Writing Excuses

It's important to be original, but is it possible to be TOO original? Further, is it possible that we over-value originality? Dan raises the question in regards to James Cameron's Avatar, which made ...

2 Juli 201216min

Recorded live at Utah Valley University, here's another Q&A episode from the LTUE Symposium! The questions: * What was Brandon's plan with Mistborn and the themes regarding establishment? * Why do...

25 Juni 201219min

Capers! They're delicious on bagels with lox and cream cheese. Also, tricky to write well, and often called "heists." Dan explains the caper/heist format to us using Ocean's Eleven as the model, so w...

17 Juni 201217min

There are a lot of things that Our Very Own Brandon Sanderson can get away with. In The Way of Kings, he gets away with not just one, but TWO prologues. In this 'cast Mary, Dan, and Howard get to gril...

10 Juni 201223min

Coming to you pre-recorded from the boomy basement of Brandon Sanderson, here's an episode about time travel. Oddly, there's an audio artifact here where we're hearing faint echoes of those speaking, ...

3 Juni 201217min

A microcast is our word for an asynchronous Q&A episode: you ask us tons of questions online, either through twitter or facebook or our listenermail account (on the sidebar), and we want to answer as ...

27 Maj 201219min

We're doing something new, and Howard gets to go first. The plan is to take something one of us has completed, and which you've had ample time to read, and grill the creator about the project. Obviou...

21 Maj 201221min

Michael R. Collings and his son Michaelbrent Collings join us live at UVU to talk with us about cathartic horror. In particular, we talk about how the catharsis is part of what makes horror such a del...

14 Maj 201219min