo! I'm going to share with you this quality that makes writers stand out. The quality that when I see it, I just know that writer is going to hit their goals. That they'll reach their dreams. If you have it, know that you're going to get there, too. Let me give you a hint. It's not talent. There's this myth out there that writers should be born with this innate ability to write. That it comes from within like some kind of magic. And Hollywood reinforces this myth by creating movies about writers who go away, write a whole novel in a weekend that's perfect and amazing, buy a mansion with the proceeds of their book deal. Many writers I meet and have the opportunity to work with carry this crushing fear that they don't have what it takes because they see these examples. It's all over the internet, ads that promise that you can write a book in 90 days, writers who share their methods of writing faster. Heck, this week I was watching a Gossip Girl reruns with my teenagers and there was this episode where Vanessa gets an idea for an original play and writes the whole thing from scratch the night before she applies to a prestigious art school. And get, get this, she actually gets it. That doesn't happen. People do not write an entire play, an entire novel, an entire book that quickly. It doesn't work like that. So if you're feeling imposter syndrome because your first drafts don't measure up to the best selling novel you just read, I feel you because that happened to me too. Now, I love a challenge. Honestly, writing is the only profession in the world where humans seem to think that they should be able to do it without learning the craft. Let's think about it for a second. You can't become a surgeon without years of school and practice. This is not a disputed fact. And you can't become a car mechanic, a cashier, a chef, or a rocket scientist without learning how first, right? The same is actually true in the arts. You wouldn't dream of standing up on stage and performing a dance or a piano recital in front of an audience without practicing first. In some cases, you'd have to practice for years before you'd feel confident doing that. So why is it that we believe that we should be able to write a book worthy of praise on our first try just because we want to? Now I like to call this the stick figure Mona Lisa effect, which if you've been following me for a while, you may have heard me talk about. Well, I'm not much of an artist. I am the first one to admit that. And when I want to communicate something quickly, like if I was playing a game of Pictionary where I wanted you to guess what I'm trying to say, I'm likely to draw using stick figures. Now, does this mean I don't have talent? Well, possibly. But I also recognize that I haven't spent much time in my life learning to draw or sketch realistic figures. It just hasn't been a priority. But when I look at my stick figures that I've put down on the page, I can see plainly that I have not drawn the Mona Lisa. Right? I don't get frustrated that my drawing isn't celebrated in the Louvre, and I don't expect these stick figure sketches will ever be worth anything except perhaps a laugh at my expense. Presumably, if I ever wanted to become an artist who could draw things in a more sophisticated manner, I'd take some art lessons. I would practice, I would track my progress from stick figures to basic still life, maybe to portraits. I don't even know the steps because I haven't done it. But I would gain skills along the way so that years in, maybe I could leave my stick figure days behind. The thing is, with writing, it's harder to tell what the caliber is. of what you've written. Because you can't compare your stick figures to the Mona Lisa objectively, side by side, seeing those images right in front of you. Why? Why is that true? Why can't we do that with writing? Why can't we tell if what we've written is worthy of the Mona Lisa? And it's because writing is more than just the spelling and the grammar that you put on your page? When I sat down to write my first book, while on maternity leave with my third child, Manju, and she's turning 13 this summer, I assumed, wrongfully assumed, that because I had experience with business writing and impeccable spelling and grammar, that writing a novel would come easily to me. So I went ahead and wrote my stick figures draft while my children napped and when I read it back Oh, I could see the wonderful woods that I dreamed up and the magic in my books With all the rich characters that were interacting with one another in my scenes. I thought I'd nailed it So, I shared it with beta readers and other writers who had met and who were gracious enough to take a look at my writing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And they were very nice. Good start, they said. Cry again, they encouraged. Keep going. Okay, I wasn't really too sure what to do with that feedback. Wasn't I done? Ugh. But I had fallen prey to the Hollywood myth that anybody can be a writer just because they have a great idea and want it badly enough. Now, you've got to understand that I tackled many difficult things by that point in my career. I'd worked in software, finance, government, and manufacturing. And I wasn't one to shy away from a challenge. So I got to work. I immersed myself in the writing industry, even though I was a little bit baffled by what the journey should be to become a writer. It didn't seem to look the same for any two writers. I also felt like an outsider. But despite that, I asked a million questions and I read as many books as I could to break it down. My readers weren't experiencing the beautiful world that I'd fallen in love with in my own mind when they read my work. And this was a problem. I was determined to find out why, and so I ended up studying with some of the best agents, editors, and publishers in the world to figure this out. The answer was to learn the art of show don't tell writing, which when done right means that your words will invoke images and scenes that run like a movie in your reader's minds. The reason that readers love consuming story is because you draw them in. The problem is, you can see your opus worthy of the Mona Lisa in your mind. So no matter what you put down on your page, in words, your brain already knows the answer and it's going to fill it in when you read it back to yourself. In fact, it'll construct the Mona Lisa even if what you've actually put down on your page is nothing but stick figures. Transcribed This is what was happening with my draft, I realized. My grammar and spelling, well, they were good. There was nothing wrong with what I'd written, so anytime I sent it to an editor, there wasn't a lot that they were giving me back. It was just a skeleton, or stick figures if you will, of the world that was alive in my mind. Now, many writers never get past this stage. You might have a great idea, and hope that readers will love it as much as you do. You can dot your I's and run a spell check, and then share it. But if that writer hasn't taken the time to learn the skills and practice showing the reader their beautiful idea, then the reader's going to scratch their head, wondering just what's so great about the stick