20.06: History and Community

20.06: History and Community

Author: Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler February 9, 2025 Duration: 25:54
Have you ever wondered how much you need to know about a specific character before you start your story? Do you need to have an entire outline of their childhood before you can start writing in depth about them? We don’t think so! But it is important to listen to these questions as they emerge. This can help you figure out how to incorporate facets of each character’s identity that have narrative weight, instead of crowding the story with small facts that might not be necessary. This can help you layer and backfill as you build out – and discover– your story. Homework: Identify something from your character's life before your story begins - write a scene in which that element of the character weighs on the scene but is never explicitly mentioned. P.S. Want to come write with us in 2025?! Our retreat registration is open, and we are starting to fill up! We are going to unlock our creative processes in Minnesota and explore Story Refinement as we cruise down the Mexican Riviera! Learn more here. Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use my code homeserve.com/excuses for a great deal: https://www.homeserve.com * Check out Talkiatry and use my code Talkiatry.com/WX for a great deal: https://www.talkiatry.com Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/writing-excuses2130/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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
16.17: The Time To Rhyme [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 24:22
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, Amal, and Howard Rhyming is powerful. It can signal a form, or telegraph whimsy. It can be predictable, surprising, and sometimes both. It may also be seen as childish. When, then, is it…
16.16: Poetic Structure: Part II [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 27:57
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, Amal, and Howard How does a poem happen? Absent an external structure, what makes a thing a poem? The key word in that question may be "external," because ultimately the poem on the page…
16.15: Poetic Structure, Part I [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 18:15
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, Amal, and Howard Rigorous structure in poetic form is commonly pointed at when we declare Poems have meters and rhymes, as the norm. Yet words without patterns can roar like a storm So wh…
16.14: Poetic Language [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 20:35
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, Amal, and Howard We might begin with description. Or we might begin by deconstructing the act of describing. Wait. No, not there. Let's jump in AFTER the deconstruction. Let's leap beyond…
16.13: Day Brain vs. Night Brain [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 19:31
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, Amal, and Howard Patterns in the way we're speaking may betray which 'brain' we're using; often bound by what's familiar, sometimes loosed for free-er choosing. Writing like the day-brain…
16.12 : Singing Versus Speaking [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 19:17
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, Amal, and Howard Can you hear your writing sing, being intoned instead of read? With the dialogs as tunes whose tags say "sung" instead of "said?" When the rhythm of your prose echoes the…
16.11: What is Poetry? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 19:16
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, Amal, and Howard This is how we begin our master class on poetry, with Amal El-Mohtar: With not one question, but two. * What is poetry? * What is prose? Yes, both questions are a trap. O…
16.10: Paying it Forward, with Kevin J. Anderson [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 28:11
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, Dan, Amal, and Howard, with special guest Kevin J. Anderson Kevin J. Anderson joins us to talk about how others have helped us in our careers, and how we might continue that tradition and help…
16.9: Crossing The Revenue Streams [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 21:58
Your Hosts: Dan, Erin, Brandon, and Howard How many different ways can our writing earn money for us? What additional work, besides "just" writing, do we need to do in order to get that money? In this episode we discuss…
16.8: Smart Promotion [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 24:24
Your Hosts: Dan, Erin, Brandon, and Howard Let's talk about how promote yourself and your work, and how to do it well. The tools we use for this continue to evolve, and in this discussion we'll cover things that have wor…