Category Archives: Career and Lifestyle

These episodes talk, at least in part, about how to manage your career as a writer, and how to keep writing.

Archive Seasons 11-13, Career and Lifestyle, Season 13, Theory and Technique

13.32: How To Handle Weighty Topics

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Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Amal, and Maurice

How can we, as writers, best handle weighty matters? This is our year on character, so we’ll approach this with a focus on character creation, depiction, and dialog?

This topic is, in and of itself, weighty.

Credits: This episode was recorded by Andrew Twiss, and mastered by Alex Jackson

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Write a scene in which a person who is part of a group you have written about about is reading what you wrote.

Voice of Martyrs, by Maurice Broaddus

Archive Seasons 11-13, Career and Lifestyle, Season 13, Theory and Technique

13.25: Our Journey With Character

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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 learn a bit about each of us, but it’s also possible that you’ll learn something about your own writing, and find yourself able to navigate the next few steps on your journey with character.

Note: The apology strips Howard mentioned begin with this strip. They are part of a story that begins here.

Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson.

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Describe your journey with character to someone else.

My Lady Jane, by Brodie Ashton, Cynthia Hand, and Jodi Meadows

Archive Seasons 11-13, Career and Lifestyle, Guest, Season 13

13.20: Fear and Writing, with Emma Newman

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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 Jackson

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:41 — 13.6MB)

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Read “The Listeners” by Walter de la Mare (it’s just 250 words). Now write the backstory.

After Atlas, by Emma Newman

Archive Seasons 11-13, Career and Lifestyle, Season 12, Theory and Technique

12.53: Writing Excuses True Confessions

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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…

 

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Try something you’re sure you’ll fail at… or maybe take the week off.

Ladycastle, by Delilah Dawson, Illustrated by Ashley A. Woods and Rebecca Farrow

Archive Seasons 11-13, Career and Lifestyle, Guest, Q&A, Season 12

12.48: Q&A on Novels and Series, with Brian McClellan

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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 each new novel when there’s a long time between them?
  • Should you have more than just one book done before querying agents?
  • What do you do if your novel turns out to be too short to be a novel?
  • Is it possible to write a series as a discovery writer?
  • How do you foreshadow big things that are a long way out?
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Take two books or movies, suggested from friends. Those are parts 1 and 3 of a series. Now figure out how part 2 works.

Hungry Ghosts, by Stephen Blackmoore

Archive Seasons 11-13, Career and Lifestyle, Guest, Live Audience, Season 12, Theory and Technique

12.47: Screenwriting and the Writers Room, with JD Payne

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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.

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Give a character description using only visual cues in 20 words or less

Boilerplate by Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett

Archive Seasons 11-13, Career and Lifestyle, Season 12, Theory and Technique

12.46: Reinventing Yourself

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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, and how important it is to continue learning as a writer.

Credits: This episode was recorded in Chicago by Andrew Twiss, and mastered by Alex Jackson

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:18 — 14.7MB)

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Immerse yourself in a genre that is new to you. Short story anthologies in that genre, or award winning novels are a good place to start. Read those.

NOTE: The Lost Book of the White by Wesley Chu and Cassandra Claire has been retitled and rescheduled. You should (eventually) be looking for:

The Red Scrolls of Magic, by Wesley Chu and Cassandra Clare, scheduled for release in March of 2019.

Archive Seasons 11-13, Career and Lifestyle, Season 12, Theory and Technique

12.44: NaNoWriMo 2017 Primer

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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 doesn’t look nearly as pale as any of us remember him looking.IMG_2633

Credits: this episode was recorded in Cosmere House Studios by Dan Dan the Audioman Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson

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Do NaNoWrimo in a way that matches your personal goals.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern