wetranscripts | Entries tagged with backstory

Writing Excuses 19.27: Close Reading on Character: An Overview and Why We Chose C. L. Clark's ...

From https://writingexcuses.com/19-27-close-reading-on-character-an-overview-and-why-we-chose-c-l-clarks

Key Points: Short stories are like tapas, a bite-size treat. Relationships. Backstory. Choices. Ability, what the character can and cannot do, role, tasks and responsibilities, relationship or loyalties, and status, where they are in a power structure. Sequence and anticipation. Momentum or velocity. You are who you choose to be. Dragon's tears, and nebulous expectations.

[Season 19, Episode 27]

[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.

[Howard] You're invited to the Writing Excuses Cruise, an annual event for writers who want dedicated time to focus on honing their craft, connecting with their peers, and getting away from the grind of daily life. Join the full cast of Writing Excuses as we sail from Los Angeles about the Navigator of the Seas from September 14th through the 27th of 2024. With stops in Ensenada, Cabo San Lucas, and Mazatlán. The cruise offers seminars, exercises, and group sessions. An ideal blend of relaxation, learning, and writing, all while sailing the Mexican Riviera. For tickets and more information, visit writingexcuses.com/retreats.

[Season 19, Episode 27]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Close Reading on Character: An Overview and Why We Chose C. L. Clark's Short Stories.

[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.

[Erin] I am very excited that we're doing a trio of stories for this section of our close reading. Because I love to write short stories, but also, I think that there's a lot that you can learn from looking at one author doing a few different short stories. So, as a reminder, we're going to be doing C. L. Clark's stories, You Perfect, Broken Thing, The Cook, and Your Eyes, My Beacon: Being an Account of Several Misadventures and How I Found My Way Home. Which were all actually published in Uncanny Magazine. I think, Mary Robinette, you were the one who brought these stories first to our attention. What made you think of them?

[Mary Robinette] So, I have known C. L. Clark for a couple of years, and one of the things that I love about their writing is that they can be extremely emotional, get deep into a character, within a very compressed space. One of the first things that I read of theirs was You Perfect, Broken Thing. Like, even today, I had to reread just to prep for this, it still makes me cry when I get to the end. That's a really beautiful gift, from a short story, is to have this kind of in-depth emotional response. The other thing that I love about it is that there's a very clear character arc that happens, and the character is encountering several different emotional spaces. Not only is the character inhabiting those different emotional spaces, the style of writing that C. L. Clark deploys to convey that is so specific to each moment, that it's… I thought that it was a really good example of "Look at this! Look at how much freedom you have when you are attempting to convey character."

[DongWon] We hear the word character-driven a lot when talking about different kinds of fiction, different kinds of stories. C. L. Clark's work really drives that home. It definitely feels like the character has taken the wheel of the car of this story and has just taken us wherever they're going to go. Right? There's so many unexpected choices for surprising or nuanced things that the characters say or do that in each… All three of these stories will catch me off guard in a way that was so delightful and so fun. In a couple of them, really, making choices that were almost borderline [garbled] choices in ways that I think are so relatable and understandable and… I can't even be mad at them when they've done something that I so heartily disagree with.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Exactly. The other thing that I really like with this is the second story that we mentioned, The Cook, is supershort. It's like 800 and… It's less than 900 words. There is major action that happens offstage and all we're looking at in this story is the difference in the way to people are relating to each other, based on this major action that happens offstage, but the major action is not the interesting part. So it just gets quickly referred to in just a couple of lines, and then we go on. I find that very compelling, that… There are a lot of these character portraits that I find in their work.

[Howard] I want to tie a couple of things together here and clarify something. Erin, you said you love to write short stories, and, Mary Robinette, you mentioned The Cook. I love to read short stories. I was trying to figure out why, and I realized I think I like to read them for the same reason I like to eat tapas. I love being able to get in one bite a million flavors all at once. You think of a novel as… It could be a three-course dinner, it could be a pepperoni pizza with everything, it could be… If you think of it as a pepperoni pizza, or a pizza with everything, thinking of short stories as deconstructions of the pizza, as tapas, little bits of those things that would be in the full meal, and which, in and of themselves, are complete. That, coming back to the idea of just being a cook, that is the mastery that I found in reading these. That… They're small, but there is so much in there.

[Erin] One of the things I like is that… To just build on this pizza analogy, which I love, and is making me hungry, is that these are three different lengths of stories. There short stories, but one is this very tiny pizza bite type of like…

[DongWon] It's a bagel bite.

[Laughter]

[Erin] [garbled] trying to think of a name for them. It's a little… Thank you. Bagel bites. You have one that's basically, like, maybe a cross section…

[DongWon] A hot pocket.

[Erin] The hot pocket. You're…

[DongWon] I'm on it.

[Laughter]

[Howard] Okay, I just want to be clear that the story is way better a story than a hot pocket is a food.

[DongWon] Hey, some people like hot pockets [garbled] hot pockets.

[Erin] The third is maybe a slice. So, each one of them… Because it's the same author writing them, there's a certain… There's certain things that are done in all of the stories that makes us… Like, there's cheese in all three of those things. Theoretically. But the way that that cheese would be expressed is different.

[DongWon] Absolutely.

[Erin] Similarly, like, things like a description of another person, all of these have relationships also at their core. But the way that people are described is slightly different when you have three words to do it versus a sentence versus maybe a paragraph.

[DongWon] One of the reasons we chose Time War is because there's like 3 to 4 different voices in that book. So it's really useful to break it down and compare. Short fiction, similarly, because they're bite sizes, the metaphor we've landed on, it's very easy to figure out how to talk about different aspects and highlight different aspects. Being able to cover a collection of short stories, a handful of them here, let's us really compare and contrast how the author is highlighting different aspects of character, drawing out different elements of character, across all three stories. So I think it'll make for a really dynamic and fun conversation.

[Howard] When we do close readings, the power of these, for me, is being able to reference the text, being able to read to you, fair listener, the words that did the thing. With the short stories, it's so much easier to find the words. Because, you know what, in this one, there's only six sentences to choose from that did this bit of lifting on that character.

[Mary Robinette] One of the things that I find, having gone from short stories to novels, is that the skills that I learned in short fiction, I deploy in novel form so that I have more space for… Like, I establish a character very, very quickly because I've learned these skills in short form. Which gives me more space to have character development, to have other things that are happening and interesting. Whereas I see a lot of people who are early career spending chapters and chapters trying to establish this character and all of this painful back story of the character. Frequently, when you look at short fiction, you're able to establish painful back story in just one or two sentences, maybe a paragraph. Especially when we get into You Perfect, Broken Thing, there is so much worldbuilding in that that's just conveyed superfast in super economical terms.

[DongWon] Well, that's kind of the thing that I want to talk about is there something Clark does so masterfully here, which is have this laser focus on character and be so late with worldbuilding. So much of the worldbuilding is defined in negative space. Right? The Cook is a great example of this, but all three stories do this in different ways, where there is very little that they are telling us about explicitly here's why this contest is happening, here's why the world is like this, is why these people have been persecuted out of existence. All that is left in the margins of the story, and not addressed. Because they don't matter, unless they matter to the character interaction. So we understand the world enough to understand why characters are making the choices that they make and that's it. It's a stop at that point. I think that is so cool, and is such a great demonstration of how much you can do if you really hone one of the tools in your kit. Then, when you carry that into novel writing, I think when you have that more expansive space to do the stuff that is offscreen in these stories, you still have that strong foundation in knowing how to write character, how to write that element.

[Erin] Yeah. I love when you said the worldbuilding sort of just comes in when it's needed. I remember in Your Eyes, My Beacon, that there's this the high court, which is…

[DongWon] Yeah. But barely mentioned.

[Erin] Like, all of a sudden, they were mentioned and I'm like, "Oh. Actually, I think this is the first time I hearing about high court. But it's very cool that both of the characters are very familiar with it." But didn't… It didn't need to be mentioned to me until this moment. I really thought this was like sort of an audacious but amazing choice. Because the time that you spend explaining the high court takes you out of the moment between these two characters is there trying to figure out what to do within this lighthouse.

[DongWon] It barely comes up again, but is this constant threat throughout the story. I never forget about the high court for the rest of the story, but it's mentioned maybe twice, off the top of my head.

[Erin] Yeah.

[Howard] On the subject of taking you into and out of the moment, we're going to take a quick break, and be back in a moment.

[Dan] This week, our thing of the week is called… A role-playing game called Monster of the Week, which, as that name implies, is based around this kind of TV show Supernatural or Buffy or X-Files. The kind of show where each week there is another monster and you have to figure out what it is and deal with it. The reason I am recommending it is because it gets so creative with the powers that you have in the way that these powers help you to tell a particular kind of story. So, for example, one of the character classes has the power of getting captured by the monster. That is literally their superpower. The reason that that is useful is because getting captured helps reveal all kinds of things, where does the monster hang out, what kinds of powers does the monster have, and it fits into that genre of storytelling that you see on shows like Supernatural, where someone will get captured and then gets to talk to the monster or see how they work. So the sh… Game, once again, is called Monster of the Week and it's awesome. Check it out.

[Mary Robinette] Right. As we come back from the break, I want to give you a couple of very specific tools to be thinking about with character. Then, what we're going to do is, we're going to read to you the opening of… Just the first paragraph of each of the three stories, so you can hear how these tools are being manipulated even in this… In these tiny, tiny spaces. So these tools are about a character's identity. Ability, role, relationship, and status. We're going to dig more into these in the next episode, but right now what I want you to think about is ability, the things a character can and cannot do. This is all about how a character self defines. So the things they can and cannot do. Role are the tasks, responsibilities, that move them through the world. Relationship is about their loyalties. Then, status is about where they are in a power structure. So, as you are listening to us read these, think about ability, role, relationship, and status, and how they are manifesting even in these compressed spaces. Just these first paragraphs.

[Erin] I'll start with the opening of You Perfect, Broken Thing.

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

[Mary Robinette] The Cook.

The first time I see her, it’s just a glimpse. I’m standing in the inn’s common room and the other warriors straddle chairs and call for ale. While some reach for a serving wench or boy, cheeks to pinch, a life to grasp—my stomach growls a monster’s growl. I should be slain; the growl is that fierce. I smell the roasting lamb, the unmistakable sneeze of freshly ground peppercorns, and garlic, but it’s all hidden behind the kitchen door.

[DongWon] Your Eyes, My Beacon.

She is light. Until she is not, and the lighthouse goes dark as the waves crash against the cliffside, the rocks at its foot jutting and jagged, a peril to even the most skilled navigators’ ships.

[Mary Robinette] So you can see how they are manipulating those things, even in these tiny spaces. That first one, we're seeing ability, the ability of the character completely manipulated. In the second one, we're looking at the tasks, I'm hungry and need to eat, and in the moment, that's everything that's defining this character. Then, in this last one, she is light, again, we're back to tasks, but also this role…

[DongWon] The status really comes in here.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] As she's failing to complete this task, as her ability fails her, suddenly her power and her status becomes very much in question.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] I think to do that with something that was really interesting I noticed between The Cook and Your Eyes, My Beacon, is, I think The Cook is very much relationship. The first time I see her, it's just a glimpse. It's about a specific other person, is being centered, really early on. Whereas in Your Eyes, My Beacon, when it talks about the lighthouse goes dark, a peril even to the most skilled navigators' ships, you can tell it's a role or status, I guess, because it's affecting all the ships. It's no longer about a single… It's not that ship. It's all the ships out there. That's where you can tell, like, it's a specific person's status or place in the world versus their place with regards to another individual.

[Mary Robinette] So this is just kind of a little bit of a preview of some of the things that we're going to be talking about over the next couple of weeks. And why we're so excited to be exploring the work of C. L. Clark.

[Howard] I want to look at The Cook again, because this, the shortest of the three, that first paragraph gives us so much information, and some of it is inherently mimetic, in that we are being given information by being asked to recall things that are not in the story. The sentence I'm talking about, I'm standing in the inn's common room and other warriors straddle chairs and call for ale. Inn, common, warriors, ale. Pathfinder or D&D. You are there. Those are words that get used all the time. If you tell yourself, oh, I'm in a D&D setting, or I'm in a Pathfinder setting, or I'm in some sort of Western fantasy-esque role-playing game setting, except I'm telling a story, you know what, that's good enough. The story will play with that backdrop you've painted. We were told to paint it by being given those four words in quick succession.

[Mary Robinette] Exactly. It leaves so much more space to then explore character. So you don't have to do a ton of worldbuilding. That allows you to then… The negative space that DongWon was talking about before, that allows you then to just focus on the character. Again, in that… In The Cook, the first time I see her, it's just a glimpse. One of the other tools you're going to hear me talking about is recency or primacy effect. By starting with this is the most important thing in this story. The first time I see her.

[DongWon] It's funny, we almost get the inverse of that with Your Eyes, My Beacon, because we are starting with her, we are starting with the she is light, and by the time we get to the reveal of what's going on with the lighthouse keeper, I… Me at least, completely forgot about this opening. Right? Completely forgot about the connection between the character and being light. Then, when that comes back, it's such a thrilling moment.

[Erin] I also wanted to note that the first time I see her, it's just a glimpse… The first time. Because you know there will be a next time. I love words like that, that help to create anticipation naturally in us by telling us there is a sequence of events, and if you wait, we'll get to the next one in the sequence.

[DongWon] All three of these imply future action. Right? We have her leaving the kill floor, this sort of athlete pushed to her limits. We're going to get more about this. Right? You get the first time I see her, you get the lighthouse going out, and the consequence of that. All three are such a great way of rooting yourself in character, but with momentum. Right? I think sometimes when people talk about characters, it can feel very static, because it's a portrait of here's a person who existed at a point in time. But the thing is people aren't static, they are in motion. C. L. Clark is a master at giving us that velocity. Each one of these, I feel like I'm coming off the starting block, and just sprinting away into the distance.

[Howard] There's a line from… I think it's… I think Hogarth speaks it in Iron Giant where he tells the Iron Giant, "You are who you choose to be." I love that line. You are who you choose to be. Just show us a choice. Show us the character making a choice. Now we know who they are in that moment. We don't know what their next choice… What they'll choose next time, but we now know enough. It's motion.

[DongWon] Yeah. But I love how that also feels in tension with this idea of character as destiny. Right? They are going to make choices and they have choice… They have agency, which, we're going to talk a lot more about in a future episode, but also, there almost trapped by who they are and what they need to be, and watching them struggle against that is so much the dynamism of these stories. Of how do you make a choice when you have to go fight a war? How do you make a choice when you can't leave the kitchen? How do you make a choice when you need to save your family? That is so fun.

[Howard] I want to come back to the kitchen. One last comment about tapas and…

[Chuckles]

[Howard] About the length of short stories. I was served something called a dragon's tear at a sushi restaurant. Which was basically a slice of habanero, teardrop shaped, wrapped around a little nugget of wasabi.

[Mary Robinette] Oh, no!

[Howard] Okay. That is one bite of heat and tears and sneezing and regret…

[Heehee]

[Howard] And joy.

[DongWon] What did you do to piss those folks off?

[Laughter]

[Howard] It's… But, see, here's the thing. I don't want a plate of dragon's tears.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] I just want one. I want to go on that ride one time. Okay. I'll go back to that restaurant and get another one. Because it was fun. That, for me, is what short fiction can do. I don't know what this is going to taste like when I start reading it. It doesn't have a book cover. It's not shelved somewhere in the fantasy or science fiction section. My expectations are nebulous.

[Erin] I think that is a perfect time to go to the homework, which I have for this week. Which is to write a series of sentences. Each one… Pick a character that you have and write that character's name is someone who… And then something about them. Then write it again, and again, and again and again and again. Until you run out of things and you have to continue to keep writing, because that will help you find levels to your character that maybe not even you anticipated.

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

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

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Writing Excuses 17.11: Structuring with Multiple Timelines

From https://writingexcuses.com/2022/03/13/17-11-structuring-with-multiple-timelines/

Key points: One way to use multiple timelines is to dramatize backstory, telling it in scene rather than in an infodump. Flashbacks, in media res. You can use multiple timelines to feed the reader information, or for pacing. Do beware of killing progress with in-depth flashbacks. Sometimes you may use the past timeline to legitimize something to the reader. You can also compare and contrast the two timelines.

[Season 17, Episode 11]

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, Structuring with Multiple Timelines.

[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.

[Peng] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're multiply in a hurry on several timelines.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Peng] I'm Peng.

[Howard] I'm getting carried away.

[Mary Robinette] Thank you, Howard.

[Dan] That was Howard, by the way.

[Dan] So, last week we talked about multiple POVs. Now we have multiple timelines. Which is a much more overtly structural thing, or more obviously structural. Peng, when… Where do we start here? When might it be a good idea to use multiple timelines, and how do you do it?

[Peng] Oh, I love multiple timelines. I think they might be my favorite structure technique. But, so what I think multiple timelines are great… Well, they're great for a million things, but one of the biggest benefits to using multiple timelines is if you've got a story that has… It's got, like, an old buried secrets that come to light years later type plot, and it's a really good way for you to dramatize back story in scene instead of having to just info dump it. Because if you've got this huge back story that happened decades ago, you don't really want to just throw that right there in the beginning or have a big section that's separated from the rest. You want to be able to weave it in really well. One of the ways to do that is to go back and forth between this back story and do it in scene as opposed to just having like an info dump. I think a really great example of that... Has everyone read Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon?

[Dan] I have not.

[Peng] Oh, it's a gre… Well, put it on your list. It is a book about basically a little boy who when he's reeling from the loss of his mother who's just died, and his father takes him to the cemetery of lost books, I think it's called. He says… It's basically a secret bookstore and everybody who goes there gets to choose one book and you have to take care of it for the rest of your life and it's yours. So he ends up choosing a book by a mysterious author and he falls in love with it. He decides that he is going to find more of this author's work because the book is just so good. But it turns out that all other copies of every other book has been destroyed. So it's this mystery about who destroyed those books, where is the author, what happened. So as the boy goes on this investigation, rather than just having big info dumps of what he finds out at every stage of his investigation, which is what you would do if you did the whole thing in present, just one timeline, we end up every time he comes upon a new epiphany, we jump back in time and we get that epiphany as it happens in narration rather than as a something just being told back to him. It works so well, it makes the past just as compelling as the present.

[Howard] I wanted to take a moment to just pin some terms down. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has introduced us to the idea that timeline means multiple realities. But for the most part, what we're talking about here is a single timeline that has multiple pointers on it that we will be jumping into and visiting. Current time, flashback, in media res, that kind of thing. Now, that said, Terry Pratchett's… Oh, I forget which book it was. It was one of the Vime's books. Has a forked timeline in the climax. It happens when Vime takes his magical day planner thingy and drops it into the wrong pocket in his trousers. It's described as the trousers of time, and they're in the wrong pocket. There's this war going on that he has been trying to stop. In the timeline he's in, he's successfully putting a stop to things. His day planner is now on the other timeline and keeps beeping things about our favorite characters dying. It's a fascinating way, here in the multiple… In true multiple forked timelines, to say, "Congratulations. You chose the better one."

[Chuckles]

[Dan] This… Another really good example of this is the one that I used as a book of the week a couple weeks ago. The Inheritance of Orquidea Divina. What the book's plot is kind of sort of about is the inheritance that this grandmother leaves to her family includes a debt to some kind of very mysterious, very dangerous person. If we had gotten everything in chronological order, the life of the grandmother growing up and then all of the family trying to deal with it after the fact, we would already know everything about that mysterious person and the danger that he represents before the family comes into play and struggles against it. So, by jumping back and forth between these two periods of history, we get to discover with the family all of the things that are happening at the same time that we get to see them happening to the grandmother in the past. So having the chapters alternate back and forth is this really smart structural choice that doesn't give away the ending before it matters.

[Mary Robinette] So, you just said that we get to see it happening at the same time that we're seeing something else happen. I just want to remind readers that even when we're talking about a nonlinear storytelling, like multiple timelines, that your reader is still experiencing things in a linear fashion. So as you're thinking about this, recognize that one of the tools that you're manipulating is when you are feeding them information. You're also using it to control pacing, as well as… So it's not just about now we get this thing, now we get that. It's also a way of controlling a lot of different pieces. So when you're… I'm going to flag a danger with multiple timelines. Which is, sometimes flashbacks can stop progress in a story while you sit down and explore something deeply. So when you're thinking about this, remember that you also want to make sure that whatever timeline that we're jumping into carries tension, that it's still serving as a good interesting story in and of itself, not just a way to try to mask an info dump.

[Howard] My rule of thumb on this is that if there's going to be a flashback, the flashback should be an answer to a question that just landed on the reader, rather than an opportunity to ask a new question or don't new information so that the story can move forward. I've found that… Yeah, the flashbacks that I hate, the flashbacks where I'm like, "Oh, I'm going to go get a sandwich," if I'm watching on TV, are the flashbacks where it has arrived and I didn't want it because it's not answering a question I had.

[Dan] All right. We are going to pause here for the book of the week. We've got a really awesome one this week because it is Peng's book. Peng, tell us about The Cartographers.

[Peng] Yay. The Cartographers is my second novel. It is a story about mapmaking and family secrets. It follows Nell Young, who's a young woman whose greatest passion is the art of cartography. She's been… She's spent her whole life trying to live up to her father who's the legendary cartographer, Dr. Daniel Young. But they haven't spoken for seven years since he cruelly fired her and destroyed her professional reputation over… It was during an argument over an old cheap gas station highway map. When the book kicks off, her father is found dead in his office at the New York Public Library with that very same seemingly worthless map hidden away in his desk. So, of course, Nell can't resist investigating. To her surprise, she soon discovers that the map holds, like, this incredible deadly mystery. So she sets out to uncover both what the map and her late father have been hiding for decades. It is a… It's coming out right about now. It comes out on March 15. I'm really excited for everybody to read it.

[Dan] Well, awesome. That sounds great. So that is The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd. So go look that up. Go buy it. Do your thing.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Okay. Let's get back to our…

[Mary Robinette] I'm just going to say, Peng is a heck of a writer, so you are in for a real treat with this.

[Peng] Well, thank you.

[Dan] Absolutely.

[Dan] So. What are some other… We talked about using multiple timelines to provide information. What are some other good uses of multiple timelines in a story? When might you want to do this?

[Howard] I think one of the most fascinating and easy to consume examples is the movie Julie & Julia, which follows Julia Child, the beginning of her career in the 1950s, and a woman named Julie Powell who created a blog in which she was going to try and cook all of the recipes in Julia Child's cookbook. This story bounces back and forth between the 1950s and the early 2000s. Directed by Nora Efrain. It was actually Nora Efrain's last movie. She wrote it, she directed it. It's a beautiful way to tell two different stories, each of which if you're familiar with Freitag's triangle or the narrative curve, each of those stories has its own narrative curve to it, and by jumping back and forth between the two of them, we increase the tension, we increase emotional investment, we reach our climaxes at the same… At about the same time. It's a delightful film. Also, just talking about it has made me hungry.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Another really good example is Vicious by V. E. Schwab. Each scene begins with something like 10 years before, five minutes before, three days before. It's… They're absolutely… There's no linearity to when those hop in. But it does this thing of enriching the world and deepening the character motivations. It is a structure that makes me deeply jealous.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Because I'm like… I don't have any understanding of how you write something like this. One of the things that I think that she does, which gets to Howard's earlier point about making sure that you're answering a question that was just dropped, is that she doesn't always do that. But she has built trust with the reader so that you understand that if we are doing this jump, that there is a reason for it, and you'll understand it later. But she has built trust by setting… By, at the beginning, that that's the way it's going to work.

