HeyJaredThe Dialogue Doctor Podcast
Writing great books is critical to generating sales and building a following of readers. On the Dialogue Doctor Podcast, Jeff Elkins and other writers discuss how to write dialogue that will excite readers and help you sell more books.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 17
- Latest publication
- Sep 28, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 4, 2026
Latest episodes
What Raymond Carver's "Cathedral" Teaches Us About Character Voice [ep 348] (opens the original)
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Why do writers keep studying Raymond Carver's "Cathedral" more than forty years after it was published? In this episode of The Dialogue Doctor Podcast , Jeff Elkins sits down with members of the Dialogue Doctor community to dig into Carver's famous short story and figure out exactly what writers can learn from it. "Cathedral" has an almost absurdly simple premise: a man, his wife, and her blind friend spend an evening together in a living room. And yet Carver turns that small situation into a si
How to Write Quiet Scenes with Big Emotional Stakes [Ep 346] (opens the original)
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How do you write a quiet conversation scene where the real conflict is happening inside the character? In this episode of The Dialogue Doctor Podcast , Jeff Elkins works with Dennis Kurlas on a reflective scene from Dennis's novel. The scene follows Margo as she meets her friend Fran for lunch and prepares to reveal something deeply personal: she has feelings for two different men. On the surface, the scene is simple. Two friends sit at a café, talk about life, discuss romance, and catch up. But
How Writers Can Use the Enneagram to Build Better Characters [Ep 346] (opens the original)
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Can the Enneagram actually help you write better characters? Or is it just pseudoscience with numbers, occult-looking diagrams, interpretive dance, and a suspicious amount of personality-test confidence? In this episode of The Dialogue Doctor Podcast , Jeff Elkins sits down with JP Rindfleisch IX to talk about the Enneagram as a tool for writers. Jeff and JP approach the topic with the right amount of usefulness and skepticism. They are not treating the Enneagram like scientific law. They are no
How to Open a Fantasy Novel: Action, Tension, and Character Growth [Ep 345] (opens the original)
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How do you open a fantasy novel with action without confusing the reader? In this episode of The Dialogue Doctor Podcast , Jeff Elkins sits down with new fiction author Malcolm Coon to work through the opening of Malcolm's fantasy heist novel. Malcolm has built an epic fantasy world loosely inspired by a D&D world he created with his brother when they were kids. Now he is turning that world into a story about couriers, rooftops, rebellion, hidden danger, and a young character being pulled into s
Is Publishing Still Worth It? Authors Talk Burnout, Book Marketing, & Hope [Write Wrong Repeat Ep 5] (opens the original)
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What happens when a group of working authors sits down after a rough month and tells the truth about publishing? You get this episode of Write Wrong Repeat . In this conversation, JP Rindfleisch IX, Holly Lyne, Jeff Elkins, Tom Holbrook, and Crys Cain check in on their writing lives, business experiments, marketing wins, publishing frustrations, and the strange emotional math of trying to build an author career in public. August was not an easy month. The group talks honestly about grief, health
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