232 Making a Movie From Your Story with Beth Barany

Pencils&Lipstick podcast · May 27, 2024

Transcript

Hi, everyone. Happy Memorial Day weekend. If you're in the United States or, you know, just because this comes out on Memorial Day doesn't mean that you're listening to it on Memorial Day. But, you know, it's Memorial Day as this comes out. It is May 27th and this is episode 300 no 232 my numbers are getting mixed up 232 and I have an

interview for you with Beth Birani I really love listening to Beth Birani because she's so fascinated by science which is something that I appreciate in the world but I'm not I struggle to understand it a lot and and it's not a passionate of mine, but she's so passionate that it just becomes so much more interesting. You know, when you're listening to somebody talk about what they're passionate about. If you don't know Beth Brownie, the link to her website is below, but she writes science fiction and fantasy. She also teaches science fiction and fantasy. She teaches how to write, how to revise, how to edit. She has her own podcast, which we will have the link in the show notes below. She teaches a lot of different ways to enhance your writing. And we're going to talk about another course she's coming up with, with Danica about marketing. And it's going to be a little bit different than maybe the other marketing classes that you guys have. But Beth is also putting on her resume filmmaker. She is actually putting together a short film, which I just find so cool. So what we talk about in this episode is, I think it can be encapsulated by saying, go out there and experiment with what inspires you and with what you're passionate about and what you want to learn. So you know Beth doesn't know everything about filmmaking but she has been in the sort of filmmaking world for about seven years and is going to learn more about it and is in the process of putting together her own film and I just find it really inspiring. So we are going to get into the interview. We talk about a lot. We cover a lot and of course the links are in the show notes. So share this episode with everyone out there who

you know who's a writer, who wants to be a screenwriter, who wants to maybe dream big and make their books into a film or a screenplay or a theater show or just a commercial or whatever it is, we talk about all that stuff. And it's, you know, it's mid spring, maybe we're coming to the end of spring, it's summer, it's that time to feed your creative well. So let's get into the interview with Beth Birani. There you go. Well, welcome back, Beth. I'm so excited to talk to you. We've, I mean, we've gotten to see each other a couple of times in the last few weeks, which is fun. Yeah. If, if no one knows who you are, I've done a little intro for you pre -recorded, but let's, would you give us a personal intro to who, who Beth Birani is? Sure.

Gosh, I feel like I am, I'm curious about a lot of things and I really identify as a, as a storyteller, as a novelist, and now a filmmaker, and also a media maker. I love, like, I have a podcast too, I love doing that. And I love not just the audio component, but the video component too, obviously. And I'm daydreaming about making other things, like a graphic novel series, or multiple series, or, you know, I'm thinking about stories in different mediums, so. In mediums. Yeah. Do you draw? Mm -hmm. Would you be working with somebody? Yeah, I'd be working with someone. I did the storyboards for my film. I we're going to talk about the film. You know, just fun. It's not meant to be pretty or it's not gorgeous, but it's recognizable. Other people can look at it and go, oh, I see what you mean. I think that's really fun because you're actually exploring different avenues for your creativity. And I think sometimes when we get, we identify first as novelists and sometimes we can get stuck there you know and it doesn't feed us as much and it's okay to go look go look at other

stuff right yeah yeah i love the visual medium i actually doodle a ton uh and which are just like very free form and things like that and when i'm stuck with fiction i like to go to the visual medium, either paintings or film and TV. But I also love sculpture, I love mosaics and murals. And I'm very inspired by the natural world and take lots of pictures of flowers in the neighborhood, but also street views. And I love the juxtaposition of how our cities are built. I live in a city. And you know, the visual, the visual, approaching things visually, and how humans have created our environment also inspires me. So I mean, that's just one of the angles of inspiration, also music and dance. And I guess you could say all the art forms. Yeah, artsy forms. But I think that's, I mean, you're a science fiction and fantasy novelist, right? So yes, you have to. I wonder if you don't, if we don't feed ourselves with

those visual mediums, could our imaginations kind of run into a wall, you know, for sure, feed that, right? Totally. And I also feed my imagination with science. And I listen and watch a lot of YouTube. And I love to hear about the latest engineering projects with airplanes, they're building like supersonic jets. And, of course, everything to do the space, I'm deeply fascinated with all the new upcoming rocket companies, and everything space stations, and so and so wants to be the first orbiting hotel, which is awesome, because my these first four books in my sci fi mystery series take place in

an orbiting hotel. Space Station Hotel. Yeah. It's like almost a possibility, right? Like, 50 years ago, People are like, oh, that's, you know, dreaming. And now it feels like, no, it could happen. Could happen. I mean, the ISS, the International Space Station, has been up there for 20 years orbiting. And the Chinese have a space station. Russians used to have one. Like, having a space station is not out of the realm of possibility. And to have one more built out that you and I could potentially go to is coming.

Yeah, that's so cool. It's like our world, you know, I think it's important to have novelists, honestly, because a lot of what I think we take that serious science stuff and put it into what ifs, right? And probably push the scientists to be like, yeah, what if, you know, we kind of work in this like balance of constantly challenging each other. I think so. I'm very inspired by science. Scientists have been very inspired by the Star Trek world, for example, is one big one. But others, you know, Arthur C. Clarke, he talked about the space elevator and there are people working on how to create a space elevator.

I'm in touch with them because I put space elevators into my story and they're like, ooh, come to our conference and talk to us about your books. And so I haven't decided yet. That's so fun. Yeah. That's awesome that there's kind of this bleed over that maybe we don't think about when we're in our offices all by ourselves. Yeah, totally. I mean, in what way is what you're creating somehow connected to what other people are doing in the real world? Because people who like this, especially the space elevator people, they want more media of space elevators so it can enter into public consciousness.

There's actually the Marvel film with the three Marvel characters, I'm spacing on the name, with Ms. Marvel and Captain Marvel and... Oh, that's right. Rambo. Yeah. There was a space elevator in that movie. Right, right. Yeah. Because I feel like you get funding if it's something that people are like, oh, maybe. We're weird as humans. We need to know something, and then it can permeate, and then the government's like, oh, OK, maybe. Right, right. Maybe we'll pause it.

Yeah, yeah. I think there's a lot of interplay, right? the arts influence, you people who are in government read our novels and then maybe like, ooh, what if, you know? Or sometimes, you know, like I put universal basic income in my science fiction novels and it's, I did a bunch of research and it's, experiments are happening in today's world, but what would it look like if whole regions or broader had universal basic income? And I'm not the first novelist to put that into our stories. I just read a novel published maybe 10 or so years ago. I can't even remember, but the timeframe of the 2000s and there was Universal Basic

and come in her novel. So, the more we put it in, the more it becomes like part of the zeitgeist and people aren't so maybe against that idea. And they see it in different narratives and like how it could play out. and I think that's so fun because as a reader it captures my imagination when they do something I haven't seen before but you wish like I wish it was like that here so that's what I'm doing I think a lot of us do right we put our wish list into our stories for sure yes and that you get to play around with the characters and what you think a human would do or human or non -human you how would this how would this change and it like when you're using an experimental thing you also have to think like oh wait that's right they have this therefore i have to think more it won't it's not the like natural reaction of our world now now you have to be like how would that that might affect things it might not but it might like affect things throughout the story and how they react or whatever i find that the most like one of the most fun one of the fun things absolutely How would humans react to this? Exactly. And that's something like I'm trying to create built environments in my story because this next Jamie McAllister mystery is taking place on a new space station where humans and plants have a symbiotic, more of a symbiotic relationship. I'm still working it out, but ideally she's going to be impacted as soon as she walks on the station.

She won't know why. and she'll still slowly start to realize how much the plants are impacting her. And she'll notice how it impacts others or how people are gonna be maybe more emotionally open in some ways. But also I want the plants to be part of communications. And also it has to then be a part of the mystery because it's a murder mystery. And one of the murders happens on this particular space station.

So that needs to have a role somehow. I'm still working it out. I mean, the story is written, it's in edits, but there's always these little things. This piece needs to be worked out, among other things. So it doesn't have just one effect or consequence, it has to have multiple consequences in multiple ways. Yeah. Yeah. And how does that affect whatever you've already written? So interesting. You have it written in edits, but you still have questions. And I wonder if I wonder if a new novelist or like newish we always I always still feel new like I feel like every book is new but that's an interesting I think sometimes people think they wait and to send it to edits until they have everything finished so why do you choose to have the editing process while you're still well yeah I don't have a I don't hire an editor I use I mean, I use my critique partners to have two critique partners and my husband who reads parts of it.

He is really great with continuity and plot holes and my critique partners too. And yeah, because so my process is to write fast and edit slow. And first I edit just for clarity, and then I kind of step back and think about the macro and think about, because I'll get questions from the critique group, like, well, why now? Why is the bad guy going after her now? So I have to, it's like my subconscious has answers, but I have to excavate the answers. So then I can then put little clues in the book. And I wrote these four books, the first four books in the Janie McAllister series, I wrote them from the perspective of the detective. So I didn't know who the bad guy was. So I know that's backwards for a lot of people. They like to know who the bad guy is, what they did and why they did it. And then you have your detective come in. But I like to be the detective and not know. So I seed the stories with the setup, with red herrings or not. I don't even know if they're red herrings. I just seed a bunch of clues and I put her in kind of a difficult situation in that she's high tech. She's got this ocular implant. So what if there were no clues or the clues didn't make any sense? So then when I write the story, by the end in my first draft, I have figured out who the villain is and why. I make an attempt at answering why, Yeah. But it's in the edits that I do a lot of backstory writing, where I figure out how they got to this place. And so it's like, I have to go back, back in time and figure out how they got to this moment in the present. Yeah. Okay. And so I do that for like everything. And that seems a little bit different than what a lot of people teach though. Yeah, I'm more on the pantser side. And that's also, you know, so you know, I'm also a writing

teacher and a developmental editor, but I really trust people's process. And I want them to trust their own process. And not to be because a lot of people get stuck, because they go into the weeds, but they haven't even finished the book. So it's, to me, it's more important to put, as one of my clients said, like the big rocks, put the big rocks in, and the milestones of the story, you don't need to know every single detail about the setting, every single detail, even about motivation, because sometimes we don't always know our motivations for how we behave, right? So we have to take a moment and pause and excavate, go back in time and go,

oh, I acted this way because of X, Y, Z from the past. So I feel it's, if a writer needs to do that in the editing phase, why not? You know, there's no, there's my stance as a writing teacher is there's no one right way to go about writing a novel. There certainly isn't. And you might not even use the same process each novel used for. Exactly. But I think that's an interesting, especially if someone has a team kind of like it sounds like you have, you know, if you have very trusted readers and people who are willing to look through it. yes and and willing I guess to to like not have a full manuscript this this sounds like a really nice idea for especially when you're starting out or you can't afford a full edit or you don't like you don't have a trusted editor because that's a big deal to find that editor that's actually giving you what you want um we can find a lot of typo finders but that's not an editor, right? Like I need, yeah, most of us need a story developmental or somebody that's going to ask you questions. Because I think even writing it several times, there's always going to be a question. From a from a reader's point of view who hasn't read it yet, like they will come up with something, which is great, because then you can answer it. So you can leave it. But you can be intentional. Sometimes