[Peng] I think another really good way that multiple timelines can be used is this same sort of, along these same lines as answering a question. If you've got a story in which you have something that you need to sell to the reader that's a little bit difficult to believe were you think you're going to have trouble getting them to buy, whether it's like a worldbuilding aspect or it's a plot point or something about a character, if you put that into the past timeline, just by putting it there, the existence of that history or of that previous mention is kind of automatically legitimizing. So, it sort of works the same way as if you've got a legend in the story. The more times you mention a legend or the more times you mention something about magic, the more it just starts to feel real and believable, just through the repetition. So a lot of times, multiple timelines will have that same effect, where if something… If you tell the reader that something has happened in the past, it just automatically makes it more believable. It's a really easy way to sell something to readers that you need them to buy for the present narrative.

[Dan] It's so weird that… The way that works. Because you're absolutely right. Everything in a fantasy book, for example, is just stuff we made up. Right? But it's… The idea that this has happened before… If I tell you it happens now or if I tell you it happened 10 years ago, either way I just made it up. But that 10 years ago thing does really kind of hack the reader's brain into saying, "Oh. This is very unbelievable, but if it happened 10 years ago, it must be true."

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Then that helps us kind of suspend our disbelief of it a little better by setting an artificial precedent. It's so weird that that works, but it does.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] Extending that trick, if you say, "Oh, this exact same thing happened 100 years ago." Yeah, wow, that's kind of cool. But if you say, "This exact same thing happened 122 years ago, only it was in the summer instead of the winter." Holy crap. I am so onboard.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Wow. Because now… Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] I mean, Wheel of Time…

[Dan] There's a specificity to it.

[Mary Robinette] Wheel of Time is based on…

[Dan] There's one more example I want to mention really quickly, just because. It's the movie Frequency which is about a father who is a firefighter and dies in a fire and his son who grows up to become a cop. The story is told with watching them both when their about the same age in life, scenes inter-cutting back and forth, but what's different is that through a weird quirk of science fiction, they actually can talk to each other and the two timelines interact with each other over the radio. It's a really interesting take on this narrative premise.

[Mary Robinette] All right. While we're doing examples, there are two that I want to just throw in there because they are structurally so different and interesting. One is Firebird by Susanna Kearsley. It is both multiple timeline and multiple POV in that she has a character who's in I think the 1500s and one who is in the early 2000s. Those characters never interact. Their stories are connected only by one artifact that they both possess. It's this… It's just… It's a beautiful meditation on time and place. But what she does by going between those two timelines is that the contrast between them also makes you appreciate the commonalities, the things that don't change over time. She's a… It's beautiful, beautiful writing. The other one which is completely different structurally is a picture book called When I Wake Up by Seth Fishman. It's a kid wakes up in the morning and says, "Today I could…" And the story splits into four distinct timelines, each color code… Each are happening simultaneously on the page and color-coded. So I could go to the park. I could make breakfast for my parents. I could… It's this beautiful thing of like this is how my day… It's basically sliding doors for a kid in four timelines with colors. It's really lovely. But, it is, again, it's… What I like about each of them even though they use different versions of the multiple timeline is that they are exploring the texture of contrasts.

[Dan] That's awesome. All right, Howard, bring it home. What's our homework?

[Howard] Okay. Your current work in progress. Look at adding a second timeline, time stream to it. A couple of ways you can do this. Take a character whose back story perhaps you haven't told yet. Write a fun back story for them and find a way to weave that into the existing story bouncing through multiple timelines. Alternatively, you might take your current work in progress and the ideas you have for your second book and see if the first book story could be told as a flashback in the course of the second story. But, dig in and try to do this. I don't want to make it easy. Drill into it and break some things and when they are broken, step back and say, "Howard, you're a jerk. You did this to me." And we will all have had fun.

[Dan] That sounds great. You are out of excuses. Now go write.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 14.41: History

From https://writingexcuses.com/2019/10/13/14-41-history/

Key points: Let your characters talk about history. Consider whether the history is continuous (Chinese model) or rise and fall (Roman Empire model). Visit places that are similar to your fantasy world. Only give information that is pertinent, that has a reason, that adds to your story. Make sure the characters are interested, and that it is relevant to the story. Have characters disagree, and have opinions. Use little details to make your reader think there is an entire iceberg underneath. Consider verbal perspective, like the visual perspective of a chalk drawing of a cliff. Drill down deep on some details. Character history? A continuity spreadsheet for events in the universe. Writing YA means characters don't have a lot of history. Use a character worksheet as a starting point, but don't expect to really know your characters until the 2nd or 3rd draft. Differing opinions of the same event can make it feel real.

[Mary Robinette] Season 14, Episode 41.

[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, History.

[Dan] 15 minutes long.

[Howard] Because you're in a hurry.

[Mahtab] And we're not that smart.

[Brandon] I'm Brandon.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

[Mahtab] I'm… Mahtab. I was going to say I'm Mary Robinette, but I'm Mahtab.

[Laughter]

[Howard] Mary Robinette couldn't be with us this month… This week.

[Brandon] Well, we're doing the Utah cast. We like to shake things up. This week, we're going to talk about history. Actually, next week, we're going to do the genre of alternate history. We're going to talk a little bit about that. So we're going to try to veer away from that this time and focus on creating histories for your characters, for your secondary world fantasies or science fictions, or maybe extrapolating from our history right now to the future.

[Dan] I just realized that given Mary's known history as a voice actor, there's going to be a whole conspiracy fan theory that you really are Mary Robinette…

[Laughter]

[Dan] Doing an accent.

[Mahtab] Possibly.

[Howard] We'll post pictures.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] But that won't help.

[Brandon] All right. So, let's talk about secondary world fantasy, building histories for places that didn't exist.

[Dan] Yes.

[Brandon] Are there any resources you use? How do you start? How do you give a sense that the place has been around a long time? As a new writer, I'll just preface this by saying, this was really hard for me in my first books. I always felt that this was a big hole in my worldbuilding, that a lot of the great epic fantasies I'd read… You travel through Tolkien's world, and you get a sense that there are thousands of years of history at every turn and quarter. Where my worlds, it felt like they sprang up… Got built for the set right before the story started, and then the characters act in them, and then they were being wiped away after.

[Dan] Well, one of the things that Tolkien does… I mean, yes, he spent decades of his life building the world before he started writing in it, but beyond that, I think the much more reproducible trick is that everywhere he goes, everyone talks about history. So he's kind of cheating in that sense. So if your book doesn't focus on that, then you aren't going to have that sense. But when they go to Rivendell, when they go to even Laketown, they will talk about how, oh, this used to be this, and then this other thing happened. So you are kind of learning the history as you go. So you can include those details without spending decades of your life building them in advance.

[Howard] There are aspects to our world history that are really fascinating to model yourself, to model your work on. If you compare European history with mainland Chinese history, there is a continuity to Chinese history that none of the architecture… The Chinese people never walked up to a piece of architecture and said, "Where'd this come from?" But in the Middle Ages, in Europe, after the fall of the Roman Empire, 200 years later, we had people looking at aqueducts, people who had no idea how to work stone in that way, looking at these things and saying, "Who built this?" So the European conceit, which I think may be a little closer to what Tolkien was writing, is this sense that civilizations fall and some of them were greater than ours. We had this thing we call the Renaissance, this rebirth. The Chinese didn't have a Renaissance. The Chinese had a much more linear experience through this. Knowing that, when you are creating secondary world history for your world, allows you to choose. Our my people going to have a continuous history, or is there going to have been a collapse and technology was lost? Simple technologies, stone working, metalworking, whatever. When it is rebuilt, there are ancient puzzles to be solved.

[Dan] That contiguous idea, the more Chinese model, if we're going to call it that, can be fascinating, and I don't think it's done a lot. If you've got 2000 years of unbroken history, then this isn't just the little farm town where you lived, this is the farm town where 20 generations of your family have lived.

[Mahtab] I think even going to certain places that would be similar to your fantasy world would help. For example, Diana Gabaldon, who's written the Outlander series, she was a great researcher. She started writing the world based on her research from books, but then she eventually did go to Scotland, and viewed the area before she actually wrote down the entire story. There is a time travel involved, but there is a lot of history. So I think she did have a bit of it, but then a lot could be extrapolated. The other one that I really love was done… A fabulous job, and I think you'll all know him, Patrick Rothfuss with Name of the Wind and Wise Man's Fear. I mean, it just the way we were given the history of… Is it Shandrian or Chandrian?

[Brandon] I'm not sure. I don't know that I've heard him pronounce it.

[Mahtab] Nor am I. But history, and how it relates to Kvothe and the revenge that he wanted to take for certain things. The way it is built… But we are given that information as needed, at the right time that we need it in the story. I mean, if he had given all the information that is in the second book in the first book, we would probably have been overwhelmed. But the fact is that he's tilted, and he metes it out as required. You get the feeling that it's there. I guess the way you do it is you probably allude to it. But if it is not pertinent to the point… To the plot at that point in time, let it go. Let the reader just go along for the ride, and explain it at the time when you need to.

[Brandon] Absolutely. I agree with that 100%. One of the themes I'm noticing here is having reasons, though, to explain it. It works in Name of the Wind because the character's a storyteller and a bard. His… Telling stories of the past is basically the foundation of his relationship with his parents. With Tolkien, of course, there's a lot of lore, and characters are very interested in the lore. If this is something you want to do, having a reason, having a character who is interested in architecture, having a character who wants to talk about these things, and then making it relevant to the story. Maybe not to the main plot, but to the story in some way is going to help a lot.

[Dan] One of the other things that Tolkien is doing is he has a big cast of characters from lots of different backgrounds. So you have a chance for the Numernorian Ranger and the man of Rohan to argue over which path they should take. The dwarf has an opinion all his own. They think the other opinion is dumb, and they will give historical reasons. So you get lots of perspectives, which allows you to explain more of what's going on.

[Brandon] I think this is a very natural thing that human beings do. We like to talk about the past, we like to talk about our heritage. I remember just visiting Charlston for the first time when I was out there to work on the Wheel of Time books, and how multiple people told me we have houses that still have musket balls in them. From the Civil War. Right? Like, you can go and see there's a whole, there's a musket ball in there that was fired during the Civil War. That's like a very big mark of pride. I found it fascinating, right? Being from the West, where everything is a little more new, I love that aspect. I think, like I said, it's very natural. Those little details… We often talk about how the little details evoke a large picture and a larger story. I tell my students there's this philosophy that in writing you want to only show the tip of the iceberg, and then have all of this worldbuilding and stuff you've done that's underneath the water that's supporting it. I tell them that really what you want to do is you want to be able to fool the reader into thinking there's an entire iceberg down there.

[Howard] I'm going to build a little pile of ice on an ocean colored rubber raft, and I'm going to float it, and I'm going to use smoke and mirrors to make you not look at the raft.

[Brandon] Yup. And see an iceberg instead in the deep.

[Dan] If you want to compare this to visual art, if someone wants to suggest depth, you've all seen the pictures of like chalk drawings on the sidewalk that look like you're standing over a giant cliff. They're just using little tricks of perspective. So it's the same amount of total chalk, but it looks like it goes down for hundreds and hundreds of feet. So you can do that same kind of verbal perspective, I guess, and add little tricks into your book like mentioning the ancient king that used to run this or when you give the name of the city, explain where that name came from. Without having to build these hundreds of feet underneath it. You're just giving the sense of it.

[Mahtab] What I also like, which George R. R. Martin also did, was he was so specific about certain things. I mean, almost going to a depth that I didn't need. That somehow gave me the impression that he knows so much. He could have… like just maybe the Lannister's flag, and what they believe, and the Lannisters pay their debts. On certain aspects, he drilled down… Like, on the houses, so deep that it just gave me the impression that he knows a lot.

[Dan] Yes.

[Mahtab] Which without… He may not know a lot, but that is… I'm like, "How on Earth has he done this?" Because my impression in my mind is he knows everything. If he knows so much about one house, he probably knows so much about everyone.

[Dan] One of the reasons that that works so well is because it's a house. So it's not as… It doesn't sound as important as… If he were to give the entire history of the geography or whatever, this is how this land was formed, volcanically. So giving details, tons and tons of detail on something that isn't necessarily as important… Then we go, "Oh, he knows all this stuff about this one…"

[Mahtab] Exactly.

[Dan] "Little thing, I bet he knows everything."

[Brandon] Our book of the week this week is Airborn.

[Mahtab] So, this is one of my favorite books by a very well-loved Canadian author. His name is Kenneth Oppel. There are three books in the series. The first one is Airborn which was the Governor General's winner for 2004. The other books are Starclimber and Skybreaker. So, this is a book that set in an alternate history, of course, Victorian era, where a lot of airships were used for transportation. The story starts with a cabin boy called Matt Cruse, who has lost his father, but he's really dying to be a pilot, but he comes from the poor classes who… Chances of becoming a pilot are hard. But it's got a lot of fantasy elements in it. It starts out with him rescuing this person in a balloon. The person actually dies. But he leaves a notebook behind, which is handed over to his family. Three years later, he's on this trans-oceanic cruiseship, which is called the Aurora. One of the passengers is Kate de Vries, which is basically his love interest, who has that same notebook of the person that he had rescued which talks about cloud cats. Now, this is in the Victorian era, which was mainly a very.male-dominated society. Kate is very forward thinking, she wants to go find them. So there is this adventure going on where they're attacked by pirates, they crash land on an island, they do see the cloud cats… Spoiler alert, sorry about that. Then it ends on a fabulously dramatic note of them rescuing the ship and he being promoted. This is Matt Cruse. Of course, his adventures continue, with him falling in and out of love with Kate de Vries, who I love, but… It's the language, it's the pacing. Kenneth Oppel is just amazing with his plotting, his pacing. He's done a lot of middle grade and YA, but this is one of his finest. So, Airborn, Kenneth Oppel.

[Brandon] Excellent.

[Dan] Thank you, Mary Robinette, for that… Oh, I mean… Let's cut that out.

[Howard] Mahtab.

[Dan] Mahtab.

[Howard] This is totally Mahtab.

[Brandon] So. For the second half of this podcast, or the few minutes of the second half we have left, let's talk about character histories. How do you develop what the history of a given character is before they walk on screen for their first scene? How do you keep track of those notes? How much do you pants, how much do you plan?

[Howard] These days, I have a continuity spreadsheet. Which pins events in my universe and who is affected by those events. When somebody is walking on screen, the first thing I do is I look at the spreadsheet and ask myself, "Where were they when these things are happening? Do I need to worry about it?" If the answer is no, awesome!

[Chuckles]

[Howard] They walk on screen with whatever information I needed to motivate them for that scene. But if their paths crossed any of those points in the spreadsheet, I have to do more work. Usually that just means I'm not going to put them in the book.

[Laughter]

[Dan] Writing so much YA has been nice because the characters don't have a lot of history.

[Laughter]

[Mahtab] They're much younger.

[Dan] She's 16 years old, and maybe there's one or two formative experiences that I have to deal with. But in writing for adults, when I actually have to do this, I often will just make it up. I mean, I tend to be very pantsery anyway. But if there is… If there's something that relates directly to the plot, then I'll already know it. If it doesn't, then it can be whatever I want it to be.

[Mahtab] I actually like to fill up a character worksheet. Depending on whether it's middle grade or YA, I'll have a slightly longer worksheet. Some of it is just dealing with the physical appearance, but a lot deals with the character's motivations, what do they want, what do they need, any secrets that they have, just build upon that. That's just a starting point, I honestly do not get to know my characters till probably the second or third draft. This is just me putting some stuff down on paper. But it's a starting point. Just so that I can visualize the character. As I'm writing the story, stuff occurs to me. So the character worksheet is a starting point. Probably the second or third draft is when I really get to know the character. But I have to say, honestly, they've never talked back to me or they've never taken over the story. It's like sometimes… Most times, it's like talking to a teen. Pulling words out of their mouths.

[Chuckles]

[Mahtab] How do you feel today? Yeah, okay.

[Dan] They refuse to tell you anything.

[Mahtab] So, yeah. It's a work in progress. But as you do more drafts, you get to know them, and then start building on the areas that you think the story needs the history on.

[Howard] As I've gotten older and learned more, one of the things that I've learned is that it's not just that history is written by the victors, it's that history is read and interpreted differently depending on who's teaching it, depending on who's reading it. Nothing makes history in a secondary world feel more real than people having different opinions of the same event. Maybe they are both right. Especially if the event impacted one or more of these characters. Some of my favorite moments in tracking characters through these spreadsheets are when I realized both Alexia Murtaugh and Karl Tagon fought in the same war. Briefly, on opposite sides. At one point, they probably both knew the same person. Out of that grew the bonus story that I put into Schlock Mercenary book 14, which is the two of them talking about this guy who died during the war. Capt. Murtaugh talks about how he's the reason she was able to switch sides. So it was this intersection of my spreadsheet of history and personal backstories that the story almost told itself. It was a lot of fun. My part told itself.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Ben McSweeney had to do all the art.

[Brandon] Dan, you have our homework this week.

[Dan] Yes, I do. What we want you to do is come up with the history of a place. Take like a thousand years worth of history. What wars were fought there, what people lived there? All of these things that happened in this one location. But then, tell that story from the point of view of a tree that has lived that whole time and watched this all happen.

[Brandon] Excellent. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 14.40: Deep Vs. Wide

From https://www.writingexcuses.com/2019/10/06/14-40-deep-vs-wide/

Key points: An ocean that's an inch deep? 4000 dungeons, all the same? Do you worldbuild with depth, or width? Depth comes from causal chains, how things are linked together. History, consequences, ripples in the rest of the world. Pick a few, and dig deep on those, consider the ramifications. Watch for the one that gives you surprising yet inevitable, that makes the story unfold the right way. You can't go deep on everything. If a character uses something, science, technology, magic, to solve a problem, you need to know how it works. How do you make characters with the same background express something different? As a writer, stretch to make characters with similar backgrounds who are also distinctive individuals, who offer something different to the story. Audition characters! Choices and actions make characterization. Think about how the axes of power reflects self-identity, and what each person's primary driver is.

[Mary Robinette] Season 14, Episode 40.

[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Deep Vs. Wide.

[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Brandon] I'm Brandon.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

[Brandon] I've shared this story before on Writing Excuses, but it is one of my favorite stories. I once read a review of a videogame that was an RPG game that was known for having an expansive world. The review was critical because they said, "Yes, it's really, really expansive, but it's like an ocean that's an inch deep. Every town you go to has the exact same copy-and-pasted rooms and things. There's nothing to explore. All the dungeons are exactly the same. Yeah, there's 4000 of them, but if you just copy-and-paste the same three dungeons 4000 times, then you're not exploring 4000 locations, you're going into three places 4000 times." This has stuck with me, because the more I worldbuild, the more I realize that I prefer as a writer to have depth to my worldbuilding. I ran into this policy early in my career, where I had started to get popular. I had three magic systems in the Mistborn series, and fans are starting to hear that I was working on something new, the Stormlight Archive, which was going to be big. They started asking me, "How many magic systems do you have in this one? You had three and your previous one, how many are in this one?" I would be like, "There's 30. There's 30 different magic systems." I kind of fell into this more is better sort of philosophy. When I actually started working on the book, I realized one of the things that had made the Way of Kings fail in 2002 when I tried to write it the first time was this attempt to do everything a little bit, to have 5% worldbuilding and characterization across a huge, diverse cast and a huge setting, where the book had failed because nothing had been interesting, everything had just been slightly interesting. So I want to ask the podcasters, with that lengthy introduction, what constitutes a deep story to you, specifically when you're talking about worldbuilding? What draws you to those stories, and how do you create it in your own fiction?

[Mary Robinette] For me, it's looking at causal chains, the ways things link together. A lot of times when I see something that is shallow, there is an item, but it doesn't appear to have any ripple effects, it doesn't have any effects on the rest of the world. Whereas with deep things, you can see that there's a history, and you can also see that there are consequences to having this thing in the world. When I'm teaching my students, I talked to them about, and when I'm doing it myself, I think about why. Why did this thing arise? What was the need that caused this piece of technology or magic to occur? How does it affect everyone, and what is the effect, with what effect does using it? It's not like necessarily the personal toll, but what is the effect on the society? That's the piece, for me, like looking at how it affects the society, that I feel like a lot of worldbuilders fall apart, because they think about the effect on the individual magic user, but not the connections between those things.

[Dan] So, during the time that I was writing the Mirador series, there was a cyberpunk TV show called Almost Human with Karl Urban, if you remember that one. They did that, they had this very shallow worldbuilding. I remember in one of the episodes, a guy walked by an electronic billboard in a mall, and it like read his retina or did facial recognition and knew who he was and called up his shopping history and offer him a product. I'm like, "Oh, that's a cool detail." But if they have that technology, it would be in so many other places in the city. It would enable so many other things. They didn't explore any of that. It really frustrated me. So when I started building my cyberpunk, I'm like, "Well, I can't do that with everything. I'm going to do that with… Here are three or four branches of technology's, and just drill really deep into them and try to figure out how is this going to change society?" How will the entire city feel different if all cars drive themselves, for example? Just really dig into those and try to figure out what the ramifications are.

[Howard] For me, the decision point on deep versus wide occurs after I've only gone deep on as many things as I go deep on, because I will find the one which in conjunction with the others, gives me surprising yet inevitable. Gives me all of the pieces I need for the story to unfold in a way that it's going to do the things that I want it to do. At that point, I feel like… Whatever that thing was, and whatever pieces it touched in order to function in that way, that is where the depth has to be. Everything else, I'll go wide, and, if I have more budget, all sink an extra couple of holes over here as red herrings. But for now, that's the research that needs to be done.

[Brandon] You bring up an important point, which is that you can't go deep on every topic. We've been talking about this concept all through the year. But this idea that sometimes you do need to touch lightly on things, basically to pitch yourself ideas that you can catch in later books or later scenes.

[Howard] I wanted to tell a joke about the history of our solar system 75 million years ago. I was wondering how old Saturn's rings were. So I started doing research. What I determined is that in 2006, Saturn's rings were as old as the solar system. In 2018, when we dove Cassini through the rings, Saturn's rings are about 100 million years old, and will probably be gone in the next 200 million. The more I looked into this, the more interesting it got. The reasoning behind, the math of all this, which I'll spare all you. At the end of that session, I had four hours of information in my head, and zero jokes.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Now that's familiar.

[Howard] So, I left all of that out, because I realized, "Yeah, I totally write things about that. But it's not going to move my story forward, it's going to make people argue because it's not every… Some people know the 2006 science." I just have to give it a wide miss. The point here is that portions of my week are absolutely lost in that way. I'll research something and come away with nothing useful. But I don't get to have useful things if I don't do at least some of that research.

