Writing Excuses 21.20: Sequencing from Mega to Micro

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Writing Excuses 21.20: Sequencing from Mega to Micro

From https://writingexcuses.com/21-20-sequencing-from-mega-to-micro

Key Points: Sequencing. Why do we put things in the order we do? Broad to narrow, funnel. Deliberate or instinctive? The more you know, the more deliberate it is. Broad to narrow, or reverse. Recency primacy. Cause and effect. Sequencing in sentences. Turn noun into adjective. Garden Path sentences. Set up patterns and break them. Readability. Tell them what you are going to tell them, tell it to them, and tell them what you told them. Important things! Cognitive psychology. Turn the paragraph upside down. Gossip!

[Season 21, Episode 20]

[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 21, Episode 20]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Sequencing from mega to micro.

[Erin] Tools, not rules.

[Howard] For writers, by writers.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

[Erin] And today we are talking about sequencing and why do we put things in the order that we do. And I thought I would actually start by... It's funny, the first thing I thought of when I was thinking about how to lead off this episode was our actual tagline. That we've changed, because we could say, for writers by writers, tools not rules, or, by writers for writers, rules that are bad and tools that are good...

[Chuckles]

[Erin] But instead we say, tools, not rules, for writers, by writers, because I think we just think it sounds better.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And so one of the things I'm wondering about sequencing is how much of it do you think is, like, things we absolutely, like, can figure out by like dialing them up and having rules, and how much of it do you think is, like, some sort of intrinsic thing that we know. Like, having rhythm.

[DongWon] A thing that I think about a lot... I mean, I do think the rhythm is really important. Right? And I think we're going to dive into that in even more detail in the next episode. But I do think part of why that tagline works so well is the rhythmic beat of it. But then there's also a narrowing funnel of the concepts, as you start from the broad statement of why do we do this show. Right? What's our core principle? And we worked a lot on this tagline, and we did a whole exercise last year of all of us trying to come up with what is this show's mission statement at this point. Right? Like, Writing Excuses has been around for a while. Sorry, I don't know why we're doing [garbled a beat around the curtains that we are right now] and...

[Howard] I find that... Sorry.

[DongWon] Trying to drill down into what is our goal with this show. And then, tools, not rules, just really emerged as a core principle for us. Right? Of this thing of we're not trying to be prescriptive about writing. We want to give you a deep understanding of as many different aspects of writing as we can, so that when you're confronted with a situation, you can... You have some things to reach for. Right? So, to start with the broadest aspect of what we do and then narrow down even further into why you and then why us. Right? So there is, like, this mega to micro, to borrow the show's title, in the tagline itself. Which I think is a really good microcosm of the macro thing we're talking about.

[Howard] To speak more specifically to the question, how much of it is deliberate and how much of it is instinctive, the more you know about the things you do, the more deliberate it becomes. A great example of this is the order of adjectives in the English language. Most English speakers don't even think about it. But if you order adjectives weirdly in a sentence, English speakers will be like, wait, what... You did that wrong. We don't know what the rule is, but there appears to be a rule. But once you think about it, and once you really look at it, you realize, oh, there are... And I can't recite the rule. All I can remember is my favorite social media post about it, which was from the fake AP style book, which said the order of adjectives is increasing order of awesomeness. The blue Italian rocket-propelled monkey-piloted motorcycle...

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Is the correct order of adjectives. And I love that, because it made me laugh, but I also loved it because it made me think about a thing that I hadn't thought about before in a way that forced me to create a rule for it, so I could be more deliberate about a way I was writing.

[Mary Robinette] This is... I think this is one of the really interesting things, that a lot of times there are rules that we have internalized and we don't know. And this is a good example. You can go look this up. I also don't remember it, but I remember being blown away because it was like, oh, oh, yeah, there actually is a thing with this. But, it's not just that, like, you've been honing your tastes your entire life as a reader. So there are things that you know intuitively about sequencing that you wouldn't be able to articulate. For me, the things are... When it's not working, that's when I kind of step back and I start thinking about, okay, well, why isn't this working? What are the rules? Or, the tools that I have? So there is the large to narrow, but sometimes you do want to invert that. And when you do, you want to do it with deliberation, while understanding, like, what it does. So if you start very broad and you funnel down, you're bringing the audience's attention to a single point. And then that point takes on a lot of emphasis. But sometimes you start with an important point, and then you broaden outward in order to take them out into the larger world. So it's a lot about where you're trying to direct the reader's attention, and sometimes it's broad to narrow, and sometimes it's the other way around. Sometimes it's the thing we talk about, the recency primacy effect, and sometimes it's cause and effect.

