Writing Excuses Transcripts

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/19-44-a-close-reading-on-structure-tradition-and-innovation 

 

Key points: Where does it fit into the fantasy lineage? Using tradition, but also breaking from it. In conversation with... What the writer intends and what the audience thinks. The conversation that the author is having with the genre and the conversation that the reader is having. Anxiety of influence! Fifth Season is a break from the restoration line of epic fantasy.  "The world is what it is. Unless you destroy it and start all over again, there's no changing it." Each POV is in a different genre. Story as unfolding and telling. When writing, do you think of being in conversation with other books, or with the canon? What has made you the storyteller you are? Who are you telling stories to? Be aware of the traditions you are following, and of the ones you are breaking. 

 

[Season 19, Episode 44]

 

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[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 19, Episode 44]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] A Close Reading on Structure: Tradition and Innovation

[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.

 

[DongWon] So, this week I wanted to talk about another aspect of Fifth Season. I think we're going to zoom out a little bit, a little further away from the text. This is coming from a little bit of my perspective, both as an English major and someone who almost went into academia, and also as a publisher. But one thing that I'm really interested in talking about this book is the way it fits into the lineage of fantasy novels. I think this is a really interesting thing to think about when thinking about how to structure a book, how to frame a book. This kind of touches on some stuff like Hero's Journey kind of things and the way that's used in fiction. But also, just the place that this book has in the canon of fantasy literature, to use a loaded term. So, in a lot of ways, modern epic fantasy is established by Lord of the Rings and a lot of it is descended from that. I think Fifth Season is a really interesting break from that tradition that nonetheless is in conversation with it. Right? One thing that struck me on my second reading of the book several years ago was how much of it uses the classic fantasy tropes. Right? To me, it felt so contemporary and so fresh and so different. But when I stepped back for a second, I said, "Wait a minute. This is a book about wizards who go to a magic school and use crystal magic." I was like, this is just the most classic fantasy I've read in a second. Like, harkening back to, like, Tolkien seventies, eighties fantasy. And the way she pulled from that and yet flipped it and reversed it to create such an exciting, fresh work.

[Mary Robinette] One of the things… I'm glad you brought this up. One of the things that I also love about that, in that is that much like when you look back at the Wizard Master… Excuse me, The Wizard of Earthsea, that magic does basically one thing, you use words and you can change things. Yes, there are nine different Masters, but it's basically, you use words and you can change things. The thing that's happening here is you've got one thing they can do, they can do some vibrational stuff.

[DongWon] Yep.

[Mary Robinette] It's all of the different ways in which it can be twisted and pushed, and then is in conversation with this whole, larger body of work that is outside of fantasy that causes it to be doing some really interesting fresh things. Also, I just need to put out a little shout out to Dark Crystal, which is my favorite crystal magic.

[Laughter]

[DongWon] Yes.

 

[Erin] I [garbled really] like the phrase in conversation with… Such an interesting one, because some of it is like we don't actually know…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Like, we believe that a work is in conversation with another work. I remember earlier you were saying that this work is maybe a little bit in conversation with Octavia Butler. I agree with all these things, but it's interesting, like, how do we know sort of what tradition a book is drawing from? How much of that is the book doing it, and how much of it is us doing it? Because we bring our own context…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] With us. So we're like, oh, I see these things here, and I've seen them in other places.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] It's a really interesting thing. Unless you ask the author, which we will…

[DongWon] Yes.

[Erin] It's hard to know.

[DongWon] Well, it's the difference between sort of intent and the reader. Right? My subjectivity… Sorry, we're getting a little academic here. But my subjectivity as the reader is projecting all of the stuff that I've read. Right? Like, I'm not super familiar with Dark Crystal, so I don't see that. I do… I am familiar with Earthsea and Lord of the Rings and parable of the sower. So, for me, I'm seeing this book as being deeply in conversation with those three things. We were off mic talking about Omelas as well, the ones who walk away from Omelas, another Le Guin story that this feels very in conversation with as well. Right? So…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] I think what traditions it's pulling from is fascinating.

 

[Mary Robinette] So, for me, one of the definitions of genre is that it is literature that is in conversation with itself. That you are both be… Not just that it's the writer is thinking about it. It's that it is… The readers are having conversations about it. So, regardless of what Nora intended with this, because of the way it's being read, because of the way it's positioned, it is in conversation through the conversations of the readers. Actually, as we were talking about it, I think for me… I said Dark Crystal because it is puppets, but for me the thing that it actually brought to mind more was Crystal Singer. Which is a much older…

[Howard] McCaffrey. [Garbled]

[Mary Robinette] Anne McCaffrey. Sorry, my brain just… Similar, one of the similar things there is that you have to have this particular skill, which is, in that case, perfect pitch. Then you go to this planet and you go through this transformation. Some people get turned into rock people by accident. But you are locked into this career now. Because you can no longer exist… There's a symbiont in this case, is the mechanism. But it's still that idea of this being locked in, being enslaved, for the benefit of this other civilization that then convinces you that the reason it's okay is because you are highly valued. So that then the characters become part of their own narrative.

[Howard] I just realized that's exactly like being a web cartoonist…

[Laughter]

[Howard] Because I could no longer exist without the Internet.

[DongWon] Also, you start to turn into rock…

[Howard] I was just going to die…

[Laughter] [garbled]

 

[Howard] I started to turn into a rock. No, the… Sorry, the important thing that I was going to say was that whether or not the author is consuming, is aware of, is having a conversation with the genre, the reader probably is. The best example I can think of for this is the TV show Heroes, which, when it came out, a bunch of us said we've already read this comic book. It's just the X-Men. Why are you trying to read tell it? We've already done this. Heroes was wonderful. It did neat things. But it was trying to do so without the audience having read comic books. Which can't happen. So, when you talk about tradition and innovation, it's entirely possible to convince yourself through anxiety of influence that you are innovating because you are not reading everything else. That's probably not the way it's going to be read.

[DongWon] Right. One thing that I think about Fifth Season is it is deeply in a lineage, in a tradition, and I do think that Nora knows that. Or N. K. Jemison knows that. But… How she thinks about it, I'm very curious to hear. I've not had a conversation with her about it. But, something that I do think is really important is that this book also represents a rupture. This is a very stark departure from one of the core… What I think is one of the defining impulses of epic fantasy, and what I also think is exciting is that because of this rupture, we've seen the start of a new lineage. I see fantasy works now in conversation with Fifth Season, rather than Lord of the Rings as they sort of… I mean, the Poppy war is the example that this brings to mind the most. And because… What I see the difference is, is most epic fantasy… I'm not saying that N. K. Jemison was the first person to do this, but she did it, I think, in a way that was very effective and sort of opened the genre up, is most epic fantasy is what I think of as restoration fantasy. Right? So, Lord of the Rings, the world was good, it has fallen through the rise of Sauron, and just the general, like, rise of the age of men, and the goal is to restore the former glory. The goal is to get Aragorn, the heirs of Numenon, back on… Not Numenon…

[Howard] Numenor.

[DongWon] Numenor, back on the throne. That is so much of what that book is about. The farmboy finds a magic sword can defeat the evil, restore the kingdom to the place of justice and glory and good. It is about restoring a former order. Right? This is part of what makes a lot of epic fantasy inherently conservative, because it's saying things that used to be good, we need to get back to those ways of being. Right? Fifth Season is saying the exact opposite, of examining structures over and over again and saying these things are broken beyond repair. Because we are exploiting people, damaging people, hurting people in a way that the only answer is to burn it down and start something new. Right? Or it's not even particularly interested in what the new thing to start is. It is interested in the examination of what has gone wrong entirely at this point, to the parts that we, as the readership… I don't know that every reader is feeling this way, but are coming around a little bit to maybe Alibaster was right. Maybe he had a point. This is the Magneto is right argument for X-Men fans, of which I've been a big component of. This is Kill Monger's right, this is siding with the villain a little bit because restoration can't be the answer for everybody.

[Mary Robinette] There's a line in the book that is the world is what it is. Unless you destroy it and start all over again, there's no changing it.

[DongWon] Exactly. Speaking of accepting things being the way they are, let's go to break for a moment, and will be right back.

 

[Mary Robinette] I want to tell you about Family Reservations by Eliza Palmer. This is so good. It is not a science fiction or fantasy book. This is mainstream. You should read it. It weaves together some of the most complex family dynamics I've seen. Part way through it, I was thinking, "Oh. Oh, this is King Lear." Eliza describes it as succession meets fine dining. So it has some of the most delicious food descriptions ever. The story does a beautiful job of handling omniscient narrator. And I highly recommend it, not just because it's a fantastic read, but also because it is a masterful use of omniscient narration. If you been wanting to play with this tool, this book is a really good one to read to see how it's been handled in a modern context. Although you should expect to come away being very hungry.

 

[DongWon] Okay. Before the break, Mary Robinette, I think you had a point that you were trying to expand on with the quotation of that line.

[Mary Robinette] So, it's just that when we talk about things that are in conversation, and when you look at when this book was written in the conversations around Black Lives Matter and breaking the world, there are parallels that a modern reader will bring to that, whether or not it is intended. Then, I think, also one of the things about it for me that is interesting structurally is that if you think about the structure of the book also breaks structure. Like, it is not structured the way you've seen other books structured. That is part of what makes it feel so fresh, is that we aren't seeing regurgitation of the hero's journey. Although she is re-purchasing parts of it. Like, when you look at a hero's journey, there's a mentor, there's a character, like, Alibaster is literally called the mentor. The Guardians, one of the other things that happens when they go into the Threshold is that... In the Monomyth, you meet the Guardian, and they are literally called the Guardians. But they are the evil ones in this. It's... It is interesting to me that then the way that first book works, it interrupts the hero's journey at what some people call the dark night of the soul. Sometimes people call it the descent into the abyss, where we literally go into the earth. Like… So… But it is fundamentally not the hero's journey.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] This book is fundamentally not that. It is taking those elements, it is breaking them, and it is re-purposing them to build this entirely new structure.

[Erin] I think it's like bringing new things in. I mean, the… It's so funny to think about the hero's journey. It's also maybe… It's there, but, like, it is only one small… There are a lot of ways to tell stories.

[Mary Robinette] Exactly.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Erin] There are a lot of traditions of storytelling. We have a small one that we've taken and sort of, like, that has been part of fantasy that I think does come from that Tolkien way of thinking. I feel like one of the things that I've been really loving in recent works in general is seeing different ways of telling stories coming into things. I think that probably there's also some of that that this… That this book is in… Is in conversation with. Even though not everyone may know that that's a voice that's being…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Added to the conversation.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] I think that's something really cool that books can do, which is that you don't have to understand every single thing that the book is working with in order to enjoy that story, in order for that story to be influential on other stories that are being told.

[DongWon] Exactly. It goes into the ambient conversation and space, and then people start responding to it.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. One of the things that I particularly enjoyed is that each kind of track of the story has a different structure.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] That works with each other's. So, Dam…

[DongWon] Damaya.

[Mary Robinette] Damaya. Damaya is very like, "Oh. Here is the orphan child who is becoming the chosen one," kind of thing. Syonite is getting very much the reluctant hero journey. For the beginning of it. But then when you start braiding them together, where these things are working in parallel, they fracture, they go in different directions. Then you got this other thing, the whole second person section, which doesn't play by any of those rules.

 

[DongWon] This is a trick I think of most clearly used in Game of Thrones, where each POV character is in a different genre of story. Some are in event, like… You have… What's the young girl's name, I'm blanking on her. But each of the characters, they're like, some are in an adventure story, some are in a political stunt story, some are in a straight up horror story. Right? Some are in a supernatural story, some are in a grounded political fantasy. N. K. Jemison has done that here, where again, we have the child coming into her own power, we have the wizard at the height of her power exploring the world, and then we have the very contemporary sort of like tragic hero story. Again, going back to the parallelism or the POV, realizing that all three are the same person…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Is just… Makes it a stunning trick in terms of how it operates within the genre conversation.

[Howard] Um. I was just reading a bit from Leverage Redemption, the new seasons of leverage. One of the characters says, "Hey, look. We're going to mess this guy up pretty hard. Are we the bad guys here?"

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Sophie says, "Oh, yes. Never forget that, Brianna. We're not heroes, we're just necessary." I love that moment, because in one context, yes, you're necessary and I'm siding with you. You are in… You're hurting this person, but you're doing a good that needs to happen. And on the other hand, I look at it and say, in the context of Fifth Season, well, this is probably how the Guardians feel about themselves. Oh, we're not the good guys, but we're necessary. And just that brushstroke across the Tolkien line of black-and-white, good versus evil… That's silvery gray brushstroke, it just shimmers and invites you to stare at it. I love it.

[Mary Robinette] There's an interlude at the one third mark in this book, which arguably is the end of Act One, sure. But it literally says, "A break in the pattern, a snarl in the weft. There are things you should be noticing here, things that are missing and conspicuous by their absence." I think that's one of the things that makes this so powerful, is that she is… There's a line from Hemingway that says that a story is the things that you leave out. And the things that she's choosing not to show, the structural elements that she is choosing not to use… We don't get the reconciliation. We don't get the restoration. All of those things that are being left out on purpose are what makes this so interesting.

[DongWon] Yeah. An earlier [garbled] reference how she calls out I'm not going to tell you the nice part of this story…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] So, no rude.

 

[Howard] When we talked earlier, previous episode, about… Erin and I had this conversation off-line about… Sometimes we'll just read spoilers because we want to know what happens, but we still want to enjoy the story. A story is an unfolding, and it is also a telling. I can appreciate the telling without the unfolding, and I can appreciate the unfolding while not paying attention to the telling. The consuming media with that in mind, feels to me like a break with tradition. It also, and I'm just going to put a pin in this, argues really well for this book, because it is so well told. The telling is so much more than the unfolding.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] That's why we would encourage you to read it more than once.

 

[DongWon] I have one question that's a little bit of a pivot. As a publisher, I've talked about this a lot on podcasts and elsewhere, I think in comp titles. Right? I'm inherently wired to think, this book is like these other books. This book is in conversation with these other books. I'm curious, as a writer, are you guys actively thinking about lineage in that way, or, like, canon in that way, and the idea that a canon can be a personal thing. Right? In terms of, like, what you've read and where that comes from.

[Mary Robinette] Um, I mean, definitely, I've never done anything like Jane Austen with magic or The Thin Man in space…

[Laughter]

[DongWon] Yeah, that is true. Yeah. So I think you're very unaware of your influences…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Absolutely. Definitely never done Apollo era science fiction that was influenced by Ray Bradberry. Absolutely haven't done that. I don't know what you're talking about.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] I don't know that I… I mean, I know what I've read and if I… I could reconstruct the things that have made me who I am as a storyteller. I think it's a lot of things though. I think some of it is canon science fiction, I think some of it is barbershop tales.

[DongWon] Yep.

[Erin] I think some of it is a lot of things.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And I do think that this is something that I a lot of times will challenge a student to do, which is to think about what has made you the storyteller that you are.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] And who are you then telling stories to?

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] I think those are two really key things, because otherwise, other people will tell you, like, when you put a book out in the world, anyone can tell you who you're in conversation with. But when you're writing it, you get to decide.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] At that moment, take the power and say, this is who I am and here is how I want to tell this tale.

 

[Howard] The better you get at reading, at comprehending what you read, the more able you are to, when you write, to consciously say, I am writing like the things I have consumed and to be able to say I am going to attempt to write unlike the things I have consumed. I am aware enough of the traditions I've been consuming that I am going to break with them and I'm going to write differently than them.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] That's a… I see that as a late career skill that takes a long time to develop and you develop it by reading.

[DongWon] That's what I love about Fifth Season is it is both deeply honoring and in conversation with the traditions that it comes from, but also is so deeply interested in being like, "Uh uh, I'm doing something different."

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Erin, I really loved what you said in terms of the books that made you a writer or, like, the things that you're in con… The stories and not even just books. Right? We're pulling from all parts of our lives. For you, that being different from the conversation that you think the audience is, like, who is this for, what books are they reading, what books will they know and understand? Then, thirdly, the one that you can't control in any way, which is, what people will actually say your book is like. Right? What people will say once it's out in the world. I think your relationship to each of those three different interpretations is really, really important. As a publisher, I'm most interested in the second one, the one that I want writers to come in with is an understanding of here's my audience, here's what they're reading, this is like that. But you understanding for yourself why you're writing this and where you're coming from I think is so important and so powerful.

[Mary Robinette] I think it is the most important thing. To know why you're writing it and who your writing it for.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Because you can lose yourself. I mean, I think it's important, you want to get published, you want your stuff out in the world. But I think if you lose hold of who you are as a storyteller, then you won't be happy with the story no matter how successful it is, no matter how many other people like the way that you told it.

[DongWon] 100 percent.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. It is a common thing that I will see with… When I was going through the slush pile, I would see people attempting to mimic someone else.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And seeing people thinking about what does this editor want? What does that editor want? But it is that thing about what you want… I'm also going to say one other thing about the conversations that we're having. I would not be surprised if Nora had read Crystal Singer and forgotten that she had read it, and that that turned up in the book. Because I have, when I'm gone back and reread some things, I've been like, oh, I didn't actually think about the fact that when I was writing Glamorous Histories, I'm like I'm going to do this something fresh and new with my magic, it's all going to be based on folds and threatens. Then, I'm watching Game of Thrones… Not Game of Thrones. Wheel of Time. I'm like, oh, look at them using folds and threads. No consciousness of that. But this is what we're talking about, that you can be influenced by something, it can come into the book, but it's still your own.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] It's still your own, even if you have been in conversation with something and forgot the the conversation happened.

[DongWon] This is me talking about patterns once again. That's okay, that's how stories work. We are all absorbing stories that we've read, we are all absorbing fiction that we've engaged with, and recombining it and putting it back together in our own ways. Right? So just because a reader will come up to you and be like, "Hey. This is just like that thing from… That Anne McCaffrey did," doesn't invalidate your work at all. Your work is still your work.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] So don't let that throw you. It's okay to have influences, it's okay to come from a place and… In fact, I think it's one of the most important things, is to recognize you come from a place and try to understand that. If you don't have a perfect understanding of it, that's fine too.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

 

[DongWon] With that, I have some homework for you. Very much along these lines. I want you to make a list of the books that you consider the antecedents to this book that you're working on now. What works is your book in conversation with? Are you following on and building on that foundation, or are you disrupting and pushing back on that legacy in one way or another?

 

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

 

[Howard] Have you ever wanted to ask one of the Writing Excuses hosts for very specific, very you-focused help. There's an offering on the Writing Excuses Patreon that will let you do exactly that. The Private Instruction tier includes everything from the lower tiers plus a quarterly, one-on-one Zoom meeting with a host of your choice. You might choose, for example, to work with me on your humorous prose, engage DongWon's expertise on your worldbuilding, or study with Erin to level up your game writing. Visit patreon.com/writingexcuses for more details.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/19-14-a-close-reading-on-voice-epistolary-storytelling-through-voice

 

Key points: Epistles, letters, and voice. What do letters do for voice? 2 things at the same time, what you plan to say, and knowing that it is written for a specific audience, how you present it. 2nd person! Can we be luxuriant and indulgent without epistles? Yes, using pacing, accent, attitude, experience, and focus. Try free indirect speech. Epistles let you concentrate it. Playfulness or humor in the midst of serious situations, like gallows humor. Epistles have a performative aspect, with the character conscious that their words will be judged. The signoff yours. Repetition and resonance! 

[Season 19, Episode 14]

 

[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 19, Episode 14]

 

[Mary Robinette] Hey, listeners. We want your input on season 20. Which, I have to be honest, does not sound like a real number. What elements of the craft do you want us to talk about? What episode or core concept do you use or reference or recommend the most? Or, what are you just having trouble with? After 20 seasons, we've talked about a lot of things. What element of writing do you wish we'd revisit for a deeper dive on the podcast? Email your ideas to podcast@writingexcuses.com

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] A Close Reading on Voice – Epistolary Storytelling through Voice.

[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.

[Erin] 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.

 

[Erin] At the very beginning of our journey in this book, I talked about how much I love the fact that it used epistolaries, that it uses letters. So we're going to really dive into how voice is working within the epistolaries in this particular episode. I actually want to start before we get into a specific reading that I'm going to ask DongWon to do, just to…

[Laughter]

[Erin] Just to hear him do it, is that I'm wondering sort of what is it… Why do we use epistolaries? What is it that letters actually do in voice? I'll say, for me, one of the things I like about using letters is that there are 2 sort of things going on at the same time. There's what you planned to say, and the fact that you know you're writing it to a specific audience, that your character is writing it to someone. So they expect it to be read. That changes the way that they actually present themselves in the things that they put on the page.

[Mary Robinette] I do agree because I think that one of the things that that illuminates is very clearly what the character thinks of the other character. Because of the way they frame things, the… All of the subtext that goes into that epistolary letter. It is also, I think, one of the things that is fun because there is the epistolary that is the letter, and then there's also things that are… Like news articles, and these are very different because they are written to a broad audience, whereas a letter is written, as you said, to one specific person. That is, I think, that's fun.

[DongWon] The letter epistolary, the thing I love really about it is I'm such a sucker for the 2nd person in a piece of fiction. I love the you address. It plays with your subjectivity as the reader in such an interesting way, because it forces you into the position of the person on the other end of this. Right? So, in this case, switching between Red and Blue, and using the 2nd person… I'm put in the position where I have to identify with the person receiving the letter in a way that I think is really fascinating to me, and I think really deepens the connection to character in this book. It's a really clever trick that I really love.

[Howard] How do I know what I think, until I see what I say? I have operated on that principle for decades.

[Screech]

[DongWon] I find these so delightful is the letters can be quite silly in a way that's really good. So. Anyways, Erin is torturing me by making me read this.

 

"My perfect Red. How many boards would the Mongols hoard if the Mongol horde got bored? Perhaps you'll tell me once you finished with this strand?"

 

[DongWon] Just like these little references and jokes layered throughout… It is so delightful to me. Then, there's a later line in the same letter that… This taunting voice. Right?

 

"A suggestion of corruption in my command chain? A charming concern for my well-being? Are you trying to recruit me, dear Cochineal? And then we'd be at each other's throats even more. Oh, Petal, you say that like it's a bad thing."

 

[DongWon] There's so much dialogue here, there's so much voice-iness here. The characters are coming through. It's such this crisp playful way as, like, Blue taunts Red through this whole letter. We're going to see such, like, different evolution in the tone of their letters to each other as we go. But these early ones are such a hook for the audience.

[Erin] Yeah. I think I've been thinking since we talked about it a few episodes ago, why I find these to be so dense in some ways. I think it's because I'm responding to the denseness of personal indulgence as opposed to the denseness of poetic prose.

[DongWon] Oh, I love that.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] You know what I mean? Because these are the moments in which I feel like I get the best sense of who they are, because of the way that they're trying to present themselves, as opposed to… Which is like the splash of color against this beautiful backdrop of poetry. Which I absolutely love.

[Howard] Indulgence is definitely the right word there.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] The luxuriating and indulgent… That I can feel… I can feel in reading these how much Max and Amal just love to write.

[DongWon] Oh, yeah. And love to write to each other. Right? These letters… They wrote these, this novella, sitting literally back-to-back, passing a laptop back and forth. So one would write the letter and hand it to the other. I think that's where that sense of playfulness comes from. You can feel the friendship in this, you can feel the taunting, back-and-forth, as they're both trying to show off for each other in a way that I think comes through.

[Howard] Oh, you're going to go Blue du ba de...

[Laughter]

[Howard] Well, I got some draft punk on tap for you, baby.

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Howard] Hey, I've got some questions about how these epistolaries… Not just how they work, but how we can do the same sorts of things. Maybe even do the same sorts of things without being epistolary. But I think those questions have to wait until after the break.

 

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[Erin] I'm excited to tell you about a song this week. It's a song Story2 by the group clipping. What I love about songs, just in general, is that they have to get put so much story into, like, a really small space. In this case, it's through a character study of a guy named Mike Winfield. I won't tell you much more, because it literally takes 3 minutes to actually listen to the song. But one thing that I want you to listen for, maybe the 2nd time around, or as your sort of enjoying it, is how he gets so much about who Mike Winfield is, where he's been, and the tension of the current moment, all at once. The 2nd thing to look for is something that clipping does that's amazing is they change the time signature of the song as it goes and tension is tightened, which is something that you may be able to use in changing the tempo of your prose. So, look at how they decide when to change that tempo and what you can learn from it by listening to Story2 by clipping.

 

[Howard] Let me start with this question. The luxuriance, the indulgence, the loving to write. Can we do this without resorting to epistolary? Are these tools available to us in other ways?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Absolutely. They're still using the same tools that we've been talking about for voice all along. They're still using pacing, accent, attitude, experience. Focus, even. But what they're doing is that, in the epistolary, it gives you a little bit more freedom… Just a little bit… To have some of those repetitions, some of the more colloquial language. You can do that absolutely when you're not in epistolary form. That's where we… That's where that free indirect speech that we've been talking about comes back in. That some of the things that are very specifically their phrasing, if you took that, and you shifted it to 3rd person and you put it into the middle of a paragraph of action, just a sentence out of that, you would get that same sense of the character, but you would get it spread out through the book instead of in this compressed place of the epistolary where it's isolated in form.

 

[Erin] I also think being playful in the middle of ser… In, like, a serious situation is something that we can all use. I mean, you are the humor expert, so you know this sort of better than anyone, but, I think, that that's something to think about here is that just because a topic is serious or a theme is serious doesn't mean that there isn't room for play. That room gives us a breath. It's like gallows humor. Even in the worst of times, people often use humor to respond to it. There's an episode of Deep Space 9 that I love where all the people are gonna die, and how they respond to it shows you so much about their character. One person gets quiet. One person jokes. One person plans. That shows a lot in the way…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] I mean, you can do that in voice. Somebody who starts making a list at the… Imminent death is coming, is going to feel different than somebody who jokes about the different ways they could die.

[DongWon] The thing I love about the humor here, though, is… When I encounter humor in fiction sometimes, it's very frustrating, because it undermines the emotional beats of the overall story. Here, the humor never contradicts the story, it never contradicts the character beats. It is so clearly a character masking an emotion or taunting somebody else or being playful. But it takes the world seriously, and it takes the stakes seriously, and finds a way to be funny in the middle of that. Right? So I think the overall impression when people talk about Time War, when they think about this book, is of this lush romanticism, of this like deep character work and poeticness. But the experience of reading it… I often find myself laughing out loud at different beats of the book. It's much funnier than I think people remember after they come back to it.

[Howard] As a humorist, that is what I reach for when I'm writing anything that is not… Would not be categorized as humor. During a critique group for one of the shorts that I published in Space Eldritch, a friend said, "The jokes that you put in this scene kind of undermines a whole lot of tension and horror that's been happening." My response was, "I know. I got too tense and scared, and so I just did it." The rest of the group was like, "So did we. Thank you." I was like, "Oh. Okay." So this is a… It's not to everybody's taste, but I reflexively use the tool correctly. That's one of the things that so cool about these kinds of tools is that sometimes if you are getting too tense, you are getting too emotional, you realize, "Oh, I need to… I need to turn a phrase in a way that makes me giggle."

[Mary Robinette] This is also that… That sense is also something that your character will be experiencing while they are writing the letter. So there is a performative aspect to an epistolary section, where the character is conscious of the fact that their words are going to be judged, so they are trying to present themselves in a certain way. When we look back at that first letter from Red…

 

"My cunning methods for spiriting her from your clutches. Engine trouble, a good spring day, a suspiciously effective and cheap remote access software suite her hospital purchased 2 years ago, which allows the good doctor to work from home."

 

[Mary Robinette] It's like I'm just going to show off just a little bit. You think you've got me? No, no, no. Look at how clever I am. I set this up 2 years before you even got here. That kind of performative nature, I think, and how am I going to be judged, is, again, a thing that you can bring outside of the epistles into the way your character's moving through the world. How are people going to judge me, by the actions that I take and the words that I say in the text of a letter, it becomes very, very clear.

[Erin] Yeah. I think it really also is a great way to show character development, because the way you move through the world changes, and therefore the type of performance. You get better at performing, maybe other people get better at judging, they become more familiar with you. I know we wanted to look also at some of the letters from the very end, because how does the relationship change? I know, Howard, you had some thoughts about how the…

[Howard] Oh, Lord.

[Erin] Even the signoff changes from the very beginning to the end…

[Howard] Yeah. There's a…

[Erin] Of the letters.

[Howard] There's a technique, that I need to give a name to so that I can just call it a thing, in which you define the terms for your reader and one of the terms that gets defined, through these epistolaries, is the signoff yours. This is from an epistle that Red's writing to Blue.

 

"I am yours in other ways as well. Yours as I watch the world for your signs [epithenic as a horospeck?]. Yours as I debate methods, motives, chances of delivery. Yours as I review your words, by their sequence, their sounds,, smell, taste. Taking care no one memory of them becomes too worn. Yours. Still. I suspect you will appreciate the token."

 

[Howard] Then Red closes the letter.

 

"Yours, Red."

 

[Howard] Every letter afterward is closed, whether from Red or Blue, with the word yours. Now we know what that word means to them. Because Blue would not write yours absentmindedly. Blue would write yours saying, "Yes. All of these definitions you gave me and more." So, by defining the terms here, Max and Amal have lent weight to the word so that one word can do a huge lift all the way through the rest of the book.

[DongWon] I really love about this technique is it lets them be more directly emotional from the perspective of the character then you would get in narration sometimes. Right? In narration, you sort of have to have a little bit of a step back. Being able to fully embody for pages at a time the deeply lovesick romantic characters that we're seeing can lead to a more direct address. In particular, there's one line it that I've seen quoted many times, but I'd love to reference it here just to show how far we've come from the playful tone of the early letters to now in these, like, deep professions of love.

[Mary Robinette] As I read this to you, I want you to think about 2 tools that we're talking about, repetition, and then there's also resonance. That's where you recognize that there's a link between something you've said before and something we're saying now. So this section has some lovely repetition in it.

 

"I love you. I love you. I love you. I'll write it in waves, in skies, in my heart. You'll never see, but you will know. I'll be all the poets. I'll kill them all, and take each one's place in turn, and every time love's written in all the strands, it will be to you. But never again like this."

 

[DongWon] The thing I love about this passage… I mean, other than it's like heartbreakingly romantic and so beautifully written. But it's so clearly identifiable with Red. That Red's most romantic gesture is I will kill all the poets through all of time…

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] And replace them. Like, that's her solution to making sure Blue understands how much she loves her.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. It again resonates with that first moment when we met Red on the battlefield. The thing about this resonance is that it's one of the ways that you can allow the reader… That you can make space for the reader. That's something that is really important in stories, I think, because the reader inhabits half of the story. Like, the writer has the thing, and then we invite the reader to it. But you bring so much of yourself to it, your own experience. When you are imagining a voice, you are using your own experience to imagine that voice. So, having these resonant moments where you can insert yourself and you can feel that, where you're drawing the connections yourself, makes it stronger than the stories where everything is explained out completely. Those stories tend to get very flat.

 

[Erin] One other thing I love about this, and the mention of repetition and all that, is that one of the first things we see is the repetition, which we talked about in a previous episode. "She has won. Yes, she has won. She is certain she has won. Hasn't she?" That is… Repetition can be both sure and unsure. Like, repetition's very interesting. Because sometimes you repeat something because you know it, and sometimes you repeat something because you wish you knew it. You want to convince yourself of it. Seeing Red move from this sort of trying to repeat the things I have been told and taught are important…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] To something I am claiming as important for myself is just a great way to look at how the same tool can be used 2 different ways, and is also a great way to show movement in the character as a whole.

[DongWon] This goes back to the previous episode, but in the way that Blue communicates confidence and vulnerability in her voice, we're seeing that come out of Red now. Red is much more confident in this scene than she's ever been in the early scenes. But that confidence is coming through an incredible vulnerability. An incredible moment of stress and distress in this letter as she's communicating how much she loves Blue, but also knows that Blue is dying at her hand in these moments. Right? So, the incredible complexity of what's happening here, but we're seeing a Red that is so much more certain and aware of herself and what she wants and who she is then we've seen up until this point in the book.

[Mary Robinette] She's also doing a thing in this where she is using some of the cadence of Blue with the listing. "I'll write it in waves, in skies, and my heart." But doing it with Red, short, punctuated sentences. So it's this thing where she is both reflecting the person that she loves and also truly expressing herself.

[DongWon] She's learning how to write this way. Right?

[Howard] The line, "Red may be mad, but to die for madness is to die for something," is… Ah… I get chills.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] The confidence. The acceptance. The decision. And the… I'm in the chapter where Red is at a dead run trying to fix an unfixable problem.

 

[Erin] I think on that chill we will move to the homework for you. Which is to write a short note from one of your characters to another about something that's important to them. Then you're going… Make it short because you're going to have to do it a couple of times. Rewrite it as a text message. So you're going to change the format a little bit. How does that change the way that this note is happening? Then, right it is something that's going to be screened. Think about the ways somebody in prison might have their letter read by someone else who doesn't care about it before it gets to their intended target. So that changes a little bit of the context. Then, finally, right it as the final message they will ever get to send in their life. Which changes the stakes.

 

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

 

[Erin] Would you like to help other writers be out of excuses? Review us on Apple podcasts or your podcast platform of choice. Rate us 5 stars and help someone like you find us.

 

[Mary Robinette] Support for today's show comes from the Inner Loop Radio. If you listen to us because you're a writer, then you'll also want to listen to Rachel and Courtney talk about how to stay inspired, how to stay focused, and how to stay sane. Subscribe now to the Inner Loop Radio on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or any other podcasting site. Get inspired, get focused, and get [lit] on the Inner Loop Radio.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/18-32-the-kirsten-vangsness-expansion-pack

 

Key points: Imposter syndrome, and the expansion pack you bring from your life, from your experiences. Expressing is cathartic. Love the art in yourself. Everybody has the right to create. Anyone gets to play with the great creative gods. Honor what the audience brings. Imposter syndrome? First, agree that you are an imposter. Second, if you want to write, you are a writer. Avoid gatekeepers, including yourself! We have already gone through some gates, look back at those, and use that to get through new gates. Take care of your personal well and your art well first, let the commerce well fill when it can. 

 

[Season 18, Episode 32]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses, The Kirsten Vangsness Expansion Pack.

[Erin] 15 minutes long.

[Howard] Because you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

 

[Mary Robinette] And we are with our special guest, Kirsten Vangsness. Kirsten, would you like to introduce yourself to our listeners?

[Kirsten] Sure. Hi. My name is Kirsten Vangsness. I am most notably seen [garbled] in my hair and a keyboard. I have played Penelope Garcia on Criminal Minds coming up on its 17th season. I am a Los Angeles-based playwright, I have written four or five… Oh, shoot. I've cowritten five episodes of Criminal Mind. But I've written a few one acts… I've written a one person show that… I mean, he's my friend, but Neil Gaiman has been quoted as saying this is his favorite one person show. I took a couple of plays to Edinborough in 2019. I am the host of Kirsten's Agenda, which you can find on YouTube. I make stuff. That's me.

[Mary Robinette] Fantastic.

[Kirsten] I have a cat…

[Mary Robinette] We are so excited…

[Kirsten] [garbled]

[Mary Robinette] Yes. That was also… For our listeners who are not watching the video feed, Kirsten has an extremely adorable tuxedo cat behind her. Whose name is Atrao.

[Kirsten] Atrao.

[Mary Robinette] So I… Atrao. I was delighted. Delighted to meet both of you, actually.

 

[Mary Robinette] So what we're going to be talking about is the idea of imposter syndrome and the expansion pack that you bring from your life, from the experiences that you have. So, Kirsten and I both have a theater background. Longtime listeners have heard me talk about puppets, like, a lot. What do you find yourself, like, pulling from your performance experience when you are writing?

[Kirsten] One of the… I started writing… Writing became a gateway drug when I was in fifth grade and I got a huge crush on Harriet the spy and I started keeping a journal. Then, when I started to audition for things, I realized there weren't any parts for me that I could do in a monologue way that really showed what I wanted. They were too narrative or… I don't know. Like, you needed to kind of get in there in one short period of time and you realized, "Oh, it needs a conflict, it needs something fun to do." So, writing, I would kind of walk around my room and be like, "Okay. If I was coming up with the perfect monologue, this is what it would have." I would kind of talk and do it, and then write it down, and talk a little bit more. So that was actually how I started to write. Then I would go and do the thing that I just sort of barfed out of my mouth, and it would be way more successful and get me way more attention, or… I used to do these monologue festivals. It would cost like $50 to do, and you would get $55 if you won. I didn't have any money. So, like, I need to win this thing. So it became really important. Because then you got seen by casting directors and stuff. Then, as I… I always knew, just from writing in my journal, how cathartic expressing and necessary… Expressing. Period. I think that's true for every single human being. But when I was performing, it engages the brain, the writer brain, in a different way, because… And I've noticed this when I've written the Criminal Mind scenes I've written for the character that I play. There's the writer Kirsten, and then when actor Kirsten is doing what writer Kirsten wrote, she's like, "Holy goodness. I'm discovering something over here that…" So you get to have a different perspective. Especially, I think, if you're willing to come… Which is how I do, from any kind of creative standpoint, where I believe love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art. I'm not special. My job is to stay out of the way and let… Be the muse, let the muse come, blah blah blah. Everybody has the right to create. Everybody has the right to make something. You get an award or people like it, that's great. But I think that if you're willing to stand in personally from the work, you can kind of interact with it in a way that isn't so, like, "Look at this thing I made. Look at this thing." It's like you're here and I… I've actually… I'm going to name drop again. I actually learned that a little bit, or I learned to take ownership of that, from watching Neil Gaiman. Because I've been around him enough times and watched him sign books. Obviously, he's such a meaningful writer for many of us. The way he is able to engage with people who say to him, "This book is so important to me," and he can honor it, because he stands outside of the work. Like, he understands, like, that's something that I get… I get to play with the great creative gods, isn't this wonderful. I know the secret, which is you get to play with them. Anyone gets to play with them. Any of us who know that secret should share it. I do think that there are people who are gatekeepers, and act like you need to have some sort of rights to do it. I don't believe that. I can't believe that, because I'm not good enough of a writer to believe that. I… Sometimes I am and sometimes I'm really, really not. I have to make that very clear as we… I have written very good scenes in things that have been televised where I have literally started the scene like, Person One says something important.

[Laughter]

[Kirsten] Person Two says the opposite thing. Person Three comes in with an anecdote. Like… It's so… Did I answer that question?

[Yes]

[Kirsten] Talk about expansion packs.

[Garbled]

[Howard] [garbled] you absolutely answered the question.

[Yeah]

[Howard] The best of us, and the rest of us, do that same thing. I cannot count the number of times I've flipped through a script that I thought was ready to be illustrated and realized that there is a dialogue bubble that says "Punch line goes here, Howard."

[Laughter. Right. Right.]

 

[Mary Robinette] My current novel has a thing that says, "Bilbert makes funny joke here."

[Yeah. Yeah.]

[Mary Robinette] unfortunately, it's actually really bad joke here, which is much easier to fill. The thing that I especially like that you were talking about is honoring what the audience brings to it. I think that that personally is something that I brought out of my theater experience, is recognizing that only half the show exists until we get in front of an audience. They… Each person in the audience brings their own thing, whether that's the people on the set or the people who are watching it, or the reader. For me, like, when you talk about the great creative gods, that's the audience is actually that, because that's who I'm writing for, that's… That meeting in between us is what I'm looking for.

[Kirsten] Absolutely, because that energy, the gods and goddesses in non-binary gods and creatures of power, they are… There's an energy that happens between you and the audience. I'm doing this thing I just started in LA called Bits. By the time this airs, I will have done a couple of them. The whole idea [garbled] are these really incredible writers who write things, but we don't finish it. Sometimes the thing that makes you finish it is to do 10 minutes or less of it in front of a room, and say, "I'm making this thing," and take that terrible, disgusting, horribly apathetic to your insides leap of I'm reading this in front of people, and I don't even know if it's good, I don't know where it's good. I'm hoping that these parts make sense. You know, as you start to do it, because you'll feel this wave of energy coming at you. Whether that wave is apathy or joy or curiosity, you'll feel it. It is really interesting. Because it does teach you what you're saying to the audience.

[Howard] The wave of apathy is kind of like the sound of one hand clapping.

[Laughter]

[Erin] I think one thing that's cool is you feel it from yourself as well. Like, you get things from the audience, but I… I do not really have as much of a theater background, but I'm a big karaoke person…

[Laughter]

[Erin] As some of you folks…

[No, I can tell]

[Erin] In Writing Excuses land know, and, like, what's funny is you can be at home and, like, maybe your practicing your song, but when you get up in front of people, you sing differently, because they're there.

[Yeah, that's right]

[Erin] I think the same thing when you read your work. Like, sometimes I'll go… I like to read unfinished things that are just like those little bits that you're talking about. I'll start to read a sentence and as I'm reading it, I'm like, "Oh, that's not right. Actually…

[Laughter]

[Erin] Like, that word is not the word that I should be saying." Sometimes I'll try to revise it, like, on the fly and try to like remember what did I just say, because that was the thing, because in the moment of being in front of the audience, being there and seeing them brought something out of me as a creator that I didn't get in the same way when I was reading to my cat, as lovable as she is.

