Writing Excuses

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, C.L. Polk, Fran Wilde, and Howard Tayler  Let's talk about technological body-modification! It's a common element in science fiction, but it's also an increasingly important part of the world we're living in right now. Liner Notes: In this episode we referenced "Happenstance," and Amy Purdy's quickstep from Dancing With The Stars. Credits: This episode was recorded by Daniel Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson.

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Fran Wilde, C.L. Polk, and Howard Tayler Let's talk for a bit about writing while disabled. This can mean anything from scheduling your craft around doctor's appointments, to learning to operate on a limited budget as defined by your body. You might be asking "I'm not disabled, so how does this pertain to me?" Well... you're not disabled currently. Eventually, as we age, we all experience disability. Liner Notes: Howard tweeted about his experience at the hand clinic. Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette and Howard Tayler, with special guests Fran Wilde, C.L. Polk, and William Alexander Whether or not you're writing from your own experience, depicting disability in fiction is fraught. In this episode we'll talk about some of the dos and don'ts in order to provide you with guidelines for disability depiction. Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson  

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette and Howard Tayler, with special guests Fran Wilde, C.L. Polk, and William Alexander For the next eight episodes we'll be talking about bodies, and how they don't all work the same way, and how this can be applied to our writing. Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, Brandon Sanderson, and Howard Tayler, with special guest Seth Fishman Seth Fishman, author of seven picture books (as well as lots of longer-form stuff), joins us to talk about writing picture books, including some of the business and publication aspects. No-Context Pull Quote: "Your art is so bad we're going to hire someone to draw badly for you." Credits: This episode was recorded live by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, Brandon Sanderson, and Howard Tayler, with special guest Peng Shepherd Peng Shepherd joined us aboard Liberty of the Seas for WXR 2022, and returned with us to the topic of story structures. In this episode we answer questions from our live audience. The questions include: How do you make sure you've got the right number of plot threads? How do you spread the structure of a given plot line across multiple books? How do you avoiding having subplots distract readers from the main plot? What are some strategies you can use to better align character goals with the overall problem of the story? Are there clear dos and don'ts with regard to story structure? How do you prepare or color-code bits for running a role-playing game? More broadly: what organizational tools do you use for story structure? For the answers, you'll have to give the episode a listen... Credits: This episode was recorded live by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jac

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, Dongwon Song, Piper J. Drake,  & Howard Tayler, with special guest K. M. Szpara CONTENT WARNING: this episode is about adult acts and adult bodies, and we won't be using euphemisms.  K.M. Szpara joined us at WXR 2022 for this discussion of writing bodies and intimacy, with a particular focus on which kinds of words to use for things. Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr. before a live audience aboard Liberty of the Seas. It was mastered by Alex Jackson.  

Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, C.L. Polk, Marshall Carr, Jr., and Mary Robinette Kowal Oh no! You've put the project down for long enough that you've lost your place in it! Whatever will you do? For starters, you can listen to this episode. We've been there, and one of us is there right now. We talk about the different problems you're likely facing, and how to overcome them in order to find the thread and get moving again. Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson.

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Cady Coleman The fictional side of science and the scientific side of fiction are part of the discipline of science communication, often called SciComm. In this episode Cady Coleman joins us to talk about how science fiction fits into the field of SciComm, and how the stories we tell can affect the people who read them. Credits: This episode was recorded before a live audience by Rob Kowal, and mastered by Alex Jackson.

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Cady Coleman Chemist, USAF Colonel, and NASA Astronaut Cady Coleman joins us to talk about actual travel to actual space, and how that's a thing which is increasingly available to people who are not in the employ of government space agencies. Also, we discuss how the demographics of space travelers are changing, and how this is creating safer space travel for everyone. Credits: This episode was recorded before a live audience by Rob Kowal, and mastered by Alex Jackson.

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Maurice Broaddus, and Howard Tayler We wrap up our eight-episode dialog master class with a discussion of nuance, which is difficult to describe in a blurb because it's... well, nuanced. That may sound a bit recursive, but our discussion dives deep into the meta. Credits: This episode was recorded by Daniel Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson.

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Maurice Broaddus, and Howard Tayler We begin this episode with a quick exploration of the terminology, and what we mean when we say "text," "context," and "subtext." Subtext exists between text and context. It's the information which isn't actually in the text, but which we are able to divine based on the context. And in this episode we talk about how to use context and text to provide subtext to the reader. Credits: This episode was recorded by Daniel Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson.

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Maurice Broaddus, and Howard Tayler Tension! In this episode we discuss the ways dialog can build and/or maintain tension, especially when placed in context with the rest of the scene. Liner Notes: A great article about tension for those who (like Howard) may need a solid working definition -Toward a general psychological model of tension and suspense Credits: This episode was recorded by Daniel Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson.

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Maurice Broaddus, and Howard Tayler Everything is about conflict? Really? Well, yes. Maybe not in the action-movie sense, but conflict is everywhere, even among people whose goals, objectives, and methodologies are in alignment. This, of course, means that it exists among your cast of characters, and it will inform the way the talk to one another. Liner Notes: We mentioned this famous Monty Python sketch about wanting to have an argument. Credits: This episode was recorded by Daniel Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson.

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Maurice Broaddus, and Howard Tayler We've mentioned "area of intention" earlier in this dialog master class, but now the concept gets the spotlight. If all of your characters have their own agendas, their own areas of intention, then the dialog between them should reflect that. Credits: This episode was recorded by Daniel Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson.

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Maurice Broaddus, and Howard Tayler How well do you know your characters? Sure, you might know their age, nationality, and perhaps wardrobe, but how well do you know their internal characteristics? Do you know them well enough that you can write dialog that sounds like them? In this episode we discuss how you might approach this problem. Credits: This episode was recorded by Daniel Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson.

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Maurice Broaddus, and Howard Tayler We're back with Maurice Broaddus for the second in our eight-episode mini-master-class on writing dialogue. This time around we're addressing the question of dialogue's "job." What's it for? Why is this particular bit of dialogue in this scene, this chapter, this book? Credits: This episode was recorded by Daniel Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson.

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Maurice Broaddus, and Howard Tayler Writer, teacher, and community organizer Maurice Broaddus joins us for an eight-episode mini-master-class on writing dialogue. In this episode he walks us through his three keys: pay attention to how people speak, write in a way that evokes how they speak, and write dialogue that makes individual characters distinctive. Liner Notes: We mention Descript transcription software in this episode. Here's a link! Credits: This episode was recorded by Daniel Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson.

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Zoraida Cordova, Kaela Rivera, and Howard Tayler In this, our final "ensemble masterclass" episode, we discuss the nuts-and-bolts, the tips and tricks, the tools of the trade. In short, we talk very specifically about how we do it. Color-coded sticky notes, index cards, spreadsheets, and more... Liner Notes: Howard's guest story for Dave Kellet's DRIVE compendium is now running online! It's called "History and Haberdashery." Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson.

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Zoraida Cordova, Kaela Rivera, and Howard Tayler Our episode title comes to us across two and a half centuries: "We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." —Benjamin Franklin We've already established that you're planning to write an ensemble. This isn't an episode about the pros and cons of ensembles. No, we're here to talk about how an ensemble story can go wrong, leaving the characters to hang separately rather than hanging together. Liner Notes: It happened again! We referenced the Ty Franck/Daniel Abraham episode, which we recorded at GenCon Indy several years ago, and again we can't find a link to it. Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson.