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Writing Prompt
Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week
- 1
- World Building History
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- 1 June 2009
- 16:08
Write an encyclopedia article about a war that has five distinct causes. Identify and justify each of them.
- 4
- Non-Linear Story Telling
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- 8 June 2009
- 16:35
Write a story about a flashback that is completely false…
- 2
- Keeping it Real with Aprilynne Pike
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- 14 June 2009
- 16:04
- 3
- Stumping Howard at Conduit
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- 21 June 2009
- 21:18
Start with a device that vaporizes water, ala Batman Begins, and turn it into a believable super weapon which is not being used to destroy the world.
- 5
- How to Take Criticism
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- 28 June 2009
- 16:29
Write a story about a critic who is the hero.
- 6
- Dramatic Breaks
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- 7 July 2009
- 17:19
Write a story in which Howard hates elephants and dramatically breaks one.
- 7
- Genre Blending
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- 12 July 2009
- 17:31
Combine “Horror” and “Western” and don’t make it look like either one.
- 8
- What Star Trek Did Right
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- 20 July 2009
- 20:06
Start with iconic Kirk, Spock and McCoy characters and make them your own characters. Spock cannot be an elf … or a rooster. Spock-a-doodle doo!
- 9
- Conventions You Should Be Attending
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- 26 July 2009
- 16:06
Your protagonist shows up at a convention, and in his pocket he has a …
- 10
- The Dos and Don’ts of Attending Cons
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- 2 Aug 2009
- 19:38
… he has an entire universe in his pocket, and it’s not peacebonded.
- 11
- Trimming
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- 8 Aug 2009
- 15:35
Write a story that involves you Larping with Jerry Pournelle. Then cut the story down to half size.
- 12
- Subplots
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- 16 Aug 2009
- 18:05
Write a story about why Brandon and Dan are wearing identical explosives and blasting t-shirts.
- 13
- Dialects and In-World Jargon
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- 23 Aug 2009
- 17:33
Write a story about why Armando and Haggis are locked in room with many beautiful women whom they are trying to run away from.
- 14
- The Four Principles of Puppetry with Mary Robinette Kowal
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- 30 Aug 2009
- 14:19
Create some sort of fantasy or magical setting in which puppetry requires a fifth principle.
- 15
- Writing Process Q&A with Mary Robinette Kowal
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- 6 Sep 2009
- 16:45
- 16
- The Anti-Mary Sue Episode
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- 13 Sep 2009
- 17:43
Go out and do some research, find a fascinating character that is nothing like you, go pick some topic that you don’t know about and then write a story.
- 17
- Characters & World Building Q&A with Mary Robinette Kowal
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- 20 Sep 2009
- 17:48
Write about either a band called The Predestined Monkey, a predestined monkey, or a band of predestined monkeys.
- 18
- How To Not Repeat Yourself
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- 27 Sep 2009
- 16:53
The princess is trying to eat a pie, but someone is trying to stop her. Oh, and the fate of the world depends on the outcome.
- 19
- Emotion in Fiction with John Brown
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- 4 Oct 2009
- 15:47
Give us villainous heroes, romance and something that evokes terror.
- 20
- Plot- vs. Character-Driven Fiction
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- 11 Oct 2009
- 15:51
Come up with a plot-driven story, and then try to make it good with boring characters.
Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
- 21
- Pitfalls of Self Publishing with Larry Correia
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- 18 Oct 2009
- 15:54
A self-published book becomes a threat that will end the world…
Scenting the Dark by Mary Robinette Kowal
- 22
- Idea to Story
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- 25 Oct 2009
- 17:50
Insects have in someway evolved defenses against all of the poisons we use to kill them and many of the chemicals that would kill anything, because they have somehow evolved magic.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell. If you think Eragon ripped off Star Wars and Star Wars ripped off Lord of the Rings, you need to listen to this book. In this book, Campbell goes through the mono-myth and disects it, explains it and talks about how mythology influses all of our culteral experiences.
- 23
- How to Write Without Twists
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- 1 Nov 2009
- 15:41
“Sense & Sensibility & Terrorists”
- 24
- Writing Comics with Jake Black
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- 8 Nov 2009
- 19:38
Write a story in which Superman swoops into a room, kicks something, and then turns into Spider-Man.
Wheel of Time books, by Robert Jordan
- 25
- The Business of Writing Comics
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- 15 Nov 2009
- 19:33
Our superhero gained his superpowers by writing technical articles for Wired …
Wheel of Time books, by Robert Jordan
- 26
- NaNoWriMo
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- 22 Nov 2009
- 16:09
Kill one of your characters with a shovel.
Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, read by Ethan Hawke
- 27
- Mixing Humor with Drama and Horror
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- 1 Dec 2009
- 16:13
Take the most intense character tragedy you can image for your character and, whether or not it is appropriate, find humor in that tragedy.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell.
- 28
- World Building Gender Roles
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- 6 Dec 2009
- 17:10
You are writing a future military where the only people allowed in the military are homosexual, and you need a good explanation of why.
The Gathering Storm, by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, narrated by Michael Kramer & Kate Reading
- 30
- Unreliable Narrators
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- 13 Dec 2009
- 16:31
Have an event occur, and then provide five different character perspectives on the event … none of which are completely accurate.
No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy, narrated Tom Stechschulte. In Dan’s opinion McCarthy is “the best word for word writer working today.”
- 29
- Antiheroes
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- 20 Dec 2009
- 15:59
Write a true, classically-defined antihero in such a way that Howard will enjoy it.
Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, narrated by Martin Jarvis
- 31
- Tragedy
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- 27 Dec 2009
- 15:56
Write a delightful story about happy, cheerful anthropomorphic creatures who all die horribly.
Stationary Bike, by Steven King, narrated by Ron McLarty
- 32
- Collaboration
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- 3 Jan 2010
- 17:50
Write a story (all by yourself) about a collaboration which goes horribly, horribly wrong.
For those who want to write a comic, but don’t have the drawing skill neccessary: write your comic and then draw it anyway.
Inferno, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, narrated by Tom Weiner
- Bonus 1
- Parsec Award Acceptance Speech
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- 13 Sep 2009
- 17:43
Dan is on a death panel and he’s going to pull the plug on your grandfather.