Fifteen minutes long, because you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart.

Writing Excuses Season 2 Episode 21: Fight Scenes

Rob Wells joins the Writing Excuses crew for a second ‘cast, this time dealing with fight scenes. We talk about good blocking versus a bad blow-by-blow, and cover a few of the factors that may dictate the right style of description for that wicked-cool fight you’ve pictured in your head.…

19.10: Introducing Our Close Readings Series

You’ve probably seen us posting about our Close Reading Series, and in his episode, we finally officially introduce it!  For most of the remainder of 2024, we’ll be diving into five core elements of writing by focusing on five different literary texts. We’ll spend five episodes on each one, and…

18.47: NaNoWriMo Week 4 – Climaxes, or OH MY GOD NO

It’s week four of NaNoWriMo! Or, National Novel Writing Month, which happens every year for the month of November. This week, we are talking about how to write climaxes, how to write resolutions, and what exactly the three-quarter mark is.  How do you write a climax scene? How to keep…

18.45: NaNoWriMo Week 2 – Inciting Incident

Welcome to the first official week of National Novel Writing Month (or, almost the end of this week)! In this episode, we dive into how to write an inciting incident.  What is an inciting incident? It is often the thing that goes wrong in your story. Within the first page,…

18.44: NaNoWriMo Week 1- Getting Started

Welcome to National Novel Writing Month! For November, writers all over the world are trying to complete a novel, or write 50,000 words. In honor of NaNoWriMo, all of our November episodes are going to focus on writing a novel or big project.  For our first week—starting! How do you…

18.39: How To Write An Ending

Deep Dive: Sergeant In Motion How do you write an ending to a book? How do you finish something you’ve been writing for over 20 years? Howard Tayler talks to us about writing the ending to his serialized webcomic and space opera, Schlock Mercenary. We dive into how to write a…

18.29: Collaboration And Partnership

What are the best practices for collaboration? How do you write in an established intellectual property (IP)? How do you write a new story in an established world? We dive into working with an individual or a group. We hear stories from our hosts about how they have navigated creative…

18.25: To Narrator or Not to Narrator

In our second episode on Dan Wells’ audio-only book, “Dark One: Forgotten,” we provide you with tools and advice to consider when deciding whether or not to have a narrator. We also talk about location-aware dialogue, or how you can have your characters info dump without it being an info…