Season 04 – Writing Excuses: Recent Episodes
Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler
The last of our three recorded-live episodes is also the last episode of Writing Excuses Season 4. We took questions from the audience, and answered them with ABSOLUTE APLOMB.
Questions asked include:
How did we, as beginning writers, manage to write while holding down day-jobs and/or going to school? What is the process for getting published? How do you portray the various dynamics of an ensemble cast? How do you keep tension up when death isn't a problem for your characters? How do you make the transition from writing fan-fiction to writing original fiction? How important is it for an author to stay in touch with the fans online and at events? What do you do when your cast of characters has grown too large for you to manage it? What was the biggest stumbling-block for our creativity, and how did we overcome it?
You want the answers? Have a listen!
Writing Prompt: You walk out of a bookstore into torrential rain, and Howard attacks you with the POWER OF THUNDER.
Recorded live at Dragons & Fairy Tales, this episode is for anybody who has a novel or two (or more) sitting in the bottom of their trunk. What are the best ways to re-use old material you've set aside? We talk about rewriting entire novels, repurposing plots or characters, and moving stories from one place to another.
Sometimes we do this because an idea is just too good to let sit, but the execution on that idea (at least the first time around) wasn't good enough. And sometimes we shouldn't do it at all.
Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: Feed by Mira Grant - it's 1/3 zombie novel, 2/3 political thriller.
Writing Prompt: "Interspeciated workplace." Go!
Prompt #2: You just got a "Cease & Desist" from a webcartoonist...
Audience Noises: Delivered on cue, thanks to cleverly positioned signs...
This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible.
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Recorded live at Dragons & Fairy Tales in Eagle Mountain, Utah, this episode features the work of several brave souls who submitted their first paragraphs to us for critique.
We are not American Idol -- we're not out to rip these to shreds. We offer constructive criticism, highlight the good we find, and point out where improvements could be employed.
Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: The Desert Spear by Peter V. Brett, which Howard loves because of the risks the author took.
Writing Prompt: You're writing in your journal for the first time in ten years, and the last ten years included the invasion of Earth.
That Thunder You Can Barely Hear: It was really, really loud. And funny.
This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible.
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*Note: From the Audible website, here are the terms of the free membership. Read the fine print, please!
Audible® Free Trial Details Get your first 14 days of the AudibleListener® Gold membership plan free, which includes one audiobook credit. After your 14 day trial, your membership will renew each month for just $14.95 per month so you can continue to receive one audiobook credit per month plus members-only discounts on all audio purchases. A very small number of titles are more than one credit. Cancel your membership before your free trial period is up and you will not be charged. Thereafter, cancel anytime, effective the next billing cycle. Any unused audiobook credits will be lost at cancellation.
How to build a future setting for your novel by extrapolating from the present, working backwards from the story you want to tell, and getting those to meet in the middle.
Brandon, Dan, and Howard start at the ending and work their way backwards for your enjoyment.
What do you do when, halfway through the book you're writing, you realize it needs to be completely rebuilt? More importantly, how do you figure this out in the first place? This podcast came about as a result of a question from a listener, but the question was specific to "what if you find out it's too derivative?" As it turns out, that's just one of the many problems you can discover midway through a novel.
We spend the first half of the cast discussing how each of us identify the showstopping problems that require us to overhaul our works.
We then talk about the process of fixing things that might, at first glance, appear to be completely unfixable. Sometimes we shift pieces of paper around, sometimes we push blocks of text around in our word processors, and sometimes we have to do something really significant, like adding an entirely new character or point-of-view.
One of the best features of this particular 'cast is the bit in the second half where Howard and Dan grill Brandon about his process for Towers of Midnight. Wheel of Time fans won't find any spoilers, but they'll certainly gain some insight.
Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: The Warded Man, by Peter V. Brett, which Howard loves because of the "stand-up-and-cheer" moments of heroism throughout the book.
Writing Prompt: Take something you've already written, grab a throwaway concept in that story, and rewrite that scene or chapter so the throwaway bit is now the major focus.
Moment of Extreme Hubris: "I give lessons." Listen for it.
That Episode on Stealing for Fun and Profit: Right here.
This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible.
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*Note: From the Audible website, here are the terms of the free membership. Read the fine print, please!
Audible® Free Trial Details Get your first 14 days of the AudibleListener® Gold membership plan free, which includes one audiobook credit. After your 14 day trial, your membership will renew each month for just $14.95 per month so you can continue to receive one audiobook credit per month plus members-only discounts on all audio purchases. A very small number of titles are more than one credit. Cancel your membership before your free trial period is up and you will not be charged. Thereafter, cancel anytime, effective the next billing cycle. Any unused audiobook credits will be lost at cancellation.
James Dashner and Julie Wright talk covers, titles, and first lines with Brandon and Dan.
James Dashner and Julie Wright join Brandon and Dan at CONduit in Salt Lake City, and may end up wishing they hadn't. Brandon throws sets of story concepts at the crew, and asks them to quickly frame serious stories with a solid settings and cool characters.
The first set of story elements:
Church accountant contact lenses that ruin your vision brain implants
The second set of story elements:
Hell for English Majors Key that will lock any door
The third set of story elements:
Janitors are trying to take over the world They're going to be stopped by a superhero with no arms It can't be silly
Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan
Writing Prompt: This whole episode was made of writing prompts. Pick one!
Fun Random Fact: Howard worked as a church accountant for a while and he owns contact lenses that do, in fact, impair his vision.
Freaky Bonus Thanks: We couldn't have recorded this episode without help from our friends at Dungeon Crawlers Radio.
This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible.
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*Note: From the Audible website, here are the terms of the free membership. Read the fine print, please!
Audible® Free Trial Details Get your first 14 days of the AudibleListener® Gold membership plan free, which includes one audiobook credit. After your 14 day trial, your membership will renew each month for just $14.95 per month so you can continue to receive one audiobook credit per month plus members-only discounts on all audio purchases. A very small number of titles are more than one credit. Cancel your membership before your free trial period is up and you will not be charged. Thereafter, cancel anytime, effective the next billing cycle. Any unused audiobook credits will be lost at cancellation.
Janci Patterson and Robison Wells have both sold books very recently. Brandon and Dan put them on the spot and ask how they did it.
Live from CONduit in Salt Lake City, L.E. Modessit Jr. and the Writing Excuses crew answer questions from the audience.
L.E. Modesitt and Robison Wells join Brandon and Dan for a discussion of "practical" fantasy. Recorded live at CONduit in Salt Lake City.
Some new strategies for getting yourself published. Obviously we guarantee exactly none of them.
Forget "Anxiety of Influence." Let's talk about how to borrow, beg, and outright steal from pop culture, history, and mythology.
Sandra Tayler, Dawn Wells, and Kenny Pike take over the 'cast with some coaching from Dan (and heckling from Howard) to talk about what it's like to live with an artist. We cover the ups and the downs, and share embarrassing anecdotes because we know you want to hear them, and we're not afraid of the fact that the Internet Never Forgets.
Beyond the fact that Sandra and Dawn are stay-at-home moms, and Kenny is a stay-at-home Dad, the three of them each have important roles to play in their spouses' careers, and those roles go far beyond mere cheerleading and moral support. We talk about that, and then Sandra, Dawn, and Kenny offer advice to those who may find themselves as significant others to creative types.
Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: Wings, by Aprilynne Pike, in which a 15-year-old girl discovers that she's a fairie, and it's nothing like the storybooks suggested.
Writing Prompt: From the desk of the Fake AP Stylebook -- write something involving a blue, Italian, rocket-propelled, monkey-piloted dirtbike.
Bit Jordo Accidentally Left In: IRS agents will delight in the dirt that runs from 10:43 to 10:54. Whoopsie!
Spanish Pun We Didn't Use Even One Time: "Writing Esposas."
This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible.
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*Note: From the Audible website, here are the terms of the free membership. Read the fine print, please!
Audible® Free Trial Details Get your first 14 days of the AudibleListener® Gold membership plan free, which includes one audiobook credit. After your 14 day trial, your membership will renew each month for just $14.95 per month so you can continue to receive one audiobook credit per month plus members-only discounts on all audio purchases. A very small number of titles are more than one credit. Cancel your membership before your free trial period is up and you will not be charged. Thereafter, cancel anytime, effective the next billing cycle. Any unused audiobook credits will be lost at cancellation.
