Broadcasting to the Tribe of Storytellers: An Interview with Daniel Ford and Sean Tuohy of the Writer’s Bone Podcast
by Jessica A. Kent
February 19, 2020
Two writers walk into a bar…
…and start a podcast.
Daniel Ford and Sean Tuohy recorded a teaser video at J. J. Foley’s on January 21, 2014, introducing a new podcast – Writer’s Bone – that the two were starting. The forty minute first episode, which premiered five days later, features the founders bantering about pop culture, the books they read as kids, and how they both became writers (Ford is a fiction writer; Tuohy is a screenwriter). The voices echo, and the audio cuts out at one point. But it was a start. The goal was to talk to writers, as many as they could find, about the art of storytelling.
Tuohy wrote a Facebook post the day after the episode aired, saying, “One pod down. How many more is unknown.”
Now, six years to the day from when the first episode premiered, the 400th episode of the Writer’s Bone podcast dropped on January 26, 2020, with Tuohy and Ford still at the helm of the popular interview series that sticks to its roots of conversations with writers and storytellers of all kinds. The 400th episode was recorded live at Belmont Books and featured Ford and Tuohy interviewing local authors James Charlesworth and Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne about their debut novels, their process, and what they’re excited to read in 2020.
The event would’ve been a great chance to do a recollection over the years, for Ford and Tuohy to reminisce about how far they’ve come, to name the hundreds of authors they’ve talked to, to toot their own horn a little bit. But that’s not them. They’re writers first, but they’re fans of writers a close second, and are the biggest champions of the people they meet. Instead of a look-back episode, they used the 400th episode to focus on fellow writers and the community around them.
Four hundred episodes – along with nearly two hundred additional episodes of their Friday Morning Coffee series, five other shows produced through the Writer’s Bone podcast network, a website of content, and a near-constant social media presence – is no small feat. And they both have day jobs. There seemed no better time to get the story behind the podcast and find out some nuts and bolts of the process. Both Tuohy and Ford were gracious enough to meet me at Thinking Cup in the North End so I could attempt to interview the interviewers (which felt more like recording a podcast episode that will remain unaired!).
Daniel Ford (l) and Sean Tuohy (r) recording live from Porter Square Books
The Origin Story
The foundation for Writer’s Bone has to be the friendship between Tuohy and Ford, easy-going conversationalists who segued from our small talk at the coffee counter to what you could call the formal interview with ease. First you notice the bantering, the similar gallows humor, the finishing of each other’s sentences. When they met after having just moved to Boston independently of one another, they say it just clicked.
“We met at a party hosted by our friends,” Tuohy tells me. “We literally locked eyes across the room.”
“We’re not making this up,” Ford notes.
“You were wearing a [Hartford] Whalers hat, and I made a joke about it, and we started talking and just—"
“Didn’t stop,” Ford interjects. “We basically had to be separated.”
Tuohy explains that in life, we’re all looking for our tribe. “In that moment we found our tribe members.”
Both writers were looking for a creative outlet, so they decided to start a website and podcast that focused on conversations with creative types around writing and pop culture. Early episodes feature the two of them chatting in an apartment, or live at a bar, literally about everything (bacon jam, the worst jobs they’ve had, Star Wars), but the focus always turns back to writing. Their first interview, with novelist and founder of Hard Case Crimes Charles Ardai, airs in their third episode.
“I remember we had to stay up. [Ardai] had to stay up late,” Ford tells me. “I think we may have started at 9:30. And I will never forget that feeling when we were done. It was like, ‘That was awesome!’”
“It was just a good time,” Tuohy adds. They suddenly realized that they had something – their craved creative outlet, a cool pastime, a future profession, or just connection with another artistic person.
They liken those early days to a punk rock scene, or the wild west. They didn’t go into it looking to fill a gap in the market, or looking to capitalize on the rising podcast craze. They just wanted to talk to writers, and create a vehicle to share those conversations with the world – and they would learn as they went. “The first two years we were taking almost a shotgun approach of who we were interviewing – anyone and everyone. The first two years were just emailing fifty to a hundred people a day, and calling people and trying to set up interviews,” Tuohy explains. And in those early years, they hosted a much wider variety of storytellers than they tend to do now – from authors to screenwriters to actors to comedians to comic book creators. But the one thing that remained was the focus on storytelling, in whatever form.