 

[Kirsten] That's right. I think it's two separate things. To write on your own in your privacy, to create in your private world, that has its own trappings, right? Like, I destroy myself when I write. Like, I have to know that there is a person that lives in me, that is just going to constantly tell me what a failure I, how pointless it is, or, like, why are you doing this? You're already on a show. You're already successful. Like, just… It will do anything it can to get me to stop. Then there's another… Is another kind of risk you're taking, like you said, when you're at home, doing your karaoke, and then when you go out in the world doing it. It's like the Heisenberg principle. The observed object is going to change by the act that it is being observed. And we at least all say we want our work to be seen and heard, so we have to get it observed. But it's so terrifying to have it observed, too.

[Mary Robinette] Yes. Absolutely. When we come back, we're going to talk about imposter syndrome and how to take these pieces of our lives and use them. But right now, let's take a quick break. Do you want to tell us about your thing of the week, Kirsten?

 

[Kirsten] Oh. Here's my thing… My thing! I asked if I could do plural things, and you said I could come so here's my plural things. I have a show on YouTube. I highly recommend Season Two, Season One's a little dated, because it was pandemic time deeply. But it's called Kirsten's Agenda, and it is about art and self-actualization. I don't remember most of it, but I do know that I made stuff during… I wrote things, I wrote songs, I interviewed a bunch of smart people. I have heard that it is helpful for stuff. So that is something that I would like to plug. Then, this is not something that I made, but it is a thing, it is my thing of the week, because I'm deeply invested in it. If you happen to be listening to this and you're going to the Edinborough Fringe this year, there's a show called Blue written by a wonderful playwright named June Carryl. It is about the insurrection, it is about the George Floyd incident, it is about… It's so beautifully told and so smart. It's an hour long and it's wonderful. It's called Blue by June Carryl. If you happen to be in Scotland in April, go see that at [garbled assembly room]. That's… Those are my things.

[Mary Robinette] All right, listeners. You have your marching orders. You're going to go listen to Kirsten… Or watch Kirsten's Agenda on YouTube and obviously you need to buy tickets to the Fringe festival in Edinborough. It's in April. You have plenty of time to make those plans.

[Kirsten] It's in August. It's in August. August! It's in August. They have a little time.

[Mary Robinette] They have some time.

[Laughter]

 

[Mary Robinette] Fantastic. So, now that we are back, I want to talk about imposter syndrome, because that's something that I think it's everybody. One of the things that you were talking about before the break, Kirsten, was why should I even do this? I don't even have… But also, your already successful. So there are these multiple parts of everyone's life, where there is an area that you have success, and then there's the new venture that you're trying. For a lot of our listeners, that new venture is writing, where they're very early in their career and maybe you haven't finished anything yet. What are the things that we can… I talk about with my own life that I came into writing with an expansion pack from the theater that I already knew how to deal with character. Because I had already been inhabiting characters, but structure was a hot mess.

[Ha ha!]

[Mary Robinette] What are ways that you can look for the skills that you already have and find out what your expansion packs are?

[Kirsten] I would say the first thing is to… I heard this… This was a black woman talking about imposter syndrome in business. It applies hugely with her, much less for me… In different degrees, depending upon the privilege in which our society has endowed us at this period of time, but she was saying, in terms of imposter syndrome, to get an agreement that you are an imposter. She was saying that where she is, the spaces in which she goes through life, it wasn't designed for her to be there. So she is an imposter. When you look at it like that, it's kind of cool, meaning, like, good for you for getting in there and doing it. So, I mean this in a different way obviously, because I want to make that distinction very clear, I am not trying to say that I'm going into the same situations like that, but I'm saying internally, get into agreement that you feel like an imposter, I think, is always the first thing that can end that argument. I'm a big fan of ending arguments inside myself. So, okay, I'm an imposter. Number one. Number two, I want to write. Because I want to write, means I am a writer. End of conversation. I wouldn't want to do it… I wouldn't have… I have a right to do it, because I want to do it. That's it. End that conversation. So there's some of these things that just need to be just stopped, and you need to let… Like, you need to do an act of spirit. Right? Like, don't go into your reptilian brain, just act of spirit. Then, I think, in terms of like, we all have what we need. I mean, we all have in our little hobbit bag of tricks what you need to do it how you do it. How I write is totally different than how other people write. So when I… Yes, it might be nice to read how other people do it, to give you freedom. But, like, I can't… Like, the way I write, I have to go back and edit every two seconds, which people say is terrible, you should never do that. But sometimes that's how I have to do it to make it work for me. I think that, like, you can pride yourself once you know and take pleasure… And I need to learn how to do this… In what you don't know. Like, I cannot learn to outline if my life depended on it. Like I… Literally, if my life depended upon the outline, I would be dead on the ground.

[Chuckles]

[Kirsten] But… Because I don't know how to do it yet. But it's going to feel so good when I do. But I still don't know. I think that that's part of the… It's called expansion pack for a reason. It's going to expand. So boring if it was just like the pack. You know what I mean? That's it… That's all you have. So I think that you just know what you're built with and then you go forth.

 

[Howard] Kirsten, I think in the first half of the episode you gave us a critical tool here. You talked about how we want to avoid the gatekeeping of any of this. Hey, get the gatekeepers out of the way, you should be… Hey, don't gatekeep yourself.

[That's right]

[Howard] Just stop that. We can all see ourselves doing it. Oh, I shouldn't do this because I'm… No. Week. I'm gatekeeping. Why am I gatekeeping? Because I'm afraid of failing. Because I'd rather go get a sand… I don't know. But figure out why that gatekeeper's there and then show him the curb.

 

[Erin] Yeah. I also think, like, what you said about feeling like… Understanding where the world is kind of working with you or the world is working against you is, like, you have… Everyone has gone through some gates already in your… Whether it's in your personal life, in your professional life, like, you know how to get past gates, like, you've made it somehow. So, sometimes I think we look at the gates in front of us that are closed, and we forget to look behind us at the gates that we've already unlocked, scrambled over, dug under, however you got through it, you got through it. Maybe you left a little bit of yourself behind. Maybe you got a scrape in the process. But you did it. I think going back and acknowledging that is a great way to take power forward for the next gate in front of you.

[Mary Robinette] I literally got chills when you said that, Erin. Just FYI. Yeah, that's… I think that that is absolutely important is to honor the experiences that you have had, whether they're positive or negative, for what they can teach you about the road ahead of you. In one of our other podcasts, I talked about the fact that I cannot tell you exactly how to navigate through the experience of being a writer because I start from a different point. So the experiences that I passed through our different. But, to Erin's point, to Kirsten's point, I can look at the things that I have gone over, and that can help guide me forward. I have… actually, have a conflict that I'm going to resolve after I get off this podcast. In fact, thank you.

[Chuckles]

 

[Mary Robinette] So, one of the things… I'm going to circle back to something from the beginning part of the episode, Kirsten, when you were talking about your gateway into writing, which is that you started it by monologueing. By trying to find monologues. Where you are now, what tools are you still using from that?

[Kirsten] Oh, I still… I mean, look. I am a… I think that there are people that move in a linear fashion, and there are people like little onions that just go in a little circle. I'm the circle kind. So, like, I'm doing the same… I dress the same as I did when I was five. So, it's like… I just go a little more provocative, a little more provocatively. I'm going down a road and I'm stopping the road because it's not going to make any sense to anybody but me.

[Chuckles]

[Kirsten] But I think that the things that I use, luckily for me, the way in which I speak to myself, the way in which I externalize, a lot of stuff I write about is about all the people who live inside of us. I do a lot of like persona stuff… Very easy for me to write dialogue, just based on the various things that I combat with inside of my own person. So, dialogue is really easy for me, because I can do it based on what goes on inside of me. If that makes any sense. So I think just journaling… To me, you know how you know you're a writer? You know how I know I'm a writer? I write. If you wrote a sentence today, I will argue, that by dint of recording yourself saying something, writing something down, drawing something out, you are a writer. That day. Check the box. You might want to be more of a writer, by writing a little longer. But if you don't right, are you a writer? Like, who's the actor? The one who has the nachos commercial that's running all the time, making money by just sitting on their couch, or the person who is doing day to day today scene work and monologues and plays for two dollars a night? Like, who's the actor? Like, who's the writer? So, like that's… To me, the act of doing it creates more moments of success. Like, I… You have to make the gross stuff, and then through all that gross stuff that you're puking out, there'll be like a little bit of gold.

[Garbled]

[Howard] I had a friend, years ago, said, "Lots of people will tell you you can't write. Don't let any of them tell you you don't."

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I will also, just to layer onto that, continuing to use theater as the metaphor, that sometimes you go through slumps. Where you cannot find a gig. At all. Or you can't even get in the room to audition. That doesn't make you stop being an actor. It doesn't… Likewise, as a writer, just because you don't make a sale doesn't mean you aren't a writer. Then, also, one thing I want to say for mental health. If you have to take a break, surgeons go on vacation, they're still surgeons. So if you have to take a break from writing, you're still a writer, even if you're not actively doing it because of mental health or other health things.

[Kirsten] Yes. I would say, though, that creativity is one of those wonderful, terrible, jealous mistresses. That once you open Pandora's box, if you try to shut her again, you will feel pain. Your body will scream at you. So maybe not writing… Maybe you can take a break from writing, but your creativity is something… It's there, and it's there for you, always. It's always there for you. That's the thing that I find so touching about it. I can leave her forever and she's always there. She might be, like, "you forgot about me and I feel lonely and you need to tend to me more so I'll wake up to you. You're going to have to be nice because I'm not just going to drop pearls of wisdom at your feet right now because I'm a little mad." But she's always there. If I can impart this to everybody, if I could give… I want to share this with the world, that's how important this is. Because I am very… Like, I have a successful job. People can point… Look! There she is. She must get paid for that. She's… Like I do the thing.

[Chuckles]

[Kirsten] Also, you see my name on it. Write… Cowritten by there's my name. That is great and fine. But if I don't… If I knew a lot of rich successful people that were happy, I would… If money and success made you happy, I would know a lot of rich and successful happy people. And I don't. I would say equal, but maybe not even that. There's your art well and there's your commerce well. They are not the same well. Very rarely can I say that I have… put… my commerce well is the thing I make money doing. Your art well is your art well. You hope that the art well becomes a commerce well. But it becomes a commerce well, it's kind of, now, it's a job to make you money. You can't… To put all of this into this isn't fair. Like, so we have to also look at the joy of the doing of it and the deep, deep important cool value of the doing of it. The fact that you are writing, that's cool. The fact that you're writing and that no one's paying attention to it, no one's giving you money, that's even cooler. That's what they write songs about and make movies about is you. So, like the second you become successful, you're just like, "Whatever." You chew up gum. You're going to get attention for that. But, like, I want everyone to know that coming from someone whose commerce well is very full, I always have to keep my art well full. That's my responsibility, and our responsibility as people to our own inner artists that needs tending. The world will become progressively a more kind of place you want to live in if we each just tend to our own pleasure, tend to our own art well.

[Erin] Just to feed on to that, and to add to what Mary Robinette was saying earlier, the most important well… I love that, by the way. I love the art well and the commerce well, and there's also, like, your personal well. Like, your actual I can exist as a person well. That is the well that you really, really must feed the most, because if that well goes dry, you lose it all. So, sometimes you have to… I have found that, literally in the last week, that I was struggling, staying up late, working on a project, not doing very well, and then I was, "You know what? I'm going to go get eight hours of sleep. I'm just… It's going to put me back, but I'm just going to try it." Then I woke up, and the next day, my art well… My personal well was refilled, and so my art well was moving much faster than it was when I was, like, struggling through the art and letting the personal go. So, it's really about making sure you feed yourself so that you can feed your art and then hopefully we all become rich and happy and successful at the same time.

[Mary Robinette] Amazing. I think that that is a great point for us to move on to our homework, which will give you, dear listeners, something to fill your art well with.

 

[Kirsten] Ooo. Okay. So I came up with this. I'm going to try to make it concise. Brevity is not my forte. I have these big questions that I always write about. I always write about time. I'm fascinated by time. What is young, what is old, who lives inside of us? That Madeleine L'Engle quote we are every age we've ever been. These are things I think about all of the time. I also think about the female sexual response cycle all of the time. These are two things I constantly think about. So I end up writing about them, because there my big questions. Now you might know what your big questions are. You might be like, "Oh, these are the things I think about all of the time." I'm talking about big [contemplations?] Like what do we do after we die, or, I really, really, really am this political affiliation. This is why and I feel deeply about it because… What are your big questions? If you don't know what they are, or even if you do know what they are, get a recording device on your phone, whatever. I like those voice to text things very much. I use that almost all the time. Record yourself. You can hear yourself, because I think cadence and the way things you're stressing on is important. And see the words. Go on a rant. Rant about your philosophical big question or questions. Then, sit down, make it easy on yourself if you can only I feel stressed out, I can't do it for too long. Like, make a timer. Like 10 minutes. Do it… Do a little mini. Mini task. Now make a scene based on that philosophical idea. Don't write about the philosophy. Have the people doing the thing. Make a thing where you try to avoid talking about the concept. But show the concept. Maybe even don't even have any dialogue, if you don't want to, just by their behavior you see it. That is my homework.

[Mary Robinette] All right. Fair listeners. Your task is to identify what your big questions are, and then write a scene in which you have characters living out and embodying that big question.

[Kirsten] I would expansion pack this and say do all that while making sure that at least all three wells are filled up as high as you can get them. The other two, the personal as Erin was talking about, and the commerce, as high as you can get them at that moment, before you get to this. That would be my… Be gentle with yourself. Give yourself grace as you do it. That would be the expansion pack part of that.

[Mary Robinette] You should maybe do that by taking a break and go watch the Kirsten's Agenda.

[Laughter]

 

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

[Howard] To stay up-to-date with new releases of upcoming in person events, like our annual writing retreats and Patreon live streams, follow Writing Excuses on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Or subscribe to our newsletter.

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/18-25-to-narrator-or-not-to-narrator

 

Key Points: Different audio formats use narrators differently. Narrator, telling, and no narrator, showing, changes the pacing. Immersion versus distance! Create space for the audience to imagine. Keep in mind what you can let the audience imagine, and what you need to specify to fit your story. Do think about narrator or not as craft, but also as a business decision.

 

[Season 18, Episode 25]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] To Narrator or Not to Narrator.

[Erin] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] 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.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[Dan] We're going to talk about narrators today. We had a moment in the last episode where I said that Forgotten doesn't have a narrator, and Mary Robinette said yes it does. We're going to talk a little bit about that difference. There are a lot of audio things, as audio becomes a much bigger part of the market, people are starting to play with the form a little, we're starting to see full cast audio a lot more than we used to, we're starting to see a lot of different things. So there are full audio dramas, radio dramas, and then there are dramatized audiobooks, and they use narrators differently.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So when you're thinking about an audiobook, an audiobook is something that was written for prose, for print, not necessarily prose but written for print, and then is read aloud. A dramatized book is something that, or a full cast… Let me step first… The full cast, where you have multiple voices, instead of a single narrator. Then you have dramatized audio which is usually full cast and then sound effects. Then you move over to radio plays, which come from the stage side into the audio realm. So in those cases, you are dispensing with all of the basic conventions that come out of novels, short stories, and you're starting with more stage and cinema conventions and moving I. There's some overlap in between. But those are… That's kind of your basic range.

[Dan] Yeah. These are not necessarily very clean-cut categories. There is a lot of play in between them. But, for example, if you go and listen to I Am Not a Serial Killer, that is a narrator reading the book. He will read everything, he will read the dialogue, he will read the narration. He will change his voice now and then when he's doing a different person's part. But it is one person reading it. Listen to Zero G, and it has full cast and sound effects, and it has a narrator to say the inner parts. To describe sometimes how the main character is feeling, what a location looks like. Which is similar to that audiobook, but changed a little bit. Then, something like Dark One: Forgotten, there is nobody just saying inner thoughts out loud, there is nobody describing the setting. It is all right there on the page, much more like a classic script would be for radio or TV.

[Erin] What's interesting with Dark One: Forgotten, though, is that because it is in the style of a podcast, the narrator… Like, the characters in the world are directly addressing the audience. There's a part where it's like, "Oh, I'm not going to put this part in," or "Let me let you know what I'm going to do right here," or "I'm interviewing this person," where there letting you know what's happening from moment to moment, almost like a narrator, but within the world. Which I find like a really interesting way of like mashing things up. One of the things that I do for Zombies Run is I've both written the script part where they're just like, "Runner! You need to go over here. Somebody's attacking you. A zombie's behind you." Which is, there's no narrator really, they're just talking to you like you're somebody that they're talking to over a headset. But I also write in-world radio for Zombies Run, where somebody is actually doing a radio show within the world, and similarly, they are addressing the audience, but it is a fake audience that we've fictionalized for the sake of the Zombies Run universe. It's fun. Each one is a slightly different technique.

 

[Dan] Yeah. That's so cool. So, one of the questions that I want to get to in this episode, and I'll just throw it at you, Erin, is what do those different styles do for you? Why would you choose one over the other, aside from the constraints of the medium that you're working in? When does having a narrator really help you, and when do you prefer to dispense with the narrator altogether?

[Erin] I can't remember if we said this in a podcast or just while talking, but at some point we were talking about showing versus telling and how that changes the pace. When you have a narrator, it's a more telling media. You're being told what's going on. So it is a little bit slightly different paced than when you're… Let me rephrase. When you're… When you have a narrator, it makes you feel, I think, more like you're listening to a story. So it feels like you're around a fireside, and, weirdly, unlike in prose, that actually slows down the pace, I believe. It feels like, okay, we're just gathered around and I'm going to tell you what I am doing. When you don't have a narrator, you're within the story yourself. You feel like you are a part of the story, I think, more. For that reason, it feels faster paced in the tension is higher.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I think of it as immersion versus distance. So the more present a narrator is, usually the more distant you are, because you have someone who is describing the things to you, but you are not participating in the scene. Whereas when the action is happening around you, you are in fact participating in the scene, because you are at least directly hearing what is happening. So you are a direct witness in that case. So, in puppet theater, we use show, don't tell, for very different reasons, because you are literally doing a puppet show, not a puppet tell. There, what I'm thinking about, is that immersion. It's like, the example that I use is I could say, "There's a clock on the wall." Or, I could have someone say, "Oh, looks like it's 9:05 now." One of them has you deeper into the world. So, for me, I think about it in terms of immersion versus distance on whether or not I'm going to use an active narrator. The other thing is that sometimes that narrator is the most efficient way to change a scene.

[Dan] Yes. I really like that way of thinking about it, the immersion versus distance. I found several times adapting Zero G from the prose that I wrote into more of a script format that there were so many times when I was describing how Zero felt or what he was looking at and I realized, "Oh, I'm gonna have someone reading this. I can just make this dialogue instead." That happens so often. Really, that's what was going on. There were moments when it needed to be a narrator doing it, and there are moments when it felt so much better and so much more natural to have the character themselves say it.

[Mary Robinette] One of the things that I find when I'm writing for… Erin, I don't know if you find this too, but when I'm writing for… Knowing that there's going to be an actor on the other end, is that I can have my written dialogue be more ambiguous, because I can put a note to them and then trust them to do the thing. Like, having a character on the page say, "What!" Like, I can't do that without adding a lot of context around it, extreme numbers of punctuation marks, in order to get that "what!" As opposed to "what." Those are two different things. An actor, I can trust, usually, to do that. On the other hand, if there is a possible way to misinterpret a line, an actor will find it.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] I think it was Margaret Dunlap, and I apologize if I've misremembered who it was. But she was telling me about a videogame that she had been writing dialogue for. For one particular dialogue tree, she had to come up with five or six options that were all different. Basically, she used the word what, then with some script notes to say, said in this tone of voice for all five.

[Laughter]

[Howard] Yeah. That was Margaret.

[Dan] That was Margaret. Which I thought was so brilliant.

[Howard] Got paid for writing the same words six times.

[Mary Robinette] Yep.

[DongWon] Amazing.

 

[Howard] Yeah. One of the things that I wanted to point out is that just from our episode title, to narrator or not to narrator, you may be thinking of white room stories, like They're Made of Meat is the classic example. Where there is no description, is just dialogue. We call it white room because you have no description of what's going on. All of your cues come from what is in the dialogue. If you take a white room story and move it into the audio realm, suddenly the fact that there are two different actors, two different voice actors doing the voices, gives you more information. If you add sound design in the background, the sound of a café or the sound of science-fiction space, which shouldn't make any noise, but for some reason always does, you can create something that makes it no longer white room, but the energy… And, for me, as a writer of comedic pithy tight dialogue, the energy remains there. You don't need the dialogue tags that you often have to resort to to say who's speaking. So I love what an audio drama affords you, which is the ability to do that fast banter and keep all those pieces there so that the energy doesn't get slowed down by a narrator explaining to you what they're doing.

[Erin] I will say, on the other hand, the challenges that physical description when you don't have a narrator means that you need to be sometimes coming up with reasons that, in dialogue, your characters will be saying where they are when they're both there and they know that they're there.

[Laughter]

[Erin] You know what I mean? Right. We all know we're in this room, but like, wow, this chair's comfortable. It's a little bit more of those like location aware…

[DongWon] Isn't this coffee shop so nice?

