Writing Excuses

We're back for 2013 and Season 8, so let's start it off by answering all your questions! That's right, it's time for a fast-paced, lightning round of microcasting! It's like eight very, very short podcasts in one.

* Why do some authors only ever come out with one or two books?

* What's your process for writing fast under artificial deadlines (NaNoWriMo)?

* How do you avoid getting bogged down in explanation?

* What happened to your Hero of a Thousand Faces episode? (Whoops! See below.)

* Are there concerns or pitfalls regarding the use of metaphors and similes in genre fiction?

* What are some pitfalls to writing short stories?

* How do you write sex scenes? (Note: This particular question resulted in an entire episode back in Season 7. Shanna Germain to the rescue!)

* Have any of you included original poems in your work?

Whoops! We lock-stepped this episode to the release of A Memory of Light, but we ALSO locked it to air after our Hero of a Thousand Faces discussion. Crass commercialism trumps continuity! You'll get the hero's journey next week.

Incidentally: If you're eligible to nominate things for the 2013 Hugo Awards, here's a list of the things we've done which are eligible.

And now, for the very last episode of Season 7, we shall chance taking a look forward. Is this prognostication, or reckless abandon? Neither! We get asked a lot about how the industry is changing, and how we're adjusting to what we see happening. This isn't us predicting the future: this is us interpreting what we're seeing, and then describing how we plan to react.

* Mary suggests that we're seeing a swing from Fantasy to Science Fiction as the dominant speculative genre, and but she doesn't plan to start writing nothing but sci-fi as a result.

* Dan calls out a trend towards supplemental materials -- shorts that tie in to flagship novels. He's already taking part in this, and plans to keep doing it.

* Howard hits the hot-button of "e-publishing," and calls it "shortening the value chain." He's been making a living with it since it was basically brand-new, but he plans to continue to exploit the disruptions it creates -- sometimes by lengthening the value chain.

* Brandon sees increasing pressures for authors to promote themselves, (largely the result of exceptional cases of authors with good platforms), but suggests that the time can still be better spent writing more books.

And that's it for us until 2013! We'll be back next year with Season 8, and you'll only have to wait a week for it to start airing.

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 there a few weeks back.)

Hopefully this excuses (no pun intended) the fact that this episode is a full three days late. Merry Christmas!

Let's talk about secret histories. A secret history is a subset of alternate history, in which historical events are given new explanations, typically fantastical ones, but in which the reader is invited to believe that this is the world we all currently live in.

We mention Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Tim Powers' Last Call, and Jo Walton's Among Others, and why secret history has the appeal it does, especially when it's done well. And because you want to know how to do it well, we spend some time on that, as well as discussing some of the ethics of creating secret histories in the first place.

We're drawing to the close of Season 7, so here's some microcasting (that's what we call a fast-paced Q&A) where we field your questions. Here are your questions:

* What are your embarrassing early projects?

* How do you tell if your idea is too big for the story you're working on?

* How do you avoid discouragement?

* How do you handle multiple magic systems in one book?

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 episodes (49 and 50) made reference to this one, which was recorded before they were, and many of you were confused. We were even confused! But enough about the behind-the-scenes recording process. On with the episode!

Mary pitches us three story sketches, and we pick one to brainstorm. This, by the way, is also how Mary works with her agent. After the pitches, we select the one that doesn't have much of a story yet.

And then it's a brainstorming session. If you've ever wondered where we (or anybody else) gets their ideas, and more importantly, how they refine them, this is a must-listen.

Mary has a distinctive outlining methodology, and this episode is all about it. She tells us about roadmaps, layers, thumbnails, under paintings, synopses, and more, in the order in which those elements usually appear.

The discussion of pacing vs. plot is particularly useful. Especially if you're Howard.

Mary then takes us through the process of outlining a specific short story which, as of this cast, she had not yet written. Also, this episode is part of a sequence that was recorded in a different order than that in which it aired. Our bad! Here's the one you probably wanted to listen to first.

The outline itself can be found here.

We haven't discussed beginnings this in a while, and when we did, we summed it up with "in late, out early." Now we're going to talk about what needs to be present when you're "in." We talk about tone, and how the tone you set in your beginning is a promise made to your reader, using examples from George R.R. Martin and David Brin. We also talk about how useful (and how dangerously trite) a labeled prologue can be, and how important it is to establish a setting, especially in genre fiction.

This episode appears out of order with something else we recorded which we refer to, specifically a piece Mary is working on. Tantalizing, yes? Here is the episode you probably wanted to hear first.

Brandon and Mary are back to offer you some last-minute help.

Are you stuck? We have a tip to get you un-stuck.

Is it being difficult? We will help you approach the difficulty differently, in a way you are certain to hate (and thank us for later.)

Sure, there are only two days left, and this was originally recorded to air while you still had a week, but don't use our lateness as an excuse for slacking off. Slack ON!

Need additional motivation! writtenkitten.net!

A while back one of the former storyboard artists at Pixar, Emma Coats, (@lawnrocket on Twitter) started tweeting the "22 Pixar Storytelling Rules" And now the cast of Writing Excuses reviews them, and offers some applications.

These rules cover character development, plot structure, process, and much more. No, we weren't able to give them all deep coverage, but this serves as a great refresher on lots of things we've covered in the past.

You were expecting to hear from Howard on Wednesday, right? HAH! That deadline just FLEW by.

But Howard is here for you now. It's Black Friday, November 23rd, 2012, and you've probably been counting words...