Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd The genre of your story is making promises to the reader, and the medium upon which your story is told makes promises too. In this episode we talk about the expectations set by various mediums and genres, and how we can leverage those to ensure that we deliver … Continue reading 17.1: Genre and Media are Promises →

• Animation, 
• Comics, 
• Fulfilling Promises, 
• Kuleshov Effect, 
• Murder She Wrote, 
• Mystery, 
• Promises to the Reader, 
• The Avengers

Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd The title of this episode comes to us from the first paragraph of The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss—a novel which delights us with turns of phrase and evocative prose from beginning to end. We’re continuing our exploration of “promises as a structure” by looking at … Continue reading 17.2: It Was a Promise of Three Parts →

• First Lines, 
• First Pages, 
• First Paragraphs, 
• Fulfilling Promises, 
• Promises to the Reader

Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd This week we’re talking about giving inevitability to our intended surprise, and we open with a discussion of Chekov’s Gun, which, as a writing rule, is mostly used in inversion. Next week we’ll focus on making inevitable things surprising. Liner Notes: Art and Editing of Suicide Squad (YouTube)  … Continue reading 17.3: Chekov’s Surprising Yet Inevitable Inverted Gun →

• Foreshadowing, 
• Fulfilling Promises, 
• Promises to the Reader, 
• Surprising yet Inevitable

Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd In the previous episode we discussed how to ensure that your surprise feels inevitable. In this episode we’re covering how to make inevitability feel surprising. The title is a nod to the concept of the “red herring,” which is arguably the most useful tool for setting up a … Continue reading 17.4: The Gun on the Mantel is Actually a Fish →

• Chekov's Gun, 
• Fulfilling Promises, 
• Promises to the Reader, 
• Red Herring, 
• Surprising yet Inevitable

Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd Your brand—your name, the cover art for your book, and even the typeface for the title—set expectations for the book’s contents. That advice about not judging a book by its cover? It’s lovely in theory, but in practice, that’s just not how it works. In this episode we’ll … Continue reading 17.5: The Promise of the Brand →

• Back Cover Copy, 
• Branding, 
• Cover Art

Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd Oh no! You’re in the middle of a thing (a novel, a series, a career) and you suddenly realize that the expectations you set early on are not the expectations you’ll be meeting. What do you do now? , We’re talking about how go about resetting audience expectations, … Continue reading 17.6: Hitting Reset Without Getting Hit Back →

• Branding, 
• Expectations, 
• Fulfilling Promises, 
• Promises to the Reader

Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd What are your influences? What pieces of art, music, literature, or other media have inspired you? In this episode we’ll talk about making that inspiration deliberate, and consciously learning from our influences. Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson

• Anxiety of Influence, 
• Influence

Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd How do you translate things from the spark of inspiration into a work that someone else can consume? Like, instead of turning a movie into a book, you’re trying to create a book out of the movie in your head. And what if your “spark” isn’t a movie … Continue reading 17.8: The Alchemy of Creativity →

• Creativity, 
• Ideas

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Peng Shepherd, and Howard Tayler We’re beginning another eight-episode deep-dive series, and this time it’s a fresh approach to story structure, led by our guest host Peng Shepherd. Join us as we zoom right through the overarching frameworks defined via things like the Hero’s Journey, Freytag’s Triangle, Save … Continue reading 17.9: Let’s Talk About Structure →

• Character Arc, 
• Freytag's Triangle, 
• Kishōtenketsu, 
• Maps, 
• Master Class, 
• seven-point story structure, 
• Story Structure, 
• Three-Act Format

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Peng Shepherd, and Howard Tayler In our second micro-structure episode, Peng Shepherd leads us into an exploration of the ways in which the use of multiple point-of-view characters can create a framework within the larger framework of the story. Liner Notes: In one example we contrasted the single POV … Continue reading 17.10: Structuring with Multiple POVs →

• Master Class, 
• POV, 
• Story Structure, 
• structure

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Peng Shepherd, and Howard Tayler Guest host Peng Shepherd continues to lead our exploration of sub- and micro-structures by taking us into the scaffolding of in media res, flashbacks, and other tools for structuring a story by telling it out of chronological order. We also cover how to … Continue reading 17.11: Structuring with Multiple Timelines →

• in medias res, 
• Master Class, 
• Story Chronology, 
• Story Structure, 
• structure

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Peng Shepherd, and Howard Tayler One common structure—both macro and micro—is the “story within a story,” or “framing story” structure, and yet somehow we’ve never really explored it on Writing Excuses. Guest host Peng Shepherd is here to help us set things right. Liner Notes: Here are some … Continue reading 17.12: Structuring a Story Within a Story →

• Framing Story, 
• In-World Artifact, 
• Story Structure, 
• structure

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Peng Shepherd, and Howard Tayler Our exploration of sub- and micro-structures continues with guest host Peng Shepherd. This week we’re talking about how a story can be structured around a “thing.” The simplest explanatory example would be structuring around a map, which is where we start the episode… … Continue reading 17.13: Structuring Around a Thing →

• Maps, 
• Master Class, 
• Microstructure, 
• Story Structure, 
• structure

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Peng Shepherd, and Howard Tayler Guest host Peng Shepherd leads our discussion of “order-less reading order” (after we get past the business of “having too much fun with the episode title”). But what do we even mean by “order-less” or “disordered?” At one level, we mean you can … Continue reading 17.14: Structuring for Disordered or Order-less Reading Order →

• Fixup Novel, 
• Serials, 
• Series, 
• Story Structure, 
• structure

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Peng Shepherd, and Howard Tayler You probably already know what footnotes are¹, but have you ever seen a story told through the footnotes²?  It’s similar to the story-within-a-story structure, but there’s more to it than that. In this episode our guest host Peng Shepherd explores footnote storytelling³ with … Continue reading 17.15: Storytelling in the Footnotes →

• Footnotes, 
• Story Structure, 
• structure, 
• White Room

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Peng Shepherd, and Howard Tayler Thus far we’ve attempted to organize our discussion of sub-, micro-, and other alternative structures  with specific categories, but this domain is a lot larger than that. This final episode with our guest host Peng Shepherd has been titled “Miscellaneous Structures” because, y’know, … Continue reading 17.16: Miscellaneous Structures →

• Microstructure, 
• Story Structure, 
• structure

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Brandon Sanderson, and Gama Martinez Did you know that there are some famous intellectual properties which have entered the public domain, and which you can therefore use to create your own stories? It’s true! Gama Martinez (whose God of Neverland novel features Peter Pan) joined Dan and Brandon at LTUE to talk about … Continue reading 17.17: Writing in the Public Domain →

• Intellectual Property, 
• Public Domain

Your Hosts: Dan Wells and Brandon Sanderson, with special guest Jody Lynn Nye So, you’ve decided you want something to be funny. How do you go about making that happen? Jody Lynn Nye joined Dan and Brandon at LTUE, and pitched this topic to them. And yes, it’s much more than just “delivery, delivery, delivery.” Liner … Continue reading 17.18: How to be Funny, with Jody Lynn Nye →

• Character-Based Humor, 
• Humor

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Brandon Sanderson, and Megan Lloyd Megan Lloyd returns to the podcast to talk us through the process of creating something in a collaborative environment, whether it’s a pair of authors working together, or a dozen people working to write, storyboard, and animate a television series. Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, … Continue reading 17.19: Working in a Collaborative Environment →

• Collaboration

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Zoraida Cordova, Kaela Rivera, and Howard Tayler What’s the difference between an ensemble story, and a story the has a lot of characters in it? Zoraida Cordova joins us for this episode, kicking off an eight-episode mini-master-class about ensembles. In this episode we discuss what makes ensembles work, and how we … Continue reading 17.20: Basics of Ensemble Characterization →

• Characters, 
• Elemental Genre, 
• Ensemble, 
• Secondary Characters

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Zoraida Cordova, Kaela Rivera, and Howard Tayler Every member of your ensemble has a reason to be there, but they also have their own voice. Zoraida Cordova joins us for a discussion of how we make our ensemble characters distinct from one another. Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by … Continue reading 17.21: Casting Your Story With Character Voice →

