Writing Excuses
Episodes
15.41: Researching the FCK out of Things, with Cory Doctorow
11 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Piper, and Howard, with special guest Cory Doctorow In journalism, that three-character string in our episode title means ...
15.40: Researching for Writing the Other
04 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Piper, Dan, and Tempest, with special guests Nisi Shawl and Silvia Moreno-Garcia Writing stories which feature people who are not like you...
15.39: Translation, with special guest Alex Shvartsman
27 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, and Lari, with guest Alex Shvartsman Translation is fantastically complex. In this episode Lari and Alex help us navi...
15.38: Depicting Religions That Are Not Your Own
20 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Piper, Dan, and Tempest, with special guest Nisi Shawl Whether you're writing about a real-world religion, or one you've created f...
15.37: Writing Under Deadlines
13 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Victoria, Dan, and Howard What's it like to write under a deadline which has been set for your project by someone else? What ...
15.36: Collaboration, with Shannon and Dean Hale
06 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, and Dan, with special guests Shannon and Dean Hale We've had several discussions about collaboration, and we&...
15.35: Tools for Writing and Worldbuilding, with Erin Roberts
30 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Dan, Mary Robinette, Lari, and special guest Erin Roberts We've received a number of questions about the 'tools of the trade' ...
15.34: Writing Deliberate Discomfort
23 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Dan, Mary Robinette, Lari, and Erin How do you proceed when the story you want to write includes elements that make you personally uncomfo...
15.33: The Long, Dark Second Act of the Soul
16 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Victoria, Dan, and Howard Many Writing Excuses listeners have asked us how we muscle through writing second acts, those big, chon...
15.32: Short Story Markets
09 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Dan, Mary Robinette, and Lari, with special guest Erin Roberts Erin Roberts joins us for a discussion of short story markets—a topic whi...
15.31: The Agent in the Room
02 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Dan, DongWon, Piper, and Howard You had questions for agents, Dongwon has answers! How do you go about becoming an agent? How do an agent ...
15.30: Write What You Want To Know, with Laurell K. Hamilton
26 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, and Howard, with special guest Laurell K. Hamilton We've all heard the "write what you know" rule. Laurell K. Ha...
15.29: Barbie Pre-Writing, with Janci Patterson and Megan Walker
19 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, and Howard, with special guests Janci Patterson and Megan Walker Janci Patterson and Megan Walker joined us to talk about th...
15.28: Small Evils
12 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Victoria, Dan, and Howard Small evils? Yes, please! This episode isn't about writing the big villainy of world domination, bu...
15.27: Alternate History, with Eric Flint
05 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, and Howard, with special guest Eric Flint Eric Flint joined us at SpikeCon (host of the 2019 NASFIC) to talk about creating ...
15.26: Taking the Chance, with David Weber
28 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Howard, and Dan with special guest David Weber David Weber joined us at NASFIC to talk about the importance of risking failure on...
15.25: Using the MICE Quotient for Conflict
21 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard The MICE quotient is a tool for categorizing story elements—Milieu, Idea, Character, and Event...
15.24: Keeping it Fresh, with Jim Butcher
14 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Howard, and Dan, with special guest Jim Butcher Jim Butcher joined us at NASFIC for a discussion about how we can keep long-runni...
15.23: Serialization
07 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Lari, and Dan, with special guest Jenn Court Let's talk about serials. Jenn Court, whose work includes lots of writin...
15.22 Writing For Children, with Shannon and Dean Hale
31 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, and Dan, with Shannon and Dean Hale Shannon and Dean Hale join us again, this time to discuss how to effectively ...
15.21: Writing About Children, with Shannon and Dean Hale
24 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, and Dan, with Shannon and Dean Hale Shannon and Dean Hale join us to discuss how to effectively and convincingly ...
15.20: Mental Wellness and Writing
17 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Victoria, Dan, and Howard In this episode we'll be talking about the things we do to stay creative, productive, healthy, and ...
15.19: As You Know, This Episode Is About Exposition
10 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Victoria, Dan, and Howard "As you know, Bob..." is the trope-tastic line we use to refer to expository dialog which has n...
15.18: Finding a Community, with Shauna Hoffman
03 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, and Lari¹, with special guest Shauna Hoffman Many Writing Excuses listeners (especially WXR alumni) already know Sha...
15.17: Asexual Representation
26 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Dan, Tempest, Mary Robinette, and Howard Generally speaking, asexuality is a sexual orientation or identity typified by the absence of a ...
15.16: Balancing Plot and Character
19 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Victoria, Dan, and Howard We're often asked how to balance character arcs with the intricacies of the plots we create. In thi...
15.15: Dialog
12 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard Listener questions drove this episode, and there are only two of them but they were pretty good d...
15.14: Agent Query Trenches
05 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard The title of this episode comes to us from listener questions along the lines of "what do you...
15.13: Using Elections in Stories
29 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard, with special guest Daniel Friend Daniel Friend, who edits SF/F, has worked in election offices, ...
