You love ‘em, we love ‘em, and there’s never a shortage of questions so here’s another another fast-paced Q&A. Here are the questions that we field in this episode:

• How do you prepare to write?
• How do you write stories that are important without being heavy-handed?
• Magical realism vs. Fantasy — what’s the difference?
• Do you have recommendations or techniques for serving as a beta reader? (Here’s the promised liner-note bit from Mary.)
• Is it possible to do a serial with short stories and novellas all in the same setting?
• Why do publishers say they want crossed-genre books, but they’re not publishing crossed-genre books?
• Picture books and books for beginning readers: can you ‘cast on this for us? (Answer: not until we’ve got an expert guest in that field. If you want that info, go to SCBWI.org)
• Can you do a ‘cast on reading aloud? (Answer: yes. This is not that ‘cast.)
• What is the primary thing you’ve learned from reading Literary Fiction that has informed your Genre Fiction writing?

Writing Prompt: “Kittenpunk.”

This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible. Visit http://AudiblePodcast.com/excuse for a free trial membership*.

*Note: From the Audible website, here are the terms of the free membership. Read the fine print, please!

Audible® Free Trial Details
* Get your first 30 days of the AudibleListener® Gold membership plan free, which includes one credit. In almost all cases, one credit equals one audiobook. After your 30 day trial, your membership will automatically renew each month for just $14.95, billed to the credit card you used when you registered with Audible. With your membership, you will receive one credit per month plus members-only discounts on all audio purchases. If you cancel your membership before your free trial period is up, you will not be charged. Thereafter, cancel anytime, effective the next billing cycle. See the complete terms and policy applicable to Audible memberships.

Writing Excuses 8.17: Microcasting [ 17:48 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (16904)

We’re back for 2013 and Season 8, so let’s start it off by answering all your questions! That’s right, it’s time for a fast-paced, lightning round of microcasting! It’s like eight very, very short podcasts in one.

• Why do some authors only ever come out with one or two books?
• What’s your process for writing fast under artificial deadlines (NaNoWriMo)?
• How do you avoid getting bogged down in explanation?
• What happened to your Hero of a Thousand Faces episode? (Whoops! See below.)
• Are there concerns or pitfalls regarding the use of metaphors and similes in genre fiction?
• What are some pitfalls to writing short stories?
• How do you write sex scenes? (Note: This particular question resulted in an entire episode back in Season 7. Shanna Germain to the rescue!)
• Have any of you included original poems in your work?

Whoops! We lock-stepped this episode to the release of A Memory of Light, but we ALSO locked it to air after our Hero of a Thousand Faces discussion. Crass commercialism trumps continuity! You’ll get the hero’s journey next week.

Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: A Memory of Light: Wheel of Time, Book 14, by  Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, narrated by Michael Kramer and Kate Reading.

Writing Prompt: What does SFPA stand for?

Incidentally: If you’re eligible to nominate things for the 2013 Hugo Awards, here’s a list of the things we’ve done which are eligible.

This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible. Visit http://AudiblePodcast.com/excuse for a free trial membership*.

*Note: From the Audible website, here are the terms of the free membership. Read the fine print, please!

Audible® Free Trial Details
* Get your first 30 days of the AudibleListener® Gold membership plan free, which includes one credit. In almost all cases, one credit equals one audiobook. After your 30 day trial, your membership will automatically renew each month for just $14.95, billed to the credit card you used when you registered with Audible. With your membership, you will receive one credit per month plus members-only discounts on all audio purchases. If you cancel your membership before your free trial period is up, you will not be charged. Thereafter, cancel anytime, effective the next billing cycle. See the complete terms and policy applicable to Audible memberships.

Writing Excuses 8.1: Microcasting [ 17:43 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (22191)

We’re drawing to the close of Season 7, so here’s some microcasting (that’s what we call a fast-paced Q&A) where we field your questions. Here are your questions:

• What are your embarrassing early projects?
• How do you tell if your idea is too big for the story you’re working on?
• How do you avoid discouragement?
• How do you handle multiple magic systems in one book?

Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: Who Fears Death, by Nnedi Okorafor, narrated by Anne Flosnik

Writing Prompt: Two different characters, two different magic systems…

This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible. Visit http://AudiblePodcast.com/excuse for a free trial membership*.

*Note: From the Audible website, here are the terms of the free membership. Read the fine print, please!

Audible® Free Trial Details
* Get your first 30 days of the AudibleListener® Gold membership plan free, which includes one credit. In almost all cases, one credit equals one audiobook. After your 30 day trial, your membership will automatically renew each month for just $14.95, billed to the credit card you used when you registered with Audible. With your membership, you will receive one credit per month plus members-only discounts on all audio purchases. If you cancel your membership before your free trial period is up, you will not be charged. Thereafter, cancel anytime, effective the next billing cycle. See the complete terms and policy applicable to Audible memberships.

Writing Excuses Season 7.52: Microcasting [ 17:49 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (25071)

Microcasting! Again!! Now with exclamation points!!! You’ll have to have a listen for our answers, but here are the questions:

• How do you deal with bad reviews?
• How do you apply Brandon’s magic system rules to science fiction?
• Dan, will you do the marshmallow voice for us again?
• How do you keep tension high without exhausting the reader?
• You’ve made your manuscript as good as you know how to. Now you need to make it even better, based on feedback. What do you do?
• Any tips on creating suspension of disbelief?
• How do you deal with annoying fans?

Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: Howl’s Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones, narrated by Jenny Sterlin.

Writing Prompt: The story of the writer and her VERY ENTHUSIASTIC alien fan who is impossible to escape.

“Oddly, no. Sometimes you guys are dull.” 5:22, Mary Robinette Kowal.

Mary’s Shmoozing 101 Link: Right here.

This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible. Visit http://AudiblePodcast.com/excuse for a free trial membership*.

*Note: From the Audible website, here are the terms of the free membership. Read the fine print, please!

Audible® Free Trial Details
* Get your first 30 days of the AudibleListener® Gold membership plan free, which includes one credit. In almost all cases, one credit equals one audiobook. After your 30 day trial, your membership will automatically renew each month for just $14.95, billed to the credit card you used when you registered with Audible. With your membership, you will receive one credit per month plus members-only discounts on all audio purchases. If you cancel your membership before your free trial period is up, you will not be charged. Thereafter, cancel anytime, effective the next billing cycle. See the complete terms and policy applicable to Audible memberships.

Writing Excuses 7.30: Micocasting...Again! [ 19:06 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (20497)

Recorded live at Utah Valley University, here’s another Q&A episode from the LTUE Symposium!

The questions:

• What was Brandon’s plan with Mistborn and the themes regarding establishment?
• Why does Kelsier shrug so much? (This leads into a fun discussion of “tells.”)
• How do you know when to stop a chapter? What about expanding it?
• How do you make your prose more transparent?
• How do you decide who and what to cut?
• What do you do to filter out the extraneous ideas that come while you’re writing?
• What can collaborators do in order to create a single “voice” for the book?
• What’s the best way to tackle a long back-story?

Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: Partials, by Dan Wells, narrated by Julia Whelan.

Writing Prompt: From Earl K. Hill, our cameraman: tell a whole story from the view of the sidekick.

This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible. Visit http://AudiblePodcast.com/excuse for a free trial membership*.

*Note: From the Audible website, here are the terms of the free membership. Read the fine print, please!

Audible® Free Trial Details
* Get your first 30 days of the AudibleListener® Gold membership plan free, which includes one credit. In almost all cases, one credit equals one audiobook. After your 30 day trial, your membership will automatically renew each month for just $14.95, billed to the credit card you used when you registered with Audible. With your membership, you will receive one credit per month plus members-only discounts on all audio purchases. If you cancel your membership before your free trial period is up, you will not be charged. Thereafter, cancel anytime, effective the next billing cycle. See the complete terms and policy applicable to Audible memberships.

