Tag Archives: White Room

Season 17, Theory and Technique

17.15: Storytelling in the Footnotes

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Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Peng Shepherd, and Howard Tayler

You probably already know what footnotes are¹, but have you ever seen a story told through the footnotes²?  It’s similar to the story-within-a-story structure, but there’s more to it than that. In this episode our guest host Peng Shepherd explores footnote storytelling³ with us.

Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson

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¹ This is an example of a footnote.
² This is not an example of footnote storytelling.
³ With the addition of a third footnote, maaaybe there’s a beginning, middle, and end, and therefore a story?

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Read the short story “STET” by Sarah Gailey, then take a short story you like (or one which you wrote yourself) and try to add footnotes to it in a similar way; either to expand upon the story, or to deliver a twist or contradiction to the story told in the body of the text.

Molly on the Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal, illustrated by Diana Maya

Archive Seasons 1-6, Season 05, Theory and Technique

Writing Excuses 5.20: More Dialog Exercises

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The rules: Write dialog with no dialog tags and no narration. Write it in such a way that we get character, conflict, and setting. We did this a few weeks ago, and have more examples from you, our daring, sharing listeners!

We ran waaay long this time, but it’s okay because we spent a bunch of time reading the submissions. After each reading we discuss what went right and what went wrong, and what to learn from it.

Lots of principles come out of this, including avoiding Maid-and-Butler dialog, how to write natural banter, how to establish a character with that character’s voice, and how dialog-only, “white-room” pieces just can’t tell certain types of stories effectively.

Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: Empire of the East, by Fred Saberhagen, narrated by Raymond Todd

Writing Prompt: Brandon decided to read the first two paragraphs of Empire of the East to us, because it’s all dialog and seemed to fit.

Special Guest Appearance: Howard’s pants. We haven’t heard from them in almost a month. They’re back.

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