Writing Excuses Transcripts

Writing Excuses 10.28:  Polytheism In Fiction, with Marie Brennan

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2015/07/12/writing-excuses-10-28-polytheism-in-fiction-with-marie-brennan/

Key points: Are your gods numinous or just petty people? How much are they involved in daily life? Do they manifest or intervene? Beware the perfectly organized religion -- that's not realistic! Think about how people in this culture experience their religion. How do people speak about their religion? What about athiests or other religions? Give your characters a range of devoutness and interpretations. How do people swear in this religion? What is sacred and profane? Blasphemy, profanity, obscenity? Make your gods numinous, and make the religion part of the characters' lives. Are your gods characters with goals, or are they the goals themselves?
( Libations, salt, and other offerings? )
[Mary] So these are all things that are fun to play with, which brings us to your homework for this week. So what we have for you is a toy. This is something that one of my students built. Kate Hamilton built a belief system generator, which is fantastic. It will give you divine myths and origins, major deities, all of these things. It will give it to you for multiple religions existing in the same world, which is great. What I want you to do is I want you to go to this, and the link is going to be in the liner notes, and just generate a religion. You can generate more, because it's actually kind of fun, but the first one, because this is a random prompt. The first one, what I want you to do is, I want you to write a prayer that fits with this religion. The prayer can be for anything you want. But write a prayer that fits in this religion, and think about how that infuses the rest of the world.
[Howard] Outstanding. You are out of excuses. Now go write.

Writing Excuses 10.26: Q&A on Scenes and Descriptions

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2015/06/28/writing-excuses-10-26-qa-on-scenes-and-description/

Q&A Summary:
Q: I recently got feedback "show, don't tell" from a publisher in regard to describing a character's internal thoughts while moving through a scene. How can I show these sorts of things?
A: Give the character something to do while thinking. Physical reactions, and make sure you have internal thought process, not just a label. Use external observations to show internal state. Cut the navel-gazing.
Q: When introducing a new POV character, how can you describe their appearance through their own POV in a way that doesn't feel forced? (I.e., how do you avoid looking in a mirror?)
A: Use comparisons with other people. Slip them in, instead of infodumping. Focus on the important detail, not overall appearance. Don't overdo the specific description.
Q: Can you explain the difference between scene and setting?
A: Setting is the scenic location, the physical environment. A scene is designed to contain the plot.
Q: How does your environment affect your writing? Could writing in different places change the tone of your scenes?
A: Yes. Sometimes pieces creep into the story. Use music to block.
Q: How do I paint an evocative fantasy landscape quickly as in a short story?
A: The idea that epic fantasy can't be done in a short form is a fallacy. Best is suggestion, the small telling detail that does double duty. Be very specific about the details you do include, and use them more than once. Don't take things for granted, give them context.
( On stage, they said... )
[Brandon] We are out of time. So I am going to give you some homework. What I want you to do, we're going to be moving into talking about the middle of your book next or your story that you're working on. I want you to go and describe to a friend why the middle of your book is going to be awesome. Now, you can't talk very much about the beginning or the ending. This is why the middle... What's going to happen in the middle that's going to make people excited to read your book. Now, we had some homework previously where you were going to identify scenes that were coming up that you were going to be working on. Describe those. Describe those to your friend in a way that's going to make them excited to read your book.
[Howard] If you've done this right, you'll also make yourself excited about writing them. In fact, I'd argue that if that doesn't happen...
[Dan] Then you may need to rethink some things.
[Howard] You may have a problem.
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

Writing Excuses 10.24: Hooking Younger Readers

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2015/06/14/writing-excuses-10-24-hooking-younger-readers/

Key Points: What hooks younger readers? A familiar voice that is relevant to them. Both the syntax and the character's point of view. Popular picks do get checked out again and again. Book trailers do work! Are there differences in boy and girl reading habits? Boys do lean towards adventure/action/sports. Write about what interests you and do it in a voice that interests younger readers. Good characters, a good plot, and passion.
( The do we decimal system? )
[Brandon] Great. We actually had you come up with some homework to give to our students.
[Kiley] Okay, folks. Your homework. Go to the library or your bookstore and tell them three books you love. Then ask the librarian for something outside your genre.
[Brandon] Yup. We want you to be...
[Howard] And then read it.
[Kiley] Yeah. Read it.
[Brandon] We want to be forcing you to read something different. So we're going to make you go to an expert who knows their stuff. You're going to tell them what you love, and then they're going to pick something different that they love. Thank you so much, Kylie, for being on the podcast.
[Kiley] Thank you.
[Howard] Thank you, Kiley. You were awesome.
[Kiley] You guys are awesome.
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.
[Mary] And read.
[Howard] Something new.

Writing Excuses 10.22: Project-In-Depth – Of Noble Family

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2015/05/31/writing-excuses-10-22-project-in-depth-of-noble-family/

Key points: Do your research! Antigua in 1818? Slavery or not? Great Britain? What really was happening? Write what you know, write what you made up... but when you write what other people know, that means research. Sometimes you will need an expert. Think about how you are going to handle translation, if any. Give your reader permission to not understand! Research may change your plot. Don't be afraid to use a new situation or conflict to re-examine aspects of your world. Go ahead and explore your world in other ways, too. Don't just change the labels, try having it work differently. Focus on your story first, and use the social issues and conflicts to stress your characters, show them reacting to illuminate the issues. 
( Plenty of words, keep reading... )
[Brandon] Not really, but we wished we were. But Dan, you have some homework for us.
[Dan] Yes. Your homework today is to do kind of a version of what Mary did with this story. We want you to take something common that... An activity or an object that you are familiar with, and then have a character describe it to someone with a completely different frame of reference. Whether that person is from another culture or from another planet, whatever it is, so that they have to describe it without using the common words that we all fall back on.
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

Writing Excuses 10.20: How Do I Write a Story, Not an Encyclopedia?

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2015/05/17/writing-excuses-10-20-how-do-i-write-a-story-not-an-encyclopedia/

Key Points: Infodumping... Skill levels: 1) description 2) dialogue 3) interwoven 4) transparent worldbuilding, and multiple duty bits. Start by asking what information does the reader need to continue the story? You don't need to describe everything, just the necessary parts for the plot. Layer information in, either because you are going to use it, because it describes the character, or there is an emotional relationship. Mask information by having the character involved. Giving us the information in a paragraph should be your last resort, but sometimes you do it. Make sure the character has a reason to think about it. Beware "As you know, Bob" (aka maid-and-butler dialogue). Give them a good reason to talk about it. A Watson may help, but don't introduce them just as a foil for explaining things. Break it! When people fix things, they need to talk about it. To get beyond dialogue to explain something, think about emotional impact. How do people feel about the geewhiz, what emotional attachments do they have? Look at the item in use, with people interacting with it. A key is don't stop the story for the description. Use interesting scenes with worldbuilding threaded in. Use Watson, what can go wrong, what side effects are there, to do things. But there must be a plot-specific reason for explaining things! Sometimes you just need background color, so mention the Battle of the Red Armies, and move on. Even when something is important to the plot, occasional casual mentions are better than a single in-depth infodump. How does it work, what does it look like, and what is your character's relationship to the item -- those are the key pieces of information we need.
( An infodump on infodumping? )
[Brandon] We are running out of time. We do have a lot of podcasts on world building and show versus tell, so the archives once again can be very useful to you if you want a little bit more on this topic. Mary, you have a writing exercise for our students to do?
[Mary] Yes. So what I want you to do is I want you to pick a specific geewhiz item, some specific item to your world, something that you have created, and I want you to have something go wrong with it. I mean, again, this can be culture, this can be an object. Whatever it is, but something goes wrong and your main character has to deal with it going wrong. So, these are the three pieces of information that I want you to get across while it is going wrong. I want you to get across how it works, what it looks like, and again, physical or cultural, and your character's relationship to it. So if this is something, and I'm going to use an object as an example, if it is an object that is something that she cannot afford, then I need to know she can't afford it. If it's something that she covets, I need to know what. If it's something that she disdains, I need to know what and why. So what I want to know is... You're showing me a scene in which something goes wrong with your geewhiz item. How it works, what it looks like, and your character's relationship to it.
[Brandon] Excellent. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

Writing Excuses 10.18: Build an Entire World? Are You Crazy?

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2015/05/03/writing-excuses-10-18-build-an-entire-world-are-you-crazy/

Key Points: Start writing your story before you start worldbuilding. Don't get overwhelmed! Worldbuilding is in service of your story. Start with your geewhiz, look at how it affects things from the viewpoint of your characters. Avoid sinking your writing with icebergs. Sometimes you just need to take the underpants off the puppet. When researching, look for patterns and weave them into your world, don't just borrow specifics and try to file the serial numbers off. Get experts to review. "Why is it like this?" and "What is the effect?" are your two guides. 