Writing Excuses 7.26: Q&A at UVU part 2 [ 19:32 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (21141)

A microcast is our word for an asynchronous Q&A episode: you ask us tons of questions online, either through twitter or facebook or our listenermail account (on the sidebar), and we want to answer as many of them as we can. Not every answer can fill an entire episode, though, so we take the smaller ones and cover a bunch of them at once in a microcast. This week we take a brief, pithy look at the following:

• Prologues and epilogues
• Using drawings to get across settings
• Simple tricks for naming things
• Would you self publish if you had a do over?
• How do you keep a powerful character interesting?
• Foreshadowing
• Trimming
• Flashbacks

Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley

Writing Prompt: Write a flashback, in a prologue, with a mirror scene. Yes.

This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible. Visit http://AudiblePodcast.com/excuse for a free trial membership*.

*Note: From the Audible website, here are the terms of the free membership. Read the fine print, please!

Audible® Free Trial Details
* Get your first 30 days of the AudibleListener® Gold membership plan free, which includes one credit. In almost all cases, one credit equals one audiobook. After your 30 day trial, your membership will automatically renew each month for just $14.95, billed to the credit card you used when you registered with Audible. With your membership, you will receive one credit per month plus members-only discounts on all audio purchases. If you cancel your membership before your free trial period is up, you will not be charged. Thereafter, cancel anytime, effective the next billing cycle. See the complete terms and policy applicable to Audible memberships.

Writing Excuses 7.22: Microcasting [ 19:10 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (18553)

James Dashner joins us for a Q&A at Utah Valley University during Life, The Universe, and Everything.

The first question starts out amazingly rough, but the 12-year-old asking it manages to stick the landing. The questions include:

• Why is the ARC of James’ first book so different from the later books?
• How do you handle paragraph- and sentence-level edits?
• How do you plot your stories?
• How do you craft endings that are both satisfying, and leave the reader wanting more?
• What do you do when your compelling villain threatens to take over the whole book?

Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: Everneath, by Brody Ashton, narrated by Amy Rubinate

Writing Prompt: You get kidnapped and put in an asylum for the criminally sane.

That Panel Howard Talked About: It’s actually at the end of Massively Parallel, and you can look at it right here.

This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible. Visit http://AudiblePodcast.com/excuse for a free trial membership*.

*Note: From the Audible website, here are the terms of the free membership. Read the fine print, please!

Audible® Free Trial Details
* Get your first 30 days of the AudibleListener® Gold membership plan free, which includes one credit. In almost all cases, one credit equals one audiobook. After your 30 day trial, your membership will automatically renew each month for just $14.95, billed to the credit card you used when you registered with Audible. With your membership, you will receive one credit per month plus members-only discounts on all audio purchases. If you cancel your membership before your free trial period is up, you will not be charged. Thereafter, cancel anytime, effective the next billing cycle. See the complete terms and policy applicable to Audible memberships.

Writing Excuses 7.19: Q&A at UVU [ 16:04 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (18800)

It’s again time for us to do a Q&A by any other name!

• Is it better to include romance, horror, SF, or other genre elements to flesh out a story, or should the story stand alone?
• Any tips for developing an idea without getting caught in Worldbuilder’s Disease?
• Any NaNo WriMo tips? (yes.)
• What did you to do build an audience before you got published and famous and stuff?
• How do you create sub-plots without overshadowing the main plot?
• What are the most important things you learned as writers during 2011?
• How do you stay motivated (especially during editing) when it seems like everything you wrote is crap?

Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: Persuasion, by Jane Austen. Note that there are lots of available recordings. We recommend something unabridged, like the version linked here.

Writing Prompt: Listener Bill Housely provided this one — a lone woman who runs an orbital refueling post makes first contact when some aliens arrive in desperate need of fuel.

This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible. Visit http://AudiblePodcast.com/excuse for a free trial membership*.

