Writing Excuses Transcripts

Writing Excuses 20.26: Gaming as a Writing Metaphor 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-26-gaming-as-a-writing-metaphor

 

Key points: What's the difference between experiencing a narrative as a game or prose? Choice, direct agency? Narrative games? Energy and complexity? Games are simulations. What are the actions, what are the verbs? Buy-in! Between games and writing, there's a middle ground of control in games. Competence. Not all books or games are for everybody.  What makes a narrative game? Obvious narrative? Present me with a story, don't make me randomly discover it. Make room for the audience. Let them make their own interpretations, draw their own conclusions. How much do I love the characters? How much do I care what happens to them? What are the levers in your game or narrative? Invite the reader in... 

 

[Season 20, Episode 26]

 

[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

 

[Season 20, Episode 26]

 

[Howard] This is Writing Excuses. 

[Erin] Gaming as a writing metaphor.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Dan] And I'm Dan.

 

[Erin] And we get to talk about gaming...

[DongWon] Yay! Prepare for a six hour long episode.

[Erin] Yeah. Yeah, I know. I was like, this is actually sort of hard because there's so much that...

[Dan] Yeah.

[Erin] You can talk about when it comes...

[Howard] This play-through of Writing Excuses...

[Erin] Exactly.

[Dan] Kind of a speed run.

[Erin] Oh, my gosh. Yes. But I've been thinking about sort of what is it that separates the way that we game from the way that we write, the way that we experience prose narration from the way we experience being in a game. And the thing that I... the reason I really love games is I actually think that sometimes giving the person experiencing the narrative more choice and more direct agency over what happens, whether that's true or you just make them feel that it's true, changes the way that we experience story. And, for me, that's the big difference between them. But I'm curious, for you all, like, what makes you pick up a game instead of a book for that day? Like, what is the difference between having the same story as a television show versus a game that that show was based on?

[DongWon] Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I love narrative, but I don't love narrative games a lot of the time, like, if a game is very story heavy, I'll often be like… Like I tried to play Last of Us a little while ago, and I just was like, I'm putting this down, I'm going to watch the TV show. Because it… The way it was giving me the story felt so slow compared to what I wanted in terms of my ability to consume a narrative, and then all the opportunities for player choice were so constrained to things that felt like they didn't matter, a.k.a., how I searched the drawers in this room versus the big narrative stuff I was interested in, which is, what do we do about this outbreak plague situation? Right? And so, I think, for me, when it comes to what am I looking for from game experience, I want something that's more energetic and more complex than you can get from somebody telling me a story. Right? So this is why I love FromSoft games so much, where I build the narrative by interacting with the world rather than them telling me what the story is.

[Howard] I think it was… It must've been 15 years ago now. I was at a convention and had the opportunity to go out to lunch with Steve Jackson. And he dropped a bit of wisdom that I have never been able to shake. He said, "All games are physics simulations." And I thought, now, that's not true. That's… Wait. Crap. Every game… Chess! Is a physics simulation, at some level, all games are simulations. And so, when I sit down, when I think of gaming or playing a game as a metaphor for writing, I often think, why would I want to play a game like Burger Time instead of working fast food? Why would I want to play a simulation of fast food restaurants instead of working fast food? Well, because I don't want to smell like hamburgers at the end of the day. But these simulations that we play can teach us things. And in many cases, they can teach us the same things that the job would teach us, only without the risk of smelling like [frieda?].

 

[Erin] And, I think that also they create a game play loop. So if you're writing a game, the main thing you have to figure out is what are the actions of the game? What are the things that the game lets you do?

[DongWon] What are the verbs?

[Erin] What are the verbs of the game? And so, like, in a… And it limits them. There are always less than the verbs that you can experience in life. Because a game is not going to be able to, like, do, like, and then I scratched my nose for three seconds for no reason. I mean, who knows… Maybe in the future. But it's hard to get to that level of granularity. And so, they then have to make those verbs things that you are going to want to choose. And, it's funny, I'm thinking back to, like, weeks and weeks and weeks ago, when we talked about second person and how second person requires buy-in. And games are often a second person medium, and, similarly, you have to get the player to buy-in to this is the situation I want to be in. These are the verbs that I want to be able to use to navigate that situation. Like, you may not like the… I love a narrative game. But where it feels like I don't have enough verbs to, like…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Move this narrative forward. Whereas I'm like, oh, actually, for me, the listen, the experience, the watch it unravel is a verb that is one that works well for me. Which is why different people have different desires and loves of games. Like, some people like a puzzle game, like I do. Some people like a narrative, some people like I want to shoot the thing from a weird angle.

[DongWon] I mean, this is why tabletop can be so interesting too, because even in this case, buy-in is so important and difficult to get. So when you're trying to get someone to play a new game system they've never played before, just the lift of getting them to understand what the core metaphors and verbs of the game are can be three hours of sitting there and walking someone through the session or whatever it is. And so how you get that buy-in in terms of, like, what are the world building hooks, what are the character hooks, what's the setting hooks, to get them on board with the idea of these are interesting verbs I want to interact with. I think that can be such a challenge with really effective game writing.

[Dan] Yeah. Erin, I'm glad that you enjoy narrative games…

[Laughter]

[Erin] I'm buying them all.

 

[Dan] Because I'm with DongWon on this one. And I find that I don't like the way games tell stories often. Which is strange to me, and I'm trying to figure out why, and I don't know if I can articulate it. But, relating this back to writing, I… There's an interesting middle ground of control. And we talked about this a little bit. Whereas I'm going to just go and work in a burger restaurant, then I have control over what I'm doing. Maybe not as much, because I am an employee. Right? Where is if I'm going to read a book about that, I have no control whatsoever. And games exist in that very intriguing middle ground, where there's a lot of interaction, there's a lot of input from both sides. And that's… Writing for that is very different.

[Erin] Yeah. I was just thinking about, like, the competence thing as well. Like, we people love a competent character. If you want people to love your characters, one way to do it is to show them being really good at something. Because for some reason, we like it. We like feeling competent. And in a game, like in a burger… There's a game that I play on VR called Star Tenders, where you are tending bar for aliens. And the entire game is just like increasingly complex drink orders, that you have to try to make before your customers get mad…

[Chuckles]

[Erin] And wander off in an alien type way. And so what I like about it is, like, you're not expected to master it the first time.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] It's like learn… You get to learn a skill and then they add a little bit more. They had a slightly more complex thing, and all of a sudden, like, the verb that was hard for you in the beginning is one of a much larger sentence that you're able to manage. And that gives us a feeling of competence that really makes us feel like we are able to advance. But I think it's hard to do in prose. Like, you can show a character going through that journey, and have you really relate to that character, and therefore you go through that. But in games, because you're the one who has to make the physical motion, it often feels like in that physics simulation, like, you got a chance to level up.

[Howard] I had a friend tell me years ago. It was the very first of the Batman Arkham games. And he said, "Oh, my gosh, this game was so good." And he described this one scene that plays out. And he says, "And I was Batman. I got to be every bit… I got to do all of the Batman. I did all of the moves, I used all the tools, I used all the whatever." And I played that game and realized, I do not get to be Batman. I was not good enough. I did not learn fast enough. And I got tired and I moved away from it. And that's fine. You play a game for a little while, you decide it's not for you, you play something else. But the idea that the simulation of whatever can map out players differently, where a player gets to have an experience that they've been dreaming about their whole life and maybe didn't know it. My friend Joey, a Batman book would not have made him feel the same way that game made him feel.

[DongWon] Well, and I think that kind of ties into what makes Hades such a big success, is the way they tied narrative to failure. Right? When you fail, you get a little more piece of story, you get a little more piece of interaction. And then you repeat the loop. Right? Like, they were able to build the storytelling into the road like nature of the game. As you go back through it, you learn more about the world, you learn more about the characters, deepening your investment in the character and in their relationships when you do fail. So where something like the Rock City game kind of falls down is, if you fail at being Batman, now you just don't get to progress. You don't get more Batman because you were a bad Batman. If you fail at being [Zacharias], then you're… He's a failure. That's the whole point of the story. That is, you engaging with it and getting more of it as you build those skills and learn. Right? So, like, whether it's your aliens walking away from you in an alienating way because they're upset, or it's being spotted by the criminals because you're a bad Batman, like, the way in which we participate in the stories has to be fluid in that way, or has to be a rewarding experience in that way, or our buy-in starts to break down.

[Erin] I was laughing when you said that because I remembered the time I tried to play Grand Theft Auto, and there's a tutorial quest where you just get on a skateboard, and I don't drive…

[Chuckles]

[Erin] And I'm not good at driving related tasks. I could not finish. Like, it's a thing that they mean for it to take three seconds…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And, like an hour and a half later, I was like, obviously, this game was not meant for me because I can't even get a car…

[Howard] I have decided that my… I should not be stealing automobiles.

[DongWon] I think that comes back to books in that way though, because not… Books unfold… Not all books are for everybody. Right? Like, what makes sense to you and what you have buy-in for and what is an engaging world building character narrative to you will be really different than the next reader. Right? In the same way, that a game about stealing cars is probably not for someone who has never driven a car before. Right? And I think that can be true in fiction as well. And understanding who your reader is is also really important there.

[Erin] All right. I'm going to interrogate you about narrative games and yellow boxes, but first, we're going to press pause.

 

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[Erin] And now we're back. And so… Un-pause.

[DongWon] How was that load screen for you?

[Erin] Hope you enjoyed it. So [garbled] interested in is I'm like people who don't like narrative games? I must find out why? As somebody who enjoys writing the narratives of games. And I think it's interesting, like, the wanting to tell a story versus how much gamers experience it is fascinating. If you write for games, you know that you're writing the item description that, like, 89 percent of people will just be like, nope. X out. It's like you're writing the dialogue that people are trying to skip in order to get to their next action. But I'm wondering, like, when you say I don't like narrative games, I'm wondering what makes something a narrative game? Is it just how obvious it is in its narrative? Is it an outside category? Like, what does that mean for you?

[Dan] Well, I don't think it comes down to the obvious nature of it, because I, for example, really don't like Hades because it is not presenting me with a story. I mean, that's not the only reason. But it's a story you have to discover. And that's a place where DongWon and I diverge, because I don't like that in games, I enjoy being told this is the story that we have to fulfill, go do it. Here's what this is about, go do it. And the idea that I have to just randomly discover what the story is by talking to people or by reading books that I find laying around the environment always just rubs me the wrong way.

[Howard] Sorry. I'm giggling over here. Railroad Tycoon, The Linear Narrative.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] I… No, I totally feel you here. One of the things that I love about games where a lot of the story is in front of you, but there's a lot of open space is that… And no, fair listeners, I'm not going to become a streamer of games… But I will often talk back to the characters on screen and say stuff that is just funny to me and is sort of in universe or not in universe, and I get joy out of that. Even though the story is maybe a little flat, I enjoy fluffing it up a little on my own.

[Erin] And thinking about this as a metaphor for writing, it's interesting, because it's, like, how strong… How, like, is the power of the narrative? Like, how much is the narrative saying, like, a story is happening here?

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] How much is it making you discover it? Because there are prose pieces where the story is not, like, a very clear, like, plot point to plot point type of thing.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] But it feels a little more like you're kind of wandering through and story is occurring. And it's interesting thinking about, like, how much are we guiding, how much are we controlling our readers? I mean, we're always controlling everything, but how much is that control felt by them versus is it just feels like they're having to put it together for themselves?

[DongWon] Well, I'm getting on my soapbox for a second here of my obsession with FromSoft games. Right? And so, these are the Dark Souls games, Blood-Borne, Elven Ring, and the reason I love these games so much is they're deeply authored experiences. Like, there's no question that there isn't a very specific point of view behind those blows and that they are creating an experience for the player that has thematics and characters and all the things we expect from story. But you're just getting that story in big cut scenes, where people are talking to each other and there's story being told to you. You're having to discover that story by doing things like reading the item descriptions, by piecing together, like, oh, I thought this boss. This boss was like… Said this one thing that's related to this other boss. Like, you're trying to, like, weave string theory together, the world building and the plot. And I recognize that it's not for everybody, and completely understand why. But what I love about it is I think it gets something… Or gets at something that's really true about all storytelling that we do, which is you have to make room for the audience. Right? And this is a thing I talk about a lot as I'm putting together an actual play show and things like that. One thing I talk about with my players and with the rest of my cast is we need to make room at the table for the audience. There is a fifth seat at the table here, and it's the audience who is here participating in this with us. And it's why I love actual play shows like Dimension 20 or [What's My Number?] or Friends at the Table, because they understand that I am also a participant in this story in an active way. Right? And I think that's true of a book, too. When you write a book, you're writing a book for someone. You have to understand that the reader is there picking it up and interacting with it. Now, their verb is limited to turn the page and continue reading. They have one verb, which is keep reading, don't keep reading. Right? How they feel about that, how they engage with it on a moment to moment basis can change and evolve. But the more you make space for them to make their own interpretations, to engage in a certain way, and to draw their own conclusions from stuff, I think that's where interaction with fiction can be so exciting and so deep and rich.

[Erin] It's funny, thinking about, like, the verbs of games, I'm reminded of… So I used to do writing for Zombies Run, which is a game with only the verb run.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And so, years and years and years of narrative, of, like, small scene of, like, people talking and then something has to happen at the end of the scene to force you to run. And to go to the next thing. Which is like… Was really interesting in figuring out what are the ways to continue to get audience buy-in. Because, if you think of tabletop games, some have extraordinarily complex mechanics that will take you…

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Erin] 10 years to figure out. Or, like that boardgame, where you're like, our first eight hour session…

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Is going to be figuring out…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] How this boardgame works. And then, eventually, we'll become experts. But thinking about, do you need that level… Like, how much complexity is too much? Like… And that can be true in a game, but also in a narrative. How much just becomes distracting where it becomes about the experience of the narrative as opposed to the narrative itself.

[Howard] When we look at audience buy-in, it's useful to look at improvisational theater, where the audience is literally shouting suggestions at the stage. And if the audience is not engaged, the show falls flat pretty quickly. By the same token, comedy acts on stage in comedy clubs, the audience is buying in by laughing. They make noise. If the audience does not make noise, we say that the comedian is dying. Because that's what that experience is like. And if the audience is making noise, if there laughing all the way through, the comedian is killing. Why is it so violent? Probably because public speaking is the thing we're all scared of the most. And so we tie it to death this way. But the sense of audience buy-in is very, very visible in improvisational theater and in comedy clubs. And if you think about how important the audience participation is to the performers, and then look at what an audience means to you as a writer, that contrast might change the way you think about what you're writing.

 

[Dan] I've been sitting here trying to think about what narrative is in games I enjoy. And it comes back to a lesson that I have learned for my own writing, which is, how much do I love the characters? How much do I care about what happens to these characters? Because there are plenty of games, and I apologize for continuing to rip on Hades…

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Because it's a beloved game that everyone other than me adores.

[DongWon] You're alienating our whole audience.

[Dan] I know. I could not possibly have cared less about any of the characters in that, and so…

[DongWon] [gasp] Dash…

[Dan] I know. And so, playing the game didn't really hold a lot of appeal for me, after the basic gameplay loop, I figured out the narrative side of it didn't work for me. Whereas something like Cyberpunk 2077 and this… So much of this comes down to personal preference… Those characters I fell in love with. And I wanted to spend time with them. And so when I am doing my own writing, I… That's what I keep coming back to is the lesson I learned, which is, I'm asking my readers to spend however many hours it takes to read this book, to invite this character into their brain and spend time with them. It has to be somebody that they love and care about.

[DongWon] Well, it's so interesting, because I played Hades because I love the characters and I played a billion hours of Cyberpunk 2077… I really love that game, I play that game not for the characters but for the world. I find the characters… They're fine, I enjoy engaging with them a lot of time, but mostly, what I want to do is run around that city stealing and driving cars…

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] And…

[Erin] No!

[DongWon] Getting…

[Dan] Yeah.

[DongWon] In fights with weird criminals. Like, that's the thing that I really… Like, mechanically and vibes-wise, being in that world… To me, Cyberpunk is a game that's all about vibes. Like, the aesthetics of it, the culture of it, all of that are things that I really, really enjoy, and so… I think it's, like, also [garbled] the lesson when I say make room for your audience in terms of crafting your narrative experience, whether that's a game or novel or short story or a film, it's… You also can't predict what part of your story that people are going to attach to. Right? I know people who play Hades and have never read a single piece of the text… They just like the combat. They enjoy the mechanical aspect of the combat. And I know people who have never played an action game in their life that somehow saw credits on Hades, the thing that I, who play a lot of action games, have never been able to do, because they just love the characters so much that they just kept playing this thing and learned a whole set of skills that they never had before in their entire life. And so, watching what your audience will connect to is something you can't necessarily predict. Right? And you can't control for that. You can have guesses, you can have focuses, but that's why you kind of gotta chase your own interests as much as anything else.

[Howard] I… Dan, I remember a comment you made on the Borderlands games years ago, which was, yeah, this is cute games, and one of them is really fun, the one where you run around shooting things and exploring the world. And then there's the game of comparing red arrows and green arrows on your gear, and I don't like that game at all.

[Dan] Yeah.

[Howard] And…

[DongWon] 100 percent.

[Howard] And I love that principle, that there can be a thing that we just love that is inextricably fused to a thing we despise, and are we going to play anyway? Are we going to continue to consume or are we going to look for something that doesn't have the up down arrows game in it?

[DongWon] This is me and Destiny's death grip on my brain, but… Yeah.

[Chuckles]

 

[Erin] I think one of the reasons I really love games and game writing is because there are all these different levers you can be pushing in any narrative.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] You can be pushing the character lever, you can be pushing the world lever, you can be pushing the what are the actions lever, which is often a plot lever. But it's like in games, they're all sort of… They are more discrete. They feel more discrete from each other. Like, in a prose narrative, you can really weave in… Like, the world is happening, what the characters, with the action is all at once. But the way that games are designed, like, someone makes the world and then they sort of put characters in it who have their own set of actions. And they can't 100 percent control how you use those actions and that character to experience the world. And because of that, there are intersections that will happen that they will never be able to anticipate as public… Emergent gameplay is here. Somebody is having a gameplay experience you did not intend.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] But they were able to find those connections in interesting different ways. And I think it's nice when we think about our stories to think about how are all the levers that we're pulling different? And, like, how… If we separate out the way that were talking about lenses, it's sort of a version of doing that, of thinking about what are all the different lenses, what are all the different levers, and how are we combining them in really interesting ways to make stories?

[DongWon] And also just letting… Learning to realize that you don't have full control over the audience experience. Right? And that they are going to bring their own lenses, they're going to bring their own verbs, the going to bring their own ways of interacting with the story to that experience. And once it's out of your hands, you don't get to tell people you're reading this wrong. Right? Or you can try. Sure. But, like, you're going to get…

[Howard] Feel free to say that. It's probably not going to work out the way…

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] And so I think one of the things that I found really exciting about this topic of gaming, not just because I clearly love games, as do we all, but because it is this thing that I think is really, really hard for people who create prose to wrap their heads around, is learning to… Not just, like, ease off of the control, but actively invite in the reader into making this experience with us. And I think learning how to do that is a thing that can really take your fiction from being exciting to truly connecting with a huge fan base.

[Erin] And with that, we're at the end of this game session. And we are going to move to the homework.

 

[Erin] And for the homework, I'm going to challenge you a little. There are probably folks who are listening to this who are like, I only… Last game I played was tag. But I would like you to think about… Take a project that you're working on and imagine that someone is making a game of it. And figure out what would that game be. What would be the actions that the characters would be doing? What would be the parts of the world that the game would be focused on? And just write out sort of, like, a here's the game of my amazing work of art. If you need help with this, you can look at things that are games that were made from things like Lord of the Rings game. Just read a description of it, see if anything comes to you. And then as you're writing that out, is there anything you've discovered about your story that was unexpected?

 

[Howard] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

Writing Excuses 20.24: An Interview with Charles Duhigg 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-24-an-interview-with-charles-duhigg

 

Key Points: Communication is a set of skills. Proposals should give a taste of what the book will be like. A taste of the book and a roadmap. Voice! Deliberate practice. Three kinds of conversations, practical, emotional, and social. Make sure you are matched by asking deep questions and listening. Practice conversational reciprocity, make sure you are contributing to the conversation. Try looping for understanding: ask a deep question, repeat back what they say in your own words, and ask if you understood correctly. Make your compliment sandwiches with good bread. The goal of a conversation is to understand each other. 

 

[Season 20, Episode 24]

 

[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

 

[Season 20, Episode 24]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] An Interview with Charles Duhigg.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[Howard] And I get the opportunity to drive this interview. And I'm going to begin by introducing our guest. Or rather, letting our guest introduce himself. Charles. Welcome to Writing Excuses. Who are you?

[Charles] Thank you for having me on. This is such a treat. My name is Charles Duhigg. I am a journalist for the New Yorker magazine. And in addition, I write books. The first book I wrote was named The Power of Habit. And then the most recent book I wrote was named Supercommunicators.

[Howard] I just finished Supercommunicators yesterday and there's a thing that you wrote that I actually highlighted because it resonates so well with something I already believe, and I think it dovetails nicely with our topic today. And that thing is "It's a set of skills. There's nothing magical about it." I love that. And this was in the context of someone who has learned to talk to other people in order to elicit information from them so that, I think, they can become spies.

[Charles] Right.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] But what we're going to talk about is how to engage with other people in order to pitch your book to them. In order to get an agent, or a publisher, or a bookseller even to…

[Mary Robinette] Or just a reader.

[Howard] Or just a reader.

[Charles] Exactly. I mean, those are all proxies for readers. Right?

[Howard] I mean, if you're hand selling your stuff…

[Charles] Yeah.

[Howard] You have to be able to have these kinds of conversations where you engage with other people and, for whatever reason, they like you and they want to read what you wrote.

[Charles] Yes. It… And I love that you picked up on that that one idea that communication is a set of skills. Because it's kind of like writing. Right? Like, nobody is born knowing how to be a great writer. It's something that you learn by reading and by writing yourself and getting a good editor. Communication is exactly the same thing. And particularly, when it comes to pitching your book. That, like, that is not something anyone is born knowing how to do. It's something that you learn to do. Because you have literary agents who help you out, and you have editors who say, like, I like this idea, but I don't like that so much. And it's a process of evolution. And so if someone is listening who feels like they're not good at it right now, that does not mean you're not going to be good at it forever. It just means you have to learn the skills and practice them.

[DongWon] I mean, 100 percent. I mean, the good news about it being a skill is that you can practice it and improve it over time. Right? And I think writers have such a dread when this topic comes up. And they want their agent to take care of it for them. They want their editor to take care of it for them. And to some extent, that does happen. Right? We're here to support that process, we're here to help you figure that out, and hone that message. But you kind of have to be compelling to get an agent in the first place. Right? And then you have to continue to be compelling in how you talk about your work when you meet book sellers, when you meet readers at any event that you do. Right? And so, you've got a couple books under your hat at this point. What was that process like for you? I mean, was it difficult to transition from knowing how to pitch in a business context by knowing how to pitch as a journalist to doing it on a book project? Or was it all just kind of the same skill set that you'd already developed?

[Charles] It's kind of the same skill set. So one of the things… I was at the New York Times when I sold The Power of Habit. I was an investigative journalist. So my job was really to get people to tell me secrets. Right? To get them to tell me things that they'd not… Don't necessarily want to tell anyone or want to have their name behind. And a lot of that is about communications, is about building trust. And saying, look, let me explain to you why I'm excited about this, why I'm interested in this. What's going on? And I actually… I wrote a story for the New York Times Magazine about, like, the psychology of credit cards, because there's all these psychological tricks that collectors learn to go after people. And I wrote that piece, and I got an email from someone, from, like, a junior guy who worked at the Wiley agency, saying, "Hey, have you thought about turning this into a book?" And so I emailed him back, I said, "No, but it turns out I've been working on a proposal for a year. I'd love to come in and tell you about it." So I met with him, and Scott Moyers, who is now the publisher at Penguin, but was then a literary agent. And I think the thing that, like, got them interested was I was just so excited about habits. Like, I was so excited to say, like, I'd… I was a reporter in Iraq and I got embedded with this army guy, and he told me all about habits. Then I started looking it up at home, and, like, it turns out it's something you can, like, basically fiddle with the gears and change the habits in your life. And I don't understand why I'm so smart, but I can't lose weight. And I think it was just a… It was my enthusiasm. My clear passion for it, that got me over the first hurdle. Because I think that's what a reader is looking for and the publisher is looking for and it agent is looking for. They are looking for someone who is so passionate about this that they cannot wait to tell you all the amazing things that they've learned.

 

[DongWon] You mentioned that you came in for a meeting with them. Right? You sat down with Scott, you sat down with this younger agent, and sort of pitched your idea, and that it was your energy in the room, that enthusiasm that kind of… You felt like caught their attention in a certain way. It's a little unusual to be pitching in person. Right? I think that, like, maybe your status as a Times writer at that time. For, I think, newer writers who are trying to get that across on the page, do you see differences or advantages to pitching in person versus purely over an email? Like, how do you see that process differing over the course of your career?

