Writing Excuses Transcripts

Writing Excuses 20.07: Lens 3 - Identity 2 - Motivation & Goals

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-07-lens-3-identity-2-motivation-and-goals

 

Key points: Motivation and goals. Motivation beyond the story. Motivation and goals may shift. What happens when they achieve their goal? Eight jewels of Rovisla. Some goals and motivations conflict with each other. Ability, role, relationship, and status. A headlight writer. At the edge of the cliff, what does their motivation make them do? 

 

[Season 20, Episode 07]

 

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

 

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

 

[Season 20, Episode 07]

 

[DongWon] This is Writing Excuses.

[Mary Robinette] Motivation and goals. 

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[Mary Robinette] We have been talking about different lenses that you can be using to view things. So what we're going to be talking about now, coming off of our history and community, is we are going to be talking about this idea of identity and that the motivation and goals and that as a lens that you can apply. So a character's motivations can help them... Make them like relatable to the reader. It can drive the story's momentum, it can create obstacles. But what is good character motivation and how do you share that with the reader? How do you make that visible on the page? So we're going to be talking about, like, what do they want? What part of themselves is the goal serving? What are some of the things that you think about when you are thinking about motivation?

[Dan] For me, it's important that the characters have motivation beyond just the story that they're in. I mean, the first Star Wars movie is such a blunt instrument example of this. He wants to be a fighter pilot. That's his motivation. It's dumb and it's small and it doesn't matter very often, but it is distinctly not I need to go and rescue this princess and destroy the Death Star.

[Howard] But he also wants to go get power converters from Tosche Station.

[Laughter]

[Dan Wells] That is true. That's the thing that he wants.

[Howard] Which is, he wants to get off the farm.

[Dan] To get those in order to get off the farm.

[DongWon] Well, he wants friends, specifically, which becomes his most important character trait throughout the entire arc of Star Wars, is that Luke is someone who cares about his friends. Right? So what we just cleverly done there is unpacked how many different motivations a character can have its, even when what they want seems very simple, which is to be a fighter pilot.

[Dan] Yeah.

[Erin] That, I think, there's a lot of times the motivation they have on the surface is not, like, the true thing motivating them underneath.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Being a fighter pilot is about being away from here. It's about literally flying off, it's about wanting glory, it's about wanting recognition, it's about a lot of those things. Those can get then applied to a different goal. So a lot of times, like, the character's motivation and goals seem like one thing. The motivation underlying stays the same, but the goal shifts.

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Mary Robinette] This is something that I think is so important because sometimes you'll see people and they will have the goal shift, but they won't realize that the new goal does not match the motivation. For me, the thing… You've probably heard me talk about this before, that I talk about objective and super objective. That the super objective is kind of the deep-seated hole that is always there that they're trying to fill. When I'm playing with the idea of goals, I try to think about when they achieve their goal, because often there's the short-term goals. What is the new goal that immediately replaces that? An example that will hit too close to home for our listeners is the idea of, well, I want to be a writer. Okay. So I'm going to submit something. But I'm not a writer, because I haven't had anything accepted yet. Even though I've submitted something. Then, oh, I've had something accepted, but I've only sold one story. So there's this constant… I think for… I think the really interesting goals, the ones that are very sustaining, are the ones where the character is constantly redefining themselves to tell themselves that they haven't met their goal… Their… Yeah.

[DongWon] Well, this… Again, we can go back to Star Wars for this, because what Luke wants is to become a hero like his father was. He becomes a hero like his father was at the end of Star Wars, and then discovers what an awful fate that is in the second movie, when he finds out what happened to his father and who his father is. Right? So we see this evolution of Luke's goal as he's searching for an identity, as he's searching, quite frankly, for love of a parent, of community, of people around him, and how much that goes against him as he struggles in the third movie with am I like my father or am I not? Right? So you can see how the goal shifts as the objective and the super objective kind of move around him. What I love about that also is that wasn't a plan when they made the first movie. That evolved over the writing of the second and third movies. So you can see the way in which writers find ways to disrupt a character's motivation and goals to keep tension moving, to keep the story interesting and developing, and they end up with one of the most enduring stories of our generations.

[Howard] The understanding and application of… Mary Robinette, to use your terms, the objective and super objective hinges pretty heavily on whether or not you understand that in yourself. I've had career conversations with artists, with writers, with cartoonists, and I often come back to, hey, do this job because you would be drawing comics anyway, not because you want to get rich. I remember as a kid, is a really little kid, kindergarten age, I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be a doctor because I felt like that was a neat job. Then in high school, I wanted to be a rock star because I wanted to be a rock STAR and I wanted to be rich. Neither of those were things that involved the actual passions that I had for doing things. It wasn't until later in life that I realized, wait, I like making stuff. Performing in front of people less so. Carving people up into little pieces with knives, quite a bit less so. I like drawing and telling stories. So the motivation for my character was really driven by the thing I'm passionate about, and the super objective was, boy, it sure would be nice if I could do this full time. What steps do I need to take to do it full time? So, what is it that your character is deep down have discovered about themselves that they really want? Or, what is it deep down that they haven't discovered that they really want? That they haven't explored yet? Maybe the character arc is about learning that.

[Erin] First of all, just a note to self that in a crisis, I will never let Howard perform any sort of surgery on me.

[Laughter]

[Erin] Cutting somebody up into little pieces may not be what people think of when they think of medicine…

[Dan] Very [garbled] characterization.