[Erin] Dialogue lines. Exactly. Like, "This coffee shop? I never liked that one." Whatever it is. Like… I think that that's really fun to figure out how to make it work. It's like the same challenge people have with info dumping in that you want to make it seem like really natural to the scene that your writing without fully disrupting what's happening between the characters.

[Mary Robinette] Yes. I want to talk about that more when we come back from the break.

 

[Mary Robinette] Everyone, we want to introduce you to our new producer, Emma Reynolds, and Emma is going to tell you about our thing of the week.

[Emma] The thing of the week is the Earbug Podcast Collective which is a weekly newsletter that is sent out. It is coordinated by one of my friends and mentors in the audio serial area whose amazing. But it is curated by a different person each week. It's just a great way to get your hands-on, or I suppose your ears-on all of the different audio content that is out there for inspiration for you.

 

[Dan] All right. So, we're back. I want to talk more about this white room concept. In particular, I… One thing I said at the beginning of this year, because I've been doing so much audio and now getting back into more traditional novels, is that I had initially kind of fallen off the wagon and forgotten how to write scene descriptions. So the first draft of the actual Dark One novel that I turned in was basically people talking to each other as if they were in an audio drama.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] No one was moving around doing actions, there was no description in between the lines of dialogue to break up what was happening. There was very little scenic description of where they were. That's because my brain had gotten so embedded into this audio space, where that kind of stuff wasn't a part of the script. That really kind of hit home for me the differences that arise when you start breaking these formats, when you start jumping from one to another. Because there are things you can do in one that work really well, but don't work at all when you do them in a different format.

[Mary Robinette] One of the things that I enjoy playing with is… That comes out of audio drama, is using this idea that Erin was talking about before hand, of the interaction with the world to describe what is going on through dialogue. So, in The Spare Man, I don't describe actually that much of what Gimlet, the little dog, does. Frequently, the way I am keeping her alive in the scene is through dialogue. That she's… Like… When someone is having a conversation, it's like, "Is this dog allowed to have people food?" That tells you everything that's going on. But part of what that does for me is that it creates space for the audience. I think any time that you have the narrator they're describing things in a linear way, that removes some of the audience space to imagine the world. One of the things that I think is fun is thinking about deliberately creating that space for the audience. When you're coming back to prose or when you're in the audio realm, is thinking where do I want to allow and encourage the audience to do some lift for me, because that is going to make the story more immediate for them, because it's going to be… They're going to be active participants in this story.

[DongWon] I really love that idea. Sort of pairing that with what Erin was talking about in terms of show, don't tell, one of the things about balancing the showing and the telling is about trust. Right? When you make space for the audience, what you're also doing is saying I'm trusting you to fill that space. I'm trusting you to meet me over there. Right? So making sure that that on-ramp is very easy for them, it's a very easy path for them to follow to meet you where you are, I think is really important and one of the key skills in that. So you can have that little moment of here's what Gimlet is doing and that's filled in, backfilled by us when we hear that, and we then fill in what the dog has been doing for the last like 30 seconds. It's such a delightful way for you as the creator to take a moment and say, "I see you, audience, and you are participating in this story too, and this is a thing we collaborate on." I think that's a beautiful thing that audio drama can do in a way that prose fiction can do, but it's not as natural of a fit. So I love hearing ways that you pull that in.

[Howard] There's a technical tool… Technical? A way of thinking about the absence of the narrator that I find it really useful. In the Dark One: Forgotten, when she says, "I'm recording this in my dorm room." We don't get much of a description, really, any description of the dorm room. It's assumed that all of us have in our head a picture of a dorm room. If, at any point in that story, there'd been action in the dorm room where Sophie and… The name of the main character is…

[Dan] Christina.

[Howard] Christina. Where Sophie and Christina decide to go out the back door… I've never been in a dorm that had a backdoor. But if that's a piece of blocking that you're planning on having in your story, you have to do a little more than just the shorthand when you give us that description. You have to do just a little bit more lifting so that the blocking that happens later works. I describe this as a technical tool. It's something that you have to keep in mind so that you know which pieces you can just let the audience imagine on their own and which pieces you have to specify.

[Dan] Yeah. I think it's important that we kind of draw a line on this. The title of this episode is To Narrator or Not to Narrator. I don't want you to think that that is… That that is a decision that has to be made from project to project. It can be made scene to scene, or even sentence to sentence. There are times within a completely normal traditional novel where you might decide to pull that narrator way back and let dialogue or action do the lifting rather than having the narrator. There are times even in an audio thing where you might want to have a narrator step in and do more.

[DongWon] One thing I do want to bring up, though. If you are making the decision of do I want to do this as a traditional prose project or single voice narrated audiobook versus a full cast production, from the business side, there's an important decision that you will be making there, which is that the right situation is very different for an audiobook versus a full cast production. When you start getting into the full production, you are now walking into dramatization territory, which is what film and TV producers will want if they're going to adapt your work. So, one thing to keep in mind is if somebody shows up and says, "We want to do a full cast production." That's a totally exciting cool thing to do. Be intentional about what you're doing and realizing that if you give up those rights, that may interfere with your ability to do a film or TV adaptation down the line. Now, I know, in a lot of cases, it still works, just doing the thing because the thing that's in front of you and it's exciting. But it's one of the things I want to make sure is clear as were talking about this, that these are different from audiobooks, not just in craft and practice, but in a business sense, you're making a different choice by participating in that or not. There's some blurry space in there. If you have like two or three narrators, I don't remember exactly the distinction, but there's sort of three categories in there. So there's some difference.

[Mary Robinette] It's…

[DongWon] You probably know this better than I do, actually.

[Mary Robinette] One of the big demarkers is whether or not you have changed it from the original form. So, you can have a full cast with almost… I'm not sure if there's a cap on the number of char… Of narrators that can be in there, as long as you don't change any of the words.

[DongWon] Okay.

[Dan] With Zero G, they did full cast audio, but we retained film rights. I don't know exactly how Sarah worked that out, but we worked that out.

[DongWon] It is possible to do it.

[Mary Robinette] You just have to…

 

[Howard] As an aside, this is one of those cases, fair listener, where having an agent…

[Laughter]

[Howard] Is very helpful. Because they can look up these exact questions for you so you don't have to.

[Dan] Solve the problems for you.

[DongWon] This is kind of an edge case. Right? You can tell from the way I'm talking about it I don't have this immediately to mind as… This is not something I've dealt with a bunch. It's a thing I've dealt with once or twice. So there's a conversation to be had in these gray areas. There's blurriness, there's ways to negotiate it.

[Mary Robinette] It's true, actually, that my definition on that may also be linked to whether or not it is narration versus acting.

[DongWon] Right.

[Mary Robinette] As far as the union is concerned.

[Dan] Yeah. That's a good [garbled distinction?]

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Dan] Too.

[DongWon] Right. Then the union starts to come in, that's a whole nother set of questions that need to be answered as you do it. So, anyways…

[Laughter]

[DongWon] Here's a few things that the decision of narrator or not to narrator is a craft one. It is also a business one. Make sure you're talking to your publishing team if you have one. Make sure you're being intentional about the choices that you're making, as you go into those choices.

[Erin] It can also be an experimental one. Which is to say that you can also just see what happens if you take something that you've written just as a regular narrator full prose, and what would happen if you took the narrator out or tried it in an audio format, and see what you learn. Because one thing that I think you learn a lot about in audio is which details you're going to want to have your narrator or your characters mention. Because, there, I think, is a limit, especially in a more fully acted production, to how much people want to listen to a narrator before they're like, "Get back to the drama."

[Chuckles]

[Erin] So you learn like maybe this longer passage that I might be able to put on the page is going to come off much differently, like, when I'm listening to it, especially if it's not in audiobook format listening, but more of a full cast.

[Dan] Yeah. One of the elements that gives me fits when I'm trying to write these pure audio dramas, for example, with the Moon Breaker videogame, is fight scenes. Doing those in something that has no narrator gets so hard. You can actually go and listen to the Moon Breaker episodes and see me doing these kinds of experiments that Erin's talking about, saying, "Well, what happens if I just do a straight fight scene and say, okay, Foley guy, lots of laser noises for like 20 seconds and then the story will keep going." Then other episodes are much more intentional, like, I'm going to block this entire thing out so that I know exactly what's happening, and the only things that are going to happen in the fight scene are ones that I think we can depict with clarity with pure audio and no narration. It is very hard to make a fight scene intelligible without a narrator describing what is happening and no visuals to let you see it.

[Howard] I'm just reminded of the time when Mike Magnola on a panel said, "Oh, yeah. I really trust this artist. In one of the scripts I said hell boy fights an army of skeletons for six pages."

[Laughter] [Oh, boy. Wow.]

[Erin] I think this comes back to why I think narrator or not is such a cool tool, because I was thinking about this fight scene. I'm like, if you want your audience member to feel like, oh my gosh, I'm in the middle of the battle, I don't know what is happening, attacks are coming from everywhere, then having no narrator is great because you're in that feeling of, like, I'm just hearing swords and screaming and dying. But if you want them to actually be able to figure out who stabbed who with the whatchamacallit, then maybe you need the narrator, because the point is for them to understand it, not to sort of just be absorbed by it.

[Dan] Yeah. Those are… That can become a really valuable tool if you think of it in those ways. Like, what am I gonna use this lack of narrator to produce a specific effect, rather than just, oh, boy, I don't have a narrator. This is going to suck.

[DongWon] You use that to great effect in Dark One: Forgotten. Right? So, at the end, when she is captured by the serial killer, we don't exactly know what happens to her. We know that she experiences some stuff that's pretty bad, and she has to go to the hospital afterwards. It's unclear what he has done to her, what injuries she has sustained. I think letting my brain fill that in is more horrifying then if you'd described, oh, he hit her. She fell down the stairs. Whatever it is. Right? It becomes a very upsetting sequence of events that was very tense and difficult to listen to, in a good way. I think by me having to fill in those details…

[Mary Robinette] Making space for the audience.

[Dan] I am very glad that it had that effect on you. When I wrote that scene, this was back when I was still on Twitter, and I got on and said, "I just wrote a scene so brutal, Brandon Sanderson will regret ever collaborating with me." It… We had to tone it down a little, but… Yeah. That…

[DongWon] That's how it came through. I was like, "I am in a horror movie right now." You know what I mean? But that's the intended effect, I think. That's what you were trying to produce. Forcing me to produce all the worst horror movies I've ever seen in my brain, I think, was a great shortcut for you to get the effect that you wanted.

[Erin] Almost makes you complicit in the violence itself.

[DongWon] Yes. Thanks for making me feel worse about it.

[Giggles]

[Howard] I think that Dan Wells being complicit is a note to end on. Almost.

[Laughter]

 

[Mary Robinette] So, now it's time for your homework. I want you to do something which is actually the way I started writing prose. I want you to take something that you've already written and I want you to adapt it for audio. When I started writing, I tried going straight to script and it was a disaster. So I started writing a short story, and then converting it into audio. Because I wanted to write audio. You, my friends, are going to take something you've already written. As Erin suggested, you're going to be stripping out narration, you're going to be figuring out what sound effects are. Try to convert it for audio.

 

[Mary Robinette] In the next episode of Writing Excuses, we explore writing as an act of hospitality and reader agency. Until then, you're out of excuses. Now go write.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/18-18-launching-an-author-newsletter/

 

Key Points: Two kinds of newsletters, content newsletters and marketing newsletters. Content or announcements? One newsletter or many? One channel is probably best. What are you passionate about? How often can you do it? Don't overcommit! Look at platforms, MailChimp and others. Consider an assistant! Collect addresses. 

 

[Season 18, Episode 18]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Launching an Author Newsletter.

[Erin] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] 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.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[DongWon] So, this week we wanted to talk about creating your own newsletter. One thing that I wanted to distinguish up front is that, in my view, there are two distinct types of newsletters that exist in the world. I think a lot of the confusion that people have, and a lot of the trepidation people have, comes from confusing which one is which. So, the newsletter that I do, Publishing Is Hard, is what I would call a content newsletter. It is a thing that I create and send out on a regular basis that are essays, whatever missives, what we would have once called a blog. The other type of newsletter is a marketing newsletter. This is for announcements. It's not a place where you write an essay about what you think about craft, what you think about writing. It's a place where you tell people, "I have a book coming out. Preorder it. I have an event coming up. Buy tickets. Here's my new cover." Whatever it is. Right? So keeping those two things distinct in your brain, I think, is the first step to really understanding a strong newsletter strategy. So that's sort of like the overall framework I wanted to launch this conversation with. There are reasons to have both. The basic difference is, I think, every single person who is doing a thing on the Internet where they want people to buy stuff should have a marketing newsletter. Should just have one. If you have… Launching a content newsletter is a more deliberate thing and takes a lot of work and thought as to what it is you want to be doing with it. But if you want to be an author, if you want to have published books, please, please, please make a newsletter. We're going to talk a little bit more about why and how to do that.

[Mary Robinette] I was very resistant to doing a newsletter for a long time, because all of the newsletters that I heard people talk about were the content newsletters. I was like, "Oh, that's very exhausting." Even though I had blogged daily for years. It just… It felt different. Then I was also resistant to doing a marketing newsletter because I'm like, "Who's going to read that? It's just going to go in and say by my things. It's just going to be people putting me in spam folders." But I'm finding that actually having control of my audience is like really handy for not just the regular things, but also the surprise visits, the "Hey, I have a sudden giveaway I want to do." That it is a nice way to connect to people.

[DongWon] Yeah. I think one of the things we're finding as digital marketing develops over the last I don't know how many years since Al Gore invented the Internet is the only thing that we know works is email marketing. Right?

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] I think display ads, I think content marketing, all of those things can work in certain circumstances. They tend to be very, very expensive. Email, though, getting in people's inboxes, especially people that you know are interested in what you're providing because they signed up for your newsletter in the first place is just one of the most effective ways to activate people, to get them to go do the thing that you want them to do. So having a marketing newsletter, the reason I recommend it so highly, is it's direct access to your core audience, to your main supporters. It is… You can make an appeal to them that is like, "Hey, please do this thing." Now, the thing to remember with a marketing newsletter is that every time you send one, some percentage of the people are going to unsubscribe to that thing. Right? That's okay, that's part of the process. Right? You're going to lose people every time you send it. So, the thing about that, every time you pull the trigger on sending a marketing letter, is that I'm going to lose some people when I do this. Because it shows up in their inbox, they're like, "I don't remember signing up for this. I'm going to unsubscribe." It's fine. It's how people use the Internet. But you want to make sure when you are doing it as a result, you work doing it for a really intentional purpose.

 

[Erin] I have a question that is just for me. I am somebody who does a lot of things in different areas. I do some game writing, I do some short story writing, I do some teaching. If I'm creating, because I've yet to put together a newsletter, but I'm using this as the drive to do it, am I like… Should I be having three newsletters? Should I be having one that, like, has a lot of different types of content? Or will people get mad and unsubscribe more?

[DongWon] It's a tough balancing act, because you don't want to hit the marketing things too often. Right? If you're sending one every week when you have something dropping, people… You're going to lose a lot of your audience over time as people unsubscribe, because they're like, "These are too many emails." Right? So finding that balance is tricky. If you're a traditionally published author, it's not too bad, you're doing one or two or maybe three of these a year. Whatever. With the number of things you have coming out, I would advise, like, yeah, have one channel. I don't think segmenting your audience is going to be… I mean, it's just like way too much work for you and too much work for your audience, too, to figure out which newsletter they want to sign up for. I would just try instead and really think about how can I bundle these things together to make sure that I'm not touching them too often.

[Dan] Yeah. Which is kind of, sort of, what I do with mine. I call mine a water cooler newsletter. Based on something a friend of mine told me a while ago, which is, if you think of social media as a water cooler, that's a place where you go and you have interesting conversations with people. If someone shows up at the water cooler and all they ever talk about is how you can buy shirts in their store, you don't want to talk to that person or listen to what they say. So my newsletter is very much a marketing newsletter, and I send it out once a month, whether I've got a new launch or not. I need to tell people about my calendar, and what events I'm doing, and so on and so on. But I also make sure to include I'm going to recommend somebody else's book in every one. What is Dan reading right now? This. I am going to give you a quick update on what I am writing, in case you are interested. Like, I'm halfway through this book. So it is a tiny bit of content to help give you something interesting to read, and to recommend other people as well as just me. So that it's not purely, "Hey, go to my store and buy my merch."

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. That's why, like, mine will often have pictures of my cats and I have an automation set up so that on your birthday, I send you a short story, and every year it's a different short story. That… Remembering to change them is…

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Sorry for everyone who got the same short story twice this year.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] I love that. I love having that little bit of a personal touch. Right? It can be automated, but still, it's like a thing that you receive. It's like, oh, here's a special thing from this creator I follow, who I'm a fan of. I think it's a great way to like get them more engaged with you in a more personal way.

 

[Howard] Coming back to answering Erin's question, what should you put in your newsletter. I would ask this first. What's a thing that you're interested in and would be willing to write about on a regular basis that might interest other people? That could be movies that you like to watch. That could be… It could be cooking. I mean, there… Any topic. Literally, any topic. Because when you're creating content, when you're creating a content newsletter, when you're creating something with hooks, something that grabs people and holds them, you have to be passionate about it first. If you're not passionate about it, it's going to be twice as hard to write about it. So that's the… For me, that would be the first question. The second question, then, is how often can I do it? How much… What else do I have to promote that I would roll into it? With DongWon's newsletter, it's about your passion for publishing. Which dovetails nicely with Writing Excuses, passion…

[Chuckles]

[Howard] For talking about writing.

[DongWon] Exactly. Yup.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] It's important when you're asking yourself these questions to remember that you're giving yourself an extra job. For the most part, you became an artist because you're excited about creating art, not excited about promoting art. So don't over commit to something you know you're going to resent. Make it something like DongWon's newsletter is something that they love to write, they're passionate about. If it felt onerous, you wouldn't do it.

[DongWon] That's also part of why it's so irregular in terms of the timing. I do it when I have bandwidth to do it. I am often insanely busy, and it's… I just don't have the bandwidth to come up with another well thought out, carefully worded newsletter. Right? So when it comes to the marketing newsletter, that's why my advice is to make it as light of a touch and like a lift as possible for you of keep it simple. Stick to really basic things. At a bare minimum, just announce when you have stuff. Include extra things if you can, in terms of recommending other people's books, little personal touches like your… Like the cat photos or the short story for… On people's birthdays. Those are lovely little things. Those aren't necessary. You can make it as late as possible for you to make it manageable. Then, when you're looking at the content style newsletter, really think about what your bandwidth is. How much can you take on? Can you do a thing once a month? Once every two months? Don't overpromise to your audience and leave them feeling disappointed. Give them more rather than give them less when you're making that sort of content approach. I want to switch to talking about the mechanics of it, how you do these things, what platforms you use, things like that, but let's first take a break for a moment. Then we will be right back.

 

[Dan] All right. So, I want to talk about the new book from our good friend of the podcast, Piper Drake. She has a book out called Wings Once Cursed and Bound. It actually comes out in two days from when this airs on May 2. This… Piper has a very successful career as a romance author. Wings Once Cursed and Bound is a step into a bit of a new genre. It is kind of modern fantasy. It is about a woman in Seattle who is secretly hiding the fact that she is actually a char… A kind of mythical creature from Thai folklore. She is a bird person. She encounters a guy who is a vampire who goes around in the world collecting mystical artifacts and locking them up so that they don't cause problems for people. He is currently looking for the infamous red shoes. Kind of the same idea as the Hans Christian Anderson story about the red shoes that make you dance forever. So, it's the two of them and those red shoes. They get embroiled in this big story. It's a wonderful, wonderful book. That is Wings Once Cursed and Bound by Piper J. Drake.

 

[DongWon] Okay. So, as we're thinking about how do I set up that newsletter platform for myself, Erin, you are currently thinking about doing this for yourself. Sounds like the rest of everyone else has your own marketing newsletter. What platforms are you all using? How did you go about setting that up? What do you feel like works for you? I mean, are there best practices that you're finding really helping you reach your audience in the way that you want to be?

[Mary Robinette] So, I work with a company called Northstar Messaging. Because I have a limited number of spoons. So I had started mine with MailChimp. That was working really well for me for a long time. But there were a number of automations that I wanted to do with onboarding, and it was hard. It just didn't do that well. So we've just switched over to Active Campaign which allows you to build sequences so that… This is called a nurture sequence. So someone comes in, and they get a welcome message. Then, a little bit later, they get a different thing that has some additional evergreen content, as they're being folded into the regular flow. So that's… That idea of a nurture sequence is something that I had heard about a lot, and hadn't known how to execute it. Which is why I was like, "Hello. You are professionals." It's something that I have experienced as a consumer, and I know that they're useful. But I just… I couldn't understand how to do that for myself as a writer.

