Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler
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Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler discuss writing techniques in a fast-paced format. A weekly podcast about the craft and business of writing.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Writing Excuses turns creative craft into practical working knowledge through candid discussion, concrete analogies, and exercises writers can immediately apply.
Writing Excuses treats writing as work that can be examined, practiced, and improved. Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler move between group discussions and guest interviews, grounding abstract craft questions in specific working…
A scene outline becomes mise en place; your next draft gets its ingredients lined up.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A plain, useful way to think about how creative control changes after publication.
Mary Robinette Kowal opens on a rueful note, admitting she regrets choosing raising children as the metaphor. That sets up the episode's main move: treating creative control like parenting, where a draft is yours to shape and a published book is not.
A narrower frame helps a story keep its focus.
The episode treats framing as a practical craft problem: what belongs in the lens, what stays out, and how a story shifts when the frame gets too wide.
Tradition becomes a usable craft lens, not a museum label.
Writing Excuses uses this episode to ask a plain but useful question: what traditions are already steering the stories a writer makes? The panel starts with personal reading habits, from newspaper comics to mass-market paperback science fiction, then broadens into the…
A sharp craft discussion of agency, buy-in, and how games change the story contract.
The conversation uses gaming as a useful way to think about agency, buy-in, and the kind of contract a story makes when people can steer it. It keeps circling practical craft questions: who the work asks something of, how much guidance that audience needs, and what changes when…
A practical conversation about craft, communication, and the discipline of deliberate practice.
Charles Duhigg comes across as a journalist for The New Yorker and the author of The Power of Habit and Super Communicators, but the real emphasis stays on a simpler point: communication and craft are made through skills, not magic.
A practical craft talk on making scenes feel physically real.
The discussion treats sensory detail as part of the work of storytelling, not decorative filler. It begins by bringing story back into the body, then moves through acoustics, scent, memory, and the reminder that perception is not the same for every reader.
Time changes what a scene reveals, sometimes more than the scene itself.
Writing Excuses uses time as a practical craft tool here, not a grand idea. It looks at how day and night, or spring and fall, can shift what a scene means and how a character reacts.
A practical reminder that worldbuilding should supply context only as far as the story needs it.
Writing Excuses treats worldbuilding as a matter of context: give the story what it needs, and keep the rest vague until the plot asks for more.
Rob Walling on bootstrapped SaaS growth, plateaus, and exits — with founders who lived them.
Abbey Ashley's playbook for turning your job skills into a virtual assistant business.
Naval Ravikant on epistemology, startups, and crypto, from David Deutsch to Vitalik Buterin.
Alex Theuma interviews SaaS founders and investors on scaling to $10M-plus ARR.
Guy Raz traces founders' origin stories and fields live advice-line calls from entrepreneurs.
Alex Blumberg interviews guests like Megan Phelps-Roper and Shane McAnally about failure and reinvention.
The hosts discuss writing techniques and promote their annual writing retreat on a cruise ship.
A panel of authors discuss writing techniques and the craft of storytelling, with a focus on moving through the middle of a book.
Announcement of the final Writing Excuses at Sea cruise retreat, followed by a discussion about writing in the Middle East.
The hosts explore writing as a metaphor for raising children, discussing how characters and stories develop their own agency beyond the author's initial plans.
The hosts and guest Taya Albrecht explore revision techniques focused on character consciousness, discussing first-draft struggles, layering character traits, and using discomfort to reveal personality.
The hosts of Writing Excuses explore how to frame a story by deciding what to include or exclude, using tools like the MICE quotient and considering audience perspectives.
The hosts of Writing Excuses explore how tone functions in writing, discussing its emotional impact, use of contrasts, and practical tools like word choice and sentence structure.
The hosts explore authorial intent in writing, discussing how personal motivations—from commercial goals to emotional experiences—shape stories.
The hosts explore how personal storytelling traditions, from books to oral tales, shape writing, discussing unconscious biases and the importance of diversifying influences to grow as artists.
The hosts and guest Mark Ashiro explore the differences between theme and meaning in writing, using personal anecdotes and metaphors.
The hosts explore how gaming mechanics serve as metaphors for writing, discussing player agency, narrative design, and audience engagement.
The hosts explore how to write compelling confrontation scenes, moving beyond physical fights to include verbal altercations.
Charles Duhigg, author of 'Super Communicators,' joins Writing Excuses to discuss how communication skills apply to writing and book pitching.
The hosts explore how sensory details—sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste—ground readers in fiction and reveal character perspective.
The hosts explore how time functions as a narrative lens in storytelling, discussing techniques like flashbacks, magnified moments, and time as setting.
The hosts explore how to create effective context in storytelling, emphasizing tying world-building to character conflict and avoiding unnecessary details.
The hosts explore how setting and time affect storytelling in speculative fiction, discussing worldbuilding details from sewer systems to time measurement.
The hosts of Writing Excuses explore cooking as a metaphor for writing, discussing creativity through ingredient substitution, the value of different writing 'recipes' from fanfic to professional work, and techniques like 'mise en place' for outlining.
The hosts of Writing Excuses discuss the art of teaching writing, sharing personal experiences from school visits to prison workshops.
In this interview, furniture maker and publisher Christopher Schwarz discusses how his woodworking and journalism backgrounds inform his writing and publishing at Lost Art Press.
The hosts of Writing Excuses explore second person perspective in writing, discussing its intimacy, challenges with reader agency, and applications in games, marginalized narratives, and modern media like influencer videos.
The hosts discuss third-person omniscient point of view and promote an upcoming writing cruise masterclass.
The hosts discuss the third person limited point of view as part of a mini-series on narrative proximity.
The hosts discuss character internal versus external identity through a close reading of C.L.
An interview with author Arkady Martine about worldbuilding in her novel A Memory Called Empire.
A panel of authors discusses writing techniques, focusing on scale in worldbuilding, using a close reading of a science fiction novel.
A panel of authors discuss how to build fictional economies in writing, drawing from a space economy camp for writers.
An interview with authors Max Gladstone and Amal El-Matar about voice in writing, focusing on their book This Is How You Lose the Time War.