Monthly Archives: August 2013

Archive Seasons 7-10, Career and Lifestyle, Season 08

Writing Excuses 8.34: Survivorship Bias

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When people who have succeeded at a given endeavor speak about their success, we are inclined to listen because hey, we’d like to succeed there as well. It’s critical to recognize the bias here. Survivorship bias is the skewing of the data that occurs when you examine and seek to emulate successes without considering failures in that same space.

Here at Writing Excuses we suffer from it. So in this podcast we’ll talk about the places in which our experiences may just not apply to you because we got lucky. Sure, there are things we’ve done right, and clearly in some cases we’ve been able to exploit good fortune to our advantage, but in this episode we’ll focus on the non-reproducible aspects of our own success with an eye toward helping you to focus your own efforts on the things that actually matter.

The Liner Notes We Keep Promising You: Here is Tobias Buckell’s post on Survivorship Bias (note: contains strong language)

Word of the Week: “Rothfussian,” which means “writing something so awesome on your first go that success cannot be denied to you.”

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A very successful author or artist has a fan who decides to emulate that creator’s life in crazy, cargo-cult detail in an effort to become similarly successful.

We plugged Michael Moorcock’s Elric series for you, but those are no longer available on Audible. You might consider Moorcock’s Blood: A Southern Fantasy instead.

Archive Seasons 7-10, Live Audience, Season 08, Theory and Technique

Writing Excuses 8.33: Making Non-Human Characters Relatable

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How do you help your readers relate to the non-human characters in your fiction?

The first question to answer is why you’re putting non-human characters in the piece to begin with. What are your goals for that race, culture, or whatever? Once you know that, you can begin addressing the challenge of helping the reader relate.

We talk about our strategies, and we cover examples from Iain Banks’ Look to Windward, Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep, and of course from our own work, including Kiss Me Twice, I Am Not a Serial Killer, and The Body Politic.

Immediately Discarded Negative Example, Because the Rathole is Just Too Deep: The 1977 Star Wars Christmas Special

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Depict a conversation between members of a non-human species who do something besides talk.

Thief of Time: Discworld, Book 26, by Terry Pratchett, narrated by Stephen Briggs

Archive Seasons 7-10, Career and Lifestyle, Live Audience, Q&A, Season 08, Theory and Technique

Writing Excuses 8.32: Microcasting

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Microcasting! It’s what we call a Q&A, because it’s like several little podcasts in one! Here are the questions (you’ll have to listen to the show for the answers):

  • How do you manage your workload?
  • Are writing contests worth it? Which ones are good?
  • How do you make it clear that the weird aspects of your world are done on purpose rather than just being bad science?
  • How do you know when to take a break from your writing?
  • What are your word count suggestions for various markets?

Some Worthy Links: Writer Beware, Writers of the Future

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Keep track of your hourly word count for a day’s writing. Then set goals to beat that word count in subsequent sessions.

The Madman’s Daughter, by Megan Shepherd, narrated by Lucy Rayner

Archive Seasons 7-10, Season 08, Theory and Technique

Writing Excuses 8.31: Combining Dialogue, Blocking, and Description

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The combination of dialogue, blocking, and description, can be considered from a couple of directions. The first is the idea that we’re really talking about making every element do double or triple duty. Dialogue, blocking, and description work together for exposition, answering questions the reader is asking.

The second is the “pyramid of abstraction.” The bottom of the pyramid, the scene setting, is the concrete foundation. The layers atop it can be more and more abstract, like tagless dialog without concrete descriptions, if that original foundation is firm enough.

In this ‘cast we take both approaches, and offer some tips, tricks, and examples so that you can learn to do this well.

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(Which is Actually Homework) Write description for half an hour. A full half hour. Set a timer! Try to use all five senses. Now write a single paragraph in which we establish a single character in that setting. Finally, write three sentences that convey the character, the description, and the character’s emotional state. Want more exercises like this one? Here you go! (courtesy of Mary.)

Bloody Jack, by L.A. Meyer, narrated by Katherine Kellgren