[Charles] So, it's always great to get in person if you can. Like, I try and do everything in person, including interviews with sources. That being said, that's not practical all the time. And I think the other thing that happened is, before I walked into that office, I sent them a copy of my proposal. And this is, I think, unique to nonfiction. Because I think fiction is very different. But in nonfiction, the way that you sell a book is you write a proposal. And then they give you an advance on the proposal, and you essentially use that advance to go write the book. Right? The proposal is like a roadmap of what you want to do. Now, there's a lot of people who will say, like, oh, write a five or 10 page proposal and just don't spend too much time on it. I actually believe the exact opposite. So when I wrote my proposal for The Power of Habit, it ended up being about 76 pages long. It was about 22,000 words. And I spent an entire year working on it. While I was working at the time, so it wasn't full time. But it was a lot of time. And the reason that I thought that that was important was because I wanted to give them a taste of what the book would be like. Right? Like, I wanted to actually give them, like, something. And also you have to do that work yourself. You gotta figure out what the roadmap is. You need to know what you're going into, and what kind of stories you're looking for. And so, I think when it comes to reaching out to agents and publishers, we put a lot of attention on getting together, we put a lot of attention on the cover letter, but, actually, having a great proposal is really essential. Because many people write a proposal as if they're writing a memo on what the book is going to be like. But the best way to show what the book is going to be like is to write in the manner that the book is going to be like. Right? To, like…

[DongWon] 100 percent.

[Charles] Tempt them…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] I think that this is not actually is different from fiction in some ways as it looks on the surface. Because, like, we don't get to write the proposal, we have to just write the book.

[Charles] Right.

[Mary Robinette] But the thing that we do have to do is to hook them on our query letter and our synopsis. And that's, I think, where a lot of people get so frightened, because it's really daunting to take this enormous idea and try to narrow it down, essentially retelling the same idea, but in a extremely condensed form. And I think what you were saying about a taste of the book and a roadmap is very much… Like, when I, not being an agent, but when I'm looking at student query letters, I often read them, like, this feels nothing like the pages…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] That you have written.

[Charles] Right.

[Mary Robinette] And so you're telling a false story.

[Charles] Yeah. I think it's really essential. Because I also think that the thing that we're screening for is we're not just screening for topics. Right? We're not just screening for background of the person. Even when I'm reading, I'm screening for voice. Like, I want to know that this person is coming into it with this complete world that's already been imagined and is so rich and it's so vital that it's just… They're going to pick me up and carry me along. And if we write a cover letter that doesn't have that voice, that doesn't sort of like play with us the same way that the book plays with us, then what we're doing is were basically sort of shooting ourselves in the foot. I think.

[Howard] Yeah, and there's… I guess there's a fine line between aping the voice of your book in your proposal as if you're cosplaying the book and using the voice that you use in your proposal… The same voice that you use in the book. That's a distinction that I think is difficult for a lot of people. You… It's easy to misinterpret that. Oh, I'm writing a high fantasy, so you want me to include in my proposal something about the healthy stew I enjoyed this morning? No! That's not actually what we're saying.

[Charles] Right.

[DongWon] One of the things I most commonly say when people are asking me for feedback on a proposal, on a query, or whatever it is, the thing I'm always saying is, like, I don't know… I don't feel you in this book. Right? I'm looking for where your voice is in this book, why is this the only book that you could tell, and you're right, that that comes down to voice. Right? Like communication, I think, is so often about building a personal connection, especially in storytelling. Right? So being able to create that connection, like, I think, the word authenticity has a lot of, like, weight to it that is very complicated. But, like, how do you bring your own authentic voice to a project? Right? How do you make sure that when you're doing that proposal, when you're writing that sample, that it feels like you and your perspective?

[Charles] Right. So, that's a really good question. And I think here's the thing that's true of voice. At least in my experience. Voice is not something that you are born with or that you discover easily. Voice is the product of writing and writing and writing. In fact, there was this wonderful… Adam Moss, who was the former editor of New York Magazine, who wrote this book called The Work of Art. He recently had something in the New York website where he interviewed Jonathan Franzen about writing The Corrections. And it turns out that before Franzen wrote The Corrections, he spent years writing a book called The Corrections that was about an IRS lawyer. And this one little minor chapter featured these folks in Minnesota or someplace like that… Wherever he sets the story. And he realizes eventually after literally years of writing that that's the story. And there's… He gives his journals to Adam Moss and in his journals, he says things like, I've been writing this for three years and I just today wrote the paragraph that I think sounds like what I want this book to sound like. And then you lean into that. And so the thing that is true of voice is that if it's not working, it doesn't mean that it's not authentic.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Charles] It means that… Actually achieving authenticity often takes work after work after work, and like peeling back the layers, and just sticking with it. So authenticity isn't something that comes from, like, a wellspring in ourselves. It's something we discover and it takes work to discover.

[Howard] The metaphor that I've used with students and used with myself… You've heard the you have to write a million words before you write your first true word. Whatever. The way I look at it is you've got a couple million of the wrong words in you and they are in front of the right words. So you gotta get them out of the way by writing them. Sorry.

[Charles] Yep. And it's actually… If you look at basically every, like, kind of… The guy who wrote Nickelback Boys and The Underground Railroad, Colson…

[DongWon] Colson Whitehead.

[Charles] White… Yeah, thank you. Colson Whitehead. Colson Whitehead, before he wrote his first book, about the elevator inspectors, he wrote another complete book and basically just threw it out. Right? Because he didn't know what he was doing yet. He didn't know what his voice was. And if you look at every single author, it's kind of like this. I've been reading this, like, crazy science-fiction thing recently. And I loved it, and I went back to some of the early books and they're terrible.

[Chuckles]

[Charles] They're just absolutely awful. Because this guy didn't figure out until his like third or fourth book what…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Charles] How to do this. And that's…

[Mary Robinette] I think it…

[Charles] That's okay.

[DongWon] I was about to ask which one, and now I realize why maybe you weren't…

[Charles] Yeah.

[DongWon] Revealing that right off the bat.

[Charles] [garbled] have to say because I… Every… It's called Carl the Dungeon.

[DongWon] Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Charles] It's a… Or Dungeon Crawler Carl.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Charles] Right? And it's just like… It's super fun and it's a great… And his early books are not.

[DongWon] Yup.

[Mary Robinette] But I will say that it's… Going back to what you talked about at the beginning, that it is… We're talking about our skills. And what we're talking about are practices. It's not just that you have to write a million words, it's that you have to do it intentional, some intentional practice. You have to look at identifying what the mistakes are. You have to read intentionally. You have to do all of these things in order to hone those skills. Otherwise, your… There's the aphorism, practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.

[DongWon] Yeah.

 

[Charles] Yeah. That's… And in fact, in the academic literature, there's this thing known as deliberate practice. Eric… Ericsson was this philosopher who spent his whole life looking at why people are exceptional, and he found that deliberate practice was one of the key ingredients. And the thing that's interesting about deliberate practice, whether it's writing or playing tennis or playing golf… It's not supposed to be fun. Like, the practice doesn't feel interesting, and, like, you're letting your soul free. The practice feels like work.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Charles] Because what you're doing is you're saying I'm bad at this. I'm going to do it again and again and again. I'm not going to do the stuff I'm good at, I'm just going to do the stuff I'm bad at again and again and again until it just gets a little bit better.

[Howard] One of the things that I love about Ericsson's work, and I applied it to myself a lot. Cartoonist for 20 years. Daily. Had to go fast. Once you're getting paid to do a thing, what you begin practicing is all of the shortcuts that allow you to keep getting paid rather than learning to do the really difficult things that nobody's ready to pay you for. And… I mean, once I read that, this is, I think back in 08, I remember looking at my artwork and thinking, oh, well, if I ever want to get better, I have to draw stuff that doesn't go into tomorrow's comic. I have to draw stuff for practice. Wow, what a waste of time that's going to be. Now I'm sad.

[DongWon] Yeah, I mean, I think… No, go ahead. Sorry.

[Charles] It's at the core of how we become great. Right?

[Howard] Yeah.

[Charles] I mean, I think in some ways it's actually this enormous… I know that people, though write a book or they'll write a proposal and it won't sell and they'll be so discouraged. But actually, you've been given this enormous gift. Which is you have been given feedback on what's working and what isn't working. And, by the time you publish, by the time you hit the main stage, you want to be at your best. You don't want to be learning… Like, when I got to the New York Times, you don't want to be learning how to do journalism at the New York Times.

[Chuckles]

[Charles] It's much better to learn that at smaller papers so that you're ready for, like, prime time when you get there. And so it's actually… Instead of being a discouragement, I think it should be this gift to think that, like, look, I just did this amazing thing, and now I know how to do it better.

[Howard] Okay. Well, we've talked a lot about writing and getting better at it. After the break, I think we need to talk about talking.

 

[Charles] If anyone listening is interested in learning more about the science of communication, with why some people seem to be able to connect with anyone, and others sometimes we struggle with it, let me recommend my book, Supercommunicators. And what I've tried to do in it is I've tried to tell a series of stories about CIA spies, and how The Big Bang Theory, the TV show, became a hit. But embedded in those stories is a set of skills that make us great communicators. And at the core of this is kind of what we're learning in neuroscience about communication, which is when were having the same kind of conversation is other people, we managed to connect with them. We managed to become what's known as neurally entrained. And so for anyone interested, I would love to encourage you to read Supercommunicators, and then to tell me what you think.

 

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[Howard] As promised, let's talk about talking. Supercommunicators is fundamentally about having conversations with people where it's a conversation that's meaningful. And as I read the book, I loved it because you started naming… You gave names to some things that I kind of instinctually knew or had learned how to do. Which hopefully will make me better at it. As my friends I'm sure will tell you, I'm not very good at it. I'm not… I'm terrible fun at parties. Or anywhere else.

[Mary Robinette] That's not true.

[Laughter]

[DongWon] Deeply not true.

[Howard] I put on my best face for Mary Robinette.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] When you are meeting with someone and you need to have a negotiation, when you are meeting with them… When you are doing what we call a cold conversation, and it's important, I want to know what your toolbox is like. I mean, I've read the book, so the book is its own toolbox. But what's your personal toolbox for that kind of circumstance?

[Charles] Yeah. It's a great question. And I'll… Let me give a little bit of theory and then I'll answer the question with…

[Howard] Sure.

[Charles] Specific skills. So, one of the things that we've found… This kind of started when I was falling into these bad conversation patterns with my wife, where I'd like complain about my day and she'd give me advice on how to improve it, and I would get upset that she was giving me advice and not telling me, like, how righteous I was. And so I went to all these researchers, neuroscientists, and I asked them, like, what's going on? I'm a professional communicator, why do I keep making the same mistake again and again. And they said, well, we're actually living through the Golden age of understanding communication. And one of the things that we've learned is we've learned that we tend to think of a discussion as being about one thing. Right? We're talking about my day or the kids grades or where to go on vacation. But actually, every discussion is made up of different kinds of conversations. And those kinds of conversations, they tend to fall into one of three buckets. There are practical conversations, where were making plans or solving problems. But then there's emotional conversations. Right? Tell you what I'm feeling, and I don't want you to solve my feelings, I want you to empathize. And then there's social conversations, which is about how we relate to each other and society and the identities that are important to us. And they said what's really critical is to be having the same kind of conversation at the same moment. That if you're not matching each other, then you're like ships passing in the night. You can't really connect with each other. You can't even really fully hear each other. So then the question becomes, okay, so if I walk into a negotiation or I walk into even just an everyday conversation that's a little, like, a little tense or a little meaningful, what do I do to figure out if… What kind of conversation mindset you're in and how do I match you and invite you to match me? And there's actually…

[Howard] Yes. Tell me what you do?

 

[Charles] There's a technique for this that psychologists have studied for a while now, which is asking deep questions. Now a deep question is something that asks you about your values or your beliefs or your experiences. That can sound a little bit intimidating, but it's as simple as, like, if you meet a doctor, instead of saying, "Oh, what hospital do you work at?" saying, "Oh, what made you decide to become a doctor?" Like, what you like about… What did you enjoy most about med school? When we ask a question like that which is not a hard question to ask, what we're really doing is inviting that person to tell us where their head is at and tell us something important about themselves. So the number one thing that I do, when I walk into a tough conversation or a negotiation, is I asked the other person a question, a deep question, and then I just sit back and let them talk. Because they're going to tell me what's going on inside their head.

[Howard] So, instead of, hey, how about that Lakers game? It's, hey, what's your favorite thing about being a journalist? Charles?

[Charles] Yeah. Exactly. Or instead of just walking in and saying, okay, there's three things I want to share with you. I want these deal points and I think that it's really important that we do the jacket this way and… Instead of going in, because we tend to think before hard conversations. We tend to think about what we want to say, and that gets in the front of our mind. And so we bully in… Bull into that conversation and we say it. But if we start by asking them a real question, a deep question, like, exactly the one that you just mentioned. Or, what made you decide to be a publisher? What book has been one of your favorite books to publish? Like, what… When did you… When do you feel like you became the publisher you wanted to be? That person is going to tell me so much about themselves.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Charles] And at that moment, I know how to connect to them.

[DongWon] Those are good questions.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] My first boss in publishing was a literary agent. This is Chris Calhoun at Sterling Lord Literalistic. He was a great mentor to me. And I always remember that he… One day, I walked into his office and he had written out on a card on his desk, and, like, put it on a little, like, platform where he could see it any time he was on the phone. And it just said, let them talk. Right?

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] And it was… He had the gift of gab and he loved to tell a story and it was sometimes a reminder and… I think about it all the time when I'm meeting new people in publishing, when I'm in a negotiation, when I'm pitching a book, is, wait, this isn't about what I'm telling them. It's also me listening to what it is that they have to say, and making the space for that. And then what you're saying is also the explicit invitation to tell me what's going on with you, and then we can have that connection. And on the basis of that connection, there's trust that we can have a negotiation.

[Charles] That's exactly right. And it… Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Mary Robinette.

[Mary Robinette] You're just making me think of this thing that my mother, who is an arts administrator and used to have to do fundraising all the time, and I asked her how she did schmoozing, essentially, and she said the other person is always more interesting than you are.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] That was her mantra, and then specifically when trying to sell a puppet show… If you think selling a book is hard… Welcome. Welcome to my life… To ask them about what they needed, what they were looking for, and to let them talk. And then you could figure out how you could fill their need, and not to start off by telling them what your product was, what your story was.

 

[Charles] Yeah. That's… And I think that there's something important there. Which is… Asking questions doesn't mean that you just ask questions. Right? And I think particularly for journalism writers, it's really easy to get into this place where you're just asking question after question. And, like… And there never asking questions back of you. And so it feels very one sided. The thing with a deep question is that it's a question that's very easy to answer your own question. So, oh, you became a doctor because you saw your dad get sick when you were a kid. Oh, that's interesting. I became a lawyer because I saw my uncle get arrested when I was a kid. Right now we're sharing something and there is this thing in conversation known as conversational reciprocity or authenticity reciprocity, where a conversation only really feels meaningful when both people are contributing to it. And sometimes some people are not good at asking us questions. But that means that we should see that as an invitation to volunteer things about ourselves in a graceful way. Because it's not that they're not curious about us, it's just that they don't know how to ask questions. They haven't practiced them.

[DongWon] I'm curious…

[Howard] The next question I wanted to ask about the toolbox… How do you learn to listen? Because we talk a lot about, oh, you need to be a better listener. You need to spend time listening. And it took me a good decade to realize that listening was a lot more than just not being the one who is talking right now.

[Charles] Yeah.

[Howard] Mary Robinette is laughing because she's like, oh, yes, I remember you 10 years ago.

[Laughter]

[Howard] It's actually been less than 10 years that you learned that.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] I mean, I was not saying that out loud.

 

[Charles] So, an interesting part about this is that when we talk about listening, listening has this image of being a very passive activity. But when researchers look at listening, what they see is it's an incredibly active activity. When it's done well. So the thing that's happening is it's not enough just to listen. You also have to prove that you're listening. And the act of proving your listening actually makes you a better listener. And there's a technique for this known as looping for understanding that they actually teach in all the business schools and law schools. It has these three steps. Step one is you ask a question, preferably a deep question. Step two is when the person starts answering the question, you repeat back in your own words what you heard them say. And this isn't mimicry, this is about showing them that you've been processing what they're saying. Adding a little bit, like, what I hear you saying is this, and that reminds me of this. And if you actually force yourself to listen closely enough that you can repeat back what they've said and add something to it, then you are actually listening. And then, step three, and this is the really important one. This is the one I always forget. It is, ask if you got it right? Because what you're doing when you say hey, did I hear… Did I understand you correctly? What you're really doing is you're inviting them to acknowledge that you were listening. In one of the things that we know about our neurology and how we evolved is when I believe you are listening to me, I become much more likely to listen to you in return. So this technique… You're exactly right. Listening is a skill. It's a skill that we practice. In the way that we can practice it is this looping for understanding. And it feels awkward the first couple of times you do it. And then it becomes really natural, and it becomes a habit.

[Howard] I mean, so does golf.

[Charles] Exactly.

[Laughter]

[DongWon] I don't know that golf ever doesn't feel natural, but…

[Mary Robinette] Actually… I putt. NVR.

 

[DongWon] Because there's a technique that we use in giving feedback. Right? That is very basic and very common, that is the compliment [garbled – sandwich?] Right? You start off by saying a nice thing, you give the feedback, and you say the nice thing at the end. Right? And I think people love to cut out the nice parts of that and just be like, oh, I don't need to deal with that. I want to dive right into the hard part, the criticism. Right? And to me, that always feels like such a mistake, because, to me, the opening part in the final part are the opportunity to do exactly what you're saying, for me to repeat back, here's what I think you were trying to accomplish in this. Here's why I think this is a wonderful project, or what your goals are. And that opportunity for them to make sure that we're in alignment about what our goals actually are in this conversation we're having about how to work on your project, how to improve your writing. Right? And so whenever I see people cut out the compliment parts of the sandwich, I'm always so frustrated because I think, oh, no no no no. That's the part that's really important. That's more important than the feedback in a lot of ways it's is understanding that we're on the same page and moving towards the same goals.

[Charles] And what I love about that is that the compliments you just mentioned… They're not necessarily actually compliments. Like, when the compliment sandwich is done poorly, it's someone saying, like, I love that book that you wrote 20 years ago…

[Chuckles]

[Charles] It was so good. This book is terrible.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Charles] It does not work at all.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Charles] But if you could go back to that thing you did 20 years ago, that'd be great. Right? That's a compliment sandwich, and the person walks away thinking, like, you're a jerk. I'm not going to talk to you anymore.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] That sandwich needs better bread.

[Charles] It needs better bread. It needs better bread. Well, what you said is I'm not actually just going to give you a compliment.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Charles] What I'm going to do is I'm going to show you that I'm aligned with your larger goals.

[DongWon] Yep.

[Charles] Like, there was something about your proposal that excited me so much and you seem so passionate about this, and I am so inspired by that, and I think we're a little bit… We're off-track a little bit on making this work. But you and I are on the same side of the table. And that… Those are what the best compliments are. The best compliments aren't actually compliments. The best compliments are reflections that I see you. And in seeing you, we become aligned.

[DongWon] It's such a useful technique in negotiation as well. Whenever I'm negotiating a contract, a lot of times I will take a breather in the middle of it, if we're up against some particular deal point and just remind everyone that we're trying to do the thing together. Right? We want… We all want to publish this book. We want to publish this book together, and we want to make this work for the writer and for the publisher. So that everyone is winning. Right? And so I think reminding everyone that we all want the same things. And, I think, even when you're thinking about writing a query letter to an agent, starting from a place of I want to find a great project. You want me to find a great project, that project being yours. Right? We're all kind of working towards the same thing, even if it may be doesn't work out on this particular moment, but I think remembering that we all have sort of the same goals and are on the same side of things can be a really useful trick. And… Well, I mean, literally keeping everything from becoming adversarial.

 

[Charles] Yeah. And I think one thing that's really important about that, that you just mentioned, is it gets to what the goal of a conversation is. Right? The goal of a conversation is not for me to impress you that I'm so smart. Or that I'm right and you're wrong. Or that you should like me, or that I'm smart. The goal of a conversation is simply to understand each other.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Charles] To ask you questions that help me understand how you see the world. To speak in such a way that you can understand how I see the world. And if we walk away from a conversation completely disagreeing with each other's thing… I'm not going to vote for your guy, and you're not going to vote for mine, or walk away saying that sounds like a great book, but it's not a book I want to publish… That's not an unsuccessful conversation.

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Charles] If we genuinely understand each other. Because eventually, we will find a person who agrees with us or wants to publish our book. But we'll only be able to connect with them because we're focused on understanding each other, as opposed to just impressing each other.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] I think that might be a beautiful place for us to wrap up. Because at this point, hopefully, our listeners have understood the conversation that we're having and are ready to go have some conversational adventures of their own. But before we go, Charles, do you have some homework that you like to…

[Charles] I would love…

[Howard] [garbled] our poor listeners with?

 

[Charles] I would love to… Can I give two pieces of homework?

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Charles] [garbled] and you folks can choose? So…

[Howard] You can give three.

[Charles] The first piece of homework that I would give is to say tomorrow, ask someone a deep question that you might not usually ask a deep question. Right? If it's your kids, instead of asking, "How was your day?" Ask them, "I noticed that you really like Jasper. It seems like you admire him. What do you admire about Jasper?" Or a coworker, or a stranger on the bus. It feels scary in theory to ask a deep question until we actually do it, and then we see how easy it is. And then the homework for writing is, getting back to this voice question, write one paragraph that is terrible. Just pointless, there's nothing going on, but that you feel like indulges some aspect of your voice. Maybe it's funny, maybe it's wry, maybe it's sad. Just do something completely pointless. Set that paragraph aside for a couple of days. Come back to it, and I promise you, you're going to see something in there that surprises you at how good it is. And that is a little bit of a… That's the pebble on the path to finding your voice.

 

[Howard] Thank you so much. Charles Duhigg, Supercommunicators. We've enjoyed the interview and, fair listener… You're out of excuses. Now go write.

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-22-the-lens-of-time

 

Key Points: Time! Setting? Day versus night? The when of the character? Anticipation and flashbacks, expectations and disappointments. Magnified moments. What is the character noticing? Order or sequence of time. Time as an extension of setting. Associations with time of day. Personal physical cycles! Conveying passage of time. Children, other changes. Sensory details, obligations. 

 

[Season 20, Episode 22]

 

[DongWon] Between drafting your new novel, building your lore bible, or meeting with your critique group, who has time to stress about website security? As a writer, your website is your digital face to the world that lets people know about your work and where they can find it. Securing your website means less stress about anyone disrupting that important outlet. Kinsta offers managed hosting for WordPress with lightning fast load times, enterprise grade security, and 24/7 human only customer support. They're available in multiple languages and ready to assist regardless of site complexity. It's complete peace of mind knowing your WordPress site is always secure, online, and performing at its best. Kinsta provides enterprise grade security and is one of the few hosting providers for WordPress with SOC2 and other certifications that guarantee the highest level of security for your website. And Kinsta customers can experience up to 200 percent faster sites by simply moving their WordPress sites to the platform. They even have a user-friendly custom dashboard called MyKinsta that makes managing your site or multiple sites a breeze. And if you're moving from another host, they offer unlimited expert led migrations to ensure a smooth transition, so you won't experience any downtime. Ready to experience Kinsta's hosting for yourself? Get your first month free when you sign up at kinsta.com today. It's a perfect opportunity to see why Kinsta is trusted by thousands of businesses worldwide to power their websites. Visit kinsta.com to get this limited time offer for new customers on selected plans. Don't miss out. Get started for free today.

 

[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

 

[Season 20, Episode 22]

 

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses.

[Mary Robinette] The Lens of Time.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Dan] And this is Dr. Who.

 

[Mary Robinette] So, we've been talking about these different lenses that you can look at a story through. We're looking at the idea of where and when, and time is one of the big lenses. You don't have to be working on a historical piece of fiction to be thinking about time. All stories move through time, even if it's only for a moment. So we're going to be talking about time as your setting. The differences between a story that's set during the day versus at night, or even a scene or a moment. We're going to be talking about how you can use time to your advantage. Not so much in a structural way, but more in that sense of controlling the reader's experience of the story and the character and the setting.

[Erin] We are going to be doing that.

[Dan] Love it.

[Erin] And we're starting now.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] When you are sitting down to think about a story, I know, Erin, that you often start with a voice and that you are very much thinking about the character. How much is the character... At that stage, are you thinking about the when of the character?

