Writing Excuses

Microcasting! It's a Q&A, with each question serving as its own little micro-podcast. This week's questions: * Should you include your prologue as one of the three chapters you send in a submission ...

26 Touko 201419min

Brandon has some rules about magic systems -- rules he uses as guideposts for his own writing. In his own words, "I name them Sanderson's Laws partially out of hubris..." Sanderson's third law states...

19 Touko 201420min

This topic breaks down into two parts: First: sometimes you create something, and when you hand to your fans, it becomes their thing. How do we as creators deal with this when it happens, and how do ...

12 Touko 201418min

How do you go about writing a character showing their emotions without them sounding whiny (or whatever the "too-much" version of the appropriate emotion might be)? Adding to the difficulty of the ex...

5 Touko 201417min

Microcasting! A Q&A by any other name. Here are the questions we fielded: * Can I have a rule-based magic system and a mystical system in the same universe? * What are your pre-writing methods? (Ca...

28 Huhti 201418min

Eric James Stone joins Brandon, Mary, and Howard to answer questions from our listeners. Here are the questions: * Should you submit your prologue along with the first chapters? * What do you do wh...

21 Huhti 201418min

What do you do when the ending you've planned won't be emotionally satisfying? You know, when you've discovered during the course of writing the story that you're making promises to the reader that th...

16 Huhti 201419min

"What are the parts of the job that nobody told you about?" Or, you know, WARNED you about... It's a question somebody sent to us, and we all had different answers, so Brandon put together a list, a...

7 Huhti 201418min