Writing Excuses Transcripts

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-18-the-art-of-teaching

 

Key points: Teaching as a writer forces you to think through your process and what you know. Also, how do you communicate that to someone else? It helps you be more creative and challenges you. How do you get it across? Start with humility. Examples! Difference between workshops, retreats, school visits, and regular classes? Punchy, big points, not minutia. Opted in, or apathetic? 8000 jokes! Be flexible. Safe creative space. Lovely ugly alien babies. Treat them as equals. Take them seriously. Advice if you are thinking about getting into teaching? Think about a teacher who created a safe space and challenged you that you remember, and put yourself in their place. Is this something you want to do? Be enthusiastic about the subject. 

 

[Transcriptionist apology: I suspect I may have confused Marshall and Mark at some points.]

 

[Season 20, Episode 18]

 

[Mary Robinette] Hey, guess what? The 2025 Writing Excuses Cruise is over 50% sold out. During this week-long masterclass, I'm going to be leading writers like yourself through a series of workshops designed to give you the tools to take your writing to the next level. Space is limited, but there is still time to secure your spot. We're going to be sailing out of Los Angeles from September 18th through 26. Regardless of where you are in your writing journey, this event is your opportunity to learn new skills while exploring the beautiful Mexican Riviera. Whether you're revising a story, reworking a character arc, or revitalizing your plot, you'll leave more confident in your current story and bolstered by a new set of friends. Join us on board at writingexcuses.com/retreats.

 

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

 

[Season 20, Episode 18]

 

[Marshall] This is Writing Excuses.

[Erin] The Art of Teaching.

[Marshall] I'm Marshall.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Mark] And I'm Mark.

 

[Erin] And we are here on the Navigator of the Seas. This is another one of our recorded on the cruise episodes in front of a live audience. Live audience makes a noise.

[Whoo Applause]

[Erin] Amazing. They're real. Or good sound effects. We are going to be talking today about teaching, which is perfect for this cruise, because we've all been teaching the whole week, and wanted to talk about all the different ways you can come to teaching, and what teaching means and how it can help your writing, and all that jazz. But to start, we should probably actually say what kind of things we teach and how we came to it. So, Mark, remind us who you are and what you teach?

[Mark] Hello, Writing Excuses. I'm Mark Oshiro, the author of many young adult and middle grade novels. And I feel very lucky that I have taught more times than I can count over the years. Primarily to young adults and middle grade students, though I have taught at a few adult workshops. My preference, no offense, Writing Excuses, is teaching to kids because I think about how much I wish that… Some of the people in this audience are very horrified when I say that, by the way. But I prefer, because I am so lucky that I had adults in my life when I was in high school who fostered my love of writing, and I want to show them the possibility that not only can you write and do it for a living, but that you can be a big ass weirdo and not have to edit yourself and be yourself and still be a creative person.

[Erin] What about you, Marshall?

[Marshall] I second the big ass weirdo thing. I'm… I call myself out all the time when I'm teaching kids, because it's just… I'm just being weird.

[Mark] Yeah.

[Marshall] And it's fun. But I got into teaching 17 years ago. I teach high school for the last 15 years. I've taught middle school. I was a sub for middle school for a long time, and I kind of decided, I don't know, a little later in life, like I always kind of wanted to teach, or know I could teach, and then I just went and got my credential and have been doing it for a long time now.

[Erin] Nice.

[Marshall] Like, a long time, it feels like.

[Erin] So, I am probably then the newest person to teaching. So, I… My father is a teacher, and so I feel like I come by it honestly. But I mostly teach college students. So I love that we actually have, like, a wide range of folks, and teach adults as well, as we do here on the cruise. But I teach at University of Texas at Austin, and I teach creative writing there, and have a blast. And I love students in college, I think because it feels like there right on the brink of kind of figuring out who they are, and creativity is a great way to do that. And writing can be an amazing outlet, whether the person wants to go on and become a best-selling author or whether they are an engineering major who just does this because it's something that they love and they want to put time into it.

 

[Erin] So, I'm curious, all that being said about how amazing we all are, what you think you get out of teaching as a writer?

[Mark] I actually think the primary thing I get out of it is actually forcing me to think about my process and what I do actually know. And I remember the first time I got asked to teach, I was like, "What? I've only had…" At that point, I think I'd only had two books out and I was like, "That's not enough." That's not enough knowledge, that's not enough experience. Which was wrong, because I did actually know a lot of things about writing. But, first of all, it forced me to stop and think, well, what do I know? What is knowledge that I… Or wisdom, I can impart on another person? And even throughout the years, even what I've taught was new, I've never taught that specific lecture ever in my life. And it forced me to sit and think about I taught voice and how I use it to guide my story. So I love that it makes me have this very introspective deep dive first and think about my process, what it is that inspires me and motivates me. And then the second half of it was, well, how do I communicate that to someone else who doesn't know me, is often meeting me for the first time, and they have no way in and has never read anything that I've written. So how do I communicate that to someone else, and communicate it in a way that is both entertaining and engaging, but, hopefully, that they take something away from it? I love teaching that just causes a reframe and allows you to just, oh, this thing I'm doing, I now have this chance to think about it a little bit differently.

[Marshall] I never told… I never said what I teach. I teach English, I've taught Digital Media for a bit, and now I have a creative writing class for the first time. I feel like just the actual what I'm going to do, like, in front of these kids, each day, is… Helps me be more creative and it challenges me. And I really do… I really like seeing what kids can create and how they can challenge themselves, even though they really hate English class, most of them, and they don't want to read, they don't want to write, they don't want to be there. And I say, okay, that's fair, but… I don't know, let's talk about movies for a little bit and write something. And share stories. That's my favorite part of teaching is getting to tell stories and hearing their stories. Yeah. So, I get out of it… And then, when I come back to the page, hopefully, theoretically, I am more creative. But usually, I'm very tired.

[Erin] Yeah. Teaching can take it out of you. It's very… Like, there is a perform… There is an aspect of performance. Like, some of teaching is at about actually making sure the thing lands. Like, you can be the best expert in the world on something, and actually quite horrible at teaching it, because you don't know how to, like, get somebody who's not at your level of expertise up to where you are. Like, I think, like many people have that experience of having a teacher where you're like, I wish I understood what was happening and I'm not quite there. And we all try not to be that teacher. Whether or not we succeed… Ask the students.

 

[Erin] But I'm curious, like, some of what y'all are talking about, just like unpacking all the parts of that process. So, like, how do you think about, like, how you convey something well, like, how do you teach people who are, like, not really there, how do you figure out how to get something across in a way that actually, like, works for the person that you're talking to?

[Mark] I mean, primarily it was messing up. Like, doing my early lectures, my early talks, and having those moments… The personality changing moments of silence where you're like, oh, this didn't connect, this didn't land. This joke is unnecessary. So, I have learned from having those moments and accepting, like, okay, that was embarrassing. That sucked. But it's like, oh, now I know that I can do something different. So I do something, actually, at the beginning of all of my lectures, in whatever form. If I'm teaching multiple times over a week or if I've done some short residencies before, which is… I know personally that if I'm just being taught rules, these are the rules, don't break them. I'm out. I don't do well with that kind of where… It feels very top-down. I know these things, these are the way to do it, you need to do these things. So I actually start… Or attempt to start from this place of humility. And I did hear, we, which was saying, hey, this is not about the rules of voice, with the rules of guiding your story, or whatnot. I have some information and what I think is knowledge. I hope to give it to you. So, starting from that place, and then even though I care deeply about what I'm teaching, I don't want it to feel so self serious that it's boring. I'm not giving a place for people to come into it. And I also found, as many of you saw here at Writing Excuses, like, examples. You can explain, hey, maybe think about voice in this particular way. And for me, I'm also a visual learner, someone, if you demonstrate the thing, I am attempting to learn, it helps me a thousand times more than just saying do this. So I've learned over the years that examples are so, so helpful. I have a lecture I've taught multiple times on how to write compelling dialogue, and we have a whole section in which to demonstrate how to use… How to actually utilize some of the rules, what it is is, I construct dialogue about the class I'm in in real time. And then show them, and then we create an argument and we show how it goes back and forth and just watching people open up because… It's a little bit of improv, so, of course, especially the little chaos goblins in the room are like, I'm going to say all sorts of wild things…

[Chuckles]

[Mark] And you use that to sort of guide people through this is how you create a scene. Oh, we just noticed it got confusing. Who's speaking this time? How do you write people speaking over each other, because that happens in real time in real life? So, yeah, that's how I found my way into teaching.

[Marshall] Yeah, I've found that with the age group that I teach asking them early on to write about themselves, I get them… One, I get to see how the writing is, because I love writing, but I like sharing stories, so if I can connect with them on anything, like, just the posters in my room… I have a bunch of geeky Star Wars and Marvel posters on my wall, and the kids are like, oh, what do you think of this? That's… I find that that is the best way to help those kids who really would rather not be there, there. It's not necessarily about the grade or about what I teaching, although I think what I'm teaching is awesome. I think just getting them to buy-in is a huge part of it, especially when you're teaching 15, 16-year-olds who are just like, "Bro, this guy?" You know what I mean? And I love what you said about dialogue, too, like, listening to kids talk to each other and making them talk? It's a really kind of fun way to… When I go back to the page, if I'm writing a teenager or something, like, that, like, this is what they would focus on, this is what they would… How they would communicate their day to there buddy. You know what I mean? They wouldn't share with me. But I'm just listening.

[Erin] Yeah. Like, the more of humanity you get to know, the better you can portray it on the page in some ways. And, like, how often do many of us, like, speak to kids of all ages? Like, you might have your own kids and speak to them, but a lot of times, you don't have necessarily an opportunity and, like, to really see folks in an environment where, while you do have some power over them, they sort of are able to fly free, and you can just observe the flock of wild teen birds as they go around [garbled]

[chuckles]

[Erin] That sounds bad. As they go around, and do their thing.

[I like garbled though. Yeah, that's good. Garbled]

[Erin] There you go. We are going to now take a break for our thing of the week.

 

[Erin] I have the thing of the week, so, just I'm going to keep, like, just throwing the mic to myself. And the book that I want to call out, which… Whose name I am going to forget… No. Is All This and More by Peng Shepherd. And one of the reasons I'm especially excited to talk about this book is that Peng was actually an instructor here on the cruise a couple of years ago, working, I believe, on this novel. And so it's just very meta-. Like, and I am living in the meta-cruise moment of it all. But this is a very cool book for me specifically… I mean, it wasn't written for me, but it was written for me because it is a choose-your-own-adventure novel. And the actual conceit of the book is that someone goes on a show where they're able to change parts of their life based on, like, what the show decides. So they get to, like, decide if they want to blow up their marriage or choose a different job. And at the end of the chapter, it actually gives you the opportunity to flip to whatever chapter you want. So if you want them to blow up their marriage, flip to chapter 8. If you want them to do a new job, flip to chapter 10. And it's a really interesting way of going through a book that takes a novel and a game and puts them all in one. So, definitely check it out. All This and More by Peng.

 

[Erin] And we're back. We are still on the cruise, still moving, still talking about teaching at all levels. And something else that I love that you were saying, Mark, about figuring out how to, like, convey things is using really good examples and using tactile materials. Do you find, because, I know you do school visits, like, you're not there for very long, like, you're having to, like, get in, get out, engage and go. And, like, is there a difference between that and, like, what I think Marshall and I do, where we're teaching the same folks for, like, years and years and years?

[Mark] Oh, yeah. Absolutely. My teaching technique and speaking technique is different for a workshop or a retreat than it is for a school visit. Generally, in kid lit, the school is actually how you're going to meet your readers. You might get lucky to be at a book festival that is geared towards young adults or middle grade readers, but the majority of the time I am meeting my readers, it is through school visits. So you're doing a presentation that is as long as a class period. Sometimes you're lucky, you get, like, the auditorium style where you therefore, like, an hour or two. So in those, I tend to be much punchier. I am trying to make grand big points. I'm not delving into, like, the minutia. And a lot of times, you're meeting kids who may have an interest in writing, or may have an interest in reading, but you're probably going to meet a few kids who are also deeply apathetic about it. Whereas when you're at a retreat, when you beat… Teaching a workshop, these are people who have already opted in. So they're here for that. So I tell 8000 more jokes. I think one of the best compliments I ever got was doing a school visit, and afterwards, the teacher came up to me and was like, "I've just never seen my students that energized. You're like their weird gay uncle." And I was like, "Yes!"

[Chuckles]

[Mark] That's the energy I want. And so I'm coming into these spaces, one, to as I said earlier to demonstrate that I have not had to edit who I am or edit my personality to be a professional creative person. And I'm not… In those instances, I'm not thinking I want to inspire this person to be a writer. I just want to inspire them to do the thing that they want. So I'm often surprised how often I get questions that have nothing to do with writing at all. Is to maybe someone who wants to do something creative, but the thinking of a completely different field. So then the questions tend to be more about, like, motivation, how do you keep doing this? Did you have parents who supported your creative endeavors? How did you get to the point that you are? What did you study in college? Those sort of questions. So I think the biggest advice I give as well to other people who are joining the kid lit field is you have to be flexible. You cannot go into any of these settings, especially the ones where you're there for one hour max and assume that this is how it's going to go, everything is going to go how I want. Also, children will say something to rip your soul out of your body and then move on, because it's Tuesday.

[Yup]

[Mark] So you also have to be… I mean, don't be afraid… You should be very afraid! But don't be afraid of them, like, they're going to ask the questions, especially if they feel safe. And these questions sometimes might be wild, you might have to say, "Mind your own business." But I want to foster that sense as well of, like, yes, maybe I'm only here for an hour, but I want this hour to be as impactful as possible.

[Erin] I love what you said about safety there. It makes me think about, so, before I started teaching college, I actually did, like, public writing workshops that you can do in libraries or in, actually, like, places where folks are living after coming out of, like, prison and are, like, trying to get back on their feet and they have writing classes as a creative outlet. And there's a book called Writing Alone And with Others, which was developed for prison writing workshops that we used their methodology. In the big thing there is, like, in a prison, you, like, depending on what it is, because our system is no bueno and we're all about punitive, people, like, can't actually keep pen, paper, stuff with them. So you have to do the writing exercise at the time, like, you basically walk in and you're like, here. I'm going to give you, like, a few images, and, like, an idea, and one prompt, and, like, you're just going to go. And then everyone shares their writing that they just wrote. And it's really hard. Because it is terrifying to share writing when you have a long time to write it. And if you just found out about it five seconds ago, it's really hard. And one of the big principles that we talk about in that group is that we're going to make this… This is going to be a space about safe creative expression. Not about perfection. It is… We often use the analogy of, like, having a baby. If somebody has just had a baby, you say what a sweet baby. Many babies look like aliens, but…

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Just after birth is not a time to tell the parent, "Your alien looking child is freaking me out." You have to say, "What a sweet baby. I love its wide eyes." or whatever thing you can come up with that seems affirming. What I love about that experience is that, like, it has helped me to really see the good in everyone's writing and to create, like, a safe creative space for all of our lovely ugly alien babies.

[Mark] The safety thing, I think, is so important when it comes to teaching. Like, they're not going to open up, they're not going to create or create what they… If they don't feel like, if you read it, you'll betray them in some way. You know what I mean? So I really try to foster, like, the most… The safest space I can for students so that they can actually just express themselves and write something and have fun while they're at school.

[Marshall] I love that you said that as well. I'm very lucky also that I'm one of the few authors whose been able to do visits and teaching at juvenile delinquent facilities, and the biggest thing I run up into in those environments is adults who don't take the kids seriously at all. So in those spaces, it's… Someone starts talking about their writing and you treat them like a peer, on your level. So they start telling you about, like, oh, I have this story or whatever, and they're used to people dismissing it or assuming they're not going to have a future to tell that. So what I do always is, like, well, why do you want to write that? Why is it that thing? And ask them, like, essentially… They don't see them as craft questions, but I'm asking them craft questions to show them I am interested in the thing you're doing and I take it seriously. So, that's something I think in any situation, but particularly in those situations where the kids actually aren't safe.

[Erin] Yeah. I'm, like, looking for things… The thing is there is beauty to be found in all writing. And I think it's really exciting to see if somebody is really pouring their heart out. I think something else that can be hard, depending on the environment, is when people put a lot of themselves on the page, like, a lot, and you realize… You can tell sometimes, when this is someone's first opportunity to work through something, and, like, it is often just as messy as a therapy session on the page, and you are trying to react to it both as a human being, but also like… Your purpose at that point is to be affirming, but also to actually treat it as writing and not to treat it, I find, as therapy. To be like, okay, a lot happened in that piece. Like what I really thought was interesting was, like, how you kept referencing, like, the color blue. Like, that was really, like… Why did you… Why did that happen question because then it takes the person into talking about craft, and it allows them, I think, a chance to process at their own pace as opposed to being, like, oh, my gosh, did that really happen to you? One thing we do in this, in these settings, is we'll say you actually are not allowed to act as if it is about the person's life. You should always pretend that they wrote it about somebody else, because otherwise it derails the conversation into the person, and not into the prose that they put on the page.

[Mark] Yeah, I know, and I… One of the first creative writing assignments I give my student, because I'm co-teaching sort of the class with another colleague and we had them, like, recall a memory from when they were younger. And that kind of platform… Really, they hit the page with it. And so sometimes… Whenever I was talking to them and giving them feedback, I always made a point of saying, oh, the character did this, the character did this, or what do you think of that about this… And one of the students said, well, it didn't happen that way. And I said, yeah, but we're also writing fiction. So I know this is based on a memory you have, but it can be… It's fiction. I don't know the story. So…

[Erin] And I think the things that happen… I think one of the nice things about teaching, at all levels, is that some of the things that we don't talk about in writing, like, as we get older, some of the things that we like take for granted, like how much of ourselves is in our writing, become much more clear… Become clearer when people are newer to it, and so they can't hide it as well in some ways. And so some of the things that you see when you teach are things that you're like, wow, I should remember that from my own writing. Like, I should remember to think about how much of myself and my bringing to this writing experience. Or, wow, am I using… In my thinking broadly enough about dialogue? Or am I thinking about how to make things exciting in a way that aren't just the ways I've been taught, but the things that work for the story? And we're starting to run out of time. 

 

[Erin] But before we get to the homework, which feels very apropos…

[Right]

[Erin] For the topic that we're having, I'm wondering if you each have, like, one sort of piece of advice you would give if somebody is really interested in thinking about getting into teaching?

[Marshall] Think about a tea… No, in…

[Erin] I love the facial expressions that are happening.

[Marshall] That question's amazing. I think… I would go… I would suggest, think about a teacher that you had that created a safe space, that challenged you, that you remember, and put yourself in their place. Like, is that something that you want to do for other young folks? Maybe they reached you at a time where you really needed that teacher and that class and that time. You know what I mean?

[Mark] My thinking was very similar, along those lines. It was a moment where not only you were inspired by the teacher, but they did something that had you then writing and it didn't feel like homework. Because, to me, there were the moments that now I look back and I was like, you gave me more to write, and I wasn't even… I was doing it, but it didn't feel like work. And those, to me, are like the transformative experiences… Is why, at that age, when I could've been doing 20 other different things, did I choose to write more or write a different assignment or read this book? Why was it that thing and what was it that that teacher or librarian or educator did to get me to forget that I'm in school. Like, that's… And so, if you can imagine that. So, yeah, if you have that empathy or understanding, like, what was it that helped you get past that point?

[Yeah]

[Erin] And I would say for me, like, it is be enthusiastic about the subject matter, about the people your teaching. If you teach enough, you will have a day in which you are tired and you are not at your best. But, even so, I think, the enthusiasm really comes through. If you want the person to… When you want someone to learn, that really, I think, comes through. Even if you're tired, even if you're hangry. Like, that wanting someone to learn is what's important because it means you're able to be flexible, and you're thinking about the things that you brought with you from people who wanted you to learn and who were successful in getting you there.

[Mark] And they know… They know if you're excited about it. They know that you're passionate about it. And even if they might not be, they'll get there with you. Because they know you're stoked about it. So, is it homework time? [Garbled you looked like you were?] about to say one more thing.

 

[Mark] So, the homework is very similar to what we kind of just talked about, but I want you to think, if you're even kind of considering teaching, your homework is to think of something that you're very passionate about. It doesn't have to be writing, it could be knitting, it could be whatever. And create a lesson in your head or write it down that would work for you, your younger self.