*Note: From the Audible website, here are the terms of the free membership. Read the fine print, please!

Audible® Free Trial Details
* Get your first 30 days of the AudibleListener® Gold membership plan free, which includes one credit. In almost all cases, one credit equals one audiobook. After your 30 day trial, your membership will automatically renew each month for just $14.95, billed to the credit card you used when you registered with Audible. With your membership, you will receive one credit per month plus members-only discounts on all audio purchases. If you cancel your membership before your free trial period is up, you will not be charged. Thereafter, cancel anytime, effective the next billing cycle. See the complete terms and policy applicable to Audible memberships.

Writing Excuses 7.11: More Microcasting [ 15:42 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (18269)

Microcasting! This is a fancy word for “Q&A” — we pick some questions from Twitter, and do what amounts to nine mini-episodes of Writing Excuses with a side of bacon. This time around the questions were:

• What do you do if you dont like your characters?
• How do you keep your plot on track?
• Is it better to use real locations in an Urban Fantasy?
• What do you do about plot holes?
• How do you know if you should abandon a story and move on to something else?
• How do you ensure the answers to mysteries are satisfying?
• What are some language-level mistakes that mark writing as amateurish?
• What should a scene consist of?
• What kind of bacon is best?
• Why is Schlock, who looks like a pile of poo, lovable instead of disgusting?

Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: One Salt Sea by Seanan McGuire, narrated by Mary Robinette Kowal.

Dan Has A New Book Out This Week: Partials releases this Tuesday, Februrary 28th.

Howard Has An Actual Birthday This Week: Wednesday, February 29th. There will be a sale on at schlockmercenary.com, and it will involve the numbers 11, 29, and 44.

Writing Prompt: Write what one of your characters would write if that character had a blog.

This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible. Visit http://AudiblePodcast.com/excuse for a free trial membership*.

*Note: From the Audible website, here are the terms of the free membership. Read the fine print, please!

Audible® Free Trial Details Get your first 14 days of the AudibleListener® Gold membership plan free, which includes one audiobook credit. After your 14 day trial, your membership will renew each month for just $14.95 per month so you can continue to receive one audiobook credit per month plus members-only discounts on all audio purchases. A very small number of titles are more than one credit. Cancel your membership before your free trial period is up and you will not be charged. Thereafter, cancel anytime, effective the next billing cycle. Any unused audiobook credits will be lost at cancellation.

Writing Excuses 7.9: Microcasting [ 16:23 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (19371)

Microcasting! It’s our high-speed Q&A! Here are the Q’s, listen to the ‘cast for the A’s.

• Is it still safe to go the commercial publishing route?
• How do you find the balance when writing serious stories with silliness in them?
• What are the alternatives to three-act structure?
• Do you ever lose your drive, and what re-inspires you when you do?
• How does your writing life affect your non-writing life?
• What was the defining moment in your life where you decided to become a writer?
• How effective are book trailers?

Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: 1421: The Year China Discovered America, by Gavin Menzies, narrated by Simon Vance

Writing Prompt: Give us a story in which writers are using actual fantastic creatures in the process of writing fantasy — ink from unicorn horns, elf-skin parchment, etc.

Promised Liner Note Links: Dan’s 7-point Story Structure,

This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible.
Visit http://AudiblePodcast.com/excuse for a free trial membership*.
*Note: From the Audible website, here are the terms of the free membership. Read the fine print, please!

Audible® Free Trial Details
Get your first 14 days of the AudibleListener® Gold membership plan free, which includes one audiobook credit. After your 14 day trial, your membership will renew each month for just $14.95 per month so you can continue to receive one audiobook credit per month plus members-only discounts on all audio purchases. A very small number of titles are more than one credit. Cancel your membership before your free trial period is up and you will not be charged. Thereafter, cancel anytime, effective the next billing cycle. Any unused audiobook credits will be lost at cancellation.

Writing Excuses 6.4: Microcasting [ 19:10 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (16206)