Writing Excuses

M. Todd Gallowglas is a writer and a storyteller who has spent years doing traditional oral storytelling at renaissance fairs. He joined us at FantasyCon/Westercon 67 before a live audience and talked to us about how this tradition has informed his writing, and how these principles can inform our writing as well. He also schools us (okay, mostly Howard) about how these principles should be informing parts of our podcast.

We were thrilled to have Peter Beagle join us for an episode, recorded live at Westercon 67. We talked about the writer's mindset, and how to get into it. Peter schooled Brandon before the episode even began, and then proceeded to school all the rest of us.

Peter is an absolute delight to listen to. We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did.

 

Live from Westercon 67 and Fantasy Con, Mette Ivie Harrison and J.R. Johannson join us to talk about writing for the mystery genre. We begin by talking about the key differences between thrillers and mysteries, and then move into how this understanding can drive our story structures. We discuss how characters with arcs and iconic characters drive different types of stories, and how each of us go about building these kinds of things.

How does a convention play into your career as an author? How might you expect to be participating in programming? How, in short, do you get to be on panels?

Deirdre Saoirse Moen, who organizes fan-run literary cons and schedules programs for them, joins us to talk about programming from the convention's point of view. Conventions want to create engaging programs, and want authors to be able to participate in that. Authors, of course, want to do things that ultimately result in selling more books. These goals are not incompatible, but there's a trick to getting them to mesh well.

We also talk about what you should do when you find yourself on a panel -- things to expect, things you can do to prepare, and some things to take care to not do.

By the way, registration is open for the 2015 Out of Excuses Workshop and Retreat. We talked about that mid-week, and appended that bit of audio to the end of this episode. If you'd like to discuss the event, here's the place to do so. That'll keep all the questions and answers in the same place!

Hugo Award-winner Christopher J. Garcia, publisher and editor of The Drink Tank, joins us for a discussion of fan writing, . We start with a definition of terms - fan writing technically covers everything from writing about fandom, to writing fiction that doesn't appear any different from professional fiction. It's tricky, because the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer has gone to professional writers for their unpaid, non-fiction work.

We talk about fanzines, where they came from, what they're for, and how (and why) aspiring professional writers might submit to them, and about the power that fan writing has on both fan culture and on the development of the genre.

 

Paul Stevens, an editor at Tor, joined us in front of a live audience at Westercon 67 to talk about royalties. After a brief definition of the term, he explains how royalties are calculated, how they're processed on Tor's side, and what sorts of things authors should and should not expect.  We talk about contractual terms, advances, the differences in royalty rates between the different mediums (ebooks, audiobooks, paperback, hard cover), and much more.

We've had a lot of requests for an in-depth discussion of royalties. This, folks, is very definitely it.

 

Patty Garcia, Director of Publicity for Tor & Forge books, joins us in front of a live audience at Westercon 67 to talk about what publicity activities look like for commercially published genre fiction books. In large measure, these activities center around driving discussion about the books with the most-followed reviewers, and we talk about what some of those are. We grill her about what sort of criteria we should be using for review copies, and what other activities new authors and established authors alike might consider spending time on.

Peter Orullian joins us in front of a live audience at Westercon 67 for a Q&A. The questions include:

* As a writer, how do you handle reviewing other people's books?

* How do you compartmentalize your writing to prevent that obsession from displacing everything else?

* (Here are the signs we talked about)

* How do you create frightening, unique creatures?

* What are the basics about networking at a convention?

* Is there a yield for the average story idea?

* What rules do you follow and what rules do you break when writing epic fantasy?

* What can you do in critique groups to teach craft if you're avoiding prescriptive critique?

* How strongly do you believe that the audience won't remember what you've told them, but will remember how you said it?

 

Kathleen Dalton Woodbury, the forum moderator at the Hatrack River writers group joined us at Westercon 67 to talk about critique groups. We cover how critiques should be offered, as well as importance of receiving critiques graciously and without defense, and we reflect on lots of the good and bad writing groups and critique groups we've been a part of.

This is hard to get right, but once you do get it right your critique group can become the team that helps you turn your work into something outstanding.

 

David Farland joins us, along with a live audience at FantasyCon 2014, for a discussion on writing instruction. Dave runs My Story Doctor, and firmly believes that almost anyone can learn to write fiction at a professional, conventionally publishable level.  In this episode we cover some of the methods and exercises used to train new writers, and how writers can use these on their own.