20.01: Welcome to 2025!

20.01: Welcome to 2025!

Author: Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler January 5, 2025 Duration: 23:18

For our 20th season, we are focusing on your toolbox. We’re going to be thinking about tools in terms of the lenses that we use to approach a story. We’re going to focus on the four lenses of: who, where, when, and why (don’t worry– what and how will be looked at in a later season, since they’re more about execution and less about lenses.) Our hosts talk about the lenses they’re adopting as they look towards 2025. 


At the end of this season, we’re going to take all these lenses and apply them to one work: All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders


A note: we will now only have “thing of the week” occasionally, and not regularly! 


Homework: Make a list of the tools you already have in your toolbox. Now, as an intention, think of an area that you want a tool for. Over the course of this year, we’re going to try to help you find that tool. 


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Credits: Your hosts for this episode were Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, 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
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Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Mary Anne, and Wesley The third-person POV lens can be used for simultaneously describing the world to the reader and describing the character. In this episode we'll talk about where we deploy…
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12.5: Literary Fiction [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 20:20
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12.4: Hybrid Viewpoints [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

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12.3: Project in Depth, “Risk Assessment,” by Sandra Tayler [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

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Duration: 21:29
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Mary Anne, and Wesley This week we talk about character voice, and how to get it right in First Person. This POV is a strong tool for developing memorable characters. We cover sentence structur…