18.31: Getting Personal: Mining Your Life for Themes

18.31: Getting Personal: Mining Your Life for Themes

Author: Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler July 30, 2023 Duration: 24:10

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 tell your story?  We think about the personal touches that you can add to your writing, and how people can hear when your story is personal. 

Homework:

2 things! 

1. Have you watched Criminal Minds? If you haven’t, you should! Next week, we have a special guest—Kirsten Vangsness who plays Penelope Garcia! Explore her other stuff (like her web series and podcast), and get ready for an INCREDIBLE conversation with her. 


2. What's the thing in your real life that you keep thinking about when you aren't writing? Can you give that feeling or theme to a character? ALSO, prepare for our next Deep Dive, by reading through Howard Tayler's Schlock Mercenary. And feel free to re-listen to our interview with Howard earlier this year, 

Thing of the Week:

Everything Everywhere all at Once 

Credits: Your hosts for this episode were Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler. It was produced by Emma Reynolds, recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson.

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It’s a common piece of advice: if you want to be a writer, you should write. But what happens when you’re staring at the blank page, or when the business side of publishing feels like a maze? That’s where Writing Excuses comes in. Each week, hosts Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler gather not just to talk about writing, but to dissect it. They move quickly, respecting your time while packing episodes with actionable discussions on technique, from character voice to plot structure. But this podcast understands that a writing life isn’t just about craft-it’s also a career. So conversations naturally pivot to the practicalities of the business, navigating careers, and sustaining creativity in a demanding field. You’ll hear five distinct professional perspectives blending into a single, focused conversation designed to get you past excuses and back to your work. It’s like a regular, invigorating workshop session delivered directly to you, meant to equip you with tools for both your manuscript and your professional path.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 500

Writing Excuses
Podcast Episodes
16.36: Deep Dive into “Milieu” [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 20:26
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, C.L. Polk, Charlotte Forfieh, and Mary Robinette Kowal The M.I.C.E. Quotient is an organizational tool which categorizes story elements as Milieu, Inquiry, Character, or Event. In this second episo…
16.35: What is the M.I.C.E. Quotient? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

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Your Hosts: Dan Wells, C.L. Polk, Charlotte Forfieh, and Mary Robinette Kowal The next eight episodes are a deep dive into the M.I.C.E. Quotient, so we'll begin with a definition. M.I.C.E. is an organizational tool which…
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Duration: 20:23
Your Hosts: DongWon Song, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler Novels deliver a lot of information, and it's helpful to consider that delivery in terms of layers. Novels are layer cakes, and we're not talki…
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Duration: 18:37
Your Hosts: DongWon Song, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler Few pieces of writing advice get repeated as much as that old saw "show, don't tell." We're here to show tell you that it's not only not univer…
16.32: First Page Fundamentals—THE KILLING FLOOR, by Lee Childs [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 21:11
Your Hosts: DongWon Song, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler In this episode we explore the first page of The Killing Floor, by Lee Childs, with the goal of learning how to build good first pages for own…
16.31: First Page Fundamentals—MOBY DICK [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 20:49
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16.30: First Page Fundamentals—THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 21:56
Your Hosts: DongWon Song, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler In this episode we explore the first page of The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson, with the goal of learning how to build good first…
16.29: Building Trust [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 17:03
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16.28: Common First-Page Mistakes [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 18:16
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16.27: Nobody Wants to Read a Book [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 18:36
Your Hosts: DongWon Song, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler Our controversial episode title comes to us via John Schwarzwelder, and it points up nicely the importance of today's topic, which is first lin…