[Brandon] For me, where I went wrong on Stormlight Archive, looking back at it, when I first tried to write it, was I was a big fan of the Wheel of Time, which was, at that point, on its 10th book, 11th book soon to come out, I believe. I was trying to compare my series with one that had been going for 12 years.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Brandon] I wanted to jump in at the 12 year mark and say, well, this is what I love about the Wheel of Time. So I'm going to write a book that evokes those same feelings without doing the groundwork and characterization that the Wheel of Time had been doing for over a decade in order to create a really spectacular experience later in the series. What I ended up doing is, I ended up just touching lightly on all these things that I had spent my worldbuilding time on preparing. I ended up with a story that just wasn't satisfying because of that. Have you guys ever been working on a book and realized I need to do a deep dive on this one topic? What made you decide to do that, and what was it?

[Mary Robinette] I'm actually in the process of doing that right now on the Relentless Moon. One of the things that I went a little shallow on in the Fated Sky was the political situation on Earth. Because most of the book takes place on the way to Mars. Well, the Relentless Moon is a parallel novel that takes place on Earth and the moon, while Fated Sky is going on. Which means that I actually have to dig deep. In order to dig deep into the political situation on Earth, I have to do some… A deeper dive on the climatology of the planet after the asteroid strike. Because I'm like… Like, I have actually no idea as we are recording this whether or not the jetstream is still functional. Because where that asteroid strike was, it's like it may not be. I… So, I have to sit down… I've got an appointment with a… Someone who specifically does computer modeling of this kind of thing to figure out what the climate looks like. Because I didn't need to know. Now I do. It's… Yeah, it's…

[Dan] Yeah.

[Howard] Irradiation…

[Mary Robinette] Totally stalled on the novel right now.

[Howard] The secondary radiation of the regolith, the soil, the dirt, the whatever on a world where there is no magnetic field shielding you from radiation, and deep dove on this and came up with a quote from a Russian scientist who was asked, "Which one's worse on the moon, the solar radiation or secondary radiation from the regolith?" The Russian scientist said, "They are both worst."

[Laughter]

[Howard] Which means if you don't shield against one of them, you die. You have to shield against both. But again, this is a case where I was reading for four hours before I found that moment, where… For me, this is a moment where I laughed. Out loud. I'm like, "Okay. I even say that with a Russian accent." I'm not even going to put it in the book. But the idea that the dirt can be as dangerous as sunlight on a planet where there's no magnetic field… I tell jokes on that until the radioactive cows come home.

[Dan] In Partials, I am… That whole series deals with a lot of different kinds of science, but there was only one of them that was in the outline. It said, part of my thinking was, "And then Kira figures out how to cure the disease that's killing everybody."

[Laughter]

[Dan] Which meant that I had to figure out how to cure disease. Right? I could totally gloss over all the ecology, all the genetics, all the everything else, but, and I've said this before, I never want to write the sentence, "Then she did some science." So if I have my character actually using a science or a technology or a magic or whatever to solve a problem, I need to know how that works. So I did actually enough study into virology that I was later able to convince a doctor that I knew what I was talking about when my father was in the hospital. So finding out which one is key to the plot, which one hinges a whole story, that's the one I focus on.

[Howard] As a side note, writers tend to be dangerous that way.

[Dan] Yes.

[Brandon] Let's go ahead and talk about Squid Empire.

[Howard] Oh, yes. Danna Staaff. Nonfiction book called Squid Empire: The Rise and Fall of the Cephalopods. Which is a discussion of… It's a… Well, it's a whole book about cephalopod evolution on Earth. The cephalopods were the first creatures to rise from the seafloor. They invented swimming. Then, at some point, fish invented jaws, and the kings of the ocean became the ocean's tastiest snack. This book walks you through all of that. If you are interested in worldbuilding, the discussion of this, just the way these things interoperate and interlock and unfold is useful. But it is also fun and beautiful.

[Brandon] Awesome. That was Squid Empire.

[Howard] Squid Empire: The Rise and Fall of the Cephalopods by Danna Staaff.

[Brandon] Awesome.

[Brandon] So, let me ask you this. How can you take a single culture in a say science fiction or fantasy book and build a bunch of characters who all maybe come from the same background, but all express something very different? The reason I ask this is often times I think our go-to in a fantasy or science fiction book is we're going to have this alien, and that's going to represent this, and we're going to have this fantasy race, and they're going to represent this. Or, this kingdom is the kingdom of merchants, and we're going to bring in a character from the kingdom of merchants. Where, sometimes what you end up doing is then creating a bunch of caricatures or things like this in your world. Digging deep, I found that sometimes, the best thing to force me, as a writer, to stretch and make sure I'm not making each of my races or my worlds or my settings or my kingdoms stereotypes of themselves is to say I need three characters who come from a very similar background with a very similar job who are cousins and who are all distinctive individuals, who offer something very different to the story. This has been a really good exercise for me in forcing my worldbuilding to stretch further, where I'm not just pigeonholing certain people from certain countries into certain roles in the story.

[Howard] I audition characters. I mean, I have a cast of thousands in Schlock Mercenary. I will often tell myself, "Okay, I'm going to be doing a scene. There's a side character here who is this particular race, and I haven't represented that race before. So, here are four different faces, and here are some different backgrounds, and here are some different attitudes. Which one of those… Which of these people gets to be in my story?" Then I pick one who gets to be in the story. The other three are now completely real to me. By keeping them real, by keeping those three real while the fourth is on the page, the fourth feels less like a stereotype to me. I don't know if it works for the readers, because I'm taking a comic strip.

[Chuckles]

[Brandon] It is actually something I think you do really well. When I pick up Schlock Mercenary, and I get different critters from all around the universe, I often… I will often associate the main character personality with that critter. Then they start acting different and I'm reminded, "Oh, wait. This is a culture of a bunch of different people who all act differently." You've actually really helped me to view this in a Good Way, Howard. So, good job.

[Dan] One thing that I am kind of, just now, really learning the depths of, is the idea that characterization is action. That who a character is has very little to do with where they come from and everything to do with what they choose and what they do. I think actually the hobbits in Lord of the Rings are a great example of this, because from a certain point of view, all four of those hobbits are the same. They're remarkably similar. But if you see one leaping recklessly into danger, it's probably Merry. If you see one screwing around and causing a problem by accident, it's probably Pippin. If you see one making a very grumpy, pragmatic choice, and planning ahead, it's probably Sam. So even though they come from the same place and they all like the same things and, given the opportunity, they will all sing a song in a bar, you know who they are, and they're all very different.

[Mary Robinette] So… I completely agree with you, that the actions are the things that we judge other people by. Since with secondary characters, we don't get to go into their heads. One of the ways that I make decisions about which character is going to do what is that I think about the axes of power, but specifically the way it affects… We've talked about axes of power on previous podcasts. But specifically, the way it reflects our self-identity. Which I find kind of breaks down into role, relationship, hierarchy, and ability. That we have… We are each driven by these things. Each person will have one of those that is kind of their primary driver. So if I have four characters that are all from the same background, then I make sure that each of them has a different primary driver. So, for instance, Elma, her primary driver is… She's very much driven by relationship and sense of duty. Whereas Nicole is very much driven by hierarchy and status. Even though they have exactly… Very similar backgrounds. They're both astronauts. They're both first… Among the first women astronauts. But they're driven by different things. Because of that, they make different choices and do different actions. So, for me, it's about the driver. That's one of the ways that I make… Differentiate… To try to make the world seem richer.

[Brandon] That's awesome. We are out of time. Dan, you have some homework for us?

[Dan] Yes. What I want you to do is a little bit of what I did and what I talked about earlier, writing Mirador. Is to take one thing, one kind of science or one kind of magic system, one aspect of your world, and just drill as deep into it as you can. Figure out what all of the ramifications are. I talked earlier about self driving cars. One of the recent discoveries, someone crunched the numbers and realized that it's actually much cheaper for a self driving car to putter around the city until you need it again, rather than park itself. What is that going to do to the city? What is that going to do to the traffic? When you really take the chance to look as deep as you can into one thing, you're going to find a lot of very cool story ideas you had never seen before.

[Brandon] Excellent. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 14.12: Writing the Other – Latinx Representation

From https://writingexcuses.com/2019/03/24/14-12-writing-the-other-latinx-representation/

Key points: Latinx, a catchall term for people with Latin American heritage. You will make mistakes, that's part of the process. Latinx is not just one thing. To write a Latinx character, think about where they live, how they got there, what's their family story, how did they grow up, what kind of foods do they eat and when. Remember they are people. Think about immigrant mashup foods and traditional foods. Comfort foods! Consider intersectionality, the mixture and crossing of various aspects in identity. Broad portrayals of a culture or group are likely to be misleading, while being specific about a culture or family can be very relatable.

[Mary Robinette] Season 14, Episode 12.

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, Writing the Other – Latinx Representation.

[Tempest] 15 minutes long.

[Dongwon] Because you're in a hurry.

[Julia] And we're not that smart.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Tempest] I'm Tempest.

[Dongwon] I'm Dongwon.

[Julia] And I'm Julia.

[Dan] Awesome. This is the second in our awesome Writing the Other series, where we give you the tools that you need as an author to write about other cultures and other people that are different than yourself. We today have the wonderful Julia Rios with us. Can you tell us about yourself?

[Julia] Yes. My father is… Was from Mexico. He is no longer with us. He grew up in Yucatán and he immigrated to the United States and married my mother, who is a white woman from California. So I am half Mexican, Mexican-American, choose your choice. I am a writer, I'm an editor, I'm a podcaster, I'm a narrator. Primarily, I edit fiction for Fireside magazine and I write short stories and flash fiction in the form of text messages for an app called Flash Read under the name Julie Rivera.

[Oooo]

[Dan] Cool.

[Tempest] Fancy.

[Dan] Well, awesome. We are excited to have you here. Please tell us what we're going to be talking about today, and let's start with the word Latinx, because that's actually the first time I've ever heard it pronounced out loud and I haven't known exactly how to say it. I know a lot of our listeners might not know what it means.

[Julia] Okay. It's really funny, because once I was on a panel about it, and we spent most of the panel, all of the Latinx people participating, trying to decide how to pronounce it.

[Laughter]

[Julia] We all… The four of us settled on Latinx, but it's unclear to us that that is correct, so… 100% correct. There are probably other opinions available. But, roughly, Latinx we think is a good choice. I and four other people at least. No one has challenged me on that yet. It is a catchall term for people who have Latin American heritage. There are very many different labels, and we could have a really long conversation about that, so I don't really want to get into it. But that means people from North America, Central, and South America, places where Spain came and conquered and colonized. Then you have a lot of mixed race people, which definitely, I fit in with that. My heritage is going to be some European and some of the indigenous Mayan ancestry.

[Dan] The word itself comes from, if I'm not mistaken, in Spanish we have Latino and Latina, which is gendered because of the way Spanish functions.

[Julia] So, because Spanish is a gendered language, to try to not default to male, which is the sort of old-fashioned way of saying… Like, "if one enters a room, he must pick up his glass of water," and we don't really use that anymore. So, instead of saying he or she, we move to they often in English. Latinx is the inclusive word that includes everyone, across the gender spectrum.

[Dan] Awesome. Cool. So… Well, the… Like I said, the purpose of this series is to give people tools of how they can do this right. So what are some things that people can do when they're writing about Latinx people that they can… To do it right, to do it well.

[Julia] Yes. Okay…

[Dan] I should say well, instead of right.

[Laughter]

[Julia] Okay. The first thing I'm going to say is there are many ways to be Latinx and there's no one right way and there's no umbrella term. Also, there are always going to be mistakes. No one's ever going to be 100% perfect. So, understand that you will make mistakes, and that's okay, that's part of the process. But one of the things that I think can be hard to realize when you're looking at a culture and you say, "Oh, Latinx people, we need more Latinx rep," is it's easy to think of that as one thing. I am Mexican. That's one country. I am Mexican-American, so I have a different experience than people who are living in Mexico. Like, in Mexico, there are thousands of micro-cultures depending on where you live. Which state you live in, which city you live in, are you in a rural area, are you in a city? All of these things inform your experience and your cultural heritage. That's just within Mexico. In the United States, we have a big diaspora of people from all kinds of countries and places, like Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Central and South America, Mexico, Cuba, and, depending on where you are in the States, you are more likely to have a high population of one kind of person. Like in South Florida, you have a lot of Cubans, because Cuba is right there. In New York, there are a lot of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans. In California, there are a lot of Mexicans. So it kind of… Those things can inform some of your Latinx population in the United States. But also, it includes everyone in Canada, South America, North America… Anyone who is coming from those countries and then settled in those areas. So there are a lot of different people. That's the first thing to realize. When you're going to set out to write a Latinx character, ask yourself, where do they live? How did they get there? What's their family story? How did they grow up? Did they grow up as a fully assimilated American, because that can be a very different experience than growing up as a first generation immigrant whose first language was Spanish and they didn't start learning English until they were nine and they crossed the border. Then also, who's their family? What kinds of traditional foods do they eat and when do they eat them? What kinds of relationships do they have with their families? Remember that all of these people are people just like you. You have a lot of complex experiences in your life. Your ways of operating at school would be different from your ways of operating when you're at your grandmother's house for a formal dinner.

[Dongwon] I think we call that term code switching.

[Julia] Code switching. Exactly. That's exactly what I was getting at. So when you think about all of these things and you realize that people from all over the place have different things informing who they are. So your traditional foods for Thanksgiving might be very different from your neighbor across the street, depending on how they've grown up, and where they've grown up, and what their family story is. So that would be the first thing that I think is important to…

[Dongwon] I have a particular fascination with immigrant mashup foods, where, like, weird American and then whatever immigrant culture they're coming from get all crossed over together. Like, not Latinx obviously, but my family would eat pickles with spaghetti, just because it was like looking for a little bit of like kimchi like thing. Anyways.

[Julia] No. This is totally a thing. So, we had a foreign exchange student… For a while, my mother was taking a lot of foreign exchange students. We had one from Thailand. She got to the United States and didn't know what to do with our food at all. She was, "This is just completely foreign to me." Then she discovered ketchup. She was like, "This is a sauce that you put on things." So she just put it on everything. It became like the thing. We were all like, "What are you doing?" She's like, "Well, I have to have something that gives the flavor. This is the American flavor. I will now put it on all my food."

[Laughter]

[Tempest] Oh, the American flavor.

[Dongwon] What's great about that is she's not… Wrong…

[Laughter]

[Dongwon] It's how she's trained to eat her food.

[Julia] Exactly. Exactly.

[Dan] Different immigrant cultures and immigrant families all have their own style of changing the way that they act while also kind of staying true to where they came from.

[Dongwon] But there are so many Latin American cultures where there's that iconic sauce, whether it's chimichurri, whether it's… Whatever it is. But…

[Julia] What your family's traditional foods are will make a big difference. So, for me, right now we are on the Writing Excuses cruise and we just spent a day in Cozumel, which is very close to where my family lives in Yucatán. So the food here is very similar to what I grew up eating. That was very exciting because I got to go and have some of the foods that remind me of my childhood. Like ceviche and fish that's grilled in achiote, which is a Spanish, or a Mexican spice.

[Chuckles]

[Julia] I get kind of confused about my languages, because I've been speaking both of them today.

[Laughter]

[Julia] These things are traditional to me. They make me very happy, they feel like home. Also here, pretty much all throughout Latin America, which is a really weird term, but that means anywhere that Spanish people came and did conquests. There… You'll find dishes with rice and beans. But everybody presents it slightly differently. So the kind of rice and beans that you get in Yucatán are similar in some ways to the rice and beans that you get in places like Cuba. And different from the rice and beans that you get in northern Mexico, which is what most United States Americans will associate with Mexican food. Here, the beans are black beans that are in a sort of paste. It sort of looks like chocolate pudding. When I was six and I visited, I thought that was chocolate pudding, and I was very disappointed the first time I tried it.

[Chuckles]

[Julia] Then I realized it was super yummy and I stopped being disappointed. But the first time, I was like, "This is not chocolate pudding."

[Laughter]

[Julia] "Somebody tricked me, it's beans." But that was something that I got to eat, and it was very comforting. Someone who is from a different culture will have a very different style of beans that they consider comforting. That's one of those details that if you decide where your character's from and what they grew up eating, you can think about like what's comforting to them. In the same way that you'll have your own comfort foods. For me, as growing up in California, is a very assimilated American, and also with Mexican heritage, I have these Mexican comfort foods and I love mashed potatoes. They're my favorite. I have eaten mashed potatoes every day on this ship.

[Laughter]

[Julia] I go to the Wind Jammer before dinner to get mashed potatoes.

[Dan] That is great.

[Tempest] That makes sense to me. I feel that that is a correct choice. I'm wondering though, in terms of thinking about making your character very specific when it comes to their culture… Like, what kind of Latinx person are they? How does intersectionality play into this?

[Julia] [Ooo] Intersectionality plays a big role. Intersectionality is the idea that everyone has more than one thing that informs their identity. So, often we talk about these in terms of marginalization. So you could be Latinx and disabled, or Latinx and queer… I am both of those things. So that's exciting. But there are also just a lot of different things that you can be. I had a conversation with a woman in a shop today when I was buying something. She was surprised that I knew something about what I was buying. I said, "Well, it was because my father was from Yucatán." We made a connection, and she said she was from Yucatán. She told me some of her heritage. Then she wanted to exchange the kind of mixtures that we were. So she was a mixed race person from Yucatán, and she wanted to explain exactly how. Then she was asking me like who I was, and wanted to know who my parents were, and what kind of people had formed me. This is the kind of thing that was important to her, and is important to a lot of people here because they want to make that connection with you, and they want to see where we can be together. Because we recognize that we are also very different. So she has other identity things that don't match up with mine. We're both mixed race, but we have different things. The intersection of those things makes us who we are.

[Dan] That's awesome. Let's pause here a little late for our book of the week. No, that's okay, because this was super cool. What is our book of the week, Julia?

[Julia] Our book of the week is Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez. It's a wonderful middle grade novel. It's through the Rick Riordin Presents from Disney Hyperion. It is about a boy named Sal, and he breaks the universe.

[Laughter]

[Julia] I don't want to ruin it.

[Dan] Very descriptive title.

[Julia] I want you to go and read this book. Also, it will make you very, very hungry for Cuban food.

[Dongwon] Oh, yes, it really does.

[Julia] Specifically Cuban food. I brought this book because I got to be to read it and I know it's deliciously wonderful. I keep waiting for the whole world to get it so I can make everyone read it and squee about it with them. But also, specifically because Carlos has written a character that is Cuban-American, and it's a very specific culture that he's dug into, that's also his own cultural identity. But you get a lot of the details of how he interacts with the world. Some of them overlap with my experience, and some of them are very different, because Cuban-Americans have a different experience than Mexican Americans. So I recommend it for those specific details.

[Dan] Well, awesome. That is Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez. It is available now, so go out and look for it.

[Julia] [garbled I will tell you it] will make you laugh really hard.

[Laughter]

[Dongwon] Maybe cry just a little bit.

[Julia] Oh, and cry.

[Dan] Laugh, and cry, and be hungry…

[Julia] It will be really good though.

[Dan] The entire gamut of human emotions contained in this middle grade novel.

[Dan] I want to talk a little bit more about this idea of specificity. Because it's very important. That's one of the things that we hear a lot is that if you try to portray a culture or a group very broadly, you'll end up getting a lot of things wrong and offending a lot of people. When you zero in on one very specific culture or even one very specific family, then it's actually even more relatable in a lot of ways. But… I want to tell this story because this is one that I did wrong.

[Chuckles] [Uh-oh]

[Dan] I've got… My Mirador series is about… It's a cyberpunk trilogy, YA, from Harper. The main character is Mexican-American. I've lived in Mexico for a few years. I thought, I can do this. I've got this. I'm going to do this right. The Mexican-American community has not really picked up the book. I was wondering why. Then I came to Mexico, where the book is huge. What I realized is that I was portraying a very Mexican family, and doing it in a way where they felt seen and they felt this is us. You have portrayed us in your book. The Mexican-American community didn't feel that, because I was not doing them, I was portraying Mexican people. So, being specific is very important. What can people do to portray these kinds of cultures and people very specifically?

[Julia] So, the first thing that I would recommend that you do is think about who specifically is your character and what their family is like. Because I don't think it's coming from one specific culture will give you enough. Like, I'm Mexican, but I know a lot of other Mexican people who have very different experiences. Part of that is my family, going back to intersectionality, I have within my family people who are Muslim, people from Afghanistan, people who have come from a lot of different places. So when we have Thanksgiving dinner… I always love to ask people what they eat at Thanksgiving dinner, because families bring out their favorite foods. When we would have Thanksgiving dinner growing up, we would often have turkey and mashed potatoes, but also like Afghan rice with raisins in it. That's something that we would have because I had people from Afghanistan in my family. So your character is going to have a very specific family. That's not something that you would associate necessarily with a Mexican experience. But it was my experience, and I'm a Mexican-American. Your character is going to have a lot of specific things like that. They're going to have specific things that are Mexican-American. One thing you can do is go to a Mexican restaurant, and asked the people who work there where they're actually from. Sometimes they're from Mexico, and sometimes they're not. Because they know that selling Mexican food, if they look Latinx, is the best way to make a restaurant successful in the United States. But if you ask them and they say they're from Mexico, ask them what part of Mexico. Find out a little bit more about that. I don't want you to bother the restaurant people too much.

[Laughter]

[Julia] But usually they'll be happy to tell you what region or what town. If they do, go home and like look that up. Find out what makes the food taste like what it is. Think about like, "Oh, okay. That's an interesting thing." Can you think about what those things that they might have carried with them, what comforting memories they might have brought? How those things would mesh with where you live now? If you live in the middle of Indiana and your Mexican restaurant is run by people from Guadalajara, they might really like corn in very different ways at the same time.

[Dan] That's very cool.

[Tempest] This is all been very food based. I feel like…

[Julia] Well, this is because food is a really big part of culture…

[Laughter]

[Julia] Especially…

[Tempest] That's very true. Yeah. But also like, I love the emphasis that you have on family, because I feel that… I mean, especially when it comes to YA novels. I know that with YA that the whole thing is to like get the parents out of the way, so the kids can go out and have a dangerous adventure. But it just never seemed to be like my experience, that I would be able to like escape my parents at that point. Not necessarily even wanting to escape my parents or my family or my cousins or whatever. I really love Guadalupe Garcia McCall's books. One of the things I love about it is that it's about like families together dealing with issues. I feel like that's another thing that in some cultures, that kind of family togetherness is not necessarily emphasized. But in Guadalupe's, it is.

[Julia] I believe she is… Guadalupe is Mexican-American. She lives in Texas. She wrote a book called Summer of the Mariposas. It's wonderful. It's a YA retelling of the Odyssey by Homer. But starring four sisters who have to go rescue their father. They go on a quest, the same way Odysseus does. They run into some of Odysseus's kinds of monsters, but in Mexico. So they cross the border and go into Mexico to rescue their father from someone. It uses Loteria cards, which are a very specific Mexican game that I grew up with, and a lot of Mexican Americans will have grown up with. It's a very specific to this family and their experience of living in a border town, and of having their parents come from Mexico and having that specificity that they have within the home. So I think that's a really rate example of using specific culture.

[Dan] It is such a great book, too. So you get two books of the week this time.

[Laughter]

[Dan] One of the ways to get this level of specificity and to do it well is, like you said, to talk to people. Be polite about it. But talk to people and find out where they're from, and who they are, and what they like and what they don't like. What they brought with them? What they miss?

[Dan] I believe that's kind of the homework that you're going to be giving us, right?

[Julia] Yeah. I think so. My homework originally was to write a scene about someone from a very specific culture, and to think about the things that inform who they are and what they like. I think if I had had like an hour, I would have gotten into other things that weren't food, but since I primarily talked about food…

[Laughter]

[Julia] I want you to write a scene where people are eating a meal. It could be any meal. It could be a holiday meal, or it could be just a regular meal. It could be a fast food meal. But I want you to think about your character and who they are and where they're from. How they feel about this food and why they feel that way? How does that inform the conversation that they're having over the meal, or their thoughts that they're having if they're alone, or whatever. This could be anywhere. It could be in your fantasy world, it could be on a space station, whatever. But it will definitely inform who they are, and I want you to think about that and write that eating a meal scene for me.

[Dan] That sounds fantastic. Make us hungry as well while you're doing it.

[Laughter]

[Dan] Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Julia. And, obviously, Dongwon and Tempest as well. This has been Writing Excuses. You are out of excuses. Now go write.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 13.50: What Writers Get Wrong, with Zoraida Córdova

From https://writingexcuses.com/2018/12/16/13-50-what-writers-get-wrong-with-zoraida-cordova/

Key points: We don't need just one of something, we need multitudes. Seeing yourself as a caricature all the time hurts at a very basic level. Don't just throw in random Spanish words, like Abuela. Different Latin countries, different families, have different nicknames for things. Subvert stereotypes, think about how you are going to make your character different. Read 100 books about a culture. Be aware that Hispanic and Latino has a lot of variations and range. The Dominican Republic and Ecuador are very different. Representation in what we create is important, both for the people who have stories about them, and the rest of us to have empathy with them. "Good representation is good craft."

[Brandon] Hey, guys. Just breaking in here before we start the podcast. This is Brandon, and I have a new story out that I think you might like. Little while ago, Wizards of the Coast came to me and said, "Will you write us something? You can write anything you want in any world that we've ever designed." So I was excited. I sat down and wrote a story called Children of the Nameless which is kind of a horror story-esque thing. It starts off with a blind young woman in a town listening as everyone in her town is murdered by something she can't see. So, you can find links to that on my website. It's called Children of the Nameless. Or you can go to Wizards of the Coast.com, wizards.com.

[Mary] Season 13, Episode 50.

[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, What Writers Get Wrong, with Zoraida Córdova.

[Mary] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Brandon] I'm Brandon.

[Mary] I'm Mary.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] And I'm usually getting it wrong.

[Laughter]

[Brandon] We are live at ComicCon Salt Lake City.

[Whoo! Applause.]

[Brandon] We have special guest star, Zoraida Córdova.

[Zoraida] Hi, guys.

[laughter]

[Brandon] Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

[Zoraida] Thank you for inviting me. I'm really excited.

[Mary] So why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Because one of the things were trying to do is make sure that people know that culture is not a monolith. So what's your background?

[Zoraida] So I am originally from Ecuador. I was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador. I came here, I came to the United… Not here. We moved to New York when I was five. So I'm… I consider myself a… New York made. I am a writer, I write urban fantasy. I love painting, I love Star Wars, I love food. I do speak Spanish, but I don't… I no longer think in Spanish. That's a little bit about me.

[Mary] So, out of that stuff, are we gonna talk about Star Wars, are we going to talk about writing? What are we going to talk about?

[Zoraida] A little bit of everything, I guess. Whatever you want.

[Laughter]

[Mary] We're going to talk about being Latina in America?

[Zoraida] Yeah, let's talk about being Latina in America. I think that, especially right now, it's a little complicated because I grew up in a very, very diverse neighborhood in Queens, New York. I'm from Hollis. You recognize the song, It's Christmas Time in Hollis, Queens. I never felt like an outsider really. Because I… Everyone around me was a person of color or… Even if we had like white kids in school, they were like neighborhood kids, right? So I didn't… I was never aware of my otherness until I got into publishing. Because publishing liked to segregate books and genres for a little while. Like, my first novel went out on submission when I was 18…

[Mary] Oh, wow.

[Zoraida] Actually, 19. It was a quinceañera story, which… quinceañera are 16s, but with more pink and more cake and more family…

[Chuckles]

[Zoraida] And heels. But we got… It was the same time that Jennifer Lopez was published, like, had published a quinceañera collection, and there were a couple of other quinceañera novels. So our rejections were, "This is really funny, but we already have a Latina book for the season." I feel like… Nobody says that anymore. They say it… They use more coded language, but it's almost like… It's like the Highlander, right? There can only be one of something. Because I as the Latina, in publishing, represent all other Latinos in publishing. That's wrong. It shouldn't be that way. We should have multitudes. So that's… Yeah.

[Laughter]

[Howard] I never… I mean, I get some rejections, and they're never, "We've already taken books from bald dudes."

[Laughter]

[Brandon] Right.

[Howard] Never comes up.

[Dan] We filled our white guy quota for the season.

[Chuckles]

[Zoraida] Yes. Yeah. So I don't… I think that things are changing a little bit, and I think that that has to do a lot with We Need Diverse Books, the organization that came out in 2014, I believe, May 2014. It started out as a hashtag. I feel like it's not to say let's replace white authors with people of color. It's just let's make the table bigger so that we can all have a seat. I think that that inclusive… Like that inclusive mentality is what's desperately missing from publishing. My book, Labyrinth Lost, is about a girl who is… She doesn't want power, so she casts a curse to get rid of it. Instead, she gets rid of her family, and sends them to another dimension. Oops.

[Chuckles]

[Zoraida] Now she has to go in get them back. But, above that, it's also about a Latina family, and how witchcraft is different from this culture. Right? Because they're brujas, which is the Spanish word for witch. At the end of the day, it's still a universal story, it's about family and sisters and having something bigger than yourself. But, it's still one Latina character.

[Dan] So, one of the things that… One of the side effects of this is that often when you see Latino characters being presented in media, they're not being written by people who actually are Latino. I'm guilty of this. I don't know if guilty is the right word. I've got an entire series where the main character is Latina. But. What do you see when you watch TV or you read books, and you're like, "Oh. That guy's never met a Mexican in his whole life." Like… What do people get wrong?

[Zoraida] People get the accents… In TV, people get the accents wrong, right? Like what is an accent… Ecuadorian speaking Spanish sound like? You've probably never heard it. But you've heard like Mexican accents or Colombian accents. If you watch Narcos, some Colombian people are upset because all the accents are wrong. But then again, you have a show, like Narcos, where like… They're drug dealers. Yay.

[Chuckles]

[Zoraida] So that portrayal, the drug dealer, the… A book recently came out where a girl goes to Ecuador, and I'm like, "Yes! Ecuador's in a book. Finally. That I didn't write." She gets kidnapped, right? By these drug lords. I was like… It makes me… Like, it hurts. Right? On a very basic level. Because, like, seeing yourself as a caricature all the time… Latinos… Like, every time you watch a TV show, here comes the maid, and her name is Maria, and she gives you some wisdom. So it's the same problem with African-American people who have like the magical Negro who all of a sudden gives you a bunch of wisdom. Now you know, like, "Oh, I can finish my quest." That goes for all different cultures, right? We have these stereotypes. For me, and YA, it's always like the sassy best friend, or the super like curvaceous Sophia Vergara look-alike. Like, I'm sorry, I don't look like Sophia Vergara, like… If anyone's disappointed, like when you meet a Latina author. So, those are some stereotypes. I think that other ones that really bother me are when you can't establish a character… Your character's ethnicity, so you just throw in random Spanish words, right?

[Laughter]

[Zoraida] I recently read this sci-fi book, and the only way that you know that this character is Latina is because she randomly says the word Abuela. I have never used the word Abuela in my book. Because I don't call my grandmother that. I call her mommy. Because she's like my second mother. So that just shows like not doing research. Because different Latin countries use different nicknames for things. Like, different families use different nicknames for things. So that's really frustrating.

[Dan] My Latina character totally calls her grandma Abuela.

[Laughter]

[Dan] That's the one she was talking about.

[Howard] That's a Puerto Rican or a Cubano…

[Zoraida] It just means grandmother.

[Dan] It's different in every culture.

[Howard] I know, but if there's a cultural thing… I saw this in a comic book recently. I wish I could reference it directly. Where a Latino writer put a very, very Latino Abuela in the book, and it is a beautiful, beautiful moment. I think it might actually be in a Hulk comic.

[Zoraida] Really? Well, the new Groot… Groot's grandmother is Puerto Rican. He comes from like the Ceiba trees, and… You know…

[Howard] I think that might be it.

[Zoraida] Are you thinking that?

[Howard] I think Hulk was in the book.

[Zoraida] Oh, okay.

[Dan] Oh, that's super cool.

[Zoraida] Yeah. I think that's really beautiful. There are ways to do it. But that's just craft, right? Like, as writers, we want to subvert stereotypes and we want to be like, "yes, maybe I do want to write about a sexy Latina and… But how am I gonna make her different?" One of my favorite stories is Selma Hayek, when she was in Dogma, she almost didn't get cast because Kevin Smith just saw her as like, "Oh, she's just like a pretty body and face." Then he actually talked to her and was like, "Oh, maybe there's more to you than this outer shell of what you're supposed to be in Hollywood."

[Brandon] Let's go ahead and stop for our book of the week, although you've already kind of pitched it to us. Do it again. Labyrinth Lost.

[Zoraida] Labyrinth Lost is about a girl who sends her family to another dimension and then has to go and get them back.

[Chuckles]

[Brandon] Excellent. And… Um…

[Mary] So I had a question that I wanted to ask. As you were talking about some of these things that… They hurt and… I was wondering if you wouldn't mind… And the Selma Hayek story made me think of this. Can we dig into some of your own personal pain there a little bit? So you've… I'm going to extrapolate from a friend of mine who had grown up in San Francisco… Actually, no. She had grown up in Texas, as a Japanese-American in Texas. She had friends from San Francisco who were Japanese-Americans. They all went to Seattle to this very small island. The San Francisco women were going, "Why do these people keep staring at us?" She's like, "What? Are they staring?" Because she was so used to being stared at that she had just stopped noticing. So, growing up in a very diverse community, when you leave New York, what are the things that you experience that you think are probably media-based? That the… Experiences where it's like, "Oh. Oh, you've just explored…"

[Zoraida] So, I think… I haven't… I've been traveling for… I haven't been home in two months. I went home for a day last week, and then I came here. So traveling in different cities has been strange. I was in Atlanta, and I think that… Like, I don't know the Latino communities in Atlanta, but it's… People do look at you. Most of the time, I'm on my phone talking to… On my headset, so maybe that's one of the reasons. This girl's talking to herself.

[Chuckles]

[Zoraida] But sometimes it's just like maybe somebody has never seen somebody that looks like me walking in their neighborhood. I won't really go to Arizona, because I'm afraid of like somebody asking… Racially profiling me or something like that. Like, I just won't go there. So when I leave New York, I… I don't always feel unsafe, I don't… It's not that I'm afraid of being around other people. Like, I'm literally surrounded by you guys right now…

[Chuckles]

[Zoraida] But you're great. So I think that the problem is the language in our media right now about Latinos and about Mexicans and about like Puerto Rico and things like that. I think that has caused me to feel more guarded than I would have two years ago, right? Like, I'm always on the edge, and sort of like standing near somebody, like, "Are they going to say something inappropriate? Are they going to like…" If I'm on the phone with my mom, should I talk to her in English or should I talk to her in Spanish? Because like, if I'm talking in Spanish… You see these videos that go viral where somebody's like, "It's America. Speak English." I'm like, "Well, go back to England and speak English."

[Laughter]

[Zoraida] So like, it's just being afraid to do things that were normal to me two years ago.

[Mary] Right.

[Zoraida] That are a little frightening. If you look at the things from the earthquake right now in Mexico, there are these people… There's a photo of a 90-year-old man carrying boxes to help his neighbors. So, like, these are the people that our leader calls like rapists and murderers? Meanwhile, there are some of the most helpful people like coming together for a tragedy. Where do I fit in that? Because I'm not Mexican, but if you… I don't know what people see when they look at me. Because I only know what I see when I look at me. Hopefully, it's like good things right now.

[Mary] Your hair is fantastic.

[Zoraida] Thank you.

[Laughter]

[Howard] Sorry we had to put the bandanna on it.

[Mary] Yeah.

[Zoraida] I like it. I feel like I'm at Woodstock.

[Brandon] So, say we've got a listener who says, "I really wanted to add some Latino/Latina characters to my book." Where would you say they begin? How do they go about that, doing it the right way?

[Zoraida] So… Just with writing, there is no one right way to do things. Right? I think that Cynthia Leitich Smith, who… She's a native American author. She says if you want to write about somebody, read 100 books about that person, about that person's culture. If you can't find 100 books, then are you the person to add to this? Right? That's one way. I think that with Latinos, you have to figure out… Don't say… Like, I'm not telling you how to write, how to say Latino, how to say Hispanic, but there are very, very different connotations. Like, I am Hispanic and Latina, because part of me is from Spain. But there are some Latinos who have no Spanish blood, they're still indigenous, or they're Afro-Latino. So, like, figure out what those things mean. Figure out what country they're from. Because even though we speak a similar language, although our accents are completely different, we have completely different histories. The history of the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean is going to be different than the history of Ecuador in South America. So figuring out that there is no way to look Latino… That's one of the things that really bothers me, because when people think Latino, they think light skin or tan or… They don't think Afro-Latino. They don't think of somebody like Rosario Dawson or Zoe Saldana. They think of Sophia Vergara. I'm sorry for using her over and over again, but I'm blanking out.

[Chuckles]

[Zoraida] On my Latina actresses. So, I think it's doing a research that doesn't feel like anthropology, because anthropology also is about studying a culture to then destroy it, right?

[Mary] Yeah, we can… If you're not clear on that, go back and listen to our colonialism episode, and that'll help clear that up a little bit.

[Zoraida] Colonization, yay!

[Howard] One of the things that is… Doesn't get said enough is the importance of representation in the things that we create. My oldest son is autistic. We were watching an episode of Elementary in which Sherlock Holmes is talking to the woman who becomes his girlfriend, who is portrayed as autistic. It's different from how my son's autism manifests. He stood behind the couch watching the episode for about 15 minutes. For the first time ever… Ever! Watching TV, he said, "They're kind of like me." That moment! There are kids who are Latino, who are black, who are female, who are all kinds of ways, who never get to say that. We need to hear… We need to hear your voice. We need to hear diverse voices so that these people have stories about them.

[Mary] Well, it… Just to use a… Not… A non-loaded example, the… Oh, shoot. I've just forgotten her name. Astronaut. Um. She just did…

[Howard] Mae Jemi…

[Mary] No. No, no, no. She's white. Which is why it's a non-loaded example, because white is the American default. Sorry. But she just got the record for the most number of days in space. And said that being an astronaut had never been on her radar at all, until NASA picked… When she was in late high school, NASA picked the first class of female astronauts. She was like, "Oh, I want to do that." If she had not seen that role model, she wouldn't have pursued that. For a lot of people, the role model comes from fiction. Learning through fiction that, "Oh, that could be me," or "I could do that." Or just "I am not alone. This experience that I'm having is not alone." There's… While you were surrounded, there are also… When I was going to elementary schools, I would go into elementary schools in Idaho and it would be a sea of white kids and one little brown kid. One child. So that child was getting everything through books.

[Zoraida] Right. I think it's a… It's not just important for us, for like diverse people to see themselves in books, it's also important for like white kids to see other people in books.

[Dan] Absolutely.

[Zoraida] Because that creates empathy. Like, as writers, our biggest thing is to create empathy through our works. When I lived in Montana for a brief period of time when I was in college, I'd never seen so many blonde people in my life.

[Chuckles]

[Zoraida] So, I would… But the people who would come up to me were native people who were like, "What tribe are you from?" Because I was confusing to them. I'm like, "I'm from the Ecuadorian tribe."

[Chuckles]

[Zoraida] So…

[Laughter]

[Zoraida] So, it's… We confound each other as people, but I think that as long as we create inclusive stories… You don't have to make it a point to say like… You don't have to make a checklist of I have a disabled character and I have a character who's queer and Latino. You… It has to be organic to your story, too, right? You don't want to create two-dimensional characters. But that's just craft. So good representation is good craft.

[Mary] Can you give some examples of some good craft? Some books or media where you've been like, "Ah, yes. Thank you. Thank you for using your craft to do this well?"

[Zoraida] I'm a really big fan of Leigh Bardugo and Six of Crows. I think that that is an example of a really diverse cast of con artists…

[Chuckles]

[Zoraida] I'm trying to think of lately… Benjamin Alire Saenz, who writes queer Latino boys. And Adam Silvera, who also writes queer Latino boys. But they're completely different from each other. Part of that has to do with one is in the Southwest and one is from the Bronx.

[Brandon] Well, we are out of time. I want to thank our audience at ComicCon.

[Whoo! Whistles!]

[Brandon] And I want to thank Zoraida for coming on the podcast with us. Thank you very much.

[Zoraida] Thank you.

[Brandon] Mary? You've got a writing prompt for us.

[Mary] Yeah. What I want you to do is I want you to go and… This echoes something that you've done previously, which is reading outside of the box. I want you to go and find books written by authors in, let's say… See if you can find a couple of Ecuadorian authors. Read them. Then… You've got a suggestion?

[Zoraida] No, I was going to say, challenge accepted.

[Laughter]

[Mary] Try and find a couple of Ecuadorian authors. Then, make one of your secondary characters… Not your main character. Make one of your secondary characters from Ecuador.

[Brandon] All right. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 13.41: Fixing Character Problems, Part II

From https://writingexcuses.com/2018/10/14/13-41-fixing-character-problems-part-ii/

Key points: Fixing broken characters, part II! When a story just stops, you may need to spend more time developing the characters before hand. When a story stops, check either the character building or the world building. Sometimes you may need to add another character to bring out another side of a character. Sometimes brokenness shows up when outlining. Without a sense of the character, you can't write (or outline) the scene. Look at the blanks, that may be where your story is. Put the plot aside, and focus on who the character is and why this is a problem. Sometimes, with a big cast and many storylines, you may need to map them out, and combine characters. Sometimes, just lean into the prose. Ignore the story issues, structure, character, or plot, and just lean into the prose. Sometimes you just unravel part of the story, then crotchet or knit it back together again.

( Here comes the words! )

[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Fixing Character Problems, Part II.

[Mary] 15 minutes long.

[Amal] Because you're in a hurry.

[Maurice] And we're not that smart.

[Brandon] I'm Brandon.

[Mary] I'm Mary.

[Amal] I'm Amal.

[Maurice] I'm Maurice.

[Brandon] And we have broken characters. How do we fix'em?

[Eee!]

[Brandon] This is part II. We talked about this previously with the other podcasting team. I really want to get Amal and Maurice's thoughts on what they do when a character just isn't working. Have you ever had a character, when you get done with your piece, or even midway through it, that you know the character isn't working?

[Maurice] Yes.

[Chuckles]

[Brandon] Okay. Podcast over.

[Laughter]

[Maurice] It's happened a couple of different ways. I remember early on I had a story, it was a young woman, and I was very much in her head, story's going along just fine, and then I killed off her husband. Then the story stopped. I'm just like, "Yeah, but what do you do next? What…" Nothing. Nothing came after that. That was like the first time when a… I started filing away the whole idea of, you know what, I have to spend more time developing these characters before hand, because… Like I said, this was early in my career, so I hadn't quite reached that whole let's spend weeks with the character and really get to know them, because I hadn't done all that work, that back work yet. I didn't realize that back work still needed to be done. That's actually become my big hint is the work isn't done because the story stops. So either I haven't done enough character building at that point, or I haven't done enough world building. Because sometimes the story stops because I haven't developed the character… The world as a character enough, and the story stops.

[Brandon] Okay. So with you, when the story stops… Is this most of the time, if you've got a problem, it's a need to go back and I have not spent enough time with the characters?

[Maurice] Yeah. Usually that's the case. But there was a time when it was pointed out to me that a character wasn't working for me. That was, ironically, with The Usual Suspects, my middle grade novel. The editor wrote back, and among the editor notes, they were like, "You do know that… I love your main character. But he always has a hard edge to him. He's always hard. That works when he's in the school situation, but he becomes almost one note because he's always doing that." So, her suggestion was, why don't you add another character to bring out his softer side? So I ended up…

[Mary] A foil? Ingenious.

[Maurice] Right. A foil.

[Laughter]

[Maurice] In this case, the foil was a little sister. Because he would act one way at school with his defenses up, but around his little sister, he can't help but lower his guards around her. That brought a whole new dimension to the character, and a whole new… Basically, a whole new arc to the story. I was just like… I was so pleased by the time it was done, going in and inserting those scenes of the two of them interacting. I was like, "All right, maybe editors aren't the enemy."

[Laughter]

[Amal] So, in my case, because I mostly write short fiction, I find that… The identifying the brokenness of a character almost always happens at the outlining stage. I say outlining, I don't act… I mean, my… The way that I tend to write is very slowly, but then my final draft… My first draft is usually very close to my final draft. So there's a lot of that time that spent kind of figuring out the story, before I start actually diving into prose. It's usually at that stage that I'll see a yeah, this character is just not… Like, I mean, if I don't have the sense of the character, I just can't write the scene. So it hasn't yet happened for me that I've written a whole draft of something and been like, "Mm, that character's actually not working. I need to do something." But the problems that I'll encounter as I'm trying to do it are usually dependent on whether or not the character has come out of the needs of the plot or whether the plot as come from the character, the idea of the character. So that a story I've mentioned before, Madeleine, where with the kind of like memory flashback hallucination thing, that was the idea that I wanted to play with. It actually came out with… I wanted to write… I thought to myself, I want to write a time travel story where the way that you time travel is through sense memory, is through like being triggered through your senses, and it's an involuntary thing, and you're literally traveling through time. It was as I was trying to work out the implications of what that meant, that I decided actually, I think what I want to do is tell a story more about someone experiencing this. So it's less a high concept thing, and more about the experience of memory. I had to sort of keep zooming in on that idea until I had a character, and even then, when I figured, okay, well, so this is the character, I know that her mother had Alzheimer's, but… But what else? Those blanks were where the story ended up living. The way that I ended up fixing that was basically just by… By putting the plot aside completely and thinking like, "Well, who is she? Why is it a problem that this is happening?" Like, all these other things came out. Like, she's really, really lonely in the wake of having tended to a parent in the last stages of a really terrible illness. She's… Her friends have more or less abandoned her, because they can't deal with how terrible that pain is… How sustained and terrible that pain is. Like, all of those things, they kind of just came together.

[Brandon] Okay.