“It didn’t matter if they were authors or screenwriters,” Ford tells me. “Recently, there was Paul Lieberstein from The Office – not someone you would typically find on our podcast. But the stories he told about writing his own movie, starring in his own movie, and more importantly, learning from Steve Carell about how to be an actor, how to take the lead when you’re a star. That was totally invaluable, and writers can identify with that. You don’t have to be an actor to get it.”
“I think early on that shotgun approach to finding storytellers was because we were still finding our tone as storytellers as well,” Tuohy adds. “You [Ford] with writing, me with screenwriting. We were finding a voice, and to find a voice, we needed to talk to others.”
But what about the name Writer’s Bone? It’s a take on the book/movie Winter’s Bone, and has a variety of meanings, including getting to the bone, or truth, of interviews. “We each have a bone in us that’s creative,” Tuohy explains.
“It defines us because we’re tenacious, we don’t give up,” Ford adds.
The Nuts and Bolts
While the podcast was evolving with a weekly release, the Writer’s Bone website evolved as well, with written interviews, original fiction and essays, music reviews, a section called Badass Writer of the Week, and The Boneyard. Today, Writer’s Bone is probably most known for the podcast, and while the brand still encapsulates the website, where new content is still featured, the podcast soared once they were able to figure out the audio and technology.
“The audio side? It was complete trial and error,” Ford says of their learning curve. A self-proclaimed do-it-yourself-er, Ford figured out the tech as they went, seeking out people more experienced than him to help him through.
“Dan’s skill set got better and better with the audio. And when that got better, it became a lot easier on the business side,” adds Tuohy.
“It was a product,” Ford adds. The audio for them clicked in 2016 – you can hear it in the episodes – and that was when they were able to bring on more sponsorship (including One Room, with a mission they love to support). Still, they have to keep on top of changes and updates in technology. Ford talks about how they hosted a SoundCloud embed code on their site – until the day they found out SoundCloud was shutting down. After some brief panic, Ford simply looked for a new channel. Now, the podcast can be found on dozens of hosting sites – iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, iHeartRadio – due in part to Ford’s diligence to getting it out there. (“Dan treats the podcast like the monkey from Outbreak. Just get it wherever he can,” quips Tuohy.)
Of the podcast production, Ford says that, “We’re doing it quicker, far superior. Right now, we’ll do an interview, and timewise, editing-wise, it doesn’t feel like it takes any time. And it’s still fun. It’s still a creative outlet rather than a slog.”
“It is nice to do an interview after a tough week of doing ten hour days, mind-numbing work,” adds Tuohy.
They’ve returned to J. J. Foley’s after that first teaser video to record live shows, but began recording live interviews at Trident and Brookline Booksmith as well. A short-lived supplement to the main podcast appeared in 2015 entitled Sunday Brunch, which morphed into the current iteration Friday Morning Coffee. Since then they’ve spun off four other shows: Film Freaks Forever, NovelClass, Pop Literacy, and the recent #Authoring. Interestingly, the shows that spun off captured some of the peripheral conversations the early Writer’s Bone podcasts were having around film, pop culture, music, and more. “As time goes on, you whittle down and you know what your strong suit is. And we found what our strong suit was with Writer’s Bone,” says Tuohy.
And that strong suit is talking to authors about their process.
Tuohy and Ford at the Sid Sanford Lives! book launch at Trident Booksellers and Cafe
Gathering the Writing Tribe
The Writer’s Bone podcast has indeed whittled itself down to a core offering: Conversations with authors about how they write, and giving authors a place where they can be honest about the way they work. The interview always begins with asking about an origin story and early literary influences, and ends with asking the author what kind of writing advice they have for aspiring writers (which, after four hundred episodes, is quite the collection of wisdom). Ford and Tuohy may ask about the publishing process, but aren’t interested in the details of contracts and submissions. “We don’t try to ‘get’ anyone, we don’t try to throw roadblocks. It’s just, ‘Tell me about your work and your process,’” says Ford. “We’re all part of the same team. We’re trying to figure out this creative thing.”
Tuohy adds, “It helps when we talk to somebody and ‘Oh! They’ve gone through the same struggles that as I have.’ I remember [the interview with] Mackenzie Lee. She gave the most honest answers. People don’t talk about how there are days you don’t write, or go weeks without writing, or feel lethargic or angry about your stuff. And it was such an honest answer, and I loved it because I relate to that. And we know our listeners will relate, because there’s someone trying to write their first novel or their first screenplay.”