think we did it all. We it all, you know, because we're so close to the story by that point that we're like, yeah, sure, you see it how I see it. Yeah, maybe not. And I do have beta readers, too, that I've been cultivating for years, that I bring in now for this next book, my goal is to bring them in when I feel the book is like, a 85 90 % there. I want it because because of the timeline, and I do want to get this book out in September of this year, I need to be done, if I could hand the book off to them in the summer, like in July, that would be so amazing, which means I have to be super diligent now at really coming back to the manuscript and really answering all those questions. And I also want to caution folks not to show their work too soon. So I used to share, I used to show my work too soon. And then I would get a while I was in the first draft phase.

Now I've learned to only share my work after the first draft is written and I've already done a pass or two on it. And I've kind of taken it as far as I can go by myself. Now I start to show it to them. And my critique group has seen the first 100 pages a few times and they haven't been happy and I haven't been happy with the opening. So I finally shared with them the new opening like the first two chapters just a few weeks ago. And they really liked the order of operations and because I'm doing a lot of things and a lot of writers might be doing this too, where you're trying to do a lot of things, trying to write a mystery, a murder mystery. I've got a science fiction setting. I've got a woman who's in transition in her life. So it's kind of a women's fiction secondary plot. And I have a tertiary, well, the romance is not, it's not a typical romance, it's a secure romance. So there's relationships and friendships and things that are also part of the story. So I had to figure out what's the right mix.

How do I signal to the reader? It's like suspense slash thriller, murder mystery probably. We see a murder or attempted murder in the very second scene. And then by the third scene, we meet our heroine. She's arriving at the space station. And so we get the whole space station strange in a setting experience and, oh, and then I have a major subplot of her trying to redeem the name of her grandmother, who's been considered a war criminal, essentially, or wanted for

treason, really. So yeah, there's a lot going on. It's a big book. It's over 100 ,000 words. Yeah. But to remember, I don't know about you, but sometimes when I have a lot going on I'll write a scene and I'm like focused on that thing of the scene and then I'll be done and be like oh wait there's like other things going on in the story like it can't just be like this scene, this scene, this scene. I feel like oh I should probably answer that question. So do you encourage people to I mean that is hard to find that balance of of sharing too early, too late. I guess it's just a matter of, like, doing it and then figuring out for you what's too early, what's too late. Yeah, and getting feedback and getting, you know, I even had an opportunity to share part of the opening with a group of writers who hadn't read anything I've written and didn't know the story world. And I showed them maybe the first five pages of specifically her approaching and arriving at the space station.

And they gave me great feedback. And I also got the feedback like, oh yeah, I get it. We're in a science fiction story and she's an investigator and okay. Like they understood. So that was some confidence building. Like I was in, that was a good opening. And then I did away with that opening. I tried something else for pacing reasons. And I'm like, okay, no, that's too much. Cause I have to front load all the things from the other scene. And yeah, you just try a bunch of things. And ultimately, it comes down to like, are you as the writer satisfied with this? Does it do what you're trying to do? Which means you have to define, what is it you're trying to do?

Even if it's ambitious, I am. I am trying to do some ambitious things in this book. And basically set up also, there's gonna be three more books in this like quartet. I seem to write in quartets. And I did these four, that's a grouping of four. And then now I'm starting another grouping of four. still the same heroine, the same world, just we're doing more ambitious things. That also is, I don't know about you, but like the first book might be more contained, the next book gets a little bigger, Envision, the third book. I did that in my YA fantasy series as well, where the first book has felt super contained, single point of view, this one adventure. Book two has like two or three points of view longer, book three is almost not quite double the size, but almost double the size

of book one and has five or six points of view. Yes, yes. Yeah, because you just you change and I think in order to keep in order to keep this story interesting to the reader, it's got to be interesting to us, right? Like if if we're not interested in keeping one point of view, then we got to change otherwise, why write it? Yeah, I think the reader can tell when we're bored. Yeah, you want to be excited. You want to push your envelope, your edge, you want to, you know, I feel like every book asks me to stretch and grow. Like you were saying, every book is a little different. And now I can see this. After doing this enough times, I can see the process that I through every time but it took me about six or seven books to kind of start to notice because I had friends around me who are like Beth you you say that every time when I would say oh no I don't know what to do my story sucks and they're like are you like two -thirds of the way through writing and I'm like yeah and they're like Beth you said that last time and I'm like oh thank you that's right? This is part of process. This is such a good reminder to have to not stay in your tiny little office closet. Maybe it's not tiny. I don't know. I always

just envision my own. And to get out there and just to find those friends that are encouraging and the people that are are going to sort of see those habits because it's hard to see it by ourselves. It is it is. And some people are more tense hold the bigger vision when you're down in the weeds and I find that so helpful and that's why I have an ongoing critique group now for well I've been in one form or another of a critique group my whole novel writing career I mean right from the very beginning and this group I'm in now for gosh 20 years almost something like that and my husband actually I met in my very first critique group and we're critique partners and give each other feedback at all the stages and just, you know, we've trained each other well. This is good. I need to get me one of those. My guy's finance so he's always like let me know if you need like numbers and I was like I don't actually. No numbers in the book. There's no numbers. I'm always like could you acquire this like business if you had this and he's like yes but and no buts just tell me yes cuz it's like a sub sub sub sub sub lot I like because I think some of us well I've just talked to a lot of writers of it and I think a lot of people think that you're you're supposed to grow out of writing critiques or they're scared to go to writing critique groups. It can take sometimes a lot to find the right one. Yeah, kind of depending on where you live and what your physical abilities

are, whatever. I mean, I think it's great that one good thing about COVID is a lot more is online. So it's more accessible to find, you know, join one in Seattle if you live in Houston. Exactly. But in fact, my two critique partners, sometimes during I mean, one lives out of state all year round. Well, and well, most of the year, and then we'll come here to the San Francisco Bay Area. The other critique partner lives near me. But when we're all meeting together, and one or two of them are out of the area, we meet on Zoom. And of course, during COVID, we met on Zoom. And sometimes, all three of us are in three different states. And know, we'll meet. So we all agree that it's important for our our stability as writers. And I guess that's what you need too, is people who are part of that agreement, who are long -term committed. And that I'm moving into screenwriting, I'm reaching out to find a screenwriting group because I need to work.

I have much less experience on screenwriting and I need help and feedback and people to poke at my work. Is it very different? I've heard that it's like mostly dialogue and then, is that true? Yeah, mostly dialogue with action. You wanna show people sometimes reactions, but also how they move through space. So it's like writing a story from omniscient perspective where there's no interiority. So you gotta take out all the inner thinking, inner thought, although you can sprinkle a little bit into scripts, but imagine the camera is just showing what people are doing. Okay. And then decide, depending on whether you want a close -up or a medium shot or a wide shot, you can describe a scene with that in mind. Like, you know, you could say the sun came up over the valley, you know, illuminating the swaths of grapevines budding in the early spring, right? now we have this idea of a wide shot. And then you could say, you know, the worker was pruning the vines and not where he was supposed to be. Right. So you can put in a little authorial voice. But you've got a sense. Now we're zoomed in on somebody. You know, the butterfly landed on the curly rose. Right. Like, OK, now we're even close up. So how you describe you're telling the camera what the camera is showing. Yeah. Okay, so then like the cameraman, the actors, everyone sort of has an idea of where things are starting and then that's interesting. Well, okay. And you storyboard it. So you're writing a script, but tell us, tell everyone what you're doing. Okay, so what I'm doing is I am making a short film about my heroine, Henrietta the Dragon Slayer. I've written a trilogy about her and I just want to showcase for those on video, a little sticker that we have coming for our Kickstarter. I know we're going to talk about Kickstarter. We just did a test run on the stickers that our designer did. So I wanted to write more stories about Henrietta the Dragon Slayer. I have her, the three books, and I'm like, okay, now what?

So I wrote a script. I wrote a pilot script, a 30 minute, like, pilot TV show. And I have an idea for the whole season and maybe more seasons. And that was like seven years ago because I've been trying to, I've been dabbling in understanding filmmaking for about seven, well, longer than that. I've been wanting to be in filmmaking for quite some time. But I started about seven years ago, volunteering at a film camp here in Oakland. That's for teens, teen girls and non -binary kids who want to be in film, who want to either learn how to be a cinematographer or costumes, or they don't know, they just think it's interesting. So this film camp in five days, these teens learn how to make a movie and they don't just learn, they do it. They write, they do the figure out the costumes, the setting, and then five days and five days they make like a five minute movie. It's amazing. It's amazing. Yeah, and then they have advanced camp. I think it's 1010 working days and they'll do a more sophisticated short film in 10 days. So it's so amazing. They are doing everything, everything, sound, slate, keeping track of the shots, shot list, acting, everything. And they rotate often and directing, the who's holding the camera, often they will rotate. So they all get the roles. And then the adults were there just to be consultants, like in my case, a story consultant, and to be with the teams as they go around the building where the film camp is happening and downtown Oakland and do their shots and get organized. And the adults are like, okay, in three hours you need to be done so that we can move on to the next thing tomorrow. And remember you're editing this on day four or five or however it is. And then they have a film festival, which is super fun. Yeah, so I've been involved with this camp for seven years. It's called Real Stories, R -E -E -L, founded by a woman who used to work at Pixar and who would often be the only woman in the room.

And she's like, so we need to train the next generation. And this film camp is now part of a greater nonprofit called Bay Area Video Coalition. And my crew, so I decided this last summer to find out what would it take to turn my script into a film. So I was at the film camp and I asked one of the coordinators, in fact, the head coordinator who runs the camps, I said, what would it take to turn my movie into a film? and she's like, Well, let's do it. And I'm like, What? You want to do it? It's my question. sight unseen. She's like, let's make a movie because all these young people who are now in their 20s, some of whom had done the film camp in their teens. And some have gone to film school, some have done have helped on real sets and films and things. Short films, student films, college films, but also productions that are not just college films. And and they want experience. So yeah, I decided with them, yeah, to go ahead and do this. And we just started meeting. And long story short, I started reaching out to the founder of Real Stories, also one of the people who runs Bay Area Video Coalition and networking. And long story short, we ran a successful Kickstarter just recently in the spring. We raised over $4 ,000, which was way above what we thought we could raise. We wanted to raise $500. Kickstarter's all or nothing. Yeah, you set a goal, you have to, if you don't raise that money, you've not succeeded, and you don't get anything. And so I knew because I had won one previous Kickstarter for one of my novels, that a low goal was good. So we just set it the same $500. We succeeded, I raised $500 in one day was amazing. And actually in less than 24 hours. Yeah. And by the time the whole Kickstarter was over. I said it for 32 days. I don't know why I did that, but 32, because you do it up to 60 days even. But we did 32 days. I'd raised a little over $4 ,000, 800 % of my goal, mostly friends and family, colleagues, but some strangers, which is amazing.

Yeah, it's always so cool. So cool. We're giving away fun things where people get rewards like the stickers, bookmarks for the trilogy. Some people have bought the trilogy as an add -on, the physical books, giving away eBooks, but also giving away things like, we're gonna make a behind the scenes. We're gonna do interviews with actors and the crew. We've already started on that. And $50 and up,

people are getting a screening of the film next year. So we just put the due date for the film next year because I have no idea how long it's gonna take. So next year, it's a lot. It's a 10 minute short film. It's meant actually to be technically the teaser of my TV pilot. It's meant to be that opening action thing. And there's like, yeah, so I've storyboarded the thing. We have actors now, we ran auditions, we have two actors. We're just starting scouting locations. We're getting our costuming together. So many moving parts, it's amazing. It's very cool. I mean, I think that when you say film, it's just like, oh my gosh, how many different moving parts? I mean, you have experience. I think that already gives you, and you know people, so maybe just me and DC being like, film, that would take so much longer. But as far as like, why did you decide to do Kickstarter and with this creative project? Because I don't know, what does it cost? Or much time does it take? OK, so Kickstarter itself doesn't cost anything to launch, to run. I mean, it takes time.

So didn't do this out of the blue. When I ran my Kickstarter for the fourth book in my Janie McAllister series, Red Running Deep, that was two years ago, right before this book came out, I had been studying how to do a Kickstarter with Russell Nolte and Monica Lionel, who now have a book Kickstarter for Authors and all these wonderful educational programs. And I had bought their class and I would sit in on the classes, but also there's a Facebook group where you can learn and ask questions. So I spent about three months studying all that material, making decisions, figuring it out, because I had never done a Kickstarter for my novel, and what I found out is if you have any experience with direct sales, and I know you do, Kat, a Kickstarter is a form of direct sales. Yeah, except that it's definitely different than a typical book launch. Would you agree? It different than a typical book launch, yes. and many people use it to launch and find their super fans. I don't know if I'm there yet. I like saying with the book Kickstarter, it also was friends and family. And I raised, because it was new, I set a $500 goal and I only ran it for two weeks. And I raised just shy of $1 ,500. If I had run it for a whole month, I probably could have made $3 ,000. Who makes $3 ,000 in a book launch as an indie author. Most of us don't, most of us don't. So you could say it was my most successful launch. So it is a form of a launch and what do people get? You you give people, now I'm not into the fancy print books with the silver lining and the hardback. Like a lot of people do that and they are way into it. And I think do that if you love those kinds of books. You gotta earn a lot more money for those books. You do and so you have to love it. And what I noticed, like I really appreciated what you did in your Kickstarter with giving away like little bracelets and things like that, like do what you can do. So my upsells were more because I'm a coach and a teacher and things like that. I think I'm like, I'll do a one -on -one or I can't actually, I can't even remember what I did for the, I was pretty modest in what people could get as rewards

because I wasn't doing anything fancy, yeah. I think it's great. In fact, and to be fair, you know, just to let people know, two years ago, these Omni leather bound books weren't really a thing. You Brandon Sanderson was just becoming, he had just broken Kickstarter. Well, let me tell you exactly. I launched without knowing on the same day Brandon Sanderson launched And the first hour of my launch was nail -biting because nothing was happening. And like, oh, no, what exactly? I know until maybe half the day had gone by. And then I'm like, oh, that's why I had that hiccup. And just felt like I had been launched. I launched into the void, you know, and and I knew. So Sanderson this year in 2024, he launched on backer kit, which is becoming a rival on the same day that I launched on the same day. You see, I was no, I kind of heard that he was coming out. I'm like, I am not doing anything on the same day he is. I pay attention. Well, and it's OK, we're different. Totally different, yeah. It's a help and a hindrance. It is and it isn't. It has become more than it was.

That's very vague to say. But mean, for anyone listening about Kickstarter, like what do you like about it and what do you maybe not like about it or kind of wish was different or wish you would have done different because you've done two you've done a book yeah you've done a creative project like the film so yeah well I have to say doing the film was such an eye -opening experience on Kickstarter because well number one I already knew how to write a sales page I I could look at what I had done last time and I'm like, oh yeah, I already and I already have also all the parts for marketing this film because I had already put together a pitch deck, I'd worked on my log line, I was starting to go after grants, so I had bios for my team and I had thought about the why of the project and why now and why it's so important and people had asked me in the grants like social impact and so I had had all this material. So would advise anyone, so helpful, oh my god, because the first time you think about marketing your novel can be so hard because writing a book is different than marketing a book. So I would really advise anyone thinking about doing a Kickstarter for their book is to gather, take your time and gather all the marketing bits, you know, the one line description that goes with the title that goes at the top of your page, the one paragraph, the listing of all the tropes. And so I knew this was coming and I had listed all my tropes out. And then also, why now? I had been asking the question, why Henrietta the Dragon Slayer since book one, which was back in 2011. So I've been thinking about the importance of my project and why it's personally important to me for a very long time. But that's not always easy to answer, especially if you're a new writer or it's a new project. You're like, why? Yeah, why am I motivated to write this? Why this story? And it's taken me some time to articulate that for the Janie McAllister, but over time you get better at it

and when you share it with others and test it. So I believe in testing the marketing bits way in advance. And I studied. I went into the Kickstarter for Authors group, and I'm like, I'm going to do this for my film. Any other filmmakers that you can recommend that I should look at? And so I spent an afternoon, like three, four hours, analyzing other people's Kickstarter pages for film, noticing what I liked, noticing what their rewards were, because I wanted to get some ideas.

