Tag Archives: Geography

Archive Seasons 11-15, Guest, Season 15, Theory and Technique

15.45: Worldbuilding Fantasy, with Patrick Rothfuss

November 8, 2020 Howard Tayler 8 Comments

Your Hosts: Dan, Mary Robinette, and Howard, with Patrick Rothfuss

Pat joins us for a discussion of worldbuilding, in which we field a couple of challenging questions from readers. Here are the questions!

How do you create timeless urban fantasy?
How do you create a compelling secondary world fantasy without leaning on a complex magic system?

We ran a bit long with this one, but we have no regrets. Because compelling. And maybe timeless.

Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:25 — 22.3MB)

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Just change one thing, and then follow the permutations.

Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury

Archive Seasons 11-15, Season 14, Theory and Technique

14.02: Geography and Biomes

January 13, 2019 Howard Tayler 17 Comments

Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab

Mahtab Narsimhan joins us this year for a dozen episodes on worldbuilding, and this week we’re talking about geography and biomes. These pieces of our settings can be central to the stories we tell, but they can also be backdrops, and the story purposes they serve may determine which tools we use to describe them.

Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:47 — 13.0MB)

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Describe a landscape using four senses that are not sight

Legion vs. Phalanx: The Epic Struggle for Infantry Supremacy in the Ancient World, by Myke Cole, narrated by Alexander Cendese

Archive Seasons 11-15, Guest, Live Audience, Season 11, Theory and Technique

11.Bonus-03: Some Books Have Maps in the Front, with Maurice Broaddus, Mur Lafferty, and James Sutter

November 3, 2016 Howard Tayler 4 Comments

Three days late for the beginning of NaNoWriMo 2016, here’s a bonus episode about maps. Because nothing says “keep writing” like “hey, let’s draw a map now!”

Dan and Howard were joined by Maurice Broaddus, Mur Lafferty, and James L. Sutter, who wanted to talk about maps. As Napoleon Bonaparte is rumored to have said prior to invading Russia, “geography is destiny.” We talk port dwarves, rolling glaciers, star systems, and more.

Liner links:

Logarithmic star map
Tolkien’s map of Middle Earth
Center-Pivot Irrigation (75 years old, not 50 as Howard said)

Credits: This episode was mastered by Alex Jackson, and was made possible by the generous support of the GenCon Indy Writer’s Symposium, and the Writing Excuses patrons at Patreon.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:45 — 13.6MB)

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Take one big idea from each of two of your favorite books, and mash them up for something new.

The Voices of the Martyrs, by Maurice Broaddus (audiobook not yet available)

Fifteen minutes long, because you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart.