Episodes
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Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Zoraida Cordova, Kaela Rivera, and Howard Tayler
What's the difference between an ensemble story, and a story the has a lot of characters in it? Zoraida Cordova joins us for this episode, kicking off an eight-episode mini-master-class about ensembles. In this episode we discuss what makes ensembles work, and how we distinguish the "pro-protagonist" from the "co-protagonist" as we create character arcs.
Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson. -
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Brandon Sanderson, and Megan Lloyd
Megan Lloyd returns to the podcast to talk us through the process of creating something in a collaborative environment, whether it's a pair of authors working together, or a dozen people working to write, storyboard, and animate a television series.
Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson -
Missing episodes?
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Your Hosts: Dan Wells and Brandon Sanderson, with special guest Jody Lynn Nye
So, you've decided you want something to be funny. How do you go about making that happen? Jody Lynn Nye joined Dan and Brandon at LTUE, and pitched this topic to them. And yes, it's much more than just "delivery, delivery, delivery."
Liner Notes: "It's always more funny when Howard's not here." —Brandon Sanderson at LTUE 2022 (posted here for posterity)
Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson.
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Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Brandon Sanderson, and Gama Martinez
Did you know that there are some famous intellectual properties which have entered the public domain, and which you can therefore use to create your own stories? It's true! Gama Martinez (whose God of Neverland novel features Peter Pan) joined Dan and Brandon at LTUE to talk about how cool this is, and (more importantly) what kinds of things authors need to do in order to make sure they're only using the public domain bits of the properties in question.
Liner Notes: Need a list of things that entered the public domain in 2022? Here you go!
Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson -
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Peng Shepherd, and Howard Tayler
Thus far we've attempted to organize our discussion of sub-, micro-, and other alternative structures with specific categories, but this domain is a lot larger than that. This final episode with our guest host Peng Shepherd has been titled "Miscellaneous Structures" because, y'know, sometimes the last bucket in your row of carefully, taxonomically-labeled buckets needs to be "miscellaneous."
Liner Notes: Howard mentions "LTUE" during the episode. Hey, guess what! The next few episodes following this one were (will have been?) recorded at LTUE!
Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson -
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Peng Shepherd, and Howard Tayler
You probably already know what footnotes are¹, but have you ever seen a story told through the footnotes²? It's similar to the story-within-a-story structure, but there's more to it than that. In this episode our guest host Peng Shepherd explores footnote storytelling³ with us.
Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson
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¹ This is an example of a footnote.
² This is not an example of footnote storytelling.
³ With the addition of a third footnote, maaaybe there's a beginning, middle, and end, and therefore a story? -
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Peng Shepherd, and Howard Tayler
Guest host Peng Shepherd leads our discussion of "order-less reading order" (after we get past the business of "having too much fun with the episode title"). But what do we even mean by "order-less" or "disordered?" At one level, we mean you can just pick up the story anywhere and start reading. Kind of like TV series prior to the advent of the fully serial series. But kind of unlike it, because how does this work within just one book?
Liner Notes: For good examples of non-order-dependent stories, consider schlockmercenary.com, The Lady Astronaut universe, DISCWORLD, Seventy Maxims (annotated),
Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson -
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Peng Shepherd, and Howard Tayler
Our exploration of sub- and micro-structures continues with guest host Peng Shepherd. This week we're talking about how a story can be structured around a "thing." The simplest explanatory example would be structuring around a map, which is where we start the episode... kind of like how The Lord of the Rings starts in The Shire.
This episode does not end with even one of us climbing a volcano.
Liner Notes:
Tower of Babel, by Josiah Bancroft
The Storyteller's Tarot Spread
Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson -
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Peng Shepherd, and Howard Tayler
One common structure—both macro and micro—is the "story within a story," or "framing story" structure, and yet somehow we've never really explored it on Writing Excuses. Guest host Peng Shepherd is here to help us set things right.
Liner Notes: Here are some examples of story-within-a-story structure...
Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer
Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell
Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons
Neverending Story, by Michael Ende
One Thousand and One Nights
Sun the Moon and the Stars, by Stephen Brust
Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix E. Harrow
Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson -
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Peng Shepherd, and Howard Tayler
Guest host Peng Shepherd continues to lead our exploration of sub- and micro-structures by taking us into the scaffolding of in media res, flashbacks, and other tools for structuring a story by telling it out of chronological order. We also cover how to do this without breaking the flow of the story.
Liner Notes: The "trousers of time" book Howard referenced was Jingo, by Terry Pratchett.
Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson -
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Peng Shepherd, and Howard Tayler
In our second micro-structure episode, Peng Shepherd leads us into an exploration of the ways in which the use of multiple point-of-view characters can create a framework within the larger framework of the story.
Liner Notes: In one example we contrasted the single POV Killing Floor, by Lee Childs with its multiple-POV TV adaptation in season 1 of Reacher.
Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson -
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Peng Shepherd, and Howard Tayler
We're beginning another eight-episode deep-dive series, and this time it's a fresh approach to story structure, led by our guest host Peng Shepherd.
Join us as we zoom right through the overarching frameworks defined via things like the Hero's Journey, Freytag’s Triangle, Save The Cat, and Seven Point Story Structure to look at the microstructures which both define and obscure these general narrative shapes.
Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson -
Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd
How do you translate things from the spark of inspiration into a work that someone else can consume? Like, instead of turning a movie into a book, you're trying to create a book out of the movie in your head. And what if your "spark" isn't a movie in your head, but instead a suite of emotions?
In this episode we discuss how we do it. That might not answer the question for you, but hopefully it's a good start. Alchemy is pretty magical, after all.
Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson -
Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd
What are your influences? What pieces of art, music, literature, or other media have inspired you? In this episode we'll talk about making that inspiration deliberate, and consciously learning from our influences.
Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson -
Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd
Oh no! You're in the middle of a thing (a novel, a series, a career) and you suddenly realize that the expectations you set early on are not the expectations you'll be meeting. What do you do now? ,
We're talking about how go about resetting audience expectations, whether mid-story, mid-series, or mid-career, including some strategies for communicating “everything is changing now, forget what you know” without making the audience feel like they've been betrayed.
Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson -
Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd
Your brand—your name, the cover art for your book, and even the typeface for the title—set expectations for the book's contents. That advice about not judging a book by its cover? It's lovely in theory, but in practice, that's just not how it works.
In this episode we'll talk about how your brand gets defined, and how you can work with those elements to correctly set expectations regarding your work.
Liner Notes: We've done several episodes about branding. 14.34 is particularly good.
Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson -
Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd
In the previous episode we discussed how to ensure that your surprise feels inevitable. In this episode we're covering how to make inevitability feel surprising. The title is a nod to the concept of the "red herring," which is arguably the most useful tool for setting up a good surprise.
Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson -
Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd
This week we're talking about giving inevitability to our intended surprise, and we open with a discussion of Chekov's Gun, which, as a writing rule, is mostly used in inversion.
Next week we'll focus on making inevitable things surprising.
Liner Notes: Art and Editing of Suicide Squad (YouTube)
Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson -
Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd
The title of this episode comes to us from the first paragraph of The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss—a novel which delights us with turns of phrase and evocative prose from beginning to end.
We're continuing our exploration of "promises as a structure" by looking at the promises made by the prose of your first line, first paragraph, and first page. What does your first line say about the rest of your book? Did you mean for it to say that? Is your first line writing checks that your later chapters can actually cash?
Liner Notes: We did an eight-episode master class on first lines, pages, and paragraphs with DongWon Song. It begins with 16.27.
Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson -
Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd
The genre of your story is making promises to the reader, and the medium upon which your story is told makes promises too.
In this episode we talk about the expectations set by various mediums and genres, and how we can leverage those to ensure that we deliver a satisfying story.
Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson
Liner Notes: The entirety of Season 11, The Elemental Genres, is a deep-dive on this stuff. - Show more