And then I have to say, the biggest difference in doing a film versus doing a novel is that I already had a team for my film. I've been building my team since last summer. So when I decided to do a Kickstarter at the end of January, they just looked at me with big eyes because none of them had done a Kickstarter. And they're like, OK, Beth, like because I'm the writer, director, producer. It's like what I decide. They're like, OK, but, you know, they'll push back on the areas that they have experience on. But they had never, ever done a Kickstarter, none of them. And even a $4 ,000 film project is the biggest budget they've ever seen on a film for them, right? And for me, too, because I've never done one. So yeah, yeah. But I want to actually we've done a budget and the budget is like, between 15 and $20 ,000. So this is considered a microfilm. And according to the film industry,

but for all of us, it's the biggest project we've ever worked on. A big number there is a big number. And I'm raising all that money. Like I've raised $4 ,000. Now I'm going to go raise the next bit with charitable donations, which I'll have a vehicle to accept very soon. And I'm going to see if I can do some angel investing as well, which might be, which to me, it feels a little more distant. But because I have a team and I have been wanting to work with a team for a very long time, I am in seventh heaven. Like I am not alone. I don't, I don't have to make all these decisions by myself. And I can also I am working with the capacity of these people who are all volunteering their time right now, the only person who's, there's just been a few people who are absolutely going to get paid, for sure, because I've told them like the actors, and I have someone designing a poster, we said, Okay, we this is our budget. And she said, Okay, you know, and we're going to hire some other people. And And we have already have an editor lined up who also we said, okay, here's the budget for that. And I have my husband working on the project and he'll be happy. We have a budget for him because he's our music consultant. You That's right.

You gotta have music. We have to have music. Yeah. Oh, and, and sound effects. We have someone who wants to do sound effects. We have our costumer. We have our props person. I have a assistant. Well, she's now become basically my co -producer co -director who I turn to for everything. Yeah. And I have advisors, I even found. So I've been networking in the San Francisco screenwriters community. And I found someone who agreed to be like a consultant for me, who's been worked on some big films and done some. Anyway, he's connected to some big, big name people. And he's like, What do I have to do? I'm like, just answer my questions. that's it. But a lot of people have come like I'm actively seeking like women who are producers and there's a women producers network people are actively acting asking to be connected. So I a friend of a friend is who's in the producers guild I'm hope to talk to her and I've talked to people who've been behind the scenes on films and talked to people who've done documentaries and fundraising for that and yeah so I'm just doing a massive amount networking and loving it tremendously. That's cool. Yeah and I think like even we can take this into to novel writing too of like if again like as a circle we are alone so much but we don't have to be like we kind of choose to be as writers and then we complain about it because it's not great for our mental health but like we really could ask for help, We could ask for consulting. We could become part of groups, right? We could, maybe if you don't want to do a Kickstarter by yourself, you would learn a lot anyway putting one together with other people, you know? Right, right. And yes, that's part of this community that Russell started and now another author, Andrea Lawson, is built also a Kickstarter for authors community, is so helpful. She does consultations, teachings, she's got her book, she's got the Facebook group. And so you don't have to do it alone at all. And in fact, I'm thinking about how do I make my fiction Kickstarter launches as collaborative as the film. It's harder though,

because I really am the main decision maker on 99 .999 % of everything. But I've been already in the past, I have beta readers, I ask my readers for input on my covers, but that's about the extent of it. And, um, so I haven't really, it's about like questioning again, like you said on everything, like how could I make this different? How could I, and I wonder too, if we don't spend enough time sometimes, um, because we feel like life goes too fast, like, Oh, Kickstarter, you know, everyone's doing Kickstarter. Therefore I must do Kickstarter yesterday. And it's like, no, in fact, it's one of those things, you know, everyone says all the big names. I'll just say that. I don't know what that means. All of them say, you know, your book launch should be like six months. And I think sometimes we feel like that's craziness, you know, like, what do I do for six months? What I liked about Kickstarter is it forced me to sort of do that six months, because I think part of that is just asking yourself, like you said, why this book? Why would you read it? Yeah. Why do you care? Why do I care? Why does anyone care? Why does anyone care? Yeah. And I saw in your Kickstarter, you have these beautiful, like memes, an image of the main character, plus some descriptions, like who that person is, what drives them and their goal. And I thought, oh, that is so cool. Like working with having all that preliminary material and then taking it to critique partners or a trusted beta readers. Or I actually have a group of friends where we got together, we haven't for a while,

but we would get together and talk about our blurbs. So there are people I can go to and say, here's the blurb, here's the trope list, here's the why, right? All the marketing material. Because marketing is so hard, I now start building on it as soon as I can. and I like getting feedback. I actually built it into the brainstorming process and I teach that and I do it for myself. I write a stupid elevator pitch as one of my early, early parts of my brainstorming just to start going and exercising. Before writing the book or like as you're like in the very beginning. Early, the very beginning and the tropes and like what the tropes are that are kind of percolating inside of me and all the things like if you front load of that stuff in the early days. And even I also ask and answer why this book all the time. It's kind of part of my own creative process because it's easy with day -to -day life to forget. And if I've taken a few days off from the book, I have to go, okay, now, why am I writing this book? Why am I even caring? Why?