[Howard] I planned to put them back together. I mean…

[Mary Robinette] I was convinced that I was going to be a veterinarian until I was a senior in high school, looked at my grades, and realized it was a bad option and went into puppetry. But I also changed from… I wanted to make sick animals well, and in puppetry, I just made animals.

[There you go. Garbled]

[Erin] [garbled] worse. I love that. What I was going to say also in addition to life lessons, is that what I like about that is that it talks about how the super objective is something that sort of beyond individual, kind of, like, titles, or you may not understand what it really means to be a doctor. There's just something about it that you identify with. The reason I bring this up is because a lot of times in science fiction and fantasy, I'll hear people talk about their character's motivation as really tied into, like, the world itself. They're like, the character's motivation is to get, like, the eight jewels of Rovisla.

[Mary Robinette] Sure. Yeah.

[Dan] My favorite books, Rovisla. Okay. Continue.

[Erin] Sorry. So, yes. So, like, that's the thing that you're, like, well, why? Like, I don't know one jewel of Rovisla from another. So, like, what is happening…

[DongWon] How many apostrophes are there in Rovisla?

[Laughter]

[Howard] There are three, and they are all jewel shaped.

[DongWon] Okay. Got it. Please continue. I'm… This is very interesting.

[Erin] Sorry. So, since I don't know anything about the world, that motivation means nothing to me. Often, in early chapters of a story, if you focus too much on the Rovisla and not enough on the internal super objective…

[Howard] The apostrophes…

[Laughter]

[Erin] The apostrophes, so to speak, then you don't actually get what makes that character interesting, and people glaze off of it, because we relate to super objectives that we can understand.

[DongWon] Yeah. Well… Sometimes the best thing you can do, sometimes, is give your character exactly what they want. Right? If you are searching for the eight gems of Rovisla, and you're 50 pages in the book, and you get the eight gems of Rovisla, that can be such an interesting moment of, like, oh. Oh, no. Now what? Right?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] What is the story here? Right? Like, them realizing there are still problems that aren't solved in fulfilling their quest. Right? Like, one of my favorite novels of all time was one when I read it when I was very young which is Robin McKinley's The Hero and the Crown. Right? The goal that she sets out to do, she accomplishes way earlier than one would expect given the length of that book. Everything that follows after is what takes that work from being a delight to being an absolute masterpiece.

[Mary Robinette] That's one of the things that we actually saw in N. K. Jemison's book last season, is that on one of the timelines of the character, that it's like I want to be a really amazing Oragene.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And, yeah. Got that. Ooo, not what you actually wanted. And there is all kinds of complications that come from that. One of the… The next episode, we're going to be talking about stakes and fears, but I just want to say that one of the things that I love about a really good, juicy goal is that achieving it creates the next problem.

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Mary Robinette] One of the other things that I love, I'm going to tell you about after our break.

 

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[Mary Robinette] I love giving a character goals and motivations that are in conflict with each other. So I break it down in my own brain when I'm trying to come up with them, with… By talking about ability, role, relationship, and status. This is basically what the character is good at, or not good at, the responsibilities that they have, the relationships, the loyalties, and then where they are kind of in a power dynamic. So, if I have a character who's like I love my mom and I want to be there for my mom, but also, if I am there for my mom, that I have to miss this big stakeholder meeting where, I don't know, stake-y things happen.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] I'm imagining this to happen at a steakhouse.

[Mary Robinette] Well, I was thinking actually different kinds of stake, like the stabby vampire thing.

[Vampire? Oh, boy.]

[Howard] There is this aphorism that I've… This saying that I've held close and tried to live by for much of my life. It's don't put off what you want most for what you want at the moment. That is itself the current between the two poles of conflicting goals and objectives. Your… In that sense, in the way I took it originally, is the battle between your immediate appetites and your long-term desires. I mean, that's every substance addicted person ever where they are fighting this battle against a now metabolic desire for a thing that is hurting them, and is preventing them from achieving their long-term goals. That doesn't mean that for goals and objectives and motivations to be in conflict, one has to be wrong. But that's a very common real-world occurrence.

[DongWon] I think time is a great way to create conflicting goals and objectives. Right? What happens on this timeline, what happens on that timeline. Another way is through relationships. Right? Were going to talk about this more when we get to talking about stakes, but the way in which our different goals represent different aspects of who we are in life. Right? What my goals are as a student, as a professional, as a family member, are all really different things, and those are often in conflict with each other. Like, our professional goals and our relationship goals are famously often in tension with each other. Right? In terms of, like, balancing work and life.

[Dan] Yeah. The first Toy Story movie does this really well. Where what Woody really wants ultimately is he wants to be the beloved leader of the toys. Like Mary Robinette was saying, that sometimes the goals can be in conflict with each other, he misinterprets this to mean I have to be the favorite toy. To the point of becoming this incredibly venal selfish guy who's trying to get rid of one of the other toys. Buzz Lightyear shows up, he's the new favorite toy, and Woody is ready to sacrifice him completely. Because he has misinterpreted his own motivation. Then, when he finally gets what he wants and gets rid of Buzz, he immediately realizes, oh, no, I can't be the beloved leader of the toys if I have thrown one of them out a window and cursed them to be lost forever. So he spends the second half of the movie trying to be the beloved leader inclusive of Buzz rather than excluding him from them.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

 

[Erin] I also think something really fun about, like, really understanding the motivation of your character is that it can help you, or at least it helps me, somebody who kind of writes forward, I'm a headlight writer, so I'll write what I understand until I get to the part where, like, the light I can no longer see what I was originally aiming for, and then I figure out the next part of the story, and then figure out the next part. A lot of times when I'm at those transition points, I go back to the character's motivation and think, okay, I got them to the edge of this cliff. What motivates them? A character who's motivated by being seen as amazing is going to, like, dive off the cliff in a really, like, spectacular way. Whereas someone whose motivation is more about care might say, okay, how can I make sure this is a safer cliff for everyone, and create a path down it? So, figuring out what that motivation is means that this… The story, even as goals change and plot points change, the story still feels like it has a nice emotional through line. Because it's still responding to what the character's motivation is and what that makes them want to do.

[Mary Robinette] I think that that's a really good point, that the character's motivation and their goals affect the actions that they plan, that they take, in the story. That changes the shape of the story. So when you're looking at the story… This is one of the reasons we wanted to include this in our idea… In the who and the lenses that… You can… It's not just, ah, this is a very juicy character. It's… It will affect the shape of the whole story.

[Howard] I think it's… Just in terms of story structure, if you've got an outline that on the surface just looks like it holds together beautifully, with twists and turns and pinch points and a great ending and whatever else, but your character motivations don't match, it's going to be a struggle to read. It's going to be a struggle to edit. If you've got a story where your outline is weak, but the character motivation is really strong, and at every turn of the page, at every hard return as you are writing, you are following what that character's voice in your head is telling you, you might end up with something where, yeah, you have to go back and edit and wrap a plot around that in some way, but you're going to end up with something that's a compelling read, and more of us are going to enjoy it.

[DongWon] I mean, this is specific to my approach to storytelling and what I enjoy to read, but I'm very much a plot derives from character person. Right? Like, I think when I see story problems arise, so often it's because somebody came in with an idea of here's what happens in the story and then tried to backfill what the motivations were that got them there. Sometimes when you do that, it's really hard to get motivations to line up with the actual events that you want to have happen. Versus if you flip it, and this is admittedly a little bit easier if you're a headlight writer like Erin versus a plotter, but having a strong sense of what your character's motivations are, are the things that can lead you to interesting complex plots. Right? As you have characters who want different things, and, for themselves, have their own tiered wants that are in conflict with each other, that's where complexity comes from. Right? When you have a character who wants three things, two of them are in conflict with each other, and they're trying to pick between those, and another character also wants three things that intersect with the first character's things, you have so many places you can go to, so many choices you can pick from. That's when the interactions, the intersections between these plot arcs are going to feel really nuanced and exciting because you have the richness of this whole tapestry that you start weaving together.

[Mary Robinette] It's interesting, as you say that, because I'm… I tend to be a plotter, but I do not plot my character arcs. I think that's because I come out of theater, so character is the thing that I've internalized the most. So I'm like, here are the events that are going to happen, and part of what I enjoy is this is how my character reacts to them as these events stampede across their goals. One of the things that I will do sometimes is that I will give my character a small goal at the beginning that's just like a cup of coffee, warm pair of socks, just want to take a nap. Whatever it is. I think of that as kind of my avatar of success, for now we are in a safe secure place because we can have the thing that we have not been able to have. As a… Related to that with the Glamorous Histories, once Jane and Vincent are married, I didn't want to do the will they, won't they kind of thing where it's constantly breaking a couple up. So I gave them the motivation for the all four of the second books, that all they want to do is get off the page and go have sexy fun times.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Things keep getting in the way of that. So I do think that if you can give them something that is not related to the plot in any way…

[DongWon] Yeah

[Mary Robinette] Shape or form, that it can help make things a lot more interesting.

 

[Mary Robinette] Speaking of things that can make stuff more interesting, we have a little bit of homework for you. So, we've been talking about motivation and goals. I want you to write a scene from a secondary point of view character. This is not something you need to include in the novel, this is… Or short story, this is an exercise. Write a scene from a secondary point of view character. Pick a concrete goal for them that is not the protagonist's goal. How does that change the way they react in the scene? Can you take those reactions and bring them back into the main scene and make it more interesting?

 

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

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/19-29-a-close-reading-on-character-barriers-vs-stakes 

 

Key points: Barriers and stakes. Speedbumps and clinking jars. Use stakes that are tied to the character. Which stakes impact their sense of self. Setting up a barrier? What is the character's goal, and what stops them from achieving it? Barriers and stakes in ability, role, relationship, and status can interplay. Connect the reader with the character to make the barriers and stakes resonate. Use sensory details. Metaphorical heavy lifting.

 

[Season 19, Episode 29]

 

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

 

[Dan] You're invited to the Writing Excuses Cruise, an annual event for writers who want dedicated time to focus on honing their craft, connecting with their peers, and getting away from the grind of daily life. Join the full cast of Writing Excuses as we sail from Los Angeles aboard the Navigator of the Seas from September 19th through 27th in 2024, with stops in Ensenada, Cabo San Lucas, and Mazatlán. The cruise offers seminars, exercises, and group sessions, an ideal blend of relaxation, learning, and writing, all while sailing the Mexican Riviera. For tickets and more information, visit writingexcuses.com/retreats.

 

[Season 19, Episode 29]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] A Close Reading on Character: Barriers vs. Stakes.

[Erin] 15 minutes long, because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[Howard] I drove over here with some glass bottles in the back of the van that were full of what is essentially marmalade for making hot tea. For making, like, citron or honey [honey tea]. Every so often, I would hit a bump, and I would hear the jars clink together. There were no speedbumps. A speedbump is kind of a barrier. Slow way down for it. The glass jars in the back of the van? Those are stakes. If you don't slow down for the speedbump, you will get marmalade all over everything in the back of the van. So there is my one-trick pony explanation for barriers versus stakes. Now, let's get out some other tricks. More ponies, please.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] So we're looking at You Perfect, Broken Thing by C. L. Clark for this episode. One of the things that I very much like about it is… Well, there's a bunch of things that I like about this story. But, it's a really good example of barriers and stakes. The barrier in this story is very clear and escalates. It's that our main character has to run a race. Not only… So, that's barrier one. Barrier two is that they have to run a race while they are sick. Then, we've got this additional thing that there are family members that are dependent on them, and the more that they practice, the sicker they get. The family members depending on them are the stakes. This is the reason that they're running the race. The need for the cure which is what they earn when they run the race is the… Is one of the stakes of this. So, it's a really short story, but there are multiple barriers and there are multiple stakes, all interacting simultaneously.

[Howard] One of the things that works so well for me with this story, and I wish it worked less well, because it's a me thing not a story thing, that is the description of physical pain. The description of… Well, it's this line at the very beginning. 

 

When I leave the kill floor, my legs are wasted. I shuffle to the women's locker room. I can't stand anymore. But I know if I sit, I'll never get back up. At least, not for another hour. 

 

Oh, I feel so seen. What do the kids say these days? It's me. So much, it's me right there. If I sit down, I will never get back up.

[Erin] I also think that that… There's a great technique that's being used to demonstrate this a little later in the story, the, 

 

I use the railing like a cane. All my strength bent to keeping my feet for one, two, three, four. Five, six, seven, eight, nine. Ten, eleven, twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen stairs.

 

You just feel in the punctuation… There's nothing else going on in this sentence. At that moment, everything stops for the I need to get from step one to step fourteen, and I cannot think about anything else because it's taking all of my will to get past this pain. Without even saying exactly what's happening, it's coming through so clearly in that moment.

 

[DongWon] One of the things I really love to see is when I can feel the writer in the story itself. I can feel their perspective in it. I can… I get such a sense of C. L. Clark's own experience with exertion, with working out, with pain, with exercise, and it's coming through so clearly. I think, when you think about character, when you think about projecting and empathizing with someone who's not us, but also don't forget the ways in which you can utilize what is you to really enhance the reading experience.

[Howard] One of the places where the barrier and the stakes… The line between the two begins to blur, is the… If you've experienced the pain of that with a really tough workout, and have experienced the pain of, I think I've injured myself. We get both of these. "It takes a long time," I'm quoting now. "It takes a long time for the lightning pain in my ankles, knees, hips to dissipate to a dull throb." For my own part, when I work out, which is not a thing I do much anymore, but when I've worked out in the past, if I start getting lightning pain, it's time to stop. I am past the barrier of I am exhausted and I am into the stakes of how much do I really want to pay for the rest of this work out. Do I want to pay with not being able to walk tomorrow?

 

[Mary Robinette] I think that this is a great example because it's so personal to you. When you're trying to choose a stake for your character, you're looking for a stake that is tied to the character. You can have big global stakes, but when we're talking about character stakes, it's something that is going to affect the character's sense of self. So… We have this, right in that first sentence, or in the first paragraph. "When I leave the kill floor, my legs are wasted. I shuffle to the women's locker room. I can't stand anymore. But I know if I sit, I'll never get back up." So, that is directly tied to the character's ability. That… This very small stake. If I sit, I do the thing that I want to do, which is to sit down. That's my goal, I want to sit. But I can't. I can't. What is at stake is my ability to stand back up. I can't… I don't have that ability anymore. So when you're looking for those, you can interrogate the character's identity which we talked about in the previous episode to find the stake that is going to most directly impact their sense of self.

[Erin] Yeah. I think that the barrier… I think one of the things that really works for me here in terms of that identity barrier is if it's hard to sit, to stand, to climb, and the stakes are so high for something that is much more physical exertion than, Lord knows, I'm doing on a daily basis, then how hard is it going to be? I really feel when the race starts, I'm not anticipating that the main character's actually going to make it through.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] To be honest. Like, I'm like… Like, you are not even making it from, like, barely to the starting line. How are you going to make it…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] All the way through? There is a surprise… I think I get the same surprise in ability that the character does, which is great. It brings me on the journey with the character, because as Coach is learning, like, Oh, I actually did climb this wall, and did murder that person. I'm also learning that that's what they're capable of. Then that, actually, makes me identify with them more, and makes the emotions of the story hit that much more… Like, much more… With much more of a punch.

 

[DongWon] In what is a very brutal story, one of the most brutal lines, in my opinion, at the end of the first section when it just says, "This is not my first race."

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] We understand that she has done this before, and she may do it again in the future. That's how she's thinking about it. Even though we see how much her body is breaking down, we see how much she's at the limits of her ability, but the idea that she's been doing this for a while is just heartbreaking, and it sets the stakes of how important this is, that she is going to keep pushing herself to accomplish this.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] I'm going to read a bit of the breakdown for you, after the break.

 

[Erin] This week, I have got to plug one of my favorite books of all time, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson. This is a voice story, like, from start to finish, in my opinion, which is why I love it so much. It starts with this opening paragraph. "My name is Mary Catherine Blackwood. I'm 18 years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I could have been a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead." If that doesn't get you to read We Have Always Lived in the Castle, I don't know what will. So check it out.

 

[Mary Robinette] When you write a novel, there are often things you have to leave out. Scenes that predate the main book, situations that just didn't fit in, character moments that hit the cutting room floor. I've taken nine stories like that from the Lady Astronaut series and put them together into a short story collection called Silent Spaces: Tales from the Lady Astronauts. It's on Kickstarter right now. It includes stories about the arrival of the meteor in 1952, the race to the moon and Mars, and my Hugo award winning novelette, The Lady Astronaut of Mars. And there's one story, Silent Spaces, that is 100 percent new for this book. The Kickstarter funded in eight hours, so this is not so much a please help me make this, as a please help me make this even cooler. Because the stretch goals bring the Lady Astronaut series off the page and into the real world with tons of memorabilia, like patches, drinkware, teletype reproductions, recipe cards, spacesuits, and more. I hope you'll be a part of its journey and help out Silent Spaces on Kickstarter.

 

[Howard] Welcome back. I promised you some reading. There we go. Our protagonist is climbing a climbing wall. 

 

The colorful rubber is rough under my fingers. I think of Little and try to imitate her gibbon's grace. Each contraction of my lats pulls me higher and my biceps thrill at their strength. My legs forget their fatigue and I'm –

I'm a goddamn orchestra.

Until I'm not, and numbness webs across my back, a note out of tune. Maybe it started in my fingers and I didn't notice and now it's too late.

 

I have been in… I have been in that… Not exact position, not on a climbing wall, but I've been in that position more times than I care to count. It really struck home to me. The feeling of oh, I can do this, I've got this, oh, I'm fine. And then all of a sudden, there is pain and I realize not only am I not fine, I'm not fine and I'm in a place where I should not have put myself. This is another one of those barriers that blurs into stakes because we failed to clear the barrier properly.

[Mary Robinette] So I'm going to talk about how to set up a barrier. Again, you're looking for something that your character can't get through. So if you think about what their goal is, like, her goal is to run the race. So, if she can run the race well and quickly, then story's over. Immediately. So you have to put barriers. The barriers are the things that stop your character from achieving their goal. So the first thing we do at the beginning is we establish what our goal is. Then we have a series of barriers. You can tell the reader what those barriers are, and disguise it as part of the character thinking. So when there's a part where right before the section that Howard read to you where she's thinking about, she puts the climbing harness on and her teammates say, "Don't do that. Shut that shit down. You just ran a mile's worth of sprints." "I didn't need them to tell me that. I calculated our needs the night before, our weak spots. I accounted for his lack of stamina, for Shell's lack of speed. My pain. Our weakness will come with us to the race. The wall is there, too, and I need to be able to take it." So, very clearly, we've laid out exactly what the problems are, we've foreshadowed what's going to happen in the race. Doing that allows the reader, knowing what the barriers are ahead of time allows the reader to anticipate those and to anticipate the failure points and also to be surprised when they play out in different ways. But all of these things are, again, still tied to that goal of I need to run the race and we've also been told what's at stake if we don't run the race. So it's the here's the goal, here are the things that are going to stop me from hitting that goal, and then when we actually get into the race, there are even more things that go wrong.

[DongWon] I still love that line, our weakness will come with us to the race.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] It's just… You just feel it in your chest when you read that.

[Erin] That's life, though.

[Laughter]

 

[Erin] Also, Mary Robinette, when you were talking, it made me think about the fact that there… The barriers also can exist in those ability, role, relationship, status, and that when a barrier hits in one, then maybe one of the others can be the thing that gets you past it.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] So I'm thinking about the other moment in the race, where, like, the strength gives out, and then somebody's like, "You got this, champ." Which, as a former [crossroader?] Like, there is something very powerful weirdly about some random person being like, "You can do it." It is the role. You are a champion. A reminder of the role that helps you get forward a little more. Then, when that runs out, it's something of the relationship.

[Mary Robinette] Yep.

[Erin] To the people that you need to bring this medicine forward to. So it makes me think about my own work, how can I create a barrier in one of these areas and then solve it with another, and then hit a barrier there and solve it with another, and sort of pass back and forth between the different aspects of character is a way to create story moments.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I want to be clear that there are other ways to create barriers for character. You can use milieu. So… We'll see this in the race itself, where the place itself is the problem. You can create things with the questions. That… If a character has a question, they can't get the answer. I'm specifically in this section, because we're talking about character, thinking about barriers to the character and to their sense of identity. But I want to be clear that barriers can, in a lot of different ways.

 

[Howard] It's important to note that the… This several extreme connection that I developed to this story grows out of the very close parallel between the physical experience in the story and some of my own physical experiences. It's challenging to set up a barrier or to set up stakes when that connection isn't apparent. For instance, the wizard who just needs to cast that spell right. But it's not tied to exhaustion or hunger or migraine headache or any… It's tied to some magical sense. Finding a way to communicate that so it is personal to us, the reader, can be a challenge. That's where, for me, stories that fail to deliver barriers and stakes in ways that resonate? That's usually why they fail. It's because, for some reason, worldbuilding didn't connect me to those things.

