Fifteen minutes long, because you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart.
Howard takes the moderatorial lead on this episode in which he, Brandon, and Dan are joined by Rob Wells for a discussion of marketing. What is marketing? What’s the difference between marketing and PR? What’s the difference between a marketing manager and a publicist? How can knowing this help a…
Our producer Jordan Sanderson joins us for this week’s installment, in which we likely make all kinds of enemies among the authorial community by exposing the many things they’re doing wrong with their websites. The fact that you, fair listener, are here reading content on our website shows that you…
All three of your Writing Excuses hosts include a measure of violence in their written work. So Brandon, Dan, and Howard decide to clear the air a little bit. Why do we write about violence? What does it bring to a work of fiction, and what challenges does it pose?…
This week (and for the following two weeks) the Writing Excuses crew is joined by author Dave Wolverton, who also writes under the name David Farland. This week’s topic? ROMANCE. What can four adult males possibly have to say about the subject? The answer: We tell you absolutely everything we…
Kids these days with their long hair and their love of reading. It’s like, get off my lawn, am I right? But in other news, kids (meaning anything from chapter books to mature YA) read a TON, and somebody has to write those books, and it might as well be…
Last week we talked to an editor, this week we talk to OUR editor: Brandon’s and Dan’s editor at Tor, Moshe Feder. It’s a great opportunity to learn more about how an author and editor work together to help make a book the best it can possibly be. We also…
We are pleased to present the second half of “Viewpoint and Tense,” which, as we all know, is Tense. Part 1 was Viewpoint. It’s not two podcasts that both talk about tense and viewpoint, it’s two totally different podcasts that share a title for some reason. Why didn’t we just…
As a writer it’s sometimes difficult to decide between doing things the readers want, and things that are right for the story. But as Dan says, writers can get away with doing things to readers that readers would never do to themselves. Beware! This podcast contains spoilers for The Lord…
Writer Eric James Stone joins the Writing Excuses crew for our third Conduit installment. We tackle questions from the audience again (except for when Brandon throws a question AT the audience, which still had Mike Stackpole in it.) Are plot twists necessary? How does the web change the market for…
The Writing Excuses crew tackles writer’s block again, this time approaching the “This Sucks And I’m A Horrible Writer” mindset. Dan relates his Neil Gaiman anecdote, Brandon explains why he’d written so many books before getting published, and Howard throws down the gauntlet on neverending Chapter One revisions. If you’re…