Yeah, and I think that takes away a lot of stress. I so you and Danica, it's Danica, right? That you're doing the marketing with. So you're you're thinking about putting or you are putting together a marketing course. Is that part of that? It was like teaching them and because waiting until the end of the book Like I mean do whatever you want y 'all I've done it all Yeah, but it is a lot because I think you're just you feel like it should be done Yeah, like it should be over and I should be able to like move on to sell but you actually can't it's like a good six weeks of work easily if you haven't done it. Yeah and that's if it goes really well. Yeah I mean I did I spent three months learning how to run a kickstarter before I ran my first kickstarter. Give yourself time. Yeah um yeah because you still have to learn stuff in the middle. Totally. I was like oh I'm gonna give myself time because Beth told me to give myself time. Everyone told me to give myself time and I listened this time for once in my life and even

Even still in the middle of the Kickstarter, somebody, those graphics came from somebody asking, who is this person? Because they didn't want to read my landing page. And I thought, okay, let's go say it in a little blurb. So it's one, it's a wonderful, it's wonderful and yet stressful, right? So it is, it is. Yeah. But what it talked to us about this heart centered marketing that you're putting together. Yes, yes.

So heart -centered marketing for fiction writers. How to keep your author presence visible between launches. So we weren't going to necessarily talk about like the nuts and bolts of how to put together a Kickstarter because that's something else. But we want to talk about how can you show up between books to your to and and be a presence as an author who writes right. And it could depend on your goal. Like I'm always list building personally. So we're going to talk tactics, what are some of the things you can do that aren't social media, but we also are going to talk what is really important to you, what are your values, how do you want to show up as an author, who else can you be connected with, right? If you're coming from the heart and it's primarily it's geared to romance authors but all writers of genre fiction and we're all writing emotional you know, stories that fit some kind of trope, you know, expectations, but then we want to exceed them, right?

And give the readers an incredible engrossing experience. So how do you stay in touch with your readers during the in -between times? How do you make it be part of your creative process instead of a chore? So - Big Yeah. So it's also, it's kind of like knowing yourself, knowing what you need. And think it's, I think of it as food, like what feeds you, most of us are fed by the fact that we have readers, isn't it? I mean, I don't write just over here I write to give it to get this amazing thing that came out of me or who knows where it comes from.

So how do we maintain a relationship with our readers? How do we cultivate connections, how, and then it all comes down to what it is that you as the author are fed by? And then how do we build that into your life? So it becomes a routine habit, something that gives you like excitement and enjoyment. And that you feel like you're you're that it's easier, I guess, because that, you know, everyone, the consultants, you know, I mean, when I say them, the kind of people who are who are ahead of the game, and you would probably say the same to a newbie of like don't just email them when you have a new book coming out but and that's good advice because nobody wants to feel like they're you know kind of being used as go buy my book on the other hand it's hard to to answer the question well what do I tell them it means what are they interested in what do I feel like and maybe for some people it's really easy if they're very personable or very open but many people want to keep you know a private life versus the writing life versus like you guys even care and sending out a newsletter can sometimes feel like you're just sending it to the void like during COVID when all the screens would be blank and you're talking and you're like is anyone listening? Exactly so we'll talk about author persona for the people who feel like they need to have like a character who is them but isn't them exactly who gets to be the voice they use when they do their marketing. You know, how do you decide who that is? How can that help you shape what you want to share about? And so we'll do some processes and we'll do little exercises and have hand worksheets and everything

because I think the thing we all crave the most, I know I do, is I want feedback. I want to know, did you love the character? What do you want more of? Because what I've found is when I ask my readers what else they want, they're like, whatever you got, Beth, whatever you got, like just give it to us. You like readers aren't writers. Yeah, exactly. When I told them that book five would be more than a year late, one of them, one of my active beta readers, she's like no you know and I'm like yeah I mean two years ago book four in my series came out since then I realized oh no wonder my sales have dropped I haven't released a new piece of fiction at all and I like right it is it is it's a lot it yeah there's always you're always sort of trying to do well you're doing a of things. I think lots of writers are trying to do a lot of things and and to make sure that

their creative well is still full. So when is this a marketing class? Is this going to be a live class? Is going to be? It's going to yeah we're going to run a live class hopefully at the end of May of 2024. It might be in June. I'm we need to another one of my workshops just got shifted so I might have to change the date for this because I need time to create it and market it And then after that, it's going to be an evergreen class in my little online suite of classes. Yeah, that's awesome. So should I just send them over to Beth Birani? Yeah, bethbirani .com. Sign up for the newsletter to be notified about the upcoming classes. And then do you teach other things during the summer? Do you sort of wait for the fall? Well, it really depends. This year, so I am doing a, I'm going to be participating in Want to Write Romance that Sue Brown Moore is running in June of 2024. So we're going to be talking about character development and bringing in some of my NLP toolkit, neurolinguistic programming and helping how do you design a character arc that is tailored to romance, the romance beats and how do you do it in a way that's from the inside out which is my specialty and so I'll be doing that in June and then July we're filming so I've kind of just blocked off July like it's a short shoot it's like a three -day shoot but I'm gonna take the rest of July to like

decompress because there's a lot building up to that yeah and then I'm teaching an in -person thing in September and I think I have an online thing at the end of the year at Lewis's community about editing, I think, that's all that's lined up so far, but I'm open to collaborations. That's the other thing I've decided my entire business needs to be oriented to collaboration. So if people want it, and that's what I've been doing actually all this time also is I go into other people's communities like yours, Kat, and I teach my courses. I used to run my own online school, but now I don't. But my courses are still going to be archived and eventually people can have access to the things I teach live. a you have amazing courses and I have a lot of courses that are in the archives right now while I switch over to Thrivecart. Yeah oh man moving moving software too is a big deal but yeah but