15.12: Writing the Other—Being an Ally
22 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Piper, Tempest, DongWon, with special guest Erin Roberts What can we do to be allies to members of marginalized groups? Many of us want to...
15.11: Digital is Different, with Cory Doctorow
15 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Piper, Howard, and special guest Cory Doctorow "How do you break in?" is one of those questions we always get aske...
15.10: Evaluating Ideas
08 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Victoria, Dan, and Howard We've talked in the past about how ideas are cheap, and that it's execution upon those ideas wh...
15.09: Choose Your Own Adventurous Publishing Path
01 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Dan, DongWon, Piper, and Howard "Should I go self-pub? Should I go traditional? Can I do both? How do I decide where my book fits?"...
15.08: Q&A on a Ship
23 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Dan, Mary Robinette, DongWon, and Howard At WXR 19 we recorded live, and took audience questions aboard the ship. Here they are! (You'...
15.07: Creating Chapters
16 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Victoria, Dan, and Howard How do you create chapters? What are the rules for carving your manuscript into numbered chunks? Is ch...
15.06: Prose and Cons, with Patrick Rothfuss
09 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Dan, Mary Robinette, Howard, with special guest Patrick Rothfuss How do you write beautiful prose? How do you set about telling a story wi...
15.05: Setting Goals for Your Career
02 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Victoria, Dan, and Howard What kind of career goal-setting do you do? We had a discussion in this vein with DongWon a few weeks a...
15.04: Revision, with Patrick Rothfuss
26 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Dan, Howard, and Mary Robinette, with special guest Patrick Rothfuss We begin our discussion of revision by addressing a question we hear ...
15.03: Self Publishing
19 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Howard, with special guests Victorine Lieske, Tamie Dearen, Bridget E. Baker, and Nandi Taylor Howard leads this discussion with four gues...
15.02: Writing Between the Lines
12 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Victoria, Dan, and Howard Victoria Schwab, who also writes as V.E. Schwab, joins us this year, and in this episode she helps us c...
15.01: Evolution of a Career
05 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Dan, DongWon, Mary Robinette, and Howard Season 15 is going to be a bit broader than the previous seasons have, at least in the abstract. ...
14.52: Game Mastering and Collaborative Storytelling, with Natasha Ence
29 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard, with special guest Natasha Ence Natasha Ence is a professional game master. (Yes, you read that...
14.51: A Farewell to Worldbuilding
22 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard We've spent all year focusing on worldbuilding, and it's time to move on. Almost. In this...
14.50: Write What You… No.
15 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard We've all heard the adage "write what you know," and in this episode we set out ...
14.49: Customs and Mores
08 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab In this episode we discuss how our customs and mores govern our own real-world interactions, and how our ...
14.48: How to Practice Worldbuilding
01 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard The entire year has been about learning how to worldbuild, and we've learned a thing or two o...
14.47: Writing Characters With Physical Disabilities
24 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Piper, Dan, and Tempest, with special guest Nicola Griffith In this episode we discuss how to faithfully represent people with physical di...
14.46: Unusual Resources
17 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard Among science fiction and fantasy plot devices, the "uncommon resource" trope is com...
14.45: Economics
10 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab Economists tend to see everything as economics, which is kind of how proponents of ANY discipline see the...
14.44: Realism vs. Rule-of-Cool
03 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard Where do you draw the line between what seems plausible, and what would be cool? If you pick "...
14.43: Sequencing Your Career Genome
27 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Howard, Mary Robinette, Dan, and DongWon Let's talk about career planning. It's a lot more than just launching a career by selling...
14.42: Alternate History
20 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard Alternate histories (and historical fantasies) are a staple of genre fiction. In this episod...
14.41: History
13 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab Let's make history! In this episode we talk about doing exactly that—creating real-feeling historie...
14.40: Deep vs. Wide
06 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard How do you decide between digging one really deep, narrow well, and digging one really wide, shal...
14.39: Positioning Your Book in the Marketplace
29 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Howard, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Dongwon "Positioning feels like the most important question in all of publishing." — DongWon So...
14.38: Volunteer Opportunities for Writers, with Jared Quan
22 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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...
14.37: Outlandish Impossibilities
15 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard Some science fiction and fantasy stories arise from a premise which, under even just rudimentary...
14.36: Languages and Naming
08 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 elemen...
14.35: What You Leave Out
01 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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...
14.34: Author Branding
25 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 market...
14.33: Writing Imperfect Worlds
18 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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? Ho...
Worldbuilding Gender Roles
11 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 s...
14.31: Cultural Setting as Conflict
06 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
14.30: Eating Your Way to Better Worldbuilding
28 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Piper, DongWon, Amal, and Maurice We like food, and we like to talk about food. Our hosts this week talk about how this influences their f...
14.29: Field Research
21 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard So, you're going to go someplace and learn something you can't learn in any other wa...
14.28: Warfare and Weaponry
14 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab How do you write about warfare in your stories when you've never fought in a war? How do you describe...