[DongWon] Because it's really about character choice. Right? To bring all these barriers and all these stakes back to creating a character that we are interested in, engaged with, whether we hate them, whether we love them, whether we empathize with them or not, it has to be about choice. So when this comes down to that moment of Coach in the mud pit, right? And making a choice about what she will do to win this race, what is worth it to her? I think that's one of the things that communicates so much about the character, about the stakes that are going to occur, and our understanding and compassion for her, even as she does something that in some ways is unforgivable.

 

[Erin] I also really like how we're taught a little bit how to read that moment. So, one of the things that I love is the series of, like, the very long kind of sentence paragraph of just things that are happening, that I will not read, because it's very long. But there's a series of things that is going on as she's in the mud and trying to get out of the mud. When I was looking back and doing a close reading, I noticed that we… It's not the first time we get this long sentence paragraph. We also get it with the meal the night before, which is also, like, a moment of, like, just really being in the moment. So, sometimes you can be in the moment with the food and enjoying it and the companionship. Then, the next day, you're in the moment of survival. I don't necessarily relate to life or death survival in that way, but I do relate to eating a good meal. I feel like the story sort of taught me a little bit how to take in that kind of sentence, and how to be in that moment with the character, and then used it for something that I was less comfortable or less familiar with.

[Howard] We actually talked about that principle in the very first season of Writing Excuses, a bazillion…

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Bazillions ago. The idea of get one thing, one small thing, exactly right and we will follow you along for the big thing. If you can connect me with the character enjoying a meal, then I will stay connected when they are trying to cast color magic using their sense of [oxareen].

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

 

[DongWon] I love picking Clark for character because they do embodied character so well. Right? They do sensory detail. I always feel I am in the room with them. I feel like I can smell the things that the character smells, tastes the things, feel the pain and the burn in my body.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] It's so wonderful to be so deeply entrenched in a perspective like this.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. The other thing that I love about it is how they managed to do that with such often sparse description.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Like the section...

 

I don't want to tempt the ache in my body, but I don't want to die tomorrow without remembering the good things my body does. So we’re two bodies, in flexion, extension, the slow eccentric stretch and the isometric clenching hold, over and over, until we can release.

 

Like, she does not tell you what is exactly happening in that scene, but you can understand it and feel it in your own body. The other thing that I want to call out about that particular section that I read is that this is also one of the two moments where she makes… The character makes it clear that she is not expecting to survive the race. That her motivation has changed. Which, for me, also helps with that moment in the mud. Knowing that this is something she's doing for other people. That the relationship aspect of it…

[DongWon] Drowning another runner is okay because she doesn't expect to survive herself?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Right? There is… If she weren't willing to sacrifice that much, it would make that moment less sympathetic. Then, of course, we get the moment at the end which… I don't know why, it caught me off guard. I was surprised by it, when she turns down the shot for herself…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] And gives it to the kid. In retrospect, it's, of course, and that's what so lovely about that moment is when you're doing character and you're setting up the stakes and all these things, getting to that moment of, oh, of course, this is what they would do even when you didn't see it coming, is so much what let's character drive a story. Because it means you're leaning into choices, it means you set up the stakes well. Right?

[Howard] It's ironic almost to the point of a pun to say, Mary Robinette, that example you read is a fine example of muscular prose.

[Laughter]

[Howard] Because it's giving us so much information. All of the words are doing the metaphorical heavy lifting for us, explaining to us what's going on.

 

[Howard] I've got the homework for you. We're going to return to the speedbump metaphor. But you're not allowed to use my speedbump and my jars.

[Laughter]

[Howard] Write a short scene in which your character has to deal with a mundane obstacle. Then, rewrite it as if that obstacle now has life or death stakes. How do you shift it to make those stakes clearer?

 

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

 

[Erin] Are you struggling to find time and energy for creative work or writing? Sandra Tayler has a new book that might help. Structuring Life to Support Creativity is a resource book for creative people who want to make more space in the life that they have for the creative work they want to do. This book is drawn from 30 years experience in juggling creative work along with everything else life throws at us. Inside the book, you can find such topics as managing your mental load, arranging your physical space, how to come back to your creative work after life goes sideways, the problem of motivation, and more. The whole book is written with a focus on adapting for how your brain works instead of trying to change you to fit expectations. The book is not prescriptive. Instead, it provides concepts and tools so you can find the ones that work for you. This makes the book autism, ADHD, and neurodivergent friendly. Preorder your copy today at sandratayler.com. Just make sure that Tayler has an e r in the Tayler.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2022/11/13/17-46-monstrous-awakening/

 

Key Points: What does it mean to wake up monstrous? Body horror and body humor play with our fears of losing ability, of losing agency. That could be me? To be scared, to be horrified at helplessness, rope and duct tape could do it, too. Watch out for the sideswipe at disability. Think about ripple effects. Consider the metaphor of apartment life as a disaster! Pay attention to the point of view, and authorial empathy. Make sure your character keeps their humanity and agency. Don't grab that wheelchair, don't just help without asking.

 

[Season 17, Episode 46]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses, Monstrous Awakening.

[Chelsea] 15 minutes long.

[Fran] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Fran] I'm Fran.

[Chelsea] I'm Chelsea.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[Mary Robinette] We are here to talk about this idea of monstrous awakening. One of the things that I'm going to ask you all to do before you listen to this episode is actually to pause and to go read an essay that Fran wrote that's called You Wake Up Monstrous. We will be here, and it's fine if you don't have time to listen to... to read that before you listen to the episode. Totally fine, you won't be lost, but if you have time, it will give you some important framing, I think. So, let's dive in and talk about this idea of body horror and body issues. Fran, and you kind of sort of for those who have not had time to listen, sort of sum up what we're talking about with body horror and body issues, using some of the metaphors that you use in your wonderful essay?

