Spoilers ahead! We dig into Of Noble Family, by Mary Robinette Kowal, focusing on language, culture, and the extensive research Mary did.
Fifteen minutes long, because you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart.
We answer questions about consistency, alternate histories, and the Great Spoke Plague of ’77
You’ve done piles of world building. How do you convey this world to reader without infodumping? We talk about the different skill levels involved, and then the techniques that you’ll be using as you get better and better at what is probably the most critical skill unique to genre fiction…
What’s the difference between intrigue, suspense, and mystery? We talk about this, and then drill down on intrigue.
This one’s for all you folks who like to do some world building on-the-fly.
We’ve talked beginnings all month. Now we take your questions about them.
Let’s get that first page written in a way that will bring the reader to all the rest of the pages.
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…
How do you know which bits of your story have to come first?
Any discussion of story structure must necessarily take a look at that big, long bit between the beginning and the end, that piece where almost everything actually happens. In this episode we talk about the middles of stories, and how formulaic structures will help you get them to do all of…