Episode 236: Two Scoops with Sarah Pinsker

Eating the Fantastic

It's time for two scoops with writer Sarah Pinsker as we discuss the origin of her ice cream collaboration with The Charmery which resulted in their book-inspired flavor, the sculpture she saw at the American Visionary Art Museum which planted a seed for Haunt Sweet Home, how she knew her idea was meant to be a novella and not a novel, why she prefers writing books without a contract, how multiple ideas coalesced into one, the narrative purpose of telling a story via multiple formats, how to know a character who doesn't know themselves, why you can't tell from the end product whether a piece of fiction was plotted or pantsed, Kelly Robson's theory about the Han Solo/Luke Skywalker dichotomy and what it means for creating interesting characters, why she's a fan of making promises in the early paragraphs of her stories, whether our families understand what we're writing about when we write about families, and much more.