Writing Excuses 15.27: Alternate History, with Eric Flint

Jul. 8th, 2020 03:36 pm
mbarker: (Me typing?)
[personal profile] mbarker
Writing Excuses 15.27: Alternate History, with Eric Flint
 
 
Key points: Alternate history makes a change to real history, and explores the ramifications. One kind involves a time travel element, while another just makes a change. It takes research, and people will complain about details. One trick, use locations that were later destroyed. Use historical characters where possible. Also, crowd source your expertise! Think about how to use thoughts and actions of historical people rather than modern thinking and behavior. You may want to use old attitudes to tell a story. But, be aware that your audience may not like those attitudes. Time travelers may help you here. Also, pick the right historical period, and characters.
 
[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 27.
[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Alternate History, with Eric Flint.
[Howard] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.
[Brandon] And we're not that smart.
[Brandon] I'm Brandon.
[Howard] I'm Howard.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Brandon] And we have special guest star, Eric Flint. Thank you for coming on the podcast with us.
[Eric] You're welcome.
[Brandon] We're also recording live at SpikeCon.
[Applause]
 
[Brandon] So, Eric, you are one of the established masters of alternate history. We're really excited to have you on the podcast about it with us. Just in case there is someone listening who doesn't know what alternate history is, how would you define the sub genre of alternate history?
[Eric] Basically, the author makes some kind of change in real history, and then follows what the ramifications of it might be. You can broadly break it into two parts. There's a lot of alternate history also involves a time travel element.
[Brandon] Yeah.
[Eric] Where you take somebody in the modern world and put them back in older times. But then there's a different kind of alternate history, what you might consider pure alternate history, where there's no time travel element at all, where the author just makes a change in something. It can be something very minor. But something that's going to have a cascading effect. I've written both types.
[Brandon] So, that sounds to me really hard.
[Laughter]
[Brandon] Because I write epic fantasy. No one can tell me I got my history wrong, that I… But it feels like if you pick a time that people have studied a lot, say World War II or something like that, and you say, "Well, this battle changed and I'm going to explore the ramifications of what happens all the way into the future if that one battle was fought differently." It sounds like you have to do a lot of research and listen to a lot of people grumble that you got it wrong.
[Eric] I make it a point… I have not, and have no intention of ever writing an alternate history set in World War II, the Civil War, the Napoleonic era, where there are a jillion reenactors and fanatics who will go berserk over every little goddamned jot and tittle [garbled]
[laughter]
[Eric] "No, those uniforms only had three buttons…"
[Laughter]
[Howard] Well, your problem is that historians, they will let you know when you're wrong, but the reenactors…
[Eric] No, no, no.
[Howard] They'll come to your house.
[Eric] Well, what really drives you nuts is that the issues they're going to give you a hard time about, who in the hell cares? I mean, they really don't have hardly anything to do with the story. My biggest series, Ring of Fire series, is set in the middle of the 30 Years War in central Europe in the 17th century. There are, in the United States, exactly one group of reenactors of the 30 Years War. I made it a point to get on good terms with them a long time ago.
[Chuckles]
[Eric] Yeah, it is a lot of work. Whenever I'm… At least when I'm starting an alternate history series. It gets easier if you go along, as you go along. But whenever I'm early on in an alternate history book, I have to budget about twice as much time as I do for pretty much any other kind of novel. The only other kind of novel I've ever done that requires that kind of research is hard SF. Yeah, there are plenty of times when I envy dirty rotten fantasy writers like you…
[Chuckles]
[Eric] Because you can just wing it.
[Laughter]
[Eric] I mean, you do have to be consistent and care… I mean, there's actually quite a bit of work goes into it, but it's not the kind of…
[Brandon] No. I've… Most of my career, I wrote just in secondary world fantasies that I'd made up. The first time I even touched our world, I made sure to make it post apocalyptic. Cities that had suffered in Norma's disasters that had changed the landscape, the physical landscape. I still got things wrong and got complaints about… I took Chicago and I changed it to steel and blew up most of it and I created an underground and most of it takes place in the underground. Still, people were like, "You know what, that street actually doesn't intersect there."
[Laughter]
[Brandon] I'm like, "Uh. Man. You'd think that I could change the world enough that I could…" But it is… It's difficult. How do you… What's your go-to method for research?
 
[Eric] Well, all right. There are some tricks I use. When Andrew Dennis and I wrote 1634: The Galileo Affair which is part of the Ring of Fire series, and takes place mostly in Venice. Every single important location except the Piazza de San Marco and the Doge's Palace, which are quite well-known and you can visit them. But every other location that figure in the novel, we situated somewhere in Venice that got destroyed later. So, Mussolini razed it and put up a railroad station in one case, and I've forgotten everything else. So there's nothing left for anybody to go and prove that we're wrong. It's far enough back, there's not enough of a historical record.
[Howard] So, you're like time travelers trying to hide your tracks…
[Eric] Yeah.
[Howard] By putting your activities where something's going to wipe it out.
[Chuckles]
[Eric] It's not just [garbled]. Another thing I will do, I like to use historical characters if at all possible. But what I try to do is… One of the major characters in the Ring of Fire series is a Danish prince, Prince Ulrich. He existed. I mean, he was a real Prince of Denmark. But in real history, he was murdered at the age of 22. Very mysterious episode. So he died at the age of 22. Well, prove me wrong as to how he…
[Chuckles]
[Eric] Evolved afterwards. So I try to find people that were young. In one way or another. It's hard for somebody to… They can second-guess me, but, it's like, "Prove it."
[Brandon] Right.
[Eric] There's a lot of that. No matter how you slice it, though, you're still a lot… Actually, in terms of writing excuses, the two things I tell people there's the biggest and most dangerous forms of procrastination are research and worldbuilding. Because you can do that forever. At a certain point, you just have to say, "Enough!" And start writing a book. Then, yeah, a lot of times, you'll have to go back into more research and do stuff. There's no way around it, there's a lot of work. It gets easier if it's a big long series, the farther you go. Because the farther you get from the breakpoint, as we call it, the more possibilities open up.
 
[Brandon] Let's go ahead and stop and talk about our book of the week, which is the first book in the Ring of Fire series.
[Eric] All right.
[Brandon] Will you tell us a little bit about it?
[Eric] Yeah. The premise of the whole Ring of Fire series… The first novel is called 1632… It's a very simple premise. There's a cosmic accident that's caused by basically irresponsible behavior on the part of a very powerful alien species, who enjoy manipulating space-time, and what amounts to a fragment of their art hits the earth and causes a transposition in time and place of a whole town in northern West Virginia in modern times. Modern times being the year 2000, which is when I wrote the book. A town… About a 6 mile diameter… I mean, the whole physical area is transposed, not just the people. So that this town materializes in the middle of Germany, in an area of Germany called Thuringia, which used to be southern East Germany, in the middle of the 30 Years War. They just boom, they show up, and there they are. That's the MacGuffin, I mean, that's the premise. That's the only premise. I… It's a three-page premise. I don't spend… It's really let's get on with the story. Take my word for it that this happened. Yeah, I know it's crazy, but who cares.
[Chuckles]
[Eric] We'll go from there. What the whole series is about is how this town of 3500 modern Americans… The impact that this has on the world in general, particularly Europe in the middle of what was probably the most destructive war in European history, at least since the time of the collapse of the Roman Empire. It's also a very fascinating period in history. From there, the series has sprawled out all over the place. There are seven novels that I call the mainline, that sort of run in the center of this series, followed… They depict the main characters and the main actions that happen. But then there are all kinds of side stories that branch off from there. Some become pretty major storylines in their own right. I believe we're up to about 24 novels published by Baen Books. Then, in addition, starting about two years ago, we launched our own publishing house, which we call Ring of Fire Press, which… We have a booth in the dealers' room if you want to drop by. We're publishing our own stuff set in the series. It also has a magazine called the Grantville Gazette that's been in operation professionally for about 12 years now.
[Brandon] Yeah.
[Eric] [garbled] done really well.
[Dan] Yeah.
[Brandon] If you guys don't know about this whole thing, go research it. Because it is one of the most fascinating like emergent storytelling cultures in science fiction fantasy that these novel started. The people loved reading them, started talking about them, and creating forums. Out of that grew a magazine which has fiction that is kind of members of the community are writing that is all canon about this town, and they know all the people who are in it because it's a somewhat small town and just what they're doing. They'll be like, "We need to get rubber? How do we get rubber? Well, we need to write a story about somebody going…" All of these things… It is really… The network around the 1632 books is just fascinating to me.
 
[Howard] Well, that's the thing that I would like to ask, with regard to alternate history and the research that needs to be done, how much of that in the last 10 years have you been able to crowd source? Have you been able to go out to members of the community and…
[Eric] I was crowdsourcing it right from… When I wrote the first book, I talked to Jim Baen and we set up a special conference in Baen Bar's discussion area devoted to that book. I said to people, "I'm going to need help writing this, because all kinds of… The kind of research I have to do is impossible for one people to do." It's like, "What can you do with modern engines?" So a lot of it was technical. The basic rule I followed, with one exception, was that I used the real town of Mannington, West Virginia, as the model for the town of Grantville. The only big exception is I moved the power plant, which, in the real world, exists in another town called Grant town about 15 miles away. I moved it because I really needed a power plant.
[Chuckles]
[Eric] But that's the only thing I cheated on. So the basic rule, that's been true ever since, is if it's in Mannington, you can put it in Grantville, if it's not in Mannington, you can't. That's the rule. People spend a ton of time, believe me, researching what is and isn't in Mannington.
[Brandon] Do people in the actual town know about this?
[Eric] Yeah.
[Brandon] Do they get tired of…
[Chuckles]
[Eric] We haven't been out there in quite a while. The first… Four years now, going back, I don't know, close to 20 years, the fans of the series hold an annual convention. It's being held here this year. WesterCon is hosting it. The first five years we held it in West Virginia. We couldn't hold it in Mannington, because Mannington doesn't have a motel. That's how small a town it is. So we held it in a larger town of Fairmont, population about 30,000. We did that for five years in a row. But at that point… There would always be new people coming every year, but about at least two thirds of the people had gotten to be regulars. They came up to me and said, "You know, Eric, there's only so many times you can visit a town of 3500 people." I mean…
[Laughter]
[Eric] So… Which is fair enough. So what we started doing after that, Conestoga in Tulsa was the first one that did it. We'll go to a convention and ask them if they're willing to host us. What they get is maybe 50 people showing up who wouldn't otherwise show up. We do all the organizing and tracks and everything else. But basically, it means we don't have to organize a convention because somebody else is already done it.
 
[Brandon] So, kind of getting back to how to write alternate history. I'm actually going to pitch this at Dan first. I know you haven't done true alternate history, but you've done cousin genres.
[Dan] I've done secret history.
[Brandon] You've done secret history, you've also done historical fantasy. So, my big question is, how much do you worry about getting the thoughts, mannerisms, and actions of the historical people right when you're writing a story like this? I preface this by saying when I write epic fantasy, I generally am not trying to write… This is my mode… People who acted and thought like people did in the Middle Ages. I get away from this because I'm writing secondary world fantasies, generally with magical technology that would really place people more post-Renaissance and things like that. But really, they're thinking more along… If not contemporary, modern lines for thought processes. How much do you worry about this?
[Eric] Oh, a lot.
[Dan] I actually…
[Eric] Oh, I'm sorry, Dan. Go ahead.
[Brandon] We'll go to Dan first, and then we'll…
[Dan] I love this question, because I actually got into kind of a big ongoing argument with my editor and copy editor on my Cold War book, which, by the time this airs, will already be out. It's called Ghost Station. Straight historical, not alternate or anything. Set in 1961. Part of the plot hinges on the inherent sexism of the era. That there are two different places where people miss obvious clues because they assume that the bad guy is a man. Which is not to say that the bad guy is not a man, but… I'm trying to do this without spoilers. Anyway, that sexism was important. The editor and the copy editor were both trying to impose more modern sensibilities on this. Changing just kind of some of the minor language. In a place where I would say man, they would want to change it to person. Just in a couple of places, saying, "You know, we kind of want to be more sensitive about this." If it was in narrative, I let it slide. If it was ever in dialogue, I'm like, "No. The fact that this person has this attitude, the plot hinges on it. We have to keep that attitude there." So, it does matter. I think if you're using it on purpose to tell a particular story, you want to have those old attitudes and you want to have those older kind of more antiquated personalities. If you're not, then sure, go ahead, because obviously it's a hot button issue, if everyone who worked on the book kept trying to change it.
[Brandon] I know that when I read Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, like, the way that she made people feel, I don't know, I'm not an expert in that period, but they felt like they were from the period. It really was a big selling point for the book for me. Eric, do you… How much do you worry about this?
 
[Eric] It's… Oh, you worry about it a lot. I mean, it's kind of at the center of what you do. Because if the book isn't historically plausible, it's not going to work as a story. You have to realize that people in the past do not necessarily think the same way, or behave the same way, they do today. There are various ways that I have found to deal… By the way, the issue may involve, at a purely practical level, is that if your audience is so repelled by your heroes, it's awfully hard to sell a book. To give an ill… Unless it was written 2500 years ago. Then, people will give it a pass. But, to give an instance, the Odyssey, the hero Odysseus, the very first thing he does after Troy, they're sailing down and he says, "Oh, there's a village there." And they stop, rob and plunder it. These are the good guys. Okay? There're two… There are several things you can do. One of them is that if you introduce a time travel element and people from the… Our time, then at least you've got a binocular view of what's happening. So you can be depicting the attitudes of people of the time, but you're also depicting how modern people are looking at it. The other is to pick an historical period… One of the reasons I picked the 30 Years War is that that world was not that different from ours. It was different, but it wasn't like ancient Greece, or Ming China. It wasn't that different. The same was true, even more so, with the series I'm doing set in Jacksonian America. Then what I did was went looking for the right character. I needed a Southern character, an effective political leader, whose attitudes would be at least okay for the modern audience. I was lucky, because such a person actually existed. That was Sam Houston. Sam Houston's attitudes on race were not the same as modern people, but awfully close. He was partly raised by Cherokees, so he's very friendly to Indians. He was asked once by Alexis de Tocqueville what he thought about the capabilities of the different races of North America. He said, "Well, there's no question the Indians are equal to Whites." He said, "Blacks are considered to be childish… Childlike and inferior, but nobody ever gives them a chance to do anything, so how can you really know what they're capable of or not?" That's an attitude that a modern audience, okay, they can go with that. Then, I think the other major character is a Northern Irish radical of the time. He's not exactly got modern attitudes, but they're a lot closer. It's a real issue, though. I mean, because you have to do it in a way that's going to be plausible all the way around. So far, I've been able to put off. But there are some areas of history I would just stay away from.
[Brandon] Right. Probably good advice there.
[Eric] Well, unless I could put a time travel thing in it, but other than that, I'd just stay away from it.
 
[Brandon] We are out of time. I want to thank our audience at SpikeCon.
[Yay. Applause.]
[Brandon] I want to thank Eric. Do you have, by chance, a writing prompt you can give to our audience?
[Eric] A writing prompt?
[Brandon] Yes.
[Eric] When you're… Writing takes a lot of intellectual and emotional energy. It really does. It's hard to get started at the beginning of the day. Wherever that day may be for you. I found two things help. I plot ahead of time. Which I strongly recommend, because one advantage to having a well-developed plot is I don't have to sit down in the morning and say, "Gee, what am I going to write about today?" I can look at the damn plot and say, "Okay. Here's where I am." But the second thing is just write. Write a sentence. Just get a sentence down on paper and keep writing. If it turns out that sentence didn't work out right, you can always scrap it later. But start writing, because once you do that, you've kind of gotten into the story. The story itself will kind of pull you into it. But it really is kind of hard to do it. It's kind of like jumping into a pool of ice cold water. It's like the only way to do it is just do it. That's about… That's what I do every day.
[Brandon] Thanks for the advice. This has been Writing Excuses, you're out of excuses, now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 15.26: Taking the Chance, with David Weber

Jul. 1st, 2020 02:35 pm
mbarker: (Me typing?)
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Writing Excuses 15.26: Taking the Chance, with David Weber
 
 
Key points: Taking the chance, taking risks, is the only way to be successful. "He who will not risk cannot win." To succeed, take the risk of failing. If you don't submit, you can't make a sale. Be a storyteller. At some point, it will turn into work. Keep going. When you can't get the platonic ideal book on the page, what do you do? Write the damn book. Learn from it. Characterization is critical. You have to be you. Write the story that interests you. Choose your verbs wisely. Never bury dialogue inside a paragraph. Sentences are what you build books out of. Characters are what stories are about, sentences are how you tell the story. Get those two things right.
 
[Mary Robinette] Season 15, episode 26.
[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Taking the Chance, with David Weber.
[Howard] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.
[Brandon] And we're not that smart.
[Brandon] I'm Brandon.
[Howard] I'm Howard.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Brandon] And we have special guest star, David Weber. Thank you so much for being on the podcast with us.
[David] Thank you for inviting me.
[Brandon] David Weber is one of the best-selling science fiction writers of all time, so we are super excited to have him. We are alive again at SpikeCon.
[Whoo! Applause!]
 
[Brandon] So, this topic was one that you suggested, David. The idea of taking the chance, meaning taking risks with your writing. What made you want to do this topic?
[David] Well, it's not just taking risks with your writing once you're an established writer. I cannot tell you how many people I've encountered who I think could have been successful writers, except that they were afraid to take the chance of failing at something that they had dreamed about. I could have been published easily 10 years earlier than I was if I hadn't kept finding excuses to do other things instead. That means I've been publishing for 30 years and I've lost a third of the time that I could have been published at this point. I mentioned in the preshow when I was talking to our hosts that there's a quote from John Paul Jones which has become increasingly important to me over the years, and it has nothing to do with not giving up the ship. But Jones said that, "It seems to be a law inflexible unto itself that he who will not risk cannot win." So if you don't take the risk of failing as a writer, you can never succeed as a writer. So you're sitting there, and you have this dream that says I could be a writer. Perhaps you could. But if you keep saying I could be a writer long enough, one day you wake up and it's turned into I could have been a writer, but the opportunity is gone now. Okay? So if you want to write, you have got to take the chance of being rejected, and possibly being rejected over and over again, until you find the right first reader, the right publisher that says, "Oh. I could do this." Okay? You have to remember while you're doing this, you control, or writers in general control a resource that publishers have to have. Publishers exist to publish. That means they need things to publish. Which means that they are constantly on the lookout for things to publish. Yes, they get a lot of dreck and there's… the first readers pile is the slush pile, and people read it and they go, "Oh, my God." I actually know of one book that was submitted on brown paper written in purple crayon. Okay? You don't get read when you do that kind of submission. But if you don't submit, you cannot possibly make a sale. I cannot emphasize… Over emphasize how important it is to be willing to do that. The other thing that I think you need to bear in mind is you can learn to write better with editorial support and with the practice. You can learn to write better. But what you have to be to make it work in this business is a storyteller. You have to have that bug. You can increase the skill with which you exercise that need to be a storyteller. But that's a critical element. If you don't feel that inside, if you don't feel the story that needs… That's growing that needs to come out, then you don't need to try and be an author. Because you're going to be fighting your own nature the entire time that you're trying to write a story. Unless that is what it is your nature to be. Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, storytellers have to tell stories. That's certainly true in my case.
 
[Brandon] Howard, you had something you wanted to say?
[Howard] Yeah. I was just going to… I like the John Paul Jones quote. We've had the opportunity to visit NASA a couple of times. They have that famous slogan, failure is not an option. Because there are times at which, boy, you just… You can't allow yourself to fail. I created a maxim within my own universe, which is "Failure is not an option. It's mandatory. The option is whether or not to let failure be the last thing you do."
[David] Yeah.
[Howard] The idea there… I mean, that doesn't get you past the John Paul Jones quote, which is that you have to take that chance in the first place. But I am always reminding myself that I am going to fail. It's just gonna happen. All I get to choose is whether or not I learn from it and whether I let myself quit.
[David] Well, NASA's failure is not an option stands on the shoulders of every single thing they did that failed as they were doing the engineering, when they were developing…
[Howard] They blew up so many rockets.
[Laughter]
[David] Absolutely. Okay? Failure is not an option means that ultimately we must succeed. It doesn't mean that we won't have the occasional catastrophe along the way. That we won't have Columbia. That we won't have…
[Dan] But, to your point about the whole premise of this episode, if NASA had never done anything that could have failed, they never would have gotten into orbit, they never would have gotten on the moon.
[David] Exactly.
[Dan] They had to be willing to take those risks and screw up horribly in order to achieve what they eventually have achieved.
 
[David] That's absolutely true. It's… Okay. No task worth doing springs fully blown and fully performed from the brow of Zeus. Okay? You have to go out there and make it work. All right? Now, most of the successful writers that I know would write whether anyone was buying their work or not. We have to do it. That's part of that storytelling bug that I was talking about. Okay? Whether we're writing for our own entertainment, our family's entertainment, or just because, my God, it's 2 o'clock in the morning, I can't sleep, I gotta do some more writing, we write. If you don't have that kind of… Robert Asprin once said, and Robert and I did not necessarily see together on all things…
[Laughter]
[David] But he said, "Successful authors are like rats. If we don't wear our fingers down on the keyboard every day, our fangs grow through our brains and kill us.
[Laughter]
[David] Okay? It's still a valid metaphor, even though I use voice recognition software when I write now. But it's true. If you… I have this need to be crafting stories. Okay? Now, for the last year or so, I haven't been, and that's because I face planted into a cement floor in Atlanta the day before Dragon Con and gave myself a concussion, broke my nose into places, stitches inside my mouth, the whole 9 yards. It has taken me effectively a year to recover from the concussion status to where I am once again really writing. Okay? It's been a real trial for me and for people who were expecting books from me and everything else, but sometimes, the need to tell stories is sort of temporarily stymied by the fact that, you know what, my brain's not working.
[Howard] One of the first things that I learned about… I'm a web cartoonist, and one of the first things I learned in this regard was when I still had a day job, early 2000's, we would take… I was in the software industry. We'd take two weeks off around Christmas, because kind of the whole industry wound down. For that two weeks, I told myself my Christmas present to me is that I'm going to pretend I'm a cartoonist full-time. I'm just going to do this. I would tell my plan to people. They're like, "You're going to pretend to have a job over Christmas?"
[Chuckles]
[Howard] "Okay, one, you're a broken human, and, two, what does your family think?" What I found is those are some of my fondest memories of this. Yeah. Storyteller gotta stug… Gotta story tell."
 
[David] There comes a time, in a given project or whatever, where it turns into work. Where you have to drive yourself to it. You have to do that. I have, in every book, I have what I call the chapter. That's the point at which I say, "This entire book is dreck. What was I thinking? Oh, my God, I can't get this to come together." The only thing that I can do is just keep grinding it out and saying, "Boy, this is sucky." Okay, that kind of thing? Then, when I get to the final edit, I can't identify the chapter.
[Howard] I was going to say, you've refined your process to the point that only happens for one chapter doing a project?
[Laughter]
[David] No, that's… Pretty much, yeah. You know. It's this kind of thing.
[Howard] Winning.
[David] Yeah.
 
[Brandon] Let's go ahead and… Let's stop for a book of the week, then we'll get back to it.
[David] Okay.
[Brandon] You have our book, or books of the week, this week.
[David] I have two. One is The Gordian Protocol, which came out in May, with Jacob Holo. Who is a BMW engineer in an alternate universe. I think that our backgrounds, the synergy was really, really good. He's got three or four self published novels out. This will be his first traditionally published novel. Is his first traditionally published novel. This was not one of the two I was thinking about, but he has just handed me the draft of the Valkyrie Protocol, which is the sequel. It's pretty much ready to go. We have to wait for him to get a hiatus in that real-life job to do a little tweaking that I pointed out to him. The other book that I've just handed in is the sequel to Out Of the Dark, which, yes, is the one with vampires in it. This one is rather cleverly titled Into the Light. I did it with Chris Kennedy, of the Four Horsemen universe and whatnot. He was my co-author on it. I'm really pleased with the way that it worked out. The vampires are a little flamboozled when they begin finding out some things about their own past and their own existence that neither they nor the earlier writers who didn't like the vampires didn't know. Okay? For… I won't go any deeper into it than that. But suffice it to say, that Vlad Tepes was a tiny bit mistaken about exactly how and what he became when he became it.
[Brandon] Excellent.
 
[Brandon] This topic's very interesting to me, because I work with a lot of aspiring writers. I teach at the University, and of course the podcast, and things like this. Looking back at myself when I was first making the choice to start writing, one of the things that I think holds back new writers, and I've kind of found some language that I can describe this more recently, is that, for me, there was this beautiful book I imagine somewhere out in the aether, right? It was like the Platonic ideal of a book. As, having read for many years, and sitting down to write the first time, it was like I knew this book was out there, but then my crude fingers could not get that book on the page. It was really frustrating to me. Because it felt like… It wasn't fear that I think stopped me, it was this sense that I was taking something beautiful and I was making it something flawed and terrible, because my skill wasn't good enough. I've found multiple other aspiring writers that kind of have this same attitude that… Less fear, more like, I guess I must not have done enough worldbuilding or I must not have thought it through enough, because this beautiful story, I just can't make it come out on the page.
[David] Well, that's…
[Brandon] So, I guess my question to you is strategies for writers who are having trouble making that transition, taking that chance, giving themselves permission to fail. What are some strategies that people could use to do that?
[David] Write the damn book.
[Laughter]
[David] And when you're done, if it's not what you thought you were going to come up with, file it under this was a learning experience, these are the things that I can see that I did wrong. Do those right in the next book. I have an entire file cabinet at home that has probably 300 short stories in it, that were written solely because they were things that I wanted to play with as a writer. How was I going to describe this? How was I going to handle this bit of characterization? You… Basically, this is one of the crafts that the only way you can learn to do it is to do it. There's not a credential program somewhere that is going to say, "Okay. Now you have a diploma. You'll go out there and be a successful writer." Okay? There are all kinds of courses that you can take and training that you can seek that will help you, give you tools that you might not have otherwise. But there's nobody out there who can teach you how to be a writer. Anybody who says we will teach you how to be a writer is taking your money. Okay? Because what they can do is they can teach you how they are a writer. They can teach you how these three guys over here are writers. They can't teach you how you're a writer. Okay? Characterization. Characterization is a critical component of any story you're going to tell. How do you build a character? Okay? One of the things that I do when I'm doing writing workshops is I rollup a character from one of the role-playing game series. I tell my students, I say, "Okay, this is the character that you have. This is the age, this is the gender, everything else. Go home, and between now and the next session, write me an explanation for why this character exists with these skills, these abilities, these disabilities." They frequently turn it into what is actually a very good short story. Okay? In getting out who this character is. That's the kind of thing that you have to be able to build on your own. I can give you that assignment, and tell you to go home and do it. But I can't say to you, the first way that you should do it is by doing thus and so, because the best that you could learn from that is how I do it. What makes a writer succeed is that writer's voice. You can take exactly the same story, the exact same plot, even the exact same characters by name. Okay? And have two different writers do the story. You have two totally different stories. Okay?
[Brandon] Absolutely.
 
[David] One of them is going to be the way that you tell the story, and one of them is going to be the way that somebody else tells the story. What makes you a successful writer is your voice finding its audience. You cannot do that trying to be someone else. You have to be you.
[Dan] Yeah. I… Finding that voice of your own is critical and it is difficult. I like to think about this in terms of Ender's Game. Because they had the kids in the Battle School, and they would fight against each other. Then there's this really critical scene towards the end of it, where Bean stands up in the lunch room and says, "Guys. We are doing the same strategies over and over and over. We will never learn anything new until we give ourselves the freedom to fail." That's when they kind of throw out the whole competition system and they say, "Okay. We're going to try this, and it probably will be awful, but we'll learn something from it.
[David] Yeah.
[Dan] So I imagine someone out there listening to this podcast thinking, lack of risk-taking is not my problem, I've tried everything I can think of. It's… I'm just not selling anything. Maybe what you need to do is something ridiculous. Maybe you need to change genre. Maybe you need to try something new. Maybe you need to put that big golden book that Brandon was talking about, that idealized thing that you have in mind, put that on a shelf and write something different.
[David] Okay. Let me tell you one of the most critical things that you should bear in mind as a writer. Write the story that interests you. They say, write what you know. Well, I don't know anybody who's been a starship captain. Okay? I'm sorry, there just aren't too many of them around for me to go interview, that kind of thing. But if there's a type of story that is especially suited to you, that you enjoy reading, etc. Point number one, you're not unique. That means there are other people who enjoy reading that same sort of story. It may not be what's currently hot. But publishers don't necessarily look for what's currently hot. They look for what they expect to be durable. Some publishers do. They want to push you into writing whatever is selling right now. Avoid them. Okay? I'm sorry. But you should. Okay? Now, if they say, "We'll pay you a stack of money to write it," then you can say to yourself, "Okay. They'll pay me a stack of money. I'll get some practice writing, and then I'll be able to go do what I want to do." But, point number one, if you like it, other people will like it. Point number two is if you like it, you will write it better than something you are writing that you feel that you have to write in order to be hot, in order to sell your work. Okay? Point number three is publishers are constantly looking for things to publish. Now, some publishers, for whatever combination of reasons, have blinders on or at least blinkers. Okay? Maybe, it's like, I don't agree with the political philosophy in that book. There's all kinds of idiosyncratic factors that can come into play. But the bottom line is publishers need stuff to publish. Keith Laumer once said that there's not the great unsold novel. There's only the great unwritten novel. Because if you write it, and it is good and you submit it long enough, you will sell it because publishers are looking for things to publish. The editor who discovered Thomas Wolfe… Thomas Wolfe had been rejected about eight or nine dozen times. Okay? Then this guy found… Discovered Thomas Wolfe and made his entire career out of the fact that he was the guy who discovered Thomas Wolfe. He was asked by another editor at one point. The guy said, "I read the first quarter of a million words, and it sucked. Where did you realize…?" He said, "About word 300,000."
[Hmm, hmm, hmm.]
[David] Okay? What I'm saying to you is that eventually, if what you have done is publishable, it will find a buyer. Sometimes, even if what you've done isn't punishable… Publishable. Punishable? There was…
[Laughter]
[David] I've read some horrible books before. But even if what you've written in its current form isn't publishable, sometimes you'll get that little comment back that will tell you why it wasn't. More often than not, you'll get a form letter that says, "I'm sorry. It doesn't really meet our needs at this moment. Etc., etc." But sometimes you'll get that little flicker of a response, and you go, "Oh!" Now, I've been doing this… I've supported myself as a writer since I was 17. I'm 67 this year. So I've been writing… I've been earning my living pushing words around for 50 years. Okay? I've been a published novelist for… Well, we sold the first… I sold the first book in April 1989. So this is the 30th year since I sold the first book. In the course of that time, I like to think I've learned a few things. Okay? There are some very simple things that an author… Okay. For example. Any aspiring writer should realize that the most important word in any sentence is the verb. Choose your verbs wisely. Don't say, "He came quickly to his feet." Say, "He leapt to his feet. He jerked to his feet. He jerked upright." Okay? Never use an -ing verb when you can avoid it, unless you want the voice of what you're writing to be passive. All right? Never bury dialogue inside a paragraph. If there's dialogue in a paragraph, start the paragraph with the dialogue and arrange the internal mechanics to make that work. Okay? Don't worry about choppy paragraphs. Worry about where you want to direct the reader's eye. You're setting the cadence, you're creating the rhythm. Maybe you need short choppy sentences and paragraphs at this point. Maybe you need one line paragraphs for emphasis. Okay? Maybe the one line paragraph that you need is, "In the world blew up." Okay? Because you're in the middle of a combat situation, there's a missile incoming, the character you're writing about doesn't know it. There's combat chatter, they're saying, "We're under fire," the character's turning around. Then the world blew up. As a separate paragraph. So think about those sorts of things when you're writing. That's not a question of my telling you to write in my voice. Because these are things that any writer can profit from, in the way that they construct and craft sentences, and sentences are what you build books out of.
[Brandon] We could probably sit here for another hour and listen to this.
[Chuckles]
[Brandon] Because these are excellent points. But we are out of time. I want to thank our audience at SpikeCon. Thank you guys.
[Applause]
[Brandon] I want to thank Mr. Weber for coming on the podcast.
 
[Brandon] Do you have a writing prompt you can give to our listeners?
[David] A writing prompt?
[Brandon] Yes.
[David] Something to do. I would say, go home and create a character. Okay? Not one that you set out to build because this is going to go in your story. But give yourself the assignment of taking a character that you didn't create because you rolled it up or whatever. Then, build in your worldbuilding bible, in your tech bible, whatever, build why that character is who that character is. Because stories are about characters. If the character is not interesting to the reader, the story will go nowhere. If the character is not interesting to you, and understood by you, you will not be able to communicate it to the reader. Your characters will still, if you do this long enough, the characters will evolve in the storytelling, and they should. So, as the life experience of that character is shared with your readers in multiple books, you have to understand how that character changes and incorporate it. Characters are what stories are about. Sentences are how you tell the story. Get those two things right, and the story will usually succeed. A weak story that is well told will succeed, where a strong story that is weakly told fails.
[Brandon] Awesome. I don't know that we could put it better than that. So, this has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 15.25: Using the MICE Quotient for Conflict

Jun. 25th, 2020 11:02 am
mbarker: (Fireworks Delight)
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Writing Excuses 15.25: Using the MICE Quotient for Conflict
 
 
Key Points: MICE (milieu, inquiry, character, and event) affect where your story starts, stops, and the kinds of conflicts it has. Milieu stories start when a character enters a place and ends when they exit. The conflicts are things that prevent them from exiting the place. Inquiry is driven by questions, starting with a question, and ending when it is answered. In between, things keep the character from answering the question. Combining plot threads makes a story more interesting, but can also cause story bloat. Character stories are about character transformation, character change. The conflicts are things that get in the way of that change, interior conflicts. Is the character driving the change, or are they resisting the change? Event stories start when the normal status quo gets broken in some way, and the character tries to fix it. They revolve around external conflict, and are often what people think of as plot. The event changes many things, introducing many conflicts that need to be resolved, so you have conflicts throughout your story.
 
[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 25.
[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Using the MICE Quotient for Conflict.
[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.
[Howard] And we're not that smart.
[Brandon] I'm Brandon.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Howard] And I'm Howard.
 
[Brandon] We are going to be talking about the MICE quotient again. Mary Robinette, can you give us a quick overview again of what it is?
[Mary Robinette] Great. So the MICE quotient is an organizational theory that says that every story contains four elements, milieu, inquiry, character, and event. Kind of which one of those is the major driver affects where your story starts and stops and the kinds of conflicts that go in the middle. You can have more than one, and then you can treat it kind of like nesting boxes.
[Brandon] In the past, we have talked about using this to kind of frame and organize your story. One of your students suggested that we talk about how the MICE quotient can lead to conflict in a story, which is a really good idea. So we're going to use that.
[Mary Robinette] It's something that I get very excited about, because we do talk about it mostly as framing, but what you're framing is the conflict in the middle. So if we know where a story starts, so, for instance, let's talk about milieu to begin with. Milieu begins when a character enters a place and it ends when they exit. Which means that every conflict that your character is running into has to be something that prevents them from exiting the place, because the moment they do, the story is over. So that then makes it really easy to identify the kinds of conflicts that you need to put in the middle because everything is an impediment to getting out. The example that I often use for a milieu conflict, like, just a milieu stream, is in Star Wars, the retrieving the princess sequence. Because you get in, you retrieve the princess, you get back out. When they're running through the halls and they're being chased by storm troopers, you've got a series of things that happen. So, are they able to escape? That's your basic question. It's like, are they able to escape? Then you apply a series of yes-no, no-and's. But what happens there is the first thing that they try in their try-fail cycles, they tried jumping down a chute. Does that work? No. And they wind up in a garbage chute. So they're still trapped. Are they able to get out of the garbage chute by firing a blaster at the wall? No. And they wake up something. So, are they able to get away from that? Yes, but it's because the garbage… It turns out it's a trash compactor and the walls are coming further in. So it… But every single one of those is all about preventing them from getting out of that place. When they finally do, everything… When they get out of the trash compactor, that's… That part of the story is closed. When they get off the ship, that part of the story is closed. But everything else is a conflict, it's something that is a barrier between them and exiting.
 
[Brandon] Okay. So that seems to make a lot of sense for milieu. What about inquiry?
[Mary Robinette] Okay. So. This is one of those episodes where I'm just talking a lot.
[Laughter]
[Mary Robinette] So, on inquiry story is driven by questions, right? Murder mysteries are classic examples. So your character has a question at the beginning. The story is over when your character answers the question. So what you're looking for in the middle of the story are the things that keep him from answering the questions. Howard, you just made a face.
[Howard] I just made… The classic inquiry story try-fail bit is the act two body in a police procedural. We have a suspect, we have a theory, we are confident in this. Our suspect turns out to be a victim, is now dead. So that's a beautiful example of that.
 
[Brandon] What I'm hearing, kind of understanding this time around, both with milieu in here, is, I kind of always imagined milieu simply being you're in a place and you have to get out. But there are complications along the way. You mentioned Star Wars. They can't just get out. They have to get out with this person. And I'm thinking of these inquiry stories. There's a lot of times where the audience, and even the detective, sometimes, know who did it. But the question is bigger than just who did it. It is can we convict them, or do I have the right person, or how do I prove it? Rather than just, who did it.
[Howard] In which case, often the act two body is the person who had the key evidence that you needed in order to convict.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Again, these are things that are standing in the way of answering that question. A lot of times, what happens, like with a mystery or a thriller, is that answering one question opens up a much bigger can of worms. That is again, the character is like, I thought I had an answer, but that answer is actually like I'm… It's so much… Like, what is making that weird sound? Is it… What is making that weird sound? Then you're like…
[Brandon] Yeah?
[Mary Robinette] Then you're like, "Oh. Well, the thing that's making that weird sound is that my front door is open." Why is my front door open? Like, that thing where it just keeps unpacking. But the thing is that as long as it's staying on that line of questioning… It's still on inquiry story. Where you run into danger is when you introduce a conflict that is not related to that initial story question, that isn't preventing your character from escaping… Or answering a question.
 
[Brandon] So, would you call this a problem with the story or does it simply require some different skills to achieve, or what?
[Mary Robinette] So, I say it's a problem, it is one of the things that causes story bloat. When you interrupt… When you prevent your character from finding an answer by having a plot thread come in from the side. But it's also something that if you're doing it deliberately, on purpose, where you have multiple threads going through, that it can make the story more interesting. Because a single thread story is just straight ahead, it's fairly boring. We know what the conflicts are going to look like. But, like, one of the things that is also going on in that Star Wars sequence that I'm talking about is that there is all this character stuff that's going on. Like, Luke is trying to prove that he's worthwhile.
[Brandon] And Han just wants money.
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] Han just wants money. All of that interpersonal conflict is also happening, interfering with the escape. That's part of what causes the blaster fire, right? That's part of what causes the delay in talking to C-3PO, because they're just yelling.
[Howard] Coming back to the idea of the police procedural, super common in your police procedurals is the A plot, B plot structure. Often, the B plot is the one where we are doing a character story, or we're doing a milieu thing. So you will have those conflicts. I see it as problematic when the only conflict in the story is the thing that was introduced in the B plot. So it's something to watch out for. But some of the most elegantly constructed police procedurals are places where the A and the B, the conflicts weave back and forth and it all feels very organic. But when you pick it apart using this tool, you realize, man, you guys nested your parentheses and everything. It's just…
[Chuckles]
[Howard] I wish I wrote that.
 
[Brandon] Let's stop for our book of the week, which is Escaping Exodus.
[Dan] Escaping Exodus by Nicky Drayden. This is a far future science fiction novel that I read in January. It's about a future of Earth when we've kind of ruined the planet, each is a common trope. In reaching out for the stars, we were unable to find any other habitable planets, but we apparently did find giant vacuum survivable creatures that just fly through space that we can live inside of.
[Ooo]
[Dan] So, the author creates this incredibly interesting culture about these people who just move from beast to beast, living inside of them. They've been doing this for generations, to the point that they can barely remember this kind of dark past when they lived on a dead planet instead of inside this live, vibrant beast. The main character is going to soon inherit, like, the high priestess role, kind of the leader of the clan, the matriarch. It's a really cool story that's centered around a really fascinating premise, and I love it.
[Brandon] Awesome. Escaping Exodus by Nicky Drayden.
 
