Season 12 Archives

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12.1: Variations on First Person

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard We’re beginning a new season, and during 2017 we will be focusing our topics on structure. We are also going to shake things by expanding our cast a bit. You’ll be hearing some new voices soon! They belong to: Wesley Chu Piper J. Drake Mary Anne Mohanraj We’ll post … Continue reading 12.1: Variations on First Person →

Take something you’ve written, and put it in the three different forms of 1st person — reflective, epistolary, and immediate.

The Star-Touched Queen, by Roshani Chokshi, narrated by Priya Ayyar

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12.2: How to Nail Character Voice in First Person

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Mary Anne, and Wesley This week we talk about character voice, and how to get it right in First Person. This POV is a strong tool for developing memorable characters. We cover sentence structure, linguistic tweaks, accents, and much more, as well as some exercises you can try out to develop … Continue reading 12.2: How to Nail Character Voice in First Person →

Write a page or two of first-person POV in which the character is trying to complete a task. Now write that same task-completion scene from the POV of someone else who is attempting the task.

Perennial, by Mary Anne Mohanraj

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

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 … Continue reading 12.3: Project in Depth, “Risk Assessment,” by Sandra Tayler →

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)

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12.4: Hybrid Viewpoints

Your Hosts: Brandon, Piper, Dan, and Howard, with Sandra Tayler Piper J. Drake joins the cast for our week-four episodes, of which this is the first. This week we’ll be drilling down into hybrid viewpoints—blending 1st and 3rd person, framing stories, stories-within-stories, and unreliable narration—and how to best serve our work with these techniques.

Put a framing story around something you’ve already written.

Absolute Trust, by Piper J. Drake

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12.5: Literary Fiction

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Mary Anne, and Wesley This week we talk about the genre of Literary Fiction. Our first hurdle is the word “literary” whose use in this context can imply that all other genres are somehow not literature. In that vein, then, we’re talking about mainstream, or “non-genre” fiction which is crafted with … Continue reading 12.5: Literary Fiction →

You drive your spouse to the airport and watch them fly away on a trip. Then you go straight home, and find them there in the house, sitting at the computer…

Midnight’s Children, by Salman Rushdie (print and ebook available here)

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12.6: Variations on Third Person

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.

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

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12.7: Description Through the Third Person Lens

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Mary Anne, and Wesley The third-person POV lens can be used for simultaneously describing the world to the reader and describing the character. In this episode we’ll talk about where we deploy these tools, where the pitfalls are, and how to do it well. Credits: This episode was recorded by Andrew Twiss, … Continue reading 12.7: Description Through the Third Person Lens →

Homework assignment: read Ursula LeGuin’s Steering the Craft, and dive into the exercises there.

Amberlough, by Lara Elena Donnelly

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12.8 Short Stories as Exploration, with Tananarive Due

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 … Continue reading 12.8 Short Stories as Exploration, with Tananarive Due →

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.

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12.11: Diction

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Mary Anne, and Wesley Let’s talk about word choice. And when we say “let’s” we mean “we’re going to talk to you about it. You don’t actually get to talk back.” So maybe “let’s” wasn’t the best of the possible openers. Our discussion covers what we want to say, how specific … Continue reading 12.11: Diction →

Exercise 1: Take some dialog you’ve written recently. Replace the dialog with dialog that uses completely different words (except for articles, prepositions, and names.)

Exercise 2:  Write a scene in sentences no longer than seven words, then rewrite it in a single long sentence.

Sins of Empire by Brian McCellan

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12.14: Controlling Pacing with Structure

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard Let’s talk about the structural tools we use to control pacing. These include sentence length and punctuation.   Also, white-space.   Liner note: Here is the Feb 12, 2017 Schlock Mercenary strip mentioned around the 18-minute mark. Credits: this episode was recorded in Cosmere House Studios by Dan Dan the … Continue reading 12.14: Controlling Pacing with Structure →

Change up a piece of fiction of yours by changing the length of paragraphs and sentences.

Tea & Jeopardy: A GeekPlanetOnline Community Podcast, by Emma Newman and Peter Newman

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12.15: Pacing With Chapters

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Mary Anne, and Wesley What makes a chapter? WHY is a chapter? How do we chapter, and do we always chapter the same way? Should our chapters be this many parts of speech? This episode will answer these questions and more, except for that last question, to which the answer is … Continue reading 12.15: Pacing With Chapters →

Examine a book that made you keep turning its pages, and consider how it does that. Then look at a book you did not like, and consider how it nevertheless kept you reading it.

