Writing Excuses

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, a romantic interest, or really any other character who gets enough focus for the contrast to be useful. In this episode we talk about foils, offering examples, and our approaches for writing foils in our own work. Credits: This episode was r...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard Our characters become far more interesting when they begin interacting with each other. These interactions—these relationships—are often how our stories get told. In this episode we explore ways in which we can fine tune relationships in service of our stories. The tools include the Kowal Relationship Axes (Mind, Money, Morals, Manners, Monogamy, and The...

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. It's a difficult question to answer, and a very soulful sort of thing to answer in front of other people. So Brandon went first while the rest of us racked our brains. What are you going to learn from this episode? Well... you might lear...

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. One thing that they have in common is that they're all members of the Asian Disapora, and in this episode we'll learn what kinds of things writers get wrong when writing Asian Diaspora elements, and how we as writers can learn to ge...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Amal, and Maurice Internal conflicts, simply put, are problems your characters have with themselves. In this episode we address the ways in which writers can build stories and subplots around internal conflicts, and how we can tell when it's not working. Notes: the MICE quotient is Milieu, Idea, Character, and Event. Mary's relationship axes are Role, Relationshi...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard When Mary says we could do fifteen different episodes on character arcs, she's being conservative. Notwithstanding, we set out to talk meaningfully about character arcs in one episode rather than in fifteen (or fifty.) We look at the shapes of these arcs, how they progress in our narratives, and the tools we use to get them to function properly in the...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard Our listeners submitted some great questions! How do you fairly and even-handedly write a deeply compelling character you deeply dislike? What's the best way to discuss a character's underlying motivations without expressly stating them in narrative or dialog? How well should characters understand their own motivations? How do you make non-viol...

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 for WXR 2017, where, six days after a brilliant presentation on overcoming fear, she recorded a session with us on the same topic. The class was just that good. Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and was mastered by Alex Jack...

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 the time they arrive in the book. How much backstory needs to be written before you start in on the manuscript? How much needs to be in the manuscript itself? And how much backstory is too much? Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use my...

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 overarching plot.) How can we use this information to believably motivate characters? 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 g...

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 about what writers get wrong about street art. Jamahl is many things, and one of those is "street artist." Jamahl Crouch, pen on sketchbook, GenCon Indy 2017 We discuss the differences between graffiti and street art, where things like...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard For our purposes, the term "flat character" refers to a character who lacks the depth required to maintain reader interest. In this episode we discuss how to avoid putting flat characters front-and-center in our writing, and how we go about fixing manuscripts that have flat character problems. Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use my code...

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 this episode he's talking to us specifically about the things that writers get wrong about being a gay man. Credits: This episode was recorded live by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Andrew Jackson. Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use m...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Amal, and Maurice Let's talk about characters who have conflict built right into them; characters whose attributes and attitudes might seem to contradict one another; characters who like, y'know... actual people. (And let's talk about how to write them.) Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use my code homeserve.com/excuses for a great deal: https://www.ho...

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 defining characters for the reader. In this episode we discuss our tools for shaping character voices, and the ways in which we make sure each one unique. Liner Notes: We talked about authorial voice in episode 12.10, and about 1st-person V...

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 make planned power increases not seem like an ass-pull¹? What do you do when your villain is more interesting/engaging than your hero? How do you know when a character is unnecessary and needs to be removed from the story, or killed off in the...

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 Symposium to talk with us about secondary characters—why they're so important, why they can be difficult to write well, and how she brings her secondary characters to life without giving them a POV. Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and...

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 we're writing small casts? What does "large" and "small" mean for us? Liner Notes: No, Howard was not in the room. Yes, despite his absence, he was wearing both trousers and pants while he ventured into the wilds to obta...

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? What are the tricks for quickly establishing someone's individuality within your story? Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson.  Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use my code homeserve.c...

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 this discussion we use those as our starting points. 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....

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 get wrong when setting their stories amid legal procedures.  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...

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 what we'll focus on is person-vs-environment as opposed to person-vs-person. PvE rather than PvP, if you will. Credits: This episode was recorded by Andrew Twiss, and mastered by Alex Jackson, both of whom understand that environmental noi...

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? How are they alike? And most importantly, how can we use this information to write effective opposition to our heroes, protagonists, and main characters? Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson. ...

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 who, per writer intent, do not engender audience sympathy. 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:...

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 episodes will feature an expert guest who will help us understand what writers get wrong about something in which they have expertise. Aliette de Bodard will be co-hosting several of these week-three episodes, but this week her role is "...