Shows / Writing Excuses
Episodes
- Writing Excuses
13.38: How to Find and Use Alpha Readers
Your Hosts: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard We begin by making a useful distinction between alpha and beta reader: the alpha reader is an industry…
- Writing Excuses
13.37: What Writers Get Wrong, with J.Y. Yang
Your Hosts: Dan, Mary, Aliette, and Howard with special guest J.Y. Yang J.Y. Yang is a Hugo-nominated short story writer from Singapore who identifies as…
- Writing Excuses
13.36: Confronting the Default
Your Hosts: Brandon, Amal, Mary, and Maurice If you live in the northern hemisphere, inland, perhaps above the 40th parallel, you are probably quite sure that…
- Writing Excuses
13.35: Cliché vs. Archetype
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard Tropes, archetypes, and even cliches are tools in our toolboxes. There's no avoiding them, but there are definitely…
- Writing Excuses
13.34: Q&A on Character Arcs
Your Hosts: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard You had questions. We came up with answers. The questions are below: How do you fulfill promises about character…
- Writing Excuses
13.b1: Bonus Episode — Elephants and Death, with Lawrence Schoen
Your Hosts: Howard and Dan, with special guest Lawrence Schoen Lawrence Schoen, clinical psychologist, cognitive hypnotist, small press publisher, Klingon…
- Writing Excuses
13.33: Reading Outside the Box
Your Hosts: Dan, Mary, Aliette, and Howard, with Kristie Claxton Kristie Claxton joined us at WXR 2017 to talk about reading outside of the spaces where we're…
- Writing Excuses
13.32: How To Handle Weighty Topics
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Amal, and Maurice How can we, as writers, best handle weighty matters? This is our year on character, so we'll approach this with a…
- Writing Excuses
13.31: Learning to Listen as a Writer
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard "Write what you know" gets misapplied a lot. In this episode we'll talk about how to know things by…
- Writing Excuses
13.30: Project in Depth, THE CALCULATING STARS, with Kjell Lindgren
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, and Dan, with Kjell Lindgren Spoiler Alert! If you haven't yet read The Calculating Stars: A Lady Astronaut Novel, by Mary Robinette…
- Writing Excuses
13.29: Iconic Heroes
Your Hosts: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard The term "iconic hero" allows us to differentiate between different kinds of heroes who appear in series…
- Writing Excuses
13.28: What Writers Get Wrong, with Wildstyle
At GenCon Indy 2017 we were joined by Wildstyle (@MrWildstyle on Twitter), who wears many hats, and many of the hats he wears are donned in service of…
- Writing Excuses
13.27: Characters as Foils
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Amal, and Maurice A foil is a character who serves as a contrast to another character. The foil might be a sidekick, an antagonist…
- Writing Excuses
13.26: Character Relationships
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard Our characters become far more interesting when they begin interacting with each other. These interactions—these…
- Writing Excuses
13.25: Our Journey With Character
Your Hosts: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard Brandon wanted to ask us how our perspectives on character have changed since the very beginning of our writing…
- Writing Excuses
13.24: What Writers Get Wrong, with Piper, Aliette, and Wesley, with special guest Ken Liu
Your Hosts: Piper Drake, Aliette de Bodard, and Wesley Chu, with special guest Ken Liu Our hosts for this episode are experts in a great many different things…
- Writing Excuses
13.23: Internal Conflicts
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Amal, and Maurice Internal conflicts, simply put, are problems your characters have with themselves. In this episode we address the…
- Writing Excuses
13.22: Character Arcs
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard When Mary says we could do fifteen different episodes on character arcs, she's being conservative. Notwithstanding…
- Writing Excuses
13.21: Q&A on Character Depth and Motivation
Your Hosts: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard Our listeners submitted some great questions! How do you fairly and even-handedly write a deeply compelling…
- Writing Excuses
13.20: Fear and Writing, with Emma Newman
Your Hosts: Dan, Mary, Aliette, and Howard, with special guest Emma Newman Emma Newman, author, audio book narrator, and podcaster, joined us on the Baltic sea…
- Writing Excuses
13.19: Backstories
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Amal, and Maurice Character backstories: these are the tales that describe how the characters in your story became who they are by…
- Writing Excuses
13.18: Naturally Revealing Character Motivation
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard What motivates us? What really motivates us? Why? (Note: our motivations are probably not in service of some…
- Writing Excuses
13.17: What Writers Get Wrong, with Jamahl Crouch
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard, with Jamahl Crouch Jamahl Crouch (Illusmm1 on Instagram) joined us at the GenCon Indy Writers Symposium to talk…
- Writing Excuses
13.16: Avoiding Flat Characters
Your Hosts: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard For our purposes, the term "flat character" refers to a character who lacks the depth required to…
- Writing Excuses
13.15: What Writers Get Wrong, with Mike Stop Continues
Recorded live at WXR 2017. Your Hosts: Dan, Mary, Aliette, and Howard, with special guest Mike Stop Continues Mike has multiple areas of expertise, but for…
- Writing Excuses
13.14: Character Nuance
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Amal, and Maurice Let's talk about characters who have conflict built right into them; characters whose attributes and attitudes…
- Writing Excuses
13.13: Character Voice
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard Character voice, the flow, order, and feel of words that is unique to a particular character, is extremely useful in…
- Writing Excuses
13.12: Q&A on Heroes, Villains, and Main Characters
Your Cast: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, Howard You had questions about heroes, villains, and main characters. We have answers! Here are the questions: How do you…
- Writing Excuses
13.11: Writing Secondary Characters, with Charlaine Harris
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard, with special guest Charlaine Harris Charlaine Harris joined us in front of a live audience at the GenCon Writers…
- Writing Excuses
13.10: Handling a Large Cast
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Amal, and Maurice What are our favorite techniques for managing large casts of characters, and how do our processes differ from when…
- Writing Excuses
13.9: Quick Characterization
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard How do you go about defining a character for your readers when you don't have many words to devote to the project?…
- Writing Excuses
13.8: Making Characters Distinctive
Your Hosts: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard What do we do to make our characters distinctive? Often we categorize the distinctions as flaws or quirks, and in…
- Writing Excuses
13.7: What Writers Get Wrong, with Lou Perry
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard Lou Perry joined us in front of a live audience at GenCon Indy to talk about law and courtrooms, and what writers…
- Writing Excuses
13.6: External Conflicts for Characters
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Amal, and Maurice An external conflict is a story driver that originates outside the protagonist. In this episode a large part of…
- Writing Excuses
13.5: Villain, Antagonist, Obstacle
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard What's the difference between villains and antagonists? How is an obstacle character different from those other two?…
- Writing Excuses
13.4: Protagonists Who Aren’t Sympathetic
Your Hosts: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard This week we're joined by Valynne Maetani, who'll be one of our hosts all year. We're discussing protagonists…
- Writing Excuses
13.3: What Writers Get Wrong, with Aliette de Bodard
Your Hosts: Dan, Mary, Aliette, and Howard This year's third-week episodes will all follow a common theme: "what writers get wrong." Each of these…
- Writing Excuses
13.2: Writing Active Characters
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Amal, and Maurice This week we welcome Amal El-Mohtar and Maurice Broaddus to the Writing Excuses cast for a discussion of active…
- Writing Excuses
13.1: Hero, Protagonist, Main Character
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard 2018 is our Year of Character, and we kick it off with a quick exploration of the differences between heroes…
- Writing Excuses
12.53: Writing Excuses True Confessions
