Writing Excuses Season 4: My fave episodes

My favorite casts of Writing Excuses season 4. These are all about 15 minutes, cause the tagline of the podcast is: "15 minutes, cause you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart!"

* Season 1 Faves here.

* Season 2 Faves here.

* Season 3 Faves here.

Types of Humor We manage to cover character-based humor, physical humor, and non-sequitur, brushing alongside cognitive humor and exaggeration as we go, but hey… we only had 15 minutes to work with.

Pacing with James Dashner We talk about reveals, punchlines, cliffhangers, chapter length, and the “Brandon Avalanche.” 

Breaking the Fourth Wall We talk about the theatrical origins of the term, and how the technique it represents might be used by authors and others....We also talk about when it would be absolutely, inarguably inappropriate to break the fourth wall.

Living with the Artist Beyond the fact that Sandra and Dawn are stay-at-home moms, and Kenny is a stay-at-home Dad, the three of them each have important roles to play in their spouses’ careers, and those roles go far beyond mere cheerleading and moral support. We talk about that, and then Sandra, Dawn, and Kenny offer advice to those who may find themselves as significant others to creative types.

Writing Practical Fantasy ...if you have an army of 1000 armored knights, you’d better have an economy and political system capable of producing and supporting them.

Mating Plumage Yes, we judge books by covers, and no, writers don’t have any control over them. We have a little more control of our titles, and still more over our first lines.  Humorous and tragic anecdotes follow, along with a great example of a first line from Barbara Hambly.