[Brandon] All right. So we've got two more letters left.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] So we've got character. So character stories… I joke that character stories are driven by angst.
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] Because character stories are about your character going through a rediscovery of self, their transformation. It's usually begun because they're unhappy. So the other way that I'll joke about it sometimes is that it starts when your character's unhappy, and it ends when they're happy. That's in a happy ending. The books that Dan writes, that end when your character is more unhappy. An unhappy different…
[Dan] About half-and-half.
[Mary Robinette] Okay.
[Brandon] So, when they thought they were happy for a little while, and then they get to be more unhappy because they lose that happiness.
[Mary Robinette] Yes.
[Dan] Yeah.
[Howard] It starts when you're unhappy, and it ends when you realize, no, that was actually better.
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] But this is the thing, that it is… So what's happening in a character story is that your character's trying to change. When… Or they're resisting change. But when that change happens, once that change has occurred, the story is over. That arc is over. So all of the things that are happening in the story are things that get in the way of that self transformation. It's… You're filling them with self loathing, doubt, they try to make a change, it backfires, all of these things. You see it a lot in coming-of-ages, in romances, and things like that. But it's basically the character getting in the way of themselves. Character stories are very much an interior conflict. A lot of times, when you're pairing them with something else like a milieu or inquiry or event, which we'll talk about in a moment, what you're doing is that the character goal is something that often they have to sacrifice in order to achieve another goal. I find that putting the character conflict kind of in direct opposition to whatever goal that they need is very useful. Like, the classic epic fantasy version is I can't help with this, I'm an orphan farmboy.
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] Then you get a little bit further along. Well, I'll come along, but I'm not really going to be able to do anything, because I'm an orphan farmboy. Oh, okay, I've picked up a sword. I stabbed something. Hey. I guess I can do something, even though I'm an orphan farmboy. Then, eventually, the orphan farmboy becomes the king. It's like, "Hey, look at me, orphan farmboy. I'm the king. I guess being an orphan farmboy isn't so bad after all." It's this thing.
[Laughter]
[Dan] I like how mercilessly you're mocking 50% of our listeners.
[Laughter]
[Dan] Including Brandon.
[Brandon] 50% of our listeners are orphans?
[Dan] And farmboys. 25% of our cast are orphans.
[Gasp… Okay… That…]
[Howard] That's true. It's true.
[Dan] That shut everyone up real fast. Let's talk about event stories.
[Howard] I tried to play that… I tried to play that card to keep the conversation going.
[Laughter]
[Mary Robinette] Dan, Dan. If you can find a way to bring the mood down…
[Howard] One of the things that I like about character…
[Dan] He was happy and I needed to make him unhappy.
[Laughter]
 
[Howard] One of the things that I like about character stories is that… And character conflicts. One of the things that we, as human beings, most love, even if we don't admit it, is the approval of, the friendship of, the comradery with other people. When you are trying to change, the people around you probably don't want you to, if they're people who like you. Because you might change into something they don't like.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Howard] There are so many thousands of ways to explore that principle. It's so incredibly relatable, because, to some extent or another, we've all been there. We've all done that.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. One of the things about that is that when you're thinking about a character story, I think that… We often talk about a character has to undergo change, but one of the things for me is, is the character driving the change themselves or are they resisting the change? Is the change being… Something that they don't want to do? Like, the character who does not want to discover that they're actually a jerk. That they insist that they're not a jerk, and, by the end, they realize that they are and they mend their ways. But if you come into it and you've got a character who's like, "Hey, I have actually had anger management issues my entire life, and I'm going to work really hard to not do that." Or the one who's like, "All right. So it's time to be a parent. I'm going to buckle up, even though this doesn't come naturally to me. But let me… What are the things that I can do?" Those are two different things. So the one whose resisting the change, when they go through their try-fail cycles, they're trying to hold onto that initial definition. Right? So the failure to hold onto it is the thing that propels them onto the next stage in their evolution. Whereas someone who's trying to change, they're going to be failing to change, and when they succeed, that's what the thing… That propels them onto the next thing. I think it's important to know kind of where your character is on that journey, and that it's going to shift, too, over the course of their arc, sometimes. But the conflicts are all the things that prevent them from making that change.
 
[Brandon] Event stories.
[Mary Robinette] All right. So, event stories are the status quo, the normal, the outside world, something breaks it. Your character tries to put it… Set it right. So where event stories are internal conflict… Er, sorry, character stories are internal conflict, event stories are external conflict. These are the things that most people think about as the plot. It's the things that are happening. Even though all of the other ones are also plot. But it's… Those are the conflicts, it's like, "Someone with a gun. Oh, no."
 
[Dan] So, I've been thinking about this the whole time. I haven't been saying much because I've been trying to look at my own book, Zero G, in terms of this. MICE quotient isn't something that I use a lot when I'm outlining. But I'm fascinated by this idea of how it can create conflict, and how it can flavor the conflicts in certain directions. So, Zero G is Home Alone in space. A little boy is on a colony ship going to another planet. Pirates hijack it. He has to fight them off, because he's the only one awake. If that were a milieu story, then the conflicts would be around, well, he gets on the ship, and then the story ends when he gets off the ship, and all the conflicts would be there in the middle, the things that are stopping him from getting off the ship. That would be a very different book than what I have now, which is more of an event story. Pirates show up and he needs to get rid of them.
[Mary Robinette] Right.
[Dan] So we… So you can tell the same story… I could have told it as a milieu story…
[Mary Robinette] You absolutely could.
[Dan] Where all of the conflicts are centered around the ship itself and things that go wrong with it. But choosing one will give you a really good idea of what kinds of conflicts to include.
[Mary Robinette] Exactly. This is… There are milieu elements in Zero G.
[Dan] Definitely.
[Mary Robinette] One of the things about it is he has to navigate. You do open with him getting on the ship.
[Dan] And close with him getting to a new planet.
[Mary Robinette] And close with him arriving… But you're right, the major driver is the event, the arrival of the pirates. And the failure of his pod. So there's a disruption of his status quo. If that pod hadn't failed…
[Chuckles]
[Dan] Then the story would be very different.
[Mary Robinette] Very, very different. But it… That catalyst exists. It's that bouncing back and forth a lot of times that can make the story richer and more interesting. But it does help you focus it. One of the things that I use as an example sometimes is Goldilocks and the Three Bears. So if we begin, if we do a straight ahead milieu story with Goldilocks, Goldilocks… Without any of the other elements, it's like Goldilocks decides to go for an adventure. She explores a meadow and then she comes home. She has problems in the meadow, her shoe comes untied. Like, there's no bears. Whereas if I wanted to tell it as a character story, I could be like no one thinks that Goldilocks is old enough to do the things on her own. So she goes off on an adventure, discovers she's way out of her depth when she encounters bears, comes home, being a child is not so bad. Or, Mama Bear could be like, "I want to be a great porridge chef."
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] "My family does not appreciate my porridge. They want sandwiches." Then finally discovers that it is in fact her chosen audience of little blonde girls…
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] But these are the things that… Knowing what they do, it can help you focus it.
[Howard] I think that with event stories, one of the challenges, circling back to conflict, is that event… It often feels like, well, I drop in an event, there's my conflict. I'm done. Well, you can't be done, because you have to have conflict throughout the story. What are the things that drove it? The event changed the status quo. There are elements throughout the story that you've built that our characters will continue to discover have changed as a result of the initial event. It's not just a single conflict that needs to be resolved.
[Mary Robinette] Correct.
 
[Brandon] Well, the event of this episode is coming to an end.
[Laughter]
[Brandon] But there's one last thing to do. You have some homework for us, Mary Robinette.
[Mary Robinette] That's right. So, what I want you to do is… I don't want you to think about the frame of the story. I want you to actually just free write something. A character is doing something. Free write… Give yourself a page, two pages. Then, I want you to look at it and identify the MICE elements that are inherently in the conflicts there. So, look at it and ask yourself, is my character trying to navigate or escape a place? If they are, you've got a milieu going on in there. If they're not, eh. Are they trying to answer a question? You've got an inquiry. Are they trying to change themselves? Are they unhappy with themself? That's a character story. Are they trying to change the outside world, the status quo? That's an event story. Look at which one is kind of the dominant one. You might have two in there. Pick the one that you're most interested in. Maybe two. I'll give you two, if you're really feeling ambitious and want to write a lot. Build additional conflicts that follow those.
[Brandon] All right. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 15.24: Keeping It Fresh, with Jim Butcher

Jun. 17th, 2020 11:15 am
mbarker: (Fireworks Delight)
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Writing Excuses 15.24: Keeping It Fresh, with Jim Butcher
 
 
Key points: How do you keep a series fresh? Do you reinvent the story? Try to write a story that is just a little bit more than you think you can do. Force yourself to stretch. Do you focus on specific things to improve in each book, or do you tackle different styles of stories? Some of it is different styles, but the basic skeleton of each story is the same. How do you write ongoing stories about a changing character, without losing what people love about them? Start with what is going to change in this book, and work backwards from that. Craft is fundamental. How do you use different genres to keep your career fresh? Different genres offer different opportunities. It's fun to try different characters, different arrangements, different stories. 
 
[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 24.
[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Keeping It Fresh, with Jim Butcher.
[Howard] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.
[Brandon] And we're not that smart.
[Brandon] I'm Brandon.
[Howard] I'm Howard.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Brandon] And we have special guest star, Jim Butcher.
[Yay! Applause]
[Jim] Hello.
[Brandon] Jim Butcher, many many time best-selling author of many many awesome books. We are super happy to have you on the podcast, Jim.
[Jim] Thank you very much.
[Howard] We're recording here live at NASFIC Spikecon in Layton, Utah.
[Brandon] Yeah.
[Howard] So that was the audience noise that you heard. Thank you, live audience.
[Applause]
 
[Brandon] All right. So, keeping it fresh.
[Dan] I love that this sounds like an after school special from the 80s about rapping. [wrapping?]
[Brandon] Yep.
[Chuckles]
[Brandon] Yep. Well, it would probably be an after school special about something important that would have rapping in it incidentally.
[Dan] Yeah.
[Brandon] Done by people who look like us.
[Chuckles]
 
[Brandon] Jim, we decided to talk about this because you have one of the longest-running series in science fiction and fantasy going right now. Some of the latest books and last books in the series are some of the best. So I consider you an expert at keeping a series fresh. It's something that's very kind of near to my heart because I am writing book 4 of a very big series right now.
[Jim] Of course.
[Brandon] That's kind of in my head. So I guess my first question to you is how do you keep the Dresden Files so fresh? How do you keep reinventing the story?
[Jim] To me, I don't think I'm reinventing… It doesn't seem to me that I'm reinventing anything. When I do a Dresden Files story… I kind of had the general shape of the whole thing in mind when I got started. So, I mean, I got to plan it all out. So I would know, well, okay, this is this. This is what's going to happen in this part of the story. This is going to be the book about necromancers. This is going to be the one about… This is going to be the personal one where he gets an apprentice, and stuff like that. So, I mean, I had the plan going from the get go. So, in a lot of ways, it doesn't seem like it's particularly fresh to me. I think the real thing that keeps the books being interesting and involving and longer and longer is that I keep trying to write the story that I'm not sure I'm skilled enough to write. When I plan the story, any time when I sit down and I get set to, where I'm here's how I'm going to do the dramatic action, here's how I'm going to do the personal tensions, and stuff like that, I always try and plan the story just a little bit more than I think I can readily do. So that when I'm going forward, I'm never sure I'm going to be able to get the story done the way I wanted to do. As a result, I think that makes you keep growing as a writer.
[Brandon] Forcing yourself to stretch.
[Jim] Sure. Sure. You keep trying to reach a little bit further than you've done before. As long as you can do that, you can keep improving. I think that's kind of the meta-strategy that sort of has the side effect of making the series more fresh and interesting as you go along.
[Howard] It's the self-contained version of the yes I can principle.
[You suffer like that, yeah]
[Howard] Mr. Taylor, can you draw an entire Munchkin deck in a month? Yes I can!
[Jim] Right, right.
[Howard] I'm going to have to figure out how to do that. I stretched from it, and I'm super glad I took on the project. But the correct answer was I don't think so, but I want to.
[Chuckles]
[Jim] Right. Yeah. Something like that.
 
[Brandon] Do you ever take a book… I ask this, because it's something that I do… And say, "You know, in this specific book, I'm going to work on this one thing. This is something that I don't know, that I want to learn to do better." Like, I'm going to work on my humor in this book. Or I'm going to work on my interpersonal relationships or things. Do you take it that specifically, or is it more just here's a style of story I've never done before?
[Jim] A lot of it is here's a style of story that I've never done before, because I'll change it around. But, on the other hand, the Dresden Files, I mean, the basic skeleton of every story is the same. Somebody's up to something, Harry Dresden starts poking around in it, and then things go crazy. I mean, that's how you write it. But as far as the… As far as focusing specifically on areas of my writing, not so much. I mean, I just sort of figure that as long as I'm trying to cover the entire range of human experience, or at least as much of it as I can within the books that have purple haired fairies and stuff like that. That as long as I'm trying to include all that experience, it's going to force me to grow in other ways and in ways I wasn't expecting. So I'll be writing along, and occasionally I write a scene and I'm like, "Man, the humor was really good in that scene. What did I do?" I'll have to stop and go back and think about this as I was producing it, how did I get that result. Other times, I'll just write a long, going, "Wow, I did not expect this to be this soul crushingly intense emotional scene." But it worked out there. Then I have to stop and figure out, "Well, why did it work out there?" Occasionally, I can't explain it. I do a lot of writing by instinct. Once I get going and I'm actually doing it, I'll trust my instincts pretty firmly. If they start taking me in a direction, it's like, "Yeah, I'll go that way. Let's see what happens." I mean, the worst thing that can happen is that you write something that wasn't quite right, and you delete it, and you do it again.
 
[Brandon] Dan, you kind of had… Not kind of, you had to do this with the John Cleaver books, right?
[Dan] Yeah. Six books in that series.
[Brandon] How did you keep those fresh? The second third from the first third, or how were you looking at each book and trying to do something different?
[Dan] The big problem for me that I kept tackling with each new book and with each new trilogy was this is an ongoing story about a character changing. How can I show that he is different than he was, while still being recognizably the same person that everyone loves from… If you read the first book, you love the character for certain reasons. I need to advance him, but I can't throw away all the things that people love about that. So, I kind of focused on character arcs. What is he going… How is he going to change in this one? What is going to be different at the end of this book than at the start? Then, kind of work backwards from there. I'm curious to know, I wanted to ask about Harry Dresden with the same thing. How do you… Because he does change, he does grow. But he is always intrinsically himself. Do you think about that consciously, or does that just come very natural to you?
[Jim] For the most part, it comes naturally. There's some things where I'll stop and look at and I'll go, "Now wait a minute." If I've just had Dresden take some given action and I'll think, "Well, that's not necessarily in character for him. So why is he doing something different?" A lot of times, I'll be writing along and the beta readers… The way I operate is I'll write a chapter and then the chapter goes off to my beta readers while I'm working on the next one. Then I start getting feedback from them, to hear about what they thought about the previous chapter. A lot of times, I'll come across something, the beta readers will be like, "This is really out of character for that character." They'll list specific reasons why. I mean, I've got beta readers who'll be like, "Well, in this book on this page in this paragraph…"
[Chuckles]
[Jim] Then I've gotta go, "Okay. They're right. That is out of character for what I've established." So why… Do I need to change it or do I need to explain why it's different? Depending on how much room is left in the book… I love exploring why is it different. Have Dresden show up later and talk to that character and be like, "What's up?" Try and find out what's going on in their life and so on. Characters change as they go along. But at the same time, the core stuff… I don't know, I think holding onto the core character is as much about craft as it is about psychology. By the time you're… By the time you've gotten your language established of which language it's used for which character, whether you're talking about tags and traits, or just their personal dialogue. By the time you've done that, it establishes a very very firm picture in the reader's mind if you keep it consistent. The longer you go, the more firm that picture is. So in that sense, the long series is really on my side. It's much easier to manipulate you guys when you let me do it for a long time.
[Chuckles]
[Howard] I want to take a moment and call our listeners attention to a couple of things you just said. On the one hand, you said, "Oh, I do a lot of this by instinct." Which feels very pantsy, very discovery writery. But what you just said about craft, when you talk about the craft of the dialogue, of a character's language… We've done probably a dozen or more episodes where we've drilled down on that. How with one line of dialogue, the reader should be able to tell which character is speaking, without any other tags. How do you make that happen? What I want to illustrate here, just by calling this out, is that when you say instinct, I think part of what you mean is that you know that craft enough that you've stopped needing to think about it when you're writing Dresden's dialogue. It is just there.
[Jim] Yeah. Yeah. Obviously, yeah. That's the whole point of craft. The whole point of craft is the wood worker at his bench who knows his tools so well he doesn't need to think about using them, he doesn't need to think about how they're going to be employed or even where they are. He just reaches out and picks up his T-square and goes to work. That's the foundation of what you've got to be if you want to be a professional writer. You've got to have your craft down well enough that your brain is free to do these other things. Like, to be able to suggest to you, hey, maybe this character needs to have this sort of revelatory scene right here, so that we know more about who they are. Then, when you go back later, once you're going back and you're brushing up the stuff after you've gotten it written, then you can go back later and go, "Well, you know what, I really need to establish this character a little bit better, more firmly, if he's going to have that big a role late in the book. I need to have him hit harder early on." Stuff like that. Which is why I've got to do that right now. I got Marcone doing big stuff at the end of this story, but his introduction is a little bit soft. Even though he's got a much larger presence in the overall series, there's going to be some people that pick up this book and it'll be the first book they've read in the series. So that means, just from… Purely from the craft standpoint, I got to go back and make sure he's got a good entrance that is going to be commensurate with his role in the story.
[Howard] He's gotta be in the establishing shot…
[Jim] Yeah.
[Howard] And he's gotta be front and center.
[Jim] Exactly. He's gotta be there. So that's one of the things I'm working on. That I've got all that to do before the manuscript goes off to the editor, but… But, yeah, the craft is indispensable. I can't think of anything… I mean, when I first started learning about writing craft, I hated the whole idea. I hated the entire concept. My teachers told me so many things that I just didn't like, and I sat there, all huffy about it. Because my teacher would say things like, "The business of writing is the business of manipulating people's emotions." It's like, "That sounds awful." But she's right.
[Chuckles]
[Jim] When you're a writer and you can write characters and you can make people laugh when you want them to laugh and you can make them cry when you want them to cry and support who you want them to support and hate who you want them to hate, that's a good story. That's the story everybody wants to read. Oh, I hate this guy. What's he doing next?
[Laughter]
[Jim] That's… To do that, that's the entire point of writing craft. That is why it exists, to help me manipulate your emotions.
[Chuckles]
 
[Brandon] Let's go ahead and stop and do a promo, and talk about our book of the week, which is The Aeronaut's Windlass.
[Jim] Okay.
[Brandon] Can you tell us a little bit about it?
[Jim] The Aeronaut's Windlass is a steam punk series. I told my editor I wanted to make it a… I wanted the genre name on it to be steam opera. She's like, "Well, you can't make up your own genres." I'm like, "Watch me!"
[Laughter]
[Jim] But essentially, it's a story that's set in a world that's very hostile to human life. So humanity exists inside these enormous towers called spires. The only way the spires are connected is by airships. So all trade, all military stuff, all travel, it all happens by airships because the surface is just… It's a green hell, and you don't want to go there, so we'll be there next book.
[Laughter]
[Jim] But… So, it's a really… It's a fun series, because you've got all these spires, so you've got all these human cultures that are evolving entirely separate from one another, so you can get in… You can get just all kinds of crazy nonsense, which is so much fun. I mean, it's… In a way, I'm just riffing off the Odyssey here, going from island to island, adventure to adventure. But that's what we're doing in the Cinder Spires. So the characters are… There's an air ship captain, there's a privateer so we've got a pirate, and there's an heir of one of the wealthier and more influential houses, so we've got a princess. There's a girl who can talk to cats, so… That's her big thing is she talks to cats. The cats are smart. The cats can… The cats understand, I mean, they understand humans, except when they don't want to.
[Chuckles]
[Jim] I mean…
[Howard] So, cats.
[Jim] Cats, yeah. So then we've got a cat who's a prince of his people and he's just such a jerk and everybody loves him. I don't get that. But [garbled]
[Howard] What's the series? What's the series name?
[Jim] The series is the Cinder Spires.
[Howard] The Cinder Spires.
[Jim] The spires are all made of these giant… This ancient black stone that is all but indestructible and nobody knows where it came from.
[Howard] And the genre is steam opera.
[Jim] Steam H-opera. Yeah.
[Brandon] I've read the first book and it was one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had in a while. They're just… It's a wonderful book. So you guys should all read it.
[Jim] Yes, you should. Everyone.
[Laughter, applause]
 
[Brandon] We went really long on the front of the podcast, so we are almost out of time. But I do want to touch on one other concept, which will tie into this idea of what we just talked about. You are mostly known for writing urban fantasy, even though I know that that's not where you started in your pre-writing career, your prepublication career. You've since published your epic fantasy, and you've now got steam opera.
[Jim] Right.
[Brandon] Like, how do you approach different genres in keeping your own career fresh?
[Jim] Going to the different genres is a lot of fun, because, I mean, really, you get to play with different toys, and you get to arrange them very differently, and you get to tell slightly different stories based on which… What is strong in the various genres. I just took out… I've got like half of my first science fiction done, that's been done. I did that like 10 years ago. I stopped writing that book with my poor science-fiction character… He had just ejected from his ship whose core was about to explode in a decaying orbit over the moon with a solar flare coming on. He's been there for like 10 years.
[Laughter]
[Jim] I'll have to get back to that one someday. That was sort of Men in Black meets X-Men on the moon. So that was a lot of fun, too. But, yeah, when you get to go to the different genres and you get to make the different characters and you get to build the wild new stuff that you… It's like, wow, I really wish I could do this in the Dresden Files, but really, laser beams are not really a thing there. Laser pistols are not really a thing there. Oooh, but in science fiction, I can totally do this. But the different genres, they just offer you different opportunities. I mean, at the end of the day, you're still working with humans, and humans are always the same thing. I mean, it doesn't matter at what point in history you go to, human nature remains the same. So… It's just fun to take humans and plop them into weird situations and see how they react. That… just erase this part, okay. I'm starting to sound like a psychopath at this point.
[Laughter]
[Brandon] I know, drop people in, poke them with a stick, see what happens.
[Jim] Sure, sure.
[Brandon] That's storytelling, right there.
[Jim] Sticks. Yes.
[Laughter]
 
[Brandon] We are out of time. I want to thank our audience, Spikecon.
[Applause]
[Brandon] I want to thank Jim for being on the podcast. Do you by chance have a writing prompt you can throw at our audience?
[Jim] A writing prompt?
[Brandon] Yes.
[Jim] Let me think here. [Pause] Yeah. Something we didn't know was intelligent has been intelligent all along. Go.
[Brandon] Excellent.
[Dan] Nice.
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses, you're out of excuses, now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 15.23: Serialization

Jun. 10th, 2020 02:06 pm
mbarker: (Fireworks Delight)
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Writing Excuses 15.23: Serialization
 
 
Key Points: The serial form, a format with multiple installments that are each individually satisfying, but also form a larger whole. Do you leave room fo surprises or discoveries as you go? Most television shows are shot before anything airs. If you can respond, do! But keep in mind your storytelling goal. Emotion, and emotional arcs, drive serialized stories, not plot. Start with your characters, what they want, what they feel, and how they are changing. Give them somewhere to go that is purposeful. Plot versus emotional arc? Plot is stuff that happens. The emotional arc is how the character feels, what they want, and how they change. Where does the character begin, where do they end, and what happens in between. There is a range of television forms, from serialized shows where characters do grow and change, to procedurals, where characters need to end where they started, so that the next episode can pick up with those same characters. How do you balance satisfying endings and keeping the reader/watcher coming back? Know when your show is done. Build a proper arc. Fractals! Five act emotional arc, at the series, season, and episode levels. Episodic storytelling has a complete story within each episode. Problem, then solution. Episodes stand alone. Serialized storytelling has long arcs that tie everything together. To make each installment feel satisfying, make the reader feel something, elicit an emotional response.
 
[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 23.
[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses, Serialization.
[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.
[Lari] And we're not that smart.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Lari] I'm Lari.
[Mary Robinette] And we have our special guest today, Jenn Court. Jenn, do you want to tell our audience about yourself?
[Jenn] Sure. I am a television producer in Los Angeles. Which means currently I have not left my house in about six weeks. I work with John Rogers at Kung Fu Monkey Productions. I also run a small nonprofit teaching television writing to writers from underrepresented groups.
 
[Mary Robinette] Fantastic. So we asked Jenn here today because, as someone who works in television, she is significantly more comfortable and familiar with a serial as a form than people who write novels, unless you're like writing a long epic thing with multiple installments. Most of us don't deal with a format that is involving kind of these small individual things that are supposed to be satisfying individually, but also are part of the larger whole.
[Dan] Yes. But that serialized model is becoming a lot more popular with Amazon and e-book and stuff like that, so we wanted to do a podcast and have Jenn kind of talk to us a little bit about what works and what doesn't in that format.
[Mary Robinette] So, one of the questions that I have, if you don't mind me just jumping right into the "how do you do this thing?" questions…
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] We've… One of the things that I'm aware of in the… Is that serials in the older style, before we started bundling things and having them all come out… A season come out. But a true serial, which is released one week at a time, or in installments, often is responding to the act of storytelling, while at the same time having a long arc already planned out. But it's responding somewhat to audience engagement, it's responding to surprises. So I'm wondering how much you're thinking about leaving space for surprises or discoveries as you're working?
[Jenn] That depends somewhat on your show. The tricky thing about television is that we write and film and edit long before usually any of it airs. Particularly with a serialized show, people will often plan to shoot everything before the first episode drops. So there is actually less responding to audience wishes and things that make them excited. There's less of that than it might feel like sometimes. We're just very good at predicting what that will be. When you are in a medium where you can respond, I wouldn't discourage it. It's good to listen to people who give you feedback, particularly if the feedback is, "Oh, hey, that person from a group I belong to, you got them very wrong. Please don't do that." That can be an excellent thing to respond to. But you also need to keep in mind the thing that you are driving towards in your storytelling. Sometimes an audience wanting something tells you you are doing it right. It doesn't mean you have to give it to them yet. That can wait.
[Dan] Yes. I…
[Jenn] one of the things we do try to keep in mind is emotional arcs. Emotion should always be driving a serialized story, not plot. If you are chasing plot in a serialized story, you are going to do bigger and bigger and bigger things, none of which are going to be satisfying at all. You're trying to chase that high of the first excitement in the first installment. The best way to do that is by driving things from your characters, what they want, what they feel, how they're changing, and you must have planned that in advance. You can't start at the beginning and just write, hoping that your characters become fully fleshed human beings. You have to actually give them somewhere to go that's purposeful.
 
[Mary Robinette] Can you talk about the difference between plot versus emotional arc? Because, for me, I always think about the emotional arc as plot, since there is still have to be… There still has to be an inciting incident to begin an emotional change, and catalyzing points. But you're using them as two different things.
[Jenn] I am. That's mostly because I so often see people who come in and have only done one of them. So that is… It has been useful to describe them as separate items, so folks can learn to make them work together. Plot is stuff that happens. The MacGuffin you have to find or return or get rid of, the ring you are throwing into the lake of fire, for example. The emotional arc is then separate from that. How do we feel about this ring? Is it shiny, does it go with my skintone? It's the… What is the emotional investment in the plot itself and how does that change? Having a character who begins with I want to do this and at the end of the story still wants to do that, there's not a satisfying arc to that. The wants and the needs that your characters have do adapt over the course of the story based on the things that have happened to them, the things from the story plot that are occurring to them to change the things they want and need. So those emotional arcs are the first thing that we look at when we're building a television show. Where does my character begin, where do they end, what's the midpoint turn that gets me there, and then how do I fill in the things in between?
[Dan] The one season of TV that I worked on, the big lesson that I learned from that, the thing that I thought was really valuable that helped me to understand the difference between serialized and kind of regular prose novel, was that I was not… I needed to focus less on changing who the character was than on watching them react to something. Giving them something very interesting and meaningful that would challenge them in some way, and then watching them react and adapt to it. Which is not to counteract anything Jenn is saying, because I think it's the same principle. But for me, coming from novels, I was trying to make every story be a huge meaningful change in the character's perspective on life. That quickly becomes untenable when you're trying to put out a new episode or a new installment every week.
[Jenn] Which show was it?
[Dan] So instead… It was a science fiction show called Extinct.
[Jenn] Okay.
[Dan] It was… Yeah… No one saw it. Don't worry.
[Laughter]
[Dan] But… Go for it.
 
[Jenn] Television is a… There are a range of different reactions to it. We have properly serialized television, where your characters are going to have to change. So, Downton Abbey, those characters grow, they change, sometimes they regress, they get a little muddled in there a couple times. Or you have a procedural. If you have a CSI, your characters are probably not going to grow or change in time, they pretty much need to end where they started so that you have an episode the next week. So in that regard, there's a wide variance in the degree of serialization in television. Never mind that it is an incredibly serialized format. Our episodic television does not have that kind of character growth. Properly serialized things do. Limited series, especially, do. Because they are aiming at an actual end, as opposed to aiming at an indefinite extension of the series.
[Lari] What's very hard about serialization is to try to strike that balance between giving the reader or the watcher a satisfying ending and also something that will keep them coming back. So I was wondering if you have any tips for that? Or if they change, according to the kind of series, so is it something where the characters change or something, or the characters really don't change that much from episode to episode?
[Jenn] I think there is wisdom in knowing when your show is done. There are more and more people who are looking at beginning from a place of knowing we have three seasons in this show. That's what I'm going to write. Or we have five seasons in this show, and that's what I'm going to write. The longer you draw something out to an artificial end, the less likely you are to keep people coming back and the less likely they are to be happy if they do. So having an arc you can actually build properly is important. [Set?] is a useful thing. You don't always get that. So you need to build a season arc, but think about it in terms of a series arc. It's all fractal. It's math. Everything is math. Even words. So if you're thinking about the five act structure of your character's emotional arc, you think about that for the series, for the season, for the episode, and narrow it down that way. Keep thinking about where is my character starting, where do I need them to end to get them to the next place I need them to go?
 
[Mary Robinette] Cool. I think, let's pause here for our book of the week, which is not a book. Jenn, you had pitched something to us that sounded very interesting.
[Jenn] Yes, indeed. I cannot recommend highly enough Fiona Apple's latest album. I want to say Just Bring the Bolt Cutters. Please forgive me if I've gotten that wrong. It is only 9 AM in Los Angeles. It has been a long week. But in terms of sheer word… It's Fetch the Bolt Cutters. In terms of sheer wordsmithing, I think there are very few people who are as adept at evoking emotion through unexpected words as Fiona Apple. It is well worth a listen. It came out Friday. So… It is available now.
[Mary Robinette] Excellent. So that was Fiona Apple's Vegetable Cutters?
[Dan, Jenn] Fetch the Bolt Cutters.
[Mary Robinette] Fetch the Bolt Cutters.
[Dan] I am definitely going to refer to it as Vegetable Cutters from now on.
[Mary Robinette] I will… That will be the name of my next vegan band.
[Chuckles]
 
[Mary Robinette] So. Moving on. From our… As we continue into the next part of this particular serial, you mentioned serial versus episodic.
[Jenn] Yes.
[Mary Robinette] Which is, I think, a distinction that most people who are… Are not thinking about when they're talk… When they're thinking about writing something that has more than one installment. Can you unpack it for us a little bit? I'm pretty sure I know what you meant, but I'm going to make you do the work anyway.
[Chuckles]
[Jenn] Absolutely. That's what I'm here for.
[Chuckles]
[Jenn] Episodic storytelling in television, if you had, say your CSI, your average medical show, you have a complete story that is contained within the episode. You start with a problem. By the end of the episode, you have solved that problem. There are often elements in any given show that are more serialized. You might have a season mystery lurking in the background that runs through everything, but for the most part, you have… Each episode stands alone just fine. You don't miss anything if you don't tune in that week. So in episodic television… There is less room for people to have those big moments of character growth in episodic television because you really do need them to get back to where they started, so that the next writer can just pick up and write the characters they're used to. In serialized television, you're tracking a season-long story or several season-long stories that do need to have an arc that covers all of them.
[Mary Robinette] Cool. So when I think about how to apply this for people who are writing prose, one of the things that I think is… We often talk about how prose has to have a character arc. That… I'll hear people say that a lot. My response has always been, "Well, no, it doesn't." When you look at like, most cozy mysteries, there isn't a character arc. Or at least not for the main… The protagonist. So really what's happening there is that those are much more episodic than they are a serial.
[Jenn] Yes.
[Mary Robinette] Whereas even something that… When you're looking at a trilogy, even though it's enormous, it's still much more of a serial. But it also starts to get into… I think one of the things that happens to people on a chapter level that were… Which we'll sometimes talk about people who are reading something that just feels very episodic, it just feels like there's no progression. I think actually that on your point that writing is fractal, that's essentially what's happening, is they are not treating each chapter as part of a serial, they're treating each chapter as part of an episodic television show. So to speak. That it's… That there is no progression going on.
[Jenn] That seems entirely likely to me. The… I do not write novels, so I will not speak from experience. But I do often see television writers trying to work a particular scene, and they're treating the scene as if it either stands apart from everything else that's happening in the episode, in which case you should cut that one, even if it's the best thing you've written. It doesn't matter, if it doesn't fit, it doesn't stay. Or, they're treating it as not having enough of its own structure. Even in serialized television, as in any serialized story, every piece you write has to hold its own weight in the structure. If it's not capable of sustaining interest, you might not get a chance to prove how brilliant the end of your story is. Because your scenes have failed to carry their weight.
[Mary Robinette] I just watched something that… Where they clearly expected a second season to happen. It didn't. So the ending was incredibly unsatisfying.
[Jenn] Yes.
 
[Mary Robinette] Dan, what were you going to say?
[Dan] I wanted to talk about that subject, actually, the idea of satisfying endings. It's… We're almost out of time, but is there anything you can give us, any good advice or tips on how to make each installment of a serialized story feel complete and satisfying, while still riding toward that ultimate goal?
[Jenn] Make me feel something.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Jenn] If you can elicit an emotional response, your audience will… Usually, not always, but they will usually be willing to wait for the next piece. Because you have offered them a complete emotional experience.
[Mary Robinette] Cool. I feel like that's a good point for us to segue out of this and hopefully leave you all wanting some.
 
[Mary Robinette] Let's give them a writing exercise. Does anyone have one that they'd like to share? Jenn?
[Jenn] I do. Yes.
[Mary Robinette] Excellent. Whew!
[Chuckles]
[Jenn] This is something that we do whenever we build characters for a television show. I would suggest that folks think about the protagonist they are thinking about writing next, and do make themselves a little chart with two sides, one with a plus and one with a minus. I want them to start with the negative characteristics that their protagonist has. The impulse is, so often, to build your protagonist up, to make them perfect. The most interesting thing about any character is their flaws. Flaws become your superpowers, they become the things that make you interesting, that make you capable, that make you potentially great. So start with those things, and you will end up with a much more interesting character than if you make them perfect right off the bat.
[Mary Robinette] That is great advice. So, thank you so much. So, this has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 15.22: Writing For Children, with Shannon and Dean Hale

Jun. 3rd, 2020 01:28 pm
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Writing Excuses 15.22: Writing For Children, with Shannon and Dean Hale
 
 
Key Points: Children like formulas, the same thing again and again. Often this is the same beats, just like any genre. Sometimes it takes them a long time to make the connection, to figure out what is happening. They need to realize it themselves. Write what you wish you had as a kid. The thing a child loves may not be what you would have guessed. Don't try to simplify an adult story for children, put yourself in the child's place and write the story that way. Don't try to streamline or simplify. Do make sure context is clear, and repeat things three times. Focus on what matters to a person at that age. Humor, comedy is hard. It's surprise, unexpected twists. Non sequiturs are hilarious for kids. Physical humor. Callbacks and echoing. Kids want you to tell them the truth. Middle grade, especially, lacks adult figures. Kids don't have a lot of control of their lives, so giving them control scares them. Having adults in the story changes the dynamic, makes it hard for the kids to be the protagonists. 
 
[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 22.
[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Writing For Children.
[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.
[Shannon] And we're not that smart.
[Brandon] I'm Brandon.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Brandon] And we once again have Dean and Shannon Hale here as our guests. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
[Yay! Wow! Garbled I love you]
[chuckles]
 
[Brandon] So we talked about writing about children. Let's talk about writing for children. One of the things I've noticed that kind of blew my mind and having children was how much they wanted to hear the same thing again and again and again.
[Oh, yeah.]
[Brandon] This is kind of antithetical to what I enjoy in storytelling and fiction. Yet some of the great children's series, I've noticed, will often just keep to a strict format on purpose. Is this something that informs when you're writing for children, particularly the younger age?
[Shannon] We…
[Dean] To some degree, I think it does, yeah.
[Shannon] To some degree.
[Dean] I mean, you know, there was… Like, with The Princess in Black, that's the one that I feel like…
[Shannon] That's the one the most where…
[Dean] Is formulaic, but I feel like part of the formula is subverting expectations.
[Shannon] Yes.
[Dean] So that allows you to work within… Work some sort of… It doesn't become…
[Shannon] Every book we're trying to think, "Okay, what are the expectations for this book, and how can we kind of flip it?" But we do have, like, the same kind of repeat…
[Dean] Yeah.
[Shannon] Where there's going to be a superhero moment.
[Dean] The same kind of beats.
[Shannon] Yeah.
[Dean] Well, just like any genre, really. I mean, you go to see a science fiction movie or a horror movie or a movie at all, and you kind of have certain… Like, there's this kind of social contract between you and the filmmakers that you're expecting…
[Shannon] Right.
[Brandon] Right. Well, you get to cheer for certain moments. Being able to anticipate what's going to happen in a story is really fun. It's, I think, deeply ingrained into us as adults. As children, it's not there yet. So when you start to be able to make that connection, when you can say, "Oh, this is happening." Like with my children, I distinctly tell the age where they figured out that people always get in trouble in movies, but then it turns out all right in the end.
[Yes. Oooh.]
[Brandon] That took way longer than I would expect it. Like, I think, oh, you watch two or three movies, you get this. But it's usually right around 10 or something. 8 to 10 where they're like, "Oh, wait. Things go wrong and then they get better. Things are going wrong. The story's going to get better by the end, and they'll be okay." That was really revelatory to me that it took that long, but it's just because they hadn't seen as much media.
 
[Shannon] It means more to them that they came up to that conclusion on their own rather than… It wouldn't have been the same if you told them that that's what's going to happen. They have to just have that experience. I talked to a psychologist once about that very thing you are talking about. Kids want to… For example, wanting to reread the same book over and over again. They said that they're going through something, that that book is giving them comfort or understanding. As soon as their brains have developed in that one little part where they need to, they click, and then they move on. They go to something else. So in terms of being a writer, I wouldn't worry too much about what do kids need to hear over and over again. I would say just write the story that's calling to you, write what you wish you had when you were a kid.
[Dean] Yeah.
[Shannon] And don't worry about what formula do I need to design for a child.
[Dan] Yeah. Definitely. Often the thing that the child loves is not what you would have guessed, anyway.
[Shannon] Exactly.
[Dan] With Zero G, I was talking to an adult just last week, like, who had listened to the audiobook, loved it. What was your favorite part? Oh, it was when he goes outside of the ship and I was so tense and so scared and I thought something awful was going to happen. There was a five-year-old. I said, "What was your favorite part?" "He ate a cheeseburger in zero gravity." I'm like, "Oh. Okay. There we go."
[Dean] But don't leave out either of those. I just remember… Because so often when you're writing for children, they're actually not reading it. The parent is reading it to them. As a parent, I feel your pain reading some of those books over and over and over again…
[Chuckles]
[Dean] That just aren't that good. But are great for the kid. But as a writer, you're like, "How can I make this not terrible for the parents?"
[Chuckles]
[Shannon] So you mean like picture books and the younger stuff?
[Dean] Yes, yes yes yes.
[Shannon] Yeah, absolutely. I think the bigger mistake that writers make when writing for children, though, is writing for children. Because they think what that means is child means less or less intelligent adult. Therefore, I will take this adult story and simplify it so the child may understand. That's not how it works. That's not the math that works. You have to actually just put yourself into the position of the child, and write the story that way. You can't start from the position of the adult trying to write down to a child. You have to be inside the shoes and then write forward.
[Dean] I always think of those books, like those old… Those Renaissance paintings of babies…
[Shannon] Right.
[Dean] That are just like… They have adult man faces.
[Laughter]
 
[Brandon] So this is something that comes up a lot, and I think it's very important to talk about, because it is kind of the central element of writing about children… Or writing for children, is not writing down to them. But how… You do, to some extent, also have to simplify your language depending on the age that you're targeting, and you have to be more streamlined in your story. So where's the balance between writing down to them and streamlining, simplifying, or writing age-appropriate?
[Shannon] I totally don't even think about it that way. So, for example, we write Princess in Black, which is for like four through four… Yeah…
[Dean] Nine?
[Shannon] 4 to 8-year-olds. We don't simplify the language. We are aware that if this is a big chunkier word that might be new to them, we make sure the context around it is clear and we will do the rule of three. We repeat it three times. For our middle grade and young adult books, we never simplify the language. We never… The whole lexicon is open to you. We know they'll keep reading past it if they don't know. Maybe it's an opportunity to learn something new, which is great. What I focus on instead, and I don't think about simplifying the story, either. I focus on what matters to the person at this age. What matters to them is going to be different than what matters to an adult. It's going to be different than what matters to a different person of that same age. So it's all about character. Where they are in their life, what matters to them, what's interesting to them. Then write that story. Then, likely other people that age who are going through similar experiences and have similar life perspectives are going to be interested in it.
 
