Writing Endings, Using Literary Devices, And Tips From The Story Book With Amy Jones

How can you sharpen your craft when the self-critical voice gets louder the more you learn? What kinds of literary devices might enhance your prose? And how do you write an ending that pays off the promise you made to your reader? Amy Jones shares her writing tips after 15 years of teaching storytelling.

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Amy Jones is a writer, lecturer, and researcher who has designed courses and lectured for over a decade on literature, linguistics, and the craft of storytelling. She is the author of multiple books on writing craft, and today we’re talking about The Story Book: Plot, Character, Setting, Genre, Narrative and Literary Devices.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

• Why writing is like being an athlete, and why struggle is a good sign
• The differences between academic writing and writing for a commercial audience
• Endings, killing your darlings, and not underestimating your reader
• Why Dickens could waffle and modern writers can’t
• What Gen Z storytellers on TikTok can teach conventional fiction writers
• Literary devices as a toolkit, and why reading aloud matters in a world of audiobooks

You can find Amy at WoodenBooks.com.

Transcript of the interview with Amy Jones

Jo: Amy Jones is a writer, lecturer, and researcher who has designed courses and lectured for over a decade on literature, linguistics, and the craft of storytelling. She is the author of multiple books on writing craft, and today we’re talking about The Story Book: Plot, Character, Setting, Genre, Narrative and Literary Devices.

So welcome to the show, Amy.

Amy: Hi. Thanks, Jo. Thank you for having me.

Jo: Oh, lots to talk about. First up—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.

Amy: Okay. So, I grew up in Somerset, which is where I live again now. There’s a strong literary history here, I think. I went to primary school in Nether Stowey, and was introduced to Samuel Taylor Coleridge very young.

So I think that’s had a strong effect on my interest in writing, which has really always been there.

As soon as I finished my undergraduate degree, I went into teaching, which has now been about 15 years. As you said, I’ve taught across A level and then undergrad. I started a course for undergraduates with a very good friend of mine with the University of Plymouth, and covered literature, linguistics, creative writing.

So I have been a bit of a jack-of-all-trades in the writing world, and loved it. My connection with writing has really been… it’s a lovely opportunity for me to download all of that teaching knowledge that I’ve had over these years.

I was in touch with John Martineau, who is my publisher at Wooden Books, and he was interested in creating a series of storybooks, or story writing books.

I was originally starting that with that friend, my good friend Emma Craigie, who is a writer. But she had other projects in mind, so the six small books and then the large Story Book all came to me, which has just been a delight. So it’s been one a year for the last seven, eight years, and that has culminated in The Story Book now.

Jo: Yes. So we’ll come back to The Story Book in a minute.

In terms of your writing history, has it all been non-fiction, or do you also write fiction?

Amy: I do write fiction, but I don’t tend to put it out there. I find the more that I have expertise in the craft of storytelling, the more I’m self-critical of my own work.

Jo: Oh.

Amy: I’m a really big fan of Horace, and especially the Ars Poetica, and he has a wonderful line in there about how he considers himself to be a whetstone, upon which, largely, fiction writers sharpen their craft. So I use that model for myself.

I spend a lot of time these days—as well as academia, which we’ll talk about—doing consultancy work for scriptwriting, media companies, but also novels and fiction at the same time. So that’s where I’ve found myself.

Jo: I think that’s really interesting, because that whetstone idea, and if people don’t know, that’s W-H-E-T-stone, right? Where you can use it to sharpen a knife. So essentially you’re helping other people sharpen their skills.

I actually really love that metaphor. I guess essentially you’re a teacher, but also a form of editor in that way. That is a role that editors play too, isn’t it?

Amy: Exactly, yes. It is a gorgeous quote, and that text is one that I come back to time and time again if I’m ever in doubt about my feedback.

Horace is my guy. Yes, I especially love that whetstone metaphor.

Jo: That’s great. It’s interesting.

You mention there the self-critical thing, in terms of the more you learn, the more self-critical you become. So how do you balance that for your students then?

Because I know I recognise that, and I’m sure many people listening also recognise that. It’s like you see your flaws more easily.

Amy: Yes, exactly, which is very valuable. I think what a lot of creative writers are looking for, in my experience, is someone to be that kind of critical friend.

You never want to rip somebody to pieces, but if you can put your finger on the one particular element which is bringing their story down, or which they haven’t recognised as an integral part which they need to blow up a little bit more, it’s a wonderful symbiotic relationship between that role and the writer themselves.

Jo: How do you encourage writers who want to publish more of their work? How do you encourage them past that point? Because let’s face it, the manuscript is never finished, just abandoned, right? Whoever said that. I mean, that’s true of so much of art.

How do you help other people get over that critical voice?

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