[Mary] So, I'm curious. You both talked about like the story stops, or looking for the story and kind of the space and putting the plot aside. Are there symptoms that tend to… That you've now learned that oh, when the story is breaking in this particular way, this is the kind of fix that I usually end up applying to it?

[Maurice] One of them, one of the fixes happened with my urban fantasy series, because again, I had that big sprawling cast, and again, part of the issue was I had all these different storylines I was trying to track. Then I didn't realize until actually I was starting to map some of them out, there was like, "Okay, some of these just stop and go nowhere." I would introduce something that I would never pick up ever again. So what I ended up doing was, and it helped… It actually solved another problem in the book, which was I had so many characters in the book that what I ended up doing was combining characters, which (a) cut down the sum of the characters and (b) it allowed for some character growth and whole arcs at that point.

[Amal] For me, what I've realized I do, to the point where now I design workshops around this, is that I feel like the break or the problem happens because I'm trying too hard in one direction. What I end up doing is leaning into the prose. Like, this is going to sound weird and super inside baseball-y, I guess, but what I end up doing is because I also write poetry and I tell all my students that I feel like there's a day brain and a night brain for poetry, which is a concept that I first heard articulated by my friend [garbled]. But, similarly to the way that when you sing, you use different parts of your brain than when you speak, so that if you have speech impediments with your speech, you might not have them if you sing, I find that if I'm really, really focused on a lot of prose… Like, a lot of story issue stuff, structure or character or plot, if I let myself just lean into the prose that I'm writing and let my poetry brain take over, then I can sometimes just jump over the skip in the record or the scratch in the record rather, and just move into something else and keep going. So that definitely happened in this story. And I… It's weird. I can't definitely remember what the line was. I just remember very, very clearly that there was a line where I was like, "I have no idea where I'm going with this," and I just tried to follow the poetry logic of the line. It took me somewhere unexpected, and into a different metaphor, and then suddenly everything just kind of fell into place for the character.

[Mary] I will let you guys know a thing, because I do… I didn't have that language for it, lean into the prose, but like you can spot this in my fiction. If you see my character doing an activity, thinking about what it is that they are… How am I going to solve this problem, and Jane is like working with glamour and how is she going to solve this relationship thing? And then she's like, "Aha!" And she puts the glamour down and goes away. That is me freewriting…

[Amal] Huh.

[Mary] To try to figure out a plot problem with my character.

[Amal] Huh.

[Mary] That I'm like I can't get her from this point to this point. I can't get her over this decision hump. What is the thing that she needs to do? I'll usually go back and trim that sucker down, and sometimes I'll pull it out altogether, but one of the things that I have found is that I do like lean into the prose, that I will freewrite as my character and I will give her an activity that she's doing while she's trying to figure it out.

[Brandon] This is really interesting to me. It's going to be a slight tangent, but it kind of plays into a theory I have, where… When I was younger and when I was becoming a writer, I always imagined writing as more of a craft. It's like you are building something brick by brick by brick and whatnot, and the more I've been a writer, the more I realize it's more a performance art.

[Mary] Oh, yeah.

[Brandon] You go over something over and over, at least for me, I'm a planner, over and over in my head. I practice it, I practice certain skills, and then I sit down, and it's like, "Blam." This thing happens, and then I'm left with this thing. Now I'm going to cultivate it, but the actual creating of the story, it's like doing a play where this is performance night. Then I get to go back and revise it. It's this really weird shift that's happened in my brain, the more I've become a writer, which is an odd shift for someone who is kind of an outliner, like me. That always kind of saw it brick by brick.

[Mary] I mean, this is a thing that I think I talked about in my very first episode with Writing Excuses, before I was a full-time cast member. That my training as a puppeteer was to break techniques apart so that when you got into the art of it, you worked thinking about the technique anymore, you could just do the performance. I think that that's a thing that early career writers, we're still thinking about all of the technique. So when you're trying to figure out a character problem, it's… Like a character problem can lie in so many different aspects of character. It can be a motivation issue, it can be a back story issue, it can be a goal issue, it can be the personality issue, that the character's personality doesn't fit with the thing you need them to do. Learning to identify where these problems lie is difficult. Once you figure that out, a lot of it does become very intuitive.

[Brandon] Let's go ahead and stop for our book of the week. Book of the week is actually The Only Harmless Great Thing.

[Amal] Oh. Yes. Oh, my gosh, I love this so much. The Only Harmless Great Thing is a Tor.com novella by Brooke Bolander. It's amazing. It's about… Oh, it's about… Ostensibly, it's about the fact that during wartime on Coney Island, they started teaching elephants to use paintbrushes so that they could paint, I think, what was it, clocks with radium or something like that. So they basically offloaded the extremely dangerous and terrible task of interacting with radium onto elephants, because they could survive longer than the underprivileged women who had been doing it until that point. So it's about this woman who is teaching this elephant how to do this at first. But it's a narrative. It's also broken up by a kind of… It's an alternate future sort of where those events took place. So imagine an alternate future from that same actual real thing that happened, but it's intercut with elephant folklore, like folklore that elephants have with mythologies that elephants have, so it imagines that elephants have this storytelling tradition that reaches back to the mammoths, and that they have incorporated this incident into their own mythology. So it's this beautiful, beautiful defamiliarization of a bunch… It's doing so much stuff that I could go on and on about, but the thing that struck me was that because Tor.com also put out novellas about other megafauna and alternate histories, which are Sarah Gailey's River of Teeth and The Taste of Marrow. Those are like rollicking heist novels, novellas. So because Brooke Bolander's stuff that I've read up until this point has been very fast-paced, very… Like, just like… I think it's like… Whiskey is the way I talk about it, it's like knocking whiskey back, is like what Bolander's stuff…

[Mary] Why would you do that?

[Amal] I know. Well, when it's hard and you're angry and you want the burn, like there's… Right. So. But, so that's what I was expecting from this. I knew it would be difficult and full of unhappy things, but I still expected it to be what I think of as a Bolander story. Instead, it's slow. It's like… It's like sipping that whiskey. It's like a slow, long pour of something. The voices are so distinct and so sustained and it's just beautiful. Like the… Being in the mammoth space and that kind of like elephant mythology voice, just forces you to slow down, and really appreciate everything beautiful that's going on in the prose. It's absolutely wonderful. It comes… Yeah. It came out in January. So…

[Brandon] Awesome. So let me throw a question at you guys that I threw at the other podcasters, which is, is there a time where you pushed yourself on a character that maybe was giving you trouble, or that when you were outlining, you were like, "This is going to be a little bit tough," that was rewarding? That you're glad you did?

[Mm… Hum.]

[Amal] Yeah.

[Laughter]

[Mary] This is exactly how we all answered it.

[Laughter]

[Amal] I'm trying to think of an exclusively character instance. Because the one that I want to use is the character in The Truth about Owls, who is a girl named Annise. Anisa, rather. I made that mistake. Anyways, she… Like initially when I… This kind of plays into some of the things that we were talking about in other episodes. Initially, I was going to have her be Indian, and I had wanted the story to be about gender, and I was going to explore those things through the Blodeuwedd story, which is a Welsh story about a woman made of flowers who gets turned into an owl. I had like all these important structural things I wanted to do. Then I realized I couldn't do any of them, because I had no idea who this character was if she was Indian. Like, I had no access to the things that I wanted to talk about. I had like some thought processes for why I had wanted that, but it was insufficient. This discouraged me to the point where I just didn't want to write the story. I literally wrote to the editors and went, "You know what, I just don't think I can do this. I'm sorry. I'm going to back out early while it doesn't have a problem." The editors, Julia Rios in particular, went, "But, we really want a story from you. Can you not just tell this story, like through backgrounds that you're more familiar with?" I ended up making this character Middle Eastern instead. I ended up making her of Lebanese extraction, and everything fell into place. Every single thing that fell into place, I fought. Basically. Because I did not... I was like, "Okay. She's going to be… Her family is from Lebanon, but I really don't want to write a story about war, so I'm… I'm… No. I'm just not going to do that part." Then I realized that the time constraints that I had chosen set it squarely in the time when Lebanon was being bombarded by Israel in 2006. I was like, "Crap." Okay. So. Well, I'm going to put her in this other part of Lebanon, where she won't have experienced any of that, because most of the bombing was on Beirut. I put her in Rayak, which is my mom's village, which is a place that I spent time in. Then did a tiny bit of research and realized the only other airfield in Lebanon is in Rayak…

[Laughter]

[Amal] It also got bombed. I was like, "Oh, God. There's just no escaping this. I'm going to write this stupid war into this story, and I didn't want it to be about any of this." But as soon as I made those decisions, then the writing came out, and it all sort of happened. Every difficulty, everything that was like, "No, like I just, I didn't want to do this." As soon as I decided to like, "Fuck it. Fine, I will do it." It ended up working out.

[Maurice] So, I already talked a little bit about the process of writing a middle grade. That would have been one example. I can give two examples that all revolve around the same issue. The issue was agency. So one… I'll give one example where I fixed the problem in one example where it kind of slipped by all of us. Which was an interesting experience. So my… The story that I have with Uncanny Magazine, Ache of Home. I'd sent the story in, they loved the story. They were just like, "Yeah, but that ending. You know, your main character, she doesn't seem to have enough agency in solving the problem. Is there a way that…" We need to fix that, basically. So they gave me some notes. So it basically involved going back and… Actually, whenever I think about fixing character problems, I have this visual view, like when you're, I know, [garbled]

[laughter]

[Mary] You're looking very frightened right now.

[Maurice] But, like you were crocheting the other day or something, and just the whole idea of just… You sat there, and you'd be like, "And now we're going to unravel."

[Mary] Oh, yeah.

[Amal] Oh. Yeah.

[Maurice] That's what the process was like. I was like, "Okay, now I'm going to unravel the last third of my story."

[Mary] I'm so glad that you said that, because that was… That's a thing that as an early career writer, when you're fixing character problems, one of the most liberating things for me was realizing that I could just pull a giant chunk of text out and write a different chunk of text and it cost nothing.

[Maurice] Not a thing.

[Mary] It's like the thing I enjoy personally about writing is writing, so… It was like… My husband said this. He was watching me pull a bunch of crochet out, and he's like, "But… But… You did all of that work." I'm like, "Yeah. But I get to crochet again."

[Laughter]

[Maurice] Right. Right.

[Mary] Like, I'm still getting to crochet.

[Maurice] Yep. So, when I unraveled, and then I got to re-knit it back together. The re-knitting, for me, it just looked like… In a lot of ways, it was just a matter of reordering and reprioritizing, just doing a series of just little shifts here and there. Ultimately, that's all it took, was just some little shifts here and there. I'm like, "The story was already there. I just had to bring it out a little bit more." Now, the one that slipped by a lot of us was with Buffalo Soldier of all things. It isn't a major critique or anything, it was just one review that said, "Loved Buffalo Soldier. Loved the world building. Loved all these aspects of it. It's just that the child that the main character's protecting has no agency, and is little more than a damsel in distress." That's one of those things that just kind of haunted me. Well, it's just like… Hum, that one slipped by me. I get where… Because the whole story started with the whole image of… My nephew's on the autism spectrum, and is like the worst hide-and-seek player ever. Because like we'll play in teams, and like me and him will go hide. Like, as soon as someone goes, "Hey! Where's Orion?" He doesn't want you to be worried about him, so he'll jump out of the bushes. "Here I am!" You are awful at this game.

[Laughter]

[Maurice] So, the whole premise of this story revolved around the idea of like trying to play… It was basically a chase novel with a child whose like, "Hey. You know what, why are we hiding?" But it was one of those things where it was like, Mm... He doesn't… While he drives the story, I missed the fact that he doesn't really have a lot of agency in the story. So it's one of those things where it's like lesson learned. I will keep that in mind for… If I come back to write more of this, that problem will be fixed.

[Brandon] Well, I'm going to stop us here. This has been really good. I'm glad that we did this, this kind of one-two punch on this topic. I have some homework for you guys. It actually relates to some things Maurice and Amal were talking about. I'm… I find that often the way to fix a character problem is to add or subtract a character. So I want you to take one of your characters from a story you've written, and I want you to split them into two people. See what happens with those two people interact. Then, in another story, I want you to try combining, for a scene, two characters that have been the same person… Or two different people for a while, combine them into one and see how that scene plays out with a character combined, with two characters combined. This has been Writing Excuses, you're out of excuses, now go write.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 13.30: Project in Depth, THE CALCULATING STARS, with Kjell Lindgren.

From https://writingexcuses.com/2018/07/29/13-30-project-in-depth-the-calculating-stars-with-kjell-lindgren/

Key points: (Beware of Spoilers) The Calculating Stars. Set During Mercury/Apollo era space travel. Start with We Interrupt This Broadcast, an alternate history about slamming a meteor into Chesapeake Bay in the 1950s. Add Lady Astronaut of Mars, an anthology piece that starts with the first line of Wizard of Oz. Then drop back to write the prequel, 40 years before! And you have The Calculating Stars. Decide that the loving relationship, the commitment, is not going to be a conflict point, although stuff going on around them can strain the relationship. Going up there and doing cool astronaut things is actually a very small part of the adventure for the whole team and the family. Put the focus on emotional reactions and societal pressures more than technical pressures. Survival training. Terminology. The emotional reactions to events, the visceral reactions. The vividness of your first launch. Get experts to fill in the jargon.

( What did they say? )

[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Project in Depth, The Calculating Stars.

[Mary] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Brandon] And we're not that smart. I'm Brandon.

[Mary] I'm Mary.

[Dan] I'm wondering what evil plague you have in your lungs…

[Laughter]

[Dan] Over there, Brandon.

[Brandon] I don't know how many of these have aired yet, but I haven't been on the NASA episodes yet. You can tell why. I've been on book tour for a week and also caught a head cold.

[Dan] He was sick, so we had to quarantine him from the mission so the rest of us could carry it out.

[Brandon] But I'm stepping in for this one because we're going to talk about Mary's book and we have a special guest star, Kjell Lindgren. Say hi to the audience.

[Kjell] Hello, audience. I'm excited to be here.

[Dan] Welcome back.

[Kjell] Thank you.

[Mary] So I am especially excited about this specific Project in Depth, because it has two unique circumstances for you listeners. So, first of all, this is a reminder that in the Project in Depth's, we go full on spoilers. The Calculating Stars is not a heavy book to be spoiled, but if you're one of those people don't want to know anything ahead of time, read the book first, come back and listen. But the reason I'm excited about it is that we are doing this at an interesting point in the process. I have not yet finished… My editor has done all of the structural stuff on it, but we haven't done the line edits, which means that I'm actually going to be able to incorporate any changes that come up during this conversation.

[Ooo]

[Mary] And because this book is set during Mercury and Apollo era space, and it's involving my Lady Astronaut universe, and we have an actual astronaut here, this is also an opportunity for you to kind of hear sort of what it's like to have a sensitivity reader or a specific expert in to talk about a book. This is kind of what this process is like, although obviously usually it's not done in a podcast format.

[Laughter]

[Brandon] So, let's address, at least for me, what the elephant in the room is for this. This is a stor… A novel based on a novella that you wrote. Why did you decide to do it? How did you approach it? Like, just that concept? What's going on here?

[Mary] Okay. So what started with this… For most people. Most people first became aware of this through the Lady Astronaut of Mars. Which is not actually the first book in this series… In this universe that I wrote. I call this my punchcard punk universe. The first story I wrote in this was from a writing prompt. It's called We Interrupt This Broadcast. It was about slamming a meteor into the Chesapeake Bay in the 1950s. That one was… That idea I had was it would be really cool if there was a mad scientist and things went slightly wrong because he had forgotten to account for leap year. That was how that started. Then, Lady Astronaut began when I was asked to write something for an anthology called Ripoff in which we had to begin our story with a famous first line. So I began with the first line of Wizard of Oz, which is why I have the International Aerospace Coalition launching rockets from Kansas…

[Laughter]

[Mary] Because I got locked into that.

[Brandon] Did that ever feel like… I don't know…

[Mary] A giant mistake?

[Laughter]

[Brandon] [inaudible restriction?]

[Mary] Yes. Because it doesn't make any sense at all to launch rockets from Kansas. You want to be as close to the equator as you can be. It's nice to have a big body of water in case something goes wrong. I've got none of that in Kansas. So what happened with the novel is that it's set 40 years before the novella with the same character… Same main character. So there was a lot of stuff that I had to justify in the world that I was locked into. There's also stuff that I just… I looked at and like, "Oh, boy, that timeline was wrong." So Elma in Lady Astronaut of Mars just misremembered the dates on that. 'Cause…

[Chuckles]

[Mary] It doesn't make any sense.

[Brandon] Locked into some character things, right? You've got the relationship which... we know what happens in 40 years. So we know that they're going to be in a loving relationship for another 40 years and things like this. Like, there are certain things... Did that ma… Was this the sort of restrictions breed creativity sort of thing or was this a man, I wish I could just toss this continuity?

[Mary] There were times when I… Mostly timeline issues with continuity. The timeline does not actually make sense. But we just, as I say, handwaved past that. The character stuff, there were things about it… I was committed to having a loving relationship. That's… I liked…

[Brandon] That's one of my favorite parts about the book.

[Mary] Thank you. I feel like it's not depicted often enough. So I… One of the things that I knew going into it was that their commitment to each other was never going to be a conflict point. But that all of the stuff that was going on around them would cause stress… Would put strain on the relationship, but not in the OMG, are they going to break up? I never wanted that to be a plot point.

[Dan] So, before we get too far into this, I feel like we may have missed a link in this chain earlier. Where was the point where you decided, "Okay, I've written these two shorts. Now I'm going to go back and write a novel." How was that decision made?

[Mary] I don't actually remember completely.

[Laughter]

[Mary] I suspect that it was something along the lines of, "Hey. That just won a Hugo award."

[Laughter]

[Mary] "Can I market that?"

[Dan] Let's capitalize on this thing.

[Mary] Which is really crass. But it was… To a certain degree, it was looking at some of my favorite works. Like Anne McCaffrey's Dragonrider… The Ship Who Sang, which was a short story that got expanded and some other things.

[Brandon] Even Dragonflight won the Hugo before it was finished as a novel.

[Mary] Yeah. So I was interested in what that process was like. The other thing was that I have these characters and they've got this really interesting backstory that I haven't explored. Like, I talk about in the novella that Elma was one of the first women… The first people on Mars. How does that come about in the 1950s? How do you get to a point where you have women in space since it took a long time in the real world for that to happen? So how do I make it happen faster? So there was a lot of it that there were just pieces of it that I was interested in, but I don't actually remember what it was that made me go, "This is a good idea."

[Chuckles]

[Brandon] So, let's get the astronaut, first thing.

[Laughter]

[Mary] Thank you. Because I've been looking at Kjell. I'm like, so… Yes. Tell… So…

[Kjell] I'm coming at this from a completely blank slate. So, not having read the sequel that was first written, I get to kind of follow this chronologically from when Elma first becomes an astronaut. So… I have to say that the relationship between Elma and Nathaniel is one that… There's clearly a very loving relationship, and frankly, Nathaniel sets a very high bar…

[Laughter]

[Kjell] For husbands everywhere. But it's clear there that that is kind of the emotional core from which Elma draws her strength. I think that that really resonates for those of us that undertake these sometimes… Well, not sometimes. These very risky missions. That we, I think, largely recognize that we could not do this, we could not go through selection and go through training and do all that travel and do the mission as a single entity. It requires support at home from the family. Your spouse has to be on board with this. Your kids have to be on board and understand what all this entails. So, for me, personally, and I see that in Elma also, is that it is an adventure for the team, for the family. The other part of it is that you clearly are showing behind the scenes, that it's not just the astronaut that is going up there and getting to do…

[Mary] Really cool astronauty things.

[Kjell] Yeah, cool astronaut things. In fact, that is a very, very small part of…

[Brandon] Well, that's the book, right?

[Kjell] That's real life.

[Brandon] [inaudible]

[Kjell] That's true, that's true. I mean… So, that is real, also. In a typical astronaut career of… I don't know if you can call 20 years typical, that's maybe six months, maybe a year in space. So most of that time is spent on the ground, with this larger team that makes that possible. That is reflected in these… You know, the calculators that are doing the work and mission control and the engineers and all that. So that is, I thought, really well depicted and reflected in the book.

[Mary] Whew!

[Brandon] I'm going to build off this and ask you a question, because this is one of the most interesting things about this book to me. When you first started talking about it, I remember brainstorming with you. What is now two books was one book. A lot of the things you talked about were going to be… All ended up in the second book, right? The quote unquote exciting parts. Right? The actual flying, the rocketship, and [inaudible]

[Mary] Right!

[Brandon] Yet, this book is very compelling. You made an extremely compelling book out of quote unquote the boring parts. It's not boring at all. In fact, it feels breakneck to me throughout the entire story. So, how did you structure this, knowing that what everyone expected to be the book wasn't going to come until the second book, and how did you keep it paced and exciting?

[Mary] So, this was… when we were talking about it was… My plan was that I was going to structure it like three novellas. That novella one was dealing with the asteroid strike, novella two was the push to the moon, and novella three was the push to Mars. As I got into it and started… Was working on it, there were sections that… Because I knew I was going to be doing them in novella three with the Mars, that I was needing to skip in novella two, the push to the moon, because they felt… It felt… It was going to be repetitive. But it also meant skipping things that were really emotionally important. So I talked with my editor and said I feel like I have made a structural mistake and that this is actually two different books. As soon as we did that, and moved Mars to being its own book, that freed me up to deal with a lot of the unsexy stuff. But the things about… That I had been reading about in all of these different autobiographies by astronauts, talking about the selection process and getting the call and the first time that you do… The first training flights that you do and all of these different things that are these emotional points. So what I was trying to work with was… With this was not so much the question of… It's never a question of is she going to the moon? Is she going into space? That's never… But how and when and what is she going to have to push against? So what I wound up doing was trying to focus more on her emotional reactions to stuff, and also the societal pressures, rather than the technical pressures. The technical pressures, I felt like, well, this is our job, this is what we're doing, this is the thing we do. Then, the societal pressures were kind of more my major plot points. Because it's set in the 1950s, which is in the middle of the civil rights era.

[Dan] So, one of those kind of emotional arcs that you do in this book is her overcoming this kind of very intense anxiety disorder that she has. I am wondering how much of that was presaged by the previous books, or is that just you felt like it was important for her character and you created it for this one?

[Mary] It was something that I created for this. By 40 years later, she's got that pretty much under control. In part, because the specific anxiety that she has is a social anxiety disorder. You have things… You strap her on a rocket, she's fine. But you ask her to speak to a large room, she's like, "I'm not okay with that." That is true for a lot of people. Also, oddly, people with things like social anxiety disorder tend to be really good in a crisis situation because they're used to managing low level… Or high-level anxiety all the time. So they're actually quite levelheaded when things are going wrong. I added that because I had a character who was hyper competent. That was this canon thing. She's a pilot, she's this computer… Mathematician. I needed to give her a breaking point, a weakness. That one was a very obvious one for a number of reasons. One of which is that it also allowed me to highlight some of, again, those societal pressures. Because she's bucking against what it is that she's supposed to be doing, the hole that people keep trying to fit her in. So that was one of the reasons I added that to her character.