[Brandon] So, one of the hardest things when I wrote my middle grade series, and the place where I misfired the most, which I think has been the biggest holdback of that series is I got the humor wrong. The feedback I've gotten consistently is that younger kids love the plot but are not interested in the humor. Older kids like the humor, but feel that the plot is too kiddy. So the books did not land. Basically, the conclusion we came to is they're YA humor in a middle grade book. Which tends to grab a very narrow select audience of middle grade readers whose sense of humors has matured. Do you have any advice on writing humor for younger children? Kind of to preface this, like, I put a lot of sarcasm in, and it was too subtle. They just thought people were being mean to each other. Rather than thinking… Getting the joke. The older kids got the joke. Oh, this is sarcasm. Ha, ha, ha. But the younger kids, like, it turned them off. They're like, "Oo, they're all just so mean to each other."
[Shannon] Sarcasm's really hard in middle grade.
[Dean] Yeah, it definitely is.
[Shannon] For sure. We've done a lot of comedies. We've probably done at least half of our… Let's see, I've done 30+ books, and I would say at least half of them are comedies.
[Dean] Squirrel Girl was a comedy.
[Shannon] Yeah. For sure.
[Dean] So is Princess in Black.
[Shannon] Princess in Black, I would consider a comedy. So, first of all, just about comedy in general, it's the hardest thing to write. Nothing's harder than comedy. Everything would be funny if we were all good enough to write comedy all the time.
[Chuckles]
[Shannon] It would be funny, because why wouldn't we want to laugh all the time. It's really, really hard to write. Part of the… One reason why it's harder, hard to write comedy, is everybody has a different sense of humor. So it's just not going to hit on everybody. I think there's a natural… I think there's an instinct to it. I think that the people I know who write comedy for younger readers are just that way naturally. That's just where their brains are.
[Dean] That's where their headspace is. I think one of the things that works… I feel like comedy, at its root, is like fear. I mean, it's like being surprised by something. It's like, "Oh!" Like that.
[Shannon] Unexpected.
[Dean] It's an unexpected kind of bam. Whether it's… sometimes it's a little more cerebral, or sometimes it can be slapstick, but I think when you approach it as doing something that is unexpected… I think we get… It's easier, sometimes, in Princess in Black, because were coming to it with what would be surprising here. If everybody thinks it's going to be a bunny and it's a frog. It's just that kind of…
[Shannon] I mean, I think the bunnies are going to be cute, and actually they're…
[Dean] They're evil. Right, right.
 
[Dan] In a lot of kids… Go ahead. I'll just say a lot of kids think that non sequiturs are humor. They think that's what humor is, because you tell them a joke that has some kind of wordplay in it, and they won't get that, but they'll think it's hilarious that the ending makes no sense.
[Dean] Yes. Absurd, yeah.
[Dan] When a four-year-old or a six-year-old tells you a joke, the humor is usually look how much this is ridiculous. There's no connection between the setup and the punchline. Isn't that funny?
[Mary Robinette] What I found when we were… Because we had to write shows that had layers. We had to have humor that was for adults, and humor for kids. The nice thing about doing a live show is that you know where the joke is landing because you can tell who's laughing. So what we found was the kids would respond to physical humor and the sound of words. Like, the word petunia was hilarious…
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] To them. Tube. I don't… oo sounds were very funny for unknown reasons. But the other thing is humor is contextual. This is true for adults, as well. The problem is that kids don't have as much context. So doing verbal humor is much, much harder for them than… Because they don't have the experiential thing to understand why that juxtaposition is off. Whereas physical humor, they do understand the juxtaposition. It's very easy to see. This isn't the thing. They've got a lot more experience with that. So we found that like… That's one of the reasons fart jokes work really well with kids. Toilet humor…
[Dean] Relatable.
[Mary Robinette] It's a context… Relatable…
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] It's a context that they understand.
[Shannon] But it's also constantly changing. So the humor that we would use in Princess in Black for these younger readers is different than what we use in middle grade is different than what we use in young adults. Sadly, there's not a lot of humor in young adults.
[Dean] Yeah.
[Shannon] People think that the teens aren't allowed to laugh [garbled]
[chuckles]
[Dean] They probably didn't think they're allowed, either.
[Shannon] But in addition to surprise, so unexpected twisting it, also callbacks are really, really great. So actually, they're waiting for that moment when they know that person's going to say that line.
[Dean] Yes.
[Shannon] Then, when they do, that's funny too. So there's a lot of echoing. Hum… Comedy just takes so much revision.
[Dean] Yeah.
[Shannon] You go through it… I mean, dozens of times just to make sure that you're… Every key moment, if I say this here, how can I make it funny later if I echo it in a slightly different way?
[Dean] Then, after the 100th revision, you're like, "Is this funny?"
[Laughter]
[Dean] "Was this ever funny?"
[Shannon] [garbled If we're not?] still laughing, then we cut it. Yeah.
[Mary Robinette] There's a puppeteer who did a show that he called The Hello Show. He got tired of… There's a phenomenon, you walk a puppet on stage and some child in the audience is going to go, "Hello, puppet." Just like every show. He got… He snapped.
[Laughter] [garbled]
[Mary Robinette] So he had his own small theater. So he just brought every puppet he owned and said, "It's the Hello Show." He was like, "I'm going to do this show one time and it'll tank, but it'll just get it out of my system." He just walked puppets out on the stage one at a time, sometimes to a time. "Hello!" "Hello!" "Hello." That was the only word in the show. Kids said hello back. The puppets said hello to each other. The big laugh of the show was when a puppet came out and said, "Hey!"
[Chuckles]
[Brandon] I've been actually…
[Shannon] I laughed.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
 
[Brandon] Writing a book with my 10-year-old.
[Oh!]
[Brandon] More because his brother, 12-year-old, had to write a story for class and I helped him with it, and the 10-year-old saw that. He was like, "I wanna write a book. But I want you to type it because that's the hard part."
[Laughter]
[Brandon] "If I could type, then I'd be totally able…"
[Shannon] Oh, that's all it takes.
[Brandon] So, it's been teaching me a lot about his humor as a 10-year-old. His individual humor. Because he'll sit down and be like, "All right. We're going to do this." Anything… A mistake happens, like we type it… Something accidentally or something, he laughs, leaves it in, and does it four more times. Right? Any time he's like… We're like, "All right, what's the name of this chapter, chapter 12?" His brother's like, "You want a banana?" He's like, "Chapter You Want a Banana."
[Chuckles]
[Brandon] And then laughs. Then, the next one's like, "Chapter You Want an Apple." Like, he wants to keep the joke running, like the callbacks that you said. Any time he's gotten even a chuckle from himself, it ends up going over and over again. I will reinforce the whole non sequitur thing, because…
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Brandon] Any time, it's like… He wants to tell a joke, he's like, "All right. What weird thing can they find in here that's not…" Yeah.
[Shannon] [garbled It gets all surreal really weird?] This is why books for children are not written by children. Because they can… It just gets really weird.
[Laughter]
[Brandon] Real weird real fast. But he also uses… I've noticed, he uses a structure. So he's telling a story about kids who get sucked into a videogame. The videogame is basically Minecraft, except you have to do weird things to do all the Minecraft stuff. Having that structure of I know how you play a game of Minecraft, I know what you do in Minecraft. But in this one, instead of building things out of metal, you build it out of dirt, because dirt is a silly thing to build your pickaxe out of.
[Right]
[Brandon] It's been a lot of fun.
[Mary Robinette] It's almost as if he's doing worldbuilding. I don't know where he would have gotten that from, Brandon.
 
[Brandon] Let's stop for our book of the week. Shannon, you're going to tell us about Best Friends.
[Shannon] Speaking of writing books for kids…
[Dean] I love this book.
[Shannon] So I decided to write a memoir of my childhood friendships. It seemed like a really terrible idea…
[Chuckles]
[Shannon] Because I… A memoir? Who writes a memoir? People who do big important things. I didn't have that unusual of a childhood. But I… I really… My goal was to do… It's a graphic novel, and I wanted to just tell the truth of how it felt to me to be 10, 11, and 12. So I wrote it, it was called Real Friends, illustrated by LeUyen Pham. It… I've never had a book become so instantly beloved. It blew my mind. I mean… You put out a book and you like wait a week or two and you're like, "Has anybody read it? Does anybody care?" Within 24 hours, I was getting emails from people who'd read it 24 times already. I mean, it was just insane. What I discovered from that was kids want you to tell them the truth. So many adults and parents are trying to protect them. A story can be a safe place where we can tell kids the truth and they can see there how they're feeling mirrored back to them. It's such a relief. Adults often read this book and they're like, "This is too painful." Kids read it and they're like laughing and enjoying it, and like, "Oh, it's so great."
[Laughter]
[Shannon] Because it's just like, oh, someone showed me how I'm feeling. Even if what happened with me and my childhood is not exactly what's happening with them, the emotions are the same. I'm telling them a story so they feel a certain way and they have felt that way and then they can see it, not only read it with words, but see it on the page and they feel validated. It's an amazing experience. So, anyway, that one was called Real Friends and Best Friends is the sequel. Best Friends takes exactly just sixth… My sixth grade experience.
[Dan] I want to put in an extra plug for this. My daughter read Real Friends like 4000 times. So this Christmas, we got her Best Friends and she had finished reading it before we were done opening presents that morning.
[Shannon] Yes. It's insane. The thing is that I've learned… Some parents have told me that as a way of saying, "Well, that was a waste of $12," because they read it so fast. They reread it. Over and over again. What's so wonderful about graphic novels, too, is that… And the beautiful illustrations that LeUyen did, is they can examine each page carefully and they can see… They read it first just for words, then they go back and examine the pictures. They see the nuances and the interactions between characters and expressions. What I like… My hope for it was that kids who are going through certain hard times and haven't had the words yet to explain how they feel can take this book and show an adult and point to this panel and say, "This is how I feel." You're giving them words, like… Writing for kids, I mean, there's nothing better in the world than to think I was able to give this child a way to communicate to someone else how they're feeling and to validate how they're feeling.
[Mary Robinette] That was also one of the things… The literature for kids, whether it's print or graphic novel or stage, one of the things that I find so exciting about it is the voice that it gives to kids. We had multiple times… Like, we would go and we would do, like, Sleeping Beauty. More than once, we would have a child… We had a child stand up and say a variation of "my dog died, and I miss him," during the Q&A. It's not that there was a dog in the show.
[Right!]
[Mary Robinette] It was just that…
[Shannon] We get that every time we do a school visit.
[Mary Robinette] That there was an opening. I think that's one of the things, for me, about writing for children is that you're inviting them. You're creating a space that is for them that is safe, and you're inviting them in. That invitation allows them to open up, and feel like they can share too.
[Shannon] Yes. The most common, like, fan mail that I would get for Real Friends and Best Friends is not "I like this part when…," it's "Here's what happened to me." You told me your story, now I want to tell you mine. That's incredibly empowering.
 
[Brandon] So, one of the things I've noticed about particularly middle grade. YA as well, but particularly middle grade, is that there is, in the stories, an absence of adult figures, or at least adult figures who are controlling the story. Right? I was wondering, you had mentioned in a previous episode that Princess in Black, there are just no adults, right? A lot of the great middle grades, there just are no adults. Or if they are adults, it's the adults like Dumbledore who for some reason, can't be involved.
[Shannon] Yeah. Every time, there's some reason.
[Laughter]
[Brandon] So, I guess the question is, why is this? What do you feel about this? Is this an important part of the genre, has this become too much of a cliché in the case of things like Dumbledore, or how's it going? Dan?
[Dan] So, as I was studying horror, when I accidentally became a horror author…
[Chuckles]
[Shannon] I hate it when that happens.
[Dan] One of the principles of horror that somebody explain to me was that adults have control over their lives. So what scares us is when we lose that control. For kids, I think it's the opposite. They don't have a lot of control over their lives. So suddenly giving them control, that's what scares them, and that's what forces them into conflict and adventure.
[Mary Robinette] That's great.
[Shannon] I think as soon as you have a mom in the story, it just changes the whole dynamic. There someone there to protect you, there's someone there to make decisions for you. I mean, fairytales, what they are is an excuse to get kids away from parents. Like, almost every fairytale, that's what they're doing. They kill the parents, they lock them away somewhere, they do something so the kid is on their own. So, basically, yeah. It just… It's a story device so that the kid can be the protagonist, the one driving the action. There have been times in books, like, I wrote a book called Dangerous where I was like I want the teenager to have a good relationship with her parents and have them be present. Can I pull this off? I managed, but she… There were times where I was like, "She's gotta go on her own now. That she's got to, or this story's not going to go anywhere." So, I… You don't want it to be tiring.
[Dean] No, no. I enjoyed writing the parent…
[Shannon] Oh, we did the same thing with Squirrel Girl.
[Dean] In Squirrel Girl. Yeah.
[Shannon] We wanted her to have a good relationship with her parents.
[Dean] Right. It's tricky too. Because, I mean, you don't want them to remove the tension that exists by just simply being there.
[Shannon] And solving all her problems for her.
[Dean] But you don't want them to be jerks or like just sort of flat nothing people. So it's tricky to get somebody that you like, like a supporting character that you like that doesn't derail the tension of the…
[Shannon] In that circumstance, I think what we did is just say, "They think she's cool."
[Dean] No matter what.
[Shannon] And they trust her. They think she's awesome. They know she's as awesome as she is. There are certain things that she can do that they cannot. They're like, "We're worried about you, but be careful. We love you. We'll make some cake for you when you get back. From defeating Hydra."
[Dean] That's right. How awesome would that be?
[Shannon] They have cake.
[Dean] So they are a big part of why she is as awesome as she is. Because…
[Shannon] Just like Ma and Pa Kent were a big part of why Superman is so awesome.
[Dean] Exactly.
 
[Brandon] We are out of time.
[Shannon] Oh, there's so many things we could say.
[Brandon] I'm going to give us the homework. You guys the homework this time. I'm going to suggest you do what I've been doing with my 10-year-old, is, find a younger relative or a friend and type out what they tell you for a story for a little while. We talked about how there's a reason kids don't write stories for kids, but I think I've learned way more about the way my son's humor works and the way he sees story and what excites him by just letting him tell me a story and me typing it out. He loves the idea that he can now take this and share with people because my 10-year-old's dyslexic. So writing is really hard for him. But now he has a story that he has written. So give this a try. See if it teaches you anything about writing for children by having a child write for you. This has been Writing Excuses, you're out of excuses, now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 15.21: Writing about Children with Shannon and Dean Hale

May. 27th, 2020 11:14 am
mbarker: (Burp)
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Writing Excuses 15.21: Writing about Children with Shannon and Dean Hale
 
 
Key Points: Writing about children can be difficult, and you may stray into caricature. How do you avoid making fun of them? First, don't just transcribe what kids actually say. Try to give the sense of being children without hitting the reader over the head, especially in dialogue. Children focus on different things than adults. If you add grammatical issues, be sparing. Kids are sometimes overly precise, applying a rule everywhere. Why are you writing about a child, focus on the bits that enrich the story. Looking at the world as a child does can let you portray the fresh wonder of the world. The life experience, and stakes, are very different for children. When the protagonist is a child, or a teen, the stakes rise, and the tension, too. Consider kids as foreign visitors, trying to avoid faux pas. Teenagers are spies in adult country! Teens are not little adults, they are trying to figure out the transition from child to adult. Don't minimize their feelings. To write about kids or teens, you need to respect them. Pay attention to what is important for the story, and the relationships, how other characters react to what the children say and do. 
 
[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 21.
[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Writing about Children.
[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.
[Shannon] And we're not that smart.
[Brandon] I'm Brandon.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Brandon] And we have special guests, Shannon and Dean Hale.
[Shannon] Hello!
[Dean] Hi. I'm Dean.
[Shannon] And I'm Shannon.
[Brandon] Thanks, you guys, for coming on the podcast with us.
[Shannon] Yeah, it's great.
[Dean] Thank you.
 
[Brandon] You're going to tell us how to write about children.
[Shannon] Okay, let's do it.
[Dean] Awesome.
[Chuckles]
[Brandon] So, this has been surprisingly hard when I've done it. I'm never sure if I'm going too far and it's straying into caricature. Like, I can usually tell for an adult when I've gone too far in a vernacular or a voice or things like this. When you're approaching writing about children, how do you keep away from making it… It almost seems silly to me. Does that make sense? Like, I'm making fun of them rather than actually writing like them.
[Shannon] It's actually… I've written… Where I've taken direct transcrip… Directly transcribed what my children have said, and tried to put it into a story. Our editors are always like, "That's too extreme."
[Dean] Nobody would be like that.
[Shannon] "No one talks like that. Come on!"
[Dean] What are these, monsters?
[Shannon] So you can't actually… Actually, I did write what I thought was a humorous slice of life story about our four-year-old twins. The editor legitimately thought it was a horror story.
[Laughter]
[Shannon] I was very… The notes were very confused. I was like, "Why is she saying… Why is she reacting…" Then, finally, she referred to it as a house of hell. I was like, "Oh, she thought it was a horror story. That's just our everyday."
[Chuckles]
[Shannon] But it is… You can't do exactly what kids do. Just like… But it's true with any characters. Dialogue would be really boring if we just transcribed what people actually say. So you have to get the sense that they're a child without hitting the reader over the head. Particularly in dialogue.
 
[Mary Robinette] What are some of the markers in dialogue that you find for believable child language? Is it a difference in vocabulary, sentence structure, con…
[Shannon] You know… First of all, I would say children are very observant about things that adults don't care about. So for… Just what they talk about is going to be different. That can be so much fun. What does this kid… What are they interested in, what would they notice? So there are these non sequiturs that just kind of pop up. It's a great thing for humor. I would say also, just as with any character, if you want to have like grammatical issues for the kid, pick like one or two and stick with those. Don't hit the reader over the head with, like, weird grammar things constantly. Just have that consistency be for that character. Just like you would for an adult character who might have a certain quirk with the way they speak. You don't… You wouldn't do it every single sentence because it gets to be too much.
[Mary Robinette] When I was doing the puppet theater, we were often… I mean, the protagonist was always a child. One of the things that I found was that… Also, going into schools a lot, was that kids tended to be overly precise sometimes. That they would have learned a rule and they wouldn't actually have any nuance about how the rule was applied.
[Brandon] I've noticed this in my children. This is absolutely true for almost all kids I've met. That they… You tell them something. They want that to be the way the world works. They now understand the world. Then, when you immediately violate it, because of the wiggle room we give ourselves, they call you on it. I remember when my… He was only like three or four. We had talked about certain words that we don't say. Then we went to a Disney movie and they said like one word that was like this. Then, later on, that kid was describing the movie to my father… His grandpa… And said, "Don't go see that movie, grandpa. It is filthy."
[Laughter]
[Brandon] It's like a Pixar movie, right? I'm like, "Oh. Okay. Yeah."
[Shannon] I actually wrote a chapter book that was based on our twins, and really tried to be true to what it felt like to be that age. My… I sent it to someone who didn't know it was about these twins. My response was that the character was unlikable and nobody would be interested in this child.
[Laughter]
[Dean] Your children are unlikable and no one is interested in them.
[Mary Robinette] She's also living in a hell house.
[Dean] Right.
[Shannon] But it can be too much. You don't… Like, too much reality, nobody wants. So what do… Why a child? Why are you writing about a child, first of all? What are they bringing to it? So you focus on those little quirks, those little bits that can just enrich a story.
[Dean] The best part for me about writing from… As a child, because that's kind of where I go, is get into that headspace, is just looking at the world in a different way. It makes the story somehow more interesting. It's like that quote from… Was it GK Chesterton? That's about the dragon and the… I can't remember how it goes, but the idea that…
[Shannon] That… The quote you're talking about is GK Chesterton says that fantasy doesn't tell you if dragons exist. Fantasy shows you that dragons can be defeated. I think you're thinking of a different quote.
[Dean] No, I am… I'm thinking of the door one. That there's a…
[Shannon] Oh… Yes. So… Like a kid of 10…
[Dean] Go, quote.
[Shannon] Is interested in reading a story that says, "Tommy opened the door and saw a dragon." A kid of four is interested to read a story that says, "Tommy opened a door."
[Dean] It's finding…
[Shannon] Everything is still so new.
[Dean] Finding the wonder in those things that are sort of rote and old is… For… As a writer, is awesome. I mean, you can be able to kind of get that reinvigorated look at something from the other side.
[Dan] Yeah, that's what I did with Zero G, which was the middle grade that I put out. The plot is… I always pitch it as Home Alone in Space, but really, it's Die Hard in space with a 12-year-old. It's Die Hard if John McClane were super interested in how fun it was to jump around in antigravity, right? Like, that's his focus. He's always either trying to have fun or he's hiding from bad guys. Because those are the cool things that a kid is going to care about in that situation.
[Shannon] Yes.
 
[Brandon] So, when we were talking about this ahead of time, you mentioned the stakes are really different for children in life, which really struck me. Can you expand upon that? How are stakes different for children? How does that influence writing about them?
[Shannon] Children don't have the same… Well, life experience. But, just, they don't have as much in their toolbox. They don't understand how things work, they don't have the confidence, they don't have experience, they don't have a credit card, you know, they don't have… So when they're put in a situation, it's going to be totally different than if an adult were in it. You can get so much tension by having the protagonist be a kid. And a teen as well. Also, even if the main character isn't a child, if you insert a child into a situation, the stakes go through the roof. Immediately. Oh, we've got to save these people. Yeah, let's do that. Oh, and there's a three-year-old about to fall off the bridge. [OOOOH!] I mean, it just…
[Dean] We did that with Squirrel Girl. Like, we were like, "We need more tension here."
[Shannon] Let's add a baby.
[Dean] Yes.
[Laughter]
[Dean] That's exactly what we did.
[Shannon] She's not just saving the day, she's saving a specific baby. Suddenly, it's like, "Yes, we need to do this immediately." I was… We were just watching Adventures in Babysitting last night with our kids. I was trying to explain to them, because I'm a nerdy writer mom that's explaining story to my children in the middle of a movie…
[Dean] Mom, we're watching.
[Shannon] I know. But, I'm like, "Do you understand why…"
[Dean] Pause.
[Shannon] If this was about adults, it wouldn't matter, because…
[Dean] Can we watch it now, Mom?
[Shannon] They've got a credit card, they can just get a new tire. But, added to the fact that all these things are happening, is the fact that they can't let their parents know. They can't make the most logical easiest way… Choice to get out of this situation because they can't let their parents know. An adult wouldn't have that same situation. So, the stakes are higher, the tension's higher, and then [you opt] for fun.
 
[Mary Robinette] Sorry, it just occurred to me… One of the things that I often say, like, when I'm talking about kids is that… What you said, that they just lack experience. But I think of them as foreign visitors. Like, when you come… When you go to a foreign country, what you want is someone to explain what the rules are so that you don't make any social faux pas. So, like, when I go into… When we would go into schools doing school visits with the puppets, the mob mentality was the thing you kind of had to fight. Because they would… Like, if one kid did it, everyone would assume that that was the thing you should do. But it occurs to me that teenagers are actually like spies who have come into adult country and don't want anyone to know…
[Laughter]
[Mary Robinette] That they're from the outside or child land. So they're desperately trying to not get caught is still being children.
[Shannon] Yes. Oh, teens are… I love writing about teens. I think a mistake a lot of writers make is they don't want… First of all, they don't want to be annoying. They don't want their character to be annoying. So they just make them into adults. They say they're 16, but they really just behave like adults. They're missing so much great story matter there. What matters to a teenager? What are they going through in their lives? But in addition to the science fiction adventure or whatever you're writing, you've also got that element of this is a person trying to figure out… Navigate that transition from child to adult. That's really interesting.
[Dean] I think one of the things that we do as adults, or at least that I do, is tend to believe or to minimize the feelings of the kids, or minimize the experience.
[Right]
[Dean] To believe here they are going through this thing that… [Adolescence?] Oh, that's ridiculous. How is that difficult? But if I go into writing it that way, it rings weird. But the kids are feeling with the same intensity or more than we would if we were put in… If we were plucked out of our familiar environment and put into an environment where we don't know what the rules are.
[Mary Robinette] It's stressful.
[Shannon] That's a good point, that you have to absolute… When you're writing about kids or teens, you absolutely have to respect children and teenagers. You can't…
[Dean] It can be hard.
[Shannon] It will come off as false if you go in thinking and judging them and being like annoyed with them and wanting to just make them older. Come in respecting their point of view or it will be false.
 
[Brandon] Let's stop for our book of the week. Dean, you're going to tell us about The Princess In Black.
[Dean] The Princess In Black is a phenomenal…
[Shannon] Phenomenal.
[Laughter]
[Dean] Yes, it's a… Let me see if I think of another word that you can say. No, it… What's the type of book that we are calling it? It's like transitional chapter book about a g… Princess Magnolia who is a princess and loves being a princess and walks around in pretty dresses. But when the monster alarm rings, she becomes the princess in black, and puts on a black costume and goes out and fights evil. As a superhero would. There are many books in the series, some of them…
[Shannon] There are seven so far. Yes.
[Dean] Oh, and if… Wait…
[Shannon] [Gorgeously?] illustrated by LeUyen Pham.
[Dean] How close are we to Easter? We're past Easter. Because I was going to recommend, there's a hungry bunny horde book if you're celebrating Lagomorph Liberation or some other kind of…
[Chuckles]
[Dean] Day.
[Shannon] [A bunny horde book] belongs in every Easter basket.
[Dean] That's true. That's true. So, The Princess In Black by Shannon and Dean Hale. Illustrated by…
[Shannon and Dean] LeUyen Pham.
[Dean] Something…
[Brandon] We love these books in our household. My sons just went straight through the whole series eagerly, so… They're fantastic.
[Shannon] Yay. Thank you.
[Dean] More coming.
[Dan] I purposely did not tell my children that I was hanging out with you guys today because they would have just blown a gasket. So.
 
[Shannon] I have to tell a quick story. One time I… My son borrowed a bunch of books from a friend. Several of them were Sanderson books. We were going out to dinner with the Sanderson's, so I brought my son's friend's books with us and he signed them to this guy. When I returned them, I was like, "Hey, just FYI, I saw Brandon Sanderson, so we just had him sign your books to you." He said, "Hold on a second." He ran upstairs, he ran back down, with all seven Harry Potter books and said, "Would you like to borrow these?"
[Laughter]
[Brandon] I'll sign them.
[Shannon] That's not going to happen. But only because… Also, talking about Princess in Black in terms of writing about children, these kinds of books… There's lots of different ways to write about children. In some of them, we like get inside a kid's head and show the world how they're seeing it. In other ones, like Princess in Black, it's purely wish fulfillment fun. There are no adults in this world. So we're not showing children by comparison to what they're not. We are just having kids in adventures. So the way they talk and the way they experience things is a very different style than in some of our other books.
 
[Brandon] I want to circle back to this what you said before about respecting children as you're writing about them. Because I find this is a hard line to walk sometimes, because some of the things my children do, as we've talked about, you just can't put on the page. Like my children, I think all children, are basically sociopaths for a large part of their…
[Narcissistic sociopaths. Yup.]
[Brandon] Getting that across, getting across… Like, I love my 10-year-old. He's awesome. But he will not accept that the world is not the way he wants it to be. If we say, "You have to do this." He says, "No." We say, "But if you don't, your teacher said this." "No, she didn't."
[Chuckles]
[Brandon] Right? I'm like, "No, we have a piece of paper here." He's like, "She didn't say that. It doesn't say that." He won't accept it, it's right there. Like, evidence means nothing to my 10-year-old, right?
[Chuckles]
[Brandon] Because he says it's not. So, how do you do things like this in a story about children, but also respect them and not act like they're… There's this fine line between talking down or treating down and also presenting how they are. That line can be really tough for me sometimes.
[Shannon] Yeah. It is a really fine line. Honestly, if we really wrote children exactly as they are in movies and books, nobody would like those characters at all.
[Dean] They just really aren't likable.
[Shannon] But we love them in real life.
[Dean] Yes.
[Shannon] But you just can't show that.
[Dean] [garbled… The paranoids aren't there… The paranoia…]
[Chuckles]
[Shannon] It's insane. So you have to show the bits… We're always asking ourselves, what's most important for this story? So, what matters about this story? Then characters in service of this story. Also, I mean, I think the… I'm sure you guys have talked about this many times. The heart, the foundation of every single story, no matter the genre, is relationships.
[Dean] Relationships. Oh, yeah.
[Shannon] Relationships between characters is all that matters, ultimately. Everything else is set dressing. So how the other characters react to the children is equally important to what the children say and do.
[Brandon] That's a really good point, thinking about it. Like, that's another dynamic that changes your perspective. Asking what the stakes are, asking what are the relationships, how does the child view the relationships with those around them? Which is going to be very different, but still very intense and important than the way I view the relationships.
[Dan] Well, those relationships… I love what you said about that being the most important thing. To talk about my own middle grade series again, the second one, Dragon Planet, I had this fantastic plot built, of how he was going to go out and explore this brand-new planet and there were dragons on it and all this stuff. I'm like, "This is still so boring."
[Chuckles]
[Dan] "Why is this Dragon book so boring?" Then just added in the little character arc was that the little boy is trying to get his dad to think of him as a scientist. All of a sudden, all of the stakes were there because that relationship was in place.
[Mary Robinette] I mean, I think of examples of stories where… That do not have relationships. But all of the ones that I get really excited about, like, the ones that I read for… Certainly, I think if you have characters on the page, that if they are not having relationships, there is a problem.
[Shannon] I mean any relationship, not just romantic, but any kind of connection…
[Mary Robinette] No no.
[Shannon] Between other characters.
[Mary Robinette] I just… There's… This is a total digression, but there's a story that I love that has no characters on the page at all. So…
[Brandon] Once in a while.
[Mary Robinette] Once in a while. Once in a while, you can do it.
[Shannon] Any rule can be broken.
[Mary Robinette] Yes. But one of the things that I was thinking about with the honoring of the children is that… What I've found is that when I try to remember like specific incidents from my own childhood, rather than looking at the outside of the children… From an outside observer point of view, that it is often a lot easier for me to have them move through the world in a way that makes emotional sense.
[Shannon] Yeah.
[Mary Robinette] There was something that someone said when they were… It was at an assembly. Like an art exhibit opening, and someone had brought their infant, and the infant cried. You could hear a couple people in the audience make a dismissive sound. But the speaker said, "I am so glad that you brought your child, because we've all been that child. We have all cried." It was just like, "Yes, yes. We have all cried." It's a good reminder that everyone can enjoy art.
[Shannon] Some of us have been the mom who desperately needs to get out of the house. But I can't leave without the baby.
[Brandon] Didn't you take the twins on tour with you?
[Shannon] I took my kids everywhere. Yeah. The twins, specifically, came when we shot the movie Austenland in England. So they were there for seven weeks with me.
[Brandon] On set?
[Shannon] Well, you know.
[Dean] When they let you on the set.
[Shannon] Yeah.
[Chuckles]
 
[Brandon] All right. We're out of time on this episode. It's been awesome. Shannon, you're going to give us some homework.
[Shannon] Yes. So we talked about how the stakes change when you've got a young protagonist. So find a storybook or a movie that is about adults, and conceive of it as instead to be about a teenager or a child. Just write a paragraph about how that plot would change. What would… How would the heart of the story change if everything that happened in the book still happens, but it happens with and to a child?
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 15.20: Mental Wellness and Writing

May. 20th, 2020 11:36 am
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Writing Excuses 15.20: Mental Wellness and Writing
 
 
Key Points: Mental wellness, a.k.a. self-care, not mental-health, writing with depression, and so forth. Physical and mental wellness go together. Remember it's work, no matter how much you enjoy it. When you set your own hours, you need to carve out time for other things. Set aside time for family and friends! Create, sustainable practices. How can you write with physical or mental ailments? Don't equate word count, quantity, with self worth. What is the smallest bite? Do 20 minute sprints. Crack the seal! Try different ways and accommodations to see what works for you. Listen to healthcare professionals and other people. Make yourself accountable to somebody else, and let them warn you when you are overdoing. How can you use writing as therapy? Write out your anger, then let it flutter away in the wind. When you are writing for your own mental health, you are writing so you can have written, not to be read. Outlining lets you write emotional beats that fit where you are when you are ready for them. Writing during bad times? Don't equate self-worth with word count. Sometimes you can't. Remember, writing is writing, thinking, deleting, walking, musing, and so many other things. Replenish the creative well. Try writing with pen and paper to get rid of the extra distractions. If you can't write, maybe you can plot, brainstorm, try variations on scenes.
 
[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 20.
[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Mental Wellness and Writing.
[Victoria] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.
[Howard] And we're not that smart.
[Brandon] I'm Brandon.
[Victoria] I'm Victoria.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Howard] And I'm Howard.
 
[Brandon] We're going to talk about mental wellness and how you apply it to your writing. We have a bunch of questions from listeners about this, but let's start off… Dan, you have something you want to…
[Dan] I just wanted to make sure that our listeners know upfront that we are talking about mental wellness, which is different from mental health. This is not… We've done episodes before about writing with depression and things like that. We'll probably touch on that a little bit, but more than anything else, this is an episode about self-care. About making sure that you can handle the process of writing, or using the process of writing to help with other things.
 
[Brandon] Okay. Well, let me ask then, what do you guys do in order to take care of yourself while writing?
[Victoria] It's interesting. For me, physical wellness and mental wellness go hand in hand. So, it's hard when I'm on the road most of the year, but I always try and carve out a good 30 minutes a day for either yoga or stretching or watching a really nice television show or putting on a facemask or like taking a long shower. Doing something, it doesn't have to be fancy, but something where the onus is off of me to have measurements of productivity and success. To have something that is pass-fail, right? And you can only pass. Because I feel like so often, especially those of us for whom writing is a part or a whole career, we put so much pressure on, and you can put so much pressure on if you're carving out time to write at 11 o'clock at night or 5 AM in the morning, to just almost consider everything a metric. That just leads to a lot of self-loathing, to a lot of you're not doing enough, you're not doing what you should be doing. So I think taking a chance to reset, to put away all of the metrics, and just take time and remember to human, in addition to… So that your self-worth doesn't become directly correlated with what you're making.
[Howard] I have so very, very many thoughts on this. Let me start by saying that I love my job. It's wonderful. I really do love it. It's fun. But if it's the only thing I do all day, I feel empty. So, if you're looking at a career in writing or in drawing comics or in whatever because you think that will be fun and you think you will be able to work much, much longer hours than you could work wherever you're working now? Be advised that that may be a false paradigm. It's gonna end up as work, no matter how much you enjoy it. I got to draw a munchkin deck a couple of years ago. It wasn't accelerated, fast-tracked project, and I worked… Literally, I'm not making these numbers up. I worked from 6 AM to midnight, every day for a month, except Sundays. My sleep schedule was such that that was actually survivable. Superpower. Only actually needed five and a half hours of sleep per night. It was wonderful. At the end of that month, I learned two things. One, I can do this. Two, I need to stop.
[Chuckles]
[Howard] Because I was empty and I was burnt out and I knew that I had reached a physical limitation that I did not want to push up against again any time soon forever.
 
[Victoria] You also bring up a point that I want to expand upon, which is this idea of the hours. There's this idea that when you set your own hours, you can do anything. The fact of the matter is that the freedom of writing and of creative professions where you get to set your hours is also the downside, because writing is a 365 days a year process, in that you can take a physical vacation I'm sure, but turning off, unplugging, these are things which are both very difficult and you end up feeling very guilty about that time that you take. So I think that the less structure you have in this job or in this hobby or in this aspiring profession or this actual like current profession, the more important it is to find ways to carve out time in which you affect those boundaries.
[Brandon] I'm very focused on time management. I'm a very structured person. We've talked about my spreadsheets and things like that. One of the problems I had with this early in my career is I know… I got married a year after I published my first book, right? After I sold my first book. Suddenly, having a wife and family meant that I was unaccustomed to taking my attention away from the stories. Because even though I wasn't writing, they were in the back of my head. I've heard lots of rider friends have this conflict with spouses and with family, that you're always too focused… You're not there with me when you're there with me. I had to learn, for me, what worked was to pick specific times. At 5:30, I can't write. It doesn't matter if my family's home or not, I have a requirement that 5:30 to 9:30 is not work time. I've got to be doing something else. By giving myself that kind of… I turn the clock off, and even training my brain to be like, "We're not going to focus on that. We're not going to think about that. We need these four hours to refresh, we need these four hours to spend with my family, with my kids," whatever it is, that was liberating to me. To train my… It was hard at first, but it was liberating to train myself to turn it off for four hours a day.
[Victoria] It's about creating sustainability. The fact is, you can do anything, as you were saying, Howard, for a short period of time, but most people don't want to have a single project. They want to have a long-standing career, and in order to have a long-standing career, you have to find a way to create healthy, sustainable practices.
[Howard] At the time of this recording, I'm feeling huge like despair-worthy amounts of stress, because there's a whole bunch of cartooning that needs to be done before Monday, and it's not done yet. Last night, one of the kids had a severe medical emotional stuff. I was told that I had to sit next to her on the couch and watch YouTube videos. In fact, I was told that I wasn't allowed to get up and run errands, because my part of the medical process was to be the service emotional comfort Dad or something. I look at that, and I recognize that for my own part, yeah, it was kind of a huge sacrifice to help this other human being instead of doing the thing that I wanted to do for me. But ultimately, those other human beings are more important to me than I am. If they are not happy, I really despair. Me not getting my work done? That makes me sad. But them being unhappy, that is huge. As Brandon said, being willing to carve out time, I have to do it. My schedule isn't as rigid. But when something happens, my moral compass says I will drop what I'm doing in order to be with them.
 
[Brandon] So, there's a question here about writing under the stresses of physical or mental ailments. How can you long-term do this? What measures and steps do you take?
[Victoria] Well, so I have chronic pain, but I'm going to talk less about that because I use physical activity to try and mitigate some of the effects of that. But I will talk about writing as somebody who has anxiety and depression, and are obviously hills and valleys that come with having anxiety and depression. Look, there are some times when you can't write. We'll talk at the end of this about some homework that might help with that during those times. But in the immediate, what I do is I, one, do not equate word count and worth. In the interest of that, I carve down my goals to the smallest possible metric. There are some days when that metric is can I open up the document and sit with my story and think about it for half an hour, because that is going to create… Keep the creative door propped open in my head. Because I think the more time you spend away from the project, the harder it is to come back. Some days that's can I write a couple sentences? Let's not look at this as 2000 words or a chapter. What is the smallest bite? So I am somebody who is extremely structured in my writing, but I also only write for 20 minutes at a time. I probably, even on my most productive days, write for three hours total. That's nine sprints. Really. So I don't think that it's time equals quality, but I do think that by cutting it down to 20 minutes, I can stare at a Word document for 20 minutes. I can think about a story for 20 minutes. Even on a bad day, I can spend 20 minutes not doing anything else. Neil Gaiman has a process where he says, "When I sit down to write, my two options are do nothing or write. It's simply about removing the other distractions. You can either write or do nothing. Those are your two options." For me, I want to make the smallest bite possible. Just the same way that I never sit down and think, "Today, I'm going to write a book." I don't even sit down and think, "Today, I'm going to write a chapter." I sit down and think, "Today, I'm going to spend some time in this scene, in this moment." There are some days when I make a paragraph out of that, and I'm so happy. Usually, if I can cracked the seal on the overwhelming feeling, the overwhelmedness of that day, I can get something down on paper. Getting something down, even a small quantity, is better than nothing, and will help me feel better and make things feel a little bit more manageable.
[Howard] I like the idea of cracking the seal, because it makes it sound like the doom of the world is going to spill forth…
[Victoria] It is.
[Howard] Once I've gotten it open.
 
[Brandon] Dan, I know you've had some chronic pain issues before. You had your tailbone. You were trying to record, while your tailbone was hurting. You also had carpal tunnel. How did you write during these times, with these chronic pains? What did you do?
[Dan] For me, those were chronic issues, but they were not long-term issues. They were a few months at a time. So, for me, it came down to being willing to change my routine. I am a creature of routine. I like to write in the same room every day during the same hours. So, forcing myself to say, "Well, actually, you know what, for the next year, I'm going to use a standing desk instead of a normal desk." Or "I'm going to try a different keyboard layout." I had one that was split up… I am using gestures that you can't see the thing because this is audio only. But trying to find different ways and different accommodations. But, at the core of it, it comes down to, am I willing to do this in a different way than I've ever done this before? Which is kind of how I do my whole career. That's why I jump genres. That's why I find new programs to be a part of. I'm always trying to find the new thing, because I don't know until I try if that's going to be a thing that works really well for me. Some of these accommodations that I have used in the past, like a standing desk, I keep coming back to over and over because I genuinely have come to love it.
[Howard] I'd like to go on record real quick to say there are healthcare professionals out there. Some of them may be related to you. They might be part of your circle of friends. People you can listen to who are going to tell you, "Oh, wow, that thing you're doing? Maybe don't do that." I've failed to listen in a couple of key places. I can't take much ibuprofen anymore because I took a whole bunch of it in order to be able to draw a lot, and now one or two of those will give me IBS in all the best let's not talk about this on air sorts of ways.
[Chuckles]
[Howard] There are things that you may be doing to push through and get it done that make you feel like a superhero that are actually not good for you. Being willing to listen to other people and step back into the mortal realm a little bit might be good.
[Dan] I recognize that not everybody is in a position to have someone else to listen to, but if you do, whether it's someone who lives in your home with you or just a friend that you can text, making yourself accountable to somebody else is a huge part of self-care. Because we can't always be the best judge of have I spent too much time on this? Am I fixating too much on this? Am I burning myself out on this? So having someone who can check in every now and then and say, "You know what, it's three in the afternoon and you haven't eaten anything today." "Okay, yes. Then I need to put this down and I need to go eat."
 