[Erin] I think a lot... So. I saw a very interesting tweet a long time ago that said that one of the ways you can upgrade your craft is to move time in the story. To actually use anticipation and flashbacks… Not necessarily, like, an entire flashback, but just what is your character coming from? What are they looking back to? What are they looking forward to? And, like, playing with that in the story. That in truth, and in our own lives, we rarely just move forward in time. We're often thinking about, like, our expectations, which is our vision of the future, and our disappointments, which is our reckoning with the past. And so, a lot of times, I really think about how my characters are reckoning with the time they are in in their own times. And, like, also the time that the world around them is in. Are they in sync? Like, are they moving forward in a world that's moving forward with them? Do they want to hold back in a world that they're like they love tradition, but the world wants progress? And then, looking at that as a source of tension in the story, between the way that they're dealing with time and the way the story and the world is.

[Mary Robinette] I love this idea of looking at where they are in time and using that anticipation as a source of tension. That… You're making me think of something that I just did a brief reread of which is in Dune, which is the fight between Paul Atriedes and Jamis, when he has to, like, "Hello! No, here I am! The Chosen One." And what's interesting in that scene is the way Frank Herbert plays with time. It's happening at a particular point in Paul's life and… Where he's a young man, he's approaching a point where he is going to kill for the first time. That is a threshold, that is a time threshold. That's going to be a marker. Before he killed, and after he killed. That's how his world is going to divide. But the other thing that he does in that is that he does these very small flashbacks to before he is in this thing, where he's thinking about my training taught me this. And all of that is setting up this anticipation of the ways the scene can go wrong, the ways that it can potentially go right, but mostly the ways it can go wrong. It's looking at the… That he's been trained in this one particular way, to go very slow against the shield, and that he keeps making the same mistake over and over again because of his training. And so you've got this contrast of this… His knowledge… His history compared with the future that he's aiming for and this anticipation of all the possible paths for which it can go wrong, which is, I think, one of the great things that you can play with with time, is the… Is letting the reader know, oh, there's more than one path for this. There's more than one path, there's more than one way that this can go wrong. You don't know which of those possible futures you're going to land in.

 

[Dan] Yeah. One of the other things going on in that scene is… That also plays with time is what my seventh grade English teacher always used to call a magnified moment. Where it's really an exchange of blows that takes probably ultimately maybe 30 seconds. I think in the movie, it was drawn out to 40 or 45 seconds. But it's still very short. Whereas the actual excerpt is two or three pages worth of material. Because every single second, every single step, every single move of the blade is given this momentous weight. And so it is expanding things out and magnifying every little moment that takes place into this huge, kind of glorious, thing.

[Erin] I love that… I was thinking about, like, fight scenes and love scenes are two of the ones in which the time in which it's taking on the page and the time it was probably taking in the life of the characters are so different. I'm curious, like, how like… Like, how do you make that moment… Like, how do you make it slow down and not fade as it feels momentous? But not slow down so much that people are, like, wow, I've been on three chapters of the same, like, sword cut, and, like, I wish they would do it already…

[Laughter]

[Erin] [garbled] is it just, like, let… Like, how do you, like, actually make time slow and speed within something?

[Mary Robinette] I think that there's two pieces that you're playing with. One is the character's awareness of time, and the other is the actual amount of time that it takes the reader to experience it. So, one of the things that happens in the example that we were just using is 2 to 3 pages takes several minutes to read. And… Unless they are listening to some [garbled] to speed.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] But it is that reader experience of it will slow it down. Sometimes when something is slow down in ways you don't want it to be… Fight scenes that are slow in ways that are not helping the story… It is because you're taking too long to get us through it. Likewise, you can speed things up by compressing it so that the reader's actual experience of reading it is shorter. Like, physically shorter. But then there's also what the character is noticing. Sometimes you can create a sense of, oh, this took forever, by lingering on the character's experience, feeling all of the things that they feel. The kinds of things that I've been thinking about lately are what they're noticing, where they feel it in their body. It's not that you have to hit all of these beats, but that each time, you hit one of those, you are having the character live that moment again. So if I have my character picking up a sword, and the first thing that happens is that we describe what the sword looks like, and then the next thing is the character experiences the physicality of picking it up. The weight of it, the heft, the balance. We've now experienced that sword twice. If we think about, this was the sword my father gave me, that's a third time that we're experiencing it. If we think… If we cut through the air, if we try some simple bl… Strikes with it, that's a fourth time that we're experiencing it. But all of those are things that probably happen almost immediately for the character. So, those are ways to slow it down, but also to be conscious that sometimes you don't want to slow it down, and you want to just pick one of those, the one that is most distinct to the character, the one that is most demonstrative of this specific moment in time.

 

[Erin] I think that's interesting, because that's making me think about ordering a lot. Which, like, ordering is a function of time… Or whatever. Sure, I'm going to say it is. Ordering is a function of time because I said so.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] I think it is.

[Erin] Yeah. But I'm thinking, like, let's say that the character ends by slicing somebody in half. I don't know if this is what happens, but… This is what happens. Then I'm wondering, that, if it's like, if you pick up the sword, sliced the person in half, then notice the weight of it, then think about that it's the fact that it's the sword that your father gave you, it's a completely different emotional experience…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Than if you do all of that before you hit. So, thinking about, like, what order things happen in is really interesting. I also just really love that there are certain things you can do in prose that are difficult to do in other forms. Which is that… Like, I always think people in the world of my character probably find them very annoying because every time they say a line of dialogue, they then think for, like, a long period.

[Laughter]

[Erin] Half a paragraph of deep thought. Return line. Which is, like, an interesting… And we can talk at some other time about dialogue and how not to lose the reader when you, like, have long periods of, like, epic thought in between dialogue. But in real life, that would be quite irritating, unless you think very quickly. But in a story, the reader does want to know what's going on in the character's mind. And so they're willing to, like, pause with you for a moment. Because what they're gaining in that moment of time as a reader is worth the pause in the reality timeline of the story itself.

[Mary Robinette] I think, on that, why don't we pause for a moment?

 

[Mary Robinette] One of the things that I am really enjoying about this conversation is that we're talking about using time in so many different ways. We're talking about the sequencing of a story and how that can change… Just when a character has a reaction. We're talking about using time as a way of… As an extension of setting. And I'd love to actually dig into that part of it just a little more, the idea of time as an extension of setting. I think I've talked about this more on a previous episode, but one of my favorite scenes that taught me so much was from Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey where we get a character going into a room and describing it… First, her experience of it, her interactions with it, when she arrives in the middle of the night and it is fulfilling all of her Gothic fantasy dreams. And then, the next morning, when she gets up, and discovers that the terrifying scratching sound is actually a rosebush that's beautiful outside the window. And that the secret locked cabinet that had a role of enciphered paper in it is actually not actually locked. It was open, she had accidentally locked it, and the enciphered paper is actually a literal laundry list. She just couldn't read it because it was dark. But the… How the literal time can cause the character to experience a place and the reader to experience a place in a different way, which gives you essentially two settings for the price of one.

[Erin] Absolutely. Because we associate certain times of day, I think, with certain things. Like, night and danger often go together. Which is interesting, too, because if you with… If there's a character who's like, not feeling steady in their bones, until the sun goes down, then that's an interesting… That's something different, and what does that mean about the character? What does that say about them? But I often think about, like, I experience my own body differently walking around based a little bit on time of day.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] You know what I mean? It's like I am more… Because it feels like you don't have the 360 view in the same way at night. And so I am more conscious of who's around me in the distance. And those are all thoughts that I'm having, and that a character can be having as a way… So then what do they notice? Because we all… The dangers that we view are reflections of our own mentality. And so, the dangers that you view in the night are going to be different than the dangers I view in the night. And so thinking about that, then, that's a great opportunity to maybe get to what are your character's fears? Or what is your character's fearlessness? Where do they feel comfortable? When do they not? When do they feel ill-at-ease? And I think all of those are, like, great moments, I think especially… I think that's especially great when you're trying to get something done clockwise. Like, I need to have the character go to the grocery store…

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Because it's like, really important later on that they've been there. But it's not interesting at all, so, like… But, if it's all of a sudden, they're going and, it's, like, they've got to go in the middle of the night… Or they need to go out in the day, but they hate their appearance. Then, how does that time actually make something mundane more interesting so that you can hide the plot work that you're doing that will then become more interesting later.

 

[Dan] Yeah. And I think a lot of kind of personal physical cycles can go into this as well. Healthwise is what I'm thinking of, since developing depression and on the particular meds that I'm on right now, I am so much better in the mornings and in the afternoons than I am in the evening. And by the time we get to dinner time, there's just not much of me left. And so I will experience the world and people will experience me in very different ways based on what time of day it is as well.

 

[Mary Robinette] It is interesting how much we are shaped by time. And yet it is also one of those things that I think is hard to convey to readers. Like, the passage of time. The way in which someone is different in the morning then in the evening. One of the questions that I'll hear people ask is, like, how do I let people know that time has passed? If…

[Dan] Yeah. I asked Fonda Lee this question a while ago, because I think she does such a brilliant job of it in the Greenbones saga. With the first book takes about a year, the second about five years, and the third book covers 20, 25 years of time. And how do you convey that so well? One of the little tricks she pointed out was that she made sure to always talk about the children as soon as possible after a time jump, because if the kid that was toddling around and barely verbal last time is suddenly doing his school homework, well, then you know that a certain amount of time has passed. And it became a really interesting shorthand for me to go back and look through the books and go, oh, yeah. She does do that every time there's a time jump.

[Laughter]

[Dan] She starts talking about the kids early on. Because they will change more than the adults will, and so it makes it more obvious that time has gone by.

[Mary Robinette] I think that actually interestingly ties back into what we were talking about for where… How much can you change a place and still have it be recognizable. And, like, how much can you change a time… When you're changing time, what are the pieces? If you don't have the option to have children, if it is just moving day to night, what are the pieces that change, and those are the things that you flag. Like, kids change a lot, but buildings don't change that much. If you're going day to night, the light through the window changes a lot even if nothing else in the room does.

[Dan] Yeah. The temperature could change, the sounds that your hearing outside, whether there's suddenly crickets or something else, that you could… There's a lot of sensory details that you can mention that will immediately clue you in to the passage of time.

[Erin] I also think obligations change over time. Like, from day to night, if you're in a sort of traditional, like, work during the day is the, like… One of the reasons a lot of times writers write late at night and early in the morning is because those are times that people feel that the obligations of life had yet to like come tug on them. And so it's, like, is it quiet in some ways, not just the quiet of the actual room, but the quiet of, like, no one demanding things from you and nobody is needing things from you in this moment.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah, but… Interestingly, that has been one of the things that has been disruptive for me at this… And I've recognized the symptoms before I say it… That's one of the things that's been disruptive for me about teaching my cat to talk…

[Laughter]

[Erin] There are many, but that's…

[Mary Robinette] Is that her diurnal cycle is not the same as a human's. So she sleeps during the middle of the day, and then, at night, when I am starting to wind down, when, normally, before this, I would have been able to have quiet, because the rest of the world has quieted, that's when she's like, let's play! Let's have zoomies together! Let's use this button board thing and let me mash on it and talk to you. So I have… Like, I'm finding that now I'm starting to write during the middle of the day, which has never been a writing time for me. Because then those obligations, which is this, are quiet.

[Dan] I need to write when my cat shuts up.

[Mary Robinette] Oh, my God. I love her so much, but choices were made.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] What I love about that is, like, you're not going to get your cat to not be dire… Like, you can have some stern talks, but I don't think it's going to work. And so, also thinking about, like, what are the things… Like, children's growth, like a school day, like, what are the things that keep… That are unchangeable by your character, no matter what they do in the world?

[Mary Robinette] The inevitabilities.

[Erin] These are the inevitabilities of time. At the beginning of the day, they'll have to do this. At the end of the day, they'll have to do that. I was reading Babel…

[Mary Robinette] Yep.

[Erin] By R. F. Kuang and it's all about school. Like, it's a schoolbook, for at least the portion then I'm in. And so there's a lot about the school year, and, like, the passage of time in a school year, which the characters are going through so much internally, but there's still, like, they have to hit the external, go to this class, be in this place, do this thing by this time. And, I think, we sometimes forget or ignore or get used to the strictures of time in our lives. But maybe we should not do that for our character's lives, and think about how we can use that as an opportunity for tension or fun.

[Mary Robinette] That is a fantastic example of great time passage and using time as setting and time to manipulate character. Speaking of time, it is time for us to give you some homework.

 

[Mary Robinette] And it's a really simple one this time. It's similar to the one that we gave you at the beginning of this, looking at the lens of when and where. And this is just I want you to change the time at which a scene takes place. If you've got a scene that's set during the day, what happens when you move it to the night? What changes? If it's set in the spring, what happens if you move it to the fall? You don't have to make all of the changes, but, what happens if you change the time in which that scene takes place?

 

[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-20-the-lens-of-where-and-when

 

Key Points: Where and when, aka setting, or worldbuilding. What are societal constraints and conventions that you can use?  How are your characters shaped by the world they are in? What nitty-gritty details of daily life are going to show up in your work? Where does the poop go? Where do place and setting hit person? What has the character experienced? Meaningful details make a world become vivid. Make your characters interact with the world. How do you build a setting that can change, without breaking? Sometimes you do upend it, and write about the consequences of that. Or you can keep the definitive parts, and change things around that. What happens after the glorious revolution can make a really interesting story.

 

[Season 20, Episode 20]

 

[Mary Robinette] Hey, guess what? The 2025 Writing Excuses Cruise is over 50% sold out. During this week-long masterclass, I'm going to be leading writers like yourself through a series of workshops designed to give you the tools to take your writing to the next level. Space is limited, but there is still time to secure your spot. We're going to be sailing out of Los Angeles from September 18th through 26. Regardless of where you are in your writing journey, this event is your opportunity to learn new skills while exploring the beautiful Mexican Riviera. Whether you're revising a story, reworking a character arc, or revitalizing your plot, you'll leave more confident in your current story and bolstered by a new set of friends. Join us on board at writingexcuses.com/retreats.

 

[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

 

[Season 20, Episode 20]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[Dan] The Lens of Where and When.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

 

[Dan] Today we're going to talk about where and when, and we're going to talk about setting. How you view and use setting. And in speculative fiction, we often call this worldbuilding. But once you've finished building the world, how do you capture it on the page? How do you convey that world, and how, most importantly, does that world change the things that you're writing and change the way that you're telling the story? What does it really mean for a setting to be vivid, or a world to feel deep, or a place to feel lived-in? And so I want to throw this question out first, how does the setting, how does the place where the story takes place, change what you are writing and how you write it?

[Mary Robinette] One of the things that I find is that this is a thing that I play with a lot because I'm writing secondary world fiction sometimes and sometimes I'm writing alternate history, and they offer me different choices. We've talked before about how sometimes when you're writing something that's an alternate history, when we had C. L. Clark on last season, that there is a tension that comes from this, from the audience's awareness of the setting. And that you can use that to change the way the audience is thinking about the story. And you can also use it as a way of focusing in on the story, the story that you're trying to tell. So I find that when I'm trying to set a story, that one of the things I'm looking for are kind of sort of the landscape things that I use. Some of it is that, with time in particular… Yeah, time in particular, I'm looking for the societal constraints and conventions that I use. If it's a time of war, that's going to be a very different story than a time of peace. So those are things that I look at for how I support some of the other choices that I've already made.

[Erin] I think, for me, there sort of two things. One is that characters are shaped by the world they live in. And I think this is sometimes where, not to go back and think… Bring trad character into it, but I think it's really important. Because I think sometimes, because worldbuilding can be so exciting in speculative fiction, like, we can go really ham on, like, thinking of, like, every really interesting thing and how the sewer system works and, like, how the magic system works without thinking about, like, what does it actually mean for, like, John Jane Doe walking down the street, and, like, what that means in terms of what do they encounter. What systems are there? How do they get from place to place? Where are the tensions that they're getting in their everyday life? What's easy for them that we would find hard? What's hard for them that we might find easy? So, I think the first thing I think about a lot is, like, where… How does the place sort of weigh… We talked about weight earlier this season… How does the place weigh on the characters in both a good and bad way? How do they feel it? How do they live in?

 

[Dan] Yeah. And that's such an important thing to think about, when you're worldbuilding, because when we are doing worldbuilding, I know there's often a tendency to think about the really broad kind of Tolkien-esque kind of things. Like, this is a world that has elves, and they live in trees, and whatever you're trying to do. Whereas the nitty-gritty kind of daily life details are often the ones that are going to show up in your work so much more than that. How do they get around in this city that lives… They live in trees? Do they have public transportation? Do they just have to walk everywhere? Do they have any kind of…

[Mary Robinette] Like the puppet [garbled] you gotta go get that.

[Erin] Yes.

[Laughter]

[Dan] What is going on here? And I remember when I was breaking in, there was this huge push to think about economy. And every time I would go to a convention, there would be some worldbuilding panel where they were like, you have to think about where all of the food comes from and where all the money comes from. And, yes, I think that that's a useful thing to think about. But, for me, I agree with you, Erin, that so much of it comes down to character and what is going to affect these characters. And, yes, if there is no food around or if food is scarce, that's something that's going to weigh on them heavily. But if there's always food and they don't have to think about it, then maybe it's never going to come up in your story.

 

[Erin] Yeah, I think… And, I think I also… I often find, like, those systems questions, like, do you get so, like, taken away from the people. Like, people always ask, like, where does the poop go? A question we should always ask…

[Laughter]

[Erin] About our stories, truly. But, like, that's somewhat interesting, but if you're, like, so and so, like, they have a poop shooter system that, like, uses hollow vines to shoot it out of the trees. Like…

[Laughter]

[Erin] [garbled] elves.

[Dan] This is why Tolkien never got into it.

[Laughter]

[Erin] But Legolas was, like, well, like, that attracts, like, rodents, that attracts weird things to the trees, so, like, whose job is it, like, who's actually down there, like, sweeping up at the bottom, like, of, like, where the poop shooter goes out?

[Dan] Cleaning up…

[Erin] That is…

[Dan] Pneumatic vines.

[Erin] The pneumatic vine cleaner.

[Dan] Legolas! There's rats in the pneumatics again!

[Erin] Like, there are 10 more… 10 times more stories about Legolas, the pneumatic cleaner, and, like, whatever's happening there then there are, like, to me, then the big systemic questions. So, it's like when place and setting, like, hit person, that's when, for me, the sweet spot is, for sure.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah, and I will often use that when I'm having trouble finding traction on a thing. Where I've got the general idea, but I'm like… What am I going to do with this? I don't always go sequentially. Sometimes I start with character, but sometimes, I'm like I don't know who this story is about. And I will look at place for who is available to me. And I look across the socioeconomic spectrum, who are the people that are the poorest people of society, who are the poop cleaners down at the bottom? Maybe it's a high status job, who knows?

[Erin] I like that. It's Legolas' duty.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] That's why he's got to have the braids, to keep…

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Oh, my God.

[Erin] Sorry, listeners.

 

[Dan] So. At the risk of getting us back on track…

[No, no]

[Dan] Let's talk a little bit more about time, about the when half of this where and when, because if you are writing historical fiction, if you are writing something set in our world, I think it becomes very natural to think about time. But if you are writing something about outer space, if you're writing something about… Set in a completely different world altogether, then there's… Time still matters. Like you were saying, is this a time of war or is this a time of peace? Is this a time of intellectual Renaissance? Is this a time of whatever it is? There's a lot of those when questions we can still ask.

 

[Mary Robinette] And it's also, I think, for me, one of the things that's fun to play with with when is also when in the characters life is this? What are the things that they have experienced? Knowing a little bit about their history, that's… That history is part of the when of the character. And, again, with the character, but it does affect the way the story is told. If you know that it is after a traumatic event for… In a time of war, chances are that this character has experienced traumatic events. What are those, how do they affect the story? Also, time of day can make a huge impact on a story. A scene that is set at noon can often read very differently than one that's set at midnight. Hello. Let us meet at noon…

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] For our romantic tryst that no one will know is happening.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Like…

[Erin] And that… But that's interesting, because it immediately makes me think, well, what kind of world… Like, if I want to have that, if I want a tryst at high noon, but no one knows it's happening, what does that say about the way time is viewed and used in that world in a way that's different from ours? Is it, like, the sun is so hot that it's, like, so dangerous to go out during noon because your eyes will melt out of your face, and so, therefore, like, it is dangerous and difficult and that's why this is the time to meet? So I think it's sometimes fun to, like… Time is something I think is hard for us to get away from in some ways, but a lot of times, even when we create new worlds, they're still like working 9 to 5, like, in some ways, they're still doing everything during the day and sleeping at night, because that's the way we do. But, like, is that always the case? What about a place where there is no night, or there is no day? All of that kind of stuff.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I'm working on a short story right now, as we record this, where my character winds up in a world that… Cave systems, it's all like phosphorus and fungi, and I'm like, do they have day night cycles? Like, when is sleeping happening? How do they tell the passage of time? How do they tell seasons? I'm just finishing working on Martian Contingency. And I think I have probably complained about this multiple times, that I have so many regrets because I decided to structure it around calendar, but there's the Earth calendar and then there's the Martian calendar, and Martian days are 39 minutes longer than Earth days. So, when do we celebrate holidays? Do we keep them with what's going on at home, do we celebrate them at a new time based on the cycles on Mars? And also your living underground, so your idea of day night cycles are based on the very few people who are going out on the surface. And it's like… It becomes this whole cascading thing where the when of the story affects, like, every decision that I made and also it kind of hits a point… It's not arbitrary, but it's… It offers opportunities to be in flux and reveal something about people, because of the way they are making… They are interfacing with time.

[Dan] And speaking of time, this is the time when we are going to pause for a moment.

 

[Dan] All right. So we are back. And I would like to ask you one of the other questions that we posed at the very beginning. What does it mean for a setting to be vivid? How does a setting come alive?

[Erin] I have an answer to this, I think, that actually comes back to time as well. So, a couple of years ago, I got the opportunity to write for the Pathfinder Lost Omens travel section. And I was actually in charge of the time and calendar section, and got to think about how different cultures within this really big world of Golarion, which is the Pathfinder world, how different cultures actually dealt with time. So as I was thinking about it, I thought a lot about how we… When we decide to mark an occasion, when we decide to measure our world in a particular way, there's usually a reason for it. Sometimes it's an arbitrary Emperor, as in our month system. But it can be much more meaningful. So I think worlds feel vivid when things that we choose to put in them have meaning. Like, have a… Have, like, a real meaning to them. And so, like, for example, I think, working with goblins, and I decided that they actually measure times by the length of songs and campfires. And so everything… I like that, because I was like fire is so visceral, like, how long… And they really know, like, how long this fire will burn, and they have, like… It's something that they all kind of can figure out, like, really quickly, and they know how long this song lasts. So there like, okay, we're going to sing this long song, and by the time that's the end, we will… It will have been an hour or three hours. And you get to a point where you could sing it in your mind. And you don't actually have to sing that song out loud. And what I like about that is that it's details. So I think worlds become vivid when you have details and those details have meanings that resonate with the world and make sense for it.

[Dan] Yeah. Well, and I would add further that your story needs to take advantage of those details. If that's something that we can only learn about reading the appendix, then it didn't necessarily affect the story in any way.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Whereas if your characters are kind of constantly singing that song to themselves in the background, that that's how they talk about time and they say, "Wait for me here, I'll be back in two songs of whatever," then that matters, and it does bring it to life.

[Mary Robinette] The other thing about that is that it is an interaction with the world. One of the things that I see people do frequently when they… They have world builder's disease, is that they can describe a world, they can use all of these beautiful pieces of language to tell you about the trees and the vines in the poop shooters and all of this, like, gloriously visceral language, but no one interacts with it. And so the story can become static. For me, the thing about the where and the when is that it is a thing that is inhabited. Like, time passes. I know that my animals can tell time, because if I'm late with their meal, they definitely let me know. So they have an awareness of time. But it is that interaction with the time. It is the this is a thing that supposed to happen. So when I'm thinking about it, I am thinking about how is my character interacting with it? The thing that you were talking about, the being back in two songs. That's an interaction with it. What are the other ways my character is interacting with the world? And that, for me, is how I make it vivid. By making it a lived in place.

[Erin] And I also think, challenging the world that you've built. I think sometimes we're reluctant because we spent all this time building, like, a beautiful house of cards and you don't want to blow on it. But that's when things get interesting. So I was thinking about the measuring time by fire, and, like, what happens in a typhoon? When you really needed to measure it, and the fire goes out unexpectedly. Like, then what happens? Like, and that probably happens at a crucial moment of conflict. So, I like to set up a world, and then by… If you can knock over parts of the world and the world still stands, I think, for some reason, that feels more lived in and more vivid. Because there are many things in our world that don't make sense for that fall apart and we still keep going. So when things are too perfect and everything lines up to well, sometimes it also feels like very… Like a doll's house that's, like, really pretty, but like it doesn't feel like… It feels like dolls are living in there instead of, like, people in these stories.

