Words take time to read, but that’s not the same amount of time that the words communicate…
Fifteen minutes long, because you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart.
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.
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…
If you haven’t yet read “Parallel Perspectives,” from Schlock Mercenary: Massively Parallel, we have a PDF for you to download and read before you start listening to this episode. It’s a 33mb file in a public DropBox folder. Parallel Perspectives PDF for Writing Excuses listeners Got the file? Done reading?…
This month’s syllabus topic is story structure, and we’ll be starting with the part we start with. And that part usually isn’t the beginning — that’s where the story starts for the reader. We’re going to talk about where the story starts for you. It’s the answer to questions like…
You know what’s fun? WRITING! Writing is fun. And that, more than anything else, is why we do it. Or at least it’s why we decided to do it. Making sure that it is still fun is kind of tricky. Also tricky? Writing for nothing more than the fun of…
So, you’re planning to kill somebody, but you don’t want anyone to see it coming. How do you make that happen? We begin by talking about the hints that writers inadvertently drop, and why they drop those hints. Then we look at how to write without sending those cues, and…
Sara Glassman joins us to talk about back cover copy, covers, query letters, signings, and what booksellers look for on page one.