Writing Excuses

If you write short stories or enjoy speculative fiction, this episode is for you. Our host Erin Roberts has written short stories, interactive fiction, and has built worlds for tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs). For the next 8 episodes, we’ll be diving into three of her short stories. This week, Erin explains how to write outside of traditional genre classifications. We talk about the importance of antagonists, tone, and the horror genre...

 Or, The Business of the End of Schlock Mercenary

How did Howard start making money from his hobby of drawing and writing comics? How did he self-publish? We have a special guest on this episode! Sandra Tayler—Howard’s wife, the editor and publisher for Schlock Mercenary, and a published author—talks about starting their business. We dive into uncertainty, quality of life, and “manic optimism.” We learn about how to use pre-ordering, PayPal, and Kickstarter...

Deep Dive: Sergeant In Motion

How do you write an ending to a book? How do you finish something you’ve been writing for over 20 years? Howard Tayler talks to us about writing the ending to his serialized webcomic and space opera, Schlock Mercenary. We dive into how to write a resolution, how to finish a book, and how to finish a series. And we dive into the art of leaning into the tropes without leaning ON them...

Deep Dive: A Function of Firepower

How do you write the middle of a book? How do you write an ending to a story? For this week’s episode about writing, we focus on Book 19 of Schlock Mercenary, the penultimate book in Howard Tayler’s series. We discuss ways to make a book feel self-contained, rather than just something to keep the beginning and the ending further apart. 

For reference, A Function of Firepower is the 19th Schlock Mercenary Book...

We talk with Howard Tayler about the story structure of a story with a BIG disaster in the middle - one which we don't recover from until the next book. We also talk about the weight of world-building, how to write for your ideal reader. And Howard considers the question, what is the cost of death if immortality exists? 

For reference, Mandatory Failure is the 18th Schlock Mercenary Book; 1st in the 3-book finale to the 20 book mega-arc...

How do you write the middle of a book? How do you end your book? How do you know what to write next? This week, our hosts —who all work as a writers and publishers (and are sometimes teachers and puppeteers and many other things)— talk through how they have written the middle of their books.

The middle is where most of the story takes place...

Let’s talk about organization! This week, we’re talking about how and what to keep track of— characters, places, names, etc. How do you organize a book? How do you outline a novel? 

And don’t worry, we dive into the messy question, what is worth keeping track of in your writing? We also hear about how Howard and Mary Robinette have turned their planning tools (and research!) into money...

18.34: 17 Years of Foreshadowing

What can Normal Gossip teach us about foreshadowing and artful storytelling? 

Thinking about the 20 books that make up Howard Tayler’s Schlock Mercenary, our hosts discuss foreshadowing—our favorite examples, and our go-to tricks for structuring our own work. What does foreshadowing actually do for our work? Do we even need it? Well, yeah… it’s like invisible narrative scaffolding. But it’s also like a red herring...

Bonus Episode! Our first ever half-numbered episode!

We are making some changes here on the podcast, and we wanted to talk to you about them. We hired a producer (Emma Reynolds), we have new interactive offerings on Patreon (office hours, livestreams, Q&A’s), and we are going to begin advertising! Don’t worry, you can subscribe to our Patreon to listen ad-free...

The first episode in our eight-episode Deep Dive into Howard’s weekly webcomic strip, Schlock Mercenary. We grill Howard on how he taught himself to draw, why he decided to self-publish (hint: his wife, Sandra Tayler, helped him), and how he managed to write an ending. 

Homework: 

The "How it should have ended" game: write your own ending(s) to one or more of your favorite things. (For reference, watch some of How It Should Have Ended...