[Mary] Season 10, Episode 18.
[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Build an Entire World? Are You Crazy?
[Howard] 15 minutes long.
[Mary] Because you're in a hurry.
[Dan] And we're not that smart.
[Brandon] I'm Brandon.
[Mary] I'm... Mary.
[Howard] I'm Howard... Oh, crap.
[Dan] I'm still Dan.
[Laughter]
[Howard] Oh, man.
[Dan] I know who I am.
[Howard] I know, I know, I know.
[Brandon] We changed it around, for those who are listening and confused why we have so much trouble. We did it one way for many years. But then people were getting Dan and Howard mixed up because we do our tagline in a different order than our names.
[Dan] Now they're going to get...
[Howard] If you must know what happened...
[Dan] Howard and Mary mixed up.
[Howard] If you must know what happened, it's... When I said, "15 minutes long," you had just said, "Build an Entire World? Are You Crazy?" and I thought, "Oh, my gosh. Dan needs to say something about building a world in 15 minutes." Then he didn't, and I was sad.
[Brandon] We missed the chance for a joke. It's all your fault, Dan.
[Dan] I know.
[Howard] You blew it for me. Dang it.

[Brandon] Okay. World building. We're talking about world building. Now...
[Howard] I want a re-...
[Brandon] I want to remind you, that we intentionally are... Point out, hang a lantern on the fact we intentionally had you start writing your story before we started you world building. This is because a lot of writers, new writers, do it the opposite way around. They will start doing their world building and they get overwhelmed by the amount they have to do or the amount they think they have to do, and never get around to writing their story. In fact, we did a podcast... It was a few years back now, targeted at one of my friends who'd been world building his story for a decade, and had never started writing. We called it Notes to My Friend. A podcast for him. We don't want you to be overwhelmed by this. It's... Specifically, we'll be talking about world building, but for these next couple of episodes, we'll be talking about them in service of your story. It's not just world building, it's how to world build for your story.
[Dan] You're not just creating a world in order to create a world, unless, I guess, that's what you want to do, but we're talking about telling stories. You're creating a world in which a fascinating story can take place.
[Brandon] Right. So how do you do this?
[Howard] Let me give you an example. We're recording here in Chicago. Just the other day, Mary, you were telling us about the alderman and graft and the whole idea of Chicago politics and graft. If you're writing a story about Chicago politics and graft, the fact that there is a wonderful... Was it a Cuban grocery? Just down the road from Mary's house. Well, that's part of the world that we're currently living in, but unless the story takes us there, that's probably not something that needs to be described. I mean, it's really neat, and it's got all the sensory stuff going on. But it's not directly in service of this political story you want to tell. There are lots of things that are in the Schlock Mercenary universe that in the back of my head I know they exist, I know they're there. But I don't write them down, because I don't have time to write them down. I'm too busy writing the story. If I need them, if they show up in the story, well, then I've got to write about them and I've got to fit them in.

[Brandon] With this podcast, we'd like to, today, help you identify the places that you want to expend your world building effort. Specifically, we want you to try to let your story drive where you expend your world building. Now you are going to have to put effort into this. World building does take work. But, you know, it's awesome. It's the reason that we're reading science fiction and fantasy rather than other genres. It's the reason we're writing it. That said, as I often say, character comes before world building. A fantastic story with great characters but terrible world building is still going to be a book you want to read. But a book with all this world building, no character, no plot... That's an encyclopedia.
[Howard] The... I guess, the operating principle here is that rather than info dumping, you want to use the story, the plot, to tell us the things, to describe the world to us.
[Brandon] In an upcoming episode, we're going to talk about strategies for doing this on the page. Right now, we're kind of talking about the idea of world building.
[Howard] The whole concept.

[Brandon] How you go about it, the concept. So let's talk about our strategies. Do you use a separate file for your world building? How do you do... How much of it do you actually do ahead of time? How much do you do it on the fly?
[Mary] I do a mix. So I usually have something... I'll do some brainstorming. Mostly, what I'm looking at is... What... Usually, when I'm doing my world building, there's some particular idea that I'm really excited about. Like a tidally locked moon.
[Brandon] Your geewhiz.
[Mary] My geewhiz idea. So I will look at how that affects... How society would be affected by that. Particularly from the point of view of my character, but the questions that I specifically ask about the geewhiz idea is how does this geewhiz idea affect the highest level of the economy, the lowest level of the economy, how does it get misused? When I say like the lowest level of the economy and how does it get misused, I'm like does this cause a black market? Is... Are... Do we have social... Societal repression because of this? What are the things that happen because of this thing? The other thing that I look at is, particularly if it's a geographically based geewhiz idea, I look at how it affects the areas that are not there.
[Brandon] Right, right, right. Very good points. Dan, you tend to discovery write your stories. So you tend to not have your world building done ahead of time and put it in as you need it, I would assume?
[Dan] Well, I do a mix of both. As we were preparing for this I was trying to think, which do I do first? I... They play back and forth across each other constantly. The cyberpunk series that I have coming out later this year is a good example. I sat down and I thought this is the kind of story I want to tell, therefore I'm going to need these kinds of technologies and these kind of technological companies. I wanted to be sure to constantly be name dropping my imaginary brands and things like that, just to build the character because that's the kind of person she is. But at the same time, as I went through the world and said, "Well, if this technology exists, this other one probably also exists," Okay, well then that's going to inform the story back again. Doing that on the fly is hard...
[Laughter]
[Dan] But that's what revision is for.