mostly people can find you at bethbirani .com and they can they can that's right um find your podcast there if they're especially if they're sci -fi and fantasy um I I'm not but I listen to it off and on and I'm I'm always like yeah I can I can apply that to mine too because you have you have such a different way of looking at characters and the character art. So I just enjoy, I enjoy that point of view and that perspective. So people can find, I'll have the links in the show notes honestly. Okay, Yeah, the blog and yeah, I have all the things start at Bethbronnie .com including I think the, yeah, even my fiction, you can find it through there yeah that's so that's so cool and if you guys want to uh it are you going to put anything on like social media or anything or your newsletter about the film or is that oh absolutely okay yeah i'm constantly sharing tidbits about it and actually the film has its own instagram at yeah at henrietta film but i'm cross promote i mean and right now it doesn't have its own email list. So I'm, I'm promoting it via my author list to the readers as well as to my writer list, you know, under the Creativity Sparks coaching teaching hat. Yeah. So I'm not shy. I am not shy. I talk about, I share the process and yeah, super fun. I mean, how else can we be inspired to like, whether somebody wants to do a theater show or I don't know, anything. I can't even think of all the things that we could do, write a song, whatever, you know, I think we get inspired by, oh somebody else did something different I want to do that too you know like I mean telling a story can be done through many many different mediums so I think it's fun that you're yeah I'm so excited like I get to be part of a film like I'm a person on the sideline looking I know and people yeah people tell me and my my supporters and my friends for the Kickstarter they're like it just makes be happy that you're making a movie and because I too am super excited and I think it's just amazing to be behind the scenes and like make this thing and I've written enough novels and nonfiction books to know that first you got to go through the muck for a long time before you get to that polished beautiful thing and I'm so willing like let's make it messy and then I know that my editor and I I have a good editorial eye that I don't know of the technical aspects of editing a film.

We have a lot of post -production, cause we have a monster. It's like, it's gonna be awesome because I also trust my team. We're gonna, everybody wants a quality thing and we're gonna do the best we can. And I'm getting lots of great advice from all kinds of amazing people out in the world. It's super fun. And I just have to say, if anybody listening or watching wants to make a film, you can. With your iPhone, you can make a film. there's with with Canva you can make a film like the tools of production are in our hands today not just with books which is awesome but also film and other mediums as well it's it's incredible

I'm nothing has to stop us just know how and you can learn you can yeah and like you said like people are willing to answer your questions like it just really takes the willpower to ask Exactly. And if somebody says, no, I won't answer your question, go ask another person because there's lots of people. No one holds just the one answer in this room. And no one has said, no, I won't answer your question. People have said, I don't know. And I'm like, okay. And I just move on to the next person. But also, you don't know until you ask, who knows what? So it's amazing. And yeah, there's so many pieces to making a movie that it's, oh my God. It's so much. It's exciting. That's an overwhelmed Beth right now, but it is exciting. I it's -

Step by step. It's just like anything. If anyone has any sort of idea, like you said, we can do it, but just go do it. Summer's coming. It's like the moment of, it's springtime, it's find that new idea and go do it and you're so inspiring to the rest of us. I think you're awesome. I know a lot about how to be scrappy and how to work with what I have and you know, and if you just work with what you have and you ask like, well, how can I do it given what I have and my know -how and my experience and who I know, then you can do it. If you show up and do the work, and would have to say, with the coaching hat on, you have to be willing to fail, you have to be willing for it to be messy, that you don't know, that it isn't very good, and do it many times. Take two, take three, take 100, take 95.

Yes. You know what, because they never show us in Hollywood all the messy, so they just want to like believe that it just came out of thin air and that's probably not true. It's not true and same for fiction. Like I get a lot of writers who come to me really upset that their first drafts suck and I'm like well they're supposed to suck. Really? So finish it and then we'll talk about editing. Then we'll talk about the 20th version. That's right. That's right. Yeah I don't know how many edits you do but I do a ton. I don't even I can't even count that. I lose track, yeah, I lose track. No idea, I have no idea.

At some point, I do clean the computer out and go like, well, all those need to be deleted. You delete things? I never delete my old versions. Because there are, you know, you could mess up one day and work on the version that you go, wait, I I took this part out. Right, I hide all the previous versions in a folder called x -drafts, so I'm only, the most recent draft is all I see. There you go. But I like to keep them because recently I wanted to figure out when did I start working on Henrietta the Dragonslayer as a novel. And I could figure it out like it was 2003 or 2004. Oh wow. It to me, yeah.

You must be very good at archiving. I am. I used to work in a library. I have been an archivist in a past life. I like to archive. You're going to have to teach a course on that at some point. And version control. I know a lot. I learned how to do version control from somebody else, but yeah, version control, really important if you want to keep track of stuff, yeah. Many authors learn version control when they accidentally upload the wrong version into KDP and then you learn, you fall on your face and you learn real fast. Yeah, I would say life is expensive. you know, we learn, our mistakes are expensive, but how else are we going to learn? You know, like, that's how we learn. They're usually more expensive for the ego, many of them than anything else. Although sometimes they cost money too, but not that much. Anyway, thank you so much, Beth, for talking to us all about this. I know we didn't even get to everything, so we're just going to have to have you on again. Okay, well, thank you so much, Kat, for having me. I really appreciate yapping and sharing and being excited about creative work and I hope all of you listening stick with Kat's podcast lots of great creative people and and keep with your keep it up keep it up keep going on your creative work absolutely yeah all right thanks