Writing Excuses

John Brown rejoins us for this discussion of repetition. How do we, as writers, avoid repeating ourselves? We're not just talking about the literal re-use of words and phrases here. We're interested in avoiding the re-use of themes, character arcs, and plotlines. Forget the problems Howard might have coming up with a new joke... he (and all of us) need to reach further than that to keep things fresh. This week's Writing Excuses is Brought to you by Servant of a Dark God by John Brown. Writing Prompt: The princess is trying to eat a pie, but someone is trying to stop her. Oh, and the fate of the world depends on the outcome.

Our Sponsors:
* Check out MasterClass and use my code masterclass.com/excuses for a great deal: https://MasterClass.com
* Check out Talkiatry and use my code talkiatry.com/WX for a great deal: https://www.talkiatry.com
* Check out Tin Can and use my code tincan.com/WX for a great deal: https://tincan.kids


Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 your characters revolt and start to take over the story? When you became a writer what most surprised you with its difficulty? How do you build the history for the worlds your books are set in? Three huge questions, TWELVE answers. Enjoy! Oh... and your writing prompt: write about The Predestined Monkey.

Our Sponsors:
* Check out MasterClass and use my code masterclass.com/excuses for a great deal: https://MasterClass.com
* Check out Talkiatry and use my code talkiatry.com/WX for a great deal: https://www.talkiatry.com
* Check out Tin Can and use my code tincan.com/WX for a great deal: https://tincan.kids


Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

John Brown, debut author of Servant of a Dark God, joins us for this discussion of the avoidance of self-insertion. In polite company we call this the "Mary Sue," because it's difficult to say "self-insertion" in polite company, much less with a straight face. In broader terms, what we're covering is voice, and how to make our characters sound like themselves rather than us. This week's Writing Excuses is Brought to you by Servant of a Dark God by John Brown.

Our Sponsors:
* Check out MasterClass and use my code masterclass.com/excuses for a great deal: https://MasterClass.com
* Check out Talkiatry and use my code talkiatry.com/WX for a great deal: https://www.talkiatry.com
* Check out Tin Can and use my code tincan.com/WX for a great deal: https://tincan.kids


Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

We won a Parsec Award at Dragon*Con, and it's a darn good thing we weren't there in person to give an acceptance speech. Otherwise this podcast might have happened live, in front of hundreds of people with sharp and/or heavy things in their pockets.

Our Sponsors:
* Check out MasterClass and use my code masterclass.com/excuses for a great deal: https://MasterClass.com
* Check out Talkiatry and use my code talkiatry.com/WX for a great deal: https://www.talkiatry.com
* Check out Tin Can and use my code tincan.com/WX for a great deal: https://tincan.kids


Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Mary Robinette Kowal joins us again, live at WorldCon 67 in Montreal! This time we fell back on that tried-and-true "Questions from the Audience" format, so the topic is pretty much what the audience asks for on the fly. If the questions were all over the map, our answers require a new school of cartography. It all kind of fits under "process," though, so for categorization purposes, we're calling it that. Also, we failed to discover the Northwest Passage. Maybe we'll find it next week, when Mary joins us for a third episode for more questions from the WorldCon 67 crowd. In completely unrelated news, something cool happened to us at Dragon*Con on Saturday. We'll talk about it in an upcoming 'cast.

Our Sponsors:
* Check out MasterClass and use my code masterclass.com/excuses for a great deal: https://MasterClass.com
* Check out Talkiatry and use my code talkiatry.com/WX for a great deal: https://www.talkiatry.com
* Check out Tin Can and use my code tincan.com/WX for a great deal: https://tincan.kids


Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Aside from being a delightful author and a Campbell award winner, Mary Robinette Kowal is a professional puppeteer. She joined us at WorldCon 67 in Montreal, and totally schooled us in front of a live audience. I mean it. TOTALLY SCHOOLED. If you want to learn something new about writing, and I mean something really NEW you need to listen to Mary talk about puppetry. You can't see the perpetual looks of astonishment and epiphany us jaded professionals wore during this recording, but I assure you they were there. We learned so much from Mary we decided to record two more episodes with her. Not because we felt like you, our listeners, necessarily deserved it. We wanted these recordings for ourselves. Mary required us to share. It was part of the deal.

Our Sponsors:
* Check out MasterClass and use my code masterclass.com/excuses for a great deal: https://MasterClass.com
* Check out Talkiatry and use my code talkiatry.com/WX for a great deal: https://www.talkiatry.com
* Check out Tin Can and use my code tincan.com/WX for a great deal: https://tincan.kids


Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 a good idea, and the more you talk about it the better the idea seems, and so then you actually do it and are left looking back at it with a mixture of awe and horror? This episode is like that. Brandon thought it would be funny to have a discussion about dialects in which Dan and I actually do dialects. So we did. We're all very sorry. In the spirit of eponymy, I shall now write an excuse: "It was late, and we were so tired that we thought this would be funny."

Our Sponsors:
* Check out MasterClass and use my code masterclass.com/excuses for a great deal: https://MasterClass.com
* Check out Talkiatry and use my code talkiatry.com/WX for a great deal: https://www.talkiatry.com
* Check out Tin Can and use my code tincan.com/WX for a great deal: https://tincan.kids


Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Meanwhile, several side-characters found themselves looking for a sub-plot in the tavern. Something funny, or perhaps romantic to take the load off of the main story, but still tense enough to keep the pace going. Or maybe something that will let them introduce important elements to the main plot without the reader knowing that's what's going on... And that's pretty much what subplots are, and what they're for. But if we skip to the ending that way they can't do their job! So listen to the whole eighteen-minute podcast, and we'll rejoin our main characters next week, as the automated orbital lance counts down to zero...

Our Sponsors:
* Check out MasterClass and use my code masterclass.com/excuses for a great deal: https://MasterClass.com
* Check out Talkiatry and use my code talkiatry.com/WX for a great deal: https://www.talkiatry.com
* Check out Tin Can and use my code tincan.com/WX for a great deal: https://tincan.kids


Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Let's talk "trimming." Why do it? Well... because your manuscript is longer than it needs to be. Yes, we're talking to you. AND you. And you, too. None of you are exempt! (Well... maybe YOU are, but you can't be allowed to believe it.) So... what do you trim? We've covered "Killing Your Darlings" way back in Season One Episode Three, so while those are certainly on the list of things to cut, we're going to focus on tightening your prose and reducing word-count without changing the story. So that's what we cover in a brisk, 15-minute 'cast whose synopsis is at least fifty words longer than it needs to be. Maybe fifty-two.

Our Sponsors:
* Check out MasterClass and use my code masterclass.com/excuses for a great deal: https://MasterClass.com
* Check out Talkiatry and use my code talkiatry.com/WX for a great deal: https://www.talkiatry.com
* Check out Tin Can and use my code tincan.com/WX for a great deal: https://tincan.kids


Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Last week we discussed what kinds of events that you, the aspiring author, should be attending. This week we cover what you should and shouldn't be doing there. And we start with some don'ts. The word of the day? "Booth Barnacle." If last week's 'cast was a little long-winded, this one is downright rambling, coming in at a hefty nineteen minutes and thirty-eight seconds. Oh, the anecdotes! If you thought we were name-dropping last week (Phil Foglio, Kevin J. Anderson, and Lawrence Schoen) this week we throw around names like Larry Niven, Steve Jackson, John Ringo, and Tom Doherty. We sure hope you can learn from our meandering, celebrity-brushing reminiscences. And speaking of celebrity-brushing, brush up against us this week in Montreal at the World Science Fiction Convention! The Writing Excuses Panel is on Friday from 2:00pm to 3:30pm in P-513C, and will feature all three of your Writing Excuses hosts with as-yet-unnannounced special guests from the world of publishing, editing, and of course authoring genre fiction. And again, on the topic of celebrity-brushing and networking in general: one piece of linkage you introverts (and you untrained extroverts) absolutely MUST have - "Networking 201: How to Work a Room," by Diana Rowland. The long-awaited writing prompt (last week we just gave you the first half) is... a man arrives at a convention with something important in his pocket. It is an entire universe... and it has not been peace-bonded. This week's episode of Writing Excuses is brought to you by the bad accents of Dan and Howard as they pitch Dungeon Crawlers Radio.

Our Sponsors:
* Check out MasterClass and use my code masterclass.com/excuses for a great deal: https://MasterClass.com
* Check out Talkiatry and use my code talkiatry.com/WX for a great deal: https://www.talkiatry.com
* Check out Tin Can and use my code tincan.com/WX for a great deal: https://tincan.kids


Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy