Ep. 16: How to Build a Story: Erin Entrada Kelly on Writing Organically and Trapping Guinea Pigs in a Well

Here are a few highlights from our conversation with Erin Entrada Kelly:

 

• Building stories grounded in a single character
• The gift of writing in your head 
• Why all roads lead back to one word: “organic”
• The power of writing in longhand
• Why novels should be like a blanket, not a quilt
• Feeding your creative soul, and why it counts as writing time
• Emotional tension vs. external tension
• Remembering that characters are living, breathing people… not pieces on a chess board
• Secrets hidden in her books… hint: Wuthering Heights fans and Trekkies will delight!

 

Erin Entrada Kelly is the award winning journalist turned NYTimes bestselling and award-winning author of a vast range of gorgeous children’s books. Among other honors, she won 2018 Newbery Medal for Hello, Universe, a 2021 Newbery Honor for We Dream of Space, 2017 APALA Award for The Land of Forgotten Girls, and the 2016 Golden Kite Honor Award for Blackbird Fly. Erin is also the author and illustrator of the beloved Marisol Rainey chapter books series. Erin lives in Delaware and teaches in the MFA programs at Hamline University and Rosemont College, and also teaches fiction with Gotham Writers Workshop.