Writing Excuses

Through all the tumultuous evolution of various social media platforms one thing has remained stable: email. In this episode we talk about how to design and deploy author newsletters. Credits: Your h...

30 Apr 202324min

Dolly Parton once said "figure out who you are, and then do it on purpose." One of DongWon Song's newsletter installments riffs on this, and in this episode we riff further, exploring good principles ...

23 Apr 202326min

Publishing is hard. Also, Publishing is Hard is a newsletter from DongWon Song. They launched it in 2019 as an outlet for their experiences in the publishing industry. In this episode we explore thi...

16 Apr 202322min

Back in February, with Episode 18.8, we began exploring the process of writing a mystery story. That episode led us into a series of six episodes about tension, and the tools we use to create and mana...

9 Apr 202321min

Let's take all our tension tools and apply them in tiny ways. A big application of tension might be an argument between two characters about a course of plot-important action. Microtension might be th...

2 Apr 202317min

In our ongoing exploration of tension, the time has come to examine conflict. It can be shaped and delivered in numerous ways, but you have to know the core conflict before you can make anybody feel t...

26 Mar 202319min

Our continuing exploration of tension has taken us to a favorite technique: unanswered questions. Sure, this obviously applies to mysteries, but consider the question posed in romances: “will they get...

19 Mar 202321min

Our deconstruction and categorization of tension continues this week with an exploration of Juxtaposition, which is a contrast between two elements that supplies tension by allowing the reader to inse...

12 Mar 202320min