Fifteen minutes long, because you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart.
What do emotional beats and action scenes have in common? Well, they both need to land with your audience in order for your story not to fall flat. On today’s episode, we’re talking about the importance of reaction. Everything from portraying your characters’ reactions to letting readers sit with—and witness—…
Have you ever wondered how much you need to know about a specific character before you start your story? Do you need to have an entire outline of their childhood before you can start writing in depth about them? We don’t think so! But it is important to listen to these questions…
Today we are introducing the “lens of who” – which means talking about characters. We try to break big character ideas down into their elements. For instance, what do terms like “relatability” or “depth” of character really mean? One of the main take-aways from this episode is that your characters each have…
So, what is publishing for, anyway? The question may seem glib, but DongWong Song raised it in their newsletter, and in this episode we answer (or at least refine our asking of) the question. Liner Notes: The Publishing Question Credits: Your hosts for this episode were Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan…
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Fonda Lee, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler Let’s follow up on character biases with an exploration of moral frame. When we say someone is “morally gray” or “morally ambiguous,” what we’re really talking about is the way they fit into the moral frame defined by society. In…
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Fonda Lee, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler The world of your book is most often shown to us through the eyes of the characters who live in that world. In this episode we discuss the fact that those characters have biases which will distort the reader’s perception…
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Fonda Lee, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler We’re beginning another master class, another deep dive series of episodes, and this time around we’ll be led into the realms of good worldbuilding by Fonda Lee. In this episode Fonda talks about her process, which includes plotting…
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, C.L. Polk, Charlotte Forfieh, and Mary Robinette Kowal Our fourth M.I.C.E. Quotient episode explores the “Character” element, and how these angsty, navel-gazing voyages of self-examination can serve either as complete stories or as elements in other stories. Also, we talk about how to do this in ways that don’t…
Your Hosts: Brandon, Howard, and Dan with special guest David Weber David Weber joined us at NASFIC to talk about the importance of risking failure on any path (especially a writer’s path) to success–whether you’re risking rejection in the submission process, or the possibility that the book you write won’t…
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Lari, and Dan, with special guest Jenn Court Let’s talk about serials. Jenn Court, whose work includes lots of writing for TV (IMDB link), joins us for the discussion. What are the elements that get us, as readers or viewers, to come back for episode after…
