Alle afleveringen
1.012 afleveringen, van nieuw naar oud
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14.12: Writing The Other — Latinx Representation
24 maart 2019 · 20 min
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Tempest Bradford, DongWon Song, and Julia Rios Julia Rios joins us to talk about writing characters who come from one of the many Latin-American cultures or subcultures. "Latinx" is a catch-all term for people with Latin-American heritage, including mixed-race people. In this episode we talk about mash-up cuisine, intersectionality, and how to navigate the subtleties to find the specific cultural elements which will help you create Latinx characters. Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson. Lees meer
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14.11: Magic Without Rules
17 maart 2019 · 20 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard When we say "without rules" we're talking about stories whose magic is not held under logical scrutiny for the reader. There are lots of reasons why you might do this, and in this episode we'll talk about not just about the why, but also the how. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.10: Magic Systems
10 maart 2019 · 18 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab Let's design magic systems! We talk about how we do it, and how the principles of magic system design apply to the science fiction systems we create, and vice-versa. NOTE: In this episode we're talking about "hard" magic systems, where there are well-defined rule sets (even if the reader isn't shown them explicitly.) Next week we'll talk about "soft" magic. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson and mastered by Alex Jackson. Lees meer
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14.9: Showing Off
4 maart 2019 · 24 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard Let's infodump without infodumping. Let's deliver lots of exposition without sounding expository. Let's talk with the maid and the butler without having maid-and-butler dialog. Credits: This episode was recorded by Benjamin Hewett, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.8: Worldbuilding Q&A #1
25 februari 2019 · 25 min
Your Hosts: Howard, Mary Robinette, Dan, and DongWon We invited attendees at WXR 2018 to ask us some general worldbuilding questions. Here's what they asked: What cultural stuff do you need to know during the writing process? How do you treat overlaps between real-world religions and fictional religions when the fictional religions are part of the story's fundamental conflict? How much worldbuilding do you have figured out before you start your first draft, and how much do you discover on the fly? What's the point in a book beyond which you shouldn't introduce big worldbuilding elements? How do you ensure that the world comes through as a character of its own? How much change to terminology is too much? Credits: This episode was recorded live by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.7: How Weird is Too Weird?
18 februari 2019 · 16 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard How weird, how far outside the realm of what the reader feels to be familiar, is too weird? Where is the line beyond which the fantasy is too fantastic, the unreal too unrealistic, or the aliens too alien? In this episode we discuss finding that line, and with the tools at our disposal, possibly moving it. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson and mastered by Alex Jackson. Lees meer
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14.6: Fantasy and Science Fiction Races
11 februari 2019 · 17 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab Let's talk about race, sort-of. Let's talk about creating races—species of people, really—which is a critically important activity in much of our worldbuilding. In this episode we discuss a few of the pitfalls, some of our own techniques, and a few of our favorite alien¹ races. ¹Can of Worms: It's likely you'll subconsciously code your creations after people who are "other" to you. This is both fraught and inescapable, but we don't want to discourage you from trying. On May 26th we'll go into detail telling you "yes, you can," in a Writing The Other episode entitled "Yes You Can." Lees meer
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14.5: Viewpoint as Worldbuilding
4 februari 2019 · 18 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard When you're defining your world for the reader, some voice in the text must speak those definitions. This episode is about how we use character voices—their dialog and their narrative view points—to worldbuild. What do they see? How do they perceive it? What are their favorite jokes? What do they say when they swear? Credits: This episode was recorded by Benjamin Hewett, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.04: Writing the Other—Bisexual Characters
28 januari 2019 · 19 min
Your Hosts: Dan, Tempest, DongWon, and TJ This is the first of our Writing The Other episodes, in which we set out to help writers portray people who are unlike them. In this episode we're joined by T.J. Berry. She walks us through the language and terminology of bisexuality. Lees meer
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14.03: World of Hats
21 januari 2019 · 18 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard Margaret Dunlap joins us during season 14 to talk about worldbuilding. In this, her first episode with us, we talk about worlds in which a monolithic culture (like, say, 'everyone wears hats') is represented. We cover how to use the trope to your advantage, and how to avoid the trope if it's going to cause problems. Lees meer
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14.02: Geography and Biomes
14 januari 2019 · 19 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab Mahtab Narsimhan joins us this year for a dozen episodes on worldbuilding, and this week we're talking about geography and biomes. These pieces of our settings can be central to the stories we tell, but they can also be backdrops, and the story purposes they serve may determine which tools we use to describe them. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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14.01: Worldbuilding Begins! Up Front, or On the Fly?
