Alle afleveringen
1.012 afleveringen, van nieuw naar oud
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15.10: Evaluating Ideas
8 maart 2020 · 20 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Victoria, Dan, and Howard We've talked in the past about how ideas are cheap, and that it's execution upon those ideas which is what really matters. In this episode we'll talk about how we evaluate things over there on the side of the equation where things are cheap and plentiful. Because while we have no shortage of ideas, they vary quite a bit in their value to us. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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15.09: Choose Your Own Adventurous Publishing Path
2 maart 2020 · 25 min
Your Hosts: Dan, DongWon, Piper, and Howard "Should I go self-pub? Should I go traditional? Can I do both? How do I decide where my book fits?" In this episode we'll cover these, and many more questions as best we're able. Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson Liner Notes: Zoe York on The SisterCast Skye Warren Marketing Class on RWA forums¹ Writer Beware ¹ RWA membership is required for these forums. This episode was recorded in September of 2019 Lees meer
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15.08: Q&A on a Ship
24 februari 2020 · 27 min
Your Hosts: Dan, Mary Robinette, DongWon, and Howard At WXR 19 we recorded live, and took audience questions aboard the ship. Here they are! (You'll have to listen to the episode for the answers.) What have you learned in the past year that has improved your craft? When you're having trouble, how do you know if it's "I don't feel like writing" or "there's a problem with the manuscript?" How far ahead do you plan your careers? How do you tell when a fight/battle/showdown is going on for too long? How do you continue to learn and improve on your craft? How do you manage and prioritize your time when you're working on multiple projects? How do you feel about multiple first-person POVs in a single book? What are the most important elements to include on the last page of your book? What are some things we can do to strengthen our voice when writing in third person? How do you decide who to have as alpha and beta readers? In secondary world stories, how do you decide whether to call a horse a horse? How much leeway will an editor or agent give a story when it's not ready, but it shows promise? Liner Notes: "Sometimes Writer's Block is Really Depression" Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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15.07: Creating Chapters
17 februari 2020 · 19 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Victoria, Dan, and Howard How do you create chapters? What are the rules for carving your manuscript into numbered chunks? Is chaptering part of your outline, is it something you discover while you write, or is it something else entirely? In this episode we talk about how we do it, and how we think about it while it's being done. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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15.06: Prose and Cons, with Patrick Rothfuss
10 februari 2020 · 26 min
Your Hosts: Dan, Mary Robinette, Howard, with special guest Patrick Rothfuss How do you write beautiful prose? How do you set about telling a story with words that sing (and dance, and tell jokes) instead of just conveying information in word-sized chunks? In this episode we talk about how we do it, and how writers might set out to do good word-do like the best good word-doers do. Liner Notes: Gwendolyn Brooks—We Real Cool Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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15.05: Setting Goals for Your Career
3 februari 2020 · 22 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Victoria, Dan, and Howard What kind of career goal-setting do you do? We had a discussion in this vein with DongWon a few weeks ago, but neither Brandon nor Victoria participated then, so it's worth revisiting. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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15.04: Revision, with Patrick Rothfuss
27 januari 2020 · 29 min
Your Hosts: Dan, Howard, and Mary Robinette, with special guest Patrick Rothfuss We begin our discussion of revision by addressing a question we hear a lot: How do you know what needs to be changed? We talk about our various techniques for getting distance from our work, incorporating feedback, and breaking the process down into manageable chunks. Liner Notes: Lindsey Ellis on Three-Act Structure Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson. Lees meer
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15.03: Self Publishing
20 januari 2020 · 24 min
Your Hosts: Howard, with special guests Victorine Lieske, Tamie Dearen, Bridget E. Baker, and Nandi Taylor Howard leads this discussion with four guests who are doing well with self publishing. They share some numbers with us, and talk about their strategies for reaching their audience, and making the most of their market. Liner Notes: Given, by Nandi Taylor, is available on January 21, (just two days from this episode's air date) Credits: This episode was recorded live at WXR by Bert Grimm, and was mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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15.02: Writing Between the Lines
13 januari 2020 · 20 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Victoria, Dan, and Howard Victoria Schwab, who also writes as V.E. Schwab, joins us this year, and in this episode she helps us cover that deep concept of "theme," and how we as authors can state our themes without coming straight out and stating them—writing our themes "between the lines." Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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15.01: Evolution of a Career
6 januari 2020 · 28 min
Your Hosts: Dan, DongWon, Mary Robinette, and Howard Season 15 is going to be a bit broader than the previous seasons have, at least in the abstract. We're going to focus on your questions. In this episode we tackle the topic that dominates our collection of these questions: CAREER. Liner Notes: It hasn't actually been 15 years. It's been 12. Writing Excuses launched in February of 2008, and the first five seasons were not full-year seasons. Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.52: Game Mastering and Collaborative Storytelling, with Natasha Ence
30 december 2019 · 18 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard, with special guest Natasha Ence Natasha Ence is a professional game master. (Yes, you read that correctly.) She joins us to discuss collaborative storytelling, and how the principles of game mastering for role-players can be applied to creating a fulfilling, engaging story. Credits: This episode was recorded live at LTUE by Dan Thompson, and was mastered by Alex Jackson. Lees meer
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14.51: A Farewell to Worldbuilding
23 december 2019 · 22 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard We've spent all year focusing on worldbuilding, and it's time to move on. Almost. In this episode we try to cover some points we may have missed, we talk about what we've learned, and discuss some of our favorite recent examples of worldbuilding. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.50: Write What You… No.
16 december 2019 · 19 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard We've all heard the adage "write what you know," and in this episode we set out to un-misinterpret it. The phrase is fraught, and perhaps the most perilous bit is that it can be used an excuse to not write. Here at Writing Excuses we're pretty committed to approaching things in ways that let us do MORE writing, so this topic is a great place for us to leave you out of excuses. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.49: Customs and Mores
9 december 2019 · 20 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab In this episode we discuss how our customs and mores govern our own real-world interactions, and how our understanding of these interactions can be applied to our worldbuilding. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson. Lees meer
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14.48: How to Practice Worldbuilding
2 december 2019 · 19 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard The entire year has been about learning how to worldbuild, and we've learned a thing or two ourselves while preparing material for you. In this episode we talk about some of those lessons, and try to answer stray questions that didn't fit into any of previous episode buckets. Liner Notes: If Dinosaurs Had Body Fat Like Penguins Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.47: Writing Characters With Physical Disabilities
25 november 2019 · 16 min
Your Hosts: Piper, Dan, and Tempest, with special guest Nicola Griffith In this episode we discuss how to faithfully represent people with physical disabilities through the characters we create. Our guest, Nicola Griffith, walks us through the process of rigorously imagining how the world might look to someone with a particular disability. Credits: This episode was mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.46: Unusual Resources
18 november 2019 · 19 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard Among science fiction and fantasy plot devices, the "uncommon resource" trope is common enough to almost seem cliché. Fortunately (?), the economic principle of scarcity is ubiquitous enough in real life that most of us don't even blink when presented with the idea in fiction. So how do we keep it fresh? How do we roll scarcities into the economies we create, and the worlds we build? Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.45: Economics
11 november 2019 · 18 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab Economists tend to see everything as economics, which is kind of how proponents of ANY discipline see their discipline, but it's not a bad way to look at worldbuilding through the lens of economics. In this episode we talk about how this works for us, and how it lets us roll our worldbuilding into our storytelling. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Liner Notes: Mahtab mentioned The Economics of Science Fiction on Medium.com Lees meer
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14.44: Realism vs. Rule-of-Cool
4 november 2019 · 21 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard Where do you draw the line between what seems plausible, and what would be cool? If you pick "plausible," how do you stay cool? If you pick "cool," how do you avoid knocking the readers out of the story? And finally, how might we structure things so that when the time comes, we don't need to choose one or the other, because we can have both? Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and engineered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.43: Sequencing Your Career Genome
27 oktober 2019 · 19 min
Your Hosts: Howard, Mary Robinette, Dan, and DongWon Let's talk about career planning. It's a lot more than just launching a career by selling a book, and in this episode we talk about the kinds of things we want to be thinking about and preparing for beyond simply selling our next book or project. Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm at WXR 2018, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.42: Alternate History
21 oktober 2019 · 21 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard Alternate histories (and historical fantasies) are a staple of genre fiction. In this episode we talk about the worldbuilding process, the tools we use, and the pitfalls we try to avoid when constructing these kinds of stories. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.41: History
14 oktober 2019 · 18 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab Let's make history! In this episode we talk about doing exactly that—creating real-feeling histories for secondary world settings. We discuss the resources we turn to, the pitfalls we try to avoid, and the places where we think the history has been done really well. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.40: Deep vs. Wide
7 oktober 2019 · 19 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard How do you decide between digging one really deep, narrow well, and digging one really wide, shallow ocean? In this episode we talk about our desires to build worlds which appear both vanishingly wide and unplumbably deep, when we have time to do neither. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.39: Positioning Your Book in the Marketplace
30 september 2019 · 19 min
Your Hosts: Howard, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Dongwon "Positioning feels like the most important question in all of publishing." — DongWon Song In this episode we talk about how to ask and answer the question of positioning, which is "who is this book for?" Credits: This episode was recorded before a live audience aboard Liberty of the Seas by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.38: Volunteer Opportunities for Writers, with Jared Quan
23 september 2019 · 20 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard, with special guest Jared Quan Jared Quan serves as a volunteer on several non-profit boards, and joined us to talk about the opportunities that exist for writers. Administration, leadership, writing and editing, and teaching are just a few of the many kinds of roles available for volunteers. Credits: This episode was recorded live at LTUE by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson. Lees meer
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14.37: Outlandish Impossibilities
16 september 2019 · 23 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard Some science fiction and fantasy stories arise from a premise which, under even just rudimentary examination, appear utterly ridiculous. And some of these stories are hugely successful. In this episode we talk about how we manage our worldbuilding when the goal is less about building a world which works, and more about getting the audience to buy in on something outlandish so we can get on with our story. Liner Notes: "Went With The Wind" begins about two minutes into this full episode of the Carole Burnett Show Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.36: Languages and Naming
9 september 2019 · 20 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab How do we come up with names? How do we do it in ways that enhance our worldbuilding? What are the elements that give our invented naming schemes (even the zany ones with lots of syllables and apostrophes) verisimilitude? In this episode we talk about some of the tricks we've used, the pitfalls we've avoided, and conlangs in general. Liner Notes: In Episode 12.51 we discuss Conlangs ("constructed languages")with Dirk Elzinga. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.35: What You Leave Out
