Writing Excuses Transcripts

Writing Excuses Season Five Episode Six: Micropodcasts

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/10/10/writing-excuses-5-6-micropodcasts/

Key Points:

• What is the right way to kill a character? Bombs. With meaning!
• Authors that have influenced your writing and why? A. A. Milne, because he has so much fun playing with words. Melanie Rawn, because she mixed magic with characters that I cared about. Tolkein for introducing me to the world that isn't ours. Victor Hugo for finding beauty in the gutter. Jay Lake and Charlie Stross for taking ideas to the nth degree. Pat Rothfuss for showing that even well-worn tropes, done well, are still viable stories.
• When do you quit your day job? When God tells you to. When your wife tells you that you may. When you get your first advance check.
• What do you do when you discover you hate a character? Bombs. Redefining them radically. Have something happen to that character that is grossly unfair.
• How do you respond to accusations of being a Mary Sue? Do you really want to ask that? Is it wrong to write characters that people want to be like?
• What are some basic tools for ensuring that all characters in a story have different voices? Model them on people you know. Check that they are different enough to recognize. Practice having different characters react differently to a single issue. Make your characters individual.

( little podcasts, little podcasts, and they're all made out... )
[Brandon] All right. Let's wrap this up with a writing prompt. I'm going to go ahead and use one again this time.
[Dan] Excellent.
[Brandon] by saying the writing prompt is that these two different people who criticized Dan's book actually both read different books somehow.
[Dan] And thought it was the same one.
[Brandon] And thought it was the same book. They both had the same title, they both said they were written by Dan Wells, but somehow two different books were released. How and why is your writing prompt.
[Dan] Compelling.
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.