[Brandon] Yes. That's why I constantly think that you're crazy as a writer, because I'm more of an outliner. I have my settings all done ahead of time. But I'm a working writer, meaning I don't have 20 years as Howard referenced Tolkien on a previous podcast, to get everything prewritten. I want to be releasing two books a year if I can. So for me, I'll have a few months if I'm lucky to do my world building ahead of time. So I have to focus. I have to say, "Okay. What... Where am I going to expend that energy?" I usually let the characters do the driving. Now once in a while... Usually I'll have a geewhiz... I'll be like, "All right. There's a geewhiz for this world. It's a world where a hurricane, a magical of hurricane tears across the land every couple of days" or something like that. I will start populating that world. Then I'll focus down on the characters and say, "Okay. What does this character have experience with? What does this character know about? This character doesn't know the history of their world. This character knows that he's locked in a prison and he's trying to deal with this battlefield that he was part of." So I need to know what they're fighting over and why they're fighting over it and things like that. I will spend my time building a document that's a couple of paragraphs here, a couple of paragraphs there about why they're fighting or what they're fighting over, what's distinctive about their combat, and these sorts of things, that I can use then to write that character's viewpoint.
[Howard] A great example of this from the Schlock Mercenary universe, from my own work, is the 70 Maxims of Maximally Effective Pirates... Or Maximally Effective Mercenaries. Sorry. There's... We know that there's 70 of them, it's right there in the title. I haven't written 70 of them.
[Brandon] Yet.
[Howard] As needed, I will assign a number permanently to a maxim. When I assign that number, I go to the wiki that has these canonically listed and I like that in. Because at some point, this piece of world building is going to be very profitable for me.
[Laughter]
[Howard] Because, I mean, Schlock and Mercenary, which of those words said otherwise? But people ask time and again, "When are you going to tell us what all 70 maxims are? You've got them all ready, don't you?" No. I'm building them as I need them in support of the story.

[Dan] But that's one of the great things to do about world building. Which is, if you look like you know everything, people will assume that you do. Like the brands of technology that I mentioned. I have five or six companies for every major technological group and my world. I don't know what they do or where they are or anything about them, but I can mention, "Oh, you've got that computer from X."
[Brandon] Because people are all crazy.
[Dan] And people are like, "Wow. That's great."
[Brandon] No. I do this too. I absolutely do this. There's no way you can think of everything. There's no way at all. I often... In fact, I just taught a lesson to my students last week in my university course where I was talking about the iceberg theory. Where I'd heard before I became a professional writer this idea about the iceberg, where only the tip is showing, and the author needs to know everything that's underneath, and there's like 10 times as much under the water. I heard these authors pontificating about this on a panel. You know what, that's not really true.
[Mary] I actually have a puppetry metaphor here.
[Brandon] Oh, good.
[Mary] So you only see the outside of the puppet. I know puppeteers who have painstakingly created that puppet, and it moves beautifully, the framework's great, and then they build correct underwear for it... Undergarments for it, and they put it all together, and they put it on and the puppet can't move because it's bound up by all of this stuff.
[Laughter]
[Mary] What they've done is they've got this beautiful piece of art, but it doesn't do what they were intending. A lot of times what happens, I think, when people focus on the world building before they focus on the story is that they feel like they are locked in, because they put the work in and they put the effort in. But sometimes you just need to take the underpants off the puppet.
[Chuckles]
[Brandon] I will say...
[Dan] I live by that advice.
[Laughter]
[Brandon] I'm scared by that.
[Laughter]
[Mary] Sorry.
[Brandon] I do like the iceberg metaphor in what we'll be talking about in an upcoming episode, where we talk about not overwhelming the reader with too much stuff.
[Howard] Based on what the reader sees.
[Brandon] Based on what the reader sees. But really, the truth is, you need to give the illusion that you know the rest of the iceberg. In some cases, you will have a big chunk of that iceberg, but for a lot of things, you won't have this... What Dan was saying, all of the different companies done ahead of time, or you won't have... You'll have some of the iceberg, but you don't need to have it for everything.
[Mary] This is also... This is... Even though we're talking about creating a world, all of this advice also applies if you are doing something that is historically or real world based, in terms of the amount of research you do. You only need to do enough research to answer the que... The big questions. You need to do your big world building before you start.