[DongWon] Well, there's also an emotional quotient to it, too. Right? There's this really important principle in architecture, popularized by Frank Lloyd Wright, that's about compression and expansion. Right? So in... If you walk into a Frank Lloyd Wright House, you generally walk into what, to modern audiences, feels like a very compacted space. The hallways tend to be quite short, the [garbled] aren't wide, there's not a lot of space to put stuff in them, and then you... What you do is you walk through that and then you walk into a large open space. Right? We think of open concept when it comes to Frank Lloyd Wright, but really, there's a lot of compression and then that expansion, so that then the living space feels like this huge airy space, even when by square footage, it may not actually be that big. Right? And then part of the sin of the McMansion is it's just all open space. You walk into a huge foyer, you walk into a huge kitchen, you walk into... And everything feels the same. Right? You get this... I'm back on my risotto issue here, but everything... There's no differentiation from room to room. And so without that compression/expansion, you don't have the emotional, either relief of, ah, I'm now in a great space. I'm now in this next emotional sort of scene as you go from narrow to broad. Or you don't have the sense of I'm leaving this space and focusing down back onto a single thing. And then I'm getting set for the next expansion. Right? So that's sort of, like, funneling in and out of the compression/expansion. It's something I think about in fiction as being very important for giving the differentiation between scenes, and then, therefore pacing as you're pulling people through.

[Erin] Yeah. It's interesting, I was like, there are other... They're both directions...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Like, they both have... Feel like they have... Some sort of, like, intentionality. You're going from one to the other. I often think about, like, the broad to small. I think it's why the adjectives getting increasingly cool works, because each one... We love details, I think, as humans, and so each detail usually, each cool thing is more specific than the last cool thing.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Like, the coolest thing about this is that there's only so many monkey-propelled... What was it, rocket launchers? Sorry.

[Howard] Rocket-propelled monkey-piloted motorcycle.

[Erin] Yes. You know what I mean? So it's like, there might be many rocket-propelled, but only so many are going to be...

[DongWon] That poor monkey.

[Erin] Monkey-operated. So, each one gets more and more specific. I really like the broadening because I feel like what it does is what a camera does a lot of times when it pulls back on a scene. Which is, you assume a certain amount of context when you give a specific detail, and when you broaden outward, it turns out that that context is different than you anticipated, it gives you a little bit of a shock and it's like, oh, wow, I never would have thought that this is where this happened. Or this is where this person was.

[Howard] One of the things that we talked about... Oh, gee, a decade ago in Writing Excuses... Is sort of a pyramid theory of giving information, in terms of description. Where you begin with lots of description as you're setting things up, with less and less as you get to the top of the pyramid. The reason being, I think, twofold. One, it sort of accelerates your pace through the scene or through the chapter. And second, it draws focus away from the details and toward whatever the specific events are. And, again, this isn't a rule, it's just a way to think about when to use description and when not to use description.

[Mary Robinette] Well, it's also a more basic mechanical thing, which is at the beginning of a scene, the audience knows less about the space...

[Howard] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And less about the people at the beginning of a book. That's one of the reasons that the ends of books are shorter than the beginnings, is that they often just take less description, because we've already done that load-bearing work for the reader. Which is, again, going back to the sequencing question, it's like when do you do these things? And why, and how do you make those decisions?

[Erin] Yeah. We've talked a little bit about the broadening, like, why might you broaden, why might you narrow in? But, Mary Robinette, you actually mentioned two others, cause and effect, and I can't remember the last one.

[Mary Robinette] Recency primacy.

[Erin] Recency primacy. Like, why... Is there a reason that you would use... I mean, cause and effect feels like this is something we generally understand, like, first you say why something is happening and then what occurs after it has happened. But, like, why would you focus on that as opposed to broad and narrow?