Jed and the Junkyard War, by Steven Bohls

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12.16: Writing Crime Fiction with Brian Keene

Brian Keene joined Dan and Howard at the World Horror Convention to talk about writing crime fiction, including how he goes about getting readers to feel the things he wants them to feel to drive the story forward. Liner Notes: The Horror Show with Brian Keene

Experiment outside of your genre for 30 minutes of writing time each day for a week. Focus on the character. At the end of the week, take the character you’ve created and see if they can be fit into something else you’re working on.

The Complex, by Brian Keene

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Congratulations to the winners of the 2017 Writing Excuses scholarships!

Let me tell you something right up front: our listeners are amazing. This year we had more scholarship applications than ever before, and the quality was through the roof. Choosing just four applicants out of this unbelievably talented batch was incredibly hard, and incredibly painful. We had fiction submissions this year that are publisher-ready, right … Continue reading Congratulations to the winners of the 2017 Writing Excuses scholarships! →

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12.17: Q&A on Style, Diction, and Paragraphing

Your Hosts: Brandon, Piper, Dan, and Howard We fielded some questions on style, diction, and paragraphing: Is it okay to have pretty prose in a straightforward adventure story? How do author voice and character voice differ? How do you prevent paragraphs from rambling? I feel like my writing is derivative of the writers whose work … Continue reading 12.17: Q&A on Style, Diction, and Paragraphing →

Ask your alpha readers for their definition of your voice.

Wayward, Volume 1, by Jim Zub (writer),  Steven Cummings (Illustrator), John Rauch (Illustrator), and Tamra Bonvillain (Illustrator)

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12.18: Gendered Dialect, with J.R. Johansson

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 … Continue reading 12.18: Gendered Dialect, with J.R. Johansson →

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

The Row, by J.R. Johannsen

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12.19: Structure on the Fly

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard This episode is for you discovery writers, especially those of you for whom our current season of structure seems to be locking you down, or pointing up methods which you just don’t like to use. We talk about how these methods, these structural principles, these mechanical advantages in … Continue reading 12.19: Structure on the Fly →

Write a story in an hour and a half without outlining it. Pick a character, an object, and a genre. The character has problem with the object. Use a timer, and use the yes-but/no-and method as you go.

Hardcore History (podcast), with Dan Carlin (note: this podcast has a rolling paywall. The sooner you subscribe, the more you’ll have access to when you get around to listening.)

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12.20: Retrofitting Structure into a First Draft

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Mary Anne, and Wesley We’re speaking again, at least in part, to discovery writers. In this case, we’re talking about how to take a non-outlined work and apply a structure to it in revisions. Credits: This episode was recorded by Andrew Twiss, and mastered by Alex Jackson.

Identify the promises you made in the first 10% of your story. Color-code them. Now color code your chapters and/or scenes, mapping them to the promises made early on.

City of Miracles, by Robert Jackson Bennett

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

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 … Continue reading 12.21: Narrative Bumper Pool, with Bill Fawcett and Carrie Patel →

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

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12.22: Hybrid Outlining and Discovery Writing

Your Hosts: Brandon, Piper, Dan, and Howard What can discovery writers learn from outlining? What can outliners learn from discovery writing? Is there a balance between the two that can serve as a happy, productive place for writers? (summary of answers: lots, lots, and yes-but-not-all-writers.)  

Write a backward story. Begin with the ending, and work your way backward into the story as you write your way forward with the words.

Nothing Left to Lose, by Dan Wells

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12.23: Proposals, Pitches, and Queries

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard Let’s talk about selling your stuff. In this episode we discuss query letters, pitches, and proposals—the tools that you use to present your material to people who can pay you for it, and who will partner with you in the task of selling it to the general public. … Continue reading 12.23: Proposals, Pitches, and Queries →

Write a pitch. Memorize it. Get other people to stamp your “I pitched my story to you” card. (link leads to a printable PDF)

Code Name Verity, by Elizabeth Wein, narrated by Morven Christie and Lucie Gaskell

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12.24: Creating Great Outlines

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Mary Anne, and Wesley How might you go about creating great outlines? There are many processes, and we cover several of them.   Credits: This episode was recorded by Andrew Twiss, and mastered by Alex Jackson

Take the list of events that you’re considering putting into your story. Create a list of scene types, and assign your events to these scenes.