[Erin] I think that's a great point, which is that it's nice to see what you like in a newsletter. Like, if you have… You see somebody's newsletter and you're like, "Oh, my gosh. This design, I'm loving it." Like, it's nice to see, like, how are they sending it to you. Usually you can find it somewhere. Scroll down to the very bottom newsletter, you might see like, sent to you by MailChimp, or Constant Contact, or one of the many other platforms that is used to send newsletters. Or, if it's the kind of content newsletter like you have, DongWon, you can sometimes tell in the URL. Like, what the service is behind the service.

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Erin] I love doing that, just because, even though I don't actually have a newsletter, I love making up the idea that I'm creating a newsletter, doing lots of research, and then not sending it.

[Laughter]

[Erin] So, often I collect lists of places that would be good to use, just by looking at what other people do and saying I want to do that.

[Howard] You're LARPing as a newsletter sender.

[Laughter]

 

[Dan] I don't actually know what system I use to send out a newsletter. Because of a different tool that I use, which is an assistant. I understand that this is not immediately accessible to every aspiring author. I have an assistant whom I pay. She puts together a newsletter for me, among other tasks. I will sit down at the beginning of every month, and I will write three paragraphs. What is Dan working on, what is Dan reading, what does Dan recommend. Then send them off to her, and she turns it into a newsletter and sends it out into the world. That has been, for me, an incredibly valuable way of offloading the parts of this business that I know are important, but that I don't want to do, and still get some value out of them.

[Howard] I have the same model. My assistant's name is Sandra. Sandra has a full plate of a million other things. With the long Covid and chronic fatigue, it's not just that I don't really want to spend time crunching the text for a newsletter, it is that we have to prioritize my time now so that I am doing the things that only I can do. Anything that can be done by somebody else gets handed off. So the newsletter management has been handed off. Now, that said, Sandra will sometimes come to me and say, "Hey, do you have anything for the newsletter? I need a picture. Do you have… My bank of Howard pictures has run dry." So I will dig around and I will find something. This happens with newsletters. It also happens with a thing that is very much like a newsletter and is core to our business model, Kickstarter updates. When we're working on a project and we need to let people know, "Hey, here's what… Here's where we are in this. Here are some art drops. Here's what's new in the…" It reads exactly like a newsletter, and the audience is exactly like a newsletter audience in that it is a self-selecting group of people who have chosen to hear about this. That's one of the things that I like to remind people about newsletters is that they work better than banner ads or anything else because it is a self-selecting group of people. If someone unsubscribes, they have self-selected out of the group, and that's fine.

[DongWon] But at some point, somebody said, "Yes. I want to take this content."

[Howard] Exactly.

[DongWon] That is such a huge difference versus…

[Howard] Incredibly… Incredibly valuable.

[DongWon] Exactly. Exactly.

[Howard] Incredibly valuable. As a data point on that, when we did our last Kickstarter, we looked at… We had a marketing company help us find all of the self-selecting people that… Anybody who'd ever bought anything with us, subscribers to the newsletter, previous Kickstarters, whatever. It was over 15,000 email addresses. We sent out one mail blast saying, "We're launching a Kickstarter."

[DongWon] Great.

[Howard] And had more subscribers than we had ever had before. So, starting a newsletter and collecting these addresses is… It's going to help you in the future, one way or another.

 

[DongWon] That's the thing. You can start collecting them early. You don't have to send a newsletter. No one remembers signing up for newsletters. Once you do it, you're not like, "I can't believe that person hasn't emailed me yet." Right? So you can start collecting emails now. Then, when your first novel comes out, five years from now, then, maybe, you have a few thousand names on that list. Right? That can make a huge difference as you just grow that a little bit over time. Just make sure any time someone goes to your website, someone goes to your link tree, or Twitter profile, or whatever it is, "Hey. Sign up to get updates from me here." I think starting to grab those like little drips, it adds up over time. What I love hearing all of you talk about this is… It kind of… This is one of those things that plays into the category of what we call authoring. Right? Things that go into the job of being a professional author that aren't actually writing books. Right? Which is an enormous amount of time. It is always shocking to me how much time and effort goes into dealing with email, responding about events, answering interview questions, all these things that sound like nice problems to have until you're doing this so much you don't have time to write. So, newsletters is a great one, especially a marketing newsletter, to offload to a consulting firm, in Mary Robinette's case, assistants, whatever it happens to be. But when you're early-stage, sort of more Erin's position, you're doing that research and figuring out how to launch it and build that up. I love hearing that you've already done all that homework. We'll get you to pull that trigger soon.

[Erin] It's happening.

[Mary Robinette] I should say that the marketing firm is a very new thing.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Before that, it was assistants, and before that, it was me, and when it was me, it was wildly irregular.

[DongWon] Exactly. That's the process. Right? You learn by doing. I love hearing Erin talk about, like, figuring out what you wanted to do by seeing what other people were doing. I mean, that's so much how we learn how to do all these marketing techniques is what's working. What are authors I like? Who do I respect? What content am I getting in my inbox that I think is good? Just sign up for a bunch of people's newsletters. I know it's going to be annoying for a minute. But just see what they're doing. Right? Go to your favorite authors pages. See what their newsletters look like. Learn some techniques from them. Then start applying that little bit by bit for yourself.

[Howard] It is worth pointing out that your newsletter can be a business model unto itself.

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Howard] If you are passionate enough about what you are writing, if you touch a nerve, you may find, wow, Howard writes about lazy recipes for old people, suddenly has 50,000 people reading it. Well, maybe if I turn that into a book, I can make money out of it. That is a legit thing. Which is one of the reasons why I would encourage you, if you're going to do a newsletter, write about things you're passionate about. Because that passion, that's what connects people to your fiction, it's what connects them to your TikTok, it's what connects us with each other.

[DongWon] If you're doing a content newsletter, you can get people to subscribe and pay. It's shocking how few subscribers it takes for that to suddenly feel like, "Oh. This makes sense for me to be spending a couple hours a week on this."

[Erin] I think that's also good because it gives you an assignment. So, one of the reasons that I have not started a newsletter for myself, despite the fact that I once worked as somebody who sent out newsletters for other people as a job. So it's… I know what the thing is. Is because it's so easy to put yourself last and say, "Okay. I only have so much time. I'm going to do stuff for other people." Or to put your writing self first, which is a completely legitimate choice. But the authoring does sort of need to get done. So by being on this podcast, I'm forcing myself to do the authoring. We're going to be asking you to do some of the authoring, too. But I think even more than that, if you have subscribers, it's a way to sort of offload… You're not making yourself do it, you're doing it for somebody else. You're giving them a gift. So, as long as that doesn't become a huge like pressure on you, I think it can be a nice motivation to kind of kick yourself in the butt and sort of make yourself do the thing that you want to do. Because you want to reach other people and let them know about what you've been doing.

[Mary Robinette] It's as if… It's almost as if when you're saying you're using this as a way to get the… To make yourself do the newsletter. It's almost as if you are figuring out who you are, and then doing it on purpose.

[Laughter]

[garbled Exactly. Wow. Callbacks. As if we've planned these episodes. Exactly.]

[Mary Robinette] It would have sounded so much more clever if we hadn't all just giggled at that.

[Laughter]

[Dan] We're clever, we're just not very professional about it.

[Laughter]

 

[DongWon] On that note, I think I will take us to our homework for the week. I think our homework is probably pretty easy to guess what I'm about to tell you to do based on everything I've said on this podcast so far, which is… Go make your own newsletter. Make a marketing newsletter, figure out what service you want to use. MailChimp is probably the most popular, but do a little googling. There's a million guides out there. Make an account. Make a free account. Just sign it up. Figure out how to integrate it into your personal website, if you have one. If you don't, make a website. Highly encourage you to do that. Then, you don't have to do anything to it. Don't send a newsletter, don't do anything with it. Just make it, get the sign-up form on that site, and let it be.

[Mary Robinette] In the next episode of Writing Excuses, we talk about why publishers make choices, how writers can use that, and why Howard's been using the Time Machine all wrong. Until then, you're out of excuses. Now go start a newsletter. Or go subscribe to ours. Because we also needed to start one, and recording these episodes made us realize that we hadn't. So, use the Time Machine, find our newsletter subscription button, subscribe, and join us.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2022/12/25/17-52-the-wxr-2022-qa/

 

Q&A Points:

Q: What strategies can you use to make the reader aware of the complexities of your world without infodumping?

A: Drop bits of reference into the dialogue without details. Pick themes that your characters are passionate about. Add stuff that is not vital to the plot. Let the character interact with them.

Q: How do you balance a sense of progress with an unreliable narrator?

A: With a goal that they are aiming for. Why are you using an unreliable narrator? Knowing that, and being deliberate about it, allows you to mix it with progress. Progress is asking questions and answering them, which is not necessarily connected to whatever the narrator may be lying about. 

Q: How can I make two magic systems work in the same setting when one is very underpowered compared to the other, and the protagonist uses the weaker magic?

A: That's the best way to do it! Because it has conflict. Show that they are the underdog, but they use their skills better. This builds sympathy and rooting interest. 

Q: Have you ever based a character on yourself or someone that you know? If so, did you find that more or less difficult to write?

A: Yes, every character is a reflection of me, in some way. No, not actively base on myself, that I consider to be me. Basing a character on someone you know? Strip out the details, keep the patterns of mannerisms. Base on a struggle or a conflict. Tuckerizations!

Q: So, on book adaptations, Dan, as someone who has had a book adapted, can you talk a little bit about what the process looks like and things to keep in mind when working on adaptations?

A: New and innovative is better than faithful. Script form, on screen, is not the same as novel form. 

Q: Do you have any recommendations for conventions or other writing events an aspiring author should attend for networking purposes?

A: Surrey International Writers Conference. Nebula conference. Check your local conventions.

World Fantasy. World Con. Story Makers and Pikes Peak. 

Q: Do you use any particular methods to calibrate how detailed your scientific or technical terms are for each series or audience or genre?

A: Consider a cheese sandwich. If all it does is feed the character, you don't say much about it. If the character is a chef, you may say more. Technical jargon is the same. Think about the structural purpose they serve in your story.

Q: How do you cultivate an audience, specifically how do you interact with fans responsibly, especially starting out when they may number less than 10 and are essentially your peers?

A: Try to add value to every group, every conversation you have. Marketing is a minus value, so add value to the group before you try to market to them. Make a contribution, be interesting, make sure people enjoy spending time with you first. Consider a street team! 

 

[Season 17, Episode 52]

 

[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Q&A on the Writing Excuses Cruise 2022.

[Dan] 15 minutes long.

[Mary Robinette] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Brandon] I'm Brandon.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Howard] And you guys are going to ask us questions, despite our not-smartness.

[Chuckles]

 

[Brandon] Go ahead. First question.

[Julie] Hey, can you hear me?

[Dan] Yup.

[Julie] I'm Julie. What strategies can you use to make the reader aware of the complexities of your world without infodumping?

[Howard] What strategy… I love this question, and James Sutter gave us a great answer to that a couple seasons ago. Just by dropping little lines of dialogue, "the screaming hills" or "The monks of whatever" as little bits of reference without any additional details. These are just things that exist, that the characters know about, and that gets sprinkled into the dialogue, and then off they go with the plot.

[Brandon] I would pick a few themes for your book. In specific, things that you are going to… That your characters are passionate about. Right? Everybody… Kind of because Tolkien did Tolkien's thing wants to pick the ones that Tolkien did, which is not a bad idea. But your character might be a calligrapher, and they might be interested in the history of fonts on your world. They can talk about the history of fonts, and drop those hints in, not at length, not infodumps, but mentions here and there. Which will give the same sense of depth in history to your world, and be relevant to your character and their passions, rather than that same character talking about the history of that fort over there, which might be something that Tolkien would have done. Pick the ones that your characters are passionate about.

[Dan] I think so much of what provides depth to a story is stuff that is not vital to the plot. If we… If the only information we ever get is the information we require in order to understand the current story taking place, then the world is only as big as the current story taking place. Whereas, if we have other things, other history, other cultural details that have nothing to do with the current story, then that makes the world very large.

[Mary Robinette] I pick them based on whether or not my character is interacting with them. So if the character is interacting with the food, then I can describe that food. If they aren't interacting with the food, then I do not describe the national dish of whatever fiction fantasy world I have.

 

[Brandon] All right. Question number two, by the person in the excellent T-shirt. One of mine.

[Todd] Ah, yes. I'm Todd, and I'm currently wearing the same shirt as Brandon, but… For my question, I'm wondering how do you balance a sense of progress with an unreliable narrator?

[Brandon] Uh…

[Mary Robinette] Ah…

[Brandon] How do you balance… Oh, that's… I don't have to repeat them because…

[Mary Robinette] Um… So, your character can still have a goal that they're aiming for. Frequently, that unreliability is about some aspect of self. So, you don't… You can still be honest to the reader by having the character react in ways that are consistent with whatever that secret is. Which allows you to make that forward progress and then kind of drop clues before you do the big reveal about what the unreliability is.

[Brandon] Yup. I would agree. Unreliable narrators should always be a feature, not a bug. Right? Like, if you're using it, you should be using it for a reason. What is your goal in using the unreliable narrator? What are you achieving? Well, that will then tell you how you can intermix that with progress. Because you can cheat and really fun ways with an unreliable narrator. There can be several… I mean, a character that I wrote who lost several years of time in their memory, or parts of the time in their memory, becomes unreliable not because of them hiding from the reader, but they legit don't know. This then becomes a cool reveal. So highlighting those things… The thing that I would say you most want the reader to pick up on is that you as an author are doing this on purpose. The character is unreliable on purpose, not on accident. They will give you all kinds of accommodation if they know it's on purpose. As soon as they suspect it's on accident, you start to lose them.

[Howard] I think that the sense of progress and the narrator might be a false concomitance here, that those are not necessarily related. For me, the sense of progress comes from a question being asked and then later being answered. Every time I get an answer to a question I had, to a question posed by the story, I feel like we've made progress. That, for me, is completely disconnected from who the narrator may or may not be lying about.

[Mary Robinette] I just realized part of why I think they may have asked this question. That if you're writing something like a heist where…

[Brandon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] The narrator has a secret goal.

[Brandon] Right, right. In a lot of heists, they do. That's a very good point to bring out. A lot of times, your character will have a secret goal. Again, I still think it comes back to make sure the reader knows that it was done on purpose. So they can start to suspect and put things together. I always feel like if you're heisting the reader, the clues should have been there all along. Now, there are really brilliant ones were you're not supposed to notice anything is wrong until the last minute before it happens. But in that case, you need to have created a narrative that has payoffs all along, otherwise it's suspicious.

 

[Brandon] Question?

[Unknown] How can I make two magic systems work in the same setting when one is very underpowered compared to the other, and the protagonist uses the weaker magic?

[Brandon] Ooo. That's the better way to do it, usually.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Why?

[Brandon] Because conflict. Stories are about conflict and what you can and can't do. I'm glad you're asking this question, but the answer is actually pretty simple in that you don't have to really worry about power level in books, particularly if your character is the weaker party. The answer is how do you do this is you make it very clear that they're the weaker party, they're the underdog, and you show them using their skills better than those who are overpowered. Right? The whole idea of I am not as strong, so therefore I must be very tactical in how I apply the strength I do have, builds enormous amounts of sympathy and rooting interest for a character. If you have a character that's superstrong, it's actually much harder because building that rooting interest when they are from a position of power means that the conflict has to be approached differently. So I would say present these kind of magic systems in an interesting way that reinforces what you're doing. Right? If the powerful magic system is in the control of the elite, and the week magic system… I mean, this is the most obvious one, but it's a good example… Is in the hands of the underdogs, both socially and narratively, then you will… It'll be… It'll flow from there.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. The plucky hero is a common trope, but one of the things that you often see in superhero movies is that the super villain is ridiculously overpowered compared to the superhero. Those are essentially two different magic systems.

[Dan] Yeah. Well, also, when you start to think about what counts as a magic system in the kind of grand metaphor of just character power, look at something like the Star Wars series. The original trilogy has one Jedi, but that doesn't make the other characters not interesting. Right? Han Solo's magic system is that he can attack people from range and he can fly through space. He does that with other things. It's not as powerful as being a Jedi, but it's not on interesting and it still is vital to the story and to the society that they live in.

 

[Brandon] All right. Next question.

[Lisha] Hi. I'm Lisha Bickard. Have you ever based a character on yourself or someone that you know? If so, did you find that more or less difficult to write?

[Brandon] Okay. Let's split that into two questions. First, have you based a character on yourself?

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[Howard] Yup.

[Dan] No.

[Brandon] I would say every character I write as a piece of me. Some aspect of my personality comes out. It's inevitable.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] Yeah. That's… Same here. I've given up on trying to say, "Oh, this character is nothing like me." Because I am alive to write what they say, so, at some level, they're at least a little bit like me.

[Dan] But I feel like that's a very different question from have you actively based one on yourself versus do elements of yourself bleed through.

[Brandon] Okay.

[Dan] I don't think I've ever written a character who I consider to be me.

[Brandon] I would agree that I have not done that, either. There's no… I mean, I don't know if you're talking about self inserts, but, like the Dirk Pitt books, Clive Cussler always shows up in them as a character. I've never done that.

[Mary Robinette] No, I haven't done that either. But I have given my character… Like Ellena, I've talked very openly about in Calculating Stars, that while I don't have an experience personally with anxiety, my experience with depression is her experience with anxiety. That I mapped that. Also, there's several other things that I'm just like, and that's… The other thing I talk about is her experience with Parker is based exactly on someone that I used to work with. So I have done that.

 

[Brandon] Let's take the second half of this one. Basing a character on someone you know? Have you done this? Pitfalls? How did you approach it? These sorts of things.

[Mary Robinette] Again, so, Parker is based on somebody that I know. I strip out the identifying details, and what you're left with is the patterns of mannerisms. In Glamorous Histories, I've often talked about the fact that Mr. Vincent is heavily based on my husband, who I frequently describe as the love child of Mr. Darcy and Eeyore. Mr. Vincent and Rob do not have the same back story in any way, shape, or form. But they have the same mannerisms. They have many of the same interests and attitudes.

[Brandon] It's kind of uncanny.

[Mary Robinette] It really… Yeah.

[Brandon] Yeah.

[Howard] There was this one time where, as a favor to a friend, I wrote a character into a story, and then had him kill his own dang self. Really stupidly, and… That was a lot of fun both for me and for my friend.

[Brandon] I don't generally base on… Well, I do and I don't. I base on a conflict often. If I have a friend who has a struggle or a conflict, I will put that in. The only characters that are based on friends more overtly than that are Tuckerizations, where they get to say they make an appearance in the books.

[Dan] Yeah. I often auction off for service auctions and charities and things the ability to be brutally murdered in a Dan Wells book. That's not so much copying the mannerisms as just, "Hey, look. You can show all your friends that…

[Mary Robinette] Your name.

[Dan] A monster killed you."

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Your name is in this book. Frequently, with Tuckerizations, they are not anything like the person, they just have a name in common.

[Brandon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] One of the pitfalls is that if you have not cleared it with them ahead of time, that it can be… Like, my husband knows that I put his mannerisms into books. I have a friend who was a Tuckerization, and then I was like, "Oh, I'm very sorry, but your Tuckerization is actually going to be a villain in the next book. Is that okay?"

[Brandon] Yeah. The Tuckerizations I do of friends stay in the background almost exclusively. If it's an unflattering Tuckerization of someone I know, I always change the name and the description, and it's then just kind of the concept becomes on inspiration.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. This is what happens when you write something that you think is a standalone and they ask you for a sequel.

[Dan] And then they ask for more. I had a character, there was a teacher, a schoolteacher in the John Cleaver books, that was named after a friend of mine who is a schoolteacher. Before that went to print, I realized, oh, wait. In the next book I'm going to turn this guy into a pedophile. So I'm going to change that name really quick and make sure that that does not come back to bite him in any way.

 

[Brandon] So, let's stop for our book of the week. Our book of the week is my book.

[Yay!]

[Brandon] So, 15 years ago plus, I started writing a little series called Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians as a way to take a break between the Mistborn books. It's as different from Mistborn as I could possibly get inside my brain. About kids who have weird magical talents that sound like drawbacks until they use them. Like being late for things or being bad at dancing or things like that. Now, long-awaited last book, last secret book of the series. I actually pitched this book to my editor. I said, "I want to do five books, and then end on a horrible, horrible cliffhanger. Because there kind of comedic, and that's what the character's been warning them. Then pretend there's going to be no sixth book because the main character refuses to write the book. Then I want to have a sixth book which is finally coming out written by another character in the series to give the actual ending because the main character was a dweeb and would not write the ending of his series, where he actually kind of proves to be a little bit more heroic than he's been telling people all along. So we have Bastille versus The Evil Librarians, written with my good friend Janci Patterson, who's been on the podcast a number of times. Who helped me get the voice right, because I was struggling with it, which is part of what took so long. It is finally out and you can get it. The series is now finished.

[Mary Robinette] Yay!

[Dan] Hooray!

[Howard] Huzzah!