[Mary Robinette] So, a lot of times what we're dealing with is an order of information thing, where the reader isn't getting information at the time they need it. And even if it's just in a single sentence, it can cause a little bit of confusion. So I just did an exercise with the people in the Writing Excuses Cruise. At the time that we are recording this, we have just gotten off the cruise ship. And I showed them a piece of fiction that I'd written in high school. And it's not good. It's not terrible, but it's not good. And one of the sentences in it is something like, Agony seared her hand as the wood slapped into it. And, like, just flipping that, like, you know that she's experiencing pain, but you don't know why yet. And just flipping it, As the wood slapped into it, agony seared her hand, you understand there's a stronger connection. There are times when you want to invert that, because you want the surprise. Like, if someone opens a door and gasps, you don't yet know why they gasp, and so delaying that moment gives the reader the same surprise that the character has. So that you like [gasp] I'm gasping too. Why am I startled? And so you get to make those decisions about when you want the reader to have the same information at the same time the character does, when you want them to experience the cause and then the effect, and when you want them to be surprised and experience the effect, and then the cause. For instance, one of the effects of this is that we should probably take a break.

[Erin] But wait, what's the cause? No, I'm just kidding.

[DongWon] Time.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] The cruise ship sailing up to Alaska this summer is completely sold out, except for the cabins we'd reserved for Writing Excuses attendees. These cabins are only available until June 4th. On June 4th, any cabins not reserved by Writing Excuses attendees will revert to the cruise line, and will be sold to the general public. If you want to join the Writing Excuses hosts and 100 new friends on our final annual cruise as we read, write, critique, and learn while reveling in the stunning scenery, visit writingexcuses.com/retreats. Don't delay. We're holding the very last unreserved cabins on the entire ship, and they will not stay unreserved for very long. Again, that's writingexcuses.com/retreats.

[Mary Robinette] For many writers, worldbuilding is also an opportunity for world breaking. A shattering of existing norms and assumptions of what is and isn't possible. If you've read the work of NK Jemisin, author of The Broken Earth trilogy, and 42nd Grand Master for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, you'll know what I mean. This June, in Chicago, you can meet NK Jemison yourself and attend a master class on worldbuilding and world breaking at SFFWA's 61st annual Nebula Awards conference. I'll be there too, along with other powerhouses in science fiction, fantasy, and related genres. This year, for the first time ever, SFFWA's Nebula Awards include top prizes for poetry and comics. We are excited to welcome these mediums into the fold. The Nebula Awards conference is an annual opportunity to gather as professionals and professionalizing writers. Have you bought your tickets yet to join the conversation in person or online, and to celebrate our latest stars at the Nebula Awards banquet? If you're in Chicago already, you can also freely attend our mass autographing session on Friday, June 5th. All details are available on sfwa.org. So tell your friends, nod to your fellow creators, and reach out to fans. Let's break down some old worlds and build new ones together in Chicago.

[Howard] Thanks to HomeServe for sponsoring this episode. Sandra and I have been homeowners for 30 years, and it's been wonderful. Of course, it's our biggest investment and we have to literally live inside it without breaking it. We'd been in our house for 2 weeks when the water line to the EVAP cooler on the roof broke, destroying 64 square feet of ceiling and almost 200 square feet of hardwood floor. Regular homeowners insurance usually doesn't cover that kind of thing. And that's where HomeServe comes in. You don't want to be on your own for things like plumbing failures, HVAC breakdowns, or electrical issues. You could be searching for a contractor in a panic, or you could already be on the phone with Homeserve's 7x24 hotline scheduling a repair. They've helped homeowners like you for over 20 years with a trusted national network of over 2600 local contractors. Help protect your home systems and your wallet with HomeServe against covered repairs. Plans start at just 4.99 a month. Go to homeserve.com to find the plan that's right for you. That's homeserve.com. Not available everywhere. Most plans range between 4.99 to 11.99 a month your first year. Terms apply for covered repairs.

[Howard] They call it the best 4 days in gaming, and I am disinclined to argue. Gen Con Indy is my favorite convention. There's a symposium for writers, and it might well be the best 4 days in writing. Will you be there? I will. As will Mary Robinette, Erin, Dan, and Sandra. As you're putting together your Gen Con schedule, be sure to look us up by name so you can sign up for our events. There will be a Writing Excuses podcast Q&A session, a Thursday night networking party hosted by Writing Excuses, and a session with Howard Tayler... That's me... And Maurice Broaddus called A Conversation With No Chaperones. I can't believe they're letting us do that one. You can also visit me and Sandra, along with Jim Zubb and Stacy King, at booth 1349 in the exhibit hall. Along with our usual racks of merchandise, we will have some Writing Excuses loot. Gen Con Indy runs from July 30th through August 2nd in Indianapolis, Indiana. You can buy a membership right now, and then you can start creating your wish list for panels, workshops, and other events. On May 17th, event registration goes live, and your wish list will have you pre-registered for things. Get your tickets today and reserve your spot. We would be delighted to see you at Gen Con.

