Writing Excuses Transcripts

Writing Excuses Season Three Episode 17: More Q&A at WorldCon

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2009/09/20/writing-excuses-episode-3-season-17-characters-worldbuilding-qa-with-mary-robinette-kowal/

Key points: What do you do when characters revolt? Check -- is this the right character? Are you bored with the story? Are you forcing yourself to follow an outline, and you are a discovery writer? Or go ahead and write it out, then decide whether or not it is better. What's surprisingly hard about writing? Starting something new, doing revisions, doing all the parts -- beginnings, middles, ends. How do you build a world and history for your story? Study history. Reuse fiddly bits. Plan and take advantage of serendipitous happenstance. For new magic or technology, consider -- how does it affect the poorest class, the richest class, and how can it be abused?
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[Brandon] That's very good advice. All right. We'll go ahead and end with the writing prompt which is you're going to write about a band called the Predestined Monkeys...
[Howard] I thought you'd just make them write about a predestined monkey...
[Dan and Brandon] [garbled]
[Howard] It can be a band of predestined monkeys.
[Brandon] Something like that is your writing prompt. This has been Writing Excuses. Special thanks to Mary for sitting in on three of these. Thank you all, audience, for giving us questions. Keep on listening.
[Dan] You have no more excuses, now go write.