 

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

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/18-05-an-interview-with-mary-robinette-kowal/

 

Key points: Puppetry and teaching a cat to talk with buttons? Before that? Art education with a minor in theater and speech. Art director. Puppets. Technique, and something to say. Curiosity and surprise. Challenge! Toolboxes. MICE Quotient. Axes of power. The go-to? Yes-but, no-and. What is the character trying to accomplish, what is their motivation? Next? How do we deal with tension without conflict. Subverted expectations? 

 

[Season 18, Episode 5]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] An Interview with Mary Robinette Kowal.

[Erin] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

 

[Howard] And I'm driving. My name's Howard Tayler, and I get to lead this interview of my friend, Mary Robinette Kowal.

[Mary Robinette] Hi.

[Howard] Mary Robinette, I remember meeting you at World Con in… Gosh, was it Montréal?

[Mary Robinette] It was World Fantasy, but, yes.

[Howard] Was it World Fantasy?

[Mary Robinette] No, I think…

[Dan] World Fantasy. I'm pretty sure it was World Fantasy.

[Mary Robinette] It was World something.

[Laughter]

[Howard] I'm pretty sure it was World Con, because that was the year that I got to be in the People Versus George Lucas movie.

[Dan] Okay.

[Howard] But we podcasted, and episode 3.14 was Mary schools Brandon, Dan, and Howard about using puppets to teach us how to write. That was when I met you. But that is not when you started. You have done a bazillion things. I know that one of them is puppetry, and another is teaching your cat to talk with buttons. Where did you come from?

[Laughter]

[Howard] Where did you even…?

[Mary Robinette] Were did I even? So, I was actually an art major in college. Art education with a minor in theater and speech, because being one of those kids who wanted to do everything, that was the closest I could get to doing all the things I wanted to do.

[Howard] The everything major!

[Mary Robinette] Yes. The everything major. I was firmly convinced… So, before that, I was firmly convinced that I was going to be a veterinarian specializing in cats. Then I looked at my math grades, and… Actually, just looked at my grades in general. I was like, "Oh, hey." It turns out I'm good at art. Went to college to do that. I… Like, I can render. I have good technical chops that I have used outside of school. I've been an art director. I've even illustrated some things. But I looked at the stuff that my friends were doing and realized that I had technique, but I didn't actually have anything to say. With puppets, I had both. I had the technique, and I had things I wanted to say. I had a voice that was specific to me. I fell in love with that, and chased it, and did that for 20+ years. Somewhere along the way, also started writing again. Because I had stopped. Again, had that moment of, "Oh. Not only is this fun for me, but there are things I want to say." It's very much the storyteller with any tool you will give me. But some of them I have more things to say than others.

[Howard] That is fascinating to me, because I feel like… Well, you and I are clearly very different people. Because I feel like if I got something to say, and I have technique, then I got something to say using that technique. I've seen your art and was… You drew a picture on a tablet at one point when we were in Chicago. I remember looking at it and thinking why are you not just doing this. You've got so many wonderful things to say, and clearly you've got mad art chops, why don't you say them that way? So that… I don't understand that. I'm not denying that it's a thing, but I just don't understand it.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. It doesn't make sense to me either. Honestly. I don't know…

[Meow]

[Mary Robinette] Elsie however does have things to say.

[Chuckles]

 

[Dan] Well, let me ask you a question, Mary Robinette. Was there a specific moment or project or story that helped crystallize for you either visual art is not for me or puppetry is for me? Because of that, I have something I want to say. Is there anything specific attached or is it more broad than that?

[Mary Robinette] It's broader. Some of it is the difference in where I am in my life, I guess. But with the… I mean, with the writing, I very clearly remember that I was… When I came back to it, my niece and nephew had moved to China with my brother. Skype was not yet reliable thing. So I started writing this story for them. If you go back pretty far into episodes, you can find a thing where we do a deep dive on an outline for… I think I was calling it Two Ordinary Children or Journey to the East, I can't remember which. But it's the novel that brought me back to writing. I remember that I was starting to write this thing as a serial for my niece and nephew. I thought, well, you know, I'll just write an episode and all kind of choose your own adventure my way through it. And that I was… I was starting to think about what happened next and starting to wonder where the story was going and that I wanted to know what happened next. That was this moment of going, "Oh, I think I have something here." That curiosity, that wonder, that is the next thing, what's the surprise. For whatever reason, when I draw, when I paint, I love it. I really en… It's very satisfying. But it is not surprising for me. There's no curiosity about what's the next thing around the corner for me.

[DongWon] I think that is such a wonderful way to think about it, and I'm so glad that you expressed it that way. I… One thing that I always encourage people against is this idea of comparison. That moment you had when you looked at the stuff that your friends were creating and what I thought you were going to say is, "And I could see they were so much better than me." That's not what you said. That's a really important difference. What you said is that you found your voice and your excitement in a different style of art. So I don't want people out there to just get discouraged and stop doing one thing. But the way you did it instead is you got very encouraged by something new and exciting and followed that passion. Which is such a better way of making that decision.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Like I… As I said, I use those skills. It has framed the way I approach things. I still take enormous satisfaction from it. It's just I get more satisfaction from other things. I have stories to tell that I… The tools for me are better with puppets than with fiction.

 

[DongWon] You're exploring all these different media, you're exploring all these techniques. To sort of refill your creative tank? To sort of get back to the writing side, or is it all kind of orthogonal, incidental to each other?

[Mary Robinette] It's… It depends. There's… A lot of this is a new understanding of it. If you had asked me this at the beginning of… When I joined Writing Excuses, I'm sure I would have answered it differently, but I don't know how I would have answered it. Because at the time, I didn't understand that I had ADHD. One of the things that helps is the new. Like, I'm drawn to the new. In hindsight, it's like, "Oh, that's why I had a very successful career in theater," because theater is… Everything is… It's constantly moving to a new show. You do that show and you get really good at it. Then the season is over and you go to a new show. Or you're doing a television show and it's a different… Each episode is different, and you have to learn this technique and that for this particular thing. So it was constantly… New was constantly happening. With the writing, I think that's one of the reasons that I keep moving genre is because that's some of where that newness comes for me. But I also… One of the other things for me that is a driver, and again, it's like, "Oh, in hindsight," is the challenge. So the refilling of the well, it's less about going to something else to refill the well, and more about finding something new to challenge me. So sometimes that's the "I'm going to take my friend's advice and try to write this book without an outline."

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Sometimes it's "I'm going to learn to make a Regency gown that is entirely handsewn."

[Oh, wow.]

 

[Howard] Okay. On that terror inducing note, let's take a quick break for a thing of the week, and then were going to come back and… I've got some cool questions queued up.

[Mary Robinette] I want to talk about The Monsters We Defy by Leslye Penelope. So I met Leslye through a friend of a friend and was told this person is great. Then I was like, "You know, I'd like to…" Correct, Leslye is fantastic and extremely talented and smart. Then I was like, "Let me read this person's fiction." So I listened to The Monsters We Defy. It is such a good audiobook. So it is prohibition black Washington heist novel with ghosts. It is so good. The heist is so beautifully structured. Like, I spent a lot of time looking at how to construct a heist, and this one is so just exquisitely handled. There is the assembling of the team beats, and I love all of the teams. There's the… There's… Every heist, there's a twist, and the twist is… It's just so cleverly handled and moving in the way that it's handled. It's… I can't tell you about it, but you need to listen to this book. It's also really well narrated. It is smart, it is moving, it's funny. It's dealing with generational trauma. It's dealing with fashion. It's dealing with magic and ghosts and I love it a lot. I keep talking about it on kind of everything I go on. So, this is The Monsters We Defy by Leslye Penelope.

 

[Howard] I have a question about the toolbox. Because, Mary Robinette, you have thrown so many tools at us during the last decade or so. The MICE Quotient, obviously, we come back to a lot. The axes of power that you've talked about a little more recently. Discussions of creation of tension. Discussions of the way learning to read things aloud changes the way you write. Do you have a go to favorite when you're stuck? When you fall back on craft, what's the first tool you reach for?

[Mary Robinette] Yes-but, no-and. Because almost always, when I am stuck…

[Howard] Sorry. I thought you were yes-but no-anding my question. And I'm like, "It wasn't enough?"

[Laughter]

[DongWon] The worst improv tool ever.

[Laughter]

[Dan] That's going to be my new response when I get interviewed in like someone else's podcast. Just…

[Laughter]

[Howard] It sounds like a game. Yes-but, no-and.

[Laughter]

[Howard] Mary Robinette, please continue.

[Mary Robinette] Yes. But…

[Howard] No.

[Mary Robinette] Okay. So, the reason that I said, "Yes-but, no-and," is that almost always when I'm stuck, it's because of the "Okay, but what is the next thing that supposed to happen next?" It's usually I have a general idea of the scene and I'm in the scene and I'm like, "Oh. This is okay. But where's? What's the…?" So I look at what my character is trying to accomplish. So I guess in many ways the actual answer is that I go back to my theater roots and I'm like, "But what's my motivation?" Then, once I got the motivation, it's the question of does she succeed at this thing? It's going to be yes, she succeeds, but there is a negative consequence. Or, no, she doesn't succeed, and there's a negative consequence. Then, more recently, when I'm in the latter part of the book, realizing that the but and the and represent directions of progress. So, yes is closer to the goal. But is a reversal. And is continued motion. So yes-and gets me closer to the goal. So it's yes, and a bonus action. That has helped me so many times when I'm kind of trying to inch forward towards the ending. It's reaching for that has been very useful in a scene. Especially if it's like something is coming too easily for the character, or it's coming… It's too hard. I can, like, "Okay, you can adjust direction of action."

 

[Howard] Okay. 

[Erin] I'm curious…

[Howard]  Who else has questions? Erin?

[Erin] I'm curious, yes, what the… So, you have all these amazing tools. I'm curious if there's anything you wish you had a tool for, but you haven't yet figured out. Something that you're working towards figuring.

[Mary Robinette] Um… Hah… Yeah. That's a great question. So… I'm sitting here… What… For the people who don't have the video feed, I'm staring into the middle distance as I think about the novel that I am writing right now. I wish that… So. Huh. A thing that I have been thinking about a lot recently, which I will talk about later in the season, is the difference between conflict and tension. I wish I had a set of tools for talking about tension that is not conflict based and how to manipulate it. I'm starting to kind of be able to identify it and some of the tools to manipulate it. But it is still such a new concept to me because so much of my training as a writer has been story must have conflict. I've been coming to realize that a story must have tension and that conflict is the easiest way to teach that. But that I don't think that it has to have conflict. So, like, one of the things that I'm actually trying to do in this book is have people… Is have the conflict come from the cooperation. Or have the tension come from the cooperation. It's… It is such… Like, it is working, but I don't have a toolbox for it. I'm definitely feeling myself… My way through it and am looking forward to being at a point where I can reverse engineer it, and can reverse engineer what other people are doing. Like, I can tell that other people… It's like, "Okay. This is a subverted expectation." What are the dials for setting up that expectation? What's the point at which you subvert it? Does it matter which direction that you do the subvers… Like, when you veer off of the expectation, does it matter which direction you go? How do you control that? Like, I really… I am… That's, for me, the toolbox that I'm excited to get my hands on next.

[DongWon] That's so cool.

[Howard] Let me know when you've got that one labeled.

[Laughter]

[DongWon] I love watching your process, Mary Robinette. Because… This reminds me of, like, there's a thing that the physicist Richard Feynman said at some point about you don't truly understand the concept until you can teach it to a freshman seminar.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] I see you over and over again tackle these new ideas, these new techniques, these new things. Like, watching you sort of figure out how to internalize it, how to do it, and then how to explain it to other people, seems to be the cycle that I see you go through. It's always really exciting just to watch that and participate in it, and end up getting to reap the benefits of the results at the end there.

[Mary Robinette] My dad says that actually what I is an engineer, really. He's sad that I didn't go into programming.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] The rest of the world is happy that I did not.

[Howard] There is a computer somewhere that is very sorry that it's not running a Mary Robinette Kowal program. But it's not running one, so it's unable to speak to us, so… Meh. Oh, well.

 

[Howard] Hey, do you have some homework for us?

[Mary Robinette] I do. What I want you to think about is, I want you to think about the skills that your non-writing life has given you. I talk a lot about the stuff that I've brought from puppetry. Dan has talked about the stuff that he's brought from doing audio. Which is, granted, still writing, but it is the non-writing aspect. Howard talks about the stuff that he gets from drawing. DongWon and Erin are going to be talking about these things as well as we go through the season. So think about your own life. What is a lens that you have that gives you a toolset that is exciting to play with in your writing?

[Howard] Thank you very much, Mary Robinette. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2021/05/30/16-22-scenes-and-set-pieces/ 

 

Key Points: Scenes and set pieces? Start with setting, challenge, adversaries, rewards, and story development. Setting? Wow factor and tactical implications. Environments let players get creative. Challenge? Variety, and catering to different players. Sneak, battle, talk? Unique elements. Make your challenges hinge on character abilities, not player abilities. Adversaries. Introduce bad guys early, and make things personal. Give them distinct abilities. What's their motivation? In prose, we often challenge characters outside their area of expertise, but in games, we usually challenge players in their skill sets. Rewards, or consequences, and story development. Rewards, gear, show the reader they are making progress. Story development. Make sure characters have incentives to do the encounters, and that there are stakes. Think about how a scene pushes things forward. What are the ramification, what are the potential callbacks?

 

[Season 16, Episode 22]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[Cassandra] Scenes and Set Pieces.

[Dan] 15 minutes long.

[James] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Cassandra] I'm Cassandra.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[James] I'm James.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[Dan] We are talking about scenes and set pieces today. We've got a lot to cover, so were just going to jump right into it. James? Get us started.

[James] Yeah. So when I'm designing an encounter or a scene or whatever you want to call it, I like to break it up into several different categories. So I like to think about the setting, the challenge, the adversaries, the rewards, and also story development. So we're going to hit each of those in turn. I just want to start off with, so, for setting, Cass… Oh, Mary Robinette?

[Mary Robinette] I just want to say… I just want to jump in real fast and say all of the prose writers have been riding along with this because they're interested and curious about it. This episode in particular has stuff that directly applies to what you do. Because every point that we're about to hit is something that you should be thinking about in your prose scenes as well.

 

[Setting]

[James] Yeah. I mean, I definitely think, Cass and I both write fiction as well and I'm sure we probably bring everything we've said in this class to those as well. But, so I want to just right now with Cass, when you're designing the setting for a scene or an encounter, what do you think about?

[Cassandra] Well, there are two things, primarily. The wow factor and the tactical implications of your environment. The wow factor can be a whole bunch of things. With video games, in particular, it's all about the visuals, it is all about the audio, and it's also about cinematography. You can have the best graphics in the world, you can have the best music, but if it's a very static kind of thing, or it's just a character walking in, it's not going to work out for everyone. It's also about individual imaginative [garbled]. In prose, for example, it could be things like how things smell, how things taste, texture. But in games, it can also be about emotional beats. My favorite example of that is Persona 5. When you start the game, you are midway through a heist. There are people with shadow faces leading you on through it. You're running through it. It's great and everything, but it's not terribly impactful because it's weird. However, at the climax of the game, after you have everything explained to you, you actually revisit that first place with the exact same parameters. It's suddenly so much more powerful, because you just had 40 hours of context drilled into your head. Well, we've come to the tactical side, since most of my design goes through actual designers. I'm curious about how you develop them into the RPGs, James?

[James] Yeah. So, in a game like Pathfinder or Dungeons & Dragons or Starfinder that's all about more or less killing things and taking their stuff, or occasionally other variations on that, environments can be really important to the design of scenes, especially combats, because it allows the characters to get really creative. It allows… And it makes, frankly, things seem more interesting than just fighting skeletons in a blank room over and over again. When you add an environment, suddenly the players have a lot more things they can work with. So, for instance, you get the players coming up with all these interesting ideas where they'll go, "Okay, if I tie the badminton net to the goat, and then I scare the goat with the airhorn, then they'll run up the end." Like, players are really creative. You want to give them props to do stuff  with. So that's where I feel like the environment can really be handy. Which… Oh, Dan, did you want to jump in?

[Dan] Yeah, I was just going to say that this is a lesson that I learned watching Star Wars movies, actually. Because the first time I played a tabletop wargame about spaceships, I very quickly realized that it's super boring. Because there's no terrain in space. So there isn't really an environment to interact with. It's the absolute epitome of an empty room. Then you watch the Star Wars movies and realize, "Oh, this space battle, they're running through a trench. This one, they're dodging asteroids. This one, they're flying through debris. This one, there's the big giant shield and it's all about which side of the shield are you on, and is it going to be brought down in time." There's always some kind of dynamic interactive element to make those encounters more interesting.

[Mary Robinette] So, one of the things about the setting that I just wanted to get in here for prose writers, is that the same thing is true. Like, when you're thinking about the setting, how is your character going to use that setting? How is it going to play into the overall arc of the story?

 

[Challenge]

[James] That brings us right into the second one, which is talking about the type of challenge. I really like variety, like you were saying. I really want to mixup the enemy types with the types of challenges. So it just doesn't become wave after wave. Thinking about challenges that cater to the different character types and player types. Because some people are going to want to sneak, some people are going to want to battle their way through. Mary Robinette's probably going to want to make friends with them if they're giant apple trolls, like from last episode.

[Laughter]

[James] So, you want to make sure that there's sort of something for everybody. But, Cass, what do you think about?

[Cassandra] Well, the balance is definitely one of the most necessary things. But I think it's also important to focus on the elements that make your game unique. If your game is all about a character with an energy whip, create challenges that explore every possible use of that whip. Let her swing across chasms, electrocuting things, retrieving objects… I remember Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I picked up this weird Taser-like ability, and my favorite thing to do would be to knock out people and just very gently, like, fill the water full of electricity to watch them very gently buzz to death.

[Laughter]

[Cassandra] In an RPG, you should always…

[Mary Robinette] Very gentle.

[Cassandra] Be sure that your challenges hinge on character abilities and not just player abilities. The players who spent points building a detective should have an easier time solving mysteries. Even if the player playing the barbarian is naturally better at puzzles.

[James] That's so important. I feel like I've absolutely been in that game where I'm the wizard with the 18 intelligence, but I'm naturally just terrible at most puzzles compared to the people I play with. So it'll be the barbarian being like, "No, it's this and this and this."

[Chuckles]

[James] I'm like, "Dude. You shouldn't know that, and I should."

[Dan] Yeah. The first time that I wrote, it was actually an adventure for Starfinder, typically the game writing that I have done has been in much more narrative systems. Starfinder is much more of a crunchy numbers-based thing. So, the main comment that the editor sent back after I submitted the first draft was, "Dan. Players like to roll dice."

[Yeah. Laughter]

[Dan] I realized that I had not really given them any skill checks. It was all based on just kind of interaction. You can ask these questions and learn this information and then you know where to go. He's like, "No. There's like 20 skills in this game. You haven't used any of them. They put points into those skills and they like to roll dice. Give them a chance to do what they're good at."

[Cassandra] That sort of reminds me, I think, of my favorite tabletop RPG story that is in [garbled]. There was a comment going around a few years ago, of this group of Avengers trying to fight, I think, this Orc Lord. Everyone was kind of dropping over dead and it was just terrible and they were all going to lose. There was this one dude left. He was like, "Okay. What? Screw it. My character has like really high charm. I am going to try to seduce the Orc Lord." He rolled a natural 20.

[Chuckles]

[Cassandra] There was just this long pause. He was like, "You know what, I am going to go for it. I am going to declare my love and just stop the war." He kept rolling natural 20s. By the end of the game, his character was leading this Orc Warlord home and going like, "Mom, this is my new husband."

[James] See, that's what I love about tabletop role-playing games. Because in a videogame, maybe you spend the resources to build out that possibility, even though it's a very, very faint possibility. But in a tabletop role-playing game, you can just change on the fly and go with that. I think that's really one of the things that has kept games like Dungeons & Dragons alive in the era of video games.

[Mary Robinette]. If you been listening to all of these things, the variety of challenges that your character faces in prose is as important as it is in a game. You don't want a character who's constantly just fighting things. You want a character who's having to solve the things in different ways. Often in ways that do not play to their skill sets. That's what often will make an interesting challenge in prose.

 

[Adversaries]

[James] Actually, that's a great segue into talking about adversaries. So, I think it's really important when you're thinking about the adversaries in your encounter, you want to introduce any big bad guys early and give players a reason to care. You want to make things personal. So, yeah, what do you folks do in terms of trying to establish a good adversary?

[Cassandra] You want to give them a few distinct abilities that strongly point towards who they are and what they are, and possibly, at least for me, have at least one encounter that completely cements their personality. I think a good example of this is Borderlands and Handsome Jack. Very early on, you meet him and you kind of get a sense of exactly who he is and why you should absolutely hate him. These things need to be done quickly. I think if you're designing a tabletop role-playing game, these parameters have to be set very clearly as well. Because players have the whole game to learn how to use a complex character effectively. A game master who is looking at your notes, he only has minutes. I'm curious about what people have done in regards to that [garbled]

[Howard] Yeah.

[Cassandra] Adversaries.

[Howard] For my own part, the word adversary is hugely informative here. If you run across something, somebody, some animal, whatever, and it just wants to kill you, that's not an adversary. That's just obstacle, it's an enemy. An adversary that I'm going to care about? Well, look, the party and I, we are trying to build a bridge across the street. But the Otter King has decided that there shall be no bridge across the stream, and he takes issue with our entire project, sabotaging us at every turn. But if we don't build the bridge, our eventual plan to unify the clans on both sides of… You see where I'm going?

[James] I romance the Otter King.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Yes. Please. Romance the Otter King, because everybody loves otters. Ultimately, if… For the adversary to feel real, and for us to feel invested, they have to be working logically and passionately and investedly in something that runs counter to what we're trying to do.

[James] I just want to throw out that in my current Starfinder game, I have a player who is literally playing an otter marriage counselor. That's her whole deal. She's incredibly effective. It's… We've talked our way through half the encounters.

[Mary Robinette] So, the thing with adversaries, we been talking about and around, comes back to a thing that I bring from theater for you prose writers. What's my motivation? The Otter King? Like, sure, the Otter King wants to stop you from building the bridge, but why do they want to stop you from building the bridge? That why can make your adversary often significantly more interesting. So think about what that motivation is.

[James] One other thing I want to throw out before we go to our game of the week is that something Cass had said about keeping abilities narrow. This is especially important in tabletop role-playing games, and which I always tell people who are designing new monsters or new adversaries is that really, you're only… If you're not going to use an ability in the first couple rounds of combat, that's often all that an enemy is on stage for. So you don't want to build an enemy with a dozen different abilities if they're only ever going to use three of them. Because that just makes it harder for the game master to process quickly. So pick a couple of things and that'll both let the GM know how to run them and let the PCs know how to fight them.

 

[James] But, let's pause for our book of the week.

[Mary Robinette] So, book of the week, or game of the week, is Shadow Point Observatory. Which is a game for Oculus Quest 2. It's a puzzle game. But I picked it up because it's beautiful. It's about observatories, which are totally my jam. You're trying to solve this thing where this young girl has been ripped out of time. It's the character that you're going in and you're trying to figure out how to restore her to her time. But because she's been ripped out of time, every time you encounter her, each layer of the puzzle, she gets older and older. It takes decades in her… For her for you to figure this out. There's this one point… It's a spoiler, but this is also like… The kind of excruciating thing that they're doing. Because you're in this beautiful environment, and she begs you not to leave. You're like, "But I have to go, because I have to finish solving these puzzles in order to bring you back." It's so painful to walk away from her. It's just… It's really nicely done. I liked it a lot. My dad likes it too. So. Shadow Point Observatory. Highly recommended.

 

[Dan] Super cool. Before we move on to the next thing, I cannot get this thing out of my head that Mary Robinette said earlier, when we were talking about challenges. She said that for prose, it is often, and I would say usually, really important to challenge the character in something that is not their area of expertise. Which is the exact opposite of what we were saying about game writing. Where often you want to let people do what they are good at. I think that that's a really key thing to bring out, that in games, the players want to excel. They want to have a chance to use their powers. They want to show how awesome they are. In fiction, we often kind of… We want to let our characters demonstrate their awesomeness, but we also want to force them to be weak and to overcome those weaknesses. Which, I think, is a really interesting dichotomy.

[James] Well, it's important to remember that when you're doing a game, you're designing for a range of characters, often in a role-playing game. You don't necessarily know which one you're getting. So you want to make sure that the challenge you design is hard enough to challenge the person who specializes in that particular type of challenge, so that it's a satisfying thing, but they can succeed. But it still needs to be beatable by characters who aren't specialized in that. So you want to make sure that you are accommodating for all of the above.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Even… In both cases, I think, the thing that will happen is the thing that happens in real life, which is that whatever tools you bring to the table, whether it's your characters bringing it to the table in prose or in games, they're going to solve it with the tools that they have on hand. So, just because the challenges and set up for them to be like this is the… The character who in prose who walks into the room and is like, "Oh, there's a lot of people here that I'm supposed to shoot at and I can't… I don't actually know how to use a gun. But I'm very good at sneaking." So they do this… They use the skills, even though the challenge in front of them is set up for them to fail.

[Howard] I want to do a quick call back to something Cassandra said two or three episodes ago about choices yielding consequences. The reward being consequences. I don't mind failing a challenge in a role-playing game, provided the failure isn't, "Oop. Wawawawawa. Game over. Start again." If the challenge going back to the Otter King… I failed to talk to the Otter King, now we have to fight the entire otter tribe. Well, that's a sad failure, because I don't want to fight the otters, I want to befriend the otters. If you build the challenges in such a way that the failures alter the choices we can make, then failure isn't catastrophic. I feel like in role-playing games, failure should be fun.

[James] Yeah.

 

[Rewards]

[Mary Robinette] I feel like that is a natural segue to talking about rewards as part of the consequences.

[James] Yeah. Absolutely. Rewards, and even putting rewards and story development together. Because in many ways, like you were just saying, there kinds of the same thing. The rewards, the consequences, and the development, all fall into the same category. So how do you all handle that?

[Cassandra] Very carefully. Because I feel like…

[Chuckles]

[Cassandra] The entire feel of a player's experience can be ruined, honestly, if they end up with, let's say equipment that is meant for them in the end dungeon. Now, for some players, again, I am a power player, I am happiest when I can just bulldoze through things. It makes me laugh. But for other players, it just takes away the enjoyment, because all the challenges are gone. The environment, the varieties you build in the consequences, they no longer matter if one strike of the sword is enough to stop an adversary cold. So you do not want to end up with a character that is overpowered. Similarly, it's important to track the rewards, because an underpowered character is just going to be miserable. The grind isn't fun when you're dedicating a few hours of your life to fun.

[Mary Robinette] The thing that I think about in prose is that the rewards are part of the way of letting the reader know that you're making progress. It's not just about the gear that you pick up, but that yes, this slog is worth it. Because it's really easy in prose, we talk a lot about yes-but, no-and, and making things worse for the character, and it's really easy to forget the importance of the yes, which is the reward. Even if there is a consequence for that reward. It's still that forward momentum, that forward progress, is still important to think about.

[Howard] One of the mechanics we built into Planet Mercenary, if players embrace in character their failures, they get role-play points. You can spend the role-play points to boost die rolls, to reroll dies, to reroll dice, to… There's all kinds of uses for them we didn't put limitations per game around on how you spent these. One of the players in one of the play tests I ran, to my great joy, figured this out, so that when we got to the point where it's time to defuse the nuclear weapon, he has accrued all of his role played failures and plays this stuff and Bam! The weapon is defused. Nothing about that felt steamroll-y. Everything felt earned. Because he had done such a good job of owning all of the earlier failures.

[Dan] That's great. One thing about rewards, when we're talking about gear, I keep talking about Star Wars and I apologize for that. I don't know why that's the example that leaps to my mind. But when you're talking about giving overpowered gear to a character too early, Luke Skywalker gets his lightsaber like 20 minutes into the first movie. That's the best weapon in the game, so to speak. But what's fascinating about it is that he… The reward is not the gear. It's his own skill with it. We have to get into the middle section of the second movie before he really learns how to use it. It's not until the end of the third movie that he gets it into a full-blown lightsaber battle where he gets to show off all his skills. So sometimes rewards are… It can be really valuable to give someone the crazy equipment early on, and then just let them learn how to use it.

 

[Story Development]

[Cassandra] Last of all, one you really do need to consider is how story development ties in with encounters they are creating. Make sure that your characters are incentivized to actually do the encounters. Make sure there are stakes. They don't need to be big stakes, however. Assassin's Creed Valhalla had this one [cat] that you could find and [stick, take] to your boat. It was a completely separate, quiet quest. Mechanically, it did nothing. It's just a decorative item. But, good Lord, it's also a kitty that you can have on your Viking boat for the rest of the game. James, do you have anything to add on that point before we run away [garbled]?

[James] Yeah. You want to think about how does a given scene push things forward. What are the ramifications? What elements do you want to tag for future reference, so that, as we said before, you can call back to something? What can the outcomes of this scene lead to later so that when, three scenes down the road, somebody calls back to a thing you just did, you've laid the groundwork for that?

 

[Mary Robinette] You all had homework for us, I think?

[Cassandra] We did. We would like you to design an encounter for a game that you've enjoyed, getting all of the factors that we mentioned. Setting, challenge, adversaries, rewards, and story development.

[Dan] Wonderful. Well, thank you very much. This is been a long, but I think, really fantastic episode. This is Writing Excuses. You are out of excuses. Now go write.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2020/06/28/15-26-taking-the-chance-with-david-weber/

 

Key points: Taking the chance, taking risks, is the only way to be successful. "He who will not risk cannot win." To succeed, take the risk of failing. If you don't submit, you can't make a sale. Be a storyteller. At some point, it will turn into work. Keep going. When you can't get the platonic ideal book on the page, what do you do? Write the damn book. Learn from it. Characterization is critical. You have to be you. Write the story that interests you. Choose your verbs wisely. Never bury dialogue inside a paragraph. Sentences are what you build books out of. Characters are what stories are about, sentences are how you tell the story. Get those two things right.

 

[Mary Robinette] Season 15, episode 26.

[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Taking the Chance, with David Weber.

[Howard] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Brandon] And we're not that smart.

[Brandon] I'm Brandon.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Brandon] And we have special guest star, David Weber. Thank you so much for being on the podcast with us.

[David] Thank you for inviting me.

[Brandon] David Weber is one of the best-selling science fiction writers of all time, so we are super excited to have him. We are alive again at SpikeCon.

[Whoo! Applause!]

 

[Brandon] So, this topic was one that you suggested, David. The idea of taking the chance, meaning taking risks with your writing. What made you want to do this topic?

[David] Well, it's not just taking risks with your writing once you're an established writer. I cannot tell you how many people I've encountered who I think could have been successful writers, except that they were afraid to take the chance of failing at something that they had dreamed about. I could have been published easily 10 years earlier than I was if I hadn't kept finding excuses to do other things instead. That means I've been publishing for 30 years and I've lost a third of the time that I could have been published at this point. I mentioned in the preshow when I was talking to our hosts that there's a quote from John Paul Jones which has become increasingly important to me over the years, and it has nothing to do with not giving up the ship. But Jones said that, "It seems to be a law inflexible unto itself that he who will not risk cannot win." So if you don't take the risk of failing as a writer, you can never succeed as a writer. So you're sitting there, and you have this dream that says I could be a writer. Perhaps you could. But if you keep saying I could be a writer long enough, one day you wake up and it's turned into I could have been a writer, but the opportunity is gone now. Okay? So if you want to write, you have got to take the chance of being rejected, and possibly being rejected over and over again, until you find the right first reader, the right publisher that says, "Oh. I could do this." Okay? You have to remember while you're doing this, you control, or writers in general control a resource that publishers have to have. Publishers exist to publish. That means they need things to publish. Which means that they are constantly on the lookout for things to publish. Yes, they get a lot of dreck and there's… the first readers pile is the slush pile, and people read it and they go, "Oh, my God." I actually know of one book that was submitted on brown paper written in purple crayon. Okay? You don't get read when you do that kind of submission. But if you don't submit, you cannot possibly make a sale. I cannot emphasize… Over emphasize how important it is to be willing to do that. The other thing that I think you need to bear in mind is you can learn to write better with editorial support and with the practice. You can learn to write better. But what you have to be to make it work in this business is a storyteller. You have to have that bug. You can increase the skill with which you exercise that need to be a storyteller. But that's a critical element. If you don't feel that inside, if you don't feel the story that needs… That's growing that needs to come out, then you don't need to try and be an author. Because you're going to be fighting your own nature the entire time that you're trying to write a story. Unless that is what it is your nature to be. Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, storytellers have to tell stories. That's certainly true in my case.

 

[Brandon] Howard, you had something you wanted to say?

[Howard] Yeah. I was just going to… I like the John Paul Jones quote. We've had the opportunity to visit NASA a couple of times. They have that famous slogan, failure is not an option. Because there are times at which, boy, you just… You can't allow yourself to fail. I created a maxim within my own universe, which is "Failure is not an option. It's mandatory. The option is whether or not to let failure be the last thing you do."

[David] Yeah.

[Howard] The idea there… I mean, that doesn't get you past the John Paul Jones quote, which is that you have to take that chance in the first place. But I am always reminding myself that I am going to fail. It's just gonna happen. All I get to choose is whether or not I learn from it and whether I let myself quit.

[David] Well, NASA's failure is not an option stands on the shoulders of every single thing they did that failed as they were doing the engineering, when they were developing…

[Howard] They blew up so many rockets.

[Laughter]

[David] Absolutely. Okay? Failure is not an option means that ultimately we must succeed. It doesn't mean that we won't have the occasional catastrophe along the way. That we won't have Columbia. That we won't have…

[Dan] But, to your point about the whole premise of this episode, if NASA had never done anything that could have failed, they never would have gotten into orbit, they never would have gotten on the moon.

[David] Exactly.

[Dan] They had to be willing to take those risks and screw up horribly in order to achieve what they eventually have achieved.

 

[David] That's absolutely true. It's… Okay. No task worth doing springs fully blown and fully performed from the brow of Zeus. Okay? You have to go out there and make it work. All right? Now, most of the successful writers that I know would write whether anyone was buying their work or not. We have to do it. That's part of that storytelling bug that I was talking about. Okay? Whether we're writing for our own entertainment, our family's entertainment, or just because, my God, it's 2 o'clock in the morning, I can't sleep, I gotta do some more writing, we write. If you don't have that kind of… Robert Asprin once said, and Robert and I did not necessarily see together on all things…

[Laughter]

[David] But he said, "Successful authors are like rats. If we don't wear our fingers down on the keyboard every day, our fangs grow through our brains and kill us.

[Laughter]

[David] Okay? It's still a valid metaphor, even though I use voice recognition software when I write now. But it's true. If you… I have this need to be crafting stories. Okay? Now, for the last year or so, I haven't been, and that's because I face planted into a cement floor in Atlanta the day before Dragon Con and gave myself a concussion, broke my nose into places, stitches inside my mouth, the whole 9 yards. It has taken me effectively a year to recover from the concussion status to where I am once again really writing. Okay? It's been a real trial for me and for people who were expecting books from me and everything else, but sometimes, the need to tell stories is sort of temporarily stymied by the fact that, you know what, my brain's not working.

[Howard] One of the first things that I learned about… I'm a web cartoonist, and one of the first things I learned in this regard was when I still had a day job, early 2000's, we would take… I was in the software industry. We'd take two weeks off around Christmas, because kind of the whole industry wound down. For that two weeks, I told myself my Christmas present to me is that I'm going to pretend I'm a cartoonist full-time. I'm just going to do this. I would tell my plan to people. They're like, "You're going to pretend to have a job over Christmas?"

[Chuckles]

[Howard] "Okay, one, you're a broken human, and, two, what does your family think?" What I found is those are some of my fondest memories of this. Yeah. Storyteller gotta stug… Gotta story tell."

 

[David] There comes a time, in a given project or whatever, where it turns into work. Where you have to drive yourself to it. You have to do that. I have, in every book, I have what I call the chapter. That's the point at which I say, "This entire book is dreck. What was I thinking? Oh, my God, I can't get this to come together." The only thing that I can do is just keep grinding it out and saying, "Boy, this is sucky." Okay, that kind of thing? Then, when I get to the final edit, I can't identify the chapter.

[Howard] I was going to say, you've refined your process to the point that only happens for one chapter doing a project?

[Laughter]

[David] No, that's… Pretty much, yeah. You know. It's this kind of thing.

[Howard] Winning.

[David] Yeah.

 

[Brandon] Let's go ahead and… Let's stop for a book of the week, then we'll get back to it.

[David] Okay.

[Brandon] You have our book, or books of the week, this week.

[David] I have two. One is The Gordian Protocol, which came out in May, with Jacob Holo. Who is a BMW engineer in an alternate universe. I think that our backgrounds, the synergy was really, really good. He's got three or four self published novels out. This will be his first traditionally published novel. Is his first traditionally published novel. This was not one of the two I was thinking about, but he has just handed me the draft of the Valkyrie Protocol, which is the sequel. It's pretty much ready to go. We have to wait for him to get a hiatus in that real-life job to do a little tweaking that I pointed out to him. The other book that I've just handed in is the sequel to Out Of the Dark, which, yes, is the one with vampires in it. This one is rather cleverly titled Into the Light. I did it with Chris Kennedy, of the Four Horsemen universe and whatnot. He was my co-author on it. I'm really pleased with the way that it worked out. The vampires are a little flamboozled when they begin finding out some things about their own past and their own existence that neither they nor the earlier writers who didn't like the vampires didn't know. Okay? For… I won't go any deeper into it than that. But suffice it to say, that Vlad Tepes was a tiny bit mistaken about exactly how and what he became when he became it.

[Brandon] Excellent.

 

[Brandon] This topic's very interesting to me, because I work with a lot of aspiring writers. I teach at the University, and of course the podcast, and things like this. Looking back at myself when I was first making the choice to start writing, one of the things that I think holds back new writers, and I've kind of found some language that I can describe this more recently, is that, for me, there was this beautiful book I imagine somewhere out in the aether, right? It was like the Platonic ideal of a book. As, having read for many years, and sitting down to write the first time, it was like I knew this book was out there, but then my crude fingers could not get that book on the page. It was really frustrating to me. Because it felt like… It wasn't fear that I think stopped me, it was this sense that I was taking something beautiful and I was making it something flawed and terrible, because my skill wasn't good enough. I've found multiple other aspiring writers that kind of have this same attitude that… Less fear, more like, I guess I must not have done enough worldbuilding or I must not have thought it through enough, because this beautiful story, I just can't make it come out on the page.

[David] Well, that's…

[Brandon] So, I guess my question to you is strategies for writers who are having trouble making that transition, taking that chance, giving themselves permission to fail. What are some strategies that people could use to do that?

[David] Write the damn book.

[Laughter]

[David] And when you're done, if it's not what you thought you were going to come up with, file it under this was a learning experience, these are the things that I can see that I did wrong. Do those right in the next book. I have an entire file cabinet at home that has probably 300 short stories in it, that were written solely because they were things that I wanted to play with as a writer. How was I going to describe this? How was I going to handle this bit of characterization? You… Basically, this is one of the crafts that the only way you can learn to do it is to do it. There's not a credential program somewhere that is going to say, "Okay. Now you have a diploma. You'll go out there and be a successful writer." Okay? There are all kinds of courses that you can take and training that you can seek that will help you, give you tools that you might not have otherwise. But there's nobody out there who can teach you how to be a writer. Anybody who says we will teach you how to be a writer is taking your money. Okay? Because what they can do is they can teach you how they are a writer. They can teach you how these three guys over here are writers. They can't teach you how you're a writer. Okay? Characterization. Characterization is a critical component of any story you're going to tell. How do you build a character? Okay? One of the things that I do when I'm doing writing workshops is I rollup a character from one of the role-playing game series. I tell my students, I say, "Okay, this is the character that you have. This is the age, this is the gender, everything else. Go home, and between now and the next session, write me an explanation for why this character exists with these skills, these abilities, these disabilities." They frequently turn it into what is actually a very good short story. Okay? In getting out who this character is. That's the kind of thing that you have to be able to build on your own. I can give you that assignment, and tell you to go home and do it. But I can't say to you, the first way that you should do it is by doing thus and so, because the best that you could learn from that is how I do it. What makes a writer succeed is that writer's voice. You can take exactly the same story, the exact same plot, even the exact same characters by name. Okay? And have two different writers do the story. You have two totally different stories. Okay?

[Brandon] Absolutely.

 

[David] One of them is going to be the way that you tell the story, and one of them is going to be the way that somebody else tells the story. What makes you a successful writer is your voice finding its audience. You cannot do that trying to be someone else. You have to be you.

[Dan] Yeah. I… Finding that voice of your own is critical and it is difficult. I like to think about this in terms of Ender's Game. Because they had the kids in the Battle School, and they would fight against each other. Then there's this really critical scene towards the end of it, where Bean stands up in the lunch room and says, "Guys. We are doing the same strategies over and over and over. We will never learn anything new until we give ourselves the freedom to fail." That's when they kind of throw out the whole competition system and they say, "Okay. We're going to try this, and it probably will be awful, but we'll learn something from it.

[David] Yeah.

[Dan] So I imagine someone out there listening to this podcast thinking, lack of risk-taking is not my problem, I've tried everything I can think of. It's… I'm just not selling anything. Maybe what you need to do is something ridiculous. Maybe you need to change genre. Maybe you need to try something new. Maybe you need to put that big golden book that Brandon was talking about, that idealized thing that you have in mind, put that on a shelf and write something different.

[David] Okay. Let me tell you one of the most critical things that you should bear in mind as a writer. Write the story that interests you. They say, write what you know. Well, I don't know anybody who's been a starship captain. Okay? I'm sorry, there just aren't too many of them around for me to go interview, that kind of thing. But if there's a type of story that is especially suited to you, that you enjoy reading, etc. Point number one, you're not unique. That means there are other people who enjoy reading that same sort of story. It may not be what's currently hot. But publishers don't necessarily look for what's currently hot. They look for what they expect to be durable. Some publishers do. They want to push you into writing whatever is selling right now. Avoid them. Okay? I'm sorry. But you should. Okay? Now, if they say, "We'll pay you a stack of money to write it," then you can say to yourself, "Okay. They'll pay me a stack of money. I'll get some practice writing, and then I'll be able to go do what I want to do." But, point number one, if you like it, other people will like it. Point number two is if you like it, you will write it better than something you are writing that you feel that you have to write in order to be hot, in order to sell your work. Okay? Point number three is publishers are constantly looking for things to publish. Now, some publishers, for whatever combination of reasons, have blinders on or at least blinkers. Okay? Maybe, it's like, I don't agree with the political philosophy in that book. There's all kinds of idiosyncratic factors that can come into play. But the bottom line is publishers need stuff to publish. Keith Laumer once said that there's not the great unsold novel. There's only the great unwritten novel. Because if you write it, and it is good and you submit it long enough, you will sell it because publishers are looking for things to publish. The editor who discovered Thomas Wolfe… Thomas Wolfe had been rejected about eight or nine dozen times. Okay? Then this guy found… Discovered Thomas Wolfe and made his entire career out of the fact that he was the guy who discovered Thomas Wolfe. He was asked by another editor at one point. The guy said, "I read the first quarter of a million words, and it sucked. Where did you realize…?" He said, "About word 300,000."

[Hmm, hmm, hmm.]

[David] Okay? What I'm saying to you is that eventually, if what you have done is publishable, it will find a buyer. Sometimes, even if what you've done isn't punishable… Publishable. Punishable? There was…

[Laughter]

[David] I've read some horrible books before. But even if what you've written in its current form isn't publishable, sometimes you'll get that little comment back that will tell you why it wasn't. More often than not, you'll get a form letter that says, "I'm sorry. It doesn't really meet our needs at this moment. Etc., etc." But sometimes you'll get that little flicker of a response, and you go, "Oh!" Now, I've been doing this… I've supported myself as a writer since I was 17. I'm 67 this year. So I've been writing… I've been earning my living pushing words around for 50 years. Okay? I've been a published novelist for… Well, we sold the first… I sold the first book in April 1989. So this is the 30th year since I sold the first book. In the course of that time, I like to think I've learned a few things. Okay? There are some very simple things that an author… Okay. For example. Any aspiring writer should realize that the most important word in any sentence is the verb. Choose your verbs wisely. Don't say, "He came quickly to his feet." Say, "He leapt to his feet. He jerked to his feet. He jerked upright." Okay? Never use an -ing verb when you can avoid it, unless you want the voice of what you're writing to be passive. All right? Never bury dialogue inside a paragraph. If there's dialogue in a paragraph, start the paragraph with the dialogue and arrange the internal mechanics to make that work. Okay? Don't worry about choppy paragraphs. Worry about where you want to direct the reader's eye. You're setting the cadence, you're creating the rhythm. Maybe you need short choppy sentences and paragraphs at this point. Maybe you need one line paragraphs for emphasis. Okay? Maybe the one line paragraph that you need is, "In the world blew up." Okay? Because you're in the middle of a combat situation, there's a missile incoming, the character you're writing about doesn't know it. There's combat chatter, they're saying, "We're under fire," the character's turning around. Then the world blew up. As a separate paragraph. So think about those sorts of things when you're writing. That's not a question of my telling you to write in my voice. Because these are things that any writer can profit from, in the way that they construct and craft sentences, and sentences are what you build books out of.

[Brandon] We could probably sit here for another hour and listen to this.

[Chuckles]

[Brandon] Because these are excellent points. But we are out of time. I want to thank our audience at SpikeCon. Thank you guys.

[Applause]

[Brandon] I want to thank Mr. Weber for coming on the podcast.

 

[Brandon] Do you have a writing prompt you can give to our listeners?

[David] A writing prompt?

[Brandon] Yes.

[David] Something to do. I would say, go home and create a character. Okay? Not one that you set out to build because this is going to go in your story. But give yourself the assignment of taking a character that you didn't create because you rolled it up or whatever. Then, build in your worldbuilding bible, in your tech bible, whatever, build why that character is who that character is. Because stories are about characters. If the character is not interesting to the reader, the story will go nowhere. If the character is not interesting to you, and understood by you, you will not be able to communicate it to the reader. Your characters will still, if you do this long enough, the characters will evolve in the storytelling, and they should. So, as the life experience of that character is shared with your readers in multiple books, you have to understand how that character changes and incorporate it. Characters are what stories are about. Sentences are how you tell the story. Get those two things right, and the story will usually succeed. A weak story that is well told will succeed, where a strong story that is weakly told fails.

[Brandon] Awesome. I don't know that we could put it better than that. So, this has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2018/11/25/13-47-qa-on-fixing-characters/

 

Q&A Summary:

Q: How do you approach changing/refining character voices when you realize that two are too similar?

A: Redefine in your head who they are. Give them a different background and personality. Do you need the extra character? If not, combine them. Try a vocabulary fix.

Q: How can you tell if a character is the problem? How do you go about defining this?

A: Watch for the reactions in writing group. Is writing them keeping you engaged, or are they boring? Try looking at them from somebody else's viewpoint. An honest critique partner.

Q: How do you maintain interest in a character who is largely inactive?

A: A reluctant hero, or a protagonist who has not yet protagged, may mean it's time to focus on somebody else, or that the story hasn't started yet. What is the character excited or interested in? Protagging is good, but fascinations can also work.

Q: How do you write interesting bad guys when your POV characters are just the good guys? 

A: Why are the people around you interesting? Use second-hand sources, clues, and the POV characters thinking or talking about it.

Q: How do you give a powerful character meaningful challenges and relatability?

A: Identify things they are not good at, and put the challenges there. A really big bad guy. Delve into their emotional side, what they care about.

Q: How can I make alien characters charming and mysterious?

A: Listen to the podcast on writing alien characters.  [Season 13, Episode 44]

Q: How can I make a normal everyday person an interesting character without giving them some sort of Mary Sue trait? I.e., child of prophecy or magically superior?

A: Consider what you find interesting in the normal people around you. Listen to people -- the knowledge, background, even the way they talk. Passions and interests are strengths.

Q: How do I give my characters interests that mesh with the plot after writing half a draft and realizing they have no interests?

A: Use a spreadsheet. What are the plot points, and the interests or abilities that you need? Now add the characters, and see who needs what. 

Q: Who is Cheeto McFlair, and why are they writing on our spreadsheet?

 

[Mary] Season 13, Episode 47.

[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Q&A on Fixing 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 Broken.

[Brandon] Well, hopefully we can fix you, Howard.

 

[Brandon] Jonathan asks, "How do you approach changing/refining character voices when you realize that two are too similar?"

[Dan] Oh, man. Okay. So I did this. I talked earlier in the year about how all of my boy best friend characters tended to be very similar. So the most recent one, since it's not out yet, I have the chance to go through and fix it. Really had to kind of fundamentally redefine in my head who he was. He couldn't just be the snarky guy who cracks the jokes I would make if I were in the scene. He had to have something else. So, I made sure that I gave him a very different background and a very different personality than the other character, and his language started coming out differently.

[Valynne] One of the things that I've done is when I have two characters in the same book who are sounding very similar, I've just had to decide, "Do I really need this extra character?" A lot of times, I can just combine them into one. So I kill them off.

[Howard] It's a good thing that that doesn't happen in real life.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Howard, you sound just like Dan. Die now.

[Dan] We don't need both of you!

[Laughter]

[Howard] My solution for this is often a vocabulary fix, where I'll pick words that are unique to each side. One character is willing to use metaphors in their speech, and the other won't use metaphors, they'll use something else. That often is enough to differentiate it.

 

[Brandon] All right. Darcy Cole, longtime friend of the podcast…

[Dan] Friend of ours in real life.

[Brandon] And friend in real life, asks us, "How can you tell if a character is the problem? How do you go about defining this?" I've had a moment to look at this, so I'll start us off. You guys can think about it. I've had a couple of times where the character was the problem. It took a little while to notice it. What would happen is in writing group, people were not wanting to get back to that character when their scene came up. This happens in all stories where you've got a large cast and you're switching between them. Sometimes people are going to be like, "I'm not excited to get back to this character." But what was happening with this one was habitually, people were like, "Oh, that one was a downer, too." Like it wasn't just like they were sad to get back to it. They were not excited when they were done with it, and they were happy to get off of it and back to other characters. Usually…

[Howard] Reading these chapters is like homework.

[Brandon] Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I was running into that. So that was one way I identified, "Okay. This character's a problem."