[Dan] Okay. We're going to pause now for our book of the week. This is one that I'm reading right now. It is Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff. It is read by Jennifer Ikeda. It is a fascinating world building book because it is a big kind of epic fantasy that is also steam punk. It is also based entirely on Asian culture rather than medieval European culture. So it takes all of these different elements, combines them in a very new way. It is not authentic Asian culture, in the same way that the Shannara books are not authentic Europe, but very interesting, very fun to read. I recommend it very highly. You can get it from audiblepodcast.com/excuse which will give you a 30-day free trial and you can download Stormdancer for free.

[Brandon] Excellent. So let's talk a little bit about the research side of world building, which was briefly mentioned by one of you before. How much research do you do, how much research do you need to do in order to get across this world building that you want to do?
[Mary] I want to talk about... I'm glad you brought that up, because one of the things that I wanted to talk about with world building, and the steam punk actually ties in very nicely, is that frequently what people will do is that they'll take something from the real world and they'll file the serial numbers off. A lot of times this is culture, and this can lead to something called cultural appropriation. But one of the things that I think you're doing this research is that you don't... Much like if you're researching science or an article, you don't want a single source. So if you say, "Well, I want a culture where the people... The women are socially repressed because it's easier to write because it mirrors what I know," you don't want to just look... If you model it just on the way Europe socially oppresses women or just on the way India or Africa... That you will wind up with something that is a knockoff that you are culturally appropriating. What you want to do instead is look at the patterns of behavior. Those patterns of behavior are things that you can then weave into your own world. So this is... We're still talking about fairly broad strokes in research. On the other hand, if I'm sitting down and I'm deciding that I want to do something that is actually set in one of those places, I would need to do much deeper research.

[Brandon] Right. The thing is, you can never get it all done. So there's a very easy hack, so to speak. This is to find experts that can read your book and tell you what you're doing wrong. So my suggestion is, for world building purposes in particular, make sure that you find a few experts. Particularly if you're doing something that's... Theoretically, someone could read your book and be like, "Wow, they did that wrong." Whether it be something like how we're dealing with race relations or something even simpler like when I was doing Way of Kings, I needed one of my characters to know field medicine. Well, the field medicine... This was a big part of his life, a big part of the world, how they went about doing medicine on the battlefield. It's a nice cultural thing to the world, so I wanted to include it. I don't know anything about that. So I actually went and got a doctor to read the book.
[Dan] In academia, this is referred to as primary sources. You never do a research paper that only has secondary sources. People talking about stuff that they've heard about. No, you go straight to the people who know about it and talk to them.
[Mary] But again, with the medicine, if you had based your field medicine only on an Army medic. That's going to wind up being very different than if you looked at field medicine in Rome and field medicine in Japan and field medicine in the Army and then went to your doctor and said, "Does this play?" Because if they... If your doctor is saying, "This is how field medicine is done," you're regurgitating something that already exists.
[Howard] When I...
[Mary] Sometimes you want that. But if you're creating from whole cloth, sometimes you don't.

[Howard] When I did Mind over Matter for Privateer Press, I was writing an Iron Kingdoms... That's their setting. Their setting, which is... Call it Full Metal Fantasy. It's like steam punk only without the Europe. I was writing a medic. I asked the creators, "Well, what technology is available?" I realized that there was a portion of the iceberg that they hadn't actually defined. So I had to go and start researching 19th century medicine. One of the things that I found was that coal tar was used as an antiseptic. I pitched that to the creators and said, "Hey, I found this stuff called coal tar, which is a mild acid and guess what? Comes from coal and is called coal tar. Can we use this?" They said, "Oh, my goodness, that word is perfect. We want that chemical everywhere!" So that piece of research became really important. The lesson I learned was that, "Wow, you research a thing and suddenly you have... You don't have the answer, you have something that informs the whole story." The second is that sometimes the person who you expect to be the expert on this universe doesn't know anything about it.
[Brandon] Now I want to hear a story about Coal Tar the Barbarian.
[Laughter]
[Dan] Coal Tar the barbarian battlefield medic.
[Laughter]
[Dan] Yes. This goes back to what I was saying earlier about how they inform each other. Your world building and your story are constantly playing off of each other. As you research something, you go, "Oh, that's so cool. My character would love this." Or my character would hate this. That will change the way that I write the story because the world has changed.
[Howard] Yet, that antiseptic is acidic. It became something that got splashed in somebody's face because I now knew I had a weapon.
[Dan] Again, if you had found a different kind of antiseptic that was not interesting and did not suggest anything cool about the world or the people using it...
[Howard] We wouldn't have mentioned it.
[Dan] We wouldn't be hearing about it now.

[Mary] One of the things that we're pointing out is the way that all of these things are interrelated. I'm going to give you two questions to use as a tool for deciding these things. One is... You've got something like coal tar. That's your idea. What you... The two questions are, "Why is it like this?" And then, "What is the effect?" So like if I say, "Oh, I've got Glamour." I can cause light. Why can I cause light? Well, because of this. What is the effect? Well, if you can cause light, then no one would have invented candles. Maybe I'm not going to do that.
[Brandon] Right.
[Mary] But you can look at nothing exists in a vacuum. Every part of a culture, a world, affects every other part. The butterfly effect. So that's why... Remember that your world building goes in two directions. Its past, and then the effect that it will have.
[Brandon] There is so much to talk about world building. There is no way we can fit into a five... 15 minute episode. Or even a 20 minute episode which this one is already [inaudible – approaching?]
[Laughter]
[Brandon] That's why we have all these archives of previous episodes. You will find a lot of world building. We'll link some of our favorites in the liner notes for this one. But we talk about specifics, how to world build different types. This we were trying to get you to think about your world building, and as Dan said, let your story drive it. Let the conflicts of the characters drive where you're going to spend your time. From there, you can do all of these other things we talk about, how to extrapolate and things like this.

[Brandon] We're going to give you some homework. Your homework is going to relate to your world building. What I want you to do this week is I'm going to want you to pick your thing, your geewhiz, as we mentioned. Whatever it is. It could be your magic system, it could be some element of the weather, or whatever. Something cool from your world. I want you to describe it in 150 words. So very shortly. From 10 different perspectives. Now your goal here is to have 10 very different people describe or interact with this thing. Interaction's better because they're moving. That can be from 10 different cultures or you can include socioeconomic levels. Pick people from different socioeconomic levels or different ability levels. In fact, mix all of those together to come up with who's going to interact with this thing whatever it is and do it in 150 words 10 times. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

Writing Excuses 10.16: What Do I Do with All This Blank Space?

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2015/04/19/writing-excuses-10-16-what-do-i-do-with-all-this-blank-space/

Key Points: The first page establishes tone, genre, and makes a couple of big promises. Convince the reader that you're competent and that they want to read the book. You don't need to start with an establishing shot. The key is the order of information that you present to the reader. Imagine a dark theater and a flashlight picking out one thing at a time. You don't have to start by writing the perfect first line, first page, or even first chapter -- start writing, then go back and create the beginning. A hook -- tone, conflict, motion. Don't get stuck on the first line, stress the first page. Sometimes we write upside down -- take the last sentence and move it to the beginning, and see what happens. The first thing the character notices, and the last thing they think about are important. The stuff in the middle is filler. Make sure you don't bury the good stuff in the middle! The first page needs to indicate what's important to the character. What do they want? Also, what kind of conflict is coming? Something cool! Introduce the character, and introduce the problem. The first page builds trust. Raise some questions, and answer them, to show you know what you're doing. Raise another question and don't answer it so that the reader wonders about it (a.k.a. a hook!). In the first page, I'm looking for character voice and cool things!
( Start at the beginning, and go on to the end? )
[Brandon] Let's go ahead and do our homework, then. Mary, you have the homework this week.
[Mary] What I want you to do is, I actually just want you to write the first page. In a standard manuscript format, the first page is only 13 lines. Frequently, honestly and depressingly, an editor will decide on the first 13 lines. So I'm going to ask you to just write your first 13 lines. I want you to see if you can fit in... See how much you can fit into those 13 lines, about your character, what it is that they want, see if you can get the conflict in. Go ahead, give it a try. But when I say fitting in your character, what were looking for is their class, their attitude, their mood. Those... The attitude and the mood is going to be things that really drive how this is going. Then, of course, I also need to know the genre and the tone of the story. So see how much you can fit into those first 13 lines.
[Brandon] Right. If you did your homework last time, you have three different versions of how you could start your story. The idea is now to take one of those and try and just saturate it. Just stick everything you can in there as is possible. All right. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

Writing Excuses 10.14: How Much of the Beginning Needs to Come First?

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2015/04/05/writing-excuses-10-14-how-much-of-the-beginning-needs-to-come-first/

 Key Points: What do you want to tell the reader, and what do you need to set that up? Of that list, what comes first? What do you need to put in the beginning so the reader is willing and excited to keep reading, and what can you exclude? Talking about the first one third of the book. What promises do you want to make, what will you pay off by the end of the story? Character motives, tone, plot? A book is a way to hack the brain, to produce a specific emotional state, and readers want to know what this book will do for them. That's a promise! What kind of arc will your character have? Introduce the character, show us what they want, and why we love them. Show us the hole in their life, what they are missing. The first third of the story is about asking questions. What is the large framing question, and what are the smaller ones inside that? Three key elements: starting state of the character, what they want; inciting incident, that kicks them out of their comfort zone and makes them act; and the big decision, to do something. The Hollywood Formula says the character is forced to act in the first third, and ends when they start acting instead of reacting. From romance, we have denial, reluctance, exploration, and acceptance. Start with the awesome moments that you want to write about, and look at how to tell the reader that they are coming without being too explicit. Blow something up! From the homework: try different beginnings, emphasizing different promises, and see what happens.
( One third? What if I don't know how long the book is going to be? )
[Brandon] If you've done the homework that we've assigned two weeks ago, then you will already have a list of all your favorite things that you want to put in this story in order. Then you'll be able to take them and say, "Okay. How do I make promises regarding these things? I know that I'm going to... I have this great awesome moment in my story that I want to work toward." You can ask yourself how to put in the beginning of your story something about each of these. Your homework this time is actually a little more active than that. We actually want you to start writing your story. Okay? Yes. Time to start writing.
[Howard] Tolkien had 20 years.
[Brandon] You got three months. We're going to make you write it three times, actually. We want you to start your story, and we only want you to write a couple pages each time. So 500 words each time. But we want you to each of these attempts to take a different one of the things from that list. If you didn't do your homework, go ahead and think about a story you want to write and three different promises you could make. Try in those each two pages to emphasize a different one. To emphasize a different tone and a different type of promise. In a full novel, you're going to do multiple promises and you're going to make some of them really important and some of them subplots and things like that. For this time, you're going to pick one and be like, "All right. This is the story where I'm promising a romance." Or this is the same story, the same setting, but I'm promising that something big is going to blow up. Whatever it is for you, pick three different promises and do your best at emphasizing them. All right, guys. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

Writing Excuses 10.12: Story Structure Q&A, With Special Guest Wesley Chu

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2015/03/22/writing-excuses-10-12-story-structure-qa-with-special-guest-wesley-chu/

Key points: Story structures are tools. See if it helps you. If it doesn't, set it aside and try something else. None of them are magic wands that will write your book. They are just tools to help organize your thoughts. Don't expect to use the tool easily and perfectly the first time. When it's new, it often is hard to use.

