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mbarkerWriting Excuses 19.13: A Close Reading on Voice: Blue's Perspective - Confidence and Vulnerability
Key points: Confidence and vulnerability. Love may weaken you and expose you to pain. Long rolling sentences, with punctuation to guide you. List after list. Gradations of vulnerability. Change in voice can show change in character development. What mechanism causes your character's change? How does that affect the voice?
[Transcription note: I have tried to get the quotes from the book correct, however, I may have made mistakes. Please refer to the book if you want the exact wording!]
[Season 19, Episode 13]
[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.
[Season 19, Episode 13]
[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.
[DongWon] 15 minutes long.
[Erin] Because you're in a hurry.
[Howard] And we're not that smart.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[DongWon] I'm DongWon.
[Erin] I'm Erin.
[Howard] And I'm terribly vulnerable. Also, I'm Howard, and I get to drive this episode. I love Blue's perspective. I… Maybe it's because I love plants, maybe it's because I know now who is responsible, as we've learned, for most of the writing of Blue's perspective. Let's begin with a reading from London Next.
[Mary Robinette] London Next.
"The same day… Month… Year… But one strand over is the kind of London other London's dream. Sepia tinted, skies strung with dirigibles. The viciousness of Empire acknowledged only as a rosy backdrop glow, redolent of spice and peddled sugar. Mannered as a novel, filthy only where story requires it. All meat pies and monarchy. This is a place Blue loves, and hates herself for loving."
[Howard] Embodied in that last sentence, for me anyway, is the very soul of confidence and vulnerability. The ability to love a thing and to acknowledge that loving it is problematic. Loving it may, in fact, weaken you. Loving may, as many of us have discovered, expose you to pain. Let's talk about this.
[DongWon] There's so much in this voice that I love, that is so distinct from Red's voice. Right? We're getting such a different rhythm, such a different kind of imagery. We talked about how short the sentences are when it comes to Red. You get those short sentences in contrast with longer ones to communicate different kinds of emotion. Whereas Blue talks in paragraphs, Blue thinks in long, poetic thoughts. Right? "Viciousness of Empire acknowledged only as a rosy backdrop glow." I mean, you just keep going. It just keeps rolling and unfolding and you get a sense of how rambling Blue's thoughts are, and how organic, and… In this contrast between Garden and Agency, we get the sense of, like, shoots spreading across the ground. Right? Like, a rhizomatic structure to how she thinks. It's really wonderful. Yet we're also getting something very parallel to what we got with Red, which is a core internal conflict. Her conflict with herself as we see Red trying to enjoy the thing and can't, because of Agency. We get this thing of Blue loving a thing that she doesn't… She hates the fact that she does love it. Right? So these tensions within the character are foregrounded in both cases, but, wow, is the technique different in how Blue gets that across.
[Howard] I think that it's worth looking back at our first introduction to Blue. Because Blue is the one who initiates contact… Blue's letter to Red, which we talked about a little bit during the Red POV.
[Mary Robinette] And we'll talk more about when we get to the epistolary section.
[Howard] Yeah. When we get to the epistolaries. In the 4th paragraph, "I shall confess to you here that I've been growing complacent, bored, even, with the war." Blue reaches out to Red at first out of boredom, out of desire for some sort of a connection beyond the incredibly rich connections, as we learn throughout the rest of the book, that Garden, and that Blue's own up thread activities allow her. She spends an entire lifetime, on at least a couple of occasions, married with kids, having careers and activities and building things and doing stuff, and just one of those lives would be enough for me. Yet, here is this goddess almost, for want of a different better word, who has become bored with that, and so reaches out to the enemy for conversation?
[Erin] That's really interesting that you said the word reaching. It's… I think those long sentences almost give you that sense of reaching. Because, like, they string on, and so they almost are like an outstretched arm, which I think is… I mean, I hadn't really thought about until this moment. One of the reasons that I think that sentence length and punctuation are such amazing tools, like, one of the things I love and I'm just saying this so it may not be true, is I notice all the dashes and the commas and…
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Erin] The use of punctuation in the Blue sections because they are these reaching sentences, and you need that punctuation to tell you… To make it makes sense, and to make you be able to follow that path that's being laid out for you in Blue's prose.
[DongWon] We get list after list after list of things. Because what… One of the things that the author is communicating is how hedonistic Blue is. Right? We get a glimpse of that with Red too. There's a line about she has a fetish for feeling, which is…
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[DongWon] Something that I love. But it's so much more abbreviated than Blue, who lingers in these things. Right? There's… She's talking about a tea. "She looks forward to her own pot, anticipates the dark, smoky, multi-path her chosen tea will pick, between the notes of candied rose, delicate bergomat, champagne, and muscat and violet." Going to your point, Erin, in that sentence we lose the commas at some point. That… The list gets away from her and we start just getting ands instead of this list of commas as she [garbled] like, oh, wait, and also this… And also this… Right? It just indicates such a deep connection to feeling alive, to tasting, to eating. We get long descriptions of that in some of the letters as well, as Red and Blue go back and forth about, "Do you eat? What is eating to you? Do you enjoy it?" All these wonderful things as Blue sort of lays out this very seductive path for Red to sensation, to experience.
[Howard] In talking about confidence, there is a paragraph that epitomizes Blue's confidence to me. "It is not entirely my intent to brag. I wish you know… I wish you to know that I respected your tactics. The elegance of your work makes this war seem like less of a waste. Speaking of which, the hydraulics in your spherical flanking gambit were truly superb. I hope you'll take comfort from the knowledge that they'll be thoroughly digested by our mulchers such that our next victory against your side will have a little piece of you in it. Better luck next time, then." I love that. I don't know what the hydraulic flanking gambit was or what the mulchers are, but I don't need to. What I need to know is that Blue is confident in victory, and so confident that she can express that. "It is not entirely my intent to brag." Not entirely. But there's some boasting here. To an enemy. Giving them information about what you're doing! Such supreme confidence. I love it.
[Mary Robinette] We also see that confidence in her body language. The actions that she takes… Just… Like, there's a moment when the server arrives and they put down the [garbled]
[Howard] In London Next.
[Mary Robinette] In London Next. The sentence that just caught me is, "As she settles the teacup on its saucer, however, Blue's hand snaps out to circle her retreating wrist." It's like it's this reminder of this enormous physical competence…
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Mary Robinette] And confidence. "The server looks terrified. 'This set,' says Blue, adjusting, softening her eyes into kindness, her grip into a caress, 'is mismatched.'" It's like… I can see that moment so clearly, but also the confidence to go, oh, okay, I know I came on too strong. Back it down. Back it down. Always being completely in control.
[DongWon] One thing I really love about this confidence and vulnerability dichotomy here is it creates distance to the character. Right? We talked about this in the voice of Red, about how close we are to her thoughts sometimes, how we are in that immediacy of her thought process, and that when were not, it's creating distance, versus here, we almost never get a real solid glimpse into Blue's thought process. Right? But we are getting the effects. We're getting… It doesn't tell us, oh, that was too much. Instead, we're getting her action of, like, releasing, calming. We get… We know why she did those things, or we're inferring why. But we're not seeing it from the interior. Right? It's such a difference in Blue's, like, remoteness. I have a thought about this book, which is kind of unusual, that I think the book is more from Red's perspective than Blue's. It's almost like the sections about Blue are written from Red observing Blue, than it is necessarily from Blue's. This is not actually true…
[Mary Robinette] No.
[DongWon] This is just like a little, like, thought I have sometimes when experiencing it, because we have that distance from Blue. And because there's like this romanticism and how we see Blue that almost feels from… Filtered through another perspective. I really love that.
[Howard] I feel it… I feel it the other way.
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Howard] When I am identifying more with Blue. But when I've… There've been a couple of times I've sat down to read where I've just been frustrated with stuff, been perhaps a little more Red in my brain…
[Laughter]
[Howard] And it's felt…
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Howard] Like you're describing. So I think the book…
[DongWon] I think that may be true. The only thing that I'm…
[Howard] I think that may be something you [garbled] DongWon.
[DongWon] That's what's beautiful about it is… Because of the way the voices work, different people will connect to different parts in different ways.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I mean, like… I feel like… The… It is equally split between the 2 of them. But I think that it is the difference in the way the characters inhabit their own bodies in the way they move through the world, like, we have this section where she's like… Where she's getting another message. "But she wills herself not to look around, commands every atom of her body into stillness, forbids the need to leap into the kitchen and pursue and hunt and catch." It's… There's… Like, I can feel that moment in my own body, of, like, oh. Nope. Don't look around. Stay put. So… But it is different than the way Red inhabits her body.
