Andrew Shaffer, author of Feel the Bern: A Bernie Sanders Mystery describes what it’s like to write fiction about public figures and how studying comedy writing at The Second City has influenced his writing process. He shares a writing prompt from his wife, author Tiffany Reisz, who appeared on episode seven.
A JCPL librarian interviews published writers about their favorite writing prompts—exercises that can help inspire, focus, and improve your creative writing. Whether you’re a beginner or a pro, a novelist, essayist, or poet, you’ll find ideas and advice to motivate you to keep writing. A partnership with the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning.
PtoP Ep 17 Shaffer edit 1
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Carrie: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Prompt to Page podcast, a partnership between the Jessamine County Public Library and the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning. I'm your host, librarian and poet, Carrie Green. Each episode we interview a published writer who shares their favorite writing prompt. Our guest today is Andrew Shaffer.
Andrew is the New York Times bestselling author of Hope Never Dies: An Obama Biden Mystery, and over a dozen other humorous works of genre fiction, from mystery to horror. He is a five time Good Reads Choice award nominee. An Iowa native s Schaffer lives in Louisville with his wife novelist Tiffany Reisz.
His latest release is the cozy mystery Feel the Bern: A Bernie Sanders Mystery. Welcome Andrew, and thanks for joining us.
Andrew: Yeah, thanks for having me on.
Carrie: So we did have Tiffany on, I think it was back in on [00:01:00] episode seven, so we're glad to have you on as well.
Andrew: Yes she warned me. That she warned me. She says, have a prompt, ready.
And I was like, of course. That's the name of it, right?
Carrie: Thank you. As your bio notes, some of your novels are inspired by real people. Which seems like a prompt in, in and of itself in a way. And one that is probably both fun and challenging. Can you talk a little bit about what your process is like for writing about public
figures?
Andrew: Yeah. So the public figures I write about are politicians. I've written about Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Obama, and the latest one is is Bern, Bernie. And so, what that process is like is I, I was looking at politicians because they're sort of like in the pseudo public domain, they're not really public domain, but [00:02:00] the chances of them suing you over anything are, are very small unless you sort of go after their families or whatever.
Because they've made themselves public figures by being politicians and and so there's, there's not much in terms of like legalities there to, to wade through. And I mean, frankly, when I was writing about Donald Trump, the first politician I wrote about my publisher was like, wouldn't it be amazing if he sued us?
Think of that publicity, . Alas, that did not happen. That book faded, faded pretty quickly. But. But yeah, it's interesting. It is sort of a form of fan fiction almost. It's, it's a sort of form of satire. It sort of crosses all these sort of boundaries. Some people go, how, how can you write about people who are, you know, living or whatever, you know, and I'm like, it it, it happens all the time on Saturday Night Live,
you know, there's every, every week they're doing a different politician on there or something. This happens [00:03:00] all the time in political cartoons, so I don't know why it's so sort of strange to some people that you would do it in, in books. I think it's that you get into the minds of those characters, though, and you're trying to ascribe what their thoughts are and whatnot.
But I had a, a, you know, a very simple process, which was when I was doing a book on Obama and Biden, I was like, I can't get into Obama's headspace. He's too cool for me. But I was like, I, I think I, I think I know what Joe's thinking. And in fact Joe Biden did later read the first book in that series and, and gave it a thumbs up.
So , I, I guess I got him pretty good. I don't, I don't know about Bernie Trump, Bernie or Trump, but I know Joe liked it. .
Carrie: Yeah. Well
that's something, right? ,
Andrew: right, right.
So you also brought up comedy and
Carrie: sat, you know, comparing it to Saturday Night Live.
Andrew: Mm-hmm. .
Carrie: You've also studied comedy writing at Second City.
Andrew: Mm-hmm. ,
Carrie: I think, and that's an improv school. Did that [00:04:00] study of improv, did that influence your writing?
Andrew: Oh, oh. A ton. Yeah. I wasn't there for very long. I was it's in Chicago, the Second City. It's where a lot of comedians came up through and went to Saturday Night Live from there. And, and I was taking classes there for, I don't know, about a year, year and a half.
At one point I was commuting every Sunday back and forth from Iowa, which was a four minute, four four hour drive each way. And I was doing that in one day. And so I ki I kind of tiring. But I learned so much because, because the thing about improv is, and I'm not sure if you know, people are familiar with it, but as a comedy form it's, you are always thinking, you are, you're just given a prompt by an audience and it's always something like, like random, like someone could just yell out bananas and then
you know, a, a good improv team will do 15 minutes of the most hilarious [00:05:00] stuff you've ever seen on bananas. Never to repeat it ever again, but just sort of throwing it all out there. And the way that they do that is they don't have filters. They don't they don't filter themselves. They just, whatever comes to mind is just what they say.
And, and you have to be very open to new ideas. And especially when you're collaborating with other people in an improv group there's a concept called Yes, and. So you don't say no to anything. You're always saying yes, and then you add your own sort of in stuff on the end of that. . And so, you know, and you're trying to work together to sort of extend the scene.
And if someone says, says are you an alien? You don't say no because you, you shut that scene down. You say, yes, I'm an alien. And, and then you sort of take that in a different direction. And so for writing, that's just been really, you know, invaluable to get my mind in that space of just saying, where can this [00:06:00] scene go?
Where does this go? Because I know the kind of things that can shut a scene down, you know? And I, there's this episode of the Office with Michael Scott and an improv group, and, and every time he's asked to do some improv, he shows up and he has a gun, , and he goes, I've got a gun. Everybody give me your money or something.
He, like, he just introduces a gun into every scene and it just, it just kills the scene because everybody, nobody can do anything, you know, with that. And so over and over that happens and I'm like, so there is certain ways that you can, you know shut down a scene by, by introducing, you know, like something that's sort of too large for that scene or whatever like that.
So yeah, it's, it's just a really interesting and, and fun way to think about responding to a writing prompt to let your mind go anywhere.
Carrie: Mm-hmm. . Yeah, absolutely. What role do prompts play in your writing process? I mean, do you use [00:07:00] them have you used them in the past?
Andrew: You know, I don't, I, I haven't used like formal prompts
online, but you know, I, if you boil down all of my books, they're, they're based on a prompt at some point.
For instance, my Joe Biden and Obama book, I saw a picture of Joe Biden looking very lonely, standing in the, in the White House with his aviator shades on, staring out. He has nothing to do. And I just thought, what could he be thinking about at this moment? So, I mean, I, I use a lot of, you know, photo prompts, if you will, and, and a lot of news stories and stuff too.
But I just like, what is he thinking about? Oh, he kind of has a Walter Mitty existence where he's a detective and nobody else knows about this. And so it, it, it evolved over the years into. Into him being an actual detective in my book. So, so yeah. So that's where I sort of get my, my prompts is, I'm just looking at a photo, looking at news [00:08:00] articles and could be a it could be a social media meme.
There were those Barack Obama and Joe Biden memes going around. And I said, oh, well, what, what if those were real? What if they really were like, best friends behind the scenes? And I go, oh. And so I combined it with this other, this picture that I thought of him being a detective, and I said that that would work out if they were just a couple of buddy detectives.
Carrie: Mm-hmm. .
Yeah. So do you wanna share your prompt?
Andrew: No. No, sorry. See, see how that shuts.
Carrie: I thought you were supposed to say yes and...
Andrew: I know, see, see how that shuts, shuts the conversation down when you, when you say no to something. Yeah. This actually I was talking this over with my wife Tiffany, and, and she was like, here's a great prompt.
You need to share this one. And I was like, Okay, I'll share this one. So this is actually hers, but, but think about a children's book or TV show or movie. And then think [00:09:00] about where those characters are 20 years later down the line. So you know, the. The every, every every children's book, you know, whether it's Harry Potter or whatever, ends with them, you know, living happily ever after or something.
But then you think of, well, what happens, you know, 20 years down the line? Do they have P T S D from, I mean, you know, these were kids and, and a lot of these stories that you think about, I mean has, has Charlie squandered his chocolate factory fortune and does he have to find an heir? You know, there, there are just so many sort of unanswered questions out there that, that you have after, after a happy happily ever after ending, especially for children.
You go, what would this be like for adults somewhere down the line? And I think that's really, it's really an interesting thought. And the, the great thing is you don't have to, I mean, you know, for purposes of just, you know, fan fiction or [00:10:00] whatever, you can write whatever you want. But if, if you were trying to get something published, it can be it, you know, you don't have to say, this is Charlie and his chocolate factory.
You can say, you can, you can make up your own characters or whatever, but sort of keep that same vibe of, of oh. As a kid I was gift, I was gifted a chocolate factory. By this insane old man. And he left me a workforce that I had no idea what to do with them. And so this is my story of of how I became like the evil chocolate factory owner and they rose up against me.
You know? So that's just, you know, off the top of my head, something that, you know, that sort of inspires me is. Just a really weird direction for, for, for something to go in where you think, oh, happily ever after. It's never the ending, is it?
Carrie: Mm-hmm. ,
and I think people do that a lot with like fairy tales or, you know mm-hmm.
myths, you know, thing, stories that people know well, [00:11:00]
oh
Andrew: yeah, yeah. I mean, they're just like, you know, there's, there's what if, what if the Greek gods were alive today and what would they be doing, you know? Mm-hmm. . And, and so there's, that's, it's always sort of a fun, fun prompt to play with and, and, and go and just fun directions with.