Questions and Answers:
Q: Do you make a conscious decision about how to structure your story before you start writing?
A: Yes. Although sometimes in writing, will realize the interesting central conflict is different than expected, then go back and change the beginning. Sometimes write some, then outline. I like to outline extensively, then toss the outline and make it up as I go.
Q: In the past, Writing Excuses has touched on many story structures -- MICE, 7-Point, Hollywood Formula, etc. Do you think it would be helpful to try to fit your story into as many of these structures as possible, or is it best sticking with one?
A: Often, structures are more useful for diagnosing what has gone wrong with a story than for planning. Pick one and learn how that works, then another. Story structure is a tool. Use the one that works for your job.
Q: Do you use any tools to help you view the structure of a story/novel? If so, what are they and how do they help?
A: Document map, to create an outline on the fly, with goals and steps. Scrivener corkboard. Aeon timeline.
Q: What do you guys think about cliffhangers? Like them, hate them, diabolically evil? How can an author use them more effectively?
A: What are you using them for? To get someone to buy your next book? That's a dirty trick. To surprise, to create mystery, and people buy because they are excited to find the answer? That's good. Don't use cliffhangers to make people wade through a POV they don't like. The payoff on a cliffhanger has to be good. I use cliffhangers to change the rules in the game. "He opened the door and..." is annoying. "He opened the door and saw (something that changes everything)" So I want to know what is going on, what the reaction is to this new thing -- that's a good cliffhanger.
Q: How do you come up with plot twists for your stories?
A: See the podcast on plot twists.
Q: My short stories all seem to take a form of a bell curve; open, rising action, climax, denouement. What are some other forms or techniques I can use to bring variety without increasing my word count?
A: That is the structure of a story.
Q: Is there a difference between short stories and novel structure?
A: Novels are like watching the Olympics on the BBC, while short fiction is like watching a YouTube clip of the trick on gymnastics. There are other story structures besides Western European ones.
Q: Is there a specific amount of time you should do for your introduction? How do you know how long to take before your inciting incident in your story?
A: There is no hard and fast rule. "The inciting incident can happen when the introduction has told us enough to know why the inciting incident is significant."
Q: How do you deal when you get a good way through your story and realize the structure isn't working? Is it better to push through and finish a thing, then fix it in edits or go back to the start and start over with a new structure?
A: First, pour yourself a glass of Scotch. Set your head on fire. Eat a lot of ice cream. Then fix it right away, because the longer you go down the wrong path, the more you have to fix. Make notes about the changes to correct, then write as if you have already made those corrections.
( Lots and lots and lots of words... )
[Brandon] Now, we're going to give you some homework as we transition out of story structure and start talking about beginnings, which we'll be doing the next few episodes on. Dan has an exercise for you. Honestly, we're recording this months after the last one recorded, so I'm not sure if we gave you homework the last time or not. We couldn't go in and look. So, if we did, do that one also. If we didn't, here is your homework for next week.
[Dan] You get double homework if you're lucky. Okay. So what you're going to do, at this point we hope that in the process of your storytelling, you know what kind of story you want to tell. So you're going to get a piece of paper or a laptop or whatever and make a list of all the awesome things you want that story to accomplish. Whether they are fight scenes or love scene...
[???] Set pieces.
[Dan] You want something to be heroic. Yeah, big cool set pieces...
[Mary] Gondola Chase!
[Dan] In a really interesting place. You want to make somebody really sad. You want to have a stand-up-and-cheer moment. Whatever it is. You're going to write all those down in a big list. Then you're going to put them in order. What order they're going to happen. That is kind of a proto-outline. Then next month, we'll talk more about what do you do with that and how do you start at the beginning and turn it into a story.
[Brandon] Excellent. Wesley, thank you for being on the podcast with us.
[Wesley] Thanks for having me, guys.
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

Writing Excuses 10.10: Q&A with the I Ching

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2015/03/08/writing-excuses-10-10-qa-with-the-i-ching/

I Ching, Interpretation, and Answers:
7. Although he reached a great position, Wise Liu did not care for earthly things. He brewed instead the pills of heaven, forging immortality in his earthly crucible.
I: When do I give up traditional publishing and start self-publishing?
A: When your back catalogue and unwanted material are sufficient. When traditional publishing isn't connecting with your audience.
I: When should I quit my day job?
A: When you're losing money by having the day job.
I: When should I stop writing for other people and start writing for myself?
A: What makes you want to write?

21. Marriage is a blessed union indeed, when done in accordance with Yin and Yang. The dragon and the phoenix coil together, uniting in a sweet dream of love.
I: How do you handle genre mash ups?
A: When the genres play well together, different, but able to talk to each other. When it's awesome, and the story needs the combination.

20. All names in Heaven are unique, and even earthly things cannot be the same. Your future is set within the book of fate, which never confuses praise and blame.
I: How do you choose character names without telegraphing the character's future?
A: Use twitter or spam as a name generator.

25. Emperor Ming slew his one true love, but a shaman took pity, and eased his heart with dreams of roaming upon the moon, his beloved mistress forever at his side.
I: How do you kill your darlings?
A: Look for what doesn't fit, but you are tempted to twist the story to keep. Then set it free on the moon.

31: Two scholars went to the capital for examinations. One passed, and stayed. One failed and returned, carrying a letter from his friend. He fell ill, but eventually, thank Heaven, came home.
I: How do you deal with professional jealousy?
A: Realize that their success does not reduce your success. Remember why you are writing -- because you love it. Celebrate their success, and recognize that wherever you are on the journey, there are problems, but they may be different ones. "A rising tide lifts all the boats."
( And now, with feeling! )
[Brandon] All right. We are way out of time.
[Howard] Oh, dear.
[Brandon] But we are going to let the I Ching give us a writing prompt. So shake that one more time, Howard.
[Rattle of sticks]
[Brandon] Give us a good one.
[Dan] Okay.
[Brandon] Here's your writing prompt.
[Dan] Number 44. "Competing fiercely to become Spring's queen, the garden of flowers blossomed to their full beauty. Who will win the golden crown of glory? Among them all, only the peony stands out."
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.