20.10: Interview with Chuck Tingle: Breaking the Rules

20.10: Interview with Chuck Tingle: Breaking the Rules

Author: Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler March 9, 2025 Duration: 33:52
Writing Excuses
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Today we have the pleasure of talking with author (and longtime listener!) Chuck Tingle. We invited him on the podcast to talk about breaking the rules—both in terms of how to publish and what to publish. Chuck told us about the business and creative rules that he has upended—he doesn’t do readings, he is anonymous (during our interview he wore a pink bag over his head), and he thinks you should tell and show. Chuck then shares some of his favorite failures, what he learned from them, and how failures actually aren’t real. Also featured on today’s episode: puppet bloopers, approaching art, and why LOVE IS REAL. You can learn more about Chuck Tingle here. Chuck’s Thing of the Week: The FrankenStand (a vegan hotdog stand in LA that serves horror-themed hot dogs) Homework: Choose a section from your current Work In Progress (WIP). Think of the writing rule that you’re treating as the North Star of Writing At Large (what would the English Department hammer into you?). Try to rewrite that section without that rule or doing the opposite of the rule. Then, look at it and see what changes that makes. Is there a version of your writing where you can use this as a tool, and not a rule? P.S. 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. P.P.S. Are you tired of ads?! You can join our $5 tier on Patreon and receive ad-free episodes each week! Sign up for our newsletter Credits: Your hosts for this episode were Mary Robinette Kowal, Dongwon Song, and Howard Tayler. Our guest was Chuck Tingle. It was produced by Emma Reynolds, recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson. Join Our Writing Community! Patreon Instagram Threads Bluesky TikTok YouTube Facebook 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

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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…
18.42: Creating Magic Outside of a System [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 27:55
How do you write about magic? How do you build a world with magic and spells and potions? We dive into the rules and laws behind magical worlds. We often think of magic as being with a system, but what if it's not? What…

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