[Brandon] Let's stop for our book of the week, which is Lab Girl.
[Victoria] Yeah. Lab Girl. It's interesting. It came out a couple years ago. It's by an author named Hope Jahren. J A H R E N. It is a book that is very hard for me to quantify. But it's something that I recommend to anybody who is… Once an exploration of mental wellness and mental health issues, especially, as they intersect with creativity and with writing and identity. Hope Jahren is a brilliant botanist and biologist who was sensibly is writing a memoir through an examination of her relationship with the natural world. Underneath that is an examination of her mental state as it shifts and she processes it through this motif. I found it at the time when I needed it. I think it is a beautiful book, regardless of when you find it. But I hope that it will just find some of your listeners at maybe the right time, and just make them see themselves a little bit and understand that you can find beauty and that you can have some really incredible experiences. And, that really, like, sometimes if you struggle with mental health, because that's something that I do struggle with, even though this is a self-care podcast, I think sometimes it can feel like a deteriorating condition, where you can feel like, especially if you're in one of the hills… Or one of the valleys, that you're never going to have a hill again. I think it can be really grounding, the same way that you need people in your life that can kind of call you back to yourself, it can be grounding to see yourself, especially your mental self, through other works as well. I found it just an incredibly powerful book.
[Brandon] So, that is Lab Girl?
[Victoria] Lab Girl, by Hope Jahren.
 
[Brandon] So, as we move into the last few minutes of this podcast, there's a question here about tips for writing as therapy. Including, how to draw on personal grievances in a tasteful way, and help you make both more powerful writing and work through, perhaps, some issues. Anyone done this? What are your thoughts on this?
[Howard] Let me begin by saying that there are… If you are furious, if there is rage, and you just want to get it out of your system and put it on the page, write it using a tool where it does not immediately go online.
[Laughter]
[Howard] Write it in a way where it is disconnected from the Internet. Maybe write it and print it and then delete the file. Because we say things when we are in these frames of mind that are valuable for us to have said. But their value decreases dramatically as they get read by other people. I can't remember what the story was that I was listening to… I think it actually might have been Amal El-Mohtar when she was doing her oracle of buses thing, and somebody was saying, "How do I make this one emotion I'm having go away?" She said, "You write down the full description of this emotion, and then put it on a piece of paper and then tear up the paper and let it flutter away into the wind," or something. It was a beautiful thing that she said, and I haven't done it justice. But there's this idea that when we are writing, we are writing so that we can be read. When you are writing for your own mental health, you're writing so that you can have written. Those are two different things.
[Victoria] I definitely use writing as a form of catharsis. I've done it since the very beginning, since far before I was published. It felt like… A lot of circuitous thinking, a lot of spiral thinking, and it can feel very tangled up in my mind, and I feel like focusing on a story and putting things into word can be a way for me to make straight lines out of a lot of the clutter in my head, to kind of channel my energy. But I also… I write as catharsis for very specific emotional beats. One of the reasons that I outline my stories so rigidly before I write them is so that I can write them out of order. So that I can pick the scenes perhaps that have emotional beats that I want to write that day. Some days you wake up and you want to write a murder. Some days you wake up and you want to write a love scene. Some days you wake up and you want to write… Or you're prepared to write some of those really difficult emotional scenes. Those very difficult emotional scenes, you're probably not prepared to write every day. So then rather than sit around and wait for the day that I'm ready to write the next scene, I basically have it prepped and have it blocked out in my story and then set it aside until I have a moment or a day in my life where I feel either very stable and thus ready to explore this darkness or feel very unstable and very ready to explore this darkness. But I definitely earmark different emotional beats that I know I can't write every day. I wait for something to happen or for some state to come along for me to be ready to do those moments justice.
[Brandon] Dan was smiling over there when you said…
[Chuckles]
[Brandon] Some days you don't want to write a murder…
[Victoria] Yeah.
[Brandon] Or whatever it was.
[Victoria] Some days you do want to write a murder.
[Dan] I don't know what that's like, to wake up and not want to write a murder.
[Victoria] I know.
 
[Brandon] Last question here. How do you manage to keep writing during bad times in your life?
[Victoria] You try. I mean, I think this goes back to what I was saying earlier about you don't equate self-worth with word count. I mean, like, you try. You try when it helps you. You understand that if for some reason you can't, or if the world just feels too big, it's okay to go into a creative fallow period. I've said online many times that writing is writing, but so is thinking. So is deleting. So is walking, and musing, and doing lots of things. So is reading. So is consuming. There are times when you just… You're not ready to put work out of yourself onto paper, but that's a really great time to take work in. That's a really good time to find shows or comics or movies or books and try and replenish that creative well for when you are feeling ready.
[Howard] I need to tear the question into a couple of different elements here. Bad times. That is such an enormous bucket. How do you keep writing during bad times? It is entirely possible that the very best thing for you during a particular bad time is to not write, is to not think about writing, and to do something completely different, and I can't answer how to categorize that. I just gotta come out and say that time might exist. Then there are bad times. I remember at one point my daughter talking about how she had a whole lot of trials and everything was really hard. What she was describing was I'm a teenager. I'm here to tell you that, yes, that is terrible and it is really hard. But when you are a teenager and you are experiencing that, many of the adults are looking at you and saying, "Oh, sweetie. I do not want to tell you about my 30s."
[Chuckles]
[Howard] I do not want to tell you this. Because the lessons you are going to learn right now are going to allow you to function when you're in your 30s. It is possible that the bad times you are having are things that… The lesson that you learn from them is, oh, I need to change my schedule. I need to change my diet. I need to get some exercise. I need to do something in order to mitigate the bad time and carve out time to write. I don't know… To the person that is asking the question, I don't know what kind of a bad time you're having.
[Victoria] That's true.
[Howard] So I don't have the answer.
[Victoria] I also just want to say, last note, because I think this is getting into a question that we don't get to answer, really, is that often times we become very distractible especially in these days. Like, your computer is a great tool of distraction. Sometimes it can also feel like a very precious thing. You look at a Word document or a blank screen and it feels very official, because everything that you write becomes a typed thing. When I am feeling… Like, specifically susceptible to these moments, I switch to pen and paper. I scribble along the top of the page so it's already not blank anymore. I might just doodle or do something. I find that it helps me turn off some of those extra voices, some of those extra distractions. It's not to say that what I put down on paper will be great. Often times I don't use it. But it's a great thinking tool to re-open that door. Or maybe I'm not in a good enough place to write, but maybe I can plot. Maybe I can brainstorm. Maybe I can play a choose-your-own-adventure with those scenes, where I'm how can I make this scene worse or stronger?
[Howard] I would love to have a three hour session with me and Victoria and Dan and Brandon and half a dozen other people where we just talk about unlocking.
[Victoria] Yes.
[Howard] Because all of our strategies are going to be different, so my suggestion… I did unlocking session at WXR on the cruise ship. It was one of the most beautiful discussions we've had because we were able to look at this question and talk about our respective bad times and come up with strategies. It may be, listener, that the answer for you is to talk about it with someone.
 
[Brandon] All right. Victoria, you have some homework.
[Victoria] I do have a homework. I like this homework because it involves getting a piece of paper and some colored pencils. I feel like that just…
[Oooo]
[Victoria] it taps back into like that elementary school or that young, like, joy of, like, creating something. I want you to create a lifestyle tracker. This is a very simple grid where you essentially make like an x-axis and a y-axis and down one side you put different things. I want you to put at least three things which are craft oriented, reading, writing, planning or plotting. I want you to put three things which have nothing to do with your chosen craft. Is it eating healthy, is it taking a half an hour walk, is it stretching, is it self-care? Then, across the top, I want you to put the dates. You can start with a track that just goes for 30 days. I tend to get overwhelmed by that, so I do a 10 day tracker. The point of this tracker is I want you to track each of these things every single day and color in the squares if you do them. The reason is because when you get overwhelmed, it can be very easy to lose track of time. If you struggle with anxiety and depression, a day becomes a week becomes a month. Suddenly you haven't written in a month, and you don't understand why. I am very good about that thing of if I start something at the beginning of a month, and then I mess up on the third day of the month, I'm like, "Oh, well, try again next month." The goal with the lifestyle tracker is the most that you can lose is a single day. Every single day a fresh start. I find that even if you get to 4 PM and you think this day is lost, again, you're not losing a week. You're not losing a month, you're not losing a year. You've lost a few hours. Go and nail something else on the lifestyle list, if you feel like I can't make today, I bet you can do 30 minutes of self-care. I bet you can take a bath or put on a facemask or like, do something nice for yourself. Then color in that square and see every single day as a fresh start.
[Brandon] Awesome. So this has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go take care of yourself.
 
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Writing Excuses 15.19: As You Know, This Episode Is About Exposition

May. 13th, 2020 11:19 am
mbarker: (Fireworks Delight)
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Writing Excuses 15.19: As You Know, This Episode Is About Exposition
 
 
Key Points: As you know, Bob, maid-and-butler dialogue is all about exposition, and not very convincing. The good news is that at least you're thinking about exposition. Levels? First, dialogue is more fun to read than an infodump. Second, natural dialogue, not exposition dummies. Third! Too much dialogue, using it for everything. Answer? Symbols! Make sure your scenes have a plot movement as well as dialogue. Only tell the reader what they need to know, and tie it to conflict and character. Context! Be careful not to add actions and beats to every line of dialogue. Write your dialogue outward from the point. Why are these people having this conversation? All conversation is combat, is conflict. Focus on the details of what each character wants and notices. Use the person coming into the conversation late to fast-track exposition. How do you add description and exposition? Write five sentences, then pare it down. Try emulating screenwriting, setting the scene with just enough for a director or artist to know what to do, what the mood needs to be. Consider spatial intimacy. You don't paint an entire city, you paint one room, one street. You may build an entire house and decorate it, but give the reader just a glimpse, enough for them to infer the rest from the reflection off your iceberg. 
 
[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 19.
[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, As You Know, This Episode Is About Exposition.
[Victoria] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.
[Howard] And we're Bob.
[Laughter]
[Brandon] I'm Brandon.
[Victoria] I'm Victoria.
[Dan] I'm not Bob.
[Laughter]
[Howard] As you know, Howard…
[Chuckles]
[Howard] Sorry. That's the classic, as you know, Bob. The maid-and-butler dialogue where two people talk about a thing that both of them already understand, but they talk about it so they can exposite to the reader. So, fair reader, listener, if you didn't get the joke…
[Dan] Don't do that.
[Howard] Yeah, don't do that. If you didn't get the joke, now you do.
[Victoria] Can we talk about how meta it is that you just like explained the entire show?
[Laughter]
[Howard] Expositioned it… Expositioned it. Well, because it's… Never mind.
 
[Brandon] It's actually kind of nice to see in my students. As you know, Bob, or whatever, I call it maid-and-butler dialogue, it's nice to see in one way because they're at least thinking about exposition, right? Like, your first level up is when you realize dialogue is just way more fun to read than a big infodump. So I'll put this into dialogue. But then, your next level up is realizing that dialogue needs to feel natural and you need to construct a scene in such a way that the dialogue feels like it's coming from real people rather than exposition dummies there to give the exposition.
[Dan] If you want to see this done wrong, CSI Miami was shocking sometimes at the level that two forensic scientists would sit there and recite textbooks at each other while looking at a body or whatever.
[Brandon] Now, most of our questions, or most of our episodes this year are coming from questions from readers. There's actually a really… Readers? Listeners. There's a really great question starting this off, which is the next level up moment. This listener says, "I've noticed that a lot of my scenes are little more than conversations, typically with other actions used to set in a secondary capacity, if at all. Back story, plot revelations, growth, all shown through conversations." I'm going to assume this character… This read…
[Howard] This listener.
[Brandon] This listener, noticing that, is not writing maid-and-butler dialogue. They're writing good dialogue, but they're noticing, I'm doing… Making my dialogue do a ton of heavy lifting on this. I've noticed this in my own writing as well. So it's something that I worry about.
[Dan] So, this is something that can be handled really well with symbols. I don't mean symbolism in the AP English sense. I mean that you assign a visible thing or an action to a thing. The really obvious one is Luke, you've turned off your targeting computer. Right? We don't have to come out and say Luke has learned that he needs to use the Force. Because he turns off his targeting computer, and everyone goes, "Oh. Okay, I understand what this means. They establish that earlier. With the blast shield down, I can't even see. How am I supposed to fight? We get that same thing, reversed. Another really beautiful one is actually in the movie Toy Story where the first scene is we're going to spy on the little boy's birthday party and see what the new present is. It's all… Woody's in charge, and he's doing this thing, and he wants to make sure he maintains his position as the favorite toy. The final scene is that exact scene re-done, but now he has a friend. Now he's with Buzz, and they're partners. So without coming out and saying, "I have learned the value of other people and that friendship is important and I don't have to be the favorite toy to be valued," we get all of that through the use of this really stark visual symbol that just relays it to us.
[Victoria] Two things. I personally feel like this is a plot problem. I feel like this is a reflection, if the only purpose of your scene is this dialogue, then you need to separate out the verbal content of the conversation from what you're trying to accomplish in a plot sense of the scene. If the only forward movement in the scene is through the dialogue, then I think your scene is not working as a holistic scene, moving the overarching plot forward as well. I come from the anime school of worldbuilding. The anime school of worldbuilding states, basically, we do not infodump because we don't tell you anything except what you need to know going in. Everything that you learn, be it dialogue or exposition, is tied to conflict and character. So when I see scenes like this when I'm teaching or when I'm reviewing for people, and I see these large chunks of conversation, then that starts to happen in a vacuum in my mind. They're just hovering there in space. So I start to ask those authors, those writers, to start separating out the two lines, almost as if you're making a song, and you would separate the musical instruments or separate the lines and say, "What else is this scene accomplishing?" Because the nice thing about conversation, the beautiful thing about dialogue, it can happen in a context and then some. You get twice as much out of your scenes when there's a physical underlying context to the scene as well as a conversational context.
 
[Brandon] Let me ask you this, though. One of the things that I've just started becoming may be hyperaware of, too aware of, is that people using non-dialogue beats and actions and things in order to replace writing better dialogue.
[Howard] Well…
[Brandon] It gets really bothersome when I see my students and every line of dialogue is modified by a sentence saying what they're doing. They've learned that if someone slams their coffee cup down, it helps add an exclamation point. So every character with every beat is doing something.
[Victoria] But that is the equivalent of somebody thinking that they're revising by moving commas around. That is not actually fixing the motion of the scene, right? Those are crutches of the scene. So I actually think it's a lot better, I'll advise students to create a block of the scene and then a block of dialogue. Like, work us between the two. I actually think that a paragraph of the scene bracketing the dialogue is a lot more efficient than slicing up your bracketing scenes as notes throughout the dialogue.
[Brandon] I tend to agree with that as well. I like it, personally, with reading when you go into dialogue, the dialogue has been tightly worked so that it just gets across emotions and things without… With as very little outside the dialogue is possible, and then you transition back into motion and…
 
[Victoria] It also comes down… I know this is a tangential thing that relates to this, but let's talk about dialogue for a moment. Because I'm shocked by how many people think that when you write dialogue, you begin at the beginning and you go to the end. When, like, the truth is most conversations have a point. So when I write dialogue, I build outward from the point. What is the thing that the two or three or four people engaged in this conversation are trying to get to? I think when you build out from the point, instead of the hello, hello, goodbye, goodbye of it, then you start to understand why they're having the conversation. Really, like, we don't have conversations in a void. We have conversations in a context. So often when I see a lot of dialogue happening, a lot of information being conveyed this way, I start to wonder why there's an absence of context. Sometimes the context can replace some of the dialogue. Absolutely, it's a balance that you find in the writing. Like so many things that we talk about, you learn the right balance by doing it wrong and by doing it right. But I think… I mean, this is the time where you have to remember that all writers are readers. Find the things that really work. Find the good examples of it, and study them, the way that you would study anything.
[Howard] I think it's important to recognize that… And I use this as a punchline in a Schlock Mercenary strip a decade ago. Good Lord. The punchline was, "Captain, all conversation is combat."
[Chuckles]
[Howard] The Captain's response is along the lines of I think I'm going to enjoy it a lot more now. The idea that we converse because there is a… There are competing ideas, and at the end of the conversation, those ideas will have changed in status. At a almost theological level, the religion of the sharing of information, conversation is conflict.
[Victoria] Absolutely.
[Howard] Even if we agree, there is conflict here, because if there wasn't conflict, we wouldn't need to talk. So, as you know, Bob, is broken because there is no conflict, there's no reason for me to tell you what you know. But, if I'm saying a thing… If I'm trying to explain a piece of worldbuilding to someone who doesn't know it, the disagreement… The conflict there is not I am providing information that you need. The more interesting conflict is I'm providing information that you don't believe, and you're now going to refuse or refute. It becomes an argument. You layer that atop character conflict, atop other things, and suddenly… I will read page after page after page of that, because it can be fun.
 
[Victoria] I think the pointedness of exposition is important. Either the fact that in dialogue, no two people come together to have the same conversation. We each come to a conversation with an idea that we want to convey to the other. So often, what's the interesting part of dialogue is when we miss each other in the conversation, when each of us is trying to basically have a monologue to the other one, and we have to have that collision point. I also, on the character building exposition side of it, I feel strongly that… This so often gets put into first person, but when you think about writing, regardless of whether your writing third person or first person or second person, you are writing a perspective. Every single character will notice different things. Every single character that you write is moving through their world and their environment differently. They see the world differently, they have different philosophies, and they're going to notice different things. So often, unless you're writing a purely omniscient world, you can tie the details of the things that we notice, of the things that we perceive that are relevant, to the attention of the character that you are writing about. So remembering that each of us has a bias, a way of moving through the world, each of the characters that you write is going to perceive different things about the world around them. Honing it into those details can help it from feeling infodumpy, can help the exposition from feeling it doesn't serve a point.
 
[Howard] One of my favorite stupid tricks is the person… We have this happen all the time, all of us. Someone walks into the room late and tries to join the conversation, but they don't know what's been said yet. Everybody is now instantly mad. "We just covered this!" "Yeah, but I wasn't here." "Why do we care that you know?" "I care that I know."
[Chuckles]
[Howard] One, there's comedy inherent in it because we've all been there, we've all been annoyed, and we are now watching the lessening in status of the person that we would like to see drop. One of my… One of the rules of comedy. But the other thing is, it allows you now to fast-track the exposition and give them the equivalent of the as you know, Bob, in a way that has conflict just running… Just oozing off of it.
 
[Brandon] Let's go ahead and stop for our book of the week.
[Dan] Book of the week, this week. One of my very favorite things in the entire universe is…
[Howard] Me?
[Dan] When… Well, you're related to it.
[Laughter]
[Dan] When Writing Excuses listeners, students at our retreat, people who listen to the podcast, come to me and show me their book that they wrote and have published. Like, that is just… Makes me so happy. That happened recently. Suyi Davies Okungbowa, who is one of our scholarship winners for the 2019 cruise, has got a fantasy book published. It is called David Mogo Godhunter. He gave me a copy. It's super, super good. It's basically the Dresden Files if it took place in Lagos, Nigeria. About a guy who is hunting fallen gods for a wizard. It's really good stuff. Really well written. He is presenting a very new, unique world that he does a great job of exposing that information to us. So… It applies to our episode as well.
[Brandon] Title and author, one more time?
[Dan] David Mogo Godhunter. The author is Suyi Davies Okungbowa.
 
[Brandon] All right. So, the other question we have for this week is about adding description. How do you add description when it doesn't come easily? How do you find the balance between worldbuilding and exposition?
[Victoria] I am one of those people that believe you write five sentences, and then you ask yourself if one sentence will do the same amount of work. That's not to say that you should underwrite. I think you're totally fine to overwrite. But I usually believe that if you take a paragraph to describe anything, and then you ask yourself if every sentence in that paragraph is pulling the same amount of weight, you can usually get it down to one or two very powerful sentences. I think sometimes, especially in the fantasy tradition, we think more is more. Sometimes, more is more. But usually… I come from a poetry background. So, usually, what I think is especially in moments where we're truly setting up world, where the exposition and the description is not actively engaged with any one thing, with conflict, with character, with anything, but we feel the need to set the scene, that in that case, less can be more, when it is done pointedly.
[Howard] I think that the tradition of writing… When I say tradition, the form, the syntax of writing for the screen and writing for comics, where at some point, you are telling the director, you are telling the cameraman, you're telling the artist what to do. As the writer, there is a line you don't want to cross, where you may have told them too much. Yet, there's also this point where all you've given them is a white room full of people talking and they don't have anything to work with. When I talk about writing comic scripts, often what I will focus on, and this is useful for writing other things, is colors and moods and shapes. I'll say, "Establishing shot, longshot, super desaturated background to show distance, trees in the foreground, characters in the immediate foreground, brightly lit, whatever." That establishes a mood, where we are close up on the characters and they are in a huge space. Well, if I were to write this in prose, obviously I wouldn't write it that way. But I would want to talk about the tree that is nearest. I would want to mention that we can see for miles. It feels like we can see to the end of the world. Something poetic that establishes this same feeling of huge space with people in it up close. So, it may be that an exercise for description is to look at screenplays and the way they handle some of these scenes, and then look at how you would write it in prose to accomplish the mood. Rather than to say these are all of the millions of things that were in that picture.
[Victoria] So, this kind of comes back, for me, to the idea of spatial intimacy. Right? You cannot paint an entire city. Not in any way that a person can keep in their mind. But you can paint a room or a street in that city. I have this theory that there are two kinds of fantasy authors. There are… Or really any genre authors. There are authors who build you an entire house, decorate every room of that house, then give you as the reader the key to that house. You now get to explore every room. If you don't see it, it doesn't exist there. That's like the Tolkein philosophy, right? Then there are authors who build the entire house, decorate the entire house, and instead of giving the reader the key, they leave one curtain open. What you can essentially see then is one room, perhaps an open doorway, a hall beyond, and you're given just enough details to be able to infer the house beyond. I think that when you're writing fantasy or something where you feel like there's a lot of room for description, remembering that a few key details instead can have that iceberg philosophy, can show you and be reflective of an entire world.
[Brandon] Absolutely. I like to go back… Going back to what you said earlier and kind of tying this all together, if your worry… One of your worries is you're doing too much conversation, a few of those very well described tight… Like… This is when one paragraph is better than 17. A really, really like curious paragraph that gives you that window, that gives you that drape, that shows you… And brings you right in there is a wonderful powerful balance to some of these dialogues.
[Victoria] Absolutely.
 
[Brandon] We are out of time on the podcast today. I am going to give you some homework. What I want you to do is I want you to take a favorite piece of media of yours, whether it's a book, a television show, a movie. I'm going to use Star Wars for this example because it's pretty universal, a lot of people have seen it. I want you than to make a list of all the worldbuilding elements that are necessary to understand Star Wars. Right? To understand how that movie, how that world works, how that society works. Then, once you've got that done, I want you to watch the movie, read the book, the show again, and see at what pace the creators of that media put all of those things in. So you can get a sense for how somebody else is doing it, how they are using their learning curve and their description and their exposition to give that information to you. So, have fun doing that. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 15.18: Finding a Community, with Shauna Hoffman

May. 7th, 2020 10:05 am
mbarker: (Burp)
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Writing Excuses 15.18: Finding a Community, with Shauna Hoffman

From https://writingexcuses.com/2020/05/03/15-18-finding-a-community-with-shauna-hoffman/

Key Points: Isolation? No one can hear you scream? The situation makes us feel as if we are out of control, and fight-or-flight syndrome, along with fear, anxiety, and depression, may kick in. Self-isolation as a choice is one thing, having it forced on us is something else. So -- make it your choice! Take back control. Find ways to reach out. Writing groups online. Meetup.com. Nextdoor. You are not alone. Writers are not solitary recluses, geniuses who work by themselves in seclusion. Go to a writing conference! Nanowrimo's forum. 4thewords. Writing dates, or co-working dates. It's okay to not want to write! Give yourself a lump day! Try online role-playing groups. You have the control, the choice, to reach out.

[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 18.
[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses, Finding a Community.
[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.
[Lari] And we're not that smart.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Lari] I'm Lari.
[Mary Robinette] And we are joined by our special guest, Shawna Hoffman.
[Shawna] Hello, everyone.
[Mary Robinette] Shawna, do you want to tell everyone a little bit about yourself?
[Shawna] Absolutely. Many of you who have been on the cruises before know me. I own a large corporation that takes people on cruises, but I'm also a psychotherapist. I am a speaker, I am a writer, I'm a podcaster, I'm a lover of the human spirit. There's nothing in my heart that helps me more than helping others. That's me.
[Dan] This is also the very first week that Lari is on the show. Larissa Helena is one of our guest hosts. She's going to be on a bunch of episodes throughout the rest of the year. So, this is your first episode, Lari. Can you introduce yourself as well?
[Lari] Sure. I am kind of… I learned recently that if you're saying you're like a Jane of all trades, then it keeps going like, but master of none, so I don't say that anymore.
[Chuckles]
[Lari] But, let's just say, I'm a Jane of all trades in publishing, because I've done a little bit of everything. So I'm an editor, a translator, a rights manager, I've been an agent. Right now, I'm a rights manager and translator for most of my time. But I've just kind of explored all different parts of the business.
[Dan] Awesome. Thank you very much.

[Mary Robinette] So, this episode came out of questions that you all have asked us. But it also felt fairly timely. Given that we are recording this while we are all still in quarantine or safer at home or ensconced in situ or sparkling isolation, whichever choice you want to call it. Dan, do you want to read the question that we got from our listeners?
[Dan] Yeah. So the question says, "I often feel isolated as a writer, a feeling social media is probably exacerbating. But sometimes it feels like a no one can hear you scream situation. Not everyone may be alone, but some writers are. What are some ways you go about keeping the pressure off pre-post agent and pre-post pub, even when it feels like you're in it alone?"
[Mary Robinette] So, I think that this is a thing that affects every writer at some point or another in their career. But I also think that right now it's hitting a lot of people very hard. Because so many of us get our communities by traveling or just even going to the coffee shop to hang out in some place that is not your home. It is difficult when you've got something that's normally a solitary occupation, and then you add any form of isolation on top of that. Since not even… Even without the sparkling isolation, a lot of people don't have access to a larger community. So, Shawna, do you have any immediate thoughts about ways that people can build a community or build a kind of safe emotional space for them during these times?
[Shawna] What's interesting about the time that we are in… It's actually a little bit of what I call fight-or-flight syndrome right now. Because it's a situation that we are out of control in. When you are choosing to stay at home and you know your writing or you know you're being creative, it's actually a choice. Right now, it tends to be more stressful, because fear, anxiety, depression, and the basic fight-or-flight syndrome, because it's actually been taken out of our control. We been told what we are supposed to do. Before, people who isolated in order to be creative made a choice to do it. It was… Can also always be lonely. But, in this point in time, it tends to be more lonely because it feels like it's out of our control. It's not our choice. So the first thing that I try to help people with is to make it your choice. Right now, we have to stay safe. So if you make it a choice to stay safe, in your mind, your changing your perception, your giving back your control, you're taking back your control. You're choosing not to be at the effect of something else. That is a very's first step to not feeling any anxiety or depression, as we're going through this. I think you made a really good point, going out socializing, even, like you said, being in a coffee shop, gives us a sense of community. The funny thing is that right now everybody is in the exact same place. So what you… I offer people to do is to find ways to reach out. Whether it's writing groups online. Whether it's… You know, there is a great app, meetups. Meetups, now, are people who wouldn't normally go to a meeting, go to a group or join a group, because maybe they're on the more shy side, can find something in meetups where they can all of a sudden engage with other people in different ways. Meetup.com. It's one of my favorite places to send people to. You've moved to a new community and you don't know who to meet or how to meet other people. But right now, on Meetup, there's tons of meetings going on that you can do from your home. I'm also finding apps like Nextdoor. Things like that. There are people that want to reach out. I think a really big piece of it is to (a) not feel like you're the only one going through this. When you do that, when you put that mentality, or you feel like that is what you're going through, you tend to go deeper into a [possible] depression or more anxiety. You are not alone. That's the most important piece to feel right now, is that you are actually part of what so many people are going through. Everybody is going through.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Lari?
[Lari] I think what would also be interesting to talk about is this image that a lot of us still have of what writers tend to be like, the romantic idea that writers are solitary, a recluse, or just the geniuses who work by themselves in a little secluded room, and how sometimes we need to [object] to that image, like, make it a little harder for people to realize that it's really hard to be home alone by yourself, so just really bringing up this idea it's very normal to want community and to find it hard when that's all you do all the time.
[Dan] Yeah. I… One of the things that I usually recommend for people to find a community is to go to a writing conference. It's so easy for me up on a panel, when we're talking about writing and finding a community, I can say, "Hey. Everyone in this room who is interested in possibly joining a writing group, stand up." Then half the room stands up. They look around and say, "Oh, hey. A) I'm not alone, and B) I can talk to these other 50 people right after the panel is over and maybe put something together." That's not necessarily something you have access to right now, but there are online resources as well. Another one that I love to point people to is nanowrimo's website, National Novel Writing Month. They have an incredibly expansive forum that breaks things down, not just by genre of what you're writing, but also by region of where you are writing, down to the city and often even the neighborhood level. So if you… Even if you're not interested in doing nanowrimo, you can get on there, sign up, and then see who all the other writers are in your area. You can talk to them over the forum, contact them and maybe put together a writing group, or even just a Slack, or some kind of little support group online. These kinds of things are really, really valuable to have. And totally viable during quarantine.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. We'll talk some more about some additional resources after we come back from talking about our book of the week. Shawna, I think you had something you wanted to recommend to our… People.
[Shawna] Right. Thank you. Yes. I've written a book called Guy Free Working on Me. It's a woman's journey to self-awareness. It's also my podcast. It's for women who are in a relationship, not in a relationship, it's about really searching for yourself, finding time, and doing the work to become the most healthy and genuine person you can be. So, thank you.
[Dan] Cool.
[Mary Robinette] So, that's Guy Free Working on Me, by Shawna Hoffman.

[Mary Robinette] So, one of the… Let's toss out a couple more resources for people. Two of the other things that I want to recommend, much along the lines of what Dan recommended. 4thewords. The number four the words, is a… So it is a game. You've heard me… Anyone who's on… Has listened, longtime listeners, have heard me evangelize about this. But it's a game in which the way monsters is by the number of words you write in the time in which you write them. But their forums are this incredibly vibrant and caring community. It's a great place to meet other writers and just… Sometimes to just go in there and say, "Has anyone else ever had the thing where you know the next scene that's supposed to happen, but you just don't want to write it?" And have a bajillion people chime in and go, "Oh. All the time."
[ssshh]
[Mary Robinette] It's… Also, hi, yes, me too.
[Laughter]
[Mary Robinette] The other thing that I find very helpful in general, and the pandemic and my sparkling isolation has given me additional tools, is writing dates or co-working dates. So, I've done these sporadically for years, but because of this, I've actually set up a regular date. So, on Wednesday mornings, I meet up from 9 to 11 with some other folks. We have two hours that are dedicated time to work in the company of others. The way that we do it is that we chime in… No, we come in, we chat for 15 minutes, and then we work for 45, and then we have a 15 minute break where we stretch, we refresh our beverage, we chat. Then we work for another 45 minutes. It's the most productive time that I have. If you're thinking, "But I don't know anyone," one of the things I want to draw attention to is that not everyone in this group is a writer. But we are all working together. So it's true that you may not be able to find a writing community, but you may be able to have a community who understands what it's like to be working on a project that you're frustrated by. There are other tangible kinds of links that you may be able to touch base in. Then, the, sort of the last one, is that if there's a writer that you like a lot, and they have a Patreon, some of them have co-working sessions. That's another way to start meeting a community. Like, mine has co-working sessions, I've got a Slack. Dan, also, I think you do, too, don't you?
[Dan] I do an online writing group that has formed more than a couple of off-line groups of people who have been through it.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So, this is a… These are some possible ways that you can go about it. What are some other things that you might, Shawna, suggest?
[Shawna] Actually, this might go against everything that this podcast is all about, but, I, in this time, it's okay to not want to write. It's actually okay. It's very difficult to become creative when you're in fear or when you have anxiety. What we're finding is that… You're seeing it all over social media. "I'm not doing anything. I'm not getting anything done." I want to take the onus off of that, I want to give you permission to have the gift of time right now, and maybe not try to feel like you have to be creative. Maybe you want to do self reflection right now. Maybe you want to just join with family on phones and podcast… And Zooms and things like that. It's okay to not be creative at this time.
[Dan] I have started doing, and this surprised me, because I work from home anyway. So it was very surprising to me that I was starting to feel the quarantine burnout. Because I rarely ever leave my home under normal circumstances. But a few weeks ago, I hit a point, on a Wednesday, where I was just an absolute useless lump of a person, and I could get nothing done, and was whining about it to the friends on my Slack that I keep for sanity. They all said, "You know what, we all feel the same way. It's okay to have a lump day." So I've started giving myself Wednesdays as my kind of creative cheat day. You don't… It's important, like Shawna said, you don't have to constantly be writing. But you don't have to give it up entirely, either. I have found that kind of just giving myself one day of the week to kind of try to regenerate emotionally has allowed me to keep writing on the rest of the days. Once I came to terms with that and accepted it, then it's been pretty productive on all of the other days. But I give myself a lump day.
[Mary Robinette] I have structured so that I have… That I don't do work on the weekends, even though I'm self-employed and… Like even without this, we can was… That was the day that I was at a conference. But otherwise, indistinguishable from the rest of the week. So, I'm also making sure to give myself time to not work. Shawna's absolutely right. It is… I think everything that this podcast does stand for actually, that you have to be gentle and kind with yourself in order to… For there to be any work possible at any point. But sometimes you just don't write.
[Dan] I know that we're going long, but I want to recommend one more thing. This is a little self-serving, because I do run role-playing groups for people online. But I have had… I have seen online role-playing games become an incredibly valuable tool for people to find friend, for people to find like-minded individuals, whether it's creatively or just socially. There's a lot of resources to go through to find that as well. I got a friend right now who was in quarantine, like absolute strict no human contact quarantine, for three weeks.
[Shawna] Cool.
[Dan] I've got another one who is just a single guy, living in San Francisco, again, virtually no in person contact with anyone. For both of them, the ability to get on once a week and just play Dungeons & Dragons or something, without the need to be in a video meeting, without the need to feel like they had to be productive, was super valuable. So you can visit websites like Roll20, which has an incredible forum, called Looking for Group, where you can just go on and find like-minded people who want to play a game. Astral's another good one. So while you're looking for your community, even if you're a writer, you can find a lot of other writing friends or just good social friends that you can interact with through other means as well.
[Shawna] Just one last thought. That is that you actually have the control to reach out. If you don't do it, you're going to find yourself feeling more lonely and more lonely. So, even if you choose one or two places a day to try to reach out to, make your list and do it. Because you actually have the control.

[Mary Robinette] Well, on that note, why don't we wrap up with a writing prompt or exercise? Shawna, did you have something for us?
[Shawna] Yes. I think I just did it. How about…
[Mary Robinette] Oh, perfect.
[Shawna] How about… How about you make a wonderful list of people that you could reach out to in the next week that could inspire you, that could make you feel part of a community? And think outside the box. Think outside the box, don't go to the ones that you would normally go to. Go back to your high school or junior high school or reading group or church group or any other group, Mom's group, anything. But make a list. And go for it.
[Mary Robinette] That sounds fantastic. So. You are out of excuses. Now go write, or be a lump.
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Writing Excuses 15.17: Asexual Representation

Apr. 30th, 2020 10:10 am
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Writing Excuses 15.17: Asexual Representation

From https://writingexcuses.com/2020/04/26/15-17-asexual-representation/

Key points: Asexuality is a sexual orientation that is not interested in sex. Not celibacy, not due to something that happened, it's just the orientation. There are a number of sub-identities. To write such a character, first, remember it is not celibacy, it is not a choice. Do your research! Be aware of the love hierarchy encouraged by Western culture, and understand that asexuals probably don't order people that way. To flag a secondary character as ace so that readers recognize it, probably the best is to have the characters talk about it, probably in a moment of recognition that this person is ace. To avoid harm, watch out for the stereotypes. Don't magically "cure" your asexuals! Also, don't portray your asexuals as totally solitary, give them a community and support. When writing historicals or other books where the term asexual would be anachronistic, just have the character explain what they are, without using the label.

[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 17.
[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, Writing the Other: Asexuality.
[Tempest] 15 minutes long.
[Mary Robinette] Because you're in a hurry.
[Howard] And we're not that smart.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Tempest] I'm Tempest.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[Howard] And I'm Howard.

[Dan] One of the questions that we had come in this year was about specifically asexual characters and asexual representation. The person asking the question made the good point that that's not an identity that gets a lot of coverage. Even we, on our show, we've tried to cover a lot of different topics, this is one we've never hit before.
[Tempest] Oh my.
[Dan] So, Tempest, what… Start us off. Tell us what that identity is, and what it's about.
[Tempest] Okay. So this is the very short version. Because once you start actually looking into asexuals and asexual identities, you will discover that there is, like, some sort of deep well from which these identities have emerged. So it's, like, very complicated and there's lots of different names and labels. But that's okay, because hey, everybody loves some names and labels, they help us. So, at its base, asexuality is a sexual orientation that means that you are just not interested in sex. It's not celibacy, it's not like the choice to, like, not have sex. It is that that is your orientation. So, think of it in the way that, like, with homosexuals, they enjoy having sex with people who are the same gender as them. Bisexuals enjoy having sex with people who are the same gender or different genders, and heterosexuals enjoy having sex with people who are the opposite gender or across from them. But asexuals, they don't want to have sex with anyone, and that's okay. But then, within the asexual identity, there are lots of sub-identities that basically explain exactly, like, where you fall on this whole, like, I don't want to have sex with people thing. As I said, there are a lot of them, I'm not going to go into all of them. But some of it's, like, there's a name for people who… They don't necessarily want to have sex with people unless they form a very strong connection with, like, one person. Then they're like, "I could enjoy having sex with you. I want to have sex with you because I have made this connection with you." But they… But, in general, they don't walk around the world being like, "I could have sex with them." No. They're only interested in that one person they've made a connection with. Then there's also, under the heading of asexuality, what your romantic status is. Because some asexual people also are not romantic, they're not interested in romantic relationships at all. That's called aromantic. But then there are some asexual people who do want to be in romantic relationships that just do not involve sex. So, as I said, it's pretty complicated, there are a lot of levels, and that's just a really basic explanation.
[Mary Robinette] I just want to clarify that when you're talking about writing an asexual character, that the reason that they're asexual is not because of something that happened in their back story.
[Tempest] Right.
[Mary Robinette] It is their orientation.
[Tempest] Right. Right. So, like, again, it's different from celibacy, and celibacy may be like someone did have something happen, and they're not interested in having sex because of something that happened in their background. They're just like, "Nope. I'm no longer making that a part of my life." But that wasn't how they were born, that's not the orientation that they are, that's just like their reaction to a thing, or in the case of some people, a choice.