[Brandon] Oh, go ahead.

[Kjell] I have to say that that societal part was something that it was hard to read. The reactions to… The introduction of the female astronauts, and photos of them powdering their nose in the cockpit, or as they're doing a dunker test, putting them in bikinis. So from today's perspective, I have a really hard time with that. But when I think back to the 50s, and you've just introduced a new astronaut class and you ask this group about cooking in space and this cook about what they're going to accomplish during a mission. I mean, of course, that is very foreign to the experience… I hope is very foreign to our experience now, but it really brings you into the era that we're talking about.

[Mary] It was… That was based on two things, which are both unfortunately real world. One is the way the WASPs were treated in World War II, and a lot of the early women airline pilots… Just even becoming airline pilots. But there was… One of the things that they would have to do… I read about… I think this is in Jerry Cobb's book… But in one of the books about early women pilots, they would talk about how they would fly, and they would own their own company, or they would be… The captain. They would get in the craft, they would fly it to wherever they were going, and then they would have to slide their trousers off and slide a skirt on before they got out, because the people wanted to see them in skirts and heels. That they would have to powder their nose in the craft and put on the lipstick before they got out because that's what the client expected to see. Some of the first women astronauts talked about the different questions that they got from the press. You can read them and you're like, "Yup." I mean, I've pushed it a little, but not very far.

[Brandon] Let's stop for the book of the week. You were going to tell us about Riding Rockets?

[Mary] Yes. So this is one of the books that Eileen known very heavily when I was writing this. There were a number of them which we've talked about on other podcasts. But Riding The Rocket… Riding Rockets by Mike Mullane, who is a shuttle era astronaut. It is a fantastic autobiography. One of the things that's great about it is that he came into the program when a lot of the Mercury and Apollo people were still there. So he's got this perspective, where he's looking at the way the program is changing, and also he's a really compelling storyteller and very good with sensory details. I pulled a lot of stuff from that.

[Kjell] I really enjoyed that book as well. It's a great shuttle era book.

[Brandon] Let me ask you, Kjell, did you get freezing water squirted in your ear?

[Kjell] I did not get freezing water squirted in my ear. I spent three days and two nights in a freezing Russian forest. But I did not get surprised with a…

[Mary] Yeah. That was… I so wanted… That was one of the things that I wanted to fit into the book and just there wasn't a structural spot for it, was the wilderness survival stuff.

[Kjell] You bet.

[Chuckles]

[Mary] Ah, I wanted that in there. So I'm going to do…

[Brandon] What do you mean by that? Like, you actually… They make you do wilderness survival?

[Kjell] Absolutely. So they did it back in the Apollo days. In fact, there's a great photo of… Actually, I think it's the Mercury 7 out in a desert. They've cut up a parachute and tied it on their heads, they're in various states of undress, because they're out doing essentially desert survival.

[Mary] They weren't sure where they were going to come down.

[Kjell] Right.

[Brandon] Okay.

[Kjell] So, as a part of our training, we do water survival and winter survival to prepare us for the possibility of one, landing in water. The Soyuz spacecraft is designed to land on land. So a water landing requires some additional procedures and training. Then winter survival, because… I did in fact at the end of my mission land in the middle of the night in a blizzard. So had the team not been able to track us, then we would have to have been able to fend for ourselves for a little while. That technology's improved since the days that we really kind of started this training. We have GPS, we have satellite phones. So the fact that we would… The team wouldn't be able to find us is fairly remote at this point. But the winter survival training is a little bit of a… A little bit of a haze.

[Chuckles]

[Kjell] Just to kind… It's that Type II fun that I think in a previous podcast…

[Laughter]

[Kjell] That Tom Washburn was talking about. Type I fun being the fun that you're having in the moment, and the Type II fun the experience that you think back at and you're like, "It's fun, that that is done. That is over."

[Mary] Well, it's also… My father-in-law was Air Force, Vietnam-era fighter pilot, and they did survival training with them as well as a teambuilding…

[Kjell] Sure.

[Mary] And ways to test how you react under pressure situations without the safety net of well, I'm in a simulation. Like, no you're actually…

[Dan] No, you're not…

[Mary] You could actually die out here.

[Brandon] So, let's talk about the climax, because we're running… We only have a few minutes left. This book pushes toward lift off quite effectively. I wanted to ask, Kjell, this is your chance. What did she get right, what did she get wrong?

[Kjell] Well, let me tell you, it's clear that you've done your research, because the terminology that you use, even the tempo of the use of that terminology, is really good. The acronyms, people railing against acronyms…

[Chuckles]

[Kjell] That's all… That is all very common to the experience. So in the biographies that you've read, the pieces that you've borrowed, that feels very familiar and sounds very familiar. But you don't dwell on that. That is background. I really appreciate that. What you do… I thought you did a great job of is really focusing on the emotional reaction to various events. Talking… The description of taking off in a T-38 and the ground falling away below, and the same with her other flights, that sensation of taking off. Then the launch. It's not so much a description of necessarily what's happening. You certainly let the reader know what's going on. But it is that visceral reaction, it is the explanation of how she's feeling as she experiences these various milestones as they climb into orbit. That is really what rang true to me, is the description of the person that's going through it, and not so much the technical description of okay, now this is where the rocket is. So not just the launch, and not just taking off. Sitting in Mission Control. How you feel when you see a rocket explode. All these things rang very emotionally true to me.

[Mary] Oh, good. So, here are the hacks that I used to get that.

[Laughter]

[Mary] One is that I noticed in a number of the autobiographies when the astronaut began talking about their launch, their first launch, they switched to present tense. Chris Hadfield's… In his Astronauts' Guide to Life on Earth, says that he's switching to present tense because it is that vivid, that it feels like something that he has just done, because it is unlike… It doesn't fit… It doesn't get blended into other memories.

[Kjell] It's interesting that description of it. I see it in your book as well, is that it is not a narrative of… Like this is my launch narrative, this is what happened when I took off. It is snapshots of memories and emotions that you had at a particular time. So I remember the whole launch sequence, when the engines started, and that there are various specific times, when the launch shroud pulled away so we were able to see out the window for the first time. My first glimpse of the Earth, the arc of the Earth and the blues and whites contrasted against the sky. When… The first time I opened the hatch to get ready to do a spacewalk. Just various specific snapshots. It does feel very present and it's not… You can string those things together as a story, but… Yeah, these are very brief glimpses in time that you remember and just are able to relive.

[Mary] So, let me tell one other hack that I used… Or two other hacks. Because these will be useful for readers. Or for writers. One is that I basically grabbed the Mercury… Because NASA has these online. The transcripts of the Mercury launches and the Apollo launches. And used them as the outline for the scene, and wrote on top of it. Pulling up some stuff to… I'm like, "And we're going to skip past this very long thing." Then the other thing is that… Which Kjell is well aware of… I would write sections and be like, "Then the captain turned and said jargon."

[Laughter]

[Mary] "And he handled his jargon." Then I sent them off to experts. So I would email Kjell and I had a rocket scientist and for Fated Sky, I also had the person who does the algorithms to figure out where the landers should land. I would send it off to them and say, "Can you just play MadLibs with this?"

[Laughter]

[Mary] Katie Coleman also, who's a shuttle era astronaut. So, technically speaking, sections of this book were written by an astronaut.

[Brandon] Or multiple astronauts.

[Mary] Or multiple astronauts.

[Dan] The version of this that you sent to me was early enough that it still had a lot of that in there. I remember in particular, I'm fairly certain it's the sequence early on where she is flying the plane into Kansas, and it just broke, and there was about a half page all in brackets that said, "Okay, I haven't written this scene yet, but here's a bunch of jargon I've already collected." Then you just had some sentences that could be used to fit in as she talks to the tower to make the landing. Which is not something I've ever done. I thought that was a really cool trick too.

[Mary] I found a… Without one, I'm not sure if that's the one. There was one of them where I found a training video of how to… It's an Air Force training video from like the 70s or 80s of how to start a T-38. So there's an instructor talking through it, and it's real-time, and… So I'm just like, "Wait. Gonna pause that. What did they just say?"

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Write all this down.

[Mary] Because it's exactly the thing that I have, where I have a trainer, and I have a… The pilot in the back, and these are the back-and-forth between them. I'm like, "Okay. Noting that." My father-in-law had a number of things that were wrong with the… Which I think were all fixed by the time you guys read it. With some of the piloting stuff. Because he had flown all of the planes that I talked about. He was a test pilot, too. So…

[Kjell] So there is one piece, though…

[Mary] Yes.

[Kjell] In chapter 34…

[Dan] Oh. I'm excited.

[Mary] Yes.

[Kjell] Where you talk about… So it looks like a grab from shuttle era description of the TALs, the Transatlantic Abort. Talking about the OMS engine systems. So that is very, very shuttle specific…

[Mary] Ooooo...

[Kjell] So for anyone that knows kind of the shuttle lingo, they will see this as a… This is a shuttle lingo grab. So there may be pieces of that that are applicable. It's kind of the Mercury Gemini Apollo era vehicle. But this is probably some of that terminology. You'd have to really make sure that that fits. Because they didn't have an OMS… The shuttle had an OMS engine, but the…

[Mary] Right.

[Kjell] Apollo era did not.

[Mary] Of course they didn't.

[Kjell] We planned aborts for the shuttle, so that they would actually… Could land, so there's a Transatlantic Abort, there's a Return to Launch Site Abort. If you're aborting off of the capsule, you're basically just going into the drink somewhere.

[Mary] Random.

[Kjell] Along the flight path.

[Mary] Okay. Yeah. So that is…

[Kjell] So we want to reconcile that with this era of spaceflight.

[Mary] Yeah. Thank you. I will totally go… Readers, you will not see that in there because I'm going to go fix that… And get more details on it.

[Dan] But the original version…

[Mary] The original…

[Dan] Will be available somewhere?

[Mary] We're putting the original version up on the… Of anything that I… Chapter 34, up on the Patreon, so you can see after I… See the Transatlantic Abort… No, that's… Of course. Right. I think I probably grabbed that because I couldn't find any stuff about aborting from Apollo and Mercury because of exactly that. Interesting. Huh. Anything else that I got wrong? Please tell me things.

[Kjell] Oh, boy. So, I just want to say, I really enjoyed this alternate history. Because there were brief glimpses…

[Mary] That's not a thing I got wrong.

[Kjell] No, that's not.

[Laughter]

[Kjell] No, I'm… I don't have a whole lot…

[Dan] Yes, you did. Dewey loves [inaudible]

[laughter]

[Kjell] That's right. Dewey's in charge, and we hear… We see Aldrin and Armstrong and Collins name in the next… The new class of 35 astronauts. So there are pieces of our history that have been borrowed into this, and I really enjoyed that. I love that it started with a cabin in an earthquake, and that her description of the launch was shaking like a cabin in an earthquake.

[Mary] Yay. Circular stuff.

[Brandon] It is a really good book.

[Mary] Thanks.

[Brandon] You guys all have obviously read it, because we told you you had to, but if for some reason you haven't, you need to read this book, so that you can read the sequel.

[Mary] Right.

[Brandon] Which is…

[Mary] The sequel is all space, all the time. I mean, they have to get to space.

[Dan] Most of the time.

[Mary] Most of the time. Yes, and the sequel has a section that I changed because I was talking to Kjell at a convention and he talked about watching in The Martian movie someone changed direction in midair. I remember that he was continuing to talk, and I'm like, "I am rewriting a scene in my head, while this man is speaking to me."

[Laughter]

[Brandon] We are out of time, though. We've already gone about 30 minutes. So, Dan, you've got a writing prompt for us?

[Dan] Yes. Okay. So, what we want you to do is re-create for yourself a little of what Mary did with this. Take something you've already written. It doesn't matter what it is. Something you've already finished. Then write a prequel of that that takes place 40 years earlier.

[Brandon] All right. We want to thank Kjell for being on with us.

[Kjell] Thank you for having me.

[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 13.24: What Writers Get Wrong, with Piper, Aliette, and Wesley, with Special Guest Ken Liu

From https://writingexcuses.com/2018/06/17/13-24-what-writers-get-wrong-with-piper-aliette-and-wesley-with-special-guest-ken-liu/

Key Points: The Asian Diaspora, or the Great Diaspora, refers to the fact that people who claim an Asian identity or Asian ethnic origins no longer live in the cultures and lands of their origins, they are spread around the globe. Pet peeves? The limited set of roles often occupied by Asian characters in popular media, especially torn between their two identities. These characters are not a symbolic background where cultures are fighting. Who should play what characters? Make a decision, and be ready for the meta-conversation that will happen around it, because you are doing it in a community. Beware of trying to have one character represent all of Asianness. To write better characters, don't think of your Asian character as having an identity that revolves around being Asian. Write characters who are individuals first, and their ethnic identity is secondary. Do talk to many people in the ethnic group you wish to use for your characters, and ask questions. Be aware that Asian is a huge umbrella. Drill down 20 steps, where are they from, what are the details of their lives that informs who they are. Do the research, get the names right.

( Go right to the source... )

[Piper] So. All right. We're wrapped up. We've gotten our tips in. We do need to apply homework.
[Ken] The homework will be easy and pleasant. If you're interested in more about Asian Diaspora issues, a lot… I cannot recommend more than to read actual books by Asian Diaspora writers. One of these, it's less well-known, is Maxine Hong Kingston's China Men. Everyone knows about The Woman Warrior because that's on college campuses all the time. China Men is one of her books that I think is the equal of The Woman Warrior, and perhaps even better in some ways. I told her that when I met her, and she smiled at me and didn't say anything. But I really think it's a beautiful book, and reading it will give you lots of insight.
[Piper] Okay. Thank you, everyone. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses.
[Chorus] Now go write.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 13.19: Backstories

From https://writingexcuses.com/2018/05/13/13-19-backstories/

Key points: Backstory affects everything a character does, so it is one of the most important aspects of a character, but you also don't need to map out everything and try to fit it all in. A broad overview, similar to what you have of your friend's backstory, is probably enough. Then, when you are writing a character, you may find yourself inventing back story in the moment to explain their reaction. When you find you need more backstory, stop, make notes, and then later go back and weave it in. Sometimes you may want to build lots of backstory, but be very conscious of what the reader needs to know versus what you may need to know. Where can you fit in backstory? At the end of every action scene, as a pause or rest. Or when a character is interacting with something that triggers it. In conversation! Flashbacks are not just to give information. They should be presented at the right time to shape the interaction the reader is having with the story, to propel a story forward. Flashbacks that break the forward momentum of the story fail, while flashbacks that add to the momentum work well. You can use flashbacks to build a mystery and answer it, or to deepen it. Put your flashbacks in when the reader wants it. Avoid tangential zoom flashbacks. Think about what your character inherited, where they are now, where they want to be, and where they think they are. Those four parts are your character's cultural backbone. Then discover the rest as you write.

( When they were young... )

[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Backstories.

[Mary] 15 minutes long.

[Amal] Because you're in a hurry.

[Maurice] And we're not that smart.

[Brandon] I'm Brandon.

[Mary] I'm Mary.

[Amal] I'm Amal.

[Maurice] I'm Maurice.

[Brandon] We are talking character backstory.

[Hooray! Yay!]

[Brandon] This has been really hard to not talk about…

[Laughter]

[Brandon] Before this point.

[Mary] That is, in fact, my backstory for this episode, is that I've been wanting to talk about this for months.

[Brandon] So, go! Backstories.

[Mary] All right. So the thing is, like, backstories are simultaneously one of the most important aspects of your character, and also the thing that you need to worry about least. Because a backstory is going to affect the way your character moves through the world, they're going to affect how they interact with other people, but at the same time, you do not actually need to map out their entire backstory, their entire life, and then try to fit it all in.

[Brandon] Yeah, because you will… If you work too much on it, you will try to fit it all in, and… Boy, the infodumps are really…

[Mary] So, generally speaking, what I try to do with my character is have a kind of broad overview of what their backstory is, in much the way that I have a broad overview of what someone else's backstory is. Like, I don't actually need to know more of my character's backstory than I do of Amal's or Maurice's. I don't need to know their entire life history, unless it is specific to the moment that I am encountering in that particular story. It's absolutely affecting the way they move through their life, and it's affecting the way I interact with them, but I don't need to know all of it to be able to have an effective, moving interaction, and satisfying one, with them.

[Amal] Do you ever find yourself inventing backstory in the moment, because as you're writing a character, you realize that they're having a very strange reaction to something, maybe more than you'd planned for, because you're caught up and then you retroactively invent backstory to…

[Mary] I'm, in fact, doing that right now with a novel that I'm working on. Where I knew that my character had previously been on this planet as a military surgeon. She's 78 now, she had been there when she was in her 30s during occupation. And she's back. I knew that about her. As the… As I've been working on it, I've realized that actually something went wrong when she was here previously. It wasn't just that she was a military surgeon. I mean, obviously, war is a lot of things going wrong for an extended period of time, but that there was a backstory that I actually needed to unpack. So what I've done is I've gone ahead and stopped and made some notes to myself, and then am continuing going forward as if I had already written that stuff. But this is the mistake that I see people make, that I have to go correct, is that I will see a lot of writers who make that discovery and never go back to weave it in previously. Which either results in the reader feeling as if they've been coy all the way through, and not… Or feeling as if the writer lied to them.

[Amal] Interesting. I had a moment like that reading a book that came out recently called Autonomous by Annalee Newitz. Where you're basically introduced to this character, who, in my case anyways, I just despised. Like, hated, hated this character. Then, you're kind of given a flashback very late in the book that does actually explain a number of the behaviors that made me detest him. But it felt like too little too late. It felt like no, actually I didn't… I feel like without having had… And that can actually absolutely be a decision. Like, maybe she just never wanted me to like this character. So it doesn't actually matter that I have this information, and so on. But timing those reveals needs to be a deliberate choice as well, I think.

[Maurice] So, I'm horrible at following any of this advice.

[Laughter]

[Maurice] [garbled to save myself]. I literally did 3000 words worth of world building for a story that was 6000 words long, so, I mean, that's the kind of guy I am.

[Mary] I mean, I've been there and I've done that.

[Maurice] I'm the same way when I'm building my characters and doing their backstories. I try to be conscious of the fact that yes, I've done all this work, the reader doesn't need to know all this, but I need to know this. Now, the one time when it did come in handy was with the first book of the urban fantasy trilogy. Because when I turned it in, it was a 60,000 word novel, because I was… I don't know, I was doing a thing. But when they accepted it, they were like, "Okay. But this is an adult urban fantasy novel. You need to add 30,000 words to it." I was like, "How I'm I going to add… The story is there, it's done." But what I ended up doing was, I have all this backstory material. All of a sudden, it's like, "Wait. 30,000 words? I now have room to flesh out and to show some more of that backstory for some of these characters." So you get an even deeper feeling of why they're doing the things they do. Because sometimes they're arb… And I realized that, when I was doing the draft, sometimes they are behaving in this nonsensical way. To me, it made sense, because I knew there backstory. It was like, "Oh, wait, I have gone to the other extreme of so not showing enough of this." It was like, now, forced to add that 30,000 words back, I was like, "Oh, why don't I bring the readers up along for the ride, so they can see this too?"

[Brandon] So, Maurice, let me push you on that. How did you get that in there without it feeling like an infodump? Because I think that you're absolutely right, you need this stuff. But it also needs to be natural.

[Maurice] Right. So, it became a matter of how am I going to dramatize this information? So, then it was like… So, basically, I would go through the narrative and see where the brakes were in the story, to go okay, now… There were like… For example, there was a… Wherever there was a big action scene, I needed to sort of reset anyway. So I've learned that during those reset moments, that's where I can slip in some backstory, because it gives the reader a pause, come down from that action scene and sort of reset the stage. During those moments, it's like, "All right. Here's a little bit more about this character."

[Mary] I also find… So I'll do things like that where I use it as a rest point. But I also will often handle the character's backstory in the same way I'll handle other pieces of infodumpy stuff, which is I will save it for moments when the character is interacting with something. So like if I want you to know how a mason jar works, I'm not going to go, well, a mason jar is a glass object that is used… What I'm going to do is I'm going to have the character pick up the glass, and I'm going to have them put water in it. I'm going to have them put a lid on it. I'm going to have them boil it. So that… I will have them interact with it. It's like, "Oh, that's how a mason jar works."

[Right.]

[Mary] So a lot of times, when I'm trying to slip backstory in, then I will have it arise naturally through conversation, or through something… Some environmental trigger, some concrete trigger that… Like with the mason jar example, my grandma use these all the time, these mason jars, and her dill pickles were amazing. That's the kind of… It's like, well, now you know that I had a grandma who canned things.

[Amal] Right. Exactly. The… It's funny. I'm thinking back to a short story I wrote called Madeleine which I've mentioned in another episode. Where, just talking about triggering things, literally the whole plot is that she has no control over the fact that she's encountering things and they are triggering these memories and hallucinations, which are also flashbacks… But are also weird, because there are new intrusive elements that are happening in them. But for… In order to choose what those would be, because they were… Like the fact that they were happening was the plot, I didn't want them to actually be moving in a way that advanced… Like… I don't know if that makes sense. Basically, I wanted them to feel as random and intrusive as memory kind of is on its own. And as unpredictable. So even though it didn't necessarily make plot sense… Like, it wasn't necessary to the plot that she be sipping a cup of warm milk, or that she needed to remember that when she was a small child, she sipped a cup of warm milk in the same way and blah blah blah. The… Like, I tried to just through moving through my own environment, kind of pick things, things that are sensory, things that are weird and interesting and stuff to try and trigger those things. Because ultimately, the point of those flashbacks was something beyond giving information about the character.

[Brandon] Let's go ahead and stop for our book of the week. Which is Racing the Dark.

[Mary] Yes. So this is… Alaya Dawn Johnson is a wonderful writer. This was actually her first novel, which I had read years later. She wrote it, I think, 2008. It's YA and it is phenomenal. Especially when you're talking about character backstories. It's set in a series of island nations in which people have learned to bind the spirit. So they have bound the spirit of fire and death and water. They have been bound for about a thousand years at this point. Wind got away about 500 years previously and wreaked havoc. It's this young girl who is… She supposed to be a diver. That's what she does. Much like the pearl divers, but for this specific type of fish. The environment is changing in ways that make people think that a spirit might be breaking loose. It just… Things just keep getting worse for her, in ways that always seem… It's like and what other choice did she have? It's forcing her down this very specific path. It's just phenomenal. But her backstory, this… This… The fact that she was a diver is so important. Sometimes in things that she is able to do within the story, but also in the choices that she makes and the regrets that she lives. It's a wonderful story. I'm actually reading the second book in the trilogy right now. But Racing the Dark is the first one, by Alaya Dawn Johnson. I highly recommend picking it up.

[Brandon] Let's dive back into flashbacks. Because I love me a good flashback.

[Laughter]

[Brandon] I just do. It's interesting, because when I first got into writing, I remember one of my professors saying, "Don't use flashbacks. Flashbacks are a crutch." That is kind of some writing advice, and yet I have series that use extensive flashbacks. In my current book, I would guess that there are 50 or 60,000 words of flashbacks.