What's the fourth wall? What happens when you break it? Should you be breaking it at all?
A brainstorming session fueled by New Scientist's "13 More Things We Don't Understand" article.
How to write multiple viewpoints effectively, using the tool for the right reasons and avoiding pitfalls.
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 enjoyed last week's discussion with the sweeping generalizations and the appropriate application thereof, this 'cast should be every bit as intriguing. What are teenagers interested in, and how is that different from what interests adults? Do stories need to be simplified for teenagers, or are we underestimating them when we do that? How does the age of your protagonist determine the age-group to whom your publisher will market the book? Why is it genre-appropriate for Dumbledore to repeatedly withhold crucial information from Harry, Hermione, and Ron?
Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: Dragon's Blood by Jane Yolen, because a pit-fighting dragon is way cooler than the dragons of Christopher Paolini.
Writing Prompt: Take a protagonist younger than about 16 and put him or her in charge of a group of adults.
This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible.
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*Note: From the Audible website, here are the terms of the free membership. Read the fine print, please!
Audible® Free Trial Details Get your first 14 days of the AudibleListener® Gold membership plan free, which includes one audiobook credit. After your 14 day trial, your membership will renew each month for just $14.95 per month so you can continue to receive one audiobook credit per month plus members-only discounts on all audio purchases. A very small number of titles are more than one credit. Cancel your membership before your free trial period is up and you will not be charged. Thereafter, cancel anytime, effective the next billing cycle. Any unused audiobook credits will be lost at cancellation.
Jessica Day George joins us again, this time to tell us how to write men. Brace yourselves for the bandying-about of generalities, for painting with broad brushes, and for assorted other potential points of offense!
Let's say, for a moment, that you're not a man. How do you go about writing men? Now let's turn the question around... suppose you ARE a man. How do YOU write men? And now let's cut to the heart of the matter by comparing these two processes. Are they different? Should they be? And where do knitting and superconductivity enter into the picture?
This is why it's so cool to have Jessica with us Y-chromosome types. We all get to learn stuff.
Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: Maze Runner, by James Dashner
Writing Prompt: Alternative history! Take an absurd 19th-century folk belief, treat it as absolute fact, and write a story hinging on that principle.
This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible.
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*Note: From the Audible website, here are the terms of the free membership. Read the fine print, please!
Audible® Free Trial Details Get your first 14 days of the AudibleListener® Gold membership plan free, which includes one audiobook credit. After your 14 day trial, your membership will renew each month for just $14.95 per month so you can continue to receive one audiobook credit per month plus members-only discounts on all audio purchases. A very small number of titles are more than one credit. Cancel your membership before your free trial period is up and you will not be charged. Thereafter, cancel anytime, effective the next billing cycle. Any unused audiobook credits will be lost at cancellation.
Recorded live at LTUE 2010, here's a high-energy Q&A session with the Writing Excuses crew and our special guest James Dashner, author of The Maze Runner. We cover outlining vs. discovery writing, the return to the hairy palate, education for writers, killing people, whether or not we want a bagel, pragmatic approaches, authors who don't inspire us (and by "us" we mean "James Dashner"), and cooking up complex plots.
Note: Brandon says "Episode 6" but he was totally wrong. This is 4.7, for real.
Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: James pitches one of his favorites to us -- False Memory by Dean Koontz
Writing Prompt: You're flying in an airplane when a wing falls off... but the plane keeps going.
This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible.
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*Note: From the Audible website, here are the terms of the free membership. Read the fine print, please!
Audible® Free Trial Details Get your first 14 days of the AudibleListener® Gold membership plan free, which includes one audiobook credit. After your 14 day trial, your membership will renew each month for just $14.95 per month so you can continue to receive one audiobook credit per month plus members-only discounts on all audio purchases. A very small number of titles are more than one credit. Cancel your membership before your free trial period is up and you will not be charged. Thereafter, cancel anytime, effective the next billing cycle. Any unused audiobook credits will be lost at cancellation.
This episode was recorded live at Life, The Universe, & Everything 28, The BYU Symposium on Science Fiction and Fantasy, and features, among other things, our largest audience ever.
Oh, and James Dashner, our friend and the author of The Maze Runner.