[Dan] Okay. So, we're a writing podcast. For our listen… We do this for our listeners out there. If you want to write a character with an asexual orientation, we want to give you tools to do that. If you don't, if you have no interest in this topic whatsoever, you have our permission and our blessing to not listen.
[Chuckles]
[Dan] That's fine. Then go yell at us on Facebook which is what you always do.
[Laughter]
[Dan] If you are, however, interested, Tempest, what are some things that people can do to write characters who are asexual?
[Tempest] The first, biggest thing often is just recognizing that asexuality is not celibacy. That is a big mistake a lot of authors make. This mistake is made, like, in a lot of places and media where the two are conflated. But they're two very different things. So that's like the first big thing. If you start from there, you're already like a good 25% of the way to doing it like super well. Another thing is, like, obviously with anything, do a lot of research about the asexual identity. There is a lot of stuff out there about it, because of the fact that in the past 10 years, there has just been a lot of discussion of asexuality and a lot of people who are realizing that they might be asexual so they have forums and they have Tumblr communities and there are websites that have lots of good information. So, like, getting into there and respectfully looking up on some of these things. If there are private spaces, don't go in them. But if, like… There are a lot of Tumblrs, actually, that are public, that are for making sure that people understand, like, the many, many differences and all the different labels that I was talking about. So, do that kind of research. The other big thing is just to think about the fact that asexuals, they do not have a love hierarchy the way that our mainstream Western culture encourages us to have a love hierarchy. What I mean by that is, like, there's… You know, okay, the hierarchy of love. At the top is, like, your romantic partner, or your kids. Then, under them, it's, like, maybe other family in there, with some cousins that you like, maybe. Then, under that is, like, your friends. Then, under them, is acquaintances. Maybe up here, with your friends, maybe your dog above them, because we all know we like our dogs better than our friends, right? So, like, this is the way that our culture sort of…
[Mary Robinette] Just to be clear, this is a hierarchy of love, not attraction.
[Tempest] Right. Love. Like actual…
[Mary Robinette] Yes.
[Howard] With apologies to my cousins, you've put them on the wrong side of my friends.
[Laughter]
[Tempest] I was just… Some people… Because some cousins are above friends, some aren't. They're below the friends, right? But our culture encourages this. It encourages us to put love on a hierarchy and be like, "These people you love more than these other people." But many asexuals don't… They're not here for the love hierarchy, because they're like, "But I…" They don't order their people that they love in that way. This is like… If it's romantic love, it's not romantic love, this is familiar love, this is friendship love. They're like, "It's all love to us." So, understanding that, understanding what the love hierarchy is, and, like, how to, like, bust out of it. Then that again, that's like another long way towards going… Writing a good asexual character, because chances are, they're not going to be down with that hierarchy.

[Dan] Cool. I want to pause right now for our book of the week, which, once again, is from Tempest. You get to talk this whole episode.
[Tempest] Yay!
[Chuckles]
[Tempest] So, the book this week I want to suggest… Or recommend is Let's Talk about Love by Claire Kann. This is a YA novel. It's contemporary. The protagonist is black, bi-romantic, and asexual. Bi-romantic is similar to bisexual in that she wants to have romantic relationships with people as her same gender or people of other genders. But she only wants romance, she doesn't want sex. She's asexual. So, in this… Like I said, she's working out what she wants from life. But really, it's all about, like, just her being a fabulous black girl and also being asexual. And, like, getting other people to get on board with her fabulous self. It just deals with a lot… It goes through a lot of things that asexual people, but I think, like, especially young people, go through in, like, figuring out, like, how to have relationships as an asexual, and how to basically inform the people who might be into you what asexuality is and how it works, and some of the heartbreak that sometimes comes from that. So this is just a… It's just a really good book, a really good story anyway, but it's also a really great asexual representation.
[Mary Robinette] And the name of that was?
[Tempest] Let's Talk About Love by Claire Kann.
[Dan] Great.

[Mary Robinette] So, I have a followup question. I think that most of our listeners are probably going to be approaching this as writing a secondary character. That most of them are not going to be writing a primary character who is ace. So, one of the… I recently wrote an ace character into the Lady Astronaut. It's in the second book, Fated Sky. I have an ace character. The challenge that I had was figuring out how to write the character in such a way that she was recognizable by readers, that they would recognize themselves in her, but not have it be a plot point. So, what I guess I'm wondering is, like, what… When I'm thinking about that, are there tools that you can suggest to… When you're thinking, "Ah. I think that that person is ace." Which is a tricky thing, because everybody expresses differently. But what are some of the things that… Like, this is a thing that if you want to nail it and help people recognize themselves, this is something you can include with your secondary character?
[Tempest] Yeah. It's sometimes hard because… Especially if the book is not necessarily about that character having a relationship. Then, like saying, "By the way, everybody, I'm asexual. Okay, let's go, like, kill that dragon."
[Gasp]
[Tempest] But that's…
[Mary Robinette] No, right.
[Tempest] Not a thing that you can do necessarily that works. But, the way that I have seen it done in a couple books is that the characters have a conversation about it, not necessarily because they sit down and go, "Okay. Tell me about your sex life. Tell me about your sexuality." But it will come up in some way, or it'll be like a moment, where they're just like, "Okay. But, like, maybe you could go do that thing. Like, perhaps go seduce that man." And the person will be like, "I don't know how to do that. Because I don't do that." They'll be like, "You don't do that?" Then… Like, then it becomes a conversation about, "Wait a minute. Oh, I didn't know this about you." Like… When it comes up, if it comes up, sometimes it can come up in the other characters are like, "What?" Or it comes up in the other characters say, "Oh, that's really interesting. I didn't know. Okay. We're going to have to come up with a different plan. You can't seduce that person. All right. Like, plan B." But, yeah, like… At this point, because asexual representation is not as large as the representation of other people on the LGBTQ spectrum, sometimes it means that, like, characters need to just like actually just have a conversation about it, or say it. But the trick is finding a good place to put that without it being like, "As you know, Bob, as an asexual, I feel etc., etc."
[Mary Robinette] Isn't that the way all conversations start, though?
[Laughter]
[Tempest] I'm doing that all the time. Like, as you know, as a lady…
[Howard] I'm going through my manuscript right now and removing all references to as you know, Bob.
[Chuckles]
[Tempest] Right.

[Howard] I will freely admit to a massive level of ignorance on this matter. Not for want of… Not because I haven't been trying to learn, but I haven't spent enough time at it. I haven't learned enough. I feel like the thing that I've come away with from the Writing the Other episodes that we've done in general is the guiding principle of do no harm. What are the things that I should watch out for or that our listeners should watch out for when writing asexual… Ace characters, as the shorthand goes? What are the things they should watch out for so that they're not damaging that community, or members of that community?
[Tempest] The stereotypes definitely. Some of the biggest stereotypes that I have encountered about asexuals is you'll see, if they're included in a book, then somehow during the course of the book, they magically become not asexual because they meet the right person.
[Chuckles]
[Tempest] Which is just as bad as… Like, for instance, you have a character who's a lesbian, and then she meets some dude who's just so great, and then by the end of the book, she's no longer a lesbian. It's like, "Wait a minute. No. That's not okay." So, yeah, like, doing that. Having… Or as Mary Robinette mentioned earlier, having a character who is asexual because something bad happened to them. For instance, like, they say, "I was molested as a child, so therefore I don't like sex." Like, that's… First of all, that's not how that works. Also, that's a very damaging stereotype. Basically, also only showing asexual's as like individual persons in a sea of… Like, there are no asexual's anywhere ever. That's also just the thing that I'm always telling people, like, folks don't exist in a vacuum. Like, they have a community. There is an asexual community and often people will seek it out. So, showing asexuals as being people in a community, and as having some support, that's usually good. The other thing that is a question I often get is, like, how you talk about asexuals when you're, like, writing something where, like, that word wouldn't be used. Because that is actually a fairly recent word in the lexicon. In that case, again, more talking and having them sort of explain this is how I am, this is how I feel. I don't want this, I don't want that. In doing that, making sure that, again, you don't fall into those particular stereotypes.

[Dan] Cool. That is all the time that we have. Thank you very much, Tempest, for being on the show, to talk about this. We are going to try to put… I mean, you mentioned some… Looking at Instagram, and some things like that. Do you have any specific resources that we could put into the liner notes?
[Tempest] I do. We actually, at Writing the Other, we have a Master Class on How to Write Asexuals. It is taught by Lauren Jankowski, who is an amazing writer who is also ace and she does a lot of… Talks about asexual representation. You can take the Master Class you go to writingtheother.com. It's listed with our Master Classes. With that class, you also get, like, a ton of resources that Lauren herself has collected. Another great resource is another one that Lauren runs. It's called Asexual Artists. Actually, it's just like conversations with people who are artists who also happen to be asexual, talking about their art and talking about how their sexual identity informs their art, if it does. So, those are like some really great places to start if you are interested in trying to get that representation right.
[Dan] That's fantastic. Thank you very much.

[Dan] Now, once again, we're handing it back to you for our homework.
[Tempest] The homework is to go to the Master Class. Oh, no.
[Laughter]
[Tempest] Oops. No, the homework actually is to take two characters from your current work in progress who are either in a relationship… Romantic relationship, or like stepping toward a romantic relationship, but to write a meet cute. A scene where they're meeting and that spark is happening for the first time. But, instead of them having whatever sexuality they already have, whether it's heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual, whatever it is, have them be asexual but romantic. So, now, it's like, how does that spark happen? How does one of them perceive the other as a potential partner? But without them wanting to have sex with that person?
[Dan] All right. There you go. You are out of excuses, now go write.
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Writing Excuses 15.16: Balancing Plot and Character

Apr. 23rd, 2020 10:44 am
mbarker: (Me typing?)
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Writing Excuses 15.16: Balancing Plot and Character
 
 
Key points:  Balancing plot/pacing and character scenes? Depends on genre, subgenre, and personal style. Upfront character and later payoff? If you don't care about the characters, you won't care about the plot. Even when the reader wants to know the answer to a question, getting the answer through the POV of a character who cares is more satisfying. Long form needs more characters than short stories. You may come to a series for the plot, but you stay for the character. Lots of character upfront builds emotional investment which means the ending hits much harder. But it's sleight-of-hand, because plot forward and character heavy books also have the other side, they just handle it through their lens. How do you decide whether to emphasize plot or character? Thrillers don't have time for navelgazing, so you have to fit the character stuff in with the rest. Tiny moments of navelgazing! Mix physical beats and emotional beats in every scene. Make sure the reader knows why characters are doing things. How do you plan and structure story to create strong emotional responses? Promises, progress, payoff. Make sure your roadblocks are legitimate. Build expectations. Align your stand-up-and-cheer moment with the culmination of other moments. Connect your readers to the character's why. Give readers small problems or weaknesses they can relate to.
 
[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 16.
[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Balancing Plot and Character.
[Victoria] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.
[Howard] And we're not that smart.
[Brandon] I'm Brandon.
[Victoria] I'm Victoria.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Howard] And I'm Howard.
 
[Brandon] We are going to pull an intricate balancing act today on our podcast as we talk about balancing between characters and plots. One of our listener questions is how do you find a good balance between plot/pacing and character scenes?
[Howard] You put the plot on one side of the scale…
[Chuckles]
[Howard] And on the other side of the scale, you place a feather. And…
[Victoria] Yeah.
[Laughter]
[Brandon] You're going to first determine where you want to be as regards to genre, sub genre, your personal style… Like, there is no set balance. Just like if you say, "I want to cook a thing. How much flour should I use?"
[Dan] Well, it depends on the thing.
[Brandon] Well, what's the thing that you're going to cook, and what's your personal style of cooking, and what's it for? Different stories and different types of stories can have a different balance here.
[Victoria] Yeah, I… Something I've become really aware of over the years, like, 16 books, is the fact that my opening acts are more character than plot. They tend to be slower. I always compare it to I am setting the table, or I am putting all of the pieces on the board. I do that in the hope that the price you're paying in the pacing of the first act leads to the payoff in the third act. But I used to be very self-conscious about it. I used to think that this was inherently bad. Because I had quote unquote slow openings or slow first acts, that I was somehow feeling in that respect. But the fact is, I think that's why my endings are consistently considered pretty satisfying. Because you put the time into building the characters and into setting that table, playing that board, so that when you get to the plot later, because the fact is, if you don't care about the characters plot is happening to, we don't actually care about the plot.
[Howard] If a reader is really invested in knowing the answer to the question… Maybe it's a mystery, and we're trying to find out who done it, maybe it's a science fiction thing, some sort of sense of wonder thing, and the question is how will they ever survive… There's a question that the reader wants answered, and they're going to read all the way to the end to get the answer to the question. I find that the answer is more satisfying if it is answered through the point of view of a character who cares about the answer more than the reader does.
[Brandon] This is particularly important for long form, right? I've read plenty of short stories where the question is all I cared about. A good Asimov story, I'm not paying much attention to character I'm just going to be like, "How are the three laws screwing things up this time?" But the longer your form gets, the more that reader… That character is going to pull that reader between those chapters. Like Howard said, their passion is going to become a surrogate for our passion.
[Victoria] Well, yeah, it's relative to the amount of time that you spend with the characters. So, in a short form, where it's like five or 10,000 words, or micro fiction where it's a lot shorter, you really have to rely on conceit or the plot twists to be the thing which holds the story up. If you have a 1000 page fantasy novel, then, like, you better care about the characters, because that's the thing propelling you forward. I also use the series example, which is, every first story in a series that you come to, you come for the plot. Because you don't know the characters yet. Never, in the history of books… I'm sure somebody can prove me wrong, but that's the statement I'm going to make right now, has anyone come back to the subsequent books in that series just for plot. You come back to the subsequent books in the series because you are invested now in the character. So, the longer the form, the more the emphasis on character [kind of pulls plot.]
[Brandon] Yeah. Even a plot heavy… Like Agatha Christie style mysteries, after the first one, you're like, "Oh. I loved this detective. I want to find out more about their adventures." That's why you're coming back [garbled].
[Howard] I really enjoyed Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy. When Red Storm Rising came out, I was excited for the exploration of plot and whatever was going to happen. Then was nothing but disappointed when I realized that this was not a…
[Brandon] Jack Ryan.
[Howard] Jack Ryan book. This was something else.
[Brandon] So I kind of take the same perspective you do, Victoria, although it's different for different books. I find that certain books, I allow myself more time up front with the characters. This, like everything in writing, is less about what's right and what's wrong, and more about what are the pros and cons of different styles. I would say a pro of lots of character upfront is that emotional investment, that emotional resonance, hits so much harder by the end. One of the examples is the Stormlight Archive, right? A 1000 page epic fantasy novel, I spent a lot more on character and getting you into those people, so that the ending, where certain things happen to certain characters, is that much more powerful. With a shorter book or a book that's more of an ensemble cast, sometimes I spend a little less on each character and I focus on there's the big plot that we're going to focus on. Because that's going to keep you going while you're learning who all these people are. I'm not going to upfront you with 10 different characters for the heist novel.
[Victoria] Also, ensemble casts make a really fascinating opportunity to balance character and plot…
[Brandon] Yeah.
[Victoria] In really interesting ways because you can get pieces of the story from each of them and almost do double the work, like, you get to cheat a little bit. I do think… I mean, I will say, the Stormlight Archives was an educational experience for me, because I was about halfway through book two… And I tend to gravitate towards reading shorter books. I was halfway through book two, and I was like, "Why do I care so much?" Like, someone asked me to pitch it to them, and I had a hard time pitching the plot, but I was like, but, it's the characters. This is the reason that I'm here. I do find that across most long form and most big fantasy series, it's because we're invested in the slow con, the slow growth of the character.
[Dan] Yeah. That's what I've been sitting here thinking, actually… Which things can I pitch, and how can I pitch them? I'm… for whatever reason, Pixar movies is what came to mind. If I were to describe to someone, "What is Toy Story's about?" It's about Woody and Buzz becoming friends. Whereas if I'm going to describe A Bug's Life, it's about a bunch of bugs getting together to save some ants. It's very plot heavy versus the other one is very character heavy. That is a good way of deciding for yourself and for your own work, what is it about? If you can boil it down to one sentence, does that sentence that excites you the most have more to do with character or plot?
[Howard] A month ago, during evaluating ideas, I talked about a videogame YouTuber Lazy Purple… A video called Lazy Purple, what it feels like to play Sniper. He did this thing where he talked about his journey in learning how to play this character well and what he was doing wrong and how miserable he was in how much he sucked at playing Sniper. Then he started doing it right, and then he did a quick video montage of what it looks like to everyone else. What it looks like to everyone else is miss, miss, miss… Missing… Missing… Miss miss miss, and then hits every shot. One of those is incredibly interesting and fascinating, and the other one is a story that has some awesome moments in it. Wow, he made that shot. But you don't know what went into it. In watching it, I was fascinated because… Well, one, I was fascinated because it was nice to see that other people have this problem. But, two, I was fascinated that he had given us a character arc for himself, and that wasn't what he'd set out to do.
 
[Victoria] Also, I'm going to make an argument here that we can talk about books that are plot forward and books that are character forward. Each of these is about a sleight-of-hand, a bit of legerdemain, which is that the plot forward books are doing just as much character work, they're just burying it in a very specific way, where it almost becomes A plot, B plot of it. The character heavy books are doing, when they're good, are doing a lot of plot work, they're just handling it through the lens of character.
[Brandon] Right. Yeah, this is totally a false dichotomy, also. This is one I got very frustrated about in my master's degree program, where they'd talk about our entire genre are what they call plot books. All popular fiction is plot books and all literary fiction is character books. That was very… Like, I think this is all just a false dichotomy. You're right.
 
[Brandon] Let's move this conversation then to how do we individually in the stories we're telling decide what our balance is between plot and character? When do you decide what you're going to advance and how? When you decide whether you're going to have a scene where the character's just going to go off and think and decompress for a while and do a little bit of this navelgazing, as we might call it, and when do you decide I shouldn't do that, I should cut that out and just keep us moving?
[Dan] Well, see, writing thrillers, I don't have time for navelgazing…
[Laughter]
[Dan] And have to find ways of fitting all the character stuff into the rest of it. So there can still be the kind of scene-sequel ideas, but it still has to be moving things along.
[Victoria] I like to hide tiny moments of navelgazing… I think a little bit of navelgazing goes a really long way. I think that there is always time for those moments of introspection along with the action. I like to pair them, because I think probably my biggest personal phobia when I'm writing is being bored. That's why I'm very sensitive to slowing the story down too much. I'd rather fold it in along with something else. But I definitely, when I write scenes, I sit down and I think what are the physical beats of this scene and what are the emotional beats of this scene. I make sure that every scene that I have is doing both. Because I think that there's a way to pull off both in most scenes.
[Brandon] Yeah. A lot of your strongest scenes are where you sit down and say, I can have the character think about this problem for a while or I could come up with some sort of plot sequence that is a minor plot sequence where they're trying to achieve something that really clearly shows what their emotional state is. While they're doing it, you are also putting them… You in their head and showing off how they're feeling.
[Howard] There's a point at the end of Empire Strikes Back where we are queuing up the plot for the beginning of Return of the Jedi. Han is about to be frozen in Carbonite, and we are very, very plot forward, and we have one of my favorite character moments of all time, which is when Leia says, "I love you," and Han says, "I know." So, was that plot? Was that character? Was that… That is a scene that is serving both functions, and after you've seen the whole trilogy and you know… Spoiler alert. We rescue Han. Once you know the way the shape of the story is, that becomes a stand-up-and-cheer moment. Because Leia has completed a portion of her arc, and Han has completed a portion of his.
[Victoria] I'm going to argue this is one of the greatest strengths of genre and writing science fiction and fantasy, is that we get to fold those introspective moments into a construct that can be very exciting, and it can be…
[Dan] Right.
[Victoria] We don't have to choose between plot or character in the way that a lot of realism and liter… Quote unquote literary fiction would force you to pick.
[Dan] So… I'm trying to think of a good answer to Brandon's question.
[Chuckles]
[Dan] Because I don't know… I don't know if I have one. But one thing that I always tell students when I talk to them is that I need to know why their characters are doing what they're doing. It's not enough for me to see them participating in the plot. How is the plot affecting them? Right? So when I do have a scene that is this character's going to go off and think about what's going on, more often than not, it's something like a moral compromise, a… Am I willing to take this next step that I don't want to take? Which is very plot heavy, but through that lens of character. So, for getting all of that character emotional reaction stuff, then that balances out the plot.
 
[Brandon] Let's stop for our book of the week, which is actually a show.
[Dan] Oh. Which one?
[Brandon] Chernobyl.
[Dan] Chernobyl!
[Chuckles]
[Dan] I love Chernobyl. This is my favorite TV show in a long time. It's an interesting one for this because while it has, let's say four fairly strong characters in it, I can't tell you any of their names.
[Chuckles]
[Dan] It does a great job of portraying a very large story through very personal details, focusing on characters without really giving you more than like I said, three or four strong character through lines. But, best TV show I have seen in a very long time. Relentlessly bleak. And depressing. Which is absolutely my wheelhouse. So, practice some self-care with one… With this one. If you know going in that the episode about how they need to…
[Howard] Put down the dogs?
[Dan] Euthanize the dogs… If that's going to get you, then don't watch it. But it was such a beautiful, wonderful, depressing masterpiece.
 
[Brandon] And, on that note…
[Laughter]
[Brandon] No, um… How… Question, actually, segues right really well into it. How do you plan and structure a story to create strong emotional responses from the reader?
[Dan] You gotta euthanize those dogs.
[Laughter]
[Victoria] Please don't euthanize any dogs. You can kill as many people as you want in your books. The moment there's a lot of animal death, I am out of that ship. But…
[Brandon] So, I would say that a big part of this is also the promises, progress, payoff thing that we talk about a lot. If you want the strong emotional response, you have to show the reader something they want to have. Which is often a character making a great decision, or characters overcoming their flaws or getting together, whatever it is, you want to give them the promise and make them really want that. Part of that is also making sure that the reason the characters can't have it right now is legitimate, right? That they're going to… If the reader is like, "This is… There's no legit reason these two characters would be a part, they are totally in love, it's stupid that they continue to be apart," then you're not… You're going to get the wrong emotional response. So. Promises. Make it clear why they can't have it. Then give us teases as you progress us toward it, so that when it happens, you get a stand-up-and-cheer moment.
[Dan] That's all about building expectations. You have to let them know what could happen, you have to let them know what the stakes are. Because if you just give us two characters with no context at all, I don't know if they're going to fall in love or if they're going to kill each other or if they're… What that relationship is. Establish those expectations and give us things to hope for and things to be afraid of.
[Howard] I think the Hollywood Formula, when we talked… Way back in Season Six with Lou Anders about it, part of this lies in alignment. You take your stand-up-and-cheer moment. If you take it out of context and you place it so that it is out of alignment with other things, we don't stand up and cheer as hard. But if it happens right alongside… Surprising yet inevitable. If it happens right alongside the culmination of other moments, it hits harder. You align things so that they hit harder. You've got a Chekhov's gun hanging on the wall that we know is going to go off, everybody's expecting that, when it happens, that isn't inherently satisfying. It's satisfying, it's an emotional beat, if it is aligned with somebody's character arc doing something that is difficult or that is wonderful.
[Victoria] I'm going to argue that for me, it comes all the way back to character every time. It comes back to understanding your characters, it comes back to rooting for them, and rooting for them comes back to motive. It is never, and Dan, you were talking about this a little bit, it is never what we do, it's why we do it. I think sometimes when I don't really care about a character's outcome or when I don't care about their journey, it's not because they're not doing interesting things, it's because I'm not connecting to the why of what they're doing. I think you can write terrible people doing terrible things, and if we, as the reader, can connect to the why of it, we are emotionally invested. I've had characters that have died after being on page 4 a paragraph, and I can get people to care about them because we have to understand… They have to feel real. They have to feel well-rounded. And we have to get why they're doing what they're doing. World domination's not a very tangible thing for us to relate to. Jealousy, covetousness, feeling slighted. I like to zone in when I'm making my characters and really look for the small problems. Look for the pettiness, look for the weaknesses that I feel like my readers are going to be able to relate to. Because we rarely see ourselves in the good things.
[Chuckles]
[Victoria] We don't really look at that hero and be like, "I see myself like that hero on their strapping journey." No, we like look at people and we see their weaknesses and we understand them. So really drilling down to your character and understanding what drives them. It's not just about what drives the plot, but what drives your characters through the plot.
[Dan] There's a scene in the very first episode of Community. First episode, first season, where he's trying to talk about empathy with people, and he says, "We are empathetic creatures, and I know that because I can tell you that this pencil's name is Todd, and then you will be sad when I break it." Then he breaks it, and you immediately feel sad. So it doesn't take much to get people to love someone. But you do have to put in that work.
 
[Brandon] We are out of time this week. Victoria, you have some homework for us.
[Victoria] I do, I do. I started to talk a little bit about drilling down, and this homework is in the interest of drilling down towards your characters. If you have a character, or if you want to build a character, if you want to examine one you've already written or you want to create one from scratch, I want to challenge you to create a… Basically, a mythos for your character, using three pillars. I want you to figure out what it is your character fears, what is your character wants, and what it is they are willing to do to get it. Now, once you have these three concepts, and you have the beginnings of your character, I want you to use these concepts to build your character a mantra. Either if there's a will, there's a way. If a thing is worth having, it is worth taking. A thing that they believe is an absolute. Then, over the course of the story, if you choose to put this character in a story, your story goal is to figure out how to make the character break the mantra you have given them. How to find their tensile strength? But start with those three questions. See if you can start to build your character from these three pillars, and find out what makes them tick.
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 15.15: Dialog

Apr. 15th, 2020 11:23 am
mbarker: (Me typing?)
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Writing Excuses 15.15: Dialog
 
 
Key Points: First question: If all your dialog scenes turn into logic-based debates, is that a problem? Yes. One scene like that, okay. Lots? Not so good. Make sure your scenes have two goals, a physical goal and a conversational goal. Logic-based debate sounds like a conflict of ideas, competing ideas. Sometimes you should have other kinds of conversations. Don't forget that most decisions are emotional, not logical. As an exercise, try removing every third line of dialog. Then add bridging material. Do all your character voices sound the same? Manipulate pacing, accent, and attitude for different voices. Punctuation, sentence structure and word choice, and how the person feels. Learn to use punctuation, experiment with m-dashes, colons, semicolons, commas, and ellipses. Second question: How can I create more variety in my dialogue scenes? Move the scene to another interesting setting. Give them two goals, a physical goal and a verbal/emotional goal. Think about the reader's reward. Think about the authorial intent, why do you need this scene, and the character's intention, what are they trying to accomplish?
 
[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Dialog.
[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.
[Howard] And we're not that smart.
[Brandon] I'm Brandon.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Howard] And I'm having a conversation with my friends, Brandon, Mary Robinette, and Dan.
 
[Brandon] We are once again using your questions to sculpt these specific episodes. While the title is very generic, Dialog, there's a specific aspect of dialog you're asking questions about. Here is the first question. Most of my dialog seems to end up being… Turning into logic-based debates between whatever characters are in the room. Is this a problem?
[Mary Robinette] Yes.
[Laughter]
[Mary Robinette] There are times… I shouldn't say that. If it's all of your scenes are turning into that, that's a problem. Having a scene that's like that, that's not a problem. So there's a bunch of things that you can do to address that. One of them is to make sure that there's… If you give two goals in the room, one is a physical goal and the other is a conversational goal, that's immediately going to cause things to shift for the [garbled]
[Brandon] Yeah. Agreed. Now, going back to your first point, Mary Robinette, it's not necessarily a problem unless it's all the time. What this means is, having different scenes feel different is part of what makes a book work. Having some of your dialog scenes that read like Aaron Sorkin dialog, where it's just like back-and-forth, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, is great. It can be really exciting, it can yank you through a scene really quick, it can make you smile, it can make you just have a blast. But if every page is only that, it starts to, like anything in writing,…
[Dan] It can be exhausting.
[Brandon] Yeah. It gets exhausting.
 
[Howard] Let's open up for a moment and look at the logic-based debate between two characters. Fundamentally, what you have there, it sounds like, is a conflict of ideas, and that is what… If that's what every scene is ending up being, then every scene in which you have dialog, the conflict is competing ideas. There is… If we categorize the types of conversation people have, one type of conversation that can be very dramatic is the one where one person is trying to tell a story without revealing a key secret, and the other person is trying to learn the key secret and doesn't care about the story. They're… Now they're not arguing, but there is tension, there is conflict.
[Dan] The fact that this is a logic-based debate also potentially highlights another issue which is that most people make decisions based on emotion, rather than on logic. I used to work in advertising and marketing, and that was our hallmark. People think they make decisions based on logic…
[Laughter]
[Dan] But at the end of the day, it comes down to whatever emotional connection they have forged between themselves and the solution. So making… If your characters are being very careful to plan out exactly the best possible course of action or determine in steady debate who is right and who is wrong, most conversations in the real world don't go that way. Some do. But most of them are a lot more emotional than that.
 
[Mary Robinette] There's a trick that I have, for when I discover that I have accidentally written one of those things. Aside from the introducing physical conflict. This is to go through… This is a totally mechanical exercise that's super fun. I go through and I remove every third line of dialog, because one of the things that happens when you're conversing with someone that you're familiar with is that you'll jump ahead. You'll see where they're heading and you'll jump to the next point. So when you pull out every third line of dialog… I want to be really clear. This is an exercise, this doesn't work for everything.
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] But when you do it, what happens is that those natural jumps ahead begin to happen. You do have to put in some bridging material to cover them. But it gets really interesting, and often has a more naturalistic flow. It compresses the scene, too.
 
[Brandon] One of the worries I have from this question is, again, if everything is a logic-based debate, I worry about character voices all sounding the same. One of the things I look for as a reader that really makes scenes work for me is when there's a lot of variety to motivations, to how people approach a conversation. Dan mentioned this, a lot of people make decisions based on emotions. Having somebody think that they're logic-based, but there really emotional, facing someone who is very logic-based, or someone who's front about their emotions is often a more interesting scene than a platonic debate or a Socratic debate about here is… Are the logical points that I'm making. Often times, that's just really boring to read, because we want to see the character's investment in this.
 
[Mary Robinette] There are some tricks to changing the nature of a character voice that I learned from doing audiobook narration. There are five things that make a character voice in audio. Pitch, placement, pacing, accent, and attitude. Pitch and placement, you can't do a darn thing with on the page except refer to them. Pacing, accent, and attitude are absolutely things you can manipulate. The length of time… So, pacing, you control with punctuation. How long the sentences are, where you put the commas, whether or not a character gets commas. Someone who speaks in a run-on sentence is going to have a very different feel than someone who has lots of short sentences. Accent is the sentence structure and the word choice. So if you take a training phrase, like, "What did you say?" That is serving to say, "I want you to tell me more." It can take a lot of different forms, but a British nanny is going to say, "Pardon me, Dearie?" And a drill sergeant is going to say, "What do you say, maggot!"
[Brandon] [uh-hu]
[Mary Robinette] So, looking at the word choice and sentence structure. Then, the attitude is what the person… How the person feels. Again, that changes the word choices that we make. It changes our pacing. So looking at your use of punctuation, and your word choice, and sentence structure, is a great way to shift the language of your characters.
 
[Brandon] So, one of the things I noticed teaching my classes at the University over these last years, is that a lot of my students aren't very fluent with punctuation. Now, these are high-level students. It's usually… To get in my class, there's 15 slots, and we usually have 100 or more applications, and we picket based solely on how good are these… The sample chapters that they sent. So these are high-level amateur writers. I just assumed because they are high-level amateur writers that if they're not using certain punctuation structures, they've made a stylistic decision. Right? It's okay not to like m-dashes, for instance.
[Mary Robinette] Sure.
[Brandon] I love them. Other people are like, "You know what, I don't like this punctuation, it becomes a crutch, whatever." Totally all right. But I started to mention to people, like, "Hey, this might use an m-dash. I know you probably aren't stylistically interested in them, but you might want to experiment." They're like, "An m-dash?" I realized a lot of high-level writing student get there by practicing a ton, but they aren't using all the tools because they haven't been able to figure out how to take those boring, dry English major classes…
[Chuckles]
[Brandon] And apply them to actually writing stories. Using m-dashes, colons, semicolons, commas, ellipses in your dialog… That's like something that's vital to me, in order to make it feel right. I'm realizing more and more a lot of my students don't use it just because they've never been… Had those tools explained as potential tools for controlling how the reader reads a scene.
 
[Brandon] Let's stop for our book of the week. That is The Lost Future of Pepperharrow.
[Mary Robinette] By Natasha Pulley. I love this book. The first book is The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. I had enough time in between reading that one and when I got The Lost Future of Pepperharrow that I think that you can actually read this as a standalone. Obviously, there are some nuances. But, basically. The main character is a composer and a synesthete. He has synesthesia. It's set in Victorian England. There's another character who is clairvoyant. It's this whole interesting thing of, like, what is free will, what are the choices that you make, and then there's a clockwork octopus that steals socks. It's just beautifully, beautifully written.
[Howard] That actually explains a lot.
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So many things. So beautifully written. I love these books with abandon. One of the other things that I also love is that there's a little girl character whose name is Six. She is… to a modern eye, she's probably autistic. But they don't have the word and the people just accept that this is who she is. They don't try to make her be someone else. She's just allowed to live her life, and there's no like "We're going to cure her" subplot or anything like that. It's just characters who are fascinating. I just love these books a lot. I'm going to ramble about them for days. The Lost Future of Pepperharrow. One of the reasons that I actually wanted to bring this up with dialog is that much of It takes place in Japan, where people are speaking Japanese. She has made the choice to render it in slang that is class linked to Victorian England, because the character who is interpreting it is a Victorian. So when someone is lower-class, in his head, he hears them as Cockney. Because…
[Brandon] Right.
[Mary Robinette] It's so good. It's really interesting.
[Brandon] Awesome. The Lost Future of Pepperharrow.
 
[Brandon] All right. So, the second question we have for this week is what can I do to create more variety in my dialog structure, or in my dialog scenes? One of the things you can do is something that I love to do. When I notice one of these scenes… Sometimes I just keep it, right? My dialog scene is working. Sometimes I'm like I have had too many scenes like this. These are the equivalents… I've talked about this a little bit on the podcast before. In movies, you will occasionally have scenes where two characters walk down a hallway, stop, and then there's a shot, reverse shot, as they have a conversation, then they walk a little further down the hallway, then they stop, and there's a shot, reverse shot, and then they walk a little further, and then shot, reverse shot. These scenes are okay, but they're kind of the cinematic version of sometimes you just need to summarize in your book. They're the sort of things that you don't want to have to use unless it's the exact right tool at the exact right time. They're a little bit lazy, and they're a little bit boring. In books, sometimes you have these scenes of dialog where you're like, "I just need to get this information across. I know I need to get it across. I don't want to do it as a big infodump. So I'm going to have characters have a conversation about it and do my best to not make it feel maid and butler." I have found most of the time, if I can move that scene into some other interesting setting… Let me give you an example from Oathbringer. I had one of these. It was boring.
[Chuckles]
[Brandon] It was one of the worst scenes in the book. I just threw it away. I instead had a character… I'm like, "Who is this character? What is happening?" Well, it's Dalinar. He is a warlord who is kind of repentant and becoming a different person, but he kind of wants to hold on to the fact that I'm a tough warrior. So he goes down and he wants to do some wrestling, right? It's this whole thing, I'm going to go recapture some of my youth. He just gets trounced by these younger men. In the meantime, his wife shows up and says, "We were supposed to have a meeting. We're going to talk about this." He's like, "Do it right now." It was during the wrestling match. You would think that this doesn't work, but it worked perfectly, because I was able to over… To give the subtext of he's trying to capture his youth without ever saying it. With the things she's saying representing his new life that he's supposed to be getting better at instead of going trying to recapture his youth. The scene just played wonderfully in this setting where he's getting pinned by these younger men.
[Chuckles]
[Brandon] That are feeling kind of embarrassed that they're taking their king and basically just… He can't do it anymore. Just changing that scene… When I ran that one through the writing group, one of my writing group members said, "Wow. This is the best scene in the whole sequence. The whole sequence of chapters." It started as the worst one. So just kind of giving some more flavor to the scene can be really handy.
 
[Mary Robinette] That gets back to one of the things we were talking about ahead of… At the early thing, was giving them two different goals, the physical goal and the verbal emotional goal. Sometimes those two things are vastly… They just are fighting themselves. That sounds like so much fun.
 
[Howard] I think in terms a lot of what is the reader's reward for having read this chapter or this scene or whatever. I mean, the scene has a purpose, and in some cases the purpose is, "Oh, I gotta do a bunch of exposition so that I can do a bunch of plot later." The scene's purpose is not the reward. One of the purposes should be a reward of some sort. Some page-turn-y bit. Taking the shot versus shot example… Or the whole hallway walking scene. One, yes, those are terribly lazy. But if in that scene, we are traversing a space between two very interesting spaces, and we arrive someplace where the camera opens up onto something wondrous, and the conversation stops because we are now in a new place looking at something interesting… Well, now that whole thing was justified because we set up pacing for an eye candy. Whatever.
[Brandon] Agreed. I love some of those things.
[Howard] I always think about it in terms of what's the reward for the reader? If there isn't one, what can I put in?
 
[Mary Robinette] You said something that made me think of a thing which is that when you are looking at these scenes, they actually serve two functions. There's the authorial intent, the reason you, the author, need that book… That scene in there. But then there's the character intention. Every time we're talking, we're speaking for a reason. There's something that we are trying to accomplish. Sometimes it's I want to look clever, sometimes I want to get information, sometimes it's I want to prevent someone… It's… There's a purpose behind that. So if you can think about exactly why the character is saying that, and you make sure that that is present in the scene… It's not a scene that's just, "Hello, here is my authorial intent."
[Chuckles]
[Dan] Yeah, that's what I wanted to mention as well, because when we start scenes, we often think about what our goal as the writer is, what is this scene intended to accomplish. Making sure that you know what their goals are… Not only does it provide more characterization like that, but usually what it does is it brings a lot of imbalance into the scene. People want to have a different conversation than the person they're talking to wants to have. Or, you will have a power imbalance, where one character is trying to convince their teenager or their employee or something to do something, like, "I don't want to be a part of this conversation at all." Or just a child talking to an adult and not being treated seriously. Those imbalances, wherever they come from and however they manifest, can add a lot of texture in there as well.
[Brandon] All right. That was a really good conversation about dialog.
[Dan] Hey!
 
[Brandon] Look at that. Let's go ahead and go to our homework, which Mary Robinette is going to give to us.
[Mary Robinette] Yes. So, what I want you to do is I want you to take a scene with dialog. This can be a scene from something that's already written or something that… A published thing or something that you've written. I want you to remove all of the description from it. So that you're just left with dialog. Then I want you to do that thing I mentioned earlier, I want you to remove every third line of dialog. Put the context back in and use body language and internal motivation, where the character is thinking. Build bridging things in there so that the scene now flows, with those pieces of dialog missing.
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 15.14: Agent Query Trenches

Apr. 8th, 2020 11:31 am
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Writing Excuses 15.14: Agent Query Trenches
 
 
Key Points: In the trenches, dealing with querying? How do you survive, emotionally? Don't go into a holding pattern, keep writing, keep making things, keep submitting. Don't give up the day job! Be honest with agents or publishers about your ability to work, when the deadlines are. Set your own success thresholds, your own goals, and be upfront with the publishers. Don't like queries? Try first chapters! Be aware, it's a lot more work, going to conventions, talking to editors, and asking to send them sample chapters. Learn to write a synopsis, which may be your query, before you write the book! Use Howard's checklist: a character, a conflict, a setting, and a hook. When should you give up? If it's making you ill. You may want to just write for fun! You may get someone to act as your shield. Think about what you love, you may be able to get it another way. Before you start, decide what the failure modes are. Be aware that even published authors have to deal with editors criticizing their stories, bad reviews, criticism! Learn to cope with it early on.
 
[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 14.
[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Agent Query Trenches.
[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.
[Howard] And we're not that smart.
[Brandon] I'm Brandon.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Howard] And I'm Howard.
 
[Brandon] This title comes from a specific question that people asked us about what to do when you're in the trenches dealing with querying. We've actually gotten… We have seven questions…
[Chuckles]
[Brandon] All along the same idea. Which meant we needed to do a podcast on this.
[Dan] We asked you what you wanted to hear about, and so many of you were like, "Please help me. This sucks." It does.
[Brandon] Yeah. Queries are miserable. Let's just do the first one. What are your best tips on how to survive the query trenches? I think they're asking kind of emotionally, right? How do you deal with the fact that you're getting lots of rejections or just never hearing back from agents on queries?
[Howard] Years ago, at… I think it was at LTUE, I was talking to a woman who'd handed a manuscript to Tracy Hickman, who was going to pass it along to an agent. She said, "What am I supposed to do now? I'm in this holding pattern." I said, "Well, if it gets handed back to you and you're told that it's awful, are you going to stop writing?" She said, "No." Okay, cool. So if it gets… If it comes back and they say it's awesome, but it's not what we want. Do you have anything else? Have you written anything else? She said, "Well, not yet." Okay, if it comes back and they said it's perfect but it needs revision, are you ready to keep writing on it? She said, "Yes. Okay." All of these sound like you can spend your time waiting still writing. Because this validation that… Because it sounds a lot like your question is about I'm in a holding pattern because I'm expecting validation and I'm nervous about it. Whether I am told I can write or I can't. For me, the best answer personally has always been regardless of what they think, I'm going to keep making things. So I keep making things.
[Brandon] That's great advice.
[Dan] There's a lot of self-care things you can do, but this is, for me and for Brandon, this was our baseline. Back when we were trying to break in, our rule was always be writing and always be submitting. Because once you send that thing off, if you sit on your hands and wait, it is going to eat you alive. But if you spend that time creating something new and doing what you love and following your passions, it makes it a lot easier.
[Mary Robinette] I'm going to ditto that. So, not to repeat it, what I will say also is that the thing about your emotional state while this is going on is to understand that the fact that the query has gone out, and you're waiting, that you're in a Schrodinger state. That it can either… You either have a published manuscript or you don't. The beautiful thing about it is that you currently don't have a published manuscript. So, the only state change is going to be a positive state change. Once you know that, I think that a lot of the pressure goes away. Because if that thing comes back, you can just send it out again. There's no… There's like actually no risk.
[Brandon] The thing is, the more stories you have on submission, that you can be submitting, at least, for me, the less any one rejection hurt, for me. This is just, I think, kind of natural, if you've got all these different options. You're not so invested in a single one that a punch to the face right there hurts way more than if you've got lots of different options. I'm not sure how to make that metaphor work.
[Laughter]
[Brandon] But it really did for me. Beyond that, do remember that a rejection of a manuscript is not a rejection of you. I know we've talked about this before, and it's hard to think that way, but this is how you have to be. You have to be like these are pieces of writing, these are pieces of art I've created. It might be, when they get rejected, that there's something wrong with them. It might be that it's just the wrong match. They may be fantastic pieces of art. Either way, there the pieces of art you created, and that imbues them with a certain level of validity, no matter what happens. Right? They may not be ready for a professional publication, because they might not hit the market. They might not have the skill level. There are all sorts of reasons. That doesn't mean they aren't your wonderful pieces of art that are valuable because you made them. I really think that is the case. So, do lots of art and be submitting lots of places. Try not to let the rejections hit you too hard.
 
