Writing Excuses 20.35: Deep Dive into "All the Birds in the Sky" -- Using the Lens of Where

[mbarker]

 Writing Excuses 20.35: Deep Dive into "All the Birds in the Sky" -- Using the Lens of Where 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-35-deep-dive-into-all-the-birds-in-the-Sky-using-the-lens-of-where

 

Key Points: Place! Grounding? Context. Lived in. Details. Unnecessary details. Interactions. Senses. Familiar place and character interacts with place, draws reader in. Setting as immersion, but also as a lens on what the character thinks and feels. What is the emotional function of the place? Sense of wonder?

 

[Season 20, Episode 35]

 

[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 35]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] A Deep Dive on "All the Birds in the Sky" -- Using the Lens of Where. 

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[Howard] And I'm here to talk about places. All the Birds in the Sky had, for me, some of the most memorable and grounding place moments in anything I've read recently. One of them was when Lawrence is taking his trip to, I guess it was MIT, to go see a launch, and someone tells him, oh, I'll give directions to your parents so they can find their way there. And someone comments that they'll never find their way there without specific directions. Because I remember a couple of occasions driving in Boston and complaining about it to someone and having them tell me, oh, yeah, the budget for the Boston MTA is handled like here's the amount of money you have. See how wrong you can make all the maps.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] And I bring that up because it feels like something that everybody who lives in Boston knows. And it's something that, by the characters brushing up against it in this flirtation with the location, we become very grounded in it. Oh, yes, that's Boston.

[Mary Robinette] What I like about that, actually, is that the way Charlie Jane is handling one of the tools that we have, which is context. Anyone who knows Boston knows that this is true, but she also provides context for people who don't know Boston. Which is a great trick that you can use with, like, secondary world fantasy. It's not just for real-world places.

[DongWon] Well, I mean, what I really love in the later portions of the novel is how lived in this vision of San Francisco feels. It feels like the author has such a deep connection to this place. And, I don't know if Ernesto's bookstore is real, and if it's inside the mall that is described in the book, but I believe that that's a real place that has been transformed in this way. I believe that these streets are laid out like this. And there's so many details from the bus stop to the parks to all these that feel very authentic to me in a way that is so detailed, that gives this backdrop, and this context, to the characters. Right? And so this fight between magic and technology feels really rooted in this fight over San Francisco that we've seen unfold over the last couple decades. I can't remember exactly when this book comes out, but, like, it is definitely in the heart of that conversation. Right? And so place is really informing the characters responses and goals in a very deep way.

[Erin] Yeah. I think something really interesting about, like, why it feels lived in is that there's always the unnecessary detail which is often the way we think about place. You know what I mean? It's like if you… I think sometimes the mistake you can make as a writer is to be like I'm describing the beach, so I'm going to talk about how, like, there's sand and waves and all the things that a beach contains. But a lot of times, it'll be, like, that's the beach where, like, every spring, the penguins, like, flood it for some reason. How they got there, I don't know. And leave behind penguin eggs, and, like, then you have to step over them. That's the thing that, like, if I went, I would remember about the beach.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] It is either something emotional context to me or an interesting detail that distinguishes it. Like, the mall where all the signs are in… Or half, or all the signs are in Spanish, is something that, like, you're going to remember that's going to distinguish it, and I love that she manages to put that in.

[Dan] Well, and so much of the description of place is couched in interactions. Yes, she's not just describing the bookstore, she's not just describing the restaurants, but giving real specific details about how the characters interact with those places. Two of the ones that really stood out for me were, at one point, they flagged down a food truck, which is so completely outside of my experience with food trucks that it immediately took me somewhere else, and I'm like, oh, this must be a thing that the author has experienced. This must be unique to that place. The other was they… I think it was Lawrence was eating fried chicken at some point, and just going on and on about how it didn't leave his fingers messy. And that's such a small little detail about this one specific chicken place that fries in such a way that it doesn't get all greasy. And those are such a brilliant way of letting you into that space.

[Mary Robinette] I also am just going to… That the interaction thing made me remember a line… When the kids are in middle school, and they run away to try to go to the river, because it makes a pew pew sound.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] And there's this line, well, this sucks. Lawrence squatted down to examine the river, nearly soaking his butt in the slushy ground. What's the point of ditching school if we can't go make laser noises from the ice? But the… That squatting down to examine the river, nearly soaking his butt on the slushy ground. Even if you haven't experienced that kind of wetness, that kind of… If you are someplace that doesn't get snow, that doesn't get sluggish, you know what it's like to have your butt wet from sitting on something that was unexpectedly damp. And I love that she gives us this very tangible thing that implies the rest of the world, and also through a way… Like with your fried chicken example, you know what it's like to eat fried chicken and thinking about the wonder of, oh, wow, fried chicken that doesn't make my hands messy. It's like… It just… It invite you in and implies everything else through one of the other things that we use for where, which is that… The senses.

[Howard] Yeah. There's a chain here that I want to make sure we've established the connections. Having a place that I'm familiar with in the book grounds me in the book. Having a character interact with a place makes the setting and the character work together. If you've got all three of those, to where I know the place and the character interacts with the place, then you've completed this link that has drawn me all the way into the story. And yes, Mary Robinette, as you were saying, the senses. I think of the spice house. The description of that house where the wood smells like things used in curry. The woods in the first chapter… If any of you have gone wandering in the woods as a kid, and been lost, there is an emotional element to a forest where you don't know which way the road is. And Charlie Jane connects us to that, and connects the characters to that, and uses where as a lens to pull us… Me, anyway, all the way into the story.

[Mary Robinette] I think the other thing that she does that's related to this is that she's also using the where, the place in the characters perceptions of it, to underline some of the major themes of the book. There's this line… I'm going to read you a fair bit here, but…

 

The parrots were eating cherry blossoms on the top of a big tree on the crest of a steep hill not far from Grace Cathedral. A half a dozen green birds with red splotches on their heads just tearing the ship out of those white flowers. Petals scattered across the sidewalk and the grass as the birds squawked and worked their crooked beaks while Lawrence and Patricia watched from the steep bank of the parklet across the street. San Francisco never stopped astonishing Lawrence. Wild raccoons and possums wandered the streets, especially at night, and their shiny fur and long tails looked like stray cats unless you looked twice. And he talks a little bit more, and then says, the only reason Lawrence ever saw these urban twists of nature was because he hung out with Patricia. She saw whole different city than he did.

 

And that, for me, is like cap… Like encapsulating the strength of their friendship and the crux of the book, that they see different worlds. And so, by presenting these different worlds, by having this moment where Lawrence is looking at the birds, but we know that he is not seeing the birds the same way Patricia experiences birds, is, I think, one of the fun ways that Charlie Jane is using where to support this theme that we've been talking about with the book.

[DongWon] Yeah. I mean, sort of encapsulating a lot of what we've been talking about. So, I think the mistake that people make when talking about setting or worldbuilding is that it's about immersion. Right? People think it's about immersion, and it is, to some extent.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] You want to, like, have your reader smelling, seeing, what do this feel like when they touch it. I think all that is incredibly important, but even more important than that is the lens into how the character thinks and feels about the world. Right? And that is everything from both examples, in terms of, like, the fried chicken and the slush are telling us something about Lawrence, in that he's kind of fussy.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] He doesn't like to be dirty. It would be so bad for him if his butt touched that slush, in a way that Patricia would be not notice it at the same level. He's thinking about, is there grease on my hands? Right? And the thing about getting, and what I love about what she has done here with San Francisco in the latter half of the book is… The way I talk about New York City is that it's haunted. Right? Because anywhere I go in New York City, after having lived there for the majority of my adult life… I no longer live there, sadly. But is I have so many memories of every neighborhood, and versions of that neighborhood, and versions of the person I was in the people I knew and who I went there with, who I was hanging out with then. All of these things are layered on any space I go to in New York, pretty much. Any neighborhood, any region. They're… I just have lived so much of my life there. Right? And so setting, I think, when I think about it is this leads into character and emotion, because it's about what they were connected to in that time, how the people that they are with… In the way that that scene you just described is changing literally how Lawrence sees the world. He is noticing the parrots of telegraph Hill. He is noticing the raccoons. He's noticing all of these different elements that he just would have been invisible to him without this person that he's with.

[Howard] Okay. I have a question that I want to ask all of you. And it's a tricky one, so we're going to wait until we've taken a break.

 

[Howard] I promised you a tricky question. It's so tricky that I have to explain it first.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] In many stories, the place that a thing happens, the where, is chosen because something… It had to happen somewhere. It's… They have to be standing on something. They have to be breathing something. San Francisco, in this book, is not that place. It is a character unto itself. But are there places in this book, and I can only think of one, are there places in this book that are used because the plot had to do a thing, but it doesn't really matter where it happened. And the only one I can think of is the flashback to Siberia. We had to have a thing happen that was bad, and it had to happen where there was methane [clathrate?] And so on and so forth, and so we picked Siberia. But it could just as easily have been Canada or Alaska or something.

[DongWon] I'm going to disagree with the premise of your question a little bit. And then I'll sort of circle back to answering the thing that you're asking. But, to me, I don't think that San Francisco is just a character of the book. I think the book is about San Francisco in a very, very deep way. Right? And it's about this sort of fight for the soul of the city in terms of this community and connection on one side, this pursuit of technological solutions on the other side. Right? This technocracy that has sort of taken over how they think about the city versus this person, Patricia, who is out there helping people who are living with AIDS, helping people who are homeless or being taken advantage of. Right? It's this real fight over what it means… And also just sort of the myopicness of what is happening outside of San Francisco that influences so much of the book, of, like, oh, yeah, that happened in Korea. That happened in Florida. That happened over there.

[Howard] I will concede that in my haste, I understated the importance of San Francisco.

[DongWon] Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Howard] To the story. The question stands, though.

