Writing Excuses

Humor is present as an element, at least to some degree, in a substantial amount of the media we consume. In this episode we discuss some stylistic tools for applying humor  to our work, and how these...

21 Elo 201622min

Victoria Schwab, who also writes as V.E. Schwab, joined us in Phoenix to talk about crossover fiction—in this context the term means books that target a given demographic but which have a much broader...

14 Elo 201621min

"Talking about humor is the least funny thing you can do." —Howard Tayler You have been warned! and with that out of the way... What is the driving force that gets readers to turn pages in a book th...

7 Elo 201623min

Trina Marie Phillips joined us at Phoenix Comic Con to talk about her work as a futurist. Futurism, for those unfamiliar with our use of the term here, is related to science fiction, but it remains ro...

31 Heinä 201616min

We fielded the following questions about the "Thriller" elemental genre from listeners on Facebook and Twitter: * How do I build tension consistently through my story? * How do you maintain tensi...

24 Heinä 201620min

Thrillers are, by their very nature, page-turners. In this episode we look at the thriller element as part of a story whose principal driver is one of the other elemental genres. We consider some exam...

17 Heinä 201620min

Alyssa Wong, Campbell Award nominee and Nebula Award winner, joins us to talk about impostor syndrome. This is the frame of mind that many successful writers suffer from, in which they worry that they...

10 Heinä 201626min

Let's get this out of the way up front: in the syntax of elemental genres, the phrase "the element of thriller" is clunky. But we'll say it anyway. We discuss the difference between the drivers in th...

3 Heinä 201616min