Writing Excuses 20.39: Wrapping up our Conversation about Lenses

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Writing Excuses 20.39: Wrapping up our Conversation about Lenses

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-39-wrapping-up-our-conversation-about-lenses

 

Key points: How do you make one big mega-lens? Don't do it! Use the lenses during revision? Cherry-pick! Technique is for when you are struggling with the art. Use the lenses as exercises. Which lens do you resonate with, and which one do you struggle with? Where, worldbuilding, is the hands-down winner. Who! What is my motivation? To have a thing happen in the story, what kind of place do I need? The lens of slaps? Celebrate what you're good at.

 

[Season 20, Episode 39]

 

[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 39]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Wrapping up our Conversation about Lenses.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[Erin] And I'm going to start this episode with a confession. Which is that our entire conversation about lenses came from the fact that Mary Robinette and I were in a conversation, and I was like what if we just talked about writing as like who, what, when, where, why, and how. Like, we all remember that from when we're children. It's super easy. And I feel like we found out like that there's so much complexity within these very simple theoretical lenses. That each of these lenses has lenses within the lenses. And so, my biggest question for all of you is how do you take all of this and like synthesize it. I mean, we've been talking about it and how it was done in All the Birds in the Sky. But for people who are trying to figure out how to take all of this knowledge and put it together into one mega lens, how the heck do you do it?

[Dan] Well, my advice would actually be to not do that and to ignore us entirely.

[Erin] Nice.

[Dan] During the process of composing and writing a book, I really feel like it has to come from you as a person, it has to be an expression of yourself and what's interesting to you and of how you're feeling. And then, in the revision process, you could go back and look… Use all these lenses to say, well, what have I done? What did I do? How did I do it? Is there a way that I can amp that up a little bit, or is there a lens… When I look through the lens of who, there's nothing to see. Clearly, I need to characterize better. They feel… At least for me, and how my process works, these all feel like really great revision tools. But using them as first draft writing tools runs the risk of just being too formalized and…

[DongWon] And overwhelming.

[Dan] Yeah.

[DongWon] Yeah. One thing I think about with how we approach this podcast and what our pedagogy is as a group… Right? Is so much… I mean, the phrase we use all the time is tools, not rules. Right? We're not giving you guys rules, we're just trying to give you a deep tools kit that you can pull from when you need to. And so the way we think about putting together a season, and this season in particular, I think, was a lot… Breaking down these lenses into a bunch of subtopics. And so, giving you the ability to be, like, I'm struggling with X, Y, or Z. And then you can go back and cherry pick, and be like, I'm going to listen to this episode. Or relisten to this one, or whatever it is. Right? And I'm going to continue along Dan's trend here of not being very good at marketing the podcast, but…

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] There's a way in which you don't need to listen to necessarily every episode that we do. What I want you to do is to feel like this is the thing that I need to be hearing right now, this is the thing that useful to me. I mean, plenty of people do listen to it back to front, but also, plenty of people dive in in the individual moments. Right? And so I think I'm doing a little bit of an end run around your question, Erin, in some ways. Because we all are synthesizing all of these things as we write. So hearing it once is helpful, but don't try and hold it all in your head, I guess is what I'm saying. And be more targeted about, like, hum, I'm struggling with this issue.

[Mary Robinette] Just jumping off of that, but then to actually answer Erin's question.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] I tend to think about the idea that the technique is there for when you're struggling with the art. I've talked before about when I was learning to do this particular style of puppet, I had to walk the puppet around the table, and that my mentor was looking for me for the point where I had internalized how to do the technique, so that when I was performing, I wasn't thinking about technique, I was just thinking about art. And in an ideal world, when you are writing, you are just dealing with stuff that you have internalized and you are… The artist is happening. You're chasing the emotion, you're chasing the tension, you're chasing the things you want to read and the things you enjoy. But I don't think that these things are limited to using them in the editorial process. I think Dan is absolutely right, that's a great place for them, but I also think that when you're writing, and you hit a wall and you're like, uck, I don't know how to move past this. You can reach for one of the lenses, and snap it in, and go, okay, is this where I'm having problems? Am I having problems with the who? Am I having problems with the where? And that that can give you a way to use technique to move forward, to find your way back into the art again. I know that when I am dealing with depression, that's when I am most likely to reach for the techniques. Because I can't trust my own judgment as well, because I am in a depressed state. So the way I learned to use things like this is what DongWon was saying was to cherry pick, to pick and choose. I would say pick one of the things that we've talked about, and say, okay, today I'm going to write and I'm going to do the thing I'm just going to chase the emotions, but I'm also going to keep this one lens on while I'm doing it to see if there are any opportunities that can occur while I'm writing. And when you do that, you will train yourself over time so that you do internalize that and you aren't having to think about it consciously. But, yeah, if you try to do all of this all at the same time, that's trying to learn 15 new techniques simultaneously, and you don't learn any of them well. So, I would do targeted practice with them.