[Erin] I think this would be a perfect moment for us to will our bodies into stillness and go into the break. When we come back, we'll speak more about the beautiful voice of this story.
[Howard] This episode of Writing Excuses has been sponsored by Better Help. You know that puzzle with the eggs and the sand and the jar? If you pour the sand in first, the eggs won't fit, so you put the eggs in first, then pour the sand around them. It's a metaphor about making time for what matters in life. If you're like me, you may need someone to help you label the things you're trying to fit into the jar of your life, and then assist with some of the finer points of… And I'm going to stretch the metaphor here a bit… Placing the eggs in the jar without breaking them. Yeah. A therapist. Better Help makes it easy to find and meet a therapist. Fill out the online questionnaire and Better Help will match you up with a licensed therapist with whom you can connect via messages, chat, phone, or video. Getting help getting everything into the jar may seem like one more thing you need to get into the jar, which is exactly why Better Help makes it easy. Learn to make time for what makes you happy. Visit betterhelp.com/WX today to get 10% off your first month. That's better help… HELP.com/WX.
[Mary Robinette] Surprising no one, I love Jane Austen. I also love murder mysteries. Claudia Gray has a great series going, in which she takes characters from Jane Austen novels and puts them into classic cozy mystery settings. The 2nd in the series, The Late Mrs. Willoughby, has all the twists I want plus sparkling banter and social commentary of Jane Austen plus it has a romance between our heroine, Ms. Tilney, daughter of Catherine from Northanger Abbey, and young Mr. Darcy, the son of Lizzie and Red Darcy. This book is delightful. So, check out The Late Mrs. Willoughby by Claudia Gray.
[Howard] I want to ask what we mean by vulnerability. I feel like confidence is pretty easy to define. Maybe I'm wrong, and that's just overconfidence. But with vulnerability, I feel like there are gradations, there are inflections in it. There's the vulnerability of the known unknown. The vulnerability of I am falling in love and I know that that can expose me to heartbreak, but I don't know what kind of heartbreak. So there's unknown out there. But I know kind of the shape of it. Then there's the unknown unknown, which is I'm throwing myself on your mercy, and I have no idea what's going to happen next.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I think that one of the things that we see in the earlier chapters is that Blue is being pretty protective. That she's aware of this thing, and that she's reaching out, those long reaching sentences, but there's still, I think, a slight distance, where she's like, "But I don't want to… I want this, and I don't want it." So there's a protection there. But when we get later, there's a section, Howard, that you had pointed out, that I think is one of the places where Blue is beginning to be like, "No. No. I really am… I'm ready to be… I accept the fact that pain may come."
[Howard] Yes. I love this. A little bit of set up. Red has been discovered, kind of, and been told, "Hey, there's this other agent out there. Blue. She's been following you around. We think if you send her a letter, and we poison it, you can trick her into reading it, and consuming it, and we can completely undo her." Read participates, but not before sending a letter that says, "Don't read my next letter." So…
"Her heart should have been broken by better. Her betrayal should have had sharper teeth. All that — all that, and now this. Still, she strokes its leaves. Still, she bends to sniff the stems. A blend of cinnamon and rot. She was always going to eat it, down to the root."
This, for me, is the core of not just vulnerability, but confidence in that, and acceptance of I don't know what is going to happen next, but I know I have to do this, even though it is going to hurt. Even though it may destroy me, I have to do this.
[DongWon] Yeah. What I love is how much is communicated through the voice here. Right? We talked in an earlier section, these long rambling lists that Blue loves to make, these different descriptions, these different sensory things, and here she's talking about her own heartbreak and she says… She just says, "All that," then there's an M-dash, "All that." This idea of like she can't even bear to do the thing that she always does, which is due this long, rambling discursive thing, talking about the different aspects of it. She starts to. Right? She starts to make this list, and then she's just too sad. I love how much that comes through and just my heart stops with her… I feel her come to the realization of, "Oh, what's the point of this? What am I doing? This is too painful." Again, the voice gets that across so well, of how different this Blue is than the one… The taunting, menacing version that we met earlier. Sort of the pure hedonist that we see in the tea shop. This is someone different, this is somebody who has cracked herself open for this other person, and now the knife is going in.
