What’s this podcast episode about? Can you tell? Does it even matter? This week, we’re talking about curiosity in fiction: how stories create it, what purpose it serves, and why it can be detrimental if taken too far. Don’t worry, we love a good mystery as well, but like any flashy move, it’s easy to get so caught up with it that you neglect the fundamentals. We discuss the interplay between tension and curiosity, plus how to use one to create the other. Show Notes ANTS Mystery Stories  The Hound of the Baskervilles  Knives Out Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals  BBC Sherlock  Lost ..read more

We try our best to give actionable writing advice that makes stories better, but, unfortunately, not everyone else follows the same code. There’s a lot of terrible writing advice out there, much of it dressed up specifically to tell writers what they want to hear. This week, we’re talking about how you can spot it before throwing away perfectly good money. Whether or not you think our own advice is good, you’ll be forewarned about anything that sounds too good to be true. Show Notes Scheme in British English  Writing Advice Cultures  Hyperion  Brandon Sanderson  Process Ad ..read more

Swords? How droll. Guns? Completely unfashionable. Aren’t there any weird weapons out there to satisfy our thirst for novelty? You know what we’re talking about: the kind of completely bizarre contraption that’s as much a danger to the wielder as to the enemy. Fortunately, there are actually quite a few of those in both fiction and real life! Show Notes Mass Effect Weapon Heat Transporter Gun  HL Hunley  The Claw of Archimedes  Greek Fire  Point of View Gun Air Rifle  Mancatcher  USB Arrow  Kylo Ren’s Lightsaber  Laser Bow  Lirpa Bamboo Cannon  ..read more

Tension comes from problems that the characters have to solve, and if a character is important, they should contribute to solving the problem in question. But how will they contribute, exactly? This question can be difficult to answer, especially if you have a bunch of characters with different power levels on team good. Fortunately, we’ve got a few suggestions for you! Show Notes Animal Companions  Avatar Beach Episode  Echo  Tech The Winchester Brothers  Toph  The Buffy Gang  The Fellowship  Cersei  Margaery  Holly Munro Counselor Troi  ..read more

A wise wizard once told us that our eyes can deceive us and we shouldn’t trust them, so maybe that’s why we’re always giving our characters additional senses. This week, we’re using narrative-o-ception to sense what this topic is about and how writers can incorporate it into their work. We discuss super powers, aliens, and just about every animal sense we could think of. Also, cats. Lots of cats. Show Notes Sting  Umwelt  Daniel Kish  Parable of the Sower  Echolocation  The Hidden Memory of Objects  Whiskers  Electroreception Lockwood and Co.  Ian Water ..read more

Even the best villains must eventually come to the end of their run, but what if you could bring them back? It would be so easy, what would be the harm—NO. You stop that. Do not give in to temptation! This week, we’re talking about why it’s almost always better to leave a villain dead and then complaining about stories that didn’t leave their villains dead. You could say there’s a bit of an Echo in there, and that, somehow, Star Wars discourse returned.  Show Notes When to Kill a Hero – Or Not  Kingpin Peter Hale Kate Argent D6 Star Wars RPG  “Ursula’s Crazy Sister!”  Shee ..read more

Holy podcasting, Batman! It’s time for an episode about stories that have two main characters instead of one. A story so nice they main charactered it twice. Whether it’s a hero and their sidekick or two siblings equally sharing the spotlight, this week we’re talking about how to balance the needs of both characters. We cover how to keep them both in the plot, how to keep their interactions compelling, and why they shouldn’t steal development from each other. Show Notes The Winchester Brothers  Bo and Kenzi Slayers: A Buffyverse Story Sherlock and Watson  Nine Personality Clashes Ch ..read more

Every story is made of countless little pieces, from characters and arcs to locations and magic powers. But if those pieces are scattered around randomly, they won’t amount to much. For a story to be as much or more than the sum of its parts, we need to make it cohesive. That’s what we’re talking about today, with discussions of fractured plots, random Cthulhu aliens, and diverging viewpoints. Did you think we were going to let this episode go by without grinding the multiple POV axe a little? Show Notes Whale Sounds  A Game of Thrones  Monarch: Legacy of the Monsters  Kaiju Pr ..read more

From wholesome pipe-weed to shady ThreeEye, spec fic writers have a long history of inventing new drugs for their stories. Sometimes these drugs are a metaphor for something else, but other times, something else is a metaphor for drugs! This can get pretty confusing, so today’s episode is all about getting to the bottom of things. We’re talking about mushrooms that are literally magic, Super Soldier Serum, and the world’s most 90s video game. Plus, why lightning is drugs, but levitation isn’t??? Show Notes Force Lightning  Willow’s Dark Magic  The One Ring  Spice (Dune) Spice ..read more

If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that dialogue goes inside a set of quotation marks. Wait, we can’t all agree on that? Uh oh. What else don’t we agree on? What other wild choices are writers making out there? That’s what we’re talking about this week: everything from using dialogue as a wall of exposition to necessarily labeling animals as being from Mars. Plus, did you know this character is very weird and wacky? Their dialogue will remind you!  Show Notes Dramatic Dialogue The Road  Bad Batch  The Cruel Prince  Malazan  Travis Mayweather  Name of ..read more