Writing Excuses

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 characters. We cover characters who move stories forward, who make decisions that influence plot-critical events, and whose actions draw the reader into the book. Liner Notes: you'll be hearing from Amal and Maurice during the second week...

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, protagonists, and main characters. Beginning with addressing the question "wait, aren't they all the same person?" Because that's the elephant in the room. Or maybe it's three elephants. Or two. Sometimes there's no elephan...

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 measures of success—things that we've folded, spindled, and/or mutilated since then. There were a lot of them! This episode runs close to thirty minutes long...  Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use my code homeserve.com/...

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 you haven't read from? What can we learn about our own writing by reading these gateway books? How can we set about writing them ourselves? Credits: this episode was recorded in Cosmere House Studios by Dan Dan the Audioman Thompson...

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 constructed languages, and how we, as writers, might go about constructing them for our work. Liner Notes: The big stack of notes from Dirk required its own page. Below are links to specific tools mentioned during the episode. Duolingo Everchanging B...

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 storytelling, and what are those effects? Credits: This episode was recorded in Chicago by Andrew Twiss, and mastered by Alex Jackson Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use my code homeserve.com/excuses for a great deal: https://www.h...

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 order, and a host of other storytelling techniques. Credits: this episode was recorded in Cosmere House Studios by Dan Dan the Audioman Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson  Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use my code homeserve.com/exc...

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 isn't a cliffhanger? Is it a good idea to take a large novel, and release it instead as serial novellas? Can you debut with a series, or should you establish yourself with standalone novels first? How do you keep readers coming back for...

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 room full of writers. 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.c...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Mary Anne, and Wesley We discuss the idea of "reinventing yourself," which can mean anything from "trying something new" to "completely re-branding yourself as a writer," and how it's a difficult thing to do without figuring out what it actually is that you're currently doing. We talk about how we've done it, how others have done it, a...

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 actually building. We talk about a few of the available options, and how each of them affects the structure. Credits: this episode was recorded in Cosmere House Studios by Dan Dan the Audioman Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Our Sp...

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 you to participate in ways that will advance you toward your goals. Note: After a week, this is the only photo we've found of Wounded Howard. Dan took it, and Howard was clearly putting on "angry face" for show. Also, he doe...

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 main characters into an absurdly high number of character-developing moments. Brandon leads by aiming the question at Howard, since Schlock Mercenary has been running now for seventeen years (it was only 16 at the time we recorded.) We ...

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 property for a game, and preserving the feel of the work while doing so. Credits: this episode was recorded live at LTUE 2017 by Dan Dan the Audioman Thompson, and mastered by Alex JacksonRecorded Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use my...

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 increasingly important to the reader. In this episode we talk about the tools we use to raise the stakes in ways that are more sophisticated than just queuing up larger and larger explosions. Credits: This episode was recorded in Chicago by Andrew T...

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 structure to turn collections of stuff into something more cohesive? What tools do we use to outline, map, and/or plan our novel writing? Reference Note: "Scene and sequel" comes to us from Dwight Swain's Techniques of the Selling Writer...

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 stories today? Has ebook self-publishing made novellas more viable? How do you structure a short story? How short is too short? Is publishing sections of a novel a viable way to get traction for that novel? What should I look for in the sem...

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 Decide Whether Or Not To Send Your Editor Bad News: "Will this news get better if I wait?" Credits: this episode was recorded at GenCon Indy 2016, and mastered by Alex Jackson Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use my code homeser...

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 binding of the book? In this episode we answer these questions, and ask and answer plenty more. Credits: This episode was recorded in Chicago by Andrew Twiss, and mastered by Alex Jackson Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use my code h...

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 this episode we discuss the ways in which we go about filling that space with a well-structured story. Credits: this episode was recorded in Cosmere House Studios by Dan Dan the Audioman Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Our Sponso...

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 discussion of short fiction markets, which ones we love, and why. Credits: this episode was recorded live at LTUE 2017 Dan Dan the Audioman Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use my code homeserve.com/excu...

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 genre-specific promises made by the simple fact of where the book is shelved. Credits: this episode was recorded in Cosmere House Studios by Dan Dan the Audioman Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use my...

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 write in the short form while still putting down enough words to convey the story powerfully. Credits: This episode was recorded in Chicago by Andrew Twiss, and mastered by Alex Jackson Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use my c...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard We begin our exploration of short story structure with a re-cap of the MACE quotient (Milieu, Ask/Answer, Character, Event). Then we apply that tool to how we structure the pieces we write—specifically the short ones. Liner Notes: Here's "Evil Robot Monkey" by Mary Robinette Kowal And here's a handy MICE quotient chart! Credits: this episo...

Your Hosts: Howard, Mary, and Dan, with guest host Susan Chang Courtney Alameda joined us at LTUE 2017 to talk monsters, and what makes the best ones so good. We discuss some of our favorites, and how the criteria we apply to them can be applied in the creation of monsters of our own. Credits: this episode was recorded live at LTUE 2017 by Dan Dan the Audioman Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackso...