Writing Excuses

Eric Patten joins us for a cast on Middle Grade fiction. His series, The Hunter Chronicles (Return to Exile and The Legend Thief have both been released) is delightful. As Dan points out, there's no ...

23 Kesä 201318min

Mary's story "Kiss Me Twice," is a murder mystery featuring an artificial intelligence using Mae West as an avatar. It appeared on the ballot for the 2012 Hugo Awards in the Best Novella category (our...

16 Kesä 201322min

Microcasting! It's what we've taken to calling a Q&A. Eric Patten joins us for this one. Here are the questions: * What's your first step in the rewriting process? * How do you write Artificial Int...

9 Kesä 201316min

E.J. "Eric" Patten joins us for a discussion of pre-writing. His first book, Return to Exile, came out in 2011, and The Legend Thief released in March of 2013. What is pre-writing? Eric walks us thro...

2 Kesä 201318min

We here at Writing Excuses enjoyed Marvel's The Avengers. This isn't a movie review, though. This is a discussion of what the movie did right from a writer's standpoint. The things we focus on? * Di...

26 Touko 201320min

The number one request we got when we asked you what you'd like us to talk about? Short story writing. Mary is our resident expert, and if she weren't already a member of the cast, she'd our go-to exp...

19 Touko 201317min

There are numerous local cultures surrounding writers, writing groups, and the conventions that writers attend. These cultural peculiarities influence the writing that emerges from those areas. As wr...

12 Touko 201317min

Blocking! What is it, why is it important, and how can you do it well? We begin with a definition (blocking is the part of the narrative that tells the reader where the characters are, where the scen...

6 Touko 201318min