Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Peng Shepherd, and Howard Tayler
One common structure—both macro and micro—is the “story within a story,” or “framing story” structure, and yet somehow we’ve never really explored it on Writing Excuses. Guest host Peng Shepherd is here to help us set things right.
Liner Notes: Here are some examples of story-within-a-story structure…
- Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer
- Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell
- Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons
- Neverending Story, by Michael Ende
- One Thousand and One Nights
- Sun the Moon and the Stars, by Stephen Brust
- Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix E. Harrow
Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:43 — 15.1MB)
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Take or create an artifact within your current WIP, whether it’s a letter, a diary entry, an in-world almanac or spellbook, etc., and flesh it out for a chapter. See what it adds to your worldbuilding or plot.
Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke