Writing Excuses

Recorded live at Dragons & Fairy Tales, this episode is for anybody who has a novel or two (or more) sitting in the bottom of their trunk. What are the best ways to re-use old material you've set asid...

23 Aug 201016min

Recorded live at Dragons & Fairy Tales in Eagle Mountain, Utah, this episode features the work of several brave souls who submitted their first paragraphs to us for critique. We are not American Idol...

16 Aug 201020min

We return to White Sand (original version), Brandon's first book, written while he was a teenager. Again, you'll need to suspend your disbelief as we assume that the story edits and other major conten...

9 Aug 201018min

Let's build THE FUTURE! [cue dramatic music] The Writing Excuses crew explores another angle on the massively multifaceted gem of a topic known as "worldbuilding." We've touched on governments, relig...

2 Aug 201015min

By popular request, here's a 'cast where we demonstrate line-editing. A word of warning, though: we demonstrate this process on the very first book Brandon ever wrote. Not his first published, book, m...

26 Jul 201018min

When Oscar Hammerstein wrote "Let's start at the very beginning // A very good place to start" he was talking about teaching children to sing, not writing a novel. Sometimes the beginning is the very ...

19 Jul 201018min

What do you do when, halfway through the book you're writing, you realize it needs to be completely rebuilt? More importantly, how do you figure this out in the first place? This podcast came about as...

12 Jul 201018min

"As you know, we'll be discussing stilted dialog" said Howard. "We should do something different for the introduction." "Let's speak our dialog tags" said Brandon cleverly. "We mustn't forget to inc...

5 Jul 201016min