7 januari 2019 · 21 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard Season 14 is all about worldbuilding¹, and we're kicking it off with a discussion of when you do that bit of work. Do you handle worldbuilding before you write the story, as you write the story, or after you've finished the story? We'll talk about how we do it, and the benefits and drawbacks of each approach. Credits: This episode was recorded by Benjamin Hewett, and mastered by Alex Jackson. ¹ The question of whether this term should be a closed compound (worldbuilding), an open compound (world building), or hyphenated (world-building) is an open one. Our decision to use the closed compound "worldbuilding" in our episode descriptions this year is a matter of personal preference. Lees meer
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13.52: Working Dad is a Spaceman
31 december 2018 · 21 min
Your Hosts: Howard, Mary, and Dan, with NASA astronaut Thomas Marshburn. Last week's episode may have sounded like the last one for 2018, but that's an artifact of December having five Sundays rather than four. Fifth Sundays are our "wildcards," and something wild seems like a nice way to round out the year. Tom Marshburn, who is both spaceman and parent, talks to us about what it's like to be both. Credits: This episode was recorded by Ben Hewett, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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13.51: Wrap-up on the Year of Character
25 december 2018 · 25 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard We decided to wrap up this year on character by letting Brandon ask us some deep questions. "We decided" might be the wrong phrase, because nobody except Brandon knew what the questions were, so it might be more accurate to say "we rolled with it." It rolled quite nicely. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson and mastered by Alex Jackson. It was posted to the web by Howard, who is also the one who didn't post until twenty-eight hours and twenty-minutes after he should have. Lees meer
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13.50: What Writers Get Wrong, with Zoraida Córdova
17 december 2018 · 20 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard, with special guest Zoraida Córdova Zoraida Córdova, an award-winning author of urban fantasy, was born in Ecuador and grew up in Queens. She joins us to talk about what writers get wrong (and what they can get right and do well) when portraying latinas in the United States. Credits: This episode was recorded live at FanX Salt Lake (formerly "Salt Lake Comic-Con") by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Liner Notes: The comic book Howard referenced is Guardians of Infinity #3, (2016), which features a back-up story entitled "Yo Soy Groot." Peggy Whitson is the astronaut Mary referenced. As of this writing, she holds the record for longest single spaceflight by an American. Lees meer
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13.49: How to Finish
10 december 2018 · 19 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Amal, and Maurice Last week we talked about character death. This week we talk about other, less fatal ways in which a character story can be finished, and how we, as writers, can tell when we're done with a character arc. Credits: This episode was recorded by Andrew Twiss, and mastered by Alex Jackson. Lees meer
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13.48: Character Death and Plot Armor
3 december 2018 · 20 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard The characters we create are not all destined for long lives. Sure, some are, but a great many of them are on paths that will end in an abrupt fatality of one kind or another, and in this episode we'll talk about how we choose which characters to put on those paths, and how those paths might be shaped. We also talk about characters who walk perilous paths and emerge unscathed (sometimes thanks less to their pluck and wit, and more due to plot armor.) Liner Notes:"The Worshipful Society of Glovers" can be found here at Uncanny Magazine . Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson and mastered by Alex Jackson. Lees meer
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13.47: Q&A on Fixing Characters
26 november 2018 · 19 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard You had questions about fixing character problems. We had had answers! Here are the questions: How do you fix character voices when you find out that two of them are too similar? How can you tell if a character is, in fact, the problem? How do you maintain interest in a character who is largely inactive? How do you write interesting bad guys when your only POV characters are the good guys? How do you give meaningful challenges to a powerful character? How can you make a normal, everyday character interesting? How do you edit an existing manuscript to give characters interests which mesh with the plot? Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson and mastered by Alex Jackson. Lees meer
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13.46: The Unsexy Side of Space, with Bart Smith and Ben Hewett