2 september 2019 · 19 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard The advice commonly given to writers is to worldbuild an iceberg, but only to show the reader the tip. This is still too much work. Icebergs are big. In this episode we talk about worldbuilding the tip of the iceberg, and then worldbuilding as little as possible of the rest of the iceberg so that the tip behaves correctly. Lees meer
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14.34: Author Branding
26 augustus 2019 · 23 min
Your Hosts: Howard, Mary Robinette, Dan, and DongWon Authors have brands whether they want to have them or not. It's a simple principle of marketing, and the better we understand that principle, the better able we are to control how it affects our careers. In this episode we talk marketing, and freely use terms like "relationship marketing," "authentic experience," and "brand loyalty," despite the fact that sometimes these words make our inner artists cringe. Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson. Lees meer
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14.33: Writing Imperfect Worlds
19 augustus 2019 · 21 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard How do you write a setting in which the status quo is one with which you deeply disagree? How do you create a conflict of this sort without being overtly pedantic or preachy? In this episode we talk about creating engaging worlds while worldbuilding around—and yes, over—landmines. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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Worldbuilding Gender Roles
12 augustus 2019 · 33 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard Let's talk about worldbuilding with gender roles. Most of us have grown up with a very strongly defined binary, that distinction need not be how we craft the worlds in which we set our stories. In this episode we discuss the resources we have to help us, and the approaches we've taken to worldbuild with gender in our own work. We drill down pretty deeply on some worldbuilding with Brandon, and yes, we run quite long. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Liner Notes Axes of Power spreadsheet pronoun.is, #ownvoices, #nonbinary Lees meer
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14.31: Cultural Setting as Conflict
6 augustus 2019 · 19 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab In this episode we talk about how to put characters in conflict with their setting, and how to structure our work so that these conflicts arise organically rather than feeling mandated by plot. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and master by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.30: Eating Your Way to Better Worldbuilding
29 juli 2019 · 25 min
Your Hosts: Piper, DongWon, Amal, and Maurice We like food, and we like to talk about food. Our hosts this week talk about how this influences their fiction, (not to mention how incredibly complex [and interesting, and delicious] the subject is.) Credits: this episode was recorded by Howard Tayler, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.29: Field Research
22 juli 2019 · 19 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard So, you're going to go someplace and learn something you can't learn in any other way. Maybe it's location research for setting. Maybe you're off to interview an expert. Whatever you're planning, you need to be planning it well. In this episode we discuss the field research we've done, how we went about it, and how we might do it differently. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson EPISODE ORDER NOTE: As of this writing, episode 14.28's web-sized audio file isn't ready. We'll run it next week, and eventually swap the dates to get 14.29 and 14.28 in the right order. Lees meer
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14.28: Warfare and Weaponry
15 juli 2019 · 19 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab How do you write about warfare in your stories when you've never fought in a war? How do you describe brilliant tactics when you're completely untrained in military movements? How can you portray the emotions of someone on a battlefield without having been on a battlefield yourself? In this episode we tackle these questions and more. (Hint: the answers include "research") Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.27: Natural Setting as Conflict
8 juli 2019 · 19 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard In this episode we stories with the "Person-vs-Setting" structure. These are stories where nature fills the role of antagonist, and may also be what governs the pacing, and the delivery of key emotional beats. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.26: Lessons from Aristotle, with Rob Kimbro
1 juli 2019 · 17 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, and Dan, with special guest Rob Kimbro Rob Kimbro joins us this week to talk about Aristotle's elements of tragedy, and how they might be applied to our writing. The six elements are (in Aristotle's order of descending importance): plot, character, idea, dialog, music, and spectacle. We discuss this tool in terms of critiquing existing work, and in finding direction in the things we create. Credits: this episode was recorded by Howard Tayler, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.25: Choosing Your Agent
24 juni 2019 · 22 min
Your Hosts: Howard, Mary Robinette, Dan, and DongWon Guest-host Dongwon Song joined us at WXR 2018 as an instructor, and gave great advice regarding the business side of working as an author. In this episode he takes us through a conversation about choosing an agent. Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.24: Political Intrigue
17 juni 2019 · 17 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard Political Intrigue stories are less about "politics" (as colloquially defined by pop culture) and more about mysteries. Per Mary Robinette, they're often like heists of information. The word "politics" here is used in its purest sense: POWER. In this episode we talk about how we worldbuild for stories in which the flow of information and misinformation affect the shift of power, and how to craft those stories so they're, well... intriguing instead of being boring. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.23: Governments Large and Small
10 juni 2019 · 19 min
Answering questions about the power structures you live within can help you with the worldbuilding of politics in the fiction you write. Lees meer
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14.22: Characters out of Their Depth
3 juni 2019 · 18 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard Sherlock Holmes has his Watson for a reason. Readers need a character to whom some things must be explained. In this episode we talk about how we create these gateway characters without delivering "maid and butler" dialog, or talking down to the reader. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.21: Writing The Other — Yes, You Can!