[Brandon] Someone else asks, "Is it reasonable to be able to go through the process of getting an agent/working to publish with a traditional publisher, while working a busy job or being a student?"
[Mary Robinette] Yes.
[Dan] Not only reasonable, but arguably, requisite. Definitely don't quit that job until you've got a bunch in the bank.
[Mary Robinette] I think it's the more standard model.
[Brandon] Having something else to distract you is also really handy when you're waiting for all of these responses to come to you. Yes, in fact.
 
[Brandon] Although the next question is along the same lines, "If I'm slow making edits or accomplishing tasks because I'm busy with school or work, does that run the risk of an agent dropping me or a publisher canceling my contract?"
[Mary Robinette] I think as long as you're honest when you go in… This is a thing that I do see happen to writers, that you take 10 years to hone a book, and you turn it in, and you have never had to write something in a year, which is what most publishing contracts are. When they come to you and say, "We would like the book on X date," it is okay to tell them, "I think I might need more time than that." They'll negotiate with you some. If you want to make a living as a writer, it is easier to have more books coming out. But there are also plenty of people who have a career where they bring out books very slowly. It's just a different shape of career.
[Brandon] Yeah. There are lots of people whose goal is to publish this wonderful novel that they've written. That's… They're the Harper Lee's of the world. They want… They have this one thing, and they work hard and get it published. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to be writing a book every year. You have to decide what your success thresholds are, and what that shape is, and what it looks like. It's okay to kind of set your own goals there. I would reinforce what Mary Robinette has said, that if you are… The publisher would rather have the person who is upfront and says, "This is going to take me two years," then the person who is always a year late on their contract. The person who is upfront and says, "This is going to take me two years," they can plan, they can schedule, and you'll be just fine.
[Dan] Yeah. Don't think of it… The problem is not that you take your time, the problem is missing deadlines. So if you just establish the correct deadlines upfront, you should be okay.
 
[Brandon] Let's stop for our book of the week, which is Seven Deadly Shadows.
[Dan] Yes. So, a good friend of the podcast, one of our guest hosts a couple of years ago, Valynne Maetani. She is Japanese by heritage, and she cowrote a wonderful Japanese urban fantasy with another great local author, Courtney Alameda. This just came out at the time of recording from Harper. It is wonderful. It is about a girl in Japan who works with her father in… er, grandfather, in a shrine, a Shinto shrine. While she is going to school in dealing with all these standard high school things, the shrine is attacked by Japanese ghosts, by yokai. It spins off into this really dark… Courtney is a horror author, Valynne is a great thriller writer. The two of them together have put together a really cool urban fantasy with this really strong Japanese flavor. I absolutely love it.
[Brandon] Seven Deadly Shadows.
[Dan] Correct.
 
[Brandon] Awesome. So a lot of these questions are digging out an idea that I actually don't think that we've covered yet this podcast, I think we need to highlight, which is, they're saying, "How do you deal with all of this? How do you deal with this emotionally?" I had a strategy for dealing with the query problem. Because the query problem is, and everyone I know admits this, yet there's not really a better method. It is that a query is a bad pitch for a book.
[Laughter]
[Brandon] Usually. Right? The first chapters are a good pitch for a book. You read the first chapters of a book, for most novels, that's going to give you a really good indication of the writer's skill level, how good they are at making promises, how engaging their characters are, and things like that. None of that comes across in a query. All that comes across in a query is maybe the basic idea behind it, and some of the skills that you can bring to it individually and things like that. My goal was always to skip the query stage.
[Laughter]
[Brandon] After the first year of querying, I realized I was bad at writing queries and good at writing chapters. This is hard to do. But it is what got me published. I never got anything other than blanket form rejections on queries. So, I went and I listened to editors at conventions, I talked to editors at conventions, I watched what people were saying, and I asked if I could send them sample chapters. A lot of times, if you ask someone in person, they will say, "Yes. Send me sample chapters and an outline instead of a query." That doesn't really help if you're like, "I'm sending queries and getting all these rejections." Brandon's saying, "Well don't do that." But I will say that is what worked for me. I got, in all of my years of sending queries, one single non-form rejection letter. That was from Joshua, who eventually became my agent. But he had forgotten who I was by the time I met him in person and asked… I sent him sample chapters for something that was a bad match for him, and he had rejected them. It was a comedy piece. So, what do you guys think on that? Like, is this helpful? Is this not helpful? Is it…
[Mary Robinette] I do think that there is some merit to that. With the caveat that you should ask the editors and agents that at the appropriate time. You should not, like, just come up to them randomly. Like, don't target them. But I think there is something to that, that if it's not your strength. The other thing that you can do, honestly, if writing a query is not your strength, is that you can get help. There are people who will write query letters for you.
[Brandon] Yeah. This isn't disingenuous. Again, the query is a, generally a bad pitch for your writing. It can be a good pitch for your story. Someone else can write that.
[Mary Robinette] Right. So, one of the things that a query letter, and this is a solid reason to get good at it, is that often, not always, but often, the publisher will wind up pulling the language from your query letter for the catalog copy. So it is an opportunity for you to control which of the things you are comfortable with people knowing and controlling spoilers.
[Brandon] Yeah.
[Mary Robinette] It's not perfect. But it is an opportunity. Also, the other thing about learning to write a really good query is that it is a way to focus your story. So, I now write my query bef… The synopsis query, the little pitch thingy, I write that before I write the book most of the time. I found that that really helps me hone it. So it is… There are arguments both ways.
[Brandon] I must have query PTSD, because I never query on anything.
[Chuckles]
[Brandon] I don't even want to.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah, Brandon, we're just…
[Dan] You're also a household name. So…
[Mary Robinette] Yeah, there's…
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] There's a little bit of a difference there.
[Laughter]
[Mary Robinette] It's like, Brandon says, "I have this cocktail napkin." "We'll publish it!"
[Dan] Although, I do think it's worth pointing out, just to emphasize this, you hinted at this, when you decided your strategy was to avoid queries, that ramped up your level of work significantly. You have to do a lot of extra things in order to make that work. So if somebody wants to follow that same path, they need to be prepared to do a lot more legwork, a lot more personal contact.
[Mary Robinette] It's more expensive to go to conventions.
[Brandon] Way more expensive.
 
[Howard] I have a back cover copy checklist that actually works really well for creating a synopsis, which is character, conflict, setting, hook. It's just those four things. Gimme a character. I don't care if your book has 20 characters in it. Just give me one. Just focus on one, because that'll be more interesting. What's the conflict? Gimme a sentence that shows what the conflict is. What's the setting? Put them in a room, put them in something. Now plant the hook. One of my favorites is from the back of… I think it's Tuesdays at the Castle by Jessica Day George. Meet the Castle that changes itself every night and the women… Or the children who will do anything to protect it. I'm in. So having that formula for me… It's not a perfect formula, but having that as a starting point, makes writing a query, which is essentially marketing copy, much, much easier. Much, much easier.
 
[Brandon] So, we have the question here, when is it time to give up?
[Mary Robinette] This is a…
[Dan] On your dreams as an author?
[Brandon] It just asks, "When is it time to give up?"
[Mary Robinette] So, it's time to give up when it is making you ill. This is… Like, this is a thing that I think we do not talk enough about. That it's… First of all, it's okay to write just for fun. It's… You don't have to be on a publishing track. No one goes up to someone who plays the guitar and says, "Well, where's your recording contract? You play the guitar, you've got to have a recording contract." It's like, no, everyone accepts that you can just play the guitar for fun. You can just write for fun. If the process of jumping through these hoops is making you ill, it's okay to stop. It's okay to put it down. It's also okay to say, "I'm going to put it down for a while and then come back to it later."
[Brandon] You know what else I've heard is also okay? If you have a significant other or loved one who is willing to be a shield for you, and you are going to give them the works, and you're going to say, "When one of these gets picked up, tell me. Otherwise, I'm just going to assume they're all out there in the aether." I know people that, for their mental health, that is how they have to work. It works really well. The creator focuses on creating, and the partner focuses on making sure that these queries are going out and even sample chapters and things are happening.
[Dan] I've got two friends who, over the last year or so, have both given up. Which is… Which makes it sound like a failure, and neither of them see it that way.
[Mary Robinette] No.
[Dan] They're both authors. They're both creators. For one of them, it was the realization that what she really loved about art, she could also get through visual art. So she said, "I haven't had success with this, I'm going to pursue a different direction." So she still has something very fulfilling in her life, that she loves to do, and is finding that she's excelling in it, which is great. For the other one, and this is stuff that she shares publicly, Natalie Whipple, who wrote what is still today my favorite eSport science fiction novel, just kind of said, "You know what, what I really love is storytelling. I think I'm just going to play D&D. She now GM's two different Dungeons and Dragons campaigns. Some with her kids, some with friends. She is getting all of what she was happy writing would give her through a different outlet that is leaving her very fulfilled and happy.
[Howard] There's an entrepreneurial principle here that runs parallel to the… You've set a trigger event, Mary, a trigger pull event, which is when your health begins suffering, it's time to change. It's time to change something. The entrepreneurial aspect is before you go into this business endeavor, you need to have decided what the failure modes look like. It may be that the failure mode is when I have paid the bills for all of the things in my life using my credit cards for three months in a row, it's time to give up this business and go get a real job. Okay? Because putting that pin in the ground ahead of time means that when you look at this financial disaster you've created, you can say, "Oh. I actually predicted this as a failure mode. It is now fine for me to quit and to move on." I do not know what this looks like for writers. I know that as a cartoonist, in 2006, Sandra and I were literally on our last seven or $8000 of savings, and that was what we sent the first Schlock Mercenary book to the printer with. If that had not paid for itself and paid all the bills, then it would have been time to go get a job. We knew that that was the signal for time to give up. I got lucky, didn't need to give up.
 
[Brandon] We're out of time on this, although our homework this week, we wanted to find some way to kind of help you with some self-care. If you'll forgive a little bit of a diversion here, this doesn't necessarily get better once you get published.
[Laughter]
[Brandon] That's the thing you have to realize. Right?
[Mary Robinette] So true.
[Brandon] Now, those of us in this room, me in particular, sit in a very privileged position where we're able to earn a living off of our writing, which certainly does take away some stressors, right? I understand that. But, once you get published, you are still going to be dealing with editors sending you long sheets of notes about how bad your story is, right?
[Laughter]
[Brandon] Once the book comes out, you are going to hope for reviews, because reviews are very important to you, like Amazon reviews and things. Some of those are going to be bad. They're going to be scathing. If you are fortunate enough to get very popular, every place you go on the Internet, you risk having people… Running across people having a discussion about you. This is where I am right now. I can't go anywhere that I used to hang out without just running across threads. Though often times the first comment is laudatory, the second comment is the opposition, right? Why do people like this guy? He's terrible. Point, point, point, point, point. That is just… You're going to have to, as a creator putting your work out there, get used to the idea that you are going to face criticism in some form or another every day of your life. So. Learning to cope with this early on can be really handy.
 
[Brandon] The homework we suggest is something that some of us here at this table do, which was, we go read one star reviews on Goodreads of books we know are brilliant. Right? I do it for Terry Pratchett books, right? I go in and say, "Okay. Who could possibly, possibly hate Good Omens?" I go read about the one star reviews…
[Laughter]
[Brandon] I'm like, "Oh. Art is subjective. People are allowed to like different kinds of art. It's okay for them to not like my art. A one star review does not… Is not a personal attack, it is just this art isn't working for me."
[Dan] You practice a much more kindhearted version of this. I will read the one star reviews and go, "Man, the world is full of idiots."
[Laughter]
[Brandon] So, go do that. Go familiarize yourself with the idea that art is subjective and then keep making your art and meeting your own goals. This has been Writing Excuses, you're out of excuses, now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 15.13: Using Elections in Stories

Apr. 1st, 2020 11:09 am
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Writing Excuses 15.13: Using Elections in Stories
 
From https://writingexcuses.com/2020/03/29/15-13-using-elections-in-stories/ 

Key Points: Don't make the outcome of the election the climax of the story! Election day is anti-climactic, just waiting for the votes to roll in. Do use elections as a background that affects your characters' lives. Do use the fun, quirky people in the campaign. The candidate, with or without spouse, is arrogant and emotionally fragile. The campaign manager is counselor, manager, has plenty of experience, and is willing to put some spin on it. They also have a deputy. Next is the communications director, a people person who interacts with the press and social media. They have to balance responses and how does this make the candidate look, will it persuade people to vote for the candidate. Again, they may have a deputy to help. The finance director tells the candidate who to call and how to ask them for money. They're accountants who know how to schmooze. Finally, the field director knows the statistics and how to manage volunteers. Volunteers have time but no money, and go out to knock on doors, call phones, or whatever you do for this selection. Donors have money but no time. Volunteers and donors can be kooky and eclectic and strange. Know what the stakes of the election are for your characters, on a personal and societal level. Think about how elections are run, across history and across geography. Think about what your characters have to do to schmooze, and what are the consequences of schmoozing and the election.
 
[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 13.
[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Using Elections in Stories.
[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.
[Howard] And we're not that smart.
[Brandon] I'm Brandon.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Howard] And I'm Howard.
[Brandon] We have special guest Daniel Friend. Thank you for coming on.
[Daniel] Thank you for having me. 
 
[Brandon] You have been running or part of some political campaigns…
[Daniel] That's right. So the reason I want to talk about elections in stories is because I've been involved in a lot of them. Normally, I'm a science fiction and fantasy editor, and I don't see nearly enough elections in stories considering how often and how important they are to our own lives. So, in 2012, I actually worked in the Utah County elections office during the Presidential campaign between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. In 2017, I was the communications director for a US congressional campaign in Utah. In 2018, I ran for the Utah House of Representatives as a candidate. Lost, but that's okay.
[Dan] Well, then you have nothing important to say.
[Laughter]
[Daniel] We'll see.
[Laughter]
[Daniel] This year, I am reprising the communications director role for a third-party US congressional campaign. So I've been around elections a lot, and they're a very strange little world that not enough people know about. There's some really cool things that we can do in stories with them.
 
[Brandon] All right. Well. Take us on that trip. You pitched this episode to us. It sounds really interesting. You actually have an outline. You're way more prepared than…
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] We have ever been.
[Brandon] Yes. So let's go through it.
[Dan] Well. Mahtab.
[Mary Robinette] Yes. Mahtab.
[Dan] We've got to give her props.
[Mary Robinette] Fair.
[Daniel] Well, I'm glad I can be second in something. Besides just a vote.
[Mary Robinette] [garbled... reminder]
 
[Daniel] So, the first thing… I want to start out with how not to use elections in stories. Because there's a really big pitfall in thinking that the outcome of the election is the climax of my story. That's the most important thing that's going to happen. But, don't do that.
[Brandon] Why not?
[Daniel] Because elections are inherently anti-climactic. It's a very strange thing. Because if you're working in an election, you're going out every day and you are meeting strangers and you're working so hard. You're putting your heart and soul into this thing that is really important to you. At least presumably. Then, at the end of the day, all that work you did boils down to hundreds or thousands of other people making a decision about you. So when election day comes, that's actually the most laid-back yet high strung day of an entire campaign.
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] Right.
[Daniel] Because there is nothing left for you to do. You're sitting there, biting your nails about what's going to happen, and you are completely powerless. Now, you don't want to have a character be inactive as your protagonist. On election day, despite all the activity that they've done up to that point, they're just really sitting around, watching TV, waiting for those results to come in. So, make sure that there is something going on in your climax other than just what's the results of the vote.
[Brandon] Right. I didn't really grasp this until you said it. But now I can totally see that the last day is the most boring day, with a really nice exciting moment at the end of it.
[Chuckles]
[Dan] I'm trying to think.
[Daniel] Or a soul crushing disappointment [garbled]
[Dan] I'm trying to think of stories about elections. I remember there was a movie with Chris Rock and Bernie Mack years and years ago. They got to that point where there is nothing left to do, and they showed that moment where he was sitting around bored. He's like, "You know what, I'm going to go drive people to work." So he got a bus and he went… They had him doing something during that period.
[Daniel] Another example is I just finished watching the season of Parks and Rec where Leslie Knope runs for city council. Now, that isn't exactly a great example because they treated it like a U.S. Senate campaign.
[Choked chuckles]
[Daniel] There was way too much money going on in that race for a small town city council. But…
[Brandon] That's the joke, right?
[Daniel] That is the joke.
[Howard] It's Parks and Rec.
[Daniel] So do use it for… As a good example of what people do to each other in campaigns. Don't think that a city council race looks anything like it. That's U.S. Senate and above.
[Mary Robinette] You're making me think about Amberlough by Lara Elena Donnelly, which is all about this political campaign that is going on in the background. It is… None of the characters are directly involved in the campaign, but their lives are being influenced by everything that's going on around them. It's… You're right, it's fantastic in that way.
 
[Daniel] That's an excellent way to use elections in a story, is to have this thing that is really going to affect your characters' lives happening in the background, and to what extent do they pay attention to it, to what extent do they understand that this is actually going to matter to them? Do they get involved or not? So, to use elections as a vehicle for telling interesting stories, doing it within an election campaign is actually a great idea, because there are so many fun, quirky people in a campaign. Everybody in a campaign is automatically a little bit weird. Because they are willing to take a job that's going to last for a few months, and it does pay decently for those few months, but then after that, you're out of work, and you either have to move to another place to get a new job, or you have to do a completely different kind of job, which is what I'm lucky enough to be able to do. They're really just a little bit kooky because they're not just getting involved like, "Oh, I'm going to donate." "Oh, I'm going to have a yard sale." They're actually putting their 40 hours a week or more into this. So I want to just run down the cast of characters within an election campaign and tell you a little bit about why they are going to be fun. So, the most obvious person is, of course, the candidate, the person who is running for office. Whether or not they have a spouse is also going to be a big deal, because candidates' spouses make a huge influence. But the candidate is going to be arrogant. Arrogant enough to think that they can win. And yet also emotionally fragile. Candidates are always needing reassurance from somebody that they're doing okay, that they can actually win, that this is worth all of the time and effort they are putting into it, because everyone is so invested.
[Howard] It sounds like writers.
[Brandon] Yeah.
[Laughter]
[Dan] I was going to say, the TV show Veep, in the season where she was running for President, they did that beautifully. That combination of just absolute bullheaded arrogance and complete fragility. So that's a good example to look up.
 
[Daniel] Yes, it is. Now, the person who is most often going to be helping the candidate feel better about these things is the campaign manager. Besides being the psychological counselor for the candidate, their main job is to manage. Now, campaign managers tend to have lots of experience under their belts. They tend to not really… Like, they want to make sure that they're supporting someone that they like, but, there also very willing to spin things, to color the truth a little bit. That's part of the job. So, campaign managers tend to be interesting that way. Under… They also usually have a deputy to help them when they're not around. The next job is the communications director, which is what I know the most about because I did it. Communication directors are usually a people person, because they have to interact with the press. They have to figure out social media. Beyond them, you have the finance director.
[Brandon] Wait, wait wait wait. What makes communication directors weird?
[Dan] Yeah, you skipped over that.
[Daniel] Oh, now I have to tell you something weird about me. Communication directors are the people who have to think about how we are going to persuade people to vote for you. What's the message? So they kind of have to get into other people's heads. They like this. They think of it as really, really fun when somebody drops something, like some insult on Twitter, and they get to respond to it and really burn the other guy. Yet, they've also got to balance this with how is it going to make my candidate look. They're always the ones who want to get the zinger, the "Oh, yeah, gotcha!" But they've also got to be really careful. How well your communication director balances those things or how well they don't, makes a really interesting character. Now, when I tell you these things that the person should be good at, a really interesting thing to do in a story is make them not so good at one of these things. Now, in the real world, your deputy should cover for you. I'm not the best at social media. My deputies do that really well. But what if in your story, they don't have that deputy for whatever reason, and they have to fail really hard at something that's really important.
[Howard] It's interesting to note that when you describe the communications director… I mean, I have years of corporate experience as a marketing guy. I realized, oh, that is squarely in the middle of the marketing wheelhouse. Squarely in the middle. All of the skill set of marketing, whether or not you think marketing is evil, that is where it fits. It's just that the product you are marketing, the message that you are marketing, is… It's this weird sort of flexible undulating brand that is a person whose brand will necessarily change during the course of the campaign.
[Daniel] Yes. That is all very true. Just to give you a real life example in me, I was told the other day that I'm really good at writing fundraising emails. Which is something I have never aspired to be.
[Mary Robinette] I'm just making a note of that for my own [garbled]
[laughter]
 
[Brandon] Let's pause here for book of the week, then we'll come back to the rest of the roles. So. Our book of the week, you were going to pitch at us…
[Daniel] So, every year, there is the Life, the Universe, and Everything symposium in Provo, Utah, that is a wonderful conference. I'm sure it has been talked about multiple times. Now, last year, they started having a benefit anthology that keeps prices low for students going to this. I'm in that first benefit anthology. My story is called Launch, and the benefit anthology is called Trace the Stars. So, it's available on Amazon. All of the stories in there are fantastic, I've read every one. The reason I want to bring this up is because the next benefit anthology is already opening up their call for submissions. The topic is A Parliament of Wizards. If you don't think elections go into that, well, I'll just tell you, I'm going to write something for it. We'll see if it gets in.
[Brandon] Now, this is for charity, right. So there's no payment for the stories once they been picked up.
[Daniel] That's correct. It is a benefit anthology to benefit students who are attending this writing symposium.
 
[Brandon] Excellent. All right, let's get back to our roles.
[Daniel] All right. The next one is the finance director. This is the person who sits next to the candidate while the candidate is calling up people like Brandon and saying, "Brandon, can you give me $2700, please?" The finance director is the person saying, "This is how you ask. This is what you need to do." The thing is, they're usually only paid on commission. So their job is to bring in money so that they can actually get paid.
[Brandon] Wow. So they're getting paid on commission to raise money for the political campaign. So a percentage of what you're giving is going…
[Daniel] To the finance director.
[Brandon] Interesting.
[Daniel] For their services and figuring out who to call, figuring out how to ask them for money. Because if I just walk up to Brandon and say, "Hey, please write me a check." I'm probably not going to get anywhere. The financial director is the person who goes, "I know that Brandon has enough money to give you a max donation, and this is the best way to ask him for it." Whereas they'll say, "Daniel doesn't have enough money to give you a max donation. You probably want to get him to volunteer for you instead." So the financial director is a very strange numbers punching kind of person. They have to have a weird mix of an accountant and someone who can really schmooze people.
[Dan] Well, someone who can read people, it sounds like.
[Mary Robinette] This is something that's common in all fundraising. Most fundraising, except at some nonprofits… But most fundraising, you do get a commission for the amount of money…
[Brandon] I had no idea.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. My mom was a fundraiser for years. She is where I learned all of my schmoozing from.
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] But it is this constant interplay of a political and financial conversation that you're having.
[Dan] When I was raising funds to put together a scholarship locally… I built an endowment at one of the local universities. We would 100%, every person that we targeted, we research them and we figured out what's the best way to approach this person specifically.
[Brandon] What did you determine about me?
[Dan] We said, "Hey. Brandon."
[Chuckles]
[Dan] "I've known you forever. Give me some money." It worked.
 
[Daniel] Sometimes that works. Finally, the last person in charge is the field director. This guy has to be really good with numbers, because he's looking at statistics. This is the guy who actually figures out how many voters do we need to win this election? Where do they live? How do we contact them? Then he leads a team of volunteers to go out and knock on doors, call phones, do whatever you need to do. Go on the Galactic Inter-Webz and give them a holo-projection, whatever it is that works in your election. That person's got to have both the numbers aspect and a managing aspect. Those don't always come in the same package. Finally, you'll have volunteers who are always kooky and eclectic and have more time than they have money.
[Laughter]
[Daniel] You also have donors, who are exactly the same as volunteers, except that they have more money than they have time. So you can make them just as strange as you want them to be, and it will not be different than real life.
[Howard] That feels so incredibly safe right now…
[Laughter]
[Howard] Because I have insufficient quantities of both money and time.
[Laughter]
 
[Brandon] We're almost out of time on this episode. Is there a last point that you want to hit?
[Daniel] Yes. Just really quick. Make sure you understand what the stakes of the election results are for your characters, both on a personal level, because either they'll lose and nothing will change, or they win and everything in their life changes, and also on the societal level. What are the impacts to the society, based on who wins this election? Also, make sure that you take some time to look at not just how American elections are run, but also how elections across history and across geography have been run. You've got parliamentary elections where it's based on what party gets a percentage of the vote. That's how the seats are allocated. You have ranked choice voting, like you have in the Hugo awards, which we've all done. You also have very small electoral colleges, like in the Holy Roman Empire, where seven princes would choose the next Emperor. Each of those elections plays out differently. If you only have to schmooze seven people, that's a very different election than if you're trying to schmooze a Galactic community of several billion. So, know what your race is, if it's local, if it's provincial, if it's national, if it's Galactic or what have you. Then follow the consequences of that.
 
[Brandon] All right. What's our homework?
[Daniel] So, your homework is to go out and volunteer for a political campaign that you support. It doesn't matter if it's local or national or what have you. Then go out and do whatever they have you do, whether it's knocking on doors or calling phones or whatever. Then, when you get home, start writing down what you did. When your imagination takes off in a different direction, start writing that story.
 
[Brandon] So, this was a really awesome episode. I learned a ton. I can imagine that there might be people out there who are writing books about elections who might need a really good editor, and you freelance.
[Daniel] Yes, I do.
[Brandon] How could they get ahold of you?
[Daniel] You can email me at dcfeditor@gmail.com. Daniel Craig Friend initials editor at gmail.
[Brandon] Awesome. Well, you guys, get out there and knock on some doors. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 15.12: Writing the Other – Being an Ally

Mar. 25th, 2020 11:37 am
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Writing Excuses 15.12: Writing the Other – Being an Ally
 
 
Key points: What demonstrates being a good ally? Don't just promote your book, but also boost the work of others. Make them the center of the conversation. Build a relationship with a whole person, not just the identity. What's an ally? Someone who will ride or die for you on your terms. Empathy writ large. Think raid group makeups, the tank, the person who makes safe spaces for others, lots of different roles. Beware Leeroy Jenkins! What about the ally who overshot and missed the mark? People who step up and speak for me, taking away my agency. You don't get cookies, credit, a prize for being an ally. When was someone a good ally without blocking your voice? White people shaming a woman who used the N-word in karaoke rapping. The support of a micro-community when you need it. People in a large conference who smiled, made room, and invited participation. When writing the other, listen to your sensitivity readers, and do no harm. If you can't write the other, maybe you can challenge inequity, and the systems that create it. Be aware that there are lots of different marginalizations, and lots of different kinds of ally-ship needed.
 
[transcriptionist note: I may have confused Piper, Tempest, and Erin in the transcript. I have very little hearing in the high tones, which makes it easy to confuse female voices. My apologies for any mistaken attribution.]
 
[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 12.
[Piper] This is Writing Excuses, Writing the Other – Being an Ally.
[Tempest] 15 minutes long.
[Dongwon] Because you're in a hurry.
[Erin] And we're not that smart.
[Piper] I'm Piper.
[Tempest] I'm Tempest.
[Dongwon] I'm Dongwon.
[Erin] I'm Erin.
[Piper] We've been joined by our special guest, Erin Roberts. Erin, could you please give us some background on yourself?
[Erin] Sure. I'm a black speculative fiction writer. I mostly write short fiction. I do a little bit of fantasy, a little bit of science fiction, a little horror. I think the thing that I'm proudest of in my career so far is that my story, Sour Milk Girls, was in both The Year's Best Science Fiction and The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror.
[Whoohoo!]
[Erin] So [garbled – we'll have to get] around that.
 
[Piper] Yeah. All right. So I'm excited because I love these takeovers. Particularly this topic is about being an ally. So I'm going to kick it off and ask all of you, what are some things that people have done that you view as having demonstrated that they are good, positive allies?
[Tempest] Well, around this topic in particular, the writing the other, being an ally, one of the most important things that I have seen is when people who are… Say they've written a book, in which there's marginalized characters that are not that writer's identity, they not only talk about their book in the promotion of it, but they also say, like, "I have read so much great fiction by people who actually do come from this identity. These are the people that I went to." Or "These are the books that I read for research." As many people would tell you, one of the most important things for writers is to have people like boosting your work, right? Like, to have people saying, "Yay, I love this," and just like letting their audience know. So, if you're, just for example, say a white person who is writing a book in which you have a black protagonist, you're going to have a whole bunch of people looking upon you, all of a sudden, on your twitter or whatever, and for you to then boost up black authors writing black protagonists is a really good thing to do.
[Dongwon] Yeah, I think being a good ally is so much about centering the voices that you're trying to support, right? The mistake that I see so often, not to talk about the negative sides of this too much, but the mistake I see is that somebody's trying to be an ally, and what they're doing is, "Hey, look at me, I'm doing a great job at promoting this other person." But if you're doing that, then you're really talking about yourself. It really is about taking the other person and making sure the spotlight is on them, they're the center of the conversation. Not to flatter our group too much, but I think the Writing Excuses group is doing a great job. They put the four of us on this podcast to talk about these issues. They're not looking for us to give them accolades, even though that's what I'm doing right now. It's really about promoting voices from people who come from other communities, who can speak on the topics that they want us to speak on.
[Erin] I also think that what's… What I really love is when people care about you beyond how you can inform their story. So something that you sometimes see is somebody will come up to you and say, "Well, I am writing this book with a black protagonist. Tell me about the black things." You're like, "Okay. That's lovely." But I like if that person has a relationship with you, that somebody cares about the parts of you that don't just inform your identity, but you as a whole person. Because identity is just a part of who you are. It shapes who you are, but isn't all of who you are.
 
[Piper] Awesome. I guess this may be a little belated, but for people who might be unfamiliar with the topic or the point of discussion, what's your quick, clearest pitch or definition for what is an ally? If someone were to just come up and ask you, "No, really, what's an ally?"
[Chuckles]
[Tempest] Well, an ally is a person who not only wants to… Who not only likes says, "I really want to support you and make it so that like the spaces that you come into and the communities that I belong to are safe for you or safer for you," but actually like does that work, and actually is, like… I get in our communities, say, will you ride or die for me? Like, allies will ride or die for you, but they will ride or die for you on your terms. Not on their terms, but they're like, "What do you need? Do you need me to step forward or to step back? Do you need me to be the loud voice talking about these things or do you just need me to be the quiet voice stepping up and going yes." Because it's going to change, it's going to be different, depending on the situation. But allies, real allies, always look for their cues from the people they're being allies to.
[Erin] Yeah. I always believe that empathy is at the core of ally-ship. It's empathy writ large. So, looking to the other person, and how they're feeling and what they want from you and realizing the power that you have, the power that they do or don't, and then, trying to do what's best for the other person. I think sometimes where ally-ship can go a little bit awry is when you make it about yourself and your reaction. I want to show I'm a good person by being an ally as opposed to I want to make the person I'm allying with their life better or make the situation better for them.
[Dongwon] I think about it sometimes in terms of like online gaming, like raid group makeups, right, like…
[Yeah]
[Dongwon] Sometimes you need an ally who's the tank, right? They're going to draw [agro?] from whatever's happening out there. They're going to get in front of the issue and say, "Hey, pay attention to me right now." So that other people have time to figure out how they want to respond and what they want to do. Especially in a dangerous situation, or in an online dog pile kind of situation, right? Then there's other people who are out there trying to make safe space for people. Make sure that there is a place to have a conversation, a place to sit and recharge, a place to kind of do the work behind the scenes that needs to be done sometimes to sort of figure out, okay, how are we going to move this conversation forward, how are we going to make improvements in the communities that we're part of, right? So there's lots of different roles that allies can play out there, and thinking about how you get into it, what kind of skill sets you have, and what kind of presence you have can be a really great way to figure out how to be a great ally, and how to support the communities and the marginalized identities that you're trying to work with.
 
[Piper] So I guess one of the things is that occasionally someone who really wants to be an ally pulls a Leeroy Jenkins…
[Laughter]
[Piper] And all of us are just standing there like, "Don't…"
[Dongwon] But come back… Oh boy.
[Tempest] For those of you who aren't aware of this… I wasn't aware until like criminally recently, this is a reference to a video of like a group of people, like, they're getting ready to go raid something, and then one guy just breaks off, and he's like, "Leeroy Jenkins!" He runs into the fray. They're all like, "No! We have a plan…"
[Piper] They all had to go in after him and they all died.
[Tempest] They all perished.
[Laughter] [horribly]
[Dongwon] Somebody add…
[Piper] A quick line on fried chicken. But anyway. So, in any case, yeah. Say Leeroy Jenkins as you…
[Tempest] Let's be real.
 
[Piper] What's one of the most… The experience that stands out most in your mind of someone who tried to be an ally and just overshot? Missed the mark? Anybody?
[Dongwon] So there was this event that was for people of color in publishing. It wasn't officially with the group, POC In Publishing, but it was an event that was intended for POC in a certain community to come together and sort of celebrate and talk about the issues that we're facing and an ally decided to take the mic and talk about what a great job that they had done to support everybody while… And were literally taking upstage time and presence away from the actual POC in the room who might have had something to say. That was a frustrating moment.
[Tempest] Yeah. I would say, for me, I've had quite a few instances where someone tried to demonstrate being an ally by stepping up and speaking for me. I have to say, one of the things that I really appreciate about my partner, about some friends who've known me for a long time is I don't need help being loud. But I am usually the tank that needs to heal. Right? So having someone stand at my shoulder and give me agency has often been what I prefer personally. So, the times when it's missed the mark for me is when someone literally has stepped in front of me to say words that would not necessarily have come out of me and took away my agency for how to handle the situation.
[Dongwon] To generalize a little bit, the place I see that most… We kind of hit this note a couple of times, but when I see that happening in a variety of circumstances, it's usually because an ally is saying, "I want credit for what I did." But there's no cookies for being a good ally. You don't get a prize at the end. The prize is you do the work, because the work needs to be done. It's important, and it's hard, and it's uncomfortable, but no one's going to say, "Good job," and give you a trophy at the end of it, right? So if that's why you're doing it, I need you to sit back and reconsider. What is my role in this community? How is that being an ally to somebody, if I'm trying to get a benefit out of it? Right?
[Definitely]
[Dongwon] Those are things I need people to think about as they're approaching these communities and as they're trying to be helpful. But sometimes somebody trying to help, as we're kind of hinting at here, can do more harm than good.
 
[Piper] I'm going to pause us for the book of the week. I think, Dongwon, you have that.
[Dongwon] I do have that, yes. Thank you for reminding me that I have that. The book I want to talk about is Paul Krueger's Steel Crow Saga. It is a secondary world fantasy that takes a lot from East Asian cultures. It has sort of analogues for a bunch of Southeast Asian and East Asian cultures. It takes place in the aftermath of a period of colonization and empire, where three of the nations have come together to throw off the fourth imperial power. So, it takes… It follows four characters, one from each of the different countries, who are all trying to figure out what to do in the aftermath of this big war. How do you make peace? How do you rebuild a world that's more equitable? How do you keep other powers from swallowing your country when maybe your country is smaller and has less military might than some of the others. Just because you won the war doesn't mean peace is easy to achieve and that people's desire for empire and control and power stop. This is also a book that I talk about as postcolonial Pokémon. So it's got a great magic system, there's lots of anime nonsense. If you like Fullmetal Alchemist, if you like those kinds of things, you're going to love this book.
 
[Piper] Awesome. All right, so I'm going to slightly switch gears for us in the fact that I'm going to ask for real experiences again, or memories that stand out to you, but instead, I'm going to ask for an example of a moment when someone steps to your side and really was an ally without blocking your own voice. Thoughts?
[Erin] I have an example that has nothing to do with writing whatsoever, but it was a very sort of real moment for me. So, I am a big karaoke enthusiast, as my friends and family all know. One of the issues that you sometimes have an karaoke is that you'll have a white person go up to the stage, they'll sing a rap song, the N-word comes up, and they decide that this is the moment to say it out loud. It's not, for the record, ever. So, I was at a karaoke bar and that happened. I was in a bar where I think I was like one of the only black people there. All of the white people in the room when the woman did it like gasped and like sham… They like sent shame stares at her. The woman stopped doing it. I loved it because this is something that really bothers me, but it has nothing to do with their lives. But their like visceral reaction really made me feel like, "Okay. Other people care about the things that are part of my identity experience, even though it's not part of their's."
[Piper] Awesome.
[Tempest] Yeah, I… I've been talking a lot recently about the value of community, and the value of, like, small, teeny-tiny communities as well as big ones, and just, like, encouraging especially my artist friends, and like artists include writers, to not only like find their place in large communities but their fun micro communities, groups of like five, six people maybe, that you can have like a group chat with, whether… Whatever you use to have group chats. So that you can get the support you need without necessarily having to expose all of your stuff to everybody in the group, and everybody in the group is just like, "We don't know how to help." But, like, you expose some sensitive stuff to like five really close friends, it's a different experience. So I have… I'm very lucky to have a lot of these little micro communities, micro groups. That is where I find most of the expressions of awesome ally-ship. Because I will come in and I will be like, "Oh, my God, this is happening." Or, "Did you see?" Or, "Let me tell you…" The best thing that they can do is they can just say like, "What is it you need me to do?" I'm like, "I just need you to sit here and just listen to me go off about those white people over there who did that thing that made me sad, right?" They're like, "Cool." Then they do. Or, I'm like, "I really need you to like boost this thing that's going on on Twitter." And like…
Or very publicly be like, "Shut up, people. Like, Tempest is awesome." Or whatever it is. They're like, "Okay. I can do that." I do that for them, too. Not all the people in these group chats are necessarily people who are outside of my identity group. Like, some of them are and some of them aren't. But, like, regardless of what they are, what I am, what the situation is, these are people that have my back. I just think it's really important to have people that have your back, in general. But then, like, that is where sometimes some people begin to understand what good ally-ship is. You don't necessarily have to have a close relationship with a person to be able to do that. To ask those questions, to be like, "Is there anything that you need me to do, like, what do you need me to do in this moment to be a good ally?" Sometimes, it's to run out on Twitter and start like yelling. Or sometimes it's just to listen. But, yeah, like that's the biggest thing with ally-ship is that you have to learn how to listen to what people need you to do and need you to not do.
[Piper] I can say I attend a lot of different conferences, both having to do with writing and the writing sphere and also having to do with my day job and my career in a corporate world. Especially, in my corporate position, I am often the only Asian American in the room. Sometimes it's really hard to walk into a really big place. For example, before I came to the Writing Excuses Cruise and Retreat 2019, I was at a summit of 1700 people. Often times, I was one of maybe two or three Asian American people in the room of 1700. One of the biggest things that really helped me be able to walk in and be confident and be a part of everything was the fact that a couple of my colleagues recognized me with a smile, made room for me at a table, were like, "Hey, we're going out." Acknowledged me, acknowledged my existence. Even if you don't know someone, the openness and welcome you can give by giving them a smile and seeing them… Or, if they're sitting by themselves, saying, "Hey. Are you eating alone? Do you want to be alone, or would you like to join us?" Just being open to that, and not being upset if your kindness is not taken well. Because they could be under stress. But just having it there, leaving it out there, and then stepping back, is an amazingly valuable thing in any kind of conferencing situation, any kind of public situation. I would say those are some of my best memories.
[Erin] Yeah. Another thing, specific to writing the other, one way that one can be a good ally is to do all the things that we have said on this podcast, I have said in other places, etc. That… To make sure that you're going to your sensitivity readers and listening to your sensitivity readers when it comes to the stuff that you're writing. To make sure that, like, the stuff that you're going to be putting out isn't going to be doing harm to the community. Do no harm is sort of like the philosophy that I try to instill in people with this. That is like one of the best ways to be a good ally as a person who is like trying to write other identities, is to make sure you listen to the people from those groups that you are trying to represent when they say, "This is harmful, let's change it."
[Tempest] Yeah. Don't just look for permission. Oh, I'm sorry.
[Piper] No, that's okay. I also really think that a lot of times… I think diversity is very important, but I also think equity is really important, and that in writing… So you don't necessarily… It's always good to have a diverse cast, but also, thinking about the systems that have created inequity and challenging those in your writing I think is also a great way to be an ally. Maybe you're not at a point where you're like, "I can actually successfully write the other." Like, "I tried it. It was a bad idea." Like, "I'm not there in my craft." But maybe I can challenge the way that justice works in my system. Maybe I can challenge the way that's sort of racial essentialism works in my world. By doing that, you put new ideas out into the world that I think also help to promote equity and change the way that we think about the world.
[Tempest] Yeah. One of the best examples of this that I've seen, and I'm pretty sure that we've talked about this on the podcast before is Justine Larbalestier. She's a YA writer, and the first several novels that she wrote, she always had a protagonist who was mixed race, POC in some way, they were all different. She did that at first, just with her first book, she just did it because that's what fit the character. Then she realized, like, how important it was for kids to be able to see themselves more. So she's like, "Oh, okay. It's cool. Now I'll just make this happen." But then, at some point, she realized that actually, because she was doing this, then the publishers are like, "We already have a book with a black protagonist, we don't need to buy one from a black person." She's like, "Wait. Oh, no. That is not what I wanted. That's not why I was doing this." So then she shifted, and she decided that like in any book that she wrote where she had one protagonist, like one POV character, that that protagonist would be white. But that didn't mean that she wasn't going to include people of color and people of other marginalized identities in the work. It's just that they wouldn't be the protagonist. Because the protagonist is the one that like publishers tend to focus on, people tend to focus on. Right? But she did that so that she could… That was her way of being a good ally, it was her way of making a space, and saying, "I am no longer going to be the one taking up this space. They can't use me as an excuse not to buy your book."
[Dongwon] One thing I want to point out is we've been talking about a lot of sort of POC oriented issues. We're talking about race and those kinds of elements, but there's a lot of different kinds of ally-ship out there, right? Disability, queer, there's a lot of marginalizations that people experience, and even within POC communities, there can be a lot of tension between different racial groups, right? So, one thing is just because you're marginalized in one way… This kind of plays into the conversation about intersectionality… You have to remember that just because you're marginalized here doesn't mean you get to be a bad ally over here. Right? We all need to be looking out for each other, and looking out for other people's communities and paying attention to different vectors of marginalization and trying to make sure you're supporting voices and respecting other people's identities. Because, even if you have an own voices project, you're only one or maybe two of those identities represented in the book. Ideally, you've got a bigger range of that in your project, right? So you have to make sure, even if you are a marginalized person and coming from that background, that there are other things you need to be really attentive to and make sure you're not stepping on those things. The work isn't done just because you're own voices, is really what I'm saying.
 