[Fran] Um… Yes. I can. I… So, body horror and body humor as well, and even a little bit of inspiration for it, all use these sort of there but for the grace of whatever universal entity is out there, that that happens to me. You see that in movies like The Fly, you see that in Kafka's Metamorphosis where the character wakes up and they are transformed into a bug. Or they are… They lose their… Not just their ability to speak, but their mouth disappears. In The Matrix, for instance. Those are all forms of body horror that play with and on sort of vestigal fears of losing ability, agency. They also play with the discomfort that we see each other go through when we become either ill or disabled.

 

[Mary Robinette] So when we're thinking about these things, a lot of times, we see authors reach for disability as shorthand for evil or helplessness. But it doesn't have to be that way. What are some other choices that a writer could make?

[Chelsea] I have a slightly different angle for how to get ahead in advertising. I'm thinking about like the body thing. I was kind of just forming a thing in my head about Neil waking up with no mouth and that helplessness. Like, I was trying to connect it with something else. I was trying to connect it to, like, you can wake up and you can have no mouth and stuff, and all of a sudden, everything is very different and there's a bug on you, and all those other horrible things. It's like you're doing this because you want people to be scared and you want people to kind of be horrified at the helplessness. But I'm also thinking about like… If you want people to be horrified by the helplessness, that's fine. There's always like rope and duct tape. Then nobody is like missing a mouth. There isn't like this kind of this weird symbolism about other disabilities going on. But they are helpless, and it is scary, and that maybe thinking, "Do I need to do this in this way specifically or can I do this and not kind of take a sideswipe at disability?"

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. What you're talking about there is thinking about the area of intention, like, why are you making this choice? It's not that these choices are always forbidden and you can never make one of these choices. Because there are times and places where it's appropriate. But you have to think about it and not just default to it because it's something that you've seen in media, because you're not thinking about the larger ramifications of it. That's usually where people run into problems, is that they don't think about the ripple effects, and they don't think about those areas of intention.

[Chelsea] I honestly believe that if you take something like that, and you're like, "Okay, I saw it on TV," and you think about the stuff that is lying underneath it, and if that causes you to go, "Mm, no. I need to do this because this has entirely different things lying underneath it," you're actually going to end up with a story that you actually want instead of one that winds up going astray because you didn't think about, like, three layers of implications about a device that you're using.

 

[Howard] Let me approach this real quick from a different angle. If you totally un-ironically tell a story about a disaster in someone's life where they can no longer afford their mortgage and they have to move into an apartment and that is just a terrible disaster. You're playing it not for humor, absolutely un-ironically. Everybody in the world who already lives in an apartment and gets by just fine looks at this story and says, "Why is my way of life horrible or evil or whatever?" You've othered an enormous portion of your audience. I bring this up not to say that we should all live in apartments or we should all live in houses. I bring it up to say that this is how you need to think about these things so that you don't come across as age-ist or ablest, when you are trying to accomplish something else with your story.

[Fran] I think what Chelsea was talking about, too, about that implied helplessness, the lack of mouth, the lack of things, it does depend, in the story, on (a) the point of view, and also a certain level of authorial empathy. Not sympathy, but empathy. Because what a lot of horror tropes rely on is a sense of that other is not part of the human pattern anymore. They've lost their humanity, because they've lost their mouth or, to go back to a previous episode of Writing Excuses, they've lost their hand, and it's been replaced by another body part. But we have this opportunity to explore the fact that in… And this is something that actually Kafka does pretty well, is that because the point of view is internal, you don't see that character as, Gregor Samsa, as helpless. He's rationalizing how to get through this situation and just to have… Take a moment to think… When you're writing body horror or body humor, and think about what it feels like to be that other person and acknowledge their personhood, acknowledge their humanity, and the fact that they have agency in the situation as well, whatever the horrific situation is, they still have choice. They still have the ability to maneuver in different ways. And so does the audience who's reading this. Just like, to go back to Howard's apartment metaphor, in the essay I wrote a little bit about what it felt like to be wearing a back brace that was exactly the same as the back brace that was being joked about in the movie that I was watching. There's a character in Say Anything who's trying to get a drink of water out of a water fountain while wearing a Milwaukee-based brace with a neck support. I didn't have a neck support, but it's impossible. It becomes this long-running joke in the middle of the movie. I just sat there and felt like, "Wow. This… I was enjoying this movie until just this moment." Just like the apartment metaphor that Howard gave us, it really does not necessarily do service to your story to have a whole bunch of your audience suddenly feel like you're operating against them.

[Howard] Done well, it's R-rated for language and so much language, I Spy with Melissa McCarthy… I think. Maybe it's just called Spy. But Melissa McCarthy plays the chair guy, the chairperson, for a spy who is suddenly pushed out in the field. She is very competent, but she is very inexperienced. At no point in the show do we make fat jokes about Melissa McCarthy.

[Fran] I love that [garbled]

[Howard] People make fun of her clothing sometimes, because maybe the clothing choices are weird. But it is never about her being overweight. It is daring. It is a daring movie to make that choice. I love it because of how well it does it.

[Fran] Also, she's a fantastic actress.

[Howard] Oh, my goodness.

[Fran] Her entire use of every inch of that screen is amazing.

[Howard] Yes.

 

[Mary Robinette] Well, why don't we pause for our book of the week. That book is Screams from the Dark: 29 Stories of Monstrous… Monsters and the Monstrous. Fran, you want to tell us a little bit about that?

[Fran] Sure. This is a collection of horror stories edited by Ellen Datlow. It came out in the late spring of 2022. It came out from Tor night… Nightfire. It contains a whole range of ways in which monsters, both familiar and new, interact with the world. A lot of them are intentionally horror stories, because that was the purview of the book. But some of them actually do some really interesting examinations of what it means to be monstrous in a human world. I really like that as well.

[Mary Robinette] All right. So that book is Screams from the Dark: 29 Stories of Monsters and the Monstrous, edited by Ellen Datlow.

 

[Mary Robinette] Okay. So, as we come back in, let's talk about some things to do that are a little bit more interesting. One of the things that I have noted in stories where I feel like it's done a little better is that the person's disabilities are not the source of the horror, it's the people around them and the environment that they find themselves in. So it is someone else grabbing the wheelchair. That's the removal of the agency, it's not the chair itself, it's someone else trying to take control.

[Fran] Helping.

[Mary Robinette] Helping.

[Chelsea] Oh, it just gives me the shivers. The angry shivers.

[Fran] I had somebody without asking help me off of I believe it was a bus. I was just… I was moving slower than they thought I should be, and that I needed help. They pulled me by my arm and dislocated my shoulder. Which I then popped back in right in front of them to the most disgusting degree I could, because I wanted to let them know that they had not in actuality helped me at all.

[Howard] See, if you had a sword cane, you could have just [garbled] at them.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Right.

[Fran] [garbled] say, why does no one let me have a sword cane?

[Howard] The drubbing.

[Fran] But it really does… People think of themselves as providing assistance without asking. The grabbing of the wheelchair… The maneuvering of someone… It is a lack of agency is horrific. In… Again, in the point of view of someone who is experiencing a lack of agency, whether it is through cosmic horror or the deep and abiding horror of someone like Steven Graham Jones's stories where every house sort of seems to build out horror around his characters. I think that there are distinctive shifts in point of view and authorial empathy that can avoid some of the pitfalls and really build some… Like Chelsea was saying before, really interesting layers and depth in there. That's only going to make your story better and scarier, or, if you're doing body humor, funnier.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

 

[Howard] A lesson I learned from Mary Robinette, gosh, eight years ago. It's one of the best ways to introduce that horror is not to make the removal of agency related to someone's weakness, you make it related to their strength. Their strength can serve them… It can do nothing for them in this scenario. The wheelchair is not a weakness, the wheelchair is a perfectly good mobility device. In fact, you're a Paralympic basketball player in that wheelchair. Then you are in a situation where that agency is removed.

[Mary Robinette] The… In The Spare Man, my main character's a cane user. She has chronic pain from an old injury. One of the scenes that I am… The day where she's like, "Oh, this is definitely a cane day," and she has to grab that, that's just part of her life. She grabs it, it's no big deal. When she gets to the set of stairs that is built to go up a centrifugal well, so they change angle every single step, and she has to climb them, that's when she's like, "Oh. No." That is the problem. It's not… It is coming from the environment and her need to interact with that environment.

[Howard] That is one spoon per stair. That's a…

[Chuckles]

[Fran] One of the things that I think about is… This is sort of elevating out of body horror a little bit, is something like Pat Cadigan's The Girl Thing That Went out for Sushi, which has body augmentation which we talked about last time and a little bit of body horror in it, in that these are people who are working in space and have augmentations done so that they can better work in space, so they become starfish and they become… They have… Different ways of gripping or different ways of appreciating which way is up that is really phenomenal. So I think that's an interesting thing to look at. Horror, especially, tends to end up with the characters and the reader trapped in a situation or trapped in that like depth of imagination where you're not sure if they're ever going to get out. Whereas sci-fi and fantasy find a way out quite often. Howard, you were going to say something there?

[Howard] Oh. Yeah. It's just I… For those of you not benefiting from the video feed, sometimes I raise my hand to let people know that I'm ready to talk when they're done.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] I was not trying to interrupt. Lois McMaster Bujold, I mentioned her in a previous episode, the novel Freefall. In which there is a whole race of people who have been engineered so that their lower legs are arms and so that their hearts and metabolisms and everything function really well, just fine, in zero gravity. This group of people, genetically engineered, and they have their own little space station and everything's cool. Then, artificial gravity, energetic artificial gravity is introduced, and they are sort of this little evolutionary dead end. They're still perfectly awesome in their own little world. When, in one point of the story, a couple of them end up on a planetary surface, yes, there is our lack of agency, there is our body horror, and it is from people who… Or it is experienced by people who, in their own environment, are perfectly suited and beautiful and wonderful and awesome. I like the way… I really love the way Bujold handles that.

 

[Mary Robinette] This has been a great discussion. Let's go ahead and talk about our homework. Chelsea, do you have our homework?

[Chelsea] I do. Your homework, if you should choose to accept it, is to rewrite a scene with body humor or body horror. It can be one of yours or it can be somebody else's. So that the character with the disability is not the butt of the joke or the source of the horror.

[Mary Robinette] That's a great homework assignment. This has been Writing Excuses. You are out of excuses. Now go write.