Writing Excuses
Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler
300 episodes
Fifteen minutes long, because you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart.
Episodes page 4 of 6
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18.53: Funding the Writing Life
Rent isn't paid in words alone. How do all of us, in various stages of our careers, keep ourselves afloat as we go about the writing life? We're getting in the weeds with this one - tips, tricks, and tools. We share…
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18.52: Writing Inside The Box
"Your short story should definitely be a novel." It's something writers are often told when they write short stories. What tips and tricks can you use to keep your idea within the length of the story you're trying to…
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18.51: So You Wanna Play With Format?
Are you interested in experimenting with different writing forms? Do you want to try an unusual or different way of writing? Well this week, we have an episode dedicated to non-traditional formats for writing. In this…
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18.50: The Unreliable Narrator
All unreliable narrators aren't unreliable in the same way. How do they differ and how does that change the way that we write them? Erin shares her unified theory (look at the graphic below!) of unreliable narrators.…
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18.49: Giving Your Story A Voice
What does it mean if your writing is voice-y? How do you give your character a natural voice? We approach this question from the high-level perspective of craft, and the granular level of word choice and sentence…
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18.48: NaNoWriMo Week 5 - Writing Endings
Welcome to the last week of National Novel Writing Month! It’s okay if you aren’t going to finish your book, and it’s also okay if you don’t have 50,000 words! You still did a thing—you created a story that didn’t…
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18.47: NaNoWriMo Week 4 - Climaxes, or OH MY GOD NO
It’s week four of NaNoWriMo! Or, National Novel Writing Month, which happens every year for the month of November. This week, we are talking about how to write climaxes, how to write resolutions, and what exactly the…
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18.46: NaNoWriMo Week 3 - Raising the Stakes
We are now three weeks into NaNoWriMo—where writers are attempting to write a novel in the month of November. For this episode, our writers talk about how to raise the stakes in your story. To make something feel more…
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18.45: NaNoWriMo Week 2 - Inciting Incident
Welcome to the first official week of National Novel Writing Month (or, almost the end of this week)! In this episode, we dive into how to write an inciting incident. What is an inciting incident? It is often the…
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18.44: NaNoWriMo Week 1- Getting Started
Welcome to National Novel Writing Month! For November, writers all over the world are trying to complete a novel, or write 50,000 words. In honor of NaNoWriMo, all of our November episodes are going to focus on writing…
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18.43: Worldbuilding in Miniature
If you're writing short fiction, how much of your world do you even need to figure out? Should you have it all written out? Can you just wing it? This week on the podcast, we discuss how much of a world to build for a…
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18.42: Creating Magic Outside of a System
How do you write about magic? How do you build a world with magic and spells and potions? We dive into the rules and laws behind magical worlds. We often think of magic as being with a system, but what if it's not?…
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18.41: Deep Dive: Erin's Short Fiction Extravaganza
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…
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18.40: How To Make Money From Your Hobby (with special guest Sandra Tayler!)
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…
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18.39: How To Write An Ending
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…
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18.38: How Do You Write A Series With Books That Stand Alone?
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…
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18.37: Mandatory Failure
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…
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18.36: The Soggy Middle Pays the Rent (or, "Stand Alone With Series Potential")
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…
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18.35: How to Organize Your Writing, or Managing the Mega-Arc
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…
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18.34: Seventeen Years of Foreshadowing
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…
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18.33.5: State Of The Podcast
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…
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18.33: Deep Dive: The Schlock Mercenary Finale
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,…
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18.32: The Kirsten Vangsness Expansion Pack
We have a special guest episode! Kirsten Vangsness, Criminal Minds star, joins us to talk about her experience as a writer, actor, and playwright. She taught us how she deals with imposter syndrome, and how she uses…
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18.31: Getting Personal: Mining Your Life for Themes
In our final episode diving into how and why Dan wrote “Dark One: Forgotten,” talk about how you can take something personal and mine it for fiction. We also tackle the complicated question—Why should you be the one to…
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18.30: Planting Supernatural Seeds
How do you slowly reveal the supernatural in an obviously supernatural story? How can you prepare your audience for a reveal without disclosing it too quickly? If someone is familiar with your writing, they know the…
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18.29: Collaboration And Partnership
What are the best practices for collaboration? How do you write in an established intellectual property (IP)? How do you write a new story in an established world? We dive into working with an individual or a group. We…
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18.28: Writing Conversational Dialogue
How do you write dialogue that sounds natural? We have some things to keep in mind when you write conversations between characters. When people converse, they do so with more than just words. Body language, tone of…
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18.27: Framing Stories
Have you ever framed a story within a story? Are you looking for a way to add structure or tension to your story? In this episode, we contemplate the value that can be added to your writing by putting it into a…
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18.26: Broadening Your Writing Wheelhouse: Video Game Dialogue, RPG Adventures, & More
Let’s talk about the things you can write that are not typically what we talk about—formats that aren't novels and short stories. In this episode, we’re thinking about scripts, RPG adventures, video game dialogue, etc.…
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18.25: To Narrator or Not to Narrator
In our second episode on Dan Wells’ audio-only book, “Dark One: Forgotten,” we provide you with tools and advice to consider when deciding whether or not to have a narrator. We also talk about location-aware dialogue,…
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18.24: “Dark One: Forgotten” Deep Dive
The team grills Dan on his audio-only book “Dark One: Forgotten,” which he co-wrote with Brandon Sanderson. We find out how he wrote a book that became a six-part audio series, and why exactly that form is important.…
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18.23: Our Advice on Giving Advice
“Show don’t tell” is probably the most famous advice given to writers. But. . . we don’t necessarily agree. In our final episode of our deep dive into publishing, we tackle advice: How do you give it? When do you not?…
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18.22: On Mentorship: Sending the Elevator Back Down
How can we make publishing more inclusive? What role does mentorship play? And how can you reframe competition as collaboration? All this and more in this episode. Homework: What's one thing that you can do to make…
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18.21: The Empathy Gap: How to Understand What Your Publisher is Telling You
The relationship between a writer and a publisher is… one that isn’t talked about enough. So we made an episode about rejection letters, email etiquette, and empathy. As a writer, how do you talk with a publisher?…
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18.20: So You Want To Work In Publishing?
