Fifteen minutes long, because you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart.
Brad Beaulieu and Jaym Gates join us from the GenCon Indy Writing Symposium to talk about good versus evil, and how your character might swing between the two. And it’s all about that swing. Moral grey areas are more interesting if we move through them. We talk about how we swing the…
Nalo Hopkinson joins us for this episode, which we recorded before a live audience of Out Of Excuses Workshop & Retreat attendees. October’s master class episodes focus on endings, and in this first installment we talk about what an ending really is. It’s obviously the last part of the book,…
Kevin J. Anderson joined us at Sasquan/WorldCon 73 to take questions about plot twists. Here are the questions that came in from our live audience: Genre Twists: good, bad, or ugly? Can you compare and contrast a good plot twist with a bad one? What is the biggest mistake professional…
This month’s wildcard episode comes to you from the 2015 GenCon Indy Writers’ Symposium, where Dan and Howard had the opportunity to interview Susan J. Morris and Marc Tassin. Susan is one of the finest moderators the symposium has ever seen, and Marc directs the event, building the schedule around…
Charlie N. Holmberg, who was recently signed by Amazon’s 47 North imprint, joined us in front of a live audience it Sasquan (the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention) to talk about breaking in to the industry. Brandon and Dan broke in a decade ago, and Howard never actually bothered breaking…
Media Specialist Kiley Snyder joins us to talk about hooking young readers.
Wes Chu, author and adventurer, recently climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, and has some things to say about all the wilderness trekking that our characters do in the books we write, and how we often forget to say anything about sleeping on inclines, altitude sickness, or packing toilet paper. The salient point: we…
Wes Chu joins us again for a Q&A about this month’s topic: story structure! Here are the questions: Do you make a conscious decision about how to structure your story before you begin writing? Is it necessary to use multiple structures (three-act, Hollywood formula, etc) in order to ensure that…
Wesley Chu joins us for a literal shake-up of our structure for one episode. We had loads of fun with this one. The I Ching is a collection of poems which you consult with numbered sticks. You ask a question, shake a random stick from the cup, and the corresponding…
In which Max Gladstone introduces us to the concept of the Magical 1%