It's the end of 2017, so let's talk about the things that we've tried to make work, and failed at. Not things that we tried before arriving at career-level…
- Writing Excuses
12.52: Cross-Genres as Gateways
Your Hosts: Brandon, Piper, Howard, and Dan What are the books which have drawn us from the bookshelf genres where you're the most comfortable into bookshelves…
- Writing Excuses
12.51: Constructed Languages, with Dirk Elzinga
Your Hosts: Howard, Mary, Dan, with guest host Beth Meacham Dirk Elzinga, an associate professor of linguistics, joined us live at LTUE to talk about…
- Writing Excuses
12.50: Form and Function
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Mary Anne, and Wesley How does the shape of your physical medium change the art you're making? What are the tools that affect our…
- Writing Excuses
12.49: Non-linear Narratives
We begin the final month of our year on structure with a discussion of non-linear structures. These include flashbacks, POVs that are out of chronological…
- Writing Excuses
12.48: Q&A on Novels and Series, with Brian McClellan
Brian McClellan joined us to field questions about writing novels and series. Here are the questions: How do you write an ending that is open for sequels, but…
- Writing Excuses
12.47: Screenwriting and the Writers Room, with JD Payne
Screenwriter JD Payne joined us before a live audience at LTUE to talk about writing for the screen, specifically regarding doing this work with others in a…
- Writing Excuses
12.46: Reinventing Yourself
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Mary Anne, and Wesley We discuss the idea of "reinventing yourself," which can mean anything from "trying something…
- Writing Excuses
12.45: Structuring a Series
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard Before you can decide on a structure for your series, you may find it helpful to decide what kind of series you're…
- Writing Excuses
12.44: NaNoWriMo 2017 Primer
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard We're going to share some of our experiences with NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in an effort to encourage…
- Writing Excuses
12.43: Serialized Storytelling
Your Hosts: Brandon, Piper, Dan, and Howard We're talking about the extreme long-form serial story here, and how to keep things interesting without forcing the…
- Writing Excuses
12.42: Adapting Your Stories for Game Play, with Alan Bahr
Your Hosts: Mary, Dan, and Howard, with guest host Beth Meacham Alan Bahr of Ragnarok Publications, joined us at LTUE 2017 to talk about adapting a licensed…
- Writing Excuses
12.41: Raising the Stakes
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Mary Anne, and Wesley When we talk about "raising the stakes," we mean making the outcomes of the events in a story…
- Writing Excuses
12.40: Structuring a Novel
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard What makes something a novel, rather than just a serialized collection of stuff that happens? How do we use…
- Writing Excuses
12.39: Q&A on Short(er) Fiction
Your Hosts: Brandon, Piper, Dan, and Howard Our listeners sent us some questions about writing shorter fiction. Here are the questions: How do you market short…
- Writing Excuses
12.38: What Do Editors Really Want, with Toni Weisskopf and Cat Rambo
Your Hosts: Dan and Howard Toni Weisskopf and Cat Rambo joined Dan and Howard to discuss what it is that editors "really want." Question To Help You…
- Writing Excuses
12.37: Subplots
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Mary Anne, and Wesley What makes a plot a subplot? Must subplots and main plots be linked by something more binding than the actual…
- Writing Excuses
12.36: Structuring a Mid-Length Piece
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard Larger than a short story, smaller than a novel... there's quite a bit of space between those two thresholds, and in…
- Writing Excuses
12.35: Short Fiction Markets, with Spencer Ellsworth and guest host Beth Meacham
Your Hosts: Mary, Dan, and Howard, with guest host Beth Meacham Spencer Ellsworth and Beth Meacham joined us before a live audience at LTUE 2017 for a…
- Writing Excuses
12.34: Fulfilling the Reader’s Fantasy, with Brian McClellan
Your Hosts: Brandon, Piper, Dan, and Howard Brian McClellan joins us for a discussion on fulfilling the promises we make to our readers—specifically the…
- Writing Excuses
12.33: How to be Brief, Yet Powerful
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Mary Anne, and Wesley We've talked about some of the structural guidelines for short stories. In this episode we'll discuss how to…