Writing Excuses

Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab - In this episode we talk about how to put characters in conflict with their setting, and how to structure our work so that these conflicts arise organically rather than feeling mandated by plot. -

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard - Let's talk about worldbuilding with gender roles. Most of us have grown up with a very strongly defined binary, that distinction need not be how we craft the worlds in which we set our storie...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard - How do you write a setting in which the status quo is one with which you deeply disagree? How do you create a conflict of this sort without being overtly pedantic or preachy?

Your Hosts: Howard, Mary Robinette, Dan, and DongWon - Authors have brands whether they want to have them or not. It's a simple principle of marketing, and the better we understand that principle, the better able we are to control how it affects our c...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard - The advice commonly given to writers is to worldbuild an iceberg, but only to show the reader the tip. This is still too much work. Icebergs are big. -

Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab - How do we come up with names? How do we do it in ways that enhance our worldbuilding? What are the elements that give our invented naming schemes (even the zany ones with lots of syllables and apostrophes...

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard - Some science fiction and fantasy stories arise from a premise which, under even just rudimentary examination, appear utterly ridiculous. And some of these stories are hugely successful.

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard, with special guest Jared Quan - Jared Quan serves as a volunteer on several non-profit boards, and joined us to talk about the opportunities that exist for writers. Administration, leadership,

Your Hosts: Howard, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Dongwon - "Positioning feels like the most important question in all of publishing." — DongWon Song - In this episode we talk about how to ask and answer the question of positioning,

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard - How do you decide between digging one really deep, narrow well, and digging one really wide, shallow ocean? In this episode we talk about our desires to build worlds which appear both vanishingly ...