PODCAST · arts
Word Docs
by Auscast Network
Alex, Amy and Sean (aka Dr Alex Vickery-Howe, Dr Amy T Matthews and Dr Sean Williams)are professional writers who also lecture full-time at Flinders University, South Australia.They’ve joined forces to cover topics of interest to new writers in a lively, conversationalstyle that frequently segues to areas far from where they started. If you’ve ever wonderedwhat writers talk about beyond the lecture theatre or festival circuit, here’s your chance tofind out.BiosDr Alex Vickery-Howe is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. In 2008 he made hiswriting debut with a bilingual, bicultural horror rock musical in Okinawa, Japan, where itopened the Kijimuna Festival (now Ricca Ricca Festival) and played to rave reviews and fullhouses, before selling out again at the Adelaide OzAsia Festival. He has subsequentlywritten and published works for a number of Australian theatre companies. On screen, Alexhas written and directed short films which have played to a variety of internat
Episodes
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Episode 68: ‘Spam’ (Collaboration)
Three writers walk into a room...and somehow manage to work together. Not these three writers, necessarily. But in theory, that's how collaboration works. Welcome to the final Word Docs of the season, where Sean, Alex and Amy are in fizzy spirits thanks to acute cases of over-caffeination (or in...
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Episode 67: ‘Protect Your Groin’ (Action & Pacing)
Sean tests Alex and Amy's knowledge of action and pacing this week (ding ding ding!). What are the pitfalls of pacing an action sequence? We've got all the answers - get your fast bits right and your slow bits even righter. Is righter a word? It is now! Get some classic Word Docs wisdom about...
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Episode 66: ‘There Definitely Is Such A Thing As A Stupid Question’ (What People Ask Writers)
Hello from the sickbed... Alex is calling in from home, where he's down with COVID; Sean is suffering from post-COVID brain fog; and Amy is infuriatingly healthy. Today the Word Docs are answering the most annoying questions people ask writers: Will you read my manuscript? If I give you an idea,...
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Episode 65: ‘The Substitute Alex’ (Satire with Alex Cothren)
Join Sean, Amy and...uh...Alex?...for this week's episode of Word Docs. Our usual Alex is out with COVID so this week we're welcoming a substitute Alex, in the form of our friend and colleague Dr Alex Cothren, who sidles up to the mic to talk satire, short stories and writing challenges. By the…
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Episode 64: ‘Don’t Touch My Dad’ (Instant Stories)
The Word Docs have written a masterpiece. No, really...it’s great. It’s alright. Look, it’s not bad. Together, Amy, Sean and Alex have devised the ultimate romance. Don’t Touch My Dad should be coming to a bookshop near you, but probably won’t be. #MorePeccable #ImmanuelCollege #Style #Plot...
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Episode 63: ‘The Alex Challenge’ (Dialectic Writing)
He has finally done his homework! Alex has come to the table with trees to shake and pots to stir. Can Sean and Amy handle their sugar addled friend? Will they withstand his jittery scrutiny? The host is juiced up...and he has calories to burn. #AlexVickeryHowe #SeanWilliams #AmyTMatthews...
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Episode 62: ‘More Has to be Going On’ (Bad Sex Awards)
And the golden statue goes to... There are some trophies you don’t mount on your bookshelf (pun intended) but they colour your career nonetheless. The Word Docs have gleefully unearthed the worst of the Bad Sex Awards to explore the act of love in print. With lots of laughter and a little light...
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Episode 61: ‘Writing Tips, The Sequel’ (More Advice)
The Word Docs are perusing expert recommendations and dissecting them at length. Amy is unwell and trying to keep the train moving, Alex is stuck on a constant delay...and Sean wants to kidnap a dog. This week we learn about Einstein’s epic battle with Hitler, the importance of supportive desk...
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Episode 60: ‘Inside the Giant Spiders’ (Immortality)
This week the Word Docs are responding to a listener question and exploring immortality. Would you want to live forever? Would you want your work to live forever? Would you want to spend eternity inside a giant spider? Is that even an option? Sugared up on chocolate, this is Word Docs at their…
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Episode 59: ‘The Ambivalent Casanova’ (Types of Writers, Part Two)
Sean and Alex are sickly and disgusting (in that order), but Amy is here to save the day with research and cogent thoughts. This week, the Docs explore the wisdom of Betsy Lerner and unpack the various writer archetypes Lerner describes. Who among them is the Natural? The Ambivalent Writer? The...
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Episode 58: ‘The Ambivalent Casanova’ (Types of Writers, Part One)
A promise delivered! Bookmark this. The Word Docs are back with the second half of their self-diagnoses, once again working from Betsy Lerner’s examples to whittle away at their artistry and categorise their quirky habits. Maybe this week they’ll each discover what kind of writers they really…
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Episode 57: ‘Alex's Manly Clap’ (Playlists and Musical Musings)
The doctors are in the house. Or rather two of the doctors are sick and stuck at home. This week the Word Docs are recording from home and everything's a bit looser than normal (which is saying something). But on the plus side, they get to practice clapping again, preferably in time to Amy's...
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Episode 56: ‘Every Human Being Has A Pinch Point’ (Beat Sheets)
This week Amy leads us through using beat sheets to plan and/or fix a story. Alex and Sean join in from where they recline eating salty gold Irish chocolate. It's the middle of teaching and everyone's pinch points are more pinchy than usual, but it's nothing gold-plated chocolate can't fix. If...
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Episode 55: ‘The Secret is...’ (Dead Blokey Gasbags)
There is a secret to writing a bestseller and it is...nah, kidding...nobody knows. But the Word Docs will keep asking people anyway. This week, the dysfunctional trio bend their knees at the altar of the great men who...nah, kidding...Sean has sorted through the rules of the blokey gasbags who’ve...
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‘It’s Good to be Back’ (All About Us)
They’ve emerged from the marking void! Alive and insane, the Word Docs discuss activities, opportunities, Nic Cage, scientology, chaotic planning, Nosferatu, spiders, inch ants and hungry catfish... Eventually, they may also get around to discussing their books. You never know. See...
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‘Shades of Great’ (Interculturalism)
Alex is in the Mastermind hot seat! Many years after writing Japanese/Australian rock musical Once Upon a Midnight, Alex is trying to remember what he was on about and why it was interesting. Luckily the Word Docs are on hand to tease all the shades of grey out of the process. Join us as we…
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‘Happily Never After’ (Tropes)
The Word Docs are slowly catching up with this mysterious invention called BookTok where all the young people are. Together, the intrepid geriatrics will sort through the virtual shelves and explore their favourite tropes with the usual blend of light-hearted humour, emotional pain and…
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‘Beware the Broccoli’ (Someone Else’s Advice)
We’re off the rails again! Amy is trying her best to keep the troops under control, but the troops are idiots. The sage advice of Anne Lamott is pearls before bewildered swine as Sean’s eerie chanting and Alex’s fear of naked cults turns a perfectly reasonable vegetable metaphor into something...
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‘All the Feels’ (Popular Romance Studies)
This week it's Amy's turn to sit in the Mastermind hot seat and the topic is Popular Romance Studies. Join us for love, sex, happy endings, trauma porn, happy for nows, and all the feels. Does Amy have the answers? Has Alex done his homework? Will Sean write a romance novel? And who is killing…
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‘Of Course It's a Sex Romp’ (Dead Tomes)
Got any dead books lying around? Manuscripts that didn't work, or didn't sell, or are just dead in the water for reasons you can't quite put your finger on? The Word Docs sure do. Alex is curious to pry into Sean and Amy's literary closets, looking for dusty old relics of the past. There must be...
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‘Let's Stress Heat’ (Cli Fi)
What do you do when the end of the world is nigh? Give into despair? Eat chocolate? Read books? Or, maybe now's a good time to join Alex on a pirate ship outta here? This week the Word Docs discuss climate-change fiction and the challenges of writing about our climate changed world. As an...
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‘Rise of the Word Docs’ (Balancing Commitments)
Unthawed from the ice, the Word Docs have returned to the airwaves to explain where the hell they've been, what the hell they've been doing, and who the hell they might be creating next. As lockdowns ease and the world reawakens, tune in to hear the gang discuss the perils of balancing…
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‘Deadwood Doughnuts’ (The Word Docs Challenge)
The Word Docs are going back to school. Marian Keyes is the guide this week as the dynamic trio attempt, for once, to do what they’re told. Weighing Marian’s advice against their core criteria of Wank Factor, DNF and Repeatability, the Word Docs try to adopt a writing prompt from the bestselling...
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‘Scrambled Legs’ (Nerding Out With Sean)
We know you've been waiting for this. The day Sean is finally allowed to talk matter transmitters to his heart's content. Be transported into speculative story worlds, where sex romping may happen on a young man's fictional spaceship, murderers get creative with transmitters, and where Alex and…
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‘That Sense of Magic’ (Dirty Craft)
How are writers portrayed in fiction? The Word Docs (or, as they’re inexplicably calling themselves, the Warlock, the Wizard and the Witch) are investigating the magic of storytelling as depicted in popular culture. From Fforde to Ginsberg, and Ginsberg to King, there is a tradition of...
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‘A Little Sidebar’ (The exegesis)
We’re lifting the boot and unpacking our process. This week, Amy leads a discussion on the form and purpose of exegetical writing as Sean snores audibly in the corner (not for the first time) and Alex rails against ever discussing his own work. What is an exegesis? Why is it important? Who is it...
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‘Amy Didn’t Like It’ (Endings)
Writers are cruel creatures. This week, the Word Docs discuss all the occasions when they’ve felt let down, horribly surprised, or otherwise manipulated by authors, playwrights and screenwriters. Alex is upset by animal cruelty, Amy by failed romance, and Sean by lions that aren’t really lions....
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‘The End is the Beginning’ (A Non-Linear Finale)
They're baaaaaaaack! The Word Docs have spent the last couple of years recording random episodes and failing to release them. But today is the dawn of a new age. Otherwise known as 2023. Alex stops polishing his awards, Amy crawls out of the writing cave, and Sean returns from a galaxy far, far...
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“There Will Be Nudity” (Pilgrimages) - Word Docs
Before you write your magnum opus – or perhaps during – a visit to a distant shore to get you in the mood and help you find the perfect setting for your novel is not a bad idea. Likewise, visiting the scene of your favourite work can bring you deeper into an author’s mindset. This week, the Word...
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‘I’ll Find a Way’ (Research) - Word Docs
This week the Word Docs follow Alice down the rabbit hole and take the academy by the tassels to hash out research outcomes, research expectations and non-traditional research outputs. What is research? How do you do it? Are creative works really so different from scholarly articles? The plucky...
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"Happy Halloween Birthday, Amy" (Outtakes) - Word Docs
It’s that special time of year again, and to celebrate Word Docs lifts the veil on their inability to stick to the subject, keep it clean, or avoid the giggles. This adults-only episode collects unused excerpts from nine months of broadcasting in the hope of bringing good cheer or at least the...
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“We Can Do This” (Return of the Heroes) - Word Docs
They almost succeed. Very, very nearly. This week, Amy, Sean and the other guy do their best to discuss heroes...and end up discussing fairy tales and gender binaries, romantic chemistry and cinema demographics, and anything else that skirts around the issue. Being heroic is hard. Writing heroic...
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“Welcome to Thunderdome” (Theme)
Another week, another rant. Place your bets as Amy and Alex face off on a range of issues they more or less politely agree on...while Sean towers with arms folded like a regal Tina Turner. From theme to ideology to politics to rebellion, the Word Docs aren’t afraid to go where Trump and Twitter...
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“The Punk Rock of Literature” (Interview with Dr Jonny Zweck)
Meet the man who ruined Alex's milk and cookies by writing a story so abjectly disgusting that it laid waste to bedtime. This week we're kicking off our 'Writers and their Partners' series, talking to Amy's partner, the Horror writer Jonny Zweck. (Sean refuses to participate in this misguided...
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“Could Do Better” (Savaging Notting Hill)
It's a Showdown! Amy and Sean are going head to head over to Richard Curtis's film Notting Hill, with Alex caught in the middle. Except Alex is too obstreperous to stay above the fray, and Amy and Sean keep agreeing on everything. We can't even argue properly. This week we're looking at…
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“I Want the Buns!” (Genre)
This week Amy kicks off with a rant about people who want to 'break the mould' of genre fiction, instead of just doing it bloody well, which leads us down the rabbit hole of defining genres, arguing about the rules (knowing the rules; bending the rules; breaking the rules; stop breaking the…
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“It's the Science Fiction Writers' Fault” (Interview with Garth Nix)
This week we're probing (with consent) Sean's sometime-collaborator Garth Nix. A man who has penned many bestsellers, Garth gives us the lowdown on writing: where he does it (The beach! Alex is astounded. How does he keep the seagulls at bay?), how he does it (By hand! Alex is further astounded....
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“Before They Were Infamous” (Odd Jobs)
Amy, Alex and Sean confess to all the jobs they had before becoming writers. From the eternal happy hour of a Sydney call centre, long nights at service stations, and weddings where the guests eat gold, the word docs have been making mischief across a range of industries. We're not afraid to ask...
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“Space Kittens, Attack!” (Heroes & Villains)
Alex, Amy and Sean take a closer look (see Episode 6) at two of our favourite character types and explore ways to write thrilling new ones. It’s harder than it seems. Maybe it’s okay for good people to be bad sometimes, but would Darth Vader ever pat a puppy? Answers await in the Cubby House/Lair...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Alex, Amy and Sean (aka Dr Alex Vickery-Howe, Dr Amy T Matthews and Dr Sean Williams)are professional writers who also lecture full-time at Flinders University, South Australia.They’ve joined forces to cover topics of interest to new writers in a lively, conversationalstyle that frequently segues to areas far from where they started. If you’ve ever wonderedwhat writers talk about beyond the lecture theatre or festival circuit, here’s your chance tofind out.BiosDr Alex Vickery-Howe is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. In 2008 he made hiswriting debut with a bilingual, bicultural horror rock musical in Okinawa, Japan, where itopened the Kijimuna Festival (now Ricca Ricca Festival) and played to rave reviews and fullhouses, before selling out again at the Adelaide OzAsia Festival. He has subsequentlywritten and published works for a number of Australian theatre companies. On screen, Alexhas written and directed short films which have played to a variety of internat
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Word Docs have?
Word Docs currently has 71 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Word Docs about?
Alex, Amy and Sean (aka Dr Alex Vickery-Howe, Dr Amy T Matthews and Dr Sean Williams)are professional writers who also lecture full-time at Flinders University, South Australia.They’ve joined forces to cover topics of interest to new writers in a lively, conversationalstyle that frequently segues...
How often does Word Docs release new episodes?
Word Docs has 71 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Word Docs?
You can listen to Word Docs on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Word Docs?
Word Docs is created and hosted by Auscast Network.
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