 

[Brandon] All right. So, let's go to the next question.

[Unknown] Awesome. So, on book adaptations, Dan, as someone who has had a book adapted, can you talk a little bit about what the process looks like and things to keep in mind when working on adaptations?

[Dan] Yeah. So, my general theory of adaptations is that I am far more interested in something that is new and innovative rather than endlessly faithful. That is an assertion that gets sorely tested when it is your own little baby…

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Being adapted. I did not have creative control over the Serial Killer movie, but I did get the chance to read all the drafts of the script and be involved with casting and things like that. The initial drafts of the script, and even the final shooting script, included some changes that I disagreed with pretty wildly. Fortunately, I had, over the process, become good friends with the director to the point that he was able to just say, "Hey, trust me. This is an art form that I am familiar with and you are not. Give me the benefit of the doubt here." I did, and ultimately realized, oh, the changes he was making would not have worked in the book. They would not have been effective in novel form. But the changes I was suggesting he make to his script would not have worked in script form. They would not have worked on the screen. So I was right and he was right, and he was smart enough to know that that's why I was arguing with him, is because it was simply an art form that I didn't know as well. The final product, he made the right calls on those adaptive changes, and I made the right call in that I stopped making a stink about it.

 

[Brandon] All right. Next question.

[Unknown] Hi. Do you have any recommendations for conventions or other writing events an aspiring author should attend for networking purposes?

[Brandon] Oh. Specifically for networking purposes.

[Mary Robinette] There are two major ones that I would recommend. Surrey International Writers Conference in Surrey, B. C., Which is my favorite writers conference besides the… Including the ones that I run, actually. The one that were currently on, Writing Excuses, we constantly tell our students that the best thing they get out of this is the interactions, but you know that because you're here. Then, the Nebula conference is designed specifically to be a thing for developing and professional authors.

[Brandon] I met my agent at the Nebula conference 20 years ago. And he's still my agent.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So those are the big things for me. But I would also look at your local conventions. Because you don't have to travel places. And also, you don't have to go to conventions to network. You can network online. Also, you don't have to network to be successful. There are plenty of authors who are successful who are complete recluses. There are a number of things that it helps with. But you can also have a career without doing that, if it is something that you're not comfortable with.

[Brandon] indeed, I'd say it's the least important it's ever been before breaking into the business. Not to say it can't still be useful, but as in the publishing is happening… Happened, as publishing has started to spread out and move out of New York a little bit more, and things like that, the need to network has decreased a little.

[Dan] Let me ask a question. One con we always used to recommend as a really fantastic networking con was World Fantasy. It is my perception that that is no longer as helpful of a networking con as it used to be. Is that… Would you agree with that, or am I wrong?

[Mary Robinette] You are correct. Yeah, you're correct. The… That was David Hartwell's home convention. He always asked his fellow editors and his author stable to attend the convention. With his passing, while networking still happens, there is not quite the same presence...

[Brandon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] There since that. They also had some other issues that often happen when you move a convention from place to place. World Con is another one of those which depending on where World Con is… And this is also true with World Fantasy. Depending on which group of volunteers are running it, they can be more helpful than others. But you have to be pretty deep into the community already to know which one is going to be a good one. So when they're close to you, absolutely go to them. But I wouldn't always recommend making the trip for it.

[Dan] Yeah.

[Brandon] If you are in the inner mountain West, the Story Makers Conference tends to be our best conference in the Salt Lake area.

[Mary Robinette] Oh, Pikes Peak in Colorado is very good as well.

[Dan] Yeah.

[Howard] The one piece of counsel I'd offer when thinking about networking is that if you are slightly impatient, and what you are looking for is someone a few rungs up to help you really launch the career, that's challenging, and that's a hard relationship to build. If you're willing to be patient, if you're willing to network and make friends with people who are at your level in career launching or in book writing or whatever, and you begin to grow with those people, in many cases these are the relationships which five years or even 10 years down the road, these are the relationships that will redefine your career when somebody comes to you and says, "Oh, hey, by the way, I just got a show green lit, and I need a script doctor, and I know you can do it." It's… I love to see people just willing to make friends. Those friendships that you make are going to be more genuine and I think they're going to be more helpful to you.

 

[Brandon] All right. Go ahead.

[Unknown] Do you use any particular methods to calibrate how detailed your scientific or technical terms are for each series or audience or genre?

[Mary Robinette] My cheese sandwich analogy. So, if you've got a cheese sandwich and it is in a scene where everyone knows what a cheese sandwich is in the cheese sandwich serves only the function of feeding the character, you don't need to describe it deeply. If your character is a chef and they are doing something exquisite with the cheese sandwich, you need to describe it more deeply, because the character is going to have a different relationship with it. It's the same with the technical jargon that you throw out. If you've got an alien that is… Has never experienced a cheese sandwich before, what often happens to a reader, to an early career writer, is that they want to say, "All right. So a cheese sandwich is made out of cheese and bread." The alien is like, "But, okay, what is bread?" You're like, "Bread comes from wheat, which is grown in…" Like, none of that is actually useful. What you want to say is a cheese sandwich is something that you hold in your hands and you eat it and it's tasty. So when you're thinking about the jargon, you're thinking about the structural purpose… The mechanical research details… You're thinking about the structural purpose that they serve in the story. I often just put in a bracket that says technical detail goes here. Or jargon goes here. Because frequently the only reason it's there is to demonstrate competence porn.

 

[Brandon] All right. This is going to be our last question for this episode. So, hit us.

[Qwamai] Hello. My name is Qwamai Simmons. How do you cultivate an audience, specifically how do you interact with fans responsibly, especially starting out when they may number less than 10 and are essentially your peers?

[Brandon] Mmm. That's an excellent question. So, interacting with an audience. There's a couple tips that I would be… If they are your peers, in particular, but… You always want to be value adding to any group that you're part of. Marketing generally value negatives, so keep in mind that it's like your value to a group is going to earn you chances to occasionally network. The sorts of things that I don't like seeing our social media feeds that are just… Network is the wrong term. That was from before.

[Dan] Market.

[Brandon] Market. Are just marketing, are just big marketing. You'll see this sometimes on Internet forums or things. People pop in and be like, "Hey, I just sold my first book. Here it is." And it's the first time you've even seen them. If you're not value adding, don't be doing that. Try to be adding something to every group you're part of and every conversation you're part of.

[Dan] Yeah. Think of your community of readers as a group of friends that you interact with. Not necessarily close friends that you invite to your house all the time, but people that you want to hang out with and that you want to pay attention to you. If you and your friend group, all you ever say is, "Hey, I have a lot of shirts for sale on my website," you won't get invited to parties anymore. Whereas, if you are contributing things, if you are interesting, if people enjoy spending time with you, then, suddenly, you are a valuable friend that people love to hang out with.

[Howard] This comes back to what I said earlier about patience. We're all inherently impatient to some degree, we want to launch ourselves from zero readers to 20,000 readers. I don't have a magic bullet for that. I don't have a magic trick for that. The thing that I have found is that it is… Doing marketing where I am asking the marketing under something, that's exhausting. I just allow myself to be myself with my audience and be silly. Then, every so often, I let them know that I'm doing a thing. Is that effective? I don't know if it's effective, I don't know if I'm actually good at this. But I know that I'm way more comfortable with that than I am with the other approaches.

[Mary Robinette] The last thing that I would say about this is that it's very easy to sound very calculating when you're thinking about this. I've heard people talk about it as a social bank. You have to put things into the social bank in order to have a withdrawal later. That is true. Also, being a good person, which is what we're talking about, being a value add, is not transactional. It's like when you are a good, contributing member of the community, you're not doing it because, well, then they're going to be nice to me.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] That is the wrong way to approach it. The way you approach it is by being genuinely interested in other people. Finding the community that you want to be part of. That's the piece that you're doing. The people that you want to be part of, that you're genuinely interested in, they don't owe you friendship in return. Right? They don't owe you anything. You're doing that because it is something that you find satisfying. You kind of have to approach it that way. Otherwise, you are going to be angry and bitter, because you've entered a transactional relationship that no one else agreed to.

[Dan] Yeah. I do want to point out that there's kind of a community building thing that I have seen a lot of authors use. This has become pretty common over the last two or three years, at least in some of the circles that I move in, called the street team. I'm sure that there are other authors that have different names for it. This is something that is kind of overtly transactional in a way that avoids the problems Mary Robinette is talking about. Saying… Assembling a group of people and saying, "Hey, I will give you an advance manuscript or I will give you these other things because you're a super fan and I would love to have you help me spread the word about my books." That's something that I see… Maybe it's mostly in YA. I don't know if this is something the rest of you have run across. But it is a system that if you handle it correctly works well to build a community that way. Like, you're part of my club now. Here's all the benefits of the club. Then, also, you're going to help.

[Howard] I was standing at my booth at World Con and a super fan had bought a book from me and someone else came up to the booth and was kind of like, "What's this?" Super fan launched into a fantastic pitch for my stuff. I very calculatedly, very carefully, did zero things to stop them.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Are you overselling me? I don't care. You dearly love this, and you love this in a way that I would love for other people to love this. So go. Run. Do the thing.

[Mary Robinette] I'm going to put in a quick plug for my Lady Astronaut club. Which is, basically, I have built a community. You can send away a self-addressed stamped envelope, you can be a member of my Patreon, someone can vouch for you in the community. We call it the kindest corner of the Internet. It is a place where I get to interact, but also, it is, at times, a street team. Like, if I come in and say, "Hello, I really need help with X." But I never approach it with the expectation that they will do these things for me.

 

[Brandon] All right. We are out of time. Thank you all for the excellent questions here at the Writing Excuses Cruise.

[Applause]

[Brandon] Your homework is to write out a few questions. To think about it, think about what are the things you need help most on in your writing career right now. Now, we are unavailable to answer your questions because we are off somewhere else. But I find that formulating these things, sitting and thinking what do I need, really helps you kind of put a point on what you need to do, where you need to learn, where you need to grow. That's going to help you get those answers. So, ask yourself the question, what is holding me back the most in my writing career, and what question would I have for the team if I were able to ask it. Maybe you will eventually be able to do so. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2022/01/30/17-5-the-promise-of-the-brand/

 

Key Points: Your packaging needs to target the right niche. The cover is an advertisement, which needs to evoke the right feel, the right genre, and the right audience. Step one, go look at the current books like your books and see what the trend is. You get to decide which faces are public, which ones are private, and which face is the right one for this moment. Check out para social relationships. Ask people, let them tell you what they see. Let them be your mirror. Put themes of what you are in each book. 

 

[Season 17, Episode 5]

 

[Howard] This is Writing Excuses, The Promise of the Brand.

[Kaela] 15 minutes long.

[Sandra] Because you're in a hurry.

[Megan] And we're not that smart.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

[Kaela] I'm Kaela.

[Sandra] I'm Sandra.

[Megan] And I'm Meg.

 

[Howard] When we began this series of eight episodes about expectations and promises, I mentioned the 2009 example of the Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice cover redesign. The design of the carton. This is, for me, the apex fail for brands, for making brands, for working off your existing brand. They took the existing brand, which was an orange with a straw stuck in it, and changed it to a nice sleek glass of orange juice. The ad execs had said, "You know, you've got this carton of pure Premium orange juice, and you know what, you never show people a picture of the juice. Let's talk about what's actually in the carton." So they changed it to this picture of this glass of juice, and they change the, which is… It's like a half gallon milk carton, the newer ones that have little plastic caps in the middle of the sloped face. They changed the little orange plastic cap to be a little half dome plastic orange. So it looked like an orange. They said, "So, here we're sending the message that, yes, it came from an orange, and it's full of juice, and it's awesome." As we mentioned, several episodes earlier, they spent $30 million on this redesign, and sales dropped by 20%, in large part because people just couldn't find what they were looking for. They couldn't find the Tropicana Pure Premium, so they were buying Donald Duck brand orange juice. "Oh, if I can't get the Pure Premium, I might as well buy stuff from concentrate." Whatever. Tropicana sales fell off so hard that they went back to their old design, and they lost like 50 million+ dollars over this whole thing. The mistake that was made here is that the ad exec assumed that we associate a picture of orange juice with orange juice, and we associate a plastic orange with authentic orange juice. It's like they got their wires exactly crossed. In this episode, we want to talk about how, especially for self pubbers, how your brand is defined by cover art and text treatments and all of these other things in order to send the right message and make the right promises to your audiences. Sandra?

[Sandra] Yes. One of the… I talk about this a lot because I do a lot of the business aspects and packaging aspects for our business. One of the things that is very important to hold in your brain as a creative person is that you've written this glorious story, and now you need to package up the story you've created in a delivery vehicle that will aim it straight into the heart of your niche. Wherever you want your story to go, to package it in a way that will deliver it there. Because failures to package correctly means that your book ends up in a mismatched audience, who will then pan your book and tank your sales. This is why being mis-shelved is a problem. Because if your cover is saying mystery when what you're delivering is a thriller, then the audience has picked it up expecting one thing and you're delivering a pro… You've delivered something else. Your packaging promised something that isn't there. They're going to be frustrated with it. So one of the key things that… I always, always, always drum into people that I'm talking about this with is that a cover is not an illustration. A cover is an advertisement. It should evoke the feel of your story, it should evoke the genre of your story, it should evoke who the audience is. It does not matter at all character on the cover matches any of the descriptions… Well, qualification there. But you don't have to match perfectly your description on the inside.

[Howard] Yeah. That's… That principle happens… We see a lot in comics. The cover of a comic book is not a scene from the book.

[Sandra] Right.

[Howard] The cover of a comic book is an illustration of the conflict in this book. Spiderman is going to fight Venom and they're going to do it in a big city. So we see Spiderman and Venom and cars being thrown around. But that panel never actually happened that way. But there are lots of other good examples of this, of the brand being… The brand wrappering the content in good ways. I'm aiming at Kaela and Meg now.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Who's ready?

 

[Megan] Okay. One of my favorite examples of a cover that really knew its audience is Eva Evergreen Semi-Magical Witch. It's a middle grade fantasy for people who love Kiki's Delivery Service. Right? So that first thing… Like, I hadn't… Yeah, I love Kiki's Delivery Service. I love Ghibli movies. I was just walking around and I look over and I see this adorable witch with an adorable animal companion on a broom who's smiling. She looks slightly anime, but not full anime. She has a long dark dress and she looks adorable and she's got her wand. I was like, "That gives me so strong Kiki's Delivery vibes." I went over immediately and picked it up. I was like, "I want to read this now."

[Giggles]

[Howard] I'm looking at the cover right now, and it's not our book of the week, but boy, howdy, that cover knows exactly who it's aiming for.

[Megan] Yeah.

[Howard] If you love Kiki's Delivery Service, you want to read this book. Is this book a repackaging of Kiki's Delivery Service? No. But if you loved that, you'll love this. You love fresh orange juice, you'll love what's in this carton. Because it's got a picture of an orange.

[Laughter]

[Megan] It may not be book of the week, but it is cover of the week. Good cover of the week.

[Howard] Oh, my. That is so brilliant.

[Megan] It is. I'm the sort of person where I'm in a bookstore, and I'm looking for a book that I don't know, I always go for an illustrated cover over a photo or a photo edited cover. Which has no indication, really, as to how much the writing would appeal to me, but I love beautifully illustrated book covers. That is actually a trend I'm seeing more and more of is fewer photos and more full illustrations. Sandra?

[Sandra] That is step one. When you're trying to figure out how to position your book, step one is literally go to the place where the books like your book are shelved and see what is the current trend. Because a mistake I see from people of my generation is that they love these 70s style covers that evoke the 1970s because that was what they were familiar with. There writing a book for teenagers and this is what they loved when they were a teenager. That is a mismatch for today's market. So you need to go find out what the current cover language is for where your aiming, so that your cover can be in communication and in dialogue with what the current trend is and just be the new cool thing.

 

[Howard] Kaela?

[Kaela] Yeah. So, I think that one of the… My cover for Cece Rios… One of… What I love about it is how… When you think of middle grade, honestly, those sections, most of it's blue. Just the colors are mostly blue. Sometimes you get a little purple in there, you might get some highlights in red, but for some reason, most middle grade books are just kind of blue colors. Blue shades. I thought it was so fun… I mean, one, because it's appropriate, but, too, that Mirella Ortega and my cover designer Catherine Lee, and everything, did such a good job. Like, one thing I told them was high saturation because that matches Mexican culture as well. But they decided to go full on into these oranges. Which means that when you put it on a shelf with any of the others, it stands out automatically, because it's the contrast color of most of the other colors on its shelf. While also still matching the vibe of all the other books on the shelf. Like, it's illustrated, it's got something about it that seems fun, it's got a strong main character full front, like middle grade often does, but it's done something to draw attention to itself at the same time. That is representative of what is inside, not just, "Oh, man, this is eye-catching. But it doesn't match."

[Howard] I'm looking at that cover right now, and it's… It's very, very warm. You mentioned that it's complementary to maybe the blue or the purple colors that you'll see alongside it. True, but there is lavender and purple right there in the cover text, so the complement… It doesn't need to be sitting next to something else to fill the requirements of good color matching. This is really, really well done. Now most of us don't get to design our own covers. The important thing here is that we need to recognize what the covers look like of the things that we will be sitting next to because the cover makes a promise. If I see a Michael Whalen or a Whalenesque illustration, a full wraparound piece of art, around a big fat book, I'm positive that it is going to be an epic fantasy. I'm 100% positive of that. If I open it up and it's a political thriller, well, that'd be weird. That'd be super weird.

 

[Megan] Yup. So, like you said how most authors don't have say… Not say, but most authors don't design their own book covers. A lot of filmmakers do not get to cut their own trailers. So you will have… I think a pretty recent example of this is the Netflix show Q Force, which is an adult comedy about a set of LGBTQ superspies that end up coming together as a team. It is a comedy, it has fun elements to it, but it also is like very sincere with a lot of heart in the series. However, the released trailer pretty much only took the goofs and the jokes and made it look like it was a stereotype poking fun of those different identities. So a lot of people who would have, I think, deeply enjoyed the show were very off put by this trailer. Something that's fun about this is a lot of times in film school, you'll get the assignment to re-cut a movie into a trailer of an opposite genre. So I did not make this trailer, but one of my favorite examples of this is Scary Mary…

[Yes!]

[Megan] Mary Poppins redone as a horror film.

[Howard] My favorite is Shining, where they took The Shining and they made it this family…

[Romantic comedy]

[Howard] Romantic comedy. Yeah, coming-of-age thing.

 

[Howard] We need to do a book of the week. We've talked about a lot of books that have had glorious covers. But we have an actual book of the week.

[Sandra] Yes. I have that this week. The book of the week I've chosen is Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. This book is brilliant packaging at its finest. It is… Like, it's a book with a slipcover, and the slipcover is actually clear plastic so you can see through it. So, there's clear spots that you can then see text that's printed on the actual hardback. Things are crossed out. So the packaging promises you kind of conspiracy theories and things that are hidden that you're trying to puzzle out and reveal. Then, on the inside, they use typography to tell parts of the story.

[Howard] Sandra is currently holding this up to…

[Yes]

[Howard] Our WebCams.

[Sandra] Yes. It's too beautiful. Like [garbled]

[Howard] The remaining three of us are here slack-jawed. Like…

[Sandra] There's art inside. There's a part where they're shooting missiles and the text actually trails itself across the page as if it's the missile trail.

[Howard] Oh, that's glorious.

[Sandra] It uses fontography as storytelling.

[Howard] Well, what I'm looking at the cover and with the clear and the effects that they've done with that, that… Yes, it makes a promise about the kind of story that's being told, but when I get to a page that has a missile trailing text, that is… That fulfills a surprising yet inevitable.

[Sandra] Yes.

[Howard] Oh. Oh, you promised me this kind of design, but I had no idea you would shoot missiles with words.

[Sandra] Yeah. Seriously, go to your local bookstore and look at a physical copy of this book, because browsing it online does not actually give you the experience of it. Yeah. So, Illuminae. There's three books in the series, this is the first one. They're all brilliant, and the stories are brilliant as well.

 

[Howard] Now. We have talked at great length, and only scratched the surface about the visual elements in our brands. These are the things that for most writers, most authors, it's out of our control. A huge part of your brand, however, is within your control. What is… What are the things that you, your name as a brand, means? My name, Howard Tayler, people associate me with Schlock Mercenary. I have a twitter feed that doesn't drop f-bombs and that doesn't do piles and piles of negging. These are things that are part of my brand. They're inherent in kind of the way I am, so it's easy. But at this point, I have now made a promise. If I were to start just trash talking everybody and throwing profanity in my twitter feed, I would be breaking a promise to the people who have followed me on twitter because of my brand.

