Writing Excuses

Your Hosts: Dan, Mary, Aliette, and Howard, with special guest Emma Newman Emma Newman, author, audio book narrator, and podcaster, joined us on the Baltic sea for WXR 2017, where, six days after a brilliant presentation on overcoming fear, she recorded a session with us on the same topic. The class was just that good. Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and was mastered by Alex Jackson

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Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Amal, and Maurice Character backstories: these are the tales that describe how the characters in your story became who they are by the time they arrive in the book. How much backstory needs to be written before you start in on the manuscript? How much needs to be in the manuscript itself? And how much backstory is too much?

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Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard What motivates us? What really motivates us? Why? (Note: our motivations are probably not in service of some overarching plot.) How can we use this information to believably motivate characters? Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson

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Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard, with Jamahl Crouch Jamahl Crouch (Illusmm1 on Instagram) joined us at the GenCon Indy Writers Symposium to talk about what writers get wrong about street art. Jamahl is many things, and one of those is "street artist." Jamahl Crouch, pen on sketchbook, GenCon Indy 2017 We discuss the differences between graffiti and street art, where things like commissioned murals fit into the scene, and how the societal pressures (read: "it's not legal to paint on this wall") affect the form. 

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Your Hosts: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard For our purposes, the term "flat character" refers to a character who lacks the depth required to maintain reader interest. In this episode we discuss how to avoid putting flat characters front-and-center in our writing, and how we go about fixing manuscripts that have flat character problems.

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Recorded live at WXR 2017. Your Hosts: Dan, Mary, Aliette, and Howard, with special guest Mike Stop Continues Mike has multiple areas of expertise, but for this episode he's talking to us specifically about the things that writers get wrong about being a gay man. Credits: This episode was recorded live by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Andrew Jackson.

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Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Amal, and Maurice Let's talk about characters who have conflict built right into them; characters whose attributes and attitudes might seem to contradict one another; characters who like, y'know... actual people. (And let's talk about how to write them.)

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Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard Character voice, the flow, order, and feel of words that is unique to a particular character, is extremely useful in defining characters for the reader. In this episode we discuss our tools for shaping character voices, and the ways in which we make sure each one unique. Liner Notes: We talked about authorial voice in episode 12.10, and about 1st-person Voice in 12.2. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson

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Your Cast: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, Howard You had questions about heroes, villains, and main characters. We have answers! Here are the questions: How do you make planned power increases not seem like an ass-pull¹? What do you do when your villain is more interesting/engaging than your hero? How do you know when a character is unnecessary and needs to be removed from the story, or killed off in the story? What tricks do you use when you want the reader to mistakenly believe a character is a hero, rather than a villain? Which is more fun for you: creating a villain, or creating a hero? How many side characters can you reasonably juggle in a novel? What are the drawbacks to making your villain a POV character? If your villain doesn't show up until late in the story, how do you make their eventual appearance seem justified? How do you get readers to like a character who is a jerk? Liner Footnotes ¹ 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 of the word "noun" indirectly in the final panel of this strip. ³ For those unfamiliar with the extraction-from-orifice idiom, it means "make it up on the spot," with a negative connotation, suggesting that the reader can TELL that this was invented in a hurry.

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Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard, with special guest Charlaine Harris Charlaine Harris joined us in front of a live audience at the GenCon Writers Symposium to talk with us about secondary characters—why they're so important, why they can be difficult to write well, and how she brings her secondary characters to life without giving them a POV.

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