Category Archives: Live Audience

Career and Lifestyle, Live Audience, Season 14, Theory and Technique

14.39: Positioning Your Book in the Marketplace

Your Hosts: Howard, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Dongwon

“Positioning feels like the most important question in all of publishing.” — Dongwon Song

In this episode we talk about how to ask and answer the question of positioning, which is “who is this book for?”

Credits: This episode was recorded before a live audience aboard Liberty of the Seas by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson

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Identify and describe your target reader. Use comp titles as necessary.

Black Girl in a Big Dress

Career and Lifestyle, Guest, Live Audience, Season 14

14.38: Volunteer Opportunities for Writers, with Jared Quan

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Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard, with special guest Jared Quan

Jared Quan serves as a volunteer on several non-profit boards, and joined us to talk about the opportunities that exist for writers. Administration, leadership, writing and editing, and teaching are just a few of the many kinds of roles available for volunteers.

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

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Research writing organizations, and their events. look for volunteer opportunities.

Changing Wax, by Jared Quan

Live Audience, Q&A, Season 14, Theory and Technique

14.8: Worldbuilding Q&A #1

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Your Hosts: Howard, Mary Robinette, Dan, and DongWon

We invited attendees at WXR 2018 to ask us some general worldbuilding questions. Here’s what they asked:

  • What cultural stuff do you need to know during the writing process?
  • How do you treat overlaps between real-world religions and fictional religions when the fictional religions are part of the story’s fundamental conflict?
  • How much worldbuilding do you have figured out before you start your first draft, and how much do you discover on the fly?
  • What’s the point in a book beyond which you shouldn’t introduce big worldbuilding elements?
  • How do you ensure that the world comes through as a character of its own?
  • How much change to terminology is too much?

Credits: This episode was recorded live by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:19 — 17.5MB)

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What do you do about time in your universe? Spend some time considering how it is demarcated in your setting.

Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik

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

13.50: What Writers Get Wrong, with Zoraida Córdova

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Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard, with special guest Zoraida Córdova

Zoraida Córdova, an award-winning author of urban fantasy, was born in Ecuador and grew up in Queens. She joins us to talk about what writers get wrong (and what they can get right and do well) when portraying latinas in the United States.

Credits: This episode was recorded live at FanX Salt Lake (formerly “Salt Lake Comic-Con”) by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson

Liner Notes: 

  • The comic book Howard referenced is Guardians of Infinity #3, (2016), which features a back-up story entitled “Yo Soy Groot.”
  • Peggy Whitson is the astronaut Mary referenced. As of this writing, she holds the record for longest single spaceflight by an American. 

 

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A challenge! Find (and read) books written by Ecuadoran authors. Then make one of your own secondary characters be from Ecuador.

Labyrinth Lost, by Zoraida Córdova

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

13.b1: Bonus Episode — Elephants and Death, with Lawrence Schoen

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Your Hosts: Howard and Dan, with special guest Lawrence Schoen

Lawrence Schoen, clinical psychologist, cognitive hypnotist, small press publisher, Klingon language expert, and novelist, joined us at GenCon Indy for a bonus episode about elephants and death.

Howard and Lawrence both write uplifted elephants into their stories, and their stories also feature death as a theme, so this is a closer fit than it may seem to be at first blush.

Liner Notes: This episode was recorded in 2016, and after falling through the cracks (thanks in no small part to being below the fold on a spreadsheet), was rescheduled to coincide with the release of Moons of Barsk, Lawrence’s second novel in the uplifted-elephant setting.

Credits: This episode was mastered by Alex Jackson, and was made possible by our Patreon supporters

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Come up with a method for immortality, and then convince your protagonist not to use it.

Barsk: The Elephant’s Graveyard, by Lawrence Schoen, narrated by J.G. Hertzler

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

13.28: What Writers Get Wrong, with Wildstyle

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At GenCon Indy 2017 we were joined by Wildstyle (@MrWildstyle on Twitter), who wears many hats, and many of the hats he wears are donned in service of producing hip-hop.

One of the most interesting revelations (especially for Howard, whose background in audio engineering predates MP3 technology by half a decade) was just how many hats there are. The role of producer in the hip-hop scene may include the roles of audio engineer, composer, and and even musician.

Liner Notes: For a deeper look at Wildstyle’s work, search Soundcloud for “Wildstyle DaProducer.” He’s been producing for a year since this episode was recorded.

 

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Watch the James Brown bio-pic, Get On Up, starring Chadwick Boseman. Listen to some hip-hop music.

“Eastern Conference,” by Pope Adrian Blessed, Ares, and Wildstyle (link will autoplay at Soundcloud. Lyrics are flagged as [explicit])

Archive Seasons 11-13, Guest, Live Audience, Season 13

13.24: What Writers Get Wrong, with Piper, Aliette, and Wesley, with special guest Ken Liu

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Your Hosts: Piper Drake, Aliette de Bodard, and Wesley Chu, with special guest Ken Liu

Our hosts for this episode are experts in a great many different things. One thing that they have in common is that they’re all members of the Asian Disapora, and in this episode we’ll learn what kinds of things writers get wrong when writing Asian Diaspora elements, and how we as writers can learn to get those things right.

Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson

 

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:33 — 15.5MB)

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Read China Men, by Maxine Hong Kingston

The Paper Menagerie, and Other Stories, by Ken Liu

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

13.17: What Writers Get Wrong, with Jamahl Crouch

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Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard, with Jamahl Crouch

Jamahl Crouch (Illusmm1 on Instagram) joined us at the GenCon Indy Writers Symposium to talk about what writers get wrong about street art. Jamahl is many things, and one of those is “street artist.”

Jamahl Crouch, pen on sketchbook, GenCon Indy 2017

We discuss the differences between graffiti and street art, where things like commissioned murals fit into the scene, and how the societal pressures (read: “it’s not legal to paint on this wall”) affect the form.

 

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 16:17 — 11.2MB)

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Go watch The Get Down (available on Netflix)

Have a look at Jamal’s art on Instagram! Illusmm1