[Howard] Yeah. There's a process that I'm working on learning right now, and it is creating comic pages using Clip Studio Paint. And I'm going to break it down into three pieces here. Piece number one is laying out the panels, because panels sort of dictate pacing. Piece number two is penciling the illustrations, composing the picture, because that's drawing the eye in, telling… The blocking and whatever. And piece number three is the dialogue. I can't obviously do all three at the same time. But I know that I have to do all three. And sometimes, I'll get stuck in the dialogue because I don't know the pacing yet. And so I have to stare at a blank page, and I have to just put panels on it, until I know where that line of dialogue has to go, and once I know that, ah, I can write the rest of it. Sometimes I have to pencil something. Relating this to the lenses, sometimes you're working on characters, and you feel like you've really grounded yourself in the lens of who, but you're stuck. And you take a step back and realize, oh, that's because everybody is standing in mid air in a white room. I need to come back to the lens of where, and I need to create a place. And until I've created the place, these people aren't going to be able to walk anywhere because their feet won't have any traction.

[Erin] Yeah. Something I… I love that, and something I find really helpful for myself is to try to think about the lenses as also exercises. So sometimes, like, if I can't figure out, like, let's say I've got two people, I'm like, oh, I love these two who's… They're who-ing around and I don't have a place for them. But I can't figure it out for this story. Sometimes it's helpful for me to take them out of the story and write what would these two people be doing in four different places? And that will give me a better sense of who they are and a better sense of which settings I think resonate with them and which don't. Or let me think of, like, eight things that could happen to them if I'm stuck on what. Because I think I am someone who can sometimes get really into one lens, and then it'll only take you so far. Like, at a certain point, if you only have plot and no character and no setting, like, you can run out of interest in the story yourself. Because it feels like you're just painting by numbers. And so I'm really interested in kind of figuring out how that all works. Like, how can I figure out this lens of who, even if that means taking the people out of the story and working on them separately in some sort of separate exercise. And so I hope that for you, this could also be something that you do. Maybe you can think about something that you want to do from one of our exercises as just a way to, like, remind yourself that you still have this lens. That you still have the capacity to use it, even if you can't figure out where it belongs in your current work. It's something you know how to do. It's a technique that you have that you can rely on.

[Dan] I wanted to add to that, because I've done that accidentally. A couple of years ago, I started getting a lot of jobs writing audio scripts. And in audio scripts, at least in the type of format that I was writing for, there was no narrator. And so everything that was in the scene had to be conveyed audibly. If there was a machine, it had to be. And so I got really good at writing dialogue. I think it improved my dialogue so much, because I didn't have a narrator there, there wasn't this third-party saying, he said, exultantly. I wasn't able to rely on those kinds of tricks. And all of that had to be conveyed just through the dialogue. And then, I went back to do a regular old prose fiction book project, and realized that I was no longer writing setting into anything that I wrote. That I had forgotten how to write narration, and how to let the characters feel like they're actually in a place instead of floating in an empty white room, like Howard said. And then I had to relearn that whole process and get good at that again. It was painful, and, like I said, I did it accidentally, but it was really great to go through, because I feel like I'm better at both of those things now, having focused on them individually.

[Erin] I love that. And it makes me think of a deeply personal question that I will ask you after the break.

