Writing Excuses5 Aug 2018

13.31: Learning to Listen as a Writer

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard

"Write what you know" gets misapplied a lot. In this episode we'll talk about how to know things by listening well. In particular, we're looking at writing interesting characters by listening to real people.

We also talk about the more formal act of interviewing people¹, and how to deal with the attendant complexities.

Liner Notes: Mary references her interviewing of rocket scientists and astronauts, which we just talked about last week. When this episode was recorded the JPL trip was still in our future, and was "will have been" extremely cool.

Comment Notes: The audio file wasn't correctly linked until Tuesday. The irony of the our "how to listen" episode having exactly zero "listen" buttons is not lost on anyone.

Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson and engineered by Alex Jackson. Their fine work was obscured from public view by the careless hands of Howard Tayler.

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