19 november 2018 · 27 min
Your Hosts: Howard, Mary Robinette, and Dan, with special guests Bart Smith and Ben Hewett When we talk about space travel we're usually talking about rocket scientists and astronauts. In this episode we spoke with our guests Bart Smith and Ben Hewett, about the "unsexy" (read: possibly boring but don't be deceived) side of the space program—budgeting, logistics, and procurement. RFI and RFP, with toilets, hammers, and business cards; that's this episode. (For those unfamiliar with the above TLAs [three letter acronyms], RFI and RFP stand for Request for Information and Request for Proposal.) Lees meer
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NaNoWriMo 2018 Bonus Episode, with Mercedes Lackey
16 november 2018 · 17 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard, with special guest Mercedes Lackey NaNoWriMo 2018 is half-way over today. Are you stuck? Do you need to get unstuck? Mercedes Lackey joined us at GenCon Indy back in 2017 to talk about writer's block, and how it's very likely a symptom of something else. In this episode we discuss the interpretation of those symptoms, and how we go about solving the root problems. Lees meer
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13.45: Next Level Narration
12 november 2018 · 22 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Amal, and Maurice Narration is that stuff which tells your story, but isn't dialog. It's the voice of your narrator, and it might be multiple voices depending on how you're handling point of view. In this episode we'll talk about the things you can do to challenge yourself and level up your narration. Lees meer
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NaNoWriMo 2018 Mini-Episode 2
7 november 2018 · 3 min
Your Mini-Episode Hosts: Amal El-Mohtar and Maurice Broaddus, with Special Asides from Mary Robinette Kowal We're a week in to NaNoWriMo. If you're scared of it, Amal is here to tell you that it's okay to feel that way, Maurice is here with the encouraging words "consequence-free." Lees meer
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13.44: Alien Characters
5 november 2018 · 19 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard As writers of speculative fiction we are frequently tasked with writing a species or race of alien people. In this episode we talk about some of the tricks we use to create non-human characters in ways that make them both comprehensible and compelling, and the pitfalls we seek to avoid in the process. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson and mastered by Alex Jackson. Lees meer
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NaNoWriMo 2018 Mini-Episode 1
31 oktober 2018 · 5 min
Your Mini-Episode Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard Back in 2017 we recorded a bonus episode for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and then forgot to air it. Here, then, in the spirit of never throwing anything away, is a spot of motivation which is both timely AND one year late. Lees meer
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13.43: Characters Who Are Smarter Than You Are
28 oktober 2018 · 26 min
Your Hosts: Howard, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Amal Many of us write characters who know more than we know, and/or who think faster than we do. Writing those characters is tricky. In this episode we talk about our own tricks, and the tricks we've seen others use. Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson. Lees meer
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13.42: Writing Excuses Talks to an Astronaut, with Special Guest Kjell Lindgren
22 oktober 2018 · 18 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard, with special space-guest Kjell Lindgren Kjell Lindgren, flight surgeon, Expedition 44/45, joined us for an episode that perhaps should have been called "we ask the space-man all of the things." We asked him stuff that we wanted to know more about, and came away richer for the experience. If there's just one technical term worth bringing home from this episode, it's "expeditionary behavior." It's the sort of thing that can make us all richer for the experience. Credits: This episode was recorded by Benjamin Hewett at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and mastered by Alex Jackson at Writing Excuses Mission Control in Chicago. BONUS: NASA invited us back to be on THEIR show, Houston We Have a Podcast, and that episode went live about three days before this did. More Kjell Lindgren! Lees meer
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13.41: Fixing Character Problems, Part II
15 oktober 2018 · 23 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Amal, Mary, and Maurice This is the second of our pair of episodes in which we talk about how we, your hosts, fix the problems we've identified with the characters in our work. Credits: This episode was recorded by Andrew Twiss, and mastered by Alex Jackson. Lees meer
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13.40: Fixing Character Problems, Part I