An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything, by Chris Hadfield, narrated by the author

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12.25: Hiring an Editor, with Callie Stoker

Your Hosts: Howard and Dan, with special guest Callie Stoker Callie Stoker joined Howard and Dan at the World Horror convention to answer our questions about hiring an editor, which is part of the process by which self-published authors build the team of people who will make the manuscript far better than they can make it by … Continue reading 12.25: Hiring an Editor, with Callie Stoker →

Finish your story. Go back and remove 1000 words. Now go back AGAIN and remove ANOTHER 1000 words. Keep doing this until the story falls apart. Now edit it and ADD 1000 words.

Vicious, by V. E. Schwab, narrated by Noah Michael Levine

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12.26: Q&A on Outlining and Discovery Writing

Your Hosts: Brandon, Piper, Dan, and Howard Our listeners had questions about outlining and discovery writing. Here are a few of the very best: Do you outline scenes? How? How do you know when to STOP outlining something? How much do you have to know about your character and/or world before you start writing? What … Continue reading 12.26: Q&A on Outlining and Discovery Writing →

Find another writer. You each write a quick outline for a story, print it, then cut your outline into strips. Now, trade piles of strips. Your missions? Re-assemble the other writer’s outline.

Contracted Defense, by Piper J. Drake

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12.27: Choosing a Length

We discuss the ways in which we decide upon the length of the stories we write, and at which point(s) in the creative process we make that decision.

Take a big, complex story, and re-tell it as a children’s story—something you’d read at bedtime, like Are You My Mother? or Goodnight Moon.

Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries, by Howard Tayler
(Note: the book is shipping now to Kickstarter backers. You can order it now via Backerkit, but it won’t appear at Amazon or the Schlock Mercenary store until August.)

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

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 … Continue reading 12.29: “Oh Crap, the Cops are Here!” with Joe McKinney →

“Oh crap, the cops are here.”

The Savage Dead, by Joe McKinney

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12.30: Tools for Writers

Your Hosts: Brandon, Piper, Dan, and Howard We are often asked what software we use to get our work done. In this episode we answer that question in a bit of detail. Liner Notes: Here’s a linked list of the tools referenced during this episode. Aeon Timeline Asana Time Management Dropbox Excel OpenOffice Scrivener Wikidpad Word … Continue reading 12.30: Tools for Writers →

Pick one of the tools from this list (one which you’re not using) and try it out.

Nexus, by Ramez Naam

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12.31: What Makes a Good Monster, with Courtney Alameda

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 … Continue reading 12.31: What Makes a Good Monster, with Courtney Alameda →

Create a uniquely American monster

Shutter, by Courtney Alameda

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12.32: Structuring a Short Piece

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard We begin our exploration of short story structure with a re-cap of the MACE quotient (Milieu, Ask/Answer, Character, Event). Then we apply that tool to how we structure the pieces we write—specifically the short ones. Liner Notes: Here’s “Evil Robot Monkey” by Mary Robinette Kowal And here’s a handy MICE quotient chart! Credits: … Continue reading 12.32: Structuring a Short Piece →

Instructions:

  1. Pick one of the MACE elements (Milieu, Ask/Answer, Character, or Event)
  2. Describe, in three sentences, how your story’s primary plot will use that element.
  3. Pick a second element.
  4. Describe, in three sentences, how your story’s sub-plot will use that element.
  5. Nest these sentences, creating a six-sentence outline for your story.
  6. Nest the sentences in a different order, outlining your story with the sub-plot’s element now functioning as the primary plot

The 2017 Hugo nominees for Best Short Story:

¹ Available in the Hugo Voter packet

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12.33: How to be Brief, Yet Powerful

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Mary Anne, and Wesley We’ve talked about some of the structural guidelines for short stories. In this episode we’ll discuss how to write in the short form while still putting down enough words to convey the story powerfully. Credits: This episode was recorded in Chicago by Andrew Twiss, and mastered by … Continue reading 12.33: How to be Brief, Yet Powerful →

Select 1 character, 1 object, and 1 genre. Write a 250 word short story.

Ghost Talkers by Mary Robinette Kowal

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12.34: Fulfilling the Reader’s Fantasy, with Brian McClellan

Your Hosts: Brandon, Piper, Dan, and Howard Brian McClellan joins us for a discussion on fulfilling the promises we make to our readers—specifically the genre-specific promises made by the simple fact of where the book is shelved. Credits: this episode was recorded in Cosmere House Studios by Dan Dan the Audioman Thompson, and mastered by Alex … Continue reading 12.34: Fulfilling the Reader’s Fantasy, with Brian McClellan →

Write your next story in a time period that you haven’t written before. Make up the facts if you want to.

