Welcome to The Story Well. It’s a place where storytellers of all stripes can take a rest from their mental labor and listen as we discuss both art and craft. There’s always a seat open for you.

Tonight, we welcome author Ryan Dalton. His new book, This Last Adventure, is available now from the finest of book sellers. Our topic is “Plants or Pants”, is it better to have your story planned out before you start writing or is it better to just sit down and let the story go wherever it takes you? We’ll discuss what we’ve learned doing it both ways.

And before I let him out the door, Ryan and I decide to take some random elements and see if we can create an interesting story out of them. And we give it away for free to anyone who’d like to take it and run with it.

• RyanDaltonWrites.com 
• Twitter: @iRyanDalton

Welcome to the Story Well, a way station for storytellers of all stripes to pull up a seat alongside their compatriots and listen to them talk of art and craft. 

The topic of the day is NaNoWriMo, the writing endurance test where writers are tasked with writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. All three of us competed in this Mount Everest of writing challenges with varying levels of success. But what does success even mean in this case? We’ll talk ideas, strategies and then take some time to create a story from scratch.