Writing Excuses
Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Howard Tayler, and Daniel Wells discuss writing techniques in a fast-paced, 15-minute format.
- Website
- http://www.writingexcuses.com
- Description
- Fifteen minutes long, because you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart.
- Language
- 🇬🇧 English
- last modified
- 2025-03-31 00:56
- last episode published
- 2025-03-30 08:00
- publication frequency
- 5.68 days
- Contributors
- Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler
- Owner Author
- Explicit
- false
- Number of Episodes
- 1102
- Rss-Feeds
- Detail page
- Categories
- Education Literature Careers Business Training Arts
Recommendations
Episodes
| Date | Title & Description | Contributors |
|---|---|---|
| 2025-03-30 | We’re now going to have a few episodes focusing on the lens of proximity—specifically, how close you are to a character. Today, we’re talking about first person. First person seems like it would be one of the most natural forms of storytelling, because... |
|
| 2025-03-21 | Today, we’re returning to different personal metaphors for how we all think about writing and storytelling. In this episode, we’re talking about how DongWon uses fashion as a helpful metaphor to think about storytelling. For both fashion and writing, w... |
|
| 2025-03-16 |
20.11: Kit Lit. Q&A Aboard the WX Cruise, with Mark Oshiro, Kate McKean, and Sandra Tayler This episode was recorded live at our 2024 Writing Excuses Cruise. (Did you know that we host a writing retreat on a cruise every year!?! You can learn more at https://writingexcuses.com/retreats/.) While on a boat in Mexico, we were joined by author M... |
|
| 2025-03-09 | Today we have the pleasure of talking with author (and longtime listener!) Chuck Tingle. We invited him on the podcast to talk about breaking the rules—both in terms of how to publish and what to publish. Chuck told us about the business and creative r... |
|
| 2025-03-02 | What do emotional beats and action scenes have in common? Well, they both need to land with your audience in order for your story not to fall flat. On today’s episode, we’re talking about the importance of reaction. Everything from portraying your char... |
|
| 2025-02-23 | This week, we’re continuing our conversation about the lens of who. On last week’s episode we talked about a character’s motivation and goals. Now, we’re starting to think about tension in the form of a character’s stakes and fears. The fears that a ch... |
|
| 2025-02-16 | Do you know what your characters want? And is there a deeper desire underneath that one? A character's motivations can help make them "relatable," drive the story's momentum, and create obstacles. Additionally, characters/ desires can serve different p... |
|
| 2025-02-09 | Have you ever wondered how much you need to know about a specific character before you start your story? Do you need to have an entire outline of their childhood before you can start writing in depth about them? We don’t think so! But it is important t... |
|
| 2025-02-02 | Today we are introducing the “lens of who” – which means talking about characters. We try to break big character ideas down into their elements. For instance, what do terms like "relatability" or "depth" of character really mean? One of the main take-a... |
|
| 2025-01-26 | For our 20th season, we are focusing on this belief: that the lived experience that we all have affects the way we think about writing. We’ve all heard Mary Robinette talk about puppetry for seventeen (or so) seasons. Today, she dives into puppetry as ... |
|