Writing Excuses Transcripts

Writing Excuses Season Four Episode Seven: Questions and Answers with James Dashner

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/02/21/writing-excuses-4-7-qa-with-james-dashner/

Key Points: To outline or not... follow your guttural instinct. Do what works for you, but don't avoid the hard parts -- practice them and make them easy. You learn more about writing by writing. Hands-on research makes killings believable, but do it with meaning. You don't have to be gory to be scary. Sometimes you gotta staple some extra ideas onto your premise to make it strong enough. Don't stop with the first, easy answers -- look for the simple, surprising, excellent ones. Make sure you have revelations, plot twists, and scenes of suspense scattered throughout your story.
( The questions... and some answers! )
[Brandon] We're out of time. I'm going to let James just throw out any writing prompt he wants to give us.
[James] You are flying in an airplane, and suddenly, one of the wings falls off. But the plane doesn't start diving toward the ground.
[Brandon] James Dashner's book The Maze Runner is in stores now. You can also read his books The 13th Reality Series for middle grade readers. Thank you, James. This has been Writing Excuses, you're out of excuses, now go write.