[Piper] All right. So we're going to have to wrap this up with homework.
[Chuckles]
[Piper] Did anyone think of homework?
[Erin] Oh, yeah. I have the homework.
[Piper] Oh, you have the homework. Whoo!
[Erin] I'm ready with the homework. Here is your homework. I want you to find the most recent short story's, book, any piece of literature, novella, whatever that you have consumed recently that you liked. Then, I want you to do two of the following five things at least. But you can do all five. You can… I want you to leave a review on Amazon and on Goodreads. Even though they're kind of the same thing, they're kind of not. Leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads. Tweet about it and say why did you love this book. Facebook about it, because Twitter's not Facebook and Facebook has a longer reach sometimes. Tell other writers. Explicitly be like, "Do you need my copy? Let me just put this in your hands. Please read this, please look at this." The fifth thing has gone out of my head, so I'm going to say… Instagram?
[Laughter]
[Erin] Pull a Instagram, take a picture, take a selfie with the book. Everybody loves a selfie. Take a picture with the book, and be like, "Read this book, it's great." But do that. Because that's a way of being an ally. Just putting out your love for that author and their story or their book or whatever it is.
[Dongwon] Can I suggest a number five?
[Erin] Yes.
[Dongwon] Tell a bookseller or a librarian.
[Erin] Yes! That was what flew out of my head. This is why we have Dongwon. Yes. Tell them. Because then they can be like, "Oh, really. We'll get more of that in."
[Piper] Awesome.
[Erin] That's your homework.
[Piper] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 15.11: Digital Is Different, with Cory Doctorow

Mar. 19th, 2020 10:16 am
mbarker: (ISeeYou2)
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Writing Excuses 15.11: Digital Is Different, with Cory Doctorow
 
 
Key points: How can you network in the digital era? Start with the role of a publisher -- to make a work public, to get the author, the work, and the audience connected. Have a reason to network, something you want to accomplish. Make sure you enjoy what you're doing. Build genuine relationships. Balance building a presence online with I oughta be writing. Think about the marketing message you need to make. Why should people buy your book? Online, you need content and you need a personality. Right now, you need to be charming online. Pay attention to the audiences, you may want different messages for each of them. Pen names? This is complicated. Professional parallel careers may push you to use a pen name. Is one name associated with a message? Watch for systemic gender issues, non-binary... and different genres. Crossing genres, you may need a pen name. It's complicated, and it changes over time. Pen names, and online life, are complicated.
 
[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 11.
[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses, Digital Is Different, with Cory Doctorow.
[Piper] 15 minutes long.
[Howard] Because you're in a hurry.
[Cory] And we're not that smart.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[Piper] I'm Piper.
[Howard] I'm Howard.
[Cory] And I'm Cory.
[Mary Robinette] We're joined today by our special guest, Cory Doctorow. Cory, would you tell our listeners a little about yourself.
[Cory] Sure. I'm a science fiction novelist and an activist. I work with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is a nonprofit in San Francisco. I live in Los Angeles. I'm Canadian by birth and British by naturalization. I'm a visiting professor of computer science at the Open University, a visiting professor of library science at the University of North Carolina, a research affiliate at the MIT Media Lab, and I'm one of the owners of the website Boing Boing.
[Mary Robinette] So, you have some experience with the digital world there.
[Cory] Sure.
 
[Mary Robinette] One of the things that our listeners have been wondering about, and this is a thing that I think face… Affects a lot of early career writers is the idea of getting out there and making yourself known. It's expensive to go places, especially if you're someplace remote, like Australia. Or, if you just have social anxiety and don't want to be around people. What are some of the ways that we can network without actually going into meatspace? Just being in the digital world.
[Cory] So, let me start with a general disclaimer. Which is that there is a certain futility in asking writers who broke in 20 years ago what you should do to break in.
[Laughter]
[Mary Robinette] Fair.
[Cory] I always remember going to science-fiction cons as a kid and hearing like crusty old people say, like, "Look, if you want to sell a story to John W. Campbell, you gotta throw a manuscript over his transom at two in the morning, and then you buy him a nickel cup of coffee as he's coming in the door." It's like, first of all, he was a Nazi, and second of all, he doesn't edit anymore. He's been dead for years. So, I can't claim to know how you would break in, right? If you didn't have the common sense, gumption, and stick-to-itiveness to be born in 1971 and on the Internet in the early 80s, you know, you've only got yourself to blame.
[Laughter]
[Cory] That said, publishers' role has changed over the years. It's called into question what the like foundational role of a publisher is. I favor the definition that says that a publisher's job is to make a work public. That is to say, you identify a work, you identify an audience for it, you take such steps as are necessary to make the work and the author and the audience connect with one another. So one of the things publishers do for writers, in that capacity, is that stuff. Obviously, if you're not published, you need a new thing to do to bring yourself into contact with audiences. I'm also skeptical of the enterprise of networking per se. Right? You have to have a reason to be networking. I mean, that reason might be that it makes you feel nice, and that when you feel nice, you write well. But you should know what it is you're hoping to accomplish. If that's to make people interested in your work because it's published, or because you hope that having a following will entice a publisher to bring you around, then the one thing I can tell you for sure is that if you're not enjoying yourself, no one is going to enjoy what you're doing. This is the golden age of grifty, multi-level marketing schemes, and we all know how creepy it feels to have someone make our personal relationships transactional by asking us if we'll come to a half hour seminar on sex toys or Tupperware or whatever it is. Or leggings. So you really have to be there for a non-instrumental reason first. If you're not, then it's the wrong thing for you. Right?
[Mary Robinette] I'm really glad that you mentioned relationships. Piper, it looked like you had something?
[Piper] I did, actually. So, even though I think I'm in a comparable age to you, I came to publishing at a later stage.
[Cory] Sure.
[Piper] So, again, I'm not breaking in at this time and potentially about a decade ago. But what I have to offer to that is that social media was invaluable to me breaking into my career in two different ways. In one aspect, it was learning to be part of the writing community online, which was my major goal first as opposed to promoting a book. Because I was genuinely just trying to get to know people, interacting with people, and kind of get the lingo of the industry, the relationships that I built were more genuine. They were on Twitter and they were on Facebook. The idea behind that is as people knew I was genuine, they were much more open when they found out that I had something to promote or market at that stage. They were like, "Oh, hey, I'd love to give you a shout out because I know who you are." Or "I'd love to invite you into this collaboration." Or "I'd love to invite you into this thing." So, I built kind of a social network before I had something to market. That said, I would also caution people not to focus so hard on building that network online before you have something, because ultimately what we're there for is to write. We don't want to feed too much time into the effort to be online, and to develop a presence online, when really, we're supposed to be writing. So there's this weird balance that comes with that.
 
[Howard] If I can approach the non-genuine elephant in the room of the messaging at the core of author marketing. The messaging at the core is "My book is the thing that you want more than anything else in the world. When you read it, it's the most fun you're ever going to have." But if I say that as my message, no one will believe me. What are the things that I say or due to transmit that message? The message that you want to send for your book… I mean, what I said was almost soda commercial levels of marketing speak. But by saying it that way, hopefully, dear listener, I've opened your mind to the way you need to be thinking about that purchasing decision. You want people to buy your book. Why do they want to buy your book? Because they're going to love it, because they're super interested in it. How do you convince them of that? Saying that message in other words comes back to being genuine. That's why it seems so… That's when marketing seems so evil. It's why it seems like a lie. If I want people to buy my book as a result of my presence on Twitter, I need to seem like someone they would like to spend time with. I need to seem interesting. I need to feel like a friend. When I appear on panels with other authors, I don't need to shout out the name of my book, I need to look like someone that they are friends with so that whatever good reputation they have reflects well on me. I know this sounds like evil horrible marketing speak, but as we're recording this, I'm wearing a necktie.
[Snort]
[Mary Robinette] It's true. He is.
[Howard] This is one of the lives that I came from and it applied so clearly to what I was doing as an early web cartoonist, I realized that the persona I had online was not read my comic. The persona was I'm fun.
[Mary Robinette] This is a thing that… I come out of it from the theater. My mom was an arts administrator. So when we were doing things in meatspace all the time, one of the things that she taught me was that the other person was always more interesting than you. That what you're doing is that you are listening to people and you are engaging with them by listening. That works really, really well in person. Online, it plays out differently. There, you have to think about two things. One thing is that I'm glad we're all talking about relationships, because, like, when you go to your favorite coffee shop, you don't go because they have the best coffee, you go because of the relationship with the barista, because of the mood, the feel of the place. If any of that shifts, it doesn't matter how good the coffee is. Similarly, place can be fantastic and have beautiful atmosphere, and if the coffee is not good, maybe you don't go. So you have to have both things. You have to have content and you have to have personality.
 
[Cory] I think that there's a potential that if you're an introvert or someone who doesn't want to do this stuff, this can feel like a counsel of despair. There is a kind of hard truth at the center of that. Which is that different technological moments favor different modes of creator. You talked about live entertainment. Well, obviously before there was live recording at all, the like most dispositive factor in the success of a performer was not virtuosity as much as it was stage presence. Right? When the phonogram comes along and the radio comes along, it becomes a completely different market for the arts. Suddenly, it's… In the absence of seeing the performer, how good does the performance sound becomes much more important than that like numinous difficult to pin down thing that happens when you see a riveting performer. We've all had that experience of being at a show and being completely taken away by it, and then watching a YouTube video of that same show and having… Being, like, oh, I hear where he missed those notes and whatever. But it was that feeling of being there that that performer was able to create. This moment really is a moment that is very good to people who are good at being charming online. So my favorite example of this is Jo Walton, who's a wonderful, wonderful writer. She's not just a wonderful writer, she's just a spectacularly interesting person. Especially in print online. Her career started with her writing really interesting message board posts in rec.arts.sf on USENET that were interspersed with really good poetry in rec.arts.sf.poetry. That led Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who is now the vice president at Tor, but was then an editor at Tor to ask her if she had a book. Now she's won a Hugo award for best novel. He solicited a novel from her on the strength of the voice in her prose. There are people who, I'm sure, would write wonderful novels who couldn't pull that off. It's actually a pity that they're going begging, but it is what it is. Right? We live in this moment.
[Howard] That story illustrates another marketing principle that I stress when I'm doing my Marketing 101 presentation. Which is that your message goes out to different audiences. My message to the person who's going to buy my book and read it as a consumer is this is the funniest use of $15 you'll ever whatever. My message to a publisher is this book will be easy to edit, and I will be easy to work with, and we will make lots of money together.
[Cory] Yeah. I actually think that the third one actually isn't even as important as the other two.
[Howard] Well, and…
[Cory] I think there's a lot of editors… I mean, every editor wants to book a best seller, but they also just don't want to have their lives made miserable by those terrible writers.
[Howard] But those first two are key. When you have relationships online, when you have relationships at conventions and you are talking to fellow professionals, when you are talking to agents and editors, yeah, pitching them your book is different than pitching them the fact that you are personable and professional and easy to work with. I've had people come up to me… I'm always sad that the answer is no. I've had people come up to me and say, "Do you have a book yet?" Because they're ready to work.
 
[Mary Robinette] So, I think this is a good spot to pause and do some online promotion. Let's…
[Cory] Sure.
[Mary Robinette] Talk about our book of the week.
[Cory] Yeah. Let me pull it up on my phone here, so I get all the details right. So, the book that I've chosen is Naomi Kritzer's forthcoming debut novel, which I think may have been published by the time we do this episode. It's coming out in November. Naomi won the Hugo award in 2016 for a short story that was absolutely brilliant called Cat Pictures, Please. That was about an AI that wanted cat pictures. Her new book, her first book, is called Catfishing on the Catnet. It's kind of a novelization of this. It's about these close knit online communities that are… Where many of the participants turn out to be all the one AI. About the adventures that they get to in the AI defending them and they defending each other and the AI, and ultimately what happens when the world discovers there's a general-purpose AI, and it really likes cute pictures of cats. It sounds like a madcap comic novel, and there's a lot of racing around it, there's a lot of chase scenes, but what makes it so endearing and lovely is the relationships that she draws. It's about these tightknit online communities where, on the Internet, no one knows you're an AI who likes cats, but they do know that you are someone that they trust and even come to love, and about the depth and feeling of communities of intent online. It's written with all of her style and verve. It is a first novel, in the best sense of the word. It feels like a novel that someone spent their whole life thinking about. It's full of so many grace notes, so much sly humor. It's really a wonderful book. I can't recommend it enough.
[Piper] Awesome.
[Mary Robinette] That's Catfishing on the Catnet by Naomi Kritzer.
[Cory] By Naomi Kritzer.
[Mary Robinette] That's… She is a fantastic writer. I'm very excited to see this novel.
 
[Mary Robinette] So, let's actually talk about the idea of community online. But specifically, the personalities that we create. One of the things some people wonder about, especially women going into writing, is whether or not they should have a pen name. Often, people who are in a professional setting, do they need to create a persona for themselves as a shield? What are some of the pros and cons of that? I'm going to keep riffing until someone else jumps in.
[Chuckles]
[Piper] I'll jump in. So, for those of you who may or may not know, Piper J. Drake is a pen name. In fact, it is my second pen name. I originally started publishing as P. J. Schnyder in science-fiction steam punk paranormal romances.
[Cory] Thank goodness you didn't say I was originally John Norman.
[Laughter]
[Mary Robinette] All the nope.
[Howard] So many wrong answers.
[Piper] Actually, P. J. was derived because of my handle on Prodigy. Way back. So that was always fun. So the reason why I chose a pen name, because I had a lot of people say, "Hey, why aren't you proud of your work?" In particular, there's also a question for Asian Diaspora, as to why you pick a pen name that sounds… Please excuse the phrasing, but rather white bread. There's a whole lot of complexity that you can dive into that. But from a professional standpoint, the reason why I picked a pen name was because I do maintain a parallel career in a corporate environment. While most of my coworkers and colleagues all know that I write as a parallel career, my clients do not. My clients could potentially feel that there is a conflict of interest or a conflict of focus, if they perceive that I'm working on stuff other than their project or their particular objectives and goals. So I opted to use a pen name, so that I continue to have this parallel career. Also, I was already published with whitepapers and speaking publicly under my real name. I wanted to keep that content separate.
[Howard] That's… At risk of trying to bucket things in a way that makes it look like it all fits, that… The idea of message. If your name has become associated with one message, using that name to send a different message can be difficult.
[Piper] Yes.
[Howard] If your name gets associated with a message as an author, and the message is, "I write fun hanky-panky…"
[Piper] Which I do.
[Howard] Which you do. That message may not fit well with your tech customers in your day job.
[Cory] It's the spicy Cajun Visine problem.
[Laughter]
[Piper] Visine? You know what, that would be a bad idea. [AAAH!]
[Mary Robinette] I just hurt thinking about that.
[Howard] Spicy. Cajun. Visine.
[Laughter]
 
[Cory] Yeah. Now, all that said, I have to say that, for me, being someone who's 1 inch deep and 10 miles wide and is known for having a lot of things going on has been a real strength. It… For one thing, it makes people think of me and lots of different contexts, right? People think of me as having something to say beyond just the narrowness of the field. It, I think, rebounds to my favor in terms of getting invited to forums that are not necessarily just science-fiction forums. There is, in terms of like market differentiation, market planning, you can try and get a bigger piece of the science-fiction pie, but the science-fiction pie is not very big. When you look at kind of runaway bestsellers, they're all books that appeal to people who just don't buy books. Right?
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Cory] J. K. Rowling did not capture 100% of the book reading public, she captured 5% of the non-book reading public. That's what made her one of the best-selling novelists of all time. Right? So having… Being known for lots of other stuff is kind of interesting. I did want to say that the… I can't speak to one's experience as a writer, but I recently read a book called The Future Is Female by Lisa Yaszek from Library of America Press. It's a book about women pioneers in science-fiction. My mentor was Judith Merrill who moved to Toronto after the 1968 police riots because she didn't want to raise her kids in the States. So we benefited in Canada from her presence there, and Judy plays a big role in it. One of the editor's theses, from having talk to these writers and their editors and their children and so on, is that a lot of the women who wrote under pen names did so, not because they didn't want to be known as women, but because they all had high-powered careers. A bunch of them were spooks. So, they were working in the Office of Strategic Services, which was the precursor to the CIA. They just didn't want to be associated with… Like, they had to keep a separate identity because it's sensitive military industrial roles, which I was really fascinated by. One of my other mentors was Tanya Huff, who began her career writing under T. S. Huff, but switched to Tanya Huff, I think in part because it became an asset to be known as a woman who wrote military SF. That was like, that was not so much a curiosity as a benefit, that we all know what dudes write like when they're writing military SF. Women writing military SF are interesting and have a… Are a break from the fare as usual.
[Piper] I write…
 
[Mary Robinette] But one of the things about this is that we are dealing with systemic issues, right?
[Cory] Sure.
[Mary Robinette] We can go down this rabbit a pretty long way, but one of the things that happens is that publishers actually print more copies of books by men or a male sounding name because bookstores buy more of them, because reviewers review more of them. So book… The publishers them, recognizing the higher demand, print more books by men, so the bookstores… So there's a cycle that happens.
[Cory] Sure.
[Mary Robinette] In the United States, 48% of the books of science fiction and fantasy is written by women and 52% is written by men. But when you look on the shelves, only 18% is…
[Cory] Wow.
[Mary Robinette] That's an average. I have been into stores where it's… The only person on, the only woman that they had shelved was Ursula K. Le Guin.
[Cory] Wow.
[Mary Robinette] Literally. Not…
[Piper] I use to follow your tweets about being in the airport and counting how many female authors there were in the science-fiction/fantasy section versus men. It was just very… It was a clear demonstration.
[Cory] How does that break down indie versus B&N?
[Mary Robinette] So, that's a great question. It… That is something that is… The… What I have found is that it is slightly better on the indie side, but not universally. Yeah. One part of that is that a lot of indie bookstores are owned by women.
[Piper] Also…
[Mary Robinette] But the best ratio I've ever found was 34%.
[Piper] Also, we want to take into account the fact that we're acknowledging and we are respecting now that there is a non-binary factor…
[Cory] Of course.
[Piper] To this consideration as well. So, pen names don't necessarily have to indicate gender. But systemically, people will default towards what they think the name should be.
[Cory] Sure.
[Piper] Case Alexander, for example, is a great… Great, great author. Amazing. She used to be Karina Cooper. That's when I met her. She wrote seamy, steamy steam punk. Then she changed to T. C. Alexander, and then… Actually, is it she there or is that they? I apologize, Case, I forgot. That's terrible. I will fix it in the notes. But, Case also writes as Case Alexander. Really, really kick ass sci-fi. Case is non-binary. There are a lot of people who are queer or non-binary.
[Cory] Yeah, that's a good point.
 
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. It's something that is difficult to track in a bookstore. So, basically, what we're saying here is that when you are choosing your pen name, you're thinking about the relationships, but you're also… There's not an easy answer there. It's also an answer that is going to shift over time.
[Piper] And across genres.
[Mary Robinette] And across genres. Like, if you're in YA or romance, it's… It… You are… That was another thing, when you look at the… Where women who write science-fiction and fantasy get shelved, a lot of times they get shelved in YA even if they are actually writing something that is adult.
[Cory] Wow.
[Piper] Sarah J. Maas comes to mind.
[Mary Robinette] Yes.
[Piper] But also, if you cross genres… I was asked to switch from P. J. Schnyder to a new pen name because I wrote paranormal romance and sci-fi and steam punk, and I was switching to romantic suspense. So they asked for a new pen name to give me a fresh start with readers who would not normally be open to my previous genres. So that's a thought, too.
[Mary Robinette] So, dear listeners, what we're saying is it's complicated and it changes all the time. There's… It's a moving target.
[Piper] It depends.
[Cory] Nancy Kress was one of my writing teachers at Clarion, and one of the pieces of advice she had for women writers was that you're probably going to divorce your husband, statistically. So think long and hard about whether or not his name is going to go on your spine because she hasn't been married to Mr. Kress in a very long time.
[Mary Robinette] That is a fascinating and… Terrifying POV. Also, something…
[Piper] I'm just giggling here, like, I can't comment on that one.
[Mary Robinette] No, I'm just like… I'm like, wow. That's… I mean, that's a state… Yes. That's a statement.
[Cory] Yep.
[Mary Robinette] That's a claim.
[Piper] That is a point.
[Howard] That is a thing that someone said that I cannot now unremember.
[Cory] It's not terrible advice. I think that picking a pen name… If you've just taken a married name, picking a pen name that isn't your married name or not isn't the worst idea in the world. Kind of hedges your bets.
[Piper] [garbled] names complicated. [Picking pen names is complicated?]
[Mary Robinette] The name's complicated. Online life, complicated.
 
[Mary Robinette] This was a very helpful episode, I think, because we've left you with as many questions as you started with. We're going to wrap up by giving you a homework assignment. The homework assignment that I'm going to give you is I want you to think about what your pen name would be. It's very easy for women to think about this because we've seen a lot of examples of it, but I want to make sure that everybody thinks about this. I want you to think of a name, and name, that is decidedly female. I want you to think of a name that is nonbinary, that you can't tell anywhere… Could be anywhere on the spectrum. And, I want you to pick a pen name that is decidedly male. See what those things feel like as names. But, here's the catch, I want them to all feel like you.
[Piper] Added bonus challenge. Practice the signature.
[Mary Robinette] For… That's a good one.
[Cory] Ooooh. Did anyone else… Was anyone else smart enough to not use the signature that they use on their checks to sign books?
[Piper] That's me.
[Cory] I still… I'm dumb.
[Mary Robinette] Bonus content at the end. Make sure that your legal signature and your autograph do not match.
[Laughter]
[Howard] Also, get Cory to sign a book for you.
[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 15.10: Evaluating Ideas

Mar. 11th, 2020 11:05 am
mbarker: (Fireworks Delight)
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Writing Excuses 15.10: Evaluating Ideas
 
 
Key Points: How do you decide which ideas to keep and which to drop? One story cooking, others simmering with ingredients added as they come up. Know how the story ends! Interact with your ideas, explore, write them, and you develop the skill to evaluate them. Passion and excitement! What are you most excited about? It's a different skill, but you need to learn how to force yourself to write. Take the core of the idea and find something you are passionate about. Add your exciting ideas to the pot. Don't throw everything into one book. Find flavors that work together. Keep track of your ideas, write them down. When you're struggling with a story, when do you push through and when do you abandon it? Understand why you are struggling. Have the ending, or at least points that you are excited about writing, in mind. Try to make this chapter or this scene someone's favorite in the whole book. Force yourself to finish books. Make a checklist, what kind of problem is this? Avoid shiny new idea syndrome. Think about your goals. Finishing teaches you how to write.
 
[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 10.
[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Evaluating Ideas.
[Victoria] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.
[Howard] And we're not that smart.
[Brandon] I'm Brandon.
[Victoria] I'm Victoria.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Howard] And I'm out of ideas. Help?
[Chuckles]
[Howard] Help?
 
[Brandon] So, we often talk on this podcast about how ideas are kind of cheap. But, let's shelve that. Like, we've covered that idea. That a lot of great… Writers generally can use any number of different ideas. Bad ideas make good books sometimes. So let's just shelve that. Let's actually talk about ideas, because I have had, once in a while, an idea that I was really attached to. I'm like, "You know what, I know ideas are cheap, but I want to write this one just because I want to write it." We have a lot of questions here, because we're doing questions from listeners this entire year, about how we evaluate our ideas and how do you figure out which ones to keep and which ones to drop?
[Victoria] So I am… I look human shaped to those of you sitting here, but I am actually a six burner stove. This is how my entire mind functions.
[Chuckles]
[Victoria] Six burners on the stove, only one of those at any given time on high heat with the project that I'm actually cooking with. The other five are all simmering on very low heat as I add ingredients to my ideas. So I actually have a very long cook time before I decide if an idea has legs. By the time it's time to assess what next goes on high heat, I know enough about the story to be able to tell whether it's worth pursuing. Now, for different people, these things are different, but for me, I don't pursue a story unless I know how it ends. I do this because one, I'm very prone to quitting and if I have an ending with my story, instead of looking out at the desert, I'm looking across a field and I know it's a finite amount of space. I also am convinced, to go back to the food metaphor, that the end of the story is the taste left in your mouth, and that we will retroactively reassess an entire book based on how strong or weak the ending is. I need my endings to be strong so that I don't lose hope and I want to work with them. So, that is one of the main ingredients that I have to have. When you add that to the fact that a lot of my ideas steep for anywhere from six months to three or four years, then I've never actually trunked a story once I've started it. Because once I've started it, I've known enough about it to know that it has the potential to be a book.
[Howard] As someone who, as of this recording, needs to lose at least 30 pounds…
[Chuckles]
[Howard] The taste left in my mouth was the only thing that remained at the end of the meal… That would be heaven. With regard to evaluating ideas, I… You know that character in the police procedural whose skill set is they're really good at judging other people? You, dear listener, and me, we sometimes like to think that we're good judges of people. Or maybe that's a skill that we want. I have come to grips with the fact that I'm still not very good at it. There are people who I have made the right call on, but there are people who I haven't. Evaluating ideas is the same way. It's not going to happen overnight. You have to meet a lot of people and interact with them. You have to meet a lot of your ideas and interact with them. You have to explore them. You have to try to write them. Then, you develop this sense for, "Oh, this idea is a three book idea. This idea is a plot twist." Where… But both ideas could be expressed in seven words and look the same until you've worked at it a lot.
[Brandon] I work very similarly to Victoria with this whole burner thing. Whatever I'm writing on, I often can't say what the next thing is going to be, with the caveat that when deadlines are tight, it's going to be the one that I have a contract coming due on. But when I hit that point, and I try to build my schedule… A here is a free slot. You have six months you're going to be able to do anything. I can't often say which of the other five projects on the other burners it's going to be. I get there, and then I decide. While I'm working on my book, sometimes I'll be like, "Oh, I'm sure I'm going to do this thing next." Then it'll change to another one. If I had finished that book right then, we would have gotten a different novel next. Which can be, I know, frustrating for fans, because I'll tell them sometimes, here are the many things I'm planning to do next. I'm going to do one of these. Some of the ones that they really are waiting for just never come up because I'm not, when I'm trying to turn all the burners up, I look at them all and decide which one I'm most passionate about.
[Victoria] Well, there's a commonality coming into play here as well, which is the gut feeling. Which is, of course, very frustrating, because it is of course unquantifiable. It is the fact that we consume enough narrative to begin to feel in our own work when something is ready and when something is not. I just finished a book that I sat on for six years because, even though I had the pieces of it, I knew I wasn't ready, I wasn't a strong enough writer. That's a really hard conversation to have with yourself, because we get excited about ideas. So, I think having this six burner stove or a four burner stove or a two burner stove, giving yourself options, really helps you because you don't know where you're going to be at when you're ready to write that next book.
[Dan] The fact that, for all of us, what it eventually comes down to is passion and excitement, what are you most excited about? You will notice, nobody in talking about how they choose projects says, "Oh, this is what sells." Right? We always talk about don't chase the market. Don't chase the market! Like, there is not a market for any particular genre or style. What there's a market for is stuff that's awesome. You will be able to write better the idea that you just can't wait to start writing. You'll be able to write that better than anything else.
 
[Brandon] I will add the caveat there that when a contract is coming due, in a lot of ways, you also have to learn how to force yourself to write… Be passionate about something that you've committed to writing. That's a different skill.
[Howard] That's a different… Skill set.
[Dan] But you presumably committed to that because you were excited about it.
[Victoria] I was going to say, this is the thing. This is why it comes back to things we've talked about already, but it's why it's so important that you let passion and what you actually want to write and not what you think people want to read be a guiding force for your entire career, because that's the only way that you guarantee that when those deadlines come up, you want to write this thing. You're not writing something that you had no interest in writing because you thought it would sell. Like, you have to make sure that in some way, you have that emotional connection with everything on your burner stove, so that even if you have to move something into that forward spot, you're not dreading it. Maybe it's… Maybe you're really excited about something else, but it's really important that you have that core fire for everything that you're writing.
[Howard] Last night, my daughters made me sit down and watch several episodes of a YouTube, Teen Fortress 2 commentary gamer. At one point in the episode, he was doing something funny and they were playing a song… I think it was a love song or something. It was a song I was familiar with, but because of copyright, they couldn't actually play the song or the YouTube video would get pulled. So he had a cheesy karaoke version of the music playing in the background, and the Teen Fortress 2 computer voice reading the lyrics. This is the difference between execution on a brilliant idea which is going to sell millions of copies and execution on a brilliant idea which never would have gotten out of the recording studio. The song, as read by the computer voice… It worked in the episode, obviously, because we had context. But if you set these two things side-by-side, that is the difference between an author who doesn't yet know how to really execute on an idea, and an author who does. When people look at the things that I've done and say, "Oh, man. That idea was so brilliant." I shrug and I'm like, "You know what, guys, the idea was not brilliant." What was brilliant, and I say this patting myself on the back, is that I managed to stretch it out across an entire book, and I drew some really fun pictures, and I made some cool reveals. It wasn't the idea, at the end of it.
[Dan] Yeah. I, a few months ago, published a novella with Magic: The Gathering. Which, to our earlier point, I was not necessarily in love with that setting, right? Because I didn't know what it was when I signed the contract. Then I got into their offices, and they're like, "Well, this character and this setting. Go." So what I had to do was take that core of an idea and find something that I was passionate about in it. What am I going to be able to do? So, first thing, I made it into a heist story. It was not intended to be one, but they were cool with it, they rolled with it, because that's what I was excited about. Being able to take those kind of… Victoria talked about adding ingredients to the pots. I had this big pile of ingredients that hadn't gone in any pots yet, and I was able to throw those exciting ideas into the other job, and then get really excited about it.
 
[Victoria] Also, talking about one of the most difficult and important things to cultivate in yourself, is the understanding of the kitchen sink, right? That you do not need to take every idea that excites you and put it into one book. It's about… And I know I come back to the cooking metaphor a lot, but it's about finding, like, flavors that work together. You don't need to don't every seasoning and every spice and every ingredient in. It's about learning to withhold and say, "This would actually be better on its own as a starlight… The star thing of a different meal."
[Howard] On the second night we were in our house, we ran the dishwasher. You said kitchen sink. The dishwasher drains into the sink. There was this gargling which woke me up because it sounded like a voice. This idea came to me that, "Oh, my gosh, you have a family who's in a house and they think that the house is possessed because the sink is talking to them, and the exorcist can't do anything and the priest can't do anything, and the plumber fixes it." That was the end of the idea. That was as far as it went. This was 1999. Before Schlock Mercenary. Two years into Schlock Mercenary, I realized, you know what, I bet I can tell a ghost story in Schlock Mercenary where it gets fixed by the plumber and everybody is quite upset at that. So, yeah, these ideas, they come from weird places and some of them may seem completely stupid, but… I mean, to the kitchen sink point, I keep track of them. I write them down. You don't write it down, it's lost forever and you don't get to use it.
 
[Brandon] Let's stop for our awesome thing of the week, because it's not a book.
[Howard] Whoo hoo! It's awesome.
[Dan] It is awesome. So, Howard and I and some other local fantasy authors do a Twitch show. We play D&D online every week so that you guys can watch us. It is called TypeCast RPG. We're using… Right now, we're doing a campaign called The Gods of Vaeron in Fifth Edition D&D rules. That is me as the GM, Howard Tayler, Charlie Holmberg, Brian McClellan, Mari Murdock, and Ethan Sproat, all science fiction/fantasy professionals. All authors except Ethan, who's a professor of science fiction. It's super cool.
 
[Howard] There's a thing that happens in TypeCast which speaks well to the topic. I will sometimes illustrate moments from the game. There are moments which are beyond my skill, and I'm just not going to try. But, every so often, I will have an idea, and I need to execute on it in literally a minute and a half. Because if I wait too long, if I draw too slowly, it's gone. The practice that this has given me in evaluating ideas has been frighteningly effective. Because I have to make the decision quickly. I have to execute to the best of my admittedly limited cartooning ability. Yes, I've been doing this for 20 years. But I know what my skill set is and what my skill set isn't. That's the sort of thing that I think authors can learn from, in that you have an idea, you don't need to spend a novel fleshing it out. See how quickly you can flesh it out to determine what it leads to.
 
[Brandon] So, we have further questions along this line. One person asks, "How can you tell the story that you're struggling with has potential and that you should push through or if you should leave it and start working on something you like more?"
[Howard] Someone please answer this.
[Dan] Yes.
[Victoria] Ha ha ha. I mean, that's a difficult thing. I always say it's the same kind of thing along the lines of writer's block. You need to understand why you're struggling. There's a difference between struggling because you're afraid of not doing it justice, struggling because you're bored which you're guaranteed readers are going to be bored then, and kind of like, you need to assess where your mentally at in the process. I will say that some days one of the only things that keeps me going on a story is the fact that I do have an ending in mind. So, coming back to my definitely not prescriptive wisdom, but if you are somebody who struggles to finish things or finds yourself getting lost on the way, I do find that having an ending or at least having mile markers, having things and scenes and moments that you're excited about in the story, having them not all be in the first act, these are things that help me get from A to B to C to D and so on.
[Brandon] That's great advice. Having things you're writing toward, you're excited about. Another thing, kind of on the flipside, you can do is I try to set down… If I'm feeling bored, I try to step back and say, "How can I make this chapter someone's favorite chapter in the whole book?" I find that almost always I can find a way to change up what's going on just a little bit to make that specific chapter a real showpiece for the book. If you can do that for every chapter, suddenly you don't… You're not worried about the idea anymore, you're excited about how this is going. I often say that for newer writers, my experience has been that most of the time, you should use one of those options rather than abandoning the story. There are times to abandon stories, but I think it should be the exception, not the rule. It should happen very rarely. Particularly if you're new, you just need to learn to finish things. So, learn to make every chapter the most exciting or the most interesting chapter in the book.
[Dan] Definitely, if this is your first book or even your second, just finish it. Because forcing yourself to finish a book that you are maybe not in love with anymore is going to teach you how to stay in love with books. It's going to teach you so much more about evaluating their validity than we can just tell you over the computer here.
 
[Howard] I did an unblocking session, a small group session, at the Writing Excuses Retreat in 2019. It was a delightful session. One of the things that I talked about is that… I've been doing this for long enough that I have a checklist. The checklist is there to determine is this an overarching story problem? Is this a scene problem? Is this a chapter problem? Then, is this a me problem? Am I sick? Have I eaten yet today? Do I need to hydrate? Do I need to go get some exercise? Do I need to go back to the well? Have I forgotten to take my medication today? There's all kinds of things. Until I have… Until I actually acknowledged that there was a checklist and that there were criteria, I was really bad at figuring this out. I've gotten much better at it because I get stuck all the time. I think we all, to some level, get stuck all the time. If the only question you know how to ask is, "Does this mean it's time to abandon the story?" it means, boy, you need a checklist, because there's a whole bunch of other things that come first.
[Victoria] You need more questions before that last resort.
[Howard] Yeah.
[Brandon] I… Even in my professional career, I've rarely abandoned stories. The one thing that I've abandoned most recently was done after revisions determined that revising the book to be as good as I wanted it to be would be as much work as writing a new book. That revision wasn't guaranteed to succeed. So I shelved that book.
[Howard] And the new book would be better.
[Brandon] And the new book would be better. I shelved that book, but I still finished the book. Right? Finishing things… We have another question here, "How do you find energy to keep a story going after that first spark of inspiration fades?"
 
[Victoria] I feel so strongly about this. This is shiny new idea syndrome. It is a medical syndrome. I think we have all felt it. There's a thing that happens either 50 pages, 100, 150 pages in, where suddenly you are like, "Um. This is familiar. I have…" That's exactly when you get a new idea. Something pops into your head. It's shiny, you don't understand it, it's mysterious and alluring, and you think I should follow that instead. So many writers, especially aspiring writers and authors, dropped the thing that they're working on to go follow the shiny new idea. It is a trick that your brain is pulling because in order to finish a story, in order to write a story, not only its beginning, but its middle and end, you have to become familiar with the material. As you become familiar with the material, that inherent shine of mystery and elusiveness wears off, potential energy becomes kinetic energy in which something is always lost. So we think, surely if I follow the shiny new idea, that one won't disappoint me.
[Chuckles]
[Victoria] It is a way toward madness. It is a way to never finish anything. I think that comes back to finish it. Even if it's not fabulous, even if you don't want to revise it, you will learn so much in the process of hitting that finish line.
[Howard] I was a music composition major, and I did not learn this lesson as a musician. I think it may be the reason why I'm a cartoonist and not a musician. Because by the time I started cartooning, I had figured it out. As a musician, I came up with wonderful themes and textures and arrangements and everything was a couple of minutes long. My instructors kept saying, "Give us some theme and variation. Explore this, dig into this. Expand it." But it's perfect the way it is! It wasn't perfect the way it was. I had another shiny idea I wanted to chase instead. Yeah, you listen to an orchestral suite, you listen to the symphonic greats from whenever, there's a core theme in there that they explored and explored and explored and explored and explored before they moved on to the shiny.
[Dan] I think when you're in this situation and you're kind of bored with a story and you want to pursue a new one, you're trying to decide if you should drop it or not, take a look at what your goals are for that. What are you hoping to accomplish with this short story or with this book that you are writing? Because, first of all, as we've discussed, if you're early career, the purpose of that book is not to sell, right? If you think, "Oh, this is impossible. I'm not going to be able to sell this." Well, you're not going to be able to sell it anyway, it's your first book. Its goal is to teach you how to write your second book.
[Howard] We're saying that very kindly.
[Dan] Very kindly and lovingly. I had five garbage truck novels before I finally wrote my first published novel. So, think about it. So really what you're doing, if you're early career, is you're learning how to write books. You don't have to think, "Oh, this book won't sell." Or "This book isn't perfect." It doesn't matter, because your goal is to learn how to write. Finishing it is going to teach you how to write.
 
[Brandon] We are out of time. Howard, you have some homework for us.
[Howard] I have some truly terrifying homework for you. I want you to get a writing implement and something to write on. Pencil, maybe a notebook. Set it next to your bed. Or whatever the thing is you sleep on. When you wake up in the morning, write down everything you can remember about your dreams from the night before. If you can't remember anything, write the words, "I didn't remember my dreams this morning." Okay? Do this for a week. At the end of the week, review the journal, and see if there is an idea there that perhaps you want to explore in your fiction.
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go dream.
 
