Writing Excuses

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 and your works in the marketplace of readers, and people who buy things for readers. In this episode we talk about what our brands need to be doing for us, and how we go about getting them to do that. Credits: This episode was recorded by Mars...

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 a fifteen-minute episode, so we ran about twice as long as usual. We discuss some of the things you should look for, things you should watch out for, and resources that can help you out. Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Ca...

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 this episode we'll talk about how to do it effectively, genuinely, and in ways that benefit the entire community. Credits: This episode was recorded my Marshall Carr, and mastered by Alex Jackson Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use...

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 covering pitfalls and common problems—including some predatory practices—for you to be on the lookout for while you develop your career as a writer. Credits: This episode was recorded my Marshall Carr, and mastered by Alex Jackson Liner N...

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 corporation doesn't have friends. It has contractual relationships. We can make friends with people who work for publishers, but those are not the same thing. Liner Notes: here is an archived copy of Dave Brady's essay about &#3...

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 classes" or "intensive courses." We're kicking it off with Brandon's episodes, which are all about the business of writing, and the first of those is this one! So... your career is your business. In this episode we'll...

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? Possibly! Patrick Rothfuss joins us to talk about economy of phrase, and the ways in which big ideas can be expressed with a few of the exactly-right words. Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson Our Sp...

Your Hosts: Dan, Howard, Mahtab, and Brandon We're often taught that the best critique group feedback is reactions to the writing, rather than advice for fixing it. But prescriptive feedback—critiques that include suggestions for you how to might rewrite something—is an important part of the process. In this episode we discuss how we curate our critique groups and filter their feedback to impr...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Victoria, Dan, and Howard Our listeners have asked about how we handle managing a large cast of characters. This is something we've all struggled with, and sometimes we've failed at it pretty spectacularly. In this episode we talk about how we turned our failures into learning, and what we do today to keep our ensembles in line and our stories on track. Credits: This e...

Your Hosts: Dan, Howard, Mahtab, and Brandon This episode comes from a question we're often asked: "how do you stay excited about a story you're working on?" We talk about how we maintain our passion for the stories we're working on, and how that's not the same as being super excited to write every time we sit down at the keyboard Credits: This episode was recorded by Marsh...

Your Hosts: Dan, Mahtab, Howard, and Brandon We've talked about deliberately making our readers uncomfortable. In this episode we discuss writing things that make us uncomfortable. Maybe it's writing strong language, or sex scenes. Perhaps it's a personal narrative that is painful to relive. Whatever it might be, as writers we need to prepare ourselves to embrace that pain, soak up tha...

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Piper, and Howard, with Cory Doctorow Worldbuilding is something you do to some degree in everything you write. Cory Doctorow writes (among many other things) near-future SF, and he joins us for a discussion of extrapolative worldbuilding. 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: Dan, Piper, and Tempest, with special guest Yang Yang Wang Yang Yang Wang, an author, actor, and director (among many other things) joins us for a discussion of language, food, and a whole raft of other cultural elements critical to crafting Chinese-American characters. Credits: this episode was recorded by Ross Smith and mastered by Alex Jackson Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and...

Your Hosts: Dan, Mary Robinette, and Howard, with Patrick Rothfuss Pat joins us for a discussion of worldbuilding, in which we field a couple of challenging questions from readers. Here are the questions! How do you create timeless urban fantasy? How do you create a compelling secondary world fantasy without leaning on a complex magic system? We ran a bit long with this one, but we have no regrets...

Your Hosts: Dan, DongWon, Mary Robinette, and Howard What do you do when some of the key foundations of your authorial (or otherwise creative) livelihood are kicked away? How do you go about repairing, rebuilding, or rebooting your career? Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson  Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use my code homeserve.com/excuses for a...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Mary Robinette, and Howard, with special guest Bruce D Richardson Bruce D Richardson, who is often credited as BDR, or BD Richardson, is a voice-over actor and audiobook narrator. He joins us for a discussion of reading out loud for an audience, including some mic techniques and best practices for recording. Liner Notes: https://www.accenthelp.com/ "I never said she s...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Victoria, Dan, and Howard How do you decide what sort of event ends your story? How do you set the scale and the stakes for that event? And once you've made these decisions, how do you set about writing the best possible ending? Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use my code homeserve.com...

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Piper, and Howard, with special guest Cory Doctorow In journalism, that three-character string in our episode title means "Fact Check." Those three characters are a great way to drop a note to yourself, reminding you to get some answers later. In this episode Cory joins us to discuss when we drop FCK into our works, and how we go about removing it later. Credits...

Your Hosts: Piper, Dan, and Tempest, with special guests Nisi Shawl and Silvia Moreno-Garcia Writing stories which feature people who are not like you is, in a word, difficult. In another word? Fraught. But good writers do difficult things, and in this episode Nisi Shawl and Silvia Moreno-Garcia join us to discuss how research can make "writing the other" less difficult, and perhaps even l...

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, and Lari, with guest Alex Shvartsman Translation is fantastically complex. In this episode Lari and Alex help us navigate those complexities, both from the standpoint of the translator, and from the standpoint of the author seeking to have their work translated. Credits: This episode was mastered by Alex Jackson Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use my code h...

Your Hosts: Piper, Dan, and Tempest, with special guest Nisi Shawl Whether you're writing about a real-world religion, or one you've created for your setting, there are numerous factors to be aware of. In this episode we discuss a few good and bad examples of depictions of religions, and the ways in which these examples can inform the way we approach our own projects. Credits: this episode...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Victoria, Dan, and Howard What's it like to write under a deadline which has been set for your project by someone else? What strategies might help you bring the writing in under the deadline? Can you train yourself to be ready for this? Those are all good questions. Hopefully we won't run out of time to come up with answers... Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, and Dan, with special guests Shannon and Dean Hale We've had several discussions about collaboration, and we've learned that the answer to "how do you collaborate with other authors" is different with each collaboration team we talk to. Shannon and Dean Hale have written fifteen books together, and in this episode they talk to us about how they...

Your Hosts: Dan, Mary Robinette, Lari, and special guest Erin Roberts We've received a number of questions about the 'tools of the trade' for organizing our work, especially with regard to worldbuilding. In this episode we talk about what we use, including some old-school analog tools like sticky notes and ballpoint pens. Credits: this episode was recorded remotely, and mastered by Ale...

Your Hosts: Dan, Mary Robinette, Lari, and Erin How do you proceed when the story you want to write includes elements that make you personally uncomfortable? In this episode we step out of our own comfort zones to examine this challenge, and to offer some strategies to you. Credits: This episode was recorded remotely, and mastered by Alex Jackson Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use my code...