Writing Excuses

Your Hosts: Dan, Mary, Aliette, and Howard, with Kristie Claxton Kristie Claxton joined us at WXR 2017 to talk about reading outside of the spaces where we're comfortable and familiar. Specifically, we focused on how to learn about people who are not you by reading stories by and about them. Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Amal, and Maurice How can we, as writers, best handle weighty matters? This is our year on character, so we'll approach this with a focus on character creation, depiction, and dialog? This topic is, in and of itself, weighty. Credits: This episode was recorded by Andrew Twiss, and mastered by Alex Jackson

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard "Write what you know" gets misapplied a lot. In this episode we'll talk about how to know things by listening well. In particular, we're looking at writing interesting characters by listening to real people. We also talk about the more formal act of interviewing people¹, and how to deal with the attendant complexities. Liner Notes:  Mary references her interviewing of rocket scientists and astronauts, which we just talked about last week. When this episode was recorded the JPL trip was still in our future, and was "will have been" extremely cool. Comment Notes: The audio file wasn't correctly linked until Tuesday. The irony of the our "how to listen" episode having exactly zero "listen" buttons is not lost on anyone. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson and engineered by Alex Jackson. Their fine work was obscured from public view by the careless hands of Howard Tayler.  

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, and Dan, with Kjell Lindgren Spoiler Alert! If you haven't yet read The Calculating Stars: A Lady Astronaut Novel, by Mary Robinette Kowal, you may wish to rectify that prior to listening. In this episode we go into great depth on Mary's novel with the expert technical help of NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren, who was one of Mary's consulting readers. Like most of our project-in-depth episodes this one runs long. Longer still because we were at JSC in Houston, which was incredibly cool for all of us, so nobody was watching the clock. Liner Notes: The reference to "Type 2" fun comes from an as-yet-unpublished episode. Type 1 fun is fun in the moment. Type 2 fun is fun to talk about later. Maybe much, much later. Credits: This episode was recorded by Benjamin Hewett, and mastered by Alex Jackson

Your Hosts: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard The term "iconic hero" allows us to differentiate between different kinds of heroes who appear in series. Nancy Drew and Conan the Barbarian are iconic, but Leia Organa and Aragorn are epic. In this episode we discuss how (and why) to go about writing a hero with no arc. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson.

At GenCon Indy 2017 we were joined by Wildstyle (@MrWildstyle on Twitter), who wears many hats, and many of the hats he wears are donned in service of producing hip-hop. One of the most interesting revelations (especially for Howard, whose background in audio engineering predates MP3 technology by half a decade) was just how many hats there are. The role of producer in the hip-hop scene may include the roles of audio engineer, composer, and and even musician. Liner Notes: For a deeper look at Wildstyle's work, search Soundcloud for "Wildstyle DaProducer." He's been producing for a year since this episode was recorded.  

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Amal, and Maurice A foil is a character who serves as a contrast to another character. The foil might be a sidekick, an antagonist, a romantic interest, or really any other character who gets enough focus for the contrast to be useful. In this episode we talk about foils, offering examples, and our approaches for writing foils in our own work. Credits: This episode was recorded by Andrew Twiss, and mastered by Alex Jackson, neither of whom serves as a foil to the other.

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard Our characters become far more interesting when they begin interacting with each other. These interactions—these relationships—are often how our stories get told. In this episode we explore ways in which we can fine tune relationships in service of our stories. The tools include the Kowal Relationship Axes (Mind, Money, Morals, Manners, Monogamy, and The Marx Brothers) and the differences between personal and position power. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson and mastered by Alex Jackson

Your Hosts: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard Brandon wanted to ask us how our perspectives on character have changed since the very beginning of our writing. It's a difficult question to answer, and a very soulful sort of thing to answer in front of other people. So Brandon went first while the rest of us racked our brains. What are you going to learn from this episode? Well... you might learn a bit about each of us, but it's also possible that you'll learn something about your own writing, and find yourself able to navigate the next few steps on your journey with character. Note: The apology strips Howard mentioned begin with this strip. They are part of a story that begins here. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson.

Your Hosts: Piper Drake, Aliette de Bodard, and Wesley Chu, with special guest Ken Liu Our hosts for this episode are experts in a great many different things. One thing that they have in common is that they're all members of the Asian Disapora, and in this episode we'll learn what kinds of things writers get wrong when writing Asian Diaspora elements, and how we as writers can learn to get those things right. Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson  

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Amal, and Maurice Internal conflicts, simply put, are problems your characters have with themselves. In this episode we address the ways in which writers can build stories and subplots around internal conflicts, and how we can tell when it's not working. Notes: the MICE quotient is Milieu, Idea, Character, and Event. Mary's relationship axes are Role, Relationship, Status, and Competence. Credits: This episode was recorded by Andrew Twiss, and mastered by Alex Jackson

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard When Mary says we could do fifteen different episodes on character arcs, she's being conservative. Notwithstanding, we set out to talk meaningfully about character arcs in one episode rather than in fifteen (or fifty.) We look at the shapes of these arcs, how they progress in our narratives, and the tools we use to get them to function properly in the context of our larger works. Notes: Elizabeth Boyle's DREAM tool for plotting character change is easier to remember when written out. So here it is! Denial Resistance Exploration Acceptance Manifestation Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson and mastered by Alex Jackson

Your Hosts: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard Our listeners submitted some great questions! How do you fairly and even-handedly write a deeply compelling character you deeply dislike? What's the best way to discuss a character's underlying motivations without expressly stating them in narrative or dialog? How well should characters understand their own motivations? How do you make non-violent characters interesting? Can there be too much depth to a character? How do you balance character depth across multiple attributes? How do you make a character motivation seem deep when most people's motivations are actually pretty shallow? Do you create standard dossiers for your characters? Does your story have to have a villain? How do you know whether or not a character's voice is working? Do you track words or phrases that are unique to a particular character's voice? Liner Notes: Brandon mentioned Howard's "Tyrannopotomus Rex" doodle as part of the writing pro

Your Hosts: Dan, Mary, Aliette, and Howard, with special guest Emma Newman Emma Newman, author, audio book narrator, and podcaster, joined us on the Baltic sea for WXR 2017, where, six days after a brilliant presentation on overcoming fear, she recorded a session with us on the same topic. The class was just that good. Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and was mastered by Alex Jackson

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Amal, and Maurice Character backstories: these are the tales that describe how the characters in your story became who they are by the time they arrive in the book. How much backstory needs to be written before you start in on the manuscript? How much needs to be in the manuscript itself? And how much backstory is too much?

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard What motivates us? What really motivates us? Why? (Note: our motivations are probably not in service of some overarching plot.) How can we use this information to believably motivate characters? Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard, with Jamahl Crouch Jamahl Crouch (Illusmm1 on Instagram) joined us at the GenCon Indy Writers Symposium to talk about what writers get wrong about street art. Jamahl is many things, and one of those is "street artist." Jamahl Crouch, pen on sketchbook, GenCon Indy 2017 We discuss the differences between graffiti and street art, where things like commissioned murals fit into the scene, and how the societal pressures (read: "it's not legal to paint on this wall") affect the form.  

Your Hosts: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard For our purposes, the term "flat character" refers to a character who lacks the depth required to maintain reader interest. In this episode we discuss how to avoid putting flat characters front-and-center in our writing, and how we go about fixing manuscripts that have flat character problems.

Recorded live at WXR 2017. Your Hosts: Dan, Mary, Aliette, and Howard, with special guest Mike Stop Continues Mike has multiple areas of expertise, but for this episode he's talking to us specifically about the things that writers get wrong about being a gay man. Credits: This episode was recorded live by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Andrew Jackson.

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Amal, and Maurice Let's talk about characters who have conflict built right into them; characters whose attributes and attitudes might seem to contradict one another; characters who like, y'know... actual people. (And let's talk about how to write them.)