Writing Excuses

Dan needs to write a military thriller. It's just a short story, but still, it's a bit outside his area of expertise, and he needs help. So in this episode Brandon, Mary, and Howard will endeavor to h...

2 Syys 201217min

Fans of role-playing games should know the name Monte Cook well, because he's been writing some of the highest-profile tomes in the field for two-and-a-half decades now. Monte joins us in front of a l...

27 Elo 201217min

Let's talk about how to start the next one -- not the next book in a series, necessarily. Your next project might not leverage the worldbuilding or characters you used in your previous project. We dis...

19 Elo 201218min

Writers, like actors, have to animate the inanimate, and evoke emotions that we may not have ever felt, and in this episode we talk about the things that we do in order to accomplish that. We talk abo...

13 Elo 201217min

Eric James Stone, Nebula winner and "graduate" of NASA's Launchpad workshop, joins us to talk about astronomy in our world-building. We talk about tides, habitable zones, planetary orbits and axial t...

6 Elo 201216min

It's time for our fourth "Project in Depth" episode, and now Dan Wells is on the spot. The Hollow City is Dan's latest book, and while it's not a new John Cleaver book, it's still a supernatural thril...

30 Heinä 201221min

Microcasting! Again!! Now with exclamation points!!! You'll have to have a listen for our answers, but here are the questions: * How do you deal with bad reviews? * How do you apply Brandon's magic...

23 Heinä 201219min

The villain problem, as we define it here at the beginning of the 'cast, is when the heroes are less proactive than the villain, when they spend most of the book doing little more than reacting to the...

15 Heinä 201217min