14.27: Natural Setting as Conflict
07 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard In this episode we stories with the "Person-vs-Setting" structure. These are stories wher...
14.26: Lessons from Aristotle, with Rob Kimbro
30 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, and Dan, with special guest Rob Kimbro Rob Kimbro joins us this week to talk about Aristotle's elements of tr...
14.25: Choosing Your Agent
23 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Howard, Mary Robinette, Dan, and DongWon Guest-host Dongwon Song joined us at WXR 2018 as an instructor, and gave great advice regarding t...
14.24: Political Intrigue
16 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard Political Intrigue stories are less about "politics" (as colloquially defined by pop...
14.23: Governments Large and Small
09 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Answering questions about the power structures you live within can help you with the worldbuilding of politics in the fiction you write.Our Sponsors:*...
14.22: Characters out of Their Depth
02 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard Sherlock Holmes has his Watson for a reason. Readers need a character to whom some things must be...
14.21: Writing The Other — Yes, You Can!
26 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Dan, Tempest, and DongWon The single most asked question we get on the subject of writing cultures other than our own is some variation on...
14.20: Allegory in Fiction
19 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard What is an allegory, anyway? This episode probably won't settle that question, but we di...
14.19: Religion and Ritual
12 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab We often worldbuild religions and rituals for the stories we create. In this episode we discuss the decis...
14.18: Setting as Theme
05 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard Theme is one of those high-falutin' concepts we're often reluctant to approach in a nuts-...
14.17: It’s Like “Car Talk” meets “Welcome To Nightvale”
28 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Howard, Mary Robinette, Dan, and DongWon This episode is about comp titles (comparative titles), which are those things you use to describ...
14.16: Your Setting is a Telegraph
21 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard Your setting can quickly tell the reader what kind of a story they're reading, and in th...
14.15: Technology
14 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab We've spent a lot of time talking about magic systems in our worldbuilding. It's time to talk abo...
14.14: When To Tell
07 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard "Show, don't tell," they tell us. Except sometimes showing is not always the best thi...
WX 14.13: Obstacles vs. Complications
31 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard What's the difference between an obstacle and a complication? Margaret Dunlap takes the ...
14.12: Writing The Other — Latinx Representation
24 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Tempest Bradford, DongWon Song, and Julia Rios Julia Rios joins us to talk about writing characters who come from one of the ma...
14.11: Magic Without Rules
17 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard When we say "without rules" we're talking about stories whose magic is not held ...
14.10: Magic Systems
10 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab Let's design magic systems! We talk about how we do it, and how the principles of magic system design...
14.9: Showing Off
03 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard Let's infodump without infodumping. Let's deliver lots of exposition without sounding exp...
14.8: Worldbuilding Q&A #1
24 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Howard, Mary Robinette, Dan, and DongWon We invited attendees at WXR 2018 to ask us some general worldbuilding questions. Here's what...
14.7: How Weird is Too Weird?
17 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard How weird, how far outside the realm of what the reader feels to be familiar, is too weird...
14.6: Fantasy and Science Fiction Races
10 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab Let's talk about race, sort-of. Let's talk about creating races—species of people, really—whi...
14.5: Viewpoint as Worldbuilding
03 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard When you're defining your world for the reader, some voice in the text must speak those defin...
14.04: Writing the Other—Bisexual Characters
27 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Dan, Tempest, DongWon, and TJ This is the first of our Writing The Other episodes, in which we set out to help writers portray people who ...
14.03: World of Hats
20 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard Margaret Dunlap joins us during season 14 to talk about worldbuilding. In this, her first e...
14.02: Geography and Biomes
13 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab Mahtab Narsimhan joins us this year for a dozen episodes on worldbuilding, and this week we're talkin...
14.01: Worldbuilding Begins! Up Front, or On the Fly?
06 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard Season 14 is all about worldbuilding¹, and we're kicking it off with a discussion of when yo...
13.52: Working Dad is a Spaceman
30 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Howard, Mary, and Dan, with NASA astronaut Thomas Marshburn. Last week's episode may have sounded like the last one for 2018, but that...
13.51: Wrap-up on the Year of Character
25 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard We decided to wrap up this year on character by letting Brandon ask us some deep questions. "We dec...
13.50: What Writers Get Wrong, with Zoraida Córdova
16 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard, with special guest Zoraida Córdova Zoraida Córdova, an award-winning author of urban fantasy, ...
13.49: How to Finish
09 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Amal, and Maurice Last week we talked about character death. This week we talk about other, less fatal ways in wh...
13.48: Character Death and Plot Armor
02 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard The characters we create are not all destined for long lives. Sure, some are, but a great many o...
13.47: Q&A on Fixing Characters
25 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard You had questions about fixing character problems. We had had answers! Here are the questions: How do yo...
13.46: The Unsexy Side of Space, with Bart Smith and Ben Hewett
18 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Your Hosts: Howard, Mary Robinette, and Dan, with special guests Bart Smith and Ben Hewett When we talk about space travel we're usually talking a...