Writing Excuses

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, Amal, and Howard - This is how we begin our master class on poetry, with Amal El-Mohtar: With not one question, but two. What is poetry? What is prose? - Yes, both questions are a trap. Or maybe two traps.

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, Amal, and Howard - Can you hear your writing sing, being intoned instead of read? With the dialogs as tunes whose tags say "sung" instead of "said?" When the rhythm of your prose echoes the rhythm of a song you'll see ...

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, Amal, and Howard - Patterns in the way we're speaking may betray which 'brain' we're using; often bound by what's familiar, sometimes loosed for free-er choosing. - Writing like the day-brain's thinking

On our third episode diving into Voice through the novella “This Is How You Lose The Time War,” we begin to explore the different voices that make up the two main characters in the story. Last episode we dove into Red’s voice– if you haven’t already, we recommend you listen to that first! 

Today, we are doing a close read of Blue at the tea shop and how voice establishes character, growth, and vulnerability...

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, Amal, and Howard - We might begin with description. - Or we might begin by deconstructing the act of describing. - Wait. No, not there. - Let's jump in AFTER the deconstruction. -

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, Amal, and Howard - Rigorous structure in poetic form is commonly pointed at when we declare Poems have meters and rhymes, as the norm. - Yet words without patterns can roar like a storm So why pay attention,

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, Amal, and Howard How does a poem happen? - Absent an external structure, what makes a thing a poem? - The key word in that question may be "external," because ultimately the poem on the page will be the implicit ...

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, Amal, and Howard - Rhyming is powerful. It can signal a form, or telegraph whimsy. It can be predictable, surprising, and sometimes both. - It may also be seen as childish. - When, then, is it time to rhyme? -

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, Amal, and Howard - For the last seven episodes we've explored language, meaning, and their overlap with that thing we mean when we use language to say "poetry." - In this episode we step back to some origins,

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, James L. Sutter, Dan Wells, Cassandra Khaw, and Howard Tayler - For the next eight episodes we'll be talking about roleplaying games, and how that medium relates to writers, writing, career opportunities, and more.