Shows / Writing Excuses
Episodes
- Writing Excuses
17.6: Hitting Reset Without Getting Hit Back
Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd Oh no! You're in the middle of a thing (a novel, a series, a career) and you suddenly…
- Writing Excuses
17.5: The Promise of the Brand
Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd Your brand—your name, the cover art for your book, and even the typeface for the…
- Writing Excuses
17.4: The Gun on the Mantel is Actually a Fish
Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd In the previous episode we discussed how to ensure that your surprise feels inevitable…
- Writing Excuses
17.3: Chekov’s Surprising Yet Inevitable Inverted Gun
Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd This week we're talking about giving inevitability to our intended surprise, and we…
- Writing Excuses
17.2: It Was a Promise of Three Parts
Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd The title of this episode comes to us from the first paragraph of The Name of the Wind…
- Writing Excuses
17.1: Genre and Media are Promises
Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd The genre of your story is making promises to the reader, and the medium upon which…
- Writing Excuses
16.52: Structure is a Promise
Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd The structure you're using for your story isn't just helping you organize your…
- Writing Excuses
16.51: Promises are a Structure
Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd Our next 8-episode intensive is all about promises and expectations. Our guest hosts…
- Writing Excuses
16.50: Worldbuilding Finale: Making Deliberate Choices
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Fonda Lee, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler Here at the end of our 8-episode intensive series on Worldbuilding we discuss…
- Writing Excuses
16.49: Magic and Technology: Two Sides of the Same Coin
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Fonda Lee, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler Magic and technology are tools that we, as writers, use to tell interesting stories…
- Writing Excuses
16.48: Believable Worlds Part 2: Creating Texture
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Fonda Lee, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler As we do our worldbuilding with similarity, specificity, and selective depth (per the…
- Writing Excuses
16.47: Believable Worlds Part 1: The Illusion of Real
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Fonda Lee, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler Writers are illusionists, and worldbuilding requires no small mastery of that…
- Writing Excuses
16.46: World and Plot: The Only Constant is Change
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Fonda Lee, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler In our world, the ostensibly "real" one (simulation theory notwithstanding)…
- Writing Excuses
16.45: World and Character Part 2: Moral Frame
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Fonda Lee, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler Let's follow up on character biases with an exploration of moral frame. When we say…
- Writing Excuses
16.44: World and Character Part 1: All Your Characters Are Biased
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Fonda Lee, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler The world of your book is most often shown to us through the eyes of the characters…
- Writing Excuses
16.43: The Narrative Holy Trinity of World, Character, and Plot, with Fonda Lee
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Fonda Lee, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler We're beginning another master class, another deep dive series of episodes, and this…
- Writing Excuses
16.42: M.I.C.E. Quotient, After the Fact
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, C.L. Polk, Charlotte Forfieh, and Mary Robinette Kowal Our eighth and final M.I.C.E. Quotient discussion will explore using M.I.C.E. as…
- Writing Excuses
16.41: Middles and Conflicts with M.I.C.E. Structure
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, C.L. Polk, Charlotte Forfieh, and Mary Robinette Kowal With the M.I.C.E. elements (Milieu, Inquiry, Character, and Event) explained, and…
- Writing Excuses
16.40: Nesting Threads in the M.I.C.E. Quotient
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, C.L. Polk, Charlotte Forfieh, and Mary Robinette Kowal Now that we've drilled down into each of the M.I.C.E. elements (Milieu, Inquiry…
- Writing Excuses
16.39: Deep Dive into “Event”
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, C.L. Polk, Charlotte Forfieh, and Mary Robinette Kowal Our fifth M.I.C.E. Quotient episode focuses on the “Event” element, and explores…
- Writing Excuses
16.38: Deep Dive into “Character”
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, C.L. Polk, Charlotte Forfieh, and Mary Robinette Kowal Our fourth M.I.C.E. Quotient episode explores the “Character” element, and how…
- Writing Excuses
16.37: Deep Dive Into “Inquiry”
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, C.L. Polk, Charlotte Forfieh, and Mary Robinette Kowal Our third M.I.C.E. Quotient episode asks about the "Inquiry" element, and…
- Writing Excuses
16.36: Deep Dive into “Milieu”
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, C.L. Polk, Charlotte Forfieh, and Mary Robinette Kowal The M.I.C.E. Quotient is an organizational tool which categorizes story elements…
- Writing Excuses
16.35: What is the M.I.C.E. Quotient?