[Howard] If writing them isn't keeping you engaged, there's probably a problem. If it's boring, if it's…

[Dan] I find… I rarely write things from multiple viewpoints, but when I do, it's very easy in those cases to pop out, "Oh, this character doesn't work," when they're in somebody else's viewpoint. Because suddenly they become very boring. I realize that I haven't built enough of a personality for them. So when I'm seeing them from the outside, they're incredibly flat.

[Brandon] Sometimes it's just helpful to have someone like Dan read your book who will tell you…

[Laughter]

[Brandon] Because he told me before, "This character's boring." I'm like, "Oh, yeah, they are."

[Valynne] I think a lot of times I just have to have a beta reader or someone point it out to me. Because I'm too close to the project and can't see what's not working. So get an honest critique partner.

[Dan] Don't be afraid of honest critique, because you're going to get those critiques inevitably. In Partials, I got a character… The character Marcus. He… Everyone hated him. That's the kind of thing that a good writing group could have caught. Our writing group didn't. So then all the reviews and all the feedback from readers is, "Hey, this is great, but this guy's awful."

 

[Brandon] How do you maintain interest in a character who is largely inactive? For example, being afraid to leave the house. It's a classic first act problem, right? That sometimes you have a character who's reacting to stimulus instead of being the proactive one themselves. How do you solve this in your stories? Valynne, we've all talked about this thing a lot. Have you ever run into this, where you wanted to start a character who was reactive and then had to deal with making the story interesting? If you've never done it, it's okay.

[Valynne] I don't know if I have. I'm trying to think of… There's a movie that I'm thinking of that deals with… It's Ryan Reynolds, and he's inside a box, like the whole movie.

[Transcriptionist's note: the movie is Buried]

[Brandon] Okay. [Garbled] thing.

[Valynne] Or Sandra Bullock in the spaceship, like the whole time, and it's like only her. That's kind of what we're talking about, right? Just, you have someone who…

[Howard] Well, I think in this case, what they may be talking about is the reluctant hero. A protagonist who is… Who has not yet protagged. Often, for me, if I'm in a situation like that, it's because it's time for the story to focus on somebody else, where something is happening, or the story hasn't started yet. This person hasn't been moved out of their comfort zone yet. In late, out early. I can come in later.

[Dan] Well, all of these examples that Valynne is pointing out are people who are confined to one location but still very interesting. That's because… Your reluctant hero doesn't want to go on this journey yet, presumably, that's because they've got something else there really interested in doing. So as long as they are excited about something or interested in something or doing something, even if it's not the plot of your book, it still makes the characters seem active, even if they're not doing anything.

[Brandon] We are interested in lots of different things. Conflict… Protagging, as we say… Proactiveness is one of them. But we're also interested in people's fascination. Someone being really interested in something alone can be sometimes enough. But the example was a character that didn't leave the house. That's a conflict. That's a really interesting conflict. How do they work around not leaving the house? You've got a story there, right away.

[Valynne] I think you end up just going deep into that character's head and understanding the thought processes behind, "What if I left?" If… I think there are a lot of things that go on in the head of someone who doesn't feel like he or she can leave the house. So you're going… You have to really analyze those thoughts carefully.

 

[Brandon] So, also longtime listener, Cheeto McFlair…

[Dan] Good friend, Cheeto McFlair.

[Brandon] Yes. As… There's a lot of Cheeto McFlair in all of us. How do you write interesting bad guys when your POV characters are just the good guys? [Pause] Oh, Cheeto stumped you.

[Dan] I'm trying to think. Because I do this in all the John Cleaver books. We never get a viewpoint from any of the bad guys. But we do see a lot of them.

[Howard] This is… That's just the story of life. You are the POV character in your story. Are there people who are not you who are interesting? Why are they interesting? What did you observe about them that was interesting?

[Valynne] I don't think you write them any differently for the most part. I mean, you still give them strengths and flaws and…

[Dan] It can be hard, though, and I see where the question is coming from, to… How can you get into the head of someone that you're not actually writing them from their point of view? I've run into this problem in some of my books. I really want to explore, for example, this person who is… It's a chase book, and we're trying to chase this person down. Why are they running? I can't say that without getting into their head, and so I had to find other ways of making them interesting and of revealing their story. Sometimes the way to do that is through research, through… Let your characters learn what they can from second-hand sources and let them extemporize on it, talk to each other. Well, maybe it's because of this, or maybe it's because of this. Which increases the mystery while answering questions at the same time.

[Brandon] I had this problem in the Steelheart books. The first one, in particular. Because it's a first-person narrative from a guy's viewpoint, and… If you haven't read the books, he basi… His father's killed by evil Superman, basically. Evil… The Emperor of Chicago, and he… His life's goal is to take this guy down. So I had to have this Emperor of Chicago who was a very powerful individual that my main character could never really interact with, because if he did, he'd be squished. So my response to this, in building the outline, I knew this, and I needed to… Like, I had broadcasts from Steelheart, the Emperor of Chicago… The kind of 1984 style, you have to watch this broadcast, sort of thing, so I could show him. I showed the effects of his rule. Had people talking about him. I built him with some immediate conflict. Not inside of him. But to the reader. Like, when I present him in the opening scene, he's presented as a savior figure, floating down from the ceiling. Then he goes ballistic and it's bad. That kind of self-contradiction of I'm expecting Superman and I got this instead allowed me to make him very memorable in the reader's mind. At least that's my hope. Thank you for the question, Cheeto.

 

[Brandon] Let's go ahead to our book of the week. Which is actually a TV show Howard's been watching.

[Howard] Not a book at all. Myths and Monsters, which is narrated by Nicholas Day. As of January of 2018, it's available on Netflix. The first episode is a wonderful pop-culture overview on the Campbellian monomyth. The whole series is about mythology… The heroes, the monsters, the settings of legend, and what are the historical and cultural underpinnings of those. Why are so many of them similar? Where are the standouts? It's quite fascinating. One of the things that I love about it is that where no direct footages available, say of Triston and Isolde in real life, they will often use penciled illustrations with halftone shading that are really striking. Really pretty illustrations in the show. Very interesting, and I'm four episodes in and have loved it.

[Brandon] Excellent.

[Howard] Myths and Monsters, narrated by Nicholas Day.

 

[Brandon] All right. So we get this question a lot. Both in the last Q&A, and we did this one. I'm just going to pitch it at you guys. If you think we've just covered this, we can move on. But the question is how do you give a powerful character meaningful challenges and relatability? This kind of comes into the iconic character thing sometimes, but I think they're talking about someone like Superman. How do you do this? We get this question a lot.

[Howard] Fundamentally, you identify the things that they are not good at, and you put the challenges there.

[Dan] Which works most of the time, but I do think there is something to be said for watching them use their… The things that they're really good at. We like that wish fulfillment of watching Superman just punch something so hard it compresses into diamond or whatever. So sometimes you just… You do just need a really big bad guy.

[Valynne] I think you need to delve into the emotional side of the character as well. What do they care about? Focus on what they care about.

 

[Brandon] All right. Victoria, you asked, "How can I make alien characters charming and mysterious?" We did an entire podcast on writing alien characters. So hopefully, you've listened to that by now.

 

[Brandon] I'm going to go to Andrew's question here. "How can I make a normal everyday person an interesting character without giving them some sort of Mary Sue trait? I.e., child of prophecy or magically superior?"

[Howard] I feel very bad that you perhaps don't know any normal people who you find interesting.

[Brandon] See, I understand what you're saying. But I want to be in defense of Andrew here. Sometimes it's very hard to do in writing, right? What are your strategies for doing this?

[Howard] I have spent a long time listening to people. When I was doing my drawing at the comic book shop, I would often ask people, "What do you do? Tell me about it. Describe your job." I always learned… Learning that the smell of pineapple and the smell of cheddar cheese are differentiated by like one chemical from a guy who was studying food science. People know things that I don't. I love learning that. If you recognize that, and begin exploring those aspects of the people on your page, they will become interesting.

[Dan] That applies not just to the knowledge that they have and the background they come from, but also just the ways that they talk. One of my favorite scenes that I wrote in John Cleaver six is he kind of goes on a date at one point, and he's in a taco shop with five other guys, people his age. They're just kind of local kids, about 19 years old, talking. They're all very different, and some of them are obnoxious, and some of them are based on people that I know, and some of them are based on conversations I've had. That kind of stuff is great. Just getting into the gritty details of why does she talk very differently from her? I love that kind of stuff.

[Howard] Now, if we come back to the question and rephrase it, how do you instill a sense of wonder when the character is a normal character without giving them something wondrous? That becomes truly challenging. I… Sense of wonder's tricky.

[Brandon] Well, your books do not have any superpowers or anything. How do you… Do you differentiate your characters? I wouldn't even say that they all were necessarily skilled in anything specific. At least not in a kind of traditional this one has this ability. Like, it was just about a bunch of kids, and they were all really interesting. How did you do that?

[Valynne] I think that you just have to highlight what things characters are passionate about. It's a combination of passion and interest and… Those naturally become strengths for someone. If it's a passion, or interest, you have a lot of knowledge about that area, and not everything is going to be interesting to everyone. But you just have to figure out what you need for your story, and how those characters can contribute based on their knowledge and passions and hobbies. I think that that's the best way to… In most ways, that is sort of their superstrength is what they love.

 

[Brandon] So, last question comes from Sarah. She says, "I am writing a story. How do I give my characters interests that mesh with the plot after writing half a draft and realizing they have no interests?" So she wants our help fixing her story.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Presumably without throwing away that half a draft.

[Howard] Begin with a spreadsheet. I'm serious. Make notes along one column that are here are the plot points, and here are the interests, abilities, whatever's that would be helpful in making that plot point. Then have your characters be aligned in a different way, and determine who lines up where and what needs to be given to. Then things will start to emerge organically. I start with a spreadsheet, not because I'm going to fix things with a spreadsheet, but because a spreadsheet's going to show me the shape of the problem. Then I can stand back and look at it and say, "Oh. The whole is all right here in Act Two, and it all comes down to three things. I've got three characters, and this is probably a pretty easy fix."

 

[Brandon] All right. I'm going to give you guys a writing prompt. It's actually a very simple one. Cheeto McFlair. Who is Cheeto McFlair in your mind, and why are they writing on our spreadsheet? We actually know who this person is.

[Laughter]

[Dan] We're not just making fun of a random person.

[Brandon] We're not just making fun of a random person. But I want you to make up who they are. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.