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The Burnt Notebook

By: Ross Sutherland
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  • Summary

  • Inspirational hacks to transform expand your imagination and your creative writing.

    Writer and podcaster Ross Sutherland offers you a suite of writing techniques to get your creative juices flowing. This series is packed with tips gleaned from literature's finest writers, but don't worry - Ross isn't about to ask you to write a dense novel or an academic text. Through a series of playful exercises he's encouraging you to have fun, to experiment, to play and to fall in love with the written word.

    A Novel production for Audible Originals.

    This is an Audible Original Podcast. Free for members. You can download all 6 episodes to your Library now.
    ©2019 Audible, Ltd. (P)2019 Audible, Ltd.
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Words, Language & Grammar Writing & Publishing
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Episodes
  • Ep. 1: Anyone Can Form a Band

    Ep. 1: Anyone Can Form a Band
    Jan 2 2020

    Ross encourages us to harness the power of aliases. We learn about Frances Pessoa, a writer with 75 pseudonyms, and we found an imaginary band and populate their world.

    The Exercise:

    1. Imagine a fictional band and pick a name for them
    2. Give your band a desirable quality you admire but don’t have
    3. Sketch out a brief profile of the band referring to their desirable quality
    4. Name your fictional band’s first single and first EP or album
    5. Come up with the track titles for the songs on your imaginary band’s first album
    6. Take one of the song titles and write the lyrics to that song
    7. The end result is a brand new piece of writing you can use to spark new ideas
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    34 mins
    Free with 30-day trial
  • Ep. 2: Invisible People

    Ep. 2: Invisible People
    Jan 2 2020

    Ross heads out to do some serious people watching. We learn about the many ways the great authors observed the people around them and we try an exercise that uses strangers to spark our imagination.

    The Exercise:

    1. Find somewhere to sit - a public place with lots of people streaming past
    2. Start people watching and quickly scribble down as much as you can about what they’re wearing
    3. When they walk out of site just stop and pick another person
    4. Enjoy the feeling of just writing without needing to think about what to write
    5. You can use the little details you notice to form an army of potential characters to work into your creative writing
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    37 mins
    Free with 30-day trial
  • Ep. 3: Playtime

    Ep. 3: Playtime
    Jan 2 2020

    Ross teaches us to listen to words in a new way by forcing them into unusual formations. We discover a technique that automatically disrupts our writing, pushing us into exciting new territory.

    The Exercise:

    1. Grab a favourite book from your childhood
    2. Take the each word of the text, look each up in a dictionary or on dictionary.com
    3. Count seven words down in the dictionary
    4. Make a note of your new word and replace the original from the childhood book
    5. Don’t be afraid to break the rules - if the word seven words down doesn’t feel like a good fit, then scan the dictionary page for a more suitable word
    6. Doing this you’ll quickly end up with an all new, highly surreal story that contains echoes of the original
    7. The surreal sentences you’ll be left with are the perfect source material to spark fresh ideas
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    32 mins
    Free with 30-day trial

What listeners say about The Burnt Notebook

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bad, bad, bad....

could not tolerate the background music at all ...
inconsistent, diff volume, hated it, so have 0 comment on content -shame for me

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Profile Image for IRB

This is wonderful

I am not a creative writer, in fact I am not creative at all. But after listening to this wonderful series I went out and bought a note book. I filled a fountain pen with pretty ink and started to write. Just like art or music, Ross tells us and shows us we can just write for our self.

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Could not last 5 minutes

Skipped through hoping the background noise would stop but it didn’t,. Would give another go without the added noise.

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Profile Image for Anonymous User

what a racket.

I couldn't listen through horrible sound art accompaniment. Reversing trucks... car alarms.. ping pong anyone?

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Profile Image for Annie B

Too much noise!

This probably has some great advice but I couldn’t hear it because of all the sound effects and weird noise.

The producers should re-master this series and then fire the clown who added the “sound art”.

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Profile Image for Anonymous User

Well worth the listen

The other reviewers are right, the backing track is far too loud. had I been listening with headphones, it might have been unbearable. However, the content is brilliant and the narrator is understandable through not only the noise but his accent. Everyone should have a listen, not just aspiring writers. The exercises are great and he describes his process in detail, and I can't wait to get through the podcast! I am inspired to pick up the pen again!

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