[Sandra] I think it's very easy, for creators, especially people who are young in having a creative career, no matter what their chronological age may be… There's this adaptation. Where we have to figure out and figure out who we are as authors and how we present ourselves. It can be very anxiety inducing. The thing that I always come back to is in the Phantom Tollbooths, which is a fun adventure story, there's a set of characters called the dodecahedron That people who have heads that are literally dodecahedrons. They have a face with happy on it, and a face with sat on it, and a face with mad on it. They turn the face forward, whatever is appropriate to the moment. So their heads are actually rotating as they emote. That is a useful visual image, because you are also a dodecahedron, and you get to decide which of your faces are public and which of your faces are private, and which one is the right face to be putting forward at this moment. I'm in a book release cycle, so I need to be putting this face forward. Okay, now I'm in a lull cycle, so I can put together… I can let this other face show more often. All of it is you. You are not creating a character. Some people do create a character that they inhabit. But I find that that is mentally and emotionally exhausting over time, and it's much better to just show aspects of yourself, rather than trying to maintain an entire façade.

[Cough. Hans. Cough.]

[Sandra] Yeah. Hans. Yeah, that's…

[Laughter]

[call back]

[Sandra] Here we go. So it's a lot to decide and it's a lot to navigate and again, we could talk for hours just on this. Search term for you. Para social relationships. If you are going to live in a public life in any way, learn about para social relationships and how they work.

 

[Kaela] Yes. I'd also… This is just something I'd recommend, like a tool for you, but… I know that some of the older Writing Excuses episodes from I think January 2021, the business of being a writer, goes into this a little bit as well. But asking people, trying to get a finger on what other people are receiving from your brand, because you're bringing your self to the table. Right? You know, again, you've got all of these faces, so you're like, I don't know which ones other people see all the time. Kind of like how you don't really know how you look, you just see yourself in a mirror sometimes. So being able to get a pulse from other people, what your brand is. Like that, I have my writing group and I have some people from my family who read my books and things like that give me a few notes on… I'll say, just tell me what you… When I write something, things that you think happen a lot I found that they were like worldbuilding, luscious stuff, high-stakes mixed with very potent emotional exploration. I was like, "Okay." That gave me a pulse on like… When I'm sitting down to write something, in my delivering on at least some of these promises. Not every book is going to be the same book, but it should have themes of what I am in each book.

[Howard] That sounds a lot like you're not going to be able to just pour concentrated… From concentrate orange juice into that carton and make people…

[Very much]

[Howard] And make people happy.

[Yeah]

 

[Howard] Any other final words before I throw homework down?

[Megan] I had… A thing I do periodically is go through a social med… I've got a Facebook and I've got a Twitter and I've got an Instagram. I periodically just read through my feed to see what the balance of content is there. Is it… Am I re-tweeting a lot or am I… Has this been a complaining week? If it's been a complaining week, then maybe I should throw a cat picture. Just trying to see that I don't fall into the habit of posting just happy on Facebook and complain on Twitter. Trying… Just to see how I'm reading.

[Howard] That's… I feel like we need to can of worms that, because we could talk about that sort of…

[Tuning]

[Howard] Oh. That's a ton of work.

 

[Howard] Instead of that is a ton of work, it's a ton of work homework for you. Okay? Here we go. This is two phases, and this is deep stuff. Describe the perfect cover art for your work in progress. Now, when I say describe, you can use comp titles, comp pictures, to your heart's content. For instance, remember that Star Wars poster where Luke is holding the lightsaber up, and you got Darth Vader's silhouette in the background? Yeah, it's kind of like that, except the setting is forest greenery with mist and fog and there's eyes peering out of the forest. Okay. Well, you've now used words to give us a picture that we can kind of see. So, do this description. Then explain why this is the perfect cover. What promises does that cover make to the audience? How does it account for audience bias? Here's part two, and part two is easy. Okay? What is the right typeface for your name? Is it serif and san serif? Is it weathered or is it crisp? Is it larger than the title? Hello, Brandon Sanderson. Or is it tiny, down in the corner? Hello, me. What is… You probably have lots of fonts on your computer. Experiment with this and see what text treatment seems to fit what you imagine to be your brand. Then write down why. Why do you think that text treatment makes the right promises about who you are? I said it was big. It's huge. You're out of excuses. Now go write about pictures and fonts.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2021/12/19/16-51-promises-are-a-structure/

 

Key points: Promises and expectations. A structural layer. A troubleshooting tool. Audience expectations are what they bring with them. Promises are what you make, which set the audience expectation for what is coming. Be aware that audiences have a head full of stuff that you have no control over. This interacts with audience bias and diversity. The bookshelf genre vs. the elemental genre. Set the expectation, deliver on it, and make it delightful. Deliver more than the reader expects! 

 

[Transcriptionist note: I may have mislabeled one or more of the speakers.]

[Season 16, Episode 51]

 

[Howard] This is Writing Excuses, Promises are a Structure.

[Kaela] 15 minutes long.

[Sandra] Because you're in a hurry.

[Megan] And we're not that smart.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

[Kaela] I'm Kaela.

[Sandra] I'm Sandra.

[Megan] And I'm Meg.

 

[Howard] I'm so excited to have three brand-new to you guests, guest hosts, here with us on Writing Excuses. We're going to go ahead and start by letting them introduce themselves. Kaela. Take it away.

[Kaela] Hi, everybody. I'm Kaela Rivera. I am the author of CeCe Rios and the Desert of Souls, a middle grade Latinx fantasy about a girl who becomes a bruja in order to rescue her kidnapped sister. It also just last month, or recently, has won the Charlotte Huck Award for 2022, so that was really exciting.

[Howard] Outstanding. Now, you say just last month and then you say recently. You realize this airs… This episode is going to do something that very few of our episodes ever do. It's going to air the day after we record it.

[Kaela] Well, then, I'll stick with a month ago.

[Laughter]

 

[Howard] Fantastic. Congratulations. Sandra?

[Sandra] Hi. I'm Sandra Tayler. I'm a writer of speculative fiction, picture books, and blog entries. My most recently published books are Strength of Wild Horses and Hold onto Your Horses, which are a pair of picture books. But I also write short stories which I post to my Patreon, and you can find it over at patreon/Sandra Taylor. I'm also the Sandra of which Howard sometimes mentions at various times on Writing Excuses. Because we share a house and some children and a business.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] And Sandra is understating a little bit her latest books. Every time a Schlock Mercenary book comes out, it has seen the editorial hand of Sandra in all of the content and the layout hand of Sandra Tayler in everything. And Sandra's done a bunch of writing for the new Extreme Dungeon Mastery book that's coming out.

[Sandra] This is true.

[Howard] So, lots of stuff. I sometimes have to remind Sandra how awesome she is.

[Sandra] I was trying to be brief.

[Laughter]

 

[Howard] Brief is fine. Brief is fine, but… Okay. Meg. Megan. Meg.

[Megan] Hi, everyone. I really just have one name, but it just sounds weird when you pair it with my last name, so… My name is Megan Lloyd. I am a storyboard artist and screenwriter working in the animation industry out in Los Angeles. I've storyboarded on a number of really cool shows. Some of my favorites that have released recently are Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous and Star Trek: Lower Decks. On top of my work as a board artist, I also write and also do development art for projects early on in the can, let's say.

[Howard] So… You… Early on… And on is one of those anywhere a cat can go prepositions. Another anywhere a cat can go prepositions is under is in under nondisclosure.

[Megan] Yes. That's the one.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] I mention cat because for those of you not benefiting from the visual video feed, which is pretty much everybody except the four of us, Meg has a cat perched on the back of her chair, which is kind of amazing.

[Megan] Isn't he horrible?

[Howard] [garbled I didn't know you could] get cats to do that.

 

[Howard] All right.

[Very cute]

[Howard] Promises are a structure. For the next eight episodes, we are going to talk about promises and expectations as a structural layer, as a troubleshooting tool, is a way in which you can look at what you're working on and determine whether or not you're correctly setting expectations, whether you're making promises that you plan to keep, whether you're… What's the jargon? Writing checks that are going to bounce? I was tempted, because this is an eight episode intensive, I was tempted to call it (sunglasses) Eight Expectations.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Explosion.

[Laughter]

[Howard] But then I would have to enumerate this, break it into eight discrete parts. Because eight expectations is making a promise that I'm not actually prepared to keep.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] This is a little more fluid than that. I do want to layout something, though, that promises and expectations are not truly interchangeable terms. In marketing, audience expectations are things that you set, or that you need to be aware of when you are doing your marketing. They… An audience will bring their expectations with them, before anything has happened. When we talk about promises, usually that's because something you have said or done or written or put on the cover or whatever has made some sort of a promise to the reader, has set their expectations for something which is coming. I also want to point out that audience bias is huge here. Now, I've just done a lot of talking.

[Sandra] Well, I…

[Howard] I'm going to throw this one of to our… Sandra, go ahead.

[Sandra] Yeah. I was just going to say that last piece that you mentioned is a huge piece, because anytime you create a thing, audience is going to arrive at the thing with a head full of stuff that you have no control over. So one of the most important things to, as you are setting expectations, it is important to have a feel for kind of the Zeitgeist and kind of societal… If you placed your book as a fantasy novel, then the world at large is going to have a set of stuff in their head that they think fits fantasy novel and if yours doesn't fit, then you have to adjust their expectations for what you mean. So it becomes a… Expectations is always a conversation with audience. Sometimes it's a conversation that is like a message in space where you package it all up and then send it out and wait a minute and a half to get their response and you hope that you packaged it well. Other times, it's much more conversational, where you can actually adjust on the fly. But… Yeah.

[Kaela] I would agree with that. I'd also say that there's an interesting way that this interacts with, like, say, diversity in literature. When people come in, they don't have any expectations, or they have very unfortunate expectations, or they have such an unfamiliarity with the subject matter that they expect to be taught everything, versus, like, for example, writing Cece, which is… It's a complete alternate fantasy world, but it is set in… Inspired by the setting of Mexico in the 1920s to 30s, which is a very unfamiliar place and time for most people. So there was a lot of difficulties in getting… Initially, getting people to be willing to take that adventure on a fantasy in that kind of a space versus a medieval English sort of [sci?] fantasy. Because, again, you can't write everything for everybody's expectations, either…

[Sandra] No. I love that you bring up the diversity angle, because this is actually… And I'm sure you actually have more personal experience than I do, but a lot of times, publishing expectations for what we are looking for mean that some of the more diverse and alternate viewpoint novels get bounced because they don't meet publishing expectations. That is actually a lot of what the conversation about let's broaden what we're offering is making more space for people to read works in which they are not centered, and learn how to engage with works that ask them to stretch a little bit.

[Howard] Let me point out here that during the next eight episodes, we're going to talk about how genre, the genre you're working in… And that can be what we call the bookshelf genre, which is where the publisher has put your book, or the elemental genre, which is what you think you're really writing to. How those make promises and set audience expectations. As well as what kind of prose you use. What kind of cover art shows up? How weird it would be to have, say, a paranormal romance that doesn't have a magical looking female on the cover anywhere. That would just be odd. The promises made by foreshadowing. The promises made, and then broken, by red herrings. These are all things that we're going to cover.

 

[Howard] What I'd like to talk about now is are there some good examples of things that you've consumed, and it can be books, it can be media, it can be anything. Good examples of something that made a promise and then kept it for you in a way that was wonderful.

[Sandra] Oh. There's so many. It's like… But… You asked that question and, of course, my brain goes completely blank. Even though I've had time to study before. Right now, currently airing is Hawkeye on Disney Plus. They've got one episode left, and it feels like they're going to land it. Like, all the way through, it's been kind of predictable for me in a delightful way. It's like, "Oh, this is going to happen next," and then it does. It makes me happy every time, because they set an expectation and then they delivered it and they made me laugh a little bit. So right now for me, Hawkeye is living in this sweet spot of being exactly what I'm expecting and yet not being boring for it. So I'm really enjoying that one.

[Howard] What about you, Meg?

[Megan] I'm going to plug the Netflix animated series Arcane. Which, the expectation is, "Wow, this art style is beautiful. Will it look like this all the way through?" Yes, it does. Not only that, but they're telling a very compelling and emotional story, that, like Sandra said, sometimes you can see what's coming only because of how they've set it up, but it's a very satisfying show to watch. Especially from a character development standpoint. And also visually beautiful.

[Yep]

[Howard] I wanted to bring up, just very briefly, Star Trek: Lower Decks because that opening scene of the first episode where they're… He's trying to record a Captains Log and then we find out he's not actually a captain, he's… So this expectation has been set that were going to take Star Trek tropes and we're going to turn them on their head. Then she's pulling things out of a box, and you realize, "Oh, it's going to throw all the Star Trek nerdery at us as well. All the trivia." Then, she accidentally slices deep into his leg with the bat'leth and we roll credits. We realize, "Oh, this is going to do some ridiculous things." So, yeah, Lower Decks has been great.

 

[Howard] Before we move any further, though, I want to plug, or one of us should plug the book of the week. Who's got that?

[Kaela] I do. I'm excited. So I chose for the book of the week The Monster at the End of This Book. Which is an old… Back from my child, little golden book, Sesame Street book with Grover the monster. I love it for talking about expectations because it's right there in the title. You are promised, in the title, that there is going to be a monster at the end of this book. Then the entire book is about Grover being scared that there's going to be a monster coming at the end of the book. Then, when you turn to the last page, Grover discovers that the monster at the end of the book is him, because he is a monster.

[Chuckles]

[Kaela] It is all safe, and adorable. Throughout the whole book, it's very interactive with a child because, "Oh, don't turn the page! Don't turn the page, you'll get us closer to the monster." But I really love it because it totally sets up an expectation, and then walks you through. Then, right at the end, twists it to make the monster safe. It's a delightful, joy-filled romp. So, if you are unfamiliar with this book, I highly recommend you go check it out and pick it up. Because it is a true classic.

[Howard] I love the illustrations where Grover has built this barrier. Now you can't turn the page. I've bricked it up. You turn the page, and the next page is covered in brick rubble. Because you smashed through the wall that Grover made.

 

[Howard] I want to take a moment now to talk about some apexes. Exemplars and failures and the apex… What I've been told is apex middle ground. Have any of you seen Million Dollar Baby?

[No. Chuckles… I… Yeah, makes sense. Chuckles… I have not. I was young when it came out, and therefore not encouraged to go to the theater to see this movie. Mostly because of, I think what you're going to talk about, the unexpected twist in the middle that completely changes the expectation of I thought this was going to be a fun sports movie.]

[Howard] Yeah. It's… Here's what's fun about it, and why it's… It's an apex example of this middle ground. It has 90% positive critical reviews and 90% positive audience reviews across thousands of reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Which is kind of weird, because when the movie came out, all I remember hearing was audience noise about "Hey, you promised me a sports movie and then you gave me something that was actually about euthanasia." That's not young people in the far east, that's euthanasia all one word. Very deep. Very, very dark. But. What it did, it did brilliantly. My… I'm sorry, Rumba, I don't know if you can hear the beep, but Rumba is behind me saying something about "I'm charged. I need attention."

[It just wants to be included]

[Howard] "The floor is dirty. Please let me eat." I don't know what Rumba wants.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] My best example of an apex failure is the Tropicana Pure Premium art. Where, in January of 09, they replaced the orange with a straw stuck in it with a glass with orange juice in it. They paid like $30 million to an ad agency, to a marketing firm, to create this. They… Their sales dropped 20%, they replaced the old artwork a month later, and the whole debacle cost them well over $50 million. Apex exemplars? Do we have another apex exemplar? We need to wrap this up and begin talking about some of the specifics that we can be doing for making promises in our next episode. So, who's got an apex exemplar for us?

[Kaela] I have an example. So, I think that the Lunar Chronicles actually does a great job of this. I know I've talked with people about when you're really excited about the kind of idea that someone's pitching you, but they don't really lead into it and the story kind of swerves off. That's really easy to do in a series as well, because you have multiple entries into this gargantuan story. But, the Lunar Chronicles, at least for me, did an excellent job of what it set out to do. I mean, it was like, "Hey, we're going to do fairytales. But it's in a futuristic sci-fi setting. How about that?" I was like, "I'm down. I want to hear more. Cinderella as a cyborg? Keep talking." With each story, it does that. Where you get a really strong first entry, and it's… It also creates… It culminates across the book into an overall very satisfying rebellion story where you can actually buy that the rebellion has happened and that it will work and how each main character does this. I love how it delivers even more than you expect. Like, you get… The second entry in the series, which is about… It's a retelling of Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, right? But by the end of the series, they have done that story so it's also Beauty and the Beast. You're like, "Oh, my goodness! It's also Beauty and the Beast." [Garbled] Then, Rapunzel being… Rapunzel being… There's no tower that makes sense in a sci-fi setting. She's stuck in a satellite. You're like, "Oh, my goodness. That makes so much sense." You get all of the isolation, all of the same issues. But it makes so much sense in its setting. Each person adds up across the series to a really satisfying closure. The Snow White makes sense because, from the beginning, there's the evil queen already, that you know about from all books. Then you find out, like, near the end, you're like, "Oh, wait a second," before you get to that last book, you find out, she has a stepdaughter. You're like, "Oh. Is it going to be Snow White?" Then you open the last book and it is. It's just such a great delivery on…

[Howard] That's awesome.

[Kaela] Everything that you were hoping for.

 

[Howard] That's awesome. Okay. Well, we are out of time, and I have your homework. So. Consider your newest favorite thing. It can be a restaurant, a film, a TV series, a novel, web comic, computer game, whatever. Ask yourself what promises this thing made to you. What expectations were set for you for this thing? Now… Write this down. Then ask yourself why you believed these promises would be kept and how they were or were not kept. So there's your homework. We're going to have seven more episodes about promises and expectations. We hope you're here for all seven. You are out of excuses. Now go write.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2021/01/03/16-01-your-career-is-your-business/

Key Points: Look at becoming a writer as a business. You are starting and running a small business. You have to manage your business, the publisher and the agent will not do it for you. They are partners, they will help, but it is your business. What do you want, what do you imagine it becoming? Think about a creative mission statement. Make sure your career is deliberate, not accidental. Ask yourself questions. How are you going to handle health insurance? How will you balance your time between writing and promotion? How are you going to handle email? You might silo the non-writing things into one day a week, or chunks of time spread through the week. How are you going to handle taxes? Hire an accountant or DIY? Think about placing a dollar amount on an hour of writing time, and use that to decide whether to pay someone else to do it or do it yourself. Try balancing money, audience, and shininess. Money, how much does it pay or cost. Audience, how many people will you connect with. Shiny, how much do you want to do it. Think of your writing as a career, a business, and make deliberate, informed choices.
 

[Season 16, Episode 1]

 

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, Your Career is Your Business.

[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.

[Howard] As you're in a hurry.

[Brandon] And we're not that smart.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary…

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Mary Robinette] Robinette.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] We're all fine. I'm Mary Robinette, we've done this a lot.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

[Brandon] I'm Brandon.

 

[Dan] This, as you can tell, is the very first episode of 2021. We are excited to be here. We've got a cool thing that were going to do for the entire year, is, we have split this year into a series of what we are calling Master Classes, or intensive courses is maybe a better way of thinking about this. So each of us has come up with a topic and we'll spend eight or nine episodes diving really deep, kind of teaching the rest of the group about that specific topic. So we are going to start with this really cool kind of inside look at the publishing world class that Brandon has put together. Brandon, do you want to tell us a little bit about your course in general?

[Brandon] Yeah. So, the idea is to have a course that starts training writers to look at becoming a writer as a business. This is something that took me by surprise when I started into this. I was not aware that writing is a small business. I didn't know I was starting a business. In fact, I didn't incorporate for several years. That's very common. But not knowing that led me to make a large number of mistakes before I'd got my feet underneath me. Even still, I'm making some of these mistakes. But I thought, you know what, one of the things that I really wish I'd known when I began was that I was starting a small business. I wanted to give some tips to writers starting on this journey or who are in the middle of it who just may not have given enough thought to this aspect of it. We all want to be artists, that's why we become writers. This whole thing isn't to dissuade you from your artistic intents. But it is to start you this class and this mindset that just isn't often shared in writing courses. Because we all want to be artists, and sometimes it feels like talking about the business side of things is crass, and we don't want to monetize our artistic intentions, but when you start on this path, you are starting a business.

[Howard] Speaking briefly as the parent of four hungry adult children, who still don't all have their own jobs, I very much want to monetize every last little bit of my everything that I do.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Crass or not crass, I want to eat.

[Dan] Yeah. So, I am very fortunate in that one of my best friends got published about a year and 1/2 before I did. So when I did get my contract, Brandon, the very first thing he said to me was, "You need to think about this. Think of yourself as a small business owner," and gave me some really great advice. So what are some of the bits of advice you want to give us, Brandon, about starting to think of ourselves as business owners?

[Brandon] Right. Well, the first idea is just this mindset change. Which was the biggest hurdle I think I had to overcome. That's why I named this first episode Your Career Is Your Business. A lot of writers, myself included, when we begin, we have in our head that once we get published, the publisher and the agent are going to be in charge of the business. We're going to have people managing all of the business side. We will be able to spend our days in artistic pursuits. This just isn't true. An agent is not a business manager. An agent will certainly help. An agent is, if you're going traditionally published, an agent is the number one resource you will have for these sorts of things. So certainly it's nice to have them. But it's your business that you're starting. It's not their business. They have a lot of different clients they'll be working for. You're going to be expected to care about your career.