[DongWon] The question does stand, and I do think that it's one thing that's really interesting is when she does jump to other locations, aside from Boston, Boston and MIT feel really important, because that's like where a lot of his tech starts from and then ends up in San Francisco in the Bay Area. Right? But then the stuff that is happening outside that, whether that's Denver, Colorado, maybe it wasn't about Denver… Colorado or [Saguaro?] they all feel a little bit like, oh, this could be kind of anywhere. Because the book isn't about those places, the book is about this place over here. Right?

[Erin] Oh. I was just going to say that… You're talking about place as a character, it occurs to me that place being a character doesn't mean it has to be a particular type of character. So, like, in this way, perhaps, like, it is a… It is the thing that the two… It's like they're trying to, like, fight over in this divorce type of thing. The two sides are fighting over. Where Siberia, to me, feels like an antagonist. There are a few times in which the place is the antagonist. The Eastern European city that Patricia gets dropped into and can't understand anything that they are saying. The maze part of the school where it's like… It just… The way that that places described, it's just a litany of bad things that happen to you there. The maze isn't really described, it's like, and then maybe you get stuck in a whole or, like, then, maybe you fall off a wall, and, like, your flat, or whatever happens in the maze. And then it's like… But we don't ever see it, other than that.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And so, maybe, the thing to think about a little bit is what kind of character is the place playing? Is it just a one off, is it a deep part of it, is it something that the characters are going to have to fight with or against?

[DongWon] Well, thematically, bad stuff happens when you don't have deep connections to the place. Right? All the places you're describing, the characters aren't connected to and that's where all the bad stuff in this book happens.

[Mary Robinette] So, I actually want to talk about one of the places that is a literal character, which is the tree.

[DongWon] Yup.

[Mary Robinette] And one of the things about the tree is that when she first sees it, it is just a place. The birds occupy it. And then the second time she comes across the parliament of… Where the parliament of birds, she… It is just the tree and her talking, and it's just a character at that point. But then when she returns to it as an adult and looks at it, she is aware of it as a place, but also as an entity. Which is, I think, one of the interesting things about this, because one of the… It's something that happens with the other characters. We see it happen with her and Roberta, that her relationship to them changes, so her understanding of them changes. And I think that also happens with place, but I think the tree is the only thing really that she experiences as a child and as a… Like that we… Has a continuity all through the thing, that her relationship to it changes.

[Howard] The tree functions as opening and closing parentheses. And if you include Lawrence's closet, and treat Lawrence's closet as Peregrine and then as Caddie, we have opening parentheses twice with the tree and the closet, and then at the end of the story, we have closing parentheses for the tree and the closet, Caddie, become one. That's a neat structure. And it's not there… I say it's not there for the reader. It's there for the reader, yes, because structures like this, even if you don't see them, they help resonate with you, they help you know that the story has ended.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] But, as a writer, knowing that you are going to come back to a place helps you build the story.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Like, when she describes the tree the second time, or when she comes back to it as an adult with Lawrence, it says Patricia had forgotten how massive and terrible the tree was. But when we… It's described earlier, it is not described as massive and terrible. How overwhelming the embrace of its two great limbs, how, like an echo chamber the space in the shadow of its canopy was. She'd expected it to seem smaller, now that she was a grown-up, just as… Just a tree after all. But instead, she looked up at its great hanging fronds and its gnarled surface and felt presumptuous for even coming into its presence again. And that is such a different perception of the tree and her relationship to the tree than she has at the other time she experiences it. So this is, for me, one of those things, one of the lenses we talked about was the lens of time, and this is one of the things for me that… It's, I think, a great example of how you can use place and a character's place trip to show their growth and evolution.

[Howard] The roles of these places… There's a tool that I use a lot, which is what's the emotional reaction I want the reader to have to this chapter, this scene, this whatever? What is the emotional function of a thing? When I first began reading the story, the woods were grounding me. There was this sense of joy and comfort, of a child in the woods. Because I had that experience as a kid. Which, we then get to the tree, and it becomes sense of wonder coupled with a little bit of dread. Because I don't know what's going to happen. And in reading back over some of these places, I looked at the emotional functions of Siberia… I like the antagonist. The emotional function of the bookstore, the emotional function of San Francisco, which is manifold and hugely layered, and even so, I am understating it.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] But that tool, as I look at the lens of where from the perspective of a reader, I step back through the meta- and ask myself, okay, as a writer, how did she do this? How much of this is deliberate in the selection of place and the writing about place, and how much of it did Howard just happened to bring to the story because… Because Howard?

[Mary Robinette] I guess we'll find some of that out when we get to interview Charlie Jane later.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Meanwhile, we should probably go on to homework.

 

[Howard] You know what? I have homework, and it's related to that thing what I just said. List the locations in your current work in progress. Next to each one, describe it story function. Is it there to ground? Is it there to evoke sense of wonder? Is it purely plot logical, a thing had to happen in a place, and so I picked this one? Is it worldbuilding? So make this list, the places in your work in progress. And then take a step back from it, and ask yourself if any of these places can be changed or should be changed, based on what you now know about them.

 

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