It also features what has to be our roughest start ever. We don't get to actual content until around four minutes in. Seventeen minutes long, because you're in a hurry, and we're pretending this was an object lesson. Also, we love picking on our friend James.
Pacing! What do we do so that people keep turning pages? Which useful tricks do we hate? Which subtle methods do we prefer? And most importantly, what does James Dashner do? We talk about reveals, punchlines, cliffhangers, chapter length, and the "Brandon Avalanche." Also, we talk briefly about the look on my face, and the roof of James' mouth.
Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: Ender's Game: Special 20th Anniversary Edition by Orson Scott Card
Writing Prompt: Someone opens a door, and finds a wet, seeping cardboard box on the doorstep.
This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible.
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*Note: From the Audible website, here are the terms of the free membership. Read the fine print, please!
Audible® Free Trial Details Get your first 14 days of the AudibleListener® Gold membership plan free, which includes one audiobook credit. After your 14 day trial, your membership will renew each month for just $14.95 per month so you can continue to receive one audiobook credit per month plus members-only discounts on all audio purchases. A very small number of titles are more than one credit. Cancel your membership before your free trial period is up and you will not be charged. Thereafter, cancel anytime, effective the next billing cycle. Any unused audiobook credits will be lost at cancellation.
Roll for initiative, folks! Brandon, Dan, and Howard all play tabletop role-playing games, and sometimes even play together. The question of the hour (well... quarter-hour) is "how can these games help your world building, storytelling, and anything else having to do with good writing?"
If this 'cast doesn't make you want to play RPGs with your friends, congratulations on a successful Saving Throw vs. Dark Podcast Magic. If this 'cast doesn't make you want to sit down and start writing, you have our condolences. That's not the saving throw you were supposed to make!
In the spirit of not-necessarily-related personal information: This week we learn that Howard is moister than Dan.
In related news, see the Writing Excuses crew this coming Saturday, February 13th, at the Life, The Universe and Everything Symposium at Brigham Young University in the Wilkinson Center. We'll be there for the full symposium, but on Saturday we'll actually be recording in front of an audience. You'll also get to meet Bob Defendi, who gets mentioned at least three times in this episode.
Audiobook Plug: Nation, by Terry Pratchett
Writing Prompt: Don't write about players being sucked into their RPGs. That's been done a lot. Suck the RPG characters out into our world, and see what happens.
This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible.
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*Note: From the Audible website, here are the terms of the free membership. Read the fine print, please!
Audible® Free Trial Details Get your first 14 days of the AudibleListener® Gold membership plan free, which includes one audiobook credit. After your 14 day trial, your membership will renew each month for just $14.95 per month so you can continue to receive one audiobook credit per month plus members-only discounts on all audio purchases. A very small number of titles are more than one credit. Cancel your membership before your free trial period is up and you will not be charged. Thereafter, cancel anytime, effective the next billing cycle. Any unused audiobook credits will be lost at cancellation.
We're going to wade into a recent e-brouhaha, but it's not going to be the Amazon vs Macmillan one. No, this is the one where Dean Wesley Smith argued that authors do not need agents. But you don't need to read that to appreciate this 'cast.
So... do you need an agent? This depends on the operating definition of "you" and "agent." What kind of contractual experience do you have? What kinds of things will your agent do for you? And if you decide you do need an agent, how do you go about identifying the agent who is right for you? We'll cover all of this and more!
Unrelated to agents (but definitely in the "and more" category): Howard reveals deeply personal information in this podcast!
Audiobook Plug: The Maze Runner, by James Dashner
Writing Prompt: Write a story in which a bestselling recluse author dies, and his agent scrambles to keep the career alive without telling anybody. Skin in the game, baby!
This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible.
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*Note: From the Audible website, here are the terms of the free membership. Read the fine print, please!
Audible® Free Trial Details Get your first 14 days of the AudibleListener® Gold membership plan free, which includes one audiobook credit. After your 14 day trial, your membership will renew each month for just $14.95 per month so you can continue to receive one audiobook credit per month plus members-only discounts on all audio purchases. A very small number of titles are more than one credit. Cancel your membership before your free trial period is up and you will not be charged. Thereafter, cancel anytime, effective the next billing cycle. Any unused audiobook credits will be lost at cancellation.
