Writing Excuses

Season 10 begins!

We wanted to do something different this year. Something special. As we brainstormed we kept returning to something a listener said years ago: "Writing Excuses is like a master class in writing genre fiction."

That's a generous remark, as anyone who's taken an actual master class can attest, but it inspired us to ask ourselves what Writing Excuses would look sound like if it were formatted like an actual master class.

The answer? It would sound like Season 10 is going to sound. This year we're going to go to school! Each month will focus on a specific bit of the writing process, and each podcast will drill down on one of those bits. We'll still have some "wildcard" episodes with guests, but for at least three weeks out of each month we're going to stay on topic. If you're new to the podcast, this is where to start! If you're an old hand, don't worry -- this isn't a return to the 101-level stuff.

In January we'll cover the very beginning -- coming up with cool ideas, and wrapping them up into something that we can turn into a story. And for this first episode we'll answer the dreaded "where do you get your ideas" question quite seriously. We're not going to tell you about the Idea Factory in Schenectady (Harlan Ellison's stock answer,) nor are we going to eye-roll. Nope. We're going to tell you how we get our brains to think stuff up, and then we're going to give you homework in the writing prompt.

We've talked about ideas before, of course, so here are some links:

* 4.11: Brainstorming from News Headlines

* 4.18: How to Steal for Fun and Profit

* 6.21: Brainstorming from Story Seeds

* 7.27: The Problem of Originality

* "Twitter is the garden of low-hanging fruit."

 

As 2014 draws to a close we say goodbye to Season 9, and talk a bit about what we've each learned this year.

* Howard explained the surprising changes that came with a change in his work space

* Mary told us how she reached a new understanding of pacing

* Brandon talked about how recent time pressures have informed his writing process

* Dan learned why he is writing

Hopefully our discussions of how we've changed as writers this year will offer you some insight into how your own writing has developed, and how you might take steps to develop it in the future.

We also talk about how Season 10 is coming, and is going to be a bit different than seasons past.

Thing We Failed To Do: get a picture of the possum. It turns out that those things are sneaky, and none of us a very good photographers.

Can of Already Open Worms: Writing for fun. "Didn't you guys just talk about that?" Yes, we did, in an episode that was recorded 3 months later, but which aired just last week.

 

You know what's fun? WRITING! Writing is fun. And that, more than anything else, is why we do it.

Or at least it's why we decided to do it. Making sure that it is still fun is kind of tricky. Also tricky? Writing for nothing more than the fun of it. And this episode is about that.

Missing from this episode: Mary. For contractual reasons we found ourselves in need of 54 episodes during Season 9, and that meant an emergency recording session while Mary was on the road. It also meant you got 54 weekly episodes this year!

Allison W. Hill and C. Austin Hill joined us at the Out of Excuses Retreat to talk about turning A Night of Blacker Darkness, by Dan Wells, into a stage play. "From the page to the stage" is a thing that theater people actually say to describe this, so the process is one that has a lot of precedent behind it. We talk about the guiding principles behind adaptation, and then dive into the challenges that our guests face with this particular project.

(Note: We may be tweaking the audio on this episode in the future to remove the "Season 10" references right at the end. They're confusing, and you don't need that.)

If there's a crowd with good questions, it's the Out of Excuses Workshop and Retreat attendees.

* Given the trend toward moral ambiguity, is there still a place for an unquestionably evil character?

* Should you publish a first book that isn't in the style or genre that you're ultimately interested in?

* Is it possible to write epic fantasy with a single POV?

* Of all of the myriad talents of the literary agents you work with, what's the one that makes you stick with your agent?

* How do you maintain your writing chops when you're buried in the research phase of a project?

* What are some issues a short story writer should be aware of when tackling a novel?

* How do you go about discovery writing characters?

* When you build a story, does the foreshadowing go in during the first pass, or in later edits?

Our sponsor, Audible, is giving away Legion: Skin Deep, by Brandon Sanderson between now and December 24th. Follow that link and get a free audio book!

Recorded live in front of the Out of Excuses students, a crowd of savvy readers if ever there was one, we talk about how to effectively write for readers who are familiar with the genre or story structure in which we're writing. It's a tricky problem, since genre fiction is supported in large part by the very tropes that prove problematic. Sometimes the solution is trope subversion, but that brings its own problems.

Dave Farland’s Writing Workshops sponsored us for this episode! Both Brandon and Dan have studied under Dave, and we’re all happy to wholeheartedly recommend his workshops to you. If you can’t fly to his place, well, visit MyStoryDoctor.com and take the online course. The coupon code for your Writing Excuses discount is EXCUSES, but don't think that means you actually HAVE any of those...

As authors we spend a lot of time trying to make our readers care about the characters we create. We have a wide variety of techniques at our disposal to accomplish this. But do we ever ask ourselves why any of this is possible in the first place? What is it about our brains that makes us care about fictional characters?

Enter Cory Doctorow, who posed this question to us at Westercon 67. If you like the episodes where a guest comes in and blows our minds (and they're some of our favorites) you need to put this one on the list.

Audiobook Pick of the Week: Homeland, by Cory Doctorow, narrated by Wil Wheaton, with Noah Swartz and Jacob Applebaum. (Note:  Cory Doctorow's titles aren't carried by Audible, but you can find all of them here and buy them DRM-free directly from Cory.)

So, you're planning to kill somebody, but you don't want anyone to see it coming. How do you make that happen?

We begin by talking about the hints that writers inadvertently drop, and why they drop those hints. Then we look at how to write without sending those cues, and how to get away with that while still fulfilling promises made to the reader.

Special Offer: Our sponsor, Audible, is giving away Legion: Skin Deep, by Brandon Sanderson between now and December 24th. Follow that link and get a free audio book!

Bookseller Sara Glassman joined us at the Out of Excuses Workshop and Retreat to talk to us about her perspective on this industry, with an eye to the things that make it easy for her to put a book in a customer's hands. We talk about back cover copy, covers, query letters, signings, and what booksellers look for on page one.

(Note: Brandon refers to a book of the week pitch that Sara made for us. We needed to run this episode out of order, so you'll get Sara's pitch for that book sometime next year.)

Charlie Harmon, one of the luminaries of Utah area fandom, joined us to talk about disability in narrative. She's been going blind gradually since she was a child, and these days while she can see some colored blurs, she cannot read, or recognize faces. We talk about some of the nuances of disability that many writers fail to capture, and how we can learn to write those things more convincingly.