[Erin] All right. Now that we are back from our break, because time is a straight line, most of the time, I'm curious about talking about this on, like, a little bit more at a micro level. Because I think a lot of times where I like to play around with it is in actually sequencing words within sentences. Not like thinking about the order of adjectives and playing with surprise. I think one of the most fun things about talking about sequencing is that once you understand that there's a way that a lot of times people expect sequencing, cause and then effect, a lot of times broad and then narrow, if you play with it, you get the surprise, you get something really interesting.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Something that I like to do a lot of times with sentences is think about a noun that I would put later in the sentence, and turn it into an adjective that modifies the thing. So instead of saying her voice which had been roughened from too many years of whiskey, I will say her whiskey voice, or her whiskey rough voice. Which is a way to give the same information, but because it moves it over, it feels like it's more laden with meaning. And also, as a short story writer, I've saved three to four words that I can then bank for later in the story...

[Chuckles]

[Erin] When I truly need them.

[DongWon] But you're almost using surprise in a certain way. You know what I mean? By that reordering, you're like shifting expectations, but still giving us the information.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] A really useful tool for this. Study Garden Path sentences. Garden Path sentences are sentences where you begin reading the sentence and it is leading you to a place where the rest of the sentence is not going. The classic example, the old crew the boat. Oh, the old, and crew is a verb.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] Not the old crew, it is the old, are crewing the boat.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] Understanding the principle of a Garden Path sentence, one, helps you to not write them accidentally, and helps you to create Garden Path-ish things where you send the reader down a Garden Path you want them on in order to button hook them into something else.

[Mary Robinette] There's a good example of this that I was already thinking about. Sorry, thank you for queuing this up for me. Douglas Adams uses this a lot.

[DongWon] Yep.

[Mary Robinette] The ship hung in the air, exactly the way bricks don't. Like, you are not expecting... You're not expecting that turn. But, sequencing wise, he's putting the surprise at the end. If it had been, bricks don't hang in the air the way these ships did. Like, there's... That is a plunker of a sentence...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Because you're not... There's so many reasons that that doesn't make...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] That doesn't work. But it does show you how important order is and sequence, because it's all the same content, it's just entirely wrong because the important, the fun thing, the surprise, comes at the beginning.

[DongWon] Well, I think one thing that is also really important at a line level, or basically at any level, is mirroring. Right? And repetition. Right? I know that when I write, especially nonfiction, I tend to over rely on repetition, but I do think it's really useful to set up a pattern and break it. Right? And that's something that you can do on a structured level in a sentence, of giving us, like, this list of things through repetition of, like, I walked a long way... I don't know, I can't think of a good example off the top of my head. I'm sorry. But, like, I think having a thing where you have one beat, second beat, and then the third beat you break the pattern, can set up that surprise in terms of using simple checks like rule of three, but doing it in a very deliberate structural way.

[Erin] Something that's really cool about patterning, too, it's like you're creating your own sequencing rules. You're telling people, oh, we are in a new... In this particular set of sentences, you're going to get this word over and over again, and each time, it's going to be slightly different.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Because a lot of times when we use repetition, we might use the same word, but, like, something different is on the other end of the verb.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Or we might use, like, the same general sentence construction, but the length changes. And so each time you're getting something slightly different. And then just as you teach us the sequence, you rip it out from under us. Which is great. It's sort of like a pact with the reader.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And I feel like a lot of sequencing is, like, you making promises to the reader about the way that they will be experiencing the story, and then being like, haha, no, or, yes, and like using that to actually... Not control reader emotion, but to take readers on a journey that makes things not feel flat.

[DongWon] Yeah. One thing I also think about with this is the idea of readability. Right? There's a thing in commercial fiction that we talk about in terms of windowpane prose. Right? Prose that is invisible in a certain way because it's so readable and you just read very quickly and you can absorb very quickly. And so, something like your Garden Path sentence is sort of very anti-readability. You have to slow down and think about it. And you're sort of putting the brakes on your reader as they're moving through it, and they have to, like, stop and parse what you're saying, versus sometimes doing something that is maximizing that speed of reading, can be a really effective technique. And there's just as much technique that goes into doing that as writing the beautifully crafted sentence.

[Mary Robinette] I just want to flag for readers that windowpane or transparent prose is a fashion based thing, because Jane Austen was writing windowpane prose in her day.

[DongWon] Yes. 100%.

[Mary Robinette] So when you're thinking about these things, like, don't think do I want to write transparent prose or not? Think about where am I putting my embellishments and why? Because the transparent prose, the window pane prose, if you're writing stuff that feels natural to you, you're probably writing something that is currently fashionable in some ways.

[DongWon] Yeah. Yes. Exactly. And one thing... One really useful thing for getting that sort of like quicker comprehension and building sort of towards that sort of speed of reading for your audience is honestly using, like, high school composition essay techniques. Right? of... there's a thing I think about a lot, of tell someone the thing you're going to tell them, then tell it to them, and then tell them what you just told them. Right? This is really useful for an action scene, for example. Where you kind of frame it up in a way of here's the thing that's about to happen, and then you go through what happened, then you tell them what happened at the end. When... A lot of times, I find when reading a scene, if they don't do that, I will not be quite sure what I'm supposed to take away from the scene or what to expect when I'm in the scene. And so having that sort of, like, intro and conclusion short of sentence, or, like, hint, can be incredibly helpful at a scene level and at a sentence level, in terms of how am I supposed to ingest this.

[Mary Robinette] So this goes back to the question of repetition and cause and effect and sequencing...

[DongWon] And recency [garbled]

[Mary Robinette] And recency...

[Erin] And everything.

[Mary Robinette] And everything. But specifically, that you don't want to do that all the time. You want to do that for the important things.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And what that does... The repetition causes people to pay attention to it. We typically notice repetition because we are wired, as animals, to notice things that are important, and repetition is unnatural. So you hear repetition in the wild when something is walking towards you, potential predator. You hear it when it's water dripping, and that's an important piece of information. So once you've identified that information, then if it's not important to you, then you discard it. You're like, okay, I can tune the repetition out. So when you're using repetition in fiction, you want to make sure that you're using it to catch the reader's attention, and that you're not doing it accidentally.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And what DongWon is talking about with this you tell them, you tell them again, and then you tell them what you told them... That is a form of repetition to draw the reader's attention to it. But if it's not an important thing, like, again, in this workshop, I was showing them some of my earlier prose, and I had this thing where I described the same action three different times and it was... I did this multiple times in a scene. But only one of the actions that I was describing was plot relevant. So, as someone who was editing it as an adult, I took out the other two repetitions where I was describing the same motion multiple times because what that was was me figuring out the right way to describe it.

[DongWon] Yeah. I think there is the repetition aspect. There's also a fractal aspect of it, too. Right? Sort of at an individual moment level, there is that tell them, tell them again, and then tell them what happened. But then there's also sort of the scene level, and then literally the book level. Right? The introductory scene of a book, that opening scene, really should mirror the structure and sort of genre flow... Not should, but can, in a useful way, mirror the structure and genre and beats of the book. And then your conclusion sort of tells us what are we taking away from this. Right? So in that sort of, like, fractal microcosm, macrocosm thing, you can sometimes either show in micro what the book will be. One great example I think about this is the opening of The Haunting of Hill House, which has this sort of long rambling sentence at the beginning that really encapsulates the entire experience of reading this book. Right? And it sets you up so well, both plot wise and linguistically, for what you're in for in this very specific way of, like... We're going to be doing some weird psychological stuff, here is some big things about the world, here's a description of the very normal house. The house is really scary. Right? Like, that's sort of the beats of that opening line, and then that's the beats of the book. Right? So, this sort of fractal microcosm macrocosm kind of thing can really play into a version of this mirroring, repetition, and all these different aspects.

[Mary Robinette] And I think one of the reasons that this works, and this goes back to the sequencing thing, is that recency...

[DongWon] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] Recency primacy effect. Because we... We like symmetry. Humans respond really, really well to it. So, recency primacy effect... We've been tossing those words a lot around in this episode, and we do talk about it in other episodes, but I'll redefine it here. It is that you notice the first thing and the last thing. Those stick the most. So when you've got this outer frame of... On this fractal macrocosm, you're completing a circuit. Because the recency and the primacy are both the same thing, and so that completes a circuit and it enhances them. And you can do that on a scene level, you can do that on a sentence level, at a paragraph level, where you hit something a little bit harder at the beginning and the end. Like, I've used this example when... In other episodes. The difference between... And it's a subtle difference... The man walked into the room. There was a blonde in the chair. Versus. The man walked into the room. In the chair was a blonde. But then I can complete this by doing... By lingering on that. The man walked into the room. There was a blonde in the chair. She had hair to the base of her spine, and, like, it didn't stop. So I'm hitting the blonde and the hair... Like, I'm hitting the blonde twice in that. Yet... I see your face, Erin.

[Erin] What are you talking about?

[laughter]

[Erin] Go ahead, hit me some more.

[Mary Robinette] You're right, I should have just stuck with the metaphor from the previous one of chasing balls.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] But the point of that is that, like, I can do the same thing with a man walked into the room. In the chair was a blonde. The chair was a fine bit of hardwood, probably from the early 1800s. And at that point, the woman in the chair becomes unimportant. The chair is the important thing. Because of this... This balance. And it is this... It's a question of sequence.

[DongWon] One thing that is standing out to me as we talk about this is a lot of things we're talking about are concepts in cognitive psychology. Right? There's the idea of the recency bias, you're more biased to say your favorite thing was something that you saw recently. Right? There's a framing bias, which is the first person who states, like, the frame of the thing tends to define the field of play. This is a tool in negotiation, where you say this is worth a million dollars, and then someone now can't be like, this is worth $20. Right? Because you framed it in a certain way. And so, I think the microcosm macrocosm thing that I was talking about is a framing thing and a recency thing. Right? So you can use your understanding of the way people's brains work and how we process information as these narrative, like... Okay, I hate to call them hacks, but you're also kind of hacking somebody's brain.

[Erin] These are tools.

[DongWon] These are tools and techniques to get information across in really efficient ways that are very impactful and meaningful.

[Howard] One of my favorite tools, and it shortcuts all of the thinking about why and how and goes straight to the mechanics, is turn the paragraph upside down. Just reverse the information in the paragraph and see if it works better. There are so many paragraphs that I've written where I look at it and I think, man, what is wrong with it? Wait, Howard, you have a tool for this. Turn it upside down. And I just reversed the order of information and realize, oh, now it's right. Do I know why it's right? No, but I know that tool worked.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Yeah, it's funny. One more tool before we wrap up here is, like, I also think that it's... Some of this stuff sounds really complicated, but as we've been talking, one thing that I've been thinking a lot about is gossip, and also, like, how we convey information. People... The tell someone, tell them again, and then tell them what you told them is also like, oh, my God, I hate John so much. Okay. So today he, like, came...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And he poured water in the copier, and it was horrible, and he burned my house down, also.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] And that is why I will never speak to him again.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And it's like we tend to do this, this is how we convey information. And a lot of it is because a lot of what we understand about writing comes from old... Like, at some point, you had to catch someone's attention verbally and say like, hey, this is why you should pay attention to what's going on. Okay, now I'm going to explain it. And, like, don't forget, this is the thing that I just told you.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Because if you're listening to somebody say something, you can't... There's only so much you can hold in your head about, like, what they just said.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And so the thing that caught your attention first, and the thing that they left with, are the things that you're going to take with you.

[DongWon] You gotta tell me how you feel about the person before you tell me the story. Right?

[Erin] Yeah. Exactly.

[DongWon] If this story is about, oh, it's so sad that my sister-in-law had to go through all these terrible things, or if this story is I hate my sister-in-law and here's all of the things that she did... Those are... Can have the same facts, but be very different interpretations of the story. Right? So, if you want to, like, learn a lot about storytelling, honestly, go look into the podcast Normal Gossip, which is one of my favorite things in life. And it's just... The rhythm of how they tell stories is so important and you can learn so much from that.

[Erin] Yeah. In fact, I was going to say, like, if I'm in love with John, I'm like, John burned my house down. That's a very different story.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Well, I think it's a little bit of the cause and effect, again. It's like you don't want to give someone an answer before the question exists.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Exactly.

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Erin] And with that. we are going... This is jumbo sized... We are going to wrap up with homework. And this homework is worth $1 million.

[gasp]

[Howard] It's only worth 20 bucks. Guys, it's only worth 20 bucks.

[what]

[DongWon] I'm very confused by this framing.

[Erin] No. All right. So, take something... This homework's probably unsurprising, but take something either that you've written or something interesting that you've heard recently. Something somebody's told you that you're like, wow, what a juicy story. And go ahead and write it down in the order that you currently have it, or the order that you received it. And then I want you to rewrite it two ways. One is to take Howard's beautiful example that he stole from my brain which is to do it upside down. Do it backwards. Figure out how that would work. And then I want you to find some very unexpected way to sequence it that feels wrong to you. What is the worst way you could possibly sequence this information? Write it that way and, I don't know... See what happens.

[Howard] You are out of excuses. Now go write.