Writing Excuses

The rules: Write dialog with no dialog tags and no narration. Write it in such a way that we get character, conflict, and setting. We did this a few weeks ago, and have more examples from you, our dar...

17 Jan 201124min

Last week we wormcanned "fulfilling promises to the reader," so this week we'll tackle the discussion using actual examples. We start with a deconstruction of The Longshoreman of the Apocalypse, which...

10 Jan 201118min

Send your angry emails to Howard, because this was totally his idea. This is a discussion of avoiding unnecessary offense. Sometimes, especially in humorous works, offense is a required risk, so that...

3 Jan 201119min

This week's episode, a day later than usual because of extended eggnogging*, features the submissions of a few brave souls who participated in Brandon's tagless, unnarrated dialog exercise. The rules...

28 Dec 201021min

Late last season we took a look at Brandon's first novel and did some line-editing and critiquing. It was so much fun we decided that Dan needed to take a turn in the dunking booth. He totally gets w...

20 Dec 201019min

Well, we're back, and we've rescued our time travel episode. Unfortunately, almost all mentions of Lincoln have been redacted, and his gold is conspicuously absent. Instead, Brandon, Dan, and Howard a...

13 Dec 201018min

Brandon and Howard are again joined by Scott Westerfeld, again in a boomy room in the Provo Library, this time for a discussion of steampunk. What is steampunk? Basically, it's Victorian-era science-...

6 Dec 201016min

Scott Westerfeld joins Brandon and Howard for a discussion of the visual components of novels. His novel Leviathan is set in an alternate history 1914, and is designed to look like a book from 1914, c...

29 Nov 201015min