Carrie: Yeah.
Yeah. Thank you.
Andrew: Oh, thank Tiffany . .
Carrie: Yeah. Thank you Tiffany for another great prompt. Do you have any advice you'd like to give to
our writers?
Andrew: You know, I. I usually, when someone asks me for advice, I, I give fake advice because, you know, just, I wanna protect my own spot as a writer, and so I give them fake advice that will just drive, lead them astray.
But, you know, no, I'll, I'll give real advice though. I think, I think most writers say some, you know, hear that write what you. Write what you know is one that I [00:12:00] hear a lot. And, and it doesn't mean that you can only write stuff about your own life. I think, you know, I mean, early on, as a writer, early on as a writer, I sort of misinterpreted that.
I was like, I'll write what you know, oh, well I've never been this or I've never been this, but you know, you can do research and sort of get into any, any sort of mindset you want for a character or something. And I think that, I think that a lot of people start off their first work is usually something that's sort of autobiographical or memoir based.
Maybe slightly fictionalized because they're just either they're afraid to jump into another reality or they've been told. They've heard this advice and internalized it. And, and I know I did, you know, at one point I was like, well, you know, and then you have someone else say, oh, well don't, don't go to writing school.
What you need to do is go out and experience life and then you can write about it. And I'm like, well, if I wanna write about someone who's, you know, on a, on a whaling boat, I don't have to go on a whaling boat, [00:13:00] do I , you know, and, and I think for a long time I sort of thought that thought that was the case. But I mean, but just think about being a, a reader first is that you've experienced so many lives in so many worlds through, through fiction, through memoirs, through nonfiction, that you do have a wealth of experience.
It doesn't mean you have to leave your home for that experience. It does mean you have to. I think what it really means is you have to write what you know in terms of emotional truths, and so that you're not just copying the, the, you know, plot points from, from some oth somewhere. You know, you're actually trying to instill in something, you know, real emotion and, and your, your real, you know, feelings and stuff.
You know, so you know, it would be. I mean, I don't know. That's just, that's just kind of my take on it. I'm sure everybody has, has their own take on it. But, but [00:14:00] you know, once I, once I heard that it sort of clicked into place, it was like, oh, okay. You know, like, like, it would, it would be very difficult for me to write a book about someone, you know, say losing a child or something.
I mean, I just don't, nothing to compare that to. So, emotionally, I don't know if I'm, you know, the person to write that type of book without any kids, but, but. You know, I try to write from sort of where, where my emotions take me and, and where I've been, you know, figuratively, not literally .
Right? Yeah.
Carrie: That is kind of one of those, I mean, it's almost a cliche that write what you know, that gets Yeah. Bandied about. Yeah. So I, that's,
that's a good way of looking at it.
Andrew: And, and the other one that I have though is, is often attributed to Ernest Hemingway, which is write drunk, edit sober. Which, a lot of people take that one literally as well.
And I'm just going to say that Ernest Hemingway, if any, if you read a lot about him, he never wrote while he was [00:15:00] drinking. He wrote, he got up at like 5:00 AM in the morning, wrote for four or five hours, and then he started drinking. The rest of the day. So, so he was always sober when he wrote. What that quote actually means though is write drunk, which means write without abandon. And then edit sober means to you know, sort of, you put on your sober thinking cap and you look at your, what you've written logically.
And again, that sort of goes back around to the, the improv stuff, you know, I mean, a lot of times improv doesn't make sense, but you know, it's funny. Now if you were gonna go back and look at like, If you'd filmed your improv or something, or take some ideas from improv for a story, you need to go back and look at those logically.
It can't just, you know, be as random as improv is. So I think that write drunk, edit sober is great advice as long as you don't take it literally as well.
Carrie: Right. Yeah. There's probably a lot of things that we should not take [00:16:00] literally
Andrew: Yes.
Carrie: About writing or, or other things as well. Well thank you so much, Andrew for joining us and for, for sharing another prompt.
We really appreciate it.
Andrew: Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me on and for, you know, taking Tiffany's writing prompt in place of my own, you know, it's, I, it was better than anything I had.
Carrie: Well, we don't care where it comes from. Lots of lots of writers have shared, you know, their favorite writing prompt, just, you know, that's not necessarily one that they came up with but you know, one that they like and turn to you.
So
it doesn't matter.
Andrew: I hope people have fun with it. I think. I think it is a fun, a fun prompt though.
Carrie: Thank you for
listening to Prompt to Page. To learn more about the Jeman County Public Library, visit jesspublib.org. Find the Carnegie Center for Literacy and learning at carnegiecenterlex.org. Our music is by Archipelago, an all instrumental [00:17:00] musical collaboration between three Lexington based university professors.
Find out more about Archipelago: Songs from Quarantine volumes one and two, at the links on our podcast website.