Writing Excuses 7.2: World Building Flora and Fauna
Let’s build the plants and animals for your science fiction or fantasy book! We begin with a discussion about naming, and about deciding how much evolutionary biology to put into creating cool...
View ArticleWriting Excuses 7.11: More Microcasting
It’s again time for us to do a Q&A by any other name! Is it better to include romance, horror, SF, or other genre elements to flesh out a story, or should the story stand alone? Any tips for...
View ArticleWriting Excuses 7.21: Project In Depth — Force Multiplication
We’re doing something new, and Howard gets to go first. The plan is to take something one of us has completed, and which you’ve had ample time to read, and grill the creator about the project....
View ArticleWriting Excuses 7.24: Project in Depth — Way of Kings
There are a lot of things that Our Very Own Brandon Sanderson can get away with. In The Way of Kings, he gets away with not just one, but TWO prologues. In this ‘cast Mary, Dan, and Howard get to grill...
View ArticleWriting Excuses 7.31: Project in Depth — Hollow City
It’s time for our fourth “Project in Depth” episode, and now Dan Wells is on the spot. The Hollow City is Dan’s latest book, and while it’s not a new John Cleaver book, it’s still a supernatural...
View ArticleWriting Excuses 7.32: Astronomy 101 for Writers
Eric James Stone, Nebula winner and “graduate” of NASA’s Launchpad workshop, joins us to talk about astronomy in our world-building. We talk about tides, habitable zones, planetary orbits and axial...
View ArticleWriting Excuses 7.34: How to Start the Next One
Let’s talk about how to start the next one — not the next book in a series, necessarily. Your next project might not leverage the worldbuilding or characters you used in your previous project. We...
View ArticleWriting Excuses 7.36: Writing Gaming Fiction with Monte Cook
Fans of role-playing games should know the name Monte Cook well, because he’s been writing some of the highest-profile tomes in the field for two-and-a-half decades now. Monte joins us in front of a...
View ArticleWriting Excuses 7.51: Brainstorming with Mary
We try. We really do. But sometimes, in our efforts to make sure we’ve got a large enough queue of episodes to keep you edutained and entercated, we get things out of order. Badly. Our last two...
View ArticleWriting Excuses 7.53: Secret History
Hey, guess what 2012 has fifty-three of? Mondays! So you’re getting a fifty-third episode of “Writing Excuses” this season. (You’re also going to be getting a fifty-fourth, because we stuck an extra in...
View ArticleWriting Excuses 8.22: Pre-writing with E.J. Patten
E.J. “Eric” Patten joins us for a discussion of pre-writing. His first book, Return to Exile, came out in 2011, and The Legend Thief released in March of 2013. What is pre-writing? Eric walks us...
View ArticleWriting Excuses Season 3 Episode 17: Characters & Worldbuilding Q&A with Mary...
Mary is back! We still had a Mary Robinette Kowal episode from WorldCon 67, and now you have it too! We take questions from the audience, and then answer them. Here are the questions: What do you do if...
View ArticleWriting Excuses Season 3 Episode 13: Dialects and In-World Jargon
Howard here, folks. On behalf of the entire Writing Excuses team I’d like to apologize in advance for that which you are about to receive. You know how sometimes one of those crazy thoughts seems like...
View ArticleWriting Excuses Season 3 Episode 3: Stumping Howard at Conduit
Howard here… I’ve learned that it’s a really bad idea to run out for a bio-break between podcasts. When I returned to the packed panel room I could tell that everyone’s attitude towards me was subtly...
View ArticleWriting Excuses Season 3 Episode 1: World-Building History
Welcome to Season 3 of Writing Excuses! With eighteen hours and fourteen months of podcasting history behind us, it seems appropriate for us to talk about history, and how to write it. We talk about...
View ArticleWriting Excuses Season 2 Episode 24: Writing Habits and Q&A with Tracy Hickman
Tracy Hickman joins us again at “Life, The Universe, and Everything,” and in this episode we let Brandon ask him random questions while Dan and Howard chime in with comments that hopefully don’t...
View ArticleWriting Excuses Season 2 Episode 18: World Building Governments
Let’s get back to world-building, and dig into a tough one: government. In this case we’re talking about government as part of the backdrop, rather than political intrigue as part of the plot. Are you...
View ArticleWriting Excuses Season 2 Episode 16: Non-Human Races
The Writing Excuses crew returns to world-building, this time to discuss the creation of non-human races. Why do genre-fiction writers use aliens and monsters, short folk, tusked folk, or any other...
View ArticleWriting Excuses Episode 35: Voice, Tone and Style
Everyone says you can’t teach style–each writer just has to figure it out on his or her own. Well, we here at Writing Excuses have never met an ultimatum we didn’t immediately challenge, so today we...
View ArticleWriting Excuses Episodes 32: Talking Exposition with Patrick Rothfuss
In this, the last of our WorldCon 66 episodes, Brandon, Dan, and Howard interview Name of the Wind author Patrick Rothfuss. We discuss exposition, and how not to bore people as you move them through...
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