 

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[Erin] So, thinking about your experience, Dan, working with one lens and forgetting another, I'm curious for everyone, is there a lens that you personally resonate the most with, and is there a lens that you struggle with? And then, what's the difference between the way you approach those two?

[Mary Robinette] We all stare at each other, going, oh, now I'm [garbled]

[Dan] Oh…

[Mary Robinette] [garbled] Think about my process and…

[DongWon] I mean, I think I can answer that first, because most of the writing I do is game oriented. Right? As someone who runs games, as someone who does worldbuilding for games, and things like that. So, for me, I mean, where is the obvious, hands down, winner. Right? I'm thinking so much about what I call critical worldbuilding. It's a term I stole from Austin Walker and friends at the table, but it's this idea of the worldbuilding you use is a way to communicate your intention about the thematic's of the world. Right? So that… It derives from why, but you can use all the things about cultures you create, the physical landscapes, and just constantly asking why is the world like this? Why is this physical space like this? Why do I want there to be a desert here, why do I want there to be a forest here, why do I want this culture to eat this kind of food? And that provides a space for my characters to bounce around in, and or my players really to bounce around in and create character, and from that, we get story. Right? And so delineating the playspace by creating the world is so much of the primary tool in my kit. Or at least the starting point for prep. And then the rest of it is all this, like, desperately grabbing whatever you can in the moment.

[Mary Robinette] I tend to start… Like, where I start my stories from… Who knows? Sometimes it's plot, sometimes it situation, and all of that. But the… Of the lenses, the one that comes the most naturally to me is the lens of who, I think that is really because I came out of live theater, where we did not have control over the where, we didn't have control over the why, somebody else was telling… There was… Somebody else created the structure, somebody else was doing the decorations, and the direction. And so the thing I was in charge of was what is my motivation? How does this character sound? How do they move? And so that's the lens that I… Like I am just… I understand that one, that's the one I have internalized the most. I think the where, also, I tend to… Because I was a set designer, I tend to think about that. But I don't always think about the when. Like… Which is funny, because I write historical stuff, right?

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] But a lot of times when I go back, when I'm looking at my stories where I have fallen down is not thinking about implications of calendar. And so… That is the part that I have to pre-plan the most. Like, you will sometimes hear me talk about these massive spreadsheets that I've got to figure out the time… Some of it's because I have to deal with technical stuff, like, the time lags, but a lot of it is because I know that, just like in my real life, I will have two things happening at the same time that could not possibly happen…

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] At the same time.

 

[Howard] The… Jackie Chan movies always seem to have a very clear sense of where driven by why will this be a cool place to have a fight. And I'm not propping them up or dissing them or anything. I'm just saying that that attitude, that idea, that mindset of I want to have a thing happen in my story, what's the place that I need?

[DongWon] How can I get as many glass panes in one scene…

[Howard] Exactly.

[DongWon] As I possibly…

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] [garbled] How can I [garbled] one ladder?

[Howard] For me… Oh, the ladder fight. That was so epic.

[Mary Robinette] The best.

[Howard] For me, it's… For 20 years, it's come down to which character is going to be able to deliver the punchline. And that… That reverse engineers into a very detailed understanding of who… I have to know all of the who because… I mean, early days, yeah, I was just telling dad jokes, and it was fun. But I very quickly realized I don't want to make fun of science fiction. I'm telling social satire. I… This is all character-driven humor. Oh, no. You can't have character-driven humor if you don't understand what makes each and every one of these characters tick. And so, for me, yeah, it always comes back down to who. Which is problematic because when I need to draw backgrounds, I have to know the where…

[Chuckles]

[Howard] And, oh, backgrounds are the worst.

[Dan] I think it's interesting that Howard and Mary Robinette both said who, because that would be my answer to this question as well, is who. Who is in this story? Whose perspective are we going to see this from? I can't write something until I know who I'm writing about. And I think that's true of all the lenses to some degree. But who is the one that preoccupies my mind more than anything. For my book, Extreme Makeover, I had this incredible new science fiction technology that I wanted to write about, and I knew what was going to happen in the story, but who does it happened to? Who is going to be the most interesting person with whom the reader can experience the story I have in my mind? That is, for me, the very most important thing.