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, C.L. Polk, Charlotte Forfieh, and Mary Robinette Kowal The next eight episodes are a deep dive into the M.I.C.E. Quotient, so we'll…
- Writing Excuses
16.34: Novels Are Layer Cakes
Your Hosts: DongWon Song, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler Novels deliver a lot of information, and it's helpful to consider that delivery in…
- Writing Excuses
16.33: Tell, Don’t Show
Your Hosts: DongWon Song, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler Few pieces of writing advice get repeated as much as that old saw "show, don't…
- Writing Excuses
16.32: First Page Fundamentals—THE KILLING FLOOR, by Lee Childs
Your Hosts: DongWon Song, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler In this episode we explore the first page of The Killing Floor, by Lee Childs…
- Writing Excuses
16.31: First Page Fundamentals—MOBY DICK
Your Hosts: DongWon Song, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler In this episode we explore the first page of Moby Dick, by Herman Melville, with…
- Writing Excuses
16.30: First Page Fundamentals—THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE
Your Hosts: DongWon Song, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler In this episode we explore the first page of The Haunting of Hill House, by…
- Writing Excuses
16.29: Building Trust
Your Hosts: DongWon Song, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler How do we build trust with our readers? What does that even mean? In this episode…
- Writing Excuses
16.28: Common First-Page Mistakes
Your Hosts: DongWon Song, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler Let's have a frank, and possibly painful discussion about the ways in which the…
- Writing Excuses
16.27: Nobody Wants to Read a Book
Your Hosts: DongWon Song, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler Our controversial episode title comes to us via John Schwarzwelder, and it points…
- Writing Excuses
16.26: Working With Teams
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, Cassandra Khaw, Dan Wells, James L. Sutter, and Howard Tayler Our series of game writing episodes draws to a close with a…
- Writing Excuses
16.25: Breaking Into Game Writing
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, Cassandra Khaw, Dan Wells, James L. Sutter, and Howard Tayler So, after all this talk about designing games and writing for…
- Writing Excuses
16.24: Worldbuilding for Games
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, Cassandra Khaw, Dan Wells, James L. Sutter, and Howard Tayler Worldbuilding is one of our favorite topics, and it's a domain…
- Writing Excuses
BONUS EPISODE! 2021 WXR Early-Bird Announcement
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dongwon, and Dan What's this bonus episode thing? Well, for starters IT'S URGENT, because as of this writing you have just ten more…
- Writing Excuses
16.23: Rules and Mechanics
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, Cassandra Khaw, Dan Wells, James L. Sutter, and Howard Tayler Let's talk about how players interact with the mechanics of the…
- Writing Excuses
16.22: Scenes and Set Pieces
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, Cassandra Khaw, Dan Wells, James L. Sutter, and Howard Tayler Let's have a discussion about scenes and set pieces, and let's…
- Writing Excuses
16.21: Player Characters
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, James L. Sutter, Dan Wells, Cassandra Khaw, and Howard Tayler So, you're the hero of your own story, and the hero gets…
- Writing Excuses
16.20: Branching Narratives
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, James L. Sutter, Dan Wells, Cassandra Khaw, and Howard Tayler How do you give players meaningful choices while still keeping…
- Writing Excuses
16.19: Intro to Roleplaying Games
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, James L. Sutter, Dan Wells, Cassandra Khaw, and Howard Tayler For the next eight episodes we'll be talking about roleplaying…
- Writing Excuses
16.18: Poetry and the Fantastic