figures they just read. Or Worse, they'll put the book down and never finish it at all. As an aside, if you ever share your writing and the reader doesn't finish your book, you've got your feedback. When your novel is ready, readers won't be able to put it down. And then that'll be a different type of feedback entirely. The good news? Whether a writer has written stick figure story or the Mona Lisa opus has very little to do with talent. Writing skills can be learned, and this podcast is dedicated to sharing these writing truths and skills so that your brilliant idea for a story, the one that keeps you up thinking about it at night, the one you dream will open up a conversation with your readers and the world leaps off your pages and paints the Mona Lisa in your readers minds. The key to making this happen is to master the concept of shōnōntō writing, the subject of this podcast and my absolute favorite topic to talk about with writing. If you've been dreaming of sweeping readers off their feet with your story, the one thing that will make you successful every single time is being open to learning. Open to sharing your work, open to continuously upping your writing skills so that you can write the book that's in your mind and not a thin shadow of your idea that won't earn your reader's attention. These skills go way beyond talent and can be learned so that your story will be read, loved, and shared across the world. When I meet a writer that has this ability of being open to learning and is willing to try, I absolutely know in my heart that they'll be successful, and that's when I dive in with both feet to help them make this happen. If you open up your own mind and know that you might be writing stick figures and acknowledge that and beef it up, when it gets to your readers, if they are giving you feedback and they say that they love it or they hate it, you'll at least know that they're reacting to that same story that's in your mind and not something completely different that doesn't represent that at all. If you've written stick figures, when you give that to a reader and you get a one star review, they just know, they haven't said that your idea wasn't good. They haven't said that your story doesn't touch them. They didn't get it. They didn't even get to see half of what it is that you had dreamed up. They just saw this thin imitation, right? So teaching these skills to writers has been such a fulfilling journey for me because getting the response that you'd hope for from readers is actually a life changing experience for writers once it happens. I am so privileged to work with writers every day who are taking steps to make their writing dreams come true. And every single writer has a different dream. We don't all necessarily set out to write a bestseller and sell millions of copies. Now, if that happens, most of us wouldn't complain. But we have smaller writing goals. We want to share that. We want to start that conversation with the world. And I've been able to witness hundreds and thousands of writers that I've had this privilege to work with find their voice. Find a way to get what's in their heads onto the page so that what the reader reads and reacts to is exactly what they intended. And isn't that what we all hope for? Right? So that your book can open a conversation with the world that you're dying to have. This podcast is dedicated to helping you learn how to use show don't tell writing for maximum impact. It's not about right or wrong. We want our stories to have the most impact that they possibly can on our readers. And that's what we're going to focus on these techniques. In the coming episodes, I'll be sharing specific lessons in writing craft, not taught anywhere else that you can apply to your book right away. I use practical examples. I tell you step by step, I don't gatekeep, I will share everything that I've learned with you. I also have a star studded list of guests that I'm going to be interviewing, I can't wait, that are going to share the straight goods on their writing journeys. That's the one thing that I ask of guests is that they tell you what it's really like. Behind the scenes so that you can get inspired and also plot your own course as you write your books and prepare to publish, or as you publish more and more books if you've already published. Okay, this is about your writing journey and getting inspired. It's not about copying somebody else's writing journey. Although you may want to do it exactly like them. Lots of times you're going to look at writers and think, well, I like this part about it, but not that part. The really cool thing about being a writer and having a creative life is that you get to get creative about how you build your writing life and your career. There's no right way, but you can certainly get inspired. I'm going to have some guests on this podcast that I know you're going to be excited to meet, published authors, as well as industry experts who are going to share with you everything that they know. I'm also going to be doing a third type of episode, which I hope you're super excited about. I am so jazzed to do this. I'm going to be bringing real writers onto the show like you and coaching live on one page of their writing. people to submit pages that they know need work. Don't submit something that you think is great and you're hoping I'll rubber stamp and say, yes, this is awesome. Go forward. Pick something difficult. Challenge yourself. Be open to learning. Remember what I said about the one thing, the one thing that I know, that one trait that will make writers successful is being open to learning. So be open to learn. If you want to come on the show, I'd love to have you so that you can see show don't tell writing in practice in your own work. There is nothing like it. And also tune into those episodes where brave writers are sharing their writing. I will never, never, never cut out writers. Um, writing down. That is not what I'm about at all. It's always done in a supportive and learning voice. So you can expect that from me. I'm always positive, incredibly supportive. I want you to learn from all of these writers as well. So if you would like to submit a page of your own writing that I'll coach live on the show, see the link to submit in the show notes. Thanks for tuning in to Show Don't Tell Writing with me, Suzy Vadori. Help me continue to bring you the straight goods for that book you're writing. planning to write. Please consider subscribing to this podcast and leaving a review on Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you're listening. Also visit suzyvadori.com/newsletter to hop on my weekly inspired writing newsletter list to stay inspired and be the first to know about upcoming training, events, and writing courses in my community. If you're feeling brave. Check the show notes and send us a page of your writing that isn't quite where you want it to be yet for our Show don't Tell page review episodes. Remember, that book, your writing is gonna open doors you haven't even thought of yet, and I can't wait to help you make it the absolute best you're feeling called to write that book. Keep going and I'll be right here cheering you on. See you again next week.