On the last day of the 2013 Writing Excuses retreat Dan took Rusty Cleaver, which he had found in a cupboard at Robin’s Roost, and tested it out on leftover vegetables. Many of us took a turn. I’m a little hard to hear over Brandon talking, but I say “Wow,…
http://www.writingexcuses.com/2015/02/22/writing-excuses-10-8-qa-on-character/ Assignment: Sketch out the events before and after your dead-drop scene from last week and three weeks ago. BEFORE: Abi was at her work, a museum conservation office, scrambling to create a forgery of the Shakespeare Folio, and not be noticed by her coworkers. She packed it in a…
From the second Character class (http://www.writingexcuses.com/2015/02/15/writing-excuses-10-7-who-are-all-these-people/) here is an exercise that builds on the previous one. My previous exercise can be found here: Writing Excuses Homework 10.5 Writing Prompt: Pick one of the dead-drop characters from the exercise two weeks ago, and turn them into a secondary character. Now take…
Writing Excuses, season 10, episode 5 (http://www.writingexcuses.com/2015/02/01/writing-excuses-10-5-what-do-you-mean-my-main-character-is-boring/) homework: Take three different characters and walk them through a scene. Convey their emotional states, their jobs, and their hobbies without directly stating any of those. The scene in question: walking through a marketplace, and they need to do a dead-drop. Robert stormed…
Writing Excuses Season 10, Episode 4: (http://www.writingexcuses.com/2015/01/25/writing-excuses-10-4-qa-on-ideas/) Take one of the ideas you’re excited about, and then audition five different characters for the lead role in that story. Make sure they’re all different from each other. For this exercise I didn’t pick one of the story ideas from the previous…
For the exercises from season 10, episode 2,(http://www.writingexcuses.com/2015/01/11/writing-excuses-10-2-i-have-an-idea-what-do-i-do-now). I am using the story ideas from both my first and second pass at the 10.1 homework. The short-hand titles for my ideas are here: Hologram playdates Adopting for Status AIs seeking base code Animal religion Judgemental coyotes Celestial custodian Stardust Binary…
So last year I started the Master Class that was season 10 of Writing Excuses, with the intent of posting my homework here. I got as far as the first exercise (Writing Excuses Homework 10.1). I have picked up listening to that season again from the beginning, and am starting…
I am a fan of the podcast Writing Excuses, so much so that I camped out on the computer to snag one of the 30 seats in their inaugural Out Of Excuses Writing Retreat in 2013. I learned a lot from Brandan, Dan, Howard and Mary that week, and each…
Someone in my extended writing tribe started a blog to track his writing projects for the year using mountain climbing as a metaphor. I thought it was a neat idea, and the part where he identified the projects he was going to work on to reach his particular word counts/…
Writing Excuses– “Fifteen minutes long, because you’re in a hurry, and we’re not that smart” Everything a catchphrase for a podcast should be – except accurate. With hosts Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Howard Taylor, and introducing Mary Robinette Kowal in later seasons, this writing podcast (which sometimes strays into the…