Brandon, Dan, and Howard each offer sage advice to their earlier selves.
Fifteen minutes long, because you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart.
Scott Westerfeld joins Brandon and Howard for a discussion of Steampunk.
Melodrama. What is it? What do people mean when they say something is too melodramatic? Usually they do NOT mean “it’s too much like a classical melodrama,” but it helps if we start with that definition: a melodrama is a story in which each character only expresses one emotion, and/or…
L.E. Modesitt and Robison Wells join Brandon and Dan for a discussion of “practical” fantasy. Recorded live at CONduit in Salt Lake City.
Forget “Anxiety of Influence.” Let’s talk about how to borrow, beg, and outright steal from pop culture, history, and mythology.
Epic podcast! Except it’s only fifteen minutes long… because you’re in a hurry, and we’ll tell you how to write an epic.
Jessica Day George joins the Writing Excuses crew again, this time for a discussion of writing for young adults, and maybe for teens, or even middle-grade readers. This isn’t a podcast about rigidly defining the boundary between the YA and middle-grade genres, though. That’s publishing. We’re talking about writing. If you…
Tragedy. It’s just TRAGIC. Tragedy is also one of the classical forms that writers need to know how to work within. Why? Well… because the Greeks thought we should be forced to have strong emotional responses to literature. Writing Prompt: Write a delightful story about happy, cheerful anthropomorphic creatures who…
A Monday without Writing Excuses is kind of like a Tuesday without Writing Excuses, only far less aggravating. With Brandon once again by our side(s), we venture once more into the realm of humor: this time, specifically considering how to blend humor with decidedly unhumorous elements such as drama and…
Jake Black fills in for Brandon “#1 New York Times Bestselling Author” Sanderson this week, and that’s perfect because Jake writes comics and Brandon doesn’t. So mostly this is Dan holding Jake’s and my feet to the fire. We’ll talk about the business of writing comics next week. This week…