8 oktober 2018 · 16 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard This is the first of two episodes in which we'll talk about how we, your hosts, fix the problems we've identified with the characters in our work. Credits: this episode was recorded by Dan Thompson and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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13.39: What Writers Get Wrong, With Wendy Tolliver
1 oktober 2018 · 18 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard, with special guest Wendy Tolliver Wendy skis, and snowboards, and writes YA novels. She is also the parent of three, one of whom suffers from mental illness. She joined us to talk about how writers can do a better job of depicting it, and how to avoid the pitfalls and the harmful cliches. Credits: This episode was recorded live at Salt Lake Fan X by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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13.38: How to Find and Use Alpha Readers
24 september 2018 · 20 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard We begin by making a useful distinction between alpha and beta reader: the alpha reader is an industry professional, while the beta reader is a stand-in for the eventual audience of readers. We then set about discussing how to find alpha readers, and how to employ them in order to make your work better. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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13.37: What Writers Get Wrong, with J.Y. Yang
17 september 2018 · 20 min
Your Hosts: Dan, Mary, Aliette, and Howard with special guest J.Y. Yang J.Y. Yang is a Hugo-nominated short story writer from Singapore who identifies as non-binary. They joined us to talk about this non-binary identification, and how writers can do a better job of depicting it (beyond simply using non-gendered pronouns.) Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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13.36: Confronting the Default
10 september 2018 · 18 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Amal, Mary, and Maurice If you live in the northern hemisphere, inland, perhaps above the 40th parallel, you are probably quite sure that there are four distinct seasons. There are, however, many, many people for whom "seasons" are things that happen to other people. This is the conflict between your default and the rest of the world, and in this episode we'll talk about confronting your default. Credits: This episode was recorded by Andrew Twiss, and mastered by Alex Jackson. Lees meer
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13.35: Cliché vs. Archetype
3 september 2018 · 21 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard Tropes, archetypes, and even cliches are tools in our toolboxes. There's no avoiding them, but there are definitely ways to use them incorrectly. In this episode we'll talk about how we shake off our fear of using tropes through understanding how they work. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson. Lees meer
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13.34: Q&A on Character Arcs
27 augustus 2018 · 19 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard You had questions. We came up with answers. The questions are below: How do you fulfill promises about character arcs without being cliché? How do you subvert character tropes without betraying the reader? Do you need to complete each character arc in a single story featuring multiple characters? What separates an iconic character from a caricature? Have you ever had an iconic character necessarily become a character in need of an arc? How do you continue a character's story after they've completed their original arc? How much does a character need to change in their arc? Lees meer
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13.b1: Bonus Episode — Elephants and Death, with Lawrence Schoen
22 augustus 2018 · 18 min
Your Hosts: Howard and Dan, with special guest Lawrence Schoen Lawrence Schoen, clinical psychologist, cognitive hypnotist, small press publisher, Klingon language expert, and novelist, joined us at GenCon Indy for a bonus episode about elephants and death. Howard and Lawrence both write uplifted elephants into their stories, and their stories also feature death as a theme, so this is a closer fit than it may seem to be at first blush. Liner Notes: This episode was recorded in 2016, and after falling through the cracks (thanks in no small part to being below the fold on a spreadsheet), was rescheduled to coincide with the release of Moons of Barsk, Lawrence's second novel in the uplifted-elephant setting. Credits: This episode was mastered by Alex Jackson, and was made possible by our Patreon supporters Lees meer
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13.33: Reading Outside the Box
20 augustus 2018 · 21 min
Your Hosts: Dan, Mary, Aliette, and Howard, with Kristie Claxton Kristie Claxton joined us at WXR 2017 to talk about reading outside of the spaces where we're comfortable and familiar. Specifically, we focused on how to learn about people who are not you by reading stories by and about them. Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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13.32: How To Handle Weighty Topics
13 augustus 2018 · 30 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Amal, and Maurice How can we, as writers, best handle weighty matters? This is our year on character, so we'll approach this with a focus on character creation, depiction, and dialog? This topic is, in and of itself, weighty. Credits: This episode was recorded by Andrew Twiss, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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13.31: Learning to Listen as a Writer
6 augustus 2018 · 21 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard "Write what you know" gets misapplied a lot. In this episode we'll talk about how to know things by listening well. In particular, we're looking at writing interesting characters by listening to real people. We also talk about the more formal act of interviewing people¹, and how to deal with the attendant complexities. Liner Notes: Mary references her interviewing of rocket scientists and astronauts, which we just talked about last week. When this episode was recorded the JPL trip was still in our future, and was "will have been" extremely cool. Comment Notes: The audio file wasn't correctly linked until Tuesday. The irony of the our "how to listen" episode having exactly zero "listen" buttons is not lost on anyone. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson and engineered by Alex Jackson. Their fine work was obscured from public view by the careless hands of Howard Tayler. Lees meer
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13.30: Project in Depth, THE CALCULATING STARS, with Kjell Lindgren
30 juli 2018 · 31 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, and Dan, with Kjell Lindgren Spoiler Alert! If you haven't yet read The Calculating Stars: A Lady Astronaut Novel, by Mary Robinette Kowal, you may wish to rectify that prior to listening. In this episode we go into great depth on Mary's novel with the expert technical help of NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren, who was one of Mary's consulting readers. Like most of our project-in-depth episodes this one runs long. Longer still because we were at JSC in Houston, which was incredibly cool for all of us, so nobody was watching the clock. Liner Notes: The reference to "Type 2" fun comes from an as-yet-unpublished episode. Type 1 fun is fun in the moment. Type 2 fun is fun to talk about later. Maybe much, much later. Credits: This episode was recorded by Benjamin Hewett, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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13.29: Iconic Heroes
23 juli 2018 · 19 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard The term "iconic hero" allows us to differentiate between different kinds of heroes who appear in series. Nancy Drew and Conan the Barbarian are iconic, but Leia Organa and Aragorn are epic. In this episode we discuss how (and why) to go about writing a hero with no arc. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson. Lees meer
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13.28: What Writers Get Wrong, with Wildstyle
16 juli 2018 · 17 min
At GenCon Indy 2017 we were joined by Wildstyle (@MrWildstyle on Twitter), who wears many hats, and many of the hats he wears are donned in service of producing hip-hop. One of the most interesting revelations (especially for Howard, whose background in audio engineering predates MP3 technology by half a decade) was just how many hats there are. The role of producer in the hip-hop scene may include the roles of audio engineer, composer, and and even musician. Liner Notes: For a deeper look at Wildstyle's work, search Soundcloud for "Wildstyle DaProducer." He's been producing for a year since this episode was recorded. Lees meer
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13.27: Characters as Foils
9 juli 2018 · 19 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Amal, and Maurice A foil is a character who serves as a contrast to another character. The foil might be a sidekick, an antagonist, a romantic interest, or really any other character who gets enough focus for the contrast to be useful. In this episode we talk about foils, offering examples, and our approaches for writing foils in our own work. Credits: This episode was recorded by Andrew Twiss, and mastered by Alex Jackson, neither of whom serves as a foil to the other. Lees meer
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13.26: Character Relationships
2 juli 2018 · 21 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard Our characters become far more interesting when they begin interacting with each other. These interactions—these relationships—are often how our stories get told. In this episode we explore ways in which we can fine tune relationships in service of our stories. The tools include the Kowal Relationship Axes (Mind, Money, Morals, Manners, Monogamy, and The Marx Brothers) and the differences between personal and position power. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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13.25: Our Journey With Character