[Howard] One of the things that I like to… I developed this mindset when I was in the corporate world. My career in the corporate space really was defined by the people I was working with, but my career as a person who makes things, a person who imagines things, a person who wants to be paid to operate the oven that bakes the cookies that only come out of my brain, that is not a career path that can be managed by somebody else. That is a career path that has to be managed by me. So a literary agent is a business partner. A publisher is a business partner. I already had, when I started doing comics, I already had a big framework in my head for what business partnerships look like and what they don't look like. So that gave me a quick leg up, and it made a lot of things easier early on. But Brandon, you're absolutely right about this mindset. You have to start from that point, believing that what you are doing is your business and, it is, to layer the meaning, a little bit, it's your business, it's not anybody else's business. They're going to try and get all up in your business from time to time, but it's really all about… It's all about what you want and what you imagine it becoming.

[Mary Robinette] So, I'm really glad Howard mentioned what you want, which I'm sure Brandon is going to get into. But I come into this from theater, and being a freelancer for my entire adult life. So, for me, the small business was transforming the small business that I already had. Which was puppeteer, audiobook narrator, and then writer. One of the things that I find helpful when thinking about this small business is to actually have a mission statement. You can think of it as your creative mission statement. But it's going to change over the course of your career. So, initially the mission statement that I had was fairly simple. It was to be able to turn down the gigs I didn't want to do. I've gotten to the point in my career now only gigs I've got are the gigs that I want to do. So now I have to figure out actually what kind of work do I want to be doing and who do I want to be and be presenting myself as. Because I have to start figuring out how to turn down the gigs I do want to do in order to focus on really refining who I am, and this thing that Brandon is talking about and Howard about monetizing. Because it's not… It's not always a straightforward path.

 

[Dan] Let's pause really quick. Do our book of the week. Which is coming to us this week from Howard.

[Howard] Well, I wish I could take more credit for this one. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. I read it years and years and many years ago, and absolutely loved it. It has one of my very favorite uses of footnotes. It's widely regarded now as a classic space in which it sits, and recently was made into a TV miniseries available on Amazon Prime. I have really enjoyed and benefited personally from comparing the two. I'll circle back around to that later at homework time.

[Dan] Awesome. So that is Good Omens from Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

 

[Dan] Now, I loved what Mary Robinette said about mission statement, which ties into what I've heard Brandon talk about a lot in the past, is making sure that your career is deliberate rather than accidental. Brandon, what do you have to tell us about that, and how to do it?

[Brandon] So, there are all kinds of questions I feel like you should be asking yourself during your unpublished years and during your early parts of your career that you have answers to for when the need arises. For instance, a good one if you live in the US, unfortunately, is going to be how are you going to approach health insurance? This is a big question that you need to think about. I never thought about it a single time in the early part of my career. You would think that that would have come up, but it wasn't until I was married and publishing my first books and realizing, wait a minute. In America, for some stupid reason, health insurance is attached to your job. I'm just not going to have that. How do I get that? Talk to other people, who are self-employed, and figure out how you're going to approach this. Other questions are how are you going to balance your time as an author? How much time are you going to spend on doing the actual writing, how much time are you going to spend on promotion? We'll talk about promotion in a later week in this master class, but right now, the question is when are you going to put these things in? When are you going to do email? I wasn't expecting how much more email would come in…

[Chuckles]

[Brandon] And how much of it would involve publishers' panic… Panicking about little things. I had to set aside specific times. What I've done in my life right now is I have taken all of the things that are not writing, and I've tried to silo them into one day a week. Thursdays. This is when I'm going to do all of these things, the longer emails. The short emails that can get a quick answer, I'll do at the beginning of my workday. But if there's something that is going to take a long, in-depth thing, I'll say, "Hey, I'm going to respond to you on Thursday." If there's an interview that I need to do for promotion, I always schedule them on Thursdays. If there are company meetings, I put them on Thursdays. This allows me to take off my writer hat for a day and approach being a business person for a day. With me, this helps keep me from being frustrated. If I have good siloing of these sorts of things, I'll stop being resentful of the time that I have to spend not writing.

[Mary Robinette] I'm going to chime in here, because I'd heard Brandon talk about this before, so I also tried siloing my non-writing things to one day a week. It turns out that doesn't work for me, because my brain is wired differently. That wound up causing me to have more fatigue. But I did have to block out time. So I have blocked out specific chunks of time, but spread them through the week. This… I just want to point out that, much like when we talk about writing, there's no one process that will work for you, but the principle behind the process, which is to be deliberate about it and make space for it, is going to be consistent. You just have to figure out which form it takes for you.

[Dan] I'm going to give a third perspective on this for the very, very early career writers. This is one of the very first bits of advice I got from Brandon when I got my very first publishing contract. I said, "This is happening. It's real. What do I do next?" He said, "What you do now is you sit down and you write as much as you possibly can, because this is the last time you'll have all of that free time to write." That did help me a lot. I was able to finish, I think, a full book and a half of new stuff before all of the revisions and the emails and the editing process in the proofing and all of that business side crashed down on me. So, just for the very early aspiring writer, that is, I think, a fantastic piece of advice.

[Brandon] I do have more time to right now than I did when I was working a job while trying to write. But, one of the most shocking things to me was that by going full-time, I didn't gain nearly as much free time as I thought I would. Because all of these other things crept in. Doing my own taxes. My first few years… I was used to doing my own taxes. Indeed, again, in the US, we have to do our own taxes, for some stupid reason. So… But then publishing made it infinitely more complicated. Because suddenly I was getting a 1099 instead of a W-2. Suddenly, I had sales overseas. Understanding that you're either going to have to hire an accountant or you're going to have to learn how to input sales from other countries and money coming in from other countries and all of this stuff with 1099s instead of W-2s. That's a huge time sink once a year for US writers that I had just not even understood was going to come along and steal a week of my time.

[Dan] We've got an episode coming up about networking, but this tax idea, the finances of being a writer, is a really good reason to rely on other people. My agent, before she became an acquiring agent on her own, worked as a tax person for an agency house. So she was able to help me a lot, which was fantastic. Brandon and I and several other local writers all use the same accountant because the accounting process for professional writers is very different from a lot of other careers. So, using these networking opportunities to find out hey, how do you handle this, is a good way to help you figure it out.

 

[Brandon] One other thing that I would recommend that you think about… This doesn't work for all writers. In fact, this is one of these things I've noticed that can be debilitating for some writers. But it is something that I do that is very handy for me, is, I find out what the dollar amount of an hour of my writing time is worth. Now, you can't be writing 16 hours a day. But, once you become self-employed, as Howard so elegantly put it in an early episode, you… It's great being self-employed, you get to work half days and you decide which 12 hours it is.

[Chuckles]

[Brandon] Meaning, there is a danger here in that you can work all the time that you want which would lead to burnout. So be careful about that. But I keep a dollar amount assigned to an hour of actual writing time to me. Then, that dollar amount of an hour of writing time allows me to understand what things I can pay for to gain an hour of writing time. If doing my taxes is going to cost me three hours of writing time, and indeed, I will make more money writing that I would hiring someone to do that, it just gives me an opportunity cost method of determining what I should hire out and what I should do myself.

[Howard] When we started putting Schlock Mercenary books into print, we quickly realized that between cover work and bonus story and whatever else, it took a block of time to put a book out, and putting a book out generated several tens of thousands of dollars of money all at once. I could look at that and say, "Well, I have books that are not yet in print, because I've got this archive online." Going to Comic Con saws three weeks out of my life. There's the week of prep, there's the week at the event, and there's a week of recovery. It's miserably stressful. I did the math and realized that unless I was bringing home $15,000 from Comic Con, it didn't even begin to be worthwhile. We looked at it and said, "Well, gosh, instead of doing Comic Con, if I really want to sell T-shirts, I can just spend that week making a T-shirt and selling it and make more money." Now, we've never done that because I don't love making T-shirts. But that was what I had to balance it against. Without knowing how much your time is worth, without establishing a benchmark over time, you will make lots and lots of very, very bad decisions about your time and not realize what you're doing until you wake up one morning and realize that you're stressed and broke and hating the things that you're doing.

[Dan] This kind of deliberate financial thought is how I knew when it was time for me to hire an assistant. Because I hit the point where I realized, oh, giving me an assistant will allow me to write one extra book per year, which will more than pay for the assistant. So that made it a very easy choice to make. We need to wrap up soon, but I know Mary Robinette has something else she wants to say.

[Mary Robinette] Right. Which is, when you're super early career, the idea of assigning a specific number value to your writing work, especially when you haven't actually sold anything yet, that's difficult. So let me give you another metric which you've probably heard me talk about when I've talked about how to decide where to send a story to. A short story. Which is that you're balancing three thing. Money, audience, and shininess. So money is literally how much is this going to pay me. Or, how much is this going to cost me. Audience is how many people will this connect me to. Then, shiny is just like how much do you want to do it. So, like, going to NASA, it cost money, does not actually connect me to audience, but it's so shiny. So that's a choice that I make. I also know that it's something that I can use, and then will, later, down the line, have the potential to bring me audience and money. But depending on where you are in your career, you're going to value those differently. Like, when you are very, very early career, you may say, "Hey, it's totally worth it for me to go to a convention, because it is… Spending that money will allow me to connect with my peers, and audience, and that networking, the audience layer of it, is totally worth it, and the shininess aspect of it is totally worth it." So it's going to be this constant balancing act, and it will again shift over the course of your career.

[Dan] Exactly. Ultimately, this idea of thinking of it as a career, as a business, and making all of these choices deliberate and informed is what's really going to help. So, thank you everybody. This is a wonderful start to our new year.

 

[Dan] We have homework from Howard.

[Howard] Okay. In 2003, at Comic Con, my friend Jim met Neil Gaiman, and Neil introduced himself, saying, "Hi, my name is Neil. I write comics." Okay. That's a fun story. Neil Gaiman rights way more than just comics. He wrote the adaptation that took Good Omens from being a wonderful novel to being a really amazing television series. You don't know, or maybe you do, the path that your career is going to take the number of different things you might write. I posit that it will be extremely valuable to you to take something like Good Omens, your book of the week, and the TV show. Consume them both and make notes. What kinds of writing decisions were made between the two that you would have made differently? What kind of writing decisions were made that just blow your mind? The adaptation between mediums may, at some future point, be something that you get to do. As an added bonus, I think this homework will be fun for you.

[Dan] Awesome. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this episode. You are out of excuses. Now go write.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2020/08/09/15-32-short-story-markets/

 

Key Points: Do you need to be prolific to make it in the short story markets? No. How do you find short story markets? Look for the lists, such as The Submission Grinder, or collections of award-winning short fiction, and see where they were published. Pay attention to what you like. Look at the audience size, the pay rates, and is it shiny for you? Do you need to be famous as a short story writer to break in as an author? No. Be your own kind of writer. How do you stand out from the crowd? Write the story that grabs you. Learn to write a competent story. Then learn to trust yourself. 

 

[Transcriptionist note: I may have confused Erin and Lari at some points in the transcript. My apologies for any mislabeling.]

 

[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 32.

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, Short Story Markets, with Erin Roberts.

[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.

[Lari] Because you're in a hurry.

[Erin] And we're not that smart.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Lari] I'm Lari.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Dan] Thank you. We are very excited to have Aaron Roberts with us for this episode. Erin, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

[Erin] Sure. I am a writer, primarily of short stories. I've had short fiction published in Asimov's, and in Clarkesworld, The Dark, and PodCastle. I also was, which is great for this particular episode, a slush reader for EscapePod for about two years.

[Dan] That is fantastic. Thank you for joining us.

 

[Dan] This is, as most of our episodes are this year, a topic that was requested by listeners. So we've got several questions, and most of these rather than about fiction writing are about fiction selling and fiction markets. So I'm just going to start. The first one here, the question is, with so many short fiction markets, does a good short story author need prolific-isy to gain notice and readership?

[Erin] No.

[Dan] Maybe the first question is what are… He says with so many short fiction markets. The short fiction market is so different today than it was when I was breaking in like 15 years ago. What are the short story markets? What are… I mean, without an exhaustive list, obviously. Where are the places people can look today to sell short fiction?

[Mary Robinette] So, one of the things about this is that… I'd like to try to give this advice in a way that's as evergreen as possible. So… Because markets are constantly appearing and disappearing. That's been true through the entirety of publishing. So, what you're looking for are markets that you kind of want to be in. The best places to find those are places that collect lists. So you can go to some place like The Submission Grinder or Duotrope or Ralan's, or you can go to an anthology of books… Of fiction that is award-winning and look to see where those pieces were published. These are all places that you can find markets, but the process of figuring out which market you want to be in… Like, giving you a list of "Ah, this market is…" Like, we can do that, but it's not…

[Dan] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] The chances of it being outdated a month after we record this is pretty strong.

[Erin] I also think that a lot of it's about you. The kind of stories that you like. The markets are different, they all have different styles, they all have different sort of editorial focuses. So, I would always say, read a lot of current short fiction, and see, are you gravitating to a certain market? Are you like, "Ah, the stories in X are the stories that I would love to be alongside." Because one of the best things about being published in a short fiction magazine is saying, like, "Well, my story's great," but also, "Oh, my gosh, these other stories, I'm so excited to be a part of this."

 

[Dan] So, back to the question, then. In order to really get out there, to gain a readership, to gain notice as a short fiction writer, do you need to be prolific? Do you need to be constantly publishing in tons of different markets?

[Mary Robinette] I don't think that you do. I mean, when you look at someone like Ted Chang, he does not constantly publish. Like, it is a thing you can do. But the question I would ask is why do you want to be noticed? Like, what are you trying to gain from that? So, here is my advice when you're thinking about like, what market to go into, and this is taking on to what Erin says about like what is important to you. That there are, I think, three things that help you decide what market to look at. One is the size of the audience the next is the pay rate. The third is the shininess. So, audience is literally how many people are going to see this thing. Pay rate is exactly what it sounds like, are you being paid adequately for your effort? Then, the shininess is how much do you want to be in this particular market? Like, there's… I grew up reading The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. So, getting into that magazine was… That was shiny for me. Even though they didn't have the best pay rate when I got in. Shimmer Magazine is beautiful, and I wanted to be in Shimmer, even though the market size is very small. So, that varies. But at other points in my career, where… Like, there was a point when we were in New York and I was supporting my husband and myself on our… On my theater and writing income, which is exactly as large as you'd imagine that to be. So, at that point, pay rate was the most important thing. So, like the number of markets that you go into, the only thing that that affects is… The two pieces of that that you are affecting there are the number of eyes that are seeing your words, and how much money you're getting paid. So, for a career, it's like which piece of that are you trying to manipulate?

[Erin] I'll also say that both as an editor and an agent, I was very scared of the word prolific. I didn't know prolific-isy was a word, but I'd be… I'm even more scared of that one. It's possible to be prolific and be really good, but I think when there's… The stress is on the quantity, it always makes me fear for the quality. So if someone's trying to just write and write and write, it immediately makes me suspicious that there isn't that much attention to editing and just letting the material rest so you can take a new look at it. So, I would say, for me, it's always best to just pay attention to what you're putting out there, first and foremost.

 

[Dan] So, I suspect part of the thought process behind this question is someone who wants to break into the market, someone who wants to gain notoriety, either because they want to move on to getting a big publishing contract or something like that. So, Lari, you as an editor may be the one to answer this. To what extent does that matter? Does somebody need to become famous quote unquote as a short story writer in order to break in as an author?

[Lari] Absolutely not. I also think editors use a little bit too much the idea of falling in love. I think we kind of lean on it a little bit too much. But it is true that a lot of the publishing process involves a couple people just falling in love with your writing. So an agent falling in love with your writing, and an editor falling in love with your writing. Often, that doesn't really have anything to do with your previous platform.

[Erin] I just want to build on that to say that I think this question may also be coming from the idea that there is a way to sort of game the system of publishing. Like, if you do this thing correctly and follow this path, it will lead you to glory. So to speak. But I just don't think that's a good way necessarily to go. Because you have to love the writer you are, instead of dream about the writer you wish you were. And figure out, if you're a prolific writer, and that's your style, then go be prolific. But if you're not, don't stress about the fact that I will never succeed, because I am not this other person. Live in your own career and your own writing style and process.

 

[Dan] Excellent advice. I want to break right now for our book of the week, which is, actually, appropriately, the Nebulous Showcase. Mary Robinette, can you tell us about that?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So, one of the things that we've been talking about is how to find good markets. Looking at a collection of award-winning fiction is a way to figure out which markets people are publishing in that are… That other people are also reading. So the most… We've got the Nebula Award Showcase 2019, which was edited by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia. That has a collection of the winners and nominees for the 2019 Nebula awards. So it's got people in there like Rebecca Roanhorse and K. M. Szpara and Sarah Pinsker. It's got just a ton of really good fiction. So, if you're wanting to get a better idea of the sort of landscape, grabbing the most current Nebula Award Showcase at whatever point you're listening to this. It may be that you're listening to this and are grabbing the 2020. But grab that, and enjoy some really… The fiction of people who are at the top of their game right now.

 

[Dan] Excellent. All right. There's another question here that I think is similar to the first one we had, but takes a different approach. What the question says is by submitting to one of the most famous sci-fi/fantasy magazines, I learned that they receive about 40 stories a day, but publish about 12 stories every two months, including those from established authors. I imagine many submissions are good, but how do you stand out from the crowd? So, rather than using short fiction to stand out in some other way, how do you stand out just enough to get published? How do you get noticed? How do you grab the attention of a short story publisher or editor?

[Erin] When I was… I'll say when I was a slusher, we just read stories. A slush reader for a magazine reads all the stories that come through the door, and decides which ones to pass up to the editors. At EscapePod, actually, the process is blind. So we don't know who's sending it, and if it's like my favorite author ever or someone I've never heard of. What I learned from that is just write a story that grabs a reader. A slush reader is just a reader that has been given a particular title in a particular role. They're not any different then you as a reader, except maybe that they do it more. So when you're reading stories, what grabs you? That's the same thing that's going to grab someone at a magazine. So if you write a great story, then it should grab someone's perspective and make them want to read more and publish it.

[Mary Robinette] So, I'm going to add on that. That is absolutely true. And also, there is a thing that happens… That I've seen… It happened to me… Happens to a lot of writers. Which is that your publishing… Or submitting, and then you start getting the personalized rejections. Then you make a sale, and you don't know why that story sold and none of the others have sold. Like, what did I do, and you try to replicate it. You can't. Then you go through a dry spell for you don't sell anything. Then suddenly you sell something, and you have no idea why. Here is what I think is happening this is based on having done the slush reading that Erin did, but in a slightly different form. I slushred for Asimov's, but I was… They divided their slush into three piles. The first was complete unknowns. The second, the B pile, was people who had some credits. Then the A list was people who had already sold to Asimov's. All that that was really doing was triaging the sort of process. Some people in the B pile were people who'd been in A… Or been in the C pile and gotten moved in for a slightly closer read. But what it meant was that I was reading stories and all of them were competent. Like, every single story in that pile was competent. The thing that was frustrating was that for a long time, I was like, "Ah yes. I understand why editors so frequently say write a story that rises above. And that they can't describe what this rises above means." But, comparing what is happening with that pile with the authors that I know, and myself who can't… Who are like, "Why did this one work?" Here's what I think is happening. I think what happens is that you learn to write a competent story. Then you learn to trust yourself. That there is a period of time in which you are writing competent stories, and there's nothing structurally wrong with that sucker. But you are so focused on the technique of it, but you aren't actually thinking about all of the things… You aren't interrogating any of the things that you are actually interested in. You're trying to mimic things that other people are doing. So they're a little bit stiff. They're a little bit predictable. But there's nothing wrong with it. Like, no one can point at it and go, "This is wrong here." Then there's a point at which you write a story that is coming very much from your own self. Those are the stories that are unique and stand out. Because they are stories that no one else could write. The stories that don't stand out are the stories that anyone could have written. They're just… There's… Again, there's nothing wrong with them, they're just not doing that extra step of letting your own voice out. In this case, what I mean by voice is your own personal taste out. So I think that one of the things that you can do is… As a writer, is to remember that you have honed your reading experience over your entire reading career, which is much longer than your writing career, and to trust your reader instincts over your writer instinct.

 

[Dan] That sounds like awesome advice. We, unfortunately, are out of time. We've got some homework coming from Lari.

[Lari] Yeah. So, I want you to pick a couple of contemporary published short story writers, and just trace their publication history. So you can see where they've been published, at which points in their career, and hopefully that will help you start sketching a roadmap for your own.

[Dan] Awesome. All right. Well, thanks everybody for listening. This is Writing Excuses. You are out of excuses. Now go write.