[DongWon] Yeah. I mean, it makes sense to me, that all three of you said who. Right? Because, for me as a reader, as an editor, and all these things, plot descends from character. Right? Who the person is determines so much, and what they want determines so much of what action is going to unfold from that. Right? And so I love hearing that from your perspective, it's the who. In my second role, or primary role, honestly, as an agent and as an editor, for me, that lens that I'm coming to fiction with is the why. Why did you write this book? What is this book? Why are you the one to write this book? And so that's the lens with which I'm analyzing what you've done. But I think as a writer, starting with who makes the most sense. But, Erin, you never answered this. I jumped in ahead of you. So…

[Mary Robinette] You have to answer your own question [today]

[chuckles]

[Erin] Please, those aren't the rules I set.

[Laughter]

[Erin] No, it's funny. I mean, I want to say who. And some of this is actually looking at… And if you're trying to answer this question for yourself, how do I engage with others stories? What is the lens through which I am interested in the way things are told? I'm a big soap opera viewer, because I… Soap operas are just characters slapping each other and making out…

[Chuckles]

[Erin] It's very who focused. Lots of things happen, but it's very who. I like the WWE for the same reason. Big people with ladders, meaty men slapping meat, but it's about…

[Chuckles]

[Erin] It's about who these two men…

[Laughter]

[Erin] Oh, is this safe here?

[Laughter]

[Erin] I'm sorry. Anyway…

[DongWon] It's just men slapping each other. That's what I'm getting out of this. The lens of slaps. I think…

[Erin] Anyway. No.

[DongWon] Continue, though, please.

[Erin] I think that who is obviously important, but something I've been realizing recently is I've been talking a lot about, in my own life, about the weight of the story, and feeling like the characters are moving through a space, and that they are carrying all the things that they brought with them, and that who they are, and the… But the when and the where, the setting, the culture… So all of that is who, but I think it's like, less… It's a very embodied who. It's a very… To me, it's very like voice-y… I'm a voice-y writer… A voice-y who. And, like, part of that is, like, how do you tell that story? And it's why I find what, the plot, really difficult. Because when you're telling a great story, you, the person, can bring people through a lot of things that don't make sense, because they enjoy the way you're telling it. But it doesn't work as well in prose as it does if you put people around a campfire. Once you print it, you can't control the setting in which they are enjoying your words. And so therefore, you have to have more actual structure to go through, that brings that who along so you don't just feel like you're wondering after an interesting person into the desert to, like, starve to death.

[Mary Robinette] What you're talking about makes me think about the way I answered that question, which is… I told you which lens I was using, like, came with unconsciously to me. But I think that an interesting thing would be to look at which ones are you using… Are you grabbing because it is uncomfortable, because you do want to experience. And I was a little bit flippant when I talked about the when. But the difference between telling a story around the campfire… The when… The whereness of that versus telling a story from a stage makes me think it reminded me that one of the things that I have been playing with recently is thinking about consciously changing the who I am writing for. So… Because I tell different stories, I put different things in, because I'm… I know this person really loves found family, this person really loves queer fiction. This person really just wants to see Pirates. And that that changes my choices a lot. And so character comes naturally to me, but thinking very consciously about the outward expression of that, whether that's the when or the where or the who, I think is kind of fun to play with.

[Howard] Kind of like the lens of who, for me, is a contact lens that's just always on my face, and the other lenses are things that I will pick up and grab as I need them. I'm always grabbing for all of them. I'm writing science-fiction that has an epic scope. Well, obviously, there's going to be when, there's going to be where. We've talked a bit about the why I tell any of these stories. All of these are things that I reach for. I think that I may have come closest to fully internalizing the tool of who. At risk of sounding like I'm way better at it than I really am. Because all of these are things that I need work on.

[Erin] And yet, I think it's good to celebrate, like, what we're good at.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Which is going to lead me to the homework.

 

[Erin] I want you to think about all of the lenses, and think about something that you think you do really well. The lens that you think comes most naturally to you, that you enjoy the most. And I just want you to write down what it is, maybe one place that you've used it, and really congratulate yourself for using the lens that you are using the best, the best way that you can.

[Mary Robinette] I love that homework.

 

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