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, Amal, and Howard For the last seven episodes we've explored language, meaning, and their overlap with that thing we mean when…
- Writing Excuses
16.17: The Time To Rhyme
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, Amal, and Howard Rhyming is powerful. It can signal a form, or telegraph whimsy. It can be predictable, surprising, and…
- Writing Excuses
16.16: Poetic Structure: Part II
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, Amal, and Howard How does a poem happen? Absent an external structure, what makes a thing a poem? The key word in that…
- Writing Excuses
16.15: Poetic Structure, Part I
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, Amal, and Howard Rigorous structure in poetic form is commonly pointed at when we declare Poems have meters and rhymes, as the…
- Writing Excuses
16.14: Poetic Language
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, Amal, and Howard We might begin with description. Or we might begin by deconstructing the act of describing. Wait. No, not…
- Writing Excuses
16.13: Day Brain vs. Night Brain
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, Amal, and Howard Patterns in the way we're speaking may betray which 'brain' we're using; often bound by what's familiar…
- Writing Excuses
16.12 : Singing Versus Speaking
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, Amal, and Howard Can you hear your writing sing, being intoned instead of read? With the dialogs as tunes whose tags say…
- Writing Excuses
16.11: What is Poetry?
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, Amal, and Howard This is how we begin our master class on poetry, with Amal El-Mohtar: With not one question, but two. What is…
- Writing Excuses
16.10: Paying it Forward, with Kevin J. Anderson
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, Amal, and Howard, with special guest Kevin J. Anderson Kevin J. Anderson joins us to talk about how others have helped us in…
- Writing Excuses
16.9: Crossing The Revenue Streams
Your Hosts: Dan, Erin, Brandon, and Howard How many different ways can our writing earn money for us? What additional work, besides "just" writing, do…
- Writing Excuses
16.8: Smart Promotion
Your Hosts: Dan, Erin, Brandon, and Howard Let's talk about how promote yourself and your work, and how to do it well. The tools we use for this continue to…
- Writing Excuses
16.7: To Series, or Not to Series
Your Hosts: Dan, Erin, Brandon, Howard Let's look a the business considerations of whether that thing you're writing is a standalone story, or part of a…
- Writing Excuses
16.6: Building Your Brand
Your Hosts: Dan, Erin, Brandon, and Howard Branding, in marketing terms for writers, is the process of establishing a recognizable identity—a brand— for you…
- Writing Excuses
16.5: Pros and Contracts
Your Hosts: Dan, Mary Robinette, Brandon, and Erin Here's our deep dive into the subject of contracts in the publishing business. We can only go so deep during…
- Writing Excuses
16.4: Networking
Your Hosts: Dan, Mary Robinette, Erin, Brandon, and Howard Networking is an invaluable part of any business, and the business of writing is no exception. In…
- Writing Excuses
16.3: Publishing Pitfalls
Your Hosts: Dan, Erin, Howard, and Brandon Erin Roberts joins us for our third installment in Brandon's business-of-writing series. In this episode we're…
- Writing Excuses
16.02: Publishers Are Not Your Friends
Your Hosts: Dan, Mary Robinette, Howard, and Brandon It sounds like a mean thing to say, but it's not a wrong thing to say. A publisher is a corporation, and a…
- Writing Excuses
16.01: Your Career is Your Business
Your Hosts: Dan, Mary Robinette, Howard, and Brandon Welcome to 2021, and Season 16 of Writing Excuses. This year we're dividing the year into "master…
- Writing Excuses
15.52: Economy of Phrase, Being the Concentrated Concatenation of Complex Thoughts in Just a Very Few Words Which Must Fit In A Very Very Small Box, With Patrick Rothfuss
Your Hosts: Howard, Mary Robinette, and Dan, with special guest Patrick Rothfuss Did we have too much fun applying ironic humor to the title of this episode?…