Fifteen minutes long, because you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart.
Your Hosts: Brandon, Victoria, Dan, and Howard Small evils? Yes, please! This episode isn’t about writing the big villainy of world domination, but about focusing on the more relatable villainy of small evils—the little crimes, the minor antagonisms—which can be the key to connecting the reader to the book. Liner…
Your Hosts: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard You had questions about fixing character problems. We had had answers! Here are the questions: How do you fix character voices when you find out that two of them are too similar? How can you tell if a character is, in fact, the…
Your Cast: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, Howard You had questions about heroes, villains, and main characters. We have answers! Here are the questions: Liner Footnotes¹ We hadn’t seen “ass-pull,” the a nouning² of the idiom “pull it out of your ass³” as a noun before. ² Bill Watterson gave us the verb form…
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard What’s the difference between villains and antagonists? How is an obstacle character different from those other two? How are they alike? And most importantly, how can we use this information to write effective opposition to our heroes, protagonists, and main characters? Credits: This…
If there’s a crowd with good questions, it’s the Out of Excuses Workshop and Retreat attendees. Given the trend toward moral ambiguity, is there still a place for an unquestionably evil character? Should you publish a first book that isn’t in the style or genre that you’re ultimately interested in?…
What do you do when your villain is more interesting and engaging than your hero? The first step? Admit that this is a problem…
