Fifteen minutes long, because you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart.
Last week we discussed what kinds of events that you, the aspiring author, should be attending. This week we cover what you should and shouldn’t be doing there. And we start with some don’ts. The word of the day? “Booth Barnacle.” If last week’s ‘cast was a little long-winded, this…
As we did with The Dark Knight and Watchmen (the comic, not the movie), once again we turn our searing critical insight on a major work of successful storytelling talk about what they did right. If you loved the new Star Trek movie, or even just kind of liked it,…
You’ve seen it done… “Zombie Apocalypse in Space.” “Perry Mason in the Armed Forces.” It’s genre blending, where the author takes themes prevalent in two different genres and combines them to create something new. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. We call down a few examples of both, and offer…
What are dramatic breaks? We open this episode with Howard very genuinely playing Doctor Watson to Brandon’s Holmes, which is amusing because as it turns out, Howard uses dramatic breaks every day. Simply put they are the points in the narrative, typically at the end of a chapter, where we…
How do you take criticism? How do you react, if you even do react? Does criticism cause you to change the way you work? Criticism can come from your peers in a writing group, from editors sending you rejection letters, and from those one-star Amazon reviewers who are out there…
Howard here… I’ve learned that it’s a really bad idea to run out for a bio-break between podcasts. When I returned to the packed panel room I could tell that everyone’s attitude towards me was subtly different. It wasn’t until we started recording that I realized Brandon had turned our…
This episode was recorded live at CONduit in Salt Lake City with special guest Aprilynne Pike. Our topic: How do we “keep it real” when writing speculative fiction? What does that even mean? (Okay, it means making the stuff that exists in real life seem real.) Short answer: Research. We…
Don’t you just hate it when things unfold out of order? Why do writers do that? We explain why they do it, and how they do it, and then we discuss how to avoid some common mistakes. Non-linear storytelling is inherently risky, after all. Maybe not as risky as jumping…
Welcome to Season 3 of Writing Excuses! With eighteen hours and fourteen months of podcasting history behind us, it seems appropriate for us to talk about history, and how to write it. We talk about the iceberg principle — 90% of the history stuff you write never gets seen by…
And here we are, at the final episode of Writing Excuses, Season 2. As promised, this episode is going to be super-useful to new writers, but it’s going to be extra-super-useful to one new writer in particular, Brandon’s nameless friend who listened to 9 hours of Writing Excuses podcasts and…