[Mary] But you know how to use them. This is the thing, is that a lot of times when people are using a flashback, they're using it just to get information in. You understand that what a flashback is actually doing for the reader is allowing you to present information to them at a time when they need it. So, if we hearken back to a previous season, where I talk about the MICE quotient a lot, the MICE quotient is not about the linear timeline that a story… That a character goes through. It is about the order in which you present information to a reader. When you're using backstories, you are presenting it in order to shape the way the reader is interacting with the story, not just to hand them a piece of information.

[Brandon] Right. I mean, handing them a piece of information is really important…

[Sure]

[Brandon] But the issue is you don't want to frontload that into the story, you wanted when it will be relevant, and also when you're dramatically… You'll be like, "Oh, I can get the context of this scene now," and things like that.

[Mary] Which then you can use as momentum to propel the story forward. A lot of times, and this is when flashbacks fail, it is because they break the forward momentum of the story. When flashbacks work well, they are adding to the forward momentum of the story by giving the reader information that they need to understand the emotional context of what's at stake.

[Brandon] It also lets you build a mystery, and then answer it, or build a mystery and then continue it in an interesting way.

[Amal] I love that idea about momentum. I'd never heard it that way before. Because I found myself just now thinking of when I have found flashbacks successful. Interestingly, I'm more often thinking of film, because it feels as if it's a filmic device, literally showing you in a visual way things that happened before. I was thinking of like Ratatouille… Everyone's seen it, right? You said mice and I thought of…

[Chuckles garbled]

[Amal] Yeah, so in fact, it opened a flashback to Ratatouille. Where basically the climax of that film is absolutely about pushing that forward momentum. It's about… I think… I don't know if there's more than… No, there are a couple of them. But this flashback involves… To spoil the film…

[Mary] It's been out long enough.

[Amal] It's been out. So, basically, there's this restaurant critic and he is impossible to impress, he's made this restaurant lose its Michelin stars because he's so asorbic, and our hero, the rat, has to cook a meal that's going to impress him. So instead of trying to build up these airy things, he cooks a very, very simple country meal, ratatouille. He cooks like a vegetable dish. Then, to show how delicious this dish is, as the critic is tasting it, literally, the camera kind of like sucks you backwards into a flashback and you see him being a small child tasting ratatouille for the first time and loving it. It's all warm sepia tones. Like, everything about the texture and the light and the timing of the flashback is such that you realize yes, he's eating the best thing he's ever had in his life, partly because it's reminding him of being a child. It builds so much character stuff into that one moment. Which then resolves the film. It's... So it's not, you don't need to know any of that stuff about the critic beforehand, you need to know everything opposite that. You need to know the critic is a jerk, who... It's so great. Anyway.

[Maurice] I was just thinking about that… I tend to write a couple projects at a time, so like, I have a short story and a novel project I'm working on right now, and they both kind of hinge on this use of flashbacks, which I hadn't really thought about until this conversation, how much they're hinging on the flashbacks. So in the short story, you have this woman, she has a shattered psyche, and so as she's trying to… I love the idea, again, I love this idea of the forward momentum… As she's progressing through the story, there's stuff that she's dealing with in the present, as she's remembering the past at the same time. So there's kind of this going back and forth, going back and forth, but it is about building that forward momentum of what I'm trying to reveal about her and her trauma and her overcoming it. Within the novel project, and partly, don't get me wrong, I love a good flashback. I just love a good flashback. So I was just thinking about how I'm using the flashback now in the current scene I'm writing, which is almost, in a lot of ways, just to set the mood for the rest of the chapter. So it opens with a flashback in order to just… Part of it is to just you're going to get some insight into the character, which sets the mood for what's going to happen in the rest of the chapter. So I love the idea of flashback and how it just… We all have these secrets that lay buried deep within us, sometimes we're not even always aware of. So just that slow revelation of what that might be reveals a character to us.

[Brandon] Put it in when the reader is going to want it. I think of when my students do it poorly, or when I did it poorly when I was a new writer, is you're writing along and you'll be reading this story, and then… Tangential flashback, just zoom, and the author thinks that they're giving lots of character, but really what happens is your reader, you're in a scene, and then suddenly you're off reading about grandma's pickles…

[Laughter]

[Brandon] And this extended thing, where really all you needed at that point was, "Oh, my mom… Or my grandma used to put pickles in jars like this. Hmm. Every time I take a sip, it tastes like pickle juice to me."

[Laughter]

[Brandon] Or you need a… Don't do it this way, but a "Oh, no, not one of those!"

[Laughter]

[Brandon] You need that hook that later on you're going to get the explanation to.

[Chuckles]

[Amal] That is my reaction to pickles most of the time.

[Brandon] Obviously.

[So good]

[Brandon] Depends on if they're kosher or if they're not. Anyway.

[Mary] Pickled okra, y'all. I'm just sayin'. Pickled okra is just... Ah'm just goin' ta go full out Southe'n on y'a. It is just...

[Brandon] We are almost out of time, so...

[Laughter]

[Brandon] Last comments on this?

[Mary] Yeah. I'm going to say that when... That you can spend as much or as little time building your character backstory as you want, but I do think that there are some things that you should know about your character going in. That you need to know where they are… That their cultural backbone, I would say. Which is how… And when I say cultural backbone, it's four things. The inherited one, what is the culture that they have inherited? What is the culture that they are currently living? What do they aspire to? And then, what is their perceived culture? That if you know those four pieces of your character's backstory, that most of the rest of it you can probably discover as you are writing. If you want to dig deeper into any of that, then I think you can. But don't feel like you need to create a 3,000 word biopsy for each of your… Not a biopsy.

[Laughter oh, my God.]

[Mary] Well, you know, their backstory was…

[Amal] An exquisite corpse.

[Brandon] All right. Let's go ahead and go to our homework.

[Mary] All right. So your homework is I want you to explore what these different tools do. So I want you to write a scene where a character has a flashback that exposes some aspects of their backstory. Then I want you to reset that scene again. And this time, in that same scene, they are going to talk to another character about their backstory, so that they're having to deal with the ramifications of it in real time.

[Brandon] All right. This has been Writing Excuses, you're out of excuses, now go write.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 13.16: Avoiding Flat Characters

From https://writingexcuses.com/2018/04/22/13-16-avoiding-flat-characters/

Key Points: Flat characters, in theater, a cardboard cutout, a mannequin, but in your book, a character without depth, that doesn't feel like a real person. Spear carriers, however, are just that, a group to fill out a scene. In different situations, characters may act differently, but still be consistent because you, as author, know why they are doing it. Motivation! If readers say a character feels flat, it may mean that you haven't put enough on the page for the reader. Layer more backstory in. Sometimes it means you as author haven't figured out why this character is there, what role they are playing. Beware the boneyard dialogue, where you have written a scene and it is in your head, but not in the story. One fix is to make sure characters reflect on why they have done. Watch for multiple characters who all tell the same punchlines, the Marvel formula or Joss Whedon problem. If all the characters are answering the same questionnaire, it may feel flat. Let the characters ask each other questions. Ask questions that most characters are unlikely to answer the same way. Use a verbal silhouette test, to check whether your characters are different enough. Build your characters around their differences!

( Gingerbread people? )

[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Avoiding Flat Characters.

[Valynne] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Brandon] I'm Brandon.

[Valynne] I'm Valynne.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

[Brandon] All right. Flat characters. This is a term that I think new writers use sometimes without knowing what it even mean. They know they're supposed to use it, but…

[Howard] You're supposed to use it because you don't want to create flat characters.

[Brandon] Yes.

[Howard] I think the term comes from theater, the idea that a character is a cardboard cutout. That the actor on stage could have been replaced with a cardboard standup, because all they were doing was filling space on the stage. In your book, flat implies that the character has no depth, that all they did was serve a very specific story purpose and they didn't seem like a real person. They were… Spear carrier is not the same thing. This is not somebody who walks on and doesn't have a name. This is somebody who is supposed to feel like a person and they feel like a mannequin.

[Dan] Yeah.

[Brandon] Let's make that distinction right now, because that's one of the questions on my list here. Is it okay to sometimes have flat characters? What is the distinction? When do you want them to be round, when do you want them to be flat? What is a spear carrier? What do you mean by that?

[Howard] Well, spear carrier, again, is a term that comes to us from theater. You have a battle scene that needs to take place, and so you have a bunch of extras who are literally carrying spears onto the stage as a group. None of them have any dialogue, except maybe to all scream, "Yah!" and then we're done.

[Valynne] I think when you have… Anytime you have a group of people… Where you have a high school football game or something that requires a lot of people, you don't need to go and make one of the attendees someone that is memorable. They just… Their function is just to populate that seat.

[Howard] In fact, on stage, you could create a cardboard cutout of the Etruscan Army with all their spears and march it onto the stage and somebody screams, "Rar!" Then we have the drama, and we're okay with that. As long as the people who are giving us the drama could not themselves be replaced with cardboard cutouts.

[Dan] I think drama is a better word to use than memorable. Because flat characters can still be very memorable.

[Brandon] They can be. Yeah.

[Dan] Here's the one joke that I have, and I come out, and I say it every time. We're going to remember that guy. 90s Saturday Night Live depended entirely on one-joke flat characters. But it's when you start adding depth… You think of it in dimensional terms. We have one dimension, this is the one thing this character does. That's what makes them flat. As soon as they start acting in a different dimension, because they also have this other interest or this other aspect of their personality, your adding more dimension and more layers and more roundness and more depth to them.

[Brandon] All right. So let me ask you this. I'm going to point this one at Valynne first.

[Valynne] Okay.

[Brandon] How do you do this without making characters seem inconsistent? Because in your book, you have characters who act differently in different social situations quite frequently. You do this very astutely. How do you make that feel like they're all the same character, rather than they've gone… Characters can feel erratic if they just act completely out of character.

[Valynne] So, once again, I think a lot of it goes back to what you know as the author and their back story. You don't necessarily have to put all of that on the page, but you need to understand what is behind everything that character does, everything that character says, why they react to things the way that they react to them. So sometimes in different situations they may act differently, and it's okay as long as you know why they are doing that. If you know, that will come across the page a lot stronger, and not be so inconsistent and oft… I think inconsistency often can be very offputting because we don't know what to expect from the character.

[Brandon] So, motivation. It comes down to expressing… I would agree with you. I think that is one of the ways you can have a character who acts completely hyper one situation and completely introverted in another situation, if their motive for doing that is the same. They get uncomfortable, and sometimes when they get super uncomfortable, they just start talking. Right? In another situation, they might say, "Okay. I've gotta shut up now. I'm intimidated." Or something like this. If the motivation, underlying motivations, are clear to us, characters won't feel erratic. They'll feel actually consistent.

[Dan] Right. And have a lot of depth to them.

[Brandon] So, let's say that we're writing a character, and our writing group is saying, "This character feels flat," or alpha readers are saying that. You thought you had a rounded character. Has this ever happened to you? How did you address it, and what did you do?

[Dan] Yes. Yes. What I think I am guilty of most often when someone accuses me of having a flat character I thought was really round is that they're round in my head, and I haven't put it on the page. I know all of their other facets and I know that this particular line of dialogue they had was interesting because of all of their back story and how it informs what they are saying now, but I haven't bothered to tell the reader any of that information. So often, it'll take a quick conversation. Let me ask you about this? Why was he flat? What about this, and what about this? If I can tell that that's the reason, the writing group or the alpha reader says, "I didn't know any of that. That sounds cool." Then it's time for me to go back and layer more of that into the story so that you see all of their other facets instead of just the one.

[Valynne] I think when that happens to me, it's because I haven't really understood as the author why I'm putting that character in the story. So I put the character in, I haven't completely figured out what role that character is going to play. I think sometimes that's okay if you're just writing and trying to figure out where it's going to go. But usually, if you don't figure that out early enough, then it's just going to come across as flat because you don't know what that character is doing in there.

[Howard] For me, most often flatness is caused by boneyard dialogue. Which is that I have written a scene, and it's not working, and I throw it into the boneyard. But that scene is still in my head, and the reader has not gotten it. I need to remember that "No, no. This bit of back… That's boneyard dialogue. The reader does not have that." The solution for me is, and it's the punchline crutch, when someone does something heroic, when someone fails at something, when a character who is supposed to do X in the story does X and that's all they do, then they're a flat character. But if they do X, and then in a witty, insightful sort of punchline-y way tell us how they feel about X, they now have depth. It's… I mean, it's a simple little trick. You existed to do one thing. They did the one thing. And then they had a feeling about it. They… It's not just, "Oh, I was the hero." It was, "Oh, I didn't think I could do that." "Oh, wow, that turned out way better than I thought." "Oh, wow. I'm not going to try that again, am I?" Those sorts of things often give just enough depth to a character, you can look at them and say, "Oh. Oh, that's a person."

[Brandon] Wow, that's a really insightful comment. Something about flat characters that's been bothering me is something I see a lot in cinema, particularly lately, where it feels like the writer noticed that the Marvel formula of action plus humor works really well, and they've been going so far as to have everybody have a punchline in a lot of these films. So dramatic moment, punchline. It can work really well. Obviously, the Marvel formula has been hugely successful. But I've been noticing that they give the punchlines to a variety of different characters, and all those characters start to sound the same to me. Because every one of them is making the same types of punchlines to undercut, comic drop as you would say it, the dramatic moment. It's really been bothering me. I'm seeing it in a lot of films.

[Howard] If it's done… It's… You have to do it for the right reason, and you have to do it well. There have been plenty of times when boneyard dialogue exists because I wrote that scene and realized, "Nope, that punchline undercuts everything that's happening." I just need to write something else.

[Brandon] Define boneyard dialogue again for me.

[Howard] Boneyard dialogue… If something is in my boneyard, it's something that I've written…

[Brandon] And cut out.

[Howard] And I cut out and I throw it into a folder that's… Right now, the folder is called Boneyard 2018. That is the scripts I wrote for 2018 that I am not using. I will go in there all the time, mining for bits of things that I actually need. Because I write those things in character voice. That's part of the character voice. I'm going to keep that. So, it's the boneyard.

[Dan] I think this is kind of a… Maybe a Masters level look at flat characters, that if you have a bunch of really well-rounded characters who are all well-rounded in exactly the same way, they're going to look flat when you put them all in the same room. Which I had not considered before.

[Brandon] Let's talk about that after the book of the week. Because we need to stop for that. The book of the week is Artemis.

[Dan] Artemis by Andy Weir. This is his second book after the Martian, which was awesome. I tell people… The way I recommend Artemis to people is that it feels less like a sequel to the Martian than like a prequel to Leviathan Wakes.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] It has the same kind of Andy Weir typical really fun voice, the really approachable use of extremely hard science fiction, but instead of a mission to Mars, it is a city that's actually been established on the moon. Then he tells a… Basically a noir story there. That there's… Things are going wrong and this woman is caught in the middle of it and trying to figure out what's going on. Trying to figure out which shady groups are paying who to do what. All done as hard science fiction noir on the moon.

[Howard] Is it set in the Martian universe?

[Dan] It is set in the Martian universe. Although the connections… You don't have to have read the Martian to understand it. But it's really good and I really enjoyed it.

[Brandon] Awesome.

[Howard] The Leviathan Wakes guys and Andy Weir met at a convention and got to talking, and decided that the Martian…

[Laughter]

[Howard] Totally functioned as a prequel for Leviathan Wakes.

[Dan] They are now, I believe, canonically… At least the authors consider them to be canonically connected. You can see that DNA in Artemis. It's really interesting.

[Howard] That's fascinating.

[Brandon] All right. So let's get back to this question. What do you do if you find out you are writing the same types of characters repeatedly in your books, and it's starting to feel flat, either in a scene, like Dan said, all the characters are feeling the same, or across your career? I'll call this a good problem to have.

[Chuckles]

[Brandon] But the Joss Whedon problem, right? Sometimes Joss Whedon's characters all feel the same. They're some of these ones that always… You never can tell who will have the punchline sometimes, because they could all say the same punchline. How do you avoid this, what do you do? I've noticed it in my own writing.

[Howard] Let's look at the… I don't want to talk down to anybody, but the gradeschool version of this problem is when each of the characters appears to have filled out a questionnaire. What is your favorite color? What is your favorite pop song? What is your favorite subject in school? If that is the way your character biographies read, where they are all answering the same question, they are all going to feel like the same person, because… Yeah, I mean, even though they've answered differently, you've given us exactly the same shape of information about each of them. So, the trick is instead of having them all fill out the same questionnaire, you have them ask each other the questions as they are filling out their biography. What does John want to know about Betty? What are the three questions he would ask her? What are the three questions that Betty will ask to Mary? How will this… How will they interact? Then you end up with silhouettes that are very, very different, because the information they're asking for is different.

[Valynne] I think in doing that, one of the things that I've noticed is… Well, I do some crazy things when I'm…

[Chuckles]

[Valynne] Trying to figure out a character. But the questions that I try to ask are questions that there's less of a chance that the characters can answer the same. So if I said, "What is your favorite color?" the chance that two characters could say the same thing is... It could happen. Whereas if I say, "Okay. What is their most embarrassing moment? What is their proudest moment? What is something... What is a secret they have never told anyone?" Those are things that help me start to make them seem not like each other, and add a little... Add more facets to the character.

[Dan] Howard said something last year that I have started using all the time, which is to consider your characters in terms of a verbal silhouette test. Which comes from cartooning. The silhouette test is saying just in outline all your characters have to be distinguishable from each other. So when I'm putting together a group of characters, I always think of that, and think, "Well, I want to make sure to have very distinct personalities and very distinct wants and roles and desires," and kind of build around the need for them all to be very different from each other.

[Brandon] All right. This has been a great episode. Listener, I didn't mention this at the beginning. I forgot to. But this is a very similar episode to what we did two weeks ago with the Chicago team. I intentionally put a similar… Two similar topics because I wanted to see how different teams approached the same topic. So if you got a little déjà vu, that's the reason. But I really like how this went in many ways completely different directions from that one.

[Brandon] Howard, you're going to give us some homework.

[Howard] I've got the homework. We talk a lot about the flat characters. We complain about the flat characters that we've seen in movies or read about in books. Take a memorably flat character from something you've recently consumed. Identify what story purpose they are fulfilling. Then write a back story for them that would satisfactorily make them interesting while still allowing them to fulfill the story purpose they filled in that story.

[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 13.10: Handling a Large Cast

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2018/03/11/13-10-handling-a-large-cast/

Key Points: The length of the story often influences the size of the cast. When you have an ensemble cast, you may need to give them all weight. Name, distinguishing characteristics, backstory, motivation? But with short stories, you often want bit players who come in, do something, and leave. With large casts, you may need spreadsheets or even a wiki to keep track. If they have a name, they need motivation, backstory, and all that. Or write one group straight through, another group straight through, then weave and blend them. Big casts often start with one character, then expand, and grow over time. You don't really start with a huge cast on page one! Small casts, characters often wear lots of hats, and you can show they are skilled in one area, but ... the story challenges them in an area where they aren't so good. You can also use the relationships between your characters more. And delve deeper into your characters, and their interactions. Think of screen time -- how do you balance and give each character enough screen time?

( How many people can fit in here, anyway? )

[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Handling a Large Cast Versus a Small Cast.

[Mary] 15 minutes long.

[Amal] Because you're in a hurry.

[Maurice] And we're not that smart.

[Brandon] I'm Brandon.

[Mary] I'm Mary.

[Amal] I'm Amal.

[Maurice] I'm Maurice.

[Brandon] We're going to talk a little bit about nuts and bolts on this episode. We want to find out specifically from Maurice and Amal how you do your writing. How you actually physically go about doing it?

[Chuckles]

[Maurice] Okay.

[Amal] Do you want to go first?

[Laughter]

[Mary] They're both backing away from the question.

[Amal] I mean, the thing with me is that I have never written a novel. Like, not even as a kid, writing… The longest things that I wrote as a kid were role-playing character backgrounds, in like over 10 pages in nine point font. That's like the thing that I did. But… So I write a lot of short stories. Because short stories are so, to me, flexible, I've tended to have a different approach to most… Almost every one. Except for the butt in chair part. Like I just sit and write. But I've… There are some that I've outlined, some that I haven't. There are some where I've come up with the characters first, sometimes I've come up with the plot first and the characters kind of arose from it. The biggest cast of characters I think I ever had to manage was when I was actually writing an episode for Book Burners, which is a serial box serial, which is like TV but written. So I had a cast of characters handed to me, and keeping track of that was really interesting. It was a completely different challenge. Thinking about things like A plots and B plots, which I don't know if I've ever otherwise done in a short story, at least until that point…

[Brandon] Specifically about characters. What do you do? Do you do anything? Do you like free write characters or do you just see where it goes?

[Amal] I think a lot of the time, I have a scene in mind, and I have a feeling or a texture that I want to generate out of this conflict or out of this conversation or I really want to experience this thing and make other people experience it. Sometimes that feeling comes from a character I have in mind, sometimes it… The feeling dictates the characters. Yeah.

[Brandon] When do you add another character?

[Amal] Gosh.

[Brandon] Just when it feels right?

[Amal] Just when it feels right. Yeah.

[Brandon] Are you usually doing smaller casts or…

[Amal] Yeah. Usually the casts are not more than four. That's… It's really interesting to take stock of how the length of the story has tended to determine that. Although, that said, I did just recently finished a novella with Max Gladstone where there are two characters in this novella. It's epistolary, and they're time traveling spies. Fighting a time war. But… As one does. But so, there are two characters, and there are two background characters beyond that who are their… Like motivating them. That's sustained over novella length. But I think that's generally the exception to a rule of the shorter the story, the fewer the characters. Somewhere at novelette length, you start having the flexibility to like put different groups in play as opposed to just two different characters in play. But I've tended not to think that way, because I think most of the short stories I've written have tended to be structure-driven as opposed to character-driven.

[Mary] One of the things that I've found with both writing short fiction and writing novels, and also dealing with puppetry, is that at a certain point, you become very con… Trained to the constraints of the form that you're working in, and will begin to naturally gravitate and move down the decision tree to make choices that fit the length that you're supposed to be working with. Like, one of the constraints that I had when I was working with puppet theater was that there were two performers. Which meant that we were limited by the number of hands to the number of characters we could have on stage at a time.

[Amal] Oh, my gosh. That's amazing. That's like the most beautiful physical manifestation of this problem. How many hands do you have?

[Mary] Right. So I would naturally… I'd be like… I would naturally say, "Oh. Well, let's think about doing Snow Queen." Because this is a thing where she encounters a lot of different characters, but only one at a time. Whereas Aida, there's like a cast of thousands. That's not a good choice, because I just can't get that many people on stage. I feel that way, that when I am… The hardest thing for me when I am jumping back and forth between short fiction and novels is remembering which metric I'm using. Because I can… Like I'm working on a novel right now that has an ensemble cast, but it also has an ensemble cast of a lot of onlookers that… And because it's a murder mystery, I actually need to give them all weight, because you don't know which one is…

[Amal] Right.

