Category Archives: Live Audience

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

12.31: What Makes a Good Monster, with Courtney Alameda

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Your Hosts: Howard, Mary, and Dan, with guest host Susan Chang

Courtney Alameda joined us at LTUE 2017 to talk monsters, and what makes the best ones so good. We discuss some of our favorites, and how the criteria we apply to them can be applied in the creation of monsters of our own.

Credits: this episode was recorded live at LTUE 2017 by Dan Dan the Audioman Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson

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Create a uniquely American monster

Shutter, by Courtney Alameda

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

12.29: “Oh Crap, the Cops are Here!” with Joe McKinney

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Your Hosts: Howard and Dan, with Steve Diamond, and special guest Joe McKinney

We invited Steve Diamond, who has been a guest before, and who has some law enforcement background, to help us grill Joe McKinney, who has tons of that background, and who also happens to be a best-selling author.

This Week’s Liner Notes are extensive. Follow the link for a Google Doc, or click here for our local mirror of Lyn Worthen’s notes.

Credits: Mastered by Alex Jackson

 

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“Oh crap, the cops are here.”

The Savage Dead, by Joe McKinney

Archive Seasons 11-13, Guest, Live Audience, Season 12

12.21: Narrative Bumper Pool, with Bill Fawcett and Carrie Patel

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Your Hosts: Howard and Dan, with special guests Bill Fawcett and Carrie Patel

Bill and Carrie both have extensive experience writing for games, and they joined us at GenCon Indy to talk about writing for an interactive story, like a tabletop RPG, or a video game.

Narrative Bumper Pool: This term comes to us from Tracy Hickman’s XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery. 

Narrative Bumper Pool from X-TREME DUNGEON MASTERY, used with permission
Narrative Bumper Pool from X-TREME DUNGEON MASTERY, used with permission

 

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:26 — 14.1MB)

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Look at a “great mistake” in history, and speculate about how that mistake could have been avoided, and how the world would be different had that mistake not been

The Buried Life, by Carrie Patel

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

12.18: Gendered Dialect, with J.R. Johansson

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Your Hosts: Howard, Mary, and Dan, with guest-host Susan Chang, and special guest J.R. Johannsen

J.R. Johannson joined Howard, Mary, Dan, and guest-host Susan Chang at LTUE 2017 for a discussion of gendered dialect.

We lead with a quick introduction to the Genderlect theory, by Deborah Tannen, which uses a very broad brush to describe key differences between the ways men and women in western societies communicate. We then explore the way some of the individual voices we’re familiar with have been influenced through gender role, cultural socialization, and even neuroatypicality.

Our goal in this discussion is to learn to write dialog which serves our stories and our characters, and  to do so in a way that both leverages and defies the existing stereotypes.

Liner Notes:

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:02 — 13.1MB)

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Use the concepts of  gendered dialect to write a scene set among members of a matriarchy.

The Row, by J.R. Johannsen

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

12.8 Short Stories as Exploration, with Tananarive Due

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Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard

Tananrive Due, whose short-fiction expertise is exemplified in her collection, Ghost Summer, joined us on the Oasis of the Seas to talk about how to use short stories to explore aspects of the craft. We discuss the importance of allowing ourselves to fail, and how we can learn from those failures, and continue to push our own limits. We also talk about how we go about pushing those limits, and what we do in order to most effectively explore new techniques.

 

Credits: This episode was recorded aboard Oasis of the Seas by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson.

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Take something larger that you’ve written  and find a short story in it. Write that story.

“Summer“, by Tananarive Due, which you can find in the Ghost Summer collection.

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

12.6: Variations on Third Person

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Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard

This episode focuses on the third person POV, and some variations on them, like omniscient and limited, and some sub-variants like cinematic and head-hopping.

Credits: This episode was recorded aboard Oasis of the Seas by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:13 — 13.2MB)

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Write a passage, and then re-write it in limited, omniscient narrator, head-hopping, and cinematic POVs.

Sorcerer to the Crown, by Zen Cho, narrated by Jenny Sterlin

Archive Seasons 11-13, Guest, Live Audience, Project in Depth, Season 12, Theory and Technique

12.3: Project in Depth, “Risk Assessment,” by Sandra Tayler

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Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard, with Sandra Tayler

This Project in Depth episode contains spoilers for “Risk Assessment,” which is included in Force Multiplication: Schlock Mercenary Book 12. The story was written by Sandra Tayler, and illustrated by Natalie Barahona. Howard handled the writing and illustrating for the framing story, but this episode isn’t about that part.

Risk Assessment is a romance wrapped up in an adventure, and is very different from most of the rest of Schlock Mercenary. Have a listen, and Sandra will tell you about it.

Credits: This episode was recorded aboard Oasis of the Seas by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:44 — 16.4MB)

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Write a “meet cute,” that scene in which our romantic leads meet, and we get to have crushes with, or perhaps on them.

In the Cube, by David Alexander Smith (out of print, but available used)

Archive Seasons 11-13, Live Audience, Q&A, Season 11, Theory and Technique

11.52: Elemental Ensemble Q&A, With Claudia Gray

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Claudia Gray joined us aboard Oasis of the Seas to answer our attendees questions about the Elemental Ensemble. Here are the questions:

  • Can you fit an ensemble into a short story?
  • What the minimum size for an ensemble? Is there a perfect length?
  • Can you put a traitor into an ensemble story?
  • How do I give my ensemble characters equal emotional weight if I only tell the story from a single POV?
  • How do you introduce your ensemble without infodumping?
  • If an ensemble is about falling in love with a group of friends, how does killing a character work?
  • How do you give every character a role in the climax without making it seem like the plot was cut to fit the team?

Credits: This episode was recorded aboard Oasis of the Seas by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:54 — 17.2MB)

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A Million Worlds With You, by Claudia Gray, narrated by Tavia Gilbert