Operation Endgame, Book 6 of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurences, by Tee Morris and Pip Ballantine

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12.35: Short Fiction Markets, with Spencer Ellsworth and guest host Beth Meacham

Your Hosts: Mary, Dan, and Howard, with guest host Beth Meacham Spencer Ellsworth and Beth Meacham joined us before a live audience at LTUE 2017 for a discussion of short fiction markets, which ones we love, and why. Credits: this episode was recorded live at LTUE 2017 Dan Dan the Audioman Thompson, and mastered by Alex … Continue reading 12.35: Short Fiction Markets, with Spencer Ellsworth and guest host Beth Meacham →

Dream up a story worthy of an epic page count, and try to write it in 4000 words

A Red Peace, by Spencer Ellsworth,

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12.36: Structuring a Mid-Length Piece

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard Larger than a short story, smaller than a novel… there’s quite a bit of space between those two thresholds, and in this episode we discuss the ways in which we go about filling that space with a well-structured story. Credits: this episode was recorded in Cosmere House Studios … Continue reading 12.36: Structuring a Mid-Length Piece →

Take your idea for a novel, and structure it as a novella.

Hazardous Tales by Nathan Hale

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12.37: Subplots

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Mary Anne, and Wesley What makes a plot a subplot? Must subplots and main plots be linked by something more binding than the actual binding of the book? In this episode we answer these questions, and ask and answer plenty more. Credits: This episode was recorded in Chicago by Andrew Twiss, and … Continue reading 12.37: Subplots →

Consider the following four things – environment, characters, disruptions of status quo, and questions, and which one of these is driving your main plot. Now ask which of the remaining three can contain a disaster that drives a subplot. Write that bit.

Survivor edited by Mary Anne Mohanraj and JJ Pionke (coming soon from Lethe Press)

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12.38: What Do Editors Really Want, with Toni Weisskopf and Cat Rambo

Your Hosts: Dan and Howard Toni Weisskopf and Cat Rambo joined Dan and Howard to discuss what it is that editors “really want.” Question To Help You Decide Whether Or Not To Send Your Editor Bad News: “Will this news get better if I wait?” Credits: this episode was recorded at GenCon Indy 2016, and mastered by … Continue reading 12.38: What Do Editors Really Want, with Toni Weisskopf and Cat Rambo →

Do something completely new. Write by hand, or outdoors. Also, listen to actual people talking, and write down what is being said.

Through Fire, by Sarah Hoyt, and Neither Here Nor There, a collection from Cat Rambo

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12.39: Q&A on Short(er) Fiction

Your Hosts: Brandon, Piper, Dan, and Howard Our listeners sent us  some questions about writing shorter fiction. Here are the questions: How do you market short stories today? Has ebook self-publishing made novellas more viable? How do you structure a short story? How short is too short? Is publishing sections of a novel a viable way … Continue reading 12.39: Q&A on Short(er) Fiction →

Go buy a short story collection that has a variety of authors in it, and read it.

“Mind over Matter” by Howard Tayler (from Called to Battle, Volume 2  from Privateer Press.)

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12.40: Structuring a Novel

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard What makes something a novel, rather than just a serialized collection of stuff that happens? How do we use structure to turn collections of stuff into something more cohesive? What tools do we use to outline, map, and/or plan our novel writing? Reference Note: “Scene and sequel” comes … Continue reading 12.40: Structuring a Novel →

Take a film or TV program, which you like, and which was NOT based on a book, and plot the novel that it would have been had it been a novel before being on screen.

Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta

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12.41: Raising the Stakes

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Mary Anne, and Wesley When we talk about “raising the stakes,” we mean making the outcomes of the events in a story increasingly important to the reader. In this episode we talk about the tools we use to raise the stakes in ways that are more sophisticated than just queuing up larger and … Continue reading 12.41: Raising the Stakes →

Try a few of the techniques discussed, especially by making the stakes more personal to a side character. And don’t do it by having anybody be dead.

The Incredible Adventures of Cinnamon Girl by Melissa Keil

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12.42: Adapting Your Stories for Game Play, with Alan Bahr

Your Hosts: Mary, Dan, and Howard, with guest host Beth Meacham Alan Bahr of Ragnarok Publications, joined us at  LTUE 2017 to talk about adapting a licensed property for a game, and preserving the feel of the work while doing so. Credits: this episode was recorded live at LTUE 2017 by Dan Dan the Audioman Thompson, and mastered by Alex JacksonRecorded

Write 3 rules of your game or world that are unbreakable. Now find narrative ways to circumvent those rules without actually breaking them.