How do you avoid letting other people's work creep into your own? We're all influenced by the media we partake in whether we admit it or not. How much of those influences should we allow into our own work? How do we control that?
As we engage the topic, we admit that sometimes we want to be influenced, and that letting those influences do their work is a good thing. But this isn't the podcast where we cover that. This is the podcast where we talk about tuning that out.
We also talk about tuning out the influence of those who are critiquing or commenting on our work. These might be fellow members of the writing group or other early readers, or they might (especially in Howard's case) be outspoken members of your audience ranting on web forums or wikis.
And then we talk about whether or not we should allow Brandon to influence our work. Take that, Brandon! (Take it, in fact, all the way out to nineteen minutes and six seconds!)
Audiobook Plug: The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Writing Prompt: Write a story, and pretend that a famous historical figure is looking over your shoulder and offering advice while you write.
This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible.Visit http://AudiblePodcast.com/excuse for a free trial membership*.
*Note: From the Audible website, here are the terms of the free membership. Read the fine print, please!
Audible® Free Trial Details Get your first 14 days of the AudibleListener® Gold membership plan free, which includes one audiobook credit. After your 14 day trial, your membership will renew each month for just $14.95 per month so you can continue to receive one audiobook credit per month plus members-only discounts on all audio purchases. A very small number of titles are more than one credit. Cancel your membership before your free trial period is up and you will not be charged. Thereafter, cancel anytime, effective the next billing cycle. Any unused audiobook credits will be lost at cancellation.
If you want to write a good, heroic hero, this is the podcast for you. We're not necessarily talking about the archetypical, classically-defined, capital-H "Hero" in this podcast, though. We're talking about what makes readers stand up and cheer.
And yes, this can be applied to the archetype, but let's not digress.
We talk about perseverance, sacrifice, hard work, fear-facing, and a bunch of other attributes that we find inherently heroic.
Audiobook Plug: The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell
Writing Prompt: Write a scene in which a character makes a noble sacrifice and is not rewarded.
Mystery Soundbite! We have no idea who those gents with mouthfuls of marshmallows were, but Jordo caught them on tape...
This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible. Visit http://AudiblePodcast.com/excuse for a free trial membership*.
*Note: From the Audible website, here are the terms of the free membership. Read the fine print, please!
Audible® Free Trial Details Get your first 14 days of the AudibleListener® Gold membership plan free, which includes one audiobook credit. After your 14 day trial, your membership will renew each month for just $14.95 per month so you can continue to receive one audiobook credit per month plus members-only discounts on all audio purchases. A very small number of titles are more than one credit. Cancel your membership before your free trial period is up and you will not be charged. Thereafter, cancel anytime, effective the next billing cycle. Any unused audiobook credits will be lost at cancellation.
Welcome to Writing Excuses Season 4, featuring new, shorter episode titles! Also, if you don't count the bonus episodes or the Parsec Award Acceptance Speech, this is our 100th Episode!
Brandon kicks this off by asking "What does Howard do that's funny?" and then by categorizing the sorts of things he finds Howard doing. Obviously this puts no pressure whatsoever on Howard to be funny during the podcast. Which is good, because he really wasn't, cold medicine notwithstanding. Again, we manage talk about humor without being funny.
We manage to cover character-based humor, physical humor, and non-sequitur, brushing alongside cognitive humor and exaggeration as we go, but hey... we only had 15 minutes to work with. Oh, and we ran over by 4 minutes and fifty-seven seconds.
Writing Prompt: Write something funny using non-sequiturs and cold medicine.
This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible. Visit http://AudiblePodcast.com/excuse for a free trial membership*.
*Note: From the Audible website, here are the terms of the free membership. Read the fine print, please!
Audible® Free Trial Details Get your first 14 days of the AudibleListener® Gold membership plan free, which includes one audiobook credit. After your 14 day trial, your membership will renew each month for just $14.95 per month so you can continue to receive one audiobook credit per month plus members-only discounts on all audio purchases. A very small number of titles are more than one credit. Cancel your membership before your free trial period is up and you will not be charged. Thereafter, cancel anytime, effective the next billing cycle. Any unused audiobook credits will be lost at cancellation.