27 mei 2019 · 22 min
Your Hosts: Dan, Tempest, and DongWon The single most asked question we get on the subject of writing cultures other than our own is some variation on "can we even DO this anymore?" Short answer: YES, YOU CAN. Our objective with this episode is to encourage you to put in the work, do the research, and write outside of your culture or personal experience. At risk of sounding cliché, it's not easy, but it's worth it. Lees meer
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14.20: Allegory in Fiction
20 mei 2019 · 18 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard What is an allegory, anyway? This episode probably won't settle that question, but we did manage a discussion on how to use our stories to teach things, or be stand-ins for things, and to do it in the ways that allegories and/or parables might. We talk about some famous allegories, some things whose authors insisted were not allegorical, and the possible pitfalls of didacticism. Credits: This episode was engineered by Dan Thompson and mastered by Alex Jackson. Lees meer
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14.19: Religion and Ritual
13 mei 2019 · 18 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab We often worldbuild religions and rituals for the stories we create. In this episode we discuss the decisions surrounding this, and our approaches for doing it well. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.18: Setting as Theme
6 mei 2019 · 18 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard Theme is one of those high-falutin' concepts we're often reluctant to approach in a nuts-and-bolts sort of way. In this episode we'll talk about how our themes can be communicated through elements of our settings, deepening reader engagement with the things we write. We offer examples from our own work, and from things we've watched or read which have done this in ways that resonated well for us. Credits: This episode was recorded by Rob Kimbro, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.17: It’s Like “Car Talk” meets “Welcome To Nightvale”
29 april 2019 · 18 min
Your Hosts: Howard, Mary Robinette, Dan, and DongWon This episode is about comp titles (comparative titles), which are those things you use to describe your project in terms of other works. We discuss the ones we've used (both successfully and unsuccessfully), and the criteria we use to come up with good ones. Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.16: Your Setting is a Telegraph
22 april 2019 · 17 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard Your setting can quickly tell the reader what kind of a story they're reading, and in this episode we'll talk about how we make that happen. Think of it as the "establishing shot" principle from film making, expanded to cover whatever worldbuilding details we choose to reveal first. Liner Notes: Here are the Schlock Mercenary Book 19 prologues Howard described, complete with the footnotes which make fun of prologues. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.15: Technology
15 april 2019 · 19 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab We've spent a lot of time talking about magic systems in our worldbuilding. It's time to talk about science and technology in that same way. This has been a staple (perhaps the defining staple) of science fiction since before "science fiction" was a word. At risk of opening the "where do you get your ideas" can of worms, this episode covers a little bit of where we get our ideas, and where you might get—and subsequently develop—some more of yours. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.14: When To Tell
8 april 2019 · 17 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard "Show, don't tell," they tell us. Except sometimes showing is not always the best thing to do. Or even the right thing to do. Sometimes we should be telling. In this episode we'll tell you about telling. (We'd show you about telling, but we still don't have a video feed.) Credits: This episode was recorded by Rob Kimbro, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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WX 14.13: Obstacles vs. Complications
1 april 2019 · 16 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard What's the difference between an obstacle and a complication? Margaret Dunlap takes the lead on this episode for us, giving us the tools we need to create 'impediments to main character progress' which will drive our stories across page turns (and commercial breaks) in compelling, twisty ways. Credits: This episode was recorded by Daniel Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson. Lees meer
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