Writing Excuses

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard The advice commonly given to writers is to worldbuild an iceberg, but only to show the reader the tip. This is still too much work. Icebergs are big. In this episode we talk about worldbuilding the tip of the iceberg, and then worldbuilding as little as possible of the rest of the iceberg so that the tip behaves correctly. Our Sponsors: * Check...

Your Hosts: Howard, Mary Robinette, Dan, and DongWon Authors have brands whether they want to have them or not. It's a simple principle of marketing, and the better we understand that principle, the better able we are to control how it affects our careers. In this episode we talk marketing, and freely use terms like "relationship marketing," "authentic experience," and "bra...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard How do you write a setting in which the status quo is one with which you deeply disagree? How do you create a conflict of this sort without being overtly pedantic or preachy? In this episode we talk about creating engaging worlds while worldbuilding around—and yes, over—landmines. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mast...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard Let's talk about worldbuilding with gender roles. Most of us have grown up with a very strongly defined binary, that distinction need not be how we craft the worlds in which we set our stories. In this episode we discuss the resources we have to help us, and the approaches we've taken to worldbuild with gender in our own work. We dr...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab In this episode we talk about how to put characters in conflict with their setting, and how to structure our work so that these conflicts arise organically rather than feeling mandated by plot. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and master by Alex Jackson Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use my code homeserve.com/excuses for a gr...

Your Hosts: Piper, DongWon, Amal, and Maurice We like food, and we like to talk about food. Our hosts this week talk about how this influences their fiction, (not to mention how incredibly complex [and interesting, and delicious] the subject is.) Credits: this episode was recorded by Howard Tayler, and mastered by Alex Jackson  Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use my code homeserve.com/excu...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard So, you're going to go someplace and learn something you can't learn in any other way. Maybe it's location research for setting. Maybe you're off to interview an expert. Whatever you're planning, you need to be planning it well. In this episode we discuss the field research we've done, how we went about it, and how w...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab How do you write about warfare in your stories when you've never fought in a war? How do you describe brilliant tactics when you're completely untrained in military movements? How can you portray the emotions of someone on a battlefield without having been on a battlefield yourself? In this episode we tackle these questions and more. (Hint: the...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard In this episode we stories with the "Person-vs-Setting" structure. These are stories where nature fills the role of antagonist, and may also be what governs the pacing, and the delivery of key emotional beats. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use my c...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, and Dan, with special guest Rob Kimbro Rob Kimbro joins us this week to talk about Aristotle's elements of tragedy, and how they might be applied to our writing. The six elements are (in Aristotle's order of descending importance): plot, character, idea, dialog, music, and spectacle. We discuss this tool in terms of critiquing existing work, and in find...

Your Hosts: Howard, Mary Robinette, Dan, and DongWon Guest-host Dongwon Song joined us at WXR 2018 as an instructor, and gave great advice regarding the business side of working as an author. In this episode he takes us through a conversation about choosing an agent. Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use my code h...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard Political Intrigue stories are less about "politics" (as colloquially defined by pop culture) and more about mysteries. Per Mary Robinette, they're often like heists of information. The word "politics" here is used in its purest sense: POWER. In this episode we talk about how we worldbuild for stories in which the flow o...

Answering questions about the power structures you live within can help you with the worldbuilding of politics in the fiction you write. Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use my code homeserve.com/excuses for a great deal: https://www.homeserve.com * Check out MasterClass and use my code masterclass.com/EXCUSES for a great deal: https://MasterClass.com * Check out Talkiatry and use my code T...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard Sherlock Holmes has his Watson for a reason. Readers need a character to whom some things must be explained. In this episode we talk about how we create these gateway characters without delivering "maid and butler" dialog, or talking down to the reader. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Our...

Your Hosts: Dan, Tempest, and DongWon The single most asked question we get on the subject of writing cultures other than our own is some variation on "can we even DO this anymore?" Short answer: YES, YOU CAN. Our objective with this episode is to encourage you to put in the work, do the research, and write outside of your culture or personal experience. At risk of sounding cliché, it'...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard What is an allegory, anyway? This episode probably won't settle that question, but we did manage a discussion on how to use our stories to teach things, or be stand-ins for things, and to do it in the ways that allegories and/or parables might. We talk about some famous allegories, some things whose authors insisted were not allegorical...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab We often worldbuild religions and rituals for the stories we create. In this episode we discuss the decisions surrounding this, and our approaches for doing it well. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use my code homeserve.com/excuses for a great deal: https://www.home...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard Theme is one of those high-falutin' concepts we're often reluctant to approach in a nuts-and-bolts sort of way. In this episode we'll talk about how our themes can be communicated through elements of our settings, deepening reader engagement with the things we write. We offer examples from our own work, and from things we've watc...

Your Hosts: Howard, Mary Robinette, Dan, and DongWon This episode is about comp titles (comparative titles), which are those things you use to describe your project in terms of other works. We discuss the ones we've used (both successfully and unsuccessfully), and the criteria we use to come up with good ones. Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson Our S...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard Your setting can quickly tell the reader what kind of a story they're reading, and in this episode we'll talk about how we make that happen. Think of it as the "establishing shot" principle from film making, expanded to cover whatever worldbuilding details we choose to reveal first. Liner Notes: Here are the Schlock Mercenar...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab We've spent a lot of time talking about magic systems in our worldbuilding. It's time to talk about science and technology in that same way. This has been a staple (perhaps the defining staple) of science fiction since before "science fiction" was a word. At risk of opening the "where do you get your ideas" can of worms, this epi...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard "Show, don't tell," they tell us. Except sometimes showing is not always the best thing to do. Or even the right thing to do. Sometimes we should be telling. In this episode we'll tell you about telling. (We'd show you about telling, but we still don't have a video feed.) Credits: This episode was recorded by Rob Kimbro,...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard What's the difference between an obstacle and a complication? Margaret Dunlap takes the lead on this episode for us, giving us the tools we need to create 'impediments to main character progress' which will drive our stories across page turns (and commercial breaks) in compelling, twisty ways. Credits: This episode was recorded...

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Tempest Bradford, DongWon Song, and Julia Rios Julia Rios joins us to talk about writing characters who come from one of the many Latin-American cultures or subcultures. "Latinx" is a catch-all term for people with Latin-American heritage, including mixed-race people. In this episode we talk about mash-up cuisine, intersectionality, and how to navigate the subtleties...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard When we say "without rules" we're talking about stories whose magic is not held under logical scrutiny for the reader. There are lots of reasons why you might do this, and in this episode we'll talk about not just about the why, but also the how. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson and mastered by Alex Jackson...