[Howard] That difference is key to anything that you are writing that has character development. You want to be able, as a writer, to show us through many tools, but character voice may be foremost among them, how a character is changing from when we first meet them to later in the book.
[Erin] Yeah. I think that one of the things that is really cool about the change here is that you see how each of the characters influences the other. How the voice of one changes the voice of the other. In this case, that makes a lot of sense because this is a conversation between 2 people. But in your story, you might think how… What is the mechanism for your character's change? Then, how might that impact the voice? If they become more confident, do they… Is the… Are the word choices stronger? Like, are they words that are more active? If they become more contemplative, do they have more moments of filtering, are they setback more? It is in those changes that you're showing that character growth.
[Mary Robinette] The other thing that… With that, that you can look at is points of repetition, as ways of emphasizing some of the change. Like the, "All that — all that." Choosing where you're going to put those pieces of repetition, choosing, like, why you're drawing a line under something by pointing at it. Like, why are you focusing us there? In this case, that… I think one of the reasons that that gets repeated… Or is so effective when repeated is because of the… You can hear the influence of Red on Blue's voice. The other thing that I was thinking about, looking at this was something, Erin, you said earlier, was when we talked about hitting a character voice very hard at the beginning, and that by the end, since this section that were talking about is much later in the book, the reader… The reader knows already and can… Can fill in a lot of the emphasis that the writer is intending. So we've got this point where… Where Blue is like… Has these rhythms that are very much like Red. But then when we… The confidence that we come back into her own voice. One of the things that's very interesting about the way people inhabit language is that when you are looking at whether or not someone picks up an accent when they moved to another place, it is often related to their confidence in themselves. The people who are very confident in themselves will mimic someone else's speech patterns as a way to make that other person feel comfortable, as a way to experiment. But people who are less confident will cling to their own original accent as a way of clinging to their self-definition. So, for me, one of the things that I find fascinating about the "all that — all that" is that she is leaning into Red's. But then when she is like… When she is eating it, we get back to the listing.
"She thinks of Ortalon as she chews the plant's fibers, considers draping her head in white cloth for closer communion. She wipes bright blood from her lips [garbled and laughs?] softer and softer, swallowing every stroke of flavor."
We get back into those long things, as she becomes more vulnerable, as she is in the process of dying. Then, going back to that thing we were talking about earlier, we have a sentence that is popped out in italics where we are… It is completely her own thought, very clearly.
"She thinks, loathsome in its own deliciousness."
That is such a… Such a very, very Blue…
[DongWon] Yes.
[Mary Robinette] Way to frame things. I love that it's unambiguous, that it is clearly a thought that she is having while this experience is occurring. That's, again, something, a tool that you can use is to think about when do I want to be very clear that this is exactly the sentence that my character is thinking.
[DongWon] Well, just the imagery here, right, of the bright blood coming from her lips. She's wiping her tears and blood off. It's like literally the red mixing with blueness here. Right? She's taking Red into herself and it's killing her. But then it ends with she rises, washes her face, washes her hands, and sits down to write a letter. She has removed the red from her in this moment. Right? She has steeled herself against this thing. We sort of feel a door closing in this moment, as she has opened herself to the deepest vulnerability, and she is returning to, "Nope. I am Blue. This is who I am." There's such a heartbreak in how this chapter ends that is in such contrast to the heartbreak that comes earlier with the "all that — all that."
[Howard] In… The question that I asked for the 2nd half of this episode, the gradations, the types of vulnerability. I love that we see kind of the whole gradient in this section we've just read. "Her heart should have been broken by better." There's heartbreak, but there's also disappointment. Disappointment is something to which we're vulnerable. "Her betrayal should have had sharper teeth." Well, betrayal is yet another level of vulnerability. Then we get to that last one. That's the homework that I want to send you out with. Are you ready?
[Howard] I want you to write vulnerability as a known known. Something that is… That the character knows exists and knows the shape it will take. As a known unknown. They know it exists, but they don't know the shape it will take. And as an unknown unknown. They have no idea what shape it will take or how it exists or anything about it. Yet they are confident enough to be vulnerable to each of these.
[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.
[Howard] Hey, podcast lovers. Do you know that you can upgrade your experience here with our ad free tier on Patreon? Head over to patreon.com/writingexcuses to enjoy an ad free oasis, as well as access to our virtual Discord community where you can talk with your fellow writers.
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