“I think what’s good about our interview style,” Ford continues, “is that we give authors the venue to say what they want to say and be honest: ‘I don’t write every day,’ or, ‘I write every day at this time, I have to, it’s part of my process, but here are my other eccentricities.’”
“’I outline every single thing, or I don’t outline at all,’” Tuohy adds. “It’s interesting to learn other people’s methods, but it’s also comforting to people out there. There are hundreds of books about writing, about being a creative writer, there are classes on it. You can’t learn anything until you actually do it. You hear from someone else and think, ‘Oh, they did the same thing.’”
Six years of talking with writers has also been a master class for Ford and Tuohy as well, and has caused them to grow as writers. “I would a) not be the writer I am, and b) would not be published if we did not have the podcast,” says Ford, who also shares how he altered one of the stories in his collection Black Coffee because of simply being in conversation with other writers. Tuohy details how, after interviewing a screenwriter and hearing him lay out the steps to getting a manager, Tuohy followed it and got a manager himself. “In listening, we’ve become better writers. So those early years of just talking to storytellers, it was just learning how to become storytellers ourselves.”
And not just storytellers, but champions of the writers they’ve interviewed. Half of our interview consisted of Ford and Tuohy giving me book recommendations. They read a lot – they have to, but they also want to – and they tumbled from one author they loved to another in our conversation. (“Caroline Kepnes…wrote a book called Providence, which is phenomenal” … “Kat Howard. Put her on your list!” … “Paul Tremblay[‘s Head Full of Ghosts] is one of my top ten favorite horror novels” … “Jami Attenberg – I just adore the way she writes” … “Kellye Garrett is phenomenal”… “Steph Post…should be a household name.”)
They’re fans, and it shows. “We’ve geared the show towards aspiring writers, and people who want to learn about the craft, but also have established authors get something out of it as well. I think that’s the important thing,” explains Ford. But ultimately, it’s about wanting to talk to the writers whose work has made an impression on them, or to which they’ve gravitated. “We’ve gotten to not only interview our idols in a couple cases, we’ve gone to hang out with them” says Tuohy.
Speaking of idols, I asked them what their dream interview would be. “Stephen King!” they both answer. They’ve been trying for the length of the podcast to get him with no avail. “We have interviewed Stephen King’s entire family,” Ford mentions.
“Except for Stephen King,” Tuohy adds.
Ford adds, “Including his daughter-in-law.”
“Who has a new book coming out,” notes Tuohy. They go on to joke that a Stephen King interview may end up being their last episode – they’ll either have to hang up the mics after that, or will be dragged out of Maine for a last-ditch attempt.
One thing Ford and Tuohy are deliberate about is eliminating the barrier between podcaster and audience, or listener. “I don’t think we’ve ever thought of it as an audience. Definitely more as a community,” Ford explains. He has deliberately said to interviewees after interviews that “You’re one of us now” – as if Writer’s Bone is just the beginning of something spilling over into the greater writing community. Tuohy adds that, “When you say ‘She’s one of us,’ or ‘He’s one of us,’ we’re including people into a club. And writers tend to be people who are kind of solitary. And to be part of a club is really cool,” explains Tuohy. “We’re a tribe, we’re all like-minded in that we’re all fascinated by this very odd thing: telling stories.
Ford and Tuohy’s philosophy is not writers competing against each other for publishing rewards, but that we’re all in this together – and need to root for, support, and be generous with one another. “There’s so much failure and there’s so much rejection in this industry that when you succeed or when you see other people succeed, take it as a win,” Tuohy says. “Take it as a team win. One of us made it. Good, awesome!”
The Next Episode
While the 400th episode was a milestone, and while they do have “How did we get here?” moments, they’re not resting on their laurels.
“Our whole operation has been, ‘All right, what do we do next? What’s the next author, what’s the next book we want to read?’” Ford explains.
“Always moving forward. I don’t think it’s a fear of slowing down, there’s just no purpose. Because we produce so much, we have no real reason to look back,” Tuohy adds.
“And it’s fun. When it stops being fun—"
“We’ll stop.”
“That’s it. There will be no debate, there will be no questioning, there will be no haggling over sponsors. No longer fun? Done.”
“Burn it to the ground.”
We hope there are many more conversations to be had before that day comes.
Visit the Writer’s Bone website for episodes, essays, features, book recommendations, and more. Go to your favorite podcast app and hit subscribe; new episodes drop twice a week. And you can listen to the 400th episode, taped live at Belmont Books, here.
