writing excuses

Writing Excuses 7.10: Importance of Criticism, with David Brin » Writing Excuses

David Brin joined Mary and Dan at World Fantasy to pound the importance of criticism into our heads. Our episode opens with a discussion of what your first book should be (a murder mystery) and why David recommends this to his students. And then on to criticism. It’s important for us, as writers, to be

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Writing Excuses 7.6: Behind the Marshmallow » Writing Excuses

Poor Mary. Even after recording an entire season with Brandon, Dan, and Howard, she still scratches her head sometimes and asks herself “why?” “Why does Dan say ‘these marshmallows are delicious’ in a funny voice? And why do Brandon and Howard think it’s funny?” “Why” indeed. In this particularly self-indulgent episode of Writing Excuses we take

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Writing Excuses 7.4: Brevity » Writing Excuses

Brevity! Use fewer words! After the obligatory “we-are-going-to-cut-this-short-after-the-intro” joke, we talk about how we can be appropriately brief, even in the context of writing epic fantasy. Mary offers us some rules of thumb for story brevity in the short fiction she writes, and Howard talks about how he accomplishes the extreme brevity of language required

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Writing Excuses 7.2: World Building Flora and Fauna » Writing Excuses

Let’s build the plants and animals for your science fiction or fantasy book! We begin with a discussion about naming, and about deciding how much evolutionary biology to put into creating cool beasties. We also talk about planning a food chain, building around water, and considering other resources (especially wood, for growing fantasy civilizations.) Other

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Writing Excuses 6.30: Help! I Can’t End My Book! » Writing Excuses

Merry Christmas! Here’s the last episode of Writing Excuses Season 6! We decided to end the season with a discussion of endings. Specifically, we answer cries for help that we’ve gotten. The cries answered include: I’m 90% done and I’ve painted myself into a corner! How do I end this book without resorting to deus

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Writing Excuses 6.28: Interstitial Art » Writing Excuses

Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman from the Interstitial Arts Foundation join Mary and Dan at World Fantasy to discuss things that fall into the gaps between the genres. How do publishers, agents, and booksellers deal with titles that are speculative, but that cannot be easily categorized as science fiction, fantasy, horror, paranormal romance, steampunk, or

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Writing Excuses 6.26: Mystery Plotting » Writing Excuses

Let’s talk mystery! Specifically, how do you plot a good mystery? We’re not focusing on the mystery genre but many of these principles will apply there. For fantasy and science-fiction work this usually means creating plots or sub-plots in which the main experience for the reader is one of discovery or revelation, rather than anticipation. Tools

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Writing Excuses 6.24: From the Ridiculous to the Sublime » Writing Excuses

Andrew P. Mayer joins Howard, Mary, and Dan at Dragon*Con 2011. Andrew’s has one book out, The Falling Machine, and the second book in this “Society of Steam” series, Hearts of Smoke, comes out on November 22nd. Andrew describes them as “steampunk superhero” novels, which nicely takes us into our topic, which centers around taking a

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