18.41: Deep Dive: Erin's Short Fiction Extravaganza

18.41: Deep Dive: Erin's Short Fiction Extravaganza

Author: Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler October 8, 2023 Duration: 25:11

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 the next 8 episodes, we’ll be diving into three of her short stories. This week, Erin explains how to write outside of traditional genre classifications. We talk about the importance of antagonists, tone, and the horror genre. And we discuss how to decide if your short story should become a novel. 


We highly recommend you read Erin’s three short stories to get the most out of these next 8 episodes! Read Erin’s short stories: Wolfy Things, Sour Milk Girls, Snake Season. Note: these books involve some darker themes. All of these short stories are available for free online and also have audio versions available. 


Homework

Take a line you've written a while ago that you absolutely love. Try rewriting it as the writer you are now.


Thing of the Week: 

Never Have I Ever by Isabel Yap 


Liner Notes: 

Interview with Erin on the podcast Just Keep Writing

Wolfy Things by Erin Roberts 

Sour Milk Girls by Erin Roberts 

Snake Season by Erin Roberts 

Writing Wonder


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
18.52: Writing Inside The Box [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 23:28
"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 tel…
18.51: So You Wanna Play With Format? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 24:47
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 ep…
18.50: The Unreliable Narrator [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 26:40
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. Hom…
18.49: Giving Your Story A Voice [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 24:09
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 structu…
18.48: NaNoWriMo Week 5 - Writing Endings [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 23:09
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 exist…
18.47: NaNoWriMo Week 4 - Climaxes, or OH MY GOD NO [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 22:22
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 thr…
18.46: NaNoWriMo Week 3 - Raising the Stakes [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 20:54
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 th…
18.45: NaNoWriMo Week 2 - Inciting Incident [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 22:28
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 thing t…
18.44: NaNoWriMo Week 1- Getting Started [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 19:19
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 a…
18.43: Worldbuilding in Miniature [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 24:07
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 sh…