Tiny Frontiers, from Gallant Knight Games and Alan Bahr

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12.43: Serialized Storytelling

Your Hosts: Brandon, Piper, Dan, and Howard We’re talking about the extreme long-form serial story here, and how to keep things interesting without forcing the main characters into an absurdly high number of character-developing moments. Brandon leads by aiming the question at Howard, since Schlock Mercenary has been running now for seventeen years (it was only 16 … Continue reading 12.43: Serialized Storytelling →

Create a “Beat Chart” identifying iconic moments, questions and answers, and new promises to readers, and then break these out into book-sized groups.

Every Heart a Doorway, by Seanan McGuire

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12.44: NaNoWriMo 2017 Primer

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 … Continue reading 12.44: NaNoWriMo 2017 Primer →

Do NaNoWrimo in a way that matches your personal goals.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

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12.45: Structuring a Series

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard Before you can decide on a structure for your series, you may find it helpful to decide what kind of series you’re actually building. We talk about a few of the available options, and how each of them affects the structure. Credits: this episode was recorded in Cosmere House Studios by Dan … Continue reading 12.45: Structuring a Series →

Take a book that doesn’t have a sequel and write plot ideas for five sequels.

The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, by Christopher Hastings

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12.46: Reinventing Yourself

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, … Continue reading 12.46: Reinventing Yourself →

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.

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

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 … Continue reading 12.48: Q&A on Novels and Series, with Brian McClellan →

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

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12.49: Non-linear Narratives

We begin the final month of our year on structure with a discussion of non-linear structures. These include flashbacks, POVs that are out of chronological order,  and a host of other storytelling techniques. Credits: this episode was recorded in Cosmere House Studios by Dan Dan the Audioman Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson  

Watch fan edits of non-linear stories that put them in order. Also, put your outline on index cards, then shuffle them randomly.

The Butcher of Khardov, by Dan Wells

The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries (defaced edition), by Howard Tayler

Your Mama’s Adventures in Parenting, by Mary Robinette Kowal

Mulholland Homebrews Sinister Shop of Secret Pets, which will have been written by Brandon Sanderson

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12.50: Form and Function

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Mary Anne, and Wesley How does the shape of your physical medium change the art you’re making? What are the tools that affect our storytelling, and what are those effects? Credits: This episode was recorded in Chicago by Andrew Twiss, and mastered by Alex Jackson

Play “exquisite corpse.”
1) Write the first line of a story.
2) Hand it to someone else. Have them illustrate that line.
3) They hand their illustration (but not your first line) to a third person, who writes a line describing what’s happening in their picture.
4) Their line goes to another person who illustrates it…

Oathbringer, by Brandon Sanderson

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12.51: Constructed Languages, with Dirk Elzinga

Your Hosts: Howard, Mary, Dan, with guest host Beth Meacham Dirk Elzinga, an associate professor of linguistics, joined us live at LTUE to talk about constructed languages, and how we, as writers, might go about constructing them for our work. Liner Notes: The big stack of notes from Dirk required its own page. Below are links to specific tools … Continue reading 12.51: Constructed Languages, with Dirk Elzinga →

Come up to with a non-combat, non-warfare metaphor to talk about a debate.

Always Coming Home by Ursula Le Guin

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12.52: Cross-Genres as Gateways

Your Hosts: Brandon, Piper, Howard, and Dan What are the books which have drawn us from the bookshelf genres where you’re the most comfortable into bookshelves you haven’t read from? What can we learn about our own writing by reading these gateway books? How can we set about writing them ourselves? Credits: this episode was recorded in … Continue reading 12.52: Cross-Genres as Gateways →

Write a story where one of the characters thinks they’re in a different genre than the genre of the story itself.

The Diabolic, by SJ Kincaid

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12.53: Writing Excuses True Confessions

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…  

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

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Applications Are Open for the 2018 Writing Excuses Retreat Scholarship

The sixth annual Writing Excuses Workshop and Retreat makes a triumphant return to the Caribbean Sea! We begin in Houston, TX, on September 22; we’ll visit Roatan, Belize City, and Cozumel; and then we’ll end up back in Houston again on September 30. You can find all the other info, including our incredible guest list, … Continue reading Applications Are Open for the 2018 Writing Excuses Retreat Scholarship →