19.50: All Systems Go
Writing Excuses
Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler
4.7 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 15 December 2024
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As the end of Season 19 approaches, we want to help you integrate what you’ve learned over the year. For December, we’ll be releasing episodes designed to help you make measurable progress on a writing project. So dust off your current work-in-progress, or pull out your brainstorming documents—we’re here to help you finish the year strong.
How do you have multiple plot threads moving at the same time? Today, we’re talking about complex plot structures—focusing on space opera and epic fantasy. Some of the questions we’re tackling are: how do you escalate existing problems, how do you juggle multiple climaxes at once, and what are the cascading effects of each? We ask each host about their unique approaches to writing larger projects. We talk about the utility of multiple POVs and what fast food can teach you about escalating problems (somebody’s gonna get burnt buns).
Thing of the Week: Laboratory Conditions
Homework: Take a piece of technology you’ve already introduced to your work. Find out a new, cool way you can use it in the next scene that you’re writing.
Credits: Your hosts for this episode were Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, and Howard Tayler. It was produced by Emma Reynolds, recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | AI might be the most important innovation ever. It's storming every industry with literally billions being invested, so buckle up. |
| 0:07.9 | The problem is that AI needs the right data and a lot of speed and processing power, so how do you compete without cost spiraling out of control? |
| 0:15.7 | Time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or OCI. |
| 0:21.4 | OCI is a single platform for your infrastructure, database and application development, with AI |
| 0:26.4 | embedded across it all. And Oracle's offering cloud helps you address your requirements for location, |
| 0:31.4 | access and data residency. OCI provides blazing fast speeds for AI's demanding workloads, |
| 0:37.3 | and in the cloud when you pay by the minute, speed matters, and of course, nobody does data better than Oracle. |
| 0:43.9 | If you want OCI to help you do more and spend less, like Uber, the Premier League and Oracle Red Bull Racing, take a free test drive at oracle.com slash bandwidth. That's oracle.com slash bandwidth. |
| 0:55.3 | This episode of writing excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. |
| 1:03.0 | If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.com.com |
| 1:09.2 | writing excuses. |
| 1:12.4 | Season 19. |
| 1:14.4 | Episode 50 |
| 1:15.3 | This is writing excuses. |
| 1:20.2 | All systems go. |
| 1:21.7 | 15 minutes long. |
| 1:22.8 | Because you're in a hurry. |
| 1:24.0 | And we're not that smart. |
| 1:25.2 | I'm Mary Robinette. |
| 1:26.4 | I'm Dong Wan. |
| 1:27.1 | I'm Aaron. I'm Mary Robinette. I'm Dong Wan. I'm Erin. |
| 1:27.8 | I'm Dan. |
... |
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