Comments on: Writing Excuses Season 3 Episode 18: How To Not Repeat Yourself

By: Brandon Sanderson’s preoccupation with deification | A Motley Vision

Brandon Sanderson’s preoccupation with deification | A Motley Vision — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 02:00:30 +0000

[...] been mentioned in passing in at least two Writing Excuses episodes (Season 2, Ep. 12 [transcript]; Season 3, Ep. 18 [transcript]). The way it manifests itself in his work is not necessarily uniquely Mormon, but [...]

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 22:31:22 +0000

I picked up listening to this podcast earlier in 2010 and hadn’t listened to this episode until now, so it’s probably a bit late but on the extreme off-chance that anyone looks through the comments on this, I actually translated the tool that Tracy Hickman created that Howard mentions in this episode, taking it from paper “roll the dice and turn the page to find out your answer” into a javascript-based app that selects your words from an array based on how it fits into the sentence. I posted it over at the XDM forums after getting Mr. Hickman’s approval and he seemed to like it. Much easier to show than explain: http://wwwdotstgeorgegamingdotcom/storybuilder. I’ll be adding to it soon, he mentioned he’d be interested in hosting the code on their official XDM site so we’ll see how that goes too.

By: Blógünder Schlock » Blog Archive » Drawing for free copy of Servant of a Dark God by John Brown

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:49:38 +0000

[...] debut novelist who Howard helped interview in two recent episodes of the Writing Excuses podcast: How Not to Repeat Yourself, and Emotion in Fiction with John Brown. If you click the links you can listen to the podcasts [...]

By: Carla

Carla — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 01:11:04 +0000

Does this writing prompt call for actual pie or metaphorical-or-allegorical pie? Either way, I’m hungry, and I’m going to write something now. Thanks for another great episode!

By: Andrew Jack

Andrew Jack — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:27:01 +0000

Excellent podcast, I often worry that my desire to get my characters into close combat is going to lead to repetitive scenes, so I found this podcast really useful.

Thanks,

Andrew

By: Raethe

Raethe — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 21:36:25 +0000

I could be wrong on this one, but as far as I know the only sequel he’s planning on (aside from Way of Kings stuff) is for Warbreaker.

By: Luis Montero

Luis Montero — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:30:31 +0000

I want know if Mr. Brandon Anderson will make a second part of Elantris I like know what will happen with the impire fjordell, arelon, new Elantris and our heroes… please say me what do you think????

By: Mike Barker

Mike Barker — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 02:03:28 +0000

Here we go again — a transcript.

http://mbarker.livejournal.com/125015.html

By: Clifton Hill

Clifton Hill — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 23:39:22 +0000

Another great podcast, especially good point about getting to the root of what your story is all about and making sure to take future stories in different directions if you keep that same root or seed. I had the same feeling when I read Eddings’; Belgariad was great, Mallorean was slightly derivative, but ok because it continued the story and gave it a bit larger scope. But the Elenium threw me, from what I recall (it’s been a while) it was decent enough but too close of a copy to the basic premises of his prior novels for me to really get into.

By: Matthew Watkins

Matthew Watkins — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:52:30 +0000

I really don’t think that repition is as bad as we think. The important thing is that we avoid formula. Many of the literary greats repeated themselves. Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Shakespeare, Austen and so many others. In genre fiction we have Tolkien, Asimov, Jordan, Brooks, Herbert, and so many others. All of these writers leaned heavily on repeating themes, and I would like to think that these are the kinds of authors that we are trying to be like.

The difference is that we need to avoid formula fiction. Think of Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew. That was formula fiction, because it did the same thing every single book. The important thing is to take a new look at your recurring themes. Approach it from a new angle. Throw in some unexpected elements. This correlates with the idea of recombination.

Essentially, we can repeat things, but we have to add some fresh elements.