24 juni 2018 · 18 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard Brandon wanted to ask us how our perspectives on character have changed since the very beginning of our writing. It's a difficult question to answer, and a very soulful sort of thing to answer in front of other people. So Brandon went first while the rest of us racked our brains. What are you going to learn from this episode? Well... you might learn a bit about each of us, but it's also possible that you'll learn something about your own writing, and find yourself able to navigate the next few steps on your journey with character. Note: The apology strips Howard mentioned begin with this strip. They are part of a story that begins here. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson. Lees meer
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13.24: What Writers Get Wrong, with Piper, Aliette, and Wesley, with special guest Ken Liu
18 juni 2018 · 23 min
Your Hosts: Piper Drake, Aliette de Bodard, and Wesley Chu, with special guest Ken Liu Our hosts for this episode are experts in a great many different things. One thing that they have in common is that they're all members of the Asian Disapora, and in this episode we'll learn what kinds of things writers get wrong when writing Asian Diaspora elements, and how we as writers can learn to get those things right. Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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13.23: Internal Conflicts
11 juni 2018 · 27 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Amal, and Maurice Internal conflicts, simply put, are problems your characters have with themselves. In this episode we address the ways in which writers can build stories and subplots around internal conflicts, and how we can tell when it's not working. Notes: the MICE quotient is Milieu, Idea, Character, and Event. Mary's relationship axes are Role, Relationship, Status, and Competence. Credits: This episode was recorded by Andrew Twiss, and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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13.22: Character Arcs
4 juni 2018 · 16 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard When Mary says we could do fifteen different episodes on character arcs, she's being conservative. Notwithstanding, we set out to talk meaningfully about character arcs in one episode rather than in fifteen (or fifty.) We look at the shapes of these arcs, how they progress in our narratives, and the tools we use to get them to function properly in the context of our larger works. Notes: Elizabeth Boyle's DREAM tool for plotting character change is easier to remember when written out. So here it is! Denial Resistance Exploration Acceptance Manifestation Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson and mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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13.21: Q&A on Character Depth and Motivation
27 mei 2018 · 20 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard Our listeners submitted some great questions! How do you fairly and even-handedly write a deeply compelling character you deeply dislike? What's the best way to discuss a character's underlying motivations without expressly stating them in narrative or dialog? How well should characters understand their own motivations? How do you make non-violent characters interesting? Can there be too much depth to a character? How do you balance character depth across multiple attributes? How do you make a character motivation seem deep when most people's motivations are actually pretty shallow? Do you create standard dossiers for your characters? Does your story have to have a villain? How do you know whether or not a character's voice is working? Do you track words or phrases that are unique to a particular character's voice? Liner Notes: Brandon mentioned Howard's "Tyrannopotomus Rex" doodle as part of the writing prompt. Here it is, should you need visual reference. Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson. Lees meer
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13.20: Fear and Writing, with Emma Newman
21 mei 2018 · 20 min
Your Hosts: Dan, Mary, Aliette, and Howard, with special guest Emma Newman Emma Newman, author, audio book narrator, and podcaster, joined us on the Baltic sea for WXR 2017, where, six days after a brilliant presentation on overcoming fear, she recorded a session with us on the same topic. The class was just that good. Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and was mastered by Alex Jackson Lees meer
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13.19: Backstories
14 mei 2018 · 20 min
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Amal, and Maurice Character backstories: these are the tales that describe how the characters in your story became who they are by the time they arrive in the book. How much backstory needs to be written before you start in on the manuscript? How much needs to be in the manuscript itself? And how much backstory is too much? Lees meer
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