• Character Voice, 
• Characters, 
• Ensemble

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Zoraida Cordova, Kaela Rivera, and Howard Tayler Every character in your ensemble needs to matter to the team, or they probably don’t belong in the ensemble. Zoraida Cordova leads us into this discussion of how we build our ensembles, how we introduce the characters, and how we ensure that all of them are important … Continue reading 17.22: Establishing the Ensemble →

• Characters, 
• Ensemble

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Zoraida Cordova, Kaela Rivera, and Howard Tayler Sometimes we have to look at our ensemble of characters and ask ourselves what kind of story we’re trying to tell? If the story works with a single protagonist and one POV, maybe this isn’t an ensemble story after all. If, however, the plot requires a team … Continue reading 17.23: Are We Stronger Together? →

• Characters, 
• Ensemble

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Zoraida Cordova, Kaela Rivera, and Howard Tayler This week we’re talking about how our genre choice influences the structure of our ensemble. How is a heist ensemble different from a superhero team? What happens when the superheroes need to do a heist? Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex … Continue reading 17.24: Ensembles and Genre →

• Ensemble

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Zoraida Cordova, Kaela Rivera, and Howard Tayler We’ve talked about making every member of the ensemble meaningful. In this episode we’re discussing who, in archetype terms, everybody is. How can archetypes help us get started, how can they help us set reader expectations, and what are the archetype-related pitfalls we need to avoid? And … Continue reading 17.25: Archetypes, Ensembles, and Expectations →

• Archetypes, 
• Characters, 
• Conflict, 
• Hero With a Thousand Faces, 
• Stereotypes, 
• Tropes

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Zoraida Cordova, Kaela Rivera, and Howard Tayler Our episode title comes to us across two and a half centuries: “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.” —Benjamin Franklin We’ve already established that you’re planning to write an ensemble. This isn’t an episode about the pros and cons … Continue reading 17.26: Hanging Separately →

• Characters, 
• Ensemble, 
• Heists

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Zoraida Cordova, Kaela Rivera, and Howard Tayler In this, our final “ensemble masterclass” episode, we discuss the nuts-and-bolts, the tips and tricks, the tools of the trade. In short, we talk very specifically about how we do it. Color-coded sticky notes, index cards, spreadsheets, and more… Liner Notes: Howard’s guest story for Dave Kellet’s … Continue reading 17.27: Ensembles Behind the Scenes →

• Cast of Characters, 
• Ensemble, 
• Scrivener, 
• Writing Tools

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Maurice Broaddus, and Howard Tayler Writer, teacher, and community organizer Maurice Broaddus joins us for an eight-episode mini-master-class on writing dialogue. In this episode he walks us through his three keys: pay attention to how people speak, write in a way that evokes how they speak, and write … Continue reading 17.28: Keys to Writing Dialog →

• Dialog, 
• Master Class

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Maurice Broaddus, and Howard Tayler We’re back with Maurice Broaddus for the second in our eight-episode mini-master-class on writing dialogue. This time around we’re addressing the question of dialogue’s “job.” What’s it for? Why is this particular bit of dialogue in this scene, this chapter, this book? Credits: This … Continue reading 17.29: The Job of Dialogue →

• Author Voice, 
• Authorial Intent, 
• Banter, 
• Dialog, 
• Exposition

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Maurice Broaddus, and Howard Tayler How well do you know your characters? Sure, you might know their age, nationality, and perhaps wardrobe, but how well do you know their internal characteristics? Do you know them well enough that you can write dialog that sounds like them? In this episode we … Continue reading 17.30: Know Your Characters →

• Cast of Characters, 
• Characters, 
• Dialog, 
• Master Class

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Maurice Broaddus, and Howard Tayler We’ve mentioned “area of intention” earlier in this dialog master class, but now the concept gets the spotlight. If all of your characters have their own agendas, their own areas of intention, then the dialog between them should reflect that. Credits: This episode was recorded by … Continue reading 17.31: Everyone Has an Agenda →

• Characters, 
• Dialog, 
• High-Context Culture, 
• Low-Context Culture, 
• Master Class, 
• Motivation

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Maurice Broaddus, and Howard Tayler Everything is about conflict? Really? Well, yes. Maybe not in the action-movie sense, but conflict is everywhere, even among people whose goals, objectives, and methodologies are in alignment. This, of course, means that it exists among your cast of characters, and it will inform the … Continue reading 17.32: Everything is About Conflict →

• Argument, 
• Characters, 
• Conflict, 
• Dialog, 
• Master Class, 
• Motivation

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Maurice Broaddus, and Howard Tayler Tension! In this episode we discuss the ways dialog can build and/or maintain tension, especially when placed in context with the rest of the scene. Liner Notes: A great article about tension for those who (like Howard) may need a solid working definition –Toward a … Continue reading 17.33: Building Tension →

• Dialog, 
• Master Class, 
• Suspense, 
• Tension

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Maurice Broaddus, and Howard Tayler We begin this episode with a quick exploration of the terminology, and what we mean when we say “text,” “context,” and “subtext.” Subtext exists between text and context. It’s the information which isn’t actually in the text, but which we are able to divine based … Continue reading 17.34: Developing Subtext →

• Context, 
• Dialog, 
• High-Context Culture, 
• Low-Context Culture, 
• Master Class, 
• Subtext

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Maurice Broaddus, and Howard Tayler We wrap up our eight-episode dialog master class with a discussion of nuance, which is difficult to describe in a blurb because it’s… well, nuanced. That may sound a bit recursive, but our discussion dives deep into the meta. Credits: This episode was recorded by Daniel … Continue reading 17.35: Nuances of Dialog →

• Dialog, 
• nuance

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Cady Coleman Chemist, USAF Colonel, and NASA Astronaut Cady Coleman joins us to talk about actual travel to actual space, and how that’s a thing which is increasingly available to people who are not in the employ of government space agencies. Also, we discuss how the demographics … Continue reading 17.36: Space for Everyone →

• Astronauts, 
• Hard Science Fiction, 
• science, 
• Space Travel

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Cady Coleman The fictional side of science and the scientific side of fiction are part of the discipline of science communication, often called SciComm. In this episode Cady Coleman joins us to talk about how science fiction fits into the field of SciComm, and how the stories we tell … Continue reading 17.37: Science and Fiction—It’s Not Just Science Fiction →

• SciComm, 
• Science Fiction, 
• Space Travel

Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, C.L. Polk, Marshall Carr, Jr., and Mary Robinette Kowal Oh no! You’ve put the project down for long enough that you’ve lost your place in it! Whatever will you do? For starters, you can listen to this episode. We’ve been there, and one of us is there right now. We talk … Continue reading 17.38: Oh No I Lost The Thread →

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, Dongwon Song, Piper J. Drake,  & Howard Tayler, with special guest K. M. Szpara CONTENT WARNING: this episode is about adult acts and adult bodies, and we won’t be using euphemisms.  K.M. Szpara joined us at WXR 2022 for this discussion of writing bodies and intimacy, with a particular focus … Continue reading 17.39: Writing Bodies and Intimacy, with K.M. Szpara →

• Blocking, 
• Dialog, 
• Explicit, 
• Sex scenes

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, Brandon Sanderson, and Howard Tayler, with special guest Peng Shepherd Peng Shepherd joined us aboard Liberty of the Seas for WXR 2022, and returned with us to the topic of story structures. In this episode we answer questions from our live audience. The questions include: How do you make … Continue reading 17.40: Questions & Answers About Structure, with Special Guest Peng Shepherd →

• MICE Quotient, 
• Microstructure, 
• Plotting, 
• Series, 
• Story Structure, 
• Subplot

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, Brandon Sanderson, and Howard Tayler, with special guest Seth Fishman Seth Fishman, author of seven picture books (as well as lots of longer-form stuff), joins us to talk about writing picture books, including some of the business and publication aspects. No-Context Pull Quote: “Your art is so bad … Continue reading 17.41: Picture Books are Books Too, with Special Guest Seth Fishman →

• Children, 
• Illustrations, 
• Picture books

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette and Howard Tayler, with special guests Fran Wilde, C.L. Polk, and William Alexander For the next eight episodes we’ll be talking about bodies, and how they don’t all work the same way, and how this can be applied to our writing. Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and … Continue reading 17.42: Eight Embodied Episodes About Disability →

• Disability, 
• Marginalization, 
• Representation in Fiction

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Fran Wilde, C.L. Polk, and Howard Tayler Let’s talk for a bit about writing while disabled. This can mean anything from scheduling your craft around doctor’s appointments, to learning to operate on a limited budget as defined by your body. You might be asking “I’m not disabled, so how does this pertain … Continue reading 17.44: Bodies, Why? (Part II: Working Through Disability) →

• creative process, 
• Disability, 
• Physical Pain, 
• Writing Career

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, C.L. Polk, Fran Wilde, and Howard Tayler  Let’s talk about technological body-modification! It’s a common element in science fiction, but it’s also an increasingly important part of the world we’re living in right now. Liner Notes: In this episode we referenced “Happenstance,” and Amy Purdy’s quickstep from Dancing With The Stars. … Continue reading 17.45: Bodies, Tech, and Character →

• Augmentation, 
• Disability, 
• Technology

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, C.L. Polk, Fran Wilde, and Howard Tayler  Okay, before we start, you have homework: Please take a few minutes to read this essay by Fran Wilde entitled “You Wake Up Monstrous.” That will give you context for our discussion, which is about how body horror and other monstrous-ness is a tool we … Continue reading 17.46: Monstrous Awakening →

• Area of Intention, 
• Body Horror, 
• Disability

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, C.L. Polk, Fran Wilde, and Howard Tayler  Let’s talk about pain. It hurts, yes, but we all experience it, so writing about it can be a great point of connection between the writer and the reader. Also, writing about it can hurt. Liner Notes: We referenced  “No, I’m Fine,” by Howard Tayler, … Continue reading 17.48: Bodies, Why? (Part III) →

• Mental Health, 
• Mental Illness, 
• Physical Pain

Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Dongwon Song, and Dan Wells Thanks to some last-minute schedule changes, we almost didn’t have an episode for today. Only three cast members were able to make it to the session, and none of those three had the syllabus. But we forged ahead anyway, and recorded an episode about why we … Continue reading 17.50: Consistency, Inconsistency, and the Crushing Weight of Expectations →

Your Hosts: Dongwon Song, Piper J. Drake, Peng Shepherd, Marshall Carr, Jr., and Erin Roberts Let’s talk about burnout. It’s been a long few years (with some of those years feeling like decades) so this may seem timely, but burnout can happen during otherwise ordinary times. Ignoring it or simply trying to “burn smarter, not … Continue reading 17.51: Feel The Burn →

• Burnout, 
• Health, 
• Mental Health, 
• Time Management

Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Mary Robinette, and Howard This Q&A session was recorded before a live audience aboard ship at WXR 2022, Here are some paraphrasings of the questions our attendees asked: How do you make your world feel big without infodumping? How do you balance a sense of progress with an unreliable narrator? How … Continue reading 17.52: The WXR 2022 Q&A →

• Adaptations, 
• Conventions, 
• Hard Science Fiction, 
• Magic Systems, 
• Sense of Progress, 
• Unreliable Narrator, 
• Worldbuilding

For Immediate Release   Writing Excuses Announces New Host Lineup for Season 18   Writing Excuses, the award-winning weekly podcast for writers, by writers, is excited to announce a new lineup of hosts as it begins its 18th season. Beginning January 1, 2023, DongWon Song and Erin Roberts will join Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, … Continue reading Writing Excuses Announces New Host Lineup for Season 18 →

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler As we announced in last week’s episode (and in this press release),  DongWon Song and Erin Roberts are joining us as permanent cast members. In this episode we conduct an interview with DongWon Song, plumbing a few depths, and learning a bit more about … Continue reading 18.02: An Interview with DongWon Song →

• Agents, 
• Editors, 
• Interviews, 
• Pitching, 
• Writing Career

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler As we announced in the first episode of the year (and in this press release),  DongWon Song and Erin Roberts are joining us as permanent cast members. Today we’re conducting an interview with Erin Roberts. She is newer to career writing than any of … Continue reading 18.03: An Interview With Erin Roberts →

• D&D, 
• Education, 
• Game Writing, 
• Getting Paid, 
• Interviews, 
• Short Fiction