Have you ever thought of being a publisher, but don't know if it's the right choice for you? In this episode, DongWon (an agent at Howard Morhaim Literary Agency) walks you through this world and gives you some tips…
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18.19: What is Publishing For, Anyway?
In this episode, we unpack what the publishing industry is, what exactly it does, and why it does it. We also outline the first steps for preparing to talk to an agent or publisher. Homework: If you had to sit down…
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18.18: Launching an Author Newsletter
It's 2023 and people still use email newsletters. For some reason they're more important than ever, so let's talk about building one. Our Sponsors: * Check out Talkiatry and use my code talkiatry.com/WX for a great…
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18.17: Build Your Author Brand, 2023 Edition
An exploration of author branding and the social media tools we use. "Figure out who you are, and then do it on purpose" - Dolly Parton. Our Sponsors: * Check out Talkiatry and use my code talkiatry.com/WX for a great…
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18.16: Deep Dive: Publishing is Hard, by DongWon Song
Publishing is hard. Also, Publishing is Hard is a newsletter from DongWon Song. In this episode we grill them about it. Our Sponsors: * Check out Talkiatry and use my code talkiatry.com/WX for a great deal:…
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18.15: Building a Mystery, Now With More Tools
Back in February, with Episode 18.8, we began exploring the process of writing a mystery story. That episode led us into a series of six episodes about tension, and the tools we use to create and manage it. And now,…
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18.14: Heavy Lifting with Microtension
Let's take all our tension tools and apply them in tiny ways. A big application of tension might be an argument between two characters about a course of plot-important action. Microtension might be those characters…
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18.13: Finding the Core Conflict
In our ongoing exploration of tension, the time has come to examine conflict. It can be shaped and delivered in numerous ways, but you have to know the core conflict before you can make anybody feel tense about it.…
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18.12: The Long Shadow of Unanswered Questions
Our continuing exploration of tension has taken us to a favorite technique: unanswered questions. Sure, this obviously applies to mysteries, but consider the question posed in romances: “will they get together?” In its…
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18.11: Turning Up the Contrast With Juxtaposition
Our deconstruction and categorization of tension continues this week with an exploration of Juxtaposition, which is a contrast between two elements that supplies tension by allowing the reader to insert themselves.…
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18.10: Anticipation is More Than Just Making Us Wait
Last week we talked about tension, and promised that we'd be breaking it down into more pieces. This week we're discussing one of those pieces: Anticipation. We sub-divided it as follows: Surprise Suspense Humor…
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18.09: Unpacking the Tension
For the next several episodes we'll be talking about tension. That may seem like a lot of time to spend on just one word, but as we unpack the word 'tension' in this episode you'll see that there is plenty of material…
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18.08: Building a Mystery
After last week's deep dive into The Spare Man we're ready to talk more generally about mysteries, and the tools we use to write them. Obviously we can't cover all of that in just one episode, but don't worry. In…
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18.07: Deep Dive into THE SPARE MAN
Spoiler Alert! This week is our deep dive into Mary Robinette Kowal's The Spare Man. It's a sci-fi mystery novel often described as "The Thin Man in space." Deep dive episodes are necessarily full of spoilers because…
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18.06: An Interview With Howard Tayler
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler In this episode we interview Howard Tayler, one of the founding members of the podcast, and the creator of Schlock Mercenary.…
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18.05: An Interview with Mary Robinette Kowal
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler In this episode Howard Tayler conducts our interview with Mary Robinette Kowal, leading with a wide-open question: "Where did…
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