 

[Dan] Yeah. Well, and that's a big question that I often think about with worldbuilding, especially with a series or, like you were talking about with Pathfinder, some kind of ongoing setting that kind of more or less needs to remain static. You want your characters to be able to affect the world. You want things to be able to change. But you still want to be able to tell more stories in there. How can you build a setting like this that has intriguing when's and why's and you're able to mess with it without completely upending it and breaking it? So that book 2 takes place in a different setting altogether?

[Mary Robinette] I think it's… I think, first of all, that you actually can upend it and have book to take place in a different setting. So that's an option. But if you don't want to do that, then you think about, for me, the things that define the world as this is the place. And you can break the things around it, but there are still definitive things. So, if I'm telling a story that set in Mississippi and I dry up the Mississippi River, it has become fundamentally a different place. So I think of the Mississippi River as being a fundamental piece of the Mississippi, and I affect a lot of things around it. But I make a decision ahead of time, I'm not going to touch that. That said, it can be really interesting when you fundamentally break the thing. Sometimes the thing that is the defining characteristic is the people that are in it. But people are shaped by environment. It's all linked together.

 

[Erin] I also think that sometimes you… [Garbled] I think it's hard to break a world in some ways. Like… Fortunately or unfortunately, one thing that I often like grate at a little bit in fantasy is, like, when it's like we killed the king, and we get a new king, and, like, that definitely fixed all the things that that king was doing.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] It's like systems are very ingrained, and so I think one way to do it is to have somebody… Like, the system of the world doesn't change, but a person's understanding of it does. The way that they try to change it in their corner does. And then actually seeing the implications of change. Because a lot of times, after the curtain goes down on book 1, and the person's like we have done the glorious Revolution, it's like but all the things that you learned, all the ways that the place has weighed on you, will change the way that your revolution runs and what you do next and how easy it is for you to fall into the trap of becoming the world that you wished to break. And I think that is, like, such a… And that, to me, is a really interesting story…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Where it's like the world persists even if I try to change it.

[Mary Robinette] I think that's the thing. It's that there's logical causal chains. It's like this follows that, this happens because of that. You actually made me think of, also, Mistborn. When you hit the end of book one, it is… I remember thinking, how do you write a sequel in this? Because they've done all the things, and the world is fundamentally different. And book 2 is very much like, oh, now the world is fundamentally different. What are the consequences of that? And…

[Dan] Yeah. The… Mistborn is a great example. It's one of the ones that I always go to when I'm working with game writers and saying, "How do you end this?" This is a problem I have right now, because I'm working on the Mistborn RPG. Wendy you set your game if you have so many different points, and his series is filled with points that completely redefine what the setting is. So many people think of Mistborn as, well, there are these grand balls in this kind of dark industrial city where terrible things happen, and people sneak around in the mist. And that is one of the seven books. And then that setting changes, and you move on to the next one. And if you want to maintain, you come up with that one cool idea that you think is great and you want to maintain that over the course of several books, maybe don't kill the Lord Ruler at the end of the first one. But if you do want to explore that concept of change and explore the world is different, then, yeah, it's okay to do that.

[Erin] I know we're running low on time ourselves, but this actually reminds me of an answer to your earlier question about what does time mean? Which is also, like, where does the actual world itself… Where does the city or the country or the universe view itself in a timescale? Do you know what I mean? Are we year one of a generation shift or year 1000? Like, we usually set ourselves against something. Are we the end of an era, the beginning, the saw he middle of an empire? And, really thinking about, like, where does your actual setting take place, like, timewise? Like, what is their image? Where does it start? Where did their causal chain start of their society and are they the first link, the middle, or the end? Because, I think, that actually… Like, dying empires have some similarities, even though they die in different ways. And so do new revolutions have similarities, even if they're very different in their goals and what they do, because there's something about newness and there's something about, like, stagnation that can actually… That are a thing of time that has nothing to do with and everything to do with the actual setting that you're building.

[Dan] Absolutely. We are going to end this episode now with some homework, which is this.

 

[Dan] Take something that you have written in which the setting matters. A scene that takes place in a certain party or setting or location, a building, whatever it is. And then rewrite it in a completely different setting and see what kind of changes that suggests to the characters or forces into the story.

 

[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-18-the-art-of-teaching

 

Key points: Teaching as a writer forces you to think through your process and what you know. Also, how do you communicate that to someone else? It helps you be more creative and challenges you. How do you get it across? Start with humility. Examples! Difference between workshops, retreats, school visits, and regular classes? Punchy, big points, not minutia. Opted in, or apathetic? 8000 jokes! Be flexible. Safe creative space. Lovely ugly alien babies. Treat them as equals. Take them seriously. Advice if you are thinking about getting into teaching? Think about a teacher who created a safe space and challenged you that you remember, and put yourself in their place. Is this something you want to do? Be enthusiastic about the subject. 

 

[Transcriptionist apology: I suspect I may have confused Marshall and Mark at some points.]

 

[Season 20, Episode 18]

 

[Mary Robinette] Hey, guess what? The 2025 Writing Excuses Cruise is over 50% sold out. During this week-long masterclass, I'm going to be leading writers like yourself through a series of workshops designed to give you the tools to take your writing to the next level. Space is limited, but there is still time to secure your spot. We're going to be sailing out of Los Angeles from September 18th through 26. Regardless of where you are in your writing journey, this event is your opportunity to learn new skills while exploring the beautiful Mexican Riviera. Whether you're revising a story, reworking a character arc, or revitalizing your plot, you'll leave more confident in your current story and bolstered by a new set of friends. Join us on board at writingexcuses.com/retreats.

 

[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

 

[Season 20, Episode 18]

 

[Marshall] This is Writing Excuses.

[Erin] The Art of Teaching.

[Marshall] I'm Marshall.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Mark] And I'm Mark.

 

[Erin] And we are here on the Navigator of the Seas. This is another one of our recorded on the cruise episodes in front of a live audience. Live audience makes a noise.

[Whoo Applause]

[Erin] Amazing. They're real. Or good sound effects. We are going to be talking today about teaching, which is perfect for this cruise, because we've all been teaching the whole week, and wanted to talk about all the different ways you can come to teaching, and what teaching means and how it can help your writing, and all that jazz. But to start, we should probably actually say what kind of things we teach and how we came to it. So, Mark, remind us who you are and what you teach?

[Mark] Hello, Writing Excuses. I'm Mark Oshiro, the author of many young adult and middle grade novels. And I feel very lucky that I have taught more times than I can count over the years. Primarily to young adults and middle grade students, though I have taught at a few adult workshops. My preference, no offense, Writing Excuses, is teaching to kids because I think about how much I wish that… Some of the people in this audience are very horrified when I say that, by the way. But I prefer, because I am so lucky that I had adults in my life when I was in high school who fostered my love of writing, and I want to show them the possibility that not only can you write and do it for a living, but that you can be a big ass weirdo and not have to edit yourself and be yourself and still be a creative person.

[Erin] What about you, Marshall?

[Marshall] I second the big ass weirdo thing. I'm… I call myself out all the time when I'm teaching kids, because it's just… I'm just being weird.

[Mark] Yeah.

[Marshall] And it's fun. But I got into teaching 17 years ago. I teach high school for the last 15 years. I've taught middle school. I was a sub for middle school for a long time, and I kind of decided, I don't know, a little later in life, like I always kind of wanted to teach, or know I could teach, and then I just went and got my credential and have been doing it for a long time now.

[Erin] Nice.

[Marshall] Like, a long time, it feels like.

[Erin] So, I am probably then the newest person to teaching. So, I… My father is a teacher, and so I feel like I come by it honestly. But I mostly teach college students. So I love that we actually have, like, a wide range of folks, and teach adults as well, as we do here on the cruise. But I teach at University of Texas at Austin, and I teach creative writing there, and have a blast. And I love students in college, I think because it feels like there right on the brink of kind of figuring out who they are, and creativity is a great way to do that. And writing can be an amazing outlet, whether the person wants to go on and become a best-selling author or whether they are an engineering major who just does this because it's something that they love and they want to put time into it.

 

[Erin] So, I'm curious, all that being said about how amazing we all are, what you think you get out of teaching as a writer?

[Mark] I actually think the primary thing I get out of it is actually forcing me to think about my process and what I do actually know. And I remember the first time I got asked to teach, I was like, "What? I've only had…" At that point, I think I'd only had two books out and I was like, "That's not enough." That's not enough knowledge, that's not enough experience. Which was wrong, because I did actually know a lot of things about writing. But, first of all, it forced me to stop and think, well, what do I know? What is knowledge that I… Or wisdom, I can impart on another person? And even throughout the years, even what I've taught was new, I've never taught that specific lecture ever in my life. And it forced me to sit and think about I taught voice and how I use it to guide my story. So I love that it makes me have this very introspective deep dive first and think about my process, what it is that inspires me and motivates me. And then the second half of it was, well, how do I communicate that to someone else who doesn't know me, is often meeting me for the first time, and they have no way in and has never read anything that I've written. So how do I communicate that to someone else, and communicate it in a way that is both entertaining and engaging, but, hopefully, that they take something away from it? I love teaching that just causes a reframe and allows you to just, oh, this thing I'm doing, I now have this chance to think about it a little bit differently.

[Marshall] I never told… I never said what I teach. I teach English, I've taught Digital Media for a bit, and now I have a creative writing class for the first time. I feel like just the actual what I'm going to do, like, in front of these kids, each day, is… Helps me be more creative and it challenges me. And I really do… I really like seeing what kids can create and how they can challenge themselves, even though they really hate English class, most of them, and they don't want to read, they don't want to write, they don't want to be there. And I say, okay, that's fair, but… I don't know, let's talk about movies for a little bit and write something. And share stories. That's my favorite part of teaching is getting to tell stories and hearing their stories. Yeah. So, I get out of it… And then, when I come back to the page, hopefully, theoretically, I am more creative. But usually, I'm very tired.

[Erin] Yeah. Teaching can take it out of you. It's very… Like, there is a perform… There is an aspect of performance. Like, some of teaching is at about actually making sure the thing lands. Like, you can be the best expert in the world on something, and actually quite horrible at teaching it, because you don't know how to, like, get somebody who's not at your level of expertise up to where you are. Like, I think, like many people have that experience of having a teacher where you're like, I wish I understood what was happening and I'm not quite there. And we all try not to be that teacher. Whether or not we succeed… Ask the students.

 

[Erin] But I'm curious, like, some of what y'all are talking about, just like unpacking all the parts of that process. So, like, how do you think about, like, how you convey something well, like, how do you teach people who are, like, not really there, how do you figure out how to get something across in a way that actually, like, works for the person that you're talking to?

[Mark] I mean, primarily it was messing up. Like, doing my early lectures, my early talks, and having those moments… The personality changing moments of silence where you're like, oh, this didn't connect, this didn't land. This joke is unnecessary. So, I have learned from having those moments and accepting, like, okay, that was embarrassing. That sucked. But it's like, oh, now I know that I can do something different. So I do something, actually, at the beginning of all of my lectures, in whatever form. If I'm teaching multiple times over a week or if I've done some short residencies before, which is… I know personally that if I'm just being taught rules, these are the rules, don't break them. I'm out. I don't do well with that kind of where… It feels very top-down. I know these things, these are the way to do it, you need to do these things. So I actually start… Or attempt to start from this place of humility. And I did hear, we, which was saying, hey, this is not about the rules of voice, with the rules of guiding your story, or whatnot. I have some information and what I think is knowledge. I hope to give it to you. So, starting from that place, and then even though I care deeply about what I'm teaching, I don't want it to feel so self serious that it's boring. I'm not giving a place for people to come into it. And I also found, as many of you saw here at Writing Excuses, like, examples. You can explain, hey, maybe think about voice in this particular way. And for me, I'm also a visual learner, someone, if you demonstrate the thing, I am attempting to learn, it helps me a thousand times more than just saying do this. So I've learned over the years that examples are so, so helpful. I have a lecture I've taught multiple times on how to write compelling dialogue, and we have a whole section in which to demonstrate how to use… How to actually utilize some of the rules, what it is is, I construct dialogue about the class I'm in in real time. And then show them, and then we create an argument and we show how it goes back and forth and just watching people open up because… It's a little bit of improv, so, of course, especially the little chaos goblins in the room are like, I'm going to say all sorts of wild things…

[Chuckles]

[Mark] And you use that to sort of guide people through this is how you create a scene. Oh, we just noticed it got confusing. Who's speaking this time? How do you write people speaking over each other, because that happens in real time in real life? So, yeah, that's how I found my way into teaching.

[Marshall] Yeah, I've found that with the age group that I teach asking them early on to write about themselves, I get them… One, I get to see how the writing is, because I love writing, but I like sharing stories, so if I can connect with them on anything, like, just the posters in my room… I have a bunch of geeky Star Wars and Marvel posters on my wall, and the kids are like, oh, what do you think of this? That's… I find that that is the best way to help those kids who really would rather not be there, there. It's not necessarily about the grade or about what I teaching, although I think what I'm teaching is awesome. I think just getting them to buy-in is a huge part of it, especially when you're teaching 15, 16-year-olds who are just like, "Bro, this guy?" You know what I mean? And I love what you said about dialogue, too, like, listening to kids talk to each other and making them talk? It's a really kind of fun way to… When I go back to the page, if I'm writing a teenager or something, like, that, like, this is what they would focus on, this is what they would… How they would communicate their day to there buddy. You know what I mean? They wouldn't share with me. But I'm just listening.

[Erin] Yeah. Like, the more of humanity you get to know, the better you can portray it on the page in some ways. And, like, how often do many of us, like, speak to kids of all ages? Like, you might have your own kids and speak to them, but a lot of times, you don't have necessarily an opportunity and, like, to really see folks in an environment where, while you do have some power over them, they sort of are able to fly free, and you can just observe the flock of wild teen birds as they go around [garbled]

[chuckles]

[Erin] That sounds bad. As they go around, and do their thing.

[I like garbled though. Yeah, that's good. Garbled]

[Erin] There you go. We are going to now take a break for our thing of the week.

 

[Erin] I have the thing of the week, so, just I'm going to keep, like, just throwing the mic to myself. And the book that I want to call out, which… Whose name I am going to forget… No. Is All This and More by Peng Shepherd. And one of the reasons I'm especially excited to talk about this book is that Peng was actually an instructor here on the cruise a couple of years ago, working, I believe, on this novel. And so it's just very meta-. Like, and I am living in the meta-cruise moment of it all. But this is a very cool book for me specifically… I mean, it wasn't written for me, but it was written for me because it is a choose-your-own-adventure novel. And the actual conceit of the book is that someone goes on a show where they're able to change parts of their life based on, like, what the show decides. So they get to, like, decide if they want to blow up their marriage or choose a different job. And at the end of the chapter, it actually gives you the opportunity to flip to whatever chapter you want. So if you want them to blow up their marriage, flip to chapter 8. If you want them to do a new job, flip to chapter 10. And it's a really interesting way of going through a book that takes a novel and a game and puts them all in one. So, definitely check it out. All This and More by Peng.

 

[Erin] And we're back. We are still on the cruise, still moving, still talking about teaching at all levels. And something else that I love that you were saying, Mark, about figuring out how to, like, convey things is using really good examples and using tactile materials. Do you find, because, I know you do school visits, like, you're not there for very long, like, you're having to, like, get in, get out, engage and go. And, like, is there a difference between that and, like, what I think Marshall and I do, where we're teaching the same folks for, like, years and years and years?

[Mark] Oh, yeah. Absolutely. My teaching technique and speaking technique is different for a workshop or a retreat than it is for a school visit. Generally, in kid lit, the school is actually how you're going to meet your readers. You might get lucky to be at a book festival that is geared towards young adults or middle grade readers, but the majority of the time I am meeting my readers, it is through school visits. So you're doing a presentation that is as long as a class period. Sometimes you're lucky, you get, like, the auditorium style where you therefore, like, an hour or two. So in those, I tend to be much punchier. I am trying to make grand big points. I'm not delving into, like, the minutia. And a lot of times, you're meeting kids who may have an interest in writing, or may have an interest in reading, but you're probably going to meet a few kids who are also deeply apathetic about it. Whereas when you're at a retreat, when you beat… Teaching a workshop, these are people who have already opted in. So they're here for that. So I tell 8000 more jokes. I think one of the best compliments I ever got was doing a school visit, and afterwards, the teacher came up to me and was like, "I've just never seen my students that energized. You're like their weird gay uncle." And I was like, "Yes!"

[Chuckles]

[Mark] That's the energy I want. And so I'm coming into these spaces, one, to as I said earlier to demonstrate that I have not had to edit who I am or edit my personality to be a professional creative person. And I'm not… In those instances, I'm not thinking I want to inspire this person to be a writer. I just want to inspire them to do the thing that they want. So I'm often surprised how often I get questions that have nothing to do with writing at all. Is to maybe someone who wants to do something creative, but the thinking of a completely different field. So then the questions tend to be more about, like, motivation, how do you keep doing this? Did you have parents who supported your creative endeavors? How did you get to the point that you are? What did you study in college? Those sort of questions. So I think the biggest advice I give as well to other people who are joining the kid lit field is you have to be flexible. You cannot go into any of these settings, especially the ones where you're there for one hour max and assume that this is how it's going to go, everything is going to go how I want. Also, children will say something to rip your soul out of your body and then move on, because it's Tuesday.

[Yup]

[Mark] So you also have to be… I mean, don't be afraid… You should be very afraid! But don't be afraid of them, like, they're going to ask the questions, especially if they feel safe. And these questions sometimes might be wild, you might have to say, "Mind your own business." But I want to foster that sense as well of, like, yes, maybe I'm only here for an hour, but I want this hour to be as impactful as possible.

[Erin] I love what you said about safety there. It makes me think about, so, before I started teaching college, I actually did, like, public writing workshops that you can do in libraries or in, actually, like, places where folks are living after coming out of, like, prison and are, like, trying to get back on their feet and they have writing classes as a creative outlet. And there's a book called Writing Alone And with Others, which was developed for prison writing workshops that we used their methodology. In the big thing there is, like, in a prison, you, like, depending on what it is, because our system is no bueno and we're all about punitive, people, like, can't actually keep pen, paper, stuff with them. So you have to do the writing exercise at the time, like, you basically walk in and you're like, here. I'm going to give you, like, a few images, and, like, an idea, and one prompt, and, like, you're just going to go. And then everyone shares their writing that they just wrote. And it's really hard. Because it is terrifying to share writing when you have a long time to write it. And if you just found out about it five seconds ago, it's really hard. And one of the big principles that we talk about in that group is that we're going to make this… This is going to be a space about safe creative expression. Not about perfection. It is… We often use the analogy of, like, having a baby. If somebody has just had a baby, you say what a sweet baby. Many babies look like aliens, but…

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Just after birth is not a time to tell the parent, "Your alien looking child is freaking me out." You have to say, "What a sweet baby. I love its wide eyes." or whatever thing you can come up with that seems affirming. What I love about that experience is that, like, it has helped me to really see the good in everyone's writing and to create, like, a safe creative space for all of our lovely ugly alien babies.

[Mark] The safety thing, I think, is so important when it comes to teaching. Like, they're not going to open up, they're not going to create or create what they… If they don't feel like, if you read it, you'll betray them in some way. You know what I mean? So I really try to foster, like, the most… The safest space I can for students so that they can actually just express themselves and write something and have fun while they're at school.

[Marshall] I love that you said that as well. I'm very lucky also that I'm one of the few authors whose been able to do visits and teaching at juvenile delinquent facilities, and the biggest thing I run up into in those environments is adults who don't take the kids seriously at all. So in those spaces, it's… Someone starts talking about their writing and you treat them like a peer, on your level. So they start telling you about, like, oh, I have this story or whatever, and they're used to people dismissing it or assuming they're not going to have a future to tell that. So what I do always is, like, well, why do you want to write that? Why is it that thing? And ask them, like, essentially… They don't see them as craft questions, but I'm asking them craft questions to show them I am interested in the thing you're doing and I take it seriously. So, that's something I think in any situation, but particularly in those situations where the kids actually aren't safe.

[Erin] Yeah. I'm, like, looking for things… The thing is there is beauty to be found in all writing. And I think it's really exciting to see if somebody is really pouring their heart out. I think something else that can be hard, depending on the environment, is when people put a lot of themselves on the page, like, a lot, and you realize… You can tell sometimes, when this is someone's first opportunity to work through something, and, like, it is often just as messy as a therapy session on the page, and you are trying to react to it both as a human being, but also like… Your purpose at that point is to be affirming, but also to actually treat it as writing and not to treat it, I find, as therapy. To be like, okay, a lot happened in that piece. Like what I really thought was interesting was, like, how you kept referencing, like, the color blue. Like, that was really, like… Why did you… Why did that happen question because then it takes the person into talking about craft, and it allows them, I think, a chance to process at their own pace as opposed to being, like, oh, my gosh, did that really happen to you? One thing we do in this, in these settings, is we'll say you actually are not allowed to act as if it is about the person's life. You should always pretend that they wrote it about somebody else, because otherwise it derails the conversation into the person, and not into the prose that they put on the page.

[Mark] Yeah, I know, and I… One of the first creative writing assignments I give my student, because I'm co-teaching sort of the class with another colleague and we had them, like, recall a memory from when they were younger. And that kind of platform… Really, they hit the page with it. And so sometimes… Whenever I was talking to them and giving them feedback, I always made a point of saying, oh, the character did this, the character did this, or what do you think of that about this… And one of the students said, well, it didn't happen that way. And I said, yeah, but we're also writing fiction. So I know this is based on a memory you have, but it can be… It's fiction. I don't know the story. So…

[Erin] And I think the things that happen… I think one of the nice things about teaching, at all levels, is that some of the things that we don't talk about in writing, like, as we get older, some of the things that we like take for granted, like how much of ourselves is in our writing, become much more clear… Become clearer when people are newer to it, and so they can't hide it as well in some ways. And so some of the things that you see when you teach are things that you're like, wow, I should remember that from my own writing. Like, I should remember to think about how much of myself and my bringing to this writing experience. Or, wow, am I using… In my thinking broadly enough about dialogue? Or am I thinking about how to make things exciting in a way that aren't just the ways I've been taught, but the things that work for the story? And we're starting to run out of time. 

 

[Erin] But before we get to the homework, which feels very apropos…

[Right]

[Erin] For the topic that we're having, I'm wondering if you each have, like, one sort of piece of advice you would give if somebody is really interested in thinking about getting into teaching?

[Marshall] Think about a tea… No, in…

[Erin] I love the facial expressions that are happening.

[Marshall] That question's amazing. I think… I would go… I would suggest, think about a teacher that you had that created a safe space, that challenged you, that you remember, and put yourself in their place. Like, is that something that you want to do for other young folks? Maybe they reached you at a time where you really needed that teacher and that class and that time. You know what I mean?

[Mark] My thinking was very similar, along those lines. It was a moment where not only you were inspired by the teacher, but they did something that had you then writing and it didn't feel like homework. Because, to me, there were the moments that now I look back and I was like, you gave me more to write, and I wasn't even… I was doing it, but it didn't feel like work. And those, to me, are like the transformative experiences… Is why, at that age, when I could've been doing 20 other different things, did I choose to write more or write a different assignment or read this book? Why was it that thing and what was it that that teacher or librarian or educator did to get me to forget that I'm in school. Like, that's… And so, if you can imagine that. So, yeah, if you have that empathy or understanding, like, what was it that helped you get past that point?

[Yeah]

[Erin] And I would say for me, like, it is be enthusiastic about the subject matter, about the people your teaching. If you teach enough, you will have a day in which you are tired and you are not at your best. But, even so, I think, the enthusiasm really comes through. If you want the person to… When you want someone to learn, that really, I think, comes through. Even if you're tired, even if you're hangry. Like, that wanting someone to learn is what's important because it means you're able to be flexible, and you're thinking about the things that you brought with you from people who wanted you to learn and who were successful in getting you there.

[Mark] And they know… They know if you're excited about it. They know that you're passionate about it. And even if they might not be, they'll get there with you. Because they know you're stoked about it. So, is it homework time? [Garbled you looked like you were?] about to say one more thing.

 

[Mark] So, the homework is very similar to what we kind of just talked about, but I want you to think, if you're even kind of considering teaching, your homework is to think of something that you're very passionate about. It doesn't have to be writing, it could be knitting, it could be whatever. And create a lesson in your head or write it down that would work for you, your younger self.

 

[Erin] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-16-second-person

 

Key Points: Second person, aka you! You the reader, you another character, epistolary letters written to you. Social media and conversations. Second person forces you into the story. Problems when the character does something that the reader would not. Marginalized perspectives use it to grab the reader and say you don't get to look away. Second person in game writing! Biggest risk in second person is the audience bouncing off it. In game writing, you tell players what they are experiencing, but they decide how they will react. Agency! Use senses, not emotions. Buy-in. You get one or two buy-in's for free, but the more you use, the harder it is to sell. Writing trust falls, here's something you know to be true, so you can trust me. Meta-textual? LitRPG is often second person. Recipes! Influencer videos. VR. 

 

[Season 20, Episode 16]

 

[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

 

[Season 20, Episode 16]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[Erin] Second Person.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[Erin] I thought about trying to do those intros in second person, but it would be really hard.

[chuckles]

[Howard] It would be very hard.

[Dan] You're Dan...

[Howard] Yeah, the best I could come up with was and you're not Howard. I am. But that's still first person.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Exactly.

[Mary Robinette] I think I could say you're Erin.

[Erin] Chaos would reign. And I think that, like, second person... sometimes feels like the chaotic proximity. So we're talking about perspective, we're talking about proximity, and now we're getting into second person, which is when you use you. That is sort of the kind of very baseline level. And I think there are a few different varieties of second person that I like to think of. The most sort of, I guess, purest second person is when the you you're addressing is the reader. But you can also use second person to address another character in a story, and I often think that letter writing, epistolary, is like you, because when you write a letter, you do, like, I'm writing to you, Sir Mixalot...

[laughter]

[Dan] That's usually who I write letters to.

[Howard] He got her letter back...

[laughter]

[Erin] Oh, great, it's doing things. But… So, what do you think? I feel like you have very strong opinions about both Sir Mixalot and second person.

[Howard] Let me say this about second person.

[Erin] Yeah.

[Howard] It is easy to forget that you… And this is me speaking to you, fair listener, have probably used second person quite a lot on social media or conversationally. So, imagine this. You're driving, and all of a sudden… You know, you tell a story that way. Sometimes. Not all the time. But you slip into second person very naturally, because it is a way to draw the reader into, or draw the listener, draw your conversational group into the experience that you personally had in a way that… No kidding. So there I was, doesn't.

[DongWon] We think of first person as the most intimate voice. Right? We think of first person as the one where you're right next to the interiority of the character. But there's a weird way in which I think second person is actually the most intimate in a way that can make people really uncomfortable. Because you're sort of forcing the reader's subjectivity into the fiction itself. You're integrating the person who's reading the story into the experience of being in the story in a way that can be a little disorienting or really fun for the reader. Right? Like, we've been talking about second person epistolary. Part of why I think This Is How You Lose the Time War hit so hard is that the romance is built over a series of second person direct address letters. Right? So the reader is the one who sort of feeling romanced by these characters talking to each other. Even though we know Red and Blue are talking to each other, but that's all being passed through the reader's experience.

[Mary Robinette] And I think that that is… There's a distinction between second person where you're addressing another character and the reader can participate…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And choose to be part of that character and second person where you're addressing the reader, and there, I think, sometimes we… Or where you're attempting to make the reader be a character. And where you run into problems with that is when you have the character do something that the reader would not, but you are addressing the reader. So you wind up breaking the relationship. Like… And then you felt like you were really angry. I'm like, no, actually, I think this is fine. I'm not mad at all. Or… And then you went down the long, dark stairs. I'm like, no, no I did not…

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Go down the long, dark stairs. Absolutely a hundred percent no. So I think it is… It's one of the challenges of how can you make the reader into a character when you're doing that kind of second person? Without making them… The actions cause an artificiality?

[DongWon] Well, I still think that this is what led to the silent videogame protagonist for so long. Right? Was they wanted to make sure that they weren't taking the player out of the experience of being the character. So if the character spoke for you… This is why, famously, Master Chief didn't talk for so long, this is why Gordon from Half-Life doesn't talk. Right? Like… And then over time that's evolved as people developed a little bit more sophistication around being able to participate in the story, even though you're being told that this is what's happening to me. But it can be a really tough balance when it comes to prose. Right? Because there's an interesting thing where I see second person deployed a lot, and it's deployed only sparingly in fiction. This is not a common technique. Certainly not a common technique to tell your whole story in. But the ones where I find it really interesting, I noticed a wave of fiction at one point that was all being told from marginalized perspectives that was all using the second person in really challenging ways. And it was a little bit of grabbing the reader and saying you don't get to look away from this. Right?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Right. And I think part of why Fifth Season works really well is that it's doing that to some extent. The second person in that is a little bit of no, you're part of this. You don't get to walk away. You don't get to say, "Oh, that happened to those people over there," because of the way the second person creates that immediacy, even though you're like, I didn't do those things. You know what I mean? And there is something really interesting about disrupting that layer between the reader and the narrator.

[Mary Robinette] I think one of the things that's going through my head when you're talking about that is the Fifth Season starts with a frame, a little bit of a frame.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] It's not there very long. Where it is, let's talk about where we are. It is omniscient voice, it is plural we, and then… Plural we? As opposed to singular we, which is…

[DongWon] Royal.

[Dan] Royal.

[Mary Robinette] Royal we. Thank you. I was like… Who knows what's happening in my brain right there…

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] But then it narrows into… It immediately pretty much goes into you are doing this. And it is that imagine how you would feel if you were here for the reader. And then you just stop noticing at a certain point that it is in second person. I read, years and years ago, when Shimmer magazine was still going, we accepted a story that was second person because I was like three pages into it before I realized it was second person. It was about someone coming home for Halloween, and it… But it starts with a little bit of this very voice-driven opening and then it drops into second person. You get home and you can smell all of these things. But it's starting with common experiences, things that it's easy to relate to, to kind of lead you into it.

[Erin] Yeah, I think there's a couple thoughts. One is the thing about the marginalized folks using second person. It's funny because I see it… I love what you said about it, and yet I was like, oh, I saw it in a completely different way. Which was that sometimes the experience of being marginalized can be that someone else gets to decide what you… Who you are, what you are doing, and how you are perceived. And I always viewed it as a way to force the reader into that same feeling of us… Of the lack of control. Like, you actually don't get to control even what you are doing in this story…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And so, therefore, you should feel what this character feels, or what I, the author, feel…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] When I don't feel in control of my own.

[DongWon] No, that's what I was trying to say. So we're…

[Erin] Oh, there you go. But you also said another awesome thing, which was that it's also about you can't look away.

[DongWon] Right. Right, right.

[Erin] So, sometimes I think it's you're participating, you're feeling marginalization. Sometimes it could be, like, you're feeling the horrible things you did.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] I think of… I'm going to take liberties with this, because we do it was Star Wars all the time. But there is a great episode of Star Trek: Voyager where a whole bunch of people participate… Feel that they are participating in a massacre. And it turns out that this is actually a memorial to that massacre grabs you and put you in the place of the soldier that panics and kills a whole bunch of people, and that's the way that they try to ensure that it never happens again. Because if you feel like you did it, you have to live with the guilt, and that… hopefully that stops you from doing further atrocities.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Which is a really interesting, like, putting you in the mind of it. I had something else to say, but I have completely forgotten. And so you, listener, are going to wait while we take a short break.

 

[Erin] All right. So, more second person. So I was thinking about it, right, before we actually started this episode… I was asking everyone, like, have you written second person? In one thing that came up again and again, was game writing. So, I'm kind of curious, from those who have written games or played games, do you feel like it works… You sort of mentioned this earlier, DongWon, like you feel like it works better in games than in prose? What do you think is the difference there?

[DongWon] I mean, it's funny because my… Of the people here, my primary creative output is in games. So most of the writing I do, sort of, is second person, because just as a GM sort of live feeding back to my players what's happened, I will say, you did this thing, you said this, you… There will be a lot of, like, I'm telling you what it is that you just did based on the rolls that you made and what you've given me in the narration that you've set up. So there's always this really interesting delicate balance between honoring their intent and making it fit the story that we're all telling together. Right? So, like… The use of the second person, because you're taking control of someone else's experience, does require you to think about their experience in a really different way than I think just straight up narration does. I really love that dance. Obviously, I'm doing that dance kind of live with the players in the moment. There's an improvisational immediate feedback aspect to it. But I think it is… The reason I love second person so much, the reason I find it so interesting to talk about and so exciting for all the things we're talking about is because you cannot escape thinking about the audience and you cannot escape thinking about the writer and they are in direct relationship when you're using you.

[Howard] Um… I was playing a role-playing game in which one of the players decided to introduce themselves in second person by telling all of us how we were reacting to them walking into the room. And to the last player, we rejected that. Because it didn't fit.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] Because we were being told a thing that was not true…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] And we actually had to stop the session…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] And say, okay, no, the other players have as much choice over what they do as you do. If you want to tell us what you're feeling, we get to have contested die rolls. But when writing game fiction, you're not telling the players necessarily what they're experiencing, you are… It's like you are giving them instruction. And it… When I wrote technical manuals, we would slide into second person all the time. But then we do have editors tell us, hey, if you know what, it's starting to feel a little too personal, let's slide back out into the third person. So, for me, what I've arrived at over the years is that the single biggest problem with second person… And I don't want to say that it's problematic, but the biggest risk is that your audience may bounce off of it in a way that you can't recover from and that makes it really difficult to use.

 

[Dan] One of the reasons that I think second person works so well for game writing, specifically, is… I'm going to tweak Howard's wording slightly. With second person, you often are telling people what they're experiencing. You're just not governing how they experience it.

[Howard] Yes.

[Dan] When you're in a game situation, you can say, I walk into the room and you see this, and you see this, and you smell this, and… I hope smell is not the primary sense that you experience when I walk into a room. But…

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Or when you listen to a podcast.

[Dan] Yeah. But then the players get to decide how they react to that information.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. It's about agency.

[Yeah]

[Erin] Yeah, I think one of the biggest, like, things that you will find if you end up, like, writing for tabletop games, when you write read aloud text that the GM is meant to read, is that people often say only use senses, don't use emotions. Like, you cannot say you are frightened by the giant monster. You can just say, like, the monster has 8000 teeth and, like, each one is razor-sharp, which… But if somebody's like, that just doesn't… I love that [garbled]

[laughter]

[Howard] It presents a career opportunity.

[Erin] Yeah. Then that's something that's, like, is sort of allowed to happen. And I think what you're saying about agency, it's like agency and buy-in. Like, I think a lot of what we're talking about is like that you… When you're using second person, you have to get much more explicit buy-in or think about how you are going to get buy-in. And, I'm curious, like, what you think are ways that people can get buy-in to second person, like, is it by setting the frame, Mary Robinette, as you were saying, is it something else?

[Mary Robinette] Just buy-in made me… A couple of things click in my head. There's a thing in… When you're writing for film, television, and what we do, the science fiction fantasy, that you get one or two buy-in's for free. People can live under the water and have fish tails. We buy-in. Witches can steal your voice. We buy-in. Storms arise out of nowhere… Nah. Like, the more you asked them to buy-in, the… To things that are off from their experience, the harder it is to sell. And I think that that may be also… I wonder if that also plays out in second person that you can do one or two, like, I'm going to have you… You do this thing that you would not do, and you give me one or two of them for the sake of the story, but the more I do, the more disconnected you feel from the story. The more often I take your agency away, the more often I tell you how you are reacting…

[Howard] There's a worldbuilding trick that I've come to refer to as the trust fall. Trust fall is a group exercise where you build trust quote unquote by catching someone who's falling. As a writer, the trust fall is the simple and easy I am going to tell you a thing that you already know to be true, and I'm going to state it as truth so that you trust me to be a writer who tells you things that are true. By doing that, you build tru… I mean, you shouldn't trust me as a writer, because I'm a liar who's going to lie a lot. But by building that trust early on, you can purchase for yourself maybe a little extra buy-in for when you need it.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. It looks like you were going to say something before, DongWon? But…

[DongWon] If I was, I have forgotten it. I'm sorry.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] That's an example of using second person to try to force someone to do a thing that they don't want to do.

[Howard] Your face says that you want to talk. Your heart says…

[Mary Robinette] You know something else that… Oh, you do have something now?

[Chuckles]

 

[DongWon] One of the things I really love about second person, while we're on this sort of how to get this buy-in component, is the way second person allows you to use voice in a really different way than other formats, because it's a direct address. Because somebody is speaking to somebody. Even if it's an unnamed narrator, their… It demands a more consistency of voice, than you would get in other… Than in third person omniscient, for example. Where you can slide around from different thing to different thing. Because now that I'm talking to you… Somebody is talking to somebody, somebody is writing to somebody, and so there's a difference in… It forces the narration into a character in your story in a really different way, as well. Right? There is a storyteller. If there is a you, than there is an I. So I think it allows certain things… That probably one of my favorite things to see in stories is when the narrator is suddenly revealed to be a character, and I am suddenly revealed to be an audience to that character's speech.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Or someone in the story. Right? Which is, as we talked about with Fifth Season, as we've seen in other things, the sudden reveal of what I thought was just narration as actually a character is a thing that I always find truly delightful and exciting.

[Mary Robinette] You reminded me of one of my favorite books, which is The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars by Steven Brust. It's… Throughout… It's two stories that appear to be completely unrelated. It's third person. But at the end of each chapter, he says, "Bones?" That's the last thing in it. And it takes a while before you… Deep into the book, the narrator says that… It's first person, actually. I take that back, it's first person. Before the narrator says that, they always tell this Hungarian folktale to their friends, and they end each section the way their mother did, which was by saying, "Bones?" Which was a way… Indicator to say, "Do you want me to keep going?" So you suddenly realize that you have been active participants in ways that you didn't realize you were an active participant. And… And it's I guess…

[Howard] You were asking me if I wanted to turn the page…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] And I turned the page. So I guess I said yes.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So I guess it is a very interesting thing to play with.

 

[DongWon] I guess this all leads me to one question as we're talking about things. We've talked about game writing, we've talked around, like, direct address and epistolary. Is second person always meta-textual? Is it… Does it necessarily require a meta-textual relationship to the text? And is that why it is so difficult to use well?

[Howard] At risk of being slightly prognosticative, I think that that will depend entirely on whether we see a massive market busting breakout work in second person. Because if that happens, it'll shift the marketplace and we may, 25 years from now, look at second person as the new normal.

[Mary Robinette] I mean, we did see a massive market busting thing, which was the Fifth Season. I did just finish another book where I realized at the end of the book that the entire thing had also been doing this. I'm not going to tell you which book it was because there's a reveal, but it is the meta-textual thing again.

[DongWon] A ton of litRPG is second person. Right? Like this entire genre is a sort of…

[Erin] Yeah.

[DongWon] [garbled] fiction that's sort of using second person as a default voice at this point.

 

[Mary Robinette] You know what is also second person? Recipes. Recipes are often second person. They don't always put the pronoun on the page…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] But it is.

[Howard] [garbled] for the recipe blogs that are third person and begin with a long essay about…

[DongWon] It's very unsettling when they say, "Howard Tayler mixes the flour."

[Laughter]

[Erin] Between bouts of leaf keeping.

[Dan] Even when you get the big recipe blogs section, the recipe itself is very second person, where it's saying do this, now do this, now add this.

[Mary Robinette] And they're often doing direct address during… I want to actually… I hear some disdain for the essay at the top, and I just want to say you are not the audience. That does not mean that it is bad. It is there to provide context and…

[Howard] Oh, no. I'm…

[Mary Robinette] Yes?

[Howard] I recognize…

[Mary Robinette] Okay.

[Howard] That I'm not the audience.

[Mary Robinette] So… But that essay, for those of us who read them, are often in second person. It's like, let me tell you about this. It's… I guess those are still first person. But it is that direct address to the reader. Sometimes it's you were asking me about this. I'm like, I'm not. This is my first time I've been here. But I can see that you are excited about it.

[Howard] Part of what they're doing is building trust. They're telling you a story about how the food affected them, and if you want to have this effect, you will now do this.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] And it drops into the instruction set.

[Erin] Interestingly, I think I was like why do I dislike these things, and I think one of the reasons is that because of the demographics of who does recipe blogs…

[Chuckles]

[Erin] It often feels like an experience I am very distant from. Like, I don't do leaf keeping and so, like, it just feels…

[Chuckles]

[Erin] You know what I mean? Like, it often is very like suburban if that makes any sense.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Like. I was like… I feel like if I wrote a recipe blog and someone was, like, I found this on the subway or something that felt more to my experience, like, I'm not buying in, because I'm… This is not the kind of experience I would be having. So I can't relate to it. And so it sort of comes back to what we're saying it's just that they're… I'm not the audience for that particular use of second person.

 

[DongWon] Late into this episode, my brain finally connected two dots, which is, in the same way that I was talking about how one of the dominant languages of our modern world is this third person close because of the video games and film, one of the dominant languages of our world is second person because of influencer videos, Tik-Tok, and [sometimes?] reels, YouTube… These are all second person addressed, these are all persons talking straight into camera to me, and me feeling that relationship and that connection. So when that gets fulfilling and when that gets disruptive, I think, is really, really cued to all these social contexts.

[Mary Robinette] I see Dan has something, but I just want to clarify that I think that those are first-person, but often… The point of view shifts…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] That we get influencer videos where you never see the person, what you just see is their hands chopping something or the let me walk you down this trail with my dog and you never see the person who's doing the walking, so it's like you are having that experience. Outing. I am… It's… Video is a totally different media. What were you going to say, Dan?

[Dan] I was just going to expand the kind of… The Internet communication beyond just influencer videos. Because a lot of it… For example, with the recipe blogs, a lot of that is framed as a you… You've been asking for this because it is in conversation with their comments section. And I feel like we get that a lot in the Internet. You've been talking about this. I've been saying this, your response was this, and… It's much more conversational, which, to a point, does have a lot of second person in it.

[Mary Robinette] And also has a lot of that meta-textual thing that you're talking about, which is an awareness of the story and the frame.

 

[Erin] And I think that one of the things that's interesting, I just thought of VR as you were talking about this. VR is interesting because in VR, you, like… It's all you. Like, you can… You're doing things, you're moving in a certain way, it is the most embodied view I think you can almost be other than maybe immersive theater. Where, like, you're in the center of something and everything is happening around you and you get to have control. And it comes back to agency, which is, I think, the more agency we feel we have in the you, the more comfortable that you feel, the quicker we're able to buy in. So when you're using it as a tool, either you can have a more… You have less agency as the you, and therefore I'm going to put the work in to make you buy in by starting with a frame…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Or making sure that you understand that there's another character, or something that, like, helps you to get in there. Or I'm going to give you maximum agency, in which case, you do feel like you control what you're doing.

[DongWon] There was that short story a few months ago that was the riff on Omalos that used Internet language and deprived us of agency by using the second person through that is making it clear that we are all complicit in the walking away from Omalos. Right? Like… And I think part of that… Not walking away from Omalos, but we're all complicit in the exploitation inherent in that story. And that was such a devastating story to read because it uses second person to disrupt my sense of agency and force a sense of complicity. And I'm blanking on the name of the story and the author. But it's wonderful. You should look it up. It's very upsetting.

[Erin] We'll put it in the show notes. And we will send you off now with some homework.

 

[Erin] So what I'd like you to do is to actually take… Write something in second person. You can decide whatever you want it to be, you can take a scene that you already have, you can write a recipe blog and second person if you want, write a bit of a lit RPG read aloud. But what I want you to do is try it in a couple of different ways. So I want you to think of something that you're getting across in the scene and try it is a you that's directed to another character. Or a you that's a letter. And then try again, where you… The you is the actual reader themselves, the person whose experiencing the text. And look at how that shifts things, and what that gives you an opportunity to do.

 

[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-14-third-person-limited

 

Key points: Third person limited. First person, I. Third person, he, she, names, pronouns. Metaphor, the camera. Limited versus omniscient. Moving POVs, head hopping. Slide, don't hop. Inner thoughts or not? Threshold between first person and third person very close, very limited? Internal thoughts. Third person offers separation between narration and character. Third limited close is the default for commercial fiction. Third limited allows shifting POVs and distance more easily than first. First may be more visceral. Distancing words. Some books jump between third and first. Perspective shifts can be useful!

 

[Season 20, Episode 14]

 

[Mary Robinette] Hey, guess what? The 2025 Writing Excuses Cruise is over 50% sold out. During this week-long masterclass, I'm going to be leading writers like yourself through a series of workshops designed to give you the tools to take your writing to the next level. Space is limited, but there is still time to secure your spot. We're going to be sailing out of Los Angeles from September 18th through 26. Regardless of where you are in your writing journey, this event is your opportunity to learn new skills while exploring the beautiful Mexican Riviera. Whether you're revising a story, reworking a character arc, or revitalizing your plot, you'll leave more confident in your current story and bolstered by a new set of friends. Join us on board at writingexcuses.com/retreats.

 

[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

 

[Season 20, Episode 14]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[Erin] Third Person Limited.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[Erin] I'm really excited to talk a little bit today about the third person limited point of view as part of our little mini-course, mini-set of episodes on proximity. One of the reasons I'm like most excited about this is I feel like this is one of the terms in writing that is used the most and understood the least.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Like Othello, a moment to learn, a lifetime to master. So I'm...

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Going to attempt to explain, like, at its very basic, like, what do we even mean when we say third person limited, and then I'm going to invite all of you to tell me what I'm missing and why I'm wrong.

[Laughter]

[Erin] So I figure… So, on its, like, very basic level, when you use first person, you are using I, you are using, like, the pronoun I to describe everything that is happening. When you use third person, of any type, you use he, she, somebody's name, they… You're using a pronoun that is the third person, that is why it's called third person. So instead of saying, "I watched as all the podcasters stared me down, waiting for me to finish speaking," it would be, "Erin observed the other podcasters as da da da da…" And limited is that you are limited to a specific point of view at any one time. Unlike omniscient, which we will get to in the next episode, you can't see everybody's thoughts all at once. You're sort of following one particular person at any distance that you want. We'll get into that later. But that's what I think of at the very basic. What am I missing? Why am I wrong?

[DongWon] I'm not going to tell you why you're wrong, but I am going to ask you a question.

[Erin] Yes.

[DongWon] Which is, do you think third person limited and third person close are the same thing or is there a distinction between those two things?

[Erin] I would personally say that there is a difference. So I think that you can be at any distance and still be limited. I mean, it's…

[DongWon] I see.

[Erin] At a certain point, it's hard to be limited. Like, if you get… a lot of times, the metaphor we use for third person limited or third person close is the camera.

[DongWon] Right.

[Erin] So it's like you're the camera behind the shoulder of whatever character. But you can be right up on their shoulder or you can actually get a little bit of a distance away. Like…

[DongWon] It's like third person action game versus Mario. It's like that…

[Erin] Yeah. Exactly. [Garbled]

[Howard] Third person limited contains third person close.

[DongWon] Right.

[Erin] Exactly.

[DongWon] But you could be third person limited, but have this 10,000 foot view, where I have no access to Erin's interiority. I can just see her moving through the landscape and…

[Mary Robinette] Right. Raymond Chandler does this a lot.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] Like, where your… You're with one character, you only see the things that they see, and the movements that they have, but you have absolutely no access to their thoughts.

[DongWon] Because the interiority of people is a mystery to his… In his books.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

 

[Howard] The example that I use… When I'm trying to explain the difference between limited and omniscient. Erin sat across from the podcasters and Howard looked like he had indigestion. Okay? That's limited because Erin can tell that I'm making a face and she's passing judgment on what my face is. Omniscient would be Erin sat across from the podcasters. Howard was thinking about… And then you state my thought explicitly. Now, we were in Erin's head and then suddenly we're in Howard's head. That's not something Erin can be. We hope.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Yeah. Another example of that… Not necessarily a good one, but it's, like, though Erin sat there, looking at Howard's face and thought that perhaps he'd had indigestion, Howard had had 16 eggs this morning.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] As they worked their way through his system, he hoped that no one would notice.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] He was wrong.

[Laughter]

[Howard] Right. Oh, this is going to make a noise.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So I'm looking forward to when we talk about…

[Howard] That's third person omnivorous.

[Laughter]

[Howard] Oh… Howard. I am looking forward to when we talk about omniscient. But one of the things that I will say with third person limited is that you don't… I think one of the things you're missing potentially is that you can do third person limited and move to different characters' POVs in different scenes. Arguably, you can also move to their POVs within a single scene. It's when you move back and forth that I think you've shifted over to…

[Howard] It's the head hopping.

[Mary Robinette] Omniscient. Yeah. Which is not a flaw. It's just a different mode. But I'm thinking specifically of a scene in Ender's Game where the camera arrives with Ender into a scene, and then Ender leaves… We're still in the scene, there's no scene break, but we stay with Bean's character. So it's a through scene, there's no scene break, but it is still third person limited even though we haven't done that hard break.

[DongWon] I love when you do a little bit of that sliding from one POV to another and then back without dropping into omniscient…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Without dropping into the head hopping. There's an example, I think, of… From one of Robert Jackson Bennett's books, the first… Foundryside. Where a character is like sneaking into a facility, and we just slide into the guard's POV for a minute and see them sneaking past from the guard's POV and then slide back to the protagonist again. It never feels omniscient, it never feels like we're knowing more than, like, what the individual characters experience. But that fluidity that you can have in limited I think is really, really fun.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I think that in that case, for me, what's happening is that he has gone to a different scene…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] But has chosen to do what I call a through scene as opposed to a scene break.

 

[Erin] So, follow-up question on this, because I think, like, head hopping… A lot of times when people say head hopping, they're talking about being in omniscient and going from one character to the other in a somewhat frantic way in which you don't know who you're even following or what's happening. But head hopping can also be used if you switch, like, abruptly from one limited perspective to another. I've seen that critique used for that as well. How do you make it feel like a slide and not a hop? Like, how do you actually make it feel like it's been passed off in an effective way that you can follow versus that you're like jarring the audience?

[DongWon] I really think about it in filmic terms, and I think about sightlines. Right? So the example I just gave of moving from the thief to the guard and back is because you have the thief, the thief's looking, sees the guard, now we're in the guard, guard does their thing, thief sneaks by, guard notices something has passed, and then now we're back in the thief. Right? So you need a handoff transition every time you're going to make that slide as literally thinking for me about the camera moving with the perspective of the reader.

[Mary Robinette] I have a similar framing. For me, it's about thresholds.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Which is, I think the same thing as the sightlines that it is about. For me, the distinction between that and omniscient is that there is a reason that both characters are not actually in the same place at the same time. Like, the example that I gave where one character literally leaves the room and the camera stays with where we are. Whereas in omniscient, you would be able to visit everybody's head within, who's in a single room. And you would be sign posting, and now we're going over to this person. Jane Austen does this… I mean, she was extremely good, which is why her works are still classics. But there's this one scene where two characters believe that they're having the same conversation and they're having different conversations. You only know that they're having different conversations because she goes from one character to the other and she sign posts by telling us whose head she's going into before we get the thought, but it is all within one thing, and then she also comments on other things that are outside of that room that none of the characters would have access to. So, for me, it's all about what the characters have access to and the thresholds that we cross.

 

[Dan] I'm wondering as well if… This goes back to our discussion of close and far perspective. But the closer the perspective is, the more it's going to feel like head hopping, because you are getting more of those inner thoughts. You're getting more of that internality. Whereas in this case with the guard watching for the thief, you're not getting a really deep examination of who they are as a person.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. It's also, I want to say that this is going back, this is a fashion thing. In science fiction and fantasy, it is in fashion to either use first person or third limited. But when you go over to romance, often you do get POVs… You do get back and forth between the two POVs. I'm going to back away from what I had said earlier about that not being third limited, because it usually only two characters. The hero and the heroine, or the hero and hero, depending on the… Which slash we're in. But often you do get both of their POVs within a single scene. It's just that in science fiction and fantasy, at some point, people decided that this was bad and they put a label on it called head hopping as opposed to controlling point of view, even if you are limiting yourself to only two people. It's still a limitation, it's still not an omniscient because you're not giving the reader access to any information that those two characters don't have.

[Dan] Well, I think it's worth pointing out that this is one of those cases where anything you can make work, works.

[Mary Robinette] Absolutely. Yeah.

[Dan] Right. Like, just because the label has been given that certain aspects of this are good or bad, if you can make it work, then it works. If you can just… Excuse me… If you can jump between heads, between characters, even if it's head hopping, as long as the reader is always very clear about what's going on and they know whose head they're in and they know what perspective they're getting, then it works.

[Howard] Yeah, I don't… I don't personally use head hopping as a way to denigrate anything. I say… Unless I'm saying you're trying to do third person limited, third person close, and I think you may be unintentionally head hopping, just to describe what's going on. But I think you can head hop on purpose and make it work very well.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. We'll talk about how to do that when we get to omniscient for sure.

[Erin] Erin had another thought, but realized that it was time for the podcast to take a break.

 

[Mary Robinette] Hey, guess what? The 2025 Writing Excuses Cruise is over 50% sold out. During this week-long masterclass, I'm going to be leading writers like yourself through a series of workshops designed to give you the tools to take your writing to the next level. Space is limited, but there is still time to secure your spot. We're going to be sailing out of Los Angeles from September 18th through 26. Regardless of where you are in your writing journey, this event is your opportunity to learn new skills while exploring the beautiful Mexican Riviera. Whether you're revising a story, reworking a character arc, or revitalizing your plot, you'll leave more confident in your current story and bolstered by a new set of friends. Join us on board at writingexcuses.com/retreats.

 

[Erin] All right. Back now, because one thing we talked about earlier… I think we're talking a lot about… In talking about head hopping and the difference between limited and omniscient, we're talking a little bit about, I think, slightly more distanced…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] One of the questions I now have is what is the difference, like, what is the threshold, other than the use of pronouns between first-person and third person very close, very limited? Like, is there something that for you distinguishes it or could you take a first-person piece, turn all the I's to she's and not have to change anything else in order to make that story work?

[Mary Robinette] No.

[Laughter]

[Erin] All right. Well, there we go.

[Dan] Next question?

[Mary Robinette] Yes, because I've done it. I've had pieces that I wrote, originally in third person and moved to first, and I've had pieces that I've written in first person and moved to third. The biggest thing for me is that in first person, the degree to which I get the character's thoughts is significantly higher than it is in third. I have… Like you can get away with it for part of a scene, sometimes even a full scene, but there are times when, in first person, if I do not get the character's full emotional reaction, I will feel cheated as a reader. Because that's one of the things I sign up for when I'm in first person is to be all the way in that character's head. Whereas third person, I am okay with selective access to their head. Sometimes I get a direct thought, which is either written in quotes or italics. So these are the words that exactly are what the character is thinking. Sometimes it is free indirect speech, which is where the character's thought has just been transported into being part of the narration. So, like, instead of saying Mary Robinette sat in the podcast and thought I have to remember I have to pack my luggage during our break, I would do something more like Mary Robinette sat in the podcast. She needed to remember that she had to pack her luggage during her break. And I would just put it into part of the narration. But, it does create a little bit of a… More of a distance, and that form is one of the differences between first and third is that being all the way into the character's head.

[Howard] For me, one of the big differences between first and third, beyond… I mean, everything that you've said tracks beautifully. But if I'm in third limited, it's usually because I want to follow two or more characters. And the high bar for me for third limited is for each of those narrative voices to sound different. Whereas, in first person, your narrator should sound fairly consistent, unless the character undergoes some really huge change that reaches all the way into their voice. Whereas in third limited, I like to be able to tell whose scene it is. By halfway through the book, I want to be able to tell whose scene it is without you telling me their name. Because the voice… I'm now familiar enough with that voice that you've telegraphed it to me.

 

[Mary Robinette] I will say the other thing that I thought about as you were talking is that one of the tools that third limited offers me that I do not get from first-person is that I have a contrast between the narration and the character. Which can be an extremely powerful tool sometimes. Especially when you've got a character that is lying to themselves or lying… That… Or is on a journey that they haven't yet figured out that they're on. That sometimes I can let the reader in on what that is in ways that I cannot do in first person.

 

[DongWon] So, I think third limited close is sort of the default voice for commercial fiction these days. Right? In a lot of ways… There's a ton of first-person, that's rising in certain sectors, you still see third omniscient, but, like, what we think of as transparent prose, what we think of as like the dominant voice in adult commercial fiction tends to be this third limited perspective. Especially fairly close in. I think this is kind of driven by a lot of the visual media we consume. Movies are like this, videogames are like this, it's just like your… Because we don't actually know what the character's thinking, you're just like write up on them, and sort of observing the world as they go through it as the camera follows them, literally in the case of a TV show. I think that has really sort of shaped how we think of it. And because of some of the things you're saying, of having the ability to have the narration come in and the narrator have a different perspective than the character, but still be very close to one or a very small number of characters, kind of gives the easiest lift in terms of communicating a lot of information to the reader using the fewest tools possible. That requires the least sort of, like, mental weights. There's always a… I talked about this a little bit on the last episode, but there is a little bit of a mental lift when reading first-person for a lot of readers. That, I think, is a very small threshold that people can cross, but they're sometimes reluctant to. But it's… The use of third person limited close, I think, if you're looking for where's my default starting point, it's a really useful one to at least try that and sort of see if that solves any perspective problems you're having, and then expand out from there into, oh, wait, maybe this should be first-person. I need more interiority, or I want that deep subjectivity of the character or I'm feeling really claustrophobic, maybe I should step back in omniscient and expand out more from their. But starting with third close, really, I think, is a great default position to start from.

[Erin] I love all that, and I think it's interesting for me to hear, because I think one of the reasons I asked the question is I actually find when I write that my third person limited is fairly close to first. Like I…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] I believe, I do a lot of third person limited that has, like, full interiority… And in case we've never said what we mean by interiority, it's, like, how much are you getting from inside the character's mind. My third person limited often uses the same cadences of thought that first-person would use. Like, the same… There's usually not a lot of distinction. So I was like, well, why do… What is the difference? For me, and I love everything that y'all have said and I also… For me, I'm thinking that some of it has to do with is there something… Like, is there ever a time when I'm going to want to go into another character, which I cannot do in first easily. For some reason, I find it harder to switch from one character to another in first, because first is very immersive, until I come out of it. It's like… Feels like a lot of work, like it's something you can do maybe chapter to chapter, but it's harder to do, like, scene to scene. Is there ever a time when I'm going to want to pull back the distance to explain something or note something even for a moment that the character wouldn't fully get into? Or is it, like, my intent is for you to feel like the character is being observed versus experienced? That one's a hard one, because I feel like it's very like… I, you just… It's like… You just know, like, when you know… Like pornography… When you know it when you see it. But… The infamous Supreme Court case said that. So it's, like, I'm thinking about, like, is it… Yeah, it's like is it sometimes when I want you to feel like you're within this character's mind or do I want you to feel like you are just a fly on their shoulder being like, oh, my gosh, what is this character getting themselves into, even if you're close enough to hear them whisper every thought to you?

[Howard] And to eat the crumbs off their shoulder if you're a little [garbled]

[Laughter]

 

[Mary Robinette] Like the one that I took from third into first, one of the things that I was playing with in that one was… I had a character who had PTSD and I knew that I was going to be dealing with some flashbacks and not, like, a brief insertion into the middle of a scene, but a full on, like, confusion dementia sequence. Being all the way in their head so that I wasn't… As they are disassociating… It was just… It was conveying the sensation of disassociating in first person is significantly easier than it is in third. Because that distance, that narrative distance, already exists because I'm observing the person, distancing it further… It's not as visceral when you distance it further. So when I got to those scenes where he's disassociating, I wrote it as if it was third person, but used the I, so… And I used all of the reporting words that we try to avoid in third person… Like, I noticed that I was, I watched my body do this thing. And that was a technique and a tool that I could only use in first person.

[Erin] I love that you called out the… Those distancing… I call them distancing words, like watched, looked, she looked at versus just saying, like, what the person actually saw. Because I think that's a really interesting… They have their absolute place.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Like, there's a time in which you want to be calling attention to the act of seeing. Whether it is disassociation or somebody who is, like, at the wall of a party and all that they are doing, noticing, is the action that they are taking.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. A spy is going to be… I watched this.

[Erin] Exactly. But somebody who's not a spy, you might be, like, well… The watching brings one more layer between you and the actual thing that's going on. Which I think is such a fun thing to play with. And another thing where I think, like head hopping, sometimes people will say this doesn't work, and I think what they really mean or should say is this has its place. Is this the place for it?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

 

[Dan] I just want to jump in really quick and point out that I have seen books, very successfully jump between third and first.

[Yes, yup]

[Dan] One of my favorite books is House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende, which is about half and half. The way that she makes that work and makes it always obvious what you're hearing and what you're listening to is, it is… The first person is one specific character. Every scene that does not have that character in it is third person.

 

[DongWon] Yeah. In general, when it comes to these POV conversations, again, we're giving you tools, not rules...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Is the thing to remember. I think a lot of people get so prescriptive when it comes to talking about whether using third person limited, are you… It's like your third person limited close, and then you go, you come out for a second, and they're like, oh, no, you broke POV. You can't do that. I'm like, what are you talking about? If it worked in the scene, it worked in the scene.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] You know what I mean? I'm not going to remember two chapters later that, like, you stepped 10 feet away from the character for one moment. Or, like what Dan's saying, in terms of mixing first person and third person, that's absolutely a thing that you can do. You can even jump to omniscient for a second, and then drop…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Back to third person limited. I think what we're giving you are ways in which you can use proximity to your character's perspective as tools. I encourage you to find exciting ways to use those tools, moment to moment, rather than book to book.

[Erin] And… I know we're running a little long, but I just want to… I love this point, so I just want to underline it, that some of the things that I've seen that are extremely effective in scenes are when perspective shifts.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] If you suddenly pull back the camera, like, all of a sudden, you're saying something. Like, if you're doing it on purpose, you're doing it intentionally, there's something you want us to see from further away. If you're a little bit further away and you suddenly, like, kind of zoom in to one character's perspective, maybe it's because they're having a moment of deep emotion where that's the only thing that the story can contain at that moment.

 

[Erin] And that brings us to the homework. Which is to take a scene that you've written and write it in the closest third person limited you can possibly stand. Get right up in there. Then write it again at a slightly more distance, but still limited third person. Look at those two scenes side-by-side, and then say, what did I do differently in one than the other? What did I emphasize? Figure out from that which perspective you want to use when actually writing the scene.

 

[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-12-fashion-as-a-writing-metaphor

 

Key points: Howard is wearing clothes! Fashion and writing or storytelling: you do it every single day. What you wear is how you present yourself to the world. Fashion is instant language. What do you put on the page without thinking about it? Fashion is where the personal meets the cultural. Make one element interesting. Pick one thing, and make that interesting. Experiment, and ask for help! You don't have to do exactly what they suggest. Develop your taste. Take one thing off! Howard, put your pants back on! Know what your go-to items are, and why. What do you want people to feel at the end of your book? Use your tools with intent to build something exciting and dynamic.

 

[Season 20, Episode 12]

 

[Mary Robinette] Hey, guess what? The 2025 Writing Excuses Cruise is over 50% sold out. During this week-long masterclass, I'm going to be leading writers like yourself through a series of workshops designed to give you the tools to take your writing to the next level. Space is limited, but there is still time to secure your spot. We're going to be sailing out of Los Angeles from September 18th through 26. Regardless of where you are in your writing journey, this event is yoru opportunity to learn new skills while exploring the beautiful Mexican Riviera. Whether you're revising a story, reworking a character arc, or revitalizing your plot, you'll leave more confident in your current story and bolstered by a new set of friends. Join us on board at writingexcuses.com/retreats.

 

[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

 

[Season 20, Episode 12]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Fashion as a Writing Metaphor.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm wearing clothes.

[DongWon] So...

[Mary Robinette] Thank god.

[Laughter]

 

[DongWon] We all are grateful for that fact. So, this episode, we are returning to the little mini-series that we're doing throughout this season of different personal metaphors for how we think about the process of writing and storytelling. I was excited this episode to talk about how I think about fashion and why I think that's a useful metaphor for approaching writing. So there's a few things I want to hit here. But the first thing I want to start with is I think fashion and writing, or fashion and storytelling, are very similar in one very specific way. Which is that whether you know it or not, you are already doing this every single day of your life. Right? It's… You are writing emails. You are sending text messages. You are al… Communicating with the people around you. You're telling stories to your family, to your friends. You are also getting dressed every day. Now, this doesn't mean necessarily that you are putting on an outfit and participating in the general broader culture of fashion in an intentional and deliberate way. In the same way that sending an email to your boss is not you writing fiction or telling a story in the same intentional way that you would be if you were pursuing this for publication. There's lots of reasons to put clothes on your body. There's lots of reasons to put text on a page.

[Howard] Kind of the difference between ordering a pizza and standing up and reading a poem. There's… Ordering a pizza on the phone. Okay, as anybody done that in the last 10 years? I don't know. But, I mean, you have that conversation and there's a base minimum of information that needs to be transmitted and you're just going to transmit it and be done. But if you're standing up at open mic night in the poetry club… I've never been to one of those. Are those even things?

[Chuckles]

[Howard] But there's a lot more intent in what's… What you're saying.

[DongWon] Yes, those are real things, for the record, but… Yes. People do do exactly what you're saying.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] But it's kind of going back to the episode about cooking as well. The difference between doing it for subsistence, doing it for everyday purposes, versus doing it for… With intention, with a reason why you're engaging with it.

[Mary Robinette] One of the things about that for me is that whether or not you intend something, you're still communicating.

[DongWon] Exactly.

 

[Mary Robinette] There is this quote by Miuccia Prada which I have loved for years, which is, "What you wear is how you present yourself to the world. Fashion is instant language." One of the places that we see this most is actually in the area of privilege. That somebody who is, like a CEO, can come into the office in jeans, but somebody who's angling for a raise cannot. So, if you're getting up and saying, yeah, it doesn't matter what I put on. It doesn't matter to you because it doesn't affect the way you move through the world. But someone else who does not have the same standing, the same other societal pressures on them, cannot make the same choices. So whether or not you're intending to make a statement, you're still making a statement.

[DongWon] Well, one of the reasons I wanted to bring fashion as the metaphor for this episode was I truly love fashion. I love designer clothes, in terms of, like, seeing what's going on in the fashion scene, what's going on in the world of design. But how I dress myself is also a point of interest, but also difficulty and pain. Right? One thing I do want to emphasize is just because we're talking about fashion, a lot of us have very different relationships to clothing at different points in our lives for different reasons. It is hard to dress yourself in a way that makes you feel good and excited to go out the door. It's hard to find a thing that feels natural to your form of expression and meets the expectations of all the people around you. Right? I just really want to emphasize that as were talking about this, that there's an easy and fun to fashion, it's also very challenging. I am someone who's made an interest out of dressing myself for a lot of reasons. Some of those were about assimilation and blending in. And as I've come out as queer and as I've transitioned, having to learn a whole new language for how to dress has been a particular challenge for me and an ongoing one. Learning how to speak those languages, learning how to approach that, made fashion into a thing that I… Instead of something that I was doing by reflex, to something I was doing by intention and deliberateness to figure out how to communicate certain things that I wanted to communicate.

[Mary Robinette] For me, what you're saying about the… Something that I'm doing out of reflex. I want to bring us to how this works extremely well as a metaphor for prose. We talk about transparent prose. Transparent prose is a fashion. Like, right now, transparent prose in the United States is that you sound like you're a 30-year-old white guy. Jane Austen was riding transparent prose in her day. But if you drop one of her books down in front of most people, it's… There are parts of it that are impenetrable. When I was writing the Glamorous Histories series, one of the things that I would always do is I would put, just to amuse myself, I would put an unaltered sentence from Jane Austen in every novel, and without fail, my editor, my copy editor, and the proofreader would all flagged that sentence as awkward. And, beside the great satisfaction of saying stet…

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] To Jane Austen, it highlighted for me the fact that even though I was trying to write in Austenian English, it was still… I was still… My fashion was still rooted in the 21st-century. When you put something in another time period, that was transparent prose in her day, it is awkward now. So, for me, when I'm thinking about writing, I am thinking about what things am I putting on the page without thinking about it?

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] If you don't read the language, you'll struggle to speak the language. If you don't understand the language, it's very difficult to use the language. As we're recording this episode, just today, we got off of Navigator of the Seas, the Royal Caribbean cruise ship, and you might think, well, all the passengers are wearing clothing that's… Some of its fancy and some of its casual and whatever, but there is a very specific language being spoken among the crewmembers where there are very small indicators of rank and position. I could tell that, wait, the ones in the white shirts are generally the bosses of a given area, and the ones in the colored shirts are the ones who are reporting to the bosses. But I didn't know where to look for pins or stripes or whatever to tell rank. But for them, that fashion really is instant language. At a glance, they know where a person stands on the ladder of rank in the ship.

[Mary Robinette] We do this all the time. I mean, if anyone has ever gone to a convention, you can immediately tell who the science-fiction people are, and it's hard to explain why. I mean, sometimes it is because there wearing a shirt that, in the Star Wars font, that says Metal Fours Be with You.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Metaphors be with you. It's just amazing. Sorry, I did actually read that as metal fours.

[Laughter]

[Erin] We were going with it.

[Mary Robinette] But when I'm thinking about fiction, it is again, like, what are the signals that I'm sending? I often think about the fashion of it. Like, is this a dressy occasion?

[DongWon] Yeah. I think that evolves over time, and those can be sort of genre indicators as well.

 

[Erin] One of the things I really like in thinking about fashion is that it's where the personal meets the cultural.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah…

[Erin] You know what I mean? Like, your… There's your own expression of identity, as we go through the year, one thing we've been talking about is the lens of who, and we will be getting to the lens of setting. In some ways, fashion is right where those two hit. Because there is… Fashion is influenced by the cultural norms around you, but also the cultural norms you bring with you. What you may believe to be a formal dress is not… For some reason, I'm thinking of Downtown Abbey and, like, all the shame of wearing a… What we would consider to be a very formal tuxedo, because they only wore white ties, where it was like an all white outfit, and wearing a black dress coat was, like, who would ever do that?

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] I believe… You're looking at me as if no.

[Mary Robinette] No. White tie means that literally your tie is white.

[Erin] Sorry.

[Mary Robinette] But it was with tails. It's okay. Sorry.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] I just…

[Erin] I do not know the language of what we were just talking about, as we can tell. But, like, I think what's important is that, like, what does that culture has shifted.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Someone who comes down in a full tuxedo right now, you're thinking they must be at a wedding or going to a particular type of special occasion in a particular culture as well. So, in stories, even when you're not thinking about the character's fashion, how is the way that they would express themselves constrained, redefined, or experienced by the culture around them?

[DongWon] Well, it's also how your personal is reshaped and changed by what you are wearing to the occasion. Right? So if you show up in a T-shirt and shorts to the wedding, then that's going to communicate a very different thing about who you are and what your expectations are in arriving at that event. In the same way that if you're trying to write a horror story and you're putting bunnies and ponies in it that are all lovely and fluffy, that everyone's a little bit like, hey, this… You may not be bringing the correct language to this particular genre expectation that you're meeting here. Right? So, the expectations that people have around what the event is and what clothing is appropriate are kind of useful to think about as you're thinking about what story you're trying to tell and how you want to tell it. And with that, let's take a pause for a moment, and when we come back, we'll get a little bit more into how you can begin to dress yourself with intent.

 

[DongWon] So, before we started recording, I made all of my fellow podcasters watch a TicTok with me that is a TicTok sound that I very much enjoy because it mostly is just people cycling through a bunch of great outfits, and I learned a lot from it and get a lot of inspiration from it. But the sound itself is talking about ways to think about putting a good outfit together. Right? And the sound goes, if it's not interesting by color, it needs to be interesting by shape. If it's not interesting by shape, it needs to be interesting by texture. If it's not interesting by texture, it needs to be interesting by color. Right? So it's sort of highlighting how you have these different elements that you can pull from, that whenever you have a story or piece of fiction, it needs to stand out in one of several different ways. Right? The voice needs to be interesting, the thematic elements need to be interesting, it needs to be hitting a certain genre expectation. Right? Understanding what your broad tools are that you can use to pull a reader in is really, really important.

[Howard] Years ago, I was the toastmaster at a couple of conventions. I realized that the most important tool in my toolbox for being a toastmaster was a tuxedo. Because when… And, yeah, there's a measure of privilege in here. When the white guy in a tuxedo steps on stage and picks up the microphone, I didn't need to say anything, everybody just went quiet. Because it signaled to the whole room that something was about to begin. I don't speak fashion very well, but I knew that piece of syntax and I knew how to use it.

[DongWon] It was interesting by shape in that case. Right? The silhouette you're presenting communicated something very clear to us, which is, fancy person in charge. Right?

 

[Dan] One of the things that I loved about that little TicTok clip that you showed us is that it uses the word interesting instead of the word good.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[Dan] It's not saying that you have to be perfect in any of these areas, it's not saying you have to be good in any of these areas, just be interesting in one of them. Obviously, your writing needs to also be good. That's what people want to read. But being interesting in your voice, being interesting in your perspective, in your technology or your magic, whatever it is that you're talking about. Find something that is going to grab attention and be interesting.

[Mary Robinette] It doesn't have to be interesting in all of those things.

[Dan] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] The… You can pick one thing that you love, that you are fascinated by, and set it against the relatively neutral background and it'll pop. So you can focus things that way when you're building. Whether it's building an outfit for yourself or thinking about a story that your writing. It doesn't have to be an original voice and an original plot and original characters. It can just be one of those things.

[DongWon] Well, what I also like about it is… One thing… When I see people start to dress themselves, and they're trying to figure out how to be interesting and distinctive and how to have intent in presenting themselves, the first thing they reach for is color. Right? So, often you see teens, young people, when they're first starting to figure out how do I look like a person, they'll be like bright colors, dark colors, whatever it is. Right? That's why we see, like… We talk about, like, teen Goths so much because they learned that if I dressed all in black, I can appear a certain way and be of a certain community and have certain expectations versus neons versus pastels, all of those things.

[Mary Robinette] [garbled] the eighties was rough.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] Yeah. Exactly. Describing all those things is really useful, but then what I really love is thinking… Reminding myself and reminding other people that there are other tools in your kit, too. Right? You don't just have voice. You don't just have character.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] You don't just have this, that, and the other. I'm currently wearing a monochromatic outfit, I'm wearing all black, but in three different textures. So I think about that when I get dressed. I was like, oh, if I'm having this linen top, then I want sort of something a little more billowy flowy on pants, and then I want those leather boots to go with it. Right? So, learning to think about the different tools in your kit and reminding yourself that, oh, this scene isn't working because I'm just trying to lean into the action of it and it's falling flat because all I have is a single note of action. What else can I lay into it? Where's the texture, where's the color, where's the shape?

 

[Mary Robinette] I think this is also something else that happens to people is that they are afraid to experiment and they're looking for someone to tell them what is correct, and also afraid to ask for help. So it's this weird thing that will happen to people. I went through. Where I had… My body had changed shape and I didn't know how to dress myself anymore. So actually went to a… And again, it was at a point in my life where I could afford this, I went to a shopper and asked for help understanding what looked good on my body. That was all I needed. I didn't have to keep going back to that same thing. I think when you're writing, that this is what workshops do for you. Like, how does this work? And you don't have to always… You don't have to do exactly what they tell you, like, sometimes she would show me something and I'm like, no.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] That's sending a signal that is very not me. Even if it looks good on my body, it does not match my personality.

[DongWon] Yes. Well, that's why when I showed this to everyone, Howard, you had a really interesting response where you said this keep saying interesting. And we had to flag that is a good thing about this, but your reaction was I don't know what interesting means in this case.

[Howard] Yeah.

[DongWon] And one thing I want to emphasize as we're talking about how to dress yourself with intent, how to engage with fashion, and how to engage with writing, the most important thing you have to do in all of this is to develop taste. Right? Not necessarily good taste. That doesn't mean that you have to be agreeing with the high arbiters of… Who award the Pulitzer Prize. But it does mean you have to have a taste. And that is a personal perspective that you're bringing to what clothes you're putting on your body, what words you're putting on the page.

 

[Dan] I want to change the topic just slightly. I teach a class about how to write thrillers. Which is a very small kind of spare style of writing. I use a Coco Chanel quote all the time when I teach it, which is, "Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off." This idea kind of goes back to what we're talking about texture or shape or color… What are the tools in your toolbox? You don't need to use them all. You probably don't want to use them all. Trim back. Be a little spare, a little lean. Especially when you're writing something like a thriller.

[Howard] I have two reactions to that. The first reaction is Coco Chanel looking at me and saying, "No. No, no, Howard! Put the pants back on!"

[Laughter]

[Howard] Take something else off. But the second response is that when we were studying… When I was studying music and we were looking at arrangements, we were told the sound of one violin is very, very interesting. The sound of two violins is fighting. You want one violin or you want several. If they're all going to be playing the same note. A string quartet, yeah, that's another thing. But it was this idea that if it's too interesting into many ways, then the things fight and we lose focus. So, yeah, Coco Chanel, look in the mirror, take one thing off.

[DongWon] It's the power of editing. Right? Is what she's fundamentally talking about. Right? Editing in terms of removing the one to many things that's on the plate, removing the one to many things in the outfit. It's the… Where the idea of kill your darlings comes from. Right? That may be your favorite ring that you're wearing. But it's a different metal tone than everything else you're wearing, and it's clashing. Or it's a different shape, and it's clashing. You take it off, it'll just look so… That much cleaner. And take it from something that feels costumey to something that feels fashion.

[Mary Robinette] It also helps you focus. It helps you say, this is the thing that's important.

[DongWon] Right.

 

[Erin] I also think it's interesting to think about, like, what your go to… Maybe this is just me, but, like, I have things in my closet that I wear all the time. Like, you know what I mean? It's like… I got like 20 things, but, like, these three are, like, if you see me, you probably see me in one of those. Because I like them the most, they feel the most comfortable. They're the hardest, I think, the same, like, to get rid of, if I'm like, oh, these don't fit the occasion. But, like… But I love them. So I'm thinking similarly in writing, like, what are the things that you go to over and over again, and then what is it about them, so that if you're… Like, if I decide, like, I love all these casual T-shirts, but I have to go to a formal event, they will not work. What is it that I like about them? Is it the shape? Is it the color? Do you know what I mean?

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Is it the texture? If it's the texture, how can I find texture in a different form? So, thinking about some of the tools that you use, like, even if it's not the tool… If your darling won't work for this particular piece, maybe it will work… Like, maybe something about the reason that it is your darling can be found elsewhere in that story.

[DongWon] Well, that's why I like talking about taste. It's like… Taste is almost this taboo thing to talk about in a certain way, because there's so… That's… It's so loaded with a certain valence of, like, good taste, bad taste. It's just like…

[Howard] In poor taste.

[DongWon] Yeah. Exactly. But really, all taste is is having a point of view. It's having a perspective. It's coming from a place in how you think about your dress, how you think about what you're interested in. Or which kind of stories you're interested in. The only way to develop your taste is to find out what you like. Right? And, like, read more, consume more books, consume more stories. Look at more people wearing clothes and think about why did they decide to dress that way?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Going back to the thing that we were talking about at the beginning with that Prada quote, that it is about how you present yourself. Often, fashion as it changes… Because fashion appears in clothing and music and architecture. It's often about that communicating this is the community that I belong to, and also, this is where I am in a power structure. It's frequently driven by a [garbled hierarchical?] story in some form or another, which is one of the reasons that you'll see people, I think, when they are like, well, I write literary fiction. I will discard all of the pieces of science fiction unless I put them on as costume. That's one of the reasons that I think science fiction writers get so mad when they see a literary person whose using science fiction tropes and does not understand how they work. It's one of the problems when you're seeing people putting on another culture as a costume. It's because they don't understand how it communicates to… And it's saying, I belong to a community that they don't belong to, whether it's in fiction or real life. It's also not understanding how things connect.

[DongWon] If you haven't taken the time to develop your taste in that thing, then you'll show up in costume and everyone'll will be like, oh, you don't go here.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] And we can tell.

[Erin] And, I think, on the other side, like… I'm reminded of a sort of comparison is the thief of joy. Which is, I remember finding out a while ago that, like, every famous person has their clothes tailored, and also just a lot of people in the world, like, their clothes are tailored to fit their body exactly after they buy them. So when you have bought something off the rack and walk out and are like, how come this is not flowing to my body the way it is when I see other people walking through the world, you don't know what they've done to their clothes between the moment they acquired them and the moment that they're actually out there. I think that, similarly, to like if you compare somebody's tenth book to the thing that you just wrote today, and you're like, well, why is there thing so perfect and mine is so messy. It's your at a different point, you haven't done the same things, you haven't tailored in the same way. Maybe you are still developing your taste and they've had longer to think about and develop theirs. So when you do that direct comparison, it isn't… They're not better, they're just using the tools differently.

[DongWon] And also, pro tip for the audience, it takes so much less money to get stuff tailored than you think it does.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] You probably think it's hundreds of dollars. It's like 15 to 20. Like, it's worth it in a lot of times. But, kind of going to what you're saying, I've seen people be so incredibly fashionable, the coolest outfits I've ever seen, and they have assembled that for under 30 dollars at thrift stores. I've seen people who are incredibly stylish, incredibly cool, and that's a 5000 dollar outfit that they're wearing. There's, like, a leveling effect to that, because their ability to bring their perspective to what clothes they're putting on their body is the thing that's equating them, not how much money they're able to spend. So, you can be a completely self-taught writer who grew up doing fanfiction and be delivering some of the most impactful narrative experiences out there or you could have an MFA and a PhD under your belt and be delivering the same effect. Right?

 

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. When I see people, I'm interested in what they're communicating to me about themselves.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Sometimes I see people and I think what you're communicating to me is that you are expensive.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] Sometimes I read books, and I'm like, mmm, you're communicating to me that you are expensive. You just feel, you want to feel fancy. I see this… unh, sometimes it's in published stuff, but a lot of times in early career writers, I'll ask them, like, how do you want people to feel at the end of this book? You can tell that what they want, and sometimes they actually voice it, is they want the reader to think that they are clever. I'm like, that's not…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] That is almost never going to work out the way you want it to work out.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Yeah.

[DongWon] That feels like somebody wanting me to know that this is designer, not that I thought about how these lapel ratios work with my shoulders.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Like, I think, those are a different type of conversation that you could be having.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Someone recently asked me if I liked her sweater, which was weird. But then I was like, yeah, it seems… They then proceeded to tell me the providence of the sweater, instead of telling me what they liked about it.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] I'm like, I don't actually care where it came from or what line it's in. I am interested in the textures and why… What I had asked was what do the numbers mean on it?

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] They then proceeded to tell me about the providence instead of like, why they had a personal connection to it. Like, why did you pick this?

[DongWon] I think that really comes back to the core reason I wanted to talk about fashion is, for me, what clothes you put on your body, what stories you tell, it all comes down to intent. If you're approaching whatever it is you're doing with the intent, you can take any of the tools available to you and build something really exciting out of it and do something really dynamic with it. If you are going for the easiest off-the-shelf option, just because everyone else is doing it, then that's always going to be a little less interesting to me. Right? Learning to develop your taste for what's exciting to you and learning to develop that sense of intent toward your craft is very challenging, but also, I think, really, really rewarding once you start figuring out how to do that.

 

[DongWon] With that, I have a little bit of homework for you to start figuring out how to do this. That is, I want you to go to your closet and take one article of clothing that you love. It can be a T-shirt, it can be a pair of pants, it can be a belt, whatever it is. Take a thing that you love from your closet. Now I want you to build three different outfits around that. Build an outfit that you would wear just out on the street, going to the grocery store, going to the coffee shop, whatever it is you do on your day-to-day. What's an everyday version of that? Now, take that same article of clothing, and think about going to a family dinner at your parents' house, that all your aunts and uncles and cousins and everybody is coming to. What does that look like? Now, take that same article of clothing and incorporate it into an outfit that you'd go out for a night out on the town with your people, whether that's your friends, your date, whatever it is. Think about how that same article of clothing, that same tool, can serve you in these different genres, these different audiences. Then start thinking about what in your fiction works that way?

 

[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. Thanks. It has pockets.

[Chuckles]

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-10-interview-with-chuck-tingle-breaking-the-rules

 

Key Points: Any number of ways to approach art. Failure is a learning opportunity. Capture the truth of the moment that it's written. Try punk rock writing. If you can't fix it, feature it. Message first, then character and plot. Be the slippery slope you want to see in the world. Take the road less travelled. Come at them as an equal. Art is more than just the words in the book. 

 

[Season 20, Episode 10]

 

[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

 

[Season 20, Episode 10]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Interview with Chuck Tingle: Breaking the Rules.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[Mary Robinette] We are joined today by our special guest, Chuck Tingle. Who... Let me just say, as we start off, I'm so happy to have you here because love is real.

[Chuck] Oh, wild. Do you know... Want to know why I'm happy to be here, along with that? I think there's some buckaroos that believe we are one and the same, or at least...

[Laughter]

[Chuck] About a decade ago did. I guess this kind of clears it up unless you have a little soundboard and you're flipping between sound modulations. But actually this is pretty good evidence that we are two separate entities.

[Howard] That would be...

[DongWon] [garbled]

[Howard] Impressive to fake.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Very talented performer. So...

[Mary Robinette] Yes. Yes. It's amazing. You're actually my cat. But...

[Chuckles]

 

[Mary Robinette] For readers who are unfamiliar with you, would you mind telling them just a little bit about some of what you write and who you are?

[Chuck] Yes. So I started off self-publishing erotica. I still do that. I have about 350 erotica shorts called Tinglers, and then I recently have signed a deal with Nightfire, which is part of Tor, part of McMillan, traditionally published horror novels. The second of which just came out. And then I just announced that I've got four more coming. So, yeah.

[Mary Robinette] [This is… Garbled]

[DongWon] That's awesome.

[Mary Robinette] This is very, very fantastic. I became aware of you first because of your erotica. Then when I started seeing that you were going to be doing traditionally published things, one of the first… The assumption that I made was that it was going to be similar to what you were doing. The reason that we have you in to talk about breaking the rules is that your path to publishing traditionally is extremely unconventional. But the other thing is that you are ignoring a piece of conventional wisdom, which is that you are supposed to put yourself into a niche and stay in that niche. If you're going to do two different niches, that you need to have [garbled] for those.

[DongWon] Yes. So…

[Chuck] I think pretty much everything about my career has been pretty untraditional. Unconventional. The writing itself, I think there's a lot of rules that I break. It is something that I like to talk about. Because I think there's a lot of buckaroos out there who are creators, not just writers, but in any sort of medium who kind of get discouraged if they don't fall into a specific path of kind of traditional creativity. There's a reason for a lot of those paths. I mean, obviously, like, there is a system to getting a publishing deal and everything. But I like to talk about my own journey, because there's some really incredible things that happen if you kind of chart your own path. Sometimes that can lead to astonishing failure, and sometimes that can lead to something really beautiful. Not just beautiful, but kind of push mediums forward sometimes. I mean, it's… That's such an important role out there. So, I just think it's important to talk about it, and not discourage those that think, well, that's not how I think. Because there's any number of ways to approach art.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] This is… Any number of ways to approach art is something that is like a flag that I will ride to. You have my sword.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] One of the things that we are fond of saying here at Writing Excuses is tools, not rules.

[Chuck] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] I think that that's one of the things… When you're talking about art, that there isn't a right way to approach it, because we're all coming from a different point.

[Chuck] Yes.

 

[DongWon] One thing I wanted to pick up on in there, too, was, Chuck, you mentioned the possibility of astonishing failure, I think is how you put it. What I… One of the things I love about you bringing that up immediately is it such a possibility in any creative endeavor, in the artistic endeavor. Learning to not be afraid of that failure, but to also embrace it as an opportunity to learn more and explore and discover what works for you, and what doesn't work for you, for me, I think, is incredibly important. But to start out almost, like, on the negative, the downbeat note, and, like, what are those moments of failure that you've run into that you found instructive for you in terms of figuring out how you wanted to move forward? What were the paths that made sense to you?

[Chuck] That is a great question. You've caught me, a little bit, because…

[Chuckles]

[Chuck] I use that… Well, I use that word, because we're communicating through words. It's semantics. We're just… We are speaking, we need a word to put value to an idea. But if you were to really, like, dive deep, and I guess that's what we're doing here, get philosophical about it, I kind of think an art failure doesn't actually exist. I'm using the word to make a point, but in reality, when I look at the process of any career, but I'm just going to talk about my own. Anything, anytime, let's say I had a Tingler that came out that I thought was going to do really well and didn't, I just… Failure's the best word for it, because we all know what that means. But if you actually look at it, that is literally just a… That is a learning opportunity. It is an experience. It is, honestly, the stuff that life on this timeline is made of. It is so beautiful, in fact, it's equally beautiful to success. So I… It was… If I'm really going to get in touch with the depths of my feeling about it, I just… I don't think that it exists, it's part of the process. Making great art is not just some trajectory upward into the sky like a rocket. It is a river that flows in various directions, and all of that is important. It's equally important, I think.

[Howard] To paraphrase badly Mahatma Gandhi, be the try-fail cycle you want to see in a good book.

[Laughter]

[Chuck] Absolutely.

[Howard] We see this in all of the things that we consume as entertainment. We see this idea of a try-fail cycle. As long as the failure is not something that stops you completely, it can be part of a process that leads to the success that you were aiming for.

[Mary Robinette] This is… Yeah. This is a thing that I love, is the part of a process. There's a thing in film and television where you only need to get the perfect shot once. Right. When you're watching the Muppets, they fling puppets all the time. There is this outtake reel that I love from Emmet Otter's Jug Town Christmas… Err, Jug Band Christmas, where they need a drum to roll out of a store.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] It rolls out of the store and fails so many different times in different hysterically funny ways. This blooper reel is now one of my very favorite things. But they only need to get it right once. I think one of the wonderful things about writing is that you can try something and you don't have to put it out into the world until it's… Until you have successfully gotten the drum to roll the way you want it to roll. Then, even if someone is like,, whatever, that drum is not perfect for me. It's like, well, that's fine.

 

[Chuck] Yes. I also tend to believe that the quote wrong way of the drum to roll is actually more perfect than the quote perfect one. I think that with art, a lot of the things… Like, for me, it's not about capturing the perfect story. It's about capturing the truth of the moment that it's written. That's the goal for me. So, Tinglers are a perfect example of that. I think of my writing, specifically with Tinglers, as, like, punk rock writing.

[Chuckles]

[Chuck] If you look at other mediums, if you look at, like, music for instance, if you have a song and you play it a little too fast and it's a little out of tune and it's a little sloppy, someone will listen to that and say, wow, that's a perfect punk rock song. If you do that in painting, you can say, oh, that was something like, oh, you really captured the movement and the emotion or something, if you don't fix those mistakes. In writing, for whatever reason, I have just found that there's a strictness that I kind of like to push back against. So the mistakes, like, spelling errors or things in my erotica shorts, I don't… I don't even see those as errors, I see them as punk. It is capturing the moment that it was made. A lot of those I wrote in 24 hours about a news item, and the idea that I should make it seem like it wasn't written in 24 hours just seems silly to me. I… It's a piece of art and I'm capturing the moment. So I kind of like to look outside of the conventions of any sort of genre, but specifically the medium of writing, and think, well, what do these quote mistakes actually mean if we're actually just trying to capture the moment?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. There's a thing they say in puppetry… I think other places too, but… If you can't fix it, feature it.

[Chuck] Oh, beautiful. Yes.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] As a cartoonist, I'm fond of saying that art for art's sake is allowed to take its time. Art for money has to run like it stole something.

[Chuckles]

[Chuck] That's a great one, too.

[Howard] It's… Because the mistakes… Mistakes isn't the right word. That first stroke you throw down with a pen as an energy to it, and enthusiasm to it, that repeated strokes trying to get it right won't have. So, boy, sometimes you just gotta roll with the first take.

[Mary Robinette] I feel like there's a joke right here about repeated strokes and Tinglers, but…

[Chuck] Oh, there you go. [Garbled] Just wait until this episode comes out and you see a fresh Tingler…

[Laughter]

[Chuck] Directly referencing Writing Excuses.

[Mary Robinette] Oh, my goodness. Any time we're talking about things coming out, it's always exciting for me.

[Chuck] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] But before we do anything more on that, I think we're going to take our pause. As I break my [garbled] podcasting.

[We're fine. We're all fine.]

[Mary Robinette] We're fine. So let's take our pause for a thing of the week.

 

[Chuck] So, going with the theme of this episode of breaking the rules, and as a Writing Excuses fan myself, I listen all the time, I have yet to hear anyone recommend food. So I have… I would like to recommend the Franken stand, which for anyone either living in Los Angeles or visiting Los Angeles, it's a vegan hot dog stand that serves horror-themed hotdogs.

[Laughter]

[Chuck] So, every week, you show up and you're not sure what you're going to get. Maybe the Mummy with a nice pale alfredo drizzled across the top, wrapped up. You could get the Swamp Thing, which is more like a chili dog. There's all kinds of things. It's just really incredible. It's the… You have to follow them on Instagram to find out where they're going to be. Normally they are some days in front of a horror shop called the Mystic Museum out in the big valley. Yeah. So my thing of the week is a delicious vegan horror-themed hotdog at the Franken stand, and their Instagram is the hotdog_franken.

[DongWon] As a new resident of Los Angeles, I am excited to go and track this one down and see what they have to offer.

[Mary Robinette] And I am thinking that anyone who is coming on the Writing Excuses cruise that is cruising out of Los Angeles in September is probably also going to make a slight detour too.

[Chuck] Oh, there you go. You've gotta get a haunt dog. That's what they call them.

[Laughter]

[Chuck] Not hotdogs. Haunt dogs.

[Mary Robinette] This is amazing to me.

[DongWon] I've had some hotdogs that I felt haunted by. So…

[Chuck] Yes.

 

[Howard] Writing doesn't have to be a solitary activity. That's why we host in-person retreats and workshops. At the Writing Excuses retreats, you'll get access to classes, one-on-one office hours, critique sessions, and activities to keep you inspired and motivated. Become a more engaging storyteller and learn how to navigate the publishing landscape. As you make meaningful progress on your stories, you'll also build connections with your fellow writers that will last for years to come. Check out our upcoming events at writingexcuses.com/retreats.

 

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[Mary Robinette] All right. So, as we come back in, I want to talk about some of the rules that you feel like other people get trapped by that you just kind of stomped over with great joy and enthusiasm.

[Chuck] Wow. I feel like there's two categories of that. There is… There are the rules of kind of the business side of things. There's the rules of the creative side of things. I think that… I mean… Part of both of these is that while… I am a masked buckaroo. It's funny. In the introduction, we didn't even mention that, but for those listeners not familiar, I am anonymous, and I wear a pink bag over my head. I would say that… I mean, just to list a few, actual… Well, the way I do book tours is certainly different. I don't do readings. Because, really, they didn't make sense to me. I thought if you're trying to get new readers, what are you going to do? Show up and talk about a book that nobody's read and have spoilers? I found it to be kind of fundamentally broken, so, like, I do my own thing with some shows. I think that in the creative side of things, I kind of disagree with the idea that you should only show, never tell. I think that you need to do both.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Chuck] Which you've actually done an episode on that was pretty wonderful. So [garbled] your listeners, go back to that one. I also… There's this whole discussion of sort of should you write with character or plot, is the big thing, or, well, who's in the driver's seat? I think most of the time you're supposed to say character. I would argue that that… I like to write message first. I always put the message in the driver's seat. Kind of the what am I delivering to the reader, what is the gift of this, and then I would say probably character second and then plot third. There's all these things that I come out it with… And that come back to the anonymous thing. Many buckaroos have tried to guess my real identity.

[Chuckles]

[Chuck] All the time I have kind of… I'm breaking off… Breaking down the layers. But I will say, for those listening, because I have said this before, that many assume that I am, like, a writer under this [garbled], but I am not. Which I think becomes apparent. I mean, I'm a writer now, but coming into this, I did not know this industry at all. Which I guess moves on to the… Kind of the business side of things, which, DongWon, my agent, who happens to be here…

[Mary Robinette] Shocking.

[DongWon] Amazing coincidence.

[Chuck] Experienced firsthand, which is just kind of… I think that my path… I used [garbled] since about the querying and all that stuff. Actually, I just… I wrote the book, I wrote Camp Damascus, and then I went on Twitter and said I have a book. I think I'd like a traditional publisher. Does anyone want to put it out?

[DongWon] Literally, just tweeted it out.

[Laughter]

[Chuck] Yes, I just tweeted it, and then old McMillan said, I guess that's a good one, let's do that. That is the short version. It's more entertaining. You could also look at it like I spent eight years building my fan base, writing erotica, creating kind of this whole thing outside of the books itself. I prefer the short version because I think it's funny. But…

[DongWon] I love the short version.

[Chuck] The short version is very fun.

 

[DongWon] But I have a question, which is, you came into this, you're saying, that you didn't know much about the publishing industry. Yet, years ago, you started writing the Tinglers and putting them up is self published. What was the thing that led you to that choice? Right? Like, when you were starting, before you knew what the rules even were, before you knew that you were breaking any what was the thing that got you to say, hey, I want to write these. I'm going to put them up here. Here's how I'm going to do it. Then, you developed a very distinctive style since then, of course. But…

[Chuck] Yes.

[DongWon] What was that inception there?

[Chuck] So, I always have… I've been a creator my whole life. So… I just thought, as a medium, that the fact that you could self publish something and kind of work through an idea and it could be out in 24 hours and have an audience, I found to be pretty fascinating and also kind of underused in the sense of, like, hey, if this works, I could talk about current events, I could express myself in this way. I would say that there was a sort of a personal kind of version of that, and a political version. The personal version was that I am on the autism spectrum, so I am [garbled] typically masking all the time. The idea of being able to create this art in, like I said, a punk rock way where I said, well, I'm just going to… My autism really shows itself in how I organize things. I'm so strict about things, and I thought, well, if I have 24 hours, I want to write these quickly. I'm not going to have time for that, and it's going to be kind of therapeutic, which it very much ended up being. Then, also, my queerness as a bisexual buckaroo in a hetero presenting relationship… Actually, I thought, I don't get to express my queerness [garbled], so, actually, kind of therapeutic personal reasons that I suspected would be very helpful for me, and ended up literally changing my life. So that was a good guess. Then, politically speaking, the kind of crux of the idea was that I was always fascinated by conservatives… There was this line a long time ago, kind of the gay marriage line was, well, if we let two buckaroos marry, what's next? Are we going to marry free trees? Are we going to marry a sentient automobile? I always thought…

[Howard] They're already marrying their cars.

[Chuckles]

[Chuck] Well, there you go. I always thought that kind of slippery slope argument… It was always kind of trotted out like this dystopian landscape. And every time they said it, even back then, I thought that sounds wonderful.

[Chuckles]

[Chuck] What a utopia. So part of writing a Tingler, as, like a larger piece of all of these books was that if I just wrote about this world where that conservative nightmare was kind of just you let it run wild and show that that's actually more of a utopia than a dystopia. So… Those were the two pieces where I thought, okay. Writing these quick shorts is going to be an interesting way to do that. Let's see if it can work. And it did.

[DongWon] You gotta be the slippery slope you want to see in the world.

[Chuckles]

 

[Howard] It's fascinating to me that your path to publishing… Yeah. You broke rules. But now we look at self pub to trad pub and that's not really rule breaking so much as it is a road less traveled.

[Chuck] Yes.

[Howard] 25 years ago, when I started putting Schlock Mercenary on the Internet, it was the same sort of thing. It was very rule breaking. Web comics were the new thing. Now you look at them and, oh, it's… Everybody knows what that is. Oh, it's a web comic. So in part I think some of the pattern here may be that if you break rules or if you break from a form, if you break from a process, and do something in a new way and succeed, the next generation is going to treat that as an accepted form, an accepted pattern, an established way of accomplishing things.

[Chuck] Oh, yes. Absolutely. I hope the lesson that they can take… That goes one step beyond that, too, which is I hope another generation, listeners to this, thinking, well, how am I going to break into it, not only could you say, well, I could trod the path that Chuck did, but the broader idea of I could just come at things from a totally different angle. Something that I have that Chuck has never thought. It's like that is the beauty of art right there. So I just I would love to encourage others to do that. I'm so proud that it has kind of worked out into a career that supports itself by kind of trodding this outsider path. And, thank you, DongWon, for being a part of that.

[DongWon] Thank you for letting me be a part of it. In terms of… You spent all that time building up your profile, having a career, doing the Tinglers, building that audience. You built… What you built outside of the traditional rules of publishing, even outside the rules of like indie publishing. Right? Like, even on the indie side, people work doing what you were doing in terms of the, like, punk rock methodology of writing in terms of, like, doing it in 24 hours, embracing the medium itself as part of what your message is. What then made you pivot again into sort of breaking through all of those rules now into doing something with a traditional publisher? Right?

[Chuck] Yes.

[DongWon] Like, in terms of making that move… Why put yourself back in all the boxes that traditional publishing creates and loves to reinforce and loves to build around all of us?

[Chuck] So, this is kind of, I guess, that's a great question. Why I encourage others… Like I… You can trod the traditional path, but, like I said, you can break off… The one thing I think breaking off really has going for it is that if you get the opportunity, if it resonates with this timeline and means something to buckaroos, then when you do want to reach more through a traditional means, you can enter that conversation a completely different way than most are used to. Because you come at it as a sort of equal. I wanted to do traditional publishing because I knew that I had the ability and the strength because of my own situation that I could come in and make sure I only signed a deal with someone who would also let me do my Tinglers. Who would listen to exactly what I say and kind of treat me as sort of like an hauteur author almost where it's… I am very involved in every aspect of it, where I think some other authors might not be, as far as, let's say, cover decisions or edits or things. Because at this point in my career, it's like, why would you sign a deal with Chuck Tingle and not want him to write a Chuck Tingle book?

[DongWon] Yep.

[Chuck] So I'm allowed to basically do whatever I want as if I was self published, but with this massive company behind me because I've already proven it. I think there's something with… Not just with publishing, but with all types of mediums where the hopefuls who want to be career artists almost see it as a lotto ticket. I think that's a very unfortunate way to look at it, because you're essentially, like, begging someone to notice for you. Never come to the big record label, the giant film studio, the big five publisher saying please, please, notice me. Come to them as an equal. I always think back to the show American Idol where everyone was competing for a quote record deal. It always blew my mind because I would see it and think, well, what's the deal? What is the record deal? Is it a good one? Is it a bad one? Why are we competing for this nebulous idea that is not a good thing inherently? I feel like in book publishing too, you see that as, like, if I could only get this big five publishing deal… What big five publishing deal? Is it going to be a good one or a bad one?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Chuck] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Well, I think one of the things that you said about coming to the table as an equal is something that… That people just don't… They get hung up on the dream. It's something that you don't have to have a huge platform already to bear in mind, that publishers exist to publish things. They do not exist without your work.

[Chuck] Yep. Absolutely. Yes. It's almost a mentality.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Chuck] It doesn't have to be. You just have to go and be willing… Go into it and think if I don't like this deal, I'll say no, because I'm a great writer.

[DongWon] Yep.

[Chuck] So few buckaroos seem to do that.

[DongWon] The way I frame it is you have to be undeniable. Right?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Because if you are deniable, they will deny you. Right?

[Chuck] Yes.

[DongWon] Part of being undeniable is being willing to walk away from a thing that may be what you've dreamed of, but is on bad terms or isn't with the right partner or at the right time. Right? All of those things, we all… All of us here we know too well can really derail you in a variety of ways. So it's not just reaching for a literary agent or a book deal or a opportunity, it has to be the right one.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] The way you get the right one is by manufacturing it, by creating it. Like, playing within the boundaries of how people expect you to behave won't always get you there. I mean, now you have to be respectful, you have to treat people…

[Mary Robinette] Right.

[DongWon] With courtesy and respect and on the terms that they are requesting for a variety of different reasons. But, provided you're living up to civility and treating people like people, you don't have to conform to the expected channels. Like, most of my clients did not come to me through the query process. Right? Most of my clients in one way or another didn't end up in the same sort of set of traditional rules that we talk about in terms of how you get a book deal. Right?

[Chuck] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] Well, what publishers are looking for a lot is the thing that Chuck is delivering, which is a book that no one else could have written.

[DongWon] Absolutely.

[Mary Robinette] I think that when we get hung up in rules, when we get hung up in the this is the way things are done, what we're doing is that we are putting ourselves into boxes, and that we're trimming off the pieces of ourselves that don't fit into those boxes, and those pieces are often the things that make our work the most interesting. [Garbled] Howard was using the metaphor of that first initial rough sketch, and then you draw over and over and over again. I see early career writers editing themselves out of the story in an effort to meet all of the rules.

[DongWon] Which is why the rawness of the Tinglers works so well. Right?

[Chuck] Yep.

[DongWon] You mentioned that you lead with message, not with character or plot. You lead with message. But then you also made the medium itself the message. Like, for you, how is leading with message driving what you choose to work on and how you write and how you publish?

[Chuck] Yes. Well, I've always looked at art as more than what's between the… For the example of writing, it's more than just the words in the book, and I think it really drives. I have found authors do not like this. But I'm going to go with it. There was a sort of thing of, like, well, I just want to write the books. I don't want to have to be a brand. I'm sure you probably have 10 episodes of the same podcast about it. Fortunately, for me, I have always loved that because I don't think that there is a difference. I don't think that art ever stops when the medium ends. I think when you read the last page of the book, that the art is in what you dream of that night when you go to bed.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Chuck] It's in what you eat for dinner. I think that the song doesn't end when the track stops. It's everything that you know about that singer. It's everything that you don't know about that singer. It's… So this idea of art in a vacuum, I think is really held onto tight by a lot of writers who are thinking, well, I don't want to have to be anything else. Being something else… Not being something else, that in itself is a statement. But, fortunately for me, I always thought, wow, how many different ways can I find to make art more than just the product, more than just the book? How can I make it everything that surrounds it? How can I show it's not in a vacuum? So I just spent a lot of time doing that because I love it. I kind of just got lucky in that fortunately for me… In an office, they call that branding. For me, I call it art.

[Mary Robinette] I feel like…

[DongWon] For me, I call that just being alive.

[Chuck] There you go. Yes.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I think this is a great opportunity for us to go ahead and move to our homework, because otherwise we will be talking for several hours.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Chuck, I think you have some homework for us.

 

[Chuck] I do have some homework. So, whatever your work in progress is, find a section, whether it's a chapter or just a page, and think of the writing rule that you believe is kind of the North Star of sort of not necessarily your personal rule, but the writing at large, the English department would hammer into you. Take that rule, whatever you think it may be, and try to rewrite that section either without that rule or doing the opposite. Then look at it and see what change does that make? Is there a version of it where you can use this as a tool, not a rule?

 

[Mary Robinette] I love that homework. Thank you so much for joining us, Chuck.

[Chuck] Oh, my gosh. Thank you for having me. And before I go, I've just got to say, it is truly an honor. This is… I came to this, like I said, not knowing anything about writing, and actually, listening to this podcast taught me a lot. So I am so honored to be here and I just… I love it. So it's really wonderful to be here. Thank you so much.

[Mary Robinette] Thank you. Well, you all have heard that here. So, now you are out of excuses. Go write.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-08-identity-3-stakes-and-fears

 

Key points: Stakes and fears. Relationships? What will make the character feel less about themselves? A friend might die? Your parent will be disappointed? Stakes often are what will I lose, rather than what will I gain.  Sometimes stakes are small. Low stakes sometimes become important. What is the worst thing that could happen? Sometimes big stakes aren't as important as small ones. What fears do you give a character? There's a hole, an absence in the character. Do we fear the unknown, or do we fear knowing it? Be obvious. Courage is picking up a flashlight and looking in the dark corner. Trauma points, along axes of safety, connection, and empowerment. 

 

[Season 20, Episode 08]

 

[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

 

[DongWon] We're excited to announce that our 2025 retreats are open for registration. Join us in Minnesota June 15th through 21st for a regenerate retreat where you will learn new skills, generate new ideas, or focus on your writing. With lots of opportunities for restoration and networking, you'll leave refreshed and reinvigorated. Tickets start at $1500 per person. You can also sail the high seas September 18th through 26th. We'll sail out of Los Angeles on the Royal Caribbean Navigator of the Seas and explore the Mexican Riviera while refining your writing. Whether you're revising a story, reworking a character arc, or tweaking your prose, you'll leave more confident in your current story. Tickets start at 2650 for writers and 2350 for family members. To learn more, visit writingexcuses.com/retreats.

 

[Season 20, Episode 08]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Character stakes and fears.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[DongWon] This week, we're continuijng our conversation about sort of the lenses of who, talking about character. The thing that I wanted to focus on this week is talking about how the fears that a character has and the stakes that a character faces help move them through the story, and help create the story that exists around them. Right? So, last time, we talked a lot about motivation and goals. The way I think about motivation and goals is very internal. Right? That is how the character's relating to themselves. When it comes to stakes, now we are getting to the parts where we're starting to feel tension, where the audience is relating to the character, we understand what their goals are, but now are feeling the pressure that they're facing and how that's moving them through the world. So when I think about stakes, I don't necessarily think necessarily about failure or danger, because we are all… Your readers are all people. As people, we tend to care about other people. So, what we care about are relationships more than we care about physical danger. Right? So, starting in an action scene can sometimes feel a little flat. But if you put a relationship under pressure in that, that's where a little bit more of that juice can come from. So, how do you guys think about creating stakes, especially initially when you're jumping into a story?

[Mary Robinette] I usually think about something that makes… Will make the character feel like less of themselves. So I find that early on, and then I say this with early career writers, that I would say, well, this… The goal is to have the eight gems of Rovisla…

[Laughter]

[Erin] We got a C in it.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Sorry. I do pronounce…

[Howard] That letter's supposed to be an apostrophe.

[Mary Robinette] I do pronounce the apostrophes. It's a regional variation. So… If they fail, then they don't have the eight gems. An inverse of the goal is not… Like, that's not compelling. Or they're like… And then they might die, which is actually, like, the least compelling…

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Mary Robinette] Thing. I think, then, a friend might die. But that's…

[DongWon] Or your parent will think you're a failure because you didn't bring the eight gems back.

[Mary Robinette] Yep. That's significantly worse for most people.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] You do not want someone to be disappointed in you.

 

[Dan] Yeah. I think a lot of stakes often come down to what do I stand to lose rather than what do I stand to gain. It's not so much about gaining those gems. This is how the D&D movie starts, is look at this great life that I had before everything went wrong. We see him throughout the movie trying to get back to zero. Just trying to struggle back to regain the things that he lost in the first place.

[Mary Robinette] Sometimes the stake can be really kind of small. Like, when you look at… Back at, This Is How You Lose the Timewar, that initial stake was if I don't check this, I'm going to be curious for the rest of my immortal life. Just that, oh, what am I going to miss? It's a small thing, but it is the thing that also is the catalyst.

[DongWon] Then, the stakes of that so quickly become what does this other person think of me? They might think I'm not a worthy competitor. Right?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Not think I'm a worthy companion by the end of it. The evolution of that stake is the thing that gives so much of the tension to that little novel.

 

[Erin] One thing I really like is when something feels low stakes, and then it turns out that it was worse than you thought. When the thing…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Like, oh, I'm just, like, trying to, like, get my cup of coffee so that I can make it through the day. But actually it turns out that there's something about… I cannot think what that would be… About getting that cup of coffee that is, like, suddenly the most important thing. Because when you're doing something low stakes, like, if you're doing a low stakes mission in life, you're not super prepared, you're just, like, I need to do this one thing. I'm only bringing what I need to get this small thing done. If that small thing becomes huge, then, all of a sudden, you are unprepared, you're afraid that you will fail, you feel like you have not brought your best self maybe to the table. Then it taps into those deeper fears about who am I, what will people think of me. It's sort of the same thing that gets people to often… When I go to karaoke, people will talk about how bad their voice is today. You don't want people to think that you're doing your best and you failed. You're either…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] It's like, I could have done better if things had been set up differently for me.

[Mary Robinette] I see this in critique groups. I actually have my critique or's do a ritual apology before we begin where everybody apologizes all at the same time. Because all of them are afraid that people will think that they're not a good writer, and that they are lesser. I… When I'm sometimes talking to a student who's having a little bit of a meltdown, I'm like, okay, but what is actually the worst thing that could go wrong if someone doesn't like your story? They're like, it doesn't get published. I'm like, and what's the worst thing that can go wrong if it doesn't get published? I write a new story? I'm like, great.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Is that a bad outcome? No?

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Dan] Yeah.

[[DongWon] For an example, I'm going back to your sort of coffee thing becoming bigger stakes. One of my favorite escalation of stakes scenes in a movie is in The Devil Wears Prada. Where, early on, and he goes to get coffee for her boss and brings it back, and, kind of like is in a meeting about… I can't remember exactly what it's about… And she kind of snickers at something. There's this incredible speech that Miranda goes through about the color of the sweater that Andy is wearing in this scene, the periwinkle blue speech, and it's like this thing that goes from the stakes of my job are absurd, I'm getting coffee for someone who runs a fashion magazine, to understanding the perspective of the people who run this magazine and why clothes and fashion and aesthetics matter in the world and the context of that, and her realizing that, oh, no, I want the positive regard of this woman who is now yelling at me because I didn't take this seriously enough. So that slow escalation as we understand the terms of the movie and the stakes of everything that's going to come in the rest of the movie is just a masterfully done scene.

 

[Dan] At the same time, one of my favorite tropes is the complete opposite of this. Where we realize that what we thought were the big big stakes really aren't as important as the small stakes.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Dan] The Perdiem Chronicles does this really well.

[DongWon] Oh, yeah.

[Dan] Throughout, where… For the several books, they don't need him to be a hero. They need him to be an assistant pig keeper.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Because the pig's the hero, and they need him to do that. In book 4, this kind of comes to ahead with one of my favorite lines where he's trying to work with the witches, and they say, "Any hero can soar with the eagles. But let's see him scratch for his own worms." Like, learning how to be a person, learning how to fend for yourself, how to survive in the world is so much more important than one or two acts of heroism.

[Howard] I got to thinking about the stakes and the fears in the very first Iron Man movie. Because the movie begins and Tony Stark wants for nothing. He can afford to blow the deal, he can afford to… He can afford to screw up because he's so rich. It just doesn't matter. Then the very first set of stakes he's presented with are now you might die. Now you need to invent or die. Those aren't the big stakes. He invents, he saves his life, and then he puts the whole company at risk. Now it is… Now he might not have money. Then we find out what was really happening here is someone's trying to take the company from you, and they're going to find another way to kill you. The final battle in the movie is because Tony doesn't want them to hurt Pepper. It comes back to a personal thing. It is not I need to where the Iron Man suit to save the world or to save the company or to save my life. It is because my friend might die.

[DongWon] So, while we all contemplate what we're all afraid of enough to make us a hero, let's take a break.

 

[DongWon] Welcome back. So we've been talking sort of about character stakes and how that relates to relationships. Right? One of the things that comes into that idea of stakes is the concept of fear. Right? We often have seen fear in stories as a negative to be overcome. But when you're thinking of how you're constructing character arc, how you're constructing a character, how are you thinking of what do I want to make this character afraid of? What fears are you putting into your characters that will help move them forward through the story?

[Mary Robinette] So this is why we wanted to tie these episodes together, because I will often look at their goals and motivations. What I find is that there's something that the character… There's a hole, there is an absence in the character, there's something. They are either rushing towards things, which are their goals, to try to fill it, or they are running away from the goal. So the… Having to confront, oh, this is a lack in myself is something that a lot of people are afraid of. Like, no one wants to confront their failings, their… No one wants to confront the fact that they're vain. Or no one wants to confront the fact that they're insecure. No one wants to confront, like, people want to be self-sufficient. So if I can create a fear and a reason to trigger that fear in them, that causes them to have to confront that or, to, like, flee from it. It's like I don't want to believe that I'm selfish, so I'm going to help these people. But they're constantly, like, but maybe I don't help them…

 

[Howard] We talk a lot about how people tend to fear the unknown. I don't think were actually afraid of the unknown. I think were afraid of knowing it. I… There's a thing out there that I don't know anything about and I would prefer not to. It may be a truth about me. It may be the fact that layoffs are coming. But there is a dark corner out there that I don't want to peer into, because it has information in it that is going to force me onto a new path, and I would rather continue to live with ignorance as bliss. Ignorance isn't actually bliss. But it's not the fear of the unknown, it's the fear of learning a thing that will now force me to change.

[DongWon] I would say it's even more than that. It's the fear of how other people see you changing.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

 

[DongWon] Right? That in encountering the unknown, you will be forced to change in some way through that encounter and what your partner thinks or what your children think of you, what your friends think of you, what your boss thinks of you, all these will change when that layoff comes. The thing you're afraid of is how do I survive that? Is that a survivable encounter? So I think that tapping into that fear is going to be the thing that will drive your characters forward. The thing I want to emphasize about when we talk about character fears like this, there's an instruction in the game dialect that's a player instruction that I love a lot. The instruction is very simple, it just says be obvious. As a player, when you're making choices, make really obvious choices. That will lead to complexity through the interaction of everyone at the table making obvious choices. Not overthinking it. So leaning into what your character's afraid of in a Broadway will lead to specificity because of all the other stuff we've talked about in this section when were talking about the lens of who as they bounce off the other characters in your plot. But don't be afraid of them being afraid of a really broad thing, of, oh, my partner's not going to like me, my parents won't love me anymore. My sister will hate me now. Right? Like, those are really juicy, really powerful motivators that I think drive most people as they move through the world.

[Dan] Well, it's not just those choices that can be really obvious. But the resolutions, the ways of dealing with them, can be really blunt and obvious as well. Going back to a previous episode, we talked about Toy Story… Or I talked about Toy Story…

[Laughter]

[Dan] His… What he really fears there is that he has no value. Unless he… And he… Once again, he misinterprets that by saying, I will have value if I am the favorite toy. That all comes to a head when he gives the huge speech to Buzz. You're a cool toy. That is not only the moment where he convinces Buzz that it's okay to be a toy instead of an actual spaceman, that is very clearly and obviously the moment where Woody is convincing himself, being a cool toy is awesome even if I'm not the favorite toy. I don't need to find external validation. I can just love me for who I am. Whether I'm the favorite toy or not.

[Mary Robinette] It's occurring to me that what we're talking about here is basically give your character imposter syndrome.

[Laughter]

[Howard] One of the thoughts that I had just a moment ago, after talking about the fear of the unknown, the fear of knowing the unknown. Courage, to me, has always been defined as moving forward despite fear. Not an absence of fear, it's moving forward despite fear. I love the idea that if were not afraid of the unknown, we're afraid of knowing what's there, then courage is picking up the flashlight and looking at what's in the corner. That, just as a metaphor for me feels like an easy sort of litmus test, lens if you will, for looking at what my character's doing and deciding, well, in act one, they're staying away from the corner. They're not peering into the shadows, and things are coming out of the shadows and they are reacting. In act two, Act III, they're picking up the flashlight and they are staring at what they were afraid to stare at before.

 

[Mary Robinette] I sometimes look at really primal fears as a thing to give a character. But I was having… I was talking to my therapist and she started talking about trauma points. I'm like, I'm sorry, sorry, can you repeat those? I'm just going to start taking notes right now…

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] I'm like, stop doing a therapy session and started being a… This is really useful.

[Howard] I no longer need therapy, I have a professional interest in the information you're providing.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So she said that most people have these trauma points where something bad happened in childhood. Most of the time, you are not actually aware of what that is, because it happened when you were fairly young. But it was a long one of three axes, safety, connection, and empowerment. When we are looking at our Tony Stark example, the thing for him, his trauma point was connection, because of his damaged relationship with his mom… With his dad. You can see that. It's, like, how does he handle that? He makes Jeeves, who's in artificial intelligence… Boo, hiss… Artificial intelligence connection. He buys friends, essentially. Then when he realizes he has genuine friends, that then becomes the most vulnerable thing for him, because it's something he absolutely cannot lose.

[Erin] I think that doesn't necessarily mean that every… I mean, we can traumatize every character, and we should…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] But we don't have to actually, because sometimes I think some of that is based on traumatic experiences, but also some of it's just a staying alive lizard brain, like, human response. Like… Safety, like, every creature has a desire to stay alive. Like, as a species, like, they do things that will help to keep them alive.

[Howard] Whether you're a mother or whether you're a brother…

[Erin] Exactly.

[Howard] Staying alive…

[Oo, oo, oo…]

[Laughter]

[Erin] Like, I think of, like, my cat… Like every… Cats want to get high. Like when I…

[Laughter]

[Erin] There's a tornado warning… Yes, they do, in every sense. No, but whenever… When there's a tornado warning…

[DongWon] I've lost many a spider plant to cats, so, yes.

[Erin] Yeah, like you're like… I'll be like, no, we have to, like, get it in a lower part of the house.

[DongWon] Yep.

[Erin] Because there's a tornado. But the cats, just, like, something is weird in the air and the best way to get away from weird things is to get as high as possible where I cannot possibly care anymore. No, to get to like a higher elevation where I can keep an eye on everything. It's just kind of baked in. We have our own thing with that. We are also safer in numbers. Humans as a species have, like, not very good, like, actual personal defenses. Like we don't have, like, really tough hides or really sharp teeth. We've got these opposable thumbs and the ability to come together in a group and build tools that help to keep us safe. So all of these things are things that are very baked in, I think, is very primal fears.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Empowerment, being able to take action to change the environment around you, because we don't necessarily physically adapt to our environments the way that, like, a reptile might.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] So I think it's really nice to think about, like, those primal fears. I also just wanted to say that… I love to write, like, horrible people as characters. So I'm, like, they don't do that, like, when they… They let their fears get the best of them. So, a lot of times, I love thinking about what happens if the character does not overcome their fears. What if they do the thing… They're like I'm afraid that no one will love me so I won't let anyone, or, I will put up a wall. That's just going to be my character arc is becoming a worse version of myself. So it can be something that drives your characters positively or negatively.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. That's something that, like, as you were talking, was making me think about Sour Milk Girls, and how, like, the fear absolutely takes over that character. For listeners who are just joining us, you can hear a deep dive about that in season 18.

[DongWon] Yeah. It's what makes a truly relatable villain pop off the page…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Is understanding where they're coming from, understanding where what their fears are rooted in. It's also what allows you to give a hero a truly believable low point. Right?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] The low point of them giving into a fear that you've seen them grapple with and understand intimately over the course of the series, that let you buy into the moment where the hero does fail. Because so often we see those moments and they fall flat, because it's not connected to anything. There was nothing actually at stake for the hero when things went off the rails. So, giving them things to care about, giving them goals and motivation, but then giving them fears that go alongside those, that is the thing that I think really can juice your story and get it to that next level.

[Mary Robinette] I will say also that going back to the idea of the traumas, the trauma does not have to be a big trauma.

[DongWon] Oh, yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Like, my… I don't know what some of… Like, what my trauma triggers are. But knowing the axes that it's on can really help clarify how a character reacts to things. Which again can help you shape the plot when you apply that lens to your story.

[DongWon] Exactly. On that note, I think we should go to some homework.

[Mary Robinette] I think that sounds like a great idea.

[Dan] Absolutely.

[DongWon] To traumatize our listeners a little bit more.

[Laughter]

 

[DongWon] So the first thing I want you to do is to make a note of all the major things that your main character is afraid of. List out those things, the fears that they have. Then, take your MC and draw a little map of all the characters that there connected to, and describe their connections to these other characters in one sentence or less. Now compare the list of relationships you've made to the list of fears that you've made for that character, and see if those two lists are in conversation with each other. Are they supporting each other, or are they completely disconnected? If they are disconnected, start thinking about how do I bring these two closer together to sort of get that feedback loop between relationship and fear?

 

[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.