[Mary] So, it's interesting because everybody that comes on stage, I actually have to give the same amount of weight to. Whereas normally, when I'm doing a shorter piece or something, anyone who's not important, I try not to give them a name, I try not to give them any distinguishing characteristics, I just want them to come in, say their bit, and get out again. Here, I have to make sure that everybody gets a name, that everybody seems to have a back story, that everybody seems to have a distinguishing characteristic. It's a very different metric.

[Brandon] By shorter story, you mean under 400,000 words, instead of over? Right?

[Laughter]

[Mary] Right. Yes. Yes.

[Brandon] Right. Okay. I get that.

[Mary] Yeah, yeah.

[Amal] What's the smallest cast you've ever dealt with, Brandon?

[Brandon] I've done two person casts before, but that was in my flash fiction.

[Amal] Okay.

[Brandon] Lar… Anything more than… I mean, The Wheel of Time had 2400 characters…

[Laughter]

[Brandon] Stormlight's got something around eight or 900, or something like that. So…

[Amal] Wait. Wait, wait. Sorry, I'm having difficult… Sorry. Say those numbers again.

[Brandon] 2400 characters. Yeah.

[Amal] I hope you can hear the face I'm making.

[Brandon] The book I just finished was 540,000 words long. We cut it to like 460. But… Anyway…

[Laughter]

[Brandon] Let's move on to Maurice.

[Amal] So amazing.

[Brandon] Maurice. What is your…

[Amal] Like, how do you do that?

[Brandon] Sorry. We're doing this podcast and I'm thinking, "Wow, they use very different methods."

[Laughter]

[Brandon] Because for me, if I'm going to track this cast, I need… I need spreadsheets for the small stories. Right? Because even the small stories, it's going to be… I'll generally do two or three about the same characters, and I'll have 60 characters in… Across the series of novellas.

[Mary] You really cannot see our mouths just hanging open.

[Brandon] But, Stormlight, it's a huge wiki with tons of characters.

[Mary] Wow.

[Brandon] And things like this. That's why I have two continuity editors.

[Laughter]

[Brandon] And whatnot. So, yeah, it's a very different experience for me. Maurice, how do you track your characters? How do you come up with them, how do you design them, how do you…

[Maurice] So, I come from a gaming background. So basically, my rule is once I bothered to give you a name, I'm going to roll you up as a character.

[Laughter]

[Brandon] Do you actually do that?

[Maurice] Well, I don't roll them up, but…

[Laughter]

[Mary] I think we'd love it if you did.

[Chuckles]

[Maurice] But, yeah, once we get to the stage where I'm naming you, then I go through all the things that I would do for any character. I'm figuring out what your motivation is, I'm figuring out what your back story is, I'm doing all those things because if you have a name… Because naming… For me, naming is one of the hardest things. So if I'm going to go to the effort of giving you a name, you come with everything that comes with being a character.

[Brandon] You actually have these sheets? Like you…

[Maurice] Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Amal] Oh, wow. Really? Oh, these are cool.

[Maurice] So. Well, I mean. They look a lot like these. So I have a sheet… It's basically divided into quadrants, where I just jot down information for each of my characters. So I can just track them that way.

[Mary] Can we put one of those templates on the website in the liner notes?

[Maurice] Sure.

[Mary] Great. That is so cool. Because that's… I want a copy of that.

[Amal] Like I've done that for my characters in retrospect. For, like, for my own fun sometimes. But… Come up with a character. This is also within the context of role-playing, but role-playing free-form online. And sometimes, just enjoying taking a character sheet from say World of Darkness or something like that, and just turning that character who is fully rounded and stuff into a character on a sheet.

[Maurice] Well… All that being said, what the… Probably the largest cast of characters I've had to deal with was for my urban fantasy trilogy, which I'm calling… I basically call my accidental trilogy, because I never intended to write a trilogy. But it was all based on the Arthurian saga. So in a lot of ways, that work has been done for me. I can just take all the characters and then just sort of… Well, here's how they've traditionally been portrayed. Now let me just do my tweaks and… How would they plug into the hood, basically. But that was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. I mean, it's not the numbers you have, but it was still a couple dozen characters per book, which is larger than I had ever done before. Tracking them was tough.

[Brandon] I throw those numbers around to be awe-inspiring, but usually there will be like 30 main characters. Right? Maximum. But… That's what gets really tricky, is remembering this character's motivations and things like this. I… usually, when I'm writing these books, I'm writing one group straight through. Then I'm writing another group straight through, and another group straight through. At least to a kind of breakpoint. And then weaving it together. Then you have to do all these passes to make sure that the different stories blend together in a way that's dramatically and pacing wise works. It gets very complicated there, but I find that if you jump each scene to the new characters, it always feels like you're stopping and starting and things like this. So…

[Amal] Brandon, can I ask you a question? Do you find that with these really large casts, that that… Like thinking back to what Mary was saying about the constraints kind of dictating what kind of story you tell. Do you find that you sort of have to tell a big… Okay…

[Brandon] Yeah.

[Amal] But that because you're choosing to tell a really big story, that you have to have a commensurate number of characters? Or can you imagine a situation where you have that number of characters for a small-scale story?

[Brandon] I have no idea how you'd do it. I suppose we can imagine it. It's certainly a challenge that you could put up before people. With me, I grew up reading epic fantasy. I wanted to write epic fantasy. I was reading these stories with these huge casts, like Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern and Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. I would read these books, and when I sat down to write, I just naturally started doing this. The big problem was, and I tell this to people a lot, was I jumped in, just trying to write that large cast from page 1, and I failed spectacularly my first few tries. What I realized is a lot of these casts grew organically over time. The author didn't say I'm going to have 2400 named characters in The Wheel of Time or whatever. Robert Jordan told a story about one character who interacted with a lot of people, and did some expanding on who these people were, and then started telling their stories. I think the form is very important to this. When I write a Stormlight book, which are the really big ones we joke about. Most of my books are kind of normal length. But when I write these, the 500,000 word ones, I actually plot them as a trilogy, with a short story collection included. I write them as three books and a short story collection, which I am interweaving as I go. I put together… The idea behind it is that when you pick this up, you're not just going to get a story, you're going to get a lot of stories, all woven together toward a big goal at the end.

[Mary] But you can talk about the difference between the way you are handling the stories in the short story collection versus the way you are handling the larger casts.

[Brandon] Yes. Ethnically.

[Mary] Does it… Do you go into those differently, or do you use the same…

[Brandon] Definitely. Absolutely, differently. It's the same setting. Like, the most recent one, there is a short story in it about a lighthouse keeper. His family has kept this lighthouse forever. A disaster has just struck. He is going through the town, helping people with the problems from the disaster. It just goes to the four different people. Really, he's collecting their wood so he can keep his lighthouse burning. But you interact with a ship captain whose ship is not there anymore. And help out the sailors, but end up with their wood. You go here to the woman whose farm was just completely destroyed. But their shed was broken, so I got some more wood. Then he goes up and stokes the flame to the lighthouse. That little sort of story has no connection to the big story, except for the fact that the disaster happened in the big story. The main characters, their job is they can like stop this. They can work with this disaster. He can't. He's the lighthouse keeper. So it allows me to just tell these different types of stories, all in one package. That was a huge tangent.

[Mary] No, no…

[Amal] No, I like that.

[Mary] Actually it wasn't a huge… That was exactly on point. Because this is… The thing that I like about that example is that one of the things that I find with a lot of fiction… A lot of processes, that it's a very fractal thing. That you've got something that you do on this big scale, and it looks totally different because the scale is huge. But when you start drilling down into it, on a scene-by-scene basis, you're doing exactly the same things. In this scene, I can only have this many characters, because this is how many words I have.

[Brandon] Well, it's beyond that. There's a sort of reader, at least me, maybe writer, brain space. Right? Like I can track maybe four or five characters in a conversation. If there is more people trying to participate in this conversation, I have trouble bringing them up enough to remind you that they're there. I've got to arrange these situations so there is a smaller number in each given scene.

[Mary] Yeah. It's like I totally forgot Howard is even in the room.

[Brandon] Oh, yeah. Howard, put your pants back on.

[Laughter]

[Brandon] Let's… We haven't even stopped for the book of the week yet, and we're [inaudible approaching the end, so…]

[Mary] Sorry, this is a very interesting conversation for us.

[Brandon] Let's talk about To Steal the Stars.

[Screech! Oh, my gosh!]

[Mary] So. We both want to talk about it?

[Amal] You can start.

[Mary] Okay.

[Amal] I learned about it from you.

[Mary] That's fair. So this is a podcast. It is an audio play called To Steal the Stars. It's coming from Tor Labs and Gideon Media. This is one of the best acted and best produced…

[Amal] And best directed.

[Mary] And best directed and best written pieces of audio drama that I have ever heard. I say this as someone who used to perform in it, review it. This is phenomenally good. It is hitting all of the right science fiction and character buttons for me.

[Amal] I was thoroughly unprepared for how hard I would fall for this. If you describe to me what the contents are… Like, even the genre of this audio drama, I'd be like okay, cool, that sounds interesting, but I wouldn't necessarily dive into it. People describe it in a lot of ways. People will talk about it as noir, as a noir thriller heist, as a near future noir thriller heist thing. All cool, all fine. But, it doesn't prepare you for how incredible the characters are, how tight the pacing is, how… And just all of those beautiful grace notes of the directing. Like, I can't get over the fact that there's a part where two people are having pillow talk, and it actually sounds like normal people. Like, it just… It's so hard to do that. It's hard to do that on the page, fiction wise, it's hard to… I mean, representing people in intimate situations is chancy at the best of times. But this was the best of times, and also the worst of times. It's just amazing.

[Mary] In context, I'll let us segue back in. One of the reasons that I think that it's really good for you to listen to is because as radio theater, each character has to have a completely distinct voice. It's not just the actor. It's the way that they are approaching the words, the way the script has been written. Each character has a distinct motivation, they have a distinct characterization. Some of the episodes have very small casts, some of them are quite large, with multiple voices all happening at the same time. It's a really interesting way to start thinking about an aspect of a cast which is the way characters actually speak.

[Amal] I think it was also all recorded in an actual hangar… Or not in a hangar, necessarily. But it was all recorded in one space, and they were… The actors were allowed to occupy that space and spread out.

[Mary] Oh, really?

[Amal] Yeah. So it wasn't in a studio the way we are. So the reason… Part of the reason the audio is so fantastic is that you get the sense of people's movements through a very large, echo-y space. They're evoking a top-secret hangar, basically, where secret objects are kept. You really get the feel of how these voices enter and leave the space, of how close people are, how far they are apart. And the performances have more room to breathe. So it's… Ach. It's just so good. It's so good. And it's going to be a book that comes out… I think November 7th? Of last year, from when this is airing?

[Mary] I know, it's time travel.

[Amal] So it's out now.

[Brandon] All right. So we are almost out of time. Even though we just did that. But I wanted to throw one more question at you guys. Which is, let's focus on the small casts. I've talked about the large casts. How do you make a small number of characters wear a lot of hats, if you've got a very limited cast, or a very limited space, to do so?

[Mary] So I'm doing a story right now, which is basically two characters on a heist. Normally, heist stories have a huge number of characters. So what I have them doing is that I have them each with a primary expertise. Then, I have given them each area of competence that is… They're okay at, but they're not great at. What that does is it allows me to… The nice thing about having a character who has multiple hats is that you can demonstrate how this person is really skilled, but by having them encounter things that they're not so good at, you can actually ramp up the drama significantly.

[Amal] I think the smaller the cast, the more it becomes important to take into consideration their contrasts to each other, to have one character's strength be the other's weaknesses, or to have them complement each other. Which is the same thing, actually. But, yeah, so, just to… The fewer characters there are in the story, I think the more loadbearing the relationship between the characters needs to be, and the more nuanced and encompassing it has to be. The more characters you have, the more variation you can have on those lines.

[Maurice] Yeah. When I'm dealing with smaller casts… Actually, it's a problem that I didn't realize was even a thing until I started doing the massive urban fantasy, which was the whole issue of screen time. When I have this large cast, it's like, how do I manufacture enough screen time for some of these characters, who… I've bothered to roll up and create these characters, they now need screen time. How do I balance that? But in a smaller cast, I have this space, and again, they get to occupy this space, so they do have sufficient screen time. So now, what are we going to do with that? Because you now have to occupy all of this space all on your own. So, for me, I'm thinking of my story, The Ache of Home, which is up on Uncanny Magazine. Cast of three. Each of the characters are so completely distinct. I could tell who's talking without any dialogue tags, basically, because each one is so distinct. Each one has a different role. Like, even my main character, she is… She's a single mom. She's struggling in the neighborhood. Yet, she also has this magical ability to tie in with the green. When her co-protagonist, is this gentleman, he's recently out of prison, but his tattoos tell the story of his life. He can peel the tattoos off, they become magical objects.

[Amal] Oh, that's so cool.

[Maurice] They're just… So they have all this screen time, and frankly, I just have more time to just delve deeper. I think ultimately that's what it is. I have more room to delve deeper into these characters and their interactions.

[Brandon] Awesome. You were going to give us some homework, Maurice, that's kind of along those lines?

[Maurice] Oh, yes. Very much along these lines. So, it's out of my dialogue class I teach. I call it, it's a talking heads exercise. Again, one of the roles of dialogue is… By the end of dialogue… Dialogue, you have characterized… You use dialogue to characterize… To develop characterization. So one of the goals is that by the end of… You should be able to write characters with such a distinct voice, I shouldn't need dialogue tags to tell them apart. I was thinking about that when you were talking about the audio plays. Very much… It makes you very conscious of that. How do my characters sound, distinct from one another, even in those brief interactions? So that what I… So the exercise is. So you have a married couple. They bump into each other at a coffee shop, when neither one was supposed to be there. One's supposed to be at work, one's supposed to be doing their other thing. They bump into each other at a coffee shop. So, obviously, they have an agenda and they have a secret they want to hide and the other one's trying to get that out of them. Write that scene.

[Brandon] Write that scene with no dialogue tags?

[Maurice] With no dialogue tags.

[Mary] Awesome.

[Brandon] All right. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 13.8: Making Characters Distinctive

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2018/02/25/13-8-making-characters-distinctive/

Key points: How do you make your characters flawed? Start with the characteristics you expect, the stereotypical stuff, for your protagonist or character. Flaws, or quirks, come from things that don't match that. Think about the character's situation, how does that affect their dialogue, actions, and thinking. Give your characters something to get in their way, and add texture. Look for try-fail cycles where the protagonist fails because their competency is not what they need to succeed. What flaw can they have that is important to the story? Do you use a tragic flaw, that causes the character's downfall, or just weird flaws that the character is constantly fighting? Tragic flaws are good when you want things to go horribly wrong. Think about flaws that can go either way. Use an ensemble cast to practice and play with flaws. Distinctions are not necessarily flaws. Look at Sanderson's second law of magic, what a character can't do is more interesting than what they can do. When you are creating distinctive characters, the flaws help! Sometimes flaws are what make characters lovable. How do you avoid just stapling a quirk to a character? Look for the things that are important to that character. Look at what's behind that quirk, what's the explanation for it. Find things in the environment or setting that differentiate this person from everyone else.

( Flaws, quirks, how is this distinctive? )

[Brandon] We are out of time. This is been a great discussion. Howard has our homework.
[Howard] Okay. We are talking about distinctive, distinctiveness, failings, quirky, whatever. Make a shortlist of five of the people you know best. They can be family members, they can be friends. Include yourself in that list. Imagine them as characters in a story. Then, next to their name, start writing the attributes that make them distinct from each other. The things that might be failings, the things that might be quirky, the things that might be weird. Include the things about yourself. Don't show this list to anybody else, because they'll find it highly offensive. You now need to keep this a secret for the rest of your life.
[Brandon] All right. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 12.28: Trimming and Expanding

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2017/07/09/12-28-trimming-and-expanding/

Key points: Revision! Specifically, taking something short and making it long, or taking something long and making it short (expanding and trimming). Novels expand easily, as you add extra scenes. Expanding: longer version of itself, changing genres, layering in a second theme or plot. You can expand at different points in the writing process, early in the development or later during revision. Sometimes adding a second theme/through line/plot can make a story work! To bring out a theme that is already there, but needs more emphasis: Mechanically, every page or paragraph, check that the thematic element is brought out. To turn a short story into a novel, instead of simply making the scenes longer, try looking at the backstory and starting the story earlier -- then build to the climactic moment of the short story, and keep on going! Short story writers often have to learn to linger when writing long form. Readers bring different expectations to short and long forms: Long form is for the immersion, short form is a quick emotional punch in the gut. Cutting? Start by looking at cutting the beginning -- first chapter, each scene? Often we are writing our way into the scene/story, and that bit is not needed. Kill your darlings, especially prose that calls attention to itself. Try the 10% solution -- cut 10% everywhere to see what's really important.

( Snip, snip, whoooosh! )

[Brandon] All right. We are going to stop for some homework, which is going to teach you to do this. Mary, you were going to?
[Mary] Right. So, this is a very brutal solution to cutting. This is when you've got something that you know is bloated. Like, your readers have gone, "I'm getting really drowsy here." Or "This goes on too long, it's a giant infodump." Take a look at it. Examine how many concepts are in that, that the story will completely break if they aren't there. So let's say that it's… That the onions must be sliced thinly, that your main character is wearing red, and there's a bowl of kimchi on the table. Those are the three concepts. You should be able to convey those three concepts in just three sentences, but you're using 11 sentences. So, trim that down to get it to three sentences. It's not that each concept must be in its own sentence, but you're not allowed anymore than three sentences.
[Wesley] Okay. I'm going to add to that. Go the opposite direction and say "The onions must be sliced thinly." Figure out how to expand that, without actually saying "The onions must be sliced thinly," and see what you can kind of expand out to, and kind of discover as you write around it.
[Brandon] Great. So there's your homework, guys. This has been Writing Excuses. You are out of excuses, now go write.

Current Mood: breathing

mbarker.livejournal.com

Writing Excuses 11.51: Ensemble As a Sub-Genre, with Lynne M. Thomas

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2016/12/18/11-51-ensemble-as-a-sub-genre-with-lynne-m-thomas/

Key points: Heists are often thriller or mystery plus ensemble. Sports dramas often are ensembles. Adding ensemble as subgenre can change the solutions, often adding other approaches. Ensembles often are big. Sometimes ensembles give the main characters a rest, as we follow the rest of the ensemble. Ensembles can provide the strange to mix with familiar main characters. Ensembles also can provide a framework for many small stories of another subgenre, or as the background for a series. Horror stories may use an ensemble is a cast of characters to kill. Ensembles can help avoid polemic and Mary Sue's. When introducing the members of your ensemble, work hard at compressed, good storytelling. Don't bury the reader in back story. Ensembles work best without superpowered main characters. "Bad decision theater is how great ensembles happen." Give the ensemble an arc.( Hiding in a subgenre, we find... an ensemble! )

[Brandon] Excellent. Well, Mary, you are going to give us some homework.
[Mary] Right. Since we are talking about ensemble as a subgenre, what I want you to do is look at some of the elemental genres that we have already discussed. See what happens to them if you introduce ensemble into it. Like, if you introduce ensemble into an issue, if you introduce it into a mystery, or into a thriller? What does it do to that story if you introduce the ensemble?
[Brandon] Excellent. We'd like to thank our special guest, Lynne M. Thomas.
[Lynne] Thank you. Lovely to be here.
[Brandon] We would like to thank our Writing Excuses cruise members.
[Whoo! Applause]
[Brandon] And I'd just like to take a moment to say we have really enjoyed doing the elemental genres with you. We only have a couple more weeks left of the year. We will be doing a Q&A on ensemble, but that will be the end of the elemental genres for now. I will encourage you to get excited and get ready because we will he introducing the new season to you and a couple of weeks.
[Howard] 2017's going to be pretty cool.
[Brandon] Look forward to that. And you are out of excuses. Now go write.

Current Mood: fiddling

mbarker.livejournal.com

Writing Excuses 7.4: Brevity

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2012/01/22/writing-excuses-7-4-brevity/

Key Points: In late, out early. Start where things are happening, close to the change point, at the inciting incident. Minimize backstory. Remove extra characters and locations. Cut filler language, combine wording and ideas. Remove repetition. Use the right nouns and the right details. Use analogies for richness. Combine scenes -- have characters do something while they're talking. Don't proliferate viewpoints. Brevity doesn't just mean shorter, it also means packing more interesting material into what you keep. Trim the fat.
( 20% lean meat? )
[Brandon] Let's do a writing prompt. Howard?
[Howard] Okay. You have a group of characters in a spaceship...
[Brandon] 10 seconds.
[Howard] On a very, very long trip. Tell us why it's important. Tell us what the problem is, and solve the problem. In 150 words.
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excus...

Current Mood: flabby

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Writing Excuses Transcripts

June 2025

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mbarker - Writing Excuses 19.27: Close Reading on Character: An Overview and Why We Chose C. L. Clark's ...
mbarker - Writing Excuses 17.11: Structuring with Multiple Timelines
mbarker - Writing Excuses 14.41: History
mbarker - Writing Excuses 14.40: Deep Vs. Wide
mbarker - Writing Excuses 14.12: Writing the Other – Latinx Representation
mbarker - Writing Excuses 13.50: What Writers Get Wrong, with Zoraida Córdova
mbarker - Writing Excuses 13.41: Fixing Character Problems, Part II
mbarker - Writing Excuses 13.30: Project in Depth, THE CALCULATING STARS, with Kjell Lindgren.
mbarker - Writing Excuses 13.24: What Writers Get Wrong, with Piper, Aliette, and Wesley, with Special Guest K
mbarker - Writing Excuses 13.19: Backstories
mbarker - Writing Excuses 13.16: Avoiding Flat Characters
mbarker - Writing Excuses 13.10: Handling a Large Cast
mbarker - Writing Excuses 13.8: Making Characters Distinctive
mbarker - Writing Excuses 12.28: Trimming and Expanding
mbarker.livejournal.com - Writing Excuses 11.51: Ensemble As a Sub-Genre, with Lynne M. Thomas
mbarker.livejournal.com - Writing Excuses 7.4: Brevity

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Writing Excuses Transcripts

Entries tagged with backstory

Writing Excuses 19.27: Close Reading on Character: An Overview and Why We Chose C. L. Clark's ...

Writing Excuses 17.11: Structuring with Multiple Timelines

Writing Excuses 14.41: History

Writing Excuses 14.40: Deep Vs. Wide

Writing Excuses 14.12: Writing the Other – Latinx Representation

Writing Excuses 13.50: What Writers Get Wrong, with Zoraida Córdova

Writing Excuses 13.41: Fixing Character Problems, Part II

Writing Excuses 13.30: Project in Depth, THE CALCULATING STARS, with Kjell Lindgren.

Writing Excuses 13.24: What Writers Get Wrong, with Piper, Aliette, and Wesley, with Special Guest K

Writing Excuses 13.19: Backstories

Writing Excuses 13.16: Avoiding Flat Characters

Writing Excuses 13.10: Handling a Large Cast

Writing Excuses 13.8: Making Characters Distinctive

Writing Excuses 12.28: Trimming and Expanding

Writing Excuses 11.51: Ensemble As a Sub-Genre, with Lynne M. Thomas

Writing Excuses 7.4: Brevity

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June 2025

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