Writing Excuses

James Dashner joins us for a Q&A at Utah Valley University during Life, The Universe, and Everything.

The first question starts out amazingly rough, but the 12-year-old asking it manages to stick the landing. The questions include:

* Why is the ARC of James' first book so different from the later books?

* How do you handle paragraph- and sentence-level edits?

* How do you plot your stories?

* How do you craft endings that are both satisfying, and leave the reader wanting more?

* What do you do when your compelling villain threatens to take over the whole book?

That Panel Howard Talked About: It's actually at the end of Massively Parallel, and you can look at it right here.

James Artimus Owen joined us in front of the live audience at LTUE in February where he was the Guest of Honor. He wanted to talk with us about "voice," and specifically how to find yours. We talk about the paradox -- voice is critical, but new authors who focus how to develop theirs often end up flubbing it.

Each of us gives examples from our own work, and the result is (hopefully) encouraging. You can find your own voice, and if you focus on learning the tools of good writing that discovery is going to come quite naturally. The magic lies in recognizing it.

But we have more to offer than just platitudes. There are plenty of tips and tricks contained herein, so have a nice, long listen or two.

The Cookie That Can Only Be Baked In My Brain: A meme originally baked in the brain of the inimitable R. Stevens. Here, then, is the chocolate chip of credit where it is due.

Larry Correia joins Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard in front of a live audience at LTUE on Utah Valley University campus. Larry knows guns inside and out, and talks to us about the mistakes that writers make when putting firearms into their stories.

Most of this is simple stuff, or at least it's simple to fix, but that doesn't change the fact that we get it wrong all the time. Have a listen, follow Larry's advice, and get your guns right.

Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more... only without a big speech before the charge.

We're still tearing into Mary's first novel outline in this second part of a VERY SPECIAL two-part session of Writing Excuses. Mary reads from her outline, then Brandon, Dan, and Howard look for high-level problems like inactive protagonists, missing character arcs, or other structural issues.

As promised, this episode runs long. Hopefully you're not in that much of a hurry, because clearly we weren't smart enough to plow through all this material inside of 20 minutes.

Liner Notes: That link up there is the same as this one right here.

Mary Robinette Kowal graciously loaned us an outline she was working on in 2003. For this podcast, Mary reads from her outline, Brandon interrupts her, and we dissect. This is a brutal process. Know, fair listener, that we love Mary a lot.

And LOVE HURTS.

In completely unrelated news, Writing Excuses Season Six has been nominated for a Hugo Award for "Best Related Work." You may feel free to extend congratulations and good wishes in the comments below.

Liner Notes: Want to follow along in Mary's outline? Here it is!

Today's episode of Writing Excuses is about writing excuses -- all those handy tricks that the great authors use to prevent themselves from finishing any book before its time  (let alone its deadline.)

Get out the vacuum, grab some Q-tips and a bottle of alcohol, and make today the day that you fill your life with the sense of wonder that will permeate  your book forty years from now.

"Here, kitty kitty..."

It's a "Howard is clueless" episode! One of us, we won't name any names, didn't take enough English classes to know the basic conflict archetypes -- Man vs. Man, Man vs. Self, and Man vs. Nature. In this episode we focus on that third one.

One example of Man vs. Nature is Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey. Another is Lucifer's Hammer, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. In both of these cases, while Man vs  Nature is the main plot, Man vs. Man sub-plots keep the story moving.

We talk about the strengths of this type of story, some of the pitfalls to avoid, lots of examples of the archetype, and then we focus on what you can do to tell this sort of story well.

New Word of the Week: "Stereotropical" - a mashup of "stereotypical" and "trope." Use it when your meaning can't possibly be confused with "tropical islands in stereo."

Let's talk omniscience, because we're TOTALLY that smart. Specifically, we're talking about the omniscient viewpoints. This is the POV from which Tolkien wrote, but we see it a lot less often these days. Has it fallen out of fashion, or does it just not work well?

Generally speaking, the omniscient viewpoint is where the narrator can see all of the action, all of the character thoughts, and is not limited to which character we're following at any given time. We break this down a little, talking about the different types or styles of omniscient POV, discussing the strengths of each, and offering examples from Tolkien, Robert Jordan, Tom Clancy, Terry Pratchett, David Eddings, James P. Hogan, Frank Herbert and others (including some of our own stuff.)

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 developing an idea without getting caught in Worldbuilder's Disease?

* Any NaNo WriMo tips? (yes.)

* What did you to do build an audience before you got published and famous and stuff?

* How do you create sub-plots without overshadowing the main plot?

* What are the most important things you learned as writers during 2011?

* How do you stay motivated (especially during editing) when it seems like everything you wrote is crap?

David Brin joined Mary and Dan at World Fantasy to pound the importance of criticism into our heads. Our episode opens with a discussion of what your first book should be (a murder mystery) and why David recommends this to his students.

And then on to criticism. It's important for us, as writers, to be criticized because we're all liars, and criticism is the only way to get decent product quality out of us. Unfortunately, we tend to hate the thing that we need the most. So David, Dan, and Mary discuss how to reconcile these two competing points, and how to seek criticism (and lots of other stuff, including how to learn by re-typing something.)