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Writing Excuses 15.09: Choose Your Own Adventurous Publishing Path

Mar. 4th, 2020 05:02 pm
mbarker: (Me typing?)
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Writing Excuses 15.09: Choose Your Own Adventurous Publishing Path
 
 
Key Points: Self-pub? Traditional pub? Hybrid? How do you decide what's the best outlet for your work? Right now, trad and indie are two parallel but separate markets. Which one is best for your book? Who else is doing similar work, are there successful titles like it in the market? Don't try to go indie just because your work isn't very good! Look where your audience is. But there is no easy mode of publishing. Don't get taken in by "Here's the simple path to success." Fundamental strategies or principles are the same, but you have to keep up with the changes, too. You can make self pub and trad work together. Your goal should not be "making a stunning debut." Your goal should be cranking out good books. Be a 10-year overnight success! Similarly, awards are a consequence, not a goal. Turn your words into money. 
 
[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode Nine.
[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, Choose Your Own Adventurous Publishing Path.
[Pause]
[Dongwon] 15 minutes long.
[Piper] Because you're in a hurry.
[Howard] And Dongwon didn't know he was supposed to turn to page 3.
[Chuckles]
[Dongwon] I was too busy marveling at the beauty of that very smooth episode title.
[Howard] Isn't it great?
[Piper] I was panicked because I'm in… Like, a different spot.
[Dan] These are the kind of titles that we get when there's no adults in the room.
[Dongwon] Choices have been made.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Howard] Who are the people who…
[Dongwon] I'm Dongwon.
[Piper] I'm Piper.
[Howard] I'm Howard.
 
[Dan] Awesome. Okay. Despite the very unprofessional nature of this episode intro, this is a very great and important topic to discuss. One of… Like… As we've been covering throughout the entire year, there's a lot of career questions that we know you listeners have. This is one of the big ones that we hear at conventions and all the time, is, should I go self-pub? Should I go traditional pub? Should I do some kind of hybrid of that in the middle? So we wanted to make sure that we had both Dongwon as an agent and Piper as a very successful hybrid author on this cast to talk about this. So, I'm going to ask be really dangerous question first that's going to get us all in trouble. When you're looking at a particular work, how can you decide what the best outlet for that is, self pub, indie, trad? How do you know?
[Piper] I have a thought, but I think Dongwon has a thought, too.
[Dongwon] Let's see if our thoughts are in alignment. So, I think, is my thinking about this has evolved and as I've sort of taken a close look at both markets and sort of the state of where traditional publishing is, I have become more and more convinced that they're two parallel but separate markets happening in book publishing right now. I think the indie readership and the indie authorship and publishing is often a discrete set of people from the people buying traditional books in bookstores. So I think the question is whenever you have a specific book is, is this particular type of book working in the indie bookstore or… Well, indie bookstores or independent publishing, right? So I think you need to be looking carefully at who else is doing this and are there other successful titles like your book in this market, right? So if you're writing a 200,000 word literary beautifully written epic fantasy story, I think that's going to be a really tough sell in the indie market, right? On the other hand, if you're writing a 60,000 word compulsive urban fantasy that's part of a 10 book series, you're going to have a really hard time finding a traditional publisher, right? So I think a lot of this is being driven by certain market trends, certain audience expectations and demands.
 
[Howard] I'd like to take just a moment to address the third possibility, which is that the thing that you are writing, depending on who you are and what it is that you are writing, might not fit in either place because it's not very good.
[Chuckles]
[Howard] I hate to phrase it in that way, but if you've been turned down for representation by agent after agent, if you've gotten rejection from editor after editor, and what they been saying is, "This isn't ready yet, thank you for playing." That's very different from what my agent told me in 2006, which was, "I have tried to sell this…" We were talking about Schlock Mercenary. "I have tried to sell this, and everybody I've talked to has either said I'm already reading Schlock Mercenary, I love it. We don't have any place for it at our publishing house. Or, I don't know what that is, but I can tell you right now, we don't have room for it at our publishing house." In every case, the answer was, "Howard, you need to be self-publishing." Now, I'm self published differently than the Kindle Unlimited or whatever market, but the decision point is the same. I was told by the gatekeepers, if you will, that my thing fit in a different space. If I'd been told, "Oh, we would love to pick that up, something like that up, we've been looking for just such a thing, but this one is really crappy…"
[Chuckles]
[Howard] Going to the indie space with it might not be a great career move. So… That's… I bring that up because I don't want people to go to Indy because… I don't want them to go to Indy without good critiques, without understanding…
[Dan] Yeah. I'm glad that you brought that up, because even 10 years ago, that was the whole stigma of the entire indie market, which is, these are the people who couldn't hack it in the real publishing, and so they went indie. Which is not… It wasn't true then, and it's very, very not true now. It is absolutely a respected and viable publishing path, but it wasn't before. Now, Piper, you keep trying to talk, and we keep stepping on you. What do you want to jump in here with?
 
[Piper] You're not stepping on me. I'm dodging, I'm waiting, I'm dodging. But, the moment is here. So, I do agree that there needs to be a certain quality, that you have to have faith in, in your book, and be sensitive to… Open to critique so that you know this is the right quality. There are, I agree, certain market trends that will help you to realize that perhaps your book could find your readership better via self pub or indie. So, for example, science-fiction romance right now, at this time in 2019, is very niche. It has a very specific readership, and that readership often looks for things online in certain ways. So it's so niche, it's not necessarily picked up by trad pub. But there are readers out there hungry for it. So it can still be very, very successful if you take the leap of faith to go indie with this series. You can have a really small, tight, but super loyal readership out of that. That can be very, very profitable. I would say paranormal romance is something that people have been waiting for it to come back for years and years and years, but I've got news. There's readers. They're out there. They love paranormal romance, they would eat it up. The audience is out there for indie work and self pub work.
[Dan] Yeah. I agree with that. I… My first self published book is now eight or nine years old. I've been hybrid for a while. It was for that exact reason. Here's a book that is clearly good and there clearly is an audience for it, but that audience is small enough that a big publisher is not necessarily interested. So we put it out in that space, and it found its audience and that's great.
[Piper] Yeah, and you can make money that way. It's not that trad pub is the way to go to make bank. Right? Indie pubs can definitely make, if your goals are focused on the financial return. Any pub can be very profitable done strategically. There are advantages to trad. But indie can also have strategies that allow it to be profitable.
[Dongwon] You keep such a higher percentage of every sale you make, if you go indie, that it takes so many fewer copies sold to really be very profitable. If you know what you're doing, and if you're successful, you can make significantly more money by going indie than you will traditional.
[Howard] Six weeks ago, we had several authors on the show. It was one of the ones that we recorded live at the Writing Excuses Retreat. That episode is probably resonating with you right now, dear listener, as you are recalling some of the numbers that they spouted.
 
[Dongwon] The thing I really want to caution you, though, is for every one person who is making those kind of numbers, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of people who are selling under 10 copies a week, right? Those who have under 20 copies sold total of their book, right? All I'm pointing out… That's true on the traditional side, too. There's plenty of books that are published traditionally that vanish without a trace, that you've never heard of, right? I'm only pointing out that there's no easy mode of publishing, right? Sometimes where I get very nervous about the conversation around self-publishing and indie is there's a certain industry of people who are invested in making it look easy and invested in saying that here's a simple path to success, right? Here's the 10 tricks you can do. From my experience, that just doesn't exist.
[Howard] They're invested in it, because they have built a business around selling shovels to the prospectors.
[Chuckles]
[Howard] They are the ones who are selling editor services, selling cover services, selling whatever. Part of their pitch is telling you…
[Dan] Well, it's not entirely these people, though. I do think that there is kind of a…
[Howard] Oh, there's absolutely…
[Dan] A group of old-school people that've kind of been burned by the market and their primary investment is biting the hand that used to feed them and doesn't anymore.
 
[Piper] Well, I would like to say that I have some recs because sometimes it's really frustrating to listen to these episodes and just have somebody tell you to go out and find somebody who knows what they're doing. So, dear listeners, I have some people who know what they're doing.
[Chuckles]
[Piper] So, Zoe York is getting a shout out. I don't know her personally. I have not ever spoken to her, but I do stalk her… I mean, follow her on social media. Zoe York has a book coming out. She also has two really great podcast episodes on the Sistercast about building your marketing brand. Now, it's applicable if you're a trad author, but particularly if you're going to go indie, if you're going to go with self pub, those two episodes really, really break down what it's like to think strategically about your approach to the market, and how you're not only going to market your first book, but your series if you're going to have a series, and then how do you keep that going over time so that you can build that trickle income up to something that really feels good. Skye Warren also did a marketing class for expert marketing advice through the RWA forum to celebrate the opening of their RWA marketing forum in January 2019. So those are two people who really know what they're doing and have made that information and knowledge available to you publicly.
 
[Dan] Perfect. As it happens, Zoe York is our book of the week.
[Piper] It is.
[Dan] Romance Your Brand. What can you tell us about that?
[Piper] So, Romance Your Brand came out in December 2019. It's, actually, the full title is Romance Your Brand: Building a Marketable Genre Fiction Series. So, friends, don't think that this is limited to romance. It is applicable across, I would say, all spec-fic genres. It is really, really focused on helping you build a marketable brand with an eye towards all the things that you need to be able to keep in mind, the moving parts of promotion and marketing and ads and also planning out your series.
[Howard] Because some of these things just work so much better in print than they do in audio, what we're going to do is were going to get a list of Piper's recommendations for people you can trust. I want to throw Writer Beware in there. And we're going to get them into the liner notes, so that you've got links. I bring up Writer Beware because I figured out how to articulate my concern. My concern is that the un-agented author, the author who has… Who hasn't found their footing, hasn't found their connections within the industry, and is looking for somebody to help out, is a prime target for predatory publishing schemes. We don't want any of you to end up there. We want all of you to never end up there. The way to avoid that is to listen to the reputable voices and do some homework. We will have pre-done some of that homework for you.
 
[Dongwon] For me, I'm very focused on educating writers about how the business works, and I think it's really important. It's one of the reasons I do this podcast, not just to hang out with your beautiful faces. But what I want to do is make sure that people understand what they're getting into. So I hope I'm not coming off as negative about the indie market, I'm not at all. I think it's a really wonderful opportunity. It just breaks my heart when I see people going out there being sold a false bill of goods and not understanding how things work. In my experience, kind of going into what Piper was talking about a little bit, is publishing is kind of publishing no matter how you're doing it. The fundamental strategies, whether you're doing literary fiction, contemporary realistic, women's fiction, or indie romance, or whatever it is, the fundamental principles are all still the same. Selling books is just selling books. There are different tactics that can apply in very limited ways, right? I think indie has a certain set of tactics that are working. Those change seemingly every six months or so. So a lot of it is keeping up on, like, what's working right now, what strategies are we using, how's the algorithm working, and those kinds of things. But we're doing the same thing on the traditional side. On a slightly slower cycle, but what's going on with the booksellers, what's going on with the libraries, what's going on with the school markets? So, a lot of it is similar factors, but the underlying principles are all the same, no matter where you are.
[Piper] As a hybrid author, I just want to say that you can harness those marketing strategies so that your indie and your trad can work together and actually build each other up.
 
[Dan] That… Let's talk about that. Because we talk about being a hybrid author all the time, and yet there still are people who are wondering, "Can I self pub and still have an agent? Is it possible to self pub one book and then get picked up by a trad publisher for your second one?" What can you tell us about that?
[Piper] Well, I can tell you that it is totally possible. There are some concerns sometimes with it. You want to look at the genres of what works you're going to self pub and what works you're going to try to put out there for submission for trad. In some ways, it may be easier for you mentally to think about I'm going to self pub in this genre first while I submit for trad in another genre. That doesn't necessarily have to be the way you go, but sometimes it's easier. Because the risk is if you put a book out indie and it doesn't perform well, and then you try to take that same book or a book in that series to trad, there's a track record that the publishing houses going to look at to determine whether they think there's a market for that book. That can impact you. Right, sometimes if your book went gangbusters and awesome, then, yes, the trad pub is going to want to eat that up and take it and publish out further with their extended distribution capabilities for you. But in other cases, when the book does not do as well or does not find its audience, the trad pub may unfortunately decide that that's not a good investment, and therefore it can hurt your chances. You want to think critically about that.
[Dongwon] You almost never can take a book that you've self published and resell that to some publisher. The cases where that happens is people are coming to you because you are selling so many copies, right? So if you are Andy Weir and you're just selling a billion copies every 30 seconds, then, yeah, publishers are going to come knocking, yelling, "Hey. We want in on this." Right?
[Dan] We want some of your money.
[Dongwon] If that's happening, then that is when that works. If you self publish something, you're not getting the numbers, you're not getting a lot of excitement, then my advice is to move on to something else that's in a different category, a new series, and that's what you want to be pitching to some publishers. The hybrid authors I work with, we really view the self-publishing side and the traditional side as two parallel careers. There's crossover in terms of the marketing and brand. In my experience, there's almost no crossover in terms of audience. The people who buy one are not buying the other one. Right? So you can't expect that if you sold 100,000 copies indie, that suddenly you're going to sell 100,000 hardcovers, right? So I think learning to think of them as two separate channels that you're developing in parallel. It's really more about market and career diversification, then it is about transferring audience from one to the other.
[Piper] I'm going to slightly disagree with you on the fact that I do, as a Venn diagram, think there's a small amount of overlap, because I don't want to disregard the readers that are buying both. But that's because there are readers that have become loyal to the author and decide that the author, regardless of how it was published, is a one-click buy. But they are a smaller selection.
[Howard] We also need to take into account that 10 years ago, this conversation would have been completely different, and that these markets change. For me, the decision points about choosing your own adventurous publishing path hinge on some of the same things, which are, on these two different paths, which market is my book going to sell better into? That's going to change over the years. The big one for me is do I want to make the sale once and let somebody else sell it a million times, or do I want to beat down 10,000 doors myself? I chose the beat 10,000 doors down myself path because I'm an idiot.
[Chuckles]
[Dongwon] Or you really like knocking on doors, Howard.
[Piper] Yeah, maybe.
[Howard] I really… I would much rather have somebody else doing that work for me. But what we found is that my primary product, as of this episode airing, is something that plays to a market where I can't let one person sell it for me.
 
[Dan] It's worth pointing out, you said that these markets change over time. They're still changing. We're in the middle of a massive technological flux in this industry. I genuinely don't know what either the trad or indie market is going to look like a year from now. We don't know. So it is worth your time not just to figure out what to do with your own books, but to keep your thumb on the pulse and keep track of what is going on. Who is big, and where they're big, and why they're big. Because it's going to keep shifting throughout your career. I have one more question before we end. We're going to go a little bit long, because somebody asked a question that I think needs more of a disabusement than an answer. He says, "Does self-publishing count as a debut, and hence ruin your chance of emerging with a big bang?" In a lot of ways, I think that if you're publishing plan is I want to emerge with a big bang, I want "a stunning debut" written on the cover of my book, your publishing plan at that point is to win the lottery. What you need to be focused on more so than these questions "of am I going to hit big? Am I going to have a massive debut?" You just need to be cranking out good books.
[Howard] For every big debut we can think of, we can quickly put our fingers on, there are 100 ten-year overnight successes. Where people have been grinding away at this, and they've had books hit the market, and they've perhaps rebooted their career a couple of times… That would be a great topic for later this year.
[Dan] Hey!
[Piper] Hey-o!
[Howard] And yet, we don't really notice them until this thing happens. Well, that's not a debut author. That is a ten-year overnight success.
[Dan] One of the examples I love to use is Hilary Mantel. She started small, she got big, and then with Wolf Hall, she got huge. She got massive. She had a BBC miniseries. All of these things. That was the first time most of her readers had ever heard of her. So, in a sense, that was emerging with the Big Bang. She just had to write 20 other books 1st.
[Piper] Right. Patricia Briggs is my favorite, favorite author in the urban fantasy space. But I read her before she hit big with the Mercy Thompson series. She had the Sianim series, she had Hurog series, she had a really, really fun adorable book, The Hob's Bargain that I was in love with and have read 50 bajillion times and had to buy three new copies of that book. So she was out there already for quite a few years before she ever wrote urban fantasy. People are like, "Oh. She hit big." But she was already out there, friends. She was already out there, she had written quite a few books already before the Mercy Thompson series came out, and that hit.
[Dongwon] To sort of go back, though, and answer the actual question, if you all don't mind?
[Chuckles]
[Dan] Oh, fine.
[Dongwon] What we do do is we say it is a traditional debut, or a traditionally published debut. You put parentheses around traditionally published and you make the font really little, so it looks like it's just a debut. That's the actual answer.
 
[Dan] I'm glad that you hit that. Okay, so there is one aspect of this that I do want to touch on a little bit, which is awards. Again, I don't think that your goal should be to win awards. Your goal should be to write good books in a long-term career. But, for example, the Astounding Award for Best New Author, which is connected to the Hugo, that one, I… You can only win that in the first two years of publishing. But they look… They do, for that one, look at specific markets. So they don't count self pub for that. To my knowledge. That could change any day. Because as we said these things are still in flux. So. There is that. But I don't want anyone listening to this episode to say, "Oh, I've got a fantastic book. I'm going to wait three years to publish it because I want to make sure I have a shot at the Astounding Award." That's not your goal.
[Howard] "I don't want to spoil my Astounding eligibility." No, what you don't want to spoil is you're not getting paid for writing these words.
[Dan] Exactly.
[Howard] Let's go turn these words into money.
[Piper] Awards, actually, don't often boost your sales. Like, there's a spike. Don't get me wrong, there is a spike. But they don't skyrocket your career in the big picture and the long tail.
[Dongwon] The thing I always say is that awards are a sign that other things are going well. Awards are a consequence, not a goal.
[Piper] Agreed.
 
[Dan] Excellent way of putting it. We are going to end our episode right here, and we are all kind of on egg shells because Howard told us he has a secret homework planned and he wouldn't tell us what it was.
[Howard] Okay. The secret homework plan is I want you to write the Choose Your Own Adventurous Publishing Path thing. What you're going to do, you're going to build yourself a flowchart with little decision points about your manuscript. Is this going to sell into a wider market? Is this a niche market? Do I want to hand sell a bunch of copies? Do I want to sell it to one person? Do I have test readers in mind? How do I feel about this manuscript? You're going to write this thing, and in writing this thing, start fleshing out the flowchart. Start fleshing out the flowchart, and write a fun fiction about your Adventurous Publishing Path. Fill every one of those pages. I promise you, when you are done with this, you will be the first person ever to have written this.
[Laughter]
[Howard] Because it's ridiculous. But also, I promise you, you'll be way more excited about choosing these things, because you will have begun imagining yourself making the difficult decisions.
[Dongwon] Please work hard to keep it from becoming GrimDark.
[Laughter]
[Howard] Oh, I want to read the GrimDark one.
[Chuckles]
[Howard] That's going to be great.
[Piper] Make it light! And fun.
[Howard] He didn't win the Astounding Award. Something got hit by a meteor. All right. Dan, take us home. Please.
[Laughter]
[Dan] From where?
[Howard] The ruins of civilization.
[Dan] Okay. Unlike Howard, you have no excuses. Now go write.
 
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Writing Excuses 15.08: Q&A on a Ship

Feb. 26th, 2020 11:14 am
mbarker: (Fireworks Delight)
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Writing Excuses 15.08: Q&A on a Ship
 
 
Q&A Points:
Q: What have any of you learned in the past year that has improved your craft?
A: Talk to your editor early in the process. Use an outboard brain. Do the hard thing. Take a chance, make mistakes, and do something because it might be fun. Go watch Lindsay Ellis Three Act Structure. (Maybe this one? https://youtu.be/o0QO7YuKKdI)
Q: My question is when you're having trouble, how do you know if it's a "I don't feel like writing today" problem or there's a structural problem that your mind is trying to ignore because it would be difficult to deal with?
A: Look at the problem, what is the barrier to moving the story forward? Make yourself a checklist, an inventory of things that can go wrong. Trust your instincts.
Q: As published professional authors, how far ahead do you plan the futures of your careers? Do you know what genres, series, or even specific books that you'll be working on in five years or in 15 years?
A: Committed idiot. Plan ahead, but publishing is volatile. Strategy, planning, but be ready to drop it. Be ready to jump in a different direction. Have a roadmap, and build a new one if you need to. Diversified income. Make plans for multiple scenarios, for whatever happens at cost points.
Q: How do you tell when a fight or a battle or a climactic final showdown is going on for too long?
A: When you wonder if it's gone on too long.
Q: How do you continue to learn and improve on your writing craft, now that you're further in your career? Have there been any times that you felt like you've plateaued and what do you do about it?
A: Learn by teaching. Externalize and explain, talk through the process.
Q: When you're working on multiple projects, how do you manage or prioritize yourself such that you don't get too disconnected from one project while you're working on another?
A: Identify different phases, and avoid doubling up on phases.
Q: If you've got multiple characters with very strong voices, how do you feel about having multiple first-person perspectives? Horribly bad idea or just really difficult?
A: Try it. See how it reads.
Q: What are the most important elements to include on the last page of your book?
A: The end is a frame, matching your beginning. Show who the character is now, how things have changed, and give the reader the emotional punch you've been aiming at.
Q: What are some things we can do to work on developing and strengthening voice when writing in the third person?
A: Rhythms that are linked to the character's personality, idioms, metaphors. Make the character feel specific and vivid.
Q: How do you decide who works best as an alpha reader and who works better as a beta reader?
A: Experience and personal preference. What are you looking for in readers, how are you using them?
Q: My question is in secondary world fiction, can you talk about how to decide between calling a horse just a horse or something unique to the world?
A: Does it connect to your story? If a horse is just a horse, call it a horse.
Q: How much leeway will an agent generally give a new writer if they like the idea or concept of a story or see promise in it, but it isn't quite there yet?
A: Agents work with people, not projects. If they believe in the person, they get lots of leeway.
 
[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode Eight.
[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, Q&A on a Ship.
[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.
[Dongwon] Because you're in a hurry.
[Howard] And we're not that smart.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[Dongwon] I'm Dongwon.
[Howard] I've been on this ship for several days now.
[Chuckles]
[Dan] Which is a lot longer than 15 minutes. We are here at the 2019 Writing Excuses Retreat on a cruise ship in the Caribbean Sea. Actually, right now we're in the Gulf of Mexico. We have a live audience in front of us. Say hello, live audience.
[Whoo!]
[Dan] Awesome. We have asked them to ask us some questions. Our theme this whole year is the questions of the audience. We've been trying to answer them, we'll continue doing that throughout. Now, we have some live ones. So, our first question. Tell us your name and your question.
 
[Caleb] This is Caleb. I'm wondering what any of you have learned in the past year that has improved your craft?
[Mary Robinette] What any of us have learned in the past year that has improved our craft? I actually learned the value of talking to my editor really early in the process. One of the things that happened to me this year was that I had a number of events that derailed me from writing. I was working on a novel, and my usual process did not work. So… When I say editor, what I guess I mean is using an outboard brain. My usual process was not working, because I kept having life things go wrong. There were some family members at hospitals, then we were moving, and it was just a lot of things. Going to someone else and saying, "I cannot hold this story in my head. Please help me focus." was immensely valuable and actually got me back on track.
[Dongwon] That's convenient, because the lesson I learned this year was to talk to my clients early in the process.
[Chuckles]
[Dongwon] To make sure that everything's on track. I think one of the things that I learned that kind of lined up with that is to not be afraid to push people to do the thing that is hard. Right? In that sometimes when you're giving editorial feedback, because you're working with somebody who puts their heart and soul into a manuscript, into a book, you want to be… You want to be nice, right? You want to go easy on them in certain ways because you like this person, you work with this person. For me, one of the things I had to really learn in this past year is to get involved early and don't be afraid of saying, "Is this really the right choice? Is this the best way to get where you're going?" Sometimes, breaking it down and doing the hard work is the most important thing. Whether or not that's going to make someone upset.
[Howard] For me, it was when I joined the TypeCastRPG role-playing game and decided that, you know what, for fun, I think I'm going to try to live sketch things that happen during the game. The pressure there being I need to turn out a… What is ultimately a single panel comic strip that depends on the context of the game in a minute and a half. Then we did a live show at [FanEx] and they set up an Elmo and I… To borrow the metaphor, screwed the courage to the wall and said, "I'm going to make terrible, terrible mistakes and I'm going to do it when my arms are 10 feet long on this screen behind me…"
[Chuckles]
[Howard] "But I'm going to do it anyway because it might be fun." It unlocked a piece of my brain that allowed me to visualize more quickly and draw faster and draw things I've never drawn before.
[Dan] Fantastic. Just, really quick for me, I talked about this in one of the classes that I taught here on the retreat, the Lindsay Ellis's episode about three act structure and the way that she explained it made three act structure work for me in a way that it never has before. So everyone go watch that. It's brilliant.
 
[Dan] All right. We have another question.
[Allison] Hi. My name is Allison. My question is when you're having trouble, how do you know if it's a "I don't feel like writing today" problem or there's a structural problem that your mind is trying to ignore because it would be difficult to deal with?
[Mary Robinette] I wish I knew the answer to that one.
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] That's a really super common problem. The way I evaluate it is whether or not… Is to interrogate the quest… The problem that I'm having. I look at the problem and I'm like, "Okay. What is the barrier between me and moving this story forward?" If it's… If I can't identify a barrier, that means that it's probably me, it is not actually the story. If it is… Sometimes it is… There is actually a problem with the story that is really difficult to diagnose. That's when handing it to someone else to look at becomes useful. But most of the time, if I ask just what is the barrier that is between me and moving forward, or the character and moving forward, that will unlock what the problem is.
[Howard] I've found that, for a lot of people, by the time you reach a point in your writing career where you're comfortable answering this question, you may have moved beyond actually writing down the equivalent of a preflight checklist. But having a preflight checklist, having a way to take inventory of the things that can be wrong… They might be diagnostic tools like pacing, three act structure, character arc, conflict, seven point whatever… The sorts of things that we talk about here on Writing Excuses all the time. When I'm writing jokes, I have this sort of checklist. I've internalized it. But what I found is that when I'm stuck, I have to take inventory. A lot of the times, it's me. I haven't had enough sleep. I haven't eaten correctly. I'm exhausted because of an emotional thing. The temperature in the room is wrong and it's making me grouchy. This character is at the wrong point in their character arc for me to write the scene that I want to write, therefore, I don't feel justified in writing it. By the time I'm able to articulate these things, the unlocking starts moving really quickly. I can see where the problems are, and where the problems aren't.
[Dongwon] I think it's probably the most frustrating advice I give, and also the most important advice that I like to give, is that you need to learn to trust your instincts. Right? But this is a case where it's very hard to tell where the line between your conscious thought and your instinct is. So, the thing I think about a lot is what Howard was just talking about is the ways in which your conscious and subconscious mind are connected to your embodiment, right? So, a lot of things that can help you are really core mental health and mindfulness techniques, right? Meditation, yoga, go for a run, go take a shower, go take a break. Find something that uses up part of your brain so that your subconscious can chew on it. Then come back to it when you're feeling calm and relaxed and centered, and try and get in touch with what is your core emotion here? What is your instinct telling you, versus what is your fear telling you? Right? If that instinct is saying, "Actually, it's a structural problem here," then focus on that, and do that hard work. On average, if you're having that question, you're probably right, that the problem is bigger than I don't feel like writing right now. On average.
[Mary Robinette] I forgot that I have an entire blog post on this that we'll put in the liner notes. Which is… For those people who never go to look at the liner notes, you can search for it. It's called Sometimes Writer's Block Is Really Depression. I talk about how to diagnose the kind of delays that you are having and the kind of… Like, if your drowsy, it's probably that your story is boring. If you are restless, it's probably that you don't actually know the next thing that's going to happen or you don't believe it actually, I think. But, anyway, Sometimes Writer's Block Is Really Depression. It includes how to diagnose it, and then a long list of tools for when it is… The problem is not with the manuscript, but external to the manuscript, to your own life. Some things to help you move forward.
 
[Dan] Awesome. Cool. Next question.
[Matt] Hello, my name is Matt Chambers. My question is as published professional authors, how far ahead do you plan the futures of your careers? Do you know what genres, series, or even specific books that you'll be working on in five years or in 15 years?
[Howard] 10 years ago…
[Dan] Now I'm just depressed.
[Laughter]
[Howard] 10 years ago, I could have told you that 10 years from now, I would definitely still be doing Schlock Mercenary. Five years ago, I could have told you when the major Schlock Mercenary mega arc was going to end. Two years ago, I could have, but wouldn't have, told you how it was going to end and what all the book plans and plot plans were around that. This year, I am re-thinking all of that, because I was probably an idiot, but I'm committed, so I'm sticking to it in a blind panic.
[Laughter]
[Dan] Committed idiot is actually a great thing to put on my business cards. Six years ago, I had the very best year of my career up to that point, and since.
[Howard] Oh, dear.
[Dan] I thought at the time that I knew I would be doing six years later, and had no idea that one of my publishers was going to dry up completely, that one of my series was going to tank abysmally. So, kind of my answer to this is that it is very smart to plan ahead, but that this industry is very volatile. A lesson I did not learn early enough is how to plan around that volatility. The good news is we're going to have one, and possibly two, episodes on this exact topic later in the year with Dongwon about how to plan out your career and how that career can change and how to reboot it when it falls apart.
[Dongwon] Yeah. I love talking to my clients about strategy. A lot of times, what most of them are planning three, four… Not even books, like 3 to 4 contracts out, right? And a contract can be 2 to 3 books. So it's what are we doing here, what's coming after that, what's coming after that? The important thing, as Dan kind of touched on, is that you have to be sort of ready to throw all of that out at the drop of a hat, right? Publishing is extremely volatile, you have no idea what's going to happen when that book hits the market. So you have to be kind of ready to jump in a different direction. Sometimes you have backup plans, and sometimes you don't. But always have something… Some roadmap of where you want to go. Then be ready to build a new one when you need to.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I… Much like everyone else, my plans change. The things that… For me, the metrics that have been working is that I have… I have kept my income stream diversified, so that's why I have three different careers running simultaneously. So that when one of them is not doing well, I can fill in the gaps with one of the others. I also think about the shape that I want my career to take. That, generally, is that I want to be able to turn down the gigs that I don't want to do. Which means that if a really lucrative contract comes in, and I'm like, "That looks… I mean, the money looks really great, but I don't want to be pigeonholed into doing that kind of work," that's not… That is something that I can think about turning down, and that I can decide in the moment. I have a giant list of novels that I want to write. I won't get to write them all, probably. But I keep them. Then, I think, the last piece of advice that I was just given this past year… I was in an enviable position, which is that I had just won the Nebula and the Locus, and we were looking at the Hugo. I was like… People kept saying, "Well, you're going to win it." I'm like, "You can't think that. That's not healthy. Certainly not healthy for me." Then my agent, Seth Fishman, said I should think about it like applying to college. That you don't know whether or not you're going to get into college, but you make plans for both scenarios. You make plans for well, if I get into college, I'm going to need to be able to put these things into place. If I don't get into college, then these are the backup plans that I have and this is how I'm going to occupy my life. So I think that that's one of the things that is very useful, is to think about the possible cusp points in your career, and to think about positive outcomes for either cusp point. So that's… That has been very helpful for me. Fortunately, I did get into college, in this particular scenario.
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] But it was also… Even the positive things can rock you if you are not prepared for them.
 
[Dan] Awesome. I want to pause right now for our book of the week, which is also Mary Robinette.
[Mary Robinette] Yes. I want to talk about a book called Jade War, which is the sequel to Fonda Lee's… Wait. Yes. The sequel to Fonda Lee's Jade City. I just had this moment of thinking that I had them backwards. So, I blurbed the first book, and the second book is every bit as fantastic. It is the Godfather meets like a Kung Fu wire film. It's secondary world fantasy, but it feels like 1960s or 70s Earth. But there are people who can use jade and they can do magic, except they don't think of it as magic, it's just part of an… It's just completely woven into the world. It feels so real that I am surprised that it is not. The relationships are compelling. If you are someone who likes a well-written sex scene, it is not the entirety of the book, but there are a couple in there that are some of the hottest and… Like, really beautifully drawn consensual sex scenes. The consensual parts is the part that I find appealing. But the…
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] Just the entire thing, it's great. It's Jade War by Fonda Lee.
[Dan] Cool. Thank you very much.
 
[Dan] Now, we still have several questions to get… Left. We want to try to get to them all. We're going to let this episode run a little long. But we're going to call this the lightning round, okay? So ask your question, and then one of us will answer it instead of all four. So, go.
[Cameron] Okay. Hey, guys, my name is Cameron. I was wondering how do you tell when a fight or a battle or a climactic final showdown is going on for too long?
[Dongwon] When you wonder if it's gone on too long.
[Laughter]
[Dan] [Haha!] Excellent answer. Next?
[Chuckles]
 
[Caitlin] Hi, I'm Caitlin. How do you continue to learn and improve on your writing craft, now that you're further in your career? Have there been any times that you felt like you've plateaued and what do you do about it?
[Mary Robinette] I learn by teaching. When I was a pup… Getting trained in puppetry, what my instructor had me do is he would have me learn everything with my right hand, he would teach me with my right hand, then he would have me teach my left hand how to do it. What he said was any time you have to externalize and explain what you're doing, even if it's to yourself, that it causes you to hone your craft and to get rid of the parts that aren't important. I find that when I am teaching students, even if it's someone that is a peer and just saying, "Hey, this is the thing that I've learned today." Even if they don't necessarily need to know it, but I'm talking through the process, that it makes me better at my craft.
 
[Jessica] Hi, I'm Jessica. When you're working on multiple projects, how do you manage or prioritize yourself such that you don't get too disconnected from one project while you're working on another?
[Dan] My answer to that has always been that I will identify the different phases that each project has to go through, and then make sure that I'm not doubling them up. So I'm never writing two things at a time, but I could be writing one while revising another or outlining another or editing or proofing or whatever it is. That way, it makes it much easier for me to keep them in my brain, because they're all in different parts of my brain.
 
[Kevin] Hi. I'm Kevin. If you've got multiple characters with very strong voices, how do you feel about having multiple first-person perspectives? Horribly bad idea or just really difficult?
[Howard] I love the way POV use changes in our culture over time. I think that that could work. I don't know that I've seen it done, but I've thought about doing it myself. I think that 20 years from now, that could end up being the rule rather than an exception, because these sorts of things are cultural. If it's what you want to do, go for it.
[Dongwon] I just want to jump in with one little note, is the thing I run into a lot from writers and in the writing community, is people think about POV really, really rigidly. So, like, if I start in third person limited, I have to stay that way all throughout. Whereas, I think, we're seeing a lot of things that are really pushing back against that. N. K. Jemisin's Fifth Season is a really great example. Even Robert Jackson Bennett's Foundryside, you'll see POV jump around from first person to third person, you'll see tense shifts, things like that. So feel free to really sort of experiment with the different perspectives and the different POV's that you have. You can drop into one just for a chapter or a scene, and then they can never reappear again. So, feel free to try different things and experiment and see how it reads. I think writers and crit groups are very focused on consistent POV. I don't think readers even notice.
 
[Emma] Hi. I'm Emma. What are the most important elements to include on the last page of your book?
[Oooo]
[Howard] Your Patreon.
[Laughter]
[Mary Robinette] So, what I think about when I get to the end is it is a frame. I am framing something that I set up at the beginning. At the beginning, I made promises to the reader. One of the things that I promised them is that they would feel a certain way when they get to the end. So when I look at that last paragraph, I think about it as the beginning in reverse, the inverse of that. I try to make sure that I'm showing who my character is now, where they are now, and the ways in which things have shifted. Doing that in a way that makes the reader have that emotional punch that I had been going for through the whole thing. Like, if I had been wanting them to have a sense of dread all the way through, and then the catharsis of relief, then that last thing needs to contain relief. If I want them to still feel dread, then that last thing still needs to have dread in it. So it's a… For me, it's the frame, it's the button, and that's what I look for at the end.
 
[Jess] Hi. I'm Jess. What are some things we can do to work on developing and strengthening voice when writing in the third person?
[Mary Robinette] I can take that one.
[Dan] Do it.
[Mary Robinette] So. Coming from theater and audiobook, the thing about third person and the way… Is that it is actually still very much first-person in this real simple way. The narrator is telling a story to the audience. The narrator is sometimes very closely linked to a third person character, but even so, there is a storyteller who is speaking to the audience. What you're looking for with the voice are rhythms that are linked to the character's personality. If it is a tight limited third person, you want to use everything… You want to make sure that the idioms that you're using, the metaphors that they're using, that these are all linked to how they self define themselves. All of that is going to make the character feel specific and vivid in ways that aiming for the so-called transparent prose will not.
 
[Morgan] Hi, I'm Morgan. How do you decide who works best as an alpha reader and who works better as a beta reader?
[Howard] Sad, sorry experience.
[Chuckles]
[Dan] Yeah. I mean, that really is the answer. I know Mary Robinette and I, for example, have very different criteria as to who we count as an alpha and who we count as a beta reader. That… It all comes down to experience and personal preference, I think.
[Howard] For my own part, an alpha reader… When I've handed it to an alpha reader and gotten it back, I want to feel energized about doing the things that need to be done to fix it. I want my offer readers to energize me. My beta readers I want to be a little more critical and help me fine-tune things. But I'm fragile that way.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah, I'm… Just to demonstrate that we are sometimes counter. The thing that I'm looking for in a beta… In an alpha reader is someone who is asking me the right questions to help me unpack it a little bit further so that the beta readers are getting something that is closer to the story that I'm trying to tell. The beta readers, I am using them as a general, but the alpha reader… For me, the alpha reader in this case is Alessandra Meechum [sp?], most of the time, and she is… She's what is sometimes called the ideal reader, which is that she represents the core audience that I am writing for. So when I'm writing, I am specifically writing to see whether or not I make her go, "Oh, I love this," or "I hate this so much."
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] That often pleases me a great deal.
[Laughter]
[Mary Robinette] So it depends how you're using them. I'm using her to shape the story. I've spotted… Sometimes I'll spot someone in beta and go, "Oh. You also sit in that ideal reader category." There are some stories that I'm going to write at some point that she will not be the ideal reader for, and I'll switch out alphas for that story. But that's what I look for.
[Dan] It's worth pointing out that Alessandra is in the room, and beaming like the sun to be referred to as an ideal reader. So.
 
[Nick] Hello. I'm Nick. My question is in secondary world fiction, can you talk about how to decide between calling a horse just a horse or something unique to the world?
[Oooo]
[Dongwon] I would say only rename things if there's a big sort of… If it connects to the core of your story, right? If the question you're asking is about, I don't know, national identity, for example, then it can be very complicated to use an existing country or an existing sort of language structure. So… If… Unless you're asking the question of what is the meaning of horse, then I wouldn't rename it, right? But if you're trying to disrupt ideas of like what do we consider animals, what do we consider our relationship to them, what are beasts of burden, then that's a case where maybe playing with it would give you an opportunity to really do a lot more there. But, in general, if it's a horse, call it a horse.
 
[Matthew] Hello, my name is Matthew. How much leeway will an agent generally give a new writer if they like the idea or concept of a story or see promise in it, but it isn't quite there yet?
[Dongwon] I wonder who's going to answer this one?
[Laughter]
[Mary Robinette] I don't know. Well, I'll take… No.
[Dongwon] The thing that I talk about a lot is that I work with people, not projects. Right? I sign a client, I don't sign a single book. So, the answer is if I believe in the person, then all the leeway in the world, right? That's something that we'll work together to make it right. What goes into that decision is hard to articulate in a lot of ways. But I have to be excited about this person's potential to do something really interesting… Even if they're not quite there yet. So there are clients I've worked with for years and years and years, and we haven't gotten out with anything. But we're still working together, we're still honing in on what the right project is… Or how to do X, Y, or Z. So, the answer is, it depends a lot on the person. The right circumstances, it's okay if that book isn't quite there, so long as I can see you're doing something interesting and I can see that you are someone who has all the chops, all the drive, all the ambition to get to where you need to get to.
 
[Dan] Great. So, that is all our questions that we have. I'm sure that there are many more burning in your hearts right now, but… Thank you for listening. We have a piece of homework for you. So, once again, we're throwing this to Dongwon.
[Dongwon] So, I think that the openings of novels are really, really important. It's a great opportunity to hook your reader. More than that, it's an opportunity to get someone to say, "Yes, I'm going to spend $20 or whatever it is to buy this book." So what I would like each of you to do is take the first line of your work in progress or something that you've finished and rewrite it three separate times. Make sure that when you write each one, it's not three variations on the same sentence. Try and shake those up as much as possible, right? Try a different voice. Try a different style. Try different… Even like points to start the scene and see what jumps out at you. What is the most exciting, what grabs you, what are you excited about to keep going with. I think that will tell you a lot about how your opening scenes should work so that your pulling the reader into your story as forcefully as possible.
[Dan] Perfect. Okay. This has been Writing Excuses. You are out of excuses. Now go write.
 
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